Tim Dillon: Sometimes Joe Rogan goes, "All you have to do is eat the mariuetta bones and go in a tank." And I go, "I can't. I can't do that. I'm just trying to not eat pancakes at night."

Ron Bennington: But I have the mariuletta bones. You would love it. It's really delicious.

Tim Dillon: My goal is if I can just not eat breakfast foods at night, that's a huge step for me.

Ron Bennington: If you cut out cereal as an adult, you've waited too long.

Announcer: Portcast is recorded during Ron Bennington's cancer treatment. Abrupt cuts or visual changes may be necessary to protect the privacy of patients and staff. And now, forecast with Ron Bennington 

Ron Bennington: This feels like a fever dream, seeing Tim Dillon in a cancer ward.

Tim Dillon: Well, you know what it is? There's not one person here who doesn't think I'm a patient. There's not one person here when I walked in who goes, "Why are you here?" Everyone said, "Yeah, of course." I walked in immediately and they looked at me and they were like, "Right." So I mean, if we could get a group rate on this -

Ron Bennington: Yeah, this is definitely a foreshadowing of your life.

Tim Dillon: Let me tell you right now, not only is it a foreshadowing, it's probably-- I'll be here in a few months. So it's like, let's just start now. It's somewhere in me. Let's just get it in now.

Ron Bennington: Are you a guy who goes and does the checkups?

Tim Dillon: I do the checkups.

Ron Bennington: You do?

Tim Dillon: Yeah. I do the checkups.

Ron Bennington: And that's the best way, dude.

Tim Dillon: It's the best way. But I've also lived a life to be here.

Ron Bennington: Right, of course.

Tim Dillon: That is how I've lived my life.

Ron Bennington: Right. I couldn't relate more. I could not relate more.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. I mean, I was listening to you when I was 14 years old, eating a pizza in my bed that my mother bought me, and she would put a pizza on my bed and then close the door. So I'll be here.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, you'll be here.

Tim Dillon: Yeah.

Ron Bennington: But yes, you do have a lust for life. You enjoy life.

Tim Dillon: I enjoy it. And I think that some of it is, I look at a lot of healthy people and I see what they do. They jog a lot. They play a lot of tennis, and that's very foreign to me, that life. And I would like it to not be. I wake up and I look at these people on the West Side Highway and stuff and I go, "That's a real interesting experience on this planet to have that kind of positive. You get up every day and you go," I like myself and I like the way I look and I feel good and I'm going to bring positive. "And that hasn't been my -

Ron Bennington: No, mine either. But here's the thing. I really enjoy ex addicts. They're my favorite people. Current addicts, I'm not a huge fan of. They're a pain in the ass, but people who have come through it on the other side.

Tim Dillon: Current addicts are a real liability.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, they're not fun. And quite frankly, I don't trust them.

Tim Dillon:  No, I think a current addict, there's a real question about where they're... I haven't done a drug in 15 years and I haven't had a drink, but I'll find my way to a cigarette. I'll find my way to an unhealthy meal. These are not good things.

Ron Bennington: But again, you have to live life. You have to live life.

Tim Dillon: Right. Yes. I believe that. I believe that. I also think that there's certain things I can learn at 41 and certain things I can't. That's all.

Ron Bennington: You're uploaded. You are who you are.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. I can get marginally better and that's a good goal.

Ron Bennington: Yes. For maybe a month or two. You know what I mean?

Tim Dillon: Sometimes Joe Rogan goes, "All you have to do is eat the marrow bones and go in a tank." And I go, "I can't. I can't do that. I'm just trying to not eat pancakes at night. 

Ron Bennington: But I have had marrow bones. You would love it. It's really delicious.

Tim Dillon: My goal is if I can just not eat breakfast foods at night, that's a huge step for me.

Ron Bennington: If you cut out cereal as an adult, you've waited too long.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. When you eat pancakes at 9:00 PM at night, you realize you've done the wrong thing.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: You've done the wrong thing.

