This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. My name is Jessa. One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment matters.
There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do. I'm Ben, and I work at United Healthcare. I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters. It's more than just work.
We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. This is Danielle Fischel from Pod Meet's World. Every purchase is a financial decision, so it's worth asking.
What am I getting out of this? If you're using the Chase Freedom Flex card, you can maximize your cash back on things you need: groceries and gas, cash back. Dinner, cash back on that too. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. Sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex card.
Learn more at chase.com/getflex. This is a paid collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.
Offer subject. Terms apply. Indeed sponsored jobs get you quality candidates when you need them most. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results.
When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed dot com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is A job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong. It's Big News Saturday on Fox, and here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere—this is what makes it special.
Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game.
Now the sideline touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, including yours. Send them to ouramericanstories.com.
That's ouramericanstories.com. There's some of our favorites, and now we get the special treat of hearing from the number one car collector in the world. Miles Collier is the founder of the Revs Institute, and today Miles brings us the story of human mobility. Here is Miles: the history of personal mobility, starting with our legs and how we got out of Africa. All the way up to you know the present auto-centric world, and you know it's well known that the hypothesis that humankind arose in Africa appears to be the consensus at this particular point, and there was a diaspora.
Of prehumans and humans migrating out of there, and ultimately taking over the rest of the world, and then ultimately discovering the idea that you didn't have to do it all yourself. You could take advantage of the energy that was stored up in the bodies of domesticated animals, so you could start riding horses or. Using oxen to plow a field and so on, and ultimately, after six thousand years of being paired with the horse, mankind discovered the internal combustion engine. The the most surprising thing I discovered in my research was really the role of the horse in the late 19th, early 20th century. What people don't realize is we think of the industrial revolution and we think of the advent of steam and it's often described as the age of steam, as well as possibly the age of electricity because street trolley cars and electric light bulbs and things were all invented in the late nineteenth century.
But in fact, if you look at the data. That period was really the age of the horse. The horse was omnipresent. The horse was critical for the working out of modern industrialized society.
Now, why is that? Because if we want to think about steam and electricity as being wholesale forms of energy, there were no retail sources other than the horse.
So. A trainload of goods could arrive at the station of a city, and it came over hundreds of miles, and it was hundreds of tons of stuff. But then you had the problem of getting it from the depot to the doorstep, and that required individualized or retail transportation to do it. And there was no other retail transportation other than the horse.
So it's Counterintuitive, but as steam and electricity became more and more prevalent in the 1880s, 90s, 1900s, and 1910s, the population of horses living in the urban fabric increased concomitantly. Totally counterintuitive. The highest population of working horses in the United States was in 1910. There were 26 million working horses. I'm not talking about my friend Flicka, sticking his head over the fence that you give two cubes of sugar to.
I'm talking about horses that lived in high-rise stables in the middle of the urban fabric, and that were required to keep society going. And the impact. That horses had on society was overwhelming, and because of their presence, viewed in general by society as incredibly damaging, destructive, environmentally destructive, dangerous to life and limb, bad for human morality, and so on and so on. In other words, the horse was as vilified in 1910 as the automobile is today. That I found absolutely fascinating.
Now let's consider one of the most impactful aspects of the horse economy, and that was if you have 26 million working horses, and boy did they work! They were viewed by the public in those days as biological machines.
Okay, which is just we shudder to think of that, but they were not viewed as being sentient. They were not viewed as having feelings. They were literally biological machines, and each and every individual biological machine required five acres of fodder-producing agricultural land in order to be sustained for one year. Let's do the math. Twenty-six million times five is one hundred and thirty million acres under cultivation to just support the biological machine, the horse, working in cities.
What was the manifestation of that? Look at photographs of New England in the eighteen ninety s and nineteen hundreds, and you will see that the green hills of Vermont or the white hills of New Hampshire haven't got a tree on them anywhere. And if you go there today, you walk in the woods, and you can go way deep in the woods, and all of a sudden you'll come across a stone wall.
Well, those are the stone walls that bounded the fields that were necessary to support the horse.
So, one of the major impacts of the horse in the late 19th century was the denudation of forests throughout the world, or at least around the developed world. And with all of the yin and negative impacts that has, horses obviously defecated and urinated all over the streets, and indeed they also had the bad taste to die when they were improperly treated or came to the end of their, you know, just totally exhausted.
