Episode 1603 - WTF Origins: A Full Maron Special Presentation

Summary

Podcast Summary: WTF with Marc Maron – Episode 1603: WTF Origins: A Full Maron Special Presentation

Introduction

In Episode 1603 of the WTF with Marc Maron Podcast, titled "WTF Origins: A Full Maron Special Presentation," Marc Maron sits down with Brendan McDonald, his longtime producer and business partner, to delve into the formative years of the WTF podcast. Released on December 26, 2024, this episode serves as a comprehensive retrospective, exploring the pivotal moments, challenges, and creative processes that shaped the iconic podcast.

Early Beginnings and the Luna Lounge Era

The conversation kicks off with Marc reflecting on the early days of WTF and its connections to the vibrant alternative comedy scene in New York City, particularly centered around Luna Lounge.

• Marc Maron [00:43]: "I want to believe on some level, not just for my ego, that we are historical figures and that WTF is a historic podcast, which it is."

Brendan elaborates on Luna Lounge's significance as the heart of New York's alternative comedy, highlighting its transformation from a music club to a breeding ground for innovative comedians.

• Brendan McDonald [08:05]: "Luna Lounge became a phenomenon because it was really the heart of what became New York's alternative comedy scene."

The duo discusses the initial challenges of hosting alt comedy shows, including unconventional venues like Rebar and the grassroots efforts to curate and book talent through figures like Michael O'Brien and Dave Becky.

Personal Struggles and Professional Setbacks

Marc shares candid insights into his personal life during these early years, revealing the tumultuous period marked by addiction, marital issues, and professional instability.

• Marc Maron [04:09]: "I was just, like, working that and doing comedy, doing meetings, hanging out with Mishnah, getting a divorce, locked out of my apartment..."

Brendan echoes these sentiments, detailing his own battles with sobriety and the impact of personal turmoil on their professional endeavors.

• Brendan McDonald [15:07]: "By the late 90s, you know, I had not sobered up yet. I was in a marriage. I was unhappy with... worrying about having kids, and I was like, I just wanted to die."

The Marc Maron Show and Air America

The discussion transitions to the creation of The Marc Maron Show, a project Brendan produced alongside Marc after their departure from Air America. They recount the ambitious yet ultimately flawed attempts to establish a late-night radio presence.

• Marc Maron [25:22]: "This becomes the key lie. That ends the whole thing ultimately."

Challenges such as scheduling conflicts with LA Clippers games and contractual disputes are highlighted as significant obstacles that led to the show's premature termination.

• Brendan McDonald [39:05]: "We were just sitting there. Waiting to launch our show."

Transition to Break Room Live

Following the dissolution of The Marc Maron Show, Marc and Brendan pivot to creating Break Room Live. This segment explores their innovative approach to blending comedy with radio, utilizing improvisational talent from the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) theater.

• Marc Maron [55:05]: "We knew it when the day was done, we were like, that's the show."

They discuss the technical and creative hurdles faced during this transition, including limitations in technology and the dynamic between Marc and political host Sam Seder.

• Brendan McDonald [53:57]: "It was sort of a guarantee. We're a shoe in."

The Birth of WTF Podcast

Ultimately, the challenges and lessons learned from their radio ventures culminate in the creation of the WTF podcast. Marc and Brendan reflect on how their past experiences informed the podcast's format, emphasizing authenticity and deep, meaningful conversations.

• Marc Maron [66:57]: "If we started to lose our audience or something, that we'd, you know, bow out before it got sad. But it just never happened."

They acknowledge that the podcast's success was not just a result of hard work but also of intuition and a deep understanding of their creative strengths.

Reflections and Legacy

In concluding the episode, the hosts contemplate the legacy of WTF and its place in podcast history. They express gratitude for the journey and the enduring impact of their work, both personally and professionally.

• Brendan McDonald [85:02]: "You believed in what we could do. And even if that show didn't pan out, that was the beginning of Break Room."

• Marc Maron [86:33]: "It was like the culmination of my work, and it has... provided me a living and a life that I like."

Notable Quotes

• Marc Maron [00:00]: "Lock the gate."
• Brendan McDonald [05:07]: "They just put me in there. I got an email yesterday from some guys like, you know, we've been repeating this joke of yours in my family for years."
• Marc Maron [25:22]: "We go in there to meet when we think like, this is the thing where we have to apologize..."
• Brendan McDonald [39:05]: "We were just sitting there. Waiting to launch our show."
• Marc Maron [55:05]: "We knew it when the day was done, we were like, that's the show."

Conclusion

Episode 1603 offers an intimate look into the origins of WTF with Marc Maron, unveiling the complexities and triumphs that paved the way for one of podcasting's most influential platforms. Through honest dialogue and shared memories, Marc and Brendan provide listeners with a rich narrative of resilience, creativity, and the enduring power of authentic conversation.

Transcript

[Marc Maron]

Lock the gate.

[Brendan McDonald]

All right, let's do this. How are you? What the. What the Buddies? What the Nicks? How is your. What the Miss? Or your what the Annika. No. Yeah, what it? Huh? Yeah. I hope it all went well yesterday. I hope that you're feeling some sort of gratitude or relief that it's over or gratitude for your life or some sort of holiday spirit business. I hope you had a good season. I hope as we go into the new year, we can sort of get our brains together and figure out how to deal and get through. Those are my New Year's resolutions. This year again, I'm going to focus on dealing and getting through. Huh? Right. So today we're doing the thing we seem to be doing every Christmas for the last bit of time, for the last few Christmases. This is a compilation of a series that we actually did for the full Marin called WTF Origins. And this is me and Brendan, my producer and business partner for many years now. Many years. I don't even. Like. You cross some line with the years where you're like, holy shit, it's been that long. While you're in it, you don't feel it. But we talked about the things that were important in the creation of WTF as well as the early days of the podcast. I want to believe on some level, not just for my ego, that we are historical figures and that WTF is a historic podcast, which it is. And on some days I wonder, did I unleash this fucking thing on the world, or would it have happened without me? Certainly it would have. And as things move on and move past, you know, you do reflect. And I guess sometimes when we do shows like this, it's good for me to listen to it, to know that we did something. You know, everything gets plowed under so quickly, and it just seems to go into, not the rear view, but onto the pile of stuff available that people can find and kind of all of a sudden engage with, which is good. But it does feel like history and stuff just flies by so quickly. And we've done a lot of these fucking things. And I've talked to a lot of people, and a lot of those talks were kind of amazing and enlightening and touching and informative and, creatively speaking, were my. My lifeline to humanity in a lot of ways. And on this episode, we talk a lot about. Or a bit about the Luna Lounge days, where the kind of alt comedy thing took hold in New York City. We talk about the Marc Maron show, which was a show that Brendan Produced with me out here in Los Angeles after we were pushed out of Air America. And then we talk a bit about Break Room Live, which was something that we did when they pulled me back in. And then we kind of finished with a discussion about, you know, wtf and how that came out of all those things, but also out of my experience and Brendan's experience and how we kind of worked together on this thing. But it is nice to look back just to make sure, because my brain is addled and fucked up from the pace of technology and from engaging with it and from age and from, you know, just time kind of flying by. But this is a nice thing, and I hope if you haven't heard this stuff, that you find it entertaining and informative and interesting, because it has been that for me and I believe for Brendan. And I would like to say this. This was all part of this year's bonus mater on the full Marin. And people can subscribe to that feed by going to the link in the episode description. So unless you had the bonus feed, you haven't heard this stuff. But again, I hope you enjoy it. We'll see what I can remember and how I remember it. That's always the interesting thing about getting old, is how your brain just kind of rewrites things.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. Well, do you feel like you've done that with other things? Like there are other times in your life where you've come up with a narrative on them and then all of a sudden you find yourself being told that's not how it was.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yes, but I mean, usually not a full narrative.

[Marc Maron]

Right, right.

[Brendan McDonald]

But also, some people, you know, you're at the whims of other people's memories of, you know, people have said things to me where they said it was me, and there's just no way. There's just no way.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

They just put me in there. I got an email yesterday from some guys like, you know, we've been repeating this joke of yours in my family for years. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. I have no idea what you're talking about. It was literally. It was a line that was like, beans are good. And I'm like, what is that?

[Marc Maron]

Beans?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. And I'm like, what is that from? I don't know what that's from. Is there a joke? He's like, I thought I heard it on Sirius. I'm like, you know, I don't remember some of my jokes, but I remember the impact of that line. If it was part of something, it Might have been something I just riffed. I don't know.

[Marc Maron]

Well, I think this is a good segue, because the whole reason I wanted to talk to you today was after watching you on Dave Cross's new show, which is called Senses Working Overtime. And I was watching it on YouTube. You guys are very fun together, as always. But you start talking about the New York days, the Boston days, the New York days, all the stuff in your past that where you. You guys had a lot of common ground. And I realized that in talking about Luna Lounge, it's this thing that comes up a lot on the show, especially people in your, you know, cohort.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

And I'm not really sure that I could. If somebody asked me, like, what's the deal with Luna Lounge? I wouldn't be able to tell them very much. Cause I just haven't heard enough detail. I could tell lots of people. The story of the Comedy Store has been told on our show over and over again. I could tell lots of stories about snl, like, as a. As a civilian, as somebody who just heard about it, but I couldn't do that with Luna Lounge. And so I thought it would be a good idea to ask you some of those questions and get the story from someone who was there. So what's the deal? Luna Lounge, if anybody else, if anybody's wondering, what we're talking about was a club in the Lower east side.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yes, it was on Ludlow Street. It's now a hotel. The building had been. Has been level. It's gone. It was like a few doors down from Katz's on Ludlow. And it was primarily a music club. I mean, you know, we could get Rob Sacker, the guy who owned the place, to chime in here. But Luna Lounge became a phenomenon because it was really the heart of what became New York's alternative comedy scene. So in my recollection of it, the comedy show that ended up there started elsewhere. You know, that was sort of the final home of it. But the first attempt to do an alt show was not Luna Lounge. And the first one, I remember maybe the first two was done at some small bar that. A small showroom. It was put on. It was. It was kind of created and curated and Booked by Michael O'Brien, the publicist, and Dave Becky, the manager.