Ron Bennington: Now do you make your own or you stop at a diner?

Tim Dillon: I'll stop at a diner. I'm a social person.

Ron Bennington: Sure you are.

Tim Dillon: So I like to sit alone in a diner and I don't speak a lot of Spanish, but I can hello and goodbye. And we're losing that in New York. No one goes out.

Ron Bennington: And young people don't drink 

Tim Dillon: They don't do the clubs.

Ron Bennington: Young people don't drink.

Tim Dillon: They don't do the clubs and they all seem to be, they want to live forever and they want to be very healthy, but none of them are having any fun.

Ron Bennington: You got to have the fun. You know what I mean? It's like, what would you rather do? Watch TV for fucking two weeks straight or watch The Godfather? You're better off taking an hour and a half and being blown away.

Tim Dillon:  Yeah, that's the whole thing. Sometimes you meet these people and they're obsessed with something called biohacking where they are now trying to live forever by... They read about a berry that an Indian tribe ate on an island. So they all live till 120. So they go, "I eat that berry now." And I go, "What? I can't connect with that." I can't connect with that.

Ron Bennington:  No, I like a drug to get fucked up on, not to break through to the other side like Jim Morrison.

Tim Dillon: No, I'm not trying to be more productive or a better version of myself. I liked waking up, smoking a lot of weed and going back to bed. That's my day.

Ron Bennington: Second sleep. I don't call it a nap. I call it second sleep. And then you can wake up and have pancakes.

Tim Dillon: And then I'd have some barbecue chicken pizza and you enjoy your life. Can you feel when this goes in or no?

Ron Bennington: Yes, sometimes. Sometimes you can actually taste it 

Tim Dillon: Really?

Ron Bennington: There's different things that you could taste. When they clean it with saline, you get a salty taste. You're just in the Long Island sound. You know what I mean?

Tim Dillon: Interesting you get a saline.

 Ron Bennington: Yeah.

Tim Dillon: Joe Rogan says you don't need this. You just need...

Ron Bennington: Well, I get a lot of advice like that online from people and they'll say, "You got to do your own research." And I'm like, "That's never going to happen."

Tim Dillon: No, no, no.

Ron Bennington: You know what I mean?

Tim Dillon: No. I tell those people, I go, "Hey, maybe you're right, but I'm not going to know."

Ron Bennington:  And I have went with the PhDs on this one.

Tim Dillon: You know what I mean? I understand your line of thought.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: I get it. You are saying, "Let's listen to a doctor."

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: That's fair.

Ron Bennington: I mean, in the same way that if you're on a plane, you'd never think I should be flying this 747.

Tim Dillon: But I like seeing people just try to get into the cockpit.

Ron Bennington: Oh yeah, sure 

Tim Dillon: Because it's the triumph of the human spirit.

Ron Bennington: Sure.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. You want to see people in there going, "Hey, what does this do? 

Ron Bennington: Yes. But when they're at the door, because I didn't get every aspect of nine eleven. I was in the city, but I wasn't in the air. So it's good to see that happening.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. It's a lot of you think you're better than me energy these pilots.

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: Yeah.

Ron Bennington: And they are. They are better at flying than you are. I'm sure there's plenty of things you're better. You're better at comedy.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. It's interesting that you don't tell the doctors, "Here's what I think we should do."

Ron Bennington: I never do. As a matter of fact, they go, "Hey, we've got your numbers." I go, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know." They're like, "Serious?" I go, "Yes, I want to live like this is okay. I don't want to live like I dropped to a 13. How?"

Tim Dillon: Right. And it's also very complicated. It's complex, all this.

Ron Bennington:  And the person running this is they're a scientist as well as a doctor. This is research. I'm a lab rat for them.

Tim Dillon: Right. Right. So they come in and they're looking at all these as test cases of how things are responding.

Ron Bennington: Yes. Yeah. And then that's the only good thing is who knows? Maybe I'm helping someone down the road. I could at least feel good about that.

