June 8, 2022 • 22 mins
Welcoming Delilah to The Pod Club! In this week’s episode, host Jo Piazza is joined by radio legend and podcaster to talk about all the things from empathy to roller skating to the evolution of audio. America’s radio legend has probably gotten you through a breakup (or three) with her comforting advice and soothing voice. While she remains a pioneer in the radio world, Delilah joins Jo to talk about how she has adapted to the podcast landscape to bring us two new shows in the past few years. Hey, It’s Delilah is a 5-minute appetizer to the full meal show Love Someone with Delilah. Whether you are looking for advice, a laugh, or just an audio hug, this week’s episode has it all.
Delilah’s Shows:
Love Someone
Hey It’s Delilah
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yesterday on the skate floor, Diana Ross upside Down starts
playing I can't not disco skate, No, no, no, you
have to. You have twoteen year old skated up. She goes,
Oh god, mom, please stop, please stop. You're so embarrassing me.
I'm like, you're not even near me. How am I
embarrassing you? She goes, people know you're my mom. You gotta,
(00:21):
you gotta. When the upside Down comes on, you have
to dance. You have to. You have to or you
it's really a sin. I think it might be one
of the cardinals. It isn't one of the top ten.
I think it's a podcast podcast. It is absolutely one
(00:42):
of the top ten cardinal sins. If upside Down comes
on and you do not dance, if you do not
give it your all and get out there and shake
your ass and do a full Diana. Now, that voice
should be very recognizable to anyone that grew up in
the eighties and nineties and drove around in the car
(01:04):
listening to the radio, or maybe he made mix taps
of love songs when you were in junior high in
high school like I did. If you were that person,
then you totally recognize that that voice is none other
than Delilah. Yeah, Delaa, And somehow, through the magic of
(01:25):
having a podcast, I managed to get Delilah to talk
to me. Yeah, Delilah has spoken to generations of listeners
about life, love, heartbreak, and all of the things in between.
Delila personally got me through more than one breakup. Now
most of you know that Delilah isn't just a podcast host.
(01:45):
She's a radio legend, an actual legend. She's been on
the air since nine seventy four, people giving advice to
listeners who call her to talk through life's hardest moments.
Fun fact, Delilah was actually the inspiration for Dr Marshall
Fieldstone in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. And that is
why to so many of us, Delilah feels like a
(02:07):
familiar friend. She's really the blueprint for that classic, soothing
radio voice. But she's also someone who is so incredibly
unique and passionate and just Delilah is a badass. And
I have to say that because she is so real
and authentic, and she puts a ton of love and
care into every single conversation she puts on the air.
(02:30):
I could have stayed on the microphone with Delilah for hours.
We talked about everything and when I just opened my
heart up to Delilah like so many listeners have. But
we also talked a little about how Delilah has found
ways to adapt as podcasts have started taking over the landscape,
and Delilah really is nothing if not totally adaptable. You
(02:57):
have been bringing comfort to people through the radio through
audio for so many decades. At this point, you've brought
comfort to me through I was counting three breakups in
high school and college about twenty five years ago. And
(03:20):
what is that, like, what does it take to go
on the radio night after night to bring comfort and
advice to people? Well, it's who I am. So whether
you meet me at a grocery store, or you meet
me at a skating rink, or you meet me on
the radio, you meet the same person. I've met a
(03:41):
lot of people in our industry who are completely somebody
else off the air, you know what I mean. There's
there's people that there are a persona on the air.
There a caricature, right, and that's that's way too heavy
of a burden to bear to try to pretend to
be something I'm not. The only difference on the air,
(04:03):
Delilah and off the air Delilah is off the air,
Delila swears. I try not to around my small children
or my grandchildren, but you know, that's about it. Do
you know how much better it makes me feel that
off the air Delila swears. I'm so happy. Off the air,
Delila swears. And I have a five year old that
imitates everything I do, so I try really really hard
(04:26):
to say, oh gosh, darn it. Yeah, I don't win
that battle every day. I don't. Yeah, have you always
been someone who wanted to comfort other people who wanted to?
That's not even that I want to. It's truly, Joe,
it's not even that I want to. Can how I am? Yeah,
I'm pathetic. You know. People call with all sorts of dilemmas.
