Episode 317 · Post-Ben
Louis CK | The Tim Dillon Show #317
with Louis C.K.
Oct 2, 2022 · 1:17:50 · 1,100,000 views · 29 segments, 154 moments indexed
Tim Dillon is joined by Louis CK to discuss life, comedy, the metaverse, fake tits, & much more
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- 2 min
Tim opens with Louis CK discussing selling his specials and movies on his own website, why raising prices lowers sales, and how digital content can't disappear like physical media, making 'farewell tours' impossible in the streaming era.
5moments
- Tim introduces Louis CK and highlights his direct-to-consumer sales model: the 4th of July movie with Joe List, five seasons of Louis, and stand-up specials bundled for $25.
- Louis discusses his pricing strategy: raising prices reduces units sold, and over time doesn't generate more revenue overall.
- Tim points out the core problem with digital content pricing—it never actually goes away, it just sits there, and people clone and steal it anyway, so you can't use artificial scarcity like a farewell tour.
- Louis mentions his current tour with new shows in Milwaukee and Atlanta, all sold out, plus Madison Square Garden on January 28th.
- Ten thousand MSG tickets sold the first day, but sales are trickling as the remaining seats get progressively worse.
- 3 min
Louis discusses his upcoming Madison Square Garden show, calling it his 'last show' as a marketing gimmick, how he wrote a new hour of material quickly after the pandemic, and reflects on the history and meaning of playing the Garden.
6moments
- Tim considers what opportunities might open up after performing at Madison Square Garden, maybe the Boston Garden calling next.
- He had to dump all his material into the last special and write a completely new act in three weeks for shows scheduled after it dropped.
- Writing under deadline pressure actually worked better for this hour—he just made it happen instead of letting it flow naturally.
- Tim confirms he's going back to Madison Square Garden and is really excited about it.
- He doesn't view MSG as the pinnacle of stand-up venues; any great show is the pinnacle, whether it's the Garden or the Columbus Funny Bone.
- Some of his best shows happened at smaller clubs like the Funny Bone, where he'd look out the plane window the next day and feel it was perfect.
- 3 min
They discuss how the Bronx has resisted gentrification unlike other NYC boroughs, debate whether brutalist urban housing projects 'failed' depending on the actual goal (packing poor people in cheaply), and connect it to hip-hop emerging from the Bronx's poverty.
6moments
- The Bronx has resisted gentrification while every other area—Jersey City, Harlem—has been transformed.
- Tim describes the Bronx as frozen in 1972, with long Oldsmobiles covered in graffiti and men in leather jackets.
- The Bronx represents the clearest failure of urban planning when you examine the massive housing blocks built there.
- Urban planners succeeded at their actual goal: packing as many people as possible into cheap buildings for maximum developer profit.
- Hip-hop emerged from the conditions in the Bronx, something that never could have come from Long Island.
- Hip-hop couldn't have emerged from Levittown Long Island, where Tim grew up.
BronxBrooklynhip-hopBarclays CenterMadison Square Garden
- 2 min
Louis and Tim break down how 360 record deals and advances are designed to keep musicians perpetually in debt, using private planes and other perks as examples of costs quietly deducted from artists' earnings.
5moments
- Record labels pack poor musicians into cheap housing uptown, get rich off the music their squalor creates, then take the lion's share when they die early.
- Tim explains 360 deals: the label gives an advance, recoups it from everything you earn, and keeps you perpetually in debt to them.
- Record companies tell bands they're getting a private plane, but the plane is just recouped from the advance as an expense they control.
- Tim stopped taking advances on the road long ago because labels call them expenses and take them back when they split.
- Nobody tells young artists the con: that a Porsche they're offered is just debt they'll be paying back forever.
record label dealsBiggie
- 3 min
They discuss 'drill rap,' a phenomenon of young rappers broadcasting violent beefs live on Instagram that have resulted in real killings, plus the DA's attempts to use rap lyrics as courtroom evidence, and joke about needing a 'Grindr for killing.'
7moments
- Drill rap is social media-driven beefs between young rappers under 21 who diss each other on Instagram and show up at projects with guns.
- NYC Mayor Eric Adams wants to ban this content on Instagram because it has resulted in numerous killings.
- People have been literally killed during Instagram Live streams where guys show up and follow through on threats.
- The DA is now using drill rap lyrics as evidence in court, since some rappers name specific locations, dates, and times of actual murders.
- This phenomenon is happening in the UK too, where social media has made rap beefs play out in real time.
