Say hello to the fourth guest of Behind the SEOs!
He is Yosef’s real life friend and Mordy’s Twitter friend, but best of all he is the Chief Growth Officer at Warrior Made. He is a father of two, an outdoorsman who enjoys backpacking, and a history buff just like Mordy. Today we welcome Yuriy Yarovoy to the podcast!
Episode transcription
Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to Behind the SEOs, where we strip away the facade of your favorite search marketers and bring them to life. I am your host Mordy Oberstein:. You might know me as the liaison to the SEO community for Wix. I am joined by…
Yosef Silver: My name is Yosef Silver:. I’m the founder and CEO of Fusion Inbound.
Mordy Oberstein: And today we have a very special guest for you. But before that, you can find the Behind the SEOs podcast at @BehindSEOs on Twitter and of course, BehindTheSEOs.com. And of course, you may subscribe on iTunes and Stitcher and Spotify and wherever great podcasts are found. OK, let’s get right to it. We have a wonderful guest for you. He’s a friend of mine. Yosef, he’s a friend of yours way longer than me. I mean, I barely call him a friend. I’ve known him and crapped on him on Twitter a couple of times. But other than that.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I mean, what else is friendship, really?
Mordy Oberstein: Oh, he’s speaking already, dammit. Ruining this podcast and we barely started. Yosef, I think you should introduce him.
Yosef Silver: Today’s guest we have Yuriy Yarovoy! Yuriy is the Chief Growth Officer at Warrior Made. Yuriy welcome.
Mordy Oberstein: Welcome.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Howdy.
Yosef Silver: You’re allowed to talk now.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’m allowed to talk.
Mordy Oberstein: You were always allowed to talk, but you know.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, but I mean, like who can interrupt Mordy’s like announcer voice you. I know. I don’t want to get in the middle of that.
Mordy Oberstein: I wish. I wish I had another career as like a baseball announcer or something like that.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. Like it would probably be for the Mets.
Mordy Oberstein: We’re going to get. Well, we’re going to get to this, we will know.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That’s the justice in life. Right. Like you, you make it all the way. You become an announcer. But the Mets are the only people that hire you.
Mordy Oberstein: Could be worse. Could be the Pirates, anyway.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It could be the Pirates.
Mordy Oberstein: Because I’m telling you, like my Uncle is a Pirates fan, brutal. Yosef is like, what? Baseball? Americans.
Yosef Silver: There is a part of every podcast where I’m reminded that I did not grow up in this country every single time.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s kind of early.
Yosef Silver: It has come early.
Mordy Oberstein: I think in every podcast I’ve either made fun of tea and/or the queen.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Don’t make fun of the queen, she’s a sweet old lady.
Yosef Silver: She is a sweet old lady.
Mordy Oberstein: Wait, have you seen the crown. Yosef.
Yosef Silver: You know, she has immense responsibility.
Yuriy Yarovoy: She has zero responsibility. Other than being the largest landowner in the UK. She has no actual power.
Mordy Oberstein: Here comes the American right. What’s there? What are they for? They do nothing.
Yosef Silver: She can authorize. She’s the only one that can declare war.
Mordy Oberstein: Really?
Yosef Silver: She opens and closes Parliament and she owns a lot of land.
Mordy Oberstein: Doesn’t seem right.
Yosef Silver: And her family is like a lot of drama. If you’ve seen the crown, like there’s a lot to deal with.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yes, but this documentary, that’s fictionalized on Netflix.
Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love it.
Yosef Silver: I wonder if she watches it.
Mordy Oberstein: You know, they’re watching it. Come on. They’re sitting around.
Yuriy Yarovoy: How old is? How old is Queen Elizabeth?
Mordy Oberstein: Four hundred and twenty-seven.
Yosef Silver: Ninety-one, ninety-two?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Good for her man.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah.
Yosef Silver: I think the Queen Mother died at one hundred and three.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Those are some good genes. You know arranged marriages for land and power have clearly yielded good genes.
Yosef Silver: She is ninety-four, not ninety-three.
Yuriy Yarovoy: She’s ninety-four.
Yosef Silver: I didn’t realize that my grandmother was so close in age to the queen. My grandmother is ninety-one, so.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Is there like a knitting club that they can all join and?
Yosef Silver: Yeah.
Yuriy Yarovoy: So what are we doing here? Are we just going to talk about the queen or like?
Mordy Oberstein: We could, we could.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I mean, I’m fine with it. You know.
Mordy Oberstein: We would have alienated our entire UK audience. But yeah.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I mean, I’m fine demonstrating my ignorance about the monarchy.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. But while I’m ignorant, I have very strong opinions about it.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That’s what being American is. Although you no longer live in the US.
