Latest news with #WTF
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Marc Maron's 3-Word Response to Ending His 'WTF' Podcast
Marc Maron had a typically succinct three-word response to the news that he will end his WTF podcast in the announced the news on the June 2 episode of his long-running show, which featured an interview with John Mulaney. 'WTF will turn 16 years old on September 1. Sixteen years, it's a long time. It's a long time to do anything,' Maron said during the show's opening. 'All of a sudden, you're old and you realize you've been doing something for a long time. This started in the old garage. No one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me,' he recalled. Simply put, Maron said: 'We're burnt out.''We have put up a new show every Monday and Thursday for almost 16 years and we're tired,' he explained. 'And we're utterly satisfied with the work we've done.' 'When Brendan and I started this thing, all we knew was that we were going to do it every Monday and Thursday. And there was no way to make money. There was no way that we knew how to build an audience or anything. We were doing it in the garage in the beginning that was just a garage filled with junk. And it slowly evolved into the show that became what you listen to twice a week. Sixteen years we've been doing this and we've decided that we had a great run and now, basically, it's time, folks. It's time. WTF is coming to an end, and it's our decision. 'Thankfully, we both realized, together, that we were done,' Maron continued. 'There was no convincing or pushback, or arguing. We were done. And it's okay. It's okay for things to end…This was a show that started when there were no podcasts. And now, there is nothing but podcasts.'Though podcasts had been around for nearly a decade before WTF, Maron's show was one of the first to garner mainstream attention and is largely credited with launching the current podcast boom. The success of the show transformed Maron's career from that of a cult standup comedian to a successful presenter and actor, with roles in Joker and on Netflix's Glow. His next project, the Apple TV+ series Stick, in which he stars opposite Owen Wilson, premieres Wednesday on the streamer. Maron is also the subject of an upcoming documentary, Are We Good?, directed by Steven Feinartz. New episodes of WTF drop every Monday and Maron's 3-Word Response to Ending His 'WTF' Podcast first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 2, 2025
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Marc Maron will wind down his ‘WTF' podcast after a pioneering run of nearly 16 years
Comic Marc Maron is done. Well, almost done with his famous podcast. 'WTF With Marc Maron' will come to a close this fall, he announced Monday. 'We're tired, people. Burnt out,' he wrote on his website, explaining that he and producer Brendan McDonald had an agreement that they would end the pod's run when either or both of them were 'ready to stop.' Both are now ready, he said. 'As of September we will have been doing the show for 16 years. Wow. That's a long time to do anything,' Maron wrote. 'We have put a new show out twice a week for 16 years and we've put everything we have into those shows. That's just the way we work. We have since the beginning and it's always been just us. Obviously, we had help along the way, but in terms of creating the show Brendan does his job, I do mine. No networks, no boss. Just us and hundreds of guests and you.' 'WTF' was named best comedy podcast by the Academy of Podcasters in 2016 and was nominated for the iHeart Radio Podcast Awards in 2019. The operation began in September 2009, and while it wasn't the first podcast ever, Maron said that 'in terms of making it a viable medium, we were certainly one of the OGs.' There was no way to make money from it at first, he said on Monday's pod. He and McDonald just knew they were going to do two shows a week. 'We changed the world, literally. ... We helped unleash an exciting type of delivery system for pure self-expression,' Maron wrote on his website. Maron told The Times in 2017 that he prepares for interviews by, for example, watching a director's film or listening to a musician's records but without much outside research. 'How do you get around someone's public narrative?' Maron asked The Times. 'People who live public lives have a public narrative. And they'll go to it, because it's easy. Sometimes you can get a little more within those narratives, but to get around it is really the trick.' That year, he and McDonald published 'Waiting for the Punch: Words to Live By From the WTF Podcast,' a collection of excerpts from interviews with guestsincluding former President Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, Louis CK and Will Ferrell, to name a few. Maron credited the selections in the book to McDonald's 'steel trap memory' of who had said what and when. 'What winds up in the book are many of the unexpected or revealing conversational nuggets that could be discovered only after the familiar territory had been crossed,' then-Times staff writer Carolyn Kellogg wrote. Moving forward from this fall — Maron didn't give a specific end date for 'WTF' on either the podcast or his website — the 61-year-old said that post-podcast he will be doing stand-up, more acting and 'hopefully enjoying life a bit.' 'There's probably going to be some ups and downs with me, emotionally, around the reality of this,' he said on the podcast. 'But ... this is a full-hearted decision, it's the right decision for Brendan, it's the right decision for me. It's OK for things to end. It's just time, folks.' Then he launched into an interview with comic John Mulaney.
