oh. repatriations well look at the rest of 70. philip the 70 you guys are for. victory or defeat while the u.k. leadership celebrates a historic deal across the english channel the european union's chief negotiator describes it as a loss for both sides. not so merry christmas countries in europe see covert cases and debts as people placed on the strict measures during the festive period. and what a waste of money a us senator claims the government's throwing away more than 50000000000 dollars this year on worthless projects would be joking machines melissa it's. the big picture coming up in just a few moments time that's what i was trying to now it's a bring you the latest. to suggest that.

what just happened and what happens next let's ask michael harrison the publisher of talkers magazine the trade poet of top media michael himself is a talker host of the michael harrison rap on the walk f.m. in washington d.c. and other stations across the usa and michael this is our 4th annual ever since i came to our team america you and i have done this at this time of the year we debut your talkers the 10 biggest talk topics of the year so here we go radio comp down style number 10. horrible hurricanes raging wildfires michael the evidence is in arguable yet on talk radio climate change is still an argument right. everything is arguable nothing is off limits especially

this crazy heck of the year 2020 so it's arguable because of the money involved it's political because it's economic because the remedies that would be put into effect to excuse major combat climate change something that. could cost a lot of money and may not be something that you can count on as a result it's become political unarguable lot of industries don't want to see a rush to some type of a new green deal even though there are a lot of green jobs i was intrigued by number 9 on your list you said china because that even when it's not an election year usa talk radio tends to focus on domestic subjects what brought china into the conversation. well china is domestic because everybody realizes that we're involved with china our businesses are involved with

china our corporations are involved with china when we go shopping so much such a large percentage of the goods that we buy are made in china and this past year there has been an increasing awareness in the in the general consciousness of the public and what's interesting is this is both democrats and the republicans and donald trump has a lot to do with it and it's one of the areas where both sides seem to agree with them that china has not played fair in terms of the trade that we have with them and that china is up to a war of subversion against the united states in terms of cyberspace in terms of intellectual property in terms of surveillance and even militarily so it has become quite obvious to people along the entire political spectrum and talk radio has been a major place this is played out that we have a problem with china and it's going to go on for a very long time the c.c.p.

the chinese communist party is a pretty tough bunch and they don't always have our best interests at heart number 8 among the 2020 talkers 10 michael flynn and roger stone to talk radio listeners michael what are these stories about. there are interesting character studies there are the cast of characters that come with the circus and it's a political circus and they are colons in the game of whether or not the trumpet ministration has been treated harshly and unfairly by the democrats by the deep states and by the media or whether or not the trumpet ministration is full of bad guys and these are evidence that it all depends on what side of that spectrum you are viewing it from and it's it really adds a lot of color to the game some of its height into the moeller report when it came to flynn stone is sort of

a poster boy for the type of characters that trump surrounds himself with but it really is kind of fringe talk it's personalities and and politics yes stone is a central casting a batman villain he was a great t.v. actor with michael harrison the publisher of talkers magazine we're counting down but talkers 10 for 2020 the 10 most talked about topics of the past year and lest we forget earlier this year the president was impeached 2nd time in our lifetime if we don't count nixon's timely resignation but president trumps influence will endure via now 3 sitting supreme court justices 20 twentieth's appointment being justice amy coney barrett who's hearing was much less the spectacle of trump's nomination of judge kavanagh controversy over social media censorship the president rails against what he calls big tech for fact checking him michael these companies

are in a tight spot with that section 230 protection the trump wants to revoke our twitter and facebook publisher in the way that you are or are they merely the platform that they conveniently claim to be. well when they emerged out of nowhere at the beginning of the digital era the the law the legal system couldn't keep up with the technology so they were granted this platform status whereby they were like a public utility and not responsible for the content of what's posted there so that they could be this big democratized platforms and all people can play in the game but they have subsequently evolved one into being very powerful to being advertising media and 3 having to bear some kind of responsibility maybe not legal but certainly ethical responsibility for the the truth of what's being distributed

