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NC #1109 Spreadsheet Workshop Video, ChatGPT with CarPlay, Leave Headroom Recording Audiobooks, Turbo Fan, Kerry Murphey of Final Lap Weekly and Whooshn

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NC #1109 Spreadsheet Workshop Video, ChatGPT with CarPlay, Leave Headroom Recording Audiobooks, Turbo Fan, Kerry Murphey of Final Lap Weekly and Whooshn

Allison Sheridan hosts the Silicast podcast, reflecting on a recent episode that blends Apple tech, AI integration, and personal experiences. She shares how her team reviewed Apple TV recommendations and discussed tech maintenance, including using old software like Virtual 2 to relive vintage computing pleasures. A standout segment features a new AI-powered CarPlay experience where voice assistants allow users to ask questions, journal, or track observations during car trips—turning commutes into productive, reflective time. The episode highlights how AI can organize scattered memories into structured stories, enabling users to explore personal history or plan ideas. In another segment, a handheld fan from Gizu Life is praised as a practical, multi-functional tool for travel, offering cooling, charging, and lighting features. Kerry Murphy, a NASCAR host and Tesla owner, shares insights on EV ownership, including using Tesla overflow lots to inspect new vehicles before delivery and the growing accessibility of electric vehicles. He emphasizes how Tesla’s app-driven purchasing process eliminates traditional haggling, offering seamless delivery and service. Additionally, the discussion touches on EV market dynamics, including pricing stability, the value of pre-inspection, and how AI-powered tools enhance user engagement. These segments collectively showcase how technology—especially AI and Apple ecosystems—can transform everyday experiences, from driving to personal storytelling, into more intuitive, enjoyable, and productive routines.