So it was a Living in the city with horses cheek by jowl meant that the infestation of rats, flies, sparrows, fleas, and all kinds of noxious vermin was ever present. And you're listening to Miles Collier with this fascinating explanation of life before the automobile and this idea. That horses were machines. They were, they were animals, but they were machines. And viewed that way, 26 million working horses.
Again, not those horses in the barn. Those pretty horses in the barn, working horses. When we come back, more of this remarkable storytelling and automotive history, and well, life before the automobile. Miles Collier and his storytelling continues here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family.
If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to ouramericanstories dot com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's ouramericanstories dot com. This is Hoda Kotb from Joy One and One with Hoda Kotb.
Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy. A ten-foot skeleton, sure. A full-size fog machine, why not? Three bags of candy that somehow become six bags of candy. It happens.
Which brings me to the Chase Freedom Flex card, the savvy decision that will earn you more cash back on the everyday purchases plus the extraordinary Halloween tricks and treats. With Freedom Flex, you earn even more treats on your Halloween and everyday needs. You get 5% cash back on popular rotating quarterly categories, 3% on dining and drugstores, and 1% on all other purchases. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. That's no tricks, all treats.
More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. So sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex card. Learn more at chase.com/getflex. This is a paid. Collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex cards issued by J.P.
Morgan Chase Bank, NA, member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply. All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there.
What's worse, being understaffed or being poorly staffed?
Well, that's a trick question because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, "This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs." You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're looking for, or go a different way and get no traction. Seriously, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 percent more likely to report a higher than non-sponsored jobs. It really is a no-brainer. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.
Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at Indeed. dot com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.
dot com slash podcast right now. Indeed. dot com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire?
This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox. And here we go.
It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff live. With an epic pregame, the crowd, the atmosphere—this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game.
Down the sideline, touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. Come on and get happy with Happy GLP at just ninety nine dollars a month. Happy GLP gives you one set price every month, no tiers, no tricks. Getting started with Happy GLP is fast, convenient, and happens virtually with a licensed provider.
Check it out for yourself at happyglp. dot com. That's happyglp. dot com. A happy price for a happier you.
Compound medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results. My very see website for details. My name is Jessa.
One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment matters. There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do. I'm Ben, and I work at United Healthcare.
I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters. It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me.
And we continue with our American stories, and with Revs Institute founder Miles Collier on the story of human mobility. Let's return to Miles on the age of the horse in the 19th and 20th centuries and its effects, including from their poop. You know, one of the problems back in the day was was tetanus, okay, which comes you know bacteria that would inhabit the gut of horses, and then there would be horseshoe nails that would come out, and people would get scratched or cut by something that was. Contaminated with tetanus bacteria, and the next thing you know, lockjaw, as it was called in the day, was was a real problem. But it was just an you know an urban sanitation problem, and the only thing that they had to clean up all those waste products was more horses pulling more wagons.
Now, of course, you know you hang bags behind the horse and all that kind of stuff, and it all helps a little bit. But if we think of it as the 19th and early 20th centuries, equivalent to carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen, there's nothing you can do about it. One early commentator remarked that I don't know where he got these numbers, but something to the effect that 60 or 70 percent of all the dust that you inhale on urban streets is dried horse manure. Oh, thank you very much. That sounds pretty fun.
So you know, as I say, that the automobile was seen as a major public health benefit. Right, tetanus was going to go away. You weren't going to be breathing dried horse manure. The car gave off virtually no noxious fumes whatsoever. It was silent.
It didn't start and startle and panic. It was just seen as a. In fact, it was seen as a major health benefit for the simple reason that you could take it and go out to the countryside, and breathe all that wonderful ozone out there, and you know enjoy the sunshine. And so it makes sense that the horse was not looked at as a great thing. And as I say, the parallel to the automobile I find rather fascinating.
And what we take from that is, if we are sufficiently dependent on a technology, that it becomes overwhelming. And there are 1.4 billion automobiles operating in the world today. When that technology becomes overwhelming, of course, it has negative influences. What the heck did you think was going to happen?
So yes, the automobile has all kinds of negatives. But interestingly, in 1900, it was seen as a savior. It was seen as reducing urban noise. No more iron tires, clip clop of iron horseshoes on cobblestone streets. No groaning of non-ball bearing axles on.
Wagons, no cracking of whips, no screaming of teamsters. All was going to be silent with this new abidable servant that never started at an umbrella or at a blowing sheet of newspaper. And and the problem was back in those days, horses were are their flight animals, and they will startle and they will run away. Can you imagine a horse dragging a carriage, running away in full-blown panic through a highly crowded urban? City during rush hour, how many people died?
