Off the coast of Newfoundland, something lurks beneath the surface. Below is a new six-episode thriller series. Fisherman Calvin Penny, played by Josh Hartnett, is already burdened by his father's mysterious death when a sea creature begins terrorizing his hometown, putting his son Wade, played by Charlie Heaton, and the rest of his family in danger. Partnering with a visiting marine researcher, Mackenzie Davis, Calvin must protect what's left of his family and uncover the area's long-barried secrets. Watch below, streaming only on Netflix.
Hey everybody, it's Josh Mankiewicz, and today we have a special edition of Talking Dateline. This week, instead of going behind the scenes of a particular episode, we want to take you back to a live conversation from Crown Con, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, I'm known at Crown Con as the mayor of Crown Con. I do not give myself that title. I actually would be thrilled if I could get rid of that title, and somebody else could take it, but at the moment, I have it.
So I'm not the self-appointed mayor. I'm appointed by others. So at this session of Crown Con, I sat down with Ellison Barber, who was an NBC News correspondent, but also the host of the Netflix original podcast called Allegedly. That's produced by our colleagues at NBC News Studios. Now Ellison and I sat down and discussed all things Dateline.
Everything from how Dateline began covering murder cases. Now, I got my own start to my colleague and my frenemy, Keith Morrison. I don't even like to say his name out loud. We talked about all of that. So here we go.
Hello. Hi, everybody. I cannot see you because of these lights, but I hear you out there. So one of you made me the key to Crown Con City key. It says, it says mayor on it here.
I just want you to know I have it, and it's a cherished possession. Although I do believe that the mayor of Crown Con, like other, you know, offices that we all hold dear should probably have term limits anyway. But thank you and wonderful to see everybody. Let's talk Dateline. Yes.
When you think about your career, why did you want to start covering these cases and focus on crime in the first place? I did not want to start covering these cases. Really? Who made you? The, our now retired executive producer, a guy named David Corvo, said to me one day, like we're going to, you know, I've been at Dateline 10 years and we've done, as many of you probably remember, we were doing all kinds of stories within an hour and we were doing like five or six stories within those 60 minutes and they were all unrelated.
And he said to me, we're going to start trying to do these sort of murder cases over an hour. I don't know what you are. What we were doing that? I was thinking like, Tony's going to want to watch that. So clearly, yeah, you want to come to me for ideas about where America is going.
And now, like, look where we are, right? So I certainly did not see this coming. But then I went to Reno, Nevada, and I did the story of Brianna Denison, who had vanished and then subsequently was found, murdered. And then we did the story again. Now that there had been that sort of giant change to it.
And that was sort of the first, I think it was the first hour on a murder case that I did. And the reaction from the audience, I, there was not any mistaking that. And that was what I, and also I got some satisfaction out of covering that story in a way that I had not anticipated. And then we were kind of off and running because all the other stories were getting a sort of similar response. And it was a, I suddenly realized we had sort of tapped into something that I had not seen out there.
So I can't believe any credit for this because I was, not only not my idea, I thought they were nuts. Why have you stayed with it? How has that changed for you? When I started in journalism, which was 50 years ago, I was, first I was working on the assignment desk in the middle of the night and weekends and that kind of thing. And the first time I was promoted to, I was at ABC News.
And I was the off-air reporter covering the US House, which I did for three years back in the late 70s. And I really thought at the time that sort of covering Washington was the beyond end-all of journalism. And if I was lucky and I'd be the white house correspondent someday, something like that. And I was a political reporter for a long time. And then I came to Dateline and did these other kinds of stories for a couple of years.
And then we started on crime in the criminal justice system. And I saw that connected with people in a way that Washington coverage didn't. But that was a way of sort of recognizing, I sort of kind of recognize how, if you want to understand human emotion, if you want to understand love and hate and greed and lust and the things that drive people, then you need to be covering crime, which I've been realized, but it's unquestionably true. And it's been very, very, very satisfying. It has been.
You had the first live event in Nashville. Tell us about that. And I think that's a very interesting thing. Imagine some of the people here have been there as well. What was that like for you?
Are there going to be more? Yes, there are going to be more. There's going to be another one. I don't know exactly what it's going to be. I don't think it's going to be in Nashville again.
