Happy Holiday's From Our Own Michael Monks

You're listening to KFI, a M six forty wake up call with me Amy King on demand on the iheartradios.

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Then they'll do something I hate most of all. Every who down and who will the tall and the small stand close together with Christmas bells. They'll stand hand in hand, those wholes will start singing.

It's time for your morning wake up call, slaves, and good morning, Good Christmas morning.

It is Wednesday, December twenty fifth. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuakah's you. I hope that if you're like me and you're at work today, you find some peace in that. Maybe some co workers you don't like aren't in the office today, so you can take full advantage of his lounging around

But we do have Jesus. The Jesus Show is.

Coming up this morning, and what a day to tune in for that. We do also want to let you know that a transformer failure at a SoCal Edison substation in the Norwalk Downy area has led to widespread power outage in the area, but the utility says most customers had their power back quickly. It's not clear what calls that outage yesterday. We know that the Metro Sea Line trains were stopped between the Norwalk and Willowbrook Rosa Park

I want to say good morning now to professor Jonathan Losses at Washington University at Saint Louis.

Good morning, Jonathan.

Good morning Amy.

So wanted to talk to you today because you're teaching a course that I've never heard of before, and I thought I got to talk to this to this guy. And so before we start talking, I want to read the part of the description of the course. Okay, so listen to what this sounds like. This is a capstone

Well, you can learn a lot about many different topics. I'm a scientist. I've spent my career studying lizards, but I've always loved cats, and it never occurred to me to do anything scientifically with cats until I realized that people are studying cats in the same way that I study lizards, and people study elephants and hippos and eagles using all the latest techniques radio tracking, DNA analysis and

I love this.

And what kind of practical things are people going to learn from studying our furly three feline friends.

Well, there's two things. One is how a lot about cats, where they came from, why they do what they do, what the future may hold. So there's a lot to learn about the biology of cats. We take them for granted, but they're fascinating animals, but they're also good examples of how we study nature in general, what approaches we can take to understand evolution, behavior, ecology, and other broad questions.

Okay, and how long have you been studying cats Jonathan?

Well, well, only a couple of years. I'd say about four or five years, because, as I said, I've spent my career studying lizards, which have their own own qualities.

Yeah.

Okay, and how long has the course been offered? Is this the first year?

No, it's been taught three times. The first year I taught first year students freshmen, and then twice I've taught it to graduating seniors.

Okay, and how is it being received? Like are people going, oh, this is like basket weaving, or are they going, oh, I could really learn some cool stuff. And then how are they finding it once they get in?

Well, I think they're really enjoying it because they've been studying biology for their entire college career, but now they get to apply their knowledge to an animal they know and love to figure out, not about an earthworm or some obscure frog, but an animal they really care about. And we do a lot of fun things as well, we go to cat shows, and we go out to watch Beryl cats being fed, and we go to a cat shelter. So we supplement the course with some field trips that are very enjoyable.

I love this. And Jonathan, do you have cats?

Yeah? I do have cats. I'm looking at Winston right now.

I love that. I love that.

And what are a couple of things that we might not know about cats? Because I always think of my cat like, we know that they don't really need us that much except for food, but there's a lot going on in their little brains.

Well, that is absolutely true. I think perhaps the most surprising thing is we think of cats as kind of being asocial loaners, solitary animals, but it turns out that they're not, at least not always. In some conditions. They have a highly social organization where they live in groups, just like lions, and these are groups of related females that help take care of each other as kittens and are very friendly to each other. So sometimes cats can

And so in a group of cats, then would it be similar to where there's usually one male and then a bunch of females.

Yes, So the groups are composed of the females because the female kittens they grow up and stay with their family, whereas the males go off and then males try to try to be in control to mate with the females. It's not quite like lions because the males move around more than male than the male cats move around more than the male lions. But it's pretty similar.

Okay, So what's next for you in your study of cats?

So what's the next progression?

Well, I think there are two issues. One is how cats have evolved since they became domesticated in Africa just three or four thousand years ago. They're very similar and that's why we sometimes call cats being only semi domesticated. But they have changed a few things, such as their meow is more pleasing to our ear and in a few other ways. So studying more more precisely how cats

I love it.

