The Joe Rogan Experience - #2199 - Chris Harris

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Chris Harris is an automotive journalist, racing driver, and television presenter. He's also the author of "Variable Valve Timings: Memoirs of a Car Tragic."  www.youtube.com/c/chrisharrisoncars Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. So before you press the cord, I have, I'll go most places and I'm here because I want to tell people the truth about the last eight, I've had a pretty shit two years because Top Gear ended in a way that most Americans won't know, but my colleague nearly died in a crash. Um, and then they left us in limbo a bit. I've never told anyone anything about it.

Largely because my friend and colleague who was nearly killed in the accident called Andrew Flintoff, who was a presenter on the show again, no Americans want to know who he is, but he's a massive sports hero in the UK. He plays that weird game called cricket. He was like our on the show. Again, no Americans don't know who he is, but he's a massive sports hero in the UK. He plays that weird game called cricket. He was like our best cricket player. Can we use this? Yeah, no, we can. I just want to give you a quick foretaste of it.

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. Because we're recording now? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine, yeah. All right. I wasn't on him though.

What's that? I wasn't on him, but he said to. Okay. That's fine. Well, we on me? Yeah, yeah. All right, we're good. I'm gonna go into it all okay but it might be that what seems quite revelatory to me and since we're rolling cheers ten 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 you know you probably don't either do you 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 wanna do this television show called Top Gear? Yeah, it was before Top Gear for sure. Yeah, and I think it was then. 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? And I'd gone, no one would do that. They'd be an idiot to do that. 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. I thought, I'll give it a go. But most importantly, I thought, the 17-year-old me,

if he saw me say no to this job, would 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 show. 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 a decision I 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 Yeah, I just I didn't realize how deep-rooted it was. I still get hate mail now. I still get hate mail Yeah, you could have had the exact same show under a different name and people would have loved it. 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. You know, you're great. You're my favorite automotive journalist. Well, that's very kind of you. And I've just seen what you've arrived in as well, and I thoroughly approve your taste in motor vehicles.

Am I allowed to say what it is or not? Yeah, yeah. It's a Raptor R that John Hennessy jumps up to 1,000 horsepower. It's fucking ridiculous. I think I'm often asked, if you lived in America, what car would you drive? And it would always be a Raptor. Comes under the heading of of always drink the local beer

Mmm, you know we go to a city don't order a Heineken or a bud drink the local beer Yeah, and the f-150 Raptor is your local beer. Yep. That's about as American as it gets Dodge Rams and Ford f-150s. Yeah, those are the most American thousand horsepower in a truck. It's ridiculous We never thought it'd be possible. No, no zero to sixty in three Thousand horsepower in a truck. It's ridiculous. We never thought it would be possible, did we? No, zero to 60 in three seconds for a giant pickup truck. It's awesome. And it sounds great too. Just has this beautiful rumble.

Do you think you'll be allowed to drive that in 10 years time in this state? Maybe in this state. Yeah, but if you leave, they'll 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 2035 no internal combustion engine vehicles are allowed to be sold in the state same in the UK

Although they know that it was 2035 then the last administration moved it back to 2030 It was 2035, then the last administration moved it back to 2030. Good luck. They're not even ready. They're not ready. The grid's not ready. I'm so torn on this because everyone looks to me as the ultimate petrolhead and I'll sit there and go, they're all shit. They're not all shit.

They have a place. And the most sophisticated assessment of this that I've come across was just a very normal person I was talking to one day in an airport who said, surely the solution is that you just use what's pertinent to the energy that's easiest where you live. And I think it's the best way of explaining it. You know, if you live here,

you drill a hole in the ground, there's oil around here. If you live in Iceland, you drill a hole in the ground, there's loads of geothermal. So why wouldn't you have an EV there? It's brilliant, it's everywhere. It's quite a small country. I don't need to travel large distances.

But Iceland's cold and the battery capacity, when it gets really cold, diminishes pretty rapidly. 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, it's doable, isn't it? Oh, okay. Yeah. I just think we need to be a bit cleverer about it. 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 the rebellion or you're 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-Eleven, I want to enjoy a 9-Eleven. Why can't I? 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. No, and there's this religious ideology that's attached to climate change.

That's, it has that's attached to climate change. It has that sort of fever-pitched religious aspect to it. And most people, when you corner them, 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 that will not change at all and is only going to get more extreme. And like what little impact you have. Yeah, that's a really interesting point because on the one when you took it's like being a parent on the one hand you can respond to that by saying well yeah I'm going to make no difference I'll just carry on driving

around in my Raptor but then it could 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. We need to prepare ourselves to make logical and progressive changes. Yeah, I don't think you can mandate those changes. First of all, we have a long history of internal combustion engines as recreation vehicles and we love them. I think it's completely unfair 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. They do far more damage to the environment. 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. Because fuck you is the right thing to say, because that doesn't make any sense.

And there's also this weird thing that is attached to this. This is a business, the green energy business. 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 that's not, this isn't some completely altruistic, we need to save the world and this is what's wrong. It's not true, it's not true. I think I agree and there are some basic tests you can apply to it. 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'd take it. But they can't we cannot there the technology doesn't work at the moment you know it just doesn't sound the same it doesn't feel the same but that's the art I'm talking about the non-enthusiast the non-enthusiast people like you and I that don't care about that 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 take it because it's as good.

But no one can do that at the moment. They don't exist. They don't exist. It takes too long to charge. You can't just pull over and charge. It takes hours. And also there are so many other industries that pollute so heavily. Why aren't they the subject of so much sort of pernicious legislation?

I mean, we talk about shipping. If you start to look into cargo ships, what they emit is extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. Well, do you know that they, I believe it was the UN, passed some sort of regulations on cargo ships, 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 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 have to say I'm completely torn on it all because I... Some 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 the back of it I'm like, that's not good. If I can see it. I don't like it We have a lot of diesel trucks here. Yeah, and I don't like it on the highway and you see black smoke

And I do want I want things to be different Over time and I can see that that that that's the way that we might be heading But I hate I hate the fact that the timeline is determined by politicians rather than scientists Exactly, and even the scientists are all bought and paid for that's part of the problem, too Yeah, scientists aren't just scientists. They're scientists that are influenced by the university. They're influenced by whatever research group They're a part of there's a lot of shenanigans going on and the internal combustion engine has ironically reached a point where it's Really quite efficient. Yeah where it's really quite efficient No, it's quite a clever thing

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 are and go we did that yeah, we're quite clever But I think they'd be like you're not using gravity Why don't you guys just go use gravity made it be like gravity. This is so stupid. I have a Tesla. I have a Model S Plaid and it's fantastic. It is so fast. It's like a time machine. Has it got the not real steering wheel?

Yes. I don't like that. I don't like the yoke. I ordered a new one. I get it in October. No yoke. Regular wheel. Wheels better.

I like a wheel better. But I get it. There's some benefits to the yoke. It's like you get a clearer view of the dash. You basically put your hands on there and he's moving towards like completely automated You know you can press do do you press a button? It'll drive you just but based on where you stand on that. I Don't trust it. No, no, no, I mean it just doesn't feel right There's 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. 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, yes. And I presume they're driverless, aren't 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 berth mate well there was a bunch of them 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 and there was a bunch of them because there's quite a few of them in the city you'll see I've seen several today. Yes, they cause a traffic jam.

Yeah, I don't, I mean, probably one day it's going to be the way to do it, the way to get around, but I think you can't deny people the joy of driving, just like you can't deny people their ability to ride horses. If someone wants to ride a horse, they should be able to ride a horse. People have a long history of enjoying horse riding Okay, let him ride horses and I have a nine 1990 I guess it's a 93 rs, America

And it that's a rare car. Oh, I love it It's so beautiful. That's the car they made you weren't allowed the real 94 RS. We have a special one Yeah, so this one I had a Oh, I love it. It's so beautiful. Because that was the car they made, because you weren't allowed the real 94 RS, were you? They did a special one. Yes. Yes. So this one, I had a set at the Shark Works, and they juiced it up to somewhere around 300 horsepower. Nothing crazy. But oh, my God, it's so tactile and it's alive.

And it just when I drive it, I just I'm smiling. I have this big smile on my face like I'm on a fucking ride I was gonna bring my Gunther works here today, but it's raining Have you got one of those is it got a roof or not? Yeah? It's got a roof. I mean so where do we stand on the resto mod scene? Do we think it's gone too far or or do we believe this the way forward? Well, I like the ones that look old but drive new yeah, because they're less dangerous That's the help. That's the whole idea really, but I don't think there's anything dangerous in that nine nine

The nine six four that's mine. That's beautiful. It's so good. How much power is that go? 460 and it's you know, two thousand I've also got to raise my hand here and say that I work for singer So I love those two. Well, I actually have a little contract with them So I've got I've actually professionally got to say I ignore that vehicle But actually I I think I love the rest of mob thing I think it it might we might be at peak resto mod Yeah, there's so much of it going on But it does it segues into a point wanted to make about the the way we're traveling. 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, you know, even I have moments where I think, just have a look at yourself in the mirror. Just buy a used car. Then you don't you know, have another one built. There are so many great old cars out there. Right. I just go out and buy some and it's ten years old go and look at a ten-year-old AMG What a machine yeah, and if you do that's a vehicle that's already been built right? It's it's its wastefulness has already been absorbed into this weird world. We live in go and buy it Yeah, it's there for you with its 500 horsepower. It's ready to go. Yeah That's the greenest thing you can do is to go and buy an old Ferrari, right? You'll do no miles in it because you'll never use it because it might work now and again

It's the greenest thing you can do in your life is buy a used Ferrari or a Lamborghini, right? It's just best thing so but no one seems to express it this way and the other way is to rest Oh mod is to you know buy something and make it 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 my billions on on these electric SUVs There's the other thing that's ironic. They're all SUVs. So you're telling me we've got to have these efficient new EVs We're gonna make them three tons Shouldn't they be that big? Not only that there's a problem with guardrails

They're too heavy. They go right through with guardrails. Jesus. They're too heavy. They go right through the guardrails like butter. I saw that on Instagram too. It just goes straight through it. Right through. Yeah. They're twice as weight. But I do think that people love cars.

Just look to old stuff. Yeah. There's so much of it out there. Yeah, and they're so good. I have a 2005 M3. It's46 peak car peak car such a great car I know it's not too powerful, but it's so delightful like as it doesn't have a radio. It's got cloth seats I've crossed me that is yeah. Yeah cloth seats I just want the v10 so you had the E60 V10 M5 over here, crazy machine.

We had the Touring in the UK. They built a Touring, which is a state car, or 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 paid 27,000 pounds for it. I probably spent more than that on it already, just making it right.

But actually, the journey 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, I could adjust this and maybe this and maybe I can get a little wider wheel in this. And hmm. You remind me so much of one of my favorite colleagues, Mr. LeBlanc, because Matt is a much bigger car guy than anyone realizes.

We actually grew up in the same town. Did you? Yeah. I had friends that knew him, but I never met him. I've still never met him. He's a wonderful man and he's a brilliant car guy. He would agree with you. He's like that. He can never quite leave something alone. Yeah.

And with motorcycles as well. Motorcycles, he had a bizarre, working with him was wonderful by the way. I loved him to bits. I'd like to make another TV show with him. I got, one of these gangs that steals motorcycles in the UK got me. So I was doing a voiceover in the centre of London. I probably told, I might have written this story, I don't know if I told it or not. And I had a new

Ducati I'd bought. I like bikes, I'm not very good on them, but I like bikes. And I was trying to get better. And Matt's a very good rider. And I had this Ducati Panigale anniversary with all the, it's the kind of shit you buy when you've just got a TV job and you think you're the dog's bollocks. Looking back, it's fucking embarrassing. So I've parked it up in Soho, right in central London by where the voiceover studio was. And I was a bit early,

so I was milling about wearing my leathers 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 guys all in black with stuff, sort of tinted visors, black everything. What they do is they basically angle grind off the steering lock, the male part that goes into the headstock.

They angle grind it 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 is my bike. I'm small, not a very big guy, 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. And I started swearing and one of them had a hammer, claw hammer, and we had a tussle and the bike fell over. And as the bike fell over, I'm like, well, that's wrecked that then, hasn't it? Cause 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 and then they left

And I was really shocked. I'd never had anything like that happen to me. So I picked the bike up and I walked it down to the voiceover studio And I rolled it up and I walked in and Matt was there. It's a long story. I said, um, well, he went How are you? I said, well, I 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 to carry performance levers? Those are too long You always 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 So those levers are too long Yeah, I think this the mod thing is is really important to me. I love it. I can't I cannot leave stuff alone Yeah, I enjoy messing around with stuff too it's it's it's it's part of the fun of the older cars you know particularly like car like I have a Nissan GTR and that is 35 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 find me a standard one that don't exist. Yeah, it's very hard to stop r35 the unicorn

Yeah, very hard to find how much power does yours have? Well, I got a Nismo I got 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 gonna get rid of it I'm gonna keep it forever and I'm gonna juice it up to probably a thousand horsepower something stupid And if they make another one will 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 Porsche's probably they're about to do that They're already doing that with the m5 right the new m5 is a hybrid. I've driven that. The new one?

Yeah. Yeah? I'm not sure whether I can say I've driven it or not. Say it. I'll probably get it. I think I signed a piece of paper saying I'd get sued for 60,000 euros if I said nothing. It's, yeah.

There's a point in this process where you have to acknowledge that the main criticism of hybridity in cars is mass, is weight. weight right so everyone says it's too heavy But for me mass is just a number unless you can feel it Okay, it's really important. You can't just criticize something because it's heavy Well, 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 So that's and I won't talk about the M5, because I think I might get sued. But I can tell you now, the BMW M2 is a small performance car

that came out, 1,750 kilograms. My friend Tom Segura had one of those that he sent off to get juiced up. I forget. Dynan did it? I forget who did it. Well, the new one came out, and it was 300 kilograms heavier than the last one.

