Episode 144: Super Bowl Roundup with Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan
Doug Gordon: Hey, Sarah.
Sarah Goodyear: Hey, Doug.
Doug: So it’s February.
Sarah: It is. It can be a difficult month.
Doug: We are experiencing some weather.
Sarah: There’s always weather in February.
Doug: And I have been wearing my Rover rain cape because the best part about it is when the weather stinks and it’s cold, you just put it over whatever you’re wearing. So it’s great. Like, I don’t have to have a separate big snow outfit, like some kid going out to go sledding or something. I just put this on over.
Sarah: That’s right. And especially when it’s a wintry mix, when it’s changing back and forth from sleet to snow to freezing rain and back again, Cleverhood has you covered. And yes, underneath, you can have your puffer. You can have whatever you need to stay warm and cozy.
Doug: They’re very versatile jackets. We are so appreciative of Cleverhood and all they do for The War on Cars. They don’t just keep us dry, they don’t just keep us visible when we’re out on our bikes, but they support us and they support so many great organizations. We’re so grateful for their support.
Sarah: It’s like a nice cozy hug to put on the Cleverhood and to know that they are out there just hugging the whole world.
Doug: That’s lovely! Well, speaking of hugs and love, you can get 15 percent off everything in the Cleverhood store now through the end of February if you use the code DESIGNEDWITHLOVE at Cleverhood.com/WarOnCars.
Sarah: Cleverhood. It’s like a big warm hug.
Doug: Again, that’s Cleverhood.com/WarOnCars, DESIGNEDWITHLOVE.
Doug: This is The War on Cars. I am Doug Gordon. With me as always is my co-host, Sarah Goodyear.
Sarah: Hey there.
Doug: So welcome to the CXLIV episode of the podcast, or the CXLIV-est episode of the podcast. I don’t know how you do that.
Sarah: One of those. Yes. This is our annual Super Bowl roundup, where we take a look at the car ads and talk about what it all means for our culture, our climate, our politics, you name it. The American Project.
Doug: Yeah. I will say celebrating violent American aggression cuts a little differently right now than it used to.
Sarah: Yeah, it used to be—it used to be more fun.
Doug: It used to be more fun to be really violent and celebrate people crashing into each other, for sure.
Sarah: Anyway, we’ll get there.
Doug: Yeah. We have two great guests joining us. But first …
Sarah: We are on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod, and we are a completely independently produced podcast. It is only your support that helps us keep going and growing. So please sign up, and you’ll get access to ad-free versions of regular episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, early invites to live shows, merch discounts, much, much more. Plus, we will send you stickers and a handwritten thank-you note. And if you can read cursive, you’ll be able to read my notes to you.
Doug: I can read cursive.
Sarah: [laughs] Okay.
Doug: My kids cannot. Also, we had a really awesome time at our recent live show with CityNerd at Hunter College, and we are gonna be releasing that as a bonus episode soon. Our next live show will be on Thursday, April 24 at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. And that’s presented by Our Streets. We will put a link to get tickets in the show notes. I hear tickets are going fast, so get those now.
Sarah: And finally, we would like to acknowledge the passing of one of the greats in our field: Professor Donald Shoup, the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, and a man who really changed the minds and perspective of a lot of people out there with his work. Really great man, Donald Shoup. We re-released our interview with him. You can find that in our feed.
Doug: Honestly, one of my favorite episodes I’ve ever done. I think I said in the intro to that one that when I interviewed him, I just had a smile on my face the entire time. He was so witty and just a great conversational partner. Just so smart, and like you said, has had a huge impact on so many people in the way that we all think about cities. So he will be missed, but his impact will be felt for generations to come.
Doug: Okay, that is it for the—I guess the Cleverhood pregame show.
Sarah: [laughs] Right.
Doug: Right? Now it is kickoff time. Here to discuss Super Bowl LIX are two of the smartest and funniest people I know on or off the internet. We are joined by Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan. If you don’t know them—I hope you do—they host together the podcast The Climate Denier’s Playbook, where they take on pervasive climate myths and misinformation that are standing in the way of meaningful progress in the climate crisis. You might also know Rollie as the creator and host of the amazing YouTube channel and series Climate Town. It’s really one of my favorite watches. Somehow also, you are a big billiards player. That’s what I hear.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, we have a pool table in the office.
Doug: Oh, wow! We do not have an office, so no pool table.
Nicole Conlan: Are we allowed to talk?
Doug: You can talk whenever you want.
Nicole Conlan: During the whole intro I was like, “I don’t know how quiet I’m supposed to be.”
Doug: Well, now I guess I should say who you are. We are also joined by Nicole Conlan. Nicole writes for The Daily Show. She used to write for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Nominated for an Emmy and Peabody Award. You won the Peabody Award.
Nicole Conlan: I won the Peabody. I’m a four-time Emmy loser.
Doug: Oh, okay.
Sarah: No, no, no.
Doug: But that’s more …
Sarah: Don’t say that.
Doug: That’s more Emmy losses than I have.
Nicole Conlan: Okay.
Doug: So that’s pretty—that’s pretty good.
Rollie Williams: I gotta say, Nicole, technically you’re like a thousand-plus time Emmy loser because you’ve never won any of the Emmys.
Nicole Conlan: That’s true.
Doug: Aren’t we all then?
Rollie Williams: Yeah, we are all.
Doug: Yeah.
Rollie Williams: We have all lost the exact same amount of Emmys.
Nicole Conlan: That’s true.
Doug: And Nicole, you are also a writer for Not Just Bikes.
Nicole Conlan: I am.
Doug: We are big fans of Jason. We’ve had Jason on the show.
Nicole Conlan: Yes. I’m also a big fan of Jason.
Rollie Williams: Who? Just joking. Jason, we love you.
Doug: So let’s get to it. Rollie and Nicole, welcome. We’re really glad to have you here on The War on Cars.
Nicole Conlan: I’m excited to be here. Frankly, I’m excited to be inside out of the cold.
Rollie Williams: I’m just pleased as punch to be in your cool podcasting studio.
Sarah: Yeah, this is a cool studio. For those of you who have never seen it, our engineer, Josh Wilcox, has created a sort of—a very womb-like environment as I think of it.
Rollie Williams: It is wetter than I thought it was gonna be.
Doug: [laughs]
Sarah: No, but it’s like we’re inside a parking garage, but we’re upstairs from a parking garage. And there’s this room, even though there’s a parking garage downstairs, where we’re completely safe and happy when we come in here. So thank you, Josh.
Nicole Conlan: Our podcast studio is two—you know those tri-fold posters you get for a science fair?
Doug: Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: We have two of those surrounding us with, like, old blankets draped over them. So this is a big step up.
Rollie Williams: We put a big blanket on a table that used to be owned by a butcher shop, and we podcast into some tri-folds. And that’s our setup.
Doug: All right. Well, we’re here to talk about the Super Bowl. Did you all watch?
Nicole Conlan: Yes, I did.
Rollie Williams: Yes.
Sarah: Yes, I did. I did the assignment. I understood the assignment. [laughs]
Doug: But you would watch anyway because your house is a football house.
Sarah: Yes, my house is a football house. My wife is from the state of Mississippi, and it’s required if you are from the state of Mississippi to understand and know a lot about football, and actually to even enjoy it. So I’ve—over the past couple of decades, I’ve been making that adjustment for myself of, like, you know, just showing my love and support for her by also understanding football better and trying to care about it. But I understand it, but I have failed to care about it.
Nicole Conlan: That’s my relationship with my fiancé, except instead of football, it’s Dungeons and Dragons.
Sarah: [laughs] Okay.
Rollie Williams: That’s nice. You guys are very supportive of your partners.
Doug: Rollie, did you watch?
Rollie Williams: I watched. Yeah, I was particularly tickled that the Roman numerals are LIX. I don’t know. That was fun for me. When I was growing up, the Broncos won back to back Super Bowls, and so I think it just hit me at my stage of gestation where I was like, “Oh, football is important. Super Bowl is important.” Superball. But I ultimately don’t give one—one red shit about football.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. I mean, it was a blowout. It was a pretty rough game for Kansas City.
Nicole Conlan: We love to see it. As you know, famously a lifelong Eagles fan, I’ve always known about them and followed them extensively. I was thrilled to see them again.
Rollie Williams: And once again, what city are the Eagles in?
Nicole Conlan: Couldn’t tell you.
Rollie Williams: Okay.
Doug: [laughs]
Nicole Conlan: No, one fun thing about the game last night is like, I want to be a hundred percent clear that rooting for the Eagles is not praxis.
Sarah: Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: But it really did seem like there was a clear villain of the piece. And so it was fun to have a villain to root against, who in this case are the racism team? And …
Doug: Especially because Trump picked them to win. He picked Kansas City to win.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah, it’s—there’s tons of reasons why.
Rollie Williams: Do you guys remember last year where it was like, “Oh yeah, Biden rigged it so that the Chiefs would win because Taylor Swift endorsed Biden.”
Nicole Conlan: Yeah, I forgot about that.
Rollie Williams: And it’s like, well, everyone forgot about it, and now Trump picked them to win. And it’s like, “Oh, damn it! It’s the liberals again!”
Nicole Conlan: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: Like, it’s really amazing how the liberals pick the Super Bowl winners.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah, it’s fine. Trump will pass a new executive order that—now the Chiefs are the winners.
Rollie Williams: Also, I just kept seeing, like—like, for the first time ever, two Black quarterbacks were playing, or as Republicans would call it, the DEI Super Bowl. And I just thought it was such a …
Nicole Conlan: It’s. There was a meme going around that had, like, this—it was before the Super Bowl, and it was like, “This game is not Philadelphia versus Kansas City. It’s MAGA versus Socialism.” And then on the socialism side, they put Travis Kelce, even though he’s playing for the Chiefs. And then on the Chiefs or on the MAGA side, they put all the Chiefs. But then—oh, I can’t remember his last name. Cooper something from the Eagles, because as far as I can tell, he’s only on the MAGA side because he’s a white cornerback.
