Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm standing outside a Sozo coffeehouse in a strip
Speaker 1: mall near Phoenix, Arizona, perfectly blue skies, maybe seventy degrees
Speaker 1: an imperceptible breeze. My producer, Jacob Smith is here with me.
Speaker 1: We're waiting for the coolest car ever made. So we'd say,
Speaker 1: hold on, let's see what do we got here? We
Speaker 1: got a Is it a Nissan? No? No, it's a
Speaker 1: PACIFICA I want it's a Chryser PACIFICA. Actually a Chrysler
Speaker 1: pacifica hybrid, a minivan tricked out by the geniuses at
Speaker 1: Google with every conceivable high tech censor and gizmo known
Speaker 1: to man, so that I can drive itself a fully
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle. Google calls it Weymo, and here the outskirts
Speaker 1: of Phoenix, you can order a Weymo on an app
Speaker 1: like an uber our. Weymo silently glides up like a
Speaker 1: spooky ghost ship, and we get on board. So hold on,
Speaker 1: we have this thing. Should we start to ride? My
Speaker 1: name is Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to season six of Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. We are back,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen with a heartwarming story of what I
Speaker 1: learned riding around in a weymou on a gorgeous Arizona morning.
Speaker 1: Me and Jacob grinning ear to ear, bouncing up and
Speaker 1: down like little boys on their first visit to Disneyland.
Speaker 1: We were on our way to a new century, a
Speaker 1: new era, the dawn of a new age. Although I
Speaker 1: have to be honest, the future was now what we expected.
Speaker 1: It was better. The horse are closing, heading to Alamo
Speaker 1: Draft House Cinema tempted. Oh man, here we got an
Speaker 1: We sit in the back. You have to sit in
Speaker 1: the back of weymo. If we lean slightly forward, we
Speaker 1: could see the van's steering wheel turning all by itself.
Speaker 1: This car is not capable of breaking a speeling. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm curious about that's a good question, right, Like what
Speaker 1: if we had to what if can I enter? Like
Speaker 1: my wife is pregnant and we're rushing to the hospital.
Speaker 1: I think the only things we could do is press
Speaker 1: a button. This is pullover. If we were scared or something,
Speaker 1: I see that. What is a pullover? We do not
Speaker 1: pull over. We cruise down the streets of Chandler somewhere
Speaker 1: unseen rhythms and artificial intelligences are guiding us unerringly towards
Speaker 1: our destination, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Tempe. We approach
Speaker 1: Attorney Toyota with a student driver nervously navigating an intersection.
Speaker 1: Oh god, the irony. A human, a human learning a
Speaker 1: task that will, within years of its completion, be obsolete.
Speaker 1: And it's in that human's rear view mirror. Is the
Speaker 1: future that we should yank that d the student driver
Speaker 1: out and just say, why don't you learn? Why don't
Speaker 1: you learn? A type on a manual typewriter that's about
Speaker 1: as useful. Here's a BlackBerry, send some messages. There's a
Speaker 1: student loser. Did we realize in that moment what weymo
Speaker 1: would mean for our future, for all of our future?
Speaker 1: Not yet. We were still in the bliss state. My
Speaker 1: epiphany would not come until later that afternoon, when I
Speaker 1: found myself sprinting desperately alongside our weymo. Let's go Weymo.
Speaker 1: Jacob looked on helplessly from the backseat. Way is nobody's
Speaker 1: doing ashi? Wayman knows what he's doing. He's know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Well, come back to this, I promise, he
Speaker 1: thinks he's got away from me. Not so fast, my friend.
Speaker 1: Have you ever watched videos from tech conferences like TED?
