Superbowl Roundup with Ian Chillag
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Car
Nissan Serena
The Nissan Serena is a large family car that has a lot of space inside, making it easy for families to travel together. It has special doors that slide open, which helps when getting in and out, especially in tight parking spots.
Company
Weathertech
Weathertech makes products that help keep cars clean and organized, like mats for the floor and storage solutions for the trunk.
Part
floor liners
Floor liners are special mats that go on the floor of your car to keep it clean and protect it from messes.
Part
cargo liners
Cargo liners are mats that you put in the back of your car to protect it from dirt and scratches when you carry things.
Part
roof racks
Roof racks are bars on the top of a car that help you carry extra things like luggage or bikes when you go on trips.
Company
Stellantis
Stellantis is a big car company that makes several brands, including Jeep and Dodge, created from a merger of two companies.
Car
Jeep Cherokee
The Jeep Cherokee is a type of SUV that can handle rough terrain and is often used for outdoor activities. It's also comfortable for everyday driving.
Car
Ford Excursion
The Ford Excursion is a really big SUV that can carry a lot of people and things. It's great for families or anyone who needs to tow heavy stuff, but it's also quite large, which can make it harder to drive in tight spaces.
Car
Hyundai Palisade
The Hyundai Palisade Hybrid is a large family-friendly SUV that uses both gasoline and electric power to save on fuel. It's designed to be comfortable and spacious for passengers and cargo.
Car
Nissan Rogue
The Nissan Rogue is a type of car called an SUV, which is bigger than a regular car and can hold more people and stuff. It's popular because it's comfortable to drive and has a lot of space inside, making it a good option for families or anyone who needs extra room.
Car
Volkswagen Id Buzz
The Volkswagen ID. Buzz is a new electric van that looks like the old VW buses from the past. It's designed to be fun and environmentally friendly, perfect for people who want a cool car that doesn't pollute the air.
Term
electric cars
Electric cars run on electricity instead of gasoline. They are better for the environment and can save money on fuel and maintenance.
Car
Toyota RAV4
The Toyota RAV4 is a small SUV that is known for being reliable and having a lot of space inside. It's a good option for families or anyone who needs a versatile vehicle.
Concept
nostalgia
Nostalgia is when you remember something from the past and feel a mix of happiness and sadness about it. In cars, it can mean loving older models because they remind you of good times.
Brand
Cadillac
Cadillac is a brand that makes high-end cars. They are known for being luxurious and often have advanced features.
Concept
F1 car
An F1 car is a type of race car used in Formula 1 racing. These cars are built to be very fast and are made with special materials to help them go as quickly as possible.
Term
hitch
A hitch is a part that lets you attach things like trailers or bike racks to your car. It's useful for carrying extra stuff when you go on trips.
Concept
Formula racing
Formula racing is a type of car racing where cars are built to strict rules and are usually very fast. The most popular version is Formula 1, where teams compete in races around the world.
LIVE
Okay, Sarah, it's almost Valentine's Day.
Oh, yeah.
Do you and Laura, your spouse, observe?
We do observe.
I have to admit I'm a little bit behind on this because of the book tour.
I don't know that I've gotten this totally planned out yet.
My wife and I, we just get like a Whitman sampler or a Russell Stover sampler and then
we open it and eat it that night and since we've had kids, we buy maybe one extra small
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That's the extent of our observance.
Very romantic.
Yes, I think that's appropriate, but if you wanted to get creative with your own Valentine's
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You could because it would show that you care about them.
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You want them to stay warm, especially now that it's February and the weather stinks
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Yeah, it's kind of a way of giving somebody a hug that they can take with them.
A hug that they can take with them.
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This is the war on cars.
I'm Doug Gordon and I'm here in the studio with my cohost Sarah Goodyear.
Hello, Doug.
Hey there, welcome to episode number CLXVI of the podcast.
I'm sorry, I can't do the Roman math on that.
I had to look that up.
That's 167.
OK, 166, 167.
No, wait a minute, let me do that again.
It's 266.
Anyway, it's our annual Super Bowl roundup regardless of what episode number it is.
This time, just like all times, we take a look at the automobile ads that ran during
the big game and we ask some important questions like what do these ads say about driving specifically
and the state of our nation in general?
We also ask, can the Republic survive another year of this?
How many AI companies can one country support before it all comes crumbling down and a whole
lot more? Sarah, did you watch the game?
No, I didn't because I was on a train coming home from Toronto.
Why do you hate America so much, Sarah?
On a train from Canada?
That's what they asked me at the border.
OK, we're going to get to that and our guest in a moment.
But first, we have some business.
If you like what we do here at the War on Cars, please support us on Patreon at patreon.com
slash the War on Cars pod.
You can also order our new book, Life After Cars, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of
the automobile wherever books are sold.
Find out more and learn all about our book tour at lifeaftercars.com.
Yeah, and we have some big dates still left on the calendar.
This week, as you're listening to this, we will be in Phoenix on February 11th.
You can get tickets for that one at lifeaftercars.com.
Sarah is going to be speaking at the New Jersey Bike and Walk Summit in Princeton,
New Jersey on March 7th.
We have a big show in Atlanta on March 13th, March 16th in Memphis, April 9th in Montreal,
May 14th in Philadelphia, and we rescheduled our Columbus dates.
Yeah, that's right.
So we've got a lot of great stuff coming up.
Yeah, go check the site.
Here to help us examine our annual festival of consumerism and violent spectacle is our friend
Ian Chilag.
Ian is the creator and host of the award-winning Radiotopia podcast,
Everything is Alive.
He's the co-host of NPR's How to Do Everything and a senior producer of NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't
Tell Me.
His work has appeared in McSweeney's, The New York Times, a public space, pop-up magazine,
and yes, the German language official quarterly of the Bavarian National Opera,
which I guess we're going to get you to explain.
Ian Chilag, welcome to the war on cars.
I've been waiting so long to hear those words.
Thank you.
Wow.
All right, explain that last one, the Bavarian National Opera.
It is, yeah, it is the weirdest paycheck that I get, but the quarterly of the National Opera of
Germany runs a piece that I write every quarter and they're in German, so I think they're
translated well, but I don't know.
You're not writing it in German.
No, no, nor was I intending it to be in German.
What are you writing about?
Usually, it's sort of variations on my podcast, so it's me interviewing an inanimate object
about its life.
I was about to say, if you haven't listened to Everything is Alive, it is great and it's
probably going to come into play.
It would be a helpful skill that you're bringing into the room as we analyze the ads
for consumer products on the Super Bowl.
Everything is Alive is a really great podcast.
Oh, thanks.
I would just like to say that in the United States, the great opera companies of this nation
can't even get funding to put on operas, and somehow in Germany, they have funding for you to
write a somewhat whimsical column.
I just wanted to point that out.
You're stealing German jobs is what I'm saying.
Okay, let's talk about Super Bowl LX, Super Bowl 60,
Hell that Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California last night as we record this.
Thoughts on the game and did you watch?
