Latest / The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of / Personal Cards and Russia Memories From January 20th, 2026

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Personal Cards and Russia Memories From January 20th, 2026 · The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, I was going through some old papers and
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: trying to organize things, and I came across this carry here.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I want you to take a look at these and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: see if those that brings back a memory to you.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: When I saw them, I was quite Oh, I was
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: quite non plus that I still had them.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I'm surprised you still have them too.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: But their business cards or in I guess business cards
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: is how you would put it in the p personal cards,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: personal cards, and they were given to me, and I
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: think you probably got some too.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I probably did, but I didn't save.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Them by the daughter, and I think it's the mother
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of a family we stayed with in.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: St. Petersburg in Russia.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Well, they're written in Russian.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: How can you tell what they are?
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Well, you can tell.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: On one side it says that one of them is
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: an assistant to the president. I think that's Olga, his
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: assistant to the president. I don't know what president. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: then the other one, uh Natasha is it tat Tatiana
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and it just it's I I don't understand what that
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: is that she's apparently she's but we stayed in uh
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: in their apartment, in their home for four days or so.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: What year was this nineteen eighty six maybe?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So where where was Russia.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: In the in its I think it wasn't ussr No, Yes,
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: it was still still still the Soviet.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It was working toward not what's his name with the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: port Weinstein, Michel.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: He was he was still in the head guy.
• 1:54
  Speaker 5: But he was working on, you know, making making it
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: Russia breaking breaking.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Up the Soviet Union.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: It was, and it was it was moments away from happening.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as I recall, Yeah, and uh, it was a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: remarkable time to be there. As a matter of fact,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I bought, you know, those Russian nesting dolls. I bought
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: one that I think my son, my oldest son has uh.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I bought a traditional one with the just it was
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: like the babushka, the old woman. And there were like
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: seven or eight of them or nine of them. They
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: get smaller and smell. You know what I'm talking about,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Gina when I talk about the nesting dolls. But there
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: was one of the Russian Russian presidents or premiers, and
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I think the big, the main one. The big one
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was Gorbachev and then it went down to Brezhnev, and
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I think the smallest one was Nikita Krushchev, as I recall,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: but they were I thought that was I really liked that.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: I should see if he still has that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: I've got a bunch of buttons pins, you know, with
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: like Lennon's profile on them, and you know, various words
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: and things.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Well, I have on my desk. Here are a bust
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: of Lennon that I bought in Russia.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: Now you stayed in their house, Yeah, that was why?
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Why did you so? So that's how this program worked.
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: It was a tourist program, and it was I think
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: it was Morris Murdoch. It was together and it was
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: a kind of an exchange program where you could go
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: be a tourist there, but you had to live with
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: a family. And so the families they would and they
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: obviously the travel agency would pay the families a certain
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: amount of money to host you. And so we stayed
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: for three days in Saint Petersburg and then three or
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: four days in Moscow.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Was that uncomfortable or it was okay?
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: As I recall, the.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Saint Petersburg house was a little run down.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: It was an apartment, big, big apartment.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: The one in Moscow was we were told that, you know,
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: this is one of the nicer apartments in Moscow, and
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: the and the people that lived there had a fancy VCR.
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: Well with some of the Disney movies. It was you
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: know that that.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Was in a more it was in a modern building.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Did you have a private room?
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think so. Yeah.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: And so the first the place in Saint Petersburg. The mother, Olga,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: was a doctor and the father was a psychiatrist and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: they both worked at the same hospital. And then I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: don't know what the daughter who was the one who
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: really spoke English, Tatiana.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And then also living there was like an eighty year
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: old guy who was their grandfather and he was a
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: former conductor of the Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. Oh cool,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and he was We didn't see him too much, but
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: on our last day in their apartment. So the situation
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: was you would go to stores and there was nothing
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: on the shelves.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: I was gonna ask did they cook for you?
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes they did.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And they they also got me really drunk one night
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: on alcohol that they took from the hospital. It's it's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: it's alcohol that we use to sterilize instruments. And I said,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you probably, I said, is he going to make me
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: go blind. They said, no, no, it's it's it's not
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: It'll be fine, and they would they flavored it with
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: a little bit of like pomegranate juice or something, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: it was just like vodka, really strong vodka. But at
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: any rate, the eighty year old man. So you'd go
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to the stores and there was nothing, and people would
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: line up early in the morning, and because there was
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: nothing later in the day, because they would take it.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: They would buy everything that was available. Yeah, they would
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: just take buy.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So he went out early on the morning that we
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: were to leave and went to a bakery and he
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: stood in line. This is what they told us, and
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: he bought us a going away cake and it was
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a big, beautiful cake.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: And we had I remember we had a cake for dinner.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we went to then we went to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Moscow to the the apartment of that Now she I don't.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Was she in the travel agency or something involved somehow?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think she worked for travel in Russia. And
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: her husband, who was not there, was a it was
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a professor at the university. But he was on he
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: was on some trip and I think he was in America.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: He was on some you know, some some you know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: egghead professor trip. And the interesting thing about their apartment
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: was they had little pictures, religious pictures, and they were
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: kind of just stacked all around.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: But you were supposed to have well, that's yeah, you can.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And I said, what, why why do you have all
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: of these and she said, oh, we we sell them.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: They're they're very they're very sought after in the West,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and we so we collect them and buy them and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: get them and then we sell them. But they you know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: what was really strange about that whole trip too, to
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: me was, as I say, nothing was in the stores.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I mean literally, you'd go into what was a grocery
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: store and there would be a canopies and a potato.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But there were these stores called Barryoshka stores which only
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: foreigners could shop in, and you could go in there
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and get anything, and.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Then would you come out and give it to people?
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Well I didn't. I don't recall I really bought anything there.
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: But that was the trip where two of the girls
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: that we went that we went with that were in
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: our group, and we were told over and over if
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: a local asks you for American dollars, do not give
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: them American dollars.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Against the law.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: We were down in Arbat Street, which is a whole
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: area where there are vendors, you know, lining the streets
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and a lot of artists sell their paintings and things.
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: Like that, and so, you know, we all split up
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: and we went and got stuff, come back and the
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: girls got on the on the bus with us and
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: they said, oh, look, we got this painting that this
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: guy made of Saint Basil's cathedral.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Seemed pretty cool.
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: And then suddenly these guys in black leather jackets get
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: on the bus and started speaking Russian to the to
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: the driver and the driver you know, you girls have
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: to come with us.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Scary what happened? They gave American dollars to the artist
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: and he was the artist.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: They got him too.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: He was in real so they he knows better.
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And so they they took the look at
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: two pretty blondes, you know. So they let him go
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: after a couple of hours.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were We were really worried about them. And
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: they were gone for quite a while, and then they
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: showed up. The two girls showed up again at one
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of our next meeting quinces and they said, oh, they
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: took us to the station and one of them was
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: having a birthday, so we had cake with them in
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: a big party and they were really nice and they
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: just took pictures and we just had a kind of
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a party with him and then they brought us back.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Well what happened to the artists, So he's probably in prison.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, that just triggered these these business cards
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: just triggered all those memories.
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: So