The Joe Rogan Experience XX
[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
[1] The Joe Rogan experience.
[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night.
[3] All day.
[4] Before you press the cord, I have.
[5] I'll go most places and I'm here because I want to tell people the truth about the last 80s.
[6] I've had a pretty shit two years because Top Gear ended in a way that most Americans won't know.
[7] But my colleague nearly died in a crash.
[8] And then they left us in limbo a bit.
[9] I've never told anyone anything about it.
[10] Largely because my friend and colleague who was nearly killed in the accident called Andrew Flintoff, who was a presenter on the show.
[11] Again, no Americans will know who he is, but he's a massive sports hero in the UK.
[12] He plays that weird game called cricket.
[13] He was like our best cricket player.
[14] Can we use this?
[15] Yeah, no, we can.
[16] I just want to give you a quick foretaste of it.
[17] I'm not, I'm here to, I'll say some things that people won't have heard before, and they'll make them gasp a bit.
[18] Because we're recording now.
[19] Yeah, that's okay?
[20] Yeah, that's fine, yeah.
[21] What's that?
[22] on him though what's that I wasn't on him okay that's fine we on me I'm gonna I'm gonna go into it all okay but it might be that what seems quite revelatory to me since we're rolling cheers 10 years yeah it's been a while and you know what I don't I don't ever listen to what I say or watch what I record I don't watch my own shows good for you you probably don't either do I don't know it's good for the soul once it's done it's buried exactly but I think I came to see you about a month before I received a phone call saying do you want to do this television show called Top Gear?
[23] Yeah, it was before Top Gear for sure.
[24] Yeah, and I think it was then.
[25] And I think at that point, I'd been fielding a lot of questions about, well, why would you follow Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear?
[26] And I'd go on air, no one would do that.
[27] They'd be an idiot to do that.
[28] And then I looked at the sort of monthly payments that I needed to live my life and I got offered a bit of not much money, but some money.
[29] I thought, I'll give it a go.
[30] But most importantly, I thought the 17 -year -old me if he saw me say no to this job but punch me in the face because it's my dream job and I know that Top Gear is a weird thing in the US because I think many US people are aware of it that it exists but they've never really seen it because it never was put on a big network here yeah but it became very popular on YouTube it did yeah I mean it's a great it was a great show yeah I mean whether my era of Top Gear will be considered great I don't know I had lots of fun making it but following in Jeremy's footsteps was on reflection of decision I made the wrong call I shouldn't have done it really yeah I had a great time but you try following him in the UK just because of how much he's loved and yeah yeah I just I didn't realize how deep rooted it was I still get hate mail now I still get hate mail now yeah you could have had the exact same show under a different name and people would have loved it yeah yeah and I think we made some good films and I love what I did but even if we made a good film it was always shit because it wasn't Jeremy I really enjoyed it though I enjoyed you being on it.
[31] You know, you're great.
[32] You're my favorite automotive journalist.
[33] Well, that's very kind of you.
[34] And I've just seen what you've arrived in as well, and I thoroughly approve of your taste in motor vehicles.
[35] Am I allowed to say what it is or not?
[36] Yeah, yeah.
[37] It's a Raptor R that John Hennessey jumps up to a thousand horsepower.
[38] It's fucking ridiculous.
[39] I think, I think, I'm often asked, if you lived in America, what car would you drive, and it would always be a raptor.
[40] Comes under the heading of always drink the local beer.
[41] You know, when you go to a city, Don't order a Heineken or a bud, drink the local beer.
[42] And the F -150 Raptor is your local beer.
[43] Yep.
[44] That's about as American as it gets.
[45] Dodge Rams and Ford F -150s.
[46] Yeah.
[47] Those are the most American vehicles.
[48] A thousand horsepower in a truck.
[49] It's ridiculous.
[50] We never thought it would be possible, did we?
[51] No. No. Zero to 60 in three seconds for a giant pickup truck.
[52] It's awesome.
[53] And it sounds great, too.
[54] It just has this beautiful rumble.
[55] Do you think you'll be allowed to drive that in 10 years' time in this state?
[56] maybe in this date yeah but if you leave they'll like have people at the border waiting in the bushes to arrest you the moment you cross over if you don't have an EV and you know in California they have a mandate in 2035 you know after 235 no internal combustion engine vehicles are allowed to be sold in the state same in the UK although they know it was 2035 then the last administration moved it back to 2030 good luck They're not even ready.
[57] They're not ready.
[58] The grid's not ready.
[59] I'm so torn on this because everyone looks to me as the ultimate petrol head and I'll sit there and go, they're all shit.
[60] They're not all shit.
[61] They have a place.
[62] And the most sophisticated assessment of this that I've come across was just a very normal person I was talking to you one day in an airport who said, sure of the solution is that you just use what's pertinent to the energy that's easiest where you live.
[63] And I think it's the best way of explaining it.
[64] You know, if you live here, you drill a hole in the ground.
[65] There's oil around here.
[66] Yeah.
[67] If you live in Iceland, you drill a hole in the ground.
[68] There's loads of geothermal.
[69] So why wouldn't you have an EV there?
[70] It's brilliant.
[71] It's everywhere.
[72] Right.
[73] It's quite a small country.
[74] I don't need to travel large distances.
[75] But Iceland's cold, and the battery capacity, when it gets really cold, diminishes pretty rapidly.
[76] Yeah, but also, if you live there and you've got loads of batteries and you have a cartridge system, we can slot them in and out.
[77] It's doable, isn't it?
[78] I just think we need to be a bit cleverer about it.
[79] But at the moment, the subject's approached with, this is good, this is evil at the moment we live in a Star Wars reality so effectively you're either you're either the rebellion or your Darth Vader and his crew and I've been and you will have as well I've been pushed into the corner of being Darth Vader just don't think I am when I can I use the train if I'm in a city I quite like riding a bicycle because it suits me I like it, it works but when I want to go out on an open road and enjoy a 9 -11 I want to enjoy 9 -11 why can't I?
[80] I don't see I find it very difficult when I'm told to do things that I don't think are rational or reasonable.
[81] No, and there's this religious ideology that's attached to climate change.
[82] That's, it has that sort of fever pitched religious aspect to it.
[83] And most people, when you corner them, if they're even the real zealots, most people really don't understand how much data there is on the impact that human beings have on climate change, how much is being done in China and India.
[84] that will not change at all and is only going to get more extreme and like what little impact you have comparatively.
[85] That's a really interesting point because on the one, when you took it's like being a parent.
[86] On the one hand you can respond to that by saying well if I'm going to make no difference I'll just carry on driving around in my Raptor but then it could be suggested that that means that you should make a difference but I find it really difficult that we can't understand that if there has to ultimately be a change at some point, if it's rational, I don't know, if it's now, or it's certainly not 2035, that's not reasonable.
[87] No. We need to prepare ourselves to make logical and progressive changes.
[88] I don't think you can mandate those changes.
[89] No, you're right right.
[90] First of all, we have a long history of internal combustion engines as recreation vehicles, and we love them, and we're not, I don't, I think it's completely unfair.
[91] If you're still running coal plants that power electric vehicles, which is a fact in America, They have coal plants that power electric vehicles.
[92] They do far more damage to the environment.
[93] And if you tell me I can't have an internal combustion engine while you're doing that to power electric vehicles, I'm going to say fuck you.
[94] Because fuck you is the right thing to say because that doesn't make any sense.
[95] Yeah.
[96] And there's also this weird thing that is attached to this.
[97] This is a business, the green energy business.
[98] And these people that are involved in the green energy business have done a tremendous job in pushing these politicians to promote this very specific propaganda about what you can and what you can't do and what we need to do and where we need to get to and what bills we need to pass in order to get to this position and they're all profitable and that's the problem that nobody wants to talk about this is all business and like most businesses like the business of vaccines or the businesses of infrastructure there's or military there's a lot of money being exchanged and that's why it's being promoted It's not, this isn't some completely altruistic, we need to save the world and this is what's wrong.
[99] It's not true.
[100] It's not true.
[101] I think I agree.
[102] And I, and there are some basic tests you can apply to it.
[103] If you gave most people that love the internal combustion engine, an electric vehicle that could do exactly the same thing as well, but be electric, they take it.
[104] But they can't.
[105] We cannot.
[106] The technology doesn't work at the moment.
[107] It just doesn't sound the same, it doesn't feel the same, but they are.
[108] I'm talking about the non -enthusiast, the non -enthusiasts, people like you and I that don't care about that.
[109] If you gave them an electric vehicle that did exactly the same job that could do it as well and could be as flexible to their needs, they'd take it because it's as good.
[110] Right.
[111] But no one can do that at the moment.
[112] They don't exist.
[113] It takes too long to charge.
[114] You can't just pull over in charge.
[115] It takes hours.
[116] And also, there are so many other industries that pollute so heavily.
[117] Why aren't they the subject of so much sort of pernicious legislation?
[118] I mean, we talk about shipping.
[119] If you start to look into cargo ships, what they emit is extraordinary.
[120] Extraordinary.
[121] Absolutely extraordinary.
[122] Well, do you know that they, I believe it was the UN, passed some sort of regulations on cargo ships.
[123] And because of these regulations to make them more pollute less, the side effect, the unintended consequences were the ocean got warmer, the surface of the ocean where it was measured got warmer because there's no longer.
[124] a pollution layer over the ocean where these things are traveling which is so crazy so I know do you know that there's more green on earth today than there was in the last 100 years no I didn't know that it's because of the carbon dioxide because trees eat carbon dioxide I'm I have to say I'm I'm completely torn on it all because I some some day days, but you don't have so many diesel vehicles here, but some days I drive around in the UK and I see a diesel throwing some shit out of the back of it.
[125] And I'm like, that's not good.
[126] If I can see it, I don't like it.
[127] We have a lot of diesel trucks here.
[128] Yeah, and I don't like it.
[129] And I don't like it.
[130] I want things to be different over time.
[131] And I can see that that that's the way that we might be heading.
[132] But I hate the fact that the timeline is determined by politicians rather than scientists.
[133] Exactly.
[134] And even the scientists.
[135] are all bought and paid for.
[136] That's part of the problem, too.
[137] Scientists aren't just scientists.
[138] They're scientists that are influenced by the university.
[139] They're influenced by whatever research group they're a part of.
[140] There's a lot of shenanigans going on.
[141] And the internal combustion engine has ironically reached a point where it's really quite efficient.
[142] It's quite a clever thing.
[143] If you were to invite an alien down in that vehicle there and try and show off what we're capable of, you might show them a Raptor R and go, we did that.
[144] Yeah.
[145] We're quite clever.
[146] But I think they'd be like, you're not using gravity?
[147] Why don't you guys just go use gravity?
[148] Made it be like gravity.
[149] This is so stupid.
[150] I have a Tesla.
[151] I have a Model S plaid, and it's fantastic.
[152] It is so fast.
[153] It's like a time machine.
[154] Has it got the not real steering wheel?
[155] Yes.
[156] I don't like that.
[157] I don't like the yoke.
[158] I ordered a new one.
[159] I get it in October.
[160] No yoke.
[161] Regular wheel.
[162] Yeah.
[163] Wheels better.
[164] I like a wheel better.
[165] But I get it.
[166] There's some benefits to the yoke.
[167] It's like you get a clear view of the dash.
[168] You basically put your hands on there.
[169] And he's moving.
[170] towards like completely automated you know you can press do doot you press a button and it'll drive you just based on the navigation.
[171] Where do you stand on that?
[172] I don't trust it.
[173] No not do I I mean it just doesn't feel right but a few times I've been in one of those things with the most advanced they've all got levels now haven't they and I've let it drive me I'm there thinking I'm hovering I don't like it.
[174] It's the exact same feeling that I got when Joe Biden was the president like is this okay are we I just I have to say I don't And in this city There are A lot of Jaguars With sort of Radar -y things on them Yes Yes And I presume they're driverless Are they Yes they're driverless I don't know what they're called Wayvo Waymo Waymo So I view those Like I do That sort of bloke In the corner of the bar That's just a bit shuffly Gets up Does the one -legged walk Comes back from the urinal With a bit of piss down his leg I'm like I'm giving you a wide birth, mate.
[175] Well, there was a bunch of them and they got into a sort of a situation where they created a traffic jam because they all came into an intersection together and no one wanted to move.
[176] And there was a bunch of them because there's quite a few of them in the city.
[177] You'll see...
[178] I've seen several today.
[179] Yes, they cause a traffic jam.
[180] Yeah, I don't.
[181] I mean, probably one day it's going to be the way to do it, the way to get around.
[182] But I think you can't deny people the joy of driving, just like you can't deny people their ability to ride horses.
[183] If someone wants to ride a horse, they should be able to ride a horse.
[184] People have a long history of enjoying horse riding.
[185] Okay?
[186] Let them ride horses.
[187] And I have a 1990, I guess it's a 93, R .S. America.
[188] That's a rare car.
[189] Oh, I love it.
[190] It's so beautiful.
[191] Because that was the car they made because you weren't allowed the real 90s 4 -R -S, were you?
[192] They did a special one.
[193] Yes.
[194] So this one, I had ascended to Shark Works, and they juiced it up to somewhere around 300 horsepower.
[195] Nothing crazy.
[196] But, oh, my God.
[197] It's so tactile and it's alive.
[198] And it just, when I drive it, I just, I'm smiling.
[199] And I have this big smile on my face.
[200] Like, I'm on a fucking ride.
[201] I was going to bring my Gunther Works here today, but it's raining.
[202] Have you got one of those?
[203] Yeah.
[204] Has it got a roof?
[205] or not?
[206] Yeah, it's got a roof.
[207] I mean, so where do we stand on the rest of mod scene?
[208] Do we think it's gone too far, or do we believe it's the way forward?
[209] Well, I like the ones that look old but drive new.
[210] Yeah.
[211] Because they're less dangerous.
[212] That's the whole idea, isn't it, really?
[213] But I don't think there's anything dangerous in that 9 -6 -4.
[214] That's mine.
[215] That's beautiful.
[216] Oh, it's all good.
[217] How much power has that got?
[218] 460, and it's, you know, 2 ,000 pounds.
[219] I've also got to raise my hand here and say that I work for singer, so I've got to be very careful.
[220] I love those too.
[221] Well, I actually have a little contract with them, so I've actually professionally got to say, I ignore that vehicle.
[222] But actually, I think, I love the rest of mod thing.
[223] I think it, we might be at peak resto mod because there's so much of it going on.
[224] But it does, it segues into a point I wanted to make about the way we're travelling.
[225] One of the ways I find to appease myself, if I do wake up some days and think, I'm pretty wasteful individual or whatever it is.
[226] Even I have moments where I think.
[227] Just have a look at yourself in the mirror.
[228] Just buy a used car.
[229] Then you're not having another one built.
[230] There are so many great old cars out there.
[231] I just go out and buy something that's 10 years old.
[232] Go and look at a 10 -year -old AMG.
[233] What a machine.
[234] And that's a vehicle that's already been built.
[235] Its wastefulness has already been absorbed into this weird world we live in.
[236] Go and buy it.
[237] It's there for you.
[238] With its 500 horsepower, it's ready to go.
[239] The greenest thing you can do, is to go and buy an old Ferrari.
[240] Right.
[241] You'll do no miles in it because you'll never use it because it might work now and again.
[242] It's the greenest thing you can do in your life is buy a used Ferrari or a Lamborghini.
[243] Right.
[244] It's the best thing.
[245] But no one seems to express it this way.
[246] And the other way is to Resto Mod.
[247] It's to, you know, buy something and make it...
[248] Make the car that you wish new car makers built now but they can't because they've all been drawn into this need to spend billions on these electric...
[249] SUVs.
[250] There's the other thing that's ironic.
[251] They're all SUVs.
[252] So you're telling me we've got to have these efficient new EVs, but you're going to make them three tons, shouldn't they be that big?
[253] Not only that, there's a problem with guardrails.
[254] Jesus.
[255] They're too heavy.
[256] They go right through the guardrails like butter.
[257] I saw that.
[258] I saw that on Instagram too.
[259] It just goes straight through it.
[260] Right through.
[261] Yeah.
[262] They're twice as wet.
[263] But I do think that people love cars.
[264] Just look to old stuff.
[265] There's so much of it out there.
[266] Yeah.
[267] And they're so good.
[268] I have a 2005 M3 So an E46 Peak car Peak car It's such a great car I know It's not too powerful But it's so delightful Like it doesn't have a radio It's got cloth seats Cloth seats I fucking love That is rare Yeah Yeah cloth seats I just bought the V10 So you had the E60 V10 M5 over here Crazy machine Yes We had the touring in the UK They built a touring Which is a state car Or sorry a station wagon and I've got one of those that I bought earlier in the year and I'm just do you know what I've paid 27 ,000 pounds for it I probably spent more than that on it already doing just making it right but actually the journey of of just reconditioning and renewing something like that to use for the next five years I find more interesting than most new performance cars now is that a sad statement or not no no because there's something about like seeing the improvement on a vehicle like getting a vehicle and going, yeah, you know, these suspension is okay, but these shocks are like, I could adjust this and maybe this, and maybe I can get a little wider wheel in this.
[269] You remind me so much of one of my favorite colleagues, Mr. LeBlanc, because Matt is a much bigger car guy than anyone realizes.
[270] We actually grew up in the same town.
[271] Did you?
[272] Yeah.
[273] I had friends that knew him, but I never met him.
[274] I've still never met him.
[275] He's a wonderful man, and he's brilliant car guy.
[276] He would agree with you.
[277] He's like that.
[278] He can never call.
[279] quite leaves something alone.
[280] If I, and with motorcycles as well.
[281] Motorcycles, he, um, had a bizarre.
[282] Working with him was wonderful, by the way.
[283] I loved him to bits.
[284] I'd like to make another TV show with him.
[285] I, um, I got, uh, one of these gangs that steals motorcycles, uh, in the UK got me. So I was, I was doing a voiceover in the center of London.
[286] I've probably told, I might have written this story.
[287] I don't know told it or not.
[288] Um, and I had a new Ducati I'd bought.
[289] I like bikes.
[290] I'm not very good on them, but I like bikes.
[291] And I was, trying to get better and Matt's a very good rider and I had this Ducati panegali anniversary with all the it's the kind of shit you buy when you've just got a TV job you know and you think you're the dogs bollocks and looking back it's fucking embarrassing so I've parked it up in soho in right in the central London by the where the voiceover studio was and I was I was a bit early so I was milling about wearing my leather still and I saw this bike moving past me and I thought that's a nice bike oh shit that's my bike and I saw these got these these guys all in black with stuff sort of tinted visors black everything what they do is they they basically angle grind off the um the steering lock the mail part that goes into the headstock they angle ground off break the steering and then they have a moped behind or something quite powerful with a leg out and another guy and push your bike away in neutral and they get it around the corner into a van and away it goes and they did it right in front of me and so I walked up and I was like this my bike i'm not a you know i'm small not a very big guy i'm you know i don't present any kind of a threat and there was three of them and i challenged them and i said this is not on you know and i started swearing and one of them had a hammer claw hammer and um we had a tussle when the bike fell over and as the bike fell over i'm like well that's wrecked that then hasn't it because i could just see the fairing squashed and then the guy tried to hit me with the hammer and i was like i remember screaming you're trying to steal my bike and now you're trying to hit me with the hammer and then they left and i was really shocked i'd never had anything like that happened to me so i picked the bike up and i walked it down to the um voiceover studio and i rolled it up and i walked in and matt was there it's a long story and i said um well he went how are you i said well someone's just tried to steal my bike and they tried to hit me with a hammer and he came outside and he looked at the bike he's got the most lovely deadpan voice and he goes you want to get those Decati performance levers those are too long looking he was trying to mod it didn't even care you almost get killed by a hammer because he's like you he's like obviously you know tough he's a big boy and he's like he's fine but those levers are too long they don't suit that bike those levers are too long yeah I think this the mod thing is really important to me I love it I cannot not leave stuff alone.
[292] Yeah, I enjoy messing around with stuff too.
[293] It's part of the fun of the older cars.
[294] You know, particularly like car, like I have a Nissan GTR and that is...
[295] 35?
[296] Yeah, that is the ultimate mod car because they've been around for so long in exactly the same form and there's such an aftermarket and everybody just goes crazy.
[297] Find me a standard one.
[298] That don't exist.
[299] Yeah, it's very hard to find.
[300] 35 the unicorn yeah very hard to find how much power does yours have well i got a nismo i got uh last year's model the nismo so i got it new was still laying around and but i got it because i know you can fuck around with them so i'm never going to get rid of it i'm going to keep it forever and i'm going to juice it up to probably a thousand horsepower something stupid and if they make another one it'll have to be a hybrid it'll have to be yeah yeah it'll never be the same there's this i mean they're about to do that to porches probably they're about to do that they're already doing that with the m5 right the new M5 is a hybrid.
[301] I've driven that.
[302] The new one?
[303] Yeah.
[304] I'm not sure whether I can say I've driven it or not.
[305] Say it.
[306] I'll probably get...
[307] I think I signed a piece of paper saying I'd get sued for 60 ,000 euros if I said nothing.
[308] It's, yeah.
