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Welcome to One Good Thing Media, your official podcast review channel. We search the vast digital landscape on a daily basis to discover the best shows that podcasters have to offer. Are you ready to discover new favorites to add to your playbook? Stay tuned and listen to host Gerald Spears' latest podcast reviews.

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Hello, lovelies, welcome to Season 3, Episode 4 of our One Good Thing Media Podcast. My name is Gerald Spear and I am the host and creator of our show. I hope you're having a great week. I certainly am. In fact, it's actually been pretty magical. I'm feeling lighthearted and having a super productive week. Considering the time of year and all the seed catalogs that I'm pouring through, I am attributing my great mood to a case of spring fever.

News and Inspirational Quote

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Today, I'll be covering two new podcasts and three others that you may have missed, which is totally understandable, since there are over 300,000 active podcasts and no central search engine. If there are any techno wizards out there, we need you. If there are any techno wizards out there, we need you. Before we get going with our news and updates, please make sure to follow our podcast and tap the notification button so you'll never miss a single episode. We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would give us a great star rating. It helps move us up in the charts, makes us more findable if there is such a word and puts a big smile on our face.

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And now it is time to get going. Are you ready for some news and quickies? I was listening to a podcast. No surprise there when the host said something that set the tone for this week's show. While discussing past trauma, whether it happened as a child or as an adult, he soundly rejected perpetual victimhood by telling the audience perpetual victimhood, by telling the audience your biography is your past. Who you choose to be in the future is entirely up to you. I know at least some of you are probably thinking oh yeah, that's easier said than done, and I agree, but it's still not impossible. Today I'm sharing two new podcasts that underscore the power of all humans to define who they are despite who they were or what they experienced in their past.

Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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My first news bit for this week is about a brand new podcast entitled the Binge Crimes Finding Mom's Killer. It's a multi-episode series about a young boy who worked closely with the police, including conducting covert operations, to bring his mother's killer to justice. His name is Collier Landry nay, collier Boyle a now 40-something charismatic man with brilliant blue eyes and a thick mop of curly hair who overcame terrible odds to become a filmmaker, author, podcaster, public speaker and an advocate for victims of crime. But when his story began in the late 1980s, collier was an 11-year-old boy whose bedroom was literally filled with stuffed animals, a Nintendo game player with Mario at the ready I can relate to that one and a Batman clock hanging on the wall. Yet despite his innocent childhood trappings, collier was also an intense young man who possessed an astounding amount of courage and mental acuity.

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Collier's father was a highly respected physician in Mansfield, ohio, who was beloved for his medical expertise and affable and trustworthy public persona. However, his lighthearted manner did not extend to his family In the privacy of his own home. The good doc was verbally abusive and physically violent. He was also a prolific philanderer and liar In stark relief. Collier's mother, noreen, was a kind woman and an attentive mother who was always there to support and guide him. She also remained committed to her decades-long marriage until, that is, she found out that her husband's latest girlfriend was blissfully pregnant with his child Soon. After discovering this unpleasant fact, noreen filed for divorce and then poof, she disappeared.

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The rest of this chilling story tells like a great detective novel where a young child and a lone detective crack the case. Here's how you can listen to or watch this story unfold. Here's how you can listen to or watch this story unfold. The first way is, of course, listening to the Binge Crimes Finding Mom's Killer.

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The new podcast series that I mentioned at the beginning of this particular segment, the Binge Crimes, is an established podcast by Sony Entertainment. For those of you who love to binge your shows ad-free, the Binge Crimes is an established podcast by Sony Entertainment. For those of you who love to binge your shows ad-free, the Binge Crimes first drops each of its multi-part stories at one time. To get into the action, though, you must subscribe to the Binge Crimes for a modest sum per month. After a short amount of time, each series is then made public with ads, with all episodes being doled out over the course of a few weeks, just like a normal podcast. As of this recording, sony has already dropped the ad-free version that you have to subscribe to, and, after a slight pause, they are now dropping one episode at a time with ads, for free.

