#2199 - Chris Harris
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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.

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 will 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. What's that? That's fine. We on me?

I'm going to go into it all. Okay. But it might be what seems quite revelatory to me. Anyway, good to see you since we're rolling. Cheers, sir. Ten years. Yeah. It's been a while. And do you know what? I don't ever listen to what I say or watch what I record. I don't watch my own shows. Good for you. You probably don't either, do you? I don't, no. It's good for the soul. Once it's done, it's buried. Exactly. But I think I came to see you about a month before I received a phone call saying, do you want to do this television show called Top Gear?

Yeah, it was before Top Gear for sure. 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 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. Right. Because it's my dream job. Right. And I know that Top Gear is a weird thing in the U.S. because I think many U.S. 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 of decision I made the wrong call I shouldn't have done it really yeah I had a great time but you try following him in the UK just because of how much he's loved and yeah yeah I just I didn't realize how deep rooted it was I still get hate mail now I still get hate mail yeah you could have had the exact same show under a different name and people would have loved it yeah yeah and I think we made some good films

And I love what I did. But even if we made a good film, it was always shit because it wasn't Jeremy. I really enjoyed it, though. I enjoyed you being on it. 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 of your taste in motor vehicles.

Am I allowed to say what it is or not? Yeah, yeah. It's a Raptor R that John Hennessey 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 always drink the local beer. You know, when you go to a city, don't order a Heineken or a Bud. Drink the local beer. 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 vehicles. A 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. It just has this beautiful rumble. Do you think you'll be allowed to drive that in 10 years' time in this state? No.

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 in California, they have a mandate in 2035. After 2035, no internal combustion engine vehicles are allowed to be sold in the state. Same in the UK. Although they – no, it was 2035. Then the last administration moved it back to 2030. Okay.

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. Yeah. 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. You 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 where you 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...

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 you will as well. I've been pushed into the corner of being Darth Vader. I just don't think I am. When I can, I use the train. If I'm in a city, I quite like riding a bicycle because it suits me. I like it. It works. But when I want to go out on an open road and enjoy a 9-11...

I want to enjoy 9-11. Why can't I? I find it very difficult when I'm told to do things I don't think are rational or reasonable. No, and there's this religious ideology 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 that.

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 comparatively. That's a really interesting point because it's like being a parent. On the one hand, you can respond to that by saying, well, if I'm going to make no difference, I'll just carry on driving around in my Raptor. But then it could be suggested that that means that you should make a difference.

But I find it really difficult that we can't understand that if there has to ultimately be a change at some point, if it's rational, I don't know if it's now or... It's certainly not 2035. That's not reasonable. No. We need to prepare ourselves to make logical and progressive changes. I don't think you can mandate those changes. No, you're quite right. First of all, we have a long history of internal combustion engines as recreation vehicles, and we love them. And we're not...

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 probs.

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 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. 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. The technology doesn't work at the moment. It just doesn't sound the same. It doesn't feel the same. But that's 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'd 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. 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...

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 some days, 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. And 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. You hit the gas on the highway and you see black smoke. And I do want things to be different.

over time. And I can see that that's the way that we might be heading. But 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. 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. You know, yeah, 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 I think they'd be like you're not using gravity Why don't you guys just go use gravity made it Billy 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

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. Wheel's 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 completely automated. You can press, doot, doot. You press a button. It'll drive you just based on the navigation. Where do you stand on that?

I don't trust it. No, nor do I. I mean, it just doesn't feel right. The 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. Waybo? 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 caused 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 them ride horses. And I have a 1990 –

I guess it's a 93 RS America and it that's a rare car 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. So this one, I sent it to 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'm smiling. I have this big smile on my face like I'm on a fucking ride. I was going to bring my Gunther Works here today, but it's raining.

Have you got one of those? Yeah. Has it got a roof or not? Yeah, it's got a roof. So where do we stand on the resto mod scene? Do we think it's gone too far, or do we believe it's the way forward? Well, I like the ones that look old but drive new. Yeah. Because they're less dangerous. That's the whole idea, isn't it, really? But I don't think there's anything dangerous in that 964. That's mine. That's beautiful. Oh, it's all good. How much power has that got?

460 and it's, you know, 2,000 pounds. I've also got to raise my hand here and say that I work for Singer. So I've got to be very careful. I love those too. But I actually have a little contract with them. So I've actually professionally got to say I ignore that vehicle. But actually, I think... I love the Restomod thing. I think we might be at peak Restomod because there's so much of it going on. But it does...

It segues into a point I wanted to make about the way we're travelling. One of the ways I find to appease myself, if I do wake up some days and think I'm a pretty wasteful individual or whatever it is, even I have moments where I think, just have a look at yourself in the mirror.

Just buy a used car. Then you're not having another one built. There are so many great old cars out there. I just go out and buy something that's 10 years old. Go and look at a 10-year-old AMG. What a machine. That's a vehicle that's already been built. Its wastefulness has already been absorbed into this weird world we live in. Go and buy it. It's there for you. With its 500 horsepower, it's ready to go. The greenest thing you can do is to go and buy an old Ferrari. 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 the best thing. But no one seems to express it this way. And the other way is to restomod. It's 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 billions 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, but you're going to make them three tons. Shouldn't they be that big? Not only that, there's a problem with guardrails. Jesus.

Jesus. They're too heavy. They go right through the guardrails like butter. I saw that. 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's an E46. Peak car. Peak car. It's such a great car. I know. It's not too powerful, but it's so delightful. It doesn't have a radio. It's got cloth seats. Cloth seats. That is rare. Yeah. Cloth seats. I just bought the V10. So you had the E60 V10 M5 over here. Crazy machine. Yes. We had the Touring in the UK. They built a Touring, which is a state car. Sorry, a station wagon.

and I've got one of those that I bought earlier in the year and I'm just do you know what I paid £27,000 for it I probably spent more than that on it already doing 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 seeing the improvement on a vehicle, like getting a vehicle and going, yeah, you know, the suspension is okay, but these shocks are like, I could adjust this and maybe this and maybe I can get a little wider wheel in this and...

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...

I 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, you know, and you think you're the dog's bollocks. Looking back, it's fucking embarrassing. Yeah.

So I've parked it up in Soho, right in the centre of London, 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...

The steering lock, the male part that goes into the headstock. They angle ground off, break the steering. And then they have a moped behind or something quite powerful with a leg out and another guy and push your bike away in neutral. And they get it around the corner into a van and away it goes. And they did it right in front of me. And so I walked up and I was like, this is my bike. I'm not, you know, I'm small, not a very big guy. You know, I don't present any kind of a threat. And there was three of them.

And I challenged them and I said, this is not on. 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? Because I could just see the fairing squashed. And then the guy tried to hit me with the hammer. And I was like, I remember screaming, you're trying to steal my bike and now you're trying to hit me with the hammer. And then they left. And I was really shocked. I'd never had anything like that 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. And I said, well, he went, how are you? I said, well, someone's just tried to steal my bike and they tried to hit me with a hammer. And he came outside and he looked at the bike. He's got the most lovely deadpan voice. And he goes, you want to get those Ducati performance levers? Those are too long. LAUGHTER

He was trying to mod it. He didn't even care. You almost got killed by a hammer. Because he's like you. He's obviously tough. He's a big boy. And he's like, he's fine. But those levers are too long. They don't suit that bike. Those levers are too long. Yeah, the mod thing is really important to me. I love it. I cannot leave stuff alone.