Transcription

13080 Words, 68664 Characters

English
Hi, this is Allison Sheridan, the new Silicast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com, technology geek podcast with an ever-sus-like Apple bias. Today is Thursday, August 6, 2026, and this is show number 1109. I'm sitting here all by my loansome with no live show because it's a show early, and we're off tomorrow to Spain to see the eclipse and more. Last week, I forgot to tell you about two things. The first I sort of obliquely mentioned, but I didn't give you any of the fun details, and the second I completely forgot, and it's super cool, at least I think it is. Well, the first one is that I got to be on clockwise again. We had host Micah Sargent and host Emeritus Jason Snow, along with me and Zach Hall, senior editor at 95 back. We talked about Apple TV recommendations that I learned about a bunch of shows I didn't know about. And in this part, you'll hear Jason Snow slam me for naming two shows that are not on the Apple TV service. It was kind of embarrassing, but that's where the title of the episode comes from. The TV judge rejects your argument. I'll after that, we turned our attention to weather and how we journal using our Macs. We also talked about tech cleaning and maintenance habits, which turned into a dual-meaning question. I asked about old technologies people have fired up just to learn or relive. That's why I mentioned last week that Jason Snow recommended Virtual 2, so I could have even more fun with VisitCalc and other old applications. As always, the show is super tight. Clockwise is always 30 minutes, no more, no less. You can find Clockwise 667 with me and Zach at the link in the show notes, but as always, you can subscribe to Clockwise in your pod catcher of choice. The other thing that I completely forgot to tell you about is that Steve has created a video for you of my Macstock presentation, how the cool kids really use spreadsheets. He really pulled out all the stops on production with this one. The trick was to record video of me, video of the screen in my workshop, a clean version of my audio, and a listenable version of the audience audio. And as it turned out, video of a rather snarky attendee. He used his Osmo Pocket 3 on a tabletop tripod to capture the screen in my presentation as the Osmo was pretty good at picking up low light. The angle made it keystone, but he squirted up and editing. He did his best to fix the color cast, but the lighting on the screen was pretty brutal. In retrospect, I should have just done a screen recording while I was doing the presentation, while there's always next time. So since my talking head wasn't all that critical, he used his regular camcorder to capture me. My audio was important to the presentation, so he attached one of the DJI mics to me so he got terrific sound of my voice. Back on the camcorder, he mounted a boom mic facing backwards to capture the audience audio. This was a genius move because the audience participation in this workshop was one of the best things about it. People didn't bother to grab a microphone or wait around for that, and it said just hollered out their questions or suggestions or sometimes, in some cases, corrections. The boom mic picked it up perfectly. So then Steve laid all of these tracks down together in Final Cut and then cut back and forth between showing my screen and showing me depending on what was interesting at the time. He did a really terrific job. When once snarky audience members stood up and had some show and tell for his snarkiness, Steve grabbed his iPhone and captured the video and audio from the event. You'll see that portion if you make it all the way through the tutorial. In the workshop, I taught how to fill down and write, not just functions, but how many items like months, days of the week, quarters, and even handcrafted lists can fill sequentially. Next I taught the important distinction between relative and absolute cell references. I showed two of my favorite but tricky concepts, concatenate to combine cells, and V look up to search for data in an array. The real crowd pleaser was when I showed how to, I was able to analyze the entire data set of the every name of every baby born from 1880 to 2026 from the US Social Security System using a pivot table. I actually found the end of Excel because this data set was so huge. I think I told you about that before, but you get to see it happen. At the link in the show notes, you can watch this 90 minute workshop and even download the demo files to follow along and use my cryptic notes as a handy-dandy reference guide to remind you of how to do what I demonstrate. I can't thank Steve enough for doing so much work on this to make a really professional presentation available to you. Okay, enough about me. Let's hear from the fabulous jewel from the North Woods. What if the most productive hour of your week is the one that you've been driving through your entire life without noticing it? You know, I was in town with a friend of mine in a town called Two Rivers and we were driving around and we suddenly wondered, "Hey, what are the two rivers in Two Rivers?" And I asked that question of the S-Lady and guess what? S-Lady had no idea. It offered me two rivers bowling, two rivers pizza. Did I want to make a reservation at the Two Rivers pub? That was not the question I asked. So I got on my phone and I told Chatshipy Tee what are the two rivers and two rivers and it gave me the two rivers a little bit of the history and what industries are built around those towns. Who is there now? I got such a kick out of it and so I turned it off and went, "Okay, that's what AI in a car should be like." But then we got a Chatshipy T app, in CarPlay in itself and you now can press the button and ask it any question, any random question. So it was hilarious. I took it out birding with a friend of mine and we were sitting in a pond in front of a bunch of trumpeter and tundra swans and so we asked it, "What's the difference between trumpeter swans and tundra swans? Can you tell us physical differences so we can see the difference?" It answered the question and sure enough we found a little bit of both out there and then it cheerfully came back to us and says, "You know what? I'm right here anytime you have a question." And I said, "No, no, no, stop listening to us right now," and it just was sitting there waiting for the next command. That's what happened when Chatshipy T got a widget in CarPlay but it wouldn't turn off. You could just turn the car off and then turn it back on and that would finally kill it. But now Chatshipy T has an app and with the app specifically it has not only a mute button on the app but it has a end conversation button on the app. So if I ask you a question, I don't think it's forever just sitting there and listening to me. But you know what? It's hilarious. Now, whenever we're driving, passing the time, you know, usually listen to music or podcasts, but now the car has strangely been become but that ingredient that has been missing for me all this time. I have long thought that good long car drives. I don't know about you. I love driving in the car and I love thinking when I'm driving in the car. I don't know if it's the motion, if it's the scenery moving past, if it's probably just the fact that nothing else is competing for your attention right at that moment. You're not really doing any task switching. It's the same reason why people talk about they do their best thinking in the shower, right? You just have more focus when it's there. And Apple CarPlay plus a voice AI means that you can spend time reflecting, planning, even writing, developing an idea out loud, hands on the wheels, and eyes on the road, no typing, and no screens. The three things that you need is a car with CarPlay. You need an iPhone with either chat GPT, which works currently. There are other apps that have AI integration to CarPlay, namely perplexity and GROC. Inclod will get there eventually. And then if you want, you can go ahead and just put it at the bottom of your CarPlay app so that you can always press that button and hit it right there and start talking to it. The honest advice is that once you're in your driveway, try it out, start it. Try it once to see if you know how to start it, how to stop it, whether you're using the application in CarPlay itself or you're using it on the phone. One of the easiest things that I found to do is I would say interview me. I created basically a script with chat GPT and you can just say that and it'll do a pretty darn good job. But I also created rules for this interview me part of it. And the part reason I'm doing it is I'm creating a podcast. I'm remodeling a part of my house. I'm talking about a hard conversation that I'm bracing with or someone else or I'm planning out a goal that I haven't quite set out loud yet. You can also use it as a spoken diary, start giving it a journal telling it a story about your life so you can get it down eventually transcribed in a place that you can use it. I'll ask it reflective questions and then pause for the answer and it'll help you think through these things of where you're headed. It's now so used to me telling its stories from the time when I was growing up on our military base. Some of them fairly hard that by now by the time I get home, I've been given some really decent advice. It'll go through the summary. It'll give me a rough transcript and maybe help me consider what it was I was trying to ask it questions about. I even have written podcasts with it and said pretend I'm on a radio show and that you're my producer and your job is to ask me thoughtful follow-up questions on whatever topic I'm bringing to you but then add 10 callers. Five of them are genuinely curious but a little bit confused about what I was saying. Five of them are flatly skeptical. They don't even- I think my idea holds up at all. And give me those questions, and it will interrogate me on those questions, bring them in to what it was that I was telling it, and then at the very end of the day, summarize it, create a script about it. I've just told it my whole script, but make sure you include the really hard questions, because you can imagine a caller out there questioning that way too. But I even built my drive to Macstock around this too. 90 minutes each way, and on the way, I used the fake radio show script and walks through a podcast, wrote it right there while I was in my car. When I got home, like I said, everything was organized, put in an exact order that it should be, and cleaned up as a script for me to go ahead and actually record. So it was a fully formulated situation. One drive, I started narrating my grandmother's life. After the years that she lived, the places she lived, and what Chad G.P.T. ended up building out for me was this picture of what it looked like for a refugee at eight years old, moving into a part of the Turkish territory. And then eventually her father dying at the same year where the family was expelled from this territory. Shows up in Ellis Island, the Depression in the '20s. I didn't ever got a chance to talk to my grandmother about these exact details. But what it told me was this story of what her life probably looked like. And when hearing scattered facts, like I said from her, stories that the relatives used to talk about, what I got was a human timeline. I could understand my grandmother's life a little bit better. And it made me want to keep coming back for more stories like that. You know, the one thing that it's really good at is it's good at taking something that comes in a random order, yet keeping focused, it has