WTF Uncovered - Live At Now Hear This
Marc:This is a rare thing, okay?
Marc:It was recorded at the live show that we did at the Now Hear This Festival in October.
Marc:Now, there's a few reasons, maybe one, that this is a very special episode.
Marc:Well, there's two.
Marc:It was never aired because the recording was plagued with audio problems.
Marc:And unfortunately, it was all mixed onto one track by the guy recording it, which made it very hard to edit around the audio issues.
Marc:There was also an audience Q&A section, but they didn't have an audience mic.
Marc:Just a bunch of audio problems, which left us with about a half hour of usable sound that is here.
Marc:And that obviously wasn't enough to warrant a WTF episode.
Marc:But since we're doing this thing on Fridays, we might as well play it for you now.
Marc:But the special thing about this is.
Marc:This is the first time that myself and my producer, Brendan McDonald, and he's also my, obviously the co-creator of WTF, my business partner, been with me a long time.
Marc:This is the first time.
Marc:that we ever really went on stage together to do a thing in an organized way.
Marc:And obviously that meant that I scrambled and floundered and bumbled my way through it.
Marc:And Brendan, of course, was highly organized and meticulous and had a presentation, a slideshow and everything else.
Marc:So this is classic straight man, maniac dynamic.
Marc:Well, I'm not overselling it.
Marc:I mean, it's me and Brendan.
Marc:But I guess the point is, we've never done one.
Marc:We've never done a live thing.
Marc:And this was our first try at it.
Marc:And of course, the festival fucks up the audio.
Marc:But there's a half hour here or so of me and Brendan on stage together doing the Mark and Brendan show, which has never been done live.
Marc:So enjoy.
Marc:So what's the plan, Brendan?
Marc:You have to understand, Brendan and I have been working together since 2004 when I entered the Air America ensemble, the morning show.
Guest:If people don't know what that was, that was like a left-wing answer to right-wing talk radio.
Guest:It launched in 2004 at the time of the presidential election, and we were ready to do big things.
Marc:Yes, we were going to stop Bush.
Marc:That was the big plan.
Marc:That didn't work.
Marc:I showed up there with my, like I was very insecure about my political knowledge.
Marc:I knew I was angry and a reactionary.
Marc:And I showed up with my Democracy for Dummies book and thought that would get me through.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Well, what we're here to do today is to go back as far as that and then get up to speed with today, kind of go through the creation of WTF, the process of what we do, you know, Mark and I together, and talk about some things that we've never talked about publicly.
Guest:In fact, some of these things are things that Mark does not know that I'm going to bring up.
Guest:In fact, Mark does not know anything of what I've prepared for today.
Guest:He is completely in the dark with this.
Guest:We felt it was kind of like a meta commentary on our actual relationship where he does no preparation and I'm completely overprepared.
Guest:So we'll see how that works out live in front of people.
Marc:I'm ready.
Marc:I'm probably more ready given my nature than you are.
Guest:What does that mean?
Marc:That means like, yeah, I'm not that prepared and I'm going to roll with it.
Marc:But if something doesn't pan out that you've prepared, I got to drive home with you.
Guest:Well, I thought a good place to start.
Guest:I'm going to put up on the screen here.
Guest:Can we see the first photo there?
Guest:Now, you're not going to know what this is with just looking at it, but I'll tell you the story behind this.
Guest:That is a piece of paper that was handed to me by the U.S.
Guest:Secret Service.
Guest:Well, the date is right here, June 15, 2015.
Guest:This was in advance of the president coming over to Mark's house.
Guest:And it says, you probably can't read all the fine print there, so let me go through it for you.
Guest:It says, place this under telephone.
Guest:Become courteous, listen, and do not interrupt.
Guest:If you can't tell, this is for if a bomb threat comes in to Mark's house at any time, really ever.
Guest:We are now on alert for a bomb threat at Mark's house.
Guest:You're supposed to write down the time the call was received, the time the call has ended.
Guest:And they told me, just try to get through all these questions, like everything that's there.
Guest:And it's not because it's like a Jason Bourne thing where they're going to trace the call.
Guest:They just literally want me to do recon so that it makes it easier if they have to track down a bomber.
Guest:So the questions there are, one, when is bomb going to explode?
Guest:Two, where is it right now?
Guest:What does it look like?
Guest:What kind of bomb is it?
Guest:What will cause it to explode?
Guest:Why did you place the bomb?
Guest:That would be very nice if he tells us that.
Guest:What is your name?
Guest:If you get that far, that's fantastic.
Guest:That means you're doing a good job with this sheet.
Guest:What is your address?
Guest:Are you calling from a payphone?
Guest:Which you probably also say, are you calling from the past?
