Anthony: The 55-Gallon Drum Challenge was great. We put a bunch of girls in 55-gallon drums, sealed the tops and, through a hole, started throwing stuff on them. The last one remaining in her barrel would win the prize. We threw everything from ice-cold water at first to disgusting food products, syrup, fish guts, worms and then at the end, African hissing cockroaches. The screams that came out of the barrels translated really well over the air. It sounded like a storeroom at a serial killer's house. You got the echo of the barrel and the horrifying screams of these girls. And us laughing in the background. It was really sick.

One of your fan Web sites recently had users nominate their all-time favorite O&A bit, and among the submissions was the time Smelly Karen came on the show. Who's she?

Opie: Karen was this chick who couldn't smell.

Anthony: And she stunk.

Opie: She had no sense of smell and she stunk, which was hilarious radio because how do you know when to shower if you can't smell yourself?

Anthony: Good-looking lady, but she just reeked.

Opie: I think everyone has a story.

Anthony: Yeah, you go deep enough into anybody and you'll find something.

Opie: Other shows get high-profile guests and actors, and they'll sit in the studio and give you nothing aside from the fact that you can then say, "Hey, I had Arnold Schwarzenegger on the air." We'd rather have Joe Schmoe from the street who has a good story to tell. It's much more interesting. We don't need names on our show just to have them on.

Anthony: When an A-list celebrity comes to a show, there are usually three publicity people around him making sure he doesn't say anything. They give you a laundry list of things you can't talk about. Maybe if they opened up for two seconds and talked about things other than their next movie or record, then you'd get something out of them. We have a reputation too. We've had guests come on the show and say, "My God, you guys were cool. I thought you'd be scumbags." The reason we have that reputation is because we get so friendly with guests that after a while we start talking to them as if we're all friends. And what do you say to your friends? "Hey, asshole, get me a beer." You know you're really getting along with someone when you call him an asshole.

How did (actor) Jay Mohr become a regular contributor to the show?

Opie: The first time he came in we had all sorts of crap going on. We had Dee Snyder in the studio with a girl getting her clit pierced. Jay was amazed. And we just hit it off.

Anthony: I remember when our producer said "Yeah, Jay Mohr's coming in." I'm like, "Jay Mohr?" So I punch him up on the Internet and I'm like, "Oh, the guy from SNL and Jerry Maguire. What's he doing?" But he came in and it wasn't about Jay Mohr being on SNL or him talking about what he's up to. He's just a guy from Jersey.

What did you guys do to develop your extensive online presence?

Opie: We've been doing this since Anthony and I first got together. We saw the potential of the whole online thing and were one of the first radio shows in America that had a Web site. It was primitive, granted, but it was there. We would put up pictures of things that were going on in the studio way before anyone else did.

Anthony: You could listen to our show and that night go to the computer and see pictures of what we were doing in the studio. Nobody was doing that back in 1995. I mean, you would've been hard-pressed to find a decent radio station site, let alone an individual show. We picked up a couple of computers - I've always been a computer geek and I loved the technology - an HTML book and a digital camera. I'd be snapping pictures as we were doing the show.

Opie: We had one of the first digital cameras. I'm sure they were around a few years before that, but no one was using them for a radio show. Now we have an unofficial Web site that gets millions of hits.

Besides the obvious - nudity and foul language - what are the benefits you get from the Internet that you don't get from radio and TV?

Anthony: The instant feedback is a big thing. We started it back in Boston. I would bring in my laptop, find an open phone line, plug it in on my own account and give people a site they could go to and submit comments as the show was going on. Everybody knows it's a pain in the ass to get through on the phone to a radio station, and the only other option you had was a fax, which might be checked and might not be. But with instant feedback, comments pop right up on the screen. If somebody has a funny joke about what's going on, it's right there.

Opie: Growing up listening to other radio shows, we always thought, "Wow, I wish I could see that." Your mind paints the pictures and that's cool to an extent, but you really want to see what the hell is going on. If a listener is driving in his car and there's some crazy stuff going on in the studio, he'll be thinking, "Man, I wonder what that looked like." Now he doesn't have to wonder anymore because that night, three hours later, it's online.

What's stopping you from doing it live?

Anthony: Live streaming.

Opie: Yeah, pretty much just the technology. When we tell people we're turning on the live Stinky Cam, there are so many people logging on that we're slowing down the whole CBS/Viacom computer network. It's simply not efficient enough. If you're checking it out you'll get a picture update every minute or two when it's supposed to be every 10 seconds - that's how much the system slows down. So instead we'll take a bunch of pictures, make sure we get the good ones, and throw them up on the Web site that night. We also take video and throw that up on the Web site. Sure, there are people who have brought some of their radio show to TV, but with the time it takes to edit and put a show together, there's a lag of well over a week. With us, you hear it on the radio and then two or three hours later you're seeing what we saw.

Anthony: Without pixilation. And with all the nastiness.

(Scott Gramling)

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Sure, there are people who have brought some of their radio show to TV

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Without pixilation

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Opie: I think everyone has a story.

Anthony: Yeah, you go deep enough into anybody and you'll find something.

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One of your fan Web sites recently had users nominate their all-time favorite O&A bit, and among the submissions was the time Smelly Karen came on the show.

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