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Callarogas shock media boy. There is so much going on with podcasting and comedy high I’m Johnny Mack in a busy Wednesday with your Daily Comedy News. Is all right? The big one? Mark Maren kind of shockingly announced that WTF with Mark Maren, his podcast that’s been around for sixteen years, will end this fall.
On Monday’s episode with John Mulaney and I did pull some clips, Maren said, WTF is coming to an end, and it’s our decision. He made it quite clear that this was a co decision with producer Brendan McDonald. He was very very clear about that. Maren said, we’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall. The podcast turns sixteen years old on September first.
More than sixteen hundred episodes. Probably the most notable one was Barack Obama in the Garage. I actually use that to teach my college students on this is how you do it. I’m going to miss the show a lot. I find Maren very easy on the ears, the conversations always good.
There are a lot of weeks where Maren has the same guest as someone else, for example, John Maliney and the Maren version of it is just better. Maren explained. It wasn’t some kind of difficult decision necessarily, neither me nor Brendan. We’re the only people in charge of this operation at every level. We both realized together that we were done.
All right, let’s listen to Mark Maren explain it. And this started, you know, the old garage, the you know, just no one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me.
Brendan MacDonald my producer who I’d worked with for years on other things radio and streaming related. And when Brandon and I started this saying, all we knew was we were going to do it every Monday and Thursday, and there was no way to make money. There was no way that we knew how to build an audience or anything. And it was crazy. We were doing it in a garage at the beginning that was just a garage.
It was filled with junk, and it slowly evolved into the show that became what you listened to twice a week. Sixteen years we’ve been doing this and we’ve decided that we had a great run and now basically it’s time, folks, it’s time WTF is coming to an end, and it’s our decision. We’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall. Now, I remember listening to the show. Podcasting has had kind of two waves.
The second wave everybody puts around twenty fifteen with Cereal, But there was that earlier wave when we all first got phones and you would actually have to connect to your phone to iTunes and manually download a show. Before we left the house. He had something to listen to, and I was out running, and I remember Maren and Nerdiced were like two long form pods that you would grabs. You would just have stuff on your phone to listen to as your bran. Maren said, we’re tired, we’re burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we’ve done.
We’ve done great work. Doesn’t mean I’ll never have, you know, talks like I do here or some kind of podcast at some point in time, but for now, we’re just wrapping things up. It’s good that he gets to go out on his own terms. Maren said, it’s okay for things to end. We started the show on our terms.
We grew it on our terms. We’ll end it on our terms. It’s the right decision for me, it’s the right decision for Brendan. It’s okay, it’s okay for things to end. It’s just time, folks.
But again, we’ll have a few more months, so don’t get all bummed out. Let’s just enjoy it. The world is on fire. I have the people I want to talk to. We’ll find a little joy, We’ll find a little connection, We’ll find a little solid in each other’s company.
Also, notably, he never did video, and that’s the big thing in the industry right now was, oh, you gotta have a video, and this has always been an audio podcast. Maren Show actually debuted a month after the Adam Carolla Show and three months ahead of Rogan, and then he got into the interview with John Mulaney, which was separately noteworthy. Now what rang my ears? Listen carefully to John Mulaney commenting here, Maren asks him will there be another season of Everybody’s Live? And I had pointed out on this podcast a few weeks back Robbie Prau, who heads up Netflix Comedy, gave some sort of quote that made me go, huh, this isn’t the slam dunk we were led to believe.
Now, listen to m’laney here, I’m not sure this show’s coming back. Listen Have they said we’re doing more yet we Yes. There was a plan to do more and we’re figuring it out. Yeah, yeah, are you gonna U? I never know what to say to that.
I also like this clip from John Mulaney. He’s almost defiant that if if something works, he’s going to stop doing it. Fair enough, respect the mindset, but it’s why the show doesn’t work. But here’s Mulini. Anytime you say they’re figuring it out not a bad set, a side of me comes out, you know, like they’ve they’ve found their groove.
No, we haven’t. I’ll do it blindfolded.
And also when they say things like they’re figuring out, it’s just a diplomat…
Good, Oh, I think they just say it’s not good when they don’t like yeah, I think we’re no longer living in the decent era of uh, well, they’re figuring out. I think people want the best for you, John, Oh, that’s it. Molini also talked about being offered the oscars he did confirm that it was offered to him. He said, I was very flattered. They came to me.
Must have been last summer, and I knew Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t going to do it, and they offered it, and it was honestly, they had a lot going on, and it’s months and months of work. Both he and Maren praised Conan. Malini said he came out and was not only funny, but he elevated the show to the point I almost convinced myself that I’d seen these movies and I han’t seen one of them. Mary makes some good points that Conan will sometimes self erase when he’s floundering, and in the first few seconds of the Oscars, you could see Conan was almost heading towards a flounder and then found himself. So it’s a really good listen Maren and Malaney.
But I have plenty of more podcasts for you to listen to. Joe Rogan had on Jimmy Carr a very good three hours. I can listen to Jimmy Carr talk about comedy all day every day. Here he talks about Heckler’s and. Then I’m trying, but then I’m trying to I’ve got a good fastball, and then I’m trying to work on the other bits.