Sarah: Yes. Because it’s very rare to have a white cornerback, and that is the DEI. But other people were joking that that’s a DEI move to have a white cornerback.
Nicole Conlan: But he also had, I think, one of the biggest plays of the game. So good for Cooper whatever your name is.
Doug: Wow. White people can make it in this country after all. That’s amazing!
Sarah: But—but let’s just say this may have been—and I am very not Black, so I’m not really qualified to say this, but, like, it seems also like maybe the Blackest—maybe the Blackest halftime show ever, or perhaps close to that. The halftime show is what I was waiting for. Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: Whipped ass.
Doug: That kicked butt. It was really—what’d you think?
Rollie Williams: I mean, Kendrick Lamar established himself as the greatest hater of all time.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Rollie Williams: He looked into a camera and said, “Hey, Drake. I hear you like them young,” in the Super Bowl to 100 million people.
Nicole Conlan: And then he got 70,000 people all together to say “A minor!”
Sarah: [laughs]
Doug: And Serena Williams on stage.
Nicole Conlan: Uh-huh. Drake’s ex.
Doug: Oh, man. That was incredible.
Sarah: Yeah.
Doug: To bring it to The War on Cars, however …
Rollie Williams: Drake loves cars.
Doug: … let’s talk about the car that was on stage out of which a hundred dancers poured. It was a Buick GNX. Do you guys know the backstory of this Buick GNX?
Nicole Conlan: Well, it’s on his album cover, right?
Doug: Right. His most recent album is called GNX.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: And he apparently was brought home from the hospital by his dad in a Buick Regal, which the GNX is like a souped-up version of the Regal. My mom had a Regal in the ’80s, a blue Regal, I believe. It was a really popular, common, basic car.
Nicole Conlan: And yet you didn’t go on to become a famous rapper.
Doug: Not yet.
Rollie Williams: Not yet.
Doug: Not yet. I have lots of people I hate and could write diss tracks about.
Nicole Conlan: Okay. [laughs]
Doug: So yeah, apparently when that album came out, GNX, it made getting a GNX very difficult because, like, sneakers or a brand of soft drink or something like that, like, the minute someone like Kendrick endorses essentially something, demand for that goes through the roof. So the producers of his show had to find a GNX to dismantle, right? Because they had to, like, hollow it out so all of these people could climb up from the bottom of the stage.
Rollie Williams: I mean, I was gonna say high density vehicle right there.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah. At that point, it’s a bus.
Rollie Williams: Yeah. Yeah.
Doug: I mean, that’s like the congestion charge at that point is like one cent per person.
Nicole Conlan: Boy, when a rapper finally releases an album with a ’99 Subaru Outback on the cover, a lot of people in Colorado are gonna get real rich.
Doug: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a whole story about how the production team had to source this car, but also had to tell the people that they were buying it from, “Hey, we’re gonna totally destroy it, basically.” And a lot of people didn’t want to do that, but they did get their hands on one and hollowed it out and put it on stage.
Nicole Conlan: I think they would have had an easier time being like, “Hey, we’re gonna destroy it for Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show.” Although then if I’m the owner of that GTX, I’d be like, “Oh, then give me $45 million.”
Sarah: The history of the Buick is pretty interesting, too. We had the scholar and author Gretchen Sorin on the show a few years ago to talk about her book Driving While Black. And she talked about the history of the Buick just as—you know, not the GNX in particular, but the Buick brand in the African-American community. And what she told us then was “generally African Americans favored the Buick, and they favored the Buick because it was a good, sturdy, sensible car that had a great reputation.” So it was a car that wouldn’t strand you when you were going out on the road. So—because she writes a lot about how, you know, when you set out on a road trip as a Black person in the ’50s, ’60s, and earlier, you really had to be very sure of your vehicle, that it was gonna get you there, because you could not stop to get it fixed. You could—a lot of the time, you carried your own gas with you and all of that.
Sarah: “It was a car that wouldn’t strand you when you were going out on the road. And it was also heavy, and a heavy car would be harder for a mob to turn over if you encountered an angry mob on the road. Also, a Buick was a nice, big car with a large trunk, and you needed that trunk space to carry all of those big coolers and blankets and pillows, extra fan belts, maybe even some extra gasoline cans. And Buick had nice, large, comfortable seats for sleeping if you had to sleep in the car.” So that is the backstory of the Buick that I just was thinking about during that whole show.
Doug: I think we should also note that Super Bowl LIX was obviously held in New Orleans. And on New Year’s, in the middle of the night on New Year’s Day, there was the vehicle ramming where a guy in a Ford F-150 Lightning truck, he drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street. He killed 14 people. 30 or 40 other people were injured. There was a shootout with the police that also injured some bystanders. And sadly, part of the reason that attack occurred was because the city was replacing a lot of the bollards around Bourbon Street in preparation for the Super Bowl. So security was really, really tight.
Doug: There’s a quote from the police department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick. She said they had 3,000 officers from agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the Louisiana State Police, that were stationed all throughout the French Quarter. They banned traffic from 5:00 pm to 5:00 am. They cut off all the access to Bourbon Street from every side street. And then there were checkpoints inside to make sure people didn’t have explosives or weapons or anything like that. So security was—you know, we’re very good in this country at responding to the last thing that happened, but not preventing the next tragedy.
Nicole Conlan: Well, you brought …
Doug: Brought the mood down.
Nicole Conlan: … me and Rollie on this podcast to crack wise, make our little jokes. And it doesn’t feel like the right moment to do that here. I will say, if they are closing traffic from 5:00 pm to 5:00 am during the Super Bowl, it does sort of raise the question of, like, why can’t that be a more permanent solution in the area?
Sarah: The fact that America is still struggling so hard to install basic infrastructure like bollards that in other wealthy countries it’s just routine to have retractable bollards that just work and they protect your nice pedestrian areas in the centers of your cities, which is—yeah, exactly as you say, Nicole. Bourbon Street should be, like, in the center of a very large, permanently pedestrianized zone in the middle of New Orleans. There’s no reason to have cars going through there. It’s just tragic. This has happened so many times before. It had happened in Europe just recently before this. People use vehicles this way to attack other people because they’re very effective weapons. That’s what it is. They’re really good weapons, and we don’t make provision for that in the ways that we should.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, it’s like that Onion article that, like, “How could this possibly have happened?” says nation where—the only nation where shootings happen.
Doug: Yeah, exactly.
Rollie Williams: I totally butchered that Onion headline.
Nicole Conlan: No, you nailed it.
Rollie Williams: That is so ubiquitous. Yeah. I mean, like, I don’t know. They do this—they do this in New York. Bourbon Street’s the most trafficked street that I can think of in America. Like, people are always there, they’re walking around. They got, like, giant plastic guitars full of, you know, margaritas. And, like, put some fucking big rocks around there. Like, they do this in New York. They just, like, plop giant boulders, and cars can’t go in there. Why do we need cars to be mixing it up with the people?
Nicole Conlan: It is crazy that there are many places in America—I’m thinking of Los Angeles, specifically—where they’ve figured out they can put stuff in the way to stop homeless people from living there, but they can’t make the jump to cars.
Sarah: I think it’s called “hostile architecture.”
Doug: Yeah. Especially because New Orleans did do a massive sweep of homeless people before the Super Bowl.
Nicole Conlan: Sure.
Doug: Because if you put them out of sight, they just don’t exist anymore.
Sarah: Yeah.
Doug: Well, I do have good news.
Rollie Williams: Yay!
Doug: And that is that racism is over.
Sarah: Okay, good.
Doug: Because the NFL, you might remember that in the wake of George Floyd in 2020, the NFL put “End Racism” in the end zones?
Nicole Conlan: Uh-huh?
Doug: That’s gone now. They took it out. It was replaced with “Choose Love.” Did you guys notice this?
Nicole Conlan: Yes, I noticed it on the Chiefs’ helmets.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Rollie Williams: Also, I just gotta say, like, to put “End Racism” in the end zone, that’s like, you’re just sort of renaming zone “Racism.”
Sarah: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: I’m just realizing this.
Sarah: I will say that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, has said that the NFL is gonna stick with its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which is pretty interesting. And on Monday before the Super Bowl, Goodell said, “We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League. And we’re going to continue those efforts because we’ve not only convinced ourselves, I think we’ve proven ourselves that it does make the NFL better. We’re not in this because it’s a trend to get in or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League, both on and off the field.” I would just like to say that I did not have this on my bingo card, that the NFL was gonna actually make an articulate defense of DEI programs.
Nicole Conlan: No matter how you identify, you are allowed to get a concussion.
Doug: That’s right.
Nicole Conlan: That we will not treat. Also again, rooting for the Eagles is not praxis, but I just gotta say, Jalen Hurts? Entirely female management team. And he has gone on record several times about being like, “I didn’t pick them because they’re women. I picked them because I wanted the best team.” What a guy, huh?
Doug: I did want to read the statement for why they went with “Choose Love.” And this is a statement from an NFL spokesperson, Brian McCarthy. “‘Choose Love’ is appropriate to use as our country has endured, in recent weeks, wildfires in Southern California, the terrorist attack here in New Orleans, the plane and helicopter crash near our nation’s capital, and the plane crash in Philadelphia.”
Nicole Conlan: Choosing love only would have helped one of those situations.
Rollie Williams: What—what is this list? Just bad things recently that we could think of in the past three or four weeks?
Doug: And Starbucks messed up my order.
Rollie Williams: Yeah. Right.
Nicole Conlan: If only the Southern California wildfires had chosen love.
Sarah: Yeah.
