BONUS Welcome to WTF+ from Marc and Brendan
Marc:Well, here we are.
Marc:This is our first.
Marc:Am I going to set this up?
Marc:Is that what we're doing?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why don't you do that?
Marc:Well, I mean, this is me and Brendan McDonald, the producer of WTF, talking about what is exciting and new with our WTF Plus podcast.
Marc:Since we've shifted to a new host that is ACAST.
Marc:So I don't know when it started that we talk about the, why is it plus?
Marc:It used to be premium, now it's plus.
Marc:And everybody's like, I don't know.
Marc:I guess that's just a new language.
Marc:That's plus.
Marc:Plus.
Marc:Hey, you know, hey, I'm getting more.
Marc:More.
Marc:Because God knows everyone needs more and we need more people talking more.
Marc:We need more content.
Marc:So we're contributing to the great content pile by doing these things.
Marc:So the deal with WTF Plus now is that with this shift to the new platform, we're going to make, I don't know, like 800 plus episodes for free.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You even did it.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Plus.
Marc:I know.
Marc:What happened to Extreme?
Marc:Can we call it WTF Extreme?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With just an X. Yeah.
Marc:No E. WTF X. T-R-E-M-E.
Guest:WTF.
Guest:More Mark.
Guest:That's literally what we call this in the platform.
Guest:I don't think you've seen it yet.
Guest:It says that you can buy in two tiers.
Guest:One is the archives and one is the full Marin.
Guest:The full Marin.
Marc:Oh, that's rough.
Marc:There's some women in my past that have experienced a full Marin.
Yeah.
Marc:And I wouldn't say it was a good experience for them overall.
Marc:So you're going to get the full Marin in bits and pieces, which is really the way to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyone listening to this right now is only getting the full Marin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're getting the full Marin, but it's like I said, it's not going to last forever and you don't have to live with it.
Marc:But there's going to be like 800 episodes for free.
Marc:Now, I had an issue with this recently talking to that fella from Vulture where, you know, we set up this interview and he's asking me questions about specific interviews from like years ago.
Marc:And I don't think that people know this.
Marc:And I think it's important to tell them because like I could rediscover some of these episodes along with the audience who has never heard them because once I do it,
Marc:Once I talk into the microphone, either with a person or by myself, that's my memory of it.
Marc:You're the guy, Brendan is, the guy that puts the thing together.
Marc:So he spends more time with my voice than I do.
Marc:So anyone asking me to remember the Bob Zamuda podcast, I mean, I remember being in the garage with him and thinking like, this can't be true.
Marc:But I don't know if I remember specifics of everything.
Marc:I remember the donut shop story.
Marc:Oh, that was a story he told about Norman Wexler, right?
Marc:Norman Wexler.
Marc:Yeah, the producer, right?
Guest:A writer, a writer.
Guest:He might have produced some stuff.
Guest:Is that one of the ones that people can listen to?
Guest:Of course, yeah.
Guest:I mean, so here's the thing.
Guest:If you're listening to this, that means you're subscribing to WTF Plus.
Guest:And there are episodes for you that not everyone can hear.
Guest:But from 501 to the present, and that's just going to keep going,
Guest:everybody can now hear these.
Guest:You listening to this are getting them without any ad breaks, but everybody has access to them on all podcast apps right now, which is another thing that we thought was real attractive about this move.
Guest:Everybody can just listen to these episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts.
Guest:Whatever you're listening to, these episodes are there.
Guest:What we realized is that's kind of daunting.
Guest:There's a lot of content in there,
Guest:For many years now, there's more this is more this is plus this is plus okay But just like you were saying mark plus has its limits when you when everything melds together and merges into one experience so from time to time I think we'll do we'll continue to do this have mark and I on the mics here where we can talk about specific episodes you might want to go and listen to whether they're relevant to today whether they're relevant to where marks at in his life and
Guest:This is just a good way for you to know what's in there.
Guest:What are some of the buried treasures?
