The Daily Zeitgeist - Icon #12 - Stephen King: The REAL Lawnmower Man

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

In this episode, Jack and Miles are joined by poet/podcaster Chelsea Weber-Smith to talk about the king of horror novelists with the surname 'King': Stephen King! They'll explore his humble beginnings, his ultra-successful writing career, his not-so-successful use of slang and so much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969 Malcolm and Martin are gone America is in crisis and at a Morehouse college the students make their move These students including a young Samuel L. Jackson

locked up the members of the board of trustees including Martin Luther King's senior It's the true story of protest and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget I'm Hans Charles

I'm inalick Lamouber Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this spin-off episode of DER daily Zikeyes.

Stephen. Stephen. Stephen Keneven? For some reason, I kept having that go through my head. Which we're calling the iconograph. Instead of looking at the Zikeyes through current events, on Monday mornings, we are looking at the Zikeyes through the powerful pop culture horroxes that are our icons.

Icons. We use these icons to create meaning. Meaning. to build identity. To scare the shit out of ourselves at sleepovers. Shit! To learn that the proper way to welcome a new roommate is to stand outside their room on the first night, chanting, fresh fish, fresh fish, until they start crying.

And most importantly, they teach us that sometimes you black out and do irreparable damage to your life and your family. And sometimes you black out and write Kujo. that's right today we're talking about Stephen King I'm gonna say an especially appropriate subject for our show about the zeitgeist because I'd contend he has a better grasp of our cultural shared consciousness than maybe anyone or at least that's what he views his job as is we're working in the myth pool is what he calls it drinking from the myth pool

I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Hello, hello. Couldn't it be more different than maybe Tupac and that, God, bro. From Tupac to Stephen King. From Tupac's lips to Stephen King's eye glasses. We're all here. Stephen King's tiny coin slot like eyes. Dude, those are top.

He's got tiny deep eyes, the likes of which. Like a doll's eyes. Leg a dial his eyes. He's got Biden eyes. He's got Joseph Biden eyes. Where you, yeah, feel like you should be pushing coins into them. Miles,

I think we've gotten an especially appropriate guest. Thank God, because I don't know shit about Stephen King. A poet and podcaster, you can hear on the American hysteria podcast exploring, the fantastical thinking and irrational fears of Americans through the lens of moral panics, urban legends.

and conspiracy theories, please welcome the brilliant, the talented, Chelsea Weber Smith! Chelsea! I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled to be here, and, you know,

I love Stephen King, but I don't have, I didn't read the autobiography. I don't have that grasp on his life, so I'm just here to learn, and I'm so excited. I just know he's from Maine. Black people are like,

eh, on him, and... But he's such a fan of black people. Oh, I hear that. You guys have superpowers. As long as you've got some magical information to impart to the white people.

But I just know, but he's one of those people too that I always saw like the book on the rack at the grocery store. Like there would always be a Stephen King book. Like when they would sell books at the checkout at a grocery store. And then beyond that, it would always be me hearing about some movie like, oh, that's Stephen King?

Yeah. Exactly. That's that experience. That's also Stephen King? Because, like, my main interaction, I've read Carrie and, like, probably, I'd say, like, five Stephen King books just randomly, like, based on, oh, I needed a paperback while I was about to board a flight or something like that. So, you know, I think I've read The Mist, Carrie. I haven't read it. I've read, my favorite thing I've ever read by him was, like, a short story that wasn't even, like, supernatural or like a horror thing. It was, I think it was called like all that you leave behind or something. That was just like a great work.

Like, the guy can write. I'll tell you one thing. He's a great writer. It flows through him. Yeah, my main interaction with him was sleepover movies. And I didn't realize like all of the movies that I watched. All the like first probably 20 horror movies that I watched were written by him or like based on his work. It was crazy.

The lock that he had on. on just like that type of movie like movies for people between the ages I don't know if it was four people between the ages of eight to like 15 but that's who was watching them shits in the 80s that was like YouTube before YouTube or like have you seen it

I'm like no but I do just want to talk about this idea that he has he calls it mining the collective unconscious for what he calls pressure points, which are these like shared fears. And he's like, yeah, you know, you've got your obvious ones, like fear of spiders, fear of snakes that everyone knows about.

But I feel like one of his talents is he's really good at finding the less obvious ones. And in now all these years later, it seems obvious that clowns are fucking creepy as hell. But when he wrote it, the most popular spokesperson for the most. most famous brand in the United States was a clown Ronald McDonald. Ronald was like, was everywhere. Right. It was like the face of McDonald's.

And it's not that people weren't scared of clowns before he wrote it, but I don't think it was a mainstream understanding. Like people didn't know that people were scared of clowns in the way that like pop culture knows. Like he found that pressure point at a time. when they were like, a thing, a hospital for children? Let's do this clown.

Call it this terrifying clown. And I have to say, as a bit of an expert on killer clown, phantom clown panics, please listen to our episode of the history of how clowns became scary. But we do have John Wayne Gacy in the 70s. Right.

And so it was kind of a little jumping off point. Didn't help the clown. But yeah, it was like Bozo was the most popular. act in America. Everybody loved Bozo. Like, no kids were scared of Bozo. The Clown was on TV in syndication when I was a kid.

Like into the late 80s, early 90s. Like, I remember, I think it was WGN, like the Chicago local TV that we all got like everywhere in America for some reason. Yeah. That was like an after school thing where Bozo the Clown would have a kid try and throw a ping pong ball into a popcorn bucket for some reason. And I was like riveted. I was like, I got 30 bucks that this kid fucks this one up.

But just some other pressure points that I want to call out that I think he identified are, you know, fear of prison in Shawshank, Green Mile, fear of dogs, which like is a thing, obviously. But not like, killer dogs was not really, dogs are the thing that, like, you can't hurt in a movie. Or everyone's going to be mad at you. And he made like the killer dog movie. Fear of insanity addiction is everywhere in his work. Like the shining being the best example. Fear of cars, I think. Like it's almost like he looked at the things that are most likely to kill you in the.

And was like, okay, so our brain at some level understands like these are the things that are going to kill us. And we just have to like will ourselves to ignore these dangers to like get through our. everyday lives. And he was good at being like, no, we're going to like dig into the like fear of illness. Obviously, that's like the big thing that kills most people and who made the stand. Fear of narcissistic charismatic leaders, uh, the dead zone, the stand. Um, and he was also like channeling. So I, I don't know, like he was on the school shooting thing. Like he wrote a novel called rage about school shooters like in the 70s. Um, and then he had to, pull it off of shelves when school shootings

actually started becoming such a thing that he was like being blamed for a lot of school shootings. Damn. I mean, he even like sort of pre-sades the like GLP one Ozempic craze with thinner. Exactly. You know? He also presaged cars with maximum overdrive. And also stranger things.

I don't know how he foresaw it, but stranger things is really influenced. I do just want to go through to fully... Oh, but sorry, before we do, Chelsea, one of the things that kept popping up in my head as I was going through the list of things that actually kill people

that he was good at channeling, I was like, where is Stephen King's bees? Right. True. Because bees do kill a lot of people who are allergic to bees. And there's also the corresponding moral panic. Yeah.

about killer bees that you guys just are doing an episode about right now. Yeah, we just, I just recorded with Akela Hughes, who's so funny, and she brought some information about killer bees and other insect panics. And I mean, it is shocking. I mean, unless there's a book I'm not thinking of or you're not thinking of that is insect focused, I think that's coming next. Right. That's, he's saving up.

Right, right, right. Oh, that's just like magnumophis at the end. Victor says he B story is the horror short story, the man in the black suit, which features a pivotal terrifying B encounter. So that's from 1994. But it's not the, it's not like the whole thing is being focused. It's not like he wrote Candy Man, which would have made sense if he wrote Candyman. I do just want to go through just because like I knew he wrote a lot of hits,

but I just want to go through this eight year span from like when K. comes out to 1982 because he's like LeBron in terms of his like longevity. Like he's been able to do it better, longer. But like this is where his career started. Like this is the first eight years of his career. 74, he releases his debut novel, Carrie. And like, it's immediately optioned and turned into a horror movie classic by Brian DePaulma. 77 The Shining.

So three years later, The Shining. 78, also 77 children of the corn. He's just dashing that off in like some little like magazine. 78, he writes the stand. 79, he writes the long walk and the dead zone. The long walk, by the way, we'll get to this. But he starts writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman because they were like, we're releasing too many books by Stephen King.

