World Cup Payouts, Space Industry & AI Bubbles: Jake’s Top Moments

0:00Friends, listeners, viewers, welcome to the, I'm sad to say, final ever episode of Room Where It Happened. And if that has come as a shock to you, I have good news as well. The show continues in a new guise with a new name and new hosts. And I will explain a little bit more at the very end of today's episode, so stick around for that. And what we're going to do today is just look back at some of the most interesting and impactful conversations that we've had over the last year. in fact more than a year, probably getting close to 18 months now since we first started recording Run When It Happened.

0:32It's been a real privilege for me to delve into a world that I really am fascinated by. The world of business, the world of sport, the world of AI and just doing something very different to what I'm regularly doing with high performance and high performance racing. And like anything fun and good and rewarding in life, you can't do it on your own. And the wind beneath my wings, every step of the way, has been Simon, the producer of the show. Hey, Simon. Hey, Jake. How are you doing? Very well. Now, we should probably explain to people that you produce Rumour It Happened, soon to be retitled and re-hosted, and Untapped with Spencer Matthews.

1:08So I guess the first question should be, who's your favourite host to work with, me or Spencer? Well, I would never pick favourites, but I think it's whoever you think it is in your heart, Jake. Well, one of us is also technically your boss as well as one of the hosts of the show, and it isn't Spencer. Yeah, that's a good point. So yeah, so that would be you then yeah great um well look you and i have worked together for as i say almost 18 months on run where it happened how's it been for you yeah it's been amazing the show's obviously changed a lot i think in that time um but i think we've had some amazing people on in a very short space of time and uh people i you never some people who you'd never heard of before we start researching and then you're really surprised by some people who are very famous like branson or stelios or people like that who have come in um and they were they were sort of everything we thought they'd be and more we booked and were disappointed by and they never made the edit yes some did make the edit some didn't make the air at all and that's just the way it is um let's just break down the third wall for a moment because podcasting i think is in such a an interesting place and it's actually it's interesting when we talk about business and we talk about sports and we about content we talk about ai we talk about you know growth and share prices and global stock markets and valuations and all these things like i think the creator economy is now so central to this sort of stuff could you just for a couple minutes break down kind of where we were at the beginning and and the kinds of things that are business like high performance but how we make decisions on the direction of a show what works and what doesn't um so yeah i mean i would say almost at the start I came from TV and you know you obviously know TV very well and so many of the decisions made in TV and I think have bled over and the decision making have bled over into podcasting so it was a lot of I think a lot of just kind of editorial sort of nous from producers and from talent and hunches and then maybe maybe you would get some data off the back of that because you know even even a year or so ago the data and it still isn't now the data on RSS is quite hard to come by yeah but then what happened i think really in the last year is um youtube podcast just really changed it was already happening a bit but i remember the conversation some conversations even we had really early on like it was very much uh oh we should really be on that that's going to happen and it felt very far away yeah and then within a few months it suddenly was the kind of has become the be all end all in some ways i'm still surprised by that because I don't know a ton of people that do listen and watch podcasts on YouTube.

3:41I watch clips of podcasts on YouTube all the time and I do a lot of research that way. I guess I watch bits and bobs, but now I think the other thing that blurred is, what is a podcast now? Netflix could take this episode we're recording right now and stick it on the TV. Is that now TV or is that a podcast? I don't know. That's the difference. It's just content, right? I think that we've reached a point where it's just content. And I think what I've been really interested in is the dissemination of the media. So if I, when you say you don't watch podcasts on the telly, I actually tend to watch podcasts on the telly.

4:13But I will listen to them when I'm driving. Yet the only place I find out about what podcasts I should be listening to on the telly is often on Instagram. And often on Instagram, it is a content creator sitting on a stage talking about a different podcast, the one that they host, that they really enjoy. And I go, well, if they've recommended it, I'll go and find it. So I saw like, this is how like circular the whole thing's become. I saw Jay Shetty talking about a podcast that he doesn't host at CanLion on Instagram, which I went then and found on YouTube, watched it and enjoyed it and then recommended it to a mate who listened to it on RSS, on a podcast player.

