Episode 300 - Episode 300
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Marc Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this, what the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fuckaneers, what the fucknicks, what the fuckanots, what the fuckaholics, what the fuckaricans, what the fuckamolens, what the fuckanucks, what the fuckstables, what the fuckosaurs.
Marc:All right, the list goes on, it goes on.
Marc:300 episodes, 300 episodes of WTF I have put out into the world.
Marc:This is the 300th one.
Marc:So I haven't quite put 300 out yet.
Marc:By the time you finish this, it will be 300.
Marc:This is a monumental moment because it has two zeros at the end of it.
Marc:I had to think a lot about how I was going to do this episode.
Marc:Some of you were expecting like, oh, it's going to be the most.
Marc:He's going to interview somebody that was dead.
Marc:He's going to get Bill Hicks on the show.
Marc:Richard Pryor is going to be on WTF on the 300th episode.
Marc:Lorne Michaels will come out special to come to my garage.
Marc:The truth of the matter is there are no interviews.
Marc:necessarily, that would be a 300th episode.
Marc:All my interviews are special in their own right.
Marc:This is not necessarily or in any way a celebrity-driven show.
Marc:It is a conversation show.
Marc:That is my way of telling you that.
Marc:lower your expectations in terms of the big get for the 300th, because that's not the way it's gonna go.
Marc:But the truth of the matter is, is that this is my 300th episode and where I'm at today is much different than where I was at
Marc:when i started this show i had no fucking idea folks i had no idea that this would become what it has become i had no idea that i would be a small business owner that was not part of my plan and it's weird because of where i'm at now with the podcast because the podcast has become popular and has become profitable to a degree
Marc:It's pretty exciting that this thing has taken off.
Marc:It's exciting that it's successful and it does make money.
Marc:It was a medium that people weren't making money in before.
Marc:And I have to be honest with you.
Marc:I have found sort of a thrill in making some money off of this thing.
Marc:I never understood the entrepreneurial spirit.
Marc:I never understood...
Marc:what they talk about when they say invest in small business or you should do your business at a mom and pop shop.
Marc:It wasn't until I owned a mom and pop shop, me being the pop and maybe one of my cats being the mom, but there is a pride to it.
Marc:I do feel like I'm putting out something that is unique and I'm proud of it and it speaks from my heart and that people dig it.
Marc:And any money I get from that, I feel like it's an honest dollar.
Marc:But I did get an interesting email that I want to share with you at the beginning of the show just to to quell any fears.
Marc:I don't know if they were fears, but but this was an interesting take on something and was provocative to me because I wouldn't have thought about it this way.
Marc:Dear Mark.
Marc:And this the subject line says a conservative fan.
Marc:Dear Mark, I just listened to your Gilda's Laugh Fest episode, and I just had to write you about your political comments during that show.
Marc:I've been listening to your podcast for a while, and every so often you'll tell us your political views.
Marc:I'd like to bring you over to the dark side, but I know that quoting Milton Friedman or pointing out that you are a living, breathing, Randian capitalist superhero who pioneered a new artistic medium simultaneously while inventing a new business model won't sway you.
Marc:But I know what will eventually convince you that capitalism is the only ethical political system giving you money.
Marc:I just bought a bunch of merch on your website.
Marc:Your show is great and I'm a huge fan.
Marc:Good luck on the new TV show, John.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:know that i'd consider myself a randian capitalist or whether or not uh i uh would go along with any sort of a milton friedman-esque analysis of my show but i i am uh given uh what i come from and given what i came from i'm very happy to be making money but you know don't be so quick to call me a conservative i'm not in that tax bracket my friend but i appreciate the input so what are we going to do on this show
Marc:I decided to talk about where I'm at now with the show and also to bring guests in that reflect where the show is at and where it's come from to some degree.
Marc:On this show today, I'm going to get on the phone with Nathan Rabin from the Onion AV Club, who's been very supportive of the medium of podcasting and certainly supportive of my show.
Marc:I'm going to have a conversation with Jesse Thorne, who is the host of Bullseye, and he's the king of the Maximum Fun podcast network.
Marc:And he started me in this racket in a lot of ways.
Marc:He set me up here and I owe him for that.
Marc:He doesn't seem to think I owe him as much as I think I owe him, but he did teach me how to use my microphones.
Marc:And then I thought it would be interesting to talk to a podcaster who was inspired by my podcast.
Marc:to start his own.
Marc:And for that, I chose Pete Holmes.
Marc:And some of you know my relationship with Pete.
Marc:Some of you know how deeply and genuinely Pete annoys me.
Marc:He's a funny guy.
Marc:He's a bright guy.
Marc:And not unlike many of my shows, having Pete in here to talk about how I influenced him or inspired him to do a podcast or steal mine, as he says,
Marc:It does provide a little bit of that tension that you've all grown to love and expect from a Marc Maron guest.
Marc:Did I just say my name in a third person?
Marc:I believe I did.
Marc:And then finally, I'm going to talk to Andy Kindler.
Marc:who I love and who I've loved forever.
Marc:For as long as I remember doing comedy after seeing Andy Kindler, I've always loved Andy Kindler.
Marc:We've had our ups and downs, but I got to be honest with you, out of all the cats in my immediate world, Andy Kindler loves my show.
Marc:And he talks to me about it.
Marc:He loves listening to it.
Marc:So I thought that I would interview a member of my community that just loves the show and talk to him about that.
Marc:So that's the plan for this show.
Marc:But I want to assuage some fears and talk about about where I'm at.
Marc:I think the show is going well.
Marc:I think that it has gotten into a groove that that has grown well beyond me.
Marc:And I want to tell you a couple of things that that I do that you might not know I do.
Marc:One is that I love almost every interview I do, and I honestly learn something from almost every interview I do.
Marc:And I can tell you moments that have changed my life from these conversations.
Marc:And I'll be honest with you.
Marc:Once I have the conversation with the person in the garage or on the road or wherever I have that, I rarely, if at all, listen to the completed podcast.
Marc:My memory is of the conversation I had with a human being.
Marc:And a lot of times people come up to me and they say things like that thing you said, what's his name in episode 12.
Marc:I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
Marc:I got to remember that.
Marc:So my experience remains human.
Marc:I rely on my memory.
Marc:That's how I hold these conversations.
Marc:So a lot of times I will get things, you know, like a lesson I learned from Stuart Lee about audiences or something I learned from Sarah Benacasa about parents.
Marc:I like I'm always listening.
Marc:you know, for a new perspective on comedy, on life, on art, on existing in the world and trying to get by.
Marc:And these conversations have changed my life.
Marc:And I know that a lot of you have been changed by them.
Marc:And I completely appreciate that.
Marc:And it was far beyond anything I knew would happen with this show.
Marc:I get hundreds and hundreds of emails from people who express their gratitude for how much this show has helped them through a dark time, changed their perspective on things, you know,
Marc:help them manage a drinking or drug problem or help them you know wake up to to what comedy is capable of or treat their their peers better or their or their spouses better but another thing that i i i've learned to do in doing this show is that i i no longer care as much about my experience
Marc:In the conversation, it took a couple of hundred episodes for me to realize that if I walk away from a conversation with a guest that I didn't feel like my emotional needs are met or I didn't feel like I got to something or I should have done it this way or should have done it that way, that I don't really talk about that with you guys because it's my experience.
Marc:And you're going to have your experience with the conversation.
Marc:I know a lot of times I'm speaking to people that you people have relationships with, you know, either through media or through their work.
Marc:And just the experience of hearing them talk is something that you wouldn't have heard before.
Marc:So I don't bring my baggage to you.
Marc:In that way, I wanted you to know that, that if you think I'm selfish or self-involved or this is all about me, it really isn't that I guess I'm tooting my own horn in that I'm keeping some shit to myself and I want you to know that.
Marc:So in that way and in many other ways, this show remains vital to me.
Marc:Because my heart has opened up over the arc of these 300 episodes.
Marc:And I'm very able to listen, to care, to laugh, to be there for somebody else in these conversations and in my life.
Marc:And that would not have happened without this show.
Marc:And I don't see it as diminishing at all.
Marc:I know some of you have expressed some fear or some worry.
Marc:That perhaps that if I get content or if I become happier, that there's going to be a problem with the output of the show that maybe I'll lose my edge if I find any peace of mind or contentment or happiness or money.
Marc:I just don't see that as a threat.
Marc:You know, we all have good periods and bad periods and be previous to this show.
Marc:I'd had some good periods.
Marc:They may not have lasted long, but I had them.
Marc:And and also you should take in mind that I am on the precipice of something that I've never been before.
Marc:I've never sold tickets as a stand up comic previous to to to the WTF show.
Marc:reality i you know i i'm writing a book that i i'm very nervous about because i'm very busy and i want to put the right amount of time into it i wrote a book before but the stakes were not as high some of you know most of you that because of this show uh not only do i i now sell tickets but i've gotten an opportunity from ifc to make 10 episodes of a scripted half hour comedy based on my life i've never had
Marc:that experience before.
Marc:I've never been in this position before to do that.
Marc:Who knows what's going to happen?
Marc:What I'm telling you now is just because I may have this brief interlude of happiness and engagement and finally arriving at a place where not only is my my art or my comedy in a good place and the best place it's ever been.
Marc:But but now I have opportunities that I never had before.
Marc:So you should know enough about me to know that not that's making me a bit anxious and a bit frightened.
Marc:But I'll tell you one thing that's gone.
Marc:I'm not going to fuck it up on purpose.
Marc:I'm not going to let the part of me that likes to fuck things up to protect myself do that.
Marc:But I don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:And knowing that there's no reason.
Marc:that I couldn't spiral down into a mess.
Marc:It's not out of the question that I could fuck everything up.
Marc:But one thing I can tell you now, having done this show for so long, having done it for 300 episodes and having grown as a person with this show and with you listeners, is that I think that if it doesn't work out the way I want it to, or if everything does go wrong, or if the worst happens, if the worst it could happen happens, that I can probably handle it and I can cope with it and I can adjust to it.
Marc:And I can accept it because that is something I was never able to do, any of those things, without beating the shit out of myself, judging other people, or making it worse.
Marc:And all of that happened because of this show, because you people enjoyed this show, and because people wanted to talk to me.
Marc:And I'm thrilled that you people love this show, and I'm thrilled about this 300th episode.
Marc:And now I'm going to talk to some other people about WTF and about where we go from here and where it fits into the world.
Marc:I don't really think past this microphone.
Marc:I know there's a lot of you out there, but I don't think about that number.
Marc:I don't always think about what you want or what you don't want.
Marc:I stay in the moment as much as I can.
Marc:And a lot of times I don't have a clear idea of how it affects people.
Marc:Until I start hearing from you, which I appreciate.
Marc:I just want to hear some some outside input as to, you know, what WTF means, what it means to others, what it means in a cultural context.
Marc:And I think that the best way to do that right now is to go to this phone conversation I had with Nathan Rabin over at the Onion AV Club.
Marc:So, in my mind, that's a relationship.
Guest:Oh, totally, totally.
Guest:I think you kind of have a relationship with everybody who listens to your podcast.
Guest:But I feel like it's sort of an inherently one-sided relationship where everybody knows everything about you.
Guest:You a little bit less so about everybody who listens to you.
Marc:But oddly, a little bit more so about you, at least what you offer me through your writing.
Marc:But you are absolutely right in that I do find that my fans approach me with a very deep and almost sometimes troubling notion of who I am.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:And I'm kind of a bit of a grotesque emotional exhibitionist.
Guest:At least I was in my memoir.
Guest:So anybody who's read my book knows everything about me.
Guest:Yeah, other people, a little bit less.
Marc:So what would you say your position is over there?
Marc:Are you like, in terms of the AV club, I consider you the main guy.
Marc:Can I call you the main guy?
Guest:Well, that is incredibly, incredibly kind and also incredibly inaccurate and that I'm the head writer.
Guest:So I kind of control the things that I write and not so much what other people write.
Marc:But does that mean that you you look over other people's stuff and say, maybe you should do this.
Marc:This isn't happening and that kind of thing.
Guest:No, it's not like 30 Rock at all.
Guest:I think I'm the head writer solely because they don't want to let me near anybody else's prose.
Guest:I like to say that I'm celebrating 13 years without a promotion.
Guest:I'm the only person who has ever made an editor, and that's because I'm a product of the Chicago Public School system.
Guest:So my grammar and my spelling and everything else related to the English language is pretty terrible.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah, apparently, apparently.
Guest:Until it's sort of polished and buffered and made palatable for public consumption.
Marc:I have the same problems.
Marc:I have the same problems.
Marc:I think I've got good ideas and I can execute them, but what happens in between the larger words is not necessarily the right words to use in terms of just simple stuff, grammar and whatnot.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:And my wife, I just got married.
Guest:She was an English teacher.
Guest:So she has a much, much, much greater grasp of pretty much everything relating to the English language than I do, which can be a little bit humbling at times.
Marc:Well, I understand.
Marc:It sounds like you married the right woman.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:I definitely married the right woman.
Guest:I actually just got married two weeks ago.
Guest:Graduation.
Guest:So, yes, it's kind of new in my mind.
Guest:So, yeah, thank you.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Marc:Well, you've been a tremendous supporter of the medium of podcasting and certainly a supporter of mine, which I appreciate.
Marc:When was the first time that you started listening to podcasts?
Marc:I mean, was it before WTF?
Guest:I think it might have been just before WTF.
Guest:I remember the first podcast that I listened to was Never Not Funny.
Guest:And then comedy Death Ray, I guess it was called at the time.
Guest:And that was kind of an entryway into WTS.
Guest:And yeah, I remember just listening to WTS for the first time and sort of feeling this sort of visceral truth that is so incredibly rare anywhere in pop culture.
Guest:And it just kind of opened this world to me where...
Guest:It was okay to talk about the darkness in the world.
Guest:It was okay to talk about the ugly side of humanity.
Guest:And I think because you were so incredibly open about just kind of like exposing your scars, exposing your ugliness to the world, it sort of made me, and I would imagine all of your listeners, feel a little bit better about our own ugliness, made us feel a little less alone, made us feel a little less alienated and detached from the world around us.
Marc:Well, I'm flattered, and I certainly appreciate that.
Marc:And I think that that wasn't what I wrote down.
Marc:That wasn't the list of things I wanted to do when I started the podcast, but I'm certainly glad it has that effect.
Marc:When people say things like that, I'm so glad that people find comfort in what I'm doing.
