Episodes

  • BONUS: "Life After Cars” (w/ The War on Cars)

    BONUS: "Life After Cars” (w/ The War on Cars)
    Nov 21 2025
    What would society look like if people no longer needed their cars? That's the premise of the new book “Life After Cars,” written by Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear.
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    58 mins
  • BONUS: Abundance in transportation

    BONUS: Abundance in transportation
    Aug 12 2025
    California needs better public transit. But building new bus and rail lines is difficult and expensive here. A new report says to make things easier, the state needs to get out of its own way.
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    24 mins
  • BONUS: Freeways and loneliness

    BONUS: Freeways and loneliness
    Apr 8 2025
    Urban highways are preventing us from meeting our neighbors and building community, according to a landmark new study. Luca Aiello, professor of data science at the IT University of Copenhagen, shares his research into the impact of freeways on social networks. The findings are important not just for our right to pursue happiness, but also for our pocketbooks. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2408937122
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    46 mins
  • BONUS: Sizing up California's freeway budget

    BONUS: Sizing up California's freeway budget
    Aug 13 2024
    In a lean budget year, California has shrunk the size of its climate investments while still spending hundreds of millions of dollars on freeway expansions. Carter Rubin, director of state transportation advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, joins the podcast to talk about his research into the state's mixed priorities in transportation spending. Research on HOV/toll lanes: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/18RD022.pdf
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    45 mins
  • Port of Entry: The Right to The City

    Port of Entry: The Right to The City
    Jun 3 2024
    Traffic is a huge problem in Tijuana and San Diego. If you drive around during the day, you will most certainly be caught in a traffic jam. So should we build more roads to ease traffic congestion? In this crossover episode with Port of Entry, KPBS' border podcast, we explore what is keeping residents of Tijuana from a better quality of life. The answer took us by surprise. If you enjoyed this episode of Port of Entry, check out their current season on Visionaries and Shapers of the Borderlands. You can check out their catalog for older episodes here or wherever you get your podcasts!
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    36 mins
  • BONUS: Freeways are bigger in Texas

    BONUS: Freeways are bigger in Texas
    Apr 30 2024
    City Limits, a new book from journalist Megan Kimble, chronicles the emergence of a modern wave of freeway revolts in Texas. As the Texas Department of Transportation seizes more and more land to widen its highways, people who had never considered themselves urbanists or activists are joining the movement. This time they're not just fighting displacement, pollution and segregation — they're also fighting climate catastrophe.
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    53 mins
  • BONUS: Reconnecting Communities (with David Alvarez)

    BONUS: Reconnecting Communities (with David Alvarez)
    Dec 19 2023
    The California legislature is starting a conversation about how to reunite communities that were divided by freeways. For Assemblymember David Alvarez, the issue is personal. Alvarez grew up in San Diego's Barrio Logan, one of the most polluted communities in California. He's now chair of a special committee dedicated to correcting the kind of racial and environmental injustices his family has faced for decades.
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    23 mins
  • BONUS: Blowing the whistle on widening freeways

    BONUS: Blowing the whistle on widening freeways
    Nov 7 2023
    Former Caltrans executive Jeanie Ward-Waller shares her story of getting fired after speaking out against a freeway project near Sacramento. She says Caltrans is driven by a "mindless impulse to add more freeway lanes," and that reform-minded people at the agency are often sidelined and dismissed.
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    33 mins