and that is the reality of what we're facing, which is fascist. the the the hotel on celebrates taking full control of that dentist den after defeating the last target of resistance. although anti telephone fighters claim they still hold parts of the eastern country or province, providing approval rating drops to the lowest of his presidency. following the chaotic us withdraw from cobble and the pull out is even testing us relations with co britain. a defense minister called cast down on america status as a global power. russian president waves in denouncing the us withdrawal as

catastrophic what happens in us again, this done is indeed a catastrophe. americans are pragmatic people and have spent over $1.00 trillion dollars on the african campaign. but to spend those are headlines to solve it back in just under an hour with another look, this is our international stay with us. on this week show even before and demick supply chain interruptions and recent cyber ransomware attacks, our food supply was threatened by drought and other consequences of climate change and by population growth technology to the rescue. how and why an old technique is suddenly cutting edge. but 1st, back to work, got the job. and if you're staying and work at home mode, are you hurting your chances for career advancement?

i'm holland cook in washington. this is the big picture on our t america. ah, hundreds of colleges and universities now require students and faculty to be vaccinated, and increasing number of businesses are requiring employees to get the jab, did all federal workers and members of the us military. how is that going? let's ask human resources and occupational management experts. david louis, ceo of operations inc, which advises companies of all sizes across all industries on all aspects of human resource matters. so he's been a busy guy lately. david, how are the businesses you work with handling vaccine mandates?

good to be back with you. how and, you know, i think this is one of the most confusing and most challenging decisions business owners have to make right now. they are weighing the decision to open and operate a safe working environment. looking after the health and safety of all employees. and at the same time, they're trying to not trample on individual rights enforce what looks like a political decision in some cases on some of their employees. so a lot of businesses are try to walk. the fine line only allow people who are vaccinated in the office, but for those people who can afford to do so, businesses who can afford to do so continue along the lines of remote work. if you allow your people to work from home, then you are not forcing that vaccination issue to the forefront. i think that's the best advice we can give, at least for those businesses that have that option. well, recently when delta airlines said that the all employees must be vaccinated or

you're going to pay another $200.00 a month to be in the company health plan. the reason being that their employees who have been hospitalized for coven, we're costing $40000.00, average per person. did that trigger a bunch of phone calls from the companies you work with? i mean, i don't know how to engage when our phones ring more than they have before. i think ultimately at the end of the day, the phone just continues to ring. you know, listen, the, the interesting part about the delta decision very simply is that it highlighted the cost of this, the cost of non compliance as it relates to vaccination. and it's not the 1st time you've heard this. you've heard other companies take a look at things like smoking and say that smokers cost more money and they're looking for some ways to be able to force people to proceed from a smoking situation. so this wasn't a total shocker, but it's just one more piece of straw on the back of companies to sit there and say, hey, other businesses, big businesses are making

a big deal about the importance of getting back to native. the more big high profile firms that make bold moves like delta, the more companies are going to get behind those kinds of moves at all levels and start to figure out ways to force their employees to get a shot me arm. so we can get back to whatever normal is going to look like in a post coven workplace. however, this plays out. i foresee a massive paper trail. one of the surprises or was that during the shut down was how much more productive many are working from home, 13 percent more productive. per some studies we've seen so unsurprisingly, many want to stay at home. some employers would prefer that they've closed the office some 10000 google employees supplied the work remotely, or transferred to a different location. the company approved 85 percent of those request. but the new york times reporting on a recent study by stanford university and various corporate surveys identifies

what's being called remote bias by one estimate at home. workers are only half as likely as office counterparts to get a promotion. david, what do you make of that? and how can work from homes, maintain visibility, and seem handy to have around? well, it's a fantastic point holland. so i think the important place to start is that the staff we're talking about are staff that are mostly focus, almost exclusively focused on a pre cobra workplace. and it was absolutely true prior to january 2020, that if you were a remote worker, your career path was far different, far more limited than those counterparts of yours who came to the office on a day to day basis. well, the world has changed, the world of work has changed. and so now you're seeing a far less belief picture for those people who work remotely as it relates to their career progression. with that said,

i don't mean to imply that it's going to be easy or that you're on equal footing as those people who report to the office every day, far from it. you do need to make yourself present. you need to make yourself known . and you just touched on one of the key things of that productivity piece. i think people who work remote have actually a significant advantage because they don't have to get in the car or on the train or on the bus to go to and from. they can, if they choose to and if they're allowed to continue to work. so they are going to continue to be more productive or more productive in the eyes of leadership, which is absolutely key. but here's the other facet. you really need to make sure that you look at a way to inject yourself as not just a player in the game, but a leader in the game and show how you can lead from a distance. you do that, you're going to be on a path to be one of those new remote managers that we see in a post cobra workplace. remote managers, we're seeing that a lot in the broadcasting industry already. and i think you've just given us the

cure for out of sight out of mind. some who have returned to the workplace are facing another challenge. bottom lining the study, he co authored portland state university professor larry martinez concludes people of gotten used to not having to engage in interpersonal when occasion as much. and that can take an already distressing or 10th situation, and exacerbated because people are out of practice of not having to have difficult conversations. the spirals that we are seeing might be stronger, and opposed pandemic world. after over a year of zoom, many are just now getting fully dressed again. they texting during meetings, they show up late for in conversation. they are ignoring or interrupting the people . they're trying to communicate with day. but how much of this are you seeing and how managers deal with lapsed etiquette in the workplace?

