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What 2025 Taught Me About Culture, Chaos, and Community
16 Plays13 days ago
2025 was a year of transformation, rapid change, and unexpected lessons. In this episode, I reflect on everything this wild year taught me about finding meaning in chaos, building community, and discovering resilience.
In This Episode:✨ Why 2025 felt like living through Pluto in Aquarius energy 🎮 My thoughts on gaming culture, anime, and media that got me through the year 🎵 Music that healed me: The Weeknd, FKA twigs, Tinashe, Marina, and Florence + The Machine 💭 The illusion of work and why people are waking up to new realities 🌐 AI, technology, and the exponential changes we're navigating 👥 Finding the Cult of Jade and why community matters more than ever 💪 The biggest lesson: No one's coming to save you—you have to save yourself
This year forced us to look within, question everything, and find our own authority. Whether you're burnt out, searching for meaning, or just trying to figure out what's next, this episode is for you.
Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro: Reflecting on 2025 5:00 - Pluto in Aquarius & Rapid Change 10:00 - Media & Anime That Captivated Me 15:00 - Music That Healed: FKA twigs, Marina, Florence 25:00 - Gaming Culture & PlayStation Rant 30:00 - The Illusion of Work & Finding Meaning 35:00 - The Cult of Jade & Building Community 40:00 - No One's Coming to Save You 42:00 - Looking Forward to 2026
Connect With Me:📸 Instagram: @gatherthempod 🐦 Twitter/X: @gatherthempod 🎵 TikTok: @gatherthempod 📧 Listener Letters: gatherthempod@gmail.com 💜 Support on Patreon for exclusive content (link in bio)
Mentioned in This Episode:
- Dan Da Dan (anime)
- Severance (TV show)
- The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow (briefly)
- FKA twigs - Eusexua/Exsexua Afterglow
- Marina - Princess of Power
- Florence + The Machine - Everybody Scream
- Cardi B - Am I the Drama?
- Doja Cat - Vie
- Digimon: Time Stranger (game briefly mentioned)
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
00:00:08
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Gather Them Podcast. I'm your host, Jerome. This is a work regular week. I'm pretty much in the space of being glad that 2025 is coming to an end. By the time you see this, 2025 will have come to an end. But we'll be in that weird kind of transition period where, you know, we don't really know what 2026 is going to bring. Like, I think it's going to be Very interesting. I think right now, 2025 has really set the stage for a lot of random rapid change. There was a lot of divisiveness. There a lot of echo chambers. There were a lot of political divisions and things that happened that I didn't even think were going to happen. And that's literally what i talk about when I talk about Pluto and Aquarius. Pluto is the sign of chaos, destruction, death
00:01:04
Speaker
Things like changing. And it's like Aquarius, the sign of the individual technology, humanity, the collective, that combination right there.
00:01:17
Speaker
The fact that when people said that the last time this happened was. 250 years ago, i'm like.
00:01:28
Speaker
Okay, it's kind of weird to not think it's a little on the nose. I'm not going to lie about that. It kind of feels a little weird to say that. Not to mention I was talking about conspiracy theories with some friends. So that also had me a little shook where I was like, oh no.
00:01:45
Speaker
But it did, this year did, you know, I think give me an interesting perspective on where people are at culturally, where the media is kind of at, and where people are maybe finding their meaning a little bit.
00:02:00
Speaker
I, for me, found more meaning through my own journey and entrepreneurship. something that I never thought I would get into. But I think as someone that has ADHD, it can be really hard to integrate into the world and to see things the way other people see them. I have my own unique way of looking at things. And I like that about myself. I think I would, I've always been maybe hard on myself because I didn't understand myself. But I understand myself a lot more. And I actually thank 2025 for that.
00:02:37
Speaker
I don't know if I would have been the person that I am now. There was a lot of rapid change, a lot of transition.
00:02:48
Speaker
You had to be ready. You had to adjust. Whether it was like the weather, whether it was the political climate, whether it was technology, you just had to adjust. This is kind of, I think, the pinnacle part where we start to maybe get to this level of exhaustion. So it's been a little hard for me to maybe tell where people are at with regard to...