Marc:But it's interesting.
Marc:When I started it, all I wanted to do was get myself out there.
Marc:I felt like I needed...
Marc:I felt that my voice was valid and that whatever I'd done in my life to get me onto a mic, that was what I would bring to it.
Marc:And it's very odd because I don't think that how I talk or how I engage is, uh, is necessarily, uh,
Marc:You know, unusual.
Marc:But as I do it more, I realize that there is sort of a craving for some sort of organic conversation and also just frank conversation.
Marc:And I think people, I just, that's always been the way I've talked to people, which might speak to why I don't have a lot of close friends.
Marc:You know, it's draining in a way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I think part of it is, you know, you listen to a talk show, especially a television talk show, sort of people sort of engaging in socially mandated charades.
Guest:The host is pretending to be interested in the guest so that they can get eight minutes of television and the guest can promote their product.
Guest:You never get that sense with WTF.
Guest:You never get the sense that you're interested in somebody as an entertainer or as somebody with something to move.
Guest:You get the sense that you're interested in humanity.
Guest:and you're interested in your shared humanity.
Guest:You're interested in where you overlap.
Guest:You're interested in where you clash.
Guest:You're interested in kind of how you can see the world from such kind of antithetical places, yet share this perspective.
Guest:thing that everybody shares, which is being human.
Marc:Well, I think that that's the best I can do.
Marc:I think that because of this medium, it wasn't gonna happen anywhere else.
Marc:Now, when you talk about, and you listen to a lot of podcasts, and I know you've gotten onto Gilmartins, and there's a lot of podcasting going on, I mean, how do you, what do you think the, you've stated some of what you think about the importance of the medium,
Marc:But what do you think in the broad, you know, in a broad sense outside of my podcast?
Marc:This was the first time I think that any of us have really witnessed.
Marc:We all sort of thought that the Internet in terms of creating new things or having some sort of explosion of of content that was unique was probably behind us.
Marc:And now, you know, we see it happening in a very big way with podcasts.
Marc:So where do you see the medium going?
Guest:Well, I think that's an interesting question.
Guest:I think kind of the medium right now is at sort of a crossroads where there are people like yourself and Comedy Bang Bang who are kind of sort of leveraging the enormous popularity and visibility of your podcast into television shows and to different things.
Guest:I know Nerdist just had a couple of specials on the BBC.
Guest:So I think it is a very interesting sort of crossroads.
Guest:where it's sort of like stand-up comedy in the 1980s, where it can be a means to an ad.
Guest:It can be a way of getting your name out there.
Guest:It can be a way of getting your own television show.
Guest:But it can also be an art form in its own sense.
Guest:And I feel like that's one of the things that your podcast has illustrated, that podcasting is an art form in and of itself, that it's connected to stand-up comedy.
Guest:It's connected to sketch comedy.
Guest:It's connected to talk shows.
Guest:But it also has this sort of freedom...
Guest:And the sort of intimacy and the sort of openness, especially at this point, where there aren't a lot of people making a great deal of money off of it, where there aren't a lot of rules.
Guest:There isn't necessarily like this rigid hierarchy.
Guest:And the cost of entry is very, very low.
Guest:You can just kind of like, you know, get some mics, get some bandwidth, and then put something up there.
Guest:So I think as it gets older, as it evolves and develops, I think it's going to grow more sophisticated.
Guest:I think some of the wildness and some of the unruliness, some of the intensity that sort of characterized the early days will be lost a little bit.
Guest:But I also think that we're going to see new and amazing and
Guest:exhilarating forms of expression.
Guest:And I'd like to think that there's a Marc Maron, not a Marc Maron, but somebody like Marc Maron, who's disgruntled and frustrated and just wants to communicate who they are to the universe, who's going to be starting a podcast.
Guest:you know, next year or the year after that or, you know, the year after that, that will completely change the way people think about podcasting and what the medium can do and what it's capable of.
Marc:Yeah, I wish I had time to go find that person.
Marc:Look, there are thousands of podcasts out there.
Marc:Some of them are inconsistent.
Marc:Some of them are five minutes long.
Marc:But I wonder if the audience of podcasts, I wonder if people have that same drive to go out and find that, you
Marc:of a guy that was on his, you know, losing his mind.
Marc:And that record is amazing.
Marc:I just wonder if the if without publicity that those sort of diamonds in the rough or those people that that might be at the end of the rope out, you know, I could see it happening in retrospect that, you know, five years from now, there are 10 podcasts that somebody unearths and says no one was listening to this guy.
Marc:And it was Jesus.
Marc:So, but I, do you think that the, that there is a curiosity there?
Marc:I just wonder about the curiosity because I think that in some ways podcasting is, has gotten a bad rap in that.
Marc:Like people will try wanting to be like, Oh God, that you, the mics were horrible.
Marc:This was horrible.
Marc:That, that it seems that slightly polished, at least personalities seem to be rising above the fold and the smaller podcasts seem to be struggling a bit.
Guest:Well, I mean, look at WTF.
Guest:I mean, you were not a giant, massive cultural figure when WTF started out.
Guest:You definitely had a name.
Guest:You were definitely respected.
Guest:You definitely followed your stand-up.
Guest:You wrote a book that was fantastic.
Guest:But you were not somebody where people, like Richard Gervais, people would just check out a podcast because you weren't involved.
Guest:But your podcast developed through word of mouth, through these kind of landmark episodes, through these water cooler episodes that everybody talked about, the Carlos Mencias, the Dane Cooks.
Guest:So it was able to kind of spread virally and without you taking out ads or anything like that.
Guest:So I'd like to think that that's going to continue to happen with podcasts.
Guest:Another thing that's nice about podcasting is it's awfully incestuous.
Guest:So you kind of have the same people on podcast after podcast after podcast.
Guest:But that's also a nice way for new podcasts to make a name for people who have power, who have leverage, who have appeal.
Guest:to kind of pay it forward, to kind of give a heads up to other podcasts.
Guest:And that's something that you can definitely do via yours.
Guest:I mean, there are definitely people who are going to check out a podcast because somebody was a guest on WTF.
Guest:Like, you have that power and you have that freedom.
Guest:And obviously, you know, it's good to have, you know, these huge guests that everybody is interested in.
Guest:But one of the things that's great about your podcast is you still have, you know, your big Jay Oakerson's.
Guest:You still have these people who will be completely unknown to a lot of the public and can still kind of be part of this community that supports itself and supports each other and that is constantly ever growing.
Marc:that the podcast has brought our community closer in some weird way.
Marc:I get a lot of comics that come up to me and go, it's almost a way to check in with their peers as to what's going on.
Marc:I'm finding that a lot of comics don't really know each other as well as they're familiar with each other.
Marc:Most of the time, I don't know them that well.
Marc:And it sort of, I think, becomes sort of a community bonding agent.
Marc:And I'm sort of thrilled about that.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Well, you know that Chuck D had that famous line about hip-hop being CNN for black folks.
Guest:And I think you can kind of extend the analogy and sort of say that WTF and podcasts in general, you know, you make it weird, you're your mental most happy hours, you're nerdist.
Guest:You know, those are kind of CNN for comedians and for stand-up comics.
Guest:And I think one of the things that's interesting and valuable is you've given this sort of
Guest:a very intimate glimpse into this sort of insular and kind of hermetic community to people who would never even think about, you know, going to an open mic or, you know, trying their hand at stand-up, but have this sort of deep reverence for Largo, who have this deep reverence for, you know, the somewhat minor figures because you talk about it.
Guest:loving and appreciative and kind of thorough sort of way.
Guest:I kind of feel like one of the values of these 300 episodes of WTF is taken together.
Guest:They're kind of this fantastic oral history of the STEM comedy, you know, from 1960 to the present.
Guest:And another thing that's amazing is
Guest:is several of your guests who died, but people know them better because you spoke to them, because you got under their skin, because they got under your skin, because you had a real connection.
Guest:I mean, I feel I know and appreciate Patrice O'Neill and his legacy a lot more because you guys talked, because you had an amazing conversation that I wouldn't really know him just from the three minutes I see him on Twitter.
Guest:You know, tough crowd or him doing like a standup set on Conan.
Guest:You can kind of reveal yourself in a way that you can't on WTF, that you can't, you know, in other mediums.
Marc:So what do you what do you want me to do, Nathan?
Marc:Like as a fan of the show and as somebody who's on, where would you like WTF to go now?
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:I mean, I guess kind of sort of the WTF that I love, that I embraced kind of initially, kind of explores a lot of these sort of more obscure kind of random sort of nooks and crannies of the comedy world.
Guest:I guess the Bob Zemuda episode was a really good example of something that, you know,
Guest:Not a huge name to a lot of people, but my God, what a fascinating, fascinating story.
Guest:And I also liked that it went really, really long.
Guest:And I tend to like episodes that go well over an hour long.
Guest:Um, so yeah, if you can get Shecky Green, uh, that would be absolutely fantastic.
Guest:And again, just these people that you don't know.
Marc:Well, I've got one coming up that, you know, that I'm, I can't wait to do.
Marc:And then, and then it's right up.
Marc:It's right in that wheelhouse, man.
Marc:I got a guy named Bob Golub, uh, coming up.
Marc:Cause like, I'm like you, I mean, those conversations with those kinds of guys, they're, to me, they're always the most exciting and mind blowing ones because, um,
Marc:They they don't have a necessarily a public personality in place.
Marc:So you're not fighting against a life script that or a career that needs to be protected necessarily.
Marc:And, you know, this guy was, you know, was you're going to love that one.
Marc:OK, well, I'll definitely take that advice.
Marc:I'm actually thinking about interviewing my optometrist who is a who's a jazz saxophone player, Jewish guy.
Marc:He's an optometrist.
Marc:In this Latino neighborhood who grew up in like somewhere in Wisconsin where his father owned a pharmacy and he became a bebop jazz saxophone player.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:And again, that's the kind of thing you can do now when I feel like your audience trusts you.
Guest:They trust you implicitly.
Guest:They kind of give you a blank chaga.
Guest:We trust you.
Guest:We trust your judgment.
Guest:We know that no matter where you're going to take us, it will be great.
Marc:someplace worthwhile so my god that is really exciting and and i very much look forward to uh both an episode uh like that and then episodes you know of a similar vein well thank you nathan thank you for supporting me and and and uh and and spending your time here with me today and and i will forge forward i will forge forward and try to uh to find those nooks and crannies
Guest:Cool.
Guest:I very much appreciate that.
Guest:When you come to Chicago in August, please stop by the office.
Guest:We'd love to treat you to lunch.
Marc:So we did all right?
Marc:You feel good about it?
Marc:Anything you want to add?
Marc:We good?
Guest:No, we're definitely very, very good.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Thank you, Nathan.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Bye.
Marc:Again, that was Nathan Rabin from the Onion AV Club reflecting on podcasting and my podcast.
Marc:And I'm very thankful for his support.
Marc:He's a smart guy.
Marc:You should read his book.
Marc:You know, one thing that is happening that I'm not sure I'm handling, I think I'm handling it okay, but I'm a little more known.
Marc:I got this weird email, the subject line, 89 memory, 1989.
Marc:Mark, I caught your act in Boston back in 89 while at school.
Marc:You followed a lady who bombed trying a Stephen Wright deadpan all the while silencing the room.
Marc:You led with a dick joke.
Marc:Something about the mic stand being used for penile exams.
Marc:I did that.
Marc:I woke up to that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and kept going strong with a bit about folks catching connecting flights after being in a plane crash.
Marc:I did that.
Marc:I remember that joke.
Marc:Funny thing is that the memory of your act has stayed strong, but I never knew who you were.
Marc:You were that guy.
Marc:In the mess of my early 20s chaos, I just never caught your name.
Marc:You surfaced again in my little narrative years later with an appearance on Leno.
Marc:No, it wasn't.
Marc:It was Conan.
Marc:And you were talking about Sanjaya Malakar getting shot in the head and exploding in a firework display of bad hair and blood.
Marc:I realized then that you were, hey, there's that guy, but still didn't catch your name.
Marc:Now I've become a big fan of your podcast and I've put these fractured memories together.
Marc:I don't have any motivation for sending this to you other than I wanted to share how strong of an impression your material made on me several decades ago.
Marc:Apart from George Carlin, I haven't seen another comedian who left that kind of memory.
Marc:Most fade like graduation speeches with their platitudes of mediocrity.
Marc:Thanks for the great work and I hope it's as fulfilling...
Marc:for you to make it as it is for me to listen.
Marc:Sincerely, Joel.
Marc:Well, it is, and there's one thing I can say about this show, is that in some areas, I'm no longer that guy.
Marc:And I'm flattered, and I like it.
Marc:I think I'm ready at 48 after years of beating my head against the wall and being my own worst enemy to be not that guy to being Marc Maron.
Marc:I'm okay with that.
Marc:so let's talk now to jesse thorne jesse thorne of course the host of uh bullseye and uh the co-host of jordan jesse go and the uh the main dude at maximum fun uh i have a lot of respect for him originally a radio guy now a podcast king the guy who showed me my uh showed me how to use my equipment let's enter the conversation with jesse thorne
Marc:I read one book and I was happy.
Marc:I read one book and I hadn't read a book and I don't fucking know how long.
Marc:I don't know how people- Read books?
Guest:I don't know either.
Guest:Anymore.
Marc:I can't deal with it.
Marc:Because the TV is right there.
Marc:Well, there's that, but I just, I don't know how to budget my time.
Marc:You're running an empire.
Guest:I read books that, I do read books, but it's only because I have guests on my show that, you know, that have right books and then I have to read the book.
Guest:But when do you read them?
Guest:Laying in bed with your wife?
Guest:I read them like the day before in a headlong rush.
Guest:I can't do... No, I feel bad about it, but I have lost the ability to read a book sitting in bed or... That's fester time.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's time for me to go on Twitter, type my name into it, and see what insults people have skewed at me.
Marc:How am I going to be hurt?
Marc:Who's going to love me?
Marc:Who's going to not love me?
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:How do I check in with that?
Guest:Yeah, my therapist told me that because I grew up in a conflict, in a context that was full of conflict, that I'm only comfortable when I'm working on resolving a conflict of some kind.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Isn't that intense?
Marc:Does that include just like... Does it have to be a conflict or could it just be a problem?
Guest:Yeah, well, it could just be a problem.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if I'm like sitting around, I'm done with what I'm supposed to be doing, then I'll just go... I'll look for... I'll...