consistent follow up questions more than you just wandering through a random thought, eventually transcribing it, summarizing it, and putting it in a logical order. That's the honest part about it that if you're in your car, you're not outlining, you're just talking. So not everyone wants to have a productive commute. That's fine. Sometimes being quiet in the car is the whole point. But if you got a drive and you have some time, this might be a really good thing about it. Some other use cases that I found for a car play while I'm in the car itself. One situation happened when my friend and I were bird watching on these road sides. So we would say, I'm now at the corner of Highway 19 and M, I just saw four horned larks. Then we drive to Goose Pond. We're now at Goose Pond. I see 20 trumpeter swans and 300 swans, two snow geese and three cackling geese. And it was keeping track of all those geese placed by place so that at the end of the day, I could say, hey, could you give me a list of each location and what I saw and then give me a total for the entire day of what I saw. I was able then to use that and put it directly into E-Bird, which is a scientific app, helping you track birds. So this was really interesting to me. It was able to keep track of everything. The second thing that I thought was interesting is I was driving through random small towns in Minnesota and I encountered this one small town that was filled with very wealthy houses. Well, this is interesting. I said, what is here that causes all these houses to be so big and wealthy? Oh, you know what, there's a college there. Most of the people who live in this town are college professors. And then I'd say, okay, cool. What's this big silver building in the middle of town? I don't even know what that is. Oh, you know what that is? It's a factory foundry for blah, blah, blah. And it was able to tell me a little bit about where I'm driving. So even making the drive itself more enjoyable is great. Now, like I said, you can have different situations. Apple with CarPlay has apps directly in it. Right now, Catchy BT and Grock actually work. Perplexity for whatever reason is on hold, it used to work. And Claude has not yet built an app, but is going to. So you can decide which app you want to use, which system that you want to use. Or now the S-Lady is in iOS 27 going to become smarter and be able to answer and do more things, particularly integrating with your phone directly. I tried the S-Lady on iOS 27 this morning and it had a little bit of problems. I asked it about the weather. It said it was having trouble seeing the internet. I asked it again. It was able to give me an answer. Then I asked it a more complicated question and it bailed on me yet again. Not sure what's going on, but as you know, it's a beta. So we're not going to get everything that we want right away. But Apple said that it wants Siri itself to be a full competitor to these apps, pulling in knowledge, real conversations, real help opening up certain apps and putting in certain locations. So you'll be able to pull into an app and say use ways and tell me how I can get to Rochester, Minnesota and it will figure it out for me. So I believe it. I think this is going in the right direction. But if you want to do a little bit of fun while you're in your car, learn something or maybe even dictate and tell a story, this is all the different things that you can do. You look for your own ways to use AI on a drive for information, hotel reservations, some kind of a comparison of this direction versus that direction. You'll be able to find ways to use AI in cars and I think it's going to become a regular part of our workflow. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jill. I really love how Jill comes up with these ideas of how to use AI that I would never in a million years think of. So I thank you so much for that. This is fantastic. And the one thing Jill is not good at is plugging your own stuff. You need to go to Joe from the northwoods.com and find all of her podcasts. She does amazing work over there. She's got YouTube. She's got everything. You got to go check it out. Jill from the northwoods.com. [MUSIC PLAYING] Leave Headroom. Game staging for narrators. Hi. This is Eddie Tonkoi, the in-house nerd for everything behind the scenes on my wife, Jerns, character-driven queer love stories, including audiobook narration and production. This segment is about game staging, which sounds like the dullest part of audio but recording until the exact moment it matters. A line that suddenly gets louder than the rest. In a chapter I recorded recently, there was a scene where policemen shouts at a crowd. Not a full-on theatrical yell, but definitely a shout. The kind where you want the intensity to jump without the sound turning into new room, new mic, new narrator. This time I did something I used to avoid. I kept my distance from the mic exactly the same, the distance where I had already decided my tone lives, and I just raised my voice. My old instinct would have been to lean back slightly, just to be safe. But I did not want the shout to sound as if the policeman had suddenly stepped into a different room. And, miracle of miracles, it did not clip. Later in editing, I brought the shout down to a sensible loudness with clip gain, and to my delight and faint surprise, it sounded right. It still sounded like a shout, just not offensively loud. The important thing was that the tone matched the surrounding narration because I had not changed the acoustic setup midline. That is the core idea here. Headroom lets you keep tone decisions stable while loudness moves around. So, why does headroom matter beyond just not clipping? Everyone knows not to clip. That part is not exactly a revelation. The more interesting problem is what happens before clipping when you're close enough to the ceiling that you start narrating defensively. When the meter becomes the thing you are managing, performance changes. Emphasis gets smaller. Consonance gets careful. Breath gets less natural. Intensity gets contained to stay safe. Over a full audiobook, those tiny compromises become a pattern. Later in editing, that pattern is obvious. Not because the audio is broken, but because the performance feels managed. Headroom is what stops that. It buys freedom, but in the least dramatic possible way, by giving the loud bits somewhere to go. The nerdy bit is crest factor. Why speech peaks jump around. Speech has a high crest factor that means the peaks can be much higher than the average level. A paragraph can sit at a steady average level than a single consonant, plusive or emphatic word spikes far higher than expected. That is normal, it is how speech works. If the recording is already hot, those peaks force behavior, backing off, pulling emphasis, or turning the shout into a polite version of itself. That is how a line that should feel big ends up feeling strangely small. Modern digital capture makes recording hot unnecessary, with 20% more. before bit recording, there is enough dynamic range that the practical noise floor is the room long before it is the format. So the trade-off has shifted, there is very little reward for pushing the level at a lot of risk. So this brings me to practical targets, a repeatable window. The numbers matter less than repeatability, but I do like having a target window, otherwise I will absolutely start negotiating with myself. For narration, my useful boring window is, normal narration peaks around -12 dBFS, bigger moments rising naturally up to around -6 dBFS, and no clipping. That gives me enough room for real performance, including the shout, without making ordinary narration pointlessly tiny. I set that with the input gain on the interface or microphone. The door fader, the one in logic, is not usually what prevents clipping, it changes what I hear or how things sit later. If the signal is already clipped on the way in, the door cannot really rescue it. The important distinction is that monitoring level is separate from record level. A lot of recording too hot comes from trying to hear yourself better. Record level and monitoring level are different systems. Record level determines what gets written into the file. Monitor level determines what I hear in my headphones. So the rule is simple. Set record gain once to hit the target window, then set headphone or monitor level for comfort. If it needs to be louder in my ears, I change monitoring, without input gain, that one distinction prevents a surprising amount of nonsense. Here is the demo, recreating the shout problem on purpose. This is an easy thing to prove, and it is worth doing once because the lesson sticks much better when you hear yourself flinch. First is take a with headroom. I've set gain so normal peak sits around -12 dBFS, and I'm just shouting naturally without moving away. Now for take B with it too hot. I've set gain so normal narration peaks around -3 dBFS. And I'm just shouting naturally without moving away. I then needed to level match both takes in the edit. This matters because headroom is not about leaving the recording quiet forever. It is about capturing safely and shaping loudness later. And in the two hot take, one of two things usually happens. It clips, or you self-sensor and a shout becomes careful. In mine, I let it clip. When the takes are matched, the difference is usually clear. The headroom take stays stable in tone even though the intensity jumps. The hot take tends to sound constrained and it tolerates processing less gracefully because the peaks are already crowded. Why not just back off? Let's give it a try with me at that -3 dBFS position but backing away from the microphone to prevent clipping. Now I'm just shouting naturally but moving away. Backing away from the mic does not just change loudness, it changes the sound. Usually you get some mix of reduced proximity effect so the voice can get thinner, more room reflection, a different consonant balance and sometimes a different noise relationship. So the shout can end up sounding as if it happened in a different place even if the level is technically controlled. For now the simple constraint is keep distance constant to keep tone constant. Let the performance create intensity, let headroom absorb it, then set loudness later with clip gain. Distance can be used as an effect but only once it is a deliberate choice rather than a safety reflex. So here is the calibration habit. The habit that makes this boring in the good way is a calibration read. Before recording properly, I use a consistent paragraph and include my loudest plausible delivery. Not my loudest imaginable delivery, I'm not testing for opera or disaster, just the loudest thing this book is likely to ask of me. Then I set gain so normal narration piece around -12 dBFS and the loud line still stays safely below clipping. The point is not to worship those numbers, the point is to stop thinking about them once the chapter starts, then I leave input gain alone. So where does this leave us? Here is the rule, if my performance is being driven by the meter I have already lost. Set gain once, leave headroom and set monitoring separately so I am not performing into the red. Next time I will tackle the thing that can ruin perfect gain staging anyway, the noise you notice, means birds, cars on a distant speedway track by the sounds of it, aircon and a myth of silence. I don't think I could have planned that any better, anyway. If you want to know more, come and ask me over in the Slack community at podfeet.com/slack, where I and all the other loveliness in the castaways enjoy friendly, positive, online conversations. Feel