AirTalk Oct. 7, 2026

Today's show: AirTalk host Larry Mantle discusses updates on autonomous cars, This Week in AI, new book on Japanese Americans pre-WWII, Eva Marie Saint, year of the documentary and Jeff Garlin on book Best Seat in the House.

What we know about LA’s autonomous cars and their safety record

Autonomous vehicles like Waymos have become a familiar sight in some parts of Los Angeles and Amazon’s Zoox is testing throughout the region. New data show how these vehicles' safety record stacks up with human drivers.

Guests:

• Matthew Raifman, research lead on policy and autonomous vehicles at UC Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research & Education Center (SafeTREC)
• Ann Carlson, a former federal auto safety regulator and professor of environmental law at UCLA

This week in AI: the AI buildout’s price tag, new cheap models rival China

There’s seemingly a new AI headline just about every day, if not every hour. Each week on AirTalk, we set aside some time to catch you up on the biggest stories and developments of the week.

Guests:

• Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policymaking
• Kashmir Hill, features writer on the business desk at the New York Times
• Nic Perez, AirTalk Producer

New book explores the treatment of Japanese Americans pre-WWII

The mistreatment and internment of Japanese Americans in response to World War II is well known. The new book, The Distance Between Our Names: The Untold History of America's War on Japanese Immigrants (Simon & Schuster, 2026), explores the events of and attitudes towards Japanese immigration leading up to the second World War and how internment fits into the broader picture.

Guest:

• Paul Richter, former L.A. Times reporter who covered the State Department and foreign policy and author of The Distance Between Our Names: The Untold History of America's War on Japanese Immigrants

Eva Marie Saint dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, the pale, willowy actor who won an Academy Award for her first movie, On the Waterfront, and starred opposite Cary Grant in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest, has died. She was 102. We replay one of Larry’s conversations with Saint from 2014.

Is it the year of the documentary?

Do blockbuster documentaries exist? Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything, that follows Elizabeth Holmes’ a month before her prison admittance, may be the first. But, it's not the only attempt this year. We look at the economics, the shift to theaters, audience appetite and more.

Guests:

• Addie Morfoot, freelance writer who covers the entertainment industry. She’s written for Variety, The New York Times, Documentary Magazine and more. She’s author of the Ankler piece, 2 Million Viewers or Bust: Inside Documentary’s ‘Darwinian’ Collapse
• Christy Lemire, film critic for LAist, and co-host of the Breakfast All Day YouTube and podcast series

Jeff Garlin: Best Seat in the House

Jeff Garlin is known most for his role on Curb Your Enthusiasm as Jeff Greene, the loyal manager and best friend, who would often pull Larry David’s fictionalized character into or out of his absurd social predicaments. Now, Garlin has taken his decades-long first-hand experience in and around comedy’s biggest stars and turned it into a personal photography book titled Best Seat in the House: Moments No One Asked Me to Capture...But I Did Anyway (Rizzoli New York, 2026).

 Guest:

• Jeff Garlin, writer, producer, director, actor, comedian and author of Best Seat in the House: Moments No One Asked Me to Capture...But I Did Anyway