Barack Obama Praises Marc Maron’s ‘Core Decency’ in Final ‘WTF’ Episode
Marc Maron is finally ending his lauded comedy podcast WTF after 16 years and 1,686 episodes. According to the 44th President, comedy podcasting just lost a rare and valued conscience.
When the cranky, acerbic, alt-comedy great Maron first began hosting a twice-weekly talk show in 2009, the now-massive comedy podcasting industry was still in its infancy, and Maron, himself, was a bit of a trailblazer. Maron began WTF just three months before Joe Rogan launched his own show, The Joe Rogan Experience, which would quickly become the center of a comedy and misinformation ecosystem that has now begun to engulf other spheres of culture like an aggressive mold. However, for the last 16 years, while other stand-up-stars-turned-podcasters won their following with explosive hot takes and endless culture war content, Maron was having thoughtful, earnest and inquisitive conversations with everyone from movie stars to comedy giants to sitting Presidents.
Roughly a decade ago, Maron put his stamp on popular culture when he hosted President Barack Obama for a high-profile, wide-ranging podcast episode that explored the very fabric of American society through an unusually (for a comedian) empathetic lens. Then, today, the former President sat down with Maron a second time in the last-ever episode of WTF, during which Obama described exactly what the podcasting industry is losing.
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“I think we’re going to be okay,” Obama told Maron during their final recorded conversation. “I think part of the reason you had such a big fan base during this 16-year run is there was a core decency to you and the conversations that you had.”
When Obama asked Maron how he was feeling to be at the end of the WTF road, Maron answered honestly, “I feel like I’m ready for the break, but there is sort of a fear there of, what do I do now?”
As Maron explained, his following has become something of a responsibility, and he believes that he still has an obligation to take care of WTF listeners. “They need something," Maron said of his fans. “There is a feeling of like, ‘How am I going to feel less alone? How am I going to deal with my mental this and that? And how am I going to find a way to exist in the world that we’re living in?'”
“And I’m not offering them solutions, but I am commiserating, and it’s comforting,” Maron said of how he sees his role in his listeners’ lives.
“They trust you,” Obama told Maron of his listeners. “And they feel as if what you’re going through and what they’re going through occupies a similar space. And so they don’t feel like they’re traveling this journey that can be frightening alone, sometimes. And there is a power in the human voice that you grow attached to.”
“What you just described about people trusting you and connecting, partly because you’re willing to be vulnerable in front of people and let them know what’s going on inside your gut, there’s a power to that,” Obama told Maron, advising the comic to continue to channel that power even without his podcast.
As for Maron’s “core decency” and how it’s shaped his following, later in the episode, Obama opined, “In my experience, most people are really decent. And I think that’s why, when they hear somebody else who is, it gives them hope, and you should be proud of having done that.”
The mere fact the President most closely associated to the word “hope” would return to WTF for Maron’s last-ever podcast speaks to the comic’s capacity to inspire. While other artists spread fear and confusion in order to become their followers’ safe space, Maron channeled the fear and confusion that already exists in an increasingly unstable world and attempted, in his own surly, sardonic way, to create commonality with everyone else who was, like him, just trying to keep their head above water.
Sadly, if Obama’s career arc is any sort of precedent, WTF will now be followed by a small-minded, fear-driven, xenophobic podcast that goes against everything Maron stood for. So, basically, from now on, there will be two JREs.