Mordy Oberstein: Hey, that’s true. But I’m still very American. I’m the most American man in Israel.
Yosef Silver: I’ve been Wikipedia-ing while you’ve been bantering and the Queen Mother died at the age of one hundred and one.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s impressive.
Yosef Silver: Yeah, she died, I think it was on Passover. I remember finding out that she died.
Mordy Oberstein: Was that on purpose?
Yosef Silver: Did she die on purpose? She has the best health care in the country. I doubt it.
Mordy Oberstein: Joking. We were just talking about Yuriy.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Death is a choice Mordy death is a choice. It is sometimes, in a way.
Yosef Silver: Yuriy should we talk about you or?
Yuriy Yarovoy: This is starting to take a dark turn.
Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I really don’t want to go here. OK, so Yuriy tell us about your life. Best interview question ever.
Yosef Silver: No, one thing that I like about having you on the podcast is you have a lot in common with some of our previous guests. You, Heather, Lily. You like the outdoors, you like being one with nature. And I think you’re our first West Coast guest. So I would like to dive into a little bit of that. But you were not always from Santa Cruz, right?
Yuriy Yarovoy: I am not.
Yosef Silver: It’s your new home.
Yuriy Yarovoy: From Philadelphia by way of Kyiv, Ukraine.
Mordy Oberstein: Philly.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Philly. Yeah, my wife and I got tired of winter, so we decided to leave that behind. Look, we live in a time of, like we live in the most location, independent time of any generation at any point. Right. Like outside of maybe like nomadic humans, early on. We have a choice of where to live. At least, like it’s a very privileged opinion, clearly. But I didn’t have to stay in Philadelphia my entire life. There’s this wonderful book, Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, and he has a co-author that I always forget, but like they did a study of like where did people find love? In the 1920s they looked at Philadelphia and something like 80% of people married, someone like from Philadelphia. Or it was like, no, it wasn’t, I’m making these up. But it was like, it was like some massive percentage of people married someone within a two-block radius. And like another large percentage of people married someone from their building. Right. Like we’ve, we’ve expanded like we have the opportunity to travel. We have the opportunity to move. You don’t have to stay in one place. So, like, if I don’t want winter, I’m getting the hell out of winter.
Mordy Oberstein: Like okay, so I don’t live in winter either anymore. That’s terrible English, but I haven’t had a real winter in a long time.
Yosef Silver: I don’t live in winter?
Mordy Oberstein: I don’t live in winter anymore.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s the choice of snow, really.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s the thing, right? But I sometimes miss the snow.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, I look, I can drive to Tahoe, look at all the snow. Bound around in the snow, pick it up, throw it in the air and get the hell back in my car and drive the hell away.
Yosef Silver: As long as your neighborhood isn’t on fire. I reckon.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That is true. Yeah, but get this.
Yosef Silver: I think I’d rather have now than fire.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Fire and snow don’t get along, right. So if there’s fire, there’s definitely not going to be snow.
Yosef Silver: I think I’d rather have snow.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Snow, like, I love snow for the first day in the city because it’s beautiful, it’s glistening, everything’s quiet. Right. And then it gets gross very quickly. Atleast in Philadelphia. It freezes, black ice, it gets like gray slushy grossness, like people walk through it. It’s just like it’s no longer charming.
Mordy Oberstein: Isn’t that how Philly always is?
Yuriy Yarovoy: No, it gets worse with snow.
Mordy Oberstein: OK.
Yosef Silver: I’ve never been to Philly.
Mordy Oberstein: Philly’s actually not bad.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, it’s a great city.
Mordy Oberstein: I always crap on it, but.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, well you crap mostly from a sports perspective. It’s a great city.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, it’s really nice. I mean I actually spent a summer there at Temple. I did this Teach for America program. Yeah. So they threw me at Temple to be my teacher training for two months. That was interesting. That was not the best part of town, but.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Eh, it’s gotten better.
Mordy Oberstein: Has it? That’s good.
Yuriy Yarovoy: North Philly has gotten much better. I mean, especially since I’ve been gone, just like my friends that live there, like they’re not only I mean, I’m not saying that, like, home prices are a direct indicator of like how much better that neighborhood got. But just like there’s restaurants that have opened and it’s become much more walkable. Yeah, it used to be a very unpleasant part of the city for safety reasons.
Mordy Oberstein: You know, when I was there, the campus security were carrying rifles. I’m like, alright. This is interesting. I’ve never seen that before.
Yuriy Yarovoy: You live in Israel dude.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Oh, that was before I lived here. I was from New York. And I, I thought I, I’ve seen it all. I’m from New York. Then I went to Philly.
