In this episode, Carter Yates tells the story of a beloved University of Texas student hangout.   Since opening in 1991, the Cain and Abel’s bar became synonymous with the West Campus student neighborhood nestled a block away from the University of Texas. Generations of UT upperclassmen flooded through the doors. Most drank their fair share of beers while unwinding with their closest friends, a handful found their significant others before graduating and a select few got the logo tattooed on their ass. The one-story building that holds these memories, however, will soon be bulldozed in favor of a luxury student high-rise apartment, yet another of the 50-plus construction projects that have sprouted in the student neighborhood since 2004. Cain and Abel’s is the final domino to fall in West Campus’s transformation from a funky college atmosphere to another neighborhood in a generic big city. A decades-long push of privatization in a booming Austin market economy finally gained the power to topple UT’s favorite bar. But there’s a place like Cain and Abel’s in every college town, and the simple process used by private developers in Austin can easily be replicated elsewhere. And, for what it’s worth, Carter reported and produced this story in the fall of 2022. Since he finished his project, Cain and Abel’s announced they’re staying in west campus and moving to a building a few blocks away from the original location.  

 If you ever need your day brightened exponentially, all you have to do is visit the crosswalk at Whitis Ave and 24th St. Here, a UT Austin crossing guard, Mike Shaw, shares his words of wisedom, joy, and fistbumps with students passing by each day. Maren Bennett sat down with Shaw to learn more about one of the most beloved university employees.

Request Pending is now The Drag: Stories.  In this podcast, you’ll hear episodes produced by students at the University of Texas at Austin. But it’s a little different than what you might be used to hearing from The Drag. Each episode will bring you a different story, from a different student. Most of these stories will come from students in a podcast production class at UT Austin, which means you’ll get a little bit of everything, from Texas’ tallest tales to Texas’ biggest personalities.   

Drag artists have displayed their art through lip sync performances and dance numbers in night clubs and bars for decades. Now their usual venues have closed due to the pandemic, and drag artists are finding other ways to express their creativity and maintain their livelihood.

One of the hottest meme Facebook groups right now is about...trains. Yes, trains. New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens has over 200,000 members, and posts range from comics to pictures of high-speed trains to discourse over the importance of bike lanes. Issues around transit and urban spaces hardly make it to the national debate topic list, but on the internet, they’re center stage. Why do young people care, and how is city planning changing under their influence?

They say sex work is the oldest profession, and over generations, it has evolved and taken on new forms. Its latest iteration: Onlyfans. On Onlyfans, creators sell and users pay for access to original, independently made pornographic content. Sex workers are making big money from behind a computer or phone screen and often find a sense of empowerment in the process. 

This week, the Request Pending crew explores a very big question: deep sea or deep space? Executive producer Haley Butler offers her stance and explains why her love for the deep sea goes deeper than a fascination with octopi and submarines.

How can you help the environment, make friends and furnish your house without spending any money? Join your local Buy Nothing Facebook group. The Buy Nothing Project is a global network of hyper-local gift economies. All you have to do is find a group near you and start posting.

Look at the trending podcasts on any streaming app, and odds are there is at least one true crime series topping the charts. These tales of horrifying violence, conniving killers, and kindhearted victims who didn’t see it coming inspire shock and interest across the internet, and the audience is notably female. Podcasts like Crime Junkie and My Favorite Murder use discussion and comedy to give women a safe space to confront their fears. Other podcasts like Dr. Death and Serial take a more journalistic approach to covering these stories. How can we consume and create these stories with sensitivity? Featuring Haley Butler and Tinu Thomas, hosts of The Orange Tree podcast.

Common etiquette bans three topics at the dinner table: politics, religion, and money. But women on the internet are breaking one of those rules in a big way, with Refinery29’s Money Diaries. Women post weekly journals documenting their salary, monthly expenses and daily expenditures. It’s a great way to empower women with finance knowledge, but it also scratches the itch everyone has to peer into people’s personal lives.