0:00

There's a big difference between talking and

0:02

reporting, especially right now, with a fire

0:04

hose worth of news coming your way.

0:06

You know what helps? Having reporters in

0:08

the field. I'm Brad Milkey from ABC

0:11

News, and that's what we've got on

0:13

ABC's daily podcast, Start Here.

0:15

Every morning, Start Here takes you across

0:17

the country and around the world for

0:19

a quick, smart look at the stories

0:21

that matter. It's fast, it's straightforward, and

0:23

sometimes, gasp, news can even be fun.

0:25

So let's meet up tomorrow morning. Listen

0:27

to Start Here wherever you get your

0:29

podcasts. Jason

0:37

Kebler has a big time job these days as

0:39

the founder of the news site 404 Media.

0:43

But in his heart, he's a

0:45

reporter. He digs into

0:47

stories. He describes himself in

0:49

his bio as someone who loves Freedom

0:52

of Information Act requests and

0:54

surfing. I do. I do

0:56

love those things. What have you been

0:58

foying recently? So I've been

1:01

foying a lot about

1:03

pickleball. Pickleball?

1:07

Yeah, the fights that it's been causing all

1:09

over the country. What are

1:12

you hearing? Like how many foyas are

1:14

we talking about here? For

1:17

pickleball, I filed 25. 25

1:19

different cities. 25 different

1:22

cities and towns. At

1:29

this point, you might have a few

1:31

questions. First off, why

1:33

pickleball? The answer to that

1:35

has to do with this

1:38

growing sports aggressive lobbyists who

1:40

are tying local governments up in knots. When

1:43

he started his research, honestly, Jason did not

1:45

know too much about that. He just

1:48

knew it was happening down the block. Yes,

1:51

so I live near a paddle

1:53

tennis court, which I

1:56

did not know what paddle tennis was, but

1:58

it's basically tennis, but on a small, court

2:01

and I was walking by these paddle

2:03

tennis courts and I saw this big

2:05

sign that was like pickleballers go home

2:07

or pickleballers not welcome here and I

2:10

was like what like what is going on

2:12

like I thought that people

2:14

were playing pickleball here all the time but

2:18

what happened was that pickleball

2:20

players were like sneaking

2:22

onto the courts when they

2:25

were open and they were playing pickleball

2:27

when this was supposed

2:30

to be a court for paddle tennis

2:32

only and when I saw that

2:34

sign I was like oh I bet these people I bet

2:36

there's like some I always

2:38

think how real life interacts with the government

2:41

and I'm like I bet these people are complaining

2:43

to the government about the pickleball people. It

2:46

turns out these people were complaining a lot

2:49

and not just in Jason's neighborhood the

2:52

city of Dallas told him it had

2:54

more than a hundred thousand emails mentioning

2:56

the word pickleball they couldn't even

2:58

begin to forward them all. The city of

3:00

Fort Lauderdale said it would need $10,000 to

3:02

produce all of its pickleball

3:05

discourse. I think one

3:07

you said one of the emails was titled

3:09

pickleball drama. Yeah this was at the end of like a

3:12

14 email chain

3:14

between a local resident

3:16

and the parks department was like

3:18

a co-worker venting to another co-worker

3:20

and forwarding the entire email chain

3:22

and just being like FYI

3:25

pickleball drama like don't

3:28

know what to do with this. These emails

3:30

are about who can take up public

3:32

space and whether pickleballers are taking

3:34

up too much of it and if

3:36

you're thinking who cares? Jason

3:39

says the fight over who can take up space

3:41

in this country it's kind of

3:43

at the heart of the whole American project. I've

3:48

filed a lot of what

3:50

I would say started

3:52

as frivolous freedom of

3:55

information act requests in my career

3:57

and it's just like I think

3:59

that And in sort of exploring the

4:01

absurd, we can learn more about how

4:04

government works and you can take sort

4:06

of like larger lessons

4:08

from it. Pickleball's a

4:10

Trojan horse for you. It is. I

4:13

mean, I really went into this. I was like, I want to see

4:15

completely unhinged emails from

4:18

people. I

4:21

found thousands. Today

4:24

on the show, what Jason's overflowing

4:26

inbox can tell you about how

4:28

the government's working right now and

4:31

who it's working for. And

4:34

pickleball. We've got a lot

4:36

to say about pickleball. I'm

4:38

Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick

4:41

around. This

4:54

podcast is brought to you by Progressive

4:56

Insurance. Whether you're driving,

4:58

cooking or doing laundry, Progressive

5:00

knows the podcasts you listen to go

5:03

best when they're bundled with another activity.

