Keynote Fireside Chat Mini-Series: UN-INNOVATION

Between the Lines and The 82 Alliance presents: 
Keynote Fireside Chat Mini-Series: UN-INNOVATION

with Brandon Bordenkircher

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UN-INNOVATION

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Welcome to the very first episode of our Keynote Fireside Chat mini-series, presented by The 82 Alliance. In this 8-episode series, we will talk with the industry's leading experts and innovators to dive more deeply into the challenges we face and the many ways TDM and mobility can help. We're joined by co-host Rob Henry, the President of The 82 Alliance. He is a Transportation Demand Management Certified Professional (TDM-CP) with over 20 years of experience in transportation.

This episode we are talking to Brandon Bordenkircher, co-author of UN-INNOVATION: Why a Divided America is Bad for the Future of Technology. Brandon is an executive, academic, and policy leader that has worked for Airbnb, Car2go (carsharing app owned by Daimler), AI Forum, and more.

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Tune in for a deep dive on what Un-innovation is and how it's helping solve the future of mobility.‍‍‍‍

And check out our exclusive commuter playlists on Spotify!

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Episode Transcript

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[Voiceover] Commutifi presents Between the Lines with Andy Keeton. Each week, we explore the challenging issues. Transportation demands management professionals face on their journey to transition commuters from driving alone to more sustainable, shared and active commuting habits. Be sure to subscribe to hear next week's episode and check out our exclusive commuter playlists on Spotify. This is Between the Lines with Andy Keeton.

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[Andy Keeton] Hi, everyone. And welcome aboard to this episode of Between the Lines, and welcome to the very first episode of our Keynote Fireside Chat Mini-Series presented by the 82 Alliance. And this is… I'm really excited about this series. It's going to be an eight episode series where we talk with industry's leading experts and innovators and dive more deeply into the challenges we face and the many ways TDM and Mobility can help. So, for our regular listeners, this series will sound a little bit different, it'll look a little bit different. Today, I'm joined by a co-host and throughout the series we'll be joined by him, Rob Henry. You may recognize him because he was on an episode of Between the Lines early on in season one. But as a reminder, Rob is the president of the 82 Alliance, he is a transportation demand management certified professional at TDM-CP with over 20 years of experience in transportation, and he has worked and presented on transportation projects throughout the United States. He's spoken at the National Academies of Science How We Move Matters event in 2021, and has been recognized as a mobility expert and has received awards throughout the U.S. He's also an expert in public policy, which is great to bring him into this conversation, particularly as we'll see in a little bit, and he's the chair of the Public Policy Committee for the Association for Commuter Transportation. So, we're really excited to have him on, and his job throughout this series is to make sure that these conversations are really diving into some of the interesting pieces of information that our guests are really showing. So first, Rob, thanks for being on, and thanks for helping us host this mini series.

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(Rob Henry) Thanks, Andy. I'm excited, and excited to have Brandon today, and kick this off, and talk about an innovation.

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(Andy Keeton) Absolutely. Like you said, yeah, we have our first guest is Brandon Bordenkircher, who is the author of a book called UN-INNOVATION: Why a Divided America is Bad for the Future of Technology. I've got it on my bookshelf here behind me. Rob's got it in his office as well. So, we're really excited. I took a look through this. It's a pretty interesting book, and we're just going to kind of get… Just dive right in. Normally, I give a little bit of a background for our guests, but I felt like maybe this time, Brandon, you have a pretty interesting background. I feel like it'd be better if you gave an overview of your background to our listeners.

