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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.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Hello, lovelies, welcome to One Good Thing Media, your official podcast review channel, where you can find out what's hot in this fascinating media landscape. For those of you who are new to our show, my name is Gerald Spear and I am the host and creator of our podcast. I'm also a self-professed podcast junkie who spends hours each day scouring the podcast landscape to discover, and fall in love with, a variety of shows that I love sharing with our listeners. Today's episode is all about mystery true or fantastical stories that pique our curiosity and send our minds into overdrive. If you love a great whodunit, this episode will prove to be a goldmine for your playlist of podcast mysteries. I'll be covering a remarkable story about a group of Gen Z high school students who enrolled in a sociology course only to end up solving a string of heinous crimes that had baffled police for decades of heinous crimes that had baffled police for decades, plus an investigative podcast that explores the case of Karen Silkwood, and also a true story about a mysterious medical condition that produced such an intense and unrelenting itch on one woman's head that she almost lost her mind. One woman's head that she almost lost her mind. So buckle up and let's move on to our first segment News and Highlights the portion of our show that keeps you up to date with promising and popular. Did you know that you can support us by supporting who Gives a Crap? A company that really does give a crap? They produce the greenest toilet paper and paper towels on the planet, have a microcarbon footprint and donate 50% of their profits to help underdeveloped countries safely manage waste. Please give a crap by clicking on the sponsor link in our show notes and go even greener starting today.

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This week's news and highlights is overflowing with tea about some of the best shows in the podverse. Our first highlight for this episode is about us. We are varying our format a bit to bring a few outstanding interviews that we've done in previous seasons. They're powerful talks with interesting individuals from various walks of life. For instance, episode 6 covered Annie Temple, an erotic masseuse, who talks about the oldest profession on Earth, her specialties and why she wrote a business book for other erotic entrepreneurs. And in Episode 8, we featured a shocking interview with a former cult member of the Institute of Basic Life Principles, or as it's commonly called, the IBLP, the same sect that is practiced by the Duggar family of 19 kids and counting. A reality show that made them and their IBLP religion famous. Both are interview-only shows.

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Sequestered is a new podcast that debuted in February 2025 and concluded in April with a bonus episode. It's told from the perspective of Sarah Reed, juror number 11, who not only served on the jury of a sensational trial, but was also sequestered for the duration of the proceedings. I want to say up front that sequestered involves the murder of a young 22-year-old girl named Jasmine Pace. The murder caused a rippling effect that began with the family and friends and then undulated outward to involve the community and the entire state of Tennessee. Thankfully, juror number 11, sarah Reed, didn't take the cheap route by sensationalizing this trial. Instead, she allowed us to experience the entire proceedings from a juror's point of view.

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The podcast begins with Sarah talking about being selected for the most publicized murder trial in Tennessee's recent history and then being given just two and a half days to put her career and life on hold before being bused to the Chattanooga Courthouse. Once there, she had to relinquish her phone, was forbidden to watch TV or listen to the radio, told not to converse with fellow jurors about the trial, and was only allowed to have one five-minute phone conversation a day with someone anyone from the outside world. The trial is covered in a 10-part series and at times it can be quite brutal. But like many listeners, I found this podcast most compelling because it was told from juror number 11's point of view and exactly what happened when she became part of a sequestered jury how they were treated when court wasn't in session, how closely they were monitored to ensure that no rules were broken, and how much Sarah and her fellow jurors were emotionally invested in the trial, the victim and their verdict.

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Here's a clip from Sequestered the state of Tennessee versus Jason Chin, who was accused of taking Jasmine's life. Over nine days, I witnessed the unraveling of a horrifying story, one that I will never forget. This is, Sequestered, a juror's perspective on the murder trial for Jasmine Pace, a podcast that takes you inside the courtroom, behind closed doors and into the heart of a trial that captivated the town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Each episode will walk you through one day of the trial. I'll share my experience as a juror and how I grappled with the weight of the evidence, the responsibility of the verdict and sentencing, and honoring Jasmine's story.

