Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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LONNIE HOLLEY
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RACHEL SCOTT
JULIAN UNGANO
Photography by JULIAN UNGANO

HANS ZIMMER

COMPOSER

The greatest film composer of the 21st century can hack our emotions with a single note. Following the release of Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert, a compilation of his most storied film compositions, he’ll translate speed into sound in this summer’s F1.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The unwritten piece of music with the deadline rushing towards me.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That I went to music school. I didn’t. I had two weeks of piano lessons and have been making it up ever since.

"I had two weeks of piano lessons and have been making it up ever since."

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Trying to make people aware of how important it is for us to support orchestral music. We are always at the precipice of losing the orchestras. Film might be the last place that consistently still commissions orchestral music. For me, watching an orchestra play together is proof of the highest achievements we humans are capable of. Hearing musicians unite in a common emotional gesture and having that reflected in the audience gives me hope that humanity is capable of great moments of profound togetherness and joy.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Battling against authority, being thrown out of eight schools, and keeping the whole neighborhood up by playing the piano at 3 o’clock in the morning.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? The whole joy of writing a piece of music for me—and doing something new—is that you’re aiming for something that surprises you in an exciting and unexpected way. For instance, there are two notes in the piece “Time” that shouldn’t work together, but the dissonance and conflict they create gives the piece a needed moment of tension and surprise. But really, the biggest surprise in my life is me leaving my studio and standing in front of an audience, looking them firmly in the eye, and not hiding behind a screen anymore—and loving it.

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LONNIE HOLLEY
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RACHEL SCOTT