You're listening to KFI AM six forty wake Up Call with me Amy King on demand on the iHeartRadio app KFI and KOST HD two, Los Angeles, Orange County. It's time for your morning wake up call. Here's Amy kig It it not a it's are you hearing me? I'm not hearing me? Okay, Well it's it's five oh one. This is your wake up call for a Thursday, June twentieth. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. But I can't hear myself in my headphones. Very weird. So today's the first
day of summer cool right, you know why? Somebody had switched a button. I was listening to a pre delay of me, so I just heard me going it it it Okay, we're back. So today, first day of summer Solstice happens at one fifty this afternoon. It's the longest day of the year, fourteen hours and twenty one minutes of daylight. It's all downhill from there. It's going to be a great day. I can feel it.
Here's what's ahead on wake up Call. LA City Councilman Kevin de Leon plans to introduce emotion to rename Pershing Square after former slave Bridget Biddy Mason, who became a prominent LA citizen and landowner. Back in the eighteen fifties. She was a co founder of the first African Methodist Episcopal Church. The downtown square was dedicated in honor of World Old War One General John J. Pershing
in nineteen eighteen. The threat of a strike is looming for six thousand Food for Less workers in southern California. No deal has been reached following two days of negotiations this week, but the union and parent company Kroger say they're still talking and we'll be back to the bargaining table on Monday. People in Risita and other parts of the San Fernando Valley have complained to the Department of Water and Power that their tap water smells and tastes moldy or dirty. Yeah.
The LEDWP says it has tested the water and it is safe to use and drink. Officials say the smell is caused by a natural seasonal presence of algae. Let's get started with some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. A new one hundred and sixty five million dollars tower on skid Row has opened to house the homeless. The Wineguard Tower is on skid Row with two hundred and seventy eight subsidized units and loads of community amenities.
Lamare Bas said at yesterday's ribbon cutting, the taxpayer funded project should be looked at as an example of how to serve previously home people. Just because you were on housed, that does not mean that you should live in substandard housing, as though it is a punishment. Bass was joined at the opening by local and federal officials. A second tower is being constructed across the street in downtown La. Michael Monks KFI News. A standoff with a man who barricaded
himself inside an apartment in Long Beach has ended Pilise. One person was held hostage overnight. They were let go this morning. The guy police where after was arrested a short time later. The first named storm of the season is headed toward northeast Mexico, but it's already causing damage along the Gulf Coast.
ABC's Jim Ryan says Texas has seen torrential rain and flooding. The forty five mile at hour winds of Tropical Storm Alberto are whipping up high waves in the Gulf of Mexico, but it's the flooding potential that has homeowners worried from South Padre Island to Galveston, four hundred miles away. Officials in Mexico have already reported three deaths caused by the storm. They say two kids in the state of Nuevo Leone were riding bicycle in the rain and got electrocuted. The other
death was in the city of Monterey. South Korea says it'll reconsider its policy of limiting its support to Ukraine because of an agreement reached between North Korea and Russia. South Korea's presidential office condemned the agreement that vowed mutual defense assistance in the event of war. South Koreas's the agreement threatens its security and warned that it will negatively affect Soul's relations with Moscow. The Inland Empires getting a Trader
Joe's marking the chain's one hundred and ninety first store in California. An official ribbon cunning ceremony will be held on June twenty eighth at the New Muria at a location before doors open at nine am. The store is going to participate in the company's Neighborhood Shares program that donates one hundred percent of unsold products still fit for consumption to local community organizations. I didn't know Trader Joe's did that.
I love that. Let's say good morning to ABC's Stephen Portnoy. Stephen, the Supreme Court has been busy, but they still got a lot of work to do. Well. There's a lot we're waiting to hear from the Court. The way it typically works, as we've discussed, the Supreme Court
begins its term in October and winds down by early summer. And here we are toward the end of June, and we expect that by the end of this month, if not perhaps treading a bit into July, the Supreme Court will release the entirety of its case load and will understand how the justices have ruled. There are twenty one cases from this term still outstanding, and these are big, important cases. We don't know when any particular decision is going to drop. So what we have is a list of twenty one topics.
