The Losers' Club: A Stephen King Podcast

Half a decade after it was first announced, the Losers finally review Daub's Lot.

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All good things come to an end... even our coverage of Audience Network's Mr. Mercedes.

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Stephen King is no stranger to murderous cars. From Christine and From a Buick 8 to the malevolent Goblin truck haunting the roads of Maximum Overdrive, the master of horror knows his way around gory gear shifts, sinister steering wheels, and dangerous drivers. In 2014, he released Mr. Mercedes, a crime novel pitting Bill Hodges, a retired detective, against Brady Hartsfield, a criminal mastermind disguised as the ice cream man. Both survive the novel’s explosive conclusion, though Brady is left in a vegetative state. After a brief detour into the world of rare publications with the 2015 sequel Finders Keepers, King catches up with the disabled criminal and his newfound psychic powers. End of Watch sees Hodges once again match wits with his old nemesis aided by partners Holly and Jerome. 

Hosts Randall Colburn, Jenn Adams, Rachel Reeves, and Ashley Casseday hop back into the blood-soaked Mercedes to conclude their coverage of this confounding trilogy. They’ll discuss King’s swerve into supernatural territory while puzzling over the story’s bizarre tech. Does this 2016 novel elevate the trilogy as a whole? How does King handle the story’s suicide themes? Does Jerome have any flaws and what’s up with all the Zs? The Losers reach the end of the road as they say goodbye to one of King’s most autobiographical characters

In case you missed it, they recently covered Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers within the last few months. Be sure to stream those episodes before you dive into this one.

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Here's a spooky Friday the 13th treat: Randall and Mel’s Halloween Hell, the Losers’ Club's Patreon-exclusive annual series in which Randall and Mel watch a horror movie every day in October and talk about it. They'll be back with a fourth iteration this year, but to whet your appetite, they're unlocking last year's third entry which saw the two Losers joined by fellow co-hosts Dan Caffrey and Justin Gerber. Across a marathon four hours, the gang lose their marbles while discussing more than 100 movies. 

That includes 20 new releases, such as Saw X, When Evil Lurks, The Exorcist: Believer, VHS 85, Totally Killer, and many more. (Don't worry, we don't spoil anything released this year.) They also chat about pre-Hays Code nastiness, the benefits of casting real sickos in your movies, Caff's bizarre hatred of Ernest, and literally all things Ghoulies. (Seriously, we spend an ungodly amount of time talking about Ghoulies.)

Enjoy this ride and join The Barrens -- patreon.com/thebarrens -- for earlier installments and this year's coming fourth go-around.

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It took a few years, but we finally got a first trailer for Gary Dauberman's 'Salem's Lot. Naturally, the Losers have thoughts. Behold, a mini episode. Bite-size, if you will.

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There are 20 stories in Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. In the second of two episodes dedicated to the 2015 collection, Losers Dan Caffrey, Jenn Adams, Michael Roffman, and Dan Pfleegor rank their 10 favorites. Don't miss the first part of our series from last week in which they rank the bottom 10.

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There are 20 stories in Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. In the first of two episodes dedicated to the 2015 collection, Losers Dan Caffrey, Jenn Adams, Michael Roffman, and Dan Pfleegor rank all 20 tales, starting at the bottom. These aren't necessarily their least favorite. They're just ranked as such. Stay tuned next week for the concluding coverage with the top 10.

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Constant Listeners, yes, we originally planned to drop our Bazaar of Bad Dreams coverage this week. However, given Sai King’s renewed interest in Hearts in Suspension, we opted to unlock our coverage of the collection from The Stephen King Archives.

For those not in the know, The Stephen King Archives is our Patreon exclusive imprint in which your Losers search the vault of Stephen King material – dusting off unpublished short stories, long-forgotten interviews, coffee-stained manuscripts, and alternate versions of your favorite tales.

This particular entry was recorded in December 2021 - in conjunction with our Hearts in Atlantis coverage - - and sees us discussing Hearts in Suspension in full.

Published in 2016 and edited by King's longtime mentor Jim Bishop, the book features an original essay by King entitled "Five to One, One in Five", four installments of "King's Garbage Truck", a reprint of King's novella "Hearts in Atlantis", 12 essays by fellow students and friends from King's college days, and a gallery of period-specific photographs and documents.

We time travel back to UMO and talk about it all. 

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Today we're unlocking our very first episode of CrichtonCast, our Michael Crichton spinoff podcast exclusive to The Barrens. In this installment, host Randall Colburn is joined by Losers Dan Caffrey and Justin Gerber to discuss The Andromeda Strain, the crunchy, science-forward supernatural virus story that propelled Crichton, then a Harvard Medical graduate in his mid-20s, into literary stardom. 

Together they weigh in on Crichton's early life, the book's origins, its clever use of verisimilitude, intellectual distrust, the charms of Robert Wise's ultra-faithful 1971 adaptation, and the ways in which it dovetails with King's own pandemic tale, The Stand. 

Want more? Get episodes on Sphere and Jurassic Park in The Barrens: patreon.com/thebarrens.

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In this deep dive into the second season of Audience Network's Mr. Mercedes, Randall Colburn, Justin Gerber, and Dan Pfleegor gather to discuss why the series jumped ahead to End of Watch over Finders Keepers. They also wrestle with its efforts to find drama in holding patterns and touch on the season’s shocking ending, a wild deviation from the source material. 

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