Lots.
So the the horse was a major major problem, and the automobile was a major major savior. And it's ironic that roughly a hundred years later, we now see the car as a major major problem, and we're anticipating something is going to come along and save us, like autonomous vehicles. At which point one can only laugh merrily and say, "Really?
So, are we going to see autonomous vehicles? Yeah, probably. And the reason I say probably is is that they have a whole number of intransigent problems that." Even though you solve them ninety nine point I'm making this up ninety nine point three percent of the time, that's an insufficiently high level to ensure that they can be safely used by everybody. I mean, you need something like ninety nine point and then about you know five decimal places of nines to the right hand side before people are going to be comfortable with the accident rate of. Autonomous vehicles, and I'm not sure that the industry is going to get there anytime soon.
We have been listening now for, I would say, four or five years, six years, about how autonomous cars are just around the corner and how they're all working really great. The reality is that those strange sort of corner case issues where you have an event. Crescendo of an impossibly rare chained events that autonomy still can't deal with. It the amount of processing you need to just deal with a car traveling on an interstate is relatively that's a doable problem. The issue where all of a sudden we're in snow and rain and bad visibility and pedestrians and cars driven by maniacs and all these other kinds of things and in high density traffic it becomes way more complicated, and so it's easier just to finesse that with the flexibility of the human driver handling.
There's a big difference between. How people estimate risk. It's it's known that humankind are extraordinarily poor at estimating risk, and the issue here is that people estimate the risk that they are exposed to every day driving themselves in an automobile. You know, way way underestimating the risk that's inherent there. I'm taking nothing away from them as a driver.
When they are not in charge of what's going on, they overestimate the risk because guess what—you're not in control—and so, you know. Whether it's true or not, you have a higher threshold to get over, and that's why in my earlier comments I said, in order for something like autonomous cars to work, it has to be nine point ninety nine point nine nine nine, you know, lots of digits on the right hand side, so that in fact a dangerous accident almost never happens. Because the you know the the analogy for this is is air transportation, airline travel. Where the fatality rate is astronomically small. I mean, it's I don't remember what it, but it is incrementally tiny compared to automobiles.
And they're moving, you know, 475 million people, and you know, do the math. It's point oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. You know, one percent. It's like, or the other way to say it, you have a way higher chance of being struck dead by lightning walking out your door to the Uber that's taking you to the airport. But but people nevertheless, that they have a fear of flying.
Not too many people are scared to get into their, you know. Wallpaper, Woody Town and Country, and you know, drive down to the mall, right? And so that's just part of the charm of trying to deal with human beings.
Now, again, if you put them in certain controlled circumstances, I think they probably work okay. You just don't want to let them. Free in the wild because just so many complicated things happen.
Now I will immediately be proven wrong when somebody announces an absolutely perfectly working autonomous vehicle in six months from now. But I think it's a very difficult problem. Therefore, autonomy may be seen more where it has. Instantaneous economic benefit in a relatively constrained environment.
So one of those places would be long-haul trucking, right?
So that you have a conventionally driven truck that goes to the the entrance to the interstate in Fresno, California, and it's got a load of strawberries on board. And at that point, the driver gets off and hits the autonomous button, and the autonomous truck then runs from Fresno straight to New York City. And when it gets off the interstate in New Jersey at a big parking lot, another driver jumps in and he drives that thing down and through the city, and so on and so on. And then those kinds of things would result in an enormous economic benefit. Teamsters Union won't like it.
Look, I'm just blowing smoke here. And we've been listening to Miles Collier telling the story of human mobility, and folks were waiting and watching in 1910, and 20, and 30 as Henry Ford was bringing down the cost of cars and making them ubiquitous. Only very wealthy people had the access or means to to have a car, and Ford, well, he transformed the world. When we come back, more of Miles Collier telling the story of human mobility here. On our American story.
This is Hoda Kotb from Joy One Hundred and One with Hoda Kotb. Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy. A ten-foot skeleton, sure. A full-size fog machine, why not? Three bags of candy that somehow become six bags of candy.
It happens. Which brings me to the chase freedom. Flex card, the savvy decision that will earn you more cash back on the everyday purchases, plus the extraordinary Halloween tricks and treats. With Freedom Flex, you earn even more treats on your Halloween and everyday needs. You get five percent cash back on popular rotating quarterly categories, three percent on dining and drug stores, and one percent on all other purchases.