Speaker 1: The signature TED conference is an annual gathering of people
Speaker 1: who are excited about technology talking to people who are
Speaker 1: excited about technology, about how exciting technology is? You know
Speaker 1: the type turtlenecks way into bitcoin. Picture of Elon Musk
Speaker 1: on the home screen of their iPhone twelve promax so.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty five, Carl Benz invented the automobile. Later
Speaker 1: that year, he took it out for the first public
Speaker 1: test drive and true story crashing into a wall. TED
Speaker 1: conferences always have at least one speaker gliding across the stage,
Speaker 1: clicking through power points on the future of the automobile.
Speaker 1: For the last one hundred and thirty years, we've been
Speaker 1: working around that least reliable part of the car, of
Speaker 1: the driver. We may be the last generation to own cars,
Speaker 1: our kids and grandkids. They may never have to learn
Speaker 1: to drive. They may never have to worry about driving
Speaker 1: around and looking for parking or speeding tickets or drunk driving.
Speaker 1: And the best part is they could go their entire
Speaker 1: life without ever seeing a car accident. Driverless cars are
Speaker 1: being touted as one of the most disruptive technologies of
Speaker 1: our time. Are you skeptical? I know some of you are.
Speaker 1: While Jacob and I were cruising around the suburbs of Phoenix,
Speaker 1: I took a video from the backseat of our waymo
Speaker 1: of the steering wheel turning by itself as the houses
Speaker 1: and sidewalks whoosh past. I tweeted at the video and
Speaker 1: watched from the back seat as the replies flooded in,
Speaker 1: comments like I would be freaking out the entire time.
Speaker 1: Been very nice listening to your podcast. Your upcoming demise
Speaker 1: is a great loss. This will all end in tears.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are frightened by the idea of
Speaker 1: a self driving car, but let me tell you, don't
Speaker 1: be frightened. From the moment we got in the minivan,
Speaker 1: neither Jacob nor I could believe what a calming, measured,
Speaker 1: completely zen experience we were having. Right now. It's slowing
Speaker 1: for a speed bump. Oh, nicely done. There's no way
Speaker 1: I would I didn't even I wouldn't even I would
Speaker 1: have gotten boom over that thing. Weymoux slowed smoothly for
Speaker 1: a stoplight, kept a respectful distance from other drivers. One
Speaker 1: time we encountered a man in a wheelchair sharing the road.
Speaker 1: Weymoux decelerated elegantly, gave him a generous birth, then cautiously
Speaker 1: pulled away. Way. I also have to say, totally trust
Speaker 1: the thing, like I have not thought for a second.
Speaker 1: I feel safe. Yeah, this is a safe space. This
Speaker 1: is not a motive safe space. I'll tell you one thing.
Speaker 1: It's certainly a safer space in the passenger seat of
Speaker 1: my car when I'm driving. Okay, we just got someone
Speaker 1: just pulled out in front of us. Drove. Oh, Weymo
Speaker 1: anticipated the second person slowed right down. That was some
Speaker 1: great defensive driving. Yeah, we encountered some terrible driving from
Speaker 1: another vehicle. We just cut across like six lanes um
Speaker 1: and Weymo kind of unfazed. We might handle it like
Speaker 1: a pro. We reached our destination, the Alamo Cinema Drafthouse
Speaker 1: parking lot. We were so excited we decided to call
Speaker 1: up Sashwat Penny Grahi, the senior director of product management
Speaker 1: at Weymo. We had so much to ask him about,
Speaker 1: Like all the sensors on our minivan, so so we
Speaker 1: have a we have a few, So you are you
Speaker 1: clearly on the doom, which you're seeing on the dormant
Speaker 1: at the top. That's that's we have a nineteen camera
Speaker 1: complex over there. So those are cameras plus two lasers.
Speaker 1: One is a medium range, one is a long range.
Speaker 1: The lasers are technically light our systems three D scanners.
Speaker 1: It's what NASA uses when they land on Mars. The
Speaker 1: laser looks around and instantly creates an incredibly detailed map
Speaker 1: of everything in its range. So that can see almost
Speaker 1: three football fields away. Wait, three three foot that can
Speaker 1: see three hundred yards in every direction. That's right, that's right,
Speaker 1: So we yeah, and you know it can become very helpful.