free to message me, Eddie Tonkoi if you have any thoughts, questions or techniques you are using. It would be nice to share ideas. You can also find our work at jerntonkoi.com where you'll find Jern's character driven queer love stories, the audio books I produced for them and bonus material for our subscribers. I'll be back soon to talk through some more of my work flow, but for now happy recording and happy reading. I've been getting some really good feedback on Eddie's work here and I love that he's bringing us along on his journey of learning and I'm learning so much from him too. Well, I may have mentioned two or three hundred times that we're off to Spain, Portugal and Ireland soon and we're very excited, but there's one thing we're not excited about and that's the heat dome that seems to have just settled over Europe this summer. On my best day, I'm pretty intolerant beyond a fairly narrow temperature band, but on my car, I constantly raise and lower the temperature because I'm too cold, too hot, too cold, too hot. It's really fun for everyone around me. Well, and we've received a communication from the travel agent in charge of the Spain portion of the trip and she suggested buying a handheld turbofan. I'd never heard the phrase "turbofan" before, but after a quick search on Amazon, I discovered a wonderful category of small personal fans. The handheld turbofan I chose is by a company called Gizu Life, J-I-S-U-L-I-F-E and it costs $12.14 on Amazon and it is delightful. When folded up, the Gizu Life is around tube 4.7 inches long and around an inch and a half in diameter and has hemispherical ends. This makes it very pleasing to hold the palm of your hands and easy to slip into a pocket or into a purse. Also, one of the ends looks like a tiny little bear with little ears sticking out and a nose and mouth painted on the front. It's kind of adorable, completely unnecessary and adorable. It weighs 124 grams, which is a little over 4 ounces in freedom units as Dr. Gary calls them. Still with the fan closed, you can see two ports, one USB-A and one USB-C, along with a power button. The USB-C port is used to charge the device, but get this. The USB-A port lets you use the Gizu Life's 2000 milliamp hour battery to charge another device. That's enough to give an iPhone 17 Pro nearly half a charge. With the fan still closed, if you hold down the power button, it turns on the LED flashlight on one end. Before you even get to use the fan, we already have a flashlight and a power bank. The Gizu Life fan folds open to reveal two soft blades hanging loosely off of the center pivot point. When running, the blades are three inches in diameter and they're so soft you can stop them with your finger without hurting yourself. One power button push starts them spinning at two rotations per minute and a second push makes them spin even faster. In the ratings for the device, they say it has 12 to 19 hours of fan life and I presume the faster speed is the lower battery life. If you care about noise, those little blades only generate 60 dB. You can handle the Gizu Life or it will stand up on a table if you flip it open at 90 degrees instead of 180. When I'm working in my studio, I often turn on my beloved $339 Dyson Table Fan, but this week in the heat of the day, I set my Gizu Life Turbo Fan on my desk to try it out. I have to say that with such a directional, personal fan so close to you, did a darn good job of keeping me cool for the entire afternoon. Now I bought the Gizu Life in pink for the $12.41 I mentioned earlier, but I bought a black one for Steve for $15.38. Now if you're made of money, you can pay $18 for blue, brown, tropical, coral or white and there's also a sweet fuchsia that was tempting for $17. As if all this fun wasn't enough, the Gizu Life comes with the USB-C to USB-A cable and an optional tether so you can hang it jauntily from your wrist as you stroll the streets of Madrid. The bottom line is that for under $20 you can get a personal fan that's also a power bank and is also a flashlight that comes in all those pretty colors, and it's got a cute little bear. face. I think they should market this as a menopause fan and make millions, and I'm not joking about that. You know what's super cool? When I get an email, think someone bought me some coffee. That's what happens when a lovely no-silicast away goes to potfee.com/donate, and post just some buttons. You get to choose whether by me one, three, or five coffees, or you can even type in any number of coffees you want to buy. You can even use even numbers. Each coffee is worth $5 to me and is priceless to you. I know how great it will make you feel to support an independent podcaster who never sold out to the man, or a woman. Hello, everyone, and welcome to no-silawada podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and a ton of Apple bias. I mean, we're not even hiding our Apple bias at this point. One of our hosts might think she's hiding Apple bias, but she's not. She's not. She's bias. Anyway, my name is Bodie, as I might have mentioned before, and on today's episode, we are talking to Kerry Murphy. Kerry is one of the hosts of the final lap podcast, which is all about NASCAR. You might be thinking to yourself, why is a NASCAR host on an Apple bias show and an EV show? Well, he's also the host of the YouTube channel Wushin, which is a really cool name, and he has a Tesla, and he talks all about electric vehicles, and he has lots of really good tips as you're going to hear in this interview. So whether you like NASCAR, which is great, I love racing. You can go and listen to the final lap podcast, or you can check them out on his YouTube channel Wushin, and I'll provide Alice in the link, because Wushin is kind of hard to spell, and if he asks me right now, I don't think I'd be successful at it. But I'll make sure Alice in puts all that stuff into the PodFeed website, because everything good begins with PodFeed.com. Did I get the Alice in? Did I put the right amount of plugs in? I hope you all enjoy this interview, and I hope Alice in and Steve enjoys Spain. Oh yeah, and let's welcome Kerry to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate you reaching out and letting us talk EVs. I love this. So folks should know that you host the final lap podcast, which is a NASCAR podcast. But you also host the Wushin YouTube channel, which is an EV YouTube channel, Centric YouTube channel. Some people might think that that is ad odds. So do you want to try to square that circle? Is it ad odds? Well, I mean, let's put it this way. I was a NASCAR fan, a racing fan, a NASCAR host way before I got into EVs. I've been hosting a syndicated radio show called the final lap since 2004. So I've been covering this board of NASCAR for a very long time. I've been a racing fan since I was a kid. Indie cars, NASCAR, the whole thing. I mean, I just love speed. And at the end of the day, I love cars. Then in 2014, I saw a TV commercial for a Toyota RAV for EV in my local L.A. market. Those that don't know that was a like partnership with Tesla. So it had a Tesla motor, Tesla battery, Tesla everything except for the Toyota stuff. And my wife was looking for a new car and they were promoting the fact that you get into the car pool lane solo and she's driving 50 miles one way to work 50 miles back. And we had to do something to combat L.A. traffic. So that was my first foray into EVs. Was this Toyota RAV for EV and it only got 100 miles to the charge. So she had to charge at work as well, come back. And we would, we made it work. She put like 60,000 miles on that first TV that we got. So the point is, is I got into EVs after the racing thing and I have the same thought even to this day, how do those two things go together. And at the end of the day, it's cars. I love cars. So it really doesn't matter whether the using gasoline or electric. I think the fact that they are using electric and even NASCAR is kind of looking towards that as a possible future. Right now there's no way. I mean, the batteries are just not there. The charging is just not there to realistically see a NASCAR race with EVs. But we've got teams like Joe Gibbs racing, a top tier NASCAR team. They built a full on NASCAR Cup Series car electric version. And what they're using it for is pit stop practice. So they're not wasting fuel. They're not putting their team breathing all these fumes in while they're practicing during the week. They just come in, do their pit stop and leave. It doesn't need gasoline or electric or whatever. So they're already looking to the future. NASCAR has some prototypes out there. But at the end of the day, I don't see it happening in the foreseeable future with current EV technology. Not to say it won't. We do have racing series out there using electric and they're doing just fine. But in the world of NASCAR, if you're watching this and you're freaking out, you got a little more time with the fuel I think. Yeah. I had Brian Maxson, who's also on the believe network. And he does Brian drives cars. That's his podcast. And he was he was a former race car driver, current owner of a team. And he said, as long as it puts a smile on my face, I really don't care how it's propelled. So I think that's a kind of an important distinction when we're kind of looking at, you know, different ways of propelling the car. Because, you know, there's still hydrogen cars out there. There might be somebody that really enjoys driving hydrogen. I don't know who. I've got three Tesla's now. So I'm all in on the EV thing. We've been all EV. I think now for six or seven of those years, we're completely all EV. And I can't imagine going back to gasoline. I just love the thrill of sitting down in my Tesla. And it's just so futuristic. It's five, maybe even 10 years ahead of other cars. The feeling you get with with the acceleration, everybody talks about the acceleration of EVs is just amazing. And then, you know, some people are saying, well, you can't road trip them, which is complete focus. I road trip these cars in winter conditions and hot conditions in long conditions. I mean, distance. They are not only easily road tripable. They're actually kind of fun. And for the most part, we've noticed when we do a supercharger stop on a road trip, the car is usually ready for us before we're ready to leave. By the time we take a walk, go to the bathroom, get snacks, look around, all that stuff. The car's done. They charge so fast these days that it's a non-issue. Yeah. And my daughter has a 2020, I think it's 2020, Model 3. And I think it had maybe 280 miles when it came out, you know, brand new. So now we're looking at maybe 210 with the battery degradation. But they don't have a house. They, they Airbnb and they, because they work remotely. So they'll be in Arizona for a little while. They'll be in San Fran. They'll go to the East Coast. They'll go to Wisconsin. And they're doing that all off of brown 210 miles of range at 100%. Like they, and of course, they're only charging the 80%. So they're doing any with even less range. So it's possible. You just have to plan a little bit. Well, the funny thing is is we started our first Tesla. And I still own it is a 2019 Model 3 SR Plus. And that original range was 240. It really wasn't after like two weeks. It was down to like 235, then 230. And, and now it's about 180 point is we were road tripping that car back in 2019 when the supercharger network was spotty at best. Like we actually had to plan our road trips. We're like, okay, we could stop there. We can make it to here. If we level two charge here for a little bit, we can make it a little further. And now it's like with the