clashes break count as another day of rage is called across palestine in the wake of donald trump's decision to recognize jerusalem as israel's capital two palestinians are reportedly killed and sixty eight more injured by israeli soldiers . boris johnson visits russia for the first time as british foreign secretary talking trade and action meddling and even attempting some russian. somebody is just give me a pound for the for the round. because if that's news to the u.k. i guess that's the if this the. the world of sport is done and off the olympic gymnastics champion mckayla maroney claims she was paid to keep quiet about two

years of child abuse by a u.s. team doctor. you can find out details of those stories on our website r.t. dot com i'll be back with the headlines again in the rounds an hour in the meantime it's the big picture. hey everybody i'm stephen bob taft hollywood guy yes the suspects every proud american first of all i'm just george washington and r.v. and do some stuff this is my buddy max famous financial guru just a little bit different i'm not. going to tell another no no one knows up with all the drama happening in our country i'm shooting the road have some fun meet every day americans come on and hopefully start to bridge the gap this is the great american pill which.

level was selling you on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the chicken hawks forcing you to fight the battles that still needs to stop spread to tell you the subby gossip and tabloids by files of the reporters. off the bad guys and tell me you are not cool enough to buy their product. these are the hawks that we along with our audience loves watching. her.

forty four million americans are struggling to pay back some one and a half t. trillion dollars in student loan debt and if you're doing the math a trillion is twelve zeros plus interest i'm holland cook in washington this is the big picture on our team america. according to a recent survey by financial advice website credible dot com millennialist with credit card debt find their debt to be scarier than climate change the threat of

war not being able to retire even dying you heard right debt is scarier than death and no wonder with that average fifty seven hundred dollar credit card balance on top of a six figure student loan obligation and this can happen to any one book we were lucky enough to land good jobs but even with those great jobs that we had we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago i think about their present united states it was only about eight years ago there are finished paying off my student loans. our young people choking on debt because we presume that four years of college is the price of admission to a secure career let's ask david lewis president and c.e.o. of h.r. outsourcing consulting firm operations and hello david thanks for joining us. and

how are you ok during the great recession job openings outnumbered applicants now it's often the other way around with twenty seventeen labor force growth roughly half of what it was in two thousand and sixteen why is that demographics or are we not training for today's jobs. it's a mix of things if you go back to two thousand and seven before the great recession we were all talking about the fact that we were about to have all of these baby boomers retire and when they retire they were going to leave the job force and we were going to be left with this huge hole well then two thousand and eight came and a lot of those baby boomers couldn't afford to retire any more they stayed in the market now we're back to what clearly has been the hottest job market we've had in at least the last twelve years maybe in the last twenty five and so with unemployment at around four percent what we call that is almost full employment even those four percent of the population that are out there that are not working we don't have enough people to fill the kinds of jobs that we have open right now so as a result you've got

a problem where the talent that we're churning out is either not going into the fields that we need them to because we've got openings there or the kinds of positions we're creating as a country is not a match for the types of talent that we have in the in the country as a whole someone here quipped if you want to get rich be a plumber if you want to work at starbucks major in philosophy will vocational trades always be a safe career bed and in which areas is that are a real seller's market for skilled workers. so that's the irony right now is that if you go back to when i was a kid i was told that you get your college degree that said she want to better path as it relates to your career in reality right now it's almost the opposite if you go to school but you're not looking for the college path you're looking just to get out in the workforce and do something with your hands or with your brain even without the degree there are tons of opportunities out there in the medical field alone there are countless number of positions that have assistant next to them that

are tied to the medical profession chiropractic dentistry you can go ahead and you can find opportunities there well without that degree the manufacturing sector is dying for talent right now there are hundreds of thousands of positions believe it or not that go on filled every year in manufacturing most of those positions don't require any type of prior education as it relates to least college they just need vocational and then there's sales sales positions constantly out there on the job market so you don't need to go to college to be able to be successful in this job market today and you can find a lot of different opportunities out there well without the four the four year degree you read about sales which is largely a matter of traits and personality your of born salesman if you're in sales right. exactly and you know if you've got the right skills the right communication skills the four year degree and whatever it is that you have really doesn't matter you know and on that you know just to go back the manufacturing piece for a second that industry as a whole is starving for people you're starting to see those organizations and the

