WTF with Marc Maron (it's a podcast)

People seem to be tired of WTF dominating the talk here, so now WTF and Marc Maron have their own dedicated thread.

what up what the fuckers, what the fuckanettes, what the fuckanauts

LOCK THE GATES

For serious, today's Bobcat Goldthwait episode was crazy good.

looking forward to it, he was really funny on the live episode he was on

The Bobcat one is great because of Bobcat; I'm pretty much over Maron at this point. I figure if I listen to one a month from now on I won't want to strangle him.

What are some of the better episodes IYO? I tried the Janeane Garafolo one, which was pretty good, but then lost interest after playing the Sara Silverman ep in which she seemed about as bored with Maron as I was.

Maybe I should revise my policy of choosing podcasts for babe factor.

i think the louis ck episodes are generally seen as the best ones

The Maria Bamford one is my favorite.

^yah otm xxxp. maron was so hung up on the 'bobcat voice' character that it got p annoying

recent good ones: dino stamatopolous, stephen tobolowsky, dave foley, most of the live ones

lol @ maron and laura kightlinger deciding to call up lous ck in the middle of the podcast. so awkward (he picked up but was busy and annoyed, of course).

i have a dumb question

in the theme song, what is the thing that sounds like "and i'm not guilty here"?

i don't think that's what he's actually saying but it's what i always hear

Ed Helms playing bango! Mike DiStefano is essential listening. All the old school guys. Stewart Lee, duh, considering he is the greatest of all time. The Apatow ones.

I can kind of get why Maron's persona is an obstacle for some people, but I've been a fan of the guy for so long that it's almost impossible to be annoyed by him now (though there are definitely still occasions where I'll be thinking "okay, let's move ahead...").

Some of my favorite guests have been Stephen Tobolowsky, Maria Bamford, Adam McKay, Louis C.K., Judd Apatow, and Patrice O'Neal.

n/a do you mean El Chupacabra saying Double-U Tee Eff?

ha ha maybe? it seems odd that i would be that far off but ???

Dino stamatopolous one was alltime classic and listening to it got me into Moral Orel which is beyond brilliant. Also Starburns.

the Pardo one was great. funny and a lot of great nuggets about how comics approach their craft.

Loved, loved loved Bobcat today. The stuff about his Dad, his crazy biker brother, Kurt...love him. Maron doesnt grate on me anymore, I tend to focus on the guest

The joke about Michael Jordan's dad and Kurt the only one laughing-- A+

Also loved the reason he's called Bobcat (basically as an FU to someone else).

I loved the story about their idea for the All Apologies video idea, with JFK assassination and the pie, and the tour manager saying they can't be in the same room anymore.

Wasn't Kurt really into SNL, at least as a teenager?

My all-time favorite wtfs:

Louis CK
Paul Scheer
Maria Bamford road trip
Janeane Garofalo
Stephen Tobolowsky
Joe Mande

Enjoyed Laura Kightlinger confirming what I thought about Todd Barry (funny but he goes to far in dealing with hecklers to the detriment of the rest of his set, or at least he has the 2 times I've seen him in person). Enjoyed the Robin Williams and Carl LaBove episodes a lot, and his subtle skewering of Bobby Slayton was great.

Anyone other than me pay to upgrade the app? Only really worth it to be able to listen to the old episodes.

Ed Helms seems like a sweet dude, but I think because of that, he didn't really gel with Maron, who seems to need his guests to be more darkly confessional to fully engage with them. Also Helms seemed sort of surprised that Maron hadn't seen Cedar Rapids and didn't know what it was about.

I got to listen to most of the old ones before he created the app, so just use the app for the new eps now

Robin Williams was great, i forgot that one.

otm. also helms doesn't really seem comfortable talking about himself at all.
xpost

Yeah Ed Helm is a sweetheart

Yeah, that was my Ed Helms takeaway. He's uneasy talking about himself (and at least 10 minutes before the interview was over, I was hoping they'd take a break so he could go outside and get some fresh, non cat-infected air).

Laura Kightlinger's childhood sitch = whoa! She seems like a bro, though, and I'd kick it with her.

Just heard Marc Maron on the CBC lately and that spurred me to download a bunch of these and have been enjoying what I've heard though my big complaint is the sheer amount of often-pointless yammer at the beginning of each episode.

