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Weekly Fun Fact: Your Garden Is Listening
Did you know …
Earthworms are gardening gold. A single acre of healthy soil can contain more than a million earthworms, each one aerating the ground and turning organic matter into nutrients as it moves.
Plants can hear themselves being eaten. Research has shown that plants respond to the sound of caterpillars chewing on their leaves by producing more defensive chemicals — even when the chewing sound is just a recording.
The oldest potted plant in the world is over 240 years old. A Eastern Cape cycad has been living in a pot at Kew Gardens in London since 1775.
Talking to your plants actually helps. The Royal Horticultural Society ran a study and found that plants grow faster when spoken to — and that women’s voices produced slightly better results than men’s. No one is entirely sure why.
Carrots were originally purple. The orange carrot we know today was developed by Dutch growers in the 17th century, reportedly as a tribute to the Dutch Royal House of Orange. Before that, carrots came in purple, white, and yellow.
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Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Night Flight to Murder Town – A Marshall James Thriller (Chapters 31 – 33)
Night Flight to Murder Town — Chapters 31, 32 & 33
Marshall is in full survival mode. With a murdered man and a ransacked apartment behind him, he recruits his unlikely new ally Colin for a reconnaissance mission to Trent Stoffer’s Upper East Side building. What they find — or rather, don’t find — turns everything upside down. The apartment is spotless, the bedroom pristine, and Trent, according to a very helpful man named Dennis, is alive and well in Hong Kong. The body is gone, the evidence is gone, and Marshall is left looking like a man who has lost his grip on reality.
Meanwhile, in a complete change of pace, Marshall and Boo enjoy a sun-drenched afternoon in New Hope, Pennsylvania — ice cream, Main Street, and the Bucks County Playhouse — before Boo reveals the dark history of Passion House, the B&B where they’re staying. A housekeeper. A famous writer. A canal. And a locked storage room upstairs that no one talks about.
Back in 1992 New York, the mystery deepens. Dennis’s too-smooth performance and the suspiciously immaculate crime scene tell Marshall exactly one thing: everyone is in on it. The doorman, the super, and whoever cleaned up that bedroom with professional efficiency. The only lead left is a computer disk Trent slipped him — and finding a computer to read it on.
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True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
Narration provided by WondervoxShe killed her husband with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule — then wrote a children’s book about grief. On May 13, 2026, the same day that would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday, a Utah judge sentenced Kouri Richins to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In this episode of True Crime Tuesdays, Mark McNease walks you through one of the most chilling cases in recent memory — a tale of debt, deception, a secret affair, and a calculated murder hiding in plain sight behind the cover of a children’s book. From the first failed attempt on Valentine’s Day to the fatal Moscow Mule, from the internet searches about lethal doses to the jury that deliberated less than three hours — this is a story that is almost too dark to be believed.
True Crime Tuesdays is a Fearsome Fiction feature. New episodes every Tuesday.
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New Your Write Path Promotional Video
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The Twist Podcast 328: Lincoln Memorial Kiddie Pool, Praise for Penzeys, and What Bugs Us This Week
On further reflection, this week Mark and Rick do cannonballs into Trump’s giant kiddie pool, sing the praises of Penzeys super-progressive spice empire, and sound off on what bugs us this week.
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Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Night Flight to Murder Town – A Marshall James Thriller (Chapters 28 – 30)
In these three chapters of Night Flight to Murder Town, Marshall James finds himself waking up on the couch of Colin Griffin — a sharp-witted escort who becomes his unlikely confidant — and paying the price of admission: the truth. Marshall lays out his history, from his Hollywood past to the body he found that morning, and Colin listens without calling the police. Meanwhile, in a counterpoint chapter set in the present, Marshall and his partner Boo enjoy a deceptively quiet afternoon in Lambertville and New Hope — a brief, tender interlude that feels worlds away from what’s unfolding in New York City.
Back in the past, the stakes suddenly escalate. A breaking news report out of Manhattan reveals that Senator Daniel Roth — the powerful man Trent Stoffer had been secretly involved with — has fallen twelve stories to his death from his apartment near the United Nations. With his old flame dead and a senator now gone, Marshall grows convinced that his presence in New York is no accident. He’s been here before — marked as a patsy, caught in someone else’s design. And so he does what Marshall James always does: he heads straight for the scene of the crime.
