FOSTERTALK RADIO: New Year's Eve Wildcat Formation Pre-Party Spectacular
A brand new hour of FOSTERTALK Radio, music to get you ready for New Year's Eve, and send you off into the night, out of this goddamn motherfucking demon year.
YES, HI, I’m back, but only for a brief second, because I need exactly 43 seconds of your time to read this.
And yes, I know, sending an email past 5PM on New Year’s Eve, not a great way to get whatever it is you need to get read in front of anyone’s eyes. Except! Except: THIS IS URGENT. KIND OF.
This isn’t a Trying To Get Read thing as much as it is a very, very gracious and shambolic thank you to everyone who’s listened and read this year, in two forms.
A new episode of FOSTERTALK Radio, what I’m listening to before I go out tonight, on New Year’s Eve. Making radio, fucking hard, but we eked this one out. Disco, soul, house, funk, pop, dance-pop, bangers, all around. Right here:
It’s also available to stream on Soundcloud here.
I really, really hope you enjoy it. And
FOSTERTALK will be returning in earnest in 2026 — on a weekly basis — to reclaim it’s throne as the only thing anybody has or will ever actually need on Substack. I will try not to burn my career down (unlike, uh, last time), among other projects.
That’s the important/time-sensitive stuff.
Otherwise? Two more things.
1. I absolutely hate the “end of year” treacly memorializing, except when I do it, and even then (especially then).
That said, I’ve got two great ones for you to read at some point tomorrow: Jeremy Gordon’s omnibus year-in-review, and Liz Lenkinski’s “2025’s Finale Got Me Good” (subhed: Fuck this bitch-ass year.). Liz’s writing is funny cathartic soul-manna that gets me through, like, whatever week I’ve read it in. Jeremy Gordon can write about the back of a soup can and find a way to make me laugh and then, also, want to read said soup can. Also, with absolutely zero apologies to anyone else, Jeremy wrote the most true and real book about media this year, and it was a novel. It’s also, like Jeremy, “mad funny,” and surprisingly sweet. Of note: Jeremy also has the singular and poetic ability of deploying the word “damn” in no less than 43 different ways.
2. On The Matter Of Out/In Lists: This is the most confirmation bias-laden bullshit on the planet. Ignore them! Or, if you must, when digesting them, remember
Fostertalk’s Bilaterial Unified Theory of The Internet:
A. Everyone’s projecting, always, and
B. Look for the incentives.
For example, if a magazine tells you “Substack is out,” it’s probably safe to say that magazine isn’t crazy about the rise of Substack in 2025, and therefore, would like it to be out, and thus, will declare it as such. Duh. Also, if any kind of Supposed Tastemaking Online Presence (blech) is telling you something’s gonna be “in” next year, it’s safe to say they have an incentive, now, to do everything they can to ensure that said Thing That’s Not A Thing Now becomes one.
The truth about next year, what’ll be great, what won’t be great: It’s all up in the air. Nobody knows — NOBODY KNOWS. And just because someone else is trying to manifest some sense of cultural authority doesn’t mean you have to be or play any part of their trendsetting voodoo rites. In fact, I encourage you to look at the Out Lists, and shop for things you would like to put “IN,” and subsequently look for In Lists, and shop for things you’re going to tell everyone else is “so two years ago” as a means of quietly disassembling the tyranny of the tastemaking industrial complex. HOW TO BLOW UP A TRENDLINE, etc.
Beyond the prima facie beef anyone should have with anyone else trying to tell you what time it is, most people in the world, downtrodden as it so often is, deserve to feel a sense of determination. And the last thing they need is more media, trying to distract them from the basic functions of individuality and humanism, fatalistically telling them what they should and shouldn’t enjoy in the year to come, and mostly, as a way to establish and enshrine a publication or an outlet or a Content Making Person as some kind of authority in this world, at which, we should all heave a collective nah. In 2026, let these other people be rendered as powerless over your choices as they always deserved to be. ‘Cake been baked.
You know the drill: Next year, full send, right up against the goddamn wall. Love you all. Thanks for your support, always.
As ever, -f.