Whooping cough is particularly
dangerous to infants and young
children, and it's a growing concern
here in Austin and across Texas.
Austin's local health authority
continues to report cases, as
does the state's Department of
Health Services.
We're going to hear more about the
local and statewide numbers.
Plus, Texas teens face more barriers
to getting an abortion than other
age groups after the state six-week
abortion ban went into effect in
2021.
The findings of a new study that
looks at the impact on Texas and its
surrounding states.
That's coming up.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
And there's a new book out that
captures this moment in time in
Austin's music scene.
We're going to chat with a couple of
the folks behind that effort.
That is up next.
And it's right here on Austin
Signal.
Thank you for tuning in out there.
This is Austin Signal.
I'm Jerry Quijano.
It's Monday the 17th, already
more than halfway through November,
nearly the end of 2025.
Thank you spending part of your day
here with us.
A quick check in with the KUT
newsroom.
The Austin Independent School
District made some changes to
programming and student
reassignments in the final
version of a school consolidation
plan that was released late last
Friday.
10 schools are still set to close
before next school year.
Superintendent Matias Segura says
the revised plan reassigns just
short of 4,000 students
and eliminates more than 6,300
empty seats from the district, a
district that has been seeing
declining enrollment over
the last decade.
That plan is expected to help save
more than $20 million.
The AISD Board of Trustees is
set to vote on the plan this
Thursday, along with the turnaround
plans. For two dozen
schools.
Whooping cough is a growing problem
here in the Austin area.
Whooping Cough or Pertussis cases
continue to be confirmed by Austin
Public Health, and it's not just
happening locally.
The Texas Department of State Health
Services reports a surge statewide.
Texas has seen 3,500 cases
through October of this year.
That is approximately four times
more than there were reported during
the same period last year.
More than 10 times the case is
reported in the same period two
years ago.
Here to talk about this more is
KUT's healthcare reporter Olivia
Aldridge. Olivia, thanks for being
with us.
Hi, Jerry.
So do officials have any idea
why we're experiencing and seeing
this uptick in cases?
Well, vaccination rates for whooping
cough are down, and it's a very
contagious illness, so it'll spread
more if fewer people are vaccinated.
And that's why the state health
department is really urging parents
to make sure that their kids get the
Tdap vaccine.
That also protects against tetanus
and diphtheria.
And for adults to look into
a booster, if they are around
people who are vulnerable to
whooping-cough, that includes
infants, pregnant women, and
anyone who's immunocompromised,
You mentioned that Tdap vaccine.
Austin Public Health expects that
there were several cases that passed
around at Austin school campuses,
but the whooping cough vaccine,
that T-dap, it's required for
schools, is it not?
Yeah, kids are technically required
in Texas to get a Tdap vaccine
before starting school, but
fewer people are actually getting
it. So in Austin ISD specifically,
just 74% of kindergartners
were up to date on that shot during
the 2024, 25 school
year, around 85%
among seventh graders.
In Texas, you can get a
conscientious exemption for required
vaccines like this, but the data
also shows us that locally,
not all of these kids actually have
those exemptions on file and
rates for pretty much all vaccines
have been slipping since COVID.
For a story I did earlier this year
that was more focused on measles
vaccination rates, folks at
Austin ISD told me that it's just
been. Battle for a number of
reasons getting everyone into
compliance since that time when
things were pretty disrupted.
Whooping cough was not something I
would heard all that much whenever I
was a youth so I'm learning a little
bit as we're going around it seems
as though it's more dangerous the
younger the affected person is
who really needs to be most
concerned here when it comes to
whooping cough.
Sure, right? It sounds kind of like
an old-timey Victorian illness,
doesn't it?
It really does it sounds like like a
fainting couch or something you need
to get fainten couch for your
whooping cough or something like
that
Sure, but it is descriptive,
it's, you know, people start off
with a little bit of a cold, then
they're getting this really serious
persistent cough that kind of does
have this distinctive whooping sound
potentially.
It can be pretty mild for many
people, but especially for
babies under the age of one, it
can be pretty dangerous.
They can struggle to breathe, they
can stop breathing, and
again, DSHS says around
a third of infants with whooping
cough end up hospitalized.
We can read more about Olivia's
reporting on Whooping Cough over at
KUT.org.
