BONUS The Friday Show - Cracking the Code
I got to tell you the most Mark thing though is right after he read it, you know, then we've gone back and forth about the piece and he goes, I feel like I should get that out there somehow.
I literally, all I wrote back was LOL somehow.
Yeah.
Hey, Chris.
Hello, Brendan.
I got an interesting comment here that I thought you should know about.
Ooh.
Bill wrote in to us and said, my sister-in-law asked if I had heard about this show, Stick, from the people who brought you Ted Lasso.
She literally said this.
This ploy worked on her.
Wow.
That's why they do it, I'm guessing.
I saw the most egregious one I've ever seen.
Worse than from the people from this movie you also like?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
It was way worse than that.
Oh, I got to hear this.
It was a little pop-up ad I'm sure served to me because of my interest of my Googling and websites I go to.
It was an ad for a movie called Queen of the Ring.
which is a biopic about Mildred Burke, who is one of the first, really the first recognized female wrestlers, like professional wrestlers, not an Olympic amateur wrestler.
But like, you know, what you see on wrestling on TV, Mildred Burke is kind of recognized as the female forerunner of all of it.
And they made a movie about her.
You know, it seems small indie film.
The director of this film is Ash Avildsen.
Okay.
And he is related to... His name might sound familiar to you because his father is John D. Avildsen, who was the director of Rocky and The Karate Kid.
Oh, okay.
Sure.
And many other films.
He was an established Hollywood director.
Yeah.
So this ad said...
From the family that brought you Rocky and the Karate Kid.
No.
Oh my God.
From the semen.
I just want like, do you know how many things are brought to you by families that are bad?
Like, it's like, there's a whole metaphor about like, you know, the bad seed and stuff.
Like just because it's from the same family, it doesn't mean it's going to be anything like the thing you once liked.
Tell me about it.
Oh my God.
We're going to have Andrew Cuomo as a mayor here.
That's definitely not like the one I used to like.
Man.
Oh man.
That is wild that they would promote it that way.
I mean, how, how did they land on that?
Like,
The marketing team are just like, I don't know, this guy's dad made all these great movies.
But it's beyond these great movies.
It's like, we need people to know this is like Rocky and the Karate Kid.
Right, on that same level.
It's a sports movie with Uplift, right?
Underdog Story.
These movies are perfect.
And this kid who, as far as I can tell...
you know, not made a ton of movies or a ton of anything, uh, is related to the, like they, they probably thought this is gold.
Like he is connected to Rocky and the karate kid.
How do we say that?
How do we explicitly underscore that?
Oh, right.
From the family that brought you.
Like they sit around the fire and they craft these like sweaters.
I wonder if this is what Jason Reitman went through with his Ghostbusters.
It's like the marketing team was like, we got it.
His dad made the first one.
So we can just say it's in the family, you know?
Yeah.
I don't remember.
Did they ever, I think because he was an established enough name, they were just like from director Jason Reitman.
And like next to that, there was like the subconscious, like Jason Reitman.
Right.
But I wonder in his earlier movies, like up in the air, like I wonder if that movie used like from the family.
No, no, I guarantee you it never did because I would have lost my mind.
Yeah.
Yes.
100%.
Oh, geez.
So yes, Bill, uh, that is, uh, that is very interesting that, that, uh, that, that ploy worked.
Um, I, I gotta start doing that like for WTF.
Like we gotta figure out like connections to it.
It's like, it's like, uh, like if there's an episode that comes out that people, you know, has maybe as somebody that people don't know, I should advertise it as like from the show that had Barack Obama as a guest.
100%.
You should totally do that.
I'm shocked.
Yeah.
If you had a marketing team, they would have 100% of LinkedIn.
From the interviews that brought you the two-parter with Lorne Michaels.
Gallagher and Robin Williams comes.
Michael Bibiglia again.
By the way, there is a now an era of your show where it is post or pre-announcement that you're ending the show and...
And post-announcement that you're ending the show, right?
Yes.
And it's funny.
I was listening to Mike Bibiglia and I was thinking as soon as I pressed play, I was like, you know what?
I bet Mark doesn't tell him that he's going to end the show.
Well, it was recorded before we made the announcement.
So, you know, he could, like I said last week, there were people who could have been the guest that we put on that day.
He was one of them, but it wasn't.
We wound up being Mulaney.
So, yes, he just didn't tell him.
There are going to be, man, there are a few.
Let me count right here on our list.
One, two, three, four, five.
Five.
I got five interviews in the can still that happened before we made the announcement publicly.
And so those are people who didn't know.
And that's going to be going up all the way through July.
So there will be people who...
And you won't really necessarily know it because there's no reason to.
But they will have been talking to Mark without knowing that the show was ending.
And then, you know, I don't know.
Like, there's other people who are on.
Like, I don't know that Mark and Alexander Skarsgård had any conversation about, like, hey, this is the end of my show or something.
Right.
But Mike Bibiglia, he's been part of the show, right?
Like, they have had an ongoing experience.
Well, to be clear, if it had happened, probably, you know, if he had talked to Mike after talking to John and it being public.
Right.
Of course, they would have talked about it.
I just think, you know, Mark was in a situation where he wanted as few people to know as possible before we made the announcement.
Sure.
And I will say, I feel like they got a little bit of closure.
I mean, there's not going to always, you know, it's not going to be fully closure.
Like, it's just like a, it's, I related to a sibling rivalry in a way.
Yeah.
Like you're calling it closure.
I'm like, I've been to this rodeo before.
Like I've heard the same spiel.
It's a, it's a, it's a dynamic that they have.
And I, I personally love their dynamic.
Yeah, well, you know, the thing is, though, I always came down when Mark was reacting the way he was reacting back in, like, you know, the early days of the show or before we were even doing the podcast, you know, when he kind of had resentment for Mike doing that show, you know, upstairs versus downstairs, that thing.
And I, you know, we've talked about this on this show before that I was like, I think this guy just likes you and he wants you to, you know, validate him in that way.
I don't know.
This was the first time I listened to it and I kind of like came down more on Mark's side.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Like I felt like Mike was, is still being an operator and you know, I don't know, man.
Sometimes it's just like one little thing and this was all the way at the end.
And I really did not like the last thing Mike said.
I thought it reflected poorly on him.
And remind us, what is the last thing that he said?
They were talking about their, it was like, we were home free, show ending.
Yeah, wrap it up.
I don't know, maybe like I kind of had a little bit in me, like the Mike who was on the phone with Mark.
you know, who was like, don't worry, you know, I get you, whatever.
And just kind of seemed to understand whatever like Mark's resentments toward him are and how it manifests itself.
