Field Dispatches from Four Continents
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this, our second episode of the COVID-19 era, we hear from listeners around the globe about how their cities look and feel. Is it safe to ride transit? How does it feel to walk through towns and cities as people protect themselves and others by wearing masks? There's been a surge in the number of cyclists — and speeding drivers — on city streets. But will people keep biking when this ends? Listeners in Bogotá, Paris, Los Angeles, Taipei and Washington, D.C., let us know how it's all going. Plus, Aaron tells us why car ownership has taken over his brain, Sarah explains the concept of an "emotional washing machine" and Doug is hearing things in Brooklyn.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, so last night I was walking around my neighborhood at 8 o'clock and I heard something that I had never heard before. |
| 0:09.0 | I want you to take a really careful listen to this. So, |
| 0:25.0 | haunted Jack in the Box? |
| 0:28.0 | No, not a haunted Jack in the Box. |
| 0:31.0 | No, I know what it is. |
| 0:32.8 | Yeah. |
| 0:33.6 | Those are the bells of St. Agnes. |
| 0:35.6 | Yes. |
| 0:36.2 | So the really crazy thing is that that church |
| 0:39.8 | is almost a mile from where I live. And I have lived on this street for six years and not once have I been able to hear that at 8 o'clock on a weeknight. |
| 0:51.0 | Usually I mean it's just a roar of traffic at the end of my block and now I can hear it. |
| 0:56.6 | And here I thought car horns were part of the church bells all this time. |
| 1:01.0 | Yeah, ding, donong, hong. |
| 1:05.0 | Right, no, that's gone. |
| 1:06.5 | That's not happening anywhere. |
| 1:07.8 | That's the world we're living in right now. |
| 1:11.9 | This. This is the war on cars, the podcast about hearing church bells when all the cars are gone. |
| 1:22.0 | I'm Doug Gordon, I'm in my bedroom in Brooklyn. I'm Aaron Napaestack and I'm in Newfane Vermont. |
| 1:28.0 | I am Sarah Goodyear and I am also in Brooklyn about a mile and a half from Doug and closer to St. Agnes than he is. |
| 1:35.7 | I hear it every night. |
| 1:37.8 | Yeah, it was very weird. |
| 1:40.9 | So I walked around last night, just needed to go to actually to the pharmacy for non-coronovirus related reasons, and it was just shockingly quiet in my neighborhood. It was very odd. |
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