But that’s kind of what I love about the industry because. It’s it’s everything. You go, yeah, I can get good at that, and then I can I can do you like twenty minutes of fastballs, and then do I’ve start About a year ago, I started putting. I started working with a videographer and putting stuff out of like Heckel videos and people talking to me, yeah, I’ll and you go. It’s just such a joyful thing because it’s almost like doing the stuff when you go, just hit me whatever you want.
I’ll do anything. It’s like seeing magician do real magic, because you kind of go, right, yeah, I’ve worked this muscle hot enough I can. I’ll write jokes life for you now. Jimmy Carr is also the guest on kil Tony. Haven’t gotten to that one yet.
The podcast The Town had on both Mulaney I’ll maybe talk about that in a few days and had on Mike Burbiglia. The clip I pulled here Mike Burbiglia sounds to me like the Netflix money isn’t what the Netflix money used to be. Here’s for bigs. Are they still paying top dollar though? Are you?
I mean, you don’t have to give me numbers, but like they’re still treating you well because I’ve heard some pullbacks. I think there have been. I don’t look at other people’s papers that much, but. I mean it’s fine. I mean it’s fine.
I’ve never, honestly, I’ve never made a ton of money from comedy specials. A lot of it is just like marketing. Getting well, yeah, and it’s getting like, look, I do a really specific thing, like I consider myself the luckiest person in the world to have found Netflix. I shouldn’t even say this on record because it’ll make my negotiation for the next cringe exactly, but it’s it’s like Netflix is the best thing that ever happened to me, because look. I was like, I Mike Berg would turn this off.
I make shows that are combination of Broadway shows, theater, storytelling, and sinup comedy, like nobody before Netflix. Nobody was like, we got to get that on Comedy Central. And I just now before I started recording, walked the Dog for an hour and listen to Diary of a CEO with Guess Jimmy Fallon. I really enjoyed it. It was nice to hear Jimmy Fallon in real person mode.
But boy, the way he tells the story he was obsessed and convinced he would be on SNL by age twenty five. It almost sounds like hogwash, but you listen to him say it over and over and he believes it. The host even asked him, well, what would happen if you didn’t get SNL by twenty five, and Fallon like, can’t even entertain that as a premise of like, what do you mean? Of course I was going to get it very interesting. There one thing that was a little fun.
It got cleaned up at the end, But in the first half of the podcast, they were making it sound like by phrasing it this way that Fallon replaced Letterman, I mean kinda sorta, But that’s like saying Jay Leno replaced Jack Parr, I mean kinda sorta. Later on, Fallon said that he replaced Conan, which is factually accurate. A note to everybody in the podcast industry, this is my number one pet peeve, but I’m specifically calling you out Diary of a CEO guy. So in the middle of the podcast, Jimmy Fallon is talking about dying, about what it will be like when he dies, and it abruptly cuts to a live read of the Diary of a CEO. Guy trying to sell us an iced coffee.
It’s a train wreck. People. You have to place these commercial breaks. It’s very easy. I do it on this podcast every day.
If you notice what I will do is I will leend a story in a down inflection and I leave a nice little hole there and that’s where the commercial goes. It’s very easy to do, and I don’t know why people can’t do. Whether there’s so many train wrecks. The worst train wrecker of all is Tim Dillon mid sentence train wrecks. Joe Rogan is awful.
Plus the reads come mid sentence. Spotify do better anyway. Diary of a CEO very very good. Listen with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon talks about the highs and lows of his career and auditioning when he was in his twenties.
He says he wasn’t the greatest, and I’m a pretty positive guy in general, but I think it was probably my lowest moment. I remember like trying to see what therapy was or if I could afford a therapist. I wrote a letter of my best friends, like I’m losing it, dude. I think was something on the point of like I’m losing it and I don’t know if I can make it. Jimmy talked about his obsession with SNL.
I became so obsessed in high school that I really couldn’t hang out with anyone. I watched the show. People are like, can’t you tape it? I can’t tape, but I have to watch it live. I said, if I do nothing else in life, that’s all I wanted to do.
And like, even if that, if I could go for one season or one episode, then I could do whatever I want. Really really good conversation. I think Fallon is better than the interviewer Stephen Bortlett. And I’m not sure Steven is the greatest host, but he’s got a pretty successful podcast there and I’m sitting here in the basement, so what do I know. But I think Fallon is really good there.
Also, catching my ears is Jimmy does kind of what I do and swallows the syllables on the first word of SNL. I’ll often say sat Night Live or Saturday Night Live or something like that unless I catch myself and over an unciate. Jimmy a few times says something like Saturnight Live if you pay attention across my ears continuing are very busy Wednesday and busy a block. Ricky Gervais last week on Friday, got his Hollywood Walk of Fame star. He said he was humbled and that his success was a mix of luck, persistence, and a little bit of pushing against the tide.