And then he kind of was like calling him out on it in the episode.
And I felt that was like deliberate, like, but part of me is like, okay, I guess maybe you earn that a little bit.
Like if Mark's going to be a dick, you kind of earn some ability to like, it's a receipt, right?
You get a receipt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
It just like was, there was something about it that like kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
Like I'm like, I don't know.
Didn't you just say to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago, like, don't worry, it's all fine.
We'll have to talk about it.
Yeah, that's true.
So they were coming up and I'm, so I'm already like noticing that.
And then they're like almost out the door.
And Mark says that thing about we're getting older and our audiences that kind of reflect who we are or whatever.
And Mike says...
Oh yeah.
It's like when I'm walking around in Brooklyn and some pear shaped middle aged ogre comes up to me and says, Hey man, I just, I want you to know, I really relate to the stuff you're saying.
And I'm like, Oh man, is this, is this what I look like?
On the inside.
Yeah.
Yeah.
no no mark said on the inside mark made the i found that's why i didn't like it i was like what kind of bullshit is this it was just sounded so superficial yeah and like i don't know it didn't it did not paint him in a good light in in my mind and it was just to me then reinforced what i had been kind of hearing earlier i'm like this guy really is like you know very concerned about like
Coming out on top, being a winner, you know, having the edge on things.
And like if that if a fan coming up to you and you judge their physical appearance as something negative to you is where your head goes on that.
I don't know, man.
That's a little dicey for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, for me, I thought it was interesting that Ira Glass was like, wow, you're a completely different guy on stage than you are in real life.
In real life, you're really like, you know.
Intense.
Yeah, intense.
And so it seems like he's putting on a little show.
Which is what Mark was always saying.
Yes.
was mark's problem with the guy from jump was he's like you're selling this character and you're hiding yourself right and i don't like it and it's like i've always busted mark's balls about it i've always been like oh man you're so resentful of this guy's success you can't even see that he likes you whatever and i don't know this was like the first time where i'm like i don't know mark might have been right about this one yeah you know i'm i'm not like boy
That Mike Birbiglia, what an asshole.
But I am kind of like, I don't know that this is as one-sided a tension as it has previously been presented.
Yeah, yeah.
I will say, though, this was a great episode to have for Father's Day week.
You know, this was...
Yeah.
This is a very good Father's Day.
If you're on the fence, if you're driving somewhere to see your dad, you should totally put on that episode because I feel like it's a very good Father's Day episode to listen to.
Yeah.
Well, it's definitely a very good Father's Day episode if you have particular issues with your father.
Yeah.
Yes, I'm just assuming we all do.
I know you don't, but yes, some of us do.
I know, I was thinking about that when Mark was talking about Nick Kroll and how he had to unfollow him.
And I was like, man, I'm glad I don't talk about my family much around Mark or show him pictures or videos of my childhood or something.
He'd be so angry.
Dude, you know, there was at the end of the bonus episode you did with Mark where you guys talk about ending the show where you mention like you see like a pattern with people who have built themselves versus your upbringing.
And like part of me is just like, is he talking about me?
Yeah, I probably am.
And I'm talking about almost everyone.
I shouldn't say almost everyone, but I think it's a very simple equation.
Did your parents instill self-esteem in you?
And it really boils down to something as simple as that.
And then move it on the fulcrum of that.
If it's more or less self-esteem, you'll find yourself behind the eight ball farther as you grow up.
Because...
Like, that's the key.
The key is to, like, just feel like you have support.
You have somebody who gave you the keys to know, like, how to get through the next door.
And if you had to do that all yourself, what...
possible assurance would you have as a person like with your brain forming that you could get through the world and be okay if somebody else wasn't telling you you can do this you're good enough right yeah if they didn't tell you that you're you're you're at a disadvantage yeah 100 and uh yeah i felt that though
I will say I also felt the bonus episode with all the dad talk to be a little too much too soon in a weird way.
Like I felt like – I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot.
You know –
You know, these episodes, they sort of ramp up.
You don't start at this level of complete honesty and vulnerability.
So to you to have cherry picked these dad moments and they're so personal and so, so like naked.
Yeah.
Yeah, not a single one of those came from like the first 10 minutes of an episode.
No, of course not.
It was just, oh my God, this feels awkward in a weird way.
Like I opened the door and these two were having a conversation that I should not be listening to at this point, you know?
Because I just want to talk about like the Mets or something.
So yeah.
Yeah.
But I thought I was great, obviously.
All the dad stuff that you picked out, which was really fun.
By the way, I love that Matt Damon's kid treats him like the way Jimmy Kimmel treats him.
Exactly.
I love that he has identified.
He's like, yeah, now I'm like the guy who has to respond to the bully.
Pretend it doesn't hurt his feelings.
Yeah.
It's so funny though.
Cause like I, it's, it's interesting.
Like I was going back through our archives and it's like, yeah, there's not a ton of, like, it's just not, it's something that you're going to hear in a little bit, you know, in terms of the thing that I'm going to play on this episode, but that like Mark's style of monologuing and conversation is not what is traditionally noted as like masculine talk, right?
Like there's, and, and, and someone with a better,
perception of that than me is going to explain that in just a few minutes.
But what I mean by that in terms of these things is like, I noticed like when going through the archives, it's like, there aren't a ton of fathers.
I don't mean people talking about their fathers.
There's plenty of that.
And I didn't want the bonus episode to be that.
I wanted it like the mother's one to be people talking about their experience with parenthood, right?
Being a mom or being a dad.
And there's just not a ton of guys who talk about being a dad in a kind of open, detailed, vulnerable way.
You know, it's a lot of like, yeah, I got my kids.
They're great.
They're great.
Like, that's what you hear most of the time.
And it's interesting.
It's interesting that it's not the kind of default setting for a guy to be like, oh, well, let me tell you about all the, you know, very delicate issues of being a dad.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, I think that's one of the things that your listeners are realizing that are going to be missing.
Like they're going to miss honest and open conversations about topics that are just normally glossed over in other interviews.
All right, so I do want to share a story about my dad.
And I alluded to it on a previous episode with you, where I told you about how I got my dog.
My dad came home from work one day with our dog.
And I just think, I was thinking about it this week because of these episodes.
And I was just thinking...
man, something's up with this story.
So the story is, is that, first of all, my dad is a New York City bus driver, you know, just like, you know, Ralph Cramden was.
I grew up...
you know, going, instead of going to a babysitter, I would get on his bus and just drive with him, you know, every, you know, most days during the summer.
So I was like Calodro in, uh, in, in a Bronx tale.
Like that was literally the, my childhood.
So, uh, except without the mafia stuff, uh, too much anyway.
