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overwhelmed by information news fake news social media it's all coming at us high velocity from every direction and that thing in your pocket we used to call a phone is the culprit let's talk about coping with the info overload but first the american way of death our species has a one hundred percent mortality rate and although we'd rather not talk about planning our own funeral or the final tribute to a loved one we are consumers in the cross-hairs of the funeral industrial complex an expert has tips for being a smart shopper holland cook in washington. complete

this sentence there is nothing sure but. death and taxes and with april fifteenth looming we're thinking about taxes tax planners help us avoid overpaying but how can we avoid getting ripped off planning a funeral it's often a moment where we are emotionally unsettled let's ask gail reuben who's a registered trademark is the door yan of death she is the author of a good goodbye funeral planning for those who don't plan to die and kicking the bucket list one hundred downsizing and organizing things to do before you die which along with her ted talk you can find to ask a good goodbye calm gail welcome from albuquerque oh and great to be with you just going to go and functional. i chuckled aloud when i read on your website that talking about sex won't make you're pregnant and talking about funerals won't make you a dad and i noted that you are the first certified fan ologist i've met now what is

that and how important is it to as tasteful advertising terms preplan the term comes from the greek demi god then atos who is the personification of a good death and for all of our regularly scheduled visits despite great advances in medical care humans do still have a one hundred percent mortality rate and get less than thirty percent of adults to any end of life planning that's wills or trusts advance medical directives and pre-made funeral planning so it's very important to do this because if we don't the seventy percent or more of our loved ones who. our in our families are not going to be able to be prepared they're going to be scrambling to pull information together and make expensive decisions under duress and grief and it doesn't have to be that

way and i'm living proof that you could be talking about death all the time and it won't kill you well you're right and none of us are getting out of here alive and here's a phrase that everybody watching should google the f t c funeral rule from the federal trade commission gail most of the tips here seem like smart shopper one o one right yes well you know buy only the funeral arrangements that you want. in fact when you go shopping at a funeral home they may offer package deals which could be discounted if you buy the whole package but it might have elements that you don't want but unless you shop around ahead of time you don't know if a package deal or view items would be better for your budget to get a written itemized price list when you visit a funeral home to this funeral rule was passed in one nine hundred eighty three before the rot the creation of the internet people are looking online now for

information and a lot of funeral homes do not put their price lists on their websites so yes going there in person or calling them on the phone and getting a price list is how you can get that information from the funeral home although there are websites now such as funeral last city dot com or parting dot com that put up by mark at the prices for various funeral homes. get a written casket price list before you see the actual caskets well things have changed in the funeral business you don't have gigantic rooms full of full size caskets anymore you might have one or two full sized caskets and then like corners of caskets or pictures of caskets in the. catalog so things have changed a bit since one thousand nine hundred three in the in the business you want to get a written statement after you decide what you want and before you pay that's because you may get sticker shock once they add up all those costs and that's the

time when you can say well why don't we pick a twelve hundred dollar casket instead of a six thousand dollar casket and then to get an explanation in a written statement from the funeral home that describes an illegal cemetery or crematory requirements. cemetery costs are separate from funeral home costs in most cases so there is the cost of the grave opening and closing the grave a liner or vault a marker and that can add thousands and thousands of dollars to the bill cremation also you might have a funeral home that advertises seven hundred fifty dollars for cremation but there may be a crematory permit that has to be issued we have that here in new mexico two hundred ten additional dollars plus tax on top of that so whatever ties is seven fifty might actually be closer to twelve hundred so those are some of the things to be

aware of another item i read up on is that you may provide the funeral home with your own casket or earn your buy elsewhere they must let you correct. absolutely absolutely and there are people who sell caskets and urns online but you know in the case of an urn you could bring in a coffee can they did that in the big. or you could. i have been to a number of funerals and i saw one couple that died within twenty four hours of each other they were both cremated and they were both in these kind of decorative suit cases that their children had gotten at a hobby shop and that was very creative and you can do things like that well apropos cremation it's an increasingly popular choice half of americans now choose to go ashes to ashes which is not to say scale back the funeral gail how do

