Ep 634 - Department of Jokes (feat. Yakov Smirnoff)

Support the D. A. W. G. Z. @ patreon.com/MSsecretpod Go See Yakov on the Road!!!! @ https://yakov.com/ Go See Matt Live @ mattmccusker.com/dates Go See Shane Live @ shanemgillis.com Go See Lemaire Lee Live @ https://lemairelee.fun/ Go See Shawn Gardini Live if you want @ https://www.shawngardini.com/live hello. Happy Fri-Yay everybody. We got the D. A. W. G. Yakov for you this week. Unc blessssssed the cast with some tales of yore / wisdom. From the soviet union to Branson Missouri. Big beast. You must go see him on the road. Please enjoy. God Bless. Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/DRENCHED and use code DRENCHED and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup! This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/MSSP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Wow, wow, Wes.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Yakov, thank you very much for being here.

• 0:04Speaker 02

  Thanks for, thanks for having me.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yes. You're actually coming at a good time. Matt's become a bit of a Russophile lately.

• 0:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:12Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  He's from Ukraine.

• 0:14Matt McCusker?

  I know. I, I heard. I was like, dang, that's not good. So. I'm just, I'm reading Dostoevsky right now and he's, I'm, he's made me a Russophile.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  You, you're liking it though, I'm sure. Otherwise, why would you?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:28Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:29Matt McCusker?

  He's converted me. I'm just 100% Russia right now. There's nothing I can do about it.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Well.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Shame.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  It is an interesting time to like, uh, decide which side.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  No, I don't think he's picking.

• 0:43Matt McCusker?

  He's culture. I'm not government.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  He's not picking a side.

• 0:48Matt McCusker?

  It was just a joke. I didn't, I thought, I found out you were Korean. I'm like, oh, that's not, that's, you know.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Well, I grew up in Ukraine, uh, but I speak Russian and my wife is from Ukraine and we speak Russians to each other. And we have a one-year-old that we're teaching Russians. So all of this, we're just hoping that this thing will blow over.

• 1:11Matt McCusker?

  Right.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  At some point and, and, um.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  What, so how, how does the name thing work? Cause I noticed there's like three names for everybody. There's like, there's like a pet name.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  There's like a formal son of.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Father's name in the middle.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  So it would be, uh, my, my dad's, uh, name would, so it would be Ivanovich if your dad's, uh, Ivan. It would be like Yakov Ivanovich and then the last name. So.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Did you have like a pet name though? Like a nickname too?

• 1:45Speaker 02

  No, no. Well, my mom would call me like Yasha instead of Yakov. Right. But, uh, not. Yeah, that's not normal.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  So I was reading that book and everyone has three names. There's like an Ovich name. There's the Asha, like pet name. And then there's like one more.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Just like first name kind of thing.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  But most, most of the time it's your name, you're given named and your father's name, uh, and, uh, it ends on ICH or whatever that Ivanovich Petrovich, whatever.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Kevanovich.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  And then your last name. That's normally, and, uh, yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  It's confusing.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  When I came to America, I just chose not to, not to have that.

• 2:29Matt McCusker?

  Drop the bitch.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  If you're reading this, the bitch fell off.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  You like that, Nate?

• 2:41Matt McCusker?

  Well, nice.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Well, as you saw, we're going through some struggles here. The guys are down bad. Nate flicked off Joe Rogan yesterday.

• 2:50Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  He, he made a mistake.

• 2:53Matt McCusker?

  Mistaken identity?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  He gave the middle finger to the boss last night, which is.

• 2:58Matt McCusker?

  I might be cooked. I, uh, I thought it was Tony. I thought, I saw him come out from the back. I thought his car was Tony's car. So I was just giving what I thought was Tony, double middle finger, standing in front of the car.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  You're gunning for the vice president.

• 3:13Matt McCusker?

  Me and the vice president are cool. So I could get away with that with the vice president. I don't, I don't know the press. The press have only spoken a handful of times.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Double middle fingers. Crazy. Double shaking them.

• 3:24Matt McCusker?

  Rogan's, he's probably like, fuck. He's probably about to get out the car, beat the shit out of me.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  He was literally just showing us he could do round, roundhouse kicks still. He was just amped up.

• 3:35Matt McCusker?

  I saw the cop, like, once I noticed what was happening, I saw the cop that was like watching him leave, like had the, he was like, had that alert, like what the fuck is that?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  You didn't get tackled.

• 3:43Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I was about to get shot from down the street.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Dude, I. Rogan was also hitting splits in the green room last night. It was so funny.

• 3:51Matt McCusker?

  The splits are wild.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Rogan was like, I can still do the splits.

• 3:54Matt McCusker?

  That's awesome.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Cause there was a rumor that they, uh, that, uh, David Lucas could do splits.

• 3:59Matt McCusker?

  Interesting.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And I said, I don't believe it.

• 4:01Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  And then Rogan immediately was like, I can't. And did it. And then while he was on the ground doing a split, David, David Jolly walked in. I was like, what the fuck's going on in here?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  It was a wonderful night.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I, I, I used to be able to do this Kazatsky dance, you know, with the.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  With the kicks. Yeah. And so now in the show, if I, uh, because I have a, I have a theater in Branson, so there's more like a variety. So I do. Standup stuff, but I also do some fun, funny stuff. So, um, I have like dancers in the show. And then I come out and I, and I sit on a little stool that they don't see and I go like this. And people just love it. And then I, then I get up and turn around and there's a stool back there, you know? Yeah, it's like.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Kind of rocks.

• 4:53Matt McCusker?

  What's the name of that dance?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Kazatsky.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Kazatsky dance.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Kazak, Kazak.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Kazakhstan.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Kazak, no, well, no. Uh, Ca, Ca, Ca, Kazakhs were the soldiers, closer, yeah. The soldiers and they used to.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Do you also like drop it? I've noticed they'll drop it low on that too. Like they'll be kicking and.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I used to. I used to do that. Yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  It's fun when they drop it low on the Kazatsky. Very cool. They drop it low. There's some spinning going on sometimes. It's very exciting stuff. Is that reserved for like an occasion or is that just like, if you're on the dance floor, you break it out? Or is that like a formal kind of thing?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  We, I didn't.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It's like if you're busting out the Kazatsky, could I go to a club and just fucking?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Well, uh, when, when you're capable to do it, it's like doing splits, you know? It's like.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  If you, yeah, it's, it's not an easy thing to do. And, and you watch those guys that they can do spinning and jumping up and doing splits up in the air.

• 5:49Matt McCusker?

  So you gotta get like your legs straight up there. I use my leg for that one. I use my arm. I'm like, I'm gonna chill with that too.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'd be in a hospital, yeah, before I.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Before, no, I would be.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you tried it.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  But you can break, if you can do it, break it out. It's like the worm, basically. Yeah. Weddings.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  It was normal.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Glorious battle.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Few, few, few glasses of vodka and you're dancing.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Honestly, it sounds awesome.

• 6:19Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, it is awesome.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Getting hammered and just, just kicking like crazy.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's one thing I, I did enjoy about the Red Army. The, the dance. It's a fun thing.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I feel like if the Germans had had a fun dance, maybe.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  People would have been like, these guys are kind of cool.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  They would not.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  But they didn't have any fun.

• 6:42Matt McCusker?

  No dance?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 6:44Matt McCusker?

  They just, they just, they had no, they had that.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  They weren't.

• 6:46Matt McCusker?

  They kind of crip walk. They kind of crip walk.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  They got the goose step, which some countries still hold down. North Korea still rocks a goose step. You go, well, that's pretty sick. When everyone, the whole.

• 6:58Matt McCusker?

  From a military drill perspective.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Just from visual perspective.

