Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Evel Knievel Faces the Abyss

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Evel Knievel, the world-famous daredevil, is planning his greatest ever stunt. In 1974, he wants to leap over Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The chasm is almost a third of a mile wide, much bigger than any jump he's done before. To make it work, he'll need a custom-made rocket-powered "Skycycle," TV camera crews and - most importantly - a very positive attitude.  For a list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. Join our Cautionary Club to get episodes ad-free, hear bonus interviews and get an extra Cautionary Tale every month.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Pushkin. Bobby Knievel, evil Knievel, is all alone now, strapped into his X2 sky cycle with its star-spangled paint job. Thousands of spectators have trekked to see him jump the broad gap of Snake River Canyon. In darkened cinemas across the globe, hundreds of thousands more fans gaze up at the world.

the close circuit TV feed, waiting for evil to hit the button to launch. The X2 sits on a red, white and blue takeoff ramp. It's steep, 56 degrees, and is topped with a stars and stripes flag which whips madly in the gusty Idaho wind. The X2 is like no other motorcycle evils ever ridden, for although it has wheels, this cigar. shaped craft isn't a motorbike. It's a steam-powered rocket. When it leaves the ramp, it will be travelling at 400 miles an hour. And evil will certainly need all that speed. The furthest he's jumped to bike is 140 feet over the fountain at a Las Vegas casino, and that put him in a coma for a month. Snake River Canyon? Well, it's near a 4,000 feet.

35-year-old Knievel has been talking, no, bragging about this stunt for years and invested a million of his own dollars to make good that boast. But now the brashest showman on earth is having second thoughts. I wish I didn't have to do this and that I wasn't here. He admitted to a gaggle of journalists. But he is here, sat in X2, and he does have to be. have to jump, or face global humiliation, financial ruin, and the anger of an increasingly restless crowd below. When it comes to leaping buses, trucks and fountains, evil barely breaks sweat.

He's not a man to worry much or dwell on the consequences. He's a man of grand action, not diligent preparation. His philosophy has always been to think positive and open the throttle. But today, September 8, 1974, 1974, Evil's having trouble thinking positively. His primary thought is that if he presses the X2's launch button, it will be the last thing he ever does. It's 3.36pm, and the countdown begins. Evil and the sky cycle hurtle into the brilliant blue sky.

But it's immediately clear something's gone wrong. Very wrong. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevil thrill show had come to Butte, Montana, and seven-year-old Bobby Knievel was transfixed. As Chitwood stuntmen, rolled cars, jumped motorbikes and generally filled the...

air with noise, excitement and engine fumes. A plan formed in Bobby's young mind. I went home and took the mudguards off my bicycle, he said, and I put cards in the spokes so it would sound like a motorcycle. Bobby then took his grandpa's garage doors off their hinges to fashion a crude ramp and charged neighbourhood kids two cents to watch him furiously pedal himself and his bike. into the void. When the spectators grew bored, Bobby promised he'd leap across a raging fire. Unfortunately, a pile of brush he set a light,

soon licked at Grandpa's garage doors, leaving Bobby without a ramp, but with lots of explaining to do. Bobby Knievel left school without graduating, and a life in Butte's copper mines beckoned. But he was saved from the darkness and dangers of the subterranean world by landing a driving job at the pit head.

He found his duties dull, though, and enlivened his shifts by scaring passengers with the recklessness of his driving. At the wheel of a truck, he asked a colleague to dump a heavy boulder in the back so he could pull a wheelie. The truck tipped back violently, severing an overhead cable,

and earning Knievel a firing. A stint in the army, a foray into petty crime and some dead-end jobs all followed. But it was an unlikely sounding nine-to-five position that finally halted his slide into Palukaville. So what was the job Knievel credited with saving his life? Insurance. The young man turned out to be an imaginative salesman and soon claimed he had broken all records at the Combined Insurance Company of America. He boasted of selling 110 policies in one day

by targeting the staff at a mental institution, though some vulnerable patients undoubtedly fell prey to Knievel's patter and signed up too. Odd as it may sound, this job was every bit as vital to the evil Knievel story as his youthful exposure to Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevils. Puffed up by his success, Knievel insisted on going to head office to demand an immediate promotion to Vice President.

