WTF with Marc Maron (it's a podcast)

Maron was driving me nuts with all the "yeah"s "right"s "uh huh uh huh"s and sentence finishing in the Danes interview. It was like he had a plane to catch.

Mike Myers ep is gold

Decided to listen to Claire Danes. Marc seems disappointed that she's not as mentally disturbed as he'd like her to be.

Today's is great.

I don't think I ever knew that Bob Newhart had never really done any live standup before he recorded his first album—which went on to win Album of the Year and net him a Best New Artist Grammy in 1961.

that stuff about Dean Martin was hilarious -- Dean just rolls into the show in the afternoon & is genuinely cracking up at Newhart because it's the first time he's heard the material. Like Maron says, it totally makes sense I just never knew that's how it went down. Crazy.

great interview, seems like such a nice man

Love Bob Newhart so much that I'm actually listening to WTF.

<3

"I like Francis a lot, what he's doing."
"Wha--who's that?"
"Pope Francis."

As much as I love Mould as a musician, the best part of his interview today is when he's talking about professional wrestling stuff.

I'm watching the 1st episode of Maron right now (it's just started on Fox over here). Maron can't act.

He gets better in the second season. Still distracting sometimes.

Yeah, I turned it over, it wasn't very good. Does it get better?

Well...

A little? It's a little more consistent, I think.

alec sulkin!! the only person i read on twitter. im actually excited to hear this.

I was pretty bummed over their group fuss about words/topics they can't use in comedy anymore. Shitty way to end a pretty good interview.

couldnt make it through the maron angst session. try again tomorrow i guess

What a surprise that a Seth MacFarlane-favoured writer would blankly fail to understand how rote, unthought insults could possibly be offensive on any level

Maron usually rolls over on his interviewees saying boneheadedly dumb shit, so the very friendly pushback on this was at least partly heartening to hear

the Ty Segall one is an entire episode of "Who are your guys?"

Ha! it really is.

except padded out with "what, who are those guys?!"

Robyn Hitchcock tomorrow?!?!

The Wanda Sykes one is pretty good. You can tell they have a lot of mutual respect and admiration for each other.

yeah that was a nice conversation. seemed like there was some dark stuff underneath her first marriage, did not sound like a good scene at all

I agree - it did not sound like a happy situation.

As a side note, do you all ever listen to the Longform podcast? It's rapidly becoming a favorite of mine.

never heard of it, i'll check it out

longform podcast ruuuules
they said they started it because they liked wtf, fwiw
probably a good episode for just weird life bio stuff if anybody wants to check it is the dan p lee one
i kinda just like hearing people talking about their messy twenties really

hey btw i liked marc's liver mush story
v endearing

yeah that was kinda cool

Paid $9 for yearly access to the archives, but this proprietary player sucks compared to Pocket Cast (or even the iOS podcasts app).
Listened to Mark Duplass one today - it was really good and pretty surprising because I only know him from The League.

Downloading some Longforms now, I've been having a hard time finding podcasts I like - comedians talking to comedians is boring, even the good tentpole podcasts (WTF, nerdist, etc.) rely on that too much.

this is a gr8 longform ep:

http://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-87-amanda-hess

I was looking forward to this Jay Bakker episode because, even though I've not been associated with the church or considered myself a Christian in over 20 years, I always did like the Bakkers. Especially Tammy Faye. Jay seems like a good guy too.

I was never on the fence about whether or not Jerry Falwell was an asshole to his core, but it was nice to have that confirmed.

Did you ever see his documentary TV series, One Punk Under God? It was pretty good.

Oh man, I forgot about that show! It was good.

I always meant to, but never did.

i really liked it

and there's some good stuff where he goes to their old theme-park thing

I have REALLY enjoyed the interview with Jay Bakker. The downfall of the PTL and the other televangelists around that time, as well as the Iran-Contra scandal, are the first two eye openers I can recall, and it's way interesting to hear the stories from around that time from another, more intimate perspective. The anecdote Bakker provides about his dad being catatonic in the fetal position on the couch for several days after it all went down is particularly personal, especially given the over-coiffed nature of their ministry.

And to Maron's credit, he did the touristy thing and asked questions about some of the scandal details, but seemed to keep his questions as being about Jay's role and position during it. It's helped by his chronological approach, and he doesn't dip back in for sensational shit after the PTL goes down.

And he really seems to engage with Bakker on his current ministry and on the question of faith and the teachings of Jesus. I'm pretty impressed by this interview.

otm

I'm only halfway through but I'm really enjoying how good and honest the interview is...but also that Maron has a sort of respectful understanding of Bakker's relationship with his parents, and that they were still his parents at the end of the day no matter how the larger public saw them...

and that Maron is genuinely interested in Bakker's faith. That's a big part of who this guy is and letting him talk honestly about it is awesome.

the nick stoller interview is great because maron is being a dick the whole time. the whole 'artisan bread' exchange is so funny. he should interview more people that he has some level of open disdain for.

I was trying to figure out why he was so weirdly aggressive during that interview. It's not like he's never interviewed Harvard types on the show before.

I kind of felt bad for Stoller, he was trying to roll with it and have fun but it felt like Maron was kind of walking all over him

Some of those "Maron being a dick" interviews can be pretty funny esp if the interviewee is a bit of a dick to begin with eg. Dane Cook. I have no idea who Eric Stoller is tho.

or Nick Stoller even.

Lol yeah him too. Maybe I was thinking of Eric Stoltz.

seems like a perfectly nice guy but it's still a funny dynamic, like that podcast where kumail nanjiani and maron were going at it. i've been kinda bored by WTF lately so it was refreshing. tim and eric this week though, could be good.

When Nick Frost was talking today about his character on Spaced, named Mike Watt, I thought "Has Maron never interviewed Mike Watt? Maron needs to interview Mike Watt!"

nick frost is on today? awesome!

Ugh that would be awful. Marc would keep interrupting him. Mike Watt needs to just do his own podcast of monologues.

Haha, prob right