Guest:What are some of the things you might not know?
Guest:And I know that not all podcast apps are the same in terms of finding these things.
Guest:So to kind of cut down on your scrolling and to also kind of be uniform in how you search for these things, any podcast app, if you just search WTF and the person's name in the search,
Guest:the episode will come up.
Guest:Like you don't have to worry about some apps where episodes are numbered, some apps where they're not.
Guest:Just go search, you know, WTF and Jane Fonda and the Jane Fonda episode will pop up.
Guest:Or any of them.
Guest:So like, let's play games though.
Guest:Let's see what I remember.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:So I guess the interesting thing to me was that you told me that when you spoke with the reporter from Vulture that like just some things were kind of like, you know, melding together.
Guest:And, you know, the person was asking you, you know, did you remember certain things about your intros even?
Guest:And...
Guest:It's like intros.
Guest:I don't know that, you know, from the moment you're done what you said.
Marc:Sometimes.
Marc:Also, the weird thing about thinking about the entire arc of the show and if people are just starting to listen to it is my personal life over.
Marc:I mean, geez, man, we started this coming out of a divorce and then I must have I must have gone through at least four relationships.
Marc:on the mics before I stopped talking about them so explicitly after one of them.
Marc:And obviously, death, Trump, some successes, failures, jokes.
Marc:I mean, the ongoing narrative of me is honestly more interesting, I think, to people other than me than it is to me in retrospect.
Marc:But it's all documented.
Marc:I should really listen to some of this stuff.
Marc:It would probably help me.
Marc:It may help.
Marc:It may make you cry.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Make me cry.
Marc:But I don't always see progress.
Marc:I do feel better.
Marc:But I remember shifts in decisions we made about how I talk about things.
Marc:I remember there became a point where we had to address the realities of COVID, of politics, of things that really wasn't
Marc:what we were tapped into.
Marc:I mean, for years, we made a sort of promise or an understanding that this was a show about my life and about the life of others, not a show in reaction to current events unless absolutely necessary.
Marc:And it became absolutely necessary for four plus years.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, and it's, I think one of the harsh realities we had to learn, and we're still kind of dealing with it, is that extremism doesn't take a break
Guest:Just because you feel like there's some progress being made on a social front, on a political front, it doesn't mean you've defeated radicalism.
Guest:And I think that was a big issue for us coming into the Trump years was, oh yeah, we may have focused a little too much on ourselves.
Marc:Well, that's true.
Marc:That's collectively.
Marc:People who sort of took the breather.
Marc:I did stand-up material around that.
Marc:But what strikes me in thinking about this on a day-to-day basis is some of the work we did previous to the podcast years ago at Air America.
Marc:The narrative I had going there about Christian fascism, about the sort of tooling away at state governments.
Marc:And that was 2004.
Marc:And all that, that was how many years ago is that 17, 18 years ago?
Marc:And, you know, they've pulled it off.
Marc:But it's not like that.
Marc:We we haven't been talking about this actively or at least some of us.
Marc:But you're right.
Marc:Over the Obama years, it was it was sort of it settled back into something else, something in the background.
Marc:But what I'm finding in general and what frustrates me and the reason I continue to talk about it and have always talked about it, no matter who's president.
Marc:is that most people are sort of elaborately shallow most people even people that we think are smart are sort of like they're taking information you know very you know small packets of information bits and pieces of information with no context and a lot of people even the smart ones know nothing so there there's some part of me i don't know why i'm talking about that now but there is some part of me that that feels like a certain level of activism is necessary
Guest:Yeah, well, and what's interesting in terms of the intros of the show, I think we were fortunate to have a grounding in how to do kind of political or even persuasion-based radio and presentation.
Guest:And that has kind of...
Guest:resurrected itself at certain times where we have felt the need to do that.
Guest:And the time that really jumped out in my mind, and I think it'd be very interesting for people to go back and listen to this, is it just coincidentally happens to be the Michael Moore episode.
