Wes Siler (Journalist, Adventurer, Public Lands Advocate)

Wes Siler is a journalist who spent 20 years writing about adventure, vehicles, gear, and the great outdoors, most notably being one of the most popular writers for Outside Magazine. On this episode Matt Farah talks to Wes about why tech isn't rewarding journalism, how both parties are effecting our public lands, towing, hunting, climate change, and so much more. Wes is a well of knowledge and worth paying attention to. https://wessiler.substack.com/ IG: @wessiler Recorded February 25, 2026 SHOW NOTES DeleteMe Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/TIRE and use promo code TIRE at checkout. AG1 For a limited time only, get a FREE AG1 duffel bag and FREE AG1 Welcome Kit with your first subscription order! Only while supplies last. https://www. DRINKAG1. COM/TIRE. Want your question answered? To listen to the episode the day it's recorded? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What's up everybody, welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is, as always, brought to you by Off the Record. We love Off the Record here at the Smoking Tire because they are looking out for us 24/7/365. Wherever I drive a car, whatever state, whatever jurisdiction, I know that if I get yoinked, Off the Record is right there backing me up. All I gotta do is go to offtherecord.com/tst, send a photo or scan of the ticket along with a description of what I was doing at the time, my version of events, if you will, and Off the Record goes to work. 95% of the time, you just get that text message just long enough later that you've completely

• 0:44Matt Farah?

  forgot about it saying dismissed. Other times, you gotta take a little extra action. Either way, they are looking out for you. It is affordable and it's high quality and you're supporting your favorite podcast when you use them. It's a three-peat winner, folks. OfftheRecord.com/tst. That'll get you 10% off all legal services booked through Off the Record. Once again, OfftheRecord.com/tst.

• 1:14Matt Farah?

  Cheers, baby. And with that, welcome to my Airbnb at the foot of a beautiful meadow at the base of a mountain with a man I haven't seen in 10 years, maybe?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  10, 12 years, something, yeah.

• 1:28Matt Farah?

  Wes Hyler. We did motorcycle things briefly.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  We did YouTube things briefly.

• 1:33Matt Farah?

  Car things briefly.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were colleagues in the car review world in the 2000s.

• 1:38Matt Farah?

  Mm-hmm. And now here you are.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42Matt Farah?

  Wearing a vest over a flannel.

• 1:45Matt Farah?

  And we all know what that means. So I actually have to like, I got, you know, when I was coming up here, I'm here for Ice Race, and I knew, I read your newsletter. I just became a paid subscriber, by the way.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Thank you, I appreciate it.

• 1:59Matt Farah?

  Don't know if they alerted you, annual prepaid.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  WesHyler.substack.com.

• 2:04Matt Farah?

  I mean, honestly, the best... Not just on literal Substack, uh, but like the best writing that I'm reading today is like pretty much full Indies.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17Matt Farah?

  Like yourself, like Garbage Day, Hamilton, Nolan, I read AR Moxon.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Hamilton's great, yeah.

• 2:24Matt Farah?

  Do you read Moxon?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:25Matt Farah?

  I recommend AR Moxon.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:26Matt Farah?

  Um, but like they're, they're all just like, they moved to, to the newsletter format effectively.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you can't be a journalist working for most mainstream outlets today. There's a few that still do it right. You know, there's, there's the Atlantic. I know, like Road Track. Yeah, um, but you, you know, it's, it's just impossible to be a journalist. And so I was fired uh, in September for being a journalist.

• 2:54Matt Farah?

  I read this and this is crazy.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:56Matt Farah?

  Uh, because so you, but, but so that's a well crafted sentence. So you weren't, you weren't fired for writing about the wrong thing. You were fired because you decided to run for office here in Montana and the, uh, this is according to your newsletter.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12Matt Farah?

  And the, the, the outlet said for perhaps the first time ever that you cannot write for us and run for office.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it, that's a decent summary.

• 3:25Matt Farah?

  I mean, but you wrote 5,000 words on this and I just did it.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just, you just did a quick.

• 3:28Matt Farah?

  I just did it in 50s.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  So more or less the story is I, I was at Outside, um, as the Outdoor Lifestyle columnist for a decade. Uh, I was by far the most popular writer. Um, you know, I was responsible for something like any given day, a quarter to a half of all the web traffic.

• 3:44Matt Farah?

  And you write about cars, you write it like

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Dogs.

• 3:47Matt Farah?

  Dogs, outdoor gear.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50Matt Farah?

  Uh, more and more, it's a land conservation type issues, but, but for most of your career, it's just been general outdoor lifestyle stuff.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I tried to tackle important issues. So what, what matters? If you're an Outside magazine reader, if you care about the outdoors, you know, what matters? And so that changes in a given year. You know, right now we could talk about climate change because.

• 4:10Matt Farah?

  Cause I'm here for the ice race.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It's almost March and there's no snow in Montana. It's fifty degrees outside.

• 4:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I always took, I always took that charge really seriously. Um, and I think I was good at it. And the problem with, with being good at journalism is that often being good at journalism is bad for business. If it is a business that is oppositional to journalism. And so what we've seen recently is a lot of publications have been acquired, um, by, for lack of a better word, tech bros.

• 4:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  And they're in it not to.

• 4:41Matt Farah?

  You could also say assholes.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Assholes, it's, it's, that's.

• 4:45Matt Farah?

  People that are actively bad for humanity.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  And so they're not, they're not in it for the cause of journalism or the cause of informing the American public.

• 4:52Matt Farah?

  They're usually in it to the exact opposite thing of that.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're using it for a short-term buck. And so they, they get that short-term buck out of an app sale or something like that. And so they only look at the journalism as the opening of their engagement funnel. And they want the smoothest path from, you know, backwards up that asshole right into the app sale.

• 5:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Right? They don't want good stuff that challenges people. They want unchallenging content.

• 5:16Matt Farah?

  Well, if you're talking about Bezos and the, the post recently, he explicitly has said he wants.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:23Matt Farah?

  Uh, we're, we're going, we're going full bore, pro capitalism all the way.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yes. So just, just, just bullshit, right?

• 5:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  And so what happened with Outside was it was acquired in twenty twenty one by tech bros. Um, you know, some, some dude who had made like a Strava clone, uh, you know, at the height of like app acquisitions.

• 5:41Matt Farah?

  We only fuck with the real.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Got hundreds of millions of dollars for like a bad Strava clone, uh, and thought he was a genius. And, you know, he, I was sitting there doing good journalism and he was seeing that as a barrier to him selling apps. And so he wanted to fire me for a while. I had an ironclad contract. He couldn't really fire me. Um, you know, interviewed Tim Walz, uh, during the campaign, interviewed John Kerry. I was supposed to interview Joe, Joe Biden. You know, I was, I was doing important work and, you know, he was just, this is not what we're trying to do. Just, just, you know, go review a fucking tip, bro. You know?

• 6:14Matt Farah?

  Was he, did he, he, oh, he stick to cars, do you?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  He almost. Yeah, stick to cars. Yes, exactly.

• 6:19Matt Farah?

  I get, I get, I get the occasional stick to cars.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  And so I got, I got recruited to run for office here in Montana for state senate, which, you know, there's one point one million people in Montana. I. Hate to phrase it this way, but running for state senate here is kinda like running for town council in Santa Monica.

• 6:32Matt Farah?

  My, my, my, my like, yeah, assembly person, I think represents like the same number of people.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly, like, yeah.

• 6:39Matt Farah?

  But I do have to pause with, because I have to actually, because I, I wanna talk about it because the, the way you ended up running is interesting and I wanna talk about that.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:48Matt Farah?

  It circles back to this stuff, but I, you know Mallory, Mallory McMorrow?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Of course, you're a good friend.

• 6:54Matt Farah?

  Michigan State Senator.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 6:55Matt Farah?

  I support her, I support everything she does.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:59Matt Farah?

  Her team asked if she could come on the podcast.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:02Matt Farah?

  And I said, although I support everything she does, I don't think having politicians on the podcast, even if I support them.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:13Matt Farah?

  Is what I wanna do.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:15Matt Farah?