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Other ways to watch or listen to Collier's story include the Mansfield Murder documentary by Collier Landry that's currently available on Amazon by Collier Landry. That's currently available on Amazon If you're a Prime member, by the way you could purchase it for just $2.99. Collier also has his own podcast, called the Collier Landry Show, where he discusses many different topics, including matters pertaining to his mother's murder and his father's incarceration. So why am I mentioning so many ways that you can listen to Collier tell his story? He reveals different details in each retelling that, combined, make the story even more compelling. Here's an edited clip from the show that will give you a keen sense of the style and content of Collier Landry's story. Voices in this audio clip include the narrator, steve Fishman, detective Lieutenant Dave Mesmore and, of course, collier Landry Boyle.

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You tell us who you are? I'm Collier Landry Boyle. Can you tell us how old you are?

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now I'm 12 years old, it's 1990, and we're in a courtroom in Mansfield, ohio. The prosecution's star witness has just taken the stand. He's about to describe something that happened one fateful night a few months ago.

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You awoke at 3 to 3.15 am, I believe was your time. Okay, and what awoke you?

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I heard the two bangs and heard the scream Okay, and then I heard the footsteps.

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Then you got up in the morning.

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Yes, I did.

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And what was the first thing you did?

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I looked in my mother's bedroom.

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Were you alarmed when you got into the bedroom?

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Yes, I was.

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Why was that?

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The bed covers were all messed up. Her bedclothes were just lying in a pile.

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What was going through your mind at that time? What were you thinking?

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Where's my mother?

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collier landry boyle wasn't your average 12 year old. He was very smart. He was very determined. So when his mother went missing, collier decided it was up to him to find her. This is the story of how a precocious kid joined forces with a most unlikely partner. Together they set out to solve the mystery of his mother's disappearance. Along the way they'd unearth one terrible family secret after another earth, one terrible family secret after another. On New Year's Day 1990, six months before that 12-year-old boy took the witness stand, the Mansfield Ohio Police Department was swamped with the usual holiday stuff bar brawls, disorderly conduct. So when a 44-year-old woman named Noreen Boyle was reported missing, it was not a top priority. A couple of uniformed patrolmen had been sent over to her house to check things out. Their conclusion Nothing to worry about.

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Collier secretly gathered up his mother's friend's phone numbers, hid in the bathroom and started calling them. Please report my mother missing.

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I said I'll stop over and see what's going on.

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Now Dave was the Mansfield Police Department's head of major crimes. He wasn't supposed to go chase down leads on low priority cases. But Dave low-key, laconic Dave is full of surprises. By this point he'd been on the force for 15 years and he'd developed a reputation for striking out on his own for bucking his superiors. Dave figured he'd head over to the Boyle residence have a word with Noreen's husband, a prominent local doctor named Jack Boyle.

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It was like late morning, early afternoon, the doorbell rings and it's this guy in a sport coat with a bushy mustache, glasses, khaki pants, named Dave Messmore. This is.

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Collier Boyle. He was the kid you heard testifying at the top of the show. He's a lot older now. When Lieutenant Dave Messmore arrived at the Boyle residence, it was Collier's grandmother, that's his father's mother, who answered the door.

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Collier, hovered in the background. I'm standing there over my grandmother's shoulder and Dave was saying to my grandmother well, you know I'd like to talk to the doctor and you know, just kind of curious, but you know he was just very calm. He's a very calm guy, very collected, I mean very detective-like, you know what I mean Just looking around, looking at things, taking everything in. Just I'm going to get to the bottom of this type of thing. And I remember he kind of charms his way in and my grandmother's like I'm going to call my son and she goes and she leaves to go make the phone call in the kitchen. And I knew at that point that that was like my one shot, because here I am alone with a police officer. That that was like my one shot, because here I am alone with a police officer.

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Collier made an impression on Dave. This was a kid who dressed in chinos and penny loafers. He had a perfectly coiffed brown bob. He looked like a tiny adult.

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He was not like a little 11 or 12 year old you'd normally talk to. He was just very astute, very well spoken. Whenever his grandmother would walk away, he'd say things that make you wonder if there was something wrong.

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I say to Dave, I look him dead in the eyes and I say my mother would never leave me.

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He said my mother would never leave without me, without me knowing where she was going.

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And I think he's looking at me in a very peculiar way, like who is this kid? He could just tell I was so adamant.

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He said something happened and I said okay, I'll work on that. On January 8, 1990, collier Landry Boyle sat down with Lieutenant Dave Messmore in an elementary school classroom the kind with those small chairs. Dave is six feet tall but he figured it'd be good to be on the same level as Collier. It'd make him comfortable.