(04:50):
Some of them are funny, some of them are just stupid,
and you're like, really, how did you get yourself in
this mess? Um? Some of them are really annoying. Like
I at my microphone so many times I'm talking to people,
I'm like, you, knucklehead. When I was younger and I
was just on one station, I was pretty crazy and
(05:12):
I would actually go to people's houses and do you
know stuff to help. I had one listener who became
a friend, she's sang at one of my weddings, who
had a crisis with a chemical dependency, and I went
and picked her up and kept her kids for a
few weeks while she went through a rehab. And she's
(05:33):
now thirty plus years clean, and her kids are grown
and have amazing careers and are amazing lives. That could
have turned out really bad, but I was young and
foolish and didn't even stop to think of the consequences.
I want to hear how your career and audio has
(05:53):
evolved from just radio and now to podcasts. Tell me
how you made the switch and how you've been so
successful at it. Well, it was really necessitated by the marketplace.
You know, people have different listening habits and are consuming
content differently. And so four years ago, five years ago,
(06:13):
we started, you know, playing around with the idea of
a podcast, and I would say, why would people listen
to a podcast when they just turn me on the radio,
you know, And then I realized people are consuming content
differently and at different times, and so we said, let's
do this, let's jump in, and so we started our podcast,
(06:35):
Love Someone. I guess it's been three, three or four
years now, and because I get to talk to so
many cool people for my radio show, and most of
what we talked about ends up on the cutting floor
because you know, we don't talk more than three or
four minutes. You know, I just talked to Michael blue
Blay for what twenty nine minutes, So if only three
(06:59):
or four that gets to hit the air, that's kind
of sad. And I didn't want to just talk to
music artists, although I love my music artists. I wanted
to talk to people who were using their gifts to
try to make the world a better place. We've had
nurses on, We've had a lovely lady who is ahead
of the go Red for Women, the Heart Foundation, you know,
(07:23):
talking about most hearted attacks happen with women. We think
of it as a guy thing. The truth is it's
killing women, and nobody, you know, really talks about it.
So we did a podcast about that. I did a
podcast with the school teacher who teaches at risk youth
how to build wooden boats and has been able to
(07:45):
help and bless and turn around the lives of so
many at risk youth by giving them their tribe and
giving them life skills. So he doesn't just teach how
to use a chisel, he teaches how to use financial wisdom.
I love that. Yeah, do you have a favorite episode
(08:06):
of Love someone with talala? Mm hmm. Chrissie Matts said
that I was banned girl geeking like I was. I
was almost speechless with Christy Mats because I love her
so much. So when you were a kid, you said,
this is your little girl grown up dream. When you
(08:27):
were a kid, um school choir, church choir, where did
you find your voice to perform? Yes? I used to
make a little paper in my boom box in my room.
I was just like making up melodies and singing, but
I was too afraid to share that with anybody. But
music was always, you know, always singing. And then in
middle school and my mom couldn't afford an instrument for
(08:49):
a band, but all the cool kids were a band.
I was like a great and so choir obviously free
and I could you go and do that? And so
I really would like, oh, this is where I was
supposed to be all alone, and then to learn how
to sort of blend with many people's voices but also
still have your own. And it just sort of opened
(09:10):
up something for me. And then it wasn't until high school,
my senior year, where I actually had enough courage to
join our audition for the chamber choir, which was a
competitive choir, and we did state and all those things,
and my acquire teacher, Ms. Roll Ill, I'll never forget,
she's so instrumental. She like really encouraged me to do
a solo that year and I was like, oh my gosh,
(09:32):
oh my god, this is this makes me so happy.
And then she nominated me to have a scholarship for
a coral camp at the University of Florida, and that
was like, oh yeah, okay, no question. And then we
did one with Mercy ships. What is mercy ships. Mercy
(09:52):
ships are converted cruise ships that are converted to hospitals
that go to the poorest countries in the world. They
take volunteers, so you can volunteer for two weeks or
two months or a year. They take surgeons and doctors
and nurses and they go to the poorest countries in
the world and they provide medical services and they set
up clinics in those poor countries and they teach modern medicine.
(10:17):
So when they pull out, when the ship pulls out,
they leave behind information that they've taught, so they empower
the whole community. And I did a podcast with Mercy Ships,
and I actually got to talk to the volunteers who
had gone and worked for a couple of weeks or
(10:37):
a couple of months, or a couple of years, and
how that changed the trajectory of their life. And that
was what an amazing podcast. I mean, I was sobbing
through the whole thing. I want to see if we
can play a little bit of that for our audience,
because that sounds Oh my gosh, it was. It was
one of the most powerful things I've got to do
(10:59):
profession How long was the stint that you did? How
long did you volunteer for? Yeah, it was about seven months,
So it was long enough that I had to quit
my job. I was gonna say, tell me about some Bani. Yeah.