Yeah, I enjoy messing around with stuff too. It's part of the fun of the older cars. Particularly like I have a Nissan GT-R.

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 find. A stock 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. It was still laying around. But I got it because I know you can fuck around with them. So I'm never going to get rid of it. I'm going to keep it forever. And I'm going to juice it up to probably 1,000 horsepower or something stupid. And if they make another one, it'll have to be a hybrid. It'll have to be... Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it'll never be the same. I mean, they're about to do that to Porsches, 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 think I signed a piece of paper saying I'd get sued for €60,000 if I said anything. It's, yeah. There's a point in this process where...

Well, you have to acknowledge that the main criticism of hybridity in cars is mass, is 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. Right. You can't. Because actually, 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.

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 whole internet had a massive collective baby and went, oh, it's fucking ruined everything.

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.

And that's the clue as to what I think about the new M5. Judge it. Get in it and judge it before you actually, or drive it before you judge it. And that's what it looks like. God, it looks good. It's a 700 and something horsepower sedan with a BMW badge. Look, 727,000. When is that coming out? The launch is at the end of this year. It is, it's a beast. I could only imagine. I had an M5. I miss it. Was it a V10 or the V8 one?

It was V8. The E39. 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's a good car. I loved it. It was great. And actually, an M car...

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, a little bit of ride height, a 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 they are. I was like, I'd love to find a low mile one. And this one has super low miles. I forget what it is, but it's really low miles. M-TEC cloth is rare. Yeah. I look at the cars I missed out on. There was a white manual M-TEC on 18-inch wheels, E46 M3. And 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. Yeah.

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. And... 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 look where... That was done by Tuttle, right? And look where they are now. They've just come back from Pebble Beach with this GT1 amazing looking thing which you might have seen. You Google GT1 Tuttle. Doesn't he have a car that goes to 10,000, 11,000 RPMs? That's so nuts. Yeah. It's a lovely thing that he developed with a friend of ours called Philip Cadori who obviously runs the Quail. And it's a

okay so k has it's a very good name isn't it it's a 911k developed by a guy called kadori k for kadori and it revs to 11 000 11 000 rpm 911k 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 it's just so visceral you're 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 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 well that's that's what they've just done so tuttle did the gt1 he's just launched that at pebble beach wow look at that that looks i hate the wheels

But again, I've got to be careful. I work for Singer. I love Singer. Singer are amazing, but that's my friend Richard who'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. I'm 100% right. Those wheels are disgusting. The 911K is an amazing thing. And maybe if I was Porsche or another car maker, I'd be starting to cry foul.

Because what's happened is the Restomod thing is actually a movement that reminds car makers 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. Right. And 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 for three hundred thousand dollars 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 called BMW, you cannot make that car. Right. And I'm not sure that's fair. Right. Like what Ruff does? Yeah. 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 Restomod. Porsche could not make a Singer. They could. But they couldn't sell it. 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, and people don't understand that if, I mean, I have a 2007 GT3 RS. Yeah.

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. But they'll still rotate. Yeah. Just the engine out the back. You add that to an old like design. It's less prominent now because tire technology has moved on so much. Right. The first time I got to drive a lot of these things.

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My colleague who called Paddy McGinnis, who's one of the co-hosts, whose claim 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 um the car's on a low loader and i look at the tires they're 20 years old oh god yeah well that's it had been borrowed for the job you know old tire technology matched with age as well it's terrible that's the story with uh 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 well paddy gets so paddy gets eviscerated in the press because he can't drive and everything else

I could have been in that car. I'd have crashed it. I can drive a bit. Anyone. You cannot. And 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, some of it's like witchcraft. 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 high wear stuff where it needs the grip, 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? So...

It's a really, really interesting point. They must have done. For me, it comes under the same heading as someone must have made a light bulb that you never need to replace. But why would they make it? Well, the tire without air thing, for safety purposes, there's a lot of reasons why you would want a tire that... I mean, I know they did make them. They do have them. There's this tire that looks like a sort of spring. You know that Adidas shoe that has the sort of lattice? Yes, 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

Don't have an answer. That's what it is. It's like it's heavier I don't know 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 were 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 - it gets in the way of your ability to make money right normally the latter and

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. Tires are a… The more you get into cars, tires are a fascinating subject. That's a good opener when you meet some of the opposite sex.

But it's never worked for me. But actually, they are. Because they're the only contact you have with the ground. So it stands to reason they're the most important part of the performance package. F1 commentators, and I'm actually slightly less so in the US, but in Formula 1, the commentators spend most of the time talking about tyres. Because it's the main factor.

But they're not sexy. Tires are not sexy by definition. So, you know, car makers will tell you, 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, your experience at Top Gear. Yeah, that'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. So 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 a 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, what a joy. I don't push a desk. I get to wreck other people's tires.

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. He can fuck off. You know? And I don't want to be that guy. I hate those guys. Yeah, but actually, I...

I'd be lying if I said I feel good today. I've had a good few months. But the last 18 months have been bad because I just didn't know what to do. 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, a

He wasn't wearing a crash helmet. And if you do that, even at 25, 30 miles an hour, the injuries that used to stay in 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 something.

Someone say, there's been a real accident here. The car's upside down. So I ran to the window, looked out, and he wasn't moving, so I thought he was dead. I assumed he was. Then he moved. I can tell you now that he, unless he's a physical specimen, Fred, he's a big guy, 6'5", 6'6", 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 that moment of realization that he survives 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 was...

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, it just, the name tells you it's physics is complicated. It doesn't mean it's inherently dangerous. You just drive it according to what it is. You have to be aware of its limitations. And I think that, that really was difficult. There were, and you need experience. There were two people that had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before me.

present that day me and someone else a pro driver and we were sitting inside at that time no one had asked us anything about the car they just gone on and shot it without us and i think um if i'm looking in the mirror i find it very difficult even now that andrew who i who i loved a bit a lovely man he um he was a pro cricket player he wasn't a automotive guy and he 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 going to 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 the most experienced driver on the show by a mile.

I said, if we carry on, at the very least, we're going to have a serious injury. At the very worst, we're going to have fatality. 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 watch 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 an 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 Clough and Richard May. In their Amazon show, which they've just ended. Great show. So... And also, I'm... James Mayer. Yeah, 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...

that if you enter into a show like Top Gear, you know what you're taking on. I believe that there is no such thing as great risk-free television like that. You've just got to... I just turn up and I assess what I see and I do what I'm comfortable with and I want to make great television. That's it. And if sometimes it got a bit sketchy, so be it. We've all done that. 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. They weren't. One of them is an active 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 went, we did a go-kart race down a hill in just compacted mud on wooden go-karts with no engines. And we were like,

And I just looked at him and I said, this is just this. 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 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 want to break my fingers. I didn't. I'm sorry. It was a shit piece of television. So I always said, I don't mind breaking my hand if we get a BAFTA for it.

or an award, but this was just the shit skit. And 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's really killed me is that no one's ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand. And 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 organisation, 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 sat 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 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 commission 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 a bit of me thought as the experienced driver, do 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. You know, if you and I went outside now and there were two quad bikes, I'd happily roll it for a laugh with you. I'm that guy. And even me as that guy thought it had gone too far, which I think is important to say. Right. Well, that is 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,

of what it's like to actually be in control of that vehicle or what is possible. Right, right. So all too often it's, can you just do that? Right. And then you want to be a crowd pleaser. You know, 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.

