True Story Media Presents: Dakota Spotlight

True Story Media.

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Hello, it's Andrea, and today is the second in our True Story Media Presents series, where we are introducing you to the creators on my new network.

Thank you so much for all of the wonderful feedback on last week's episode with Alvin from Affirmative Murder.

Some of you have been asking, what exactly does it mean to have a podcast network?

And there are different types of networks, but at True Story Media, we are a network of independently produced shows.

So this means that we exercise no control over the content outside of asking creators to abide our ethical guidelines.

We also take no ownership of their IP.

We help with monetization, marketing, promotion, and strategy, and we provide community.

Basically, I created True Story as the kind of network that I would actually want to join myself.

If you're familiar with my backstory, you may recall that I originally sold my show to a large corporate podcast network, and it did not go very well.

I say all of this today because it's frankly a pretty scary time to be working in media.

And independent podcasts are really special because they are incredibly hard to censor.

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The creators that I've brought onto this network are curious, diligent seekers of the truth.

And boy, do we need every one of them right now.

So that's my speech.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.

And with that, here's the episode.

Well, I am thrilled to have you, and we're so so excited to have Dakota Spotlight as a new member of True Story Media.

And I'm just so excited for our talk today.

So James, if you could just start off by introducing yourself, telling us who you are and what you do and why you're here.

Sure.

My name is James Wallner.

I produce Dakota Spotlight.

It's a podcast I started.

I think in 2019, maybe late 2018, but my first season came out in February of 2019.

I actually had to look that up before this interview because it's, where are we now?

2025.

It's been a while.

I

started Dakota Spotlight, as I said, in February of 2019 and living in western North Dakota, a rural area of a rural state, really.

And

I basically just decided one day I'm going to make a podcast that I would like to listen to, like in the way I would like it to be, right?

And I tried not to overthink too much about what other people are doing.

Obviously, you know, serial was big at the time and in the dark was an influence for sure because they do such stellar journalism, really.

But I decided, you know, I got a microphone.

I got a digital recorder.

I'm just going to create something I would like to listen to.

And I've always liked audio.

Let's put it that way.

I've liked listening to the radio.

I used to listen to a Prairie Home Companion.

I don't know if you're familiar with that or listeners.

Yes.

Grew up listening to that in

my kitchen home.

My mom made dinner.

So yeah.

Oh, fantastic.

And the thing with audio is not that I don't watch television or movies, and I have actually co-produced a documentary film as well.

But it's that box in the corner of your room that has hijacked your eyesight, which, and because your eyeballs are in the front of your head, you have to sit there looking at this thing and it completely hijacks everything else.

And I've always enjoyed the aspect of using your own imagination, letting the receiver of the information use their imagination for the visuals and using sound to tell the story.

I've just always been fascinated by it.

And although I never worked as a journalist until a few years ago, I did study photojournalism in college.

I went to Fresno State University in California and I

big sites on become a journalist.

And this was back in the day when you had to know how to spell.

Remember that?

Before every,

before you didn't have to know how to spell.

I actually didn't get into the journalism program at Fresno State because I am actually a really poor speller.

And

but I also, but I took photo journalism classes.

And back in the day, when you develop your own film, and I was going to go, you know, with my Minolta 35 millimeter cameras cameras and get, you know, to the war zones.

And I was going to get, get there and get these great shots.

And I kind of had a romanticized idea about it at the time.

But, and then I went on in life and never worked as a journalist until after I started this podcast when a company in North Dakota hired me.

to bring the podcast to them, which, and that company I've since left and I'm back to producing this independently.

But

that's kind of who I am.

And as I said, I started there in

the first season, it came out in 2019 and in Western North Dakota.

It's so interesting.

You know, one of the things I love about podcasting is just the diversity in backgrounds and diversity in professions that people had before they came to podcasting, because podcasting has not been around long enough as a profession for anybody to have gone to school for it or trained in it.

Certainly, people train in analogous fields or work in analogous fields, like, you know, journalism, radio, entertainment.

I think there's a fair amount of fellow authors kicking around in podcasting now.

But it's, you know, and then a lot of like celebrities who are famous for other things are getting into podcasting with extremely mixed results.

I'm sure we could spend a lot of time going on that phenomenon.

But it's, I think that's so interesting.

And it's interesting that you sort of the way that you

quantify or qualify rather journalism and saying like, well, well, I wasn't a journalist when I got into this, but then I was when I started doing it for the radio show, but then, you know, because it kind of points to this question that actually has been very much front of mind for me, especially in the last

two years that I've been working on this project of who is and who is not a journalist and what qualifies us to be a journalist.

And

I did not start off as one.

I did not have training as one.

You know, I had training as a storyteller because I'd written a bunch of novels and I'd been in book publishing the whole time.

So I sort of had this kind of adjacent experience.

But, you know, I was writing fiction.

So very, very different than doing, you know, than doing journalism, doing nonfiction projects.

And I really, you know, I was, I have been fortunate to work with some people that did have a lot of experience.

And, you know, my current producer has that background.

And so,

you know, I learned to be a journalist on the fly.

I certainly consider myself one now.

And I think,

but that took me a little coming around.

So can you talk us a little bit through that process?

And I think especially, you know, if you are,

you know, on the older side of being a millennial as I am, or if you're a Gen X person or a boomer, you know, we have like a very, we grew up in a very different media environment and a very different idea of like what, sort of, who is and is not

a journalist.

And that's changed so much as the media has changed.

And now I think there is, you know, so much is happening in new media.

And I think people, especially in the wake of, you know, the last election, like cannot stop talking about the influence of podcasts.

And so I think that's it's a medium that's being taken much more seriously, I think than it was even a few years ago.

And I think people outside the industry will probably not appreciate how much it has changed in the, you know, seven years that you've been in it.

It's even changed in the three years that I've been in it.

So can you talk us through a little bit of that process of like, what was the day that you were like, I, James, am a journalist?

Because I certainly consider what you do on the show journalism.

And I had a friend of spear, who is a very well-respected new media journalist, who said, you know, like, really gave me this framing of, well, like, journalism is an act, right?

If you're doing it, then you are one.

You don't get a stamp.

You don't get a license.

You don't get, you know, it's not a matter of,

obviously people do get training and go through, you know, this, this.

um sort of more set path that goes through like legacy media that's increasingly disappearing right so i think it's a very much an open question so for you like what was that moment where you're like, oh, I'm doing the thing, like I'm doing field reporting and fact checking and open, you know, source reporting and due diligence and all this stuff of like, oh, I'm doing journalism.

