The Institute

A scoop of Firestarter, a dash of IT, and just a soupçon of Carrie and The Shining — Stephen King’s novel The Institute is like a bowl brimming with the author’s greatest hits. But does it go down smooth? That’s what the Losers’ Club asks in their episode about the 2019 tome, which takes readers inside the eponymous Institute where a mysterious gaggle of doctors, scientists, and thugs subject psychically-touched children to terrible tests, many of which border on pure torture. Join the gang as they dissect what the story has to say about friendship, U.S. foreign policy, and the youth of today. Questions abound! Can King write modern kids as well as he can those of the ‘50s and ‘60s? How does the paranoia of early books like Firestarter and The Stand factor in here? Does adding “-ster” to someone’s name make for a good nickname? They also comb through the book’s reviews and King’s pre-release interviews to puzzle over the relentless comparisons to the crisis at the Southern border. Weird stuff.