• 7:01Matt McCusker?

  For sure. Military aesthetics.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Nothing else.

• 7:05Matt McCusker?

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• 7:14Matt McCusker?

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• 7:19Speaker 01

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• 7:25Matt McCusker?

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• 7:41Matt McCusker?

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• 7:46Speaker 01

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• 7:46Matt McCusker?

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• 8:23Matt McCusker?

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• 8:42Matt McCusker?

  Can I, actually I want to run something by you.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:44Matt McCusker?

  I, this is for everybody. I saw this thing, uh, a couple of days ago and I, I think this is a, a new development in like ultra white behavior. You know when your dog poops, you grab a, a dog poop bag and pick up the poop?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:57Matt McCusker?

  The guy was squatted down next to his dog, holding the bag open while the dog shit into the bag. And I just wanted to say right now, I hope that's not a new trend. Cause that was, it was so, so disturbing. It was so disturbing to watch.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  What did this guy look like? Give me a description.

• 9:13Matt McCusker?

  Just, it's like one of those, it's like an ultra white.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:16Matt McCusker?

  You know what I mean? Like someone who's.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  How old?

• 9:19Matt McCusker?

  Probably like sixties. Like it's like a fleece, like a fleece vested kind of soft handed white. Uh, I don't know. If I had probably like some shit with a carabiner on it, I'd have guessed. Like probably some cargos maybe.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Harris voter?

• 9:34Matt McCusker?

  Undeniably so.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  I gotta be honest, that screams Harris voter.

• 9:41Matt McCusker?

  It was a Harris voter. They need to talk about that, man. It was an establishment Democrat for sure.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  It was definitely, it's about as dem as it gets, dude.

• 9:51Matt McCusker?

  Like 10 pins on your back, just holding a bag for your dog to shit in was like, I'd rather you leave it there. Just leave it and walk away. I, I really did. I'd, I'd rather you leave that and me be like, motherfucker, than watch that and be like, whoa, dude, why, why are you doing that? What if it has, what if your dog has diarrhea?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  That's what I've been thinking. How do you, how do you catch that? Yeah.

• 10:15Matt McCusker?

  Dude, it was, my older dogs will kind of scoot a little bit too. So you had to, it was, I couldn't believe what I saw. So I'm hoping that stops now.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:24Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Was it a trash bag?

• 10:31Matt McCusker?

  It was a dog poop bag, the tiny little bag.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 10:34Matt McCusker?

  He was just holding a tiny little dog bag.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Around the rim?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right next to the.

• 10:38Matt McCusker?

  Right, right on the crater. Just, you know, down a little bit. He had it, he had it dropped.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Screamed at him.

• 10:44Matt McCusker?

  Dude, I should have, I should have.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Like, hey.

• 10:46Matt McCusker?

  I should have beaten them up.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  You should have fought him.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  So this is, this is a good job for like a robot to go behind the dog.

• 10:53Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  You're exactly right.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  That way, nobody's upset.

• 10:59Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I don't like it. Dog shit robot, you might be on a billion dollar idea. I've been trying to make money off of dog shit for a while. I have, because like you gotta think, it has to break down into something that's worth some, you know, I think they, off gases. There's all this dog shit. I'm so serious. I mean, it was like, all this dog shit is getting just thrown in these bags and trapped in plastic. And it's like, there's gotta be some quality within dog shit that you can, like, it's like whey protein.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Ethanol.

• 11:26Matt McCusker?

  Something, man.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  You want the gas.

• 11:28Matt McCusker?

  I wanna, I wanna corner the dog shit market and turn it into a million dollars.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  I mean, you might be.

• 11:34Matt McCusker?

  I've been thinking about this a lot.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Just call for a Cossack.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I'll celebrate with a Cossack. If you do this, I'll get in enough shape. I'll get stem cells in my knees. I'll hit it.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  So this is why it's called secret podcast, right?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  No one can know about it.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  No one can know about it. Cause if somebody gets wind of Matt's dog shit idea.

• 11:55Matt McCusker?

  True.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  They're gonna take advantage of it. Elon Musk might be listening right now.

• 11:59Matt McCusker?

  Dude, please.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Could fuel his rockets.

• 12:02Matt McCusker?

  Oh, true.

• 12:06Matt McCusker?

  There's gotta be some use of all that dog shit. Apparently it doesn't work as fertilizer, because that was my first line of thought.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Well, the bag would not work.

• 12:15Matt McCusker?

  The bag, well, they say they're compostable, some of the bags. But I've looked into the fertilizer and they're like, yeah, I could be carrying some nasty, you know? I don't know. I don't know why a cow's shit would be.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  You were looking into it.

• 12:25Matt McCusker?

  Dude, for sure.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  You're Googling this already.

• 12:28Matt McCusker?

  I've looked into it deeply. It's always me walking dog shit to my, out of my garage to my thing. And I'm like, is there an industrial application? I forget it. Whatever Grok says, I'm like, I forget. But yeah, stay tuned.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, what do you?

• 12:41Matt McCusker?

  The robot picking it up.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Robot's great.

• 12:43Matt McCusker?

  Now you're sitting just cleaning it up as a robot.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Just, that could just be a form of getting it to you.

• 12:49Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, you could use, you know, those robots that carry like food orders?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Matt McCusker?

  When there's no order, in between orders, they could go and just fashion dog shit up.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Fill it with shit.

• 12:59Matt McCusker?

  And have it in a separate compartment than your food.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Which would be a good deterrent for the people kicking those things over too. Every once in a while, you go, I was actually carrying dog vomit.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Vomit's gotta have something. We gotta get vomit going too.

• 13:13Matt McCusker?

  Gotta be some stem cells in it.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Come.

• 13:15Matt McCusker?

  Dog come will be.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Dog come could be very valuable and lucrative.

• 13:20Matt McCusker?

  Probably, there's gotta be like B12 in it, probably.

• 13:23Matt McCusker?

  Do you have any dogs?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  I, I had a dog for a while. I had him in the show.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  It was part of this kit. And then I had him for about a year.

• 13:34Matt McCusker?

  He's a working dog.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  It's a working dog.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was kind of a half and half. He was supposedly a pet and part of the show. And it was a Shih Tzu and a poodle, so called him Shit Pooh. So it was a cute little dog, but I realized that I didn't have enough patience for that.

• 13:56Matt McCusker?

  You'd hit him.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  And then, so I, I, when I was on the road, I felt guilty that he was alone and in the, and so I would put him into dog motel. And I realized that I was spending more money on a dog than me. Uh, staying in a nice motel. So the lady who owned the motel said, why don't we co-parent this dog? And I said, great. So she took him and that was it.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  I visit, I visit him a couple of times. He was running the motel. He's really cute. So he would sit on her, on her desk and greet people and it was really, so it worked out really nice.

• 14:41Matt McCusker?

  Nice.

• 14:43Matt McCusker?

  There's a happy.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  La Mer got rid of his dog. They threw.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  The way him and his family got rid of their dog is they took the dog to the park and they threw the ball and then got in their car and drove away.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  You serious?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Dead serious.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  And the dog is still with the balls.

• 15:01Matt McCusker?

  It's probably in that dog motel.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Did you just wipe your fucking hand on the chair after you ate a chicken finger?

• 15:10Speaker 04

  No, I just, I was getting it up.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Oh, you had already spilled?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Sorry about, I didn't mean to actually get upset with you, but that genuinely would have made me angry. That I, you wiped ketchup on the fucking chair.

• 15:21Matt McCusker?

  That is crazy.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  I would have actually, I would have been truly mad. I would have been like, dude, you gotta leave.

• 15:28Matt McCusker?

