Comedian of the Year Marc Maron Is Done Podcasting, But the Conversation Continues

Consequence's 2025 Annual Report continues with Marc Maron, Comedian of the Year. If you haven't already, check out our lists of Best Albums, Best Songs, Best TV Shows, and Best Films, and stay tuned for more lists and interviews.

Marc Maron is a master of conversation. Across 1,686 episodes, WTF with Marc Maron expanded the possibilities of podcasting, and his final episode, with Barack Obama, felt like an ode to dialogue itself -- to the power of people exchanging views.

"When it comes down to it, people are just people, and in terms of conversation, it's just a matter of curiosity, empathy, and the ability to listen," he tells Consequence over Zoom. "But also the ability, when you're talking to people that have a certain position in life, or have a public personality, to get them off-kilter a little bit so they aren't locked into that." Before winding down his podcasting career, he developed a knack for knocking guests off-message, guiding them away from future anxieties and "into the present."

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The theme of conversation -- its strengths and limitations -- runs through his excellent 2025 HBO special, Panicked. Of his girlfriend's no-nonsense attempts to be supportive, he quips, "I don't think she likes me." A segment imagining Theo Von interviewing Hitler builds a series of jokes around refusing to offer any pushback at all. Perhaps his most enduring line from the special mocks humorless scolds in the progressive movement, whom he says “annoyed the average American into fascism.” It's not enough to start a dialogue; you have to strike the right tone.

" I do continue, I think, to evolve and grow in tone, in depth, and in my ability to make things funny that I think are challenging," he says. Regarding his decision to "take liberals to task," he recalls that he "changed the tone of that material a week before" he filmed the special. "If you come in hot on this stuff, it's very hard to get out from under -- especially when you're dealing with more liberal or progressive politics -- to not sound self-righteous," he explains. " So how do you do that and make it conversational?"

Across a wide-ranging discussion, Maron, Consequence's 2025 Comedian of the Year, is careful to describe his forays into politics in comedic terms. More than once he says some variation of, "I didn't make a statement. I made a joke, and that's what I do." As one example, we discuss his viral comments on the Riyadh Comedy Festival, in which he said, "How do you promote that? 'From the people that brought you 9/11?'"

The bit helped ignite a backlash to the Western performers taking Saudi Arabian money to take part in the event. "I made a joke about it," he says. "And I guess that joke had some resonance and kind of sparked a more culturally active look at the participants in that festival."

On this subject, his voice drips with contempt. "It's about money, dude. It's really about: Can you rationalize taking that money? And most people can, because that's the world we live in. And I'm not even on any kind of high horse. I get it. Hey, all money's shitty." Though as he clarifies, there is no dollar amount that would have enticed him to Riyadh.

He also doesn't buy the argument that those comedians were spreading Western values. "Autocratic countries that become culturally Westernized, I don't think it ever changes the politics of those countries. It just does what it does here: creates more distraction, a sense of freedom of choice, because you have a few different restaurants and a few different places you can go online." He deadpans, "Adopting Western culture, it's not helping us right now."

Behind this remark, and Panicked, and so much of Maron's comedy over the last few years, lurks Donald Trump. "If you can rationalize taking the money and live with that, then that's how this world works. You know, our president, who's supposed to be an example of something American, might be the most American president we've had in years. Who knows? Get away with what you can get away with, get all the money. You can double down on anything. Don't take responsibility or apologize for anything."

When asked if he was a little less panicked these days, now that Trump's grip on the GOP seems to be waning -- after he couldn't stop the Epstein votes and failed to force Indiana redistricting -- Maron isn't ready to unclench. "In the real world, nothing has changed. Zero. So whether or not this stuff goes to the wayside or whether or not he bullies those Republicans back into the line, who knows? I don't know. The bottom line is we're living in a fairly new authoritarian America and either people are gonna adapt or they're gonna not." He adds, "I don't know if there's hope."

Maron's anxiety is a source of so much of his humor, and while his political jokes make headlines, his meditations on his personal life are what make him so relatable.

The centerpiece of Panicked is a 10-minute story about packing up his three cats to flee the Los Angeles wildfires. Maron workshopped the special over two years, with extra attention paid to that expansive segment. "It takes a long time to polish those longer pieces, a 10 minute piece like that," he recalls. "A story has to evolve and then you kind of have to fill it in with funny beats. I think that one's pretty joke efficient, but those don't happen in one telling. You have to find them after telling it many times and accentuate pieces building up to other pieces. It's got an efficiency of laughs throughout it, and that takes a while to put together."

Maron himself is the butt of most of the jokes; if there had been no mention of politics, Panicked would still earn its title. At other times, he shows a warmer side. His father's dementia is treated with refreshing honesty, because as anyone who has encountered that category of diseases can attest, the experience is often loving and surprisingly funny.

" I do think it's an opportunity to get to know a loved one in a way that has, at times, a poetic honesty," he says. "Through the confusion, certain poetic things unfold and bits and pieces come out-of-context that are very revealing about them  -- and, if they are a parent, you."

That doesn't make it enjoyable. "It's scary. Like, am I gonna get that? That's the basic fear about anything, you know: cancer, dementia, MS, who the fuck knows? You can run with all that stuff. It's terrifying, the possibility of having it. But in engaging with it -- and given that my relationship with my parents is not bad, but it's not as connected or respectful as some other people's -- it gave me a little bit of leeway to explore those jokes without fear of offending."

His relationship to the offensive has also matured. "Over the course of my career, I've done a lot of wrong minded jokes for effect and for reaction that, over time, I learned were not really necessary or particularly appropriate," he says. "And this is part of evolving as a person and becoming wiser."

It's a lesson he wishes other comedians would learn. In Panicked, he mocks those who cry for free speech just to punch down -- or as he puts it, "Speak power to truth." He's also been a vocal critic of the Austin comedy scene, and he thinks it's fair to wonder, "Is Joe Rogan still a comic or is he some sort of lifestyle show that deals with information?"

"I'm not some radical progressive out in the world ranting about political impropriety. I'm a comedian, so when I said what I said about what was happening in Austin and around that sphere of comics and that audience, it was to make a point," he says. "Because they've created this audience of what was primarily not comedy fans, and created this new breed of, you know, pseudo-radicalized comedy fans around anti-woke comedy.

"What's interesting about comedy and what is great about it is that it is an expansive bunch of voices, both vulnerable and angry," he continues. "And there was this thing that was happening where they were assuming the last word about what comedy was. And it was a fairly un-nuanced and very hackneyed repetition of two or three ideas that were primarily right-wing talking points. So that was why I did that. It was for comedy -- not for me, not for the left. It was for comedy."

With the relentless podcast grind behind him, Maron is shifting focus. He is currently developing a film based on a novel by his friend Sam Lipsyte, preparing for another season of the Apple TV+ series Stick, and even playing music with a new group of musicians, a pursuit he approaches with characteristic self-deprecation. "I don't like not being good at something," he admits. "My singing could use some work, but there's only one way to get better and that's to do it."

(He's also still touring standup, of course, and you can get tickets here.)

It is that drive to refine the craft — whether in music, conversation, or comedy — that keeps him moving forward. He insists that the best material, the kind that changes how people think, isn't disposable. "That's just good poetry," he says. "I think jokes can last forever."

Yet, regarding his own place in history, Maron is at peace with the variables he can’t control. He knows that relevance in the modern media landscape is "very fleeting," and he seems content with his own intimate corner of culture.

"It's really about the impact one makes," Maron says. "It's me just sort of trying to accept my journey and my ceiling... being somebody who is very famous to very few. It's just the way it is."