Sure.

I actually kind of have a story about that.

So great question.

But just my background, I'm actually between the two generations exactly.

I was born in 1964.

So I'm supposed to be part of.

Which generations are those?

You know,

both.

Boomer X.

You're on the cusp of the Boomer X.

I'm right on the cusp of X and Millennial, exennial or whatever dumb thing they call us.

And it's interesting because in some ways I identify with the older generation.

In a lot of ways, I identify more with the younger.

So, but here's a couple tidbits.

I remember my parents saying, being a kid, and we'd have to look this up, but if I was born in 64, the night Nixon resigned.

My parents saying, come and watch this.

You're going to remember this for the rest of your life.

And I'm like, why?

I'm a kid.

Why would I do that?

What's going on?

You know, the president of the United States is going to resign tonight.

And I remember sitting down.

I even remember my little sister, who was probably only like three or four, you know, crying because she felt so sorry for this man who she didn't, because she had to like leave the club.

You know, she didn't understand what was going on, but she felt sorry for him, you know, but she was a baby, you know.

And

obviously, I do remember it because we're talking about it now.

And then I went on to read Woodward and Bernstein's books, you know,

Watergate, and I've seen the movie.

And so fast forward to me starting this podcast in 2019.

The reason I started this podcast was because of the things that are happening.

You know, this was 2018.

when I started hearing people say things like, your facts aren't my facts, or, but just

realizing,

starting to witness.

And if I knew how bad it was going to get by today, I might not even started this podcast because I would have been just like, it's, it's a lost cause.

Like, what happened to truth?

It is so upsetting today.

But if we go back to 2019, when I started this podcast, it was in an effort to demonstrate to locals in the little town I lived in that you can get the truth.

If you get off of the bar stool, I've told this story a few times.

If you get off the bar stool and stop gossiping about this story, maybe ask questions,

there is a truth somewhere and you can get to it.

And the context of this is, I was living in a small town, 700 people western North Dakota, and a man was found deceased one town over, as we say out west, one town over, same county, one town over.

And he was found deceased in the winter, laying next to his running vehicle in the morning.

And it was winter.

So we had, it was very cold out.

So he was, someone drove by out this dirt road, found Victor Newberry, who lived in this town, Glenal and North Dakota, dead.

And his truck is running.

He's just laying there on the ground.

And I was sitting in a bar.

one town over and I start hearing these rumors and everyone said he was killed by the the Boston mafia and I'm like we're in western North Dakota What the hell is the Boston mob doing in North Dakota?

And I felt a frustration that I, you know, that I could not, you know, I said, well, have you, I asked people, have you, who's anyone asked the cops what happened?

They won't tell you anything.

And so, well, another part of it is I want to add is I was so frustrated by what was, what is, what was and is going on.

in the U.S.

with this erosion of the truth that I had to actually stop watching the news.

I mean, I know a lot of people are doing that.

I actually had to like step away for a while.

And I thought, I think I say this in season one.

Maybe if I just focus on one thing,

it'll do me good.

And my one thing was I wanted to find out what happened to Victor Newberry, found dead next to his running pickup, one town over from where I live.

And I did find out what happened.

And ironically, the beginning of this arc of this whole investigation, I kind of realized why people did think the Boston Mafia was involved.

I want to spoil the story, but

it was like a

almost out of

just like the principle of the thing.

I'm like, I'm going to show you 700 people in this one town or, you know, this little rural county.

You can find answers.

Like I was triggered or almost challenged by a guy who was probably drunk on a barstool, literally, is how this whole whole podcast started.

And like, you don't think I can find the truth?

I love that article.

I'm going to go find the truth.

You don't think I can find the truth?

I'll show you how often if I

love a challenge, right?

So, and it turned out to be, to my surprise, a really interesting story.

Like, I got a little spooked a couple weeks in, like, oh, this is not what I was expecting exactly.

And ultimately, I did find out through records requests to the police, video of a couple of DUIs that night,

people involved.

I found out what happened to Victor Newberry.

I mean, there's still some unanswered questions because it comes down to the people who were there.

But it was Dakota Spotlight was born out of my frustration of seeing, I guess, facts getting eradicated or the belief in them.

And then that's this bashing of journalism.

I mean, you know, that people just are going to decide what they believe in despite what facts are in front of them.

So.

Yeah.

no, there's so much there that resonates with me.

And I think, you know, I similarly started my podcast out of spite.

Yes.

I mean, like, not really, but kind of.

I mean, I think like there was a lot coalescing for me because I had learned, you know, so much about this form of abuse that had been, you know, really impacted my family.

And then, you know, there was a particular journalist, Mike Kicksenbog,

who I will always take time to name,

who had covered my sister story and brought it to a national audience and really not done a thorough or responsible or ethical job.

And I opened up my podcast app one day and saw that he had a podcast.

And so I was like, well, you know what?

He's going to do a podcast.

So am I.

And I did not anticipate that being a massive career pivot for me, but in fact, it was.

I think that's what's so exciting about the medium is there is obviously a corporate side to podcasting, and there are projects that sort of get money for development and get, you know, usually, honestly, those are projects with celebrities attached, but like there, there is like a sort of corporate-y side, but so much of it still, and certainly in you know, 2018 is just like a person who goes and gets a mic and is just like, I have something that I need to talk about, and I have a story I need to tell, and a story I need to pursue.

And sort of, I think, especially for true crime podcasters, just this real sense of like insatiable curiosity and really wanting to get to the bottom of things.

And like, we are the weirdos that get excited if we put in a FOIA request and get a thousand pages back, you know, like that.

That's like a real common thread.

You're just like, woo, you know,

when that, when that document dump comes through.

And I think that's, and that, that, to me, that just makes the medium so exciting.

And I think that's like, what's so interesting about true crime is it sort of is an entry point into all things, you know, that happen in a community.

And I agree with you that I think like, and when I talk to, you know, my younger friends and colleagues who are in their, you know, 20s, they don't even, they don't have a memory of when things weren't like this.

And in terms of just like where like

people were, people sort of agreed on the basic facts of reality, which obviously has been, been steadily declining and then really was, I think, so exacerbated by 2020 onwards

because of the COVID pandemic, because of, you know, our

attempt at a racial reckoning, you know, all those things that really just sort of spurred the moment that we're in.

And so I think like they don't even know a sort of version of where like, yeah, people agree, people disagreed on what we should do about it, but they agreed on what happened.

