Marc Maron choosing to end his long-running WTF Podcast after 16 years marked a shift in the pop culture landscape. But just because he’s closing the garage, it doesn’t mean his voice is getting quieter. He’s still speaking out, still sharing his opinions, and still telling some of the funniest, most poignant comedy material you’ll see on stage. As Consequence‘s Comedian of the Year, Maron sits down with us to discuss the evolution of his comedic style, his approach to balancing liberal and conservative viewpoints, and his views on the changing landscape of digital culture and its effects on comedy.
Never one to shy away from his opinion, Maron has had some choice words for the Austin comedy scene, which as he puts it has “created this audience of what was primarily not comedy fans, and created this new bread of pseudo-radicalized comedy fans around anti-woke comedy.” While clarifying that he too has had some “wrong-minded jokes” in his nearly 40-year career, he explains that his criticism is purely about comedy and not politics. “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 says. “And there was just this thing that was happening where they were… assuming the last word about what comedy was, and it was fairly un-nuanced and very hackneyed in terms of its 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.”
As for his own comedy, Maron gets candid about crafting the set for his latest standup special, Panicked. In particular, he speaks on “taking liberals to task for their idiosyncrasies” to give the set balance. “I changed the tone of that material a week before,” he says. “I realized that if you come in hot on this stuff, it’s very hard to get out from under, especially when you’re dealing with moral liberal or progressive politics — to not sound self-righteous. So going into the first piece, I literally changed the tone of it… A big line from the special was delivered to me a week before, after working with the balance of being a liberal minded person and our own foibles and our own idiosyncrasies. And then the line that says, ‘We annoy the average American into fascism,’ that happened a week before the special, dude.”
Watch the full interview above (or via YouTube) to hear what else Marc Maron has to say about the state of comedy, the Riyadh Comedy Festival, and more. Also read our full Comedian of the Year cover story and the rest of our 2025 Annual Report.
Maron has a few tour dates on the horizon, and you can get tickets here.