4:51And I think that is what I love about this, is that we've stumbled into a world where we create content that we love. At the very beginning, it's like, what do you love? Well, you and I both love business, right? so that's where it began but if you and I just kept on saying well this is what we think the show should be therefore that's what the show is like the show would just die there's so much data available now the show then becomes the thing that the audience want the show to be and our job then is to listen to that and then try and put it everywhere they are if they're on TikTok they find us if they're on Instagram they find us if they're talking to a friend it gets mentioned if they're on RSS it gets fed to them if they're on YouTube it somehow triggers the algorithm and I don't like this algorithm game because I like stability.

5:37I don't like that one of my episodes gets 5 million views and the other one gets 5 views and it's like, how is this possible? Because I know both of them were equally valuable conversations but I have to understand that that's the way the world's gone and I think the privilege of my life actually has been to be involved in a business like High Performance in a time where the industry has changed so much. So when I first started on kids TV, I remember there was a pecking order, right? If you were on the children's BBC channel, you were desperate to be on BBC 2. If you were on BBC 2 presenting children's BBC, you were desperate to be on BBC 1.

6:08And I remember one of my bosses coming up to me at one point and saying, listen, don't worry about it, because there won't be kids' programmes on BBC 1 and BBC 2 for very long. It would all be on the CBBC channel. And I remember laughing, thinking, that is literally never going to happen. And it's taken, well, I was there in 2001, I started, until 2008. So it's taken 20 years for that to be the case. But now I'm not even sure my kids would be able to find the CBBC channel. I think my kids would find the content that they want on YouTube. So it only has it not, it's no longer BBC One or BBC Two.

6:40It's probably not even the CBBC channel anymore. That's taken a long time. Our world of podcasting, oh my goodness, the rate of change in this world that we have to keep up with all the time and respond to all the time is nothing like broadcasting, like traditional linear broadcasting, is it? but I think it's like it's cool for you and I like a couple of like long in the tooth tv people you're a bit younger than me but like we've been around the block a bit now we're having to relearn our own industry does that make sense yeah no absolutely but I'm but for you though as because I that all has to happen around kind of around me and I get to sort of obviously make decisions and things but I never and this is a very rare thing for me to do but like I never have to promote on instagram be the face of it and be the sort of point person on it for you does all of that whilst that that sort of i understand that story from cbbc and how rapidly that must feel that change but at the same time like how does it feel for you to try and keep up with or do you even feel the need to keep up with quote-unquote all of that stuff do you or do you Are you trying to just find your lane still?

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9:01I think trying to keep authenticity at the center is what's really important to me, right? So if I start doing, like, you know, I see all these people like School of Hard Knocks and the guy walking up to people with a little microphone going, hey, are you a billionaire? Hey, like they just bumped into them on the street, right? And I have to keep saying to my son, I'm like, you do know that he didn't just bump into him on the street. Like they were booked to meet and it was all planned. And my son's like, what? Like I don't... It's like Santa all over again. Exactly, yeah, I'm afraid. I have huge respect for what those channels do.

9:38I think it's great. But I don't ever think that's me. Do you know what I mean? I just think I'm not the guy on the street creating content that looks one way but actually is another. I think I just lean into what I actually think is pretty much my only skill, which is sitting down with someone and trying to disseminate the way they're thinking or break down what they've done and trying to get to the why rather than the how. I think all that is really good. And then understanding that no matter how much I want to know this world or how interested I am, like I saw Oprah Winfrey at CanLion talking to a load of young content creators.

10:12And I think it's cool, you know, Oprah's like another generation on from me. I think it's cool that she's there, like still plugged into that generation. I feel like I'm kind of plugged into it through the people that I work with at High Performance. But there is a reason why I'm 48 and I kind of come in and I ask people, what is the plan with how we're going to promote a new podcast? Or where are we going to launch a new show? And they're 25 and they're telling me the answer. I think that is like, you just can't miss that stuff, right? Like they're half my age and they're telling me what we're going to do.

10:43And I think you know I've spoken loads on High Performance about this idea of hold your beliefs lightly. And I think that's a great lesson from the conversations we've had over the last year or so on Run where it happened, this idea of holding your beliefs lightly, whether it's to do with sport or business or AI or the advancements of tech or SpaceX being floated on the stock market, whatever it is that we've had huge deep discussions about, hold your beliefs lightly because this stuff is changing and it is changing fast. So you've got three choices. Try and be on that train yourself. That's not for me.

