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Marc Maron's Final Podcast with Barack Obama

After more than 1,600 episodes over 16 years, American comedian Marc Maron released the final episode of his podcast this week. His last guest: Barack Obama.

I love Marc Maron, his humor, his conversations, and I'm going to be sad that he's stopping. He was one of the first to launch this long-form format at a time when podcasts weren't cool yet.

I found some powerful ideas in this conversation that connect with what I've been thinking about lately. Here are a few of Obama's remarks that struck me:

  • At the end of the day, you don't need to agree on everything to work with someone.
  • Know what you truly believe in. That's the starting point.
  • The post-World War II period wasn't perfect. But at least there was a shared story.
  • You have to be tolerant of people. As long as they're not actively trying to harm you, you have to be tolerant.
  • Sometimes you win and you're happy. Sometimes you lose and you step back for a while to lick your wounds before coming back. But we're not going to try to destroy you because you lost.
  • One of the necessities of liberal democracies is accepting partial victories, not just perfection. The only question is: is it moving in the right direction?
  • We're probably going to overshoot the 2-degree Celsius target. Because it's very hard for humans to change their primary energy source in one generation. But we've made progress.

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