Guest:So if you go and listen to that episode, the intro of that episode consists of Mark talking about some recent attack on
Guest:Amy Schumer online by trolls and misogynists.
Guest:And they kind of looped us into it by taking audio of Mark talking about a joke that he did that was similar to one that Amy did.
Guest:And they edited the audio to make it sound like Mark was saying she stole his joke.
Guest:And that just really made us kind of like put on the brakes and
Guest:of everything we were doing and say, hang on, this has to be addressed because it is getting bad.
Guest:And we had seen it getting bad for a very long time.
Guest:And it just so happens that if you listen to that intro, you hear the seeds of Trumpism.
Guest:You hear the seeds of the alt-right.
Guest:You hear, frankly, a kind of online version going on of what's happening today across the country with fascist movements.
Marc:Well, those were the we've talked about that before.
Marc:Those were the kids that that Bannon radicalized and then later were folded into a more old timey network of white supremacy.
Marc:Those were some of the most interesting interviews for me, too.
Marc:In recent times were the guys that were able.
Marc:What's his name?
Marc:Barron.
Marc:What was that guy's name?
Marc:Dale Barron.
Marc:That's B.E.R.A.N.
Marc:If you want to search for that episode.
Marc:And the guy who made the movie about Pepe, you know, that stuff was interesting to me to flesh this out.
Guest:Yeah, Andrew Marantz was a reporter from The New Yorker who studied these subcultures and we talked to him as well.
Marc:It became important because it...
Marc:It's hard to contextualize all the fronts of which this is happening.
Marc:And obviously, you know, we did a lot of entertaining interviews interspersed with this.
Marc:But I think it was in the Amy Schumer episode or me talking about Amy on the Michael Moore intro is where I coined the phrase unfuckable hate nerds.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah, it definitely is.
Guest:And, you know, I think that has kind of come to define a certain pushback that you've had in your, not just your podcasts, but in your stage work.
Guest:And generally in your life, you know, this feeling of you're finding there's a lack of people pushing back against this momentum of like rank misogyny, sexism, and just general...
Guest:disdain for fellow people that manifests itself as somehow comedy or just talking it the way it is.
Marc:I have a different understanding of it recently.
Marc:I'm not even sure why it all happened, but there is something different is informing my empathy and evolving around how women are
Marc:treated and framed and fucked with and abused and denied a voice.
Marc:It's just in general, diversity in general.
Guest:Well, that's interesting.
Guest:Do you think that that could be directly traced to you having conversations on this show?
Guest:I think of a few that jump out in my mind, and it's not to...
Guest:I'm not saying you were blind to the struggles that these interviews might have illuminated, but the actual sitting and talking to someone who has experienced it.
Guest:I'm thinking about Melanie Linsky, who talked to you about just how overwhelming...
Guest:the role of an eating disorder played in her life and in terms of her self-esteem and self-awareness.
Guest:I'm thinking of Geena Davis, who you talked to about wage issues and in general opportunities that women get in the industry.
Guest:Like I said, I don't think these are episodes that kind of
Guest:that revealed the way of the world to you.
Guest:But I think that largely doing this for 13 years and just having a steady stream of people cross in front of your path, sitting across from you in a microphone who have a different lived experience, it has to make a difference.
Marc:Yeah, well, I think from the beginning of the show that my capacity to actively listen and engage in a sort of almost strange immediate codependency and empathy with people, which is not something I was great at.
Marc:I was pretty self-involved.
Marc:And keeping an open mind, I think that...
Marc:The one thing that happens in almost every interview is I am very emotionally available and this stuff is landing in a different way.
Marc:So no matter what I knew, the combination between being open to somebody else's experience in an empathetic way and just listening, you know, in a deeper way, it plants it.
Marc:It situates it differently in your in your mind and in your heart.
Marc:And it has been over the last.
Marc:Five or six years.
Marc:Certainly, I I knew what was going on to a degree.
Marc:But I thought I think also in the way that my relationships have shifted in my own understanding of of how I treat women or I have treated women or I thought about things comedically, you know, for me.
