The CDC reduced earlier this
month the number of usually
recommended vaccines for children.
Now that change has flummoxed some
parents and pediatricians in the
area. We're going to hear some of
the questions that they have been
asking.
And it's been more than six months
since deadly flooding killed more
than 130 people across the Austin
area and the Texas Hill country.
And recovery is still a long ways
down the road.
An update from some of folks still
working through that process that's
coming up in today's show.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
Plus, the ATX Free Fridge project
has been filling in the gaps of food
access across the Austin area for
more than half a decade, but the
project itself could use a little
love and help these days.
That story and a whole lot more
coming your way, that is on today's
Austin Signal.
Howdy out there, this is
Austin Signal.
Thank you for making us part of your
day. It is Wednesday, January 13th.
I'm your host, Jerry Quijano.
Let's get into today's
show.
Changes in the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention's new vaccine
recommendations are causing
questions among some parents and
raising eyebrows among
pediatricians.
So what is going on and how are
folks around here feeling about it?
Well, to answer some of those
questions, we are talking with KUT's
healthcare reporter.
Olivia Aldridge.
Olivia, thanks for joining us.
Hi, I'm glad to be here.
So for folks who might not
be familiar with the change, what
specifically did the CDC alter
here?
Yeah, the CDC announced a pretty big
overhaul of its recommended vaccine
schedule.
So previously, that schedule
basically included 17 vaccines
plus an antibody treatment for RSV
recommended for all kids at
various ages in their life.
Now there are only 11 vaccines
recommended for kids.
And those other six
were kind of moved into different
categories.
So, now they're recommended either
for kids at especially high risk
of severe disease or for patients
who have gone through what's called
a shared clinical decision-making
process with their doctor.
So, essentially, that's just parents
chatting with the kid's pediatrician
and deciding whether to give them
that vaccine.
The shots affected here that
are moved into those other
categories are that RSV
treatment And I mentioned hepatitis
A and B, meningitis.
COVID-19, the flu shot,
and then rotavirus, which is a
common infection that causes
vomiting and diarrhea.
And I want to add that this
isn't a requirement.
It's actually states that make
requirements about shots that kids
need for school.
But many of these state laws
reference the CDC guidelines.
And those guidelines are also just
an important resource for public
health departments, health care
professionals, and then the general
public.
Okay, well, our listeners are
certainly going to be concerned
about how Texans and Austinites
could be affected.
What has been the general reaction
to this recommended change among
pediatricians that you've spoken
with?
There has been some confusion, I'd
say, around like, why these
vaccines?
Because it's not the case that there
was some new study that shed doubt
on any of these specific shots.
The science is the same.
So one pediatrician that I spoke
to is now sticking to the vaccine
schedule endorsed by the American
Academy of Pediatrics, which
aligns with that previous CDC
schedule with the 17 shots.
That's common.
It's also true in some cases at the
organizational level.
So like Austin regional clinic
pediatrics Texas children's
are basing recommendations on that
American Academy of Pediatrics
guidance
Okay, so now let's talk about the
parental side of it.
How have parents been reacting to
this news?
Yeah.
Um, I think there's a lot of
confusion.
So, you know, one
pediatrician that I talked to, um,
said that she immediately started to
get questions from parents that were
like, what is this all about?
Um, just generally a lot confusion
about what information can
I trust that's not totally
new. So this pediatrician,
Dr. Marjan Linel, um.
Even before this, she was getting a
lot more questions, running into a
lot More skepticism, you.
Remember, the country's top health
official, Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
Is a pretty prominent anti-vaccine
activist, and there's a lot of
misinformation floating around on
social media.
So in Texas, parents do have some
choice.
So the state has vaccine
requirements for kids entering
school, but it's possible to seek an
exemption. So she really tries to
meet parents' concerns with
care and give
them the best information she can so
that they can make an informed
choice. She often sends folks.
To some online resources from the
Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania,
which have some really detailed
information about what's safe.
OK, lastly, along those lines,
we have about 30 seconds left.
I know right now sickness is on
a lot of people's minds, flu, what
have you. What is the flu vaccine
recommendation?
And is that affected in any of this
that's going on?
It is affected for
for kids. The CDC isn't officially
recommending it for all kids anymore
But right now during this very
active flu season a lot of public
health leaders are urging people
young and old to get it It
can help prevent those really
serious flu cases that can put
people in the hospital
All right, we have been speaking
with KUT's healthcare reporter,
Olivia Aldridge.
You can find more of her reporting
on this story and others at
KUT.org, and we're
going to have it in our show notes
for today's show.
Olivia, thanks for coming on the
show.