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Victims matter. Jasmine Pace is not just some girl listed in an autopsy report.

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Jasmine's story, family that loved her. She was a friend, she was a granddaughter. Please don't minimize this trial to the trial for him. Join us as we explore the crime, the trial and the profound impact of Jasmine Pace's story.

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I want you to remember this trial as the trial for Jasmine Pace. This is the trial for Jasmine Pace.

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This is Sequestered a juror's journey, a victim's voice and the pursuit of truth.

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My last highlight for today is a podcast called Murder 101. I recently revisited this show because it was such a fascinating listen the first time around. I know it sounds like a hard-boiled detective show, but it's not. Rather, it's an unlikely criminal investigation led by a high school teacher and his Gen X sociology students. Their experiences include how they went about taking on the cases of multiple murderers that they soon concluded were done by a single serial killer and then ultimately solving these cases. Along the way, they received some help from highly trained outside sources, but it was their unwavering dedication and legwork that ultimately broke these cases wide open. There are so many lessons deftly tucked into this podcast, including a fresh perspective of Gen Z, a group of youngsters that are often maligned as being too sensitive, too averse to work and too involved in electronics to interact with the real world. But Murder 101 shows another side of this budding population. Here's a trailer for the show.

Speaker 5: 10:25

A group of high school students. High school students.

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Elizabethan high school students started a project to research a string of unsolved murders.

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Their research led to the identification of the killer. Investigators now have an answer to a 34 year old question. Once you start getting a few tips or a few leads or a few identifications, then the cold case isn't so cold anymore.

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There's a pretty good chance he's still alive. Everything that the students predicted through their profile turned out to be accurate.

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Redhead killer profile Male, caucasian, 5'9 to 6'2. 180 to 270 pounds. Unstable, home Absent father and a domineering mother. Right-handed, iq above 100, most likely heterosexual.

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There is no profile of this killer, except for the ones the students created.

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Just because some of these women no longer have people to speak for them does not mean that they deserve to not be spoken for. What if this guy's still alive? Like what if he comes after us? I said are you going to kill me? And he said yes.

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And now it's time for our epic episode of the week. This week I listened to a great episode by Mr Ballin's Medical Mysteries. It's episode 78, and it's called the Unbearable Itch. Have you ever had chicken pox? Or like when you get the itch in the middle of your back and it's just out of reach. You can't quite get it, but what if you developed an itch on your head that was so irritating and so constant and lasted so long that you started losing your mind? This is what the Unbearable Itch episode is all about, and it's a true story.

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A woman in her late 30s woke up inside of a dark room and immediately began thrashing wildly. Her wrists were bound to the metal rails on either side of her bed, keeping her pinned down and unable to use her hands. Her head hurt from the gauze bandages that were wrapped tightly around her skull and held in place by a foam helmet that she was forced to wear to sleep each night. But as uncomfortable as that foam helmet was, the compression was the only thing keeping her endless torment at bay. The woman had been in the psychiatric hospital for weeks, as far as she could tell this was her future, gritting her teeth through the constant agony in her head as she lay helpless and strapped to a hospital bed, she could feel her sanity slipping away. But when her misery became almost unbearable, she reminded herself that she had chosen this. She had entered this hospital of her own free will because, no matter how brutal these nights and restraints might seem, it was the only way she could survive.

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She had to be in this facility because the itching was so bad that she was on the verge of scratching herself to death. As many of you already know, I am a total empath. When I'm watching a movie, I'm in the movie, and when I listen to this episode and all of the itching that she was enduring, guess what happened to me? Oof, hibby-jibbies, gerald, oh no, not you again. What are you listening to? Are you spying on me?

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Oh.