And rather than slowing down, he's just like, like, I'm going to Chris Gaines this shit a little bit. Call me Dick Bachman. Yeah. So he called us Dick Bachman. A 1980 fire starter. Immediately a movie. 81 Kujo, which he doesn't remember writing as we'll get to.

And then I just want to talk about 1982 here real quick because he writes the running man as Richard Bachman starts the Dark Tower series, which is one of, like, writes that as Stephen King, which is one of his fan favorite series that expands his whole career. and then releases a book of four short stories slash novellas. And I just want to tell you those four short stories include apt pupil, a short story called The Body, which becomes Stand By Me, and then a novella that becomes Shawshank Redemption. God. That's five unreal. What's that fourth one about, though? Was the fourth one just kind of one?

The fourth one was the one that like all the literary critics were like, this is the really good one. Oh, damn. Yeah. What it feels like is like how people think some people think that Shakespeare was multiple people. Right. Like a bunch of people in one like medieval trench coat. Yeah.

You're on a generational run. That's five movies in a single year and like three of them are Stand By Me, Shawshank and the Running Man. Like those are fucking classics. Wait, usually I know you sometimes you'll crunch the numbers about people's careers. Do you have figures on how much money this fucking guy has? It's kind of wild because like Shawshank didn't do well when it first came out. Stand by Me did pretty well. Perry did really well.

The running man did fine. But it's they're just like massive in terms of their impact and like being things that everybody watched on VHS. Yeah, yeah. And I guess that's true. He does say that like a lot of the stories that come out at this time, he's like either written or. like started writing when he was younger and they were just like waiting to burst out of him. And he compares it to like a bunch of people being in line at like a revolving door and like just like pressing to like get through. And then he was on a ton of cocaine. We don't get many PSAs for

cocaine. Yeah, yeah, right, right. And this won't be one of them. But this portion of his career, he was on so much cocaine that he doesn't remember writing Kujo, for instance, at all. Is that because the times were just so good that he was like, I basically had unlimited cocaine pile and a bunch of paper to write my stories on? It was at a time when the entertainment industry was basically like, you know, yeah, you go to a event and there's drinks and there's tons of cocaine. cane. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, he talks about, like, he has a teacher in college who puts

this idea in his head of, like, there's this myth pool where we all go down to drink. And, like, it's this shared, like, collective thing of myths that we're all kind of working from. That's the same thing that David Lynch talked about, too. And I feel like there's a similarity between them. He taught, he called it the unified field, though. And that his ideas all kind of, like, were pulled up from this shared consciousness, which I think, is very cool. Yeah, and I think it's a helpful way to, like, think about creativity. And there's, uh, he also, I appreciated. So he wrote this book in the 70s, I think, um, late 70s that is about horror and like the just horror genre, both in television,

movies and, uh, literature. And, uh, he gives a big shout out to the campfire story, the hook where the urban legend where like two young lovers narrowly avoid an attack by an escaped prisoner with a hook. And he, he like uses it to be like, look, there's no, there's no symbolic beauty and horror. It's just like telling you a story that has a certain shape to it that's designed to scare you. But it is, it is a cool, like dance macabre is the name of his nonfiction book about horror. And it has like some cool insights as well as him being wildly wrong. about various filmmakers. We'll get to his bad take on his own, on the movie The Shining.

He hated Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. But he also like hates West Craven. He's like, and then there's this nobody bozo, West Craven who sucks. Don't talk about my West like that. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say. He also just, he has this weird thing with slang where so he's like, here's the hook. story and he like tells it the way somebody would

around a campfire but at one point he's he uses the phrase he says and so the guy's like doesn't want to leave the thing but the girl wants to leave and the guy's so jacked off that she's scared about it

that he peels out and so he means like so he thinks that the word jacked off means pissed off um whatever his very unique superpower is grasping how people use slang

or like having an ear for that is not one of them. It's very strange. Just yeah, just hang out in Maine, do your Coke and get all these kind of slang terms wrong. That's,

you kids are really jacking me off. What? What the fuck? Get away from Mr. King's house. Yeah. But another thing that's interesting in dance macabre where he talks about

how the best thing for horror is economic anxiety and how there's always this growth in horror around times of economic anxiety and you'll notice that his career launches like in the late 70s when there's this famous malaise. He talks in the book about the Amityville horror

and this is actually like one of the things that's really cool to see. Like he's kind of good, like he'd be a good guest on the Daily Zykeist other than the lazy racism and not knowing how people, talk, is like he analyzes the Amityville horror. And he's like, if you think about it, like the whole book and movie are a economic horror story where they like invest all this money in this house.

They're like, I'm the first person in my family to own a house. And it immediately like is the worst investment ever. And like there are scenes where like Josh Brolin like is losing his shit looking for some. like money that he misplaced and stuff. So, and he said that he like went to see the movie and like somebody behind him in the theater was like, the bills as they were like as the house was just demolishing itself. But his characters frequently are trying to make ends meet in a town that is kind of on the brink of collapse. Right. So that that brings us to carry.

which I guess first like he he credits his love of horror or like you know the thing that he feeds his imagination with with just like horror movies and comics that are like fucked up he's a little twisted

when it comes to his taste in this stuff that's what I hear and he saw horror as a harmless blow off for anxieties and bad feelings again a harmless blow off for anxieties which is a weird way of saying that was like a little closer yeah yeah yeah visually I can see what you're saying.

Yeah, you're blowing up. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Blowing and jacking. Harmless jack off to, what? But that is a theory that's been backed up by experts who think that we watch horror movies as a useful tool for reducing anxiety by allowing people to play with being scared. And that's sort of his theory of the case.

See, because I'm wired so differently that while watch horror, if there's something like really, like, People are like, you got to check this shit out. But other than that, I do not gravitate towards it at all. Like, in fact, I'm like, bro, not, I'm good. I have enough terrorizing shit going on in my mind. But I think I wonder if there's a version of where you're at on the sort of spectrum of anxiety or it's like, if you're right, kind of right here,

it's fun to just kind of keep hitting that nerve or if it works the other way. I don't know how you look at something. I know you like it. The totally opposite side. Yeah. Yeah. also is very like anxiety. Sometimes I just like stay up late reading stories about people, finding people who are secretly living in their house. You know, and I'm just like,

yeah. Well, because you're like, it's just like me. Yeah, but I've just been a horror kid my whole life. I mean, speaking of Stephen King, it was like, I remember so vividly going to Blockbuster, as long back as I can remember, five years old, and I would break off and go to the horror section and just like walk through, like it was like a haunted house. And the movie I always gravitated to look at the cover of was Stephen King's It. And I was just waiting for the day I'd like find a way to watch it. And, you know, it's like, I've just always been that way.

I just love horror and it does calm me down. It's weird. It's so odd. I feel like that was a multi-vHS tape set, right? It was like two or three. It was the Titanic of horror. Yeah. That's the two BHS set.

Yep. He was the king of blockbuster. Like there were so many. I didn't mean to say king. But, you know, you get it. You said it. You did it. So at the time he's writing, he writes Carrie.

He and his family live in a double wide trailer. He's teaching English at a private high school, earning extra money, working summers at an industrial laundry facility and moonlighting as a janitor. So I think we can count him as another one of our icons who's. roots are firmly in the soil of like everyday life and like working class existence. Um, we've yet to cover anyone who had like a very privileged background, I think. Um, the thing that everyone seems to be dealing with is, you know, what everyone else. I, it just feels like it's weird that this thing that everyone's struggling to achieve is privilege. And it's like the one poison that a great artist can't actually.

actually survive is privileged. But so he's working as a janitor when he gets not, I don't think he's on, I don't think he has cocaine money at this point. He needs, he needs Kerry to get that. Yeah, yeah. He did do a bunch of drugs.

He did do drugs in college. He experimented with LSD, peyote, and mescaline in college, but I don't think he had cocaine money at this time. Okay. Step by step, Stephen. Step by step. That's right.

So he is working as a janitor and gets this idea for the opening scene of Carrie, which is a, he's cleaning the girls locker room shower and imagined the opening in which a girl gets her first period, but doesn't know what it is. And then all the other girls start pelting her with sanitary napkins, which is kind of weird out of context for him to be like, I was sitting there picturing the girl's taking showers. I was cleaning the thing.