And now we're just so far away from that.

But I think it's also like the thing that sort of keeps me at it, because it is easy to despair when you're a person who cares about the truth and is trying to tell it into putting this information out into an ecosystem where there will be just be people be like well fake news you know and be like but i have records and due diligence and all the things like i can prove my case and they're just like what um you know but i also find that and i wonder if you do that like people are really craving that they're craving something that they can actually

you know

like verify, right?

That sort of sense of like being able to really

anchor people by doing thorough reporting that's not just opinion, that's not, you you know that is open to just finding the truth where that's the only aim where like you're open to being challenged you're open to disagreement you're open to things that do not confirm your original hypothesis

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So your show is obviously very regionally focused.

And, you know, you have the story like starting off in this like small rural town.

So what do you think?

I mean, and this is a, you know, it's not like your show is about New York City or LA or what, you know, or like a place that necessarily people outside of it think about a lot.

What do you think,

like, what do you think?

is sort of special about this area and what makes it an interesting setting, you know, in sort of the general way.

Like what makes this region an interesting place to follow true crime stories?

Well,

I guess because it is so rural and, you know, Western North Dakota is considered to be this sort of, you know, very heartland, all-American.

And it's become a cliche now in podcasts almost that like, you know, we never thought it would happen here or everyone knows one another.

You know, a small town, everybody knows everybody.

And all that, it seems like.

almost all podcasts anytime it's outside of a you know larger city you hear that But it is really true in North Dakota.

Like North Dakota is, you feel like you have three degrees of separation from everyone in the state.

If you don't know, someone starts talking about someone.

If you don't know them, someone you know in North Dakota knows them, right?

And for the story I want to tell you about today, this season three of my podcast,

one of the detectives I talked, to basically said this this is when Bismarck, North Dakota, the capital of North Dakota, lost some of its innocence because it was a,

you know, we'll be talking about a horrible double homicide.

And I think it is this sort of sense of innocence and goodness that

we believe this, you know, this rural all-American country is all about.

But it turns out evil and bad people show up every, I mean, it's no surprise to people, right?

But shows up everywhere.

And then when it hits a place like this, it's sort of has a larger impact in a way because it's so much more noticeable and or not noticeable, but it's just it's just a bigger impact, I guess.

Yeah, well, it's interesting to think about, you know, and we've

our show has gone to increasingly has gone to, we've covered, you know, we covered a case here in Seattle area.

We've covered a bunch of cases in the Fort Worth area to begin with, which is kind of like an interesting mix between the two because there are like a lot of disparate towns around the Fort Worth area, but it's obviously sort of concentrated.

You know, and some of the cases, like the case we cover, this is, is in rural Southeast Georgia.

And so it is interesting with that sort of small town.

And I think it's sort of,

you know, it has like the people who are personally impacted are also like geographically.

close to each other.

And for me, it's been very interesting as a person who's always lived in big cities.

It's been really interesting to go and spend time in these small towns and has been, you know, really kind of illuminating.

And I think

whether you're doing so, you you know, in real life or just listening to media that takes place in those places, I think that's really important because there's two things that have maybe, I think it's challenged a lot of my notions about what people in, you know, what goes on in small towns.

And also like kind of the red state, blue state thing, right?

Of just like, I think it's like, it's, it's illuminated in two ways of just like, oh, like life, life is sort of different here in some ways that were hard for me to understand, you know, as an outsider.

And then also

like that people are, it's been very encouraging as a reminder that actually like people do have way more in common than they remember.

And it's not, you know, in our current media climate, we've been so conditioned to see,

to see people on the opposite side as this other.

And then like, when you're actually in a room with someone, you know, doing field reporting is so, it's such an impactful experience.

It's like when you're in a room with someone, and you know, obviously everything in my show is like sort of, we all have this shared experience, but it's been really extraordinary to just be like, oh, like I really, it's made me realize the extent to which I've fallen into that trap and just been like, and it's when you're actually sitting with someone in real life, it's much harder to hold on to sort of all those ideas about how they are different than you.

And I think like I've been also impacted, or it's also really,

you know, been it's both ways, right?

It's like these people are also trusting me, you know, a

very like lefty, you know, liberal person from Seattle, right, to tell their story.

So it sort of goes both ways.

So it's been, it's been a small, nice, hopeful thing to hold on to

in this climate.

It's been entertaining too, but in your latest season, I mean, the small nuances when I don't remember the name of the town, but what was it?

You'd never heard of a waffle house?

Oh, I never heard of, I'd never been to a waffle house and I'd never heard of a huddle house or maybe I'd never heard of waffle house.

It seems like such a part of town.

And that was like such a great thing to add to your show because it's, it's subtle.

It's, it's a little comical and gives you some breathing room as a listener for this very serious topic.

But also it does say something like it points out that you are sort of an outsider and you're willing to go into this place to, again, to find the truth.

So I thought that was well done.

Yeah, thank you.

And I mean, it was so fun.

I think both the both, you know, two of the seasons where we've been on the road with someone that also I had like an existing relationship with and was close with, you know, both in season four and in season six.

So they felt um perfectly at ease to make fun of me.

Also, so it was also very cute to like have them be like, wait, how did you just pronounce that?

Or like, what, what are you saying?

Like, you know, and just be like, wait, is that wrong?

And yeah, I mean, first of all, in my show, we always need any moment of levity that we can find.

So those are really fun.

But yeah, I mean, it's like, it's such a delight, you know, to be able to go out and just have, I mean, I'm so grateful that the show has enabled me to sort of go on these interesting journeys, just places like I don't know that my life would ever take me there, but it's such a valuable experience to see and really get to see.

You know,

I got to go to a Bucky's for the first time, which like in the, you know, is like such a whole cultural experience.

I'm obsessed with it now.

We have to stop every time I go to Georgia.

And like, you know, as a listener, when I'm listening to this, like I love that, right?

Like I love to be like, like that sense of like, oh, I'm going somewhere.

Like I'm in the car with someone.

I'm going on a journey.

I'm walking up to someone's door.

Like that just is so thrilling as a listener.

I was just going to add that if you have any doubt, I don't think you should, but you are definitely a journalist.

You're doing amazing work.

And I have my own listeners who love my show, who have like recommended your show to me.

Like, James, have you heard this show?

She's an amazing, amazing podcaster.

So you're doing great, great work.

And my listeners, some of my listeners already know about your work.

And

I so appreciate that.

