0:03 It's 2026 and if the last few years have
0:05 felt less like chaos and more like
0:08 something kind of quietly locking into
0:10 place, you're not imagining that. If you
0:13 notice that events keep arriving just
0:16 preloaded with villains, emotions,
0:19 branding, and solutions like the
0:22 argument was decided or prepackaged
0:24 before anybody noticed it. I don't think
0:26 that's random. So, I'm not here to
0:28 speculate or theorize or raise
0:31 questions. I am here to show you why
0:39 Let me be clear about what this is and
0:41 what it isn't. This is not a timeline or
0:43 a prophecy and it's definitely not a
0:46 list of things that might happen. So
0:48 instead of asking what year something
0:51 happens, the better question is [music]
0:56 what does a system like this always do
0:58 next? So keep in mind these are opinion
1:00 only and [music] they're not stated in
1:02 any way that's asserting facts or
1:05 accusations. So prediction number one,
1:07 increased conflict [music] with China
1:09 and it's not going to be through open
1:11 war. It's going to be through pressure. [music]
1:11 [music]
1:13 China does not need to escalate
1:17 anything. It just needs friction. some
1:19 delays in shipping, energy constraints,
1:21 currency [music] pressure, cyber
1:22 disruptions that each one's going to be
1:24 small, but together they create a
1:27 constant background stress. [music] It
1:29 won't be called aggression. The goal is
1:30 just compliance with changing
1:34 conditions. Number two, AI will replace
1:38 a large percentage of artists. music and
1:38 writing, [music]
1:41 illustration, voice over work, video.
1:45 It's cheaper, faster, and endlessly
1:47 compliant with humans. So, for a very
1:50 long time, creativity was the last place
1:53 that humans felt [music] irreplaceable.
1:56 Even when jobs were automated, art still
1:58 felt really personal to us. And that's
2:02 gone. So, number three, the loneliness
2:04 epidemic is going to accelerate. It's
2:07 going to be very quiet. And most people
2:10 assume loneliness comes from isolation.
2:13 And that's not quite right. Loneliness
2:16 comes from friction. Human interaction
2:19 carries more friction than it used to.
2:21 Every conversation feels a lot heavier
2:24 and politics are leaking into
2:26 everything. One wrong sentence can turn
2:28 a just a normal conversation between
2:30 people into a big problem. And you're
2:32 going to see this show up everywhere.
2:33 There's going to be fewer close
2:34 friendships. there's going to be more
2:37 surface level only interaction.
2:40 Loneliness doesn't just make people sad.
2:42 It makes us hypers suggestible. [music]
2:45 So loneliness is not some side effect of
2:47 what's coming. It is one of the
2:50 conditions that allows everything else
2:54 to work. So number four, AI becomes a
2:56 primary interface for mental health.
2:58 probably by spring of 2026, more people
3:00 are going to talk to AI about their
3:02 inner life and their their mental state
3:05 than they will to therapists. And that's
3:07 already true in small numbers, but it's
3:08 not going to stay small. It's always
3:10 available. It's cheaper. It listens
3:12 without interrupting. It has access to
3:14 more data. It doesn't judge you. It
3:16 doesn't get tired. Doesn't try to check
3:17 its Instagram while you're talking on
3:20 the couch. And for somebody who's
3:22 already lonely,
3:24 that matters a lot. And for a lot of
3:26 people, it's going to help at least
3:28 enough to keep using it a little bit.
3:30 But that's where the conflict is going
3:34 to start. Who owns the data? Who decides
3:36 what advice is appropriate to give to
3:39 people? And then what happens when guidance
3:41 guidance
3:44 crosses into influence and that's the
3:46 [music] fourth pressure point here. So
3:47 moving on to number five. There is going
3:49 to be an explosion of artificial content
3:51 like video, audio, documents,
3:54 screenshots, entire events that never
3:56 really took place. [music] I would
3:58 assume by the summer of 2026, the volume
4:01 will be high enough that authenticity
4:03 becomes really hard to prove in real
4:06 life. [music] And that will absolutely
4:08 change human behavior because once
4:12 anything can be faked, everything can be
4:15 denied. A compromising video comes up,
4:17 oh, it's AI. An audio recording gets
4:19 leaked out, it's a deep fake. [music]
4:21 Documents and evidence start to appear.
4:23 It's generated somehow. When the world
4:26 is just saturated with synthetic
4:29 material, the burden of proof [music] is
4:31 going to flip backwards. It's going to
4:33 feel like a lot of confusion and then
4:35 you will kind of unplug because it's
4:38 just too much. And confusion is
4:40 incredibly useful if you study human
4:42 behavior because when people cannot tell
4:45 what's real, they fall back on something
4:47 a lot easier. And this is tribe
4:50 authority and familiar narratives. And
4:52 that's the fifth pressure point. Number
4:54 six, there will be an event that
4:57 encourages isolation. So something's
4:59 going to happen that [music] makes
5:01 isolation feel like a sensible option.