And now, Jonathan, is there a book that you have or a website if people want to dig a little more into the science of cats since we're not in Saint Louis.

Well did I did write a book called The Cats Meow that came out about a year ago, and I think it's a fun read. I hope people will like it as well. That would be the best place, I think.

All right, Professor Jonathan Losses, Washington University at Saint Louis, teaching the science of cats and the author of The Cats Meal, thank you so much for your time this morning.

I wish I was in Saint Louis. I would take this case.

Well.

I always good to talk to a fellow cat lover. All right, take care you too, Bye bye.

And that was our Amy King talking earlier this year about the science of cats. I think I heard him say their mew has become more pleasing to our ears. And I would say that's a qualified statement. You know, usually it's usually it's all right, but there are times at about yeah, exactly two thirty in the morning, and they're hungry for some reason, even though they just ate yeah, and it's time to wake up.

No thanks. Hey, do have a warning to issue about some pets.

Public health officials in La in La County have a bird flu warning for pet owners.

The warning follows the voluntary recall of Northwest Natural's brand two pound Feline Turkey recipe raw and frozen pet food after the H five bird flu virus was found in some samples.

So that's going on. Another thing to worry about with bird flu. So keep your eyes peeled for what's going on with that raw food. Again, it's all related to raw stuff, whether it's impacting people or the livestock, something that we just have to keep.

Our eyes on.

Kfi's Tammy Truio says the pet food was sold in two pound bags with best buy dates of May and June twenty twenty six. People are advised to toss any of that pet food if you've got it. We'll have the customary masses and shirt services celebrating the Birth of Jesus here in La along with the annual events providing meals to the homeless and poor. You'll see Archbishop Jose Gomez celebrate the twelve thirty pm Mass in Spanish and then continue the tradition by celebrating a mass with general

You're listening to Wake Up Call on demand from KFI AM six forty.

I'm Michael Monks sitting in for Amy King this Christmas Day. Merry Christmas to you and yours and Happy Honkah as well. Coming up at six oh five. Let's see, we don't have Amy King, we don't have Handle on the news either of the Bill Handle Show, and that whole team is out of here. But Jesus Christ is going to be filling in. That Jesus Christ Show will be coming up this morning at six o'clock. But first, Oliver James

Let's say good morning now to Oliver James. Good morning Oliver. So Oliver, before we talk about what you have now done and what you are doing now, I want to take a look back at your life and kind of to get people up to speed on kind of how you got kind of a rough start in life and that affected you into adulthood. So let's back up a little bit and talk about, you know, what was life like as a kid for you.

I know, life was like everyone else growing up in the night vision, no parental you know, guidance. You kind of just raised yourself TV a bunch of young food. It was. It was just like everyone else.

But you had some pretty big stumbling blocks starting out at a young age. You made a mention of when you were in first grade, you got suspended.

Yeah, got suspended around first second grade. I don't know why, but apparently I was the bad kid. But how they chose to handle the situation. They decided to take me out of school more. I don't know why, but that's how they.

Handle things, okay, and that affects your learning and your ability to learn, and that it sort of snowballed as you grew up.

So did you end up? Did you get your high school diploma?

Yeah? I got my high school diploma. School was definitely a rough journey, like after getting suspended around like first second grade. It was literally just fighting with teachers, arguing all the time, suspension. Yeah, and then one day I woke up and I was graduating. That's literally how it was.

Okay.

So now that's going to bring us a little closer to today, so you're not to you know, you had a lot of kids had had tough goes, but for you it was pretty profound because you got your high school diploma and you couldn't read.

Yep, yep, yep. You know. I've done a lot of interviews and I'm trying to make sense of it, and I'm trying to give people an answer so they can make sense of it themselves. But let's just sit and think about it. I was a child, now I'm an adult, and I'm looking at at their children and I'm like, why would they leave the responsibility to a child to learn anything like reading, you know, all these things, why the child wouldn't learn that. Now I'm sitting here realizing

Yeah, well, and I think that we see that in schools now. They keep just dumbing it down and they're like, oh, well, we want to have We don't want to hold kids back because that might hurt their self esteem. So let's just let them move on without teaching them the skills that they're going to need to survive and thrive in life. And so you got your diploma, and then holding a job was kind of tough because you said you're functionally illiterate.

