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Eight is five o'clock straight up. This is your wake up call for Tuesday, June seventeenth. I'm Amy King. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio apps. Gonna be a big day. I hope you got a good night's sleep because we're raring to go show.
Hey.
Otani of course pitched his first game in a couple of years. Just one inning, wasn't great, but he's back on the mound and then went right back out and hit like immediately came off the mound, put on his batting gear and went to went to home plate. Also, Sonny and Gizmo both back in the nest this morning. Haven't talked about the Eagles for I don't know twenty four hours, but I turned on the camera because I still turn it on every day and a lot of times.
The nest is empty now, but they're both back there, and if you want to get a glimpse of glimpse of them, friends of Big Bear Valley have the link on their website. And they don't stick around. They don't stick around long. They take off early and leave the nest for the day. And today we are being visited by an astronaut, Colonel Nick hag Is on his way into the KFI studios. We're going to be talking with
him during wake up call. Find out you know what he's been up to since he returned to Earth after spending six months floating in waitlessness on the International Space Station. Can't wait for that. Lots going on around the world, So here's what's ahead on wake up call, saying the curfew has been successful. La Mayor Bass has eased curfew hours. The curfew last night went into effect at ten pm,
that's two hours later than the previous day. The Civic Center, Chinatown, Little Tokyo and nearby areas remain under curfew until six a m. Mayor Baths says the curfew has protected stores, restaurants, businesses and communities from bad actors. A doctor in Santa Monica has agreed to plead guilty to supplying ketamine to friends star Matthew Perry. Prosecutors say doctor Salvador Placentia gave the drug to the actor and taught his assistant who injected.
Of course, Perry suffered a fatal overdose of the drug at his home in Pacific Palisades last October, shops have closed. Cars are lined up to get gas in Iran's capital city following a warning by President Trump that all Iranians should leave Tehran. ABC's Jordana Miller joins us in just a couple of minutes to give us the latest as things continue to heat up in the Middle East. How often do you have your phone out? How often do you check it? Are you a slave to your phone?
We're going to be talking with Richard Simon. He wrote a book called Unplugged. He joins us next to tell us how it might be time to break up with your smartphone and how that can make your life a whole lot better. And I can tell you, since I started reading this book, I notice how much not only I am in my smartphone, but how much everybody around me is too. And at the bottom of the hour, of course, we're throwing a bit of a welcome home party.
We're going to be joined by our friend, NASA Astronaut Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, who's back on Earth after more than six months on the Inner National Space Station. He's coming here. He'll be in studio, live with us, a couple of little fun things, decorations. It's a party. Let's get started with some of the stories coming out
of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. A federal appeals court is set to hold a hearing today on whether President Trump can continue to control California National Guard troops. Trump federalized the Guard and sent them to LA to protect federal buildings and agents doing ice raids. Governor Newsom sued, challenging the president's authority to do so. Newsom says Trump only sent the troops to instill fear in the community. President Trump says he has the right to federalize the
troops and they were needed to protect law enforcement. LA Mayor Bass has adjusted the curfew for downtown LA, pushing it back from eight to ten pm.
The downtown La Residents Association says the ongoing curfew has hurt the neighborhood. Group co founder Cassie Horton says, it's time for the curfew to come to an end.
Our businesses cannot afford this. They're already kind of hanging on by a shoestring after the fires.
COVID did the writers.
Strike all of that.
A survey put out by the group on Sunday showed that a combined eighty percent of hundreds of members either want the curfew gone immediately or phased out over the coming days. Michael Monks KFI News.
SpaceX has completed another launch of a Falcon nine rocket from the coast of Santa Barbara County.
The launch from Vendenburg Space Force Base happened just after eight thirty Monday night. The rocket took twenty six Starlink Internet satellites into low Earth orbit. It was the third flight for the first stage rocket booster supporting the mission. Daniel Martindale, KFI News, Let's.
Say good morning now to ABC's Jordana Miller in Jerusalem. So, Jordana, Israel's not letting up continuing to attack Tehran, and of course the goal is to take out its nuclear capability. What are the latest developments.
That's right, Israeli air Force, with air superiority, it must be said, has a flight path now in over western Ran into to the capital Tehran, where they're carrying out a series of strikes. Really, the air force has been active and carrying out bombings since Israel's opening attack back on Friday morning or Thursday night in the United States. One target that the Israeli Army says they succeeded in hitting was the new Joint chiefs of Staff, the new
head of Iran's army. This was a close confidante of the Supreme Leader, Ayatola Jomene. He was just put in the position maybe three days ago, and overnight they targeted a place in Tehran where he was with an air strike and he was killed. There's also a lot of i would say, growing threats against the Supreme Leader coming from coming from Israeli leaders, the latest being the Defense Minister ystral Katz, who said today that Homiani could turn
out have the same fate as Sodom Hussein. You know, this is a war that is not explicitly to bring down the regime. That's what the Israelis have said, but you know, on the ground, everything that they're doing seems to be pushing the regime to the brink, right, assassinating military leaders, scientists, going after their headquarters, political and military headquarters, and now yesterday as well hitting one of the national broadcasters,
the TV that is aligned with the regime. We am sure many people saw the clip that was circulating online of an Iranian female anchor in the middle of her in the middle of her newscast, you know, with an explosion in the back and star and leaving the cameras right. So we're still seeing a lot of activity on this side.
I can tell you. The Iranians overnight launched four different waves of ballistic missile strikes in total about thirty missiles, so a lower number than we saw the previous days, but they spread them out, keeping Israelis up all night and in their shelters, especially those living in Tel Aviv and in central Israel. For me, I'm in Jerusalem. I was up twice, but most of the country was up four times.
And when you luckily, when you get to when you get awakened, you have to go into the shelters. Is that correct that you hear those sirens and then off you go into the shelters for how long?
