Dallas Morning News Innovation Endowment

The Drag Audio Production House

Something amazing and unique is happening on the University of Texas campus. Students and recent alums are reinventing what it means to create the most popular podcasts. The next big audio story won’t be coming from a national podcasting powerhouse. It will come from The Drag.

The Drag is an audio production house built by students and recent Moody College alums. We love audio storytelling, and we especially love long-form journalistic podcasts that guide listeners through a complex story. And we want to help the media world figure this out, so we partner with media organizations to help them tell fascinating stories. The next generation of podcasters will come from the Moody College. Where did we get our name? Guadalupe Street, famously called The Drag, runs alongside our home on campus.

Through the production house, our partnerships and our classes, we are able to give our students free reign to investigate stories and the realm of audio. It's been incredible to see our students take charge of these audio projects, and we cannot wait for you to listen to them. 

Our first podcast, “The Orange Tree,” covers the 2005 murder of 21-year-old Jennifer Cave. The 7-episode podcast is reported and hosted by Tinu Thomas and Haley Butler, who started working on the story when they were journalism students who lived and went to classes just a few blocks from the crime scene. Since the show aired summer 2020, it has gained more than one million listeners. Listen to “The Orange Tree” today on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.