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(Brandon Bordenkircher) Sure. Yeah. Well, folks, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So, a bit about myself. My name is Brandon Bordenkircher. I'm the COO at Innova EV, an electric vehicle car sharing company, I'm the CEO at 12 Tone Matrix, which is an interactive and visual search platform, and I'm a fellow at DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. My background or how I got into this space is a little different than most people. In my twenties, I played in punk bands, toured, released records, and then I got into community organizing, which was pretty similar to the the punk bands, the punk ethos that I grew up with. That let me into the tech space. So, I was a community organizer dealing with housing issues. I started writing white papers on disruptive of mobility tech, and I spent a few years on Airbnb as a public policy team. So from there, I got a job at Mercedes Benz where I managed their car sharing service called Car2go, and then, yeah, I've just been publishing academic articles that have been cited in countries all around the world, five continents and by scholars at Harvard, MIT, etc. As you mentioned, I co-wrote a book with my wife, Sydney, called Un-Innovation, which is a study on the intersection of technology, public policy and political ideology. It features an analysis of statewide technology policies over the span of four decades.

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(Andy Keeton) Very cool. So, punk rocker to author. I think that's a good career trajectory we can all aspire to. But I mean, you started the conversation diving into an innovation on this book that you've written with your wife, Sydney. I think starting off, let's start with kind of title. Why UN-Innovation. What does that mean?

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(Brandon Bordenkircher) Yeah. Number one, it sounded good.

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(Andy Keeton) Yeah. I thought so.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] I think innovation could be described as progress, forward motion. I think of innovation as like a car traveling down the highway at 100 miles per hour, and public policy can kind of act as a guide rail to that forward motion, keeping us safe, making sure the car doesn't careen off the cliff and explode at the bottom of a ravine. Conversely, I think public policy at its worst can act like a parking brake. You know what happens when you pull a parking… Pull the parking brake while you're traveling at 100 miles per hour down the highway, nothing good. In fact, it can cause a lot of problems. So pulling the parking brake, so to speak, in an attempt to go backwards and stop innovation is not only unrealistic when you're traveling forward at 100 miles per hour, it's actually dangerous. What the book talks about is… In what we unpack in the book is regulations pertaining to technology and trying to find out who's attempting to pull the "parking brake" and not to beat a metaphor to death, but the consequences of overregulating, pulling the parking brake, and how that could affect United States, and how that could potentially allow other countries like China to take up the innovation mantle, like with AI 5G and how that could potentially be deleterious to the United States.

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(Andy Keeton) Very cool. So, looking into the book a bit more, can you kind of elaborate… And we're going to get to a specific example that you're familiar with kind of extensively in Car2go. But before we get there, can you just elaborate on some of these… The problems, the solutions that you're dissecting?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah.

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[Andy Keeton] As well as the negative effects that are brought on by these solutions. You mentioned that pulling the parking brake. But any examples you can share. Anything more there is great.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think ultimately the underlying problem we dissect is the political division in the US, specifically between conservative and liberal political parties and how we got there, for example, self sorting, which is when like-minded people move near other like-minded people, there's also the demise of the Fairness Doctrine that originally required media companies to provide equal time for both sides of the debate, and then there's social media, which is… Has helped the spread of confirmation bias and is basically self sorting, but on a technology platform. Yeah. So, we take those and then once we explain how we got here, then we use both political parties as a form of measurement to dissect different policies passed by each party in attempt to find out the reason why each party is passing the specific laws and regulations. So, a few of the regulations we put under our microscope are, let's say, ride hailing, home sharing, autonomous vehicles, car sharing, 5G. So, that's what we're looking to uncover; why are things the way they are and how is that affecting the regulation of these newer technologies?

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[Rob Henry] So Brandon, I recently had a conversation with elected officials from both of our major parties, and they both were talking about how it feels like within their own parties, there's almost two parties and thinking about solutions to that moving forward. Is that anything you thought about or…