They include whether cities have the power to find people who sleep in homeless encampments or whether that violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, whether a state can prohibit gun ownership by someone who is the target of a domestic violence restraining order, or whether that violates the individual's Second Amendment rights, Whether the First Amendment was violated by the Biden White Houses pressure that applies to social
media companies to take down certain posts, And of course, the most widely watched case of the term, whether Donald Trump enjoys absolute immunity for his official acts as president. There are other cases involving abortion rights, the power of the administrative state, and Purdue Farm of bankruptcy. A lot of really substance of and important stuff that could come out from the Supreme Court, and we don't know when it's going to happen. The only days that are scheduled are
today and tomorrow and perhaps the lat additional days through next week. Okay, So do they have to make decisions on all twenty one or could they hold any of them over? They would not hold them over. What they could do is seek off ramps, like for example, last week when the issue was announced on the abortion pilm if for pristone, the justices didn't decide whether the FDA acted appropriately or not they left the merits to some other future case
potentially. Instead, they unanimously agreed that the doctors who brought the case didn't have standing to sue, and that was one thing all nine justices could get behind. So they didn't really resolve the underlying issue that can happen in any case. Oh okay. And then that you mentioned that the term could end at the end of June or even July, so there's not an official end
date like there's an official start date. There is a tradition, oh okay, that the Supreme Court generally releases all of its opinions by the end of June, but there has been there have been occasions where with a heavy case load, additional days are added to the calendar in early July. Okay. And as you mentioned, we could get decisions today. We just don't know, and we have no idea what order or anything. We just know there's
some big ones coming or kind of hanging in in the balance. And we say that because we know along of the list of twenty one there are really significant cases. There are on this list of twenty one some cases that are not as interesting to the American public. Every case that makes its way to the Supreme Court is interesting to say and has lasting impact in the law in some way or another. But the cases that are going to be big news are on this list, Okay, all right, And then they reconvene the
first Monday in October. And I only remember that because there was a movie about it. You got it, Okay, Stephen Portener, thank you so much. We'll be watching for those decisions, you bet. All right. Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. The LAPDS trying to find a parole league considered armed and dangerous who was allegedly seen loading a rifle in the South La area. Police were
called Tuesday night to the area of sixty ninth Street and Avalon Boulevard. Officers found Ezekiel Garcia, but then he took off. Police lost him after he ran into a junkyard. Garcia's forty two, about five to seven, one hundred and fifty seven pounds, with short black hair. He is on active parole for murder. The price of your avocado toast might be going up.
The FEDSI two employees with the US Department of Agriculture who were inspecting shipments of avocados had been a so and held captive by guys in the Mexican state of Michua Khan. The inspectors have since been released. US inspectors are stationed in parts of Mexico to expedite shipments of produce and to prevent the import of diseases that could ruin crops in the US, but because of the attack, on Monday, US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said shipments of avocados and mangoes had
been stopped until further notice. Steve Gregory Quaya Fineos, a sixteen year old girl from Lake Forest, and a teen from Chicago, have been killed in a jet ski crash in Illinois. Officials say a jet ski collided with a boat on Lake Maria Tuesday night. The sixteen year old and the other girl were on the jet ski when it crashed. The teens were pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Top advisors to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to
meet with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the White House. ABC News says the meeting is supposed to happen today and that Israel's Defense minister will also meet with Defense Secretary at Defense Secretary Lloyd Osz in the coming days. The US canceled another high level meeting with Israeli delegates on Iran. The administration says the
meeting was never fully finalized on the schedule anyway. Others say it was canceled over Netanyahu's recent video claiming the US was withholding weapons needed for the Warren Gaza. Louisiana has become the first state to require the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms. Opponents questioned the law's constitutionality, warning that lawsuits are likely to follow, but supporters say the purpose of the measure is not only religious,
but that it has historical significance. ABC's Derek Dennis's a poster of the Ten Commandments in a large, easily readable font will be in all classrooms from kindergarten all the way through state funded universities by twenty twenty five. The bill signed yesterday includes a context statement describing how the Commandments were a prominent part of
the American public education system for almost three centuries. The most seismically active volcano in the Cascade Range has been rumbling three hundred and fifty small quakes that have rattled under Mount Saint Helens since February. Seismologists say magma maybe moving beneath the volcano. The last eruption was in two thousand and eight. The big eruption
was May eighteenth, in nineteen eighty or was it nineteen eighty one? I got the day right wrong on that Mount Saint Helens is considered the most likely volcano to erupt in the future in the US. I was. I was in Oregon when that one blew. It was pretty freaky. I did my little fact check. Mount Saint Helens did erupt on May eighteenth, nineteen eighty, so I actually had it right. Who knew. Here's what we're following
in the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. A Juneteenth celebration in Oakland has turned violent bullysey A fight broke out during the celebration at Lake Merritt last night. At least four people ended up being shot, several others were injured. At least one person was arrested for an assaulting and officer. There were about five thousand people at the event. The first name storm of the Atlantic hurricane season is churning off the coast of Texas. Drenching the coast with heavy rain.