[Marc Maron]

Oh, wow. Michael O'Brien. No kidding.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. And he was part of it, him and Becky.

[Marc Maron]

Right. And he. And both of these guys continued to be, you know, names in with top comedy people for the next several decades.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, Dave Becky became like the really the Biggest manager in comedy.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Brendan McDonald]

And I think it's a good thing.

[Marc Maron]

I also remember, like, in our first, you know, five, ten years, we were always getting guests from Michael O'Brien.

[Brendan McDonald]

Well, Michael O'Brien and Dave came up together. You know, Michael O'Brien was just a guy. He had very few clients in the beginning, running his own shop. I think he still does. And Becky, you know, locked into him. And Becky was. That's how it works, that side of the business. They came up to you.

[Marc Maron]

I think the last time I got an email from Michael O'Brien, it was still from an AOL address. I'm not kidding.

[Brendan McDonald]

Wow. So they booked this one, and on the show was me and Jeff Ross and maybe Todd.

[Marc Maron]

Wait, do you remember where it was?

[Brendan McDonald]

It was upstairs at some place. I don't even know if it was a functioning club. It was a small room, but then it moved almost immediately to a place called Rebar, and that was the show.

[Marc Maron]

Rebar? Was Rebar in Brooklyn?

[Brendan McDonald]

Nope. It was this weird bar. I don't know how they found it. It was on the west side. It was not conducive to what we were doing. But that became the first alt comedy venue. It was a bar that was very weirdly kind of, you know, it was one of those places like, is this owned by the Russian mob? What is the style here? It was kind of modern, but kind of weird. And then they had a back area, and eventually they put a curtain there, and there was no seats. People were sitting on the fucking floor, and there was no real stool. Had some weird, kind of weird, kind of welded, modern bar stool. They pulled in there, and it was just not. And there was no mic.

[Marc Maron]

Well, so why do you think they were doing it? What. What was. What was the impetus? Did they just recognize we have this talent and we need them to have a space to play?

[Brendan McDonald]

I think it was a reaction to the alternative space that there was something happening and, like, people like, you know, Becky was looking to showcase people, I'm sure.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

And to have a place where, you know, they had some control over that that wasn't a comedy club and that. And this is when, you know, this is when, like, during Luna Lounge, the UCB moved to New York.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

And set up shop before they had a theater and. And they were coming down there. But then when it moved to Luna, it changed hands at some point, but again, not to comics.

[Marc Maron]

But when you say it changed hands, what do you mean? Like, who was booking it?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, I mean, at some point, you know, moved from Rebar and then it became Luna Lounge, and the show got a name. Eating it.

[Marc Maron]

Okay?

[Brendan McDonald]

You had me and Jeff Ross and, you know, Louis and Silverman and Jeanine Zach, you know, the full Colin Quinn. Eventually. Eventually, people made their way because singer made it appealing. You know, at the beginning, comics like Colin and Patrice and stuff were like, you know, were you guys just doing comedy for nothing? You know, they made it seem like it was amateur hour. It was an open mic. And I always treated it as a place to work out.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

In a way that I could not work out in the comedy clubs. And I think eventually that became sort of a thing. I think. I don't know why. I don't know if Colin was adverse to it at the beginning, but he ended up coming around and then, like, the State guys. I think arguably Stella probably started at Luna Lounge like it was. And some of them were doing solo standup. Some of the, you know, UCB people were doing solo performances. So it became this huge scene, and it was sort of the center of a comedy thing between performance art, sketch and standup that actually got a hip kind of following to it. It was like, you'd go there on Mondays, there was a line out the door, and I was just this cranky fuck. And I hated everybody that was coming in for some reason. And I'd get up there and do my little thing, and. But I was like, you know, why are all these people here? And I remember Will Ferrell came down, celebrities would start coming down, and it became a thing. And they put. They. They put couches in the back. It was a weird seating situation, but there was a stage back there and all these couches, and people would sit on the fl. Stand around the room. All the comics that, you know, of my generation, most of them eventually performed there at least once or twice. Chappelle would go down there, you know, but that was later. Early on, it was a little more raw and a little more weird, but then it got pretty mainstream. Ish.

[Marc Maron]

And so it just seems like that the. That the initial show that was. That happened at Rebar and that moves over to Luna.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Is a really, like, hospitable gym for you at that time.

[Brendan McDonald]

For me, it was all I thought about when everyone. Anyone would talk about alternative comedy. Like, I didn't really care because I didn't come out of that right. You know, Like, I mean, I started. I was already like, I'm older than all these fucking people now anyways, you know, So I started even before Louis. Like, Nick Depaulo is more like, my generation, New York comedy. Dave Attell. You know, I started in comedy clubs. You know, I started in the late 80s, you know, in Boston, then came to New York and, you know, was kicking around. So by 1995, I've been working as a professional comic for seven fucking years. So for me, it was really just a place to work out in a way that I wasn't beholden to anybody. And the idea of it was you couldn't do new material, so that was the challenge.

[Marc Maron]

Wait, hang on. That was like a philosophical idea behind the show initially.

[Brendan McDonald]

You got to go up there with something new every week, talk about your day, whatever. Wasn't a place to do your act.

[Marc Maron]

Right, right.

[Brendan McDonald]

And I'm like, great.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, that's.

[Brendan McDonald]

I would just get up there and.

[Marc Maron]

That'S like, what you're doing now.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. And sometimes it really wouldn't work. I mean, sometimes it was just. But it would. It did kind of train me to do this thing where you just get up there and drive and drive and drive until you find something. And if you don't find anything, it's so sad.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. Sharply talks about that all the time about, you know, he was a regular. He used to go every Monday and he talks about how it was. It would be this amazing thing where just some nights you were just on fire, and it was like. It was this inspired lunacy just coming out of you. And then some nights you're just tanking so hard, like. Like, in a way you'd never see anybody else.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. It was so painful. It's terrible. But I kind of. I can get right there now. Like, I'd get up there with the wrong attitude and be mad at the audience. And it was. Yeah, it was some serious. There was some serious tanking sometimes. And I have to go into that front bar and just be like, I gotta get out of here.

[Marc Maron]

Was the music scene already jumping by the time you guys started?

[Brendan McDonald]

You know, dude, I missed all of it, you know?

[Marc Maron]

What do you mean by you missed it? You just didn't care.

[Brendan McDonald]

No, I spent my life in comedy.

[Marc Maron]

Right?

[Brendan McDonald]

You know, like, I missed that. I mean, what. What music scene? So what is happening in 95? I mean, that weird, that amazing, you know, meet me in the bathroom thing, that was the early aughts. Right.

[Marc Maron]

But a lot of those bands got their start at Luna, right? The Strokes, Interpol. Yeah, yeah. Yes, The National.

[Brendan McDonald]

They were around, I guess, but I didn't know them, you know, it just wasn't my thing.

[Marc Maron]

I don't think at your time, like 1995. The person who became the biggest after starting at Luna was Elliot Smith. Was he around?

[Brendan McDonald]

He may have been. I don't. I don't remember him. They weren't on the shows with us.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

But maybe he was around. You know, I don't. Like, I really was so detached from music in general then. I just didn't. I didn't go to any of it. I don't. I missed.

[Marc Maron]

But it wasn't like the world's crossed over. It wasn't like.

[Brendan McDonald]

Well, I think probably with some of the performers it did, but not me, you know, like, I think that, like the. Like, I was always sort of an outsider, but I think around the, you know, like, Cross was out in la. He really wasn't around New York yet. But like, I imagine with some of the state guys and with some of the. With Garofalo, I'm sure there was crossover in terms of hanging out and stuff, but I didn't hang out with people.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

So I didn't see it. But, you know, at some point, you know, there was a lot going on. You had pianos down there, right?

[Chris Lopresto]

With Todd.

[Brendan McDonald]

Todd and David Cross came to New York.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, Tinkle.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, tinkle at pianos. And that was a venue that had comedy, alt comedy. There's a lot of those kind of shows coming up. I do know it waned. I remember it kind of waned, you know, and it became less vital, like at the beginning was very vital to me.

[Marc Maron]

Well, but did it. Do you think it became less vital because it became more mainstream? Like, was it?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, but, you know, the heat came off it. I mean, dude, it was crazy down there.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Brendan McDonald]

You know, like. Like when something pops in New York, it's like this lines around the block. And then like, I remember at some point, it's like, nobody's waiting anymore.

[Marc Maron]

Well, that then is a place where I think you're the page turned for you. And it's probably what led to ultimately radio being an option because, you know, you talk about all the things you had with in development that didn't wind up happening. And having already done the like, comedy exploration thing, you're now faced with, am I just going back to clubs? Am I just going back to being a, you know, feature somewhere, or do I take this new gig? Which is probably why at that time in your life, taking the radio gig made sense.

