Hood classics, read loud and questioned harder.
Storytellers is a chapter-by-chapter reading show built around hood classics and live reaction. Derek keeps the plot moving while stopping to challenge character choices, clumsy sentences, missing logic, and sudden violence.
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Storytellers is a serialized reading show with a sharp running commentary track built into the performance. The recent episodes center on The Ultimate Sacrifice, a hood classic full of guns, money, violence, family drama, and characters making decisions with almost no room for peace. Derek reads the chapters and keeps the story moving. Then he interrupts it. A strange phrase gets questioned. A plot gap gets dragged into daylight. A character's logic gets challenged before the next body drops. That stop-start rhythm is the show. It has the forward pull of an audiobook, but the pleasure comes from hearing the reader wrestle with the material in real time. The tone is blunt, funny, and impatient with nonsense. When the book gets melodramatic, Derek names it. When a sentence turns awkward, he rewrites the thought aloud and explains why the original trips over itself. The recent arc tracks Gaddafi, Boo, Kimmy, Umar, Amin, Tosca, Cat, and others through escalating violence, disappearing side characters, money arguments, and romantic betrayal. Deaths pile up quickly. So do questions. Derek keeps asking who is left, why the story still has so much book remaining, and how many villains a single plot can hold before everyone loses moral standing. The result is less like a quiet literary podcast and more like sitting beside someone who enjoys the mess and still expects the writing to do its job. It is funny because it is specific. It is tense because the underlying story keeps turning cruel. The show works best when recap, reaction, and close reading all happen in the same breath. Storytellers is for listeners who want narrative heat with commentary that is just as alive as the fiction.
Made for: Best for listeners who enjoy serialized hood classics and fast editorial commentary. It especially fits an audience that wants recaps, reactions, and line-level nitpicks alongside the story.
What sets it apart: The show does not simply read the text; it argues with it in real time. Derek's live reactions turn plot holes, awkward phrasing, and over-the-top character choices into part of the entertainment.
4 Minds. One Story. We have fused two age-old activities; Storytelling and the game Telephone into a thrilling new medium. Storytellers. We build delicious little narratives. Come try one.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Derek's running commentary turns serialized crime fiction into a sharp record of changing language, social assumptions and everyday detail.
Storytellers follows Derek through serialized crime novels, combining an aloud reading with spontaneous criticism. During The Ultimate Sacrifice, he stops over awkward sentences, tests characters' decisions against the plot and notices details that mark the book's period,…
A narrator reads the chaos, then stops to roast the sentence before you can.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loaded argument and a tangled family question keep this one moving.
RBC S47Pt9: The Ultimate Sacrifice hinges on a domestic blowup, with Kimmy catching Reds in a lie and a handgun sharpening the stakes. The host also returns to the earlier knot around Tangie, Shakira, Cochise, and Boo's grandmother, piecing together who said what and how that…
A cash drop and a family call turn into a volatile reckoning.
The episode circles money and the strain it brings: cash is counted, boxed, and carried, while the real pressure sits in the calls, the commentary, and the grudges that follow.
A burned Chrysler, a trunk surprise, and a host who keeps stopping to fix the prose.
This episode tracks the fallout from the burned Chrysler, the trunk discovery, and the safe money haul, and it keeps circling back to the story's own wording.
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A profane crime story built around betrayal, consequence, and a sentence that lands hard.
Derek opens by making plain that he was done with sprawling series fiction, and that impatience gives the episode a rough, emphatic start. From there, the story tracks a childhood bond, a bad choice, and a felony-murder sentence, with Eric's betrayal carrying most of the weight.
A tense doorway scene becomes a sharp, profane argument with the story's voices, assumptions, and impossible retirement plans.
Chapter 19, "One False Move," makes a tense doorway meeting feel less like a plot beat than a pressure test for the book's strange internal logic.
A hidden crossing reaches Sweden, Copenhagen celebrates the war's end, and a cat spoils the milk.
Chapter 16 of Number the Stars stays close to death without turning heavy-handed. The host's repeated feeling that nobody deserves to die, even after preparing himself for that possibility, gives the wartime story a raw edge. Anne-Marie's thoughts return to Ellen, Mrs.
Great books, taken chapter by chapter, with delight
Book talk with room to wander.
Derek introduces Ratchet Book Club, discusses the YouTube version with comments, and begins Chapter 40 of Life Expectancy.
Gideon confronts Sergeant in Lakenheath about a FEMA scam, leading to a poisoned drink and the Sergeant's death.
Derek reads Chapter 16 of 'Number the Stars,' where Anne-Marie learns about the Danish resistance smuggling Jews to Sweden using hidden boat compartments.
A dramatic reading of a chapter from the book 'Waking with Enemies' where Gideon is dying.
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A reading of Chapter 29 from a hood classic, where Arizona dresses and reconciles with the narrator.
Storytellers’ “RBC S47Pt9: The Ultimate Sacrifice” centers on a cemetery shooting tied to Money, Qaddafi, Kimmy, and Boo, with the narrator tracking a funeral at Harmony Cemetery and describing a public attack in the middle of a graveside gathering.
Derek discusses the near-completion of a hood classic book, speculating on remaining plot points and character fates.
Derek recaps the latest episode of Ratchet Book Club, discussing how Gaddafi is losing trust with his team.
A narrator reflects on healing from a gunshot wound and recalls his father's advice about birds, pondering why people can't be left alone to make money.
Derek discusses his frustration with a book where characters vanish and only the main villain is pursued, noting that all characters are villains except possibly a mother and sister.
Marnie tells Dirty Reds that Kimmy changed after prison, slept with Phil, Derek Pendleton, Omar, and Black Junior, and that she used the proceeds from those relationships to buy a new Altima.
Gaddafi describes a man tied up in a Chrysler trunk, then says he watched the car burn until Eric died in the flames.
Ratchet Book Club chapter 6 centers on Kimmy realizing Gaddafi was tied to the Charlene Gooding shooting on S Street in Southeast.
Storytellers: "RBC S47Pt1: The Ultimate Sacrifice" centers on Beaumont Penitentiary, where Keith Barnett is attacked in a shower room after being called a rat.
Derek introduces the Ratchet Book Club podcast and begins reading Chapter 7 of a book about sleeping with strangers.