031: Who the Hell is Anthony Cumia? feat. Matt [Redacted]

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Didn't stop the debauchery that went on in that place.
I think it was some things were illegal.
I don't think or or at least very much against company
policy. I.

(00:46):
Welcome back to posting Through IT, I'm Mike Hayden.
I'm Jared Holt. And I'm Matt.
This is the 6th installment in our unofficial long form Who the
Hell Is series. If you scroll back on the feed,
you'll find our previous ones onJack Pozobic, Tim Poole, Candace
Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Dave Portnoy.
Give those a listen. They're meant to be Evergreen,

(01:06):
as they say in the media business.
These episodes take a ton of time and effort, so please
consider subscribing to our Patreon.
The link is in the description. Today, we're taking a closer
look at the life, career, and downfall of Anthony Cumia, one
of radio's most influential shock jocks.
It's possible you haven't heard of Anthony Cumia before, or that

(01:29):
it's been a while. If you have, his career took a
self-inflicted nosedive in 2014 that he was never able to fully
recover from, and we'll get intothat later of course.
But prior to his fall from national stardom, he was one of
the nation's hottest on air personalities.
These days, Kubia is basically doing the white nationalist
media circuit and a Sunday nightshow for a right wing talk

(01:51):
station in New York. As we talk about Kumia, a lot of
the material we're going to cover today is pretty fucking
gross. We feel this stuff is important
for understanding the rest of Kumia's career and also a lot
about right wing talk show material in general, but some
listeners may find some of it uncomfortable.
This is not an episode to play if you have kids in the car.

(02:13):
I will not be playing it with mykids in the car.
I question any of our listeners who are playing this show with
their children in the car. But before we get into all of
that, Matt, who the hell are you?
Hi. I'm Matt.
I don't want to say too much about myself because Anthony
notoriously docks his people and, you know, really, really

(02:34):
messes with their life in a big way.
I worked with Jared a little biton something on a a project that
I don't really, you know, I can't talk about, but that's how
I got to know him. And I've been listening to the
show even in the old days when it was called Ship Post.
And I've really enjoyed having mic on.
I think it's been great having having two people to talk about
this stuff. And I got into Opie and Anthony
in the kind of pre jerk off Louis CK period.

(02:57):
That's such a good way to put it.
I mean, he was jerking off back then, but we just didn't know
about it. So he wasn't outed yet.
And I saw about 103 hour shows where he was on some show called
Opie and Anthony. And I started listening to, and
this was about 2014, maybe 13 or14, right around the time the

(03:18):
show was actually ending. And all this stuff was up on
YouTube and it felt like I was kind of listening to an off
limits conversation. It's some of the hardest laughs
I've ever had, but it's also kind of the most offended I've
ever been. And I just wanted I, I presented
this idea to Jared because at one point they'd asked, you
know, who are some people that you think we should talk about?
And I thought Kumiya is like a godfather to a lot of the folks

(03:40):
you guys talk about. He laid a blueprint for a lot of
really, really bad people. For a long time, I'd thought
about starting my own podcast. I'd been taking time stamps of
some of the crazier shit that Kumiya was up to and just saving
it in my phone. And when I heard that you were
into the idea, I just expected to kind of send you those notes
and time stamps, but I wasn't expecting you to have me on as
the guest. But I do really appreciate it

(04:02):
and using those notes as well and starting my own podcast and
I've recorded a couple episodes as well.
So I, I don't think that would have happened without this
opportunity. So thank you.
Thanks for joining us, Matt. We really appreciate it.
I'm super pumped for this one. A lot of blood, sweat and tears
has gone into the prep for this doc.
A lot of it has been mass blood,sweat and tears and then my

(04:25):
vicarious blood, sweat and tears.
But before we get started on explaining who the hell Anthony
Cumia is, we need to give a shout out to some of our newest
Patreon members. These are folks who gave a
little extra so you can get the bonus episodes that we're
starting next month for $5 a month or if you support us at a
higher tier, you get some perks and one of them is a shout out.

(04:47):
So Mike, who we got to shout outthis week.
And if I get any of your pronunciation of anybody's name
wrong, you have to message us and I'll say it again.
So Executive club members Brandon Brinson, Jesse Comer,
Kathleen McCollum, KMF Matt Fridge and Michael Skokie.

(05:07):
Is that correct? Thank you.
Platinum members Aaron Melissa Brenner, Brian Hamlin, Chelsea
Spear, Christy Kilgore, Desiree Irby Hannah Gaze, Ian Lofi, Lynn
McHugh, Marissa Ashman, Misty Schuler, Nathaniel Brunt, Nigel
Pirate, Raphael R Scott Trickle,Stella Zanya, Stephanie Shannon,

(05:32):
Steve Dudenhofer, Stephen Hamlin, Susan Tapert And there
are no wolves in Chicago. You just saw a coyote.
If you want to shout out on the next episode, you can sign up
for our Patreon page. Just want to say thanks to
everyone who has signed up to support the show so far.
I can't tell you how much it helps us out, especially on

(05:52):
episodes like this which take forever to produce.
So now that that's out of the way, let's get started.
This is the Opie and Anthony show.
But enough of this palaver. Let's get the show.
On the road. Anthony Cumia is best known for

(06:17):
Co hosting the Opie and Anthony radio show which ran from 1995
to 2014. He was Anthony obviously and Co
host Greg Hughes was Opie. They also had comedian Jim
Norton as a third Mike. I'll just say this up top, and I
do mean complete offense to Mr. Hughes when I say this, Anthony
Cumia was the star of that show.That's 100% true.

(06:40):
I think that Howard Stern is thebiggest radio shock jock
personality of all time and Anthony is number 2 in my
opinion. Or he was #2 he's kind of faded
into obscurity a bit. Jim was another beloved star of
the show though. And you're right about Opie.
If you read any of the comments on old YouTube clips you will
inevitably see a ton of Opie hate.
He did play a role obviously though.

(07:01):
Anthony and Jim were the quick witted hilarious guys and Opie
steered the ship as they say andhe was a true shock jock and
Anthony probably did have the most influence of the three.
Opie and Anthony stood apart on the radio for over the top
content. First and foremost.
It was vulgar, raunchy, and often just plainly fucked up.
They broadcasted 4 hours a day for years and there's just no

(07:24):
way to review, let alone cover everything that happened on that
show. But we'll cover some selections
from it later, like the time theFCC fined them for asking a 17
year old girl who called in to rub the phone with her on her
pubic hair, which she did. Like I said, we'll talk about
the show itself later, but it's pretty crazy that they got away
with doing stuff like that on public Airways for as long as

(07:45):
they did. It also succeeded for another
reason. Besides being crazy, Kumiya and
Hughes were able to create a show that felt authentic to
their listeners. The format often felt loose and
unpolished, and that was unusualat the time, even among shock
jocks. When celebrities appeared on the
show, they would break from their public persona and just
just shoot the shit with them. They interacted heavily with

(08:08):
their fans, they promoted up andcoming comedians, not just the
famous ones. They were recurring bits and a
whole cast of oddball side characters and storylines for
listeners to get swept up in. And each time the show got in
trouble, the response always seemed to be an unapologetic go
fuck yourself. I think for Opie and Anthony
listeners, that felt more real than other shows on the radio at

(08:32):
the time. People ate it up.
Anthony Cumia was everywhere in the 2000s, so this show would
make headlines sometimes for itscrude antics.
But for all its problems, and there were many, Opie and
Anthony achieved A lasting impact on comedy radio and, as
you'll hear later, politics, particularly reactionary
politics. Even today, a decade after Kumia
nuked his career with a racist rant on Twitter, he commands a

(08:55):
level of acknowledgement among certain industry Titans.
Opie and Anthony influenced a generation of up and coming
media personalities who Revere him for pushing limits of comedy
broadcasting at free expression.Today, Cumia has courted an
audience that includes far rightextremists, making him relevant
in that sense to this show, and he's leaned into his own hateful
beliefs. He entered business with Gavin

(09:17):
McInnes at one point, who you may recognize as the Canadian
douchebag who started the Crowd Boys.
He continues to trade on the cloud he gained during the Opie
and Anthony heyday and has funneled his ride or die fans
into the arms of the white nationalist movements
propagandist. Anthony Cumia's impact on the
radical right has been substantial, or more than you'd
expect from a washed up comic. What do we make about someone

(09:41):
like that who now has a relationship to Nick Fuentes's
gripers? That's his followers.
That's why we're happy to have Matt on this episode to help us
answer. Who the hell?
Who the hell? Who the hell is Anthony Cumia?
The the show, whatever that showwas, never ended.
It went on through our show, through your show.

(10:05):
It just didn't stop the debauchery that went on in that
place. She, I think it was some things
were illegal, I don't think or or at least very much against
company policy. Kumi is born in 1961, and that
makes him 64 years old today. And he's born in Queens and he

(10:26):
spends most of his life, his early life in Suffolk County,
Long Island. I want to make a distinction of
Suffolk County versus Nassau County.
Nassau County, plenty of reactionary politics.
That's where George Santos won alittle seat.
But for the most part, as somebody who spent a lot of my
childhood in Nassau County and is very familiar with Suffolk

(10:48):
County, Nassau is more of your sort of Hillary Clinton
demographic, you know, suburb ofNew York City, commuter trains
and so forth. Suffolk is the ultimate kind of
white flight part of Long Island.
And Trump had a very close relationship to Suffolk County
in in 2016, he gave a, you know,a kind of a big talk about law

(11:13):
and order with the Suffolk County Police Department, a
department that has had a history of significant
corruption. And I just want to make that
distinction because it is a veryreactionary part of the New York
metro area. So he's Italian American, if you
couldn't tell from his name. And Matt, you said he had a bit

(11:33):
of a rough childhood. Absolutely.
His dad, Joseph Cumia Senior, rarely worked, and he recalls
his father working for a vendingmachine company where he would
pill for the money and candy from the job.
And some of Anthony's earliest memories are being hungry all
the time and his dinner being candy.
And that is dad was paying for everything like gas and beer,

(11:55):
with quarters that were also stolen from the vending
machines. Anthony recalls moving all over
Long Island because they would inevitably fall behind on their
rent and were constantly evicted.
His father was also abusive, according to Cumia's 2018
autobiography Permanently Suspended.
In that book he wrote that his dad was a virtuoso with the
belt, which he used to beat Anthony when he got in trouble.

(12:17):
It's pretty grim. You you told us about the
spaghetti incident. Not obviously not a reference to
the Guns and Roses cover album. What was that?
This is actually kind of a metaphor for Anthony's childhood
that he often recalls. His parents were having a fight
and his father threw a plate of spaghetti at the wall, and he
remembers watching the sauce andnoodles drip down the wall while

(12:38):
he was weeping. It's something that actually
stuck with him a lot. He's brought up many times.
It's in his book and he's just very anti conflict.
His father also thought Anthony was turning gay or would turn
out to be gay. He once told a story about
making a puppet and his father ripping it up because he thought
it was a doll. So Anthony's father was a piece
of work, but his mom wasn't muchbetter.

(13:01):
A little different, but something that stands out about
her is that she was a heavy drinker, right?
Absolutely, they both were. Anthony remembers his mother
coming on field trips hungover and sick.
In some stories he's told on air.
He's recalled making her put on a bunch of makeup and go go
boots and wear skimpy clothing because he liked the attention
that she got from other kids. And on a particular field trip

(13:24):
they went to see, it's called You're a good boy, Charlie
Brown. Anyway, some kind of Charlie
Brown movie. She came on the school trip and
chaperoned. Mother had to leave in the
middle and go vomit in the bathroom.
Came back smelling like Pepto Bismol.
So another thing that stands outabout Anthony's family was that
they were extremely racist, and that's According to him.