Yosef Silver: You don’t see that many guns and rifles. Like if a soldier got on a bus or something to like, go home, they’d have a gun on them, but like.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It was more like when you’re at like the shook and like you’ll randomly see like a patrol walk by or like you’re walking into a store and you have to go through metal detectors. There’s just like the constant reminder of like, security theater. Right.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. It is theater, which is interesting. But that’s a whole different conversation.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’m not knocking it, right. But like it’s more like, it’s theater for theater purpose. Right. Like the more you see it, the more, one: it puts your mind at ease into it. And two: Any bad actor sees that as a potential deterrence, although like if you’re really motivated that ain’t going to stop you.
Mordy Oberstein: Nothing says security like a nineteen-year-old with an assault rifle.
Yosef Silver: Mostly, every time I get on a bus in Israel, I clearly fit some sort of profile because like, I get on a plane, train, go into malls and they just let me through. Every time I get on a bus, they stop me.
Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? So I do a thing like I don’t want to talk about this, like, too much because this is not about Yuri. So the way this works, the Hebrew accent, I would say is like if you speak French, you probably have a very good Hebrew accent.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s nasally.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. The American accent in Hebrew is literally like you speak like you’re Gomer Pyle. Like you sound like an idiot automatically. It’s true. You know, like I’ll go to the airport. I mean, you drive the airport. They’re really tight on security before you even get to any of the terminals. Like right when you get to the airport and they make you roll down the window. And I just like, in my thickest American-Hebrew accent I possibly can, “Shalom.” And they’re always like, go, go get the hell out of here.
Yuriy Yarovoy: They’re like, I don’t have time for this.
Mordy Oberstein: Stupid American.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That’s great.
Mordy Oberstein: It’s awesome. So wait, do you go back to Philly? Do you have fans? Fans. We’ll get to the fan thing, you see what’s on my mind.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I have many fans in Philadelphia, they all happen to be friends and family, but you know.
Mordy Oberstein: I meant, do you still have friends and family in Philly, do you go back?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, we don’t have any family in Santa Cruz, which makes having two kids difficult.
Yosef Silver: Congratulations on the second kid.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you just had a second kid. That’s awesome.
Yosef Silver: How is that adaptation going? Are you sleeping?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, yeah, she’s starting to sleep better and that means Sarah’s learning to sleep better, which means I’m starting to sleep better. Two’s hard. Two is really hard.
Mordy Oberstein: Tell me about it.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Like, I almost don’t want. I want to skip to the point where she could sit up on her own, like at that point, like usually, the baby is a little more reasonable.
Mordy Oberstein: Children are never reasonable.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I think that’s the hardest thing with like, you can’t reason with a baby.
Yosef Silver: I don’t know what you’re looking forward to but I can’t reason with my ten-year-old.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Like, I would argue that like reasoning with a two and a half-year-old. It’s hard, right? But at least there’s like some logic that you can play with to kind of get them to agree or disagree or whatever. Right. But with a baby, it’s just like it’s like talking at a wall like there’s not much you can do other than, like, balance and “shh shh shh.”
Mordy Oberstein: Wait, but with like with a baby, like you don’t like where they are or what they’re doing, you just literally pick them up and move them.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That is, yes that is a perk. It was arguably like the best time to travel. Like when Sawyer, my son was. Like I went to MozCon, he was like eight weeks old. Like we flew three times with him before he was three months old like we traveled a lot with him. He probably has more frequent flyer miles. He’s probably been on more flights before the age of three than I had been up until like age 15.
Yosef Silver: That’s awesome.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah.
Mordy Oberstein: Babies are not bad.
Yosef Silver: This year travel isn’t a big part of 2020. But are you. Like I know you live in a beautiful part of the country. You have like beach, you have forest. You have all of it. I mean you have everything and clearly no snow. Have you taken the baby out, like are you bike riding and hiking, all that stuff with the baby yet? Is she still too young?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Not yet. The birth was a little difficult on Sarah. So she’s just getting to a point where she can be a little more active. So looking forward to that. I think that’s also contributed to the kind of like the difficulty of things.
Yosef Silver: I have this image of, like you and your family backpacking in the woods for like four days with everything you need on your back.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’m looking forward to that. Like, come hell or high water I’m definitely taking Sawyer camping, at least camping. I don’t know if backpacking is in his cards at the ripe old age of three just yet. It’s like, I don’t want to carry him. So like I want to go somewhere where he can get around on his own.
Yosef Silver: Where his image will align with the goal of the hike.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, yeah. But I definitely want to take him like this summer. I think I know where I’m going to go, but yeah.
Yosef Silver: What was the trail you did recently, it was outdoors? You said it was like a really intense two or three day, almost killed you, kind of hike.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, we went up to this place called Hyatt Lake in Emigrant Wilderness. So like my buddy wanted to do a really hard hike. He had never been backpacking at all, ever. I was like, oh, OK. Sure.