I want to switch topics to another
story that you reported last week,
which is that Texans under the age
of 18 were disproportionately
affected after the state
enacted its six-week abortion ban
back in 2021.
First off, who conducted this study
and what time frame were they
looking at?
So it was published in the American
Journal of Public Health, and some
of the authors are part of this
Texas-based research group called
ReSound Research for Reproductive
Health.
They used to be affiliated with UT
Austin.
They looked at this time period
around when Texas's Senate
Bill 8 was passed.
That was the approximately six-week
abortion ban passed
prior to Roe versus Wade being
overturned.
Of course we now have a more
restrictive total ban,
but data from this period is
interesting to researchers because
it's some of the earliest data
available on the effects of
restrictive abortion bans kind of
in this era and
can maybe indicate more of
what we might be seeing in states
across the country now.
Well, from reading your reporting at
kut.org, I noticed that overall
facility-based abortions dropped in
Texas, but when it came to patients
under 18, they were way down,
60% fewer during the
time of the study.
We're obviously here in Texas so
we're worried about that.
Did we see that there
was an effect on abortion numbers in
the states surrounding Texas in the
same time period?
Yeah.
So keep in mind with those
statistics you're talking about,
there's only six weeks within
time frame when people can be
getting that procedure when
this was the law.
But the study's authors also looked
at Texans traveling to
surrounding states.
So it got statistics
on the number of Texans who
left the state of Texas to six
surrounding states to have
in clinic abortions
there.
What they found was that there were
a lot more Texans doing that than
before, maybe unsurprisingly,
but it still didn't compensate for
that overall decrease.
It really didn't come close.
So I think for minors under
the age of 18, there was still an
overall 26%
decrease in the number of abortions
they were getting, even if you
included those out-of-state
numbers.
Okay Olivia, we only have about a
minute left with you.
Were there any other important
takeaways that you found from this
study?
Well, I would note that, you know,
as we discuss, laws and trends have
changed.
The study doesn't factor in
telemedicine, for instance, so
medication abortion sent by mail
from doctors in other states.
And we know that that's increasingly
common in the US and kind of the
post-Roe era.
So it's not comprehensive of all the
abortions that could have been
taking place, but it does show us
some interesting trends.
All right, we have been speaking
with Olivia Aldridge.
She is KUT's healthcare reporter,
and you can find more of her
reporting over at kut.org.
Olivia, thank you for talking to us
today.
And thank you for being with us here
on Austin Signal.
You can hear us every weekday
afternoon at one o'clock on KUT
News 90.5 on the
KUT app and online at
KUT.org.
Hope you're having a nice Monday
and hey maybe your Monday
morning commute seemed smoother
than usual and if so
you are not imagining that.
New research shows that Monday
mornings have the fewest traffic
delays on average.
Compared to rush hour during every
other weekday.
But as KUT's Nathan Bernier
reports, the trend says more about
who can skip traffic than
how to fix it.
Nobody likes to go into the office
on Mondays, so for those who can
choose which days to commute,
they tend to avoid it, and that
creates an opportunity for people
like Kenna Pierce.
She lives in South Austin and works
in North Austin.
I go to work on Monday and I take 35
and the traffic is way less
in the morning anyway.
On the way home it's always bad.
A new report by Texas A&M
University's Transportation
Institute backs that up.
Researchers looked at traffic data
in almost 500 cities natio nwide,
and a clear trend emerged.
Mondays is...
Hands down the least
congested weekday.
David Schrank is a senior research
scientist at the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute.
He's been studying urban mobility
for more than 35 years,
which is long enough to know that
the same thing that makes Mondays
smoother, basically people making
their own choices about when to go
into the office, can also make
Mondays way worse.
Because you don't know
which Monday ever
employer in town is going to call
their people in you're no one's
expecting it. And all of a sudden,
wham, everybody's out there trying
to use the system at the same time.
Or something else happens, like bad
weather is forecast on Wednesday, so
people decide to go in Monday
instead.
Of course, not everyone has the
luxury of choosing which days to
commute, but Austin does have
an unusually large number of people
who work from home at least one day
a week, according to a poll
conducted by Moveability Austin.
That's an organization whose main
purpose is reducing traffic by
convincing people not to drive
alone.
When people are stuck in traffic,
they like to think it's the
traffic's fault. But actually you
are traffic.