Guest:Location and or number, gender, race of caller.
Guest:That could get dicey if you say that on the sheet.
Guest:Age of caller, exact wording of threat.
Guest:As we switch to the next photo, you can put that up, but I want, as we're switching that, you don't have a landline.
Marc:No, I don't have a landline.
Marc:And I don't remember you showing me that.
Guest:No, I think I knew what would happen if I showed you that.
Guest:You gotta understand, Mark was away the week that we were preparing for the president to come over, and that couldn't have been timed out better.
Guest:Because if he was there when they were dropping massive lines of communication, like these giant boxes to have secure lines, I can tell you how that would have gone.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Why is that there?
Guest:It's making noise.
Guest:I love his impression of me.
Guest:It's always that same voice too.
Guest:Just go back for one second.
Guest:When I got to Air America and you guys used to do that package of all the news stories from the day.
Guest:Our friend Dan Pashman would put together notes for you on what news you had to read.
Marc:For that morning.
Guest:Yeah, and the first day that he put it next to Mark, Mark said, what is this?
Guest:I can't read this.
Guest:I'm so sorry about your levels there, but that's what happens.
Guest:Welcome to my world, by the way.
Guest:Let's just run through some of these real quick.
Guest:Caller's voice.
Guest:They're very distinct here.
Guest:Deep breathing, disguised.
Guest:That's the one I want.
Guest:Hello.
Guest:Put the bomb on me here.
Guest:There's also background sounds.
Guest:Street noises, motor, factory machinery.
Guest:Crockery.
Guest:A very dainty bomber calling from his kitchen.
Guest:What does that sound?
Guest:I'm scrambling eggs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just stirring the kale.
Guest:Don't worry.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:So anyway, we come through this whole process of doing the show that leads up to the President of the United States coming on.
Guest:Now, granted, that was over a year ago.
Guest:We've obviously...
Guest:had many shows since then, but getting this bomb threat page was probably the moment where I was like, wait a minute, what did we do?
Guest:How did we get here?
Guest:Why did this happen?
Guest:It's a good place to start to go back and say, did you know what I was doing before we started working together?
Marc:You were at WNYC.
Guest:Did you know... With Leonard Lopate.
Guest:Well, yeah, he worked there, yeah.
Marc:Oh, you didn't work for him?
Guest:I didn't work for him, no.
Guest:So I'm in the halls and whatnot.
Guest:I actually... Can we play audio clip number one?
Guest:I figure there might be some things that...
Guest:embarrass you a little bit throughout this show today so I figured right from the start I'll embarrass myself good so can can I hear embarrassing clip number one stocks mostly unchanged at this hour the Dow is down just a fraction this is NPR
Guest:And this is WNYC at 304.
Guest:It's 87 degrees.
Guest:Humid outside.
Guest:Feels like 90 in New York City.
Guest:Good afternoon.
Guest:I'm Brendan McDonald.
Guest:In this, the 23rd hour of... You like that voice?
Guest:Yeah, what was that?
Guest:The radio voice.
Guest:That was the VR, though.
Guest:Yeah, that was what I thought you were supposed to do with the radio.
Guest:I thought you were supposed to get on a microphone that's hanging down like this, and you talk like those guys.
Guest:That was the job.
Guest:I mean, it was super unnatural, and I'm very glad my life kind of evolved out of it.
Guest:And I think what happened when we started working together...
Guest:All the stuff that I had been doing in my life up to that point, which was working as a newscaster, then writing news, then producing news in a newsroom, which brought me over to working at Air America, working with you.
Guest:I think the kind of radio professionalism I brought to that and then the style and the creativity and the talent you brought to it, we just started to kind of connect on those things.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:When I'd panic, I'd be like, Brendan, Brendan, what does this mean?
Marc:explain this to me and he just explained it in terms that like me could understand and i'd be like okay okay i got it good so it's much more simple than i couldn't even understand basic newspaper articles like the tents of them at like four in the morning was sort of like i don't understand whether they're saying this is good or bad you realize you shouldn't be doing anything at that time like the human a human
Marc:I was trying to understand policy and shit, and I'm not dumb, but if you don't know the language, I could not understand clearly what was being talked about, and it made me feel stupid.
Marc:Remember that email that I got?
Marc:Did you talk about that?
Marc:I don't know what you're bringing up.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:We were at Air America, and I was the idiot, and I still do this today.
Marc:It's a bad habit.
Marc:No one went through the emails that came in.
Marc:Why would you do that?
Marc:Why would anyone go through those horrible emails that come to the actual station?
Marc:Well, I apparently had time to do it, so I would go through all these emails, and one of them was just, remember that dude who was just sort of like,
Marc:Yeah, Marc Maron.