He is the one patient for my time there that
stands out the most. He arrived with a I think
(11:22):
it ended up being a sixteen pound tumor on his
base and he was so weak he actually had to
be carried for the whole journey. He lived. He lived
way out in the boonies, like there were no roads.
They had. His grandson carried him for two days just
to get to a road so they could ride a
bus to the ship. The surgery was risky just because
(11:42):
the tumor was so huge and his body was so
so weak. So you know, the doctor talks about, you
know this this kind of a life threatening surgery. Are
you sure you want to do this? And he said, like,
I feel like I'm dead inside already from this tumor.
It's worth the risk for me. And I wanted this
tumor removed. And so he went in for surgery I
(12:04):
think it was. It was an all day surgery and
he ended up meeting ten or eleven units of blood.
It was amazing. I went out to dinner with some
friends that night while he was having a surgery, and
when I came back, I was walking up the steps
into the ship and somebody yelled down the ramp at me, Marta,
some bunnies in surgery and he needs your blood, and
(12:24):
I was like what. Like they had run out of
the units that they had stored for him, and so
they were asking all the other A positive people to
go um don't get their blood. And so I went
down into the lab and They drew it right away,
and I mean they didn't even put it on a cooler.
They took it right into the o R and gave
it to him and um when I went in for
(12:46):
my shift, he was still to date it and on
the ventilator, and I got to be the person to
hold the mirror for him to see his face for
the first time. After that, Tom was removed and I
just remember him laughing like he looked at her so
excited it and we were all crying. So we started
doing our podcast that drops twice a month, which is
(13:08):
long format. It's anywhere from twenty minutes to half an
hour forty five minutes. And then last year I was
approached by my Heart that carries my syndication, and they said,
people want more. I'm like, I'm on five hours a day.
You're on five hours a day. Mean that's something. That's
what we have to have to say. Right here you are.
(13:30):
There's so much Delilah on the radio. So when I
Heart approached you and said we want more Delilah, and
you said, there's so much Delilah in the world, you
really don't want more Delilah? You like, do you really
want more Delilah. How did you come up with the
podcast for them? What did you what did you say
you wanted to do? Well? We decided, you know, we
had several meetings with my producers and Craig, my business partner,
(13:53):
and we talked about different ideas. And the first thing
that they wanted was I do a feature called Delilah's
Delon And they said, just let's just redo a Delilah dilemma,
like mashed two of them up every day. And I said,
that's going to get really old, really fast, and we're
going to run out of content after a while, because
even though I've done ten thousand Delilah dilemmas, I'm still
(14:15):
going to run out of content eventually. Yeah, and and
we want to keep it fresh. And so we noodled
around a bunch of ideas and Lisa Wells, who's been
with me for over twenty one years, said, you've got
so many millions of phone calls that all the listeners
heard was three minutes of them, and they missed a
lot of the really juicy backstory. And she said, let's
(14:39):
let's share those. The longer calls, the more intimate calls,
the more detailed calls, and so she took the helm
and she produced like five or six and she said,
what do you think of this? And then I just
dropped some simple lines in that they wove in. And
so we're trying to do mashups. The are themed, so
(15:01):
you know, two or three calls from somebody who's struggling
with good breakup, or two or three calls from somebody
who's overcoming in addiction or whatever. So there's kind of
a little theme in each podcast, but not a theme
for the whole thing, like there is with love Someone.
And so this one is Hey it's Delilah. Right, Hey
it's Delilah. Yeah. It drops daily. It's like an audio hug.
(15:24):
If you need an audio hug, you can listen to
Hey It's Delilah. They're ten or fifteen minutes, and their
mashup of some of my best conversations or my best calls,
or you know, sometimes I'll just go off on a
tangent and I'll just talk about something in my heart
and you only hear those one time. If you happen
to be listening at you know, on a Tuesday night,
(15:44):
you'll hear that conversation I had, but then it's gone, yeah,
and if you miss it, you might have missed some
wisdom that could apply to your life. And so, hey
it's Delilah. Are those those conversations I have with my
audience and then conversations with collars mashed together in It's
(16:06):
like a snack. It's not like a meal. It's like
a snack. My show is the meal, the full meal
deal you get. But hey, it's Delilah's this is the
amuse boush. Yeah, I think we all need an audio hug.