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah. It really comes down to… Especially when solving problems for some of these issues brought on by technology. It's really understanding why people feel the way they do, why they have these thoughts on certain technologies, and really getting to the crux of the issue. I mean, what that takes is empathy. So, no matter which side of the aisle you're talking about, it's really understanding why people are… Why people feel a certain way about a specific technology. I mean, I think a good example of this is why people think and act the way they do. You think about global warming and renewable energy, folks living in coal country who are… They're predominantly Republican areas, they don't receive… They don't see renewable energy as just a threat to their job. They see it as a threat to their cultural norms and identities. When interviewing folks living in coal country, researchers have found they use words like tradition and pride in generations and taken away. Working in the coal industry is something that's really ingrained in the DNA of the folks who live there. It's hard work working in coal mines, and they take a lot of pride in it.It's important to understand really what drives people and when you're attempting to win them over and finding solutions because saying like, hey, I have the solution, here's what you need. If you are not connecting with a person and really understanding where they're coming from, no matter how good your solution is, it's moot. No, they're not going to listen to you. So, it really comes down to empathy, and my wife and I are big proponents of design thinking, and having empathy, and finding out why people do the things they do. So, I think you're right. That is a big problem, not just the two parties, but within the two parties there are a lot of problems, and I think we could all take a moment to take a breath and try and have some empathy and try and understand where the other folks are coming from.

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[Rob Henry] Yeah. I think that that's great, and I think that old adage of living in someone else's shoes to get a perspective on why, especially with technology, it's so important. So, it's great.

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[Andy Keeton] Yeah. I mean, really interesting. I like that insight as well, Rob. Yeah. It's not just the two parties. It's now for some parties, I guess. I think it's really important, like you said, Brandon, to understand where people are coming from, what drives them to do things, and I think you mentioned that and talk about that a lot in the book. You also mentioned this idea of, I'm quoting you from talking earlier, governments have to iterate hopefully to solve for 80 percent while leaving out 20 percent. What does that mean? Why is that important?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah. I think if I could use an example, so I think a great example of this would be the negative effects brought on by policy solutions. So, let's say Airbnb. I think this is a good example. On one side, you have property owners who are buying up properties and renting them on Airbnb at extremely high prices, and that ends up driving up the cost of rent in a neighborhood or a city. So, elected officials attempt to reel that in to mitigate some of the problems brought on that Airbnb or Airbnb is causing. So, they're trying to make sure elected officials are trying to make sure the car doesn't veer off the cliff, so to speak. But being too extreme with policy solutions could do harm as well. For example, there are many people who host on Airbnb in order to supplement their income, to help pay for their mortgage or pay for medical bills, and overcorrecting via regulation could be devastating to those folks. So, it's important for governments to iterate when solving problems, and a good way to do that is by utilizing what you mentioned; the 80-20 rule. So, you're basically looking to solve a problem and tempting to make 80% of the people happy, and then iterating to help eventually get the rest of the 20% of the folks on board. So, it's just to paint a bigger picture. It's impossible to make 100% of the people happy, especially in government. And the best you can do, I think, is to attempt to make 80% of the people happy and then learn from the 20% of the people who are not happy from your decision. So, you gather feedback from the 20%, you learn from it, you incorporate that feedback while iterating making changes to policy, and you make small steps forward, so you eventually attempt to make everyone happy. So, every solution has a North Star where you're like, this is what we're looking to do. It's 100% of what you want, we want to make 100% of the people happy, that's your perfect goal, but that's unattainable. So, it doesn't mean you don't try, but you have to try and make the most biggest percentage of people happy and then iterate to eventually get the other 20% on board. It's also what's known as, I think it's called dual track. So, you want your product or policy, and then collect feedback, and then iterate to make your product or policy perfect, or whatever you're attempting to accomplish.

