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End of an Era

Last week, Marc Maron announced his legendary WTF podcast is ending in September. By then, he will have been doing it for 16 years. The show has featured everyone from Anthony Bourdain and Iggy Pop to Barrack Obama, Paul McCartney, and Robin Williams.

It’s been a great run. And none of it happened the way Marc Maron thought it would.

Maron started doing standup in Boston back in the mid-80s. His accounts of his days in New England are an exhausting tale of one-nighters in Worcester dive bars and sad taco restaurants in Fitchburg. But as Marc would say, he was “building his clown.” He paid his dues. Man, did he pay his dues.

Marc probably hoped his career would follow the usual trajectory of stand-up-late/Letterman/sitcom success. It didn’t work out that way. And really, it doesn’t work that way anymore. Who needs TV when you have 1.5M followers on TikTok?

Good Timing

Maron was old school in his approach, but he was incredibly lucky to start his podcast when he did. He moved from NYC to LA in the 2000s after a stint on Air America and started the podcast in the late summer of 2009. Maron was a successful stand-up with several albums, many TV appearances, and comedy specials to his credit. But in 2009, he was desperate.

WTF took off, becoming one of the most successful podcasts of all time. Since then, he’s had his own TV show, Maron, interviewed a president, and has played the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall.

Marc has done just about everything a comic can do, short of winning an Oscar. He has always prized his stand-up career, but it was his podcast that launched him to fame.

Could he carry on with WTF indefinitely? Sure. But it’s a good time to call it quits. This week, he uploaded podcast #1651. That’s a lot of episodes.  

For a long time, I was a hardcore fan. I listened to every second of every episode, twice a week. I bought a membership so I could go through back episodes.

The early years of WTF are unreal. Marc sounds like a different person. Coming off a second divorce and with seemingly no career options left to him (other than doing standup at clubs), he approached every episode as a life or death struggle—a battle with his own demons and neuroses. It’s raw stuff. No aspect of his personal life was off limits. We hear Marc’s brutally honest take on everything from standup and childhood to his current relationships. It’s intense.

As Marc recorded one memorable and unsettling interview after another, we learned about the life of a struggling road comic. It was a sobering depiction of what it’s like to do comedy in the 21^st century. We also got to know his cats. And that he’s a pretty good guitar player.

It wasn’t always pretty, but Marc kept moving forward. By the time he started WTF, he had been sober for a while (about ten years, I think). And so we also heard many stories about substance abuse and addiction. Not just Marc’s stories, but his encounters with doomed comics like Sam Kinison.

WTF was a masterclass in the history of modern comedy. If you ever wanted to do stand-up or know what that life is like, you had to listen to WTF. It was the thinking man’s Howard Stern Show.

Maron is the kind of person who gets stuck in your head.

Embrace the Darkness

Yes, Marc could bring the funny. But the show was dark. We’d hear tales of suicide attempts and other near-death experiences. Since Marc was in his late 40s, these stories were not done with a blasé, “that’s rock and roll” attitude, but felt more like we were allowed to eavesdrop on a particularly good AA meeting.

I loved the show. No, actually, I was obsessed with it. And I liked Marc about as much as I could like any celebrity. But he wasn’t easy. He’s a frustrating person. As is true of all sensitive people, Marc can be incredibly insensitive. He could be mean and nasty to his own guests. He made Gallagher walk out of an interview, though we pretty much sided with Marc on that one. It’s a different story with his odd, cringey interview with former standup and filmmaker Jason Nash. I’m not sure why that happened, let alone aired.

A Changed Man?

By Marc’s own admission, the first few years of WTF involved him making nice with comedians he had angered over the years. Most of them seemed forgiving.

But did Marc truly change?

WTF was often about Marc’s struggle to become a better person. He certainly made strides in that regard, but there were times when Old Marc would come out. And it made me wonder if his oft-touted claims to evolving and opening his “heart and mind” were just bullshit. If it’s one thing I’ve learned about Hollywood people, it’s that they all want to become rich and famous. And once they are rich and famous, they want to be richer and more famous. This process often works against their own credibility and authenticity.

Marc can be especially frustrating when it comes to politics. One minute, he’s railing against Texas and its anti-reproductive rights laws and how people shouldn’t spend “one penny” in the state. Months later, he’s talking about his dates in Austin and him visiting one of his favorite barbecue places there. Even Elon’s Nazi salute apparently wasn’t enough to make Maron leave Twitter/X.   

Eventually, WTF was not so much punk rock as it was an R-rated version of Terry Gross’s Fresh Air. Still entertaining, and yet, the edges were smoothed away. Marc mellowed after a while, but you also got the sense he was going through the motions—of it just being a job.

Still, what a job! Working from your house. Having celebrities over. Cutting up with the funniest people alive. Not bad.  

For a while, Maron was accessible. He was the kind of guy who’d respond to your emails or your Tweets. Back in 2017, I was able to get a picture with him when I saw him in DC. A few years later, that wasn’t possible. I guess when you’re playing the Kennedy Center, you don’t have to work the merch table anymore.    

Unfortunately, after you’ve done anything more than 1,600 times, it’s hard to keep it fresh. You end up repeating yourself. For me, WTF was never the same after Marc left the original garage and moved into a mansion in Glendale. The fire just wasn’t there, though the show could occasionally reach the mind-blowing heights of its early days.

I loved hearing Marc interview David Letterman and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the new space. I was also happy for Maron when he speared “white whales” like Albert Brooks and Larry David.  

Even so, once he was in the new “garage” (actually a guest house), we didn’t hear much about Marc’s personal life anymore. That was probably to protect whomever he was dating at the time. I can understand that. It didn’t make for better listening though.

The successes kept coming. He got a book deal. He had a wonderful turn on the show GLOW as the grumpy wrestling coach. He’s been getting regular parts in movies.

Covid, Trump, and Canada

And there was tragedy, too. In May of 2020, Marc lost his partner Lynne Shelton, just as we were getting to know her. And there was Covid, where Marc was forced to do conversations over Zoom. It was necessary, but it defeated much of the purpose of why Maron did the podcast in the first place. It was all about connecting. It was about two people in the same room having a meaningful talk. Covid rendered the visceral virtual.

Still, he carried on. He sounded tired. We were all tired. The country was tired. In fact, the country was failing, fast.

As we plodded uncertainly through Biden’s presidency, Marc started making comments about wanting to move to Ireland or Canada (where he apparently has established legal residency). Covid and years of Trump—not to mention the natural process of getting older and dealing with all of life’s bullshit—was enough to send him packing.

I can’t blame him for wanting to leave. I’d love to get out of here, too.

Thank you, Maron

I know they don’t give out Pulitzer Prizes for podcasts. They should. And Marc should have got one. Hell, if they had Noble Peace Prizes for podcast, he deserves one.

Marc will be missed.

And what can I say? I started doing a podcast back in 2015 because of him.

I got sober back in 2021, and Marc was an inspiration for that.

I visited LA last year and stayed right next door to the Comedy Store. Because of Maron.

I took a comedy class last year and did a few open mics. It wasn’t because of Joe Rogan or Tom Segura or Bert Kreischer. 

Wishing you well, Marc, in whatever you decide to do next. We need you here. But I’ll understand if Vancouver is the better option. After all, you’re only ever a microphone away.