range of my new Model Y and the supercharger network, we don't think about any of that when we go on a road trip. We just go. It's that easy. 100%. Can I ask you something about your route for because I've heard this story from many people, especially in California, is even though because that car was so early when it came to electric vehicles, people would still get notices from the state to do the missions testing on it. And it was like, it was kind of a pain in the butt to be like, no, no, this doesn't have. Like I've actually heard stories of people like having to drive it to the missions testing. And they're like, where's the tailpipe? And it's like, well, I told you guys there's no this electric car. Yeah. I never ran into that. The cycle of that car was 2012 to 2014. And I was a 2014. So maybe they had ironed that out already. But I heard the same stories that you were talking about that, you know, because it looks like it looked at the body style, the shell, everything of the regular RAV4. It just like you mentioned, there's no tailpipe, obviously. And, you know, it looked the same. So it kind of freaked people out. Yeah. No, 100%. We were talking before we hit record about the Wushin podcast, which is an amazing name. I actually own the license plate for my Model 3, it says Wushin, for California, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, so if I see that rolling around, I'll make sure to home and say hello. There you go. Hey, I know him. We were talking a little bit about what your channel is about, and you know, it's more of an EV, I don't know, lifestyle isn't the right word, but it's like a more of a holistic EV advice podcast. It's good information for folks who are just beginning like you said in our pre-interview, but it's also good information for folks who are, like myself, who have owned it for a little bit, owned a Model Y for a little bit, or any electric vehicle. So on yours, one of the things that I thought was great was Tesla has all of these overflow lots, and they're usually in mall parking lots because nobody goes to the mall anymore. And you actually used these overflow lots to pre-check out your car before you picked up your new Model Y Juniper. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I discovered that lot. How did I discover it? Oh, I was taking my teenager to practice driving in the mall parking lot. I look at over and I'm like, that's an awful lot of Tesla's in one spot. So I told him to go drive over there. Don't hit anything, of course, because he was new at the time. And we're looking around and I'm like, this has got to be like the brand new overflow lot because the actual Tesla dealer, or service center, whatever you want to call it these days, because it's not a dealer, was half a mile away. So I'm like, I put two and two together and realized this has got to be where the semi-trucks drop them off before they actually go to get delivered. And from that point on, I was just trying to create ways to make videos using that lot. And now I still do it because what cooler backdrop for a Tesla channel than having all these brand new Teslas around you for whatever the topic is. And so then when we decided to order the Juniper, this was May of last year, I'm like, you know what, I wonder, because I already knew about the lot, I wonder if it's there. So we were out to dinner one night, the night before taking delivery. And I'm like, let's drive over there and see if our car is there. So I set the whole family out there with the VIN and they knew the color, of course, and everybody's looking for the car and we finally found it. And it gave us a great opportunity to look over the car without the pressure, without the excitement of the next day of taking delivery of the car, plenty of time, nobody looking over your shoulder, none of that stuff. And I figured later on, I would do a video about that. And so yeah, I've got two videos about that exact thing about checking out your car the day or a couple days before. And I think it gives people a chance to bring that checklist. Everybody knows about the Tesla checklist that you have to bring on delivery day. But again, you're so caught up in the excitement. You're getting a brand new car. You can't wait to drive off the lot. And you really, that checklist goes to waste because you're not thinking about that stuff. You might look at a few things here and there that you thought of. But to have all the time in the world the day before is key. And obviously I know about my overflow lot. A lot of people, I don't know where they're kept, honestly, probably different places all across the country. I know the Burbank Center, they keep them at the Burbank Airport, so you probably don't have access to that, for instance. But it's worth a try. It's worth a look. They might even have it at the service center already the night before. So go there that's usually open. Parking lots are usually pretty well open, especially during business hours and stuff. So yeah, it's just one of those things that it was like Eureka, I found gold for Tesla content. And like I said, now I use it for anything because it's a great backdrop just to walk through the lanes of brand new cars. Kind of bummed right now because we had this weird pollen dust storm the other day. And now all the cars are yellow and dirty. So it doesn't really make a great backdrop at the moment. Maybe somebody go out there and wash them, I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, if you wanted to, if you wanted to do a post-apocalyptic style video, maybe that's you get yourself like a sepia tone on your camera and there you go. Yeah, it might fit right in. Yeah, yeah. It's also a good way for me to keep an eye or keep my, my keep tabs on how deliveries are going. Like, there was a time when between the Juniper and not and the lot was empty. And like you mentioned before the show, people were mad at Elon. And so that lot was also empty. And now, you know, we're seeing the lot is packed. And we're seeing less and less of the S's and X's because those are going away. And more and more of the Y's. What's really noteworthy, I was there last week. The cheaper model Y is really taking over this parking lot and I personally don't understand this car. I think for fleet usage, for businesses, it's a no-brainer. But saving 5 grand on the cheaper model Y is not worth it because you're losing a lot more in my opinion. And you're getting a way stripped down version when 5 grand over the course of a loan is not much 5 grand. If you're paying cash is technically not much, you've already paid most of the car. Why are you cheaping out on the last 5 grand and missing out so much? The one thing that is a deal breaker on that cheaper stripped down model Y is the sound system. It's only like seven speakers, no subwoofer, as opposed to like 15 and immersive sound and all that stuff. I'd be like, no. Yeah. I went to training on Tesla products and then all of the cars there, with the exception of the Cyber Cabin and Tesla semi, and in the training, it teased that there were supposed to be the Tesla semi and the Cyber Car there because we're supposed to get Robotoxy here in Arizona soon. And I went to my chiefs and I was like, can I please go to this training and I'll do a class on it afterwards and like, yeah, so they paid me to go for four hours and hang out with Tesla engineers and stuff. And I was honest, I was like, I'm going to use it for my channel so I'm going no matter what. But would you guys still pay me to go if I teach a class and they said yes. But I walked up to the, not, not, I was kind of talking to a couple of different people that were there. And I just kind of opened up the door of the more affordable, the cheaper one. And I looked inside and listen, it doesn't have a console in the middle, but it does have a place to put your bag or whatever. And I actually kind of thought that was nice. There were certain things and I didn't get a chance to drive that car because they weren't offering test rides in anything except for the cyber truck, of course. But the fact that there were just some nice cities in that car that I was kind of surprised by. Because like you, when I first saw it announced, I was like, this just doesn't seem like, this seems like it's a placeholder for people to see that it can start at a certain price, but then upgrade the car. Right. Ultimately, the bigger one. Yeah, I like the seats better than I like the seats in my Tesla. Okay. They're roughly the same comfort, but I like the material better because it's kind of, it's not that vegan leather. It's more kind of like a cloth recycled. And I thought that in terms of, you know, when you get in an Arizona and you're sweaty and you leave sweat marks on the back of your seat, in terms of that, that would, that would be correct corrected with those seats. And so there were little bits that I actually really liked about that, that lower end car or the cheaper car, I should say. But on the other side, I do agree like, it's not so much cheaper that you can't typically spend the extra $5,000 to get something that's better by a significant amount. Like there are definitely aspects I was surprised by the car and I was actually surprised about my reaction when it comes to the car. On that car, when you open up the front, there's no plastic inside. It's just open. Yeah. They just, it's like they forgot. I was like, you guys tried to save so much money, you couldn't put, you know, three dollars with a plastic in here to kind of protect these pieces. But no. Yeah. Now, as I understand it, because I had comments, of course, that people always love commenting on our, our Wushen channel on YouTube. But, you know, up in Canada, it's, you know, it's a lot more savings. And I get that. And in other markets, it's going to be more than the $5,000. So you've got to weigh your options and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, the stuff that has been removed of that lower model Y, I think is worth more than the, the savings. So you, you got to weigh that out for your own personal finances, of course. Absolutely. And then, you know, looking down the line, and I very, very rarely do this, but looking down the line when these cars become used cars, there probably be even more affordable and have to give people more access to getting, you know, an electric vehicle versus a, you know, $42,000 or $50,000 Tesla. Yeah. I think the use of the EV market is a good topic. I mean, it's, I think exploding. I keep getting Carvana stuff in my email, because I have one time wanted to see what the price was on my cars, and they keep bothering me. And they're like, the price of your car is gone up. I'm like, what? They don't go up. there's so many. stories right now about the use the EV market. And I've been kind of reluctant to talk about it just because it's so transient in terms of whether, you know, the values are high or low or whatever, and by the time I actually report on it, that whole thing could be over with, you know. Right. Yeah. It was like back in the day during the pandemic, talking about Tesla prices, you know, by the time you actually aired the episode, it might be up $5,000 because they were just so randomly prices were randomly changing. Yeah. I remember that period. It was like by the week, Tesla would change a price up or down, and you just didn't know when to buy. You know, you don't want to have that pitted in your stomach. Oh, I made the wrong choice of timing and all that stuff. Yeah. And it's not like Tesla, if they'd dropped the price, it's not like they gave you a thing to a favor and dropped your price. If you already