Podbit · Last Podcast On The Left
When COVID hit, The Stand went through the roof in sales again. Stephen King acknowledged it was a silver lining in an otherwise grim moment — and Joe Hill noted that horror fans were already psychologically prepared.
Where this was said
At 44:45 · chapter starts 44:10
Marcus asks Stephen whether COVID caught him off guard or whether he saw it coming given his long fascination with plague scenarios. Stephen admits the biggest result was that The Stand went 'through the roof' in sales — a ghoulishly useful silver lining. Joe then cites Dutch researcher Matthias Claassen, whose book Why Horror Seduces is described as the sharpest academic work in the genre, and a co-authored paper that found horror fans absorbed the emotional shock of the COVID years better than non-fans. Joe's explanation is intuitive: if you've read The Stand, you already have an action plan for Captain Trips. The conversation briefly touches on whether people behaved the same during the Black Plague as COVID — Marcus notes their 2021 research confirmed alarming similarities — before Stephen asks if they had Zoom in the 14th century.
When COVID hit in 2020, The Stand by Stephen King went 'through the roof' in sales again, as readers sought pandemic fiction that mirrored reality.
A study by Dutch researcher Matthias Claassen found that horror fans dealt with the emotional and psychological shock of COVID significantly better than non-horror fans.
Dutch researcher Matthias Claassen co-authored a paper proving horror fans absorbed the psychological shock of COVID better than non-fans. If you've read The Stand, you already have your action plan.
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