Hi, Linda Holmes here.
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What does 2026 have in store for pop culture?
It's impossible to know for sure, but we are always willing to make our best guesses anyway.
That's right.
We are back for another year of pop culture predictions.
We'll touch on AI, the future of RuPaul's Drag Race, and what's to come for the Law & Order universe.
And of course, we'll check in on our prognosticating from last year and see how things worked out.
I'm Stephen Thompson.
And I'm Linda Holmes.
And today we're talking about our 2026 predictions on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
Joining us today are our Pop Culture Happy Hour co-hosts, Glenn Weldon.
Hey, Glenn.
Hey, let's just get on with this, okay?
And Aisha Harris.
Hello, Aisha.
Hey, I'm just glad we've made it through this year.
We made it.
We're still here.
We're all still here together.
Thank goodness.
It's wonderful to see all of you.
I'm going to start right off with Aisha Harris.
I would say historically a good predictor relative to the rest of us.
Really good track record.
Batting, what, 150?
Okay.
All right.
Well.
I don't know what that means.
Great time to be saying all that because this year.
The first thing we're going to do is we're going to listen to Aisha's prediction from last year.
I don't know if either of these things will actually happen, but they're predictions, so who cares?
I think that in 2025, Bob Iger is going to extend his CEO contract for Disney.
As you may know, he stepped down as CEO and Bob Chapek took over.
And then Iger came back because he just couldn't let go of the reins.
But he has his contract extended through to the end of 2026.
But I feel as though he's probably going to find a way to extend it past that.
The other part of this is that David Zasloff, the Warner Brothers Discovery CEO, is going to be unceremoniously ousted or resign from the company.
How'd you do, Aisha?
Well, no.
Yeah, how'd that go?
How'd that go for you?
Oh, for two.
Oh, for two.
Yeah, none of these things happened.
In fact, a lot of other things happened.
So Bob Iger, to that point, as of this taping, has not extended his CEO contract.
He is still scheduled to be in this position until December 31st of 2026.
But just in early December of 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Disney's board Basically, they plan to announce Iger's replacement in, quote unquote, early 2026.
So, you know, it's possible.
Like, my prediction could still, who knows, in 2026.
It could come true.
Sure.
But it seems unlikely at this point.
So that was wrong.
As for Zaslav, man.
Oh, man.
Zaslav is somehow coming off even better financially than anyone could ever imagine.
You've got this bidding war happening between Netflix and Paramount for Warner's assets.
You know, as of this taping, things are still kind of up in the air.
Who knows what this will turn out to be.
But Zaslav could walk away with hundreds of millions in equity in this sale.
OK, so he's doing fine.
So the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us are just here.
So my predictions were completely, completely off.
Yeah, but don't beat yourself up, because I mean, when you're trying to predict this part of the industry, it's Brownian motion dude.
It's random atomic bombardment.
Don't beat yourself up.
I agree.
I wouldn't even try, because I try not to even pay attention to who the names are that are involved in stuff like this.
Appreciate it.
Feel for you.
We'll get to mine.
But I'm sure for 2026, Aisha, you're just going to crush it.
You're going to crush it.
OK, so this is a prediction that I think Stephen especially will have thoughts on.
And I will be very curious to hear what you think about this.
I'm predicting in 2026 that a fully AI-generated song that we are aware of will crack the Billboard Hot 100.
I feel like it's coming.
I bet you're right.
You have Suno and Udio, these two big AI companies that have sort of entered into the mainstream.
Suno especially.
It's this generative artificial music creation platform and they have a partnership with Warner Music Group.
So they've already been sort of adopted into the establishment of the music business.
And in this past year of 2025, we've seen actually quite a few AI artists, quote unquote.
The songs may not be fully AI generated, but they are at least in part AI generated have hit Billboard charts.
Not the Billboard Hot 100, but they've hit, you know, the very specific ones.
Subcharts.