Yosef Silver: So you broke him in easy?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Huh?
Yosef Silver: So you broke him in easy?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, Sort of. So we went to this place called Hyatt Lake and there’s no trail to it. So you go cross country. And he had a hard time adjusting to using a map and listening to directions. Like, not like me giving directions but like directions of like where to go, like navigational directions. He thought it was like just walk straight. But in reality you use waypoints and you get to a place and then you turn or whatever. Right? Like we have a map and compass and all that. It was just, it was very difficult. The terrain was very difficult. There’s a ton of brush. And there’s only one place to get water. And like, he had blown right past it. So I was like, oh, I got to catch up to him. And by the time we got to the top of the, like on the other side of the valley, I’m like I’m pretty sure I had, like, severe heat exhaustion. Not quite heat stroke, but I slept in the shade on top of this pass for like three hours. Like, you know, this is a good kind of just going through my head. He apologized the next day. Like, once we got to camp, he apologized profusely the next morning. He’s like, I did not expect that to kick my ass like that. But it was, it was good because, like, he’s very, very in shape. And I definitely went, like, off the couch, like straight-up dad bod, which contributed to my condition. Yeah. But like, together we made one really good hiker because, like, psychologically I was like strong, but like, psychologically he was very weak, whereas like physically I like crumbled. Like I mean, the hike was fine. It’s just like I got seriously wrecked because of no water and it was very hot.
Mordy Oberstein: And dad bod.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. Whereas he, he was fine, like physically, just emotionally wrecked. So, you know, like it’s always bad when both people fall apart one way or another, like, you know, this way, like we could kind of like keep each other going, which was helpful. But yeah, the ego in me says, like, this is only a six-mile hike one way, which is hilarious because, I’ve done like 30 miles in, like, rough terrain, but like on trail, you know, it’s a very hard day, but it’s fine. This was like the hardest miles I’ve ever done anywhere ever in my life and yeah, humbling experience.
Mordy Oberstein: I used to hike a lot. I mean, we’re talking a long time ago already, but I felt like so you can have like a really, really hard trail and it can be really, really long. But for me, it always depended on the day like today. If today was a good day. It didn’t matter. I could do 40 miles. Or it could be the easiest, stupidest hike and just if it’s the wrong day, it is the wrong day.
Yosef Silver: Is there a correlation between the wrong day and hangover?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Man, I can’t even imagine just hungover. Like that day plus hangover, like I probably wouldn’t have made it. What I like about backpacking is, like it kills your ego. And what I mean by that is there’s only one way to go. And that’s like ahead, right? No one’s going to carry your crap for you like you’re in this. The only way you’re getting out is if you get yourself out. Right. So it like forces you to kind of just like put all of your shit aside and just put one foot in front of the other and just do it, right. And I think, like very few instances in life force you into that corner where you have to, like, fight out of that corner. And I like doing that. Like it’s motivating.
Mordy Oberstein: I feel like that with binge-watching. Like if I need to, I can plow through this.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Totally the same exact thing.
Mordy Oberstein: Right? It’s just one episode at a time. I can do this. I can get through this. I will nail this. I will watch the entire season in one sitting.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Exactly like that yes.
Mordy Oberstein: I just want to make sure I understand like, I got right.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yes.
Mordy Oberstein: I would have made a great Marine.
Yuriy Yarovoy: 100 percent. Yeah. Yes. There’s an entire branch of the military.
Yosef Silver: Binge-watching.
Mordy Oberstein: Binge-watching.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yes, Netflix Warriors, they call them.
Mordy Oberstein: Better than mopping floors. My brother, by the way, my brother’s in the Army. I don’t know. He’s stationed somewhere in Tacoma or something like that. So he said yeah, I’m in some chemical unit division where they use all these like fancy words they use in the army for describing things. You think about it, like, you know, like chemical division. You’re talking about mixing this and all that. Like dude do you mop floors with the chemicals in Mr. Clean, is that what’s going on here?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Just like a fancy rebranding for just the janitorial staff?
Mordy Oberstein: Basically, but yeah, the military. Wait, how long have we been going for? No one’s been timing this. I feel like I should have been timing this.
Yuriy Yarovoy: 11:33 my time, so.
Yosef Silver: It took about forty five minutes for your microphone to work.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I vote you buy a normal mic.
Mordy Oberstein: This is a high quality mic.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’m not doubting that, I’m just saying.
Mordy Oberstein: Wait, let me ask you a question. I’ll stop you right there. What is not normal about it.
Yosef Silver: We don’t hear the sound.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yes.
Mordy Oberstein: That was Zoom. I don’t know what it is like. That’s Zoom.