More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. That's no tricks, all treats. More ways. To earn more ways to get rewarded, so sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex Card. Learn more at chase.com/getflex.
This is a paid collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex Cards issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, NA, member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply.
The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Start Saturday strong. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox. And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff, live with an epic pregame.
The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game.
Down the sideline, touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. Come on and get happy with Happy GLP at just ninety nine dollars a month. Happy GLP gives you one set price every month, no tiers, no tricks. Getting started with Happy GLP is fast, convenient, and happens virtually with a licensed provider.
Check it out for yourself at happyglp dot com. That's happyglp dot com. A happy price for a happier you. Compound medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider.
Individual results. May vary. See website for details. My name is Jessa. One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters.
Every moment matters. There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do. I'm Ben, and I work at United Healthcare. I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters.
It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field.
I'm Nicole Auerbach, and I'm Joshua Perry. We're so excited to be here to chat about our favorite thing in the entire world: college football. From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the stories shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football. Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered. Watch rushing the field on NBC Sports now.
And we continue with our American stories, and with Revs Institute founder Miles Collier. On the story of human mobility, let's return to Miles. The thing we do when we try and prognosticate technology is we have a tendency both to overestimate and underestimate simultaneously. And what do I mean by that?
Well, if we go back to sort of the Popular Mechanics of the nineteen fifties. It was a magazine at the time for sort of home shop and technology of the future kind of thing. There was an article every other issue about flying cars. Simultaneously, if we remember the Sunday papers, we had Dick Tracy with his wrist radio. And we now move to the real life.
2021 is no one's seen a flying car yet, and we don't anticipate any in the near future. And the wrist radio is such a ridiculously primitive and silly trivial thing compared to what our so-called wrist radios, to wit, the iPad can do today.
So we've. Massively overestimated the high-profile, flashy technology of flying cars, and massively underestimated the mundane technology of something like the phone. And indeed, an early commentator in the turn of the century, the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Comments on the telephone and the automobile by saying something like the automobile has had more immediate influence on our society, but I expect that over time the telephone will prove to be the greater change agent. That was written in like 1902 or 1903.
Well, that was took him a hundred years to be right, but wow, he's right now. I find that an absolutely amazing comment. It'll be interesting to see what does happen, but. The thing about prognosticating the future, especially in things like this, is you can be right on connecting all the intellectual dots and still be wildly wrong. And what do I mean by that?
So there's a quotation in one of the early car magazines from 1902 that talks about the coming nirvana with the automobile and how it's going to reduce urban congestion. And the urban congestion during the time of the horse was diabolical.
So the urban congestion would be reduced because, as the writer says, there would be the space taken up by the horse, and we would therefore immediately drop our density by fifty percent, and there would be freer motion.
Well, how did that work out? And that's the argument that the autonomous car folks. Are basically making at this point is now. Do you realize that your automobile sits for ninety four percent of its time doing nothing, taking up space? With the autonomous car in the shared economy, we can reduce the car population from down to twenty percent of what it is today, or whatever the number is.
And that's exactly as true as the idea that with the advent of the automobile over the horse, that traffic. Population would drop by fifty percent? No, because people will come up with new ways to use the artifact, new ways that we no one's thought about right now. For example, if you no longer have to worry about sitting in a traffic jam, then why not send your autonomous vehicle out to go pick up the three R Martinizing at the dry cleaner? And if it takes six and a half hours in traffic to do it, who cares?
Ain't you any skin off your nose?
So, under that rubric, I would say that you haven't seen traffic and problems until we get autonomous vehicles going. I mean, who knows? That's just as valid a view of the future as the one that it's all going to be nirvana. The one thing I can promise you, it's probably not going to be nirvana, nor will it be you know the kind of hard dystopian thing that I've just described. It'll be, but it'll be surprising, always.
That's always the future of the new transcendent and radical technology. You know the the iPhone and the iPad. I mean these things are are machines of the devil. But when they first came out, is all we heard about is oh, it's going to be so wonderful. You have a major library at your fingertips.
Yeah, really. And most people are, God only knows what the hell they're watching on the thing or spending their time doing and texting back and forth and all this crazy, crazy stuff.
