Here's an idea.
Let's go on a road trip.
So Molly and I are on vacation.
We're taking a road trip.
We're gonna go to Nashville, and we're
stopping in Louisville along the way
and then coming back through Philly.
And I thought that this would be a really good excuse
to not only get out from the record corner-- there's, uh,
there's not a lot around here.
Really out from the record corner,
but to also talk about the road trip as an idea.
The first known road trip happened in Germany
when Bertha Benz-- the wife of Karl Benz,
the founder of Benz Moterwagen-- took her husband's
then-experimental automobile for a 66-mile drive
in a suspected publicity stunt.
But since then, I think it's fair to say that the road
trip has developed strong associations with America
and American culture, which is not
to say that people in other countries
don't go on road trips or that road trips are uniquely
American, only that for lots of people
the association between America and road trips is a strong one.
And I want to talk about that for a little while
because I think it also is related
to the difference between going on a road trip
and just driving for a while.
(SINGING) Getting there is half the fun.
Come share it with me.
There are easy answers as to why that might be.
America is big.
Some might say, too big.
Gas prices are relatively low.
The terrain is amenable to car travel, but there's more to it
than that, both historically and metaphysically.
In our SAT episode, we talked about the idea
that education would make the country a better place,
and this idea cropped up when proud Americans were confronted
with the eventuality that progress in America
would stop because for 200 years progress had been synonymous
with the Western Frontier.
And by the mid 20th century, the West Coast
was definitely a thing.
For a while, though, progress and mobility
were peas in a pod, and mobility has always
been a subtext of America's favorite societal bulwark--
freedom.
SINGER: Freedom isn't free.
It's upon a striking out, forging ahead,
hitting the trail that our popular historical narrative is
built, and to a certain degree, that
nebulous concept of the American Dream, which I'm pretty sure
involves hamburgers.
Great, thank you so much.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is
that America's idea of its own awesomeness
is very much built on metaphors having to do with movement.
Relatedly, I might theorize that American exceptionalism
and the emphasis that we place on the capability
of the individual are very much tied up
in our love of the automobile.
Of course, it hasn't always been that way.
There were no Camaros at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
And as far as I know, Babe was not
the nickname Paul Bunyan gave to his bright, blue Buick.
The automobile and American citizens
have carpooled since probably about the 1950s, when
President Ike Eisenhower, inspired
by the awesome system of roads he saw in Germany,
authorized the construction of a country-wide highway system
for moving troops and cargo and supplies around the country.
And I mean, yeah, sure, great, but seeing military vehicles
on a highway remains a relatively rare sight.
Far and away, Eisenhower's highway system,
which wasn't completed until the '80s,
had its greatest impact on civilians.
At the end of World War II when rationing ended,
car ownership skyrocketed, and nearly one in six Americans
worked in the automotive industry.
Cars and the roads that made them useful
became nearly synonymous with American culture.
The rise in car culture coincided
with the growth of the middle class, suburbia, fast food,
American consumerism-- the most recognizable byproduct
of which being the shopping mall--
cross-country distribution.
To say that modern America was built both by and for the car
would not to be an insane overstatement.
This also almost definitely gave rise to that most popular
of common quips, you know, the best way
to see America is in a car.
(SINGING): Riding along in my automobile.
And as resistant as I normally am
to what is frequently misnamed, common knowledge,
I think I agree, with requisite self consciousness
about the fact that, yes, the best
way to see America does involve a seat and a widescreen viewing
experience.
The reason that I agree is that beyond freedom
and individualism, which are absent for obvious reasons
on planes, trains, and buses, when you're in a car
or on a motorcycle, there's this kind of intimacy
with your surroundings, that even when
you're on the highway, to a certain degree
you're taken through places and not around them.
There's always a suggestion that you might stop.
You can stop.
You may as well stop, maybe not for long, or if you're
in an RV, maybe indefinitely.
Either way, one is constantly in transition but also
somehow present, always passing through,
a phrase which is itself a cliche found
in countless renderings of America's frontier spirit.
Are you from around here?
Nope, just passing through, a phrase
which means both itself and its opposite.
When someone stops on a road trip,
they're also always just passing through.
No, just riding through.
This is what I think makes a drive a road
trip because a road trip is really kind of a paradox
not unlike Sorites.
Which grain of sand turns a pile into a heap?
Which mile marker turns a drive into a road trip?
In reality, it's neither a single grain nor a single mile
that makes either, but still some boundary
needs to be crossed.
We could agree that it becomes a road trip at the first 500
miles, the second time you refill your gas
tank, the third on-the-road meal, the first roadside
attraction.
But for my mileage, I think it becomes a road trip
if there are places you are just passing through.
Passing through does have its own purposefully unclear
boundary.
But maybe by looking at the stories that portray it,
we can develop a sense of it.
Things like "Easy Rider," "Thelma and Louise,"
"On the Road," "Grapes of Wrath,"
"Fear and Loathing," "Rain Man," even
"Star Trek" or "Battlestar Galactica"
could be considered galactic road movies, with attitudes
smacking of the American frontier spirit or early
to mid century nomadic struggle, respectively,
but most importantly, some sense of passing through
and in the process probably learning
something about the world and your surroundings and maybe
even yourself, which is cheesy.
I know, but it's true.
Bertha Benz on that first road trip, she passed through.
