Awards Circuit Podcast: The comedian says he's been approached about launching a new podcast — but says he's not interested.

Marc Maron wrapped his “WTF” podcast in October after 16 years — and so far, he says, he doesn’t really miss it.

“I don’t find myself freaking out as much,” he tells Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast. “I mean, it was a big haul. We did a lot of episodes. We did two new episodes a week. I was banking interviews. It was all consuming, and anytime you stop something that’s all consuming, any kind of relationship after 16 years, there’s a freedom there. I thought there would be more of a panic or more of a feeling of sadness, but that didn’t really happen.”

And although he’s shown up as a guest a few times since then on other podcasts — like this one! — Maron says he’s resisted pitches to get back behind the mic. “There were people that wanted to set me up somewhere or do a deal with the old catalog and do new stuff,” he says. “I don’t know, I don’t see that there’s anything really special about the format anymore. And I don’t see that there’s any reason to compete in the format anymore. We did a thing and the more you keep doing it when it just becomes a job, it just kind of fades away. You’d rather not be the guy that people are going, ‘Oh, is he still doing that?'”

Maron stopped by the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast to talk about his most recent HBO special, “Marc Maron: Panicked,” including how his famed cats are doing. He also reminisced about his first time in Variety — specifically, the 1995 Comedy Central talk show pilot that earned his first mention in our pages. And he took the 10 Questions survey.

Also in this episode, “The Paper” star Domhnall Gleeson. Listen below!

For “Panicked,” Maron’s bit that liberals “annoyed the average American into fascism” has earned him raves for being so spot-on — as his audience begrudging admits he’s right. “It’s a line that came to me probably a week before the special, it came out of nowhere,” he says. “It was quite a gift from whatever muse I’m working with. But that was a line that kind of dropped in pretty close to showtime, and there was a couple other lines. It seems to have resonated, that particular line.”

Maron said he took nearly two years to build “Panicked,” but he made some tonal changes a few weeks before the show that made what had been pretty worn material suddenly feel fresh again. “I was constantly shaping it,” he says. It’s sort of the way I do it. I keep it kind of fluid to let new things happen right up to show time.”

A big chunk of the special recounts Maron’s experience during the January 2025 L.A. fires — which he said he began workshopping immediately, even while the fires were still raging. “That story, that long form piece of comedy, which is about 15-plus minutes, took months to find all the jokes and to make those physical beats work,” he says. “It was really a piece of work, that thing.”

The centerpiece of it is how Maron handles taking his cats, and in particular, Charlie, as he evacuates his home because of the fires. Maron’s fans know all about his cats, thanks to “WTF.”

“People love the cat thing,” he says. “If you really look at ‘Panicked’ as a full special, there’s some heavy stuff in there, man. There’s stuff in there about death. There’s stuff in there about having to deal with childhood trauma. There’s stuff in there about processing grief. But I do notice that this stuff that sticks with people is lighter.”

So, how are the cats? “It’s been pretty good the last couple weeks,” he says. “But I have this problem with Charlie and Buster. Charlie wants to kill Buster, and Buster is the old guy, and Sam’s the middle guy. And it was a lot. It was causing me a lot of problems. But I put Charlie on a new medicine, and the advice I was given was to keep them separate, but rotate them during the day — so they each get equal time in the bigger part of the house, and you put one in a bedroom, one the main house, and then switch them out. It’s a bit much. So now I just let them each have a floor. I think that Charlie’s a lot happier. I don’t know if it’s the medicine or the space, but he’s happier, and that’s good.”

Maron’s first time in Variety came on Sept. 7, 1995, when he appeared in the production chart for his “Marc Maron Project” talk show pilot for Comedy Central. “That space was eventually taken by ‘The Daily Show,'” he notes. “At that time HBO had a piece of Comedy Central, and HBO Downtown produced a show that I used to do for them, ‘Short Attention Span Theater.’ They wanted to do a talk show pilot, and because I was sort of there and I wanted to try that, we did a pilot. I feel like we did two episodes of ‘The Mark Maron Project.’ Robert Small directing, my guest was Dave Chappelle on one of them, but he must have been a kid then. And Steven Weber, and there were comedy bits.”

Speaking of talk shows, Maron says he thinks it’s disappointing that the form seems to be going away on TV. “I’m sad that that format can’t live in this world we live in, but I don’t think they’re at fault. I think that ultimately, as individuals, you better hold on to that part of your brain that can take in long-form content, or else you’re going to just have a complete mind meld with the tech forces that are guiding your brain in life, and you won’t really have much of an identity or a method of choice anymore… I feel bad that the business is changing, but I don’t know what one does about that.”

1. Childhood nickname: “During PE in fifth grade at stick ball, my coach used to call me ‘Hank Maron,’ which was pretty good, because I hit a couple homers. I wouldn’t say I was doing it all the time, but I don’t remember too many nicknames, other than just my last name.”

2. Something you loved as a kid but can’t believe you were into it now: “I was pretty involved with Cocoa Pebbles. I don’t feel ashamed about it, but I tried to eat them recently. It’s not the same.”

3. Go-to Karaoke or sing-in-the-shower song: “I really like playing that Dylan song I played the other night. ‘Going, Going, Gone’ on [his album] ‘Planet Waves.’ I do do Taylor Swift’s ‘Bigger Than the Whole Sky.’ I will sing it, and I will play it. We had to pay for it, for the last special. She could have said no, and she didn’t.

4. Give me an alternate title for your show:  “I feel like we did, but ‘Panicked,’ once toy decide one, all the others kind of fade.”

5. What’s your secret talent?: “I can cook, and I can play harmonica.”

6. Favorite ice cream flavor: “Ben and Jerry’s still makes pretty good vegan ice cream. That chocolate fudge brownies good. The vegan Jerry Cherry Garcia is good, vegan Phish Food is good. I like things with caramel in them too.”

7. The one item you couldn’t live without: Glasses.

8. What TV show in all of history do you wish you were a cast member of?: “It would have been fun to be on the ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show.’ What a cast, man. So funny. To work with Ed Asner, at that point, how funny would that have been? That whole crew, oh my god, so funny.”

9. Fictional character you most admire: “I watch ‘Michael Clayton’ a lot. That’s a good character.”