Pop Culture

A Billionaire Slid Into Nicole Kidman’s DMs (Sort Of) and 4 Other Stories You Need to Gossip About RN

February 18, 2026

Every week, the pop culture news cycle tests the limits of what sounds real and what sounds like a fever dream. This week? It chose violence. We’ve got a finance heavyweight publicly soft-launching his love for Nicole Kidman, a baby brand doubling down on threesome jokes, and Olympic athletes who reportedly burned through 10,000 condoms in three days.

As Jackie and Claudia Oshry declared on this week’s episode of The Toast: “Category is business”— because somehow, all this chaos still comes back to money, brands, and power moves.

Here are the five wildest headlines—all of which are very, very real.

Nicole Kidman has a very public admirer and everyone’s confused

Somewhere in the universe of billionaire behavior, a new genre dropped: announcing your crush through the press. TMZ reported MGM Resorts chairman Paul Salem is romantically pursuing the Practical Magic actress—despite the fact they’ve barely spent time together. Naturally, the internet had questions.

“Why does TMZ know this?” Jackie asks. “He hasn’t even asked her out yet. Why are we talking about it?” Exactly. High-profile people usually move in stealth mode, not press-release mode. Claudia calls the whole thing “unprecedented,” while Jackie predicts, “I feel like it’s going to backfire before it even has a chance.”

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FridaBaby responded to backlash and didn’t back down

Parenting brand FridaBaby found itself in hot water after its marketing humor—including a joke comparing a rectal thermometer to a threesome—went viral. Instead of apologizing, the company doubled down, saying humor has always been part of its brand voice.

Jackie reads the statement, then pauses: “I was reading with an open mind until that line…‘we will continue to show up with honesty and empathy.’” Claudia agrees—“That’s just word salad”—but admits she “kind of likes [the company’s statement],” noting they “said what they said. Like this is their way of marketing.” Jackie, however, isn’t convinced. “It’s just so inappropriate…they could have just said a couple of [their jokes] missed the mark.”

And honestly, she’s not wrong. Parenting products occupy a weird space where edgy marketing hits very differently than it does in almost any other industry.

Joshua Bassett is dropping a memoir and it’s deep

Joshua Bassett’s upcoming memoir Rookie promises his most vulnerable story yet, covering mental health, identity, and life behind sudden fame. But the internet, of course, immediately zoomed out to the pop-culture ripple effects.

“Personally, I don’t need a memoir from him,” Claudia jokes, adding that the only era she’s really curious about is “that three-month period where he stopped dating Olivia Rodrigo and started dating Sabrina Carpenter and then created like two of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Like he doesn’t get enough credit.”

For those who weren’t chronically online at the time, that triangle lit the “drivers license” match, shoved Carpenter into an online dogpile moment, and then, in Claudia’s words, a Taylor Swift–assisted Eras Tour boost helped tilt the universe back. “That saga, I will never stop talking about,” she adds.

The Olympic Village reportedly ran out of condoms in three days

Olympic records come in many forms. Not all of them involve sports. Reports out of the Milan-Cortina Olympic Village say athletes went through the initial condom supply in just a few days, continuing a decades-long Olympic tradition that dates back to public health campaigns in the late ’80s.

“Most of them are young,” Claudia says before Jackie paints the social scene like a college campus with better abs: “You see them at the cafeteria—’Oh, how’d you play today?’”

The shortage was reportedly temporary, supplies were replenished, and the internet once again learned the Olympic Village remains undefeated in its…extracurricular reputation.

Brooks Nader’s birthday began with food poisoning—on a private jet

Model Brooks Nader kicked off her 29th year with a pre-party plot twist straight out of a group chat horror story. “She got food poisoning on the private jet en route to her 29th birthday celebration,” Jackie explains, before side-eyeing the official explanation: “I feel like that’s what you say when it’s not bad sushi.”

Claudia floats a theory, asking if it could have been “another GLP-1-induced episode,” and Jackie admits, “Yeah, I kinda do.” Claudia adds that Nader has been open about her life on her reality show, Love Thy Nader, joking, “You can’t pull the wool over [our eyes].”

Whatever the cause, the mayhem didn’t derail the trip. Claudia admits the party itself looked “so fun…I [saw it] and wished I was there.” Proof that even when the pregame includes an ambulance, main-character energy still finds a way to win.

Want the full conversation? Tune into The Toast wherever you get your podcasts.