Marc:I'm not a guy that was entirely innocent in terms of jokes that were dicey.
Marc:It was something that I did.
Marc:It was something we all did.
Marc:I was definitely kind of compelled and driven and more shocking and trying to start a certain amount of shit at different points in my life and stand up.
Marc:But I became more sensitive through these conversations and through talking to a bunch of different people.
Marc:I mean, even just in terms of
Marc:marginalized people, and in terms of people who struggle with mental illness and all this stuff, I knew about it, but I had a certain guard up.
Marc:I wasn't, I don't think, hurting these people, but I think I was protecting myself from their pain because I didn't want to overempathize or feel it or make it mine.
Marc:But now those boundaries seem to have settled in, and I'm able to, especially recently, even before the Roe v. Wade decision,
Marc:Something different was happening for me.
Marc:And I also think because, you know, Lynn passed and my emotional boundaries and how I approach, you know, women in general has shifted a great deal since I was younger, since her death and since, you know, before since how I was like before I was with her.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think people, if they want to kind of get a sense of that listening to this, there's some really interesting episodes that we did that are in a more recent archive position because they were done during COVID.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:I've noticed that it was a time where I was back on the Zoom with you while you were having these interviews.
Guest:And it was just interesting to see you talking to people, you know, mediated through this screen, like you and I are talking right now, and yet you wind up connecting with them just as strongly as if they were sitting there with you, like Jodie Foster.
Marc:That episode was crazy to me.
Marc:I mean, it was great.
Marc:Like, you know, when you realize, like,
Marc:She made herself available.
Marc:There was sort of, initially when we were doing the Zooms, I was nervous because I wouldn't be able, I didn't know if we would be able to have the same emotional connection.
Marc:And certainly there's the spontaneity that's a little trickier to deal with because sometimes there's a little bit of a sound delay or whatever.
Marc:So it's not as, what's the word I want?
Marc:Visceral or like it's- Present.
Marc:Present, but it's like here, I can smell somebody across, and I do.
Marc:I'm very sensitive.
Marc:Yeah, tangible.
Marc:Yeah, I'm very sensitive to the smell of soaps people use.
Marc:Even when I hike, it's ridiculous.
Marc:Like, a guy walks by me, I'm like, really?
Marc:But, I mean, I'm not judging my guests.
Marc:But especially, like, the older gentleman, it's sort of like, what did you have on that is still in my garage two days later?
Marc:Oh, Old Spice.
Marc:Something.
Marc:That sticks around.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:But, you know, it could be deodorant.
Marc:But the point being...
Marc:Is that most of the time we were able to really do something interesting with Zoom.
Marc:Like even the only time it became tricky is when you don't know that there's someone else in the room.
Marc:Like, you know, with Cate Blanchett, it was like her kid was standing, like literally standing next to her the entire time.
Marc:And Nicole Kidman, I mean, Keith Urban had to come help set her up.
Guest:But those are some of the great moments.
Guest:And I'm so glad that we have them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That like you could have these people in their lives in those moments.
Guest:Like, yeah, you know, she's just going to ask her husband to help her with the tech.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that there's none of the one benefit of it that we couldn't have counted on was that.
Marc:They're not out in the car.
Marc:They don't have three people with them.
Marc:They don't have makeup on from just doing a TV appearance.
Marc:They haven't done 90 things that they've driven around for.
Marc:They're not dehydrated.
Marc:It's like, you know, Kristen Bell came over here.
Marc:She was starving.
Marc:She needed to eat.
Marc:And fortunately, she liked the food I had leftovers.
Marc:So but but the comfort level of Jodie Foster at her home, that was like that interview is an all timer, man.
Marc:And, you know, just talking to her and she about stuff she never talked about.
Marc:You know, the period after the assassination attempt on Reagan and it was Hinckley, right?
Guest:Yeah, and you know, we should tell people we didn't know when we did the interview, they didn't say anything to us.
