This Past Weekend: #652 w/ Matt McCusker (Transcript)

Really? Yeah, I’ve been big on that, man, trying to grow stuff. I got garlic coming.

THEO VON: So blackberries and garlic, and this is all in your own yard?

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh shoot, that’s my garden. Yeah, it’s been revamped. The hailstorm destroyed my blueberry bushes. Yeah, it’s in my— I have like a little backyard.

THEO VON: But you’re making the most out of it. Now, can you feed your family here, man?

MATT MCCUSKER: No, dude, it’s so sad. So that’s a blueberry bush. It got destroyed in the hailstorm. That one’s coming back to life as well.

THEO VON: And is there any reward from the— like, doesn’t the government subsidize this kind of shit or whatever?

MATT MCCUSKER: I should get some sort of subsidy. But we had a blueberry bush and it produced one, literally one blueberry the first time I did it. And me and my whole family cut it into fourths and we each had a fourth of a blueberry. We would be dead if I actually had a farm. We would all be dead. I’ve gotten like 5 radishes, 1 blueberry, and the raspberries were flowing, man. And then just the hailstorm wiped— just completely wiped me out.

THEO VON: And was there stuff you could have done in advance to prepare for that? Because I mean, does it feel like the plants look to you for the leadership, or you don’t feel that at all?

MATT MCCUSKER: I am—

THEO VON: I’ve never had a garden yet.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, so here’s the thing, you can be like that. There’s a lot of doting mother type gardeners. I’m a stern father. If you can’t pull your own, you die. I need producers. I need people who are going to adapt to the elements. I’m not going to baby any of these plants.

THEO VON: Like Stalin.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, completely. It’s a completely totalitarian system. My wife’s like, “Well, bring that one in.” I’m like, “If it can’t handle the sun, it’s dead.” Yeah, I’ll get someone who can handle the sun. I’m not out here babying these plants, bro. I got kids. I’m not worried about a plant. Yeah, I gotta see her cry about a beanstalk. It’s dead. Pull it out. Yeah, throw it in the compost. Next. So I run a ruthless garden. It’s completely ruthless. I had a rat that just died.

THEO VON: Did you f* him?

MATT MCCUSKER: I did. He was— that’s the thing with gardening. It does kind of connect you to like a real life or death thing because it’s like, I don’t want to kill an animal. But then it starts eating, you know, starts just munching all your leafy greens and you’re like, “I’m not about to grow food for a rat. That’s bullshit.”

So then I had a guy come out and the guy gave— it was like an exterminator. And this stuff he gave it, he’s like, “Dude, this stuff’s the real deal. Don’t let your dogs get it.” Because my dog had eaten rat poison once. No problem. Survived. And I was like, “I hope you’re all right.” He’s like, “No, this shit is like fiberglass in it. So when the rat eats the poison, the fiberglass cuts his lungs and he starts like drowning in his own blood.”

THEO VON: Who created this? Netanyahu?

MATT MCCUSKER: I think so.

THEO VON: Fing— that’s the same stuff they were putting in the Palestinians’ food that they were giving them, which is fing heartbreaking.

MATT MCCUSKER: But that’s a fair point. But the—

THEO VON: And why are they trying to kill him so hard?

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, well, that’s their job, man. Because if they half step it and you still have rats, you’re going to call them all pissed off. So like the poison messes them up, but the fiberglass or whatever really makes sure they die no matter what.

Also, rats won’t die around the colony. They’ll like a dog, they’ll run off and find solitude and die. And we got rid of this chair recently. It was like hogging up space in our backyard. And when you lifted it up, there was a dead rat. One of the dead rats back there had been laying there so long. I picked it up, dude. Its face was gone. It really kind of fed me up. Like it was yesterday, I picked it up, I had like two sticks put together and I was like, “This thing’s been sitting for a while, let me peep its face.” Dude, just a void where its face was, just like things ate its face. Yeah, just a hole for where its face was. And I was like, damn, that fed me up.

THEO VON: F*, you’re living in a damn Saw episode over there.

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, gardening is crazy.

THEO VON: Where are you gardening at?

MATT MCCUSKER: Just my backyard.

THEO VON: Transylvania, dude. It just sounds insane, bro.

MATT MCCUSKER: Gardening is crazy though because you get like little spider allies. I see my orb weavers in my garden. They’re like on my team fighting the bugs. The rats, I’m trying to fight the rats, but we got them under control, I think.

THEO VON: How did you know that you were having issues with the rats?

MATT MCCUSKER: I’d see them right in my face just munching my— I’d like open the door and they’d just be munching my shit.

THEO VON: Oh yeah, we ballsy.

MATT MCCUSKER: I’d be like, “What the f*?” They are kind of cute though. They’re called cotton rats. So they’re these big guys and they have these really furry coats. I kind of like them, but then they started shitting in my grill and I was like, “We’re done.” Yeah, they honestly, I would have tolerated them, but they completely overstepped their boundaries. There we go, dude, there he is. That’s the exact guy. Imagine one of those guys, no face, hole for a face.

THEO VON: Zoom in on him.

MATT MCCUSKER: Look at that little guy, little fat little hairy guy. Look like gerbils almost.

THEO VON: Yes, that little floor bear.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, he’s munching on somebody’s f*ing herbs right now.

THEO VON: One of God’s little McNuggets, them little things.

MATT MCCUSKER: They are.

THEO VON: They’re thick, huh?

Exterminators and Pest Control

MATT MCCUSKER: They’re thick as hell. They had a burrow underneath my little porch in the back of my garden. And also people were like, “Oh, just dump cayenne peppers,” all this. Dude, I dumped like— I got like 4 pounds of red pepper flakes, just laced the whole garden. Dude, that guy was just like sitting in a bed of it. I’m like, man, get out of here with this bullshit. Give me the fiberglass poison.

THEO VON: There’s always all those tricks, dude. Like if you’ll siphon some piss out of a senior citizen or something and put it out there. Yeah, rub a baby’s ass on the f*ing stair rails or whatever. Nobody will fall down it. Yeah, nobody will get hurt again.

MATT MCCUSKER: Doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. The exterminators come. Not even the Home Depot. And I don’t want to, you know, mess up Home Depot.

THEO VON: No, but let’s talk about them.

MATT MCCUSKER: They’re done, dude. That shit— none of that stuff works. You need a professional exterminator, and they have like Dr. Evil weapons. That’s the only thing that gets them.

THEO VON: Well, did you get one of those guys who comes and he’s tatted and he has all his AA years of recovery f*ing medallions around his neck, and he’s—

MATT MCCUSKER: Ideally, that’s what you want. Yeah, but this guy’s pretty chill. He’s pretty clean, but you could tell he’s been around. He’s been around the stuff for a while. The other guy I know got bit by a rattlesnake. Literally got bit. He drove himself to the hospital.

THEO VON: F* yeah, that’s bullshit, bro.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s crazy. I get nothing but love for exterminators. Do you ever have like a horrible infestation of any kind?

THEO VON: Just these hoes. True, basically. Sorry, I was just making a meme clip. That was basically just so he needs a strong hand for that. But no, I never had anything like that. You know what, bring up some of these exterminators first. I want to see some of these.

MATT MCCUSKER: Let’s— good call.

THEO VON: Let’s get a gander at some of these America’s top 10 most extreme exterminators, including women.

MATT MCCUSKER: There we go.

THEO VON: A lot of these bitches will kill anything they go around.

MATT MCCUSKER: There we go. Look at that guy. Look at extreme.

THEO VON: Yeah, look at that f*ing guy right there sandblasting.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, they’re giving— this is— I need to see the real guys. This is the f*ing— it’s like the stock footage.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s all Temu shit, man.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, none of the exterminators look like these guys. These are male models.

THEO VON: Yeah, I mean, there’s Billy the Exterminator. There’s that guy, and he passed away.

MATT MCCUSKER: Did he really?

THEO VON: Yeah, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Short shelf life on those guys. I mean, you’re literally dealing in poison.

THEO VON: You’re out there just f*ing spraying glyphosate on everything.

MATT MCCUSKER: You’re out there with those bug bombs. They— what they do is they inhibit reproductive systems. So like, I had fleas and I had to do a bug bomb. The Home Depot was bullshit, so I got the real guy who came out. And when I did the first one, I lit it off. You know, you pull the thing and it’s supposed to give you 10 seconds. It just exploded in my face. So I just got drenched in this shit and had to run outside.

THEO VON: Fourth of July place?

MATT MCCUSKER: Roasted.

THEO VON: Because they’ll put those things in together, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, dude, they just— you can’t reproduce. So it just like scorches bug genitals and then they just have to watch like the apocalypse. There’s like a colony of them.

THEO VON: Is this Palantir Online? Where are you? I just can’t believe you’re involved in all this, dude. And your children are what, sleeping inside?

MATT MCCUSKER: Well, I came in from like talking to the exterminator and I’m like, “Bro, this rat poison is crazy.” I forgot my two daughters were there. And I’m like, “Yeah, those little mice.” And they like watch it play. And I was like, “Oh, the mouse is back.” I’m like, “What it does is it cuts their lungs and they drown in their own blood.” My wife’s like, “Chill, dude.” I’m like, “Yeah, my bad, my bad, my bad.”

Gardening Solo and Group Dynamics

THEO VON: Are you part of a group with the gardening, or how?

MATT MCCUSKER: A lone wolf. I have thought about joining a group, but I’m like— you ever do something like that, it’s just too much human interaction for me. I just like to figure it out by myself. Maybe one mentor would be good. A whole group, there’s bound to be someone I don’t like. I’m going to be battling. I’m like, no thank you.

THEO VON: Some guy trying to get you to buy his soil or some other thing, something like that.

MATT MCCUSKER: Or just a run-of-the-mill know-it-all. Yeah. Any group of just adults together, there’s going to be at least one, if not two, unbearable guys. Usually like, you ever do adult education? There’s always one person who’s going to raise their hand, talk for 10 minutes every time. It’s just like, “Bro, shut up, man.”

DUIs and Family Traditions

THEO VON: Or when you go to like that DUI course, some guy who’s like, you know, he’s never going to drink and drive again. Again, dude. First of all, one of God’s rules is nobody gets just one DWI.

MATT MCCUSKER: I know, I know. Everyone needs to get one. My friend— it was funny, it was a couple years ago— but he had one. I think he was the last one to get one, but his brother had one and his dad had one, and they’re all at like family Christmas party with extended family, and he like cheers them like, “Hey, the three of us all have DUIs, guys.” And I think his dad was trying to keep his under wraps. He was like, “Shut the f* up.” You did DUIs? Cheers. And you know, thought he would go better.

THEO VON: But dude, there’s nothing sadder than a dad getting a DUI on his way home from work and he’s been drinking or whatever.

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, they get them, man. I know a lot of guys who just quietly get them and you’re like, “All right, all right, you got me, you got me.” Dude, they drive dry. Yeah, that’s—

THEO VON: Oh, my stepdad got one. My dad would be drunk, he would park his car just like wherever it kind of stopped, like by our gate or whatever. So my mom would fing be out there yelling at this 77-year-old man who’s just fing unconscious in a white f*ing LTD. He was not even— at a certain point, dude, he wasn’t strong enough to get the door back open once he got in. So sometimes he’d get in there and he’d get home from work and we didn’t know.

MATT MCCUSKER: We’d be inside and we’d f*ing leave him out there all night.

THEO VON: Yeah, crazy, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Well, dude, that’s the thing. They were allowed to drink and drive. Like, drinking and driving was— my dad is almost 70, and when they were in high school, cops would pull you over— you’d be hammered driving a car and they’d be like, “Come on, man, take your beer and get out of here.” Yeah. You didn’t get in trouble for it. So all of a sudden now it’s criminalized. F*ing woke bullshit.

THEO VON: It’s a good point.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s pretty bad. It’s very dangerous. There we go.

THEO VON: Who’s this guy?

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s an exterminator.

THEO VON: And if he has a church behind him, he means it. Who is he? That’s AI. Well, I think if you just go to YouTube, say you put in like Tucson extreme exterminator, if you go to some of those places and just look for some, try to make it by city or whatever you have to do to see if you can come up with some.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, let’s get some organic.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’d be nice if by the end we had some.

MATT MCCUSKER: Damn, exterminators are really— they keep themselves hidden.

THEO VON: Well, I think, first of all, I wonder if that’s a dying game.