Thank you.

I was going to round off the question you had.

Like, when did I realize I was a journalist?

Um,

actually, when uh, this company, Forum Communications, approached me to join them and produce, continue to produce my podcast.

They're in Fargo.

They're like, basically, you already know what you're doing.

Come do this for us.

And I did that for a few years.

I left about two years ago, a year and a half ago.

But as editor there, uh, shout out to Matt von Panon in Fargo, who

had heard my podcast.

podcast and he actually said

James what you're doing in this first season I did right

I hope I'm not throwing people under the bus here but he

said I have a hard time teaching this to some of my reporters so some of this journalism stuff is I don't know if it's an if it's I don't want to say it's an instinct or something like that but maybe you just need to watch all the president's men like a thousand times and really you just don't give up you don't so you got a denial of a request Try it another way.

Try, think, think in another, maybe you can get, you know,

you know, there's all kinds of records out there.

There's all kinds of ways to get information.

So, but anyway, my story was the editor at in Fargo there said, told me that.

And I thought, oh, I already, I mean, the editor of the newspaper is telling me this.

I guess I am a journalist already.

I just didn't know it.

Yeah.

I mean, I, yeah, I have, I really basically had the same experience.

And I,

you know, I unfortunately started off with a producer who was very talented.

I learned a lot from, but unfortunately, the relationship went a bit south.

And, and she, uh, she was very adamant about telling me that I was not a journalist.

Um, so I think that was partly what stuck.

And I mean, fair enough, like in the beginning, I.

I wasn't necessarily, right?

I was an expert in munch housing stuff, which like all, I had a similar journey with that, right?

Where I'm like, well, I can't just like walk in here and call myself an expert.

And then after, you know, several years of reading every available thing and interviewing a bunch of experts.

And it's like, you know, it was really Dr.

Mark Feldman, who's probably the prominent expert and like one of, easily one of the most well-known.

you know, who's been a friend for years.

And he was like, you're more of an expert than most people who call themselves experts.

And I was like, all right, well, you know what?

That's good enough for me.

And I'm just, I'm, I'm going to run with that.

But, you know, I think it's like, on some level, it's good to have that humility, right?

Because you don't want to just like say that like it means nothing.

But yeah, once you are doing all of that work and you really have to back it up.

And I think for me, you know, where my work got a lot more journalistic was in our third season where I was tracking this Kowalski case and I was, you know, yeah, doing originally report, original reporting that no one else was doing.

I was reading through every, I watched every second of the trial.

It's just like, yeah, if this is not journalism, then I don't know what it is.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think, I think to your point, like, and I think this about podcasting as well is with journalism.

And obviously podcasting is not always journalism, right?

It's like certainly the podcasting is its own thing.

Not everyone is trying to do do journalism with their podcasts.

Some of it's entertainment, some of it's, you know, talk radio, some of it's sheer propaganda, but you know, what have you.

It's like there's, there's a lot going on within the medium of podcasting.

Um, but I do think when it comes to like what makes someone a good true crime podcaster, I do think it's sort of more of a set of traits than anything.

Um, I think it's like, number one, I think just like loving the audio medium itself, but also like just being like the kind of obsessive weirdo that cannot let things go, like really does like you have to be so obsessed with things to be doing it so regularly and sort of keeping that content going so i think that is i think that is very much a shared trait and so you know one of the things that our shows have in common is that we do so much original reporting and i think um you know that type of podcast can be very high stakes.

And, you know, the whole thing that we're doing here at True Story Media is that we are an ethical true crime network.

And so we have a lot of considerations about what that means and have had, you know, really thought hard, my partner and I, when we were putting this together, you know, about what, what do we consider ethical, you know, an ethical true crime podcast?

And, you know, we have different formats of shows.

Ours both, you know, some of them are not, don't do original reporting.

They're more commentary.

And those, that can be very ethical and very valuable and helpful too.

But I think it's especially high stakes when you are doing original reporting

because you really have to consider like, if I'm the person that's bringing this story out there and I'm the person that's making this public, you know, you have to have a lot of sensitivity around, you know, you're necessarily talking about traumatic things that happen to real people,

usually some of whom, you know, it's like you're not, we're not covering historical cases.

So it's like, who are still alive.

You know, what kind of considerations do you take to make sure that your coverage, you know, really basically like you doing all you can to have it have a net positive effect?

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, sometimes I feel like that's just in a way, like to get a little wishy-washy here from the beginning, right away, is sometimes it's just like, it's a feeling, right?

You know, you know, if you're crossing the line.

At least I feel that way.

In one way, I feel that way.

I know that's not a good enough answer right now, but like I would know if I was crossing the line from something ethical to unethical.

And, you know, some of the examples are like, you know, you uncover a story.

This happened to me.

I walked away from a story once for this reason.

It was a murder case near Aberdeen, South Dakota, I think in the 80s.

And I started getting into it and it was solved.

And I was reaching out to

the inmate.

And then I found the family.

And, you know, I thought it was a very fascinating story.

I did some document, got some documents from the local sheriff.

And I thought, this is going to be good, you know.

And then I got to the family of the murder victim.

And they were kind of, well, one member was on board at first.

and they kind of had a powwow there and I was ready to move forward and they said you know we just don't want to do we just don't want this to come out we don't see any reason and and in that case it was solved so you know what was the

um I didn't necessarily have a great answer like what is does the public need to know you know what's the benefit to the public it would have been it would have been a great story a great true crime story but i walked away from it and just said basically i respect your guys.

I don't want to do this to you.

You know, they, they felt it would be too,

they didn't use the word traumatic, right?

But it would just be too tough for them to relive.

So, I mean, that seems maybe a kind of obvious example, but

not everyone.

As we big, I was going to say, and yeah, many of our colleagues in the space, unfortunately, do completely ignore that if they have a story that they know is going to be compelling and entertaining as the story.

To the point that they get in arguments on social media with members of family members of the victims.

And so you don't get a right to tell me what I can talk, report and not like, holy cow.

Yeah, that's

that's

that's hard to defend.

And I think,

you know, we we on the story have mostly told stories.

And it's certainly my strong preference to tell stories with the people who were the most impacted.

So either survivors or family members or,

but certainly there are people that impacted that are not happy about our coverage,

sometimes because they're the perpetrator, often.

But also, you know, because not everyone wants to deal with that becoming public.

And we had, you know, we had a really, we had a really tough,

which I, which I talk about in the show, but like, you know, we had a really tough ethical quandary with this last one because of the two surviving siblings.