Yuriy Yarovoy: What’s not normal about it is the function or lack thereof.
Mordy Oberstein: I have podcasted many moons with this microphone. I blame your Zoom link to be honest with you.
Yuriy Yarovoy: What?
Mordy Oberstein: I will just say.
Yuriy Yarovoy: You can’t turntables.
Mordy Oberstein: No, it’s 2020. I’ve seen what’s going on in America. I can say whatever I want without any backup whatsoever.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Fair. Fair.
Mordy Oberstein: Right.
Yosef Silver: But if you’re using the mic we can’t hear you.
Mordy Oberstein: Wait a second, let me just, let me just wipe away the hair dye that’s dripping down the side of my face while I’m talking. By the way, are we allowed to talk about this on this podcast? Alright. Left, right, center, up, down, whatever you are. Rudy Giuliani has to be the biggest freak of nature I’ve ever seen. Like, where did he come from? Because I remember he was mayor of New York City when I grew up. He was the mayor of New York City. And I don’t remember, like, you know, I wasn’t old enough to understand the politics of was he good? Was he bad? But he seemed like a normal, you know, like a regular politician. Mayor. You saw him at the Yankee games and then he disappears for twenty years and then he reemerges and this is him. What happened in that span of time?
Yosef Silver: I was wondering that, because, again, I mean, I wasn’t in the states or New York and I was like, hang on, was he a good mayor? Like, I feel like he was liked as a man. I don’t remember.
Mordy Oberstein: I mean, he was America’s mayor after 9/11. Like, I’m sorry. I mean, like, I was definitely not old enough to remember the politics. But I very much remember him on Saturday Night Live. I remember, if you’ve watched the World Series when the Yankees were in it in the 90s all the time he was sitting front row. He was a regular politician. Agree or disagree with him. But now like something tragic happened to him or something, I feel like.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I think he got caught doing something and it’s so compromising that now he’s on the hook for something. That’s my personal theory.
Mordy Oberstein: Who knows. Right.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Or he was just always like that. But, you know he wanted to be a successful politician. That’s no longer the pressure that he’s under. He can do whatever he wants.
Mordy Oberstein: He’s like hey, I’m just going to do me from now on.
Yosef Silver: I hesitate to say this because I want to stay away from politics, but I do think the last four years have eroded a sense of tradition and decorum that used to be in politics.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That, that I agree with. I don’t think that, that is necessarily like a controversial statement. I think, it’s interesting. And we can move away from politics after this. There’s like almost like a sense of honor that existed. Right. Like you did the right thing, regardless of whether it like, it may not benefit you directly, but it’s still the right thing to do. So you do it. It was like the utilitarian good, like that used to be a thing that existed in politics. Right. And sometimes you did that for leverage down the road for other things that may benefit you. It could be strategic, point is you still did it, right. Like that no longer exists. And I think that erosion is not only bad, it’s toxic. Right. It has like a compounding effect on society. Negative, compounding negative effect on society, personal opinion, anywho.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s profound, with that.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I went to school for History and Political Science, like I can talk about this all day.
Mordy Oberstein: I love history. I’m a history buff. My undergrad was history. OK, how did we not talk about this, this whole time? Oh my God. OK, anyway.
Yosef Silver: Because you’re mic was broken.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Right, you were actually talking about it. We just couldn’t hear.
Mordy Oberstein: I was expounding upon the strategic difference of Vietnam and World War II. You missed the whole lecture anyway, from a serious topic like that to some rapid fire questions that we have. So these are basically, for those of you first time listening, these are random out of left field kind of questions. Some of them are completely insane. Those are the ones I came up with and some of them are just kind of funny and cute. Those are the ones that Yosef came up with.
Yuriy Yarovoy: So it’s just like normal questions for you, Mordy.
Mordy Oberstein: For me. Yeah, like totally normal questions.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Nothing changes.
Mordy Oberstein: Nothing changed, nothing changed. Yosef, you should kick it off with the first one I think.
Yosef Silver: OK, just answer with the first thing that comes to your head. Don’t overthink it. This is our Rapid Fire Question round
Yuriy Yarovoy: Alright.
Yosef Silver: OK, East Coast or West Coast?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Best coast. West Coast.
Mordy Oberstein: Mets or Yankees?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Mets. Because I know that it hurts you.
Mordy Oberstein: Jets or Giants.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Jets, because I know that hurts.
Mordy Oberstein: No, I’m a Steelers fan now. You lose.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Oh yeah, totally. I’ll go with Joe Namath.
Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I love Joe Namath. Sexiest man ever.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I just like his fur coat. He wore a fur coat well.
Mordy Oberstein: He wore it well, and he still wears it well, which is amazing.
Yosef Silver: You know, you need to wear a fur coat well?