Tim Dillon: Well, for sure.

Ron Bennington: So you're saying I'm a hero?

Tim Dillon: Yeah.

Ron Bennington: Okay, good.

Tim Dillon: I would say that.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, good.

Tim Dillon: I've always felt that though. I always felt podcasters, radio people were heroes.

Ron Bennington: Sure.

Tim Dillon: That's why I've modeled my life sort of after you, which is why I'll just get right in the chair. Let's just be honest about it. I mean, we don't even have to do the test. Just put something in it. But I always thought that people who talked for a living figured it out.

Ron Bennington: Well, we are third responders. We have enough time to think about it before, you know what I mean? First responder doesn't really know what happened.

Tim Dillon: Yeah, who cares?

Ron Bennington: Right. And then the second responder's like, "I've got the facts." And then the third responders, we judge. We judge what the actual heroes did.

Tim Dillon: We respond from a home or a studio and we survey the scene. And I think that's more important. I think it's more important.

Ron Bennington: Well, I was thinking about you when I first met you, young guy, and the way that you used to attack Long Island in front of New York audiences filled with bridge and tunnel people. And I'm like, "I don't know where he's going, but he's going."

Tim Dillon: My cousin is having a wedding. We're going to the wedding August 9th, and we're excited about that. She had some problems with heroin, but is now not doing that, which is good.

Ron Bennington: Yes. It's better.

Tim Dillon: Not on the wedding day. That's what I say.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: And that's nice. And she's marrying a guy and we Googled him and he had been in the public for attacking some people violently. He punched a woman once and we just Googled his name. We said, "I wonder who she's marrying. She's marrying a guy who got banned from sporting events and stuff for beating people up, old people and women and stuff." But it's just a Long Island story. It's still nice.

Ron Bennington: It's still good people.

Tim Dillon: It's still nice. It's still a nice story.

Ron Bennington: Right. Everyone makes mistakes.

Tim Dillon: Everyone has problems. It's violence and does heroin, I think. I imagine that most people do these things,

Ron Bennington: Right? But he's willing to marry her. You know what I mean?

Tim Dillon: Yeah. So I think that we can't lose ourselves in the constant judgment.

Ron Bennington: Right. I mean, I grew up with people and a lot of them would be seen as somewhat of a criminal element, but I love them. I love them. I can't help it.

Tim Dillon: I love them. To me, the best thing about... My mother rented out rooms in my house in eighth grade because she didn't have the money to pay for it. And many of those people sell drugs. They were renting rooms in Long Island. And she had a good friend, a guy named Dennis. And the thing about Long Island is you think you win, but you've never won.

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: Dennis got divorced from his wife and Dennis explained to me, he said, "When I got divorced from my wife, she thought she was going to take half of my baseball card store." But he goes, "Little did she know, I let the store fail. And then I moved into a van in a 40 Conoline van, and I parked it two blocks from the Long Beach boardwalk, and I lived there for two years and she got nothing." So Long Island, that's a win.

Ron Bennington: It is a win.

Tim Dillon: We call that a win.

Ron Bennington: The best thing about Long Island is there's no Southern accent.

Tim Dillon: There's no Southern accent, but we have the same ideas.

Ron Bennington: Everything is the same.

Tim Dillon: Everything's the same. Due to treatment, we'll be right back.

Ron Bennington: I mean, I'm a no regrets guy.

Tim Dillon: I agree with you.

Ron Bennington: When I go back for a high school reunion and someone starts to whine about how you treated them and you're like, "Hey, we're here." You know what I mean? We're all in the same movie.

Tim Dillon: Yeah, because when they tell me what's going on with me, I'm going to rack my brain and go, "There was a month I just ate at 7-Eleven."

Ron Bennington: Sure.

Tim Dillon: Was that it?

Ron Bennington: Was it a warm hot dog that finally put me over there?

