Marc Maron
Marc David Maron is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, musician, and former radio presenter and podcaster.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Maron was a frequent guest on the Late Show with David Letterman and appeared more than forty times on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, more than any other stand-up comedian. He hosted Comedy Central's Short Attention Span Theater from 1993 to 1994, replacing Jon Stewart. He was also a regular guest on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn and hosted the short-lived 2002 American version of the British game show Never Mind the Buzzcocks on VH1. He was a regular on the left-wing radio network Air America from 2004 to 2009, hosting The Marc Maron Show and co-hosting Morning Sedition and Breakroom Live.
In September 2009, following the cancellation of Breakroom Live, Maron began hosting the twice-weekly podcast WTF with Marc Maron, interviewing comedians, authors, musicians, and celebrities in his garage in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Highlights include a 2010 episode with Louis C.K. that was rated the No. 1 podcast episode of all time by Slate magazine, a 2012 interview with comedian Todd Glass in which Glass publicly revealed that he was gay, and a 2015 interview with President Barack Obama. The podcast ended in 2025 with Obama returning as its final guest.
From 2013 to 2016, he starred in his own IFC television comedy series, Maron, for which he also served as executive producer and an occasional writer. From 2017 to 2019, he co-starred in the Netflix comedy series GLOW. He also had a minor role in 2019's Joker and provided the voice of Mr. Snake in the DreamWorks Animation film The Bad Guys and its sequel The Bad Guys 2.
Early life
Maron was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of mother Toby Blum and father Barry Ralph Maron, an orthopedic surgeon. He has a younger brother, Craig. Maron is from a Jewish family, originally from Poland and Ukraine. He lived in Wayne, New Jersey, until he was six. Maron's father joined the U.S. Air Force for two years for his medical residency in Alaska, which led to Maron and his family moving there. When his father left the Air Force, he moved the family to Albuquerque, New Mexico and started a medical practice. Maron lived in Albuquerque from third grade through high school. He graduated from Highland High School. He graduated from Boston University in 1986 with a B.A. in English literature.Career
Maron first performed stand-up in 1987 when he was 24 years old. His professional comedy career began at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where he became an associate of Sam Kinison. He later moved to New York City and became part of the New York alternative comedy scene. During the summer of 1994, he appeared several times on Monday open-mic night, coordinated by Tracey Metzger, at the now-closed Greenwich Village location of the Boston Comedy Club. He auditioned unsuccessfully for the 1995 Saturday Night Live cast overhaul and attributes being passed over to being high during a meeting with show creator and producer Lorne Michaels.Maron continued to be a stand-up comedian and also began to appear on television; his voice was used in episodes of Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, and he hosted Short Attention Span Theater for a time. He also recorded half-hour specials for HBO and Comedy Central Presents as well as comedy showcases like the Cam Neely Foundation fundraiser, which also featured performers such as Jon Stewart, Denis Leary and Steven Wright. He frequently appeared in the live alternative stand-up series he had organized with Janeane Garofalo called Eating It, which used the rock bar Luna Lounge in New York's Lower East Side as its venue, from the 1990s until the building was razed in 2005.
His first one-man show, Jerusalem Syndrome, had an extended off-Broadway run in 2000 and was released in book form in 2001. In 2009, he began workshopping another one-man show, Scorching the Earth. According to Maron, these two shows "bookend" his relationship with his second wife, comic Mishna Wolff, which ended in a bitter divorce.
In May 2008, he toured with Eugene Mirman and Andy Kindler in Stand Uppity: Comedy That Makes You Feel Better About Yourself and Superior to Others. In January 2009, a collaboration with Sam Seder, which had begun in September 2007 as a weekly hour-long video webcast, became Breakroom Live with Maron & Seder, produced by Air America. Until its cancellation in July 2009, the show was webcast live weekdays at 3 p.m. Eastern, with episodes archived for later viewing. In its final incarnation, the show was informal, taking place in the actual break room of Air America Media, with the cafeteria vending machines just off-camera. This meant occasional distractions when Air America staff and management alike would occasionally come in for food and drink. Maron and Seder held court in an online "post-show chat" with viewers, in an even less formal continuation of each webcast, after the credits had rolled.
