This week on Chopping It Up, Keith sits down with a man who should probably charge him rent for all the space he takes up in his head — his good friend Robbie Boyd, calling in from the opposite coast with a sharper wit than any TSA agent deserves to deal with at 3AM.

This is a special episode.
Not because Robbie grew up in Belfast during the Troubles.
Not because he once rewired a house with a fountain pen and Catholic guilt.
Not even because he flew across the country to sit in front of a microphone he absolutely did not want pointed at him.

It’s special because this conversation is what we used to do as a country — two people who disagree on almost everything… agreeing that none of it is worth losing a friendship over.

We go deep into:

• “Luxury has gotten cheap, but survival has gotten expensive.”
  Robbie drops the line that’s been haunting Keith for a year — and together they unpack smartphones, heated car seats, McDonald’s inflation, Cribs-level envy, and the weird comfort of knowing we all live better than kings but still feel worse.

• AI as tool, threat, and mirror.
  From fake videos that could ruin your life to kids who know how to swipe but not how to troubleshoot, we talk about what we’re gaining, what we’re losing, and what we’re absolutely sleepwalking through.

• Loneliness disguised as convenience.
  DoorDash instead of dinner. Netflix instead of date night. Banking instead of walking into town. When the easiest option becomes the default option, community quietly evaporates.
  (Spoiler: community doesn’t survive unless you show up.)

• Why comparison is killing our joy.
  Two pairs of shoes, one pair of wedding shoes, and a whole lot about Russian Czars.

• How friendships survive disagreement.
  The real heart of the episode — and the reason Keith refuses to hang up the phone when Robbie calls… even if he knows he’s about to lose an hour of his life.

We end where all good conversations should:
with Vonnegut, a walk to the post office, the joy found in the “in-between spaces,” and a reminder that the only thing anybody remembers about you is how you made them feel.

This one hits you where it matters — in the part of your soul that still wants to be known, still wants to be connected, and still believes we can build something better together.

Plug in.
Sit with it.
And maybe… call a friend.

In Part 2 of this episode of Chopping It Up, Keith picks back up with Efran Pulido right where we left off — on MSR Bug in Iraq, at the height of the IED war.

Efran walks us through dismantling devices while insurgents watched from the hills, the day he rendered safe a 500-pound bomb buried in a ravine, and what it feels like to walk down a shut-down highway in a bomb suit with a blinking detonator in front of you and thousands of people stacked up behind you. From EOD school to “energetics,” to training TSA in explosive detection and X-ray recognition, he explains how you go from cutting wires in a war zone to calmly untangling 16 liens on a local property without breaking a sweat—because, as he says, “no one’s dying today.”

Then we bring it fully back home: what the Valley felt like when El Rancho was a shoebox, Los Olivos was the edge of the earth, Los Alamos was quiet, and you had to wait for someone to give up their Verizon slot before you could even get internet. We talk about the old gas station, the Los Olivos sewer fight, why quaint is a feature and not a flaw, and why this snow globe of a town needs to stay under glass.

We close with what matters most: family and community. His wife Kelly (the vice principal at the high school), their four kids, his son Diego setting kicking records under the Friday night lights, and the ridiculous concentration of talent in this Valley—Baja legends, polo champions, world-class musicians, and the guy fixing your flats at the tire shop.

If you want a realtor who’s defused bombs, navigated federal agencies, and still treats your house deal like the most important mission of the day, you can call Efran at 805-598-4140. And if you find something suspicious on the side of the road… maybe call him for that too.

This week on Chopping It Up, Keith sits down with homegrown Valley kid Efran Pulido — and Part 1 of his story starts a long way from real estate signs and collared shirts.

Efran walks us through how his family first came to the Santa Ynez Valley: his grandfather in the Bracero Program, his dad alone on a horse ranch where Sunstone sits now, ready to hitchhike back to Mexico until no cars came… so he stayed and built a life here instead. We talk about learning English at Solvang School, crying in front of a black-and-white TV because he couldn’t understand a word, growing up on Elm Street breaking windows and playing basketball, and running the full gauntlet through SYVUHS.

Then the story takes a hard turn: losing his way in Isla Vista, answering a random recruiter postcard meant for the Army, and getting poached by a Marine who walked in and dropped the line, “You wanna be on varsity?” From there it’s Okinawa, Hawaii, and finally EOD school in Florida—training to be the guy who walks up to bombs on purpose.

By the end of Part 1, Efran is rolling into Iraq at the height of the IED war, watching burned-out convoys coming the other way, living at Checkpoint 22 with Iraqi National Guard, and suiting up in a bomb suit on his birthday to walk down a major highway in 120° heat toward a blinking device that might end his life.

Part 2 picks up right where we left off—with the largest IED in the region, a 500-pound bomb, and the moment Efran earns the Navy Commendation Medal for Valor.