The firm's founder, W. Clement Stone, duly made time for Knievel, and duly turned the promotion down flat. The disappointed salesman resigned on the spot. But the meeting wasn't nearly as acrimonious as you might imagine. Present alongside W. Clement Stone was his friend and collaborator, Napoleon Hill. And the two older men probably chuckled indulgently at Young Knievel's Moxie, for Stone and Hill were America's greatest proponents of such unabashed self-belief. The older man, Napoleon Hill, was arguably the father of the modern self-help book.

As an example of personal success, his pedigree was impeccable. President Woodrow Wilson had sought Hill's advice on how to fight World War I, and when it was won, had sent Hill to oversee the Versailles peace negotiations. The wealthy steel mogul, Andrew Carnegie, also took a show. to Hill. After sharing the secrets of his own success, he opened his address book to Hill, leading to scores of interviews with other millionaires. Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Alexander Graham Bell all lent their wisdom for Hill's blockbuster book, The Laws of Success in 16 Lessons. The Main Lesson, if you're interested,

is, you can do it if you believe you can. Perhaps it should have been, don't believe everything you read, because Napoleon Hill was, of course, a huckster and a fraud. There's no evidence, he advised Woodrow Wilson, and his claim that the laws of success was written under the tutelage of Andrew Carnegie came only after the millionaire had died. Biographers of Carnegie can find no. proof in the archives. Hill's own notes from his interviews with the great and good were

conveniently lost in a fire. Still, the law of success made Hill a rich man, but the wisdom he had gathered for its 16 lessons wasn't sufficient to prevent the Great Depression ravaging his finances. So, the author reverted to the grifts and scams that had sustained him before his writing career. He continued to claim presidential connections, though. He said he'd advised Franklin D. Roosevelt and coined FDR's famous Depression-era rallying cry. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Hill rehashed the law of success, slashing his thousand-page tome to a more manageable 230 pages, describing the 13 steps to riches. Think and Grow Rich flew off the shelves and remains in print today. It sold 100 million copies, with Oprah Winfrey and Larry Ellison said to be

amongst its fans. Some of the 13 steps are obvious, but laudable enough. Acquire skills and knowledge, be persistent, be decisive. But the bulk of the book is dedicated to things we would today call manifesting. Hill recommended visualising your goals, maintaining unwavering faith in yourself, and something he called sex transmutation, which involves channeling whatever sexual energy you possess into making money instead. Hill was now genuinely welcomed into the company of millionaires, who were perhaps flattered by his portrayal of successful people

as being fearless and strong-willed. And this is how he came to know W. Clement Stone, the founder of an insurance empire and Bobby Coneville's boss. Stone hailed from an impoverished single-parent home, but amassed enough of a fortune to win the ear of US presidents for real. He attributed his rise to the same positive frame of mind recommended by Hill. The two offered courses in what they called the Science of Success and co-authored a new volume, success through a positive mental attitude.

Though not bookish, Bobby Knievel hungrily devoured the teacher. of Stone and Hill. Mr Stone taught me a lot about the value of a positive mental attitude, said Knievel, reflecting on his quitting. He said he was sorry to see me go and wished me the best of luck. Success, however, eluded the positive-thinking Knievel. His motorcycle showroom in hardscrabble Butte failed. And the prize money he occasionally earned racing bikes

wasn't nearly enough to support a growing family. Leaving Montana, Knievel was hired to run a Honda dealership and was determined to make a go of it. But these slight Japanese motorcycles were rather looked down on by American customers more used to the muscular roar of Harley Davidson's. Knievel had to change that perception. So, inspired by boyhood memories of the auto daredevils, he decided to take a supposedly puny Honda to a local race meet

and perform on it a 40-foot jump. He'd never attempted such a stunt, but didn't bother to practice. He was just going to think positive about his ability to clear a distance longer than an 80-seater school bus. Napoleon Hill had better be right about the power of unwavering self-belief, for if Knievel fell short, he'd land not on bare dirt, but on top of two mountain lions and a hundred rattlesnakes. Cautionary tales will be back in the moment.

