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.