No, it's "just not" deleting files when I tell it to. An advanced search for "marked" reveals 1000+ podcasts. I mark a podcast after listening to it so I know to delete it.

Is that process of marking somehow keeping the files on the player?? Isn't there some way to see "unattached" files? Can I check on the files I "deleted" that weren't marked?

Wow, this is crazy. I thought Shift-Delete killed files dead.

And for so long I was wondering: How is it that I could return to a Bookmark of a file that I'd deleted. "Oh," I thought, "maybe the Bookmark is keeping the file on the player and it'll be deleted when I reuse that Bookmark slot somewhere else."

This discovery just deleted 13 months of podcasts, 1023 files taking up 10 gig. That's a lot of podcasts. No wonder I don't have time to listen to music anymore.