  I just talked to a storm chaser.

• 15:32Matt McCusker?

  Fuck, Reed Timmer, I believe his name. He had a, he's the guy who has the tank where he goes in a tornadoes. He had a dog that would do storm chases with him. That's what I said. I was like, well.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Was that dog's name Toto?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  It's a little Wizard of Oz joke.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  They're gonna get in Russia soon.

• 15:52Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I was like, well, that's gotta be crazy for a dog. They don't like, like light thunder. I was like, that dog in that tornado must have been bugging. He was like, yeah, he was actually pretty scared. It'd be, it was called the Dominator. It's just like giant, it's an F-350. Dominator's awesome. It's an F-350 that just anchors down into the ground and it just like, it's like bulletproof glass. You can go inside of the swirl. Not in F5, obviously, but you can go down and just be inside of a tornado. Then you, they launch rockets up into it to like study the wind pattern or something.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  The guy saw Twister.

• 16:28Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, pretty.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  That guy saw Twister and was like, I'll do that. That's crazy. I mean, that was actually, I think the name of it was Toto.

• 16:37Matt McCusker?

  Really?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  The, yeah, I was, I loved that movie.

• 16:40Matt McCusker?

  Twister was sick.

• 16:45Matt McCusker?

  Did you like Twister?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Twister was good.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 16:48Matt McCusker?

  Did you see Waterworld?

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 16:50Matt McCusker?

  Did you see Waterworld?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Waterworld, Kevin Costner.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  I, I, I remember that movie.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 16:57Matt McCusker?

  I thought it was sick, yeah. The what?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  The smokers? That's who they were fighting.

• 17:01Matt McCusker?

  Is that the guy?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember Smoke Siggs, the bad guys.

• 17:03Matt McCusker?

  What?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:05Matt McCusker?

  Dang, I just remember my uncle Neil took us to Salt. And I think you see Kevin Costner's butt in the movie.

• 17:11Matt McCusker?

  You see his butt?

• 17:12Speaker 01

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• 17:48Speaker 01

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• 17:59Matt McCusker?

  When you see him open.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't get any easier than that. So get locked in for football season. Check out everything PrizePix has going on this September. Download the app today and use code DRENCH to get a hundred and fifty dollars instantly in lineups. If you win your first five dollar lineup, that's code DRENCH to get a hundred and fifty dollars instantly in lineups. If you win your first five dollar lineup, PrizePix.

• 18:24Matt McCusker?

  Run your game.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  When you were growing up in Odessa, how long did you live in Odessa?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  I was 26 when I, when I left the Soviet Union. So I lived all, all my life in a communal apartment with my parents, sharing the room. So basically that was my, my life. So I never.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So when you hear people talk about how cool communism is, what are your thoughts?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Well.

• 18:54Matt McCusker?

  That's a good question.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Cause I'm curious, because I never lived under communism.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  If you don't know any better, it's, that's the way people live. So some people live just a little bit better than others. But you get used to it. Yeah, no, I grew up, no phone, no car. Nine families in one apartment. One bathroom. Kitchen shared between all those nine families, one stove. And you have a schedule, like when you can cook. And God forbid you cook longer than other people get real upset and you can have lead pipe in your soup. You know, and just, just for flavor, you know?

• 19:43Speaker 02

  So, um, but you don't know any better. You just live like that. And in my case, you know, I, I was lucky that I kind of discovered comedy because I wasn't good in sports. I wasn't good, you know, in studying and, but I was good in making people laugh, getting in trouble and, and still keep doing it. And, and so that's what got me.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. How did stand-up start in the Soviet Union? When were they doing that?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Well, in my, um, normally there was like two stand-up comedians in the whole country that approved by the government.

• 20:28Matt McCusker?

  It's awesome.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  So they can be on television, they can be on the radio and so.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  We were doing that for a few years.

• 20:37Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  We did that for like, yeah, for like eight years in the United States.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  I don't think there's anything close to that.

• 20:45Matt McCusker?

  It was kinda like that.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 20:47Matt McCusker?

  We all shared an apartment with one bathroom.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  No, I gotta tell you, this, this was like when I, when I came to America and I was hoping that I can do comedy, but I didn't speak English. So I, but I remember going to.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  I'm sorry to stop you. In communist, in, in the Soviet Union, would any of the people in the communal apartment leave dishes in the communal sink?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Because that would be a beating.

• 21:16Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  There was a lot of challenges. Dishes, dishes was not one of them.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Dishes was not a challenge.

• 21:23Matt McCusker?

  No. You're saying they cleaned up and dried after.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Even then, even Soviet Russia.

• 21:27Matt McCusker?

  Wow.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  They would, they would.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Are you hinting on someone?

• 21:32Matt McCusker?

  So if you had been really good at sports, though, would you get like a different apartment? Or would you still be locked in with family?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  You would still be in same situation. You would probably have more opportunities like going outside the country, like representing the Soviet Union. Comedians were not sent out to, to represent the Soviet Union. So, uh, so you would have like, if you're a ballet dancer, um, you know, opera singers, those were, they were pride of, uh,

• 22:03Speaker 01

  You guys weren't proud of your comedian? They weren't proud of the comedians?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  No. Well, if you were approved by the Communist Party, then you were an asset to them.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  And, uh, and then so what would happen in each apartment in, um, there would be a speaker that was connected to like the whole, so, and they were on all the time. So on Sunday mornings, they would, uh, broadcast a comedy skit that were approved by the government. And, and so I would record that, like big recorder and I would record that thing and I would memorize it because there was no riders or there was no, it wasn't like you were stealing because there was nothing allowed. So, but this was allowed. So then I was able to memorize it

• 22:58Speaker 02

  very quickly and then would tell my friends and they would laugh. And it was kind of like an impression. They knew where I got it. It was, everybody heard it. It wasn't like I was, you know, and, but it gave me a chance to be popular with my friends and that's what encouraged that.

• 23:18Matt McCusker?

  Damn, there's something kind of bleak about that, though. You're just memorizing like state propaganda. That was the only thing you're allowed to do, which is, but I get it. That's the only thing that was there, but that's like pretty wild.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  And I got, you, you're conditioned so much. I remember seeing one of the comedians in New York and, and I, uh, and he said that Jimmy Carter had a hemorrhoid operation and he will be perfect asshole. And I, I literally ducked behind the table because I thought somebody is going to shoot him.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  I swear. I mean, this is how conditioned you were. Don't say anything against the government. And, and literally we had a department of jokes that, that each, each, um, state, uh, we had 15 state or 15 republics and each republic had the Minister of Culture that had a department of jokes. So if to become a professional comedian, you had to submit your material in writing, all the jokes that you're gonna do, and it would be more like vaudeville comedy. So you're, you're not doing an hour special. You were doing, uh, hosting something, few jokes here, few jokes there, and then they would approve it with

• 24:39Speaker 02

  a stamp.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  What, uh, what type of jokes would they approve? You're allowed to like make fun of your wife or something?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mother-in-law, yeah, mother-in-law jokes, uh, stuff.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Racism?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  They didn't like racism?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  No kind, no, you can't do political jokes. You can't do sexual jokes. You can't do religious jokes. You can't do, um, you can talk about fish.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, stuff like that, obscure.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And, and those jokes were pretty much like old jokes that everybody was hashing them over. So you didn't have to deal with the, with the, uh, Communist Party, uh,

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and the informers were everywhere. So you could not just like sneak in a joke because they were watching. So it was pretty, but backstage you would tell jokes about, Khrushchev Brezhnev. I mean, this was just okay.

• 25:41Matt McCusker?

  I'm surprised they didn't catch on worldwide like they thought.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  The what?