What were you doing? I was cleaning the girl's showers. All right, Stephen. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. But he at this time is writing for basically the place that you could get horror stories published at this time were nudie magazines, which included publications like Cavalier, which is such a funny, early forerunner of like magazines. with names like smut and jugs.

Right. This one's like, I say the people in the pages of this magazine are really quite cavalier. Cavalier. For those are the cavalier attitude. So in 1972, one of his friends

gave him shit for writing for misogynistic magazines and bet him $10 that he couldn't write a story from a woman's point of view. Just want to give a quick shout out. That friend's name, Flip Thompson. Bring back people named Flip, I say. It sounds like a villain he would write for the 1950s.

Yeah. Also sounds like a guy who wouldn't challenge him on something like that. He's like, I challenge you now to write from the other perspectives, Stephen. All right, flip. Gender studies. Mr. Flip. So he's working as a janitor has that idea for the opening scene. He's also recently read a Life magazine article about telekinesis,

which said that girls in adolescents have been known to have powers right around the time of their first period. So those two ideas merge. But the only reason we have Carrie is because of his wife, Tabitha. And I would say that that would be true. You could say that of his entire career. There's a couple anecdotes from his first couple books here. But he wrote the first three pages of Carrie and threw them in the trash.

And his wife fished them out and urged him to continue. and helped him better understand the female perspective. And I just want to say as somebody, like, he has kind of had a career long struggle with writing women, like to try and imagine what that first draft was like, where she had to be like, brother. How frequently were the girls,

you know, flouncing boobily around? You know what I mean? Right, right, right, right. where do you think these people exist, Stephen? These are real people in your mind? Yeah, I believe so. I just don't know.

And I feel like Carrie is really, like, it's really good. I say this as a born woman. Yeah, it was like, I felt really good about it. And I always thought that it was a pretty amazing feat for the 70s. For a man actually. Being able to do that. Because most men were just extremely angry at feminism. Right.

So, yeah, shout out to Flip Thompson and Tavis. The real heroes of the story. Yeah, that God, those, that draft he crumpled up and threw in the garbage. And the money I'd pay to read that. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, the pre-Tabatha drafts. Oh, please. Got to be somewhere.

It'll be like in a college you can visit in his notes one day. Right, right, right, yeah. The novel has this, like, pseudo-documentary, like true crime feel. Like, he does a thing where it's written, like, it's, like, pasted together from different, like, magazine accounts of this thing that happened. And you don't know exactly what it is yet, like, as it's going on. But it gives the book a sense of dread that you're, like, coming toward something. And so producer Victor pointed out, like, he just read Carrie again and was saying that, like, were it written today?

like all of these different details of the book. Like he, it's about a loner character who is like, has this sexual repressed upbringing and then like something terrible happens. It would be like, this is way too on the nose a metaphor for like a school shooting. Yeah. Right, right, right.

And just like a foreboding thing happening at high schools. We're just so used to that now. Yeah, yeah. Again, he's like kind of mining this collective unconscious. And could you imagine that he's, but he's always just kind of off by like a couple degrees because in his mind he's like the girl's locker room, man. He thinks going on with that. It's just like tangentially getting there. It's like everything was like, oh yeah, no, that wasn't about jail.

That was, I just wanted to write the N-word a bunch of shot shank reduction. I would even say that it's also a novel about the fear of the mean girl because the girls in that novel are so mean. Scary. Yeah. And in the movie too. Social rejection. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, high school is fucking terrible.

I also look picturing these girls in high school just being so mean to the janitor Stephen. Yeah. You go dickhead Stephen, everyone. Plug your noses. Come on, guys. Well, that happens in it, too. One of the Beverly's dad is a janitor and everyone makes fun of her for having the janitor. Oh, shit. Wow.

So there's something there. Yeah, there's a lot here. Stevens collective unconscious. Yeah, that's right. So first publishes a hardcover, as usual, does pretty well. And the paperback rights are sold for $400,000. And the paperback goes on to sell one million copies in its first year, which is like, you know, Bible numbers. It's putting up Bible numbers out here.

King James. People have pointed out it's also smart that it's an inversion of Cinderella, essentially. Like it's, you know, going to the ball at the end. Right. And then kind of goes, he was planning to underscore this connection by having carry leave one of her dancing shoes at the prom. But I don't know. He got drunk and forgot to do that.

I wonder if Tabitha goes, come on, Stephen. We've been doing, we're so close. Right. We're working on this. It's too much. Speaking of Tabitha, he gets his idea for his follow-up, which is the modern day, like 1975, modern day vampire story, Salem's lot. He's teaching Dracula to

his students at the time and discussing the book with Tabitha and she's like, can you imagine if Dracula came to Herman? And that's basically the plot of Salem's lot. Like, it just paints a picture of like early Tabitha being like the blues clues guy

leading a toddler around by the nose with like really obvious paths to the conclusion. Like, just like, gee, I wonder what it'd be like if Dracula was my neighbor. And then, like, stares wordlessly at Stephen until he, like, starts writing the novel she's assigning him. I could also see him as a teacher going and then giving the prompt to his students and being like, hmm, this one's interesting. No, not good enough.

This is dry, not sexy enough. Yeah. Brian, the editor, said that Stephen King couldn't look more like a janitor. His glasses look like they came with a broom. Those glasses he have, yeah. Those glasses. Oh, yeah. So Brian DePalmas Carey, huge hit.

Salem's Lot, too long to turn into a movie. So it becomes the first of many Stephen King books to get the TV miniseries treatment, among them It and the Stand. So takes a couple years and writes his next book, which is The Shining, which is again, kind of a Tabitha joint in the sense that she suggests that they temporarily move to another part of the country and just pick a place at random. And so he pulls out an atlas and randomly points his finger and they land on Colorado. While staying in Boulder, they book a hotel to have a night to themselves because they have kids at this point, which is the Stanley Hotel. And it's Halloween and it's the last day of the season before the hotel closes for the winter and says that like the Bellman is like showing them around. and there's like they have the orchestra playing for them at dinner, even though they're the only people in the place and all the other tables

in the restaurant had the chairs turned upside down and like placed on top. And so it's like they just happened to like have dinner in the setting of the shining on Halloween. He's like, I don't know, maybe there's something here. Every fucking time with this guy. Every time with this guy. All because Tabitha's like, we should go somewhere else. Tabitha said that shit.

Bro, he would be fucking nothing without Tabitha. I know. Tabitha literally did the spin the globe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a prompt. There was one. By the way, the Stanley Hotel where they were having dinner is also the hotel where they filmed dumb and dumber.

Jeff Daniels stays in the Stephen King suite, which is supposedly haunted. When he runs and jumps on the bed. Yeah, that's right. What? We'll take it. Yeah, okay. But yeah, so it's pretty well known that he hates Stanley Kubrick's movie version. His big complaint, I mean, he's got many big complaints, but he was very annoyed that they cast Jack Nicholson and says that like, you know, Jack Nicholson, like in his book, the main character is the writer, is the Jack Nicholson character.

and he like has a redemptive arc and for Stephen King he says Jack was an autobiographical character full of King's least desirable traits the book like writers block excessive drinking hostility toward the family the books Jack ultimately redeems himself and battles his demons long enough to save his family blowing up the Overlook Hotel and its evils once and for all in Kubrick's movie Jack is a psycho

who becomes even more of a psycho and is crucially never redeemed. This is a quote from King. The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first see Jack Nicholson, he's in the office of Mr. Olman, the manager of the hotel.

And you know then he's crazy as a shithouse rat. All he does is get crazier. Which is like kind of true, but it's like I don't need the bad guy in my horror movie to like have a redemptive arc. Right. You know? Well,

and that's the difference between a book and a horror movie. probably is like I understand that frustration but yes the same time it was never gonna it was never gonna unless it's a mini series like it has a lot more depth I think because you have three you know sections you can actually do it in but right really hard yeah I mean do you think he was also taking it personally because it was autobiographical yeah yeah I'm no shit house rat god yeah fuck I'm supposed to be okay in the end right and this is a time when like he's writing about an alcoholic author and he is an alcoholic author. And so he's probably a little too close to it.

