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

Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast

In this episode of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, comedian Yakov Smirnoff joins the hosts to share stories from his life growing up in Ukraine under Soviet rule, his experiences with Russian naming

Key takeaways

• Yakov Smirnoff's upbringing in Ukraine involved listening to Voice of America broadcasts at night as a form of resistance against Soviet propaganda.
• The Russian naming convention—first name, father's name (ending in -ovich), and last name—is deeply rooted in tradition but often simplified or abandoned when immigrants come to the U.S.

Main topics

• Soviet-era life in Ukraine
• Russian naming customs

Notable quotes

"I was like, I'm qualified." – Yakov reflecting on hearing 'Give me your tired, your hungry and your poor' from Voice of America.

Conclusion

Yakov Smirnoff's heartfelt stories and sharp humor provide a unique lens into Soviet

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The Wild Wild West. Yakov, thank you very much for being here. Thanks for having me. Yes. You're actually coming at a good time. Matt's become a bit of a russophile lately. Okay. Yeah. Okay. He's from Ukraine. I know. I heard. I was like, dang, that's not good. Well. I'm reading Dostoevsky right now, and he's made me a russophile. You're liking it, I'm sure. Otherwise, why would you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's converted me. I'm just 100% in Russia right now. It's not that I can do about it. Well, it is an interesting time to decide which side you want. No, I don't think he's picking a side. He's not picking a side. He's not picking a side. I'm kidding. It was just a joke. I thought you were Ukrainian. I'm like, oh, that's not good. Well, I grew up in Ukraine. Speaker 1 (0:55) 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 Russian. So all of this, we're just hoping that this thing will blow over at some point. So how does the name thing work? Because I noticed there's like three names for everybody. There's like a pet name. There's like a formal son of. Father's name in the middle. So it would be my dad's name. So it would be Ivanovich if your dad's Ivan. It would be like Yakov Ivanovich and then the last name. Speaker 1 (1:41) Did you have like a pet name, though? Like a nickname, too? No. Well, my mom would call me like Yasha instead of Yakov, right? But not, yeah, that's not normal. I was reading that book and everyone has three names. There's like the Ovech name, there's the Asha like pet name, and then there's like one more. Yeah. Just like first name kind of thing. But most of the time it's. Your name, you're given name, then your father's name, and it ends on itch or whatever that, Ivanovich Petrovich, whatever. And then your last name. That's normally. It's confusing. When I came to America, I just chose not to have that. Drop the bitch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're reading this, the bitch fell off. Speaker 1 (2:38) You like that, Nate? Well, nice. Well, as you saw, we're going through some struggles here. The guys are down bad. Nate flicked off Joe Rogan yesterday. Yeah. What happened? He made a mistake. Mistaken identity. He gave the middle finger to the boss last night, which is. I might be cooked. I thought it was Tony. I saw him come out from the back. I thought his car was Tony's car. given what I thought was Tony double middle fingers standing in front of the car. You're gunning for the vice president. I mean, the vice president are cool, so I can get away with that with the vice president. I don't know the press. The press have only spoken up. Double middle fingers. Double shaking them. He's probably about to get out the car and beat the shit out of me. He was literally just showing us he could do roundhouse kicks still. He was just amped up. Speaker 1 (3:35) I saw the cop, like once I noticed what was happening, I saw the cop that was like watching him leave. Like he was like had that alert, like what the fuck is that? You didn't get tackled. Yeah, I was about to get shot from down the street. Dude, I. Rogan was also hitting splits in the green room last night. It was so funny. The splits are wild. Rogan was like, I can still do the splits. That's awesome. Because there was a rumor that David Lucas could do splits. Interesting. And I said, I don't believe it. Yeah. And then Rogan immediately was like, I can. Speaker 1 (4:04) And did it. And then while he was on the ground doing a split, David Jolly walked in. I was like, what the fuck's going on in here? It was a wonderful night. I used to be able to do this Kazatsky dance, you know, with the kicks. Yeah. And so now in the show, because I have a theater in Branson, so there's more like a variety. So I do stand-up stuff, but I also do some fun, funny stuff. So I have like dancers in the show and then I come out and I sit on a little stool that they don't see and I go like