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Episode 146 -- Gender and Road Trips with Sarah Marshall (Patreon)

Published:
2026-07-27 19:01:48
Imported:
2026-09

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In America when the sun goes down and we sit in our apartments recording our podcast, watching the long, long skies over Oakland and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the East Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, we think of Sarah Marshall, and we are seized with a desire to talk to her about being on the road. This is our episode about cars, about gender, and about one particular way in which they mix: the road trip and its peculiar fate in American media and society.

Comments

Amy

Hell yes! Habitual solo roadtripper here.

Laura Cullen

I won't argue that west and south are canonical directions for road trips, but my personal favorite road trip would probably be one that I took from Texas to Toronto, meandering through the Midwest at about six or seven baseball parks along the way, I think (it's been ten years, and none of the photos are on the cloud, so the exact details are a bit fuzzy).

Jenny

When my husband (Black) and I (Asian) drove from Boston to Ithaca NY in fall 2020, we became VERY aware of the front lawn Trump signs that increased in frequency and size the further west we went. We made no impromptu detours and stopped only for food and bathrooms. Maybe one day we'll be able to imbibe in the freedom and romance of a true meandering road trip, but meanwhile we'll continue to just drive between destinations.

Geneva Samuelson

Sometimes I wonder if all my favorite podcasters are in a group chat.

Amy

I particularly enjoyed the closing section: what we want from future road trips. I agree with Sarah: time. However I think of it as lotto winnings, money that means I can go where hotels are more expensive (every national park adjacent town) and where gas is more expensive (westward). Money means being able to stay on the road indefinitely. And I agree that gotta-see-it and Instagram motivations are obstacles to what I will most enjoy seeing. I recently did Utah national parks. Everybody is enthusiastic about Zion and Arches (while they stampede to destroy them), but I was most awed by Capitol Reef. It's been a little over a month since even my last day trip, and I am going out of my mind with impatience.

Amy

It used to be See America First. Now it's see the living land before it is all gone. I get quite emotional about it and often weep when rounding a corner on something awesome.

Jenny

When you raised the question of "how far back does the road trip (narrative) go", my mind immediately went to the Odyssey (and, since I'm Chinese, Journey to the West). But as I thought about it while listening along, I felt there are some key differences between the American road trip and the traditional "quest" narrative. They both entail physical dangers/adventures and a spiritual transformation. But in traditional quest narratives, the destination is usually important and culminating, even if the journey itself meanders. Whereas for American road trip narratives, I feel like the destination often doesn't matter very much -- and in fact, the state of perpetual wandering may even be the point (thinking of My Own Private Idaho, or the defiant "never going back!" of Thelma and Louise). Why is this? I feel like it might have something to do with what you said midway through the episode -- that the American road trip is in a way a legacy or shadow of the US westward expansion, which has already "tamed" the dangerous, unknown frontier of the past into a known present. The ultimate destination (from coast to coast, or city to city) is no longer important because it's known and quotidian. Whereas the journey in between allows the traveler to "fall back in time" to a state of mystery, surprise, and discovery. So the road trip narrative is as much a reaction to the colonial past as Dracula (another "quest" narrative, of a sort) was a reflection of the colonial present of its time. Food for thought for road trip narratives of the future!

Alex

Incredible that IBWTR would drop a road trip episode just a month before my impending roadtrip TO the IBWTR live show... serendipitous! I finally got to enjoy my solo Route 66 trip moving out west last summer and there were lots of really interesting ways to read a gendered past and present in what that trip involves.

Ben Neumeyer

If you're looking for an interesting text on the dangers for black road-trippers in the Jim Crow south: In The Warmth of Other Suns, one of the individual stories Isabel Wilkerson tells from the Great Migration is of a doctor who moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the 50's by car. She describes the drive across Texas as a terrifying ordeal where he had to drive an insane number of hours without stopping because there was just nowhere safe to stay there.

OhLordyAmina

Fun! I’m an older, older new driver and I’m so excited about the possibilities to come and also the fears being a Black woman on the road so I can’t wait to listen to this fully. I immediately think of the movie with the American title, Fat Girl. The French title is along the lines of, “To My Sister”. I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s both a lovely meditation on the sister dynamic and just the horrors of being a young girl/woman. There’s a mini road trip section in it too. Since we’re recommending books, I’ll recommend: Driving While Black.

Daniel

Canadian listener here, and actually listening to this on my 2 hour weekly commute. Moira's question about the road trip's role as a "rite of passage" is an interesting one. For us, it certainly does not occupy nearly as much space in our culture. I think for Canadians, road trips are a fun byproduct of getting to your destination, and not the other way around as seems to be in the canonical American Roadtrip. Great episode as always , cheers from Ontario! ❤️

Carsten Brombach

Great episode! Makes me want to rewatch one of my favorite road movies: the 15 mph one (David Lynch‘s „Straight Story“)

Sarah Wesolowski

American who moved to Europe and is loving the transit and less need for driving here. Please do an episode on the gender politics of transit and driving! Ever bigger personal cars are one of the most statistically dangerous things in most of our lives especially in the US.