Doug: So we are here to talk about the ads on the Super Bowl.
Nicole Conlan: Yes.
Doug: So some quick stats: this year, a 30-second ad on the Super Bowl cost up to $8 million depending on where it was placed.
Nicole Conlan: Bargain!
Doug: That’s up from $7 million last year. You know, inflation, price of eggs hitting everybody.
Sarah: Yes. [laughs]
Doug: And maybe we should talk about some of the folks who didn’t advertise, especially since you guys are so climate focused.
Rollie Williams: Sure.
Doug: State Farm, the insurance company, did not advertise. Last year, they had one of the top-rated ads. Like, people loved that ad with Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to say, “Like a good neighbah, State Farm is there.” If you remember that.
Rollie Williams: Whoops!
Sarah: So cute.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Thank you, Agent State Farm.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Like a good neighbah, State Farm is there.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Cut! Hey, Arnold, I’m hearing neighbah. It’s ‘neighbor.’]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: That’s what I said. Neighbah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Neighbor.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Neighbah.]
Doug: So they were out this year, largely because of the fires in California and Los Angeles.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah. Well, you don’t want to advertise and then be like, “Like a good neighbor, unless you live in Southern California.”
Rollie Williams: Or Florida. A lot of Florida, also.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs] Yeah. If you’re not—if you’re not gonna insure those homes, you don’t want to be advertising that service.
Doug: Yeah, because they did, in fact, announce last year that they would not renew about 70,000 policies in California. So …
Nicole Conlan: “Like a good neighbor we’ll leave you alone.”
Sarah: Yeah, “Like a good neighbor, we are moving to a safer place.” Yeah.
Doug: Probably not a good look to spend $8 million on an ad plus production costs when you’re denying claims for, like, someone’s home.”
Nicole Conlan: “Yeah, sorry we can’t rebuild your childhood home. But also, Martha Stewart is dancing. How fun is that?”
Rollie Williams: “We had to get Kieran Culkin to play pickleball against The Rock. So, so sorry.”
Doug: State Farm had also, like, really raised rates in California because they’re basically now catching up to the reality that insuring homes in disaster-prone areas, which is just basically now the United States, is really expensive. They raised rates an average of 22 percent last year, and for every dollar they’ve collected in premiums, they’re spending $1.26.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah, I will—I can’t remember if I’ve recommended this on our podcast. I don’t think so. But if you haven’t read Mike Davis, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, he goes into more detail about how, like, insurance rates have long been way too low in California and that’s like, what’s encouraged people to build farther into places that are going to burn. Really good read.
Sarah: And I mean, I think you’re seeing this sort of reality check of the insurance industry is gonna be a huge story over the next few years because the money’s just not there. The insurance is not there. Anyone who has to pay for home insurance or car insurance has felt it. I mean, the price of eggs is really a footnote to the price of insurance. And it’s not changing. And then it’s gonna be uninsurable. There’s just not even gonna be such a thing as insurance for many people.
Nicole Conlan: Well, you guys mentioned the god, Donald Shoup, at the top of the podcast, and his whole deal is like these—the externalities of this thing are not being priced, and we are all essentially subsidizing people to make choices that hurt all of us. And the insurance market is kind of the same way.
Sarah: So State Farm was not the only notable absence at this. I mean, we do this show because traditionally this has been a huge place for car companies to promote their products, yet this time there was very little explicit car content. Is that right?
Doug: That’s right. There were only two car ads from a major brand. That’s Stellantis, so Jeep and Ram.
Sarah: How does that compare to how it used to be?
Doug: Yeah, so it’s down by a lot. Hyundai, Kia, they’ve advertised in 14 consecutive Super Bowls. They were out. Nothing from Ford, nothing from Audi, Mercedes, nothing. This is a part of a trend. This is a report from Paul Hiebert in Adweek. The automotive category accounted for 40 percent of commercial airtime in 2012, and it declined to 8 percent in 2024.
Rollie Williams: Wow! Precipitous.
Doug: Yes. Big drop off. Lots of reasons for this, lots of uncertainty. With Trump ending EV subsidies, nobody knows where the market is gonna go. Sales are good, but slower than I think a lot of people have been hoping. The media landscape is changing. You know, you can spend a lot of money on a Super bowl ad and then it’s kind of one and done. Nobody really sees it after that. So they’re focusing on, quote-unquote, “new media” like Instagram, social media.
Sarah: I mean, like, if you advertise on The War on Cars, you can just get so much more for your money.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: I was going to say, yeah, The War on Cars advertising is, I think, 11.5 times more effective than a Super Bowl.
Doug: We punch way above our weight. We are not—we are against taking car company money. I can say that.
Rollie Williams: All right, let me just ask The War on Cars this officially. If Mercedes came to you and was like, “We get all your car, anti-car bullshit or whatever, but we will pay you $40 million to run Mercedes ads.” Would you do it?
Doug: Can I shut down the podcast after running that ad? Like, what’s the—do I have to keep it going?
Nicole Conlan: For $40 million, I think you can do whatever you want.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, you gotta keep it going for six months.
Sarah: I don’t know. I say yes. I say we take the cash.
Nicole Conlan: $40 million. How is this a debate at all?
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Nicole Conlan: I would say yes so fast they couldn’t finish the question.
Sarah: Yeah. Thank you. And then we just spend that money destroying them if we can.
Doug: I would like to note that I hesitated, but I’m going to say yes.
Sarah: Okay.
Doug: Okay.
Rollie Williams: It is …
Doug: Does that count? Yeah.
Rollie Williams: The money is in Mercedes gift cards.
Sarah: Oh, no.
Doug: Oh, no.
Nicole Conlan: I mean, you can flip those on one of those gift card-flipping websites and still get $20 million.
Doug: That’s right. That’s right.
Sarah: Yeah. Like, I think that’s a good deal. I would take it. Mercedes, please make note of that. But yeah, it’s …
Nicole Conlan: Quick note about Mercedes.
Sarah: Oh, yes.
Nicole Conlan: Everybody loves to blame BMW drivers for being bad. But whenever I was walking my dog when I was living in La Crescenta in Los Angeles, always, always, the Mercedes was the one who came closest to killing me. Every time. Almost on every walk, I would almost get hit by a Mercedes.
Doug: Was it a particular Mercedes or just Mercedes in general?
Nicole Conlan: No, it’s sort of a popular area for Mercedes. And boy, I’ve almost gotten flattened by a lot of Mercedes.
Rollie Williams: Did they ever get you, though?
Nicole Conlan: No.
Rollie Williams: Surgical precision.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: Immaculate drivers.
Sarah: This segment was brought to you by BMW.
Doug: That’s right. That’s right. Which just paid us $40 million. Thanks. That’s it. We’re done.
Rollie Williams: Sorry to Indecent Proposal you guys.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs] I was surprised how few, because I watched it knowing I was gonna do this podcast. I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I didn’t realize I was gonna be here?”
Doug: We sprung this on you.
Nicole Conlan: I watched it knowing I was gonna do this podcast. And I was—there was a moment last night where I was like, “I hope we have something to talk about.” Because there were not a lot of car commercials.
Doug: We’re gonna get to the real car ads, but I think there were a lot of car-adjacent ads that say something about car culture and climate. You know, we were talking right before we started recording that every year there’s a trend. You know, there’s some industry that sort of represents where we are as a country. Last year it was crypto. This year was AI. Did you guys notice?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Nicole Conlan: How could we not notice it? It was like every other commercial.
Doug: Were there any that stood out?
Nicole Conlan: The Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey ones stood out. Both because I just kept being like, “Man, this commercial sucks, but Matthew McConaughey is such a good actor.” He’s so good. I can’t imagine anybody else doing this in a way that doesn’t actively make me want to kill myself. But also, all the things he’s doing with AI are like, it would be faster to do this without AI.
Rollie Williams: Absolutely.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs] AI would make all of these tasks much harder.
Doug: Did you see the one that was …
Nicole Conlan: Where he’s sitting in the rain?
Doug: Yes.
Nicole Conlan: I don’t need AI to not book a table at an outdoor restaurant in a rainstorm.
Sarah: Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: That’s not an AI problem.
Sarah: I know. That was—that was very confusing. And also, why would the people who owned the restaurant seat him outside during a rainstorm? It just—I don’t think they needed AI to make that decision.
Rollie Williams: My guess is the restaurant was using AI, and they made him sit out there because the AI …
Nicole Conlan: “We’ve calculated the optimal table for Matthew McConaughey.”
Rollie Williams: I did—so one Google Pixel 9 AI commercial stood out to me because I was trying to clock anytime a car was present in any commercial.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. You did your homework.
Rollie Williams: This would really be—I’ll go above and beyond. I’ll give you quantity, not quality here. And in the Google Pixel 9, there were two beats in a car where the car was like—it was like a dad raising his little girl and being like, such a team player. By the way, like, all these commercials where the dad is like, “Well, yeah. I mean, I’m raising my kid with my wife,” and it’s like—that’s like, you’re not a hero for doing the bare minimum for this.
Doug: Congrats, right?
Rollie Williams: But yeah, but also there were two moments where, like, he was teaching his daughter how to drive and she did the classic, like, think she’s reversing and then punches into a garbage can. Not the gar—it was an open garage and a garbage can. She hit the garbage can because they’re like, “We can’t show damage!” And then the last beat was him crying in his minivan as he dropped her off at college. And I think that really gets people because they’re being emotionally manipulative, but it’s like, look how many important life moments happen when you’re in the car.
Doug: Yeah, totally.
Rollie Williams: And that bummed me out.
Nicole Conlan: Is that the same commercial where he was, like, preparing for a job interview, where he was like, “My last role involved a lot of negotiation?”
Rollie Williams: I think that’s the same commercial.