Um,
So anyway, one day my dad is apparently working.
You know, he is working.
And he parks his bus at the Staten Island Ferry.
And they have like this little turret at the Staten Island Ferry where the bus drivers go to hang out.
I've been up there.
It's kind of cool.
It's like something out of Star Wars.
But anyway, he apparently tells us that there was this dog just wandering around the ferry.
And he found the dog and then tied the dog up on his bus, made a couple more rounds with the dog on the bus, just with the dog just next to him on the bus in the, what is it, the 80s at this point in New York City?
And yeah, that's our dog, our dog Barron.
By the way, Baron was the name of Superman's dog in Superman 1.
I note that because my mom gave Baron the name, but I just always thought that was fun.
And I'm also in Superman mode at this point.
I already have my Superman tickets.
Do you have your Superman tickets?
Yeah.
No, I do not.
God damn it, man.
You got to get your Superman tickets.
But anyway, I'm ready for that.
I'm listening to the blank check guys talk about Superman.
I am like all in on Superman.
It's like George Costanza waiting in line for soup.
I'm in Superman mode now.
Like now until the end.
Anyway, so my dad comes home with this dog and like...
I'm like, at the time, I'm like just elated because I have this collie, this dog that looks like Lassie.
Another reason why I loved Lassie growing up.
And like this dog is like this perfect, well-mannered dog.
And
There's no chance that this dog, this perfectly mild-mannered dog, is just roaming around the Staten Island Ferry without an owner, right?
And I am oblivious to this because I am in the elation of having this beautiful dog in my life.
But in the back of my head has always been like, wait, so can you tell me that story again?
Because...
this isn't, this isn't adding up.
Like you just found this dog.
Like I actually hope that like years later and like maybe if I ever talked to my dad again, he could tell me that, Oh, actually that was just a bullshit story.
I told you when you were a kid, we actually found, you know, we, we bought him from like a kennel or something, you know?
Cause like this story, it seems real bad because I feel like my dad stole a dog from someone and
And they then no longer had a dog.
And my family had this stolen dog for years.
And, like, I just can't shake it.
Isn't that fucking, like, right?
Like, I'm not crazy to think that that dog was probably stolen, right?
I mean, I think you'd be crazy to not think it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so yeah, that's, that's like my dad's story about this dog, you know, coming into my life.
And like, look, my dad's a weird dude.
He's does weird things.
He's like a weird, like bit of a liar, you know, just a wee bit of a liar.
And like,
I just, I wouldn't have put it past him that he either stole the dog or giving him the opportunity to be like, he actually just lied to me about finding this dog as this magical story.
And actually, he, you know, got the dog from like a kennel, you know?
So, yeah, that's my dog story.
Your dog story.
I like how you call it your dog story.
Yeah.
I think that's your dad's story.
Yes.
Yeah, I guess so.
So, yeah, my dad, I'll send him a happy day, a happy Father's Day text.
You know, that's like more than I normally do for him.
So I think that that's good.
Well, I do think that, you know, it's kind of one of the things about WTF that, you know, we...
over the years have provided an ability for people like yourself to hear stories where they're like, Oh, thank God other people have situations like this where it's, it's like, you know, look, I don't think I'm the kind of person who goes around and just tells everybody I had a great childhood.
It was awesome because like, well,
I had the problems that anyone has, but I don't have like a negative perception of my childhood.
And I think that most people probably think that's the norm, right?
Like people, you know, had a good childhood, they had good parents.
I'm the weirdo.
I didn't.
Right.
Yeah.
And one of the legacies, I hope, of the show is that it allowed people to realize they weren't alone on that front, on many fronts, right?
It could be anything.
But if that's it, if that's one of them, weird stuff about parents and your upbringing, then great.
That's one of the things I'm glad we accomplished.
Oh, man.
And just Mark, the way Mark's able to...
Talk about the things that are on people's minds and they just don't realize it is second to none.
And I'm going to miss that, man.
I'm going to miss it.
Yeah.
Well, I said last week, I don't want, you know, the coming weeks to be like a eulogy about the show.
And I, you know, I stand by that.
However, something did come up this week.
That I feel like it absolutely changed my whole week.
It changed like everything I had been, you know, kind of mentally adjusting to in terms of the end of the show and made me have to like really sit back and take a breather and go like, holy crap, like, wow, that...
That really is something.
And it was a piece of writing.
It was something Mark identified this.
He talked about it on Thursday's show in the monologue.
And this was an article on the Defector website.
And look, if you haven't ever been to Defector, you might know it formerly as with most of the staff there as writers from Deadspin and some of them from Gawker.
I would call them the good Gawker writers, not the ones who destroyed the First Amendment by getting sued by Hulk Hogan.
Uh, but, but, uh, but some great writers and savvy, smart people, uh, good critics, cultural, uh, astute people.
And, uh, they started this website that's, um, that's worker owned called defector.
And, uh, you know, you can get a subscription to it, or you can do kind of like just sign in and, uh, sign up for their email letter, uh, so that you can get some articles.
You can, you know, pay or not pay.
That's like basically their, their, the way it's set up.
And, uh, and, uh,
It just, you know, there's been a there's been a lot of pieces coming my way that have been written about the show since we made our announcement.
But this one is called There Will Never Be Another WTF with Marc Maron.
OK, that's good enough to get me to click on it.
And it was written by Diana Moskovitz.
Seen her byline with a lot of stuff on Deadspin.
I believe she used to work for the Miami Herald.
And she has a book coming out soon called The Woman Who Stole Fire, which is about...
basically the, the, the first woman who participated in the, the modern Olympics.
And, and so she's a great writer.
She's got a pedigree.
She, you know, someone that if you read her stuff, you'd like trust it as being good.
And,
I even even with all of that being said, I was not prepared for the piece that she wrote.
As I've said to basically anyone that I spoke to, she cracked the code.
Yeah.
Like she tapped into the secret show.
Like to me, there's always been a show that no one else gets to see.
Like basically like in a weird way, what we've kind of illuminated here on these Fridays.
Right.
Like we talk a little bit about the process of the show and somewhat about like my philosophy around that.
But like.
To me, there's a whole kind of mental hidden show that I personally deliberately keep from view because I think part of what makes the show work and makes it successful is that you just think there's a guy in his garage who turned the mics on and you heard this thing come out, right?
Your fly on the wall moment.
And she just picked up on everything that I've always been putting down.
And Mark as well.
And also for Mark, picked up on things that he himself wasn't even aware of that he was doing.
Mm-hmm.
And I always knew so much of what she was saying, but I also knew that it had to go unsaid.
And, you know, it's like we couldn't just come out and say like, hey, guess what, guys?