[Brendan McDonald]

Oh, my God, dude. Like, I was like spiraling by now. By the late 90s, you know, I had not sobered up yet. I was in a marriage. I Was unhappy with. I was living in Queens, you know, she was thinking about having kids, and I was like, I just wanted to die. And I was doing segments on a local TV network. You remember that? The desk segments for Metro tv. And in my mind, I was like, well, maybe this will work out for me. I'll just find a local gig. Because everything had crapped out, deals crapped out. You know, I wasn't. You know, I did not build relationships on the road like you were supposed to. I wasn't doing the type of comedy or. Or that anybody wanted. You know, I would. You know, I could work in San Francisco, I could work in Boston. There were. There were. There were places I would go and headline, but, you know, I wasn't a known quantity. And when. So, you know, then the marriage breaks up in 99. So I put all my fucking, you know, eggs into the sober basket. And I'm just, like, working that and doing comedy, doing meetings, hanging out with Mishnah, getting a divorce, locked out of my apartment, locks changed, subletting way down on Delancey Street. And I don't know, man, once that all fucking came to pass, I was able to go back to the apartment in Queensland, which I kept. And then I split and I sublet the apartment in Queens. Some fucking loser guitar player never paid me. Friends of Jody and Stoli's downstairs. And when I got to la, it was like I had to start all over. I had to fight to get involved and pay my dues in the alt scene there. That's when I got my name on the wall at the comedy store. Finally, 2002, 2003, I felt like I just wasn't. If it wasn't because I was sort of some mythic guy at the Comedy Story, I don't know how it would have went for me, really, in la, I didn't like doing all the alt shows and. I don't know, dude. But what happened was ultimately, by the time the Air America opportunity came, was presented to me and I was sitting around and, you know, I didn't have a pot to piss in, really, and I couldn't. I couldn't turn it down. Like, there was no way I could. You know, I had the apartment still in New York, and, you know, I was political enough, so it was really, again, a sort of. I could see a way around it.

[Marc Maron]

You know, this kind of brings us back to what we documented last year with our Morning Sedition series. And so if people are listening to this and they haven't heard that, you can go Back to last year, we did a series of several episodes on the full Marin here about morning's edition called Good Morning Geniuses. That was our radio show. And you can listen to that with some clips that we played from the show and from our time there, which was like basically the next two years of your life. I think all of this stuff, including Back to Luna Lounge, is stuff that, were it not for these things in your life, you would not have gotten to the podcast. So.

[Chris Lopresto]

Well, that's.

[Marc Maron]

They're all very important and a good part of your origin story.

[Brendan McDonald]

Oh, my God. Even just talking about these, these turns, like, you know, I don't generally put the memories together like that.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Brendan McDonald]

You know, to where Luna Lounge happened. And then, you know, I start fucking around with sobriety and around with a woman. And, you know, I'm married, you know, two or like three years and I'm already blowing it. And then that whole marriage blows up because, you know, I make, I just remember, dude, it was 90, must have been 99 or 2,000, where I'm like, you know, I'm just like in a room sweating and a year sober with Mishnah, like, are we doing this, man? Cause I'm going to leave my wife. She goes, I guess so. I'm like, good enough, you know, and.

[Marc Maron]

That'S always a good trigger puller, I guess.

[Brendan McDonald]

So I'm in. Oh, my God. Just the whole fucking thing blew up and then, you know, conversely, she blew mine up again. Yeah, but those, those trauma points of chaos, relationship chaos and yeah, sobriety, all that stuff. Yeah, it does haze things a bit.

[Marc Maron]

So I told you to tap into whatever trauma you had around this topic. And the topic is the Marc Maron Show. Did you do any tapping?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, well, I'm doing it now. I mean, I, I did it today. You told me this morning, you know, to get in, in the zone and ktlk. I remember ktlk. I remember you moving out here, you know, and you just had a baby and you were living in.

[Marc Maron]

No, no, I didn't have the baby yet. I had just gotten married.

[Brendan McDonald]

Oh, that was it. Just got married.

[Marc Maron]

I literally just got married.

[Brendan McDonald]

And you, and you just bolt and you're living in these furnished apartments.

[Marc Maron]

Those were kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, I found that charming.

[Brendan McDonald]

What were they called? The Oak. Were you in the Oak woods or.

[Marc Maron]

No, it was just called like Burbank Community Living or something like that. Burbank Long Term Living. It was like you would live there if you were like, had like a three month stint on A on a Disney show or something, right?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. It's like those other ones, I think they're called the Oakwoods that some people lived in. But I just remember that, you know, coming out of the morning show, coming out of morning sedition, this weird panic on the executive level when the shakeup at Air America happened and we had some clandestine group of consultants and marginal characters from the brass who wanted to keep us in the fold as the new CEO failed.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

And the idea was that, you know, Scott Elberg, I don't even remember his position. President.

[Marc Maron]

He was a vice president. Yeah, like a couple of vice president.

[Brendan McDonald]

And then Scott Krantz.

[Marc Maron]

Gary Krantz.

[Brendan McDonald]

Gary Krantz, I know his brother, they had some sort of, you know, finagled something out here in L. A because we got fired off the morning show and we wanted to keep in the game and they finagled something with ktlk. Stephanie Miller had the morning show there. So that was part of the condition of us getting anything was that I had to make nice with Stephanie Miller. But the one thing we did have by that point were chops and fans.

[Marc Maron]

And fans. There was a devoted hardcore. And I mean that's. That I think is the reason why we wound up doing the show in la because people like there was, there were petitions back when that mattered, you know, and, and, and the, the petitions, you know, kept coming into the Air America offices, keep Mark and Mark on the air, blah, blah, morning sedition and that, that meant something. And that's what I guess my question is, I'm wondering because I remember it all kind of going down, but I was outside of it, you being in it, like, what were you hearing? Were you hearing from those people who were doing those like, back channel deals to try to get you on in la?

[Brendan McDonald]

Basically, I remember, and I don't know where it came within the arc of things, but I remember, you know, I packed up, I went back to Los Angeles and Elberg came out there and took me to Dantana's and said, look, this is just a placeholder. You know, we're going to get, get you back on the air in the mornings. But, you know, we, you know, this will keep you in the mix to do this morning show or this, whatever that show was. I don't even know what you call that show. We did a late night show.

[Marc Maron]

I envisioned it as the late night talk show, variety show a la what was on the networks, but just on the radio. That was my goal for it.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right. So, you know, that was encouraging. But by this point, though, like, I don't know how you felt, but I'm like, there was enough fuck you and me to be like, I can just go back to my life here, whatever the fuck this is.

[Marc Maron]

I do remember that. I remember that it was weird that it was like there was a moment. No, no, dude, you know what I remember? I remember that once you had moved everything back out there, they were like, there's a chance to keep the morning show. Do you remember that?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yes, they were.

[Marc Maron]

They, like, suddenly were like, they realized the error of their ways. Everyone had browbeat Danny Goldberg.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And was like, he'll change his mind now if you want him to. And you were like, you already moved me back home. Like, I'm already out of.

[Brendan McDonald]

There's a lot of fudgeing around going on. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, just sort of like. But it wasn't a guarantee.

[Marc Maron]

That's right.

[Brendan McDonald]

I do remember that. And I do remember saying that it didn't sound like a sure deal, though.

[Marc Maron]

Well, and why would you. Why would you feel confident about anything they were doing at that time?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, because I didn't even understand, you know, what these different groups were. Yeah. That, like, there was, you know, trouble in. In at the Castle, whatever. I mean, like, what was. What were Elberg and Kranz doing? What were all those suits doing? I mean, I know.

[Marc Maron]

I think all those guys thought they were going to finally, they were going to take. They were going to rest Air America away from the progressive activism ecosphere and really just make it radio. Right. Which was Scott Elberg's background, was Gary Krantz's background, where these were clear channel radio guys and they, you know, to Scott's credit, he saw you as a good person to bet on as a radio host.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

In any event, you wind up coming back to la, we know that this thing is going to get set up. I. You. You asked me directly, will you come out here and produce this for me? Because, you know, I got to get this off the ground like morning sedition. And I agreed that I would come out until the end of March, that if we could do it for like a ramp up of like three months, which winds up biting us because they. We, you know, the time got crunched, but I said yes, even though I just got married, I'm trying to start a life here in Brooklyn, I will come out.

[Brendan McDonald]

Well, for me, there was. I wasn't going to do it without you. You know, I'm not like, I wasn't that kind of radio guy. I didn't I didn't care enough about, you know, working in radio to be set up with some producer I didn't trust or some lackey or some, you know, tired old timer.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, well, that, that meant a lot to me. Like, that was, that was a key motivator to, to doing it was you, you did exactly say that. You said, I wouldn't, I won't do this if you don't want to come out and do it. And I was like, this guy's known me for less than two years. You know, it's, you know, we've, we've worked together for whatever it's been 18 months or so. And if he trusts me with this and, you know, I'm a, I'm 25, 6 at that point like that I felt like that was enough of a sign that I should go do this.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And so we just had to build this thing from scratch. I came out there and it was.

[Brendan McDonald]

A two hour show supposed to be.

[Marc Maron]

Two hours late night starting at 10pm on the west Coast. So if you're trying to listen on like live stream on the east coast, it was one in the morning. And the promise was this is going to be syndicated. So, you know, we, we would wind up doing it at, you know, so that people in New York could wind up listening to it maybe the next day or the next morning or whatever.

[Brendan McDonald]

And that was a lie.

[Marc Maron]

Oh, well, that becomes the, that becomes the key lie. That ends the whole thing ultimately. But we went out there with this idea. I remember going over to your house in Highland park and just sitting at your kitchen table and basically going through everything we did on morning's edition to see what kind of thing would still work. My thought about it was, well, let's just do like what fucking Conan does. We'll do Conan but for radio. Like, you know, you, you be the Conan. And like, this is late night but with, but on the radio with Mark. And you know, we then incorporated some of the characters. That was the other thing. The guys who used to be writing for us at Air America, who still had their jobs at Air America, they now had no work. They were like writing for Randy Rhodes, but it was like nothing, you know, but so we were able to use these people to do our old bits. And then I just kind of like, I thought of like, what the sound of the show would be. And I started, you know, going through all this old big band music and like thinking again, like, the idea of like this should be like almost a joke on Carson. Like if our last show was like a sly elbow to the ribs of morning radio. This would be the same for, like, late night. And, you know, we. I thought we had a great theme song. I was very happy with.

