The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud

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Who saw something in you before anyone else did? On “The Person Who Believed In Me” podcast, host David Begnaud asks artists, athletes, founders, and advocates this one powerful question. Their answers reveal the untold story behind success — the teacher, parent, or coach who changed everything for them. Often called “America’s Storyteller,” David is an award-winning journalist known for compassionate, human-first reporting. He shines a light on everyday people and quiet acts of kindness. Do Good Crew is the community behind the show — podcasts, live events, and weekly uplifting stories. New video episodes every Monday. Subscribe, and send an episode to the person who believed in you.

  1. 6d ago ·  Video

    James Brown | "Kids Like You Don't Do Math and Science"

    James Brown was in fourth grade when a teacher saw him reading a book called So You Want to Be a Doctor and told him he should consider another career. “Kids like you, she said, do not do well in math and science.” He never told his mother. He carried it alone, and it held him back for years. Then two middle school teachers in Washington, D.C., pulled him aside with a different message: honey, you can do this. Simple as that. Deep Southern care wrapped in belief he hadn't heard before. He started to think maybe he could. At 14 he was cut from one basketball team and kept by another coach who saw him miss an undefended layup in front of the whole school. The students laughed. The coach, Don Fugle, kept him anyway because he paid attention. A year later Morgan Wooten recruited him to DeMatha, handed him three sheets of fundamentals, and told him to pick one: all county, all state, or all America. James took the third sheet and worked it religiously. He became one of the best high school players in the country. He was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in 1973 and cut at the end of training camp. He went home and didn't leave his bedroom for two weeks. In this conversation with David Begnaud, he talks about the lie he told Morgan Wooten at basketball camp that spiraled into a Friday afternoon confrontation about integrity. About his mother calling the gym to say practice ran too late and if it happened again, JB couldn't play. About Senator Ted Kennedy flying him to Capitol Hill to pitch Harvard. And about leaving Fox for CBS on a handshake, turning down a counter offer because his mother taught him your word is your bond. James Brown is a three time Emmy Award winner, Pro Football Hall of Famer, and host of CBS's The NFL Today. He has hosted more Super Bowls than anyone in television history. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 Intro: The Coach Who Called Out the Lies 00:05:04 The Ray Rice Commentary and Speaking Truth 00:08:43 The Fourth Grade Teacher Who Said Kids Like You Don't Succeed 00:14:37 The Two Teachers Who Said You Can Do This 00:15:55 The White Shadow: The Coach Who Kept the Kid Who Couldn't Play 00:20:49 Morgan Wooten and the Three Sheets: The Roadmap to Excellence 00:37:40 Cut Twice: The NBA Dreams That Didn't Come True 00:47:49 The Lime Green Suit and the IBM Interview 00:52:10 The Answer Can Be Found in Love 00:53:49 Katrina, Alfreda, and Unconditional Love 01:00:22 The Bank Is Closed: Leaving Fox for CBS 01:17:52 We Got Them Right Where We Want Them: Down Six with 30 Seconds Left 01:20:53 Come Back in 10 Years: How Morgan Wooten Measured Success ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: James Brown Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Allison Childers, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

    James Brown | "Kids Like You Don't Do Math and Science"

  2. Oct 5 ·  Video

    Howie Mandel | "You Were Hysterical, Young Man"

