- Coming up on "Austin InSight": As we mark Veterans Day, we're checking up on an experimental treatment for vets with PTSD.

Plus, the big blue wave that swept Texas could mean a friendlier relationship between city leaders and the state.

"Austin InSight" starts now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from: Sally & James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hi there, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Laura Laughead.

The dramatic democratic shift in state government after last week's elections will have significant impacts on many aspects of public policy in Texas.

As you may have heard, for the first time in three decades, a Democrat will hold statewide office.

And it's not just one.

Democrats will hold virtually every office starting next year, as well as seizing control of the Texas House of Representatives.

The state senate, however, will remain a Republican advantage.

Here in Austin, that's given city leaders hope of having a more productive relationship with the state government.

Local government reporter Sam Stark has been exploring that topic and joins us now.

Sam, it's great to have you back.

- Thanks for having me.

- So Sam, Austin has been for quite some time, as one city council member put it, "a political punching bag for the state".

But they're pretty excited, I would say, for the changes coming to state government, right?

- Yeah, so I've talked to several city council members who are still kind of grappling with what this change in state leadership might mean for Austin, which often has progressive leaning leaders at city hall.

Council Member Vanessa Fuentes told me since she started representing District 2 on the dais in 2021, the state has been pretty hostile towards the city.

She told me she has only known a Texas legislature that has been "hellbent on undermining home rule authority and preempting municipalities on our ability to pass legislation, bring forward policies that support our shared constituents."

- Did she give you any examples of times that she felt the state undermined city policies?

- Yeah, she gave quite a few.

Fuentes said she set up the healthcare fund for Austin women seeking abortions outside of the state, which was gutted after new legislation blocking such funds passed.

There's been consistent state legal challenges to Project Connect, the city's light rail, which has hindered progress of that project.

There was the so-called Death Star law that passed in 2023, which overturned a city ordinance that required rest breaks for construction workers.

And more recently, the state threatened to withhold public safety funds over the city's immigration and customs enforcement policies, which led to city officials having to roll them back.

Mayor Kirk Watson actually just posted on a city council message board on Friday that he is directing Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis to update the department's general orders to reflect something more in line with Austin's values.

- Certainly a few wide ranging examples there.

So what do we think might change?

- Yeah, I spoke with a professor of political science at St.

Edwards University about this.

He said he expects city leaders to propose some sweeping changes, but said they should still be cautious.

- It's like if you have children, it's that first time that you let the children alone at home without a babysitter.

And if the parents come home, find the house is a mess, then that's going to end very quickly.

But if Austin can demonstrate that it governs better without the oversight of the state, then they might be given more latitude in the future.

- So yeah, a lot is still unknown and we'll be sure to be watching closely after new state leaders are sworn in in the new year.

- And watching we know you will be.

Sam, thank you so much for your reporting.

- Always good to be here.

(bright music) - This week marks Veterans Day, and we wanted to take a closer look at an innovative new treatment some veterans are turning to for conditions like PTSD and serious brain injuries.

It's called ibogaine.

It's a powerful psychedelic drug that's not currently approved for medical use in the U.S.

But Texas is investing millions in its research to try to change that.

To tell us more, we have Logan Davidson, the director of policy and advocacy for the group, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions or VETS.

Logan, thank you so much for being with us today.

- Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me.

- Well, and I know this discussion means something more to you because you have service members in your family and I do as well.

It's a really important conversation.

But before preparing for this interview, I actually had never heard of ibogaine.

I know I'm not the only one.

So that being said, let's start with the basics.

What is it and why are veterans seeking to use it?

- Absolutely.

So even for folks who are familiar with psychedelics, many of them probably have not heard of ibogaine or hadn't prior to the last 12 months.

So ibogaine is a derivative of the iboga root, which primarily grows in Western Africa.

It is an incredibly powerful psychedelic.

It's one of the least researched psychedelics.

There are a number of reasons for that.