Andrew Carlson

So glad you brought up The Green Book and explored the intersectional asymmetries of the road experiences. Shoutout to Moira for a kickass job on A Bit Fruity about Lindsey Graham! I so appreciated your perspective on that program, you added some really helpful context, and it was such a treat to hear two of my favorite shows collaborate again. I cannot recommend that recent program enough to everyone, the professor really nailed it.

Miriam G

Shout out to interrailing, which hits a few of the discussed characteristics for Europeans (rite of passage, somewhat institutionalised by the DiscoverEU programme), or for the points related to having your own vehicle - long distance cycling (EuroVelo network for example). Road trips seem more for sparsely populated and not well connected areas

Charley

Yes! As a Gen X Brit, interrailing was the first thing that came to mind as a young person’s rite of passage when listening to this. When I worked in Hungary teaching English, late 90s, I got to visit tons of places in central/eastern Europe, with a backpack, a couple of friends, and the web of train routes (Vienna, Prague, Transylvania, etc). Some of my best memories 💜

The Fat Culture Critic

There’s also a tradition of road trips in Canada, though there are definite differences. I cannot imagine driving the Sea to Sky in B.C., the Trans Canada through Banff, or driving through Saskatchewan in winter and feeling sovereign over the land. It’s nature’s world and we are subject to it. Maybe that’s because we have significantly more geography than population.

Brian Wade

In direct contrast to Michael Hobbes, Moira looks exactly as she sounds. I will not be elaborating. Love the show tysm

Jemima Barkley

Another example of road trippers being endangered by fellow travellers is Bones and All. I would literally never watch it again cause I didn’t eat for the day after- but it’s maybe interesting that old mate who ends up being the antagonist is sort of established as such from the beginning at least by being so creepy, but actually every other person they meet is a freak so idk

Jemima Barkley

I do think the coming of age road trip is a thing in Australia, but it’s not a cross country odyssey, it’s more like a long drive to some famed swimming hole, camping and getting super drunk and then talking about it for the rest of your life. But I would say that type of thing is most common among regional/rural Australia. For people in cities everywhere is literally too far away here and everything in between is so boring cause the population is so concentrated along the coasts.

Lizbeth

Thanks for recommending! Great episode on so many levels.

Brian

Adrian’s pronunciation of Cape Girardeau is so generous to the people of Missouri. Never change

Brandon Darcel

Great episode! Surprised you didn’t mention the doc “Will & Harper” from a couple years ago. About a trans woman on her first road trip since transition, accompanied by Will Ferrell. It can be a little cloying and pandering but an interesting watch.

Cheyenne Montgomery

Best roadtrip I ever experienced included a stop to eat at the diner in Holcomb, Kansas featured in Truman capote’s in cold blood. It’s a Mexican restaurant now. The man who was currently living in the former Clutter family home was eating as well. He saw the nerdy pile of cameras I had with me and invited us over to the Clutter house to look around. We later went to the cemetery to pay our respects to the family. In cold blood encapsulates a lot of the classic roadtrip features, including dangerous strangers traveling into a little town and destroying a family that should have been safe, followed by the East Coast literary elite, Capote, who exploited the story.

Jenny

Canadian here, living in the US - I feel like the question of whether people see themselves as "sovereigns" vs "participants" of the land is definitely cultural, but also quite individual. Like, I'm sure there are many Americans that feel small (in a nice way) when they encounter the Rockies! At the same time, I did also encounter a(n older white) man at the Grand Canyon who, laying eyes on the wonder of nature, turned to me and said "isn't it nice that this is all just for us? All this beauty, only for us." I was like "... I'm pretty sure millions of people and creatures have come and admired this land since it came to be, and millions will continue to do so long after us lol". I don't know if he was American, but that was some settler colonialist mindset right there 😂

S

i’m too young and too queer for this: my roadtrip media is preacher’s daughter by ethel cain

Maud McInerney

Don’t overlook the great potential of Canada for road-tripping… more miles (well, kilometers) more weather, more moose.

Aloisia

as a il/missourian, adrian's french pronunciation of cape girardeau is taking me out lol

elishevaaaa

Honestly I think Lolita is the quintessential american road trip novel. Nothing has really come close to it in terms of prose function. How these sites of gendered violence and exploitation are an extension of this masculine idea of Americana and freedom - domination of your environment as a feature, not a bug

Lu

There's probably a better avenue through which to request an episode, but I loved the mifepristone episode and would love to hear IBWTR cover later abortion care. There are so many harmful, stigmatizing myths about later abortion on the left (for example, that only people with maternal or fetal health concerns get later abortions, or that every later abortion is a wanted pregnancy and therefore inherently tragic: Democrat messages that ultimately cause a lot of harm for later abortion seekers). Later abortion care is a highly stigmatized and under-researched topic and I think Moira and Adrian would knock it out of the park. (source: I work at a later abortion clinic)

Lu

Yes! Also wanted to mention Lolita!