    Howie Mandel got expelled from high school in Toronto for calling a contractor out of the Yellow Pages and asking for a 25-foot addition to the school library. He scheduled the appointment during math, because that classroom's window looked out on the field, and then — this is the part he finds most revealing about himself — he didn't tell a single other person. He sat alone watching a man with a clipboard and a tape measure, waiting for a joke nobody else knew was happening. He was thrown out of a different school for retrieving a bent Snickers bar from the swimming pool with his mouth. He has no diploma. By the early eighties he was a working comedian in Los Angeles, and the Tonight Show booker had told him flatly he'd never be on: not Johnny's cup of tea. So when he heard Joan Rivers — then guest-hosting for Carson and out-rating him — would be working out her monologue at the Comedy Store, he called Mitzi Shore and asked for the 9:55 spot, the five minutes directly before her. He woke up that day with a high fever. He went anyway, and the adrenaline carried him, and she passed him on the stairs and said he was so funny. Then she talked to Mitzi for forty-five minutes while he slid down the wall outside and lay on the steps waiting. When she finally came out, she gave him a phone number. He did the Tonight Show that week. McCauley called the next morning. He went on twenty-two more times with Johnny. In this conversation with David Begnaud, he talks about being diagnosed with OCD in his forties only because his wife gave him an ultimatum, and about accidentally disclosing it live on Howard Stern's show — convinced in the elevator down that his career was finished, until a stranger on the street whispered me too. He talks about the half hour he spent punching a locked doorknob in Malibu. About why he believes no one should ever apologize for a joke, and why he made an apology video anyway. And about what Joan gave him beyond the booking, which was permission not to care what the room thought. Howie Mandel is the longest running judge on America’s Got Talent, available to watch on NBC and Peacock now. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ Chapters 00:00:00 "The majority of the world does not have a sense of humor" 00:03:18 The Johnny Carson litmus test 00:04:40 Toronto, 1977: stand-up on a dare 00:06:42 The contractor and the school library 00:12:02 The Snickers bar in the pool 00:13:26 "I just wanted to have a group laugh" 00:17:02 Kelly Ripa and the apology video 00:20:38 Addicted to social media 00:26:30 The 9:55 PM spot and the fever 00:31:57 Lying on the stairs, waiting for Joan 00:33:00 The Tonight Show, twice in two weeks 00:36:30 Joan's last show and Chris Rock's 62 seconds 00:43:00 Nothing is too soon: laughing at his father's funeral 00:58:28 The Howard Stern disclosure, and a stranger who says "me too" ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Howie Mandel Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

    Howie Mandel | "You Were Hysterical, Young Man"

  3. Sep 28 ·  Video

    Marlee Matlin | Nobody Stood Up at the Oscars

    Marlee Matlin was twelve, performing at a children's theater for the deaf in Chicago, when Henry Winkler accepted an invitation to stop by on his day off. She performed the whole show at him. Afterward she walked up and asked whether she could be an actor in Hollywood, like he was. Before he could answer, her mother pulled him aside and asked him to dampen his enthusiasm — tell her to go to college, get an education, dream other dreams, because Hollywood was not going to be kind to a deaf girl. Winkler looked at her and said she was talking to the wrong man. Marlee didn't learn about that exchange for years. When she did, she says it broke her heart for her mother, who wanted what most mothers want. She also says Winkler rescued her from not believing in herself. They became pen pals, and every letter she sent, he answered — which is how she knew the friendship was real, and, she says, how she came to know she was worthy. A few years after that first meeting she won the Academy Award for Children of a Lesser God, at 21, the youngest woman ever to win Best Actress and the first deaf performer to win at all. She had learned about the nomination from a phone at a rehab center, where her counselor congratulated her and then told her to go clean her room. When the relationship that followed the Oscar collapsed, she turned up at Winkler's door with the statuette in her hand and told him she had this, but no boyfriend and nowhere to live. He and his wife Stacey said stay the weekend. She stayed two years. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Marlee talks about the year she presented the next Best Actor award and chose to speak the nominees' names aloud — a decision she made alone, to show producers she could, and one the deaf community read as a betrayal. She shut them out for fifteen years and says she still carries something like PTSD from it. She talks about what her parents never knew, and what she never told them. And about the tough love from Winkler that she resented at the time and now says was right, including the morning he told her that no, she could not skip an hour of work for her son's first day of kindergarten. Marlee Matlin is executive producer of the feature documentary, Siren: The Voices of Shelley Beattie, available now on HBO. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Marlee Matlin Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

    Marlee Matlin | Nobody Stood Up at the Oscars

  4. Sep 21 ·  Video

    Chris Olsen | "I Think My Therapist Hates Me"