I need an audio hug. And yeah, it's such a
great way to describe it. I'm I'm a radio junkie.
(16:57):
I've always loved listening to the radio. But it is gone.
It's there and then it disappears. So there's something really
nice about being able to hear something and share it
with a friend, right to be like, hey, you listen
to this, so we can share this experience. And I
feel like now with Hey It's Delilah, people can do
(17:18):
that with your conversations. And you know, you might hear
something that strikes a note and you're like, oh my gosh,
I needed that today. You never know, you never know
what's going to resonate with someone exactly exactly. I mean,
that's why I think it's great despite the fact that
there's a lot of issues that I have with the Internet,
(17:38):
but it is great that we can reach more people
on different mediums where they need us example. And that's
really the key, Joe, is when you you want to
be relevant, you have to be willing to kind of
adjust to the different formats or the different platforms. I guess,
and I know some people my age were like, now,
(17:59):
I'm not going to do that. They're going to that. Well,
if you're gonna be set in your ways, guess what
you're gonna miss out and you're not gonna get You're
gonna you're gonna miss opportunities. All right, Screw relevance. You're
not going to get to touch people and reach people.
And that's why we do what we do. So Craig,
my business partner, said to me many many years ago,
we were at a radio conference and they were talking
(18:21):
about it was called the Gorilla in the Backyard, and
they were talking about satellite radio and how terrestrial radio
needed to pay attention because satellite radio was going to
take over. And I said to him, if that happens,
I'm under contract for terrestrial radio, and he said, do
you don't have to worry. People are always going to
be hungry for content, and you love to talk, so
(18:46):
you're never gonna run out of content. And it doesn't
matter what platform we put you on, You're gonna find
a way to connect with people heart to heart. That's
what I do. I'm a storyteller. I tell stories. I
connect with people. And I remember thinking, why are we
even having this conversation than about the gorilla in the backyard.
(19:08):
Why doesn't everybody just go There's gonna be more ways
to share our content. Yeah, exactly. There's more places to
talk now, many many, many more places. There's more places
to share content, there's more places to connect. Do you
listen to podcast I do. I like listening to mystery podcasts. Mostly.
I listened to podcasts with my daughters because I like
(19:32):
staying connected to them. So when something is important to them,
I wanna hear what it is and hear what's about.
And they're into murder mysteries, female murder mysteries. I'm like,
oh my god, are you guys like plotting something that
I need to know about? Like why are you obsessed
with this? Which ones have you guys listened too lately.
(19:52):
Oh my gosh, Dangerous Women was the one we were
listening to yesterday. I don't think I've ever heard of this. Yeah,
it's female serial killers, female serial killers. Yeah, I mean, look,
here's the thing, Like murder, mystery shows are the most
popular podcasts. People love them. What is next for you?
(20:15):
I feel like you're constantly innovating. Who knows? Like it
hits me in the middle of the night and I
have to get up and get my phone and and
type in you know what I'm thinking about. We are
a couple of people are wanting to do a Broadway show. Yeah, oh,
I'm very into that. Yes, Delilah the Broadway show, I'll do.
I'll do anything anything I can in the world to
(20:36):
promote that. Wouldn't that be fun? Like think of the
music and we can play. Think of the music. Yes,
the music and the costumes and the dance numbers. I
love it. Yes, Delilah, the musical is a thing that
has to happen, Like that's in my heart now, it's
lodged in my heart. This is a thing that I
need to see in the world. Yeah, there's just so
much great, great, great music and I've got to, you know,
(20:58):
play so many amazing songs. I started on the air
in so I had disco dresses with matching little tights underneath.
And you've also gotten to talk to so many incredible musicians,
so many, so many. Those are my only questions, Delilah,
this made me so happy. Well, thank you. That's it.
(21:24):
That's all we got for today's pod Club. Now, of
course you need to listen to Delilah's podcasts Both Love Someone,
which airs weekly, and hey it's Delilah, which you can
hear daily, and if you've got a long car ride
coming up, you can still find her on the radio.
Almost fifty years on air, fifty people, fifty years, and
(21:46):
she's not going anywhere. No, we're very lucky that we
got to talk to Delilah Dela La today and who knows,
who knows what we're going to have next week, So
keep turning in, be good. The pod Club is hosted
(22:07):
by me Joe Pianza. Our executive producers are Me Again
and Emily Marinoff. Our producers are Mary Do and Darby Masters.
