. Below, Maron in his own words, edited and condensed. <\/em>I\u2019m weird. I can be more open<\/strong> in some ways with audiences than I can in interpersonal relationships.<\/p>\nLook, I\u2019ve lived and learned<\/strong> over time. I\u2019ve been a toxic person in my life. I\u2019m not great at relationships. I used to do a joke where I think I\u2019m about 85 percent woke and the other 15 percent I keep to myself. <\/p>\nThe podcast is just me and my producer<\/strong>, Brendan McDonald. It\u2019s really about me and the arc of my life, and guests enter into that. Listeners have seen me move through almost everything one can in life, other than the birth of a child, because I don\u2019t have that. The death of a partner, cats coming and going, women coming and going, career things coming and going, my own personal anxieties and mental health coming and going, politics.<\/p>\n\nThere\u2019s not a day <\/strong>that goes by where I don\u2019t celebrate my decision not to have children. <\/p>\nWe weren\u2019t going to stop<\/strong> podcasting until one of us was like, \u201cAll right.\u201d And it happened. We were experiencing real burnout. If you\u2019re a workaholic, you don\u2019t really process that. But there are symptoms. There is a certain part of your emotional and psychological life that starts to buckle. It is somewhat consuming to show up, be engaged, and be empathetic\u2014to have a genuine conversation. <\/p>\nI want to have my life back<\/strong>. I\u2019d like to enjoy it without putting so much of myself out there, because there is an emotional responsibility to that.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s no reason<\/strong> to fade away if you don\u2019t have to. <\/p>\n\n
\n
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<\/button>I grew up middle-class<\/strong>. My old man was a doctor and had bread. Neither one of my parents really have money anymore. My dad screwed up everything. When I started doing comedy, whatever fallback I had in parents wasn\u2019t there. And doing comedy at the beginning, it\u2019s sparse, dude. <\/p>\nMy friend made me buy this watch<\/strong>. It\u2019s an Omega Speedmaster. It\u2019s classic. You got to wind it, though. My girlfriend is like, \u201cDoesn\u2019t it just wind itself?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cNo. This is how watches used to be.\u201d She\u2019s a little younger than me.<\/p>\nI used to say that I never really felt<\/strong> that life was going by quickly. When you\u2019re in it, you\u2019re like, \u201cIt\u2019s plodding by.\u201d Then, all of a sudden, it\u2019s like, \u201cOh my God, how am I the oldest guy in the room?\u201d I didn\u2019t really have a sense of age of these younger comics, like John Mulaney or Nate Bargatze. I always saw them as my peers. Then you hit sixty and you\u2019re like, \u201cYou guys are forty. What? When did that happen?\u201d<\/p>\nI like Springsteen<\/strong>, but I\u2019m not necessarily a Springsteen guy. <\/p>\nWhat have I learned from being divorced<\/strong> twice? Just give them the money. Please. <\/p>\nDrama is a way to avoid intimacy<\/strong>. Even when you both end up crying, that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re being intimate. It just means you\u2019re devastating each other. <\/p>\nI\u2019m sure that intimacy in sex<\/strong> with somebody that you love and have an openhearted relationship with can be amazing. Maybe I\u2019ve experienced it a few times.<\/p>\nAs a middle-class American Jew<\/strong>, no one taught us how to use God. I was never taught to fear God or have a relationship with God. I knew I was a Jew and that was enough. <\/p>\nYou don\u2019t really require<\/strong> a lot when you\u2019re grieving. Just to show up in somebody\u2019s dark time is an amazing service. <\/p>\nHave you been to a hospital?<\/strong> It\u2019s fucking horrendous.<\/p>\nGrief isn\u2019t unusual<\/strong>. It\u2019s a guarantee. You hope it\u2019s not tragic. It\u2019s nice if there\u2019s an arc to it that makes sense. <\/p>\nWhat happens to us after we die?<\/strong> Not much. But is that so bad? Don\u2019t we all need a nap for a while?<\/p>\nI thought comedy was<\/strong> a noble undertaking. The only rule of comedy is you should be funny. Outside of that, you can fucking do whatever you want onstage. If you can make it funny, you can be who you are.<\/p>\nI\u2019m sure hardcore progressives<\/strong> would call me a centrist. Whatever. That infighting is kind of an issue. <\/p>\nThere was this idea<\/strong> on the anti-woke flank, \u201cDon\u2019t censor yourself at all.\u201d And it\u2019s like, no, that\u2019s how civilization works. That\u2019s the way democracy works. You learn tolerance, and you behave properly in certain situations. Now that\u2019s gone. I don\u2019t know how democracy works without tolerance and compassion. <\/p>\nI went to see a concert<\/strong>. Behind me was a mentally challenged kid, grown up. He was having a great time. Standing next to him was his father, I guess, who just had this look of, like, \u201cIt\u2019s a hard life, and we do the best we can.\u201d I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m like, \u201cI get it, and I don\u2019t need to use that word.\u201d <\/p>\nTo get vulnerable and understand<\/strong> why you\u2019re an asshole as opposed to double down on being an asshole is a choice.<\/p>\nIf you can change one or two people<\/strong> to either think differently or help them out, that\u2019s not nothing. I don\u2019t know what else I can do. I\u2019m not going to run for office. <\/p>\n\n\nmore What I’ve Learned interviews:<\/span> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The finale of Marc Maron’s acclaimed podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, came out October 13 after sixteen years and more than sixteen hundred episodes. He will appear in the movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, out October 24. Maron, who’s sixty-two and lives in Los Angeles, spoke with Esquire in August while he was in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2095501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[310910,395780,285977,285684,395779],"class_list":["post-2095500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-content-type-feature","tag-contentid-97d8e1b2-f34f-4166-9ffc-2a93dd73d9f4","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-what-ive-learned-marc-maron"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Marc-Maron-on-Bruce-Springstein-Movie-Deliver-Me-From-Nowhere.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2095500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2095502,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095500\/revisions\/2095502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2095501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2095500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2095500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2095500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}