I did watch, yes.
I live the apartment next to us is full of people from Boston who are sports maniacs.
We thought we were going to be over there watching with them, but they're so serious about it
that they actually did not want any distractions.
So we stayed in our apartment and watched it.
I respect this, by the way.
You're very distracting.
So I watched a quarter with my almost six-year-old before she went to sleep,
and she just kept asking, is Jason our neighbor who loves the Patriots?
Is Jason okay?
I just want Jason to be happy.
The empathy of a child.
I said, he's not.
Jason is not okay.
Yeah, I didn't watch or perhaps I should say I didn't have to watch
because I was on a train coming home to New York from Toronto.
I'm not the hugest football fan to begin with,
but it sounds like it was not the most fun game to watch that even if you weren't a Patriots fan.
Yeah, we're going to get to this, but this was the first Super Bowl I can remember
where even compared to last year where Kendrick Lamar was the halftime show and everyone was
talking about it and he did such a great job highlighting American racism and all the rest.
This was the first game I can remember where it felt like we were there for the halftime show
and there was just a little football on either side of it.
That was it.
The weirdest opening act that Bad Bunny had ever had was a two-quarters of a football game.
Yeah, basically.
I mean, it was just so low scoring and just field goals, no touchdowns until the final quarter.
It was a terrible game.
I am from New England.
I grew up there.
I am not a Patriots fan largely because Bob Kraft, we can get into this later.
And they're sort of like the evil empire to me like the way that some New Yorkers
just hate the Yankees if you know if you're a Mets fan.
And that's how I feel about the Patriots.
So I was rooting for Seattle.
I didn't have a Seahawks hat.
I had my Seattle Kraken hat from Ford.
So at least I was representing.
That counts.
Okay, so we are here to talk about the ads.
According to USA Today, a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl 60 cost about $8 million.
Some companies paid $10 million.
It all depends on placement, length.
That's up from $7 to $8 million last year.
So thanks, Joe Biden.
Inflation, still a thing.
I actually think that they were paying more because of Bad Bunny.
Oh, I would bet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they just knew that lots of people would be tuning in for sure.
I kind of broke down the themes of this year's ads into a few different categories.
Let me know if you agree or disagree.
First, in one big bucket was weight loss, insecurity, and appearance.
Okay, that's pretty traditional for a lot of advertising in this country.
Second bucket was what I'm calling life in this country is harder than it needs to be.
Yes.
Third, obviously, is AI.
Oh, yeah.
And the last bucket, I'm kind of just lumping patriotism, prejudice, and religion.
Otherwise known as just America.
Okay.
All right.
Wow.
I missed a lot.
You missed a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I spotted another theme, which is lost animals and the lengths we will go to to save them.
Oh, we're going to get to that one.
Okay.
Yes, absolutely.
There were two ads, right, featuring lost dogs.
Yes.
I mean, I don't want to jump ahead, but I will say one of them almost made me cry.
And one of them made me want to go live off the grid far away from all technology.
If you watch the game, I think most people know which ads those are.
We'll talk about that.
I will say overall, I thought the ads were bad.
I really thought they were boring.
I thought there was nothing that people would be talking about today other than us on a podcast,
because we have to every year.
There was nothing that stood out.
I just feel like there's nothing that really broke the form or...
There was nothing that met the cultural moment, really.
It just felt like a rehash of all the stuff we've seen a million times.
Yeah.
I felt the same way.
And it felt like there was so much just fan service where I'm going to put a face you know
in a concept you're familiar with, and that will be enough.
And that was depressing.
Yeah.
There was the Duncan ad that was like a sitcom of Goodwill Hunting, just with Ben Affleck and
DH, Ted Danson, Jason Alexander, a bunch of other people.
I will say I do think de-aging technology is getting better, and that was showcased last night.
Oh, for sure.
Okay.
It sounds like it was just a lot of rehashing of stuff, because I don't know, maybe it's too
scary to create original things in the United States right now.
I'm reminded of an Onion article that was like US Department of Retro warns we are running out of
past.
That sort of feels like what happened.
Yeah.
I feel it feels like a peak oil moment, but for celebrities.
Like we've done them all, and now we're just using the ones we have until they run out.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
So in the weight loss appearance insecurity category, we had Serena Williams for Rowe,
and Kenan Thompson, DJ Khaled, John C. Riley, Daniel Brooks, Danny Trejo, and Agastair for
We Govee.
So GLP once.
My favorite thing about that second ad that I just mentioned there for We Govee,
it was a 90-second ad.
The second half of full 45 seconds was about possible side effects of the drug.
Don't take if you or your family had MTC, MEN2, or if allergic to it.
Tell your provider if you plan to have surgery or a procedure,
or breastfeeding, pregnant, or plan to be.
Stop taking and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck,
severe stomach pain, or any of these allergic reactions.
Serious side effects may include pancreas inflammation and gallbladder or severe stomach
problems.
Call your prescriber if you have any of these symptoms.
We Govee may cause low blood sugar in people with diabetes,
especially if you take medicines for it.
Call your prescriber if you experience vision changes or heart racing at rest.
Side effects of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea can lead to dehydration,
which may cause kidney problems.
That's not your car, is it?
Ian, thoughts on these ads?
Well, that ad was amazing.
Like you said, the second half, the side effects, I guess that's what happens when
they read the side effects at a normal pace of speed because it took forever.
My experience watching that as it went on and on and on is, wow, they have a lot of money to spend,
that they are taking this much time where really nothing is happening in this ad.
They can afford to do this.
Good for them, I guess.
Yes.
I got up to use the bathroom.
I had seen this ad already, so yeah.
Okay, next one real quick.
I feel like Ian, this one was tailor made for you.
This was that hair ballad ad for Manscaped.
Okay, I will say that to me, yeah, that's like some masculine vulnerability.
Women have to be dealing with grooming ourselves and sort of being humiliated about our grooming
all this time and I think we don't usually think of men as having as much anxiety,
especially there's a shot of a guy sitting on the side of a bathtub being shaved.
I don't know, I kind of like the masculine vulnerability there.
It kind of cuts against the football image of what men are like and I found that kind of charming
actually.
Ian, I feel like like I said, this one was tailor made for you.
Would you on Everything Is Alive interview like a pile of shaved hair?
A ball of hair, yeah.
That's a good question.
I did try to interview a dust bunny that had collected under someone's bed.
It didn't go well, so we didn't air it.
But this ad, my initial reaction was I was repulsed by the ball of hair.
But by the end, it won me over.
It was an emotional roller coaster.
I loved the hair.
I also felt like this ad, in contrast to those really fan-servicing celebrity things,
this ad did more than it needed to.
Like the song had key changes.
It was good.
Yeah, I like this one.
The next bucket I said was life in this country is harder than it needs to be.
We had the Trump investment accounts ad, which is a bunch of kids talking about saving for their
future.
We had him and hers rich people live longer.
And then we had Adrian Brody for TurboTax as the expert.
They say death and taxes are the only guarantees in life.
