[00:00:15] Phillip: Welcome to Future Commerce, a podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

[00:00:19] Brian: And I'm Brian.

[00:00:20] Phillip: And this our 2026 predictions episode.

[00:00:24] Brian: Here. We....go.

[00:00:28] Phillip: Pregnant pause. This our biggest and baddest episode of the year. And we are splitting this into two parts this year. This is part two. If you haven't heard our roundup, our look back on our 2025 predictions, go check that out after you listen to this one. It is a doozy. I think went almost two hours. I think we had almost an eight plus predictions hit rate. We knocked it out of the park. And I trust we're going to do just about the same this year.

[00:00:58] Brian: I would say so.

[00:00:59] Phillip: Yeah, I hope so. As always, want to hear from you. Want to hear from our dedicated audience. Obviously, we've been doing this now for almost ten years, and we love to hear what your predictions will be for the coming year. Drop us a line, tell us what you think. Maybe you agree, maybe you disagree with how we see the future of commerce. And I want to hear what you think the future of commerce is going to be. Hit us up [email protected]. And of course, you can get a copy of our newest book. It's called Lore. It has a lot to do with what's in the future of commerce. You can get this at shop.futurecommerce.com. And this talks a little bit about what the future of commerce is going to be. This and all of our print is available right now for you. And it's available if you're listening to this right before the 2025. It's for a little bit less money. We have a sale running for the end of the year 15% off. It's yours if you go and hit the site right now shop.futurecommerce.com. Make this part of your own personal lore and the lore of your brand. Okay. Brian, this a huge episode, and I have some really big thoughts about what is going to govern all of my predictions. I put a lot of thought and research into all of my picks this year, not shooting from the hip.

[00:02:15] Brian: Most prepared. I mean, our shoot from the hip approach has been pretty good, I would say. So, I mean, I'm curious if this, like, even improves the predictions further or if it, like I don't know.

[00:02:27] Phillip: This could undo everything

[00:02:28] Brian: For me. Because now you're looking at data, and the data might, like, block your instincts. Good.

[00:02:36] Phillip: Well, I am relying on my instincts first. And, obviously one of the things that I did last year in preparation was I took all of the content from our newsletter that comes out three times a week. I took all of the content and I put it through into a custom GPT sort of distilled like, what are the storylines? What are the trend lines? What are the things that we're talking about most often, like the things that matter to us, because I think that we have a particular lens on what are things that are impacting culture and commerce. And to us, those are the things that will impact the future of commerce. And so I did that again this year. And I've come up with a few things that I think will be guiding lights for me and for my predictions. And so that's how I've come up with my my thing. You're gonna hear me say it over and over again. How did you arrive at your predictions this year?

[00:03:34] Brian: I mean, it's typical. I kinda look back at what I've some of the thesis that I have in my head about how the world is shifting, how technology is impacting people, how people are changing, what technology is capable of. What I should have done this year is run the McLuhan tetrad on different things, and I feel like that would have been a really fun way to do this. But I didn't do that. Maybe next year I'll do that. I think that's the way to go. But I think there's just instincts that I have about certain things. And so looking at what we've said about the years and or the past few years and kind of feeling out the different areas. And, I mean, that's it a lot of it is extremely instinctual, and that's paid off pretty well. Hopefully, it pays off again.

[00:04:25] Phillip: That's fantastic. You I have a prediction as to what your biggest retail winner will be because I think it's the last six years running. I think it's been the same.

[00:04:36] Brian: It has. It absolutely has.

[00:04:37] Phillip: So I can make some predictions. But do you mind if I prediction about my predictions? Should we should we jump

[00:04:44] Brian: In? Should we

[00:04:44] Phillip: Should we

[00:04:45] Brian: Do it?

[00:04:45] Phillip: Alright. So I will give my little preamble. I have a bit of a thesis for 2026. I've said it a couple of times, I think, already on the podcast. But I think there are two guiding words that I think will guide all of my predictions, but I think will be consistent themes in future commerce's editorial and content going into 2026. So I believe 2026 is the year that consumers and companies are shifting from relying on institutions to relying on themselves. And we saw this a lot earlier this year, the Edelman trust barometer, I think showed this, that we are at an all time low interest institutions. We're also seeing that automation is taking over the mundane, There is a statistic that's going around this week. Layoffs are at almost great financial crisis levels like people, especially in upper middle class, white collar jobs are finding it tough to find the sort of white collar, mundane office worker job. It's automation is really taking the place of those types of work. We are automating away the mundane. We're also seeing if you saw the release of ChatGPT five, a lot of people are turning to GPT to have more control of things like their health or their finances, even their identities or their own information. Companies are rebuilding their tech stacks, and they're reducing their dependencies on outside organizations and institutions.

[00:06:19] Phillip: And so I think, to sum it all up, what I see is happening is a cultural and a commercial rise of autonomy and sovereignty. And that's what's happening in two different spheres. And in all areas, both commercial and consumer, we're seeing autonomy and sovereignty. And that's what's going to guide all of my predictions. It's it's economic contraction I see coming in 2026. We are seeing layoffs sort of happening happening right now. I'm not saying it's a pessimistic outlook, but I do think there are things to look out for. There's we are dealing with some sticky inflation right now. We just had another rate cut. I think there will probably be some more. We also see this retreating institutions pulling back, and I think that's accelerating the shift to both autonomy and sovereignty. And then if consumers no longer buying into optimism, what are they buying into? Their own self control. And that is where we're going into the first time, I think, in a very long time where the average person has more leverage. Right? And they have more tools and they have more agency than the institutions do that were designed to serve them in the first place. And that, to me, is the age of autonomy. That's the age of sovereignty. Okay? That's to me where we're heading.

[00:07:42] Brian: Dead on at every level. Technology is giving every person more individual power to do the things that they want to do and to control their environment. And actually so your thesis shows up a lot in my predictions, no question. And I think that the question is, where is this going to show up the most? And I've got some viewpoints on what's going to get transformed the most this year. And we definitely saw some early signs of things last year. Calls that we made last year that I think are going to continue into this year, and they're a result of actually what you're talking about. That technology is extending what we're capable of as humans and therefore giving those that take advantage of that the ability to do more. And so I think There's a lot there's a lot to talk about. There's a lot to talk about here. I this also and this I'm getting ahead. I'm getting into things. But this gonna

[00:08:55] Phillip: Well, there

[00:08:56] Brian: Reshape our whole political environment.

[00:08:59] Phillip: Think the I think you're a 100% right. We're also heading into political campaign season ahead of midterms. Right. And I think we're going to have a lot of discourse around what will what will the democratic platform be heading into a year where you're going to see a lot of

[00:09:18] Brian: People buying

[00:09:19] Phillip: For midterm positions. And I think I will talk a bit about some of that as well.

[00:09:25] Brian: Same. Think by the way, just for dear listeners, Phillip and I developed these completely independently.

[00:09:32] Phillip: And Yeah. that's the thing. so that's something, like, we probably just to validate. Like, we do not talk about or share any notes or compare any notes ahead of this conversation. Yep. So we're both going in completely cold.

[00:09:47] Brian: We're both going in completely cold, and that's and so, Phillip, you and I are gonna have a lot of the same predictions, which means we're probably right, to be honest. Like, that when when we're both converging on an idea, it's probably gonna happen just given our hit rate. I like

[00:10:05] Phillip: Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see.

[00:10:06] Brian: Although although we had one of those last year that did not pan out. So That's true. Yeah.

[00:10:13] Phillip: We'll see. Well there's a right up top. Let again, if you're if you're not familiar, if you haven't listened for six, seven years. If you

[00:10:25] Brian: It's still one of my

[00:10:26] Phillip: Jokes for later. It's a mind virus. If you haven't listened for the past number of years that where we have done this particular format, the predictions are as follows. For this year, we are going to cover the biggest retail winner of 2026, the biggest retail loser. We're going to cover the modern brand winner for 2026, the modern brand loser of 2026, the biggest media winner of 2026, biggest media loser, the biggest tech winner of '26, biggest tech loser, and most interesting trend. And then the biggest news story of the year. We will cover also in the back half modern work trends And something that we say sort of like the grab bag at the end is what are something that you are sick of that you hope dies in the new year? And then at the end, we'll sort of cover overarching, like, are the vibes? What are the vibes? So without any further ado, any last words before we get going? Alright. Well, this it. This our 2026 predictions episode. Alright. The biggest retail winner of 2026. Brian, what did you choose? I'm ready. Walmart. Oh my gosh.

[00:11:50] Brian: and let me tell you why. Okay. You ready for this?

[00:11:53] Phillip: It's a departure.

[00:11:56] Brian: It is. It is. Okay. Doug McMillon, retired.

[00:12:03] Phillip: K.

[00:12:04] Brian: Who who took over? John Furner.

[00:12:07] Phillip: Genuine shock and surprise for me, by the way.

[00:12:09] Brian: I know. Everyone's like anyone who's been listening for a while is about ready to be blown away by this. John Furner was the head of Sam's Club. You know who Sam's Club had to compete with?

[00:12:23] Phillip: Costco.

[00:12:23] Brian: Costco. Do you know how successful Sam's Club was at that? Actually, stinking successful. This the guy who had to build a business that was up against the best business in the world and was successful at it. I think John Furner is the guy. He is the guy Doug McMillon was a transition guy. He actually reestablished Walmart's identity. He took them from small town killing, low wage cheap goods company to one of the major retailers that kind of beat Target. They beat Target off at their own game and beat a lot of these other players. John is apparently, he has a little more of a direct approach than Doug. He's very technology focused. He's had to compete at the highest level and has got a focus on quality. He understands the middle class American consumer probably better than just about anyone in this country. That's my viewpoint. And so I am picking the guy that competed with Costco, won ground, and is now taking a well positioned retailer, and I think he's gonna go go gain some more ground. I think he's gonna win. There you go.