    Chris Olsen has more than 14 million followers on TikTok. At 19 he spent close to a year in a rehab in Boca Raton — six months inpatient with three group sessions a day, then nine months of treatment while bussing tables at a restaurant next to the mall. The first assignment every new arrival got was to write down their ten most shameful secrets. He read his aloud, and the therapist turned to the room and asked whether anyone thought he'd been honest. He had to keep reading them, day after day, until he cried. Her name isn't Lizzie, and she didn't want her photo shown. She was the person he was most afraid of in the building, and he later named his memoir I Think My Therapist Hates Me after what he assumed she thought of him. What she told him years later was that she can usually tell from the start how a patient will do, that she didn't see it for him, and that she was harder on him than on others because she believed he could start over. He's still her patient. He only recently learned she was 26 at the time, following a philosophy her own elders insisted was the only thing standing between her patients and death. She's since left that center and opened a private practice, and the two of them now spend a good deal of time undoing what she taught him. It got him sober. It also locked in the idea that he owed the world a lifetime of making other people feel better — a complicated foundation for a career built on strangers' approval. In this conversation with David Begnaud, he talks about being 14 at a family weekend at his mother's rehab, told by a therapist to make her feel better while she cried in front of the room, and deciding in that chair to stop feeling. About scrolling past a thousand kind comments to find the cruel one, because that's the one that matches the story he was told about himself. And he arrives, mid-conversation, at something he hadn't put together before: that he and his mother each had a harder time with the other sober than drunk. Chris Olson's memoir, I Think My Therapist Hates Me, is available now. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Chris Olson Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

    Chris Olsen | "I Think My Therapist Hates Me"

  5. Sep 14 ·  Video

    Thomasin McKenzie | Anxiety and Jojo Rabbit

    Thomasin McKenzie grew up in a house in Wellington where everyone acted — her parents coached it, and her grandmother is one of New Zealand's most beloved actors. She'd watched her parents leave for work overseas often enough to know what the job cost, and when she graduated high school her grandmother was relieved she hadn't gone to drama school. Then at 13 she overheard her mother coaching other girls through an audition for a film called Consent, about a New Zealand woman who was raped by police officers as a teenager and not believed in court. Thomasin asked if she could try out. She got the role, and it changed what she thought acting was for. She chose her father, Stuart, as the person who believed in her — not for a piece of advice but for showing up. He was on set with her from the time she was six. What he said before auditions and exams alike was the same thing: enjoy the process. No pressure to win. He was living with her in Prague during Jojo Rabbit when a role she'd already seen herself in went to someone else, and he was there through years of anxiety severe enough that at 21 she couldn't attend her own film's premiere. He never made her feel bad about it. In this conversation with David Begnaud, she talks about what a panic attack actually feels like from the inside, and why it's nearly impossible to describe once it passes — like trying to define a temperature. She' also talks about walking away from Top Gun: Maverick for a smaller film about an unsolved murder case that has since been solved… about being told by a director to stop finding the hardship in every character and find the joy instead… and about moving to London at 22 specifically to stop leaning on her father so hard — which is how she came to see him as a person rather than someone who's supposed to have the answers. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Thomasin McKenzie Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Kylee Anderson, Maxim Trofimenko, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