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AIs. You can't trust them. But yes, welcome to what Are you Listening To? A segment where I share what I've binged this week, and it's a good one. This week I binged Radioactive, the Karen Silkwood mystery. It began dropping episodes in November 2024, and, honestly, I don't know why I waited so long to listen to this incredible program. So many podcasts, so little time. I'm not sure, but I'm happy to say that I spent a day listening to Radioactive, the Karen Silkwood mystery, and I'm sure that her story is going to remain with me for many weeks to come. For those of you who aren't familiar with Karen Silkwood and what happened to her, very briefly, she was a 29-year-old woman living in Oklahoma and working as a technician at a plutonium plant with shoddy safety procedures that put their workers at grave risk for developing plutonium poisoning and, down the line, different types of fatal cancers.

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Also if you haven't seen the movie Silkwood, I highly recommend that you do Now. At this point in the presentation, this would be the part where I would talk about the storyline, but I'm going to hop right into the trailer and part of Episode 1, which explains everything you need to know about how this investigation went awry in 1974 and how two of the original journalists have reignited the investigation into her death.

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Fifty years ago, Karen Silkwood got in her car alone, she'd agreed to deliver sensitive documents to a New York Times reporter.

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She never made it, and those documents she was reportedly carrying were never found.

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Do you think somebody killed her? There's no question in my mind. If someone killed her that night, I think they were trying to stop her in order to get the documents.

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I'm Mike Boettcher. I've covered the world for Network TV and returned home to Oklahoma to investigate the one story I can't get out of my mind.

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And I'm Bob Sands. I've been covering this liquid story since I read the wire copy on the air in Oklahoma City the night that Karen died in that car crash.

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Bluntly stated she was spying on her employer gathering evidence. Her union wanted to document charges of safety violations at the Kermagee Corporation's nuclear plant.

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For years we've run down leads and in 1994, 20 years after Karen Silkwood's death, a friend gave me a secret tape for safekeeping. An Oklahoma highway patrolman had launched his own risky investigation behind the thin blue line.

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I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the security at the FBI office and that, as I was told in the beginning, I might be in danger.

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I got the tape on one condition no one else could hear it until the people named in it were dead that time has come.

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We also found a trove of private investigators' tapes in a storage locker and tracked down physical evidence from the night of Karen's crash.

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My God Holy mackerel, there's black stuff in it still. Yeah, oh my gosh. The accident investigator believed he had a smoking gun. He told his daughter on his deathbed to hang on to it. We have the bumper. Something's not right with this story. I think it needs to be looked into further.

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Fifty years later, what we've learned about the life and death of America's first nuclear whistleblower, radioactive? The Karen Silkwood Mystery A new narrative series from ABC Audio Coming November 12th. Wherever you get your podcasts, cassette tapes recorded in the 1970s, interviews a private investigator had made looking into a mysterious death the death of Karen Silkwood.

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Karen died in a single car crash off a dark, empty Oklahoma highway exactly 50 years ago. This November. She was on her way to meet a New York Times journalist, reportedly to hand over documents she'd secretly been collecting at her job at a nuclear facility. But she never made it to that meeting. On the way, karen fell asleep at the wheel, possibly under the influence of drugs, drove off the highway, crashed into a ditch and died.

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Or at least that's the official story. We've never believed it, not for one second. From ABC Audio this is Radioactive. The Karen Silkwood Mystery.

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I would like to add that when Karen Silkwood died that terrible night in a single car crash, people who were trying to diminish what she was discovering at the plant and what she had discovered already were maligning her. Oh, you know, she takes drugs. She's a terrible mother. She doesn't have any paperwork. She's just lying about the company. They wouldn't poison their employees, baloney. Not only did many people witness the stack of paperwork that Karen had accumulated as proof that her employer was poisoning their employees, karen Silkwood's body was removed from the accident with emergency responders wearing hazmat suits.

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And that's a wrap for this week. Before we close, I want to remind you to please, if you're not following us already, give us a follow. Hit the notification button so you're aware when our next episode drops and, if it so moves, you, give us a five-star rating. Next week we have a remastered interview by Dana Diaz and myself, and it's all about her life with a narcissist, how she left and what she's doing today. Make sure to tune in and until then, loves, you know we love you, mwah, talk soon.

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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.