ZD 25.01: Will '25 Be a Good Year?
What to expect in a world where we should expect the unexpected.
In this issue: bird flu update, looking into China, 2025 predictions collection, culture break, 2025 advice round up, and what 2025 means to this publication.
The Distilled Spirit
Happy New Year! Welcome to a slightly updated format — expect a few more links up front. If you love this publication you should check out The Zeitgeist Roasted. It is amazing.
💉 Be Very Afraid of the Bird Flu
The world is not ready for another pandemic but pathogens don’t care. H5N1, or the bird flu, keeps threatening to break out of its largely animal hosts, cross over to humans and become a much bigger issue.
Defcon 3 for H5N1 ()
Jeremy Faust sees a few alarming cases that could portend a much more serious issue coming.
H5N1: More than You Wanted To Know ()
Everything you ever wanted to know about the flu and H5N1 in one very consumable package. Pairs very well with AI tools like NotebookLM if you are building a knowlegebase on the subject.
🥠 Window Into China
China is a fascinating place to learn about.
Dwarkesh Patel’s Chinese Adventure (
)Podcaster Dwarkesh Patel took a trip to China over the holidays. He shares his experience in a vivid first-hand account of what it feels like to be there today.
IP Theft and The Rise of Nations (
)IP theft has always been involved in the rise of nations — China is not different than previous rising powers like Britain.
😎 Cool Kids Culture Corner
Two things caught my eye in culture this week.
Pantine is Back Baby! ()
Casey Lewis writes a brilliant newsletter aggregating Gen Z and Gen Alpha culture. The next thing the kids are bringing back is Pantine shampoos. The 90s are back.
🍾 New Years Prognostication & Advice Round Up
New year’s resolutions just are not what they used to be. Nonetheless, many publications share 2025 predictions and advice issues. Here is my curated list of the most interesting for your reading pleasure.
Sweeping Predictions
Be bold in the new year is solid advice. Here are some big picture predictions worth reviewing:
The Future Today Institute and Amy Webb triangulate signals and publish their annual letter focusing on 10 themes for 2025. Technology supercycles are exciting times.
- shares a list of 50 emerging themes for 2025.
- and talk through the post-hype AI of 2025.
- makes seven technology predictions for 2025.
The Daily Upside peers into their crystal ball and has a few prognostications.
- looks at forces effecting capital markets in 2025.
Self Improvement
Lots of folks — your author included — use the new year as a time to focus on self improvement. Here are some pieces of advice I found especially useful.
Sahil Bloom should be a household name. He probably will be one day. First and foremost he helps you maintain perspective by suggesting that you should think in terms of intentions over resolutions while sharing his well thought out list. Second he has a great annual planning guide worth studying.
Captain YAR designed a solid framework for structuring your next 52 weeks.
- shares a great guide to being more organized on a whole lot of levels in 2025.
- curated a list of creative tools to help get you there next year.
Grilling is an important aspect of self improvement. How else can you stay sane? Don’t miss Barbeque Bible’s grilling trends for 2025. The South American-style grills are exciting.
2025’s Unknowns
I am not quite brave enough to get into specific predictions for 2025. But here is a list things that worry me as an investor, observer and person who enjoys consumer capitalism to its finest:
I think it would be unwise not to expect some sort of big, explosive foreign policy event. There is just too much going on too many places in the world for things to be stable. And that is before you add the Trump Administration chaos factor.
Regulation will be no barrier for AI progress, at least in the US. I suspect, however, we will start to reckon with paying for it all. There is certainly lots of upside and opportunity, but we are essentially solving every problem with throwing more computer and therefore more energy at it. At some point that becomes less efficient than the Mark I Human Cranium.
Our barriers to advanced AI entry have failed — the cat is out of the bag. You can train a GPT4 class AI for a few tens of millions today. How much cheaper is that in January 2026?
A huge wave of commercial loans issued in 2020 will come due this year. By and large they will have to be refinanced at materially higher interest rates. That is going to have major reverberations especially in commercial real estate which is still nowhere near recovered from the pandemic.
H5N1 keeps threatening to explode into something pandemic-like. Are we ready for another round?
The Future is Bright
There are concerns to be sure but we live in an amazing time. The future really is bright if you can look past the vitriol. It is an amazing time to be alive. Here are some things I am looking forward to:
It is going to be an amazing year in software, especially if you are building things. What you can accomplish using low and no code solutions today is astounding. Beyond that, AI enables you to avoid so much time consuming data entry and data conversion, challenges which were often the real impediment in software operations. I am excited for what is coming.
Medicine seems poised for a break out year — AI is bridging a final gap on a number of therapies that could be life changing for many.
The world is waking up to the threat that China, Russia and to a lesser extent Iran pose. There is real interest in beating them back and keeping them contained.
The US economy is in good shape. We have undergone real productivity boom. There are lots of places where growth is possible.
Zeitgeist Distilled in 2025
I think we are on to a great thing here. We will remain weekly and there are no plans for a paywall at this time. I am planning to keep bringing the same mix of curated content from elsewhere coupled with an internally generated thought piece, technology exploration or dive into the zeitgeisty subject of the week.
One thing I have been turning over in my head is “what is the best way to deliver some technology deep dives.” My current thinking there is to setup a separate section of this Substack for some longer-form pieces that would be focused on how to build specific tools. Some examples could be “building a YouTube scraper using Airtable, Make and Apify” or “creating a connected link tracking system using Notion, Make and Airtable.” There could be some video angles here, things like that are frankly boring to read and write and much better to watch. I suspect there is a bit of overlap but some different audiences. Let me know if things like this would excite you or turn you off.
And stay tuned for an exciting 2025! I’m happy to be your Chief Zeitgeist Distiller.
The Look
NotebookLM is an amazing tool I love. One thing I really love to use it for is as a mirror — to give me feedback about this publication. I asked it to roast me. It did not disappoint.
Did you enjoy reading this post? Hit the ♥ button above or below because it helps more people discover great Substacks like this one and it helps train your algorithm to get you more posts you like. Please share here or in your networks to help us grow!