You know that intro part that some of you think is so skippable?
It's actually the entire reason that this thing has been going for a decade plus and why it's still popular.
Like, yeah.
I just to me, it was like, no, I just don't ever say anything.
Like, if anybody ever asked me in an interview or something like, oh, well, you guys still do that long monologue.
You ever think about getting rid of that?
I'd always be like, no, it's like, you know, our shows like the circus, like some people like the tightrope walker.
Some people like the lion tamer.
You just you pick what you want from it.
You get move on from there.
But like I fucking knew the important part was the monologue.
Right.
I just knew that.
And I knew it in my bones and nobody could tell me differently, but it wasn't just something that either of us were going to come out and say, but man, Diana got it.
And my, I'm sitting here with this thing this week, just kind of floored by it.
And I, I thought like, you know,
I want people to read this thing.
Obviously, I think it's a great thing for people to get to know.
And I was going to talk about it here with you.
And I'm like, what am I going to do?
I'm going to read.
It's like literally reading your own press clippings.
Right.
You know?
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I'm like, I'm a fucking producer.
I contacted Diana Moskovitz.
I said, I don't know if you do this kind of thing, but will you read your piece on our air?
Oh my God.
She said, absolutely.
So this doesn't exist on the Defector website.
They don't have audio recordings of their pieces, but much like a book on tape or whatever, Audible original, I got Diana to record her piece.
And and that's what we'll do for the rest of the show here.
I want you to hear it.
It's a it's a lengthy piece.
I do encourage you to go read it.
You could go read it right along with this.
But but for those of you who have not read it or if you don't have the time to sit down and read it, here it is for you right now.
This is Diana Moskovitz reading her piece that you can find on the homepage of Defector dot com right now.
And this was a real pleasure.
I'm so happy that we were able to do this.
There will never be another WTF with Marc Maron by Diana Moskovitz.
I heard Marc Maron announce he was ending his podcast the way that I imagined he'd have wanted me to, while walking through my neighborhood in Los Angeles through wired headphones just a little too hopped up on caffeine.
A younger version of Maron would have given an oh come on to my caffeine source, a matcha latte, as opposed to Maron's preference, the strongest coffee possible.
But long-time listeners know Marin also went through a T-phase, episode 949, so I like to think that the current version of Marin would let it slide.
I first listened to WTF with Marc Marin in October of 2010, episode 117, because I heard this American Life host, Ira Glass, say that he had appeared on it.
I was immediately hooked.
I had simply never heard an interview like that one, with a host so engaged and a guest so honestly and openly themselves.
I binged as many as I could the following weekend while cleaning my apartment and told my long-distance boyfriend he had to start listening too.
I got caught up soon enough, with a 23-mile commute between my office and my home and
and a newspaper job that required a lot of driving on top of that, I had plenty of time to listen.
And in the early years of podcasting, there were far fewer options, with many of those being true radio shows like Fresh Air, Radiolab, and the aforementioned This American Life that had been posted online, maybe or not necessarily with a little bit of a re-edit for the web.
Fifteen years later, WTF is the one podcast that I've never quit.
I've never missed an episode, though at times I have fallen behind.
Okay, fine, I don't always listen to the bonus episodes.
I apologize to producer Brendan McDonald for that.
I've even seen Marin, a veteran stand-up comic with decades of success, perform multiple times live.
Once, he dropped in at the comedy store, just the store to us what the fuckers, to work out some stuff on the same night a friend happened to be going up too.
Then I can tell you all these things about Maren.
The name of his producer, his go-to place to work out his stand-up, his recent coffee grinder ordeal, the details of a household saga involving his refrigerator.
This is covered in many episodes, but let's call it 1469 to choose one.
is as key to WTF's success as any other detail that will be trotted out in the coming months as the podcast enters what figures to be a lengthy and deserved farewell tour.
The headline will be that WTF set the template for modern interview podcasts, helped pave the way for monetization, helped turn the medium into a routine stop on the entertainment industry's publicity circuit, and later the political campaign circuit, and opened up the door for pretty much every single comedian-hosted podcast that followed.
All of that is true.
But that is not why WTF outlasted and outperformed nearly every podcast from its era.
It's because, as McDonald realized when he worked with Marin on progressive talk radio at Air America, Marin is so spectacularly good at commanding an audience on a mic and so completely fearless and bearing his every insecurity.
And it is especially because that openness makes whoever's opposite of him so comfortable bearing their own in turn.
Even as the show grew, it stayed true to its purpose.
Real conversations after real monologue to start the show.
And though it evolved, it never lost sight of its core principles.
The show stayed independent, always came out twice a week, and didn't shy away from its success or run away from its failures.
It was, from start to finish, a deeply human show.
That's just one reason why there probably won't be another show like WTF again.
To my mind, nothing illustrates the alchemy of WTF like my favorite two episodes, ones that always leave me in tears.
Sir Ian McKellen, episode 621, and weeks later, Sir Patrick Stewart, episode 638.
The best way to listen to them is back-to-back.
With McKellen, Maren has one type of classic WTF talk.
He opens up asking McKellen, a little forcefully, to help him understand this Shakespeare guy.
McKellen, unquestionably one of the greatest Shakespearean actors in modern history, happily obliges, after the two have a good laugh about the desk holding the same cup as used by recent guest President Barack Obama, episode 613.
There is also a time capsule quality element to this episode, which opens with Maren suggesting listeners also check out McKellen's interview on the Nerdist podcast, a reminder of a time when podcasting was a much smaller community of independent productions, and not bound to simply plug whatever was in their own network.
At one point, Maren does an entire monologue about how it's cool that there are different podcasts that all have different styles, so you can see different sides of the same interviewee.
It's like a broadcast from another dimension.
But back to the interview.
McKellen goes on to explain not just Shakespeare, but a philosophy of life that he sees as embedded in the Bard's work.
"'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.'"
It's this, McKellen says, the way we put on clothes, you could say our costumes, every day, and give ourselves titles at work, you could say character names, and go through our expected motions, you could say the script, that separates us from animals, who do none of that.
They simply are what they are, but humans perform for ourselves and for each other, and it is that performance that makes us different.
We're not even halfway through the episode at this point.
They go on, Maren and McKellen talking about getting older, about holding grudges, about how holding grudges gets harder as you age, because you realize how stupid they were.
As McKellen notes, acting is very easy in comparison to life.
It is then that McKellen tells the story of how he came out as gay at age 48.
At the time, in 1988, the British government was considering a bill that would have banned books, film, and art that had gay themes.
The justification was that such works promoted homosexuality merely through their existence.