She passed through several towns in the German countryside
to refuel, to have repairs done.
So passing through, like the road trip,
is of course not uniquely American, but maybe
characteristically American, at the very least something
enabled if not encouraged by American infrastructure.
Now, if you'll excuse me, while passing
through Somerset, Pennsylvania, we
decided to stop for some hamburgers.
So in the meantime, while we are doing our roadside business,
what do you guys think?
Road trip, defined by passing through,
in any way characteristically American?
And if so, how?
Let me know in the comments.
Comment responses from the roat--
let's see what you guys had to say about Thor and names.
Don't worry.
The car is parked.
So first thing's first, I just want
to say a huge thank you to my girlfriend,
Molly, who helped shoot the Road Trip episode that you just
watched.
I didn't really do anything other than talk
during the entirety of the filming.
She dealt with all of the camera and script stuff
and making sure that I was making sense.
And it would not have been possible without her
in the passenger seat, so just I just
want to say thank you so much to Molly.
She's such a good sport.
And just a couple more news items before we
get on to comments.
I'm going to be at the Phoenix Comic Con upcoming
at the end of this month.
We're going to be doing a panel and an office hours.
I'm going to be at VidCon this year, again,
and I'm going to be giving one of the talks
at Camp Imgur, which I'm super excited about.
So information on the when and where and what of all of those
things in the doobly do.
If you're going to be there, come say hi.
Let's be friends.
OK, now on to comments.
Codydog03170 makes the very good point
that Thor is not now a woman.
A woman is now Thor.
Very good point, thank you for correcting me.
ToastNinja talks about how their name, Hadrian, is a relatively
rare one, and that they would be very excited to meet someone
with that name, but then also goes on
to talk about how they were surprised the Doctor didn't
come up in this conversation.
And wouldn't you know it, on the print outs
that I have of the research for this episode
I have scrawled so many notes about the Doctor, saying, like,
oh, maybe Thor is more like the Doctor
with like a taxonomy of all the different characters
that you could say are related.
But, yes, I just want to say I totally
agree that the doctor is very, very
much a part of this conversation and I
think becomes even more interesting when you start
talking about the real names of the actors that have portrayed
the Doctor over time and how their names relate
to the grander idea and title or whatever
you want to call it of doctor.
McDaioh-- whose name I'm probably butchering,
so I apologize-- talks about how since Thor
has no alternate identity it becomes more difficult to say
that another character becomes Thor than is the case with most
other superheroes since he just is Thor
and that this is one of the things
that the current arc has narratively
had a hard time justifying and that it
might have been just more interesting
or worked better if it was done with magic,
if Thor just magically turned into a woman for some reason.
And I think that this is one of the criticisms of the new Thor
that I can appreciate.
I don't necessarily agree with it,
but I can see where it comes from.
And it's a really great point.
I think it maybe just comes down to taste.
But, yeah, great point, and thank you,
McDaioh, for running this.
Daniel Rea asks whether or not there
is anger about the new Thor, because Thor is portrayed
as unworthy and makes the point that a lot of times when there
is a character transition it's because of a death
and not necessarily because that character is
no longer able or worthy to be themselves.
And I don't actually know enough about the full kind of Marvel
or other universe continuity and mythology
to say for sure that this is a unique thing.
But I would be curious to know if anybody out there has
something to throw at this, this idea
that it's rare for a character to become
unworthy of themselves or their own powers.
Muffin Jr., I have had this experience several times over.
I have a good friend whose name is James.
But I call him Jim because that's how I met him,
and I am having such a hard time transitioning.
It's because to me he is Jim, through and through.
Jim, if you're watching this, I'm very-- I'm so sorry.
I totally understand why you want to do it.
I'm just bad at it.
What I'm saying is that I'm a bad friend, and I'm sorry.
I owe you a scotch.
DJ5un and OfficiallyErling talk a little bit
around this idea of having a kind of pride
in having a unique name and wondering
sort of why you feel a certain way towards hearing
about someone else that has your name that's unique.
And this is something that I actually
think a lot of people experience,
even if they don't have unique names.
My first name is not unique, but my last name is rather unique.
There are other Mike Rugnetta's.
Like I said in the episode, there's a bunch.
But someone, a couple years ago when
I was starting to make YouTube videos with Know
Your Meme, they were like, hey, you
should change your name because your last name is weird.
It's hard to spell.
It sounds bad.
And it's going to be a stumbling block
for you getting famous, which is a whole other, like, whatever.
Who cares?
I'm not interested in being famous.
But I took great insult to that.
I was just aghast that they would recommend that I change
my name because it sounded bad.
And I never did because that's just-- that's just not me.
I am Mike Rugnetta, me and five other guys.
Missuscake writes a really awesome comment
that gets into some of the history of the continuity
and talks about Thor having his name stripped
of him in the past, which is stuff that I didn't know about,
so links to this comment and all of the others in the doobly do.
JakEnglish, about a 7 and 1/2 minute YouTube video,
it turns out.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these motorists.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit,
links in the doobly doo.
And the tweet of the week comes from Matt Blind
who points us towards Type Drummer, which is a thing that
is surprisingly fun.
I hope you're on a lunch break right now
or you just have some free minutes.
Clear your schedule for the rest of the afternoon
or at the very least the next 20 minutes.