One of the biggest ones is that it lasts an incredibly long time.

An ibogaine experience is going to last 18 to 24 hours.

And so when you think about clinical research, you have other compounds that are shorter, makes them more appealing both to commercial researchers and to publicly funded or philanthropically funded researchers.

Ibogaine's an incredibly effective treatment, especially for traumatic brain injury and for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Research done by Stanford University, which is one of the first ibogaine clinical research outcomes that we've had since the Controlled Substances Act, identified as having profound neuroregenerative properties.

So it interacts with the brain in a way that is different than really any other treatment we have available to us now and in ways that we don't yet fully understand.

What we do understand is that if you are a patient, a veteran specifically, suffering from post-traumatic stress and potentially traumatic brain injury, there is no treatment more effective at resolving those symptoms and sending you into remission and potentially getting you to a point where you no longer meet the diagnostic standard for post-traumatic stress disorder.

- That is remarkable.

But we do want to note here, ibogaine is currently not legal here in the country.

So how are veterans accessing this treatment and what does treatment even look like?

- Absolutely.

So as you mentioned, ibogaine is currently a Schedule 1 drug, so the same level of legal restriction that you may see with MDMA or LSD, the other psychedelics.

So in order to access it now, you have to leave the United States to go to a country where you can legally access it.

Mexico is the primary location where most folks are going, and that's because it's geographically very close by and we've seen actually a build out of clinical infrastructure to meet the demand of both the veteran population and other populations like first responders or folks with addiction or neurodegenerative issues.

Now, a treatment lasts a couple of days.

It's an inpatient treatment.

A nice analogy might be similar to surgery, but this is a mental health surgery.

So you'll fly down to Mexico, join usually in a cohort.

Eight to 12 is usually how folks go through the treatment in a group, a semi-private, semi-public setting.

The first day is intake.

There's some intention setting.

And in the weeks prior, you have been doing prep, both one-on-one with a therapist and also probably a little bit with your peer organization, your cohorts, that way you know who you're going in with.

Then you go into your ibogaine treatment the next day.

Ibogaine, while it is a derivative of a root, it's primarily taken as a capsule or a pill.

So they'll turn it into a powder, they dose you according to what's appropriate for your height, your weight, your medical history.

There's a full battery of tests and you are under medical supervision and hooked up to a heart monitor and EKG and all these things to ensure that it's safe because it's a very long, very intense experience.

Then the next day you return home, but that's not the end of the treatment.

That's the beginning really.

This opens the door.

And so for weeks and months after, you'll continue to do that one-on-one integration with your therapist.

And then also you'll continue with your cohort doing what are known as integration circles.

So all the guys or girls that are there with you, you'll meet once a week, every other week, once a month, depending on how far out from treatment you are to just carry forward those lessons that you got from that experience.

- There's so much more than just taking a pill and being monitored.

That community aspect, which I'm learning just now is so important.

And on the legal side of things, last year, Governor Abbott signed a bill dedicating $50 million to ibogaine research, and earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order in support of alternative treatments, including ibogaine.

Clearly high level support here, but what are the biggest lingering questions about its safety and effectiveness?

I heard you mention heart monitors.

How long do you anticipate before this is cleared and available here in the U.S.?

- It's a good question, and we should always be careful about setting timelines related to pharmaceutical drug development.

I think we should assume that ibogaine will follow the same traditional timeline that any other novel breakthrough treatment follows, which is an accelerated but still responsible research timeline.

So ibogaine has not begun Phase 1 human clinical trials yet in the United States.

That is underway.

So Texas' 50 million sort of knocked over the first domino in that process.

The federal government allocating resources and demonstrating their support is also helpful.

But from the minute that you get your first human dosed in a clinical safety trial to when we can expect approval, think eight to 12 years.

And that feels like a really long time, but in the world of pharmaceutical drug development and healthcare reform, it's typical and actually maybe even fast.