Molly

Smiled at the shared experience of long drives with Best of Simon and Garfunkel

Marjorie Pak

Another great book in this vein is the young adult novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis.

Marjorie Pak

What a fun episode. I found myself thinking of road trip food: foods that I ritualistically buy & eat on every road trip (Pringles, Oreos, Diet Coke, i.e. gas station junk food). Nick Hornby has a great passage about this near the end of About a Boy: ‘They stopped to get petrol, cans of drink, chips and chocolate bars, and when they got back into the car the atmosphere between them had changed: somehow among the popping cans and the rustling potato chip bags they seemed to have become a trio. It as almost as if they had forgotten why they were travelling in the first place; the journey had become the point of the trip.’

CassieWasRight

I asked my partner what the most iconic piece of road trip media was and he said "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" which is AUSTRALIAN. (I am of course a red-blooded American queer so I said "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Judy Newmar" which is American Priscilla)

Susan Olson

Loved this episode! Surprise Sarah time is the best. For me the road trip movie at the top of my mind is always the hero's journey of our time, Magic Mike XXL, followed closely by Mad Max: Fury Road. I watched them as a double feature with friends for a birthday years ago and heartily recommend it.

Astraea

Thank you for this information! I hadn't heard this until maybe two (?) years ago, and it's important to know. Democrats propagating incorrect information and just kind of not caring that is wrong has been an increasing point of anger for me over the last few years. (Obviously Republicans are the bigger problem, but Dems aren't exactly covering themselves in glory.) May I ask what, in your experience, are the reasons people get later abortions other than maternal or fetal health concerns? My understanding is that it's usually either a) someone who didn't know they were pregnant until at least week 13, b) someone who sought an earlier abortion but TRAP laws made it impossible for them to get it earlier, or c) someone who had to win a legal fight to get the abortion, eg a minor fighting their parents in court. But that understanding comes entirely from someone else's summary of the Turnaway Studies, which are kind of necessarily about people who *didn't* get abortions, so it's not the cleanest dataset ever.

Astraea

A very fun episode! I'm not sure that I agree that road trips are necessarily about dominating your landscape, though. There's definitely a parallel between modern roadtrip stories and 19th-century settler migration, for sure. But a lot of road trip stories seem to me to be about losing yourself, or finding yourself, or this sort of "time out of time" feeling you get because you are, basically by definition, not living your normal mundane life while you're on a four-day drive. To me it makes more sense that road trips are about the fact that land dominates *us,* or that we seek that out; you could cross the country in a day on an airplane, but you chose to drive instead, which takes a lot more time and is a lot more physically tiring (not as much as walking, but still). But I think there's also an important distinction between how people *actually* view road trips and how media *portrays* road trips. As something that grew out of white Americans' perception of "the untamed West" (I live here, guys, GTFO with that shit) and cowboys and settlers, etc, it make sense that a lot of the most iconic roadtrip movies are about men doing manly things, male bonding, etc. But if you just live here and you go on road trips because you love the landscape and the local communities, it's a very different vibe.

D

Oh yeah, road trips to Montreal too, def a thing.

Lu

My short answer is that people get later abortions for the same reasons they get abortions earlier in pregnancy! My long answer is that people get later abortions because a) they find out new information (about their health, about their pregnancy, including about the *existence* of their pregnancy, and/or a change in life circumstances), and/or (but these days I’d say more commonly “and”) b) they experience any of the myriad of barriers to getting an abortion earlier, including all the ones you named! I recommend whonotwhen.com and Patient Forward as resources for understanding abortion later in pregnancy. Later abortion is incredibly misunderstood and stigmatized but is truly such a moral good, and is truly life saving and life affirming care.

Lu

Also getlatercare.com for the nitty gritty info about actually seeking and obtaining later abortion care.

achten

Hey, what about native Americans? "Smoke Signals" is a great movie, and a great road trip movie. Don't miss it. Adrian, a returning phrase in the movie is "Hey, Adrian."

A Shade In Shades

For other road trip content, I'd heartily recommend Avery Alder's Ribbon Drive which is my all time favourite tabletop RPG (works as a larp as well). Very accessible, can be quite deep/emotional and you get to make a mixtape.

ilse lemmers

Oh, The Vanishing! It's based on a Dutch book, Het gouden ei, which has been traumatizing Dutch high schoolers since 1984. My son had to read it as a third year last year,, just like me in the '90's, and he was pretty nervous this summer when at a German Raststätte I went in on my own to use the bathroom, haha.