Guest:And I only found this out after the fact that she has a history of walking out of interviews if the interviewer brings up John Hinckley.
Guest:Not only just not engaging with it, she would leave.
Guest:And and so I mean, that's a that's a kind of error on our part to not know that.
Guest:But we didn't know that.
Guest:And you asked it and it was fine.
Guest:Like I have a way of doing that.
Marc:It's kind of weird.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like I like I I'm sure, you know, what do you think it is?
Marc:Well, when I know I'm about to do something dicey, I kind of half throw it away.
Marc:You know, like there's a thing that sort of, well, you had that problem with the guy.
Marc:And then you just see, you know what I mean?
Marc:Like just a taste.
Marc:Don't stern it.
Marc:Just kind of toss it aside.
Marc:Like it's on the way to another thing, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And see, you know, test the, you know, see where it's at.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, I always wonder, did you ever develop that?
Guest:Did you have a moment where you thought, that's the way I have to do it because the other way doesn't work?
Guest:Because I do remember there was the interview you did with Weird Al Yankovic, and you just, in the midst of talking to him about something, you just said, how did that happen when your parents died, which is a fairly public thing, that his parents had died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their home, and he was like, oh,
Guest:So, wow, we're going there, huh?
Guest:He was very taken back by it.
Guest:And I don't think I've ever heard you do that again.
Guest:And I guess I've always wondered, did you make a shift after that or it's just a natural progression?
Marc:Well, I think it's an evolution of methods.
Marc:I think the lesson I learned with Weird Al is it doesn't matter if it's a known thing.
Marc:You still there, you know, you can't just act like you're in that moment.
Marc:He doesn't assume I know that I'm just going to bring it up just because it's on his wiki page.
Marc:And also because something's on someone's wiki page doesn't mean the world knows it.
Marc:It means somehow it got on there.
Marc:And that's one thing I've learned a lot about, like, you know,
Marc:the kind of getting information about people and, and knowing just because it's out there doesn't mean, you know, everybody who's listening has looked that person up to find out these details.
Marc:No one has.
Marc:So for most people, it's new information, but I just found like a lot of times when I do that stuff, uh,
Marc:I kind of sense where they're going.
Marc:Like with Rosie Perez recently, I could feel that she wanted to talk.
Marc:But I always kind of look to the side or I look at my notes and I do it in a tone like I'm just kind of moving on to the next thing and I'm like, oh, okay, so you want to go talk about that.
Marc:So I think it was just out of respect and also the idea that I'm not going – I don't really love –
Marc:that kind of confrontation or that blindsiding.
Marc:It's just not like, it's not what I do.
Marc:I know people like, some people like to listen to that and that's what some radio is, but that wasn't, we were evolving out of that from the beginning.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And frankly, it's a thing that is detrimental to us when it's used without our blessing, frankly.
Guest:Like when someone listens to an hour-long conversation that you have and they excerpt a sensational part of that conversation and use it as a headline, it hurts our show.
Guest:People are less likely to do the show.
Guest:I want to make that clear.
Marc:Yeah, especially because it's not just the common complaint.
Marc:of taking something out of context it's that we didn't solicit that you know that's not what we're doing i mean if that happens which it did with sam elliott it's like i i really thought he was gonna say like i love that movie i i mean i right it's like i asked him because i liked the movie and i thought like well maybe me and sam can bond about a western and then like i was like wow okay
Marc:It was such an innocent question.
Marc:I could not believe it.
Marc:And then all of a sudden in the eyes of quick bait world and the press, it's like I set them up somehow.
Marc:And I'm like, I did nothing.
Guest:No.
Guest:And in fact, we wouldn't want that to be a thing we do because it's I'll be perfectly honest is we've been told there are guests who won't come on the show now because of that interview.
Guest:So it doesn't help us.
Marc:And it's always such a good interview that, you know, like that guy, like, it's not like, you know, he's a well of entertaining stories, but like I was able to put his life in context, you know, with the work he did.