And the big lingering questions, so we always want to be careful about saying we know it works because we want to get substantive clinical evidence that it does.

But anecdotally, we know it works.

The Stanford research shows this is an effective treatment and potentially significantly more effective than anything we do have.

What we also know is that there is a heightened risk even compared to other psychedelics, specifically to your heart health.

And so it's critical that we understand what preexisting conditions can create or can indicate that you are at higher risk of a negative experience of a medical intervention here.

We shouldn't think about this as, oh, ibogaine is the treatment for PTSD or the treatment for traumatic brain injury versus maybe another psychedelic or even another existing traditional treatment.

What it is is about getting additional effective tools in the toolbox so that way providers and patients can together make the best decision for their healthcare outcomes.

- Indeed.

And we focus this conversation today on veterans, but potentially ibogaine could one day be used to help treat the rest of us, right?

- Absolutely.

Yes.

So veterans are a population that has an acute need for effective treatments for the conditions that are driving the veteran suicide epidemic.

But I don't think there's a single person, veteran or civilian, that would say that our needs for effective mental health treatments end at that population.

- Absolutely.

- You think about post-traumatic stress.

Obviously when you think of that, it conjures an image of combat or of firefighters running into a burning building.

But some of the largest populations struggling with post-traumatic stress are victims of domestic violence and sexual violence here in the United States.

And so while veterans are the tip of the spear for these treatments, and that's true of ibogaine, that's true of the entire psychedelic policy reform movement.

Veterans have been the tip of the spear, but they have also been very clear, both at our organization and others, that that's just the beginning, that we want access to effective healing modalities to be available to all Americans, regardless of if you're accessing them through the VA or through your primary care provider.

- Well said.

Well, we will continue to stay up to date with the research on this.

Certainly a fascinating conversation, important one.

Logan Davidson with VETS.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

- Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

- If you want to learn more about Logan's organization, you can visit VETsolutions.org.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) If you've driven down North Lamar lately, you may have noticed a line outside one particular taqueria at lunchtime, whether it's hot, cold, or even pouring rain.

It's for good reason.

Paprika is one of the New York Times Best 50 Restaurants in the United States.

It was one of only two in all of Texas to make the list.

This recognition comes as husband and wife owners, Margarito and Hayden Perez, celebrate one year in their brick and mortar after six years operating out of a food truck.

First thing we got to talk about is the New York Times listed Paprika as one of its favorite 50 restaurants in the whole country.

That is incredible.

And I remember driving by a few weeks after that announcement in the pouring rain and there was still a line all the way around the door.

What a testament to how much people love this place.

What has that recognition been like to you so far and has it really even set in yet?

- You know, it hasn't fully set in.

Like you said, we have had lines before on our busier services, Saturday, for example, but definitely after Priya mentioned us in the New York Times piece, we've just seen so many new faces.

We've had folks that have eaten with us for years and do so consistently, but just to have folks coming from out of town and lining up and like you mentioned, willing to line up in the rain or the cold weather.

It's just not a very big spot that we have, but it's been really, really surreal, the faces that we've been able to feed and folks that we've been able to connect with and just figure out kind of how to get everyone in here into this tiny taqueria.

- In the article, your suadero taco was especially praised.

And from personal experience, actually it's so, so good.

It's one of my favorites here.

But you've also talked about the larger question of what authentic Mexican food even means anymore.

How would you describe Paprika's approach to food?

- I think it's something we talk about a lot, my wife and I. I talk about it with my pops, being born in Mexico and then growing up in the Midwest, running away here to Texas.

And ultimately what I've been landing on lately, because it's evolved over the years.

When we first opened up in the food truck in October of 2019, we had chips and queso, we had guacamole, we had esquites.

I very much think it was like ATX Mex is what we were calling it and kind of what we were going for.

But over the years, as we've really found our voice and I think kind of honed in and laser focus on the tacos, the colors, the sounds, the textures of a taqueria, Mexican culture and what it means to interact with a restaurant, I really have landed on immigrant tacos.