• 25:45Matt McCusker?

  I'm surprised the communist dream didn't catch on worldwide.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  The, well, I, I'm, you survived.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  I survived in that environment, came here and realized that you can do whatever.

• 25:58Matt McCusker?

  What was that like coming here and when you first got here and you were just kind of like existing and?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't speak English. So for the interpreter, uh, the guy, you know, was laughing at me and it, um, at the immigration office, like he was saying like, what, what do you want to do in America? And I said, I want to be a Russian comedian. And he started laughing. And I go, why is he laughing? He said, well, it sounds like Amish electrician. And, and so, and then I see dogs are sniffing my luggage. And I said, what is, what's going on there? And, and the interpreter said they're looking for drugs. And I, and I go, I thought in America, people are hooked on drugs, but dogs?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Dogs.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  And they start laughing again. I'm going,

• 26:49Matt McCusker?

  Kill him.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I'm doing pretty good.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Without even knowing the language, I'm doing good, you know? So that's how, but then I didn't, I, I got a, I, I was really determined. I knew that I, I wanted to do it, but I had no, nobody to kind of, there was no sound. Robin Williams was doing, um, uh, suppression jokes. And people kind of thought that he was Russian. And then they were thinking, oh, you're faking that you're from Russia. All of that stuff was happening for real. And so I, I, I figure I gotta learn English and, and so I got a job as a, uh, went to bartending school. Cause I figured.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Where'd you move to?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  New York.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  New York.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  So I was.

• 27:40Matt McCusker?

  All you knew how to, all you knew how to make was the Moscow mule before that?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  That would have been a good one. Yes. But I had no idea. I'm like, and I, I go to bartending school on Fifth Avenue and they want $200 for a week or two week course to become a mixologist. So I would have a diploma, but I don't speak English. And so I, I bring that big tape recorder with me and record, uh, this, the, all the drinks that they're, you know, like grass supper or dry martini, whatever. And then I try it and I get hammered and.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  But eventually I got a job and, and it gave me a chance to start talking to and trying my jokes on Americans.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  What years?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  That was 77.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  They, uh, when you came to America, how, like they must've interviewed you a lot, right? Like to come from the Soviet Union to the United States?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  The government wasn't like.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Interview like.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Like the government being like, who are you?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Government. Yes, they did. Uh, we, we had to wait in Italy, um, to, for three months to get past. So they didn't want people with Communist Party records or, you know, like criminal records, Barry Manilow. I, I joke about that, but they didn't want any of that.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And Lee Harvey Oswald just got right in.

• 29:13Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, it's pretty nuts. Interesting.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  So, and then, and then the interview comes and you think that, you know, CIA is going to like grill you. And I walked into that, uh, and, and the guy is in shorts, kind of, you know, relaxed, kind of going, looking at me, going for my papers and going, are you a spy? I go, no. He said, okay, that's fine. So.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Well, I got in.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Strict security.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Tell me, are you a spy?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:47Matt McCusker?

  You have to tell me.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  No. I would tell, I would, I would be honest if I was a spy.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  That's pretty, so what was it, what was your impression though, when you came here and it was, if you were so used to, that was so normal to be like nine families in an apartment. You got here and you had your own spread, like where did you move?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Well, you didn't, I mean, at first, at first it was like, I, I, I had a friend who immigrated before me and she had an apartment and we slept on the floor for, for a while. I came with my parents, so we didn't have any money.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  The funny part, how we survived this three months in Italy. They would allow only so many things to take out of Russia. And there was a list, like a camera, a hat, something like that. And a hundred dollars a person to exchange, that's it. So we, as kind of a, um, a part of this research was, what do we need to take with us so we can sell in Italy?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  And one of the things was condoms. And because in Soviet Union, there were like a couple of pennies. And there you could sell them for a dollar and we heard that. And there was no restrictions on how many condoms you could get. So I would go to all different and you could, you gotta talk to the pharmacist. Because it wasn't like just pick it up, you gotta talk to them, they, so I would go from one pharmacy to another and just get as many condoms as I could get. So we got like a suitcase full of, I'm not, I'm not making this up, full of condoms. And we gave it to my mom, so figured they won't ask her why, you know, whatever.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  And so we passed them through and we got to Italy and my job and their job was on Saturday and Sunday, there was an open market and you go there and you open the suitcase and you sell.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Sell condoms.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Sell condoms, right? So, so, so it was funny because my, my parents who were very conservative, you know, never seen capitalism, all of a sudden they become this capitalist. So, so my dad, they said, I'm gonna be in charge of advertising. So he starts blowing this up.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Minister of advertising.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Right, and mom's clever, I mean, and she's as straight as you could be. She translates into Italian, if you don't wanna have a kid like this and points at me, buy a condom and people would laugh and they would buy it. And that's would give us money to, to pay rent for this time and we survived.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Hey, that's awesome. Where, where's Chernobyl compared to Odessa?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  It's about, it's closer to Kiev, yeah, so it's probably 60 miles from Kiev.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And what year was that, were you there?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  No, no, that, uh, that blew up in, right before the Soviet Union collapsed. I believe that that was kind of the last straw that broke the camel's back. Because Gorbachev did not know, they literally tried to cover it up. For, for a long time and I talked to a, um, when I, um, when I visited, uh, so, well, at that point, still Soviet, no, no, it was after Soviet, I visited, I took my kids to, to St. Petersburg and we happened to, through some friends, knew a general who was in charge of covering up Chernobyl.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  And so, and he said, we tried, so we got all the heavy equipment from all over the country to get there, to bury it, the whole city, the whole thing. But after, after it's already been out and the news were out. And, uh, and that was kind of Gorbachev's, you know, end of that. It's interesting, I, I went and I visited there and.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Chernobyl?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Oh, that's cool.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, and they give you a Geiger counter and they're still, so if you walk on the pavement, no, no problem, just same as in the city. But the moment you like veer off just a little bit into like a grass area.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Still there, still there, that was only like five, six years ago when I went. And, but you walk in and there's, it's kind of like a monument to a fallen empire. Because everything, uh, uh, grown with trees and, and so every, the pictures are still of, you know, all the Soviet politic, all of that was still there, but it's totally a ruin.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  How, how far around it is like unusable, basically, or unlivable now?

• 35:06Speaker 02

  I don't think, uh, it, the, the radiation level, if you compare it to just a regular city, it has already just from the sun and all of that. So I would say 20 kilometers maybe around that.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Didn't they build like a dome over it now?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  As a, as a museum or?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  No, no, like a protective.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Just to protect?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Well, maybe I shouldn't have gone.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  But I had, I have a one year old now, so I guess it's still okay, yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Got three arms, doing great.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Maybe it would help me.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Did you ever see the show Chernobyl?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  I did.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  It was great, right?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I liked that.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're sitting on the edge of the, edge of the seat and the music or whatever, that sound that, that.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  But I liked the, my favorite part is the Communist Party, like when they have the meeting of all the townspeople and they're like, everything's fine.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  And then one guy's like, why is the air glowing? And he's like, shut up. He's like, everything's fine, then he throws up blood. Get him out.

• 36:20Matt McCusker?

  Dude, that.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 36:22Matt McCusker?

  That was, what year was that again?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  I thought it was, no.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Chernobyl, I think it was like.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  When did it blow up?

• 36:30Matt McCusker?

  When did it happen, yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  It would be 90, it would be, no, 89 or right before the collapse. The collapse was 91, so it was just. It was, yeah.

• 36:44Matt McCusker?

  Damn. Yeah, that's an epic, that's an epic failure.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Notre Dame's last title Soviet Union existed.

• 36:51Matt McCusker?