pre-ordered it at a higher price, they were like, yeah, they're not going to do anything. They're not going to, you know, go back on it or anything. That's my favorite question when I see online on Facebook. I just bought it yesterday. Are they going to honor the new price? Nope. That's not how it works. That is not how it works. I wish it was. I mean, because I do understand that Elon's like, well, if you bought it at a cheaper price and the price goes up, we're not going to ask you for more money. And I do understand that. But when you're the dealer and the automotive maker, and you know that these prices are going up, a significant amount or down, a significant amount, I think it's kind of on you to make that. At least do something to try and make it right, whether that's a little bit of free FSD for a period of time, or there are things that Tesla could do that would cost them nothing and win a bunch of a lot of love from owners. I actually like the non-negotiation part of it. I just, I don't like that part of the car buying experience. My dad was huge into the negotiation parts of it. He would like spend the day at the dealership and going back and forth and he just loved that. And when it was time for him to buy a Tesla, one of the questions was, so you don't haggle the price? No. You just buy it online and you show up and you drive it away. Yeah. It baffled them. We bought my wife's last August. We bought my wife's a Kia Carnival. And I was actually surprised because it's been a while since more than 10 years since we bought a car where we actually had to negotiate on any sort of price. And we knew what, you know, we knew roughly what people were paying because everybody has access to that information now and we went a little below that. And they fought me on it a little bit and then they completely messed up. My wife only had one day that she could go and look at this car and then they completely messed up. They didn't have it ready. It was in the back lot. It was dark back there. It was next to a strip club. My and it wasn't the original salesperson. He had passed it off to somebody else and I basically emailed him. He's like, what did you think? And I was like, hey, man, this is the deal. It was here. You guys didn't have the car ready. I asked you to have the car ready. We didn't go until 7 o'clock at night. So it was plenty of time to get it ready. And they ultimately gave us our price and then they gave us, you know, some money off of the service plan for the doors and stuff like that. They tend to break and but it was a it was a pretty painless experience other than the fact that that one moment were. Yeah. The guys like, I don't have the key for this. So we had to wait for somebody to bring us a key to the back lot. Again, it's behind like a a jack of the box and there's a strip club over here and then there's a weed shop over here and I've got my wife and my daughter who's 12 at the time. I was like, this is great. Yeah. This is a great process. Well, and that's another thing that is funny. You bring that up the buying process of other cars, other dealerships, even EVs. I mean, but if you go to a traditional dealership, they want to keep you there as long as possible so they can keep haggling and and wearing you down and making you upset, making you want to leave. And that's just not how it works with Tesla. When I delivered my juniper, if I was on a lot for 10 minutes, it was only because I was doing a video. Like literally you show up with your phone. If you're unfamiliar with how you deliver a Tesla, you show up with your phone and it walks you through the steps. It helps you find the car. You find the car. You look over the car. You unlock the car with the app and the car is now yours. You literally drive away and we didn't even have to talk to a person. A Tesla person. You just, that's it. There is no going back and forth in this and that and upcharges and, you know, undercarriage coating and all this other garbage that you really don't need for the most part. It's, you just show up. It probably would have been five minutes if that. Yeah, the time you show up, open your app, get in the car, go U-A and leave. That's how it should be. It does a really nice process for sure. And it did take me probably 10 days to to pick a dealership and pick a sales person and all that other stuff for my wife's car. But I didn't have to go down except for the one time we looked at it and the one time we bought it. So there was a positive there, but it's definitely not as easy as just, wait, like you said, I think it doesn't take five minutes like Elon says to pre-order, but it takes, you know, less than 15 minutes to pre-order. And then I had to go in my delivery center was way far away from my house compared. There was one that's closer. That's about three miles away from my house. But for what a reason, I was like down Santana, which nobody in the Sierra Arizona, it's a long way away from my house. I didn't really drop off the down payment and I pre-signed some whatever things with the down payment one I was there. But because my wife was going to be down. The down payment and everything is in the app as well. Yeah. You don't need a check. You don't, you just link your bank account and that's kind of scary and kind of weird, not stuff. But at the end of the day, it's all done. Yeah, we chose to drop off the check, but that is a good point. All right, so you don't have to. No, you don't have to. Let's talk a little bit about your channel and some of your recent videos. One, and I know this isn't exactly recent, but I have the Tesla windshield package. It's, you know, $16 or $17 a month. It's cheaper than doing that through my insurance. Sure. As I discovered, yeah, why don't you do want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Again, I was driving with my teenager. We're going to lunch. We're in our Model 3 and we're actually following an X. So we're not following a big dump truck of rocks or anything like that. We're just driving along and bam. I mean, it is the loudest noise when a rock hits your windshield. And it started off really tiny and I'm like, it's going to grow. I have a feeling because it's just how it is. And, you know, we went to lunch and we came out and it was a little bigger. By the time we got home and had some sun, some heat buildup, all that stuff, it was, you know, it was a pretty good chunk of the windshield. And by the evening and the hot sun, it was about a foot and a half to feet. And obviously, you know, you can't fix that. If you're not familiar with windshields, you can fix a tiny little maybe rock chip. But when they go sideways and they just get longer and longer and longer. And it's over. You got to replace the whole thing. So I set up the whole appointment through the app, the Tesla app for the Model 3. I think it was like 1500 bucks, which is a big ouch. Insurance paid for a thousand of it. So I had to pay the deductible of 500. But as far as the Tesla experience, it was painless. Again, everything through the app, they gave me a date and time. It was like maybe four or five days out. It wasn't a big deal. They said it would be in and out in one day. And it was a Friday at that. It went south or something did go wrong. I'd lose the car for the weekend. But I dropped it off at 8 a.m. I was driving home by 5 p.m. So it was pretty painless and super, super easy. Yeah, that monthly insurance is probably worth it, but I still didn't do it. Yeah. For me, I don't pay for it through my end. I don't included in my insurance because it just raised my prices up so much to I was like, man, it is so much, it's $17 a month or whatever. It was $12 when I first signed up for it. But $17 a month is almost a no-brainer for, you know, I'd have to drive the car for a long time to pay the $1500 for the windshield replacement. At this point, I was kind of playing the odds. Yeah. I've had two in my entire life and both were Teslas. One was a rental in Europe. Ten minutes after leaving the rental shop, same bang, a Tesla Model Y. And we had a crack. It was probably four feet by the time the heat took over and everything. And so I've had two in my entire life, both were Teslas. I'm kind of playing the odds at this point. And again, the one that got hit was our 2019 with almost 80,000 miles on it. So it's lasted a long time and our other two Teslas, I hate to even bring it up, but they've been fine too. So yeah, my oldest, she's replaced at least two windshields in hers. But again, she does like cross-country road trips often. So I know that it's not. Yeah, it's weird. They have a low, but they might not even have 50,000 miles on their car because they don't go anywhere once they get to where they're going. Right. Very rarely, right? But then they'll take these massively long trips, you know, for several hundreds and thousands of miles and then they'll just sit forever. Right. And then I want to kind of round this out because you give, like I said, really good advice on your Tesla channel. And one of the things, your latest one is about tire rotation. And we were talking before, earlier before we hit record, that I was like, oh, this spurred me because I have not rotated my tires since I had them replaced last year, which is a round June or a May. May I have replaced for about time? Yeah. So what are your advice when it comes to EVs, specifically in replacing tires? Well, yeah. I mean, that's the thing about my channel. Like you mentioned, I go from the full spectrum, from bare bones. Hey, you just got your brand new car. It may be your first car ever. You don't know much about cars, kind of topics like rotating your tires all the way through, you know, checking out full self driving where a lot of people are probably Tesla experts at that point. They're using full self drive for a long time. And they want to get a few tips that maybe they didn't think about. So I use that full spectrum of topics. It's funny. I get comments on stuff like tire rotations. Like I already know this. Why are you doing videos like that? It's too simple. Well, maybe you know that, but 5,000 other people don't because they just got their car. And like you mentioned, it might be EV specific. And so in terms of EV specific tire rotation, it's like one of the few things you have to do for maintenance, because you know, brakes should last pretty much the life of the car, windshield wiper fluid, I guess, windshield wipers. And so tire rotation is your main serviceable thing that you got to do once in a while. Now, having said that, I have a 2022 Tesla Model Y Performance staggered tire setup. So you don't do any rotating at all on that. They say to rotate them side to side, but I don't understand. The inside is still going to wear on the inside. It's the whole thing. But anyway, so on the square setup of the Tesla Model Y Juniper, they say to rotate them every 6250. It's right there on the screen. The nav screen tells you exactly when to do that. I forgot like you and did it around 8,000, so they actually wore out a little more. But 6250 is what they recommend. I don't think I've ever rotated a car at 6250. I usually between 8 and 10,000 people like to say that it's because the EVs are heavier. And I've done a lot of comparisons like gas car equivalent to the Model Y or gas car equivalent to a sedan like Model 3. They're roughly in the same ballpark in terms of weight. So I don't understand that argument. What I do understand is, yeah, the acceleration. If you're having a little too much fun with your car and you're, you know, you're gunning it at the lights and stuff. Yeah, you're gonna see some different wear than you might not notice. For instance, my wife used to have a lead foot. Now she's slower than molasses and her tires last forever. So it just depends on how you drive your car for the rotations. So I suggest doing it because it saves you, you know, tires are expensive and you want to have them last as long as possible. Yeah, I think I've paid right around $1,500 to replace my tires. And I think it's the most expensive brand I tried to go right in the middle. