Today’s Highlights: We begin with a look forward – If 2025 was the year the 20th-century cultural models finally stopped working, 2026 is the year we start building something new – five big ideas for 2026 culture (Doug McLennan’s Diacritical).
The friction of this transition is everywhere. In the entertainment world, a violinist has sued Will Smith for sexual harassment and wrongful termination, alleging he was fired simply for reporting misconduct (Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)). Composer Stephen Schwartz has bowed out of hosting a Kennedy Center opera gala, declaring that appearing at the venue has become an “ideological statement” he can no longer support (The New York Times).
Commercial strategies are shifting. A review of 2025 reveals that celebrities dominated Broadway stages, a lucrative tactic to lure audiences off their couches that is reshaping the theatre economy (Washington Post (Yahoo)). Meanwhile, musician John Mayer is attempting to turn the historic Henson (formerly Chaplin) Studios into a modern-day “Warhol’s Factory” (Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)).
And we look at how audiences and identities are evolving. The boundaries of media consumption are blurring, as fans flocked to movie theaters to watch the Stranger Things finale, turning a streaming event into a communal, pajama-clad spectacle (The Verge). And in a poignant cultural shift, linguists warn we are living through the last days of the Southern drawl, which is rapidly disappearing among younger generations (The Atlantic).
All of our stories, organized by category, below.