[309] There's a point in this process where you have to acknowledge that the main criticism of hybridity in cars is mass, his weight.
[310] Right.
[311] So everyone says it's too heavy.
[312] But for me, mass is just a number unless you can...
[313] feel it okay it's really important you can't just criticize something because it's heavy right you can't because actually it might it might affect the way the car drives but you have to drive it to tell that first that's where I have a job um so that's and I won't talk about the m5 because I think I might get sued but but I can tell you now the BMW M2 is is a small performance car that came out 17 150 kilograms my friend Tom Segura had one of those that he sent off to get juiced up yeah I forget a dinan did it I forget who did it.
[314] Well, the new one came out, and it was 300 kilograms heavier than the last one.
[315] And the whole, the internet had a massive collective baby and went, oh, it's fucking ruined.
[316] I ran one for six months.
[317] It was better than the last M2.
[318] Of course it was.
[319] Really?
[320] Yes, because someone German with a massive forehead and a white coat made it that way.
[321] Because these are really clever people.
[322] Right.
[323] And actually, mass only matters if you can feel it.
[324] So if you drive a car and you can feel it's too heavy, fine, I'm with you.
[325] And that's the clue as to what I'm.
[326] I think about the new M5.
[327] Judge it.
[328] Get in it and judge it before you actually, or drive it before you judge it.
[329] And that's what it looks like.
[330] Yeah.
[331] I mean, it looks good.
[332] It's a 700 -something horsepower sedan with a BMW badge.
[333] Look at 727.
[334] When is that coming out?
[335] The launch is at the end of this year.
[336] It is, it's a beast.
[337] I could only imagine.
[338] I had an M5.
[339] I miss it.
[340] It was a V10 or the V8 one.
[341] It was V8.
[342] E -39.
[343] Yeah.
[344] I had it in, what year was it, 2015 or something?
[345] What was that?
[346] Which one would that be?
[347] That would have been the V10.
[348] It wasn't a V10.
[349] Was it not?
[350] It was the one after the V10.
[351] Oh, that would be the F10.
[352] Yeah.
[353] The F10M.
[354] Yeah.
[355] I'm a real nerd.
[356] I loved it.
[357] It's a good car.
[358] It was great.
[359] And actually, an M car should be, and your E -406 is the definition of this, an M -car should be a car that the non -car nerd can't spot it from the normal one.
[360] But the car nerd can spot it just for.
[361] the camber, a little bit of ride, a little bit of shoulder.
[362] You can see an M -car.
[363] You and I can see an M -car from a mile.
[364] Little hips.
[365] But a civilian cannot see an M -car from a mile.
[366] Especially in E -46, because it's such a plain -looking car.
[367] That's a gorgeous car.
[368] We actually had someone reach out to Jamie.
[369] That's how I bought it.
[370] Because we were talking about how great there.
[371] I was like, I'd love to find a low -mile one.
[372] And this one is super low miles.
[373] I forget what it is, but it's really low miles.
[374] M -Tec cloth is rare.
[375] Yeah.
[376] I look at the cars I missed that on.
[377] There was a white manual M -T -T -T -E -T -Cless.
[378] on 18 -inch wheels, E -46M -3.
[379] And why I didn't buy it, I don't know.
[380] But then, I suppose I could say that about a thousand cars that I wish I'd bought, or I hadn't sold.
[381] I wish you never sold that green Porsche.
[382] Do you know what?
[383] I know who owns it.
[384] Yeah?
[385] It appears in the UK now and again, and I see it.
[386] It was a cool thing.
[387] But I had to realize early on that I couldn't afford to keep all these things.
[388] But that thing was a masterpiece.
[389] It was lovely.
[390] But look where, that was done by Tuttle, right?
[391] And look where they are now.
[392] They just come back from Pebble Beach with this GT1 amazing looking thing, which you might have seen.
[393] He Googled GT1 Tuttle.
[394] Doesn't he have a car that goes to 10 ,000, 11 ,11, 11 ,000 RPMs?
[395] That's so nuts.
[396] Yeah, it's a lovely thing that he developed with a friend of ours called Philip Cordori, who obviously runs the quail.
[397] And it's a K, so K has, it's a very good name, isn't it?
[398] It's a 9 -11K developed by a guy called Kadori, K for Kodori, and it revs for 11 ,000 RPM, 9 -11K.
[399] my favorite car name ever.
[400] I've driven it.
[401] There's a video online of that in this gold thing.
[402] How is it?
[403] You need to sit down after driving it because it's just so visceral.
[404] It's one of the few cars that you're aware of just how fast that crank is spinning and you have to keep it revving and it just keeps going and your eyes says it's gone to eight.
[405] You've got to stop now.
[406] I'm going to have bits of metal coming out the side of the engine but it never does.
[407] Wow.
[408] And it's so light.
[409] Everything's carbon so it's about 900 kilograms.
[410] Wow.
[411] Yeah, you'd love that.
[412] That's really that's very basic intravenous performance that is how light did you get your green card down to it is that it?
[413] No that's what they've just done so Tuttle did the GT1 he's just launched that at Pebble Beach wow look at that that looks I hate the wheels but again I've got to be careful I work for singer I love singer I love singer amazing but that's my friend Richard's just done that can you get me a picture of a singer why are the wheels so gross because they're supposed to look like 80s wheels from Le Mans yeah let that go.
[414] Yeah, I think you might be right.
[415] I'm 100 % right.
[416] Those fields are disgusting.
[417] The 9 -11K is an amazing thing.
[418] And maybe if I was Porsche or another carmaker, I'd be starting to cry foul.
[419] Because what's happened is the RestoMod thing is actually a movement that remind carmakers that they're not being given or being offered a fair crack at the whip now.
[420] Because you can come along.
[421] You and I could establish the Monkey and Joe car company tomorrow.
[422] Right.
[423] And we could find a car.
[424] We could say, right, we're going to make an E46 M3.
[425] We're going to buy a hundred good E46 M3s, and we're going to turn them into the Joe and Monkey M3.
[426] And we're going to sell them for $300 ,000.
[427] They're going to have a nice new interior.
[428] They're not going to stray too far from the original philosophy of the car.
[429] Everyone's going to love them.
[430] And we wouldn't have to meet any kind of crash legislation.
[431] Smog would be, according to the vehicle age.
[432] In Europe, there's even less to do.
[433] do.
[434] It comes under very low volume approval.
[435] You don't have to do anything.
[436] We don't have to meet any emissions regs really in Europe.
[437] You can do what you want.
[438] But if you're a car, if you're called BMW, you cannot make that car.
[439] And I'm not sure that's fair.
[440] Right.
[441] Like what Ruff does?
[442] Yeah.
[443] So they don't even, that's not even really a Porsche.
[444] Well, it has its own chassis plate.
[445] It's a really gray area.
[446] But I think it's unfair on the car companies in many ways because they can't go out and do that.
[447] Right.
[448] They can't make a rest of them on.
[449] They can't, Porsche could not.
[450] make a singer.
[451] Well, they could, but they'd have to establish a new co, or they'd have to buy a company.
[452] But could Porsche make resto mods of their vehicles?
[453] I think they potentially could, but they'd be terrified, I suspect, of the potential litigation.
[454] Right.
[455] You know, because if one of them went into a wall, you know, you'll suddenly, you get to sue Porsche.
[456] Right.
[457] Also, especially if you're selling something like that.
[458] one of those old widow makers where and people don't understand that if i mean i have a 2007 gt3 rs and uh it's still like around corners you let off off the gas it'll whip around on you yeah the new ones don't really do that that much the new ones are much better they've got well they've got this rear steer on them which definitely helps but they'll still rotate yeah just the engine out the back but you've had that to an old like design It's less prominent now because tire technology has moved on so much.
[459] Right.
[460] I remember the first time I got to drive a lot of these things.
[461] I didn't quite understand the Widow Maker tag because they had new tires.
[462] They had these new tires.
[463] Tires are everything.
[464] I'll tell you what a Top Gear story is fairly interesting.
[465] My colleague who called Paddy McGinnis who's one of the co -hosts, who's claimed to fame for me in America is he had to be subtitled in America for Top Gear because his accent is so broad from the north of the Union and he had subtitles.
[466] It's like watching peeky blinders.
[467] Yeah, no, it's worse than that.
[468] Anyhow, he crashed a Lamborghini when we were filming and it was all over the press in the UK.
[469] It helped it, it was red, like proper dognob red Lamborghini, goes off the road.
[470] Anyhow, at the end of it all, the car's on a low loader and I look at the tires.
[471] They're 20 years old.
[472] Oh, God.
[473] Yeah.
[474] It had been borrowed for the job.
[475] You know, old tire technology matched with age as well.
[476] It's terrible.
[477] That's the story with the guy from Fast and the Furious.
[478] What's his name?
[479] Paul Walker.
[480] Paul Walker.
[481] That's the story with him.
[482] They had old tires on that car.
[483] So Paddy gets eviscerated in the press because you can't drive and everything else.
[484] I could have been in that car.
[485] I'd have crashed it.
[486] I can drive a bit.
[487] Anyone, you cannot.
[488] And if you get in these old cars with old tires on them, they have nothing.
[489] Yeah.
[490] Absolutely nothing.
[491] It's incredible how much the tech.
[492] technology has come along in that regard.
[493] I'd say Michelin, at its best, is, you know, some of it's like witchcraft.
[494] If you get in a new Porsche GT3RS now, the tire they've developed for that probably has four compounds across it, you know, so the highware stuff, where it needs the grip, they're so clever.
[495] They really are.
[496] The performance they add to the vehicle, no one knows.
[497] How come no one can figure out how to make a tire?
[498] without air so it's a really really interesting point they must have done it must for me it comes under the same heading as someone must have made a light bulb that you never need to replace but why would they make it well the tire without air thing for safety purposes there's a lot of reasons why you would want a tire that I mean I know they did bake them they do have there's this tire that looks like a sort of spring you know that added a shoe that has the sort of lattice yeah it looks a bit through it.
[499] Yeah, I have seen those.
[500] But I suppose you're still dealing with a, at that point it's a sprung mass, which would interfere with suspension.
[501] I don't have an answer for you.
[502] Do you think that's what it is?
[503] It's like it's heavier?
[504] I don't know.
[505] Because there's no air in it, that makes sense, because you'd have so much more rubber.
[506] But I think they tried to mitigate that by having it clear, so you see through it.
[507] There were some shots of one recently.
[508] I have to assume there's only two reasons you wouldn't make it.
[509] One, it doesn't work too it gets in the way of your ability to make money right normally the latter yeah i don't know it's probably a performance issue too because by manipulating the tire pressure you can get it just right whereas you're not going to be able to manipulate anything once the compound is exactly yeah yeah tires are a the more you get into cars tires are a fascinating subject that's that's a good opener when you meet some of the opposite sex um But I, it's never worked for me. But, but actually they are, because they're the only contact you have with the, with the ground.
[510] So it stands to reason that the most important part of the performance package.
[511] F1 commentators, and I'm actually probably slightly less so in the US.
[512] But in Formula One, the commentators spend most of the time talking about tires.
[513] Because it's the main factor.
[514] But they're not sexy.
[515] Tires are not sexy by definition.
[516] So, you know, car makers will tell you, I've got, we've got a new damper system that's got eight settings and we've got this and this.
[517] this, they can't tell you that they've spent five years developing a tire that's revolutionary.
[518] Nobody cares because it just looks like a tire.
[519] Yeah, it just looks terrible.
[520] What are you showing me?
[521] And when they come to replace that tire, they'll just give me the cheap one.
[522] I don't want to spend that money on that one.
[523] Right, right, right.
[524] So, you're experienced at Top Gear.
[525] Yeah, that's interesting.
[526] So I've never really spoken about it because I'm, I keep my mouse shut.
[527] I like to remain dignified.
[528] It's been quite a journey.
[529] It's come to an end now.
[530] I really feel it's a full stop.
[531] The show has been put on hold in the UK indefinitely is the terminology from the BBC.
[532] That means it's an end.
[533] But strangely, it exists in other formats around the world.
[534] There's been an American one.
[535] There's one in Finland.
[536] There's one in Australia.
[537] There's one in France.
[538] So the the license and the brand exists elsewhere, but not at its home in the UK.
[539] And it came to an end for me one day in December 22, in a way that I'd like to say I hadn't expected, but I had.
[540] And I think that's the bit that I've found very difficult to deal with over the last couple of years.
[541] Fundamentally, I'm quite happy -go -lucky person.
[542] I'm very privileged with the life I've had.
[543] And I love the fact that I earn a living doing what I love.
[544] You must have the same thing.
[545] To wake up, what a joy.
[546] I don't push a death.
[547] I get to wreck other people's tires.
[548] And also, my subject is one that is surrounded by joy.
[549] No one wants to hear.
[550] The last person you want to hear from is the miserable car road tester.
[551] Right.
[552] He can fuck off.
[553] Yeah.
[554] He can fuck off.
[555] You know, he can, and I don't want to be that guy.
[556] I hate those guys.
[557] Yeah, but actually, I'll be lying if I said, I've, you know, I feel good today.
[558] I've had a good few months.
[559] But the last 18 months, I've been bad because I just didn't, I didn't know what to do.
[560] because I'd like to sit here and say I never saw it coming but I did so what happened the accident that my friend Andrew had known as Fred I won't go into too much because it's sort of out there what happened he rolled a Morgan three wheeler he wasn't wearing a crash helmet and if you do that even at 25, 30 miles an hour the injuries that used to stay in that profound I was there on the day I was the only presenter with Fred that day.
[561] I wasn't actually right by him, but I was close by.
[562] I remember the radio message that I heard.
[563] I always used to have a radio in my little room at the test track where I was sitting inside so I could hear what was going on, and I heard someone say, there's been a real accident here, the car's upside down.
[564] So I ran to the window, looked out, and he wasn't moving, so I thought he was dead.
[565] I assumed he was, then he moved.
[566] I can tell you now that he, Unless he's a physical specimen, Fred.
[567] He's a big guy, six foot five, six foot six, strong.
[568] And if he wasn't so strong, he wouldn't have survived.
[569] He's a great advert for physical strength and conditioning.
[570] Because if he hadn't been that strong, he'd just snapped his neck.
[571] He'd be dead.
[572] So I couldn't believe he survived.
[573] And that sort of, that moment of realization that he'd survived has kind of defined my thoughts on the subject since.
[574] because I believe that anything after that is a bit of a bonus you know he should be dead really and the fact that he survived it is remarkable and it's given him and his family a chance to move on under very difficult circumstances so that day was very difficult made even more difficult by the fact that the build up to that particular shoot I knew that we were at the last minute I knew we were using a Morgan three -wheeler it's a very it's a difficult car you know it's by just the name tells you its physics is complicated it doesn't mean it's inherently dangerous you just drive it according to what it is you have to be aware of its limitations and i think that that really was difficult there were and you need experience there were two people that had driven a morgan three -wheeler before present that day me and someone else a pro driver and we were sitting inside at that time no one had asked us anything about the car they just gone on and shot it without us and i think um if i'm looking in the mirror I find it very difficult even now that Andrew who I loved a bit is a lovely man he was a pro cricket player he wasn't a automotive guy but he was a real enthusiast he was great much like you he'd love cars and he would always come up to me before a shoot and say tell me how it is you know I've got all the advice give me the last bit of advice and what I should do what I should expect and that was the first because of the call times that day that was the first time we'd never had the chance to talk about how he might approach a difficult vehicle and that was the one day that it went wrong I find that very difficult to live with and I feel partly responsible because I didn't get the chance to talk to him but my situation is nothing compared to his anyhow the bit that I find really difficult is that in the aftermath of that accident the show was put on hold Andrew had to recover from frankly awful injuries and has done so but profound injuries we all kept quiet, we said nothing and I said nothing because I wanted to look after him it wasn't my story was it I was caught up in the collateral damage I lost my job immediately because they cancelled the show when my contract was up so suddenly I haven't got a job but again you look in the mirror and think I'm alive I've got three beautiful children I'm not in Fred's position Andrew and Fred are the same person Sorry, that's his nickname.
[575] And I just sort of got my head down.
[576] But I had seen this coming.
[577] There was a big inquiry.
[578] A lot of soul searching.
[579] The BBC's good at that.
[580] But what was never spoken about was that three months before the accident, I'd gone to the BBC and said, unless you change something, someone's going to die on this show.
[581] So I went to them.
[582] I went to the BBC, and I told them of my concerns from what I'd seen.
[583] As the most experienced driver on the show by a mile, I said, if we carry on, at the very least we're going to have a serious injury, at the very worst, we're going to have fatality.
[584] Let's explain to people that aren't aware of what Top Gear is and how Top Gear works, because I know there's a lot of Americans that never watched the show.
[585] You guys do a lot of really crazy stunts with automobiles, not necessarily just cars, but big trucks and all kinds of crazy.
[586] things and some of them are quite ridiculous.
[587] Yeah there was a bit of a arms race between us and maybe the other big car show the Grand Tour at the time to go ever more stupid and we did some we did do some big stunts and a lot of the time And the Grand Tour is the original cast of Top Gear, Jeremy Coffs and Richard May in their Amazon show which had they just ended, a great show So and also I'm James Mayer Yeah I'm not of the health and safety world.
[588] I'm not risk adverse.
[589] I love a bit of risk.
[590] And I also absolutely believe that if you enter into a show like Top Gear, you know what you're taking on.
[591] You know?
[592] I believe that there is no such thing as great risk -free television like that.
[593] You've just got to you know, I just turn up and I assess what I see and I do what I'm comfortable with and I want to make great television.
[594] That's it.
[595] And if sometimes it got a bit sketchy, so be it.
[596] We've all done that.
[597] You know, that's the way the world lives.
[598] And I think what happened with Top Gear was I saw repeatedly too many times my two co -hosts who didn't have the experience I had in cars.
[599] This is the critical thing.
[600] I'm qualified to make those decisions because I've done it a long time.
[601] They weren't.
[602] One of them is an act of comedian, the other guy is a pro cricket player.
[603] Brilliant entertainers.
[604] They were great hosts.
[605] But their roles were to make people laugh and my role was to tell people what cars were like.
[606] And all too often, towards in the last year, I saw a situation where it got too dangerous.
[607] And it culminated actually in us being in Thailand.
[608] Myself and Paddy were in Thailand.
[609] And we did a go -kart race down a hill in just compacted mud on wooden go -carts with no engines.
[610] And I just looked at them and I said, this is just this.
[611] So it's not a question of whether we get injured, it's how injured we get.
[612] So just have an ambulance at the bottom because something's going to go wrong.
[613] Sure enough, I broke something in my hand, broke a finger or what have you.
[614] And I just thought, which sounds ridiculous from your background because you're all super tough guys.
[615] But it hurt.
[616] No, I don't want to break my fingers.
[617] I didn't.
[618] And I was sorry, it was a shit piece of television.
[619] So I always said, I don't mind breaking my hand if we get a BAFTA for it.
[620] Or an award.
[621] But this was just the shit skit.
[622] And I ended up damaged.
[623] And it went on too much.
[624] So anyhow, I went to the BBC and I said, I want to have a meeting with the head of health and safety because this is not good.
[625] And what's really killed me is that no one's ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand.
[626] and I it's very difficult to live with that initially for me when I knew I thought I'd done the right thing I'm not very good at that I normally just go with the flow but I saw this coming I thought I did the right thing I went to the BBC and I found out really that no one had taken me very seriously I did a bit of digging afterwards the conversation I had with those people was sort of acknowledged then they tried to sort of shut me down a bit and then they didn't look after me at all they just sort of left me me to rock.
[627] And I, even now, I'm totally perplexed by the whole thing.
[628] To actually say to an organization, this is going to go wrong and then be there the day that it goes wrong is a position I never expected to be in and I never want to be in again.
[629] It's strange and pretty heartbreaking in many ways.
[630] I love that show.
[631] So did the conversation between you and the network completely stop after the accident?
[632] They just sort of left me to sweat, really.
[633] I just sat in my, where I live and drank whiskey.
[634] I didn't have much contact with them at all.
[635] Everything went quiet.
[636] They had two inquiries into the accident commissioned, neither of which I had access to.
[637] I pushed very hard to have access to the second one and saw some of it.
[638] And I had this, this is one of the most bizarre interactions I've had.
[639] I sat down with someone from the BBC who, who was going to talk me through bits of the second inquiry into the accident.
[640] And I'd already been told that I no longer had a job.
[641] So I'd have been told that Top Gear was done.
[642] And at the beginning of it, he said to me, I won't name him.
[643] He said, well, I want to thank you so much for taking part in this because it's really going to help us as an organisation going forward.
[644] I said, well, it doesn't really help me. I've lost my job.
[645] And I'm always reminded of that old adage from a very brilliant BBC comedy show.
[646] which was never commissioned an inquiry that you don't know the outcome of in the first place.
[647] So I don't know.
[648] The whole thing, the whole situation was ridiculous.
[649] And I've never told anyone that.
[650] You know, I think, and I want to tell people that I did, because a bit of me thought, as the experienced driver, do members of the public think that I didn't do enough to protect Andrew?
[651] But I, and Paddy as well.