Marc:accidental i'll get involved in something right sure a fight on the internet you're a drama addict whatever that's what we call it yeah yeah it's i'm here to help but uh i'm happy to be watching this there's anything i can do i'd love to but i'm perfectly fine just getting a little buzz from all the commotion
Marc:Yeah, I'm supposed to be interviewing you, Mark.
Marc:No, you're not.
Marc:No, the way this is going to go.
Marc:No, this is the way it's going to go.
Marc:How's it going to go?
Marc:I'm not as good an interviewer as Birbiglia.
Marc:You're not the Birbiglia.
Marc:I didn't ask you here to play the Birbiglia role.
Marc:We're looking towards the future, Jesse.
Marc:We've done 300 episodes, and honestly, and I've told you this before, when I called you...
Marc:I didn't know anybody else that did this kind of thing.
Marc:I knew you because of the radio show.
Marc:I knew you did a podcast, but I literally called you up and I was like, what kind of mics?
Guest:You knew me as the guy whose emails you'd suddenly regretted ignoring.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You had me on your show when you were in college, and then you asked me to do your show again, and I'm like, who is this guy?
Marc:Is he still doing that thing on the street in college or whatever that was?
Guest:The good news is that I just assumed that you had changed email addresses.
Marc:No, and then I'm in my kitchen.
Marc:I hear you on the radio.
Marc:I'm like, wow, I better return that guy's email.
Marc:He seems to be doing okay for himself, that fella.
Right.
Marc:but but quite honestly you you told me what kind of mics to get i went out and bought the wrong mics right and then you showed me the real you brought your mics over here and you said these are the mics you need and i'm like okay and then i got those mics and then you showed me how to hook them up then i asked you where to put the little switch on the back you told me that then i got this mixer and you're like i don't really have one of those but i it's got to be pretty simple you showed me how to use this and then you showed me how to use garage man i still use it the way that you showed me how to use it even though it might not be the way
Guest:What I like about the origin story of WTF and my involvement in it is that I just suggested some microphones to you, but it is as though I gave you some sort of talismanic sword.
Marc:You did.
Marc:You were the angel.
Marc:I was like, I need an angel.
Marc:I need a podcasting angel.
Yeah.
Marc:But you were very giving with your time.
Marc:You didn't think twice about it.
Marc:You sat here with me and you held my hand as I figured out how to work GarageBand.
Marc:Because I realize this today, you don't use GarageBand anymore.
Marc:It's been years since you used GarageBand.
Marc:Well, I've never been a Mac guy, so I've actually never used GarageBand.
Marc:right so the way you used it was you'd open a file but you'd open the the a general file which is piano then you you delete that and then open another file and it'd be a mic you know like a vocal file right now i know that i can just open a vocal file but because you told me to do it that way i still do it that way which is a roundabout way of doing it but i just cannot fuck with the system because i told you because when i came here i had never used garage band in my life is that true
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I knew I had used, I had recorded before, but I had never used GarageBand.
Guest:And so you said to me, how do I do this?
Guest:And I said, well, I bet I could figure it out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you're doing, you're still all these years later, not only doing, I think it's normal to sort of go into something blind, figure it out and then do it a weird convoluted way forever.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:But it's unusual to ask someone for their expert opinion, have them figure it out and give you a weird convoluted solution, and then do that forever.
Marc:I'm using the way you figured out how to use GarageBand.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And that's the way I do it.
Marc:Now it has become a talisman.
Marc:And these mics, you've got me... I had seen these mics before, but once... Your love for the Shure SM7...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just was transposed right onto me.
Marc:And like, you know, if I walk into other radio places, I'm like, oh yeah, SM7s.
Marc:You know, I know nothing about any other kind of mic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I have the mics that I use on the road, which I don't think you would ever use.
Marc:But the SM7s, I'm like, these are amazing.
Guest:Right.
Marc:These are the best mics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they're not.
Guest:I mean, they're the best mics for our purposes.
Guest:They're not the best mics?
Guest:Well, there's these like $3,000 Neumann microphones that people have sometimes.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Why would you need?
Guest:You don't need them.
Marc:i mean that's why we have these no but these sound good these have the sound great yeah these have the sound we want you know what if these are good enough for michael jackson on thriller they're good enough for me is that true yeah well i well that brings a whole new dimension to it sure but i just want to talk about where you're at now you just got offices you've got real offices
Marc:You're running an empire of shows.
Marc:You've got Jordan Jesse Go, you've got Bullseye, you've got the other one and the one after that.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Judge John Hodgman you do.
Marc:The two new shows, what are they called?
Guest:International Waters, Throwing Shades, Stop Podcasting Yourself.
Guest:So how many you got now?
Guest:The Memory Palace.
Guest:I think it's seven, six or seven.
Guest:I don't know, actually.
Guest:Why don't you know?
Guest:Because I don't count very well.
Guest:I don't know why I don't know, Mark.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:We've got six or six-ish.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now I do a podcast from my garage, and you're on it right now, and this is all I can handle.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But clearly, when you started in radio, your goal was to be an NPR guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm a failure at that.
Marc:Well, thank God.
Yeah.
Marc:It's nice to hear someone say that.
Marc:Hasn't it gotten to a point with that operation and with what NPR is where you can honestly say, you know what, maybe I wasn't cut out for this and that's okay.
Marc:That's occurred to me, Mark.
Guest:That really has occurred to me.
Marc:Maybe there's only room for two or three guys.
Marc:There's only room for Ira and Jad and then, wait, wait, don't tell me.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Doors are closed now.
Guest:Yeah, I kind of think that might be the case.
Guest:It makes me sad, though, Mark, because that is really what I wanted to do with my life.
Marc:Well, let's talk about that audience for a minute.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because with This American Life, I think you share listeners.
Marc:I think we both share listeners with them and Radiolab and Wait, Wait and those things.
Marc:But it seems to me that the infrastructure, the bureaucracy of NPR, because of their fear of particular listeners that I'm not even sure exist...
Guest:they they're not so willing to let they do they all listen to wait wait everybody wait wait has so many millions of listeners it's a funny show yeah well the what wait wait does well and what i can't figure out how to do well apparently is wait wait is for people that listen to our shows and also for lame people
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're for both of those people.
Guest:And they don't compromise, I think, to do it.
Guest:They're making their show.
Guest:It just works for... It's sort of like Seinfeld.
Guest:Seinfeld worked for 25 million people every week or whatever.
Guest:30 Rock, which I also love, only works for 2 million or whatever.
Guest:But for some reason, Seinfeld figured out how to make a thing that was really specific, really wonderful, really great, that worked for people... Everybody liked.
Guest:That everyone liked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, this is the Harmon conundrum.
Marc:Harmon thought that community would be that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He really did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's no reason why it shouldn't have, except that maybe we...
Marc:There's nothing you can do to manufacture lightning in a bottle.
Marc:But my point about NPR, and I like NPR, is that I don't know if new listeners are necessarily coming in.
Marc:And so now we have podcasts.
Marc:And now you have to admit that your life has been irreversibly changed for the better because of a decision to podcast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, you know, it's funny that you mentioned that idea of I don't know if new listeners come in.
Guest:We now we have podcasts.
Guest:There was this guy who quit and I'm forgetting his name, but he quit American public media or was fired from American public media recently.
Guest:And they make, you know, Marketplace and all these other shows.
Guest:And he left there and said, listen, if we're trying to find new audiences, we'd better do it fast because they live in the age of the Internet and they will just create something else.
Guest:We will be cut out.
Guest:We cannot rely upon people to find us in the way that they could before.
Guest:I mean, I think a lot of public radio's success...
Guest:has been built upon, A, making a high-quality product, and B, the fact that if you want high-quality product on your radio, it's the only choice.
Marc:And C, guilt.
Marc:But like, weirdly, I'm an NPR listener.
Marc:I mean, it's all I really listen to.
Marc:In the car, if I'm playing something inside.
Guest:Yeah, but I think in 10 years, your car, it will be easy for 15 years.
Guest:It'll be easy for you to listen to something that you've chosen affirmatively in your car.
Guest:Like, I listen to the radio in the car, too, because my car is a 2004, and it doesn't have a line in on the stereo, and I like how the knobs feel, so I don't want to put in a new stereo.
Guest:So I just listen to the radio most of the time.
Guest:And sometimes I'll put my phone with a little speaker in my shirt pocket to listen to a podcast.
Guest:But, you know, mostly it's a hassle to listen to a podcast, and that's all it takes.
Guest:But that will go away.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And in terms of building and becoming a producer of podcasts,
Marc:I'm just like, I'm trying to think about the future because I have this conversation with people is that we all found out through Ira Glass mentioning something in a news article that was unrelated to the something he mentioned, really what the ceiling of this audience is.
Marc:And he mentioned that in my mind, and maybe I'm wrong.
Marc:He said that the response to the Mike Daisy thing was his largest episode, and that was $800,000.
Marc:And if that's the number one podcast's largest audience for an episode, that's our ceiling.
Marc:That's $800,000.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I start to think, and obviously you're doing well with your model in terms of making money enough to rent office and to have a kid who enjoys hats.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And, you know, I'm doing OK.
Marc:I don't know what I'm going to do, really.
Marc:I can't see myself out of this garage, but I'm just that kind of person.
Marc:I'm unable to compartmentalize or think about anything.
Marc:It's a nice garage.
Guest:I don't think you need to be out of the garage.
Marc:No, I don't want to be out of the garage.
Marc:But like I have some concerns about like, well, what happens now?
Marc:I mean, is this it?
Marc:I mean, am I now this?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I do this podcast.
Marc:I'm very proud of it.
Marc:I like it.
Marc:I'm earning money from it.
Marc:I enjoy doing it still.
Guest:Well, there's a thing that happens, and I know this because this happens to me, which is that you get really keyed into the idea of growing bigger, bigger, bigger, building towards something, solving something.
Guest:And the problem is that if you get somewhere that you want to be, you still feel like you are not growing rather than happy being a success.
Guest:Because you're making a good living from the work that you're doing right now.
Guest:You're making a good living from the show and from your stand-up and from TV projects.
Marc:It's all because of the podcast.
Marc:Every bit of success I have right now,
Marc:Outside of the fact that obviously I've been a comic for a long time and I've done a lot of different things, but everything I have that is happening is because of these two mics that you told me to get in my garage.
Guest:But the thing of it is that you, I'm sure, are sitting around thinking like, well, how come I can't host The Tonight Show?
Marc:whatever no all I'm thinking about oddly is I become sort of more what's the word I get concerned for the medium mm-hmm there's part of me and even when I talk to you or if I talk to to Benson or anybody there's some part of me that's sort of like how are we all going to make this bigger look I'm not a businessman right you know this all happened in a way I was not a guy and
Marc:who was like, I'm going to run a small business.
Marc:I had to figure out how to do this.
Guest:Well, I only run a small business basically because I discovered, much to my dismay, that I couldn't make a living from being on the radio.
Marc:It's like teaching.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:NPR is like teaching and you're not Ira Glass.
Guest:Well, the thing is, is NPR is public radio is the production of shows are generally subsidized either by major grant funders, by stations, by there are all these places where where the production of the show is paid for.
Guest:It's not by the radio stations that carry the shows.
Guest:And so the problem for me has been that I do a show that doesn't really it's not really grant fundable.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I don't do it at a station.
Guest:So my problem is that because I'm just a guy, you know, I'm I are, you know, my net from my net from stations and stuff is about right now about twenty five thousand dollars a year.
Guest:And so I'm doing this show that has two people working on it pretty much full time and has an office and a studio and all this different stuff.
Guest:And I'm doing it with a net income from radio of $25,000 a year.
Guest:And the donations from the radio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so what I ended up doing is doing all these other things essentially to make it so that I could do this one thing.
Guest:And you don't want to sell dildos because I will sell dildos.
Yeah.
Guest:You know what kind of dildos I want to sell?
Guest:Tweed?
Guest:No, I want to sell Good Vibrations dildos.
Guest:What, the San Francisco?
Guest:Yeah, I want to sell... This is very important to me.
Guest:I would love if anyone out there works at a Babes in Toyland, at a Good Vibrations, at one of these sort of sex-positive, lesbian-owned dildo stores.
Guest:I'm all over selling those dildos.
Marc:You just want to be connected to a proactive, progressive, ideological
Marc:sex toy yeah exactly and that and you're very aware of green sex toy some sort of eco sex toy or something made out of recycled bamboo fibers those are not sexy words either fibers that never come for yourself mark yeah a good weave but but that also has to do with your awareness of you know the audience you want yeah like i don't ever think about that that's not true
Guest:You think all the time about the audience.
Guest:The last time I was on this show, we talked for 20 minutes about how we struggle to understand our audiences.
Guest:Understand.
Guest:But you seem to know.
Guest:Wide swaths of our audiences.
Marc:But you seem to know going in that there's a tone that you're creating with a network of shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:i think it's just an approach to the themes that i think are essential to being a person you know and and the struggles i struggle with are you know basically love you know self-acceptance uh you know living in the world uh you know this sort of why are we here stuff and it's i'm just trying to render that down and i think that you know even the the notion or the reality of somebody challenging themselves to figure that stuff out is very taxing for some people it's like oh my god
Marc:Why is he bothering with this?
Guest:It's exhausting.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I find myself exhausted listening to WTF sometimes.
Guest:Well, I'm going to put that on the blurb.
Guest:Exhausting.
Guest:Jesse Thorne.
Guest:Producer.
Guest:WTF, the public radio version.
Marc:Exhausting.
Marc:You're stationed to have this.
Marc:But also, I don't know that I ever got into this as even a business.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I think you got into it to be part of a community of like-minded people.
Marc:That rejected me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But now you're building the next generation of that.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I mean, where do you see the MaxFun universe going?
Guest:That's an interesting question because I've been really struggling with this lately because, you know, as I said, Bullseye and formerly The Sound of Young America had always been the center of it.
Guest:You know, it had always been a structure that allowed me to do this show.
Guest:And I realized I was like, wow, you know, this public radio thing, which has been so central to my identity,
Guest:is really sort of a heartbreak as much as it is anything else.
Guest:And I have to go through a lot of pain with public radio world in order to make this thing.
Guest:And I was thinking about it.
Guest:I'm like, well, Jordan Jesse Goh on the internet has roughly as many listeners as Bullseye.
Guest:It is time that I spend with my best friend joking around, which is my number one favorite activity probably.
Guest:And it's like, why am I doing the one that is so painful?
