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The War on Cars

The War on Cars, LLC

The War on Cars brings you news, commentary and stories about the worldwide battle to undo a century"s worth of damage wrought by the automobile.

society & culture news commentary

All Episodes

31:16

The Creation of America's Car Culture, Part 2

The War on Cars ·

2026/01/06

Signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, otherwise known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, ushered in an unprecedented era of roadbuilding in the United States, becoming the largest public works project in the country's history. Designed to spread freedom and prosperity — and, as the name implies, provide for the national defense — these highways tore through urban neighborhoods, destroying once-thriving communities and displacing

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06:29

PREVIEW: Hanging Out with Jonathan Maus of Bike Portland

The War on Cars ·

2025/12/30

***This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars.*** We were out in Portland, Oregon, for our book tour in November, and spent a lot of great time hanging out with Jonathan Maus, the legendary founder of Bike Portland. We sat down with Jonathan in his backyard shed/studio and talked about

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01:18:00

Dispatches from Book Tour, Part 2

The War on Cars ·

2025/12/23

We are back home in Brooklyn but we can't stop talking about everything we saw out on the road on our Life After Cars book tour. Listen for our takes on the second leg of our trip, which took us from Providence to Austin to Houston to Denver to Boulder…and then ended with a surprise diversion to an unexpected destination. We've seen so much along the way—like just how destructive freeway expansions can be. But also how cities can reclaim automobile infrastructure for humans! Plus, a shout-out to all

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01:06:55

Dispatches from Book Tour

The War on Cars ·

2025/11/25

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind as we hit the road (not in a car) to promote our new book, Life After Cars, in some of the greatest cities of North America including San Francisco, Washington, DC, Seattle, Vancouver, BC, Nanaimo, BC, Portland, OR, San Diego, and Los Angeles (as well as our home base of NYC, of course). Getting to visit all these cities in person, often walking and riding the streets accompanied by local advocates and elected officials, was a real joy and a privilege. We saw

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29:46

The Creation of America's Car Culture

The War on Cars ·

2025/11/11

This episode is part of a special series called "Changing American Car Culture" funded with the generous support of The Helen and William Mazer Foundation. As historian Peter Norton documents in his book, Fighting Traffic, the death and destruction caused by the introduction of automobiles into U.S. cities in the early part of the 20th century caused a lot of people to challenge the notion that such machines would ever become popular. In response, autmobile companies, car dealers, driving

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02:14

PREVIEW: A Talk with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo

The War on Cars ·

2025/10/28

This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars. Back in September, Sarah moderated a conversation with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo as part of Climate Week events in New York City. The event was presented by the Clean Cities Campaign and Respire, a Paris-based nonprofit that focuses on

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43:58

Welcome to Life After Cars

The War on Cars ·

2025/10/21

Today we celebrate the publication of our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile. In this episode, we serve up a sample of the audiobook and talk about some of the things we learned and that surprised us during the process of bringing Life After Cars to publication. Also, who should play us in the movie version? Listen to hear our thoughts and let us know your opinion. We are so grateful to all of our listeners and supporters for making this day

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38:16

The War on the War on Cars with Ted Mann

The War on Cars ·

2025/10/07

In this episode, we talk about the Trump Administration’s full-on financial assault on all the modes of transportation we hold dear here at The War on Cars. Biking, walking, public transit—basically, anything deemed “hostile to cars” or that has something to do with sustainability and equity is under attack. Ted Mann, a reporter at Bloomberg News who has been covering the story, joins us to explain what is going on with federal transportation funding for active transportation projects and more

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37:45

Cities for Children with Tim Gill

The War on Cars ·

2025/09/30

Tim Gill is a London-based independent scholar, writer and consultant on childhood, and a global advocate for children’s play and mobility. He is the author of Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Urban Planning and Design Can Save Cities and No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society. We met Tim when he appeared on a panel with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo that Sarah moderated during Climate Week in New York. When we heard what he has to say about cities and children, we knew that we had to have him

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07:42

PREVIEW: The Cars of TikTok

The War on Cars ·

2025/09/23

This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars. If you spend any time at all on social media, you’ve seen countless videos of all kinds of different people talking about all kinds of different things with one setting in common: the car. We got together in the studio with journalist and