(13:44):
And it seems that those attitudes rubbed off on him and
his brother. He told story on air one time
about him and his brother Joe getting into trouble for playing
with matches and starting a fire.
They said when the authorities showed up, they reflexively
blamed it on black people and they were not living in a place

(14:05):
that had a lot of black people in it.
From the environment I grew up in with my my parents at the
time, I blamed it on black people.
I was in kindergarten. I was in kindergarten and I
turned to the fireman and went 2black guys.
I saw 2 black guys. And this is in a neighborhood on

(14:28):
Long Island where you just did not see black people.
Kumi's parents eventually got divorced.
He moved with his abusive fatherto California, where they took
up a cowboy lifestyle. Kumi often recalls that his
father would subject him to whathe called man training in hopes
it would prevent him from being gay.
He'd do stuff like buy him guns and send him to the woods to

(14:49):
kill his dinner. This came up again and again as
we were digging into Kumia. I mentioned it earlier but the
way Kumia tells it, his dad was aggressively anti-gay.
There's one story Kumia told where his father nearly beat a
man to death in front of him after that man made a sexual
advance on young Kumia. The abuse from his father

(15:11):
continued during this time and stories he would he later told
on air. Kumia said he was constantly
hungry at school and would oftensteal food just to have
something to eat. Despite the abuse and neglect,
he really admired his father, and he fondly recalled having
his first beer with his father when he was 11 years old, which
he earned from writing a bull inhis book Permanently Suspended,

(15:34):
he writes. My father came over and popped
open a cold course for me. I drank a beer with the guys
after writing a bull. To this day, it's still one of
those defining moments that signified the transition between
me as the kid who used to play with toys and the young man who
is now hanging out socially withadults.
This kind of stuff became a theme during Anthony's childhood

(15:55):
in California. Anthony's father put him in
danger constantly. He would always drive drunk with
a beer between his legs. Anthony's described him looking
for cigarettes and swerving all over the road.
His father wasn't the only one abusing alcohol, though.
Anthony's also recalled how he was always drunk and had
graduated from Coors to Joe Seniors Homemade Moonshine,

(16:16):
which was pure alcohol. Anthony would have a couple
shots of that and he described it as when you'd stand up, you'd
drop to your knees. Anthony also recalled a time
where his father tossed him the keys to their dune buggy to take
it for a ride. He'd been drinking, I'd been
drinking and he filled the car with a bunch of the other kids
from the stable and drunkenly drove through bushes and along
riverbeds. He said I could have killed the

(16:38):
whole car full of kids. He was constantly shooting guns.
It was the most dangerous situation for children to be
placed in. That reckless lifestyle took a
dark turn when Anthony saw his young friend Charlie shot.
A gun went off and Anthony watched his nine year old
friend's shirt immediately turn red when he described young
Charlie's wound. He said it looked like a water

(16:59):
fountain. He dropped to his knees and it
came squirting out in a perfect red tube.
They dressed the wound and anything that they could find
and threw him in the back of a pickup truck.
And they were really far from the from like a major Rd. even
50 miles away from the nearest highway.
They actually drove him from theMojave Desert across the Arizona
border to the nearest hospital. And I'm very happy to say

(17:21):
there's a happy ending of this. 1C lived.
So Needless to say, I mean, Anthony Cumia's upbringing was
just full of all kinds of stuff that would be like, perfect
subject for talk therapy years later.
But instead, he had a radio show.
So Kumiya and his brother were also sexualized from a young
age. For Anthony's 13th birthday, he

(17:43):
said his father had a young woman named Buzz come over to
babysit. Buzz was 19, part of a family
who was friends with the Kumiyas.
And the way Kumiya tells it, Buzz proceeded to have sex with
Anthony when she came over, who was just 13 at the time.
And the next day, his father asked him how his night was,

(18:03):
giving him the impression that he set it up.
During a 2004 radio show where Kumia was telling the story, his
brother called into the show andhe said that he was having sex
with a 32 year old woman at the time when he was 16.
And they also divulged that their father was the one who
kind of hooked him up with the older women.

(18:23):
They mentioned that their fathermost likely slept with the same
women as they had. That was actually going down on
five. Oh man.
The old man hooked me up with her as well.
I mean the old man for us that way.
Oh. There it is.
There's some Frampton, Is this bringing back memories?
Bringing back such memories. Jesus.
Yeah, I think the old man was banging Sue also.

(18:45):
Probably. So Joe was a little older, so
you were only 15 or 16 banging the 32 year old?
Yeah, I was about 16, I guess. Yeah, and he was he.
Was just want to note that the way Anthony's brother talked
about these women years later was disgusting and these clips
we played cut around a lot of disgusting and demeaning
comments about their physical appearance.

(19:07):
We're going to get into this later, but misogyny was
obviously a defining feature of Opie and Anthony's radio show.
One thing that I kind of found interesting actually, because
Anthony's such a psycho, even atthat young age, it came to a
point where he's like, this is this isn't going well.
You know, he did have ambitions.He was a really smart kid.

(19:28):
And he just thought like, I needto leave California.
And he called it deprogramming. And it's just like this, this
thing where, you know, it was socrazy there all the time.
There was endless alcohol, sex and guns and it just he, he kind
of knew at some point that, you know, he had to make a life
change. And their time of their father
ended in a really crazy way. Their mother was growing

(19:49):
concerned about their life in California and bought them plane
tickets back to Long Island. Joseph Senior sold them,
pocketed the money and bought them Greyhound bus tickets.
It was a week and a half long journey with only $50.00 in
their pockets. They got to know sex workers,
Alcoholics and other people thatterrified Anthony.
And again, they are teenagers atthis point.

(20:10):
But eventually, Anthony Cumia and his brother made it back to
Long Island. Anthony's life became less
chaotic after this, but his homelife is still a mess.
His mother was hardly home. She was working as a cocktail
waitress at the disco and was working, you know, late nights,
overnights. When their mom was home, she
have loud sex with men that she brought back to their house and

(20:34):
some of the men were pretty meanto Anthony.
The way he tells it, when she wasn't home, Anthony and his
brother would use the house for their own parties and to have,
you know, their own sexcapades, if you will.
Yeah, that's absolutely true. There's even a story that
Anthony told of his brother banging on the door while his
mom was having sex and threatening to beat the guy up

(20:56):
with a baseball bat. Pretty, pretty wild time for
sure. But something I want to note
here is that Anthony was, by allaccounts, the extremely bright
kid. With better guidance, he
probably could have done really well.
Instead, he'd get beaten when hemade a puppet or took apart a
clock. And I, I kind of get, you know,
being annoyed if your kid is taking apart your clocks.
But he did have an interest in, he had an interest in how things

(21:18):
worked, you know, so he was really into astronomy, the moon
landing. And his dream was to become a
pilot of a fighter jet. And he was a gifted student but
eventually fell behind in his classes because According to
him, he was constantly stoned. He first smoked weed when he was
playing with model rockets and noticed that one wasn't flying
well. And he opened it up and found a

(21:39):
bag of weed in there that his brother was storing, you know,
so that his dad wouldn't find it.
And he decided, you know, I'm going to give this, I'm going to
give this a shot and smoked a joint.
And he said he went into like a,a shed or a barn or something
and came when he said he came out of the barn, everything was
in color. Kind of felt like Wizard of Oz
going from black and white to color.

(22:00):
So Anthony eventually dropped out of high school but continued
to hang around in the parking lot and date high school girls
who were younger than him. I think every high school has at
least one of those guys, and at the high school he went to, he
was that guy. But we'll cover some of that
later. So as Anthony gets a little
older, he starts working variousconstruction jobs installing

(22:22):
HVAC systems. He hates this.
Jumia has also said that around this time he and his brother
were selling cocaine and he talked about doing coke with his
mom. But Anthony starts doing
something else in his free time that would begin to change his
life. Anthony and his brother start
recording music together in a band called Rod Gut.

(22:44):
His brother was a skilled guitarplayer and Anthony happened to
be a talented vocalist. Some of the music they recorded
honestly wasn't that bad. It's not really my genre, but I
can recognize some amount of talent there.

(23:07):
I'm willing to give Kumia that much here.
That might be the most I give Kumia on this whole episode.
But we don't know Anthony Kumia as a rock star.
We know him as a shock shock. So what's the relationship
there, Matt, between this band and Anthony's career?
Yeah, I mean, he was in a lot ofvariations of that band with his
brother, and they had a lot of serious songs, but they also

(23:30):
would do a lot of parody songs, and his brother would send them
out to all the local DJs in LongIsland, and it eventually got
noticed. In 1994, a DJ at the Long Island
radio station WBAB announced an OJ Simpson song parody contest.
I will interject the OJ Simpson trial, a big big moment in terms

(23:51):
of galvanizing anti black racism.
This was around the height of the NFL stars murder trial.
Around the few dozen submissionswas a song called Going to
Electric Shock OJ to the tune ofOtis Redding song Dock of the
Bay. That song was, of course,

(24:22):
recorded by Anthony's brother. So listeners can't see this, but
I feel like I have to make a point that the music video they
made for this song features Anthony Cumia in blackface, as
does the album cover. It sure does.
The song itself was a hit with the radio stations listeners.
In September, Anthony's brother were invited to perform it live

(24:44):
on the air for the show's host. And who was the host of that
show? Matt.
Well, hosting the night time attitude late night on WBAB was
none other than Greg Hughes, butlisteners will know him as Opie.
Soon after that initial appearance on WBAB in September,
Kumiya started contributing comedy segments for Hughes and

(25:04):
other shows on the station. He'd regularly join Opie at
night and work his construction jobs during the day.
Yeah, he was a frequent guest onthe show, and then Opie had the
idea. What if we broadcast it together
as a duo? Hughes wanted to grow a show,
and listeners loved Kumia's presence on the air.
It felt like a perfect fit. The station management wasn't

(25:24):
sold on the idea and shot down Hughes's pitch.
The duo started sending tapes around to major stations.
Finally, they got a bite. In March 1995, they were hired
by Boston station WAAF and debuted their new show Opie and
Anthony. Anthony recalls actually tossing
his work tools out of the car onhis way to Boston.
Kind of like something out of a cheesy movie.

(25:46):
I, you know, I didn't realize hewas such a dork.
But it's, it's pretty funny thing to picture.
The duo arrived in Boston and they actually moved into a house
with Kumiya's mother-in-law. And that's including OB.
They were both in a house with their mother-in-law as well as
Kumiya's wife. Their job was only to do small
breaks between alternative rock songs where they talked just a

(26:07):
bit. But as time went on, they
started pushing it and playing less and less music and just
talking a lot more. And this really upset the
program directors, but they eventually caved because they
saw a bump in the ratings. And things were going pretty
well in Boston for Opie and Anthony.
You know, this new show, the duo, you know, this, this idea

(26:28):
they envisioned was finally coming to life.
But as they were going along, you know, they were
incorporating these various comedic bits.
And one of them went just a little too far.
Yeah, O and A were fired from WAAF for an April Fool's prank
where they claimed that Thomas Menino, who was the mayor of
Boston at the time, died in a car accident with a Haitian male

(26:51):
prostitute. Even the mayor's wife actually
bought it because Menino was on a plane at the time and, you
know, he wasn't able to answer any of his calls.
They were asked to apologize. And this is the audio of their
apology. I just, I feel bad that the
mayor's, you know, wife heard it.
Who knew that the mayor's familyis fans of the European Anthony
Show? Used to be.

(27:13):
Honestly, I think it's stupid. I think anyone who listens to
our show for the last three years knows what we're all
about. We've done pranks like this for
the last three years. We apologize to the mayor and
his family. I am sorry Mayor and family.
Seriously, that apology was not enough to save their jobs.
They lost their jobs in Boston, but the Opie and Anthony most

(27:33):
people think of today kind of came to life after their time in
Boston. They moved to NYC in 98 and
started broadcasting at WNEW, which is where the show really
took off. You know, New York is America's
largest radio market. Within years they were a top
ranked radio show among men aged18 to 34 and at their peak in

(27:55):
their WNEW years, I think they were syndicated in 19 markets.
So at WNEW, this is where Opie and Anthony really hits its
stride. What were those years like?
Can you give us a picture of like what what their life is
like in the broadcasting studio?Yeah, actually just picture

(28:16):
several fridges full, completelyfull of beer.
They said they had a Sobie fridge, which used to be kind of
a flavored juice drink. At the time, Sam Adams was a big
friend of the show. They brought their owned fridge
there and stocked it full of pallets of Sam Adams beer and
other beer companies started to take notice that they would
mention them on air. So they brought additional
fridges to and pallets of beer to fill as well.

(28:38):
So that's all going on. There's a Jägermeister machine.
They even had those, like, shot girls that are dressed in, you
know, skimpy outfits serving alcohol.
The show really never ended. As Kumiya describes it, when
their afternoon drive slot ended, Anthony would hang out
and party with the show on afterthem.
They were increasingly popular shock jocks and had a cult

(29:01):
following that really started toform.
Fans of the Opie and Anthony's show called themselves Pests,
and it's actually kind of a weird, creepy army that they had
that would attack other shows that they had disagreements
with. That a segment that they called
Assault on the Media where they would just jump into live news,
live news coverage and start screaming Opie and Anthony radio

(29:24):
show on XM Satellite Radio, things like that.
Just disrupting these news feeds.
And eventually they had to stop all that because they blew an
air horn in a guy's ear and he claimed that he was partially
deaf because of it. Jeez.
So when people think of Opie andAnthony, I, I, I feel like
they're, they think about it as a showcase for various
comedians. Is that right?

