No, seriously. Have you heard the news? Longtime podcaster, comedian, and all around interesting dude Marc Maron has wrapped up his well-known and widely respected podcast "WTF with Marc Maron."
The New York Times recently sat down with Maron to discuss the decision to end the influential podcast that has informed and enlightened, engaged and entertained, amused and even annoyed, millions of Americans for the past sixteen years.
The New York Times recently sat down with Maron to discuss the decision to end the influential podcast that has informed and enlightened, engaged and entertained, amused and even annoyed, millions of Americans for the past sixteen years.
On a drive to lunch one sunny recent afternoon in Glendale, Calif., the comedian and actor Marc Maron was contemplating the term “burnout,” trying it on and inspecting it from different angles, like a new pair of pants he wasn’t sure were to his taste.
Maron had used the word a few times in a June episode of his podcast, “WTF With Marc Maron,” in which he announced that he and his founding producer, Brendan McDonald, would be ending the influential show after 16 years. Many responses to the news had echoed the term (including Howard Stern’s “I was burned out in 1996”) and now Maron seemed to worry that he’d sounded weak, or self-aggrandizing.
“The fact is, we’ve been doing this a long time,” he said, turning the wheel of his tan Toyota Avalon, a graveyard of empty seltzer cans, coffee cups, and Zyn packets. “And now we kind of want to live our lives. That may be burnout, or it may just be the natural course of things.”
This cycle of conjecture and revision — Maron grasping for, and occasionally reaching, some kind of emotional truth — was the essence of “WTF.” Over more than 1,600 episodes, he engaged in raw and personal dialogues with a staggering array of comedians, artists and public figures. Among them were Robin Williams, Lorne Michaels, Louis C.K. and Barack Obama, who became the first sitting president to appear on a podcast when he was a guest in 2015.
Maron had used the word a few times in a June episode of his podcast, “WTF With Marc Maron,” in which he announced that he and his founding producer, Brendan McDonald, would be ending the influential show after 16 years. Many responses to the news had echoed the term (including Howard Stern’s “I was burned out in 1996”) and now Maron seemed to worry that he’d sounded weak, or self-aggrandizing.
“The fact is, we’ve been doing this a long time,” he said, turning the wheel of his tan Toyota Avalon, a graveyard of empty seltzer cans, coffee cups, and Zyn packets. “And now we kind of want to live our lives. That may be burnout, or it may just be the natural course of things.”
This cycle of conjecture and revision — Maron grasping for, and occasionally reaching, some kind of emotional truth — was the essence of “WTF.” Over more than 1,600 episodes, he engaged in raw and personal dialogues with a staggering array of comedians, artists and public figures. Among them were Robin Williams, Lorne Michaels, Louis C.K. and Barack Obama, who became the first sitting president to appear on a podcast when he was a guest in 2015.
I have to be honest about this post -- I've never listened to Marc Maron's podcast. In fact, I've never really listened to any podcasts. For someone who loves talking and engaging in discussions and debates, I am surprisingly uninterested in podcasts. That said, if I were to listen to one, Marc Maron's likely would have been a top choice. Maron seems like the kind of guy that I would generally agree with and even when I didn't would respect his criticisms and counterarguments. And I have enjoyed Maron's stand-up, which I see more as spoken word monologues.
I guess what's also interesting is that numerous people over the years have suggested or observed that I should have a podcast. As an English teacher who basically organized his instruction around Henry James' description of being "a person on whom nothing is lost," my Socratic approach the English classroom certainly would lend itself to the podcast model. Of course, many students and colleagues might also observe that my class was not so Socratic as it was "listen to Mazenko and then respond." And I have several text threads with various friend groups whose banter certainly reads like many podcasts.
That said, there's a part of me that considers the whole podcast idea a bit of a mindless time wasting. I know I feel that way about the talking heads on television news, an issue I wrote about for The Villager a couple years ago. Seriously, do we really learn anything from listening to a few other people just ramble around in casual conversation. Or, is it all just "infotainment"? Listening to loose conversation is certainly not enlightening in the way a lecture or presentation or even a TED Talk can be. The Lyceum Movement in American history -- a key venue for the lectures of Henry Thoreau -- was arguably an enlightening and educational experience for its audience.
So, I don't know. I don't think adding podcasts to my daily life is ever in the cards. But I won't discount the impact of Maron's podcast run, and I don't doubt it's leaving a bit of a hole in American culture.
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