MATT MCCUSKER: I don’t think so, man, because it’s like—

THEO VON: Is it running in the family? Because a lot of times you’ll be like, you know, my dad was a fireman, I’m a fireman, and then the third kid is like, “I’m not— I’m just fat or whatever.” Yeah, true.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, no, that’s—

THEO VON: But there’s always that lineage, you know, like, I love hot dogs, my dad loved hot dogs. My son loves hot dogs. And then you have like, breaks, gay son. Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: Who really likes hot dogs? Yeah. The— dude, I think it’s just one of those gigs. It’s just like a get out of jail gig. And you do it especially if you do it for yourself. That’s what a lot of them— it’s just like it’s a business you can get into. It’s like cleaning. You can run it, you can start a cleaning company pretty easily. It’s very low overhead.

Strippers and Side Hustles

THEO VON: A lot of strippers do it.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s actually a great— yeah. It’s a great move.

THEO VON: It’s their gate. It’s like a re-entry program into— I’ve hung out with a lot of strippers, me even made out in their cars sometimes. And you’ll have like a mop handle coming across your shoulder and shit, you know.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s when you know they’re on the ascension. Oh yeah, you see that, you know, this is actually a good sign.

THEO VON: This lady’s got her act together.

MATT MCCUSKER: Hop in, there’s a 9-month-old in the car seat. You’re like, bad sign, this lady needs a mop.

THEO VON: He’s sleeping on a pack of Swiffer replacement covers.

MATT MCCUSKER: I tried my hand at stripper dating. Wasn’t— you know, I might have— nothing against them. I just wasn’t cut out for it. It was a little too rough and tumble for me.

THEO VON: You have to be a boss. You have to also work late hours to be a stripper’s boyfriend. You are working. They work late hours. You have to be up when they get home. Dude, my sister had a friend that was a stripper, right?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yes.

THEO VON: And she would come over to our house and shit, and her and my sister always fighting and stuff. And then she stole our vacuum one time, right?

MATT MCCUSKER: Trying to break into the industry.

THEO VON: Velisa. That was her name. Velisa, which isn’t even a name. Velisa. Like, what name is it? Volissa?

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s kind of— it is a crazy name.

THEO VON: It’s crazy, dude. And so anyway, she stole our vacuum, dude. 2 years later, I’m at like one of these real fancy parties where they have a woman pop out of the cake or whatever, like the thing you kind of see— like they actually had a girl pop out of the cake. They had 2 cakes and 2 girls pop out of them, and it was a big birthday for this guy, and they were strippers, right? And one of them was the woman. Whoa, it was Verissa who had stolen our vacuum, dude. And so guys are tipping her and shit, and I’m just fing like waiting. I’m just in the back just like, just making vacuum sounds and shit and fing locking on her.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s f*ed up to take someone’s vacuum too. That could really throw a household under quick.

THEO VON: And me and my sister were on our last limb as neighbors, dude. And we lived under this family that was like very heavy-boned.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, they’re stomping. Yes.

THEO VON: And they were beating each other. I think there was domestic abuse.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yikes.

THEO VON: And I would call the police all the time on them. I’ve called the police. I’ve always called the police a lot since I was a child. But yeah, I would call the police all the time and I’d be like, “He has a gun.” That’s what I would say every time.

Social Media, Algorithms, and Screen Addiction

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s good. They get right there.

THEO VON: They’re right there.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: If you’re like, hey, he’s beating this woman, one of his kids, he f*ing tied his kid to a tree outside or whatever.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: He just put a bunch of crow food on his kid’s shoulders and tied him to a tree outside. Never.

MATT MCCUSKER: They don’t get— yeah, they’re not going to— gun is— that’s the code. That’s the fast pass because they want the action, dude. They do. They love it. And well, they get like cred if a cop takes a gun off the street. That’s something they get like accolades for. Bringing a guy’s like— just socked his wife in the stomach. Nobody— your sergeant doesn’t pat you on the back. If you get a gun, that’s like a— that’s like a cop like Pac-Man pellet that like takes you further in your journey. Yeah, that’s bad. It’s like literally a metric for cops. How many guns you get and all that stuff.

THEO VON: Were you almost on the force ever?

MATT MCCUSKER: No, my wife was on the cop, so I got to like observe secondhand. I did— I thought so hard about becoming a cop, but I wasn’t able to do it.

THEO VON: That’s right, your wife was a cop, huh?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I was selling weed, so I couldn’t become a cop.

THEO VON: You guys met, dude?

MATT MCCUSKER: We met before. Yeah, we knew before that, but yeah.

THEO VON: But she was a cop when you met her?

MATT MCCUSKER: No, she wasn’t a cop. She just surprised me one day. I was like, I think I’m going to become a police officer.

THEO VON: And I was like, she wants to call now. Not—

MATT MCCUSKER: No, no, she did it for like—

THEO VON: Was she ever a cop?

MATT MCCUSKER: She was for 5 years in Philadelphia.

THEO VON: Okay, that’s being a cop, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, dude, she was on like little foot— she was on foot patrol and everything. She was in like not the best area for sure in Philly, like North. No, she was in South, like Grey’s Ferry-ish. So it’s pretty rough.

THEO VON: A lot of areas there.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it was like gang— there were some gangs there for sure. It was like an old Irish neighborhood of like pretty, I would say, pretty hardcore white trash. And then it was like black gangs, it’s a brutal— it’s not a good mix.

But the, so yeah, and then cops gotta watch like videos too of like all the bad stuff that happened. You get an email of like, a 14-year-old got shot up in a deli last night. It’s just lively. It’s like the video. I don’t know, why do they make them watch that stuff, dude?

THEO VON: Well, Twitter makes us all watch all that.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, true, true. I’m not a cop.

THEO VON: That’s what I’m going to start f*ing replying to some of these Twitter feeds. “I’ll send this to the authorities.” I wake up in the middle of the night for some reason, turn on my phone, next thing I’ve seen 7 people get massacred outside of some like, yeah, outside of like a car dealership in Tijuana or something.

MATT MCCUSKER: What? Yeah.

THEO VON: What portal of hell did I just take myself to?

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, X is crazy now. I remember when it was Twitter, it was like, “There’s too much censorship.” And I’m like, yeah, dude, let me see the real shit. Now I’m kind of like, let’s go. Let’s censor this heavily again. My mind, I can’t even go on X anymore. I get all like race-baiting, kind of like race war propaganda where it’s like, “Can you believe the—” it’s just non-stop. You watch it, you get the race war propaganda. Yeah, dude, I get a lot of like white supremacy stuff. Yeah, I swear to God, I don’t even like— I don’t like— or they want you back.

THEO VON: They know you have a black wife.

MATT MCCUSKER: They want me back. They want me, man. They’re trying to break me out of that. But it’s just like, yeah, it’s rough. I’ll be like watching, trying to scroll next to my wife, and it’ll be like a guy screams the N-word. I’m like, oh. What was that? I’m like, well, some f*ing video. Going back to Instagram, it’s just a guy screaming the N-word again. I’m like, oh shit, my X feed’s just completely bonkers, dude.

THEO VON: Elon should do better than that. He should want better than that for society, I feel like. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of smut. It’s just trash.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s—

THEO VON: Yeah, it feels like trash, honestly. Yeah, I think there was a spot where it felt like— I mean, I guess there’s still some good video and stuff on there. I’ll see like some good political stuff on there. But I do feel like outside of that it’s losing a— I feel like it’s kind of starting to lose its vibe.

MATT MCCUSKER: I think so. Then you read the news, it’s like “This now valued at $90 trillion.” Like, how? Why is this worth so much money now? I don’t know. Maybe, if you do flood it with porn and like violence, it does make a bazillion dollars. So good business-wise, you might be crushing it. But I’ve stepped off of X. Yeah, I can’t, I just can’t watch it. It’s too much.

THEO VON: It’s too much.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I’m trying to go to bed. I’m trying to drown myself to sleep.

THEO VON: I’m trying to have a decent life. F*ing killing animals in my backyard.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, only when necessary. Yeah, it is funny too. You’re like trying to, you know, I want to live in a safe neighborhood. Then you’re just watching just people being shot in the face and you’re like, why am I doing this in my safe house? This is crazy, dude.

THEO VON: We’re at a point that for sure one of the biggest things I’m noticing, or for myself that I notice— we’re at a point— what the f am I talking about? That’s insane. We might be at a point, let’s see, where like I have to control what comes into me, man. Yeah. And if I don’t, then that’s my fing fault.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it’s true.

Big Tech Liability and Social Media Addiction

THEO VON: Now the algorithm, the people that make the algorithms should be able to be held liable if like someone goes and does a crime based on like them feeding them the same type of bullshit. Like somebody goes and shoots out a place because they got indoctrinated into some really strong and sadistic beliefs or something because the algorithm fed them that. I think that those people should be held liable.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, man. It’s tough. Case by case is tough because it’s like, well, how do you— it’s like in court, obviously, like the moral thing, yeah. But like a lawyer, though, like Facebook’s lawyers will just shred that and be like, “Oh, he’s watching that and this and that.” They’ll get out of that. But I agree. Didn’t they just rule against Facebook now being like, yeah— what was that thing that came against them being like, “Yo, you guys kind of like they did with cigarettes where they’re like, yeah, dude, this shit’s bad. You knew it was bad. You gave it to people. Now you got to fork.”

THEO VON: Here you go right here. “A jury has ordered Meta and Google to pay $3 million to a 20-year-old woman who alleged that she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.” F*ing damn shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: All right, everyone else get on that train.

THEO VON: “Jurors found the companies liable for product design features that harmed her mental health. The plaintiff, Kaylee GM, testified that the apps replaced her hobbies and contributed to anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia.” Yeah, bro, that—

MATT MCCUSKER: They have about 2 billion lawsuits coming about the same. That’s—

THEO VON: It says it right here. “The case is the first of thousands targeting big tech over addiction to reach trial, a bellwether to assess how other claims could be resolved.”

MATT MCCUSKER: Well, this is apparently, from what I heard long ago, a lot of these social media companies had people who designed slot machines consult with them on how to make their interface as addictive as possible. You know, when you like pull down and refresh and like your phone kind of like shakes a little bit, there’s that little noise— that’s like slot machine technology somehow. Like it’s designed so you get a little dopamine burst when it goes like bump and you’re like, “Oh yeah, new stuff.” And it’s apparently set up like that where it’s purposely designed to be maximally addictive. And they did that on purpose.

THEO VON: Shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s a thing. It’s like cigarettes. They’re like, “Ah, this is bad for you.” Now they’re going to have to pay out. They already have billions and billions of dollars. They just have to fork some of the billions.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah, it’s worth it to them. Yeah, to continue to do it. But dude, remember the old school dopamine burst? You’d see a bald eagle fly by. That’s—

MATT MCCUSKER: That was the dopamine burst. Yeah, I remember those days.

THEO VON: Or even if it wasn’t and somebody just said it was. True. Yeah. You can fing see when you’re a kid, you’re staring up into the sky and fing pointing.

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, I do remember being younger before the internet and just like, it’s like summer and I would just be sitting outside and just like I would just be able to kind of like stare off for a while and just like be like, “This is nice.” And it’s like I have a real— I can’t even take a shit now if I don’t have my phone. I’m like, I need to be scrolling.

THEO VON: Yeah. When was the last time that we’ve daydreamed?

MATT MCCUSKER: You know, it’s tough. You really do. I feel like on a plane I can try to like force myself, but then the whole time I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m not on my phone. I’m so cool right now.” I don’t even daydream. I just pat myself on the back for not looking at my phone.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: And then I go, “You know what, I’m going to look at my phone.” Everyone’s looking at their phone, dude.

THEO VON: Or if you go to a restaurant— it used to be— this is the craziest thing, to think that someone could be in a restaurant by themselves. Like 40 years ago, you could do that. You could be in a restaurant by yourself sitting at a table and you wouldn’t look insane.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s true.

THEO VON: Now, without a phone— now, if you see someone in a restaurant by themselves just sitting there waiting for some people who are probably doing coke to bring them their food, dude, there’s f*ing no—

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, I do this when I go out, when I’m in a different city, I’ll go out to dinner by myself and I’ll pride myself and I’ll sit there just like waiting for some congratulations. It never comes. I just stare straight. You literally don’t know what to do with yourself. Because it is that problem. You’re like, “I can’t stare straight ahead.” I’ll try to look kind of almost like I’m dreamily like, “Yeah, oh,” and it’s just nothing there.

THEO VON: Or I’ll rearrange the silverware again, do that shit, play the shell game with like, fork, knife, napkin, fork, knife, napkin.

MATT MCCUSKER: Go to the bathroom really slow.