Tim Dillon: There's something called a Big Un, and it was a frozen cheeseburger at 7-Eleven. When I was losing my house in Long Island at 22 years old and it was being foreclosed on, and I was in the depths of what they would call alcoholism.

Ron Bennington: Sure.

Tim Dillon: I would go to 7-Eleven and get the Big ‘Un cheeseburger and I would eat it standing there in 7-Eleven, and I'd throw the wrapper out, and then I would get back in my car. I'd pay for it and leave. And I'll ask if it was that.

Ron Bennington: I'm feeling like you should be in my chair and I should be over there going, "Tim, you're a great guy. I'm sorry this is happening."

Tim Dillon: 1000%. No, it's like I'm going to ask tonight to just stay the night. I'm just going to ask if I can just jump into a bed.

Ron Bennington: You don't even have to ask. Just do it. Just help yourself. You should have came in wearing pajamas.

ANNOUNCER: Due to treatment, we'll be right back.

Ron Bennington: But that is one of the people who tell me, "Oh, the chemo's killing you faster than cancer." This thing, and they'll say, "There's a study." I go, "A study by who? You have it." And these geniuses that are working at the hospital don't have this study.

Tim Dillon: Well, there's a lot of study. Now, by the way, what's interesting is, and I'm telling you, I'm 41 years old, I've never in my life read a study.

Ron Bennington:  Right, meaning 

Tim Dillon: I've never read one study and wouldn't know how to read it if I had it.

Ron Bennington: The only thing I really read in school was a smart girl's paper when she sat next to me. And eventually I had to just hand it to her and say, "Leave a couple wrong. I don't want to get called in."

Tim Dillon: I come from a school where at one time, we were in ninth grade, we were doing cocaine at someone's house, and one of the substitute teachers we had showed up to purchase cocaine from these people.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: That's the educational background I have.

Ron Bennington: When your teacher shows up, at your coke dealer's house.

Tim Dillon: When your substitute teacher shows up to get a package, it's probably not an ideal learning environment.

Ron Bennington: But it sounds like a great way that you could have gotten at least a B by keeping your mouth shut.

Tim Dillon: Totally. And I still didn't. Does this tire you out? Do you feel energetic after?

Ron Bennington: No. The only thing that ever makes me feel energetic is the hydration stuff that they do. It's a great feeling.

Due to treatment, we'll be right back.

Tim Dillon: It'd be fun if I just walked into people's rooms as their doctor.

Ron Bennington: Sure.

Tim Dillon: And they go, "What the hell has he done?" And I walk in with a Nestle quick and I say, "Here's the plan we figured out. We've created a plan.

Ron Bennington: Has anyone seen my bag?" You just come in and kind of freaked out.

Tim Dillon: I left my cell phone in an Uber. Anyway, here's the plan. So now does it get progressively... It's the same level all the time.

Ron Bennington: In terms of how much I have to do?

Tim Dillon: Yeah.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. But here's the kind of downside is I'm open-ended. I meet people that I'm going to be doing this for five weeks or I'm doing it until...

Tim Dillon: But that's a commitment and I think that's good. You're doing it until you don't want to do it 

Ron Bennington: It's Shawshank and I'm Red. You know what I mean? I'm the guy that finally one day is just going to write my initials somewhere. But yeah, I mean, at best, the idea is that we're kicking the ball down the street, making it to hopefully the next trial drug, then the next trial drug. At a certain time, do you still want to keep doing this?

Tim Dillon: It's all about how you feel.

Ron Bennington: Yeah.

Tim Dillon: And you've lived an unbelievable life.

Ron Bennington: I've had a great life. I can't complain at all.

Tim Dillon: Yeah. I remember listening to you guys, Ron and Faz, you were on WNEW 1027. You were on after ONA. You were on at about 7:00 PM, if I'm correct. You were the evening show. And I remember listening to you guys, it was probably 1999. Right?

Ron Bennington: In that era.

