The Spokesmen 151

This isn’t the usual show, it’s a Spokesmen Special, with three academics as guests. Host: Carlton Reid.

PETER NORTON is associate professor of history at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. This reveals how, in the 1920s and 1930s, the American motor lobby invented and popularized the term “jaywalking” in order to reframe what streets were for (and they were no longer for pedestrians and cyclists.  

MELODY HOFFMAN of Minneapolis describes herself on her blog as an “urban bicycle scholar, critical feminist, community engagement professor.” Her book Bike Lanes are White Lanes discusses how seemingly benign cycle infrastructure can ring alarm bells with some black communities, why cycle advocacy can sometimes shout “white privilege”, and how “invisible riders” get neither recognition nor cycle facilities.  

CHRIS OLIVER is a professor of medicine and tweets as @CyclingSurgeon. He is a consultant orthopaedic trauma surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and also advises the Scottish government on active travel. Once morbidly obese he lost 168lbs (76 kilos) and took up cycling to keep fit. He has ridden Lands End to John o’Groats, and with his daughter, he has also ridden coast to coast across America. 

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The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast is sponsored by Jenson USA.