Tropical Storm Alberto could bring fifty mile per hour winds and up to three feet of storm surge from Mexico all the way up to Louisiana. A study of nearly a million people suggests those who feel happy have more career success, make more money, and are just more successful in life. Social scientists and happiness experts. I think it's great that there are happiness experts also say that unless you're using your money to buy experiences, donate, or get extra time,
it really doesn't buy you happiness. Okay, classrooms in Louisiana are going to be required by law to display the Ten Commandments. We're talking about that. More on handle on the news right now. Though, Let's say good morning to ABC's crime and terrorism analyst Brad Garrett. Good morning, Brad. Haven't talked to you for a while, that's true. Good morning, Namy, Good morning. So the LA School Board has voted to ban cell phones and
social media at school. Are the cell phones really that bad for the kids to have? Yes, okay, good talking to you, Red. Yeah, that's it. We'll see you later. So the holy issue with cell phones, obviously, is that they have all these positive aspects. You and I use them, the world uses them every day. The problem is that
kids become and they're particularly vulnerable to becoming addicted to cell phones. If you have them in school, you know they're going to constantly want to pull those phones out, use them in class, use them in the hallway, and so it creates a huge distraction. So it's it's a learning inhibitor, for
lack of better terms. But the bigger picture, amy is that the excessive use of cell phones and social media by kids and adolescents are having, by a number of studies I've read, you know, really negative impact on their
brains. And in fact, two social psychologists say it actually is rewiring their brains to spend so much time and it results in them feeling or having less empathy, being drawn to you know, some very for some kids, some very dramatic or violent imagery that they just keep watching and watching and watching, and it creates a certain amount of meanness where people can say and do whatever
they want. I mean, the number of kids that, like when I was growing up, obviously they weren't cell phones or tablets or computers, and so it was all in person and what many of these experts are saying, is that's what kids are missing, and it creates basically fragility in kids. Where we would go to a playground, go to wherever, we'd have to deal with people in person. Well, you know, what you say and how you act are going to be different in person than they are via social
media. And so it's a combination of all those things. And then if you add to this, when smartphones basically sort of came into the picture or in the twenty tens, you see this dramatic drop or increase i should say, in depression, anxiety and other stuff in kids, and they believe and I think this is probably right. It's directly link to excess it cell phone
use. You know when you talk about being addicted to cell phones and you think about it, that, oh, that can't happen because it's not a physical substance like with nicotine, with smoking it's addictive, or with alcohol drinking it's addictive. But as you mentioned, it rewires your brain. And I think about some days that I sit and I play my little solitaire game and I'll just sit there and play it and play it and play it and play
it. Like why I'm watching TV or whatever, and I'll go, you know, I should put this down and go do something else, and you're just like mindlessly playing it, and it's like you feel like you can't stop. It's they're called dopamine hits. You know, you get DoPT dopamine through all sorts of the pleasure things you do in life. But if you get constantly get hits of it, then you you don't want to leave it.