And the internet had a massive collective baby and went, oh, it's a BMW M5. I forget who did it. Well, the new one came out and it was 300 kilograms heavier than the last one and the whole internet had a massive collective baby and went, oh, it's fucking ruined. I ran one for six months. It was better than the last M2. Of course it was. Really? Yes, because someone German with a massive forehead and a white coat made it that way. Because these are really clever people.

And actually mass only matters if you can feel it. So if you drive a car and you can feel it's too heavy, fine, I'm with you. But that's the clearest to what I think about the new M5. Judge it, get in it and judge it before you actually drive it before you judge it. And that's what it looks like. Yeah, it looks good. It's a 700 and something horsepower sedan with with a BMW badge look at 727 fun is that coming out? The launch is at the end of this year. Mmm. It is It's a beast

Could only imagine I had an m5. I miss it If you turn on the v8 one, it was v8 39. Yeah, I had it in What year was it? 2015 or something? What was that? Which one would that be? That would have been the V10. It wasn't a V10.

Was it not? It was the one after the V10. Oh, that would be the F10. Yeah. The F10M. Yeah. I'm a real nerd. I loved it.

It was a good car. It was great. And actually, an M car should be, and your E46 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. But the car nerd can spot it just for the camber, little bit of ride height, little bit of shoulder. You can see an M car, you and I can see an M car

from a mile. Little hips. But a civilian cannot see an M car from a mile away. Especially an E46, because it's such a plain looking car. That's a gorgeous car We actually had someone reach out to Jamie That's how I bought it because we were talking about how great there I was I'd love to find a low mile one and this One is super low miles. I forget what it is, but it's really low. My m tech cloth is rare Yeah, I look at the cars. I missed out on there was a white manual m tech on 18 inch wheels e46 m3

And I why I didn't buy it, I don't know. But then I suppose I could say that about 1,000 cars that I wish I'd bought or I hadn't sold. I wish you never sold that green Porsche. Do you know what? I know who owns it. Yeah? It appears in the UK now and again, and I see it.

It was a cool thing. But I had to realize early on that I couldn't afford to keep all these things but that thing was a masterpiece It was lovely, but but look where that was done by tuttle. Yeah, right then look where they are now It's come back from Pebble Beach with this GT1 Amazing looking thing which you might have seen you Google GT1 doesn't doesn't he have a car that goes till 1111 thousand RPMs. That's so nuts. Yeah, it's a it's a lovely thing that he developed with a friend of ours called Philip Kudori who Obviously runs the quail and it's okay. So Kay has it's a very good name, isn't it? It's a 911 K Developed by a guy called Kudori K for Kudori and it revs for 11,000 11,000 RPM 911 K

It's my favorite car name ever. I've driven it. There's a video on online of that in this gold thing. How is it? You need to sit down after driving it, because it's just so visceral. 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 eye says, it's gone to eight. You've got to stop now.

I'm going to have bits of metal coming out the side of the engine. But it never does. And it's so light. Everything's carbon. So it's gone to eight you've got to stop now I'm gonna have bits of metal coming out the side of the engine but it it never does and it's so light everything's carbon so it's it's about 900 kilograms Wow yeah you'd love that that's really that's very basic intravenous performance that

is how light did you get your green card down to is that it that's what they just done so Tutsil did the GT what he's just launched that at Pebble Beach look at that that looks I hate the wheels. But again, I gotta be careful. I work for Singer. I love Singer. I love Singer too. 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. Yeah, I think you might be right. But 100% right. Disgusting. I think you might be right. But, um. 100% right. Those wheels are disgusting. The 911K is an amazing thing. And maybe if I was Porsche or another carmaker, I'd be starting to cry foul. Because what's happened is the Resto mod thing is actually a movement that reminds carmakers that they're not

being given or being offered a fair crack at the whip now. Because you can come along, you and I could establish the Monkey and Joe car company tomorrow. We could find a car, we could say, right, we're going to make an E46 M3. We're going to buy 100 good E46 M3s and we're going to turn them into the Joe and Monkey M3. And we're going to sell them into the Joe and Monkey M3. And we're going to sell them for $300,000. They're going to have a nice new interior.

They're not going to stray too far from the original philosophy of the car. Everyone's going to love them. And we wouldn't have to meet any kind of crash legislation. Smog would be, according to the vehicle age, in Europe there's even less to do. It comes under very low volume approval. You don't have to do anything. We don't have to meet any emissions regs, really, in Europe. You can do what you want. But if you're a car, if you're called BMW, you cannot make

that car. And I'm not sure that's fair. Right, like what Ruff does. That's not even really a Porsche. Well, it has its own chassis plate. It's a really gray area. But I think it's unfair on the car companies in many ways, because they can't go out and do that.

Right. They can't make a resto mod. Porsche could not make a Singer. They could. But they'd have to establish a new co, or they'd have to buy a company. But could Porsche make resto mods of their vehicles? I think they potentially could.

But they'd be terrified, I suspect, of the potential litigation. Right. You know, because if one of them went into a wall, you know, you'll suddenly you get to sue Porsche. Right. Also, especially if you're selling something like one of those old Widowmakers where and people don't understand that if I mean I have a 2007 GT3 RS and 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 mm-hmm but they'll still rotate yeah just the engine out the back I I've had that to an old Like design it's it's it's less prominent now because tire technology has moved on so much, right? Well the first time I got to drive a lot of these things. I didn't quite understand the Widowmaker Tag Because they had new tires. they had these new tires are

everything yeah I'll tell you what a top gear story it's fairly interesting my colleague who called Paddy McGinnis who's one of the co-hosts who's 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 England, he had subtitles. It's like watching Peaky Blinders. Yeah, no, it's worse than that. Anyhow, he crashed a Lamborghini when we were filming. And it was all over the press in the UK. It helped it was red, like proper dog knob red Lamborghini

goes off the road. Anyhow, at the end of it all, the car's on a low loader. And I look at the tires, they're 20 years old. Oh, god. Yeah, well, that's the- It had been borrowed for the GTI. Anyhow, at the end of it all, the car's on a low loader. And I look at the tires. They're 20 years old? Oh, god. Yeah.

Well, that's the- It had been borrowed for the job? Old tire technology matched with age as well. It's terrible. That's the story with the guy from Fast and the Furious. What's his name? Paul Walker. Paul Walker.

Paul Walker. That's the story with him. They had old tires on that car. So Patty gets eviscerated in the press because you can't drive and everything him. They had old tires on that car. Well, Patty gets so Patty gets Eviscerated in the press because you can't drive and everything else. I could have been in that car I had a crashed it I can drive a bit anyone you cannot and that's that if you get in these old cars With old tires on them. They have nothing. Yeah, absolutely nothing. It's incredible How much the technology has come along in that regard? I'd say Michelin at its best is, you know, it's some of its like

Witchcraft if you go if you get in a new Porsche GT3 RS now the tire They've developed for that probably has four compounds across it You know, so the the high wear stuff where it needs the grip. They're so clever They they really are the performance they add to the vehicle. They're so clever. They really are. The performance they add to the vehicle no one knows. How come no one can figure out how to make a tire without air? 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 that I know they did make them They do have this tire that looks like us looks like a sort of spring You know that Adidas shoe that has the sort of lattice. Yeah, it looks a bit like that. Yeah, I have seen those But I suppose you're still dealing with a at that point. It's a sprung mass which would interfere with suspension I don't have an answer. That's what it is. It's like it's heavier I don't know I because there's no air in it that makes sense cuz you'd have so much more rubber But I think they tried to mitigate that by having it clear so you see through it There was some shots of one recently I have to assume the any reason you would there's only two reasons you wouldn't make it. One, it doesn't work. Two, 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 the more you get into cars tires are a fascinating subject mm-hmm that's that's a good opener when you meet some of the opposite sex but I has never worked for me but but actually they are because they're the only contact you have with with the with the ground so it stands to reason they're the most important Part of the performance package yeah F1 commentators, and I'm actually probably slightly less So in the US but in Formula One the commentators spend most of the time talking about tires

Because it's what it's the main factor, but they're not sexy tires are not sexy definition 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 and this. They can't tell you that they've spent five years developing a tire that's revolutionary. Nobody cares, because it just looks like a tire. Yeah, it just looks terrible. What are you showing me?

And when they come to replace that tire, they'll just give me the cheap one. I don't want to spend that money on that one. Right, right, right. So you're experienced at Top Gear. Yeah, it's interesting. So I've never really spoken about it because I keep my mouth shut.

I like to remain dignified. It's been quite a journey. It's come to an end now. I really feel it's a full stop. The show has been put on hold in the UK, indefinitely is the terminology from the BBC, that means it's an end. But strangely, it exists in other formats around the world.

There's been an American one, there's one in Finland, there's one in Australia, there's one in France. So the license and the brand exists elsewhere, but not at its home in the UK. And it came to an end for me one day in December 2022 in a way that I'd like to say I hadn't expected, but I had. And I think that's the bit that I've found very difficult to deal with over the last couple of years. Fundamentally, I'm quite happy-go-lucky person. I'm very privileged with the life I've had And I love the fact that I earn a living doing what I love you must have the same thing to wake up sure

What a joy I don't push a desk I get to I get to wreck other people's tires And and also my subject is one that is surrounded by joy No one wants to hear the last person you want to hear from is the miserable car road tester, right? He can fuck off Yeah last person you want to hear from is the miserable car road tester right he can fuck off yeah I don't want to be that guy I hate those guys yeah but actually I'll be lying if I said I've you know I'm feel good today I've had a good few months but the last 18 months I've been bad because I just didn't I didn't know what to do because 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 you sustain are profound.

I was there on the day, I was the only presenter with Fred that day. I wasn't actually right by him, but I was close by. I remember the radio message that I heard. 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 this has been a real accident here. The cars upside down So I ran to the window looked out and he wasn't moving. So I thought he was I thought he was dead I assumed he was then he moved

I can tell you now that he even unless he's a physical specimen, Fred, he's a big guy, six foot five, six foot six, strong. And if he wasn't so strong, he wouldn't have survived. He's a great advert for physical strength and conditioning, because if he hadn't been that strong, he'd have just snapped his neck, he'd be dead. So I can't believe he's, I couldn't believe he survived. And that sort of, that moment of realization that he'd survived has kind of defined my thoughts on the subject since. 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 really was difficult. And you need experience. There were two people that had driven a Morken 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'd just gone on and shot it without us. And I think if I'm looking in the mirror, I find it very difficult, even now, that Andrew, who I loved a bit, a lovely man, he was a pro cricket player. He wasn't an automotive guy.

But he was a real enthusiast. He was great, much like you. He loved cars. And he would always come up to me and say, well, I'm going to He wasn't an automotive guy. But he was a real enthusiast. He was great, much like you. He loved cars. And he would always come up to me before a shoot and say, tell me how it is. I've got all the advice.

Give me the last bit of advice on 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. And I just sort of got my head down. But I had seen this coming. There was a big inquiry, a lot of soul searching. The BBC's good at that. 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 gonna die on this show so I

went to them I went to the BBC and I told them of my concerns from what I'd seen as someone as the most experienced driver on the show by a mile I said if we carry on at the very least we're gonna have a serious injury at the very worst we're gonna have fatality. 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. You guys do a lot of really crazy stunts with automobiles, not necessarily just cars but big trucks and all kinds of crazy things and some of them are quite ridiculous. 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 do some big stunts. And a lot of the time... And the Grand Tour is the original cast of Top Gear, Jeremy Kaufs and Richard May. In their Amazon show. Which sadly they've just ended. Great show. So, and also I'm... James Mayer.. So yeah, I'm not of the health and safety world. I'm not risk averse. I love a bit of risk. And I also absolutely believe that if you enter into a show like Top Gear, you know what you're taking on. You know, I believe that there is no such thing as great risk free television like

that. It's good. You just got gotta, you know, I just turn up and I assess what I see and I do what I'm comfortable with and I wanna make great television, that's it. And if sometimes it got a bit sketchy, so be it. We've all done that, you know? That's the way the world lives. 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.

This is the critical thing. I'm qualified to make those decisions because I've done it a long time. One of them is an actor-comedian. The other guy is a pro cricket player. Brilliant entertainers. They were great hosts. But their roles were to make people laugh.

And my role was to tell people what cars were like. And all too often, in the last year, I saw situations where it got too dangerous. And it culminated, actually, in us being in Thailand. Myself and Paddy were in Thailand. And we did a go-kart race down a hill in just compacted mud on wooden go-karts with no engines. And I just looked at them, and I said, so it's not a

question of whether we get injured. It's how injured we get. So just have an ambulance at the bottom, because something's going to go wrong. Sure enough, I broke something down. And I just looked at him and I said this is just this so it's not a question of whether we injured It's how injured we get so just have an ambulance at the bottom because something's gonna go wrong sure enough I broke something in my hand broke a finger or what have you and I just thought Which sounds ridiculous from your background because you know, you're super tough guys, but it hurt. I don't break my fingers I didn't I also he was a shit piece of television So I always said I don't mind breaking my hand if we get a BAFTA for it

But or an award but this was just the shit skit But I ended up damaged and it went on too much 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 And what what what's really killed me is that no one's ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand. 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 to rot.

And I, even now, I'm totally perplexed by the whole thing. 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. It's strange and pretty heartbreaking in many ways. I love that show. So did the conversation between you and the network completely stop after the accident? They just sort of left me to sweat really. I just didn't really, I just sat in my, where I live and drank whiskey. I didn't have much contact with them at all.