Lonnie Stern is MoveAbility's
executive director.
Their Austin area poll found about
60% of Travis County
respondents worked from home, at
least occasionally.
For Williamson County, it was 55%.
For Hayes County, about 50%.
The poll found remote work is an
economic privilege.
People allowed to work from home
tended to have higher incomes,
higher education, and were over 35
years old.
And remote work just is not possible
for much of the workforce that's
considered essential.
Like those in retail, healthcare,
construction, or hospita-
Work from home isn't going to be
a panacea.
We find that people who work from
home may then take extra
trips during those off hours.
So that's why we're starting to see
the midday traffic spike
where it used to be very
predictable. Everyone drove in and
everyone drove out for the workday.
Now they're making all these trips
in the middle of the day.
Texas A&M's research found the
same thing.
Another factor is all the extra
trips by delivery trucks because
of more people shopping online.
And more baby boomers have retired
and now they're driving around
during the middle of the day.
So if Monday is the best day
to commute, what's the worst day?
On average, across all the roads
measured in Austin, it was Thursday,
especially afternoons between four
and six p.m., in Austin anyway.
In Houston, Dallas, and San
Antonio, Fridays between 4
and 5 is still the worst time
to be on the roads.
I'm Nathan Bernier in Austin.
It's Austin Signal, thank you
for being with us.
We hope your Monday morning
and Monday afternoons commute goes
smooth.
Something that didn't move very
smooth this weekend was the Texas
football team.
They came up short in a road game
against Georgia, and joining me
now to talk a little more about that
is KUT's Jimmy Maas.
Howdy, Jimmy.
Good afternoon, Jerry.
So Jimmy, a final score of the game
against Georgia, 35 to 10,
seems like a walloping.
Was the game any closer than the
score indicated?
A score not indicative of
the game.
Although, man, the game and
the season really did unravel quite
quickly there in the fourth quarter.
They were only down four points.
Texas, I mean.
Georgia was leading by four.
And then on the ensuing drive,
they had a fourth down, seemingly
they stopped Georgia with a little
momentum.
And then a fake punt.
And then four downs later,
the costly penalty on another fourth
down. And then, a quick touchdown,
and then a quick.
Onside kick that fooled Texas.
It happened very fast.
Next thing you know, it is, they're
18 points down and they
had nowhere to go.
There was kind of a junk touchdown
at the end, but with
that,
there were a lot of expectations on
this Texas team and I think if you
were trying to hold that team to
that same standard the pre-season
number one, that was a very
disappointing game.
Absolutely absolutely as like you
said preseason number one this team
had made the college football
playoff two times in a row I'm
If you are holding Texas to the
standard that is the highest
grossing athletic department
in division one sports,
it is a very disappointing game.
If you have some sort of circumspect
view that like, well, it's a
young team, young quarterback read,
you know, it s hard to make the
playoffs for three years in a row
and it's
very even more difficult to come
in with those kind of manning sized
expectations and live up to them.
This season may be right about where
you'd expect and it's not over.
It's there's still a little.
Little bit to play there's a little
bit of sliver of hope that the you
have a game this weekend against
Arkansas here I DKR Arkansas
here closing out next Friday against
Texas A&M and that
That game will determine whether
Texas A&M may get into the SEC
Championship.
That's right, so lots to play for
still.
That's KUT's Jimmy Maas with a quick
update on the Longhorns.
Jimmy, thank you. Thank you.
And thank you for tuning in to
Austin Signal.
We will be back in just a moment.
You're tuned in to Austin Signal
here on KUT News.
Thank you for making this part of
your Monday.
You know that feeling when you wanna
look up a favorite old local band
or photos from a now shuttered
venue, and once you've finally found
an archived link that sends you down
nostalgia lane, eeeek,
a piece of the internet no longer
exists.
A fantastic alternative to that is
a good old fashioned hold it in your
hand book, a lasting testament to
a sound and to a moment in time.
Out now that's putting a new shine
on the artist venues and stories
right at the heart of our local
community music community it's
called austin's music scene your
guide to the city's most iconic
artists and venues and today
we're joined by the book's
editor-in-chief mitch baronowski and
its photo editor david brendan hall
uh gentlemen thank you for coming on
Austin Signal.
Thank you for having us.
It's great to be here.
Thank you.
Well, Mitch, let me start with you.
