Maria Palmer: Radio, Rage Bait, Real Community

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Sound Off podcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:09  
Maria Palmer is a part of the morning mosh pit on Chicago's Rock 95 five. I'm not sure how she arrived in my feed, but she was likely delivered through the Sound Off podcast Instagram page, which follows and tracks the activity from just about every attendee from morning show boot camp, the Conclave, the Last Conclave, Worldwide Radio Summit, Radio Days Europe podcast movement, and you get the picture. She was delivered to me by the Algo. How she got into radio is a little more organic. iHeartMedia senior regional vice president James Howard met her while she was working in a dive bar in Washington D.C. She has worked in Charlotte for Live 1065 The End until the pandemic put an end to that. Then reunited with iHearts Rock 955 in Chicago, where she did evenings before joining the Morning Mosh Pit. Here's the thing, and why I wanted to have Maria on the show. Maria is succeeding at this 2026 radio thing because she understands that making online content and performing great radio are two different skill sets. Both take time, and both take patience. And now Maria Palmer joins me from Chicago. Tell me about the story to a program director walks into a bar.

Maria Palmer  1:24  
Yeah, really lucked out on that one, huh? And one of the best in the business too, in my opinion, the best in the business. But I'm a little biased there. Yeah. So just as the story goes, there I am working in a dive bar as a bartender. I'm still in acting school at this point, so I'm I'm doing the whole thing, and he comes in with his DC 101 hat on, and I immediately clock that. I'm like, well, I will be talking to him tonight at some point, and the way that he puts it is that he saw me wheeling and dealing with my bartending thing, and he says that I was both entertaining and taming simultaneously, and he said, "Well, that's a transferable skill. And I said, "Well, I don't want to be a bartender. And so, radio was a thing. He asked if I had ever considered it, and I was like, "I'm considering it right now. And then, yeah, he came back a couple weeks later and was like, "Hi, I know that we had like kind of just touched base on this, but would you actually like to do it? And was like, yes, absolutely. That sounds like the coolest thing in the world. And luckily for me, turns out it is the coolest thing in the world. He brought me into iHeart, gave me the whole spiel about 94% of Americans still listen. I was like, bud, I'm a bartender. Like you don't need to make the sale. I'm here, dog, and then trained me up from literally nothing. I had to learn how to run a board, had to learn how to do promo stuff, just taking any job that I could take that was offered me in any swing fill shift until I got enough reps, and now here I am.

Matt Cundill  2:59  
Did you listen to the radio growing up,

Maria Palmer  3:02  
oh yeah! And DC, what I want was number one on my presets.

Matt Cundill  3:05  
Yeah, there's some legendary radio in Washington in the the DMV, as it's called.

Maria Palmer  3:11  
The DMV, yes, it is DC, Maryland, Virginia. That's home.

Matt Cundill  3:16  
What was his drink order?

Maria Palmer  3:18  
He was drinking whiskey that night. I don't remember exactly what he ordered because I threw in a couple shots for free on there. I wanted the job, but Michter's was what I was dealing them.

Matt Cundill  3:30  
So there you're starting at DC 101, the swing shift as they call it, and where you probably picked up some weekends as well. What did bartending teach you about people that made you capable of relating.

Maria Palmer  3:45  
Gosh, everyone just wants a friend and someone to talk to and connect with. The bar is really great for that because you're quite literally sitting across from someone and having a drink, so you're loosened up a little bit. And I feel like that certainly applies to radio. I almost picture when I'm, you know, really in the pocket in the zone, the board as being my bar, and the listener being on the other side of that bar, and we're having a drink together.

Matt Cundill  4:12  
And I think the bar is a great place to find talent too. You know, there's a few drinks going around with people who are being irreverent, and you're seeing people at its best. And listen, restaurants, bartending-it's-it's a performance.