Marc:Why don't you let the adults talk and just shut up for a while?
Marc:Tell the child to leave the room.
Marc:Tell the child to leave the room.
Marc:Me.
Marc:And I couldn't let it go.
Marc:So I was like, what exactly about me is the problem?
Marc:And he's like, well, you don't know what you're talking about.
Marc:You're not really funny.
Marc:It's just like, why don't you let the grownups talk?
Marc:And then I was like, what specifically is it that you don't think is funny?
Marc:And I kept going back and forth with this guy until the guy actually said, why do you keep emailing me?
Marc:And I was like, how did I become the asshole?
Marc:You'd think I'd learn the lesson.
Guest:That, to me, though, all that stuff was like, in my mind, I'm like, oh, this is great.
Guest:This guy is gold.
Guest:And it kept us working together.
Guest:Even when we were not working at Air America, we always kind of kept contact.
Guest:I was trying to get Mark in at places I was working.
Guest:We were always kind of...
Guest:Like, radio was in the dying days then.
Marc:He was at Sirius.
Guest:I was at Sirius for a while.
Marc:You did Rosie O'Donnell's show.
Guest:Connections with other people that I could maybe try to pull Mark in with.
Guest:It just wasn't working.
Guest:And we finally got a deal to go back to America for a... It was eight years ago, actually.
Guest:It was during the presidential campaign again.
Guest:We did a video show with Sam Seder, and that did not go well.
Marc:The story behind that was between us...
Marc:Like Air America had fired me two or three times because of money problems.
Marc:And then we get a call from a guy on the inside, this guy Carl, and he's like, hey, there's a new guy with money at Air America.
Marc:And I think we should do something.
Marc:And I'm in the middle of a divorce that is breaking me.
Marc:Like I'm almost bankrupt.
Marc:And I am just emotionally shattered, incapable of much of anything.
Marc:And I'm like, well, I'm not in any condition
Marc:to do anything.
Marc:And I'm like, unless we can get them to give me enough money to get out of this fucking divorce, I'll do it.
Marc:But I'm not capable of really functioning on camera or on a microphone.
Marc:That's the pitch.
Marc:So...
Marc:So then I start rallying for Sam Seder.
Marc:Sam Seder is a very brilliant, funny guy, but profoundly annoying.
Marc:But why did you rally for Sam?
Marc:Because I thought we had to do politics, and there was no way I was going to carry that.
Guest:I think your brain was so wrecked from the divorce that you were like, I need someone to help.
Marc:I need a partner to do this with.
Marc:And Carl, the guy who was bringing me in, was like, no, we don't want Sam.
Marc:Because Sam was like...
Marc:Very hard to manage and just bright but annoying.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:I don't know how to say it nicely.
Marc:But I fought for Sam.
Marc:I'm not doing it unless Sam gets the job and he gets the same amount of money as me.
Marc:I just want Sam there.
Guest:And then you fought with Sam.
Marc:Forever.
Marc:As soon as me and Sam got together, I was like, oh, fuck.
Marc:Why did I do this?
Yeah.
Marc:And that was the dynamic there.
Marc:But they gave me the money up front.
Marc:I paid off the X. And I got through that.
Marc:And I don't think anybody watched that show.
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, constantly warring with your co-host does not engender a lot of audience sympathy.
Guest:I think it was like one of those things.
Guest:You could watch it the same way you watch bum fights or something like that.
Guest:People really just go watch YouTube things that are bad.
Guest:They want to watch the brutality.
Marc:We did it every day for a year.
Guest:So that was canceled, unsurprisingly.
Guest:And as it was winding down, I think we saw the writing on the wall.
Guest:I think we just wanted to keep doing what we were doing.
Guest:But at this time that this was going on, I was really listening to podcasts.
Guest:I wouldn't say I was like an early adopter, but I was definitely like an early-ish adopter.
Guest:bandwagon person like 2007 I had started listening to a lot of podcasts the thing is there were just mostly radio shows like I would listen to This American Life and Fresh Air as podcasts instead of it was just better for our schedule The Best Show with Tom Sharpling that was like a big one that I was you know as an early proponent of podcasts I was like it's great Tom's show is three hours and you can listen to it whenever you want
Guest:But the real show that made me have the confidence to say to you, like, yeah, let's do this, was Bill Simmons' podcast.
Guest:So, like, there'd probably be no WTF without, or in whatever form it's in, without the Bill Simmons podcast.
Guest:Because I was listening to that as a fan of his writing.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I've never heard this guy in my life.
Guest:I've only ever read him for a decade.
Guest:And he has a podcast.
Guest:Great, let me listen to it.
Guest:And, like...