The subcharts.
So you have Zaniya Monet, like an animated animator.
That was created by a songwriter named Talisha and Nikki Jones.
A couple of her songs have reached, like the hot gospel songs, the hot R and B songs, Kane Walker, this AI assisted country artist, hit the country digital song sales chart.
And then, on top of that, if you're following Timbaland on Instagram, as I do and it's a very sad thing to watch, but Timbaland has gone full down the rabbit hole.
His character, Tata.
You have all of these people and these big industry titans adopting AI-generated music very quickly against many artists who are like what are we doing here?
So I just feel as though it's very possible that That this will happen, that we will see one of them actually crack into the Billboard Hot 100.
And what a sad day it will be.
I guess I'm just, I'm all for cynical predictions these days.
I'm sorry, guys.
Unfortunately, Aisha, I suspect your cynical prediction will be right on the money.
We're certainly heading in that direction.
You acknowledged the several artists who have kind of cracked these genre charts and They're not artists.
They're not artists.
I just want to say they're not artists.
Artists in air quotes.
Right now it is often kind of AI-assisted where it's a little bit of a hybrid.
But, man, the opportunities there.
So many people are trying to make this happen that it feels like a foregone conclusion.
Also, when you factor in like these streaming services have playlists where a lot of people are just hitting play on a playlist and then everything on that playlist, particularly around the holidays, just kind of naturally hits the Billboard charts.
So all it's going to take is a song like that just kind of landing on the right playlist for it to happen.
I suspect you're right, Aisha.
Yeah.
I'm not going to boo your prediction, Aisha, because it would sound like I was booing you.
And I would never boo you.
Love you.
Hope you're wrong.
Yes.
Me too.
Booing the situation.
All right.
Me too.
Speaking of booing the situation, Glenn Weldon, I cannot wait to be reminded.
What was your prediction for 2025?
I think the widespread acceptance of AI, of specifically generative AI like ChatGPT, is going to hit a roadblock.
I think the thing it has going for it right now is its usefulness.
I mean, we're all professional writers.
We don't use it, but every single one of our friends do every day in their lives at work.
And I think it continues to be used for the kind of writing that I would call task-oriented or functional.
You know cover letters applications, grant proposals, technical manuals, any email you have to send that is, you know, has to do with procedures or systems.
You know.
So the reason people use it is because it's so efficient.
They've convinced themselves that there's a kind of writing that is most efficient when it adheres to strict guidelines and formatting, and that's what computers can do right.
I think what's going to happen is that people are going to begin to acknowledge that kind of writing was never really about adherence to guidelines and formatting, that there always a human voice was behind it and there needs to be.
I think what we're doing now is producing final products that are so anodyne, so uniform, so generic that its usefulness, AI's usefulness is going to come into question.
I mean, guys, I don't know about this one.
I'm going to defer to you all to make the judgment.
I think your horizon is just too short.
Yeah.
Yes.
Because I think what I was focusing on there. was the technical writing aspect of AI.
And I tried to make the case that all writing is and should remain a human endeavor.
I still believe that.
But I think that was kind of a stand-in for me predicting a kind of larger backlash against AI.
And I don't think there was one.
As much as there was in 2025, I felt an entrenchment happening.
People dug in.
People who were leery Of it grew convinced that it sucks, and people like me, who already knew it sucks, ran to the barricades to try to shore them up.
But that's just people who are inside the barricades, right?
I'm not just talking about the people whose jobs it's threatening or taking, but I'm also talking about the people who listen to this show, who have come to realize, I think, how much of their I don't know cultural lives, their intellectual lives, their aesthetic lives, their artistic diet is getting poisoned by AI.
And I say that and I know how snooty and artsy-fartsy it sounds and it makes me want to beat myself up and take my own lunch money.
But I think it's true.
How are you going to... What grade do I get here?
I think what this prediction... was missing was some kind of metric.
Yeah, that's true.