[00:14:00] Phillip: Wow. What a prediction. Alright. There there it is. Brian's retail winner of 2026. My retail winner of 2026 is Walmart.

[00:14:15] Brian: We're we're on the same page, baby.

[00:14:18] Phillip: I'll tell you why.

[00:14:19] Brian: Walmart's

[00:14:19] Phillip: Waiting. there's a number of reasons. I mean, you could you could look around broadly and say there's there is an affordability crisis happening in The United States. Where do Americans go when times get tough? They don't go to Target. Right. I think we've seen that. But that's not the reason why I'm choosing Walmart. I believe if you look at what is happening among the Make America Healthy Againitiative, very recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announced a you know, Medicaid and Medicare deal to make GLP-1s more affordable for folks that are on Medicare and Medicaid. And where do many Americans receive their health care? Well, increasingly, it's not CVS and Walgreens. You know, CVS and Walgreens are becoming PBMs pharmacy benefit managers and mail order systems. They're closing doors. Walmart is becoming a primary health care system for many Americans. I believe in 2026, we start to see Walmart becoming America's frontline health system, primarily because through low cost labs and GLP one programs, diagnostics, basic care, they are becoming the primary touchpoint for more Americans than any other provider. Not through hospitals through footprint and accessibility alone. And when you look at my lens of sovereignty and autonomy, I think Walmart is that front door for most Americans, because you can diagnose I'll get into this a little later on. You can diagnose many of your own health issues. You can

[00:16:20] Brian: Use page. This, like, part of my whole thing. This it. This this the year ahead. 100%.

[00:16:27] Phillip: So you are you are trying to provide and diagnose your own care. You're trying to access your own care. And then where are you going to fulfill a good deal of that care? It's going to be the point of most convenience for you. It's also gonna be the place that's most affordable. And I think for all of those reasons, Walmart becomes the retail winner of 2026.

[00:16:49] Brian: The consumerization of health care is the trend of the year. Let's get to the loser. Phillip, you go first this time.

[00:16:56] Phillip: Okay. Well, necessarily then the retail loser of 2026 comes with the collapse of the middle class lifestyle complex. And who best is the exemplar of the middle class lifestyle complex?

[00:17:13] Brian: On the same page again, this would be insane.

[00:17:15] Phillip: Than Target. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Target Target is the was the elevated middle class retail lifestyle, aspirational lifestyle retail god. That is until a few years ago step in steps inflation in steps identity politics. And what happens is it's neither affordable enough to be desired in the current state of affairs, nor is it really luxury enough to be aspirational anymore. And so it's in this messy middle. So consumers either trade down into discounters or resale, which, by the way, I struggled as to whether to pick resale as my as my winner. I feel like resale and thrift are going to boom in 2026.

[00:18:16] Brian: They already have been. I mean, this.

[00:18:19] Phillip: Sure. But it's like, where do you know, like, where where are going to head into? But consumers trade down into discounters and resale, or they're going to retreat up into true luxury in some ways as in sort of like a treat yourself. But the middle class being hollowed out, like the curated middle is evaporating, and Target exemplifies that better than anyone else. And so that was the retail thesis that powered the twenty tens. Also, I don't think that people identify with private label as much as they used to. And that was Target's entire strategy, billions upon billions upon billions of revenue at Target, go to favorite day, good and gather to you know, these are brands that people identify as being part of the Target lifestyle. What has Target strategy been for the last few years is trying to court brands that people know and trust to be in the door in the doors, shop in shops. It's Warby Parker. And now they've lost their Ulta in store partnership. I think that this it's heading downhill. It's heading downhill fast. And so we're we're losing reasons to be at Target fast and furious. And I think that's gonna be a tougher tougher year for them to navigate yet again. And that for for all those reasons, Target is my 2026 retail loser.

[00:19:39] Brian: It's good good reasons. I agree that Target's not gonna do well. Walmart's Walmart and Amazon could be a two pony show. the third there's not there's not enough room on the sidewalk for a third friend. Like

[00:19:59] Phillip: Yeah. Potentially. Yeah. Brian, for your retail loser of 2026, what did you select?

[00:20:05] Brian: Family Dollar. So they got purchased off of Dollar Tree. Like, they got split apart. You know who bought them? Massellem. Massellem? Massellem Capital. Same people that bought that own Big Lots now. I think that Family Dollar, I don't know if you've ever spent time in one, that they it's not a dollar store. It's just a it's like a little mini store that has cheap goods in it, except for they're not that cheap for what you get. And it's almost like, why would I buy this when I can buy similar things for higher quality on Amazon and have them shipped to my house? Anyone can get free two day shipping now, one day shipping sometimes. Like, it's it's and Walmart's so ubiquitous now, and it just it doesn't really have a place anymore. It's just not it's it was like a distribution center for cheap goods. We don't need that. People don't need to see these cheap goods. They just need to buy them. And so I think Family Dollar is in a it's in a tough spot, and it gets a it's not gonna be a fun road.

[00:21:26] Phillip: Something to consider there is tariff impacts. When we're looking at what's happened with tariffs there is some wavering on tariffs and there could be some false signs. And this something you've been really good at is calling things ahead of when when the data might point otherwise for some time. Like, there could be a dead cat bounce in discounter, like deep discounter and dollar. Because I think we are starting to see a little stimulus possibly coming coming our way. There's already stimulus in certain sectors. I think there's a farm bill coming.

[00:22:09] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:22:10] Phillip: Yep. So that's interesting. We're seeing relief on certain categories like coffee, bananas, or something.

[00:22:18] Brian: So there's think meat is the next the next one because the cost of beef is Potentially. Right now.

[00:22:24] Phillip: Potentially. Right. so we're we're starting to see certain carve outs. And with that, there's likely to be yeah. I can see some wavering and going back to more trade negotiations with China to get some relief for consumers and then claiming it as a win. And so to some degree, if also if dollars are put right into the pockets of consumers in 2026 at some point, especially in the midterm you know, hubbub. I think that could that could be a dead cat bounce, but we'll see.

[00:22:58] Brian: We'll see. Totally. Well, good luck to Target Family Dollar. Hopefully, you guys can find your way through.

[00:23:08] Phillip: Yeah. That's a good no matter what, I think it's a it's murky waters to navigate for everybody next year. I don't think it's going to be easy, as difficult as 2025 was. I think 2026 is going to be just as difficult because there are there are some serious challenges ahead.

[00:23:28] Brian: Let's do modern brand winner.

[00:23:30] Phillip: Okay.

[00:23:31] Brian: I have three. So there's two that are in the same category, and it's an extension of stuff that I talked about in the 2025 predictions episode. But Aurand Eight Sleep are the two that I have in mind. Aura, who I kind of referenced in my 2025 predictions about health monitoring, they actually doubled in 2025. They're in Costco. I think that the beauty of the thing that they're in, the business that they're in, is that it's only gonna get better. The technology that they've got in those rings, they're only going to be able to continue to make those rings collect more information. and they could also release other types of monitoring products as well. Eight Sleep has their is it the block product or whatever? Or the pod. The pod. The pod or whatever it is that you put on your bed and it can it's not a mattress. It just allows you to sleep at different temperatures and incline and all that kind of stuff, you're also collecting all kinds of health data. You can send it to your provider, your doctor. And so to your point about the consumerization of health and the sovereignty angle, owning your data is something that I wrote an article about a couple years back. What year was it? I don't even remember. Anyway that Owning your datand taking and using it to your advantage and having tools for monitoring it, this huge. And so I expect that Aura, Eight Sleep, and other brands that are invested in technology like this are going to be highly, highly successful. And then my third one is related to something you said recently. It was the resale component. It was not exactly resale. It's back market, which is the a refurbisher.

[00:25:44] Phillip: You're jumping categories entirely. You're you're tip you're picking three winners. That's highly unusual, but we'll allow it. We'll

[00:25:51] Brian: Allow I know. Joy Howard, who we've had on the podcast before, is crushing it over there. The concept of using tech over again and is gonna continue to gain relevance, especially as the current popular form factors of tech like a laptop and a cell phone haven't evolved in so long that as long as you're able to revitalize and maintain those pieces, there's no reason not to use an older device. And so I think that while we expand we see an explosion of new hardware forms, The things that we use on a daily basis, like phones and laptops, are not going away. There's just not a lot of reason to produce a whole bunch more of them when we already have such power to do the things that we typically do on a day to day basis with them. So I think back market's gonna do really well as a result. And they're doing some really cool things around greater trends. They had a whole basically I don't remember the exact title of it, but it was like basically like a Luddite day. It was a Luddite conference. Oh, wow. It was like a it was like a how do we be more mindful about our technology usage conference? And I think that is a trend I'm gonna get into a little bit further because that's a continued trend over the last few years that's gonna continue to see groundswell. But, like, that back market is gonna be a leader in again, your your point about having sovereignty and agency, like, why let technology get be in charge of you and just, like, follow it all the way through? Why not take charge and think about what you're doing with it? And that they're leading that conversation, and Joy's doing a great job with that. So I

[00:27:54] Phillip: I love that prediction so much. I think that's really, really great.

[00:27:59] Brian: There you go. Alright. How about you? Modern brand winner 2025 or 2026. Sorry.