And and and social media knows that. And that's why you know, through algorithms, if you pull up whatever you pull up, they're going to send you more and more information. If you get into you know, dark phonography, they're going to send you links to more of that. And and so that's the big concern. And because kids and adolescent's brains are not developed, they're just so vulnerable. So all of this stuff. So now you're throwing
in mega dopamine hits. You're you're making them to be more cynical and more judgmental, which obviously is a huge problem across this country right now. And you're teeing them up for I think having some mental disabilities or lack of better terms as adults in their ability to handle themselves and handle other people. Yeah, and then then going back to the anonymity thing or that you're not dealing
with people in persons so you can make a snarky comment. I mean you see it on social media all the time because people don't have to take responsibility. And it made me think, yeah, when you confront somebody on the playground, you've got one or two bullies in the school, but now everybody
can be bullies. Well that's that's exactly right. And if you take kids that get into really dark violence that I'm going to the stuff I talk about all the time, like mass shooters, you know, the social media you know, just sort of helps facilitate. You know, you already have to be driven that direction, but it sort of adds gas to the fire. And then they take social media together their phones with them to shootings. They
have an audience. So basically they have replaced and maybe on a less extreme, the kids have replaced the interaction on the playground, the interaction and whatever to interacting in the anonymity of your bedroom on a phone. Okay, and then Brad, what good what's the danger to Will it be amplified as we start using AI more? Oh? I don't even want to think about that.
Yes, of course it's going to encourage kids maybe to cheat because it's going to be easy to do, and the school systems the universities are going to have to get up to speed the best they can to figure out. You know, is this these words come out of this kid's mouth or was it pulled together by AI? But it's you can also see how AI can alter your reality based on what it creates. So again I'm going to be
dark about this subject. I mean, AILE is doing and will continue to do, some unbelievably wonderful and maybe even life saving things, but like so many things else else, I mean, in this whole world of technology, it can have a really dark side. Yeah, And I just wanted to mention in your show notes that you mentioned that in the future an entire generation of adults that grew up not having to solve problems on their own because they
have AI that could really impact things. It already impacts it. I know that. Like with people that I've hired to work for me at other places, I'm like, here, you need to learn how to problem solve. Don't just do the task, learn how to solve the problem, anticipate the problems, and they like, they have no concept of that. Absolutely not. You're totally right, and so how is that kid going to overcome that as an adult. That's why I use the word disability. I mean that's
a disability in my view. I mean the ability to figure out people, to read them and can confront them in a you know, in a rational, non violent way, is a skill set that everyone needs. Some are obviously better than others. But my goodness, and I see it every day around here. I see it around my son's kids or friends that it's like, you know, they just don't really get it, and you know, really boils down to a certain extent to parents basically being the sheriff taking away
phones, taking away tablets, whatever it might be. I don't mean permanently, but limit the amount of time because it's all going to be an uphill battle because everybody around them has technology. Okay, Well, then so the LA school district deciding to ban them at least during school hours. That forces them out of the phone and back into the real world. Hopefully we'll see some positive results. Bred Garrett, thank you so much as always for your
information and your insight. We appreciate it. You're welcome here. Amy talk too soon. So called poison pills have been added to ten crime bills in California. Both the state Senate and Assembly will now vote to finalize the bills on the floor. During an Assembly committee hearing yesterday, Republican assembly Woman Kate Sanchez said the poison pill amendments will deny Californians a fair vote on an initiative to repeal Prop forty seven. It's anti democratic, it's unfair and tippy flank,
it's borderline corrupt. State Senator Scott Wiener, who accepted the amendments to his bill, said he doesn't see how the poison pills would affect the ballot measure. The poison pill amendments would make it so that if a ballot initiative to repeal Prop forty seven passes, the crime bills would be nullified. Blake Charlie kay if I News Robert F. Kennedy Junior's campaign has raised about three million dollars for the month of May. That's a sharp drop from April,
when it took in nearly eleven million. The number nowhere close to the Biden or Trump campaigns. Biden reportedly took in an additional eight million dollars from one fund verser earlier this week. Kennedy's been trying to get on enough ballots to qualify for the first presidential debate. He hasn't met that threshold, so for now, it'll be President Biden and former President Trump debating one week from today on CNN. Don't know about you, but that is going to be must
see TV for me. The Dodgers take on the Rockies in Colorado today. The first pitch is going out at twelve ten. Oh I love a daytime game. You can listen to every play of every Dodgers game on AM five seventy LA Sports and stream all the games in HD on the iHeartRadio app Keyword AM five seventy LA Sports powered by LA Care for all of LA. More than six hundred Smart and Final warehouse workers in southern California are going to walk
the picket lines today their warehouses are closing. The workers have been told they can reapply for jobs at a warehouse in Rancho Cucamonga, but they say they'll be making ten to twelve dollars an hour less, which they call an unfair labor practice. Residents in Venice say a homeless RV camp is growing and police aren't enforcing a law that prohibits overnight camping, say Abbott. Kenney Boulevard is littered with broken down r vs, trash, personal belongings, litter and human
waste. Justin Timberlake's attorney says he's looking forward to defending the pop star against his drunk driving charges, but least say Timberlake was pulled over Tuesday night on Long Island for running a stop sign after leaving a hotel in the Hamptons. He refused a breathalyzer and failed field sobriety tests at five point fifty World Rainforest Day is coming up on Saturday. We're going to find out how our rainforests
are doing and what we can do to help save them. Close to the home, it's not a forest, but it's a big old piece of land that's going to be getting a facelift. It's two thousand acres in the Sepulvit a basin. So let's say good morning now to the founder and director of the River Project, Melanie Winter. Good morning, Melanie, good morning.