00:03:17
Speaker
The holiday has made me a little hazy. feel a little like... I need to just get reintegrated back into the real world a bit. I mean, things have been happening behind the scenes. It's just really interesting to see the ways in which 2025 tested our boundaries, our level of burnout, making things became a little bit more challenging, I would say. Some things became a little bit more easy. I'd say for artists, particularly when it came to AI and things like that, that was a little bit more...
00:03:52
Speaker
of a thing to have people in upheaval. But I found that for me, focusing on my own level of transformation, the things that I could control, the things that like inspired me were my creative journey, a again, private practice, hanging out more with friends towards the end of the year, trying to Be a little bit more alive. I think 2025 was just pretty bleak when it came to career. Some days I would wake up and I would just be like, oh my God, it's the same day on repeat. I'm doing the same thing over and over again. I don't know.
00:04:31
Speaker
how I'm going to make it or how I'm going to survive. And then I realized that by integrating the things that I used to do back into my day or, you know, doing things that were maybe different or things I wouldn't normally do, I would just find ways to still continue to challenge myself. And I think, again, the move towards people having more the gig work or, you know, working a job that they didn't really maybe want to work. I think like,
00:05:01
Speaker
The thing about it was that people felt so scared that like, if I leave my job, then that could be it. Like that felt like that was the key for people. Whereas I was on this wave of like, I'm a figure this shit out regardless.
00:05:14
Speaker
And I hope that everyone else kind of has that going into 2026 because I don't think that we should live in fear, especially when we all in fear.
00:05:27
Speaker
in agreement that like things are pretty bad like it is pretty bad you know now so I am curious if, you know, in 2026, there's going to be more like push towards people like leaving their jobs.
00:05:46
Speaker
There are a lot of layoffs due to AI, um apparently. Sometimes I'm like, I see media news highlights, but I'm like, I don't understand how people are still like, I mean, that's like really ignorant of me to say, I guess, but like,
00:06:00
Speaker
driving SUVs, like why is there still traffic everywhere? Like why is everyone still on the road if everyone's not working? i don't understand, like people are still making it. And I wonder if people are just making it because they're relying more on their community now versus before the pandemic where it felt like people were still leaning towards the old way of being very independent and being the one that is really on their shit, you know, really business type, business millennial. Like, I remember that really being a thing, like people really being on their shit about going to work. And now it almost feels like there's an illusion of what we thought work was kind of lifting right now.
00:06:44
Speaker
So yeah, I thought that that was a good idea.
00:06:48
Speaker
experience to go through for me I talk about it more on my Patreon and my 2025 Trauma Cake episode which I'll link below it was a hard year I'm not gonna just you know feel oh it was all good and like blah blah blah but like it wasn't terrible in the sense that I think it can get worse and I think that with 2026 being a midterm election year that it will get worse if people are not paying full attention
00:07:30
Speaker
I mean, I will talk a little bit about some of the things that I found interesting, you know, just really quickly in the media when it came to TV shows or, you know, specifically anime. I guess I'll talk specifically about anime. I don't think that everyone wants to listen to that.
00:07:49
Speaker
But what I will say is that there were shows that I didn't expect to watch like Dan to Dan that really sucked me in The emotional plot, the artistic design, the animation, the way in which the characters had their own personalities. I wasn't someone that went into anime as a longtime viewer.
00:08:14
Speaker
The only anime thing I've ever watched was Digimon and Pokemon, I guess. And I guess Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. But that was all the Americanized things. There are a bunch of things that I have not watched. I...
00:08:27
Speaker
At first struggled to keep up with watching the shows because of the subtitles, having to read those. I really understand now that meme or that talk of the girl that was vacuuming and watching anime because you can't miss the subtitles. I thought that the gaming atmosphere was very interesting. I didn't really participate too much in games.
00:08:50
Speaker
I watched a lot of games. I watched a lot of my friends play games. They played Indiana Jones or they played Metaphor. They've played a couple other games. I did get into the one game I did play and get into at the end of the year was Digimon, the new Digimon game that came out, Strange Time.
00:09:10
Speaker
Which I think is actually pretty fun, like, so far. I mean, i just brought it because it was on sale for the holidays. And so I just bought it. i heard Claire Obscura was everyone's favorite game. I personally...
