Happy 25 pieces of culture that explain the last 25 years pub week to all who celebrate! At Vox, we are thrilled to be launching this project, which identifies the cultural phenomenon — across movies, books, food trends, hashtags, and even pharmaceutical drugs — that help us understand the last quarter century. The project represents our best effort to distill exactly those artifacts that illuminated something fundamental about their moment in time, and taken together, explain the 21st century.
So which cultural product exemplifies the shifting cultural tides of the 2020s, with its atomization of media, its distrust of establishment institutions, and its overall mood of distrust and paranoia? The monoculture is dead, but correspondent Christian Paz argues that the closest thing we have might be The Joe Rogan Experience. Christian traces Rogan’s ascent from a reality TV star and martial artist to host of the most-listened-to podcast in America, by creating a space for supposed “free thinkers” and other average Joes who defy easy political categorization. Rogan and his fans “have been at the crossroads of just about every major moment and societal change that defines the 2020s, from Covid misinformation and vaccine fearmongering to the expansion of the ‘manosphere’ universe,” Christian writes.
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—Naureen Khan, senior editor, culture and features