i think the key thing i'm going to highlight here holland, is that we've all been working remotely now for some 18 months. and when you put everybody in that circumstance, there's a higher level of tolerance and acceptance for some of those types of behaviors that you just described. well, now we're going to be dealing with an uneven playing field because more and more, some portion of the workforce in many companies is going to start returning to the office and those gaps, those gaps, those inappropriate levels of behavior, the lack of dress, the lack of etiquette are going to start to become more highlighted because now instead of everybody having some of that, only a few people, the ones working remotely, are going to companies need to look at that now and start providing some level of coaching. some standards of behavior. professionalism approaches towards remote work approaches towards remote communication. i mean, let's face it, we're already to the point almost where the telephone is obsolete, where all of our communication with our co workers tends to be like we're doing it

right now on his own screen where you've got a camera to camera. and so i think you've got to emphasize ok, well what's the appropriate way to be able to do that and active way to do that to be able to stay in front of employee, stay in front of your co workers, but do so in a constructive way as close to as possible, what would happen in a face to face conversation? i got about a minute left, but because the show is the big picture, i want to ask you about the last 18 months. we have been an uncharted waters and you've been and where the waiter is hip deep. what has surprised you most during the shut down? i think to start how well we've done as a country in adapting to these unbelievable circumstances. i mean, this is the classic case of what we meant when we said, when life gives you lemons make lemonade. we've made a lot of lemonade in the u. s. and, and i think abroad is, well, it, it has happened across the world where we have figured out a way to be able to leverage this amazing technology. we're all taking for granted

and be able to successfully still exist, run our businesses, stay connected and continue to progress. think the other huge surprise, which i'm still trying to figure out, is why exactly in the us do. we have 10 and a half 1000000 open jobs and those numbers continue to climb. it's not in our opinion about this gap around that's going to change what unemployment runs out. i think it's about something else. i think companies are really growing at some ridiculously high rates. the unemployment level doesn't reflect that and i think you're going to see a big labor shortage issue continue into 2022. i think you're right, david louis operation, think i know you're busy. i appreciate your time. thanks. as always for stepping into the big picture. got guns, the national shooting sports foundation estimates the 20000000 firearms were sold last year with 8000000 of those purchases made by 1st time buyers. this track data from the f b i's national, instant criminal background check system. in 2010,

there were 14400000 background checks for gun purchases. that more than doubled 10 years later. and in the 1st 6 months of this year, over 22000000. the actual number of guns sold could be much higher since multiple firearms can be linked to a single background check. gun sales trend up when a democrat is in the white house. so the industry had banner years during the obama administration and business is brisk now. and the pandemic has made many fearful. and now all those gun owners have triggered amunition shortage. that is impass, seeing law enforcement agencies recreational shooters and hunters. and could deny new gun owners the practice. they need to handle their weapons safely. if you are among the many new gun owners and the usa here is some valuable and possibly surprising advice from tom gresham. host of a gun talk radio show and information rich gun talk dot com, frankly, buying

a firearm for self protection is not for everyone. if you're not going to make a commitment to safety and ongoing training, i would encourage you to perhaps reconsider. but for those who want to get a guide, my suggestion is to go get a class 1st and last training. because you don't really know what you need and you don't know what you're going to like until you've had chance to shoot. a lot of ranges will allow you to read the guns and try them. what i suggest is that you call arrange arranged for an instructor, get some one on one time when instructor and say, look, could you bring 3 or 4 guns, or can i rent some guns from you? and then figure out what works for you. unfortunately, typically a lot of women want to get a small gun, something feels good in their hands. but the physics of a dictate the small guns recoil more, they kick a lot and they're uncomfortable and they're harder to shoot. and they might, may find that something there's just a little bit larger,

actually works better for them. coming up, we have known for decades that food shortages looming, yet all along. and ancient agricultural technology went under exploited until now and waiting to hear why. this is the big picture on our t america. ah, the, it's all about proximity and as we talked about before, the can tell an effect. if you're close to the central bank, you get the money 1st. and you get to put it in to things like assets and then as the money works is right through the economy. those assets go up a lot. and this is how the weapon income gap is created.

