MARC MARON

just wanted to sit down and have a conversation. Nearly 900 podcasts later, he’s still talking— and millions of us are listening.

You wouldn’t expect Bruce Springsteen, Will Ferrell, Dick Van Dyke, Amy Poehler—or President Barack Obama, for that matter—to pop into somebody’s garage to be interviewed. But that’s exactly what they—and hundreds of other guests, from Al Franken to Al Gore—do when they’re on WTF With Marc Maron, a twice-weekly 90-minute podcast.

The popular podcast is recorded in Marc Maron’s garage on a residential street in Los Angeles. Guests sit on a simple orange chair across the desk from the actor/comic who, with his shaggy hair and big mustache, looks more like a member of a garage band than an ace interviewer.

“I don’t really have planned questions,” admits Maron, 54. “I just want to have conversations.”

His conversations—852 and counting since 2009—have put him at the top of the podcasting heap. After his much-buzzed-about conversation with President Obama in 2015, WTF With Marc

Maron gained 300,000 listeners per episode and is now downloaded 6 million times each month. The show has charted in the podcast top 100 on iTunes in nine countries and enjoys support from a rotating cast of sponsors such as Squarespace and Stamps.com. It has come a long way from the early days when the podcast operated on a shoestring and listeners sent in donations of $10 per month. SO WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE LISTENING TO THIS GUY? One reason WTF is popular is that Maron’s guests— including people not known for revealing things about their personal lives as well as fellow interviewers such as Terry Gross and John Oliver—open up to him. That may be because he is so forthcoming himself.

Every episode begins with Maron sharing personal opinions and revelations. Fans know that he’s been divorced twice, that he isn’t close with his father, that he’s a one-day-at-a-time recovering alcoholic, that despite his sometimes-grumpy demeanor he’s a softie for cats and that he’s struggled with jealousy

toward comedians he came up with who then eclipsed him in their success (like Louis C.K., the formerly estranged friend and roommate he famously made up with on one of his podcasts in 2010).

“People who come into his garage feel like they can unburden themselves,” says Brendan McDonald, Maron’s producer and co-author of their new book of podcast excerpts called Waiting for the Punch: Words to Live by From the WTF Podcast (available Oct. 10). “Marc is able to get moments of insight and clarity from people. He really connects with them.”

“I enjoy listening,” Maron says. “The skill for that grew, not so much because I was a bad listener in the beginning, but I always wanted to interject.” He admits that his podcasts in the early days were a little like therapy. “I think the first hundred episodes are me asking celebrities to come over and help me with my problems. I have grown as a person over the time I’ve done this.” Now he’s more empathetic and is able to let people go on and just guide them. “Almost every time I’m surprised by something in the conversation.”

Maron and McDonald have been strategic about how they want their podcast to become a part of people’s lives. They created a regular twicea-week ’cast that’s long enough to allow conversations to unfold. “A lot of people deserve time to talk, and they do better with a long-form interview,” Maron says. “Especially somebody who’s been in something for decades, like [musician] Randy Newman. And [documentarians] Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Talking with them about Vietnam needed to be a big conversation. There aren’t a lot of places to have those longer conversations anymore.”

NO, HE’S STILL NOT A HOUSEHOLD NAME

In spite of his podcasting popularity and the sure success of his new book, Maron is still one of those guys you might think you don’t know until you see him. He’s been doing stand-up comedy for more than 30 years—at clubs, on late-night TV (more than 40 times alone on Conan O’Brien’s shows as well as on Letterman, Leno, Fallon, Kimmel, Corden and Ferguson) and on his own largely autobiographical IFC sitcom, Maron, from 2013 to 2016. And he now stars in the hit Netflix series GLOW, about the real-life 1980s women’s wrestling league. Maron plays washed-up Bmovie director Sam Sylvia alongside an almost all-female cast led by Alison Brie.

“I always wanted to act in something where I wasn’t playing myself,” he says.

Although Maron no longer smokes like his character (thanks to nicotine

lozenges), doesn’t drink or do drugs (he’s 18 years sober) and his personal life is good (credit his girlfriend, L.A.-based abstract painter Sarah Cain, he says), he completely relates to his scrappy, neurotic, druggy, boozy, romantically and professionally challenged, bitingly funny character on the show.

“I get this guy,” he says. “Not only that, I already had some Lacoste shirts to wear. I thought they were timeless.”

So why does this successful actor, stand-up comedian (check out his special Marc Maron: Too

Real on Netflix) and soon-to-bebest-selling author keep inviting folks to sit in the orange chair? Why does he keep asking the hard questions on WTF?

“In this format, I can be funny, I can be serious, I can be emotional,” says Maron. “I can do anything.”

And that’s why we’re listening.