Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.

Welcome to New World Next Year, 26. I'm James Corbett at CorbettReportreport.com.

And I'm James Evan Pallado of Mediamonica.com. Merry Christmas to all of you. This is our special

year-in show. The big differences, we dress up a little bit, and we don't know what the other one are going to talk about.

Usually, always on your new world next week. We've got our three stories, we know what we're going to talk about, we know where the points are, and we've been doing this for 15 or most years. This is the only episode of the year where we do not know what the other is going to talk about, and for probably about the last decade, our New World next year, 2026 episode, we look at the year

past and we make a trend prediction for the upcoming year and we usually take turns.

And James, I'm going to trust that I went first last year.

So you go first this year, man.

What was your story of 2025?

Good question. Well, in casting about for a story of the year,

there are many possibilities that present themselves. And here's one that I know that you will

appreciate, James. Here in Japan, every year, there's an association that chooses the

Japanese character of the year to describe the year. And this year's character was the character

for bear. So that tells you something about the situation here in Japan. But I cast my net a little

bit more broadly than that. So I decided on a different word that I think encapsulates the word of

the year. And people who are corporate support subscribers who watch my recent subscriber

exclusive video will have seen that me and Sean picked a Japanese character

for our character of the year.

Mine was a bit of a cheat.

I used the two characters, Hewa, which means peace.

But not peace.

It's peace in quotation marks. Because my story of the year is the peace before the storm.

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