[652] They both experienced other incidents on that show that i think we're unacceptable and that's coming as someone who loves a bit of risk you know if you and i went outside now and there were two quad bikes i'd happily roll it for a laugh with you i'm that guy and even me as that guy thought it had gone too far which i think is important to say right um well there's the problem with those shows is they always want to keep pushing the limit and it's generally the producers who don't quite understand the limitations of the vehicles and not yes they don't have the experience of what it's like to actually be in control of that vehicle or what is possible.
[653] Right, right.
[654] So all so often it's, can you just do that?
[655] Right.
[656] And then you want to be a crowd pleaser.
[657] You know, you want to be the guy that can do it.
[658] We had that on Fear Factor.
[659] Yeah.
[660] When I was hosting Fear Factor, there was a couple of times where I was like, what the fuck are we doing?
[661] Especially the second, like, Fear Factor started in 2001 and went to 2007, and then we came back again in 2011, and we only did six episodes.
[662] And they, tried to make it just really ramped up.
[663] And when it was canceled, it was actually canceled because people had to drink donkey sperm.
[664] Yeah, which was pretty minor.
[665] I mean, it's disgusting, but it wasn't anything that was going to risk anyone's lives.
[666] But I was really feeling like if this keeps going, the stunts are so spectacular and so big, we're launching cars through moving trains.
[667] There was a moving train.
[668] And then the train had all these cardboard boxes in it.
[669] We launch a car off a ramp like sideways and it goes through the train.
[670] You have to time it just right so you don't hit the car into one of the big metal.
[671] And someone in the car?
[672] Yeah, driving it, yeah.
[673] Oh, yeah.
[674] My experience of that now is that if you establish really big stunts that have big vision and are ambitious, they tend to come with them a level of rigor that means they are executed well.
[675] the difficult area is the kind of just being at a test track with a smaller crew and someone says give that a go that's when it goes wrong because no one's really thought about it they're saying well we've done that we've done the risk assessment but just give that a go while you're here I think that goes wrong and also my my experience and this is where I'm like everyone that's shot with me will be have been reminded of this now and again close or play end of the day that's when it goes wrong if you're a test track it's just you know the lights come in down there's 10 minutes to go and the director says just do that I go no because everyone's tired someone's going to have ignored the lockdown on the circuit there'll be someone coming driving the other way with the coffee cups over there's all it's the end of the day right if it's six o 'clock five 30 I'm gone right and not because I'm work shy I'll stay around and pick stuff up but don't the end of the day when you start rushing and I think there was an element of that day at dunsfold that was a shoot that was rushed for me that was, and I know that that was a, we need to use this day, shoot.
[676] That's another one that's another red flag for me. We've got a day at a track, we need to fill it.
[677] Well, that's, you've reversed engineered that, you know?
[678] Right.
[679] Your priorities are all ready to fill something up.
[680] And I look back, some of the stuff that we did on top gear, I look back, that was dangerous, visually dangerous and, and definitely was in practical terms, I'm very proud of because we executed it well.
[681] Like Andrew, Fred, Vintov went off a dam.
[682] in a metro and did a car bungee It was extraordinary piece of footage You can see it It's just amazing film But it was rigorous It was done properly There has amazing stunt crew That did it I couldn't have done it It was brave And it was a really memorable piece of television That This is it?
[683] What a legend And he's got me in his ear He sat like that for 45 minutes Look how far down that thing goes Oh God And I think I'm very proud of of what the team did there and Andrew was magnificent.
[684] Dude, fuck that.
[685] Can you imagine?
[686] Fuck that.
[687] Look how far down that is.
[688] Because if it goes wrong, you're dead.
[689] Yeah, and he's got that chirpy little shit in his ear as well.
[690] I think, and there's other stuff that we did that I can't understand what we were doing.
[691] So we also did, and you won't find this.
[692] I think they've removed it from YouTube, but they're saying, oh my God.
[693] How about that?
[694] That's so insane.
[695] How about that?
[696] Look at when it goes over itself like that.
[697] Oh, my God.
[698] That is so ridiculous.
[699] And then the yank.
[700] Oh.
[701] But that, do you know, when I said to you earlier, I've been a bit of me regrets doing it.
[702] I look at that and I think, what a thing to have been part of.
[703] It's ridiculous.
[704] Yeah.
[705] And I'm proud of that stuff.
[706] One thing we did do, which, again, on reflection, was just madness.
[707] We, there's this, there are the.
[708] these guys that go to motorcycle meets and shows in the UK that have these titanium skid plates on their boots and they hold onto the back of the bike you might have seen them and they go really fast and the sparks go out of the back and um they would be decided we'd be good idea if we did this so each of us had a vehicle we were using or you know you were the person that was pushing that vehicle you're an advocate for that car in the film and i think i had the new landrover defender you've seen those I had a short wheelbase defender and I had to hang off the back of it wearing these, we had to wear these shoes the big problem with some of these ones is that Andrew was so brave he would go first and set such a high benchmark you'd have to go, shit I need to really go here so he went out and did like, I thought he'd do 40 miles now I think he did 75 miles now hang on the back wearing these titanium shoes Anyhow Paddy gets in and tries to go really fast and he falls off and he's okay but he could someone goes Paddy's over I look left The ambulance driver was having a cigarette at our end of the runway, and he was two miles down there.
[709] And that was one of those moments where I thought, this has got a bit loose.
[710] You know?
[711] If you're going to do these things, that guy should have been running parallel.
[712] And I didn't like that.
[713] Two minutes of two miles.
[714] It's a long time.
[715] I know.
[716] Although at the end of that was quite, I can give you some levity there.
[717] I did my run.
[718] I didn't get quite as close as far.
[719] I think I did nearly 80 miles an hour or something.
[720] And I fell off at the end, and it hurt a bit.
[721] And I got in the back of the crew car, which I think was another land rover.
[722] And I was sitting there thinking, this smells terrible.
[723] Have I done something wrong here?
[724] There's a really acrid smell.
[725] Not from the colon, but definitely I thought this is not a good smell.
[726] Like a chemical smell?
[727] Yeah.
[728] And then I was told to get out.
[729] What happened was the shoes were red hot.
[730] And I'd got in the car and they just melted straight through the mat, straight through the carpet.
[731] And it was just smouldering on fire.
[732] I looked like a shit Marvel superhero.
[733] Yeah, I think.
[734] I'm very happy and proud to have done Top Gear.
[735] But I'm so sad at the way it ended.
[736] Yeah.
[737] You know, no one, that's the ultimate.
[738] No one had control of that that day.
[739] That's what the insurance industry calls an act of God, whether you believe in him or not.
[740] But what happened afterwards was really sad because I've arrived here.
[741] You've got your crew.
[742] You know, you've got your people.
[743] They were my people.
[744] And from that day, I've never really spoken to them.
[745] the producers everyone else no one really it just it just went like that bang done and that was that was very hard because i just couldn't believe it had happened so they're just gone and you spend five six years of your life more in daily contact with people and they just stops i was always torn on those type of moments on top gear because i just wanted to watch car reviews I wanted to watch people have fun with cars.
[746] But then for the casual people, you have to do something stupid like bungee jump with a car off the side of a dam.
[747] And it's like, I don't, I'm not interested.
[748] Maybe it's because I hosted Fear Factor for so long.
[749] I've seen so many things like that.
[750] They're not interesting to me. I want to hear a car enthusiast rave about the fun they're having while they're driving an automobile.
[751] Maybe you should produce a car show.
[752] I've got an idea.
[753] I'll pitch it you afterwards.
[754] But you're quite right.
[755] there's plenty of market for that there is and actually this is the country for it yeah maybe in europe it's less but i know that when we did geeky car stuff that was very you know for you and i the numbers did that at the moment you did something hyperbolic and ridiculous the numbers did that but what about online online is totally different yes right so that's where it belongs like where i found about you was online yeah you know and i i don't remember what was the first video that i watch of you, but I do remember that green Portia.
[756] Yeah.
[757] I remember that's a long time ago.
[758] Oh my God.
[759] And that's where I started out and I suspect I'll return there.
[760] I've got plans to relaunch the YouTube channel in the next month or two and there's content coming and I'm, YouTube's a very different place to when I left it and it's pretty surprising.
[761] There's so much motoring content out there.
[762] It's almost saturated.
[763] It's very very saturated.
[764] And there's so many different types of markets now too.
[765] Yeah.
[766] And the algorithm, the idea of being at the behest of an algorithm is terrifying if you've just received you know check from a network for six years of your life suddenly going oh i'll go in with the algorithm that's quite scary it is but all you need is one thing to take off and then all of a sudden you're being suggested to millions and millions of people which is interesting about the algorithm and if you just look at one type of vehicle then you're like um i really just got interested really recently in the innios granadier yeah i was like what a fascinating idea.
[767] Take, I mean, what a limited market, by the way, too.
[768] But actually, ironically, is the only example of a brand new resto mod, isn't it, really?
[769] Yes, yes.
[770] Similar.
[771] I mean, it's essentially a new vehicle, but if you, for the casual, it looks like a defender.
[772] Yeah.
[773] It really does.
[774] But it kind of better, kind of quite a bit better.
[775] Yeah.
[776] And, you know, really interesting.
[777] BMW, six -cylinder supercharged engine.
[778] And so now when I open up YouTube, it's like, oh, Grenadiers, it's all Ineos.
[779] It's just constantly all these off -roading Australia dudes and all these different people like sending me these things.
[780] I think you're right.
[781] It does belong on YouTube.
[782] I mean, linear television.
[783] I joined a TV show when linear television still survived.
[784] Well, you know, you know, I understand destination television.
[785] Sure.
[786] It's gone now.
[787] It's gone.
[788] The world's changed completely.
[789] Top Gear still has a place in it.
[790] You know, many of my previous colleagues make a lot of online content for Top Gear.
[791] They do a great job.
[792] There's some really good films.
[793] But there's something quite romantic for me about the sit down, squidge onto the sofa with as a family and watch 8 o 'clock Sunday night.
[794] It was a quasi -religious experience, really.
[795] But it was in a time where people didn't have smartphones.
[796] You're quite right.
[797] That's gone.
[798] That waiting for a very specific time to watch a program, no one is interested in that anymore.
[799] I know.
[800] It's strange, isn't it?
[801] Because it's logical that they wouldn't because no one has any patience because of the immediacy of these things.
[802] But there's equally something quite lovely about what we used to do.
[803] Right.
[804] I can't really reconcile it.
[805] I totally acknowledge the excitement of the new, but I'm slightly wistful for the past.
[806] Is that fair enough?
[807] I see what you're saying.
[808] The only thing that still exists that you have to wait for is live sports.
[809] Yeah.
[810] So live sports, when you're watching a game, the game starts at 8 p .m. You have to be there at 8 p .m. It's not going to wait for you.
[811] There it is.
[812] The podcast as a concept is amazing as well.
[813] I've got to be a bit cheesy.
[814] I have got a podcast, which, when's this going to go out?
[815] Is this going out a day after we record this?
[816] Yeah, pretty soon.
[817] Well, the day after that, my new podcast launches, I didn't realize that.
[818] What's the call?
[819] It's a really, really interesting name.
[820] Chris Harris on cars?
[821] Chris Harris and Friends Car Podcast is what it's called.
[822] Because I just thought, well, he's Heinz tomato ketchup.
[823] Yeah.
[824] And that really is a nerd product.
[825] So one of the things I did, by way of therapy, was I did a car podcast in the immediate aftermath of this accident.
[826] Because I realized I wanted to have contact with this world.
[827] I think that the moment your life gets difficult you regress to what is your comfort food My comfort food is cars And I love cars They make me happy Well I would much prefer you Without producers and network executives And all these different people telling you what to do I like What I like about podcasts When I like about YouTube content From people like Matt Farrah Is I know it's one human being This is their perspective This is what they enjoy They really do love these videos vehicles and they talk about it without any influence of other human beings.
[828] So you're getting this singular viewpoint, which I think is the most attractive thing about it.
[829] And the thing you pointed out there, this idea of having to alter things or add sort of ancillary comedy to them to make them appeal to the masses.
[830] Yeah.
[831] Is what I found very difficult on top gear.
[832] Because I came there as I arrived as the rigorous car tester.
[833] You put me with some comedians, put me with whoever.
[834] I don't need to do that they'll do the heavy lifting they'll make people laugh but if you want to know whether the new m2's any good or not please give it to me and i'll tell you right and the m2's a good example when the first m2 came out i was giving it to review for top gear and i just said well i'd like to just do a review of the car we've got a test track i'll slide it around to tell you what it's like then move on someone else can make them laugh but that wasn't enough they had they had a section of this where i had to i was given this sort of piece of testing equipment called the pantometer 3 ,000 or something just made up.
[835] I had to put on these underpants which were going to tell people whether my sphincter was moving faster in this vehicle I don't know what it was.
[836] I looked back and I should have just said fuck off.
[837] I don't do that.
[838] It's just an embarrassing moment in my life.
[839] But that was exactly they felt the need to augment the test with something stupid to draw in the casual viewer.
[840] And that's where YouTube is brilliant, because YouTube doesn't feel the need to that.
[841] It can just cater for us nerds.
[842] Whatever you're into, YouTube can deliver it without someone from a network messing with it.
[843] What's really spectacular about YouTube is there's only one YouTube.
[844] You think about how big the internet is.
[845] There is in China, though.
[846] Well, that's different.
[847] I'll tell you a good story about that.
[848] About, I don't know, eight years ago or so, I was at the Geneva Motor Show, the biggest car event in my world.
[849] And this Chinese guy comes up to me, and he's like, really, really grateful.
[850] He's like, I'm so glad to meet you, you want to say thank you.
[851] I went, why don't say thank you?
[852] He said, because you've made such a difference to my life.
[853] I'm not the second coming.
[854] I don't know what I've done to you.
[855] It goes because, you know, I host all of your videos on a channel in China, and it made me, like, loads of money.
[856] I just went, sorry?
[857] Yeah.
[858] So I did a bit of research.
[859] He has.
[860] He's made lots of.
[861] He just took, you just ripped them all off YouTube and host.
[862] Wow.
[863] There's no regulation.
[864] Wow.
[865] So he's just telling you he ripped you off.
[866] But he had, but he thought he had no, it wasn't like he had no shame.
[867] He couldn't even see what he'd done wrong.
[868] Right, right, right.
[869] He's just like, thanks.
[870] Well, China has Apple stores that aren't even Apple.
[871] Does it?
[872] Yes.
[873] China has full Apple stores where they're selling counterfeit laptops, phones, everything.
[874] None of it is really, I don't even though they do phones anymore, but it was all, they had Apple stores that Apple found out about that weren't even, nothing was Apple.
[875] It's, it's creating content in the last 10 years has become a really fascinating situation because I'm sure you felt the same when you started out.
[876] If you produce something, you own it by definition.
[877] It doesn't matter whether you're within a network or have you.
[878] The international property in your head is that's mine.
[879] Right.
[880] And content producers over the last five years have had to accept the fact that that is no longer the proposition.
[881] People can do what they want you cannot you can't hunt them down right and it and it's shameless and i still get occasionally get engaged i don't look at the instagram message thing very often but sometimes i'll just see someone saying i'm just going to post this do you mind and sometimes i'll go well yes i do i i went out there at three in the morning right i nearly crashed that car i paid for those rear tires right why should you get the chance to monetize that for your channel exactly what are you offering me right nothing i just find it really odd it's very odd yeah and And it's also, they feel like they could just say a few things, you know, like, hey, look at Chris Harris doing this and that's enough.
[882] And also, that's enough of an alteration.
[883] In their professional world, could you imagine if one of them was an accountant?
[884] And I walked in and said, right, I've got my books.
[885] I can't add up.
[886] I'm really disnumeric and I'm an idiot.
[887] Just do those for free, will you?
[888] Because just do them.
[889] Yeah.
[890] Well, no, he'll say, I want some money for that.
[891] No, no, no, I just do them.
[892] And also, shut the fuck up and do them.
[893] So what, how does that?
[894] No other world works like that.
[895] No, the content world is very strange.
[896] It's very strange where people can use your stuff and do entire shows based entirely on your stuff.
[897] Oh, it's just extraordinary.
[898] But the Chinese example was the best for me, though.
[899] I love that.
[900] Well, the best is that they didn't, he had no shame about it.
[901] But actually, he was doing nothing wrong.
[902] Culturally, they don't think there's anything wrong with that at all.
[903] I mean, do you have to take the Chinese car industry seriously now, but 15 years ago, there used to be a sort of underground recess of at Detroit Motor Show where the Chinese car companies would be and it was a sort of, it was a grim catacomb of imitation so he'd go underneath and there'd be like their version of a BMWX5 which was literally like someone had gone with a BMWX5 to draw one and done their own version of it they would just shamelessly copy stuff because there was no there were no IP laws over there culturally didn't acknowledge imitation you just do what you want I reacted terribly at the time I sort of understand now that if you don't get that from the age of one you can't learn it afterwards but they were shameless and I can remember being again at the Geneva Motor Show you'd go to the particularly the Japanese cars and you'd want to sit in the back of a new one you couldn't because there'd be Chinese engineers from car companies measuring them there would be like 20 minutes they'd have these laser rules out going just getting all the measurements of the interiors and of the engines and stuff.
[904] Can I look at that?
[905] No, they'd be there for 20 minutes, shamelessly, just copying, scanning the car.
[906] Wow.
[907] In broad daylight.
[908] It's amazing.
[909] They make incredible electric cars now, though.
[910] Oh, they've stolen a march on everyone.
[911] China has made, they make some unbelievable cars.
[912] I've watched some of them reviewed online.
[913] You can't even get them in America.
[914] But I've watched someone reviewed online, and they're just fucking fantastic.
[915] they are they've definitely had an advantage over Europe I can't say for America because you have Tesla which is you know the only other global leader in that area but the European car industry has been caught napping and it's a bit of a worry for someone like me that you know I'm very fond of a lot of the European brands but they're struggling they're struggling to respond to this there are boats full of very impressive very good value electric cars that have landed in Europe in the last six months there's also a problem with European cars in that European cars are always known for having a great reseal value.
[916] Yeah.
[917] Like particularly like Lamborghini and Porsche and like Ferrari.
[918] You could actually make more money off of them in a few years than but not electric ones.
[919] Nope.
[920] That's the problem.
[921] Like electric ticans, you know, those things are gorgeous.
[922] That's an incredible vehicle.
[923] Good luck trying to sell that thing.
[924] I saw lucid airs, which is a fantastic have you been in one of those?
[925] No, I haven't.
[926] Wow.
[927] I've heard the sapphire is magnificent.
[928] It's extraordinary.
[929] You can't, you, you, you're going to get like half the price of that thing.
[930] Yeah.
[931] In a year.
[932] It's fucking nuts.
[933] I know.
[934] The Ticcan in America, in the UK, early one, 30 ,000 pounds.
[935] Unbelievable.
[936] Someone paid 120 for that three years ago.
[937] Crazy.
[938] And it's still really good.
[939] It is.
[940] It's a very, again, for particular people.
[941] Maybe the thing, the point I didn't.
[942] make earlier.
[943] I have to excuse myself a bit of jet lead for my confused thoughts sometimes is that the electric car has one unspoken fact about it.
[944] It's for rich people.
[945] That's what I find quite difficult.
[946] There's a meritocracy about the motor car that I find appealing.
[947] You can have a Bugatti Veyron or Shiron or you could be some guy that lives in India that's got a little thing that costs 100 quid or $100.
[948] You're ultimately getting the same thing.
[949] the you have the freedom to travel to choose where you're going.
[950] And I think in a, in a, I like you, I like to, I don't want to be told what to do.
[951] And I think it's really important that that vehicle can take you where you want to go.
[952] But the electric vehicle is for rich people, isn't it?
[953] You think about it.
[954] You, you show me the electric vehicle for, for normal people.
[955] Well, it's terrible for people that live in apartment complexes.
[956] It doesn't exist.
[957] Unless you have some sort of a charging station where you park your car and everybody has one so you could leave it charged overnight, it's rough.
[958] But look at the cost of them yeah you know very expensive terrible resale value yeah it's it's a very flawed concept at the moment but but as you say the performance of them can be your your plaid is a great example it's a time machine yeah it's a time machine it really is it merges in traffic silently like it goes faster than anything it doesn't seem real it's incredible and i'm sent the new one that i'm getting i'm sending to well it's already sent to unplug performance.
[959] Are you aware of those guys?
[960] So they tune them, do they?
[961] Because it needs to be faster, doesn't it?
[962] No, well, they change the suspension.
[963] It's not any faster.
[964] They use the same power train, but they change the suspension, they widen the front and rear, and they upgrade the brakes.
[965] They make it much more just agile.
[966] I think the main thing it needs is some sort of jet washable, pressure washable floor, because I think passengers will eventually shit kidding.
[967] knees out they're so fast yeah well they're shocking roadster which is going to be insane which is basically vaporware now didn't people like pay full price for those things like five years ago he's he's fascinating i know he's been on your show i i don't know what to make of him i i just love the fact that he's he's the ultimate disruptor yes he's come along he's just he's seen an industry he's gone that's ready for a shakeup and he's had and he's had a go and i uh With multiple industries.