Our associate producer is Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional
music was composed by Aaron Kaufman Aaron Kaufman is also
our consulting producer and special thanks to Nikki e. Tor.
(22:29):
He was just a wonderful human being who I like
to think at the end of episodes.
Yesterday on the skate floor, Diana Ross upside Down starts
playing I can't not disco skate, No, no, no, you
have to. You have twoteen year old skated up. She goes,
Oh god, mom, please stop, please stop. You're so embarrassing me.
I'm like, you're not even near me. How am I
embarrassing you? She goes, people know you're my mom. You gotta,
(00:21):
you gotta. When the upside Down comes on, you have
to dance. You have to. You have to or you
it's really a sin. I think it might be one
of the cardinals. It isn't one of the top ten.
I think it's a podcast podcast. It is absolutely one
(00:42):
of the top ten cardinal sins. If upside Down comes
on and you do not dance, if you do not
give it your all and get out there and shake
your ass and do a full Diana. Now, that voice
should be very recognizable to anyone that grew up in
the eighties and nineties and drove around in the car
(01:04):
listening to the radio, or maybe he made mix taps
of love songs when you were in junior high in
high school like I did. If you were that person,
then you totally recognize that that voice is none other
than Delilah. Yeah, Delaa, And somehow, through the magic of
(01:25):
having a podcast, I managed to get Delilah to talk
to me. Yeah, Delilah has spoken to generations of listeners
about life, love, heartbreak, and all of the things in between.
Delila personally got me through more than one breakup. Now
most of you know that Delilah isn't just a podcast host.
(01:45):
She's a radio legend, an actual legend. She's been on
the air since nine seventy four, people giving advice to
listeners who call her to talk through life's hardest moments.
Fun fact, Delilah was actually the inspiration for Dr Marshall
Fieldstone in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. And that is
why to so many of us, Delilah feels like a
(02:07):
familiar friend. She's really the blueprint for that classic, soothing
radio voice. But she's also someone who is so incredibly
unique and passionate and just Delilah is a badass. And
I have to say that because she is so real
and authentic, and she puts a ton of love and
care into every single conversation she puts on the air.
(02:30):
I could have stayed on the microphone with Delilah for hours.
We talked about everything and when I just opened my
heart up to Delilah like so many listeners have. But
we also talked a little about how Delilah has found
ways to adapt as podcasts have started taking over the landscape,
and Delilah really is nothing if not totally adaptable. You
(02:57):
have been bringing comfort to people through the radio through
audio for so many decades. At this point, you've brought
comfort to me through I was counting three breakups in
high school and college about twenty five years ago. And
(03:20):
what is that, like, what does it take to go
on the radio night after night to bring comfort and
advice to people? Well, it's who I am. So whether
you meet me at a grocery store, or you meet
me at a skating rink, or you meet me on
the radio, you meet the same person. I've met a
(03:41):
lot of people in our industry who are completely somebody
else off the air, you know what I mean. There's
there's people that there are a persona on the air.
There a caricature, right, and that's that's way too heavy
of a burden to bear to try to pretend to
be something I'm not. The only difference on the air,
(04:03):
Delilah and off the air Delilah is off the air,
Delila swears. I try not to around my small children
or my grandchildren, but you know, that's about it. Do
you know how much better it makes me feel that
off the air Delila swears. I'm so happy. Off the air,
Delila swears. And I have a five year old that
imitates everything I do, so I try really really hard
(04:26):
to say, oh gosh, darn it. Yeah, I don't win
that battle every day. I don't. Yeah, have you always
been someone who wanted to comfort other people who wanted to?
That's not even that I want to. It's truly, Joe,
it's not even that I want to. Can how I am? Yeah,
I'm pathetic. You know. People call with all sorts of dilemmas.
(04:50):
Some of them are funny, some of them are just stupid,
and you're like, really, how did you get yourself in
this mess? Um? Some of them are really annoying. Like
I at my microphone so many times I'm talking to people,
I'm like, you, knucklehead. When I was younger and I
was just on one station, I was pretty crazy and
(05:12):
I would actually go to people's houses and do you
know stuff to help. I had one listener who became
a friend, she's sang at one of my weddings, who
had a crisis with a chemical dependency, and I went
and picked her up and kept her kids for a
few weeks while she went through a rehab. And she's
(05:33):
now thirty plus years clean, and her kids are grown
and have amazing careers and are amazing lives. That could
have turned out really bad, but I was young and
foolish and didn't even stop to think of the consequences.