Guest:Because I'm really invested in it.
Guest:But I have to think about how can I change that equation so that I'm not constantly hating the fact that I'm not on more public radio stations.
Guest:Because, you know, on the one hand, who cares?
Guest:I'm on some great public radio stations and, you know,
Guest:I got this great Internet audience.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Isn't that interesting, though, because I'm the same way with stand up is that like really before the podcast and before people got to know me and before the podcast had an impact on anybody or whatever part of plays in their life.
Marc:I was just a marginalized comic that couldn't sell tickets.
Marc:And now I sell tickets.
Marc:But I think I'm slowly becoming more known as an interviewer.
Marc:Certainly to the people that listen to my show.
Marc:And it was a hard thing for me to accept that when people say like, hey, your podcast means a lot to me.
Marc:I'm like, well, did you like the show?
Marc:There's this part of me that's like, it must be the same with you.
Marc:Do you listen to Bullseye on NPR at all?
Marc:Do you get it?
Marc:There's that moment where I'm like, but I've been doing comedy.
Marc:I'm a comedian.
Marc:And I know I'm doing good comedy, but I also know in my heart that I might not ever be as big as I might have wanted to or have the stature as a comedian that I might have wanted to.
Marc:And that is heartbreaking.
Guest:Because the thing is, is there is this thing in your heart that you have set up to be who you are.
Guest:It is a part of your self-definition.
Guest:I know from your show and from knowing you how central to you the idea of being a comic is.
Guest:And, you know, there's not any I know almost no comics that aren't like that.
Guest:And you can tell because of because comedians will still talk to each other about those actors in the mid 80s that, you know, decided to become stand up comedians so that they could get more parts.
Guest:They weren't real comedians.
Guest:They're still angry about that 25 years later, you know, because it is a central part of their identity.
Marc:And it's a struggle.
Marc:It's a journey.
Marc:You know, we're warriors.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it's tough to figure out if that's this.
Guest:And, you know, for me, I've been doing The Sound of Young America, now Bullseye, since I was 19.
Guest:So it's the same thing.
Guest:Yeah, it is all that I've ever done in my adult life.
Guest:It is my thing.
Marc:But on the other side of that, you're still within that community.
Marc:When you do a live podcast of any kind, whether it's Jordan Jesse or I do Bullseyes occasionally, don't you?
Marc:Yeah, sure, sure.
Marc:That you all of a sudden have this audience that you know appreciates you, but there's just this weird thing about being validated by...
Marc:by either the mainstream audience, vis-a-vis a delivery system that everybody gravitates to, and yours is NPR, and mine would be HBO or whatever, but I've got this show on IFC that I'm thrilled to try, and I'm thrilled that it's happening, and I'm looking forward to it, but there's this idea we have of ourselves.
Marc:I'm obviously a bigger comic than I was three years ago,
Marc:And I was always sort of a respected comic, but I don't know.
Marc:I don't know that I'm going to blow up, but all the opportunities that are coming are coming because, you know, I built this thing and you did as well.
Marc:And it's weird that, you know, that our success has to be tempered by this strange heartbreak and self-flagellation.
Guest:It would be nice if, you know, something that I fantasize about sometimes, when I hosted a TV show for a little while, it was really fun to just have it be my job to just go host the TV show.
Guest:Like someone handed me the script to the TV show.
Guest:I just looked at it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, you know, familiarized myself with it and then tried to remember to smile more than I would ordinarily.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were hired to be Jesse Thorne.
Guest:Yeah, and it was fun.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was a blast.
Guest:And there's a part of it where you get a lot out of fighting and making your own thing and all that stuff.
Guest:But you can see the appeal of doing it without having to get into a big fight all the time.
Marc:Of being an undeniable commodity that people will respect because they know if they put you in front of people, people will give them money.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, well, you make it sound so dirty, Mark.
Marc:It is dirty.
Marc:As soon as you get other people involved, there's going to be a little dirtiness involved.
Marc:But let's talk about the future of podcasting in general because we're on this path.
Marc:And we are I think I can say without without bragging that we were at the cutting edge of it in you before me and several others before me.
Marc:But this you know, I have to see this, you know, not as some sort of visionary or even somebody who's looking ahead in a business level.
Marc:But I have to see it as growing and becoming something larger.
Marc:How does that happen in your mind?
Guest:Well, I mean, I think that it's tough.
Guest:I mean, the problem is that what makes for the best situation for people who make stuff and for people who consume it is if there's an open platform.
Guest:And I think one of the great things about podcasting is it's an open platform.
Guest:Anybody can make an MP3 file.
Guest:Any player can play an MP3 file.
Guest:You can play it on your computer online.
Guest:rss is really simple um it works easily and it's automatic and so on and so forth um the problem is that the technologies that have been built on the back of that um just haven't gotten to the point where they're easy enough for a person that doesn't care to use it right so you have to still be like you know people will i'm sure this happens to you mark people tell me all the time oh yeah i don't really i don't do podcasts i don't know how
Guest:Yeah, but the problem is that it's just human nature to not be... There are nerds, and nerds like problems and finding elegant solutions to the problems.
Guest:And those people, for them, it's like, well, why wouldn't you just learn?
Guest:You know, I'm like that.
Guest:Why wouldn't you just learn how to do it if it's going to give you a better whatever?
Guest:But the truth is that for most people, even 5% hassle is enough to just be like, well, screw it.
Guest:Because, you know, radios are... The average household has seven radios and four TVs.
Guest:So you're saying that people are just waiting until there's just an on-off switch and a dial.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And my worry, the thing that I worry about is that in getting to that point...
Guest:you lose the openness part.
Guest:You lose the fact, you lose the part where it's accessible to anyone.
Guest:Because there's going to be somebody deciding who's on the dial.
Guest:I worry about that.
Guest:So I think the future of podcasting is predicated upon finding something that makes it much easier to hear these things.
Guest:So it makes it as easy as me turning on the radio in my car and enjoying the feel of the dials.
Guest:And that still, for our purposes, for our tastes, still has that openness.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's weird because even satellite radio is confusing to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even then, it's too many choices.
Marc:I don't know how it unfolds, but I do think that we should both be... I mean, I'm very happy with the audience I have, and I've never been... I'd be very happy with the audience you have too, Mark.
Marc:And I've never been more happy as a comic or better as a comic, and I've never had more people come out to see me, and I have a TV deal, and I'm going to make a TV show.
Marc:You've got a copy of the book, Happiness for Dummies.
Marc:I do.
Marc:That was given to me.
Marc:And all that happened because of this.
Marc:It seems like a prop, Mark.
Marc:No.
Guest:It seems like something you would leave on the table.
Marc:It's over on the shelf.
Marc:If it was a prop, I'd leave it on the table.
Marc:I only leave stuff on the table just to, I don't know.
Marc:There's no rhyme or reason to it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I think we should both be grateful and happy that we've found this thing.
Marc:So why aren't we?
Guest:Why are we such assholes?
Marc:Why are we such whiny jerks?
Marc:Let's save that for the 400th episode.
Marc:Thanks for hanging out, Jesse.
Guest:Well, thank you for having me, Mark, as always.
Marc:I'd like to do some more emails.
Marc:I do have a couple, and I'm sorry if I didn't get to yours.
Marc:This was an interesting thing, talking about just how much the podcast is spread throughout the world.
Marc:I have listeners almost on every continent in every country in the world.
Marc:I haven't heard from Russia, but I have heard from China.
Marc:Not that I'm.
Marc:Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
Marc:It's everywhere.
Marc:But this is sort of a weird one, because those of you who've been listening a long time, I don't even remember what episode it was where I was in Washington, D.C., and I talked about being on a subway with some strange rural racists.
Marc:And I just got this email.
Marc:I literally just got it on July 23rd.
Marc:Subject line, D.C.
Marc:Metro Hillbilly.
Marc:Dude.
Marc:I was on the same metro train a couple of years ago when that drunk hillbilly lady was talking about Obama having 666 on his scalp.
Marc:What the fuck was that about?
Marc:I also remember them trying to get the military guy to chime in and he wasn't having that.
Marc:I thought he was really diplomatic when he said he's all of our president.
Marc:I felt like jumping into the conversation and breaking down the lady's crazy logic, but decided it probably wasn't worth it.
Marc:The whole thing was pretty strange slash disturbing slash entertaining.
Marc:I was actually thinking about that today.
Marc:That's really strange.
Marc:I just heard it on your show.
Marc:I guess your fan base is getting pretty large if some random WTF listener was actually there during one of your stories.
Marc:I'm actually on the metro commuting right now to work.
Marc:Shit.
Marc:I'm not made for a cubicle either.
Marc:I know how you feel.
Marc:Keep rocking, Mike.
Marc:I guess he just listened to that bit about the cubicle thing.
Marc:But that is so bizarre that retroactively he remembers being on that car in earshot of that conversation that was not that loud, but it was enough to draw attention to it.
Marc:And now he's a listener of the show.
Marc:I don't know who listened to this show.
Marc:And it just it's it's amazing to me that what we're sharing here is some common thread of humanity, not political ideology, you know, not a specific point or angle, but just just conversations about life.
Marc:Here's another email.
Marc:Subject line, architects love Mark Maron.
Marc:Hey, Mark, I'm an architect from Montana.
Marc:Myself and most of my architect friends listen to WTF regularly.
Marc:I find myself in a lot of deep conversations that center around your podcast.
Marc:Something about the work you do really resonates within the architecture community.
Marc:I'd love to know what your thoughts are on that connection.
Marc:Maybe it's because we're all sad bastards that overthink everything.
Marc:Take care and thanks for the great shows.
Marc:Shay.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:Maybe it's the creative disposition.
Marc:I'm really not sure.
Marc:I'm just not sure.
Marc:But I do know that many comics have been inspired to do podcasts because of the surprise success of this one.
Marc:And one of those guys is Pete Holmes.
Marc:Now, you know, me and Pete have our thing.
Marc:It's not tension.
Marc:It's just a thing.
Marc:See, I believe that what Pete Holmes is, who Pete Holmes is, is something within me that I am too ashamed to put out in the world.
Marc:So he said that he's stolen my podcast.
Marc:He said that publicly.
Marc:He said it to my face.
Marc:So I just have to accept that maybe there's a little of Pete and me just as much as there's a little of me and Pete.
Marc:I don't mean that literally.
Marc:All right, just back off.
Marc:Let's get into this conversation with Pete Holmes, the host of his podcast, You Made It Weird.
You made it weird.
Guest:You like the headphones, too.
Guest:I do.
Guest:In fact, most episodes of my podcast lately open with discussions of parking, turning off phones, or whether or not they wear the earphones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if they don't wear the earphones, there's always a slight distrust of me, because I'm like, why wouldn't you want to... It feels like we're listening to the show while it's happening.
Marc:Well, you know, that's weird, because I do the same thing.
Marc:I'm talking to Pete Holmes on our 300th episode here, and...
Marc:I love the earphones.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:If I had a choice, I would be wearing earphones in life.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:But some people don't even think to do it.
Marc:I don't know how to regulate my voice if I don't wear them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what it reminds me of is old school telephones, like this telephone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The nuance that you would get from a headset receiver.
Guest:Oh, like hearing yourself in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I never thought of that.
Guest:Those old girlfriend calls where you're just breathing?
Guest:You can't do that on a cell phone.
Guest:You'd just be like, are you there?
Guest:Is anyone there?
Guest:Yeah, you don't know if anyone's there.
Guest:Is this over?
Guest:Back in the day, you could do that for hours.
Marc:But I bet you never thought that at some point in your life that you'd be making these weird preferences around earphones and having the skill set of doing a broadcast show.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, you've been doing comedy how long?
Guest:A little over 10 years.
Guest:And you started in Chicago.
Guest:I, you know, I actually started in Boston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, but like, I'm considered a Chicago comedian because it was only a handful of times.
Guest:I went up at the Comedy Connection and the Hong Kong, you know, the comedy studio, of course, maybe three or four times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my college once.
Guest:And then I, and then I moved to, and then I moved to Chicago.
Guest:That's really, really what.
Guest:And then to New York.
Guest:And then to New York.
Guest:Because I remember seeing you heavy and sweating.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that was old Pete.
Guest:That was a thicker Pete.
Guest:There was a little more ice cream in the milkshake.
Guest:And a little more sweat.
Guest:And definitely a sweatier guy and definitely a much more... When you knew me, that was an interesting time for you to know me because that was the peak of the religious time.
Guest:So I would go up and I was very clean, very Seinfeld.
Guest:Were you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe that's why I was just sort of like, what is this guy doing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, people used to ask me if I was on drugs.
Guest:I mean, because I was so positive and like even more so than I am now.
Guest:Believe it or not, I have more grit to me now.
Guest:And back then I was just like, I'm so glad to be here.
Guest:I couldn't believe I was performing in New York.
Guest:It was the Boston Comedy Club.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was going up.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The first time I went to stand up New York, I almost had a panic attack because I was like, this is where Seinfeld told Orny to, you know, the story about the musician.
Guest:It took me so long to adjust and I paid everybody incredible respect.
Guest:I hope including you and then also went up at the end of the night and told jokes about like I had a joke about like RoboCop and like why do we Robo what kind of time are we saving by dropping the tea like so safe you know what I mean I'm not saying that's a bad joke it's just like the safest possible stuff
Marc:Well, I mean, I think it was probably before you sort of owned the stage and were able to feel comfortable talking about yourself.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because you're a comic now, you know, despite whatever resistance I had to you initially, has, you know, you are able to, it seems like what's happening now, and I don't know what role the podcast plays in this, but that you're actually a crossover act.
Marc:I mean, people don't realize that, you know, that's a term that they used to use for black comics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:who crossed over to wide audiences, but there is now alternative comics that can actually play a mainstream room.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:You started in mainstream rooms, but you sort of associated yourself with the alternative comedy movement, and certainly by doing your podcast with the Nerdist label and being part of that Meltdown Comics crew, I mean, you're part of the new breed that anchors alternative comedy, or what's known as alternative comedy, Los Angeles.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But you're also doing regular clubs.
Guest:Yeah, really look up to those Bill Burr types, guys like you.
Guest:Burr, of course.
Guest:I think Burr is like my number one example.
Guest:Louie, you know, these guys that can do both.
Guest:What we were talking about this off mic was the idea that people are learning so much about how to be this more Marini sort of exposed comedian.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I started by doing the Robocop jokes and these observations.
Guest:I had a joke about spill the beans.