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[Rob Henry] Do you think in the coming out of the pandemic, and we know that AI is going to accelerate in many facets of our lives, that the American public and policy coordinators, directors are ready for that, to understand that dual track system?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah. I think there are many governments out there that have been doing it well, actually. I think … I mean, what's a great idea? I guess, scooter sharing. So, let's say, when scooters launched, they just tossed their scooters everywhere. Scooters were banned from too many cities to mention. Because they didn't ask for permission, they just launched without running it by the local municipalities, and it caused a lot of problems. So, what Chicago was able to do, instead of just launching their scooter pilot, they were able to learn from other cities. And because of that, instead of launching their pilot and then iterating solutions to mitigate some of the problems that e-scooters were causing, they were actually able to learn from the problems caused by the scooters and learn from other municipalities. And what they did in Chicago, which I think was great, was they enacted a lock to requirement for the e-scooters and dockless bikes. So, they required the scooters to be locked to a bike rack or a light post, etc. So that they were able to… They're really able to mitigate a lot of the issues that were brought on by e-scooters in other municipalities. So, I think, governments are starting to do a really great job with learning, not just from their own policies, but from other cities policies and the issues that are brought on and different ways to solve for those problems. So, that's through something that's called policy diffusion, where governments learn from other governments out there. And I think Chicago is a great example of that. There have been a lot of other municipalities who have done other things like that, but I think that is such a great example of how cities are able to learn from each other and to make those small changes, iterate and solve for some of those problems that are brought on by solutions. E-scooters being a solution to lack of transportation in the city.

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[Rob Henry] It's great.

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[Andy Keeton] So I want to continue the conversation around mobility. I love this scooter conversation, because I think most people listening to mobility space are definitely are aware of that problem of scooters and dockless bikes just ending up wherever and seeing how governments react with that. But in your book, you talk about three mobility-specific topics. You mentioned these ride hailing like Uber, Lyft, autonomous vehicles, and car sharing. I want to dive into car sharing, because you're intimately aware of that, having more to Car2Go and kind of look more at that Car2Go car sharing problem. So let's start off high level. What is the problem that you are researching and addressing in the book when it comes to car sharing?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Well, I think, first understanding what the problem is, what car sharing is looking to solve for? So, there are several problems. There's global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic congestion that are all brought on by private vehicles, personal vehicles. So, those are some of the problems car sharing is looking to solve, but there's another problem it's looking to solve as well. And if we could focus on that, I think this will be a good example. So, the average annual cost of car ownership, according to AAA, is about 10 grand a year. And I mean, $10,000 a year is not much to some folks, but there are a lot of folks out there who are not able to afford that. And that's a problem, because sometimes the bus, the train, taking a bike or walking is not the option you need. If you're looking to go to the grocery store, and you're going to be carrying, like, six bags worth of groceries, that's not something you can take on a bike, it's not something you would like to take on the bus or the aisle, and ride hailing is very expensive. So, car sharing is giving these folks a solution in filling that gap, so to speak. It allows them to utilize public transportation or walk or take a bike on all the other days, but when they need a vehicle, car sharing like Car2Go allows them to rent a vehicle by the hour or the half hour by the minute. And it allows them to run their errands without spending an arm and a leg that it would have cost them if they were to have done traditional car rental. So, that's what it's looking to solve for car sharing. Now, there are problems brought on by car sharing, which I found out about as the general manager for Car2Go. Yes, there were a lot of benefits, less traffic, less vehicle miles traveled, less carbon emissions, but people who owned their own vehicles and parked their vehicles on city streets, thought that Car2Go was encroaching on their parking spots. So, to be clear, Car2Go was not encroaching on their, "parking spots." Car2Go was just parking on the streets, which was available to anyone with city parking sticker. But that said, these folks with their private vehicles found Car2Go to be a problem, and they found it exasperating their existing parking crunch. So, it was great for 80% of the folks in the neighborhood, but those 20% were not… It was less than 20%. I mean, it was probably less than 5%. But those folks were not happy. So, how do you deal with that specific problem that comes up? You rebalance the cars, you make sure that wherever those problem areas are, you focus on there and make sure cars are moving and not sitting idle for too long. And that's… I think that's what I learned at Car2Go. I'm currently working at Innova EV, which is another car sharing company. And one of the reasons I love Innova EV is that we use a corral-based system, so we're not parked on the street, we're not gobbling up parking, and people aren't getting annoyed with us. So, I really like that about Innova EV, let me just say.

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[Andy Keeton] Makes it a lot easier.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah.