Tim Dillon: That era. Yeah, 1998, 1999. And that's when I first heard you guys. I was like, "This is great."

Ron Bennington: Yeah.

Tim Dillon: These guys are having fun every night of their life. I was like, "This is the best job in the world." Truly. I though that. I was like, "This is the funniest thing and these people do this for a living." I was like, "This is unbelievable." You guys were talking once about the people they send out in a horrible storm as being the lowest level people at the news station. And you'd see people in the middle of a hurricane. It'd be some woman who's like, "This is Christine Garcia reporting." It was like some Florida radio station and there's trees going behind her and you see the whole thing. I remember you had a line, you said, "Just know that if there's budget cuts at the station, you are the first to go. You are expendable." But I remember -

Ron Bennington: But it's showbiz.

Tim Dillon: Yeah.

Ron Bennington: It's show business.

Tim Dillon: You said you had another great line, you go, "Hey, you're on camera. You're on camera, you're there." I remember listening to that and going like, "There's no better job."

Ron Bennington: No, I've always felt that way. I mean, stand up, you have to write things down.

Tim Dillon: You have to have - To go places.

Ron Bennington: Yes. Oh, the travel, the terrible travel.

Tim Dillon: It's a nightmare.

Ron Bennington: But just to show up and just be outraged for no apparent reason.

Tim Dillon: Well, you can also just, you can show up and then you're at work.

Ron Bennington: You're at work.

Tim Dillon: Some people have to go to work, and then even when they get there, they have to do things while they're there. You just show up, there's a microphone, you're at work.

Ron Bennington: You're at work. You're doing your job.

Tim Dillon: And you can have fun, which so many people in these buildings around us are so miserable every day of their life.

Ron Bennington: And this is where I was like, "Hey, let's let we get a bad caller or a weird caller, invite them in and let them take over for a little while. Let them take a run with it." And you end up meeting so many characters in your life. Plus, I started doing this in the 80s, so to be a shock jock in those days, you could entertain people by just saying poo, and they would be like, "You are unbelievable. You're so edgy."

Tim Dillon: You started in, was it Tampa?

Ron Bennington: Yeah, in Tampa. And that backed into it, just I had started -

Tim Dillon: The Ron and Ron show.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. I started a comedy club and then I would bring the comedians down and the PD said to me, "Your comedians stink." And he goes, "But you're funny. Why don't you come in once a week and we'll give you free commercials during the week?" And then I did that and the show started taking off right away because, I think because A, I didn't change my voice. B, I didn't change my name. And I sounded like one of the crazy people who just showed up at a radio station. It's really what I was.

Tim Dillon: What was it like in the '80s doing this job? Because now it's like this thing that everybody knows about, but I feel like back then you guys were really inventing the whole medium.

Ron Bennington: Sure. And here's the thing too. It's like, all right, the winner of those tickets is my Coke dealer, so come on in. There's always side money. And then also we would bring strippers in and it was exciting to people because they didn't have Pornhub, but they didn't have only fans. They were like, "These guys are getting to see naked women." And they were thrilled for us. It was insanely easy. I remember we brought somebody in to put a bolt through a girl's nose, I think, or maybe her tongue, made the paper, made the paper. There was nothing happening.

Tim Dillon: There was nothing going on.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, there was nothing going on.

Tim Dillon: The local paper.

Ron Bennington: So whatever we did, this is outrageous.

Tim Dillon: This is big.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. And I rode that for years. And Fezzy, being the gay guy who quite frankly didn't know that he was gay, though he was playing a gay character. I mean, there's a movie for you, but that was just an exciting thing.

Tim Dillon: This was the beginning because you and Fez had an unbelievable chemistry listening to the show. It was unbelievable.

 Ron Bennington Fez I literally loved, and he was part of my family. It was never planned. He just put himself into it. He was there for my kids, everything. So all of that was easy. And then when he really had bad mental problems, became interesting in a different way.

Tim Dillon: Of course.