5:05

Much like how their progressive home and auto

5:08

policies go best when they're bundled. Having

5:12

these two policies together makes taking care of your

5:14

insurance easier. And it could help you save

5:16

too. Customers who save by

5:18

switching their home and car insurance to Progressive save

5:21

nearly $800 on average. That's

5:24

a whole lot of savings and protection for

5:26

your favorite podcast listening activities, like

5:28

going on a road trip, cooking dinner, or

5:30

even hitting the home gym. Yep,

5:33

your home and your car are even

5:35

easier to protect when you bundle your

5:37

insurance together. Find your perfect

5:39

combo. Get a home and

5:41

car insurance quote at progressive.com today. Progressive

5:44

casualty insurance company and affiliates. National

5:48

average 12 month savings of $793

5:50

by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive

5:52

between June 2021 and May 2022. Potential

5:56

savings will vary. This

6:01

episode is brought to you by Planet Life. Labor

6:04

strikes, climate change, crappy office

6:06

printer. What do they all have in

6:08

common? Come on, tell them about the

6:11

money. Economics is everywhere and

6:13

everything, fueling our lives, even where

6:15

we release the money. If

6:17

you're a fan of Onex and are curious to learn

6:19

something new and exciting about economics every

6:22

week, check out the Planet Life podcast. Remember,

6:25

Planet Life is a different kind of world

6:28

where the complex economy actually makes sense. The

6:31

human stories keep the heat up and scary. Flisters

6:33

can learn, laugh, and be entertained. It's

6:36

econ. It is down to earth.

6:38

Planet Money answers questions like, will AI take

6:41

over our jobs? Is it

6:43

not good just finance and marketing? Why

6:45

are Christmas trees so expensive? The

6:48

Planet Money team lives to tell a good story in about 30

6:51

minutes. It's econ. For

6:53

the rest of us. Tune into

6:55

Planet Money every week for entertaining stories and insights about

6:57

how money shapes our world. Stories

7:00

that you cannot find anywhere else. Listen now to Planet

7:02

Money from MDR. Remember, you can get

7:04

your podcast. Alright,

7:14

I'm going to assume you know about Pickleball by now. But

7:17

on the off chance you do not, Jason

7:19

Kebler says, just imagine a

7:21

Diet Coke version of tennis. It's

7:24

slower and smaller, uses paddles

7:26

instead of rackets. It's honestly

7:28

like a mix between ping pong

7:31

and tennis, but

7:33

played on a small court. Like

7:35

you're running around, but you don't have to

7:37

run that far. Yeah, one Washington Post columnist,

7:41

a guy who hates Pickleball, said

7:44

that players have to defend an area the size of

7:46

a rug, which, uh, little

7:50

side eye there from the tennis community. Yeah,

7:53

while I was, I don't play tennis or

7:55

Pickleball. I have played, but I

7:57

don't play as a, I'm not a player.

8:00

That's how you avoid bias in a

8:02

story like this. Exactly. Yeah, it's an

8:04

impartial person here. But over Thanksgiving, I

8:06

was about to publish this story and

8:08

I went to a family Thanksgiving and

8:10

I started talking to people who I

8:12

know who played tennis. And

8:14

I was like, do you know about the pickleball

8:16

drama? And every single tennis

8:18

player that I've told this story

8:21

knew exactly what I was talking about immediately.