[Brendan McDonald]

What was the theme song.

[Marc Maron]

That. That's a band called Real Big Fish and the song is called Sell Out. And it's just. It's. It's real, like, energy, propulsive horns, just really.

[Brendan McDonald]

Well, the best part of that show was using all the improv guys out.

[Marc Maron]

Here, and that was your connection with people at the UCB theater at the time. I think Seth Morris was the real door in. Yeah. We went and had. What was that Place is closed now. But that diner, like, right by the Hollywood sign. It's like in a hotel, like, you go out.

[Brendan McDonald]

Oh, yeah, yeah. The 101.

[Marc Maron]

The 101 Diner, right.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

I remember having lunch or something there. Breakfast with Seth Morris.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Who was, you know, a big. You know, he was one of the teachers at ucb.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, I think he was. He might have been running the place.

[Marc Maron]

I think he was. So he was, like, way into it when we had. We met with him. He. He got it right away that we just, like, feed us a pipeline of hungry improv people sure, like, want to do this stuff.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And James Adomian was one of them. Paul Rust, remember that guy? You actually interviewed him on the show and he reminded you, hey, I used to do a thing on your old radio show.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. And did we use. Well, we used Wyatt.

[Marc Maron]

Wyatt was the big one. And Wyatt Cenac was the big. Like, he created a character that worked the most perfectly with you because it was the one that, like, understood the dynamic of, you know, call in to a radio host with a regular recurring bit that you can.

[Brendan McDonald]

He's an army guy, right.

[Marc Maron]

He was a recruiter. Right? Yeah. And. And it was, you know, he's recruiting for the surge because this is 2006. So it's like the worst time public opinion has completely turned on the Iraq war.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And his thing was like, he's. He's coming around to, like, places you're not used to recruiting. So, like liberal talk radio. And he's going to make the pitch to recruit. Oh, Reese Barr. She was. She would come on as a Russian prostitute.

[Brendan McDonald]

That's right.

[Marc Maron]

Svetlana, the movie viewer.

[Brendan McDonald]

Svetlana. Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Craig Anton you used a couple of times. Just. He was just your buddy who would come in and do some. Some characters. And then we did. This was another thing. I remember we went to the Figaro, the Cat Other cafe. I remember all the locations that we wound up doing these things at. So we went to the Figaro and met with Kevin Kataoka, Ray James and Steve Rosenfield.

[Brendan McDonald]

That's right. To talk about writing.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, they wrote just monologue jokes for us every day. And it was great. It was like this. I can't believe more people don't think to do this or didn't at the time, where it's just like, get a bunch of funny comedy writers and get them to send you jokes. And we'd pay them $10 a joke and you'd have jokes every night. Like heads and tails of the show were joke. We're like, you know, basically monologues.

[Brendan McDonald]

Straight up monologue jokes. Yeah, yeah. Doing them on the radio. But it was fun.

[Marc Maron]

It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to just. Even. Just to pick them. Like you get these daily lists of jokes from these guys and then just select the ones he thought were good.

[Brendan McDonald]

And then. But. But it just became. I don't know how quickly it became just a fucking nightmare.

[Marc Maron]

Well, it was as quickly as that meeting that we had to have, honestly, that.

[Brendan McDonald]

Were we on the air yet?

[Marc Maron]

No, no, we had to prove ourselves to get on the air. So what winds up happening is we go. I go out there with you, we start building this show. Gary Krantz comes out and says we have to go have this meeting at Clear Channel, which was, you know, a giant radio hub out there. It wasn't just this one station, it was this entire Clear Channel portfolio of stations. But. So we go in there to meet when we think like, this is. Oh, okay, this is the thing where we have to apologize, Right. For the.

[Brendan McDonald]

For shitting on Stephanie as her lead in.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. And this goes back to when we were on Morning's Edition. You were always making a stink over us not being live in la or now it wasn't even that we were live. We were live.

[Brendan McDonald]

They used. We were live three to six in the morning, but then they run us again. And it was. They did that at the beginning, but then they dropped Stephanie in as the live thing and they defended that because why wouldn't you want to have live radio in the market that the radio station is in? I mean, I got it, but it just irked me because then there was really no presence in LA unless you were up at 3 in the morning.

[Marc Maron]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

And it just bothered me. So knowing that Stephanie was in the studio about to start her show, I would sometimes end my show in a snide way about, you know, setting her up in la and it must have just pissed her off to no end.

[Marc Maron]

Oh, yeah, they were. Well, I mean, I don't even think pissed off is the right word. They were, like, vengeful. And we didn't. We didn't know it. We thought it was. Oh, they got slightly pissed off at that. So we go in there and this dude, and he's a big, like, he's a big. Strapped.

[Brendan McDonald]

Like a football player dude.

[Marc Maron]

Exactly. He. He's. Guys, he's biting his lip. Comes over to his stiff lip, like, reaches out, shakes your hand. How are you? Shakes your hand, goes back and sits down and this guy, this. This giant ham hock that we just met is the one in charge.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

And we have to, like, figure this out within this moment.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

It was all a hope.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

There was no prep to it. There was nothing. There was no. No groundwork had been laid, like, but we represented that.

[Brendan McDonald]

It was sort of a guarantee. We're a shoe in. I was.

[Marc Maron]

Why I was out there.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

I wouldn't have been out there if they said, well, we don't know if this is going to happen. Basically, it comes down to, can you unpiss off this giant Texan? Which we wound up doing amazingly. But at that moment, like, he, he, you know, finally, like, after staring daggers at us, he's like, you know, you offended me greatly. And, you know, it was like. It was like what you would do to, like, a drug dealer. Like, yeah, this ends now.

[Brendan McDonald]

Like, yeah, guns on the table.

[Marc Maron]

And he made us go downstairs, like, in. At that moment, Stephanie Miller was, like, coming off the air. Yeah. I couldn't believe, like, how awful the whole situation was and how. How little, how minimally we were prepped for, how bad it was. That's. That was the thing I couldn't believe.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. I don't remember what our feeling was. How did it end up, but I do. Cause, like, years later, I did Stephanie's podcast and she seemed like she didn't even remember it.

[Marc Maron]

No, I think she felt like you did the right thing and you apologized and it was coming from a genuine place. And you said the whole time, you're like, this was, I think, an honest reaction. You weren't just making an excuse. You were like, I was new to radio and I was told one of the best things you could do is create rivalries. Create, like, make. Make your audience think you're better than the others. And. Yeah, because that was true. That was a. Like a lesson people had imparted to you.

[Brendan McDonald]

Like, yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Oh, John, Manzo or some guy like that. Yeah, you got to get your. And Randy Rhodes, who was on Air America, would do that stuff all the time. Hit herself against Franken, you know, like people on our air, so. And you said that to her, and I think she believed you, which was true. You weren't lying.

[Brendan McDonald]

I was also mad, though. I was. I mean, the reality of it is, whether I thought that or not. Oh, yeah, it was. It was really about how we had no viable presence in Los Angeles.

[Marc Maron]

Right, right, exactly.

[Brendan McDonald]

And it wasn't even her fault. But I. Yeah, you know, look, man, I. You know, I was. My mouth gets me in trouble.

[Marc Maron]

All right, well, so we get the show. We're finally on. We're finally building to get on the air. We've got these comics in place. We've got, you know, people doing bits for us, we're lining up guests, and we're ready to launch on February 27, 2006. And then we find out we will not be launching on that day because there is a LA Clippers game.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And that becomes the persistent story of the entire run at the Marc Maron show.

[Brendan McDonald]

The station, before it was a progressive station, had a contract with the Clippers to run live game coverage. And those games, I guess they probably started at 8 or something. And all we could do was hope that they'd be over because we had a 10 o'clock start time live. And then during fucking basketball season, it would go to 10, 20, 1030, 1045. And we were just sitting there.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Brendan McDonald]

Waiting to launch our. Waiting to do our show.

[Marc Maron]

And initially what we would do is. So we launched the next day, which was February 28th. That was a Tuesday. And. And then I think immediately the next day was another Clippers game, the Wednesday. And we had. We had the. The reason they would be late is that, like, if. If the Clippers were in LA or on the west coast, they would almost always preempt us because. Yeah, the games would start at 7 or 8 o'clock, and. And then they'd even. They had to take a post game. Right. And so if they were on the east coast or Central or something, we'd get lucky.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

Or they had no game that night. We'd be fine. But because, you know, an east coast game is starting at, you know, 4:00, Louisiana time.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

So they'd be in the clear by then. But then after basketball season, they also had an arena football contract that we'd get preempted for and UCLA basketball as well. So it was a Major sports clusterfuck that we would, you know, rarely avoid. And at first, what they had us doing was start whenever the Clippers game ends and go for two hours. And we. So that could have meant the Clippers game ends at 11:15.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And we would go till, you know, 1:15 in the morning or whatever it was. We put our foot down on that. We're like, we're not going to keep going that late.

[Brendan McDonald]

Who was paying us?

[Marc Maron]

Air America in New York.

[Brendan McDonald]

That was good.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. And so eventually they made us. We said, well, what we'll do is we're just going to start whenever the Clippers game ends and we end at 12. But the problem with that became we'd lose guests. We'd get crunched down to 45 minutes of a show. It was just all a total mess.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right away and seething. It was like a nightmare.

[Marc Maron]

Oh, yeah.

[Brendan McDonald]

And you were just curious, sitting up there waiting. It was a real lesson, you know, God knows I'd done comedy long enough, but just did not have any way to. To protect your job or to have a say in your future in a way and just have to, you know, play by these rules.