I think it's going to be somewhere else, but I'm not sure where that is. But look, it was sort of concentrated crime con because a lot of people are here for a lot of reasons. But everybody who was there in Nashville at that event was there just to see us and talk with us. And that was great. There was a very long period of time in television in which you really could only guess at what the audience was thinking or what they liked.
And that was through the ratings. But of course, that's a really imprecise way of doing it because if there's a football game on opposite you, you're not going to do as well as if some other program is on. And that was really everything to do with how well you're presenting your story. So events like this and the thing we did in Nashville and social media sort of changed everything, all of them are opportunities for me and for all of us to sort of figure out what you were thinking. And that's a much more precise way and for me an interesting way of finding that out than just sort of reading the numbers.
When you think about your time at Dateline, if you could go back and talk to yourself in those early days, what is the advice you would give yourself from today? Do a better job of buffing Keith's car. Have you started to get better at that? It's like a whole wax on, wax off thing. But it's a, yeah, he was very angry for that.
Is it a Lamborghini? What are we talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go with that. Sure.
I'm like, what advice would I give my earlier? First of all, I didn't see this coming. I would say now, like I wish I had started this sooner. I sort of came to Dateline in the middle of OJ. It was already the trial was already going on.
I didn't do the direct trial coverage. No Phillips was our anchor then and he did most of it. I did a couple of like just side stories to it. But yeah, my only wish is that we'd started doing this a lot sooner because there's a lot of untold stories out there. They connect with people and they tell you things about what's happening in America that sort of wasn't getting covered for a long time.
I always say, whenever people ask, because people have known for years that I'm like relaxing time is that I've watched Dateline and it's like if I'm coming back from long work trip, whatever, I'm just going to relax and just watch Dateline. I often will joke about that because I know a lot of people don't understand why I'm so interested in it and it's easier to just be like, oh, no, I'm a freak and kind of like leave it at that. I feel like everybody in this room knows and the way that I feel about it is that I'm like, there are so many layers as to why people are interested in covering it, watching it, reading it, following cases. And for me, it manifests in so many different ways. And one of them is that I really believe when bad things happen, information, factual information is the best chance we have it preventing bad things from happening in the future.
I also think that I want to be aware of when bad things happen, who the people are and I want to honor them, I want to hold space for them and their families and I want to remember the next time I see a statistic that it is real people and real names and people who maybe looks like. And I also want to have a better understanding of the criminal justice system that's so big and so robust and has the potential to impact everyone. Yeah, and the great thing is over two hours, you can do all of that. You know, unless you are very well known, your murder is probably not going to get a tremendous amount of ink in your local paper and probably not a lot of time on television. The great thing about Dateline is that we can talk not just about the actual crime and the TikTok about what it was solved, but also who the person was, not just how they died, how they lived, what they meant to other people in their life.
What went wrong, how this could possibly have happened. And that is a huge luxury in journalism to have that much real estate to tell a story and that much time to do it. Sometimes it's a month, two months, three months. You have a lot of time to assemble that story and get around. Some of this stuff I'm working on right now, you won't say until the fall.
Let me ask you about Keith Morrison. Yes. For starters, do you want to clear up if it is best friends or arch nemesis? Okay, we really, I do owe you all this answer. Yeah, I hate him.
Okay. Yeah, sadly that's not true. He is the sweetest guy, everybody at Dateline adores including me. And the great thing about Keith is that whether I have been posting what I'm going to his house, which is always like a picture of it, it's a castle, he's got a moat or it's in it. I've been doing that.
And I put up all these photoshopped pictures of us during the Olympics, posting our heads on other people's bodies and all this other stuff. He's been remarkably tolerant because when I started posting the Olympics stuff, we were about four days into it. And this is when I was still on Twitter and I was getting this giant response. And I thought, you know, maybe I should have said something to him about this. And then he came to me on a week later and he'd be like, what are you doing?
He's like, yeah, just roll with it. You don't have to do anything. He's like, okay. So. Was he like, my, my, my, and then lean?
Did he lean? He's always leaning and he's like, yeah. But he's, he's been very tolerant about my antics. And he is exactly who you say on television. He's a wonderful guy.