Maria Palmer  4:25  
Yeah, you're constantly selling something, whether that be a drink or just the vibe of the bar. And like, I worked at a dive bar, so the appeal was not necessarily the booze or the scenery; it was the hang. So yeah, like even though maybe I would never hang out with some of those people and like outside the bar, it doesn't matter. In in here, we're all friends, and same thing on air.

Matt Cundill  4:50  
You studied acting. Tell me about why you wanted to become an actor.

Maria Palmer  4:55  
So I originally went to college to. Pursue biology and psychology, and I wanted to do premed route and you know be the doctor, but in the way that every 18 year old kind of says they want to be a doctor because they're like I I don't know and just try man that seems like what people want me to do maybe I'll be fulfilled, and then I took an acting class at Montgomery College just as part of my core requirements, and my professor kind of pulled me aside, and we talked about what it actually takes to pursue that as a career, because it didn't seem really possible, you know, like who can be an actor. And I was like, so I know that there's not necessarily going to be much money in it for me. I wasn't, you know, I'm not a Nepa baby, wasn't born rich, probably not making it to Hollywood anytime soon. So I, I had asked him, "What do you like about being an actor professionally and then teaching it also on the side? And of course, we talked about the art, and that was part of it. But the biggest thing that stood out to me in that conversation and why I ultimately went down that path was he said community. He said it is incredible to work with artists every single day and be around like your kind of people that understand the weird imagery that's in your brain, and they have it too. And then the people that are going to shows are people that have an appreciation for art, typically. And even if they don't have that same imagery in their brain, we're all in it together. We're all buying in. And I thought that that was pretty profound. I hadn't considered really community as an aspect of the workplace, I suppose, and how truly important that is. So I think honestly, I just wanted to be around other performers as much as I do love the work too. But like, if I just liked the work, I could go, you know, do community theater and then keep a full time job. But doing it for work, I was like, oh yeah, I do want to be around people I like every day.

Matt Cundill  6:43  
What was it like working with Bobby Bones?

Maria Palmer  6:46  
So I just sort of boarded his show, so I didn't really work with him one on one. I just sort of pressed the buttons, but it was a good way to hear. He's got such a classically set up morning show of you know the straight character and then the goofball lunchbox and then you know your entertainment and all that stuff. So he does a really great how do I phrase this a version of I suppose perfection of of this is what we want a morning show to be. This is the cookie cutter type deal in a good way.

Matt Cundill  7:19  
I had a chance to meet Bobby Bones in 2018, and iHeart was launching him across the United States and in Canada as well on a number of stations. And one of the things I really picked up was his fearlessness and the stories he told about the things that he did. I was like, "I'm not doing that. I'm going to get fired. I'm not going to do that. That's going to ruin my reputation. I'm not going to do that, and I felt that you know the I'm not going to do that is really shaped who I am and what I do and and you know what I do in media, whether it's radio or podcasts. But having heard and listened and board opt with Bobby Bones, what did you learn?

Maria Palmer  7:56  
I guess how to keep it light. He doesn't do any version of a downer show. He's really good at you know if things are going wrong, he'll touch on it, and that's difficult. You know we're not all having the most sunshiny days, but it is our job to bring the sunshine, and I think he's very very good at that.

Matt Cundill  8:12  
If you could teach one skill from acting to people in radio that they really need to know, for me it was improvisation. So I didn't go to acting school, but I always made sure to do improv classes. For me, I thought that was that was important. Is there something else that you can take in acting that would really sort of help people who are on the radio today? Is there another aspect of of it?

