Rund Abdelfatah

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598 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 19 Jul

Rund Abdelfatah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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Throughline · Route 66 and the quest to connect America · 16 Jul 2026 podcast

So she did, along with her colleague, Quinta Scott.

The two of them drove Route 66 together, knocking on doors, peering into shuttered businesses, grabbing a bite to eat at diners along the road.

And what people said was Cy Avery invented Route 66.

So then we had to find out about Cy.

Cyrus Avery was born in 1871 in a small town in Pennsylvania.

He was named after his grandfathers, both of whom were also called Cyrus, and both of whom were farmers.

His dad was a livestock farmer.

And Sy, among other things, delivered milk in the town with an ox.

By the time he was 12, Sy was growing up to be a curious and independent kid who knew his way not just around an ox cart, but the rutted dirt roads in Pennsylvania.

And in 1884, after Sy's 13th birthday, he and his dad loaded up a heavy wagon and headed west in search of land for the family to settle on out on the frontier.

His family says he went in a covered wagon.

My conjecture is that if you're on a covered wagon from Pennsylvania to southwest Missouri and then into what is now Oklahoma, that probably there were wagons that broke down.

There was horses that got away.

And if there was a 13 or 14 year old around, you would say, hey, come and help us pull this wagon out of the mud.

So as did many people in this country.

So I had a firsthand knowledge of how bad the roads were.

This was not a theoretical deal.

Even during the colonial period, Americans were complaining to their government about bad roads.

So in 1806, Congress and Thomas Jefferson approved plans for a national road that would funnel settlers from Maryland into the Northwest Territory.

But by the 1940s, the government had run out of money for the project.

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