How to Laugh When You Have No Idea What You’re Doing with Horse Vet Turned Comedian Matt Evans
How a Horse Vet Became a Stand-Up Comedian and Found Joy in the Journey
What do equine medicine and stand-up comedy have in common? Apparently, more than you’d think.
This week on Laugh or Death, I’m talking with Matt Evans, an equine veterinarian, stand-up comedian, and author of Chomping at the Bit: How I Became a Horse Vet Beyond All Common Sense.
Matt graduated from Texas A&M, practices equine medicine outside Austin, Texas, and performs stand-up around Austin and beyond. He also writes and paints, because apparently being responsible for giant animals that can kick you through a wall wasn’t enough hobbies.
But what I loved about this conversation is that underneath all the horse stories and jokes is something almost everyone can relate to:
That nagging feeling that you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.
Becoming the Expert Before You Feel Like One
Matt wasn’t raised around horses.
Then he became a horse veterinarian.
Which created a small problem: everyone suddenly expected him to know what the hell he was doing.
Matt describes the beginning of his career as a classic fish-out-of-water story. He had the education, but he was also learning the culture, language, and practical realities of being around horses while trying to convince clients that, yes, he was in fact the doctor.
He says he basically had to pretend to be a horse person for the first five years of his career.
That experience became a major theme of his book: imposter syndrome.
And I think there’s something reassuring about hearing someone who is objectively qualified admit that they still wondered whether they belonged.
Because most of us eventually reach a point where the training ends and someone says, “Okay, now go do it.”
And you think: Wait. By myself?
When Something Painful Becomes a Funny Story
One of my favorite parts of our conversation is Matt explaining how humor started changing the way he experienced stressful situations.
During one particularly tense procedure, Matt was worried something had gone wrong with a horse. As he approached the horse to check, an older man watching from his wheelchair yelled:
“What did you do wrong now, Matt?”
Matt wasn't ready to laugh yet.
But he immediately recognized that someday, it would be funny.
He started thinking about telling everyone back at the clinic, and suddenly the moment felt a little different. It wasn't just something stressful happening to him. It was becoming a story he could eventually laugh about and use to connect with other people.
That's an incredibly useful humor skill.
The more often we look back at difficult experiences and find something funny in them, the better we become at recognizing humor while the difficult thing is actually happening.
You don't necessarily have to laugh immediately. Sometimes you just need to recognize:
I'm probably going to laugh about this later.
Veterinary Medicine, Comedy, and Learning How to Learn
Matt has been a veterinarian for more than two decades and doing comedy for years, and we get into which one is actually harder.
His answer?
Comedy.
At least veterinary medicine gives you a fairly obvious path: school, training, mentorship, experience.
Comedy is messier. You need stage time. You need feedback. And sometimes the exact same joke that killed yesterday gets absolutely nothing tonight.
But Matt realized something from learning veterinary medicine, painting, comedy, and writing:
Once you learn how to learn, starting something new becomes less intimidating.
Read. Find mentors. Practice. Get feedback. Repeat.
Eventually you stop looking at someone who's great at something and thinking, I could never do that.
You start seeing the process that got them there.
Maybe Your Life Doesn't Have to Be a Drama
Toward the end of our conversation, Matt says something that really stuck with me.
You don't have to have everything figured out.
The joy is in the journey.
While writing his book, Matt started looking at his life almost like a hero's journey. He'd gone after something, gotten in over his head, struggled, learned, and eventually came out the other side with a story.
And we started talking about what happens when you take that idea one step further.
We're all the main character in our own life.
But that doesn't mean the story has to be a drama.
What if you started viewing your life as a comedy instead?
You're still going to screw up.
You're still going to have moments where you don't know what you're doing.
You're still going to suffer.
But maybe you don't have to treat every mistake like a tragedy.
As Matt put it, “there's a lot of room for love in a comedy.”
Humor Doesn't Make the Hard Stuff Disappear
Veterinary medicine can also be an emotionally demanding profession. Matt talks about anxiety, compassion fatigue, burnout, and the mental-health struggles veterinarians can experience.
Looking back, he realized humor had quietly become one of the tools that helped him through those experiences and through his own imposter syndrome.
Not the answer.
Not a replacement for getting help when you need it.
But a way to get enough distance from a difficult moment to breathe, regain perspective, and keep moving.
And I think that's the bigger lesson in Matt's story.
You don't need to wait until you've mastered your career, figured out your life, or made it through the hard part before you're allowed to enjoy yourself.
Sometimes the joy is happening right in the middle of the mess.
You just have to learn how to notice it.
And occasionally it involves a horse.
Or getting heckled by a woman at a retirement home who yells, “When's the show gonna start?” eight minutes into your set.
Which is difficult to recover from at any age.
Links:
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To learn more about Paul’s work, book him for speaking engagements, or explore the science behind humor and resilience, visit: 👉 https://www.paulosincup.com You can also dive deeper into the tools discussed in this episode in Paul’s book: 👉 The Humor Habit
All Links For Paul: https://stan.store/PaulOsincup
Guest Socials & Website:
Website: mattevanscomic.com Social media: @mattevanscomic
Episode Minute-By-Minute:
00:00 – Meet the Horse Vet Who Became a Comedian
02:00 – The Weirdest Way to Know Summer Is Coming
04:00 – Becoming a Horse Vet “Beyond All Common Sense”
06:00 – When You’re Definitely Not a Horse Person
08:00 – Bald Guys Writing Jokes About Hair
10:00 – The Imposter Syndrome Was Real
12:00 – Learning to Fake It as a Horse Vet
15:00 – Can Horses Tell When You’re Nervous?
17:00 – How Humor Helps in Stressful Moments
18:00 – “What Did You Do Wrong Now, Matt?”
19:00 – The Most Brutal Heckle From a Retirement Home
21:00 – Learning to Laugh Before the Crisis Is Over
23:00 – Colonoscopy Jokes, Obviously
25:00 – The Tiny Trick That Makes a Joke Funnier
26:00 – What’s Harder: Comedy or Veterinary Medicine?
28:00 – Once You Learn How to Learn, Everything Changes
30:00 – The More You Know, the Less You Know
32:00 – Why Getting Good Requires Being Bad for a While
33:00 – Things I Never Needed to Know About Bulls 😂
35:00 – You Don’t Have to Have It All Figured Out
36:00 – What If Your Life Is a Comedy, Not a Drama?
38:00 – Why Veterinarians Need Humor
39:00 – How Comedy Helped Matt Through Imposter Syndrome
41:00 – You Worked Really Hard to Feel This Bad 😂
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