But he still can't let it go, like, years later. Like the version of Dance Macaw that I read had a foreword written by him, I think in like 2010. And he still is talking about how bad The Shining is. Jesus. He's like, I mean, you want your movie to have a cool ending. Like in the book The Shining, he blows up the Overlook Hotel. In the movie, he freezes to death.

How dorky is that? Which is like, he's an unfortunate choice because it's like very, it is exactly what Kubrick has that he doesn't is the ability to like make this story cool and like not dorky. I'm surprised he didn't take shots at like Stanley Kubrick being dead also. Like it's just getting that petty. He's like, who's laughing now, Stanley?

Oh, that's right. You probably can't read this anyway. Stephen King, undefeated. That's right. You're killed by the Illuminati. Yeah. Remember now? I do think he was, it is weird that he hasn't written a book about the Illuminati because that is the thing that's going to kill us all.

Right. Or has he? I don't know. Victor, let us know. Yeah. Any secret societies? It is worth noting, though, that I think he, part of like the big head of steam of him thinking that Kubrick's shining.

wasn't shit, was built up because it was considered like a bad movie when it was first released. It was nominated for Razies for like worst director. Shelly DeValle was like nominated as like worst actress. She's so good in it. I know. She's so great in it. And like that's a thing, like he makes fun of that performance. He he really like has very, I don't know, just middle brow like tastes in movies where he's just like, I don't know, yeah, the West Craven thing at one point, he's like talking about, you know, mining the fear of cars in dance macabre.

And he's like, you know, not, there are some good movies about like how dangerous cars are, unlike Turkey's like a mad max. And it's like, come on, man. Like, what are you talking about? That's not a turkey. That's a good one.

embarrassingly, he eventually is like, all right, everybody likes that version of The Shining so much. We're going to take the Pepsi challenge here. I'm going to make my own version of The Shining. It's going to be called Stephen King's The Shining. It's going to star an actor who can really hold down the part of Jack Torrance, Stephen Weber of Wings. and part of the deal between King, Warner Brothers, and Stanley Kubrick was that King would no longer talk shit about Kubrick's The Shining in interviews if they let him make this.

They're like, fine, dude, just like, shut the fuck up about how that. Like, for us, also for yourself, it's like hurting everything about it. Um, so he released this mini-series, The Shining, um, and it, you know, is a TV miniseries remake of like a cinematic masterpiece. Um, there's like all, they bring back a lot of stuff that just like doesn't work on screen. Like for instance, the ending where, you know, there's a hedge maze that they get stuck in. The thing in the book is, that it's a topiary garden with like animals, like bushes carved into animal shapes.

And those animals like come to life. And the special effects in 1997. Yeah. TV miniseries were not up to that task. Yeah. Oh, God. Also, Danny is like horrifying, invisible friend who's like, he lives in my mouth.

Tell me. The scariest, like, little kid shit possible. That is one thing he's good at. little kids can be scary as fuck. Yeah. Is actually like a flying teenager ghost who like can do

like skateboarding. Yeah. Like literally it's like it's like what if Casper from the 90s movie Casper combined with like a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Oh my God. And that also look like shit too?

Like those effects or they kind of did like Oh yeah, yeah. Return of the Jedi Force Ghost kind of. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, boy. I mean, it's a fucking television miniseries. I just love, though, that they know his IP is so valuable that they're like, dude, we just have to throw him this fucking grudge bone

that he can just fucking get it over with. So we can just get back to fucking making money and we don't care how bad this shit is. Just let him fucking be done with it. Well, I remember it being like a good pitch at the time was like, you've, we've all seen the shining. That shit is like, fucking crazy and scary and like a masterpiece.

The guy who wrote it thinks it sucks compared to what he wanted to do. Sure. So like I remember there being like a good pitch and then immediately everyone just being like, no, no, no, no, you don't have to watch this. You don't have to watch this at all. Turn it off, turn it off.

They even changed the Here's Johnny line to just boo. Chops the thing and then goes, boo. I'm pretty sure here's, Johnny was ad-lib by Jack. Johnny was ad-libbed because in the book, the line was, nowhere left to run, you cunt. The man can write some really gross shit.

That is for sure. Holy shit. Jack Nicholson is like, let me get a couple with this one really quick. You might if I try a couple other ones. So I'd sing the C-word. But yeah, it's exactly like you say. you know, like, we, especially in film form, at the length of a film, we don't need our horror monster.

Like, Anthony Perkins is not, we don't need him to be redeemed at the end of Psycho. We need to be, like, freaked out and have seen, like, the craziest shit possible. Like, the thing that's cool about the Shining is, like, the thing Stephen King will, is always like, there's something like profoundly evil about that movie. And it's like, yeah, that's what's cool. That's what we are looking for. Right. Like how some people might describe your books. Yeah.

Like the work, like you don't get to see things that are so thoroughly evil in art. You know, there's like the painting of that guy biting his baby's head off. That is like a classic. Which one's that one? Baby head bite off? Saturn devour's a son. Yeah, Saturn devours his son is the one I'm thinking about. Something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like we want. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like totally different from his other style. He's just like, oh. No, he went nuts and like painted all these paintings, I think, and I might be wrong, but like on the walls of his house, like he went, you know, he did some wall painting, which is always a bad sign. Yeah, he's just hanging out with Goya. He's like, hey, man, you might if I do some, can I, can I piece this wall up really

quick? I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't know, man. It's Goya. Yeah, this guy fucking rules. Look, I don't have a shot at it. This is my daughter's bedroom, man. The thing you did in the dining room is kind of a little.

No, no, no, no, this is fine. This is fine. This is great. But, yeah, it's just, I guess it makes sense that he can't kick himself out of it because it's him writing about, you know. Is he this? I mean, I'd imagine for how prolific he is as, you know, an iconic in his contribution to, like, the genre that he probably has like a bit of an ego, right? I'm like, I don't know how he talks about his work enough because it feels like one of those things

where he's somehow also being like, well, I'm the goat at writing this. shit, but he can't get over the fact to be like, but I'm not a filmmaker and that's okay. He does, well, we're going to get to he, I think his ego peaks along with his cocaine use at a project that we have

coming up on maximum overdrive. That's the movie he did direct, right? That is the one movie he directed. Right, okay. And I will say, it's like, I understand if you make something and you spend years of your life and then the thing that is made from the thing is more

famous than the thing and more people see the thing. Like that would be frustrating for sure. This is just the one where I'd just be like, let it go, man. Let it go. I mean, you lost this one. He doesn't actually seem that often to be like such an asshole. He just has these like weird, very specific. Okay, so he's human.

Yeah, he's human. The Shining, he's never been able to forgive a guy who was driving a van who hit him. He in Maine, right? In Maine. That guy died a year later on Steve. Stephen King's birthday, and, like, he's just, like, never really been able to forgive that guy and has, like, written him into his stories in, like, really insulting, weird ways. Well, the guy died on his birthday?

Yeah, he died of a drug overdose on his birthday. That's wild. Like, the same, like, later that year, I think. And, yeah, it is, like, there's a dark, a darkness. Because I remember at the time, him being openly, like, fuck that. guy. Right, right, right. I don't think I've ever seen somebody who, like, so clearly wished someone ill in the public.

And then the guy died of a drug overdose, like, later that year. And what a good plot that would be for a book. Like, can you wish death upon someone and then you actually kill them? Right. But he seems, again, it's like he seems to not be able to get the irony or something. Or like he's just shamelessly a character in that story. and it was just like anyways, that guy was a fucking idiot. Right.

Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives.

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and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

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The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're after The Shining came out, he publishes The Stand, which a lot of people think is his greatest novel. I think it. The Stand are usually like up there as like the ones that people think are. I know the new Kennedy Assassination 1 is

very popular with Stephen King fans but the stand is and the Shining I think is up there as well the stand comes out it's this massive work they eventually add 400 pages to it because like the original version

they couldn't print it because it would have been like too expensive to print so he's again he's just churning out just like fucking the prose is flowing through him. And he later restores it to the full length that he had in mind. But he does it in 1990 by adding like 1990 pop culture references to like Freddie Kruger and Roger Rabbit. Which is weird.

Yeah, yeah. There's this one line from. Harold was now holding his pistol in both hands as he had seen cops doing the movies. he pulled the trigger and his bullet smashed the second man's elbow. The second man dropped his rifle and began to dance up and down, making high jabbering noises. To Franny, he sounded a little like Roger Rabbit saying, please. Oh my God.

