By the way, I would beg to Sean Duffy to also declare war on bike lanes. These are some of the most un-American European communist garbage. You never bike around. Absolutely not. I have a car like a normal American. [00:00:16] Well, if you didn't know. Now you know bike lanes are communist and un-American. That was a segment on Newsmax and during a bit disparaging former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Bike lanes caught a few strange. And let me tell you up front, I think about bike lanes a lot. [00:00:34] I don't bike, I'm not a bicyclist. But I might be if we had better bike lanes. So the arguments against bike lanes that were that were mentioned was that one, no one's using them. Two the weather is no good. And also bus lanes are terrible, which is not about bike lanes. [00:00:51] But you know, I got to say, I hate the argument that no one's using them because it's like anything with the government, they do something badly. Then when it doesn't perform well, they say, see, they're no good. And then they use that now documented poor performance as an excuse to cut funding from that program and just scrap it all together. [00:01:09] It's like performative bureaucracy. And it's honestly, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. It's a waste of everyone's time. And if they had actually implemented the bike lanes properly in the first place, perhaps more people would use them. Bus lanes are not ideal, I will admit. But again, the solution to poor city infrastructure is not to abandon the idea [00:01:28] of public transportation completely. The right has abandoned reality to this extent now that they they've equated walking and biking and riding busses to communism. It's so unhinged and no one is even talking about trams. Why not? We should all be talking about trams. [00:01:45] And this isn't the first time that any of this has come up, by the way. So 15 minute cities, they promote the idea that places where people live should be walkable, and that people should be able to access grocery stores and city centers and most places that they need to get to within just a 15 minute walk from their homes. [00:02:04] It's just an idea. Something to think about, possibly to work towards. They're not perfect, but I personally wouldn't mind living in one. But walkable cities would reduce car dependency across the country, and the United States is nothing if not car dependent. This doesn't mean that cars won't still be around, but it would de-center the car [00:02:23] from the city, meaning that the city would be more people centric instead. Notably, it would also reduce oil and gas dependency, resulting in low emission cities. It would reduce the need for ongoing road construction, and we all know how annoying that can be. It would get more cars off of the roads, resulting in safer, [00:02:41] quieter cities with cleaner air, and it would reduce the need for these giant parking lots that you see everywhere you look, which require green spaces and floodplains to be paved over. So anyway, right wingers interpreted all of this as leftist communism and disguise, [00:02:58] saying that this was just a way to pacify the population to make it impossible for us to move around freely, even though it would actually do the opposite in a lot of ways. Saying that the left wants to take their cars from them, and basically saying that real Americans love being oil and gas consumers. [00:03:16] And as always, they're wary of incessant government control. Take a look. Local authority bureaucrats would like to see your entire existence boiled down to the duration of a quarter of an hour. You in your area will only be allowed within that 15 minute zone [00:03:34] that you've been allocated. Echoes of that language have recently been heard in the House of Commons. Will the leader please set aside some time in this House for a debate on the international socialist concept of so-called 15 minute cities and 20 minute neighborhoods? Disinformation researchers say this all started with the pandemic. [00:03:52] So the idea of climate lockdown first appeared in March 2020, when news of lockdowns in Wuhan as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic first broke into international news. And the terminology came from a set of accounts in the U.S. Who were linked to a fossil fuel think tank called the Heartland Institute. [00:04:13] You wouldn't be relegated to your designated 15 minute city. You can leave like no one's saying you can't, just, like, go outside of that. It makes me crazy. And anyway, you know, we should just have trams. But I've already said so much about this, and I could honestly talk about this for much longer, but was. [00:04:28] We'll start with you. The current American landscape in most places, really, just like a handful of cities in this country are exceptions to this. But most places require people to have cars to get around, and it's incredibly restrictive for anyone who doesn't have a car or for anyone who just doesn't want to [00:04:45] or can't drive at all the