Yeah not then now you know I'm on welfare. Now it will always be over your head. The world was designed for you to know how to read. They made this world up like that. If you don't know how to read, you are in a world that you cannot operate. And this is a made up world works all these things you can't read, you miss all the opportunities in life, and it continues into your adulthood.

Okay, So, and you gave some examples of like you would get a job, but then as like a bartender or a server.

But then you couldn't hold the job. And I hadn't even.

Thought about this, but like, what were some of the challenges you face once you got the job, Because it sounds like you're a pretty a charismatic, friendly guy. I mean, you get the job, but keeping it was the hard part.

See, that's the strength of a person who does want to read. I learned how to do interviews and talk and do things that you know, mask that other people probably can't do. But once I get the job and they can see the two colors, they can see like, Okay, I was a bartender and I'm dating the person who hired me as a bartender at the restaurant that I was at, and she had to bar or demote me to a bus or a server, and she couldn't understand

Okay, So when it came to like if you were sitting there helping somebody and they said, well, what's good on the menu?

You're like, uh, you tell me. I was a charmer. I would just literally be like you tell me. I'm like, you know what, that looks good?

You know.

I would definitely try that and it'd be like, well, what's in it? I'm like, well this it's a surprise. And I would just lie or make up anything. I had no idea what I was doing.

Okay.

Well, then in twenty twenty, Oliver, something changed for you. Some switch got flipped on you.

What happened?

Uh, you know COVID. Let's just say that, you know, everybody got a little taste of what it feels like when the world and ended. You know, you're like, what should I do with my life?

Like?

Should I change? And when I realized, I'm like, okay, the world ain't ending. Your life just kind of ended for a little bit. What would you do with it? And I thought, I'm like, I want to be a father one day, I want to do things. I want to grow. And I was like, you don't know how to do none of that. You can't even read. So I just decided to pick up a book.

And you literally picked up a book and how did you start reading.

Then if you don't know how.

You know what it's just this is the best way to put it. There's a lot of people who go on health journeys, right, it's a new at the end of the year. How do you do it? Social media starts throwing up a bunch of people doing push ups on a stair master or you know, running up and down some jumping off a building. Who knows what they'll show, you know, just so you can see the hype of how athletic they are, and then you might go follow it. You might go out there and be like, I'm gonna

Yeah.

And then did you have somebody kind of helping you along the way, Because I would imagine as you're you're learning these words and learning how they go together, and you know, all the things that you've got going on in your head translated to paper, you would have to have somebody to kind of give you a helping hand to help me.

Yeah, my lady, she was the one that helped me the most in this journey with the reading. She's the one that read to me in the beginning. So she brought me a book in the beginning on Christmas Day one day, a three hundred and sixty five quote book because I was really big into inspirational stuff and I didn't know inspiration could be in a book. So that was a shock to me. I was like, oh my god, this is like you already just said, and she's like, yeah,

I love it.

And I think that that probably was really smart, whether you realized it at the time or not, because then you kind of have bite sized chunks too. Yes, you don't have this huge story that's super involved like you can. You can take a bite and go, oh, I like that one, and learn different ones as you go.

Maybe yes, I didn't know that. But the comprehension, you know, you got to realize. And I can tell you this now, so even some people can know. Comprehension is scary. You know, internal monologue is scary. I went to the emergency room. I thought I was going crazy. When you see images in your head and you start seeing movies in your own mind because you're reading, I thought I was losing my mind. I have no idea what was going on, because my brain has never been activated in that way

Oliver, do you have a favorite quote?

You know what.

I do.

And if you want to hide something from people, put it in a book. If you want to hih, that's one of my put Yeah. If you want to hide something and the quote is deeper than that, If you want to hide something from African American people, put in the book.

You know.

But you know, sometimes I like to give it to everybody because it is for everybody. If you want to hide something from somebody, the knowledge is in a book. So if you're looking for something that's hidden, go look in a book. You'll find it.

Wow.

And you can follow Oliver James on TikTok At Oliver Speaks one And that was our Amy King talking with Oliver James earlier this year. When we come back, our very own Will Coleschreiber's weekend watch out is here the details on what's happening around the region.