Guest:Where'd that phrase come from?
Guest:Someone's spilling beans.
Guest:Right.
Guest:fine it's fine it did work yeah but then like that that's learning how to paint photo realistically right and i think that's an important part of a painter's training if i'm going to say that's just learning the craft learning the craft right just literally learning because you're so petrified it's so terrifying and you're just kind of seeing what it looks like to tell a joke and have it received and to wait for them to laugh and then try a tag and then and then now i'm definitely trying to do more of that comedian who's a podcaster thing
Marc:Well, now let's talk about that.
Marc:Now, you know, when I came into podcasting a few years ago, there were only a couple of guys doing it.
Marc:There were definitely guys doing it before me.
Marc:But in terms of my peers, there weren't that many comics doing it.
Marc:And then I started doing it.
Marc:And, you know, I found that, you know, I could talk freely and not be hung up on whether or not something's funny or whether or not it's fully thought out and just do a stream of consciousness thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, when did podcasts come onto your radar?
Guest:Well, see, it's so perfectly that we're talking about this.
Guest:It's so perfectly that we're talking about this.
Guest:Because as you know, and as I've never made any qualms about it, I totally ripped it off from you.
Guest:I've used the term Burger King-ing.
Guest:Your McDonald's.
Guest:I'm not making money off of this franchise.
Marc:If you're going to use that term, you better kick me a few bucks.
Guest:You have served millions, though.
Guest:And then I don't want to flatter myself and say I'm Burger King, but all I did was, here, I read an interview where you said that stand-up, and you had been doing stand-up, you'll always have been doing stand-up longer than me.
Guest:And at that time, it was also true.
Guest:And you were like, doing the podcast is as good or better than doing stand-up.
Guest:Now, stand-up is such a sacred thing.
Guest:requirement yeah it's a compulsion and i mean that in a good way i never want to sound like i'm addicted i love being addicted to my work and it's so therapeutic and it's so connecting and enlivening and necessary for me and then i read and i knew you were that way too from my our brief talks and then you said that the podcast was sometimes better so even what you just said there not always looking for a laugh
Guest:yeah good lord the funniest things are down those shafts where the walls are paved with no laughs yeah and then at the end you're just like we never would have got here right if there was a crowd here right we never would have had the balls or maybe i don't know the live shows are harder but you're getting in there and you find something that's really precious when you're talking uh alone on a mic when you're talking alone on a mic right i even just did a podcast and someone brought a friend and i was like even that energy is kind of because you can't help but play to him
Guest:I was playing to them.
Guest:I was monitoring their coffee intake.
Guest:I was seeing when they were texting.
Marc:As a comic that paid his dues, you know, two people.
Marc:That's a crowd.
Marc:That's a crowd.
Guest:And a tech.
Guest:We have two people in a tech.
Guest:That's three.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Guest:We're sold out.
Guest:But there's a weird thing that what you taught me and something that I'm very grateful for.
Guest:I don't want to butter your bread too much.
Guest:But, you know, actually, I would like to butter your bread.
Guest:It's your anniversary.
Guest:You taught me that there's a real liberation to opening all the windows.
Guest:Right.
Guest:there are all these windows and parts of my psyche when you met me 20 24 year old pete pudgy pete was like so terrified of people actually knowing who he is right don't get me wrong there's still things that i'm guarding and i'm like i'm a little uncomfortable if everyone knows know that but what it's this weird experiment following your example of like what would it be like to talk about my divorce something i never people like do a one-man show is like ah it's not natural yeah i don't want to invite people to sit down and
Guest:I'm definitely going to talk about the divorce.
Guest:But if it comes up and you start getting into it, people on my show, people that listen to my podcast know how many thrusts I lost my virginity with.
Guest:It was six pumps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And counting in as one and out as two.
Guest:At least you got the pump.
Yeah.
Guest:Some people don't even make it to pumping.
Guest:Yeah, there's a pre-sorted period.
Guest:And when Judd Apatow did a live episode, we riffed about pumps.
Guest:So, I mean, shouldn't I be humiliated?
Guest:It's not humiliating at all.
Guest:It's liberating.
Marc:Well, I think that you and I are of a certain ilk that it's not everybody's cup of tea, and it also makes people uncomfortable.
Marc:But there's something about this medium that lends itself to that.
Marc:And certainly a lot of people aren't doing that.
Marc:Like when you say there are a lot of people that are going to do the kind of comedy we're doing.
Marc:I don't know that that's true.
Marc:I think that what makes you or somebody that does the type of things that we're doing enviable is that other comics and even people say, like, how do they fucking talk about that?
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:And they're not even afraid to talk about that.
Guest:But what's interesting about the podcast is that it does inform the stand-up as well.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I know you'll relate to this.
Guest:If I go up, now there are people that listen to the show and they know everything.
Guest:They know arguably more than my mother knows about me or my brother or my friends.
Guest:So if you go up...
Guest:the the you there's a premium on your honesty now you can't even attitudely be felt false people will be like that's not pete we came to see pete so like now the stand-up is being informed and improved i hope by the podcast we were talking this is what we were saying off my kids we're worried and you just alluded to it a little bit that people starting out are going to start by getting up there and just being like i don't know 18 year olds being like
Guest:My mother keeps waking me up.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:I don't know what this, like, maybe pump the brakes and start with a little bit more traditional stuff until you have something to say.
Guest:Figure it out.
Guest:The real tragedy is I didn't have anything to say until I was divorced.
Guest:I really think that's true.
Marc:Well, I think that there are, you know, events in people's lives that definitely, you know, change everything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, it happened with Louis.
Marc:It certainly, you know, happened with me.
Marc:I was always sort of a revealer.
Marc:But, you know, until you really handed your ass.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You have nothing to hide.
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, there's a humility to it.
Marc:There's false humility, and then there's also sort of confident strutting that's based in insecurity.
Marc:But once you really get handed your ass, it's almost like a favor.
Marc:Once your ego is leveled, then you're sort of like, well, I know who I am.
Guest:You die to yourself, basically.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then all that's left is resurrection.
Guest:People love resurrection.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:It's very important to a lot of people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a big theme.
Marc:Keeps coming up.
Marc:So you see yourself as the Jesus of podcasting.
Guest:Don't put Messiah in my mouth.
Guest:I never said that.
Guest:But yeah, when I got divorced, this is gonna sound cliche, but maybe cliches are cliche because they're real, is I didn't know what pain really was.
Guest:That was a very sad, dark time for my life.
Guest:And then I was like, oh, this is what everybody's avoiding.
Guest:This is what it is to go to a comedy show and laugh and forget your troubles.
Guest:I didn't know what that was.
Guest:Then all of a sudden I had some troubles I wanted to forget.
Guest:And all of a sudden comedy was serving me.
Guest:And that actually goes back to the podcast.
Guest:The podcast is the most mutually beneficial thing where the audience enjoys it.
Guest:And I know you get this where you get emails and you get people coming up and saying whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm sure people say, you've saved my life.
Guest:You've improved my life.
Guest:The Maria Bamford episode helped me realize I was in a codependent relationship and I was a codependent person.
Guest:Got me going to Al-Anon.
Guest:Mike DiStefano fucking changed my life.
Guest:This shit is happening.
Guest:People who do my podcast, Gerard Carmichael is the episode that comes out
Guest:today, and I was in a real rut with stand-up.
Guest:I was going up and I was saying the words.
Guest:I don't know if you've ever seen that game Rock Band, where you just have to hit the notes.
Guest:That's what I was doing.
Guest:I was going up and kind of speaking into a void.
Guest:That's when I just lose it.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:It's so lonely.
Guest:You're like, this is my favorite thing, and I hate it.
Guest:Yeah, I'm tired of me.
Guest:I'm tired of me.
Guest:And then Gerard, I don't know if you've ever had a conversation where you're just kind of like, oh, this person's saying what I believe so firmly, but I forgot
Guest:back to me, and it just filled me with light.
Guest:He was like, he was talking about the idea of going up and finding comedy and improvising and just following.
Guest:He was talking about how on his set list he writes, keep going.
Guest:His set list says, keep going.
Guest:And as I was talking to him, just recounting it now, I'm getting tingly.
Guest:I was moved.
Guest:And it happened on Mike.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like you heard a man, me, moved by another man.
Guest:And then he was... It ended up being this really beneficial thing for both of us.
Guest:And then that night I went up and remembered myself.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I felt planted again.
Guest:And this isn't just...
Guest:I don't know what this says about me, but like now when I'm having a really great conversation, I'm kind of like, I wish this was on mic.
Guest:This one was on mic.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And there is this is going to sound talk about Messiah in my mouth, but there is a ministry to that.
Guest:It did minister to me.
Guest:I don't mean religiously, but it ministered to me.
Guest:It addressed a real need.
Guest:I was in a rut and it saved my comedy.
Guest:And then like the shows were better.
Guest:And I think I hope people listening to it feel the same way.
Guest:And I've had many similar experiences with guests that have changed the way I've thought about stuff.
Guest:And I guess that's what the type of podcasting and comedy we're doing, but specifically podcasting, is that you and I need to talk to people to get a sense of who we are.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, we're sort of craving that moment.
Marc:And, you know, you obviously, you know, had a God in your life and you pursued, you know, God in your life.
Marc:And we're going to pursue that, you know, maybe for life.
Marc:And I, it was a little more nebulous, but I always relied on other people to sort of like, you know, feed, you know, looking for these answers that is going to make my life, you know, easier.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or better.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, the word minister as a verb, how is that used in its real, in its within the church?
Guest:I think you would say, oh, Mark, you're such a good listener.
Guest:That's a real ministry to me or that's a blessing to me sort of thing.
Guest:But like a pastor would minister to his congregation, I suppose.
Marc:Well, I you know, I don't want to say that the weird the greatest effect that my podcast could have is that it actually helps people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because and when you talk about ministering.
Marc:I never thought that I would be that guy.
Marc:And obviously, I mean, you were going to be a minister, right?
Guest:Yeah, my mom says I wanted him to be a youth pastor, but he's a comedian.
Guest:And then she goes, close enough.
Guest:It is, kind of.
Guest:But you know what's funny?
Guest:I'm not burdened by working for... I don't have to toe any line, you know what I mean?
Guest:I can say whatever my truth is, my spiritual truth, my physical truth, that day, in that moment.
Guest:I just think it's absurd that a youth pastor could get fired...
Guest:fired because he doesn't tell the the church's corporate line if you said you know i don't know if there's a hell fired right i think gay people are okay fired what like what if you're feeling that way what if you believe that right you have to like like i i was at a church where the pastor had an affair and and he was fired you know what i mean it's like for sinning you know what i mean isn't that what this is all about where's the forgiveness yeah where's the fucking forgiveness
Marc:goodness uh so yeah but that i think it's a little bit better yeah well i i think but i think i never thought it would have that effect because i'm a pretty selfish you know self-involved guy and a selfish guy and the course of the podcast you know from the feedback i get you know and the struggles i go through and how people relate to it and you get these emails where it's like you really got me through a dark time you really helped me out it's like i feel like um i'm very grateful and i'm i'm amazed yes and
Marc:That whatever I've been accused of, which is selfishness, that my struggle with being me in the world is helping... It's a type of alchemy.
Marc:Yeah, hundreds of people.
Guest:You turned... We both... Look, I don't want to put myself... I have such reverence for this show.
Guest:I don't want to put myself in that boat, but allow me to.
Guest:We both turned selfishness a little inwardness, a little navel-gazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:into something that actually is helping people.
Guest:Like, talking about my divorce, I just had Mike Burns on the show, he talked about his divorce, he talked about wanting to die.
Guest:We both had this moment where we discussed the moments in our lives where we wanted to die.
Guest:Something I never thought I would ever confess, being as put together and hey, hey, as I am, talking about being at a sushi bar in the Midwest and just wanting to die.
Guest:It wasn't dramatic, it wasn't colorful, it was just a feeling of like, oh, dread, this is dread, I'm in dread.
Guest:He talks about a great story on the episode.
Guest:And then when we got off, I said to him genuinely, I was like, I know you think we were just talking, but you did a good thing.
Guest:That's a good thing that you gave people.
Guest:And then here they come, the comments and the emails to Mike and to myself where they're like, this is what I needed.
Guest:I was going through this today.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're not alone.
Guest:If there's a message to my podcast, it's that like, hey, look at me.
Guest:I'm kind of like a CBS guy.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Just like a regular guy.
Guest:I like to think that I'm somewhat put together and friendly.
Guest:But I've done everything.
Guest:I've jerked off on airplanes.
Guest:I think about killing people.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I'm here to say, use me, this regular guy, as the barometer to say you're not so fucking weird after all.
Guest:And none of us are.
Guest:That's a great mission.
Marc:And I think that myself and you and some other people are using this medium in a way that promotes and encourages interaction, intimacy, self-examination, and also relief.
Guest:And the honesty.
Guest:I know you get this.
Guest:When I, now I tour, I never really, excuse me.
Guest:That's all right.
Guest:Never really toured before.
Guest:And now I tour because I want to meet the weirdos.
Guest:You know, you have the what the fuck, Ricans.
Guest:I want to meet my weirdos.
Guest:And they come out and they dive right in.
Guest:I know you get this too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because people know your cat's name.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I told you that I know your neighbor's name.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, all this intimacy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So people are always apologizing.
Guest:Like, I don't want to freak you out, but I grew up Mormon and they just dive right in.
Guest:And I'm like, no, this is what I want life to be.
Guest:You think I want to talk about how the nachos are here or what you thought about the show?
Guest:Tell me about what it was like leaving the Latter-day Saints.
Guest:Let's get into it.
Guest:Sure, but make it quick because there's other people.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:are you gonna buy a t-shirt if i can beat it no but that's like but not unlike you know i i try to be as available as possible in that moment yeah and and let them in well that and let people say their piece and and have it and because i don't know them but i do know they know me right and if they know me that well they must relate to me on a certain level and there's that weird moment where everybody seems familiar because they do know you right right and
Guest:I'm like I sometimes joke that the podcast should be called Pete needs help I need help how did you do that yeah you have kids yeah you give of yourself you know what I mean like how are you balancing that there's there's a real we also call it what the heck yeah well no I and I you know and I know we've had our tense moments but I'm very happy you're having such such success with my show yes
Guest:A lesser version of your show.
Guest:If I may, I've said it before, but I want to say it again because it's your 300th anniversary.
Guest:You've done something incredible for the stand-up community, but also for people.