McKellen fought against the proposed law and appeared on a BBC radio show to speak out against it, while also nearing the end of his one-man show, Acting Shakespeare.
When asked by the host if he would like to see their proposal disappear altogether, McKellen replied, "...oh yes, I certainly would.
Yes, I think it's offensive to anyone who is, like myself, homosexual, apart from the whole business of what can or cannot be taught to children."
It's a beautiful story, one of fear and shame, followed by redemption and blossoming.
Maren then compels McKellen to tell several more about being knighted, about making the Lord of the Rings films.
McKellen quips that he would never give up Gandalf because otherwise it might go to Anthony Hopkins.
Actors are so competitive.
They're just like us.
It goes on like this, to the point that McKellen says that he has to remember to save something for his memoir.
It closes with McKellen, off book, reciting a Shakespearean monologue to Marin about the dangers of attacking the other, in this case immigrants.
It's a gorgeous moment, despite McKellen's insistence that theater is best without microphones.
What the fuckers.
This is what Maren calls listeners, along with what the fuck buddies and what the fuck nicks and any number of terms of endearment to open each episode.
We'll recall that Maren was so moved that he kept talking about McKellen reciting Shakespeare to him and couldn't help but bring it up to Sir Patrick Stewart when he swung by the garage.
Stewart is not impressed.
What a show off, he replies.
Every time I have heard this, my heart skips a beat.
Aren't Stewart and McKellen friends?
Stuart then tells the story of his own life.
It couldn't be more different than McKellen's, despite their shared traits.
Stuart grew up speaking a local dialect, and his father served in battle during World War II.
The person who came back from the front was a man prone to violence who beat his wife and terrorized his family.
Stewart's interview hinges on his own quest to not be like his father, while also building up his career as a successful Shakespearean actor in his own right, one who would play the monstrous Macbeth and become an activist against intimate partner violence.
But all that gets flipped on its head when, many years later, Stewart learns that his father came back from the war with what was then called shell shock, which we would now consider PTSD.
In that moment, Stewart says that he realized he had to atone for his years of painting his own father in a villain's light.
He decided to take up PTSD as a cause as well.
The connection to McKellen comes when Stewart discusses how they finally, after years of parallel career paths, became friends on the set of the X-Men films.
As Stewart explains it, he had avoided McKellen for years, because everyone knew from the moment that McKellen appeared on stage at Cambridge that he was a star.
Stewart knew he couldn't compete with a man so much more talented and better educated than himself, who never finished school, and so he did his best not to.
In his memoir, Stewart also said that McKellen told him not to take his career-making role in Star Trek.
But as McKellen and Maren said, the hard feelings tend to fall away over time.
McKellen and Stewart started hanging out, realized how much they did have in common, and became fast friends.
When McKellen agreed to perform Waiting for Godot on Broadway and needed another actor to take the stage with him, he told the director it should be Stewart.
Though it's not said overtly, it becomes clear that after all those decades, whatever inferiority Stuart had to McKellen just fades away, replaced by recognition that everyone involved was struggling to become and be their true selves all the while.
This is the moment every time I listen, when I weep.
If WTF had its own philosophy of life, it would go more or less like this.
You will start out young and filled with righteous anger at how unfair the world is.
You will try many things, and you will probably fail at them.
But that's okay.
Everyone fails.
And everyone is hiding shame they believe nobody else will understand.
Everyone gets at least a few bad breaks, and some more than a few.
But if you hang in there, at some point, you will cease to fail.
At some point, you will get a lucky break.
At some point, you will look around and realize that while this might not be the life you envisioned, it's still a good life and one you can be proud of.
You will fuck up and you know what you should do after?
Fucking apologize.
And then at some point, after that, you will get older and wiser and realize that your apprehension about Sir Ian McKellen was ridiculous.
These are two of my favorite pieces of audio.
I recommend them to people constantly.
To my ear, they also display what made Maren the best and what made WTF different from any other podcast.
He really regularly got interesting people to go to places they would never go in any other interview.
Marin famously does very little preparation, a practice I wouldn't recommend for anyone else, but which he can get away with because he's just that good at engaging with people in front of a microphone.
This also, strangely enough, sometimes made him an excellent interviewer of women directors and actresses because he knew none of the gossip.
He just talked to them like artists and people.
In the early episodes, Maren's engagement comes from a sort of reckless anger.
He's broke, he feels left behind by his peers and damned by the world, and the Enterprise has a sort of, fuck you, I'll go there, why don't you, feeling.
The early success of that sheer audacity, though, didn't stop Maren's self-probing.
He didn't wall himself off or protect what he gained once he'd finally gotten it.
Instead, he seemed to discover a genuine passion for connecting with people.
And what Marin would later describe as a growing capacity for empathy would first temper and then replace the old piss and vinegar.
He tries not to judge.
He's got too many years of sobriety in him for that.
Another frequent topic on the pod.
But he does expect honesty and appreciates guests reciprocating his friendly ribbing.
If WTF had a motto, it would be go deep or go home.
Over the coming months, a lot of best-of lists will get trotted out.
They'll include his interview with Robin Williams, episode 67, now in the Library of Congress, his confrontation with Carlos Mencia about joke-stealing, episodes 75 and 76, Todd Hansen, episode 190, Todd Glass, episode 245,
Mandy Moore, episode 995.
Maren's late partner, Lynn Shelton, episode 627.
Pretty much every interview with a comedy legend.
Too many to count at this point.
And his two-parter with Louis C.K., episodes 111 and 112.
But for me, the most important episode that hinges on C.K.
isn't his interviews.
It's episode 863, Kim Deal.
The first episode aired after the New York Times confirmed the longstanding rumor that C.K.
had frequently masturbated in front of and around young female comedians.
Maren used the introduction before the episode to talk about the report.
If the McKellen and Stewart interviews showed WTF at its best in connecting with guests, the introduction for this episode showed why the monologues were just as important and why damn near every other interview podcast would rip off the format.
The show's emotional stakes were embedded in those monologues and included everything from Maren wrangling his cats to grappling with his role in his failed marriages to his ongoing sobriety.
In this case, the monologue was a place for Maren to grapple with the reports about C.K., who was a big part of the story WTF told about itself.
After coming up together in comedy, the two grew distant when CK got famous, and Maren did not.
The two-part episode in which Maren and CK worked through all that had already been declared one of the greatest podcast episodes of all time, and Maren had gone on to play himself on CK's acclaimed FX show.
How could people not want to know what Maren had to say about a man to whom he'd been so intimately linked?
In the first episode after the news, Maren launched right into the monologue this time, with barely a hello.
He knew why we were there, and he knew the question at hand.
What did he know?
Marin says he had heard a story before about unnamed female comedians in Aspen being forced to watch CK jerk off.