At least death only happens to you once.
Brace yourself.
The pain is coming.
So it's basically Adrian Brody being Adrian Brody like the consulate actor that he is.
And yeah, taxes, doing taxes is a pain.
But that's because companies like TurboTax make it hard.
I think in the big, beautiful bill, they stripped out any sort of provision that would have made it
easier for the IRS to just send you a bill, basically at the end of the year, a statement.
And you could just file right away like they do in civilized countries.
So yes, life in this country is harder than it needs to be.
That is so darn true.
And I feel like the inside of all of us feels like Adrian Brody's face at this point,
sort of craggy and crooked and just like it's had the life crushed out of it.
Yeah.
And I like the noir aesthetic of that too.
And it's a dark time, a dark ad for a dark time.
Yeah, I do like celebrities making fun of themselves.
I think that's always good material for a Super Bowl ad.
I think that's a deep vein to mine.
Yeah, a lot of these ads take a great actor and ask the question,
what if they weren't a great actor?
Or what if they were a pain in the ass, which is part of the point of that ad.
Okay, so the next category, and this was a big one, was AI and tech in general.
So we had Oakley and Metta in what they were calling athletic intelligence.
It featured athletes and people doing all kinds of stunts, including Spike Lee
shooting a slam dunk while he's wearing the Oakley Metta AI glasses.
But confidence isn't just built in the gym.
Try step boost max, the insoles that add one vertical.
Then there were a couple ads for Anthropics AI Claude.
So it says ads are coming to AI, but not to Claude.
And the tagline is keep thinking, which I find ironic because like,
aren't we told that the entire point of AI is that you have to stop thinking?
You don't have to think.
You can write a whole book without thinking, that's the whole point.
But this is the thinking man's AI Claude.
Yeah, it just won't have ads.
It won't have ads and you're going to think, and also the young man in the ad,
his teeth are a little crooked, he's an imperfect thing.
And then the guy who's talking to him is weirdly perfect and scary looking.
So it's kind of saying like, no, we're not that AI that is-
Right, because the dude is creepy.
There's another ad with a woman playing the part of the AI and it has a very
Stepford Wives quality to it.
And you're like, oh no, the creepy thing about AI isn't that there might be ads.
It's that it's a non-human person machine acting like a real human, but not quite.
One of the big ones that everyone was talking about was Search Party,
which was an ad for Ring.
This I think is very war on cars adjacent because it's about suburbia and suburban paranoia.
This is Milo.
That's our family.
But every year, 10 million go missing.
And the way we look for them hasn't changed in years.
Until now.
One post of a dog's photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match.
Search Party from Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs.
Since launch, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family.
Be a hero in your neighborhood with Search Party.
This is available to everyone who has a Ring camera for free.
How nice of them to do this for free.
How is this not just the first act of a Black Mirror episode?
Or like the, it's like if a Shirley Jackson short story ended halfway through.
Like this is clearly a disaster.
Yeah.
Yes.
I think it's a bit like all the surveillance technology like clear at the airport or whatever.
It's like, hey, look at this.
If we just take your picture, you get to breeze through security.
Isn't this a lovely thing we are doing for you?
It's like, no, you are helping them build the surveillance state.
And yes, it's a cute white Labrador now.
But next time it's just going to be like an immigrant or someone the government deems
as like someone we need to find and arrest and deport.
Yeah.
And the neighborhood that this is taking place in,
it reminds me of Minneapolis actually, like the sort of image of the steps and the doors
and people kind of going up to those steps and doors.
I just immediately flashed on people in Minneapolis having their doors broken down
and people going house to house.
And then yeah, that aerial shot where you see this sort of web of surveillance going over
the neighborhood, I mean, my question is, did they not get that that might have negative
connotations for some of us now?
I mean, or, but I guess they feed their dog washing it basically.
Yeah, basically.
Yeah.
My favorite was I saw a post on Blue Sky that was like, hey man, this ring stuff,
does anybody have a suggestion for a doorbell camera that doesn't tap into this surveillance
network?
And someone responded saying, yeah, you know what it's called?
A fucking doorbell.
Do not need a camera.
Like when did we become this society where you need a camera to tell you like, oh,
I don't know if a package you guys missing.
Fine, better than building a giant surveillance state.
That's just my opinion.
Honestly, I think the solution is just programmable dogs, you know,
so they don't get lost in the first place.
It's a proprietary, it's technology, it's contained, you control the dog,
you tell it to come home when it's lost.
That's the simplest solution.
Don't dogs, you can get chips embedded in them now and you can put an air tag on their collar.
We don't need this.
We don't need this.
It's the thinking man's dog.
Then there was Chris Hemsworth for Alexa Plus, where Chris imagines all of these
different ways in which AI is going to try to kill him.
I moved your meeting and your car will be here in five.
Look at this little beauty I found in the garden.
Nice snake, Chris.
Hey, whoa, what is that?
Our new Alexa Plus.
She's not living here.
That is full on AI.
One minute real buddy buddies in the next minute.
She's trying to kill us.
Now, Chris, how exactly would I do that?
So we basically see a bunch of different ways in which sort of final destination style.
Alexa is going to kill Chris Hemsworth, like a garage door falling on his head,
the pool cover going over while he's swimming in it.
I thought this ad was sort of meant to make people who think AI is bad look like idiots.
Oh, if the AI is not going to come and kill us all with a robot army in the matrix or terminator,
you're paranoid if you think that's what it's going to do.
Am I?
I thought all of these things are ways of softening actually.
My fear about AI is not that a garage door is going to fall on my head.
My fear of AI is that it's going to destroy democracy and just spread
disinformation and misinformation.
That's my fear and that's what's happening right now.
Was there an extended version where it did destroy democracy after?
Yeah, I think that's just called look outside.
I actually, I thought this ad made me feel like, oh, Amazon, they just don't care anymore.
This may happen.
That's not going to stop us.
It felt the same thing in that Claude ad too, where it's saying we're not going to,
you're never going to have ads on Claude.
Yeah, we are, but they don't care that we're going to be able to look back at this ad and say,
but you said we weren't because it's, it's all so big that it's unstoppable and they're,
they're fine.
That was my takeaway with the Claude ad too, was sort of like,
my, we're never going to have ads on AI t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered.
But why do you need to say that out loud if you're never going to do that?
I don't feel reassured.
I'm just going to say that I do not feel reassured.
Also for AI was for Google Gemini, it's called New Home.
So this, we see pull up photos of our new house in Glenville.
It's being typed into Google Glenville and it's an empty house.
And we hear a kid's voice and it's basically merging photos of like,
so it's a family that's moving and a mom is trying to describe to her son,
this is what our new house is going to look like to sort of make him feel better.
And we just see a bunch of different prompts being put in to Google Gemini.
So for me, my reaction to this one was sort of like AI,
what if you could just remove all uncertainty and imagination out of life?
Like part of what it means to be a kid is to deal with expectations and uncertainty.
And it is scary to move into a new home when you're little,
but like it's fun to imagine things.