Nicole Conlan: Because he was a stay-at-home dad. And he was like …
Rollie Williams: And it’s like, “You’re not getting that job, brother.”
Nicole Conlan: I’ve had enough bullshit jobs where I’ve tried to be like, “Well, my experience running the carousel at the zoo would qualify me for this executive VP position,” where it’s like, this isn’t—AI’s not gonna help you with that.
Doug: That ad made me so sad, actually, for the state of things, because it was basically like: Do you have no friends, no family who’ve ever had experience raising children? Are you not married because your wife has no opinions on what you should do? It feels like a lot of the AI stuff, much like the weather seating-outside-in-the-rain restaurant ad is basically like, do you not know how to ask people stuff? You can ask a robot instead.
Rollie Williams: It really does feel like the AI commercials are the steering wheel from the movie Wall-E, where they’re just like, you guys just don’t even worry about making any decision in the future. Like, don’t ever use that part of your brain that, like, helps you navigate society because we’re gonna take care of it for you and you’re gonna love it.
Sarah: But I mean, you’re right about the cars being this sort of ambient thing, that that’s just a condition of his life and his relationship with his daughter that is just ambiently there all the time. And that’s why it works in the narrative. And there was another ad that is not a car ad at all—it was a Taco Bell ad. It was sort of—I think the thing was, you know, there were some celebrities talking, but it was like, “Oh, no. Let’s not have celebrities. We’re just gonna have regular people.” And it was all, like, these kind of Polaroid shots of people in their cars eating Taco Bell.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: This is Taco Bell’s celebration of its fans. Behold a bunch of randos. Not famous people.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (LeBron James) Wait, what?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Sorry, big guy.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Doja Cat) But I’m Doja!)
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: Yeah, but celebs don’t make Taco Bell Taco Bell. Fans do.]
Sarah: It was all car, car, car, car, car. But it was Taco Bell, and it was just this idea that, like, this is your life. This is your life. You’re in your car and you’re having Taco Bell. Like, that is the American condition.
Doug: And when you are in a car, you are the star of your own story. No one else is involved in that narrative at all.
Sarah: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Rollie Williams: Especially not the person that I just drove over.
Sarah: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: That guy is a speed bump on my way to a chalupa gordita.
Doug: That’s right.
Nicole Conlan: I will say probably about half the times I’ve eaten Taco Bell have been in a car.
Rollie Williams: Yeah.
Sarah: I think it tastes better that way, probably. [laughs]
Doug: Okay, so then there were some ads that I’m qualifying or categorizing as “Make America Suburban Again.” I feel like there. There was a trend a bunch of years ago to show, like, hip, young urbanites, like, Friends-style, you know, like, hanging out in coffee shops or walking down city streets with their AirPods on or whatever. So there was the Bud Light cul-de-sac party.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Rollie Williams: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: Yes.
Nicole Conlan: Oh, yeah. Where Shane Gillis and Post Malone are best friends.
Sarah: Yep.
Rollie Williams: That makes sense to me, actually.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Post Malone) You wanna go fishing tomorrow?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Shane Gillis) I got a colonoscopy tomorrow.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Ted) Fellas, I accidentally threw a lane party.]
Doug: Okay, so we see, like, the lawnmower busting through the fence, the big case of Bud Light.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Ted) They’re here.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Shane Gillis) You call this a party?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Post Malone) Cul-de-sac party!]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Shane Gillis) Launch. Launch. The beers are a metaphor for an invitation.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Ted) Is that our leaf blower?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Post Malone) Party at the sac!]
Rollie Williams: It’s not a metaphor if it’s a literal invitation.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (neighbor) You are cordially invited to the end of the cul-de-sac.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Peyton Manning) This is incredible.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (wife) Your mower smokes meat?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Shane Gillis) No, our smoker cuts grass.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Ted) Hell, yeah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: I spent most of my money on this.]
Doug: And then we have one of the Mannings. Peyton?
Nicole Conlan: I want to say Peyton.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Peyton Manning) How many Bud Lights can you fit in that puppy?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Shane Gillis) As many Bud Lights as it takes.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Peyton Manning) That’s a lot of Bud Lights. This cul-de-sac’s, poppin’.]
Doug: So we have a big party at the end of the cul de sac with Huey Lewis and the News playing. What do we think?
Rollie Williams: I loved it. I thought it was really funny. I don’t know, it’s obviously, like, trying to harken us back to, like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be more fun if we got out of our urban centers and really sprawled this thing out once and for all?” But, like, those guys are really funny, and they did a funny job, I thought. And Peyton Manning’s my favorite Manning because he won the Super Bowl for the Broncos.
Nicole Conlan: Also, this is something that I’m gonna talk about when we get to the Jeep ad, but I feel like every commercial—this year especially, but it’s been building since, like, 2008—every commercial is trying to be like sort of an Old Spice, like, sort of nonsensical fever dream of a commercial. But when every commercial is like that, this all sucks. And so I think the Bud Light commercial, just from a strictly narrative perspective, works a little better for me just because it all takes place in one universe. It’s clearly a joke, but it isn’t like we put Seal’s head on a seal. Isn’t that wacky?
Sarah: So disturbing.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: Not as disturbing as the cowboy hat. Like …
Doug: Oh, the flesh hat?
Sarah: The flesh hat.
Rollie Williams: Flesh hat.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Rollie Williams: Kill that man.
Doug: That was for some streaming service, right?
Rollie Williams: Tubi. Yeah, I mean, they got us, right?
Doug: Yeah, we’re talking about it.
Rollie Williams: I’m sorry, Nicole, I cut you off.
Nicole Conlan: No, that’s it. It’s just—it’s like the commercials that stood out to me are the ones that are like, oh, this one’s just kind of like, fun and normal as opposed to the ones that are like, we get it. You want to be Old Spice circa 2010.
Rollie Williams: And they even had him in there. They had …
Nicole Conlan: That was in the Instacart.
Sarah: I’m gonna just say one thing about the Bud Light commercial that is gonna be unpopular. But, like, when they were firing off the cans of Bud Light …
Nicole Conlan: Not how leaf blowers work.
Sarah: I also just, like, kept thinking of, like, rubber bullets or something. Like, I was like, somebody’s gonna get killed!
Rollie Williams: That’s a metal bullet.
Sarah: You can’t—it’s not a t-shirt.
Doug: Look, if you defund the government, the only way they’ll be able to pay for things like policing protests is through sponsorships.
Rollie Williams: Bud Light presents nightsticks?
Doug: Yeah, basically. That’s what’s gonna happen.
Sarah: Yes. Sorry.
Rollie Williams: I mean, I really—it really did bum me out. It seems obvious to me that Shane Gillis, a very funny comedian, shot the can and then turned to the camera and said, “These cans are a metaphor for an invitation.” And then a guy picked the can out of the water bucket and read the invitation to the party on it. That’s not a fucking metaphor. That’s a literal invitation.
Nicole Conlan: There does seem to be widespread misunderstanding. This is what happens when you cut humanities education is there’s a widespread misunderstanding of metaphor in the world right now. I don’t know if you guys have seen this Elon Musk ball of worms quote?
Sarah: Oh, yes.
Nicole Conlan: But I can’t get over it. I’m calling this car adjacent because it’s Elon Musk, and Elon owns Tesla.
Sarah: For sure.
Nicole Conlan: But he was …
Rollie Williams: Nicole can make anything car adjacent in two Kevin Bacons.
Doug: She’s right at home. She’s right at home.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah. Two degrees of separation from car adjacency. He has this quote where he was talking about defunding USAID, and he’s like, “Well, what we found when we got into USAID is instead of being an apple with a worm in it, what it is really is just a bowl of worms.”
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Elon Musk: What we have here is—is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you got an apple, that’s got a worm in it, maybe you can take the worm out. But if you’ve got actually just a ball of worms, it’s hopeless. And USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you’ve just got to basically get rid of the whole thing.]
Nicole Conlan: And it’s like, okay, not the best metaphor, but it’s a metaphor. But then he spends the next 90 seconds being like, “And when you have a bowl of worms, you can’t save it. You have to get rid of the—people don’t like worms, so you have to get rid of all of the worms, which represent problems with USAID. In this metaphor, the worms are the problems, and you want to get rid of the problems, so you have to get rid of the worms.” And it’s like just—you have to have some faith in what your metaphor is. [laughs]
Rollie Williams: And my guess is that Shane Gillis was given license to riff, and so he riffed that. And they had already shot the thing with the guy reading it as an invitation, and they’re just like, “Fuck it. Put it all in the ad. Who’s gonna care? Who’s gonna know?”
Nicole Conlan: Rollie Williams.
Rollie Williams: I will know.
Nicole Conlan: I think the other reason that this ad works for me is that Rollie and I are at a point in our lives where our, like, hip, cool friends are becoming dads and living that lifestyle. And it does feel like we’re getting into party-dad-in-the-suburbs territory.
Doug: It’s appealing. I mean, the grill alone, I feel like I would like space for a grill. So it’s appealing. I like the ad. I did like the ad.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, bring face tattoos to the suburbs.
Rollie Williams: Yeah!
Nicole Conlan: I mean, our generation is.
Rollie Williams: Yes.
Sarah: Okay. I can get behind that.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: Okay. There was another one that I also feel like highlights the kind of urban-suburban divide, and that was from Rocket, the mortgage company.
Sarah: Oh, yes.
Doug: Okay. So we see a pregnant woman standing in an apartment building, I guess, then crossing a New York City bridge to the suburbs. Lots of cute babies, empty house that someone’s walking into, painting and fixing up. Tender moments.
Rollie Williams: Military planes?
Doug: Yep.
Rollie Williams: Interesting.
Doug: Moving van on the country road, as the song says. Everyone’s singing along to this classic. It is a great song.
Rollie Williams: Oh, yeah. And then they, like, cut to the Super Bowl stadium and they were all singing this song.