Guest:His voice, in the way that we had been spending time in radio, going in and out of meetings with these executives who tell you what radio needs to sound like and what you need to do.
Guest:And you heard my dumb voice on that thing, this mindset of what radio is.
Guest:And the first time I heard Bill Simmons, I'm like, oh my God, they allowed this guy to have a show?
Guest:His voice is so not a radio voice.
Guest:I listened to it for like five minutes, ten minutes.
Guest:I'm like, oh, he's sounding just like the stuff he writes.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:And it was the moment that it clicked for me.
Guest:Like, you don't have to do this bullshit that they're telling us to do.
Guest:Like, let's just do what we can do.
Guest:So this Air America thing wound down.
Guest:And you just I think you had been on.
Guest:Started to be on a lot of podcasts.
Guest:Keith and the Girl, probably, right?
Guest:Not a lot, but I did Keith and the Girl.
Guest:You did enough that you had this sense that it was out there.
Marc:You had to go all the way out to Queens to do Keith and the Girl.
Marc:And they had this whole studio set up in their house.
Marc:And I'm like, people are listening to this?
Marc:And they're like, yeah, a lot of people.
Marc:And I'm like, you could just set up.
Marc:And I was like, holy fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Let's do that.
Guest:So like two days after we get fired, you send me this email.
Guest:Uh-oh.
Guest:This is, no, it's a good one.
Guest:All right.
Guest:It says, we should talk about the podcast idea.
Guest:Jesse Thorne offered some guidance.
Guest:And I like this part.
Guest:It seems that between your know-how and the ease which we can move things, I don't know what that meant, and make things on the computers.
LAUGHTER
Guest:We should start a pay podcast.
Guest:It wouldn't kill us time-wise, and it wouldn't take much.
Marc:It took a lot, actually.
Marc:But, yeah, that was... We're poetic, poetic, and move things, you know.
Guest:We move through time and space, and we're good on the computers.
Guest:That was almost like something from your dad.
Guest:I think he sent that email.
Guest:But the pay podcast, that was the idea.
Guest:We were kind of basing it off Jimmy, off Pardo.
Guest:Jimmy Pardo was doing Never Not Funny as a thing you subscribe to for seasons, right?
Guest:And they would put like 10 minutes of it on iTunes, and then you'd pay to have access to the full thing.
Guest:I think that's what we thought we would wind up doing.
Guest:But do you remember that you actually wanted a co-host?
Marc:Sure I do.
Marc:It seems to be a recurring theme.
Marc:I need someone there to look at.
Guest:I have this email from you from August 13, 2009.
Guest:The subject line, Proops.
Guest:And you said, you think I should approach Greg to do this podcast?
Guest:I'm sure he'd be into it.
Guest:And my response was...
Guest:Aside from guests that you are interviewing, you do not need anyone else to think otherwise is a fatal mistake for this project.
Guest:Because all I was thinking was, oh great, we're going to do a podcast and he's going to be at war with Greg Proops for a year.
Guest:Just like what we just went through.
Marc:Proops terrorizing me with words.
Guest:Yes, I'm sure it would have been Proops terrorizing you.
Guest:And you just like, why is he always doing this to me?
Marc:Oh, yeah, he came up to me once.
Marc:You know that story, right?
Marc:I knew Proops in San Francisco.
Marc:We did comedy together.
Marc:And there used to be these live shows in the morning for radio.
Marc:It was Alex Bennett's show on Live 105.
Marc:And we were at some show at Cobb's Comedy Club at like 6 in the morning.
Marc:And Proops is smoking pot.
Yeah.
Marc:and he had he got the hybrid pot before anybody's like you want to smoke pot and i'm like all right so we smoked some weed and i'm like incapacitated and we go out there and he knows i'm not even functioning and we're doing a live show at seven in the morning and there's four comics on and i'm like like i couldn't even put thoughts together and greg keep going he kept going like what do you think mark and i'm like
Marc:And then after the show, he walked up to me and goes, I invented you.
Marc:He was my first choice, huh?
Guest:So we didn't use proofs, but we did.
Guest:You were the one who said, what do you think about WTF as a concept?
Guest:Not just as a name.
Guest:That was like the concept of the show.
Marc:Yeah, I had this big idea.
Marc:It's like, it's the most important philosophical question of our time.
Marc:Like, we could wrap segments around it, and it'd just be that... It gives us a big umbrella.
Guest:You know, like, I felt like it's broad and we can fit anything in it.
Guest:Well, we tried, too.
Guest:We would have, like, the WTF question of the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, it was ill-conceived.
Guest:Or no more juice stuff.
Guest:Yes, Know This About Jew Crap was a segment.
Guest:And it was Know, N-O, This About Jew Crap.
Marc:Because someone sent that in an email.
