Well, you’ve mentioned several episodes. You’re now four seasons in.

I’m not going to make you pick a very favorite, but Rich, can you talk about some of the moments that you’ve really enjoyed working on this podcast?

Richard J. Reddick: Changes from day to day. I think when we were with the Delcos, there was a moment, we kind of looked at each other and like, “hey, this is working.” Like we don’t know what we’re doing, but it’s working.

And then as recently as meeting with Fran Harris — and Fran is my good buddy, my fellow distinguished alumnus. And Fran is a character.

And in fact, we had this conversation recently about we should do a BAM after the show because a lot of times we start a conversation and we stop because we ran out of tape or [engineer] Jake’s tired or [producer] Miles is like “that’s enough.” But what’s really cool about it is a lot times we have a conversation that continues and it’s like “wow, we should capture that.

So, you know, we percolate these ideas so maybe in season five it’ll be like a “BAM After Dark.”

Lisa, what would you add what sticks out to you?

Lisa B. Thompson: What sticks out to me is the fact that it’s beyond us.

I think for me, after the meeting with the Delcos and having them talk to us, I realized we are capturing a moment in time in this city. And that has been really awe-inspiring.

Rich, I guess looking ahead, what do you see for the future of Black Austin Matters?

Richard J. Reddick: There’s so much and literally after every interview, after every season, we all sit together and think about what’s next.

So for instance, this season, we’re gonna have reels and video with our shows, which we’ve never done before. And that’s Lisa’s idea, you know, she’s the artist. She’s like, “hey, we should do this.” And it looks really great. It looks awesome.

So I really do think we’ve been talking about moving it forward for publications and things that we should be doing.

You know, our day jobs — our day hustle — is being academics. And this is an academic archiving project, which we’ve been so fortunate to have the opportunity to do.

And so it would be a hugely important thing for us to think about making this into academic work that’s accessible, because the beauty of this, I think for us as scholars, is a lot of times our work is within the walls at the academy. And this has been such a wonderful community engagement.

We’re just blessed to be the people behind the microphones, but honestly, it’s true, you will walk around and people will come up to you and they’ll say, “I recognize your voice” or they’ll come to you or they will email us and say, “this is a great interview you did.” “Well, why haven’t you interviewed this person?”

And a lot of times it’s like, give us time, you know? Season eight, season 25, we’ll get to it, but we will definitely do that. But as Lisa said, just the variety of experiences in this city and as somebody who is a semi-Austinite in the sense that I went to high school here — I wasn’t born here, but I’ve been in for a long time — I am just very proud of the folks that we have in our community who sometimes are just doing their day to day and not thinking about and they’re surprised sometimes like, “why did you ask to come talk to me?”

And it’s really because you’re our neighbor. We want to know what you’re doing. And we feel uplifted having those conversations with our colleagues and our friends.

Lisa B. Thompson: What’s been remarkable is also, as an academic who’s kind of a senior scholar at this point, is that you rarely find new collaborations at this stage of one’s career.

We’ve found this way to work together. And I’ve always known that he’s a genius and it’s wonderful to be able to be in such a partnership on this project, and thank goodness for the tweet!