Finally a Conversation About a Car-Less Future That Won't Make You Feel Like Crap

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges and possibilities of a car-less future, highlighting both the downsides of car dependency and the need for cars in certain contexts.

Free Yourself from the Tyranny of the Automobile!! That's the subtitle of the new book Life After Cars, written by the hosts of the popular podcast "War On Cars." And listen, I am 100% on board: this quasi-hippy spent most of her 20s trekking around college towns on a crappy commuter bike. But like a lot of you, I also live in a place where the infrastructure has refused to catch up to my desire to have fewer cars on the road. So here's what I absolutely loved about this conversation: we talked at length about all the ways that cars make our lives worse... and also talked about the ways that we need them (particularly in rural areas) and the movement they afford people whose freedoms are otherwise circumscribed. There is absolutely nothing fixed about our current car-contingent culture, and Sarah and Doug were so good at fostering a funny (and super smart) conversation about what sucks, what doesn't have to suck, and places that are working to make it suck less. This was one of those eps were Melody and I finished recording and couldn't stop texting about how good they were — so let's keep the conversation going in the comments. GREAT NEWS: WE HAVE VERY GOOD EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS…

People in this episode

Host: Anne Helen Petersen

Guests: Sarah, Doug

Topics covered

• car culture
• automobile dependency
• sustainable living
• rural transportation
• infrastructure
• freedom of movement

Keywords

• automobile
• sustainability
• transportation
• infrastructure
• freedom
• rural areas
• car culture

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: War On Cars

Books & works: Life After Cars

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