Maria Palmer  8:33  
Certainly, like you said, that improv. The yes, and especially when it comes to improv, that specific rule I think, is really big because radio is such a vulnerable space to be in, and you're being your hopefully a version of at least of your authentic self in front of a lot of people, and improv is similar in that way. You're you're making choices in front of a lot of people. You need your other ensemble members to have your back, and you need to feel supported by them. And so sometimes, maybe someone says something not quite off color, and it's it's part of the rest of the team to make sure that that plays as well as it can. And then you know, if you have to have a conversation off air, then that's fine. But I do think being able to catch the ball and throw it back in is very, very important. I would say that yes, and I 1,000% agree with you specifically with the yes and note is what what I would put in there. I also think that acting teaches empathy inherently in having to do character work, and I think that at some point in their life, everyone should be forced to try and play a villain, someone that they would not agree with ever, because no one thinks that they are the villain. Everyone thinks that they're the hero, and in playing a villain, even if they are doing the worst thing you could possibly imagine, and you as a person can't are like, how could I ever do that? Your job as an actor is to figure out how a person could do that. And I think media, right, especially right now, would really benefit from that level of empathy when it comes to gossip blogs, when it comes to talking about news stories, where of course the headline is going to sound clickbaity and ragebaity and every other thing, and they're setting up real human beings as characters. But if we can just take that extra step as we're reading that information, be like, okay, but this is also a person, so maybe in my reasonable brain, I could see how this would happen and this would happen. There's other circumstances there, and just not presenting human beings as monsters because none of us are. We're weirdos for sure and have flaws, but I think that empathy would go very far.

Matt Cundill  10:45  
We're at about episode 520, 521, and I have tried for years. I've asked it a few times to to people, and I said, "How can you teach empathy? And I think you just answered the question.

Maria Palmer  10:58  
I do try.

Matt Cundill  11:00  
Well, it took 10 and a half years, but we finally got there.

Maria Palmer  11:03  
We got there. Look, it took us 10 and a half minutes-not even.

Matt Cundill  11:07  
How did you get to Charlotte?

Maria Palmer  11:09  
Oh, very again, lucky on that front. So, at the time, I was again trying to get any version of full time. I was doing long-term film at the country station in DC on WMZQ, and I had been doing that about 10 months, and it was just clear at some point I was like, "I'm not gonna get this gig. If they were gonna hire me for this gig, it would have happened by now, which is fine. I love country music. I don't know that I'm a country DJ. I'm sure I could do it, but you know, I understood why they were making that call. And then, just as word travels around the radio biz. I heard that there was that opening on WEND. I was pumped about it. I also didn't think I had a shot in hell, so interviewed and got to talk to Diesel, who was the PD at the time, and he's just an absolute delight. We hit it off pretty immediately, and I got to you know go down there, and man, Charlotte's gorgeous. I love that city, nice and warm and fun. And END is such a legendary station to have been a part of. I have nothing but love.

Matt Cundill  12:13  
And then after that, you found your way to Chicago.

Maria Palmer  12:16  
Yes. So after my dear blessed company gave me the boot that January, and then there was a subsequent pandemic. Don't know if you recall, I was SOL, as they say, on the beach, as we put it, and didn't know what the hell was gonna happen. And then my angel from above, James Howard, reaches out and goes, "Hey, I'm trying to start a project. Sit tight. I was like, "Well, I'm not doing anything else, so don't worry. I'll be sitting. And then it took took about eight months from when he said "sit tight" to me actually being on air. But hot dog, we did it.

Matt Cundill  12:56  
And you started. Was it evenings in Chicago, and then you went to mornings?

Maria Palmer  13:00  
Yeah, evenings in Chicago, out of a living room in Ohio because we started in the midst of the pandemic, so we couldn't even-I couldn't even move to Chicago yet. So then, yeah, evenings for four and a half years, something like that, and then now we're mornings.

Matt Cundill  13:17  
Yeah, I find it difficult to talk about the pandemic.

Maria Palmer  13:19  
Yeah,

Matt Cundill  13:20  
yeah. I find it a lot of is there's a lot of trauma sort of surrounding the whole thing about oh god, and nobody talks about it. And historically, I don't even find it's very well documented. Also, you know, back in 1920, there was a pandemic. Not a lot of history written about the shitty times, right?

Maria Palmer  13:37  
Yeah, and we only hear about the roaring of those 20s, and ours are not roaring so much. It's like a low predatory growl.

Matt Cundill  13:45  
It's all spent online.

