Save It For Swing Shift

You ever do something genuinely selfless and generous, feel good about it, then get hit with that cold realization that the other person might be playing you? That’s the gut punch driving this conversation.

In this episode:

• The $250 card, the gift with intent, and the trade list that broke the trust
• Blocking someone cold vs. saying your piece first — where's the line
• Six months of tilted trades and the moment "friend" became "transaction"
• Why this one's visceral: values are non-negotiable, and Rob's a fixer
• Better to have no friends than bad friends
• A perfectly timed Tender Loving Baskets ambush to close it out

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

RJ has an update on the Suburban he'd rather not talk about, so naturally we talk about it. Turns out the check engine light saga has a dumb ending: the cone filter on the cold air intake had fallen off at some point, and the truck had been happily inhaling raw ranch dirt down five miles of dirt road each way for who knows how long. Rob, the diagnostician, would like it noted that he was technically right about the intake side. RJ would like it noted that the truck still runs fine and still gets 17 miles a gallon.

Then the main event: Slate Auto. RJ walks Rob through the pitch for the blank slate — a no-frills, $24,990 electric pickup that ships in gray primer with crank windows and no stereo, built to be wrapped, customized, and even reconfigured from a truck into an SUV with a wrench in your own driveway. One chassis, one vehicle, no trim levels. From there it's a genuinely good back-and-forth about whether the concept works: EV range anxiety versus the reality of a 45-mile round trip, why cold and heat wreck the estimated range, bidirectional charging as a generator on wheels, and whether an EV actually makes more sense out at the ranch than RJ ever expected once you fold in solar. Plus the graveyard of dead EV startups — Fisker, Lucid — and whether Jeff Bezos money is enough to keep this one from joining them.

In this episode:

• The cold air intake mystery and the unfiltered ranch dirt confession
• Rob was right about the intake side, and won't let it go
• Slate Auto's blank slate: $24,990, primer gray, DIY down to the body panels
• Turning a truck into an SUV with a wrench, and the whole "grows with you" pitch
• EV range anxiety vs. the math of an actual daily drive
• Bidirectional charging, solar, and why the ranch might be the perfect EV setup after all
• The EV startup graveyard and whether Slate has the legs to survive it

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

Most sponsor reads are scripted weeks in advance. This one happened live, by accident. Rob dropped the words "Tender Loving Baskets," and RJ spit-took hard enough to land it on the board. That's the whole origin: a fake sponsor, born live, immediately promoted to the show's ongoing bit.

But first, the warmest cold open we've had — RJ's psychiatrist heard the podcast. Not this one. The other one. Which raises the deeply strange feeling of being someone's content, playing through the speakers in their car, while they also know you in real life. From there it's the real story behind Tender Loving Baskets: Mom and Mike's actual family side hustle making personalized (bespoke, if you ask RJ, repeatedly) gift baskets, and RJ's pitch that it should come back purely so the show can run ad spots for it. Then it gets away from them entirely — a domain check turns into breaking news mid-recording, the noir ad concepts start writing themselves, and a wicker roots movement is born.

In this episode:

• A psychiatrist as the first listener who knows us in real life, and the vertigo of being "content"
• The spit take heard round the board — Tender Loving Baskets is officially a sponsor now
• The true story of TLB, the family basket business, and the eternal "bespoke" argument
• What a host-read ad sounds like when it's also a bit
• Checking a domain live and calling it strategy
• Steaks, puppies, and a basket: the ads really do write themselves

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

We start with a check engine light mystery and end up arguing about humanoid robots, military automation, and why redundancy exists when the stakes are high. Along the way, we bounce from O2 sensor voltage and OBD2 codes to SpaceX hype, Starlink reality, and a Costa Concordia lesson in how fast small errors become disasters. 

• P2270 downstream O2 sensor code and why it triggers anxiety 
• The strange truth that buying the part can “fix” the problem 
• A brief detour into trillionaire headlines, SpaceX launches, and relying on Starlink 
• Tesla humanoid robots as home helpers, plus the privacy and connectivity worry 
• Why legs might be the wrong priority for useful household robotics 
• Automation impacts on labor, manufacturing, and mission staffing 
• Military use cases, drones, autonomy concerns, and the human-in-the-loop problem 
• Naval examples of crew reduction and what redundancy is really for 
• Costa Concordia as a case study in margins of error and leadership failure

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

After last episode's Pokémon deep dive, RJ decided somebody needed to man this podcast up — so naturally we're talking trucks. Specifically, the ranch fleet and the very distinct personality of each one.