So we've got a vision for the Sepulvita basin called La Vision. And I know this story came out on Monday because Low County state and city leaders unveiled the plan for the restoration, and I wanted to get some more information about it, like what all is going to happen and where is this piece of
land? Yes, this is well. If you've ever driven north over the Supulvida Path into the San Fernando Valley up the four h five, you can't help but notice this big, huge chunk of open space just to your left at the bottom of the hill and right there at the base of it to one oh one four five interchange is a huge dam that you often see in car commercials. So behind all of that is two thousand acres of open space.
It's a flood management facility that the US Army Corps owns, and the dam itself was built in gosh, sorry, nineteen forty or so, it's too early for me, but still on that, but it's and it's got eight miles of living waterways, just three miles of the Los Angeles River, half of which has no concrete on the sides or the bottom. It does concrete, no, not in the subpulsitive basin. It's our wonderful, amazing treasure. And then the tributaries. Tributaries are channelized in various ways, but
they don't have concrete on the bottom. So the potential here is to do what we call floodplain restoration and allow the rivers, the river and the tributaries here to be living, uh, you know, rivers which have all these
benefits for us. That opens up water supply and more flood risk reduction and habitat and biodiversity and kayaking and canoeing and fishing and you know it's just and shade and community and so yeah, and if you go there, the crazy thing is there's this land for lots of land the city leases for recreational purposes. So they over the years they sort of did this ad hoc design, you know, peace reread piece. Oh let's do some baseball field here,
Oh, soccer field here. Oh this there, But it's not it doesn't. It kind of ignores this amazing resource of all these waterways, and it's all very hodgepodge. So we have this opportunity to redo the basin in a way that makes it more accessible for everybody, that makes it more twenty first century for everybody, and it's the kind of things that it offers and also provides all this climate adaptation for us local water supply, public safety, habitat
or diversity, you know, community going. So it's a rethink on this incredible resource that so many people don't know anything about. Well that's what I was going to say, I don't know anything will yeah exactly. And it's like, like you said, two thousand acres, it's two and a half times the size of the Central Park. Okay, so what we have in the valley, which is crazy. So we have all this land to work with, and so the vision then is to reconfigure and fix some of the
issues that are with it. Like there's a couple of things that we learned about and that was like there's a there is a kayak launch spot, but there's an issue with it. Yeah. So the river itself right now has these what they're called drop structures that make it difficult to kind of do what you would naturally do, which is start upstream and go all the way downstream
and then back up. So to avoid those little couple of drop three drop structures, they start by the dam and it's not that easy to set up. So we did the technical feasibility study for this work a few years back, and you know, looked at where it was the best place to do a kayak launch and how could you make that work easily and not have to be so you know, making things up with spit and polish. Okay, So you're going to just improve some of the stuff that is planned, like
we had. There's bike paths that aren't connected, so maybe work to fix those issues. And then who is going to be paying for this, Melanie, right, there's always that question. Yeah, Well, I think there's so many different things that this project can do. But there's a lot of different funding sources. There's federal funding that's available through the Inflation Reduction Acts currently, and I'm sure there be other sources of funding down the road as well.