THEO VON: Oh, look at that, Chick-fil-A is offering free ice cream to families who agree to put their phones away during their meal, bro, as part of an effort to encourage more face-to-face time and less screen use at the table. What are the exact rules with that?

MATT MCCUSKER: Who’s enforcing? And dude, imagine if you cost your family the Chick-fil-A family meal just from one glance. That’s tough. That would— you would get in serious trouble.

THEO VON: You glanced down at your phone just to see the Bears didn’t get it done again. You f*ing cost—

MATT MCCUSKER: Because a retarded guy blows a whistle at you.

THEO VON: They should have a dude, Chuck Filet is his name. It’s just a black— it’s a black dude in there. He’s a straight chicken cop in there.

The Early Internet and AI Fears

MATT MCCUSKER: That would be a good job. He’s like, boom, got you. Yeah, yeah, fork, $38, let’s go.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah, Chick-fil-A strikes again, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s nice. Chick-fil-A, I like that. I do too.

THEO VON: I like that. If they’re not on their phone, let me see. The promotion is only offered at select Chick-fil-A locations by individual operators, not a company-wide program. It originated in 2016 from a Georgia operator and has been revived locally at various times. I like that though.

MATT MCCUSKER: I do too.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, there was just like— or just driving and thinking about shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I know, dude.

THEO VON: Your mind had so much time to just create. I think that’s one reason we’re more creative, because our mind was able to just fing create. The RAM wasn’t always— you know, your computer sends you that thing, it’s like, “Your RAM is almost done.” You don’t even know what your RAM is. You’re like, “F, I better empty the RAM trash, clean this out.”

MATT MCCUSKER: I need to fragment. I still don’t know what that is.

Yeah, no, dude, it’s— that’s really— it’s like, you know, because you have sleep, your brain gets to rest. But that downtime, your brain does do stuff. It kind of organizes things when you just kind of chill out.

Because when you’re on your phone and you read something, you don’t remember any of it. When you’re on your phone, every button and thing you’re moving is engaging the problem-solving part of your brain. You want your memory to be active, so information’s coming in, you have so much coming at you. The part of your memory that can store information in the short term is like a tiny little bucket in your brain. It only fits so much. When you’re hitting buttons and going up and down, it’s like splashing a ton of water in a tiny bucket— everything spills out.

So I never remember anything. I research stuff on my phone all the time, and then I’ll be like, “How many carbs do you need to be in keto?” I’ll read a whole article on it, and a day later I’ll be going to tell someone about it, and I’m like, “I don’t know, you need only a little.” I can never retain anything.

THEO VON: Well, dude, if somebody wants to tell me something these days, I’m like, “Dude, I can look at information.” We all have it now. Somebody used to have the information. You had to go down the street. Yeah, you had to get molested by a guy. Yeah, that was the price you paid just to figure out how to grow bougainvilleas in your backyard, you know what I’m saying?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, no, it’s true. Now I can just take a picture of a plant and it’s like, “This is the plant you’re growing.” I do it all the time, and I’ll be like, “Is this good? When can I harvest this?” Yeah, I do kind of like that.

THEO VON: But you’ll just take a picture and put it in like Perplexity or something?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, like Grok, and be like, “When can I pull this garlic?” But it’s not surefire. It’ll be like, “Have you eaten pussy today?”

THEO VON: It’s going to just show you some f*ing holes.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yo, check this out.

AI and the Fear of Technology

MATT MCCUSKER: I personally am not worried about AI. People are like, “It’s going to end the world,” and I just don’t worry. I don’t think it is, honestly. And if it does, what are you really going to do?

THEO VON: Right?

MATT MCCUSKER: A lot of people are doing this thing like, “I’m just not using it,” because— it’s like, it’s a computer. You can destroy a computer easily. You say, “Wait, but it’ll self-build itself so you can’t.” It’s like, dude, you’re just— it’s just nerds freaking out. I don’t think it’s a real threat whatsoever.

THEO VON: You know, I started to think it definitely could be like the Y2K thing. Remember that?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: I remember everybody was like forcing their cousins to admit they were fat or whatever because God wasn’t going to want them after midnight, or all that shit, you know. Or it was like, “Don’t say you’re fat before midnight or God won’t let you in.” There were those email chains— “Send this to 10 people that aren’t fat.” You’d get those type of email chains, like, what is this shit, dude? I think Bush Senior was doing that. But anyway, that was crazy, bro. Everybody thought Y2K was going to end it.

And then people thought the dot-com boom— remember a guy bought shoes.com and sold it for like $270 million? And we were all buying different dot-coms. Yeah, people were making up crazy dot-com names.

Dot-Com Era and Early Internet Websites

MATT MCCUSKER: I tried to get a couple. Did you? Yeah, I didn’t get anything good, honestly. I don’t remember. I think I sold them off right away, or they just expired. They expire too if you don’t keep refreshing them. But yeah, I never had anything good.

I watched this Soft White Underbelly. This has been cracking me up for like a month. There was a guy who— it was similar to that lawsuit. He was going on being like, “I had too much internet at a young age and it had a bad effect on me.” And he was going out and compulsively doing gay acts, but he was like, “I’m not gay, I just— it was the internet.” And the thing that got him into it was gay.com, which just made me laugh so hard. Just as a young kid hitting gay.com— your whole life just over. Everything changes from gay.com. Getting caught in 5th grade on gay.com, I would have been done, dude. Two older brothers catching me on gay.com, I would have been fried, dude.

THEO VON: Oh, that would have been crazy, huh? Going up to your room— “You going to get on gay.com?”

MATT MCCUSKER: Gay.com— that’s a billion-dollar hyperlink, whatever. Gay.com.

THEO VON: So that’s still worth money, I—

MATT MCCUSKER: For sure.

THEO VON: Gay.com, just send it to your buddy, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Hilarious.

THEO VON: Change—

MATT MCCUSKER: You can change the hyperlink. There’s a way you can do that. Oh man, dude.

THEO VON: Buffhomos.com was one of my favorite ones. Ari Mannis is a comedian, and he started a website called buffhomos.com.

MATT MCCUSKER: Did he really?

THEO VON: Yeah. See if it’s still active or not.

MATT MCCUSKER: I bet he pays— buffhomos.com is great. What’s he doing with it?

THEO VON: Oh, just goes to his website. I think he should change that, but maybe not actually.

MATT MCCUSKER: All you’d have to do is put like one good buff gay guy—

THEO VON: Well, he was doing it and his f*ing management told him not to do it.

MATT MCCUSKER: He couldn’t curate buff homos?

THEO VON: Yeah, they’re like— that’s how nobody should have a f*ing manager.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s a billion-dollar idea.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s crazy. If you’re not a f*ing pussy.

MATT MCCUSKER: So his managers had to sit him down and be like, “About buffhomos.com.” Yeah, but then they told him to make that his landing page, basically.

THEO VON: Yeah, a non-buff homo on there.

MATT MCCUSKER: And I love Ari.

THEO VON: Ari’s opened for me a bunch over the years.

MATT MCCUSKER: He’s a great man.

THEO VON: He’s a great comedian and he’s a great dude, clearly a business genius too.

MATT MCCUSKER: Buffhomos.com is so good, bro.

THEO VON: And he would send me the pictures of Buff Homos and stuff, and he would get his friends that owed him favors— he would give them stage time if they modeled for it. So that was the best part. You had guys like Steve Fury, just different comedians who were like kind of door guys at the store but were also growing good comedians, like Craig Connett. And he would have them just modeling— just regular dudes with their shirts off. But when you put them under the banner of Buff Homos, it’s crazy. You put a banner over something, you see a picture of a regular dude with his shirt off, you’re like, “Okay, maybe that guy’s trying to get in the military or whatever.” And they write “Buff Homos” above it, you’re like, “Oh, this changes everything.”

MATT MCCUSKER: I mean, okay, so his manager is probably worried about the fallout of being like, “Is it true that you tricked young comics into stage time for modeling for buffhomos.com?” First of all, I think some of them knew what was going on.

THEO VON: True, for sure.

MATT MCCUSKER: They’re all buddies. But yeah, that’s a good lose-a-bet kind of thing. Like, you lose the bet playing poker— buff homos of the week.

THEO VON: I had a website called totalcreeper.com for a while.

MATT MCCUSKER: Did you really?

THEO VON: Yeah, this was a long time ago, and I would just find total f*ing creepers and take pictures of them and put them on that shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: And dude, I did those early websites on the internet. There was mullet.com. That was great. Yeah, mullet.com was good. Dude, there was cameltoe.org.

THEO VON: Work.

MATT MCCUSKER: People just snapping camel toe shots— no way, sure, that one was— yeah, that one was a little bit of an invasion of privacy, obviously. But I remember as a young man being pumped on that.

THEO VON: Yeah, what was a good one? Oh, is there a way to find that in the archives of anything, guys?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, Web Archive might have it.

THEO VON: No, no, this wasn’t my shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s Tumblr. That’s a UK female.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s Tumblr. Do you remember Tumblr? That shit was weird.

MATT MCCUSKER: Tumblr was crazy, dude. I never got into it personally, but I knew a girl who— her big thing was curating a Tumblr of just lightly pornographic content. It was just like a sex Tumblr. It was crazy.

Catalogs, Looksmaxxing, and Social Media Pressures

THEO VON: Oh dude, there was like one girl in panties getting out of cars or whatever, and f dude, something about it, dude. But in panties, not like thong, not trashy fing, you know.

MATT MCCUSKER: No dude, we’re rare that we still— we’re JPEG heads. We’re one of the last to have beaten it to a still image. You know what I mean? Like, not a lot of people can say that. Yeah, dude, right? I remember the f*ing, like, I used to come home from church on Sundays and grab the newspaper, pop out the Kohl’s catalog, straight to the underwear section, lock the door in the bathroom. God, 45-minute sesh, dude.

THEO VON: I used to rub like a thing— this is f*ing crazy. I should never say this because I’ll never have a wife after this, but I would rub like a picture of like if they had a model, like an underwear model, I’d rub it under my arms because sometimes it would kind of smell like a little bit like that.

MATT MCCUSKER: Jerk off too. You would stank it up?

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah, I’ll just kind of stank it up.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, yeah, I don’t think my mom got it.

THEO VON: My mom—

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s actually really good. I think it’s a good idea to stank it up. Yeah, yeah, I never even thought about that.

THEO VON: Thanks, man. I got ashamed of it.

MATT MCCUSKER: The stank— I think that’s actually pretty cool now. The problem is you’re crossing wires because you’re going to catch— like, you’re going to be out working out one day, catch some of your own funk and be like, “Goddamn, I better come under there,” start f*ing eating out your armpit.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s insane.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s the line.

THEO VON: No worries. I had a buddy that did that, that we’d catch him doing it at night.

MATT MCCUSKER: No sleepovers, really?

THEO VON: Because he had like hair under his arm and he would kind of get his tongue around the corner of his pectoral.

MATT MCCUSKER: Ah, that’s f*ing weird.

THEO VON: And get him a little nibble.

MATT MCCUSKER: Just f*ing get you a little nibble, Danny. Pretty impressive.

THEO VON: You nibbling your arm, pussy? Huh, Ricky? Okay, this was it. Yeah. Are there any still on here?

MATT MCCUSKER: Total Creepers, sick.

THEO VON: But yeah, people were supporting— people were sending this shit in. This was good shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: And the Creepers in is awesome.

THEO VON: “My great aunt died and there are two zombie jokers showed up to the burial and said they were friends of hers, but no one knew these two.” What you think?

MATT MCCUSKER: But that’s Total Creepers. That’s a really good one.

THEO VON: It was good, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Damn, 2011. Lamp Man.

THEO VON: “This guy and I were at the same full-service car wash. He was yelling into his phone about a mortgage.” What do you think?

Yeah, I miss the imagination, bro. I miss like seeing a girl smile at you like on a Friday at school. Or give you some sign of like— maybe she even just like asked you to go throw some trash away for her.

MATT MCCUSKER: That would have been awesome. I would have loved to do that.

THEO VON: Totally. And then you’re thinking all week and you’re like, “F*, she’s thinking about me.”

MATT MCCUSKER: Yep.

THEO VON: I’m going to start working out. You start making like— we would chisel like weights out of like wood and shit and try to like get pumped.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: And we didn’t know that it had to weigh a real amount. We were like, “Oh, it just has to look like weights.” Just dumb shit. But then Monday you’d be like, “Oh, she fing hates me again.” But there was just that couple day period where there was no phone to see that she was having a blast or that she was like, her family was rich or whatever, had a boat or whatever. You just laid at home in your fing poor bed.