  Really? It's tough, dude.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  We'll be back, this is our year, you ready for some college football?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  You gotta get fired up.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Really?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  It's time. Do you live in Missouri?

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  You a Missouri Tiger fan?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Well, I don't follow sports, so. I should, yeah, well, yeah, I, with your background, yes. With my background, it's like, I don't know why grown men bend over and touch each other. I mean, that, you know.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  If you put it that way.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Well, if you say it's gay, I can't, you know, it's hard to argue.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  I just described it, that's all.

• 37:32Matt McCusker?

  This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp.

• 37:40Matt McCusker?

  I can instantly tell me.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  If you could get better at anything or something, what would you choose?

• 37:47Matt McCusker?

  Oh man, I, you know, if I could get better at anything, if I can get better at something, it would be, I, I'm, you know, I would just be better at just kind of like holding my friends.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Holding them.

• 38:00Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, sometimes when my friends are talking to me, you just stand like, you know, apart from them, why not just hold them?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Embrace when you talk.

• 38:05Matt McCusker?

  Embrace them when you talk, yeah, grab the back of their neck.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  That's interesting, I never thought of that.

• 38:09Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Feeling better, feeling better, being better, is defined differently for everyone. For BetterHelp, they help with the better. It's a BetterHelp therapist who really gets you. It's a focus on global, or yeah, global emotional wellbeing with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over a hundred countries. Uh, and, and it's creating a space to help you, uh, sorry, I can't read any of this. To help you explore what better means to you. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash MSSP. That's better H E L P dot com slash MSSP.

• 38:45Matt McCusker?

  Excellent.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Do you like any sports? With any?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  No, not really, no, I never got into it, I wasn't good at it, so if I wasn't good, I wasn't.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Scott loves basketball and he, I mean, you should see him.

• 39:02Matt McCusker?

  Sure.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  I might be the worst person to ever touch a basketball, but it is my favorite thing.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  He likes to see the men, he likes to see the big men.

• 39:11Matt McCusker?

  See what they can do.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  And he cheers for them.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  I cheer for him, I wear his shirts.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  He said he would kiss a bunch of the players for them to win a championship this year.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Said I would kiss a bunch of players.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  He would mash butts with LeBron James.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  I said, no, I said I would mash butts with.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  He would take naked butts and mash them together.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  I said I would mash butts with you.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  You said you would mash butts back.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I'll mash butts for a couple of years.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Are you sure he's talking about basketball or just?

• 39:39Matt McCusker?

  Well, it's also like, would you rather mash butts or kiss? That's a tough question.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Damn, mashing butts is disgusting.

• 39:45Matt McCusker?

  Mashing butts is disgusting, but it's almost like, you know.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  You guys ever do a naked mash?

• 39:50Matt McCusker?

  It's a little more, it's a little more clinical. Mash butts quick, you're off, a kiss is pretty intimate.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  What do you think's scarier, naked butt mash or kissing?

• 40:01Matt McCusker?

  No tongue, but wet lips.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Do I?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  But wet lips.

• 40:05Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, but wet lips.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Those are the only two choices that.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  You gotta, you gotta pick one. Are you mashing butts or kissing?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Just think, you made it out of the Soviet Union to be sitting in Texas someday, talking about mashing butts.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Who would have guessed? USA, we won, we won.

• 40:28Matt McCusker?

  We can literally do anything we want.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  We can mash butts whenever we want.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  We can do it.

• 40:38Matt McCusker?

  Matching butts is our scissory.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  It is.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  So what brought you to Missouri?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Branson, Branson, Missouri. It's a little town that has a lot of theaters. And I didn't know anything about it. And my career kind of went through, I got canceled kind of idea.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  What'd you get canceled for?

• 41:10Speaker 02

  For the Soviet Union collapsing.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 41:13Matt McCusker?

  They blamed it on you?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Somehow I got the brunt of that.

• 41:18Matt McCusker?

  Who'd you get canceled by?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Well, officially, Leatherman had a top 10 list on the night of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the things that will now change, and I made number one on the list. Yakov Smirnoff will be out of work. And I thought it was kind of funny because I was playing Vegas Atlantic City. I was, I was killing it, you know? And, and one joke, what's a big deal, right? And six months later, none of my contracts were renewed. Kind of like SNL kind of a thing. It's just like one thing and it's just that you're done.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  And, and I couldn't, I couldn't find work for two. And I had two little kids at that point. And we were living in a house next to like Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger. We were in Pacific Palisades, two and a half million dollar home. I'm like going, this American dream rocks. It's never will end. This is, this is it. And the mortgage didn't end, but the career did. And so all of a sudden I can't pay my mortgage. And, and so.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Just change the joke to Russia instead of Soviet Union. Just say Russia instead of Soviet Union.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Nobody cared, nobody. You know why, you know why?

• 42:48Speaker 01

  We had to stop talking shit.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  I realized later on, and this was something that took me years to figure out, that I was meeting the need that America had. America, the Soviet Union was a pain in the butt to America. I was like preparation age. I was like, you know.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  You were living the butt mash.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there you go. Now we're connecting it. Yes, yes.

• 43:15Matt McCusker?

  Russian America finally butt mashed and there was no more market.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Tore down the wall, everyone.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  So.

• 43:25Matt McCusker?

  Damn, that fucking, that sucks.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  But there, when the itching and the swelling and it goes away, you don't need preparation age. So that's kind of what happened. I was like, put it aside and, and literally couldn't find even going back to clubs. We're not, nobody, it was like you're, who cares?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Soviet Union is not there, who cares? So then.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  It was also, was that around when the comedy bubble itself burst?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Well.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  It wasn't like, it wasn't huge in the eighties and then like nineties it kind of dipped? Or am I wrong about that?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  I think you, you might be right. Timing might have been similar to that. And then I remember I was telling my agent, you know, what do I do? And he goes, well, Willie Nelson is doing this concert in Ames, Iowa, and they won't pay anything, but he needs a co-host. Would you want to go to Ames, Iowa? And I go, farmers would not know who I am. Why would I, you know, and, and, but I had no choice. So I went and it was, you know, I, I did my set and they gave me a standing ovation. And I was like, holy, this is pretty cool. So, and then I want to say goodbye to Willie Nelson.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  This is where I opened the door at his tour bus and the smoke comes out. And, and he, and, and he goes through the smoke. He goes, Yakov, you did great. You should go to Branson, they'll love you there. And I go, what's Branson, you know? And so I went and in Branson, they didn't know that the Soviet Union collapsed.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  So I got 33 years out of that. I own 2000 seat theater and I entertain over 6 million people there. So it, it in some ways being canceled worked for me. So that's.

• 45:30Matt McCusker?

  So you're in the theater business?

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Well, I'm, I'm, I really, it's just my theater where I, when I got there, it was not easy. I rented it and I, for show, I'm thinking, well, I'll do well there. But 17 people showed up. So it was started, oh my goodness, two little kids, what am I gonna do?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Now they must, they must love you in Branson.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Now, well, it took a little while, but they do, they do. And so it became, so I did 400 shows a year. I would just do show after show and.

• 46:07Matt McCusker?

  Was it you performing or you were throwing a plays?

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Just me.

• 46:10Matt McCusker?

  Damn, so you just tore up.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  And then it became, because they like more variety. So I added some dancers and sketches and things like that. But mostly it was me.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Now I kind of, you know, I do only like 30 shows a year. And this is where I, for the first time, really come back and kind of put my foot in the water, go, do they still know who I am? And then, you know, Kill Tony, you know, Tony says to me, sure, I'd love to have you as a celebrity judge. And, and all of a sudden it's like, and yesterday I was like, I felt like I was an ugly duckling walking into the Swan Lake, honestly going, are they gonna kill me? Or are they gonna just accept me?

