After an unexpected hiatus, your best friends AJ and Jordan are back in business.

This time around we go where few shows of any stature have ever dared: the subject of traffic congestion. What's up with it? What causes it? When did we first start to see it as a problem? How did competing narratives from the early days come to shape how we see and deal with it? Is traffic congestion definitely bad, or is it akshually good?

And as always, we will be talking about how this all affects us as humans, individually and collectively. This is a longer episode than usual, but it's more packed than the Katy Freeway at rush hour. Stay tuned for a follow-up episode about some common ways we've tried to address traffic but ended up making it worse!

Links:

Want to learn more on this episode’s topic? Here’s just a short list of interesting resources:

• Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton (buy or find in library)
• Questioning Congestion Costs
• It's back, and it's even dumber than ever: The Urban Mobility Report
• PDF: Congestion Costing Critique: Critical Evaluation of the “Urban Mobility Report”
• Traffic Congestion - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
• The Causes of Traffic and Congestion
• That Influential Texas "Urban Mobility Report"
• Self-Driving Cars: A Coming Congestion Disaster?
• Is Ride-Hailing to Blame for Rising Congestion?
• Traffic congestion - Wikipedia
• Video: Why Traffic Congestion Grows Exponentially, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It // An Explainer (CityNerd)
• Video: The Simple Solution to Traffic (CGP Grey) — mentioned in the show
• Video: Why do Traffic Jams Occur out of Nowhere? (The Good Stuff)

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Hosted by AJ Fawver and Jordan Clark. Edited by Jordan Clark.

Music in this episode: Sounds of the Supermarket, Scott Joplin ("Reflection Rag" & "Sugar Cane"), a 1986 Weather Channel broadcast, Gary Nintendo, Jerry Reed ("Lord Mr. Ford"), and The Muppets ("It's Not Easy Being Green")