8:24

And there's this huge rivalry between

8:27

tennis players and pickleball players. And

8:30

the tennis players have this huge

8:32

sense of superiority because they

8:35

see their game as a real sport where you

8:37

have to be physically

8:39

fit. Whereas one of

8:41

the appeals of pickleball is that

8:43

you don't have to run that much. Pickleball

8:46

has been around since 1965, which kind

8:49

of surprised me because I'd only

8:51

heard about it in the last few years. How

8:55

did the sport start, but then also how did

8:57

the surge start? Like what brought it

8:59

on? Why is pickleball everywhere? During

9:01

the pandemic, people were looking for

9:04

things to do outside. And

9:06

I mean, pickleball

9:09

just like really, really surge in

9:11

popularity during that. There's

9:14

a lot of like word

9:16

of mouth and then there's a

9:18

lot of evangelism from pickleball

9:20

players. It's like if you play pickleball,

9:25

you want to get your friends involved in it. You

9:27

need people to play against. You need

9:29

people to play against. It's like my mom recently

9:32

had a surgery, but she's like the second

9:34

that my surgery that I'm recovered, I'm going

9:36

to play pickleball because all the other

9:38

women in the neighborhood are playing pickleball. And

9:40

I do think it's one of those sort

9:42

of like word of mouth phenomenons. And

9:45

communities are spending real money to invest in

9:47

pickleball. Like Washington, D.C. actually just set aside

9:51

three quarters of a million dollars in

9:53

their budget for new courts. Yeah,

9:55

I mean, this is one of the reasons I

9:57

wanted to do the story because There's

10:00

very few pickleball

10:02

exclusive dedicated facilities for

10:05

pickleball only. One

10:08

of the goals of USA Pickleball is to

10:11

have communities build new courts. They're

10:15

pushing all over the country to

10:18

get these courts made at the

10:21

same time when local budgets for

10:23

public space are very low. I

10:25

was very interested in how

10:28

is this going to work because

10:30

it seems like we build

10:32

very few things in the United States

10:34

anymore for the public good. Yet

10:37

there's this really politically

10:39

engaged community

10:42

of pickleball players who

10:44

want new facilities. I wanted to

10:46

see how that would play out. I want

10:48

to get into that, but I have one more question before we do. I

10:52

was a little bit surprised to learn

10:54

about the celebrity allies that pickleball has.

10:58

Tom Brady, LeBron James, Drake, how

11:01

are they involved in this sport and why?

11:04

I don't know how these people

11:06

were initially introduced to the sport

11:08

of pickleball, but you're absolutely right.

11:11

There's these celebrity pickleball

11:14

showdowns where Tony Romo,

11:17

Tom Brady, Gary

11:19

Vaynerchuk, all of these pretty famous

11:21

people play pickleball against each other

11:24

in tournaments in the same

11:26

way that people play celebrity golf tournaments.

11:29

Some of these are televised. I

11:32

don't know if you've watched any of them, but it's

11:34

funny because the tournaments themselves, there's

11:37

not that much sport happening, at

11:39

least in the celebrity ones. It's

11:42

mostly trash talking because

11:44

they have so much downtime

11:46

between points. They

11:49

can yell and play

11:51

at the same time, which I think

11:53

is really funny. Okay, so we've

11:55

talked about pickleball advocates. I

11:58

want to talk about pickleball haters. What

12:01

are the pickleball haters hate

12:04

so much about this sweet little

12:06

sport? I mean, you've laid out a circumstance

12:09

that does seem perfectly engineered

12:11

to pit people against each other, which

12:13

is a push

12:16

to have

12:18

more pickleball resources in

12:20

space that's already being used for other stuff.