• 47:01Matt McCusker?

  Of course.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Well, of course, in your mind, your mind plays tricks. It's like you go, I don't know. I'm sure when you went back, you know, Saturday Night Live, it was like, what's gonna happen here? You know? Yeah. So.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:19Matt McCusker?

  That's interesting.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  I still feel that way whenever I go to any, any other club.

• 47:24Matt McCusker?

  For sure.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  I'll go back to the cellar and be like, they hate me.

• 47:26Matt McCusker?

  They hate me now.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  I'll go anywhere. I go to the store, I'm like, fucking LA.

• 47:30Matt McCusker?

  They hate me.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Then you hang out with them for 10 minutes, you're like, all right, I like LA.

• 47:33Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Any club I go into, I'm like, I hate everyone here.

• 47:37Matt McCusker?

  Also luckily there's.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Somebody says hi and you go, hey, how are you? Thank you.

• 47:41Matt McCusker?

  I love your stuff.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:43Matt McCusker?

  Luckily, there's a, plenty of political strife again with Russia, so.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  What was that?

• 47:47Matt McCusker?

  There's a lot of political strife with Russia right now too, so.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:51Matt McCusker?

  Could be another harvest season.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I try, I, after, I feel like after that whole thing happened in the nineties, I feel like I developed, like I had like PTSD from going into a political direction.

• 48:07Matt McCusker?

  Right.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  So I, I started and I, I was going through divorce and I realized that this is a lot more job security, talking about men and women. Cold war will never end. So I just, I doubled down on that. I got, I, I literally, while I was doing shows in, in Branson, I got my master's degree in psychology at UPenn because I wanted to research laughter. And here's what triggered it. It was like realization that when relationships start, everybody laughs.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  And, and then when it's over, the only people laughing are the attorneys. And you're like crying, literally. So I was like, I started asking my audience, I go, let me ask you, how many of you, when you fell in love, remember laughter being part of that? And they all, yeah. And then I go, how many of you would go on a second date if you didn't have laughter? Silence. Oh, there's something here.

• 49:20Matt McCusker?

  All those guys are lying, by the way.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  She's hilarious.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  God, she's funny.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  And you fucker, you go, I don't get it. I don't get the, what's the punchline?

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Well, but that was in Branson, so it's a different.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  What? All right. So if you, you studied, what were you studying laughing like? Cause first of all, I got a question. What the fuck is laughter? How about that?

• 49:44Matt McCusker?

  The relief of psychic tension.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but why does it come out like that?

• 49:48Matt McCusker?

  I just remember hearing that somewhere.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  I had a feeling you'd know.

• 49:53Matt McCusker?

  It's perceived threat that gets.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I, I was going after deeper, you know, like, there's a lot of understanding of laughter, element of surprise, all of those things are correct. That was going for a route. My dad was an engineer and inventor. So my brain is like, what is it? What is it? I want to understand why there's laughter in the beginning of the relationship and why there isn't later on. And it's not just a relationship with your wife, or it's the same with the children, the same with your coworkers, the same. So I was looking for what's a common denominator? What is it?

• 50:39Speaker 02

  And so I did my dissertation and then I went to Pepperdine and got my doctorate degree because I want to continue figuring this out. And the dissertation is online. You can, 190 pages of no jokes at all. I mean, it's like serious research. And, and so the dissertation is called Law, Law of Laughter, LOL. That's the only joke they allowed me on the cover. That's it. And so, so the, what they boiled down to, and it started, and that's what explained to me, my success in, in, in America, not just because, you know, I had, I was hard

• 51:24Speaker 02

  working, I had talent, all of that. But the main thing that got me on the level that I never imagined, making movies and doing all, was that there was a need. America needed relief from that crazy tension that, so Brezhnev and Khrushchev with the shoe, we will, we will bury you, all of that. America lived in that. And here I show up and I'm like, we're afraid of this? And that's what got me to get on Tonight Show, this, all of those things. And then I realized, so the need, so I was meeting the need.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  And that's what happens in the beginning of the relationship. You, you do everything to meet her need. She's doing everything to meet your need, whatever the needs are. And, and then the humor triggers the laughter. That's it. So if the need is not met, you're screwed. And then, and of the relationship, normally you're saying, I'm not meeting her need, I'm done, or vice versa.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Cause I've noticed me and La Mer have stopped sharing giggles.

• 52:37Matt McCusker?

  Dr. Smirnoff, could you, Dr. Smirnoff, can you please diagnose these two? I feel like their love is fizzled out.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Their love is fizzled.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  My, my love with La Mer is fizzled. It's not as funny. At first I go, oh, La Mer, he just wiped ketchup on the chair after eating a chicken finger during the podcast. And I go, now I go, what the fuck was that? Oh, he left the dishes. I'm having people for dinner. Who cares? Now I go, what the fuck are you doing? Stop jacking off in the office.

• 53:08Matt McCusker?

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• 53:47Speaker 01

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• 53:48Matt McCusker?

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• 53:50Speaker 01

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• 54:43Matt McCusker?

  Well, what about a relationship of like years where like, maybe the laughter has died, but then the wife falls on the floor and you go.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause that never gets old.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Then the need was met.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  True. Yeah. If she just, if you, yeah, you could marry a clumsy bitch.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  And you're gonna laugh for the rest of your life.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Till she takes a header off the fucking porch and you get.

• 55:12Matt McCusker?

  That's cool. You went back to school for psychology. So what do you do with that? You just kinda, you just sit on the doctorate?

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Well, at first I kind of.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Similar path.

• 55:20Matt McCusker?

  True. Yeah. I'm a master. I have a master's in social work.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Okay. So at first I thought I'll, I'll go into that relationship arena, do TED Talks, maybe. I did a PBS special called Happily Ever Laughter. But then I realized I'm splitting myself that, you know, I believe that comedy is really what I want to do, but I was doing it to fit, to meet the need. And then I realized that most people don't want to change their, whatever their pattern is in a relationship. You can spend all your life trying to help them, but they don't. So I use that in my show. I use a lot of material, men, women

• 56:04Speaker 02

  differences, my, my wife, telling stories about my wife, me, and that's basically incorporated what I learned into my standup.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  So.

• 56:19Matt McCusker?

  I went to Drexel, by the way. I went to Drexel right next to Penn.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. We used to live, did you go to Penn?

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  So we, we lived right there. We lived in University City in Philadelphia.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  It's, it's a, it's a beautiful campus. I loved it.

• 56:34Matt McCusker?

  Penn's nice, yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 56:36Matt McCusker?

  Drexel's ugly. Drexel's, it was literally voted, I went to Drexel right next to Penn. It was voted one of the ugliest campuses in America.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  You should see Harris-Burger Community College. I went from like, very nice schools at first, and then literally Harris-Burger Community College in Westchester, both of them look like Soviet, the architecture is Soviet block.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  That's why, that's why I liked it. That's why it felt at home, right? It felt right at home.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  You go, oh, there's only three windows.

• 57:05Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, Westchester's, yeah, they got some rough.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Fucking AT&T building.

• 57:10Matt McCusker?

  At least they have like grass. Drexel's no grass. It's just concrete and it was run by Greeks for a while. So they got this idea to put like giant, almost an amphitheater thing in the middle of like a paver. It looks horrible. Yeah. Drexel was Greek run for a long time.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Hack was right next to the farm show complex and a bunch of fucking train tracks. It was tough, dude. I feel like it was always cloudy when I was there. That was a dark period.

• 57:34Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, that's a tough one. Although you, you definitely probably felt like Boy Genius at the.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  I did.