Everything went quiet. They had two inquiries into the accident commissioned, neither of which I had access to. I pushed very hard to have access to the second one and saw some of it. And I had this, this is one to the second one and saw some of it. And I had this, this is one of the most bizarre interactions I've had. I sat down with someone from the BBC who was going to talk me through bits of the second inquiry into the accident.

And I'd already been told that I no longer had a job. So I'd been told that Top Gear was done. And at the beginning of it, he said to me, I won't name him, he said, I want to thank you so much for taking part in this because it's really going to help us as an organization going forwards. I said, well, it doesn't really help me. I've lost my job. And I'm always reminded of that old adage from a very brilliant BBC comedy show, which was never committed an inquiry that you don't know the outcome of in the first place. So I don't know the whole thing. The whole situation was ridiculous.

And I've never told anyone that, you know, I think I want to tell people that I did because I a bit of me thought as the experienced driver, the members of the public think that I didn't do enough to protect Andrew? And Paddy as well. They both experienced other incidents on that show that I think were unacceptable. And that's coming as someone who loves a bit of risk. 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. 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 right right so also often

It's can you just do that right and and then you want to be a crowd pleaser You know you you want to be the guy that can do it we had that on fear factor Yeah, when I was hosting fear factor there was a couple of times where I was like what the fuck are we doing? especially the second seat like fear factor started in 2001 and went to 2007, and then we came back again in 2011, and we only did six episodes, and they tried to make it just really ramped up. And when it was canceled, it was actually canceled because people had to drink donkey sperm.

Yeah. Which was pretty minor. And consider, I mean, it's disgusting, but it wasn't anything that was gonna risk anyone's lives lives 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 There was a moving train and then the train had all these like cardboard boxes in it We launch a car off a ramp like sideways and it goes through the train You have to time it just right so you don't hit the car Into one of the the big metal someone in the car. Yeah driving it. Yeah. Oh

Yeah, my 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. 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 the risk assessment, but just give that a go while you're here. think that goes wrong and also my my experience and this is why I

Everyone that's shot with me will be ever been reminded of this now and again Close of play end of the day. That's when it goes wrong. If you're a test track, it's just you know The lights coming down there's ten minutes to go and the director says just do that again No, because everyone's tired someone's gonna Ignore the lockdown on the circuit. There'll be someone coming driving the other way with the coffee cups over the heads. Or it's the end of the day.

If it's 6 o'clock, 5.30, I'm gone. And not because I'm workshopped. I'll stay around and pick stuff up. But 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, I know that that was a, we need to use this day shoot.

That's another one that's another red flag for me. We've got a day at a track, we need to fill it. Well, that's, you've reverse engineered that, you know? Right. Your priorities are all ready to fill something up. And I look back, some of the stuff that we did on Top Gear, I look back, that was dangerous, visually dangerous, and definitely was in practical terms.

I'm very proud of, because we executed it well. Like, Andrew, Fred Flintoff went off a dam in a Metro and did a car bungee. Extraordinary piece of footage. You can see it, it's just amazing film. But it was rigorous, it was done properly. There has footage. You could see it. It was just an amazing film, but it was rigorous. It was done properly. There has amazing stunt crew that did it. I mean, I couldn't have done it.

It was brave and it was a really memorable piece of television, that. This is it. What a legend. Oh. 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 what the team did there. And Andrew was magnificent. Dude, fuck that. Can you imagine? Fuck that. Because if it goes wrong, you're dead. Yeah, and he's got that chirpy little shit in his ear as well.

And there's other stuff that we did that I can't understand what we were doing. So we also did, and you won't find this. I think they've removed it from you shit. That's a oh My god, how about that? That's so insane. How about that? Look at it goes it goes over itself like that. Oh my god That is so ridiculous and then the yank Oh ridiculous and then the yank oh but that you know I when I said to you earlier I bit of me regrets doing it I look at that and I think what a thing to have

been part of it's it's ridiculous yeah and I'm proud of that stuff one thing we did do which again on reflection was just madness, there are 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 sparks go out the back.

And it's decided we'd be good if we did this. So each of us had a vehicle we were using or 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 Land Rover Defender. You've seen those. I had a short wheelbase Defender. 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, I'm about wearing these titanium shoes. Anyhow, Paddy gets in and tries to go really fast.

And he falls off. And he's OK, but someone 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 and that was the one of those moments where I thought this has got a bit loose you know if you're gonna do these things that guy should have been running parallel because those and I didn't like that although two minutes of two miles it's a long time. I know. Although the end of that was quite...

I can give you some levity there. I did my run. I got... I didn't get quite as close as I think I did nearly 80 miles now or something. And I fell off at the end and it hurt a bit. And I got in the back of the crew car, which I think was another Land Rover, and I was sitting there thinking, this smells terrible. Have I done something wrong here?

A really acrid smell. Not from the colon, but definitely, I thought this is not a good smell. Like a chemical smell? Yeah, and then I was told to get out. What had happened was the shoes were red hot, and I'd got in the car and they just melted straight through the mat, straight through the carpet,

and it was just smoldering on fire. I looked like a shit Marvel superhero. Yeah, I think I'm very happy and proud to have done Top Gear but I'm so sad at the way it ended. Yeah. No one, that's the ultimate, no one had control of that that day. That's what the insurance industry calls an act of God, whether you believe in him or not. But what happened afterwards was really sad because I've arrived here, you've got your crew, you know, you've got your people. They were my people and from that day I've never really spoken to them. The producers, everyone else,

no one really. It just went like that, bang, done. And that was very hard because I just couldn't believe it had happened so I was 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 but then for the casual people you have to do something stupid like bungee Jump up with a car off the side of a dam and it's like I don't I'm not interested

Maybe it's because I hosted fear factor for so long. I've seen so many things like that. They're not interesting to me I want I want to hear a car enthusiast Rave about the fun they're having while they're driving an automobile. Maybe you should produce a car show. I've got an idea. I'll pitch it to you afterwards. But you're quite right. There's plenty of market for that. There is. And actually, this is the country for it. 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 is online. And I don't remember what was the first video that I watched of you, but I do remember that green Porsche. Yeah.

I remember that's when I was like, oh my God. That's a long time ago. And that's where I started out and I suspect I'll return there you know I've got plans to 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 yeah pretty surprising there's so much motoring content out there it's almost saturated it's very very such and there's so many different types of markets now too yeah 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 I really just got interested really recently in the Ineos Grenadier yeah I was like what a fascinating idea take the I mean what a limited market by the way to actually ironically is that is the only example of a brand new

Resto mod isn't it? Yes. Yes similar. I mean, it's essentially a new vehicle But if you for the casual it looks like a defender Yeah, it really does but it kind of better kind of quite a bit better Yeah, and you know really interesting BMW six-cylinder supercharged engine And so now when I open up YouTube, it's like all Grenadiers, it's all Ineos. They just constantly, all these off-roading Australia dudes and all these different people sending me these things. I think you're right, it does belong on YouTube.

I mean, Linear Television, I joined a TV show when Linear Television still survived. Well, you know, I understand destination television. It's gone now. It's gone. The world's changed completely. Top Gear still has a place in it. Many of my previous colleagues make a lot of online content for Top Gear.

They do a great job. There's some really good films. But there's something quite romantic for me about the sit down, squidge onto the sofa with you as a family and watch, eight o'clock Sunday night. It was a quasi religious experience, really. But it was in a time where people didn't have smartphones. You're quite right. That's gone.

That waiting for a very specific time to watch a program, no one is interested in that anymore. I know. It's strange, isn't it? Because it's logical that they wouldn't, because no has any patience because of the immediacy of these things Yes, but there's equally something quite lovely about what we used to do right. I can't really reconcile it I I totally acknowledge the excitement of the new but I'm slightly wistful for the past Is that I see what you're saying? The only thing that still exists that you have to wait for is live sports Yeah, so live sports where you're watching a game the game starts at 8 p.m. You have to be there at 8 p.m

It's not gonna wait for you. There it is. The podcast is a as a concept is amazing as well I've got to be a bit cheesy I have got a podcast which which I didn't when's this gonna go out is going out a day after we record this Yeah, pretty soon. Well the day after that my new podcast launches, I didn't realize that. What's it called? It's a really really interesting name. Chris Harris on Cars. Chris Harris and Friends car podcast is what it's called because I just thought well he's perfect. Heinz tomato ketchup. Yeah. So that and that really is a nerd product. So one of the things I did as by way of therapy was I did a car podcast in the immediate aftermath of this accident because I realized I wanted to have contact with this world

I think that the moment your life gets difficult you regress to what is your comfort food my comfort food is cars And I 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 I like what I like about podcasts, what I like about YouTube content from people like Matt Farah is I know it's one human being, this is their perspective, this is what they enjoy, they really do love these vehicles and they talk about it without any influence of other human beings. So you're getting this singular viewpoint, which I think is the most attractive thing

about it And the thing you pointed out there this idea of of having to alter things or add sort of Ancillary comedy to them to the make them appeal to the masses Yeah Is is what I found very difficult on Top Gear because I came there as I arrived as the rigorous car tester You put me with some comedians put me with whoever 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 is any good or not, please give it to me and I'll tell you. And the M2 is 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 a section of this where I was given this sort of piece of testing equipment called the pantometer 3000 or something just made up. 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. But I look back And I should have just said fuck off. Yeah, I don't do that You know, it's just an embarrassing moment in my life I but that was exactly they had to all they felt the need to augment the test with something stupid To draw in the casual viewer and that's where YouTube is brilliant because YouTube doesn't feel the need to that

It can do that. It could just cater for us nerds Yeah, whatever you're into YouTube can deliver it without Someone from a network messing with it. What's really spectacular about YouTube is there's only one YouTube Yeah about how big the internet there is in China though. Well, that's different. I'll tell you a good story about that about in China though. Well that's different. I'll tell you a good story about that. About eight years ago or so I was at the Geneva Motor Show, the biggest car event in my world and this Chinese guy comes up to me and he's like really really grateful. I'm so glad to meet you, I want to say thank you. I went why don't I

say thank you? He said because you've made such a difference to my life. I'm not the second coming, I don't know what I've done to you Goes because you know, I host all of your videos on a channel in china and they've made me like loads of money Spiceman Sorry, yeah, so I did a bit of research he has he's made lots of you just he just took you just rip them all Off youtube and host them. Wow, there's no regulation. Wow So he's just telling you he ripped you off. But he had, but he thought he had no, it wasn't like he had no shame. He couldn't even see what he'd done wrong. Right. He's like, thanks. Well,

China has Apple stores that aren't even Apple. Does it? Yes. China has full Apple stores where they're selling counterfeit laptops, phones, everything. None of it is really out. I don't even know if they do phones anymore. But they had Apple stores that Apple found out about that weren't even, nothing was Apple. 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. If you produce something, you own it by definition. Doesn't matter whether you're

within a network or have you the international property in your head is that's mine. Right. And content producers over the last five years have had to accept the fact that that is no longer the proposition. 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 I'm just gonna 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 it's also they feel like they could just

say a few things, like, hey, look at Chris Harris doing this, and that's enough. And also, that's enough of an alteration. In their professional world, could you imagine if one of them was an accountant, and I walked in and said, right, I've got my books. I can't add up, I'm really disnumeric and I'm an idiot. Just do those for free, will you? Just do them.

Yeah. No, so I want some money for that. No, no, no, just do them. And also, shut the fuck up and do them. How does that work? No other world works like that. No, the content world is very strange. It's very strange where people can use your stuff and do entire shows based entirely on your stuff. Oh

it's just extraordinary. But the Chinese example was the best for me though. I love that. Well the best is that he had no shame about it. But actually he was doing nothing wrong. Culturally they don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. I mean do you remember, mean, you have to take the Chinese car industry seriously now, but 15 years ago, there used to be a sort of underground recess of Detroit Motor Show, where the Chinese car companies would be. And it was a, it was a sort of, it was a grim catacomb of, of imitation. So you'd go underneath and there'd be like their version of a BMW X5, which was literally like someone had gone with a BMW X5 to draw one and like someone had gone with a BMW X5

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, they didn't acknowledge imitation. You just do what you want. I've, I reacted terribly at the time. I sort of understand now that if you don't get that from the, from the age of one,

you can't learn it afterwards. Right. 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. It'd 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. You go, can I look at that? No, they'd be there for 20 minutes, they'd have these laser rules out going, just getting all the measurements of the interiors and of the engines and stuff. You go, can I look at that? No, they'd be there for 20 minutes shamelessly, just copying, scanning the car in broad daylight. It's amazing. They make incredible electric cars now though.

Oh, they've stolen a march on everyone. China has made, they make some unbelievable cars. I've watched some of them reviewed online. You can't even get them in America. But I watched some of them reviewed online, and they're just fucking fantastic. They've definitely had an advantage over Europe. I can't say for America, because you

have Tesla, which is 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. 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's also a problem with European cars in that European cars are always known for having a great reseal value. Particularly like Lamborghini and Porsche and Ferrari. You can actually make more money off of them in a few years than, but not electric ones.