Looksmaxxing and Bone Smashing

MATT MCCUSKER: Yep. Thinking, just imagining her. Yeah, it was actually— I genuinely— I know people say this all the time, but I do feel bad for like younger kids. Have you gotten into like the clavicular stuff?

I see this and all that stuff. So he did an interview with Andrew Callahan recently. I watched, and I’ve watched a lot of his stuff, but there’s like this world of guys that are like, you know, looks maxing is like, your only hope in life is to become as attractive as possible. But now they’re doing these things where like injecting a bunch of peptides. These are like young, like early 20s, go on TRT, you’re hitting the peptides. And the thing that gets sensationalized is like you kind of tap your jawbone with a hammer. It’s called like bone hammering or whatever. So you like kind of do micro fractures. Dude, it’s crazy. And he— I watched an interview. He said like, “Oh man, like that’s really nothing.” But that’s all like what you have.

THEO VON: “Bone smashing is a dangerous non-scientific social media trend primarily popular on TikTok and within looksmaxxing subcultures that involves intentionally inflicting blunt force trauma on facial bones to alter their structure. Proponents falsely claim that repeatedly breaking or bruising bones with hammers, bottles, or hard objects will cause them to heal in a more chiseled or masculine shape.”

If that’s the case, everybody in Stockton would be f*ing beautiful. Yeah, true.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, true. Everyone’s been f*ing hit in the face.

THEO VON: Everybody’s been f*ing hit by bottles and shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, well, the thing is, a lot of it’s just internet stuff, but there is the underlying philosophy where it’s like, the die has been cast for you, and if you’re not like super attractive— it’s like guys are kind of becoming girls now where it’s like, “I just got to be prettier.” And it’s called the bone structure hierarchy, where like the way your bone structure is, that kind of determines your whole fate as a person. And if you don’t ascend, you’ll become this like— it’s just sad and very bleak and like this really nihilistic thing where it’s just like, dude, you can just be a dude. You don’t have to be like, “I need to ascend, I need to ascend so I can mog.” I feel bad. I mean, I think a lot of kids at least joke about it, but I was watching that interview and I’m like, man, this is like a really sad way to live. Just being like, “My subvertebral is not maximal.” And it’s like, dude, you’re a guy. Who cares? Just—

THEO VON: And what is mogging?

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s the part. Mogging is like— so you can be height mogged, you can be frame mogged. If someone’s bigger than you and you stand— if they take a picture with you and they’re looking bigger, you’ve been mogged.

THEO VON: Okay.

MATT MCCUSKER: If they’re taller than you, you’ve been height mogged. And there’s like, you can go any dimension of like whatever you have.

THEO VON: So somebody could be cock-mogging you. Somebody could be—

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s the worst mog. If you get cock-mogged, dude, that’s f*ing tough. I’d be hitting mine with a hammer.

THEO VON: Look at the fing jawbones on this little cock. Like, damn, that thing’s small. You’re like, “Yeah, but look at that fing smile on it.”

MATT MCCUSKER: Which is brutal, because I know girls do that. They take pictures together and there’s a lot of like very hyper-specific comparison where they’re like, “Look at my knees and hers.” It’s like, this is now like younger guys I think are starting to do that to some degree, becoming very aware and conscious of like, “He’s taller than me in that photo.” It’s like, you’re fine.

I don’t know, that kind of freaks me out. He got frame-mogged. That was the thing. He took a picture, that’s clavicular, and he got frame-mogged because the guy standing next to him was bigger. And it was just— that’s like, now you descend. You were ascending and now he descended a little bit.

THEO VON: Damn.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s—

THEO VON: And this Clavicular— I mean, that guy also looks like— he looks like a f*ing GNC store.

MATT MCCUSKER: So the other guys— so that’s the ASU frat guy, the guy in the black is Clavicular?

THEO VON: Yes.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, so that guy— it looks unnatural, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude. Well, first of all, the guy on the right looks fing insane, dude. He honestly looks like a fing good, like kind of a trill lesbian.

MATT MCCUSKER: No cap, bro.

THEO VON: No cap, dog. BLM, dog. You know what I’m saying? You’re wearing a fing like bra shirt or whatever. What are you fing doing? And also, you know, it started all that was LaMelo Ball, dude, was fing whatever. That dude wearing that bra or whatever, remember he was shooting that fing fadeaway?

MATT MCCUSKER: No, no. Was he wearing a bra?

THEO VON: Yeah, him and SGA were like just gooning around after—

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh, I think I did see that shit.

THEO VON: Well, this is— this was that.

MATT MCCUSKER: I don’t know.

THEO VON: That was when I was growing up. Mixed dudes wasn’t f*ing— mixed dudes had enough.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s what you’re talking about. What the f* is that about?

THEO VON: No, that’s not it. That’s crazy. Yeah, I’m saying that’s crazy.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s wild.

THEO VON: You don’t— when do you need just that much of a shirt?

MATT MCCUSKER: Yes, take it. Yeah, you don’t need it at all.

THEO VON: Yeah, like you hit a growth spurt or whatever, dude.

Supernormal Stimuli and Artificial Beauty Standards

MATT MCCUSKER: Well, dude, the sad thing about like the— you see that guy, that’s like a very bizarre frame with all like the peptides and like filters and all this stuff. That’s what’s garnering all the attention, like especially for women. Like your lips have to look all— people are becoming literally artificial beings.

It’s like, dude, it sounds like a really complicated thing, but I think about this all the time. There’s this thing called supernormal stimuli. So like, they did these studies where they had these butterflies and the male butterflies saw a female that was a shade of purple— the more purple the butterfly was, the more attractive they were. And the butterflies would go mate with those butterflies. The scientists made a shade of purple that wasn’t able to be produced by the natural butterflies, that was like such a deep purple. The butterflies would just lay on this piece of cloth and just die.

And I feel like that is happening to people in some regard where people are— especially women are making themselves into these like artificial things. And now guys are matching and it’s just, I don’t know, freaks me out. It’s like they’re chasing an aesthetic that’s not natural and it’s not attainable. And they’re using all these like scientific methods.

THEO VON: A lot of women, if women have those lip injections, dude, I’m out there.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yep.

THEO VON: If women put on too much lip, like if it’s a little bit I can get, right? But if it’s just f*ing dumb, dude. Like, your lips look like they’ve been eaten or whatever.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, dude, no, I’m telling you. And there’s also a fine line of plastic surgery where it almost all ends in the same exact look. There’s like a fully constructed face that you’re like, “Oh, it’s just like plastic surgery face.” I just feel bad because, you know, you’re obviously insecure, everybody is, and then you do all this work and you’re like, “Oh, my nose looks better, this looks better,” and it’s like— and you have this look where you look like a clone or something.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, some— it’s just too much.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: And then also, if a girl puts on so much lip gloss, bro, I’m like— it’s almost like you’re saying it’s like too much of the purple color. It’s like, it’s too juicy.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yes. No one’s lips are this juicy. Like, chill. And it’s— I just feel bad because, oh, that’s— I’ve seen this for sure. That one is—

THEO VON: Look what he’s wearing.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s a rough look.

THEO VON: He’s wearing a f*ing jersey bra. He’s wearing a jersey, bro. Look at this.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s— I mean, what is going on? I don’t know. I don’t know. Having a good time.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s a good point, man.

MATT MCCUSKER: No, but that’s— yeah, I saw that. That’s one of those videos you’re like, dang, did I really look like that during that? Still smiling. That’s like a—

THEO VON: No, and that guy’s a boss, dude, too. And honestly, if he’s one of the— if any of these guys ended up being gay fellas or whatever, and being one of the best to ever do it, good for them.

MATT MCCUSKER: Exactly. Who gives a s*?

THEO VON: Gay Jordan.

MATT MCCUSKER: Gay Jordan would be nice. Just that light, that slightly lighter lift off there. That would actually be kind of sick to watch.

THEO VON: Fly, float.

MATT MCCUSKER: It is floating through the air. I just feel bad for, you know, because you have— they get like preyed upon because you’re on social media and it’s just nothing but before and afters, before and afters, before and afters. And you just go after that and you can get like permanently disfigured. And it’s just— yeah, it’s evil. Something strikes me as like evil to do that.

Ozempic and Body Modifications

THEO VON: Well, there’s a lot of stuff now too where it’s like, the peptide, like all that stuff. A lot of it, there’s not a ton of research done on it. We just started f*ing hearing about it, and everybody started using it.

MATT MCCUSKER: I know.

THEO VON: Dude, I remember I was with a girl one night in her car and I was trying to make out or something. I don’t remember, but we were sitting in there talking and she’s like, “Yeah, I got to leave in like 2 hours to go down to Tijuana to get some Ozempic. It’s just cheaper down there.”

MATT MCCUSKER: Really?

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, they busted a woman outside of a Vineyard Vines selling illegal Ozempic.

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh, bro, they— yeah, that’s because you start going to the doctor and then they all start talking to each other and one of them gets it off the internet. Yeah, there’s— dude, so many of them are doing it, taking the jab. And it is kind of— because you do get it, like, you can go to a doctor, but it’s kind of expensive. And all it takes is one of them being like, “I got this website, I’ll get it, I’ll inject you.” And then it’s like, does this person know what they’re doing? Where did they really get that? What is this stuff?

I’m so freaked out about putting anything into my body. I can’t do it. I’ll take like a new vitamin and I’m like, “I feel kind of weird today.” That’s me, I’m being a b*h. But I really am like—

THEO VON: But that’s Irishness, I think, as well.

MATT MCCUSKER: I think so.

THEO VON: You guys operate best on beer and stuff like that.

MATT MCCUSKER: I think so. Basic whiskey, beer, complete basics. Yeah, adding to— I took the one, it was like a pill form that you just take it for your stomach, and I think it helped. I didn’t really notice much, but the needles, man, I get just too scared. I have one in my fridge. I can’t do it. It’s supposed to help you sleep and burn fat, and I look at it and go, “Nah, I’m not doing that.” Just sits there. I’m scared of the needle. I won’t do it. I won’t do it.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude. Save that bh in case things get crazy. Shoot it into one of your fing plants.

MATT MCCUSKER: True, dude.

THEO VON: If you started peptide in your f*ing plants, dude, next thing you know, you have like 11 blackberries in your yard.

MATT MCCUSKER: That would be nice. My whole family can each have like 3 apiece. That’d be awesome.

Gardening and Growing Your Own Food

THEO VON: How good are radishes though? You mentioned radishes.

MATT MCCUSKER: Radishes, man, they grow so easy and they’re good. They can get a little spicy here and there, but those ones are— they were rewarding because this is the thing too, like I tried growing carrots, dude. The carrot greens this big, I pull the carrot out. I’m not lying. It’s this f*ing big. So that kind of hurts.

THEO VON: You wait 3 months.

MATT MCCUSKER: Then you just got to take it out and throw it on the ground, just let it kind of decompose. Radishes just rip, man. You can grow radishes anywhere.

THEO VON: Those bulb— those underground— those like, potatoes, radish, I think. Yeah, there’s tubers or whatever they’re called.

MATT MCCUSKER: I think, yeah, potatoes, a tuber, radish. I don’t know what the hell— like root vegetables, I guess.

THEO VON: Yeah, root vegetables.

MATT MCCUSKER: They grow pretty good, man.

THEO VON: My grandma used to have them all in her cellar back in the day. Senior citizens would have them in their cellars and stuff like that. Keep a lot of root vegetables in there. I love radishes though. They’ve kind of disappeared for a while. You would see them kind of like shaved up, like they’d been— yeah, literally like somebody had terrorized them and put them on like little salads.

MATT MCCUSKER: I’ve seen that, like shredded radish. Yeah, it’s kind of weird. I feel like Mexican food brought them back into my life because I would see them on the tacos and at first I’d be like, “I’m not eating that.” And then I started eating them and I’m like, “Damn, these things are pretty good actually.”

THEO VON: You get a spicy radish. Put a little bit of salt on it.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, man, they’re good. And there’s something— I mean, just pulling it out of the ground, washing it off, and eating it, there’s something awesome about that.

THEO VON: You ever pull one right out and just wash it right there and eat it in the yard?

MATT MCCUSKER: I’d have to wash it first, so I usually bring it inside. But I’d like to. I’ve like picked berries off a bush and eaten them, but the radish, I’d never pulled them out of the dirt and eaten them.

THEO VON: No, do that.