Got it in. He's like, and that's how you know I wrote this in 1990. Just cracks his knuckles, leans back in. I just look at it. What else? he becomes a pop culture personality like the

one of the reasons everybody knows what he looks like is he shows up in this it will he starts going on David Letterman he's in an 1985 American Express commercial

he's got a flare for the dramatic he's like a real ham in these commercials he later calls this a major regret complaining that after that everyone in America knew what I looked like wow you know, he's

and was disappointed. I will say he is supposed to be like very cool to his fans. Like when people write to him, he writes them back. And, uh, just generally,

like, has been pretty nice to people who are big fans of his. Um, he's also like Stan Lee where he appears in his movies. Um, he was in thinner.

I know that. Yeah. Big time. I don't know why I've seen thinner so many times. That's like the one weird Stephen. King movie. I don't know why. It's just because that one guy's lizard skin, too. His boy turns into a lizard.

We're going to get to thinner. Oh, good, baby. His whole Richard Bachman persona, pseudonym, uh, turns on thinner. Okay. But yeah, uh, he's making, he's writing books that are like before

they're published. They're being turned into movies. Like Kujo, Christine, Pet Cemetery, Fire Starter. Pet Cemetery, by the way, is at least partially based on like him they moved to a place out and like a farm and there was a road that like ran by the house that animals just kept getting hit by cars on

and like just you had to keep your kids away from it so he just you know he is pulling from everyday life and like things that people should be afraid of you know yeah um other pop culture like places where he shows up in pop culture. There's a Quantum Leap episode where it ends with them going back in time to 1964 to give a bespectical teen named Stevie King

all of his story ideas. I don't know why. And then in 2000, he played himself during a brief cameo on The Simpsons, which not long after that, the cartoon series kind of fucked up one of his books because he wrote

he was in the process of writing this book Under the Dome which is about a town being trapped under a giant glass dome. He had been working on it since 1978 and the Simpsons movie came out in 2007 and was like that exact plot.

Simpsons did it as they say. Yeah, the Simpsons did do it. But I mean if we believe that they're, there is like a shared unconscious, like it stands to reason that he and other writers would be like pulling things out of the same idea pool. Yeah. And The Simpsons, especially for like a lot of the interesting shit that they kind of were joking about. But then ends up becoming eerily close to reality.

Yeah. But yeah, I want to talk about the life and death of Richard Bachman, his secret literary alter ego, which began with his desire to publish all the books that had been rejected prior to. Carrie and his first one is getting it on, which is a story about a school shooting and they changed the title to Fury because they're like that. Why would it be called getting it on? You freak. Why aren't you calling it blowing and jacking? Yeah, yeah. Blowing and jacking.

Wait, what year was that? It's like, I think it was written before Carrie. Wow. Yeah. He's like, Are there many examples of, like, kids doing stuff like that? I mean, no. Maybe, like, University at Texas or something is, like, the closest thing to-

Yeah, there's, like, there's definitely mass shootings, but, like, this is not a thing of, like, high school students, like, going in and shooting up their high school is not a thing. And he eventually has to pull it off the shelves in the early 90s after they're, like, for school shootings that buy people who had read this book. Oh, God. Yeah. and so he kind of channels something. Yeah, yeah.

I just looked it up and it looks like the first school shooting was in 1966, so it would make sense that, and it was like a big story. So I bet that was the impetus. Right, before then it becomes like something in our modern era. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But with the stand and like, I don't know, it is just interesting because like the stand, you know, is about a pandemic. And then, like, years later, everyone's like, fuck. He saw it coming. The politician in the dead zone is, like, very Trumpian.

Mass shootings obviously become a bigger thing after he writes that book. And Super Producer pointed out that the ending to the running man, the protagonist flies a plane into the building, killing the executive and destroying the network. so he's he's down there yeah yeah I'm like I don't know

I'm just putting things out there guys Cosmic Gumbo man and I'm just taking simps off but yeah like last year there was a book there was an adaptation of the running man and the long walk which were both Bachman books

and yeah he I think it was like five different books that came out being written by Bachman they weren't like massive hits I will say, like, I think he was like, I'm just going to put these out there under a different name, and they'll be just, you know, it'll prove that these publishers don't know shit. And it was like they were, this guy could probably make a living long term.

Sure, sure. Not like barely if he was just an author. So it really was just like the overflow pseudonym he used. It's like they don't want to find that it's a Bachman joint. And I'm going to. And it was the, yeah, it was the rejected pile. It does kind of remind me of like the George Lucas thing where during the original trilogy, he's like furious about the studio notes.

And then he finally gets to do all the stuff he wanted to like his way with the prequels. Yeah. Yeah. In this one, it's just he's, well, what about these ones that they didn't want? And people are like, yeah, no, they're all right. That's fine. They're not as good as the ones they did want. they were kind of smart about that.

They still wanted him, though. They still wanted him, huh? Yeah, yeah. So he's got thinner as a Bachman book. And it's when it's about to come out, a bookstore clerk realizes, like, first of all, it's the first one that, like, really feels like a Stephen King book. And because it's, like, about a curse and stuff like that. It's also, it has, like, some pretty lazy racism because, At one point... Beyond lazy.

Yes. At one point, so the book is about a guy who runs over an elderly Romani woman while getting a handjob. Yes. Jack-in and hand jobs and all that stuff. And ends up being cursed. And for the scenes in which the characters speak Romani, he just excerpted random text from Swedish language versions of his books. Like he didn't even like bother trying He was just like yeah

Just take this like Lorum Ipsum Essentially So we're like That doesn't That's not even a thing He's like yeah My bad my bad I guess

Wait so it's just Swedish basically Yeah He's like that looks like some weird shit So that'll fool him Yeah I thought Romani people were like an invention Like a not a real thing Yeah exactly

That's how he was reading Nobody knows what they sound like Yeah yeah He's like Elmerelda From the hunchback of Notre Dame? I thought that these, what the heck are these characters? Yeah, because I remember that the guy who played her dad was just like,

I don't know what this guy was based, but he always called him White Man from Town. That was his nickname. He's like, hey, white man from town. And that was a thing we used to call one of our teachers behind his back. A man from town. Okay, white man from town. But a bookstore clerk blows the case wide open when he discovers that the copyrights to the last four Bachman books were registered

in the name of King's agent and the copyright to Rage was actually in King's name. Oh, like if he just looked closely. If you just looked at it, they were like, oh, wait a second. They didn't do a great job on that. He never did like a true Chris Gaines thing, right? He never like appeared as

Richard Bachman or there was ever like a headshot. Yeah, the headshot that they used was like his publisher's friend. Oh, okay. So there was, okay, but it would be so funny to Stephen King just like a dumb beer or something. Just like a swoopy

kind of female-looking hair. And this old patch. That would have been so great. He, so the plan was to do thinner as a Bachman and then misery was going to be the next Bachman and that probably

would have, like misery was probably going to be a bestseller one way or another. And so if that, if those meddling kids hadn't found out who it was under the Richard Bachman mask, he might have been able to kind of actually build a career for Bachman.

Was that ever something he like aspired to do though? Yeah, I think he wanted to, but also maybe was getting tired of doing it. Thinner sold around 28,000 copies before the Bachman identity was revealed. And then after that, it sold 10 times as much. Stephen King is such a better name.

Yeah. I know. Richard Bachman is just, you know, Kaiser So, the Richard Bachman thing. He was like in his room and he was like, I had a Bachman Turner Overdrive or whatever.

I was going to say is that? Yeah. He just pulled it off that album and then Richard Bachman turner over time. And then Richard was the name of like one of the authors on his shelf. And he just. Are you just looking around the room and saying you love things? Yeah. Ebenezer Hendricks. Yeah.

Ebenezer Hendricks. What the fuck is that name? Really? Benizzer. Hennigms. The fuck got in your room. Which brings us to maximum overdrive, which, aka cocaine the movie. Bachman Turner Overdrive?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He's just pulling things off the shelf. Maximum overdrive. Okay. So as we've referenced so far, in addition to chugging excessive amounts of beer and NyQuil in the 80s, he formed a cocaine habit, does not remember writing Kudjo, which he says, I'll just read from, I think, this is hit from his on writing memoir. At the end of my adventures,

I was drinking a case of 16 ounce tall boys a night. And there's one novel, Kujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don't say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.