- Tim jokes that what's needed is an app like Grindr but for guys wanting to kill each other to connect more easily.
- The underlying human need isn't really about killing—it's about connection and wanting to see the other person.
- 3 min
Louis tells a long story about his teenage job as an operator on a pre-internet 900-number party phone line, breaking up fights between Boston guys competing for the attention of the rare women callers, who would then arrange to physically fight each other.
8moments
- Tim worked as a moderator on a 1990s Boston phone party line before the internet.
- Party lines were voice chat rooms where callers paid per minute to connect with other people.
- As an operator, Tim monitored rooms of people using a headphone system and could see which channels had activity.
- When a woman entered a room full of men, all the guys would immediately try to talk to her simultaneously.
- Tim's job was to prevent aggressive fights between callers competing for the attention of women on the line.
- Boston Irish men would threaten each other with violence, escalating to the point of yelling their locations and neighborhoods.
- Men fighting over a woman would actually calm down and start negotiating the logistics of meeting up in person to fight.
- Two guys would coordinate plans to meet and fight over a woman who had already left the chat room ten minutes earlier.
- 6 min
Louis argues that society offers kids in certain neighborhoods nothing better than gang life, illustrating with an extended hypothetical about a kid whose family is destroyed by addiction and violence, concluding that gangs offer protection, belonging, and parties that nothing else provides.
10moments
- Tim argues there are positives to gang membership that society refuses to acknowledge.
- Gang membership becomes nearly required for safety in certain neighborhoods.
- Tim's hypothetical: a kid with a mother addicted to crack, a father in prison for murder, living with his grandmother.
- The kid attends a school with police frisks at the door and constant violence, with no actual education.
- Unaffiliated kids get beaten walking through the neighborhood; joining a gang offers protection, parties, and access to girls.
- Tim questions where the kid goes if gangs are eliminated—what alternative does society offer him?
- The core issue: no articulated vision for kids in these areas that doesn't involve joining a gang.
- Suburban people ignore gang problems until gangs roll into their own streets.
- Tim concludes he understands why people in certain areas see gang membership as their best option.
- Someone compares gangs to the Republican Party and teachers union as examples of real gangs.
- 4 min
A philosophical tangent about how human desire for possessions beyond basic sustenance creates the need for protection systems, wars, and exploitation, tying it back to gangs, wealth, and why people convince each other to harm one another.
7moments
- Tim describes a quotient of human suffering that's always present, like squeezing a balloon that pops up elsewhere.
- Owning things you're not physically holding, things locked away that require a system to protect them, makes you part of the problem.
- Tim can't explain why humans developed the urge to have more than basic food, shelter, and tools.
- Accumulating possessions you can't personally protect forces you to convince others to harm each other on your behalf.
- Creating that system requires dehumanizing people—calling them the other team, the other religion, bad people.
- A skill learned for protecting private wealth gets transferred to larger schemes: annexing countries, expanding empires.
- Russians are breaking their own arms to avoid the draft, showing people reject wars they don't want to fight.
- 5 min
Tim and Louis discuss how Iran's ongoing freedom protests and killings by the morality police get almost no American media coverage compared to trivial celebrity stories, contrasting it with the heavy coverage given to Russia/Ukraine.
8moments
- Iran is a central problem to American history, yet there's a revolution happening there with freedom fighters being mowed down that American media ignores.
- The US has interfered with Iran for years; Iran's only consistent demand has been that America leave them alone.
- The Iranian uprising isn't on CNN.com—instead the homepage features celebrity gossip like how Lindsay Wagner looks now.
- Politico sells banner ad space above its articles to post "the woman from Crocodile Dundee is disgusting now" as clickbait.
- The Iran situation blows up on Instagram because people in LA have relatives there, but mainstream media won't amplify it.
- A woman was killed by Iran's morality police, but the progressive left doesn't want to criticize them because they've been wronged by US intervention.
- Putin makes an ideal Hollywood villain—a white heterosexual man—while Iranian mullahs are harder to demonize because they're people of color we've historically wronged.
- The media should at least mention major international news if they're going to run a news website, even if there's nothing ordinary people can do about it.
IranMarjorie GreenePoliticoHerschel WalkerLindsay WagnerUkraineKardashiansBrett Favre
- 3 min
Louis recommends Iranian films ('Taste of Cherry' and 'A Separation'), praising their humanity, then they discuss why Instagram activism fails to generate real attention for Iran compared to Ukraine, and how Putin makes a better 'Hollywood villain' than the Iranian regime.
