WTF with Marc Maron (it's a podcast)

Yeah that was a fun listen, Giamatti was so giddy

Did you guys listen to Matt B. Davis? Very old-school ep with escalating tension between Marc and guest, you get to hear two guys who can be kind of assholes rubbing their scars against each other, I loved it

Yeah, I just listened to that one the other day, even though he teased it ahead of time I really didn't expect it to get as tense as it did.

yeah it was great oldschool wtf
but i wanted to email marc afterward to tell him: gah Matt is a bully, fuck that guy

every once in a while i will check in with this podcast based on the guest -- and then will be reminded why i never listen. this dude WON'T SHUT THE FUCK UP. LET YOUR GUEST FINISH HIS SENTENCE. god what a jerk!

He did a decent job not stepping on A. Whitney Brown's toes last week.

God, if you hated a new episode for that reason, please don't listen to anything before, like, four years ago. xp

I generally listen to every WTF episode whether I know the guest or not. Sometimes I'll skip if I really don't want to hear a particular guest talk for an hour (Neal Brennan and Tiffany Haddish was a rare week where I skipped both), but I also skip ones where it's been made extremely clear that the interview was an uncomfortable one. That means I'll probably never listen to the Ben Kingsley ep.

I listened to some of the Kingsley episode just now. Pretty awkward. It seemed like Ben has all of his stories set down word for word and didn’t necessarily dig Maron’s interruptions and attempts to connect.

The Tiffany Haddish ep was pretty illuminating and the Daniel Stern was interesting too

ben kingsley best maron episode of all time

i absolutely love WTF, have listened for years and years, he's a great host and has the best conversations of any regular podcast interview person, except maybe tyler cowen

however, how to love WTF as i do:

skip 100% of interviews with musicians
skip 100% of interviews with "thinkers"
skip 100% of interviews with authors
skip 90% of interviews with directors
skip 50% of interviews with actors (you can tell within 5 min)
skip 0% of interviews with other stand-ups

yes, stand ups are most reliable

The Tiffany Haddish ep was pretty illuminating

I tapped out of this v early, did she talk about her comedy paedo video lawsuit or The Int3rnational Alma Mat3r School Of Asc3nsi0n Bless3d Univ3rsity?

totally agree that the standup eps are the best but I like the musician ones, I can't explain why since there's so much of Maron fan-stammering about the albums and then asking the musician "So you met xxxx?" but for some reason I like them anyway

I skip the ones where they talk about politics but it can be unpredictable which ones those are

Tiffany Hadish was just weirdly "People were unfairly mad at me for drunk driving, why are people like that"

skip 0% of interviews with other stand-ups

lol these are always skipped regardless of podcast, comedians are some of the least interesting people on earth

with WTF musicians and maybe some oddballs like a chef are the only ones I don't immediately archive

every actor interview is a free ~*MasterClass*~

I tapped out of this v early, did she talk about . . . The Int3rnational Alma Mat3r School Of Asc3nsi0n Bless3d Univ3rsity?
― bae (sic), Saturday, May 25, 2024 9:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

What's this?

I promise I tried googling various combinations of those words, to no avail

sounds like a Scientology thing

try H3ir Holin3ss or H3ir Princ3ss

Something about Daniel Kaluuya’s manager

cryptic sic tic

I like Maron but can't deal with the musician interviews. I just feel like he's out of his element or something, even more than when he interviews directors and authors. Which is why I think the interviews with comedians are typically the best episodes

I liked the recent one with Tammy Faye Starlite, who was part of the late 80s / early 90s NYC performance art and alt-comedy scene Maron was also part of. The two had similar interests and frames of reference (Maron didn't have to have done any homework or read a book), so they could relax and engage.

milo z, if the only thing you listen to is musicians than we are not into wtf for the same things! but the reason the comedian ones are good are not necessarily bc they are "interesting" or "uninteresting" people - but (1) because they are good at talking, that is mostly their job; (2) i like listening to shop-talk between peers.

yes to the shop talk, and i hope Daniel Stern fit into your 10% of actors - good amount of shop in that one partly because he’s comedic

oh thanks for the rec, i hadn't decided on that one yet, seemed dubious

I think Maron is going to find a way to mention in every single episode that his mother told him she didn't know how to love him as a baby, and I'm here for it

The Molly Ringwald one is pretty funny because Maron keeps asking her about stuff and she keeps saying "well I wrote about this in the New Yorker" -- i mean, not that Maron is expected to study the full dossier for every guest but in this one you can really tell that Maron knows nothing except that she was the preppy girl in the Breakfast Club and he's basically "so like what's been up since 1985 with you?"

The Molly Ringwald one is pretty funny because Maron keeps asking her about stuff and she keeps saying "well I wrote about this in the New Yorker"

This is pretty dumb on her part; does she not realize that their conversation is being recorded, and will be shared with people who have no idea that she wrote something for the New Yorker? I mean, an interview isn't a conversation; the questions are prompts meant to elicit information that will be of interest to the reader/listener. I frequently ask questions of artists that I know the answer to, because I want them to tell the story for the reader's benefit. If I ask a musician a question and they say, "Well, as I said when I was profiled in DownBeat," fuck that person.

yeah, that is weird. Perhaps she thinks she's just there to promote something new?

If it's related to her and John Hughes, she may have written that piece so as to rehash it just once instead of permanently being asked the same questions and not wanting to be off-the-cuff about them.

an interview isn't a conversation... I frequently ask questions of artists that I know the answer to

two huge differences btw you and maron

i mean obv he cant be expected to read every article and interview for every guest. but if someone had written a big article in the new yorker that got a lot of attention a handful of years ago reflecting on the one big thing they're most famous for, not unreasonable to expect that an interviewer wouldn't be totally ignorant of it imo

always amazing to me that Maron has this reputation as one of the great interviewers when every fourth or fifth guest gets noticeably annoyed that he knows little to nothing about them

haven't listened to that interview, but I liked her recent appearance on Search Engine: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/search-engine/how-do-you-survive-fame-pNaUIh_12Pz/