The Personalities Behind the First Race

How a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads. 

Freakonomics Radio shares a story from our friends at Search Engine. (Part one of a two-part series.)

• SOURCES:
  • Alex Davies, author of Driven: The Race To Create the Autonomous Car.
  • Chris Urmson, co-founder and C.E.O. of Aurora.
  • Don Burnette, founder and C.E.O. of Kodiak AI.
  • PJ Vogt, reporter, writer, and host of the Search Engine podcast.
  • Sebastian Thrun, roboticist, C.E.O. of Sage AI Labs, adjunct faculty at Stanford University.
  • Timothy B. Lee, author of Understanding AI newsletter.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Very few of Waymo’s most serious crashes were Waymo’s fault," by Kai Williams (Understand AI, 2025).
  • Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, by Alex Davies (2021).
  • "An Oral History of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the Grueling Robot Race That Launched the Self-Driving Car," by Alex Davies (WIRED, 2017).
  • Understanding AI, newsletter on Substack.
  • Waymo Safety Dashboard.

• EXTRAS:
  • "The Fascinatingly Mundane Secrets of the World’s Most Exclusive Nightclub," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
  • Search Engine, podcast by PJ Vogt.

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