Middle Chunk of Audio Dropped

I recorded a podcast today that ran about 1 hour 20 minutes, and while it was recording it seemed to be working ok. However, once I stopped recording and looked at the audio, it was down to 28 minutes… when I listened to the audio, it appeared the middle chunk (from about the 24th minute to the 75th minute) seemingly cut (note that the length of the project stayed at 1 hr 20 minutes, but the audio tracks somehow compressed to only 28 minutes… at the 24th minute it just immediately jumps to what originally was the 75th minute). I couldn’t figure out why this happened, or how to recover the original audio. I don’t think it was something I unwittingly did, since I just hit stop when we were done and the audio then appeared to only run 28 minutes. Is this a common problem and how do I avoid it in the future?