Marc:And it was a good interview.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that happened the last five minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was also it was like in a couple of weeks removed from Peter Dinklage, you know, again, just speaking with you, having a conversation.
Guest:And he had a problem with the, you know, new Snow White movie.
Guest:And then it got all click baited and he, you know, got run through the ringer of being like anti Disney or whatever bullshit it was.
Guest:But like, yeah, no bueno for us when that stuff happens.
Marc:But that was actually, you know, that was a kind of activist thing he did.
Guest:That he said, yeah, he wanted it out there, but then it just gets put on us that we're like the controversial show.
Marc:Because people talk candidly for a while.
Marc:Well, that's the thing that you hear in almost all the interviews.
Marc:And the thing about the Zoom period...
Marc:I became able to do it.
Marc:There were some very challenging moments.
Marc:James Caan was challenging because this is an old guy who's like, he doesn't even know what camera to look at.
Marc:He's too close.
Marc:You remember?
Guest:I don't know if you watched that one.
Guest:Yeah, and his stuff kept running out of battery, whether it was his earphones were running out of battery, and then the phone ran out of battery, and he's got some guy there.
Guest:He keeps calling over.
Guest:He's coughing.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:the coughing that was a ball though i did like even though there were technical problems with that it was fun to watch it happening right out of the gate like you know when i made some sort of so you're he's like oh this guy's a genius huh this guy's a real remember like he busted my balls like within seconds that's what you want that's what you want sunny to do
Marc:Yeah, no, that was great.
Marc:He would probably have me over to the house.
Marc:I could probably go over there once a week if he wanted me to.
Guest:Well, that's something I kind of wanted to land on here because we're talking about all these things that are part of your evolution and how you've learned to listen to people differently.
Guest:You've learned to experience people differently.
Guest:But then there are people like James Caan was someone who was talked about for a very long time on this show.
Guest:Basically, anytime you had a Jew on, you were like, hey, James Caan, he's the toughest Jew, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:There are two kinds.
Marc:There's a James Kahn Jew.
Marc:And then, yeah, it's my theory of the kind of... The math Jew.
Marc:The math Jew and the alpha Jew, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and that's been true.
Guest:I mean, everybody kind of knows your history on this show, speaking about SNL and Lauren, and then the Lauren episode happened.
Guest:I think if you're buying a subscription to this, you've probably heard that episode.
Guest:You've probably heard the Keith Richards episode.
Guest:We just replayed it recently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, like, I think there have been a lot of people on this show that, you know, are in the archives that you can go back and listen to that really were, you know, for you, it was really something to get to spend time with these people, like, just in any way, let alone have an hour-long conversation with them.
Guest:Like, it just, you know, is part of your life to have, you know, Iggy Pop in your life.
Guest:And then here he is on your back porch taking his shirt off and feeling the...
Marc:The breeze.
Marc:It was crazy.
Marc:It was crazy to have some of those people over my house just to see Iggy come in like, hey.
Marc:You're wondering, is he going to keep his shirt on?
Marc:And sure enough, right before we go in the garage, he's just pulling the shirt off.
Marc:And there he was sitting right in front of me with no shirt.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:And I think the interesting thing was you got to talk to Jim.
Guest:Like, he was there to talk to you.
Guest:Yeah, you talked to the real version of that guy.
Guest:He wasn't putting on air.
Marc:Well, that's what Rollins told me.
Marc:He said, you know, there's Iggy and there's Jim, you know, and Jim is like, and I don't think Iggy is going to do an hour interview, you know, but Jim.
Marc:And, you know, it's sort of amazing the depth of memory and how sharp he was and how on top of it.
Marc:But you start to think about these guys.
Guest:you know who have whatever press they have but if you're in the game as long as them and you're still as vital as he is and he still do the kind of output and the work he does they can't be dumb and they've got to they must have figured out a way to take care of themselves that episode was pretty early on too you know that that was episode 400 so it's actually if you're subscribing to this you're the only ones who can listen to it it's a it's a exclusive to uh the the the plus side of things here and um you know
Guest:That was something, like, we were realizing, you know, four years into doing this show, like, oh, we can get through, you know, a certain level of a famous person, you know, and really talk to them.