11:16Don't be on the train at all and imagine it isn't happening. It's also not for me. Surround yourself with people that can get you a ticket to be on the train. That's the kind of decision I think that I've made with high performance. So that's where I'm at. And in terms of holding your beliefs lightly, is there, and I'm putting you slightly on the spot now, is there a particular moment or guest or episode that you sort of maybe had your notions of something kind of challenged the most? Yes, 100 % space. The growth in the space industry and the fact that we should be looking at living in space, traveling to space, working in space as a genuinely viable option for our future.

12:00Oh, that was our friend Dylan Taylor. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, should we just play a clip from what Dylan said to us? I think that's quite nice for people if they haven't heard the conversation. Yeah, let's do that. So imagine all the heavy industry on Earth, all the polluting industry, all the things that we do here that pollute the Earth or change climate, all those things. Imagine getting that heavy industry off the Earth and putting it in these Lagrangian points and making the Earth essentially a national park or a Shangri-La, an oasis, a utopia. How far in the future? in our lifetimes, 20 years or less, in my opinion.

12:38So my little kids, who I've already mentioned, you know, not even teenagers yet, how should they be viewing space? Because traditionally, as a little kid, you're here and space is up there. Yeah. I like this idea, and preview it with them when you talk to them, please, that space is an eighth, it's the eighth continent. Yeah. Because a lot of people think about the space industry. You know, we don't talk about the China industry. We don't talk about the UK industry. It's like these are domains, right? And so, and the thing I like to tell young people is whatever your passion is, if you're a passionate cook, if you're a passionate artist, if you're a passionate writer, if you're a programmer, if you're a data scientist, it doesn't matter what it is, all of those careers will have a space component to it.

13:24I think that's a pretty brilliant thing to imagine. How many years do you think it will be till you can look up and see lights on the moon because there's humans living and working there. 20, 35. Nine years. No. True story. So there you go, Dylan Taylor, talking about all the things that I hadn't considered, which is like our children. I mean, you've got a newborn baby. I've got a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old. So mine will be there quicker than yours. But he's basically saying it's a viable option for them to look at a space job. I love the idea that there are things that we can do in space that we can't do on Earth, like today, and that already, like, cancer-fighting drugs have been discovered in space.

13:59perfectly pure diamonds have been grown in space. It's an atmosphere where there is no atmosphere, therefore we can do things we can't do on Earth. And this idea, and I hadn't really thought about it when he sort of, do you remember, he spoke about the fact that 90 % of the Earth we can't live on. It's mainly ocean, and then where it is an ocean, it's quite a lot of ice and snow and quite a lot of mountains. There are pretty limited places for human beings to live. So if we really genuinely care about the future of humankind, we can't not look at Mars, which is the most Earth-like planet. Like, I hadn't really thought about it.

14:32I honestly just thought this was just willy-waving from billionaires about going to Mars and, you know, space travel and all that sort of stuff. I think that was the first conversation where I thought, ah, this actually is a, it's happening for a reason, rather than just ego. Yeah, that was one of those moments where I sort of really felt that kind of paradigm shift in terms of, like, the big difference between kind of us and everyone else, I suppose, and billionaires and everyone else, which is he was talking about the different billionaires he knew. And the conversations they're having isn't, I thought it was, should we go to space or not?

15:06And their conversation is just where in space we should go. So it's like they've already had that conversation. That's been and gone. We're only talking about where we're going. And remember he talked about moving heavy industry off of Earth. And I found that really compelling and interesting, particularly with the data center thing. Although that being said, I did very recently see an Instagram post, which I presume is 100 % true. And, you know, I have no doubts it is true. That was talking about how actually it's harder to cool things down in space in a vacuum. So actually the data center thing is a real challenge.