[00:28:03] Phillip: Phillip. I have a for me, the you know, again, I'll I'll sort of I'll I'll cover the category as a spread, and then I'll give you examples of of the category. For me, the modern brand winner of 2026 are science forward wellness and self sovereign health brands. I'll give you some examples. I think Function Health is a really good example of the type of organization that is a very modern, like, sovereign health brand that allows you to submit your own get your own datand perform your own analysis of and get your own labs on where you are health wise. Okay?

[00:28:58] Brian: We're totally aligned. This amazing.

[00:29:00] Phillip: But Function Health is one of many, many, and it's an annual subscription. There is a company called Levels, which is I've just learned about in the past few weeks. Levels allows you to have real time glucose monitoring and lab panels. And it's marketed toward people for everything from weight loss to GLP-one use. And I think that this a really interesting non diabetes use centered, long term diabetes care consumer that they're marketing to. This somebody who is a sort of tech enabled sovereign health consumer. Another is very. You know, very is a is an integrated program with things like Aura. And it it also does glucose monitoring real time does things does it with a similar system with a band, and like sort of the back of the arm monitoring. And you get it all in real time in an app, but you know, it has a whole partner integration ecosystem. And it does the same Libre sensors that you would use with other devices. These are things that you don't need a prescription for. And I think you're looking at a time now where consumers can order their own labs through other means. Like earlier this year, I was able you know, go get a full panel myself by going straight to straight to a panels with labs direct.

[00:30:58] Phillip: I went to a direct monitoring lab just for fitness purposes without me having to go direct to a doctor or go to my primary care who wouldn't see me for two, three months. And so we're at this personalized nutrition, metabolic tools, precision supplements that are specific, like specifically meant to hone in on all of this data. You know, Momentous is another one of these they are, performance products and it's like creatine, omegas and stuff, but it's meant to be personalized to you and for your nutrition based on your data. And I think when you look at all of that together, it's like biological sovereignty. Right? And so we're not trusting the health system anymore. People want to self quantify, self diagnose, self optimize. and I think, again, like you, it's it's we're we're losing institute institutional trust to your point. Your body is a platform. We should have tools that allow us to optimize the platform. And for me, again, my my winner for the year are these self sovereign health brands. Okay.

[00:32:11] Brian: One caveat. They're basically predictions are totally tied together. I'm I think you we're both right. Like, it's the tech and, like, the back end, like, platforms and, like, plans and not like, tests and, like, all of it. It's all tied together, and that is health is in for a big year. Health is in for a big year. Oh, yeah.

[00:32:38] Phillip: Absolutely. The caveat I would put out there here is I. I do see Ancestry and 23andMe, there are institutions where there is risk associated with your data belonging to institutions and what happens to those institutions when they go away. 23andMe declared bankruptcy earlier this year. I do think that there

[00:33:08] Brian: Is institution.

[00:33:10] Phillip: 23andme absolutely was institution. I think that these are these are challenges where we are we are still at the frontier of this sort of thing. And a lot of these technologies are early stage startups that are funded by venture capital. And we don't know that we have total data sovereignty and ownership over a lot of this content. And so that is one thing that I think I would just like to offer up that it is not total sovereignty. Like, we don't necessarily own it.

[00:33:44] Brian: No. Right? We know that.

[00:33:45] Phillip: Own our own data. Right? But, anyway, I do wanna put that out there for people that would be critical of the perspective.

[00:33:51] Brian: Oh, no. I'm gonna take this a step further when we get there.

[00:33:54] Phillip: Okay. Yeah.

[00:33:56] Brian: Because Alright. I got a big thing to say about this exact topic.

[00:33:59] Phillip: Brian, modern brand loser of 2026.

[00:34:04] Brian: Mine's super cut and dry.

[00:34:06] Phillip: Oh, okay. Then you go first because I'm Okay.

[00:34:07] Brian: I'll go first.

[00:34:08] Phillip: You're sitting around in my very large dock.

[00:34:09] Brian: You ready? Go ahead. Yeah. It's very over for somebody, and his name's Jimmy. MrBeast Brands. I'm I'm calling Oh. Yeah. I'm calling it.

[00:34:19] Phillip: Very specific.

[00:34:20] Brian: It is very specific. Uh, I think he is speaking of aura. I think he's lost it. I think that the American children are kind of done with mister beast. And as a result, I think his brands are gonna take a big hit. I think he's he's peaked. I think his I think his I might eat my words here. He has a very good chance I'll eat my words because he might be too big to fail. I mean, he's projected to have done almost a billion dollars in 2025. And when you have that much money, you can sometimes will yourself into not failing. But I think in the in the hearts and minds of the American child, mister Beast is kind of over.

[00:35:03] Phillip: Could you let's poke at that just quick. You know, they he he recently just had this, like, beast land that popped up in in I think it was Saudi Arabia. It looked like a glorified carnival. He's doing, I think, season two of the beast games on Amazon. He seems like he's at his height. Yes. What is this just a gut pick? What tell me.

[00:35:32] Brian: Gut pick. Yeah. I think I've seen I mean, I have four kids. They I mean, and then my kids are definitely maybe not a typical American consumer. Definitely not, actually. That I know for a fact. But I think that there's there's a level of, like, disillusionment that's happening right now. As kids are becoming adults faster, there's a certain level of just skepticism now on certain things. And they're they're being trained on on on the Internet to consume certain things. But I think that there's level now where it's like they can get over something fast, and this a this has been a memetic process, in my opinion. That memetic process is about to flip. And so I see I see the kids that are cool being like, mister Beast isn't cool. In fact, he's kinda gross.

[00:36:36] Phillip: That's already happened. I agree with that. Right?

[00:36:39] Brian: So when those kids are now saying, oh, mister beak mister Beast is cringe over whatever they whatever words they're using these days to say that. Whatever their whatever words they're using to emote the fact that mister Beast is over, I think that's gonna start to play out, and we're gonna see that start to kinda tip over the edge this coming year.

[00:37:01] Phillip: Okay. I can see that. I can see that.

[00:37:03] Brian: And maybe it's not like a full on collapse, but I think we're we're we're at we're at the height. This peak MrBeast.

[00:37:10] Phillip: I love the specificity. Alright. My modern brand loser of 2026, brands dependent on borrowed authority. I'll explain what that means.

[00:37:21] Brian: Nice.

[00:37:22] Phillip: Okay. If we're heading into a time where we have a lack of institutional trust, whether that's old media or whether that is celebrity credential and credibility, then any brand whose legitimacy depends on that credentialed expert or an editor or celebrity or institutional validation rather than measurable outcomes also would suffer in the mind of the consumer who is now turning to other forms of authority. Right? So in the sovereignty era, I think consumers trust their own data. They're trusting their own experience. They're trusting their own diagnostics and peer results. And I believe that what we're looking at are generative engine answers that are we're certainly going to have to contend with what are the inputs and the vectors that are giving us the sense of whether we trust the content coming out of that, right? If we have greater reliance on it. I'll tell you a bunch of things that led me to this particular example. For instance, I wrote about this in our newsletter, The Census yesterday. But TikTok has been bouncing between the number 10 spot and the number 30 spot in the Apple App Store for the past ninety plus days. It is no longer the number one downloaded app. What is the number one through number nine downloaded apps? They're AI apps now.

[00:38:48] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:38:49] Phillip: People are spending more time with Gemini, ChatGPT and Grok than they are downloading TikTok. Now they're spending a lot of time on

[00:39:00] Brian: Tiktok, but

[00:39:01] Phillip: This Google search, the Google search app has more download installs over the last ninety days than TikTok. And I was told definitively in 2022 that TikTok was supposed to kill Google search. So

[00:39:16] Brian: Chatgpt was supposed to kill Google search. Everything's supposed to kill Google search.

[00:39:21] Phillip: Yeah. My my sense of where consumers spend time and where they validate things like purchase decisions and where their path to purchase is being shaped are definitely through more answer engines than not. And in a personal sovereignty era, I think that whatever is guiding those purchase decisions like, okay, all bets off if they launch ad units. But in this exact moment, things that are like expert credibility, celebrity credibility, institutional validation, those things start to fall by the wayside, and it's people's actual feedback, ratings and reviews and actual people's inputs. Okay, so what are those brands? Well, in like skin care, it's expert led brands, right? It's it's the Doctor. Dennis Gross and it's Barbara Sturm or it's like it's it's it could be even skin that was celebrity brand. It was like Kim Kardashians thing that could shut down already. That's a good leading indicator in supplements. I think anything that relies on massive amounts of creator investment. So the old guard would be Moon Juice or Four Sigmatic or the really old guard of the vital proteins of the world or Sakara life like we're looking at a tremendous daily harvest and food. Right? Curators, right? We've got the wine clubs like Wink or the old school lifestyle DTC brands. So any of these things that are like they have old institutional borrowed authority. We relied on the editor to give me the roundup of the taste or relied on a celebrity to say, I use this. And that's how we trusted things. I don't think that's how we trust things in the future. And that's why I say

[00:41:19] Brian: That's a huge shift. That's a huge shift because

[00:41:22] Phillip: I agree.

[00:41:23] Brian: Those were, like, cultural, like, alignment storytelling type, like, brands. And what you're saying is the story is you and what you need. And I think that's dead on. Like, the you're your own influencer in this scenario. Yeah. And maybe there are communities that you end up identifying with that are aggregates of people that are like you.

[00:41:50] Phillip: It happens all day, every day. Right? Like, you see an ad on Instagram, the first place you go to validate it. I don't think you click through the ad anymore. I don't think you go to see what the reviews say anymore. I don't think you trust those reviews anymore. You go to chat GPT and you say, this product work?

[00:42:06] Brian: Right.

[00:42:06] Phillip: And they tell you, this product relies on flimsy science. It is reliant on clever marketing and creator positioning. And like any product of its sort, your mileage may vary. And that right there is enough for anyone to have to to be to have more skepticism than they might have if they had followed the click.