preplan ors and survivors create meaningful memorial services when someone's been cremated well in fact you can have a funeral before the cremation takes place and actually save money because you can rent that casket instead of having to buy it. also religion has been on the the decline in the united states and when you don't have the rituals of a established religion and clergy people don't know what to do there has been over the past few years a rise in certified funeral celebrants people who are trained to take a situation and learn all about the deceased and make a celebration of that person's life all about that person who died and make it a healing activity for the family the loved ones to actually come together and

have a good goodbye for this person and unfortunately a lot of people think oh cremation you just send the body off and they're cremated and that's it and that is a disservice to the people who love that person in fact i've heard a lot of people say oh you don't have a funeral for me when i when i die and i say if people didn't love you don't worry they wouldn't go to the trouble wow so. it really is for the community and for the people who are left alive and missing that person a good goodbye hey one of my new year's resolutions is to make my wife a thumb drive of do this when i think things to do before you die gil what are the basics the boxes we need to check off to spare are survivors i hassle at the minimum before anybody gets sick have advance medical directive let people know do everything possible to keep me alive or if you're at that point in your life where

it's like you know no her roic measures if it's my time let me go so that's what advanced medical directives are for you want to pull together your important information including four things that go on a death certificate your social security number do you know your wife's off the top of your head lou that's an important piece of information mother's maiden name the place of birth as well as your date of birth most people would know that but veteran verbal discharge a d.d. two fourteen form is needed to get free burial or internment in a national cemetery. and it would also be nice to know you know what kind of disposition you want do you want to be buried do you want to be cremated do you want to donate your body to science there are a number of options and more are coming you can have alkaline hydrolysis aqua mission where instead of being cremated by fire it's

a water process so you can have a warm bath instead of a trip to the blast furnace and. and then what you might want done with those final remains you know it's if you do have a burial plot is it paid for and by the way if you're going to make arrangements in advance it is ok to put your information and your preferences on file with a funeral home you can preplan it not prepay and then when the time comes if you don't home to take credit cards you can get the points the miles and you. so so that's that's a great way to plan ahead for your loved ones and obviously give know what you want you know give your surviving spouse the account numbers and passwords for everything so that your facebook page dies with you i guess i got about a minute left but confronting the inevitable need to feel awkward and i've read that there are now death discussion events such as there over the past ten years

the silver tsunami of baby boomers is getting people talking about our mortality death cafes came to us from the united kingdom strangers come together have a little coffee or tea said cake or cookies and talk about what's on your hearts and minds about mortality issues sometimes that's easier to do than with your own family and the before i die festival i mean fact just found out i'm getting an award for this about hopefully doing something about our one hundred percent mortality rate thank you gayle reuben a good good buy dot com stop hey what's that sound it's a wall of noise and two communicators help us to tame the deafening didn't that bombards us every single day next this is the big picture on our t. america.

we will not be judged by what it is that we should have it's that we will be judged by what we give to our children we must accept responsibility to fix our nations and make sure that we fix them for the sake of the future that stop looking behind us and believing the gloom will rule is gone the house we must have a new generation of people who will fix our countries for the rest of the future and that's what it is the. all three in nigeria. that's geysers financial survival guide liquid assets not those that you can burn in zigzags quite easily. to keep in mind no asset to mean to a place in. order.

as far right parties obsess about the danger is them to the know it bundle on the day of muslims don't step up their game within the next twenty to forty is islam they vanish from europe other those fee is really just to find. out what politicians to do something to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. some want to listen. to going to the press this is what the four three of them all.