15:45Interesting. But yeah, like I'm always saying about our baby that, you know, we're sat here on Riverside about to do recording a podcast that will go probably on YouTube and on RSS. But the stuff she's going to listen to, be into, watch, play with, get a job in, whatever, probably don't even exist yet. And I think it's interesting to speak to people like that, Dylan, who they're already having those thoughts. Yeah, and I think as this show evolves and changes and new people get the privilege of sitting in the chair, I still think that is one of the key things that we have to do is like, I think it's answering questions for people who are a bit lost and confused in the world of business and sport.

16:32But I think also challenging people. It needs to continue to challenge people because I think that we think we know like where we're at with all kinds of things in our lives. And it's only through having these kinds of conversations, as you've said at the beginning, like some of them with people we'd never heard of before. Suddenly you see the world in a different way. Like I think about people like Karen Howe, You know, really good conversation with Karen Howe. Because I don't think that I really understood AI until we had that conversation. And when she's saying like these companies still don't have enough data, you know, I think that is very, very interesting.

17:09I don't know, do you want to play a clip of Karen's and hear what she had to say to us? Yeah, yeah, let's tee that up now. It's the scale. So even compared to social media, which already we can argue was problematic in its scale, AI is way worse. So if we look at Meta as an example, which both existed in the social media era and now is trying to refashion itself as an AI company, under the social media era, Meta accumulated around 4 billion user accounts worth of data. When it came time for them to develop generative AI and they wanted to outcompete ChatGPT, the New York Times reported that there were internal conversations of executives lamenting the fact that they did not have enough user data to do that.

17:58which is bananas. Like they had 4 billion user accounts of data at that point. And so they were talking about what about if we bought out Simon & Schuster for all of their books so that we could train a generative AI system? And what if we continue scraping the internet? And what if we continue acquiring all this other data? And in the end, they didn't buy Simon & Schuster. They just torrented all the books from the dark web and used it to train their AI models instead. So that is just one example through the lens of data for understanding how the scale has really shifted here. So I think like I hadn't really thought about that.

18:38AI changes the kind of the moral deal of being a human being on every level. Like what is done with our data? Who are the very few men that are controlling the AI businesses? Are our politicians really going to want to control them? because I don't think they understand them well enough. That's one of the really interesting things I think that I thought about after my conversation with Karen is that the only people that know enough about it are the people that are in it. And because the rest of us are naive to what AI really can and will and is already doing, we therefore go, oh, I don't know about that.

19:09I'll let the experts deal with it. And then there's a real danger that the world suddenly looks different. You know, there are these huge data centers everywhere. It is hoovering up the world's resources and obviously financial resources at an alarming rate. So I think I just want this show to continue to open people's eyes, really, to the world in which we're living. Yeah, I think Karen, I thought, was pretty... I mean, we were pretty early on Karen. She's gone on to... She's everywhere now. So, you know, we can... Well, I'm priming. That's what we call a booking triumph in our game. Yeah, exactly.

19:48but I think there were so many kind of things she said that I feel, I mean that conversation was months ago now, that I feel it was sort of almost continued and got even more true so the thing about them not having enough data you know, that was true when they were building the first meta, the first meta AI, you know you think with something like chat GPT the amount of data it needs to hoove up constantly just to be what it is already which is still pretty hit and miss for a lot of tasks. The cost of it is so crazy. And the amount of data they need is so, you know, numbers that we can't even comprehend.

20:29And I think there's definitely the question I think that's now being asked, which I think wasn't being asked when we first started the show. I think when we first started the show, it was probably more optimism. And what can this do for you? How will it change business? Maybe some people lose their jobs, but we're kind of pretty sure it'll just be these kinds of jobs. I feel like now when we've had guests on, the conversations have been much bigger than that, you know. And I think, I know it's a subject that you're sort of quite passionate about. But I don't know how you, I don't know if you felt a shift in any of your sort of understanding of, or maybe not your understanding, but your sort of perception of it as we've kind of gone on.

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22:13Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing for me is that we, as the people, need to try and take back some control here. I think that's the biggest thing for me. And I think that actually has come through, not just from Karen, but all of the conversations that we've had about the discussions over AI. And I think, like, none of us as individuals can be experts. right, you know, we don't fully get the whole, how much data is it using? How much is it destroying the planet? Do we really need it? Is it going to cause a financial meltdown? You know, I had a really interesting conversation, didn't we, about whether, you know, this with Andrew Sorokin about whether, you know, what happened with the Great Depression is basically being mirrored right now with huge investment followed by a potentially huge crash.