The Louis CK ones aren't available in the iTunes feed (they just fell off the bottom I guess) but you can still download them if you search for them in the cached versions using Google search.

Fast forward

Anyone who's just now getting acquainted with Maron needs to hear his Not Sold Out stand-up album from 2002. The ones since then have also been funny, if slightly more self-loathing, but the set that comprises Not Sold Out is masterful.

Fast forward
― reggaeton for the painfully alone (polyphonic)

Yeah, I guess. Might get to that. I find that I'm listening to a lot of these when my hands are incapacitated (cooking or something) so not always an option, and thankfully so far it hasn't been TOO irksome. Though we'll see after I have 20 of them under my belt!

seems like a sweet dude, but I think because of that, he didn't really gel with Maron, who seems to need his guests to be more darkly confessional to fully engage with them.

I was suprised at how well the Stephen Tobolowsky ep went because of this - Maron didn't dig for any of the painful stuff Tobolowsky's talked about, but just let himself get caught up in the guest's storytelling ability and say some "wow"s at his IRL bloozzzz-rock encounters

My favorite ep so far was W. Kamau Bell & Dwayne Kennedy talking about race and comedy. I could've listened to a couple more hours of that.

Patrice Oneal & Mike DeStefano (RIP) are the 2 best I've heard.

have no idea what greg fleet looks like i just assume hes superhans from peep show

he kinda looks like a middle-aged smackie whinnyingly asking you to lennim twenty bucks

The two-parter with Mencia is sort of different from the rest of the podcast but is AMAZING -- Marc Maron, Comedy Detective, and the case of the Ripped-Off Jokes -- the whole thing has the intensity of those scenes in the interrogation room from Homicide: Life On The Street

live wtf from brooklyn was very funny especially chuck klosterman.

Greg Fleet on today! <3

Oh no, Andy Dick on Thursday. I may skip that one.

yeah that's going to be weird and awkward... I may have to listen in stages

I still blame him indirectly for Phil Hartman's death, so unless his hour with Marc is some kind of self-flagellating apology fest, I'm not interested.

yeah, and I've heard icky stories of him crashing high school proms and shit...dude is not right

remember maron saying andy dick was someone he didnt have time for as he wouldnt take responsibility for his actions (think it was on joe rogans interview)

confession: I could never get into this guy. In my brief listening experiences, he seemed like he had one eye on the press release, the other on the wiki page and then would regale some occasionally on-topic or more than often off-topic story that contributed little.

Also he has that (former?)-cocaine-abuser post nasal drippy voice that I hate.

7 years ago I wrote upthread:

I tuned in but now I know why I never listen to this guy, he's terrible.

amazing he didn’t get canceled in 2023 for sitting quietly in an apartment for six months in 1988 while someone else yelled, yes

I'm not trying to get into a whole thing here, but am i missing something here? are we talking about a different guy named marc maron?

jaymc - just checked and I must have been regularly listening by November 2009, because I remember Janeane Garofalo discussing her extremely idiosyncratic diet / food management style, and had heard Maron’s issues with ice cream established previously.

are we talking about a different guy named marc maron?

maybe you are tbh

uh ok, i apologize for implying that during his time scoring coke and girls for sam kinison he might have been around fucked up shit, instead of "sitting quietly". an easy mistake for me to make, since he mentions his time in the comedy store scene so rarely, i must have gotten it fuzzy in my memory

again not trying to cancel marc or anything, but feel like i'm being gaslit here if we're gonna seriously argue about whether he had a period of his life where he was a drug-fueled maniac

The moment I knew the show was capable of reaching a whole other level was the Todd Hanson episode from relatively early in the run.

https://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/tag/Todd+Hanson

massive suicide trigger warning for that Todd Hanson ep

(it’s a great episode but it fucked me up mentally for a while afterwards)

the shouty guy Conan always had on every few months.

in those clips Maron always looks exactly like the kind of guy who'd have a background spot as "bad standup #2" in the Sopranos or Better Call Saul

His selvage and $500 boots look is kind of corny but a vast improvement over his coke era fashion.

he talks in the new Mulaney ep about how in those pre reccoke days Maron had some kind of superstition about skulls & always wore a skull shirt and or skull ring lol its very funny

He frequently discusses how he always buys a new outfit before taping a special and how he immediately regrets that choice every single time. Looking forward to seeing what he wears in the new one.

lol

one of my favorites was his Adam Goldberg episode from 2014 - they had a lot of similarites, he kinda matched Maron w a lot of personality aspects.