Maria Palmer  13:47  
It's truly

Matt Cundill  13:49  
the morning mosh pit on Rock 95 five, and you know I thought here are three people, and I think when you have a radio show, the role definition in a market where there's like infinite number of choices, whether on radio, off radio, anywhere, and you were talking about the team earlier on, and you know how we're going to pass this around. Tell me about the role definition of each person on the show.

Maria Palmer  14:11  
What I love is it is minimal. We all kind of know why we're there. Certainly, Maris is the dad and has to deal with two children between me and Mikey. But the other thing that I really love about the morning mosh pit is we are all being our authentic selves. So we're not really playing characters. We may be like versions of ourselves, but yeah, it's really just us being chaotic, and we're not trying much at all to do any version of character playing?

Matt Cundill  14:43  
Yeah, well, it sounds like there's no show prep that goes into the show because it all feels spontaneous. But I know that you're all prepping like crazy, right?

Maria Palmer  14:50  
We do about an hour of prep in the morning, but our prep is we have our lovely prep sites. Shout out Dr. Dave's and Premier and Wise Brothers, but. Truly, we go through. One of us will suggest a story, and then as long as all three of us have something we can say about it, it goes in, and we have a good sense of what our audience wants to hear, of course, and we know where our lanes kind of are. But we are all three different people, so we're all inherently going to have a different take, and we just let that ride,

Matt Cundill  15:21  
but you all know each other's limits.

Maria Palmer  15:24  
Yes,

Matt Cundill  15:25  
and I I think when I sort of speak of role definitions, like um, don't need to take it that far.

Maria Palmer  15:31  
Yeah, and we and we certainly try to steer away from hyper controversial topics and hyper controversial people and X, Y, and Z because what we don't want to do is there is enough rage bait in the world, and the internet is full of it. And as much as we are, of course, a radio show, we are also very present on social media, and so our content is going to be just as consumed there. And I would rather achieve what we want through the rage baiting, which is that adrenaline rush or that dopamine bump, or what it is, at no one's expense, and I think that that can be done. Ultimately, it's not fun for us if it's not fun for everyone, including the people in the room and the people listening. So we can do our adrenaline rushes together, and it doesn't have to come from punching down.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  16:19  
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Matt Cundill  16:52  
I think one of the things talent struggles with when we talk about authenticity and when we talk about you know being yourself and all that stuff is sometimes you know they want to talk about things that make people feel uncomfortable, and I don't know, but I don't think I need to hear a breakdown about what's going on in the Middle East, nor that you know anything about the midterms, and you know there's there's just a bunch of stuff we don't need to talk about that.

Maria Palmer  17:13  
No, not right now, and certainly not. That's just not the point of the show. I think that journalism is very important, and I am not a journalist, and sure, I think that there are absolutely moral stands that should be spoken up about, and I will do that at the appropriate time. But certainly, again, not at the expense of also my co-hosts, who you know, we're all three in this together. We're also all three very separate people, and in the same way that I don't want their views to be attributed to me. They don't want my views to be attributed to them. So I think that's just a lot of consideration ultimately.

Matt Cundill  17:48  
Who was doing an imitation of you last week or the week before?

Maria Palmer  17:51  
That would be James Howard, the man, the myth, the legend, the one that brought me out of the bar and into this radio world.

Matt Cundill  17:58  
It was impressive.

Maria Palmer  18:00  
It was so good.

James Howard  18:02  
Creep. Try working with two.

Morning Mosh Pit  18:06  
Oh God!

James Howard  18:06  
I'm Maria Palmer. This is the Morning Mosh Pit on Rock Nine to Five Five. That was

Morning Mosh Pit  18:10  
good, actually. Your voice got a little lower.

James Howard  18:12  
Yes. Over there, the tall drinker Water, who's very punchable, is of course Michael. Yes. Thank you. Thank

Morning Mosh Pit  18:18  
you.