22:56Like, I don't know whether all that stuff is going to happen, but I do know that we need to continue to ask the questions. and I think we can force the politicians to try and put AI more central on their agenda and try and take some sort of control back over AI, but it all comes down to money, and it probably won't happen, will it? And that sort of bit at the end is the thing I think everyone kind of lands on eventually. Has it changed how you would, knowing, kind of as we've gone along, being brutally honest, knowing how much data and energy whenever it turns out that hasn't actually changed it's changed my view on like I don't think people should use it but I've not actually changed my behaviour just being brutally honest like just one of those hypocrisies in life you know yeah yeah yeah well actually where I live someone's trying to put planning permission in to put a data centre about a mile away from our house and they're quite loud like they hum and buzz all night long right and someone in the village put a message in saying, don't moan about someone trying to put a data centre in because there'll be people trying to put data centres everywhere.

24:08Don't moan about it if you're busy taking 10 ,000 photos on your phone and asking chat GPT nonsense questions and creating PowerPoints that you never use. Like, if you're just like... I think we're currently... You know, like, when we look back 40 years and we go, what, every time we went to the supermarket, we just took 30 carrier bags with our shopping in it. And then when we got home, we unloaded it and put the bags in the bin. Then next week, we went and got 30 more bags. We're like, yeah, that's what we did. And our kids wouldn't recognise that behaviour. I think there's a potential that we won't, in the future, recognise this behaviour, where we're like, what, we just asked Chansey, we did 100 things a day and just expected that there was no impact from that.

24:50Or technology itself saves itself. You know, the technology gets to a point where actually it doesn't take the amount of what the resources of the world that it does at the moment to be able to process this stuff, which is inevitable, I reckon. It's the same reason why there's more power in the technology we're using for this conversation than sent man to the moon. Yeah, I think so. But I think it's just good for this show to continue to be a place that asks those interesting questions. I mean, I think if I was to put, if I was to say which was my favourite episode of the last 18 months, the conversation with Kieran Maguire, about money in football was right up there.

25:31And actually, it was kind of brought into sharp focus for me by the fact we had this conversation, and not long after we had the conversation before the 2026 World Cup, and then suddenly everyone, you know, from all the mainstream media to everyone on social media to the average fan, they were all talking about the money around the World Cup. I mean, crazy, ludicrous things like one of the stadiums in the US had parking spaces for 1800 cars they decided that that was part of the sort of like the controlled area so no cars were allowed in therefore the only way to get to the stadium was to take the train and the only way to get a train ticket was to pay$150 which is usually a$15 train ticket and at the same time you're staying in a hotel where all sorts of shenanigans went on to increase the prices of the hotel rooms ahead of the tournament and people have had to decide whether they're going to fly to multiple countries and the Scotland fans after their three group matches had to make a decision like they didn't know for days whether they were still in the World Cup or not so do they fly home do they stay out are they paying for hotels do they come and go like do they just write it off and come home like it kind of felt to me like a World Cup where the fans were almost at the bottom of the of the conversation right and business was at the top of it and that chat that we had with Kieran I thought was really interesting because it's the kind of first time that I've that I was forced to ask myself questions about my favourite sport and the sport I love, which is football, that were not like sporting questions.

27:03They were financial questions. And as soon as you see it as business and understand you are purely interacting with businesses every time you go and watch even the football team that you support, your local football team, then I think it changes your relationship with the game. But that is kind of what the crazy economics of modern-day football, I guess I'd say. Yeah, there was a particularly interesting moment where we talked about the Club World Cup. So we'll play that clip. And I think this might illustrate, I think, some of what you were talking about. That competition was worth£80 million to Chelsea.

27:39What? £80 million. How is the Club World Cup worth£80 million? Because FIFA had to make it attractive to clubs to enter. FIFA had a very last minute, but very, very lucrative broadcast deal that they signed for the competition. And on the back of that, they'd make more money. In a crazy situation, Chelsea made far more money from winning the Club World Cup, which, let's be honest, do you know anybody that actually watched it? No. I mean, I don't remember who played in it. I just know what the results were. Yeah. So I can't remember any of the matches. I just didn't watch it myself, and I'm football mad.