00:09:24
Speaker
Video games are interesting for me. I like gaming. I want to build a PC. I prefer PC gaming than consoles because I think that consoles are so impermanent that like by the time, like they're talking about PlayStation 6 and i feel like PlayStation 5, I just was able to get my hands on it back in 2023.
00:09:47
Speaker
three I might have been able to get my hands on it finally then. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, PlayStation 5 Max. I'm like, be so for real. I can't take it. so I'm definitely looking to get into some PC games this year and my downtime for sure.
00:10:04
Speaker
Music really captivated me this year. I was really, The Weeknd, I love The Weeknd. And I think this was his last album, Abel Tessa Faye. I think this was his last album as The Weeknd.
00:10:17
Speaker
I really was disappointed that Tinashe did not come out with part three. That really did upset me. i really was looking forward to it. I was really, oh my God. When she said every year a new part would come out, I really was so serious, locked in. But I get it. That's not really how creativity works. You can't really put a time limit on it.
00:10:35
Speaker
I was also really captivated by Marina. She talked about her journey with chronic fatigue. and how creating this album was an outlet for her and coming back to herself. And I thought that that was inspiring to me as someone that had gone through something really deep and personal at the beginning of the year. And then towards the end, or at least by the summer, that album really did help to heal me a little bit and start to make me not feel like
00:11:09
Speaker
love and connection weren't pointless. Like there was a meaning to have connection and love and that it's okay to want it. Like, I really think that it was an album that was needed.
00:11:24
Speaker
i highly suggest if you didn't listen to it to go listen to it. I think people are too hard on people for the way in which they show up in the world. Like, I'm not really that person per se. I'm more so the kind of person that's very down to earth, and I like to connect to people.
00:11:45
Speaker
I think I'm better at people like me. I've been able to make friends online, so I think that's important. FKA Twigs was another one that stood out to me this year. I did not expect there to be a part two. I also came into the year not really an FKA Twigs stan.
00:11:59
Speaker
I was listening to the music passively. There was music that I liked, singles that I liked. There were some very rude comments about you know liking FKA Twigs and being...
00:12:12
Speaker
bigger that people made or someone made on X, formerly known as Twitter, that was funny to me. And I felt like I could laugh at it as, you know, i'm a bigger person. But essentially the joke was that only like thin people or something like FK Twigs. And it's so funny because I lost weight and I was like, maybe that's why like FK Twigs now.
00:12:41
Speaker
But no, that was like not for real. But their music is actually really great. I like that the way that she described the album being this state of
00:12:55
Speaker
like essential essential wo is like a sound and sexual is Consensual, I guess, is a sound. And it's more so...
00:13:11
Speaker
like Or no, not so much a sound, but like a feeling. And it's interesting because like... Throughout the album, you kind of see it or feel it. At least I do. I think for me, someone that can do the pattern recognition thing, stemming of the music. That's why I think I really enjoy rave-ish music or club music, because like pop music in general, because of the way in which it activates certain sensory
00:13:42
Speaker
neurons and connections in my brain. Like I listen to certain songs on repeat just because of the way it like simulates my mind. Tinashe of course came out on top, but FK Twigs came out within my top five of artists that I listened to on repeat because the album was so good. I listened to Perfect Stranger so much this year.
00:14:07
Speaker
And it's still one of my favorite ah like songs on the album. Love Essential Afterglow because I love the way the... It becomes like really, really ravey at that point. like But it's still not. like That's the point of the album. The album is supposed to be this like reflective moment for Twigs. And...
00:14:35
Speaker
the experiences that they've had these spaces or thoughts that they've had these spaces, particularly because this year actually didn't go out as much. I didn't go to the bars as much. I didn't go to hang out or, you know,
00:14:49
Speaker
just lollygag as much as I used to. And I think that partly was the inflation. So I felt like I was really dependent on media to get me through this year. And I feel like there were definitely highs and some lows. Something else that I will say was a high before I move on to things that I maybe thought were lows really quickly was Florence and Machine's album. That really surprised me as a Florence and Machine stan because I didn't realize Florence had that atopic pregnancy and that she went through all of the things, had the lost the baby and like had all these things happen to her. So I just was like blown away by like the album itself being this
00:15:37
Speaker
witchy, mythical journey while also telling the story of transformation and sorrow and like how you just have to reshape that sorrow into like something.