Guest:Like, really have a conversation with a person who is known to the world.
Guest:But, like, how many other times did William Friedkin come in somewhere and sat down for three hours and talked about his whole life and career?
Guest:And there were so many callbacks.
Marc:I like how he's sort of aware of the idea of fate.
Marc:And in his personal narrative, he's got these things that happen that he kind of locks onto.
Marc:That was crazy, man.
Guest:Yeah, it was wild.
Guest:It's one, you know, have had people bring that episode up to me years afterwards.
Guest:Like, oh my God, that episode with William Friedkin, that's amazing.
Guest:Well, I think we've probably given people a lot of places to go back and settle and listen.
Guest:And frankly, you know,
Guest:For a lot of you who are members now to this, you've probably listened to a lot of the show.
Guest:Maybe you've heard these before.
Guest:I think these are good episodes to give a re-listen to if you've already heard them.
Guest:I think we've cited a lot of shows that probably have a different context now or have maybe taken on different shape in the current environment.
Marc:I just want you to read me some more names from early on.
Marc:Like who's 502?
Marc:Do you have to list there?
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Episode 502 is Chris Cornell.
Guest:Whoa, man.
Guest:So we've played that one twice because he's passed away.
Guest:Did he sing?
Guest:He did not.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:He was one that didn't sing.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:That was like, you know, he was on pretty good behavior.
Marc:There's a lot more darkness there than we realized.
Marc:But he was intense, man.
Marc:He seemed like a little angry guy to me, a little bit angry.
Guest:Well, I'm looking right here at the list and episode 498 is RuPaul, which was a perfect example of one of those things where that's a person whose life you just didn't know and didn't have any experience with anything like that.
Guest:It really opened you up to the different types of conversations you could have over the next 800 episodes.
Marc:That's a great episode, that one.
Marc:What's like, okay, what's number 525?
Marc:525 is Alec Sulkin.
Marc:Oh yeah, the writer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who I used to just, I just used to like his Twitter stuff and I'm like, I want to talk to this guy.
Marc:I think when we spoke to him, he had been doing Family Guy for a while.
Marc:He just had a tweet that I could never forget.
Marc:He said, woke up with a bad case of dad dick today.
Marc:And I don't even know what it meant, but it's like at some point you look at your dick and realize it's getting older as well.
Marc:And that was really what I'm like, I got to talk to that guy.
Marc:Who's like, who's 550?
Guest:Oh, 550 is a really great episode.
Guest:That's like a wild thing to just land on at random.
Guest:Basically, anyone and everyone should listen to this one.
Guest:Ali Brosh.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I love her.
Guest:Yeah, I always think about that episode and like literally say, I hope that person is doing well.
Marc:Well, you know, she came out with a second book and I interviewed her for her book event.
Marc:She's okay.
Marc:I mean, she's not much different, but she's okay.
Guest:That's a great episode, you know, in terms of the kind of conversations we have around mental health.
Guest:That book is great.
Guest:What's the name of it again?
Guest:Hyperbole and a Half.
Marc:It is great.
Marc:Both of the books are great, especially if you have that type of mental health thing.
Marc:You know, a depressive sort of manic, you know, like a bipolar thing, but also a hypersensitivity thing.
Marc:I remember I was so...
Marc:We didn't know if we could get her.
Marc:It was hard to get hold of her.
Marc:You know, she lived in a cabin almost somewhere.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like up in the Midwest somewhere, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she doesn't do a lot of public appearances because, you know, she has a lot of struggles with being in public.
Marc:Fragile.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:God, what a great one.
Guest:Yeah, that is a great one.
Guest:It's a fun game.
Guest:Sometimes there's episodes where when we're done, I know in the moment that talk is going to help people, and it does.