time. Driving is dangerous. It's ableist. It keeps us separate from our neighbors. It's incredibly expensive. The vehicles themselves, but also insurance, maintenance, gas, etc. But the propaganda here is that cars and driving and pumping gas [00:05:01] is practically a patriotic duty. And now we're seeing trends where more and more young people are putting off getting their driver's licenses because they just don't want to do it or they can't afford to, but instead they have to be dependent on their friends and family members who do drive. So they're sacrificing their own mobility almost entirely because apart from ubering [00:05:20] everywhere, most of them don't have access to any kind of public transportation. And now people who want public transportation are communists. And you know what I say, if that makes me a communist, and so be it. I want, I want. Why? When I went to Austin last week, I had to drive three hours to get there. [00:05:37] Why can't I take a train anyway? Why is Utah? I like, first of all, just the idea. Sorry that getting a car makes you somehow more American when these cars are expensive. [00:05:55] We're talking about on the cheap side of $450 $400 car note God knows how much for insurance and then gas. Forget about it. Like your pockets is just getting smoked at that point. So yeah, if somebody wants to ride a bike to work, ride a bike to the bar, [00:06:13] which I wouldn't recommend after you have a couple, but whatever to ride a bike wherever they want to go. I see no problem with that. Like I live in LA, which is, you know, one of the most nightmarish car cities in America where I essentially try to avoid leaving my house before sundown. [00:06:33] In my car. I'm blessed enough to work from home not to have to commute every single day. But that's not everybody's reality. And like Yasmeen said, like, yeah, people would love to get on a train, you know, 30 minutes on that train boom at their office in a 5 to 10 minute walk. [00:06:48] But this idea that you're a, you know, that you're a squish, that you're some lefty communist, you know, Chairman Mao loving leftist. If you want to ride a bike, God forbid, in your freaking city. It's some of the stupidest things that people on the right do. [00:07:08] Like, I'm not even trying to ride the bike. I just want other people to be able to ride their bikes, you know? - What do you think? - Freedom for the bikes? Well, I don't know. I've listened to your. I think you're very passionate about it, and I can't say. [00:07:23] I can't say I disagree with you. My bike has a flat tire. But I see people on these scooters and things, and they're all over Atlanta. It does present. I'm again. I'm with you. Yes. Okay. I'm just telling you, they're on the sidewalks. [00:07:39] They're doing things. Yes, the bike lanes are there, but people are going to do what they want to do. And there's a lot of accidents and potholes and things. And look, I'm with you, I. But but here's the thing too, with that. [00:07:54] - Right? - Yeah. There's accidents because there aren't always designated areas for people to do things right. So here bicycling, you know, the law is you're supposed to do it on the road, right? There's so many accidents because people don't understand what the laws are. They don't understand how things are supposed to work. [00:08:10] If I wanted to ride my bicycle to my gym, which is a four minute drive from my house, right? And would it would take me seven hours to bike there. Right. I looked it up. And maybe half an hour to walk there. If I take my bike, I'm having to weave in and out of parked cars on the street. [00:08:26] And even just in my neighborhood, that would be dangerous for me to do. You're also not supposed to ride your bicycle on the sidewalk and the sidewalk, even, like they'll put a sidewalk there, and then it just ends, right? Like they don't build. It doesn't have the little off ramp for you guys. - No, no, it just. - Stops like an off ramp to put. [00:08:43] The next slab there. You know, like they really just don't build cities or towns or neighborhoods with any of this in mind, right? They do it around the car first and everything else comes second. And if you just started putting the people first, then the cities [00:08:58] and the towns and the neighborhoods, they would all look a lot different. But that is a big ask, right? Because that's a huge infrastructure change, because right now all of the infrastructure in this country is, Car centric, right? It's all catered to the car, right? [00:09:14] That's why you have these big old streets instead of more narrow streets where maybe a tram could go. Right? That's why they have to pave over all these places. Here in Texas, we have sprawl. Everywhere you look, we have these giant strip centers, one story strip centers. And then what do we have? Giant parking lots in front of them. [00:09:32] So even if you wanted to walk from one place to another to the next, you're walking over like hot tar, like pavement and concrete. In the Texas heat, there's no trees, there's