Scott Valentine, True Crime Author Matthew B. Cox, and Jesus and Ugly Jody with Jody Corbett

Scott Valentine, True Crime Author Matthew B. Cox, and Jesus and Ugly Jody with Jody CorbettThis edition of The Neil Haley Show opens with a Love Is podcast simulcast, co-hosted by Kim Sorrelle, welcoming actor Scott Valentine, remembered as Nick Moore on Family Ties. Valentine spoke about resilience, recounting how being run over by a truck left him paralyzed and told he would never walk again, and how he refused to accept that verdict. He framed setbacks as manure to clean off before climbing back on the horse, insisting that when someone treats you like dirt it defines them, not you. He credited his good fortune working with Michael J. Fox, Michael Gross, Meredith Baxter, Justine Bateman, and creator Gary David Goldberg, then centered the conversation on Red Coral Universe, the ad-supported streaming platform he built with partner Larry Meistrich to give independent creators a real voice and a fair share of the profits, splitting revenue from dollar one and opening the door to makers the big platforms overlook. Find it at redcoraluniverse.com.Neil then joined a Criminally Good with Sherrie and Jen simulcast, presented by Storehouse Media Group, welcoming Matthew B. Cox, a former licensed mortgage broker who became a notorious white-collar offender and once landed on the U.S. Secret Service's most-wanted list before serving time in federal prison. Cox recounted how, since his release, he has reinvented himself as a true-crime author and the host of the popular YouTube show Inside True Crime, where he interviews law enforcement and former criminals, occasionally joking that a guest turns out to be less former than advertised, for an audience of more than a million subscribers. He explained that he began writing behind bars, penning memoirs of fellow inmates, among them Efraim Diveroli, whom he was incarcerated alongside, and clarified a common mix-up: he did not write War Dogs, the film that drew from a Rolling Stone article by Guy Lawson, with Jonah Hill playing Diveroli. His own book, Shark in the Housing Pool, has been optioned for the screen several times over roughly seven years without yet becoming a movie, a grind Cox takes in stride, noting that only a handful of optioned projects ever get made and that he is happy with where things stand. He offered a candid critique of the true-crime convention circuit for sidelining actual reformed offenders while welcoming him only as a journalist, and, drawing on the long odds he has watched other authors face, cautioned anyone banking on a single Hollywood deal to build something else in the meantime. Now channeling that same hustle into growing his shows across new platforms, he encouraged listeners to check out Inside True Crime.The hour closes with a Jesus and Ugly Jody simulcast, hosted with Sherrie, where recurring guest Jody Corbett led a reflection on blessings. Corbett walked through several kinds, material provision, relationships, and health, and pointed especially to what he called unrealized blessings, the disappointments that only reveal themselves as gifts in hindsight, a point Neil and Sherrie echoed with their own stories of doors that closed before better ones opened. He opened by asking simply what a blessing is, and pressed on where blessings come from. Anchoring the talk in Jeremiah 29:11, he noted that God's plans are meant not only to prosper but to protect, and reminded listeners that even everyday gifts like a healthy body, rest, and the breath of each morning are easy to overlook. He then turned to the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4 to argue that not everything that looks like a blessing is one, since some are distractions meant to pull us off course, and that our free will shapes which doors we let God open. Find Scott Valentine at redcoraluniverse.com and Matthew B. Cox on Inside True Crime.