how many times will you look at your smartphone today it's eighty according to research i've seen that's every twelve minutes and that's an average one in ten of us check every four minutes and i think all those numbers are low so it's a self-inflicted wound if you feel overwhelmed by every day in full overload but even if you don't have a smartphone a firehose of information is drenching you daily every day we are exposed to over five thousand advertising messages right now there's a little green r t that's going to pop on your t.v. screen inches away. a is the brand name of your t.v. or your computer if you're watching on line look around the room if you're sitting still or if you're driving just trying not to be distracted by billboards and bumper stickers and six commercials in a row on the radio of those five thousand daily messages you will recognize some two hundred eighty five and you will remember only you cut through the clutter

let's ask to make their living helping storytellers do just that david bernstein is a college professor of media studies a veteran broadcasting executive who's program some of the most respected radio stations in the usa and directed some of talk radio's biggest stars this is the guy who gave joan rivers her own radio show god bless you and paul gleiser is a texas radio and t.v. pundit he owns a radio stations there in operates an agency that creates commercials you want to listen to when you've seen paul previously he was live from dallas we have now lured him into the swamp here in washington d.c. gentlemen welcome thank you good to be here thank you of both rays teenagers now grown and with sixteen year old twins at home i too am witnessing the matrix and any parent watching knows the phrase wait but because teens are focused on their smartphones but they still hear us off in the distance speak the words of

sufficient interest that they ask us to repeat ourselves david or should i say professor bernstein you are competing for a nineteen year old's attention in the classroom how do you cut through the fog and are you concerned that this digital native generation is fundamentally distracted and lacks focus it's only fog to us it's not fog to them so when we look at what they were reince over materialism so they want the experience of the classroom and they want the experience of the work in via. and they have things in the work environment that we never had sleeping in coons for half an hour and taking that kind of relaxing mode during work that's their focus so if we get into their world and get out of our own boomer world we'll be just fine we don't have to deal with that as a problem we deal with that as what it really is but they're in the classroom

you're earning their attention moment by moment aren't ya. working hard to do it because i don't believe that it's on them to pay attention it's on us let's face it this is a performance we walk into a classroom we stand in front of the classroom they're sitting there writing their own world in their own world if i say don't look at your cell phones they look at their cell phones. to look at their cell phones and i don't find them looking at their watches so i can't cut into that rather than tell them that they can't do it i tell them it's ok for them to do i understand their world and i can't and i don't want to pull them out of the high level remember you're in my world and if i say something and you miss it you lose well you have to ride the horse in the direction he's facing and another way we double the chatter is by having two versions of the news paul in the age of trump merely reporting the news

is just a commodity dueling versions make playing it straight defunct business model i don't think so and i think if the legacy guys want to be relevant going forward they need to reclaim that business model they're the guys that still have critical mass they're the guys who still have the big audiences if i were them i would be conspicuously saying we're giving it to you straight right the newsrooms today are trump did dare speak its name monolithically liberal monolithically opposed to republicans every republican president has gone up against it this one and has had to deal with this one called it out and thus it is exposed and for all to see if there's not any one of the big three networks or the or the cable guys that don't

have a diversity policy in their h.r. manual and it's diversity of gender and diversity of race and. versity of all things that we now today in our politically correct world call upon to be diverse but there is no diversity policy with respect to idiology and political belief in their newsrooms and their needs be that there needs to be a fight about what gets on the air and how it gets reported if that happens i think it saves their model well not to that point and david i heard you speak recently and you talked about the difference between bias and prejudice talk about that well there is a huge difference we all have a bias bias is not bad bias is what we are how you grew up what your parental situation was the environment you were in your zip code all those things that are in innate part of you and you can't one of a mosaic of the fabric of the world now when you look at prejudice

you see something completely different prejudice is unfounded it's something that's learned it's something that's taught you weren't born with a prejudice you were somehow enabled to pull that out and that's just wrong i don't allow any talk of prejudice in my class because that means something is superior over something else i don't accept that but what bias we all have it let's be open about it so we understand each other yeah that debate that paul is suggesting now politics aside that thing in your pocket we used to call a phone delivers the world in real time by the time the network evening news airs you already know the news information staples like weather and sports and severe weather school closings are no longer the radio franchise as they used to be and newspapers are in a death spiral paul how can the legacy media continue to earn our attention in the