This is Austin Signal.
Thank you for being with us.
It's been six months since
catastrophic flooding tore through
the Texas Hill Country, killing more
than 130 people.
As the Texas newsroom's Lucio
Vasquez reports, recovery is
still far from complete.
It was just after midnight on July
4th, Joe Herrera said the
rain sounded normal at first.
Then it didn't stop.
Herrera, who has Parkinson's
disease, lives with his wife near
the Guadalupe River in Kerr County,
Texas.
As the rain intensified, the river
began to rise.
The water was all the way into the
garage, pretty deep already,
within minutes.
As it kept rising, a neighbor came
to check on them, tied a rope around
Herrera and helped pull him to
safety. They survived, but their
home was badly damaged.
Their car was destroyed.
Still, Herrera says he's happy to be
alive. He says he was back in his
home two months later.
Hundreds of other people weren't so
lucky.
Every day, I pray to God, thank you
for what I have.
In a matter of hours, the river rose
up to 37 feet.
The region is expected to lose up to
$22 billion in damage
and economic losses.
Recovery is far from complete,
but daily life has largely resumed.
Shops are open, restaurants are
busy, traffic moves steadily
along bridges that were once
underwater.
The Guadalupe River is quiet now.
But walk closer to the river and
the gaps appear.
Empty lots where homes once
stood. Fresh dirt where foundations
were washed away.
The beauty and the calmness
of that river.
And to see the damage that it's done
is really hard for people to
understand. And that's gonna take
years to get over.
Louis Amastoy is a resident and
journalist who's been covering the
flood for the Kerr County lead, a
local online news source.
He says the landscape tells only
part of the story.
These are people that have lived
here their entire lives, you know,
this is a pretty close-knit
community.
The flood was one of the deadliest
natural disasters in Texas history.
At least two people, including an
eight-year-old girl, remain missing.
And as the water receded, questions
followed about whether people along
the river were adequately warned and
whether the risk was fully
understood before the storm.
There's a lot of questions to
be answered.
One of those questions centers on
the accuracy of flood maps produced
by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, an agency that has also
faced criticism for its response to
the disaster.
Former acting FEMA Administrator
David Richardson was accused by
some state and federal lawmakers
of failing to show urgency as
the crisis unfolded.
He later defended the agency's
response during a congressional
hearing.
Texas got what they needed when
they needed it.
Richardson resigned in November.
Also, some residents said emergency
alerts on their phones were
inconsistent or never arrived at
all. During a public hearing about
a month after the flood, the Kerr
County officials responsible for
sending those alerts said they were
either asleep or out of town as
floodwaters began to rise.
But for some families, the last six
months have been about
accountability.
Four separate lawsuits are now
moving through the courts, all
connected to Camp Mystic.
An all-girl summer camp where 25
campers and two counselors were
killed.
The summer camp recently announced
plans to reopen later this year.
Kyle Finley represents families who
were suing Camp Mystic.
Have a child still missing.
And instead of focus being on that,
we're talking about trying to
open camp to gain additional
revenue.
Attorney Michael Watts says
investments made by Texas lawmakers
after the flood should prevent
another tragedy from unfolding.
There will never be a flood death in
this river again because we'll
have a warning system that we need.
The state legislature approved
nearly $300 million for
upgrades to flood warning equipment,
including new sirens along the
Guadalupe River.
Amistoy, who's been covering the
disaster in the same community he
calls home, says recovery is
far from over.
We still have missing people.
And I think that's our community's
responsibilities to ensure that
they're not forgotten.
Amistoy says uncertainty still
hangs over the Hill Country,
for survivors still rebuilding and
families seeking answers.
That was the Texas newsroom's
Lucio Vasquez.
You can find more from him
and the entire newsroom over
at KUT.org.
Thank you for spending part of your
Tuesday afternoon here with
us on Austin Signal.
Coming up, the ATX Free Fridge
project has been in operation for
six years, but they could use some
help to keep the project moving
forward. We've got that.
And the new year means new
items available in the public
domain. Come here.
What's available?
What can you mash up?
That's coming up next right here
on Austin Signal.
This is Austin Signal.
For more than half a decade, the ATX
Free Fridge Project has been helping
to fill the gaps in food access
across the Austin area.
People in need can visit one of five
outdoor fridges to pick up free
food, no questions asked.
But as KUT's Katy McAfee
reports, the project has recently
hit a bit of a rough patch.
Within 10 sunny minutes on Tuesday
afternoon, seven people stopped by
a refrigerator on South 1st Street
and Ditmar Road to pick up free
food. The fridge is covered by
a wooden pergola with built-in
shelves for dry food and clothing
donations.