You don't have to have it all served up to you in this clean way.
Yeah, I mean, I find it also just disturbing that the image that they're promoting of this
family is a little bit of a tradwife kind of thing where the mother is creating this beautiful
cocoon for her children that will include apparently a very elaborate food producing
garden and that that's being enabled by AI, this sort of traditional low tech world
that she's only able to envision that and show it to her kids through the AI prompts,
but that fundamentally it's like a really retro vision of what the family is going to look like.
The mother and child in that had to relocate because she lost her job to AI.
That's what makes that add so interesting.
Okay, so then there was kind of the bucket I'm calling the state of the nation.
There was of course a Clydesdale ad, Budweiser American icons in which we see
a Clydesdale protecting a baby bird that grows into a bald eagle.
Watching this, when they cut back to the game, the Clydesdale was at the stadium with an eagle
mounted on its back on this special saddle that had a bar that the eagle could stand on.
It was missing the magic and cinematography and it just looked like two sad animals that didn't
know where to go. That's why you need AI to generate these animals.
Yeah, it's almost like they were trying to do an AI thing in real life, but it just looks like
some weird 1950s circus act for some washed up circus.
Where's Peter when you need them?
When was the last Super Bowl where there wasn't an ad with unlikely animal friends?
It's always a winner. I think that was probably the only pair last night, but yeah.
Okay, then there was, he gets us. Is there more to life than more?
The one who dies with the most toys wins.
Okay, so there's a little girl just surrounded by dolls. There's people playing pinball. It's just
people with virtual headsets in a classroom and a woman with dogs running around.
It's just extremely overwhelming.
Traffic, big shot of traffic.
Big shot of traffic and more, more, more, more, more cars going around a racetrack,
faster, faster, crashing, bodies that are pumped up and sweaty and more dollars and
a car falling out of the sky.
Oh my God. And bodies being smashed.
And this young woman's watching the sky. There's more to life than more.
What if Jesus shows us how to find it? He gets us.com.
He gets us runs an ad almost every year.
And they have been ads that showed like real or not real, but conflicts that were made to look
real between different political, you know, in a demonstration with people yelling at each other.
And this struck me that instead of sort of trying to recreate the images that we
are seeing on our televisions or on our social media feeds of actual confrontations
between fascist shock troops and regular people in their neighborhoods,
they couldn't do that this time because that is too real. So instead, they just went for a critique
of American capitalism writ large or, you know, hyper consumerist culture writ large
because that's a safe thing. It feels much, much safer than their previous ads.
I love that, you know, this ad is so frenetic and it's cut really fast.
And then as it builds to a crescendo, as you called out, a car falls out of the sky.
And you see like crash chest dummies or bodies like and broken glass like that's what builds it
all. It's all this car crash that is coming and going to end everything. And then like a biblical
plague cars falling out of the sky like that's the 11th plague pass over.
No, I mean, if any advertisement at this year's Super Bowl was part of the war on cars,
it was this one more cars were harmed during this ad than any other.
Yeah. And I sort of don't understand how seeing the crash test dummies crashing around inside
of the car goes with the more theme. It just, yeah, it's like, it's that feeling that America is
a car crash that is happening and we're just watching it in real time.
I'm very disturbed by having seen that ad. Thank you.
All right, let's move on to the next one. So the next one was for Redfin and Rocket
Mortgage. And this was another lost dog one in that you were talking about.
So we see a family that's about to move kid in the backseat of the car saying goodbye to her
friends, another kid also moving a reference to a dad that is now probably out of the picture,
a divorce. She's walking a dog. She sees the other kid, the dog barks, the kid backs up.
They are not friends. And we see the racist neighbor who will not make small talk with
his brown skin neighbor. Now she's looking for Frankie, the dog. And that's Lady Gaga singing,
won't you be my neighbor, Mr. Rogers. And then we see the two girls who were suspicious of each
other hugging. We see the brown skin neighbor helping the racist neighbor. It says America
use a neighbor just like you. I like the subtext just at the very end that if you're having problems
with your neighbor, just surprise them in their front yard holding a chainsaw.
Yes, cut down a tree in their neighbor. So it says America could use a neighbor before
just like you fades in. And when I saw it for the first time,
as I was prepping this episode, I thought America could use a neighbor. We have two,
Mexico and Canada. One were threatening to bomb. The other were threatening to annex.
Maybe we should be better neighbors than that. But then it says America could use a neighbor
just like you. And like, I don't know if I want that racist dude with the American flag as my
neighbor. I'd rather have the brown skin guy with the chainsaw helping me out. But yeah.
I mean, I have to say I started crying. I mean, I'm an ad crier. And that one got me.
And I'm very resentful of that. And I'm also mad that the Lady Gaga cover of that song, which
the video of her recording it is really wonderful. I felt like this was such a bait and switch because
I saw that song on Instagram. I saw her playing the piano. I thought, oh, this is so nice.
She's singing like just the most lovely song from all of our childhoods.
Like, we really need this song right now. And then to find out it was for an ad.
And now it bummed me out, especially much because I was successfully manipulated
into crying about a mortgage ad. But again, that that neighborhood, I mean, it is very
resonant. And the subtext here, which we all are feeling and knowing is that these neighborhoods
are being actively smashed up and terrorized. And I mean, it's very interesting to me that
advertisers are willing to point to that. And because it feels almost risky because
what is really happening and that we've all seen and we can superimpose the images that we've seen
onto that neighborhood, I don't know. I'm not thinking about mortgages while that is going on.
But I guess it's worth it to them. Yeah. That is one where as it was happening,
I had no idea what it was selling me until it came up at the very end.
That would have been like, I would have expected it to be Jesus that they were selling me.
It could have been. Yeah. Jesus and mortgages, that's America.
It's weird what becomes interchangeable on Super Bowl Sunday.
All right, the next one. Okay, so I'm not sure if you saw this one, Ian. This was the
blue square alliance against hate ad. It's called sticky note. So you see a kid walking down the
hall, getting bumped into his clearly kind of being bullied a little bit, opens his locker,
feels something, sees something, and on his backpack is a sticky note that says dirty Jew.
Thank you, man. Quickly covered up by another kid, a black kid. It says two and three Jewish
teens have experienced antisemitism. Share the hashtag with a blue square to show that you care.
Stand up to Jewish hate. Do you know anything about this ad, either of you, about the blue
square alliance against hate? No, do tell. It's a nonprofit founded by the Patriots owner, Robert
Kraft. And I would be like, okay, yeah, you know, I'm Jewish. I experienced antisemitism
in high school and sure, that's the thing worth calling out. It would be better if Robert Kraft
weren't buddy buddies with Trump. He was at the Melania premiere recently at the Kennedy Center.
So I guess- I think you mean the Trump Kennedy Center? Oh, sorry, sorry, the Trump Kennedy Center.