No. That's the problem. Like electric Taycans, those things are gorgeous That's an incredible vehicle. Good luck trying to sell that thing. Nobody I saw lucid airs, which is a fantastic Have you been in one of those? No, I haven't Wow. I've heard they're the heart the sapphire is magnificent It's extraordinary. You can't you you you're gonna get like half the price of that thing. Yeah in a year Yeah, okay fucking nuts. I know the tycan in America yeah in a year yeah fucking nuts I know the tycan in America and in the UK early one thirty thousand pounds unbelievable someone paid 120 for that three years ago crazy and still really good it is

it's a very again for particular people maybe the thing I the point I didn't make earlier I have to excuse myself a bit jet lag for my confused thoughts sometimes is that the electric car Has one unspoken fact about it It's for rich people That's what I find quite difficult. There's a meritocracy about the motor car that I find appealing is that You can have a Bugatti Veyron or Chiron or you could be some guy that lives in India that's got a little thing that cost 100 quid or $100. You're ultimately getting the same thing. You have the

you have the freedom to travel, to choose where you're going and I think in a I like you, I like to, I don't want to be told what to do and I think it's really important that that vehicle can take you where you want to go But the electric vehicle is for rich people isn't it you think about it you show me the the electric vehicle for normal people Well, it's terrible for people that live in apartment complexes It doesn't exist 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, but look at the cost of them. Yeah. Very expensive. Terrible resale value. Yeah. It's a very flawed concept at the moment. But as you say, the performance of them

can be your plaid is a great example. It's a time machine. Yeah. It's a time machine. It really is. It merges the 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 unplugged performance are you aware of those guys so they tuned them today yes because it needs to be faster doesn't it no well they changed the suspension it does not any faster okay they use the same power train but they change the suspension they widen the front and rear and they just they

upgrade the brakes they make it much more just agile I think the main thing it needs is some sort of jet washable pressure washable floor because I think passengers will eventually shit kidneys out they They're so fast Yeah, well Roadster which is gonna be insane which is basically vaporware now didn't people like pay full price for those things like five years ago He's fascinating. I know he's been on your show. I Don't know what to make of him. I just love the fact that he's he is the ultimate disruptor Yes, he's come along. Yes, just he's the ultimate disruptor. He's come along, he's seen an industry, he's gone,

that's ready for a shakeup, and he's had a go. With multiple industries, that's what's crazy. But the one that's pertinent to me, the two questions I'm asked most are, what do you think of the electric car revolution and its effect on the environment, but also, what do you think of the electric car revolution and its effect on the environment? But also, what do you think about Mr. Musk? I almost don't really have an opinion on him.

I just let him do what he does. What I do know is I'm always fascinated what he's going to do next. And that's all you need to know. And the stuff that he's produced, 10 years ago there were not many Teslas on the road in the UK. Now they're everywhere. I don't know any other Vertical that's witnessed penetration like that, you know if I walk into a white goods store I'm not seeing fridges made by companies

I didn't even heard of ten years ago 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 That will go down in the history books. Yeah, it's undeniable. Yeah it's undeniable and it's also he's doing that with Rockets and he's also doing that with the internet. So I bought X or Twitter and turned it into X and that's a massive disruptor. Do you do Twitter? Whatever it's called now. Yeah. See I left it because I got so much abuse initially when I did Top Gear. That's when I got sort of you know. You can't read comments. No you can't but then you'd then you'd get drawn into conversations. Oh shit

I was and I actually leaving it was the best thing I ever did at that time I haven't gone back because I didn't really need it to promote anything 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. You're never gonna get away from that. But you just don't read it. That's the most important thing. Like people are always gonna, if you're a public figure, people are always gonna have opinions of you and there's a lot of shitty people out there and they're the most vocal and they're the most persistent. Let them talk. Do you think in 50 years time you won't be able to post or comment without your identity being revealed. I hope

that's not the case but probably. Yeah. I think they would like to do that in America. Yeah. You know but I think it's important for whistleblowers, it's important for you know people that work in an organization and they want to expose corruption, they want to expose something, they want to expose some illegal thing they're doing in regards to the environment. It's very important. You have to have people, they want to expose the government. It's very important to allow people to be anonymous. When you're in a dark place, as I was 18 months ago, you can feel that very pertinently. There

was a lot of very unkind things said about Andrew's accident and Top Gear afterwards. And I did want, I thought to myself all those anonymous keyboard worries fuck you. I was, and you know this, 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. You know how bad that is? I couldn't do it as well as you. But when you step back from it... Yeah but I don't engage in any of that stuff never I don't read negative things and I don't engage in it it just I I'm not afraid of it I just I know what it is and I don't like it I don't

think it's necessary I don't think it's good for you I don't think anybody gets any benefit out of it I don't think the person gets benefit out of you calling them a cocksucker I don't think you get any benefit out of calling them a cocksucker I don't think it helps and benefit out of calling them a cocksucker. I don't think it helps. And I just look at it, I do what I call post and ghost. I post things and I go away and I don't care what happens in the comments. And also, I'm very aware of bots.

I'm very aware because we've done a lot of research, research, we've done a lot of, we've had a lot of conversations and done a lot of reading about the amount of content that's on, especially Twitter, that's not organic. And it's an extraordinary amount. There's an FBI analyst that estimated it to be in the range of 80%. 80% of all the accounts he thinks are bullshit. And they're used to promote specific narratives, they used to argue and shame people, they're used to attack certain political figures and public figures 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 reading, oh maybe they're right, this guy is a piece of shit, I always thought he

was a nice guy and then everything 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 probably in, you know, fucking Russia somewhere, and a troll farm, and 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 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 just there. It's the crab with its claw open.

You're like, everything's saying, don't put your finger there. You can't. But you do. I don't. And I did very briefly. 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 in human 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 It's not the way human beings are meant to communicate with each other We were meant to communicate with each other like this I know this is 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, is because the only person I've done without that in recent times, Edward Snowden, for obvious reasons. But you don't want to, that's not a good way to communicate. It's not even a good way to communicate with your friends through text message. No.

You wanna be there talking, so the person says something and go, oh, okay, I get it. I get it. So why did you think that? But it's the cadence of conversation and also the quality of silence and the way that you respond. And actually, I'm now going to say something terrible. My podcast is done over Zoom, but it's the same voices every week. So people become used to the cadence of conversation and they can actually, they can, I do believe relate to it for the comments. Confirm that.

Well, there's nothing wrong with doing podcasts over zoom. The problem is with guests. Exactly. It doesn't work with guests. Yeah, it doesn't work with you can do it, but I know people that do it with guests and they're fine. They just, they adjust and they're very good podcasts. I listened. My friend Duncan does a lot of people through zoom and they're great. They're great conversations But if you had if you had to sit down and speak to a roomful of young people About how to manage third party opinions of you on the internet. What would you say to them? Just ignore? Yes Yeah, well You have to be

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 to be able to honestly assess whether or not what you'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 But don't wallow in other people telling you you suck or other people attacking you. There's no benefit There's another side to that that I've I had to teach my other co-hosts on this podcast, who weren't from a media background at all. I personally believe that to ignore the negativity,

you can't wallow in the positivity either. I just think you don't have the right to just pick and choose what people say about you. You can't just absorb the nice stuff and ignore the bad stuff. That's just as bad for you. Because then you're like, oh, I'm pretty fucking amazing. That's bad for everybody too. Nobody benefits from being told they're amazing. You know if you did something that's good. So congratulations, you worked hard, you put out something that's good, leave it alone.

Keep moving, keep moving. Don't read all that positive shit and blow your head up. And that happens to a lot of people. They get like enamored. It's called audience capture. 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. Like you see it a lot with people who lean right,

because there's not as many right-wing voices on the internet. You get a tremendous amount of support. All these people say, you're the only one out there speaking the truth. And they're like, you're out there speaking the truth. And you start believing that bullshit,

and then you change your perspective. Yes. Audience capture. Yes. Yeah, that's dangerous too. Yeah, when you're becoming conditioned by the environment you're in without realizing capture. Yes. Yeah, that's dangerous too. Yeah, when you're becoming conditioned by the environment you're in without realizing it. Exactly.

Actually, with a segue back to the BBC, I've seen that with that network I work with. I think there's a lot of high quality people that work at the BBC. And at the moment, they're under a lot of pressure and everyone's judging them as individuals within the organization. I think the organization is, that is is almost impossible to work in now And it's changing them. They almost have nowhere to go Well, they're also that'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 and so they're also not the experts So they have their own ideas and they have to have some sort of an impact on it to justify their position.

So you see people having ridiculous suggestions that everybody has to entertain because Bob is an executive. OK, Bob is the fucking co-producer. We've got to listen to Bob 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 and would you ever make television again no no done I've just finished something for the BBC which this podcast is gonna be he's gonna put the catamombs division so I've got one thing I've just done with the BBC which is not correlated which will

be my last thing I've done for the BBC probably I did it with Paddy I loved it it was actually about wellness and trying to you know which is a word I fucking hate it's not a word. It's like mindfulness. I just said it So I apologize to you wellness and mindfulness have both been captured spirituality as well Basically, it's about it's about me being having let myself go. I'm a shit I let myself go a bit better now, but you should have seen me a year ago Oh, and I and we've gone off and done three one-hour shows about. Was that as a response to the top of the year? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I sat and I drank world-class quantities of single malt. I had made, I like a single malt. And I had built up a nice little collection, a really nice little collection. I was quite disciplined. I'd pour myself a beautiful Glenn Farkless 25.is 25 and I'd enjoy it and I put it away I did that collection in the first month after the top gear incident the whole lot gone Oh, wow, and then I slipped into the full, you know, it was terrible

Yeah, and I and I 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. But 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 take Let's try being an alcohol I didn't want to but now I've done it. I get it. Yeah Yeah, and I you know, and I also I was doing a weekly podcast my my sort of decline was quite publicly Documented and some people saw it, some people didn't. But I'd sometimes, I'd see someone say, is he all right?

And I'm like, no, he really fucking isn't. Where was I with that? But I do think that the, yeah, if you start going down that route, it's a problem. It really is a problem. Yeah, it's a real problem. I should say- Mindfulness What are the 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 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 I know they do I've got a lot of Swedish friends I've been to Sweden it's fucking great place it was a it was an amazing experience I loved it but didn't involve cars I want to be making shows about cars that's what I love doing I'm being hired and doing your own thing there you go I'm grateful for it and I think there's some really entertaining television, although we missed out one bit you talk about Having to drink donkey semen. Yeah, there's a there's a clip from this show that's Doesn't make it 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, you know, if you film top gear you've been around the world you've eaten Stuff you shouldn't have eaten and he's long as've survived you just another box tics, you know I never thought I'd eat a sheep's rectum. I'd buy a spine. It's a bit chewy But I was given this this vial of liquid and I drank it and it tasted a bit like a Really peaty single malt imagine an Arddbeg that's really peaty. I was like, cool. And on the label it said beaver. I was like, OK, what's that?

And this Swedish guy said, it's the essence of a beaver that we make liquid alcohol with. So you flavor like a shine with beaver because it was strong. And he sort of fudged it and moved on I thought it was dry it was the flavor was in my mouth I couldn't get rid of it transpires this is a secretion from the anal gland of the baby so I ate beaver ass I drank it I was a

Grecian over so someone milked a beaver. Oh boy. I drank it wasn't that bad What's the benefit of this supposed 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 are they all doing it I don't think they're all drinking it, but I think some of them drinking. I think so really it's popular over there It was it's for sale Fresh It was it's for sale Fresh What happens if you get a tainted one here it is tails from the fringe beaver gland vodka Wow So that's the beavers butt right there, and it's a gland in the vodka ten days later. I was in Japan

doing some other work and I I Remember that 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, my olfactory system, such as it is, was only registering beaver. For 10 days?

Every food I ate tasted of beaver. Did you try to like wash it out with alcohol? I tried everything. Wow. It's an incredibly pungent. But about fire spitting? Didn't do that. I must try that.

I was thinking, how did you burn it off? I don't know. You'd have to just get a new head. Wow. So it eventually just dissipated in time? It did disappear. After 10 days, you still had it? It was still there.

You know when it's just there as a sort of residual taste? I would have been so upset. Yeah. You motherfucker, you ruined 10 days worth of meals. But also, when I found out it hadn't made the cut, I was like, come on. It has not made it. I went through the voiceover and it's not in.

That's so crazy. But I, wellness as a concept is is something that I as a word I hate and I'm proud of the show that will come out at some point but I but I'm I like cars I want to make shows about cars and I will go of course I will go back to the internet and I will you belong you you belong doing your own thing Chris Harrison cars was awesome. We might bring it back. Yeah I've got some we've made some films And I'm gonna give it another month, and then we'll give it another go well a bunch of people were trying all these different things

Like they were trying to monetize it so you had to subscribe online or to access the content Yeah, doesn't work doesn't work you lose ninety nine point nine percent of people. There's too much good stuff for free. Yeah, people have, that's another thing. We come back to that idea of this Chinese guy going, thanks for educating my children or whatever I've done. There is no monetary value placed on content now. There's a few firewall systems that work. I think New York Times and the Times in the London Times works. I pay for that. And I think they make money. It works barely. But they've had to work so hard. They have been diminished greatly

by the lack of people wanting to buy paper newspapers. It's been a big impact on them. It also changes the way they do journalism because now everything's very clickbaity, which is a real problem as well. But the expectation is that content is now free. Right. Yeah.

How many listeners would you lose, do you think, if you put a paywall up for this? problem as well. But the expectation is that content is now free. Right. You know, 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. Yeah. Yeah. I think the way that we relate and interact with content is fascinating. It is. There's an ever bigger appetite. These devices mean that the immediacy means that there can never be too much content. I was pointing that out when I first saw you here, that you have the tiniest little iPhone, the little baby mini that they don't even...