    Thomasin McKenzie | Anxiety and Jojo Rabbit

  6. Sep 7 ·  Video

    Chelsea Handler | He Said He Was Coming Back

    Chelsea Handler was nine when her oldest brother Chet died — July 10th, in a hiking accident — and she came back to school in the fall to a town full of people asking if she was okay. She hated it. So she told everyone she'd been cast in a movie with Goldie Hawn. Kids started asking for autographs. She doubled down. She wrote to Goldie Hawn asking for a signed photo, and Goldie Hawn sent one. The lie eventually collapsed on its own, because there was no movie, and she says the humiliation of being found out was worse than the pity she'd been trying to escape. Her third-grade teacher, Carol Schectman, watched all of it happen. She could see that a family that had lost its firstborn had scattered into its own separate corners of grief, and that nobody was checking on the youngest of six. She'd drop by the house on a Tuesday night for no clear reason — Chelsea understood decades later that she was taking the temperature of the household. And she'd pull her aside and tell her she was special, without specifying what for. In this conversation with David Begnaud, Chelsea talks about the brother who carried her up the driveway pretending not to know she was faking sleep, and opened her bedroom window in winter because she liked the cold. About her father, who responded to the death by suing the friends Chet was hiking with, and who in her nine-year-old accounting disappeared along with him. About going to therapy at 40 and learning that what she'd felt at nine wasn't grief so much as betrayal because he'd said he was coming back. Thirty years passed and she assumed she'd never get to say thank you. Then a brief mention on Chelsea’s Netflix show led them to reconnect, giving them eight more years together. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Chelsea Handler Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Will Whitley (Statik Creative) Social: Kylee Anderson, Maxim Trofimenko, Gracie Pekrul Theme Music: Slipstream Post-Production: Longwave Digital & David & Luana Co. CONNECT WITH US: The Person Who Believed In Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/believedpodcast

    Chelsea Handler | He Said He Was Coming Back

  7. Aug 31 ·  Video

    Bozoma Saint John | Always the Outsider

    Bozoma Saint John was 12 when her family landed in Colorado Springs, where her classmates already had a picture of Africa: the child on the UNICEF magnet, flies and a distended belly, worth a penny a day. Her father held two PhDs. Her mother was a fashion designer. Nobody in that house took an American name. Bozoma was strong in math and science and Latin and was going to be a doctor — decided at 12, though she says she couldn't tell you where her parents' plan ended and her own wanting began. Then an eleventh-grade English teacher named Martha Wood assigned a creative writing exercise: describe yourself somewhere else, in the third person. Bozoma wrote it, and Mrs. Wood held the pages up and read them aloud — in a room of native speakers, some of whom had mocked her accent. The room went quiet. It was the first time anyone suggested she could be something other than what had been planned. She starts crying about it thirty seconds into this conversation. Two more people did that for her later. Spike Lee, whose phones she was answering at 23 when she gave him notes on the Bamboozled script — bad notes, she says now — and he slammed his door, and came out to say: you made some good notes, you can stay. And Ari Emanuel, the first boss who ever really saw her, who told her she wasn't Bose at Apple or Bose at Uber. She was just Bose. Did she have an agent? She also talks with David Begnaud about her husband, Peter. They were separated, after the death of their daughter Eve and the blame they'd started looking for in each other, when his cancer turned terminal. He asked her to set the divorce aside, then proposed again — sixty pounds lighter, in a jacket that no longer fit, with a Hostess cupcake instead of a wedding cake. She says yes is still the best one she's ever given.