[968] Yeah.
[969] That's what's crazy.
[970] But the one that's pertinent to me, the two questions I'm asked most are, you know, what do you think of the electric car revolution and its effect on, you know, the environment?
[971] But also, what do you think about Mr. Musk?
[972] I almost don't really have an opinion on him.
[973] I just let him do what he does.
[974] What I do know is I'm always fascinated what he's going to do next.
[975] And that's all you need to know.
[976] And the stuff that he's produced, 10 years ago there were not many Tessers on the road in the UK.
[977] Now they're everywhere.
[978] I don't know any other vertical that's witnessed penetration like that.
[979] If I walk into a white goods store, I'm not seeing fridges made by companies I didn't even heard of 10 years ago.
[980] But there's the second most expensive thing you'll ever buy as a civilian and he's managed to have that level of penetration.
[981] That will go down in the history books.
[982] Yeah.
[983] It's undeniable.
[984] Yeah, it's undeniable.
[985] And it's also he's doing that with rockets and he's doing that with the internet.
[986] So I bought X or Twitter and turned it into X. And that's a massive disruptor too.
[987] Do you do Twitter?
[988] Do whatever it's called now?
[989] Yeah.
[990] Yeah.
[991] I left it because I got so much abuse initially when I did top gear.
[992] That's when I got sort of, you know, you can't read comments.
[993] No, you can't.
[994] But then you'd get drawn into conversations.
[995] Oh, shit.
[996] I was, and I actually leaving it was the best thing I ever did at that time.
[997] And I haven't gone back because I didn't really need it to promote anything.
[998] And it was, the toxicity was long before he bought it for me. The toxicity is just an inherent quality of people being able to post anonymously.
[999] You're never going to get away from that.
[1000] But you just don't read it.
[1001] That's the most important thing.
[1002] Like, people are always going to, if you're a public figure, people are always going to have opinions of you.
[1003] And there's a lot of shitty people out there.
[1004] And they're the most vocal and they're the most persistent.
[1005] Let them talk.
[1006] Do you think in 50 years time, you won't be able to post or comment without your identity being revealed?
[1007] I hope that's not the case, but probably.
[1008] Yeah.
[1009] I think they would like to do that in America.
[1010] Yeah.
[1011] You know, but I think it's important for whistleblowers.
[1012] It's important for, you know, people that work in an organization.
[1013] They want to expose corruption.
[1014] They want to expose something.
[1015] They want to expose some illegal thing they're doing in regards to the environment.
[1016] It's very important.
[1017] You have to have people.
[1018] They want to expose the government.
[1019] It's very important to allow people to be anonymous.
[1020] When you're in a dark place, as I was 18 months ago, you can feel that very pertinently.
[1021] There was a lot of very unkind things said about Andrew's accident and top gear afterwards.
[1022] And I did want, I thought to myself, all those anonymous keyboard worries, fuck you.
[1023] And you know this.
[1024] I was almost at that state, which is the ultimate low, the Kelvin of human behavior, which is, I'll meet you in that car park so we can have a fight.
[1025] You know, you know how bad that is?
[1026] I couldn't do it as well as you.
[1027] But when you step back from it, yeah, but I don't engage in anything stuff.
[1028] I never, I don't read negative things.
[1029] and I don't engage in it.
[1030] I'm not afraid of it.
[1031] I just, I know what it is, and I don't like it.
[1032] I don't think it's necessary.
[1033] I don't think it's good for you.
[1034] I don't think anybody gets any benefit out of it.
[1035] I don't think the person gets benefit out of you calling them a cock sucker.
[1036] I don't think you get any benefit out of calling them a cock sucker.
[1037] I don't think it helps.
[1038] And I just look at it.
[1039] I do what I call post and ghost.
[1040] Yeah.
[1041] I post things, and I go away, and I don't care what happens in the comments.
[1042] And also, I'm very aware of.
[1043] lots.
[1044] I'm very aware because we've done a lot of research and research.
[1045] We've done a lot of conversations and done a lot of reading about the amount of content that's on, especially Twitter, that's not organic.
[1046] And it's an extraordinary amount.
[1047] There's an FBI analyst that estimated it to be in the range of 80%.
[1048] Yeah.
[1049] 80 % of all the accounts he thinks are bullshit.
[1050] And they're used to promote specific narratives.
[1051] They use to argue and shame people.
[1052] They're used to attack certain political figures and public figures and and then that conversation becomes completely changed because there's a swarm of people that have a very specific narrative and then the casual person read oh well maybe they're right oh hey this guy is a piece of shit I always thought he was a nice guy and then everything changes and just don't engage don't it's I'm interested in reading people when they're toxic opinions sometimes but oftentimes I'll go that doesn't seem real and then I'll go to their account and sure enough they have 39 followers and it looks like they're probably in you know fucking Russia somewhere and in a troll farm and it's not a real the pernicious side to it is like all the aspects of life that we know are bad and we shouldn't go there be they alcohol or you know relationships whatever it is if you're in a bad place you're susceptible and that's what that's what I find very difficult about that side of the internet sure if you're in a bad place especially you after that accident then it's a magnet it's like it's there it's the crab with its claw open you're like I'm everything's saying don't put your finger there you can't but you do I don't I and I did very briefly and I'm very glad actually I'd actually left Twitter before then but I was very I couldn't believe some of the heartless comments that were made afterwards it's because they're not there it's like it's a very inhuman way to communicate we're communicating in text to a person that you're not you don't see their face, you don't look in their eyes, you don't feel the pain of what you're saying to them.
[1053] It's not the way human beings are meant to communicate with each other.
[1054] We were meant to communicate with each other like this.
[1055] Oh, no. That's one of the reasons why podcasts are so successful, and one of the reasons why I only do them with people in the room also, because the only person I've done without that recent in recent time is Edward Snowden for obvious reasons.
[1056] But you don't want to, that's not a good way to communicate.
[1057] It's not even a good way to communicate with your friends through text message.
[1058] You want to be there talking, so the person says something and go, oh, okay, I get it.
[1059] I get it.
[1060] So why did you think that?
[1061] But it's the cadence of conversation.
[1062] And also the quality of silence and the way that you respond.
[1063] And actually, I'm now going to say something terrible.
[1064] My podcast is done over Zoom, but it's the same voices every week.
[1065] So people become used to the cadence of conversation, and they can actually, I do believe, relate to it.
[1066] For the comments, confirm that.
[1067] Well, there's nothing wrong with doing podcasts over Zoom.
[1068] the problem is with guests.
[1069] Exactly.
[1070] It doesn't work with guests.
[1071] Yeah, it doesn't work with, you can do it, but I know people that do it with guests, and they're fine.
[1072] They just, they adjust, and they're very good podcasts.
[1073] I listen, my friend Duncan does a lot of people through Zoom, and they're great, they're great conversations.
[1074] But if you had to sit down and speak to a room full of young people about how to manage third -party opinions of you on the internet, what would you say to them, just ignore?
[1075] Yes.
[1076] Yeah, well, you have to be.
[1077] self -assessing though you can't be a person that is clueless about how other people see you yes because that's not good either so you have to be a person who's objective and introspective and you have you have to be able to honestly assess whether or not what you've done is good or bad and we've all done good things and we've all had bad work and when you put out bad work and you know it's bad just just accept the fact that it's bad feel that pain grow because of it Use it as fuel to be better in the next thing that you do, and that's it.
[1078] But don't wallow in other people telling you you suck or other people attacking you.
[1079] There's no benefit.
[1080] There's another side to that I've had to teach my other co -hosts on this podcast who weren't from a media background at all.
[1081] I personally believe that to ignore the negativity, you can't wallow in the positivity either.
[1082] I just think you don't have the right to just pick and choose what people say about you.
[1083] You can't just absorb the nice stuff and ignore the bad stuff.
[1084] That's just as bad for you.
[1085] Yeah.
[1086] Because then you're like, oh, I'm pretty fucking amazing.
[1087] Like, you know, that's bad for everybody, too.
[1088] That's not good.
[1089] Nobody benefits from being told they're amazing.
[1090] You know if you did something that's good.
[1091] So congratulations.
[1092] You worked hard.
[1093] You put out something that's good.
[1094] Leave it alone.
[1095] Keep moving.
[1096] Keep moving.
[1097] Yeah.
[1098] Don't read all that positive shit and blow your head up.
[1099] And that happens to a lot of people.
[1100] They get, like, enamored.
[1101] It's called audience capture.
[1102] And you see it, one of the things that happens, particularly with comedians, you see, especially if they start getting involved in political commentary, they start getting audience capture.
[1103] Like, you see it a lot with people who lean right because there's not as many right -winged voices on the internet.
[1104] You get a tremendous amount of support.
[1105] All these people say, you're the only one out there speaking the truth.
[1106] And they're like, speaking the truth.
[1107] And you start believing that bullshit.
[1108] And then you change your perspective.
[1109] Yes.
[1110] Audience capture.
[1111] Yes.
[1112] Yeah.
[1113] That's dangerous too.
[1114] Yeah.
[1115] When you're becoming conditioned by the environment you're in without realizing it.
[1116] Exactly.
[1117] Actually, with a segue back to the BBC, I've seen that with that network I work with.
[1118] I think there's a lot of high -quality people that work at the BBC.
[1119] And at the moment, they're under a lot of pressure.
[1120] And everyone's judging them as individuals within the organization.
[1121] I think the organization is, that environment is almost impossible to work in now.
[1122] And it's changing them.
[1123] They almost have nowhere to go.
[1124] Well, they're also, it's like it's an unhealthy relationship in the first place because you have executives and producers who want to make a thing, but they're not the talent.
[1125] And so they're also not the experts.
[1126] So they have their own ideas and they have to have some sort of an impact on it to justify their position.
[1127] So you see people having ridiculous suggestions that everybody has to entertain because Bob is an executive.
[1128] Okay, Bob is the fucking co -producer.
[1129] We've got to listen to Bob.
[1130] and Bob's got some stupid fucking idea that you have to hear out and if you say Bob it's not going to work because of this now you're in an argument with Bob and Bob's mad at you would you ever make television again like that?
[1131] No, no. I've just finished something for the BBC which this podcast is going to be he's going to put the Catanox divisions so I've got one thing I've just done with the BBC which is not car related which will be my last thing I've done for the BBC probably I love it with Paddy I loved it was actually about wellness and trying to be you know which is a word I fucking hate it's a captured word It's like mindfulness I can't believe if I just said it.
[1132] So I apologize to you.
[1133] Wellness and mindfulness have both been captured.
[1134] Spirituality as well.
[1135] It doesn't mean anything.
[1136] Basically, it's about me being having let myself go.
[1137] I'm a shit, I let myself go.
[1138] I'm a bit better now, but you should have seen me a year ago.
[1139] And we've gone off and done three one -hour shows about.
[1140] Was that in as a response to the top year?
[1141] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1142] I sat and I drank world -class quantities of single malt.
[1143] I had made, I had, I like a single malt.
[1144] And I had built up a nice little collection, you know, a really nice little collection.
[1145] I was quite disciplined.
[1146] I'd pour myself, you know, a beautiful Glenn Farclos, 25, and I'd enjoy it, and I'd put it away.
[1147] I did that collection in the first month after the Top Gear Incident, the whole lot gone.
[1148] Oh, wow.
[1149] And then I slipped into the full, you know, it was terrible.
[1150] Alcohol is a strange.
[1151] And I don't look back on it as being, I now realize how bad it was, but I'm a bit of a box ticker.
[1152] you have to you can't talk about it unless you've done it I've done it so that's the box you wanted to tick let's try to be in an alcoholic I didn't want to but now I've done it I get it right yeah yeah and I you know and also I was doing a weekly podcast my my sort of decline was quite publicly documented some people saw it some people didn't but I'd sometimes someone would I'd see someone say is you all right no he really fucking isn't where was I with that but but I do think that the yeah that the if you start going down that route it's a problem yeah it really is a problem yeah it's a real problem um i should say mindfulness wellness what other words that wellness is worse than mindfulness they're both the same to me we went to so this show we did all right and this is i'm not promoting it's just it was interesting because i i like cars and the bbc had me all i wanted to do was present stuff about cars and this organization decided to send me off to go to sweden to see what it's like, why they have a good quality of life.
[1153] I know they do.
[1154] I've got a lot of Swedish friends.
[1155] I've been to Sweden.
[1156] It's a fucking great place.
[1157] It was an amazing experience.
[1158] I loved it.
[1159] But it didn't involve cars.
[1160] I want to be making shows about cars.
[1161] That's what I love doing.
[1162] That's the difference being hired and doing your own thing.
[1163] There you go.
[1164] And I'm grateful for it.
[1165] And I think there's some really entertaining television.
[1166] Although we missed out one bit.
[1167] You talk about having to drink donkey semen.
[1168] Yeah.
[1169] There's a clip from this show that doesn't make it.
[1170] but I'm given this substance to drink by this guy who's got an impish grin, I'm like, and I'll do, I'm that guy that'll eat most things.
[1171] You know, if you've filmed Top Gear and you've been around the world, you've eaten stuff you shouldn't have eaten.
[1172] And as long as you've survived, it's another box ticked.
[1173] You know, I never thought I'd eat a sheep's rectum.
[1174] But it's fine, a bit chewy.
[1175] But I was given this, this vial of liquid, and I drank it, and it tasted a bit like a really peaty single malt.
[1176] Imagine an ard bag that's like really peaty.
[1177] I was like, cool.
[1178] And on the label, it said beaver.
[1179] I was like, okay, what's that?
[1180] And this Swedish guy said, it's, yeah, it's essence of a beaver that we make liquid alcohol with.
[1181] So you flavour like a shine with beaver because it was strong.
[1182] And he went, he sort of fudged it and moved on.
[1183] I was like, wow, and it was, the flavour was in my mouth.
[1184] I couldn't get rid of it.
[1185] Transpires, this is a secretion from the anal gland of the beaver.
[1186] so I ate beaver ass I drank it I was a secretion so someone milked a beaver oh boy and I drank it wasn't that bad what's the benefit of this supposedly it has some quality it does and you know if you see the average Swedish guy walking around you'd I'll have some of that beaver juice if I look like that are they all drinking it I don't think they're all drinking it but I think some of them drinking it yeah I think so really it's popular over there it was it's for sale does it have to be fresh I don't know what happens if you get a tainted one here it is tails from the fringe beaver gland vodka wow so that's the beaver's butt right there the gland in the vodka 10 days later I was in Japan doing some other work and I I remember my host saying what do you think to that food and what I wanted to say to them was I can just taste beaver ass 10 days later Wow.
[1187] All my olfactory system, such as it is, was only registering beaver.
[1188] For 10 days.
[1189] Every food I ate tasted of beaver.
[1190] Did you try to like wash it out with alcohol or anything?
[1191] I tried everything.
[1192] Wow.
[1193] It's an incredibly pungent.
[1194] What about fire spitting?
[1195] I didn't do that.
[1196] I must try that.
[1197] I was thinking, how did you burn it off?
[1198] I don't know.
[1199] You'd have to just get a new head.
[1200] Wow.
[1201] So it eventually just dissipated.
[1202] It did disappear.
[1203] But after 10 days, you still had it?
[1204] It was still there.
[1205] You know, when it's just there as a sort of residual taste?
[1206] I would have been so upset.
[1207] Yeah.
[1208] You motherfucker, you ruined 10 days worth of meals.
[1209] But also, when I found out it hadn't made the cut, I was like, come on.
[1210] It has not, I went through the voiceover and it's not in.
[1211] That's so crazy.
[1212] But I, wellness as a concept is something that I, as a word I hate.
[1213] And I'm proud of the show that will come out at some point.
[1214] But I like cars.
[1215] I want to make shows about cars.
[1216] And I will go, of course, I will go back to the internet.
[1217] That's where you belong.
[1218] You belong doing your own thing.
[1219] Chris Harris on Cars was awesome.
[1220] We might bring it back.
[1221] Yeah, do that.
[1222] I've got some, we've made some films and I'm going to give it another month and then we'll give it another go.
[1223] Well, a bunch of people were trying all these different things.
[1224] Like they were trying to monetize it so you had to subscribe online or to access the content.
[1225] We did that.
[1226] It just doesn't work.
[1227] It doesn't work.
[1228] You lose 99 .9 % of people.
[1229] There's too much good stuff for free.
[1230] People have, that's another thing.
[1231] We come back to that idea of this Chinese guy going, thanks for educating my children or whatever I'd done.
[1232] There is no monetary value placed on content now.
[1233] There's a few firewall systems that work.
[1234] I think New York Times and the Times in the London Times works.
[1235] I pay for that.
[1236] And I think they make money.
[1237] It works barely.
[1238] But they've had to work so hard.
[1239] They have been diminished greatly.
[1240] by the the lack of people wanting to buy paper newspapers yeah it's been a big impact on them it also changes the way they do journalism because now everything's very clickbaity you know which is a real problem as well but the expectation is that content is now free right yeah you know how many how many listeners would you lose do you think if you put a paywall up for this well i lost 50 % when i went over to spotify did you yeah initially yeah we lost like half but we got it back pretty quickly.
[1241] Yeah.
[1242] Yeah.
[1243] I think the way that we relate and interact with content is fascinating.
[1244] It is.
[1245] There's an ever bigger appetite.
[1246] These devices mean that the immediacy means that there's they can never be too much content.
[1247] I was pointing that out when I first saw you here that you have the tiniest little iPhone the little baby mini.
[1248] My friend Yoni has one of those too.
[1249] I admire it.
[1250] I admire that you don't even have a case on yours which is even crazy.
[1251] Well, the iPhone's a funny thing because it's a bit like a steering wheel.
[1252] in a car.
[1253] That's your contact point.
[1254] It was designed to feel brilliant.
[1255] And the iPhone, with that metal ridge, is one of the most pleasing objects you'll ever pick up.
[1256] So why put a condom on it?
[1257] Because you don't want it to break.
[1258] It's made out of glass.
[1259] It's still working.
[1260] And I want an unsheathed phone.
[1261] Also, mine has a nice little kickstand.
[1262] Look at this.
[1263] Oh, what's that?
[1264] Yeah, look at that.
[1265] Oh, so you could, yeah, okay.
[1266] Yeah, when I'm sitting in the kitchen table.
[1267] But when I sit down, when I get in a car, I don't want something and rub the thing around my steering wheel.
[1268] I judge people so harshly when I get in their car and they have some stupid fucking thing on their steering wheel.
[1269] I'm like, what is wrong with you?
[1270] Who are you?
[1271] Do you wear mittens on top of that?
[1272] You fucking idiot?
[1273] What are you doing?
[1274] I've come here briefly for two reasons.
[1275] One, because I want to be on this podcast, see you.
[1276] The other thing I've come to do in this state, I'm going to need some help with this.
[1277] I'm not here for much longer is I saw a bumper sticker advertised that I think is the greatest bumper sticker ever created.
[1278] And it simply says, Texas.
[1279] It's bigger than France.
[1280] That's it.
[1281] It's the statement.
[1282] And it's for sale online.
[1283] And I've got, I've got eight hours now to go and find it before I fly back.
[1284] But I have to get this bumper sticker.
[1285] Oh, we get you one.
[1286] It says, it literally just says, it's a statement.
[1287] Yeah.
[1288] It is the greatest statement made by any state or council.
[1289] Well, it's quite a bit bigger than France, isn't it?
[1290] Where is it?
[1291] Yeah.
[1292] Okay.
[1293] I just love it.
[1294] Look at that there.
[1295] Yeah, it's kind of funny.
[1296] It's brilliant.
[1297] And I want that.
[1298] I haven't, I have a...
[1299] Really, we were talking about this at the beginning before we got rolling, but it really is its own country.
[1300] Yeah.
[1301] It's very different than the rest of the country.
[1302] Yeah.
[1303] It's very independent.
[1304] And one of the reasons is the history of this place.
[1305] Like, for the longest time, the Comanchee dominated this territory, and you couldn't get across the land.
[1306] And so the people that eventually figured out how to fight off the Comanchee and settle down, They're the craziest, most rugged individuals ever.
[1307] That's the Texas Rangers.
[1308] They figured out how to cold camp, and there's a photograph of Jack Hayes, who's the original Texas Ranger, out in the lobby.
[1309] And that's why he's there.
[1310] I was like, without those psychopaths that figured out a way to fight off the most ferocious band of Indians that ever existed in the plains, no one would be here.
[1311] So they were very reluctant to join this whole union thing.
[1312] Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
[1313] Also, they've been conditioned to become animals, you know, to be extreme fighters.
[1314] Once their battles finished, they don't stop being fighters.
[1315] Right.
[1316] Well, it just flavors the independence of the entire state and the pride of the state.
[1317] How does Austin fit into that?
[1318] Because I think it's viewed as this center of cosmopolitan life within a state that's known to be a bit different.
[1319] So how does that work?
[1320] It's good.
[1321] It's a balance.
[1322] So Austin is this preposterous, progressive blue city that's surrounded by ranchers with guns.
[1323] So this is saying, keep Austin weird and surrounded.
[1324] And I think that's accurate because you've got a lot of very, you know, have universities here.
