Recognition that's long overdue

And to think we knew him when.

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7/10

'WTF With Marc Maron'

Acid-tongued, rage-prone satirist Marc Maron has been a stand-up-circuit fixture since the Eighties, hosting Comedy Central shows and befriending guys like Judd Apatow and Conan O'Brien along the way. But his new podcast, "WTF," may be his greatest achievement yet: a series of unvarnished shit-shoots with comedians that move from laugh-geek joke anatomy to quasi-therapeutic venting (Louis C.K. wept during his epic two-part interview).

And there's more, from the New York Times:

On his show, whose title includes an exclamation that can’t be printed here, Mr. Maron, a stand-up comic by trade, has cast himself as an unlikely celebrity interviewer — one who is angry, probing, neurotic and a vulnerable recovering addict. And somehow he’s able to elicit from his guests, mostly other comedians like Sarah Silverman and Ben Stiller, the same level of vulnerability.

The interviews, usually taped in his garage in Los Angeles, often end up feeling more like therapy sessions. Take, for example, Robin Williams talking to Mr. Maron about the dark side of dealing with audiences: “I guess it’s that fear that they’ll recognize — as you know — how insecure are we really? How desperately insecure that made us do this for a living?”

Thanks to moments like these the podcast has, over the last year or so, become a cult hit and a must-listen in show business and comedy circles. The success of the show has everything to do with its perceptive, prickly host and his ability to coax surprisingly revealing things from his guests.

Thirty years from now, people will look at the late, great Morning Sedition the way some people look at Jean Shepherd's show. What most people won't realize is that one short-lived radio show is what allowed Marc Maron to cut his interviewing teeth with some policy heavy-hitters -- people like journalists Michael Ware and Borzou Daragahi, politicians like Howard Dean, policymakers like Robert Reich. Maron may no longer even remember the call letters of Air America's then-flagship station, but it's the experience he got there that laid the groundwork for him to finally find a niche. He's a really good standup comic. But he's a GREAT interview show host.