My friend Yoni has one of those too. I admire it. I admire that you don't even have a case on yours, which is even crazier. Well, the iPhone's a funny thing because it's a bit like a steering wheel in a car That's your contact point, right? It was designed to feel brilliant and the iPhone with that metal ridge is one of the most pleasing objects You'll ever pick up man. So why put a condom on it? I don't I want you don't want it to break I want it. It's made out of glass. It's still working and I want an unsheathed

Mine has a nice little kickstand. Look at this When I sit down when I get in a car, I don't want something I judge people so harshly when I get in their car and they have some stupid fucking thing on their steering wheel I'm like what is wrong with you? Who are you? Do you wear mittens on top of that? You fucking idiot. What are you doing? I've come here briefly for two reasons. One, because I want to be on this podcast, see you.

The other thing I've come to do in this state, I'm going to need some help with this, I'm not here for much longer, is I saw a bumper sticker advertise that I think is the greatest bumper sticker ever created. And it simply says Texas is bigger than France that's it the statement and it's for sale online I've got I've got I've got eight hours now to go and find it before I fly back

but I have to get this bumper sticker oh we get you one it says it did she just says it's a statement yeah it is the greatest statement made by any state or county. It's quite a bit bigger than France, isn't it? Where is it? Yeah. Okay. I just love it. Look at that there. Yeah, it's kind of funny.

It's brilliant. And I want that. I have a... Really, we were talking about this at the beginning before we got rolling, but it really is its own country. It's very different than the rest of the country. It's very independent. And one of the reasons is the history of this place. For the longest time, the Comanche dominated this territory and you couldn't get across the land. And so the people that eventually figured out

how to fight off the Comanche and settle down, they're the craziest, most rugged individuals ever. It's the Texas Rangers. 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. And that's why he's there. 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. So they were very reluctant to join this whole union thing. Like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Also, they've been conditioned to become animals, you know, to be extreme fighters. Once their battle's finished, they don't stop being fighters. Right. Well, it just flavors the independence of the entire state and the pride of the state. How does Austin fit into that because I think it's viewed as this center of cosmopolitan life and within a state that's known to be a bit different so how does that work? It's good it's a balance so Austin is this preposterous progressive blue city that's surrounded by ranchers with guns So this is saying keep Austin weird and surrounded and I think that's accurate because you've got a lot of very you have Universities here. You have some really intelligent interesting people here great restaurants great nightlife

But also you're surrounded by Texas Texas, the real Texas. The majority of Texas is like ranchers and small-town people and they're heavily armed. That's the thing about being an English person, sorry a British person, the gun thing is totally foreign to us. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna offer any opinion at all other than say that it's just foreign. It really is. And at times, I'm sure people in the UK would quite like to feel the security

of having that about them. But it's amazing driving around here as a British person thinking, that person in that car has almost certainly got a gun. Yeah, almost certainly. We don't have that. Well, we also have the First Amendment, and you see the consequences of not having the

Second Amendment in the UK because they can tell you, we're going to lock you in jail for a Facebook post. And you can't really do that here. You can't just force people to go to jail. That was an issue also in Australia. Australia, they took everyone's guns away after one mass shooting I think in the 1990s and they were able to round people up and put them in camps when they found out they had a cold. It was crazy. You can't do that in America. The Second Amendment protects the First Amendment.

It's maybe 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, but they're not. They're really quite different. Well, you have a real caste system over there. You have a class system over there. And actually, they're both wonderful places. I love coming here. There's something about all of the states that I've visited that I love. And I have no strong opinions.

Maybe this is the older you get. I no longer have strong opinions really about the way other people live their lives. So that's what you do. 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 the older I get, the more emoliant I become, I think about that. I when I was younger, I would have had stronger opinions about that. But you know, the way that Texas operates is, is Texas is stuff. It's, it's, it's the way you do things. And I don't, I don't, I have to be here a long time to fully understand the layers of it, the nuances of it. And I, 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. Everything has subtleties, doesn't it? Yeah. That's why I see it. 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. Yeah people always giving me their fucking opinion But they haven't stopped to consider it right, you know, and that's not me. I'm not trying to dodge issues here You probably tell them I'm not completely apolitical. I I just don't like politicians. I don't I don't I don't care what side of the fence they sit on I'm deeply suspicious of people that go into a career of politics. As you should be.

As you should be. So I don't profess to be on one side or the other. All of them tend to be inexpert. I think the idea that we've created a system where you get promoted because you're inexpert 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 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 in expert 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 but there's also this

Because of that because of there's these shitty opinions and nasty people and all this information Flowing rain in bots and all this other stuff It makes you consider the nature of speech and it makes you consider like what it gives you a choice Do I choose to engage in this kind of stuff? Do I choose to read this kind of stuff or do I just recognize it for what it is? Like, I don't drink moonshine. 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. No, I don't drink. I don't want it. I know it's there. I don't drink it. Right? So you can choose to avoid the things that suck in life.

You can. But through the prism of parenthood, I've got three kids. I do as well. Yeah, I... That's where it gets tricky. Yes, 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,

and I was just hated because I wasn't Jeremy. Which is odd, because Jeremy's one of my heroes. I think he's one of the greatest 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. Yeah I was 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. Yeah, not the third world debt. It's a tote. It's ridiculous But it doesn't matter. It's just shitty human beings with bad lives that when they go over your kids Yeah, I tell you something, how about this? Never said this publicly. I had a phone call one day from family home saying that my youngest child had been out skateboarding. He's a farmhouse middle now, he's been skateboarding on some little lane. When I heard that I thought, why would he skateboard there? It's really rough. He just fall over.

But two people in a car had approached him and tried to coax him into the car. It turned out it was two 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 agree with you that I want to be, have a sensible view of this world we live in,

but 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. You don't come back from it completely. Well, you recognize the real shit nature of some human

beings, 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. You're so right. So refreshing to hear you say that. It's just a car. Ideal in the least serious subject on the planet.

It's a motor car. It's just being attached to that iconic name it's all it is and then also the way that show was cancelled because Jeremy punched a producer did you have to work with the same producer Jeremy punched no he that guy had left I came I met him once shook his hand I never didn't know he was come on team Jeremy yeah he's he's brilliant at what he does if he punched the guy, the guy probably sucks. Oh, Jesus, I'm not coming to you on that.

I'm going to get in trouble. But I do, if no one's ever really asked me what I think of Jim, I think he's just the best. He's quite a fucking character. And I shouldn't have, maybe I shouldn't have tried to follow him. But I wasn't trying to follow him. I think what I now realize I was trying to do is I was trying to be part of the solution. I knew I could do the driving bit

But I thought the other people could cut could carry off the Jeremy bit right and I now realize that's very difficult Yeah, it's difficult to follow. Yeah, you're not gonna follow that. You're just gonna be different. He's a completely unique person Oh, I think they did Elon dirtier than anybody ever did. Oh they were naughty with that. They did a terrible thing. They did a terrible thing and I talked to him about it and he was furious. They pretended that his car died and they did it for a sketch 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. Yeah.

All right. So that was called the Roadster. That was the original Roadster. Yeah, the original one, which is a cool looking little car. And they pretended that it died on them 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. And apparently someone had got a hold of the script and read in the script before they even filmed it, then the car dies and

Then we have to figure out why the car dies So what kind of an impact do you think that had on the sales of his car? I mean how to be extraordinary 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 when it didn't die 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. That's the way a lot of reality shows are made, unfortunately.

So ultimately, you reverse engineer an outcome. So you're being told, this is what you're going to find. This is what's going to happen. All we need to do is you've got to help us get there. Now in reality TV, I can understand it, 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, it's not... And you're just lying.

You're lying. You're lying about this car breaking. It did not break. One of the biggest problems on Top Gear for me was when things didn't break. So often the producers, and I understand why, they'd want stuff to break. That was the joy, particularly normally with the older cars we'd buy and mess around with. But actually, older cars are quite reliable now. You buy something and expect the engine to blow up. It won't.

Well, how many of those 1988 Toyota Land Cruisers are still on the road with hundreds of thousands of miles? try well, they did a brilliant Film about that and they trying to kill a Land Cruiser and they just couldn't Drop it off a building and it drove away It's the cockroach of the car world. 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 I'm not sure I loved the problem. It's young the other day by saying I drive around in my Land Cruiser feeling Sorry for Range Rover drivers, and I just got a whole lot of

Read it. Yeah, but I do think that I have some sympathy for people that make television because You know if you were they say don't work with children 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 so this is the part where you say it's great but what if I think it's shit right but but they they, I can understand why the producer and the director's thinking, well

we've got to get all this packaged together, that's our hour there, that's our hour there. But we haven't stopped to actually evaluate this thing we're supposed to be evaluating. And I have some sympathy with people that make television, because actually that bit's just, they don't care about that. But for me, that all that matters I want I want to give an honest opinion of the car Well, that's where you shine and that's why you should only be doing things on your own. I think I will after this Yeah, you know fuck fuck that wellness show, too I have to take a leak. Let's come back. Yeah, take a little quick break dogs in cars is a good subject Yeah, I love having my dog in

the car my dog loves going in the car he knows we're gonna go do something fun the dog so is it sensible to suggest the dog is the ultimate car companion sure because they're never upset yeah yeah they're like yay we're in the car 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 with the shark face. It just looks like he's gonna kill you but all he'd do is lick you to death. He's a gorgeous animal and From the very from as a puppet I eat all all dogs have access to all cars It's really important for me if you've got a really if've got a car that's a million dollars, your dog's going in there. For me, it's like, it's close to religion for me. I love it.

Because for me, it's a demonstration of who I am. I want the things I love the most to share the things I love the most, right? So the dog goes in it, and I love patination on cars. So my cars are known for being not that clean let's say they just live in them and you know the handle on a GT3 under the bucket seat where you that lovely handle that you move backwards on mine they're all chewed where he chewed them as a puppy and I leave them like that so when people get in they go fuck what was that and I'll go either talk to you that but the only time I've come to grief is that I now I'm very I'm very suspicious of

switchgear that's laid on the horizontal because I was on a slip road in an in an M3 of mine last year no sorry no it'd 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 lean on the traction or the ABS and the cast went fully sideways On a slip road in the middle of the day and it looked outrageous I mean, 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 system. Oh, no without me knowing oh no so now I'm aware of that

He's not allowed aware of that. He's not allowed to do that. Yeah, they shouldn't be right there. But I suddenly thought, that's, there he is. Aw, what a cutie. That's in the back of the M5, the V10 M5, that's Pip Dog. Ah, 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 the 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 wants to see an animal stressed. And I have rejected cars because my dogs didn't like them. I had a thing called a golf. I had a thing. I borrowed one had a thing called a golf R estate. I'm not sure you got them over here, but they did a combi sort of station wagon. There's a theme here. I love station wagons.

Why do you like station wagons? I think long roofs and curtailed arses look better. Really? Yeah. The three box thing doesn't do as much for me. I long down I think they look gross yeah I love them I see them I'm like what did you do to that fucking so I bought I so this is the new actually good look I bought I bought the old one so you type in the click in 2015 Goldfarb estate there and I and I any one of those yeah so I went and bought one of these, well, that'll be good. And it's not too showy and it'll do the job.

And at that point I had my old dog boss, Vymorana, and I put him in the back and he just got out again. I was like, he hasn't done that before. Put him in the back again. And it was quite evident he did not like the car. I don't know why. I don't know why. So you didn't like the car because you didn't like the car?

So I took the car back and the guy he saw it and said what's the problem? I said the dog doesn't like it. And he went, what? The dog? What do you mean? I said, well the dog doesn't like it. I can't live with it because the dog lives with me. So he goes. Absolutely. Yeah, no, the dogs are a bit... What could it possibly have been? Who knows? Dogs are, as we know, the most incredible things. We don't deserve them. They are wonderful, but they see and they perceive things differently to us. He knew. It could be that he didn't like the cologne that the German guy that assembled the boot

interior with. You know, dogs operate on a level of perception we can't even understand. So I, yeah your fascination with bears, you know could a man be beaten up by, could a man defeat a bear? I always love that. It's like well what are you thinking of? I love, I often like walking around trying to think what my dog's seeing of a situation. What's he smelling? Oh they must be smelling just so many different things. I know. 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. They smell everything. They

have like a reference of discernibility. A menu. Yeah it's just very different than ours. So do they have like terminator vision? Is there red code going across and they're like, because they have no language too, right? So it's all on instincts which is fascinating because you know nobody taught my dog to pee on things He just knows that you step. What's this? Pees on it, you know when I I take him on trails and he finds out where all the other dogs have peed, they're like, oh, I got a pee there too.

But there's an emotional sensitivity to these animals as well. That thing there you just seen a picture of. I mean, it was bred to fight bulls and bears. That was what it was bred to do. 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. He will do that consistently every single time. He knows. He just knows. He knows she's uncomfortable. Yeah. They're empaths. Especially when they really love you there's something about them like my dog understands language like he doesn't know just like sit, give me your paw, lie down, stay. But Tone, I bet you he knows Tone. He knows things. We could be going towards the house, I go, no, let's go around the back.

And he's like, okay, we're going around the back. He knows what I'm saying. It's real subtle, real simple. I wonder if we over-project 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 over project 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. Like in Georgia, some couple recently was attacked

and someone 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. Whereas a dog like Marshall that said nothing but love and he's a golden retriever, he's bred that way, he's just a genuine joy.