no shade, there's nothing there. - It's, I. Really think. - Nonsensical. [00:09:47] It is. And you make perfect sense. But I think it's going to take more than just give them the infrastructure, because I don't see why anyone would be against biking, health, whatever. Right? A choice, right? You have choices, but the minute you're stuck in rush hour traffic, [00:10:04] you're going to have to change the will of the people, because around here they just go into the bike lane. We're not waiting, okay? That's how people well, that's how people are. The congestion, white flight 30 years ago. And so now we don't have the correct planning and engineering. [00:10:19] This is what this is where we're at. Okay. And so, yes, I think you're on to something. But even people who would say I'm with you, it's very ideal in traffic. - But then they're saying. - Here's another thing too. What's funny about hearing you guys talk about this? [00:10:35] It's like in New York, especially in Brooklyn. For a while, bike lanes were synonymous with. - Your rent's about to go up. - Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, here come the whites. And then bike lanes and that high roller. All right. Yeah we're done. [00:10:50] We're going to start looking for some section eight. It's over. Yeah. That used to be like the association that so many people that I knew had with the bike lane when they were living in places like Bed-Stuy and Bushwick and other places in the city. It's like the second one of those bike lanes get painted. [00:11:08] Yeah. Them high rents is coming right behind it. Yeah. But that's the thing. Like, New York is maybe one of the only cities in the in the country like major cities. Not even Houston, Chicago, LA. I can say this for, you know, New York is one of the only cities where you can go without a car [00:11:24] and not get in a car the whole time you're there and actually be able to get around the entire city, right? Yeah. Yes. You can get an Uber. Yes, you can get a cab, but you don't have to. Right. Because they have a subway. But the thing is, how old is that infrastructure. How old are these subways? [00:11:39] It's literally a hundred and plus years and. They haven't updated it. Right. So it's crumbling, like getting into a New York City subway. Some of them are really nice and most of them are not. Most of them are obviously aging and need upkeep. So yeah, like these are idealistic things, right? [00:11:56] Because it would require a complete revamp. But the cultural like ideological aspect of like trying to convince people that this would be good in the first place is crazy to me. Like, like the the best argument that I can think of is that it would be a lot of work. [00:12:11] It would take a lot of time and it would cost some money, right? But at the end of it, you would have a much more livable place because like right now, if it's a nice day, I can't just walk out of my house and go get a cup of coffee from, like, the neighborhood coffee shop, right? The best neighborhood coffee shop is a ten minute drive from my house, which [00:12:29] is like over, like, several miles away. And it's crazy. You know, my nearest grocery store is about that far as well. Just to get to my gym again, I would have to drive just to get out of my neighborhood. I have to drive anywhere that I want to go. I have to drive. And I don't think that that's fair. [00:12:44] I think that it excludes a lot of the population from being able to live a life in a certain way, but it is also I live in Texas, so, you know, everything comes back to oil and gas and you know what they're up to. So anyway, I think I've talked about this enough. [00:13:00] No, no, I love I love the passion. And I agree with you. Because I could keep going. My local Trader Joe's boy, it's a three minute drive. I it's the only place I love more than my own house. I'm in there all the damn time. - I love. - Trader Joe's. We have the Belt line. [00:13:16] And when that was, you know, envisioned years and years ago now it's like every property that's on the belt line, like everybody wants to be, you know, right there. Because that's almost. Actually. Yeah. Most like really nice neighborhoods and suburbs, like, they, they popped [00:13:32] up around the old streetcar lines. You know, in Houston we have the light rail. It's not very extensive, but that part of, you know, it is pretty nice where the light rail is, you know, but a lot of people, like the culture isn't such where we know how to use public transport. So it's like, you know, we have to learn as a city and as a people because [00:13:49] so many of us are used to just getting into our cars and going places, but. The city around pickup trucks, that's the ideal way to plan a city. Texas. There's a bunch of pickup trucks. Texas, man. Yeah, it's crazy. Like they have to make the roads wider and like, the parking spaces, like you [00:14:05] can't fit a truck in these parking. And the trucks are getting bigger. It's like, so ridiculous. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.