over their platforms because of the enormous influence they wield and the amount of also goods hyperbole fake news if you will that's that's being you know distributed in the marketplace of ideas through this new technology so it's a complicated story and i won't take it you know i won't get too deep into that rabbit hole with you but this is an issue right now that the the lawyers and the legislature and congress have to deal with that they have to understand it the impact of this digital technology and how do we regulate it without either a fringing anybody's freedom of speech but without letting them run amok and create havoc with misinformation it's a very very touchy issue indeed and very very 20th century 21st century rather with . with so many americans out of work and so many businesses severely curtailed

or closed for it came. in a couple of rough pandemic months looming january february may have been march maybe march the economy. the 4th most talked about topic on the talkers 10 will very likely be in the 2021 talkers 10 which brings us to number 3 george floyd's death and several other sad stories picked america's scab and prompted a black lives matter montra that among other things caused washington's football team to drop its long controversial redskins name the cleveland indians are going to rebranding a baseball team there michel despite various silver linings that came with this new consciousness has the black lives matter movement galvanised the rights appetite for the olden times trump evokes with make america great again and less subtle

notions. well that's the that's the $1000000.00 question is just whether or not the magen movement trump movement are racist or just overlap in areas where organizations and people that are racists happen to like them it's it's a complicated issue race relations has always been a major issue in american politics and in america american culture we're just seeing as i said before the 21st century version of black lives matter and as evidenced by the police reform which ties into this and a lot of the political correct issues major league baseball as we're speaking has just recognized the negro leagues from history as being major league something themselves so it's another example of a sports evolving with this new consciousness some of the protests were violent it brought up the law and order issue other protest stories were peaceful and where the recipient of violence this is been a heck of

a year and the black lives matter movement and the the racial reckoning as it's been cold are are going to continue on into the new year this is not just a one year phenomenon but during much a part and parcel of what's happening in america as we move forward into the future the original sin many say after the year we've been through anybody could against the top 2 topics of 20202020 election and continuing controversy number 2 in the cove and 19 pandemic obviously number one early last spring the president was telling us that this virus would just disappear like a miracle as he was telling bob woodward that it had gone airborne michael you hear americans voices every day and we've seen hard hit red states split to blue in this past election to what extent are these top 2 stories really one

story and do you think the pandemic cost trumped his presidency. i think that had it not been for the 10 demick kenneth trump taken a few words of advice from some of his advisors he would have won this election he could have won it in a landslide and he could have gone down in history as a great president he it's tragic how he blew it yeah i do believe code 19 was one of the major elements that led to his demise in this election and certainly it ties into not just politics but the economy and we're going to be dealing with it through much of 2021 i mean joe biden is not going to have a walk in the park it's not going to be like when ronald reagan became president after the iran crisis and all of a sudden we were tying yellow ribbons and within a few days the hostages were sent home this is not something that could be rectified that quickly and biden is going to have his hands full in dealing with

the economy and the next phase in the cove an era which is really what it is we're living in an era of code 19 which will probably be as long as world war 2 even if americans who didn't did he dr fall choose advice to sit tight over thanksgiving and christmas data tells us the january and february are going to be rough the economy is a mess we're a divided people arguably now fighting a civil cold war when the f.b.i. caught those heavily armed militia danders plotting to kidnap the governor the president told him stand back and stand by michael i've got 30 seconds but i got to ask donald trump may be the most influential talker of our lifetime how prominent do you expect his voice to be a year from now. prominent but hardly as prominent as he is with the the bully pulpit and the megaphone of the presidency so he'll be around but we're

moving into a new era in my opinion. michael harrison talkers magazine talkers dot com thank you for stepping into the big picture and happy new movies year pal coming up cameras are everywhere possibly including your front porch and if you have a video doorbell who else is looking for a way this is the big picture on our to america. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race is often spearing dramatic to follow through

the only really i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical of time to sit down and talk. an entire village in alaska. if another country threaten the wife of an american. we do everything in our power to protect. want of a skipping climate change poses the same threat right now alaska does seem some of the fuss just coastal erosion in the world we lost about 30 feet. 35 feet of ground in just about 3 months while we were measuring. is fast paced the river is $35.00 closer to the town than was or anything were a part of the earth for. as

