Earlier this week, Marc Maron dropped a bombshell: WTF, the podcast he’s been hosting since 2009, will come to an end later this year. “Sixteen years we’ve been doing this, and we’ve decided that we had a great run. Now, basically, it’s time, folks. It’s time. WTF is coming to an end,” Maron said on a recent episode. “It’s our decision. We’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall.”
It’s difficult to overstate how influential WTF was and how important it was in popularizing podcasts as a medium. By the time WTF wraps, it will have nearly 2,000 episodes. That’s an enormous catalog to sift through if you’re unsure of where to start, so to celebrate Maron’s podcasting legacy (and give those who’ve never listened an enticing entry point), we’ve rounded up the best and most memorable WTF episodes.
Robin Williams (episode 67, 2010)
Robin Williams was famously always “on,” leapfrogging from one bit to the next and almost never peeling back the curtain to give us a sense of his true self. But that changed with this episode, in which the comedian spoke openly and honestly about his struggles with depression, substance abuse and suicidal ideation. It’s especially devastating now, given that Williams died by suicide in 2014. But it’s such an illuminating conversation that it’s been inducted into the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Barack Obama (episode 613, 2015)
If there was any lingering doubt in 2015 about the cultural significance of podcasts, this episode promptly erased it. It’s easy to forget what a huge deal it was back then for a sitting president to appear on a podcast episode — in Maron’s garage, no less! — now that things like Donald Trump’s chat with Theo Von and Kamala Harris’s appearance on Call Her Daddy are relatively commonplace. But Obama’s appearance cemented the fact that podcasts were to be taken seriously. Even if we set aside the import of the president taking the time to sit down with Maron, the conversation itself is a great one, with the pair candidly discussing fatherhood, racism and gun control.
Louis C.K. (episodes 111 and 112, 2010)
Okay, before you say anything, yes, Louis C.K. is a problematic sex pest who shouldn’t be celebrated. But we can’t ignore the significance of this early WTF episode, recorded seven years before the allegations against C.K. came out, and the impact it had on podcasting as an art form. It’s more like a therapy session than an interview, as C.K. and Maron — former friends who had a falling out — use the two hours to hash out their issues. Those issues are too complex to delve into here, but they involve Maron’s jealousy over C.K.’s success. “You’re letting me down as a friend, by being jealous,” C.K. told him. “I could’ve used you. I got divorced. I got a show canceled…but you shut me out because you were having a hard time.” It’s a fascinating listen.
Lynn Shelton (episode 627, 2015)
Maron met his partner, the filmmaker Lynn Shelton, for the first time while recording this episode — and if you listen to it, you can very obviously hear two people falling in love. “I didn’t know what to expect,” Maron recalled in a 2020 episode honoring Shelton after she unexpectedly passed away from an undiagnosed blood disorder. “At the time, she was married and I was with somebody, but at this point, when we had this conversation, it was undeniable that we connected. My connection with her is almost seamless. I have no self-consciousness when I’m with her. I was always better with her. I was a better person when I was engaged with her, as a guitar player, as a lover, as a human, as an actor. I was better in Lynn Shelton’s gaze.”
Sam Fragoso Will Meet You Where You Are
As the host of “Talk Easy,” the increasingly popular interview podcast, Fragoso has built a reputation for uninhibited conversations. Our chat was no different.Andrew Garfield (episode 1359, 2022)
Andrew Garfield is always a captivating interview. (There’s a reason his frank conversation about grief with Stephen Colbert has over 2.3 million views on YouTube.) That’s immediately apparent in this episode too, particularly when Garfield tells Maron about how he’s been coping with his mother’s death. The pair also discuss how Garfield dealt with his sudden rise to fame after being cast as Spider-Man and the “spiritual journey” that the actor has been on since his performance in Under the Banner of Heaven.
Carlos Mencia (episodes 75 and 76, 2010)
Back in the early days of WTF, Maron made a habit of calling out and confronting joke thieves — comedians who rip off other comedians’ material — and his conversation with Carlos Mencia is one of the most memorable examples of this. Mencia has long been a pariah among other comedians because he’s so notorious for lifting other people’s jokes. On his first appearance, Mencia is on the defensive, implying that the people accusing him of plagiarism are simply jealous of him. So Maron has him back for a second episode, this time bringing along two comedians whose material has been stolen by Mencia — Willie Barcena and Steve Trevino — to plead their case. Maron doesn’t let Mencia off the hook this time, and eventually he kinda, sorta owns up to stealing jokes, though he tries to blame it on his insecurities and other psychological issues.
Mel Brooks (episode 358, 2013)
Obviously anyone who’s lived as long and impressive a life as Mel Brooks has — he’s 98 now, but was 86 at the time of his chat with Maron — will have an endless supply of stories, and Brooks does not disappoint. He and Maron chat about his childhood, his service in World War II, and of course, his legendary career. You can hear the reverence for Brooks that Maron has; this one is a must-listen for comedy nerds.
Mavis Staples (episode 1026, 2019)
If you’ve ever spent time with or around Mavis Staples, you know that she’s an absolute joy, so it makes sense that her episode would be one of WTF‘s best. Like Brooks, Staples has a ton of fascinating stories — about her career, but also about the racism she and her family had to endure in the Jim Crow-era South, what it was like to be around Martin Luther King Jr., and even a few details about her relationship with Bob Dylan. Since Dylan almost never discusses his personal life, her perspective about her time with the man she was once engaged to is the only recollection of their time together that we’ll get.
Conan O’Brien (episode 163, 2011)
The year 2011 was a hugely important time in Conan O’Brien’s life. It was just a year after the NBC late-night debacle that saw him pushed out of The Tonight Show by Jay Leno, so all of that drama was pretty fresh when O’Brien sat down with Maron. Beyond that, O’Brien is typically always on, like Robin Williams, but this conversation is a candid one that delves into his personal life. And looking back at it, it’s easy to see why O’Brien would eventually go on to have a successful podcast of his own.
Gallagher (episode 145, 2011)
Whatever you think a podcast appearance by Gallagher might entail (I don’t know, talking about smashing watermelons, I guess?), forget it. It turns out the prop comic fancied himself to be some sort of genius, and most of his conversation with Maron consisted of him complaining about not being as rich or famous as he felt he deserved to be. And yet that’s not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Gallagher coming off like an asshole in this episode: It turns out that in addition to being an egomaniac, he’s also incredibly racist and homophobic. When Maron presses back on the vitriol he’s spewing, Gallagher eventually gets up and storms out, becoming the first and only guest in WTF history to walk out of an interview and leading Maron to drop one of the podcast’s most memorable lines: “Oh come on, Gallagher.”
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