[Marc Maron]

But I will say I. There were a couple of nights I can remember, like, so now once we launched, you know, I only had about a month there until I was set to go back to New York. And so we were really trying to make this work. And I do remember, like, several shows. Like, at the end of that show, I. I remember I had the instant replay machine, like, which I wound up leaving out there with you.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And I would. I would take it in and out of the studio so that it didn't stay there and get stolen by.

[Brendan McDonald]

I still have it.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. And I remember, like, walking to my car after the show one night and, like, looking down at, like, you know, remember how you used to have, like, a little overlay where you could write what was there? Yeah. And I'm just, like, walking with this thing, and it's like, fart Dick Cheney shit or whatever on each button. And I was just like, man, this is fun. Like, I know this is stressful, and I know, like, we go through a lot to do this, but, like, I like that this is my job. I like that this is my life. And it was. Yeah, it was, like, very typical for us that it would be like. Like that next to, like, some sound bite of Bush, right?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Exactly. And so, you know, I was definitely committed. Even though I was going back to New York, I was committed to, like, I want this to work. I want there to be an outlet where like I can be working in radio. And it's funny. We're doing comedy.

[Brendan McDonald]

And you wanted to build it so it would stay.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, well. And it didn't. It didn't last that long. So February 28th was our first show. And then July 14th, that was your last day, I believe. If I'm looking at the info I had and matching everything up, I think on the show, the on the air on like July 5, you announced that you couldn't come to an agreement with them about syndicating. You had an escape clause in your contract. I don't know if that was true, but that was how you announced it on the show. That said if they couldn't syndicate the show, you didn't have to do it.

[Brendan McDonald]

Well, that's probably a nicer way of putting it, but they were sort of like, do whatever you want, it's over.

[Marc Maron]

Right, right.

[Brendan McDonald]

I can't believe we owed anybody anything.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. And so July 14, 2006, that was your last show. It also coincidentally was Janine Garofalo's last day at Air America. She quit at that same. On that same exact day, unrelated from the Majority Report show in New York. And that was it. That was the short four and a half month run of the Marc Maron show. Right. March.

[Brendan McDonald]

Not even legendary, not even appreciated by anybody.

[Marc Maron]

It's not underappreciated, it's non appreciated.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. It happened in a vacuum and no one was the wiser.

[Marc Maron]

Right. But it does lead to, I mean, it's going to lead to other things we'll talk about on future episodes. How, you know, we did break from Room Live, stemming from, you know, a lot of this stuff. But, you know, a lot of the things we were doing.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Were helpful in setting up this podcast. Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

Sure.

[Marc Maron]

First of all, stuff we don't do anymore, like using improv comics to do kind of comedy bang bang style things that, you know, that was kind of an early version of that on this show. That was basically the next two years for me, was trying and failing to make this happen somewhere else.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right. And were you at Sirius yet?

[Marc Maron]

That's right. I was trying to get it on there and it just wasn't, I don't know, probably many reasons, but it wasn't anything anyone was willing to spend money on.

[Brendan McDonald]

You were sending them tapes.

[Marc Maron]

I was sending them lots of reels. Like different kinds. Different kinds to different places. I'd go to, I'd have meetings with people, places where I was Doing work so that I could be like, hey, you know what I do and I could bring this here. And there were always reasons. Nah, we can't do that.

[Brendan McDonald]

It's not saleable, whatever, non appreciated. Yeah, that was the beginning of the fucking end in terms of my hope for having a career in show business really. Because then, you know, my wife leaves me not long after that and I'm thrown into the, the sort of chaos of, of, you know, a divorce and you know, just spending hours and days, you know, photocopying bank receipts, like, you know, disclosure stuff, just being beaten down. It was, it was a lot. So yeah, it was just a spiraling shit show where I was going broke. You know, no one could really lend me money. My, my dad wouldn't lend me money. I think my mom gave me a little money to keep me afloat, but I was spiraling the drain, dude.

[Marc Maron]

Well, what was your, you you had, did you mentally have any like career prospects or like career goals or ambitions at this point or were you totally swamped?

[Brendan McDonald]

No, I just knew that like, you know, I was doing what I could. I was doing what I always did, you know, again, I mean, this was not a time where I could sell tickets. So whatever club work I was taking was just, you know, that kind of like, you know, kind of unknown headliner club work. I was probably doing a few TV appearances here or there. But despite what anybody thinks to be, oh really?

[Marc Maron]

Like I looked up your, like maybe a Conan here or there when you'd be in New York, because Conan was still in New York. So you're out in L. A. I don't know what TV appearances you could have done in LA at that time.

[Brendan McDonald]

So I was journaling and I was talking to friends every day. I was very depressed and I was just, you know, trying to keep it together.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, and I do remember you taking a lot of fill in gigs. Anytime there was a, like a gap with a host on Air America, you would do like a fill in for if they were like they, they were loot, they lost somebody and they didn't have them for like. I remember you would do guest spots for Randy Rhodes and then they fired Randy Rhodes. So there was a period of time where you and Sam and Ron Coon, you were all like filling in.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right, Right. Yeah, I kind of remember that. Was I doing it out here? I must have.

[Marc Maron]

I do remember you out there. And then anytime you were in New York, you would go into the studio, you'd do fill in spots for Rachel Maddow, you Would do fill ins. You would just do. You were. You were like trying to, I think, stay in the mix there because you essentially had no other real prospects.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right. Other than the standup and. But I think they must have been trying to keep me in. You know, I. I think it was.

[Marc Maron]

Always Scott Elberg who was there at thought, you know, Mark Marin is a good guy to keep around and we'll, you know, try to do something with him.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

Also, you and Sam on your own, started doing a video thing, very primitive kind of like Skype interface that you guys called Marin v. Cedar. And you would do it like every Friday.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

You know, and I think you. He was. He was utilizing like his Air America email list to have a group of fans who still wanted to watch him. And you guys would do this video chat essentially, where you talked about things. I think you probably, you know, were there just to go back and forth with Sam. He was doing like politics on. And you were just kind of reacting.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, well, that's the dynamic. Yeah, I vaguely remember that. And I remember. I don't remember when we got that Marin v. Cedar was actually. I think that kind of bled over and was the initial title for Break Room Live.

[Marc Maron]

I think that's exactly right. Not only the initial title, it was what we did for the first four months because so. So from. From my records here, what wound up happening was Carl Ginsburg, who had been at Air America from the start. He left, then he came back and he got in touch with you because there was new money, right? There's new money there at Charlie. Yeah. Charlie Carraker was a wealthy guy who. He. He was a businessman. He had some money and he was a lefty and he wanted to get into progressive politics.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

And Carl, not unlike me, and I've given Carl the credit for this before that it's like he got what your appeal was and how you could be like a viable host of something, Presenter of something.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And, you know, that was. His goal was to get the money to basically set Marc Maron up on the path to getting a TV deal somewhere.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right. He thought we could do the Daily show over there, basically.

[Marc Maron]

And I think. But I think his end goal was, yes, we would use the Air America infrastructure to do a Daily show type thing, but ultimately this would be getting Marc Maron a gig as the new Jon Stewart somewhere. And, you know, he would be the producer of it or whatever. It was not a bad idea in terms of what could work. It was a bad idea in terms of the infrastructure at Air America. Was totally not suitable for doing this. Nor was the kind of presence online at the time for streaming video.

[Brendan McDonald]

And across the board, it didn't.

[Marc Maron]

Across the board, not just us. Right, exactly.

[Brendan McDonald]

And despite Carl's, you know, very passionate resistance to having Sam on, you know, he, he complied and we got the money for Sam too. And that turned out to be kind of a monster that we couldn't really hold back. And it created the. The tension that kind of was. Was what Break Room was. Because Sam had a very specific agenda. I just needed somebody to talk to, but there was no way I wasn't going to get steamrolled by him.

[Marc Maron]

Well, ultimately, you guys came into it with two different styles of presenting. His style of presenting was much more akin to what he's been doing ever since on his show, the Majority Report. Right. Like it's. And then. So he wasn't wrong in his idea of what he thought were. And you weren't wrong in what you thought you were good at and what you weren't going to be able to do in terms of the, you know, the lift of a daily politics show.

[Chris Lopresto]

Right.

[Brendan McDonald]

He just didn't want to be funny.

[Marc Maron]

Well, I mean, it's. I'm. Whether he wanted to or not, I think he thought, this is the audience I can engage, which to his credit is the audience he's engaged ever since that on his own gig. But like, it's so weird. I've never even the original Air America, I've never been a part of something other than this, other than Break Room Live, where it was doomed to failure from the start. Like it was ill conceived from the.

[Brendan McDonald]

Get go because the technology wasn't there.

[Marc Maron]

The technology wasn't there. The personnel were. Was a problem. It was a problem. Like, you know, Carl should have said, absolutely not. No, Sam. Right. Like, if he, if he wanted the thing that he ultimately wanted, which basically you and I then went and made as a podcast, it would have been better. But the, the dichotomy between you and Sam never allowed for the thing to gel ever.

[Brendan McDonald]

You know, I guess I felt bad about that, but I also didn't have confidence enough in myself because, you know, we had no writing staff and there was no, there was no set and there was no, like, there was no context. You know, he, you know, Carl had no idea about nothing. And by the time you got in, I mean, we could have. We ended up building segments that would serve both Sam and I. But the bottom line was, is we were working with, you know, very new technology that wasn't really effective. We. They spent, like, $100,000 on a website, you know, to do everything we wanted to do, but there was nothing going on. There was no streaming.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. No. And it was this idea that it would come in the middle of the day. You know, a lot of websites at around that time, the mid-2000s, they had, you know, verticals on their site where that would support, like, a tech window. That was the idea here, was you'd have a. This would help build Air America as a digital media brand that it would rival, like the Huffington Post. That was the. That was the goal. And if. If this is the type of show we're doing, this live streaming thing, it's either got to be like, absolutely nothing. Like just production wise, two people talking and set up with an agenda and then. And then go back and forth. And that wasn't working because of you and Sam, or we need to put some personality into this thing. We need to make it a show with characters, with. With like a vibe. Right. And that was where the idea of doing it in the break room started.