MATT MCCUSKER: I should actually. I have left a little bit of dirt on before when washing it, and it’s got to be minerals and s* in here. You don’t believe all that eating the dirt propaganda, dude? You can eat dirt for sure.

THEO VON: I wouldn’t have a ton. I mean, it depends on what area.

MATT MCCUSKER: Just the dust. True. Yeah, true, true, true. My soil is pretty good. That’s the thing too, you got to like work, you got to build like a whole little colony in your soil, because if you just dump soil out of a bag, it’s not living.

THEO VON: How many square feet is your garden?

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh man, not a lot. It’s probably like 40 total, if that. And then I have a little thing outside my fence, it gets like full sun all day. That’s probably another like— probably have like 50, 60 square feet total. Small.

THEO VON: Do you have to water in the morning and evening, or how does it work?

MATT MCCUSKER: I do in the summer, yeah.

THEO VON: But I have a water pail. Use the hose.

MATT MCCUSKER: I have those, and I have like some sprinklers now. I got to hook them up. But I just kind of water them twice a day depending on how hot it is. If it’s like super hot, that’s twice a day. You put some mulch down to keep the roots from getting scorched. So it’s just nice, man, especially when you just see a new little bud pop off your plant. It’s just such a— I come out in the morning and I’m like, oh, it’s just a nice little treat. Yeah.

THEO VON: And you’re kind of like an orchestra conductor.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, man.

THEO VON: Nature.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it is. It’s pretty cool. You got to be patient, you got to wait. And it’s like, dude, I planted garlic 6 months ago, I might have some in like 3 weeks. And it’s just like a thing that’s like good, that’s growing— you know what I mean? Because otherwise I’ve had a lot of times in life where I just have nothing to look forward to and you’re just like, whatever. And every day I’m like, well, my berries eventually— 2 years. I have like things that are going to take like 2 years to grow and I’m like, man, 2 years is going to be sick.

THEO VON: I like that.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s— I’m telling you, it’s really good for you.

Morning Routines and Investing in Yourself

THEO VON: I recently started to get up earlier and just really start to take some control over my own life more. And it’s just helped me so much, man. It’s helped me to, I don’t know, everything else just feels like more possible. It’s like, oh, I’m caring about what I’m doing here, you know?

Like, it hasn’t been like every day has been perfect, but just over the past month it’s gotten— let me see what I’m trying to say. So I’ll get up and I’ll do some yoga, workout, meditate, hit an AA meeting or something, and then it’s like 10 AM and the rest of my day is mine, right? Like, I don’t have work and s* to do, but I just feel like the more I’m investing in myself or things like that, it feels good, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s— yeah, it’s unbelievable because otherwise it’s like, what is moving your life? You’re just kind of being blown about. I do that all the time where I’m just kind of like, you have to make your life mean something.

Matt’s Surprise Birthday Party

THEO VON: Exactly. I think when you’re a kid, you come out of this time where you’re like, oh, there’s all these things that I get to get put into, and there’s somebody putting you in a shit. You don’t even realize that, like, you’re— yeah, all this stuff happens and you’re just in. But we kind of lose that as we get older, you know? I mean, I know work comes along and family comes along, but it’s like, yeah, you have to— I always feel like, oh, life has to make it. No, you have to make it.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, dude, it’s like 100% true. That’s actually fair. I never thought about that too, because you do get thrown into school and yeah, you’re just like, well, I guess someone will throw me into a job, and then you just kind of drift along. And it’s like, I’ll do that for like stretches of time, and then something will happen where I’m like, what the f* am I doing? It just is a really bad feeling where I’m like, what am I doing with myself? And then, yeah, waking up and being like, I’m going to do this at this time, I’m going to work out, I’m going to do this. Dude, it really does make your life feel so much better. It’s like, even if you get up like a half an hour early.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: Just like, just get up and go for a walk. Otherwise, yeah, that’s a feeling that I get like really free. Like that’ll really bring me to a bad place when I realize I’m just being blown about. Yeah. By the whims of whatever forces are around me.

THEO VON: Especially as time goes on, dude. I went to your birthday party. That was fun, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: That was fun. That was a f*ing complete shock.

THEO VON: So you had no idea?

MATT MCCUSKER: No clue. Everyone was laughing at me like, you didn’t even Google the thing. My wife told me she was going to take me to an opera, and then she did it. It was actually, to her credit, it was a pretty good move. She’s like, we don’t— we never do anything like that. We never get dressed up.

THEO VON: And I was like, all right. It was Boyz n the Hood: The Opera.

MATT MCCUSKER: I didn’t know. I didn’t know what the hell it was, man. I was like, everyone was laughing at me because, didn’t you Google? The opera wasn’t even in town that weekend. I’m like, I didn’t look it up. I was just showing up, man, you know?

THEO VON: And, dude, 84% of life’s just showing up.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, man, that’s what— and I really can just be like, what? I don’t look into things. I realized that night, I didn’t realize how little I truly look into things. And I’ll just like, just be like, all right, I’ll just come. I don’t research it because I was talking to a lot of people that are like, I’d have to look at the seat chart. I have to know where I’m sitting.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s whimsical, dude. That’s like an Irish hello or whatever.

MATT MCCUSKER: I really do not know what the f* is going on. No idea what’s going on there. And I just showing up like, oh, this will be cool. I was like, I’ll get to see an opera. I’ve never seen that before. Just waited until it came.

So I’m like, in my head, I’m like, I’m going to be in a dark room all night. I was like, I’m going to see a little weed edible. I’ll be fine. So I’m literally— she was like, all the tickets we got, we get to go meet the opera singers like before. And I’m like, a meet and greet with the opera singers? I’m like, sounds weird, but I’m like, I’m down to meet them. This is kind of cool. I’m super gullible.

And then I’m like kind of stoned and I just like walk into this room being like— I remember the last thought I had was like, I wonder what opera singers are like. I walk in and I saw my mother-in-law and I was like, what the hell? Why is she here? And then I saw someone I hadn’t seen in like 3 years and I truly was like, oh, I’m probably having a dream. And I was like, this is not real. And I kept looking around and like the noises kind of came back and I was like, surprise. And I was like, what the f*? And then I got like angry. I was furious at first.

THEO VON: I remember you telling me that, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: I stood there and everybody was like 150 people. I’m like kind of high on it. I’m like, this is— I know this is completely overwhelming surprise. And then I’m looking around being like, what the f? She made everyone wear tuxedos and shit for this. And I’m just like, yeah, I forgot. Furious. Sorry. I just felt like, oh no. And then I just kind of like, I realized what was happening, that I was like frowning at 150 people and I had to like, oh hey, thank you everybody. And it took me like an hour and a half for the shock to wear off. I was fed up. But, you know, eventually I was like—

THEO VON: What was the anger about, you think? Kind of because you were telling me that, and that was fascinating. And your wife was great, dude. Like, she started like 5 months in advance. She’s like, don’t forget Friday or whatever. And I’m like, this Friday? She’s like, no, Friday in 5 and a half months. But she would remind you every month. And I was like, f. And then once I said, I promise, I said, I promise I’ll be there. I was like, f, I got to be there. But it ended up being great, though. It was a great night, dude. I got to hang out with Tony. There we are right now. Adam Egeth, Joe DeRosa.

MATT MCCUSKER: And is that your cousin? No, Zach.

THEO VON: He works at the, uh, yeah, he was at the Mothership for a while. But yeah, dude, it was a cool— it was a good group though, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: It was— that was— it was fun. I got there, was just like, I don’t even— I couldn’t even place the anger at first. I was just going like, what the f*? And I was actually kind of looking forward to sitting in a dark room all night watching the— I was like, this will be crazy. And then it was just like, what I was angry about was like, I don’t really like a lot of attention. So then I walked into just like a complete and total just being like awash in attention and like surprise, and it just like, it pissed me off.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: And then I was like, oh, this is like a party, this is nice. It was— it literally took my brain a second to be like— so first it wasn’t even a party, you know what I mean? Like my brain was like, these are just people looking at me, like why is this happening to me right now? And then it was like, it came in in layers, and I’m like, oh, f*, this is my 40th surprise party because we did something 2 weeks before that. So I was like, nice, I’m done. So it took me— my brain was like lagging for like seconds. And then, you know, I just like had to walk around and be like, hey, thanks, say thanks, say thanks, you know.

THEO VON: Thanks, Maxing.

MATT MCCUSKER: Thanks, Max.

THEO VON: Thanks, Max.

MATT MCCUSKER: Post-Maxing. Thanks, Maxing.

THEO VON: Dude, it would be so funny because I’d be talking like a comedian and then there’d be just somebody who was randomly downstairs who was at the thing. And it wasn’t nice of event, man. It was like an event, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: It really was. It was.

THEO VON: And there was like a thing with desserts, and there was— I think they even had like a duck or something. They had great food. They had, uh, but then there would be also like just family members or somebody’s like, “I’m Matt’s 11th cousin” or whatever, you know. Yeah, you know, fire department, you know, just f*ing—

MATT MCCUSKER: I’m like, what is going on? Yeah, one of my cousins I know, I heard the next day kind of called you, was like, let’s get a photo right now. Yeah.

THEO VON: Was? Oh, I don’t remember some things, but it was just like there was a lot of different things. And you would get like, yeah, kind of Irishy looking guys and this and that, and then a fing, you know, just somebody with Down syndrome who they said was Irish or whatever. And then even just down to a big freckle in a wheelchair, you know. It just like— there was this decision of fing McCuskers that had just been through it all, you know. Some Civil War veteran was there, like there was ghosts there.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, people were taken aback because that was only a small faction of my family. So people that I knew would be like— because you would just see various mutations of me where you’d be like, that’s got to be one of his cousins. People were like really laughing about that all night, being like, I can literally spot every single one of your family members. You guys all look exactly the same, dude.

THEO VON: That would be the best if they had done a thing, find Matt’s family, like a Where’s Waldo. Yes. And you had to like just find— like amongst all the people there, you had to get like a signature from those people.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s kind of fun, actually. But no, it was, uh, it was cool, man. I, I, you know, I always— I gave it up to Brittany.

THEO VON: I was like, man, it was very sweet of her.

MATT MCCUSKER: Very nice. Very impressive. It was, it was just such a— it was like I said, it was like an event. It was like a massive event. And it’s, you know, I’m always kind of like, I don’t want to do anything, you know, blah blah blah. So that was— it was nice. I was like, I appreciated it, but it was, it was a lot for me to take in.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s scary, dude. Having a surprise experience is kind of scary, especially that magnitude, man.

MATT MCCUSKER: That was like— that really like threw me upside down because I’m going like, you know, I’m like, I don’t like to ask people to do anything. You see people wearing tuxes, I’m going, oh f. So then my family hates dressing up, so I’m like, f, they made them do that. And you know, I was just like, but it was cool, it was awesome.

Military Draft Age and Fitness

THEO VON: And you can— can you still be drafted or not?

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh, for the war? I think they just bought—

THEO VON: Yeah, I think the war is a unique term.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, or the military. Yeah, the conflict. The, uh, yeah, I think it’s up to 42. So if I’m—

THEO VON: What are the requirements? And they keep f*ing making the age bigger, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, 42, dude.

THEO VON: There’s some f*ing—

MATT MCCUSKER: I got 2 good years of me, bro.

THEO VON: You could be a colonel.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’d be crazy. I mean, I went to college. At least I want sergeant. Like, I’m not going in there as a grunt. Yeah, but actually, I’d kind of like to boss up as a guy.

THEO VON: Be on time. What are some of the, uh, Army chants? Do you have to do some of those? Probably.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it’s like, I don’t know what I’ve been told. Yeah, 42. Is not that old or whatever.

THEO VON: Welcome America. Army raises enlistment age to 42.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, they’re pandering to me.

THEO VON: Eases marijuana restrictions, dude. So you can have fing— dude, it’s just going to be a bunch of fing thick trans kids on gummies out there. Here was one of the problems. Did you know that 70% of young Americans are unfit to serve in the military? They couldn’t serve in the military.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I’ve heard that.

THEO VON: 70%.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s no surprise, man. That’s— I mean, that’s sad.