00:15:52
Speaker
You don't just sit with it, like you let it out. And it was really like everybody screams, like when that song came out, felt like it was pinnacle, to what was happening at the moment, which was around the time we were entering the government shutdown.
00:16:09
Speaker
And it felt like things were just at such a head. So I felt like the album to me was one that was really great at and drenching itself and Like what she was going through and like what the collective was going through.
00:16:25
Speaker
That blew me away. I wasn't gagged too much about Cardi B, Nicki Minaj stuff. I wasn't really gagged by the artists that did come out. Nicki was a surprise. The MAGA Barbie was a surprise. Not a surprise, but like, damn, like, okay, so I guess we don't care anymore. Cardi B came out with her album, which I think was good. I'm, again, not a super big fan of long, long albums. There were songs that felt dated.
00:16:51
Speaker
Overall, I think it was good, but there were songs that felt like it was a little dated. Particularly the song where she was like, I'm kill it this summer. And I'm like, girl, it's literally like fall when you're dropping this album. And she dropped it around the same time Doja Cat dropped her album, which i actually thought was pretty good.
00:17:08
Speaker
i think it needed more room to breathe and for it to come up during the Nicki. Cardi beef was really
00:17:18
Speaker
unfortunate. I'll say that. It was just really unfortunate for Doja. think Doja is still handling it well. I would highly suggest that you go see her on tour too because she's going to give it on every song. She's a performer. I think she's worth it to see. could see her doing a Vegas residency at some point.
00:17:39
Speaker
And I would go. Honestly, i would go see... Doja Cat. So shout out to her. I think that some of these cultural moments though, especially with like, I'm using Nicki Minaj as an example. I don't want to be the person or, because it's something I'm noticing that's happening in culture is that women are taking the hit a lot harder than men are.
00:18:02
Speaker
People are recognizing that there are celebrities like Snoop Dogg that have also done things like, you know, been underneath Trump or have aligned themselves with Trump that have gotten flack, but it's not really to the extreme that Nikki has gotten it. I think it brings me back to the point that we need to stop looking to celebrities for our political and cultural validation. And we need to start looking within
00:18:37
Speaker
And learning to accept other people for who they are instead of othering them. Even like the idea that people push this year of like segregation needs to come back. Like, I don't know if that's fully the idea, like if that's the point either.
00:18:58
Speaker
i definitely see why people are saying that, but I also think that is
00:19:06
Speaker
is not helpful for our situation. It's almost like people want to forget that things happen when there's so much that we can't forget. And there's so much that we've come to understand because of our relationship to each other.
00:19:24
Speaker
So I think that in 2026 and going forward, Particularly for me, I'm going to start looking objectively. That kind of leads me into my next topic, just really quickly. Just going into the fact that we've had those moments where...
00:19:45
Speaker
there's been a lot of like picking of sides and like divisiveness and like echo chambers and these moments where like people haven't really taken them seriously or there's moments where we've taken them too seriously but we can't really do anything about those things like one example is i hate to say it but like one of the examples that i think of is like our current political so structure. Like, so the fact that people, for example, watch the news every day, are burnt out by the news, are like really like getting like hot and heavy, taking sides. And there's like literally nothing that you can do because you are one person and a sea of people and the government has like
00:20:40
Speaker
guns. and you can't It's not like you can just walk in there and just change anything. So I think like for me, I started to pull away from the news a little bit, started to not cultivate an echo chamber as much, checked myself when these things started to happen, particularly in the spaces of crypto, AI spaces, understanding the good and the bad about AI. like I don't think AI is all good, all bad. I don't think anything is. Someone drew an example that like, I think is very relevant to AI. One of those things is that like, when we first created airplanes, like we were polluting the earth like shit, but everybody want to go on vacation or everyone wants to travel and see places and go places. So eventually I think we're going to have to just get to the point
00:21:27
Speaker
Because in human history, all throughout, like we know AI is not going anywhere, but like all throughout, we've been able to figure out, adjust and get it under control. I think it's just a matter of people are worried about when that's going to happen because things are not happening quick enough.
00:21:45
Speaker
um The exponentialness of it all is just like before you blink the next day, something completely different has happened. The internet has felt a little louder and not always connected, I think.
