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Mysterious Goings On with Alex Greenwood episodes
- Revenge Is a Casserole Best Served Hot with Carla Young
A widow, a therapist's homework assignment and a spider named Hilda. Author Carla Young joins Alex to talk about Dear Dead Husband, the casserole as both love language and weapon, the platitudes grieving people actually get handed on the porch, and the household spider behind a word Kirkus Reviews wasn't sure about.
Earmuffs for the opening line. Listen in!
LINKS
Carla Young: https://carlayoungauthor.com/
Public Lending Right: the Canadian program Carla mentions that pays authors when their books are in libraries. https://publiclendingright.ca/
Libby: the free library app Carla recommends for requesting her books (and any author's). Ask your library to bring a title in, and it counts as a vote. https://libbyapp.com
All the Time in the World by Robert Lee Hill: 84 poems from Caroline Street Press. https://amzn.to/47t9RGM
Caroline Street Press on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarolineStreetPress
Alex's earlier conversation with Dr. Cory J. Wicker, "Taking the Avenue of Hope": https://mgopod.com/f/taking-the-avenue-of-hope-with-dr-cory-j-wicker
THE HALLOWEEN VAULT IS OPEN
Our usually paywalled Halloween material is free for a limited time: an hour of chilling stories, the Halloween filmstrip that started it all, horror movie watchalongs and more. https://mgopod.com/f/the-halloween-vault-is-open
ABOUT THE SHOW
Mysterious Goings On is celebrating its 11th year of author interviews, craft talk, and the occasional trip somewhere you legally can't go. New episodes drop weekly — subscribe wherever you listen, and catch the video extras at All the Fits That's News.
CONNECT with ALEX:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations: Speaking & Media FAQ
Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
1 hr - Taking the Avenue of Hope with Dr. Cory J. Wicker
Dr. Cory J. Wicker is a Baton Rouge native, a first-generation college graduate and a human capital development PhD with peer-reviewed work behind him. He is also a vinyl collector, a lifelong introvert and, as of this fall, a debut author.
Avenue of Hope: A Devotional Journey Through Life's Unexpected Turns follows five seasons of Cory's life, including the 2016 Baton Rouge flood, the death of his brother and a move to Missouri he describes as divine redirection. Each chapter pairs the story with scripture, reflection and questions for the reader.
Cory and Alex met at work, and Alex was one of the first people he told about the idea for writing the book. Cory talks about a dream that started it, why he wrote the book away from home and what it costs a private man to put his own life on the page.
Listen to the end for a chance to win an autographed copy or a discounted ebook!
Watch the video version here: https://alex715.substack.com/p/taking-the-avenue-of-hope-with-dr
GIVEAWAY AND LAUNCH
Cory is giving away an autographed paperback of "Avenue of Hope." To enter, email [email protected] (Cory, no "e") by end of day Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026; the drawing is that day.
Emailing counts as consent to join his launch list. Anyone who emails by the deadline also gets a one-time discounted price on the Kindle edition.
The official launch is Oct. 27, 2026. Find the book and more about Cory at drcoryjwicker.com.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Mysterious Goings On is celebrating its 11th year of author interviews, craft talk, and the occasional trip somewhere you legally can't go. New episodes drop weekly — subscribe wherever you listen, and catch the video extras at All the Fits That's News.
CONNECT with ALEX:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations: Speaking & Media FAQ
Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
54 min - Death by Snails and the Heart of a Movie with Lucas Hardwick
What makes a movie work—even when it seemingly shouldn’t?Film critic, screenwriter and returning Mysterious Goings On favorite Lucas Hardwick joins Alex Greenwood to discuss his debut book, Death by Snails, Volume 2: How to Watch Anything Through the Art and Majesty of Film Criticism.
A finalist for the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Book, Death by Snails collects five years of Lucas’ writing on more than 100 films, ranging from Apocalypse Now, The Birds and American Psycho to forgotten drive-in curiosities and deep cuts you may never have encountered.
Lucas explains why he avoids plot recaps and hunts instead for a film’s “heart of gold”—the idea, choice or bit of subtext that makes the whole thing tick.
