The Kingcast - Podcast Rankings and reviews

It’s hit or miss. There are some great episodes that mostly stay on topic. Then there are some which devolve into politics or other subjects. When they can stay focused, it’s usually pretty good, especially if you are a big King fan. Some very interesting guests as well. Wish they could stick to the King universe though.

Overall, this is a good podcast. If you like King, you’ll probably like the show.

That being said, the hosts somehow consistently manage to mention Twitter or some other social media platform within the first few minutes of the show on every single episode and the conversation never leads anywhere interesting. You could make a drinking game out of it that would kill even the most seasoned alcoholic.

How many times with how many different guests do we need to hit the same handful of talking points about the downfall of Twitter? It has zero to do with the podcast’s subject matter and no guest has ever managed to say anything interesting about the state of social media post-pandemic. And yet this seems to be one of the host’s favorite topic of discussion, much more so than anything Stephen King ever wrote. If you’re listening to the show right now as you’re reading this I can pretty much guarantee you will be hearing the words Twitter, Elon Musk, social media, or references to X, the site formerly known as Twitter if you haven’t already heard them.

Seriously though, Gen Xers are having a really tough time with the breakdown of Twitter, I get it, but please find something else to talk about or maybe start another podcast that’s about how Twitter used to be a fun place to hang out and make business connections until the Tesla guy ruined it for you.

Hi-

Love the pod, but I was confused by your life of chuck discussion in 1/17/24 episode. I was never under the impression that chuck knew that was him dying when he opened the door when he was 12. When he started having the headaches when he was older, he probably guessed, but he didn’t know at 12. That’s what made it to me so sad. If he knew when he was12, that just makes it less interesting to me. You guys read the script too, so maybe that’s there. I wondered if he knew at 12, but I, ultimately, thought it was pretty clear he didn’t. I mean why would he think that dying man was him? His grandfather had seen someone else die, not himself. Unfortunately, I don’t have the book on me, so I can’t reread it to make sure I’m right. Anyway, it made it kind of hard to listen after that because it totally changes the story if you think he knew. Anyway, still love the pod, 5 stars

The Keith Gordon episode is what sold me on subscribing and I’m so glad that I did. Had a complete blast going through the archives and sometimes wish the episodes could go on even longer. As a King devotee, this show is for me!!

I used to really enjoy this podcast. When it started, the guys really got into deep discussions on King books and films. However, as the show has gone on, it’s become more of a normal guest of the week podcast where Vespe and Wampler just talk about wares the guest is hocking and only touch on whatever the topic is supposed to be. When they delve into politics or something, I don’t mind, but when a guest waxes philosophically on a movie they just did, instead of talking about The Dark Tower, I ask myself why I’m here. I can get interviews on a thousand other pods, I came here to listen to people talk about Stephen King. It seems like the hosts am have grown bored with the topic of the show most weeks.

If you get the right guest (Mike Flanagan, Matt Fraction, Bryan Fuller, King himself among some others) you can get really great moments of insight and intrigue with this show. The problem is, any guest that doesn’t fully join and anchor the conversation results in endless rambling and extremely boring content. You’ll spend 45 minutes on literally anything but King before maybe glossing over the same points you’ve heard 20 times before. And of course there are the lackluster technical aspects of the show. A 4 year old podcast should have ironed out the kinks of echo, background chatter, audibly belching hosts, etc. Some of these are just not fun to listen to if you are sensitive to that type of thing. Lastly, this recent Thomas Jane episode pulled me up short when the dude endorses RFK, Jr. and the hosts just roll with it as he describes how we’ll soon be in a false flag civil war and laments that good ol’ RFK (a literal insane person) isn’t getting the support he needs. This goes virtually unchallenged (and that was my end point for that episode). Yikes. That’s not the Stephen King content I’m craving. More like dipping into infowars. I don’t expect this podcast to establish solid political commentary or guardrails against every wild idea, but we can probably avoid inane conspiracy theory nonsense being blasted out in the world. We’ve already got plenty of that. Editing can be a useful tool. At this point I’m definitely creeping towards that inevitable unfollow. Bottom line, this show can be interesting (even fascinating, and a great promo tool for guests), but it’s frequently not worth your time. Download an old King book on audible, or pick up an old paperback and enjoy that instead.

Edited to add: just listened to an episode where Wampler is very audibly inebriated. This is not a value add, imo. It’s a drag to have the show continue to morph into such an unenjoyable production.