Everyone he meets, like, you're my new friend. Everybody just assumes, you know, but you've met dogs, they see people, they're sketchy, they're scared of men, maybe they were beaten. They're a reflection of the environment. Exactly, exactly. Dogs are just like us. They're just like us. You get a dog like Carl Carl thinks everybody loves them

And he just want everybody wants to play and that's what he does He just runs up to you and tries to play because that's his whole life. That's all he's ever experienced I want taking care of I want some bear chat. So I have I'm slightly fascinated by These really large bears big gringes and I do find myself sometimes at four in the morning when I can't sleep, googling just the size of them, their potential power, the potential statistics of what they can and can't do. Are they as awe-inspiring as I should think they are? Oh yeah, and beyond. There's a great story that you can find that's on YouTube. There's

a clip of my friend Steve Rinella, and he was on a Fog Nack Island, and they were elk hunting, and they had shot an elk. And a Fog Nack Island is an incredibly difficult place to traverse. The bush is dense and thick, and the bears are enormous. A Fog Nack is connected to Kodiak By a small land strip, I believe It's certainly like right next to Kodiak. I might be wrong about the I think it maybe used to be kid I'm not sure but the point is They are coastal brown bears and coastal brown bears are the same thing as a grizzly bear, but their diet is very different

So their diet is so rich in protein from salmon. They have so they're enormous They could be 1800 pounds they could be 11 feet tall they're fucking huge They're preposterously big and you can't imagine how big they are unless you you really encounter them so my friend Steve He was in the group of friends, they had shot this elk and he was filming it for a television show called Meat Eater. They shot this elk and they put most of it up in the tree and they carry some of it back to camp 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 is literally riding the back of the bear for about 30 yards before he falls off of it. One of my friends, my friend, Janis, it is gnashing its teeth about 18 inches from his face as it runs by. Now imagine a head this big. I mean the head is like this isn't it? Like this, enormous, I mean so big,

just impossibly big and it's gnashing its teeth 18 inches away from his head as it runs by. He hits it with a trekking pole, like whacks it with a trekking pole. The way Steve described it 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 it is no language the flight right us full chaos full chaos terrifying chaos no one had their gun in front of them no one no one knew what to do they were all the gun like pistols were in the packs rifles were sitting down over there No one was prepared. No one thought the bear was there. They didn't understand that it was there

Yeah, I think I think As a northern European We're always fascinated by the shit. We haven't got right and grizzly bears are up there with Chevy Suburbans most muscle cars honestly the idea of the other the foreign is really fascinating for any what any person that doesn't have that sure and I it's same with Australia you know you know you go to Australia it's a very different thing they have little shit that will kill you right spiders you go there and someone

will casually go yeah man that'll that bites you you're fucked. You're like what do you mean? It's a spider. No mate Jesus it's not like a big furry thing. Right. But in South America it's big and furry. It's whole presentation is I'll kill you. Right. These ones are not quite like that. Right. So I do have this fascination with this stuff and again that's why YouTube's great because as a kid growing up if you wanted to find out about this stuff you couldn't really. You had to go get a book or there was no VHS. You went to Blockbuster. You couldn't buy documentary of Grizzly Bears could you? Right. You didn't get it. Right. Now it's all over there. But even a documentary is

not gonna do it. You have to experience them. You have to actually be around one and see it. So you have been up close with these things? 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 gonna eat you?

Yeah, so you were a food source. Yeah, are you a food source? Am I gonna eat you? What are you? One of the best things I've done with Top Gear was with Matt LeBlanc who, as you can tell, I'm very fond of. He's just a, he's great fun. But he had this idea around Bigfoot, so he's a believer. In his own way. He's not, he's not a believer, but he presents a really strong argument.

I like people that, as you can tell, I like- I'll shoot that argument full of holes. But I like to apply tests to things. He's not a believer, but he likes to apply tests. He said, stand in the Washington State forest and tell me that we know everything that's in there. And I, if you come from a little island off Europe, the size of your forests are awe-inspiring.

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. That's what it really is. And there's an actual animal called Gigantopithecus that existed alongside human beings that was an 8 to 10 foot tall bipedal ape that lived in Asia and could have come across the Bering Land Bridge. Yeah, well there you go, it's possible. So, and there's also, Native Americans

have some enormous number of names for these creatures, different tribes, so they don't have fake animals, they don't have a bunch of like dragons and stuff that doesn't exist. Yeah, it's not a mythical creature. Right. So, and I don't want to pitch Matt into something that he's not some crazy believer. And actually, the premise of the whole film was fun.

He was there going, I think there's something here. Let's go have a look for it. And I was just acutely aware, as we shot it in Northern California, so North San Francisco, the forest at night is a sketchy place. You know, it really reminds you of just how insignificant we are and how vulnerable we are without our man-made objects to defend ourselves.

Sure. And I, in the context of that, a bear, for me, was terrifying, actually. I just thought they were creatures I'd seen on nature programs. The idea that there was something out there that viewed me as food, that if you live in England, we don't have that.

We simply don't, we don't have mountain lions. I'm not gonna eat by a badger. I think the largest carnivore in the UK is probably a fox or a badger. We don't have these things that you have. All right. It's difficult for you to understand. There's nothing that viewed me as a food source.

California killed all the bears, all the grizzlies. They used to have, well, the California state flag is a grizzly bear. Yeah. And their bears were similar I believe in size to coastal brown bears, the grizzlies, the brown bears that used to live there. And there's a place in California called Leveque, there's a town called Leveque that was named after, I believe his name was Stephen Leveque. He was the last man to get killed by a brown bear in California before they eradicated them So this is in the 1800s, I guess so they just started killing them all they just killed him. Fuck these things. They're killing everybody Yeah, let's just kill him. You can sort of see why oh, yeah, but a polar bear is even more madness again, isn't it?

Oh, yeah, have you ever seen that BBC show where they put the guy in the glass cube? Oh my god I mean what was going on there? That is so terrifying the thing is just smelling meat inside that cube and trying to get through it to get to him it's biting it and you see it's massive jaws and they don't eat anything but meat yeah so they're they're the most dangerous of all polar bears and ironically they're the ones that we make seem to be the cutest. This. This. Fuck that thing.

How do you know that's going to work by the way? Did you try that out on a bear? It looks like a shit X-wing fighter doesn't it from the inside? And this bear just gets to it, it's like oh there's meat in there. How do I get to that meat? I just, that's... And we make those things out to be our friends you know that's that's the you know what would you do for a Klondike bar you know they sell Coca-Cola they sell Klondike bars and this this bear is just

a fucking super predator blue blue was a bear. What's Baloo? Baloo? Jungle Book. Oh yeah. The friendliest. It's amazing isn't it that we anthropomorphize bears. Yeah. More than just about any other creature. Yogi. Paddington Bear. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Friendly, cuddly. I think, I think because 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 for 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 only had a lot of training before, and this is a long time ago, but the polar bear training that he talked about was quite difficult to absorb really. 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. There was nothing you could carry that you could immediately produce that would stop a polar bear, an adult polar bear. So the best thing they had was a short shotgun that had a solid bolt, just a solid bolt in it. 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 that was coming at you. So they carried this thing, they carried this thing that had a solid bolt in it. That's all he had. I don't know much about guns, but that's what that's what they said they were given. Oh There's some pistols that you can Effectively unload into a bear and stop them a 50 cal would stop it with it Yeah, well sure a 50 count on they have a 50 cal pistol, but they have 40, you know 40 magnums 44 that would stop a bear. You have to shoot it multiple times 40 Magnums 44 that would stop a bear you have to shoot it multiple times Yeah, not one and you know and like if you have a 38 or a 9 millimeter good luck

Good luck bounce right off its head. Their heads are so thick You could literally shoot it in the forehead and it probably bounce off its forehead. I Mean they bite each other you've seen them go to war with each other. When they bite each other, they have insane amounts of power and bite force and they're just clamping down on each other's face and they'll do it for half an hour, walk away like it was nothing. Okay, that versus a big gorilla.

That's a good question. We've had that question many times. What is it? I think the gorilla is at a severe disadvantage because it doesn't really kill anything. So the gorilla just gnashes its teeth at other gorillas and makes like he's a badass and they have incredible power, but they don't even eat meat. Whereas the bear, all it does is run around killing things. It's all it does.

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 say, hey, 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 and 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. As a parent you realize it as well, In the UK we have you know, we don't have dangerous species of animals like that, but we we do Through anthropomorphizing them in films and cartoons. We make we make things cute that might not be cute Sure, you know that we have a real urban fox population in the UK

And they start they actually started in my hometown of Bristol The fox is a clever creature and it worked out that it was much easier to come into town and raid bins And they actually started in my hometown of Bristol. The fox is a clever creature and it worked out that it was much easier to come into town and raid bins than it was to stay out there trying to find rabbits in the countryside. And these nighttime foxes, they were very clever. No one really knew they were there.

The BBC made a fantastic documentary, I think again, Attenborough in the early 80s about urban foxes. And they've spread throughout the UK and the fox is this you know In in most cartoons. It's a lovely cuddly thing with the Bushy tail. It's a beautiful color But they're you know, they're They're predators. They're a real problem for Farmers and they date a lot of poultry. I'm not even going into fox hunting. That's not my world, but

But there's been a few stories recently foxes going into people's houses and you know attacking babies and you know stuff like that and you and then then you see on Instagram people feeding the foxes in their back gardens and you think this that's not a domesticated animal yeah you can't do that you can't you know you got to make it you got to decide one or the other also if you feed them then they become accustomed to getting food from that particular. Also, if you feed them, then they become accustomed to getting food from that particular area.

And then you kind of fuck them up, because then they lose their ability to hunt. If you do it too often, if you provide them with food every day, you're going to fuck them up. I've just had my holiday down in Newquay on the north coast of Cornwall, which is just one of the most beautiful places on the planet. 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 because all the seagulls just dive on people Wow So you're it's it's like that scene in the that Jurassic Park film where the pterodactyls are coming down You've seen a seagull eat a rat. Yeah hole hole just Throw it down. They'll do it to pigeons, they'll do it to everything they can catch. There's a wonderful Instagram clip, and I'm admitting too much of my search history here, I think it's a cormorant just being given like a black oily thing, just being given fish, and it eats like five. Yeah, I've seen that. You think that the volume of fish you've eaten there is greater than the mass of your body. 100%. There's no way that I didn't think you could eat that.

No, there's so many videos of different birds throwing down a whole large mouth bass. And it's like, how is it even getting in your mouth? They have these skinny little necks, and they swell up. And they have the fins popping out of the tails popping out of their mouth yeah they're pretty extraordinary creatures and they're essentially dinosaurs and actually to come back to the content discussion YouTube whatever it is I do love the fact it's all out there yeah the fact

it's being recorded mm-hmm 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 talk about crustacean. Why? 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. Yeah, how weird is that? So the insight into the the addled brain. I hate the crab. I also think it's a totally unnecessary looking creature. They're so delicious though. You love them.

Everyone I know loves them. My children adore them. But if there's a big brown crab on a plate, I can't even sit in a room with it. Fuck off. Just an awful thing. Also, and this is a good example, right? In the pantheon of hateful aesthetics,

right? Right. You have an exoskeleton, so you're inside out. This thing or someone or something has decided that's going to be inside out. So it has a shell to protect its soft, cuddly, and as you described, delicious innards. Why would you make that exoskeleton hairy? That's unnecessary It's also disgusting. This thing has hairs growing out of a shell. What? That's the worst aesthetic of anything. Well, very lucky. They're small 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 and they'll grow another claw. Yeah, that's from a film. That's not real. No, it's real No, it shouldn't be allowed. In other words, it should be fixed. another claw. Yeah. That's from a film. That's not real. No, it's real.

No, it shouldn't be allowed. In other words, it should be fiction. Right. That's from a horror movie. I know what you're saying. Type in coconut crab. Oh yeah, those are crazy. They're huge.

So like anything that you're scared of, you're fascinated by it. Someone did some research into the claw bite force of these things, and they were absolutely shocked at the torque and power they could generate. Look at that guy holding one. You get a perspective. What is that? The size of that thing.

What is that? Come on, that's unnecessary, isn't it? So type in claw strength of coconut crap and you will be absolutely horrified at what they found. Wow. Look at the size of that thing. They are freakish. Where do they live? They live on a couple of islands.

3,300 Newtons. That's so nuts. That could take your hand off. Oh yeah. Wow. The bite of mo- 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 clamp 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 lovely guy on 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 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? And you can't make them pets. No. That's how they're wired but the stats of that so stronger than a leopard bite that's so I would have never imagined that I would have never guessed no and I stay up at night worrying about this sometimes there's something called the Japanese with a giant spider crab so what I used to go on holiday as a kid was this lovely old sort of Victorian style hotel in Cornwall.

It was run a bit like 40 Towers. In fact it was like 40 Towers. Had the guy that run it that was the curious guy that made lots of jokes that people found a bit rude but he was wonderful. And they only had about three magazines in their very smelly lounge area where all the old people would sit. And one of them was a National Geographic magazine from about 1975. But I'd always sit and read when my parents were doing

other stuff and it had an article about Japanese giants these giant spider crabs and it was just one picture of one in a tank with with his legs like seven feet apart something well let me see this that it stayed with me it stayed with me for years I was reading about these crabs. I got locked into the crabs. Giant spider crab. Okay, spider crab. Japanese spider crab. 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, crabs are a huge problem for me. They really are. My children know. Look at this. What's that? Wow. Are those things, do they taste good? Look at that. Are the coconut crabs delicious?

I don't think, I've never heard of anyone eating a coconut crab. I wonder why. Jesus Christ, that's insane. That's so big. I had no idea that there was a crab that's longer than a human being absolutely disgraceful thing can you eat a Japanese spider crab oh I think I think you do yes like they got ice so it looks like they're preparing a Japanese spider crab is no easy task you gotta find a big pot yeah right you gotta break it up I guess Wow now what about, find out about the coconut crab. Can you eat coconut crabs? I might wanna eat one.