(29:46):
Yeah, they'd have a lot of comedians on their shows for
years and actually said that they kind of hated it.
Comedians were just there to sell tickets, and they would
shoehorn their comedy bits into every topic and constantly plug
their gigs and just go home. But that kind of changed when
they met Jim Norton. Who was Jim Norton and and how
did he change things? It sounds like he was pretty
important. Absolutely, I was a pretty small

(30:07):
time comedian at the time when they met him.
Kumiya is an incredible impressionist and he used to
impersonate Andrew Dice Clay a lot and at one point this was
heard by the Dice's security team, a guy called Club Soda
Kenny. That actually ended up being a
big part of Opie and Anthony. He introduced the show to Dice

(30:28):
and they had him on the show. He also brought his opening act
Jim Norton. Norton was a regular on the show
and in 2001 he was hired as the third Mike and he brought a lot
of his funny friends with him. These comedians acted a lot
differently than the ones they had disliked in the past.
They didn't shoehorn their jokesinto all the topics, They were
very natural, quick witted, and they famously roasted each other

(30:52):
every chance they could get. That was basically the show's
format until Opie and Anthony ended.
So some of the regulars on Opie and Anthony included comedians
that a lot of our listeners might have heard of today.
People like Patrice O'Neal, BillBurr, Amy Schumer, Louis CK,
Patton Oswalt, Ricky Gervais, Joe Rogan, Brian Regan, Nick

(31:13):
Dipaolo, Bob Saget, Jim Jeffries, Marc Maron and so on.
A lot of these people that were,you know, in and out of the Opie
and Anthony studio went on to become huge names.
Opie and Anthony's show like they were shock jocks, right As
in radio host who were offensiveand shocking, as the name, you

(31:35):
know, implies on purpose. It was just, you know, they
would get huge ratings for thesecrazy stunts they pulled on air.
And every time they saw the ratings come in and every time,
you know, the the network executives would come by and
say, like, that was crazy. But wow, we're making so much
money. You know, they think of how to
one up it over and over and overagain.

(31:55):
Tell us a bit about that. I I mean, what did that look
like on Opie and Anthony? Because it also got them into
quite a bit of trouble too. They've talked about that a lot.
You know, they took these huge risks, but with these risks we
had huge payouts. Actually, especially like you
said, with the ratings. You mentioned it earlier, a 17
year old girl rubbing the phone on her vagina over the air.

(32:19):
And that was very common. It's crazy to say about vaginas.
Vaginas were involved in a lot of their bits at the time.
Wiffle ball bats were inserted as far as possible.
Oh my God, the wiffle ball bat thing.
I've heard so much, so many bitsabout the Wiffle ball bat guys.
It's insane. Like they they seriously
measured and marked off the depth with a sharpie to see how

(32:41):
far you know a certain woman hadinserted it.
Women spoke through their vagina.
They shot ping pong balls out ofthem, crammed cell phones in to
see if they could get a signal and ring, and it rang.
They played darts with cherries trying to throw them in, you
guessed it, a vagina. And even in their butt at times.
You know, they've got some variety at least, I guess.

(33:02):
Yeah, yeah, you got to switch itup, otherwise it's going to get
boring. It, I just want to say this,
this seems like a weird bit for radio, right?
Because it's like you can't see this.
I mean, later on in Opie and Anthony, there was like a video
component, right? And I've listened to some of
these clips and it's like very graphic and stuff.
I guess they did manage to get it across, but it seems like
such a crazy bit to do for radio, right?

(33:25):
I mean, this seems like it's mostly for the amusement of Opie
and Anthony personally. Almost.
Right, we could, we, we, we, we could say over the air right now
that we're sticking ping pong balls in our butt holes so no
one would actually know whether we were doing it right.
So they didn't get fired over that bit, but they did another
bit. Tell us a little bit about sex

(33:45):
for Sam. Yeah.
So that was a really interestingand it had been a bit that they
had done a couple of times. They would have couples that
would get points for having sex in various places around
Manhattan. It was a contest.
It was basically a very dirty scavenger hunt.
They had a wacky point system including a 2 point conversion,

(34:09):
which meant anal sex and they even had spotters because they
realized that they couldn't trust their listeners to be
honest. So a group of five comedians and
show employees were each assigned to a couple to spot for
the contest, which basically meant that they would just watch
them have sex. They would call into the station
mid coitus and it kind of explained what was happening.

(34:30):
You might be wondering who Sam is.
Why are people having sex for Sam?
As Matt mentioned earlier, Sam Adams, the beer company was a
huge friend of Opie and Anthony.So sex for Sam's Sam Adams.
Sam Adams was the unofficial sponsor for the show and he was
in studio when they would perform these stunts.
So they do this for a couple years, you know, the first year,

(34:51):
the second year, it must be popular because they go for it a
third year. It's 2002 at this point, and
they add a location as a potential venue for their
couples in this competition to have sex at.
What's that venue, Matt? Because this is what ends up
getting them in trouble. You could get the most points
for having sex in a church. One of the couples went into

(35:15):
famed New York landmark institution Saint Patrick's
Cathedral. Paul Mercurio was the spotter
for that particular couple and he joined them as they went in
the church and the deed went down.
They were confronted actually bysecurity.
And this is all by the way, record over the phone.
You can hear all of this happening on air.

(35:37):
The security comes up to Paul and, you know, tells them that
they got to stop and they got toget out.
And Paul takes it way too far. When they're confronted, he
starts yelling at them about howpriests molest kids and
screaming at them like where is your God now?
They. Mean potatoes.
That is what the church needs. Step back, be counted and that.

(36:01):
Was a balloon notch, just so youknew.
But you're not Where's? Your dog now.
All right, we're moving on. We'll call you back.
He tells them that he called thepolice and they have a lot of
chances to leave, but Paul knowsit's great radio and keeps
upping the ante. When they do finally leave, the
police are waiting for them outside.

(36:22):
Then Paul starts berating the police.
He causes a big scene at that point, hoping Anthony go to
another caller, which is a New York City police officer who
tells them that they they got tochill out like Paul is.
If Paul just keeps his head downand stops harassing the police,
they can get out of this. But if he keeps doing that,
they're actually going to get arrested.
So the stunt draws a lot of heatwhen the FCC said it was

(36:44):
investigating the matter and WNEW fired Opie and Anthony, who
were their stations top talent at that time.
It could have been worse for them.
They had a $30 million contract with the station and they were
paid out. So all of a sudden this guy who
had no money growing up and was eating candy for dinner is is is
a multi millionaire, right? They were paid millions of

(37:07):
dollars just to not work, but they were still pretty upset
because being away from the radio meant that their fandom
that they worked so hard to build would disappear.
It's not like they had, you know, Twitter at the time or a
way to keep in touch with their audience.
They were just this major radio show that just ceased existing.
So according to OB, Clear Channel offered them a contract

(37:28):
as soon as they were fired from WNEW.
He alleges that Viacom, which atthe time was a part of CBS Major
Broadcasting Company, would allow them to get out of their
contract if they added a Howard clause to their Clear Channel
contracts. That would impose a fine on them
if they ever mentioned Howard Stern's name.

(37:49):
That seems like a pretty weird ask for a, you know, a radio
contract is like, OK, you've gotthis popular show, you're crazy,
you just got fired, we'll hire you as long as you don't mention
Howard Stern. So this feels like maybe a good
point to unpack the radio war that Opie and Anthony had with

(38:11):
Howard Stern. What is the background on that
Matt? Yeah, they were in a battle with
him for a long time. WNEW that didn't end until the
Sirius and XM merged in July of 2008, so they even worked for
the same company and would have these huge battles with him.
Howard was upset enough about itthat he talked to both of their

(38:31):
bosses, this guy Mel Karmazin, who censored them and said that
they couldn't mention Howard's name anymore on the radio, so
they started calling him Radio Edit.
As in they would be like, oh, did you see what happened on
radio edits show like like that's exactly right.
They they would mention him, yeah.
That's, that's how they would mention it because they weren't

(38:52):
allowed to say his name. And then they famously had
another problem with Mel Carmanson where he told them, I
can remember the quote. When do you wake up in the
morning? Something like when do you wake
up in the morning and decide to fuck me?
I, I something like that. But yeah, they were eventually
censored and weren't allowed to say radio edit and tested that

(39:13):
at one point. But it said radio edit, radio
edit over and over and over and over until I guess Van Halen
just started playing over the radio like the.
Station just interrupt, like when somebody gives too long of
a speech at the Oscars and they start playing music.
They did that but with, like, Van Halen guitar riffs, yeah.
Yeah, it was like Van Halen censorship.

(39:35):
So they were in this big battle with Howard Stern?
Yeah. Howard was not particularly
entertained by this. The station management was
clamping down on them, told themthey couldn't talk about Howard.
So when Clear Channel rolls up and says we'll hire you, all you
have to do is agree to Viacom's condition to get out of your
contract that you're not going to talk about Stern.

(39:57):
Do they take it? I mean, they couldn't just have
Howard. You know, saying things about
them and them not being able to reply to it.
So they decided to eat the bullet and wait out their two
year contract. The next place they go is XM
Satellite Radio and after a 2 year hiatus they were back on
the air and they sort of hit theground running.
XM radio was a shock jocks dream.

(40:20):
It's subscription based, it doesn't relay over Federal
Communications infrastructure. And that meant that there were
practically no rules. So what you could and couldn't
do on satellite radio, what happened on air was between you
and the company. So after a 2 year break, you
know, Opie and Anthony are just sitting around collecting these

(40:41):
gigantic paychecks. They return to the air, they're
on XM. Seemingly every barrier in front
of them is lifted up. What's the Opie and Anthony show
like Matt when it returns? It was actually worse than
before. They nearly lost their show like
a mere 5 months into starting with XM.
So what Matt's talking about is there was an Opie and Anthony

(41:03):
episode like you said, about 5 months into the start of the
show. It had Ralphie May on.
He had just become a a name for winning Last Comic Standing.
That would come into play later.But the producer for Opie and
Anthony invited a band onto the show, and that band brought
along with them a band of young women.

(41:23):
This what band was known for gruesome stunts, like one of the
guys would cut himself open, hithimself in the head with bats or
put thumbtacks in his head. The band was drinking a lot of
booze. And the women they brought with
them, we're having sex on air. And they were doing, you know
what we mentioned earlier, the wiffle ball bat challenge, the

(41:45):
producer Danny of Opie and Anthony was trying to have live
sex with one of the girls but couldn't keep an erection up.
So that episode was crazy, even by Opie and Anthony standards.
It was just wild on air. But the show seemed to end like
it normally did. Listeners walked away from it
thinking maybe, wow, that was nuts.

(42:05):
What happened? I I mean sure the episode was
crazy but there must be more to that story man.
Yeah, pretty grim actually. They discussed it a little
later. I'm going to warn you.
It's like pretty dark, I guess. What had happened was that the
girls that they had had on, who were having sex live on air were

(42:25):
underage. And they don't say necessarily
what underage means. I don't know if that's 21.
Worst case scenario they were under 18.
But what we do know is that one girl was taken away in an
ambulance. And we also find out that Jim
Norton actually had sex with thegirl that was taken away in the
ambulance. There's stories of her walking

(42:47):
out into the hallway completely naked.
And it's just a really, really grim scene.
The police show up, and they think that they might be
arrested. That might be the end of the
show. But you mentioned Ralphie May
earlier, who had risen into famebecause of Last Comic Standing.
The police recognized him and they believe that he is the
reason that they weren't arrested and the show didn't

(43:10):
end. Christ, and you're still on the
air. Yeah, fuck it.
Thanks to. I we're just.
A comedian. Thanks to a fellow comedian,
that's right, who the cops recognized and started talking
to and kind of got them off the kind of calmed them down a

(43:31):
little bit because other women coming to work should never have
to. Say, is she dead?
Yeah, why? Why is that girl being loaded
into an ambulance? Why are the cops coming in?
Is. You know a radio show should
never involve when a guest comesin after the guest leaves, is

(43:53):
she going to make it? Shouldn't be like something?
Sounds like a crime to me, but I, I don't know, certainly
sounds like something that merits an investigation, right.
It's like, you know, I'm just saying it has the whiff of
criminality. You know it.
It doesn't matter whether whether whether someone actually
broke the law. It certainly merits an
investigation. Absolutely.
I mean, Jim is famously in a a, I mean, he's, he's been off

(44:17):
alcohol for since he was like inhis teens.
So he takes that stuff really seriously and he even tries to
help people on the show, recommends that they seek
treatment. And you know, he knows better,
absolutely knew better, than to take advantage of this woman.
This country is so fucked up I just want to add that.
They didn't lose their show, andlike you said, it's getting

(44:39):
raunchier and nastier than ever.You know, a good example of this
is as they reignite their radio board, with Howard Stern
particularly focusing on his daughter.
What was that about? Yeah, they attacked his
daughter. She was cast in an Off Broadway
play and some of the pests actually attended the opening
night performance and recorded the audio and even took photos

(45:02):
of Emily Stearns nude scenes. The duo had a particular focus
on the audio of Emily Stearns saying very sexual things.
They made the audio kind of available to their listeners to
edit and create Emily Stern jingles that they would play
over the show. Can I interject, How old is
Emily Stern at this time? She couldn't have been that old.
This would have been like, I think around like 2006 or seven.