digital age if they can capitalize on the one thing that all this multiplicity of outlets cannot claim. and that is access their supporters who can who can have a sit down with the speaker of the house and they can use that and play it straight and bring it to us in a way that we can then begin to form our own opinions and the again that is the business model that i think the legacy media has if they are smart enough to capitalize on it because there's ten million voices out there but which ones which ones can bring you the greatest amount of information upon which you can form judgments well there's the battleground right there because david there are millions and millions of voices out on twitter many of them think they're reporting the news can we trust twitter as a news source professor. no it's not a news source twitter is a notepad that you can send to people all around the world most of whom you don't

know to get an opinion across or to share something my dog is feeling better today i'll put that on twitter that's not news twitter does have some news feeds on it and when you see a news on twitter whether it's coming from a source you're unfamiliar with or a friend check out the source it may be a legitimate story but it's coming from somewhere else it's certainly not coming from twitter don't go to twitter for your news go to twitter to communicate and read what other people are thinking and reacting to but it's not a news source but you're seeing the nineteen and twenty year olds you teach using it as a news source. yes and i tell them that they're going to the wrong place if you use that as a stepping stone if you see this something in the news that's happening and you see it on twitter follow it to a real news source because you need to know if it's real or not it may not be real right it's somebodies view and i would like to think that most people are nicer

than they say i'm on facebook and on twitter which many seem to be using to vent we lost aid. dear chum this past year gifted writer producer and voice of god nick michaels who reckon that in the over communicated world whisper becomes a scream paul with dialogue now so loud and coarse and that tone producing results for our outspoken president is civility now quaint i hope that civility never becomes coined or outmoded and i have many many times though i voted for this president cringe at what he says and how he says it i nevertheless concede that had he not campaigned the way he did and had he not. and were he not the way he is we'd be under the administration of president hillary clinton if if if trump had not gone the route that he went he would have lost and none of those other sixteen

republicans up there on that board are with him when it all started had any chance of beating hillary clinton it was trump's way that won and so the thing that gold me about the two thousand and twelve election was how gentlemanly was mitt romney was i in his losing effort on that debate where he let candy crowley make a fool out of him of my t.v. and the been knew i would have thrown something so yes i don't want civility to become quite but there's no point in being a civil loser all the time a day that i got thirty seconds but as a professor and as a parent how about some advice for parents apropos their kids info in take thirty seconds. they're going to get their info from wherever they want to get it and it's usually peer to peer which is the same way it's been for one hundred years it's just that there are new methods new technology allows new methods to do that let

kids have a right to be on their phones just like adults do what they have to do is learn responsibility and learn where. the real information is and be able to separate fact from fiction well said david bernstein at artie's bustling new york bureau and called wiser in the swamp here from texas thank you both for joining us. and thank you for watching the big picture and now if you see us somewhere else you can also find our america live at youtube dot com slash r t we're also live a directv three two one and on the pluto t.v. app one two three and if you have dish we are two eight zero there and all of our shows are available anytime anywhere on any device at youtube dot com slash the big picture our a t m holland cook in washington back here same time next week and in the meantime i am at holland cook on twitter where if you follow me i'll follow you

questioned more. i have the owners to still again interview alastair cook he is a former e.u.

diploma and founder and director of conflicts for this. we will discuss the americas you know. he's gone into a nationalistic fever. out. there but. this is it we've come to a point. we always are on the margins some. of us want to go into the belly. i think i want to leave now. it may be completely different and it is.

nigerians prepared to cast their votes in the present but i think change for the oil rich nation well to talk about this i'm joined by a presidential candidate. most. countries. is also said to be the continent's most corrupt. terrorist insurgency does nigeria have the resources to tackle it. will the coming vote bring the country together.