It’s June 2nd, 2025, and today on his show, WTF with Marc Maron, host Marc Maron announced that his show is coming to a close sometime this fall.

He’s been doing it for 16 years and he’s ready to end.

But Marc’s announcement of this has me feeling oddly nostalgic. Your Daily Lex It’s not that oddly.

Maybe it’s just normal nostalgia.

I’m a fan of Marc’s.

I’m a fan of WTF.

I knew of Marc before WTF and then knew him even more after WTF and worked with that show for years and years.

Here are just random memories of my work with WTF with Marc Maron.

First of all, his producer is a guy named Brendan McDonald.

I always liked Brendan for a variety of reasons, including probably more than appropriate, the fact that Brendan and I are birthday twins.

He’s older than I am, but we have the same birth date, November 28th.

So that was always exciting.

He and I race still to this day every November 28th to say happy birthday to the other one first.

When I first joined Midroll as a co-founder and the network had just successfully pulled in WTF, they were running ads for stamps.com with a CPM of $12, CPM being the price that stamps was paying per thousand downloads.

And that’s a terrible price, less than half of what the industry standard was at the time.

And my job was to raise that price up.

And I told stamps, you don’t have to go all the way to $25, but you got to get from $12 to $18.

And they were furious.

They were out of their minds.

And I’m like, look, I’m sorry, but you’ve got, this is also my first time doing it with stamps.com.

I’m like, you got to pay more.

The show is very popular and I can fill up the ad space with or without you.

And they’re like, we’ve been a longtime sponsor.

I’m like, that’s why I’m not making you pay full price.

That’s why I’m having this conversation with you.

I appreciate that you are a longtime sponsor, but if you want to keep being a sponsor, you’re going to have to pay more.

And they hated me so much and they paid it.

Another fun Marin story, when he had Barack Obama on, I didn’t know that he was going to have Barack Obama on, but Brendan had called me.

He’s like, look, we have a huge guest coming on.

I can’t tell you who it is.

I can tell you it’s a big guest and we want a big advertiser for it.

And so I got to work trying to find a big advertiser.

And I said, probably even to Brendan, it’s got to be somebody like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or at the time, even Joe Biden.

Because like if you’re, or maybe Michelle Obama, like if it’s this big a deal, but you can’t tell me who it is.

It’s got to be like a huge get and somebody that Mark would be excited about.

But I had to go to the advertiser and be like, I don’t know who it is.

This is what I assume it is.

I said, I assume it’s Barack Obama, but they can’t tell me that.

And I’d like you to sponsor it.

I went to Squarespace.

They were the first call I made.

I had to make up a price.

I said it was $100,000 and you can have the whole episode.

And they said, okay.

And it worked out well.

And I was right.

And Mark thanks me by name at the end of that Barack Obama episode, which is kind and exciting.

One time we flew Mark to Texas for a podcast moving conference.

I might’ve told this story on the show somewhat recently, but either way, it’s still a Marin story and Marin’s in the news today because he announced that he’s ending his show.

But there’s a big rodeo themed party that evening and we’re going out to dinner with Mark and Mark shows up in these jeans, denim cutoff shorts.

And my coworker who was the CEO of the business at the time says, oh, Mark, I see you’re dressed up for the rodeo party.

And Mark goes, what rodeo party?

And it was really funny.

It still is really funny.

God, it was so funny.

He was just wearing denim cutoff shorts because he wanted to.

I had to record some promos with Mark at one point.

And so I went to the garage where he does the show and I sat in the same chair as Obama and saw the abandoned Starbucks cup that Mark had put under glass that Obama had left behind.

Not a real Starbucks cup.

I guess it was a White House style Starbucks cup.

You get it.

But man, Mark’s always been very nice to me.

They always hook me up with tickets when Mark’s performing comedy nearby, which is awesome.

And yeah, also a really good interviewer.

He drives home this idea that an interview show is as much about the interviewer as it is about the interviewee.

And he made WTF as much about him as anybody else because that’s the person people listen to every single week.

Many people listen to Mark even if they don’t care that much about the guest or they don’t know who the guest is because they like to hear Mark and Mark’s take on said guest.

So I don’t know.

He’s a good one.

And he was great for podcasting and great for my kids’ college savings accounts.

So thanks, Mark.

And yeah, I think I probably have to inherit the mantle as the next Mark Maron here on this show.

Right?

Right.

Oh, also, I didn’t know it until my trainer pointed it out, but I’m down 50 pounds today.

What?

Lex.