He and Alex also tumble down several cinematic rabbit holes, including:
• What Bugs Bunny has to do with American Psycho• Why Apocalypse Now may be about the one man actually getting the job done• The influence of Joe Bob Briggs• John Waters, Lloyd Kaufman and the beauty of cinematic garbage• Why Volume 2 exists even though there is no Volume 1• The exhaustion of franchise filmmaking• Whether analyzing a favorite movie can ruin it• Lucas’ movie recommendations • His forthcoming fiction about art forgery, artificial humans, provenance and identity• Why Star Trek Generations may deserve an MGO watch-along
If you love film writing that is intelligent, funny and accessible—or enjoy discovering something worthwhile in movies other people dismiss—Lucas may change how you watch.
FIND LUCAS AND HIS WORK
Buy a signed copy of Death by Snails, Volume 2 directly from Lucas:https://lucashardwick.com/
Buy the book on Amazon:https://amzn.to/3T0ApeM
Read “In Soviet Russia, Carrot Eats You,” Lucas’ essay on The Thing from Another World:https://lucashardwick.com/f/in-soviet-russia-carrot-eats-you
Find Jackploitation, featuring Lucas’ essay on The Big Doll House:https://headpress.com/product/jacksploitation/
MORE MYSTERIOUS GOINGS ON
Get 25% off a paid subscription and receive early access to selected videos and other exclusives:https://alex715.substack.com/subscribe
Hear Alex’s conversations with movie legend George Stevens Jr.:
FIRST INTERVIEW
SECOND INTERVIEW
Follow Mysterious Goings On wherever you get your podcasts—and give yourself a little break from reality.
Missed recent interviews?
Catch Matty Dalrymple on helping indie authors own their readers, and Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian James M. Scott on Empire of Ashes: [link: Matty Dalrymple episode] [link: James M. Scott episode].
Mysterious Goings On is celebrating its 11th year of author interviews, craft talk, and the occasional trip somewhere you legally can't go. New episodes drop weekly — subscribe wherever you listen, and catch the video extras at All the Fits That's News.
CONNECT with ALEX:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations:Speaking & Media FAQ
Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
54 min - What Keeps Running When You're Not in the Room
Bob ran the invoices for twenty-two years. Then he retired on a Friday, and by Tuesday nobody could open the spreadsheet.
This week it's a solo episode: three essays from the Radical Competency lane of my Substack, All the Fits That's News, read back to back for the first time. On their own they're about a small business I ran for fourteen years, a guy named Bob and my first newsroom job on the obituary desk in 1991. Together they turn out to be the same story, told three ways: the operating instructions we write without noticing, and what keeps running after we've stopped paying attention or left the building for good.
In this episode:
You Teach People How to Treat You. How four years of answering client texts at midnight taught me more about human behavior than any business degree, and why the fortune-cookie version of that phrase does real damage.
Après Nous, le Déluge (aka The Bus Factor). Madame de Pompadour, knowledge hoarding and the difference between being valuable and being a countdown clock.
Spell the Name Right. One sentence in a file on a green screen at the Tulsa World, passed reporter to reporter for more than thirty years. The best argument I've got for what work is actually for.
Read the essays:
You Teach People How to Treat You
Après Nous, le Déluge
Spell the Name RightSubscribe to All the Fits That's News, free or paid. Paid subscribers get the video version of this episode well before the audio drops, with the photographs, art and clips that go with each piece. The audio is just my voice. The video is the whole show.
Missed the recent interviews? Catch Matty Dalrymple on helping indie authors own their readers, and Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian James M. Scott on Empire of Ashes:
[link: Matty Dalrymple episode]
[link: James M. Scott episode]Everything, always, at mgopod.com.
Mysterious Goings On is celebrating its 11th year of author interviews, craft talk, and the occasional trip somewhere you legally can't go. New episodes drop weekly — subscribe wherever you listen, and catch the video extras at All the Fits That's News.
CONNECT with ALEX:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations:
Speaking & Media FAQ
Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
23 min - James M. Scott on Empire of Ashes
The bomb ended the war in one sentence. The real story took five months and a president three weeks into the job.
Everybody thinks they know this ending: two cities, two bombs, one date, case closed. James M. Scott has spent twenty years proving otherwise.
He's a Pulitzer Prize finalist, New York Times bestseller, and the author of Black Snow, Rampage, Target Tokyo, The War Below, and The Attack on the Liberty (plus Targeted: Beirut, co-written with Jack Carr).
He teaches as scholar in residence at the Citadel, leads battlefield tours, and somehow still finds time to write books that make eighty-year-old history feel like it happened last Tuesday.
His latest, Empire of Ashes (W. W. Norton), picks up where his last book, Black Snow, left off — and goes looking for the part of the story everybody skips.
Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was March 9, 1945: the single deadliest air raid of World War II, deadlier than Dresden by a factor of four, and somehow the raid history forgot. Scott explains why Japanese cities burned the way German cities never could, and how one Time magazine headline and some peer pressure from the British helped talk America into a new level of warfare.
We also cover:
Scott’s take on the “othering” argument for why the bombs got dropped — and what he found in Curtis LeMay’s and Leslie Groves’s own papers instead
How Scott tracked down survivor accounts from Hiroshima’s archive that had never been published in English, and what it’s like sitting in a survivor’s living room
Harry Truman’s letters home from the trenches of World War I, written decades before he’d need every bit of that experience to make the hardest decision of his presidency
What Oppenheimer got wrong about Truman’s personality (spoiler: the “crybaby” scene did some heavy lifting for the movie that the historical record doesn’t fully back up)
The end of Dad Books?
The Truman Presidential Library
Historic Missouri (chock full of Truman!)
This is also just a great conversation about how a career gets built by accident — Scott went to Japan in the '90s expecting a gap year and came home with a life's work, one classroom conversation about firebombing at a time.
WATCH the video edition — with archival photos from James M. Scott's own research, plus material from the Truman Presidential Library, Wikipedia, and other fair-use sources — is up now for paid supporters of Alex's Substack, All the Fits That's News.
Hearing about the Tokyo fire raids is one thing. Seeing the photographs while Scott talks about them is another. It will be up free soon, so subscribe NOW to see it NOW!
Find James M. Scott: JamesMScott.com — books, tours, and everything else.
Empire of Ashes is out now from W. W. Norton, wherever you buy books.
Mysterious Goings On is celebrating its 11th year of author interviews, craft talk, and the occasional trip somewhere you legally can't go. New episodes drop weekly — subscribe wherever you listen, and catch the video extras at All the Fits That's News.
CONNECT with ALEX:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations:
Speaking & Media FAQ
Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
46 min - How Matty Dalrymple Turned Substack Readers Into Beta Readers
What if readers paid to help you make your next novel better?
Author, podcaster and indie publishing advocate Matty Dalrymple returns to Mysterious Goings On to explain how she serialized her seventh Ann Kinnear suspense novel on Substack, releasing one chapter a day for six weeks to paying subscribers.
Matty walks Alex through the mechanics of the experiment: how she structured free and paid access, encouraged reader feedback, navigated Substack’s subscription quirks and used comments to fine-tune backstory, pacing and the mystery itself.
The resulting novel, (listen in for the cool title), sends Ann Kinnear aboard a cruise ship under an assumed identity to contact the spirit of a passenger who died during an earlier voyage. Naturally, the dead man has secrets to share.
Along the way, Matty and Alex discuss Substack versus Patreon and Kickstarter, turning real places into fictional settings, writing while on vacation and why every author can benefit from approaching publishing with an indie frame of mind.
Watch the full video interview exclusively on Alex Greenwood’s Substack, All the Fits That’s News.
Connect with Matty
Explore the original Ann Kinnear Book Seven serialization on Substack.
Find Matty Dalrymple at mattydalrymple.com, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The Indy Author
Visit TheIndyAuthor.com, watch on YouTube, subscribe on Substack or connect on Facebook. Listen to The Indy Author Podcast on all major podcast platforms.
From Expertise to Authority
Learn more at From Expertise to Authority, follow Matty on Substack, listen to the From Expertise to Authority podcast or watch on YouTube.
CONNECT with ALEX:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations:
Speaking & Media FAQ
Enjoy this episode? Please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, and don't forget to subscribe for more literary journeys! LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS
This Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
42 min - Everybody Wants a Piece of You
Everybody wants a piece of you. At some point, that stops feeling like flattery and starts feeling like a bill coming due.
This episode, Alex steps away from author interviews for essays on what happens when being good at something quietly turns into being available for anything.
One essay looks outward, at the moment a favor stops being a favor. The other looks inward, at what it costs to keep saying yes long after yes stopped being free.
Plus updates on speaking gigs, and a preview of what's coming to the show next. Coming soon: more author interviews!
CONNECT:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations:
Speaking & Media FAQ
Enjoy this episode? Please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, and don't forget to subscribe for more literary journeys! LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS
This Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
17 min - The Vocabulary Gap and the Best "No" I Ever Got
Two essays this week.
