“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,” he revealed on the latest episode of the pod featuring guest John Mulaney (via Deadline). “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 added that he was glad to be able to “end things on our terms” after a landmark, award-winning run. Over the course of nearly two decades, Maron conducted interviews with guests like Paul McCartney, Lorne Michaels, Keith Richards, Carol Burnett, and Robin Williams, the latter of which was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry in 2022. He even hosted then-President Barack Obama in his garage in 2015 for one record-breaking episode.
Speaking with The A.V. Club in 2013, Maron said, “I’m always touched and surprised by what this show seems to mean to people. I’m constantly surprised and grateful and humbled by the whole thing.” Though he “never set out to do some sort of confessional show,” the podcast nevertheless developed a reputation as a place for comics and artists to go deep not only on their work, but on their own psyche. “It’s really them volunteering the information and just my nature. I like to talk to people about things, I think. It feels good to me. It feels real for me. There are been plenty of interviews that didn’t go there,” he shared. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I come with my own baggage, but I’ve also become a better listener. You sit in a garage surrounded by garbage and books and things, and I really won’t let any of these be less than an hour long. So if you ground the conversation in the moment and have an authentic conversation, if you talk for an hour, somewhere in that hour, somewhere halfway or two-thirds of the way through, shit can get really pretty real, just by nature of the tone of it and the space and the fact that there are no cameras around and I am generally intently focused on what people are saying.”
On Monday’s episode, Maron reflected, “It’s been an incredible time in my life and [producer Brendan McDonald’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 added, “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.”
