The Pedestrian

The War on Cars

The War on Cars, LLC

Society & Culture, News, News Commentary

4.9 • 937 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back in 1952, the great American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury published a short story called "The Pedestrian" in a small antifascist publication. The story, which was based on Bradbury's own experience of being hassled by the cops while walking the streets of Los Angeles, imagined a world in which automobile dominance was so complete that walking for any purpose would be seen as a sign of mental illness. We take a look back at Bradbury's dystopian vision, and talk with four people — paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva and writers Garnette Cadogan, David Ulin and Antonia Malchik — about how walking contributes to our essential humanity, and what we lose when we build environments that make it impossible for people to walk

Transcript

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0:00.0	Guys, I got to tell you, I have a cleverhood problem at my house.
0:07.6	Sarah, this is an ad.
0:08.8	You're not supposed to talk about problems with a product.
0:11.0	The problem is that every time it rains my
0:14.8	cleverehood. I had a cleverhood problem this weekend too.
0:18.6	And what is your problem? It was freezing rain on Saturday. I went to take my dog out. He would not step foot outside of the house because he didn't have a cleverhood like I did.
0:29.0	Well, I guess I will share my problem. So everyone in my household has a cleverhood, but my daughter's
0:36.2	rain cape is the same bright yellow as my anorac, and she doesn't like to be too matchy
0:41.1	matchy with her father because she is 12 going on 16 so I don't know that's a good
0:45.7	problem to have that we have too many. So the problem basically is everybody needs a cleverhood.
0:50.9	And if you want to get a cleverhood you can just go to cleverhood.com
0:54.6	slash war on cars and you can save 20% off anything in the cleverhood store with
0:59.7	code happy commute. Cleverhood.
1:03.0	If everyone has their own, there's no problem.
1:09.0	When I was on Wilshire Boulevard one night
1:12.0	50 years ago with a friend. A police car pulled up and the police
1:18.4	inquired while we were walking on the sidewalk. And I said, well, we're putting one foot in front of the other well
1:25.5	that was the wrong answer and the policeman was very suspicious of us for
1:30.4	walking an area where there where there were no pedestrians.
1:34.0	And I said, look, in that direction, nothing, that direction, nothing.
1:38.0	If we were criminals, what we call attention to ourselves by walking?
1:41.0	If we wanted to burglar, we drive up, go in, burglar, come out and drive away.
	...

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