When folks ask us, "Where is your style of cooking from?

Is this Northern Mexico?

Is this Mexico City?"

I always tell them this is an immigrant taco.

It's an immigrant product because the story isn't so simple.

- You guys started as a food truck back in 2019 and you started it with your wife and with your mom by your side.

Can you talk about the role that they've played and that family support has played in your journey to today?

- Oh yeah.

It's both my wife, my mother, presently my father.

Family has been a massive role.

When I first opened up, my mother had never worked in a kitchen and she was all of a sudden thrown onto the plancha and we're figuring it out now because she didn't want to see her son fail.

So she moved down from Indiana.

We drove down together and took some pictures and opened up.

We didn't come from a family of restaurateurs or anything, so we didn't have any experience.

I had never run my own concept or anything.

And my wife and I were actually, shortly thereafter, just started dating.

She was coming to the food truck to eat and we reconnected.

We had met in high school like 10 years prior.

- Wow.

- And so she was a special needs teacher.

She worked in education for about seven years and she would come after she was done with school and help on the truck.

My pops also, a little bit over a year ago, moved down and also had never worked in a restaurant before.

The head butcher, he's in charge of our production.

So all the suadero, the carnitas, the pastor, he's the one slicing those things, he's the one marinating those things.

Hayden makes all of our salsas, all of our agua frescas.

It's just been a massive effort and it's always been family right there at the heart of it.

- I also want to bring up, there's a Bad Bunny mural outside that you can't miss.

Literally anyone driving by, you cannot miss it.

And it has the words, "The only thing more powerful than hate is love."

That is a powerful statement in and of itself.

And y'all have also been on your social media very outspoken and more about the issues impacting your community and advocating for your community as well.

Why is that message so important for y'all to put out there?

- Yeah, it's a mural that we're really honored to have.

We say this over and over again, or at least I do, that I'm not an activist.

I don't feel like we're ever doing enough for the advocacy, but I also know that at the very root I am and always have been an immigrant and I know what it's like to grow up in this country and be made to feel less than or other and not enough.

And like I mentioned, I didn't go to college and a big part of that was that I didn't have necessarily anyone in my corner that looked like me telling me that that was an option.

I actually just had doors closed because I didn't have the proper documentation or the resources.

And so for me, it's a topic that's very close to home, it's just very important to speak out and use your platform and show other folks that, hey, you can be an immigrant and you can still run a successful taqueria and feed folks and folks can be into your food.

And that's just one of many, many things that you're able to do with your life.

But yeah, the Bad Bunny mural that you mentioned, we're super proud to have it.

And it came up very organically where Luis Angulo, we connected over our love for football and watching Austin FC play and we played like a couple pickup matches together.

We connected over that shared friendship.

He stopped by the taqueria, really enjoyed the tacos and said, "Hey, if y'all are open to it, I'd love to help you put a mural on your walls."

And that's really how the taqueria has been pieced together over this past year.

But initially it was we wanted to do something to take a stance and just kind of put a message out there.

And I think it was maybe a little more harsh or strong and it was after the Super Bowl and the performance that Bad Bunny had, that the next morning immediately he was DMing me, Luis, and was like, "Hey, what if we twist this and make it just a positive message?"

And so I thought that was a really cool way to twist it and just say, hey, we're putting a message of positivity and love out there and that's really what we're looking for, I think, is just that humanity and being seen as the humans that we are at the end of the day.

And we felt like that really encapsulated it in just a small piece of wall that we're able to operate out of.

The goal or the hope for folks like myself is that we can help change the country to be a little bit more tolerant, a little more acceptable.

- Well, just one year in the brick and mortar and y'all are one of the top 50 restaurants in the country.

I cannot wait to see what year two here brings.

Congratulations all around.

Margarito Perez, thank you so much for sharing your story and your space with us.

