If you ask Bright Sighted Media founder Christine O’Donnell where the idea for her new podcast, The Good Stuff, came from, she’ll probably tell you a story about watching her husband, NewsChannel 13 anchor Steve Kuzj, on TV with her two kids.
“My husband works for the news, and I often want to turn on the news so the kids can see him,” she says in a promo video for the new show. “But almost every time I turn it on, I have to turn it off. There are a lot of things on there that I don’t always want my kids to see, but I do want them to know what’s going on in their community and I want them to be excited about getting involved.”
So, O’Donnell, a former news reporter turned podcast producer, decided to take matters into her own hands and make a show that her kids could watch—one that celebrates all the “good stuff” in our community, rather than harps on the negativity often depicted in traditional news coverage. To do that, she teamed up with Spencer Sherry of Saratoga Arts, and launched the series at the opening of Saratoga Arts’ High School All Stars Exhibition last weekend.
“It’s exciting to have a different platform to get our city better acquainted with its artists,” says Sherry, who will host the episodes of The Good Stuff that specifically deal in the arts world. (O’Donnell, who’s typically behind the camera, will host the others.) “I’m always looking for new ways to connect people and to knit our community a little tighter. Plus, if you know me, you know I’ll take any excuse to meet more people and make more friends.”
At the High School All Stars Exhibition opening, O’Donnell and Sherry interviewed several students about their work; in addition to a main interview, each episode of the show will feature a short segment about a student doing “good stuff.”
While The Good Stuff is, by nature, light-hearted (the first episode features the rappers responsible for the viral “Take Me Down to Stewy’s” music video), it was born out of especially dark period of O’Donnell’s life. On a recent Thursday morning at Walt Cafe, rather than tell me the press-release version of The Good Stuff‘s origin story, O’Donnell decided to start at the beginning.
Last March, when the future of Bright Sighted was looking, well, bright, O’Donnell got a call that changed everything. Her brother, Ryan, had taken his own life.
In an effort to process the loss and figure out where she fit into a world in which Ryan didn’t exist, O’Donnell turned to what she knew: creating content. She made a Substack, where she wrote down the thoughts that seemed too dark to say out loud. She made a secret Instagram account with no followers to do the same. But she had a harder time producing content for others.
“When you’re producing a podcast, at least the way we do at Bright Sighted, you really get to know the intimate details of someone else’s life,” she says. “I get very closely involved with all the people I work work. And I was like, I don’t think I have the space for that. My brain is tapped out, and I really only have room for me. So what does that look like if I’m not producing?”
O’Donnell took the month of August off in an effort to process her grief. “While I was on that break,” she says, “I started reevaluating our goals at the company, where I wanted to go, and who am I with or without this company.” She returned with a new gig as an adjunct professor in Skidmore College’s film department, and a new mindset: “I can do anything. Every day is a new possibility.”
It was then that The Good Stuff was born.
“It’s really important for my own mental health to talk about the good that people are doing,” O’Donnell says. “This is a real departure from my experience in TV news. I was an investigative crime reporter in LA. I covered Sandy Hook. I covered the San Bernardino terror attack. I was live on the scene. I know that ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ But, like, what if it doesn’t have to?”
Beginning January 20, The Good Stuff will release episodes every other Tuesday on both YouTube and Apple Podcasts. On the schedule? Interviews with Glenn Barret, the recently retired police officer who started Saratoga’s mounted officer program, and Mary Jane Hansen, who wrote the play The Baker Street Adventuress: Sherlock Holmes On Air, which recently premiered in Saratoga. All future subjects will either be nominated (email thegoodstuff@brightsighted.com to nominate someone) or be recipients of Saratoga Arts grants.
The road to healing is a long one, and for O’Donnell, it’s far from over. But if she can make herself smile—and maybe even make a few other people smile in the process—The Good Stuff will have been worth it.
“What I believe at this point is that podcasting can be a form of connection that really does help your mental health and overall happiness,” she says. “I don’t know—I just need more happy. I’ve had a lot of sad, and I’m over it.”