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One app, no subscription. Always free. Grab the free app. IHart Radio. Every. Download the free IHard Radio app today. The Mountain Lions seemed oblivious to events around them, but the crowd at the Moses Lake Raceway were whipped into a frenzy ahead of the big jump. Astride his Honda, Bobby Knievel, raced up and down to show off the bike's speed

and build tension ahead of his death-defying leap. Despite the danger, the rider felt elated. He was at last the master of his own destiny. His success would be decided by his own courage and determination. Making his approach to the ramp, Knievel tried to wring as much speed from his bike as possible. He knew this momentum would be important and that he should hang on to the handlebars

as tightly as possible. Aside from that, he wasn't sure what to expect. The owner of the mountain lions was pretty sure the novice jumper would crash, so placed his cats close to the takeoff ramp, hoping Knievel would at least clear them safely. No one showed much concern for the rattlesnakes. As the Honda left the ramp, Kneville intuitively felt he should keep the front of the bike high,

figuring a wheelie landing would be the safest option. He was literally making it up as he went along. Clearing the mountain lions, it dawned on the rider that he lacked the speed to complete the full 40 feet. The Honda landed heavily on the crate holding in the rattlesnakes. But Knievel remained upright and rode on. Kid succeeded, or at least survived.

Triumphant, he rode victory laps before the astonished spectators, even as dozens of angry rattlers slithered into the crowd. It was funnier than hell, said Knievel. People were running every which way. The expected flood of orders for new Hondas never materialised. But no matter. Knievel had caught the jumping bug. Again inspired by Joey Chitwood,

Knievel convinced riders like Swede Savage, Skip Van Lewin and Butch Wilhelm to join him in a stunt troupe, the motorcycle daredevils. Knievel would be the star of this circus and get top billing, but Bobby just didn't cut it as a stage name. Thus, evil Knievel was born. The wayward Bobby had often been called E.Ville with an eye. But as leader of the motorcycle daredevils, he plumped for EVEL. It was alliterative, catchy and more family-friendly. Throughout the mid-60s, the dare devils put on their show at speedway tracks and carnival grounds, splitting the meagre appearance fees six ways.

That is, until evil tried to jump 13 cars, failed. and couldn't ride for months. No one wanted to see Evil, Knievel and his motorcycle daredevils without evil. So Skip, Swede, Butch and the boys called it a day. Once recovered, Evil went solo,

jumping 14 cars on his debut appearance, albeit to a modest crowd. But that was about to change. Evil's performance during a break in race, at an LA bike track, went out on ABC's wide world of sports. He cleared 15 cars that time, setting a personal best and grabbing America's attention. Though Evil was fast becoming a nationwide star, his preparations for each jump remained as amateurish and ramshackle as ever. He never bothered calculating ramp angles or takeoff speeds. Who needed maths and physics?

when you had a positive mental attitude. The most evil would do is have his team roughly pace out the distance he intended to jump and then draw a target line in the sand with a boot heel. I did everything by the seat of my pants, said the daredevil. In fact, the only thing evil consistently measured out before a jump was a shot or two of bourbon. The list of evil's injuries was now, as long as a line of cars.

Roughly one in three jumps ended in a hospital visit. Concussions, broken ribs, fractured legs, busted arms, cracked vertebrae. It's often said that evil broke every one of the 206 bones in his body. That's an exaggeration. He broke a mere 35 of them. Evil often went against doctors' orders to perform, even risking paralysis so as not to miss a paycheck or disappoint his growing legion of fans. And those fans kept demanding ever more novel spectacles from their hero.