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01:07:51

Political Courage with Brad Lander

The War on Cars ·

2025/09/09

Brad Lander has been a fixture in New York’s progressive political scene for nearly two decades now, and has earned a reputation as a strong advocate for bike lanes, bike share, driver accountability, and congestion pricing. This year, though, he’s become known in a new way. As a candidate in a crowded Democratic mayoral primary, Brad cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani, who eventually won the race with a margin that shocked the Democratic establishment. And in June, mere days before the primary ended,

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08:10

TEASER: Cars Drive Us Apart, Subway Takes Unite Us

The War on Cars ·

2025/08/26

This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars. In this bonus episode, Doug and I discuss a couple of recent studies that look at just how destructive cars are to the social fabric of our communities, how they decrease life satisfaction, and how walkable neighborhoods with public gathering

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01:00:39

Should the Bus Be Free? With Yonah Freemark

The War on Cars ·

2025/08/12

Should the bus be free? That’s the question everyone following the New York City mayoral race is asking, with Democratic primary winner Zohran Mamdani promising to focus on fast, free buses if he’s elected to City Hall. Eliminating bus fares is a big idea, but is it a good one? Like a lot of things in politics, there’s no simple answer. That’s why we asked Yonah Freemark — a researcher in cities, land use, and transportation at the Urban Institute — to walk us through the pros and cons of making the

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06:14

PREVIEW: We Know What We Read Last Summer

The War on Cars ·

2025/07/29

This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars. While we were researching and writing "Life After Cars" last year, we read and pulled information from dozens upon dozens of books. There were also a handful of books that caught our attention but that, try as we might, didn't quite warrant

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54:10

BUILDING SOLIDARITY WITH BICYCLES AT VELO-CITY

The War on Cars ·

2025/07/15

At this year’s Velo-city conference in Gdansk, the theme was “Energizing Solidarity,” in honor of the city’s history as the cradle of the Solidarity labor movement that helped bring down Communism in Poland. Velo-city is an incredibly good-mood event put on each year by the European Cyclists’ Federation, where people come from all over the world to share best practices in urban cycling, and to connect with their fellow advocates, elected officials, and other members of the wider cycling community.

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06:21

PREVIEW: Are Cyclists Too Mean Online?

The War on Cars ·

2025/07/01

This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, pre-sale tickets to live shows and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars. Are cyclists too mean online? To read some of the headlines about a recent study, you'd think the answer was yes. "Forceful bike campaigners can undermine UK cycle lane planning, report finds," blared the headline in The Guardian. The subhead

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01:00:20

What Makes a City a Cycling City?

The War on Cars ·

2025/06/24

Why have some cities become places where it's easy to hop on a bike for daily transportation needs while others have languished or even been left behind? Is there some sort of magical combination of forces that separate the best cycling cities from basically everywhere else? Those are the questions asked by Cycling Cities: The Global Experience, a research project headed by Dr. Ruth Oldenziel, a Professor in The History of Technology at Eindhoven University of Technology. Nthoki Dorcas Nyamai, an

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51:33

John Mulaney, Natasha Lyonne and the Battle of the...

The War on Cars ·

2025/06/03

Recently, on an episode of the Netflix show Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, the subject turned to bike lanes. Or rather, the subject was turned to bike lanes by Natasha Lyonne. The actress, writer, director and producer said that bike lanes should be “shut down” and claimed that there is no space for them in Manhattan. Journalist Alissa Walker of Torched was on Everybody’s Live as a “public transit expert” to talk about Uber, but soon found herself — as a public-transit-riding Los Angeles

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05:19

TEASER: Live from Minneapolis!

The War on Cars ·

2025/05/27

This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, pre-sale tickets to live shows and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars. And don't miss our new book, "Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile," now available for pre-sale wherever you purchase books. Enjoy this preview of our live show, recorded before a sold-out crowd at The Cedar

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51:24

Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement with Charles...

The War on Cars ·

2025/05/20

Charles T. Brown is a longtime friend of the podcast who was last with us in 2023. We welcomed him back to talk about his important new book, Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement, out now from Island Press. Charles is the founder and principal of Equitable Cities, a minority- and veteran-owned urban planning, public policy and research firm focused at the intersection of transportation, health and equity. He is also an adjunct professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of

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229 results

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