So, you know, I think very much like the rocket mortgage ad, it's like America could use a neighbor
or if you see antisemitism speak up against it. Okay, yeah, those are good values to instill in
people. But wouldn't it be better if we didn't have a president who was buddy buddies with Nazis,
like, and a vice president who's like friends with Curtis Jarvan? The real antisemitism is coming
from inside the White House, not the halls of some high school. I had not seen that add until
you just showed it to us. And my main reaction is, so this kid gets this antisemitic slur
slapped on his backpack with a post-it note, and then another kid comes along and helps,
and he helps by putting a post-it note over that when he doesn't. Why, you could put,
why didn't you remove the antisemitic slur? And crumple it up. It's a metaphor for America.
We're not going to remove the racism. We're just going to cover it up for a little bit. Yeah.
Okay, now we're going to get to the most car adjacent ad, and this is Weathertech. They make
accessories for cars. They often purchase at least one, if not two ads. Yeah, they're a big one.
They've got some money. There's a lot of money in floor mats and all the rest. This one is called
TADA. Long way this wall fits. So watch me. Oh, we're watching, Gary. They're right. We need
Weathertech. I thought they only make floor liners and cargo liners. We're seeing all the stuff that
Weathertech makes, and we see the hitchback getting a cooler. We see roof racks getting all the
luggage that wouldn't fit in the SUV. And you can go to Weathertech, check it all out. I kind of
love this because it's like, is your giant SUV not big enough? We can make it even bigger,
more cargo capacity. Thank you, Weathertech. Yeah, and also this is a long-running theme in
American culture in general is the guy thinks he has it under control, and it's so cute to watch
him flail around, and then the woman comes in and actually solves all the problems and looks cute
doing it. And the idea that we're still sort of fetishizing this male incompetence
and finding it adorable, and that the women just have to step in and have previously,
she's ordered everything already because she knew. And also that's kind of passive aggressive,
isn't it? That she had the solution and she let him cram all that stuff in there knowing it was
going to fall all over the driveway. Making her children watch as daddy failed. I want a whole
fan fiction about this family now. I'm also curious, why are they shoving everything they own into
this car? They don't even show a kid going off to college and you're trying to cram all of their
belongings. It's just like, this is their camping trip, their Disney World trip, their national-
No, they're being evicted. Climate disaster has come along and forced them from their homes.
They didn't have a neighbor with a chainsaw to remove the tree, and now they have to move.
I always feel for ads. I feel like there's always one ad that didn't get the dress code.
There's an ad with John Hamm and Bo and Yang and Scarlett Johansson, and then there's
these normal people in a driveway, and you're like, no, it's Super Bowl night. Come on guys,
what are you doing? Maybe they stand out by being boring. Maybe that's how it is,
and we're talking about it, right? Okay, the main event, the car ads, of which there were
very few this year. There's a report from Mike Wayland at CNBC where he says that automakers
are largely sitting on the advertising sidelines during this year's Super Bowl amid broader
uncertainty in the U.S. automotive industry. GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen were the only
automakers that ran ads last night. He says that automakers accounted for 40% of Super Bowl ad
minutes in 2012, but dropped all the way to 7% last year, so it's got to be similar or even less
this year. However, automakers are still investing lots of money in advertising. They're just not
running them during the big game. They actually ran a bunch during the conference championships
and other sporting events. He says automakers now represent roughly 60% of the spend on live sports.
And the rest is gambling. The rest is gambling and GLP ones. Yeah. And Stellantis, which was the
only automaker that ran ads last year, they said they're focusing on the 250th anniversary of the
U.S., and they launched an ad for Jeep last week featuring Billy Bass, the singing fish.
You want to take him to the...
Oh, okay. Sarah, this one is your beat because you're all about cars in nature.
Oh, that's, that's, yeah, okay, I can't wait. That is a very burdensome, fake pregnancy that the
woman has got there. Yeah, there's a mom sitting in the chair, they get in a blue Jeep Cherokee,
37 combined miles per gallon. He's petting the fish. Is this the dumbest kid ever?
I was going to say this kid should be like three years younger than he is in order to be
actually asking these questions. Okay, at least he took it off the river.
He takes it off the wood plaque, yeah, and throws Billy Bass. The plastic fish.
And then actually it does swim. Oh my goodness.
Yeah. Wow, dad. And then a bear attacks it. Oh my god. So Billy Bass, I guess is
sending. Oh my god. Oh, I love this. And an eagle takes Billy Bass away.
All right, that's fantastic. That's a fantastic guy. I did like this ad a lot. I'm a god.
I would just like to also say... So we've got two in favor of this ad, one against?
Is that what you're... No, I'm kind of loving it because it's so extreme, it's so freaky.
Yeah, it poked a similar place in me that from that Saturday Night Live Home Alone skit a few
weeks ago. Oh, I love that. Yeah. If you didn't see that once, the family comes home after being
separated from Kevin, but all of Kevin's booby traps are still set and he winds up basically
killing his entire family. Okay. Yeah, it's very funny. Yeah, Sarah, what were your thoughts on
this one as the nature lover and car hater? As the nature lover and car hater. I mean, yes,
I hate the cars driving right up to the edge of the river and putting plastic in the river
that's already filled with plastic from the tires of cars. Yeah, but I kind of love the
revenge of nature on the animatronic animal because here's this ridiculous sort of humiliating
to fish, Billy Bass. I mean, it's just fish deserve much better than that representation.
Our next guest on the podcast will be a fish to talk about how humiliated.
And then the bear and the eagle just saying, no, actually, we're going to destroy this. And
then I would just like to point out is another dad fail? Yeah. Another dad fail. A lot of
dumb dads. Yeah, dads are dumb. I think there's a lot of male vulnerability coming up here. And
I think that the men are not all right. They're not scoring touchdowns either. It's only field
goals. They are putting on kick ass halftime shows, I will say. You just average all the ads
and you have a hairless male in a car falling from the sky. I also do love that they had to
have a pregnant mom sitting at home because as if you didn't need a mom in that ad at all,
it could have just been a father and son going on a road trip to put this fish in the water.
But I guess we have to explain at least there's one responsible parent somewhere
or answer the questions that would have been aroused on Reddit. I should say I'm like,
where's the mom? Everyone wants to know where the mom is. It's just someone at the ad age and she
was like, I got it. She's pregnant. But also that if mom had been able to come on this excursion,
it probably would have gone better. So in order for the full dad fail to happen, mom had to be
sidelined with pregnancy. Yeah. Mom's adrenaline would have taken over. She would have wrestled the
fish back from the bear. Exactly. Exactly. Or I like to think there was a scene before this
where the kid wanted to flush Billy Bass down the toilet and return him to water and the mom was
like, no, you can't do that. And she turns the dad's like, you got to get him out of the house.
This stupid kid. We're doing this again. Actually, I can't believe we're doing this again.
Okay. There was another ad that began running during the conference championship games.
This one is for Hyundai. It's John Krasinski's epic mission in the new Hyundai Palisade Hybrid.
There he is. My dude. How you doing? Man, I'm loving this new Palisade. Yeah.