You know, I don't think I need to tell you guys this. As great as Keith's voice is for television and it is great. It is like perfect for podcasts. So let's just have applause. How many of you have I put into a deep sleep?
Yeah. Okay. All right. So let me have you as Keith put into a deep sleep. That's, yeah.
Ask an answer. Yeah. Coming up, Ellison and I talk about the creation of my podcast, Missing in America and also some cases that I'm keeping my eye on. This election season, let the NPR politics podcast save your time and your sanity. It will help you understand key races, which polls you can safely ignore and what might happen if power shifts in Congress.
Our short daily episodes come out every afternoon so you can spend less time scrolling through each chaotic news cycle. Make NPR politics your hub for midterm election coverage. Follow our podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Talk to us about the way Dateline has sort of evolved over the years, right? Like I think of Dateline and I watch it every night before I go to sleep, like clockwork.
So like I'm still up and committed, but I also know I'm constantly interested in all of the different side projects that have come out of it. One that I know you have been really involved with and are passionate about is the Missing in America podcast. Talk to me about the way that it has evolved and where does that stand? Now this began back in 2005 when I did a story, I'm probably the first story on television and one of the first stories everywhere about how TV was not covering anybody except missing white women. And that was in 2005.
And from that came a couple of things. One is that conversation, that story, that spawned the Black and Missing Foundation, which is a wonderful outcome of that. They also led to our digital series called Missing in America, which actually ended up finding a couple of people who were missing and solving a couple of cases. Not as many as I would like, but some. And from that came this podcast series.
So. For you and you touched on it a little bit, but when you look back at the stories that you have told particularly in terms of people who are missing, what are the ones that really stayed with you today? Well, I mean, last season, one of the stories we did was that of Nancy Snow, who was the one missing from Annapolis, Maryland, like the day after the 1980 election. She was a campaign worker, Republican Party, and she just vanished off the face of the earth. And there's been one suspect during that time, but there's never been any arrest.
And she's never been found. No trace of her has ever been found. And her daughters have sort of, you know, they've grown up always kind of wondering what happened there at all. And what was so personal to me about that story was that I was covering politics back in 1979, 1980. And I was pretty sure I had met her.
She wasn't a friend of mine. She wasn't a source. But I knew what she'd worked for the RNC on the Senate campaign side. And I covered the Senate campaigns in 1980. And I was like, we were in the same room.
Like I was introduced to her when I saw that story, which was many years later. That's why I wanted to do it for missing America. And I would love it if that, you know, if our story had sort of kicked loose some tip that had changed things, but so far it hasn't happened. Every time we do one and we put that episode to bed, the producer and I always say to each other, wouldn't it be great if this solved it? Right?
I mean, I really can't think of anything that would make me happier than having some piece of information that came through and resulted in either somebody being found alive or somebody being found so that their family could sort of go from that point and maybe solve the case as well, maybe lock somebody up. Are there any cases that are, that you will tell us or on your radar that you haven't covered but you want to? Well, my friend Madison McGee has a podcast called Ice Cold Case in which she's trying to solve the murder of her father. She's not a crime con this year, unfortunately. But I did a thing with her in previous years.
And when she finally does eventually solve that case and figure out what happened with her father, like that's going to be a date line story, absolutely. It's one reason why I keep sort of like, like, expect every time I talk to her, she's going to say, well, I, we know the answer. And so far they don't know the answer, but they're definitely getting closer. And she is also sort of lit a fire under law enforcement over the years. So I'm sort of looking forward to see what happens with Madison.
When we get back, I answer some questions from the audience. They have a lot of them. Do you want to start us off on the questions over here? Yes, there's a question. Right over here.
Yes, hello. Hi. Hi. This has been such an engaging session. Thank you so much on Dateline and on these programs.
The people that are featured are the people that are relentless and the people that, their families are relentless, the people that have the resources to be relentless, the people that are fairer in complexion. Is it something that Dateline and is it something that these programs are actively thinking about, about how to elevate those stories that may be more, come from populations that are not as fair-skinned, parts of their stories that may be more problematic, you know, lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But these are still very important stories to tell. Yeah, there was a time on Dateline which we would not do a story in which the person who died was doing anything that might have exposed them to harm.
So that also was stories about like people in the commercial sex business and people who had done any kind of, they were involved. We had a criminal record for things like that. That sort of ruled them out. That was a long time ago. We're really not doing that anymore.