This is not going to happen overnight. There's also state funding that's available currently, and hopefully if we pass the climate bond at the state in the coming year, there'll be funds for that as well from the state. You know, there could be we don't they haven't shared with us yet what exactly exactly what the Olympic events they're going to be staged there, But if there are some then there's the potential for private philanthropic dollars to contribute to that of
this as well. Okay, and then when as this project continues, is all of this area currently open to the public or are just parts of it open? Oh? No, everything's open to the public now, Okay. So if you want to go hiking around, you can go there. Yeah. Yeah, there's a wildlife area. The wildlife reserve over on the east end of the basin is really phenomenal to visit because you can see the pulsed
The basin is one of the hot spots for birders in Los Angeles. Three hundred species of birds you can discover by walking through the wildlife reserve, and there's people do guided tours there as well. Or you can go play any sport you want, from cricket to soft all the best skiple to baseball to model airplane flying, to lawn bowling to paddle balls. Oh and there's a great dog park. There's a paddle boat on one of the lakes. And
then there's the canoe and kayak program that's happening over the summer. Okay, so you and the bike paths are there. Now a couple of big issues are. We really want to increase the number of bike and walking paths throughout the basin, and we want to connect better transit to it. Okay. So there's already a lot of cool stuff and this is just going to make it better. Okay, this is great. I'm going to go check this. It's going to take a while because this is a big project, but
you know, yeah, gotta start summer the basin. Okay, the Basin Explore. It's amazing. Okay. So Melodie Winter is the founder and director of the River Project. Thank you so much for sharing that information. This morning. I got to go check this place out. Have a great day you too. All right. It was justin Timberlake Tuesday night. But now rapper Travis Scott has been arrested on charges of being drunk and disorderly and also for trespassing in Miami. He has posted bond. It's not clear if he's
been released yet. A pro Palestinian protest banner has been taken down from Yosemite's El Capitan. Climbers scaled the rock face earlier this week and hung the banner fifteen hundred feet off the ground. The banner read stop the Genocide on ice cream shop in San Diego has been named the best ice cream in the US.
OS dry Cleaning on Adams Avenue in North Park has been was named after the dry cleaning business it replaced in twenty eighteen, and to celebrate being named number one by USA today, OS is going to be selling one dollar Gelatto's July first until they sell out. We're just minutes away from handle on the news this morning, women are going to have to register for the draft for the first time. Let's say good morning now to the founder and CEO of
Rainforest Partnership, Neanta Spelman. Good morning, Neonte, good morning, How are you? I am wonderful. We have a Rainforest Day coming up on Saturday, so tell us what is Rainforest Day and what do we do on this day? So World Rainforest Day is a day that we globally come together and locally to celebrate these amazing, incredible, magical ecosystems that are vital to life on our planet. And it's June twenty second. June twenty second.
How many rainforests are there in the world, Neanta? Do we know? So? You know rainforests are around the tropics, right, we have them in four of our continents, and we have lost about fifty percent of them, but we still have a wonderful amount of them in the Amazon, in in Africa, in Southeast Asia greatly, and a little bit in Australia. Okay, So I was going to ask you how they're doing, and you just said we've lost fifty percent. But is the rate that we're losing going
down or are we increasing them? How is that going? I know, there's it's kind of fallen out of the you know, the our spotlight that we don't hear about the rainforest as much. But I'm guessing that they're still trying to cut them down. Yes, So defas station rates have actually gone down in the Amazon, it's it's literally a multiyear low, finally in Brazil in particular, after some very alarming rates that occurred. In fact, if you think about it, even now, we lose like in twenty twenty two,
we were losing about a football field every five seconds. Oh my god. So yes, pretty incredible. And then now we lose them a great deal to other things like fires, and not just for agriculture and cattle ranching. But you know, there is good news because yes, because we are paying more attention and the world is really trying to rally and say, how do we stop deforestation by twenty thirty And so for me there is optimism.
