BONUS Ask Marc Anything #2
so okay well look folks these are the questions that uh you listeners submitted through the link we gave out last week and um yeah let's get into it here we go let's knock them out
So what's the status on moving to Vancouver?
Well, look, what I did was I applied for permanent residence in Canada, which is basically like a green card, which is if they approve it, I will have to live in Canada two years out of every five.
Doesn't have to be consecutive.
And I will be a resident there on that level.
I'll be able to work there.
And I'll be able to use the health plan there and also pay taxes there on work I have done there.
So it's not really quite citizenship.
I don't have to forego my citizenship here.
I can get on the path to Canadian citizenship if that's what I want to do, but it will kind of.
If it happens, which could take two to three years in terms of approval, it'll put me in a position to spend the time up there.
And then I will make the move more intently because I'll have sort of a timeline and a time requirement.
Vancouver seems great to me.
So in other words, I've put this in place.
So when I get around to two or three years from now, which will probably be
when I'm thinking around sort of winding down a bit and trying to live a quality of life towards the last part of my life that I would enjoy, I see it there.
So that's sort of the plan.
So in terms of the status,
There's no real status other than I've put a process in place to guarantee, hopefully, if I get approved, that I will be able to live there comfortably and not on a permit and see what happens from there.
So that's the plan.
That's the status, is that I'm now in line to be approved for permanent residency in Canada, which could take two to three years.
Okay.
What's the most emotional you ever got watching a film?
I get pretty emotional watching almost anything, TV shows, movies, anything that's got a tear-jerky component, no matter how silly, I will squirt a few out.
So nothing stands out in my mind as a movie that I've cried more than others.
There's probably some, but I'm not... I'm a crier, and I'll try to hide it and move them off of my face quickly.
But anything that...
you're supposed to cry at and even some things that you're not i will squirt a few out how do you think your passion for other art forms photography music film has informed your comedic voice and trajectory well i didn't set out to be anything really uh when i educated myself i i didn't know what a career was i didn't know really how one puts together a degree in terms of uh
moving towards something.
So I generally wanted to be an intellectual and creative person of some sort.
I don't know that I wanted to be an artist, but I guess probably I did.
So it was really about aspiring to understanding and aspiring to have a way of looking at the world that was informed and also know about art and film and music and
And I don't know, there's certainly nerdier people than me, and there's certainly, I don't know if I would call myself a real intellectual, but over the years, as experience has informed some of my other perceptions, and I've continued to expand my sort of perceptions around art and creativity, I think it all kind of moves together.
When I was in college, I did everything I wanted to do.
I wrote for the newspaper.
I wrote plays.
I acted in plays.
I did photography.
I studied the history of photography.
I studied art.
I studied English literature.
I studied...
All of the things that would kind of broaden my brain and get me exposed to stuff.
But sadly, it was all very immediate to me.
And I don't know if I contextualized any of it properly or really could quote anything or refer to anything.
But I do it more as I got older.
I just always wanted to be...
I wanted my brain to be sort of out there and able to be out there and sort of wrap it around like, you know, William Burroughs and T.S.
Eliot and, you know, people like, you know, Tom McGuane and, you know, I just and then all the art stuff, you know, Rothko and on and on.
And seeing all the movies, putting that into context, I've got somewhat of a context, but ultimately it freed my mind and it made me, I was definitely a non-careerist thinker and I only wanted to express myself.
And I think that everything that I studied sort of supported that.
I can't say it's the smartest thing to do with one's life.
You've talked to many comedians about Greg Giraldo.
What stories or incidents come to mind when you think of Greg?
Well, the one you know, I knew Greg when he started.
He was he was around and then we were always sort of half in touch.
But I certainly didn't know him well enough to know how fucked up he was on drugs.
But I remember when I was going through my divorce.
The woman that my second wife is the person that really kind of got me sober and put me into the mindset of sobriety and it stuck.
But ultimately, she left me and it cost me, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars and change, if not more.
And I remember telling Greg that that that she had gotten me sober.
We were having a conversation and I was mad about the divorce that she was really taking me to the cleaners and it felt unnecessary to me.
And I told him the amount.
And he also, you know, I also told him that she got me sober.
And at that time he was struggling to get sober.
And he told me, look, I've spent that much in several different rehab facilities and it hasn't quite worked yet.
So I think you should consider that money well spent.
So the analogy between his several multiple rehabs that weren't working and my few hundred grand towards a divorce that ultimately did get me sober, I thought that was a good equivalency.
So that's a good Greg story.
Has there ever been an attempt to get Howard Stern on?
He doesn't do a lot, but I really think you and the evolved Howard Stern would mesh well.
Yeah, you know, we have tried and it felt like it almost happened.
And I had a good episode with him when he had me on.