industry associations going into high school and even middle school in an effort to be able to open up the students' eyes in the parents' eyes to the future that exists within the manufacturing sector as a whole for a couple of decades back when i was a corporate suit i hired a lot of people and made a point of doing multiple interviews and really listening and reference checking like crazy still that process is just a snapshot so i was intrigued by some research that your firm did on inturn ships which strike me as the ultimate employment test drive what's the trend. so the trend is that companies who have realized that they can't just simply go ahead and put a billboard up in the form of a job posting and expect that there are going to be hundreds of qualified candidates right at their front door they're reaching down and they're looking for those the for those that are looking for students coming out of let's say advanced education so undergrad or graduate and they're starting to engage their employees

essentially during that internship phase so you bring somebody in during their sophomore junior or even senior year and you give them an opportunity to do some work for your organization doesn't cost you a lot of money could cost you nothing if you do it right and you're providing them in exchange for the job you're providing them with college credits through the university and what you do is you get a chance to be able to see how that person is going to work within your culture and whether they're a good fit or not and you're paying them very little for that test and it's usually for two three four months at a time at the end of the day you may have somebody that's a perfect fit for you when they do graduate and they're interested in you usually to the point that if you make them an offer they're likely to come on board and you lose that six months of learning curve that most new hires need especially right out of college and you also lose the chance that that candidate is not going to succeed because you've already had an opportunity to test drive them throughout the ditto apprenticeships which i'm told is now

a trend where rather than spending not to work for four years of college they may not be making a lot but at least they're on the job and making something and are you seeing the apprenticeship thing as well. absolutely that goes back to my example regarding manufacturing if you're going to go ahead and bring people into today's manufacturing world which is very much a hybrid of what we knew to be sort of the assembly line widget work and now clematis up with the high end technology you need somebody to be able to sort of show shepherd them through the process so that's what apprenticeships are all about and so states are now actually getting in on this program voting some level of tax incentive for organizations who provide apprenticeships apprenticeships a matching certain criteria that each of the states ultimately offer and giving huge tax breaks as a result so companies are getting with that and realizing hey this is a better way to integrate my new hire get them fully trained get them engaged if it's part of an internship that moves into an apprenticeship and at the end of the

day you shorten the learning cycle you improve your productivity as an organization every time i get an override i am struck by what's called the gig economy and we hear a lot about radical disruptions something air b.n. b. has visited upon hotels the way the oberoi and lifts have up and the taxis even ambulances now and you'll never go broke if you're a barber or a bartender is full time employment now merely an option. i think that as you see again as we see yes but up against a four percent unemployment level you find that there are fewer and fewer resources that are out there that are available for the traditional forty hour work week so what organizations are doing is they're looking at people and they're thinking hey can you do this for twenty twenty five thirty hours a week and so they're now tapping into an entirely new talent pool by being flexible in allowing people to work less than that traditional forty hours that's

the driver behind how many of these types of roles that you're seeing it's also obviously supplementing people's income so you've got people who are driving at night and are working full time during the day as an example but more importantly you can successfully pay for your rent support your family and not necessarily have a traditional forty hour work week job and for the employer the employer needs to understand that you just don't go out and look for people who fit the traditional workweek model you need to be flexible you need to be creative one of these gigs i've seen up close and personal is one of my sisters who is a dental hygienist there in connecticut where you are and she is in big demand thirty years after two years at a technical community college now that's return on education investment your clients are on the demand end of the employment transaction for parents looking down the road for their kids higher education what are the most opportune two and four year majors you see. so i'm

a big believer that instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket and focusing just on accounting or on something that's pre-med or pre law you want to be more of a generalist in terms of your degree pursuit so my advice to parents is to take a look at what types of degrees can be transitioned into pretty much most if not any career path that maybe in psychology communications or marketing for example those three particular degree of study can translate into just about anything out there in terms of a future and what they tend to teach and what they tend to breed in terms of the students skills our communication skills our interaction skills our team building all of those things are translatable into so many different career paths so you're trying to maximize your opportunity the idea is to take something that can be more course skill function versus career function as it relates to your four year degree you know i live in a very rural area at the end of a dirt road and

a couple of times a year i have to have a guy with contraptions come and hack back the greenery on either side otherwise you won't get down the dirt road and i walked out to chatham up the last time he was there and i said how's business and he said hey the stuff keeps growing. and that's not his day job so i think there's something to what you're saying hey david lewis operations and thank you so much for joining us again today and merry christmas. happy holidays thanks hala comment on what happened what next as we put twenty seventeen in the rearview. mirror from the guy who's been listening to you all year next this is the big picture on our t.v. america.