Guest:Okay, let's do another one.
Guest:What's 605?
Guest:605 is Tommy Davidson.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Guest:Which is very funny because 604 was Terry Gross, which was like one of the like pivotal moments in the history of the show.
Guest:In the history of broadcasting.
Guest:And one of probably the great moments of your life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Pivotal moment in the history of broadcasting that she asked me to interview her live.
Marc:That was like, you know, I... Interviewing Terry was interesting because...
Marc:There was like, there's not much public, there's not much information on her.
Marc:There wasn't at that time.
Marc:She didn't do interviews, really.
Marc:And I had to sort of look at, and I know how to do this instinctively, and sometimes you and I talk about it, but I had to look at what little there was
Marc:uh, of her biographical information that was in the world and find the, the spot where there was a blind spot and, and, and figure out like what happened in those years.
Marc:Like, you know, cause it was really like, she did this and then she did that.
Marc:And then she did this and this year, this year, this year.
Marc:And I'm like, Whoa, Whoa.
Marc:So I had to find this weird window, uh,
Marc:to get into to figure out like to sort of, you know, kind of kind of bring out who she was.
Marc:That was an interesting thing.
Marc:That was almost like some sort of gladiator shit, me and Terry.
Guest:It reminds me of the thing you always bring up that Ethan Hawke told you about working with Denzel, that he had to study Denzel movies like they were game tapes, like a football player, to just know like, okay, I can't let this guy beat me on this play.
Guest:Yeah, I can't let him just mow me over.
Guest:If anybody is thinking of doing chunks of the show and you don't want to go back and start at year one or whatever, the episodes from the year 2015, they're just one after another of just kind of...
Guest:pivotal for Mark, many of them life-changing for podcasting, many of them genre-influencing.
Guest:There's that Terry Gross episode.
Guest:There's obviously the Barack Obama episode.
Guest:That was the first interview with Keith Richards.
Guest:That was the first interview with Lauren Michaels, both interviews with Lauren Michaels that Mark did.
Guest:That was when we had Wyatt Sinek come on and talk about his problems on The Daily Show.
Guest:Sir Ian McKellen was on that year and basically did Shakespeare to Mark's face.
Guest:That was the year you met Lynn Shelton.
Guest:I mean, it really is like the most pivotal year in the history of the show.
Guest:So you couldn't if you're if you're looking to go back and listen to like a chunk.
Guest:2015 is really the the key year in the history of this program.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:So this is good.
Marc:So I think you and I could do this like every week or so and just go and just have me pick numbers.
Guest:That's fun.
Guest:I do like that because it then also just makes you randomly remember episodes and things that you might have, you know, like go here, do one more on the way out.
Guest:670.
Guest:670.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Who was 670?
Guest:That's great.
Guest:That was Todd Haynes.
Guest:Oh my God.
Marc:That was like, these are all so exciting.
Marc:That's the weird thing when people ask me like,
Guest:what's your favorite episode i'm like i don't know man do you know who i've talked to i mean yeah and for and for long time like long periods well listen to this that that we like like these were all within days of each other that you recorded these because they're one after another on the list david spade which is a bonkers episode oh that's great he talked about the story of the guy trying to kill him the home invasion yeah
Guest:Todd Haynes, Charlie Kaufman, Garrett Morris, Crispin Glover.
Guest:Like, those are boom, boom, boom, boom.
Guest:Oh, those are crazy.
Marc:Garrett and Crispin?
Marc:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's a lot of information.
Marc:But yeah, man, it was like...
Marc:It's wild to do that, because like I said to you, most of my memories are only from the experience of being with these people.
Marc:And a lot of times I'm so engaged in the conversation, unless something really kicks me in the brain, it's not necessarily going to stick with me.
Marc:But the entire feeling of being with them, I can get right back if you tell me what it is, who it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's great.
Guest:We will do this more.
Guest:We're going to be giving people bonus stuff all the time, so it's a good idea.
Guest:Well, enjoy the new thing.