Doug: Yep. And then it says, “Everyone deserves a shot at the American dream. Own the dream. Rocket.”
Sarah: Yep. And the woman—I think it’s the woman who was pregnant at the beginning—you see her at the end with the baby in a beautiful little suburban home. She still looks kind of concerned, though, and who can blame her? [laughs]
Nicole Conlan: Which is wild, because all of the people that I know with kids in the city are like, “We are desperate to raise our kids in the city and there is no housing for us.”
Doug: Yes.
Nicole Conlan: So Rocket Mortgage could just as easily have been like, “Get a mortgage on one of the six three-bedroom apartments left in New York City.” But it’s—home ownership is in the American mind, so tied to the standalone home.
Doug: The white picket fence.
Nicole Conlan: Well, and it’s the idea of, like, the only place to raise your kids is in the suburbs. Like, I know a lot of people who, like, got pregnant in a big city. and their families were like, “Well, you’re gonna have to move. You’re gonna have to move to the suburbs.” There is this idea of, like, the city being a place for you to, like, live your 20s. It’s like, no, there’s—there’s millions of people in New York City of all ages. People have lived here their whole lives.
Doug: Largest public school system in the country. Sarah and I have both raised children in the city, and I love raising my kids in the city, but I recognize that it’s really hard.
Sarah: I was raised in this city, you know? Like, this city made me who I am, so I’m very happy with that. But, you know—but yeah, I mean, the woman at the beginning looking in concern at her pregnant belly, it’s such an archetype of the pregnant woman who is having to flee to another place to bring her child into a safe world. And that’s sort of what I thought it was. It’s like, oh, you’re in this dangerous place. Your child could be at risk if you don’t get out of there. That’s how I read that.
Doug: Also, her apartment looked pretty big.
Sarah: I know! It was …
Nicole Conlan: I saw that apartment and I was like, “You can never leave that apartment. Unless that’s a studio, you are raising that baby in that apartment.”
Rollie Williams: Yeah, she had a great view.
Doug: Corner windows.
Rollie Williams: You had to establish that it was New York City. But they were like, “Well, if we do that, then it’s gonna—obviously that’s gonna be a nice-ass apartment.” But they just went with it.
Doug: Like, she could totally have afforded to move to Brooklyn, for sure.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: So this one …
Sarah: Oh, yes.
Doug: … was The Fast and the Furious with Michelle Rodriguez, Vin Diesel and Ludacris. Except this time they’re going slow. All right, so they take off, and then Michelle whips out a Haagen Dazs ice cream bar.
Nicole Conlan: Vin, watch the road!
Doug: Yeah, Vin …
Nicole Conlan: Never look at the road.
Doug: Stretching his arms out. He’s got an ice cream bar.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Ludacris) Hey, what happened to fast life?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Vin Diesel) Not today.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Ludacris) What? Are y’all kidding me?]
Rollie Williams: Did you guys also clock that when Ludacris drove past him, it was a two-lane road, so he wasn’t breaking the law? And then when it cut back to the car, it was a one lane road?
Sarah: [laughs] Yes.
Rollie Williams: But Ludacris, famously, he’s doing 100 on the highway, and if you’re doing the speed limit, get the fuck out of my way. He doesn’t care about the rules of the road.
Sarah: I think it’s sort of cute. It’s sort of nice.
Nicole Conlan: I love it.
Doug: I mean, look, I’ve said on the show before that, like, my guilty pleasure as a War on Cars host are The Fast and the Furious movies. I enjoy them. When they’re terrible, they’re still great. I love all of the actors. Like, Vin Diesel only shows up in those movies now, or I Am Groot in the Marvel universe. And I find him to be really kind of charming, even when the acting is terrible.
Nicole Conlan: Michelle Rodriguez was so good in the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
Sarah: Oh, she’s great.
Nicole Conlan: She’s really good.
Rollie Williams: She did a great job.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: And back on Lost. Like, I’ve been—she’s amazing. She’s really great. So I don’t know, I enjoy that. But yeah, eyes on the road, folks.
Sarah: All I can think of is that road is eroding into the Pacific Ocean, like, as we speak. That road that is so iconic in so many ways, either the houses along it are burning in Malibu, the whole thing is in flames. Or it’s Big Sur and it’s sliding into the ocean. It’s a lovely road. I have driven way too fast down those roads myself. But yeah, and I’ve—I wasn’t even furious. I was just fast. [laughs]
Nicole Conlan: I mean, look, then you better enjoy your ice cream while you can on that road.
Doug: That’s right.
Nicole Conlan: Because they’re both gonna melt away.
Rollie Williams: This is just a quick backstory about—I love the show Lost. It’s one of my favorite shows.
Doug: Great show.
Rollie Williams: But they kept on killing cast members off because they kept getting DUIs in Hawaii.
Sarah: [laughs]
Doug: Yes, that’s right.
Rollie Williams: And Michelle Rodriguez got killed off of the show Lost because she got a DUI in Hawaii.
Doug: That is right!
Rollie Williams: Which is maybe why she’s not the one driving; Vin Diesel’s driving.
Sarah: TIL. Okay.
Doug: All right. So the next one is from a Super Bowl—long-standing Super Bowl advertiser, WeatherTech, which is based in Illinois.
Nicole Conlan: Wow. Same stretch of highway.
Sarah: Yep.
Doug: So we see a bunch of older women driving a car. So this is basically like the Golden Girls meets Thelma and Louise.
Sarah: Right. They’re spray painting trucks and …
Doug: Creating havoc wherever they go.
Sarah: Community meetings and—and their tea, their tea is spilling on their WeatherTech. Yes.
Doug: And they get arrested for speeding.
Nicole Conlan: I mean, you don’t get arrested for speeding, so those women must have done something much worse. They did blow something up.
Rollie Williams: Well, I mean, the first beat was that they were going too slow and all the cars are driving around them because they go slow because they’re older ladies. And then the next—the closer is that they were going too fast and so the cop got them.
Nicole Conlan: It’s dramaturgically …
Rollie Williams: Ads don’t make internal sense to me.
Doug: [laughs]
Sarah: But what this ad taps into that as an older woman I think about quite a bit is this idea of older women being invisible and usually being able to get away with whatever they want to get away with. And in this case they are so flagrant that even they can’t get away with it. But it reminds me of, in one of my favorite movies, Mad Max: Fury Road.
Doug: Yeah.
Sarah: The old lady biker gang at the end. When it’s time to save civilization and the chips are down, it’s the old women who have hoarded the seeds and kept the culture alive who at the end are like, “You know what? And now we’re going to sacrifice our bodies to save the future generations.” And they flame out. And that’s always been—since I saw that movie, I’ve decided that is my—those are my role models. And as I get older, I’m ready to just take one for the team, go down hard. And anyway, that’s what I thought of when I saw that commercial.
Nicole Conlan: WeatherTech: Kill yourself for the good of society.
Sarah: [laughs] Exactly.
Rollie Williams: Learn to be a sniper. WeatherTech.
Doug: I think, Nicole, to your earlier point about how, like, a lot of the ads all seem like one part of the same, like, tonally, they’re all sort of just like chaos at every moment. WeatherTech in years past, they’ve done some silly ads, but they used to focus on, you know, “Made in the USA, employing local people.” And this year they just went for it. And they’re just like, “No, we’re gonna have the Golden Girls just, like, drive off a cliff and blow shit up.”
Rollie Williams: So they just have Super Bowl money? WeatherTech?
Doug: This is what I can’t understand. So they were founded in the ’90s. Their CEO was a big Trump supporter who broke with Trump over the DACA stuff because he was gonna deport someone who worked for WeatherTech.
Rollie Williams: Isn’t that fucking crazy? The moment it affects them personally, they’re like, “Oh, right! Fascism is bad because it hurts people!”
Doug: I always love when people say, “I didn’t vote for this.” And no one ever says, “Can you explain exactly what it is that you voted for?” Like, that’s what I would love to hear.
Nicole Conlan: Common sense is what they say.
Rollie Williams: Eggs being—whatever price they were, I don’t remember, but whatever price they were before this, that’s what I voted for.
Doug: But I can spend $7 million on an ad for my company. So yeah, they—they famously, I think, run, like, two ads per year. I don’t know if this year they ran a second one. I think that was the only one. So they’ve got some money. I mean, you know …
Nicole Conlan: To be fair, can you name one other brand of floor mats?
Rollie Williams: Uh, Kevin’s Floor Mats?
Doug: [laughs] All right. So—but I think we should get to the actual car ads. So there was an ad for Polestar 3, the electric car. The non-Tesla electric car. It wasn’t that interesting. It just kind of showed the car driving.
Sarah: I literally didn’t—I’m gonna confess that I didn’t notice that that happened.
Nicole Conlan: I barely remember.
Rollie Williams: Are you sure there was an ad for Polestar?
Doug: Yeah, I think it aired after …
Nicole Conlan: The only reason that I know there was is that I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, only two ads for cars.” And also both for EVs, which is interesting to me.
Doug: Yeah. So the Goldilocks and the three trucks ad for Ram. Here it is.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) Once upon a time, there was a girl with golden locks. You know what? Maybe it was like a …
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Glen Powell) A rugged, woodsy dude.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) Yeah! Too hard. Too soft. Too …]
Sarah: So this is that Glen Powell guy.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) Tastier.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Glen Powell) Those look just right!]
Doug: And he sees three trucks outside of his window.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) First, he drove the Ram 2500 Rebel to pick up some dinner.]
Doug: And fight a dragon.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, just kills a dragon that was minding its own business.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) Next, he took the Ram Charger deep into the woods to flex his artistic muscles.]
Doug: This is the electric.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) Then he fired up the Ram RHO for a little joyride.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Glen Powell) Freedom!]