(45:25):
Yeah. She Emily.
She was born in 83. So she was maybe like early 20s.
So she's a, she's a, she's a young woman to be getting this,
you know, to get this kind of focus targeted harassment.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, again, just an
innocent bystander. You know it's not her fault that
her dad has a bad relationship with these guys.

(45:47):
Aside from their attacks on Emily Stern, their radio war
with Howard continued to intensify.
When Stern joined Sirius Satellite Radio, which was XM
Radio's direct competitor, They hadn't merged yet at this point.
Now it's SiriusXM. It wasn't the only show that
they had an issue with. Their old intern, now a full
time paid employee. At this point, Sam Roberts

(46:09):
created a bit called Jock Tober,where they would basically
attack other radio shows. Some of the shows kind of had it
coming because they'd even started, really.
But other shows would have literally nothing to do with
them. And, you know, might not have
even heard of Opie and Anthony doing.
I mean, these are like sometimesfamily shows, things like that.
Yeah, I, I feel like of all the Opie and Anthony bits I've

(46:30):
listened to through the years, the one that I've listened to
the most is Jock Tober. And some of those bits are
genuinely like, just hilarious, right.
It's picking out some like random talk radio host in
Nebraska and just ripping them anew one.
But some of them were really mean spirited.

(46:53):
You have in the notes here though, that in addition to what
was happening on the radio, the Pests, which is the fan club of
Opie and Anthony, they would kind of put these stations
through hell too. What did that look like?
I. Mean they'd clog their phone
lines and say crazy things on the air.
You'd have to, you know, stop taking calls.
Then they would attack their Facebook and just put gruesome

(47:14):
images up on their Facebook until they'd have to shut that
down. I mean, this would sometimes go
on for a week where people couldn't like do a normal show
because they were being attackedso much.
Has a lot of parallels to what we see online today.
Yeah, particularly, and this is I think maybe the worst incident
of a show being attacked was what they called the Terry

(47:35):
Clifford beatings. She was just some innocent
person who had never heard of the show.
And they attacked her looks and,you know, she was older and,
like, talked about her weight and her son actually recalled
this later, that she would come home crying every day from work
and just be extremely depressed for long periods.

(47:56):
And this is, again, someone who had nothing to do with the show.
It's pretty disgusting. OK, so this show, the value of
which I will let the listeners decide, is thriving on XM Radio
and they got basically no rules.And Opie and Anthony is getting
even crazier. But the duo comes back to

(48:16):
actually actually is invited back to regular terrestrial
radio in 2005. Yeah, we mentioned it earlier
that Howard was on Sirius. This is when Howard Stern leaves
K Rocket, the CBS station, and joins Sirius Satellite Radio and
becomes their direct competitor.He was CB, s s biggest star and
arguably the king of Shock, the shock jock genre.

(48:38):
He was syndicated in 60 stationsand CBS replaced him with a Van
Halen front man, David Lee Roth.And Roth's show was a massive
failure. So CBS Viacom hired Opie and
Anthony to try to salvage the ratings of Howard Stern's old
morning spot. They had a lot of success at
first. They took advantage of their

(48:59):
position to speak to Howard Stern's old listeners and they
often trashed Howard. And the response was a mixed
bag. They did a lot of callers from
Stern fans calling them cheap knockoffs, but also had a lot of
callers that sided with them. It was a full on radio war and
Opie and Anthony had a much bigger audience at that point.
This was a a really crazy time for the show because they did 3

(49:20):
hours in the morning on K Rock owned by CBS, would walk a few
blocks through Times Square, andthen they do three more hours
for XM radio. The first three hours of the
show we're pretty clean and lessoffensive.
It's on terrestrial radio. They're bound by a few more
rules, but the show simulcasted onto XM radio.

(49:41):
The second part of the show was a lot more offensive.
It was just for their XM Radio listeners and they even recorded
material as they were walking between the stations and that
became like a huge spot for hijinks and bits.
Matt. Well, I mean, what was the walk
over period like? I can't imagine producing that

(50:02):
much content. Like, you know, we're good to
do, you know, one or one or soonto be two podcast episodes a
week, right? I can't imagine doing God.
What would that be like 7 or 8 hours of material every day?
Yeah, they weren't happy about it either, but they tried to try
to keep it as interesting as possible.
They'd have one of their, you know, regulars, Rich Voss, would

(50:24):
go into a random Starbucks and just do a stand up set and start
roasting everyone in line to gettheir coffee.
Once a Stern fan actually ran upto them and tried to attack
them, but their security guards kind of stopped him and held him
down and Opie screamed his face and their fans would just be
outside waiting for autographs, taking pictures with them.

(50:44):
One guy even gave Anthony a Nazihelmet that he wore, and that
was a whole bit. And this is, yeah, it was, it
was pretty crazy. This is also probably a good
point to note that like during this period, the height of Opie
and Anthony Trump was on the show pretty frequently, right?
What do you know about Trump's appearances?

(51:05):
I mean, I I assume if there was anything like too insane, it
would have come up during the campaign or like old clips would
have resurfaced. But like, what was Trump doing
on this show? He would just basically come on
and hawk his wares. You know, a bunch of RIP off
stuff that we've heard about later.
You know, we've talked about Trump University, but one of the
things that he had on there was something called the Learning

(51:26):
Annex. And it was just about, you know,
teaching people how to get into real estate, be rich like
Donald, you know, and probably RIP people off for like an
insane amount of money. And they would make fun of him
for it, you know, like having him on here is really annoying.
Just listening to him hawk his wares and plug The Apprentice
and things like that. It wasn't ever really
interesting. And they would consistently make

(51:47):
fun of him afterwards. And there is a clip of them
listening to him try to, you know, explain away the birther
conspiracy when Obama finally released his birth certificate.
And it's a very funny clip as well, where they're just like,
what the fuck is wrong with thisguy?
You can't talk. You know, he's he's making a
fool of himself. At one point.
He literally says that America should charge other countries to

(52:11):
to assassinate people on on their country's behalf.
It's a it's a really weird thing.
But yeah, he was pretty much a joke on the show.
I think the Venn diagram of people who like to hear a
narration about a woman stickinga wolf, a wall bat up in her
vagina and people who are willing to spend money on a
Trump real estate scam like overlaps pretty fucking hard.

(52:32):
That's just my guess from being an American.
Talking about a circle. Circle, that's the Venn diagram.
It's like, oh, it's like, oh man, I just finished this wiffle
ball segment. I'm think I'm ready for some.
I think I'm ready to invest in something.
You get scammed. So there were I mean Opie and
Anthony is like known for its it's right.

(52:55):
You know, it you would have people like Joe Rogan and Lewis
Black and whoever it just come on.
They there were all kinds of stunts, all kinds of, you know,
running jokes. Are there any that sort of stick
out to you as particularly memorable, Matt?
Yeah, sure. Lewis was actually arrested for
a stunt with because they were going around New York City in a

(53:18):
bus full of naked women in, you know, naked women were in the
windows. There was something I won't
call, I won't say the name of. It was basically about a Patrice
O'Neal, a black man trying to hail cab and Anthony with his
Nazi helmet standing further back with a heil, you know,
Hitler salute and seeing who thecab picked up and may not be

(53:40):
surprising, but yeah, the Nazi won the challenge.
There was also an incident of OBstomping on a homeless man's
cake. One of my favorite things that
happened because this guy reallyfucking sucks, is this guy,
Tucker Max, came on their show and would tell these insane
stories. Like, yeah, man, I was fucking
this chick when I have my friendin the, you know, in the closet
with a video camera and he was going to jump out and man, like,

(54:03):
she started shitting everywhere.Then I was vomiting, and then my
friend fell out of the, you know, the closet.
It's just this insane, like, lies of his, like, sexual
escapades. And they just started roasting
him and it, it was a really, really kind of funny segment.
And he just walked out of the set and on his way out, they
threw his book at his head. And then of course, there was

(54:25):
the Homeless Charlie incident that caught a lot of they caught
a lot of guff for they had one of the friends that they had met
on the street during the walkover just come into the
radio and talk. And he said things like he
wanted to rape Condoleezza Rice and the Queen of England.
And they were suspended for a month, but they were still on,
you know, CBSK Rock at the time.So it's, it's all shocking,

(54:47):
offensive, disgusting. All of that is, you know, fairly
obvious, I think to our listeners.
But at this point, I'm not sure anyone is really considering it
super harmful. The ratings are bananas.
A lot of people are laughing along to this.
Yeah, I mean, they were shock jocks.
No jokes were off limits. Homophobia, racism, sexism,

(55:09):
jokes about each other. But it really didn't seem to
come from a place of hate in my opinion.
Until. Until Obama ran for the
presidency, Anthony lost his mind at this point.
During the run up to the election with McCain, he became
a gun owner for the first time since his childhood.
And that's how his whole personality ended up changing.

(55:31):
He was just, I'm a gun guy and I'm racist.
And that's when the show took pretty dark turn.
Long time listeners of posting through it will know that the
Obama election is a huge triggerfor a lot of people.
There are a lot of different triggers.
We should map them out sometime for people.
But it is one of the, it's, it'sone of the biggest, it's one of
the biggest drivers of, of radical right politics.

(55:53):
Yeah, and he just became an overall asshole around this time
too. He would.
He would basically get fights with people on radio all the
time. Just the with especially with
black collar saying the most racist things that you can
imagine. He would record his commute home
where he would scream at, you know, bus drivers and comment on
their, their race and say call them savages.

(56:14):
He would talk about he would drive on the sidewalk and around
people. He'd constantly be going 90
miles an hour or 100 miles an hour home.
And he was like, and it doesn't matter because I have these PBA
cards, which were basically a get, get out of jail free cards
that police would give you. So we're starting to understand
why Anthony Kumi is a focus of aposting through an episode here.

(56:36):
He's becoming increasingly reactionary, far right proto
Trump, I guess, Proto mega and racist, overtly racist.
But things start to change in his show as well.
Sirius and XM merged together in2008.
Howard Stern's longtime friend Mel Carmeson took the reins at

(56:56):
SiriusXM, and Opie and Anthony became second class citizens in
their words. And then a year later, they lost
their CBS show to a format change.
This is around the time that podcasts were becoming popular,
stations were failing all over the US, ratings were plummeting
everywhere. The world was kind of moving
towards on demand listening, andthen sadly, in 2011, beloved

(57:16):
guest Patrice O'Neal died. He'd struggled for years with
diabetes and had a stroke that eventually cost him his life.
It was an interesting show that they had, like in his honor, all
the regulars came together and they celebrated his life on
what's probably the most reveredshows of their tenure.
Like I said, they celebrated him, but they also roasted him
and roasted each other. It was kind of like having all

(57:37):
his best friends in the studio and the ones that couldn't make
it called in and just told theirfavorite Patrice stories.
And this sticks out to me because it's one of those rare
occurrences of everyone being funny again.
There was 0 hateful rants by Anthony which seemed to be kind
of a miracle at the time. Behind the scenes, things were
also taking a downward turn. Opie and Anthony, we would learn

(58:01):
years later, we're having a prolonged falling out.
The listeners probably didn't know much about it at the time,
but what was what was the issue,Matt?
Why were Opie and Anthony these,you know, this inseparable duo,
this powerhouse of radio, they were starting to hate each
other. Well, it's interesting.
They apparently hated each otherfor a long time and no one

(58:24):
really knew that Jim Norton actually is was on the show.
Because of that hate, Opie and Anthony were going through a
rough patch, and Opie decided tokind of bring Jim on as a
buffer. But we didn't really know much
about that at the time. And you didn't really hear about
it until much later because Auntreally wanted to talk about
race. And Opie got really tired of the

(58:46):
racial discussions and claimed that management was also
starting to get upset about it. And you know, Opie at this point
had gotten married and had a kid.
They were two very, very different people.
Yeah, it seemed like Opie was starting to grow up a bit where
Anthony just wanted the party tokeep going, right?
Is that fair? Yes, definitely.

(59:08):
I mean, OB, he was a baby in hisown way.
But yeah, it wasn't, like, into the real crazy stuff.
I remember him being offended a lot by these jokes that Jim and
Anthony would constantly make about this guy, Scott Peterson
murdering his wife, who was pregnant at the time.
It was pretty dark stuff, and they were obsessed with making

(59:28):
jokes about it. And OB was disgusted by that
kind of stuff, too, unsurprisingly.
You know, he had a kid. It's pretty gross, you know?
Yeah. So in the notes you gave us,
which are book length and wonderful, you said it might be
a good place to stop here and talk about Anthony's sex life.
And there's some dark stuff thatneeds to be addressed.
And I think is I think is reallyimportant to be addressed.

