Ep15 : Austin, Texas, yall.

Published: Feb. 6, 2013, 9:39 p.m.

b'In an effort to continue evolving the show, Jad proposes the idea that the show occasionally focus on local Austin politics. Kevin has spent some time working in various local political organizations and was immediately keen on the idea. For a few minutes, a whimsical meta-discussion turns to local content. \\n\\nThe episode primarily focuses on the changes coming to Austin with the new 10-1 [re]districting structure. After decades of a 7-member at-large city council (mayor included), the November 2012 elections paved the way for something new and potentially exciting. Starting in 2014 the City of Austin will be divided into 10 single-member districts, each providing one council member to the public cabal. As far as we know, the mayor will still be elected at-large and will be 11th member of the council.\\n\\nJad and Kevin spend some time discussing the age-old "gentleman\'s agreement" - the one that was supposed to ensure racial equality on the council. They also discuss how this new proposal finally came to pass and how it will likely change some of the city landscape and project funding. \\n\\nMaterial from Podcast\\nMusic\\n\\nTarantula by Bob Schneider\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nTranscript of Podcast\\n\\nKevin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the JK Podcast. Every week, we try to excite, delight, and incite our listeners with the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. If you haven\'t yet visited our website, stroll over to www.JKPod.com for a complete episode listing. \\n\\nIt\'s not very often that Jad and I bring the meta-discussion into our episodes, but it\'s also not never. As residents of Austin, Texas, Jad proposed the idea of occasionally pursuing some local political agendas in addition to the global picture that we typically focus on. I could go on with this, but he does a much better job explaining it. \\n\\nJad: To tangent out of content and into meta-conversation, I was thinking about this the other day, like, our mutual expertise is in technology, and you have a particular expertise that\'s very rare in like, city government. Not many people have any fucking idea what\'s going on, but they\'re all interested in it, you know what I mean? But the best they can do is like read letters to the editor at The Chronicle to try to get a gauge of what\'s happening. The analysis you bring and the information you have is just so much more nuanced, you know, it\'s not even - they don\'t even compare, right? \\n\\nSo I was thinking like, it seems like those are you know, because we talk about things that are - they\'re nobody\'s area of expertise, which is I guess why we can hold our own talking about philosophy because there are no philosophers, you know, or there\'s so very few. Or we can do it you know, talking about radical political theory because no one talks about radical political theory. You know, neither of us are that you know, expert at it or anything, so I was just kind of thinking and I was wondering if that would be something we could focus more on, say Austin, or focus more on you know, technology, privacy, that sort of stuff.\\n\\nKevin: Yeah. We talked about that once I thought, about -\\n\\nJad: Oh, we did? \\n\\nKevin: Yeah, well I thought we did about the possibility of talking about some local governance, and I\'d actually be really interested in it. I think we could probably get a pretty decent base of people who would be interested in hearing about it. Particularly right now as this whole member district thing\'s going to turn up, I really think that the politics in Austin are about to get really interesting, albeit it\'s not going to be for a year. \\n\\nAnd that\'s really all it took for the meta-discussion to end, and for the local political discussions to begin. As always, here to titillate your inner ear is the voice of the co-creator, Jad Davis, mine as well, Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to our show. \\n\\nI have a friend who\'s the policy aid for one of the council members,'