Speaker 1: You may have realized, I've noticed this as you were
Speaker 1: going on forty five milpur Roots in Phoenix. The harder
Speaker 1: the speed, the longer the car needs to reason about
Speaker 1: is anything coming at that speed? Right if it's a
Speaker 1: very low speed seeing shorter distances. Okay, So those are
Speaker 1: the medium and long range riders, And that's why they're
Speaker 1: placed atop as well, because you know you need a
Speaker 1: wider range of view. They're very well complimented by those
Speaker 1: smaller spinning things you must have seen on the sides
Speaker 1: of the cars. Yeah, and so that helps. For example,
Speaker 1: imagine you were in a busy parking lot in front
Speaker 1: of a Costco or a Walmart. Cars are bought very
Speaker 1: close to each other. Because he went on sensors on
Speaker 1: the back, radar on the side, microphones to pick up
Speaker 1: things like a police siren. I asked sash Watt whether
Speaker 1: Weymo had a blind spot like anything. It couldn't see
Speaker 1: one clarification, Malcolm, when you said blind spot, did you
Speaker 1: mean the class at the classical blind spot in our
Speaker 1: human driving You know, for example, you're trained when you
Speaker 1: get your driving license to not just to rely on
Speaker 1: your side camera. You just check, oh, no, absolutely not,
Speaker 1: so that we do not have absolutely not. Weymo has
Speaker 1: no blind spots. Arizona has the dubious distinction of being
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous states in the country for pedestrians,
Speaker 1: with Phoenix as the prime culprit. This is not a
Speaker 1: city designed for anything but the convenience of automobiles. Would
Speaker 1: a city full of Chrysler Pacifica hybrids tricked out with radar, lightar,
Speaker 1: nineteen cameras, microphones, and the ability to see three hundred
Speaker 1: yards in every direction make Phoenix safer? Yes, it would
Speaker 1: but the future will get even better than that, way
Speaker 1: more better. I need to take you on a brief
Speaker 1: digression away from the sunny streets of Phoenix to a
Speaker 1: call I had with Rosanne McManus, a professor of political
Speaker 1: science and international affairs at Penn State. McManus specializes in
Speaker 1: what's known as deterrence theory. Why do some conflicts lead
Speaker 1: to war and others just fizzle out? If there's complete
Speaker 1: information and so you know exactly how call slee the
Speaker 1: other side finds war to be, and how likely each
Speaker 1: side is to win. If you fight, then there's really
Speaker 1: no opportunity to bluff, and there should be no war
Speaker 1: because both sides know what would happen if you did
Speaker 1: fight a war, and so if one side is more
Speaker 1: powerful and they would win, then deterrence would work perfectly,
Speaker 1: and deterrence would never fail and life would be really simple.
Speaker 1: What McManus means is that if I'm rational and you
Speaker 1: are rational, and I know your intentions and capability and
Speaker 1: you know mine, then we're not going to go to war.
Speaker 1: Neither of us can effectively blackmail each other or make
Speaker 1: a threat or intimidate. Under the rational scenario, if you
Speaker 1: say I'll knuke you if you cross that line. I
Speaker 1: just roll my eyes and say, no, you won't. You're
Speaker 1: not blowing up the world because I crossed a line.
Speaker 1: But what if you're just a little bit crazy? McManus
Speaker 1: is one of a number of deterrence theorists who has
Speaker 1: thought about this possibility. By crazy, McManus doesn't mean completely psychotic.