Ron Bennington: You know what I mean? I would come into work and go, "What's wrong, buddy?" And he'd cry and tell me, and people were like, "This is really good."

Tim Dillon: Well, that's the thing about our job is that it's all good. It's human. So it's all good, even when it's bad.

Ron Bennington: That's what this podcast is about.

Tim Dillon: That's right.

Ron Bennington: Okay, here's this thing that's happening. I know it's kind of uncomfortable for people, but guess what? I'm not the only one. You've had it in your family. There's a good shot that you're going to eat a 7-Eleven hot dog one day and end up here yourself.

Tim Dillon: That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Ron Bennington: And so why not enjoy this part of it?

Tim Dillon: How do you feel about when you look at the inevitability of all of our lives eventually come to an end, what do you think happens?

Ron Bennington: I have zero idea where we're going. I have a strong thing that I was invited to this reality. I wouldn't have known how to get here and I don't know how to get to the next place, but that's where I'll go.

Tim Dillon: That's right. And it might be Tampa.

Ron Bennington: I'm going to say probably a little further north, like maybe Lutz or New Port Richey, but it'll be tough. But then we'll also deal there too. I got a good heart. Maybe I made a lot of mistakes.

Tim Dillon: I think you made a lot of people happy.

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: You made a lot of people happy. You made a lot of people happy, speaking for me and growing up in a fucked up family and having to listen to something that was funny because your parents are fighting and having that made a lot of people happy. Most of them you don't even know.

Ron Bennington: Of course. And none of that was done on purpose, but now I talk to people who are like, "I lost my dad to this disease." And I'm like, "Okay, this is the good audience to have." You know what I mean? These are people that need it, healthcare providers. To me, the hardest part is having it in your family and you have to become that caregiver. I couldn't do that. I could do this a lot easier than that.

Tim Dillon: No, I don't want to be a caregiver. I want to be the receiver. And the way I've lived, I'm pretty sure I will. I'm pretty sure I will.

Ron Bennington: Do you have someone close enough to you that will - Yeah. Okay, good.

Tim Dillon: Yeah, of course. I mean, listen, we all don't want these things to happen, but you have such a great system, right? You have such an amazing group of people around. I met your wife. I never met Gail's mom. And you have an amazing group.

Ron Bennington: Right. And it's very, very true. And also people that listen to the show and people like yourself, comics. I mean, the fact that these comics will come in and do this when most of them walk through that curtain petrified, I just see their faces. They don't want to be here, and they do it. And it means a lot to them.

Tim Dillon: Well, we all love you and we owe you. I owe you more than a lot of people because you impacted my career in probably the biggest way out of anybody, because listening to you growing up was a huge inspiration to understand that comedy can be so many things.

It can be so many things. It's not any one thing. It's not just standup. It's not just doing sketches. It's not just... You can have a radio show where all of these things play into it. You can be on a podcast where you can do all of these things on the show. You can do funny advertisements, you can do funny call-ins, you can do funny guests, all of this. You were a part of creating this world that we all live in now.

Ron Bennington: Yes. Which is weird because when I was in Tampa, there were two podcasts, Ron and Ron and the Q Morning Zoo, and the women listened to one and the guys listened to the other, and life was easy.

Tim Dillon: And that's still the way.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. Yes. Yes. How many women do you think listen to anything that you do?

Tim Dillon: That weren't at January 6th?

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: I don't know. We have more women now than we've ever had, but they're not the majority.

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: They're lovely people.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: The women who listen to me, some of them are very serious.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: They're severe women.

Ron Bennington: Well, things have happened to them.

Tim Dillon: They understand things. You know what I mean? They understand things, these women. They're not...

Ron Bennington: Your ability to go different places though and make sense of the senseless or take the sense and make it sound senseless, a lot of people mistake what you do, and they'll be like... I'll see a thing like in media, Tim Dylan turns on Trump and I'm like, "He's never been with anybody."