12:24

What are the people they're complaining about? Like, what are their

12:27

top complaints? Right. So there's

12:29

there's multiple groups of people who

12:31

hate pickleballers. I would say that

12:33

the original pickleball haters are

12:36

homeowners and homeowner associations

12:39

because they say that the

12:41

noise associated with pickleball, the

12:43

plastic ball hitting the hard

12:45

racket on a small court

12:47

like back and forth all day, they

12:50

say that it is driving them crazy. The

12:54

noise is 15 hours a day, seven days a week,

12:56

just too much. And

12:58

there's been like multiple lawsuits from

13:01

homeowners and homeowners associations

13:04

against specific cities where

13:06

they say that, you know, one,

13:08

they're being driven insane and two, they're worried

13:11

that their property values are going down. People

13:13

get really dramatic about this. Like, there's a New

13:16

York Times article about these lawsuits. Someone

13:18

described it as like having a pistol range in

13:20

your backyard. Then there's the question

13:22

of land use. Like you've talked

13:24

about how tennis enthusiasts basically are

13:28

just not having it from the

13:30

pickleball people. Like they feel like

13:32

their courts have been usurped by

13:34

this sport. Yes. So

13:37

this is actually what I found

13:39

a lot more of when I

13:41

was filing my public records requests

13:43

in Boston, for example, like

13:46

there's these courts called the South Street

13:48

Courts and you could reserve

13:50

them and pickleball players had figured out

13:53

how to book all of

13:55

the slots for months on end. And

13:57

so there were all of these tennis players saying like

13:59

we simply cannot play

14:01

tennis because pickle ballers

14:04

are here at all times. It's

14:06

funny after I published the story I saw this

14:08

tweet and someone said how can you tell whether

14:10

something is a tennis court or a pickleball court

14:13

and the joke is a pickleball

14:15

court has people on it. The

14:19

idea is that like they're sort

14:21

of just like spreading throughout these

14:23

cities taking up any blacktop, any

14:25

concrete area, basketball court,

14:27

tennis court, roller hockey court.

14:30

Pickleball, pickleball, pickleball. Yeah

14:32

and the people who use these things

14:34

to play basketball or tennis or roller

14:36

hockey are very upset because they were

14:38

used to playing basketball after school and

14:40

now they can't. Those

14:43

people who figured out how to book all the courts,

14:46

is that because they were especially

14:48

organized or smart? I mean

14:50

I assume that the tennis people could also just

14:52

go in and be like I'm booking this until

14:55

the end of time. Yes so

14:57

I'm gonna generalize here and stereotype

15:01

but pickleball players are far

15:03

more organized than other players

15:05

of other sports based

15:08

on thousands of

15:10

emails that I've read. So

15:13

there are these people in city

15:16

after city who are these

15:18

quote unquote pickleball ambassadors and

15:20

they are given a toolkit

15:22

from this group called USA

15:25

Pickleball about how to

15:27

talk to local government to

15:29

gain access to more public

15:31

spaces and USA

15:33

Pickleball strategy is here's

15:36

what you should say to city council or

15:38

the parks department or your local politician to

15:41

convince them to build new pickleball

15:43

courts. But because

15:46

of this NIMBY aspect where

15:49

homeowners don't want pickleball in their

15:51

backyard it's really hard to build

15:53

new pickleball courts in certain places

15:56

and so what is happening is pickleball

15:58

players have to use already

16:01

existing public infrastructure. So this means

16:03

basketball courts, hockey courts, tennis

16:07

courts, of course. And

16:09

if there's a permitting system, it's like they

16:12

are organized and they make sure how to

16:14

like book out all of the permits. If

16:16

there's not a permitting system, I saw emails

16:18

where it's like, I will bring

16:21

my net for crack of dawn

16:23

to the tennis court and set up

16:26

my pickleball net, and then we will

16:28

play in shifts all day so

16:31

that we keep the court and

16:34

the tennis players can't get on

16:36

here. That's crazy. And

16:38

you compare that, you sort of

16:40

compare the like USA pickleball toolkit

16:43

and these ambassador like

16:45

pickleball, organized pickleball players

16:48

with the

16:50

teenager playing pick up basketball after

16:52

school. Like he doesn't know how

16:54

to lobby the government for a

16:57

permit or whatever. Well, he's not expecting

16:59

to have to. He's played at that basketball court

17:01

for years. Exactly, exactly.

17:04

And I saw a lot of

17:06

emails from parents of teenagers who were like,

17:08

my kid came home crying because he couldn't

17:11

play basketball and he was expecting to.