[00:42:30] Brian: Love that. Yeah. It's a it's a fundamental shift that you're talking about.

[00:42:35] Phillip: It's a huge shift.

[00:42:36] Brian: Yeah. Not a specific prediction, but a general project projection. This funny. I feel like I usually end up giving them more general predictions.

[00:42:44] Phillip: Sorry.

[00:42:45] Brian: And then you give the specific ones, and I think we flip flop this year.

[00:42:48] Phillip: I did name names. I gave I gave a lot of

[00:42:50] Brian: you did name names. I like it. I Okay. Let's do media. You ready?

[00:42:55] Phillip: Yeah. I'm very ready for this one.

[00:42:57] Brian: Okay. Here's my biggest media winner 2026. Mhmm. It's actually Substack. I know that's gonna sound really controversial because there's a lot of people out there that can see that have criticized it or criticized the ecosystem. Here's what I think. While I do believe that a lot of that criticism is valid, I do think we're gonna see some graduates of Substack this coming year. Yeah. They're gonna be success stories, major success stories. They're already there. You already know who they are, probably. And they're going to take some other kind of leap. Substack may or may not be there to to sort of support that leap and have additional products to sell as a result. I also think that a lot of companies are jumping in. And a lot of the criticism around Substack has nothing to do with how people are engaging with the platform. Has to do with the platform itself. I think that there's still a lot of, like, active engagement with Substack as a platform, and you could see it growing in, like, notes and video and so on. And so brands are gonna jump in there. So this the year that I think Subfact's gonna really monetize, and that's why I think that you can call them a big winner of this year because they're gonna make money. They're gonna make extra money this year. I am not speaking of the long term. I am not talking about the long term future of Substack. I'm just talking about 2026, and I wanna make that clear. But I think they they are they are making a lot of moves. They're also like, their revenue is not huge. This this not a big number. If the in order for them to be a winner and to see, like, exponential exponential growth, this we're not talking about huge monetization numbers. They're a small company when it comes to revenue.

[00:44:53] Phillip: They are small, but I think that they do have large cultural impact, especially when it comes to the new media ecosystem. Yes. You know?

[00:45:01] Brian: Exactly. That's my point, is that their cultural influence outsizes their revenue, and I think that's about to change.

[00:45:09] Phillip: Yeah. I could I could not agree more. I think that's phenomenal.

[00:45:13] Brian: Alright, Phillip. What's your winner?

[00:45:16] Phillip: Alright. My biggest media winner, the media winner of 2026, are prediction markets. Polymarket and Cauchy. Totally. Good choice. And I hate that I'm making this prediction, but I think it's the right prediction. Yeah. I think one of the biggest signs here are not only the dollars that they're spending in partnerships with the likes of All In, which is, I think, the future of media. Yeah. You know, TBPN, future of media. We're also looking at the the way that Polymarket and Kashi were seen as predictors of outcomes in elections, like the New York mayor, New York City mayoral race. We look at them as if they are sentiment and the new pollsters. Right. And so much so that they have just Kaushi has just partnered with CNN. And their tagline and their partnership was the future of news. And I'm like, I have serious issues with that. But there is a future where markets they're making markets here. And I do think that markets are replacing polls to some degree, and they're shaping the narratives around the news.

[00:46:41] Brian: Yeah. A 100%.

[00:46:42] Phillip: This not news. These are people that are degenerate gamblers. Like, they're they're not like, let's be real. They're also insider trading. Like, a lot of this like, the people that are making the most money on the platform are people that have insider information, and there's no legality here around a market that you create around times person of the year, and then somebody being able to say it's the the architects of AI, like, how could you literally predict that? There's no way to predict that. And that bet being made a day before and then you've made the market like, to me, it's rife with it's it's, it's ripe for insider trading, but yet we're treating it as if it's news. And I do think that when you combine that with creator driven commentary, so we have bottom up right? Then that does become the next layer of news. So come with me for a moment. I just spoke with Marcus Collins, Brian, for an interview for a new series that we're doing and for our next book. And Doctor. Marcus Collins, he brilliant communicator. He I saw him speak for the first time at RIC, which is rest in peace. But he he wrote the book for the culture, which is he did a ton of work in helping turn around McDonald's. And he very much is aligned with the commerce's culture narrative. You know, this idea that we have been on for the last four or five years. In our interview, he cited Marshall McLuhan and said, all media works us over completely.

[00:48:39] Brian: It sure does.

[00:48:41] Phillip: His perspective is that social media is also media. Creator driven media is also still media. It's just a different form of media. Just because it's not broadcast media, it's not coming from a singular trusted source or an institution anymore, doesn't mean that it's not media. It's still media. The fact

[00:48:58] Brian: Is the

[00:49:00] Phillip: Fact is that the stock exchange, the our our markets, our institutions, And we are moving into a time where these are new markets that are more creator driven markets. These are the new the new antInstitution versions of of markets and their creator driven markets. So they're creator driven commentary. It's a next layer of news. And whether it's right or not, I think it is the future of media.

[00:49:29] Brian: That's great. I mean, almost blindingly perfect choice here. Like, it's it's it's the right answer. I also think, just to add on, the whole hyperstition effects here is gonna like, this this the this the sort of

[00:49:48] Phillip: Correct.

[00:49:49] Brian: Yeah. Like, this how we will ourselves into anything. Like, you can aggregate aggregately pick the winners. That's the when enough people say they're the winner, they become the winner. Like, so the real question is, how do you drive drive those predictive markets? What is the what is the way to drive a predictive market now?

[00:50:17] Phillip: To your point, you're you're saying that the predictive market, the knowledge of what the crowd believes the outcome is affects the outcome.

[00:50:25] Brian: Right. And there was an article that you pushed on me on Twitter just the other day that was like, the belief economy is the future. And I think that's true. I think the belief economy is sort of the future of the economy. Maybe this has always been true, though. Like, it's just manifesting in different ways now. The way you control the narrative is through a gambling plat platform. Here's what I've been thinking about a ton lately, and I'm I've been I was like, should I write a piece on this, or should I just tweet about it, should I drop it? I'm gonna drop it here since it is the holiday season. We have become the United Pottersvilles of America. So let me let me extrapolate this a little bit. You know what's really sad about the state of our society is if you watch It's a Wonderful Life during this holiday season. The most unbelievable part about it, actually for everyone, for everyone that watches it now, is not the angels or the, like, the supernatural involvement. It's George Bailey himself. George Bailey is the most mythical part of it's a wonderful life because nobody has enough friends to pull off what George Bailey pulled off.

[00:51:48] Phillip: Wow.

[00:51:49] Brian: And they can't have that. You know why? They actually prefer Pottersville. In fact, every little town that you come across in America is now Pottersville in their disembodied self because everyone is spending everyone's gambling. Everyone's going to all of those places that you see along Main Street when you see the alternate reality, they're all attending all of those places online. Every single part of Pottersville has invaded our culture, and our most desired physical locations that people flock to to go enjoy themselves represent Pottersville, whether it's Vegas or parts of New York or Nashville or the places that are built in Dubai. Pottersville won, and we wanted it to win. And the idea that communities are at the center of things and George Bailey could exist is the it's the fairy tale of it's a wonderful life.

[00:53:01] Phillip: That's food for thought. That I need to chew on.

[00:53:04] Brian: And predictive markets being the gambling markets being our biggest media winner of 2026 is the greatest example of that.

[00:53:14] Phillip: Yeah. I'm I'm so I'm so with you on that. Okay, Brian. Biggest media loser.

[00:53:22] Brian: Okay. Ready? I'm getting specific again. It's whoever loses the battle for Warner Brothers. So Netflix made a great move, bidding. Paramount a little slow. Coming in with this hostile takeover bid at, like, $30,000,000 more or roughly, maybe more, 40. Genius move. HBO alone and the rest of Warner Brothers, this IP. This IP that can be revitalized. This plays into my Time After Time article. All of this IP is worth way more than the amount that they're adding on to the bid. So if they can pull it off, Paramount's gonna be a big winner, and Netflix will be the loser. And if Netflix finds a way to maintain that acquisition, they're gonna be a big winner. I believe I believe this actually a very, very big moment for both those companies.

[00:54:16] Phillip: Wow. I can see that. I can see that. Yeah. My choice, this probably the one that I struggled with the most. I don't really have I don't really have something great to say here because I think that the media loser in times past, I've I felt like I really want it's more of an aspirational thing. I'm like, yeah, I'm sick of a 24. Wanna you know, I really I want I want the switch to flip on a 24 and for people to be like, yeah, they're not as cool as everyone wants them to be. That's not happening anytime soon. But I do I think mine is joined at the hip with yours, and I'll just say it very succinctly. I think the biggest media loser of 2026, matter what happens, is HBO. And the reason being is that no matter no matter what happens, no matter what happens, they're screwed. Because either way, HBO has been, again, like, has been the place for high culture, high monoculture and sophisticated storytelling and probably one of the last, like, vestiges of really well produced television storytelling, appointment viewing storytelling, Sunday night appointment viewing storytelling for my entire life. And it has a brand. How many things have a brand anymore? MTV went away this year. Right? Like, how many things have a brand that's left over from the old era? And HBO still has it despite all of Warner Brothers Discovery's attempts to kill it. Right? It was Max for a while. Like, HBO went away, and it's still here. And, man, how horrible is it gonna be if HBO is just a tab in the Netflix app?