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You know I had a lengthy conversation. He described to me what he heard that night that she went missing.

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Collier then tells him about going into his mother's bedroom, followed by what happened when he went downstairs to confront his father.

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My father is sitting on the couch in the living room watching television with a towel wrapped around his waist, like he had just got done taking a shower. I said to him where is my mother? And he still was watching television. He didn't answer me and I said where is my mother? And he looked up at me. So, matter of factly, old mommy took a little vacation.

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Collier. Hmm, sounds suspicious to me and, by the way, this is a little bit of a spoiler, but it'll kind of whet your appetite for the story. Soon after that, collier's father invited him to go on a vacation and, due to the circumstances of that trip, collier knew that if he went, no one would ever hear from him again. My second new podcast this week that I am definitely recommending that you listen to is called blink. It's about a young man named jake handle, a former drug addict and laid-back dude, who sustained irreparable brain damage, was given six months to live and developed locked-in syndrome.

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For those of you who may not be familiar with the condition that I just mentioned, individuals with locked-in syndrome are fully conscious but usually fully paralyzed, except perhaps for their eyelids. Because it's a challenging diagnosis, lachnid syndrome is often misdiagnosed as a coma, and such was the case for Jake Handel. In Blink, jake details his harrowing experiences, including being aware of a crime taking place around him while he was completely paralyzed and presumed to be in a vegetative state, being isolated from friends and family by a psycho caretaker, and much, much more. I apologize for the brevity of this recommendation. However, with only five episodes dropped and many more to go. I don't have all the answers yet and can't promise more intrigue than what I know right now.

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Here's the trailer from the show, jake Handel is the only man to survive a rare, incurable disease that destroyed his brain. For months he lay motionless, silent. Everyone thought he was gone, brain dead, but he wasn't. He was fully conscious and he heard everything. But Jake's story isn't just about a miraculous recovery. It's about a life shrouded in darkness, a world of heroin secrets and a deadly betrayal that cut close to home. Now, after years of silence and countless theories spun by journalists and online vigilantes, jake is finally ready to tell his story, the real story, completely uncensored. But telling it could be the most dangerous thing he's ever done.

What Are You Listening To: Pack One Bag

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Blink the true story of one man's survival and a mystery that leaves no one innocent. My oh my. Does that ever sound curious, compelling and a must listen? I recommend that you tune in to Blink, listen to the story and see if you can solve the mystery before the end. So far, I have been batting zero. The mystery before the end so far, I have been batting zero. However, there is one teaser that says someone unnamed whispered in his ear about a heinous crime that that person had committed while they thought he was in a vegetative state.

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Before moving on to our epic episode segment, I want to mention one more show that just dropped IMO, by Michelle Obama and her brother, craig Robinson. Imo, of course, is TechSpeak, for, in my Opinion, I received word yesterday and immediately accessed the podcast. At first, word yesterday and immediately accessed the podcast. At first, I was confused because, even though it was announced as a new show, there were episodes dating back to late 2020. It took a little digging, but I finally pieced together that the Obama's production company Higher Ground has simply renamed and reimagined Michelle's previous podcast, which has been inactive since February 2024. We'll talk more about her show in future episodes, and now it's time for our epic episode segment. Each week I share a single episode that really grabbed me, and this one, I think, will grab you too.

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This week I am highlighting episode one from a podcast that is called the Unmarked Graveyard from Radio Diaries. It's a series that focuses on Hart Island and that's H-A-R-T located in the Bronx in New York City, srt located in the Bronx in New York City. Did you know it was there? If you didn't, you're not alone. Most people are not aware that Heart Island is actually a potter's field for indigents and unclaimed bodies.

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My interest was first piqued in cemeteries in general when I began searching for my sister, who died as a baby under tragic circumstances. My parents never told me that I had a sister at one time, and when I found out about her from relatives when I was an adult, they still wouldn't talk about her. I dropped it or you know so I thought. But that missing piece of me would crop up like clockwork. You know so I thought. But that missing piece of me would crop up like clockwork, nagging me to solve this family mystery. It took years but I finally found her resting place a pauper's grave in a neighboring city. Why did it take so long to find her? Well, like the story of the man in the episode I am about to share. She was buried without a gravestone and without a proper burial.