NBC News
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Marc Maron to end his 'WTF' podcast this fall, citing burnout
Marc Maron announced Monday that he would end his acclaimed podcast, "WTF With Marc Maron," after nearly 16 years. In the latest episode of the popular show, Maron said he and producer Brendan McDonald made the decision to end the podcast sometime this fall. 'It was not some kind of difficult decision, necessarily,' Maron told comedian John Mulaney, who was his guest on the episode. 'Neither me nor Brendan, who are the only people in charge of this operation on every level… we both realized together that we were done.' Maron's show, which celebrates its anniversary Sept. 1, broke ground while the medium of podcasting was still in its infancy. Since its launch in 2009, Maron has recorded more than 1,600 episodes, with guests such as former President Barack Obama, rock star Keith Richards and comedian Carol Burnett. An episode he did with Robin Williams was entered into America's National Recording Registry as the first one-on-one podcast episode. Maron's decision to end the "WTF" podcast comes as podcasts are taking over TV screens amid video formats' increasing popularity. The medium first emerged in the mid-2000s and remained a small, niche market for years before several hits, including 'Serial,' gave the medium a jolt of attention and gravitas. While 2023 was a tough year for podcasts as a whole, popular podcasts retained — and in some instances grew — their audiences in 2024. 'We're tired, we're burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we've done,' Maron said during Monday's episode. 'We've done great work.' However, Maron said that he is not necessarily retiring from podcasting. "This doesn't mean I'm never going to do something like this again," he said. "It doesn't mean I'll never, you know, have talks like I do here, or or some kind of podcast at some point in time. But for now, we're just, uh, we're wrapping things up. It's OK. It's OK to end things." "And thankfully," he said, while talking about McDonald, "we both realized together that we were done."
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marc Maron announces end of ‘WTF' podcast after 16 years
Comedian Marc Maron announced on the latest episode of his 'WTF' podcast that he was ending the show after a 16-year run. Maron, 61, broke the news at the top of Monday's episode before an interview with guest John Mulaney. 'This podcast will turn 16 years old on Sept. 1. That's a couple months away. Sixteen years, it's a long time,' Maron said. 'It's a long time to do anything, and it's certainly — I've said recently that while I'm living it, I don't feel like time is passing by quickly, but all of a sudden, you're old and you realize you've been doing something for a long time. 'This started in the old garage. No one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. 'Sixteen years we've been doing this and we've decided that we had a great run and now, basically, it's time, folks, It's time.' He added that it was a choice he made alongside longtime producer Brendan McDonald and 'was not some kind of difficult decision.' 'We always said how do we know when we're done? And I always said, 'Whenever Brendan says so.' And he always said, 'If Mark is finished, then we're finished,'' Maron said. 'And thankfully we both realized together that we were done, and there was no convincing or pushback or arguing. We were done. And it's OK, it's OK for things to end… This was a show that started when there were no podcasts. And now, there is nothing but podcasts.' Maron launched 'WTF' in 2009, making it one of the longest-running podcasts, leading to around 2,000 episodes and more than 1 billion downloads. Some of the guests have included other comedians like late 'SNL' comedian Norm Macdonald and former late-night host Conan O'Brien as well as figures like former president Barack Obama and conservationist Jane Goodall. The show revitalized Maron's career, leading to 'Maron,' a sitcom based on his life and roles in Netflix's 'GLOW,' Apple TV's 'Stick,' 'The Bad Guys' animated films and many others. He is also making a new comedy special for HBO that will air in the fall, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Maron teased on the podcast that the upcoming 'home stretch' would bring as many people onto the show as possible. 'It really comes down to the fact that we have put up a new show every Monday and Thursday for almost 16 years and we're tired and we're burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we've done,' he said. 'We've done great work.' ________
San Francisco Chronicle
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Marc Maron to end his 'WTF' podcast after 15 years of interviewing comics, actors, musicians, Obama
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Comic and actor Marc Maron said Monday that he's ending his popular and influential podcast 'WTF with Marc Maron' after nearly 16 years. Maron said on a newly released episode that the last of the nearly 2,000 episodes he has hosted will be released later this year. 'Sixteen years we've been doing this, and we've decided that we had a great run,' Maron said. 'Now, basically, it's time, folks. It's time. 'WTF' is coming to an end. It's our decision. We'll have our final episode sometime in the fall.' The 61-year-old Maron said he and producing partner Brendan McDonald are 'tired' and 'burnt out' but 'utterly satisfied with the work we've done.' Maron was a veteran stand-up comic who had dabbled in radio when he started the show in 2009, at a time when stand-ups were trying out the form in big numbers, and many listeners still downloaded episodes on to iPods. The show early on was often about Maron talking through his beefs with fellow comedians, but it soon stood out and became a widely heard and medium-defining show with its thoughtful, probing longform interviews of cultural figures. It became a key stop on press tours for authors, actors and musicians and reached a peak when then- President Barack Obama visited Maron's makeshift Los Angeles garage studio for an episode in 2015. Other memorable episodes include a 2010 personal and emotional interview with Robin Williams that was re-posted and widely listened to after Williams' death in 2014. The episode earned a place in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Maron kept doing standup specials and expanded his acting career while the show aired, including a three-season run on the Netflix series 'GLOW.' The show's guitar-rock theme song opened with a clip of Maron shouting, 'Lock the gates!' in his role as a promoter in the film 'Almost Famous.' The solo episode openings became a confessional space for Maron where he talked about his life, relationships, years of doing stand-up comedy and struggles with drug addiction. Maron gave tearful tribute to his girlfriend, director Lynn Shelton, in the episode after her death in 2020. 'People who listen to the podcast know me pretty well, and it's all good. They have a relationship with me that's one sided, but it's real and I try to be as gracious about that as possible,' Maron told The Associated Press in 2019. 'My particular little slice of the show business world is very me specific and it's very personal and usually that's a good thing. But I've had to learn how to balance how much of my life I reveal and what I keep to myself, and try to find a little space.'