Marc:Because I don't know who I was talking to.
Marc:It was probably me and Weiss or somebody.
Marc:And, you know, I'm Jewish.
Marc:And, like, it just, you know, it lit some fire in some dumb anti-Semite's head.
Marc:And he sent that.
Marc:And we were like, that's a segment.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Those are less funny today considering what we're going through nationally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can we see a photo number four on there?
Guest:The original name was The WTF Show with Marc Maron.
Guest:We very quickly did the Facebook thing, like somebody Justin Timberlake that and was like, drop the the and the show.
Guest:I don't remember how, but that logo, which was done by a guy we're still in contact with, Nathan Smith up in the Northwest, was...
Guest:we have not changed that logo despite you looking nothing like that picture anymore.
Guest:Why is that in your mind?
Marc:Well, because like at the beginning of the podcast thing, you know, there were podcasts around, but there was that menu on iTunes and that turquoise just popped.
Marc:Like, you know, it was like in the face.
Marc:It was like it demanded attention.
Guest:There really was nothing else around it in those little tiles.
Guest:And you just looked at it.
Marc:It's like, look at that thing.
Marc:What the hell is that show?
Yeah.
Marc:So we never changed it.
Marc:Now it's sort of a nostalgia thing.
Marc:What am I going to put up there?
Guest:It has good juju.
Guest:I don't mean that in the Jew way.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:There's a little of that, though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So our first episode was September 1st, 2009.
Guest:The guest was Jeff Ross.
Guest:Although guests were not the primary driver.
Guest:It was like to have a guest segment...
Guest:and then several other segments around it.
Guest:Matthew Weiss.
Guest:Yeah, Matthew Weiss was a friend of yours who you guys would do kind of a little banter on.
Guest:We wanted to kind of make him like the Carl Pilkington of the show.
Guest:Your dad would get some time on the phone.
Marc:He didn't know he was on the phone.
Guest:Did not know he was on the phone, as we have always done.
Guest:We used to do movie reviews with him on the morning show.
Guest:This is illegal, by the way, that we would record Mark's dad and put him on the air without him knowing it.
Marc:He would never know.
Marc:And I'd just be like, you seen any movies lately?
Guest:And he'd be like, yeah, that... Hotel Rwanda was a good shoot-em-up.
Guest:That was...
Guest:He goes, it was like Schindler's List, but with more action.
Guest:And we would make fake posters of them with those taglines on them.
Guest:My favorite was Sideways.
Guest:He said, yeah, that's Sideways.
Guest:That GM Cento, he really tied the picture together.
Guest:Never could get names right.
Guest:Is Paul, what's his name?
Guest:Giamatti.
Marc:Giamatti, yeah.
Marc:That's a genetic, apparently.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you'll do it to people, like, in front of them.
Guest:Like, in terms of names?
Guest:And you were Jim?
Guest:They're like, Paul.
Guest:I try.
Guest:So that was the first show.
Guest:In an email from me to you that night, September 1st, 2009, the subject line was just, as of 11.33 p.m., and then the body of the email was 1,836 downloads.
Guest:And your response was, whoa!
Whoa!
Guest:That's more than I thought.
Guest:You?
Guest:And I said, in less than 24 hours?
Guest:Yeah, that's more than I thought.
Guest:We're talking under 2,000 downloads.
Guest:You said, great, maybe we're onto something.
Guest:And I said, right, if we get a third of those people to stick around and pay 10 bucks a month, it would net us $75,000 a year.
Guest:So we should definitely hang on to this.
Guest:We might be onto something.
Guest:Now, your response to this is actually something that has guided us through until today.
Guest:You said, well, let's just keep the quality up and keep consistent and try to build this out right.
Guest:That's a very clear statement of purpose.
Thank you.
Guest:And I think that the consistency thing is like the most important thing we ever hit on in terms of keeping the show going and making it something that people could develop a relationship with and rely on.
Guest:It was like one of the things we learned from working on morning radio every day, five days a week to know people would know that you would be there for them and be there with certain segments at certain times and just that relationship was important.
Guest:Regardless of having an on-demand audio program, we knew people were going to expect it.
Marc:It was crazy because we're both kind of workaholics.
Marc:We had this Monday and Thursday thing from the beginning, and we've done a new show every Monday and Thursday.
Marc:We've never missed.
Marc:We've never missed a show.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:But it was crazy, the commitment we had, because I didn't want him to be mad.
Marc:And I always thought, well, I'd better work as hard as Brendan.
Marc:So there'd be times, I don't know if you planned this into the thing, I'd be stuck.