I want to hear how your career and audio has
(05:53):
evolved from just radio and now to podcasts. Tell me
how you made the switch and how you've been so
successful at it. Well, it was really necessitated by the marketplace.
You know, people have different listening habits and are consuming
content differently. And so four years ago, five years ago,
(06:13):
we started, you know, playing around with the idea of
a podcast, and I would say, why would people listen
to a podcast when they just turn me on the radio,
you know, And then I realized people are consuming content
differently and at different times, and so we said, let's
do this, let's jump in, and so we started our podcast,
(06:35):
Love Someone. I guess it's been three, three or four
years now, and because I get to talk to so
many cool people for my radio show, and most of
what we talked about ends up on the cutting floor
because you know, we don't talk more than three or
four minutes. You know, I just talked to Michael blue
Blay for what twenty nine minutes, So if only three
(06:59):
or four that gets to hit the air, that's kind
of sad. And I didn't want to just talk to
music artists, although I love my music artists. I wanted
to talk to people who were using their gifts to
try to make the world a better place. We've had
nurses on, We've had a lovely lady who is ahead
of the go Red for Women, the Heart Foundation, you know,
(07:23):
talking about most hearted attacks happen with women. We think
of it as a guy thing. The truth is it's
killing women, and nobody, you know, really talks about it.
So we did a podcast about that. I did a
podcast with the school teacher who teaches at risk youth
how to build wooden boats and has been able to
(07:45):
help and bless and turn around the lives of so
many at risk youth by giving them their tribe and
giving them life skills. So he doesn't just teach how
to use a chisel, he teaches how to use financial wisdom.
I love that. Yeah, do you have a favorite episode
(08:06):
of Love someone with talala? Mm hmm. Chrissie Matts said
that I was banned girl geeking like I was. I
was almost speechless with Christy Mats because I love her
so much. So when you were a kid, you said,
this is your little girl grown up dream. When you
(08:27):
were a kid, um school choir, church choir, where did
you find your voice to perform? Yes? I used to
make a little paper in my boom box in my room.
I was just like making up melodies and singing, but
I was too afraid to share that with anybody. But
music was always, you know, always singing. And then in
middle school and my mom couldn't afford an instrument for
(08:49):
a band, but all the cool kids were a band.
I was like a great and so choir obviously free
and I could you go and do that? And so
I really would like, oh, this is where I was
supposed to be all alone, and then to learn how
to sort of blend with many people's voices but also
still have your own. And it just sort of opened
(09:10):
up something for me. And then it wasn't until high school,
my senior year, where I actually had enough courage to
join our audition for the chamber choir, which was a
competitive choir, and we did state and all those things,
and my acquire teacher, Ms. Roll Ill, I'll never forget,
she's so instrumental. She like really encouraged me to do
a solo that year and I was like, oh my gosh,
(09:32):
oh my god, this is this makes me so happy.
And then she nominated me to have a scholarship for
a coral camp at the University of Florida, and that
was like, oh yeah, okay, no question. And then we
did one with Mercy ships. What is mercy ships. Mercy
(09:52):
ships are converted cruise ships that are converted to hospitals
that go to the poorest countries in the world. They
take volunteers, so you can volunteer for two weeks or
two months or a year. They take surgeons and doctors
and nurses and they go to the poorest countries in
the world and they provide medical services and they set
up clinics in those poor countries and they teach modern medicine.
(10:17):
So when they pull out, when the ship pulls out,
they leave behind information that they've taught, so they empower
the whole community. And I did a podcast with Mercy Ships,
and I actually got to talk to the volunteers who
had gone and worked for a couple of weeks or
(10:37):
a couple of months, or a couple of years, and
how that changed the trajectory of their life. And that
was what an amazing podcast. I mean, I was sobbing
through the whole thing. I want to see if we
can play a little bit of that for our audience,
because that sounds Oh my gosh, it was. It was
one of the most powerful things I've got to do
(10:59):
profession How long was the stint that you did? How
long did you volunteer for? Yeah, it was about seven months,
So it was long enough that I had to quit
my job. I was gonna say, tell me about some Bani. Yeah.
