The LOTS Project Morning Show

How do you know whether a routine is discipline—or just obligation with better branding? After 906 episodes and nearly five years of hitting the button, Brian is taking The LOTS Project Morning Show off the schedule until at least the first of the year. The show started as something he wanted to do. Lately, it has felt like something he is supposed to do. This episode gets into that difference, wh...

Twenty-five years after 9/11, social media apparently decided it was time to drag every theory, unanswered question and old argument back out of storage. I remember the day a little differently than most people: I was listening to a shock-jock radio show at work and genuinely thought the first reports were part of a bit. That leads into a much bigger conversation about 9/11, conspiracy culture, th...

The chainsaw getting pinched was the first clue that this tree had a different plan than I did. I had roughly 45 feet of Tennessee hardwood that was supposed to fall into my cleared solar field. Instead, it started loading in the opposite direction—with my chainsaw still buried in the back cut. So now what? Ratchet straps didn't quite do it. Wedges weren't going to work. Leaving the saw trapped in...

For years The LOTS Project has bounced between RV life, building a cabin, solar, land, animals, growing food, Bitcoin, privacy, tech and whatever other rabbit hole happened to show up. I'm starting to think they weren't separate rabbit holes at all. Something clicked this week while I was looking at the response to the new Solar Basics videos and working through what I want the website—and eventua...

Facebook knows exactly which people, pages and groups I've chosen to follow. So why the hell doesn't it show them to me? After deliberately spending more than 30 days using Nostr again, I've noticed myself opening it before the other social apps. The network is tiny compared with Facebook, yet I'm getting more consistent—and arguably better—interaction because I've actually been able to build the...

This was apparently the week everything decided to break. First the RV door handle snapped—and naturally it's an obsolete part that's basically impossible to replace. Then Starlink went down and looked suspiciously like another dead dish. Then my truck's tire-pressure warning came on and I discovered something I'd never seen before: a rock had actually punctured the tire. The good news? I had the...

Episode 900 feels like a fitting reminder that almost every worthwhile project comes with a few unexpected lessons. This week I spent another long day clearing the future solar field, including dropping several large trees and one rotten dead tree that decided to make things a little more interesting than I'd planned. Fortunately, everything—and everyone—ended up on the ground where it belonged. B...

Every off-grid project eventually humbles you. This week was our turn. The cabin floor is finally glued down... mostly. One overlooked detail turned into our first real construction mistake, and I walk through exactly what happened, what we learned, and how we're planning to fix it. Then we shift into one of the biggest Bitcoin stories of the week: the Coldcard security issue. If you self-custody...

One minute I'm talking about clearing trees. The next minute I'm listening to a government official argue that sheep need a permit to drink from a pond. That pretty much sums up this week. We also get into more real-world use of the LogOx, why election commercials suddenly seem to be everywhere, why I'm changing how I approach social media, and where this channel is headed as we get closer to Epis...

Some projects fight you every step of the way. This week it was sheet vinyl. What should have been a simple pickup turned into delays, confusion at Lowe's, wrestling giant flooring rolls into the cabin, and making some pretty nerve-racking cuts that couldn't be undone. From there we wander into a question that's been bugging me for months: Why has everything become gray? Cars. Houses. Restaurants....

How much privacy are you willing to trade for convenience—or the promise of safety? This week we look at the growing use of Flock license plate readers and why the argument of "I've got nothing to hide" completely falls apart once innocent people start getting caught in the system. One bad database entry, one misread plate, one false alert... and suddenly you're the problem. We also dive into the...

This week on Episode 895 of The LOTS Project Morning Show, I finally get the wood chipper running after replacing the carburetor and changing the oil. We also talk about a new forestry tool that's headed to the property, why real freedom means defending the rights of people you disagree with, and whether self-checkout has quietly trained us to do work that stores used to pay employees to do. As al...

A simple flooring project turned into another lesson in why building your own cabin is never as straightforward as it looks. This week I talk through the latest cabin progress, why weather is becoming the next obstacle, and how one overlooked specification completely changed the timeline. Then we shift gears into a conversation about autonomous vehicles, why I still won't climb into a driverless t...

