After Lunch

Continuing their year of Stephen King novels, Michael and Jess dig deep into the Pet Sematary . We talk mostly about the book itself, but also a little about the '89 movie, its sequel  Pet Sematary Two , the 2019 remake, and the 2023 prequel  Pet Sematary: Bloodlines .

Michael, Evan, Pax, and Rob talk about beans,  Disclosure Day ,  Mandalorian and Grogu ,  Masters of the Universe ,  Supergirl , opera,  Spider-Noir,  touring Hawaiʻi, and the  007: First Light  video game.

Michael and Rob are joined by Evan Hanson and Shawn Robare to assemble a team of their favorite anthropomorphic animal characters... and then try to craft a story around them. 

Rob, Michael, Evan, and Pax talk about  Supergirl  by Sophie Campbell, the TV show  After Life , artificial intelligence, and  Wrestle Heist  by Kyle Starks. And our friend Jacob Bean-Watson stops by to chat about meeting celebrities and the difference between Action and Adventure.

Our  Predator series continues as Pax, Rob, and Michael talk about the 2025 animated anthology (but not really an anthology) feature,  Predator: Killer of Killers . 

Michael and Jess continue their year-long exploration of Stephen King with the 1983 novella,  Cycle of the Werewolf , illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. We talk about favorite characters, scariest moments, and of course the 1985 movie adaptation,  Silver Bullet .

Michael and Rob welcome the amazing Chris Schweizer who's currently serializing his new swashbuckling fantasy comic  Outlaw's Apprentice . We talk about the comic and its inspirations, but also our favorite swashbucklers in that time-honored tradition of putting them into brackets and voting on them.  We hope you enjoy the tournament, but please do also check out  Outlaws's Apprentice ,  because y...

Pax, Rob, Michael, and Evan return to the lounge to talk about hitchhiking,  Mortal Kombat II,   The Devil Wears Prada 2 , giving money to people on the street, music videos,  Agatha Christie's Seven Dials , Rob's Disney cruise,  Hacks , and Beethoven's 6th.  

The After Lunch Irregulars (Jacob, Michael, Rob, and Pax) reconvene for a double episode, starting with an in-depth, spoiler-filled discussion of Guy Ritchie's  Young Sherlock . If you're not ready for those spoilers yet though, skip ahead an hour to hear us talk about Disney's Holmes homage,  The Great Mouse Detective !

Evan is back in the lounge! Joining Pax, Rob, and Michael to talk about  Mansfield Park  by Jane Austen, an identity crossroads, Kevin Smith writing  Green Arrow ,  King Sorrow by Joe Hill, and ever so much more.

Our dear friend and frequent podcast guest William Bruce West passed away on April 12. We miss him dearly. Part of the grieving process has been to talk about our friend and share memories of him, so the podcast community that Will was such an important part of has put together this tribute episode. There are personal reminiscences, but also many, many clips of Will's appearances on various shows...

It's Game Night! We've formed two teams of movie fans: Jaime Hood, Joanna from  Bloody Popcorn , Noel Thingvall, and Rob Graham on one team; Becky Tyler, Pax Holley, Jacob Bean-Watson, and Ben Graham on the other. We're playing  The Cast List, a card game in which Michael acts as host, giving each team a list of movies to see if they can name an actor who has been in all those movies. Some of them...

We talked about the movie  Predator 2  earlier this week and the novelization by Simon Hawke came up a few times. To dig deeper into that, Pax is graciously allowing us to re-run the episode of I  Read Movies where he explored the book and compared it to the movie.

Pax, Michael, and Rob continue their exploration of the Predator movies with Stephen Hopkins's Predator 2 . Set 10 years after the first movie - and during another heatwave - a group of Predators come to Los Angeles to hunt drug gangs and maybe a maverick cop or four.

Jess and Michael talk about a novel by some guy named Richard Bachman. (*whisper* It's really Stephen King!) We're walking long this episode, but do we know why?

Having officially dubbed ourselves the After Lunch Irregulars, Pax, Jacob, Michael, and Rob talk about another Sherlock Holmes movie. This one is Herbert Ross's  The Seven-Per-Cent Solution , written by Nicholas Meyer, starring Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Robert Duvall as Watson, and Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud.

As Jess and Michael continue to explore Stephen King novels this year, they discuss one of their favorite of his books,  The Shining . 

Michael, Pax, and Rob finish this month's lounge talking about chocolate,  Groundhog Day  theories, writing,  The Bride! , a new job, and Dark Horse Indiana Jones comics.

Expanding on our Spaceships Sweet 16 from Episode 398, we've temporarily narrowed the focus to the biggest vessels. Michael and Rob welcome sci-fi comics writer  Corinna Bechko  and fan extraordinaire  Siskoid to help determine the greatest Large Spaceship of All Time. Future episodes will concentrate on Medium and Small ships, leading to the Ultimate match up where we'll pit our Final Fours from...

Michael, Pax, and Rob are back in the lounge a little early this month talking about Silver Age Etta Candy,  Scream 7,  Tom Selleck's memoir, how  Les Misérables  plays in 2026 Minneapolis,  The Will of the Many by James Islington, and Tom Selleck movies.

In the first of many episodes rerunning Carlin Trammel and Michael May's old  Dragonfly Ripple  podcast that they hosted with their kids, here's the show's debut in which Carlin shares  Flash Gordon  (1980) with his daughter Annaliese and Michael shares  Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) with his son David.

Michael, Rob, and Pax take a detour from the main  Fast and Furious  series to explore the ridiculous roads, spectacular cybernetics, and inspiring islands of David Leitch's  Hobbs & Shaw , starring Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, and Vanessa Kirby.

Rob, Pax, Jacob, and Michael are back on Baker Street, this time with Edward "The Equalizer" Woodward and John "Higgins" Hillerman as Holmes and Watson in the 1990 TV movie,  Hands of a Murderer .

Rob, Michael, and Pax wrap up this month's lounge with talk about new  Dresden Files , what makes something a "classic," movies that make us cry,  High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane ,  Wuthering Heights (2026), and judging art "objectively."

Michael and Jess take a trip to  'Salem's Lot  to talk about what works and what doesn't in Stephen King's legendary second novel.