BIG DADDY LIVE

This week we welcome back Heather Shotke from The gramMarch Challenge. For those who aren't familiar with Heather, she is a middle school teacher that started this initiative a few years ago to help make her students more aware of the words we use in writing for proper communication. The initiative started out just with her students and now has expanded to a campaign that has been adopted by many throughout the nation. 

Technology continues to advance quite quickly. Particularly in the past few years it has greatly impacted how we communicate with each other via the Internet and mobile technology, as well as how we purchase and consume music, navigate with directions and access all kinds information about the world. 

Quite the controversy has ensued after Jada Pinkett Smith called for people to boycott the Oscars this year due to the lack of diversity in nominees. The lack of diversity has been called into question various times in the past, but this year it seems to have come to a boiling point. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite resurfaced from last year directly after Jada's video statement with a surge of social media conversations criticizing the Academy. 

It's January, which of course means that it's the beginning of a new year, but it also means that it's kickoff to a new award season starting with the Golden Globes. This year's show has been particularly criticized for being way too long and overall not very eventful. Despite that opinion by many critics, there were still some very widely-discussed moments, wins and jabs throughout the evening. Most notable has to be Leonardo DiCaprio's reaction to being bumped by Lady Gaga as she approached the stage to accept her win for American Horror Story Hotel. 

Sadly, this is the last episode that Amanda will be on the show as a regular panelist. We hope to have her on the show as a guest from time to time and whenever she is able. She will always be a big part of the Big Daddy Radio family and we wish her well, especially in her role as a new mom! 

There have been some extremely memorable moments in 2015; some tragic, some positive and inspiring, and others that brought much needed change. Overall it was a standout year, so for our last show of 2015 and as the year was about to come to a close, we decided to look back discuss best the moments -- and our favorite -- in pop culture in 2015.  

In the wake of two virtually identical bomb threats being emailed within one day of each other, first to New York and then to LA Country schools, there was of course fear and concern that brought both school districts to make very different decisions. New York decided to keep school open unless there was more concrete proof of an imminent threat, while LA decided to be more cautious and close over 900 schools across the county. There has been criticism on both sides, so which district handled the situation appropriately? 

It has been quite a week. So many topics #OnBigDaddysRadar, but the most outrageous taking center stage as well in the minds of many Americans is Donald Trump yet again. The fact that he has announced he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the country has sparked quite an uproar. Many claim he is no better than Hitler. While that may be a tad of an exaggeration to say the least, Trump saying that he would ban people from entering our country because of their religion is certainly something that raised everyone's eyebrows and should be a pretty big cause for concern.  

Guest panelist Nicky Elliston from Smarter San Diego returned to the show this week and joined in on the conversation about the latest #OnBigDaddysRadar. 

It has been a very sad and tough time in the past few weeks with the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, as well as in Beirut. The fight against ISIS has become that much more urgent for us as the world cried out in protest against these senseless and barbaric attacks on humanity. There also seems to be an even more heightened awareness of how people in the Western world treat and view Muslims. Many have criticized that Westerners have not shown the same kind of respect and attention to terrorist attacks like what happened in Beirut and other locations throughout the Middle East as people do when it terrorism strikes in the West. Is it that we are just so used to seeing terrorist attacks in the Middle East that it's not as impactful, or is it something deeper than that?