  And so like, I, when I invited you to come on the podcast, I didn't know you were running for office. Like, literally, I did not know.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And then for the record, for the record, I did not ask to come on the podcast, Matt asked me.

• 7:26Matt Farah?

  No, I, I did, but, but I didn't know you were running for office. And I was, and then I was like, oh shit.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  That's hilarious.

• 7:31Matt Farah?

  And I saw, and I told no to, to Mallory.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:35Matt Farah?

  And so I, I was like, alright, the way I'm gonna navigate this is like, me and Wes have like a lot of other things to talk about.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:42Matt Farah?

  Other than like, what's your website? Plug your, your campaign website.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Uh, westformontana.com.

• 7:47Matt Farah?

  Westformontana.com, if you're interested in Wes's like literal campaign positions, go check out West for Montana.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I, I don't even like talking about that stuff, so.

• 7:54Matt Farah?

  But I just like, I feel really bad because I really like and support what Mallory's doing.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 8:00Matt Farah?

  I said, I didn't do politicians and you're kind of a politician right now.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Mallory is a much more serious politician than I am. I'm not the most serious politician. So I, and it's, it's funny because people label you with that. They label you with like, oh, you're a politician now. And you, you're in your head.

• 8:13Matt Farah?

  If you win.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And you're saying, I'm just, I'm just, exactly, if I win, I'm just still Wes. You know, I'm just some guy who's like, is fed up with like the status quo and wants to see some, wants to help create some change because I think I can. It's essentially like, the compensation for this position is $5,000 a year. I, I, I will lose more money in like the hours I spend on it that I will receive from this.

• 8:32Matt Farah?

  Is that really the compensation?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  $5,000 a year. There's some change on top of that, it's like fifty, three hundred or something, but yeah.

• 8:38Matt Farah?

  Is it, but like you get like? You know, like a bearskin rug.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  I think I have to revive my own bearskin rug, yeah.

• 8:45Matt Farah?

  All right, they don't pay you, but you get to be like first in line for like deer hunting licenses.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  I don't even think that's the case.

• 8:52Matt Farah?

  No perks.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  There's really no perks. It's all, it's all downside. I have to say, don't, don't run for office.

• 8:57Matt Farah?

  It's all crazy people yelling at you.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  It's a miserable experience. It's all crazy people yelling at you. Everybody, everybody treats me like I'm on like embarked on some corrupt endeavor. Where I spent like my entire life in what's more or less public service as a journalist.

• 9:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And I'm just sort of doing the same thing, just like you are, I've written about policy. I know how to do policy now after writing about it for 20 years. Surely I can go like apply that directly rather than writing around it.

• 9:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  That was my idea. And then all of a sudden, yeah, I'm a politician now and I'm different and it's, that's strange, right?

• 9:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, because it's particularly in, particularly in this country, your job title so defines you.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:37Matt Farah?

  You know, and if you change job titles, you're like a different person now.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:41Matt Farah?

  In a lot of ways, you know, so, and especially

• 9:46Matt Farah?

  in journalist and politician aren't like necessarily opposed, but they kind of are. I mean, you know what I mean?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  They traditionally aren't always because journalists cover politicians.

• 9:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  But it's, there's also a lot of like, there's a lot of like shared common grounds because both are like.

• 10:01Matt Farah?

  Hopefully truth.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, ideally, truth ideally. Um, you know, like both, both are vastly undercompensated, like service oriented, cause oriented.

• 10:13Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Career paths.

• 10:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't even see politician as a career path. I just see it as like, you know, shit's fucked.

• 10:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  I'm, I, I'm fed up with it. I want to do something to help. And that's what we're being told to do, do something, do something positive. And I've run charities in the past. I've helped people out. Um, you know, I've tried to do the right thing always. And it just sounded kind of this time like, you know, maybe the right thing is going to Helena, the state capital. Uh, and helping craft some legislation to make the lives of Montanans a little better.

• 10:42Matt Farah?

  I, uh, I always sort of found that like, when people would tell me to like stick to cars or whatever.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:48Matt Farah?

  Like whatever your kind of area of expertise, if you're looking at something that is, is out in the world in public. For me, it's more cars than anything else. For you, it's more of the outdoors and, and, and, and than anything else, but like. Politics comes for you. Like, you don't, like, I didn't, like, go seeking that, but like, like, that shit, like, dude, why is, like, Porsche so, super fucked, like, literally right now? Like, politics. They said, you have to go full electric, and they, like, good fucking smart Germans were like,

• 11:29Matt Farah?

  "Okay!", and they went, and then it was like, "Oooh!", fucking handbrake turn, and now they're in, like, that's, that's politics.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  You, you can't care about something like cars, and not at some point intersect politics and be forced to care about politics, it's gonna affect everything. Um, you know, look at, look at Ford, and the pivot they're trying to do right now, and what their stock prices have been like. You know, look at Tesla, and the headwinds they're facing, and that's inherently political, right?

• 11:54Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:55Matt Farah?

  Also, they thought the Cybertruck was a good idea, which one could argue is not political, but is incredibly misguided.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  It's, it's indicative of a certain political belief, I think.

• 12:06Matt Farah?

  Right?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  It does, it does. One who sniffs their own farts too much will inevitably design a car that looks like that. It's the make trucks great again, uh, of, uh, of trucks.

• 12:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, so that's, for me, you know, cars run, run headfirst into politics, uh, frequently.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the outdoors even more so.

• 12:25Matt Farah?

  Right, so that's where I was going.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  You know, we have 648 million acres of public land in this country.

• 12:29Matt Farah?

  Can you, real quick, just for those who don't, like, what is a public land, like, I, this sounds like a fucking dumb question.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:36Matt Farah?

  Like, what is a public land that's different from a national park or state park?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  So, yeah, a, a, a quick, a quick history lesson.

• 12:44Matt Farah?

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• 16:56Speaker 01

  When we were creating America and trying to ratify the Constitution, we had some problems, right? So we were trying to bring together like 13 very diverse colonies, and find a way for them to exist together in the same country with, under the same governance. And one of the problems was like the royal charters that created those countries. You know, they only knew like, you know, like the 1600s. They're like, I don't know, here's a river on a coast.

• 17:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Hey, Virginia, you have everything from like this river to that river, and then like wherever that goes.

• 17:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And what that looked like on maps after the Revolution was just like, you know, vast overlapping lines.

• 17:30Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  As they went west of the Appalachians. And, you know, the only way to settle that was to like define some sort of common grounds. And that was established as, you know, at the time, everything west of the Appalachians basically went to the American people for the furtherance of our country. And as we created states, that land was granted to create states. And what we were left over after a few different wars with Spain and Mexico and various other things, the Louisiana Purchase and the establishment of these western states was a whole bunch of land that nobody wanted. We tried to give it away to homesteaders and the Homestead Act in various different ways, but a lot of it was no good.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  And so it just ended up being owned on behalf, it's owned by the American people and managed on our behalf by the federal government.

• 18:17Matt Farah?

  And there's so much BLM for most of the time, right?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  It's not just BLM, it's BLM, national forests, national parks.

• 18:24Matt Farah?

  So it's all under the same?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  It's all, it's all, it's all public lands, right? So like that right there, if you guys can see that hill is public land.

• 18:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  And that's national forest. And so it's a set aside for all of us. And it gives us a really unique, like really democratic access to the outdoors. And if you're just in the cars and you just want Matt to see the cars, well, that's where you go off roading. Right? It's where you go car camping. But we all benefit from it because that's our reservoir of biodiversity and clean environment that creates the air we breathe and the water we drink and the animals we like to see. And it's, it's just, it's, I won't dive into too many details, but the way it's managed is, was created by big thinkers like Teddy Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century. And it's exceptionally good and it's exceptional and that it's unique to America. And so you and I have traveled the world. Do you see animals anywhere in the world, including in Africa, like you see here?

• 19:17Matt Farah?

  I mean.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Outside of a national park.

• 19:20Matt Farah?

  When I was literally on safari in Africa, yes.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  But like driving home tonight, you know, we're in Big Sky right now. I'm driving home to Bozeman after dark.

• 19:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  And the animals that I might hit, like on the way home, which was.

• 19:33Matt Farah?