    Bozoma Saint John | Always the Outsider

  8. Aug 24 ·  Video

    Tori Kelly | The Internet Made Her a Star

    Before Tori Kelly became a three-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter with a voice that can move stadiums, she was a 12-year-old girl walking into a record label office, wondering if anyone in the music industry would ever truly understand her. She had already been told no by Star Search, lost to David Archuleta, and learned early that being able to sing wasn't always enough. Then Polly Anthony, the first woman to run a major record label, signed her to Geffen Records and gave her something no one else had: the feeling that she didn't need to change a single thing. In this deeply personal and unguarded conversation, the artist behind hits like Nobody Love and the voice of Mina the Elephant sits down with David Begnaud to share the story of the woman who believed in her when she was just a shy girl who wanted to be heard. Tori opens up about meeting Polly at 12 years old, a warm and maternal executive who made her entire family feel welcome and never once suggested she needed to be more outgoing, more bubbly, or more like the Disney kids everyone kept comparing her to. She talks about losing on Star Search at 10, getting cut from American Idol before the top 24 after Simon Cowell called her voice almost annoying, and what it felt like when Polly left Geffen and a new executive stepped in who didn't share the same vision. She shares what it was like to ask her parents to leave the label at 13 because something just didn't feel right, spending years being told by other labels that they didn't know how to package her, and the gut feeling that told her to walk away even when everyone said a record deal was the only way to make it. There's also a raw reflection on reinvention, rejection, and what it means to build a career on your own terms. Tori talks about teaching herself guitar after American Idol, posting covers on YouTube from her childhood bedroom, and the Frank Ocean cover that drew tens of millions of views and proved she didn't need anyone's permission to connect with an audience. She opens up about walking into Capitol Records years later and telling executives I don't feel like I need you guys, but I would love to have a partnership, performing for Ed Sheeran's 80,000-person crowds while pregnant with her son Zayden, and why a 75-seat coffeehouse show where Scooter Braun couldn't even get in became the turning point that led to her Best New Artist Grammy nomination in 2016. She reflects on pivoting to gospel music and winning two Grammys for Hiding Place with Kirk Franklin, collapsing at dinner in downtown LA from blood clots in her legs and lungs and spending a week in the ICU, and returning to American Idol as a mentor to tell contestants that even if they don't win, their career can still be everything they dreamed of. She shares why becoming a mother gave her a peace she didn't know she was missing, why she still feels insecure explaining herself in words but can make you feel everything through a song, and why Polly Anthony's belief in a shy 12-year-old girl is the reason she's able to stand on stage today and sing exactly who she is. Get more stories that remind you the world is still good. Sign up for our free newsletter: https://www.thedogoodcrew.com Chapters ☀️ 00:00:00 Intro: The Executive Who Saw Her at 12 Years Old 00:04:22 Star Search, David Archuleta, and Losing Again 00:05:40 Will Anyone Understand Me? The Shy Girl Who Just Wanted to Sing 00:06:31 How Do We Package That? When the Industry Wanted to Change Her 00:12:40 When Polly Left: Everything Changes at 13 00:19:12 The Frank Ocean Cover That Changed Everything 00:23:29 Walking Into Capitol Records: I Don't Need You, But Let's Partner 00:28:11 Opening for Ed Sheeran While Pregnant 00:32:41 The 75-Seat Coffee House Where Scooter Braun Couldn't Get In 00:35:28 Best New Artist: The Grammy Nomination at Last 00:36:39 The Peace That Came with Motherhood: Success Redefined 00:40:53 Hiding Place with Kirk Franklin: Two Gospel Grammys 00:46:02 July 23, 2023: The Night She Collapsed in Downtown LA 00:48:26 Full Circle at Epic Records: Polly's Old Label 00:49:22 Returning to American Idol as a Mentor: What Am I Doing Here? 00:52:15 I Can Hide in My Music: The Insecurity She Still Carries ABOUT THIS PODCAST: The Person Who Believed In Me is hosted by David Begnaud, founder and CEO of Do Good Crew and often called "America's storyteller." In each episode, David sits down with world-class guests to ask one simple question: Who believed in you before the world did? Big names. Honest stories. Relatable takeaways. Different paths — same question. David is also a CBS News contributor and host of the weekly segment Beg Knows America, which airs every Monday morning. Host: David Begnaud Guest: Tori Kelly Executive Producer: David Begnaud, Olivier Delfosse, Justin McGoldrick Booker: Sully Bloch Director of Photography: Foster Parks Live Production Technician: Joseph Gabay & Will Whitley (Statik Creative)

    Tori Kelly | The Internet Made Her a Star
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Who saw something in you before anyone else did? On “The Person Who Believed In Me” podcast, host David Begnaud asks artists, athletes, founders, and advocates this one powerful question. Their answers reveal the untold story behind success — the teacher, parent, or coach who changed everything for them. Often called “America’s Storyteller,” David is an award-winning journalist known for compassionate, human-first reporting. He shines a light on everyday people and quiet acts of kindness. Do Good Crew is the community behind the show — podcasts, live events, and weekly uplifting stories. New video episodes every Monday. Subscribe, and send an episode to the person who believed in you.

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