For over two decades, Hilarie Gamm has worked in the frontlines of America's high-tech field. In the first half, she discussed various threats to the tech industry that are playing havoc with the US economy. The hysteria around the Y2K crisis in the 1990s opened the door to hiring foreign technology labor, she reported. Since then, companies have persistently outsourced jobs overseas which has really dinged the American middle class. She recommended that when American companies report their taxes, they be required to declare the number of foreign workers they employ. This way, she said, we can actually get a handle on how many US citizens have lost the opportunity to work in the tech field in their own country.
With copious amounts of software and hardware being made overseas, America's national security and citizen's privacy are being compromised, she suggested. On the subject of hacking and data breaches, she detailed how the Moscow-based Kaspersky antivirus program actually turned out to be spyware at one time. Ironically, it was installed on many American computers to defeat such a threat. Gamm also reflected on how "Data is the new oil. Data means nothing when it's just data. But when it's refined, it's super-powerful. And it could power our economy to new heights."
---------------------
Michael Brein, aka "The Travel Psychologist," is an author, storyteller and publisher of travel books and guides. In the latter half, he shared accounts of travelers around the world who have been suddenly faced with paranormal phenomena, unusual synchronicities, time slips, and other mysterious experiences. Travelers to Britain and Ireland seem to report the highest number of paranormal occurrences, he cited. There's so much ancient history there, and things that we don't understand at places like Stonehenge and Avebury, he explained, and people are sometimes beckoned to such places in an ancestral way.
He spoke about his collaborative "Road to Strange" books written with Rosemary Ellen Guiley, as well as some of his own odd travel experiences. Once while sleeping in his VW bus while parked along a riverbank in Dusseldorf, Germany, he heard an auditory hallucination of mournful voices. "I knew it wasn't in my head," he said, "it wasn't external. It was paranormal." Brein got out of the bus and walked a short way and found himself at a Holocaust-era Jewish cemetery; he felt strongly that the voices had emanated from there. He also offered tips for women traveling alone, such as trusting your instincts about various situations.
News segment guests: Jeff Nelken, Mitch Battros