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[Rob Henry] was there… When you were going through the Car2Go process, was there an 80, 20 model somewhere in there with government? Where they got involved because of the perception maybe from residents that you were taking away parking space?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] It's definitely something that had to be discussed as we extended our pilot. People would call in to their alderman's office and say, "Hey, this is causing a problem." So, the alderman don't hear from the folks, we're like, "Hey, Car2Go is great, no issues, but they do hear from the squeaky wheels." The folks who were like, "I couldn't find a parking spot after work at like 6 p.m." And it's like, "Well, that's because everybody got home at the same time you did, and now all the parking is gone." So, yeah, you did… We did have to discuss that with the aldermen and assure them that we were taking care of those problems, and making sure that those constituents weren't just being swept under the rug, and that we were attempting to iterate and solve some of those negative externalities that were caused by us. So, yeah, we did have to deal with that, but it's… You only deal with the negative externalities you cause after you launch. But that's something we had prepared for. We knew folks would… Some folks were going to get angry and just have to plan for it, be ready and deal with it as it comes.

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[Rob Henry] Yeah. Well, it sounds… The corral model in some respects and a lot of the industries is almost the 80, 20, because that seems to make governments feel more comfortable with the process. And it could be the same amount of whatever it is e-scooters car share on the street, but that seems to be a solution that came out of this kind of process as all the new mobility was…

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Exactly. Obviously, it's not as big of a problem with us as it is with the e-scooters. You're not going to find any of our cars in a tree or in a lake. That's said, it makes it easier for everyone involved. It's easier for the city, it's easier for the users, they know where to find our vehicles, and frankly, it's easier for me, it's easier for the folks who work at Innova. Because we know where the vehicles are, and if a vehicle needs some TLC, we know where to go, get it, swap out a tire, etc. But these are things that companies have learned as they've launched their car sharing or e-scooters, etc, in the cities. So, you learn from the problems that arise, and you're able to come up with innovative ways to solve for some of those negative issues that come up.

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[Andy Keeton] Make sense. And I talk about this a lot on the podcast. I live in Montrea, and I don't have a car, I live in the downtown area, but there's a great car sharing company out here called Communauto. And they have a similar approach, they have the corral kind of approach. They also have just the free… I don't know how you call that, freewheeling wherever on the streets that you're allowed. I love the corral model because I know that car's going to be there, I don't have to walk around trying to hunt for one on the app. So, I like this idea that not only does that 80, 20 model work for policy, but it also works for technology, and the two can work together to say, "Hey, what's the problem? How should we work together to solve this?" I think that makes a lot of sense.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Agreed.