santa was getting ready for his big day we've all had an eye out for a porch pirate wrench is preparing to rip us off but they have had a tougher time than usual this year because so many of us are spending so much time at home and so many of us now have ring or another internet connected doorbell camera they allow you to remotely greet or even at mit whoever shows up and these systems can constantly record video crimes. been solved and traffic accidents and other mishaps have been captured by these home security systems and a georgia based company spotted an opportunity few service calls itself

a real time crime center in the cloud which extracts and unifies the live video data and sensor feeds from virtually any source and hansing the situational awareness and investigative capabilities of law enforcement agencies seems resourceful right whenever these cameras are online if you can network them police have eyes and the jackson mississippi police department has 2 problems that many police departments have number one crime rate up number 2 municipal budget crunch so in a pilot program there the system is accessing cameras on city property a.b.c. 16 t v there are explains how this system works. when a crime is committed here to jackson.

and several city councilman had concerns about the cameras in the mumba says invading privacy is not their intention this is not to invade people's privacy this is not an effort to take advantage of people's reasonable expectation of privacy this software will not have the szell recognition but it will have a license plate recognition. maybe use for potential felonies it also comes with a panic alert system for schools. in its final phase this plan enables residents to opt into a registry that allows to police to access their home security cameras you decide how much access you're sharing from no video at all to allowing a continuous stream good idea bad idea let's ask legal and media analyst usually are wary about things like this lionel what could possibly go wrong.

you are going to be emo i dear friend in age 247 real time world view and i pick on every inch of your being every bit of your locomotion everything you do every place you drive everything you buy where ever you are is going to be for ever put online and there was no absolutely nothing you will be able to do to stop it nothing is the pan optic on already upon a sea of leave your house on any given day your photographed hundreds of times there are surveillance and security cameras everywhere about who's got a phone in their pocket they can shoot video with could or is the day coming or upon us when somebody is going to knit all this stuff together like we see in the jason bourne movies it's already being done it's already being right now

remember one thing my dear friend whenever you read any particular story it's 5 years old whenever you hear something it's already old it's engines and whatever you're a politician as we heard before is no by the way this in no way violates your reasonable expectation of privacy because that's 4th amendment language reasonable expectation of privacy let me ask you a question do you happen to have a key to your car or do you have a. one of those neat buttons you push for your file that fobbed tells everybody where you are that fog can be used to slow your car down that far be able to limit your particular movement you have a cell phone that you hook in for g.p.s. that has an accelerometer ring that tells me where you're going fast you're going to fast to drive hey how it we've noticed you do it you stop in at these package

stores a lot you wheeled as you drive late at night we notice you speed we notice by virtue of your giving up all of this data now it is data giving up the relinquishment a good thing if you find a missing child if you have your parent who was you know walks away because of some type of dimension you're able to find them you praise god for this kind of behavior but what can be are this data but can it be used in excess absolutely i was warned never to email or text a friend after i had seen a movie and say this thing was a real bomb is it likely that all this text we are transmitting is being keyword scanned at all times. absolutely absolutely when you when you ask a question what about the algorithm let me give you an example do you think it's a good idea for there to be something which limits pornography on the internet now

let me just leave it at that most people would say no resoundingly no but let's assume we would say yes pornography is bad great you know there was a case a while back where a site that showed women how to conduct breast self-examination was flagged as being pornographic because the algorithm could not understand instructional from not there was another instance where a woman who decided to write a blog about the horrors of her own sexual torment of being abused by her parents it was flagged as being child pornography because when she was detailing what happened to her in the in attempt to to to purge herself of this horror the algorithm couldn't understand that or sarcasm or nuance so yes absolutely this is going to be done and how accurate is another story. well it is a reason they call it artificial intelligence being the big picture let's take

