Marc Maron's last podcast.

More than a decade ago, I sat down with @MarcMaron in his garage to tape something new called a podcast. This time, he came to me to record his last episode.

We talked about the power of conviction, decency in an age of division, and the true story of America. I’ll miss Marc’s… pic.twitter.com/kM3sAgtjF0

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 13, 2025

Podscribe has the full transcript with audio, so you can poke around looking for something of interest. 

For Maron's end-of-podcast thoughts, you need to listen to the second-to-last episode, here. This is his real sign off:

"As time went on I made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton. I never read a single review of my work..."

"... and cared only what Keaton had to say about it. If she liked it, I counted the film as an artistic success. If she was less than enthusiastic, I tried to use her criticism to reedit and come away with something she felt better about. By then we were living together and I was seeing the world through her eyes.... For all her shyness and self-effacing personality, she was totally secure in her own aesthetic judgment. Whether she was criticizing a movie of mine or a play of Shakespeare’s, she held both to the same standard. If she felt Shakespeare had gone wrong—it didn’t matter who or how many sang his praises, it was her own feeling that she went with, and she didn’t hesitate to put the knock on the Bard...."

Writes Woody Allen, remembering Diane Keaton (Free Press).

There's also this, about bulimia:

"Yes, she’s pregnant. Yes, it’s his. And yes — if you must know how they conceived — in Greenstone’s words, 'we birds’d and we bees’d.'"

From "He’s gay. She’s straight. They’re happily married./A new crop of couples are making content about their mixed-orientation marriages, divorced from sexual attraction but not love" (WaPo).

"You know, I'm being a little cute — I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven."

PETER DOOCY: "You talked about how you hoped to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into heaven. How does this help? Does this help?"

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "You know, I'm being a little cute — I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven." pic.twitter.com/dcY0J1p4zt

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2025

"He maneuvered each rib with a drill, bending it until one side snapped in what’s called a greenstick fracture."

"From there, he instructed the patient to strap into a corset for two months, until the ribs fused together in a new position. The result was a waistline reduction of nine centimeters, or three and a half inches."

From "Plastic Surgery Comes for the Waist/A drastic new procedure, which inflicts tiny fractures to the ribs, emerges at the forefront of body modification" (NYT).

President Trump Delivers Remarks to The Knesset.

"And I love Israel. I'm with you all the way. You will be bigger, better, stronger, and more loving than ever before."

"The remaining 13 living hostages in Gaza have been transferred into the hands of the Red Cross, the Israeli military said in a statement."

 The NYT reports, 51 minutes ago, in its excellent live coverage.

45 minutes ago: "As Trump makes his way through the Knesset to give his address, it is clearly a friendly crowd, even among many in the Israeli opposition. In the audience, some are wearing red MAGA-style baseball caps, emblazoned with the words, 'TRUMP THE PEACE PRESIDENT.' The question now is whether, in his speech, Trump casts the war as over — words that Netanyahu and members of his coalition have refused to utter."

7 minutes ago: "The Egyptian government just announced that both Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, will participate in a high-level regional summit about Gaza being convened later today in Egypt."

Sunrise — 6:30, 7:00, 7:13, 7:15.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

(If the second photograph looks incongruous, that's because it's a view of the western sky.)

"... you can wrap healthcare and tariffs and authoritarianism into a single argument...."

I'm listening to Ezra Klein, at 00:15:32, in the new episode of his podcast, "Jon Favreau on Where the Democrats Went Right":

"I've been talking to members of the House and Senate, and both politically and morally, I've been going back to my big shutdown piece a month ago on the side that says you can wrap healthcare and tariffs and authoritarianism into a single argument, and it is worth doing that if only to set up the argument you're actually making — if only to make American politics about what it is really about. Partly if you believe this is an attentional event. I was talking with my staff and we were looking at coverage on the front pages and it's interesting how few front pages every day are running the shutdown.... And the shutdown has, instead of becoming the focusing event that ties together what is happening in American politics, it is one hermetically sealed event in American politics. And then there are these other events happening simultaneously and coverage is splitting between them."

