The Waltons' Judy Norton, Investigator Melissa Sandberg, and AI Entrepreneur Arturo Del Rio Jr.

This edition of The Neil Haley Show opens with a Celebrity Interviews simulcast live from the grotto, co-hosted by Greg Hanna, welcoming actor and singer Judy Norton, who played Mary Ellen on the beloved series The Waltons. Norton reflected on a childhood that turned play-acting into a career, crediting creator Earl Hamner and a cast and crew stocked with golden-age Hollywood veterans for a show that has stayed relevant more than fifty years later, even though CBS initially expected it to fail. She recalled how the network, under pressure to add family programming, greenlit The Waltons half expecting it to flop, only for the show to climb from the bottom of the ratings to the top over its first season. She spoke about the craft she absorbed as a young actor, the continuity and technical demands of film work that she now shares with fans, and her belief that experience and older performers, especially older women, deserve more opportunity than the industry tends to offer. Beyond acting, Norton traced her lifelong love of singing, from early stage fright at sixteen to studying voice and recording her own CDs. She described her current chapter as a freelancer, running a popular YouTube channel that goes behind the scenes of The Waltons and answers fan questions, releasing a short film called Space Limbo, and developing a pilot she is preparing to pitch. Her guiding lesson, she said, is to keep moving forward and find a way over, around, or through every no. Find her at judynorton.com.Neil then hosted a Criminally Good with Sherrie and Jen simulcast, presented by Storehouse Media Group, featuring Melissa Sandberg, host of the Dog With a Bone podcast. A self-described civil investigator rather than a police officer or private eye, Sandberg takes on overlooked, low-profile cold cases, unsolved homicides and undetermined deaths that draw little media attention, to give victims and their families a voice, affectionately calling her listeners the Dog Pound. She traced an unlikely path from a childhood love of solving mysteries and true-crime books, through two decades in hospice care, to the investigative work that became her passion, and explained that not being in law enforcement makes people more comfortable opening up to her. She shared a chilling reminder to trust one's instincts, recounting how, while gathering information on one case, she unknowingly crossed paths with a man later charged in a young woman's death. Sandberg said several of her cases have recently seen movement toward long-awaited answers, and that her mission is simply to keep pushing until families get them.The hour closes with a Storehouse Media Group simulcast, with Neil presenting, featuring Arturo Del Rio Jr., founder of Lakeside Growth and its Stack Growth platform, on artificial intelligence and automation. A serial founder on his third AI company in a decade, with earlier work spanning fraud detection and international consulting, Del Rio argued that as impressive as AI is, it is the humans running the machines who matter most. He cautioned that the costliest mistake is setting up an automated system and trusting AI to run it unchecked, citing a competitor whose unsupervised tool once posted an approving comment on a deeply disturbing piece of content, a stark illustration of why human oversight is essential. He explained that general chatbots and purpose-built automation are different tools, that large language models tend toward average, middle-of-the-road output and can lose the thread of a long conversation once it runs long, and that expecting one system to do everything is a recipe for failure. Success, he said, comes from matching the right tool to each task, paying for the quality you need, and keeping a knowledgeable person in the loop. Find Judy Norton at judynorton.com and Melissa Sandberg's Dog With a Bone wherever you get podcasts.