CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription.Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. As special treat, you can now listen to our 2025 retrospective with Ruby Justice Thelot for free.Hey pals. Welcome to our first annual cultural predictions episode. To kick off 2026, we asked some of our favorite culture critics, media theorists, filmmakers, technologists, journalists, fashion bloggers and more to send us a voice note with their best guess about where the zeitgeist will take us this year. To our surprise and delight, 34 people got back to us with their predictions. Plus, Andrea predicts the return of club culture (think: film clubs and salons, not dance parties) in response to attention economy fatigue, and Emilie goes long on “elite midcult” in music and movies as a culture-industry counter-reaction to poptimism.Topics range from writer and podcaster Steven Phillips-Horst talking the end of bright white lighting and a return to warmer, yellower hues, to New York Mag tech columnist John Herrman talking about how prediction markets are coming for politics and political media, to New Models co-host Carly Busta talking about the rise of a neo-oral culture. You’ll find the full list of contributors (with time stamps) below. Sound design and music by Andrea.Drew Millard on the return of the buzzbandSam Valenti on no longer complaining that nobody is making good music and listening to music instead Biz Sherbert on the rise of the beautiful white boy rapperTony Lashley on the West London rapper SlewMano Sundaresan on the inevitability of somebody releasing an AI-generated or assisted song that gets critical acclaimPhilip Sherburne on the coming mass streaming exodusW. David Marx