He says he asked CK about it, and CK told him it was just a rumor and one he would not address publicly because doing so would just give it too much air.
Marin says he did not know about the other times this happened, which were reported at the Times article.
He believed CK because CK was his friend.
But Marin doesn't end there.
He unpacks why he didn't know more.
Because the entire ecosystem of stand-up comedy made it difficult, if not impossible, for women to come forward and speak up without ending their entire careers.
The work environment, the social environment makes it difficult for people to come forward and be heard, to be listened to, to be believed, and for action to be taken around that.
It is pushed aside.
It is dismissed.
It is framed as an annoyance or an embarrassment.
It is used against people.
It is used as a threat.
That is the structure that exists in life.
So, so how do we get that power structure in check?
The big step is empathy.
Something I have, I I've had problems with empathy.
You know, when you have man brain or when you don't, you are not capable of, of empathizing properly with women, which I don't think a lot of men are, and I'm not going to speak for all men, but I can speak for myself to find that empathy and
It requires some sort of vigilance.
It requires, you know, really being not just listening to someone's story or listening to something someone says to actually put yourself in the place of another person.
That requires a little work, especially if you're doing it in a work situation, in a situation where there's a power dynamic, in a situation where you're not even seeing a person.
You're just seeing a woman who is there to receive your garbage.
Right.
Or to be used as a sexual object or to be diminished or condescended to or dismissed or pushed aside with your own selfish needs and desires.
It's hard to understand that that power dynamic is real and it exists because things have been the way they've been for a long time.
From there, Marin thrashes away at all the flimsy and self-justifying excuses made by men across comedy and every other male-dominated field of endeavor.
He does not exclude himself from this.
He too has been a toxic male presence Marin allows.
His IFC show didn't have a single female writer on it and employed only one female director in its entire run.
He says that he has to change his mindset.
He has to evolve.
Yes, even if he's 54.
He looks back on the two times he dated fans, marrying one, getting engaged to the other, and admits that there were surely a lot of uncomfortable power dynamics at play that, at the time, he just chose to ignore because they like me and they get me.
That he can admit to this now and confess to the work he still has to do, Marin says, is because his job of listening to people taught him to empathize and continues to teach it.
He wants to learn, he says, so he can continue to grow.
Then he shares a story of the time he was in college.
He really admired this one professor who took the young Marin out to eat.
The first time they had lunch went great.
The second time, they went out to dinner, and the professor forcibly kissed Marin on the mouth.
Marin said nothing in response, never reported it, and kept going to class.
But he recounts the shame that the experience brought.
So yeah, he says, men have to change.
They have to quit the toxic bullshit.
They just have to.
This is obviously a fucking massive, turbulent learning moment for men, he says, if you choose to take the education.
And then Maren says, clearly emotional, that he will not stop being friends with CK.
It's probably the best time to be his friend.
When he needs to make changes in his life, Maren says, holding back tears.
You know, I can learn from it.
He can learn from it.
I hope.
I don't know Maren personally, so I'll leave it up to him and McDonald to know the full story of his evolution.
But the podcast changed after this episode.
They did start interviewing more people from different backgrounds and with different experiences.
Maren would speak openly for years about why they had to shut down comments on their website, which was because of the vitriol that greeted every single woman they brought on.
Later, McDonald would say, episode 1000, that he was torn about going on with the show after the Times report came out.
He tells Marin in the episode, I just remember thinking, are we culpable in this?
McDonald says his wife told him to sleep on it, which he did, and the show went on.
I agree with that decision, for whatever that's worth.
but I appreciated knowing that there were real human thoughts and feelings behind the decision to go on.
People who drop in and out of WTF, or who just listen for the interviews, will often complain about the monologues.
And if you're just dropping in, sure.
Why should you care about Maren's rain gutters?
These come up in a lot of episodes.
They cover two different houses.
But more recently, there's episode 1399.
Or the disappearance of Boomer the Cat, episode 320.
or his ongoing attempts at having a normal relationship, a continuous theme.
But if you have been paying attention, wow, do you care?
I have always suspected that the trouble casuals and some critics have with Maren's monologues is that they don't really fit within the historical confines of masculine literature or podcasting.
That sort of raw, unadulterated, brutally honest narrative storytelling about everyday life, you could call it domesticity, has always been the purview of women, from the poetry of Adrienne Rich to the essays of Nora Ephron to the memoirs of Mary Carr.
Marin, for his part, is a William S. Burroughs guy, and you can see that influence in his work.
But even Burroughs was writing from a lofty perch, an acclaimed literary insider from a wealthy family with a Harvard degree.
That's not Marin, who came to the mic beaten down by life and his own bad decisions.
And that's not the monologues either.
There's too much authentic self-doubt in them for that.
Early on, it verges on outright self-hatred.
He was, when the podcast began, not nearly well enough to swagger like one of the intellectual leaders of the beat generation.
Never mind that Maren was also broke, which meant that there could be no great adventures.
What else could he talk about but his house, his cats, and his struggles with his own inner demons?
In a Marin monologue, even now that he has made it into a much more comfortable life, no wars are won, no animals are hunted, no sports team emerges victorious over the other, no corporate boards are taken over, no muscles are built.
It is smaller, finer stuff.
You could call it domestic rioting or, as some men have been known to say privately, girl shit.
A good Maren monologue is filled with the personal darkness of Sylvia Plath, but intercut with the wry cynicism and comedy of Dorothy Parker.
His advice to listeners is on par with what Cheryl Stray did with her Dear Sugar column.
Maren's worrying about his weight, his body image, his own health.
What female essayist hasn't written about that?
Marin telling his fellow men to start being better because a better world for women is a better world for all, which is something he would keep doing long after the CK podcast.
Isn't full-on bell hooks?
But hey, we all start somewhere.
It is, at any rate, a deep and searching examination and inventory.
A life pulled apart string by string, then reassembled into something new, perhaps with a little bit more narrative and spice.
in search of some greater truths.
This is a celebrated tradition in women's writing, but a less celebrated one in the white male canon.
It is certainly not reflective of the currently most popular white men in podcasting, which brings us to another reason why WTF had to end.
For longtime listeners, the end of WTF is not quite a surprise.
Concerns about the future of comedy, of podcasting, and the country itself have been seeping into Maren's monologues for a while now.
Maren's talked about moving to Canada, to New York City, and to New Mexico, and probably a few other places that I've forgotten.
Maren has also talked about moving to Ireland, but that, to me, always felt less serious.
After a disastrous episode with Ben Kingsley, episode 1445, unlike fellow Shakespeareans McKellen and Stewart, Kingsley showed up having no clue how the show worked and is a jerk through much of the episode.