[Brendan McDonald]

The idea for Break Room, I don't know who came up with.

[Marc Maron]

No, I know exactly how it happened. We. We had a day where we couldn't use that studio.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

Like, and we said, well, let's just shoot today's show in the kitchen. Right. Let's go in there. And that one day was better than any of the other days we had done, because you were interacting with staff members as they came in to make their lunch. And so we just. We knew it when the day was done. We were like, that's the show. Like, the dynamic that went on in there today. That's the show. So we went and pitched that we should do this in the break room. And it required a complete overhaul. We had to redo the website. We had to change everything that we had structured promotionally for. This thing being called Marin v. Cedar now is called Break Room Live. And. But it was actually probably easier as a technical undertaking because all they had to do was run some cables from next door to the break room. That was it. And we picked up and packed out every day.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. I thought it was a brilliant idea. And the funny thing is, is that this show would be just par for the course now. We could do it in the middle of the day and it would do fine. It would get good numbers.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. Nowadays, lots of people do these things on YouTube every single day.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. And, like, with me and Sam, some of the stuff like that we really worked on kind of worked well. When he would sort of like, let me play a part in stuff, but, you know, like, we'd get in the weeds so much, and I just could never understand, like, you know, why are we talking about this for the third day in a row? This fucking bullshit. Abramov. It was just always that stuff. You know, you'd pick these narratives that ultimately were nothing. Well, they were something, but who gives a fuck, right?

[Marc Maron]

No, to me, the only things that actually had any kind of stickiness and longevity were the pre tapes we did. We did with Matthew. We would do a lot of pre tapes with. Well, Matthew did some, but the real MVP of the show, period, was this guy named Bill Buckendorf, the editor. Oh, yeah, and he came to us through John Benjamin. John Benjamin recommended him because he had done, like, some, you know, comedy videos for. For John.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And this guy Bill could do. He. He could whip anything up that we asked him. Like, if we went to him and we're like, we have this idea for a thing. We'll give you some footage and can you make it. He would make it in a day.

[Brendan McDonald]

And I'm still pretty proud of the McCain commercial.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, that. Like that thing. John McCain, like, you know, any. Anytime we had a little germ of an idea based on the news, and then we could construct something around it, like, that guy could. Executed. And he. He did. He just sat there in his little cubicle. He did it every day. He never really talked much. I think he was then also wound up being the one in the break room filming. Yeah. And. And. And like, those things are all the things that are still up on YouTube from Break Room Live and Marin v. Cedar. And some of them are really great. Like, you know, you would go on field pieces to shoot things. You did. You did stuff at your house. The Angry Chef. Yeah, those were the things that got popular. Like if there was anything in the show that was popular. But that's the stuff that people would talk about. Oh, I loved your Angry Chef videos, those things. Which was always our instinct, you and me. We always thought the things that people connect with are like bullshit, like regular things that people do on a daily basis.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, that stuff was. Was fun to do, you know, but ultimately it just, like the tension between Sam and I was real, and. And it just got worse. And we always had a pretty good time in the office before we go on the air, because that's when he would let himself be funny. But then he just started, you know, stuttering some esoteric lefty garbage and would Go on for hours. It felt like.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, well, you guys were like, you were sitting there live on camera with opposite agendas. Like, you had diametrically opposed agendas of how to get through that hour.

[Brendan McDonald]

And I just kept poking at him.

[Marc Maron]

Well, we did a thing where we split it. We decided to. You'd make. The first half hour would be the show structurally that we wanted, and then the second half hour would be like a live chat with people who are live on the stream. And so that was our idea of trying to separate it with, like. Okay, so this first half hour will be like, Marin heavy, where we do a lot of these produced pieces, field pieces, desk pieces.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And then the second half, we'll let Sam just do his thing where he wants to talk extemporaneously and take, you know, instant messages from listeners and things like that. The live chat.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

And I think that just made. It made you angry that you would then have to sit there through that half hour, and you'd just be, like, just sighing and shaking your head and like, these things were just waiting for.

[Brendan McDonald]

Him to stop talking.

[Marc Maron]

Exactly.

[Brendan McDonald]

But. But. Yeah, but then I remember there was a big sort of like, when Just Coffee got on board. Boy, that was a big day. All we thought was like, we're getting full free coffee. I remember we went to town. We couldn't get any advertisers. Why would we? Mike Moon at Just Coffee in Madison, Wisconsin, was an Air America fan. I think a Cedar fan, but he liked the whole thing. And he. We said we'd let them advertise for free coffee.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Brendan McDonald]

And then we post it. We, like, had this bulletin board. The bulletin board. That was a big. I thought that was a great idea. That every day show, whatever we were going to be talking about, we kind of put on the bulletin board behind us. It was a real bulletin board. And then at some point just became covered with just Coffee stuff. And we were put, you know, pitching the. Just Coffee. Getting free coffee for everybody. Boy, that was good times.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. That was our only sponsor.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. And it was everywhere.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. And then we brought. We brought them along to the podcast.

[Brendan McDonald]

And they didn't love. Moon was like, we don't love the catchphrase, but it's doing something. Pow. I just. My pants. Just Coffee co op. He's like, we're not thrilled.

[Marc Maron]

Coffee mug made of it.

[Brendan McDonald]

We had all kinds of going. I don't know, man. It's so weird how much that anxiety that caused me because I could never, like, I could never be interested enough in politics. To make it my life.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, but that was the thing. It's so funny because you were hung up on that as a, you know, almost like a barrier for you to get this done. And I was the one being like, no, get rid of that stuff. Like, the thing that's gonna work is you.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right? We finally did that with wtf. Yes. That finally really landed that I had this weird, you know, kind of like I had this pressure I put on myself from the inside from the very beginning of Air America. Like, I. I didn't. I didn't really realize what my specific talent was. So I just kept trying to keep up with all this stuff. And there were times where I was on it. There were certain narratives that I could wrap my brain around. Tom Delay, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, you know, the 911 stuff. I mean, there were things that would, you know, give me a kind of narrative, but I just. The day to day stuff used to drive me fucking nuts.

[Marc Maron]

Well, but it was a thing that it really took an effort for you to shake. Because if you go back to even the first episode of this podcast, the very first thing you do after introducing the show and saying hi to the audience is a rant about Whole Foods, which I think a lot of people remember that rant.

[Brendan McDonald]

They remember that shit forever.

[Chris Lopresto]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

And it went into your book. You put it in, attempting normal and that. But that was predicated on you reading an article about health care. Like, so you were still in the mindset of, like, if I have something I'm going to talk about, I have to hinge it to this kind of political context. Because you thought that's what the audience was. You thought, like, the only reason they stick around is because I'm doing politics for them. And it took some time for you to shake that.

[Brendan McDonald]

But it was like, 1500 people. We knew 400 of them.

[Marc Maron]

That's right. Well, and that was the goal when we started. WTF was okay. We knew that at any given time we had like, maybe 400, 500 people watching break Room Live. We knew that based on the, like, YouTube views and everything, we could get a regular audience maybe up into like the 1000 range, 1500. And that was our goal with WTF was that. Was that like, that number circle that that's what we should have. And it was by episode three, I've told this before, by episode three, we had 30,000 downloads for WTF. And that was what made us make the decision of, like, okay, we can't pay all this. We can't. You Know, make this exclusive just for that niche audience. This somehow, you know, broke free. We jailbreaked this idea that we had thought was going to be for a mailing list, and now it's out in the world and the people are discovering it, mostly thanks to, you know, the placement on itunes at the time and the artwork. But it had an audience, so that was why we kept that. But the definite goal was just to, you know, basically deliver the show for the Break Room Live people.

[Brendan McDonald]

But also, we got to talk about, you know, we all knew that Break Room Live was not going to be renewed. We had a year long contract and it was just sort of counting the days at some point. And then it was that. That was the great thing. They fired us and didn't make us leave. That was the best thing that ever happened to us.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, they said, well, I mean, like, technically you were still under contract, right?

[Brendan McDonald]

So, but, but I mean, any other media outlet would have been like, pack your bags, get away from the mic.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, you're out. I'll send checks to your house, but you're not coming by the building anymore.

[Brendan McDonald]

I just remember sitting in that office and we're, you know, we, you know, I don't remember how soon it was after we got fired, but it was like, what are we gonna do? Can we do it?

[Marc Maron]

You definitely brought it up to me before everything was done, like you were saying, the writing was on the wall, so we knew that. That things were coming to a head. And. And so, yeah, we had to, like, you know, make decisions.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right. And we were like, well, I know guys that are doing this thing. Yeah, it seems doable. And then we worked out a way. We, like Apple was excited about anybody with a name to, to get behind it. Oh, my God. Yeah. So we were doing those shows in the old studios at Air America, and that was all because of Break Room. Jesus Christ, if they had kicked us out of the building, who the fuck knows?

[Marc Maron]

I do think that we, you know, in doing Break Room Live in the compromised way that we did for a year, almost a year, it gave us the ability to know that like something like doing a podcast, you know, we had already been through the ringer. We already knew like, everything we did that in that year of Break Room Live was all like our own thing and we had to just, you know, scrap it together. And so the podcast seemed much easier. And then it. We knew the production stuff that could go into it. You had radio chops. So all these things that we've been talking about over the last several Episodes of this. They all met, made sense, and led up to the. The right moment.

[Brendan McDonald]

Oh, my God.

