WTF with Marc Maron Podcast

From 2013, Marc talks with Carl Reiner about his journey from writing to acting to directing, as well as his collaborative relationships with Sid Ceasar, Dick Van Dyke, Steve Martin and, of course, Mel Brooks. Carl died on June 29, 2020 at age 98. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One thing Alan Zweibel learned by being a writer for so many funny people is you have to set your ego aside. In doing so, Alan was able to have a career spanning decades and criss-crossing with multiple generations of comedy history. Alan tells Marc about his days selling jokes to comics in the Catskills, being part of Saturday Night Live in its first five years, finding a comic partner in Gilda R...

As Marc dealt with personal grief, he looked around the Internet for some guidance on coping with loss. He found a TED Talk by Nora McInerny, who spoke about losing her father, her husband and her unborn child within the span of a few weeks. Since that time, Nora has been able to move forward with her grief, not move on, as she began a career as a published writer, a public speaker, and podcaster....

Janelle Monáe is not going to stop creating, but right now she feels the urge to use her creativity in the service of action. Marc talks with Janelle about the social and political unrest in the country today and why no one has an excuse to remain silent. Janelle explains how her fears of emotional abandonment when she was younger laid the groundwork for her music career and her acting, inc...

It's been five years since President Obama joined Marc in the garage and WTF is marking the occasion not with Donald Trump, but with comedian J-L Cauvin, who talks to Marc about his Trump impression going viral and reinvigorating his standup career. Then Marc talks with comic Amber Preston who, like J-L, held down a day job in Corporate America while her career in comedy took shape. Amber and Marc...

Joe Pantoliano is widely known for playing bad guys, lowlifes and disreputable characters. He even has his own pseudo-Mafioso nickname: Joey Pants. But Joe tells Marc the reason he got so good at playing bad guys is because he was always bullied when he was younger. Tapping into that helped him with his acting, but he had to wait until later in life to tap into the cause of his depression, which w...

Stacey Abrams believes deeply that the problems facing America today - police brutality, racial discrimination, economic inequality, Covid-19, creeping authoritarianism - all require the same solution: Free and fair elections. As the only Black woman ever nominated for Governor by a major party, Stacey tells Marc how she maintains hope that obstacles can be overcome and change can be achieved. Sta...

WTF started as a comedy podcast. It’s a show made by a comedian who wanted to talk to other comedians about comedy. Finally, after more than 10 years, Marc talks with the most well-known, most successful, and arguably most influential comedian in history, Jerry Seinfeld. About comedy. About how Jerry got started in comedy, how he was incapable of socializing, how he forged a friendship with Larry...

Chris Cooper was a guy who worked with his hands. He was raised to be a cowboy on his father’s ranch, spent time building Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, and worked as a jack-of-all-trades when he was trying to scrape by. Then he became known as a guy who worked with his heart and got to the top of his craft by doing so. Chris talks with Marc about breaking his shyness to become an actor, meetin...

G.E. Smith started playing guitar when he was four. As he grew up, he liked The Beatles fine but it was really the Kinks and the Stones that grabbed him. Cut to many years later and G.E.’s had the opportunity to play with many of his heroes. He tells Marc about working with Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Roger Waters and more. They also talk about G.E.’s time as the bandleader on Saturday Ni...

Film and television production is on hold, but Jeffrey Wright is using the time to focus on his community. Jeffrey tells Marc how his attempt to help out a friend led him to a Brooklyn-wide effort to keep neighborhood restaurants afloat while feeding frontline workers. They also talk about ancestry, working in prison, Angels in America, Basquiat, Batman, Muddy Waters, and the great acting lesson J...

Kenya Barris retreated from the abusive situation in his childhood home by listening to party records and reading comic books. Those early influences shaped his understanding of who he is and prompted the creation of Black-ish years later. Kenya talks with Marc about how much he learned from comedians like Patrice O’Neal and Dave Chappelle, how his childhood friendship with Tyra Banks led to his f...