THEO VON: Blew my mind, really. Yeah, when I was a kid, I feel like— it felt like 70% could serve in the military.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

The BattleBots Solution and Army Recruiting

THEO VON: You had some kids in wheelchairs or something. You had some black kids that were still sucking their thumb or something, even though they were like 19 and still rocking. Yeah, yeah, which is cool, but they weren’t saying anything, but they weren’t retarded. So you got to pick a path. But then you had like, yeah, one kid that would get sunburned bad, he couldn’t go. You had that bee sting kid or whatever who was always a f*ing piece of shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: I’m down for them just doing like BattleBots. We’re at the point now where, yes, what is ridiculous to just be like, yeah, we’re going to just send a bunch of 18-year-olds there, shoot each other. So that’s like, it’s just like I said this before, it’s like embarrassing. Like, guys, for real, we’re still doing this. Let’s do BattleBots, solve it, see what’s up. Whoever wins gets, you know, whoever gets pink slips. Yeah, your buzzsaw flips my wedge. Now you get to hold nukes. And if I’ll build a better robot, I’ll get the nukes back so I can destroy the world if I have to, you know, if I want to get my way.

THEO VON: Yeah, I agree. It’s like, what are— to really be using— I don’t know, dude, it’s just f*ing—

MATT MCCUSKER: But there’s a trick where it’s like, yeah, you know what, you’re right, then some guy just blows up your city and you’re like, I’m fing blowing them up, f that. Yeah, so it’s like, you know, I don’t think— I think it’s escapable.

THEO VON: A major update to Army recruiting regulations this week raises the maximum age a recruit can join to 42 and removes a barrier to joining for recruits with a single legal conviction for marijuana or drug paraphernalia possession.

MATT MCCUSKER: Nice.

THEO VON: The Army’s previous limit was 35, though exceptions are occasionally made. The higher age limit brings the Army in line with other services’ limit of 41 in the Navy and 42 in the Air Force.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s the weirdest of all. And again, it’s— whoa, what the f* is this kind of shit?

Kristi Noem’s Husband and the Bimbofication Scene

THEO VON: I don’t know. I thought that was f*ing Doug Stanhope for a second on the left. Well, the, okay, secret double life of Kristi Noem’s cross-dressing husband Brian, the pouting busty bimbo photos and trove of explicit messages. Hmm, he could have— that could have been a costume he was doing.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I mean, let me see.

THEO VON: Is today revealed as a secret crossdresser who dons gigantic fake breasts and pink hot pants to chat with online fetish models.

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh, that’s the porn hole going wrong, man. Yeah, so you need to shut the laptop once you’re putting— once you’re bimbo-fying yourself for webcam. Is that what happened? He was bimbo-fying?

THEO VON: It looks like, well, his wife operated at the highest echelons of government, handling matters of national security in her recent role as DHS Secretary. Brian Noem, 56, has been dressing up and paying adult entertainers to talk dirty. The Daily Mail has reviewed hundreds of messages involving 3 women from the bimbofication scene, where porn performers transfer themselves into real-life Barbie dolls by pumping colossal amounts of saline into their breasts.

MATT MCCUSKER: Whoa, that’s— that was— that’s his— that was his boobs, basically, from saline?

THEO VON: Yeah, so he pumped his— was he pumping his own tits full of that shit? God.

MATT MCCUSKER: Okay. Yeah. No, he had balloons. Okay.

THEO VON: Oh, Brian, an insurance mogul, can be seen squeezing into a flesh-colored crop top with skin-tight pink shorts.

MATT MCCUSKER: Hold on. So those tits were balloons with the nipple? Oh, the knots mimic the nipples. I mean, I’ll at least shout them out on the nipple position. That was—

THEO VON: That’s pretty smart.

MATT MCCUSKER: That was kind of nice.

THEO VON: Dang, bro. What the f, dude? What the f is going on, bro?

MATT MCCUSKER: I— that’s nice for balloons. I’ll get— whoa, what the f*?

THEO VON: Oh man, but he has that kind of glossy skin where he’s f*ing, you know what I’m saying?

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s a horny guy. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that that’s kind of alpha to be that horny where you have balloon boobs like a fifth grader.

THEO VON: No, it sounds like what those fing clavicular kids are going to be doing. Putting fing hacky sacks in their chest and shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, man, that is, uh—

THEO VON: He sent his secret roster of online acquaintances at least $25,000 via Cash App and PayPal. But when the payments were delayed or failed to materialize, the chats would quickly turn sour.

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh, I bet I would. If I paid f*ing $25,000 to look at my balloon tits and you didn’t, you delayed on me, I turned sour.

THEO VON: Damn. Oh, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: So they kind of like put his stuff out there.

THEO VON: Yeah. It’s astounding that somebody whose spouse is at that level has that kind of bad judgment. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, bro.

MATT MCCUSKER: I didn’t know this was a thing, dude.

Wieners, Glizzies, and Revolution

THEO VON: Yeah, I guess it is, dude. Honestly, bro, all this shit makes me want to cut my wiener off and just mail it to Africa, dude. I’m not even joking, dude. I thought about that for years. Cut my wiener off, be done. And my nuts off. Yeah, if they want it, or just whatever you want. You can do it, send them both.

MATT MCCUSKER: But keep your nuts because that’ll keep your tea going and stuff.

THEO VON: Yeah, keep my f*ing nuts.

MATT MCCUSKER: Let your nuts hang. Yeah, chop off your unit and just keep everything and mail it to Africa.

THEO VON: Feed a person or two, that’d be nice. They grill that shit up in a second, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Munch that thing.

THEO VON: They get some f*ing Tennessee wiener in the mail, they would grill it, put mine on a toothpick and serve it at a party with others. But yeah, they’d be like, “Glizzy, glizzy!”

MATT MCCUSKER: No, it’s—

THEO VON: What’s a glizzy?

MATT MCCUSKER: A fresh glizzy. I mean, that is sad, man. It’s like, yeah, it’s a way here.

THEO VON: The Uber driver, he’s like, “We need a revolution.” You podcast guy, he was—

MATT MCCUSKER: But you pumped up.

THEO VON: Yeah, no, he’s trying to get me to fing do something. Like, dude, I’m fing trying to go— I’m going to work, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s probably CIA, honestly.

THEO VON: He could have been a f*ing op. He’s probably Mossad. But it was just kind of crazy. He’s like, “We need a revolution,” you know, because he’s like, “AI’s going to come, it’s going to be all Waymos. We won’t have a job, you know.”

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s true too. Yeah, that stuff’s coming, man, for sure. That’s going to be weird.

THEO VON: I mean, it is going to be, you’re not scared of it though, you said?

AI, UBI, and the Future of Work

MATT MCCUSKER: No, not really. I mean, it’s like, if I felt like it was coming and it would just like destroy my livelihood, I’d obviously be afraid of that. I don’t think it is, and I feel bad if it does, but I feel like maybe— this is me just being hopeful— it will kind of engender some like massive change where people then have to like learn how to, you know, like, do we start just sharing stuff so everyone has what they need? Like, what do you like? Literally, what do you write? And then, you know, people go, “That’s communistic.” It’s like, yeah, obviously.

But it’s like if it wipes out just like 9 industries at once and you have millions and millions of people who could work that just there’s no point for them to do it. It’s like, what do you do? Like, what do you do then? And it’s like, are they going to have to just like invent weird, like almost like fake jobs? Are people going to get paid just to kind of vibe out? I don’t know.

I’m personally kind of curious to see where it goes because it’s like you’re not going to fight the AI stuff. Everyone’s like, “We’re going to stop it.” It’s like, no, you’re not. If it saves big corporations money, it’s coming. They’re going to do that. Then it becomes like, what do you do? And I guess like, you know, yeah, it could get— now that I think about it, it’s like, well, yeah, maybe the billionaires will like give us some money. I’m like, well, they said that. F*, you think they will?

THEO VON: Well, that’s what they’ve said, is that they’re— that people would get some sort of a stipend or some sort of a UBI, universal basic income, or some sort of a token that they could use for things, like, for— which is crazy to hear. Yeah, like Altman said this sort of shit.

MATT MCCUSKER: There’s a king then, so then we’d have kings, which again, if we go back to some like futuristic medieval, like, serfs, lords, kings, knights, could be chill. I don’t know. Again, I don’t know, there’s probably people like, “F* you.”

THEO VON: Could be chill though.

MATT MCCUSKER: Could be chill, dude. You get to like wander. I get to just be in my garden, light fires, and just kind of like think about the glory of the king. Yeah, King Sam Altman. King Altman. Cuts my f*ing head off.

THEO VON: And he cuts your fing RAM down. He cuts your hard drive down to fing 30 megabytes a month.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, no more questions about your garden. I’m like, “Sorry, my lord, dude.”

THEO VON: And then that thing comes through where you throw the dead people just on it. Like, if your neighbor dies, remember back in the, like, in the, the wheelbarrow, the dead cart or whatever? Yeah. Yeah, I think—

MATT MCCUSKER: And this is my— again, this is just me.

THEO VON: He had my fing EarPods in his pocket. We put him on the fing bed cart.

MATT MCCUSKER: This is me being— hey, hey, humanity, check his pockets. A fat guy, you gotta follow him on your device. Yeah, I feel like, you know, every society rises and then falls in a terrible cataclysm. That’s like, there hasn’t been one that’s made it out of it yet.

So like, maybe it’s like with COVID there was— COVID was bad, but it also did kind of shake people out of that like dull, thoughtless malaise that so many people are trapped in, just like a meaningless existence they kind of hate. So I’m hoping the AI shakes the cage enough to where people can kind of come out of it, but then we don’t all just like fall into like complete chaos and start like killing each other. Yeah, I think there’s a sweet spot. So I’m hoping it kind of shakes it just a little bit, if that makes sense.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: So that’s my hope. But it’s like, yeah, then it’s like, well, maybe the billionaires will be generous.

Fluoride, Comfort, and the Wheel

THEO VON: I’m like, well, to me it feels like they want us poisoned enough, right? It’s obvious there’s so much that has poison in our f*ing water. Fluoride makes people dumb. Like, if you have fluoride in your water, you’re dumber.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: Which is crazy, dude. But like, they want us to be dumb enough and like not have any f*ing balls or want to do— and so you just are kind of like in this sort of wheel. Yeah. And you’re comfortable in the wheel. And the amazing thing to me sometimes is how comfortable a lot of us are in the wheel. Including myself.

Oh yeah, you’re like, you know what, I could go out there and protest sometimes, or I could do this, or, you know, but I could just sit here and watch March Madness. Yeah, you know, just got some new masa chips. I got some f*ing Good Ranchers nuggets.

MATT MCCUSKER: Chips are nice, bro. I love those things.

THEO VON: They’re nice if you eat too many of them though.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it’s a f*ed up bellyache.

THEO VON: And I don’t eat them anymore. I like, I had like 6 bags in a row or whatever. I can’t have them anymore.

MATT MCCUSKER: No, you’d eat the whole bag and you’re like, “I just ate a pound of beef tallow.”

THEO VON: Well, it’s like having gin when you’re a kid or whatever. You can’t have it anymore, you know? But it’s like that for me. It just kind of burnt out.

Privatizing Public Services and the TSA Debate

MATT MCCUSKER: The thing that I’m hopeful about is that, because if it becomes like— if money becomes a weird thing where it’s like there’s UBI and like you do have these rich billionaire overlords, like money is the thing. If you have enough of it, it kind of pumps up your ego to where you’re like, “Yeah, I did it, I’m the man.”

I’ve always wondered if we could somehow trick ultra-rich, billionaire types into being like, “No, the real flex is putting like 9 million people on assistance and making like a cool future peaceful village,” and like getting them to think, “Yeah, that would be cool if I did that.” You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Like, yeah, why wouldn’t they do that?

MATT MCCUSKER: You just have to make up their nerds. So like Zuckerberg, instead of attacking them, be like, “Dude, actually Zuckerberg’s super jacked and super tough and cool at jiu-jitsu,” and just giving the nerds everyone like, “Yeah, we love you guys.” And maybe they’ll just use billions of dollars to terraform the earth into like a cool Hobbit world. I don’t know. Now I’m just reaching.

THEO VON: Well, you start to wonder, is it an evil autism that’s out there.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, we need to give them the— yeah, exactly.

THEO VON: I think you could be completely right because, yeah, to think that you’d have billions of dollars and other people don’t have anything is pretty crazy.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, but that’s the thing though, because it’s like, I think about that all the time. And it’s like, “White House turns down Elon Musk offer to pay TSA agents during DHS shutdown.” Why? That thing was like— well, yeah, we can’t pay the TSA guy. I’m a single-issue voter and wait times at airports currently. But it’s like, dude, just take the TSA out of that because they’re trying to both pass these big deals where it’s like, “Well, we’ll do the TSA, but you have to agree to this.”