I'm gonna send you a picture if I get one. I'll be glad to see that it's no longer moving. I just cannot get my head. Can you eat them? I won't, yes. It says above that. Above that 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 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

However, the species is threatened by intensive hunting. Oh poor poor babies they ate a million heart who's fucking side are you on I was reading they don't have shells that's why their their claws are like their protection oh and they mostly on one island only eat other crabs oh wow they're cannibals yeah like they read red crabs I guess oh they'd other crab well we mostly eat other animals and we're animals. Well I've shared too much there so that that's my ultimate fear. Crabs. I can remember several times we'd be asked on Top Gear when we were going away you know you okay with everything and I'd be thinking I'll do anything I'll eat my own feces but if there's crabs there I've got problems

and only once did we go somewhere where there was, we had to go there, and we were just in Cuba filming the opening for this film. And we were in Bay of Pigs. So we were actually there, we were right there with a Maserati and an old Camaro filming this intro to a film, totally random. What is it like being in Cuba? I'll give you that in a minute.

Okay. And I don't know, I was so punch drunk with just travel and filming and working so hard. You'd almost just wake up and go, it's another mad place. I was in Kazakhstan today. I was like, okay, we'll get on with it. And looking back, I was in Kazakhstan for 10 days with Matt LeBlanc from Friends. That's a mad thing to do. That's pretty mad. But at the time it was just like work. Anyhow, so Bay of Pigs, and I looked at my phone. I thought, this is the Bay of Pigs.

Fucking hell. 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 for me. But the reason why it was really bad, was I looked 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, it's really worrying me. I'm thinking, that's gonna crawl up my leg. Something totally irrational.

I think we all have a creature, maybe bogeyman or a bogeywoman Whatever it is that maybe we fear do you have one or no, but I think where that comes from I have a feeling it's genetic memory I think that's where a phideophobia comes from an arachnophobia fear of snakes and spiders I think because some people we've experienced we experienced that on fear factor as well So people have a real it seems like a genetic, irrational fear of certain things. And I really feel like that is some memory

from either an ancestor getting bit or seeing someone get bit and die. I think there's something to that. There's a reason why it exists in some people and not in others. Because it can't be completely irrational, can it? Right. No, I think it's completely a genetic memory. That's my number one guess.

Cuba was fascinating because I suppose as an American citizen, you can't go there, can you? Can you go there now? I think you used to be able to go there. I think during the Obama administration, they made it so you can go there. It's an amazing place because it's one of the few. Which is kind of crazy,

your government can tell you can't go somewhere, like fuck you. Yes, and somebody that's so close to you as well. Exactly, you can go there on a rowboat. It's a museum is what it is. It's a fully functioning museum. For automobiles. For life in many ways.

You know, 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 a society that has limited technology and has evolved the way that it does, and then you see how resourceful human beings can be 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 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 ladders 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. It's sort of slightly hidden from all the tourists. Yes, 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. I think it's 90. Is it?

It's amazing. It's 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, I had, I, I, in many ways I loved it. In many ways I wouldn't want to go again. It's one of those curious places where I thought I've seen the right side of it. If I scratched too deeply, am I going to see something I don't want to see? Right. Maybe that was it. Well, you certainly will. I mean, there's a reason why people are escaping there. Yeah, of course. They're trapped. Yeah, they're trapped in a communist dictatorship

Yeah, it's not good. Yeah, but but as a tourist you obviously presented something completely contorted. I think that's what happens And when you're making a TV show, it's also a communist dictatorship. That's in a very unusual predicament because they're not allowed to trade, right? So China is a communist dictatorship, but we buy everything from China. They're arguably worse than Cuba, but we're not allowed to trade with Cuba because some shit that happened in the 60s. But Cuba can sell stuff to other countries other than America. So we're full of their cigars and their rum. But not America. I think you can get them now in limited quantities, but it used to be if you got a hold of Cuban cigars,

you would, I would get them. I'm going to tell you a thing or two that was illegal. I used to get them from England. And I used to get Cuban cigars. I had a friend who lived in England, and he would send me Cuban cigars. And then later, he would send me the labels. So he would send me the cigars with no labels,

like in a Ziploc bag, send me a few cigars. And then he would send me the cigars with no labels, like in a Ziploc bag, send me a few cigars, and then he would send me the labels in an envelope a couple days later. The pollution in Havana was the worst I've ever experienced of a city. I think when the wind changed, that power station just blew straight over. Was it in Indiana, where there's three coal-fired power plants, and if you go outside, you can run your finger over someone's windshield and you have black coal dust on your finger. And all these people in that area have all sorts of weird fucking diseases because they're

just breathing in particulates every day. We went to one of the best things I did with Top Gear, again, a repeat phrase, maybe I need to reconsider my negativity, was the Kazakhstan thing with Matt. So we went there and Rory was there as well. And we ended up at Baikonur, which is the Cosmodrome, where the Russian space program is based. And it's an incredible area.

I mean, it's just mind-bendingly brilliant. vastness of that part of the world the Soviet Union if we think that America the United States America is big The Soviet Union was was on a scale that you cannot comprehend Kazakhstan was just a small bolt-on to Russia But in itself has I think the fourth longest border of any any country with Russia It's it's enormous and bite this area of Baikonur, the way that the Russians worked was once they'd used the launch site, they'd just go somewhere else. Because it was so big, they'd just abandon that one and move on to another one. 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've been to Indian cities where there's heavy pollution, but that's just sort of diesel and petrol fumes.

There's something else there. You're like going, what is that? But they culminated with us watching a Soyuz rocket takeoff 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 takeoff before I haven't been to Cape Canaveral or anywhere in the US. It was one of the most awe-inspiring things I've ever seen. Sounds like such a cliche 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. There's a sort of ripping sound in the air that

people will have seen it will understand. It does feel like just the power of this thing is shredding the atmosphere around you and it hits you in the solar plexus. You have no control over this sort of rattling in your chest I think we were less than a kilometer away from where it went off. It was absolutely Sensational to witness Wow just power raw power The idea that mr. Musk has got something that's more powerful than Saturn 5 about to take off It's that that fascinates me, all of that sort of thing. We talk about power and engines.

Your rat has got a bit of grunt. But these things, they just rattle you. But the smell afterwards is interesting. Oh, it's got to be horrible. Yes. Every time they launch, I mean, how many cars does that account for? You think about the amount of pollution that's put out,

amount of carbon that's put out by the burning rockets? I can't even begin to quantify it. 100,000 cars? What are they burning as well? What's in there? What's in there? Talking about ropey fuels, I was talking to some guys that used to race sports cars, and Formula One

back in the 80s, when they were using some very funky fuels because they they had There was lots of technology left over 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

sometimes have an area outside the Formula One garage. It wasn't as developed a sport then, but they still had sponsors and guests. And one particular team had all the trees they put outside just died in an afternoon. Because this fuel was so obnoxious. 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 groups who race cars after qualifying. Because the fuel was just impossible, just poisoning them. But it gave them an extra 100 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, you can see the lower IQ in the kids. And they think that it has dropped 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 under 50 years ago were made of lead Lead pipes. Well, my friend Shane Gillis is in a hilarious bit about George Washington and George Washington had lead dentures So he had this lead thing where these fake teeth were so he had like lead in his mouth so he's getting lead poisoning all day long. I have a I have somewhere in my house

something I bought from the internet which is Boots Chemists so our chemists your CVS we have Boots which is our standard chemist. It's a logo of healthcare, of stuff that's good for you. Boots used to sell cigarettes for coughs. Duh! I've got some, I've got a tin somewhere. It's brilliant. So it shows you how you should smoke them to get rid of your cough.

Oh, boy. So I think- That wasn't that long ago. No, that's probably after the Second World War. No, before the Second World War. Crazy. I would have thought so. A hundred years ago they thought cigarettes were good for coughs.

Of course they did. But then someone... I just Googled it, something like it, to see if I'd find the ad and it, AI says that menthol cigarettes are flavored to help with coughs. Oh, come on. What? It says the menthol can are flavored to help with coughs. Oh, come on. What? It says the menthol can decrease the cough reflex. Which can help with coughs.

I've heard of that. By reducing airway pain and irritation, menthol can reduce the pain and irritation caused by cigarette smoke. Decreasing the cough reflex, menthol triggers cold, sensitive nerves in the skin, which can decrease the cough reflex. Soothing a dry throat. Ment the cough reflex soothing a dry throat menthol can soothe the dry throat feeling that's funny that AI is willing to say something that's very un-PC. I fucked up here because I never heard that.

Well it's probably true it's terrible for you. Yes however smoking can make you cough more. Interesting. Yeah can't you say menthol without it being in the format of a cigarette? I'm sure. Yeah, it's a cough drop, I think. But what we've learned about metallurgy is fascinating, 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. There's technology out there that will change something at some point

We just don't know what it is yet Right gonna happen because we're having to relearn so much of what we thought was facts, you know in other areas of our lives Mm-hmm I think maybe that's what I get frustrated by is you can't wait for that unprecedented change to come Necessarily, but you have to assume at some point someone's gonna make a battery that runs on wasps piss or in water or something Aren't they it's gonna 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 the lithium from That's a slightly specious 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 Do you know that story? It's one of the great conspiracy theories that he yelled at he met with some people You know that wanted to talk to him about this design and then he yelled they poisoned me and he ran outside and died Yeah, and then nobody ever heard about the water- powered car ever again after that so what is all that? Fucks all that shit. So the mysterious death of Stanley Meyer and his water powered car. It's a wonderful conspiracy theory I haven't looked into it enough to know how much of it is true. It looks like a Tamiya model underneath Look at it. Looks like 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 Stanley did Stanley Meyer die because he knew how to turn water into fuel This is a British newspaper. Is it the Express? Hmm. When was this go back? I can't remember this thing is ridiculous What kind of shit website is this? It's some really bad one. See if there's another article I'm sure there's other articles about that car that ran that ran on water. This is where it happened. It happened outside of Columbus.

Oh, okay. So his bizarre death at age 57 ended work that, if proved valid, scroll up, could have ended reliance on fossil fuels. People who knew him said his work drew worldwide attention, mysterious visitors from overseas, government spying, and lucrative buyout offers. I know that he was offered money to sell. I think the Y-Files did an episode on this. The Myers death was laced with all sorts of story and conspiracy, cloak and dagger stories, Gross City Police Lieutenant Steve Robinette, lead detective on the case. I told them the stand had died and they never said a word. He recalled absolutely nothing, no condolences, no questions.

How did it run on water? I don't know. Stephen Myers featured in numerous internet sites. Significant portion of the 1995 documentary, it runs on water narrated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, aired on BBC Focus on his water fuel cell invention. It's a fuel cell, okay. Who is ignored, called a fraud and died without his hometown even remembering him with so much as a plaque.

Hmm. 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 yeah right especially over exhausts right 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 a match is lighted. The volatile gases explode and prove that water is separated into its components.

Meyer said his invention did so by using much less electricity than physicists say is possible. Video shows contraption turning water into a frothy mix within seconds. Takes so much energy to separate H2 from the O," said Ohio State University Professor Emeritus Neville Rie, a physicist for more than 41 years. That energy is pretty much not changed with time. It's a fixed amount and nothing changes that. Meyer's work defies the laws of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Basically it says you cannot get something for nothing. 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. Hmm. So who knows? But when he said, the Lord sent me, okay, now it gets odd.

His first few words were, the Lord sent me here to this home. I'd like to use your home as an experiment. Okay, hold on. Meyer's creativity seemed to peak when he met Charles and Valerie Hughes, truck drivers who lived in the Jackson township. Julia Hughes, the youngest of the seven children, was five years old when Meyer rang the doorbell of her home on Mar Lane Drive. 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.

Jesus. Julia Hughes recalled the chemical stench the system was supposed to channel the sun's rays into the tower base to heat water and generate electricity for an air conditioner. Despite extensive efforts that included re-plumbing the house, the invention never worked. Oh, so he might have been a kook.

Hard to tell. But. But I I tell you what you love a conspiracy theory I know you do I'm less I am seduced by some yeah but but I'm probably less into them than you are I will say this 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. Unquestionably. And I think the automotive industry is and has been at the forefront of that.

Well, the oil business. I know. Just the oil business in general. 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. Yeah, the Arabs wanted to offer me $250 million to stop today. You and this lovely family can live in peace and prosperity the rest of your days. Meyer told them this. The army officials, meanwhile, had questioned Meyer about what foreigners wanted, thinking

that a deal might have been struck. Charlie recalled Meyer telling the family, Meyer discussed the offer in the Clark documentary, many times over the last decade have been offered enormous amounts of money simply to sell out or to sit on it the Arabs have offered me a total of a billion dollars total pay simply to sit on it and do nothing with it hmm pardon me goes I think I'll tell you I'll tell you why sure an event that happened here that did shake my I'm less cynical probably what I'm less likely to be as interested in conspiracy theories maybe because I maybe I lack your

imagination I don't know what it is but I I like I like maybe I'm terrified of the fact that I'm being taken for a ride in two areas of my life 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. Explain it to people because it's pretty crazy. Well effectively Volkswagen were able to put software into their vehicles that allowed them to cheat in emissions tests and a load of vehicles that had stated emissions qualities didn't have them when they were

not on the test rig. And actually that process had been going on in many different ways for most motor cars forever. But the scale on which they offended and the fact they did it in the US meant they got absolutely hammered for it. But you know, if you have an Audi RS4 from 2007 and you start the engine up it idles in an odd way. The car feels very aggressive for the first 30 seconds that you start it. That's because there's an air pump inside the car that is basically forcing air through the exhaust faster than it needs to so that when you put it on a

test rig it has lower emissions than it should do. This had been going on for a long time, but the scale of it Was I suppose an industrial subterfuge that I I didn't think was I don't think it could happen, right? Especially with a large corporation like Volkswagen. I know that did shake me because I always I'm a flag bearer for my industry I'm proud to be part of the wider car industry I'm a flag bearer for my industry. I'm proud to be part of the wider car industry. And I didn't think that could happen. And it wasn't just a bit of naughtiness, it was lies. And how many people knew about it?