[00:55:59] Brian: You know? Like, to me, I can

[00:56:02] Phillip: See that happening. And no matter what, like, the biggest loser of all is the consumer because everyone's prices are going up no matter what. Like, we are we are barreling towards just having cable all over again. Like, we're barreling towards a $100 a month subscription. That is what we're heading towards. It's gonna be $50 pretty soon. I pay 30 some for Netflix. Right?

[00:56:26] Brian: You were doing Netflix wrong.

[00:56:29] Phillip: I'm just saying it's my k pop demon hunters machine. I can't not have it. So I know.

[00:56:34] Brian: You gotta get in on on all your streaming subscriptions through your phone provider. That is the way to do it. Both Verizon and T Mobile have phenomenal prices for your streaming.

[00:56:48] Phillip: I've got I've got that already on lock is I get YouTube premium, which is $20 a month. I get that through my Google my my Google.

[00:56:58] Brian: You're fine.

[00:56:59] Phillip: So yeah. So I kinda have some subsidy there,

[00:57:02] Brian: But Yeah.

[00:57:03] Phillip: And I get Paramount Plus and Peacock from my association. Like, those come with my cable, which I don't pay for. So it kind of all comes out in the wash. But anyway, HBO is kind of the biggest loser here. I don't think no matter what happens, I think HBO just continues to go through the tumble dryer, and it's like yeah. It's

[00:57:23] Brian: Quick parent that all that parenthetical here. Right. I would love to do a whole after dark on the chair company.

[00:57:31] Phillip: Oh, I've heard this very good. I've not watched it yet.

[00:57:34] Brian: Oh my gosh. Extremely good. Much commerce, so much retail, so much and also just like, oh, man. I just need to talk to you about this. I haven't talked to you about the chair company yet, but I just wanna talk to you about this.

[00:57:44] Phillip: I have

[00:57:44] Brian: To watch podcast because, oh my gosh, there's things there's so many things about this show that are worth talking about.

[00:57:53] Phillip: I love it. Oh. Okay. I'm I'm so in. I'm in.

[00:58:00] Brian: Okay.

[00:58:00] Phillip: Okay.

[00:58:01] Brian: You ready for the next one?

[00:58:02] Phillip: Biggest tech winner? Yep.

[00:58:04] Brian: Alright. You're you're first. You go first this time.

[00:58:06] Phillip: Alright. My biggest tech winner gosh. I struggled on this one too, but I because it's mostly because it's an embarrassment of it's an embarrassment of riches. This follows the autonomy prediction.

[00:58:20] Brian: Okay.

[00:58:20] Phillip: Okay. My biggest tech winner of 2026 is Waymo.

[00:58:24] Brian: Oh, yeah. That's great.

[00:58:26] Phillip: So probably doesn't need a ton of qualifier here or a big essay. But

[00:58:32] Brian: Google is gonna win too.

[00:58:34] Phillip: Well, but I specifically want to just say Waymo when you look at and necessarily, I think Uber begins to lose market share as a result.

[00:58:45] Brian: Kind of partnered with Waymo, though. So Uber is not going to lose.

[00:58:49] Phillip: I don't see I don't see it happening in the way that we I don't see that happening. I think Waymo continues to dominate their they're expanding so rapidly right now in new markets. Their their territories are growing bigger and bigger and bigger.

[00:59:05] Brian: Yeah.

[00:59:06] Phillip: And their offerings are growing as well. And so there's just a level of trust that is being delivered to automated and full self driving. And we're seeing more and more regions adopting the ability to go to full self driving. I believe in 2026, we start to see more legislation become more permissive in some in some state that starts to prioritize and incentivize full self driving. Uh, and I believe that comes in the form of infrastructure. I this gonna be a very specific prediction. I'm gonna basically say that 2026 is the year that we start to see some highway infrastructure that prioritizes a self driving lane for full self driving. Like, that is a thing that I believe is the next subsidy or the next consumer subsidy or consumer incentive that will start pushing us toward an autonomous future because. It seems like an inevitability. I believe it's safer.

[01:00:22] Brian: I love this. This Right. I believe it's safer. I'll skip ahead. But this was one of my two biggest news stories of 2025 or 2026. Gosh. Dang. I keep saying 2025. 2026. We're in the new year. Yeah. I completely agree. Like, autonomous is the story. Because and for anyone listening that hasn't done this yet, when you sit down and you have your first fully autonomous ride, you literally will be like, this this the future. Like, you will not you're not gonna be like, oh, yeah. I don't see the world going here. You're gonna be like, yeah. There's no way around this. This how this where it's going.

[01:01:03] Phillip: Sure. Takes one ride.

[01:01:05] Brian: One ride.

[01:01:06] Phillip: it really does. It takes half a ride for you to become comfortable and say, oh Yeah. I think this I think it's it's safe. It takes more than one ride for you to say, I think this might be viable for me to to to maybe not have to own a car. And if if think about the employee transit benefits that we see in cities like New York.

[01:01:31] Brian: Totally.

[01:01:32] Phillip: In a world that we're moving into with return to office mandates, when do we start seeing Waymo kick in for transit benefits for employees that have to do RTO five days a week? Okay. I'm just saying, like, employer subsidizing autonomous commuting as productivity benefit is the new you get to take an Uber home after 8PM.

[01:01:53] Brian: Totally.

[01:01:53] Phillip: I think that, like, you getting a Waymo both ways is a is an obvious win. Right?

[01:02:01] Brian: I mean, this like people that are convicted of driving under the influence are going to be assigned Waymo for the for their for a period of several years. Like, this

[01:02:16] Phillip: Now that's a short story that I could write. That's dark fiction. Could write. Yeah. No. Mean allowed to drive.

[01:02:21] Brian: Yeah. You're you're now you're assigned to Waymo. Sorry. Like

[01:02:25] Phillip: That's so funny. Let's move on. Ryan? Tech winner.

[01:02:31] Brian: Tech winner. Okay. Ready? I believe that, and I've said this a million times over, the way that AI transforms the world is through enterprise enterprise contracts. And so, actually, the big AI winner that no one's talking about is Microsoft. That's number one. I'm gonna go out on a limb on the next one because I've got two. But Microsoft, right now, people are like, oh, it's having trouble selling AI. There was this story that came out in Futurism that said, oh, they're having trouble selling AI. But that's actually not the point. Selling agents is not how they're going to win. They're going to win through existing technology tools. And they have always done this. They've let the innovative people run out in the front, and then they bring that technology in. They spend a lot of time building it in so it integrates really well into all their tools, and they just keep winning at the enterprise level. Because when you look at it, the Microsoft Business Suite, when it comes right down to it, price to function to integration, it wins by a lot. It's not even close. It makes sense at scale. And so you can have the whole founder ecosystem and the startup ecosystem be like, Microsoft's stupid. But when you're talking about the Fortune 1,000, the Fortune even 5,000 or whatever, that it just makes sense. It's the obvious choice. And so if anyone's poised to win using AI, it's Microsoft. And I'm saying that right now, while sentiment's pretty low, their stock's kinda, like, wiggling and not growing at the moment. I think that by the end of next year, we're gonna see it doing well. This

[01:04:36] Phillip: Is such a Brian calling a shot because it's a it's a lot of gonna be

[01:04:41] Brian: Bigger shot. Are you ready? Okay. Okay. People are going to hate this. Okay. I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but the other company in this this that's going to win here, and it's not in the ways that you think necessarily, is Adobe. It's Adobe. Right now, there are stocks in the tank, but their earnings are strong and the business is fine. A lot of it has to do fears around AI supplanting them and the up and coming tools. Figma got set back as a result of not being acquired by Adobe. I think that Canvas had trouble moving into the enterprise as well, the competitor, quote unquote. At the enterprise level, when it comes to brand safety and using tools for generative enterprise processes, I think Adobe is gonna win. And I think we're gonna see their stock recover by the end of the year. There you go. Two big companies that are gonna make it happen through enterprise contracts.

[01:05:47] Phillip: Let me underscore why I think Adobe is well positioned. And full disclosure, Adobe is a longtime partner of future commerce, but not on the Creative Cloud side. And so but let me let me tell you why. The Creative Cloud approach where everybody else has tried to go after becoming a generative operations like you create with us, you generate content with us. The Creative Cloud team has instead embraced a new approach. Like Firefly as as a generative tool is apparently license safe. It's it's it's apparently copyright and license safe. that's interesting. But many people aren't looking at that at this exact moment, and they're not really worried about that at this exact moment. What is fantastically impressive is Adobe has decided in all of their tools to be an integration partner with almost every other generative engine. You can use Nano Banana within Photoshop. You can use it right now. You want to use all of your other preferred tools. You want to use ChatGPT for your AImage creation, you could probably do that too. You can all of the image and video integrations, audio integrations, they want to be an integration partner. They wanna be a platform partner. And I think that's a really clever play because there are very few of those that exist elsewhere.

[01:07:25] Brian: So I tool set sitting behind it that they have.

[01:07:29] Phillip: I agree.

[01:07:31] Brian: The integrated tool set is unmatched. And this the same thing that I'm saying about Microsoft. Like, these are two companies that people love to hate on, Adobe and Microsoft. And I think both of them have incredible platforms that are integrated with all kinds of things, and they're they've invested in those integrations. And you know who hasn't done that? I have two losers. The one I'm rolling right into is Salesforce. Salesforce is Please

[01:08:01] Phillip: Sponsor us, Salesforce. Yes. Yes. Go ahead.

[01:08:04] Brian: Yeah. Go ahead. They're gonna they're gonna need our help.

[01:08:07] Phillip: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Right.

[01:08:09] Brian: Yeah. Because the thing that they've really struggled with over the course and life of their company is integration, and it actually kind of is AI, which is funny because that's the thing that they've been most promoting is their agent solutions. But the problem is, actually, agent solutions are probably too early in the curve. Agents are struggling to do what we wanted them to do, but the rest of the AI stack is doing all kinds of incredible things.

