Marc's own shirt, jeans, jewelry, boots; Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses. Grooming: Joanna Ford. Photographed by Guy Aroch Most mornings, Marc Maron wakes up spiraling. Each turn of the globe brings a fresh catastrophe, a crisis, real or imagined, that sends the comedian back into battle with his tenacious anxiety. This isn't great for mental health, but it does make for good material. And today, his psyche is playing the hits. "I got cat problems," Maron sighs, a Zyn pouch migrating from the inside of his left cheek to the right. "I've got one that's just beating the shit out of another one, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. You want your home to be a place where you can relax." Related Stories Business Taylor Swift Confirmed to Make Guest Appearance on Travis Kelce's 'New Heights' Podcast Movies NY Film Festival Adds Bruce Springsteen Biopic 'Deliver Me From Nowhere' as Spotlight Gala Photographed by Guy Aroch Maybe the nicotine is helping with that. At least for the moment, Maron seems to surrender to the discord between two of his three roommates, though stand-up's most famous cat guy is never not a little on edge. He'll kvetch about anything to anyone. Right now, it's in his front yard with an audience of one. He'll find more humor in the latest war at home when he's onstage this evening. He'll write about it in his blog. And he'll absolutely monologue about this on his podcast. He launched WTF With Marc Maron in 2009, a time of personal and professional desperation, when podcasting was still a cultural vacuum mostly populated by repurposed NPR content. Many of his peers thought that Maron, who has struggled with depression and addiction, had finally lost it. But his candor and curiosity soon had comics, actors, intellectuals and eventually a sitting president trekking to a cluttered garage studio on the east side of Los Angeles to talk and listen to a self-described failure. "Sometimes the complete artist is there - they just need to find the medium," says Conan O'Brien, who booked his longtime friend for 42 appearances on NBC's Late Night before WTF made Maron mainstream. "He was very funny on television, but for whatever reason, he needed to be in the wilderness for a while. The pod was the perfect place for his freak flag to fly at full mast." For 16 years, Maron has used his platform to do just that. But in June, he and his day one producer, Brendan McDonald, announced that they were burned out. WTF ends in October after more than 1,680 episodes and inspiring countless others to grab a mic and capitalize on the booming genre Maron helped popularize. As for this 62-year-old pioneer, he'll focus on an accelerating acting career (see his supporting roles on the Apple TV+ comedy Stick and the upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere), his stand-up and perhaps some self-care. "Howard Stern mentioned us stopping the show," Maron says. "He said, 'Well, if they're burnt out, I must be dead.' I don't know if he knows the irony in that. There is something about solidifying a legacy when you stop, as opposed to just fading away." On more than one occasion, Maron refers to WTF's impending conclusion as "the change" - as if it were some biological rite of passage to endure rather than a decision he made. But for a guy with loner-ish tendencies like Maron, this could herald an existential crisis. The podcast is his primary tether to the world. His conversations - do not call them interviews - expand his social circle. And his confessional episode intros, which tackle matters as mundane as the latest cat updates and as wrenching as the death of his late partner, director Lynn Shelton, have cultivated a unique bond with many who contribute to his 55 million in annual listens. He's anxious about how he'll adjust to losing all of that. Still, he suggests zero reservations about leaving the medium that finally delivered the exposure he'd longed for. It's pretty crowded out there, if you hadn't noticed. "Things were better before everyone had a voice," Maron says. "Now there's just hundreds of groups of two or three white guys, sitting behind mics, talking about the last time they shit their pants as adults. We live in a world of mediocre afternoon drive-time radio." Marc's own WTF shirt, jeans, jewelry, reading glasses, boots. Photographed by Guy Aroch Paul Smith robe; Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses; Marc's own jewelry. Photographed by Guy Aroch *** The Maron house does not smell like cats. This feels worth acknowledging because almost every home with them, no matter how expensive the litter box, shares that unmistakable aroma. Oh, and when Maron returned from a trip to his home state of New Mexico days earlier, the youngest had defecated in almost every room. Charlie has hostility issues and anxiety-induced colitis. But when I arrive at the Glendale craftsman they all share, he lies down at my feet, belly up, as Buster and Sammy keep to themselves. Team Charlie. This is not the property where M