You know, for reasons that we get into in the show, one of them felt very strongly about, you know, these people I've known for years and I'm close with, like one of them felt very strongly about wanting to make the story public.

And the other one did not want to didn't expressly say that, but also like we didn't tell the story with them.

And part of the story was really about them.

And that was a very complicated sort of ethical.

calculus.

And I think because this is a story that involves a possible murder that needs to be investigated and that's very important and a person who is still completely at large

and also is now living with two vulnerable children, like that just sort of trumped everything else.

And obviously, the fact that we were telling it with two family members.

So the fact that there's a split in that family is very difficult for those people and very complicated.

But was sort of a, I was like, oh, I'm glad this is not the first season I'm making.

There's no way I would have sort of been equipped to make all these decisions.

But it is, it is something you have to be really thoughtful about.

And I am appalled at some of the behavior I see from other shows in the space where you just see like, you know, people saying, I didn't, you know, were the surviving family members.

I did not want them covering it.

They got it wrong.

They got a bunch of the details wrong.

I mean, it's just, and I think people don't realize that like for better or worse, there are no rules in podcasting.

So it's like, yes, someone can.

sue you for defamation if you get a bunch of things wrong.

But like that is a number one, that is a very high bar, as it should be, as it should be.

Free speech is very important.

let's hang on to that hopefully i'm gonna just ride that horse as long as we've still got it um

while we have it while we have it um and uh but you know it's like if you feel like a journalist may have been in that position if you feel like a journalist gets something wrong it's really not a lot of recourse um you can start your own podcast which is how i decided to handle it but you know there's not like the the standard for defamation again is very high in most cases you have to prove intentional malice not just sloppy journalism you can't sue someone for that um But it's very, you know, like there's not a lot you can do if your story is being exploited.

Yeah, exactly.

There's a difference between a story, if there's a serial killer running around and could still kill more people.

Too bad you don't want me talking about it.

We got to catch this guy.

You know, if someone would, you know, evict a family was like, we don't want it.

It's too traumatic.

We got to stop this guy first and then we'll stop talking about it.

But if it's another kind of story where, again, they're like, what is the actual...

In fact, one of the most satisfying things I've had from starting this show was once I'd been doing this for a while and I got to season nine, I felt, you know, I was getting vetted by some of these victims' families.

There was a...

And I got great access to, there was a terrible quadruple homicide in Mandan, North Dakota a few years ago.

And I was the first one.

I didn't jump on it, but I was the first one to do a podcast on it, to my knowledge.

And these four people were killed at a business business that they some of them partially owned a small family run business and and so all the people that work there are sort of family members of the victims and uh

you could say and the reason i got such great access to them for that season nine was because of my proven track record of doing this and that that felt amazing like we know we know who you are we know you're going to do a good

you know we trust you with this story and i even got in that case i got access to the killer's family as well and interviewed them.

So

that's sort of the strongest seal of approval you could get, I think.

You know, it's just like people know you'll take care with their story and that's that's really meaningful.

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You have a story to share with us that is the subject of

one of the seasons of your show.

So I would love to hear about it.

Well, right.

So, you know, when you and I talked about talking, you know, I considered your fantastic show and your listeners.

And I thought season three, which is an older season of my podcast, would be something your listeners might be.

would be interested in.

And the title of it is The House on sweet and seventh

uh basically this the season is about a terrible double homicide in bismarck north dakota uh barbara and gordon uh erickstad were killed by their own son who was adopted he was an adopted son and by all accounts barbara and gordon were wonderful people they were not you know there's been no reporting of them being

you know,

anything other than good parents, responsible.

They adopted this kid, Brian, and when he was 18, he murdered them with a friend who was 27.

They went in there and stabbed them with kitchen knives while their friend, 16-year-old Misty, waited out in the garage and smoked a cigarette while sitting on the freezer or the whatever in the garage.

I could talk about this forever and just keep using the word weird, strange.

But the house on Sweet and 7th is not the house where these people died.

Rather, you have to imagine a little house on a corner in the capital city of Bismarck next to A ⁇ B Pizza.

It's kind of like a little weird spot for a house because there's like a major 7th is kind of a big thoroughfare headed down, a lot of traffic.

And there's this house on the corner and there's a little door in the basement that opens up right onto 7th Street.

two-story building.

And in that house lived, well, a family, the Werner family.

so there was Michelle who was I think

18 and Amy who was 16 and then her mother their mother Pam Werner and her boyfriend whose name or nickname everyone's got nicknames in this story his name was weasel of course because what else would the mother's boyfriend's name be in this story when you when you listen to it so weasel and pam lived upstairs and i think there was a younger sibling as well but the basement was basically free reign.

Oh, there was a son, Ryan, 17 years old as well.

The kids lived downstairs.

And also, anyone who wanted to come and party there.

And the adults upstairs also had troubles with addiction and substance abuse.

But Pam, the mother, you know, when she dealt with police,

she did the part of...

being a very responsible mother.

And in the end, she sort of narced on her own kids.

We'll get to that in a little bit.

But she kind of played both sides, I guess you would say.

But they knew, they definitely knew the kids downstairs were partying.

And runaways would come there and stay there.

And their friends would stay there.

And people, it was just always sort of a party house.

Well,

what ends up happening is this 26-year-old guy, Robert Lawrence, shows up in town from Texas.

I don't know.

I think he had relatives there.

And he starts hanging out with these people.

And he becomes the boyfriend of of the older daughter, Michelle.

I think I got this name right.

It's been a few years.

And Amy is the younger daughter, is a girlfriend of this Brian Erickson who ends up killing his parents.

So they get this little clan.

And

I've interviewed detectives who work this case, and there's so much head shaking going on when you talk to these cops.

They're just like, you would not, like, I still don't get it.

Well, one of the detectives, Bob Haas, says in the podcast, it was very Manson-esque, like

a cult in a way, in a Klan.

And after these murders took place, like 12, 15 people knew about this murder for at least 48 hours, and no one goes to the cops.

And that's kind of, I mean, that sort of cult mentality.

When I started reading, I had a trial transcript next to my bed for like over a year, and I would just like read it over and over.

And in the end, some of these these teenagers reluctantly testified against their friends brian and robert the two perpetrators

to sort of stay out you know because they had to i get you know they cut a deal with because they were afraid of i mean but they did it so reluctantly that the journalists who wrote journalists who wrote about them just like these kids get up on the stand with these smirks on their faces and attitude like

So let me back up a little bit here.