17:15

There was a lot of like, please fix

17:17

this immediately emails. After

17:22

the break, one pickleball

17:24

ambassador versus the city of

17:26

New York. Today,

17:40

one in three women are blocked from

17:42

getting abortion care in their home state. Over

17:45

the past year, lawmakers in 22

17:47

states and counting have stripped reproductive

17:49

freedom from nearly 21 million women,

17:53

plus more trans and non-binary people.

17:56

Across the country, politicians are pushing

17:58

to control bodies. lives, and

18:01

futures. There is no end in

18:03

sight. They want a nationwide ban

18:05

on abortion and they're also attacking

18:07

birth control, sex education, care

18:09

for trans people, and more of

18:11

our human rights. Planned Parenthood

18:14

is fighting to make sure everyone

18:16

can get the care that they

18:18

need. They'll never back down. They'll

18:20

never stop fighting because everyone deserves

18:22

sexual and reproductive health care no matter

18:24

what. You can join the movement and

18:26

donate today. Visit

18:29

Planned parenthood.org/future.

18:32

This episode is brought to you by SAP. First

18:35

the bad news. SAP Business AI

18:37

will not help you generate cubist

18:39

versions of your family's holiday photos,

18:42

but it will help you understand which supplier

18:44

is best to help you roll out your

18:46

plant-based packaging in Southeast Asia, or identify

18:49

the training your junior project manager needs to

18:51

rise up the ranks, or

18:53

automate repetitive tasks while you focus

18:55

on big innovations. So

18:57

you can be ready for the

19:00

next opportunity. Revolutionary technology, real-world results.

19:03

This is SAP Business AI. This

19:07

podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

19:10

Hey listeners, whether you love true crime

19:12

or comedies, celebrity interviews, news, or even

19:14

motivational speakers, you call the shots

19:16

on what's in your podcast queue, right? And

19:19

guess what? Now you can call the shots on

19:21

your auto insurance too. Enter the

19:23

name your price tool from Progressive. The

19:25

name your price tool puts you in charge of your

19:27

auto insurance by working just the way

19:29

it seems. You tell Progressive how much you

19:32

want to pay for car insurance, then they'll

19:34

show you a variety of coverages that fit

19:36

within your budget, giving you options. Now

19:38

that's something you'll want to press play on. It's

19:41

easy to start a quote and you'll be able to

19:43

choose the best option for you, fast. It's

19:45

just one of the many ways you can save with

19:47

Progressive Insurance. Quote today at

19:49

progressive.com to try the name your price

19:52

tool for yourself and join the over

19:54

29 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive,

19:57

casualty insurance company and affiliates. coverage

20:00

match limited by state law. Okay,

20:05

can we break down like one specific pickleball

20:07

war and what you learned from it? I'm

20:10

wondering if it makes sense to start in New York City just because

20:12

I know people were

20:14

especially organized there. Like, what

20:16

did you learn about how the

20:19

fights went down in New York? So

20:22

there was one specific pickleball

20:25

ambassador in New York

20:27

City who basically,

20:31

I mean, this is what her

20:33

job, it's a volunteer job, but this is what

20:35

her job was. She

20:37

would walk around town and

20:40

look for sort of any uninhabited

20:43

concrete space, take

20:45

photos of that space, and then email

20:47

the parks department and say, you could

20:49

put pickleball court here, like, here's a

20:51

pickleball, it could go here, it could

20:53

go here, it could go there, it

20:55

could be there, and it

20:57

was just like picture after picture after

21:00

picture of just like random stretches of

21:02

concrete. And this person like really

21:04

cared about pickleball, like they're a player, like

21:06

who, what, what's happening here? This

21:10

person was a USA pickleball

21:12

ambassador, so a pickleball

21:14

superfan. That's not an official term,

21:16

this person is not like going to

21:19

the UN. It's an official

21:21

term in that USA pickleball

21:23

calls them ambassadors. It has

21:25

a pickleball ambassador program, but

21:28

no, they're not foreign dignitaries.

