EXCLUSIVE: A podcast institution is coming to an end. Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, which has had close to 2,000 episodes since its 2009 launch, will be turning off its microphones in the fall.
WTF with Marc Maron has been one of the most popular podcasts in the world, arguably kicking off the booming trend of audio series since launching on September 1, 2009.
The series has had 1.1B downloads, listens and impressions since its launch with 1,645 episodes as well as more than 300 bonus episodes for premium subscribers.
“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. It’s our decision. We’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall,” Maron says on the episode released today.
Maron has interviewed comedy greats, A-list actors and Presidents. His June 2015 interview with President Barack Obama broke the record for WTF’s hosting service, Libsyn, for most downloads in a 24 hour period by more than double the previous record. President Obama ventured to Maron’s garage in Highland Park, California to discuss race relations and gun violence as well as joking about black helicopter paranoia and taking jabs at Fox News.
Other standout episodes include Todd Glass coming out in 2012 and a 2010 episode with Robin Williams, which was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry in 2022.
Maron, whose first ever guest was Jeff Ross, has also interviewed the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as well as SNL creator Lorne Michaels, who was one of Maron’s white whales, the most discussed person on the podcast and the man who Maron needed closure from after a meeting that haunted him in the 1990s.
Maron and his producer Brendan McDonald were the recipients of the first-ever Governors Award by the Podcast Academy for Excellence in Audio at The Ambies in 2021.
“It really comes down to the fact that we’ve put up a new show every Monday and Thursday for almost sixteen years and we’re tired. We’re burnt out. And we are utterly satisfied with the work we’ve done. We’ve done great work. This doesn’t mean I’m never going to do something like this again. Doesn’t mean I’ll never have talks like I do here, or some kind of podcast at some point in time. But for now, we’re just wrapping things up. It’s okay. It’s okay to end things. It’s okay to try to start some other chapter in your life,” Maron adds on the episode.
“It’s nice to be able to end things on our terms. We’ve always had that power to do that and that’s what we’re going to do. We started the show on our terms, we grew it on our terms, and we’ll end it on our terms. Look, we’ve had great partners who have helped us do the show over the years. Acast has been our partner for the past three years and we’ve been able to do things on our terms with them. We always had that and it’s always been the way we’ve done it and that’s been great. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to do things the way we want to do them and now this is part of it. Ending it the way we want it to end,” he says.
Maron says that he has a lot of projects going on and he hopes to have many people that never appeared before, some persuaded by it coming to its final stretch, on the podcast before the final episodes in the fall.
These include a new stand-up special coming to HBO this summer. He is also starring in Rob Burnett’s upcoming feature film In Memoriam alongside Judy Greer, Sharon Stone and Regina Hall, and is playing Bruce Springsteen’s producer Chuck Plotkin in Scott Cooper’s Jeremy Allen White-led biopic about The Boss, Deliver Me From Nowhere. On the TV side, he’s also starring alongside Owen Wilson in Apple golf comedy series Stick.
He thanked the listeners and guests. You can listen to the clip below and the full episode at wtfpod.com.
“It’s been an incredible time in my life and Brendan’s life. We’ve done things that we never thought we’d be able to do because of the podcast. My life changed dramatically. All the things that I set out to do before I did the podcast as sort of a Hail Mary pass — To be a standup with an audience. To try my hand at acting. To have experiences with other people that were one of a kind and completely exciting and unique and engaging and revealing. To talk to a president in my garage. So many things happened because of setting up a mic in my garage,” he says. “There’s probably going to be some ups and downs over the next few months with me, emotionally, around the reality of this. But this is a full hearted decision. It’s the right decision for me. It’s the right decision for Brendan. It’s okay. It’s okay for things to end. It’s just time, folks.”
Maron is represented by Independent Artists Group, Avalon, and Brecheen Feldman Breimer.
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