Speaker 1  18:19  
And you are giving me a lot of tone right now. I'm

Morning Mosh Pit  18:21  
sorry. That's just my voice. A

James Howard  18:22  
lot of tone. That is my voice. This is my show. This is your show. To be clear, you guys are allowed to be oh on this show. Oh

Morning Mosh Pit  18:31  
wow. Oh, we're changing the name now.

Maria Palmer  18:33  
I was like, oh my god, you watch too much.

Matt Cundill  18:38  
Yeah, and I think I think that says something when when somebody can do an imitation of you that you're consistent, you're on brand, you have a brand, but he did it so well. Of course, you know he's known you. He's known you in your radio career as long as you've been in radio, right?

Maria Palmer  18:53  
Yeah, no hats off to him. And I've never seen anyone do an impression of me before, so it was like, whoa, that's startling. That's good.

Matt Cundill  19:02  
That was incredible. Yeah, I think this question probably could be directed at him, but you'd know it as well. Is what you do agnostic to a format? Like this could easily be done in country. It could easily be done in alternative pop.

Maria Palmer  19:16  
Yes, I think so. I think we'd probably have a little harder time in pop, just because we get we get a little edgy, but yeah, I make a show for people, not for any version of like category of human beings, just people in general, and we all tend to be much more similar than we think.

Matt Cundill  19:34  
Well, it's a question that we always ask people, especially in podcasts, because you want to find the riches and the niches. But you know, who is this show for? So, who is Maria Palmer for?

Maria Palmer  19:42  
Maria Palmer is for the people in general.

Matt Cundill  19:47  
What is Thursday?

Maria Palmer  19:49  
Ah, Thursday. So Thursday started as a way for us to just uplift our hospitality community, especially during the pandemic when all of our favorite bars and breweries were closing. We couldn't let that happen, and then we started doing a live remote here and there, but not for Thursday. And I was getting a little antsy being in the studio by myself at night. So there was a week where I was like, "All right, I'm gonna little sister my way out of this and annoy my way out of the studio and make it so unbearable that I'm on the mic. That the only alternative is to get me out of here and into the bar, and so I made that damn jingle that was not supposed to last more than maybe two weeks, and here we are. I don't know, three years later, four years later, something like that, and I can't get it out of my head, and no one else seems to be able to either.

Matt Cundill  20:42  
And when you went out there, you saw community. You saw the community of people who were listening, right?

Maria Palmer  20:48  
Yeah, and so now too, it's become a whole live event, and we actually just do Thursday lives out at bars, usually like once a quarter. And at first, I thought that it needed to be like a live show, and I was bringing my keyboard. I was like, maybe they'll want me to sing. But then, like, I was out there, and it was like, first of all, this isn't the vibe. We're at like a dive bar. We're not going to like sit and watch a Maria Palmer singing piano recital. But all they wanted to do was like have a drink, and I was would spend literally all two hours of that appearance just talking to people the entire time was just one over here, and then the next one, the next one, and everyone just wanted to share something with me. And I loved that. Like I, I do want to know about your life. You have to hear about mine all the time. I love hearing about theirs.

Matt Cundill  21:34  
iHeart has a phrase that they use, which is wherever you get your podcast. But where can I get Maria Palmer?

Maria Palmer  21:40  
You can get Maria Palmer on the iHeart Radio app. You can also listen terrestrially on Rock 95 five. You can also-I just started a YouTube channel. That's still a project in the works, and I started my own podcast. Hooey doing one of those by yourself sure is a lot, as you know. And yeah, I'm around.

Matt Cundill  22:03  
You haven't made it as a content creator until you've been jailed or banned. So, how often has that happened to you? And how do you unban yourself from these places?

Maria Palmer  22:12  
I've only banned banned one time on one platform, and that was Instagram Zuckerberg. I had done a series of ads for this personal injury law firm, and they were really milking those workplace accidents. And I was like, "Oh no, it sure would be a shame if I had a workplace accident that caused me to get money. And so I staged all of these like preposterous accidents that are clearly me doing it to myself, and it was, you know, a joke. And Instagram said that I was promoting self harm, so I couldn't go live for a year, and none of my content was pushed out to the general like algorithm. So if you followed me, it was fine, and you would see it. But otherwise, nothing. So no followers for a year.