Andre Royo from around that time was great too

And i love all the old comedy diehards like Provenza and Attell, loved those eps & the stories

OH! and Shelley Berman!? look up that episode!
quite a few great oldschool legends under his belt, love those too

i always enjoyed the journeyman comedians i'd never heard of before.

well... almost always

as a long-time fan i will say that the appeal of Maron was how, i dunno, “himself” he was on mic. He wasn’t pretending to be anything other than who he was, just a working comic who was kind of a fuckup, who yes granted seemed to get heated about weird random things but also was sheepish & honest about his failings at the same time

he was open about mental health & therapy & medication & depression & substance abuse & recovery, and during the late 00’s and early 10’s that was still kind of new - to be that much of an open book allowed a lot of ppl the freedom to be more open about it themselves in a public space … it affected a lot of ppl

(also made his early fanbase into kind of a kooky patchwork quilt of burnouts)

i still really love his looseness through say 2015 - he’s got an eccentric charm to him & it really did draw ppl in

like i talk a lot of shit about his interviewing & it does still drive me a little nuts, but the truth is that evem though the guests were often the draw, it was his Maron-ness that was why i listened. it was HIM & what he brought to the interview that made it worth listening. because when stuff happened, it wasnt like any other interview you had heard. his combination of arrogance & naivety & self-deprecation was a really good sauce that no-one else had.

100% this ^

Some of his pre-interview monologues are amazing. Particularly in the past few years. Stuff about his dad fading away from dementia, the fascist slide we’re heading in, actively going after the Rogan manosphere bullshit brand of comedy. The one right after Trump’s recent election was particularly powerful. Got me choked up.

Not all bomb throwing, frequently quite tender. Always insightful.

And there are some that are just about his cats. Those are fine too.

yeah Maron isn't always my cup of tea but he's a real one. he's very thoughtful and I think he looks at things in a pragmatic way. always thought guys like that who were total open books were the coolest.

Can’t think of too many comedians of his age who haven’t slid into old man conservative bullshit either. He hasn’t just avoided it, but has been actively, ragingly shredding it.

That’s worth something.

And there are some that are just about his cats. Those are fine too

I just grabbed a random Conan appearance to link upthread because I couldn't find the one I wanted (the infamous mid-'90s, coked-up & dressed like Bono one), but oddly enough in the one I shared he talks about having just being gifted his first cat.

he's into Dadrock enough that I have a strong feeling this will just be the first of several "farewell" tours.

Great post VegemiteGrrl. Yeah looking back on the show in its totality, the draw that made it special during the early "making amends/sorta a fuckup" era was that you felt like you were going on a very vulnerable personal journey with him. The interviews were interesting but there was a meta-text where you were watching this guy grow and rebuild himself in real time. And his limitations as an interviewer were part of it because the show was as much a character study of him as it was about getting the most rewarding possible interview out of Ron Shock or somebody.

Then at some point as he got more settled and as the show got bigger he kind of ran out of runway with that story arc - which is fair! People should change over that length of time. But for me thats obv when the show got less interesting, when it became just Marc the quirky interviewer talking to a revolving door of celebrities on press tours. The "story" of the show became more about Marc dealing with success, which it seems like he did pretty well, which is good for him but not always like fascinating listening compared to what came before. And as the show became less about Marc and more about the interviews themselves, for me thats when his interviewing style became a bug more often than a feature, because in that context if I'm listening I'd usually rather hear Jane Goodall finish her story than hear Marc interject to talk about an expensive tube amp he wants to buy, as happy as I am for him that he reached that place in his life.

exactly otm, otm, otm, except that for me the different kinds of quirks and disappointments in later interviews became another, new kind of metatext - about the transformation, what we leave behind. you saw a different frailty in him tbh.

