Podcast Categories: 200+ Ranking

A strange phone call reveals a question from the grave – was The Godfather of Soul murdered? Almost 40 years ago, a songwriter found herself in musician James Brown’s inner circle. The relationship would nearly destroy her career. Decades later, she’s trying to solve the mystery of James Brown’s death…and her own life. When she makes a call to CNN reporter Thomas Lake, the two stumble into a world of secrets, intimidation, and suspected foul play. 

It was a January afternoon in 1981 when a man’s German Shepherd came upon a grisly discovery in the woods outside of Houston: the badly decomposed remains of a young man, beaten to death, and a woman, who was strangled. For 40 years, the victims were nameless – until late 2021, when a team of genetic genealogists identified the pair as 21-year-old Harold Dean Clouse and 17-year-old Tina Gail Clouse, a married couple who had moved from Florida to Texas with their infant daughter. But the discovery of the identities only deepened the mystery: who killed the couple and why? And where is their daughter, Holly, who would be 42 years old if alive today? 

In this multi-part true crime podcast, host Cristina Corbin travels across the country to interview law enforcement and family members, uncover new leads and speak exclusively with a religious cult at the center of this double murder mystery. The first reporter to obtain the entire police case file, including autopsy reports and crime scene photos, Corbin exposes stunning details that move this decades-old case forward.  

Talk to Me tells the inside story of how the field of hostage negotiations was created. In the wake of major 1970’s tragedies such as the Attica prison riot and the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the NYPD realized there was an urgent need to develop a system for handling hostage incidents. With news archives and first-hand accounts from hostage team founders Frank Bolz and Harvey Schlossberg, we bring to life cases large and small to explore what worked—and what didn’t. The world’s first hostage negotiation team pioneered the use of psychology in saving lives and created a model that is still used around the world today. The series is written and narrated by Edward Conlon, a veteran South Bronx detective and New York Times bestselling author.

An XG Productions Series.