File:Marc Maron and Zach Galifianakis.jpg|thumb|left|Maron and Zach Galifianakis participating in a Doug Loves Movies podcast at the 2012 Los Angeles Podcast Festival
Maron's stand-up act is marked by his commitment to self-revelation and cultural analysis. He is particularly known for relentless on-stage exploration of his own relationships with family, girlfriends, and other stand-up comedians whom he has known and befriended over his years. In October 2013, Maron released his first hour-long special through Netflix, Marc Maron: Thinky Pain. Maron would follow this with another special, More Later, which was released in December 2015 through Epix.
Kliph Nesteroff's 2015 book The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy is dedicated to Maron.
His 2023 special From Bleak to Dark was named New York magazine's "No. 1 Best Comedy Special of 2023."
Radio
From almost the first day of the liberal talk radio network Air America's broadcasts in 2004, Maron co-hosted Morning Sedition, a three-hour early-morning radio show with Mark Riley that aired weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern time. The show was unique in the Air America lineup in its heavy reliance on both live and pre-produced sketch comedy, utilizing the talents of staff writers as well as the on-air hosts. The format was a left-leaning near-satire of typical morning "Buddy" radio programs, including recurring characters, interviews and listener call-in segments, and it attracted a loyal fan base.In late 2005, it became known that Maron's contract would not be renewed, due to problems with then-Air America executive Danny Goldberg. Goldberg reportedly did not "get" the comedy or agree with the satiric and often angry tone set by Maron and other writers for a morning drive-time show. On November 28, 2005, it was officially announced that Maron's contract had not been renewed. His last Morning Sedition broadcast was on December 16, 2005, and the show was discontinued shortly thereafter.
On February 28, 2006, Maron began hosting a nighttime radio program with Jim Earl as a sidekick for KTLK Progressive Talk 1150AM in Los Angeles called The Marc Maron Show from 10:00 pm until midnight PST. The program was frequently delayed owing to KTLK's contractual agreement to broadcast local sports events that would often go into overtime. The Marc Maron Show was never nationally syndicated by Air America despite reported contractual clauses promising such. The show was streamed online live, but the show Nd stream were not well promoted.
On July 5, it was announced that Maron's final episode would be on July 14. A few days prior, Maron bluntly discussed his long struggle with Air America Radio's executives on-air. In 2008, Marc and Sam Seder expanded their prior collaboration on a weekly hour-long video webcast into a daily show produced by Air America Media called Maron v. Seder. The show became Breakroom Live with Maron & Seder starting in 2009 and could be viewed on Air America Media's website. On July 15, 2009, after less than one year, Air America Media canceled Breakroom Live. According to the show's hosts, the cancellation was for financial reasons. Ironically, the day before the cancellation, the show got some of the first real publicity it had ever received when MaximumFun.org posted its podcast of an interview with Maron on The Sound of Young America.
On the final Breakroom Live webcast, Maron said that it marked the third time since 2005 he'd been told by an executive at the network that his services would not be required in the immediate future. Sam Seder pointed out that this would be the end of his fourth show at Air America since the troubled network's inception.
''WTF with Marc Maron'' podcast
On September 1, 2009, Maron began a twice-weekly podcast called WTF with Marc Maron in what Maron would later describe in a 2015 interview as a "Hail Mary pass"; his first-ever guest was fellow stand-up Jeff Ross. In a freeform discussion, Maron and his guests touch the arc of the interviewees' careers, their shared experiences, and stories from the road. In all, Maron released 1,686 episodes of the show, garnering critical acclaim and more than 600 million downloads; notable guests include President Barack Obama, Sir Paul McCartney, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Lorne Michaels, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Brad Pitt. The show has been noted for its influence on other long-form interview podcasts that emerged after its debut. In April 2021, it was announced that Maron and his producer Brendan McDonald would be the recipients of the first-ever Governors Award by the Podcast Academy for Excellence in Audio for their work on WTF. The success of Maron's podcast opened up numerous other avenues on film and TV as well as giving him a massive boost to audience attendance at his stand-up shows.In June 2025, Maron announced that WTF would end. He announced on the September 29, 2025 episode of WTF that his last original episode would air October 13, 2025. The final episode of WTF featured Barack Obama, who gave him the advice "be a little brain-dead for awhile" and "don't rush into what's next."