He is the one patient for my time there that
stands out the most. He arrived with a I think
(11:22):
it ended up being a sixteen pound tumor on his
base and he was so weak he actually had to
be carried for the whole journey. He lived. He lived
way out in the boonies, like there were no roads.
They had. His grandson carried him for two days just
to get to a road so they could ride a
bus to the ship. The surgery was risky just because
(11:42):
the tumor was so huge and his body was so
so weak. So you know, the doctor talks about, you
know this this kind of a life threatening surgery. Are
you sure you want to do this? And he said, like,
I feel like I'm dead inside already from this tumor.
It's worth the risk for me. And I wanted this
tumor removed. And so he went in for surgery I
(12:04):
think it was. It was an all day surgery and
he ended up meeting ten or eleven units of blood.
It was amazing. I went out to dinner with some
friends that night while he was having a surgery, and
when I came back, I was walking up the steps
into the ship and somebody yelled down the ramp at me, Marta,
some bunnies in surgery and he needs your blood, and
(12:24):
I was like what. Like they had run out of
the units that they had stored for him, and so
they were asking all the other A positive people to
go um don't get their blood. And so I went
down into the lab and They drew it right away,
and I mean they didn't even put it on a cooler.
They took it right into the o R and gave
it to him and um when I went in for
(12:46):
my shift, he was still to date it and on
the ventilator, and I got to be the person to
hold the mirror for him to see his face for
the first time. After that, Tom was removed and I
just remember him laughing like he looked at her so
excited it and we were all crying. So we started
doing our podcast that drops twice a month, which is
(13:08):
long format. It's anywhere from twenty minutes to half an
hour forty five minutes. And then last year I was
approached by my Heart that carries my syndication, and they said,
people want more. I'm like, I'm on five hours a day.
You're on five hours a day. Mean that's something. That's
what we have to have to say. Right here you are.
(13:30):
There's so much Delilah on the radio. So when I
Heart approached you and said we want more Delilah, and
you said, there's so much Delilah in the world, you
really don't want more Delilah? You like, do you really
want more Delilah. How did you come up with the
podcast for them? What did you what did you say
you wanted to do? Well? We decided, you know, we
had several meetings with my producers and Craig, my business partner,
(13:53):
and we talked about different ideas. And the first thing
that they wanted was I do a feature called Delilah's
Delon And they said, just let's just redo a Delilah dilemma,
like mashed two of them up every day. And I said,
that's going to get really old, really fast, and we're
going to run out of content after a while, because
even though I've done ten thousand Delilah dilemmas, I'm still
(14:15):
going to run out of content eventually. Yeah, and and
we want to keep it fresh. And so we noodled
around a bunch of ideas and Lisa Wells, who's been
with me for over twenty one years, said, you've got
so many millions of phone calls that all the listeners
heard was three minutes of them, and they missed a
lot of the really juicy backstory. And she said, let's
(14:39):
let's share those. The longer calls, the more intimate calls,
the more detailed calls, and so she took the helm
and she produced like five or six and she said,
what do you think of this? And then I just
dropped some simple lines in that they wove in. And
so we're trying to do mashups. The are themed, so
(15:01):
you know, two or three calls from somebody who's struggling
with good breakup, or two or three calls from somebody
who's overcoming in addiction or whatever. So there's kind of
a little theme in each podcast, but not a theme
for the whole thing, like there is with love Someone.
And so this one is Hey it's Delilah. Right, Hey
it's Delilah. Yeah. It drops daily. It's like an audio hug.
(15:24):
If you need an audio hug, you can listen to
Hey It's Delilah. They're ten or fifteen minutes, and their
mashup of some of my best conversations or my best calls,
or you know, sometimes I'll just go off on a
tangent and I'll just talk about something in my heart
and you only hear those one time. If you happen
to be listening at you know, on a Tuesday night,
(15:44):
you'll hear that conversation I had, but then it's gone, yeah,
and if you miss it, you might have missed some
wisdom that could apply to your life. And so, hey
it's Delilah. Are those those conversations I have with my
audience and then conversations with collars mashed together in It's
(16:06):
like a snack. It's not like a meal. It's like
a snack. My show is the meal, the full meal
deal you get. But hey, it's Delilah's this is the
amuse boush. Yeah, I think we all need an audio hug.
I need an audio hug. And yeah, it's such a
great way to describe it. I'm I'm a radio junkie.
(16:57):
I've always loved listening to the radio. But it is gone.
