I'm Audie Cornish and this is the assignment and I really wanted to do an episode looking back at the big pop culture moments.

But honestly, those are getting we're getting weirder and like harder to pin down.

So we're going to follow Oxford Dictionary's lead.

They just declare the word of 2025 to be rage bait.

Outrage will always bring people together.

And even if it brings people together in fighting and disagreement, it has everyone, like,

tuning into the conversation.

That's Rebecca Alter, a culture writer for New York Magazine.

She covers movies and TV, comedy, and according to her bio,

celebrities behaving oddly, which, let's be honest, is basically the norm.

When I think Marty Supreme, what happened at the New York Film Festival, right?

We can't let this movie down.

You are officially an astronaut.

Thank you so much.

How do you feel?

I feel super connected to love. Where are the great thinkers now? I feel like throughout

history there's always been thinkers. Now we're like regurgitators. So Rebecca Alter is joining me

today to look back on this year of the high brow,, the lowbrow, the brilliant, the despicable, and everything in between.

Stay with us.

All right. So first of all, I need you to introduce yourself and like your job. Like what is it when your family and your

parents' friends ask what you do? What do you say? I say I'm a staff writer at New York

magazine and my parents' friends mishear that and think that that means the New Yorker. Fair.

...