Tim Dillon: No, I think people now just, they take whatever they want from whatever you do and you can't control it. So I think that I was on Rogan Show once and I said, "I hope Michelle Obama is a man because at the Democratic National Convention, if she took her penis out, China would just say, We can't fuck with them. Whatever's going on there." And then people send me a serious message like, "Thank you for bringing that issue up." And you go, "All right, I can't." You know what I mean? There's just certain things that it will never be enough for anyone on any side.

Ron Bennington: Of course.

Tim Dillon: And the main goal of my show is to have fun.

Ron Bennington: Of course.

Tim Dillon: Because when I heard you guys, I'm like, "They're having a lot of fun." And the people in the cars, you got to remember, it's the '90s and everyone's in a car and everyone's driving home or driving somewhere. They're having fun because you guys are having fun. I don't have an agenda. I don't go, "I want this to happen."

Ron Bennington: Well, for the first 20 years, we never mentioned a president's name or politics because people didn't talk about it then. That's right. It was really the hanging chad thing with Gore and Bush that people started to go, "What side are you on?" And I was like, "I moved to Florida to drop out."

Tim Dillon: Yes. Well, your show was so funny because there was never an idea when I was listening to Ron and Fez that you guys were trying to advance anything other than this is hilarious.

Ron Bennington: It's hilarious and it's all crazy.

Tim Dillon: And it's all crazy. And it's human.

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: Politics is inhuman.

Ron Bennington: It is. It's not normal.

Tim Dillon: When you divide people up into these camps and groups and a lot of it's fake, that's not human. What you guys were doing is exposing how absurd and insane our species is. That's actually more important than talking just about... When I look at politics, I look at the people in it and how crazy they are and how strange and weird their lives are and how funny their lives are. And that to me is interesting. One side or another is not super interesting.

Ron Bennington: That's the thing I think I'm trying to do now is just to show that existence itself is so surreal and so strange that how are we worried about losing this thing that we never earned in the first place?

Tim Dillon: We don't earn.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. We don't earn it at all. Everyone knows it in the back of their mind that this thing is finite. Then when you're told, you're like, "What? Are you kidding me?"

Tim Dillon: When you were told, how did you take it?

Ron Bennington: I couldn't have been more cool. I thought I would've yelled or whatever, but I was just saying, "Yeah, okay. So what are we looking at in terms..." And this wasn't before I was with these people. And he gave me a finite amount of time. So I'm like, "So we're looking at a couple of Super Bowls? Is that where we're at here? Am I going to make it to see how the Trump show ends?" And he started asking me if I was okay, and I was like, "I'm fucking..." I couldn't ask for more. You already said you had fun every day of your life. I laughed every day of my life and somebody said to me, "Even on nine eleven?" I go, "Yeah, we were laughing on nine eleven because people were calling in with poems that they thought would help." I remember I would make the guys...

A nice woman would be reading a poem and I would just write this down on a piece of paper and then put it up to the guys. What rhymes with cunt? That was my joke every single time. And every single time everybody had a blast.

Tim Dillon: You did a thing that, to me, the importance of it, the job you guys did feels probably when you're doing it, it's very silly, but it takes on importance that a lot of serious jobs don't.  Because it is so important to just laugh because we are living in this surreal reality that we can barely comprehend.

Ron Bennington: And I mean, it's probably the best reality that this planet's ever seen.

Tim Dillon: Probably.

Ron Bennington: I mean, I've probably had a very difficult time in the old West where they really didn't want to sit around and listen to funny stories all the time. So you don't last long there, but this, maybe we have too much time to think.

Tim Dillon: Right now, I think the only thing we're making in this country is talking.

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: It's hot takes.

Ron Bennington: Yes 

Tim Dillon: We're living in that economy.