It felt like it went great.
And I don't know why he hasn't come on my show, but whatever.
It doesn't matter anymore.
Have you found any good books about recovery from eating disorders?
I haven't.
There's some around, but I haven't.
I don't work that.
I live with it.
You and Guillermo del Toro seemed like you had the potential to be friends.
Did you stay in touch?
Are there any guests who you have become friends with after the show?
Well, yeah, me and Guillermo were texting and we were planning to do things.
And then, I don't know, it just all stopped.
And I think it's because he got mad at me because when I was at his house, I took some pictures and I thought that my...
What do you call it?
The thing on your phone, the location thing.
I thought it was off and I think it was on.
And he was nervous about that, that, you know, people would be able to track where the house was.
So like after that little drama, he never talked to me again.
But who knows?
He probably just busy.
Mark,
Look, man, I mean, if it's salvageable, then you'll be able to do it if you offer yourself up and you keep the communications going.
Maybe.
But if the love is gone, the love is gone.
You can't get love that's gone back.
And I don't know what you're telling me in this paragraph.
I don't know what unavailable means.
I don't know if you were selfish or abusive or totally insensitive.
It really just depends on whether or not there's love there on her side.
You can't make somebody love you.
And after a certain point, if you've hurt somebody enough,
It's over.
There's no coming back from it.
There is a limit.
You can't negotiate a broken heart or you can't negotiate around anger that is so deep that it's killed the love.
That's just a reality.
And I'm sorry that you're going through that.
But if you're both really willing to do the work, then it's possible.
So I think it depends on that.
And that's not a professional opinion.
What have been some of the hardest moments in your sobriety?
I don't know.
I'm fortunate in that the program worked for me in that, you know, after about five years, somehow or another, the obsession was lifted.
And I don't think of alcohol or drugs as a solution.
So anything I've gone through, death, divorce...
near bankruptcy, I never thought that drugs or alcohol were a solution.
So whatever the hardest moments in my sobriety were are just the hardest moments that anyone would have in their life.
I just don't think of drugs or alcohol as a solution.
It doesn't enter my mind.
So I don't frame it in like, what are the hardest moments of sobriety?
Because I think that implies like, when did I almost drink?
After about five years of, you know, real work,
In recovery, it was never a battle to not drink or use drugs.
It was just life.
After your show in Louisville, an older gentleman approached you outside the theater and seemed to insist that you take his black binder.
What was in that binder?
Well, that guy was a guy named Robert Gottlieb, and he wanted me to have this portfolio of an event and some history of Chicago, the Chicago improv scene going way back with Del Close and the Compass players even.
And he was part of that.
And he had given me this this portfolio of press clippings and information about a reunion that he was involved with.
I haven't gone through it all.
But I have it and I'm yet to get through it.
But it was important that, you know, he give it to me.
He was one of the guys.
He was one of the compass players at a time and was part of this reunion, I think, back in the 70s or 80s.
And and that's all that information there.
I'm yet to sort of really parse it.
But he wanted me to have it either for safekeeping or just to move it along into the hands of somebody that was interested.
with the rising popularity of formula one in north america have you thought about interviewing any current or former drivers no you mentioned the underappreciated poetry of the ice storm in your interview with christina ricci which was hilarious and very touching what are some other artworks in the 70s vein that resonate with you and why well you know i grew up in that time so it's it's all the artworks all the stuff that i've gone back to you mostly some of those films you
you know, the antihero films, any of the classic sort of, you know, films out of the 70s that came out of that era of Hollywood when Hollywood was sort of untethered and a lot of the youngsters and the rebels and the weirdos got hold of the cameras.
You know, I like all of that stuff.
And a lot of the music, obviously, at least, you know, up until the mid-70s when things got a little...
A little poppy, a little disco-y, a little new wavy.
And I graduated high school in 81.
So I was sort of locked in a kind of standard American townie universe in terms of music and movies.
But I also had a job at the Posh Bagel across from UNM.
And my mother was a painter and also in graduate school at that time.
So I was always being exposed.
To kind of weirdo groovy stuff, both performance art, theater, painting, photography.
University of New Mexico had a big photography scene.
So like all the stuff that was going on in the 70s while I was in high school was there was two worlds for me.
I remember going to see a performance by my friend Steve LaRue.
who recently committed suicide, he had a band called Jungle Red that performed twice a year, and they wore medical scrubs, and one guitar, he borrowed a guitar of mine, this Ibanez Les Paul copy, and duct taped a doll's arm to it, and they just made a...
a lot of noise and broke, sort of, you know, ritually broke a lot of fiesta wear, antique fiesta wear.
I don't know what it all meant, but just being at the event with the type of people that were there was part of my experience in the 70s.