One has to assume quite a few. Yeah, you would assume. But I think there was a moral complication to it because they were still making very clever really quite clean vehicles. They weren't trying to cover up something absolutely hideous. They were in the margins, but it was still wrong. It was morally completely wrong. And once they got away with it. They were stuck with it

they couldn't suddenly backtrack on it, right and there's and I think the It shook my confidence in 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've killed JFK. Yeah. And you're like, Ooh, they might've,

they might've. It makes very good listening. I love listening to talk about it Oh, they're fascinating, but I suppose I 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 minute What else have they been doing here? Mm-hmm. And how bad was it? And how many of them did they get away with? Yeah. For every one that gets caught, it's not like they catch every conspiracy. There's no way. No, some of them sneak through and manage to be effective.

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? And the possibility of him winning this court battle was something like one half of one percent. This is Mike Lynch is it? Yeah, the guy who just died on the boat. And then right after he gets out, the guy who he's with, the co-defendant gets hit by

a car and then he gets hit by a freak water spout and sinks his yacht. I was discussing this over a few glasses of wine with some friends. It's a good one. It's got Rogan written all over it. This one has. It's perfect for you. It's so juicy. I'm not going to pass any comment.

I'm going to be a soft cock again, but I'm going to say that I read it and my eyes, well my eyebrows raised. I thought that seems like a coincidence. Didn't the lawyer die as well? Who else died? The co-defendant was hit by a car. In Cambridge, I think. So one incident was a cycling incident in the UK.

A few days before. Was it hit and run? No, they've got, they have, the person that hit the cyclist, I think they have got but they were asking for my information around it Did the person that hit the cyclist have any connection to anybody that I don't know was it? I don't know suspicious. I just read it just thought like you online Yeah, billionaire autonomy co-founder Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain's careers were intertwined for years in a fraud trial Then they died on the same day miles apart Well, I

Think I suppose the difficulty I have with that is that's a tragedy Fucked over some billionaires. Well, they they fucked over some very very They fucked over some billionaires. Well, they they fucked over some very very Yeah, they sold they sold autonomy to you at Packard and there was a big He was extradited to the US and and I you know, I don't know. It's not my world I suppose the conspiracy theory thing is fascinating But then when it's in the context of people losing their lives like that I'm like do I want to comment because it's so awful what happened.

It's awful. And also, going down in a boat is right up there for me. Jesus Christ. Right. Also, a freak water spout. If you've seen the size of this boat, it's like 300 feet long. Yeah. How?

Yeah. How did it sink? What happened? I know. You love it, don't you? Love what happened I know you love it don't you love it yeah because I got to think that there's people in this world that have the ability to do certain things to certain people that fuck them over I think you're right yeah and that seems like that would qualify we're talking about they got ripped off by billions of dollars and then somehow another guy gets off and then dies right away.

Yeah. And dies in the weirdest of ways, a freak water spout. How many people die every year in freak water spouts on 300 foot yachts? I'm doing my uncomfortable face. I just, it's so out there. It's so out there. Yeah.

It really is. Yeah. And I'll bring it back to something more mundane. There were quite a few things that happened in Formula One, sport that I follow the most closely probably, in the 90s and noughties, 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 and I and I never I never stopped to think of the implications of that

thought but if someone could do that in a sport they can do it in the rest of your life. They've always rigged sports I mean people have been rigging sports since the beginning of sports betting. But the sport that you're involved with you can't can you rig that? Oh yes, people have rigged it. People have gotten in trouble for rigging it. Yeah, certain fighters may have an injury. 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 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 TKO 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 no one from his gym is allowed to compete the UFC anymore and he's under investigation and if it turns out that they're what they're saying about him is true he's really really rightly fucked. Yeah, I Think actually there's a crossover here between conspiracy and cheating Now I think the greatest book that's not been written and never will be written is the greatest cheats in motorsport Some of the stories I've heard over the years are so good

Just because what they do is they reveal the competitive nature of human beings, but also ingenuity. You will see people that most ingenious when they're cheating, not when they're abiding by the rules. Right. And Formula One is about the phrase that the great Mark Donoghue, one of your great drivers, Mark Donoghue was a Can-Am driver who did a bit of Formula One as well. He coined the phrase the unfair advantage, which a phrase I love because it just defines so many sports. Whether we like it or not, we're searching for the unfair advantage, aren't we? And in motorsport, some of the cheats I've heard about are just brilliant.

Like what kind of stuff? So I can remember hearing a guy called Wynn, who was a touring car driver from the UK in the sort of 60s and 70s, describing how there was a famous commentator we had called Murray Walker. He was the voice of our motorsport for 40 years. He had a very distinctive voice. He was a lovely man. Met him a few times. And he'd often describe Wyn Percy getting out of this

particular car he'd been racing, covered in sweat, because it was such a monster to drive. But it turned out that it was a V12, and it was very, very thirsty. 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. And he told this story about it.

I don't think I'm misquoting. He said, well, that's why I was knackered. It wasn't because it was a V12, because I was to inflate a bladder in the fuel tank to cut off a load of the volume. So that you know. Ah. And he told this story about, I don't think I'm misquoting, he said, well that's why I was knackered. It wasn't because it was a V12, because on the warm down lap, I knew I had to pump this thing like 40 times

to fill up the bladder. Wow. And there's amazing stories of just, just ingenious cheats. I mean, there's so many of them. I mean, Formula One is about not getting caught. That's really what, that's what it's about. You know, Formula One is about not getting caught. That's really what it's about. What's the line between interpreting rules

and not getting caught? And I love all of that. And I have a few times said to people I know in those sports, can I write that book? Will you tell me? They went, no, I won't tell you any of the stories. I'll tell them to you now as a friend. But if they're ever published, I'm a dead man.

Right, because of all the money involved. But the ingenious cheating. In 1995, Toyota was excluded from the World Rally Championship because it just had a brilliantly simple piece of cheating. All the cars, the World Rally cars were turbocharged and you have what's called a restrictor, an intake restrictor. 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.

But they created this brilliantly simple bypass valve that meant that when the car was running, the air would just go round. And the intake restrictor 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 was a bit more aggressive. What they didn't realize was that the World Rally Championship had a couple of situations

where the cars run side by side at a drag race. And so the Toyota just fucked off into the distance. And everyone went, well, they're cheating, aren't they? And then they found it. But this was perpetrated by Toyota, by a car company. And I suppose those things I find fascinating. Wouldn't you tell them to don't get ahead in the straightaway? They didn't tell the driver and co-driver

didn't know. They just knew that sometimes when they got in the car someone did that with a lever. They didn't know. And Formula One is not big in America which is odd. So how do you feel about it here in Austin? Well, I saw it in Austin. It's amazing. I love it. I went to Kota. That's, we have that up there. Yeah. That's Kota. 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 of the season here. 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 in an oval. They do have some street circuits, don't they? They do have some shorter ovals, but yeah, Formula One is more complex. Way more complex. and 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 gray area of interpreting a rule book that's complicated

but also trying not to get caught and some of 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, was one of the great interpreters of the rule book was Colin Chapman, who was the man that founded Lotus. And he had found a way in something called the Lotus, I think it was 77.

It was a car that Andretti won the championship in. They created 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 basically have an understanding of it, I've driven these things. But if my terminology is wrong I apologize. 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, in the, in the paddock, it looked like a normal car. But he, he, he, 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 run around with this. He 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 behaviors. What's also the margins of victory are so slim if you have the same horsepower, same compound tires, just different engineers putting it all together. Yes they may have the same tires right but this is you know these are bunch of people 400 people in different parts of the world are told, this is the rule book, away you go. And the margin

of, and they are within a tenth of each other on a track? It's amazing. It is amazing. But they're all at it. And they're all, see there's always some conspiracy at the moment. Red Bull, apparently they thought, everyone thought they had some special brake system that they've now had to get rid of because the FIA was aware of it. Now Red Bull's complaining that McLaren and Mercedes have got flexible front wings. It is the politics of the playground being played out with billions of dollars on a racetrack and that's why I'm totally addicted to it at the moment. And how much of that engineering and technology gets to consumer cars 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 road car 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 gonna have a profound effect on it. He's gonna know shit. He's gonna have a way of looking at that project that's gonna 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 crossover between Aero and Norskell engineering and Formula One. That's profound. That really is. I mean, the way a Formula One car sucks itself to the track is an upside down plane. But there were further things as well. The carbon ceramic brake disc was developed for what? Concorde. Really? They couldn't stop Concorde. It was

going through brakes, obviously. And someone went, well, why don't we use different material for the rotor? And that's where the carbon ceramic brake came from. Oh. So there was this huge crossover in metallurgy. And actually, to broaden that, what's the greatest legacy of your frankly amazing, mind-boggling national space program?

It's what we learned about materials, isn't it? NASA served to teach us all about materials. We are benefiting now. 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. I really believe that. That's the incredible corollary 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? I'm just fascinated by them. We did a film with the F-35. I raced an F-35

in a McLaren Speedtail. 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. But we weren't allowed any cockpit shots at all. We weren't allowed to sit inside it. I just got a description from the pilot of what the aircraft could do. Well, you know, they're doing those fighter jets now with AI running them.

And they beat human pilots 100% of the time in dogfights. Do they? Yeah. The F-35 was one of the coolest man-made objects I've ever seen. They're incredible. We had to go up there to actually, it was a bit like that bungee jump thing. This was so serious that we had to be rigorous.

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, but they have a decontaminated area. 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. So you go in there you're decontaminated and we spent several days working out how to run this drag race. It started out with a genuine drag race between me and a McLaren and this F35 and they had their data on how it accelerated and we have McLaren there with their data and we worked they worked out that the car would get off

the line much quicker than the plane would overtake at a certain point. 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. And we had to sort of choreograph that bit, not fake it but choreograph it. 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. 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. Whoa. At about 137 miles an hour. It didn't do that. I was fully, as 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'd This is why I you know, I want to be someone that Expresses joy what things who have done and when an f-35 comes past you and it's just got off the ground here Yeah, you were when this thing comes past you it it's just got off the ground. Is this it right here? Yeah, you what? When this thing comes past you, it just started screaming, fuck! Does it show your front wheel?

Look at that! Look at that thing there! Wow, that's incredible. It's so nuts that they put you next to that thing though. When it was right by me, it fucking, and we never showed. You're going 218 miles an hour? No, that's kilometers. Oh kilometers. Oh, kilometers.

It comes past me like that. Bang! And I just thought, and as it did it, the front wheels just went, oh, and I thought, well, I'm in trouble here. Wow. But the power and the sound, you know, you talk about the internal combustion engine,

why these electric things make no sound. We are amateurs compared to what they get to play with. Yeah. And they have like, like what 30 minutes of flight time before they run out of gas. I don't think that thing can go very far. But but you know, all this vectoring, where it can just it can just decide to be hanging like a helicopter. Yeah, incredible. It's remarkable. But

they don't share the IP at all. You're not allowed to we were not allowed to see inside it. That is so wild that it can do that. Just hover in the air like that and shoot its draft down. Fucking crazy. Maybe that's the TV show. I just think there's a whole, is it boys toys? There's gotta be more sophisticated.

There's a whole load of stuff that's got moving parts. I think you're overthinking it. I just love it. I think you and your passion for automobiles is all you need do it on the internet it'll be huge I think so I don't think you need anything else I quite like those things they're pretty badass if you can get a hold of one of those that's great too but f22 have you been to an air show and seen one of those I flew in an FA-18. Did you? Yeah, with the Blue Angels. Wow. It was insane. Insane. Yeah, insane. Just the G4, the physical effect on your body is so extraordinary. Yeah. No, they don't use G suits either. They don't use gravity suits. So you have to hook. It's

cool. So you hold on to the- And then you do that very thing. You're forcing blood and you feel your consciousness closing like an elevator door. You 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 car the stunt planes mm-hmm It's a prop thing, but you know they're the ones that they use in the Red Bull Air Races mm-hmm And I once he got to sort of six, seven Gs, 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, 10 Gs like that. It's fucking insane. 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 and you're you know 100 200 feet off the ground just flying through this canyon sideways it's fucking insane insane I did a ridiculous film looking back with a guy called Andy Green do you know Andy Green is no

fastest man on earth he's the one that still holds the world's land speed record so he drove thrust SSC he was the first man to go supersonic in a car. 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 supposed to be funded by industry. They lost all those sponsors. And they decided to try and publicly fund it. And they couldn't.

And Andy, during that phase, said, I've got an extra 300. He's an ex-fighter pilot, because they're the only people that can drive these things. Racing drivers are useless, because the decision making is so quick and profound. They identified early on that he 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. So he's put, just bore yourself with it. He's the change in g-force during the run. So he's put, just bore yourself with it, he's put, there's a film, if you type in my name

Look at that fucking thing. Type in my name and his name and there's a film on YouTube of him taking me up in this stunt plane to put me through the G's that he'll have in the part, and honestly by the end of it. How fast did he go in this thing oh my god look at that he had oversteer over 600 miles an hour look at it that was in the US wow so he and he um but the way he put me through the g forces I would have been a terrible fighter pilot I couldn't I kept getting gray kept kept graying out, pumping and everything. Yeah well those guys are all jacked that's one thing I found out about the Blue Angels they had like when

you go to their training facility there's weightlifting equipment everywhere you have to have muscles 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 much. I love talking to you, too Thanks for being here man. It's great to see you again after all these years Oh, 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. Fuck those people Bye everybody