00:21:57
Speaker
There's been a push to get offline a bit more, a lot more of a push to get off of social media. For me, that's been relevant just because I need to spend more time on my own ventures.
00:22:10
Speaker
I also need to give my own thoughts a chance to marinate before I consume other people's thoughts about a topic. Especially with the podcast. I cannot tell you how much I just want to watch a YouTube review on a show and just see it, talk about it, and all that stuff.
00:22:29
Speaker
And that really stuck with me. I want to just say Severance A+. plus I watched Adjoin literally season one and season two.
00:22:41
Speaker
Great show. Tillman, shout out to him for his Emmy Awards. That show really made me look at work differently. As I'm thinking through 2025, it all felt connected in this way that I can only describe a year of transformation, discovering what's true, what's not true. the illusion of what your life has been like, people falling out of the illusion. I remember hearing people specifically talking about this AI stuff and creating these workflows and things like that, how they're making money with like making apps and stuff. And they're only like 16 years old, showing their parents and it's like bank accounts. They've spent years trying to make, and they've made it in seconds just by creating some app.
00:23:25
Speaker
And I think that that's just showing us that as i move forward, kind of into the end, which I'll talk about Pluto in Aquarius a little bit more from my point of view.
00:23:39
Speaker
it's like, yes, everything is happening exponentially, but like,
00:23:45
Speaker
if you know where to look or you know how to like shut out some of the noise, you can kind of find some piece in it, if that makes sense. Like, I don't want to again, make light of the year. it was a terrible year for a lot of people, but I also found in somewhat in the collective that this year did force people to go back and focus on their identity. Like, who am I? Is this person that wakes up and that goes to work? Did I like my day? What is it that's starting to burn me out? Why is this person making me feel this way? Or what is it about this situation? I feel like that conversation did start to happen more for people, but I also feel like people maybe didn't know what to do with that. Our traditional forms of media, government, like...
00:24:37
Speaker
things that we normally turn to to save us. Some people were just forced to turn within. There's going to be, i think, a lot more amplifying technology over the course of 2026. That's no doubt. i love technology. I think there's going to be more, maybe the collective detachment in some ways,
00:24:58
Speaker
where people are starting to go into their own silos. The idea that like, we're going to create these solo groups, for example, like solo communities. An example of this is the Femboy Pipeline, the MAGA conservative pipeline to being like a Femboy, like that was a thing. And like, that's a group. And I'm like, so there's all these like niche groups that are starting to pop up with these like really interesting groups
00:25:28
Speaker
what's the word, like ideas or ways in which they think about themselves. And it starts to feel a little like
00:25:44
Speaker
people are waking up to this sense of
00:25:58
Speaker
Their own reality? It's almost like they're trying to create their own reality that doesn't jive or make sense to maybe the layperson. A gay Republican on surface doesn't really make sense because...
00:26:14
Speaker
Republicans are often against gay people. Conservatives are often against gay people. Look at it. They're always like, your drag queens this, drag queens that, trans people. So, you know, it starts to feel like these groups are starting to cultivate because of...
00:26:33
Speaker
our political divide, the access to the internet, and ability to just create these groups. Because it's on a level where I've not seen this before in the internet. And as this someone that is like, I'm a millennial, so I know what the internet was like, just playing solitaire on a computer and not having the internet. And i feel like the one thing I did not think about when the internet first became a thing was that it would create this level of distortion in both our virtual reality and then it translates out into our real reality. I didn't think that would happen.
00:27:08
Speaker
But that is very much like Pluto and Aquarius. Technology, Aquarius, Pluto being the thing that is about the transformation.
00:27:19
Speaker
And then, you know, the rebellion against the system, that's starting to increase. I'm seeing so many people be a lot more outspoken about the ways in which they are just...
00:27:31
Speaker
disgruntled with the government, like disgruntled with the way things are going. Money's not stretching as far. People are living more like it's paycheck to paycheck, but on extreme mode.