  Maybe New Zealand, but you know, but, but like, yeah, no, it's amazingly natural and.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so right here in Montana, the animals that I have a pretty good chance of hitting on the way home are wolves, moose, bighorn sheep, elk, two kinds of deer, you know, black bear, brown bear, you name it. They will all be on the road tonight as I drive home. And that biodiversity and that healthy wildlife that then tours and thrives on. That establishes our unique identity as Americans of going camping, of being outdoorsy and wearing fleece fest over our flannel shirts. You know, all that is from public lands. And it's it's a really unique system that we all benefit from. It pays billion hundreds of billions into the the treasure every year. It offsets the taxes you and I pay.

• 20:15Matt Farah?

  Uh, in terms of what national park entry fees?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  No, it's in terms of like energy extraction.

• 20:20Matt Farah?

  Oh, energy extraction.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's managed under multiple use. And so basically like the public lands, I need to consider um multiple use and sustained yield. So the idea is that like, you know, oh, we want to go pull some coal out of that hill. Well, we can, so long as like, you know, we create a plan that balances that with people that want to hike on that hill, the people that want to extract timber from that hill. People that want wildlife on that hill, clean air, clean water, right? And so hundreds of billions a year.

• 20:42Matt Farah?

  So public lands aren't necessarily uh all free from extraction.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  No, no, there's vast, there's vast uh commercial activities on public lands. That's what they're there for. Again, they're there for multiple use.

• 20:55Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And when managed properly, they balance that industrial use with the other concerns with and with wildlife conservation, with the natural environment, with recreation. Right? And so what what we're seeing right now is an unprecedented attack that's trying to undo that balance and tip it entirely in favor of extraction. And extraction is not bad, but it has to be managed correctly.

• 21:13Matt Farah?

  And so are we surprised? I mean, we're this is we're in we're in the short term money government, right?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yes, we're in the short term.

• 21:19Matt Farah?

  We're in the get it while it's good government.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  But it's so it's so short term. Uh, you know, again, one of the principles in addition to multiple use is sustained yield. So the whole idea going public lands is that they will they will serve the the national purse uh into perpetuity into the future as long as America is here.

• 21:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  We will have, you know, reservoir of minerals and timber and, you know, energy to draw on if managed correctly. But what's happening right now is trying to break that system uh in favor of just really, really short term profit. So, you know, you manage that hill correctly and that'll produce timber for, you know, you know, into the death of the universe, right?

• 21:55Matt Farah?

  You don't understand, they could get more now.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Now, but not tomorrow.

• 21:59Matt Farah?

  They could, but but tomorrow.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:02Matt Farah?

  May never come.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:03Matt Farah?

  So they're just gonna get it now.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Just gonna get it now.

• 22:05Matt Farah?

  You might as well just get it now.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  No, but it's.

• 22:07Matt Farah?

  Why wait until tomorrow?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  It's crazy and and the ways.

• 22:10Matt Farah?

  Is this the is this the? Cause it like a lot of shit like we're the same age, give or take a year.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  I'm forty five, how old are you?

• 22:19Matt Farah?

  I'm forty four, so we're the same age, basically. And. You know, I was, I was shocked into reality, perhaps from a cocooned existence, but really, what, you know, when Trump got elected the first time and I went, hang on, what the fuck? And I have been, and again, perhaps because of my age or I'm sheltered fucking white guy from Greenwich, I have witnessed across the board backsliding, of course, in human rights and

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And every day.

• 22:48Matt Farah?

  And shit I never thought, you, you know, you go, these people won rights and now they have them.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:54Matt Farah?

  These lands were protected.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:56Matt Farah?

  And now they're protected. Like, I've never seen a, a, a backsliding and an, and unprotected.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  It's like fucking nuts, right? It's, so, so much of it's just so stupid is, is, is the problem of it. And you see that stupidity again on public lands, where it's just like, like you were identifying, short-term profit at the expense of long-term sustainability. And I'm not talking about like kumbaya and fucking rainbows and unicorns and shit. I'm talking about, I'm talking about logging. And if you do it right and it's managed correctly, we can log that forever.

• 23:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  You know?

• 23:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, there is, there is a way to actually.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  There is a way to do that. And that, that's what we've been doing for a hundred years. And right now, what they're trying to do is break that and do logging tomorrow really big. And then no logging two days from now, because it'll just be like a pile of mud that'll be like, you know, glow in the dark radioactive.

• 23:42Matt Farah?

  Is this, from a public lands perspective, I, I, I'm not educated enough to say whether from a human rights perspective, I would expect, I would suspect that maybe the implementation of Jim Crow might have been more of a backslide at that time than what we're seeing now. But that being said, in terms of public lands, has this been the biggest backslide?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:04Matt Farah?

  Ever?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 24:05Matt Farah?

  Since they were established.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Remember that, like, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we had like Richard Nixon. Um, you know, Republican guy, not, not the most, not corrupt politician.

• 24:15Matt Farah?

  No, he got, he got a couple of things right, actually.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Matt Farah?

  Wasn't Nixon EPA?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he was EPA, he was Clean Water Act, he was Endangered Species Act, uh, Clean Air, you know, and like Ronald Reagan was pro that stuff.

• 24:28Matt Farah?

  And all he did was be super racist and bug some people.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, all he did was crime.

• 24:33Matt Farah?

  Nixon is like real, real charming crime by comparison. Nixon crime?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Nixon crime.

• 24:39Matt Farah?

  Nixon crime is so charming.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  A little, a little light breaking and intrigue.

• 24:44Matt Farah?

  Nixon would be like. World Liberty Financial.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:48Matt Farah?

  What's a Bitcoin like Nick, you know what I mean? Imagine Nixon had Bitcoin like he's a send a telex or whatever the fuck they were doing.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 24:58Matt Farah?

  Nixon crime was so charming compared to.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  For the naked, the naked grift of these people.

• 25:04Matt Farah?

  Other than if you factor in Kissinger, I suppose there was probably more war crimes.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  We are about to do a bunch of war crime.

• 25:13Matt Farah?

  We're gonna do, let's circle back on this. We'll have to, you know, hey, hey Siri, fact check my war crimes in six months. We'll see where we're.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  We shouldn't.

• 25:23Matt Farah?

  We're doing war crimes in Minneapolis right now. Well, that, that actually.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Crime ridden hellhole Minneapolis.

• 25:29Matt Farah?

  Dude, the, the piece that you wrote, you wrote a piece about a guy, I think it was called or about preparing for tyranny.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:36Matt Farah?

  And that essentially kind of got me thinking because it was that you started with the premise that some of these protesters, I mean, the ones who weren't being murdered in the street were being followed home by ICE.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:47Matt Farah?

  And started from the premise of, well, what if home typically your safe space and maybe even your like prepper space is no longer available to you.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 25:59Matt Farah?

  As a safe space.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Being in the outdoors and being arrested in things like hunting and guns and you know, survival shit.

• 26:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  You know, manly man shit. It's like, at some point you kind of intersect prepping and it starts to make sense.

• 26:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  You know, I've written articles that like most traditional prepping where you're just stockpiling like 10 years of like cream and tomato soup is, is kind of stupid and silly because you know, any fixed location is subject to siege.

• 26:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Um, but.

• 26:26Matt Farah?

  That's why you put the tomato soup all over the hillside.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:31Matt Farah?

  I've buried shit all over the mountain.

• 26:37Matt Farah?

  They're gonna be finding it for years.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  You do it, you at some point in all this becomes something of a prepper. You look, you look what's going around, you look at the trends, climate change. Right? Weather's getting weird and unpredictable and like, we're not really taking care of our roads anymore. And there's a lot of dead trees falling down with the bark beetles. And so that never really leads to like, well, I need to own like a car on 35 inch tires with a winch and electric chainsaw in the back. And you need solar panels to run your battery pack to charger. You know, your chainsaw and then, well, you probably also need some recovery equipment and you know.

• 27:11Matt Farah?

  Pretty soon you're literally driving like a tow truck.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  You're pretty soon, pretty soon you're me in your car. You know, your Ford Ranger gets 10 miles per gallon and you know, yeah.

• 27:18Matt Farah?