8moments
- Tim describes a heartbreaking Iranian film where a suicidal man drives around town asking people to kill him.
- The Separation, an Iranian film about a divorcing couple raising their daughter, uses a gas station scene to show a father watching his daughter grow up.
- Tim argues there's no difference between a divorced New York dad and an Iranian dad—people are sold the idea that other cultures are wholly alien.
- The West never actually cares about freedom fighters; the stated goal of freedom was never genuine.
- What the West wants is the illusion of freedom, not freedom itself.
- Social media storytelling always treats a tiny group's reaction as 'everyone' being mad about something.
- Tim breaks down how 'everyone' on social media isn't even most people, just fragments of different people added together.
- No whole person exists on Twitter, Instagram, or in media—only fractional versions that combine into something false.
John CenaJohn Travolta
- 2 min
Twitter Fractions: Nobody Whole Is Ever Online
#Tim riffs that no single person is ever fully represented on Twitter/social media — it's just fragments of people's worst selves aggregated together, like a pile of dog heads that doesn't add up to whole dogs.
3moments
- Tim compares Twitter users to severed dog heads in a pile—fractions that don't add up to whole people.
- Almost nobody is actually on Twitter, and even the people who are aren't really there as complete versions of themselves.
- Tim claims he was a mortgage security salesman in 2008, though he clarifies he actually sold retail mortgages.
- 1 min
Tim reads an ad for Masterworks, a platform letting regular people buy shares in fine art investments, citing Paul Allen's art hoarding and Masterworks' historical returns.
1moment
- Tim pitches Masterworks art investment platform with his characteristic endorsement style.
- 2 min
Tim reads an ad for Keeps, a hair loss treatment delivery service, emphasizing prevention and offering a free first month via promo code.
2moments
- Tim describes how many of his friends are losing their hair and switching to Keeps for hair loss treatment.
- Prevention is key — you don't want to start solving a hair problem once it's already become unsolvable.
- 4 min
They discuss how modern life requires credit, debt, and social media profiles just to participate — from getting a job to streaming music — and how this surveillance follows young people from childhood, though Louis suggests it might eventually mutate into something else via his nephews' generation.
8moments
- At this point in society, going back seems impossible—the systems created feel like they'll either drive us to extinction or persist unchallenged.
- Tim compares social media negatively to being in a gang, claiming he could show more positives for gang membership than Twitter.
- Participating in modern society now requires being on social media—people who opt out become luddites unable to function in any societal role.
- When Tim was a kid, credit cards were hard to get and required approval; now entities just gouge people based on debt they take on.
- Modern existence requires debt—you can't exist without it, even just to listen to music or smoke a joint.
- Getting a job now means employers search your social media profiles, recording all the mistakes you've made since childhood without being warned this could happen.
- The horror of these systems is easy to describe and spans many directions, but on some level it'll transform into something else entirely.
- Tim has four nephews between ages 14 and 21, the next generation, and they seem to get how this all works.
- 1 min
Louis describes how younger kids now deliberately post very little on Instagram to avoid looking 'thirsty,' and they discuss this as a hopeful sign that mystery/mystique might return to culture.
3moments
- Kids now post less on Instagram because having lots of photos is considered cringe.
- Posting every day looks thirsty and hungry, so younger people stay away from constant sharing.
- Mystery is cool again, which Tim says is what ruined our generation of famous people and artists when it disappeared.
Instagrammystery
- 2 min
They discuss a viral story about a Canadian trans shop teacher with exaggeratedly large breasts, debating whether such a globally viral spectacle invites mockery versus deserving privacy, referencing Tim's earlier bit on LA school lunches.
5moments
- Tim asks about the trans teacher in Canada with giant prosthetic breasts
- He compares it to last week's LA school system story about food being the same
- The breasts are so massive that the person clearly wants the entire world discussing it
- Tim argues you don't get prosthetics that big unless you want people to see them from space
- The real problem is there's no local stupidity anymore, everything becomes global
Canadian trans teachersLA Unified School District
- 3 min
They coin the concept of 'localized stupidity' being erased by the internet, discussing Rachel Dolezal, Hilaria Baldwin's fake Spanish persona, and a group of Wisconsin high schoolers who did a joke Nazi salute in a class photo that went globally viral.
4moments
- Rachel Dolezal should have been allowed to be weird without global shame following her.
- Tim argues for letting Hilaria Baldwin pretend to be Spanish—she's not hurting anyone, just wants to stand out at parties.