Ricky said, I’d love to claim that it was due to my unrival genius, but truth be told, it’s a cocktail of luck, persistence and a little bit of pushing against the tide. You know, you’ve got to polarize. I think you need to know if you’re gonna do anything of any worth. As many people hate you as love you. But the ones that hate you shouldn’t affect you.
The ones that love you, they buy your house, so I’d like to thank them. And we’ve had a few weird years of cancel culture, of people telling you what you can or can’t laugh at or talk about. But we push back and we won until the next time. My former co worker Jamie Fox was at the comedy store. He started talking about Diddy and called Diddy a nasty mff or.
Jamie then got into some of the stuff that allegedly happened that I can’t even make a clean version here. There’s no way to clean up what allegedly happened, So I’ll just move on interesting that Jamie’s out doing stand up And if you’d like to follow a Didty trial, we do have a podcast for you. It is called Diddy Did He Do It? Wherever you get your shows?
And now let me teach everybody how you do this.
As I head for the commercial break, I will end on a down inflection. Late Night had some fun with the notion that Joe Biden had been replaced by a clone and or robot. Have you heard this story? John Stewart said, you’re saying that the Joe Biden, who doesn’t even know where he is, is actually an incredibly advanced cloned robot. How much Kenemine are you on?
Jimmy Kimmel said, And by the way, whoever built that Joe Biden robot is very bad at building robots. I mean, if anybody was replaced by a robot, a clone, it’s Melania, right, Gus Corner, Fortune Fiemester posted on Instagram about the call to end her marriage. She made it clear the split was amicable. In a joint note signed by both her and Jacqueline, they said they’re parting ways with love, looking back fondly, and wishing each other nothing but the best moving forward. Andrew de Simuks got married.
According to a Late Nighter, Andrew has married fellow comedian Ellie Dixon this past weekend. Married somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains. Dixon captioned a photo saying, no offense, we just got married. Horrible story. King of the Hill voice actor Jonathan Joss murdered.
The voice actor was shot and killed on Sunday. According to police, authorities were dispatched to a shooting in progress around seven. They found Jos lying near the roadway. They tried life saving measures while waiting for ems. Joss was pronounced dead at the scene.
Officers quickly detained a suspect who had fled the scene in a vehicle. That person has now been booked for murder. The investigation still ongoing. Joss was best known for his voice role as John Redcorn and King of a Hill. Joss was set to return the newly announced revival of King of a Hill cent premiere in August, had already begun recording.
Just hours before his death, he had posted on Instagram talking about how the reboot is up and moving. Jonathan Joss was fifty nine. Nick Offerman jumped on social media, hitting back at a social media user who had used a doctored clip from Parks and rec to spread a homophobic message. A man had shared a clip depicting nick Offerman’s Parks character Ron Swanson throwing a rainbow flag into a dumpster. This happened on Sunday, the first day of Pride Month.
The person captioned it just wanted to post how I feel about Pride Month. Offerman himself commented and said Ron was the best man at a gay wedding. You dumb f hashtag happy Pride. Seth Meyers gave the commencement speech to choate Rosemary Hall’s class of twenty twenty five in Wallingford, Connecticut. That sounds up, but he doesn’t it.
Yes, it is a private Connecticut boarding school with Seth Myers sounds very very uppity. He joked that the smartly just teenagers holding roses plus the bagpipes made him feel like he was on his way to a human sacrifice. Seth said, I went to a public school. We used fewer fancy words. For example, we didn’t have a head of school.
We had a principle he asked us to call him head of school if someone would have thrown a battery at him. Not only did my school not of trustees, there was barely anyone you could trust. Seth continued. Nothing that is wrong in the world today is the fault of people under twenty. And yet you hear adults all the time saying we’re doomed because they’re getting their news from TikTok.
I’m not saying you should get your news from TikTok. You should get it from late night talk shows. And today it is the Women of Comedy Emmy Showcase. Eliza Slussinger soshirs Amada will join host Whitney Cummings for the Emmy season celebration. Whitney will moderate candid panel conversations with the featured performers.
They’ll talk about the comedian’s creative journeys, influences, and the evolving landscape for women in the comedy industry. Writing rule of three, fancy schmancy, It’s a Decrescent Theater in Beverly Hills. Invite only, excuse me, welcome reception at four two panels. The event is presented in partnership with Comedy Gives back the safety Net for the comedy community, offering financial crisis relief, mental health and substance abuse treatment sponsorship. So I hope the people that are paying for those invite only tickets are donating a heck of a lot of money.
Oh.
Also today Loons on the Lake.
The Loons on the Lake Comedy Festival in Minneapolis blends new and upcoming talent with experienced top name comedians. Starts to Toay goes through the seventh headliners Jamie Kennedy, Emo Phillips, some others who you probably aren’t that familiar with unless you’re very much into comedy. There is also a comedy competition with ten thousand dollars up for grabs forty comedians. You get to do an eight minute set top ten events in the next round, then the top five compete for the five thousand dollars grand prize. I wonder what happens to the other five?
Where’s that going? That’s your comedy needs for today? All right, I’ll see tomorrow,