  I wrote, I did read your article on how to buy a truck and actually it's incredibly well thought out and I could easily write a similar article on how to buy a sports car.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:28Matt Farah?

  You think people listen to you?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 27:30Matt Farah?

  I think they just, they're like, oh, that fucking Tacoma, Tacoma, right?

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I'll just buy the Tacoma.

• 27:35Matt Farah?

  Right?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Tacomas are sick, bro. The internet says they're reliable.

• 27:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I'll put 7,000 pounds of shit on my Tacoma, go to Alaska. That's gonna work great.

• 27:43Matt Farah?

  I did, I did actually like that article. I thought as, it does what I did. It's a, it's a funnel of sort of yes, no's and

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:50Matt Farah?

  and limits of what do you need?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  You're not trying to tell people what decisions to make.

• 27:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  You're trying to help them understand the information they need.

• 27:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  To make smarter decisions.

• 27:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah, cuz they're always like, dude, would you get like a, you know, they're, they're asking me to compare two things that have nothing to do with each other.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:06Matt Farah?

  Would you get like a, a Cayenne Turbo GT or like a Bentley Flying Spur? And I'm like, wha- what?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Like, why, why do people buy Cayennes? Or it's like easily the worst car I've ever owned. They drive terribly. They're impossible to maintain. They're ugly. You can't see out of them. They're just, it's literally, literally the worst car I've ever owned is a Cayenne.

• 28:28Matt Farah?

  What year was it? It's like an old one?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  2013.

• 28:31Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Um, it was a three liter diesel car.

• 28:33Matt Farah?

  Oh, the diesel one?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:35Matt Farah?

  Everyone loved the diesel for a minute there.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  So it was, it was my wife's car and um, she was, she was really on it and she, this was when we lived in California. And she was the first person in California to go get the repair cuz it was a three liter car. It was a repair, not a buyback. And Porsche of downtown LA lost her paperwork. And we spent like three years trying to get that ironed out.

• 28:55Matt Farah?

  I won't say anything negative about that dealership.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  It was so bad, like such, such a fundamentally bad experience. Uh, at some point like Porsche squirt her on the phone. Cause she was just calling, trying to like figure out where her paperwork. She could sell the car. We parked it for three years. We didn't drive it. Uh, then the battery died and luckily I went on the, the owner's forum, um, and realized that before I pulled the, before I moved the driver's seat, cut a hole in the carpet and removed the proprietary battery that you can't get anywhere in Montana. Uh, I went on the owner's forum and it reminded me that I had to connect it to, uh, to 12 volt power. Otherwise the whole car would be bricked and totaled. Uh, so I did not total the car and change the battery, but the fact that I ran that risk.

• 29:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Is just obscene.

• 29:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's not great.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:35Matt Farah?

  It's not great.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's, it's the same, but like the car drove bad. Um, it didn't work for three years. Um, Porsche were jerks and like for me, vision out of a car is really important because you can't see, you can't drive, but you can't see.

• 29:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  And you can't see out of them. I don't, I don't understand why anybody buys a Cayenne.

• 29:51Matt Farah?

  If you want to. I don't have the vision.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  If you want a Ranger, if you, if you wanna, if you wanna SUV, a, a fast one for whatever reason, just to flaunt your, your credit score. Uh, buy, buy a Range Rover Sport. They drive so much better. They're cool. They look better, you know?

• 30:04Matt Farah?

  I mean, I, I don't know if, uh, see again, the visual thing I, uh, seeing out of them is not a problem. I've had, uh, I may get a hybrid Cayenne. With a warranty.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I need to tow something.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:15Matt Farah?

  I want to tow.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Why, why don't you just get a Super Duty?

• 30:18Matt Farah?

  Fuck out of here. I live in Los Angeles, dude. I don't live in fucking green acres.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Don't you, don't you own a car storage facility?

• 30:25Matt Farah?

  D- dude.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  You don't even own parking for a Super Duty?

• 30:28Matt Farah?

  No.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Really?

• 30:29Matt Farah?

  No. I have very little surface level outside parking.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  How mu- how much weight are you gonna tow? Like what kind of race car are you gonna tow?

• 30:37Matt Farah?

  Um, uh.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  You tow your Countach?

• 30:39Matt Farah?

  I'm, I'm gonna, we've talked about this in the show a lot. We don't need to have this debate on the show, but I'll just give you, I'm, I got a, a relatively lightweight enclosed trailer. For Brian James Trailers. It's 2,300, uh, 2,500 pounds.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:51Matt Farah?

  And it's aerodynamic.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  It's 2,500 pounds. How much weight are you putting in it?

• 30:55Matt Farah?

  Almost never more than thirty five hundred pounds.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  So you're towing essentially.

• 31:00Matt Farah?

  Six thousand, pretty much max, maybe sixty five hundred.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  So I, and what's the towing capacity on a Cayenne hybrid, seven thousand?

• 31:08Matt Farah?

  Seventy eight hundred.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  That's way too close to the limit. That's gonna be, that's gonna like go over the grapevine, like doing all that stuff. Like the roller springs, it's gonna, it's gonna be sketchy as hell.

• 31:16Matt Farah?

  I don't, I disagree.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Get a diesel truck.

• 31:18Matt Farah?

  I, I do not want.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Get someone that tows forty thousand pounds.

• 31:21Matt Farah?

  I absolutely do not want that.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Notice it's back there.

• 31:23Matt Farah?

  I don't want that. I do not want that.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  I tow.

• 31:25Matt Farah?

  I would rather have a slightly less optimized tow vehicle.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:33Matt Farah?

  That's much better for the ninety five percent of the time it's not towing anything.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:37Matt Farah?

  I do not want to drive a fucking giant ass pickup truck around LA.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  So why, why don't you just buy like a ten year old Super Duty?

• 31:45Matt Farah?

  I don't want to.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Park it somewhere and only use it for towing. Like towing is so sketchy with a, with a car that's not designed to tow.

• 31:50Matt Farah?

  Nah, it's alright.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  I tow all the time and it's a, it's a nightmare to car that can't do it.

• 31:54Matt Farah?

  I don't have to do this. All I have to do is get seven different press cars and try towing with them.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Great.

• 32:01Matt Farah?

  From S U, the SUVs I want.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Great. So just gonna afford Super Duty press cars for how you need to tow a wheel.

• 32:06Matt Farah?

  I don't, today I just got an email asking with a list of the new Super Duties. I can borrow one.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Great.

• 32:12Matt Farah?

  I, I, I, look, I understand the argument. It's just I don't necessarily subscribe to the more is more.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  For, for towing more is more.

• 32:22Matt Farah?

  I know, I know, but it's not that much weight.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  I, I think, I think for, for dear reader, uh, the best advice I could possibly give to you is to try to double the, the weight of your tow vehicle. Your tow capacity, you're gonna have such an easier time.

• 32:33Matt Farah?

  I understand.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Your car's gonna be more stable. You're gonna get better fuel economy.

• 32:36Matt Farah?

  Dude, I used to tow.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  You know, it's gonna be way safer.

• 32:38Matt Farah?

  Twenty years ago, I towed with a thirty five hundred diesel.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Matt Farah?

  Dodge, thirty five hundred diesel.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Smart.

• 32:43Matt Farah?

  The Cayenne Hybrid makes more horsepower and torque.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Great.

• 32:48Matt Farah?

  And has more, and has two more gears.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  It's wheelbase is this long.

• 32:52Matt Farah?

  It's, it's not a big deal. It's not that big of a trailer.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  It's wheelbase.

• 32:55Matt Farah?

  It's not that big of a trailer.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Great stability.

• 32:58Matt Farah?

  It also has a big fucking battery pack. Weight, weight helps.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Right, so more, more, more, more weight over the rear axle.

• 33:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah, the weight, the weight is in between. It's in front of the rear axle.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so what's, what's the weight balance in that car?

• 33:09Matt Farah?

  I mean, I don't know exactly.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Is it fifty fifty like they're supposed to be or something or close thereof?

• 33:14Matt Farah?

  I do not know.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Cause I mean, what's your tongue weight? What's your tongue weight on a Cayenne hybrid? Like seven hundred fifty pounds?