Because the closest I can come to sort of saying I think you were on the right track here and I certainly hope you're on the right track here is essentially measured in Glenn I know you're going to love me using this word vibes.
Yep.
Like I do think there is a vibe shift happening where it is becoming a more commonly held opinion that this stuff is just kind of making everything worse and that God help you if you work in HR and you are trying to sift through resumes and cover letters and get a sense of the humanity of any single person applying for a job.
There is a sense of.
That is encroaching and that more and more people, I think, are voicing.
This stuff isn't really working the way it's supposed to.
It's kind of being forced down our throats.
If I were to tack something onto your prediction for 2026, it would be a sense that I feel like you're going to see more and more statements from creatives essentially saying we did not use AI.
It's already happening.
We already are.
Yeah.
I've noticed this sort of small industry bubbling up like a cottage industry of people who influencers, who their whole entire shtick online is to basically break down what is an AI and try to warn people.
Like you know that viral video of dogs going up to like at an adoption place and they pick their owners.
That's AI.
And then let me break it down for you.
Monies on trampolines.
Yeah, yeah.
So like, I think the vibes are correct.
It's just that they are not quite as far as I think you had hoped they would be.
I mean, for me, my revulsion about a lot of this stuff is philosophical.
And I acknowledge that it's philosophical.
And I have enough trouble making predictions when I understand the tech really well.
And I am not an expert on this tech because philosophically I'm so profoundly opposed to it.
And nothing people could tell me about the way it operates is going to change that fact.
But I will tell you.
I am going to continue to be a person who mutters, they're not artists, they're not artists.
Because I absolutely feel right now like it's an uphill battle to not want this stuff thrown in my face.
But I will continue to fight that battle because philosophically I feel extremely strongly about it.
Yeah.
And I just want to make a quick note that when I talk about this, I'm really talking about large language models used for stuff like writing, books or stuff that's used generatively to create art and fake photos and stuff like that.
So there's a bunch of – when you use the term AI, it brings a whole bunch of different stuff all together.
That isn't one thing.
It's a whole bunch of different things.
So when I say that I have a revulsion, I'm really talking about generating what are supposed to be creative works.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
Well, if it's any consolation to you all, I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who has kids who are, like you know, around 12, 13.
And their new burn.
Amongst these, this very small sample size, their new burn anytime they think something is fake is that's AI.
So, yeah, you know, the kids become synonymous with slob.
Yes.
Right.
All right, Glenn.
So what is your prediction for 2026?
I didn't want to speculate about the industry.
I don't know anything about it.
I didn't want to speculate about AI, certainly.
So I chose the only thing that's left when you eliminate those two things.
And you want metrics?
Here's a metric.
This thing will either happen or it won't.
I predict that the year 2026 is the year the icon, the legend known as RuPaul Charles, will step down from hosting RuPaul's Drag Race.
Oh, really?
Interesting.
Now look, I can hear the keyboards clacking even as I speak.
I am not saying this is something I want.
I hope she goes on forever.
But there is such a thing as tea leaves people, and I'm out here reading them.
Does that make me brave?
Does that make me a hero?
But the facts are these.
In February, Drag Race will have been on the air for 17 years.
Season 18 is just about to start.
And at this point, Drag Race is not a series.
It's not even a franchise.
It is a global, hyper, megalo corporation.
I'm not saying it's too much work.
I'm saying that when it comes to Drag Race, one cannot deny that there is now...
An infrastructure firmly in place.
It is an institution.
It is a machine with a format so rigid and so unvarying that, like any machine would, it is showing signs of wear and tear.
Now, the ratings don't reflect this for recent seasons after it moved to MTV.
And look, she has expressly not said she wants to quit.
In fact, as recently as March 2025.
She told Entertainment Tonight that in show business, you never leave a job and that they'll have to escort her out of the building forever.
That quote is how I learned that Entertainment Tonight is still going concern in 2025.