[1325] You have some really intelligent, interesting people here, great restaurants, great nightlife.
[1326] But also, you're surrounded by Texas, Texas, the real Texas.
[1327] The majority of Texas is like ranchers.
[1328] small town people and they're heavily armed.
[1329] That's the thing about being an English person, sorry, a British person.
[1330] The gun thing is totally foreign to us.
[1331] I'm not going to offer any opinion at all other than say that it's just foreign.
[1332] It really is.
[1333] And at times, I'm sure people in the UK would quite like to fill the security of having that about them.
[1334] But it's amazing driving around here as a British person thinking, that person in that car has almost certainly got a gun.
[1335] Yeah, almost certainly.
[1336] We don't have that.
[1337] Well, we also have the First Amendment, and you see the consequences of not having the Second Amendment in the U .K., because they can tell you, we're going to lock you in jail for a Facebook post.
[1338] Yeah.
[1339] And, you know, you can't really do that here.
[1340] You can't just force people to go to jail.
[1341] You can't, that was an issue also in Australia.
[1342] Australia, they took everyone's guns away after one mass shooting, I think, in the 1990s.
[1343] and they were able to round people up and put them in camps when they found out they had a cold.
[1344] It was crazy.
[1345] You can't do that in America.
[1346] The second amendment protects the First Amendment.
[1347] It's maybe the, what's transpired for me, having traveled here so many times and worked here so often in the last 25 years, is that because we speak the same language and we all look quite similar, we assume our countries are really, really similar.
[1348] but they're not they're really quite different we have a real caste system over there yeah and actually they're they're both wonderful places i love coming here there's a there's a there's something about all of the states i visited that i love and i have no strong opinions maybe this the older you get i no longer have strong opinions really about the way other people live their lives so that's your it's what you do i don't i don't have any opinion about that at all really it's what you do it works for you and in the uk we're different as well and i i i've the older i get the more a molyant to I become, I think, about that.
[1349] When I was young, I would have had stronger opinions about that.
[1350] But, you know, the way that Texas operates is Texas stuff.
[1351] It's the way you do things.
[1352] And I don't, I'd have to be here a long time to fully understand the layers of it, the nuances of it.
[1353] And if you came to North Somerset where I live, there's aspects of it that look, because we speak the same language, that look like they're straightforward, but they're not.
[1354] Everything has subtleties, doesn't it?
[1355] Yeah.
[1356] That's, that's why I see.
[1357] I don't, I think maybe to come back to some of the comments, it's when people become partisan without any real information that we get, that we have problems.
[1358] Yeah.
[1359] People always giving me their fucking opinion about stuff when they haven't stopped to consider it.
[1360] Right.
[1361] You know, and that's not, I'm not trying to dodge issues here.
[1362] You can probably tell I'm not completely apolitical.
[1363] I, um, I just don't like politicians.
[1364] I don't, I don't, I don't care what side of the fence they sit on.
[1365] I'm deeply suspicious of people that go into a career of politics.
[1366] As you should be.
[1367] as it should be so I'm not I don't profess to be at one soul or the other I just all of them tend to be in expert I think the idea that we've created a system where you get promoted because you're in expert is ridiculous and in my world that manifests itself in transport I've never come across a transport minister in the UK that really has any idea what's going on or any interest or even uses fucking transport other than being driven around They're just bureaucrats It's ridiculous so that's my position on it is I just sit there bewildered by what's going on and maybe maybe where I am a total soft cock is I don't have the spine to stand up and shout about it but I just it's bizarre for me and that we that that we have inexpert people making decisions for us hence our discussion about electric cars yeah but also we have people that have the right to say whatever they want online without having stopped to think of anything that they were talking about or to or to research what they're saying it's remarkable.
[1368] But there's also this, because of that, because of there's these shitty opinions and nasty people and all this information flowing around and in bots and all this other stuff, it makes you consider the nature of speech.
[1369] And it makes you consider like what, what, it gives you a choice.
[1370] Do I choose to engage in this kind of stuff?
[1371] Do I choose to read this kind of stuff?
[1372] Or do I just recognize it for what it is?
[1373] Like, I don't drink moonshine.
[1374] If I don't go to the, if I go to the supermarket and there's a jug of moonshine, I'll go, well, I need to buy that and start drinking it.
[1375] No, I don't drink.
[1376] I don't want it.
[1377] I know it's there.
[1378] I don't drink it, right?
[1379] So you can choose to avoid the things that suck in life.
[1380] You can, but through the prism of parenthood, I've got three kids.
[1381] I do as well.
[1382] Yeah, I...
[1383] That's where it gets tricky.
[1384] Yes.
[1385] And I don't know whether you've probably experienced this as well, but when I was first on top gear, there was a lot of hate flying around.
[1386] And, you know, I was just hated because I wasn't Jeremy.
[1387] Which is odd because Jeremy's one of my heroes.
[1388] I think he's one of the greatest.
[1389] broadcasters out there I love top gear and to suddenly be the enemy was really weird I love what he did I loved his top gear I was just trying to do my own top gear and I just got shat on for it but when my children started taking heat for what I was doing for a living was very difficult yes I found that very difficult and I it's crazy that people go after someone's kids for a television show about cars like what kind of a piece of shit if I was a political broadcaster or someone that was talking about the NRA I can understand it I'm talking about the motor car.
[1390] Yeah, exactly.
[1391] Not the third world debt.
[1392] It's a total, it's ridiculous.
[1393] But it doesn't matter.
[1394] It's just shitty human beings with bad lives that want to affect you.
[1395] When they go for your kids, I'll tell you something.
[1396] How about this?
[1397] Never said this publicly.
[1398] I had a phone call one day from the family home saying that my youngest child had been out skateboarding.
[1399] It's a farmhouse middle now.
[1400] He's been skateboarding on some little lane.
[1401] When I heard that, I thought, why?
[1402] would he skateball there it's really rough he just fall over um but two people in a car had approached him and said and and tried to coax him into the car it turned out it was two uh tabloid journalists that were trying to get some dirt on me but they tried to coax my child into the back of the car oh my god and i and i i i agree with you that i want to be have a sensible view of this world we live in but when you've when you've experienced those things or when you've had to sit down and speak to your kids' teachers about the awful things that are being said to them just because their dad happens to present a TV show, it does change you a bit.
[1403] You don't come back from it completely.
[1404] Well, you recognize the real shit nature of some human beings.
[1405] And when you're confronted with it, we're kind of always aware there's bad people in the world, but when you're confronted with it over such a superficial thing.
[1406] You're so right.
[1407] It's so refreshing to hear you say that.
[1408] It's just a car.
[1409] I deal in the least serious subject on the planet.
[1410] It's a motor car.
[1411] It's just being attached to that iconic name.
[1412] That's all it is.
[1413] And then also the way that show was canceled because Jeremy punched a producer.
[1414] Did you have to work with the same producer, Jeremy punched?
[1415] No, that guy had left.
[1416] I met him once shook his hand.
[1417] I never, didn't know who he was.
[1418] I'm on Team Jeremy.
[1419] Yeah, he's brilliant of what he does.
[1420] If he punched the guy, the guy, it probably sucks.
[1421] Jesus, I'm not coming to you on that.
[1422] I'm going to get in trouble.
[1423] But I do, if no one's ever really asked me, what I think of Jeff.
[1424] I think he's just the best.
[1425] He's quite a fucking character.
[1426] And I shouldn't, I shouldn't have, maybe I shouldn't have tried to follow him.
[1427] But I wasn't trying to follow him.
[1428] I think what I, what I, I now realized I was trying to do is I was trying to be part of the solution.
[1429] I knew I could do the driving bit, but I thought the other people could carry off the Jeremy bit.
[1430] Right.
[1431] And I now realize that's very difficult.
[1432] It's difficult act to follow.
[1433] Yeah, you're not going to follow that.
[1434] You're just going to be different.
[1435] He's a completely unique person.
[1436] I think they did, Elon dirtier than anybody ever did.
[1437] Oh, they were naughty with that.
[1438] They did a terrible thing.
[1439] They were naughty with that.
[1440] They did a terrible thing, and I talked to him about it, and he was furious.
[1441] They pretended that his car died, and they did it for a sketch.
[1442] And this is the early days of Tesla, when Tesla had just that little tiny car that was basically a lotus with an electric engine.
[1443] Yeah.
[1444] That was called the Roadster.
[1445] That was the original roadster.
[1446] Yeah, the original one, which is a cool -looking little car.
[1447] And they pretended that it died on them.
[1448] and they did it for a sketch, and they got away with it because it's entertainment, and they were allowed to create a script.
[1449] And apparently someone had got a hold of the script and read in the script before they even filmed it, then the car dies.
[1450] And then we have to figure out why the car dies.
[1451] So what kind of an impact do you think that had on the sales of his car?
[1452] I mean, how to be extraordinary.
[1453] You're watching the most popular automobile show in the world, and they say your car sucks so bad that it died when they were testing it.
[1454] when it didn't die.
[1455] I'll be careful what I say here, but without wanting to shatter anyone's illusions, that's the way those car shows are made.
[1456] That's the way a lot of reality shows are made, unfortunately.
[1457] So ultimately, you reverse engineer an outcome.
[1458] So you're being told, this is what you're going to find.
[1459] This is what's going to happen.
[1460] All we need to do is you've got to help us get there.
[1461] Now, in reality TV, I can understand it.
[1462] But if you're reviewing a product, as you say, that tens of thousands of people make and they rely on that thing selling, for their livelihood.
[1463] And you're just lying.
[1464] You're lying.
[1465] You're lying about this car braking.
[1466] It did not break.
[1467] One of the biggest problems on top gear for me was when things didn't break.
[1468] So, you know, often the producers, and I understand why, they'd want stuff to break.
[1469] That was the joy.
[1470] But normally with the older cars we'd buy and mess around with.
[1471] But actually, older cars are quite reliable now.
[1472] You buy something and expect it, the engine to blow up.
[1473] It won't.
[1474] Well, how many of those 1988 -88 Toyota Land Cruisers are still on?
[1475] on the road with hundreds of thousands of miles you try well they did a brilliant uh film about that and they're trying to kill a land cruiser and they just couldn't ended up dropping up a building and it drove away they're it's the cockroach of the car world i've incredible i have a i have a 200 series land cruiser v8 diesel 157 000 miles on it i have an 80 series it's just they are they're brilliant vehicles and actually i lobbed a bomb on instagram the other day by saying i drive round in my land cruiser feeling sorry for Ranger -over drivers.
[1476] And I just got a whole lot of I didn't read it.
[1477] But I do think that I have some sympathy for people that make television because you know they say don't work with children and animals but working with cars can be difficult and I one side of top gear that I found unpalatable not just the sort of the silly comedy bit which I didn't like was quite often you'd be given a script I'd be given a script and my review was in it and I'd be like well I haven't driven it yet.
[1478] So this is the part where you say, it's great.
[1479] But what if I think it's shit?
[1480] Right.
[1481] But they, I can understand why the producer and the director is thinking, well, we've got to get all this package together.
[1482] That's our hour there.
[1483] That's our hour there.
[1484] But we haven't stopped to actually evaluate this thing we're supposed to be evaluating.
[1485] And I have some sympathy with people that make television.
[1486] Because actually that bit's just, they don't care about that.
[1487] But for me, that's all that matters.
[1488] I want to give an honest opinion of the car.
[1489] Well, that's where you shine.
[1490] and that's why you should only be doing things on your own.
[1491] I think I will after this.
[1492] You know, fuck that wellness show too.
[1493] Listen, I have to take a leak.
[1494] Let's come back.
[1495] We'll take a little quick break.
[1496] Dogs in cars is a good subject.
[1497] Yeah.
[1498] I love having my dog in the car.
[1499] My dog loves going in the car.
[1500] He knows we're going to go do something fun.
[1501] The dog, so is it sensible to suggest that the dog is the ultimate car companion?
[1502] Sure, because they're never upset.
[1503] Yeah.
[1504] Yeah.
[1505] They're like, yay.
[1506] We're in the car.
[1507] must be we're going somewhere I love so my I've got a Gt3 touring 991 you bring the dog in that what kind of dog he's an English bull terrier how big is he quite a size but you know he's what he's with the shark face it just looks like he's going to kill you but all he'd do is lick you to death he's a gorgeous animal and um from the very from as a pup he all all dogs have access to all cars it's really important for me if you've got really if you have a car that's a million dollars dogs going in there I really for me it's a it's a it's a it's like a that's the As close as it gets to religion for me, I love it.
[1508] For me, it's a demonstration of who I am.
[1509] I want my, things I love the most to share the things I love the most, right?
[1510] So the dog goes in it, and I love patination on cars.
[1511] So my cars are known for being not that clean, let's say.
[1512] They're just, I live in them.
[1513] And you know the handle on a GT3 under the bucket seat where you, that lovely handle that you move forward, forwards and on mine, they're all chewed, where he chewed them as a puppy.
[1514] And I leave them like that.
[1515] So when people get in, they go, fuck, what was that?
[1516] And I'll go, I the dog chew that.
[1517] But the only time I've come to grief is that I now am very suspicious of switch gear that's laid on the horizontal because I was on a slip road in an M3 of mine last year no sorry, no it would be the GT3 and I came off a slip road and I accelerated it was wet and I thought I'd lean on the systems you know when you just get that you lean on the traction or the ABS and the car went fully sideways on a slip road in the middle of the day and it looked outrageous i mean i'm that's what i'm quite good at so i went well there you go that sideways wound it off again the dog had put his paw on the ESP button oh no he had turned all the systems oh no without me knowing oh no so now i'm aware of that he's not allowed to do that yeah they shouldn't be right there but that's i suddenly thought that's there he is oh what a cutie that's in the back of the m5 the v10 m5 that's pip dog oh that's nice he's an absolute legend he is but he's a great dog companion no dog sickness I just love going crazy with him as long as they're accustomed to it that's the thing when I have had dogs in the past that I didn't take in cars often then you take them in a car they're kind of freaking out why are we moving they start throwing up but it's awful I don't want to see a dog like that no one's in animal stressed and I have rejected cars because my dogs didn't like them I had a thing called I had a thing I borrowed one and I bought a golf our estate it was a I'm not sure you got them over here but they did a combi sort of station wagon you've got there's a theme here I love station wagons why do you like station wagons I think long roofs and curtailed arsees look better really yeah the three box thing doesn't do it as much for me I like long down I don't know why I think they look gross yeah I love them I see them I'm like what did you do to that fucking thing so I bought this is the new one that's actually good look I bought I bought the old one so you type in the click in 2015 seen Gulf Fire Estate there.
[1518] And I, and I, any one of those, yeah, that would do.
[1519] So I went to bought one of these, so that'll be good.
[1520] And that's not, it's not too showy and it'll do the job.
[1521] And at that point, I had my old dog, boss, Vimarana, and I put him in the back.
[1522] And he just got out again.
[1523] I was like, he hasn't done that before.
[1524] Put him in the back again.
[1525] And it was quite evident he did not like the car.
[1526] I don't know why.
[1527] So you didn't like the car because he didn't like the car?
[1528] So I took the car back.
[1529] And the guy, he saw it, said, well, it's the problem.
[1530] I said, dog doesn't like it.
[1531] And he went, what, the dog?
[1532] What do you mean?
[1533] I said, well, the dog doesn't like it.
[1534] I can't live with it because the dog lives with me. So it goes.
[1535] Yeah, no, the dog's opinion matters.
[1536] What could it possibly have been?
[1537] Who knows?
[1538] Dogs, dogs are, as we know, the most incredible things.
[1539] We don't deserve them.
[1540] They are wonderful.
[1541] But they see and they perceive things differently to us.
[1542] He knew.
[1543] It could be that he didn't like.
[1544] like the cologne that the German guy that assembled the boot interior with.
[1545] You know, dogs operate on a level of perception.
[1546] We can't even understand.
[1547] Right.
[1548] So I, yeah, your fascination with bears, you know, could a man be beaten up by, could a man defeat a bear?
[1549] I always love that.
[1550] It's like, well, what are you thinking of?
[1551] I love, I often like walking around trying to think what my dog's seeing of a situation.
[1552] What's he smelling?
[1553] Oh, they must be smelling just so many different things.
[1554] I know.
[1555] They apparently can, if you have a hamburger that has like cheese, pickles, onions, ketchup, they can smell all the individual items in the hamburger.
[1556] They smell everything.
[1557] They have like a reference of discernibility.
[1558] Yeah, it's just very different than ours.
[1559] So do they have like Terminator Vision?
[1560] Is their red code going across and they're like.
[1561] Because they have no language too, right?
[1562] So it's all on instincts, which is fascinating.
[1563] Because, you know, nobody taught my dog to be.
[1564] pee on things.
[1565] He just knows that you step, what's this?
[1566] Peas on it, you know?
[1567] When I like take them on trails and he finds out where all the other dogs are pee, like, oh, I've got to pee there too.
[1568] But my, there's an emotional sensitivity to these animals as well.
[1569] That thing there, you just seen the picture of.
[1570] I mean, you have it was bred to fight bulls and bears.
[1571] That was what was bred to do.
[1572] But if, let's just say, at certain times in the month, if my girlfriend is feeling down, my dog will go and cuddle her and sit with her all night and provide heat to the part of her body that's in pain.
[1573] He will do that consistently, every single time.
[1574] He knows.
[1575] Wow.
[1576] He just knows.
[1577] He knows she's uncomfortable.
[1578] Yeah.
[1579] They're empaths, especially when they really love you.
[1580] There's something about them.
[1581] Like, my dog understands language.
[1582] Like, he doesn't know just, like, sit, give me your paw, lie down, stay.
[1583] I bet he knows tone.
[1584] Yeah.
[1585] He knows things.
[1586] Like, we could be going towards the house.
[1587] I go, no, let's go around the back.
[1588] he goes okay going around the back like he knows what I'm saying he's it's like real subtle I wonder if we overproject on them because when we were discussing earlier about some of the this sense of being just so disappointed about our fellow homo sapiens I overproject onto my dog the more I get disappointed by human beings the more I revel in dogs well they're like human beings though in that it depends on the life of the dog like people get killed by wild dogs yeah like in Georgia some couple recently was attacked and someone who was killed by wild dogs because the dogs are fending for themselves they live horrible lives now people that live horrible lives are shit people right they're dangerous shit people yeah whereas a dog like marshal that said nothing but love and he's a golden retriever he's bred that way he's just a genuine joy yeah every everyone he meets like you're my new friend everybody you just assumes you know but you've met dogs are like they see people oh they're sketchy they're scared of men they're you know those maybe they're They were beaten.
[1589] They're a reflection of the environment in which they've been more too.
[1590] Exactly, exactly.
[1591] Dogs are just like us.
[1592] They're just like us.
[1593] You get a dog like Carl.
[1594] Carl thinks everybody loves them and he just wants to play and that's what he does.
[1595] He just runs up to you and tries to play because that's his whole life.
[1596] That's all he's ever experienced is being taken care of.
[1597] I want some bear chat.
[1598] So I have, I'm slightly fascinated by these really large bears, big grishlies.
[1599] And I do find myself sometimes at four in the morning when I can't sleep, Googling, of them, their potential power, the potential statistics of what they can and can't do.
[1600] Are they as all -inspiring as I should think they are?
[1601] Oh, yeah, and beyond.
[1602] Yeah.
[1603] There's a great story that you can find that's on YouTube.
[1604] There's a clip of my friend Steve Ronella, and he was on a Fogneck Island, and they were elk hunting, and they had shot an elk.
[1605] And a Fogneck Island is an incredibly difficult place to.
[1606] traverse.
[1607] The bush is dense and thick and the bears are enormous.
[1608] A Fognac is connected to Kodiak by a small land strip, I believe.
[1609] It's certainly like right next to Kodiak.
[1610] I might be wrong about the one.
[1611] I think it may be used to be connected.
[1612] I'm not sure.
[1613] But the point is they are coastal brown bears.
[1614] And coastal brown bears are the same thing as a grizzly bear, but their diet is very different.
[1615] So their diet is so rich in protein from salmon.
[1616] They have so, there is enormous.
[1617] They could be 1 ,800 pounds.
[1618] They could be 11 feet tall.
[1619] They're fucking huge.
[1620] They're preposterously big.
[1621] And you can't imagine how big they are unless you you really encounter them.
[1622] So my friend Steve, he was with a group of friends.
[1623] They had shot this elk and he was filming it for a television show called Meat Eater.
[1624] They shot this elk and they put most of it up in the tree and they carry some of it back to camp.
[1625] And camp is six hours of trekking through the train so then they come back the next day they trek six hours they find the spot they sit down and they start eating lunch they don't realize that a bear has claimed that meat and so the bear charged through the camp and one of the guys winds up on top of the bear the bear barrels through the people and this guy's literally riding the back of the bear for about 30 yards before he falls off of it.
[1626] One of my friends, my friend Janus, it is gnashing its teeth about 18 inches from his face as it runs by.
[1627] Now, imagine a head this big.
[1628] I mean, the head is like this, isn't it?
[1629] Like this.
[1630] Enorm.
[1631] I mean, so big, just impossibly big.