- Hilaria married an international celebrity and wants to seem international herself, which is understandable.
- Wisconsin kids taking a class photo made a Nazi salute joke—just dumb local behavior that shouldn't go global.
- 3 min
Tim connects the localized stupidity discussion to how junk mail and clickbait scams only need to make pennies to be worth it, using a hypothetical fake Robin Williams murder headline as an example of media using question marks to dodge liability.
4moments
- Tim discusses the concept of 'localized stupidity' — the idea that people need to be dumb in their own town without it becoming national news.
- The real reason nothing stops: there's profit in it.
- Junk mail scams work because even 10 cents a month profit makes them worthwhile to send out.
- Media outlets use question marks to avoid liability — 'Robin Williams was actually murdered by Sean Penn?' — and make money off the clicks even when burying a denial in the story.
- 2 min
Tim tells a story about the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and how his mother knew a man in Cambridge who bought up fleeing Iranian families' Trans Ams for cheap and resold them for a fortune, illustrating that profit motives explain persistent bad behavior.
5moments
- The Shah of Iran was a U.S. puppet dictator installed for oil money, then overthrown by the Ayatollah.
- During the 1980 hostage crisis, Iranian families were being expelled from America in a panic.
- An entrepreneurial guy in Cambridge realized Iranian families were urgently selling their kids' Trans Ams before leaving.
- He bought approximately 50 brand-new 1978 black Trans Ams with gold eagles for next to nothing, rented a used car lot for a week, and flipped them for a fortune.
- As long as there's profit to be made on human desperation, nobody's going to stop the cycle.
Shah of IranIranAyatollah KhameneiBurt Reynolds
- 3 min
They debate the ethics of making fun of the trans shop teacher, with Louis arguing there's a new social contract where extreme spectacle (comparing it to his own creepy old shop teacher) invites public laughter regardless of political sensitivities.
8moments
- Tim argues that mocking someone depends on context—it's different if they're a public figure versus a shop teacher affecting her students and colleagues.
- There's a new social contract: if you get implants larger than anyone has ever seen and teach shop class, people should be allowed to laugh at the ridiculousness.
- Tim describes his own shop teacher, Mr. Swanovsky, as a creepy old guy who never smiled and only cared about soldering irons and safety.
- Shop class is the least valuable position in a school because everything taught there is fake and meaningless—nobody becomes an architect from it.
- The only real objective of shop class is keeping kids from hurting themselves; teachers spend the first three days listing horrifying accidents that happened to previous students.
- Tim describes the teacher getting implants so cartoonishly large that she has to stand a foot and a half back from the saw to teach, with kids literally positioned between her and the equipment.
- Tim acknowledges why a trans person would like shop class—because everything can be built and soldered—and says he'd want to teach biology to show what can be constructed.
- When done with cartoonishly large implants, the world should be allowed to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.
shop classMr swanovsky
- 1 min
Tim frames comedy as functioning like burning sage — a ritual to purge the overblown anger from both political sides about viral figures like the shop teacher, tying back to the earlier localized stupidity bit.
2moments
- Tim compares comedy to sage-burning in LA real estate—both purge negative energy so people can move forward with their lives.
- Everybody needs to laugh at something absurd together before society can heal and reset.
sage burning in LA
- 2 min
Tim reads a DoorDash ad offering 25% off and free delivery on first orders using promo code Tim Dillon, riffing on back-to-school chaos and grocery runs.
4moments
- Tim pitches DoorDash as the secret to clearing your to-do list.
- Listeners get 25 percent off delivery fees on first orders of $15+ with code Tim Dillon.
- DoorDash covers everything from restaurant meals to groceries to last-minute school supplies.
- Tim frames DoorDash as the solution when family life falls apart and dinner-time crises hit.
- 2 min
Tim reads a DraftKings ad for NFL betting promotions, including a $5 bet earning $200 in free bets and boosted same-game parlays, with a gambling helpline disclaimer.
5moments
- DraftKings Sportsbook NFL promotion: bet $5 on any team to win, get $200 in free bets if they do.
- Tim promotes promo code 'Tim Dillon' to download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and claim the offer.
- Tim breaks character mid-read, acknowledging the scripted ad copy needs editing.
- Tim claims he uses DraftKings and all his friends do, says everybody loves it.
- Tim complains the ad needs attractive women to be effective, dismissing it as otherwise academic.