I mean, it's disgusting, but it wasn't anything that was going to risk anyone's 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 cardboard boxes in it. We launch a car off a ramp 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 big metal... And someone in the car? Yeah, driving it, yeah. Oh, yeah. 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 rigour 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 that. We've done the risk assessment, but just give that a go while you're here. I think that goes wrong. And also my experience, and this is where everyone that's shot with me will be reminded of this now and again.

Close of play. End of the day. That's when it goes wrong. If you're at a test track, the light's coming down, there's 10 minutes to go, and the director says, just do that. I go, no, because everyone's tired. Someone's going to have ignored the lockdown on the circuit. There'll be someone coming driving the other way with the coffee cups over their heads. It's the end of the day. If it's 6 o'clock, 5.30, I'm gone. I'm 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 reversed engineered that, you know, your priorities are already to fill something up. And I look back, some of the stuff that we did on top of you, I look back, that was dangerous because,

visually dangerous and definitely was in practical terms, I'm very proud of because we executed it well. Like Andrew, Fred Vintoff went off a dam in a metro and did a car bungee.

Extraordinary piece of footage. You can see it. It's 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. 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 there.

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. I think, 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 YouTube, but they say... Oh my God. How about that? That's so insane. How about that? Look at when it goes over itself like that. Oh my God. That is so ridiculous.

And then the yank. Oh. But that, you know, when I said to you earlier, I've bit of me regrets doing it. I look at that and I think, what a thing to have been part of. 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 on to the back of the bike. You might have seen them. And they go really fast. And the sparks go out the back. And we 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. And I had to hang off the back of it wearing these. We had to wear these shoes. The big problem with some of these ones is that Andrew was so brave. He would go first and set such a high benchmark. You'd have to go, shit, I need to really go here. So he went out and did like, I thought he'd do 40 miles an hour. I think he did 75 miles an hour hanging on the back wearing these titanium shoes. Anyhow, Paddy gets in and tries to go really fast. And he falls off.

And he's okay, but 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 one of those moments where I thought, this has got a bit loose, you know? If you're going to do these things, that guy should have been running parallel. And I didn't like that. Right.

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 didn't get quite as close as I did nearly 80 miles an hour 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 happened was the shoes were red hot, and I'd got in the car, and they just melted 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. 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'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. It's like, well, they're just gone. And you spend five, six years of your life more in daily contact with people and it 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 with a car off the side of a dam. And it's like...

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 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 was online. Yeah. 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. And that's where I started out. And I suspect I'll return there. I've got plans to relaunch the YouTube channel in the next month or two. And there's content coming. And 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 saturated and there's so many different types of markets now too yeah and the algorithm i the idea of being at the behest of an algorithm

It's terrifying. If you've just received a 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. Yeah.

If you just look at one type of vehicle, then you're going to... Like, I really just got interested really recently in the Ineos Grenadier. Yeah. I was like, what a fascinating idea. Take... I mean, what a limited market, by the way, too. That actually, ironically, is the only example of a brand new resto mod, isn't it, really? Yes, yes. Similar. I mean, it's essentially a new vehicle, but for the casual, it looks like a Defender. Yeah. It really does. Yeah.

But it's 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, oh, Grenadiers. It's all Ineos. You've just been pushed back. Constantly all these off-roading Australia dudes and all these different people, like, sending me these things. I think you're right. It does belong on YouTube. I mean, Linear Tele. I joined a TV show when...

linear television still survived well you know you know i understand destination television sure it's gone now it's gone it's it's the world's changed completely top gear still has a place in it you know 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 is a there's something quite romantic for me about the sit down squidge onto the sofa with you with you as a family and watch eight o'clock sunday night it was a it was a it was a

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 one has any patience because of the immediacy of these things. But there's equally something quite lovely about what we used to do. I can't really reconcile it. I totally acknowledge the excitement of the new.

but I'm slightly wistful for the past. Is that fair enough? 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, when you're watching a game, the game starts at 8 p.m. You have to be there at 8 p.m. It's not going to wait for you. 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, when's this going to go out? Is this going out a day after we record this? Yeah, pretty soon. Well, the day after that, my new podcast launches. I didn't realise 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 Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Yeah. And that really is a nerd product. So one of the things I did, 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. Right. And I love cars. They make me happy. Well, I would much prefer you without producers and network executives and all these different people telling you what to do. I like...

What I like about podcasts, 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 having to...

alter things or add sort of ancillary comedy to them to make them appeal to the masses is what I found very difficult on Top Gear. Because I came there, 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 given 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 and 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. I don't do that. It's just an embarrassing moment in my life. But that was exactly... 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 do that. It can just cater for us nerds. 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. Think about how big the internet is. There is 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. He's like, 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 like, I'm not the second coming. I don't know what I've done to you. He goes, because I host all of your videos on a channel in China, and they've made me loads of money. I just went, sorry? Yeah. So I did a bit of research. He has. He's made lots. He just ripped them all off YouTube and hosts 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, right. He was 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, I don't even know if they do phones anymore, but it was all, they had Apple stores that Apple found out about that weren't even, nothing was Apple. Right.

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. It doesn't matter whether you're within a network or have you. The international property in your head is that's mine. 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 can't hunt them down. And it's shameless.

And I still occasionally get engaged. I don't look at the Instagram message thing very often, but sometimes I'll just see someone saying, I'm just going to post this. Do you mind? And sometimes I'll go, well, yes, I do. I 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, you

You know, 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 disnumerate and I'm an idiot. Just do those for free, will you? Because just do them. Yeah. Well, no. So I want some money for that. No, no, no. I just just do them. And also shut the fuck up and do them. How does that? 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, culturally, they don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. I mean, you have to take the Chinese car industry seriously now.

But 15 years ago, there used to be a sort of underground recess at the Detroit Motor Show where the Chinese car companies would be. And it was a sort of – it was a grim catacomb 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 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 reacted terribly at the time. I sort of understand now that if you don't get that from the age of one, you can't learn it afterwards. 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.

Wow. 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 shamelessly, just copying, scanning the car. Wow. 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 that, you know, I'm very fond of a lot of the European brands, but they're struggling. They're struggling to respond to this. There are boats full of very impressive, very good value electric cars that have landed in Europe in the last six months. There's also a problem with European cars in that European cars are always known for having a great resale value. Yeah. Like particularly like

Lamborghini and Porsche and like Ferrari you could actually make more money off of them in a few years than but not electric ones no that's the problem like electric tie cans you know 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 there the heard the sapphire is magnificent extraordinary

You can't you you you're gonna get like half the price of that thing. Yeah in a year Yeah, fucking nuts. I know the tycan in America in the UK early won 30,000 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'd the point I didn't make earlier I have to excuse myself a bit jet-lagged for my confused thoughts sometimes and

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 costs 100 quid or $100. You're ultimately getting the same thing. You have the freedom to travel, to choose where you're going. And I think...

I like you. 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 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 can leave it charged overnight. Right.

