Marc Maron podcasted so Joe Rogan could make a quarter-of-a-billion dollars from Spotify and sway an election. Maybe that’s an oversimplification. But both of them helped define podcasting, a medium increasingly setting the standards for political discourse.

Maron started his podcast as a last-ditch attempt at career stability. After being let go by progressive talk network Air America, Maron started “WTF with Marc Maron” in September 2009, three months before Rogan started “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Both hosts interviewed, or at least held court, with politicians, Maron most famously with President Barack Obama in 2015 and Rogan with former president and then-candidate Donald Trump in 2024.

Maron decided to end his podcast in the summer of 2025 and did so on Oct. 13, with Obama making his second appearance on the show. Rogan shows no signs of slowing down and is the highest-paid podcaster.

Rogan has become a sought-after show for politicians and politically adjacent individuals, sharing his platform with Vice President JD Vance, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk, FBI Director Kash Patel and others.

But sometimes less is more. Rogan churns out three-hour episodes multiple times a week, and the headlines he garners typically come from a short clip. The context behind most of the conversation is lost. It’s something that came up in the final “WTF with Marc Maron.”

Obama said: “It was interesting to me when people started criticizing, I don’t know, Bernie or somebody else for going on, Rogan. It’s like, well, why wouldn’t you? … To me, engaging in a honest conversation that’s not just yelling, not just trying to score points, but, all right, I’m going to take time to listen, and then I’m going to share how I’m thinking about things, that part of it is valuable. And the fact that we can have access to that, we can, in some ways, participate in that conversation, I think is actually not the big problem. But the problem that happens with podcasts is that they get all chopped up, and it gets put up on the video stream.”

Maron added: “The content economy. The one thing that we did was always keep it audio. It’s harder to clip audio. The people that listen to my show are in for the conversation. And I think what you’re talking about, which I try to understand or wrap my brain around, is that there’s a tribalization happening in terms of even if Bernie goes on Joe, that Bernie is focused and he knows what he wants to say. But when it’s taken out of context or it’s solely looked at by a bubble of people, that the message can become obscured, right? And diminished.”

This is an important takeaway from Maron’s show about Rogan’s show and the broader podcasting ecosystem. But it’s not a new idea, just a 21st-century version of what Marshall McLuhan was exploring when he said the medium is the message. It’s neat that a former president and a successful stand-up comic are fascinated by the distribution and consumption of mostly unregulated media in podcasting. But that’s not what’s going to be remembered from either man.

The most interesting aspect from this episode, and quite possibly the biggest lesson in the impressive 16-year run of the podcast, came around the 40-minute mark. 

Speaking about the landmark legislation of his presidency, Obama said: “Part of what a liberal democracy requires is an acceptance of partial victory and not perfection. When I was in the White House, I’d sit around on any issue with my Cabinet or my staff, senior staff, and we’d go around analyzing everything. At some point, I’d say, ‘All right, I think I’ve got all the information. If we do X, is this going to make things better?’ Because, and I’d tell them, better is good. We’re not going to get to perfect. If you’re telling me that the Affordable Care Act is going to insure 50 million people, do I think that’s better than if we were starting from scratch and I could get a single-payer plan instituted and get that through Congress, and suddenly we had universal health care and we had taken the profit motive out. … Do I think that would probably be a smarter way to do it? But since I can’t do that, I don’t have the votes for that. How about this?”

Maron, never short of words, only said, “Yeah, we can make it better.”

This leads to the former president speaking to how politics’ zero-sum game might be one of the main reasons why we are where we are.

Obama continued: “This sense that things aren’t worth it unless we get everything we want, I think, is either a recipe for disappointment in a democracy but also maybe in life, or it leads to this weird cynicism where you just were drawn entirely. And that’s part of what happened to too many of our folks. I think we decided, ‘All right, if I’m not going to get everything, then that justifies doing nothing.’”

That’s the gist. That’s everything. That’s the idea of “hope” as Obama’s slogan.

It’s an odd and poignant note on a podcast that helped evolve a type of up-and-coming media. The idea of compromise, of doing things to make things better, is a completely unexpected way “WTF with Marc Maron” ended its 1,686-episode run. 

Maron somewhat famously ended interviews with comics he knew prior to “WTF” by saying, “We good?” The host felt compelled to clear the air because it was necessary. Oftentimes they were, in fact, not good. There wasn’t a lot of optimism. 

Maron leans into the darkness and uncomfortable aspects of humor onstage and on his podcast. His greatest bit — which happens to be on his most recent special, 2025’s “Panicked” — is a bit that Obama brought up on the pod and a good summation of the state of liberals in America: “We annoyed the average American into fascism.”

Both interviewer and subject know it’s a joke, and there’s truth in jokes. Maybe pointing out our absurd reality with a good sense of humor while trying to make things slightly better for everyone is the future of politics. It seemed to work out well for these two guys.