Speaker 1: She just means somewhat irrational. What if you are possessed
Speaker 1: of and this is the phrase she uses extreme preferences,
Speaker 1: That is that you really want certain things and are
Speaker 1: willing to pay an insanely high price to get those
Speaker 1: certain things. If you are a little bit crazy like that,
Speaker 1: then I'm terrified because I really don't know whether you'd
Speaker 1: risk millions of dead to get what you want. McManus
Speaker 1: says this was exactly the situation before the Second World
Speaker 1: War when the British Prime Minister Nevill Chamberlain famously believed
Speaker 1: Hitler when Hitler said he wasn't out to wage a
Speaker 1: total war. I'm going to have another talk with her Hitler,
Speaker 1: only this time he has told me that it is
Speaker 1: his intention to come halfway to meet me. So walk
Speaker 1: us through that scenario. That what happened there and why
Speaker 1: that perception of Hitler allowed him to get his way.
Speaker 1: So he's negotiating with Chamberlain, who doesn't really want to
Speaker 1: have another war, having just had World War One not
Speaker 1: too long ago, and he tells Chamberlain, look, I'm a
Speaker 1: German nationalist, the German people in the student land or suffering.
Speaker 1: I want to unify all Germans. That's that's my mission
Speaker 1: in life. And you know, I'll do anything to unify
Speaker 1: all the Germans. But once I've unified all the Germans,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stop and that's going to be it,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be contented. So that's his extreme preference.
Speaker 1: He will do anything to unify Germans. That's how he's
Speaker 1: presenting himself exactly. Yeah, And it seems like Chamberlain believed
Speaker 1: that he believed it at least enough to give it
Speaker 1: a shot and to make this deal with Hitler. In
Speaker 1: the world of deterrence, this is called the Madman theory.
Speaker 1: McManus argues that people in any conflict may have an
Speaker 1: advantage if the other side perceives them as being just
Speaker 1: a little bit but not entirely nuts. If you can
Speaker 1: successfully convince your opponent that that is the way your
Speaker 1: mind works. You can get your way in a negotiating
Speaker 1: in a blackmailing or negotiating context in a way you
Speaker 1: couldn't otherwise. That's that's your essential argument. Yes, that's my argument. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it actually is rather hard to create that perception.
Speaker 1: Hitler is really the only successful example that I've come
Speaker 1: up with so far. Well, I want to give you
Speaker 1: another example, which is why I called you. But it's
Speaker 1: not in your world. It's in a slightly different world.
Speaker 1: It's about deterrence, right, This is where we get to
Speaker 1: the heart of it. Not deterrence among global superpowers bristling
Speaker 1: with weapons. No, the kind of ordinary, low grade calculations
Speaker 1: we make every day as a pedestrian. Why do I
Speaker 1: not just walk out in front of other cars? I
Speaker 1: don't believe that they're they might hit me because they're
Speaker 1: emotional or crazy or something. They have a series of,
Speaker 1: as you say, extreme what's the phrase again, extreme preferences?
Speaker 1: Extreme preferences. They might be more interested in their text
Speaker 1: text at there, at that moment than me walking in
Speaker 1: front of them, right, so like, and so that's the
Speaker 1: reason most people don't jay walk, right, because there is
Speaker 1: that deterrence. Yes. Now, before we get back to autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles and the glorious morning, Jacob and I spent riding
Speaker 1: way moos around the streets of Chandler, Arizona. I want
Speaker 1: to dwell on the issue of deterrence on the streets
Speaker 1: because drivers are not rational, and I think we sometimes
Speaker 1: lose sight of this fact. I thought professional cyclists, of
Speaker 1: all people, would have the best perspective on the inherent
Speaker 1: craziness of drivers. So I called up Lance Armstrong, cyclist extraordinary,
Speaker 1: who has been actively sharing the road with drivers for
Speaker 1: almost forty years. Cars freaked me out. Being out on
Speaker 1: the road and with cars and drivers and distracted drivers.