21:32

But they, it is an official title from the USA

21:35

pickleball organization, and if you are

21:37

a USA pickleball ambassador, you get

21:39

a USA pickleball email address. So

21:42

it's like you are quasi officially a member

21:47

of this, of

21:49

the national governing body for the

21:51

sport of pickleball, is what they call

21:53

it. So this woman who I'm

21:55

not going to name her because she's just a

21:58

citizen, but She

22:00

is a pickleball instructor in New

22:02

York City. So she

22:05

wanted to find places that she could both

22:07

play pickleball and then teach students. It was

22:10

her job. So she had a financial interest.

22:13

She did have a financial interest, yes. So

22:16

she put together a PowerPoint presentation that

22:21

was just called Pickleball. And

22:23

it had a slide that

22:25

was like history of pickleball,

22:27

benefits of pickleball, pickleball court

22:29

specs, stuff like this. And

22:33

she had photoshopped a

22:36

giant pickleball court on top

22:38

of an existing basketball court

22:41

with dimensions on it. It looked

22:43

like an architectural drawing, but it also looked

22:45

like it was done in MS Paint. Get

22:48

some clip art in there.

22:51

It was clip art. It really was. So

22:55

she sent this

22:57

to the Parks Department, was emailing the

23:00

Parks Department pretty regularly. And

23:03

the Parks Department was responding and

23:05

saying, we're going to try to

23:07

solve this for you. You're a constituent.

23:09

This seems like a good thing. We're going

23:11

to try to find place for you to play.

23:15

And eventually, they

23:17

were given space to

23:19

play that was next to a

23:21

black top and

23:23

next to a basketball court.

23:26

And if anyone has ever played any sport

23:28

in New York City, there's

23:31

a lot of stuff going on, usually.

23:33

Yeah, you don't have a lot of elbow room. Yeah,

23:36

and so there's this one email

23:38

where the Parks Department

23:40

is like, hey, we got

23:43

a complaint that you took up more space

23:45

than you were allotted. You

23:47

were supposed to only play in this one section,

23:49

but you were also playing in this other section

23:52

where you shouldn't. Please stop doing

23:54

that. And this woman

23:56

responded and said, well, there

23:58

was a kickball game happening. and there

24:00

was a dog with no leash on, and

24:02

there was a woman running with a stroller

24:05

and a kickball like flew past my head,

24:07

and there was a basketball player who was

24:10

really rude to us, and I cannot believe

24:12

that you are saying

24:15

that we're the problem, like we're not the

24:17

problem. And then

24:20

there was like a back and forth between

24:23

her and this parks recreation employee, and

24:25

eventually she says, can I have your

24:27

phone number to talk about this? Oof,

24:30

elevating. The next email from that

24:32

guy was like, you

24:35

gave my phone number to everyone who plays

24:37

pickleball, my office is getting

24:39

flooded with calls, and he

24:42

said that the

24:44

pickleball woman told them that

24:47

they were gonna take away the pickleball court, and

24:50

he was like, I didn't say that, it was inappropriate

24:52

for you to say that, I've tried

24:54

to help you, and

24:57

now you're flooding my office with

24:59

angry calls. This is

25:01

like aggressive advocacy. One

25:03

thought I had when I was reading your

25:06

reporting about this ambassadors program, was

25:08

that it sounds

25:10

like a lot of work, you would

25:12

need to have time to be a

25:14

pickleball ambassador, and you'd

25:16

also know how to, you'd also wanna know

25:18

how to pull the levers of power in

25:20

government. Yeah, so I'm gonna

25:23

paint with a broad brush again, but this

25:25

is again, based on

25:27

reading real emails

25:29

from real people all over the country.