the war on drugs started as a way to come back, a great problem. what's the one? it's part of the attitude of the nation, not just of north dakota. and it got to be something that you could get elected. this time, the fight against drugs took a tragic, told us that andrew was competing short form. this is way too dangerous for him to be doing. clearly they put him in harm's way. a rural college student does interest get shot in the head and found in a river like something else had to be happening. oh, i on one of my very 1st shows here 4 years ago

we were warned about food trucked in from far. the stuff that we need, let's say in the northeast, is coming from either florida or california to dade, for from florida, $3.00 to $4.00 day trip from california, most of the sugars, most of the value, most of the nutrition in most anything that is shipped from other coast depletes by 50 percent on the 1st day, 2025 percent the 2nd day. by the time you got it, it may have 10 percent of the additional value in it that it had before, but certainly it doesn't have full value by any stretch of the imagination back to the future. now there aren't enough truck drivers with an average age of $55.00. the workforce was already sending out pre pandemic. then many drivers retired and driving school shut down. the american trucking association says there are 60000 openings right now. but what if all that trucking was not necessary and harming the

environment, we need to grow. what we eat? weather is always a wild card on the u. s. a great plains in the south west and that recent report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change warns that change in rainfall patterns leave many areas vulnerable the drought and with immigration, such a hot button issues, farmers face a severe shortage of legal worker called controlled environment agriculture, nick, welcome. hey, how and thanks for having me here where we live in new england. you can't give away a tomato in august because everyone's garden has popped back in the 1980 s t. i n a couple pals put up a hydroponics greenhouse. our business turned into a hobby because we weren't very good at farming, but the tomatoes we had by memorial day, we're great neck for those. watching and listening. explain the technology you do and how are crude method back then scales up to what's the state of the

art today? sure how and so the term controlled environment. agriculture is, is a blanket term. it covers really anytime you're growing crops under any sort of cover. so that could be simple houses, traditional ventilated greenhouses are serving the newer types of facilities that we're starting to see, which are the fuel greenhouses, or completely sealed into our cultivation facilities. and there are some new technologies that have really accelerated in the past few years. that have allowed those sealed greenhouses high density greenhouses in those indoor facilities to come tuition. and you can set them up on the hard scrabble if you have to. but what about these grow vegetables in your closet? kids we see advertised online and home improvement. superstore is worth it, or just a toy and how green a thumb does it take for backyard farmers to put a meaningful dent in the family's retail food spend?

sure. so those little countertops set up. so those are pretty neat. they're probably a little bit closer to, at toys than to, you know, an actual food production method. they're great for fresh herbs in the kitchen, but they're relatively small. there's not a lot of area or capacity to really produce a lot of nutrients. and they don't put out a lot of light which limits sort of the types of crops that you can grow in them as far as backyard farming. that's an excellent past time. and you can certainly produce a good amount of food that way to really make a dent in your food bill though you quite a bit of space in a lot of time and effort. similarly, if you're living in any sort of northern climate, you basically get one harvest you know, per year. so you really make the most out of that and grow the types of crops that you can keep over the winter. these new technologies, the sealed greenhouses, as well as the indoor cultivation facilities. that's what you're starting to see. pop up around a lot of these urban centers and they allow for continuous harmless throughout the year. and it's irrelevant sort of what the outdoor, whether is or what the climate is for these environments. we are speaking with nick

collins, registered professional engineer, and a principal at collins, c. e, a. and main. i'm reminded of another technology evolution home video from 8 millimeter film to super a to beta max to v h. s. video tape. the streaming video content demand was always driving hardware advances specifically pornography. so i was utterly unsurprised to read how legalizing cannabis has accelerated growing technology states, where we'd as legal, are making billions and tax revenue neck. is it over stating the situation to surmise that even though feeding ourselves was getting foreseeable, the problematic it took all this new cannabis cash for the technology you're working to ramp up? that is very true. i've been working in a lot of control vironment agricultural markets, including candidates for over 7 years now. and seeing the advances in technology

that have been driven by candidates as a crop are now really making their way into the more traditional food crops in control environment. agriculture and one of things that's driven that as you say, is the value of this crop. there's really nothing else that's worth as much as canvases in terms of legally produce crops. so that drives a certain level of interest in a certain level of investment. additionally, cannabis as a plant can take in large amounts of energy. the energy is primarily in the form of sunlight or light at all could be sunlight. could also come from horticultural light fixtures. traditionally, those lay fixtures in any sort of greenhouse or indoor facility were high intensity discharge fixtures. they put a lot of light, they consume a lot of energy and they put a lot of heat. and that really limited how many whites you could even sit in a facility due to those heat loads, do the electric demand. so one of the big revolutions in any sort of control environment, agriculture application or the past decade,