Speaker 1: It's scares the shit out of me. Yeah, but you know, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: I I actually now prefer the mountain bike just so
Speaker 1: I can be totally away from cars. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: I'm giving a choice on my road bike, I'm going
Speaker 1: down the road and I see that there's a bike path,
Speaker 1: even if there's people with baby strollers and walkers and dogs,
Speaker 1: I always take the bike path. I just I don't
Speaker 1: want to have to think about, you know, cars and
Speaker 1: people checking out their cell phone or having a few
Speaker 1: cocktails and they freaked me out. This is Lance Armstrong,
Speaker 1: a man so utterly and completely badass that he would
Speaker 1: happily go out on a bike for one hundred plus
Speaker 1: miles in the middle of the southern French summer, riding
Speaker 1: at insane speeds up and down massive mountains. I'm a runner.
Speaker 1: I think runners are the greatest thing. Ever, we're not
Speaker 1: as tough as cyclists, not even close. But even Lance
Speaker 1: badass Lance is so scared of drivers that he would
Speaker 1: rather mountain bike or take the bike path with the
Speaker 1: parents and the dogs. Have you ever been hit that car?
Speaker 1: Of course? Oh? Yeah, yeah, many times? How many times?
Speaker 1: How many times? Oh I say many times? I mean probably,
Speaker 1: Look we're getting hit onces? Is too many? I'd probably
Speaker 1: right around five. The two worst ones was when I
Speaker 1: was young, I ran a yellow light on my bike
Speaker 1: and outside of Dallas and suburbs where I grew up,
Speaker 1: and I got to the intersection and I turned yea.
Speaker 1: I was like, I got this well. I made it
Speaker 1: five of the six lanes and the six lanel lady
Speaker 1: was coming and just heading straight from the sides and
Speaker 1: I was banged up. But okay. Then there was the
Speaker 1: time he was bombing down some empty French country road,
Speaker 1: hadn't seen a car in an hour. Well, shit, sure enough,
Speaker 1: come around the corner and this old farmer just coming
Speaker 1: the other way, and just I clipped right the front
Speaker 1: and I cracked two vertebra. You could be dead. Well yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course. Next I called up Jonathan Vaughters,
Speaker 1: another former professional cyclist. He and Lance were teammates at
Speaker 1: one point. I wanted to make sure Lance wasn't an exception.
Speaker 1: No voters just as terrified. Yeah, I mean. The first
Speaker 1: driver I fear the most is just is you know,
Speaker 1: someone who's not paying attention for whatever reason it is.
Speaker 1: They're reaching for a hamburger, they're texting on their phone,
Speaker 1: they're arguing with their kid, whatever it is. They're distracted,
Speaker 1: and they basically just sort of weave in to you.
Speaker 1: This is one reason that actually, when I teach people
Speaker 1: how to ride in traffic, I often teach them to
Speaker 1: ride actually further out. If you're further out in the road,
Speaker 1: it actually forces you into the line of vision of
Speaker 1: the driver. The second type of driver that I fear
Speaker 1: is just angry. They don't want you there as a cyclist.
Speaker 1: They feel that the road is theirs. And that you
Speaker 1: are impeding their progress to getting to their destination, and
Speaker 1: they want to run you over, and maybe they realize, oh,
Speaker 1: there's you know, there are consequences from me running over
Speaker 1: this cyclist, but they're viewing you as essentially like subhuman.
Speaker 1: The willingness to risk killing a cyclist because they might
Speaker 1: slow you down for a few seconds is, of course,
Speaker 1: the textbook definition of an extreme preference. There's a multibillion
Speaker 1: dollar industry, i should say, built upon fear of traffic
Speaker 1: peloton swift. These are you know, in home riding a
Speaker 1: bike and whatever pieces of equipment, hardware, software, that are
Speaker 1: entirely a result of people being afraid to ride in traffic.