So that sort of post-60s kind of like slightly darker
type of, you know, art and sensibility was kind of infused into me.
And also, you know, early on, you know, thinking about, you know, experiencing the Vietnam War as somebody who was six to 10 years old could experience it.
You know, in the late 60s, I was born in 63.
So I go back to a lot of that stuff, and I'm always sort of excited to see movies from that period and learn things about that period.
But in terms of visual arts and stuff, I remember going to see exhibits with my mother, you know, sort of the first time you see Namjoon Paik stuff, just, you know, pyramids of televisions and, you know, weird, you know, even... But I think that was...
Probably the 80s.
But yeah, you know, it all, I'm still sort of digging into it and learning about it and what implications it has.
Some of the writers of the 70s, I like Don DeLillo's early stuff, but that might have even been 80s.
But you know, McGuane.
But it was definitely the vibe, and it still kind of is vibrating in my brain.
Will you ever end your rift with Jon Stewart and interview him on WTF?
I think that's not happening.
He never wanted to do it, even at the beginning.
He seemed to be interested in maybe having coffee with me at one time, but this was like over 10 years ago.
and uh and i didn't want to do it i didn't like his tone and you know look it's okay if there's unresolved shit you know what does he care you know about resolving anything with me and i guess i don't really care either but the reason why it'll probably never get resolved is that
That last week of The Daily Show was a big week for them, and we interviewed Wyatt Sinek, and we put it up because there was something hanging in the balance, was that Wyatt didn't know if he was going to go
to the event of the last day of the daily show.
So it was sort of a suspense thing, but we undeniably just shit in John's yard on a week that he had just done all the landscaping and was about to move out.
I would say we probably left a flaming bag of shit in his yard.
And I do think I think there was some in some book, I think an oral history of The Daily Show.
It was phrased as the Marin problem, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.
But there you go.
Those are the reasons why that will remain unresolved.
Though, look, he's doing good work for veterans and firefighters.
And I can't begrudge him anything.
And it's not an active resentment, really.
How do you carry your grief with you in your day-to-day?
Well, I guess it's in there.
Like anything else, trauma-based or horrific in your past or in your mind and in your heart, it lives there.
So you just carry it.
You don't have to swim in it.
After a certain point, you have a little amount of control where you can kind of sit with it when you want, and if it comes up, you can handle it.
But I don't know if there is a discipline around it on a day-to-day basis.
What's your process when writing material?
Do you set aside time every day or do you put your thoughts down when something immediately inspires you?
I write on a series of post-its, napkins, notebooks.
You know, sometimes I write on the notes section in my in my phone.
I just I immediately write things down if I'm in the zone to do that.
But it's impulsively.
It's never that organized.
Eventually I start structuring.
Bits and pieces, things become bits, ideas kind of blossom, but they all happen in real time on stage and then they become sort of integrated into the conversation that is whatever set I'm working on.
But I do not set aside time every day to write, but I put my thoughts down whenever they happen and I think they need to be put down.
And then I kind of go over them.
and filter them and order them and enjoy them.
What's the best way to learn new things on the guitar?
Also, will you come back to Sweden anytime soon?
I don't learn anything on the guitar.
I try to take what I know and work within it because I do know enough to be an okay guitar player, but I'm not a guy who learns songs.
I like learning licks, but I'm always hard on myself that I don't learn more stuff.
I don't have the discipline.
to sit there and figure out leads exactly like they're being played by people.
So I don't know.
I do guitar the same way I do comedy.
I just kind of dick around until something lands.
What's my favorite Replacements album?
Well, it's pretty close between Let It Be and Tim.
I would have to say that's where I'm at.
Those are the records that I listen to the most.
And I know all the songs.
The rest, they're there for me, but those two.
And if I really had to sort of choose one...
It'll probably be let it be.
What can I tell you?
How come you haven't said anything about the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago?
Mar-a-Lago.
Mar-a-Lago.
How come I can't say that?
What is there to say about it?
What exactly do you want to hear me say about it?
It seems that, you know, the attorney general...
has a case going and the FBI needed to check out some evidence and it seemed reasonable enough for them to do what they did.
And, you know, in terms of what, you want to know if I think it was politically motivated or if it was a witch hunt?
I mean, I don't know from where you're coming from.
Look, man, I hope they hang something on that guy.
He's gotten away with shit long enough.
And is that partisan?
I guess.
But you know that about me.
But outside of...
It's heavy shit that an American president, an American monster is thoroughly under investigation on a lot of sides.
And however he has wormed out of things before, maybe some justice will be delivered.
I don't know.
So I don't know.
Like, you know, other than it happened and we're all waiting to see what that means.
I don't know what you want me to say about it.
It's exciting.
Hi, Mark.
I met you after one of your shows earlier this year.