And he described cocaine as his on switch, as mentioned he... It's my on switch. Crazy. With cocaine, one snorten it, owned me body and soul. Oh boy. Like the missing link.

Cocaine was my on switch. And it seemed like a really good energizing drug. That's how it feels at first. By the end, he is a mess. He decides to make this movie Maximum Overdrive.

The pitch, his whole reason for wanting to make it is that he wanted to put Bruce Springsteen in a movie. And he's like, Bruce Springsteen's going to star in this movie about cars. Bruce Springsteen does haunting songs about

cars. This is about haunted cars. And then they're like, no, we're going to do Emilio Estevez instead. He's like, fuck it.

I don't even want to do this. I don't even care anymore. I just wanted to meet Bruce. I mean, you could just, you guys have the same publicist. Yeah. No,

let me write him. Wow, he really wanted to, that is, that's dedication. And that's probably, Do you think he's just listening to a bunch of Bruce Springsteen while writing this high on cocaine? And he's like, yeah, man, Bruce is going to do this shit.

He's really, like, inspired by very mainstream pop music. Like, he, the shining came from, uh, the chorus to instant karma, the John Lennon. Well, we all shine on. Oh, yeah. That's where he got, he was like, he was really into the Beatles. I remember there being like a Beatles quote in Carrie. I thought he was going to, it was a shining star by Earth one and five. fire. Yeah. That'd be so funny.

He's like, shine to stop. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Something here. But I'd say this is probably maximum overdrive or Tommy Knocker is his novel about aliens who are cocaine. We'll talk about that. But maximum overdrive is just like great. You know, if the first early part of his career is like, man, cocaine really working for this guy, this is a good illustration of like where it lands where it lands you. But sleep deprivation does your creativity. So it's based on a short story trucks,

which was published in a 1973 issue of Cavalier. The story is about a group of strangers trapped together in a freeway truck stop diner who must eventually try to combat a posse of killer vehicles. This is just three years after he wrote Christine, which is another evil car movie that had already become a movie. And he's like, nah, fuck it. We're doing this one.

In maximum overdrive, every machine on earth becomes mad at people and, like, starts trying to kill them. There's, like, a part where a soda machine, like, nails someone in the nuts with, like, a soda can. Like, just launching cans out of the body. Comedy.

Yes. He wrote that. He had to write that. He wrote that shit. It's like America's funniest home. I know. But it's like before that he's like, yes, this is fucking. Yes, Stephen.

More, dude. Fuck. What else? What could a waffle iron do? I do know that a lot of people die each year from having soda machines tip over on them. So, you know? Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying.

The movie opens with this paragraph on June 19th, 1987 at 947am Eastern Time. the Earth passed into the extraordinarily diffuse tale of Ria M, a rogue comet. According to astronomical calculations, the planet would remain in the tail of the comet for the next eight days, five hours, 29 minutes, and 23 seconds. And then, like, that's the only explanation we get for just, like, going through a comet's tail is why this is happening. The next shot we get is an ATM calling a person played by Stephen King an asshole.

he's at the ATM and it just says you are an asshole then I do just we got to play this trailer real quick okay oh no bro he's talking to the why is it still him breaking the fourth while pointing at us

you snorted my cocaine didn't you okay here nobody snorted his cocaine but him My name is Stephen King. Oh, no. I've written several motion pictures, but I want to tell you about a movie called Maximum Overdry.

How clogged up are his sinuses? He's lying. When you sound like you can't even breathe out of your nose at your bore. He's just such a classic nerd, you know. He said he wrote Tommy Knockers at this time with both of his nostrils stuffed up, because to stop his like cocaine nosebleeds. Like he wrote my book with like shit just like framing his nose. Okay.

Sorry. Back to your on switch, sir. Which is the first one I've directed. Wow. A lot of people have directed Stephen King novels and stories. And I finally decided if you want something done right, you ought to do it yourself. Hell yeah. Did you see the looks he just gave?

He's like, smiles and, like, crosses his eyes. He's like, I'm on one, fans. I don't know. Also, that's Yardley Smith. Lisa's voice from The Simpsons. Really? My first picture as a director. Did you know something?

I sort of enjoyed it. Oh, boy. What is happening with his performance? Yeah. Okay. Wanted someone to do Stephen King right. You want a boy? You got one.

Whoa, hip-firing a bazooka? The hell out of here. So come and spend some time with me and my friends at the Dixie Boy. Spent some time in the dark. Please don't have to be in the dark. Wow. Help me. I'm going to scare the hell out of you.

Oh, no. And that's a promise. You're going to get us in an awful lot of trouble, man. We already in trouble. Maximum Terror Maximum King Maybe tomorrow will be our world again. Dino DeLorentis presents

Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. Wow. Wow. Wow. He got contacts. He got contacts and was like, yeah, I'm a movie star. A little wonky.

It looked like he was having trouble with those. He wasn't. I swear, I'm coming to. It's so funny because I feel like so much, like, there's been so much comedic stuff. I feel like based off of that. I feel like, like, like Garth Ferengi, like, and like the Matthew Berry stuff, like has a tinge of this weird like, I'm talking to you. I'm the author guy. And I'm weird.

This is after Kubrick and Brian De Palma have like famous. He's intensely adapted his movies into, like, massive hits. Wow. And, like, yeah, if cocaine was a sentence, it would be, I finally decided if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself about, like, directing, doing something that he's like, already at this point knows he's bad at. Like, one of the things he did during the making of this is he demanded for this shot

that had a killer lawnmower coming after people. he demanded that they leave blades in the lawnmower. And the people were like, that's not really how it's done, Stephen. And he's like, too bad. We're leaving it in there. And it like caused, uh, like, the lawnmower hit a piece of wood and like sent splinters into the director of photography's eyes.

And like they sued, sued the production for $18 million. And? I'm surprised that he didn't put that in. Yeah. Movie. I know. Yeah, that is a little wild.

Pretty good scene. Yeah. To fuck up a D.P.'s eyeballs. Like the thing they make their money with, their fucking eyes is crazy. Yeah. Why would you need the blades to be real? You don't see the blades. You didn't. Yeah, that's the amazing thing.

The law. So let me just, after the cinematographer suggested removing them because they weren't visible in the shot, he allegedly responded, there's no. fucking way. We have to be as real as possible. A really good point, actually. Very well reasoned. And the lawn mower ended up being

souped up to the point of climbing up a wooden wedge and shredding it, sending one of the splinters directly into the cinematographer's eyes, the eyes of the guy who was specifically like, we don't need to do this. Yeah. He's like, oh, okay.

There's no fucking way, man. It's got to be as real as fucking possible. We're not mowing. a lawn. No one's, it's not checking if the grass is mowed behind it. Nah, the danger, man. So he got sober right after this. Tabitha rated his drug supply and was like, hey, there's so many plastic bags with cocaine residue on it here and cocaine spoons everywhere, uh, loaded it all into a garbage can and with like their kids and friends around like unloaded the can on the floor.

I was like, hey, man, the fuck is this? Oh, like, just did like a paraphernalia pile to be like, yeah. Wow. Do we know if she knew about it the rest of the time or if she just found out about it? I think she just didn't know how serious it was. Yeah, yeah.

And then, like, went through all his, like, the staff. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm sure, like, it's like, well, I mean, he is functioning. Like, he's, he's making stuff and he's working. And I guess, into the world's biggest asshole.

But then probably just didn't, wasn't saying, it's like, why do you have both nose holes stuffed up, Stephen? Just real bad allergies again, babe. They just real bad. Yeah, went through the bookcases and found tucked into file folders and underneath unopened office supplies, the drug paraphernalia. I'm good for it. I mean, typically like with like these kinds of people who end up famous,

get access to a lot of drugs and start losing it. Like there's usually like one more step down further where I'm glad that they're like, hey, what the fuck, bro? What's going on? He's like, yeah, all right. It was just blinding a DEP with a lot. Yeah. I mean, it's just far down.

They're far down to direct maximum overdrive and preface it by being like, I figure you want something done right. You do it yourself. This is how you blind a guy. Hey, De Palma, check this shit out. De Palma never blinded a guy. buddy this movie fucking stinks check this out

motherfucker continues to eat shit so he writes it around this time he writes misery which a lot of people he has said was an allegorical representation of cocaine and booze and he said that he didn't know if he would be able to write after he quit drinking and

using drugs but decided that he would trade writing for staying married and watch his kids grow up. So that's... Damn, Stephen. All right. Pretty good work on his part.