Speaker 1: To voters, riding a stationary bicycle makes no sense, I mean,
Speaker 1: why would you do that? The whole point of riding
Speaker 1: a bike is the thrill of movement, the wind in
Speaker 1: your hair, the adventure of going somewhere. But millions of
Speaker 1: Americans only feel truly safe peddling in their basements. To me,
Speaker 1: the only possible explanation for that. While there are two
Speaker 1: possible explanations, that society as a whole have gone insane,
Speaker 1: or that people are just you know, that they are
Speaker 1: afraid of traffic and afraid of cars, which quite logically,
Speaker 1: you know, makes sense that they would. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't think we've gone insane yet. There is a reason
Speaker 1: why when you drive down the street, cyclists and runners
Speaker 1: and pedestrians aren't inundating you, competing for the road. They're
Speaker 1: afraid of you. You and why are they afraid? Because
Speaker 1: you're nuts and in any confrontation that madman has the upperhand.
Speaker 1: All drivers are nuts, with one exception, weymout. Weymou doesn't
Speaker 1: have emotions. Weimou doesn't text. Weymou doesn't eat a burger
Speaker 1: and drive with his knees. Weymou doesn't get angry if
Speaker 1: you behave like an idiot. Weymou doesn't give you the finger.
Speaker 1: Weymo doesn't do road rage. Weymou wants to live and
Speaker 1: let live. Weymo is your grandmother, only with lightning reflexes
Speaker 1: and perfect vision to three hundred yards. In a world
Speaker 1: of Weymou's, cars aren't the madman anymore. But if cars
Speaker 1: aren't the madman, guess who gets to be crazy. The
Speaker 1: answer is obvious, my friends, we do. I will admit
Speaker 1: that I was slow to grasp the actual implications of
Speaker 1: autonomous driving. I'd been too busy watching all those Ted
Speaker 1: talks where the Silicon Valley types explained the self driving
Speaker 1: tech utopia where everyone behaves with the unruffled rationality of
Speaker 1: an engineering major at Stanford University. But one day I
Speaker 1: stumbled upon a brilliant essay by an economist named Adam
Speaker 1: Millard Ball. His paper reads like the academic version of
Speaker 1: the hands Christian Anderson story The Emperor's New Clothes. This
Speaker 1: was framed as a technological problem. It was framed as
Speaker 1: a space where we just need to figure out the
Speaker 1: right programming and other technological solutions. To Millard Ball, the
Speaker 1: issue with autonomous vehicles was people, specifically the people outside
Speaker 1: the vehicle. So if you're a pedestrian and you have
Speaker 1: that confidence that the autonomous vehicle is going to stop
Speaker 1: and yield to you as legal age it should, then
Speaker 1: there's nothing to stop you from taking that right of way.
Speaker 1: Pedestrians and drivers now engage in a dangerous game of chicken,
Speaker 1: each daring the other to do something stupid. But if
Speaker 1: weymo takes over the rules of that game change If
Speaker 1: you know that the other player is much more cautious
Speaker 1: and it's likely to follow the rules, then you're going
Speaker 1: to win. When you're playing chick in, it helps to
Speaker 1: be the most crazy player in the game. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the roles have reversed in a certain way that it
Speaker 1: used to be. The thing that puts fear into your
Speaker 1: heart as a pedestrian is the unknown preferences and the
Speaker 1: unpredictability of the driver. But now we've flipped it. The
Speaker 1: driver has become the car has become entirely sane and rational.
Speaker 1: It's preference, it's right, and that allows you to be
Speaker 1: unpredictable as the pedestrian. Absolutely, and it gives you an
Speaker 1: incentive to be seen to be unpredictable. That line hold on,
Speaker 1: love explain that, why does it give you an incentive
Speaker 1: to be to be seen as unpredictable? The more unpredictable
Speaker 1: you seem, so, the more you could behave like you're
Speaker 1: intoxicated or distracted, and then be it so equivalent of
Speaker 1: being a five year old child on the street. The
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle is likely to recognize that unpredictability and be
Speaker 1: more cautious. Accordingly, Oh, I see, it's in my interest
Speaker 1: to be as flagrant in my unpredictability as possible, because
Speaker 1: I don't want to be so subtle at the car
Speaker 1: doesn't pick it up. I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: if I'm going to transgress the rules of the road,
Speaker 1: I should do so as flagrantly and flamboyantly as I can.
