Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, 1956, President Eisenhower signs the Federal Highway Act of 1956.

They called it the Federal Highway Act of 1956 because it was 1956, and that's just good naming

conventions.

But look, this is a bill that authorized

$25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles of the interstate highway system

over a 10-year period. It was the largest public works project in American history up to that time.

And of course, it transformed this country.

It linked communities, created a bunch of infrastructure jobs, helped interstate commerce, and of course ushered in the age of the automobile, largely, I would say at the expense of other forms of transportation.

So here to discuss the bill, its effects, intended and not,

are as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there! And our special guest for this episode is Eddie Alterman,

longtime editor of Car and Driver magazine and host of the new podcast

Car Show from our friends at Pushkin Industries.

Eddie, welcome to the program.

Thanks for doing this.

Thank you, and it's great to be with you all.

So, Car Show has an exclamation point at the end.

Do you always feel like you have to have it come across with an exclamation point?

Yeah, it's me deliver it a little bit.

It's fun to say, Karsha.

So there's so much to talk about here, including, you know know I think legacy and all these sort of

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