So the issue is is always that powerful technologies. Not only do they shine bright lights that improve our living standards and our societies and making us more humane and so on and so on, but they also bright lights cast dark shadows. You can't have one without the other, and the dark shadows are the nature of the thing. And we're all now familiar with all the negativity of of the digital age and and the Kind of things that are going on.
So the beauty of the automobile is it's basically done its thing in its full impact. And we have the ability to look at it, and if we are have the wit to be at all self aware, we can use what we've learned from the automobile and say, now what's that going to do to the digital age? How can the digital age ultimately be managed so that we don't end up with replicating what the automobile has done? What can we do about managing properly genetic engineering or any a number of other powerful Technologies that are coming along because we have a paradigm already, which is the automobile, sort of the first high technology, industrial, post-industrial artifact to radically change our world. Because no matter whether you love the car, don't love the car, whether you got a driver's license or don't have a driver's license, or whether you use a car a lot or you never use a car, we are live in an auto-centric society.
And our society has been completely created around the idea of personal mobility in the form of the automobile, and it's not changing any time soon. Because essentially, if we think back to it, the great contest between forms of mobility took place in around 1900 to 1910.
So you had electric street railways everywhere, which is you know. Today's modern concept of urban light rail—we all love it. You know, there has been sort of no individuals of a certain bent that just don't get all frothy at the mouth and excited about wow. Let's have more urban light rail.
Well, that war was fought by the automobile and urban light rail around 1910, and the car won handily. It was a total TKO in the third round, right? Urban Light Rail's mouthpiece got knocked. I mean, it was all over. Oh, because nobody wants to stand around and catch the eight fifteen.
Are you kidding me? You know, in the rain, what the hell? And how do I get to the station anyway? Gimmie crickets. You know, hell with that.
I'm jumping in the old flivver and driving to work. Who would would you do it any other way? I mean, the only place where mass transit even has a chance is in pre-automotive high-density cities. Manhattan, you know Boston, you know places like that, Hong Kong. But other than that, you know, if people vote with their accelerator foot, you give them a chance that to handle their personal mobility with a car over something else, they'll do it because you know the car's great strength was you had complete autonomy over who you rode with, where you went, when you went, how fast you went.
You know.
Sounds to me like it's the trifecta. And you're listening to Miles Collier give an explanation of well, just about everything related to technology, to risk taking, and of course, always bringing it right back to this auto-centric world we live in, and the billion-plus vehicles, automobiles. They're around the world, and Americans and people around the world have voted with their accelerator pedal. It's so true, and so many Americans, most of you listening, own a car, love your car, and in the end, rely on your car. As Miles so ably described, the prognosticators are almost always wrong, and nobody knows the future, and it's very hard to predict.
When we return, more of this remarkable storytelling. A look at the history of mobility and so much more, with a resident philosopher on this subject. Almost when we come back, more with Miles Collier here on our American stories. This is Hoda Kotb from Joy One Hundred and One with Hoda Kotb. Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy.
A ten-foot skeleton, sure. A full-size fog machine, why not? Three bags of candy that somehow become six bags of candy. It happens. Which brings me to the Chase Freedom Flex Card, the savvy decision that will earn you more cash back on the.
Everyday purchases plus the extraordinary Halloween tricks and treats. With Freedom Flex, you earn even more treats on your Halloween and everyday needs. You get 5% cash back on popular rotating quarterly categories, 3% on dining and drugstores, and 1% on all other purchases. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. That's no tricks, all treats.
More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. So sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex card. Learn more at chase dot com slash getflex. This is a paid collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA, member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.
Offer subject to change. Terms apply. The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Start Saturday strong. It's Big News Saturday on Fox, and here we go.
It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere—this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game.
Down the sideline, touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. Come on and get happy with Happy GLP at just ninety nine dollars a month. Happy GLP gives you one set price every month, no tiers, no tricks. Getting started with Happy GLP is fast, convenient, and happens virtually with a licensed provider.
Check it out for yourself at happyglp dot com. That's happyglp dot com. A happy price for a happier you. Compound medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider.
Individual results. May vary. See website for details. Hi, I'm Steph, and I work at United Healthcare. When I think about United Healthcare's members, I think of my own family.
My niece was diagnosed with an ultra-rare genetic disorder. I know how hard it is for families. At United Healthcare, we can make it easier. I'm Brian. I care because I know what it's like to not speak the language.
