259 – Joe Lansdale & Our Desperate Need to Be Less Dumb

2025-10-14

Joe Lansdale is here to give us all a smack upside the head. We are talking about The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale – his brand new career-retrospective, collecting the stories that have defined him for decades as one of the most edgy, provocative writers of the grim and grotesque. We cover some of the classics, like “Bubba Ho Tep,” “Mr Weed Eater” and “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” – asking where the craziness came from, and finding the roots in Joe’s colourful life. But we also discuss more serious matters, suc...

Joe Lansdale is here to give us all a smack upside the head.

We are talking about The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale – his brand new career-retrospective, collecting the stories that have defined him for decades as one of the most edgy, provocative writers of the grim and grotesque.

We cover some of the classics, like “Bubba Ho Tep,” “Mr Weed Eater” and “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” – asking where the craziness came from, and finding the roots in Joe’s colourful life.

But we also discuss more serious matters, such as the hatred depicted in “The Night They Missed the Horror Show,” and what it means in our current puritanical, easily-outraged era.

Enjoy! Beware!

Other books mentioned:

The Thicket (2013), by Joe R. Lansdale
Paradise Sky (2015), by Joe R. Lansdale
The Nightrunners (1987), by Joe R. Lansdale
“A Rose For Emily” (1930), by William Faulkner
“Cannibalism in the Cars” (1868), by Mark Twain
“Duel” (1971), by Richard Matheson
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), by Mark Twain
Neither Beg Nor Yield: Stories With an S&S Attitude (2024), edited by Jason M. Waltz
Swords in the Shadows (2025), edited by Cullen Bunn
The Only Good Indians (2020), by Stephen Graham Jones
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025), by Stephen Graham Jones
The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild (2025), by Bryan Burrough
Lonesome Dove (1985), by Larry McMurtry