• 33:21Matt Farah?

  Uh, I, I don't know offhand, but I know I can tow this trailer.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:25Matt Farah?

  But like, I don't know.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  It's gonna be sketchy.

• 33:27Matt Farah?

  I'm gonna try it before I buy it.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  It's gonna suck.

• 33:30Matt Farah?

  I'm not gonna throw seventy-five, eighty thousand dollars.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  You're gonna do this, go down the great line.

• 33:35Matt Farah?

  I towed, I towed my manx to Pebble Beach with a Benteke and it was chill.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Oh, Bentekes are sick cars.

• 33:41Matt Farah?

  It was extremely chill.

• 33:44Matt Farah?

  It was extremely chill.

• 33:49Matt Farah?

  I, uh, I also, um, man, I read, I read your, uh, you and a couple of people that I read, uh, particularly Garbage Day, are, are, uh, uh, have, have talked about the sort of, the stupidity and malice of the social media government.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:09Matt Farah?

  Like, like the fact that like ICE has like, is like terrorizing people for content.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:15Matt Farah?

  Uh, is like real crazy.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what, the, the, the purpose of ICE has nothing to do with immigration. That's just like the cover story. The purpose of ICE.

• 34:24Matt Farah?

  Like today, not originally.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  No, no, ICE was created during the George Bush administration as like to like, give, give money to Dick Cheney and Donald Trump's files.

• 34:32Matt Farah?

  It's a great cause. I mean, listen, we got, we got no, no notes there.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Dick Cheney's got an eat man.

• 34:39Matt Farah?

  Dick Cheney needs a third heart.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so ICE has never had anything to do with immigration, but today it is even less dear immigration than ever before. The entire purpose of ICE, um, is to. Manufacturer of violent insurgency against the American government. So that Trump can be justified in invoking the Insurrection Acts.

• 34:59Matt Farah?

  Which he's tried to do so many times.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's tried to do so many times. He's trying to invoke the Insurrection Act to declare martial law. Uh, and then use that to shut down the elections and stay in power for a third term.

• 35:10Matt Farah?

  Like, there's a lot of people who I read that say that basically that that was what January 6th was like supposed to be.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:19Matt Farah?

  Like, basically, they wanted all those lunatics to fight, quote, Antifa.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Antifa's not real, and these people are such fucking morons.

• 35:29Matt Farah?

  Real problem.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  So like, those guys, all those, you know, our collective memory of January 6th is now about, you know, um, a bunch of fucking morons invading the Capitol. They were never supposed to invade the Capitol. Uh, they were there to create a street war with the millions of Antifa, blue-haired liberals that were descending upon Washington DC and Donald Trump's imagination. And then because of that street violence, he could have, again, invoked the Insurrection Act, declared martial law, and prevented the election from being certified.

• 35:57Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  And so we saw a test run for it then, it didn't work, he didn't go to prison somehow. And so he's trying that again now, and so the, the, the big takeaway here, um, is that as we resist ICE deployments, as we protest, as we do that stuff, we have to resist the urge to do any sort of violence. Uh, which, believe me, that urge is there.

• 36:17Matt Farah?

  Well, yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Because that, that will give him the excuse to deploy the military.

• 36:21Matt Farah?

  Because that's the, the whole point is just poking the bear.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:25Matt Farah?

  And then creating this, you know, turning whatever, like, tiny little nothing arrest into some piece of content that can...

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Remember that Nazism wasn't about persecuting Jews or sending them to gas chambers. Nazism was about, um, you know, collecting power.

• 36:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Uh, and it did that, and, you know, fascist regimes collect power by villainizing the weakest members of society that are least able to defend themselves. And so right now, who are the weakest members of society least able to defend themselves? Uh, immigrants, um, and trans people.

• 37:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Right? Um, and so...

• 37:06Speaker 01

  By villainizing those people and by inspiring violence against them, what they're trying to do is have normal people like you and I go, wait a second, that person can't defend themselves. I should stand up for them. And they go out and beat up a cop.

• 37:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And then that video of like you beating up a cop to defend, you know, some immigrant family on their way to church being rounded up.

• 37:25Matt Farah?

  It goes on Tucker Carlson.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  It goes on Tucker Carlson and then the 82nd Airborne is, you know, stealing your Bentley and, you know.

• 37:33Matt Farah?

  Well, there's multiple shows. I mean, uh, John Oliver just did it and fucking, um, some more news just did it. With, it was that Nick Shirley guy who made this bullshit video about the, the, uh, the, uh, the childcare centers in Minneapolis.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:49Matt Farah?

  And like the chain of events that led directly from that to like sending in the fucking troops.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's wild how stupid that is. You take some little like incel pervert who can't get laid. Uh, and for some reason a childcare doesn't want some little incel pervert in their, in their childcare and that's suddenly evidence of like, you know, Somali corruption. Like where, where, where does that make sense? Where does that make sense at any level? It's all, it's all so stupid and just, it's just, Hamilton Nolan writes about this really well, but it's just, these people are fucking morons.

• 38:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  How are they in charge?

• 38:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Cause we're all, cause we're all. Cause we're all too busy to run for, well, we're all too busy running for office by having great careers and, you know.

• 38:29Matt Farah?

  And we, we sold our, you know, we sold our, um, our, our convenient, you know, we sold our privacy and we sold everything for convenience. And now they, and now they've, now they've got us.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:42Matt Farah?

  Let's go to the people. Hang on.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Read your questions.

• 38:44Matt Farah?

  Patreon.com slash the smoke and tire podcast is how you support the show. How you catch the show when it's live. I'm sorry. It's not live right now. How you ask questions for the show, how you get the show early, how you get extra show and how you get exclusive access to all kinds of cool, fun collabs and things that we do. Um, and by the way, shout out to this Montana bourbon, whatever it's called, Montana 1889.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Everything here is called the same thing. It's all trying to play into like the fucking Dutton family bullshit. It's just like, come on. We're a little more dynamic than just like a bad image of a rancher.

• 39:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, all right. The Swinging Tire says, can Wes recommend a place in the northeast? Good for outdoor activities, hunting and camping?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the northeast is wonderful. I would head to, I would head to Maine. And just get OnX Offroad, the app, and it'll, it'll, it'll lead you to everything.

• 39:34Matt Farah?

  OnX is good.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  OnX Offroad, it's just, it's like nineteen dollars a year. It's great. And head up to like northern Maine. It's just, it's just tons of logging roads with little patches of public in there. And you can just find your own little slice of heaven really easily in there using, again, OnX Offroad, it'll show you exactly where that is.

• 39:49Matt Farah?

  I've done a bunch of the backcountry discovery routes.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yes, those are rad.

• 39:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, those are good. How do you like your Torreggs in the morning? Says, what's the most braking force you've ever felt in a car? Mustang GT3 LeMans car for me. Did you ever do some crazy shit?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  It's been so long since I've done the car.

• 40:10Matt Farah?

  You don't do sports cars anymore?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  I used to, I mean, like,

• 40:14Speaker 01

  I don't know, like Lexus.

• 40:14Matt Farah?

  What was the last sports car you reviewed?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  That's been so long. I mean Corvette ZR1, Lexus LFA, GT3S.

• 40:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that was like 2011.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. C6 ZR1, yeah, yeah. This is a pretty good time to bow out.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:29Matt Farah?

  Aircooled Testicles says, Doug Demuro recently made a video about the most important cars of the last thirty years. His top three were Tesla Model S, Toyota Prius, and Mercedes ML320. Agree or disagree?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Interesting choices. I fully agree on Tesla Model S.

• 40:49Matt Farah?

  I agree on Prius also.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  I love the Prius.

• 40:52Matt Farah?

  The new Prius is dope.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Dude, it's sick. But like, honestly, the Prius forever has been, up here, there's a lot of income inequality. So we talk about stealth wealth a lot, and you don't want to flex here.

• 41:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  It's you want a car that gets you across socioeconomic divides. And if you want that anywhere in the country, doesn't matter if you're like in Carmel, if you're on Long Island, wherever you are, if you show up in a Prius, you're welcome.