A camera on a pole doesn't sound like a big deal. Until it becomes a network. Until it follows vehicles across jurisdictions. Until it starts identifying people instead of license plates. And until cities start realizing they may have signed up for something bigger than they expected. In this episode I dig into recent developments surrounding Flock, why some communities are pushing back, and why o...

A chainsaw refusing to cooperate. Trees that still need clearing. A biochar experiment that didn't go exactly as planned. And somehow, all of it led back to a bigger question: are we spending too much time watching the circus while ignoring the things that actually keep our lives running? In this episode, Brian talks through solar field progress, diagnosing and fixing a decade-old Husqvarna, the r...

This week starts with cabin cleanup and a reality every builder eventually faces: everybody has advice and half of it contradicts the other half. I'm getting ready for flooring installation and trying to sort through the endless opinions on subfloor prep, skim coating, underlayment, and what actually matters versus what just costs more money. Then we dive into a surprisingly heated local debate ab...

The cabin hit a major milestone this week. After months of learning, climbing ladders, making mistakes, fixing mistakes, and figuring things out one project at a time, the trim is finally finished and the cabin is officially dried in. That leads into a bigger conversation about learning new skills, solving problems without experts, and why YouTube may be the most valuable trade school ever created...

This episode starts with anniversary week and porch furniture… and somehow ends with steroid-enhanced athletes, collapsing Middle East peace talks, and the political machine steamrolling Thomas Massie. Pretty standard 2026 conversation. We talk about: 10 years married and the journey from Minneapolis suburbs to off-grid Tennessee a huge week of cabin progress porch trim struggles and finally seein...

The cabin officially has sheet metal on all four sides, and now comes the phase where confidence slowly turns into second-guessing your own decisions. This episode gets into: wrapping up the exterior metal work learning construction skills in real time why I already think I may redo part of the porch trim local Tennessee radio a morning host voice that nearly breaks me hantavirus headlines everywh...

Some weeks you make solid progress. Other weeks you realize the real problem isn’t building a cabin… it’s dealing with people. This episode starts with a win—figuring out a scaffolding + ladder setup that actually worked without killing me—and then takes a hard left into one of the most frustrating laundromat trips I’ve had in a long time. From there it spirals into a bigger question: Are things a...

Gas goes up 50 cents in a single day… and nobody really questions it anymore. Meanwhile, headlines are pushing a “backyard chicken problem” based on 34 cases across the entire country. In this episode, we break down both—what’s real, what’s noise, and why it feels like the focus is always in the wrong place. On top of that, real progress on the cabin build: two full sides wrapped in metal, a few m...

You ever notice how the story is always about “safety”… until you actually see how it gets used? This episode starts with real progress—finally getting a full side of the cabin done and figuring out window trim the hard way. Then it shifts into something a lot of people are just starting to notice: AI creeping into vehicles and deciding whether you’re “fit to drive.” It sounds reasonable on the su...

Some weeks you make progress. Some weeks you make progress and realize how much stuff is broken—tools, systems, and people. This one had both. The cabin is finally starting to come together. Metal is going up, problems are getting solved, and things are actually looking like a real structure. At the same time: I managed to smash my thumb repeatedly and send a hammer flying Turned a simple weed eat...

The cabin finally got its first metal on this week… which should have been the big story. Instead, progress got sidelined by literal cannon fire because apparently that’s a normal sentence in Tennessee. In this episode, Brian breaks down the first round of siding installation, mistakes and lessons learned with the metal, unexpected trim issues, and why the new trail-clearing setup may be one of th...

The cabin didn’t move forward this week—and not for any of the reasons you’d expect. A simple mistake stalled the build, which turned into one of those weeks where you realize how fragile progress actually is. At the same time, I had one of the best customer service experiences I’ve had in years… which shouldn’t be rare, but somehow is. And then there’s the bigger question: We’re spending billions...