First: polysemy sounds like a skin condition, but it's why one word can mean several things without anyone getting confused. Usually. An essay about the word "asylum" and the lowest bar in public discourse.
Then, a serious publisher called my book proposal "true and valid and in our wheelhouse," and said no anyway. Why that rejection was worth more than most acceptances, and what it says about an industry courting authors who no longer need it.
Watch the video and subscribe (free or paid): https://alex715.substack.com
25% off a paid year: https://alex715.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=896a6242
Coming in August: more author interviews.
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations:
Speaking & Media FAQ
CONNECT:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Enjoy this episode? Please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, and don't forget to subscribe for more literary journeys! LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS
This Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
8 min - June Omnibus!
June is handing out lessons Alex didn’t expect.
Ever felt like a month was trying to teach you something? Tag someone who needs to hear this!
In his latest thoughts, Alex delves into three intriguing topics:
- A Civil War reunion that should never have happened.
- The quiet disappearance of the letter T in our speech.
- The powerful lessons from Anthony Bourdain about being aware of our surroundings.
These aren’t just random musings; they reflect our history, our language, and our lives.
Get on the bus, the Omnibus, and listen in!
- Become a paid subscriber. Paid support keeps this work sustainable and helps me devote the time and energy it deserves. If you’ve subscribed before, please consider re-subscribing under the new system and take advantage of this 25% offer.
- Spread the word. If a paid subscription isn’t right for you right now, you can still make a big difference by sharing posts with friends, on social media, or anywhere you think they’ll resonate.
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Celebrating 10 Years and hundreds of episodes! Alex needs a coffee. Or ten: Become a paid subscriber!
If you’ve enjoyed the essays and want to see more of them, here are two simple ways you can help:
👉 Join today and lock in 25% off your first year.
Your support—financial or otherwise—is what keeps this going. The best work is still ahead, and I’d love for you to be part of it. —Alex
CONNECT:
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Enjoy this episode? Please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, and don't forget to subscribe for more literary journeys! LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS
This Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
34 min - IN ONE FOUL SWOOP: The Surprisingly Logical Art of Getting It Wrong
This week, two essays about mondegreens and eggcorns—those moments when the brain mishears something or rewires a phrase to make it fit better. How we confidently get language wrong in ways that make perfect sense.
Featuring:
- "There's a Bathroom on the Right" — On misheard song lyrics and why the brain prefers coherence over accuracy
- "In One Foul Swoop" — On eggcorns, language evolution, and why getting it wrong is sometimes getting it better
- Become a paid subscriber. Paid support keeps this work sustainable and helps me devote the time and energy it deserves. If you’ve subscribed before, please consider re-subscribing under the new system and take advantage of this 25% offer.
- Spread the word. If a paid subscription isn’t right for you right now, you can still make a big difference by sharing posts with friends, on social media, or anywhere you think they’ll resonate.
- All the Fits That's News on Substack (Free or Paid)
- Alex's Author Website
- Buy a Book!
- Going to Killing City...Alex's True Crime Podcast
Book J. Alexander Greenwood for keynotes, panels, podcasts, and live conversations!
J. Alexander Greenwood speaks on work, writing, media, and the systems people navigate every day, drawing on real-world experience as a writer, communicator, and podcaster.
If you’re interested, you’ll find everything you need here: jalexandergreenwood.com.
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Celebrating 10 Years and hundreds of episodes! Alex needs a coffee. Or ten: Become a paid subscriber!
If you’ve enjoyed the essays and want to see more of them, here are two simple ways you can help:
👉 Join today and lock in 25% off your first year.
Your support—financial or otherwise—is what keeps this going. The best work is still ahead, and I’d love for you to be part of it. —Alex
CONNECT:
Enjoy this episode? Please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, and don't forget to subscribe for more literary journeys! LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS
This Mysterious Goings On Podcast episode was recorded and mixed at Green Shebeen Studios in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright 2026 all rights reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.
11 min
About Mysterious Goings On with Alex Greenwood
From the publisher's feed
Explore the world of creativity and writing with Mysterious Goings On with J. Alexander Greenwood. Named a 2022 Top 5 Literature Podcast by CrowdUltra and a "New & Noteworthy" show by Apple Podcasts in 2016, this show is a magnet for top-selling authors and creative minds.
Subscribe to embark on an enthralling journey through the world of creativity and literature. Website: https://mgopod.com/
Become a Paid Subscriber: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/j-alexander-greenwood/subscribe