What was that? Every time I drive, I feel like I'm in a movie now. So the villain and the passenger
in that car is John Hugenaker, who is Krasinski's co-star in the Jack Ryan series on Amazon.
We've gone from Jim on the office to John Krasinski being an action hero. There's another
spot that is very similar. It's called Epic Groceries that follows John Krasinski as he goes to
just get groceries and all kinds of weird things happen and Epic Afternoon. So basically it's like
driving is boring. Going to get groceries sucks. But what if it didn't? That's basically the premise
of the ad. Like what if you were the star of your own action film every time you got behind the
wheel of this Hyundai? And I'm going to say again, the subtext to me is there are a lot of people
driving around normal looking American cities and neighborhoods actually being followed by armed
people in other vehicles and being cut off and being confronted with firearms and
surveilled by helicopters and drones. Yeah. Read the room, Hyundai. Well, but I just think that
our collective anxiety is coming out regardless because there's too much
stuff going on or maybe I'm just projecting onto it. Well, you have to imagine that all of this was
pitched like a year or two ago before this began and the production and all the rest takes a long
time. But at the same time, like if you are releasing this out into the world at a moment where
mass thugs are chasing after and pulling over and shooting innocent drivers on their way to
tennis or to daycare or whatever, yes, I think that is a valid point. What I've been thinking about
the way that things have played out in Minneapolis and across the country and how many of these
confrontations are happening in cars with cars, car windows being smashed, people's cars being run
off the road, people in cars being shot, that of course fascism is car-shaped in the United States
because everything we do is car-shaped. And so cars are the tools for everything and they're
the tools for implementing terror. So I guess it's sort of inevitable that whatever is happening,
you could project onto these car ads because everything we do, we do with cars.
Yes, absolutely. All right, here's the next one. This one's for the Nissan Rogue. I actually didn't
see it on the air, but I am told that it did run last night. It's called Dipsy.
Are you as serious about game day dip as I am? We see Dips going all over the backseat of a car.
That's Maddie Matheson from The Bear who plays FAC. It's kind of played like an infomercial.
It's like a child seat for Dip. I actually would buy this if I owned a car. Get flames.
Yeah, Amelia Hartford, if you don't know, she's a YouTuber, actress, race car driver, big internet
personality. And we see her driving this Nissan Rogue with the dip in the backseat,
and it's totally fine. Can I just say, for those of you that saw this ad of the Dip car seat,
it's really important your Dip needs to be rear-facing for the first two years of the Dip's life.
Yes. Okay. See, what would you ask the Dip or the Dip C on Everything Is Alive about? Yes,
exactly. Like, why aren't you facing backwards? Yeah. You think that would help?
Yeah. I would just like to say I would like to thank that ad for not providing an occasion for
me to project fascism onto it. Like, that was just kind of cute. And he's cute. And that was kind
of fun. He's great when he shows up on The Bear. I always love it. Also, the fact that his name
is FAC and they just like are playing with the word fuck all the time. Like, I kind of love it.
He is great. And yeah, it's a great personality. So that one did to me break a little bit of a
pattern of like, it's silly, it's juvenile, but it's just like innocent fun. I kind of liked it.
Right. And like snacks and Dip. I mean, like, I felt like remotely okay after I watched that.
Wow.
I praise. There was an ad for Volkswagen. It's called The Great Invitational Drivers Wanted.
I think you mean Volkswagen? Volkswagen.
Life. If we're not living it. What are we doing here?
And we all know this song. If you're of a certain age, this house of pain, jump around.
And we so far we've not seen a car. Then we see an ID buzz. And it's just like a bunch of
I know, Gen Z, millennial, younger, whatever they're calling themselves now,
in the rain, dancing. We only see little snippets of cars. We don't see the full thing so much for
a while. Reflection in a mirror. It's like, come on, come on out of your house. Yeah, it's like,
it's just a bunch of people having fun. Come on out and touch grass in a car. Yeah.
Just people having fun in the city. There's the ID buzz again. Nice green truck. Now we're seeing
more of the car on the highway. Yeah. So at this point, we actually are seeing full on cars,
different Volkswagen's. Oh, a dog. Another dog. Just people having fun. Just people having a good
time in the parking lot. And it says Drivers Wanted. So this is a reboot of an old campaign from the
90s also called Drivers Wanted. Yeah, I remember that. My reaction to this ad is that it's Stephen
Miller's second biggest nightmare after the halftime show because it is an incredibly diverse
group of Americans just celebrating and having fun, walking dogs and partying in the rain and
doing all this kind of stuff. Like just, you know, Sharon, someone kicks a soccer ball to a
group of kids. Like just being good, fun, loving Americans. Exactly the kind of thing like we
are told should not exist in this country. I will admit, I have one guilty pleasure,
and that is the ID buzz. If I ever needed a car for a cross country trip, don't ask me about the
range or anything. It feels and looks like a good looking car. I think they're skipping a
production year, I believe. Wait, so you can't buy the thing that they're selling to us? I could,
but then I think when the demand for electric cars evaporated, they suspended it, right? I believe
so, yes. I think there will not be a 2027 model if I'm correct. Yes, but I have been asked,
what's your urbanist guilty pleasure? I would say that car. Okay, all right, I'll allow it.
I found that ad very disappointing because I think Volkswagen has a long history of making
ads that make you feel something like the classic Nick Drake ad. Do you remember that? No. They had
this ad with the Nick Drake song and Volkswagen convertible driving around at night, and it was
like, it was so beautiful. I literally just got goosebumps thinking about an ad from 20 years
ago. Yeah, I expect Volkswagen is going to probably make me cry, and this ad kind of made me feel
nothing. Yeah, I mean, it was fun, but there was something generic about it, but I can see why
this is appealing. And again, at least it was fun. At least it gave the idea that unlike some of
these other ads that we talked about earlier, that our lives in the United States of America are
just incredibly painful and they just always have to be painful. At least it was this idea that like,
hey, just get out with your friends and have a good time. Yeah, go chase an ice cream truck in
your car. Yeah, I mean, it would be better if you did that on the subway or something, I guess.
It just, I'm sorry that people feel like they can only have fun if they get into a car, but at
least they're having fun, I guess. I think this ad to me, I'm with you, Ian, and that it was kind
of boring in that this could have been an ad for Pepsi, but like people dancing with Pepsi cans in
the rain and like standing outside of a park with their dog or whatever it is, it didn't feel
specific to Volkswagen in that sense. Yeah. Okay, so the other big car maker that ran ads
was Toyota and they ran two. The first that we're going to talk about, it's called
superhero belt and this is for the RAV4. Hey, let's go for a drive.