How many more times could they watch him jump cars? Visiting Las Vegas, Knievel's eye was caught by a giant fountain outside Caesar's Palace casino. It seemed perfect for his needs. so Evil phoned the owner, impersonating a magazine journalist. Do you know this guy? He's going to jump over your hotel. That nut, he's jumping nothing around here, snapped back the proprietor. In Evil's telling of the story, he repeatedly called, pretending to be from different newspapers and TV networks,

until he'd convinced the casino that this was a publicity coup that shouldn't be passed up. The event had many advantages for Evil. Vegas was brimming with visitors, so he was bound to drum up a large crowd. And what's more, these visitors would be higher rollers than his usual clientele of carnivalgoers and bike fans. Caesar's Palace had a big drawback, though.

Its forecourt was only just big enough to fit Evil's take-off and landing ramps. He'd have no long run-up to build speed, So if he messed up his approach, he'd never reach safety on the other side. But this jump was career, make or break for evil. So he just thought positive and rolled the dice once more. Evil spectacularly burst through the white plumes of the fountain, but falling just short of his target distance,

he smacked into the landing round. Coming off the bike, Evil bounced and cartwheeled across the asphalt, breaking his jaw, losing teeth, shattering his pelvis, cracking his ribs and busting his nose, until finally he slammed into a brick wall. When Medics reached him, evil was unconscious, and he wouldn't wake up for a month. The more positively people think about the future,

the less well they do in reaching that positive future. That's the conclusion of Gabriella Oettingen, a professor of psychology at NYU. Gabriela is the author of the book Rethinking Positive Thinking, based on her research into how the unwavering optimism of people like Napoleon Hill and Evil Knievel can end in disappointment.

We need to listen to our positive fantasies, so we know where to go, says Gabriela, the only problem is these positive fantasies are actually an impediment to our success. Gabriela points to studies showing that students who sully imagine themselves getting good grades tend to flunk their classes, and that patients who fantasize about a swift recovery from hip surgery

spend longer incapacitated. In their book, success through a piece, positive mental attitude, hill and stone, talk of positivity as being a talisman or lucky charm. Think positive and good things will be attracted to you, as if by magic. But let negative thoughts enter your head and you'll suffer setbacks and financial loss. Never underestimate the repellent power of a negative mental attitude, they sagely advise. it can prevent life's lucky breaks benefiting you. But Gabriella Oettingen's work points to the opposite conclusion.

She's found that we should think honestly about every hurdle in the way of us achieving our desired goals. This has two benefits. It stops us wasting time on frankly hopeless dreams, but it also concentrates our thoughts on how to overcome the barriers to achieve our more realistic ambitions. It's counterintuitive, admits Gabriella, but imagining the obstacles in our way is actually the trigger for overcoming them.

This reminds me of the work of the economist Johannes Spinovine. He looked at the beliefs and behaviour of job seekers and distinguished between the regular optimists and what he called the control optimists. The regular optimists were positive thinkers. They thought they'd quickly find a job. They were usually wrong. The control optimists thought they'd find a job only if they hustled hard for it. They were usually right. Belief isn't enough, found Spinevine. You need to take practical action. As a disciple of Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone,

it seems Evil Knievel felt he'd be a attracting disaster if he thought about all the things that could go wrong when jumping a motorbike over fires, fountains and live rattlesnakes. But it seems reasonable to argue that had he been even a tad more pessimistic, he'd have planned his jumps more meticulously, placed his ramps more carefully and thus saved his doctors the task of using pins and plates to reconstruct his shattered bones. Evil recovered slowly from his Caesar's Palace crash,

but the accident had made him a superstar, partly thanks to his tumble across the tarmac, being captured in bone-crunching slow-motion footage that audiences couldn't get get enough of. He returned to his routine of jumping cars, trucks and buses, all done with his trademark lackadaisical preparation. But Evil dreamed of something bigger and better, a moonshot stunt, something so stupendous that it would surely require him to knuckle down and plan for thoroughly.

