Curry Barker’s horror debut Obsession will make you careful what you wish for… and what sandwich you bite into.

On this week’s show, our panel gets into the indie horror Obsession, the new series Widow’s Bay, and the internet pile-on du jour over Mac Barnett and the alleged “crud” of children’s literature.

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This week, we’ve got an all-guest-host panel with Gabfest faves Isaac Butler, Sam Adams, and June Thomas guiding the discourse… straight to hell. In this case, hell is the romantic relationships depicted in the buzzy indie horror Obsession. This rom-com/horror mashup—marking Curry Barker’s impressive feature directorial debut—deals with questions of codependency and consent. But the real question: is Obsession worth the online obsession?

Next, they turn their gaze to the spooky titular island of Widow’s Bay and discuss the new series starring Matthew Rhys in another horror/comedy genre experiment. Finally, they debate whether most kids’ books are “crud?” Or really, is the recent online furor over comments in children’s book creator Mac Barnett’s new book Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children merited?

In a bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, the gang gather over the topic of book clubs.

June: Get In: The Inside Story of Labor Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, a detailed and readable analysis of Keir Starmer’s unlikely rise to power.

Sam: The latest film of indie, animated short auteur Don Hertzfeldt “Paper Trail.”

Isaac: The novel The Oppermanns, a family saga by Lion Feuchtwanger written in real time during Hitler’s rise. (And, as a bonus peek into Feuchtwanger’s post-war milieu, check out Salka Viertel’s autobiography The Kindness of Strangers.)

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.

The good, bad, and insufferable about book clubs.

New York Times critic Dwight Garner says, “The Slate Culture Gabfest is one of the highlights of my week.” The award-winning Culturefest features Slate culture critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner debating the week in culture, from highbrow to pop.

Sam Adams is a Slate writer and senior editor.

June Thomas is the co-host of Slate's Working podcast. She is the author of A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture.

Isaac Butler is the co-host of Slate’s Working podcast. He is currently working on his third book, The Perfect Moment: The Religious Right, American Art, and the Dawn of the Culture Wars.