russian athletes taking. a live picture remains controversial what awaits the olympians in south korea and more importantly what awaits them of to the get. los angeles the city of luxury and fame but also an alarming number of people living in the streets. a simple fact in l.a. is there's just not enough shelter even if people on the streets right now decided to come in there's nowhere to come in and it's been a struggle. to get this man from his own response to the problem and constructed dozens of tiny homes for people in need of shelter when you have nothing and nowhere to go. you know having something like this may as well be a castle but do the authorities accept such solution. me house on

a city parking space is not a solution your kerf someone monitoring the site otherwise it will be a free for all and is there a better alternative to end the homelessness crisis. what happened and what next and will pass to be prologue does twenty seventeen offer clues about twenty eight team let's ask the guy who's been listening to you all year michael harrison is the publisher of talkers magazine the the trade publication of talk media radio t.v. and pod casting translation he spends his entire year listening to what the usa has to say every day and each year and michael's magazine publishes its talkers

ten the list of the ten most talked about issues of the year michael thank you for joining us great to be with you holland and happy new year let's dive right in radio countdown style topic number two man terror attacks deadly terror attacks do people on talk radio sound genuinely fearful or are they just staring at the story do sure. well the problem with the terror attacks is there have been so many of them that there's a guilt feeling that we are getting numb to it both in terms of behind the microphone and even the people listening to the speakers it's hard to remember which one was which and the biggest guilt that anybody in journalism has or should have is that there is no follow up because if you go back to the to the wise in the

wherefores of any particular attack or heinous crime these tragedies these shocking tragedies that you don't have time to talk about the new ones like there's been no follow up on las vegas what happened in texas so it really is a very sad and uncomfortable situation for everybody concerned i think you're right nobody can name the vegas shooter anymore and attention span has become an oxymoron story number nine roy a more senate bid in alabama what does this portend for twenty eighteen based on what you're hearing. well it's a it's a multi-faceted story it's a story with many headlines as for what it portends well it shows you that a democrat can under certain circumstances win in a hit or two and perhaps still red voting district in this case an entire state that's one thing the other thing is it ties into one of the bigger stories

we're going to get to and that's the the me too phenomenon which is a watershed story and i'll save it for when we get to it and it also is a referendum on the coattails of the president of the united states there's a lot to this story you have very deep a lot of camera angles on it the eighth most talked about topic race relations and the charlottesville march which turned deadly you couldn't get away from this that that's sad sad weekend are we taken steps forward or backwards based on what people say on talk radio. we're taking steps forward and backwards and that's what's so beautiful about talk radio it's not a monolith as many people believe but there are many different points of view and there is a concern about the rise of nationalism the rise of white supremacy and all of the other ugly aspects that have been plaguing mankind since the beginning of

time you know racism. zina phobia. so we have it here what it basically says to the smart to the smart mouths out there or they're saying is that you can't become complacent about signs of hate that hatred you know the idea not could never happen in america it could happen anywhere sure there are human beings it's in each of us and we have to be very careful not to let it go malignant yeah and did almost to what you just said about topic number seven immigration reform the border wall sanctuary cities this xeno phobia seems to be alive and well although we don't have a wall just yet but this hasn't gone away this will bubble up from time to time on talk radio whenever one of these gun nuts happens to have a foreign sounding name correct. yeah well this is the issue that really propelled

donald trump to being a serious candidate for the presidency although when he made that first speech in san francisco everybody thought that he was going to shoot himself in the foot no pun intended by being so extreme about it those of us in talk radio know that this is been a talk radio topic for well over a decade sure for years they have been talking about it talk radio is kept alive donald trump brought it to the fore and now it is and it will remain a major controversy the issue and it's a fork in the road in terms of the united states of america and its position on immigration immigration is what built this country is it going to continue to build this country and the twenty first century or are we going to go in a new direction that's what waits to be seen well just this week we've seen the climax of talkers ten topic number six for twenty seventeen tax reform and the effort to repeal and replace obamacare and the lines are lit up

at the radio stations i've been listening to and everybody despite the polls seems to think that this is a positive thing although it's polling almost two to one skeptical does that jive with what you're hearing. oh absolutely skepticism reigns supreme when it comes to these types of things because we're talking about a bill that most people have never read we're talking about a new more. whole spectrum of law a new chapter in tax code that nobody really understands i can't find anybody who can cogently explain what this tax bill means so it became more it became more of a political item can the republicans get it done right hand trump and twenty seventeen with a victory right at the celebration is that they got it done not necessarily what it's going to do they get something anything done topic number five the debate over