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 unplug performance. Are you aware of those guys? So they tune them, do they? Yes.

Because it needs to be faster, doesn't it, Jim? No, well, they changed the suspension. It's not any faster. They use the same powertrain, but they changed the suspension. They widened the front and rear, and they upgrade the brakes. They make it much more just agile. I think the main thing it needs is some sort of jet washable suspension.

pressure washable floor because I think passengers will eventually shit kidneys out. They're so fast. Yeah, well, he's going to come up with that. Roadster, which is going to be insane, which is basically vaporware now. Didn't people like pay full price for those things like five years ago? He's 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 the ultimate disruptor. Yes. He's come along. He's seen an industry. He's gone...

That's ready for a shake-up. And he's had a go. With multiple industries. Yeah. That's what's crazy. But the one that's pertinent to me...

The two questions I'm asked most are, you know, what do you think of the electric car revolution and its effect on, you know, the environment? 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... Ten 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. If I walk into a white goods store, I'm not seeing fridges made by companies I hadn't even heard of 10 years ago. But 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. 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. He bought X or Twitter and turned it into X.

And that's a massive disruptor too. Do you do Twitter? Whatever it's called now. I left it because I got so much abuse initially when I did Top Gear. That's when I got... You can't read comments. No, you can't. But then you'd get drawn into conversations. Oh, shit. Actually leaving it was the best thing I ever did at that time. And I haven't gone back.

Because I didn't really need it to promote anything. And 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 going to get away from that. But you just don't read it. That's the most important thing. If you're a public figure, people are always going to 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 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 warriors, fuck you. 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. No, you're quite right. I don't read negative things, and I don't engage in it. It just...

I'm not afraid of it. 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 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 and research We've done a lot of car we'd have 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 It's there's an FBI analyst that estimated it to be in the range of 80% Yeah, 80% of all the accounts. He thinks are bullshit and

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, and then that conversation becomes completely changed because there's a swarm of people that have a very specific narrative. And then the casual person read, oh, well, maybe they're right. Hey, this guy is a piece of shit. I always thought I was a nice guy. And then it, everything changes. And

Just don't engage don't it's I'm interested in reading people when they're toxic opinion sometimes But oftentimes though 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 and you know fucking Russia somewhere and in a troll farm and It's not a real the pernicious side to it is like all the aspects of life that we know are bad and we shouldn't go there me they

alcohol or 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. And I'm very glad. Actually, I'd actually left Twitter before then. But I was very...

I couldn't believe some of the heartless comments that were made afterwards. It's because they're not there. It's a very inhuman way to communicate. We're communicating in text to a person that 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. Oh, no. That's one of the reasons why podcasts are so successful and one of the reasons why I only do them with people in the room also because the only person I've done without that in recent times is 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 want to be there talking so the person says something and you 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 listen 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 room full of young people

about how to manage third-party opinions of you on the internet. What would you say to them? Just ignore. 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 done is good or bad. And we've all done good things and we've all had bad work. And when you put out bad work and you know it's bad, whoo!

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 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. Yeah. Because then you're like, oh, I'm pretty fucking amazing. Like, you know, that's bad for everybody too. That's not good. 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 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 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 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 environment is almost impossible to work in now.

And it's changing them. They almost have nowhere to go. Well, they're also, it's like, it's an unhealthy relationship in the first place because you have executives and producers who want to make a thing, but they're not the talent.

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 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. Would you ever make television again like that? No. No. Done. I've just finished something for the BBC, which this podcast is going to be, he's going to put the catamon to the pigeon. So I've got one thing I've just done with the BBC, which is not car related.

Which will be my last thing I've done for the BBC probably. I 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 a captured word. It's not even a word. It's like mindfulness. I can't believe I just said it. So I apologize to you. Wellness and mindfulness have both been captured. Spirituality as well. Basically, it's about me being, having let myself go. I'm a shit. I let myself go. I'm a bit better now, but you should have seen me a year ago. Oh,

And we've gone off and done three one-hour shows about it. Was that as a response to the top beer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I sat and I drank world-class quantities of single malt. 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, and I'd enjoy it, and I'd 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. Alcoholism. Yeah. And I don't look back on it.

I now realize how bad it was. But I'm a bit of a box ticker. You can't talk about it unless you've done it. I've done it. So that was the box you wanted to tick. Let's try being an alcoholic. I didn't want to, but now I've done it. I get it. I get it. And also, I was doing a weekly podcast. My sort of decline was quite publicly documented. Some people saw it. Some people didn't. But 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, wellness, what other words? 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. 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 a fucking great place. It was an amazing experience. I loved it. But it didn't involve cars. Right. And I want to be making shows about cars. Right. That's what I love doing. I'm no good at anything else. That's the difference between being hired and doing your own thing. Damn.

And 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 clip from this show that doesn't make it. But I'm given this substance to drink by this guy who's got an impish grin. And I'm like, and I'll do. I'm that guy that'll eat most things. You know, if you've filmed Top Gear and you've been around the world, you've eaten...

stuff you shouldn't have eaten and as long as you survived it's another box ticked you know i never thought i'd eat a sheep's rectum i but it's fine a bit chewy um 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 hard bag that's like really peaty i was like cool and on the label it said beaver i was like

Okay, what's that? And this Swedish guy said, it's 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 was like, wow. And it was strong. The flavor was in my mouth. I couldn't get rid of it. Transpires. This is a secretion from the anal gland of the beaver. So I ate beaver ass. I drank it.

A secretion. So someone milked a beaver. Oh, boy. And I drank it. It wasn't that bad. What's the benefit of this, supposedly? It has some quality. It does. And, you know, if you see the average Swedish guy walking around, you'd all have some of that beaver juice. Are they all drinking it? I don't think they're all drinking it. Are some of them drinking it? Yeah, I think so. Really? It's popular over there? It's for sale. Ha, ha, ha.

Does it have to be fresh? What happens if you get a tainted one? Here it is. Tails from the fringe. Beaver gland vodka. Wow. So that's the beaver's butt right there. The gland in the vodka. Ten days later, I was in Japan doing some other work, and I...

I remember my host saying, what do you think to that food? And what I wanted to say to them was, I can just taste beaver ass. Ten days later, all of my olfactory system, such as it is, was only registering beaver. For ten days? Every food I ate tasted of beaver. Did you try to wash it out with alcohol or anything? I tried everything. Wow. It's incredibly pungent. What about fire spitting?

I 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. So it eventually just dissipated in time? It did disappear. But 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 that's not made that's not i went through the voiceover for the and it's not in i'm like that's so crazy but i 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 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

That's where you belong. You belong doing your own thing. Chris Harris on Cars was awesome. We might bring it back. Yeah, do that. We've made some films.

And I'm going to 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. We did that. This doesn't work. Doesn't work. You lose 99.9% 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'd 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. Yeah. It's been a big impact on them. It also changes the way they do journalism because now everything's very clickbaity.

you know, which is a real problem as well. But the expectation is that content is now free. Right. Yeah. You know, how many 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. 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. So why put a condom on it? Because you don't want it to break. It's made out of glass. Well, it's still working. And I want an unsheathed phone. Also, mine has a nice little kickstand. Look at this. Oh. Oh, what's that? Yeah, look at that. Yeah, when I'm sitting at the kitchen table. Oh.