Listen to the whole dialogue if you can. It's interesting, if disturbing, because Klein and Favreau openly talk about using the shutdown to leverage the Democratic Party back into power. Why aren't they more circumspect? I have to assume they are cocksure that their listeners share their primary goal — the success of the Democratic Party. 

A dose of fall color.

Althouse added for scale.

"I made dinner for my family because I wanted to and because the world told me I had to and then, three years ago, I just stopped."

"I didn’t want to anymore, and I’m here to tell you that you can stop, too. Your family will remain connected and whole; your kids will still grow up to be well-adjusted humans. And you might even enjoy one another a little more...."

Writes Erin O. White, in "Why I Had to Kill Family Dinner" (NYT).

Spot the error in the People magazine headline: "Woody Allen's Ex-Wife, Mia Farrow, Shares Tribute to Diane Keaton Despite Complicated Past."

 Link to article.

"The brilliant 1791 plan for the city... was the creation of the French-born, classically trained architect chosen for the task by George Washington himself..."

"... Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The L’Enfant Plan generated many urban nodes calling for the erection of monuments. Yet Washington is the only major Western capital that lacks a triumphal arch.... The triumphal arch originally appeared in Rome in the second century B.C., well before the fall of the Republic. The Romans... modified the monumental gateways of their Etruscan neighbors as free-standing structures and articulated them with the classical architectural forms—columns, friezes, cornices—developed by the Greeks.... It’s worth noting that, contrary to widespread belief, there is no record of a Roman arch being built for its honoree’s triumphal procession...  To be sure, numerous victory arches were erected along the processional via triumphalis that led up to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline in Rome. But hundreds of arches were also erected in many other venues.... They could celebrate the construction of new roads, bridges, ports, aqueducts, or city walls—sometimes being atavistically embedded in the latter, sometimes standing slightly in front of them. They marked entrances to forums (civic centers), sacred precincts, and important public venues such as the Circus Maximus in Rome...."

From an article by Catesby Leigh in City Journal, published last December, "Trump Should Erect an Arch for America’s 250th/His plans to mark the semiquincentennial in 2026 offer an appropriate opportunity to do so in Washington" (City Journal).

This NY Post piece from yesterday — "Trump shares rendering of massive stone monument for DC to mark America’s 250th birthday" — says the idea came from the Catesby Leigh article.

Catesby Leigh brought up the arch in Washington Square in New York City. That arch is well-loved, and you don't have to be a Trumpster to feel glad it's there. And that made me remember that we have an arch in Madison, Wisconsin: 

Gavin Newsom miffed that right-wing tough guy Joe Rogan won't have him on his show.

Here's Joe Rogan, a 02:11:01, in a recent podcast:

Do you like people? I love people. I could never be a hermit. I love people. I love hanging out. Like I love having fun. I love meeting people that are fun. I love it. The only way that happens is if people make people. You have to make cool people. Yeah. Make cool people that other people wanna hang out with....

Joe's podcast is great because he's a cool person hanging out with cool people and he lets us sit in on that love and coolness. How does anyone get on Joe's show? I think it's by making him feel that you are a cool person who loves having fun that he could love having fun with.

Meanwhile, here's Gavin Newsom bitching about not getting an invitation onto Joe's show and revealing that he has no idea what makes Joe Joe:

"It’s a family history. I remember my Auntie Martha had skin cancer so bad they removed her nose."

"My father had basal skin cancer and my brother had it. It’s tricky with this skin cancer. That’s why you’ve got to put the sunblock on."

Said Diane Keaton, in 2015, quoted in "What Diane Keaton Shared About Her Health Before Her Death/Diane Keaton—whose cause of death has not been shared—was open about her health battles with skin cancer and bulimia that affected her growing up" (E! News).

ADDED: "We're here to see The Nose. I heard it was running..."

Some midwestern trolling.

The Brewers broke out the L flag 🤣 pic.twitter.com/KnNsi3GxBd

— MLB (@MLB) October 12, 2025

HEY CHICAGO, WHADAYA SAY?#MagicBrew pic.twitter.com/3OFCtsgz9R

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) October 12, 2025