It's not easy. Health insurance is complicated. I would say our job is to make everything easy for our UHC members. I work for United Healthcare. I'm committed to care.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field. I'm Nicole Auerbach, and I'm Joshua Perry. We're so excited to be here to chat about our favorite thing in the entire world: college football. From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the stories shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football. Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered.
Watch rushing the field on NBC Sports now. And we continue with our American stories, and with Revs Institute founder Miles Collier on the story of human mobility. He shared the story of the horse, the automobile, autonomous cars, and now finally the missing link among all of them. Let's return to Miles. The big transition between the horse and the automobile, and the big enabling technology, was in fact the bicycle.
Bicycle is completely underrated with respect to its influence on modernity. The idea of living in suburbia started way before even the bicycle. It started really with the horse tram. A horse tram is like a trolley car, only it's pulled by a horse as opposed to having electric engines. But the idea was that for a couple of pennies, you could rattle in on the horse tram from living further out in the country and not being stuck in a tenement in the urban fabric.
And then by you know one thousand, eight hundred and eighty or so, the world changed from horse trams to electric trams. But it was trams and then the bicycle that made living in suburbia a very practical thing. People always wanted to live in suburbia. We we see that the earliest development of cities is that if you could, you moved out to the countryside. And the bicycle comes along, and unlike the look, we got to understand.
Even though the world was heavily dependent upon the horse in the eighteen eighty s, eighteen ninety s, and so on, the horse was only used as private transportation by elite individuals, by economically and socially elites, because they could afford the things. They were very, very expensive. The thing about a horse, unlike a bicycle or an automobile, is even when he's not working, he's got to eat, he's got to drink, he's got to poop, he's got to do all of these kinds of things that you have to manage.
So it took a great deal of human work to produce a great deal of horsework, and that was how it was. The bicycle came along, and it afforded a couple of things. The first thing was that the idea of privacy. Is a modern concept. Privacy was not something that anybody thought about in 1880 or 1890 because the way you traveled around is you were either walking on crowded sidewalks or you were in a a trolley car cheek by jowl with lots of other people.
If you look at photographs of that period, it's a teeming mass of humanity. And you lived in dense facilities and so on. Unless again, you were in the upper economic strata, but if you were in walk-up tenements and things, there was no privacy anywhere. Along comes the bicycle. Where it's powered by the individual, and you can get on that thing and take it for a ride, and ride in the park by yourself, or go out in the countryside.
And remember, in those days, the country was a whole lot closer to the city than it is today. And recreate, or enjoy yourself, or travel to work by yourself without being cheap. As I say, snogged up against various sort of disreputable examples of humanity. And by giving you both privacy and then the ability to travel on your own, giving you some mobile agency, you could do your own thing, go where you wanted. It changed the relationship between the sexes because the safety bicycle, when it first came out, before that, the bicycle consisted of what we call the ordinary, the high wheeler.
That could really only be ridden by daring young men because. It was easy to fall off on a sixty-inch wheel. Tripped to the ground was painful and resulted in broken bones and things like that. And in those days, it was immodest for women to do that.
So daring young women couldn't ride high wheelers. But when the safety bicycle came out, which looks like a modern bicycle, front wheel, rear wheel, exactly the same, uses chain drive and it uses stepped gearing, and that's what makes the safety bicycle work. And pneumatic tires. All of a sudden, the bicycle was available to both sexes, and it gave you the ability to. Control your own movement.
You were faster than a horse was. You could go all kinds of places. That's where impetus for the increasing number of parks and roads through parks came as from the bicycle, and you all of a sudden had a social life that was not conducted under the nose of various self-appointed busy bodies and so on and so on.
So the bicycle was a an enormous. Presager of what the automotive auto-centric world was going to be like, and the bicycle in fact became a craze in the 1890s. From about 1890 to about 1895 or six, the bicycle was the hottest thing going, and experienced things like annual model changes, installment buying. Used bicycle trade-ins, and we've heard all this stuff before.
So, in fact, in the 1890s, you kept up with the Joneses with your bicycle, not with your car. And something also people don't realize: so the bicycle did a great deal for the autonomy, agency, and suffrage of women.
Okay, all of a sudden they could do their own thing; they could go out with their friends. And it enabled people in the countryside to get into the city easily without having to. If you didn't live on a mainline trolley track, you kind of out of luck.
Well, the bicycle allowed you to live off the mainline, and it allowed suburbia to fill in in between the routes of the trolleys. And so, all of a sudden, country people come and enjoy the culture of the city. City people go out and enjoy the recreation of the country, and so on. It started to really mix things up and reduce the amount of urban isolationism that existed, and so on. More importantly, technologically, the inventions of aspects of the bicycle were absolutely a necessary prerequisite to the ability to produce the car.
