This edition of The Neil Haley Show opens with a Celebrity Interviews simulcast from the grotto and actor Nathan Gamble, whose new faith-based comedy Bad Counselors reaches theaters this week. Gamble described a career that ran the classic actor's arc in reverse. His second-ever audition landed him the role of Brad Pitt's son in Babel, a Best Picture nominee, at just seven years old, and steady work followed in The Mist, Marley & Me, The Dark Knight, and both Dolphin Tale films. He explained to Neil, himself a former professional wrestler, how completely his identity fused with the work, so that a stretch without booking left him feeling not like Nathan between jobs but Nathan the failed actor. By nineteen he was living alone in Los Angeles, isolated and at his lowest point, until a series of phone calls from the dean of a Ventura Bible college drew him to visit. The peace and joy he saw in those students, none of whom had the career he prized, unsettled and eventually changed him, and he stepped away from Hollywood for seven years. Gamble framed that stretch through the image of getting the Egypt out of your heart rather than merely leaving Egypt, using the time to loosen his ego's grip on acting until he could say honestly that he would be fine if he never acted again. He worked a long list of ordinary jobs, from newspaper writing to drywall and landscaping to teaching, and found real fulfillment in the conviction that his calling was larger than his career. When he returned, it was not to chase only faith-based films but to be a presence on any set, and he pointed to Kevin Sorbo, alongside whom he has filmed and whose son Braeden Neil has interviewed, as a model of an actor who works constantly without being boxed in. On Bad Counselors, directed by Chris Dowling, Gamble plays Dallas, the youth pastor who senses that two frat brothers posing as camp counselors to work off community service are frauds. He praised a cast that includes Matt Cornett, Ramon Reed, Brec Bassinger, McKaley Miller, Chris Klein, and Missi Pyle, and previewed his co-created project Bible College and the coming film Miracle on the Precipice. Asked the show's signature question, he named loving God and loving people, and being the best husband to his wife Hannah, as the things that matter most. Neil then welcomed author, podcaster, and life coach Jayson Blair for a Criminally Good with Sherrie and Jen simulcast, presented by Storehouse Media Group. Blair spoke candidly about the 2003 New York Times fabrication and plagiarism scandal that ended his journalism career, a bipolar diagnosis that followed, and the long road through the mental health field as a volunteer, clinician, and coach. That work, and a colleague's persistence, led to his podcast The Silver Linings Handbook, named for the film he loves and for his belief that hard-won lessons come through suffering. Blair described interviewing not as a checklist but as following where a guest's heart pulls, building trust so people can be vulnerable, and leaving in the pauses because a silence can reveal more than words. He reframed true crime as human stories about shared suffering, recalling Jill Harrington turning unfathomable loss into something like clay you can build with, and argued that true crime is less a gateway to sensationalism than a gateway to helping. He discussed his memoir Burning Down My Master's House, his Substacks The True Crime Times and The Center Holds, and his conviction that no one should be forgotten in a second death. The hour closes with a GildaGram simulcast where co-host Dr. Gilda Carle, author of Real Men Don't Go Woke, weighs how to handle online negativity and shares that six European countries are pulling tablets from classrooms and returning to printed books, citing drops in reading, memory, and concentration. Find Bad Counselors in theaters now, and Jayson Blair at silverliningshandbook.com.