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're just a commuter or you're driving around town, something you don't need performance tires. Like the Model 3 performance comes with the summer performance. Those are gonna wear out really fast. And if you're not, you know, tracking the car, what's the point? Yeah, yeah, like I've heard if you get 30,000 miles out of a performance at a tires for the, any of the testless, you've done really well with those tires. Yeah, these things aren't cheap. They're expensive. On our performance model, why? So because they're staggered, I only do them in sets of two. She got 55,000 on the fronts because we don't rotate them before we had to change them. And she routinely gets about 33, 34,000 on the rears because those wear out faster. You have to actually redo the suspension in the rears if you want to not wear the not as fast or put a square set up on it. But I think even then they're kind of angled weird because they're designed to when you launch, the tires go straight then. So if you're not doing all this launching, you know, because you're not a race car driver, they're gonna wear out in the inner edges and they just do. And that's just the way it is. And it's just something you either pay the money for the upgraded suspension or you pay the money on tires wearing out all the time. It's probably a wash. What was the advantage or why did you choose staggered over the regular like have a model life performance? And at the time, that's all they had left. We needed a car. All the otherwise were sold out for months. And so we weren't actively looking. Hey, we got to get a performance. We need all that speed and then she just drives at the work. So that particular model came staggered and that's just the way it delivers. And unless you actually square it out by, you know, separately, then that's what you got. Okay. That's how it comes from the performance comes. Yeah. Okay. Same thing with the model three, I believe. The performance. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. But what do you think? I'm going to have Steve and Alison Sheridan, who you may or not know, but I'm going to have them on to talk about their new Juniper. So I don't want to go too far into this. But what do you think of the new suspension of the Juniper versus the former suspension? Night and day. Because we have both generations. The model, why performance that I just talked about is the first generation, why obviously that's the performance one. So that's even more stiff than the long range. So we're used to that stiff ride. And our model three is incredibly stiff. It's like go kart stiff. So when I got into the Juniper, it's definitely springy, softer. In fact, there's a bump near my house where our model three and our performance, why don't even batten eyelash. It's fine. You could go as fast as you want over this bump. On the Juniper, it's like, I think I hit the bump stops on the top of the spring. Every time I hit that, if I hit it hard. So yeah, there is definitely a softer, smoother ride under normal conditions. And just don't hit those bumps at higher speed. In every aspect of the Juniper compared to the first gen is better in my opinion. It's quieter, softer ride, better sound, smoother, just like bankfold inside, nice amenities and features and soft touch, everything. And it's just, it's a better car all the way around. So if you're thinking about upgrading from Gen 1 Y to the Juniper, it's a no brighter. Just go for it. It's great. Excellent. And Carrie, where would people find you? You know, you get the final lab podcast. Where else can people go to find out what you're doing? Yeah, for the Tesla stuff, for the EV stuff, of course, it's youtube.com/atwotion. And it's pretty much everywhere else. Facebook, Wotion. So yeah, that's the best way to find this and get hold of this. And don't forget to like, subscribe and hit the bell. That's what us YouTubers have to say, right? You know, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give a little prop, a lot of props actually to the final lap because my early on in my fire career, I used to work with a guy, I'd never been interested in car racing. Motorcycle racing, when I was a kid, I was super interested in that. But car racing, I'd never really been interested in it. And I worked with this guy. And if you were sitting down when he was watching NASCAR, and he was, he was a, this was a dailer hand Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon was fairly new at the time. So it's around that time, about 2000 ish. If you, if Jeff Gordon was in the lead and you got up out of your seat, he would tell you to sit down and he had enough juice to tell you like, no, you don't move. He was the same with the Raiders. Like, if the Raiders were up and you, you did something, it was your fault. So sit down, Jeff is about to turn left a lot. Yeah. No, it was, it was, he was super superstitious about, I would probably still is. But what I found was, it listening to you and Tom on, on that podcast, it's Tom, right, to your co host, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby, sorry, Tom, somebody else. Anyway, listen to you and Toby reminds me of sitting there, and this guy's name was Dar, sitting there and hanging out with Dar and watching racing. And I have listened to, I think every episode since I found out about you guys since. Very cool. Yeah. It's just like the, you know, you, if people are into fantasy sports, you have a whole segment with Rady Dragon, which I think is good. And again, I have not sat down. I, you know, we have a racetrack car in Arizona, obviously, with the NASCAR. Yeah. No, no, I've been there a couple of times, but only for fourth of July fireworks. Okay. And then at the time, they didn't have, they didn't have a lighting in the parking lot. So nobody knew where they parked because there's not, I mean, thousands of people there. Yeah. Yeah. So trying to find your car afterwards was a little bit of a mixed bag. But anyway, yeah, no, it's, it's really good. So if, if folks out there are interested in racing, I highly recommend final lap. Yes. Because yeah. And that's easy to get your podcasts. You can just search for the final lap weekly, or you can go to the final lap dot com or Facebook dot com slash the final lap. So the funny thing about that show is Toby and I met in 2010 at the NASCAR Awards banquet. And we have been friends ever since. And the inside baseball on that one is he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, because that's where NASCAR is. He's always at the shops interviewing team members, drivers, executives, all kinds of stuff. He is right in the the thick of everything, NASCAR. And our show is completely unscripted. We just turned the mics on. We've got some stats in front of us, of course, but we don't have word for word. We must read this and that it's just us to talking like we're in the same room and we just have this chemistry that we could turn the mic on at any time and knock out a 40 minute show easily. It's pretty cool. - Wow, it feels way more produced than that. So that's a testament to you guys. 'Cause it does, you do definitely have, like I said, it feels like you're sitting with friends and listening, you know, or, you know, podcasts are, I think, more intimate than TV and all that stuff, just because it does feel like you get to know the personalities on each show. But for sure. - Yeah, it definitely feels like you guys have a wealth, you know, predetermined agenda and you have notes and all this other stuff. And for you to say, just turn on the mics and just go, that's super impressive. It sounds really polished. - Thank you, that means a lot, that really does. That's cool. - No, that's awesome. Thank you so much. I'm gonna put everything in the show notes so people can easily find it. And man, I'd love to have you on again anytime. - Absolutely, love to do it again. And thank you so much for having me. And this was fun. I love talking cars and EVs and NASCAR and all that stuff. Same, same. - I love Bodys interviews and you really should go subscribe to the Killop podcast so you can get more of these wonderful episodes. But I really appreciate that he donated this to the show so that I could go off on this vacation. Can't thank Jill from the North Woods and Eddie Tonkoi from also contributing so much to this show, which lets me get out of town early. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What a great way to support the show. But that is gonna wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at Allisonapodfeet.com anytime you like. I'll probably even answer you when I'm on vacation. If you have a question or suggestion just send it on over. Remember everything good starts with podfeet.com. You can follow me on [email protected]/mastodon. If you want to actually see Steve and my podcast work on YouTube, like the fabulous spreadsheet video that Steve just finished, you can go to podfeet.com/youtube. If you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community, podfeet.com/slack, where you can talk to me. And all of the other lovely No Silicast ways, people, you know, like Eddie Tonkoi. You can support the show at podfeet.com/patreon or find me one of those coffees over at podfeet.com/donate. And if you like Paypal, we can do that to podfeet.com/paypal. If you want to join the fun of the live show, you will have to wait till August 23rd to head on over to podfeet.com/live. I'm sending nights of 5 p.m. Pacific time to join the friendly and enthusiastic No Silicast ways. I miss you all very much, it's very lonely here. In any case, thanks for listening and stay subscribed.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Allison hosts the Silicast podcast and shares insights on Apple-related tech, including a recent episode with Clockwise where she discusses Apple TV recommendations and tech maintenance habits.
  2. She highlights a fun AI-powered CarPlay experience where voice assistants like ChatGPT or Siri can answer questions during drives, enabling real-time learning, storytelling, and data tracking.
  3. A key takeaway is how AI can organize fragmented memories or ideas into coherent narratives, helping users reflect, journal, or plan projects while driving.
  4. The episode features a detailed demonstration of how AI-powered tools can track bird sightings, analyze geographical data, and provide context about towns during road trips.
  5. Eddie Tonkoi discusses the importance of headroom in audio recording, emphasizing that consistent tone and performance are preserved when loudness is managed safely without clipping.
  6. A personal anecdote about using a handheld turbofan (Gizu Life) as a portable fan, power bank, and flashlight shows a practical, budget-friendly solution for extreme heat during travel.
  7. Kerry Murphy, a NASCAR host and EV enthusiast, shares insights on Tesla ownership, including pre-inspection strategies at Tesla overflow lots and the value of checking vehicles before delivery.
  8. The conversation highlights the evolving EV market, Tesla’s pricing stability, and the contrast between traditional dealership haggling and Tesla’s seamless, app-driven purchasing and service experience.