• 41:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  At a dive bar, at like, you know, Ralph Lauren's house, you know, whatever it is, like, a Prius, you're fucking dope. The ML320, the reason he's listing that is, Was the first car to use brake based traction aids.

• 41:27Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Instead of instead of.

• 41:28Matt Farah?

  Is that why he did use it?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yes, instead instead of locking different. So I didn't see Doug's video. Love Doug. Didn't see that video. I guarantee that's why he's listing it.

• 41:35Matt Farah?

  I don't know if that was because it maybe was considered the first luxury crossover.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  No, it's not. It's not really crossover.

• 41:40Matt Farah?

  Or a luxury SUV, but.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  It was the it was the pioneer of modern electronic traction aids and modern electronic traction aids are super effective. And I'm a huge advocate for them. I think most people don't realize they're on their cars and they don't use them. So if you're like, if you're in like a any sort of truck or anything like that, it's off roady. Make sure you use your modes.

• 41:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Like put it in snowmobile, put it in rock mode, put it like, then you'll get, you know, they'll replicate the function of lockers. By slowing down the wheel on the axle.

• 42:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Uh, then it's spinning the fastest to match your wheel speeds and give you traction off road.

• 42:08Matt Farah?

  The, uh, I, I mean, I, I don't really disagree with the list. I, I would. My, in my personal opinion, uh, um, I would put the Lexus RX three hundred as number three because it. It literally did. That started the crossover.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And those were such unique cars because they were on that unique platform. They were wonderful.

• 42:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, my mom, you know that my mom, my mother, from the years of nineteen, uh, well. She amassed them.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:38Matt Farah?

  By twenty eleven, my mother owned five RX three hundreds at the same time.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  I bet all five are still running.

• 42:46Matt Farah?

  Um, I don't have the whereabouts of three of them. Two of them absolutely are.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:51Matt Farah?

  But she had a ninety seven, the first year, a ninety nine, an O three, an O five and an O nine.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yep. If if you're shopping for just like a relatively affordable car that kind of does everything and it's kind of nice inside.

• 43:05Matt Farah?

  Early RX.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll they'll never die, you know, yeah.

• 43:10Matt Farah?

  The best qual, the best year by far of all the RXs we had was the O five.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 43:17Matt Farah?

  The O five had the, the best quality leather, the best quality wood. It held up the best.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was a new thing for them then and they wanted to try something really different and hard. They put everything they had into it. You know, these days, a luxury crossover is just the most bullshit, you know, cheapest components you can. When you get in a car, sold to like consumers that don't know anything. They're all terrible. They're all exactly the same. They're all terrible. But those first generation luxury crossovers.

• 43:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Like the first generation RAV4 was super fucking cool.

• 43:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  First generation Honda CRV, super fucking cool.

• 43:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  That RX, that first generation RX, the weight of everything Toyota could put into a vehicle.

• 43:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  And that's really, that means something.

• 43:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:55Matt Farah?

  Uh Yamaha BB, what is the first car Wes fell in love with and why?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I, so I grew up in England. Uh, my dad was a diplomat. Um, and we, he and I were really into English sports cars. Uh, my first car was a 1969 Morris Minor 1000. It was the biggest piece of shit ever. I think it had like 30 horsepower, maybe went 48 miles an hour.

• 44:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's rough dude.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was, it was, I love that car. I loved that car. I learned how to work on cars because it broke down like twice going back, you know, every time I went back, you know, back and forth to school. It was just great car.

• 44:29Matt Farah?

  That's awesome.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Great car.

• 44:31Matt Farah?

  Uh, this one you probably can weigh in on Mustang Geek says, uh, you've, I have to soak back, back, uh, backstory. People have asked regularly like, I talked about a weight tax for cars. I felt like, is that someone's dog? Yes, it is. Uh, you know, because uh, they've talked about increasing registration fees for EVs to offset the fact that they don't use gas, et cetera, et cetera. And I've, I've been of the opinion and it's not the most educated, but it's somewhat educated that heavy cars disproportionately.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Damage roads.

• 45:06Matt Farah?

  Damage roads.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 45:08Matt Farah?

  Uh, and actually I was, I was actually even further clarified by Ali from Range Energy who said, the transporters that are shipping heavy cars really fuck up roads.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:19Matt Farah?

  A hauler carrying a bunch of EVs.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  A bunch of Rivians.

• 45:22Matt Farah?

  Is really, really fucking up roads. So the question, that's the backstory. The question is, you've discussed a weight tax, but, but what about higher fuel taxes instead? History shows that when gas prices are high, consumers buy more fuel efficient cars, lighter vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, it works in Europe. Cafe becomes unnecessary. Could higher fuel taxes be a? Market driving solution to this environmental and societal problem.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I have a simpler solution.

• 45:48Matt Farah?

  What's that?

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I think most, most public policy should be simpler, should be written easier to understand and it can be really broadly effective. If we don't make it so complicated, you know, eliminating tax loopholes, eliminating the complicated tax code. Right? That, you know, people like you and I benefit from, but that hurts the working man. So, I mean, the simple answer to like getting a lot of heavy cars off the road in America, a lot of unfuel efficient cars is to eliminate section 179.

• 46:10Matt Farah?

  I, I actually am pro that. That's the, that's the, uh, where you can.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Readers or watchers, if you're, if you're not familiar, your section 179 is a tax incentive from the IRS that encourages you, if you have business income to off, offset it. To buy a car, it weighs more than what, 6,000 pounds?

• 46:28Matt Farah?

  6,000 pound gross vehicle weight, not curb weight.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And how much, how much can you write off?

• 46:33Matt Farah?

  So they've, they've reduced the amount you can write off over the past few years.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  It used to be like.

• 46:39Matt Farah?

  It used to be like all of it.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  All of it, a hundred percent.

• 46:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. It's less now. I, I support getting rid of it.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the, the reason why every housewife in Dallas drives a G-Wag and the reason why every general contractor has a Ford Super Duty. On and on and on is section 179. And so if you, if you eliminate that and just, it's just fair market, they need to buy their own car. Instead of having taxpayers subsidize their car, they'll buy something more fuel efficient, they'll buy something lighter.

• 47:05Matt Farah?

  I am against incentivizing the purchase of heavier vehicles.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Giant luxury vehicles.

• 47:10Matt Farah?

  Specifically that are, where people are seeking out a heavier vehicle.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:16Matt Farah?

  For a purpose.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  If you've ever like been, been in traffic behind like a Ford Super Duty Platinum. That costs like a hundred eighty thousand dollars, but like, why does this truck exist?

• 47:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Exists because somebody had a whole lot of income to write off and they were forced to buy a really heavy stupid vehicle. So you eliminate section 179, you eliminate any incentive there is to buy that.

• 47:36Matt Farah?

  Okay. Do you fuck with UTVs very often?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  I do, yeah.

• 47:39Matt Farah?

  Okay, we got a UTV question. Listen and sometimes watch says, I'm gonna rent UTVs for a bachelor party in Gatlinburg in a week. There'll be nine of us. I know, right? Someone's losing an arm.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, someone's absolutely losing an arm.

• 47:52Matt Farah?

  Well, that the number, I'm gonna ask the second and do the second part first, the two parter. Tips for a bunch of amateurs. And then, part two is, any particular brand or model we should aim for?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Uh, brand or model won't matter.

• 48:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Um, so the, the problem is like, UTVs are essentially like, a motocross bike.

• 48:11Matt Farah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  That appears safer because it has four wheels and a really shitty roll bar. Um, the, the mantra for off-road driving, um, that every, it's just out there universally is, as slow as possible, as fast as necessary.

• 48:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Right? But the problem is, the UTVs are so capable and so, they have so much performance.

• 48:31Matt Farah?

  It's flipped, it's flipped.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  It's flipped.

• 48:34Matt Farah?

  As fast as possible, as slow as necessary.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so you, you, you, they essentially exist to kill bachelor party members. Um, I would just advise you, A, not, not to consume alcohol until afterwards.

• 48:46Matt Farah?

  For sure.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then just like, just like, realize that you're driving off-road in an unfamiliar thing. Go really slow, enjoy yourself, don't kill anybody, don't lose arms.

