Culture Gabfest - Stuck in the Backrooms Edition
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 75 minutes
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Summary
This week Steve, Dana, and Julia convene once again—this time with some big news. Also, they make a classic Gabfest episode.
First up, it's the alienating fluorescent buzz, infinite carpeted sprawl, and liminal horror of Backrooms. The new release from A24 is directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons based on his YouTube series which itself was inspired by deep internet lore and a viral piece of creepypasta. Does the uncanny maze of Backrooms go anywhere? They step into the labyrinth to find out.
Next, they’re joined by Gabfest fave Leon Neyfakh to get into another parallel dimension: the world of OnlyFans. They discuss Leon’s new podcast about the ubiquitous platform OnlyFantasy—produced with comedian and OF creator Gracie Canaan.
Finally, it’s a conversation that’s as lively as… well, that’s the question. They take up a recent piece of data journalism in The Pudding analyzing the most common similes.
In a bonus episode, Carl Wilson joins the call (as well as a special endorsement segment) to talk taste. Specifically, they get into how discussions of taste have changed since Carl wrote authoritatively on it 18 years ago in his book Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Bad Taste.
Endorsements
Dana: The recent Zadie Smith essay in The New York Review of Books "Art for Our Sakes."
Carl: The live album Happy Today by Jeff Parker and ETA IVtet as well as the anthology of poetry On Occasion: Poems for the People, with a special Canadian shoutout to the poem "Oh Americans" by Gary Barwin.
Julia: The tranquil, koi fish-rich, and very SoCal Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine. Also, L.A. listeners should join the folks of L.A Material, Punch List, and New York Review of Architecture on June 7 for the event LACMA Therapy Session to process all their complicated feelings about the new David Geffen Galleries.
Steve: The band The Durutti Column as sampled in the Blood Orange song "The Field." Plus, Steve would love to know what listeners make of the author J.M. Coetzee, particularly his novel Disgrace.
(Also, make sure to subscribe to Carl's fantastic newsletter Crritic!)
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Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.
Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Stephen McHaff and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest Stuck in the Backrooms edition. |
| 0:14.6 | It's Wednesday, June 3rd, 2006. |
| 0:17.1 | On today's show, the A24 horror movie Backroom started as a creepy pasta on 4chan. |
| 0:23.4 | We will define these terms later about the eerieness of abandoned, disused spaces. |
| 0:29.2 | It's now a blockbuster in the making. |
| 0:31.7 | It made over 100 million global last weekend shattered expectations, so the headlines tell me. |
| 0:37.1 | And is turning its now 20-year-old director into a star. |
| 0:40.8 | The movie itself stars Renata Reinsva of sentimental value and Chiaveh. |
| 0:47.6 | And then the web platform only fans, it cracked a kind of code. |
| 0:51.3 | How do you get people to pay for porn when it is so ubiquitous and free now? |
| 0:55.9 | Subscribers spent $7 billion on OF content in 2024. The journalist and treasured Slate alum Leon Nafak has co-created a six-part podcast called Only Fantasy, trying to explain the why and how of it. |
| 1:09.9 | And also, I think the far deeper psychological |
| 1:13.9 | and sociological implications of its popularity, it's terrific. I listen to it all the way through. |
| 1:18.9 | We will be joined by Leon. I'm very excited. And finally, Dana, at the thought of this third topic, |
| 1:24.9 | I have to say my heart beats in my rib cage almost like a boxer's speed bag or is it more like a sparrow trapped in the rafters of an old abandoned bus station or maybe, anyway, never mind. |
| 1:39.0 | Our final topic, we discuss a data-driven analysis of 200,000 similes. I love the pity laughter coming from |
| 1:46.9 | Los Angeles. No, I'm just thinking of all the other metaphors that your heart could be |
| 1:52.9 | beating like. Okay, well, that's my cue to say. We're joined by Julia Turner from Los Angeles. |
| 1:57.9 | Julia, I will say this, you are the co-founder and editor-in-chief of L.A. Material. |
| 2:04.6 | It is amazing how I do not live in Los Angeles. I'm not in any special way preoccupied by Los Angeles. |
| 2:12.5 | In fact, you have a mild distaste for it in my experience. |
| 2:15.9 | I mean, only in the sense that I have distaste for things that are bigger, |
... |
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