Samantha Bee says there was a point in her teenage years when she was clearly headed toward a life of crime. Thankfully, that was also the point when she realized she was being an a-hole and things needed to change. Sam tells Marc how she shook off the grifter lifestyle and started doing comedy. She also details how The Daily Show cake got baked every day and how the timing of Jon Stewart’s depart...

Marc revisits his 2012 conversation with comedic actor Fred Willard, in which they discuss Fred’s career in improv-heavy films and beloved television projects. Fred passed away at age 86 on May 15, 2020. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marc pays tribute to his creative collaborator and romantic partner Lynn Shelton, who passed away at age 54 on May 16, 2020. This episode includes her August 2015 interview on WTF. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Filmmaker Eliza Hittman talks with Marc about telling the stories of teenagers in ways that feel like the lived experiences of actual teenagers. That’s partly achieved by the naturalistic performances she gets from many non-actors. But it’s also achieved by the sensitivity of her screenplays, like her latest film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which takes the teen protagonist on an unavoidably rea...

Conventional wisdom holds that Cate Blanchett is one of the world’s greatest living performers, but one person who disagrees with that is Cate Blanchett, who thinks she’s pretty terrible most of the time (her words, not ours). Marc and Cate try to get to the bottom of why she’s so hard on herself despite her many career accomplishments. They discuss The Lord of the Rings, playing Bob Dylan, why he...

Filmmaker Liz Garbus knows the importance of telling stories. Her father is one of America’s preeminent First Amendment lawyers, defending people with important stories to tell like Daniel Ellsberg and Lenny Bruce. Liz used her filmmaking skills to make a documentary on her father, just as she’s done with subjects like Nina Simone, the New York Times, and maximum security prisons. Liz and Marc als...

The OTHER Dan Levy joins Marc to talk about the Canadian perspective of America, the rite of passage for all Canadians that is Degrassi, and having Eugene Levy as a dad. Dan reminisces about his first big show business job, working on Canadian MTV, which led to an existential crisis at the MTV Movie Awards. It was only after being ok with walking away from show business that Dan got the inspiratio...

Comedian Whitmer Thomas and Marc made a movie together in Alabama. But while Marc was just a visitor, Whitmer knows Alabama to the core. Growing up in Gulf Shores and living the life of a disaffected Southern skateboarding garage rocker, Whitmer was surrounded by family dysfunction that involved alcoholism, drug addiction, failed show business dreams, jail and eventually death. Whitmer says it was...

Laura Linney thinks about mortality a lot and not just because of the current global predicament. Her thoughts are driven mostly by late-in-life parenthood and how her six-year-old is a constant reminder of the time she has left. Then there’s also the fact that her mother was a cancer nurse in New York City while her father lived apart from them, burning his bridges and living with regret. Laura a...

Director Barry Sonnenfeld had zero interest in film and went to college mainly to get away from his parents. His obsession with lenses and f-stops put him on the path to becoming a cinematographer and soon he was making his first feature film with the Coen Brothers. But not before getting hired as the cameraman for a porn shoot. Barry and Marc talk about Men in Black, Get Shorty, The Addams Family...

In a first for WTF, Rosie O’Donnell joins Marc over video chat for a bicoastal conversation about her standup career, musical theater and life during coronavirus. Rosie recalls what it was like to become a touring comic as a teenager, win big on Star Search, steal the spotlight in Hollywood movies, and then land her own TV talk show. It was only after getting to that point that she finally reckone...

The other half of a quarantined comedy couple, Sam Morril joins Marc in the garage at a six-foot distance to talk about the circumstances keeping him away from his home in New York and living with Taylor Tomlinson. Sam explains how he navigates scenarios without a playbook, whether it’s his relationship, getting started in comedy, or finally meeting his biological father. Marc and Sam also commise...

Taylor Tomlinson is possibly the first guest who grew up listening to WTF and learned the comic trade from comedians on the podcast. At the time, she was a teenager doing standup in churches and she was soon a fixture on the Christian comedy circuit. Taylor talks with Marc about how her career expanded, how she had a crisis of faith, and how her family reacted to her recent work, including her new...