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The man in question that I just referred to lived two lives and had two different names. In his later years he called himself Stephen, but in actuality, his real name was Neil Harris Jr, and he had a mother who loved him very much and had been looking for him for years. Each episode of the Unmarked Graveyard from Radio Diaries brings you stories of how people ended up in New York City's Heart Island, the lives they lived and the people they left behind. In episode one, which is the one I just immediately gravitated towards, goes back a few years when Stephen and I say that in quotes became a fixture in Manhattan's Riverside Park. Locals started noticing him sitting on the same bench day after day. He said little and asked for nothing.

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When his body was found in 2017, the police were unable to identify him and hence he was buried on Heart Island. So what happened to him? Why didn't anybody claim his body and why was he buried on Heart Island? One day, a woman who knew him from the park saw a notice about a missing person and his backstory came to light. It ended up with a reunion with his mother, a sad one for sure, but at least she knew where her son was, how he passed and how he lived, after just wandering off one day and never seen again by his loved ones. Heart Island is the largest potter's field in the United States and is the final resting place for over 1 million people. Stop by when you're in the Bronx and pay your respects. I think you'll also be shocked about the size of this land, which is quite small considering that over 1 million lost, discarded or forgotten people are buried there.

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Gerald.

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Oh, no, not you again. What are you listening to? Are you spying on me? Oh, ais, you can't trust them. But yes, welcome to. What Are you Listening To?

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A segment where I share what I've binged this week, and it's a good one. If you've been listening to One Good Thing Media for a while, you know that I am an avid student of history, human nature and what brought us to this point in our collective lives. Those were just three reasons why I was excited to binge Pack One Bag by Lemonada Media. It was actually the second time that I listened to this 10-part series and I'm so glad that I did.

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Pack One Bag is an epic story of an Italian Jewish family who was split apart by love, fascism and a world war. Through shocking discoveries and rich dialogue, pack One Bag delivers a compelling true story. Here's a quick backstory. When documentarian David Modigliani was a kid, his grandfather, franco, won the Nobel Peace Prize. But despite having such a prestigious relative, david was always more fascinated by the love story that made it all possible, namely his grandparents' romance. While running away from Mussolini's iron grip in fascist Italy, and while expecting to learn more about a romantic tale filled with love and light, he uncovered a darker side to their fairytale escape from war-torn Italy, where Jews were being rounded up and executed simply for being Jewish.

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Here's a clip from Pack One Bag when benito mussolini led a violent insurrection to take over government buildings across italy, he was on his way to becoming the dictator and eventually his fascist regime went after people like my family who'd been living there for centuries I mean, all of a sudden, we were not safe in our own country.

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It was very clear to me it was time to leave. But my only way out would be to leave my whole family behind. I mean, do you stay or do you flee?

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Stay or flee. My name is David Modigliani, and that's the question at the heart of my new limited series podcast Pack One Bag. The show centers on my grandfather, my nonno Franco. One day he'd win the Nobel Prize, but back in 1938, he was just a 20-year-old kid in Rome and when Mussolini passed racial laws against Jews like him, he didn't know what to do.

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But I was in love with this girl from Bologna, Franco I have a name, Serena, that's me and her parents had been moving money outside the country In case we had to flee, but escaping with them would mean leaving his whole family to face the nightmare that was coming. It was the biggest decision of my life. We each packed one bag and we left.

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In Pack One Bag. I dig into my grandparents' romance on the run. We made it onto the last boat out of Europe and the hidden side of their escape from fascism. Some of these boxes I literally had not opened ever. What I find takes me back to Italy to uncover the story of the family they left behind. Ciao, Enrico hey.

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How beautiful you are. The woman from the neighborhood says to me they are looking for you.

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You go out, go out, it's too dangerous.

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Now I bring the whole story to life with the help of Signore Stanley Tucci Of course it's crazy.

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This is what war does.

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Pack One Bag is a personal memoir, a history lesson that's all wrapped up in a beautiful audio production. So many podcasts and so little time. I promised you in jan January that we were going to be cutting our shows to approximately 30 minutes each, and we're keeping our word. We're ending the show right now, but we have a lot more coming next week. This is Gerald Spear signing off for One Good Thing Media. Please give us a follow. You know we love you. I hope everyone has a beautiful week.

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One Good Thing Media is brought to you by our host and creator, Gerald Spear. All things technical are by David Dodd and our announcer is Robert Spear. Our theme song is Force by HGST. Thank, you.