Is Anybody Out There? Launching an independent podcast at midlife.
Judy D’Mello
This is the fourth in my series of interviews with independent podcasters.
Judy D’Mello and Jeremy Warshaw met at a New York advertising agency in the 1980s and began a friendship they’ve maintained ever since. Eventually Judy moved into the world of writing and journalism and a few years ago she was part of Stonybrook University’s audio podcast fellows program.
In 2020 the pair teamed up to create a ten-part podcast series called Is Anybody Out There? on the subject of loneliness and connection, and how to have a more connected society.
Ashley: I know Judy is a writer and journalist but Jeremy, what about you…are you still in advertising? Do you still make videos, what are you doing?
Jeremy Warshaw: I’m still getting called from time to time. My job that paid the rent was that I would direct commercials…a lot of stuff that turns up for me [today] is website videos, or sometimes documentary-style. And that brings in an income. And as important is that it gets me onto the streets and out into the world, which is great. It’s not full-time but it's enough to make me feel like I'm not officially retired.
Ashley: So if I describe you as being at midlife, you’re not going to be offended?
Jeremy: I’d be flattered!
Jeremy Warshaw
Ashley: So how did you two come to produce this podcast on loneliness?
Judy D’Mello: When we started talking about this whole loneliness thing - and this was pre-pandemic - I thought about a podcast because I thought in terms of having a human voice, just for that little bit of time.
“The two of us as freelancers definitely had that feeling of being alone at home in your own little vacuum. ”
I had been listening to a lot of podcasts and I realized how nice it was to hear somebody's voice throughout the day. So that's when we decided we would do a pilot. And we did some research and found there really weren't too many loneliness podcasts, the few that there were, were kind of unfocused and didn't really hone in on what it's like to be lonely…there wasn't this overarching picture on loneliness. And that's what we tried to accomplish in our podcast.
Jeremy Warshaw: And the other thing just to add to Judy's comment was that being Brits, or at least spending a formidable part of our lives in England, we felt there was more community there, you know, there's the pub life for one thing. And there's a minister of loneliness over there. It’s maybe less of a stigma. It's still a stigma of course, but it seemed to be something that is now being acknowledged.
And in America, having lived here and gone through, ‘Ooh, we're in New York, this is exciting!’ all the way through to parenting, to children flying the coop, to freelancers, life is becoming increasingly atomized and feral in some ways and you're on your own. And maybe that was a natural evolution of the career path in America, but it was more obvious to us that America hadn't dealt with the reality of the way that business is now structured and life is managed. So I think it all came together as our experience, our cultural background, and Judy's encouragement of ‘let's do a podcast’ because atmospherically that’s the right vehicle to carry our message.
Judy also has some experience of otherness, which can contribute to loneliness. She grew up in India until she was 12, then moved to England during the racist 1970s.
Judy D’Mello: Coming from India, we had no knowledge of what was going on - none. We didn't know about the racial tension. And my mother is actually British, but born in India. And we had visited her relatives a few times in London, and as a young person arriving in London, I just thought we were going from the armpit of the universe, which was India in the seventies, to the height of sophistication. And it wasn't that. It was quite shocking to be there in the seventies.
And my father, who is full Indian and very brown and spoke with a heavy Indian accent, was a jazz musician of all things. And he would play in London. I mean, he did all the clubs in London and I remember being really worried about him coming home late at night, because of everything that was going on.
Ashley: I want to come back to community, but I want to get to the nuts and bolts of the podcast. When I listened to this…you know, I make radio and podcasts. I know how much work it is to create something that sounds amazing. It must have taken you a long time to produce this - and a lot of motivation.
Jeremy: Well, it went in stages because somehow it helps when you don't know all the ins and outs, and we didn't have a budget other than what we were prepared to spend on our own. [It took them about nine months from start to finish.]
Time-wise, we thought, ‘well we've certainly got the time.’ And as to the motivation, for me it was about connection.
“ I want to do something to spread the gospel about how much better the world is when it’s more connected. God knows in this country, it needs to be.”