But when I sit down, when I get in a car, I don't want something. Oh, yeah, those are disgusting. 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. I saw a bumper sticker advertised that I think is the greatest bumper sticker ever created. And it simply says, Texas is bigger than France. That's it. It's the statement.

And it's for sale online. And 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'll get you one. It literally just says, it's a statement. 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. Yeah. 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. Like, 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. Without those psychopaths that figured out a way to fight off the most ferocious band of Indians that ever existed in the plains. Yeah.

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. It's very different. How does Austin fit into that? Because I think it's viewed as this center of cosmopolitan life 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 there's a saying, keep Austin weird and surrounded. And I think that's accurate because you've got a lot of 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 going to offer any opinion at all other than to 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 know, 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 the...

What's transpired for me, having traveled here so many times and worked here so often in the last 25 years, is that because we speak the same language and we all look quite similar, we assume our countries are really, really similar. But they're not. They're really quite different. We 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 I 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 your, it's what you do. I don't, I don't have any opinion about that at all. Really. It's what you do. It works for you. And in the UK, we're different as well. And I, I've,

The older I get, the more emollient I become, I think, about that. When I was young, I would have had stronger opinions about that. But, you know, the way that Texas operates is Texas's stuff. It's the way you do things. And I'd have to be here a long time to fully understand the layers of it, the nuances of it.

And if you came to North Somerset, where I live, there's aspects of it that look, because we speak the same language, that look like they're straightforward, but they're not. Everything has subtleties, doesn't it? Yeah. That's where I see it. I think maybe to come back to some of the comments, it's when people become partisan about

without any real information that we have problems. People always giving me their fucking opinion about stuff when they haven't stopped to consider it. I'm not trying to dodge issues here. You can probably tell I'm completely apolitical. I just don't like politicians. 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. I don't profess to be 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 uh 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 that we have inexpert people making decisions for us, hence our discussion about electric cars. Yeah. But also we have people that have the right to say whatever they want online without having stopped to think of anything that they were talking about or to research what they're saying. It's remarkable. But there's also this – because of that, because there's these shitty opinions and nasty people and all this information flowing around and 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 don't go to the if I go to the supermarket and there's a jug of moonshine, I'll go, well, I need to buy that and start drinking it. 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 you've probably experienced this as well. But when I was first on Top Gear.

There was a lot of hate flying around. And, you know, 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. But 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. It's crazy that people go after someone's kids for a television show about cars. Like, what kind of a piece of shit are you? 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, exactly. Not the third world debt. It's ridiculous. But it doesn't matter. It's just shitty human beings with bad lives that want to affect you. When they go for your kids, I'll tell you something. How about this?

Never said this publicly. I had a phone call one day from the family home saying that my youngest child had been out skateboarding. It'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 said 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 Yeah, 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. Yeah, I deal in the least amount

serious subject on the planet. It's a motor car. It's just being attached to that iconic name. That'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 met him once, shook his hand. I never... Didn't know who he was. I'm on team Jeremy. Yeah, he's...

Yeah, he's brilliant at what he does. If he punched the guy, the guy probably sucks. Jesus, I'm not coming to you on that. I'm going to get in trouble. But I do... 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 carry off the Jeremy bit. Right. And I now realize that's very difficult. It's a difficult act to follow. Yeah, you're not going to follow that. You're just going to be different. He's a completely unique person.

I think they did Elon dirtier than anybody ever did. Oh, they were naughty with that. They did a terrible thing. They were naughty with that. 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.

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 died. 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. Look, 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, you know, often the producers, and I understand why, they'd want stuff to break. That was the joy. Particularly 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 today?

With hundreds of thousands of miles. Well, they did a brilliant film about that and they're trying to kill a Land Cruiser and they just couldn't. Ended up dropping off a building and it drove away. It's the cockroach of the car world. They're incredible. I have a 200 series Land Cruiser V8 diesel, 157,000 miles on it. I have an 80 series. It's just...

They are. They're brilliant vehicles. And actually, I lobbed a bomb on Instagram the other day by saying, I drive around in my Land Cruiser feeling sorry for Range Rover drivers. And I just got a hold of it. I didn't read it. 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 Want to side a 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've been 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 I can understand why the producer and the director is 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's all that matters. 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 that wellness show too. Listen, I have to take a leak. Let's come back. We'll 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 going to go do something fun. The dog. So is it?

sensible to suggest that the dog is the ultimate car companion sure because they're never upset yeah yeah they're like yay we're in the car it must mean 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 pup, all dogs have access to all cars. It's really important for me. If you've got a car that's a million dollars, your dog's going in there. Really? For me, it's like, it's close to gets to religion for me. I love it. Because for me, it's a demonstration of who I am. I want my 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, that lovely handle that you move forwards and 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 go, oh, the dog chewed that. But the only time I've come to grief is that I now am very suspicious of switch gear that's laid on the horizontal. Because I was on a slip road in an M3 of mine last year. No, sorry. No, it would be the GT3.

And I came off a slip road and I accelerated. It was wet. And I thought I'd lean on the systems, you know, when you just get that lean on the traction or the ABS. And the car went fully sideways on a slip road in the middle of the day. And it looked outrageous. I mean, that's what I'm quite good at. So I went, well, there you go. That's sideways. Wound it off again. The dog had put his paw on the ESP button.

button oh no he had turned all the systems oh no without me knowing oh no so now i'm aware of that he's not allowed to do that yeah they shouldn't be right there but that's i suddenly thought that's there he is oh what a cutie that's in the back of the m5 the v10 m5 that's pip dog oh that's nice he's an absolute legend he is i um but he's a great dog companion no dog sickness

I just love going places with them. 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, you take them in a car, they're kind of freaking out. Why are we moving? They start throwing up. But it's awful. I don't want to see a dog like that. No one wants to see an animal stressed. Right. And I have rejected cars because my dogs didn't like them. I had a thing called a golf... I borrowed one and I bought 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 like long down. I don't know why. Oh, I think they look gross. Yeah. I love them. I see them. I'm like, what did you do to that fucking thing? So I bought... This is the new one. That's actually good looking. I bought the old one. So you type in... Click in 2015 Golfire Estate there. And I...

Any one of those. Yeah, that'll do. So I went and bought one of these. I thought that would be good. And it's not too showy and it'll do the job. And at that point, I had my old dog, Boz, Vimerana. And I put him in the back and he just got out again. I was like, he hasn't done that before. I put him in the back again. And it was quite evident he did not like the car. 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 who sold it said, what's the problem? I said, 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. Wow. Yeah, no, the dog's opinion matters. 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. Yeah. He knew. It could be that he didn't like the cologne that the German guy that assembled the boot...

with. Dogs operate on a level of perception we can't even understand. So your fascination with bears, could a man...

Be beaten up by a... 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...

A discernibility. 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... Well, 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? He pees on it, you know? When I, like, take him on trails and he finds out where all the other dogs have peed, like, oh, I'm going to pee there too. But my...

There's an emotional sensitivity to these animals as well. That thing there you've 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. Really? He will do that consistently. Wow. 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. He doesn't know just like sit, give me your paw, lie down, stay. I bet he knows tone. Yeah, he knows things. Like 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 like real subtle, real simple. I wonder if we overproject on them because when we were discussing earlier about some of the –

This sense of being just so disappointed about our fellow homo sapiens. I 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. Yeah. Like in Georgia, some couple recently was attacked and somebody 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 to everyone he meets. Like, you're my new friend.