• 57:39Matt McCusker?

  HAC.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:40Matt McCusker?

  That's all, it's really nice. Community College, you can go there.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Really tear it up. Wait a second. I am smart.

• 57:45Matt McCusker?

  Smart as hell.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's a good feeling.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  So I'm curious about your coming back to SNL. The, the set, you were pretty, I mean, you were pretty set on that set, right? I mean, it was, you weren't winging it there.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  It was, because solid, it was great. And yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I was winging it a little at the, at the beginning, just being like, I was like, how do I address getting fired? And I thought about it for a while of like, what to say? And I was like, should I fucking tell them to F you? And like, oh, it's like, why would I ever do that?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Double birds to Rogan.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  But I love that you, you had your, your family there.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  That was a great setup, you know? It was like, oh man, he, he thought it through.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  No, that was last second. That was.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  No, really?

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I knew they were coming, but I was like, can we, cause I didn't even think to ask if I could get them on camera. And then when we were doing rehearsal, I was like, could we get a camera? Like, cause I was like, where are they gonna be sitting? And they showed me. And I was like, can we put a camera on them? Oh, yeah.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Then I didn't tell them that they were gonna be on camera.

• 58:54Matt McCusker?

  That's so funny.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was nice. That was a nice moment. My mom and dad held hands.

• 59:01Matt McCusker?

  That's really sweet.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  I was like, god damn, this is like the sweetest moment of my life.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Their need, their needs were being met. Yes.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Kid's not a loser. Look at that.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  We, we didn't waste our time.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Cause there was a good 30 years before that where they were like, oh, god damn, this kid sucks.

• 59:20Matt McCusker?

  It's gotta be so nice to be like, holy fuck.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  But then I'm up there like, my dad's fucking gay. Get a camera on him, pussy.

• 59:29Matt McCusker?

  Still, you'd be like, this is nice.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:32Matt McCusker?

  It's so fucking funny.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Gay bitch.

• 59:35Matt McCusker?

  Hey, my dad's a fucking bitch. TV, just like.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. That's great.

• 59:42Matt McCusker?

  You keep proud.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  But then at the, yeah, I remember at the after party, he was sitting at a table, it was just him, Lorne Michaels and Mike Myers.

• 59:48Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  In a booth, just drinking. Phil was holding court. I was like, damn, this is a good. Yeah.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. You can, you can imagine what my parents thought when I wanted to do standup in Soviet Union. You can imagine that.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  They were probably like, don't tell anyone.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Insane. It's, you are, are you, you crazy? Totally crazy. Yeah. But here we are. Here we are.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, how did they feel? They, they probably said no, right?

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Oh, are you kidding? No for years?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  I, I started when I was 15 in the community, it was community college or trade school. I was, they kind of forced me to go to become a refrigeration mechanic because.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Comedy, are you kidding? You know, um, so, and I was doing amateur comedy there. And, and then I went to military and two years and I was kind of doing amateur stuff there. And then I came back and, and I'm going, I want to do a kind of, they said, no, no, you got it. So I got my bachelor's in art. Um, and that's another thing that I do. So they said, at least this is not so comedy.

• 1:01:19Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Because again, going through the, they knew how difficult it would be to pass those Communist Party people and all that. And so in, in college, I was just doing it again as an amateur, but, and then later on.

• 1:01:35Matt McCusker?

  Where do you do it as amateur though?

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Uh?

• 1:01:37Matt McCusker?

  Where would you do it as amateur?

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  In the club, like in school, there would be a club and there would be every like May Day or Revolution Day. They would do some kind of a concert.

• 1:01:49Matt McCusker?

  Were you guys still working on that calendar that was like completely cut off from the regular calendar?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Well, regular, like, what do you mean?

• 1:01:58Matt McCusker?

  Didn't they split the calendar? Didn't they take all the religious stuff out of the calendar? And I think that was France actually did that.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Well, they changed like, you mean Christmas, like into New Years, right?

• 1:02:06Matt McCusker?

  Is that what they did?

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did. They, they saved the tree, but it was New Years, not Christmas.

• 1:02:13Matt McCusker?

  Gotcha.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  And it was Santa Claus, it wasn't Santa Claus, it was Father Frost.

• 1:02:17Matt McCusker?

  Father Frost?

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's how, and you know, and yeah, it was.

• 1:02:21Matt McCusker?

  Nothing can stop the tree.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, Christmas tree is too cool.

• 1:02:25Matt McCusker?

  Christmas tree rules.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  But they didn't, you know, we didn't even know that there was some.

• 1:02:29Matt McCusker?

  They took the Christ out of Christmas, basically. They took the Christ out of Christmas.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  There you go. Absolutely. Uh, there was no, religion was totally not allowed. You could not even say the word God in school, you, you would be expelled.

• 1:02:44Matt McCusker?

  You say gosh?

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  At those days, yeah. Gosh, I didn't try. I didn't, I didn't try. So that was my reality and, and so, uh, we, um, doing this, um, comedy thing. And then I get an offer to go on the cruise ship to do, um, like stand or the master of ceremonies, like a assistant cruise director.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Like the Black Sea or where?

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  On the Black Sea, yeah. So I was, and so they liked me and this is, this is a cool thing that happened there. So I go there and they don't, they said, we won't pay you, but you get your cabin. You get a cabin, food.

• 1:03:25Matt McCusker?

  Universal, that's pretty universal. Yeah. They did, they did that here to everybody starting out.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Well, and I was like, yeah, I'll be, I'll have my own room for like a week. Holy cow, that was amazing. And the bathroom for myself.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Odessa is there, right?

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Right there.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  It's on that little, uh, what's that called? The peninsula or the, uh?

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's near Crimea. It's all, yeah, it, but it's a little bit more south. So, um, but that's where the cruise ships go out of and they go around.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Submarines.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Uh?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  I don't know why I'm just naming things, things I know about Odessa.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  No, that's in Sevastopol. That's right, that's the Crimea.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Okay, it's a little bit farther, uh, south from, from that. So.

• 1:04:16Matt McCusker?

  I thought you were saying the cruise ship wasn't submarine.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  No, but that's very funny.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  So, so this is.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Red October cruise.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Uh, you can do comedy there.

• 1:04:26Matt McCusker?

  So you're the master of ceremonies, you're the emcee of the.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  So I was emceeing and this is, and how, because I didn't speak English or any other language. They had a lot of tourists from different countries. So you would have Czechoslovakians, you would have Polish, you would have Germans, Americans, Australians, whatever. And I, my job was to do like a games with them, you know, do some kind of Miss Cruise or, um, you know, competition. Like, yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Hottest chick?

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, oh boy, I was 24 years old, yes. And they let me, it's like, they let me into, um.

• 1:05:06Matt McCusker?

  Who, anyone could enter into the running for Miss Cruise?

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was pretty much up to me and they gave me an interpreter so I could talk to them for the first time to those.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Oh boy, I have, yeah, it was really adventurous and fun.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and Russian women are a lot more conservative. Uh, and you know, they're not like, they weren't like the hottest women in this room.

• 1:05:37Matt McCusker?

  Trump would disagree.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Uh?

• 1:05:38Matt McCusker?

  Trump would disagree.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Who would disagree?

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Donald Trump.

• 1:05:42Matt McCusker?

  He loves Russian women.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  He likes those women.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Well, now, yeah, yeah, but those days, oh, big burly, they were, they were all, no, they were nice, they were nice, beautiful women.

• 1:05:53Matt McCusker?

  Sturdy.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  But they were standing behind those big burly women, so you never saw them. Right. But, but, uh, here all of a sudden I have, uh, women who are from the Western culture and they're like, they know things about sex and that we never even heard of. You know, even though it's universal, but boy, you were so far ahead or they were so far ahead.