[1632] And it's gnashing its teeth 18 inches away from his head as it runs by.
[1633] He hits it with a trekking pole.
[1634] like wax it with a trekking pole they're all he said Steve the way Steve described that he said the most reptilian part of your brain is ignited where you no longer have like what should I do there's no there's no thinking in terms there's no language so in the flight chaos full chaos terrifying chaos no one had their gun in front of them no one no one knew it to do they were all the gun like pistols were in the packs rifles were sitting down down over there.
[1635] No one was prepared.
[1636] No one thought the bear was there.
[1637] They didn't understand that it was there.
[1638] Yeah.
[1639] I think, I think as a northern European, we're always fascinated by the shit we haven't got.
[1640] Right.
[1641] And grizzly bears are up there with Chevy Suburbanes, most muscle cars.
[1642] Honestly, the idea of the other, the foreign, is really fascinating for any where any person doesn't have that.
[1643] Sure.
[1644] And it's same with Australia.
[1645] You know, you go to Australia.
[1646] It's a very different thing.
[1647] They have little shit that will kill you.
[1648] Right.
[1649] You go there and someone will casually go, yeah, mate, that'll bite you, you're fucked.
[1650] You're like, what do you mean?
[1651] It's a spider.
[1652] No, mate.
[1653] Jesus, it's not like a big furry thing.
[1654] Right.
[1655] But in South America, it's big and furry.
[1656] It's whole presentation is, I'll kill you.
[1657] Right.
[1658] These ones are not quite like that.
[1659] Right.
[1660] So I do have this fascination.
[1661] with this stuff.
[1662] And again, that's why YouTube's great.
[1663] Because as a kid growing up, if you wanted to find out about this stuff, you couldn't really.
[1664] You had to get a book or there was no VHS.
[1665] If you went to Blockbuster, you couldn't buy a documentary or grizzly bears, could you?
[1666] Right.
[1667] You didn't get it.
[1668] Right.
[1669] Now it's all over there.
[1670] But even a documentary is not going to do it.
[1671] You have to experience them.
[1672] You have to actually be around one and see it.
[1673] Have you been, so you have been up close with these things?
[1674] I've only seen one grizzly bear in the wild and it wasn't big it was about six feet but it looked at me so much different than any other animal that I've ever seen it looks right through you like am I going to eat you yeah so you were a food source yeah are you a food source am I going to eat you what are you one of the best things I've done with top gear was with Matt LeBlanc who um as you can tell I'm very fond of um he's just a he's great fun but he had this idea uh around Bigfoot So he's a believer.
[1675] In his own way.
[1676] He's not a believer, but he presents a really strong argument.
[1677] I like people that, as you can tell.
[1678] I'll shoot that argument full of holes.
[1679] But I like to apply test to things.
[1680] He's not a believer, but he likes to apply tests.
[1681] He said, stand in the Washington State Forest and tell me that we know everything that's in there.
[1682] And if you come from a little island off Europe, the size of your forests are awe -inspiring.
[1683] And the idea there's so much stuff that we might not know about does interest me. There probably at one point in time was something.
[1684] Yeah.
[1685] That's what it really is.
[1686] And there's an actual animal called Gigantopithecus that existed alongside human beings that was an eight to ten foot tall bipedal ape that lived in Asia and could have come across the Bering Land Bridge.
[1687] Yeah.
[1688] It is possible.
[1689] It's possible.
[1690] So, and there's also Native Americans have some enormous number of names for these creatures, different tribes.
[1691] So they don't have fake animals.
[1692] They don't have a bunch of like dragons and stuff that doesn't exist.
[1693] It's not a mythical creature.
[1694] So, and I don't want to pitch Matt into something, you know, he's not some crazy believer.
[1695] And actually the premise of the whole film was fun.
[1696] It was, he was there going, I think there's something here that's going to have a look for it.
[1697] And I was just acutely aware as we were in, we shot it in northern California, so north of San Francisco.
[1698] The forest at night, there's a sketchy place.
[1699] You know, it really reminds you of.
[1700] just how insignificant we are and how vulnerable we are without our man -made objects to defend ourselves.
[1701] Sure.
[1702] And I, in the context of that, a bear, for me, was terrifying, actually.
[1703] I just thought they were creatures I'd seen on nature programs.
[1704] The idea there was something out there that viewed me as food that, if you live in England, we don't have that.
[1705] We simply don't, we don't have mountain lions.
[1706] I'm not going to eat by a badger.
[1707] I think the largest carnivore in the UK is probably a fox or a badger.
[1708] We don't have these things that you have.
[1709] All right.
[1710] Difficult view you understand.
[1711] There's nothing that views me as a food source.
[1712] California killed all the bears, all the grizzlies.
[1713] They used to have, well, the California state flag is a grizzly bear.
[1714] Yeah.
[1715] And their bears were similar, I believe, in size to coastal brown bears.
[1716] The grizzlies, the brown bears that used to live there.
[1717] And there's a place in California called Lavec is a town called Lavec that was named after, I believe his name was Stephen Lavec.
[1718] He was the last man to get killed by a brown bear.
[1719] in California before they eradicated them.
[1720] So this is in the 1800s, I guess.
[1721] So they just started killing them all.
[1722] They just killed them.
[1723] Fuck these things.
[1724] They're killing everybody.
[1725] Yeah.
[1726] Let's just kill them.
[1727] You can sort of see why.
[1728] Oh, yeah.
[1729] But a polar bear is even more madness again, isn't it?
[1730] Oh, yeah.
[1731] Have you ever seen that BBC show where they put the guy in the glass cube?
[1732] Oh, my God.
[1733] I mean, what was going on there?
[1734] It is so terrifying.
[1735] The thing is just smelling meat inside that cube and trying to get through it to get to him.
[1736] It's biting it, and you see it's massive jaws, and they don't eat anything but meat.
[1737] Yeah.
[1738] So they're the most dangerous of all polar bears.
[1739] And ironically, they're the ones that we make, seem to be the cutest.
[1740] This.
[1741] Fuck that thing.
[1742] How do you know that's going to work, by the way?
[1743] Did you try that out on a bear?
[1744] It looks like a shit X -wing fighter, isn't it from the inside?
[1745] And this bear just gets to it.
[1746] It's like, oh, there's meat in there.
[1747] How do I get to that meat?
[1748] I just, that.
[1749] And we make those things out to be our friends.
[1750] You know, that's the, you know, what would you do for a Klondike bar?
[1751] You know, they sell Coca -Cola.
[1752] They sell Klondike bars.
[1753] And this bear is just a fucking super predator.
[1754] Ballou.
[1755] Ballou was a bear.
[1756] What's Ballou?
[1757] Ballou, Jungle Book.
[1758] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1759] It's amazing, isn't it?
[1760] Yeah.
[1761] We anthropomorphize bears.
[1762] Yeah.
[1763] More than just about any other creature.
[1764] Yogi.
[1765] Paddington bear.
[1766] Sure.
[1767] yeah yeah friendly cuddly I think I think because they they do look quite appealing and they are dog -like aren't they they're slightly dog -like snout sure shape of head well we put hats on them and shit only you could prevent forest fires and they want to eat you yeah they want to eat you they want to eat anything that's slow I mean that's what they're there for their nature's cleanup crew friend of mine walked to the North Pole for some reason I don't know why and and he was and he had a lot of training before and this is a long time ago.
[1768] But the polar bear training that he talked about was quite difficult to absorb really.
[1769] Effectively, it was that there was no gun that you could carry on an expedition like that if you're just on your own or with three other people with sleds.
[1770] There's nothing you can carry that you could immediately produce that would stop a polar bear, an adult polar bear.
[1771] So the best than they had was a short shotgun that had a solid bolt, just a solid bolt in it.
[1772] And if you could get that one thing off, you could stop it, but there's no gauge of shotgun that was going to stop one of these things.
[1773] It was coming at you.
[1774] So they carried this thing.
[1775] They carried this thing that had a solid bolt in it.
[1776] That's all he had.
[1777] I don't know much about guns, but that's what they said they were given.
[1778] There's some pistols that you can effectively unload into a bear and stop them.
[1779] A 50 -cal would stop it, would it?
[1780] Yeah, well, sure, a 50 -cow.
[1781] I don't have a 50 -cal pistol, but they have 40, you know, 40 magnums, 44 magnets.
[1782] Well, that would stop a bear?
[1783] You have to shoot it multiple times.
[1784] Yeah, not one.
[1785] And, you know, if you have a 38 or a 9 millimeter, good luck.
[1786] Good luck.
[1787] Is that just the like a bounce right off its head.
[1788] Their heads are so thick.
[1789] You could literally shoot it in the forehead and it probably bounce off its forehead.
[1790] I mean, they bite each other.
[1791] You've seen them go to war with each other.
[1792] When they bite each other, they have insane amounts of power and bite force.
[1793] and they're just clamping down on each other's face and they'll do it for half an hour and walk away like it was nothing.
[1794] Okay, that versus a big gorilla.
[1795] That's a good question.
[1796] We've had that question many times.
[1797] What is it?
[1798] I think the gorilla is at a severe disadvantage because it doesn't really kill anything.
[1799] Yeah.
[1800] So the gorilla just gnashes its teeth at other guerrillas and makes like he's a badass and they have incredible power, but they don't even eat meat.
[1801] Whereas the bear, all it does is run around killing things.
[1802] It's all it does.
[1803] kills things and eats dead things and it's what it wants to do I got my money on the bear I love it I love it what I know about is cars and I'm here asking questions about bears well they're fascinating it's a fascinating part of our world and it's all the anthropomorphizing is a really fascinating aspect of it and I think in America it happened with Teddy Roosevelt with the teddy bear I think that's the beginning of the end and then Disney movies were a huge problem Disney movies are a huge problem because all the bears are your friend they all talk to everybody and hey and say why would you kill the bear like that is a giant forest dog that's an evil animal that it doesn't give a fuck about you or your kids it'll pull you out of your tent it'll eat you 100 % and they're wonderful and they're beautiful we should definitely keep a healthy population of them I'm not saying we should eradicate them but know what they are and don't be influenced by these goddamn cartoons cartoons and movies which have fucked people's heads up Yeah.
[1804] It's as a parent, you realize it as well.
[1805] Particularly in the UK, we have, you know, we don't have dangerous species of animals like that.
[1806] But we do, through anthropomorphizing them in films and cartoons, we make, we make things cute that might not be cute.
[1807] Sure.
[1808] You know, we have a real urban fox population in the UK.
[1809] And they actually started in my hometown of Bristol.
[1810] The fox is a clever creature.
[1811] And it worked out that it was much easier to come into town.
[1812] and raid bins, and it was to stay out there trying to find rabbits in the countryside.
[1813] And these nighttime foxes were very clever.
[1814] No one really knew where they were there.
[1815] The BBC made a fantastic documentary, I think, again, Attenborough in the early 80s, about urban foxes.
[1816] And they've spread throughout the UK.
[1817] And the foxes, this, you know, in most cartoons, it's a lovely, cuddly thing with a bushy tail.
[1818] It's a beautiful colour.
[1819] But they're, you know, they're predators.
[1820] They're a real problem for farmers.
[1821] They eat a lot of poultry.
[1822] I'm not even going into fox hunting.
[1823] That's not my world.
[1824] But there's been a few stories recently of foxes going into people's houses and, you know, attacking babies and, you know, stuff like that.
[1825] And then you see on Instagram people feeding the foxes in their back gardens and you think, this, that's not a domesticated animal.
[1826] Yeah, you can't do that.
[1827] You can't, you know, you've got to make a, you've got to decide one or the other.
[1828] Also, if you feed them, then they become accustomed to getting food from that particular area.
[1829] and then you kind of fuck them up because then they lose their ability to hunt.
[1830] Yeah.
[1831] If you do it too often, if you provide them with food every day, you're going to fuck them up.
[1832] I've just had my holiday down in Newky on the north coast of Cornwall, which is just one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
[1833] And when you buy fish and chips from the fish and chips outlets, they all have a seagull warning now on the shop front saying, when you buy your fish and chips, protect it.
[1834] Because all the seagulls just dive on people.
[1835] Wow.
[1836] So it's like that scene.
[1837] in that Jurassic Park film where the pterodontals are coming down.
[1838] You've seen a seagull eat a rat?
[1839] Yeah, hole.
[1840] Hole.
[1841] Just throw it down.
[1842] They'll do it to pigeons.
[1843] They'll do it to everything they can catch.
[1844] There's a wonderful Instagram clip.
[1845] I'm admitting too much about my search history here.
[1846] I think it's a cormorant just being given like a black oily thing.
[1847] Just being given fish.
[1848] And it eats like five.
[1849] Yeah, I've seen that.
[1850] You think that the volume of fish you've eaten there is greater than the mass of your body.
[1851] There's no way that I didn't think you could eat that.
[1852] No, there's so many videos of like different birds throwing down a whole large mouth bass.
[1853] And it's like, how is it even getting in your mouth?
[1854] It doesn't, they have these skinny little necks and they swell up.
[1855] And they have the fins popping out of the tails popping out of their mouth.
[1856] Yeah, they're pretty extraordinary creatures.
[1857] And they're essentially dinosaurs.
[1858] And actually, to come back to the content discussion, YouTube, whatever it is, I do love the fact it's all out there.
[1859] I love the fact it's being recorded I had never seen this stuff I've got a particular phobia and it is a phobia I hate crabs and I'm not talking about the STD style I'm talking about crustacea why I think they're horrid to look at I think I don't eat I won't eat them I'll eat all other seafood I'll eat all other seafood but I won't eat a crab You'll eat lobster?
[1860] Yeah How weird is that So the insight into the adult brain I hate the crab I also think it's a and a totally unnecessary looking creature.
[1861] They're so delicious, though.
[1862] You love them.
[1863] Everyone I know loves them.
[1864] My children adore them.
[1865] But if there's a big brown crab on a plate, I can't even sit in a room with it.
[1866] Really?
[1867] Fuck off.
[1868] Just an awful thing.
[1869] Also, and this is a good example, right?
[1870] In the pantheon of hateful aesthetics, right?
[1871] Right.
[1872] You have an exoskeleton.
[1873] So you're inside out.
[1874] This thing or someone or something has decided that's going to be inside out.
[1875] So it has a shell to protect its soft, cuddly, and as you described, delicious innards.
[1876] Why would you make that exoskeleton hairy?
[1877] That's unnecessary.
[1878] It's also disgusting.
[1879] This thing has hairs growing out of a shell.
[1880] That's the worst aesthetic of anything.
[1881] Well, very lucky they're small.
[1882] It's also interesting that people, they catch them and snap their claws off and throw them back in the water because their claws will regenerate.
[1883] And they'll grow another claw.
[1884] That's from a film.
[1885] That's not real.
[1886] No, it's real.
[1887] No, it shouldn't be allowed.
[1888] In other words, it should be fixed.
[1889] be fiction.
[1890] That's from a horror movie.
[1891] Type in coconut crab.
[1892] Oh yeah.
[1893] Those are crazy.
[1894] They're huge.
[1895] Like anything that you're scared or you're fascinated by it.
[1896] Someone did some research into the claw bite force of these things.
[1897] And they were absolutely shocked at the torque and power they could generate.
[1898] Look at that guy holding one.
[1899] You get a perspective.
[1900] What is that?
[1901] Size of that thing.
[1902] What is that?
[1903] Come on.
[1904] That's unnecessary, isn't it?
[1905] Well, um...
[1906] So type in claw strength of coconut crap, and you will be absolutely horrified at what they found.
[1907] Wow.
[1908] Look at the size of that thing.
[1909] They are freakish.
[1910] Where do they live?
[1911] They live on a couple of islands.
[1912] 3 ,300 newtons.
[1913] That's so nuts.
[1914] That could take your hand off.
[1915] Oh, yeah.
[1916] Wow.
[1917] the bite of it's stronger than the bite of most land animals including leopards bears and wild dogs and it looks like something from a horror movie do you know there's some speculation that that's what the fate of Amelia Earhart was yes so when I read that I just yeah that she crashed got on this island and the coconut crabs ate her that's insane I mean luckily I think they clamped slowly they don't yeah but more than a leopard what the fuck man so what is that thing biting through is that metal oh they're just horrendous there's that there's that lovely guy on um instagram who's a fisherman who does the experiments with the lobsters and he gets the lobster crushing claw and he puts stuff in the claw yeah and works out what they can chop in half i find that thoroughly addictive but crustacea like that that's my ultimate nightmare it's a hard life it's a hard life for them you know yeah and you can't make them pets No. That's how they're wired.
[1918] But the stats of that, so stronger than a leopard bite.
[1919] That's so bizarre.
[1920] I would have never imagined that.
[1921] I would have never guessed.
[1922] No. And I stay up at night worrying about this sometimes.
[1923] There's something called the Japanese with a giant spider crab.
[1924] So what I used to go on holiday as a kid was this lovely old Victorian -style hotel in Cornwall that was run a bit like 40 towers.
[1925] In fact, it was like 40 towers.
[1926] Had the guy that run in that was the curious guy that made lots of jokes, that people found a bit rude.
[1927] But he was wonderful.
[1928] And they only had about three magazines in their very smelly lounge area where all the old people would sit.
[1929] And one of them was a National Geographic magazine from about 1975.
[1930] But I'd always sit and read when my parents were doing other stuff.
[1931] And it had an ask about Japanese, these giant spider crabs.
[1932] And there was just one picture of one in a tank with its legs like seven feet apart or something.
[1933] Well, let me see this.
[1934] And it stayed with me. It stayed with me for years.
[1935] I was reading about these crabs.
[1936] I got locked into the crabs Giant spider crab Okay, spider crab Japanese spider crabs That's where these are from too Giant spider crab Oh, the coconut crabs are from Japan as well Giant spider crab Can't believe I'm sharing all this I Crabbs are a huge problem for me They really are My children, no Look at this What's that?
[1937] Wow Are those things Do they taste good?
[1938] Look at that Are the coconut crabs delicious I don't think I've never heard of anyone eating a coconut crab.
[1939] I wonder why.
[1940] Jesus Christ, that's insane.
[1941] That's so big.
[1942] I had no idea that there was a crab that's longer than a human being.
[1943] Absolutely disgraceful thing.
[1944] Can you eat a Japanese spider crab?
[1945] I think you do, yeah.
[1946] It looks like they got them on ice, so it looks like they're preparing a Japanese spider crab is no easy task.
[1947] Oh, you got to find a big pot.
[1948] Yeah, right?
[1949] You've got to break it up, I guess.
[1950] Wow.
[1951] no what about um find out about the coconut crab can you eat coconut crabs i might want to eat one i'm going to send you a picture if i get one i'll i'll i'll be glad to see that it's no longer moving i just i just cannot get my head can you eat them i once yes it says above that above that an aphrodisiac oh but look it says yes coconut crabs are eaten as a delicacy on some islands and are considered an aphrodisiac in other places.
[1952] Some say they're tasty and don't need any extra seasoning or cooking and can be eaten after boiling for about 10 to 15 minutes.
[1953] However, the species is threatened by intensive hunting.
[1954] Oh, poor babies.
[1955] They ate Amelia Earhart.
[1956] Who's fucking side of you on?
[1957] When I was reading, they don't have shells.
[1958] That's why their claws are like their protection.
[1959] Oh.
[1960] And they mostly, on one island, only eat other crabs.
[1961] Oh, wow.
[1962] They're cannibals?
[1963] Yeah.
[1964] Oh.
[1965] Like they eat red crabs, I guess.
[1966] Oh, the other crab.
[1967] Well, we most eat other animals, and we're animals.
[1968] Deary me. Well, I've shared too much there.
[1969] So that's my ultimate fear.
[1970] Crabbs.
[1971] I can remember several times we'd be asked on Top Gear when we were going away.
[1972] You know, you're okay with everything?
[1973] And I'd be thinking, I'll do anything.
[1974] I'll eat my own feces.
[1975] But if there's crabs there, I've got problems.
[1976] And only once did we go somewhere where there was, we had to go there.
[1977] And we were just in Cuba filming the opening for this film.
[1978] And we were in Bay of Peecese.
[1979] pigs.
[1980] So we're actually there.
[1981] We were right there with a Maserati and an old Camaro filming this intro to a film.
[1982] Totally random.
[1983] What is it like being in Cuba?
[1984] I'll give you that in a minute.
[1985] Okay.
[1986] And I don't, well, you know, I was so punch drunk with just travel and filming that I'm working so hard.
[1987] You'd almost just wake up and go, it's another mad place.
[1988] I were in Kazakhstan today.
[1989] Right.
[1990] I was like, okay, we'll get on with it.
[1991] And looking back, I was in Kazakhstan for 10 days with Matt, Matt LeBlanc from friends that's a mad thing to do that's pretty mad you know but at the time it was just like work anyhow so Bay of Pigs and I looked at my phone this is the Bay of Pigs fucking hell you know this is where you know this is where it all went a bit wrong for America this is historically quite a significant place could have been a real problem yeah anyhow and I'm looking around and there's lots going on and I look left I'm filming the opening piece to camera which was typically bad from me but the reason why it was really bad by the look left there was a crab down there shuffling around and I'm like I need that gone but I can't admit to people that that big is worrying me like that really worrying me I'm not I'm thinking that's going to crawl up my leg or something totally irrational I think we all have a creature maybe a bogey man or a bogey woman whatever it is that maybe we fear do you have one or not?