(59:50):
You know, trigger warnings for everybody, the misogyny that
open Anthony's listeners enjoyed, which they really
enjoyed and pursued. I think that's that's fair.
Yeah, they did extended beyond the radio studio and into
Anthony's life. Basically.
He lived it, right? Like they, you know, they talk

(01:00:11):
about like Rick Ross was not like actually a drug dealer or
some of that, but some, some rappers were, right.
So this guy was living the misogyny in a very palpable way.
Misogyny is almost a nice way ofputting it.
I mean, others have it's allegedpedophilia.
Even so it's got it gets pretty dark.
Yeah, and like you said, it trigger warning for everyone.

(01:00:32):
It's it's about to get kind of disgusting.
But Anthony's always been reallyopen about liking very, very
young women. I mean, there's a dozen clips of
him saying someone asking, hey, you know, if there were no laws,
it was the youngest that you would go for a girl.
Like, how was the youngest girl that you would have sex with?
And he has said on a couple occasions, 13 years old, when

(01:00:56):
Patrice heard that, he said that's disgusting.
I'm out of here. You need to be put down.
I mean, he was, I'm joking, but I mean, I think he was, you
know, pretty, pretty grossed outby that.
This is not like an isolated incident, by the way.
There's so many times where Anthony has talked about being
into 13 year olds. My.
Prostitute, Yeah. There's no such thing as the
law. No such thing as the law.

(01:01:17):
What? What age do you stop yourself?
13 There is something called thelaw just gets around it.
Just 13 is will you stop yourself 13?
Holy shit. That's gotta be the right.
It's gotta be the right 1313. What the fuck?
You never seen a hot hot 13 yearold?
That is completely fuckable. I'm just out of your mind.
I'm just thinking the age. Let's be honest, you've seen 13

(01:01:39):
year olds and gone. Oh my God, she's 13.
I don't know. Well, you have in the notes
here, I mean, he was making all kinds of comments about younger
teenage celebrities. That girl that I think it was on
Doctor Phil, she got famous second episode in a row where we
mentioned Doctor Phil, by the way, But the catch me outside,

(01:01:59):
how about that? That girl, you know, like
Anthony had made sexual commentsabout her sexual comments about
teenage gymnast. They would do countdowns for
when these young women that werein media and on TV.
We're going to turn 18. So it's I mean, just disgusting
stuff. But some of this extended out

(01:02:22):
into the real world too, right? I mean, it's like you said,
Matt, this wasn't just a bit forradio.
This wasn't just shock jocks being shocking.
But Anthony, you know, maybe seemed to kind of live out some
of this stuff too. Can you tell us about that?
Oh yeah, I mean, he took a 17 year old girl to her high school
prom. There's a photo of her actually,
and there's even a photo of Anthony with her parents in his

(01:02:46):
compound around the Christmas tree.
And her father, Jim Kennedy actually worked for the
Clintons. If prom isn't crazy enough,
there's also an instance where he took his then 17 year old
girlfriend to his high school reunion.
When the girl asked if he dated any other women, like at the
reunion, he answered, I only dated girls in junior high when
I was in high school. And as he said, I mean, he

(01:03:08):
wasn't really any different in high school.
This is a clip of Anthony admitting to statutory rape
because he believed the statute of limitations was up.
The worst I was was 20, just turned 14.
Oh my God, I have a new hero. That was pretty bad.
That was pretty bad. You.

(01:03:30):
Just turned First of all, let metell you something 9 yourself.
Nothing nothing like a 14 year old looks wise everything.
I'll dig up a picture. Believe me.
Nothing like that. Looks wise.
Talk wise. Everything.
She's a very wise girl. Wise beyond her years.
Was she? Did she have wisdom?
Wisdom beyond her years? That would go over well with the

(01:03:52):
jury. You don't get it.
She was. You don't get it.
Yes. And I was extremely immature
from my age. I was just like a goof.
What are the details? Were you in California?
No. OK.
No, it was. I don't.
What are the statue of limitations on this Jesus
Christ. Nah, it's got to be mad.

(01:04:13):
It's a while. It's a long time ago.
I don't want to implicate myselfin anything I could be arrested
for. Why don't we just stop right
there? The hell is going on?
So Anthony is making these comments as the Internet is
growing, the pests that follow Opie and Anthony are connecting
with each other online show is taking a dark turn.

(01:04:33):
Ivy. This is all kind of happening at
the same time. Some of Anthony Cumia's fans are
starting to turn on him and they're scrutinizing not just
what Anthony is saying on air, which is plenty disgusting, but
also what Anthony is doing online.
What happens there, Matt? Their pests kind of became
detectives and they just startedlooking through anything that

(01:04:54):
they could find on Cumia. They noticed that Anthony was
following Kids on Vine. Vine is the defunct social
platform where it was what, 6 second video clips looping?
So for our younger listeners, that's what that was.
Fine was fine, was great in my opinion.
Vine rocked. It was so fun.
The pest noticed that of his 81 likes on Vine, 70 of them were

(01:05:18):
underage girls. And when they question him about
it, he deleted his Vine account.And upon discovery, one of the
pests says, damn, Scroll down through his likes.
There's this one kid. She looks like she's maybe 10.
This guy is fucked up. And they also noticed that he
was following several underage girls on Instagram as young as
13 year olds. And it's not even like something

(01:05:40):
that you could accidentally do. I've seen these profiles.
I've seen screenshots of the girls in question.
And their age is in their Instagram profile.
They say something like, you know, Jamie age 13, or you know
someone age 14 and they're posting bikini pics and other
provocative photos. It's really disgusting.
Did Anthony ever respond to of those criticisms?

(01:06:00):
Yeah, it was kind of weird. This girl, Chrissy Mayer, 1 of
Kumia's employees tweeted pedo sympathizers are pedos.
And then one of the pests decided to tweet at her about
the Instagram controversy. This is like a year later, he
says why is Anthony Kumia following 13 year olds on
Instagram? And she responded because they
look at least 17. And Anthony replied to that

(01:06:22):
tweet by saying like 3 laughing emojis.
Obviously an error. She's not even that cute.
So now you know, not, not only is he, you know, following these
women, but she's not even cute. This is a 13 year old he's
talking about. It's crazy.
Jesus, there is also a catfishing scandal.
Anthony Kubia got catfished, is that right?
Yeah. It was self cutting girl on

(01:06:44):
Twitter. The poster had kind of garnered
an audience for her witty posts and comments.
As you could probably imagine, Anthony followed her for a
different reason. He was particularly interested
in her suggestive photos that she would post, even DM D her
about that and or at some point it was discovered that self
cutting girl wasn't actually the14 year old girl that she
claimed to be. She was, or he was I should say,

(01:07:06):
an 41 year old man. And that man had sourced all the
photos that he was posting on Twitter from an online photo
bucket. Do you remember?
That, yeah. That website where you kind of
had to put, you had to put your photos there and able to you to
be able to use them on other sites.
It's a sort of pre AI catfish. Very impressive.
Yeah, right. It's old school.
This is this is when there was still some art to it, you know?

(01:07:29):
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the poster had a wish list
on Amazon, and Anthony actually purchased a brand new MacBook
Pro for her. I say her.
You know, I'm just going to haveto say that because it's hard to
say. 41 year old man, he buys a MacBook Pro for a 41 year old
man. Yeah, thinking it was going to a
14 year old. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And also gave the man $200. And eventually a Twitter user

(01:07:54):
discovered that Self cutting Girl was a fake account.
And the cat Fisher claim came clean and posted, you know, Self
Cutting Girls DMS with Anthony. And unsurprisingly, Anthony had
messaged her several times, complimenting her on her more
risque photos that she posted and exchanged information with
the account holder. One DM reads.
I'm not quite obsessed with you,but I'm close, ha ha, Actually,

(01:08:16):
I'd love to go out to dinner with you, talk about stuff, and
maybe kiss you. And there's a :) emoji.
The 41 year old who I'm imagining is for, for for
anybody who's our older listeners who've seen Beavis and
Butthead, No, Principal Mcvicker.
Like I'm just imagining like that's who I'm imagining.
And just like, you know that kind of like, you know, just

(01:08:39):
just mouth breathing like dude, like posting presented as a 14
year old girl said this is me. I'm a 14 year old girl.
And this dude said I'm I'm not obsessed.
I'm getting close. Thinking it was a 14 year old
girl. I mean, case closed, that's a
wrap, that's a wrap. I don't have any, I'm not

(01:08:59):
Colombo. I don't have any additional
questions here. I think I've I've come to my
conclusions. When it came out that Anthony
had been catfished and this these messages that he allegedly
sent this account were made public, did Anthony respond to
that at all? Yes, this is his response.
Fuck off. I helped out someone who

(01:09:20):
presented themselves as someone who needed help.
I've done this hundreds of timeswith people from 8 to 80 which
always makes me laugh. Wheelchairs, beds, cars,
computers, phones, etcetera. The only difference with this
one is it was some piece of shitliar.
I have a record of being charitable if someone is in
need. I have 0 record of betting any

(01:09:42):
underage girls. Believe what you want, Hate to
ruin your good story. Fucking mutants.
Thing is, actually he does have a record of betting underage
girls. Something that he admitted to at
some point, you know, and in high school, you know, you've
heard the clip earlier. So I don't know what he's even
talking about there. It's so gross to to get caught
for that. And I guess we could say caught
because, right, because he admitted it, right.

(01:10:03):
And for your response to be like, Oh yeah, I'm sorry for
being such a nice guy. Just gross shit.
You also have a note about Sue Lightning.
Who is Sue Lightning? Why?
Why is that relevant? As we discuss Anthony's, we'll
call them extracurricular behaviors, I guess.
Yeah, Anthony's ex-girlfriend atthe time had started a blog and

(01:10:27):
would talk about some of the things that was going on with
Anthony and she also had like a podcast that she did is
recording of her, you know, talking about her life with
Anthony, that kind of stuff. But she also mentioned an
interesting tidbit that there issome evidence that Anthony had
sex with a trans E girl and adult film actress Sue
Lightning. She also alleges that aunt
bought Sue lightning breast implants.

(01:10:49):
I think you said this before when you're talking about Nick
Fuentes him, you know, the allegations of him being gay, it
shouldn't matter. Like it's it's not a big deal.
Like if someone wants to have sex with a trans girl, it should
be totally normal. But in Anthony's case, I bring
it up because he's insanely transphobic.
Like he's on par with most rightwing people where he's like
talks a bit about them being groomers and which is, you know,

(01:11:12):
this is coming from a groomer, obviously, but.
And he still does. I mean, like he, he's like post
this, this scandal, like this, he, he perpetuates it.
Yeah, it's worse now. Yeah, it's still a major thing
that he talks about. From other things that we're
going through here is that Kumiahas denied the allegations that
he had some kind of sexual relationship with Sue Lightning.

(01:11:34):
What do we know about his denial?
And in your opinion, does that hold any water?
I mean, I'm less familiar with the evidence that's out there
that supports those allegations,but what should we make of that?
Yeah. I mean the evidence is
basically. You know that she was at his
house. There's, there's pictures of her
hanging out at his house. And then there's a picture of

(01:11:54):
her in front of a mirror, a selfie in front of a mirror.
And Anthony has taken the same selfie in the same mirror.
And this is a this is a hotel inManhattan.
So all it is is that she was in,you know, could have been the
same hotel, different room taking a selfie.
So it's, it's not that damning. But also, there is a Venmo
receipt from Anthony that peopleclaim, you know, was for her

(01:12:18):
breast implants. And Anthony does deny it.
First, he denies even knowing her.
And then when the pictures startcoming out about her at his
house, he just says, you know what, you know, I didn't have
sex with her. You know, she's just a friend.
I have lots of different kinds of friends.
You know, I got to say that Sue also denied it.
She did it Reddit AMA. And when they asked her about

(01:12:39):
it, she just said that they werefriends.
You know, again, I don't think it's a big deal.
It's just that like, if he wasn't so transphobic, you know,
I don't think even if they were just friends, right?
Even if. They're just friends.
An attractive young trans woman.The fact that he's so
transphobic, I calls him to question his character, you
know, because like, you know, I don't, I don't go around and

(01:13:00):
dismissing people who I considera friend based upon their
immutable characteristics. You know, I mean, it really just
speaks to his character that he would do that.
Yeah. Jim Norton is his best friend,
by the way. He's married to a trans girl and
there's podcasts where they've talked and been nice to each
other and stuff, which also kindof baffles me with his like
history of all the terrible things, you know, he said about

(01:13:20):
trans, the trans community. So let's let's try to fly
through the rest of these here. There's pal talk.
What is this? This is like a chat room kind of
thing that Opie and Anthony fanswere using.
What? What goes on there?
A huge just became a huge part of the show especially.
In Anthony's world, he would spend all show on Pal Talk and

(01:13:41):
record their segments and thingslike that and even the are off
fire moments as well. So the Pal talkers could
actually listen in on the show. And what it was was an app.
It's kind of like Skype or Zoom,but mixed with Twitter spaces
and had rooms for various interests.
There were sexual rooms, obviously, you know, it's the
Internet. There were rooms where people

(01:14:02):
took turns singing karaoke, LGBTQ rooms, and Ant created an
Opie and Anthony room where fanswould gather and hang out with
the radio star. And it kind of feels like it
gave Kumiya a God complex. He would turn the camera on like
during the show all the time andoften get distracted.
It became a problem with Opie attimes.

