This post has to do directly with neither rock nor theology, but with my recommendation of a very funny, smart, and frequently profane set of conversations that happen on the WTF podcast. I was not a podcast-kind-of-guy until I heard this show, hosted by the comedian Marc Maron. Twice a week, he posts interviews (recorded in his garage) with his friends and colleagues in the comedy world, including (so far) Robin Williams, Margaret Cho, Conan O’Brien, Sue Costello, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Louis CK, Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, Andy Dick, Garry Shandling, Adam Carolla, and a ton of others.

As of today, there are 177 episodes, roughly an hour each, and I’ve listened to about 25 of those in the past month. Why have I abandoned my ears to these interviews in almost every spare moment of walking, driving, and sock-drawer rearranging? For whatever reason, it is refreshing and even occasionally inspiring to hear two very smart and very funny people talk for an hour about comedy — both the shop-talk and the non-shop-talk. The shop talk includes lots of disquisitions about where comedy comes from in the comic’s life, what comedy clubs are like, what the skills of joke-telling involve, what is the difference (if any) between appropriate and inappropriate jokes, or between funny and unfunny jokes, about how to improvise during standup, about the difference between standup and improv, about hecklers, failing on stage, backstage antics, warmup routines, the development of new material, and more.

The non-shop-talk includes comics’ relationships, family histories, relationships, hobbies, relationships, drug backgrounds, relationships, career decisions, and relationships.

The conversations are spontaneous, usually friendly but sometimes barbed or tense, and always (for me, anyway) fall somewhere on the humor spectrum between “amusing” and “laughing-uncontrollably.” But I am also a person who likes laughing and who constantly finds things funny and who

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