What I've Learned

Marc Maron Podcaster, comedian, writer, actor; 62; Los Angeles

- Interview by Michael Sebastian

Maron will appear in the movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, out October 24. He has announced that he will end his acclaimed podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, sometime this fall, after sixteen years and more than sixteen hundred episodes.

I'M WEIRD. I can be more open in some ways with audiences than I can in interpersonal relationships.

LOOK, I'VE LIVED AND LEARNED over time. I’ve been a toxic person in my life. I’m not great at relationships. I used to do a joke where I think I’m about 85 percent woke and the other 15 percent I keep to myself.

THE PODCAST IS JUST me and my producer, Brendan McDonald. It’s really about me and the arc of my life, and guests enter into that. Listeners have seen me move through almost everything one can in life, other than the birth of a child, because I don’t have that. The death of a partner, cats coming and going, women coming and going, career things coming and going, my own personal anxieties and mental health coming and going, politics.

THERE'S NOT A DAY THAT GOES BY where I don’t celebrate my decision not to have children.

WE WEREN'T GOING TO STOP podcasting until one of us was like, “All right.” And it happened. We were experiencing real burnout. If you’re a workaholic, you don’t really process that. But there are symptoms. There is a certain part of your emotional and psychological life that starts to buckle. It is somewhat consuming to show up, be engaged, and be empathetic—to have a genuine conversation.