There's also a bulletin board for
folks to leave notes or sponsor
community events.
This is one of five fridges run by
the ATX Free Fridge Project,
which started during the pandemic to
combat rising food insecurity rates.
And it works sort of like a little
library for food.
Take what you need, leave what you
can. No paperwork,
no questions.
The project has taken off since the
pandemic.
A few years ago, volunteers put door
sensors on the fridges and found
they were opened, on average,
300 times a day.
Lannie Lee has been going to the
Dittmar Fridge for years.
He says this resource has been
lifesaving, especially late last
year, when a government shutdown
delayed federal food benefits.
I remember not having any
food, not knowing what was going to
happen, not knowing how I was going
eat, and this place
has taken care of a lot
of people.
But though these fridges are well
frequented, not all of them are
well cared for.
Next to the cans of crushed tomatoes
and vegetable soup at the Ditmar
location is a pile of dirty,
wrinkled laundry.
Trash is strewn about the area.
Lee says lately he doesn't want to
open the fridge without gloves on.
Everybody's touching everything in
there. There's germs and there
are some people that come and clean
and help out. Lots of us do.
We pick up the trash, but it's
a never ending process
to clean up and sanitize it.
Stephanie Castleberry, one of the
five volunteers heading the ATX Free
Fridge Project, says the Dittmar
fridge will close by the end of the
month because keeping it clean has
been impossible.
A fridge on Second Street closed
late last year for similar reasons.
Try like we put out the calls to
action we set up text chains to
like tell people hey this is going
on can you go clean it but it's just
not enough you know we need everyone
who's going to the fridges to just
take that step take care of it
because the second street was a huge
loss Dipmar is going to be a huge
loss for that neighborhood.
There's a spreadsheet on the ATX
Free Fridge website where community
members can sign up to clean their
local fridge, but almost all
the spots are unfilled.
You know, we're just five volunteers
who like, we have day jobs,
you know, we do this in our free
time and like, um, we do our best
to try to like, make sure the
fridges are operational and
everything like that.
But like the people who are going
to the fridge is regularly,
we really need support from those
full.
Castleberry says, from the start,
the Free Fridge Project has been
rooted in, quote, anarchy.
It's a way for community members to
help each other out when
conventional welfare systems fail.
A key component of the project is
anonymity.
On one hand, that might make it
easier for someone to get food when
they need it.
But less face-to-face interaction
also makes it tough to ensure people
are on same page about caring for
the fridges.
That's why we're trying to do more
community meetings.
And we started a Discord so
that we can try to like connect with
more people, get people talking
to one another.
And you know, hey, that's
not how you're supposed to donate
food. Like let's do this.
Castleberry is hopeful the fridge
project will make it through this
rough patch.
Volunteers have early plans to set
up three more fridges in Montopolis,
Franklin Park, and North Austin
neighborhoods this year.
And they aren't giving up on the
Dittmar community.
They're looking for a new place to
put a fridge nearby and give the
South Austin neighborhood a fresh
start. I'm Katy McAfee in
Austin.
Technology has made it easier than
ever for anyone out there to
reimagine a piece of music,
a book, even a movie.
And many artists battle to protect
their copyrighted work from the
algorithmic meat grinder
in the parlance of our time.
But as the new year begins, more
creative works are now fair game for
anyone, human or machine, to
chop up, mash up, or glow up
as they wish.
Texas Standard's Shelly
Brisbin takes a look.
At what's newly free from copyright.
Like clockwork, each January 1st,
media historians, academics, and
creators eager to remix works of
art from the past celebrate Public
Domain Day.
On the first day of 2026,
works of artwork from 1930 along
with sound recordings from 1925
lost copyright protection.
Yes sir, that's my baby.
No sir, don't mean maybe.
Yes sir that's ma baby now.
That means that anyone is free to
adapt these works, from novels,
comics, musical compositions, and
films, in any way they like.
For me, this public domain day
marks a dividing line in time.
1930 is the year of my mother's
birth, so the way I imagine
the modern world has always begun
there, now 95 years
ago.
From my mother, I learned to love
film.
Sitting on the floor, watching old
movies she'd grown up with.
I became a passionate student of
film history, and I found that 1930
marks a bright line between early
clumsy examples of sound filmmaking
and the era when Hollywood studios
and directors began making sound
masterpieces at all-talking
epics.
Give me a whisky, ginger
in on the side,
and I'll be stingy, baby.
Greta Garbo first spoke on film in
1930.
The movie was Anna Christie, made
by MGM and frequent Garbo
director Clarence Brown.
