00:00
Hi, I'm Sarah Goodyear, and this is the War on Cars.
00:16
What you're about to hear is an excerpt from a Patreon bonus episode in which I talk with
00:21
journalist and author Matthew Rodriguez about cars as social media content studios and all
00:28
the weirdness that entails.
00:31
If you'd like to hear the whole thing, along with a lot of other great bonuses and other
00:35
benefits, you can sign up at Patreon.com slash The War on Cars pod.
00:43
To me, what's interesting is her choosing the car as the place to tape this in a way
00:54
plays into what you're saying because here she had had this life and house and all intertwined
01:01
with this person, where was she able to be herself?
01:07
Where was she able to have her own space and her own identity, her own integrity inside
01:17
of this vehicle and it's like this little world that she sets up as the venue where she's
01:24
telling you this story from and it's something that she has complete control over.
01:28
So I'd like to talk a little bit about the way that we see cars and how this is reflected
01:35
in these videos as a replacement really for the third place that you hear sociologists
01:44
talk about at a coffee shop or your workplace or places where people go are now vanishingly
01:52
rare in much of America and especially since the pandemic and people are using cars for
01:59
that purpose but they're alone when they're doing that.
02:04
And I just want to go back and say not all 50 something episodes are in her car but
02:09
it is very significant that in the very first episode that's where it is because it
02:13
almost gives the viewer the sense that she had to tell you something right now, she couldn't
02:18
wait till she got home and this is the only place where she has extra time or time away
02:23
from other demands to tell you the story.
02:27
So there is a sense of immediacy I think that comes from the confession being in
02:31
a car or starting in a car.
02:34
So I would say immediacy is part of it and then I think traditionally when you're
02:37
in a car or when you're thinking about a car you're like you do something passive
02:41
like oh I'll put on the radio and then what comes on the radio will be my entertainment.
02:46
So this kind of flips the idea on the head that I'm going to create entertainment while
02:51
I'm going to tell this riveting 50 part story while I'm driving from point A to point
02:57
I believe she's around the Atlanta metro area and we know the Atlanta metro area
03:00
is very famous for traffic.
03:02
So this idea that you could turn the hour commute into like two episodes of your
03:07
own podcast or your own TikTok series is really I think flipping the model of oh let
03:13
me just see whatever the DJ has on at the moment.
03:15
Right and it's like we ourselves are broadcasting our private time right that this is a time
03:25
that I think a lot of people as you said used to use to listen to their favorite
03:29
music or to listen to a podcast or the radio or whatever and it was like a private reflective
03:39
time and now it's turning into this broadcast time and I mean it just seems to reflect the
03:49
way that our patterns of being in the world and communicating with other human beings are
03:55
really affected by car infrastructure and car dependence right because for a lot of people
04:02
I mean they do have to spend like two or three hours a day in a car and that time I guess
04:12
you know people have gotten kind of sick of just saying like that time is just going
04:15
to be passive consumption I could I could be acting I could be doing something of
04:19
course part of the problem is that's not very safe to be thinking about all that
04:24
stuff while you're driving right it's not very safe it's interesting I think the road is a
04:29
moment a moment where individual meets collective because you're all collectively on the road
04:34
but you're in this thing that you own and you get to choose the radio station or you get
04:39
to choose what's happening inside of it so it feels like an individual bubble that is hurling
04:45
through time and space alongside individual bubbles so and to go back to something you
04:51
said you had you know talked about or I had talked about the flipping of the model and then
04:55
you brought up turning it into a content moment it's also in a way instead of putting on the
05:01
radio and being at the whim of whatever the DJ has on it's even this more hyper individualist
05:07
thing of like well I'm gonna talk about what I want to talk about now I don't have to
05:10
listen to whatever is happening on C100 or Sirius XM like it's even a further rejection of
05:16
like I'm not going to have someone talk at me I'm going to create my own thing that I get to say
05:21
right and then that content goes from the car bubble into the algorithm bubble right and so
05:29
the people who are consuming it probably many of them in cars are also receiving that in another
05:41
bubble that is a bubble of contained it looks like a community in some ways but it's actually just a
05:49
bunch of individual atoms and these bubbles that we create for ourselves are our own realities
05:57
online as well as in a car. On a personal note or a biographical note I feel like so much of my
06:03
feelings on cars were influenced by the fact that I'm a lifelong New Yorker who was born
06:10
here Lenox Hill Hospital same place where Beyonce's babies were born but I did live in LA for two
06:15
misbegotten years and what was interesting to me psychologically was and I did not buy a car
06:21
while I was there I took the bus to work in LA I took the 10 bus across Melrose respect but I
06:27
would walk on the sidewalk and as opposed to being in New York no one is on the sidewalk in LA
06:31
and you kind of even lose that community aspect or there are far fewer people on buses or
06:38
metros than there are here and I actually feel like it changes how people think about their town
06:43
because they're not commuting with people on the subway there's not that communal moment so when
06:49
they go to and from work they're in their own domains and doing what they want to do so I have
06:54
to say like that's kind of how a lot of my own I even think thinking about this came about was
06:59
being a lifelong New Yorker kind of transplanted to LA for two years. Yeah it is a real shock
07:06
to the system and we love you LA this is not this is not a diss on LA it's just if you are used to
07:15
being with other human beings and enjoying them a lot of the time and even when they're
07:21
irritating you're you have so much to look at there's so much to think about and it's not
07:27
all just you you you it's other people and and that is something that we lose in cars and I think
07:36
it really has affected the way that we see our society at large.