Marc:traveling for stand-up and I and I couldn't get home to record the intro for the next day there's I've done crazy shit there was one time where I'm like stuck in an airport and I'm like and I've got my recorder with me because I always brought it with me in case and I want need to interview somebody or I got to do an intro and like I had to get it to him and I wasn't going to get out in time so I rented a conference room in the American Airlines lounge to do the intro for the fucking episode
Guest:Renting American Airlines conference room.
Marc:I actually wrote that down.
Marc:And then there was the other time where I was, what, in Buffalo?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was in Buffalo and I got snowed in.
Guest:Buffalo College Studio.
Guest:It says right there.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So we didn't prepare.
Marc:So then I'm like, what the fuck am I going to do?
Marc:I didn't have my equipment with me.
Marc:I'm like, is there a college around?
Marc:I'll just go to the college radio station, tell them who I am, and they'll let me use their shit.
Marc:And I get there and they had no idea who I was.
Yeah.
Marc:I was just this crazy guy going like, I gotta do an intro for tomorrow.
Marc:And these students are like, I don't know, do we do, yeah, okay.
Marc:And they lead me into this room and I record it.
Marc:I'm like, do you have the file?
Marc:What are you gonna put it on?
Marc:You're like, well, you want it on a CD?
Marc:I'm like, that's not gonna help me.
Marc:And then I think I got it on a CD that I had to rip onto my computer, but then I ended up getting home in time.
Guest:Yeah, it didn't even matter.
Guest:But that mania.
Guest:I wonder if those kids remember me.
Guest:That mania drove our desire to make it good.
Guest:Like, we weren't going to put that time and commitment into it if it was a shit product.
Guest:So I think those things, the consistency drove everything.
Marc:Yeah, it was very important.
Marc:It remains very important.
Guest:Well, one month after we did the first episode, it was actually just slightly under a month, September 29th, you sent me an email.
Guest:The subject line was just, dude.
Dude.
Guest:There are a lot of those, by the way.
Guest:And this said, I think we really have something here.
Guest:It seems to be spreading.
Guest:I read that when I was just going through old emails, and I'm wondering, what was it that you thought was spreading?
Guest:That early on a month, what was spreading?
Guest:Was it comics coming up to you saying it was good?
Guest:How did you feel so confident a month in?
Marc:Because I think what started to happen was that I started to realize that comics were listening to it because of comics.
Marc:And the stuff that wasn't normally talked about in public.
Marc:But just in general, it became this weird thing where because of the comedic community and who we are, we all, well not we all, but there's a lot of us that know each other from different points.
Marc:It's like a big campus.
Marc:I don't know a lot of people now, but this was a long time, 10 years ago almost.
Marc:So it was this weird element of, like, I didn't know what that guy was up to.
Marc:You know, like, guys we all knew that no one, you know, like, I hadn't heard about that guy in a while.
Marc:Like, I just felt like it became this weird community service to sort of check in with dudes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then other, like, I don't know when we did Attell, but, like, I'm pretty sure no one has ever heard David Attell talk for an hour ever.
Marc:And I would get excited about that stuff.
Marc:I've known Attell for, at that point, like a decade, and we're friends, but I've never had a conversation with him.
Marc:And I think that started to make me realize that a lot of the conversations I was having were first conversations with people I've known forever.
Marc:And you don't really realize in your life just how that really is.
Marc:You can know somebody for a decade, and just like he said when he played that thing for me from WMIC, I'm like, I've been working with you for over 10 years, and I don't know that.
Marc:So when I sat down with Dave Attell by a swimming pool during the day, which was unusual, you know, he was in LA.
Marc:He's like, well, that's, that's, that was all I would ever, that's how me and Attell worked.
Marc:Like Attell, like the exchanges were like one time I remember, like I got to stand up New York.
Marc:I had a Honda Civic or Honda Accord that my dad had given me.
Marc:And I walk into the club and Dave looks out the window and goes, where'd you get that car?
Marc:And I go, it's my dad's.
Marc:There was only 150,000 miles on it.
Marc:And he goes, that's a lot of running away.
Marc:But that was our whole relationship.
Marc:So when I talked to him for a whole hour, I think an entire community of comedians that respected him were sort of like, oh my god.
Marc:That made me very proud to bring that community together, to reintegrate myself back into it, having been in sort of bitter Siberia for a while, and then to have it kind of like be this thing that we all could have.
Guest:Well, you were right.
Guest:It was spreading.
Guest:And if we could see Photo 5, you'll see the first three years of the show.
Guest:That's the audience.
Guest:And that's every episode.
Guest:Every data point on there is an episode of the show.
Guest:You can really see how the audience grew.
Guest:That big spike there around 2011 was when the New York Times profiled the show, which was as big of anything other than having the president on, as you can see, really jumped us up.
