Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left Podcast. This is a sample of our recent bonus episode usually only available to members.

These episodes are comprised of our crew of researchers, Amanda, and myself all getting together

for a roundtable discussion on topics that we find interesting. So here's a few minutes for free so you can

know what all the fuss is about.

So speaking of society's built for cars, that brings us to the sudden glut of car washes that have been built in this country.

Amanda and I recently visited suburb dwelling family members,

and while in the suburbs we noticed the car washes,

and I remembered I had sort of seen a headline at some point so we looked it up and

shall I just play the piece from NPR that really kicked this off for us?

Well I just want to quickly say it wasn't just car rushes it was

massive car was that was what was really stunning. Yeah yeah they were

particularly massive and also lots of them and this is definitely a phenomenon.

So this is not the whole NPR piece, but we'll explain why we chose this section after you hear it.

You also talk about this new breed of car wash the mega wash yes yeah

there's a bunch of huge ones you know tens of thousands of square feet the size of you

know like a football field and again they are able to just work

really fast they can crank out a lot of car washes some of them have dining

options and you know playgrounds for kids and stuff oh it's just a whole day at the car

wash yeah yeah I mean kids might have a lot of fun I know my kids love going through

the automatic car wash they get a big kick out of it but yeah I mean just of like, you know, you can really crank out a lot of

car washes and attract a lot of members and that recurring revenue just really makes the business run.

Absolutely. You also talked about how like some small towns they've resorted to banning car washes.

...