this and people just love it. That's wonderful. And then I get up and turn around and there's a stool back there. Yeah, it's like. Kind of rocks. What's the name of that dance? Kazatsky. Kazatsky dance. Kazak, Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan. Is that what they're doing? No. Speaker 1 (5:03) The Kazakhs were the soldiers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The soldiers, and they used to. Do you also drop it? I've noticed they'll drop it low on that, too. They'll be kicking it. Yeah, I used to. I like when they drop it. It's fun when they drop it low. It is very cool. They drop it low. There's some spinning going on sometimes. It's very exciting stuff. Is that reserved for 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? I didn't understand. It's like if you're busting out the Kazatsky. Could I go to a club and just fucking? Well, when you're capable to do it, it's like doing splits, you know? Really? Yeah, it's not an easy thing to do. And you watch those guys that they can do spinning. Speaker 1 (5:46) jumping up and doing splits up in the air. So you got to get your legs straight up in the air. I used my arm. I'm like, let me chill with that too. I'd be in the hospital before I... No, I would be. But if you can do it, break it out. It's like the worm, basically. Yeah. Weddings. It was normal. A few glasses of vodka and dancing. That honestly sounds awesome. Yeah, it is awesome. Getting hammered and just kicking like crazy. Yeah. Yeah, there's one thing I did enjoy about the Red Army. The dance. It's a fun thing. I feel like if the Germans had had a fun dance, maybe. Speaker 1 (6:38) People would have been like, these guys are kind of cool. They would not. The Germans had no dance. What's that? They had no dance. They kind of crip walked. They got the goose step, which some countries still hold down. North Korea still rocks a goose step. It's pretty sick. From a military drill perspective. Just from a visual perspective. For sure. Military aesthetics. Nothing else. Actually, I want to run something by you. Yeah. This is for everybody. I saw this thing a couple days ago, and I think this is a new development in, like, ultra-white behavior. You know when your dog poops, you grab a dog poop bag and pick up the poop? 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, because it was so... Speaker 1 (7:32) So disturbing. It was so disturbing to watch a guy. What did this guy look like? Give me a description. It's like one of those, it's like an ultra white. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like someone who's. How old? Probably like 60s. Like it's like a fleece, like a fleece vested kind of soft-handed white. I don't know. Probably like some shit with a carabiner on it, I guess. Like probably some cargos maybe. Harris voter? Undeniably so. I got to be honest, that screams Harris voter. It was a Harris voter. They need to talk about that, man. It was an establishment Democrat for sure. It was definitely. It's about as damn as it gets, dude. It's 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. Speaker 1 (8:23) I really did. I'd rather you leave that and me be like, motherfucker, than watch that and be like, whoa, dude, why are you doing that? What if your dog has diarrhea? That's what I've been thinking. How do you catch that? Dude, it was. My older dogs will kind of scoot a little bit, too. I couldn't believe what I saw. So I'm hoping that stops now. Speaker 1 (8:53) Was it a trash bag? It was a dog poop bag, the tiny little bag. Yeah, okay. He was just holding a tiny little dog bag. Around the rim? Right next to the bubble. Right on the crater. Just, you know, down a little bit. He let it drop. You should have screamed at him. Dude, I should have. I should have. Hey. I should have beaten him up. You should have fought him. So this is a good job for like a robot to go behind the dog. Yeah. You're exactly right. That way, nobody's upset. 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 you've got to think, it has to break down into something that's worth something. I think they ate off gases. There's all this dog shit. I'm so serious. All this dog shit is getting just thrown in these bags and trapped in plastic. And it's like, there's got to be some... Speaker 1 (9:46) quality within dog shit that you can eat. Like, it's like whey protein. Like ethanol. Something, man. You want the gas. I want to corner the dog shit market and turn it into a million dollars. I mean, you might be. I've been thinking about this a lot. Let's call for a Cossack. 