At any given moment in a day, people are up. Things are happening, even in those wee hours when most of your city seems asleep.
What are we missing when our eyes are shut? And what can it tell us about our world? Those are some of the questions that get an answer in a new podcast from KUT News, “24 Hours in Austin.”
A team of 20 audio producers spent the past year documenting a handful of days in Austin, with 24 hours at locations including the airport, a coffee shop and the 911 mental health dispatch.
Matt Largey, the podcast’s producer, said it can be hard at times for the big city of Austin to feel like a real community.
“What we wanted to do was to talk to as many folks as we could over the course of a day and find some of those commonalities, listen to their stories, hear what’s going on with them, and just really kind of understand what happens and how a place changes over the course of a day in Austin,” he said.
The first episode, out now, spends 24 hours in downtown’s nightlife capital, East Sixth Street, during a particularly busy time: the South by Southwest Festival in March.
“A lot of the themes that emerge as we talk to people over the course of the day, I mean, they’re pretty universal,” Largey said. “Some of them are specific to Austin, I suppose, but you know, if you’re interested in empathizing with your fellow human, if you’re interested in feeling connected to your fellow humans, I think this is a podcast for you.”
Subscribe to “24 Hours in Austin” here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