Why did you and your team, you know,
why did you want to create this
guidebook in the first place?
You know, we are a
team of fans and
journalists and creatives,
and we were
chatting with the folks at HAM.
It's their 20th anniversary at the
Health Alliance for Austin
Musicians, and wanted to do
something special.
And we, in taking a look at
the landscape, we realized no
one's ever really tried a book about
the current live music scene.
We have so much talent in this town.
We've had our history books.
We've our biographies
and our memoirs.
But we haven't had a snapshot of the
scene today.
And so we really set out to create a
love letter, if you will, because
let's face it for a lot of
musicians, a lot artists, it's
a labor of love.
And this project was for us a labor
love.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that one
of the challenges was
figuring out how we create
this snapshot.
And one thing we wanted to do, just
to clarify that a little bit,
was make it so that all the artists
that you see in the book are active
right now. The idea that you can
pick up the book, read about an
artist, check out the photos, and go
see them. Find out when they're
playing something. Yeah, exactly.
So There is an
immediacy to the concept of the book
also, which is the difference that
Mitch was talking about, you know,
rather than a Retrospective
or something like that.
Of course, it may turn into that
over time. Yeah
Yeah, but it's starting out at this
at this stage, right?
You mentioned that immediacy.
I love that You know, there's an
index of artists. You can actually
fold through the pages and see
Everything photos look beautiful
How important was it for this thing
to actually be like a tangible book
and not just an online guide?
Not that there's anything wrong with
that. But how important was for this
to be a real thing that people could
hold?
Super important.
I mean, we have, we have a digital
companion to the book as well,
where we're, we'll be sharing
exclusive content, bonus content
that you can't find on the page.
But, um, how awesome, uh,
to have something that feels like
a coffee table book, but also has
the practicality of a field guide,
if you will, and our friend Emma
Schmidt, just to call out one of the
many talented folks who worked on
the, on the book with us, uh did
these amazing hand-drawn
illustrations of venues across
town.
Inside the back cover, it folds out
to this great hand-drawn map of
the venues across town, and you can
really use that to plan your live
music experience.
So I kind of described the creative
strategy as a reverse mullet.
It's sort of, you know, party
in the front with all the great
photos from, from David Brendan
hall and others,
and a business in the back with all
the nuts and bolts that you need to
really take advantage of this town.
Yeah, well, as Mitch was saying
there, David, most of the photos in
this book belong to you, and
you were talking a little bit about
you, you were born and raised here,
I believe you said, and so you've
been on the scene for a long time.
How many years of work did you,
were you able to kind of amass into
this book?
Well, we wanted to
pull from photos from my
archive that was as current as
we possibly could.
Now, I have some photos that go, you
know, back 15 years, but
we tried to keep it within the last
decade, and even then made
some choices. Well, this is an old
photo of this band or this artist.
They have a different vibe or the
band members have changed.
Yeah. And those were cases where.
Really needed to reach out to other
photographers or the artists and get
updated photos.
And a goal of mine was to include as
many other photographers as possible
within the restrictions
of our modest
budget, but also tried
to be generous in that sense to
as many perspectives
as we could get.
And so about maybe to answer your
question, 10 years of
coming through my archive and
a lot of that thanks to
working with the Austin Chronicle,
who opened a lot of doors for me, so
shout out to them.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. And then KUTX.
NKUTX for
everything.
Education on the
music scene, commitment to
it,
to spotlighting that for
people every day.
And I think that
with the
choices that we made,
it was a difficult process.
An editorial process.
Yeah, and the difficult
editorial process and it came
together in such a short
amount of time.
I think we pulled all these photos
in a matter of two and a half,
three months. So it was quite the
trip down memory lane.
A perfectly imperfect process.
I mean, no, no one book can do
justice to the, to the broad,
deep talent that's in this town.
And so this is a start and we just,
we're trying to give the readers a
cross section.
And that's why we, you know, we
decided to use genres to sort
of organize, organize
discovery of artists, if you will.
And we have country Americana,
blues and soul, Latin and
world, hip hop and R and jazz
electronic and experimental
There's so much to discover.
I learned a lot, David learned a
lot.
Yeah that was that was one of the
fun things is that you know of
course Mitch and I both have our
segments our niches in the scene
that we know but you know
I there was stuff like particularly
jazz that I don't
know a whole lot about and so
really learned about artists that
haven't been on my radar the entire
time I've been in the seen and
connected with photographers also
who were really involved in that
and people that came in to consult
with us and educate us.
