“I don’t have a huge social life, really, [but] I like talking to people, and I think it’s important to have those conversations,” said comedian/author Marc Maron on the purpose he sees in his podcast WTF with Marc Maron. The now popular show was born out of desperation rather than a calculated career move when, in 2009, he was fired from his radio-hosting shows for Air America, The Marc Maron Show, and Breakroom Live. Maron, along with producer Brendan McDonald, scrambled to keep working. The result was an off-the-cuff podcast that featured a variety of guests from the comedy and entertainment world.
Since its inception, Maron has had some of the most famous folks in the world across the mike from him — including President Obama — engaged in chatter about all manner of things. Often revelatory and always interesting, WTF, which gets millions of downloads each month, has been touted as a podcast game changer. In anticipation of his Santa Barbara show, I spoke with Maron over the phone about his podcast and comedy work.
How do you get your guests to reveal so much? I don’t know; you just listen and talk to them. It’s not really an agenda driven show. I think that I connect with people, but I don’t know what they’re going to reveal and what they’re not going to reveal. I’m not really gunning for anything. I’m sort of looking for that moment when you feel a sort of opening. When you’re in conversation, [talking] to people who have public lives … there’s a sort of patter that happens, a detachment. So once you get around that, and you’re just talking to somebody, candidly as a person, you don’t know what they’re going to reveal … and sometimes it’s pretty mundane. Neil Young saying he went to Pilates is pretty important stuff only because it’s Neil Young. These things become more loaded for people [who] think that there’s some great mystery to it, because nobody hears these people talk as people.