Turns out it is.
So she doesn't want to do it.
There's no signs that she's about to.
So give me points for a bold prediction here.
It is bold.
It has less to do with her age.
Yes, she's in her mid-60s now and she looks great and she's hilarious and she's warm.
You know, when she wants to be.
But here's what's happening.
She stepped away from Drag Race Down Under and let Michelle Visage take the reins.
She also very deliberately makes appearances both on and off the show, in and out of drag, to distinguish between RuPaul the drag persona, and RuPaul Charles, the male presenting persona.
And RuPaul Charles has started showing up on game shows and talk shows.
So the drag persona isn't the only persona.
But here is what's really changed over the last two years.
Alan Cumming and the traitors have usurped her Emmy dominance.
And she is smart enough to know that the Emmys don't backtrack.
They always chase the new shiny thing, which means her era is over.
The queen is dead.
Long live the queen.
Now, I do think she's in it for the love of the game.
But that means that the game is giving less love back to her.
And I used to work in nonprofit, right?
And I recognize this syndrome.
She is like the founder of the nonprofit that never leaves and is keeping the org locked into, not just the same mission but the same structure with that regard, for you know the changing landscape
She was the one who changed the landscape.
I know that.
What she did for the art of drag cannot be denied.
And she showcases a very wide variety of performers on the show.
But when it comes to crowning them, her drag aesthetic is very narrow.
And you have only to look at the queens who've been crowned in other countries to see that.
So, look, I do hope I'm wrong.
Right now when it comes to drag, when it comes to queer folk, when it comes to trans folks and, to be clear, it took her a while to get on the right side of history there, but she's on it now.
She is a voice we need.
She offers a platform.
She's doing good work in the world.
And I hope she stays where she is forever.
But I have to acknowledge that what she's created is an institution that can carry on that work.
And in fact, it's already doing that around the world.
Let's say RuPaul is listening right now and she's like, you know what?
He's right.
Maybe the prediction could actually come true because of you, Glenn.
And then people might have pitchforks.
I'm not trying to get people on you, but.
No one man should have all this power.
I mean it's interesting because one of her great legacies among many is she has really helped build up a huge bench.
You know, you have people who have become icons because they first appeared on that show and that kind of launched them into wider popularity.
There are certainly people who have appeared on that show who could step into that role or at the very least, step into kind of a farm team system where it's like okay, I'm going to host Drag Race Monaco, right.
You know there's enough franchising of that show that you can certainly develop kind of future RuPaul's.
I don't know if it's going to happen in 2026, but I do like the boldness.
I mean, she might wait for a round number after 20 seasons or something like that.
But I don't know.
I just feel it in the air.
Be bold.
Be bold.
Absolutely.
All right.
Thank you very much, Glenn.
It's interesting going from your prediction for next year to my prediction from last year, which we're going to listen to now.
My prediction for 2025 is that we are going to start to hear more seriously about Lorne Michaels retiring.
SNL is doing its 50th.
A few years ago in an interview, he said maybe he wanted to stay around until the 50th.
That seemed like maybe a good time to retire.
He's 80.
Now, very often people...
Say something like that.
And then they get there and they think well, I still feel pretty good and I'm actually not going to retire.
But as I said, he's 80.
Certainly he doesn't have to do it anymore.
Certainly he could continue, if he wanted to be kind of to have his fingers in all kinds of different pies without doing the job of being in charge of SNL.
But I do think you're going to, at the very least in 2025, start to hear about succession plans.
Like what is the plan?
So in making that prediction, I neglected a very important fact, which is that we are in a historical era in which no one ever retires.
And if you have been having people kiss your ring for several decades, there is no reason why you would give it up at any time.
You simply wait around until they carry you out feet first and then, Just like RuPaul, could wait for a round number and then retire.
Probably not.
Probably not.
I'm just going to say probably not.
And I've given over to the fact that they're never going to freshen that show.
