How to go from washed-up to overnight success in three easy steps, by Marc Maron: 1) devote your life to standup comedy and toil away in near obscurity for 22 years; 2) as a last resort, start a fledgling podcast conversing with the frenemies in comedy you made along the way; 3) diversify.

Looking at Maron now—with 600 episodes and counting of the WTF With Marc Maron podcast; a critically acclaimed IFC series based on his life, Maron, heading into its third season; a best-selling memoir, Attempting Normal; an interview show in the works called VICE Portraits With Marc Maron; and a theatre tour of his standup—it’s hard to imagine he was close to calling it quits six years ago.

“I didn’t think I was going to have any of these opportunities,” he says on the phone from his Los Angeles home, squeezing the Straight in before a lunch meeting with the head of Fox 21 TV, playing his guitar, grocery shopping, doing laundry, and paying some bills. “I thought I was pretty washed-up by the time I started the podcast, which I was. I could not even really sell tickets as a comic and my future looked very bleak.”

It sounds overly dramatic, considering he was then a regular panel guest on the old Late Night With Conan O’Brien and had a few other TV and movie opportunities. But comparing himself to some of his more successful peers, like Louis C.K., David Cross, and Sarah Silverman, it’s truly how he felt. He was left with nowhere else to go in his mind but his garage, where he records his now insanely popular podcast.

The show is like an exercise in empathy as he finds ways to relate to each one of his guests. Through it, the once prickly Maron has softened his edges and is in a better place mentally away from the microphone.

“There’s a wholeness that I feel now that I don’t think I felt my entire life,” he says. “I feel like I sort of arrived in my own body and I’m comfortable with myself because all the work I put in…has made a difference in my life and other people’s lives. So with that comfort comes a certain amount of ability to give a little more. When you’re not so needy or desperate or freaking out about your own life, you do have a little more in your heart.”

Maron treats his pre-interview monologues as a kind of workout room or notebook for his standup. Stories that aren’t necessarily played for laughs in their original form are massaged into material for the stage.

“In order to tell something on-stage over and over again, you’ve got to execute a certain amount of technique over it,” he says.

And after 28 years at his craft, he’s doing the best work of his life.

“I think for most of your career, a lot of energy goes into acting like you’re not afraid and pretending you’re comfortable,” he says. “I was never that good at that. But I can honestly say that I’m pretty fearless on-stage and I’m excited to be up there…I like the stuff I’m doing now, taking the pressure off myself over the last five years to move into more personal comedy, as opposed to worrying about the world, per se. It’s been a tremendous relief to me and very exciting. I think I’m funnier than I’ve ever been and I’m really happy with the comedy I’m doing. It is the best time to see me.”

Marc Maron’s Maronation tour is at the Vogue Theatre on Saturday (May 9).