has been sort of the emergence of highly efficient, highly effective, l e d horticultural fixtures. it's only been really in the past 4 or 5 years that these fixtures have come into their own, where they equal or perform those traditional high intensity discharge fixtures. they do it for substantially less energy. they put out substantially less heat and they have the ability to tune a spectrum of the light depending on what elements you're trying to generate within the plant. they're dimple. so cultivators are stimulating sunrise and sunset are the change of the weight intensity throughout the seasons. but all ability, so all of this canvas demand isn't eating up capacity to grow food as it know if anything is expanding that capacity because it's allowing for higher density cultivation environments using those lower energy, lower heat fixtures. we're now seeing your 5 story sealed greenhouses, where they're growing crops like tomatoes, leafy, green lettuce,

things of that nature. and that's really only possible because of technologies like the fixtures that have the intensity that's necessary, but much less energy consumption, much, much less heat rejected into the space which allows you to really sort of pack the plants in there and get a lot of production out of a minimal footprint, going vertical allows you to take advantage of the volume of the space as well. and that's why you're seeing such large multiple stores greenhouses going up near major and centers. very cool, mach collins, current ca, and main. thank you for stepping into the big picture. now an update on an important story. we've been following all along. fish are dying everywhere. google it and blew frontier founder david. hell, varg warned us the oceans becoming the oxygenated. essentially what happens is, you know, a warmer, more acidic ocean holds less dissolved oxygen, which is okay if your gel a or microbial mat but not so good for bony fish and marine mammals and all of us

who depend on them and the source of a lot of this pollution, of course, whether it's petrochemical, fertilizers or oil spills. it's, it's, you know, our dependents on fossil fuels, which i'll call at our great energy systems in the 16th the 900 century. but in a 21st century, it's time to move on to you know, healthy job shad generating renewables. here's an update on a story we've been following, since the supreme court tossed out past the 1992 professional and amateur sports protection act, thus enabling states to legalize sports wagering. that was 3 years ago. sports betting is now legal and more than 2 dozen states. and here in d. c, you can lay down a bet in the capital one arena, where the n h o. washington capitals and the n b a wizards play. it's the 1st in arena sports book in the usa. others will follow magine that hallowed ground,

like wrigley field or fenway park, but you can get down right there on your smartphone. instate of sports betting is legal in yours. with those geo fence gaming apps, major league baseball is partnering with draft kings on betting themed broadcasts and fox sports regional networks have re branded as valley sports and established black market industry has gone legal because most states have budget problems and need the revenue. but it comes at a cost as keith white executive director of the national council on problem gambling explained here, back when the supreme court ruled define problem gambling. yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. the easiest way to say is gambling that's causing harm to you or your immediate family. but i think if we go deeper than that, it's things like been preoccupied with gambling, developing tolerance, in other words, needing to bet more and more to achieve that same high loss of control. so people,

gamlee problems are unable to stick with the limits of time and money. they may, they may try and set up for themselves. and that all leads to, of course, harm, not just financial harm, but psychological or motional and even physical harm. problem gamblers have much higher rates of physical disorders, especially stress related disorders. wow. is this addiction? yes. yeah. and it can be serious, even life threatening. but if you look now that we know a lot more about neuroscience, if you look inside the brain of a problem gambler, if you will, in many ways it's, it's identical to the brain of a cocaine addict. the same regions are deadened and other regions are highly activated, but highly activated only by the action of gambling. and that is the big picture. thanks for watching. if you're watching real time, we'll be back same time next week. or you can set your tv are for direct tv channel 321 or dish 280 or a live feed is always there on youtube dot com slash r t. america. and all of my shows are archived in youtube dot com slash the big

picture are t, and i am merely one player in a vast cast. on our pre portable tv app, you'll find it in the app store or google play, or at portable dot tv streaming live, or on demand on any connected device. i am holland cook and at holland cook on twitter. where if you follow me, i'll follow you question more. ah, oh, the, the the the

the the the the the all only one main thing is important or not as an internationally speaking to that is a nation's allowed to do anything, all the master races. and then you have the mind, nations who are the slave. the americans, brock obama and others have had a concept of american exceptionalism. international law exist as long as it serves the american interest. if it doesn't,

it doesn't exist by turning those russians enter this dangerous man that wants to take over the world. that was a conscious strategy. so some of it on your own, i v i v, i not leashed to austin, one tablet, block, nato to it's our we move east. the reason us hedge emory is dangerous. is it the lack of the sovereignty of other countries? the exceptionalism that america uses and it's international war planning is one of the greatest threats to the populations of different nations. if need to, what is founded shareholders in the united states and elsewhere in large companies would lose millions and millions or is business and business is good and that is the reality of what we're facing, which is fascist. ah,

the ah the hi imac either. this is a cause a report, you know, lot of people see me on tv ripping up.