Yuriy Yarovoy: What?
Yosef Silver: Snow and winter?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. I mean, I have no desire to wear a fur coat, I’m just commenting on Joe Namath’s swag.
Mordy Oberstein: Broadway Joe. OK, Rangers or Islanders?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Islanders. Mainly because I’m a Flyers fan. So like saying Rangers is just gross.
Mordy Oberstein: By the way, in case you haven’t realized what’s going on here. I am asking Yuriy to pick between two New York teams because I know how painful it is for him to choose anything New York when it comes to sports.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Like the food’s good.
Mordy Oberstein: The food is good. OK.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Did you know Philadelphia Cream Cheese is actually a New York brand?
Mordy Oberstein: Is it really?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. Do you want to know the history?
Mordy Oberstein: Yes, so wait, why do you know this?
Yuriy Yarovoy: I don’t know. I know a lot of random crap.
Yosef Silver: That’s a weird question. Why do you know something?
Mordy Oberstein: No, like why do you know. Do you know the history of Keibler.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Like the elves? No, I don’t.
Yosef Silver: It’s a Philly related fact.
Yuriy Yarovoy: But so real quick, the Philadelphia thing. Turn of the century, Philadelphia was a crossroads for like a lot of like high quality food importing. Like importers, across the country and internationally. So the best food, whether it was imported or originated but came from Philadelphia. Philadelphia was synonymous with quality. The schmoes in New York were like, how do we sell this? Let’s call it Philadelphia cream cheese, because that’s quality.
Mordy Oberstein: That’s interesting. My, how times have changed. OK, so my favorite question of all these burn a dumpster or throw a battery.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Oh, that’s not a rapid fire. I have to reason this out. It’s 2020, I say burn a dumpster.
Mordy Oberstein: Burn a dumpster. OK. So quick history on this. Philly fans, when they win or lose, they burn things. They burn the city down, which is amazing.
Yuriy Yarovoy: We don’t always burn things.
Yosef Silver: When they win or lose?
Mordy Oberstein: Yes, when they won the Super Bowl, they destroyed the city.
Yuriy Yarovoy: You can’t make us happy.
Yosef Silver: It was just an expression of emotion.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yes.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. But usually, you’re like yay, let’s go get drunk. They’re like, hey, let’s go burn stuff down. And they have a knack of throwing batteries at sports games.
Yuriy Yarovoy: By the way, New York also has a history.
Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yeah. We threw batteries at Kirby Puckett.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Y’all aren’t innocent.
Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no, I’m not. Hey, hey. OK, it’s my last one then I’ll hand it back to Yosef. Lindsay Lohan or Lindsay Graham?
Yuriy Yarovoy: I mean, what? Parent Trap. How do you not like the parent trap?
Mordy Oberstein: At least there’s something to like. That’s true.
Yuriy Yarovoy: No Lohan, all day. If you want the serious answer, yeah, 100 percent.
Mordy Oberstein: OK, good, fine. No, it’s a serious question. Of course I want a serious answer.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Life or death.
Mordy Oberstein: OK, Yosef you it take away.
Yosef Silver: Domain authority or meta descriptions?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Wait, oh we’re like being topical now? Meta descriptions.
Yosef Silver: Suck it up or cry like a baby?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Suck it up.
Mordy Oberstein: A stiff upper lip. The Englishman likes it.
Yosef Silver: He does. That’s why we’re friends. Eat to live or live to eat.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Depends on the day. I can’t commit to one or the other. I’ll ride the fence on that one.
Mordy Oberstein: I’ll take this one. Born in the USA or Born on the Bayou?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Bayou. Come on.
Mordy Oberstein: Much better song. I agree. Creedence.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. I’m not really a Springsteen fan, I got to say.
Mordy Oberstein: Me neither. I went to his concert at Giant’s stadium, I don’t know like twenty years ago.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I hear he puts on a really good show.
Mordy Oberstein: One of the worst concerts.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Oh really. I heard he puts on a pretty good show.
Mordy Oberstein: No, it was a great show. Just like I don’t know. It doesn’t do it for me. It’s heretical. OK, Yosef back to you.
Yosef Silver: Monorail or subway?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Monorail or subway? Subway. But can we go back, like CCR is just like a fantastic band in general. I just want to say.
Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Unbelievable.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Like, if you have any other questions, like compare CCR to another band? It’s probably CCR.
Mordy Oberstein: Do you like Fogerty on his own?
Yuriy Yarovoy: I got to say, I’ll be honest, I don’t really know a lot of the stuff that he put out.
Mordy Oberstein: If you heard it. There’s a couple.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’m sure I’ve heard it like, oh, I didn’t realize that it was a solo act. But he has a very distinct voice, which I love. I love his voice.