Speaker 1: You need to be obvious about it. Absolutely. If we
Speaker 1: imagine we wave a wand and we say tomorrow every
Speaker 1: car in New York City or London will be autonomous,
Speaker 1: doesn't that mean that we have immediate gridlock, or at
Speaker 1: least once pedestrians catch on to their newfound power. How
Speaker 1: on earth to cars move around a city. That's a
Speaker 1: great question, and I'm not sure that they do. And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure either that that's a completely bad outcome.
Speaker 1: Not a completely bad outcome, it's a fantastic outcome. The
Speaker 1: experts have thrown in the town, given up on rational
Speaker 1: city streets, where algorithms and censors and light our create
Speaker 1: perfect order out of disorder. No, they're saying the future
Speaker 1: is mayhem, and I'm not sure that's a completely bad outcome.
Speaker 1: Kids can play stickball on the streets of New York
Speaker 1: City again like they did in the nineteen twenties. Cyclists
Speaker 1: can ride in packs down the middle of the interstate.
Speaker 1: You spot a friend on the other side of the
Speaker 1: street and you shout out hey, and you impulsively run
Speaker 1: across the street, across multiple lanes of traffic, and you
Speaker 1: give them a big hug. My running Club meets on
Speaker 1: a crowded track on the low reast side of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: where speedy runners compete with arrant soccer balls and children
Speaker 1: running free and old folks out for a ramble. Fifty
Speaker 1: yards away is the FDR drive wide undulating ribbons of smooth,
Speaker 1: inviting blacktop. In the autonomous future, we are totally going
Speaker 1: to do our workouts on the FDR at rush hour.
Speaker 1: A hundred of us and the weymous will sit patiently
Speaker 1: until we finish. Do you understand how awesome the future is?
Speaker 1: We get the streets back rise, Please check your surroundings
Speaker 1: Spore exiting the vehicle, and remember back in Tempe, Arizona,
Speaker 1: Jacob and I are wandering the parking lot of the
Speaker 1: Alamo Drafthouse, m a deep in conversation. We're not here
Speaker 1: for a movie. We're here to test out our newly
Speaker 1: realized power as pedestrians. And first thing we do we
Speaker 1: call another weymou. When weymou pulls up, is trying to
Speaker 1: spook him with the beach ball. Okay, a beach ball.
Speaker 1: Jacob has one folded up in his bag. We quickly inflated,
Speaker 1: but I could start. It's coming here he comes, all right, okay,
Speaker 1: we're most coming. We get inside the Weymou. Jacob stays
Speaker 1: outside holding the beach ball. Let you see how Weymo
Speaker 1: responds to a beach ball throne, because it is known
Speaker 1: in the literature is the beachball test. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: should I do a gentle role? What should I just
Speaker 1: float it up in front? Or okay? Okay? Jacob doesn't
Speaker 1: hurl the beach ball at Weymo. He gently floats it
Speaker 1: in the direction of Weymo. An errant beach ball that
Speaker 1: retails from maybe four dollars beach ball thrown, and it
Speaker 1: stopped short. I might have broken a comes neck that time.
Speaker 1: Weymo slammed on his brakes, slammed. I was a little
Speaker 1: worried about you. It stopped so short that tests stopped
Speaker 1: about as hard as you know, which makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 1: will let stop for birds? Stop this thing? Like this
Speaker 1: is not the biggest beach ball in the world. No,
Speaker 1: that was fourteen in beach ball. That was super impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a threatening beach balls. A beach ball thrown
Speaker 1: with love, not anger, floated outs right like gentle lofted
Speaker 1: and it. Weymo was like, this is not happening on
Speaker 1: my watch. I'm stopping this right now. Waymo was not
Speaker 1: going to harm a hair on the head of that
Speaker 1: beach ball. The beach ball test left us drunk with power,
Speaker 1: so I said to Jacob, I'm going for a run. Jo.