(01:14:23):
It's a this is kind of stuff that's come up later, but this
is an interesting tidbit that I don't think would be relevant in
some cases. But like fans of your show, I
think will really dig this part.Paltalk even aided and Opie and
Anthony being the first to publish the Anthony Weiner Dick
pic. Like they had Andrew Breitbart
on the show who hadn't publishedthe Dick pic at the time of

(01:14:44):
airing, but he possessed it and he handed his phone to Anthony
to show him the photo. Kumiya discreetly placed it in
front of the Paltalk cameras andlisteners of course took
screenshots and sent it back to the producers of the ONA show
and beat him to the punch of releasing the Dick pic on
Breitbart. So Anthony is on pal talk all

(01:15:04):
the. Time he's befriending people.
One of them is a guy named Jeffrey Hollander.
What's the story there? Yeah, this is a dark 1, so yeah.
Just going to give you that warning ahead of time.
There was a guy that he met who went by the name Kurt Love,
which we later found out his real name is Jeffrey Hollander,

(01:15:24):
like you said, and he's a convicted sex offender.
The police report is kind of vague, but the details are
really grim. Again, I'm going to warn you
that he went to prison for 10 years for sodomy first degree
with a 12 year old girl. He used some kind of cutting
instrument as a weapon and he hit the victim in some way.
And pornography was involved. And this guy Hollander was

(01:15:46):
friendly enough with Anthony to go to notorious, the notorious
parties at Anthony's house and also spent some time with
Anthony's brother Joe. So we need to get into his
downfall. But just a.
Few more things we should talk about here.
You mentioned parties at Anthony's house.
Anthony went through a bad breakup towards the end of the
Opie and Anthony show, sort of in those last few years, and

(01:16:09):
started throwing ragers at his house and Anthony.
Kubia would post photos from those parties on his Twitter
account, including one incident where he posted a photo of a
passed out naked girl with her bikini pulled to the side,
showing her genitals. What can you tell us about that?

(01:16:29):
That post is no longer up. Neither of us looked very hard
for that photo given the context.
But. But, I mean, this kind of caused
a stir with his fans, right? Yeah.
I mean, this is just one of the many things.
That they kind of discovered about that house.
There's this guy Jeffrey Hollander being there.
And as some of the parties were allegations of Hollander

(01:16:53):
bringing underage girls to the compound saying, you know, I got
this really rich friend in the cool house.
You know, let's let's have a party bring these girls out
there. And Anthony's best friend at the
time, their producer, Danny Ross, like has made a ton of
crazy allegations of what's going on there.
And I mean, it's again, really, really disgusting and dark where
he alleges that Anthony fingereda 13 year old girl and had

(01:17:16):
bragged about it to him. You know, things like that.
It's just, it was a really dark time.
There were definitely, there's definitely pictures of underage
girls in his house. And Danny also has alleged that
some of those girls were taken advantage of as well.
Should note that Kumia has. Denied these allegations, Danny
Ross, in response, has challenged Anthony to sue him,

(01:17:39):
saying, you know, let's go to court.
Sure, we can get you, you know, we can file discovery and get
you in a deposition. And if you want to go there,
sure. Let's, let's show the world, you
know what, what exists here. And Anthony, I, I guess, has not
sued Danny, right? So yeah, I mean, there's
according to Anthony police reports.
So yeah, I just say girls at that age are literal.

(01:18:01):
Children like, you know, I know because of my, my son is in
middle school and it's a, it's like really startling to me.
It's not like in a vacuum where you just say the number, it's
actually like you have an idea of how young they are.
And it's really, really scary. I got really angry, like I, I
didn't think. I could get triggered from this

(01:18:21):
stuff, but I was kind of wrong, you know?
Like this. I'd listened to this for so
long. I already knew about this stuff,
but I spent so much time researching this that I got like
pretty upset often and that thissection, like, was particularly
rough. And I just got to say that.
Like, it's so fucking annoying that the right wing consistently
are accusing people many times without any kind of evidence of

(01:18:45):
being pedophiles. Anthony does it.
I mean, he mentioned recently about the Epstein files or
whatever, whatever you want to call it, that, you know, he was
hoping to see all these Hollywood guys get arrested.
You know, I wanted to see like Steven Spielberg fall and you
know, all these people that the Hollywood elites that they're
always referring to. And of course, you know, Bill
Clinton, who might actually be implicated, which is kind of

(01:19:06):
more makes more sense. But I, I really do get disgusted
by Anthony, you know, ranting and raving about Hollywood elite
pedophiles and Jeffrey Epstein and all this shit when he is
clearly admitted to crimes in the past.
He's clearly talked about, you know, being attracted to 13 year

(01:19:27):
old girls. He literally says like that tits
and ass. I, you know, they're, they're,
he's called them completely fuckable.
These are like words that have come out of his mouth.
And he still has support from all these right wing psycho
lunatics that, you know, even people on Fox News as high as
that and they still support him.And that's what really fucking
drives me crazy is you have evidence of a guy who is looking

(01:19:48):
like a pedophile in real life. And he has endless support from
the right Anyway, sorry. So things are.
Slowly but surely going downhillat Opie and Anthony In 2014,
things come to an end. So in 2014, Anthony Kumbia.

(01:20:09):
The way he tells it, he had justgotten a new camera, and he went
out to take photos of empty Manhattan streets near Times
Square. It's late at night.
According to Anthony, he's taking photos of the street and
some woman who believes that shemight have had her photo taken
by Anthony comes up to him, is angry and assaults him for no

(01:20:32):
reason. According to Anthony, the woman
in question started smacking himsilly on the side of the head,
up, up and down, and a few otherblack men came to her defense.
Anthony, again, the way he tellsit, tried to de escalate, got
out of that situation and went back to his apartment where he
proceeded to log into Twitter and go on a racist tweet storm.

(01:20:54):
He started by saying that the woman was lucky.
Quote, she's lucky I was a white.
Legal gun owner or she'd be dead.
And then it got significantly crazier.
Quote. Savage, violent animal.
Fox prey. On white people, they aren't
people. He also called the woman an
animal. Bitch quote.

(01:21:15):
The switch to violence is immediate.
No discussion, just violence. When will that be addressed?
Oh right, never slavery did it? Oh, OK, so a lot of these
comments are just. Deeply racist, deeply anti
black. And we would learn later that

(01:21:35):
friend of the show, Sean Hannityreached out to Anthony Cumia and
told him to stop tweeting. And that would have some pretty
serious repercussions if he didn't cool down.
But it was too late by then. SiriusXM terminated Anthony's
contract on July 4th, 2014. Looking back, I kind of find
this surprising. He.

(01:21:56):
Had been spouting hate speech for like 6 years since the Obama
election. It's actually kind of baffling
that it took so long for him to face any repercussions.
This split the opium Anthony community.
A lot of Anthony's friends and fans started tweeting hashtag
stand with Ant. Others were quiet about his
firing and Kumia took notice. It also caused a rift on.

(01:22:20):
The show, right, Matt? Yeah, Anthony expected Jim and
Opie to quit. With Anthony and start their own
podcast they decided to stay on satellite radio and the Opie and
Jim Show was born. It was very short lived show.
They turned on each other almostimmediately and and Jim were
still very tight. But Kumiyo started really
digging into Opie about his termination.

(01:22:42):
A lot of unresolved conflicts came to light.
Obie was also battling Jimmy on air of the show and it just
ended abruptly. So Jim started his own show with
Sam Roberts Who? Had started working with Opie
and Anthony years back as an unpaid intern.
They were on in the mornings. That show lasted until last
year. Opie was on in the afternoon,

(01:23:03):
but he was eventually fired. It's a long story, Matt.
You wrote that he kind of had itcoming.
What's that mean? I mean, there was a few things I
think. That led up to this point, video
had resurfaced of him stomping on a homeless man's cake during
one of their famous walkovers. So there was a lot of people

(01:23:24):
upset about that. He also kind of started doing
the shock jock thing again, you know, his stunts and he snuck
into Howard Stern's studio as a radio bit.
And by this time the radio war was way over and Howard was king
of SiriusXM. So the official reason for his
termination is insanely disgusting and bonkers.
But I think there was a few other things that led up to it.

(01:23:46):
But but the final straw was thathe filmed a video in the
station's bathroom of their talent Booker Roland Campos
pooping. And Roland went to HR and that's
the last we saw of Opie on satellite radio.
So let's get back to Anthony here after he gets.
Booted from SiriusXM and I'm talking less than a week later
Anthony Cumia announced that he's launching an on demand

(01:24:08):
streaming platform called the Anthony Cumia network so Anthony
has a broadcast studio built in the basement of his home years
earlier he would do streams of it jokingly dubbed live from the
compound we've mentioned you know the compound a few times
that's what he would call his house so Anthony kind of already
had stuff in place to be able togo independent so rather than

(01:24:34):
back off and apologize or try tosalvage Anthony just double S
down and says I'm going to do myown thing fuck you yeah and if
you see the logo from live from the compound it's.
A has a striking resemblance to a swastika.
After he was fired by SiriusXM, Kumi also made a stop on a white

(01:24:54):
nationalist podcast called The Political Cesspool.
During that show, Kumiya doubleddown on his racist views,
railing against diversity, attacking Black communities for
being childlike, and praising host Jame Edwards for his own
views on race. Mike, do you remember the
Political Cesspool? I know.
I definitely know of it as it. Is aptly named podcast in that

(01:25:16):
it is a political cesspool Yeah,this was like a stopping point
for. Like everybody, if you were like
racist in 2014 to 2015, like youmade a stop on this show at some
point. The first episode of The Anthony
Cumia Show aired on August. 4th 2014 By the end of the year
Cumia had attracted 10s of thousands of paid subscribers.

(01:25:39):
The next year Anthony Cumia expanded the network.
They included new shows called Legion of Skanks and later for
Everybody at home, The Gavin McGinnis Show.
And yes, it's that Gavin Mcinnis.
Proud boys founder Gavin McinnisIn fact, the proud Boys were
initially built out of Compound media listeners who would meet

(01:26:03):
in New York City bars near the Manhattan studio that Anthony
would later build for Compound media.
Another thing I'll note about Mcinnis is that he played a big
role, in addition to Kumia in tointroducing compound media
listeners to the harder edge of white nationalism.

(01:26:24):
He would have guests on his showlike Richard Spencer,
Christopher Cantwell, David Duke, and so on.
In 2016, Kumia rebranded this media.
Company as, quote, Compound Media.
He continued to grow, adding more shows and catapulting other
stars. He built a studio in midtown
Manhattan. Some other names that our

(01:26:44):
listeners might recognize from this period included Michael
Malice, a right wing fellow who had a moment in the first Trump
administration. Dave Landau, who left Cumia's
show to go work with Steven Crowder.
Shane Gillis, a big popular comedian, had a show on Cumia's
network for a while. Yeah, just after being fired by

(01:27:07):
SNL. For an racist Asian impression,
I believe Kumia basically blazedthat trail for the cancelled
comedian bit that got popular years later.
And instead of apologizing and backing off after losing his
SiriusXM contract, he just double s down harder and harder,
taking his cold audience down the rabbit hole with him.

(01:27:28):
But it's not all fun and games at Compound.
Media, that sort of downward trajectory we started to talk
about earlier continues, yeah, in April 2016, Kumiya.
Spent a month in drug and alcohol rehab after beating up
his girlfriend. That incident took place in
December 2015. In June 2016, he pleaded guilty

(01:27:51):
to a third degree assault and criminal obstruction and
breathing and a plea deal. It's pretty violent.
Hi, I'm in Long Island. I got my.
Hand broken. I'm waiting for the police to
come but my. Don't hang me again.
Take me for me. I.
Tried to call the police, he turned the phone off.