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. So this is why it's called Secret Podcast. No one can know about it. No one can know about it. Because if somebody gets wind of Matt's dog shit idea, they're going to take advantage of it. Elon Musk might be listening right now. Dude. Speaker 1 (10:24) Police. Could fuel his rockets. True. There's got to be some use of all that dog shit. Apparently it doesn't work as fertilizer because that was my first line of thought. Well, the bag would not work. Well, they say they're compostable, some of the bags. But I've looked into the fertilizer and I could be carrying some nasty, you know, I don't know. I don't know why a cow's shit would be carrying. You were looking into it. Speaker 1 (10:49) Dude, for sure. You're Googling this already. I've looked into it deeply. It's always me walking dog shit 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. Yeah, what are you? The robot picking it up. Robot's great. Now you're sitting just cleaning it up as a robot. That could just be a form of getting it to you. Yeah, you could use those. You know those robots that carry food orders? Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:16) When there's no order, in between orders, I could go and just vacuum dog shit. Fill it with shit. And have it in a separate compartment than your food. 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. Vomit's got to have something. We've got to get vomit going, too. Got to be some stem cells. How about cum? Dog cum will be... Dog cum could be very valuable and lucrative. There's got to be like B12 in it probably. Do you have any dogs? I had a dog for a while. I had him in the show. It was part of the skit. And then I had him for about a year. He's a working dog. Yeah, it was kind of half and half. He was supposedly a pet and part of the show. And it was a Shih Tzu and a poodle, so I called him Shitpoo. Speaker 1 (12:12) So it was a cute little dog, but I realized that I didn't have enough patience for that. You didn't. And then so I, when I was on the road, I felt guilty that he was alone. And so I would put him into dog motel. And I realized that I was spending more money on a dog than me. Yeah. Staying in a nice motel. 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. That's great. I visited him a couple of times. He was running the motel. He's really cute. So he would sit on her desk and greet people. And it was really, so it worked out really nice. Nice. There's a happy story. The mayor got rid of his dog. Speaker 1 (13:11) 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. You serious? Dead serious. And the dog is still with the balls. It's probably in that dog motel. Did you just wipe your fucking hand on the chair after you ate a chicken finger? No, I was just getting it up. Oh, you had already spilled. Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to actually get upset with you, but that genuinely would have made me angry that you wiped ketchup on the fucking chair. That'd be crazy. Actually, I would have been truly mad. I would have been like, dude, you got to leave. I just talked to a storm chaser. Reed Timmer, I believe his name. He is the guy who has the tank where he goes under tornadoes. He had a dog that would do storm chases with him. Speaker 1 (14:04) That's what I said. I was like, well, that dog's name Toto. A little Wizard of Oz joke. They're going to get it in Russia soon. Yeah, I was like, well, that's got to be crazy for a dog. They don't like like light thunder. I was a dog in that tornado must have been bugging. He was like, yeah, he was actually pretty scared. It was called the Dominator. It's just like giant. It's an F-350. Dominator. Dominator is awesome. It's an F-350 that just anchors down into the ground, and it's like bulletproof glass. You can go inside of the swirl. Not an F-5, obviously, but you can go down and just be inside of a tornado. Then they launch rockets up into it to study the wind pattern or something. Damn, the guy saw Twister. Yeah, pretty much. The guy saw Twister and was like, I'll do that. I'll do that. That's crazy. Speaker 1 (14:58) I mean, that was actually, I think the name of it was Toto. Really? Yeah. I loved that movie. Twister. Speaker 1 (15:08) Did you like Twister? Twister was good. I guess. Did you see Waterworld? Huh? Did you see Waterworld? Waterworld. Kevin Costner. I remember that for me. I loved it. I thought it was sick. Yeah. Smokers. The what? The smokers? That's who they were fighting. Is that the guy? I don't remember. Smoke Sigs. The bad guys. What? Yeah. Dang. I just remember my Uncle Neil took us to saw it, and I think you see Kevin Costner's butt in the movie. You see his butt. This episode is brought to you by PrizePix. Football is finally back, and PrizePix is bringing the heat for the start of the season with Stacked September. Oh, yeah. New promos every day, including guaranteed picks every Monday, profit boosts, and daily discounts throughout the whole month. It's super simple to get started. Just pick two to six players. Speaker 1 (16:01) Then choose more or less projected stats. You know I always want more. Just like past yards, rush yards, or fantasy score. Looking at week one's opener, Sam Donald. Week one opener, Sam Donald. It's just one yard against New England to get his cash as picked. We can see him open. 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