[1992] No but I think where that comes from I have a feeling it's genetic memory I think that's where a phidiophobia comes from and arachnophobia fear of snakes and spiders I think because some people we We've experienced that on Fear Factor as well.
[1993] Some people have a real, it seems like, a genetic, irrational fear of certain things.
[1994] And I really feel like that is some memory from either an ancestor getting bit or seeing someone get bit and die.
[1995] I think there's something to that.
[1996] There's a reason why it exists in some people and not in others.
[1997] Because it can't be completely irrational, can't be?
[1998] Right.
[1999] No, I think it's completely a genetic memory.
[2000] That's my number one guess.
[2001] Cuba was fascinating because I suppose as American citizen, you can't go there, can you?
[2002] Can you go there now?
[2003] I think you used to be able to go there.
[2004] I think during the Obama administration, they made it so you can go there.
[2005] It's an amazing place because it's one of the few.
[2006] Which is kind of crazy your government can tell you can't go somewhere like five.
[2007] Yes, someone that's so close to you as well.
[2008] Exactly.
[2009] You can go there on a rowboat.
[2010] It's a museum is what it is.
[2011] It's a fully functioning museum.
[2012] For automobiles.
[2013] for for for life in many ways you know it's not it's not something that's been allowed to develop the way that a country should have developed over the last 40 50 years right so you have um a society that has limited technology uh and as has evolved the way that it that it does and then you see how resourceful human beings can be with with reference to the automobile yes it's fascinating because there's really it's a strange mashup of weird soviet intervention and Americana from the 50s and well they're up to 50s so they've kept these American cars going that should have died they've also got a whole load of Soviet era larders that came in when the Russians wanted to help them out and also that's where their power stations come from their power station they have a coal -fired power station on the north side of the island that when it's operating has a plume of smoke that goes as far as the eye can see I mean it's an amazing thing I couldn't believe it's sort of slightly hidden from all the tourists it's yes it's a it's a country that hasn't been allowed to develop at the same speed as the rest of the world and it's what 100 miles from the coast of the US or something I mean it's 90 is it yeah it's amazing it's a well worth visiting if you can go just to see it just shows you what happens when human beings act absurdly did you feel safe over there totally yeah totally safe I had a I had, I, I, in many ways, I loved it.
[2014] In many ways, I wouldn't want to go again.
[2015] It's one of those curious places where I thought, I've seen the right side of it.
[2016] If I scratched too deeply, am I going to see something I don't want to see?
[2017] Right.
[2018] Maybe that was it.
[2019] Well, you certainly will.
[2020] I mean, there's a reason why people are escaping there.
[2021] Yeah, of course.
[2022] They're trapped.
[2023] Yeah.
[2024] They're trapped in a communist dictatorship.
[2025] Yeah.
[2026] It's not good.
[2027] Yeah.
[2028] But as a tourist, you obviously presented something completely contorted, aren't you?
[2029] That's what happens.
[2030] And when you're making a TV show.
[2031] It's also a communist dictator.
[2032] that's in a very unusual predicament because they're not allowed to trade, right?
[2033] So China is a communist dictatorship, but we buy everything from China.
[2034] Yeah.
[2035] They're arguably worse than Cuba, but we're not allowed to trade with Cuba because some shit that happened in the 60s.
[2036] But Cuba can sell stuff to other countries other than America.
[2037] So, you know, we're full of their cigars and their rum.
[2038] But not America.
[2039] I think you can get them now in limited quantities, but it used to be, if you got a hold of Cuban cigars, I would get them.
[2040] I'm going to tell you a thing I did that it was illegal.
[2041] I used to get them from England.
[2042] Yeah.
[2043] And I used to get Cuban cigars.
[2044] I had a friend who lived in England, and he would send me Cuban cigars, and then later he would send me the labels.
[2045] So he would send me the cigars with no labels.
[2046] Yeah.
[2047] Like in a, like a Ziploc bag, send me a few cigars.
[2048] And then he would send me the labels in an envelope a couple days later.
[2049] The pollution in Havana was the worst I've ever experienced of a city.
[2050] I think when the wind changed, that power station.
[2051] It just blooms straight over.
[2052] Well, there's a place, was it in Indiana, where there's three coal -fired power plants?
[2053] And if you go outside, you can run your finger over someone's windshield and you have black coal dust on your finger.
[2054] And all these people in that area have all sorts of weird fucking diseases because they're just breathing in particulates every day.
[2055] We went to one of the best things I did with Top Gear again, a repeat phrase, maybe only to reconsider my negativity, was the Kazakhstan thing.
[2056] with Matt.
[2057] So we went there, and Rory was there as well, and we ended up at Bikinor, which is the cosmodrome, where they, you know, where the Russian space program is based.
[2058] And it's an incredible area.
[2059] I mean, it's just mind -bendingly brilliant.
[2060] The vastness of that part of the world, the Soviet Union, we think the United States America is big, the Soviet Union was on a scale that you cannot comprehend.
[2061] Kazakhstan was just a small bolt on to Russia, but in itself has I think the fourth longest border of any country with Russia it's enormous and by this area called Bikinor the way that the Russians worked was once they'd use the launch site they'd just go somewhere else because it was so big they'd just abandon that one move on it's a bit like rabbit warrens you know just move on and they plotted all of it in a map anyhow we went there and we watched well when we got close you were aware of the amount of heavy industry it was just the place was the first place I've been to where I thought I'm not sure I should be breathing this it just felt like you were breathing in stuff that was hurting you I'd never I've been to you know Indian cities where there's heavy pollution but that's just sort of diesel and petrol fumes there's something else here you know you're like going what is that but they it culminated with us watching a soy's rocket take off and they let us get much closer to film it than you would normally be allowed to be and I've never watched a rocket take off before I haven't been to Cape Canaveral or anywhere in the US.
[2062] It was one of the most awe -inspiring things I've ever seen.
[2063] It sounds like such a cliche.
[2064] But watching a vehicle that has enough power to leave our atmosphere is something I'd advise anyone to do if they have the chance.
[2065] There's a sort of ripping sound in the air that people will have seen it will understand.
[2066] It does feel like just the power of this thing is shredding the atmosphere around you.
[2067] And it hits you in the solar plexus.
[2068] You have no control over this sort of rattling in your chest.
[2069] And I think we were less than a kilometre away from where it went off.
[2070] It was absolutely sensational to witness.
[2071] Wow.
[2072] Just power.
[2073] Raw power.
[2074] Wow.
[2075] And the idea that Mr. Musk has got something that says more power than Saturn 5 about to take off is that that fascinates me. That all of that side of things.
[2076] Just, we talk about power and engines.
[2077] Your rat has got a bit of grunt.
[2078] But these things, they just rattle you.
[2079] But the smell afterwards, Interesting.
[2080] Oh, it's got to be horrible.
[2081] Like, every time they launch, I mean, how many cars does that account for?
[2082] You think about, like, the amount of pollution that's put out, amount of carbon that's put out by the burning rockets?
[2083] I can't even begin to quantify it.
[2084] 100 ,000 cars?
[2085] What are they burning as well?
[2086] I mean, what's in there?
[2087] What's in there?
[2088] Talking about ropy fuels, I was talking to some guys that used to race sports cars.
[2089] I had Formula One back in the 80s when they were using some very fun.
[2090] fuels because they had there was lots of technology left over in the second world war that the Germans had for jet engines that they had pioneered that had weird lubricants in them that allowed them to run at very high temperatures or have properties that normal fuel didn't have and they would use it for qualifying particularly in Formula One and the drivers after one lap were gone they were just spent there was also great stories about the fact that they would they sometimes have a sort of area outside the Formula One garage.
[2091] It wasn't as a developed as a sport then, but they still had sponsors and guests.
[2092] And one particular team had, you know, all the trees they put outside just died in an afternoon because this fuel was so obnoxious.
[2093] And I think actually a guy called Andy Wallace, who's fantastic racing driver, who's now the chief test driver for Bugatti, tells some amazing stories about literally being hauled out of group C race cars after qualifying because the fuel was just impossible, just poisoning them.
[2094] Wow.
[2095] But it gave them an extra hundred.
[2096] horsepower for that lap well how about leaded gasoline leaded gasoline has been studies that show that in the places with higher amounts of leaded gasoline there's a you can see the lower IQ in the kids and they think that it is drop people's IQ by a measurable amount like people that grew up around leaded gasoline which is me yeah like during that time have we are dumber because of leaded gasoline the pipes The pipes in our homes, 150 years ago, were made of lead.
[2097] Lead pipes.
[2098] Well, my friend Shane Gillis is a hilarious bit about George Washington.
[2099] And George Washington had lead dentures.
[2100] So he had this lead thing where these fake teeth were pre.
[2101] So he had like lead in his mouth.
[2102] So he's getting lead poisoning all day long.
[2103] I have somewhere in my house something I bought from the internet, which is boots chemists.
[2104] So our chemists, you'll see that.
[2105] We have boots, which is our standard chemist.
[2106] It's a logo of healthcare, of stuff that's good for you.
[2107] Boots used to sell cigarettes for coughs.
[2108] Duh.
[2109] I've got some.
[2110] I've got a tin somewhere.
[2111] It's brilliant.
[2112] And it shows you how you should smoke them to get rid of your cough.
[2113] Oh, boy.
[2114] So I think...
[2115] That wasn't that long ago.
[2116] No, that's probably after the Second World.
[2117] No, before the Second World War.
[2118] Crazy.
[2119] I would have thought so.
[2120] years ago, they thought cigarettes were good for coughs.
[2121] Of course they did.
[2122] But then someone...
[2123] I just Googled something like it to see if I'd find the dad.
[2124] And AI says that menthol cigarettes are flavored which to help with coughs.
[2125] Oh, come on.
[2126] What?
[2127] It says it can, the menthol can decrease the cough reflex.
[2128] Which can help with coughs.
[2129] I've heard of that.
[2130] By reducing airway pain and irritation, menthol can reduce the pain and irritation caused by cigarette smoke.
[2131] Decreasing the cough reflex, menthol triggers cold, sensitive nerves in the sense.
[2132] skin, which can decrease the cold, the cough reflex, soothing a dry throat.
[2133] Menthal can soothe the dry throat feeling.
[2134] That's funny that AI is willing to say something that's very un -PC.
[2135] Do you think the AI fucked up here?
[2136] Because I've never heard that.
[2137] Well, it's probably true.
[2138] It's terrible for you.
[2139] Yeah, it's like, however smoking can make you cough more, duh.
[2140] Interesting.
[2141] That's so weird.
[2142] Yeah.
[2143] Can't you take menthol without it being in the format of a cigarette?
[2144] I'm sure.
[2145] Yeah, it's a cough drop, I think.
[2146] Yeah.
[2147] But what we've learned about metallurgy is fascinating.
[2148] And it does mean that that's why we have to apply that to what we currently witness in the motor car, in the automobile industry.
[2149] There's technology out there that will change something at some point.
[2150] We just don't know what it is yet.
[2151] It's going to happen because we're having to relearn so much of what we thought was facts in other areas of our lives.
[2152] And I think maybe that's what I get frustrated by is that you can't wait for that unprecedented change.
[2153] to come necessarily but you have to assume at some point someone's going to make a battery that runs on waspice or fucking water or something aren't they it's going to happen scientists are clever they have big foreheads for a reason at the moment the argument is where there's not enough cobalt or waiting in it the lithium from that it's a slightly speechless argument because I think it won't always be like that someone will someone will invent something that means that we won't need the cobalt and the lithium well some guy invented a water powered car a long time ago and he was murdered.
[2154] Do you know that story?
[2155] It's one of the great conspiracy theories that he yelled, he met with some people that wanted to talk to him about this design and then he yelled, they poisoned me and he ran outside and died.
[2156] Yeah.
[2157] And then nobody ever heard about the water -powered car ever again after that.
[2158] So what is all that?
[2159] I don't know.
[2160] Fuck is all that shit.
[2161] So the mysterious death of Stanley Meyer and his water -powered car.
[2162] It's a wonderful conspiracy theory.
[2163] I haven't looked into it enough to know how much of it is true it looks like a tamir model underneath look at it looks like the rough it looks like the the wild one mm -hmm so this guy had developed this water -powered car that you know had incredible mileage interesting messaging on the side of the vehicle yeah Jesus Christ a lady oh is oh Jesus Christ is Lord oh okay it's cursive um Stanley did Stanley did Stanley Meyer die because he knew how to turn water into fuel This is a British newspaper.
[2164] Isn't it?
[2165] The Express.
[2166] When was this?
[2167] Go back?
[2168] I can't remember.
[2169] This thing is ridiculous on the screen.
[2170] What kind of shit website is this?
[2171] It's some really bad one.
[2172] See if there's another article.
[2173] I'm sure there's other articles about that.
[2174] The car that ran on water.
[2175] This is where it happened.
[2176] Happened outside of in Columbus.
[2177] Oh, okay.
[2178] So his bizarre death at age 57 ended work that if proved valid, scroll up, could have ended reliance on fossil fuels.
[2179] People who knew him said has worked through worldwide attention, mysterious visitors from overseas, government spying, and lucrative buyout offers.
[2180] I know that.
[2181] He was offered money to sell.
[2182] I think the Y files did an episode on this.
[2183] The Myers' death was laced with all sorts of story and conspiracy, cloak and dagger stories, Grove City Police Lieutenant Steve Robinette, lead detective on the case.
[2184] I told them the Stan had died and they never said a word.
[2185] He recalled absolutely nothing.
[2186] no condolences, no questions.
[2187] But how did it run on water?
[2188] I don't know.
[2189] Stephen Myers featured in numerous internet sites.
[2190] Significant portion of the 1995 documentary.
[2191] It runs on water narrated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark, aired on BBC, focused on his water fuel cell invention.
[2192] It's a fuel cell, okay.
[2193] Who was ignored, called a fraud, and died without his hometown even remembering him with so much as a plaque.
[2194] But I have to believe that a piece of technology will emerge in the next 50 years that will make us all wonder why we all got so freaked out, you know?
[2195] Yeah, right, especially over exhaust, right?
[2196] It says the basis for Myers' research, electrolysis, is taught in middle school science labs, electricity flows through water, cracking the molecules and filling test tubes with oxygen and hydrogen bubbles.
[2197] A match is lighted.
[2198] The volatile gas explode and prove that water is separated into its components.
[2199] Meyer said his invention did so by using much less electricity than physicists say is possible.
[2200] Video show his contraption turning water into a frothy mix within seconds.
[2201] It takes so much energy to separate H2 from the O, said Ohio State University Professor Emeritus, Neville Rieh, a physicist for more than 41 years.
[2202] that energy is pretty much not changed with time.
[2203] It's a fixed amount, and nothing changes that.
[2204] Myers' work defies the laws of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
[2205] Basically, it says you cannot get something for nothing.
[2206] He may have had a nice way to store hydrogen and use it to make a very effective motor, but there is no way to do something fancy and separate hydrogen with less energy.
[2207] Hmm.
[2208] So who knows?
[2209] It would be, but when he said, the Lord sent me, okay, now it gets odd.
[2210] His first few words were, the Lord sent me here to this home.
[2211] I'd like to use your home as an experiment.
[2212] Okay, hold on.
[2213] Meyer's creativity seemed to peak when he met Charles and Valerie Hughes, truck drivers who lived in the Jackson Township.
[2214] Julia Hughes, the youngest of the seven children, was five years old when Meyer rang the doorbell of her home on Marlene Drive.
[2215] his first few words were the Lord sent me here to this home I'd like to use your home as an experiment she said maybe it was just a two -story garage shop or the privacy of towering oak and sycamore trees Julia isn't sure what Meyer saw there but she knew her parents didn't have room for a struggling inventor yet after visiting with the family for several hours Meyer stayed the night and then the next few years in the late 1970s in return Meyer built the family a solar silo designed to both heat and cool the home The structure required thousands of clear resin light guides, a crude form of fiber optics, which Meyer baked and molded in the family kitchen.
[2216] Jesus.
[2217] Julia Hughes recalled the chemical stench.
[2218] The system was supposed to channel the sun's rays into the tower base to heat water and generate electricity for an air conditioner.
[2219] Despite extensive efforts that included replumbing the house, the invention never worked.
[2220] Oh, so he might have been a kook.
[2221] Hard to tell.
[2222] But...
[2223] But I tell you what.
[2224] You love a conspiracy theory.
[2225] Oh, I love them.
[2226] I know you do.
[2227] I'm less, I'm seduced by some.
[2228] Yeah.
[2229] But I'm probably less into them than you are.
[2230] I will say this.
[2231] The more you delve into the relationship between business and science and the way that our lives run, it's very difficult not to assume that many ideas are quashed because they're not helpful for certain businesses.
[2232] Unquestionable.
[2233] And I think the automotive industry is and has been at the forefront of that.
[2234] Well, the oil business.
[2235] Just the oil business in general.
[2236] Speaking of, before we go too far, one of the kids remembered some people showed up at the house and offered him, quote, $250 million to stop.
[2237] Yeah, the Arabs wanted to offer me $250 million to stop today.
[2238] You and this lovely family can live in peace and prosperity the rest of your days.
[2239] Meyer told them this.
[2240] The army officials, meanwhile, had questioned Meyer, about what foreigners wanted, thinking that a deal might have been struck.
[2241] Charlie recalled Meyer telling the family.
[2242] Meyer discussed the offer in the Clark documentary.
[2243] Many times over the last decade, I've been offered enormous amounts of money simply to sell out or to sit on it.
[2244] The Arabs have offered me a total of a billion dollars, total pay, simply to sit on it and do nothing with it.
[2245] Hmm.
[2246] Pardon me, goes.
[2247] I'll tell you why.
[2248] Sure.
[2249] Sure.
[2250] An event that happened here that did shake my, I'm less cynical, probably, I'm less likely to be as interested in conspiracy theories, mainly because I, maybe I lack your imagination.
[2251] I don't know what it is, but I like, maybe I'm terrified of the fact that I'm being taken for a ride in too many areas of my life.
[2252] But Dieselgate, the Volkswagen thing that happened in this country, really shook me. Because I didn't think something could have happened on that scale.
[2253] Explain it to people because it's pretty crazy.
[2254] Well, effectively, Volkswagen were able to put software into their vehicles that allowed them to cheat in emissions tests.
[2255] And a load of vehicles that had stated emissions qualities didn't have them when they were not on the test rig.
[2256] And actually, that process had been going on in many different ways for most motor cars forever.
[2257] But the scale on which they offended and the fact they did it in the US meant they got absolutely hammered for it.
[2258] But if you have an Audi RS4 from 2007 and you start the engine up, it idles in an odd way.
[2259] The car feels very aggressive for the first 30 seconds that you start it.
[2260] That's because there's an air pump inside the car that is basically forcing air through the exhaust faster than it needs to.
[2261] So that when you put it on a test rig, it has lower emissions than it should do.
[2262] This had been going on for a long time, but the scale of it was, I suppose, an industrial subterfuge that I didn't think was, I didn't think it could happen.
[2263] Right.
[2264] Especially with a large corporation like Volkswagen.
[2265] I know.
[2266] That did shake me because I always, I'm a flag bearer for my industry.
[2267] I'm proud to be part of the wider car industry.
[2268] And I didn't think that could happen.
[2269] And it wasn't just a bit of naughtiness.
[2270] It was lies.
[2271] And how many people knew about it?
[2272] One has to assume quite a few.
[2273] Yeah, you'd assume.
[2274] But I think, I think they would have, there was a moral complication to it because they were still making very clever, really quite clean vehicles.
[2275] They weren't, you know, they weren't trying to cover up something absolutely hideous.
[2276] It was, they were in the margins, but it was still wrong.
[2277] It was morally completely wrong.
[2278] and once they got away with it they were stuck with it they couldn't suddenly back track on it and there's and I think the it shook my confidence in those large corporations I thought they were being more honest with us and probably made me more likely to believe conspiracy theories afterwards I thought well if they're capable of that what else are they doing conspiracy theories are fascinating because some of them are bullshit and some of them are real and it's hard to figure out what's what yeah you know there's some crazy ones like the earth is flat and then there's some ones like the CIA might have yeah yeah they might have they might have it makes very good listening I love listening oh yeah oh they're fascinating but I suppose I'm I tend to sit a bit further back and just I'd like to hear other people talk about them but when it enters your worlds but when something becomes pertinent to you right you suddenly go hang on a minute what else have they been doing here and how bad was it and how many of them did they get away with Yeah.
[2279] For everyone that gets caught.
[2280] It's not like they catch every conspiracy.
[2281] Right.
[2282] There's no way.
[2283] No. Some of them sneak through and manage to be effective.
[2284] Do you know the latest one about this gentleman who was a billionaire who had apparently overvalued his company and went to court for it?
[2285] And the possibility of him winning this court battle was something like one half of one percent.
[2286] This is Mike Lynch, is it?
[2287] Yeah.
[2288] The guy who just died on the boat.
