Episode 1030 - Stephen Colbert

**Marc Maron** (0:00)
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All right, let's do this. How are you, WTFers, WTF buddies, WTFnicks, WTFsters, WTFnucks? Yeah, the WTFnucks. Why not? I'm in Canada still, so that seems appropriate. How's it going? I'm Marc Maron. This is my podcast broadcasting from a hotel room, but it's nice, it's not a bad hotel room. It's more of a residence-style hotel room. I think it's actually an apartment. You could definitely live here. You could live anywhere, really, I mean. And I'm in Canada.
So there's reflection going on. I do want to say that I want to thank, certainly, the journalists of the world and also the entertainers of the world for being relatively one of the only, sadly, truly functional checks on this presidency. So that being said, I have Stephen Colbert on the show today. Stephen and I go back a bit. We don't know each other that well. I've done his show several times, but we sort of started in the same world.
And he has risen to the occasion for personal reasons, for reasons of whatever it is.
Stephen is one of the guys who is publicly pushing back through humor, but also through anger and heart and concern and fear on a nightly basis against this sort of wave of authoritarian thinking and single-party minority rule supporters, anti-Americans who consider themselves to be making America great again. Stephen is sort of a, he's kind of a hero in the fight in a way because he's able to present information and anger in a humorous way, providing some comfort to the sort of ongoing internal and cultural current of fear and apprehension and not knowing what's going to happen and keeps people from tipping off the edge because a lot of people are falling off the edge, mentally and in a lot of other ways because this shit is hard and it's scary and that's where we're at and Stephen is one of the guys that makes it funny. So I was happy to talk to him. We had a tight talk because I had to go over to the theater, the Ed Sullivan Theater and pull him away from the daily grind of hosting a daily show and he gave me about an hour and he's a talker and I think we did all right. So that's happening.
You can look forward to that in a few minutes.
I'm getting a lot of emails from people about many things, hundreds of emails about the Eve Ensor episode from men and women, almost equal, oddly, and just from people who are victims, parents of victims, victims by proximity, people who have been destroyed from abuse and domestic and sexual violence and just situations.
It's just overwhelming, really, and I've been getting a lot of emails relative to anti-Semitism. I've been getting emails to add to the conversation around addiction and recovery, just emails of fear, in terms of managing it. I had no idea that my conversations would lead to some sort of, to help, you know? I really got into this trip to try to get something going, and I guess to engage myself and whatever my process has been over time has had an effect on people, and it's humbling, and I'm glad to help out. So, I hope you're doing okay.
I hope your life is going well, and you got that thing done, or you fixed that thing, or you got that thing looked at, or you got your kid into the right place, and whatever. I just hope. There's emails here about the creeping authoritarianism that seems to be honestly happening in America, despite the presses or all of our best efforts to sort of feel like there's something we can do to engage, and obviously there is, but it's happening, and it's good, as I've kind of been trying to grow myself, to kind of really know who you are and who's in charge of your brain, and how do you handle what you think, and how do you facilitate some sort of change in yourself and in the world.