Marc Maron’s Podcast Helped Me See a Creative Future

On Monday, the comedian Marc Maron said that he would be ending his podcast, which has been running since 2009. I have been listening to Maron’s delightfully surly interview show, “WTF With Marc Maron,” since its early days. In the year 2025 it is hard to believe that a comedian interviewing other comedians could feel utterly fresh and transgressive, but I swear that it once did.

Maron has described creating the podcast as a Hail Mary. He had just divorced his second wife and lost his radio job on the failing Air America network. Maron told New York magazine’s Jada Yuan in 2012, “I had nothing. My manager had hung me out to dry. I was barely solvent. It was sort of like, How do I not die broke?”

That year — 2012 — was a difficult one for me. I found out I was pregnant on my second day of work at a new, challenging job, and within another two weeks was so sick I could barely leave the bathroom. I ended up quitting because I simply could not do it, and I didn’t know when I would feel better. When I could finally hold down food six months into my pregnancy, I would waddle through my neighborhood, listening to Maron work through his neuroses and challenge his guests to do the same.

The podcast made me feel as if, even though I was unemployed and depressed, I could also come back from career humiliation in a way that could be creatively satisfying, and that one day I would be able to talk about it without shame. I wasn’t sure how it would look or how long it might take, only that it was possible.

What always set “WTF” apart from other audio interview shows was Maron’s vulnerability and presence. The podcast tends to open with a long rant from Maron, which feels like he’s opening up his brain and inviting the audience to peer into the jumble: his relationship angst, the high jinks of his beloved feral cats, his creative struggles, his petty grievances, his grief over a partner, the director Lynn Shelton, who died suddenly and too young.

That openness always extended to his guests, which tended to provoke from them genuine and unexpected responses. The comedian Todd Glass came out publicly on the pod in 2012, and my personal favorite moment was when Ali Wong pumped breast milk on air in 2016.