Guest:I always used to talk about civilians and comedians, and then those walls were broken down here.
Guest:We're just talking about very similar people, whether or not they write down their weird thoughts and perform them or just have them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Suddenly people are being ministered by the show.
Guest:I told you, it got me into Al-Anon.
Guest:It got me doing all these good things for myself, having good conversations.
Guest:It's helping comedy.
Guest:It's making comedy better.
Guest:We're talking about touring and you look at the lineups.
Guest:That's what the fuck, man.
Guest:I can't tell you what it's like to be at the comedy works and look at the wall and I'm like, this is us.
Guest:It's all us.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So thank you.
Guest:I'm incredibly grateful.
Guest:It's a privilege to rip you off.
Guest:And I'd like to say for the record, I was like, oh, it'd be good for me to foster, try and be like, oh, Maren hates me or whatever.
Guest:It's never been the case.
Guest:You've never been anything but supportive.
Guest:Hook me up with my t-shirt guy.
Guest:You did email me once and I was like, is there anyone on my show that you don't have on your show?
Guest:And I thought...
Marc:Because you've been so nice about it.
Marc:No, I said, do you need email addresses of anybody that's been on my show that hasn't been on yours?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you thought like, oh, he's trying to help me out.
Guest:I thought you've been so kind, top to tails, that I wrote, I was like, I can't believe this.
Guest:Thank you so much.
Guest:I'll let you know.
Marc:And I was taking a shot.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I was like, you didn't even, that's so peak.
Marc:Like, you just completely absorbed it.
Marc:I'm like, oh my God, he's trying to help me.
Marc:Mark would never do that to take a shot at me.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, thanks for being here, man.
Guest:Yeah, thank you so much.
Marc:That was the lovely, annoying, but very sweet Pete Holmes.
Marc:I swear I say annoying with a big heart.
Marc:I do like Pete.
Marc:There's just something about him that reminds me of some part of me that I don't think I've accepted yet.
Marc:Is that wrong?
Marc:Is that a horrible thing to say?
Marc:But Pete talked a little bit about the connection you make and how helpful it is and the idea of ministering or the idea of helping with this thing, which was a surprise result of my podcast.
Marc:And I can't say enough how much it moves me to get emails from you guys about how the show moves you.
Marc:This one has a subject line therapy, and this is something I've talked about before.
Marc:Dear Mark, I just read the interview you did with Jada Ewan for New York, and I wanted to chime in about your disdain for people referring to your show as therapy.
Marc:I can see why you're offended by it.
Marc:The idea that we can't have conversations anymore without classifying them as something else, as something that isn't normal, that absolutely is condescending.
Marc:But when I think of your show as therapy, I think of it as something that is therapeutic, something that helps me get through my day.
Marc:Listening to people talk about real life is a therapeutic thing.
Marc:I don't think of it as you and your guest in a therapy session, but as something to learn from.
Marc:It helps a lot of people put their problems into context and helps them see things in themselves that they didn't even realize.
Marc:I know that's what it does for me.
Marc:Maybe it shouldn't be treated as something out of the ordinary, but it is.
Marc:And because of that, I think your show is important.
Marc:The term navel-gazing, on the other hand, I agree.
Marc:That is total bullshit.
Marc:Be well, Aaron.
Marc:I can accept that, and I appreciate that, Aaron.
Marc:Yes, and I think that is a way of looking.
Marc:A therapeutic is not therapy.
Marc:I'm not in therapy.
Marc:I'm not a doctor.
Marc:I'm not running therapy sessions.
Marc:But I do know that the show is therapeutic to people to the point where this was one of the more mind-blowing emails I ever got.
Marc:And quite honestly, incredibly flattering and humbling in a way.
Marc:Hello, Mark.
Marc:The interview with Todd Hansen is one of the most powerful narratives of depression and suicidality I've encountered.
Marc:My hope is to make it required listening for the first year medical students here at the University of Vermont.
Marc:The course, Professionalism, Communication and Reflection, is the place in the curriculum where the medical students stop to think and talk in small groups about what they're doing and why.
Marc:Reading or listening to patient narratives is a frequent activity in the course, and so it's a perfect spot for WTF to make an appearance.
Marc:If we can pull this off, I'll certainly let you know how it goes.
Marc:I'm a longtime fan of WTF, naturally.
Marc:Thanks for your magnificent work, Illuminating the Dark Places.
Marc:Lee.
Marc:That, to me, is better than a Peabody.
Marc:And also what's very important to me and has always been important to me, I just never thought it would happen this way, is the respect of my peers and the respect from the community of comedians that I've been part of for more than half my life.
Marc:And the respect I have for Andy Kindler is far beyond anything.
Marc:To me, he's a perfect comic.
Marc:He's naturally funny.
Marc:He respects and honors where he's come from.
Marc:And he's just a great comedic voice.
Marc:And he loves WTF.
Marc:And I just wanted to talk to him about that.
Marc:So let's go now to my conversation with Andy Kindler.
Guest:Andy Kindler.
Guest:Bye.
Bye.
Guest:I wanted to say one thing.
Guest:Listen, I'm addicted to your show.
Guest:I don't know if you're aware of that.
Guest:I don't know if you've been getting my shadowing.
Marc:No, that's why you're here.
Marc:This is the 300th episode, Andy Kindler, and you were one of the guys.
Marc:I honestly wanted you here because you're a peer, you're a friend, and you're a very vocal fan of the show.
Marc:And I know people that love the show, but I'm very flattered that you like it so much.
Guest:Well, you know, it changed my life.
Guest:And I'm not just saying this.
Guest:You have promised me 14 future appearances.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, this is part one.
Marc:This is like the old days when people did Carson.
Marc:Depending on how well you do with this one, I might have you on next week.
Guest:Does that mean that after the interview that I might walk over to your area and suggest you?
Marc:I might give you an okay.
Marc:Then I just leave the garage.
Marc:Yeah, you just walk out the garage.
Marc:And as you're walking by, if I look at you, that's good.
Marc:But if I give you an okay and a smile, you're probably coming back next week.
Guest:What if this really is how you're starting to be two weeks from now?
Guest:But you have no idea that there's no separation between.
Guest:I'm like Johnny Carson now.
Guest:I give a wave to the comics.
Guest:All the comics think is the most important thing.
Guest:He's going to launch your career.
Guest:And then everybody will say how they felt the first time they came in the garage.
Guest:I'll never forget when he took off the headphones.
Marc:And I couldn't tell whether he liked me or not.
Marc:But surprisingly, a week later, his booker called me.
Guest:how did this show change your life seriously oh no because i remember very clearly emailing you uh i was very i mean i wasn't like depressed i don't get i don't get like super depressed but uh why do i sound defensive about that you're having a conversation with yourself right now yeah i don't get super hey look what are you saying i get too depressed i didn't say you did
Guest:No, but I mean, I know people have a real, real depression.
Guest:But let's say on a Jewish scale, a mild depression.
Guest:Well, no, no.
Guest:I think I have every two weeks, I'm going to run out of money and be poor.
Guest:I don't know if that's depression.
Marc:I think that's a reasonable reaction.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:I don't know if you can medicate that.
Marc:What are you going to take medicine and go, I don't care if I run out of money.
Guest:Okay, so what you're saying is I may start to address the actual core issues.
Exactly.
Marc:Which apparently aren't that deep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You can find out your core issues with your ATM card.
Marc:Every 30 days, I seem to get a tug in my stomach.
Marc:Is it tied to anything in the mail?
Guest:Seems to be tied to my profession.
Guest:As far as I can trace it back.
Guest:It's like, okay, at the end of the year, you go, all right, well, what's going to happen next year?
Guest:I just thought the train was going to keep going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then when your show came on...
Guest:I wasn't aware of anything of podcasting.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, and the thing about it was, was because, and I remember the early shows, early on when you started the show, you didn't start the show like, hey, I'm excited about this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, it was a man, it was just, it was a man going through the motions.
Guest:A man, you know, spiraling down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when you scheduled me, you didn't see me hopping on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got to clear my schedule.
Yeah.
Guest:so I was probably annoying you about that but then when I heard it I was like wow there's things that you can do what I was attracted to on the dream of the radio when I was a kid right who was your guy in the radio well but you know now when I think back now I don't think I ever really had people I mean I don't think I really have what it is that's happening now because I had top 40 radio and I didn't really get into other stuff but there's memories I've had of different shows or just the experience of listening to
Marc:Yeah, radio's great because it keeps you company.
Marc:And any, like in your car, you know, and sometimes when your dad's driving the car, you listen to the radio.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and there's a guy on there that's like, hey, do you like that one?
Guest:And you're like, yeah, I did, a little bit.
Guest:Well, and then the fact that, I mean, because it was fairly early on that you're talking about visiting your mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that just the whole...
Guest:The thing is, it was almost, it was life changing for me, but it was also very emotional because you were in the same, I felt like we were, it's not like I'm unhappy that you're getting more success now because I need you to be exactly that person that you were.
Guest:But I would appreciate it if you would go out of your way to mess up a couple of things.
Yeah.
Marc:I think the stage is set for that.
Marc:But yeah, I have more things and bigger things to mess up now.
Marc:I think the stakes are higher.
Marc:I think deciding that he's got everything going on now and he must be happy.
Marc:No, I'm not happy.
Marc:I'm paralyzed with fear and I have the biggest opportunities of my life ahead of me.
Marc:So there's a real good chance this show could get better than it ever was for the same reason it was good to begin with.
Guest:right but you exactly but you also can't i can't expect it to be what it was i mean the thing about your mother you visit her in arizona and uh and she and the throwing the food oh in florida right my brother's in arizona yeah so you go there and about the throwing the food away yeah and i just could get that feeling of where you're somewhere and why is the discussion about it and why is that person your family member obsessed with having to throw the food away and there's no and i just i don't know it just really was able i had never heard anything like that yeah
Marc:And it's weird because before the show, we were okay.
Marc:We had had difficult times before, but we became much closer before the show.
Marc:Because of this show, you and I have become very good friends.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:I do too.
Guest:I do.
Guest:But I also think that even when we were having problems, we were enjoying ourselves.
Marc:Yeah, no, definitely.
Marc:But that's one of the great benefits of the show is that you and I became good friends.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:Aren't you happy about it?
Guest:Oh, I'm thrilled about it.
Marc:Because every time we hang out, we have a blast, we can have lunch, and then we get exhausted, and then we have to take a break for a few months.
Guest:And we do enjoy making ourselves... Oh, is this a sexual thing?
Guest:No.
Guest:Now, if you need me to do any impression of any... Because the last time I did the impression, I forgot to say, what's wrong with me?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:I didn't say that.
Guest:That's me.
Guest:And then I also love, and I like to time, how long it takes you to get tired of the what the fucks, what the fuck are nicks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you know it's like with the first one now.
Guest:You're already at it.
Guest:And that's what makes it so nice to me.
Guest:I enjoy when you go, what the fuck are nicks?
Guest:What the hookah chockles?
Guest:All right, that's enough of those.
Guest:But then every three or four weeks, you'll come in with a new one.
Guest:What the fuck are Mohicans?
Guest:And then we're back.
Guest:And we're back.
Guest:What the moccasins?
Guest:Yeah, we're back.
Guest:We're in it.
Guest:Here's my other favorite one.
Guest:Look, folks, we all have to mail letters.
Guest:I mean, come on.
Guest:Let's not kid ourselves.
Guest:They won't get mailed themselves.
Guest:Do you want to stand in the 12-hour line?
Guest:Boom.
Guest:Here's a letter from a lady who did the thing.
Guest:Dear Mark, I loved it.
Guest:I never thought I would use a stamp.
Guest:Now I can exercise freely knowing that my stamps go out on their own.
Guest:And then the other one is like, look, folks, we all like dirty things.
Guest:You don't have to get a... Don't think you have to buy a contraption.
Guest:It's not all about burrowing in or unscrewing out.
Guest:The condom sale is always surefire.
Guest:Even my most straight-laced customers need condoms.
Guest:They need condoms, all right?
Guest:You think I want to break in?
Guest:Well, I have to do it.
Marc:Okay, that's good.
Marc:But when we talk about the show, because you're a guy like me, you know,
Marc:We love comedy, and I know that you have certain feelings about comedians, and you know almost all the same guys I know.
Marc:But what's your experience of actually listening to some of these guys for an hour?
Marc:Which of the ones were the ones where you're like, oh, my God, I had no idea?
Guest:This is what's fascinating because sometimes it's like what you hear deepens your appreciation of the person and you get to see them in a way that is like – but then, for example, on the negative side, like Ferguson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After like an hour, I was like, okay, this guy has a thing about nothing's a problem.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:Who's on the show tonight, Craig?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know, don't know.
Guest:It's not my thing to be involved with what I'm doing.
Guest:I don't want it.
Guest:So would you like the late show?
Guest:No, no, that's not about, you know.
Guest:I see that people have walls.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Like Dan Cook, his thing was to present a performance to you.
Guest:And so that was a fast day to see that.
Marc:And I was like, I was very cranky that day too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I got a lot of mail from people going like, I don't even like him and you were a dick.
Guest:Oh, I know, because that's also because you never know how you're going to be.
Guest:Because sometimes, like the other week when you were like, you know, these abstract painters, or you said the performance hours?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:These are legitimate art forms.
Guest:If they want that as a blurb on their next project, I'm willing to put that out there.
Guest:These are people who are doing things, folks, and I've come...
Guest:After many, many years of not having any peripheral vision because I couldn't see outside of myself, there are people out there doing things.
Guest:Especially the performers are here because we're not going out for the same things.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:I thought that was a big revelation for me.
Guest:But that's the thing.
Guest:It's like when you went to visit Carrot Top, when you go to see a Carrot Top,
Marc:Yeah, a character.
Marc:In this business.
Guest:When you go and you make an appointment, and then it was a Charlie Varicolo.
Guest:You could tell the whole tension there and what's going on.
Guest:And that's fascinating to me.
Marc:Is it fascinating to you because the show business or just in general?
Marc:Well, okay.
Marc:Because you know these guys.
Marc:I mean, you know Charlie, don't you?
Guest:Well, I knew Charlie, but not that well.
Guest:But, you know, here's the thing.
Guest:On the totally positive side, on the not like Sigmund, well, I'm not a big Sigmund Freud fan.
Guest:I'm not the Carl Jung side.
Guest:Like, oh, I'm getting into his collective unconscious.
