Hello, hardfork listeners, friends of the show, loyal forkers, enemies of the show,

rivals, nemesies. We are getting geared up for Hard Fork Live in just a week and a half. It's going to be a

great show, and we're so excited to see so many of you there. We will be bringing you all of that fun in the podcast feed, so stay tuned for that.

But this week, we are off, and we're bringing you a conversation about the shift to driverless cars.

One of our favorite topics.

This is an episode of the podcast Interesting Times, hosted by Ross Douthit, and it is called

Why Are We Still Driving? Ross talks with Andrew Miller, who writes about transportation policy and the future of self-driving cars. I found this a really enjoyable conversation. I learned a lot from it, and I hope you enjoy this. We'll be back in your feed soon with a bunch of interviews and shenanigans from Hard Fork Live. Yeah. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to go paint those sets.

Are we painting the sets?

I thought we had someone for that.

No, they, um, budget cuts.

We spent all the budget on your wardrobe.

We did.

From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat.

And this is interesting times. It feels like we've been hearing about self-driving cars for a long time.

But now they're really here, ferrying people to work and school and nightlife from Los Angeles to Nashville, and poised to spread to just about every big city in America.

My guest this week is very optimistic about a future where the cars take over.

He writes about self-driving automobiles and transportation policy on his substack,

changing lanes, and he's the co-author of a recent book with the stark title,

The End of Driving.

We talked about the potential benefits of this transformation.

And as someone who kind of loves the open road,

I pressed him on what's lost,

...