Mordy Oberstein: And he got sued for his own song. He did. He did.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. I don’t really know the history of the drama, like of the falling out.
Mordy Oberstein: I think there was something like he put out a song by himself and I think was on another record label and then the original record label for CCR sued him for stealing his own music. Something like that. Like such a crazy thing.
Yuriy Yarovoy: That’s funny. The record industry’s screwed up.
Mordy Oberstein: Unbelievable. OK, what’s the next Yosef?
Yosef Silver: John Oliver or John Mulaney?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Oliver.
Yosef Silver: Really?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Really? Who chooses Mulaney.
Yosef Silver: I think he’s funny.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Well, I’m not saying he’s not funny. It’s like average funny.
Yosef Silver: John Oliver irks me.
Yuriy Yarovoy: John Oliver is just like over the top.
Yosef Silver: He irritates me so much.
Mordy Oberstein: Where’s the loyalty?
Yuriy Yarovoy: He’s a fellow countryman.
Mordy Oberstein: Where’s the loyalty?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. Come on.
Mordy Oberstein: Come on.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I love his directness. Right. Mulaney like dances around with like punch lines. Like, I like the comedy that has no punch line. It’s just like the entire story is great. John Oliver is very good at delivering, whereas like comics. I don’t like, comics that like setup for punch lines. Chappelle was a very good comic that doesn’t do that right. He just tells a story, and like the story’s absurd and you’re like this is hilarious.
Mordy Oberstein: Love Chappelle. By the way, Oliver’s metaphorical humor. Like when you watch his TV show and he’ll throw up an image and you catch the connection to what he’s saying and the image. Brilliant. It is absolutely brilliant. High level, high intelligence comedy. That’s why Yosef, OK. Now it makes sense.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I like that Oliver commits one hundred percent to the joke.
Mordy Oberstein: Right.
Yosef Silver: I’ll give you that. That I will give you.
Mordy Oberstein: OK, let’s wrap this up quickly, what else we got?
Yosef Silver: Budapest or Bangkok?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Say that again?
Yosef Silver: Budapest or Bangkok?
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’ve never been to Budapest, so I’ll say Bangkok.
Yosef Silver: And final question. Dumplings or sushi?
Yuriy Yarovoy: Dumplings, easily. But like real dumplings. I’m sorry, like I love Dupling Czar. I know, like this is where we bonded Yosef, but like.
Yosef Silver: Those are ritual.
Yuriy Yarovoy: There are so many better dumplings out there.
Yosef Silver: Fair enough.
Yuriy Yarovoy: We should go to Din Tai Fung next time we’re in Seattle.
Yosef Silver: We should go anywhere, next time we can go to Seattle. We should just go to Seattle, when we can go to Seattle.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’ll take that. Yeah, I’ll start with that. But I’m just saying like Din Tai Fung, it’s Americanized. I mean, it’s pretty good, it’s traditional but they’re good. There’s so much better. But they’re also like, keep in mind that the dumplings that you have at Dumplings Czar and dumplings that you have like, like a Taiwanese restaurant or like a Chinese restaurant. Very different and meant to be eaten differently, anywho, we could talk about dumpling for a while.
Mordy Oberstein: I’m glad we settled.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Sorry, Mordy you’re excluded from this conversation.
Mordy Oberstein: No, that’s fine. That’s fine.
Yosef Silver: In every episode we have this moment where I know nothing about what’s going on because it’s about American culture or history or music or…
Mordy Oberstein: Or America in general.
Yosef Silver: I’ve lived here ten years.
Mordy Oberstein: I’m joking.
Yosef Silver: When did you leave the country?
Mordy Oberstein: I don’t know. Seven years ago.
Yosef Silver: There you go. So we swapped. And then there were moments where we talk about British things and Mordy is rolling his eyes.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. Like, I thought when you said your cream in the jelly thing, you’re dumping jelly into milk.
Yosef Silver: I can’t have this conversation again.
Mordy Oberstein: We’re going to end on this. We’re going to end it.
Yuriy Yarovoy: No, no I need to understand this.
Mordy Oberstein: OK, so, you know, the Brits have this thing of cream and jam
Yosef Silver: On a scone. You have your cream and then you put jam on top.
Yuriy Yarovoy: What is the cream?
Mordy Oberstein: See to an American, cream is milk.
Yosef Silver: No, it’s not milk.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Like cream cheese?
Mordy Oberstein: Right, it’s cream cheese.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s cream cheese and jam?
Yosef Silver: It’s not cream cheese.
Mordy Oberstein: It’s whatever, what is it?
Yuriy Yarovoy: What is it, like yogurt?