Doug: Jumps a volcano, screaming, “Freedom.”
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (child) What about the three bears?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (Glen Powell) This is my story.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) But yeah, the bears were there.]
Doug: There are bears in the truck.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, advertisement: (narrator) And they all lived happily ever after. Sorta.]
Nicole Conlan: And then …
Sarah: And they’re driving off.
Nicole Conlan: “Panama” by Van Halen for some reason.
Doug: Yeah. And it says, “Drive your own story” at the end.
Sarah: Yeah. And they’re driving into the other iconic American car landscape, which is the desert. That’s like—it’s either you’re on Route 1 in California or you’re driving into the desert.
Nicole Conlan: We’ll talk about that in the Jeep ad, too, but that is—that is a long-standing tradition of SUVs and trucks. Before we get into this, I gotta say, Glen Powell, one of the only true movie stars of this generation. He’s got star power. Glen, if you’re listening to The War on Cars podcast, I would love to work with you someday.
Sarah: To me, like, I—I just—he’s …
Nicole Conlan: He’s very handsome.
Sarah: He’s like one of the Chrises, though. I am so confused by these people. There’s like all those Chrises, right? Like, Hemsworth and all the other ones.
Doug: Well, we had Hemsworth and Pratt in an ad for Meta for Ray Ban.
Nicole Conlan: Right. But we didn’t get the other two Chrises.
Sarah: And this just seems like he’s kind of another Chris. And I just am very confused.
Doug: It might be the wig that he was wearing.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah, the wig makes him look like Thor.
Sarah: I’ve never seen him in a movie.
Doug: Twisters. He’s in Twisters.
Sarah: I didn’t see it.
Doug: Which is actually pretty fun.
Sarah: I’m sure it’s great. I just missed it. And …
Doug: Yeah. I mean, it’s, like, not the greatest movie, but it is fun.
Nicole Conlan: He’s very good in it. He’s also in Hitman, which I think was his—it’s his character reel, and he’s good in it. I think the movie is a little uneven. He’s so talented. Star power, baby! He was in that movie Anyone But You. He was in Hidden Figures. I think he was in The Dark Knight.
Sarah: I saw that. Okay. All right. Well, I’m gonna give him a chance. But in this—I mean, it’s always interesting. He was wearing—he was sort of cross dressing, which was a little—I mean, you know, it’s like it starts out with Goldilocks.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, it didn’t, like, hit me as cross dressing as much just because there are so many, like, you know, the long blonde-haired—Fabio, for instance, isn’t cross dressing. I just sort of felt like he …
Nicole Conlan: I think he was supposed to be Goldilocks.
Sarah: He was. Yeah. But that is what’s confusing to me.
Nicole Conlan: Goldilocks doesn’t canonically have to be a girl. And that is sexist.
Rollie Williams: How woke of you to make Goldilocks a girl.
Sarah: Now I—thank you for correcting me. I realize now that I was just being too rigid in my vision of Goldilocks. I feel chastened.
Doug: There’s nothing that says she can’t be actor Glen Powell.
Rollie Williams: Ain’t no rules says a man can’t play Goldilocks.
Doug: The thing that struck me about this is, like, they—the car companies have just given up on telling you anything about what the cars do.
Rollie Williams: Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: Literally zero features of the car were described, other than you’re driving your own story.
Doug: The only thing you learn is that the Ram Charger is a plug-in. That’s all you learn. That’s it.
Rollie Williams: I guess—again, I’m gonna pick a bone with the concept of the ad where it’s—Goldilocks is about three choices, two of which being extremely wrong, bad choices.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Rollie Williams: And yet he’s like, “Oh, there was actually three trucks and they’re all awesome and we love them all.”
Nicole Conlan: Well, but then you cut—then it’s the meta world of Glen telling the story. So maybe with—canonically in the ad, Glen Powell doesn’t understand Goldilocks and the three bears.
Rollie Williams: You don’t get any points for saying, “Oh, the character actually is dumb and fucked this up. That’s why we fucked it up. Not because we don’t know how to write an ad, but because the character misinterpreted the fable.”
Doug: But the tagline is “Drive your own story.” So, like, you know, once you’ve gone woke with Glen Powell as Goldilocks, you can just do whatever the hell you want, right?
Nicole Conlan: That’s true.
Rollie Williams: I mean, like, he was driving his truck to where a dragon lives. A dragon’s home. He drove his truck to a dragon’s home. The dragon is like, “What the fuck, dude?” And he murdered the dragon!
Doug: Yeah. We haven’t established that the dragon was doing anything wrong.
Rollie Williams: No, it was hanging out. It’s where it lives.
Doug: Yeah.
Rollie Williams: That bummed me out.
Sarah: That’s what Rams are for, is to go and ram into things and destroy them.
Doug: And to cut down a tree and carve your own likeness into it?
Sarah: Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: To your point earlier about you’re the main character as the—or your point, I don’t know. Nobody on the podcast can see who I’m pointing at, so whoever I said it, it’s right. The point about the driver being the main character, like, this is literally drive your own story. When you are behind the wheel of the car, you are the main character. Not the pedestrians. You are not a main character.
Doug: Not the dragon you’ve gone to murder.
Rollie Williams: Right. And also, like, these are the biggest fucking trucks I’ve ever seen. Like, today I was riding a bike here, and I got stuck behind a lifted, monstrously large truck. And it wouldn’t go around a thing—like, there was like a car stopped on the side of the road, and I was just, like, trying to ride my bike around it. And it just stopped and it blocked the whole fucking street. And I’m just like, these are so big. It’s a goddamn arms race to see who can have the biggest, heaviest truck. And yeah, this is what this commercial really embodied for me.
Doug: I wonder if that isn’t part of why they have to show them in environments where you will never drive. Because if they showed them in a Walmart parking lot or, like, a downtown, your first thing would be like, “That is so absurdly out of place. It’s, like, bigger than the store it’s parked in front of.”
Rollie Williams: Yeah. You need two meters to park your car.
Doug: Yes. Exactly.
Nicole Conlan: When Jordan and I were in Denver during the early part of the pandemic and we didn’t have a car, we were borrowing Jordan’s dad’s—I think it was an F-150. I can’t remember what it was now. This was so many years ago. But, like, I’ve driven—when I was, like, on student films and stuff in college, I would drive 10-foot box trucks in the city all the time. And it’s not convenient, but it’s not a problem. And driving this fucking big pickup truck was such a pain in the ass. Not even like, it’s hard to drive, it’s just like, where the fuck do I put this thing? It’s so inconvenient. And that’s, like, such a good point about, like, well, it makes sense when you’re in the desert where there’s nothing and you can park it anywhere, but if you’re trying to do anything in an inhabited place, it’s just inconvenient.
Doug: And those box trucks often have better visibility than the Ram pickups because the box trucks will have, like, a flat front where the windshield is just the front of the—and you can see everything in front of you. Whereas these have just terrible sight lines and pillars that you can’t see when you’re turning and that kind of stuff.
Sarah: But I think also, like, the use of Glen Powell, who is sort of a—you know, he is that movie star, a sort of a suave movie star. Like, he’s not like that super, super macho aggressive thing, especially as he’s portrayed here reading this story to children.
Nicole Conlan: He’s Uncle Glen!
Sarah: Yeah. He’s like a nice guy, right? And so that kind of takes the edge off of, like, the incredibly scary vibe of the Ram, which is—you know, so I think it, like, gives it a little bit of, like, non-toxic masculinity sheen on top of this terrifying, like, assertion of power that those trucks really are.
Rollie Williams: Also I just realized this. Like, when we refer to a building, it’s like a one-storey building. Do you think “drive your own story” is about how massive the truck is? “Drive a storey?”
Nicole Conlan: I don’t think that, no.
Rollie Williams: Cut this, cut this, cut this.
Doug: [laughs] I think there was the part of that commercial where he’s jumping over a volcano yelling “Freedom.” Which is perhaps a good segue to the second car ad.
Sarah: Oh, yes.
Doug: So an interesting thing is that all of these ads have been online for at least a week. Like, I’ve been prepping for this episode and pulling clips and all the rest, but the Jeep ad that we’ve referenced a couple of times was not online until immediately after it aired. And it aired right after the half, which had it been a close game, probably would have been a really good place for it to air. But since it was essentially a blowout at that point, I’m imagining it was not the best place. Still, let’s watch this one.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) Longest thing we ever do is live our lives.]
Doug: And that’s Harrison Ford.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) But life doesn’t come with an owner’s manual. Might have been nice, huh? But that means we get to write our own stories.]
Sarah: Again, writing your own story.
Rollie Williams: Yeah.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) Freedom is yes or no or maybe. Freedom is for everybody. But it isn’t free.]
Doug: And then we see jeeps and military action from World War II, black and white footage.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) There are real heroes in the world.]
Nicole Conlan: Great dog. Great dog in this ad.
Doug: Yeah.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) Real heroes are humble.]
Doug: Military service member hugging a child.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) Pride is a terrible driver. Freedom is the roar of one man’s engine. And the silence of another’s.]
Doug: Gas-powered car versus electric car.
Rollie Williams: That was a hybrid, I think. Right?
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) The most sacred thing in life isn’t the path, it’s the freedom to choose it. You don’t have to be friends with someone to wave at them.]
Rollie Williams: Jeep wave.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) We won’t always agree on which way to go.]
Doug: We see two paths going in different directions.
Sarah: One’s electric.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) But our differences can be our strength.]
Nicole Conlan: One’s a plug-in hybrid.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) So choose, but choose wisely. Choose what makes you happy.]
Sarah: And that does show him unplugging his car before he starts.
Doug: Choose wisely.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Harrison Ford) … make me happy. This Jeep makes me happy. Even though my name is Ford. That’s my owner’s manual. Get out there. Write your own.]