Garbo Talks was the tagline.
And now creators are free to drop
her throaty Swedish accented voice
into their own creations.
Also in 1930, John Wayne
donned his first spurs and cowboy
hat and the big trail.
Hello, Coleman.
Howdy, Walmart.
Changed my mind.
I'll scout for that bull train after
all.
Well, that's a rare sunshine.
Take hands before you change your
mind again.
Got a good wagon boss for the trip?
And the Marx brothers first cracked
wise on film in Animal Crackers.
Louis' Milestones All Quiet on the
Western Front was a new kind of
war film in 1930 that
centered the experiences of Germans
who fought in World War I.
It's still regarded as among the
most important anti-war films ever
made.
And I, too, look to you,
Paul Balmer.
I wonder what you are going to
do.
I want to go!
Me too!
I don't see that.
The Kaiser's got everything he
needs.
Well, he never had a war before.
Every full-grown emperor needs one
war to make them famous.
I'll tell you how it should be.
In a kind of copyright twofer,
a film called Cimarron and the book
it was based on are now both
in the public domain.
The movie won the 1931 Best
Picture Oscar, and the books is
by Edna Ferber, who would go on
to write the Texas epic, Giant.
It was called the Oklahoma Land
Rush.
We're going off to a brand new
two-fisted rip-storm country.
Full of Indians, random snakes, gun
porters, and death parados!
Whoopee!
And a pioneer family helps turn
a wild frontier into a proud
state. Did you have to kill him like
that? You know, I could have let
him kill me.
Richard Dix and Irene Dunn
star in the only Western to ever
win Best Picture.
Timuron.
William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
enters the public domain, and
1930 was a great year for detective
stories like Dashiell Hemmett's The
Maltese Falcon and the first
four Nancy Drew novels by Carolyn
Keene.
For kids, there's A Little Engine
That Could, an illustrated edition
by Wadi Piper that has been popular
for generations.
And 1930 marked the first appearance
of the characters Dick and Jane
in Elson's Basic Reader.
Cartoons and animated characters
always attract remixers and
adapters, as happened when the first
Mickey Mouse cartoons became free
to use a few years ago.
This year, there are nine new Mickey
cartoons up for grabs, but
the big news is Betty Boop,
the bubbly, high-voiced girlie who's
already been reimagined across the
decades in advertising and fashion.
But now, the real thing, the
original from Fleischer Studios,
a more audacious version of Betty,
is free for all.
But when I'm
having my lobsters,
I have to have
poop-poop-ba-doop-be-da-da.
Oh, oh, oh!
If you're a copyright lawyer, the
subject of music and public domain
day might just keep you in small
talk at any cocktail parties you
happen to attend.
But for the rest of us, music
copyright can get complicated.
Music published in 1930,
the notes and lyrics, is now
free to use.
George and Ira Gershwin's I Got
Rhythm and Embraceable You are
included, as is Hoagy Carmichael's
Georgia On My Mind.
But the famous Ray Charles version
of Georgia recorded much later,
and Ethel Merman's I Got Rhythm.
Recorded in 1930, by the way,
are not.
Copyright law has a special
carve-out for sound recordings,
giving them 100 years of protection
instead of the 95 for music
compositions and other works.
This year, that means St. Louis
Blues, recorded in 1925
by Bessie Smith and featuring Louis
Armstrong, enters the public domain,
along with civil rights pioneer
Marian Anderson's haunting version
of Nobody Knows the Trouble I've
Seen.
O'er
the land of
the free and the home of the
There's also Gene Austen's Yes Sir
That's My Baby and Fascinate in
Rhythm by Paul Whiteman and his
orchestra.
Whiteman, by the way, is the subject
of 1930s King of Jazz,
an inventive and sometimes surreal
film that also enters the public
domain this year.
And if you're wondering, those
Whiteman songs within King of jazz
are copyright-free now because the
law says sound recordings that are
part of a film fall under the same
rules that the film itself does.
So feel free to work on your best
remix of Happy Feet.
For the Texas Standard, I'm Shelly
Brisbin.
And that is it for today's
show. Thank you to Olivia
Aldridge, Lucio Vasquez,
Katy McAfee, and Shelly Brisbin for
helping us cross the finish line
today. If you're listening on the
podcast, you can find more of their
reporting in the show notes for
todays episode.
And as always, you can all of our
work over at kut.org
slash signal.
Kristen Cabrera is the show's
managing producer, and Rayna Sevilla
is the Signals technical director.
I'm Jerry Quijano.
We'll be back with you tomorrow at
the same time.
We will talk to you then.