Everybody just assumes... 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 in which they've been brought up. Exactly. Dogs are just like us. They're just like us. You get a dog like Carl. Carl thinks everybody loves him. And 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. He's being taken care of. I want some bear chat. So I have...

I'm slightly fascinated by these really large bears, big grizzlies. 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. Yeah. 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 Fognac Island, and they were elk hunting, and they had shot an elk. And a Fognac Island is an incredibly difficult area.

place to traverse. The bush is dense and thick and the bears are enormous. A Fognac is connected to Kodiak.

By a small land strip, I believe. It's certainly right next to Kodiak. I might be wrong about the... I think it maybe used to be... 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're enormous. They could be 1,800 pounds fat.

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 really encounter them. So my friend Steve...

He was with a 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 terrain. 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 Giannis, 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 wax it with a trekking pole. They're all, he said, Steve, the way Steve described it, he said the most reptilian part of your brain is,

is ignited where you no longer have like, what should I do? There's no, there's no thinking in terms, there's no language. So in the flight, chaos, full chaos, full chaos, terrifying chaos. No one had their gun in front of them. No one, no one knew what to do. They were all 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. LAUGHTER

most muscle cars. Honestly, the idea of the other, the foreign, is really fascinating for any person that doesn't have that. Sure. And it's the same with Australia. 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, mate, that bites you, you're fucked. You're like, what do you mean? It's just a spider. No, mate, that's

Jesus, it's not like a big furry thing. Right. In South America, it's big and furry. Its 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 and get a book or... There was no VHS. If you went to Blockbuster, you couldn't buy...

documentary on grizzly bears could you right you didn't get it right now it's all over there but even a documentary is not going to 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 going to eat you? Yeah, so you were a food source. Yeah. Are you a food source? Am I going to eat you? What are you? One of the best things I've done with Top Gear was with Matt LeBlanc, who...

As you can tell, I'm very fond of. He's just a 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, as you can tell, I shoot that argument full of holes. But I like 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 is 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. It is possible. It's possible. 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 dragons and stuff that doesn't exist. Yeah, it's not a mythical creature. Right. And I don't want to pitch Matt into something. 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 and have a look for it.

And I was just acutely aware as we were in... We shot it in Northern California, so North San Francisco. The forest at night...

There's a sketchy place. 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 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. If you live in England, we don't have that. We simply don't. We don't have mountain lions.

I'm not going to 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. Difficult for you to understand. There's nothing that views 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 Lavec. There's a town called Lavec that was named after, I believe his name was Stephen Lavec. 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 them. Fuck these things. They're killing everybody. Yeah. Let's just kill them. 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 its massive jaws, and they don't eat anything but meat. Yeah. So they're the most dangerous of all polar bears. And ironically, they're the ones that we make seem to be the cutest. 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 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 super predator baloo baloo was a bear what's baloo baloo jungle book

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The friendliest. It's amazing, isn't it, that we anthropomorphize bears more than just about any other creature. Yogi. Paddington bear. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Friendly, cuddly. I think because they do look quite appealing. Mm-hmm. And they are dog-like, aren't they? They're slightly dog-like. Snout. Sure. Shape of head. Well, we put hats on them and shit. Only you could prevent forest fires. Yeah.

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. They're nature's cleanup crew. A friend of mine walked to the North Pole for some reason. I don't know why. And he had a lot of training before. And this is a long time ago. But the polar bear training that he talked about was quite...

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 they said they were given. There's some pistols that you can effectively unload into a bear and stop them. A .50 cal would stop it, would it? Yeah, well, sure. A .50 cal. I don't think they have a .50 cal pistol, but they have 40 magnums, 44 magnums. That would stop a bear? You have to shoot it multiple times.

Yeah, not one. And, you know, if you have a 38 or a 9mm, good luck. Good luck. It'll bounce right off its head. Their heads are so thick. You could literally shoot it in the forehead and it'd 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 and 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. Yeah. 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, but...

Well, they're fascinating. It's a fascinating part of our world. And anthropomorphizing is a really fascinating aspect of it. And I think in America it happened with Teddy Roosevelt, with the teddy bear. I think that's the beginning of the end. And then Disney movies were a huge problem. Disney movies are a huge problem because all the bears are your friend. They all talk to everybody and, hey, and say, why would you kill the bear? Like that is a giant forest dog. That's an evil animal that it doesn't give a fuck about you or your kids.

It'll pull you out of your tent. It'll eat you 100%. And they're wonderful and they're beautiful. We should definitely keep a healthy population of them. I'm not saying we should eradicate them, but know what they are and don't be influenced by these goddamn cartoons, cartoons and movies, which have fucked people's heads up. Yeah. As a parent, you realize it as well, particularly...

In the UK, we don't have dangerous species of animals like that, but we do through anthropomorphizing them in films and cartoons. We make things cute that might not be cute. Sure. We have a real urban fox population in the UK.

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 most cartoons, it's a lovely, cuddly thing with a bushy tail. It's a beautiful color. But they're, you know, they're predators. They're a real problem for farmers. And they eat a lot of poultry. I'm not even going into fox hunting. That's not my world. But there's been a few stories recently of foxes going into people's houses and, you know, attacking babies and, you know, stuff like that.

And then you see on Instagram people feeding the foxes in their back gardens and you think, that's not a domesticated animal. Yeah, you can't do that. You can't, you know, you've got to make it, you've got to decide...

one or the other. 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. Yeah. 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 it's like that scene in that Jurassic Park film where the pterodactyls are coming down you ever seen a seagull eat a rat yeah whole whole just 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. I'm admitting too much about 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 There's no way right? I didn't think you could eat that no There's so many videos of like different birds throwing down a whole largemouth bass And it's like how is it even getting in your mouth? It doesn't they have these skinny little necks and they swell up like

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. I love the fact it's being recorded. I had never seen this stuff. I've got a particular phobia. And it is a phobia. I hate crabs. And I'm not talking about the STD style. I'm talking about crustacean. Why? Why?

I think they're horrid to look at.

I think I don't eat, I won't eat them. I'll eat all other seafood. I'll eat all other seafood, but I won't eat a crab. You'll eat lobster? Yeah. How weird is that? So insight into the adult 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. Really? Fuck off. Just an awful thing. Also, and this is a good example, right? Mm-hmm.

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. 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. It should be fiction. It's just right Type in coconut crab. Oh, yeah, those are crazy. They're like you like anything that you're scared of you're fascinated by it Someone did someone did some research into the claw for 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? Well, um... So type in claw strength of coconut crab 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. 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...

That she crashed, got on this island, and the coconut crabs ate her. That's insane. I mean, luckily, I think they clamp slowly. 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? Yeah. 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 bizarre. 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 where I used to go on holiday as a kid was this lovely old sort of Victorian-style hotel in Cornwall that was run a bit like Forty Towers. In fact, it was like Forty Towers. Had the guy that ran 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 there was just one picture of one in a tank with its legs like seven feet apart or something. Let me see this thing. And it stayed with me. It stayed with me for years. What is it called? I was reading about these crabs. Sorry. 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. I 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 you do, yeah. It looks like they got them on ice, so it looks like they're preparing a Japanese spider crab is no easy task. Oh, you got to find a big pot. Yeah, right? You got to break it up, I guess. Wow. Now, what about, find out about the coconut crab. Can you eat coconut crabs? I might want to eat one. I'm going to send you a picture if I get one. I'll be...