I didn't know what to do, panicked, and then just asked for a picture with you, and I'm still embarrassed.
Is it okay if I go ahead and stop thinking about it now?
Thanks, Josie.
Yeah, look, it's on you.
You're carrying it.
on your own there.
And I'm sure it wasn't a big deal.
And there's no reason for you to be embarrassed.
Next time you see me, you can fix it.
But yeah, you can let it go.
It's okay with me.
Go ahead.
Let it go.
Hey, man, more of a comment than a question.
Is there any reason why you stopped getting musicians to play or sing at the end of the show?
I absolutely loved those segments.
Would be great to see them return.
Love the guitar bits, too.
Yeah, we can do that again.
I just it just stopped when I I think it was primarily when I moved up when I was in the house for a while before they got this studio together.
And I just sort of stopped doing it.
But I think I can do it out here if people are willing.
I can just do it the way I used to do it.
I'm not that confident about how I record musicians, but it seemed to be sweet.
Jeff Tweedy did a song on one mic.
He just held his... Yeah, we can start doing that again.
Why do you feel the need to talk over your guests?
Why will you not allow your guests to finish their sentences and complete their thoughts before interjecting your interpretations and assumptions?
I don't know, I guess that's just the way that I have conversations.
This isn't really an interview show.
And most of the time, sometimes I sense that they're saying something they've said over and over again.
And sometimes it's just to keep everything on their toes and to keep me active in the conversation.
I'm not here to wait for them to start.
I'm not here to wait for them to answer questions or necessarily even to finish your thoughts.
I'm here to engage.
Maybe that's selfish.
I don't know.
But that's the way that I do it.
And I've always done it.
And I will continue doing it.
Because by interjecting my interpretations and assumptions, that doesn't let them off the hook.
A lot of these people have very public narratives that they've gone over and over again many times.
And so when I interject and give them the opportunity to push back or disagree or agree, a few things happen there.
I understand exactly what they're saying.
It's usually about me understanding them.
Or it's it's about me misunderstanding them, which then engages on a different level.
So that's the way I have conversations.
You know, it's annoying to some people, but it's the way that I do it.
And, you know, I'm not going to stop.
Why have you never sought out help for your eating disorder?
It makes me sad to hear you talk about it for years now.
I don't know.
I have sought out help before.
But there's just no changing it for me.
I mean, you know, I can manage it through exercise and through, you know, it's not extreme.
But sadly, it is at the core of my being in terms of how I judge myself.
And it's deep and it's fucked up.
And I do work on it every day.
I do have people that talk to me about it every day.
I do try not to base my entire self image on my perception of how I look.
But look, man, I was brought up that way from a very young age, but I'm aware of it.
I try to work against it.
And every day I try to be comfortable with myself.
So I do work on it.
Hi, Mark.
Can you talk about your audio system as you seem to be a high fidelity enthusiast?
More specifically, if you were advising a shopper at what price point breaks, price breaks, do you notice notable sound improvement and an equipment rundown?
Thanks.
Well, look, man, you know, that's all relative to your fucking dumb ears.
And I'm not saying that you, but just in general.
Some of it, it's a racket because how good are your ears?
And as you get older, how good do they remain?
And what have you done to your ears?
What does it really mean?
So I'm in the mid-range of high fidelity, which is pretty pricey.
And to be honest with you, it's kind of amazing in terms of listening.
And I listen a lot.
But the speakers I bought were very expensive.
But to be honest with you,
It took me years to get this system together, you know, with a lot of trial and error because I was willing to spend money on it.
You know, when I'd made money, I don't spend a lot of money, but I'm like, I want to have a great stereo system because I'm buying a lot of records and I enjoy it.
So I've gone through several different tube amps.
Well, not several, but a couple, mostly Rogue Audio initially was my first tube amp.
And then I had project turntables.
And then I had some spender speakers, I think the D9s.
And before that, I had toy towers.
I don't know who makes those anymore.
It's an Italian company, I think.
I just went on the referrals of people at high-end stereo stores, of which there were only a couple.
But as time went on, I was probably very obsessed with Macintosh stuff.
And so what I've landed on is I've got a Macintosh 275 preamp.
I've got the sort of retro tube C22 amplifier Macintosh.
I've got an RP6, a Rega RP6 turntable with a HANA ML...
cartridge on it.
And I've got the Sabrina X Wilson speakers.
Everything I have, the Wilsons are really of the high end.
This is all high end shit, but it's mid-level high end.
You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I mean, this stuff was thousands of dollars, but it's manageable for me.
It's just where I'm at.
in terms of being able to afford it.
I don't buy cars.
I don't buy pools.
It's what I did.
But my point to you is, I still will go into a record store and be like, why do these fucking speakers sound so good at a record store?
