At its best, hearing Marc Maron talk about WTF is like reading a prickly, cat-haired covered Valentine to his fellow comedians. “As a comic, the one thing I know about us is that we surrendered a life. It’s a tremendous sacrifice,†Maron tells Slate’s Culture Gabfest, starting around minute 27. “To commit to this life of being a standup, you have to be somewhat delusional, because it’s a long shot. Most of us don’t fit in anyway, and I knew that too. We’re fighting any sense of security, normal jobs, workplace ethics, ethics in general, a sense of personal morality. There’s a lot of things that comics go through that people who live relatively secure lives don’t deal with.â€
Maron also talks in-depth about how and when he knows to put on his kid gloves, whether discussing about Dave Foley’s alimony woes, Todd Hanson’s suicide attempt or Amy Sedaris’ love life at the WTF taping in Brooklyn on Monday. “The thing which I’ve learned about people with large egos, which I have and which most of us have, comics, is that they’re always a blind spot to a large ego,†he says. “There’s always a place their ego will not allow them to go because the whole house of cards will fall down…they can’t afford to see it. And you don’t want to start poking that. What are you going to get? You’re going to get someone angry. You’re going to get someone defensive, or worse, you’re going to have a meltdown on your hands. But you can see it, if you listen to it, and it’s a pretty beautiful thing, that thing.â€