'It's been an incredible time'

Marc Maron is bringing his WTF podcast to an end after 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes. 

The comic’s talk show – one of the most popular on the internet – has been downloaded 1.1billion times since it began on September 1, 2009, from Maron’s garage

Guests over the years have included Barack Obama, Robin Williams, Louis CK, Sir Paul McCartney, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio  and Pete Davidson, who publicly acknowledged his diagnosis for borderline personality disorder for the first time on the show.

Maron announced the end of the show on today’s episode, where the guest was John Mulaney, saying: ‘Sixteen years it's a long time, a long time to do anything… all of a sudden, you know, you're old and you realise you've been doing something a long time.’

He explained that he started the show when ‘no one knew what a podcast was’, adding ‘I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me.

‘All we knew is we were going to do it every Monday and Thursday and there was no way to make money. It was crazy. At the beginning, it was just a garage was filled with junk and it slowly evolved into the show you listen to twice a week.

‘Sixteen years we've been doing this and we've decided that we we had a great run and now it's time. WTF is is coming to an end. It’s our decision we'll have our final episode sometime in the fall.’

The show has always been created solely by Maron and his producer  Brendan McDonald, and the 61-year-old comic said: ‘We both realised together that we were done. There was no convincing [each other] or pushback or arguing. We were done, you know, and it's OK. It's OK for things to end. 

‘A lot of monumental things happened on this show. This was a show that was started when there were no podcasts, and now there are nothing but podcasts. It's been an incredible time in my life and Brendan's life. 

‘We've done things that we never thought we would 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 stand-up 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 talking to a President in my garage… so many things happened because of just this setting up a mic in my garage with Brendan.’

Maron’s career has certainly taken off following the launch of the show. From 2013 to 2016, he starred in his own sitcom Maron,  based on his real life, followed by a major role in the Netflix ​wrestling comedy-drama Glow.  

He has a new stand-up special coming to HBO this summer, while he is starring in the upcoming comedy film In Memoriam – about a terminally ill actor obsessed with being featured in the Oscars' RIP segment –  and alongside Owen Wilson in Apple golf comedy series Stick which launches this week. 

Speaking on today’s show he said: ‘We're tired, we're burnt out and we are utterly satisfied with the work we've done. This doesn't mean I'm never going to do something like this again. But for now we're just wrapping things up

‘[The podcast] has a very big part of my spiritual, social, and psychological life. But I'll be honest with you, it's nice to be able to end things on our terms…. God forbid we just keep ploughing along and something diminishes. We wouldn't want to just keep plugging along because we can, at the risk of our burnout or our passion starts to drift or it starts to get sloppy. We're just not those kinds of people.

‘I do want to sincerely thank all you people for being along on this journey with me and with Brendan and with all the guests. because we really did something here and I want to thank you all for that.

‘But it's done. This is a full-hearted decision. It's the right decision for me. It's the right decision for Brendan… It’s just time, folks.’

Published: 2 Jun 2025