Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National

Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and

Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory. I'm Brian Baller. I'm Joanne Freeman. And I'm Ed Ayers.

Each week, Joanne, Ed, our colleague Nathan Connelly and I, all historians,

take a topic from the headlines and try to see how we got here. But periodically,

we mix it up with what we call the first draft, where each of us brings

something that's caught our eye from that look. Sounds like fun. Yeah, I think it's

going to be fun. This is what we got for you today. The Everlainthony American

Commute, the Databriche at Equifax and how all of that credit information was stolen,

and talk about the latest report on poverty and inequality in America. We're

going to wrap up the show with footnotes. This is where one of us brings in

something from the archives that we just can't let go of. Do the people the

archives know that? That's our little secret. It's that a confession of theft

right there. Well, we're going to start with an article that caught my eye from

the Washington Post. And it's about yet again, an increase in the amount of

time we spend commuting to work. Now, it's not that much longer than last year.

It's 12 seconds longer. But when you look at how much time there's spending

commuting overall, it really adds up. Roughly, we spend nine days a year commuting,

just getting to work, getting back. I thought it'd be really interesting to

explore where this commuting thing comes from and just how recent it is. And, you

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