Good for you. Yeah. Again, yeah, the only blinded a guy, but made some weird decisions. Did not seem to slow him down at all. Yeah. By the way, he's just like kept churning out wheelbarrows full of novel, you know. People have pointed out that he has a problem with the magical Negro trope, like in Shawshan. I would say, I didn't think red was necessarily fit that,

but red was actually named Red because he was an Irish guy in the book. Yeah. And the racist Irish guy at that would say the N-word a lot. As for the characters who were black in Stephen King's books, you have people like the Green Miles John Coffey, who can heal your urinary tract infection by... With a gentle touch. The gentle touch.

The Dick Halloram from the shining mother Abigail from the stand. So it is definitely a thing that he's not great at. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm not surprised. Yeah. I don't know. It's probably like you're right what you know. And I don't know any black people.

Exactly. I think that's exactly it. Yeah. That's probably as mythical as the Romani people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. he's like actually it's like I got this

I think I know how to write this character grabs random rap lyrics from like yeah yeah yeah exactly genius so 1999 he becomes the subject of a major national news story after he's struck by a van nearly killed while going for a walk and this a lot of people pointed

very similar to misery which begins with an author suffering and immobilizing injury after a car accident and then the guy dies less than a year later on Stephen King's birthday. Stephen King bought the van that hit him for $1,500 with the intention of personally beating it to pieces with a sledgehammer, and then eventually just had somebody else destroy it.

I thought he was going to desecrate the guy's grave who hit him with the truck or something. He's just being so petty. He's like, yeah. He officially said he was very sorry to hear about this guy's death. But then he shoehorned that guy into one of his books, four years later in which the guy was like, I think he has him, he, like, he's portrayed as a reckless and particularly stupid person who hits and kills a child who saves King while high.

And, yeah, it's like, the guy was on a number of drugs at the time of the accident, but they were all, like, prescribed drugs, including Prozac and Ballium. And that may have impaired his driving, but King's depiction of this guy who hit him as like a simpleton looking for Mars's bars to quell the munchies is not, right, not accurate. And are we to believe he wasn't driving fucked up like all the time? Right, I know, exactly. Like, also as a former addict, like, have a little fucking. How injured did he get?

Like, was this really life-altering? He was in the hospital for like, I think a month, a full month. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I get it. Wasn't like a minor inconvenience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, let it go, man.

Yeah, yeah. Well, non-authors can, like, hold grudges for a long time, but nobody knows about it. Right, right, right, right. Exactly. When your job is to write what's going on down all the time, it's like, yeah, it's kind of seeping into your work, Stephen. One place where he has a bit of a sadistic streak that I kind of enjoyed

was he held an eBay auction in which the winning bidder would have a character named after them in his book, The Cell, not one of his most popular ones. It's about a magical cell phone. I'd say technology, also a place where he struggles. But the winner was Pam Hizenga, Alexander, the daughter of Miami Dolphins owner, H. Wayne Hizenga. And she opted to have a character named after her brother, Ray. And a character named Ray Hizenga shows up in the novel, helps the heroes and then shoot himself in the head. Oh, Jesus. God, fuck.

I didn't say what was going to happen. Well, I've been. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any character you want, I'll name after. Yeah, Ray. Oh, good. Yeah, I love that. I've been Ray.

Jesus. Yeah. makes no sense. Right. What the fuck? Or is it because like the phones are making people do it, I'm guessing? Yeah, I guess so maybe. Holy shit. I just love the idea of like someone being so excited.

Ray, you're going to be in the book. And it's like, what? What's with this like 10 page description of how he was like shitting himself? Yeah. What the fuck is this? One cool thing that he does is that he has a thing called the Dollar Baby program, which he allows any aspiring filmmaker to option his. stories for adaptation for $1.

And like there are some strict stipulations. This ended in 2023 after 40 years, but like you had to send the movie to him so he could watch it. But it is kind of a cool thing. So there's like tons and tons of like student films made out of Stephen King novels. But yeah, I'd say the one thing, like again, the guy can really write. He's got a really great sense. of the shared unconsciousness,

the fears we all have. His grasp of slang, however, I just want to, from 2014's revival, the old soda burger was step in dynamite back then, stepping nitro.

That was, I think, meant to be someone who is hot. From what I can tell, a character describing a woman who he thinks is hot is saying she's step in dynamite. Is it supposed to be happening in a different time?

Like this is supposed to be old slang or is it supposed to be 2014 slang? I don't know. I think it's old people talking about something that happened before. They call, he says somebody is as gay as old dad's hat band.

From the kid. What is a hat man? Like the band around a hat? Like something. you to adorn your hat with. That must be. That's the only way I could even think of it making any kind of sense.

But again, such dated terminology. Your hat, man. The kid from the stand, for some reason, keeps saying happy crappy. Hey boy, the kid says, Coors beer is the only beer. I'd piss Coors if I could.

You believe that happy crappy? And it's just like never clear what that even means. What the fuck? But yeah, He just, he doesn't, he's always talking about sucking eggs. He really thinks that kids a lot. He really thinks kids talk about sucking eggs a lot.

Go suck an egg. Where does that even come from? When egging your shoe and beat it is what a 12 year old says at one point in one of those things. And ruin your socks? No thanks. I just darned my stockings. He also refers to breasts. This is the last thing that I'll mention.

about. For some reason, his favorite term for boobs is jihubis. I like that one. I own kind of rules. Jehubies. He used it multiple times in Salem's lot. It's also in the long walk, which like, I can't believe nobody noticed that he was the same person as Richard Bachman. Like, no, everyone calls him jahubis. And Dr. Sleep, like, recently.

like it just spans his career as the thing. Is this like a purely like a Stephen Kingism? Is this like a main thing? Like, see the only one? He's like, hey, man, Jehubis. Like he's saying it to other guys and like, dude, what? No, I never heard of that. Very Shakespearean again.

He's in our lexicon. It feels like you'd be in our lexicon for centuries. Did you know that Jehubis was not a term until Stephen King used it? It's factoids for English class. All right. Anything that you guys wanted to talk about about Stephen King that we didn't get to, but I missed. I don't think so. Miles, I know you just really wanted me to hit the Jehubis thing.

That's so wonderful to hear. I'm actually just, it's, I don't, I mean, I don't, again, like I said, I has such a superficial knowledge of Stephen King and his work. aside from just like the sort of like major points. But I am, it is interesting to just see somebody get through an 80s cocaine addiction somewhat intact. Yeah. Yeah. I think is pretty impressive. I feel like any other people that have like one of those eras, it's like, it gets way worse than merely just like, unfortunately, worse than blind DP with a lawnmower.

Yeah. He seems, I just, it also just like as I'm hearing. all this still. I'm like, damn, he really, there must have been so many people that were acting as the guardrails on his career that he might not even realize, too. Tabitha was doing some load bearing work

all through his career. That's the Jesus and the footsteps on the sand, bro. It was Tabitha carrying your ass the whole time. Sort of one fucking set of footsteps. See those footprints in the mound of cocaine stretching behind us? That was me.

I will also say that I really do. We joke and he's got his problems, but I love Stephen King and I love his work. And I feel like I owe him a lot just as someone who's such a huge horror fan. I mean, it is one of my favorite movies, one of my favorite books. And he's just a fantastic writer. And you said that. It's like the level that he's at being like a grocery store writer, if we call him that. Like his books are among like writers that I don't think are quite as good. He is a fantastic writer. That man can paint a picture. Sometimes he goes on a little long with his descriptions, but I just want to give Stephen some love because we owe him a lot. He's a huge architect of American culture and as well,

you know, and in addition are the people who helped him along the way and made sure that he didn't fucking die. A student of culture in a way that I obviously respect. And that's one of the things that I find most interesting. And he's very good at it. I wish he would was not so hard, like was not so definitive and like being dismissive of certain people. But yeah. When you get to the summit, though, you can talk like that. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. He's just like, I just want to shout out how strong his genes are. This is his son. Yes. Yes. Another core writer. All his kids, I love how this kid, his, this one is the name Joe. And he's like, I'm going by Joe Hill, bro.