And also, I go back to John Fogerty when I interviewed him.
about those Credence Clearwater records and the production on them because they hold up very well.
And he said, look, we were producing them just so you know, if you were listening in a car through a AM radio speaker, when the singing was happening, it was up front.
When the guitar was happening, it was up front.
So that was the intent.
So my point is, is that any system is only as good as what your ears enjoy.
It's really a matter of preference.
You can get a fine system for a few thousand bucks.
I think upstairs in my house, I have it's I got a Marantz 2275 and I'm running.
a project turntable through it with a Sumiko Blue Point 2 cartridge through some new Klipsch Heresy speakers.
And that is a little more old style in the sense of a little more kind of 70s high fidelity, though the Klipsch have been updated and they've done a lot of work on those, but they've been around a long time.
But it's more upfront, whereas the Wilsons do this imaging business where if you sit in the center of it, all the sounds kind of float and separate before you as if they're happening...
in different parts of the room live.
And it's pretty fascinating and pretty amazing.
But again, it's all relative to what sounds good to you.
You only have your ears.
And if you want to spend $5,000 or $200,000, whatever you're spending money on still got to go into your dumb head through your dumb ears.
So it's really a subjective thing.
It's up to you.
Go in and decide on an amount of money.
But if you want to spend a few thousand bucks and want to take the time to look around, I'm sure you can find something that'll sound just great for you.
Audiophileism is not all it's racked up to be, and I wouldn't even consider myself an audiophile.
I just wanted it to sound cool and great.
Which episode do you consider to be the turning point at which you let go of ego and really opened up to the interviewee?
I think that was happening you know
pretty early on because it was, it was always a position of humility for me or, or even to be honest with you, humiliation.
So it wasn't, you know, there was no point where I was all full of ego.
I mean, I guess you could still say I have a certain amount of ego.
I, you know, I tend to engage more than, you know, most people on conversation shows, but, but, and, and I clearly am not without ego, but I would say from the get go, you know,
Doing the podcast was a default.
It was an act of desperation.
And I saw myself as an important, relevant comic, but I was not getting any work really, and I didn't have an audience.
So the actual intention of the podcast was desperation, and I didn't know what else to do with myself.
So I'm entering it.
I'm interviewing people, my peers, who are much more successful than I was at doing the thing that I wanted to do, and yet here I was interviewing people.
And it was like...
And that's one of the reasons why I am so forward with how I talk.
It's just that I needed it to be at least half about me because if this is where my voice is going to go, I better put it out there.
And that was where, so I don't know if it was egoless.
I mean, it seems to be more ego full, but I'm working from a place from the beginning of inferiority in my mind.
So I wouldn't say that, yeah, I was always open.
I'm going to spill.
So the opening up to the interviewee was not an issue.
And also I'm incredibly needy on some level and want to sort of be as cool as some of the people that I interview.
So I'm trying to enmesh with them as well.
So in terms, it's like neediness and the need to be accepted and engage in a real way with people is what opened it up.
I wouldn't say it was egoless.
And I would say that the whole thing started from what I saw as an almost shameful place.
Mark, why haven't you been to Alaska on your latest tour?
Please come to Alaska.
I lived in Anchorage for two years.
I haven't been there in a million years.
I went and did a gig in Fairbanks once many years ago.
I should go to Alaska.
That'd be interesting.
Maybe I will.
I'll look into it.
Favorite movie score?
I don't know, man.
You know, I like songs, you know, and all those Scorsese movies always have pretty good songs.
I'm not sure, like, if I've isolated a movie score that isn't, you know, just found music that I would say, like, oh, my God, that's it.
I'll work on it.
I'll pay attention.
Okay.
Hey, Mark, your guitar on Sword of Trust and Lynn's tribute was, I'm struggling with the words, so clean and heartfelt.
Has anyone ever asked you to help score a movie or play with them that we don't know about?
No, no one has asked me.
I'm not being sought out for soundtrack work.
Have you ever tried laxatives to lose weight?
Not in a committed way.
That's my mom's thing.
Has a guest ever questioned why you labeled your conversation with them as a good talk instead of a great talk?
No, not directly about their talk, but Nathan Lane caught it and said, you know, I've been watching Twitter.
If you listen to the Nathan Lane episode, you know, he gets it because I do do that.
And there are reasons, but there's never a bad one.
But he was like, you know, I noticed that you do good talking and great talk.
I'd like to have a great time.
So he caught it, but no one else has mentioned it.
If I want to do stand up, should I try to write jokes or should I just get on stage?
I'm having trouble writing jokes.
I like to write scripts and skits, but don't know how to go about writing stand up.
Thanks for everything.
Yeah, I think you do need to have a few jokes when you start out so you can know if it works.
You have to figure out how to be funny on purpose in a way that that happens over and over again.