So

I'll go back to the the actual murder, right?

So these kids are all partying.

And these are shoplifters.

That night before the murder happens, they go to an AA meeting because Misty, who's 16, has to go.

And they go in there drunk just and disturb the whole thing.

Then they go shoplifting.

And then they kind of all congregate there at the house on Sweet and 7th.

And they start partying.

Someone gets some pot.

There's kids, you know, there's runaways and the parents upstairs.

And exactly where the idea to kill Brian's parents came from, I'm not really sure.

But

ultimately, they find out that Misty, the 16-year-old girl, who I also interview in the podcast as an adult now, she did not go to prison.

She testified also against the two guys.

A lot of people seem including one of the cops I interviewed says she was just as culpable.

But I've interviewed her.

so yeah.

So let me just quickly sort of go through the timeline of the actual murder.

So these two guys decide they're going to kill Brian's parents for whatever reason.

He thought he was going to inherit a lot of money, maybe.

So Misty, who's 16 and, you know, she came from a home where, I mean, she'd been introduced to alcohol since she was 12.

She was homeschooled, but she found

the answer books.

So she just did it all.

And then she was done and just, you know, kind of her mom obviously knew her daughter wasn't home studying.

She was just

sort of didn't have a lot of great, a lot of great role models.

She drives the two boys down there.

They go into the garage.

Misty relights a cigarette,

sits in the garage while the two guys go in.

She, well, let's take it from Misty's perspective.

She hears someone scream, what the fuck?

And then the boys come back in the garage with blood on them.

And she's told me in the interview, I thought, for some reason, I thought they killed a cat in front of their parents to scare them.

So she goes in and the parents are still alive, but they've been stabbed, right?

And the guys come back in.

The mother's still breathing.

I think Misty says, I'm sorry, this happened to you.

And Brian yells at her, fuck, she, she's a bitch and she deserves to die.

And she cuts her throat.

He cuts her throat right there.

Very graphic.

Sorry.

And then Misty leaves.

The two guys, meanwhile, while Misty's gone, they're loading these two bodies into the victim's pickup truck that has like a cover on it on the back in the garage.

Misty goes back to the house on Sweeten 7th, that little party house I was telling you about, wakes up 17-year-old Ryan Werner.

and says they killed Brian's parents.

He's like, what?

And they get up, they drive back to the crime scene.

By this time, the two perpetrators have put the bodies in the back of the truck, put the cover over it, and they went to a gas station to buy cigarettes and beer.

So when Misty and Ryan come back, they're gone, but they look through the window and Ryan sees blood in the, like the lights on.

He can see through a window that there's blood in the living room on the floor and stuff.

So they leave.

They go back to the house on Sweet and 7th.

Ultimately, the guys show up at the house on Sweet and Seventh, wake up Ryan again, and they said, Hey, you got to come help us dump a couple of bodies.

This is a 17-year-old kid who's going to go to school the next day, right?

And which gets me to this

one part of this story.

I just always shake my head.

Ryan says, thankfully for him, no, I can't help you go dump two dead bodies.

You know why?

I mean, he was trying to get out of it, obviously, but he said, I got to go to school in the morning.

And the guys are like, oh yeah, you got to go to school.

And that, that part of this story, like when I read that, I was just like, I mean, I realized Ryan was coming up with an excuse.

There's a lot of like a cult, right?

There was a lot of loyalty-based relationships.

It was very, very important that you never narc on one another.

And this goes on for a long time to the point.

Well, I'll get to that.

But

so then Misty goes with them.

And they drive out, you know, 30 miles south of Bismarck, dump these bodies.

And then they, three of them, go back to the house on Swedens and they all go to bed and go to sleep.

It's just so surreal to me.

The next morning, Ryan goes to school.

His sister, one of his sisters goes to school.

The other sister, they're driving around in this pickup truck that obviously still has blood in the back.

They go to see some friend who's in jail.

And then the guys realize they got to leave town.

They got to go on the run.

And they want the girls to go with them.

They're like, yes, we'll go with you.

Ryan wants to go.

Two days later, Amy Werner, thankfully, went to her like parole officer or juvenile.

I don't remember,

and says, I think something might have happened to, you know, I think something might have happened to Brian's parents and tips off the police who finally get involved.

They go to the house, they find the blood, and they.

they start trying to talk to all these teenagers who just go down kicking and screaming before they give up their two friends who just heinously murdered these two people.

I interviewed three detectives and, you know, they just, again, they just shake their heads about how frustrating it was for them.

Really, like, I mean, I guess that's a question I'd have for you.

Like, you know, when you're in your reporting,

I know there's a lot of family members who refuse to believe this abuse is going on and they just can't go there.

It felt like these kids also just, in fact, you know, when one of the cops says to her in interrogation, Misty again, there's two people we got to find.

And he's talking about the victims, right?

But Misty's, this is after the guys split.

He's like, oh yeah, Brian and Brian and Robert.

And they're like, no, not them.

The body.

Like they just, like their brains couldn't go there.

Does any of this resonate with you, Andrew?

Oh, yeah.

A lot of it does.

I mean, mean, I think there's so many complicated elements to this.

And, you know, it really brings to mind,

you know, so much of what we talk about on the show, because when you're talking about children who are offenders, you know, and that's still like, yes, they're teenagers.

So it gets a little bit more complicated, but these are still humans without fully formed, you know, prefrontal cortexes, importantly, right?

And lower impulse control than full adults.

And as you alluded to,

probably the majority of those kids that were in this little cult, you know, in this little family, so to speak.

And I think family is the right word for it, are coming from situations where they are either abused or neglected or both.

And,

you know, it really gets very complicated when you're talking about people that commit heinous violent crimes, because each of them really needs to be seen, I think, in this situation, especially as an individual, right?

Because, you know, it's possible, it it sounds like it could be one of many things.

I mean, it certainly sounds like the person who really committed was Brian, the main perpetrator,

was extremely disturbed.

And I think we always have to be careful about not having that knee-jerk reaction of if someone does something terrible, they must have a history of abuse.

They must have done something, you know, they must have had something done to them to make them that way.

That's not the case.

There isn't data to support that.

There are some people that just commit horrific acts of violence that had perfectly nice, stable, you know, uneventful childhoods.

And certainly like it gets very complicated when you're talking about adoption.

What were the circumstances of that?

There's a lot of interesting literature about sort of how that can affect someone's mental health.

