June 2, 2025
"But yeah, all of a sudden, you know, you're old and you realize you've been doing something a long time."
"And this started, you know, the old garage, the, you know, just no one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me. Brendan McDonald, my producer... and I started this thing.... And it, it slowly evolved into the show. That became what you listened to twice a week, 16 years we've been doing this, and we've decided that we, we had a, a great run. And, and now basically it's, it's time, folks. It's time. WTF is is coming to an end, and it's our decision. We will have our final episode sometime in the fall. It was not some kind of difficult decision necessarily.... And, you know, God forbid we just keep plowing along and, and something diminishes. And we wouldn't wanna just keep plugging along because we can, at the risk of our burnout or our our sort of like, you know, passion, you know, starts to, to drift or it starts to get sloppy. We're just, we're just not those kind of people...."Said Marc Maron, at the beginning of the new episode of his "WTF" podcast.
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15 comments:
not that maron was any good in his endeavor in the first place, with his trade mark snark,
Please don't get any ideas from this.
Maron is 61.
That seems young to me. I'm 13 years older than that. And though I've blogged every day for 21+ years, I think it is much more difficult to podcast with a guest twice a week. You have to actually care to talk to these people for hours. Who's going to come on the show? Are you going to keep up the energy and treat them right? Scroll down to see how Bill Maher treated David Mamet on his most recent podcast. Imagine how awful you'd feel if that's the product you were putting out and you were feeling tired and empty during the conversation. With blogging, it's like reading the newspaper and just showing people whatever you like whenever you want, adding as few or as many words as you want. It's not tiring or depleting the way I do it, which is for its intrinsic value to me. I'm not paid by someone else to do it, so I don't feel obligated. I casually read until something feels bloggable and then I blog it the way that feels interesting to me. I'm not managing another person's experience in real time. When you have an interlocutor and you are recording, they're trying to get out something they have or hope they have to give. The stakes are high. That could be energizing or horrible or you could just become a stalwart professional and crank things out without concern for your own inner life. The show Maron developed relied on some degree of authenticity from him, and now he's being honest that he hit the wall.
The 10,000 hour thing is more or less true. Maron is burnt out and can walk away, but those hours of expertise will beckon him after he's rested. It's a great feeling to know you're accomplished at something. He'll want the juice again.
I quit listening to Maron a long time ago when it became clear he did no noticeable prep work prior to interviewing his guests. With comedians he could get by, with musicians he was an embarrassment.
"...or you could just become a stalwart professional and crank things out without concern for your own inner life."
larry King was david frost compared to this crew,
"...all of a sudden, you know, you're old and you realize you've been doing something a long time.""
Or, calling the libs-in-the-wilderness play by play is not fun, not fun at all. WTF indeed.
What the frog? Keep hopping. Ribbit.
He in many ways defined and perfected the podcast genre way before anyone else. Anyone who has the good judgment to have Danny Elfman on their show knows what he's doing. It was great!
I stopped listening when he called Republican voters evil. Not a joke. Evil.
He won't be missed.
Not one of the better ones anyway.
I don't believe I've ever listened to one of Maron's podcasts all the way through. He never held my interest, and he seemed unprepared.
And then there may come a point where, all of a sudden, you know, you’re old and you realize you just don’t give a fuck about some things the way you did before
I listened a few times. He seemed way too earnest. You'd never know he was a comedian......I like Conan. He tries and frequently succeeds in being funny.
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