Splitsider

After the clip-and-music driven intro to almost every WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the show’s host introduces himself and welcomes his listeners. But instead of merely acknowledging the masses who have made WTF one of the most popular podcasts on the iTunes store and everywhere else, Maron lists and classifies them.

Over the course of 240 episodes, he has grouped his audience into categories ranging from the mundane (“What the fuckers”) to the arcane (“What the Fuckminster Fullers”). There have been creative references to patriotism (“What the fuckanadians”), activism (“What the fuccupy Wall Streeters”) and Cosbyism (“What the fuckstables”). And yet perhaps the most interesting part of each nickname sequence is Maron’s apparent exhaustion with doing it in the first place, as his lists have devolved into the following:

“What the fuck enough!” (#204, after six other names were listed)
“What the fuck oh there’s so many!” (#233, after five other names)
“Whatever the fuck you want to call yourselves” (#234, after six other names)
“What the fuckin fuck fuck yes oh shit fuck yes goddamn right oh fuckin hell” (#219, after eight other names)

After catching up on a few recent episodes during the holiday break, I wondered if there was any rhyme (not intentionally, it seems) or reason (inconclusive) to these roll calls and performed a non-scientific and only slightly proofread statistical analysis of the intros to the fifty most recent episodes of WTF. The attached spreadsheet details that research, in which I only tallied non-consecutive, complete-word mentions that occurred directly after the opening theme. This is very important data. READ MORE