• 1:06:21Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Matt McCusker?

  Titty fucking.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Titty fucking. Titty fuck.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  I was learning, I, I, I had to learn all of this.

• 1:06:29Matt McCusker?

  Really?

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  So all of a sudden I'm in this environment and I'm getting to know.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  You gotta bring your interpreter in, you go, tell her I'm about to fuck a bus. Tell her this always, this doesn't happen too much.

• 1:06:43Matt McCusker?

  What should I do with it?

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Tell me where, tell her, tell it.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  So, so that was exciting to be there. All this, I was allowed something that I totally couldn't imagine. And, um, and so then the cruise comes to the end and, um, I'm, I, uh, they said, would you like to go again? I said, well, would it be possible to get my parents a cabin as well? Because they never been on the cruise and stuff. And the, the Communist Party, you know, boss who controls that whole company or the whole Black Sea Cruise Line. And there's only one cruise line.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Um, he says, who do you think you are that you're gonna request something? We have hundreds of people like you, get out of here. And so I was like, oh shoot, well, I tried, but didn't work out. So I go home and I tell my parents that it's, it's not gonna happen, um, you know? And it's like in the morning, we have no phone and all of a sudden this messenger comes an hour later and he has two sets of tickets for me and my parents.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Turns out there were not any other, there's no one else.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  No, no, no, there was a more kind of an interesting twist because, so what happened? So we obviously got excited, we go, and I said to a cruise director, I said, what happened? Uh, I never heard of them going back on their word because once they say it, it's over. And they said, oh, well, you see, these ships are rented by, uh, European cruise companies during like nine months out of the year. And we go, the captain and the crew goes to those, uh, to those places could be, Britain could be, uh, whatever, whatever they need it.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  And he said, we learned that if somebody is essential, then they should get more than an average person. And, and the captain, he said, liked you. And he said, even if you need to give him my cabin, I want him on the ship. And I went like, wait, wait, you just told me that if you're more talented, you will get more stuff? And they go.

• 1:09:18Matt McCusker?

  Dangerous idea.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was like, and we're, I said, mom, dad, we gotta start.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  We gotta start being talented. What the fuck?

• 1:09:30Matt McCusker?

  So how'd you know the captain? What was your, that's, have the captain's blessings in honor, especially on the craft.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Captain would just come to watch the shows.

• 1:09:38Matt McCusker?

  That's awesome.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  That's it. And now, and I didn't speak those languages, so my mom was very conservative.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Funny to be watching the show and be like, oh shit. Fuck, I gotta be driving this thing. You hear an alarm go off, you go, oh shit. This guy's so fucking funny.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  So, so my mom watched me perform in front of like people who didn't speak my, I didn't speak their language because she always thought that I wasn't very smart. And I couldn't do well, I didn't do well in school. So it was like, how is he gonna go to another country and learn the language? And he's so dumb that he thinks that he can do comedy in that language. All of that stuff was in the back of her mind. And here she's watching me do it and watching those people laughing. And they don't understand even what I'm saying, but I guess my timing and facial expressions,

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  and then whatever their interpreters tell them, whatever it is, it worked. And then at that point, she said, you know, you, you may have an international comedy career. I was like, wow, really, mom? And that's when we started.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:10:57Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, my mom told me to become a teacher when I was.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I had a club owner.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  I had a club owner, I bombed so bad, he sat me down, he was like, what do you go to school for? And I was like, history teacher? And he was like, you should do that.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  I was like, damn.

• 1:11:11Matt McCusker?

  So that's what fueled. Yeah, really.

• 1:11:15Matt McCusker?

  That's what fueled the escape, basically. That's when you guys.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  That gave us a chance and Jimmy Carter was, at that time, wanted to get some. Russians were starving, there, there was no food and they needed some wheat. And so they made a deal, so if you show human rights in, in Soviet Union, then you can, and let some people out, we will give you some wheat. So we were basically exchanged for some grain, you know?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Good deal.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  I, I salute every time I see a Wonder Bread truck, you know, I go, hey, you never know. Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:11:59Matt McCusker?

  One hot commodity for another.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:12:01Matt McCusker?

  Said one hot commodity for another.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  He's saying you and the wheat.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Both hot commodities.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  America wanted you.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm very grateful for that.

• 1:12:13Matt McCusker?

  That's awesome. And that's what allowed you guys to just head on.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  That's what allowed, well, it took, still, they, they didn't want people to leave. Uh, even though they, so they would put a lot of challenges in front of you. One of them was that if young person applies to leave, they have to take their parents with them. Most older people would not take that chance.

• 1:12:42Matt McCusker?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  And my dad wanted to get out of there years before my mom ever imagined that. My dad knew it, he was like, he was telling my, I remember, I was like, maybe like seven. And we're in this little apartment, right, in, in one room. And I wake up in the middle of the night and I hear my dad, so, listening to this huge radios. And, and he is sitting there with his ear to the radio. And I go, dad, what are you listening to? And he goes, shh, don't let neighbors hear us, this is Voice of, Voice of America.

• 1:13:23Matt McCusker?

  Whoa.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  And they would jam the signal during the day, but at nighttime, they didn't think anybody was listening. So they didn't jam it. And so he would get up and he was like, so now I'm listening to it with him. And so, and, you know, it's like, the voice, give me you're tired, you're hungry and you're poor. And I'm like going, I'm qualified for this. And so that's how.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  What about, I mean, what about, how did you guys feel about JFK?

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  We, it was used obviously as propaganda immediately, as, look what they do in, in America. They killed their president, you know? So they, they used everything as propaganda. They used the Charlie Chaplin movies, we watched, that's the only American we saw. And so there was always that villain and, and this poor guy who's getting beat up by the police. And that's America, you know?

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  So they.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  What about, was your dad in the military?

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Uh, during the Second World War, yes, yeah.

• 1:14:32Matt McCusker?

  Dang.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Matt McCusker?

  Sheesh.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Where did, did he see, like, was he in battle?

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  Um, he, I, I think he was smarter than that.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  I think he, he was in the chemical.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Warfare, so which was smart enough, because they never, it never, it was kind of stupid because you don't know which way the wind is gonna go.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  So, so if you, if you.

• 1:15:04Matt McCusker?

  Damn.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  World War One, they found that out.

• 1:15:07Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So he went into, and he got into that. So he was in charge of like having all this gas masks and all of that. So he didn't get hurt. Um, and, um, yeah, so.

• 1:15:23Matt McCusker?

  Damn. That's wild.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Well, I think we're.

• 1:15:28Matt McCusker?

  We did it.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Matt McCusker?

  Any final, any final thoughts?

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Oh, we did.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  He's just talking.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  I thought, are you gonna start rolling?

• 1:15:39Matt McCusker?

  That was great.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Any final thoughts? Um, thank you for having me.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  And, um, I, you know, I don't know if, do I, can I plug stuff?

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'm going on tour.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  Uh, I am on tour, I'm starting September 6th in Oklahoma City at the Breakdown Comedy Club. And then after that, you can go on yakov.com and all my dates are there.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  And I hope, it's the first time I'm kind of getting out of Branson bubble. So I'm hoping that people will come.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  I think people will come.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 1:16:17Matt McCusker?

  We'll, we'll plug the thing too in there.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, what?

• 1:16:19Matt McCusker?

  They'll be able to click your website.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  Oh, cool. Very cool. So thanks for having me and.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:16:26Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, thanks, that was awesome.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:16:30Matt McCusker?

  Watch new episodes of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Spotify.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 1:16:40Speaker 05

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• 1:17:27Speaker 06

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