The show started bringing back previous guests and having more comics on again.
The emphasis shifted towards guests who would click with Maren and not just the biggest names they could get.
There was a drawing back in this, but none of that signaled the outright end.
To my ears, the end began late last year, when Maren interviewed the influencer-turned-podcaster Bobby Althoff, episode 1600.
It's a great interview, and a deeply insightful look into the world of being a person who holds the attention of others.
But it's bleak.
And Maren does nothing to hide that.
At this point in the podcast, producer McDonald was also getting on the mic regularly for the Friday show bonus segment with co-host Chris Lopresto.
Their discussion of the Althoff interview felt like two people unpacking the future and facing the darkness of what they saw.
More recently, Marin talked to MSNBC host Chris Hayes about his book, The Siren's Call, episode 1621.
It's another great talk, as Marin would say, but one that delves right into our current information system and the way in which it exploits, monetizes, and weaponizes our attention spans.
Maren has remained on top of this media landscape, but that doesn't mean he likes it.
In explaining why they were wrapping up the show on a bonus episode last week, both Maren and McDonald were clear about that.
The media landscape is changing, they explained, and they were burned out after posting at least two episodes a week for 16 years.
They've interviewed everyone they've ever wanted.
They've done so many shows.
And as Maren says, at some point, who is even going to listen to all this?
And at some point, what else can we do?
Why just plug along talking to people they don't want to talk to, Maren asks.
Having a podcast, he continues, is a punchline now.
They also address the podcast industry's ongoing pivot to video.
Through it all, WTF has remained audio only.
McDonald says they can get away with audio only because of their clout and success.
But, he goes on to say, the industry is changing such that, were it to continue, the show would have to do a lot of things that McDonald and Maren don't want to do.
Add video.
Add even more advertisements.
Use inserted ads as opposed to those Maren reads.
Those are not compromises they want to make.
Any fan of podcasts knows that this is true.
Once seen as a competitor for radio, video shows being called podcasts are now becoming a sort of background TV for our lives.
Something you throw up on YouTube and play while you work or study or commute or maybe even while you watch something else on another screen simultaneously.
Both Maren and McDonald know what this means.
The future of podcasting is both longer and shallower than the present.
Shows stretching out to fill more time without actually containing more stuff.
Layers of visuals and cutaways to add interest to what is still mostly noise.
In an attention economy that has been degraded in this way, there is little place for a long-form, in-depth interview.
It's not that they believe WTF to be something precious and holy, but they do believe it is worth listening to more intently than that.
They could adapt, but also they don't have to.
The most important relationship embodied on WTF, much more so than Marin and his girlfriends, has been Marin and McDonald.
Each, when asked, has always said they'll do it as long as the other guy wants to.
They're open about always being 50-50 on the show.
They've never sold it.
They never used it to build out their own podcast network.
It was always, even after Obama came on the show, a little punk rock.
Or at least as punk as you could be while giving out promo codes for Stamps.com, JustCoffee.coop, Squarespace, and Adam and Eve.
Even as the show grew and they added outside help with bookings and the like, it was in rock and roll parlance, always marrying a McDonald's band.
In the crass world of intellectual property, stories are now forced to go on forever and
Or as long as there's money to be wrung from them.
Punk lives on a different, shorter timetable.
Bands end.
That's part of what makes them so special.
Everyone knows this, and so everyone knows that you have to enjoy them while they last.
If it can end without the bandmates hating each other, it's a miracle.
Maren and McDonald and WTF seem headed for that kind of happy ending.
On an episode whose number I actually cannot recall, McDonald once said something to the effect of he always thought of WTF as the Marc Maron audio diaries.
Near the end of their most recent conversation, McDonald points out that Maron has achieved pretty much everything he wanted to do when the podcast started.
Acting?
Check.
Your own TV show?
Check.
Interviewing Lorne Michaels and Keith Richards?
Twice.
And Obama.
And some of comedy's biggest and most interview-averse legends, including Albert Brooks and Carol Burnett?
Check.
HBO special?
Check.
A documentary about him premiered at Tribeca.
Marin's even expected to direct soon.
Hearing McDonald talk to Marin about this, you could hear his producer brain signaling that we are now in the third act of the Marin Audio Diaries.
The conflicts have been resolved.
The goals have been achieved.
It is just about time to wrap this up and get the audience home.
It wasn't quite a hero's journey.
The story being told over these 16 years was about one man's journey to get his damn life together and figure out his shit.
Marin did that.
He can just be Marc Marin now.
Do his comedy.
Do his acting.
Send his friends some cash if they need it.
If there were a towel of Brendan MacDonald, it would be the closing line of the episode.
That's actually life.
That's how it should work.
You're like, I've had success.
It's moved me along to a point of happiness.
And now I can think about other people.
That's great.
The future for WTF will be heavy on awards and celebrations, pieces like this one looking back on the show as a text, and profiles and interviews celebrating Marin as a hero.
There will be so many best of lists.
For a long time, what the fuckers, there will also be a chance to look back and take stock of our own lives.
Where were we when this started?
And where are we now?
When WTF launched, I was working at the Miami Herald a little less than six months after the newspaper had almost laid me off as part of a company-wide reduction in force.
The only reason I got to keep my job was because another reporter in my cohort took a buyout.
His wife was going to medical school outside of the state.
He was moving away anyway.
It was just dumb luck.
A much older and wiser and incredibly accomplished investigative journalist got laid off in that round, entirely because he happened to get hired at a later date than me.
At his going-away party, he told me not to feel bad.
I should stay, he said.
I deserve to stay.
He was right.
I had horrible survivor's guilt anyway.
Over time, I grew to wish I had been laid off.
There were furloughs.
So many furloughs.
Sometime after surviving the layoffs, after I started listening to WTF, I got moved downtown to work the night shift.
Over time, it became clear that Harold was never moving me off that assignment.
I listened to WTF during my commute and while I applied for other jobs.
No one else in journalism wanted to hire me.
I was burned out.
I was tired.
I felt like my career had been a waste.
I did not have much money in my bank account.
I eventually quit and drove with my boyfriend across the country to Los Angeles to try to do something, anything new with my life.
I had one of my cats in the car with me.
The other cat rode with him and his and caught up on WTF episodes along the way.
The boyfriend is now my husband, and he swears WTF is the reason we're married.
When we were dating long distance, we would listen to each new episode and then talk about it that night.
Well, giving WTF all the credit might be a bit much.
He has a point.
WTF got me and us through a lot of
I listened to it while we learned to live together and after we got married.
And as I grew up and my elders passed away and while I wrote my first sports stories for some flannel wearing guy at a place called the classical.
