LESS THAN A WEEK into 2024, Katt Williams went on a podcast and laid waste to the world. Speaking on Club Shay Shay, the entertainment show hosted by pro-football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe, the comedian aired grievances and let loose on his long career while taking shots at an expansive list of targets, from Kevin Hart ("No one in Hollywood has a memory of a sold-out Kevin Hart show") to Cedric the Entertainer (whom he accused of stealing jokes) to Harvey Weinstein (the disgraced producer "offered to suck my penis in front of all my people at my agency").
Lasting almost three hours, the episode has been viewed more than 70 million times on YouTube; Saturday Night Live built a whole sketch around the appearance; and some of Williams's strays are still rippling through the atmosphere, as his Diddy comments ("All lies will be exposed") did when video evidence of the mogul physically assaulting his then-girlfriend, the singer Cassie, publicly emerged in May. The episode was such a cultural supernova that when Williams's comedy special Woke Foke dropped on Netflix a few months later, it felt like an anticlimax. He left it all on Club Shay Shay.
If the public face of podcasting was once thinky narrative shows vying for high-art legitimacy, these days it's chat and interview programs that hustle their way into your life. It's podcasts like Call Her Daddy, where Alex Cooper hunts for notoriety and headlines with buzzy bookings. It's Huberman Lab, where the pop scientist Andrew Huberman advises the masses to spend more time in the sun. It's the SmartLess trio (Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes) palling around with three presidents (Clinton, Obama, Biden) in a bid to keep the dream of American neoliberalism alive.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 17 - 30, 2024-Ausgabe von New York magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 17 - 30, 2024-Ausgabe von New York magazine.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
