Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for politically eclectics.

I'm Robbie Gupta.

And in this episode, I'm going to point the way to next year, 2026.

I'm going to talk mostly about what I think are some of the key trends that are going to play out in 26.

And this is a departure from prior years where I make predictions because I think predictions have a way of being ego driven.

Right.

So either it's like, oh, I'm right, which happens sometimes or, oh, I'm wrong.

And it just becomes this binary.

Like in some years, you know, I had a prediction, for example, that I said Biden or Trump wouldn't be on the ballot.

I said at the beginning of that election year, that happened to be right.

Or this past year, I said, I thought we would be in a recession by the end of the year.

That does not look like it's going to happen.

So that's not a very helpful way to talk about things generally.

So what I want to do is actually say, okay, what are actually certain – So that's not a very helpful way to talk about things generally.

So what I want to do is actually say, okay, what are actually certain issues, questions that we're going to have to answer in the year?

And what are some of the interesting ways that can go one way or the other and how will that affect your life?

Before we get there, a couple of housekeeping items. Number one is,

I have this writer's group, speaking of 2026, that's going to play out all year. We are in the process

of reviewing applications for that now. It meets once a week, and it's called the Analog Finishing School,

and it's all about how to actually tackle creative projects, whether it'll be a book you want to write, a podcast,

a narrative podcast, you want to create a screenplay. In one case, there's somebody who's in the

program who's actually going to be writing a cookbook. So if you want to be considered for that

...