You see, Evil Knievel wanted to jump a canyon. Cautionary Tales will be right back. The music you love. I heart radio. Your favorite radio stations. Everywhere you go. The podcasts everyone's talking about. All in one place.

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I heart radio. Everywhere you. Download the free IR Radio app today. Evil Knievel was in a bar, liberally downing Montana Marys, a beer and tomato juice concoction favored by Butes miners. You should try jumping that, said a fellow drinker, pointing to a calendar behind the bar. On it was a picture of the Grand Canyon.

Maybe it was the Montana Marys, or evil's positive mental attitude, but far from dismissing the idea as crazy, the rider became obsessed with the possibility. He told journalists of his desire to leap the Grand Canyon, and unusually it made some rough calculations of what it would take to clear the two-mile void. Unsurprisingly, his figures were off, way off,

Having read of Evil's projections for speed and ramp angle, the reader of one British newspaper felt compelled to write in. A 150-mile-an-hour take-off speed was not sufficient, wrote Brian F. Firth of Riton-Dunsmore, Warwickshire. He then added his own calculations. In order to leap a gap of 1.8 miles, Mr. Knievel would require a take-off speed in excess of 378 miles per hour.

Motorbikes don't go that fast. But that was a moot point. The federal authorities denied evil permission to use the National Park for his crazy jump. Scouting alternatives, evil recalled the Snake River Canyon from childhood vacations. Though less iconic, it was closer to home,

half the breadth of the Grand Canyon and better still, he could lease the land on which the stunt would take place. With total control over the location, Evil could ring every cent from the spectators he expected to flock to the canyon and the media companies who'd fight for the rights to cover the spectacle. Evil's lease ran from October 1971 through September 1974, plenty of time to complete the jump if he maintained a positive mental attitude.

The schedule, of course, began to slip. The main problem was that the speeds required to clear Snake River Canyon were still beyond what could be achieved on a regular motorcycle. Evil considered boosting a bike's power with a jet strapped to the side, but this was a schoolboyish fantasy. Then an offer arrived from an aerospace engineer.

Would Evil like a rocket capable of clearing the canyon? The X-1 sky cycle was steam-powered, a simpler and safer option than rocket fuel, and looked like a wingless jet fighter. Evil and the engineer soon clashed over the design and budget until the engineer quit. with the clock ticking on evil's lease, the NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, suggested a replacement. Robert Truax had helped design America's intercontinental nuclear missiles.

He should be able to shoot evil across a canyon. Truax refined the sky cycle and christened it the X2. Evil busied himself dreaming up a grandiose festival for the jump site. The rider thought he could attract a quarter of a million people to this remote part of Idaho, where they'd all sleep, eat or go to the toilet, wasn't addressed. Evil expected John Wayne, Steve McQueen and Elvis to attend, and even extended invitations to be listers like the Pope. All the time, work continued on the X2 and delays mounted.

Truex found evil no easier to work with than his predecessor. When his boss refused to increase the X2's budget, Truex turned to recycling bits of scrap. Legend has it that one valve was fashioned from a dog food can. Given the lashed up nature of the sky cycles, it's little wonder that test firings of the prototypes went badly. An unmanned flight of an X-1 spun crazily into the air and then plunged nose-first into the greeny depths of Snake River.

Truex next sent off his X2 prototype. It too malfunctioned and joined the X-1 on the riverbed. Evil had just weeks left on his lease and no more spare sky cycles with which to experiment. The next blast off would have to be in earnest, with evil in the pilot's seat. Just 15,000 people had come to see the warm-up acts and bike races ahead of evil's jump on September 8, 1974. Elvis and the Pope were no shows.