fake news in the state of journalism it all blurs together now on cable and on talk radio and we really do choose to believe what we choose to believe dont we. yes we do we the media basically the corporate media targets pre you know predispositions and then tells people what they want for affirmation its target audience and tell them what they want to hear and people live in bubbles of their own reality the term fake news started as one thing and it ended as anything you disagree with is fake news right here right what the facts may be sure and. but i do believe optimistically holland that as we move forward into twenty eighteen this whole crazy year of fake news and journalism under fire is going to lead to better investigative journalism and the media being much more self-conscious about what it prints and what it says and what it shows as better media and better journalism as

a result of this hope to write a topic number for north korea nuclear tension relations with russia russia russia and china struck me as a bit of an anomaly because much of what we hear on talk radio is domestic and there was a lot of international talk this year topic number three you referenced earlier sexual misconduct in the me too movement and i agree this is a watershed moment is this story at its beginning its middle or closer to the end as our attention tends to wander. i think it's in the middle i think the story will and i think they'll always be the battle of the sexes i think that there will always be cases of sexual misconduct i think we're going to get back to understanding the gradation of differences between something that might be rude and something that is

a felonious assault and it's going to move on to the courts ron burgundy is now a dinosaur topic number two trump russia investigation election hacking allegations i sense burn out on this it seems like old news and no minds are being changed is that what you take. well that may be the way you see it and some see it that way i see it as highly partisan i see the people that are pro trump seeing it as something that is a political witch hunt i see people that are anti trump hopeful that it's going to reveal something that is going to prove him to be at fault i think this is going to play itself out i do think it's important i think it's way too complicated for you and i to come up with anything cogent about it within this discussion yeah it's not only it's not up on president for a while yeah you're right all right i don't mean it's a little late i've got a minute left and we said the best for last the tip of the roll the number one talk

topic of the year according to talkers magazine research is the president's personality and deemed meaner and these twenty s are an issue leave in among some of his most ardent supporters correct. yeah yeah most of the top trump has been involved in every one of the ten stories that we've talked about so hiss is the age of trump but the most compelling part of anything said about trump has been about his personality and not necessarily about his policies people are talking one side or the other about his personality and that's pretty amazing he's a star michael harrison talkers magazine you were on my very first show on r t america and you said something back then i thought about ever since donald trump is the best thing that ever happened to talk radio. from a business perspective you bet happy holidays michael thanks for joining us. thank you holland there is no place like home for the holidays but getting there was

a nightmare for thousands stranded this past week in a blackout at the world's busiest airport in atlanta and some travelers died in that amtrak derailment in washington state we take a lot for granted but we shouldn't you flip the switch on the lights come on unless you're in puerto rico where three months later the longest blackout in american history still leaves thousands of americans in the dark and california wildfires have been raging for a month and it'll be a blue christmas for many in las vegas where tourists are still taking selfies at mandalay bay eager as we are to put this year in the rearview mirror we have lots to look forward to in the new year and right now in between twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen those of us fortunate enough to be able to do so can just hit pause so this we can make a point to make eye contact with the people and the pets who matter to you merry

christmas. you got manmade global warming incinerating planet earth it causing an eco but the corporations feel like you know what that might cost us a penny at the end of the year so to have done it adjustment to our algorithm it will take out the city and alaska that would flag us to take action appropriate for survival of the species and we're going to instead rely on our balance sheet and our algorithm like a g.p.s. monitor that's pointing over a cliff i don't care if the cliff is there my god where that says it's not they're going to keep driving i'm going to have found little ways i'm going to go right over that cliff. those are the data itself.

about your sudden passing i've only just learned you worry yourself in taking your last bang turn. you're at the top to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry for me i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got i remember when we first met my life turned on each day. but then my feeling started to change you talked about war like it was again still some more fond of you those that didn't like to question our arc and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave a funeral the same as one enters in mind it's consumed with death this one quite different i speak to you now because there are no other takers. to claim that mainstream media has met its maker.

real plot three hundred kilometers from new orleans far away from tourists jazz and mardi gras the small tone is the gateway to state prisons in a city of seven thousand seven hundred arrests in two years a very large number of federal authorities investigate through this no no no john i'm going back. some. closer but. those are. no good. or gumball pay or bad bite or.