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[Andy Keeton] So, one of the things I saw when I was looking through and reading through some of these sections in the book, you dived a lot into the two political parties, The United States, Democratic Party and The Republican Party, what policies they've enacted at the state level around the country. And I mentioned you talked about ride hailing, you talked about autonomous vehicles and car sharing in the book. but I found it interesting that it seems two of the three of those have faced, a relatively larger opposition from The Democratic Party, those being ride hailing and autonomous vehicles. Whereas car sharing seems both parties maybe have enacted similar policy or similar number of policies. Why do you think ride hailing and autonomous vehicles are maybe seen more negatively by the Democratic Party in terms of at least the policy side of things compared to something like harsher?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah, that's a great question. With ride hailing, it's founded more and large urban areas that are typically controlled by Democrats. And when you have a large number of new quote unquote taxis on the street that can cause safety issues, and that would be my main guess as to why Democrats have concerned themselves more with ride hailing. And then there's also the classification issue, so Democrats are typically more concerned about, classifying drivers as employees and requiring Uber and Lyft to pay employees' insurance give them time off, et cetera. Whereas Republicans would typically be fine with allowing companies to classify their employees as independent contractors, even though that would mean drivers aren't guaranteed health insurance, or other benefits. And I think it comes down to a free market, free choice for the Republicans and a more safety issue headache for the Democrats. In autonomous vehicles, that one's really interesting too. I think there were a total of about 120 statewide policies passed, 55% passed by Republicans, even though they only controlled, I think about 45% of the states I could be wrong, but most of those bills were in favor of autonomous vehicles and allowing them on the streets. I think that may have more to do with these specific states being in more rural areas, more spread out like Nevada. And I think there's also a component of Republicans being more open to free market and business and things like that. Whereas car sharing, I think it's more benign than ride hailing or autonomous vehicles. Ride hailing, there's a lot of drama surrounding workers' rights and how workers are classified, and with autonomous vehicles, you have the idea of killer robots driving on the streets, whereas car sharing, it's just like people sharing cars, right? It's really hard to get jacked up and angry about that either way. Now that being said, I think it was, who was it? One of the car sharing companies Get Around. It was either Get Around or Turro. There was an issue here in Chicago where there was one person on the north side who had 40 cars parked on one city street that he was renting on the platform, so that caused a bit of trouble but for the most part car sharing is pretty benign until you start getting 40 vehicles parked on one city block, then you're going to start getting neighbors mad at you. But I think those are the main differences and why parties have fallen where they've fallen with those specific technologies - [Rob Henry] There's been a lot of movement with equity in particular, in the last three to four years in the political discourse. How much of a role do you think that plays in some of those decisions when it comes to policy that's made toward a car share versus a ride hailing service?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah, that's a great question. That's something cities and companies are one looking to solve, and two, also pay a lot of lip service too. Just about every company out there wants to champion like, "Hey, look at us, we're doing all this great stuff." And it's a lot of this isn't quantifiable, a lot of this is just for show, but I think there are certain areas where cities and companies have made some progress. But I think what it comes down to is cities don't have specifically for transportation. They don't have the funding to launch more bus services or trains that run more often. In fact I think they're losing a lot of funding and they're looking for ways like, "Hey, how can we close these gaps?" We can force these companies to attempt to fill the gaps they want to run in our cities, so we're going to say, "Hey, you need to fill in these gaps." There's no more bus line here, we're going to force you to fill in that gap. And that's what happened in the city of Chicago, somewhat with the E scoters, there was an equity component where they were like, "Hey, you need to make sure you serve this area and make sure you have a certain amount of scooters at the beginning of the day and the end of the day in these areas." I think that's great, but expecting companies to fill that gap is difficult because if the companies are not able to make revenue in a city, then they're just going to have to pull out completely. It's really important for cities and companies and the community to all come together and find out. Okay, how can we work together? What is the root cause here of some of the transportation issues and how do we solve those issues? Because just throwing extra scooters in this area is not going to help family for get to school or get to work, so you really have to peel back the skin a bit, take an x-ray and find out, okay, what are the issues here in the city and how can we solve these, it may be a transportation issue on a surface level, but underneath it might be more about development and how do we get jobs in this area or a supermarket, et cetera. So I think, we need to see more collaboration. We've seen a lot in these past few years, but I talked to a lot of friends in the equity space and it's a lot of lip service, there's not much being done. There's a long way to go, props to the cities and the companies who are able to progress in those areas, but a lot of work that needs to be done.

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[Rob Henry] Yeah, I would agree. There are a handful of cities that are being very proactive in going to tech firms and saying, here's our challenge, and do you have a solution for us? And then there are cities that are just saying, we don't want your tech and they're fighting and get this kicking and screaming. Those that continue to evolve and adapt and innovate.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] In Chicago when Car2Go launched, Car2Go was ready and willing to go to the south side, but there were a few aldermen on the south side, they were worried about parking, specifically parking around this DePaul stadium just south of the downtown area. And because of that, they said, "We don't want car sharing in our neighborhood." Car2Go, was ready and willing to go to the south side. But those alderman passed on it, and Car2Go ended up looking like the bad guy. We were like, "Hey, we wanted to go there, the alderman were the people who said no, many companies are ready and willing to do those things, but there's, an education gap when it comes to some of these technologies, understanding what they do, the problems that they seek to solve, and some of the misconceptions that people have about these technologies and the problems they cause. I think that's a great example of companies need to get out prior to launch and they need to really educate elected officials and the community to insure that folks know who they are, what they do, and that they're not just fly by night, they're looking to be in the community and solve these issues. It's a lot of work to ask for tech companies to do, they just want to launch and offer their service and they have to do all this pre-work and outreach, and it's a lot of work for everybody.

