What Uber Hath Wrought [Rerelease]

The War on Cars

The War on Cars, LLC

Society & Culture, News, News Commentary

4.9 • 937 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

[This episode was originally released on October 16, 2019. We are re-releasing it in anticipation of the premiere on Showtime of the original dramatic series based on Mike Isaac's book. More new episodes are on the way!]

For a few years after Uber launched in 2009, it seemed like the on-demand ride-hailing service might be an advance in the war on cars — a way for more people to share fewer vehicles and to reduce overall automobile dependence. Fast forward a decade, and the rise of Uber (along with Lyft) has instead resulted in increased congestion, reductions in transit ridership, and the exploitation of a precarious workforce that the company would love to make obsolete altogether. In this episode, we talk with New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac about his new book, "Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber," in which he chronicles the rise and fall of Uber's co-founder, Travis Kalanick. We hear what Mike has to say about the cult of the founder and the way Kalanick's winner-take-all mentality has negatively affected the streets of the world's cities.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Sarah. Back in 2019 we talked with New York Times reporter Mike Isaac about his book
0:06.2	Super Pumped, The Battle for Uber. A new Showtime series based on the book, which chronicles the
0:12.2	shenanigans behind the Silicon Valley
0:14.0	juggernaut is set to premiere on February 27th. So we figured it was a good time to put
0:19.4	our conversation with Mike back in the feed in case you missed it.
0:23.0	We're working on a lot of fun stuff and we'll be back with new episodes very soon.
0:28.0	In the meantime, enjoy this re-release.
0:31.5	Millions of people die a year in cars.
0:34.0	They don't have to.
0:35.0	Tens of millions of people get injured.
0:37.0	Trillions of hours are spent sitting behind a wheel holding that steering wheel,
0:41.0	stressed out.
0:43.2	And we don't have to have traffic in our cities.
0:46.4	You know, that parking infrastructure,
0:48.0	that's 15% of the land in a city,
0:50.4	could be given back to the city.
0:52.3	And by the way, imagine transportation that's so
0:54.8	inexpensive that everybody could have access to it like running water. That's what
1:00.7	we're talking about. That's super visionary, right? That was like the war on cars mission statement.
1:06.4	We should get that person on the podcast.
1:08.1	That might be hard because that was Travis Kalinik, who is one of the founders of Uber.
1:15.0	Oh, there's a twist.
	...

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