Doug: Little nod to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Choose wisely. I thought that had to be deliberate, right?
Rollie Williams: Oh, that’s nice.
Doug: That had to be deliberate. You don’t just put that in there. What’d you guys think?
Nicole Conlan: I have a lot of thoughts about this ad.
Rollie Williams: Me, too.
Nicole Conlan: First of all, I think, like, this is the most traditional Super Bowl style. Like, we love America and freedom and the troops.
Rollie Williams: Or not freedom. Or maybe freedom. How are we gonna sell these Jeeps?
Nicole Conlan: It is interesting. They clearly know that their customer base is guys who go off roading and maybe wear MAGA hats, but they know that they need to move these plug-in hybrids. And so they need to use this commercial to be like, “You’re not any less of a man if you plug your car in.” I have to say as a car hater, obviously I can’t endorse any car ad.
Doug: What if they gave you $40 million?
Nicole Conlan: Then I’m endorsing every car. Go buy a Hummer. If you give me $40 million, I will advertise whatever you want. But as a climate advocate who thinks we need to be moving as many people to plug-in options as possible, I mean, I don’t think the Jeep hybrid is a particularly good car, but if that’s the car we’re advertising, I think this is probably the way to do it because I think there’s a lot of people out there who are just never gonna get on board with, like, an all-electric car. And getting them into a plug-in Jeep is probably advantageous.
Rollie Williams: Yeah. My take on this ad is that it felt so limp wristed and, like, “Hey guys, guys, guys! Everyone’s fighting. I know we’re all fighting, but one thing we can all agree on is that everybody needs cars right now.”
Sarah: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: And it just felt like, “I don’t care if you’re Democrat, Republican, or even liberal, you know? Like, everyone gets a car!” And it just felt so—it just felt so pander-y to all sides-ey. And also, my dad worked at Boy Scout camp with Harrison Ford.
Nicole Conlan: Really?
Rollie Williams: That’s not technically related, but I think it’s important to tell people.
Doug: You gotta get that in there.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, yeah. He went by Harry Ford back then.
Doug: This ad reminded me—do you guys remember the “Middle” ad with Bruce Springsteen from 2021? It was also a Jeep ad.
Nicole Conlan: Yes.
Doug: And so, you know, that’s coming just off the heels of a very contentious election.
Sarah: Didn’t they use some of the same World War II footage?
Doug: I think they also showed World War II footage.
Nicole Conlan: I mean, look, if you got cool footage of your cars falling out of airplanes in the only war that we …
Rollie Williams: Yeah, the only war that we definitely were the heroes in. Yeah, for sure.
Doug: So it reminded me of that of Bruce basically saying, like, there’s a spot in America where, like, yeah, you might be from, like, the coast and an elite, you might be a red state farmer, but we can meet here in the middle and we can all agree, like you said, we need cars. And it’s that same gravelly voice, like a rugged hero of pop culture that we all trust and love. Yeah, it was really—but pandering at the same time.
Sarah: But, like, to me, it also was this—I had this weird poignant feeling of—that watching that ad with this old man, Harrison Ford, that used to be a young, hot man who …
Nicole Conlan: Still hot.
Sarah: Still hot, but …
Doug: Shrinking. He’s great in Shrinking.
Sarah: But he used to symbolize something in a different America, the America that I was a young person in. And there was something, to me, very poignant and sad about this old guy saying, like, “No, we can all get along,” you know, in February, 2025. No, we can’t, actually. And that was a really cool 20th century idea that, like, has been proven wrong over the last two decades. And we can’t actually all get along. And I’m sorry Gramps, but that America is gone. And that is how it made me feel. It just made me actually feel weirdly as someone who is not usually the customer for, like, the American flag on the side of the barn and the fields of wheat and the, you know, all of that and Bruce Springsteen, but I was like, “God, that was kind of a lot better than what we have now.” And that—and it made me sad for that.
Nicole Conlan: I do think it was a more effective message of unity than that Snoop Dogg–Tom Brady commercial.
Sarah: Oh my God!
Nicole Conlan: We have to talk about that shit.
Rollie Williams: It’s the little cousin of this ad.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah, that is just like, sort of a less effective—like, we can—like, you can always wave at people you don’t like. Whereas, like, Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg, maybe not in the same room at the same time, based on the way it was shot, like, shouting at each other.
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Snoop Dogg) I hate you because we from different neighborhoods.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Tom Brady) I hate you because you look different.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Snoop Dogg) I hate you because I don’t understand you.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Tom Brady) I hate you because people I know hate you.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Snoop Dogg) I hate you because I think you hate me.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Tom Brady) ‘Cause I need someone to blame.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Snoop Dogg) ‘Cause you talk different.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Tom Brady) Because you act different.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Snoop Dogg) Man, I hate that things are so bad that we have to do a commercial about it.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP: (Tom Brady) Me, too.]
Nicole Conlan: And then at the end, “Fight antisemitism,” which is not what I thought the commercial was gonna be about.
Sarah: Yeah. And I think that there was a Super Bowl maybe two years ago or whenever it was, when Snoop Dogg was part of the halftime show. And I was very fond in my remarks about him, and I was like, “Oh, Snoop Dogg. He’s like, America’s high dad.” And, you know, and like, that’s so cool that we have a high dad that we love.
Nicole Conlan: We still got Willie Nelson.
Sarah: Yeah, right. But, like, after him performing the inauguration, seeing him do this ad with Tom Brady, like, no, I’m sorry, Snoop, it’s over between us.
Doug: I want to get back to the thing about this ad. No, we can’t all get along, right? Like, that seems to be where we are right now. We just have to defeat these people. And it seems kind of funny to me that, like, when you share one of the top-shared memes about how we defeat the other side right now is Indiana Jones punching a Nazi on top of a tank. That’s how we do it.
Rollie Williams: With Harrison Ford?
Nicole Conlan: With footage from World War II of us defeating the Nazis.
Rollie Williams: Yeah. You didn’t get along with those Nazis. You didn’t wave at the Nazis.
Doug: Can we just, like, share the Ark? You get it, like, every other weekend?
Sarah: [laughs]
Doug: You know? Just like, I won’t open it. You guys can do whatever you want.
Rollie Williams: There was also, like—Harrison Ford was like, “Man, I bet we all wish life came with an instruction manual. Then my life would have been a success. Bummer!” Like, in this massive farmhouse. Ugh!
Doug: With his two Jeeps parked outside.
Rollie Williams: Yeah.
Doug: By the way, the Jeep that he is driving, it’s a 2024 Jeep Wrangler four-door Rubicon 4xe. Starting MSRP of $72,000. So freedom isn’t free.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: Most people are not driving through glaciers and the desert or whatever.
Nicole Conlan: The Rubicon.
Doug: Right. Through the Rubicon. We’ve passed the Rubicon in many ways. But most people are not driving that way, even if they are Harrison Ford.
Nicole Conlan: This is a classic SUV marketing move. Like, they’ve done this. If you read High and Mighty, which I had to read. It was, like, a very specific marketing tactic used for SUVs, specifically to market to people who are like, “You have a boring corporate job, but you’re still wild and free. You go camping on the weekends, you go off-roading.” And it’s like, those people never actually do. [laughs] Keep it in your Rubicon. And this is part of that proud legacy of lying to people about what they’re actually gonna use their car for.
Sarah: Speaking of pride, there is a line in this ad which is just so true. “Pride is a terrible driver.” And that, I thought, was a very interesting line to make it through. “Pride is a terrible driver.” That’s followed immediately by, “Freedom is the roar of one man’s engine.”
Doug: Or the silence of another’s.
Sarah: Or the silence of another’s. But it’s—so the message there is a little bit unclear to me. [laughs] Like, pride is a terrible driver—which is actually true. But then freedom is the roar of one man’s engine or the silence of another. It’s like you’re—I mean, they’re just trying to give you everything all at once.
Nicole Conlan: Yes. I mean, I really do think they are giving people permission to buy an electric car and still be a tough guy. Which, I mean, we saw in the last election, like, there were a lot of ads and a lot of, like, campaign promises to be, like, “We have to give Republicans permission to vote for a Democrat.” And that didn’t work! So what I suspect is happening, unless something has changed since I last looked it up. Jeep is the—what, they’re owned by American …
Doug: Stellantis.
Nicole Conlan: Stellantis. Okay. So I think of the big four automakers, I think Jeep is the poorest-performing one. And I think they’ve maybe maxed out their market share with tough guys. And I think, like, the bigger trucks, your Rams and your what have you, are probably taking that over. And so they’re like, “We need to sort of expand into Brooklyn soy boy libs, we can’t lose our market base of hunting guys.”
Doug: Rollie and I are going two—two ways on a Jeep Rubicon.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs]
Rollie Williams: Yeah. Technically four ways, if our girlfriends let us.
Doug: Yeah. Well, we’ll pick up some soy milk and almond milk on our way home and put it in the back.
Nicole Conlan: I suspect they are trying to expand that market, and they just don’t want to, like, change their image with other people. I could be wrong. This is all, like, pure conjecture, but that’s my guess.
Doug: I think that’s a good theory. I think that’s a very good theory. I mean, I think there’s an interesting thing in this ad which is like, it is sort of arguing for a kind of freedom that the left or liberals argue, which is basically like, look, we’re not saying you have to do any of this stuff. You don’t have to go buy an electric car or ride a bicycle or be trans or do any of this stuff.
Nicole Conlan: I am saying you do have to do that.
Doug: Yes, that’s actually on—that’s our position on the left. But, like, just let other people do that, and if you see them crossing the street, you know. when you’re going in the other direction, like, a polite little nod is all we’re asking.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah. I want the same freedom on foot that you have in your car.
Rollie Williams: Right. Yes.
Doug: Can we extend—exactly—the polite Jeep wave to society?