THEO VON: But they’re doing those omnibus bills.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it’s like, take TSA out of it. You guys can go, “Okay, let’s fund TSA. Okay, back to arguing about bullshit forever.” It’s—

THEO VON: I—

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s— it’s just, dude, that shit pisses me off. Yeah.

THEO VON: Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of social media platform X, said, offer to pay the salaries on Saturday. “I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country.”

Here we go next. President Trump said he would love it if Musk paid the agent salaries. “I think it’s great, let him do that.” The offer from Musk was also warmly received by lawmakers. But then here’s the problem.

John Fetterman said the offer was “incredibly generous” in his response to the post. TSA agents across the country are relying on food pantries and community donations just to get by. DHS officials told House lawmakers Wednesday that over 480 airport screeners have quit since the beginning of the shutdown and that the agency is expected to lose $1 billion in missed paychecks by the end of this week.

Dude, Timothy Mellon, heir of Mellon Banking— shout out Pittsburgh— donated $130 million to pay the military during the 43-day-long government shutdown from October to November. But what’s crazy is, this could be a trap because then you’re letting kind of X or Tesla become this privatized— because now you’re kind of privatizing airport security.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: Whether you realize it a little bit or not, you’re saying, “Okay, we’ll let him pay these salaries.” Then he comes in and says, “Well, how about this? Why don’t Tesla just manage airport security?” Yeah, you could probably do it so much more efficiently.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: And so that’s like— I’m not saying that would be bad. I’m just saying that’s where things get kind of risky. A lot of times, offers like that, there’s this kind of caveat of hopeful business on the line.

The History of Private vs. Public Transit

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, I didn’t know this until recently. Public transportation in Chicago in like the late 1800s, there were all public company or private companies. So like you would just own like— if you’re in New York, it was like— but it’s Chicago, like the L train, that was a guy who owned the L train. Everyone who paid tickets, all the money went to him. And there was another guy who owned like the North Side public and they all eventually— the city came and was like, “Guys, give me this.”

But that was like that for a while. It was incredibly competitive and corrupt and you’d have to lobby government to pass your thing. You pay people off, then you just collected all the fares personally. Didn’t even go to the city. So yeah, that is a tricky thing though, because they can start doing their weird credit card— I mean, you don’t get great customer service with government agencies.

THEO VON: No, dude, have you been to the post office?

MATT MCCUSKER: The post office is crazy, dude.

Post Office Chaos

THEO VON: I was there a couple days ago. There was this sister that was working in there. She’s fing fighting with a bird that’s in there trying to steal like a fing thing of tape or whatever. And I’m like, in the little gift section area, I’m like, there’s nobody else in there, dude. The fing wind going by is just fing unbelievable.

There’s an Asian dude, he peeked up out of the back for like a second. The guy with the mustache, dude, fing the catfish looking dude. One of those package catfishes. He’s just back there. He swims up to the fing door and peeks around just to make sure nobody’s looking for him and fing goes back into the fing hiding behind the 7-day certified mail. You’ll never see him for like 40 more years.

MATT MCCUSKER: He’s just going to hide for 40 more.

THEO VON: Dude, he’s like— it’s like he saw his own shadow. It’s like 11 more months of f*ing being on the clock on the government’s dime.

MATT MCCUSKER: Post office is crazy, dude. I used to mail all of our merch personally in the beginning. I would mail all of our merch personally. So I started going to the post office with just like boxes of like 45, 50, 60 shirts already wrapped up. And I got to know the people there pretty well, but at first I would just show up before they knew me. They’d be like, “What are you doing to us?”

And then they eventually gave me another address where I could just drop it off at the hub and they would just take them like a big thing at once and just throw them in the thing. But it was funny. Yeah, I used to go there and they let me come towards the back and dump it in. F* yeah.

THEO VON: It’s kind of cool to see behind the scenes.

MATT MCCUSKER: It was cool, but it’s very chill time. If there’s a line at the post office, people are like, “Okay.” It’s like DMV mentality. You’re like, “Yeah, whatever, man.”

THEO VON: Don’t care. They don’t feel lines.

MATT MCCUSKER: No, they really don’t.

THEO VON: You only feel lines on one side of the counter. The other side of the counter, they don’t feel that line.

MATT MCCUSKER: No, it’s not a restaurant where you’re like, “Oh f, people are going to leave.” You’re just like, “Yeah, f it, go use f*ing something else.”

THEO VON: Public transit in Chicago shifted from private to public control in the mid-20th century, centered on the creation of the Chicago Transit Authority, the CTA, in the 1940s. The Illinois General Assembly passes the Metropolitan Transit Authority Act, 1945, when the CTA took over the big private rail and streetcar systems and effectively completed city service in 1952 with the motorcoach purchase. Yeah, anyway, that’s when it happened.

MATT MCCUSKER: True.

The Conquistadors and the Fall of the Aztecs

THEO VON: I saw you’ve been doing some history pods.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, on my Patreon. I’ve been getting deep into the Conquistador era, like the Spaniards going first to like Yucatan in Mexico, like when Cortés kind of took over the Aztecs. And then there was another guy who navigated the Amazon River later on, and the Pizarros took out the Incan Empire. Those stories are insane.

I’ve talked to the author who wrote both the books I was talking about, and we’re both agreeing, “Dude, that’s a movie.” I talked to this other guy about this too, where it’s like the fact that there’s no movie about that yet is insane. Especially Cortés taking over the Aztecs. It’s the craziest story because everyone’s like, “Oh yeah, he showed up and tricked Montezuma.” And they did do that, but it was like a multi-year effort. They had brutal battles. It went on forever.

They were inside Tenochtitlan, which was like the city of the Aztecs. Dude, that was like a brutal siege. They barely escaped, had to come back and attack it again. It was absolutely insane.

THEO VON: Were they bad people that they were attacking, or they were just people that they wanted their land, or it was just like during that colonial time?

MATT MCCUSKER: It was a little bit of everything. It was definitely during the colonial times. The Spaniards definitely just wanted gold. They were like, “Yeah, you guys have gold, we’re taking the shit.”

Oh yeah, Cortés wasn’t even supposed to do it. He was sent by another guy, Velázquez, who was like, “Take this flotilla of ships.” They were in— where is it, like Cuba maybe, or somewhere? And he was like, “I want you to scout this Mexico whatever place and see if they have any gold or slaves and bring them back to me.”

THEO VON: That’s crazy, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, so Cortés is like, “For sure.” He just took 13 ships and was like, “F that guy, I’m going on an expedition to conquer.” So he just— it was completely illegal, it was all fed up, but he just was like, “I’m doing my own thing,” like a pirate basically.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s like when your dad’s like, “Hey, go fill my car with gas,” but you take it to go see your girl.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, dude, for like the ultimate version. It’s like if he gave you his fleet of trucks and you were like, “Yo, let’s go.” And it was like he just rolled up there with 300, 400 guys, and they just battled and battled and made alliances. That was the thing that helped them. They made so many alliances with different people that hated the Aztecs.

And it was like, everyone’s like, “The Spaniards, they did some stuff that was obviously horrible.” But the problem was in the Aztec times, it was all kind of like Yucatan Peninsula, southern Mexico, up into central. And you would just be in a village and the Aztec chiefs would be like, “Yo, it’s time for taxes.” But their taxes were sacrifice victims.

THEO VON: Systems.

The Conquest of the Aztecs

MATT MCCUSKER: So they would come down and be like, “Give us like 30 people.” So you’d be living together and they’d be like, “Yeah, we’re going to fing chop you up, chop you up, let’s go.” And they would just snag most of your babes and you’d be like, “F.”

So then Cortés comes and they’re like, “Yeah, I’ll help you f those guys up.” So they all were kind of against each other. And then the thing that really kind of— it’s fed up, but it makes me laugh— they would befriend the natives there and the natives would be like, “Oh, you guys seem cool, want to see something cool that we like?” And they would take them to one of these like religious temples and it would just be like a dog with its head bashed in, like little kids’ bones. They’re like, “Yeah, we fing chopped that dog’s head off.” And they’d be like, “What the f? What are you guys doing? What’s wrong with you guys?”

So there was, you know, and they say the Spaniards exaggerated a lot of the sacrifice. But it was definitely on the books. So they got there and they were greedily looking for gold, but then they’d be like, “These guys are chopping off kids’ heads and kicking them down the steps. F these guys.” That’s kind of how they were thinking. “These guys need Jesus. We’re going to kill them and turn them into slaves and give them Jesus and take their gold, and we’re doing a good thing.” So it was kind of fed up all around, in my opinion. But nobody knew, you know what I mean? They didn’t think it was bad.

Human Existence and Moral Complexity

THEO VON: So do you think it kind of goes to an overall idea of— do you think that human existence is like a trial to see of good versus evil? Or I wonder what it is. And then, as things start to get weirder and stuff, then you start realizing, well, most countries always live under like some severe oppression.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: With no hope of like a lot of freedoms.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: With not even the ability to express themselves in some ways.

MATT MCCUSKER: Oh dude, yeah, for sure.

THEO VON: Yeah, you start to realize that— I don’t know, you wonder like it. And then you start to think, well, how does this end? Like, does this end well? But then if you had groups at that time, if you had Cortés traveling around and realizing, “Okay, we believe these are bad people, we need to bring them into some sort of enlightenment of understanding.” Is that the right way? I don’t know.

MATT MCCUSKER: No, dude, it’s really tricky. They were also legally bound. So you’d roll into a village and you’d hope they’re peaceful, otherwise you’re just doing battle.

THEO VON: I think the first 10 minutes has got to be a tough—

MATT MCCUSKER: Very tough. But luckily for them, they’d roll up— dude, they’d roll up on a horse, which, first of all, the Aztecs— they would see a person—

THEO VON: Any—

MATT MCCUSKER: The Mayans were there as well, but they would see a dude in metal on a horse and think this was like some new type of being. They never saw— yeah, they never saw someone riding a horse, so they thought the man and the horse became like one weird creature. And they were like, “What the f?” And they would just come at you 30 miles an hour with a steel sword, and it was terrifying. And then cannon fire helped them out a lot. But yeah, they just thought they were like aliens. They didn’t know what the f they were. And then, you know, they killed a couple of the Spaniards and they’re like, “Oh, we can kill these guys.” And they, you know, munched them. So, wow, let’s munch them a little bit.

THEO VON: But yeah, it was—

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, history’s been brutal and things do seem to be getting better overall. Like, that dude rolling into a village, you’re like, “I’m hungry, I want some gold.” Cortés wouldn’t— he would be nice enough, but then as soon as people started fing with him, he would fing burn villages down, burn people alive. It’s brutal stuff.

THEO VON: That’s a crazy mix. So, “I’m hungry, I want some gold.” Yeah, well, they would be starving.

MATT MCCUSKER: They would be walking, walking, walking like, “F*, we don’t have enough food.” And then you just see a village, you’re like, “We gotta go munch these guys’ shit, dude.”

Conquistadors and Their World

THEO VON: And bro, you think there was hot babes back then at that time?

MATT MCCUSKER: For sure. Oh yeah, 100%.

THEO VON: I mean, they’re probably healthier babes.

MATT MCCUSKER: Healthy? I mean, yeah, true. But here’s the thing though, it’s all relative because, you know, these guys are all, by the way, like 21, 22. So you’re a 22-year-old Spanish guy in the 1600s or, you know, late 1500s. These guys are probably on like legendary nofaps, all of them. They probably weren’t beating off every day to Pornhub.

THEO VON: That’s a great—

MATT MCCUSKER: These guys, the chamber’s fully f*ing cocked.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: So yeah, they were probably like— and you know, there was obviously a lot of brutal rape and stuff going on. But yeah, Cortés famously, in one of the battles, the general handed him like, “Here’s a bunch of women.” And one of them happened to be a former princess from like one of the chieftains or chiefdoms, who then got sold into sex slavery by a warring tribe, who then got given to Cortés as a sex slave.

But she happened to be a princess, Malinche, who was honestly one of the key figures who helped him translate all the languages so that he could move about. I don’t know if he could have done it without her. It’s pretty crazy. They became lovers, man. They were thick as thieves. And Cortés had a wife the whole time, living in Cuba.

After he finally wins, defeats the Aztec Empire, takes it over himself—

THEO VON: That’s his—

MATT MCCUSKER: Dude, his wife comes over to visit him because she’s like, “All right, this f*ing guy’s been gone. I don’t know where the hell he is. He’s been gone for 2 years.” Cortés has a child with his new babe who had been through it all with him.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: And his wife shows up, kind of gives him an earful. Dude, he choked her to death. That was just his baby. It was pretty f*ing brutal. Damn, that’s pretty brutal shit, man.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s a crazy love story.

