Cultural predictions for 2025: the year we accept the chaos
Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s a time-honored tradition: for the third year in a row, FT Weekend editor-at-large Matt Vella joins Lilah to reflect on this past year, and muse on the coming one. We’ve asked listeners to send their predictions and wishes for 2025, and today we’re talking through them! Will next year bring an end to meme culture? How do we step away from restaurant reservation wars? Will Lena Dunham make a comeback? Plus, Matt tells us why he is embracing chaos, and why we should all let go of the fear of being watched.
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As you know, the show is ending in early January – and you can still send in a cultural question through December. What’s rolling around in your head? How can we help? Email Lilah at [email protected], or connect with her on Instagram @lilahrap.
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Links (all FT links get you past the paywall):
– You can flip through all of our listeners’ and colleagues’ predictions on Instagram, here
– You can read Lena Dunham on Sally Rooney in our 2024 Women of the Year round-up here: https://www.ft.com/womenof2024
– Lilah mentions this piece by Anne Helen Petersen on how we’re all posting less on social media, and this opinion piece by Michael Grunwald about the future of farming
– Matt mentions the rise of the noodle boys
– You can listen to last year’s predictions here, or by searching ‘Life and Art 2024 cultural predictions’
– Matt is on X @mattvella
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Special FT subscription offers for Life and Art podcast listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial, are here: http://ft.com/lifeandart
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Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos. |
| 0:07.0 | We have come full circle. Once again, it is the end of the year. We are about to break for the holiday season, and we're honoring an annual tradition. You have tuned in to our prediction episode for 2025. |
| 0:19.0 | As in previous years, I am here with the editor at |
| 0:22.2 | at large of FT Weekend, the great Matt Vela. He is joining me from Copenhagen. Hi, Matt. Welcome. |
| 0:27.9 | Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me. So good to have you. So we have asked all our listeners, |
| 0:33.7 | all of you, as we do every year, to send us your cultural predictions for 2025, both what you think will happen, but also what you want to happen culturally next year. |
| 0:43.6 | As usual, the responses came flooding in by email and on Instagram, and today we will be playing some of them and chatting through the themes. |
| 0:51.0 | Before we start, I have one order of business, which is that this is our last episode of the year, but it's not our final episode of the themes. Before we start, I have one order of business, which is that this is our last |
| 0:54.6 | episode of the year, but it's not our final episode of the show. On January 17th, we'll be dropping |
| 1:00.1 | a big bonus final episode where I wax lyrical about how much I love you all and ask my colleagues |
| 1:06.7 | all of the excellent questions that you sent in. But because it is our last episode of the year, |
| 1:11.4 | I do hope it gets you in the mood to reflect and celebrate and appreciate the fact that we're |
| 1:16.1 | all still doing the thing, reading and watching and thinking and predicting. And with that, |
| 1:21.6 | let's get into it. Matt, hi. Hi. Hi. It's my favorite day of the year. Oh, mine too. |
| 1:27.8 | Mine too. |
| 1:29.8 | Okay, so why don't we get into predictions? |
| 1:33.4 | The first thing that we usually do on these shows is look back at whether our predictions from last year came true. |
| 1:39.4 | And I re-listen to our episode. |
| 1:42.0 | And I think we did okay. |
| 1:45.1 | Okay. |
| 1:47.7 | Okay. |
| 1:48.4 | So big picture, what we predicted was this. |
... |
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