I won't miss him complaining about the tedium of waiting around on set.

oh thats really interesting framing sean, i never thought of it that way

(thanks)

there's a lot of pathos and even tragedy, i think, in the past year or 2 of WTF. early on in the show, Marc clearly had this resentment and jealousy about his success and his peers' success, as waste of compute said, and this evolution was at the heart of what made the show most interesting imh. but the corollary was this conviction that if Marc *found* success (or approval, or validation, or money) then he'd "be ok." But he still wasn't OK! And at first i got the sense that he thought "if i just give it time" or "if i get recognition for my *stand-up*, not just podcasting," he'd get there... And then with Lynn's death, there was the idea that maybe that tragedy threw him off-course.

but i think in the past year or 2 he's had this growing intuition that: no, to fix himself, he has to fix himself. and maybe therapy is part of that, or maybe a bit of drugs, or maybe shutting down the podcast! but there's this fundamental humility to it, maybe even a humiliation? that's why i find it tragic. like: you can't outrace or outsucceed your wounds. part of the "metatext" of WTF, as you put it, is about how little one's happiness is contingent on what one gets in life. WTF is a story of rags to riches, transformation, reconciliation, small-business gets rich, and yet at the end of the day: the guy's still hurt or hurting in many of the same ways. (as we all might be.)

(thanks)

there's a lot of pathos and even tragedy, i think, in the past year or 2 of WTF. early on in the show, Marc clearly had this resentment and jealousy about his success and his peers' success, as waste of compute said, and this evolution was at the heart of what made the show most interesting imh. but the corollary was this conviction that if Marc *found* success (or approval, or validation, or money) then he'd "be ok." But he still wasn't OK! And at first i got the sense that he thought "if i just give it time" or "if i get recognition for my *stand-up*, not just podcasting," he'd get there... And then with Lynn's death, there was the idea that maybe that tragedy threw him off-course.

but i think in the past year or 2 he's had this growing intuition that: no, to fix himself, he has to fix himself. and maybe therapy is part of that, or maybe a bit of drugs, or maybe shutting down the podcast! but there's this fundamental humility to it, maybe even a humiliation? that's why i find it tragic. like: you can't outrace or outsucceed your wounds. part of the "metatext" of WTF, as you put it, is about how little one's happiness is contingent on what one gets in life. WTF is a story of rags to riches, transformation, reconciliation, small-business gets rich, and yet at the end of the day: the guy's still hurt or hurting in many of the same ways. (as we all might be.)

well said

can't belive he finally played glycerine after the carol leifer ep

he's in that steve albini realm for me - aware as a person they made mistakes and trying to better themselves and the world.

An excerpt from this '97 Conan appearance has been making the rounds on Maron's socials today: him roasting previous guest Trump, who showed off a (thankfully) wrapped condom he had in his coat pocket during his interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOWgpBvO7LQ

birbiglia interview was brutal. i've given this dude 100 second chances but i am continuously amazed by how much a narcissist he is

Birbiglia or Maron?

Speaking of Conan, Marc said today he dropped by the Sirius studio in NYC to say hi to Conan and they ended up doing a whole interview. I assume that means it will be on Conan's show, but it wasn't clear.

milo otm

i haven't really been following this thread or the wtf eulogies, and i've been a sporadic listener at best for years, but i happen to have clicked on that youtube vid grisso/mccain posted, and i am in tears at the fact that after the trump dis he jumps right into talking about how he's trying to quit smoking. this guy has been talking about the same topics for truly his entire life

i meant maron, birbiglia is too boring to elicit a very strong reaction from me. but probably seven or eight times maron caught off MB mid-sentence to say, "i have a bit about that," half the time adding that "it was pretty funny." idk just the most annoying kind of person who is incapable of listening and needs to talk about himself and his interests at all times

caught off = cut off

Maron always has a competitive dynamic with Birbiglia.

yeah and it’s entirely in his own head … so cringe

I felt marc wasn't too committed to it this time, and it was mostly used to give the episode some heat.

Birbiglia and Mulaney I can't stand. I've always admired Maron's dislike of them as comedians through the years.

I don't recall him disliking Mulaney, was gratified to hear him add oaf and fraud Edelman to the list.

Birbiglia is so incredibly bland, I'd be in favor of any weaponized Maron condescension.

I listened for the first time in months to Cristin Milioti, because I was a fan of Made for Love and wanted to hear what happened to it.

birbiglia interview was brutal. i've given this dude 100 second chances but i am continuously amazed by how much a narcissist he is

Does Birbiglia have a permanent "Kick Me" sign on his back? I still remember him attempting to interview Marc for WTF #100