Guest:The nuts and bolts, like when I heard Stephen Wright talk about how he feels about stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was so inspiring to me.
Guest:Because that was like, he said something that made me, like he said, you know, if I don't do it for like a month,
Guest:I start to, and I go out there, I feel weird.
Guest:Isn't this a weird thing?
Guest:So I always relate to people who have the same feelings I have.
Guest:So in the listening to people in the same profession thing, I could literally listen to that all year.
Guest:It's wild, right?
Marc:And when I do it, I feel the same way when I'm doing it.
Marc:Like, I can't, like, when I'm sitting here, if Stephen writes, I'm nervous coming over.
Marc:I don't know if I'm going to be able to talk to him, because I don't really have a lot to ask him.
Marc:I just hope that the conversation flows.
Marc:And with a guy like that, you're like, I don't know, can he even talk like a regular person?
Marc:And he was such a sweet guy, and he was laughing.
Marc:He's laughing his ass off.
Marc:Every time he laughed, he's sitting right where you are.
Marc:He'd laugh.
Marc:He'd pull away from the mic and put his hand over his face.
Marc:And I'm like, no!
Marc:No, people need to know that you're enjoying yourself.
Guest:You're laughing.
Guest:But that was so...
Guest:Of course, the stuff that you've had a firsthand view of, like the comedy store stuff, and when you had the Carla Bow thing was great, but there was another comic you had.
Guest:Jimmy Schubert.
Guest:So great.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That Jimmy Schubert thing.
Guest:I don't even have to play it back in.
Guest:I have it in my head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every single part of that story, the motorcycle and the walking up and seeing Pryor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And them telling him, don't act a certain way when you're around the famous people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Ozzy Osbourne.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you know Jimmy?
Guest:I do know Jimmy.
Guest:And that's a guy that I...
Marc:didn't know that well right now yeah that's the thing that i feel it's like we all know each other kind of right like because i don't know anybody that well i mean we're all busy you know you know worrying about ourselves and trying to hold on somehow i mean who the hell hangs out with anybody do you know anybody that hangs out with anybody you go to the club you hang out maybe you work on the road but aside from that i don't know what anyone's doing i assume they're they're sweeping or crying well that's what the thing is it's a way to check in right but that's where the uh the uh the relation the uh relating to it comes in
Marc:Okay, so let's see.
Marc:I'm going to throw some quick impressions.
Marc:Like, yeah, I want some quick reviews.
Marc:Yeah, you got it.
Marc:Episode 40, Dave Attell.
Guest:Attell was great.
Guest:You went to see him in a hotel by the pool, and that was, first of all,
Guest:He's like a guy you feel like is someone like you never get to see him or something like that.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:He's like an elusive nocturnal animal.
Guest:He's elusive.
Guest:I always thought when I first met David Tell, first of all, Sarah Silverman told me about her and I was very jealous of him immediately.
Guest:I don't know what it was.
Guest:I was not even aware of all the jealousies.
Guest:I was like, what is this David Tell that they're all?
Guest:That's not the best way to go see comics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:oh what's so great about this david i and but of course he was funny the first time i saw him yeah you know he said let's turn the microphone to funny so he was great from the beginning but oh my god i just think he's so brilliant but i always thought of him as like hanging out with everybody but i think he's more of a loner yeah so for you for him to be perked up with you yeah and uh and you were talking about making albums or something his father in the tuxedo shop oh
Guest:It's like a person.
Marc:So that was great.
Marc:I was stunned.
Marc:For me, like that was like some people consider certain episodes breakthroughs, but for me to sit and talk to David, who I'd known for 20 years and never had a 10-minute conversation with, for him during the day to sit and focus for an hour, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.
Marc:He was perked up.
Marc:He was perked up.
Guest:He was into the exchange.
Marc:Yeah, he really showed up for that.
Guest:How about the Carlos Mencia ones?
Guest:The Carlos Mencia ones were like a, that was like watching two episodes, two Goodfellas back to back.
Guest:I mean, the first one and the thoughts of the one there was that guy that you've had.
Marc:I mean, you would have very sort of as would any comic, you know, very specific reaction to.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My thing with him is like, oh, oh, I'm the bad guy because I said the terrible, horrible thing.
Guest:Oh, I'm wrong because I said something disgusting.
Marc:And I took that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, let me get this straight.
Guest:Just because I said something truly horrible about another race or people.
Guest:Oh, so now that's wrong now.
Marc:What about the stealing thing?
Guest:Well, I didn't know.
Guest:See, the thing is, with the stealing thing, it's like I never knew... And then when they got into... The problem with the whole stealing thing was when it first came out, the joke they were talking about.
Guest:I get very uncomfortable because I almost feel like those things are like we know or we don't know and we're not in the court of law.
Guest:But the thing where he was...
Guest:When you had the other people on, when you made it into that miniseries, when you had other people come on.
Guest:People who knew him for years.
Guest:Who knew him for years.
Guest:Because the first time you kind of concluded your first image of him was, people are jealous of what you do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was your overriding thing on the first one.
Marc:I brought him in here only because I wanted to know what it was like to be so hated.
Marc:I had no idea the backstory of him.
Marc:I didn't prepare, didn't do any research.
Guest:That's the other thing you do, though, too, is that you do a good thing of the thingies where you are not here to sandbag people.
Guest:I mean, obviously, you tried to provoke Gallagher.
Guest:I did not.
Guest:No, you did not, though.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm actually genuinely happy.
Marc:Did you watch him on Letterman the other night?
Marc:It was so great.
Marc:But you know what was great about it?
Marc:The first segment, he was funny.
Marc:He was talking about himself.
Marc:They were bonding around heart attacks.
Marc:He was doing the thing on my podcast that he said you shouldn't do, which is talk about yourself and be funny.
Marc:And it was at that moment I realized he was put together.
Marc:He had his hair done.
Marc:And he was being funny in the way that he's funny.
Marc:I mean, he's clearly a funny guy.
Marc:He wouldn't have been as big as he was.
Marc:But then the second segment, it was like, oh, here we go.
Marc:Now we're going off the rails.
Marc:And then by the time he put on that prop, it was like, why'd you even do that?
Marc:If Gallagher were to go out and do a completely autobiographical show about his struggles, that was written and funny, it would be mind-blowing.
Marc:Yeah, but that wouldn't be Gallagher, though.
Marc:I know, but he doesn't possess that type of self-awareness.
Guest:That's the thing that's amazing is that when you were talking to him, you were not sandbagging him, but you got genuinely upset.
Guest:I did.
Guest:And what you were getting upset about, which was totally fine because the thing was, but he didn't have an answer, and the reason why he doesn't have an answer is it's just like Jeff Dunham.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like you can say, or Lampanelli.
Guest:When you can say, I know people like Lampanelli.
Guest:Did you listen to that one?
Guest:What was that?
Guest:The Lampanelli one?
Guest:I did.
Guest:It was very hard for me to get through.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That was one where I couldn't overcome my actual dislike of the person.
Guest:The humanity was not going to work on you.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, and there were other people, like, I love listening to... I mean, I don't... Here's the thing.
Guest:I guess it's like I have a negative... To me, like, Carrot Top is not calling people spics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm not as...
Guest:So that bothered you.
Guest:That bothered me.
Guest:And the thing is that – but the thing with Gallagher was he wasn't taking responsibility.
Guest:He was like trying – he has these very extreme views.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he's trying to hide that he doesn't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the thing is he does because I remember him years ago.
Guest:I'll never forget this.
Guest:He was doing some bit and he said something about something and he said, you people are upset.
Guest:You need a spokesman.
Guest:Like he thought he was the spokesperson for the blue collar.
Marc:Well, now he's on a Geico commercial, so he's a spokesman for somebody.
Marc:Oh, Richard Lewis.
Guest:That was amazing.
Guest:Because I remember when the guy rides him back, the club owner rides him back to the apartment, he sold out, had the greatest show of all time, and the guy wouldn't give it up for him because he was afraid that Richard would ask for more money the next year.
Guest:Isn't that what it was?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, oh, it really went well.
Guest:I said, oh, we'll see.
Guest:We'll see.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I love that because, you know, he had a big effect on me when I was younger because like I used to watch Letterman at the beginning and I was a Woody Allen fan.
Marc:And my initial thing with Richard was like, this guy's doing a very sort of hyper Woody Allen.
Marc:And then as I saw him more, you realize like, well, they just they just come from the same region.
Marc:yeah yeah and and you know he's just equally as neurotic if not more but it was genuine and you know and then after a while you you would watch him do the panel thing i always built my my sense of when i was on conan and i became a panel guest it was because of richard lewis because i did like conan twice stand up and then i'm like how do i get to be you know you're richard lewis
Marc:yeah yeah like I want to sit down because because Richard Lewis used to sit down oh that's really cool and then like and then I was doing it and when I met him I was so lucky he's the only guy the only guest in the history of WTF that required a car because he doesn't like driving it makes him panicky and then there was always part of me with Richard Lewis was like you can resolve none of this I mean but nothing's better
Marc:You know, but he's really, and I'd forgotten when he came over, it was early.
Marc:He was still a little tired, 11 in the morning.
Marc:And just sitting with him, you know, at this age, I, you know, he is so fucking funny.
Marc:He's so fucking fast.
Marc:You know, his brain, you know, it's like you, you know, there's, it's always working these problems, you know, the joke problems.
Guest:It's interesting what you say, too, because I really believe that he is the embodiment of what Woody Allen would have been had he stayed a stand-up.
Guest:Because to me, I feel there's no comparison between Woody Allen stand-up and the classic movies.
Guest:To me, I think they're great.
Guest:I mean, maybe if I'd seen him live, but the stand-up is more like it's clever and there's funny stuff to it, but it's almost funnier when it's in Annie Hall.
Guest:But I think-
Guest:I shouldn't really even put, it's not even to put Woody Allen down, but I just felt like Richard Lewis was doing what the movies were like on the panel.
Marc:In looking at the history of things, I think that Woody Allen couldn't wait to stop doing comedy.
Guest:Yeah, except if you saw that documentary, you saw how great he was when he would go on for a while.
Guest:He was going on all these talk shows and just ad-libbing.
Marc:How about when he went on the Oscars a few years ago?
Marc:That was great too, yeah.
Marc:It was almost like time had stopped.
Guest:I couldn't see him, though, because I play the lanes every Monday.
Guest:I watch the Academy Awards.
Guest:I always play the lanes.
Guest:I play clarinet.
Guest:I choose to play an instrument that I will never be truly great at.
Marc:The difference between Richard and Woody Allen is I don't think Woody Allen is as fucked up as his character.
Marc:And I think Richard Lewis is equally just as fucked up as his character.
Guest:Some people have problems with Woody Allen's private life.
Guest:That's what I hear.
Guest:I start crying if people talk about it too long.
Guest:You do?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because you don't want to think about it?
Guest:I really don't.
Guest:I really don't want to not like the movies.
Marc:I don't know that you have to.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:I'll never not like those movies.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But where do you stand on that?
Guest:Even if he was Hitler.
Guest:If it turns out he was Hitler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If Hitler made Annie Hall, I would still like Annie Hall.
Guest:I think, and I don't have any problem with that point of view.
Guest:Right, but it's a little bit, I think I'm maybe pulling it, yeah, because they always say that about Picasso, he wasn't very nice.
Guest:I can't get into the backstory with everybody.
Marc:No, but even if you get into the backstory, I mean, I read Please Kill Me, and Lou Reed is never going to be the same for me, but I'm still going to listen to Velvet Underground.
Marc:I mean, it's like, what do we expect that artist?
Marc:Okay, maybe Woody Allen did some things that were bad and dubious and not necessarily wholesome.
Marc:But there's one part of me that says, yeah, that's awful.
Marc:But does that erase his body of work?
Marc:No.
Marc:And also, does it make him any less a comic?
Marc:No, it makes him more a comic.
Marc:It's like, that's the weird thing about comics.
Marc:I mean, you stay in this world long enough, but there's very little you're not going to see, and there's very little you're not going to hear about.
Marc:So at some point, when you hear something shitty, you're like, ah, he's a fucking artist guy.
Marc:you know what I mean can I can I can I dismiss it like that I mean because people have said why do you like women have written me emails saying you know why do you give Woody Allen a pass I'm like I don't know it's not because the thing is you don't give it people when they go to that point they go oh
Guest:Are you then saying that it was okay to do this specific act?
Guest:No.
Guest:You're saying you're justifying that.
Guest:No, but you're just saying it's not black and white.
Guest:But one thing I was going to say, a very seminal thing was when you had Tom Sharpling on.
Guest:Because Tom Sharpling, just when you had saved my life, then I found Sharpling.
Guest:And the way I found Sharpling was on your show.
Guest:When he talked about how he came up to you after shows and when you did that show where you said, well, you end up working in a record store someplace.
Guest:And so that turned me into shopping and that became another savior.
Guest:And then the best combo, the combo of U2.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You like that?
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:That should be available piped in instead of elevator music.
Marc:That doesn't sound right.
Marc:No, we've got to do more of those.
Guest:But he was then with Sharpling.
Guest:What he does is he makes me laugh at people who I love.
Guest:Like, I love Jim Morrison in The Doors.
Guest:I never realized he was fucked up until Sharpling starts.
Guest:When Sharpling starts describing these people and he takes them down, I still like the dead.
Guest:I love the dead.
Guest:But he'll take them down and you can't help but laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He makes you laugh at the Grateful Dead?
Guest:Yes, he hates, like, he just, he goes nuts on Jim Morrison, like, about how upset must the rest of the band members be every time he'd show up to the session, oh, look at Jim.
Guest:Not ready.
Guest:Or he doesn't like Tom, or how much he doesn't like Tom Waits.
Guest:He hates Tom Waits.
Guest:he's something so i turned you on to sharpling oh i had never listened to his show yeah yet and i felt it helped not that i wouldn't have loved it but the fact that he talked about how he was influenced by these guys who said get get off my phone and all that stuff that made me like because the more i listened i had written him an email early on saying like he's just almost like uh too long an email about how much i love what he did
Guest:And I realized later on that his person is really him, but there's still, like, when he goes, right, Mike?
Guest:Right, Mike?
Guest:I just love that.
Guest:Have you done his show?
Guest:No, only because I haven't been in New Jersey, but I think I might call in.
Guest:Yeah, you should call him in.
Guest:We're in negotiations.
Guest:No, he's the sweetest guy.
Guest:I had lunch with him out here.