It starts with Ranch Force One hitting 203,000 miles and a check engine light coming on at the exact moment RJ was praising it out loud. From there it's the full truck biography: the Suburban's former life as a Celine Dion Uber Black in Colorado (yes, she sat in that seat), the cylinder eight injector that broke in half inside the engine block, and how RJ got so good at pulling the top of the motor off that he eventually did it in 12 minutes flat.

Then there's the Land Rover LR3 — mechanically a tank, electrically a fever dream — which managed to throw 27 fault codes when a single speed sensor wire got severed by a stick. And the glorious Sport 10, a former summer camp runabout with trailer tires, one headlight aimed at the sky, and zero to sixty time that ends in a question mark.

Also: RJ crashing the F-150 into the Suburban while trying to pull it out of being stuck, a dainty attempted intervention, and the Pokedad shirt reveal.

In this episode:

• Ranch Force One, the Celine Dion spec Suburban, and what DNA evidence might be lurking in the back seat
• Cylinder eight, a broken injector, and the Haynes manual's advice to just do it all in reverse
• The LR3's fog light/oil pressure light/FM antenna/rear defroster inter-dependency explained
• 16 different size lug nuts, now down to 15
• The Sport 10: for trailer service only, and proud of it

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

For this shift Rob finally gets the floor, and he's using it to talk about the manliest thing a guy can do: collect Pokémon cards. After preloading his masculine credentials (football, wrestling, hunting, shooting — you're welcome), Rob breaks down his first big TCG expo at State Farm Stadium, the rabbit hole of Elite Trainer Boxes, Super Illustration Rares, and a Pokémon Center Evolving Skies ETB worth a thousand dollars. Then it's a rip sesh in the car with Brian, a Charizard EX Auto vs. a Charles Barkley auto, and a brief detour into whether RJ's Kevin Johnson autograph is ever going to be worth anything. Spoiler: that ship sailed.

Meanwhile RJ and Rob find the through line connecting Pokémon cards, analog film photography, and astrophotography — turns out the crackhead aspect of opening packs and the slowness of a 35mm roll have more in common than you'd think.

• Rob's first card show — as big as a Texas gun show, held on an NFL field
• The Pokémon Center stamp and why it makes a card worth 11x more
• Chase cards, SIRs, and why "buying hope and a dream" eventually gives way to buying singles
• Wemby's card values, the 29-point blown lead, and the ebbs and flows of sports card season
• Why tangible hobbies are having a moment — and the crackhead aspect of all of them

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

We geek out over a Texas-based remote observatory that lets you run telescopes under dark skies from anywhere, and we can’t stop admiring how simple and scalable the setup is. Then we pivot into the oddly satisfying world of 35mm film, where fewer shots and more friction can actually make photography feel better. 

• Starfront Observatories — the remote observatory model that's blowing up, and why RJ thinks it's the perfect job
• Telescope ranching: piers, power, Ethernet, and 24/7 staff who'll go power cycle your rig at 3am
• The garage sale camera that started something
• Why film photography is having a moment — and why RJ thinks infinite digital photos killed something important
• The clickety-clacketies, silver halide, and being "on the cusp" of something expensive

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com

We kick off the first run of Save It For Swing Shift by chasing two kinds of chaos: the grand opening of Arizona’s first Buc-ee’s and a very real QVC fixation that turns “background TV” into a shopping strategy. Along the way, we end up talking traffic control, brisket sandwiches, impulse buys, and why TikTok Live feels like QVC with a faster heartbeat. 

• Arizona’s first Buc-ee’s opening and why it becomes a local event 
• Police-managed detours and the four-mile loop to reach the parking lot 
• Inside-the-store overload from food counters to soda fountains 
• The brisket sandwich redemption story and the beaver nuggets haul 
• QVC as comfort viewing and the hosts and products that hook us 
• Easy Pay, Today’s Special Value, and how pricing changes behavior 
• Scarcity, real-time dashboards, and the “mission control” feel of live sales 
• TikTok Live shopping drops and why the format is basically QVC 2.0 

Punch in:  www.save4swing.com