Marc:That was a crazy day, that New York Times that day.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:Not only do I not prepare, but I seem to, like, isn't that when I taped the album, too?
Marc:Like, I was coming to New York to tape This Has to Be Funny at Union Hall in Brooklyn.
Marc:So I was going to interview with the New York Times, and I had to do two sets for a CD.
Marc:And the night before I left for New York, I broke up with a woman.
Marc:And it was not good.
Marc:Like, you know, the police were involved.
Marc:So that's funny.
Marc:But I created all this chaos.
Marc:And I just remember sitting there with the New York Times guy and what turned out to be one of the most important things that ever happened to us, getting these texts from this woman going like, I'm going back to the house when you're not there.
Marc:I'm going to break in and live there again.
Marc:So...
Marc:But that was a comforting place for me.
Marc:Like, at least I was grounded in some exciting stuff in preparation.
Guest:Well, that definitely has been integrated into our process.
Guest:Like, I think that... Let's get into our process a little bit, because I think...
Guest:Some people might not know the way we do the show.
Guest:We are sitting here together, and we talk to each other virtually every day in some way or shape or form.
Guest:But you're in L.A., I'm in New York, and that's how it's always been, aside from the first few episodes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mark does his recordings.
Guest:Logistically, we work together with everything, set everything up together, but he records the interview.
Guest:No one else is in there.
Guest:He sends it to me.
Guest:I edit it by myself.
Guest:No one else is editing it, and that's the show.
Guest:That's how we put it together.
Guest:Does your process entail anything that you've now made regular for yourself in terms of doing the show, getting out there on the mic?
Marc:Yeah, it does.
Guest:Like what?
Marc:Well, for a while there...
Marc:I had this habit of really being panicky that I needed to get into the garage with the guests walking in through the house behind me to turn on the mics before they knew they were on.
Marc:It was very important for me to have that going.
Marc:So it became this thing where, and I think in a lot of episodes, you hear the guests go like, are we on?
Marc:And I'm like, yep, we've been on for seven minutes.
Guest:I feel like we invented that for podcasting.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because everyone does it now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I'll listen to any show and a guest is like, oh, are you recording?
Guest:I'm like, I know where you got that.
Marc:It's better because when you say yes, they're already in regular conversation tone.
Marc:Usually what I do, I do, you're right, I do create a certain amount of chaos and you know that I create chaos because sometimes I call you and I'm like, well, what am I going to talk to this guy about?
Marc:So...
Marc:Because I do not know how to write questions down.
Marc:It just becomes this collage of ideas that I'll splatter onto a paper.
Marc:If it's a musician, I'll spend two days listening to every album they ever made for no reason, because how is that going to come up?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:When am I going to just go song for song?
Marc:But I need to do it to understand the person.
Marc:I'll never watch other interviews.
Marc:I don't watch them on TV.
Marc:Sometimes I'll see the movie.
Marc:I'll watch a TV show.
Marc:But generally, what I do is I'll go to Wikipedia, which isn't even a good resource.
Marc:But for some reason, I want to know where they were born and where they grew up as children so I can see them as children in my head.
Marc:And I go in and I'm like, you were a child once.
Marc:That's what I'm thinking.
Marc:What was that kid like?
Marc:I don't say that.
Marc:Sometimes I do.
Marc:But I need to see that they were human.
Marc:And I picture this whole thing.
Marc:And I think the biggest thing that I realize and what I'm hoping to happen is that when you're talking to famous people or people that we have an idea that we know their public personality or you make assumptions about
Marc:about celebrities of all kinds you're only given really what they give you and maybe you get some sidebar stuff some gossip or whatever so you always go in with these preconceived notions and and i do as well and i'm always amazed every time that they're just people that's it like because like you know you like i'm talking we're gonna put up roger waters tomorrow
Marc:And Roger Waters, outside of his politics, made some of these albums that are, I don't know about your childhood, but Dark Side of the Moon and Animals, they're magic.
Marc:They're like, what is that?
Marc:This guy's a mystical warrior.
Marc:He's a wizard.
Marc:And then he gets there, and you're like, oh, you're just an old guy.
Marc:And it's so relieving.
Marc:My need to connect with people is how I prepare.
Marc:And that's when you hear me scrambling, which sometimes you do, is like if somebody comes into the garage and they're expecting to be interviewed, I'm like, oh, shit.
Marc:Because I don't interview anybody.
Marc:You listen to any of those shows and tell me I'm interviewing somebody.
Marc:It's me going like, what's up?
Marc:Is that your car?
Marc:You know, whatever it is.
Marc:You know, I just need the conversation to turn into people talking.
Marc:Cause like sometimes if they're just sort of like, they come in and like, all right, go ahead.