Yosef Silver: Meet me in London and I’ll show you. It’s whipped cream. It’s like whipped cream. It’s not even whipped cream. It’s just like a thick cream, cream.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s a dessert cream.
Yosef Silver: Yeah, it’s like very whipped, thick.
Mordy Oberstein: Like whipped cream, whipped cream. Miracle Whip. It’s freaking Miracle Whip.
Yosef Silver: No, it’s not Miracle Whip. It’s made from real animal product. It’s not vegan. It’s not chemical. I imagine and I’m no baker, at all. I’d imagine if you are making your own butter from scratch, I would imagine it’s somewhere in that process before it turns to butter and separates. It’s going to solidify.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Is it like clotted cream or like clotted milk? Like there’s like a thing?
Yosef Silver: It’s probably. Yeah, like clotted cream.
Mordy Oberstein: Why is this so complicated? Is it butter, is it Miracle Whip.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah, but like the Brits also do the thing where like crisps are potato chips.
Yosef Silver: That’s just a different word.
Yuriy Yarovoy: And like fries are not, like it’s just wrong.
Mordy Oberstein: But like why is this so hard to understand, like cream. The point of the story is, OK, is that when you say cream to an American, you mean milk. Like how do you take your coffee? Cream and sugar.
Yosef Silver: I’ve never understood what the cream thing is that you guys call.
Mordy Oberstein: Because the top. You skim the cream off the top of the milk.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Yeah. What would you call that, by the way? Like if I, if I want to add cream and sugar in my coffee, how would you order that in like London.
Yosef Silver: I drink my coffee black. I don’t drink coffee, but when I did I drank it black.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I too drink my coffee black, usually.
Yosef Silver: Then I can’t answer that question.
Mordy Oberstein: So the moral of story is when he’s talking about first you put the jelly onto the cream. Like, why are you guys dumping jelly into milk? Like I don’t understand. What’s going on here?
Yosef Silver: It’s jam, not jelly. It’s a preserve.
Mordy Oberstein: I know I do that on purpose. I do that on purpose.
Yosef Silver: I’m quitting the podcast.
Mordy Oberstein: Jelly.
Yosef Silver: You win.
Yuriy Yarovoy: But those are actually different things. right? Like jam, jelly and…
Mordy Oberstein: Preserves.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Preserve, right. They’re like various levels of like being strained. Right.
Yosef Silver: Well like a marmalade would be a preserve.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Well, like preserves have all the fruit, jam has like pieces of fruit, like jelly has no fruit in it. Like actual remnant fruit.
Yosef Silver: I feel like in England that jam with bits and jam without bits.
Mordy Oberstein: This, this is going too far. We’re going to end this year.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Listen, I mean I’m going to, I’m sorry to all of your listeners, but I’m going to say the thing that everybody understands is like the English aren’t really known for their food. Like, the best food in England is like Indian or Pakistani or Turkish. And it’s really, really good. Like, you know.
Mordy Oberstein: You don’t like oxtails, dude?
Yosef Silver: Can we edit the ending to like ninety seconds ago?
Mordy Oberstein: No, no this is perfect.
Yuriy Yarovoy: It’s like the British Empire extended far and they imported a ton of fantastic food. And because of that they kind of outsourced the food quality, like they never actually learned how to cook themselves.
Yosef Silver: No, I think home cooking in the UK is much larger than it is in the US.
Yuriy Yarovoy: I’m clearly joking? Every one of your British listeners please understand that this is a joke meant to get under Yosef’s skin.
Mordy Oberstein: Right? This whole thing is about getting under Yosef’s skin.
Yosef Silver: When you say this whole thing, do you mean the segment or the whole podcast?
Mordy Oberstein: No, the whole podcast
Yuriy Yarovoy: The whole podcast, yeah.
Yosef Silver: Now I understand.
Yuriy Yarovoy: This is what happens when you play phone tag with me. I would have gotten all of this out on the phone, had either of us picked up when the other called them.
Yosef Silver: I mean, we’ve been trying to speak since like you know 2018 at this rate.
Mordy Oberstein: OK, fellers, we got to wrap this up. We’re like way over. Like we want to make this twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes and now we’re at like an hour.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Well, your microphone problems.
Mordy Oberstein: That. No recording time buddy. Recording time.
Yosef Silver: Thank you for joining us.
Mordy Oberstein: What he said, thank you for joining us. I was going to do the whole.
Yuriy Yarovoy: Quick wrap it up. Wrap it up.
Mordy Oberstein: Right. Thank you so much for joining us. Don’t forget to tune in to the next episode of Behind the SEOs. You can subscribe at behindtheSEOs.com. Check us out at behindtheSEOs.com and on Twitter at @behindSEOs. And of course, subscribe on iTunes, on Stitcher, on Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast material. Thank you so much for listening.