28:17If you win the FIFA World Cup, which we're about to get very excited about, you only get 50 million and yet that's that's a bigger tournament surely so but that's that's the that's the crazy economics of modern day football lovely and I hadn't even I hadn't even considered the you know the fact that the Club World Cup had to be financially interesting for football clubs to take part I suppose I'm still like a romantic when it comes to sports so I mean the Club World Cup kind of snuck up on me really I still don't understand now whether it's like three or four years old or whether it's been around for 50 years but it certainly talks about more than it's ever been talked about before and I just kind of thought wow what an honour to get into the club world cup it didn't kind of dawn on me that any club that plays in it immediately picks up the phone and goes yeah I know we've won the champions league we're in the club world cup or whatever you have to do how much money will we make please like it's a weird it's but it's naive to think otherwise isn't it really yeah and I guess it's almost a similar conversation of what happened a little bit with golf maybe where it was kind of you know eventually the question was asked you know well how much money would it take for you to go over here and it turned out the number for some people was about 150 million 200 million and it turns out the number for for you know chelsea to put out a decent squad in a club world cup match is that they might get 80 million that's the number um and the fact that the world cup and this is the thing i because when i first when we first had that quote from kieran it was the 80 million versus the 50 that felt really interesting but actually the 50 million is really interesting because that's a kind of weirdly small number if you think about it in grand scheme of things and think of those scotland fans hanging around for days paying inflated prices on every bottle of water every bowl of fries every you know whatever all this money's flying around and actually a tiny proportion of it is being allocated to either making anything easier for a fan or for a player to make it worth their while for a team.

30:24Every other penny of it has gone somewhere. It's not gone... Well, this is exactly the point that Eric Rees made when he came on the show. And Eric Rees is someone who kind of opens the eyes of the consumer to the fact that trust is so important, but you shouldn't just automatically trust that your local supermarket cares about your health over its profits. And he was basically saying, wasn't he, unless it's actually written in black and white that the number one focus of this business is the health of the consumer, assume you are not even considered and that actually EBITDA and profit and turnover and pleasing shareholders is actually all that matters.

30:59And I think it's a bit like that with football. I think we just have to understand that we as the fans are never going to be the most important thing as much as we would love that to be the case. And even the footballers now, yeah, they get really well remunerated and well paid. But again, I remember someone's explained to me really early in my days in Formula One, they said Formula One drivers are like light bulbs. One of them turns off, you screw another one in. I feel like that about footballers. I feel like they're just a commodity. Like you're the megastar player at the moment, so we'll love you.

31:29And at the next World Cup in four years, if you've retired or you're not around, well, don't, you might not even get a ticket. You certainly won't be central to all of the decision-making processes and all of the media around it. So I think that was an important conversation. I think we should just change how we look at football clubs. We should be like not moaning anymore that the chief exec of a football club is focused more on extending and growing the stadium and setting up a couple of restaurants than they are about making sure that there are free buses for fans with physical disabilities coming to a match.

32:02Like that stuff happens because those people are employed to make as much money as possible, not to look after fans who've got specific issues that need looking at. And that's why charities exist. That's why fan groups exist. That's why focus groups exist. And that's why we have to continue to have a voice to try and represent everyone across the spectrum in sport. And I guess the other side of that is what also can't survive, I suppose, and maybe like Brentford and stuff is a different example of that, But what you also can't have is that really old school owner, boyhood club, been there forever, made a few bob, invested in it, now owns it.

32:45And they can't compete against any of these new owners. So you don't want a very friendly but non-financially competitive owner. But you also don't want a very financially competitive owner who couldn't care less about the club. And I don't know who is floating around with enough money to be involved, who sits somewhere in the middle of that that would be this perfect person, you know? Totally right. Can I finish by talking about one of our biggest conversations, which was with Andy Willman? Please. The man who has created Clarkson's Farm. He really created Top Gear. He created the Grand Tour as much as, you know, Jeremy Clarkson gets the blaudits.