• 48:55Matt Farah?

  Dude, Andrew.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Wear a helmet, wear eye protection.

• 48:58Matt Farah?

  Why am I such an asshole blanking on Andrew's last name, who's a car rider? Who I call fucking Lefty.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Andrew Collins.

• 49:04Matt Farah?

  Yes, I literally call him Lefty. He rolled a UTV on his wedding day.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:12Matt Farah?

  And God fucking read his vows in like an ambulance.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, it's.

• 49:17Matt Farah?

  Like, it's funny now because he didn't die.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:20Matt Farah?

  But his hand is permanently fucked up.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  No, and he, and he's like, he's not as confident as he used to be before he had that accident. He's, he drives much slower.

• 49:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  You know, it really fucked him up, and, just, yeah, man, like, i- if you guys want to own UTVs, I encourage you to get some training, like a high-performance driving school, I've ever went to off-road school. But if you're gonna rent them for a bachelor party, man, that is a worst-case scenario, just like, I don't know, man, go, go to a fucking water park and enjoy some water slides.

• 49:46Matt Farah?

  But, you know, if you must do it, like, just be so careful.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Be really careful.

• 49:51Matt Farah?

  Arm restraints are a must.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  You give everybody a safety briefing, you're there to have a good time, not go to the fucking ER.

• 49:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Uh, Tickle Your Pickle for a Triple Nickel says, uh, I'm considering removing, uh, my steering wheel on my 1993 300ZX and getting a smaller one to get a, a quick bit of steering ratio. Um, the idea of removing an airbag from a car that spends 99% of its time on the street feels wrong, but it's a 93, so it's a Gen 1 airbag. In my opinion, you should probably disconnect the airbag at this point, even if you're keeping that car.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Airbags as safety devices, if you've never been hit by in the face by one, it's kind of like, you know, recreationally using a hand grenade.

• 50:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll burn you, it'll break your nose, there's probably some shrapnel involved. What was that company that got sued for the shrapnel?

• 50:40Matt Farah?

  Oh, the Takata.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Takata, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:42Matt Farah?

  No, I mean, look, a Gen 1 airbag is better than nothing in a high-speed crash, but potentially very problematic in a low-speed crash.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:52Matt Farah?

  In my opinion, I would not feel, I would not be worried about taking one out of a nine-speed.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  What I would do for triple nickel, reader guy, is I would do racing buckets.

• 51:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  And a proper racing harness, and then in those cases, you don't need an airbag, because you're properly restrained.

• 51:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah, although you might break your neck. Um, excuse me, not too delicaté. Oh, wait, hang on, real quick, Dodge January 6-pack coupette. Thoughts on outdoor car covers? Better than nothing?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

• 51:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, better than nothing.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  I should probably use one, I wish I would have one sometimes, but I have a camper on my truck, and so nothing fits.

• 51:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  But yeah, like, it keeps, we have Chinese Elms in front of our house, and they, like, rain sap on our vehicles, and it's a nightmare for everything from just clearing your windshield, like, absolutely using an outdoor car cover.

• 51:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, buy a good one.

• 51:45Matt Farah?

  Um, okay, uh.

• 51:50Matt Farah?

  Hang on.

• 51:54Matt Farah?

  Well, I don't want to, I didn't preview these, I'm sorry. Uh, okay. Duffle Shuffle Retirement Club, how much do you think cars being on a TV show or movie or owned by a YouTuber inflates their price compared to the identical car not owned by those people?

• 52:13Matt Farah?

  I mean, so here.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  I mean, yes, but like, what's an example?

• 52:19Matt Farah?

  So if it's a real TV, you know, a real TV car and movie car, then it's like, is the movie or TV show good and well known?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  And well remembered.

• 52:29Matt Farah?

  And well remembered. And if so, maybe like, what was the role of the car in it?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  It's iconic, you know, like you have like Mammy Vice, Ferrari Daytona, absolutely.

• 52:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Um, Knight Rider and like early Trans Aves.

• 52:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Probably not like, yeah.

• 52:41Matt Farah?

  But like Kramer's car from Seinfeld, probably minimal.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:45Matt Farah?

  Minimal, but like.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:47Matt Farah?

  With a YouTuber, I mean, it depends on like.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  How cringe is that YouTuber?

• 52:52Matt Farah?

  Well, what's their reputation? Like.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:54Matt Farah?

  Like, I suppose I'm a YouTuber and I sold my car at auction. So like, the fact that it was mine shouldn't mean anything, but for someone who knows about me, they know that my, I buy the best examples and I maintain them incredibly fastidiously. And I service the shit out of them right before I sell it.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  And you have really poor taste in interior fabrics.

• 53:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:15Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Matt Farah?

  And so, I mean, for me, like, you should just buy with confidence, knowing that I don't want somebody out there going, Matt Ferris sold me a piece of shit.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:24Matt Farah?

  Um, so for someone like me, maybe it's 10 or 15%, but if it's the car Paul drove in the Fast and Furious two or something, then it's maybe double or triple. The McQueen premium was always, uh, 300%.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yep. Uh, but readers, um, good advice, never buy a car from me.

• 53:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you, you use them until they're done, like the French.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:47Matt Farah?

  Uh, PTS Normal says, um, how much worse? How much more damage could our current administration do to our national parks and public lands before their term is over?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  A lot. Uh, there is, uh, if you go to my Substack, uh, westside Substack.com and search, uh, Trump plan to sell national parks. Uh, he has an express plan that's seven steps long, uh, that has been articulated by administration and we are on step five.

• 54:16Matt Farah?

  Is this straight out of Project 2025?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it's their own White House plan.

• 54:20Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Project 2025, the sexual public lands is written by, um, William Perry Penley, who's like a comic book villain. Like in addition to trying to sell public lands, he like writes like anonymous op-eds about like how homosexuals are icky.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's just a fucking weirdo.

• 54:37Matt Farah?

  So assuming it's only three years and that's a that's a scary assumption, but how much more can they fuck shit up?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  So we could lose, we could lose some major national parks.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  They'll try to sort of like slow roll at the beginning and try to sort of like build some like enthusiasm around it, still privatize like some, something nobody cares about, right? They've identified like, you know, historic buildings, battlefields, stuff like that.

• 55:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  They'll go in and they'll just like, right now, some operations of national parks have always been privatized. If you go stay in the Mammoth Lodge, it's Santerre.

• 55:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Uh, Yellowstone. Um, Santerre is pretty good, uh, but you know, like if you go back to like a Delward North, uh, who used to run Yosemite, uh, some of the lodges at Yosemite are terrible. And the guy that used to run Delward North is now, uh, the nominee for the Park Service Director. And so he has, uh, uh, knows how to work the Park Service, knows how to milk taxpayers. And so what they're gonna do is going to just try to like roll out more and more privatization within national parks. And all of that's just gonna prioritize stuff upwards.

• 55:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  And so there'll be great places for Elon Musk to visit if he wants to go pet a bison.

• 55:47Matt Farah?

  Cool.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Please do, uh, but it'll be less and less accessible to you and I and normal people. And we could see some, we could see some really significant sell offs as well.

• 55:58Matt Farah?

  So like they could create like a, like a South Africa style game preserve.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  In fact, that's, that's one of their priorities with Doug Burgum as DOI. Right now, all, all wildlife in America is owned by, owned and trust by the public.

• 56:11Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Uh, they're managed by the states. And so they have a stated goal of wanting to privatize that for profits. And so instead of like, access to hunting is really democratic right now. It costs nothing and accessible to everybody and it's how millions of families put protein on their plates to this day.

• 56:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  But if that goes to the South Africa example where it's fully privatized and access is just for rich people, then we could lose that. That's really sad.

• 56:37Matt Farah?

  You didn't use these words yet, so I don't know if you've covered this already, but Lamborghini's on Parade says, what are your thoughts on the BLM policy reversal on public lands rule?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the public lands rule is really a case of misinformation. I have a lot of frustrations with the liberal side of the coin here. Where they sort of like spend a lot of time virtue signaling and not achieving much. It's the public lands rule was not a rule. It was a sort of memo from the last administration that said, hey, consider conservation on an equal footing to other uses, which is a very formal term of public land uses, which are like energy extraction, things like that. It never actually made, because this would have to be enacted in Congress, never made conservation a use, capital U, of public lands, and it just really upset a bunch of people.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  So there's really no, there was no material change in the ground that was eliminated. And it was just sort of, again, a liberal side of, of public lands world not doing itself any favors.