Summary:

Allison Sheridan hosts the Silicast podcast, reflecting on a recent episode that blends Apple tech, AI integration, and personal experiences. She shares how her team reviewed Apple TV recommendations and discussed tech maintenance, including using old software like Virtual 2 to relive vintage computing pleasures. A standout segment features a new AI-powered CarPlay experience where voice assistants allow users to ask questions, journal, or track observations during car trips—turning commutes into productive, reflective time.

The episode highlights how AI can organize scattered memories into structured stories, enabling users to explore personal history or plan ideas. In another segment, a handheld fan from Gizu Life is praised as a practical, multi-functional tool for travel, offering cooling, charging, and lighting features. Kerry Murphy, a NASCAR host and Tesla owner, shares insights on EV ownership, including using Tesla overflow lots to inspect new vehicles before delivery and the growing accessibility of electric vehicles.

He emphasizes how Tesla’s app-driven purchasing process eliminates traditional haggling, offering seamless delivery and service. Additionally, the discussion touches on EV market dynamics, including pricing stability, the value of pre-inspection, and how AI-powered tools enhance user engagement. These segments collectively showcase how technology—especially AI and Apple ecosystems—can transform everyday experiences, from driving to personal storytelling, into more intuitive, enjoyable, and productive routines.

FAQs

AI in a car with Apple CarPlay allows you to ask questions, get real-time information, and even plan or write ideas while driving, all without typing or looking at a screen. It can assist with navigation, weather, and tasks like journaling or brainstorming, making long drives more productive and engaging.

You can use AI to narrate stories, reflect on ideas, or journal thoughts in real time while driving. It helps organize scattered thoughts, provides thoughtful follow-up questions, and turns spontaneous ideas into structured, coherent content that can be later transcribed and used.

You can use AI to track wildlife sightings, record bird counts by location, or gather information about towns and local industries. It can also help with route planning, compare directions, or provide real-time answers to questions about places you're passing through.

Set your input gain so normal narration peaks around -12 dBFS and loud moments stay below -6 dBFS to avoid clipping. Keep your distance from the mic constant to maintain consistent tone, and use clip gain in editing to shape loudness without altering performance.

Headroom prevents clipping and allows for natural performance, especially during loud moments like shouts. It preserves tone consistency and prevents the sound from sounding constrained or overly managed, ensuring a more authentic and dynamic recording.

A handheld turbofan, like the Gizu Life model, is a personal fan that also acts as a power bank and flashlight. It’s useful for staying cool in hot weather, especially during long road trips, and comes in various colors with a fun, portable design.

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