So however you have to do that is what you have to do.
So whether it's a bit or a joke or a funny noise or a little dance, I don't care.
Bits and jokes are bits and jokes, but you should have a bit or a joke that works over and over again so you know that you can do the job of stand-up.
I mean, that's sort of the thing.
And then you kind of figure out who you are up there through your bits and jokes and you kind of kind of decide where you can push your territory out to.
You own the stage.
So what are you going to do with it?
If you just want to go up there and like bounce around inconsistently.
over and over again.
I mean, you can do whatever you want.
That's the great thing about it.
But yeah, write a couple jokes.
And if you don't know how to write stand-up, go watch some stand-ups.
It's all right there.
If you need a class, just go look at your favorite stand-ups and see what they do.
Usually there's a turn or a twist or a surprise at the end.
Figure it out.
But I kind of think you do have to write some bits or jokes to get the hang of it.
and have some consistency.
What are your top all-time five albums and movies?
I don't know.
I have a hard time with that stuff.
I don't know.
I've been alive a long time.
I've seen a lot of things, and I've listened to a lot of things.
There are records I go back to, but then you kind of get point of view-y about that.
It's like, well, I have a lot of favorite albums.
How do I make the coolest five top five?
I have a lot of favorite movies.
How do I make the coolest five?
It's more about how will people see me if I tell you these five things?
Do I need to make them eclectic?
Do I have to add a foreign film?
Should I have a country record and a hip hop record in my top five?
I'll think about it, but I generally can't answer those kind of questions.
Have you ever considered getting a dog, an animal that might actually provide you with some emotional reciprocation?
Well, this is coming from someone who doesn't understand cats and is clearly kind of douchey about it.
I don't live the life that can have a dog.
I'm away a lot.
You know, I don't really want to walk a dog.
I don't really, you know, I could let a dog out in the yard.
I don't want that much attention.
I'll grow to resent it.
You know, cats are very sort of affectionate in their own way.
With each cat, each cat is different and each cat takes time to understand and warm up to.
But once you have a connection, each cat you have a connection with is a unique relationship.
And it's half them and half you.
A dog, it's just sort of like...
You know, dog frequency, dog energy, dog love is sort of a consistent, it's sort of a frequency that they all have.
Whereas a cat, you're sort of like, all right, well, let's work this out.
Let's see if we can find some common ground here and we understand each other.
I respect that more.
And I can that's a level of emotional reciprocation that that I find reasonable.
There's boundaries to it.
There's a certain amount of tentativeness to it.
I don't need unconditional love from a slobbery thing.
I grew up with many dogs.
I have nothing against dogs.
I just don't have the lifestyle of which I could pay attention to them, and I don't want to pay that much attention to them.
I talk to my cats a lot.
I engage with them all the time, but it's reasonable, and it's not one-sided, but it's definitely got some space to it.
Were there specific guests who were particularly excited to interview, but the interview flopped or the conversation was not what you expected?
Yeah, a few, a few, but not many.
Usually I adapt and my expectations are usually, they're not huge.
I'm always just panicky about how it's gonna go and excited.
But I haven't been let down that often.
And usually when I'm in it, I'm always surprised.
So there's been a few that didn't really take off.
Or just sort of like we didn't acknowledge each other or how I do it was not engaged with.
And it's a problem.
But it doesn't happen often.
Maybe once or twice.
Sorry, I can't dish on that because that's just the reality of it.
A lot of times they're not what I expected, but all the time, every time, I think ultimately, even if a conversation isn't what I expected it to be, it will reveal something about that person and usually about me as well.
Yeah, even if it's difficult or it doesn't seem to sort of land or we don't meet in the middle...
You know, after an hour, you can kind of say like, all right, well, that guy does that or that woman is like that or he or she or they are like that.
You know, that's the kind of thing that is.
And they might be totally different on another show.
You know, not everybody likes me and I don't like everybody.
And sometimes you can feel that.
If you ever did retire, which would you quit first, the podcast or stand up?
I don't know.
I can't really I don't know how all this unfolds.
And I don't know if retirement or or, you know, changing my life is a reality because I'm a compulsive guy.
And, you know, I'm doing more stand up than I've ever done in my life.
I do two of these a week.
I talk to a lot of people.
We're now doing bonus content.
I'm acting.
I don't know.
I don't know how to take any space.
I might surprise myself and just take a few months off.
And feel like, okay, I succeeded in doing that.
I earned that.
Maybe I'm doing a lot of this just to stay engaged, to stay moving, to not fall into myself.
I don't know.
There's a lot of things I don't know.
But I think...
With stand-up, that's what I set out to do, and that was always my love, and it still is, and it's always been my dream, and I do pretty good with it, and I've got a nice audience to it, but I want it to remain vital.