33:24And I just think it's a good reminder. And the reason why I wanted to finish with this, it's a really good reminder to people that amongst all of this world of change that we've spoken about, amongst the finances, amongst the AI, amongst the race for space and everything, human creativity is going to remain the most important thing. And Andy Willman is successful because he is creative and I love the conversation with him. And actually, I think one of the things that we should all aim to be in the coming years is as creative as possible and then we will retain human relevance in a world of automation.

33:58Next time we see him in the pub, he goes, guys I think I've cracked it he goes last night I was watching True Detective and he went there's this episode where they have this like religious meeting like where they're at deep south religious meetings and he went and they've got a tent frame up there's like canvas some poles people underneath it we do that so very quickly we're like studio director cameramen we start talking to everyone and they're like Jeremy it's not just we've watched that episode It can't be like that, you know. You've got to have a flat floor for the cameras to wheel across, soundproofing.

34:37It's not those little poles. Where's all your equipment go? And Jeremy's like, that impatience he's got with, that whole how hard can it be kicks in. He's like, it's going to be fine. Stop worrying. Stop worrying. Anyway, Amazon execs are flying over from LA to ask what ideas we've got for our new show. So we go over there, and there's four of us, and Mark, our main lawyer. And we're going up in the lift and Amazon want to know what our thoughts are. And Mark says to Jeremy, do not mention your tent idea. One of the American execs goes, so you got any ideas for the show? How it might look? I was watching True Detective.

35:15He's like, oh, for fuck's sake. No, no. And we're like, to take this around the world and there's got to be two of them because it's got to be like that rock and roll tour system, two stages, leapfrogging. It's got to be all that. And I said to the producer, who brought all the budgets together and everything. I said, do you think we can do this for two million quid? And he looked at me and he went, yeah. And I thought, you lying prick, but I'm asking you to lie, the psychology. And at the end, we're like, it's going to be three million, it's not going to be two. And it was five million. The bill was five.

35:47Five million? Yeah. For the crowd tour 10th. So that was our room where our kind of ambitious future was shaped. So I think what's interesting about that conversation is obviously when he's talking to you, there must be a lot that he's saying that kind of really rings true for the world that you really understood in terms of the way TB sort of works. And, you know, I don't think there's many places now where you can sort of have a laugh about kind of losing 5 million quid. I think that even that feels kind of like a different lifetime ago. Yeah. But, you know, when he was speaking, did you feel that was kind of like days gone by?

36:34Like that was history he was talking about? Or did that still feel relevant to you? Because as someone who's kind of really got feet in both camps. Yeah, it was a reminder to me how pleased I am that I feel like I've kind of future-proofed my broadcasting career, I guess you'd describe it as. Because it's interesting, like we were talking about AI. And as much as there are things about AI that I don't like, the fact that it's here means I'm fully embracing it and leaning into it. And I remember talking to Andy before we even started recording and I went, blah, blah, blah, something about AI. And he went, bleh.

37:06I said, how do you mean? He goes, AI, bleh. Like that. And then he was kind of like, he was then, as fascinated as I was on the show about how he's created his success, he was asking us afterwards, so how does this work then? How do you choose the clips and where do they get uploaded to? And as you know, we invited him back to do a second conversation on the High Performance podcast. And when I was like, so we've had 20 million views and downloads across socials and across YouTube with our conversation, that for him was absolutely mind-blowing because there was no platform for the producer of a show like Top Gear to ever share their views and for it ever to be that impactful for the audience.

37:48Even just five years ago, I don't think really, I don't think it would have existed. it certainly wouldn't have existed in this in the in the way that it does now so what he then picked up on which i thought was really interesting was he's like so if you're like a proper like top gear nerd or a tv nerd or a like real kind of like content obsessive then basically there's a whole world that you can you can tap into like there's a there's a whole world for you and i think that's really what we've ended up creating with this new era of broadcasting is we've created belonging there's no longer a place where you can't find something that doesn't speak to you no matter how niche no matter how specific it is you can find hours and hours of deep content and other people for whom it resonates with and i think that sense of community is absolutely vital yeah i think i think you're completely right on that point and i think we're going right back to kind of something you said at the start of this which is algorithms ai youtube netflix it sort of doesn't it doesn't matter ultimately at some point there has to be some authentic substance or entertaining aspect of what you're doing and what you've created that however that is made and wherever that is put that still has to ring true in some way i think um and i think that sort of that sort of point you made earlier about sort of just always chasing authenticity I think that's actually whether it's been an entertainment person whether it's been a CEO whether it's been someone who's kind of from the entertainment world that I know it can feel like a buzzword but I really do think that authenticity thing that has been the thread that has connected almost all of our guests I'd say yeah I think you're you're absolutely right and I think it's important and that authenticity remains right as the show moves forward.