So. Electric welded tube frames, just developed for the bicycle, absolutely mandatory for the automobile. Precision ground ball bearings, required by the bicycle, and mandatory for the automobile. Differentials, which allows two wheels on the same axle to rotate at different speeds as you go around the corner under power. Mandatory for the automobile, developed for the tricycle, all part of the bicycle evolution of things.
The pneumatic tire, originally developed in the eighteen forty s for. Wagons, horse-drawn wagons and things, and was diabolically expensive, and as a result, died out.
So the tire, the pneumatic tire, was actually invented twice: once in 1840 and once in about 1880 by what is named James Dunlop, the Irish veterinarian, and was originally the pneumatic tire was used on the bicycle. And it made the safety bicycle the equal of the high wheeler because without the pneumatic tire, the safety bicycle, because it was so relatively stiff compared to a high wheeler, gave a very very unpleasant ride. But the minute The pneumatic tire was put on the safety bicycle. All those problems went away, and since it didn't solve the other problems of change gears and safety and so on and so on, the bicycle took off. And from the bicycle, then the pneumatic tire went to the automobile and became a very important aspect of the automobile.
So the bicycle is, in fact, probably more important, almost. Than the internal combustion engine and the development of the automobile, because all the prerequisite technology was found in the bicycle. But by the end of the 19th century, the bloom was off the rose because of this new, much more charismatic, much more fascinating device: the automobile, which had one great feature, which is, you didn't have to propel it yourself. And that was a totally charming aspect of the thing, and the early bicycle manufacturers recognized a good thing when they saw it, and many of them immediately jumped from being bicycle manufacturers to being car manufacturers.
So the Pope Bicycle became the Pope Hartford Automobile. The Rover in England was originally a bicycle and became an automobile, and so on. Because you know those guys were the technologists of the day. And they immediately saw that here was something much better coming along, and they switched allegiances overnight. We live today and have lived probably since around World War One in an auto-centric environment.
The automobile population in Los Angeles, for instance, was over a million cars in the nineteen twenties. I have a photo, an illustration in my book, taken on top of a.
Some high ground overlooking the beach at Malibu. This picture is probably shot in the middle nineteen twenties. As far as you can see, there are cars parked side by side along the beach. I mean, there have to be you know five thousand cars in this photograph, and this is nineteen twenty.
So, the point about the automobile is it was utterly seductive. Yeah, more. It was the you know the bicycle on steroids. It just it scratched a number of human itches that had existed for four, five, six thousand years, but it did it in brand new ways. And what terrific storytelling!
And a special thanks to Alex. A terrific job, as always. And a special thanks to Miles Collier. For the storytelling, and by the way, to learn more about the Revs Institute and to visit it in person or virtually, go to revsinstitute dot org. That's revs r e v s institute dot org.
An untold story about human mobility here on our American story. The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox, and here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff, live with an epic pregame.
The crowd, the atmosphere—this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game.
Down the sideline, touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. Come on and get happy with Happy GLP. Just ninety nine dollars a month. Happy GLP gives you one set prices every month.
No tears, no tricks. Getting started with Happy GLP is fast, convenient, and happens virtually with a licensed provider. Check it out for yourself at Happy GLP. dot com. Again, that's Happy GLP.
dot com. A happy price for a happier you. Compounded medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required to determine by a licensed provider. Individuals.
Results may vary. See website for details. If you remember listening to this, and this, and this, then listen to this. Your immune system weakens as you age, putting you at higher risk for flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, and COVID. Ask your doctor about getting your recommended vaccines and how they can help protect you from getting really sick.
You can also check your eligibility and book at Vaxassist.com. Pfizer outdo yesterday. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field. I'm Nicole Hourbach, and I'm Joshua Perry. We're so excited to be here to chat about our favorite thing in the entire world: college football.
From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the stories shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football. Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered. Watch rushing the field on NBC Sports now. Some people use ChatGPT to answer questions. Others use it to get real work done.
With ChatGPT work, you bring the goal, plus real inputs like briefs, notes, files, feedback, data, and project plans. It can help turn them into an analysis, tracker, deck outline, prototype, or workflow you can review and keep shaping. You stay in control, giving direction and choosing the final output. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at.
ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans.