So it always comes down to the stand-up.
It's like, how can I continue to make this interesting?
Am I saying new things?
Are we learning?
Is this...
You know, am I seeing in a unique way and sharing that in a funny way to the best of my ability?
That kind of stuff.
So so that, you know, talking to people is nourishing for me, you know, whether it's on a mic or it's not on a mic.
But the podcast, like, it's very challenging.
And, you know, so I don't know.
I don't know what the future of that is, especially in terms of how comedy in general is going.
how long would you want to keep the WTF podcast going?
Do you ever see a time when you wouldn't want to interview people anymore?
Or would you say this is a vocation at this point?
Well, I like talking to people, but it's a vocation.
Sure.
But then also it's like, how many people, more people can I interview and how does it stay?
What it is, what it was always meant to be.
It still holds, you know, I'm doing it the same way I've always done it.
And, and, and I would say the quality of the thing is not diminished at all.
If you listen to recent episodes, Rosie Perez and, uh, Andrew Garfield and, uh,
You know, they're still engaged emotional and human conversations.
And whether it's a vocation or not, I think it's good for me and it's good for them and it's good for people listening.
So I don't know.
I'll keep it going as long as we can do that.
Do you or have you ever listened back to old intros to revisit different parts of your life?
I haven't.
I don't.
I barely remember what I say, and I barely remember conversations.
Brendan McDonald knows them a lot better than me because he listens to them over and over again as he edits them.
But for me, it's just this one-time thing, and it just goes away the day afterwards.
So I have to, more so than not, I won't listen to old intros, but I'll ask Brendan about things.
Like, what was I doing then?
What was going on in my life then?
If Brendan goes, my memory bank's gone.
How do you know Mike Moon, the Just Coffee guy?
I briefly lived, worked on a farm he co-owns and was just curious.
When I first heard you mention him during an ad, I had to do a double take.
Mike Moon and JustCoffee.coop were the first sponsors we ever had back when we did a streaming show before streaming was even popular.
Break Room Live done out of the Air America Break Room was me and Sam Seder doing a daily live streaming show before it was even easy to stream.
Like, you know, hardly anybody watched it.
And we did it for a year every day.
And Mike Moon was our sponsor and our only sponsor.
And we did it for coffee.
He would send us coffee and maybe 200 bucks a month or something.
You know, and they were our only sponsor.
And we taped just coffee stuff all over the place in the break room.
And we're so excited to get free coffee.
That's why.
So when we started the podcast, we kept their rate the same.
And I still get, you know, a couple of bags of just coffee every month.
and we still do the ad occasionally.
Even when we were getting big money for ads, they were grandfathered in at like 400 a month for years.
And again, I had just coffee this morning because they send it to me.
I never have to buy coffee.
It's great.
And I met Mike a couple of times.
He gave me a tour when he was over there.
But I guess he's moved on.
Yeah, I guess, I don't know, a farm.
Yeah, I don't know what he's up to.
Have any guests had severe allergic reactions to the cats?
Yes.
But it's weird because they were never in the garage, but Ed Helms had such a severe allergy.
Go find that.
If you're listening to this, you can listen to all of them.
Go listen to Ed Helms.
I almost let that guy die.
I don't think I took it seriously, but it was pretty terrible.
It was pretty bad.
I feel bad about that because I just, I was like, I really wanted to get the full hour in and he was like having a hard time breathing.
Yeah.
Some people are allergic, but not so allergic.
There's never been a cat out here in either garage, really.
But some people are so allergic that it kind of like maybe through the vent system happened.
Mark, what is the best fiction book by a Jewish writer you've ever read?
You said on the pod that nobody cares about Roth anymore and how bleak some of his final novels were.
I was wondering if you have any recommendations.
Yeah.
All those Roth books are great.
I've never read a Roth book that I didn't like.
And they get heavy.
And there's several different series of books within the Roth catalog that are connected.
But I'm a big fan of Sabbath's Theater, which is sort of this outlier and kind of a weird fucking book about this bitter puppeteer revolutionary.
And it's one of my favorites.
But all the Zuckerman books, and I like all those books.
And I like, you know, my buddy Sam Lipsight's writing great books.
I just read a galley for his new book that's going to be great.
It's funny.
But Roth, I definitely read most of the Roth stuff, and it's always good.
But if you could dig up Sabbath Theater, it's pretty great.
How big is the Marc Maron team?
Is it literally just you and Brendan?
And was it hard at first to delegate to your team?
Thank you, Marc.
The team.
The team has always been me and Brendan.
Me and Brendan are 50-50 partners in this adventure, and it's always been that way.
So in terms of the podcast, that's who the team is.
Now, look, if you ask Brendan this, he could really be more specific.
I mean, obviously...