Ron Bennington: Do you know, this is also funny that you say this. When I started doing radio, the PD, I already told you he didn't like my comics, but most of the guys who did radio, they didn't like comedians because comedians would not know how to riff. They would have an act and most of them would have 15 minutes and do that 15 minutes every night for years till they turned into 30 minutes. I mean, people in the 80s, they weren't even shooting for a special. That was a long shot for... That was Carlin got that. So most of those guys were just really club guys and they weren't necessarily great off the top of their head. And they didn't make for good radio. And then one day, and it was really, I'm going to say probably the generation right before you, Big J, Soder, those guys. I'm like, "Fuck, they're really quick."

Tim Dillon: Those two are amazing. Yeah.

Ron Bennington: And Soder could go into just doing characters and it was really great. And then that, I think that generation led into the first podcasters.

Tim Dillon: Yeah, it all opened up and it was... But it was funny is you were doing it in the 80s.

Ron Bennington: Right. Doing it in the 80s, but following more rules than people were... If I look at Rogan and his enormous success, which is just him doing the things that matter to him, and that's why it looks like there isn't a professional radio guy who wouldn'have stopped him in the 80s. They're going, "Pick a lane, dude."

Tim Dillon: Yeah, what are you doing?

Ron Bennington: But the thing that was just so refreshing about what he did is he just set out to keep himself interested, and then you find out more people are interested. It's fascinating.

Tim Dillon: It's a very surreal thing to know him because he genuinely is interested in all that stuff. So he's not faking it. He finds these things fascinating and that's led him to a huge career.

Ron Bennington: And again, how many people actually understand what he's doing? Because they'll write, why doesn't he do this? Why doesn't he do that?

Tim Dillon: People want you in the box

Ron Bennington: Right.

Tim Dillon: People want you in the box. And that's what I loved about your show is that all things were possible in the pursuit of laughter, comedy.

Ron Bennington: Well, especially when you were listening when we had New York radio and those callers, I would challenge them to write jokes. We'd change the headlines of the post and they were killing us.

Tim Dillon: When I was listening, where were you doing that show from?

Ron Bennington: Probably 57th Street was NEW. And then when we went over to XM, it was just across the street. Everything was pretty much in that area, but we left the doors open in that building. It was pre... So you could walk into a building, you could show up with two cases of beer, take the elevator up to us, and we'd have a lights out party and everybody would hang.

Tim Dillon: Did you know--- when you walked out of a show, did you know, this was a good one?

Ron Bennington: There's a thing that you could tell yourself that, but you don't really know.

Tim Dillon: That's the way I feel. You don't really know.

Ron Bennington: And I know a lot of radio guys where they go, "I can be funny on the radio. I just can't be funny on stage." And I go, "Well, you think you're funny on the radio because no one's there not to laugh." The shock of when the laugh doesn't happen is the thing that makes you a pro.

Tim Dillon: Right. Yeah. I always wonder, sometimes I'll walk out and I'll go, "Felt good?"

Ron Bennington: Yes.

Tim Dillon: But who knows?

Ron Bennington: Who knows?

Tim Dillon: And then sometimes I'll walk out and go, "Eh." And people like it more than I thought.

Ron Bennington: Right. Here's the thing with me. I've always said I'm just making sandcastles and they wash away the next day.

Tim Dillon: That's right.

Ron Bennington: But then look at you quoting something that I don't even remember from 20 some years ago. So there is value to what you're doing right now.

Tim Dillon: Well, it stopped me because it was like everyone's talking about the weather and at that particular time and you were talking about the who the hell are these people?

Due to treatment, we'll be right back.

Ron Bennington: Tim Dillon,

Tim Dillon: Ron Bennington.

Ron Bennington: This has been an amazing, fun time for me.

Tim Dillon: This has an amazing fun time. I appreciate it and thank you. I wouldn't be doing what I do without you.

Ron Bennington: I love you, buddy.

Tim Dillon: Truly love you too.

Ron Bennington: All right.

Tim Dillon: Thank you. Just like Shane, I'll go to my sold out stadium or Dunkin Donuts. Either one.

Again, pop pop.