a wider angle shot even without leaving home you are under surveillance and on our december 18th show talk radio tech expert dave grave line from the into tomorrow show listed step by step instructions for setting you can change to make alexa more discreet alexa there's a here that if you miss that show you can find it where you'll find all our shows archived at youtube dot com slash the big picture r.t. lionel i want to ask you about a recent report in the new york times which described how in california police drones are starting to think for themselves flying drones with artificial intelligence are aiding investigations well presenting new civil rights questions example in chula vista police sent a drone spotted someone sleeping in a stolen car with drug paraphernalia on his lap when the man left the car carrying

a gun and a bag of heroin nearby police car had trouble following as he sprinted across the street and ducked behind a wall but as he threw the gun into a dumpster and hid the bag of heroin the drone hovering above him caught everything on camera when he slipped through the back door of a strip mall exited through the front door and ran down the sidewalk it caught that too lionel you have been both a prosecutor and you're a privacy hot how do you come down on something like this. well let me give you the number one legal answer it depends in the only days of common law there was this notion called the add doctrine which means that you hollin cook property owner own everything bolo disservice if you're property and everything above up to the heavens ad silom well that was to refer in the old days when planes would fly over

significantly lower courts would have to say that a violation one habit if you're sitting out in the back porch of your mantz almost on a drone flies over is that trespass has that drone with a camera let's say with the blinking away at the camera is that a trespass is that a breach of your property rights can you shoot it down now believe it or not the answer is no because there's now legislation because of it but that is eavesdropping what if i were to just look into your do we have this notion called peeping toms if i look into your home what if i what if my drone can look in actually see some through the walls of your home can look for heat sensors supreme court dealt with it years ago and and drones that don't are not growing but devices that don't necessarily record you but for my graffiti and the like remember

lionel's law the law always lags behind technology and what we're seeing right now is it's too late let me leave you with the one thing one of the worst things that ever happened holland of course in the history of warfare was the longbow because people could shoot each other from far away and when you shoot somebody from far away you don't get a look into their eyes and you feel detached and you don't feel as connected to the activity as possible so whatever you allow law enforcement to use to let metry or somebody that exclude that removes them from the beat they tend to be a little bit more brave because they don't have to see the look of horror as a breach your backyard appearing through windows so technology is wonderful but it removes us from the from the violation to sometimes that technology involves. like the test tube baby this technology is way ahead of the law lionel every time i talk to you i end up deleting apps from my smartphone thanks again for stepping into the big picture and happy new year. are we ok

a asks meghan markle the duchess of sussex in a new york times op ed she says it seems no longer we agree on what is true we aren't just fighting over our opinions of the facts we are polarized over whether the fact is in fact a fact we're at odds over whether science is real we're at odds over whether any election has been won or lost we're at odds over the value of compromise that polarization coupled with the social isolation required to fight this pandemic has left us feeling more alone than ever as much as we may disagree as physically distanced as we may be the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of all we have individually and collectively endured this year we are adjusting

to a new normal where faces are concealed by masks but it's forcing us to look into one another's eyes sometimes filled with warmth other times with tears for the 1st time in a long time as human beings we are really seeing one another are we ok the duchesse says we will be and that is the big picture thanks for watching we'll be back same time next week if you want to set your d.v.r. we're on direct t.v. channel 321 we're on the dish dish at 280 you can find all our shows archived at youtube dot com slash the big picture our team and you can find our lives stream and you tube dot com slash r t america. yeah on the super cool portable t.v. app you get free in the app store or google play thousands of shows there no charge

i'm holland cook in the shadow of the iconic superman building here in downtown providence you stick close to home to stay safe and question more.

americans. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at large understood the bargain you get a hope and then you know rebel right as the things you don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. the really interesting. and think about the longer deeper history housings men in the united states not just that question of the american dream but the bigger question of who the dream is for.

a visionary. one time was. the phrase that her most discoveries not. but that's funny my guest today knows all about the humor of science the founder of the ig nobel prize and the editor of angels of improbable research magazine marc abrahams joins me now. marc abrahams to founder of the ig nobel prize editor of the angels over improbable research magazine hi great to see you again strange times these are today.