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[Andy Keeton] Yeah. I mean, I was going to ask you this question of what lessons, strategies, ideas, mobility professionals, whether in the private or the public sector should take away from this discussion, but that really seems like that's it, you summed it up, working together tech shouldn't just come in and say, "Hey, we have the solution, we know what's right, and same thing public sector shouldn't go in and say, tech, you don't know what you're doing, there's some discussion there, but is there anything else you'd want to add, like if our listeners are listening to this they're saying, "Okay, what's that one thing I need to bring back to my team and consider." Anything else you want to add to that brand?

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah, I think just remembering to have empathy, really attempt to understand where people are coming from, whether that's elected officials or people who live in a certain neighborhood where you look into launch really attempt to understand them and get to the root of the problem. I think this is a great analogy, a lot of times people say like, "Hey, I know the problem. I know what, we need a fence." And it's well, you may not need a fence, what's the issue? Well, rabbits keep coming in and eating all the food in my garden. It's like, Oh, why do you have a garden? Well, I need a garden because I can't have food to live. I can't afford food to live. And it's well seems like there's underlying problems here. You may not need fence, it sounds like you need more investment in your community, et cetera. Really trying to understand where people are coming from, having empathy, trying to walk a mile in their shoes, so to speak and then solving for that issue and then iterating, going through and attempting to make as many people as happy as possible and then collecting feedback from the other 20% and just going from there and trying to perfect it. I think that's the main thing, empathy and iteration - [Rob Henry] Getting close to wrapping up. I was thinking being in a punk band, is there a punk band transportation like song? I know we're trying to find sometimes different music that integrate trains or buses or bikes.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Yeah, let's see. The first one that came to mind is the clash train and vain. I don't know if that's specifically about trains that it's in the title or maybe folks to give me a pass on that one. That's a good one though, that's a good question. I'm going to be ready for the next person who asked that.

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[Andy Keeton] I like that question. That's fun. Yeah. Let us know, Brandon, give us like a list, send us an email after with here's all the fun songs that happen to talk about biking. That would be a fun song to listen to, I feel like cool. Brandon, this has been a great conversation, Rob as well. Thanks for cohosting this, Rob, and thanks for being on Brandon and and for writing this book to UN Sydney for writing this book. It's a pretty interesting read and definitely encourage any of our listeners or viewers to check it out. And this is my time to my pitch and spiel for the podcast. So if this is your first episode and you haven't listened to between the lines before, make sure you go and subscribe to the podcast@betweenthelines.io. We send emails out when a new episode comes out with further resources, you'll be able to find out, where can I buy this book, et cetera. Definitely make sure you subscribe to that and subscribe, like, comment on our podcast on wherever you listen to them. Spotify, Google podcast, Apple podcast, check out the video as well on YouTube. It's a little more fun sometimes to be in the room with us and have that conversation. But thanks again for joining Brandon and Rob and a really interesting conversation.

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[Brandon Bordenkircher] Thanks for having me. It was great.

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[Rob Henry] Yeah, Brandon, it was great.Thanks, Andy. It was fun.

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[Andy Keeton] Awesome. All right. Well, everyone, thanks for joining and we'll see you next time and make sure you keep checking out this series. This is only the first of many with the 82 Alliance. And thanks again to The 82 Alliance for helping us put this series together. We're really excited about it.

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[Voiceover] Thanks for joining us in this week's episode of "Between the Lines" with Andy Keeton. Be sure to subscribe to hear next week's episode, and check out our exclusive commuting playlist on Spotify.

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