- Ah, thank you so much, Laura.

(bright music) - Hundreds of local artists are opening their studio doors this month, giving us a behind the scenes look at their creative process.

It's all part of the Austin Studio Tour, which features more than 800 artists across the city over two weekends.

To tell us more about this art extravaganza, we have Natalie Earhart, co-founder of Almost Real Things, which has taken over the event this year.

Natalie, it's so good to see you.

- Yeah, thanks for having me.

- So for someone who's never been on the tour, can you maybe paint us a picture, forgive me, of what it's like to step inside an artist studio and really see where they create?

- Yeah.

So first, the Austin Studio Tour is an annual citywide self-guided tour.

So there are hundreds of locations across the city that you could go into.

So they range from like a gallery or a museum to someone's home studio.

- Wow.

- So the artists are ready and waiting for you to come in.

So I always tell people, feel comfortable.

You are welcome here and you can ask the artist questions, you can see what they're working on, and you can purchase local art.

- Man, that is so cool.

I know I would definitely have a lot of questions seeing all the different mediums.

And for a little background here, the event was previously known as Austin Open Studios with separate weekends for East and West Austin, but what's different this year?

- Yeah, so it was, like you said, East Austin Studio Tour, West.

They happened in different times of the year.

So last year when we took over, we combined them because we wanted to make it easier for attendees to just, you can go anywhere in the city during these two weekends.

So that made it bigger than ever.

So now we have 815 participants, 309 locations.

So I think the difference is you just have so many options of places to go.

- Absolutely.

And your organization, Almost Real Things, is now leading the tour.

What made you want to take this on?

- We had participated for seven years.

So we had sold art, hosted events, and then eventually had a bus tour where we took people to different stops.

- I love a bus tour.

- So we had good insight about the tour, but also the challenges that artists face and just promoting themselves and getting people out.

So when the other nonprofit dissolved last year, we didn't want to see the studio tour disappear.

It's one of the largest art events in the state, and a lot of the artists make all of their income from this time of the year.

So we were like, "It has to continue happening!"

And it took us a while to get there, but we're happy to take over.

- And we're glad to have y'all at the helm because it's fun for us as visitors, but it's also really important to shine a light on the creative community that makes Austin Austin.

And as you mentioned, you have 815 artists from all over the city participating.

How do we navigate that?

What's the best way we should plan our visit?

- Yeah, I can see how it could be overwhelming at first.

I always tell people start in your neighborhood, see the creatives that are around you.

Everybody has a sign posted outside their house that has their name and a picture of their art.

- Oh, that's helpful.

- Yeah.

So if you see something you like, you can go in.

We also have a print directory with all of the artists listed and a map that you could fold out and plan your route.

Also the website, atxstudiotour.com.

You could filter by types of art, by location, by if you want to see activities or live demonstrations, and you can favorite places that you want to go.

- Okay.

I love that.

And just make sure someone has like a sign in their yard before you just start walking into your neighbor's houses.

- That would be smart.

Yeah.

- What are you most excited overall for people to see this year?

- I think it's so exciting for people to see the behind the scenes of artists.

So again, you don't get the chance to walk into home studios very often or spaces where there's works in progress versus just seeing the finished piece.

So I think it's a great time for artists to connect with the community and for the community to ask questions and again, learn more how they can support local artists.

- It's deeply inspiring.

I'm personally excited.

This is something great, whether you're alone, whether you got kids with you.

Definitely so excited.

Well, Natalie with Almost Real Things, thank you so much for coming.

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

- We definitely love supporting our local creative community.

You can catch the Austin Studio Tour over two weekends, November 14th and 15th, and then again on the 21st and the 22nd.

(bright music) And that's our show.

If you're looking for more "Austin InSight," you can find it on the Austin PBS YouTube channel or in the PBS app anytime for free.

Thanks again for watching.

We'll see you next time.

(bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from: Sally & James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(bright chime)