Holiday dinners can be minefields. Your pretentious cousin won’t stop talking about her year abroad, your mom keeps asking when you plan to have kids, and your drunk uncle just spilled red wine all over the green bean casserole. Sometimes the tricks don’t end with Halloween and even the best sweet potato casserole can’t make up for the stress of listening to your dad go on yet another political rant. 

But Constant Readers may rest assured that no matter what horrors may lie under your granny’s covered casserole dish, they won’t be as bad as the terrible families lurking in King’s Dominion. From the Cunninghams to the Hartsfields, the master of horror seems to delight in showing us the dark secrets that lie within every hearth and home. 

This episode features a sour 16 of sinister clans each duking it out to be named the family you’d least like to visit for the holidays. It’s stiff competition, but thankfully your hosts Jenn Adams, Dan Caffrey, Rachel Reeves, and Julia Marchese are on hand to wade through the overturned tables and broken dishes. With a March Madness-style bracket, they’ll pit each family against each other till only one remains to claim the title of King’s Worst Family.

Note: This episode was recorded in November 2023 and is being unlocked ahead of Thanksgiving 2024.

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Losers Randall Colburn, Ashley Casseday, Michael Roffman, and Jenn Adams head to Hollywood King again to discuss the latest developments in King's Dominion, specifically Stephen King's next novel Never Flinch, Mike Flanagan's totally necessary remake of Carrie, a potential third Talisman novel, King's animated short Lily, and more.

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All the King's Men -- Michael Roffman, Dan Caffrey, Justin Gerber, and Dan Pfleegor -- assemble on Election Night to untie another big ol' Bag of Bones and answer your questions. Questions like "Who would you rather have run the country: Big Jim Rennie from UtD, Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone, or Buster Keeton from Needful Things?"; "Which King character would you want to share a slice of pound cake with the most?"; "What is the best moment or piece of writing that lives in a “bad” King book?"; "Design a Stephen King cocktail"; and more. Want to ask them a question on the next Bag of Bones episode? Become a patron at www.patreon.com/thebarrens.

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Bonus episode! The great Dee Wallace joins the Losers for a discussion on the making of Cujo. Note: This was recorded live at this past September's Creep I.E. Con and part of the beginning has been lost to the ether. Still, the majority of it remains intact!

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Today is All Saint's Day, so we thought: Why not celebrate the greatest saint of all? The St. Bernard! So, join the Losers as they remain in Castle Rock to discuss Lewis Teague's 1983 Stephen King adaptation, Cujo. Starring Dee Wallace, the film is world renown for being the de facto killer dog movie. But, it's much more than that as the Losers argue to reclaim the film as one of the great King adaptations. Listen on and stay tuned for our interview with Dee Wallace!

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The Losers turn the clock back half a century and return to Castle Rock for Stephen King and Richard Chizmar's 2017 collaboration Gwendy's Button Box. Together, they discuss the timeline of the book, the implications of the titular box, and the ways it may or may not dovetail with what we know of Mid-World. It'll take longer for you to finish this episode than to finish this book.

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Losers Michael Roffman, Randall Colburn, and Jenn Adams head to Hollywood King again to discuss the latest developments in King's Dominion, specifically the new trailer for The Monkey, JT Mollner's comments on The Long Walk, and new updates for The Institute, The Running Man, The Life of Chuck, and, yes, Fairy Tale. They also sort through some tweets, which ranges from Netflix recommends to Mark Hamill online friendships to Taylor Swift.

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Oops! All Tangents is a free-flowin' conversation exclusive to The Barrens that is based on a topic either topical or submitted by our patrons. Today, because we're nearly halfway through October, we're unlocking our recent Halloween edition. So, join Rockin' Randall, who keeps things creepy at the pumpkin patch with fellow Losers Jenn Adams, Julia Marchese, and Dan Caffrey as they talk all things Halloween.

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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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