This is a podcast from BBC Radio 4.

Normally you might expect to find the briefing room here.

But this week, as we're just about to start what could be another highly eventful year,

we thought you might like to listen to a programme we put together with senior BBC correspondents,

forecasting what might happen in the news over the year ahead.

Welcome to The correspondence look ahead.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

Now there's a widespread feeling among pundits and mere observers too

that really nobody knows anything anymore.

Many defend the record of experts,

but many deride them as ill-informed and worse, biased as well,

concealing self-interested agendas.

This year's largely unproductive events included a political novice, shattering France's

two-party system and the British Prime Minister calling a snap election only to see a double-digit

poll lead dissipate into no overall majority in Parliament.

And then Robert Mugabe resigned. Who predicted that?

So it's either a time to junk expertise or to prize it ever more highly.

And I'm joined this year by five people who've agreed to take a look ahead to 2018.

We've got Carrie Gracie, BBC's China editor, Kevin Connolly, Europe correspondent,

Yilan Nell, Middle East correspondent, James Robbins, our diplomatic correspondent, and James

Nocti, our special correspondent. So between you all, you'll be able to cover just about

everywhere, I think, and we're going to start with the United States and Donald Trump.

...