I mean, I did a story some years ago about the girls on the West Mesa, outside Albuquerque. All of them were street sex workers. And that's a case we're still on top of because it's not clear that it's been solved or not. Nobody's been locked up for it. Maybe they know who did it.
Maybe they didn't. Maybe that person's dead. Maybe they don't know. I think the idea that the victim couldn't have been doing anything illegal no longer rules you out of Dateline. And certainly, for the last 20 years, I mean, since I did the story about Tamika Houston, the story which is I was saying sort of spawned the black and missing relationship, we're definitely not covering only fairer-skinned people.
We're doing stories that look like America. And I've never been prouder of that. And that's also true in missing America. I know for us we have an episode on Gilgo Beach. And I thought so much about what I'd heard his daughter say in a documentary about how he didn't see the women he'd killed as people or as human.
And I took a moment and I think it's in our show of where I sat and went through because I researched everything I could find about all of the people who were killed beyond what they'd done for work, beyond the way that they died. And usually I'm so good at not crying in stories. And I think my voice cracked where I choked up even reading it. But just going through and focusing on one of those people where it was like her family she'd grown up in North Carolina and around the time of her funeral there'd been stuff that I'd read about where one of the pastors who, them and her funeral, had talked about how even when she didn't have a lot one of the things she loved was giving gifts, especially to her nieces and around Christmas time. And how that was her favorite time because even when she didn't have enough she would always want to find ways to give them gifts and to take care of the people around her.
And having moments and stories and that's something that I've always loved watching Dateline as a viewer is that I feel like I usually walk away appearing snippets of who that person was and remembering that. And I think also for us it's like I love when people send story tips and ideas. I have a running list that I've started of people as they've started watching and being like, hey, what about this case? What about this case? And I'm collecting and saving in a Google document because all of the stories.
It's like I'm going to tell all of them. And constantly for me every time I hear a story I tend to see and read things about people who have lost their lives and just think I wish I had the opportunity to meet them and wanting to know who they are beyond this horrible thing that happened to them. And I think that is what's so true about the true crime community. It's like most people are coming from that place of really caring and caring about people. And I think constantly how much I see that care in your reports on Dateline.
And even in the podcast all the ones that you've done on Missing America, like Daniel Robinson who went missing at the five year anniversary of him going missing, right? He was working on a geology side and going missing. And I know you covered that extensively. I'm going to take a quick quick story. Yeah.
That's a great question. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Hi.
My name is Emily. I have a more of a journalism related question. I'm a little picky about my true crime. And one thing that I think Dateline does really well is by the end of the episode they answer all the questions that I had. And I get very frustrated in other shows.
I'm like, oh my gosh, why didn't we talk about this? You should not watch this other show. But I was just wondering the process that your production, you and your production team take, like I think this must be thoughtful that you're anticipating the questions the audience has and kind of what does that process look like? Well, first of all, I'm doing the interviews. I'm trying to ask the questions that you would want me to ask, right?
I mean, the question sort of naturally comes up at that time. So I'm thinking about that. But then once we've sort of written it, even before it's all been sort of cut together, we're sort of looking at, you know, sort of what are the loose ends here. And after time goes by, like you realize there are certain questions that the audience is always going to have. Like, what happened to this couple's children?
Like he's dead, she's locked up or the other way around. So where are they and who's raising them? Frequently, if there was any kind of pet involved, we want to know what happened. That's a regular thing. But also, they're going to want to know what the stage of this person's appeals are.
So we know we know to put that in. So we're reading it. We're reading through the script. We're going through it for fact-checking reasons to make sure that like all the dates and charges and people's titles, you know, we're checking all of that. And then we're also checking to make sure that we don't raise sort of loose ends in the storytelling that don't get paid off.
Because, you know, if we say she was just starting a business called this, like, if we say that, we're going to have to say her partner took over the business and still running it, or the business went away. But we can't just bring it up and then let it drop. So yeah, we do pay a lot of attention to that. You guys set yourselves apart in that department. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for talking Dateline.
Not this episode, but most episodes on Peacock or on YouTube. Or you can subscribe, hit hand in hand, to the NBC News app. Thanks for listening. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.