I didn’t have any podcasting experience but I thought it would be fun. Because I’d do it with my good friend and I would learn something in the process.
Judy: I completely believed in the message that we were trying to send out. And the other element for me was a professional aspect: I wanted to do this and I wanted to do it well. And I wanted to know that I could do it.
I could not have done it if I didn't 100% believe in what we were doing and what we wanted to achieve, which was to really understand the loneliness issue that so many people suffer from. And I wanted to try and help in any possible way. I always thought that kept us going, and getting good feedback from people about the show has always been encouraging.
Judy and Jeremy experienced the usual podcast hiccups. They hired and worked with an editor-engineer for several months who didn’t work out, then had to find another one. Everything took longer than they thought. Judy scripted all ten shows.
The episodes are full of exchanges between Judy and Jeremy, interspersed with interviews with one or more guests, from regular people to experts.
Jeremy: We were turned off about the studio process because it's so formal and what Judy and I were trying to capture is what we have in real life, which is an easy back and forth that's genuine. The interviews with the guests were authentic and natural interviews, and the two of us didn't want to come off as too scripted.
So she would be at her location, I'd be in mine. And we knew what the talking points were for the linking connection between one audio clip and another. And we would talk to that and Judy would say, ‘Jeremy, you're sounding a bit stiff’ or ‘you're being a bit pompous.’ And I'd say whatever I'd say to Judy, but by the time we finished that section, it was genuinely a conversation. We were hitting all the talking points that had been scripted. Sometimes we would just do the script and we would do it quite well. Sometimes in the interest of time, we didn't do it very well, but it was good enough.
Ashley: When Judy and I first spoke she said that you ‘started at the worst time,’ meaning that the world of podcasts has just exploded in the last few years. And it just seems to keep getting bigger and bigger, which does make it harder for smaller shows to be heard. How do you feel about that?
Judy: Well, I think that we definitely started off with a slight fantasy that somehow we would stick out and we would get noticed and get picked up by some newspaper or media outlet and they’d say, ‘wow, this is a great podcast, we want to talk to you,’ which would then in turn attract some kind of a sponsorship. And we were thinking at the time, wouldn't it be great to be linked with someone like Cigna, who does invest a lot in mental health issues, or even Hallmark, or some type of company that promotes a connection of some sort - even Zoom. And that just didn't happen for us.
Jeremy: And the amount of downloads on a subject, however well done, like loneliness is going to be somewhat limited because it's not inherently fascinating.
Ashley: It is fascinating!
Jeremy: Oh, it's fascinating, but it’s not a subject that spreads like wildfire.
Judy: I think where the disappointment came, or frustration really, is that I reached out to the New York Times, to the Guardian in England, to the Times UK, and even to some online podcasting review sites. And nobody picked us up. The Telegraph gave us a little blip in their good news newsletter, which was very nice. And then the East Hampton Star covered us [where Judy is the travel editor], and we did an interview on somebody else's podcast. That was it really.
And maybe we weren't aggressive enough in terms of getting the PR out there, or should we have hired a PR type company - who knows? But the day I sent this email out to the New York Times I saw that they had first dibs on the Paris Hilton podcast, which was coming out. They were reporting on what the podcast is about. And that was really depressing.
“I thought, that’s what it takes to be a podcaster these days - to be named Paris or Gwyneth.”
Ashley: Despite the difficulty of getting it out there, would you like to do another podcast or podcast series?
Judy: I definitely want to. I see the loneliness podcast as being a great success, not in terms of getting sponsorships or how many downloads, but in terms of the accomplishment of making a really good, well-produced podcast. I'm really happy with it and very excited to do another one. I do think that loneliness was a tough sell and I think whatever we choose next, we should be careful about what the topic is.
Final note from Ashley: I disagree. I loved Is Anybody Out There?. It’s an overarching look at loneliness, and most importantly it’s not depressing. It’s enlightening. It gives the listener ideas about how we can live in a more connected world. Kudos to Judy and Jeremy for producing such an insightful series about a hugely important topic.