Obviously, most adoptees don't go and do something like horribly violent.

You know, there's a lot sort of at play with that particular perpetrator.

But when you talk about sort of like, and obviously I don't know all the details of the case, but like when you talk about the dynamics of, you know, why would these kids band together?

Why would they protect each other?

And it's because I think, like, one thing that my work has really illustrated for me, because a lot of times you see, you know, one of the really sad, and obviously a lot more sympathetic dynamic, but like one thing that you see that's so sad is that abused children will often lie on behalf of their parents.

They will, because they don't want to be separated from them, because they don't want them taken away.

That's the person that, you know, human beings need and children need, even teenagers, you know, like children need to have

a connection to their, they need to feel a connection to their parent or someone sort of in place of that, right?

And so, like, because they need that for survival.

And so, the brain will do very strange things to sort of like, you know, like dissociation is extremely common for survivors of, you know, and dissociative identity disorder is directly tied, which is sort of the most extreme version of that, is very tied to extreme childhood trauma, right?

And so, the brain does very, I mean, sort of fascinating things in order to protect someone's ability to survive.

Because if

a memory or an experience is so intolerable, especially if it happens to you when you're a child, your brain will protect you from it by not allowing you now.

It still impacts you, could come up later, et cetera.

But like, it is really fascinating the ways that childhood trauma can affect the brains.

And so I think we pretty, pretty, can pretty easily assume that the children that are ending up in, you know, Pam and Weasel's basement,

you know, and like childhood offenders, I mean, the vast majority of them are coming from situations of abuse and neglect, right?

It's very, like we should, we should absolutely see child offenders in a very different light than we see.

30 year olds commit, you know, or 27 year olds even committing those same crimes, right?

I think that's, I think that is important.

And not that they shouldn't be held accountable, but that's a very complicated thing.

And that's not, that's not something I, you know, dealing with child offenders is not something that I, that I know a lot about.

So I, I don't, don't, I won't get too sort of far out of my lean here, but I do think sort of the, the, the, the complicated dynamics of sort of like loyalty and attachment and the ways that, you know, the, that like they probably had a lot of trauma bonding going on.

Um, I think people also kind of don't recognize and, you know, some people are, this might be the case with Brian, you know, if someone is just a person that utterly lacks empathy if they are, you know, a psychopath, which is not a clinical term, but, you know, anecdotally, what we understand is a psychopath.

They have antisocial personality disorder.

They have that sort of dark triad of traits.

Like someone like that, you know, that's kind of in a different category.

But for the other people, you know, who are involved in this, there's also trauma bonding that happens and it's very traumatic to a person.

It does a lot of harm to a person and their psyche to commit a horrific act.

And so, you know, that could also be something that's really bonding them together on a level that

can be sort of hard to understand from the outside.

Or like if you're a person, talk to them and, you know, like, oh, oh these teenagers are just a bunch of little psychos and they don't care about this happening it could be quite a lot more layered than that and i do think that like our brain i you know i have had as you alluded to a lot of experience with people just being in denial that makes no logical sense but i think what it makes is emotional sense right where it's if it's just so

if it's going to be so threatening to your world and your life to accept that a person has done this or that they didn't have a good reason or that whatever it is, you can build an entire sort of justification.

And I mean, back to sort of our conversation about the

everyone losing their collective grip on reality, you know, that's why conspiracy theories are appealing.

It's not because they make logical sense.

It's because they're anchored in enough truth and they make emotional sense.

And that's what gets people into this, these absolute delusional, you know, adult, otherwise smart, otherwise functional people.

That's why they fall for it.

And I think people also, in my experience, completely underestimate their own susceptibility to this kind of thing.

You know, I absolutely agree.

Absolutely.

When you said that, you know, it makes more emotional sense than logical sense.

I kind of feel like it was almost like, you know, there's a lot of things, not just this kind of stuff.

That, that explains a lot of human behavior right there.

I myself have done things like, I'm like, this doesn't make a lot of logical sense.

Why am I doing this?

Could be like a relationship.

You, why am I still in this relationship?

It's emotional, not logical.

At this point, you have enough, you know, truth, facts in front of you that this is maybe not the best thing, but yet, here I'm going to make this work.

Yeah.

And I think, like, I think about this a lot with sort of like, I think we all, we all are capable of getting onto the delusion highway and and staying there for longer than we would think, right?

And in my experience, there's like, when you're in that, because I've been in that experience, right?

I justified a lot of my sister's behavior that I look back on and I'm like,

that didn't make any sense, but it's because I didn't want her to be that person because I loved her.

And it was very threatening to my family if I accepted that what she was doing really just was what it was, right?

That she was really just like lying to us and, you know, none of this was true and that she had done all these sort of harmful, hurtful things, that she was you know harming her children and so like it you know now once for me for me the off ramp was once she had a kid that was the place where i was like i can't keep going on this highway because now there's this other you know little being that i love and care about and like the cost of not accepting the truth got so much higher that like for me and my parents both, that was the off ramp.

There's other people that I know who are in her life where the off ramp was a little bit later.

And a lot of it was based on sort of what they saw and how much they saw with their own eyes.

And sort of like, you know, it was when she did this thing or this other thing, or it was when there was the second investigation, or it was when, you know, the sort of like 15th crazy story she told them, where then that was their off-ramp.

And when I look at the people who are the closest to her,

her husband in particular, I'm like, I watched him.

almost take an off-ramp when he had all these discoveries about her on his own.

And I was like, oh, now he's seen it with his own eyes.

Okay.

He's going to get off the delusion highway.

And then he like

put his turn signal on, and then he was like, Nope.

And then he just got back on it.

And I was like, I think that was the last off-ramp for him because at some point,

you're just like, you're all the way over in the left lane.

I'm really working this metaphor now, but like, you're all the way over in the left lane.

You're not getting, you're not getting back to the exits.

You're not going to take one.

It's sort of that lot, you know, that

sunk cost fallacy kicks in.

And like, it becomes more and more horrible because the longer you've been enmeshed with that person

the more that you have to accept a personal culpability especially if that's person's been abusing you know your children that you have with them then you are responsible for that harm that has happened you have been enabling it supporting it for all those years so like you're gonna you're going down with the ship at that point um and i've you know i've watched like many dads and talked to many dads who did take an off ramp and sort of it's so interesting to talk to them about like they usually put up with a bunch of stuff before that that happened and then they sort of look back and they're like how could i not have seen this and i was like well i think most people actually you know and there's plenty of people that just never do so i i think that that's so fascinating to me to think about and i think um you know it's just especially complicated when you're talking about kids right who don't have all of the yeah emotional grounding, the life experience, the they don't have support, they don't have strong support systems.