What is it? We see a man and a little kid going out of their house, getting into a RAV4,
like a 90s era RAV4. Put your superhero belt on and then we flash forward. It's that same kid
now an adult taking his grandfather for a drive, repeating the superhero belt line
and they're having a good time and it says people are the destination. That's right, people are the
destination because we've destroyed anything worth driving to in this country. You can just drive
around, there's no place to park, there's nothing worth seeing, but you can have a nice time with
your grandfather and return the favor. So it's a little nostalgia for the old RAV4 and now the new
RAV4. Yeah, and that really touches into this thing that I think so many people experience,
which is that a lot of the most meaningful interactions you have with your family members
happen in the car, that a lot of big talks happen in the car, that that's just a big part of how
people spend time together, especially family time and that they have a lot of emotional
memory with the car and I think it evokes that really nicely and it's definitely
a little depressing to me, the infantilization of the grandfather. That kind of disturbed me a
little bit, but I guess it was a better mood than a lot of these other ones. There's definitely,
I think, probably some aspiration in that ad that the child does not resist the car seat at all.
Total work of fiction. Yeah, exactly. Right, and the grandfather does not feel infantilized. He
smiles at the joke and it's also worth mentioning that these are Asian actors playing these roles
and so it does include a demographic that there are some people in our government who
maybe don't think that that should be the face of America and it's the face of America here
and that's a good thing. Yeah, again, I'm just going to write fan fiction for all of these ads.
I want to have seen the part of this story where they have to talk to the grandfather
about not being able to drive anymore and so your grandson is going to take you
to the market today and what that conversation was like because clearly now he's okay with it,
but I can imagine there was a very tough conversation. That would have been a much more
interesting ad and more realistic in that sense. Okay, so there was another toy to add and it's
called Where Dreams Began. All right, big me. This is where the dream began.
And just to set this one up, it's going to show NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace,
L.A. Rams wide receiver Puka Nakua and Paralympian Oksana Masters being urged on by younger versions
of themselves. And we see a big Toyota truck parked in the football field and a kid driving
like a toy version of that and the little kids cheering their older selves on.
This didn't make a whole lot of sense to me because the kid saying, I'm the you that never gave up.
No, the adult is the you who never gave up. That's why you're in the Olympics.
But it definitely tugs at the heartstrings a little bit.
When she says I'm the you that never gave up, I definitely, I got misty.
Yeah, it was very cute.
This one left me absolutely cold. There was something too AI about it. It felt really
fake and it also the pacing wasn't such that I could get emotionally involved in it. When I was
watching the Olympics in Canada, there was a similar ad that I saw that was a Paralympian
hockey player and there was his younger self. It showed him being diagnosed with
cancer and having to have his leg amputated and this sort of teary teenage boy standing,
looking at the hockey player, standing at the edge of the rink and really looking kind of ill
and teary and the hockey player doing his thing and he's got a beard now and he's
like very, very tough looking and he looks over to that younger person and basically says the same
thing like you're going to be okay. And that one got me because it was just,
it stayed on that one story for the whole ad. This I was, it was just too much.
Yeah, Jesus would say that we don't need that much. We just need one story.
Yeah, I might have responded differently. Okay, there was one more from another car company,
Cadillac, but this was the debut of their new F1 car and the ad is set to
John F. Kennedy's famous speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
We do these things because they are hard, etc., which is like we just make a car go faster.
That's our ambition now is like that's all we put a man in time square.
Right. And so this is the thing. The ad just showed the car coming together,
but part of what they did was they parked a car in a glass box in time square.
And then when the ad went live, they revealed from behind this frosted glass, the car.
And all I could think of is like, you're advertising a car on a world famous pedestrian
plaza. There's something I don't know. All of these cars just don't seem that interesting.
I mean, it seems like what they don't have to sell is an interesting car that cars are just
inherently uninteresting to people at this point in history and you can't get people excited about
it. We were on tour and someone said to me, what do you say to a person who says a bicycle
is this like 100 year or 150 year old technology that hasn't changed and it isn't the future?
And I say, you know what's another 100, 150 year old technology that really hasn't changed
the car? The cars have not changed substantially. There are new safety features and cameras and
things like that, but we're really just talking about four wheels and some sort of motor or engine
and a steering wheel and headlights and a windshield. Like in form and function,
it hasn't changed significantly. And I think, yeah, this has been a theme for the last few
of these that we've done that the car industry just seems to know that has a really shitty
product and there's not much more they can sell other than like, do you need to bring
dip to a party and want to make sure it gets there in one piece? Do you have too much stuff
so we can add more a hitch to your car for all your luggage? There's nothing innovative or new
about the product itself. I mean, as someone who is currently in the market for a Formula
1 vehicle, this did help me make my choice. Cadillac. I was going to get a, I don't know,
just Ferrari make a Formula 1. I imagine they must. What you said just now though,
I do like picturing that very svelte Cadillac racing car with all the weather technology
Do F1 drivers, they need floor mats? Like, do they get their shoes dirty?
And the dip seat. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you put that in the back seat of an F1.
See, that's a race I would watch is everybody gets a very loose guacamole on the back of their F1
car and whoever can make it to the finish without spilling it wins. Like those races where waiters
have to carry a big tray and whoever can get it without spilling the water or the wine or whatever.
Yes. Yeah, I just, everything about last night left me cold except for the halftime show. The ads,
the game, even the national anthem at the start, it was just fine. It like wasn't a standout.
This was not like Whitney Houston Gulf War singing the national anthem. It was just fine.
Everything felt fine. Except for Bad Bunny who felt awesome. Outstanding. Outstanding. Yeah.
Yeah. Any final thoughts on sort of the game, where we stand as a nation as a result of this
Super Bowl? I felt like this year, the Super Bowl, except for Bad Bunny, it snuck up on us
more than usual. Like we were talking about Bad Bunny since it was established he'd be the guy.
But I'm accustomed to sort of the hype rising and rising until Sunday night.
But it didn't feel that way this year. I don't know why that is. Maybe because
there's other things going on. Yeah, I think it's that there's other things going on. And I think,
that playing at violence also may not feel the same if there's real violence happening. And that
I do think that there's a deep disturbance in the American soul right now. And this thing that's
supposed to be where we can just like, even if you don't like football and even if you don't
normally eat junk, and even if you don't normally think about mass market advertising,
you just kind of were like, you know what, now I'm going to be a big sloppy smelly American and
I'm going to just get into all that for one day. I don't know that we have the bandwidth or that
that seems like fun right now. And maybe that's part of what you experienced Ian and sort of like
the lack of anticipation. But there was such anticipation for Bad Bunny. Yes. And I got to
say that that was one thing that even coming home on the train like it broke through because when I
was riding the subway back from Penn Station, there's some young people got on the train who had
just been at a watch party and they were a little tipsy and they were waving Puerto Rican flags,
turned out they were Mexican and Spanish. But they were like, oh, we're Puerto Rican. I'm like,
we're all Puerto Rican tonight and we're all American, right? And as Bad Bunny pointed out,
America is a big, big, big place and a big, big, big idea. And so that vision of America
that he presented in that halftime show, that has some juice, that has some joy in it.