Glad to see that it's no longer moving. I just cannot get my head around it. Can you eat them? Yes, it says above that. Above that?

An aphrodisiac. Oh, but look, it says, yes, coconut crabs are eaten as a delicacy on some islands and are considered an aphrodisiac in other places. 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 babies. They ate Amelia Earhart. Whose fucking side are you on? I said,

When I was reading, they don't have shells. That's why 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 eat red crabs, I guess. Oh, they eat other crabs. Well, we mostly eat other animals. We're animals. Deary me. Well, I've shared too much there. So 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, are 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 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...

And I was so punch drunk with just travel and filming that I'm working so hard. You'd almost just wake up and go, it's another mad place. We're in Kazakhstan today. I was like, OK, 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. Anyway, it's a Bay of Pigs. And I looked at my phone. This is the Bay of Pigs. Fucking hell, you know.

This is where, you know, this is where it all went a bit wrong for America. This is historically quite a significant place. It could have been a real problem. Yeah. Anyhow, 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, when 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. That's really worrying me. I'm thinking, that's going to crawl up my leg. Something totally irrational. I think we all have a creature, maybe. A bogeyman or a bogeywoman, whatever it is.

that maybe we fear. Do you have one at all? No, but I think where that comes from, I have a feeling it's genetic memory. I think that's where aphidiophobia comes from and arachnophobia, fear of snakes and spiders. I think, because some people, we've experienced that on Fear Factor as well. Some 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. 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 five. Yes, and some of it'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. It's not something that's been allowed to develop the way that a country should have developed over the last 40, 50 years. 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 kept these American cars going that should have died. They've also got a whole load of Soviet era larders that came in when the Russians wanted to help them out. And also that's where their power stations come from their power station. They have a coal-fired power station on the north side of the island where

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 think it's 90. Is it? Yeah. It's amazing. It's well worth visiting if you can go just to see it. It just shows you what happens when human beings act absurdly. Did you feel safe over there? Totally. Yeah. Totally safe. 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, aren't you? That's what happens 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. Yeah.

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, you know, 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, I would get them. I'm going to tell you a thing I did 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 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 bloomed straight over Havana.

Well, there's a place, 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 only 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. The vastness of that part of the world, the Soviet Union, we think the United States of America is big. The Soviet Union was on a scale that you cannot comprehend anywhere.

Kazakhstan was just a small bolt-on to Russia, but in itself has, I think, the fourth longest border of any country with Russia. It's enormous. And this area called Baikonur, the way that the Russians worked was once they'd used the launch site, they'd just go somewhere else. 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. 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 here. You're like going, what is that? But it culminated with us watching a Soyuz rocket take off.

And they let us get much closer to film it than you would normally be allowed to be. And I've never watched a rocket take off before. I haven't been to Cape Canaveral or anywhere in the US. 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...

There's a sort of ripping sound in the air that people who 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. And I think we were less than a kilometre away from where it went off. It was absolutely sensational to witness. Wow. Just power. Raw power.

And the idea that Mr. Musk has got something that's more powerful than Saturn V about to take off, that fascinates me, all of that sort of thing. We talk about power and engines. Your Raptor's 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, the amount of carbon that's put out by the burning rockets? Yes.

I can't even begin to quantify it. 100,000 cars? What are they burning as well? 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 there was lots of technology left over from 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 there.

And one particular team had, you know, 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 a fantastic racing driver, who's now the chief test driver for Bugatti, tells some amazing stories about literally being hauled out of Group C race cars after qualifying because the fuel was just...

impossible just poisoning them wow but it gave them an extra 100 horsepower for that lap well how about leaded gasoline leaded gasoline there's been studies that show that in the places with higher amounts of leaded gasoline there's a you can see the lower iq in the kids and they think that it 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 in our homes 150 years ago were made of lead. Lead pipes. Well, my friend Shane Gillis has 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 somewhere in my house something I bought from the internet, which is...

Boots Chemist. 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. And 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... 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 something like it to see if I'd find the ad. And AI says that menthol cigarettes 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. Menthol can soothe the dry throat feeling.

That's funny that AI is willing to say something that's very un-PC. Do you think the AI fucked up here? Because I've 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 take menthol without it being in the format of a cigarette? I'm sure. Yeah, it's a cough drop, I think. Yeah. 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 and the automobile industry. There's technology out there that will change something at some point. We just don't know what it is yet. It's going to happen because we're having to relearn so much of what we thought was facts in other areas of our lives. And I think maybe that's what I get frustrated by is that you can't wait for that unprecedented change to come.

necessarily but you have to assume at some point someone's going to make a battery that runs on wasp piss or fucking water or something aren't they it's going to happen scientists are clever they have big foreheads for a reason at the moment the argument is where there's not enough cobalt or waiting at 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. Go on then. He met with some people that wanted to talk to him about this design, and then he yelled, they poisoned me, and he ran outside and died.

Yeah, and then nobody ever heard about the water-powered car ever again after that. So what is all that? I don't know. What the fuck is 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. It looks like the wild one. So this guy had developed this water-powered car that had incredible mileage.

Interesting messaging on the side of the vehicle. Yeah. Jesus Christ a lady? God says his Lord is Lord. Oh, Jesus Christ is Lord. Oh, okay. It's cursive. Did Stanley Meyer die because he knew how to turn water into fuel?

This is a British newspaper. Is it? The Express. When was this? Go back a little bit. I can't remember. This thing is ridiculous. What kind of shit website is this? It's some really bad one. I'm sure there's other articles about that. The car that ran on water. This is where it happened. It happened outside in Columbus. Oh, okay. In a city.

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, Grove 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. But 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, focused on his water fuel cell invention. It's a fuel cell, okay. Hmm.

who is ignored, called a fraud and died without his hometown even remembering him with so much as a plaque. 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 exhaust, right? It says,

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 show his 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 Rieh.

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 Marlain 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 replumbing the house, the invention never worked. Oh, so he might have been a kook. Hard to tell. But I'll tell you what.

You love a conspiracy theory. Oh, I love them. I know you do. I'm less... I'm seduced by some. Yeah. 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. Unquestionable. And I think the automotive industry...

is and has been at the forefront of that. Well, the oil business. 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...

Hmm.

Pardon me, guys. I'll tell you why. Sure. An event that happened here that did shake my... I'm less cynical. I'm less likely to be as interested in conspiracy theories, maybe because I lack your imagination. I don't know what it is. But maybe I'm terrified of the fact that I'm being taken for a ride in too many 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 um volkswagen were able to put software into their vehicles that allowed them to cheat in emissions tests um and a load of vehicles that were had stated emissions qualities didn't have them when they were not on the test rig um

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 sort of an industrial subterfuge that I didn'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. 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'd 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 sort of backtrack on it. Right. And I think it shook my confidence in those large corporations. I thought they were being more honest with us and probably made me more likely to believe conspiracy theories afterwards. So I thought, well, if they're capable of that, what else are they doing?