39:43So should we talk very briefly about how that's going to be? Yes, let's do that. So the show will fall under the high performance banner. So we've now got high performance, high performance racing, and this show will now become high performance business. And you can talk to this more than I can because you're going to be producing it. But the slant, I guess, is going to be business in a sporting sense. So leaning more into what is the business of sport. Yeah, and in a way, I think if anyone, I'm sure there's lots of crossover with anyone listening to this with the main high performance show, you know, you think of this as almost the business of high performance.

40:20So all those high performance areas, you know, especially sport, you know, what is the business machinations ticking along in the background there? What are the stories? Who are the people? Who are the movers and shakers? You know, how are decisions really being made at the teams, clubs, you know behind the scenes of the people that you follow and you know are operating at the elite end of any sport so this is how I sort of see it right um you know all the conversation about whether Shakhtar's games were going to be held at Brentford Stadium because they couldn't play the games um in Ukraine because of the ongoing war with Russia on high performance podcasts the conversation would be with Shakhtar or with Brentford about you know how do you psychologically prepare to play your home games in a stadium in the UK?

41:11How do you make sure that your fans still feel like they belong? How do you not let it impact you in a sporting sense? How do you psychologically deal with the fact that you've got a war-torn country and you understand that you winning games of football is so important for people at the moment? Whereas on this show, on High Performance Business, it would be like, how does that even begin to happen? Who pays who? How do you even have the conversations? What do Brentford have to do to show to Shakhtar that they want to make this happen how does it work within the sporting regulations you know is there an opposing team that can claim that actually it's detrimental to them and I think that is really really interesting because the business of sport particularly after the you know World Cup in Mexico USA and Russia and the US I think it's more than ever money and finances and business decisions in sport is being is being talked about again and again so I'm excited yeah and also you the business side of it is impacting fans more and more.

42:04So people who will listen to this, this is a podcast where you can come to, you can understand how that TV package might actually affect you. Why are ticket prices what they are? Why did the World Cup cost what it costs? There's a lot going on there that even from, it's not just, business doesn't just affect business people. And I think business as a sport is perhaps one of the few business areas that really affects the people that interact with it the most. So that's also kind of, I think, a big angle for us. And I'm especially excited about the two new hosts that you've got for the show. I'm not going to say their names right now because that is stealing their thunder.

42:42They deserve their big moment. But I believe, Simon, that in just a few days' time, you will be revealing the hosts of the show. Am I right? That is correct. In our normal Tuesday upload, so whenever you're hearing this, the next episode that drops will actually be the full reveal of our new hosts and the new branding and everything. It's very, very exciting. It's very, very cool. Awesome. Well, look, Simon, a huge thanks to you for being the wind beneath my wings over the last year and a bit. It's been an absolute pleasure. I loved going on this journey with you. You've been fantastic. And of course, huge thanks to all of you at home for listening and enjoying this podcast, wherever you are.

43:17We've loved the comments. We've loved the feedback. I mean, we've had millions of views and downloads and listens. And it's been a really, really fun journey. And also, can I just say big thanks to IFS, actually, because Mark and the team at IFS and Oliver at IFS, in the early days, they backed us. They believed in this idea. They loved this idea. They're continuing to partner with the show and it wouldn't have happened without them. So I want to also shout them out and thank them for all of their hard work and their loyalty to the journey we've been on. Right, Simon, here we go then for one final time.

43:51It's been lovely working with you. You'll have a couple of new best friends to hang out with next week, along with Spencer Matthews. and the journey continues as Room Where It Happened becomes high-performance business. Thank you so much, buddy. Cheers, Jake. Thanks, mate.