At first, it was going to be like a national treasure spinoff about like Nick Cage, like, stealing declaration or whatever, but like they couldn't get that to go anywhere. They're like, okay, well, fast and furious. You know, this is just like so ridiculous over the top. And they just started like ideating and like the head songwriter just like wrote a song in his head about like Dominic

Touretto and then he was like oh shit we have something here so they just like both cool thing

and now dinner bites a new spinoff of dinner with racers presented by hot and an attire with your host

Ryan Eversley and Sean Heckman welcome to dinner with racers I'm Ryan

eversley I'm Sean Heckman and this is another episode of our new concept dinner bites where we

sit down with people for a little bit shorter version of the long format podcast that you should

be familiar with by now and for this particular episode we spoke with Kristen Lee who is a very talented and very well-respected automotive journalist. Exactly. So the reason Kristen came to mind was, like Ryan said, this is sort of a spin-off series from the normal dinner with racers. And our guests don't always have to be racers. In fact, one of the first things Kristen asked when we asked her to be on our show was, oh, God, do I have to talk about racing? And the answer was absolutely not, because this series focuses primarily on just people that we find to sing or have

kind of a unique story. And Kristen basically fell in love with cars by virtue of her dad, who

clearly sort of loved cars and brought that on to her. And she really had to fight and scratch

to find her way into this industry. As well as doing some amazing journalism, she's also written a book that's called The 50 States, Things That Go, that just came out to Children's book. We talked about that. We also talked about the 10th anniversary of Motor Trends Roadkill Nights and just got to know her a little bit better. And honestly, probably one of the most fun episodes we've done so far. Exactly. So none of this could be possible, of course, without our sponsors. We're doing this whole Dinner Bites thing because of the one, the only Ryan. Gad Nettle Tire. Hashtag Dinner with Conti on Instagram. All right, Kristen Lee. Meow. All right, we're going to start in five, four, three, two. Hello, how are you? Good, good. How are you guys doing? Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, excited to have you. So we were speaking with a few of our friends who we've done some motorsports stuff with and looking for different people in the car world to recommend. And apparently you guys go way back, our buddy J.F. Musual.

Jay-F. Yes. He was like, you've got to talk to Kristen. She, you know, she has a unique voice and she's, you know, she's been in it for a minute. So, uh, welcome. And can you please on J-F? Because I don't feel like enough people do. All this is is a J-F hate episode. We just cannot stand there.

I actually, like, cannot.

Physically, I cannot.

He is one of my dearest friends and sorry. But, you know, I'll tell you a nice thing about him. I'm sure.

Okay. Yeah. So he was actually one of the first people to like support me because I met him when I was in college

in 2012 at the LA Auto show. We met in the front seat of an Audi S3. He was sitting in the

driver's seat and I got in the passenger seat just because we wanted to check it out and we started

talking. And he shared that he had an M3 and I was like, that's so cool. So we just like kept talking and he's like, like, who are you? Like, what are you about? I was like, oh, like, I want to be a car writer. You know, I've made a couple of YouTube videos and I'm in school right now, but I graduate soon. So like I, you know, this is what I want to do. He's like, well, that's super cool. I want to you take my information and, like, we'll stay in touch. And so when I graduated, I, you know, sent emails out to, like, everybody I could. I, like, handed out business cards and things. And really, no one got back to me except JF. And he's like, I don't really have a role for you right now, but like we should definitely stay in touch and, you know, best of luck with everything.

And I went to his movie premiere for the story of the hypercar.

I think it was the story about Konigseg in New York City.

So that's really when we like solidified our friendship.

And in 2018, a spot opened up on his TV show on Drive.

...