00:27:48
Speaker
It's pretty bad. i think for me, finding space in the cult of Jade has been really great for me. It's been grounding. Something that I love to tell people is that I'm in a cult, but it's not really, it's not the drink the Kool-Aid cult. It's the cult that's like,
00:28:08
Speaker
You all wanna level up. You all wanna get on your bad bitch shit. You don't want to be the one left behind in the cult. As I see people make things and build things and use AI or create these new creative tools that are coming out and just building their own spaces on YouTube and TikTok or wherever, like I just get really inspired by my cult and that we are just working towards something that feels sustainable. Like I don't want to be someone that lives a life that feels like it's not my own. Begrudgingly just wake up and go to work every day and wake up at 65 and I retire and
00:29:01
Speaker
I don't know where all that time went. Maybe by the time we get to 65, we'll see. That there'll be maybe even more years to live, but that's a maybe. It's a maybe. It's not guaranteed. And I think 2025 showed a lot of us that life is just not guaranteed.
00:29:17
Speaker
And I think it makes me feel more passionate and grounded in the work that I do to make other people aware of this and to help other people find their own level resiliency and transition into themselves versus depending on the collective or depending on someone to be their source of happiness. Because at the end of the day, the biggest lesson that I took away is that no one's coming to save you.
00:29:50
Speaker
Like no one No one saves you in the end. There is something to be said about struggling and making it in the end. Like it makes everything feel worth it.
00:30:06
Speaker
So I'm hoping that folks can adjust a little bit more easier in 2026 into finding themselves, listening to themselves, listening to their own ideas, finding our own inner authority, not being as scared.
00:30:21
Speaker
That's definitely something I wrestled with towards the beginning and in the middle. And towards the end, I started to really ask myself, like, What is it that I'm actually afraid of? Like, what is it that I think will happen to me if I do this thing? And like, if I don't do this thing, what's going to happen to me? Because regardless, something's going to happen. I really thank you all for listening to this episode and just sharing this space with me. If you want, you can listen to my trauma cake episode. That's pretty personal. So if you listen to it, don't be trying to spread my business out there. We getting legaled up around here. And...
00:31:02
Speaker
I think the next few episodes will be really interesting. I'm trying to cultivate a space that feels more like me, where the ideas flow a little bit more freer.
00:31:12
Speaker
I want to do more specific episodes on things.
00:31:18
Speaker
specific types of media so it doesn't feel jumbled in with these regular episodes where I'm just maybe recapping the week or I'm talking about some societal thing. Like it doesn't really fit. So I want to space and time. to artists and talk about things that I really find interesting and relevant on its own time. And I want to include interviews going into the future. So right now, you know, I'm just getting recalibrated into everything. Next week, I want to bring you guys my 2026. I want to do like what I'm looking forward to in 2026, but i want to do it in a way
00:31:59
Speaker
Because I don't really know what's coming in 2026. I think I've started to get to the point where I've stopped looking for the future and I'm starting to live in the present a little bit better.
00:32:15
Speaker
i would like to maybe go through and search some 2026 predictions or review like my chart and like what some things are potentially that happened for me in like 2026. I'm hoping, listen, I'm trying to get the fuck like a man who's It's getting cold at night.
00:32:39
Speaker
These winters are, don't know. These winters are doing a lot. I don't know if I could do Pennsylvania another year. This was a lot this year. so I'm going be working very hard. This is real Judge Judy. We strict this year.
00:32:51
Speaker
But that's all to say that I'm intending for the episodes to be better. And I'm intending to eventually continue to just grow the podcast. I want to keep expanding. So that's it for this week. i hope everyone has a good end of 2025, beginning 2026. And I am looking forward to being here with you in the future.
00:33:17
Speaker
The future is bleak right now. But think about it. At some point, it might not be. People have been really down lately and I've been like, okay, well, that's you. So I think for me, I've been a little bit more optimistic of like the possibility of what can happen more so than thinking that things are going to go wrong.
00:33:39
Speaker
I think that's the way to look at it. Like the possibility more so than the actual possibility prediction of things going wrong because that's not always accurate.
00:33:50
Speaker
And I think sticking with that has been the thing that has gotten me through this year. So I hope that helps. And again, i will talk to everyone next week.
00:34:02
Speaker
Follow me on the socials, GatherThemPod, Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter, and TikTok. If you have any listener letters, GatherThemPod at gmail.com. And I will talk to everyone again soon.
00:34:15
Speaker
Take care and Happy New Year.