On on some of these so it was that
it was a process of discovery for us
and we hope that you know it's
uh... Vehicle for discovery for
others and it's
And did y'all expect it to be a
source of discovery, because I
assume, like, you know, you write a
book, you're perceived as, like an
authority on that topic, right, but
was that rewarding to be
able to be enlightened as you're
going along in this process?
Well, you know, it's interesting
because we often talk about the
Austin music scene as if it's
some monolithic entity.
And when you go down this path, what
you quickly discover is this great
insight that there is not just one
scene. You know, that holds space
for all of these great scenes,
all these micro scenes.
And so you can go to Africa night
at the Sahara Lounge on, on
Saturday night, or you can dip in
to the white horse for Armadillo
Road on a Sunday night, or You
know, you can go to ABGB
on Sunday afternoon.
You can do all these great things in
this town. Chickensh, bingo, at
Little Longhorn, right?
Thank you for that.
It's all here.
Anyway, scenes are personal.
They are highly personal.
Just to highlight something that you
sort of did there inadvertently
that the book is more than just
artists. That's right.
It's the venues, it's the festivals,
it is the nonprofits that are
giving back to the scene also.
Absolutely. So all that is included
in there as part of the guide.
And then to backtrack a little bit,
I mean, you were asking about,
did we expect it to, you
know... To learn and to be
enlightened by that.
Well, I think that you have
to when you're creating a project
like this.
Or even when you're
conversing with people about the
scene or any music scene.
And I was talking to Mitch about it.
And I think one of the most exciting
things about music in general
is that one person cannot know
everything.
There is always something to
discover. Even if someone comes to
me and says, you've probably
photographed everything.
You've seen everything. I'm like,
absolutely not. There's no way, try
me. And so through this
and even just all the time, you got
so many chances to discover music.
And that's part of the magic of it.
And it was part of magic of this
project. Can help please.
Translates to other people picking
up the book in Austin and beyond.
I think there's reach beyond here,
too
Absolutely.
It's a way to be
welcomed into the Austin music scene
and have a good knowledge.
We got about two minutes left and
you mentioned Ham earlier.
Some proceeds from the sale of your
book are benefiting Ham.
Again, that's the Health Alliance
for Austin musicians.
How important was it to use this
project as a way to give back to
those musicians, to the community?
Super important.
I mean, it's open enrollment right
now for Ham.
Most of the artists we interviewed
and talked to, and we must have done
at least 70 interviews for this
project,
they're not opposed to
change or growth.
Austin has changed a lot over the
last decades.
One common hope is that
the scene remains affordable
for them to stay here
and perform here and make their
art here.
Uh, we, we heard that
routinely and, you know,
You know, working with Ham made it
abundantly clear that we have to
support these artists in this
community if we want the scene to
thrive.
And so I'd say that's another great
note. We have an impact section in
the back of the book.
We recognize all of the great
nonprofits beyond Ham who
are working to sustain the scene.
And we give readers tips on how they
can amplify these nonprofits in
their.
We have been chatting with David
Brendan Hall and Mitch Baranowski.
They're a couple of the members of
the team behind the book.
Austin's music scene, your guide to
the city's most iconic artists and
venues.
I did notice that it says first
edition and you mentioned, uh,
you know, that maybe there will be
future ones. We only have about 30
seconds left.
Uh, but you said there's going to be
like a little bit of supplementary,
uh, information available online.
Yeah, we'll be launching an online
companion component and
stuff we couldn't fit in the book in
the very limited amount of pages
that we had.
So hopefully many more photos,
interviews, profiles,
the scene will continue to change
within a few months, within,
it could be next
week, another artist
or band forms or another venue
opens and then things will change
and we can update that in real time.
Reflects how this scene is
ever-evolving.
It's it's never gonna stop about
Thank you for going out and
supporting live music.
Yeah. Keep going.
This is David Brendan Hall and Mitch
Baranowski.
Thank you for being with us here on
Austin Signal.
Thank you.
And thank you out there for being us
on this Monday afternoon
or whenever you're tuning in.
This is Austin Signal, I'm your host
Jerry Quijano.
We have more information at kut.org
slash signal.