This was all a big disappointment for evil, but even this modest crowd was proving to be a handful. Witnesses reported a lawless, bacchanalian mood along the canyon rim. Biker gangs roamed the site, raiding fast food stands and beer stalls, burning down these concessions once they'd been looted. Evil had balked at the expense of building fences to control the crowd, and the few armed guards had employed were kept busy making sure the X2 wasn't wrecked in the mayhem. It might have suited evil if the sky cycle had gone up in flames.

For once in his life, he realised that a positive mental attitude was no replacement for sober preparation. The X2 was registered as an aircraft by the Idaho authorities, and, like an aircraft, it had pedals to control its tailplanes and smooth its flight through the air. But evil had neither flown an aeroplane nor bothered to practice flying the X2. The steam-powered rocket would deliver a huge wallop when fired,

producing acceleration more intense than evil had experienced before, even on the fastest motorbike. And yet, he had done nothing to prepare his body for the shocks and G-forces he was about to subject it to. Fighter pilots trained themselves to clench and tents to prevent blacking out in the cockpit, and they wore special garments to help them deal with G-Forces too. Evil merely donned his stars and stripes overalls.

When someone asked if he wasn't concerned about passing out, evil predictably dismissed the idea. I'm not planning on doing that. I'm going to stay awake. Such spirited determination is no substitute for a plan. For the other thing evil controlled in the edge, X2 was the deployment of a parachute that would allow the sky cycle and its pilot to float gently to the ground, hopefully on the far side of the canyon.

After takeoff, evil needed to hold back a lever with 45 pounds of pressure until he deemed it time to release his shoot. Letting go of this handle would start that deployment, if evil passed out, and his grip slackened. The parachute would pay out immediately. But there was no time to make good any of this lack of preparation. Evil was clear. He had bitten off more than he could chew

and was about to pay for it with his life. Sitting in the X2, Evil saw the American flag atop the launch ramp race by. Then he saw the blue of the sky. But then I lost all perspective, evil said. I may have blacked out, I don't know. He came too with a powerful arresting jolt. The X2 was violently slowing,

for the parachute had deployed too soon. The sky cycle with a dazed, evil-knevel trapped inside, was in danger of being dashed against the canyon or sinking in the river. The ship's going down. It's going down. Shouted a desperate announcer. Helicopter cameras followed the X-2's descent as it narrowly missed the rocky outcrops

and finally came to rest in the river. But mercifully close to the banks, evil was safe. At the canyon rim, a reporter asked Robert Truax what had gone wrong. It looks like he didn't hold onto the handle, replied the exasperated engineer. The jump at Snake River Canyon

was meant to be a triumph, a crowning glory for evil Knievel, but at best it was an anti-climax. At worst, the start of a sad decline. Ever after, evil blamed Truex's parachute design for the abortive launch, Truex thought evil just hadn't been able to hold back the release lever. Less charitable fans thought Evil had chickened out and let the parachute out on purpose.

And such cowardice was poison for Evil's brand. The stars drinking increased as the tempo of his public appearances slowed. He tried to cash in on the success of the movie Jaws by jumping a sedated tank of already docile lemon sharks, but evil injured himself and a bystander before the big event. Evil just couldn't escape the shadow cast by Snake River Canyon, especially when a business partner published stories of just how badly evil had behaved in the run-up to the jump. He found the man and beat him with a bat, earning a jail sentence, and finally exhausting the sympathy of the public.

The man who did anything. everything by the seat of his pants, was now flat on his behind. When you do what I do for a living, you have to have a positive mental attitude, he continued to say. Maybe a little pessimism would have carried him further. The primary sources for this story were Evil Knievel, Life of Evil by Stuart Barker. The article, Evil Can Evil Insurance Salesman by Jake Rosson, and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which is best approached as a work of fiction. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust.

The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben Adaf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Corinne Gilead Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.

It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it, add-free, and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com slash cautionary club. That's Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash cautionary club. This is an I-Hart podcast, Guaranteed Human.