We've worked with Midroll over the years in terms of advertising.
We've worked with Stitcher.
Now we're working with Acast.
So they are part of the team in terms of getting this thing out and making money with it and whatever.
But in terms of the creative team, that's always been me and Brendan.
And my management team also has always been there for me and helps out as well.
Uh, Kelly von Valkenberg is, um, uh, my point person and kind of organizes a lot of my life, uh, in terms of not so much the podcast, but, but in, in terms of the Mark Maron team, you know, I've got Avalon, I got David Martin, my manager, and Joe Schwartz is my booking agent.
Kelly von Valkenberg is my manager who I work with the most.
And also, you know, I've got a part-time assistant, you know, it used to be, uh, Ashley Barnhill and then, uh, Frank Capello and then, uh,
We had Walter, Walter Heyman.
And I've had I've had a few different assistants over the time that were just sort of part time, not full time.
Now I've got a new agent and I've had agents before John Burnham.
But, you know, there's a lot of people on my side of it who I don't deal with day to day.
But day to day, I'm dealing with Brendan.
I'm dealing with Kelly.
And day to day, Brendan's dealing with, you know, the other side of the business, the numbers, the ACAS people, the advertising stuff.
So in terms of delegating, look, we were never in this racket to create a network or to produce.
So Brendan and I,
run our own ship with the podcast.
So there's not a lot of delegating.
We are both either latent or full-on control freaks in terms of the quality of work we want to do.
And so we've kept it with us and we've done okay.
But in terms of delegating, it's really more partnerships with people and people working with us to facilitate and manifest the results.
Mark, I love what you do.
I've been listening since the beginning.
I love how whatever you're feeling comes through in what you're making.
My question is, why were you so antagonistic with Gerard Carmichael?
I loved listening to the conversation in both of your opinions.
You challenged him on almost everything he said.
Always fascinated to be inside your head.
Thank you for everything.
Because I just couldn't sit there and have him present himself as if he was inventing things that he wasn't.
And also, he clearly needed to be challenged.
because he disagreed with everything I said.
So I needed to challenge him in order to understand what exactly he was getting at and what he was talking about.
My fundamental problem with him was the idea that he was the only guy telling the truth and doing it in a way that no one has ever done before was ridiculous to me.
People have done it that way before and done it better.
So I was just dealing with his ego and his excitement and whatever his vision was, but I needed to push back so I understood.
Because I wasn't, you know, I didn't understand.
So whether it was antagonistic or not, I wanted to understand.
And I couldn't just let certain things sit.
And I couldn't let statements that implied that, you know, he was doing it differently or better than anybody else.
Just lay there because it's not true.
Look, I appreciate his, you know, commitment and his creativity.
But, you know.
He's not the first at anything.
Since watching Marin, I've been curious about the decision to have your character relapse.
Can you talk about that plot decision and how you felt depicting it?
I thought I did a very good job with that.
And I just look, you know, we weren't making a ton of money.
From IFC.
And, you know, it wasn't really money for me, just money to make decisions for the show and build the show out and, you know, kind of keep it evolving.
You know, they really kept us at a very low budget.
And, you know, the last season I decided was the last season.
So instead of just doing what we were doing for the first three and just do my life and having guests over, which could have went on forever, I said, well, let's fuck it.
Let's let's do it.
Thankfully, a path not traveled and just have me relapse and move through me.
what that might be like in a fictional way.
And I thought I did a pretty good job with what it would have been like and the arc of kind of getting back on my feet.
But it was really a decision to end the show in an interesting, completely fictional way.
Like, none of that has happened.
So it was really a challenge to create something that wasn't based in a reality but could be a reality and just sort of follow that through.
It was primarily because I wanted the last season to be different.
And I felt okay about how I depicted it.
What's stopping you from becoming a vegan since you're obviously an animal lover and hate watching videos of animal abuse?
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, I should.
You know, it's just a big lifestyle change.
You know, even like I'm so tired of meat and so full of meat and just...
Yeah.
Will you ever consider performing in... Will you ever... Will you consider performing in Israel in the near future, like 2023?
I don't know, man.
You know, Israel... Travel, international... It all makes me nervous.
And, you know, I just... I don't feel comfortable usually very well when I travel, especially, you know, to completely unique countries.
I've been...
You know, and Israel makes me nervous.
I don't know what my audience would be.
And it's just a fear thing.
And it's not even a judgment thing.
You know, and I get nervous, you know, whenever I travel abroad.
But Israel, for some reason, makes me more nervous.
We'll see.
Maybe.
Maybe.
So thanks for all those questions.
Some good ones.
Hope the answers were fine.
It all seemed very on the level and earnest.
Happy to answer them.
We'll do it again next month, probably.
Yeah, why not?
Next month.