Marc:I'm like, oh no.
Marc:I didn't prepare any questions.
Marc:And I don't.
Marc:I have ideas.
Marc:So if they can't meet me on those ideas, sometimes for the first 10 minutes or so.
Marc:The most recent one in mind was when Patricia Arquette came in.
Marc:And she's great, but she didn't really listen to the show.
Marc:Her boyfriend sort of said it was a good thing to do.
Marc:And she was just sort of like... And I'm like, what?
Marc:You know, like...
Marc:And sometimes if you listen to it, it takes about 10 or 15 minutes.
Marc:Like John C. Reilly, he was right out in front of it.
Marc:He said, like, I don't like doing this.
Marc:I don't want to talk too much about myself.
Marc:I don't want to ruin the mystique.
Marc:And he was committed to that.
Marc:And thank God I had a clown painting in my dining room.
Marc:Because, you know, he noticed a clown painting.
Marc:And then I asked him about clowns.
Marc:He said, what did he say?
Guest:He was like, well, if you want to talk about clowns, that I can do.
Guest:And it was like 20 minutes on clowns.
Marc:And it's like the greatest thing because, and I said this earlier, it's like most people, you can get information on people.
Marc:But the thing is, is that like, you know, it's much better if John C. Reilly talks about clowns for 20 minutes.
Marc:Because, you know, how are people going to judge that as an interview?
Marc:It's like, they're just going to go like, that was fucking weird.
LAUGHTER
Marc:It's kind of interesting that he's interested in clowns, but passionately interested in clowns.
Marc:And I didn't write that down on the piece of paper.
Marc:Make sure you talk to John C. Reilly about clowns.
Marc:But while it's happening, I'm like, oh, God, this is beautiful.
Marc:He's talking about clowns for 15 minutes.
Guest:Now, some of the stuff that you... You know, we've grown this to a business.
Guest:We do ads on the show, sometimes for Casper.
Guest:And I would say that that is probably where when I'm editing the show, I hear the most kind of... I would almost say it's where you vent the most is when you're doing these ad reads.
Guest:Because if you're in an interview and something's not going right, you're going to have to figure out a way...
Guest:around that right or if you're doing a monologue and you're you're you're not on the ball with where it needs to be you might need to stop and start again with ads you're just plowing through it and you're getting furious and and that fury is allowed to happen because he knows i'm going to edit it out so why don't i play for you right now um
Marc:This is audio clip two.
Marc:I'll be there for a live show with my producer, Brendan McDonald, plus more shows like... Plus more shows you love, like The Moth, Jess...
Marc:Fuck me.
Marc:Just post once and watch your qualified candidates roll into ZipRecruiter's easy... Just post once and watch your qua... Fucking cunt.
Marc:It stars real comedians and real-life wives, Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butler.
Marc:Butcher.
Marc:Fucking cunt.
Marc:Squarespace gives you all the tools you need.
Marc:Squarespace gives you all the tools...
Marc:cunt squarespace gives you all the tools you need for top squarespace and if you and if you want to sell stuff on your site squarespace gives you all the tools oh my god fucking balls and if you want to sell stuff on your site squarespace gives you all the tools you need for top not god fucking cunt
Guest:So I hear that a lot.
Guest:And it just has made me sad that you never hear it.
Guest:So like, now you do.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:I also hear this.
Guest:The way that I edit the show, I like to take two passes with each episode at least.
Guest:And so a lot of times...
Guest:uh when i want to get just a lay of the land of what what was talked about or what's going on before i go in and finally edit it i'll listen to it in double speed so so like i hear the show a lot every time i listen to it i i hear this can we hear number three all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what the fuck tuckians what the fuck ericans what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast thank you uh for listening if you're new to the podcast welcome if you've been here a while here we go again
Guest:So that's like you just doing your normal intro.
Guest:But when you hear that, with that other stuff I played for you, can we hear that?
Guest:Number four, it's like the most profane chipmunk.
Guest:Squarespace gives you all the tools you need for top... Squarespace... And if you want to sell stuff on your site, Squarespace gives you all the tools... Oh my God.
Guest:Fucking pause.
Guest:And if you want to sell stuff on your site, Squarespace gives you all the tools you need for top... God fucking cunt.
Guest:That's my job.
Guest:That's the fun part.
Guest:That's...
Guest:I love you.
Guest:It's great working with you.
Guest:I love you and thank you everybody for coming.
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:That was that.
Marc:That was me and Brendan McDonald.
Marc:Have a happy and safe holiday.
Marc:Don't hurt yourself or others.
Marc:Try to think about the future a little bit in terms of what your responsibility to it is and to your fellow human beings.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Merry, merry.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Boomer lives!
you