I mean, I think like it's worth saying that like, yes, abused children are more, you know, abused and neglected children are more

likely to commit crimes.

They're also way, way more likely to be the victims of crimes.

And so there's just a lot of vulnerability there.

And I think I'm always trying to get people to understand that,

you know, abuse and neglect of children is not,

it is a personal, intimate issue within a family, but it's also a hugely a community issue because

you are then like, it is a threat to the community to have children who are not, you know, able to sort of enter the community and be safe people, be healthy people.

That that has very real, you know, we should care about children because we should care about children.

I hate that I have to talk people into that, but it's like, if the rest of it doesn't convince you, if you need to be extra convinced, you know, like the cost to society of not making sure that children are raised in places where they are safe and cared for is immense.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I can let people know how Misty Jones, the 16-year-old who sat in the garage, smoked a cigarette while these two guys went in and killed and helped them dump the bodies.

And then

she, while they were awaiting trial, speaking of, you know, trauma bonding,

there are letters in the public record, in the police record at least, that I read that she wrote to them while they were in jail waiting trial, awaiting trial.

And she told them at that time, so this has only been like a year, she if she had two sons she was going to name them brian and robert right so at that point she's like you know she knows they killed him there's no no there's no

so but she's obviously still bonded with them i do this podcast i didn't even know if i'd find her alive to be honest like what happened to misty that was a big thing when i started and i interviewed her and A lot of people have commented on the podcast.

It doesn't sound like she quite gets it yet.

And she reveals to me in the podcast, I just talked to Brian last week in jail.

And that was like, it'd been a couple, a few years, I think.

And she said, he, and she's trying to get him to talk to me, basically.

And, you know, the, the, the gist kind of was when I interviewed her, was like, you know, she's done well for herself.

She's been in plenty of trouble, you know, but at the time, doing well.

But interestingly, I got a lot of comments on the podcast.

It doesn't sound right.

She's quite

really

done.

In fact, I end I end the season with with

when these murders came out, that movie, The Titanic, was just out on video.

There's a lot of people watching it.

And I think there's this lines, I don't know, line in the movie, don't let go of my hand.

And then he says, I'll never let go.

Or is it the other way around?

Right.

No, no, you've got it right.

This is a deeply formative,

I'll never let go.

Yeah, don't, I mean, deeply formative for I was 14 when that movie came out, just peak Leonardo DiCaprio, impressionable.

I use that kind of as a theme in this because the night, the month this murder happened was when everyone was renting.

It just came out on video.

And

then Misty.

We're like going to have to explain what videos are and that you used to have to go to a place to rent them to like, you know, there was a place called Blockbuster.

Sometimes they would run out of the movie you wanted to see.

Actually, I explained it in episode one of the podcast.

I explained that very thing.

And then I end it with, you know, like, this that sort of that those lines from Titanic because, you know, I interview her and you know she's doing well but it's still she was still talking to the guy still there's this this bond somehow and I think I say in the podcast I feel like they're going to forever be tethered now fast forward fast forward a couple more years I heard from Misty about a year ago and it just feels sounds like she's gotten further help like it's almost like since the podcast came out she's saying oh two people really die like she said in the podcast it took me years to reel it but now it feels like something's, you know, kicked in.

I don't know.

And maybe that'll happen again in five years.

But this trauma bonding you're talking about, talk about bonding over trauma.

You're, you're a 16-year-old girl or boy, you know, and your two friends walk in that door and kill two people and come out.

And then you help them,

you know,

dump, dump the bodies.

I just got to tell you, you know, one last thing about this story I just want to share is that that brings it back to this sort of cult, Manson-esque vibe.

So months, two or three months after the murders, a group of these kids and Weasel, by the way, who's an adult,

they go down to the house where the Ericsteds were murdered.

No one's living there.

Still a crime scene with tape around it.

And they break into the house because Michelle, the daughter, wants some of Brian's stuff.

I mean,

that's Manson family shit, right?

That's like you guys go down there and I don't know who was behind it, but and they all got arrested and because they had the cops had set up an alarm and they got busted and spent the night in jail.

All right, whether the

teenagers went to juvie or whatever it's called, but the adults,

I mean, that stuff just, I don't know if I'm a naive person, but that just shaking my head.

Like you broke in weeks later.

I just,

and again, these are young kids without a lot of great role models, but that's kind of the gist of season three of Dakota Spotlight.

Wow.

Well, that sounds like an extraordinary case.

And I'm sure that my listeners will be fascinated by it and also have probably a lot of the same thoughts that I'm having as, you know, we're talking about these issues.

So I think

that that sounds great.

And we're going to, we're going to drop the first episode here on the feed tomorrow.

And yeah, thank you so much for sharing that story with us.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for

being a part of True Story Media.

We're so so happy to have you on board.

And is there anything else you want to say?

Anything else you want to plug?

Where can everyone find you?

We will, of course, include all the relevant links in the show notes.

Yeah, of course.

And first of all, just I want to say how happy I am to be here and with True Story Media.

We're just so excited about this.

And it's an honor to work with you.

And when you approached me about, and under the sort of the context of ethical, I mean, you got my attention right away because I've been thinking for a long while, like, how could, you know, what could we do in the podcast community to come up with some kind of,

I don't even know, you don't want to use the word rule book, but, you know, standards, right?

Standards.

Standards.

Yeah.

There's not going to be rules.

It's not going to be laws, but just, you know, standards.

So thank you so much.

It's really an honor.

And

I want to tell your listeners too.

So we're going to be dropping season three again.

So if you go over to Dakota Spotlight after you listen to episode one here on Andrea's feed and you find Dakota Spotlight anywhere you get your podcasts, obviously, and at dakotaspotlight.com, you'll find this season three at the top of our feed.

It's an older season, but we're going to rerun it for all of you of Andrea's listeners.

So you can find it right away when you get there.

And I do have a Facebook group for Dakota Spotlight as well.

Happy to have new more members over there.

And season 12 is coming, hopefully in September.

And I'm really excited about this season.

Can't really share too much, but had a lot of ethical decisions there as well.

And I was just such a pleasure to be on your show, Andrea.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, well, thank you, James.

Nobody Should Believe Me is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett.

Administrative support from NOLA Carmouche.

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