Speaker 1: What the first thing is I'm gonna do is I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try and outrun the way Moo, and then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cut in front. We're gonna see what happens. Please
Speaker 1: make sure your seat belts. Jacob gets in the Weymo
Speaker 1: in order to monitor Weaymo's movements. I do a few
Speaker 1: warm up stretches. I'm gonna run. Besides, I'm gonna run
Speaker 1: in front of the Weymo. Soon happens. Okay, let's go.
Speaker 1: Weymo's moving. We most moving. Wait where's he going? Come on, Weymo,
Speaker 1: come on, Weemo stopping starting He's I think I'm making
Speaker 1: him nervous. Come on, Weymo, come on, Waymo. Doesn't know
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, and now we won't move. This is
Speaker 1: actually Weymo is the most gracious, always taken. Weymo has
Speaker 1: got the other direction. Now running alongside Weymo, Waymos stopped,
Speaker 1: I'm making way more nervous. Let's go, Waymo, Let's go,
Speaker 1: let's go, let's go. I'm out running, Waymo. Don't cutting
Speaker 1: fun Waymo. Wemost come to a stop. Now Weymo is
Speaker 1: trying to get around me. Let's see. This is exhausting.
Speaker 1: Let's go Waymo. Oh stop him again. I'm gonna let him.
Speaker 1: Wamen does nobody's doing. Actually, Wayman knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1: He's not what I'm doing. We must go in the
Speaker 1: other direction. Now he thinks he's gotten away from me.
Speaker 1: Not so fast, my friend. When must now come back
Speaker 1: to a stop. I'm messing with Weymo's head cutting in
Speaker 1: front of Weymo. Wait, what does Weymo want to do here?
Speaker 1: I wonder if Wam was angry me. Now he's taking off.
Speaker 1: Oh he comes through, ha ha ha. Weymo was freaked out,
Speaker 1: freaked out. He thinks he's going. He's got ahead of me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna catch him. Hold touch me how let me
Speaker 1: get in Weymo stop. Weymo was the perfect gentleman. He
Speaker 1: let me be the crazy one. Remember this the next
Speaker 1: time some Silicon Valley visionary promises you a future of
Speaker 1: perfect mobility, efficiency and clarity from the back seat of
Speaker 1: an autonomous vehicle. No, no, no, it's much better than that.
Speaker 1: It's me and Lance and Jonathan Vaughters and Jacob with
Speaker 1: his beach ball, taking back the road. I love you, Weimo.
Speaker 1: Religious History is produced by Mela Belle, Leahman Gistu and
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, with Eloise Linton and On an Eye. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Gera, mastering
Speaker 1: by Flawn Williams, and engineering by Martin Gonzalez. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Amy Gaines. Special thanks to the Pushkin crew head
Speaker 1: a fan, Carl Migliori, Maya Kanig, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Nicole Morano, Jason Gambrell, and of course Jacob Weisberg. I'm
Speaker 1: Mountain Bubba. Don't forget my latest book, The Bomber Mafia,
Speaker 1: which is an expansion of several episodes from the last
Speaker 1: season of Revisionist History. You can find it wherever books
Speaker 1: are sold, but by the audiobook at Bomber Mafia dot
Speaker 1: com and you'll get a bonus listeners guide and you
Speaker 1: can listen in the podcast app you're using. Now that
Speaker 1: we've got our first response to the this will all
Speaker 1: end it tears? Oh yes it will. It will not
Speaker 1: only thanks now let me do rip ripping many even
Speaker 1: we get going in the Briday something you see a
Speaker 1: rip pickin you sill be like us here ride step
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's perfect. Sees Ride to Whist goes,
Speaker 1: Ride to Whip. Thank you, Amo,