It's just going to stay exactly the same and be, in my opinion, quite uninspired as it is now, with a very very, very familiar formula they follow pretty much every week.
And, you know, occasionally they have something that's fun to watch later and usually they don't.
And I give up.
It's like if you have attained a certain amount of power, there's no interest in succession plans.
There's no interest in what's going to happen to the institution after you can't do it anymore.
You just stay there and you stay in your office and you stay powerful for the rest of your life.
Predicting that a baby boomer will voluntarily give up power.
Yeah.
I see.
I spite a flaw.
I spite a flaw.
Yeah.
I do want to say, as far as my prediction for 2026, Aisha's prediction may have seemed cynical.
Other predictions may seem cynical.
My prediction is the most cynical.
Oh.
I am proud to say.
Did not know this was a competition, but okay.
Okay.
Which is somewhere in the Law & Order universe, there's going to be a take on political reporter Olivia Nuzzi, her alleged affair with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the fallout from all of that.
Obviously, if you want to fall down that rabbit hole yourself of what allegedly happened, you can Google it.
Now, because it is such a closely watched story, there will be some kind of thing where, like the setup,
The initial circumstances or some part of it will make people go, oh, I get who it is.
Yes.
I get who it is.
I think this is solid.
I think this is rock solid.
This is a great one.
They did an episode, I think it was SVU.
It was somewhere in the Law & Order universe.
But they did an episode on the Paula Deen scandal.
Yes, they did.
They will find a way.
They will find a way.
And often it's more than one thing.
Right, they mash them up.
That was Sybil Shepard, I think, played this Paula Deen type character.
And it was Paula Deen, but it was also other things.
It's not usually a straight lift of one story.
But somewhere in there, they're going to do something that's going to make you go, oh...
I see.
I see.
It popped into my head and I just couldn't get it out of my head.
Linda, I think you win.
Yeah.
Maybe if this prediction pans out, I'll just make this a sub prediction every year.
What from this year is going to show up in the Law & Order universe next year?
So that's my prediction for 2026.
Stephen, we're going to listen now to your prediction for 2025.
I'm going to say the Oscars take box office into consideration and give Best Picture to Wicked.
The Grammys always take box office into consideration.
I think they're going to give Album of the Year to neither Taylor Swift nor Beyonce.
Instead, the trophy is going to go to Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish, which will make a lot of people very performatively mad on social media.
Yeah.
The Super Bowl.
I'm going to go with Bills over Eagles, because Detroit Lions fans can never be allowed to have nice things.
I'm going to say Rihanna will drop a new album because something good has to happen in 2025.
And finally, 2024 was a...
Quietly a very good year for K-pop music and fans of K-pop music.
I'm hereby predicting that K-pop has a very big 2025, as BTS returns from its pre-planned hiatus and releases a song.
Now here comes the metric that tops the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 plus weeks.
Bold.
You do get specific.
I love it.
Yes.
Man, I appreciate that.
And you're one for five, but that one is just... Okay, so here's the thing about this prediction.
Throughout the year, and especially as the movie K-pop Demon Hunters took off, I thought to myself finally, for once, I crushed my prediction.
Mm-hmm.
And then you go back and listen to what I actually said.
If you take out the word K-pop, I got nothing right.
I was wrong about absolutely everything pretty wildly.
I love it that you do this.
You stack them up, buddy.
Every year.
You bring a stack of predictions and they are usually all wrong, and it does not stop you from doing it over and over again.
So what are the odds that I would get it wrong in 2026?
Basically, law of averages, these are all going to be 100% right.
That's true.
You're due.
Yeah.
I'm due.
Yeah.
I don't know, guys.
You know that every time you roll die, the probability is reset.
You know that, right?
Don't tell him.
Don't tell him this.
Don't tell him this.
I don't do math.
I'd forgotten that you had predicted Rihanna coming out with a new album.