Marc:He's another guy that I don't think I would have met if it weren't for this show.
Guest:And you had a whole thing with him.
Guest:Remember?
Guest:Because I have the same thing too.
Guest:Why are they loving this?
Guest:Like you said, there was a whole group of people loved his thing.
Guest:And they were like, well, what's happening over there?
Guest:And that was another great show when the guys from, was it Besser?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Matt Bassett.
Guest:All those three things were great.
Guest:Of your perception of what it was like over at the UCB.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what their perception was.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, because they were just happy to be part of something, and I was the one going like, oh.
Guest:Oh, you're going to put your little monkey costume on tonight?
Guest:What are you going to be?
Guest:You're going to be the princess, and he's going to be Rapunzel?
Guest:What is it going to be?
Guest:rapunzel are you doing the rapunzel bit yeah what are you guys gonna do tonight what's gonna what fake uh setup in the audience is gonna prompt hilarity for you guys did you listen to the paul krasner one i did listen to paul krasner that was great because i didn't know that he came up with the term yippies yeah and that would only be important to a certain generation of people like you know there's like a lot of times i talk to people and i realize like how am i gonna get 25 year olds interest you know who's gonna care
Marc:But, like, those guys are so important to me.
Marc:I drove to Desert Hot Springs, you know, to do the Paul Krasner thing.
Marc:And, like, when I drove out there, I was completely, you know, I was all sort of like, oh, he's got great stories about Lenny Bruce.
Marc:But then you realize it's like, no, he just wants to talk about Paul Krasner.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:Yeah, because he, yeah, he's not going to give up that thread going through.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:And no one really does.
Marc:You know, there's very few people that will be like, you know, I'm going to take my time to talk about this other guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Joe Rogan.
Marc:uh i'm afraid of him i don't want him to punch me conan o'brien that was really great yeah because that was uh that was also around the same time then all the stuff was happening oh after but yeah but he was like yeah i i was very thrilled with that one too because you really got to see like he's very hard on himself and you know he's a he's a he's a deep guy i like him jimmy fallon
Guest:Well, you know I have issues with Jimmy Fallon.
Marc:All right, okay.
Guest:But wait, wait.
Guest:Now, let me ask you a question, though.
Guest:When you say that, see, here's the problem with life.
Guest:We're supposed to be loosey-goosey now.
Guest:We say anything we want, and we don't care anymore.
Marc:I'm really just looking for things where you were like...
Guest:Oh, okay, you don't want necessarily my hard-edged take on them.
Marc:No, I just, like, there are moments where, because I've had the moments when I talk to these people where my entire disposition or attitude about them changes, because I didn't really, I find I didn't really know them as people.
Marc:I would say this, he seems to be a person on guard.
Marc:I didn't learn a lot about him.
Marc:But he's a friendly guy, and he's a fun guy.
Guest:He's a friendly guy, yeah.
Guest:But how about the Todd Hanson?
Guest:That was maybe the, I Facebook messaged him after that.
Guest:I mean, I'm not saying like, hey, I went the whole route.
Guest:No, but I mean, that just tore me.
Guest:It tore me apart because the thing that was so fascinating about that was that when he was saying, he would say how sad he was, and then his friends would...
Guest:He was able to communicate how he saw how his friends would drag them down, but he just couldn't change it.
Guest:And I never really quite got that insight before into somebody.
Guest:How about the fact that you have a recording of him yelling from the live...
Guest:Because you talked about how you said, what's wrong with being sad?
Guest:And you went, woo!
Marc:Sometimes it's not about the funny, sometimes it's about the sad.
Marc:Yeah, and he went, woo, that's right.
Marc:What about the Todd Glassing?
Marc:Did that surprise you?
Guest:Unbelievable.
Marc:Did it surprise you?
Marc:You've known him as long as I have.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:To be totally honest, I've been sleeping with Todd since the 40s.
Guest:Todd is so beloved, but maybe I've heard somebody every once in a while.
Guest:I don't ever know when anyone's gay.
Guest:I don't think Paul Lynn was gay.
Guest:I think Richard Simmons is a confirmed bachelor.
Guest:I still don't understand.
Guest:You could order pan-seared sea scallops.
Guest:Right in front of me.
Guest:The only thing about Todd Glass that hurt me, though, not hurt me, was that I felt that I was more hesitant to, within a comfortable environment, use the gay thing.
Marc:Yeah, he was pretty into that.
Guest:Yeah, so whenever I will want to say that, where I think it's a, like, you know, where obviously you're not, it's not a 14-year-old kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you're just saying whatever the thing is.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, Nick Schwartz and I have this running bit about, does this word sound gay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the word is, see, biscuit?
Guest:And they, no, it doesn't sound gay.
Guest:So, like, Schwartz does a bit about how I'll come up with a different word when a better word comes up for it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he made me a little... But that's good that I... But that's not like I'm a raging homophobic guy behind closed doors.
Guest:Right.
Guest:How about the Jeffrey Tambor?
Guest:Do you like that?
Guest:I didn't listen to that one.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Marc:He's a Scientologist.
Guest:Not anymore.
Ha, ha, ha.
Guest:He's not anymore?
Guest:No.
Guest:I love, though, the thing that you are slightly hurt that I missed a couple of shows.
Marc:No, but what do you want from me?
Marc:I thought this was all about me and you listen to everything.
Guest:You're not upset you're disappointed in me.
Guest:Did you listen to the Rick Shapiro one?
Guest:That was amazing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Now, there's a guy.
Guest:Here's a perfect example.
Yeah.
Guest:That may have been the greatest thing I've ever heard.
Guest:And I know I'm guilty of hyperbole.
Guest:In fact, I do a joke that doesn't work, which said, I had the greatest weekend a couple of weekends ago, life-changing experience.
Guest:I went to a hyperbole convention.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:The joke's over.
Guest:People want more.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know what to make of him.
Guest:I'd seen him in Amsterdam and met him at, I mean, Rotterdam Festival.
Guest:And he was like one of those guys where when you don't know someone well, you kind of like draw certain conclusions, but that are ready to be filled in later.
Guest:But it was like, you know, you put people into the gym from taxi category or whatever.
Guest:And so I didn't know what to make of him, even when I saw his act.
Guest:But when I heard him on your show, I just thought he was, first of all, brilliant.
Guest:And secondly of all, when he would stop on a dime and look at how hurt he was,
Guest:And then he made you look at your behavior because you did say to him something like, you're doing that.
Guest:It seems so innocuous when you said it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he's so sensitive.
Guest:And so that I thought was like.
Guest:And also, again, learning things about the New York scene.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That I didn't know, which was really kind of good when you did the guy who claimed that Tony Clifton is still alive.
Marc:Yeah, Bob Zamuda.
Guest:That was great, but you can't stop him, though.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, no.
Guest:Like, at certain points, you're like, come on.
Guest:I feel like, look, I don't want to hear about the gangster guy.
Guest:Okay, so he said, and he left, and there was one muffin left.
Guest:Was that the idea?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'll take that muffin.
Guest:It just seemed like when he left that bakery, everyone was, like, naked and had been violated.
Guest:And stuff like that.
Guest:Take off your thing.
Guest:And then so.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:He's a good storyteller, that guy.
Guest:He is a good storyteller.
Guest:But you ever see Slums in Beverly Hills?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when he recounts about stabbing, finding out the guy stole the steak.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's sad.
Marc:But, okay, so like in conclusion here on the 300th episode, I am thrilled that my show has had such a profound effect on you and flattered that you think so much of it.
Guest:You know what's so hard about it in a way?
Guest:I realize now that it's hard.
Guest:I don't feel like I can't be myself, but I also feel like when I come on, I don't want to fuck it up.
Guest:No, you're not going to fuck it up.
Guest:You know what I mean, though?
Guest:I just feel like when I used to do Dr. Katz.
Guest:I'll give you an example.
Guest:I used to do Dr. Katz.
Guest:It was very hard not to get into the rhythm of Jonathan Katz.
Guest:So that's the thing.
Guest:I don't want to be trying to be interjecting.
Guest:And that's one of the things I think was the most spiritual thing
Guest:Thing that you said that I don't think you remember saying because I pointed out by the party was you said that you were getting better at not caring about what you thought about.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The thing.
Guest:And that's an amazing lesson to learn.
Guest:It's kind of liberating to know that even your own idea of what you're doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can even let that go.
Guest:You have to.
Marc:It's harder with stand-up.
Marc:But when you're talking to people that other people revere or might not know or have an impression of or have never heard before like that, my needs have to be secondary.
Marc:I wish I could do that with more of my life.
Marc:I think that's the big trick of the whole spirituality thing.
Guest:Yeah, if you can make it... Well, I assume that you're that way all the time.
Guest:I have to say one more thing.
Guest:The one that I thought you'd win a... What is it?
Guest:Peabody?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was the one when you went with the comedian in Texas.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Lucas Melandes?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:The Alamo.
Guest:And that started what I think is probably 75% of your pre-show conversation is about barbecue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I told him not to get the hot.
Guest:He went to get the hot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that was amazing because that was almost like an NPR with a comedy thing.
Guest:You were interviewing people at that.
Guest:Yeah, it was the Alamo.
Guest:And then you went out to some kind of celebration.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Conjunto music.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you could hear what was happening with the Alamo guy in real time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, whereas I put the camera away.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Lucas was amazing.
Guest:He's a sweet guy.
Guest:Yeah, so.
Marc:Well, I'm so happy that we're friends and that you enjoy the show so much.
Marc:I don't think anyone enjoys it.
Marc:In my circle, you've always been very supportive and shared your love of the show, and I appreciate that.
Guest:I appreciate it too, and I'm very thankful for our friendship.
Guest:I really am.
Guest:And the thing is, it's good that you have, rather in the old days, where I go, oh, that guy's coming around?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, it's just good.
Guest:You have this thing going on, and I am literally able to be excited about it without getting into the envy thing.
Guest:So I can enjoy it.
Guest:That's another level of- That's another level.
Guest:And not just lip service.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thanks, Andy.
Guest:You got it, brother.
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Marc:That was the amazing Andy Kindler, whom I love.
Marc:I will tell you that right now.
Marc:And as we close this 300th episode, I just want to thank all of you for listening to the show.
Marc:I want to thank all of my guests for allowing me to talk to them and allowing me to talk to them as people and thank them for giving their time and part of their lives to this show.
Marc:And also I want to thank everybody that's involved in any way with making this show happen.
Marc:You know who you are.
Marc:I've learned a lot from all of you who are listening.
Marc:I've learned a lot from all of my guests in a very deep and real way.
Marc:This show has had a profound effect on me, and I can't really illustrate that enough.
Marc:I will keep doing it.
Marc:I will keep learning about you, and I keep learning about myself through my guests and through just my day-to-day life.
Marc:I think this is a sort of, maybe we can end on this email, maybe.
Marc:What the psychological fuck?
Marc:Question.
Marc:Dear Mark, originally I was going to compose an email regarding circumcision due to a conversation I had recently with a friend, but I've decided against it since you probably receive those sorts of emails all the time.
Guest:Hmm.
Marc:There's so much fucking shit going through my head.
Marc:I have no idea what to write or where to start.
Marc:Okay, I have a few questions.
Marc:One, do you believe you would have a better or normal relationship with food if your mother hadn't suffered from an eating disorder?
Marc:Yes, of course.
Marc:Two, do you believe you'll ever reach a point in your life when you are completely satisfied with what you see in the mirror?
Marc:Yes, not completely, but it does happen sometimes.
Marc:Thank you for asking.
Marc:Three, have you ever been or are you currently afraid of Jessica leaving you?
Marc:Yes, I am.
Marc:I am currently and usually afraid of anybody leaving me, even if they just hang out in the garage for an hour for after reading the previous question.
Marc:Did you doubt your relationship with Jessica?
Marc:Yes, but no more than usual.
Marc:It comes and goes all day long every day.
Marc:Five.
Marc:Are you truly yourself on your podcast or is the Mark Heard a persona?
Marc:It's Mark on the microphone.
Marc:I talk a little quicker.
Marc:I talk from a different place in my gut because I'm on a microphone, but it's pretty much me.
Marc:Do you emphasize emotional sincerity?
Marc:As much as I can handle emotional sincerity.
Marc:Yes, I do.
Marc:But it's frightening for me.
Marc:And that's an ongoing thing.
Marc:If you listen, you know.
Marc:Six.
Marc:Do you believe that the majority of comedians grew up in difficult environments?
Marc:I think many of them did.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And I think that the show is a testimony to that.
Marc:Not all of them.
Marc:Mark, you're exceedingly swell, though are you able to accept and believe compliments?
Marc:Sarah, I'm working on it.
Marc:I'm working on it.
Marc:I do appreciate that one.
Marc:And I appreciate, again, everything that's happened here.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:I'm going to open the door.
Marc:Boomy.
Marc:Boomy.
Marc:Dude, it's the 300th episode.
Marc:Boomer.
Marc:Hey, buddy.
Marc:Hey, boomie.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I guess we'll just have to wait till the 400th on this.
Guest:What were you expecting coming over here?
Guest:Coming to this place?
Guest:You and I have reached, personally with you, we've reached a little bit more of a, what's that called?
Guest:Understanding.
Guest:An understanding, an equilibrium, where it's not necessarily immediately you attacking me.
Guest:So driving up the hill, I felt a little bit Orson Wellesian.
Guest:I was like, oh, I'm going to the fucking...
Guest:cat ranch yeah you know i pictured you sitting in the throne and the cats are just meowing at your feet you know vanquished foe skulls and that sort of thing peter come in i mean this is your turf it's badass petting two large cats yeah
Guest:They're the cats from Ghostbusters.
Guest:But I mean, I didn't know it would be this gorgeous.
Guest:It's a gorgeous house.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And this welcoming, I will say.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:Not that I thought maybe it would be like, you ready to do this, fucker?
Marc:Or something like that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's been a delight.
Marc:Too early for that.
Guest:It is too early for that.
Guest:But that's what's fun about- Did you say it's been a delight?
Guest:Which part?
Marc:It's been a delight.
Marc:I did say it's been a delight.
Marc:It has been a delight.
Marc:It has been a delight.
Marc:I think that the day that Boomer comes back in here and meows might just sync up with the day where I have complete self-acceptance and I'm completely able to deal with life on its own terms.
Marc:Boomer, you better not come in.
Marc:I just prophesied something that I'm not prepared to deal with yet.
Marc:Thanks, you guys.