And the dancing that we saw in the Volkswagen ad is like the real dancing of the people coming
out of the stadium and waving Puerto Rican flags and dancing to salsa. That's where the
energy is right now and that's where the excitement and the sort of older football
vision of America seems to just, it just doesn't appeal in the same way. And so I guess that
kind of gives me hope. I think the other thing sort of goes against what you were saying a little
bit in. I agree that like in terms of the game itself and the ads, there was not the build-up
that we saw. But the Bad Bunny stuff, actually, it's a really good lesson because the right was
freaking out. Like he's going to say ice out at the Super Bowl performance like he did at the
Grammys. He's going to make some overtly political statement against Trump. He didn't do any of
those things actually. He just presented his vision of celebratory culture from Puerto Rico
and from Latin America and from the United States and from everywhere. Now he had some
political moments of like the electrical utility poles, like a call out to Hurricane Maria and the
fact that the U.S. government has not assisted its own territory in getting its power back on
and reliable. And there were other moments like that that were political in nature, but not like
F.U. Trump. He wasn't like unfurling a banner that said abolish ice. And I think it's a good
lesson in how the right wing freak out never lives up to the reality because it's like,
oh my God, he's going to be singing completely in Spanish. Yes, in Santa Clara, California,
he will be speaking entirely and singing entirely in Spanish. And I think it just
exposed the ridiculousness of sort of like our culture war and that we are winning the culture
war and that's why the right is so upset. But one of the things I felt early on during his
performance is how well it worked in the light. Like often you see those halftime shows and you're
like, no, this is a concert. It should be happening under dark skies in like, it's what else, but
this one, the sun was shining and like all these different places and sets that he was walking to,
they were well lit and it felt like a party around sunset. Like it felt right for the time and it
felt like it should be illuminated. It felt a little bit like a coincidence that it worked in
the light, but I don't know. You could also see more there. I also just like the level of detail,
like there literally was a kid getting a haircut in the background of one thing. Was that like a
real haircut? I've been wondering the same thing. There was a couple that got married. Did you see
this? It was an actual marriage. They had invited Bad Bunny to their wedding and apparently,
he couldn't go because he probably gets a million of these requests, but he invited them to get married
on stage at the Super Bowl. And there were other little details, the guys playing Domino's,
which I love, which is just such like a universal city thing and any like Dominican, Puerto Rican,
any sort of culture like that, which I really loved. And just like the younger version of
himself holding the Grammy, all of that stuff. There was one person pointed out a kid, there's
like a wedding at one point, which we were just talking about. There's a kid sleeping on a couple
of chairs, which any ethnicity, if you've been to any wedding, there's always a kid sleeping on chairs.
So I just, the artistry at that level of detail for something that's supposed to be huge, right?
To be down to the detail of a child was really awesome. It's just this like multi-generational
celebration that I really loved. Yeah. And then the very simple message at the end,
the only thing stronger than hate is love. And then on the football together,
together, we are America, we are America. And you know, people have talked a lot about
the positive energy of Zoran Mamdani. And we've talked about how he won that election because
he loved, he loves New York. He loves New York the way that we all love New York. And love was
stronger than hate in that case. And the haters are the waiters anyway. But you know, I think that
keeping that simple and even the font, it was just this very simple censora font. It wasn't in
Spanish and English. It was just in English. It was just a black and white sign saying something
very clear. And it was about love. And he just brought like a tidal wave of love onto that field.
And you can't argue with it. You can't argue with that love, despite the fact that the president
crashed out about it immediately on true social. I love that it was like,
my favorite thing about Trump's response was that he was saying basically like,
this was unintelligible, nobody understood what I mean. And also it was offensive to America.
And the message was offensive, like pick one, dude. Right. So I just think that that posture of
saying, I know who I am. I know that my culture is beautiful. I know that what is inside of me
and inside of my culture is beautiful. And I'm just going to show that with love
consistently without ever showing a crack. You know, just to say like this love can
envelop you too. I just found that extremely moving. Well, that is a perfect note to end
on. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you so much, Ian, for being here. Oh, thanks for having me.
Where else can people find you? Here's your chance to give us a good plug.
You can listen to my podcast, How to Do Everything on NPR. You can also find
Everything is Alive. At this point, we know where podcasts are. I'm not going to say the
thing we say. Well, we'll put links in the show notes. Okay, that'd be great. Thanks for being here.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of the War on Cars. Thanks again to Ian Chillag.
You can listen to Everything is Alive wherever you get your podcasts,
and we'll put links to everything Ian in the show notes.
Remember, you can support us and get exclusive bonus content,
pre-sale access to live show tickets, free stickers, and more by signing up on Patreon
at patreon.com slash The War on Cars pod. A big thanks to everyone who supports The War
on Cars, including our top contributors, Charlie G of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon,
Mark Headland, Virginia Baker, and Brandon DeCoster. And please pick up a copy of our new book,
Life After Cars, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the automobile, wherever you get your
books. You can also find us on tour and learn more at lifeaftercars.com. Thanks also to our
friends at Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15% the best gear for cycling and
walking. Now through the end of February with code KISSMEUFOOL, just go to cleverhood.com slash
War on Cars. The War on Cars is produced with support from the Helen and William Mazer Foundation.
This episode was edited by Samantha Gatzek. It was recorded by Josh Wilcox at the Brooklyn
Podcasting Studio. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell
Gragg. Our logo is by Danny Finkel. I'm Sarah Goodyear. And I'm Doug Gordon. And this is The War on Cars.
About this episode
A lively discussion unfolds as hosts Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear, joined by guest Ian Chillag, dissect the Super Bowl ads and their cultural implications. They explore themes such as consumerism, AI, and the portrayal of insecurities in advertising. The trio critiques the lack of originality in this year's commercials, noting a heavy reliance on nostalgia and familiar faces. With humor and insight, they analyze specific ads, including those featuring lost pets and weight loss, while questioning the broader societal messages these ads convey.
Original notes
Super Bowl LX had everything, from ads for weight loss drugs and male grooming products to spots touting tax prep services and calming fears about our AI overlords. It also had one outstanding halftime performance from Bad Bunny. But what the game didn't have was a whole lot of car ads. (Or a whole lot of touchdowns, but that's a different story.) Why, after dominating the broadcast for decades, has the automobile industry gone cool on one of broadcasting's biggest nights? And what did the few cars ads that did run say about the state of the nation and American culture at this particularly fraught moment in time? Ian Chillag—creator and host of the award-winning Radiotopia podcast "Everything is Alive," the co-host of NPR's "How to Do Everything," and a senior producer of "Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me"—joins us to break it all down.
Join The War on Cars on Patreon and listen to exclusive ad-free versions of regular episodes, Patreon-only bonus content, Discord access, invitations to live events, merch discounts and free stickers!
Watch all of the Super Bowl ads. (NY Times)
Listen to Ian Chillag's podcasts How to Do Everything and Everything is Alive.
Order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, out now from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Find us on tour and get tickets at lifeaftercars.com.
Thanks to Cleverhood for sponsoring this episode. Listen to this episode for the latest discount code and get the best rain gear for walking and cycling.
The War on Cars is produced with support from the Helen and William Mazer Foundation.
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