Marc Maron's unintentionally timely End Times Fun delivers punchlines for the apocalypse

To a casual viewer, Marc Maron's latest comedy special might seem uncomfortably prescient.

End Times Fun landed on Netflix on March 10 — one day before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Maron doesn't address the coronavirus in the show. But he does zero in on other ways the sky appears to be on fire, such as climate change and his views on U.S. politics. 

The popular comedian and podcast host discussed his personal flavour of apocalyptic humour with Day 6 host Brent Bambury. Here is part of their conversation.

Mark, you taped and performed End Times Fun months before COVID-19 hit. Was there ever a time in your life when you didn't worry about the end times?

I think that I've always sort of had an anxiety about it, a dread about it in one form or another. This one didn't really factor into it. The end of the world by plague was not one of my go-to scenarios.

Warning: Video contains strong language.

But a lot of people have been calling you prescient for creating End Times Fun, and you start this special by talking about all the things you don't know. Why was that important to you?

Because I don't think that people do that enough. I think that we live in an age where people, if they consider themselves self-actualized, confident, they see themselves as special — that's there's very few people willing to say, "I don't know."

Most people don't know most things. So it's very easy for people to latch onto beliefs and ideas and information that [are] not true and dangerous, just out of their inability to admit that they don't know something and not find fault in that.

Most of us are guilty of ... taking in the information that resonates with us so we can have an OK day.- Marc Maron

End Times Fun is about beliefs and having them — even knowing that, you know, on a logical, practical or gut level that they're probably not true, but it makes you feel better to believe them. And that's not the way truth works.

What do you believe in? You're not really a person of faith. You're not somebody who adheres to the Marvel Universe that you describe, and that you kind of bring to life in your special. So when do you find yourself copping to something, even if the source isn't reliable, even if there's no evidence?

I think that even saying things like: "Hey, you know, don't worry, it's going to be OK," is a bit [like] magical thinking. And also, you know, I'm by nature somewhat of a sucker. You know, I want to believe things. I like the experience of being told something and going like, "Wow, that sounds cool, is that true?" And not really caring what the answer is.

So I really have to check myself constantly, you know, in terms of like what I'm hearing, what I choose to process as true. And if I'm really curious, you know, I try to source it somehow, either by talking to somebody who's intelligent or figuring out where the information comes from.

But most of us are guilty of magical thinking just by taking in the information that resonates with us so we can have an OK day.

When you were a kid growing up, were you drawn to post-apocalyptic literature or culture like Planet of the Apes or Mad Max or The Road? Did any of that stuff speak to you?

No, I was always sort of a little self-involved. I was more sort of concerned with my own health and like, whether or not I was dying. The way that the dread manifested itself was not the world was going to end, but I was going to end. As I got older and more educated, then the macro sort of took shape.

And I'm like, well, we're all going to go at some point, hopefully. Maybe it'd be better if we all went at once and no one would miss anything. The idea that a nuclear holocaust can take us out, or a nuclear accident, I think that was the original framework of the end of the world.

You actually say during the Obama years, you said to the audience: "You were all pretty politically active, weren't you?" The idea there is that they kind of allowed whatever we are living through now. [That] we all allowed this to happen through our own blind acceptance of stuff.

Well, I think that's true. And I think that, like, you know, it goes deeper than politics. I think that even now, seeing some of the reaction to the COVID, you know, where people are sort of like, childishly upset that they can't just do what they want to do.

I think that we've evolved through consumerism, and also through motivational speaking leaders into, you know, kind of selfish and self-involved animals. And I think that it's difficult for a lot of people to see beyond their own ambitions.

You ask the question of the audience: "What would it take? What will it take to bring people together?" And the answer you come up with is: something terrible.

But now we have something terrible, and we've never been more apart. We can't even go out for dinner together. Do we need something even more terrible than this to bring us together?

I don't know. Like, I get what you're saying. That's sort of a literal thing — that it's not bringing us together physically. But it is sort of a shared reality in a very existentially threatening and legitimate way. We're not together in terms of how we're processing that. That has become divisive. This may not be what it takes, but I think it's, you know, we haven't seen how it's going to affect us if and when we do get through it. But it's certainly a shot across the bow by nature.

I have to remind myself every day — and I think that's one of the problems about what we were talking about earlier — I'm doing OK here in my house. I have some money saved. I have food to eat. I'm being fairly productive.

But I have to remind myself every day that this is a real thing and that, you know, people are in big trouble, people are dying, and people are at the front lines trying to combat this thing, and they're sacrificing their life to help other people. You know, and I'm just sitting here like, wondering if I should take a walk.

So I think it's important to continue to come together around it so we can take care of each other in the future.

Written by Jonathan Ore. Interview produced by Annie Bender. Q&A edited for length and clarity.

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