[01:08:44] Phillip: Yep.

[01:08:44] Brian: And so I think that Salesforce, due to their lack of integrations, due to and then also a lot of up and comers that are coming to eat Salesforce lunch in particular, like tools that are making investments right now to take away CRM, to take away some commerce, to take away all these other things that Salesforce has done a really good job selling into that enterprise. And I think that the upstarts in their category have done a really good job of building stacks that are more conducive to the way that a lot of new businesses want need to do business. And so Salesforce is gonna be eroded away at like crazy at at almost every level of their stack if you look across their suite of software.

[01:09:43] Phillip: Wow. I like that. Remember, Salesforce is also a number of things. Salesforce is also Slack. Um, it's like Tableau. It's like Mhmm. Whatever. It's a it's a lot of Yeah. You know, legacy software that a lot of people just don't like to be in. Yep.

[01:10:00] Brian: And then the second one that I have, and this just a comment on the AI front, and this kind of an obvious thing. But I think perplexity is the one that's going get squeezed out, unfortunately, of the multi pony show that we have right now. So Perplexity is the one facing the lawsuit. They scraped data from the web maybe too early. They didn't get permission. They get sued. People are going to Anthropic. They're going to OpenAI, and they're going to Microsoft in their working life. And so I think perplexity is in a little bit of trouble.

[01:10:41] Phillip: It's funny you didn't say Gemini, which is increasingly becoming my Right.

[01:10:45] Brian: Tool of choice for

[01:10:47] Phillip: For lots of years.

[01:10:47] Brian: GeminIs my my call last year. I should've I should've mentioned them. Yes. Gemini GeminIs the one that I use consistently as well.

[01:10:55] Phillip: Using a lot of Gemini these days. Well, I'm I'm I'm super intrigued. I'll feel like we should revisit that one midway through the year because I'm really intrigued to see what happens there. Salesforce with agent force and their all of their investments in trying to sell agents was a dominating headline around agent tech commerce earlier this year. And I think that definitely and Benioff has been sort of beating the drum on talking about building all these data centers, trying to do a lot of deals with Sam Altman. I think he has beef with Sam Altman now. Right. And that leads me to my biggest tech loser of 2026, which is OpenAI. Yes. The and I'll tell you a bunch of reasons. So not only I believe I saw a chart recently that OpenAI OpenAIs the company with the largest amount of capital burn in the history of ever. Something to determine tune of it. By the time it gets to its profitability metric by 2030, it's like, we'll we'll be generating 80,000,000,000 in revenue or something something like that. I forget what the number was. It was like, they'll they'll have burnt 267,000,000,000, um, to get there which is an astounding amount of money. Uh, but the you know, not only are they encumbered with uh, a tremendous amount of debt is a strong word.

[01:12:32] Phillip: I think there's there's a lot of there's a lot of expenses in operating all of this in burn and operating all these these models. They have eroding market share. Right? Benioff tweeted, oh oh my gosh. GeminIs so much better than OpenAI. And he did that because Sam insulted him in some way. Right. They have increasing customer dissatisfaction with recent releases. And I think that's because the recent releases were meant to not make better products. They were meant to position the company for less capital burn and less cash burn, because it is expensive to operate at the scale that they're operating. Meanwhile, all of these partnership and investment deals Sam Altman has announced over the last few years have turned out that they're nonbinding. So Right. You know, all of these deals and the greatest dealmaker to ever live, apparently there's an out clause on many of them. And they produce great headlines. They may not produce the revenue streams that supposedly OpenAI needs for all this forward looking revenue, which is what allows them to continue to raise forward rounds for future looking revenue. So their product velocity will slow necessarily if they can't raise as much as they need. And I think if their product velocity slows and they continue to have all of these issues with their product, then trust weakens.

[01:13:56] Phillip: And they've already lost 30%, one third of the enterprise market. Anthropic captured that one third. And that is my victory lap I took this last year is Anthropic and Claude becoming more dominant in its position in the marketplace. Opus four point five, I think, is being hailed as one of the greatest you know, model releases of the year and Gemini three as well. And so it's the preferred Anthropic and Claude, especially Opus, a preferred model now for a lot of risk sensitive organizations. And I think they're positioning themselves for major IPO, and they'll get there most likely before OpenAI does. And so if enterprises are choosing Claude, I think OpenAI has gone very wide. They've done a lot of things. They've got Sora. Sora is like basically breaking reality. I know they've got sown a lot of distrust. And whereas companies like Anthropic have put out a lot of papers on safety and decided we're going to talk a lot about the potential risks. Right? And I think that sets up a potential regulatory coup for a company like Anthropic, where they're saying, us and allow us to strengthen our potential monopoly by letting us get regulatory capture and write laws that favor us over our competitors because we're the ones who are doing the trust and safety labs.

[01:15:20] Brian: Well what they'll probably do, though, is they're gonna they're gonna do that in partnership. There's gonna be a collaboration Yeah. For sure. Between Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Amazon. To be.

[01:15:32] Phillip: and Grok.

[01:15:33] Brian: Right? And Oh, and Grok and

[01:15:35] Phillip: and all the rest

[01:15:36] Brian: Of Grok. But I but because Elon's not gonna join that.

[01:15:41] Phillip: the largest training cluster in the world. It's hard to ignore him. But

[01:15:45] Brian: Yeah. No. No. No. No. Don't get me wrong. I agree with you. You can't ignore that Elon's big on trust

[01:15:49] Phillip: And safety.

[01:15:50] Brian: Exactly. Elon's gonna be like, I'm not signing this.

[01:15:53] Phillip: Yeah. That's true. Oh, yeah. Hey. He's he's he's not opting in too. That's so right. Yeah.

[01:15:57] Brian: But Yeah. There will be an Apple will probably get in there, and Apple will get in on a deal, and Anthropic wind up with Apple because of this deal with that they all signed together in, like it'll Anthropic will power both Amazon and Apple. Like Yeah. So that's where I'm coming from. That's Anthropic, Apple, and Amazon is tied together to a single company that's gonna merge and take over the world.

[01:16:20] Phillip: That's where I've I sort of come from is these, is the OpenAI gonna die in 2026? Probably not. Right? But I think they lost the plot.

[01:16:29] Brian: I think

[01:16:29] Phillip: I think they're losing the market. And I think consumers want more options in their search for sovereignty. Now what what is a potential risk for this this prediction? They have lock in with their memory product. Their memory is so good that ChatGPT knows you. And that is something that GeminIs working to get better. It is persistent in memory across sessions now. And that is something Claude just rolled out.

[01:17:03] Brian: But neither

[01:17:05] Phillip: Product is anywhere near as good or as useful. Meanwhile, OpenAI, its voice feature is basically unusable now. It's basically frustrating to use. So I don't know. It's a it's a prediction, and that is my biggest tech loser of 2026.

[01:17:26] Brian: What I think I'll add on to that then is I think in a in a you know, if perplexity gets basically blasted by this lawsuit and then kind of gets merged or purchased by somebody for pennies on the dollar not pennies on the dollar, but, like, for for a good rate, which could absolutely happen. And OpenAIs struggling. I can't help but think that there's gonna be a news cycle around the AI bubble popping because people are gonna be like, oh, look. OpenAI, like, can't even pay its bills. This this unsustainable. We can't use AI.

[01:18:08] Phillip: We're almost there already.

[01:18:09] Brian: The world does not possibly we can't do that. We just don't have the capability to to make this happen even if it is beneficial to society. Like blah blah blah. Meanwhile, Google and Microsoft are gonna be sitting over there like, what a joke. Because they're gonna be highly profitable in the process of doing this or at minimum have economies of scale that they can sort of, like, work this technology into their already existing suites. Like yeah. So the AI'm gonna call it now. Someone's gonna try and run an AI bubble is popping. Big story this coming year. That's a prediction.

[01:18:51] Phillip: Okay.

[01:18:51] Brian: Uh, the AI bubble has popped, but it's not gonna be real. and I and I'm I'm calling that before the story even drops. Like, they're gonna call all these data points about how it's unsustainable and nobody can make money on it. It's not it's not actually that useful or, like, businesses aren't able to use it and find efficiency, and it's just better to do things like

[01:19:13] Phillip: Own. News story of 2026? No. Okay. This just a freebie.

[01:19:20] Brian: This a freebie. I'm just I'm piling on here because it I know this gonna happen. And there you go. Got That's it. There's your freebie prediction. I've already got a couple of these in, I think.

[01:19:31] Phillip: Alright. So we're gonna we're gonna blast through the back half here. Thank you for sticking with us. I always love this so much, Brian. I think we've really covered a lot of ground so far.

[01:19:41] Brian: So Oh, we got more ground to cover.

[01:19:43] Phillip: We are at the most interesting trend of 2026. I did a lot of talking recently here. Do you wanna have a whack at this one?

[01:19:53] Brian: Sure. Okay. Ready? It actually plays back to the things we've already talked about. So I believe culturally, we are gonna start to see, and I'll I'll explain why in a minute, a moral language applied to giving your data to tech. Because we've done the same thing to seat belts, we have done the same things to other things that keep us healthy or safe, smoking, not smoking. It is transgressive or practically sinful to smoke a cigarette because we know that it is bad for your body. It's transgressive or practically sinful to not wear your seat belt. People look at you as an offender. I think that as we look at how people think about health and bodies, that we're gonna start to see not using data tools as a burden on the economy, as a transgressive health issue where it's like not wearing a seat belt. Why wouldn't you monitor your glucose or your whatever? Like, why wouldn't you use the tools available to you to optimize your body for the purposes of greater society and for yourself.