Matt Cundill  23:03  
You managed to work everything in. You've even mentioned Winnipeg. What do you know about Winnipeg?

Maria Palmer  23:08  
Louis from Winnipeg says Rock 95 five is the best rock station on the planet. We love some Winnipeg on Chicago's rock station. Oh, the beautiful city in Canada and a great prize night at the BDSM convention.

Matt Cundill  23:24  
With all these places and all these ideas and all this material that comes at you, how do you decide what goes where? What goes in a vertical on Instagram versus what goes on a YouTube page versus what goes into your podcast?

Maria Palmer  23:36  
It's interesting how it's all kind of becoming the same, and I think in a couple years it's just all going to be the same content everywhere because it seems like everything is being formatted exactly the same these days. For right now, I always do vertical on Instagram because people are swiping through Reels. Anything that would be horizontal and also long form is going to go on YouTube. Also, short form vertical on TikTok, short form vertical on Facebook. I would also then make the argument that you could do horizontal and long form on Facebook, but I usually reserve that for YouTube. But as far as which ideas I choose, it's just a constant stack, and it's that's much more dependent on what my schedule looks like. It's okay, we're going to pick a quick idea today, so it's going to be one of those five-second hitters. Or if it's something that's going to be closer to a minute, that's going to be on a day where I can really settle in and do some work on it because there's a standard that I just want to maintain.

Matt Cundill  24:35  
I'm surprised you said that I just got on YouTube, or it's been recently. I just got on YouTube, and I'm still surprised by the number of people who are like, "Oh, I'm just starting my YouTube channel. And I think we all realize now that YouTube is truly everywhere. It is the world's number two search engine. But I guess I say so many people do it. But I'll ask you, why did it take a while to get on YouTube?

Maria Palmer  24:56  
I want to do radio. I don't want to do social media. Yeah, and I didn't even really like. I'm I'm very happy that my socials have popped off, but that's very incidental because I was given the note that hey, you need to post to social media every single day. So I'm just trying to do my job, and then YouTube. I think I'm just starting out because I'm just now having any version of energy for it, I knew that I wanted to get up there at some point. But again, radio is my number one, not YouTube. And in my opinion, YouTube is TV. TV is YouTube, and I wasn't. I'm not trying to do. I'm not not trying to do TV, but I'm. It's not my primary objective right now.

Matt Cundill  25:39  
And that's everybody because it's kind of like, oh, I want to grow my show. It's like, well, are you on YouTube and are you doing shorts and are you doing a version that goes here and a version that goes there? And now people are saying, oh, I get my podcast on Netflix. And what's the difference between what you and I are doing now? If I take away the SM seven be in front of my face, now it's just shitty TV.

Maria Palmer  26:00  
Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, you got to be everywhere these days. It's very frustrating, though. I will say, on behalf of a lot of talent, to have our workforces as skeletoned as they are at this point. We've never had so few people even available to work with because we keep cutting them, and then also we're being asked to do more content than ever. That's very, very frustrating. And I, when I have talks about social media with colleagues and other people in the industry, I'm always very empathetic to that. I, I go, hey, this is what it's going to take. But I also understand if, like, you're kind of ticked off about it, and if it takes you six months to get started, fine, take your time because, like, yeah, I'm a little pissed off about it too, frankly.

Matt Cundill  26:46  
So, give some advice for somebody who has to get on or feels the need to get on the social media train, but they love radio like you do. It's your number one thing. Where should they start and temper the expectations so it's doable?