And while I worked at NFL media and while I spent a year writing sketch comedy at UCB.
And when I cold emailed a popular sports blog that had been called out for having no women on its full-time staff and
and suggested that they should hire me.
Which they did.
I never stopped listening to it.
This is something like my whole adult life.
Like Maren finally getting his HBO comedy special, I finally achieved my lifelong dream of selling a nonfiction book.
If I know a long-distance car ride is coming up, I'll stock up on episodes and listen to them with my husband.
We still talk about them afterward.
I don't have I can walk away from it all money, but I am in a better place.
It's been a journey, but this is a good life.
Like Maren, I have different cats from when WTF started.
This is just the way the world works and what time does.
Real what the fuckers know Boomer Lives, so do Monkey and LaFonda, as do my girls, Catherine Graham and Lily, and cat angels really are everywhere.
We know that things change.
Is someone chopping onions?
Yeah, that was that man.
That's a, that's a hell of a thing.
A hell of a thing.
I can't thank Diana enough for doing it on the show here like this, but also I just can't thank her enough for putting her talents at crafting an essay like that.
Um, and, and devoting it to our show.
It's just really, really humbling, uh, to hear that.
And, um,
Like, it made me feel like, it almost made me feel like being caught by a detective.
I bet.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
I was thinking of the end of The Usual Suspects.
Yes.
Like, she figured it all out.
She picked up every clue.
Oh, I was totally the snowman.
I was like, I gave you all the clues.
And yes.
Yes.
She got them all.
How do you feel?
Like, how do you feel being seen?
Great.
That was the most humbling and emotional takeaway from it for me was I was like, man, it wasn't hidden.
Like, I was okay with it being hidden.
Right.
As an inside joke.
Something only for you.
But it was...
And validating to me that if someone was astute enough and was paying attention in the way, and as she was, as devoted to the show as a part of her life as she was, she was able to pick all that stuff up.
And look, again, it's one of those things where sometimes you think a thing about yourself and you probably let it pass because you're like, that's a bit grandiose or whatever.
But I just have, I have always thought...
look, you know, the guests are important and the show is about, you know, humanity and people.
And I loved her way of putting it.
It's like, this is the story of a guy trying to get his shit together.
And that's exactly how I've always seen it.
But like I always had in the back thought of my head, I was like, well, this thing works because, you know, whatever growth you want to talk about with Mark, one of the things he never really had to grow up
about was his relationship with me.
He has been an above board, excellent partner from the day we started working together.
And it never fucking changed.
It is the most consistent thing in the 16 years of this show is the way we have worked together.
And that's not...
a fucking lie that is not exaggeration that is not like in any way me trying to look at something in hindsight that has been the way it's been since the start and it's just like I can't believe somebody else got that
Yeah.
And I know you.
And like, I know that if just one person sees that, then it would all have been worth it, you know?
And like, Diana did that.
And I'm sure she is not alone.
And that's the great thing is that everyone's journey with this show will be different and unique.
Yeah.
I just feel so great for you and for Mark.
Also, I had a bit of like a coffee spit take when, or like a jump scare when my name is mentioned.
It was like Mike Myers.
And then next to it, it did not say, please stop making a scene.
Yes, yes.
Just like as if Mike Myers came into the room just shrieking.
Like why is that happening?
But yeah, just beautiful.
Like what a – man, what a beautiful tear-invoking essay that was.
That was just great.
I got to tell you the most Mark thing though is right after he read it, he, you know, he writes back to, like I sent it to him and I was like, take some time, get yourself some, don't read this now.
Cause when I sent it to him, I knew he was not home.
And I said, don't read this now.
Give yourself like a good 30 minutes, 40 minutes when you have nothing to do and read this because it is a stunner.
And I didn't say anything else about it.
And he, he wrote back when it was over and he said, wow, got me all choked up.
And I was like, you know, then we're going back and forth about the piece.
And he goes, I feel like I should get that out there somehow.
I literally, all I wrote back was, LOL, somehow.
If only there was a way.
Well then, wait, hang on.
Then a few seconds later, he writes back, okay, I posted an IG story about it.
Yeah.
And I wrote, also, you can talk about it on the very popular and influential podcast that the article is about.
Oh, man, to put it in stick or golf terms, he could just put it in.
Yes.
But also totally blind to it.
It's amazing.
It's like an airplane.
The guy's drinking problem where he just keeps throwing the drink in his face.
It's the same thing with Mark.
He's got podcast blindness.
Oh, Mark.
It never changed.
Oh, man.
Well, I will also put a link to the full essay in the episode description.
And the comments link is there, too, if you want to click on that and send us anything.
There's a lot that has come in, obviously.
And, you know, as I said, I don't want every episode of this to be like a eulogy about the show.
But I will want to read your comments on the air and talk about your reactions to WTF.
So keep them coming.
I really appreciate those things coming in.
And again, a big thanks to Diana Moskovitz, not only for writing the piece, but for agreeing to read it here on the show.
Really, thank you.
Thanks for giving that to our listeners.
I can't can't thank you enough.
And and that's it's going to we're going to keep doing it.
We're going to keep doing this.
We've got a bunch more guests coming up next week.
You know, Kristen Milioti, always liked her, seen her in a million things.
didn't know that mark would know anything about her and i brought her name up and he was like from the penguin and i was like wait you watch the penguin and he was like yeah i love the penguin so i was like all right let's giddy up on this because i've enjoyed her uh going back to seeing her on broadway in once
Same.
That's where I saw her.
And I was like, that's a star right there.
Exactly.
I remember one time I went to the premiere of season three of Girls, the Lena Dunham show.
And it went as press.
And just somebody invited me.
And I'm on the press, on the line getting my press credentials.
And someone asked me, excuse me, is this the line to get in?
And it was her.
It was Kristen Milioti, who I think was in the season that year.
Oh, my gosh.
And she was like dressed for a premiere.
Like she's in a nice dress.
And I'm like, oh, no, no, no.
You don't belong here.
This is...
This is for like non-talented people.
You are very talented.
You belong.
Can we get a publicist over here, somebody and help this extremely talented person to her seat where she belongs?
Not with these booger pickers.
Yeah.
That's wonderful.
But so, yes, she's on Monday and Megan Stalter, who is quite the character on Hacks and and in her own show coming out very soon.
I believe it's coming out next week.
So those are those are next week's guests.
Jordan Klepper, the week after that, we've got some really good ones coming up for you.
So keep tuning in for those.
Send us your comments by clicking on the link.
Read that piece by Diana in The Defector.
And until next time, I'm Brendan and that's Chris.
Peace.
Thank you.