[01:21:21] Phillip: Yeah. It makes society better. You're you're a weirdo if you don't do it. Right?

[01:21:25] Brian: You're a weirdo if you don't do it. I started to get into this in our look back episode, and I was like, I gotta save this one. Because this this without with and it's gonna be through the form of of these data tools, like an aura ring and AI, which will then result in and it will be inescapable. I called this ten years ago as a future feature thing, and I'm saying that we're here. We're here and now. Health is going to be a push and not pull activity. Or maybe I reverse those. Push, not pull. So our health will become our responsibility. We will use tools to monitor our health and then the tools will be what alerts the doctor. We're not gonna go for checkups. It's all gonna be self administered or you go into consumer experiences to do preventative. So preventative healthcare will be done by tools and by competitive corporate agencies. It won't be by traditional healthcare. And there's a big thing going around right now about how it's like 20,000 $27,000 a year to have healthcare now or something like that. Healthcare sorry, to have healthcare coverage. So coverage coverage is going to be very dependent on providing your data. Now the flip side of all of this that we are going to see a massive kickback against this. And that will play into my biggest news story of the year in a second here. But, yeah, the kickback is going to realign us politically because and just a couple more words on this, but, like, being obsessive about your body and what's happening to your body transcends political lines. You can see people on the left and the right that get really obsessive about their health, extremely obsessive about their health and knowing what's exactly going on in their body.

[01:24:05] Brian: And those will become sort of the trendsetters and the I mean, dare I say this, and I don't mean it's actually in a negative light, I mean it more as a function, the pharisees of the new tech health connection, if you will. Because all of technology is an extension of our bodies. And of course, if that's the case, then our bodies need to be optimized. And so this plays directly into your talk at the beginning about Walmart and why Walmart's positioned to be successful in 2026 and I completely agree with that. And this why I believe OuraRings and HeatSleep and a bunch of others are are primed and also your modern brand prediction. All of this relates back to this sort of using the natural consequences of technology extending our body. And oh oh, man. and I'm gonna take this even one step further, which is this gonna result in we've already seen a massive groundswell around this too. The new Gnosticism, Gnosticism is the idea that the body The mind is what matters. The body houses and creates a function around that, but it's a flexible doesn't Its point is the mind. And so I think our disembodied minds need the most optimized body and it's not actually about the body, it's actually about the disembodied self. It seems counterintuitive to the focus on the body, but I think it's all about optimization. But I think narcissism, as opposed to a lot of the other prevalent beliefs, which would be the last realm was nihilism. Gnosticism is the future of belief in America.

[01:26:14] Phillip: Also a two for Brian. I like it.

[01:26:18] Brian: Sorry.

[01:26:19] Phillip: It's good.

[01:26:20] Brian: Yeah. That's the trend. And then the Luddite Luddite component, it comes alongside

[01:26:25] Phillip: Which I think was last year's talk, I think, as well.

[01:26:29] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There'll be a huge thing, and I'm gonna talk about that in our big biggest news story as well. So go ahead. Go ahead, Phillip. You're

[01:26:33] Phillip: All right. 2026 most interesting trend is something that I'm calling craft and the authenticity wars. All right. This evidenced in a couple of different ways, but I think it's most clear to me by looking at the most recent Apple TV ad. This sort of made the rounds. You know, Apple could have easily just I think they did originally just create a three d rendering for their opening bumper. You know, Netflix has its, like, ta dum sound, and they have that the thing that in rainbow in thing that flies at the screen. Apple has a very similar play on, but it's the top of the Apple logo, and it's spinning into place. It has a similar sort of, like red, green, blue effect going. They've recreated that, but they did it in analog with a bunch of colored glass, um, and they did it in an in camera effect. And this took a bunch of craftspeople hundreds of hours of craftsmanship to actually perfect and a lot of camera movement and a lot of aligning. And it reminds you of, like, the old, like, industrial light and magic days of like this takes craft and expertise and work to pull off something like this. And it turns into content marketing for the studio because they're not taking the easy way out. They made this, they put this giant investment into this thing that's otherwise trivial. And to me, that is the trend. That's the interesting trend is we're putting in unnecessary human work in a time where synthetic content is saturating culture. Because we're our big themes here, individuals are basically fighting for control over what is real right now. And we need verification and provenance over what is human made. And the trust layers over what is human has become table stakes.

[01:28:49] Phillip: The other clever thing that we saw during Black Friday, Cyber Monday was rather than a digital dashboard, the last couple of years, we saw Stripe create physical dashboards for their BFCM products. And so they're very data heavy. And when they show something like their their financial product dashboards for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you could tune into a website to show how their financial products were performing. Like, here's all the billions of dollars being transacted on the platform during this holiday. Well, this year, for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, they built an entire fictional village is like model scale, like one fifth model scale of an entire city, like Stripe City. And it is Tim Burton, like, miniature stop motion animation quality high level detail level craftsmanship. And it's also animated and there's like little Easter eggs all over it. This exactly the kind of thing that I think will dominate our feeds. I'm not the only one who's saying this. I believe in their year end wrap up in their predictions piece. Death to stock is also saying that what are things that AIs really bad at producing? Collage, right? High levels of layered texture, any sort of digital texture and in artwork that requires a lot of intricate layering. You see Boot Boys biz. They have their physical print publications. These are things that just cannot be produced by A. I. Because there's so much human intentionality and work that goes into it. And I think that is right. Future comics is war. So, again, exactly. Like, our piece lore. So craft and authenticity, the war for authenticity, I think, the most interesting trend of 2020.

[01:30:58] Brian: Financial prediction brought to you by or calculated with an abacus.

[01:31:04] Phillip: That's exactly right. Exactly right. Brian, this brings us to the biggest news story of 2026.

[01:31:11] Brian: Alright. What you got? You're up.

[01:31:13] Phillip: Okay. I mean, I think it just has to be said, I think it's the economic correction. We're going to see a number of things converge. There's layoffs, automation, inflation, and all of the potential the austerity that were supposed to have had with Doge, all of these things austerity from Doge was the beginning, I think austerity from consumers is where we're heading. And I think we're seeing the middle class being stress tested. So if anything, the human move and the consumer move to sovereignty is now a survival strategy in 2026. So the economic correction is something that is necessary. It's it's not it's not something that should be scary. It's like it's like required for the health of the economy is for us to not just be exponentially up into the right all the time. the fix for high prices should be high prices. We should stop paying high prices for things in order for those prices to come down. And so and some of those things are starting to already happen. We see like value menus coming back to fast food. And so hopefully, we start to see some corrections already taking place. And we'll see some early signs. But I do think there is an economic correction coming. I do have another yes, and to this I do believe that the Democratic Party platform for 2026 will be anti AI and legislation around AI as a populist platform. But I don't know that I can say that's the biggest news story of 2026. I believe that will the economic correction and being blamed on AI will spur that as the storyline. So

[01:32:56] Brian: That's that was my storyline for the year, which is Yeah. Basically, it's gonna be, I said this the last time political realignment will happen around different issues. And I think we're going see that come to more fruition. Although it's kind of confusing how that's all gonna shake out because you have the pope who is considered a pretty conservative figure sitting there ready to to bring to bring the correction about as well. But I think you're you're right about the Democratic Party. The question is, will it be tech aligned or not? Because I think there's, like in the past, the way that Democrats have done this we're gonna partner with the responsible companies to set standards. It's almost back to what were talking about before where Amazon and Apple and Google and Microsoft say, yeah, we're let's let's set limits to this, quote unquote. Therefore we can be both smart about how we roll it out and safe about how we roll it out, and at the same time, still roll it out because we're going to roll it out. And so it's basically been tech with safety has been the approach. But it feels like that era might be over the moment that the tech leaders kissed the ring and donated a million dollars to the swearing in ceremony or during the swearing in of Trump.

[01:34:51] Brian: And so it feels like it was very clear all the tech leaders, including Tim Cook, were sitting in that room ready to play ball with Trump. And so is it too far gone? That's the question. Are we to the point now where Democrats will be like, you tech companies, you're inauthentic. We can't trust you. We can't trust you when political parties in power switch. And I don't know. I don't know the answer to this because in some ways, technology is inherently always a boundary pusher. Right? And that's sort of the element of liberalism is push boundaries to not play it safe. And so I think it's just gonna be complete shakeup in terms of who falls into what camp and how political lines fall. I we can't call it Democrats and Republicans anymore. I think there will be a massive desal movement, but it's gonna cross what we currently think of as political boundaries.

[01:36:05] Phillip: And I like the desal I like the call the label of the desal movement. I really do like that. But I don't know. I well, what if we do this? Here's here's a prediction. Here's the way that we get cross party alignment and agreement and to allow the tech oligarchs to to find grace in both parties eyes after having basically bowed and kissed the ring to this administration is only after some sort of cataclysm. And I feel like there's you know, and I'm sure I haven't given it enough critical thought, but I can't think of another thing that would bring unity together around the need for legislation and the need for some sort of oversight. And that to me, We haven't yet seen something really terrifying with A. I. Yet, but I believe it's the law of large numbers like bound to happen. So when and if something like that were to happen and God forbid, lives were to to be lost or massive amounts of infrastructure were to be lost as a result, then then I believe we can see some unity on such a topic, especially around regulation. So

[01:37:42] Brian: I think that there's there's something to that, but it might not be in The United States. that's

[01:37:48] Phillip: My point. Don't think it has to be in The United States.