Conspiracy theories are fascinating because some of them are bullshit and some of them are real and it's hard to figure out what's what. Yeah. You know, there's some crazy ones like the earth is flat and then there's some ones like the CIA might have killed JFK. Yeah. And you're like, ooh, they might have. They might have. It makes very good listening. I love listening to you talk about it. Oh, they're fascinating. But I suppose I'm...

I tend to sit a bit further back and just I'd like to hear other people talk about them But when it enters your world, 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 everyone that gets caught. It's not like they catch every conspiracy. Right. There's no way. No. 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 1%. 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. One incident was a cycling incident in the UK.

Was it hit and run? No, the person that hit the cyclist, I think they have got. But they were asking for information around it. Did the person that hit the cyclist have any connection to anybody? I don't know. Was it suspicious? I just read it and just thought, like you, I'm like, oh my God.

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. I think, I suppose, the difficulty I have with that is that's a tragedy. They fucked over some billionaires. They fucked over some very, very powerful. It was Hewlett-Packard. Yeah. They sold autonomy to Hewlett-Packard and there was a big...

He was extradited to the US and 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 was right up there for me. Jesus Christ. Right. Also, a freak water spout. Have you seen the size of this boat? Yeah. It's extraordinary. It's like 300 feet long. Yeah. How? Yeah. How did it sink? What happened? Huh.

I know. You love it, don't you? Love it. You absolutely love it, don't you? Love it. 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 or another this 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 and freak water spouts on 300-foot yachts? I'm doing my uncomfortable face. It's so out there. It's so out there. Yeah. It really is. And I'll bring it back to something more mundane. There were quite a few things that happened in Formula 1, a sport that I follow the most closely probably, in the 90s and noughties, that looking back, you think there must have been someone at a button that could make things happen.

Because it was so beyond a coincidence. And 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. And 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, can you rig that? Oh, yes. People have rigged it. People have gotten in trouble for rigging it. Certain fighters might have an injury somewhere.

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 had 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 in the UFC anymore. And he's under investigation. And if it turns out that what they're saying about him is true, he's 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

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 that you 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 for me as well. He coined the phrase the unfair advantage and

which I'm afraid 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 Wyn Percy, who was a touring car driver from the UK in the 60s and 70s, describing how...

There was a famous commentator we had called Murray Walker. 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 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 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 you 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 this in those sports can i write that book will you tell me they don't know 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 all the money involved but the ingenious cheating i mean that's uh in 1995

Toyota was excluded from the World Rally Championship because it just had a brilliantly simple piece of cheating. All 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'd be 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 a 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. They just knew that sometimes when they got in a 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 Coda. We have that up there? Yeah. That's Coda. My friend Bobby owns the place. So he took me there.

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 and

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 try not to get caught. And some of the, just the way that they've, through the years, and it creates subterfuge, it creates games. Another great story, we covered this on Top Gear, 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'd 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 listening to this, I'm not an engineer, but I have a basic understanding of it. I haven't 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 and in the paddock, it looked like a normal car. But they were going so much faster than everyone else. He needed to find a way of diverting the attention to the other teams. So what he would do was at the end of a test session, quite often, he'd have a guy scuttled from the back of the garage with something underneath him.

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 kettle

It was a kettle this guy was running around with underneath the towel, just so everyone thought it was a component. It was a total diversion. And I met the guy that used to just run around with this. He had a, it was like a teapotty kettle thing. He was just told at the end of the session, put that under there and run away with it. So everyone thinks it's like a differential or something. Yeah.

And I think that's where I love motorsport because it brings out these bizarre competitive human behaviors. But it'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 in different drivers. But they are completely different vehicles. Yes, they may have the same tires. Right. But these are a bunch of people, 400 people in different parts of the world are talking

This is the rule book. Away you go. And they are within a tenth of each other on a track? Yeah. It's amazing. Amazing. It is amazing. Yeah. But they're all at it. See, there's always some conspiracy. At the moment, Red Bull, apparently 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 going to have a profound effect on it. He's going to know shit. He's going to have a way of looking at that project that's going to make it profoundly better. I believe that. I once wrote a story for some in-house magazine, I think for BAR Racing, when they had a race team about the crossover between aeronautical 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? Concord. Really? They couldn't stop Concord. 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. So there's 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 the Defense Department and the construction of fighter jets. 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. You're not allowed to go in there and drop litter because it could 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 in a McLaren and this F35 driver.

And they had their data on how it accelerated. And we had McLaren there with their data. And 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.

At about 130 something miles an hour. It didn't do that. Oh, my God. 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 don't.

This is why I want to be someone that expresses joy. What a thing to have done. And when an F-35 comes past you and it's just got off the ground. Is this it right here? Yeah. 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. When it was right by me, it fucking... And we never showed...

You're going 218 miles an hour? No, that's kilometers. It comes past me like that. Bang! And I just thought, as it did it, the front wheels just went... And I thought, wow, I'm in trouble here. Wow. But the power and the sound. You know, you talk about the internal combustion engine. Why do these electric things make no sound? We are amateurs compared to what they get to play with. Yeah. And they have like, what, 30 minutes of flight time before they run out of gas? I don't think that thing can go very far. But, you know, all this vectoring.

The way 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...

There's a, is it boys toys? There's got to 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 hope so. I think so. I don't think you need anything else. I quite like those things though. They're pretty badass. If you can get a hold of one of those, that's great too. But the F-22, have you been to an air show and seen one of those? I flew in an F-18. Did you? Yeah, with the Blue Angels. Wow. It was insane. Yeah.

Yeah. Insane. Just the G4, the physical effect on your body is so extraordinary. Yeah. You know, they don't use G suits either. They don't use gravity suits. So you have to hook. So you hold on to the... And then you do that breathing thing. Hook, hook, hook.

You're forcing blood and you feel your consciousness closing like an elevator door. You see it. You see the darkness coming from the left and the right. You're fighting it off. I wasn't very good at it. I always thought I'd be quite good because people of our height should be quite good at it. But I felt it. I got put up in one of those extra 300s, the stunt planes. It's a prop thing. But, you know, they're the ones that they use in the Red Bull air races. Mm-hmm.

And once he got to sort of six, seven Gs, I started to see that. Yeah, you have to fight it off. I think I got to seven and a half Gs, but those guys can go to like nine, ten 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. Yeah.

Just flying through this can sideways. It's fucking insane. Insane. I did a ridiculous film looking back with a guy called Andy Green. Do you know who 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 1,000 miles an hour. And they were going to drive it on some salt flats or something that dried out in South Africa, I think. Anyhow, it was supposed to be funded by industry. They lost a lot of 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-pilot, 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 they need pilots, not racing drivers. He said, I've got an extra 300, and this car has got various stages of propulsion. You start off...

with a jet, then it goes to a rocket. And he goes, it's 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, 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 Gs 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. But the way he put me through the G forces, I would have been a terrible fighter pilot.

I kept getting gray. I kept graying out. I was 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 muscle because you're literally 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 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. I'll be back in 10 years. Nah, let's have it quicker. And let's definitely get you on YouTube, on the internet. Do your own thing, man. It'll happen soon enough. You don't need other people. Thank you, bro. Fuck those people. Bye, everybody.