- 4 min
Returning to the shop teacher briefly, Louis tells a story about a neighbor who borrowed a pot and wooden spoon to perform a spirit-cleansing ritual on her new house, marveling at the specificity of belief systems around evil spirits and sage.
6moments
- Tim explains comedy has no moral gravity—it sages out serious commentary that made people angry on both sides.
- A neighbor knocked on his door asking to borrow a pot and wooden spoon for a hired woman to remove evil spirits from her house.
- The hired woman used Tim's pot and spoon to extract evil spirits from the house, then returned them to him.
- Tim marvels at the logic: evil spirits supposedly can't stand sage and will leave a house if you burn it.
- People are proposing metaverse children as a solution to overpopulation since they wouldn't actually exist.
- Tim suggests anyone who wants metaverse children should absolutely have those instead, to prevent that DNA from spreading.
- 3 min
They riff on a news story about people proposing 'metaverse children' to solve overpopulation, joking that anyone who believes in that should have only virtual kids, then speculate the metaverse will become a surveilled hierarchy/hell where past behavior determines your afterlife status.
5moments
- Tim describes the metaverse as purgatory where people must defend their right to exist each day based on everything they've said and thought.
- Creating a metaverse without hierarchy and justice systems is impossible—all of this current surveillance and monitoring is practice for judging where you belong in the metaverse.
- Social media clickbait and cancel culture isolate specific sectors of your personality rather than engaging your whole self.
- When platforms know exactly what gets you off or what makes you angry, they exploit those isolated fragments instead of appealing to your whole person, which is why everything is fragmented and polarized.
- News no longer shows the big picture—stories about Iran, for example, miss the opportunity to present it as a cultured and complex nation we might actually befriend.
- 4 min
Louis explains how viral outrage exploits narrow slices of a person the way sexual arousal does, unlike watching a film with your whole self, then Tim criticizes Biden's cavalier rhetoric about flowing arms into Ukraine and the disconnect of young progressives cheering dead Russian soldiers.
4moments
- Biden says American arms are flowing into Ukraine as he speaks, said proudly while in Belgium during a European visit.
- Tim argues that sending arms into an active shooting war means more people get killed.
- At minimum, Biden or anyone could say they wish the Ukrainian people well, the way Trump would.
- Tim's position: America can sit this conflict out, make fun of it, and mind its own business.
- 2 min
Tim reads an ad for the Babel language learning app, citing its short lessons, native-speaker voice acting, and discount code for subscriptions.
6moments
- Tim announces free Wembley Arena show on October 4th, with Hammersmith Apollo sold out the night before.
- Tim hints he might do something shocking at the Wembley show, then jokes about committing suicide for the ad revenue from an unrestricted phone photo.
- Tour dates: Milwaukee, Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry, Pittsburgh, and other cities.
- All seven specials available for $5.25 on his website, plus the new movie Fourth of July and the exclusive Louie series.
- Louie exclusive to his website because other platforms require price parity—five seasons for $30, streamable for five years.
- Bobby Kelly released a special that Tim directed.
Wembley ArenaLouieGrand Ole OpryHammersmith ApolloBobby KellyFourth of July
- 3 min
Louis and Tim run through upcoming tour dates including Wembley Arena, Madison Square Garden, and various US cities, plug Louis's website for buying specials and the Louie series, and promote Bobby Kelly's new special 'Kill Bucks' that Louis directed.
8moments
- Bobby Kelly's special 'Kill Bucks' was filmed in an old factory in Tampa and is available on Tim's website for $10 starting October 8th.
- Tim explains that Louis CK's quiet support of the show—simply telling him things are funny—means more than public promotion.
- The Lori Lightfoot Yelp review discovery: she reviewed a limousine company, and the company's response proved she was lying.
- Lori Lightfoot as a small-town petulant dictator running Chicago: pure comedy if you don't actually live there.
- Tim celebrates the archetype of a mean lesbian infused with local business drama as the best kind of localized stupidity.
- Chicago newspapers probably make more money because Lightfoot generates daily crazy headlines—she's a constant character story.
- America's cast of characters—Trump, Kardashians, Lightfoot—is impossible to create artificially; the country generates incredible stories naturally.
- Once something reaches you, it's too late to hold back; you have to dig in and go hard with the material.
- 1 min
They praise Tim's viral 'Lori Lightfoot' bit about her fake Yelp review of a limousine company, celebrating American 'characters' like Lightfoot, Trump, and the Kardashians before wrapping up the interview.
1moment
- Tim directs listeners to louisck.com to buy his material and support him directly.