• 57:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, Lockshock Daryl just wants a journal recommendations. I use either mole skins. I've been impressed with this one, which I got as swag from Monticello Motor Club. This one is Spectre and Co. And I have been very impressed with the durability of this fake leather cover. I've been writing on this since, what's the first date on here? April 28th of 2025, so almost a year. And I mean, look, that looks like almost brand new. So that's very impressive from Spectre and Co. Uh, okay.

• 58:19Matt Farah?

  My son, Doug's dinero. My son just turned one and loves the sound of engines. A 50cc dirt bike or gas weed whacker will probably make him ecstatic. What car, truck, tractor, etc. has an amazing exhaust sound? And can fit a 99th percentile baby?

• 58:39Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back up a second there. As somebody who suffers from significant tinnitus today.

• 58:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Um, use earmuffs and when it's appropriate, earplugs for your child throughout their life. Uh, I, I can't go to bed without it really loud ringing in my ears.

• 58:53Matt Farah?

  What do you think did it?

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Uh, motorcycles.

• 58:55Matt Farah?

  Motorcycles?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely motorcycles. Um, everything's.

• 58:58Matt Farah?

  Engines or wind noise or both?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  The wind noise is way more significant than, than the, the noise, but like I grew up attending Formula One races with my dad, you know, like it's, it's everything. It's all the above.

• 59:08Matt Farah?

  I do not wear earplugs enough. I, I. I wear them like when I shoot guns, I wear them.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  I wear them all the time now, but I've, I've done the damage and it only gets worse. There's nothing you can do about it.

• 59:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it sucks.

• 59:20Matt Farah?

  Uh, panic at my disco. I'm not, I'm not gonna, uh, give you my Korean taco recipe on the show. I'll just write it on the, in the comments on the fucking Patreon page. Um, the,

• 59:36Matt Farah?

  can car people and, uh, conservation people and progressives like myself find the, the, the middle, the middle happy ground?

• 59:48Speaker 01

  I think we're all in the middle happy ground already.

• 59:50Matt Farah?

  You think so?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Uh, we are divided by people around us, not by ourselves. You have to remember that the idea of a, of a personal carbon footprint that impacts climate change was created by an ad agency called Ogilvy, uh, for the client BP to shift the blame away from the oil companies.

• 1:00:05Matt Farah?

  Of course it was.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Onto us personally. That's bullshit.

• 1:00:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  You know, all of us care about this stuff. Like I, I own two 10 mile per gallon trucks because I like going outdoors, you know, and I, I feel like I can't go, I, I can't fully experience the outdoors the way I want to without them.

• 1:00:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Uh, cause I can't access the trail. I don't want to access, I can't get further into the mountains. All of us like the same stuff. All of us are hopefully good people that want to see other people succeed. What more is there?

• 1:00:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I don't.

• 1:00:34Matt Farah?

  I'd be just because I don't want a super duty.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:36Matt Farah?

  You know, I'm not, if you need a super duty, get a fucking super duty.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:40Matt Farah?

  Um, I, I don't, I do, I don't shame people. I've, I've expressed the feeling of shame from myself when I drive something that's enormous in an inappropriate situation.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  You and I look at vehicles for their utility and their function. And I think a lot of people who don't come into vehicles from that place, look at them through like virtue signaling and lifestyle signaling and sort of socioeconomic status.

• 1:01:04Matt Farah?

  It could be that, but also I think Americans versus Europe, like Europeans buy cars for like a 95% use case.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:11Matt Farah?

  Americans do it for like 120% use case.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just, just that, like one time of the year that you need to tow.

• 1:01:19Matt Farah?

  I might need to move a couch someday, someday. I better get a pickup truck, you know?

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  But I also, I also to some degree, I understand that because it's, you're buying one car. Right? You want it to fulfill all your needs. And even if it's once a month that you might go to Home Depot for a home project, or take your entire kid's soccer team, you know, or go on a camping trip, whatever it is, the, the hassle of having to take time out of your day to like drive to a rental car company and like, you know, all that, you know, bullshit, just to get that truck that, you know, you maybe don't need for your commute. You just want to own that vehicle all the time and have it ready to go.

• 1:01:55Matt Farah?

  I, I, I understand. Like I don't, I, I try and maybe I'm not perfect at it. Like I try to not like shame others for their choices. But when I have said how like I feel about it, like I, I don't have kids, you know, whatever.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Matt Farah?

  I, I like a 95% use case vehicle, not 120%.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Matt Farah?

  And I've said like, when I drive ginormous vehicles in the city, like I feel like an asshole.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Matt Farah?

  And then people have taken that and said that I think you're an asshole. If you, it's like, no, no, this is how I feel.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Matt Farah?

  Like.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you don't feel that way, like, okay. And I, and I get that. I mean, like, you know, when, when I was, uh, the first road test editor Jalopnik in the 2000s, I was living in Brooklyn. Uh, you know, total hipster, long hair, you know.

• 1:02:37Matt Farah?

  I remember the hair. Yes.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Matt Farah?

  The hair. Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Um, and you know, I brought like an Audi R8 home.

• 1:02:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  And I felt like a fucking asshole. You know, and like, I like Audi R8s. I like sports cars, but you know, that's, there's a time and a place for one.

• 1:02:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Brooklyn isn't usually it.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  It, it's not like, you know, like Bushwick in 2004.

• 1:02:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:02:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah. No, I, I, well, someone, someone had asked. In the, in the, in the Patreon and I didn't, I didn't necessarily, well, we can, we can answer it. If you'd ever been profiled in a car.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 1:03:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I get profiled today. Uh, I think both my wife and I do because we both drive modified lifted trucks. And you, like, our lifestyles sort of justifies that.

• 1:03:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And it's just the reality of like, living in a place like Montana, being able to fully enjoy it is I'm preparing for extreme weather. I'm preparing for the unknown. So one interesting fact about up here, the only NOAA weather radar is in Great Falls, the Air Force Base. And it's in a valley surrounded by mountains. So it's great if you live in like the valley.

• 1:03:37Matt Farah?

  It only does.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if, if, if you, there's, there's no other like accurate weather forecast in like all of.

• 1:03:43Matt Farah?

  And if they just defunded that one, like.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, no, they haven't, but it's just they were never were accurate weather forecast. And so like, you know, we could go somewhere. We could go visit friends, uh, in this, which is over that mountain range there, um, in like June. And while we're at dinner, it could snow three inches.

• 1:03:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  And it's like, you know, we want to be able to drive home and there's going to be mule deer on the road and elk on the road. And we're not going to be able to see. So I want an A R B bumper and I want light force lights. And I want something with a torsen center diff and good tires.

• 1:04:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, living up here, it's a different thing.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Matt Farah?

  It's a, it's a very different thing.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 1:04:17Matt Farah?

  I'm probably not going to hit a deer or a moose.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Matt Farah?

  Probably, but I will have to park at Trader Joe's like all the fucking time. You know what I mean?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 1:04:27Matt Farah?

  And I, uh, you know, so, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll borrow a fucking super duty. Or do we need one? That's what we'll do.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Matt Farah?

  Uh, thanks, Wes. One more time, Wes from Montana.com.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Wes from Montana.com and Wes.

• 1:04:41Matt Farah?

  You live here.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Wes Siler dot sub stack dot com. Uh, you know, please subscribe. Again, I got fired in September for pointless fucking reasons. Uh, so I could use your help right now.

• 1:04:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah, the sub stack is, is for us, the Patreon is the move.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Thank you to our patrons for, uh, supporting us, asking such good questions. Uh, I think, uh, I don't know if our next show is back in the studio. We maybe have another show from Montana when Zach gets here tomorrow. Cause it's fucking ice race, baby. It's gonna be good. Ice race will be good. Uh, thank you and thank you and, uh, we'll see you later. Bye.