25:33

It's like many of the pickleball

25:35

ambassadors are retired. Many

25:38

of them are former lawyers,

25:41

or they're people who were politically

25:43

involved in some way, they

25:46

have time on their hands, and

25:48

they also, it's just like generally

25:51

true that older people are more politically

25:54

involved, they go to more city council

25:56

meetings, they have more time to do

25:58

this sort of thing, And so it

26:01

is the case

26:03

that the Pickleball lobby is so

26:05

organized in part because it has

26:08

like experienced people working

26:11

on this issue. One

26:13

thing that I found really interesting is

26:16

that a lot of the Nimbies who

26:18

are arguing against Pickleball are also older

26:21

people. So

26:23

boomers are eating their own? They

26:25

are, they are. You know,

26:28

you're reporting on all this was just really

26:30

fantastic, a great read, and the

26:33

details were amazing. But I'm

26:35

sort of curious to you what

26:37

you came away with from it. Because

26:40

you're not a Pickleball player. Why

26:43

does it matter, these fights over public

26:46

spaces? Yeah, so

26:49

I don't know if this is too lofty, but this

26:51

is honestly what I think. One,

26:56

I think public spaces and recreation are

26:58

very important. I think that Pickleball players

27:00

should be allowed to play Pickleball and

27:02

I think that tennis players should

27:05

be allowed to play tennis. And I think

27:07

that we should have enough public space for

27:09

people to play whatever

27:11

sport they want. Like I don't

27:13

have anything against Pickleball. But I

27:15

do think that if you extrapolate

27:17

this out, there are documents

27:19

that I got that it's like the average Pickleball

27:21

court costs about $10,000 to build. Hmm,

27:24

that's not nothing. It's not nothing, but

27:27

it's also not that expensive. It's

27:29

like often the Pickleball players volunteer

27:31

to raise that money and give it to the

27:34

city in question. And

27:37

even doing something as simple

27:39

as putting a new patch of

27:41

concrete on already on land

27:45

that cities already own, it gets

27:49

this resistance from homeowners

27:52

where they are demanding that

27:55

cities do noise assessments and

27:57

economic impact assessments

27:59

and environmental assessments and traffic

28:01

assessments and all of these things

28:04

and it becomes really difficult to build

28:06

a Patch

28:09

of concrete like it's it's the easiest thing I

28:11

can think of Imagine

28:13

trying to build a new train line

28:15

imagine trying to build a new apartment

28:17

complex And I really

28:19

do think that this is one

28:21

of the reasons why it's so

28:23

expensive and so Arduous and so

28:25

difficult to build new things in

28:27

the United States because

28:29

there are all of these sort of like

28:31

organized groups that are trying to Protect

28:34

what they believe are their own

28:37

interests and prevent anything from being

28:39

built anywhere and when that happens

28:41

We're all fighting over this like

28:43

smaller and smaller public space Jason

28:47

I'm super grateful for you coming on the show. Thanks

28:49

for doing it. Thank you so much for having me

28:51

this is fun Jason

28:53

Kevler is the co-founder of 404 media

28:56

and if you also appreciated his

28:58

dry wit Please drop

29:00

what you're doing right now and go check out

29:02

the 404 media podcast

29:05

Jason hosts it And

29:08

that's the show if you're a fan

29:10

of what next the best way to support our work is to

29:12

join slate plus Going over to slate comm

29:14

slash what next plus to find out how What

29:16

next is produced by Elena Schwartz Rob Gunther

29:19

Anna Phillips Paige Osborne and Madeline do charm

29:22

We are led by Alicia Montgomery with a little boost from

29:24

Susan Matthews Ben Richmond is the

29:26

senior director of podcast operations here at

29:28

slate and I'm Mary Harris. Thanks

29:30

for listening I'll catch you back here next

29:33

time I'm

29:40

sorry. I'm like, sorry. I've never done this

29:42

in an interview, but I find it so

29:45

amusing. I'm like gonna cry laughing Okay

29:49

Go ahead Active

29:52

military or veteran planning your next career

29:54

move start at Columbus State Community College

29:56

when companies like Intel need to fill

29:58

thousands of new jobs in central

30:01

Ohio. They hire Columbus State

30:03

graduates. Our engineering technology programs

30:05

equip you with skills and

30:07

experience to launch a high

30:09

tech career in Columbus's fast-growing

30:11

fields and our veteran services

30:13

team will help you maximize

30:15

your benefits and connect to

30:17

a supportive campus community. Take

30:19

the first step. Apply at

30:21

cscc.edu/engineering tech.