Maria Palmer  27:00  
Sure, I could make that real easy peasy. Just start. That's it. Don't think about anything else. Don't even bother making it good yet. The only thing you have to do is we're going to the gym, baby. We're building habits. All you need to do is show up. Same way that you just got to get to the gym. You just got to post something, and yeah, people are gonna be probably weird about it for a little bit, and welcome to entertainment. That happened with your radio thing too. It's just they couldn't comment. But yeah, I always tell people just for at least your first probably year, the only thing that you should be focused on is posting. I'll say every day. I did five days a week, Monday through Friday. But if you can post every single day and just build that muscle, then just inherently by doing that, you're going to get to know yourself more because you'll be watching yourself on camera, and you'll you will know when you're cringing at you versus when you're not. You're going to get to know your followers more. You're going to gain more. First of all, but also you're going to see what videos get liked more, what gets comments more, which ones get sent to people, which ones get reposted. That's data you're going to be inherently taking in, and that's just going to make you better without having to even think about it if you just commit to doing it every single day.

Matt Cundill  28:19  
When people meet you in public in Chicago. Do they recognize you from social media, from radio, a combo of both?

Maria Palmer  28:28  
I'd say a combo of both, especially because I have radio in my username. So I think I just am the radio chick. So even if they've only seen me on Instagram, they still go, "You're the radio girl.

Matt Cundill  28:40  
How do you manage your mental health? Social media comments and there's high demand for performance, and so how do you take care of yourself?

Maria Palmer  28:50  
Well, I am a big advocate for ketamine treatments. I actually get ketamine treatments every three weeks, and that in general, just by how the treatment works makes you very, very resilient, and that is helpful. I also have, you know, and I'm very happy to have gotten here. I've gotten to a place where I can just kind of not worry about it that much. Like I've been so burnt out just by nature of waking up at 330 every day and doing a morning show and everything that that entails. I haven't posted for about two weeks now, which is not good. But I also my following has continued to go up, and that's because I have all these years behind me of content that's now just getting recycled by the algorithms and still showing up. Thank goodness.

Matt Cundill  29:36  
And the content's evergreen too. So do you think about that when you post?

Maria Palmer  29:40  
Yeah, I don't think that that's number one on my like list of priorities, but I certainly am always just I do get specific, but I don't get specific as far as timeliness much anyway. The things that are cool are going to be the things that are cool for a while. Yeah, mental health. I'd say just put your cadences. And also recognize that your audience honestly does not see you as a real person. So whatever crappy comments you're gonna get are frankly not real. They don't know who you are, and they're only seeing one version of you. And they have their own issues that they're projecting onto you. So,

Matt Cundill  30:16  
and why are you worried about people that you don't even know?

Maria Palmer  30:19  
Well, to be fair, it's a it's vulnerable to put yourself out there, and especially if you're a radio person, you're not used to being seen. And there's a version of like almost cloak that you feel like you have in that studio, and then you have to take that off for social media. That's tough. I mean, it's hard, and it's not like internet people are kind. They're taking you in the worst faith that they can, and you know, being catastrophic all the time. Then you're like, "Oh my god, am I saying that? And it's like, "No, I got issues.

Matt Cundill  30:50  
And you have acting experience, and so you are an actor playing a role, but you're playing the role of yourself, and that's that's tough.

Maria Palmer  30:59  
Yeah, it's tough, and also it's my favorite role to play. I just feel like I get to be the best version of myself every day, and that I I like I like her. I like being the best version of me. She's great.

Matt Cundill  31:17  
If I gave you four weeks off, where are you going, and what are you doing?

Maria Palmer  31:21  
I'm going back to Costa Rica. I just went there for a week. It was life changing. Porra vida rainforest and hot springs and swimming and animals and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm doing that.

Matt Cundill  31:37  
Maria, thanks so much for being on the show. I appreciate it.

Maria Palmer  31:40  
Thank you for dealing with my technical difficulties.

Matt Cundill  31:43  
What technical difficulties?

Maria Palmer  31:46  
I don't know anything that you're talking about. Our girl Taylor has us covered. Hi, Taylor.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  31:54  
Another Sound Off Media Company podcast.