You're listening to Wake Up Call on Demand from KFI AM six forty this morning.

She'll be back a little bit next week.

She'll be on break again on New Year's Day in the day after, and I will be in for her next week as well. Here's what we're following in the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. State officials in say the latest crackdown on retail theft in California has resulted in one hundred and seventeen people being arrested. The CHP led the day long operation Friday that included ten law enforcement agencies,

Night before christ Smiths and Santa's a wreck. How to live in a world that's politically correct. His workers no longer would answer to elves vertically challenged, they were calling themselves, and labor conditions at the North Pole were alleged by the union to stifle the soul. Four reindeer had vanished without much propriety, released to the wilds by the Humane Society, and Equal employment had made it quite clear that Santa

So here is that gift. It's price beyond worth. May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth.

And that was our amy King with a politically correct night before Christmas, on this day of Christmas. And if we're lucky, there will also be a day after Christmas. And you may have had a busy holiday schedule, and your busiest day is just now getting started this morning. Hollywood has excuse me, the holiday has come midweek, but you're gonna have to find some strength to enjoy the weekend.

A lot of sports, a lot of music. So you're cooped up.

With your family, maybe more than you're used to, and you're looking for places to go to get out of the house, get some fresh air, maybe sneak away a little bit.

We've got a lot of sports.

First of all, we've got let's see, well, if you are in the house, you can watch the Lakers play Golden State today. That's a special thing. But also Golden State plays the Clippers on Friday. There's the Kings, the hockey kind. There's the Kings playing the Lakers, the basketball kind that happens on Saturday. Rams and Cardinals face off at SOFI. Ducks and the Flyers there at Honda Center. Morrissey are one of our favorite Brits rockers from across

I did it last year. I haven't gotten a chance yet. I hope they're open a little bit longer so I can go check them out. And you survived, Universal Hilton, Santa Monica, Irvine Spectrum. All those places have ice rinks, slee is down at the Santa Monica Pier.

All always really fun.

And if you can't get enough Christmas, there's the Festival of Lights in Riverside at the Mission Inn, and of course Santa's Village up in Lake Arrowhead off the eighteen pack those chains just in case.

I don't think it's snowing, but you never know. And movies, there's a lot of stuff out there.

There's a Timothy Chalomey in a Complete Unknown not Sferratu. And of course if you haven't gotten your wicked fix yet, there's always that.

It's everywhere, so there's lots to do. Get out and get some mayor and.

Have some fun.

Lots to do, indeed, and if you're entertaining family in LA this weekend. Lots of stuff to show off to them, or if you just want to slip away from the family all on your own.

Plenty of options out there as well.

Yeah.

Hey, President Joe Biden has made it official. The bald eagle is now the national bird of the United States. Biden signed a bill into law this week correct what had long gone unnoticed and designate the bald eagle as the national bird. Eagle has been a symbol of the US for more than two hundred and forty years, appearing on the nation's Great Seal since the design was finalized

You're listening to Wake Up Call on demand from KFI Am six forty.

I am Michael Monks sitting in for Amy King on this Christmas morning. Merry Christmas to you and yours Happy Honikah as well as the two holidays fall on the same day this year. Here's what we're following in the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. The La County DA's office says a high school teacher in West Covina is scheduled to be arraigned next month on charges of committing sex acts on two girls. Joshua McGinn teaches in the Charteroke Unified School District. The DA's office says he was arrested

Not today, they're all off. Today.

We've got the Jesus Christ Show coming up at six o'clock. A passenger plane has crashed in Kazakhstan. The Auserbaijani airliner had sixty seven people on board when it went down. At least thirty two people have survived the crash, though, but thirty others are believed to have died. The plane had made an emergency landing after what the Russian Civil Aviation Authority says was a bird strike. Masses and church

See it every day.

And then another one permits cannabis cafes to serve cannabis along with food and drinks. Doesn't that make sense for anyone who's ever consumed cannabis before, And you wonder why was that never allowed? They seem to go quite hand in hand. Coming up at the top of the hour. No handle on the news today, no Bill handle at all. The whole crew is off. It's just me and Will

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 on KFI AM six forty and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.