Don't even, don't even curse me with this last name. I'm like, yeah, good for you, man. He did make kind of a slightly hotter version of himself. which is always impressive. Shout out to Tabitha. There we go. Victor's requesting that we do a movie night where we watch the shining

and maximum overdrive back to back. And we decide what's in. Yeah, let's see who's really got it. Fine, fine, I'm ready. I'm ready. Let's do it. Chelsea, where can people find you, follow you, hear you, all that good stuff?

Well, thank you for having me, you guys. This was really fun. You can really just find me on American Hysteria, wherever you get your podcast, Instagram, at American hysteria podcast.

And that's about it. Just listen to the show. If you like this conversation, we talk a lot about horror movies and a lot about kind of strange history, freaky history, and social issues as well.

There you go. Miles, how about you? Find me everywhere, but find, check out the new show I'm doing A&Footie where I talk about soccer,

European soccer, one of my other passions, which is unfortunately not horror, but I do like yelling at sport ball abroad. It feels classier somehow. So check that one of us.

Like if there's a correlation between people who don't watch horror and do watch sports, it's like that's where you get your like heart raising, you know? Well, I get my heart beat up by watching sports and having my life ended by my team sucking. Yeah, I know how to do like limbic system hijack as I watch something. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Maybe, maybe. Or maybe because I just don't have God in my life. You know, the other one, too.

All right. I'm going to be back after this next break with the No, No, No, No. No. Go. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men.

Actor, storyteller. and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives, and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms,

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Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge

of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolificing. child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it. To ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby. Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Neckard, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. he became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here.

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Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?

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This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. That was our Stephen King conversation. this is the No, no, no, no, no. No, book. Dump, where we get to

the stuff that I forgot to mention from the notes or didn't have time to. Or in this case, a question that Miles had that I didn't answer. He asked after the fact, which is how much money does Stephen King

have? Good question that I'm sure is on a lot of people's minds. According to his Wikipedia, I think is where I found this. He's pulling in, or his net worth is $500 million a few years ago, which means A, did incredibly well for himself, and B, he did a lot of cocaine because he should actually have more money than that. J.K. Rowling has, I think, $2 billion by contrast,

and Stephen King sold, I think, 400 million copies of his books. J.K. Rowling is at like 600 million, so, but, you know, hers all in a short period of time, fewer chances to dig in and get new contracts. He's a total machine, so he's probably, I feel like he should have as much money as her, but she also doesn't have her career at a key point fueled by a massively expensive cocaine problem. She's also another thing that tends to be good for capitalism, which is a fucking asshole. So that could be how she's pulling down, how her net worth is like 4x,

what Stephen King is, is, you know, Stephen King donates, I think, $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated life-saving equipment and other organizations that underwrite the arts. So being a good human being, bad for your ability to be a billionaire.

But, you know, a shout out to you, Stephen King, for being the sort of person, bad capitalist, good person. Next, I want to talk about how he fits into a thing, a theme that we come back to every once in a while, which is the question of, you know, these people with incredible careers, like, did they do it all at, like, one really prolific period? or is it like across a long period of time this first came up.

In the Einstein episode, Einstein we picture as an old man, but he published all of his most groundbreaking ideas for the first time in like a few months in his late 20s, I think. Yeah, his 26th year is called his Miracle Year. And we've talked about Dolly Parton writing Jolene and I Will Always Love You, possibly on the same day, but certainly very close to one another. And I will say, you know, Stephen King would seem to be the opposite of that, right? He does have a pretty consistent and long career.

But the stories that seem to have really, like, dug into our shared consciousness were the ones he had, I think, waiting. Like, he describes, I think I mentioned this in the conversation that, like, he describes the stories coming out of him at his most prolific period as, like, kind of being in line at a revolving door and like, you know, he only has time to like do one at a time but like all these different characters and stories have been waiting there. You know, I think he was working on the long walk.

Super producer Victor said in his, like when he was in high school. And so this idea of when people do their best work with King, you have the appearance of the steadiness, but he's had these story ideas in his head. and so it's kind of a combination of the two. It's, you know, he's been working on these stories and said the process of writing them was like a traffic jam of bestsellers, just sitting at the door to his brain waiting for his fingers to let them out. On The Shining, just a couple details on that one. So they changed the room number.

So in his book, it was 217. In the movie, it's 237. and in the amazing documentary, Room 237, you're told that this is because the Shining is secretly about Stanley Kubrick faking the moon landing because the moon is obviously 237,000 miles from Earth, but they, so apparently they wrote a book about the making of the Shining, and there is a letter from the set of the movie,

basically the head of the hotel is begging Kubrick to change the room from 217 to 237 because 217 is a real room and they're already getting hit up by tourists asking to see room 217, like even before they've completed the film. So they asked them to change it. Like you can literally see the letter where they're like, I don't know, change it to 237, 247, 2.57, 257. whatever, just it can't be one that's an actual room number. And presumably because 237's the first one, he put on the list. That's what they went with. In terms of his drinking and drug use, again, just want to go back to this idea because

I definitely don't want to give the impression that like the quality of his work was driven by cocaine use. I would say, you know, he said that he would write sober during the day and edit what he had set down while drinking at night, which is the opposite of the right drunk edit sober maxim that's been attributed to Hemingway.

In fact, that is false Hemingway, said that he would never drink when he wrote. He was like, my work is too important for that. He also talked shit about, I think it was Faulkner and was like, you can actually see on the page when Faulkner's had his second

drink because his pros get sloppy. But basically, I think Stephen King has essentially said he drank because he liked drinking. He used drugs because he liked the way drugs made him feel. And then he justified it to himself as a thing that helped him do his job because he basically said that it's like self-serving bullshit. You want to continue to use drugs. So you tell yourself a lie that it makes you better at doing your job.

Not true in his experience, definitely not true. in my experience, I would say. And then we also have kind of vaguely, tangentially related to his drug use. We have an anecdote from the great Christy Amaguchi, Maine, one of our great TDZ, aka writers, very funny TDZ guest, host of the podcast, George Center. His dad worked on four different Stephen King movies as a key grip, and one of those movies was maximum overdrive. and he has a couple anecdotes from that.

So on the set of maximum overdrive at precisely 10 a.m., Stephen King would say to his assistant something like, good to go, and the assistant would get on the walkie-talkie and say, Stephen will have the special now, and someone would bring him a boiler maker with vodka. Because, you know, when the coffee's not strong enough, you need a boiler maker with vodka, and presumably like two highway lane

markers sized lines of cocaine. And then speaking of presumable cocaine use, he also had this anecdote from a recent crew screening of maximum overdrive, as told by one of the grips, I think he said his name is Joe DeLessandro, who said that King was in negotiations to do maximum at the Wilmington, North Carolina Studios, as long as the owner, the Italian filmmaker named Dino de Lerentis, a legend, legendary film producer who made a

of like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and stuff, as long as De Laurentis let him direct it. And De Laurentis was like, I don't know, man. Like, why would I let this writer direct it? And one day, the security guard called De Laurentis on his walkie talking and said, sir, there's a gentleman on a motorcycle here to see you. And he's like, tell him I'm not available. Why are you talking to me?

The guards like, he says his name is Stephen King. And it turned out that Stephen King had just gotten on his motorcycle and driven down the East coast from Maine and also got the idea of how he wanted the trucks to look in the movie while on the ride. I just, I love the idea that he's in negotiations to make the movie and then just drives all night on a motorcycle, arrives like six states away without warning, without announcing himself. Again, very cocaine-coded behavior. And to be like, I've driven my motorcycle in a straight line without sleeping. And funny enough, I got great ideas for the movie on my way down.

Chef's Kiss cocaine-coded behavior. Turns out those ideas, not that good. All right. That's going to do it for Stephen King. Next week, we have Jason Pargin on to talk about how we landed on one of the most iconic logos of our time, a icon. iconic mythological figure. It is the default alien face. Big head, big Oakley wrap around black eyes, tiny nose, tiny mouth, slick back hair, tight jeans, known as the grays among alien

enthusiasts. But it's the, you know, the default alien. How that happened. That's coming a week from today. More zeitgeist in the meantime. And we'll talk to y'all then. Bye. Hi, it's Joe Interestine, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February, February 24th on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me. but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car,

you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be, sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse College,

The students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in Malik Lamouba.

Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.