Nicole Conlan: Only not in a Jeep.
Sarah: Yeah. But also the thing that I rant about all the time, which is being able to live in a place where you can choose to walk is a luxury item in this country now. Like, it is not—we do not have the freedom to make these choices because economically most people cannot afford to live in a neighborhood like mine where I can walk out the door and 10 steps away there is a produce stand that sells …
Doug: That’s because you took that $40 million.
Sarah: It’s true. That’s the only thing that enables me to use my legs to walk around. I mean, like, you know, it’s become so dire, and yeah, I would love—that’s what I always say to people. You know, if I lived in Europe, I would have hundreds of cities that I could choose from to live in where I could have that lifestyle. Here, there’s one and it’s the most expensive one. Like, it’s just—and the tiny neighborhoods. But the tiny neighborhoods in other cities where you can find that are the most expensive neighborhoods in those cities. It’s just walkability is a luxury good. Making—having the freedom to make that choice to neither have a plug-in nor to have a gas-powered vehicle, I guess that choice is just—that’s just incomprehensible. It’s outside of the norms too far.
Rollie Williams: I totally, totally agree. And there was also—just to dovetail that there was that Donald Glover “This is America” GLP inhibitor.
Nicole Conlan: God, what weird ad!
Rollie Williams: What a weird ad.
Nicole Conlan: I couldn’t tell until the very end whether it was—like, I thought it was a, like, don’t use semaglutide.
Rollie Williams: Me, too.
Nicole Conlan: Until it got to the point where it was him. And it was like, “All the other semaglutides are trying to take advantage of you, but not us.”
Rollie Williams: “We’re cool. Yeah. The way it was, like, kind of prefaced was the whole system is rigged against you. And I was like, yes! We’re in an obesogenic environment where, like, walking is basically impossible, so nobody does it, so nobody’s moving around. And, like, I know it’s not the only factor, but it’s like it seems like a pretty important factor. Then they’re like, “The system is being bad to you. Here’s our drugs. They’re the same drugs, but they’re a little cheaper.” And it’s Hims and Hers and Donald Glover’s song.
Nicole Conlan: “We’re saving you money by not getting FDA approval.”
Rollie Williams: [laughs] Yeah.
Sarah: Donald Glover is urging you to use a compounding pharmacy.
Doug: Yeah. That ad gave me total whiplash. Cause I was like, “Holy shit. Like, did Bernie Sanders buy an ad on the Super Bowl?” And then suddenly nope, just another pharmaceutical company.
Sarah: Right. Because also, there were all these rumors that there were gonna be these ads that …
Doug: From Elon Musk.
Sarah: From Elon Musk about USAID.
Doug: Right. Speaking of $40 million, it was rumored that he was spending $40 million of his own money to run these ads explaining why USAID was a huge hotbed of fraud, waste and abuse as they’re saying these days.
Rollie Williams: One might say a ball of worms.
Sarah: [laughs]
Doug: A ball of worms. Which has more worms inside the ball.
Nicole Conlan: Yes. It’s a metaphor.
Sarah: As much as I’ve hated the car ads over the years and enjoyed ridiculing them, and sort of the same feeling I have about that Harrison Ford ad, like, I didn’t realize that having those car ads, maybe—maybe that was a better world somehow. Like, you know, now it’s just—it’s gone beyond. It’s gone beyond the cars being bad. I actually don’t even have a point. But I mean …
Nicole Conlan: There’s something—like, at least the car is a product.
Sarah: Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: Whereas, like, now it’s commercials for, like, AI. And, like, even, like, Rocket Mortgage is, like, a very bummer of a concept. And there weren’t any crypto commercials this year because I think we finally realized as a society, like, we shouldn’t be advertising the concept of money.
Sarah: Right, right, right.
Nicole Conlan: Otherwise, that’s not, like, maybe how this product should function. But cars? There’s a use case for cars.
Sarah: Yes, exactly.
Nicole Conlan: I struggle to think of almost any use case for AI.
Doug: Yeah. It just feels like—you know, I think we’ve said this a couple of times and maybe we’re finally here. We’ve said this on other episodes that, like, the Super Bowl ads really speak to me as, like, end of empire sort of stuff.
Nicole Conlan: Yeah.
Doug: And the fact that we’re not advertising products, as you’re saying, Nicole, and just shit nobody wants and that isn’t helpful. Like, we now have this service that can tell you if it’s going to rain by your restaurant. Like, oh, thanks. I can’t just hold my hand outside a window or look at the weather report on the news.
Rollie Williams: Yeah, the thing we’ve had for fucking ever?
Nicole Conlan: Well, but we’re not gonna have …
Sarah: We’re not gonna have—they’re defunding NOAA. No, I was gonna say we won’t have the weather report anymore.
Nicole Conlan: Pretty soon all we’re gonna have is AI telling us if it’s rain because there’s not gonna be a weather service anymore.
Rollie Williams: Damn.
Doug: So that’s kind of like the big question I want to end on, which is: If cars are so central to American life, why are they becoming less and less a part of what is probably, as the Super Bowl is, the only remaining shared experience in American life?
Rollie Williams: I mean, elections.
Doug: But those are rigged. Those are faked.
Sarah: [laughs]
Nicole Conlan: I mean, I think it’s just hegemony now. Cars just exist for the same reason that you don’t have to advertise a road. Cars are like, well, you gotta use our product. And I think that’s why you’re really only seeing electric car commercials or plug-in hybrid commercials, because those are the ones that you still gotta, like, get the word out about. But I think, like, I just don’t know that Ford needs to spend its money on a Super Bowl commercial. They’re still, like, putting ads out, but they got that market cornered. I will say, I think the thing that you mentioned at the top about car companies also not knowing which—which way the wind is blowing with regards to, like, the Trump administration and tariffs …
Rollie Williams: Just ask AI.
Nicole Conlan: [laughs] Why didn’t they ask ChatGPT what’s going to happen with tariffs? I do suspect that’s part of it. I think as much as I have lofty ideals about how cars are simply a part of our culture now, I think it’s also like, well, Ford doesn’t want to seem like they’re going all in on electric cars if next year they’re gonna be back to gas because they’re gonna have to do a lot of backtracking to be like, “We’re not just the electric car company.” So I think that’s …
Doug: They’re honestly probably reaching—and you guys are, you know, on YouTube and, you know, I love watching you guys, watching Climate Town on YouTube. They’re probably just reaching out to a lot of, like, truck influencers and YouTube channels and getting more bang for their buck that way.
Rollie Williams: And I just want to say for $40 million, I will pivot to becoming a truck influencer. I already pivoted once. I was a billiard influencer, and then George Soros gave me $39 million to be a climate influencer. And for $40, I will be a truck influencer.
Sarah: The bidding is open.
Doug: That is it for this episode of The War on Cars. Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan, thank you so much for joining us. I’m big fans of both of you guys, so it was a real thrill to have you.
Nicole Conlan: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. This was a lot of fun.
Rollie Williams: And right back at you, big fans of The War on Cars. I am a proud new owner of a War on Cars knit cap.
Doug: You weren’t supposed to say that in front of Nicole. We didn’t have one for her. I’ll send you one.
Nicole Conlan: It’s just because of my tiny head.
Rollie Williams: That’s true. Yeah.
Nicole Conlan: You have to knit me a smaller one.
Rollie Williams: They gave you one and it just slipped over like an executioner’s helmet.
Nicole Conlan: The listeners have no way of knowing this, but I had to ask for a different pair of headphones when we started the podcast because my head is a little bit small. [laughs]
Doug: Well, now they know.
Nicole Conlan: Yes.
Sarah: We will put links in the show notes to everything to do with Rollie and Nicole.
Doug: Climate Town, Climate Denier’s Playbook.
Sarah: Billiards.
Doug: All worth your time.
Rollie Williams: Your average pool player.
Sarah: Yeah, we’ll have it all.
Doug: Before we close it out, here’s a thought experiment. We want your feedback. What would an advertisement on the Super Bowl look like if it was about progressive transportation, or really any progressive issue that we want to advance? Like, the right is really good at red, white and blue, patriotism, advancing their side. We need to be just as good. So reply to us on social media. Let us know what you think. What would an ad look like if it was for the stuff that we believe in? And I guess another question is: How would we pay for it? So let us know. We are @TheWaronCars on just about every social media platform you can think of. Send us your thoughts.
Sarah: Yeah, I’m interested to see, because I think it is time to take control of our own destinies as much as we can. The War on Cars is supported in part by the Helen and William Mazer Foundation and by listeners like you.
Doug: You can go to Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod and sign up today for exclusive access to bonus content, ad-free versions of regular episodes, pre-sale tickets for live shows, stickers and more.
Sarah: A big thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon, including our top contributors: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Mark Hedlund, and Virginia Baker.
Doug: We also want to thank Cleverhood. You can receive 15 percent off now through the end of February on the best rain gear for cycling and walking. Just go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars and enter code DESIGNEDWITHLOVE at checkout. This episode was edited by me. It was recorded by Josh Wilcox at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell Gragg. I’m Doug Gordon.
Sarah: I’m Sarah Goodyear, and this is The War on Cars.
[ADVERTISEMENT: (parody) Do you remember your first bicycle? You know, the one with the streamers, training wheels and banana seat. But it wasn’t just a bike. It was your ticket to freedom. Hanging out with pals, chasing the ice cream truck down the block. America, you loved that bike. Now you’re grown up, you drive a car, you’ve got monthly payments, insurance, kids whining in the backseat. You’re stuck in traffic, watching as your tank approaches empty.]
[ADVERTISEMENT: (parody) Didn’t you just fill up last week? And that transmission repair is gonna break the bank. It’s time to fall in love again. Travel on your own power. Go where you want, when you want. Save money, be happy, be free. America, it’s just like riding a bike.]