It's there and then it disappears. So there's something really
nice about being able to hear something and share it
with a friend, right to be like, hey, you listen
to this, so we can share this experience. And I
feel like now with Hey It's Delilah, people can do
(17:18):
that with your conversations. And you know, you might hear
something that strikes a note and you're like, oh my gosh,
I needed that today. You never know, you never know
what's going to resonate with someone exactly exactly. I mean,
that's why I think it's great despite the fact that
there's a lot of issues that I have with the Internet,
(17:38):
but it is great that we can reach more people
on different mediums where they need us example. And that's
really the key, Joe, is when you you want to
be relevant, you have to be willing to kind of
adjust to the different formats or the different platforms. I guess,
and I know some people my age were like, now,
(17:59):
I'm not going to do that. They're going to that. Well,
if you're gonna be set in your ways, guess what
you're gonna miss out and you're not gonna get You're
gonna you're gonna miss opportunities. All right, Screw relevance. You're
not going to get to touch people and reach people.
And that's why we do what we do. So Craig,
my business partner, said to me many many years ago,
we were at a radio conference and they were talking
(18:21):
about it was called the Gorilla in the Backyard, and
they were talking about satellite radio and how terrestrial radio
needed to pay attention because satellite radio was going to
take over. And I said to him, if that happens,
I'm under contract for terrestrial radio, and he said, do
you don't have to worry. People are always going to
be hungry for content, and you love to talk, so
(18:46):
you're never gonna run out of content. And it doesn't
matter what platform we put you on, You're gonna find
a way to connect with people heart to heart. That's
what I do. I'm a storyteller. I tell stories. I
connect with people. And I remember thinking, why are we
even having this conversation than about the gorilla in the backyard.
(19:08):
Why doesn't everybody just go There's gonna be more ways
to share our content. Yeah, exactly. There's more places to
talk now, many many, many more places. There's more places
to share content, there's more places to connect. Do you
listen to podcast I do. I like listening to mystery podcasts. Mostly.
I listened to podcasts with my daughters because I like
(19:32):
staying connected to them. So when something is important to them,
I wanna hear what it is and hear what's about.
And they're into murder mysteries, female murder mysteries. I'm like,
oh my god, are you guys like plotting something that
I need to know about? Like why are you obsessed
with this? Which ones have you guys listened too lately.
(19:52):
Oh my gosh, Dangerous Women was the one we were
listening to yesterday. I don't think I've ever heard of this. Yeah,
it's female serial killers, female serial killers. Yeah, I mean, look,
here's the thing, Like murder, mystery shows are the most
popular podcasts. People love them. What is next for you?
(20:15):
I feel like you're constantly innovating. Who knows? Like it
hits me in the middle of the night and I
have to get up and get my phone and and
type in you know what I'm thinking about. We are
a couple of people are wanting to do a Broadway show. Yeah, oh,
I'm very into that. Yes, Delilah the Broadway show, I'll do.
I'll do anything anything I can in the world to
(20:36):
promote that. Wouldn't that be fun? Like think of the
music and we can play. Think of the music. Yes,
the music and the costumes and the dance numbers. I
love it. Yes, Delilah, the musical is a thing that
has to happen, Like that's in my heart now, it's
lodged in my heart. This is a thing that I
need to see in the world. Yeah, there's just so
much great, great, great music and I've got to, you know,
(20:58):
play so many amazing songs. I started on the air
in so I had disco dresses with matching little tights underneath.
And you've also gotten to talk to so many incredible musicians,
so many, so many. Those are my only questions, Delilah,
this made me so happy. Well, thank you. That's it.
(21:24):
That's all we got for today's pod Club. Now, of
course you need to listen to Delilah's podcasts Both Love Someone,
which airs weekly, and hey it's Delilah, which you can
hear daily, and if you've got a long car ride
coming up, you can still find her on the radio.
Almost fifty years on air, fifty people, fifty years, and
(21:46):
she's not going anywhere. No, we're very lucky that we
got to talk to Delilah Dela La today and who knows,
who knows what we're going to have next week, So
keep turning in, be good. The pod Club is hosted
(22:07):
by me Joe Pianza. Our executive producers are Me Again
and Emily Marinoff. Our producers are Mary Do and Darby Masters.
Our associate producer is Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional
music was composed by Aaron Kaufman Aaron Kaufman is also
our consulting producer and special thanks to Nikki e. Tor.
(22:29):
He was just a wonderful human being who I like
to think at the end of episodes.
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