Halloween season officially continues on The Daily Whatever Show with special guest Ben Ulansey , the sharp, funny, and deeply thoughtful writer behind The Gen Z Report. Ben joined me, Lawrence Winnerman and Dana DuBois to talk about the films, freakouts, and real-world horrors shaping this year’s spooky season — and somehow managed to make an accidental coffee-centipede incident the perfect metaphor for modern America.
Ben opened with his “morning horror” — discovering a full thousand-legger in his coffee grounds — before diving into a conversation that ranged from Poltergeist to Get Out to the decline of subtlety in modern horror. Ben’s analysis is whip-smart and grounded in cultural commentary: horror, he argues, has always been a mirror for our social anxieties — from racism (Get Out), to misogyny (The Substance), to the existential dread of late capitalism (The Menu).
He’s part philosopher, part cultural critic, and part accidental entomologist. His insight? Horror is “reverse escapism” — a way to remind ourselves that, as bad as things are out there, at least we’re not being eaten by zombies or welded mouth-to-anus in a mad scientist’s lab. (“Human Centipede,” Ben insists, “is better than people give it credit for.” We’ll take his word for it.)
From there, the conversation turned into a rolling celebration of fear as both catharsis and critique. Ben walked through his personal pantheon of horror must-sees — an eclectic mix that says as much about him as it does about the genre itself:
The Official TDWS/Gen Z Report Spooky-Season Watchlist
Poltergeist, 1408, Kingdom of the Spiders, Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, Get Out, Us, Nope, Silence of the Lambs, Monster: Ed Gein, Cabin in the Woods, The Witch, The Menu, Blink Twice, and The Last of Us (with bonus points for Dead Space and Slenderman for gamers).
By the end, Ben had us reconsidering why we chase scares at all — maybe because, as he put it, “after watching The Last of Us, democracy wobbling doesn’t seem that bad.”
If you like your horror smart, self-aware, and a little bit caffeinated, this episode is your must-listen. Ben’s commentary reminds us that fear — like coffee — is best when it wakes you the hell up.
Love you! Mean it!
~Lawrence & Dana
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