(01:28:13):
We find out later that he bit her hand.
Broke it. Jesus.
So things are. Also not going well on the
business side of things. Matt, tell us about that.
Yeah, there was a long time. Friend of the show named Keith
Mareska AKA Keith the Cop Who been around them since the WNEW

(01:28:35):
days and he was meant to be handling the business side of
things but it was a complete disaster.
Who would have thought that thiswould happen with a cop, you
know, with no business experience.
They lost all of their major shows.
Shane Gillis. Red Bar and even Gavin left the
network. The Legion of Skanks guys joked
about it later where they said they had a 3% chance of renewing

(01:28:57):
their contract, which meant thatthey were in negotiations with
Keith and he offered three percent to what they were worth.
There was also a bit of tragedy in Kumia's personal life.
He and his mother Rosalie were always very, very close.
She was at their live gigs, she'd come on the stage, do
karaoke, come to their parties, and she was diagnosed with
dementia. And Anthony just abandoned her

(01:29:19):
right after the diagnosis and didn't talk to her for the last
five years of her life. This comes up in an episode with
his long time friend, Ron Bennington, who just asked like,
you know, why? Why abandoned your mom, you
know, and when she has dementia and he said something like, you
know, Ash, she wouldn't even know who I am.
You know, there's no, no real reason to keep up the
relationship. But I can just say from personal

(01:29:41):
experience, you know, my, my grandma had dementia and it's
kind of barely noticeable the first year and, or at least and
then even towards the end, therewere like a lot of moments of
clarity where she totally recognizes you and stuff.
So it just makes it all the morecreepy to me that he just kind
of abandoned her. On an episode with Bert
Kreischer, Anthony goes on a diatribe about doxing.

(01:30:04):
He says he understands that it happens to him, but they started
fucking with his family. His brother was a pretty big
musician at the time in what he called A tribute band for U2,
and they would play pretty big gigs around Vegas and tour the
country and cover band would make a lot more money than you'd
expect. But brother Joe also kind of had

(01:30:24):
a huge war with the Opie and Anthony Pests and they started
calling into the venues and showing him, showing the venue
owners like some of the racist things that he had done and
getting all of his shows cancelled.
And Anthony's basically saying, like, you know, this guy had
nothing to do with anything. If you want to attack me, that's
fine, but not my brother. Whereas like, you know, his
brother really did play a big role in that happening.

(01:30:45):
And it also really annoys me when you look back at what we
talked about earlier with Chuck Tober, Terry Clifford in
particular, who would come home every day crying because they
just out of nowhere, you know, she was being attacked for her
weight and her age and things like that.
You know, I mean, it's, it's just kind of a weird thing to
get upset about. Anthony is also expanding his

(01:31:06):
horizons. Even further into far right
media in 2017, he starts hosting1/4 hour on Infowars, the
conspiracy outlet helmed up by Alex Jones.
Hi, everyone, Anthony Cumi in at.
Infowars.com, Matt, you've watched some of this, you said,
Anthony. Wasn't really diving hard into

(01:31:29):
the conspiracy theory stuff right?
What was he covering? It was just like a typical
compound media show that he would.
Do, you know, mostly black crimeand, you know, things like that.
And I actually listened to this getting ready for the show
today. I listened to him talk about it.
And, you know, at the time, he wasn't interested in any of the
conspiracies or anything like that.

(01:31:50):
And he thought that, you know, Alex Jones was just this kooky
guy. But yeah, it just didn't really
make sense to me why he was on there.
And and then suddenly he was gone just as soon as he started.
And this kind of came around thetime when Alex was de
platformed. And I don't wonder if Jared has
anything he wants to say about that.

(01:32:10):
This is bringing back PTSD. Flashbacks for me, so maybe we
can talk about Alex Jones de platforming another day for
listeners who aren't aware I played some kind of role in
that. A few articles that were written
about it. I feel kind of overstated my
role, but I went through the fucking ringer, man.

(01:32:31):
Alex Jones fans are psycho. I had shit mailed to my house
and all kinds of things. You were like the poster boy for
that controversy, I remember. Seeing that some point in 2021,
Anthony starts doing. Stand up and nothing like
waiting until you're 60 to startdoing that.
He had previously done one roastand and famously bombed there.

(01:32:52):
Is that correct? Yeah.
You know most comedians you think would build their.
Bits over time, you know. 2 minutes here, they bomb.
Make it better. They've added two minutes here,
2 minutes there. And Anthony just went straight
into doing, just doing a set, you know?
And it didn't really matter because his audience is just
there to hear the racist guy they love make some trans jokes
to say Trump's name. Pretty just pure pandering

(01:33:13):
really. A couple of Opie and Anthony
fans recorded. Some of Anthony's comedy sets
and it is just brutally bad. His closer is that he doesn't
like Biden fight and mishandled the Afghanistan war.
He misses Trump and then, you know, it was some weird fantasy

(01:33:33):
about like Trump shirtless goinginto Afghanistan rescuing the
troops. There's no real like punch
lines, no jokes really. It's just fantasies and like how
much Anthony loves Trump. Well, I I personally don't want
to see Trump shirtless running into.
Afghanistan, if I can avoid it. I disagree.

(01:33:54):
I think that would be a I think that would be a great thing.
To do with Trump is just, you know, send him into Afghanistan
without a shirt. I know right?
And I like to spit on this. Maybe we can get a live stream
of? That I'm in my head.
It's not like I don't think it's.
That, you know, image that you're thinking of Trump.
I think it's one of those like weird AI ones where he's all
ripped and shit. Like it's, that's what I, I
assume Anthony is picturing. I'm picturing the Krasenstein

(01:34:17):
brothers. Book, you know, with a Robert
Mueller where he's just like ripped and he's going to save
democracy. Yeah, they they exposed the
people who draw cartoons of Trump.
Always slim. Him down by.
Like 210 lbs or something. But so in 2022, Kumia tells Nick
Fuentes that he's a fan. Quote.

(01:34:38):
I started watching a show maybe a year ago or so, and I fucking
love it, dude. It's funny and informative and
pertinent to what's going on. And courageous.
I'll say that too. Nick speaking truth to power, I
guess, right? I guess that's what he thinks.
Holy Jesus Palomino, I can't. Believe.

(01:34:58):
There he is. This is Nick.
I'm starstruck right now, my friend.
I'm starstruck. I can't even.
How are you? The feelings seem to be mutual.
Here's what Nick has to say. About Kumiya, it is good.
He's awesome. He's honestly.
One of my favorite guys and he'sso solid because he you, you

(01:35:19):
really. Tell like he's.
Just in it for all the right reasons.
This is actually one of my favorite things.
I got to hop in here and. Comment about another couple
videos where Anthony is just drunkenly screaming at his
computer about Nick. There my favorite clips of
Anthony just having complete rage filled meltdowns while

(01:35:40):
trying to play Call of Duty withNick and a bunch of gropers.
I think Call of Duty has totallyfucked me.
For no reason why am I being shadow banned and banned from
Call of Duty? I've won a count.
The other one was fucked. Cancel.
So Anthony is, you know, at thispoint.

(01:36:02):
Well into bed with the radical right.
You know, aside from his business relationship to Gavin
McInnes and his fondness for people like Nick Fuentes, who we
did a Who the Hell episode about, folks should go check
that out. In 2024, this kind of came to a
head. He spoke to American

(01:36:24):
Renaissance, their annual conference.
Mike, can you explain what American Renaissance is a little
bit and why somebody like Anthony Cumia showing up there
is a big deal? Sure.
I mean, they're, they are the the kind.
Of, for lack of a better word, intellectual wing of the White's
white nationalist movement, white supremacist movement.

(01:36:46):
They, they make a lot of pseudo scientific statements about
black people's intelligence and the intelligence of other races
to, to kind of justify this worldview that whites should
live completely separately. And it is focused in a very
pointed way on that topic on essentially white superiority
and the the need for whites to be separate.

(01:37:09):
I will also add that the white nationalist group V Dare, who is
based in who at the time they'renow defunct, was based in
Berkeley Springs, WV. And I, in a very lovely castle,
announced Anthony Cumia as a guest in 2024.
Well, what would have been theirlast conference?
But I, you know, don't think that they showed up, that he

(01:37:33):
showed up based upon, you know, my observation.
I was in Berkeley Springs at that time.
He never posted anything about it.
It was just Peter Bruno of Videre announcing that he was
there. So it's so it's very clear that,
you know, there's a lot of overlap between Videre and
American Renaissance. So kind of like the Coke, Pepsi
of the of that wing of the whitenationalist movement.

(01:37:53):
And he was kind of trying, you know, trying out what it would
be like to rub shoulders for people who are basically
professional racist. So he didn't show up to be.
There as far as we know but he did show up to American
renaissance he gave a speech there titled surviving as a

(01:38:13):
racist with quotes around it in broadcasting.
During that speech, Anthony Cumia describes himself as a fan
of Jared Taylor who is the face of American Renaissance and just
has spent decades promoting antiblack racism, all kinds of
bigotries. During that speech he tells the

(01:38:34):
story of his career and Peppers in a bunch of racist comments
about black people. As the speech starts to go on to
ACVS and. They let the people stealing go,
but they lock up the shampoo. It's it's so.
Ridiculous. And you'll hear people go in and

(01:38:55):
go, well, why is this happened? Why do, why are they locking up?
It's not a question that you need to ask.
Everyone knows, but no one wantsto address the actual problem.
Young blacks are going into places and stealing because no
one is stopping them. There's no shame anymore.
There's no consequence anymore. In the olden days when I was a

(01:39:19):
child. In June of 2024, compound media
closed its studio actually merged with Gavin Mcinnes's
censored TV network. Kumia said his network was
losing money and had been for years.
Today that still exists as Compound censored.
It hosts shows from all kinds ofinsane right wing people
including Kumia, McGinnis, Jim Goad, Owen Benjamin, Elijah

(01:39:41):
Schaefer, Devin Tracy and so on.A lot of these people are just
straight up anti semites and Kumia and McGuinness actually
have a show together too which is one of the weirder ones on
there Kumi spent nearly a decadeleaning harder into.
Far right shit. He's making posts longing for
Nazi Germany and peddling Holocaust denial, these sort of

(01:40:02):
things. So you'd think that Anthony
would be done. Right.
He's gone into this independent media lane.
He is speaking at American Renaissance.
He is hanging out with groupers,trying to play Call of Duty with
them and stuff. Somehow he gets another contract
for terrestrial radio. So in March 2025.

(01:40:25):
Earlier this year, Kumia returned to national radio with
a 2 hour Sunday slot on New York's conservative talk radio
station 77. WABC.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency actually reached out to the
radio station, asked them about some of the comments, some of
the associations and stuff that Anthony Cumia has had throughout

(01:40:46):
his career. The owner of the station is
super huge, like pro Israel, youknow, pro Jewish kind of guy.
And the owner of the station told Jewish Telegraphic Agency
that they would fire Anthony Cumia if he said anything
anti-Semitic on air. He said the station has

(01:41:08):
discussed some of Cumia's tweets, the ones that mention
Nazi Germany, Holocaust denial, whatever, and that they talked
to Cumia about those before theyhired him and added that they
believe Cumia's contract actually explicitly forbid
anti-Semitism on his show. So Matt, what?

(01:41:29):
I mean, he's back on the airwaves.
You know, he's seemingly like the worst version of himself
he's ever been. And he still gets hired onto a
conservative talk radio network.What's that show like?
I mean, this is not Opie and Anthony anymore.
This is just Anthony Cumia for two hours on a Sunday, right?
Anthony kind of emerges as a vanilla Fox News.

(01:41:51):
Style radio host whose brain hasbeen broken by a conspiracy
theories, which I kind of find crazy because he used to be like
the anti conspiracy guy even he even was when he was on
Infowars. But he's totally changed now and
I've listened to it. He often gets kind of sad.
He starts talking about the moonlanding and mentions that he

(01:42:13):
doesn't even know if he can trust that that actually
happened anymore. I believe it does.
But you know, all the shit I've learned, you know, since like
it's possible maybe we didn't even land on the moon, you know,
kind of that kind of stuff. He sounds really down often, but
he has bought into a ton of conspiracies.
There's a lot of Q Anon stuff, 911 stuff like Trump stuff.
And he's it's just, it's just strange coming from that guy.

(01:42:36):
And it's also very funny to me because he's so late to this
shit. It's also just the laziest
version of. That right, It's just like the
moon landing thing of like, well, I don't know how can we
trust anything that is like phoning it in conspiracy
theorizing, you know? I just feel like it's like old
shit that's done. Like, he is just now getting

(01:43:00):
into, like, adrenochrome, you know, when queuing on stuff.
It's like the shit that, like, tricked our grandmas.
Like, you know, five years ago. I mean, you would know better
than me about that time. But I mean, is that like, even a
thing anymore? Not, not really in the same way.
I mean, yeah. This is like antiquated and he's
just like just now kind of getting into it now.