Now, do we know?
We are coming up with a 10-year anniversary of Anti.
And who knows?
I doubt it.
She's happy.
She's not going to.
I thought you were going to say the 10-year anniversary of the first time Stephen predicted Rihanna.
Well, yeah.
If we're really going to split hairs here.
I do want to point out Rihanna did have a song on the soundtrack to Smurfs.
Oh, God.
I'm counting.
I'm giving you a D minus.
Not an album, but okay.
I'm not counting it.
It was a big year for K-pop.
That's my D minus.
It was.
Not so much BTS, but K-pop to even hundreds.
As long as you don't delve into the specifics too much, absolutely huge K-pop year.
Gotta love that.
All right.
What's on your schedule for 2026, bud?
Well, Linda, because I can never learn from past mistakes, I will give you a list.
Rams over Patriots.
When have I ever been right?
I'm just trying to will the Packers to a Super Bowl victory by picking teams other than them.
One battle after another wins Best Picture at the Oscars.
Kendrick Lamar finally wins Album of the Year.
After Beyonce won Album of the Year last year.
I'm going to stop always predicting that the Grammys will do something stupid.
No Rihanna album.
No Frank Ocean record.
I'm going to stop predicting either one.
Ever again.
So for the big one, I want to go with some kind of grand overarching prediction about the state of the entertainment industry, maybe about AI.
Instead, I'm going to aim smaller.
I predict that a major A-list talent, a Taylor Swift perhaps, will attempt to shock and awe their way into the holiday music canon.
Mm-hmm by releasing a new Christmas album to compete with the glut of old stuff that crowds the charts every December.
As a metric, I'm going to say that a new, as yet unreleased, holiday song will hit the top 10 by this time next year.
Okay.
And as degree of difficulty goes, just know this basically never comes to pass.
It's I just feel it.
There's such a void there waiting to be filled.
You know, Taylor Swift has released some holiday music, but I feel like this landscape is ripe for somebody really big, at the height of their powers, to come and do something new.
Yeah, so we're talking about a new song.
We're not talking about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey releasing a version of Santa Baby where he has like a spoken word part and then she does all the singing.
Why did you conjure that into existence?
Why did you do that?
I cannot believe you willed that into the universe.
I am predicting a new song.
It will be a new composition.
It's not going to be Taylor Swift covering Silver Bells.
It will be a new song.
And it will be a hit in 2026.
The specificity is just awesome to behold, Stephen.
Every year, the specificity is just... If you want specificity and you want to be wrong...
I'm your guy.
Well, I mean, they go hand in hand.
No, you're great.
You're great at that.
And I admire you.
No, I admire you for it.
I don't have the confidence to do that.
I just choose one.
And then I'm just like, you know what?
What happens, happens.
Que sera, sera, as they say.
It's just going to be like Santa, baby.
And he's going to go, yeah.
Yeah.
I would have assumed, if you were going to have those two doing a duet, it would be Baby.
It's Cold Outside.
No, you can't do that.
Too controversial.
It's too controversial.
It's radioactive.
Can't do it.
I don't know.
Taylor loves controversial.
Yeah, well then, maybe they'll do it with a – maybe there'll be a Christmas-themed Christmas tree version of the wood song from the record.
You see what I'm saying?
Like a bud about a Christmas tree.
He'll be a Christmas tree now.
Anyway, well, I love your predictions for next year, Stephen.
I loved your predictions for last year.
Someday one of them is going to come true.
You just got to keep piling them on.
None of mine came true either.
But I went 0 for 1 and you went 0 for like 50.
And that is awesome.
Hey, I said K-pop.
You did.
You did.
You went one half.
All right.
Well, we'd love to know what your pop culture predictions are for the new year.
You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, Glenn Weldon, thank you so much for being here.
I predict we will be together many times in 2026.
Thank you, buddy.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This episode is produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
Hello, Come In provides our theme music.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.