[01:37:49] Brian: I think

[01:37:50] Phillip: Right. Same tech, it's the same technology that's powering it everywhere. And I think that we the thing is, it's a just in the same way as the COVID-nineteen pandemic, we you know, something like an AIssue can become a viral epidemic. Like this something that can escape containment very quickly. And I feel like we're. You know, we have to we have to really take stock in what are we what are we really facing? There was a report earlier this year on the first A. I. Assisted cybersecurity attack at Internet scale. And I think that's something like I don't think that we've seen nation states utilize AI at or that we know of to weaponize AI for

[01:38:41] Brian: There might be states funded, but they won't be necessarily state, like, sanctioned, if that makes sense.

[01:38:47] Phillip: Yeah. Or that we know I mean yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah. That's something that has not happened yet, has not been reported on yet. Yeah. And those are things that I think are probably in the years ahead.

[01:38:58] Brian: Yep. Oh, well. You know, China's gonna keep keep advancing this. I do

[01:39:04] Phillip: Well, they tend to pick winners too in China. Right? Like, so Yeah.

[01:39:09] Brian: That's

[01:39:09] Phillip: Right. We're that is one advantage is like open market versus a made market. Anyway.

[01:39:17] Brian: Yeah. I think another big story, and I alluded to this earlier as well, is the autonomous the autonomous story. That was I called it earlier. Was a look ahead. This this the ahead. I think the autonomous there's gonna be a lot of a lot of talk about autonomous because it's gonna start to roll out in multiple cities it's not in now. And the and the I think that as people start to use it, it's gonna it's gonnaccelerate the use very quickly because as we both said, you get used to it after a couple rides. And it shakes your stomach the first time, and then you're you're like, it's not you don't even think about it after that. And so I do believe that a big news story is just like the boom of autonomous vehicles and, like, laws changing to your point earlier, like legislation. There's gonna be some really big news. You know what I think? And this not my biggest news story of the year, but I do think we may see a little bit of a trough of disillusionment around is the humanoid robots.

[01:40:38] Phillip: Yes.

[01:40:38] Brian: We have all of this excitement this year because things are actually rolling out. But that it's gonna be a minute before they actually are, like, useful and are widespread. And so there's gonna be a lot of people that are like, this does not work. It's not helpful at all. It's almost like an agent. Agents take a really long time to do things that a human could do. And, yes, a human doesn't have to be involved, but they're highly inefficient. That's sort of like humanoid robots. It's like it's almost so inefficient that it's not helpful. And so it could be it could be a a couple more years before we start to see actual widespread use of them. It's just gonna be mostly rich early tech adopters that are are pushing the boundaries and trying to figure out how to get them rolling in their households more quickly. And that's a pretty actually, the subset of people that are gonna use them is very small, but they're gonna be very dedicated. Cool. Alright. What's next?

[01:41:46] Phillip: Modern work trend of 2026. I think this a very easy one. We don't have to probably beat it too much. But to me, it's AI continuing to take over middle management, it's the automation piece, and the disappearance of entry level work. So to me, it's agents is the story of the year here. It's taking on all kinds of things reporting, procurement, CRM, inbox management, you know. So it's AIn the middle, as Balaji Srinivasa likes to say, it's human end to end, but it's AIn the middle and

[01:42:23] Brian: Middle out. And that's where that's

[01:42:30] Phillip: Where we have an issue is organizations reducing dependence on agencies, vendors and humans in the end. And so that's where the modern work trend will continue to go. And I think that also leads to some of the larger issues that I've mentioned here. So, Brian?

[01:42:50] Brian: Yeah. So with that, I do think that a lot of these non hired younger workers and laid off workers and workers who left because they were disaffected or whatever, they're going to need places to work in their solo or small groups that they put together. And so I think we're going to see some reinvestment in flexible workspaces and accelerators and other flexible ways of doing work. So expect some creativity around this sort of in the vein of 1909, which you're chairman of the board of, Phillip. That's kind of a unicorn. There's not too much out there like 1909. It's pretty special. I think we're gonna see more of that or other creative ways of organizing work that's independent.

[01:43:49] Phillip: And we'll and we'll need more of those sorts of organizations as people become more sovereign. Right? People need to take control of their own faith, their own income. And I think that's where we'll need more support of each other. Right? We'll need more community. So I do. I fully agree with that. All right. We're wrapping up here. Think What should die in 2026?

[01:44:13] Brian: You know, I had, like, one, two, maybe three predictions per prediction category.

[01:44:19] Phillip: I know. We've I've heard them all. Yeah.

[01:44:21] Brian: Yeah. I have, like, six or seven of these on this one.

[01:44:24] Phillip: Nice.

[01:44:26] Brian: Honestly, like, I'm not particularly opinionated about this. I think there's a lot of, like, trend jumping, trend jacking that's happened the last few years. It's kinda come to a height in this last year. It's not gonna go away, but you just see it all the time. Trend jacking is like how people hopping on, getting their little piece of the action, and that's how you get these big pushes. And they're doing it for attention and clout and for clap grab, the rage bait. They get their little moment of the action. And I kind of what what I'm hoping is that people focus more on the things they actually care about than trying to snag a little piece of the action in from other people. But I don't think that's going away. How about you?

[01:45:17] Phillip: Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm right on board with you. So mine is what I would label as the addiction economy. I feel like we this wishful thinking, it's never gonna happen. But I man, the addiction economy really needs to die. I feel like we're seeing glimmers of it. You know, screen time is a is a thing that people are starting to really come to be aware of. They're very, very concerned about screen time. You know, there's a trending device right now called Brick, where you NFC tap the Brick device, and then it basically bricks your phone for a specific specified period of time. So you walk in the door, you come home, you brick your phone, and people are opting into things like that. So phone addiction is one part of it. Dare I say the my media winner gambling as being injected into literally every part of the economy seems to be bad for us. Legalizing every form of substance that is an addictive substance seems to be bad for us. Is it any wonder that two of the fastest made female billionaires in modern history, run addiction platforms in OnlyFans and Cauchy. I feel like we really need to take stock of this addiction economy that we've built. I feel like it erodes the two things that we're also heading toward. Like sports betting, prediction markets, trading apps, all this crap. Like, it's the whole world, the casino now. And we need like, if we're heading towards autonomy, and we're heading towards self regulation of some sort. Like, we need to push back against things that are undoing that for ourselves because we're actually just enslaving ourselves to these forms of addiction. And I hope it dies. It's probably not going to.

[01:47:22] Brian: Yep. Escape from The U. P. A. Back to The USA. That's United Pottersville's of America versus United States Of America.

[01:47:32] Phillip: Right. Brian Brian in his annual caught him, like, the day after he watched the movie. It's it's it's No.

[01:47:39] Brian: I didn't watch. I watched it earlier this year. I've been

[01:47:41] Phillip: Sitting on

[01:47:42] Brian: This. I've been sitting

[01:47:42] Phillip: On this. I love it. I love it. Love it. Alright, Brian. What's the call here?

[01:47:47] Brian: Yeah. Two things here. So the vibes are so I don't know about correction necessarily. Or if there is a correction, there'll be signals that are saying that it's not a correction. so here's what I think. I think with autonomy, more autonomy and sovereignty and so on, like, splitting up of things, we're looking at a people living in their own realities. And so there's more the vibes of the year are you shape your own reality. You live in your own world. Like, it's all mixed. Everything's mixed. Everything feels like it's mixed. There's never any just, like, pure, like, communal excitement about the economy or about anything. There's no, like, excite like, pure communal joy or pure communal dismay. Everything is always mixed, and then we always feel bad and we'll always feel good. And, like, it's always just a total blend, and there's never gonna be a point at which unless there's some truly cataclysmic thing, like like, we're we're all just gonna live in this. You have your reality. I have mine. You do you. And I hope I mean, that bothers me so much, but I don't think we can go back. And then the other thing as a result of that, we're looking a lot out of the moments as Reggie James sort of called it. Uh, people who claim moments, that was the moment. We're gonna see a lot of that in the press coming up this year where it was like, people claim that as the moment. Alright. That's my vibes.

[01:49:39] Phillip: I love it. Uh, the vibes something I would call empowered uncertainty. Um if if we just kind of put a bow on everything I've talked about, if you know, we're unsure about institutions, if the future is a little murky and a little uncertain 2026, I do think that people feel more confident in themselves, and they're taking more control of themselves, and they have tools to do so. So I don't know if that's optimism, but I don't think it's doom either. And I think that to me is a good it's sort of a taking the good with the bad.

[01:50:19] Brian: And a ton of existential dread is what it comes with.

[01:50:22] Phillip: Does. I think that too can be a bit of a powder keg. And so that's a fine line to walk in a society. If they've if we veer too far into hopelessness, people want to make drastic changes. And so the vibe certainly could go south very quickly. What I do think helps is where what are the things that bring us together? I don't know. We have the Olympics. But with there are things that could maybe bring us together in this upcoming year. And I do think that there's we should be looking toward those because we have so much so much, like, even AI can drive us to isolation. So I am empowered. Uncertainty is the thing I would leave us with here today. and just remember, like, with these big themes, you'll hear us talk a lot about it. The age of autonomy autonomy and sovereignty. I think you'll hear us talk a lot about that in 2026. So it's a great place to wrap it up. Brian, I have a lot of sympatico today.

[01:51:30] Brian: Oh, man. I cannot believe how much, like, independent consensus we came to there. We're in for an interesting year. It's gonna be

[01:51:37] Phillip: We sure are. I'm so I'm so glad to have done yet another year of predictions. You put these two episodes together, and it's the longest thing we've ever done. And most well researched. Thank you all for joining us here on future commerce. And thank you for coming along for the ride. I would love to hear what your predictions are for the year. Love to hear your feedback. Drop us a line at [email protected].

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