(01:43:20):
It's really weird. I was going to say about the
adrenochrome. Now it's like when I see.
Teenagers walking around the wall wearing Nirvana and Utero
T-shirts. That's like, I'm always happy
for them, you know? But it's kind of, it's kind of
like a little museum piece, yeah.
Anthony also starts obsessing. About the Epstein stuff, just
like everyone else. And he really doesn't care about

(01:43:42):
Trump's role in any of it. I mean, he pretty much
whitewashes it, you know, and starts blaming it on other
people. And of course, you know, the
libs mainly, you know, he's these are the bad guys, you
know, it's these Hollywood elites.
These are the pedophiles he kindof fantasizes about, you know,
him wishing that like, you know,Steven Spielberg would get
arrested, things like that. And he kind of turns a blind eye

(01:44:04):
to the Trump stuff and he kind of starts blaming it on the
powers that be, you know, these literally says Illuminati, you
know, in this. And that they might have showed
him a video of him getting shot in the ear and saying, hey, This
Is Us. Like next time we're going to
put it between your eyes. If you're going to, you know,
say anything about Epstein. A lot of weird conspiracy.

(01:44:25):
Matt, I got a question like is it possible?
That what he's doing now is justan effort to kind of retain the
audience that he has. Like he's just sort of going to
is is it, it sounds to me because I, I don't listen to it,
but is he kind of going through the motions?
Like, for example, if you need to make your, you know, if you
if you need to make your nut, touse the term that was on South

(01:44:46):
Park. Like these are the issues that
his audit, whatever's left of his audience still cares about,
right? So, I mean, is he just going
through the motions for them, doyou think, or does he actually
like care about these things? Because because because I hear
the word flat and then I hear that he's recycling certain
conspiracy theories that have been around the block.
That's really interesting. It could be that way.

(01:45:06):
I mean. He has his, he still has his
compound show where it's, you know, the regular shit mostly
about black people and crime andthat's kind of stuff.
But yeah, it could be that he's just kind of pandering.
He the people that call in are, you know, of a certain age.
They're probably in their 60s, seventies or even older.
So, yeah, I think you could be right.
So that's where Anthony is today.

(01:45:28):
He is broadcasting on compound censored this, you know, after
his company gets bought by his former business partner Gavin
Mcinnis. He's there.
He's also on terrestrial radio doing right wing crank shit in
New York City. And his star has faded, right?

(01:45:48):
I mean, it's clear that things were going downhill.
He's bouncing around. It's going to white nationalist
conferences, hanging out with gripers.
It really strikes me as just kind of scraping the barrel and
trying to figure out what might still be able to work for him.
But you still see Anthony Cumia coming up fairly often in the

(01:46:08):
mainstream. He has been on the Joe Rogan
podcast, which is one of the biggest podcast in the world,
where Joe Rogan just showers himand praise.
And they remember the Opie and Anthony show in these glowing
terms. It was hilarious.
You guys were the. Birth of podcasts.
It was a podcast on the radio. We didn't know it at the time,

(01:46:30):
We didn't know what nobody knew what a podcast was, but it was
bunch of guys that you find funny, you like hanging out
with, talking about anything. And that seems to be what the
formula is. Yeah, You guys figured it out
first, because every other. Radio show that I did like if I
did Stern or and anything else you did it was very formatted
regimented. Yeah, like he had some things.

(01:46:51):
You want to talk? He.
Wanted to talk to me about fear.Factor, he wanted to talk to me
about the UFC. He had questions about this and
you know, it's always like, and then you have a call in and then
you have celebrity guests and hehe had it all like very smooth.
You guys would just bring a bunch of people in, and then
Patrice would start talking and Barrow would start talking and

(01:47:12):
Ari would start talking and I think Anthony's influence.
Sort of outlast him, right? I mean, Anthony did something
for radio, for media, for podcasting that has gone well
beyond his own career. So even as his star has faded,
he still has remained, you know,hugely important, you know, if

(01:47:32):
not on the airwaves in the hearts of people that now
dominate those top spots. So I think that's a good place
for us to wrap it up in terms ofour biography of sorts of
Anthony Cumia. Matt, I just want to say thanks
for coming on the show and thanks for doing so much of the
work that went into this episode.
Oh, happy to do it. Had a great time.

(01:47:53):
Yeah, I learned a lot. I mean, this is this is kind of
a hole in my knowledge. I've.
Heard a lot of stern when I was in high school, like my dad used
to play it on the way to, you know, on the way to drop me off
at high school. And Mineola not far from where
Cubia, well, you know, his compound is.
But I didn't, you know, I was like my father always the way he
would tell me about Opie and Anthony is that this sucks is

(01:48:15):
what he used to tell me. So I just like, I was like, all
right, let me block this out. He's like, this is funny.
This isn't now, of course, Sternis also not, you know, he's got
a, you know, a complicated past for sure.
But I, you know, I just really tuned him out and I only really
became aware of his influence when I saw the white national
stuff. So thank you for doing this as I
think illuminated a lot for me and I'm sure many other

(01:48:36):
listeners. Oh, I just appreciate you having
me. You know it was.
Thanks so much. It's been a really good time.
We're going to wrap up this episode the same way.
We do all The Who the Hell episodes, which is thinking back
on what we've covered and thinking about the question we
started with again. Mike, I'll start with you.

(01:48:57):
Who the hell is Anthony Cumia? OK, well the first thing I just
want to get out of the way. Is that this guy had like a
really traumatic childhood and all that.
And as I've said in other similar episodes, there are a
lot of people who have had a lotof trauma in their childhood
that involves sex or violence and so forth who do not do the

(01:49:18):
things that Anthony Cumia has done right.
So I think that is important to just get that out of the way.
It's one thing we didn't say, and I think it's so important
with these. It's just there are so many
people who've gone through so many things who don't go around
scapegoating Black people and treating women like they're
subhuman. OK, So that's first.
What I would say is I think in the shock jock era, the height

(01:49:42):
of the shock jock era, cruelty was so important, right?
For that humor. And then and, and, and sometimes
there would be, there would be satire and there'd be other
things going on. But cruelty became more and more
prevalent at that time. And the link that he helped
build to the Trump era, I like taking that cruelty and sort of

(01:50:03):
purifying it cannot be understated because the humor,
or at least the the the surface of humor, the idea of humor
around the cruelty faded away with a lot of the people who
ushered in the Trump era. We talked about the all right
movement. We talked about, for example,
The Daily Show, which is a Holocaust pun, which is like

(01:50:25):
purely based on scapegoating andcruelty in the name of
preserving the white race. There is a link between that era
in the 90s and what happened after it.
And I think that what Kumi's career shows us is that we
should have looked a lot closer at what was happening in the
90s. And I think, I think everybody

(01:50:46):
who lived through that time feels that way, Matt, as the the
research wonk. You know, in addition to
everything we've covered here and the research you did with us
ahead of this episode, I'm curious, your reflections when
we started, you probably had thebest idea of who Anthony Cumia
was. So after covering all this

(01:51:07):
stuff, after doing all this research and and, you know,
working to get this episode put together, who the hell is
Anthony Cumia? Well, yeah, I think Mike did a
great job covering. A lot of that, and I would add
that, you know, I mean, Anthony is a creep like in every sense
the word. He's an admitted creep.
Like at best, he's a statutory rapist and a groomer and could

(01:51:31):
be a lot worse than that. You know, he's said horribly
disgusting things about underagegirls as young as 13, like
commenting on their body and calling them fuckable.
I mean, it's, it's like undeniably disgusting.
And his racism, I mean, is, is his, that's his thing.
Like if you think of Anthony Cumia, you don't think about him

(01:51:52):
as the, you know, the young girlguy, you think of He's the
racist guy and that's his obsession.
And if you were to read his Twitter prior to his hiring by
WABC, it's it's honestly the worst things that I've I've ever
seen on Twitter. And I've looked at other people
who are you guys have mentioned and talked about.
And I don't think anyone can even come as close as some of

(01:52:13):
some of the things that I've heard him say or read his
tweets, things like that. And you know, I will say that
he's also one of the I mean, I'mgetting, I'm not going to, I'm
not really praising him here, but I have to say that it is
what, what drew me in is that heis one of the funniest people
I've ever heard. I mean, he's he's extremely
quick witted and I have had a lot of laughs for him.

(01:52:34):
And I think that's why he's somewhat relevant still and why
people pull so much from Anthony, especially at the Opie
and Anthony show. And I should also mention that,
you know, Jim being a big part of that as well.
They just had such a great rapport with other comedians and
things. And to me, I mean, I this is a
lot of people have said that they have Opie and Anthony have

(01:52:56):
kind of created the modern podcast and I got to agree.
It's just getting some comediansand friends together riffing
about the news, their lives. I personally see it in the
entire Rogan sphere and that whole weird world of podcasts.
Rogan has mentioned it himself that the reason he started his
show is because of Anthony in life from the compound.

(01:53:17):
And you know, you mentioned his influence on Fuentes earlier.
Bert Kreischer and other comedian with a huge following.
He gives Ant credit for what he does today.
Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House was a huge Opie and
Anthony fan and has cited Anthony as a big reason that he
got into media. There's another guy murder

(01:53:37):
Brian, who says the same thing. And Felix and Brian actually
have a show about shock jocks and particularly about, you
know, Opie and Anthony and Anthony Cumia.
So his his influence is undeniable for better or worse
and mostly worse. Jared Holt?
Who the hell? Is Anthony Cumia?
Well, it's hard to say. You know what hasn't been said?

(01:53:59):
Already I will just say that I think Anthony Cumia is a fucking
monster. I do.
He was bad. I was familiar with the racism,
but all the stuff in his personal life, all the just
disgusting and just vile objectification, abuse,

(01:54:19):
harassment and stuff that went into Opie and Anthony as a
feature, not a bug. These aren't like weird little
one off stories. It was just, you know, they were
shock jocks and they were at thetop of the game when they were
big and the ratings would come in and they'd say, how can we
one up this? How can we get crazier?

(01:54:40):
How can we go nuttier? And you know, as we covered some
of the people that were involvedin Opie and Anthony kind of grew
up, you know, Opie, as we said, got married, had a kid, sort of
matured, still doing the shock, shock thing, right?
But like Anthony just kept goingdeeper and deeper.
When he got fired, he went deeper and deeper, started

(01:55:02):
really just leaning into his worst qualities.
And he's just kind of a mess, just kind of a shell of himself.
And he's still trading on the cloud that Opie and Anthony
brought him. So he's kind of a legacy figure.
And part of why I wanted to do this episode is just because
even though Anthony is not, you know, like other subjects of our

(01:55:26):
series, the Candace Owens or theNick Fuentes or Jack Posobics,
people who are still very much in the forefront in that
spotlight, Anthony's influence can be seen and and really felt
throughout modern media. So by understanding that guy, we
can understand, I hope, a littlebit more about where we are

(01:55:48):
today. So I just want to say thanks
again to Matt for joining on this episode.
I learned a ton in the process and even while we were
recording, you know, learning things.
Again, before we get out of here, Matt, I just will say
thanks again for, you know, all the work you did with us to make
this episode possible. It was, as I said, a lot of

(01:56:11):
blood, sweat and tears. Many, many hours went into this
episode. You said earlier that this has
inspired you to do your own podcast going even deeper into
Anthony Cumia. Tell us about that.
Yeah. First off, thank you so much
Jared and Mike for having. Me.
This was a lot of fun and I alsolearned a lot which I didn't
think I could do it. I kind of thought I knew

(01:56:32):
everything about this creep, butyeah, I, I kind of wanted to do
a podcast a long time ago and that's why I had a lot of this
kind of information stored up and all these notes.
But I never really got around toit, being busy with my other job
that I won't mention. But yeah, I thought this would
be a good opportunity to launch a podcast that I'm going to be
calling the virus and it will beavailable when this comes out.

(01:56:56):
There will be a couple episodes waiting.
So I'm new to this and I'm not exactly sure about the direction
that I wanted to go. Kind of exploring a few options,
but I'd love for you to check itout.
Well folks, this gets us to the end before we get out of here.
I want to give one more plug to our Patreon page.
So not this week, the week that you're going to hear this

(01:57:16):
episode, but the week after you're going to start getting a
double dose of posting through it.
Every week we're going to have one episode on the public feed,
another one on the premium feed,and that is for people who go to
our Patreon page, which is down in the description of this
episode, and sign up to support us.
We have a few different tiers. The higher priced tiers have

(01:57:37):
their own perks to them, but it goes a long way in supporting
the show and making episodes like this one possible.
They take a ton of work and it just really helps out.
We appreciate everybody who has signed up so far.
It's been overwhelming and awesome to see.
And it helps us out so much. It's, it's hard to even

(01:57:58):
describe, you know, it makes me all mushy inside seeing it.
Yeah, seriously. The the the the first group of.
People who signed up for the Patreon and there's so many of
them. I mean, it made me so excited.
I was, you know, I, I, I just didn't like, I didn't expect
this when I joined the podcast with Jared and it's, it's been
so awesome. It really is.
But that's all we got for this week, and we'll see you next.

(01:58:20):
Time thanks everybody. Thank you.

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031: Who the Hell is Anthony Cumia? feat. Matt [Redacted]

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