[Marc Maron]

You know, we've been doing this origin series here and talking about the things that led up to doing wtf. And it almost seems like we were done because the last thing we talked about was, you know, getting fired from Break Room Live. And that was where we started the podcast. But one of the things we kind of pass over in those first, I'd say, six months to a year, we didn't really know what the heck this was going to be. And so we were thinking. And I know you were probably thinking, what's my next move? Like, okay, great, I've got this podcast. We're rolling this out, but what is that going to turn into? And there were, like, projects, and there were ideas and things that would be monetized, or the idea of this. We could try to monetize this somehow and make this something other than a thing we're doing on the side. Right. And just.

[Brendan McDonald]

Or just. Yeah, or to.

[Chris Lopresto]

To promote me.

[Marc Maron]

You're trying to then get yourself out there as a draw. I'm also wondering, where were you standing personally, on, like, doing TV movies? Like, were you. Were you in your mind being like, I got to start getting more gigs. I start. I got to start being in more things?

[Chris Lopresto]

Well, I think I was. You know, it's. That part of me has always been the same, and I. It became clear, I think, to me, that the podcast was. Wasn't going to get me acting roles or anything, so that I just, you know, I kind of surrendered to that. But I had to sort of, like, I had to reckon with the idea that they knew me better than me having the mystique of just a guy who does standup. Many of them knew my life because of how I do the podcast, so I really had to straddle that.

[Brendan McDonald]

But.

[Chris Lopresto]

But ultimately, because of that, it afforded me a comfort level that I don't know if it did, if it's the best thing for me in terms of, you know, being a comedic act, but it certainly facilitated, over time, my ability to just sort of expand on, you know, myself and do comedy in a pretty true way to me. You know, I have a. I have complete freedom of mind up there now, and I'm pretty fearless, and I'm still writing good shit. But I think that the evolution of having these crowds who knew too much about me created an intimacy and a connection with them that I think is probably a little different than what would have happened just as a comic and I think that's with all podcasting people, even the ones that do big draws.

[Brendan McDonald]

But a lot of guys who do.

[Chris Lopresto]

This are not showing themselves the way I am. You know, a lot of guys have a Persona, and I think I do have one, but it's pretty close to, you know, who I am, so. And because of that, it's at once, you know, exciting, but also exhausting because I have to show up. I can't autopilot any of this shit. And I think, you know, professional entertainers, most of them can autopilot. I mean, I can do the same jokes over and over again, but that's a comic thing.

[Marc Maron]

So. Do you remember any time where you wound up feeling like the, the way you were able to be on stage was really peaking for you? Like, did you have any sense? Like, you know, especially if you could kind of draw some circles around the, the type of specials you were doing? Right. So in, in 2011, that's when you did the this has to Be Funny at the, the Union hall in Brooklyn. That was your Comedy Central record taping.

[Chris Lopresto]

That was the weekend we did the.

[Marc Maron]

Interview with Saltstein, Dan Saltztein for the New York Times.

[Chris Lopresto]

That's the thing that made us, in a lot of ways.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Chris Lopresto]

And it was a big deal for podcasting. It was a big deal for us. It was a huge cover spread in the art section of the Sunday Times with pictures. It was, looking back on it, one of the biggest things that ever happened to me and to us, I think. Yeah, but I don't even remember if you were able to be mentioned then.

[Marc Maron]

I was, Yes. I was quoted in it as, you know, nobody. They didn't talk about me contemporaneously. They talked about me as the person who helped start it up with you.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Chris Lopresto]

And always upset me, Always upset me that, like, I had to have this mysterious producer that I couldn't mention because you had.

[Marc Maron]

Well, I mean, but that's the funny thing is that, like. Yeah, meanwhile, I'm, I'm in the midst of, you know, producing your comedy album as well as the podcast. Like, it was, we were doing a full, we had a full fledged operation.

[Chris Lopresto]

I know, but didn't that bother you?

[Marc Maron]

No, no, I, I, I'm like, I.

[Chris Lopresto]

Just, I gotta give Brendan all this credit, which I always do, you know, because we're partners in this. But I just couldn't say it for years.

[Brendan McDonald]

It was like this.

[Marc Maron]

No, I, I mean, like, I have.

[Chris Lopresto]

The wizard of impulses is producing my podcast.

[Marc Maron]

Look, I mean, here's the other Thing, it's like, it's part. It comes with the territory of doing this. It's like I though I can do my best work. I can do them. And in those days, I needed to do everything, need to be the best. Right. You need to get the. Be. Be optimized in what we were doing, you know, in order to succeed. Because we were. We were going from the bottom up. Right. Everything was ground floor. And so to do that, it was best if I had no interference. I didn't want to be handling anything from a public facing.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Point of view with the show. I want. And. And I also knew that a large element of the success of the show was that the show just sounded like a thing you accidentally turned the microphones on for.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

You alone.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

Right. So. And all of this, you know, none of us having any kind of reflection or discussion about it was ever important until, you know, we got a thousand episodes in or whatever. Or when we had the president on. Right. Like, this was not the show.

[Chris Lopresto]

Well, this has to be funny. I knew, like, it was probably around then where I knew, like, well, okay, I've got an audience. They know me.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. That's where I was going with this, is that I remember. I felt that, like, I remember being at that show, you know, and the funny thing about that is Union hall fits what, 200 people maybe.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yes. Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And we, you know, you had two shows there over. It was December 9th and 10th of 2010.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And it was, you know, I remember being there and being like, oh, good, he's fine. This mark finally has the audience that I thought for the last, you know, six years of working with him.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

That he could have. And it wasn't a huge audience, but it was your audience, like. Like, they came to. To be part of your CD taping, and they were, like, there for it to the point where. That's where the title of the album comes from, which is that, like, you made that comment, this comment you've made many times since about your mom saying she didn't know how to love you.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And a woman in the crowd went, oh, like a concerned sound.

[Chris Lopresto]

And I go, no, this has to be funny.

[Marc Maron]

Exactly. That was it. It was actually Ira Glass, who was in attendance, said that should be the title of the album. And he was absolutely right because that was the. That was the best moment. But it was also the most indicative of what it took to go from the guy who, you know, just was scrambling in terms of leaving a manager, taking a new manager, thought, okay, the way to capitalize on this, it's go, go do a pilot presentation for Comedy Central or whatever. To go from that. To know the way to capitalize on this and have something that makes it viable going forward is to just connect with the audience. And it was at that point where I remember sitting there going like, he's got him. He's got these people. And it was like, yeah, it was 200 a night for two nights. You know, that's not a ton, but that felt big to me.

[Chris Lopresto]

Well, I mean, I still do that. I still know that I am a on stage now. I say I'm an artisanal act. I say I'm the. I am the farm, you are the table.

[Brendan McDonald]

And.

[Chris Lopresto]

In relation to, you know, my appeal. And I say that a lot when I go on the road. Like, if I'm. I'm at in Detroit and I've sold whatever, 850 tickets, you know, I just.

[Brendan McDonald]

Barely fill up the place.

[Chris Lopresto]

I'm like, this is the ceiling. This is everyone in Michigan who likes me.

[Brendan McDonald]

They're here. This is all of you.

[Chris Lopresto]

And that's good, but it is, you know, this is it.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Chris Lopresto]

And that's okay. You know, I've wrestled with that being okay. You know, I don't know what I expect or what I want. And I also know that when I see my audience before a show or I'm in the town and they're walking up to me, I'm like, you're coming, like these decent looking couples and stuff. Like, how did this happen? Because, you know, from my gritty beginnings, I never saw myself as attracting, you know, reasonable, grown up, decent people.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah.

[Chris Lopresto]

You know, I didn't know who I would attract.

[Brendan McDonald]

But.

[Chris Lopresto]

But you know, something in that thing, I always say that I have a. I don't have a demographic, I have a disposition, which I think is true. But yeah, I think when with this has to be funny. But that was also the thing is like, I'm in the fucking New York Times building talking to Salt Stein, and he's writing the article that's gonna change our lives forever. And I'm getting texts from a woman I just broke up with who is hiding under the deck in my house. And she's like, you know, when can I go back in the house? I'm like, you can't. She's like, I'm under the deck right now. And I had to call her dad and the police were there. It was a fucking.

[Brendan McDonald]

I always got a lot of plates.

[Chris Lopresto]

In the air, Brendan. Some of them not good.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah, well, that's the. That's the funny thing is that it's like, I think this. That probably impedes a lot of your ability to really see the trajectory of this and how it was, you know, it was. It did not come without, you know, tremendous diligence and. And the right moves being made. Like, somehow I think, you know, a lot of. A lot of your thought on this, I think just thinks of it as like a. A wave that you got swept up in as doing the podcast. It led to all this stuff because you have these moments, like, this is a pivotal moment in your. In your career.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Doing this, this show at Union hall and having this New York Times interview, and yet it's still all tied up in whatever was going on with you personally. That felt just as intense as all those other things.

[Chris Lopresto]

But I always knew that we worked, and I always think that, you know, certainly with your sort of work ethic and your practicality, that the balance of our personalities works because it's symbiotic. But I rely, you know, I'm gonna follow your lead. And I think ultimately from knowing you since, you know, Air America, that, you know, I. I think I learned how.

[Brendan McDonald]

To put that stuff aside.

[Chris Lopresto]

Even if it was, you know, like, if it was, you know, on fire in my brain, you know, we always worked. And, you know, you don't, you know, I don't get into your personal life too much, and you get into mine as much as, you know, I talk about on the podcast. And sometimes if I'm in real trouble, I'll call you. But the idea was, because of our work ethic, is that this is the job, dude. We can do the job. So I was always aware that we were working. I mean, look, man, I was in my house, you know, surrounded by 1500 envelopes, putting stickers in them and sometimes T shirts.

[Marc Maron]

I think that going back to the beginning of what you were saying about, you know, the life or death stakes of getting intros recorded.