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s the bizarrest love triangle.

THEO VON: But dude, if your guy conquers a bunch of shit like that, you gotta chill the first week or something, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: You can’t just be coming up.

THEO VON: Yeah, you can’t get out the car mouthing off.

MATT MCCUSKER: He literally— it was like a savage conquest, and he was there with all of his bros. He had also made these alliances with these other indigenous factions who, when they beat the Aztecs finally, they all had a party that night. The Spaniards were drinking, fing around. Dude, these Aztec dudes were cutting off their enemy’s skin and walking around in it. And you’re all just partying. They had like a brutal, fed up 2-day party that they all woke up from and were like, “Let’s say mass right now.” That was kind of wild. And then his wife came to visit, mouthed off, and he just killed her.

THEO VON: Damn.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, it’s fed up. It’s a fed up story.

Who Are the Righteous Ones?

THEO VON: It is. Sorry, but it’s kind of— it’s the story that we keep living. It’s just crazy, like, you don’t know who’s supposed to be the righteous ones, who’s supposed to win, what the whole thing is, who’s doing things in the name of the right purpose. You know, you’re trying to go off of some moral calculations that you feel like you have, but then we’re all immoral. We’re all broken people. I don’t know, man.

MATT MCCUSKER: No, well, that’s the thing too. I try to keep at least an open mind. Like, even with Iran, it’s like, say they do make a nuclear weapon and then they drop it on whoever— yeah, maybe they have to stop.

THEO VON: I don’t know.

MATT MCCUSKER: But it’s like, they’re not dropping them. They’re just going to use it to get a seat at the table. I think that’s what people do with nukes. You make them and you’re like, “All right, can we get at the big boy table now? Yeah, f*ing get in here.” So yeah, I don’t know, I have no idea.

THEO VON: That’s got to be crazy. Now, do you also think—

MATT MCCUSKER: Sweet feeling.

THEO VON: Do you also think though, you can kind of see how like these fing mega lords and tech lords and shit— like, they start to just sit around like they all got in a room like, “Dude, we’re the fing— we own the world, right?” They have.

MATT MCCUSKER: There’s no way they don’t, dude, right? You’re 100% right.

Power, Control, and the Ruling Class

THEO VON: And they’d be like, “Well, we should obviously make sure the world stays like this, that we own it. Let’s keep everybody f*ing dumb, let’s keep doing this shit, and let’s keep bossing out and drinking kid dick or whatever until we live forever.” I just feel like there’s got to be— that has to be like— and then you start to wonder, how could people at a certain level get to that? But they must think, “Well, if I’m this fortunate, God must want me to,” you know what I’m saying? Because if you have been so fortunate and you do have religious beliefs and your ego gets involved, I could see how you could end up on that road for sure. “God wants me to do things this way,” and then you start justifying whatever you do.

MATT MCCUSKER: Or it’s the opposite— you have no religious convictions at all and you go like, “It’s just, you know, strongest person wins. The whole point of life is to be comfortable and in a dominant position.” There are people who genuinely have that as their philosophy. So they’ll just leverage technology to gain more and more power to their advantage. And that shit’s scary, especially when they get into the realistic possibility of becoming biologically immortal. And you’re like, “F*, dude, I just want to grow my radishes, man. Just let me grow my radishes.”

It is really freaked out, man. But it’s also like, I don’t think there’s a lot of peace if you’re running some cybertronic f*ing war surveillance apparatus. I don’t think those guys are chilling. I don’t think they feel good.

THEO VON: I think some of them don’t feel.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s f*ing—

THEO VON: That’s the scary part— they don’t have the thing.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I think you’re actually right about that.

THEO VON: Like, to them it’s all a f*ing game. When they die, they just short circuit, you know what I’m saying? A lot of these people, it feels like, don’t have something.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, you could be right about that.

Getting Back to What You Can Control

THEO VON: But yeah, man, I agree. It’s like, get back to what can you control, right? So you make a garden, you go on a nice walk, you spend some time with your neighbors, you do things that feel good while you’re alive. We didn’t create the world. We’re just here in it. And yeah, I don’t know.

Wrapping Up: Purpose, Aging, and Signing Off

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s all cyclical too, man. It’s like, it’s going to rise and fall. And it’s again, the problem is like, yeah, hopefully this isn’t the time where everything pops off and we all just get wiped out in a hot flash. That is— that’s scary. But like, what are you going to do, like run into the White House and just get shot in the face by secret security? You just have to chill. There’s nothing you can really do.

THEO VON: Let me see this. Steven Pinker argues that by most measurable indicators— violence, health, wealth, rights, and knowledge— humans are doing better now than any previous time, even though it feels like things are getting worse. I don’t f*ing believe that guy.

MATT MCCUSKER: Well, I mean, it’s like, yeah, there’s probably less kind of crime and large-scale violence. It’s just— it’s probably just the information. You get bombarded with just all this horrible shit, right?

THEO VON: And I think there’s still news outlets that— everything is— I believe that this depends on what you mean. If you don’t care about existing and feeling like you can grow as a human, then maybe so. I thought we were past some of this old school colonial shit. You’d think we would get past that. Yeah, but no, it’s the same thing. They’re going to—

MATT MCCUSKER: They did it with Iraq. They’re going to go, “Oh, there’s an existential threat.” Try to think back on since—

THEO VON: But America knows it’s not true now. We know it’s not true.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s the problem.

THEO VON: And nobody’s upset at our soldiers or anything like that. It’s just the people putting them out there in harm’s way.

MATT MCCUSKER: And to think about that shit— dude, think about a time there hasn’t been a giant looming existential threat overhead. Since literally the atom bomb. Terrorism was the big one, and that was the Iraq War. Before that it was just Fox News. My parents would watch it, and it would just be like crime in the city. It’d be like, “The inner cities are out of control, they’re going to come kill you,” always.

THEO VON: And then it was just like, “Terrorists are going to come f*ing kill you.”

MATT MCCUSKER: And then— yeah, remember they threw that in the middle? Then there was Unsolved Mysteries. Unsolved Mysteries was f*ing good though.

THEO VON: F, it was banging. “Maybe you could help solve a mystery.” And did we go outside fing looking for missing people in our area? We’re like, “Are you Rebecca Owens?”

MATT MCCUSKER: Sadly, I never stepped up to the plate. I was a passive Unsolved Mysteries viewer. I never even tried. I kind of feel bad about that.

THEO VON: I used to collect all those 1-800-MISSING cards, the ones that came in the mail.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: And I’d f*ing look at those bitches.

MATT MCCUSKER: That’s good.

THEO VON: I always wanted to find somebody that was missing, or always wanted to find a dead body or something.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, I was just talking to a guy today— I had him on my show— for a living he goes into bank-owned foreclosures, and his job is to assess how bad of a condition it’s in. And he’s multiple times come in to just a dead body. Wow. And he said you just have to give it a respectful nudge, and then you call the cops or whatever, come get it.

THEO VON: You think the first time you nudge, you nudge light, and then after a while you f*ing get a little tough? Like the fourth and fifth time you just give it a—

MATT MCCUSKER: I think you give it two solid, just hard knocks— just two. You have to make sure. Just give it one, and then in case it’s waking up, then no response. Like, yeah, it’s a dead person. I’m in the house with the dead person by myself and I have to call the cops.

THEO VON: Yeah, they must have had a good exterminator. Dude, there you go right there— is that J-Rod the Electrician? Shout out J-Rod the Electrician, dude. If you haven’t followed that guy’s journey, it’s the best. But yeah, having a garden, doing things that build your own life up— they give you purpose, right? That’s the thing. Let me do something with my kids. Let me f*ing look at this dead rat, you know what I’m saying?

MATT MCCUSKER: But let me check out this dead rat’s face.

THEO VON: Let me start a history podcast. Let me learn about journeys that were before me. I think we have to start to create our own senses of purpose. We have to find new ones in our lives.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, man, I totally agree. And it’s like, I’m just weary of the news apparatus and information. Whenever I find myself getting angry, it’s just like I have to ask myself, am I getting pulled into some weird thing? And I try to just stay out of that as much as possible. What can I do? I’ll try to make people laugh if I can, make some vaguely entertaining stuff, and then just try to conduct myself and tend to the stuff around me, because I don’t f*ing know what the hell is going on. I don’t have any idea. I can surmise and guess, and I think I have some idea, but I don’t know.

If someone calls me to ask me to help with a situation, I’ll try to do what I can. But sometimes I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels, or getting kind of worked over a little bit, to where it’s like, man, these guys are in my head right now. And that’s dangerous, man. Especially when you can get collective anger— you can move that stuff around and do things with it. I’m always kind of weary about that.

THEO VON: Yeah. That’s part of the trap too. You start to realize, well, this is part of the trap. They want us to be upset.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah.

THEO VON: There’s a reason why they have all this information out there. So much of it is still under control, and there’s a reason why this little bit got leaked. Yeah, I don’t know. Being alive is interesting, man. I will say it gets more and more interesting.

MATT MCCUSKER: It does. I agree. The older you get, I think it does get more and more interesting for sure. I like getting older. A lot of people are always like, “Oh man, this sucks.” I’m like, bro, I’m excited to be 50, dude. This is going to be awesome.

THEO VON: You just got 40, man.

MATT MCCUSKER: I know, I’m going to be 40. I’m going to chill and be 40. But I don’t have the— I think it’s cool. Something about getting older— everyone— I guess when you start hurting all over, that probably sucks, but I dig it. I like getting older, getting gray. I want to look old as f* as fast as possible. That’s my goal right now.

THEO VON: Really?

MATT MCCUSKER: I’m trying to age max. Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh yeah, that’s f*ing dope, bro.

MATT MCCUSKER: This is a dye job, by the way. I’m jet black normally.

THEO VON: Is it really?

MATT MCCUSKER: No, no, I’m really stressed out. Well, dude, thanks for coming in and chatting with us, bro.

Upcoming Tour Dates and Farewells

THEO VON: Dude, for sure. Thanks. Upcoming dates for Matt McCusker— the Fitzgerald Theater, Hoyt Sherman Place, Des Moines, St. Paul, Phoenix, Tucson. Phoenix and Tucson, man, you guys have to show up. Toronto. Oh, the Elgin’s a cool spot, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Toronto’s been good. I’m happy with Toronto.

THEO VON: And Chicago. Let’s go. That’s my—

MATT MCCUSKER: I’m stoked on that. Dude, thank you for that.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude. Thanks for— and I have to come and do you guys’ show again when I’m back in town.

MATT MCCUSKER: Please do. That’d be awesome.

THEO VON: Next time we have to come and do— we did that one last time with La Mer.

MATT MCCUSKER: It was awesome, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: Blonkies or whatever.

MATT MCCUSKER: Blonkies was great. That might have been an all-time episode for real. That was awesome.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, it’s fun when you sit down. So thank you, bro. I appreciate it.

MATT MCCUSKER: Appreciate it.

THEO VON: Yeah, man. Tell Brittany thanks for inviting me to the party.

MATT MCCUSKER: For sure.

THEO VON: It was a good time.

MATT MCCUSKER: Thanks for coming, dude.

THEO VON: It was great. I’m glad I got to see you and just be there for you. So many people love you. It’s so funny— you’re like the one guy when you say something like, “Oh man,” because people are like, “God, he’s a great guy,” it’s almost like you’re dead. But they say that shit about you while you’re alive. It is kind of fed up. Like, “God, if he were here right now, we would fing— I dug him.”

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, he was a great guy. It’s nice to be getting eulogized just like, “Yeah, he was a great guy.”

THEO VON: When you get living eulogies, dude, I think you’re doing a good job, man. Thanks for all your service to humanity, dude. And Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. And what’s the new history podcast called?

MATT MCCUSKER: It’s just on our Patreon.

THEO VON: Okay.

MATT MCCUSKER: Yeah, that’s just the thing I do on our Patreon. Shane was gone filming, so I had to just read books. I had to rely on cool books. That was kind of a mood. But it was like, I can’t just make up stuff to talk about.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATT MCCUSKER: So yeah, I just had the books. Yeah, man.

THEO VON: Thanks, bro. Thank you for everything, dude. Good to see you, dude.

MATT MCCUSKER: Appreciate it.

THEO VON: Yeah, man.

MATT MCCUSKER: Thank you. These leaves, I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I’ll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones, but it’s going to take a little—

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