What a Chilly Encounter with a Celebrity Taught Me About Podcasting
Happy Wednesday!
Thanks for subscribing. As usual on Wednesdays, first it's a short essay designed to make you think about a particular topic in a new way. Today's piece serves as a bit of a therapy session for an incident over the weekend in which I learned that celebrities aren't actually your friends. Ouch!
Then, I've compiled the five best "things" -- articles, podcasts, videos etc. -- I found this week, which I think you'll enjoy checking out. Let me waste my time scouring the internet for the best content so you don't have to.
What a Chilly Encounter with a Celebrity Taught Me About Podcasting
The first thing I saw was the t-shirt. It was navy blue with the circular design of a moon on the front, a logo I was used to seeing next to a YouTube video. Then I made out the words. "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon."
The shirt by itself didn't mean all that much. After all, I was walking down North Avenue Beach in Chicago in the midst of a huge crowd, and throughout the day saw plenty strange and distinct apparel (or lack thereof). It was during the Chicago Air and Water Show, the largest free aviation show in the United States, and estimates put somewhere between one million and two million people along the beach at any given point in the day.
But still, as a fan of comedy my eyes were drawn to that shirt. How often do you see people wearing a shirt for a talk show? As the person wearing the shirt came towards me, my eyes slowly rose to see a face I was very familiar with. Could it be?
Yes, it is! Holy crap, that's Marc Maron!
Now, many of you might have no idea who Marc Maron is. Certainly nobody on the beach that day did, as he walked through the crowds undisturbed. That's because he's not really famous, not in the traditional sense. I mean sure, he's performed stand-up comedy for the better part of three decades, popped up in a few Netflix shows recently (Easy, GLOW), had a few minuscule parts in some movies (including in my favorite movie of all time Almost Famous), and even had his own show on the Independent Film Channel (Maron), but he's far from a household name.
Except that he has a podcast. And not just a podcast, he has the podcast. One of the most downloaded, most talked about, most impactful, most culturally resonant podcasts of all time: "WTF with Marc Maron." Barak O'Bama, Robin Williams, Lorne Michaels, and practically every other celebrity you've ever loved has at one point opened up to Maron, and many have even cried on air.
And on top of that, I'm a huge fan of his. I've listened to (almost) every episode of the podcast (admittedly they're really long!), I've watched him in GLOW, I've seen Almost Famous about a billion times, and I even watched his IFC show all the way through. Not many can say that.
So when I got close enough to see him on Sunday, I knew without a doubt that it was him. I went up to him with the classic shy "...Marc Maron? I'm a huge fan of your podcast." He said thanks, asked my name and reached to shake my hand. I took it to mean I could continue with a conversation. So I tried...with questions, with compliments, even one semi-joke. It didn't go well. Two minutes later, after one more feeble "I appreciate your podcast man, keep it up," it was over. Mercifully.
Now I don't know if it was because Maron was out of breath (he was holding headphones in his hands and sweating, so it looked like he just completed a jog), because he wasn't interested in talking with anyone, or because he just really didn't like my ugly mug, but his responses gave me a general "ok let's get this over with" vibe.
Which by the way, is totally fine! Marc Maron doesn't owe me anything.
Here's what I found really interesting. I just assumed he would be down to talk to me. Why? If I were to see a different celebrity, say Brad Pitt, I wouldn't assume we'd have a good conversation. I probably wouldn't even go up to him in the first place!
It's just in this case, I felt like I knew Maron. In my head, we were already friends. As I thought more about it, I realized I felt the same way about all the podcast hosts I regularly listen to (full disclosure, I'm subscribed to 20-25 podcasts right now...I...uh...have a lot of friends).
Something about the podcast medium is deeply personal. Perhaps it is the informal, authentic, unproduced style. Or the feeling that when I put headphones in it feels like it's hooked directly into my brain. Or the sheer number of hours I've heard them talking to me. Some combination of all of that I'm sure.
All I know is it's a special combination. Podcasts can seem like real life, can mentally trick me into thinking I'm hanging out with someone, while also carrying the gravitas of show business, in that I think of Marc Maron as a celebrity.
That's the power of podcasting. Yield it wisely!
And promise me that if you ever blow up into one of the most well-known podcasters of all time, when you just finish a run along the beach and stop to observe some airplanes, you'll be nice to the dorky kid who comes up to shower you with praise!
The Best Things I Found This Week:
The Stigma of Depression in Professional Sports
Longform
Let me give you a quick little tip for living your best life: every time Jackie MacMullan publishes a story, READ IT. She is one of the absolute best feature writers ever, bar none. But the necessity of this particular story comes not from the skill of the writing, which is still elite, but rather the subject matter.
From the outside, it seems ridiculous that someone as rich and famous and talented as Kevin Love could possibly struggle with depression or anxiety. Yet he does, and he's not the only one, as the struggles of Paul Pierce and Chris Bosh are outlined in the piece. Even though Love published a story on the topic in The Players Tribune, in his own words, MacMullan is able to give the story behind that story and dig into Love's psyche in the way only an insightful outsider can do. It'll be the best thing you read this week.
Better Call Saul
AMC
Can you believe it's already time for Season 4? I've never been able to figure out why this show is not a bigger hit. Breaking Bad was one of the greatest television shows of all time, and was a massive hit. You've got the same creators, the same setting, and many of the same characters.
Personally, I think the show was doomed from the beginning. AMC wanted a Breaking Bad-adjacent property on its network for several seasons, causing the writers room to spread things a little too thin, and many viewers were unable to slog their way through an admittedly slow second season. But I promise! This show is great! Give it another try!
ESPN Handpicked Joe Tessitore to Rebuild its Relationship with the NFL -- Here's Why
Profile
With a new NFL season fast approaching, you're going to be seeing a lot of Joe Tessitore. As the play-by-play man for Monday Night Football, he holds the most visible and likely the most prestigious position on ESPN. And after the unceremonious end to the McDonough-Gruden pairing, he should theoretically be feeling a lot of pressure. Except that he's not, according to this profile by Bryan Curtis of The Ringer.
Curtis is one of the best and most consistent writers on the topic of sports media there is, and this piece is written in the style of one of those throwback celebrity profiles. It's a lot of fun to read, in addition to some excellent insight into business of ESPN.
Unspooled
Podcast
There's great chemistry between hosts Paul Scheer (best known as "Andre" from The League, also in Veep and The Disaster Artist) and Amy Nicholson, and this is just a great concept for a podcast. Scheer considers himself a movie buff but admits to having not seen a lot of classic movies, so he and Nicholson, who is a professional film critic, revisit every move on the American Film Institute's Top 100 movies of all time list, one by one. If you're a fan of movies this podcast is great because it helps explain what makes these particular selections so good in a way that's really accessible and not pretentious at all.
If I could be so bold as to give it a tag line, I'd affectionately call it "film school for dummies." This week's episode was on the 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity.
How David Fincher Became Great Through Music Videos
Video
Ok, you'll have to indulge me a bit on this one. Because while "Unspooled" makes high level film analysis really accessible, this video lands way more on the pretentious side. But I can almost guarantee you already admire the movies of David Fincher: Se7en, Gone Girl, Zodiac, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club. He can make a case as the greatest director of the last 20 years. So maybe you do care about Fincher, in which case you'll find this video fascinating.
Everyone agrees on what makes Fincher a master: his obsessive precision. All of the tiny details have to be perfect. And ironically enough, he developed his signature style by directing music videos early in his career. This video does a great job of connecting the dots.