I love optimism. And now I had heard and I don't know if this is correct, because you said where the rainforests are when we went up. I went on a cruise to Alaska a couple of years ago, and you take your breath in and I swear you can feel the air like it's just richer and more vibrant because of all the trees all over the place. And somebody said that that was a rainforest too, Is that technically a rainfores? It is? In fact, you are talking about our beautiful, incredible temperate
rainforests. And I am being silly because I am focused on tropical rainforests. But we do have temperate rainforests. And you know, from Washington all the way into British Columbia and further north, these temperate rainforests are incredible with these giants. And you're right when you're in the rainforest and you take a breath and you just quiet down and you listen, and you feel like you're in a different, magical place, and there's incredible biodiversity in the tropical rainforests,
but in temperate rainforests as well. There's so much life and it does feel very different different, It's really weird. It's the endergy is different, the air is different. And I think if we all experience that, I think we would revere and protect them in a very different way. Yeah. I didn't realize we had rainforests in Africa. Yes, In fact, the second largest tropical rainforests fit in in Africa, the Congo Basin. Yeah. Yes,
and Southeast Asia is just as incredible. And these tropical rainforests, they hold fifty percent of our biodiversity, and they make up you know, they make up about six percent of our surface area of our planet and they're less than three percent of the land area, so not a lot. And they're so important because they regulate our climate and our water cycle. They're so connect to us. And so you're in California. All the listeners are in California.
And here's the incredible thing. The waters that you have in the ocean they have they have chemical markers from the Amazon. Just think about it. It's not just the you know, the water uh up in the air, in the atmosphere, that's been circulated by these forests. It's not just the air and the oxygen that's been circulated, but even our you know, oceans connected it. We're very, very connected on our planet, and these forests
are so important. Are we replanting of the any like where there's been deforestation? Are there projects now to replant that? Neanta, there are projects for replanting. But here's the thing. The best we can do for our planet
is to keep the forest standing that are already there. These are complex ecosystems, and so whereas in the temperate rainforest you were talking about, there are a few species of trees in in the in the Amazon or some of the other tropical rainforests, the hundreds of species of trees alone, and so that complex ecosystem, you know, it takes a long time for that to be restored, and so replanting is not the same as actually protecting the standing forests.
And so this is what we celebrate. Why we celebrate them, it's to say we're interconnected. Why you know, they're they're important to our life on our planet. They're important for you know, safeguarding our climate. We have heatwaves around the world, and how do we take advantage of these beautiful ecosystems that evolved over millions of years on our planet. Trees, greened up planet, made life possible. So how do we celebrate them? How do
we pay more attention to them? And for those of us who work like Rainforest Partnership is the organization. I found it and we run and we're based in Austin, Texas, so we're US based, but this day is celebrated around the world and we invite the world and not just people in southern California and California and the US, around the world. And that's what we've seen that people love to come together and it's protect them right and protect the rainforest.
Don't only replant them, but stop knocking them down. So World Rainforest Day is June twenty second, NANTA or nanta. Where can we get more information about the rainforests and how they're doing and what we can do to help save them. So the first thing World Rainforest Day dot org is the website to go and make a pledge and get a digital toolkit to share why you care, go find you know. Of course, we would love you to
donate to Rainforest Partnership. We do work on the ground, but really find any rainforest organization to support and really do something for the environment for our planet. On World Rainforest Day in your backyard. Connect you know, look at the birds, take a breath, Thank a rainforest. I love that.
Okay, yes, we will do that this Saturday. Neanta Spellman, founder and CEO of Rainforest Partnership, thank you so much for your time and again, if you want more information, World Rainforest Day dot org, and we're all going to take a collective deep breath and thank the reinforest. Thanks Nanta, thank you so much. All right, take care, okay. Good thing to celebrate on this first day of summer. Right, sunshine, trees,
birds, all that stuff. It is six o'clock. This is KFI and kost HD two Los Angeles, Orange County, live from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. I'm Amy King. This has been your wake up call. If you missed a NA wake up call, you can listen anytime on the iHeartRadio app. Taking a deep breath in honor of world rains for US day. You've been listening to wake up Call with me, Amy King. You can always hear wake Up Call five to six am Monday through Friday.
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