5:02 And I don't think it's going to be
5:04 mandatory or enforced. I just think it's
5:06 going [music] to be reasonable. Most
5:08 people are not going to feel pushed into
5:10 isolation. They're going to feel
5:12 relieved by this. A lot of people are
5:15 already tired of navigating other
5:18 people. So when distance is presented as
5:20 a virtue, it's going to feel like
5:22 permission to do what you wanted to do
5:24 anyway. And because it isn't called
5:26 isolation, people aren't going to treat
5:27 it the same way that happened during
5:29 COVID. They're going to call it
5:31 something else. And that's the sixth
5:33 pressure point. Number seven,
5:35 psychological operations become very
5:37 visible this year. They're not going to
5:38 disappear. They're going to get a lot
5:40 more obvious and you're going to hear it
5:42 more often. This feels staged. This
5:45 doesn't feel organic. This looks like a
5:48 setup. And that creates a problem for
5:51 influence because influence, as you
5:53 probably know, works the best when
5:56 people don't notice it. So influence is
5:58 going to be a lot less about persuasion
6:00 [music] and more about environment. So
6:02 instead of convincing people what to
6:05 think, systems are going to shape what's
6:08 available to think with. So what content
6:11 shows up, what gets buried, what feels
6:14 normal to say out loud. And that is the
6:17 seventh pressure point. Number eight,
6:21 psychedelics moving into the mainstream
6:24 as repairing meaning for people. So
6:25 you're going to see a lot wider adoption
6:28 of psychedelics as repair. So when
6:31 people lose all this creative identity,
6:32 [music] they lose connection with other
6:34 people, they lose trust in the
6:36 narratives and they stop feeling
6:37 grounded in their own experience.
6:39 They're going to look for something that
6:42 resets their perspective. Psychedelics
6:44 do that. They've been used for 4,000
6:47 years or probably way more. But what's
6:50 new is the context.
6:52 So mid 2026, a lot of people are not
6:54 going to be asking how do I become more
6:56 successful? How do I succeed? They're
6:58 going to be asking, "How can I feel
7:01 human again?" And that's the eighth
7:03 pressure point.
7:05 So, what is all this actually about?
7:07 Eight separate little predictions. Those
7:10 are not separate. They're eight
7:12 expressions of the exact [music] same
7:14 condition. And that condition is a
7:17 system under pressure behaving
7:19 predictably. So, when geopolitics
7:22 tighten up, pressure is going to replace
7:25 the confrontation. Just the pressure.
7:27 [music] When technology speeds up like
7:31 crazy, identity starts being displaced.
7:33 If our connection to other people
7:36 erodess, people become way more
7:38 suggestible, easier to to steer, to manipulate.
7:39 manipulate.
7:42 When the truth gets really noisy or
7:46 surrounded by noise, authority always
7:47 fills that gap. We know [music] this
7:50 from history. If truth gets super fuzzy
7:54 and noisy, authority fills the gap. When
7:57 proximity to other people feels costly
8:01 or expensive socially, distance becomes
8:04 desirable or even reasonable.
8:07 If influence becomes clear for everybody
8:10 to see, it shifts into the background
8:13 because it's just normalized. And when
8:16 meaning, the actual feeling of meaning,
8:21 collapses faster than systems can adapt,
8:22 people are going to look for ways to
8:25 reset their perspective. And there's
8:28 only two things that all of this
8:31 requires to take place. Number one is
8:34 incentives and number two is human
8:36 nature. You don't need coordination [music]
8:36 [music]
8:39 at the top. So, what's coming in 26
8:42 isn't about the control in the cartoon
8:45 sense of the word. It's about adaptation
8:47 and forcing people to adapt to something
8:50 new. It's about systems adjusting to
8:53 instability [music] and people adjusting
8:56 to those systems. That's also why
8:58 recognizing the pattern truly matters.
9:00 Once you can see the pressures, you stop
9:02 reacting to every event like it's
9:06 isolated. What's being normalized here?
9:08 what's becoming frictionless.
9:10 So until then, I just want you to notice
9:14 one thing. When something new shows up,
9:17 ask yourself, does it feel like a
9:19 solution or does it feel like an
9:21 adjustment? And once you can tell the
9:23 difference, the future stops feeling
9:25 overwhelming and it starts making sense. [music]
9:26 [music]
9:28 Thank you for hanging out with me for a
9:30 few minutes and I hope your year is