[Brendan McDonald]

Sure, sure.

[Marc Maron]

It's like you're. You're part of the kind of almost like monomaniacal way you focus on something was to the benefit of this show when we were starting, even if in the back of your head or in management's head or in anyone else's head, there was some thought that, like, oh, it's going to lead to something else, like, sure, maybe so. But what mattered was this became the thing you focused on, and then, therefore, that allowed it to be the most successful it could be.

[Brendan McDonald]

Well, that was.

[Chris Lopresto]

And it's been that Way forever. You know, even with the standup, you know, the standup sort of began to evolve, you know, alongside of it in a way where I'm like, well, well, both of these things are working. Like, you know, I'm doing this show, you know, I'm good at it, I'm respected for it, and the comedy is right there on the same level. You know, they're both relative and I think they're relative in their appeal. Like, I got what, you know, I got what I worked for. And any sort of. When you get frustrated with me in talking or comparing myself to others who are huge or this or that, I think sometimes it frustrates you that, you know, my gratitude is not in place. And I don't always acknowledge that, you know, we did it because I still have that part of my brain, whether it's an addict or, or what. Something's missing that, you know, I'm always.

[Brendan McDonald]

Like, well, what about that guy?

[Chris Lopresto]

How come I'm not? And that's, you know, I know that's a path.

[Brendan McDonald]

It's pathological.

[Chris Lopresto]

So, like now, like, the effort is to balance out, to stifle those voices. Not unlike exercise or anything else. I don't like to exercise, but over time, when I wake up and I don't want to do it, you know, you know, some other part of me is walking to the gym.

[Brendan McDonald]

So.

[Chris Lopresto]

Yeah, so, you know, it was, it was, it was learning how to override my own insecurity and, you know, self sabotaging ways to sort of do the job. But I think, you know, looking back on it, we were both operating at that same level. It was of utmost importance. Like when I was doing, you know, recording those intros, you know, back then when I was like, I think I can get a, I'm going to rent a conference room in the, in the American lounge, you weren't saying like, no, dude, don't, don't.

[Marc Maron]

Right, right. No, because I think for the both of us, we saw this as a thing that we were, you know, we were plowing this field. And the other people who were plowing the same field, they had no, they had no edge on us. We were all doing it, at best, an equal level.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And in some cases I felt we were edging ahead. And that's an interesting thing. I have never thought about this until just now, but you're saying, you know, it's like so much of your brain gets wrapped up in the comparison to other people. There were, that we were winning. Like, we were the ones that we were Getting people were comparing to us. Right. You were in some ways doing a benchmark thing with this show.

[Chris Lopresto]

Well, it took a while to learn that I was doing it differently and. Yeah, but then like in this part of, like, you know, in, in sort of dealing with where we're at now, you know, we are, you know, once everybody made the jump to video and once, you know, the thing opened up and contracted, then opened up again, it was like, we do this like, so now, you know, we've, we've done what we're. We do and we do what we do, but we don't feel the desperation to adapt in another way. Yeah, to, you know, because you have a sense of how the business works and it's also not how we do the show and, and it. In, in. I agree with that.

[Brendan McDonald]

Because the product we do is so.

[Chris Lopresto]

Tight and it's specific, but it's hard to, to be a pioneer and then to watch the world move on without you.

[Marc Maron]

Well, I guess so. But then you also have to think that very few things stay the way they are.

[Brendan McDonald]

No, I, I get that. Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And so you, you, you know, to me, in any sense I think of it, it's like this is a legacy podcast. There are a bunch of legacy podcasts. We're not alone in that level. And in a way, to me, it's comforting that we just get to exist in this space and we don't have the kind of pressures on us that, you know, somebody who maybe started three years ago and had a really popular show. Three years ago.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

Is now having a hard time time keeping up with the, the, the content demands. Like, we don't have those pressures because we built this thing that's just now a 15 year old machine.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Chris Lopresto]

And it's, and it's audio and. Yeah, but, but, yeah, but that, well, that was always a thing with, with us and with me, you know, and I think we both knew that if we started to, you know, kind of lose our audience or something, that we'd, you know, bow out before it got sad. But it just never happened.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. Yeah, we always said that we, you know, if we, you know, we saw it going south, we would stop. And we never had to do that. Well, we, we do have control over is deciding when we've done enough of this. Looking back at the history of the show and I think we've, I mean, obviously there's plenty of stuff that we can unearth from time to time, but I think over the course of doing these origin shows, we've pretty much Gotten the trajectory of how we got from there to here. And I think the interesting thing about all of it is every step of the way, like, we were. Whether it was me with you or even before we met and you were, you know, doing the alternative comedy rooms in New York, and that we were driving toward this, like, this is not a mistake or an off ramp or something different like it. Actually, that is the satisfying part of it, that at least in my participation in it, which now goes back 20 years with you. And then, you know, obviously the stuff you were doing on your own before that, like, we were making the right call, like, the, The. The impulses were correct, and it landed in a place that. That. That makes sense for those impulses.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Chris Lopresto]

But that was mostly you, because, I mean, for whatever reason, you identified as a radio guy, you know, my talent in the medium early on. And I think the real turning point was when, you know, we got you enough money to leave Sirius because you believed in what we could do. And even if that show didn't pan out, I think that was the beginning of Break Room. Break Room?

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah. Of.

[Chris Lopresto]

Of you knowing that we had something that I might not have known we had as much as you did.

[Marc Maron]

Chris Lopresto asked me that on the Friday show. We were talking about that Break Room Live stuff, and he was like, so wait, you're at this Sirius, and that's a stable company, you know, and they were paying you well. What in the world would make you think to go back to Air America, which you knew was a disaster.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And I was honestly like, oh, I was pretty sure it would be a disaster, but this was the way back in to doing the thing you and I could do.

[Brendan McDonald]

Right.

[Marc Maron]

Right. Like, if. If no one. If. If nothing was going to come of it.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

For us to play around and figure out exactly the way to do this. And we didn't even know it would be a podcast, but, like, just some way for us to get that thing going. And that made sense to me. That was the best investment I could make. I wasn't staying at serious.

[Chris Lopresto]

Yeah, well, the shift from sort of upper management to, you know, independent, you know, kind of creative business owner, that.

[Brendan McDonald]

Was a big shift for you.

[Chris Lopresto]

That was good.

[Marc Maron]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's still kind of weird that we. That we do it this way, but, you know, honestly, like, obviously it's. It's. It's like the kind of culmination of my work, and it has, you know, provided me a living and a, you know, life that. That. That I Like, but, you know, for you, where you have all these other things, you could go off and make a TV show now you have your stand up and you have, you know, a. A vast body of work.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

In your life that you've been building.

[Chris Lopresto]

I've been on the Simpsons.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. Right. But like, all of this stuff, like the. The. The idea that, like, the podcast was still the thing that, you know, going back to what you were saying about you didn't have to pay a man, you didn't have to give a manager a percentage of this podcast. It was yours.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Marc Maron]

And that, I think, is the. Probably the. Gonna wind up ultimately being the biggest legacy of it for you. Like the thing that I made. Yeah. That's the important thing.

[Brendan McDonald]

Yeah.

[Chris Lopresto]

But also that, you know, how it's changed me as a person and how it is essential part of my creativity and my humanity and, you know, in terms of being with other people, it really does function in a lot of ways that are much deeper than, you know, just creating the. The podcast, you know.

[Marc Maron]

Yeah. Well, I. I think we can always have some room to look back on stuff like this. We won't do this straight up series anymore. And, you know, but I don't know. I never like the idea that this is. This kind of stuff is navel gazing or whatever. Mostly most or nostalgic. Yeah. Navels are interesting. You want to look at them? They're kind of. We. They're either weird and gross or, you.

[Chris Lopresto]

Know, you have to remember to clean them.

[Marc Maron]

That's true. Yes. Which I think we've done.

[Chris Lopresto]

We just did it.

[Marc Maron]

We've been pretty spic and span with this operation.

[Brendan McDonald]

All right, man. Okay, guys. It's a busy social season. You've got holiday parties, family gatherings, New Year's Eve. It's time to get yourself looking sharp. But if you're experiencing hair loss, you might not feel so confident when you're heading out. Now's the time to get that confidence back and restore your hair. With Hims, they can regrow your hair in as little as three to six months. The process is simple and 100% online. Just answer a few questions and a medical provider will determine if treatment is right for you. And then if you get a prescription, HIM sends it right to your door. You'll join hundreds of thousands of HIM subscribers who were able to get their confidence back with visibly thicker and fuller hair. Start your free online Visit [e-mail] WTF that's H I M S.com WTF for your personalized hair loss treatment options. Grow it hims.com WTF results vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride. Prescription products require an online consultation with a health care provider who will determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. See website for full details and important safety information.

[Chris Lopresto]

People this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

[Brendan McDonald]

Shifting a little money here, a little.

[Chris Lopresto]

There, and hoping it all works out well? With the name your price tool from.

[Brendan McDonald]

Progressive, you can be a better budgeter.

[Chris Lopresto]

And potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help find you options within your budget. Try it [e-mail] and now some legal info. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price.

[Brendan McDonald]

And coverage match limited by state law.

[Chris Lopresto]

Not available in all states.

[Brendan McDonald]

So that was interesting, right? It was to me, because I forget almost everything. Uh oh, is it happening? This whole show came from the full Marin feed on wtf. We put out two bonus episodes every week and you get every episode of WTF ad free. To sign up, go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF. We'll be back on Monday with actor Ron Livingston. And that was fun. I like that guy. And now, Brendan, if you could find some Christmas music, I might have riffed at some point. Or just end with something from the vault because I'm exhausted from doing the guitar from the last episode. Boomer Lives, Monkey and La Fonda Cat angels everywhere man. Cat angels. Happy Holidays.