[2289] And then right after he gets out, the guy who he's with, the co -defendant, gets hit by a car.
[2290] And then he gets hit by a freak water spout and sinks his yacht.
[2291] I was discussing this over a few glasses of wine with some friends.
[2292] It's a good one.
[2293] It's got Rogan written all over it.
[2294] This one has.
[2295] It's perfect for you.
[2296] It's so juicy.
[2297] I'm not going to pass any comment.
[2298] I'm going to be a soft cock again.
[2299] But I'm going to say that I read it and my eyes.
[2300] Well, my eyebrows raised, I thought, that seems like a coincidence.
[2301] Didn't the lawyer die as well?
[2302] Who else died?
[2303] The co -defendant was hit by a car.
[2304] In Cambridge.
[2305] I think, so one incident was a cycling incident in the UK a few days before.
[2306] Was it hit and run?
[2307] No, they've got, they have the person that hit the cyclists, I think they have got.
[2308] But they were asking for information around it.
[2309] Did the person that hit the cyclist have any connection to anybody that?
[2310] I don't know.
[2311] Was it?
[2312] I don't know.
[2313] But I just read it and just thought, like you, I'm like, oh, my God.
[2314] Yeah, billionaire autonomy, co -founder Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain's careers were intertwined for years in a fraud trial.
[2315] Then they died on the same day miles apart.
[2316] Yeah.
[2317] I think, I suppose, the difficulty I have with that is, that's a tragedy.
[2318] Yeah, but they fucked over some billionaires.
[2319] Well, they, they fucked over some very, very powerful.
[2320] Yeah.
[2321] So they sold autonomy to Hewlett Packard and there was a big, he was extradited to the US.
[2322] And I don't know, it's not my world.
[2323] I suppose the conspiracy theory thing is fascinating.
[2324] But then when it's in the context of people losing their lives like that, I'm like, do I want to comment?
[2325] Right.
[2326] So awful.
[2327] It's awful.
[2328] And also going down in a boat was right up there for me of, I know.
[2329] You know, Jesus Christ.
[2330] Also a freak water spout?
[2331] Have you seen the size of this boat?
[2332] Yeah.
[2333] It's extraordinary.
[2334] It's like 300 feet long.
[2335] Yeah.
[2336] How?
[2337] Yeah.
[2338] How did it say?
[2339] What happened?
[2340] I know.
[2341] You love it, don't you?
[2342] You absolutely love it, don't you?
[2343] Love it.
[2344] Because I gotta think that there's people in this world that have the ability to do certain things, to certain people that fuck them over.
[2345] I think you're right.
[2346] Yeah.
[2347] And that seems like that would qualify.
[2348] We're talking about...
[2349] got ripped off by billions of dollars and then somehow another this guy gets off and then dies right away yeah and dies in the weirdest of ways a freak waterspout how many people die every year and freak waterspouts on 300 foot yachts I'm doing my uncomfortable face I just it's so it's so out there it's so out there yeah yeah it really is yeah and I I'll bring it back to something more mundane.
[2350] There were quite often things that happened in Formula One, sport that I followed them most closely, probably, in the 90s and naughties, that looking back, you think there must have been, someone had a button that could make things happen, because it was so beyond the coincidence.
[2351] And I never stopped to think of the implications of that thought.
[2352] But if someone could do that in a sport, they can do it in the rest of your lives.
[2353] And they've always rigged sports.
[2354] I mean, people have been rigging sports since the beginning of sports.
[2355] betting.
[2356] But the sport that you're involved with, can you rig that?
[2357] Oh, yes.
[2358] People have rigged it.
[2359] Yeah.
[2360] People have gotten in trouble for rigging it.
[2361] Yeah.
[2362] Yeah.
[2363] Certain fighters may have an injury.
[2364] There's a controversy about a certain trainer that was involved in betting and then an online discord server and they would talk about bets and he'd make a lot of bets and he was making more money betting than other things.
[2365] And there was a fighter that he was taking care of and that fighter apparently had a knee injury and went into the fight and then all this money got bet on this guy losing in the first round and so he throws a kick in the first round falls down gets beat up loses by tk o in the first round blows his knee out his knee apparently already been fucked and so this guy who is the trainer has now been he's being investigated by the feds He gets kicked out of the sport.
[2366] No one from his gym is allowed to compete in the UFC anymore.
[2367] And he's under investigation.
[2368] And if it turns out that what they're saying about him is true, he's really rightly fucked.
[2369] Yeah.
[2370] I think actually there's a crossover here between conspiracy and cheating.
[2371] Now, I think the greatest book that's not been written and never will be written is the greatest cheats in motorsport.
[2372] Some of the stories I've heard over the years are so good.
[2373] Just because what they do is they reveal the competitive nature of human beings, but also ingenuity.
[2374] You will see people at their most ingenious when they're cheating, not when they're abiding by the rules.
[2375] Right.
[2376] And Formula One is about the phrase that the great Mark Donahue, one of your great drivers, Mark Donahue was a Cannam driver who did a bit full one as well.
[2377] He coined the phrase the unfair advantage, which are a phrase I love because it just defines so many sports.
[2378] Whether we like it or not, we're searching for the unfair advantage, aren't we?
[2379] And in motorsport, some of the cheats I've heard about are just brilliant.
[2380] Like what kind of style?
[2381] So I can remember hearing a guy called Win Percy, who was a touring car driver from the UK in the 60s and 70s, describing how there was a famous commentator we had called Murray Walker.
[2382] He was the voice of our motorsport for 40 years.
[2383] He had a very distinctive voice.
[2384] He was a lovely man, met him a few times.
[2385] And he had often described Win Percy getting out of this particular.
[2386] particular car he'd been racing, covered in sweat because it was such a monster to drive.
[2387] But it turned out that it was a V -12 and it was very, very thirsty.
[2388] So to make sure that when they did a fuel check at the end of the race, to make sure they were abiding by the rules, he would be furiously pumping a hand pump underneath the seat to inflate a bladder in the fuel tank to cut off a load of the volume.
[2389] And he told this story about, I don't think I'm misquoting.
[2390] He said, well, that's why I was knacket.
[2391] It wasn't it as a V -12, because on the warm -down lap, I knew I had to pump this thing like 40 times to fill up the bladder.
[2392] Wow.
[2393] And there's amazing stories of just ingenious cheats.
[2394] I mean, there's so many of them.
[2395] I mean, Formula One is about not getting caught.
[2396] That's really what it's about.
[2397] You know, what's the line between interpreting rules and not getting called?
[2398] And I love all of that.
[2399] And I have a few times said to people I know in those sports, can I write that book?
[2400] Will you tell me?
[2401] They went, no, I won't tell you any of the stories.
[2402] I'll tell them to you now as a friend.
[2403] If they're ever published, I'm a dead man. Right.
[2404] Because all the money involved.
[2405] But the ingenious cheating.
[2406] I mean, in 1995, Toyota was excluded from the World Raleigh Championship because it just had a brilliantly simple piece of cheating.
[2407] It had all the cars were, the World Raleck cars were turbocharged.
[2408] And you have what's called a restrictor, you know, an intake restrictor.
[2409] So you actually make sure that you can't take more than a certain amount of air into the turbocharger, which should limit the power and make it a level playing field.
[2410] But they created this brilliantly simple.
[2411] bypass valve that meant that when the car was running the air would just go around and it wasn't the intake restricted was completely redundant what they didn't realize was that the world rally championship had a couple of situations where the cars run side by side it would be a drag race and so the Toyota just fucked off into the distance and everyone went well that cheating are they and then they found it but it was this was you know perpetrated by a by Toyota by a car company And I suppose those things I find fascinating.
[2412] Wouldn't you tell them to don't get ahead in the straightaway?
[2413] They didn't tell the driver and co -driver didn't know.
[2414] They just knew that sometimes when they got in a car, someone did that with a lever.
[2415] Wow.
[2416] They didn't know.
[2417] And Formula One is not big in America, which is odd.
[2418] So how do you feel about it here in Austin?
[2419] Well, I saw it in Austin.
[2420] It's amazing.
[2421] I love it.
[2422] I went to Coda.
[2423] We have that up there.
[2424] yeah that's coda yeah um my friend bobby owns the place so you know he took me around and showed me and we went there for the races it's incredible they put on one of the best races the season here is awesome the track's incredible and it's so fast they're going so fast it's so wild to watch yeah and i find it amazing how huge nascar is here where they're just going around an oval just they do have some street circuits don't they they do have some shorter ovals but yeah formula one is is more complex way more complex and the the vehicles that they're just the vehicles themselves are so incredible and they're so expensive it's just unbelievable how much money is involved in Formula One so it makes sense why people would cheat a little bit I think it's this this gray area of interpreting a rule book that's complicated but also try not to get cool and some of the just the way that they've through the years and it creates subterfuge it creates games another great story we covered this on Top Gear with one of the great interpreters of the rulebook was Colin Chapman who was the man that founded Lotus and he had found a way in something called the Lotus I think was 77 it was a car that Andretti won the championship in they'd create something called ground effect so it's now a common thing but he worked out that if you sealed the sides of a car on the road you could effectively accelerate air underneath the car and create a low pressure area which basically sucked the car to the ground so you were generating downforce not through wings but through accelerating air under the car by the way any engineers listed this I'm not an engineer but I'm basically understanding of it having driven these things but if my terminology is wrong I apologise but effectively you're generating downforce in a way that you can't see it on the vehicle it's not got wings and what they would do is they'd lower these there was a sort of a handle they'd lower these skirts when they went out onto the track so when the car went out on track and in the paddock it looked like a normal car but they were going so much faster than everyone else he needed to find a way of diverting the attention to the other teams so what he would do was at the end of a test session quite often he'd have a guy scuttled from the back of the garage with something underneath a piece of like cotton or something or a blanket and run over towards a service truck and everyone would see him do it so all the teams were like they've got a trick differential they've got something special but it wasn't it was a kettle it was a kettle this guy was running around with underneath the towel just so everyone thought it was a component it was a total diversion and I met the guy that used to just run around with this he had it it was like a teapotty kettle thing he was just told at the end of the session put that under there and run away with it so everyone thinks it's like a differential or something and I think that's where I love motorsport because it brings out these bizarre human competitive human behaviours What's also the margins of Victor, you're so slim.
[2425] If you have the same horsepower, same compound tires, just different engineers, putting it all together in different drivers.
[2426] But they are completely different vehicles.
[2427] Yes, they may have the same tires.
[2428] Right.
[2429] But this is, you know, these are a bunch of people, 400 people in different parts of the world are told, this is quite, you know, this is the rule book.
[2430] Away you go.
[2431] And the margin of, and they are within a tenth of each other on a track?
[2432] Yeah.
[2433] It's amazing.
[2434] Amazing.
[2435] It is amazing.
[2436] Yeah.
[2437] But they're all at it.
[2438] And they're all, see, there's always some conspiracy at the moment.
[2439] Red Bull, apparently they thought they had some special brake system that they've now had to get rid of because the FAA was aware of it.
[2440] Now Red Bull's complaining that McLaren and Mercedes have got flexible front wings.
[2441] It is, it is the politics of the playground being played out with billions of dollars on a racetrack.
[2442] And that's why I'm totally addicted to it at the moment.
[2443] And how much of that engineering and technology gets to consumer cars?
[2444] it's a good question I think direct crossover there's some but not as much as you'd hope but it's undeniable that the brains that are involved in that sport when they go over to the roadcar side carry with them a curiosity and a skill set that's been so enhanced by what they learned on the racetrack that we all benefit I believe that I think if you look for direct crossovers in all of these places you come away disappointed but if you tell me that the person that has run Max Verstappen's car for the last three years if he went to be involved in the next Tesla Model 3 he's going to have a profound effect on it he's going to know shit he's going to have a way of looking at that project that's going to make it profoundly better I believe that I once wrote a story for some in -house magazine I think for BAR racing when they had a race team about the cross -able between aeronautical engineering and Formula 1 that's profound that really is I mean, the way a Formula One car sucks itself to the track is an upside -down plane.
[2445] But there were further things as well.
[2446] The carbon ceramic brake disc was developed for what?
[2447] Concord.
[2448] Really?
[2449] They couldn't stop Concord.
[2450] It was just going through brakes, obviously.
[2451] And someone went, well, why don't we use different material for the rotor?
[2452] And that's where the carbon ceramic, the brake came from.
[2453] So there was this huge crossover in metallurgy.
[2454] And actually, you know, to broaden that, what's the greatest legacy?
[2455] of your frankly amazing, mind -boggling national space program.
[2456] You know, it's what we learned about materials, isn't it?
[2457] NASA served to teach us all about materials.
[2458] We are benefiting now.
[2459] The car, there's something about the Raptor you'll go home in that wouldn't be there if NASA hadn't needed to have some weird material with a property that hadn't been required before.
[2460] I really believe that.
[2461] That's the incredible corollary of, of projects that are ambitious projects on that scale it has to be with like the defense department and the construction of fighter jets oh aren't they up i'm just fascinated by them we did a film with the f35 i raced an f35 in a mcclaren speed tail uh and the level of classification around the vehicle was so difficult because i didn't realize that we don't as a british government we don't own those planes we lease them from you we're not allowed to own them really yeah so the IP stays with you guys and what we do with them is kind of up to you.
[2462] But we weren't allowed any cockpit shots at all.
[2463] We weren't allowed to sit inside it.
[2464] I just got a description from the pilot of what the aircraft could do.
[2465] Well you know they're doing those fighter jets now with AI running them and they beat human pilots 100 % of the time in dog fights.
[2466] Do they?
[2467] Yeah.
[2468] The F -35 was one of the coolest man -made objects I've ever seen.
[2469] They're incredible.
[2470] We had to go up there to to actually It was a bit like that bungee jump thing.
[2471] This was so serious that we had to be rigorous.
[2472] For example, in the theatre of war, I'm not sure you can decide whether the ground is full of chips of stones or not.
[2473] But they have a decontaminated area.
[2474] The runway has to, you're not allowed to go in there and drop litter because it can get sucked up when it's doing that hovering thing.
[2475] So you go in there, you're decontaminated.
[2476] And we spent several days working out how to run this drag race.
[2477] It started out with a genuine drag race between me in a McLaren and this F -35, and they had their data on how it accelerated, and we had McLaren there with their data.
[2478] They worked out that the car would get off the line much quicker than the plane would overtake at a certain point.
[2479] But I was told very clearly that I couldn't get in the wash of the aircraft as it took off because it would just flip the car backwards.
[2480] And we had to sort of choreograph that bit, not fake it, but choreograph it.
[2481] So anyhow, first run we did, I was told that I'd be absolutely safe, I'd be so far ahead of the plane, that the plane would then be in the air by the time it went over me and we'd be away.
[2482] Anyhow, first run we do, I'm like this, in this McLaren, it's fucking fast, and it accelerates and I look left and I hear a noise and there's a plane coming past me on the ground, and I thought I'm in trouble here, and the front wheels of the car came off the ground.
[2483] Whoa!
[2484] At about 130 -7 miles an hour.
[2485] It didn't do that, but I was fully...
[2486] Any racing driver would tell you, and I'm a pretty poor racing driver, you know when the front wheels aren't on the ground what do you do well you just shit yourself and you're so invested in it you're like well if it's going over if it's going over this is the greatest piece of television ever and i hope it doesn't and the thing just the thing went it just went next to me and again i this is why i you know i want to be someone that expresses joy what a thing to have done and when an f -35 comes past you and it's just got off the ground here Yeah, you were.
[2487] When this thing comes past you, it just started screaming, fuck!
[2488] Does it show your foot wheel?
[2489] Look at that!
[2490] Look at that thing there!
[2491] Wow, that's incredible.
[2492] It's so nuts that they put you next to that thing, though.
[2493] When it was right by me, it fucking, and we never showed.
[2494] You're going 280 miles an hour?
[2495] No, that's kilometers.
[2496] Oh, kilometers.
[2497] It comes past me like that.
[2498] Bang!
[2499] And I just thought, and the, as it did it, the front wheels just went, and I thought, well, I'm in trouble here.
[2500] Wow.
[2501] But the power and the sound.
[2502] You know, you talk about the internal combustion engine.
[2503] Why these electric things make no sound?
[2504] We are amateurs compared to what they get to play with.
[2505] Yeah.
[2506] And they have like, like, what, 30 minutes of flight time before they run out of gas?
[2507] Yeah, I don't think that thing can go very far.
[2508] But, you know, all this factoring, the way it can just decide to be hanging like a helicopter.
[2509] Yeah, incredible.
[2510] It's remarkable.
[2511] but they don't share the IP at all.
[2512] You're not allowed to.
[2513] We were not allowed to see inside it.
[2514] That is so wild that it can do that.
[2515] Just hover in the air like that and shoot its draft down.
[2516] Fucking crazy.
[2517] Maybe that's the TV show.
[2518] I just think there's a whole there's a, is it boys' toys?
[2519] There's going to be more sophisticated thing.
[2520] There's a whole load of stuff that's got moving past.
[2521] I think you're overthinking it.
[2522] I just love.
[2523] And you and your passion for automobiles is all you need.
[2524] Do it on the internet.
[2525] It'll be huge.
[2526] I think so.
[2527] I don't think you need anything else.
[2528] I quite like those things though.
[2529] They're pretty badass.
[2530] If you can get a hold of one of those, that's great too.
[2531] I mean at F -22 have you been to an air show and seen one of those?
[2532] I flew in an F -A -18.
[2533] Did he?
[2534] Yeah, with the Blue Angels.
[2535] Wow.
[2536] It was insane.
[2537] Insane.
[2538] Yeah.
[2539] Insane.
[2540] Just the G -4.
[2541] The physical effect on your body, so extraordinary.
[2542] Yeah.
[2543] You know, they don't use G -suits either.
[2544] They don't use gravity suits.
[2545] So you have to hook.
[2546] It's close.
[2547] So you hold on to the...
[2548] And then you do that blue -y -thew -h -hook!
[2549] Hook!
[2550] Hook!
[2551] You're forcing blood.
[2552] and you feel your consciousness closing like an elevator door you see it you see the darkness coming from the left and the right you're fighting it off I wasn't very good at it I thought I'd be I was thought I'd be quite good because people of our height yeah should be quite good at it but I felt it I got put up in one of those extra 300s the cut the stunt planes mm -hmm it's a prop thing but you know they're the ones that they're using the Red Bull air races and I once he got to sort of six seven Gs yeah so I started to see yeah you have to fight it all I think I got to seven and a half Gs, but those guys can go to like nine, ten Gs like that.
[2553] It's fucking insane.
[2554] The pressure and the maneuverability of these things, the pilot took me through like this canyon and you're, you know, 100, 200 feet off the ground, just flying through this canyon sideways.
[2555] It's fucking insane.
[2556] Insane.
[2557] I did a ridiculous film looking back with a guy called Andy Green.
[2558] Do you know who Andy Green is?
[2559] No. Fastest man on earth.
[2560] He's the one that still holds the world's land speed record.
[2561] so he drove thrust sSC he was the first man to go super sonic in a car and and they had this thing called bloodhound and this is the last thing I'll bore you with on this podcast so they had this thing called bloodhound which was supposed to go a thousand miles an hour and they were going to drive it in on some salt flats or some something that dried out in South Africa I think anyhow it was it was supposed to be funded by industry they lost a lot of sponsors and they decided to try and public fund it and they couldn't and Andy during that phase said I've got an extra 300 he's an ex -pilot fighter pilot because they're the only people that can drive these things racing drivers are useless because the decision making so quick and profound they identified early on they need pilots not racing drivers he said I've got an extra 300 and this car has got various stages of propulsion you start off with a jet then it goes to a rocket and he goes his madness he goes I've got an extra 300 and I've developed a way of doing aerobatic moves that will demonstrate the change in G -Force during the run.
[2562] So he's put, there's a, to bore yourself with it, he's put, there's a film, if you type in my name.
[2563] Look at that fucking thing.
[2564] Type in my name and his name.
[2565] And he'll, there's a film on YouTube of him taking me up in this stunt plane to put me through the Gs that he'll have in the part, and I honestly, by the end of it.
[2566] How fast did he go in this thing?
[2567] Oh my God, look at that.
[2568] He had oversteer at over 600 miles an hour.
[2569] Look at it!
[2570] That was in the US.
[2571] Wow.
[2572] So he, and he, um, but the way he put me through the G forces, I would have been a terrible fighter pilot.
[2573] I couldn't, I kept getting graying, kept growing out, it was pumping and everything.
[2574] Yeah, well, those guys are all jacked.
[2575] That's one thing I found out about the blue angels they had.
[2576] Like when you go to their training facility, there's weightlifting equipment everywhere.
[2577] You have to have muscle because you have to, you're literally, it's like, brute force but you should have been brilliant at it then yeah it's not fun it's a lot of work so when i when i do some youtube videos with cars can i come and drag you into a car yes let's do it i'm in let's go i've loved talking to you thank you very i love talking to you too thanks for being here man it's great to see you again after all these years i'll i'll be back in 10 years no let's have it quicker and let's definitely get you on youtube on the internet do your own thing it'll happen soon you don't need other people thank you fuck those people Bye, everybody.