Right, So, Israel thankfully has developed a very sophisticated early warning system. So because these ballistic missiles are so deadly, and we've seen that over the last several days, right, twenty four Israelis have been killed and they've brought down
a part sides of entire apartment buildings. The Israelis now give their citizens usually about fifteen minutes of lead time, sometimes twenty minutes, and they first send out a warning saying, we have detected a launch of Iranian missiles coming towards us. We you know, everyone now needs to get close to their bomb shelter, right, and then you get another warning that is a loud beeping sound on your phone in
case you didn't see the other one. The first message that says you now need to go into the bomb shelter. And then usually once you're already inside, then you hear the sirens there, yeah, which is still frightening. Well yeah, anyway, yeah, yeah,
and you hear the interceptions. I mean a lot of the you know, there's every time Iran fires on Israel, you know, there's always a number of missiles that are shot down over Jerusalem because Jerusalem situated in the center of the country, a little center east, So anything trying
to hit the Tel Aviv comes over Jerusalem. When they're trying to hit military bases a little bit further south, sometimes they go over Jerusalem, right, So the sound of the explosions and the booms are often, you know, there's often many of them that we can hear from the shelter.
Yeah, that's I just can't even imagine. But thank you for sharing kind of the what it's like to get those warnings. I wanted to go back real quick before we let you go and ask you just a couple of questions. One you mentioned Israel says it has air superiority. What does that mean. Does that mean that Iran is it's little, Not it's little, but its defenses are so badly degraded that Israel can just go wherever they want and they're not worried about getting shot down exactly.
It means that when it comes to a corridor from western Iran into Tehran, Israel has managed to wipe out Iran's ability to shoot down their aircraft by taking out air defense systems radar systems, and also by taking out missile launchers and weapons depots and the ballistic missiles themselves
that would be shot at aircraft. So they are operating freely in the skies of Tehran, right, They're even carrying out air strikes in daylight, which I mean generals behind the scenes will tell us, you know that it all happened faster than they thought, right.
And then one last question for you. You mentioned that there was a string of missiles that came in. There were like thirty of them, and they came in sort of at regular intervals to kind of keep everybody on their you know, yeah, keep every everybody shared and anxious and awake. Is there a reason that there's a lower number that we know of. They're not running out of missiles or or are they.
Well, that's a great question. First of all, the Israelis say they have taken out one third of Iran's total missile launcher pads. No matter how many missiles you have, even if you have five thousand, if you don't have a means to deploy them, they're useless. So Israel has focused in the first days of this attack on taking out the launch pads and the Israeli Army does claim that it has crippled and reduced Iran's ability to fire missiles on Israel. I mean, thirty is not an impressive number,
quote unquote in a state of war. So you know so, but we'll have to wait and see that. No one denies that Iran still has they still have capabilities, and even the damage that's been done to the nuclear facilities, it is significant, but not it is not consequential in terms of you know, ending the nuclear threat. As you know, again as a general who does background briefings with the press here, you know we've been told there's there's still a lot of targets in the bank, and there's still
a lot of work to do. And remember Israel has not yet attacked the four Dow nuclear facility, which is buried in a mountain near Tehran. That is the most difficult nuclear target. But it has to be touched one way or the other, or in a sense, this entire attack on Iran will be a failure because that facility is crude, crucial.
All right, and that's where we're going to have to leave it for today. Jordana Miller in Jerusalem, stay safe, Thanks so much for the information. We'll talk soon texting. All right, let's get back to some of the stories
coming out of the KFI twenty Forever newsroom. Federal prosecutors say the man in custody for allegedly shooting and killing a state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota stalked his targets, like prey ABC's Faith Abu Bay says Vance Bolter also allegedly wounded a Democratic state senator and his wife in Saturday's attacks.
Investigators believe this was a complex and chilling plant to kill public officials. Forty five lawmakers on that alleged target list, mostly or all Democrats.
Billy say they have found assault style rifles, several rounds of ammunition, and a medical kit in Bolter's car. News brought to you by Simper Solaris. The Trump family has announced its latest business venture.
Eric Trump, one of President Trump's sons, who will run the mobile phone company, says it will build its own phones and maintain a call center in the US. The new business follows several real estate deals for towers and resorts in the Middle East, including a golf development in Guitar and a one and a half billion dollar partnership to build golf courses, hotels, and real estate projects in Vietnam.
Deborah Mark kff I News and Tropical Storm Eric is formed near southern Mexico. The US National Hurricane Center in Miami says it is expected to become a hurricane by tomorrow. Hurricane watches have been issued for parts of Mexico. Heavy rainfall is in the forecast for parts of the states of Oajaca and Guerrero. Well show, Hey did it. He was back on the mound, pitched one inning. Wasn't the greatest performance, but he was throwing like one hundred mile
in our fastballs. The Dodgers won the game last night, six to three. Tonight, the Dodgers take on the Padres at Dodgers Stadium. The first pitch goes out at seven o'clock. You can listen to all the Dodger games on AM five to seventy LA Sports live from the Gallpin Motors Broadcast booth and stream all the Dodgers games in HD, just like I did last night listening to show Hay's first outing on the iHeartRadio app Keyword AM five seventy LA Sports. Anti ice protests have cost the city of
La nearly twenty million dollars so far. City administrative officer stay Bo says most of that is tied to the cost of police, about seventeen million dollars of it. Murder and stocking charges have been filed against the man in Minnesota accused of shooting and killing a Minnesota state senator and her husband, and attempting to kill a senator and his wife. Official save Vnce Bolter will be charged with first degree murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Police are looking for the person who shot a mail carrier in South la The LAPD says a shooting happened late yesterday morning near Century Boulevard in Central Avenue. The mail carrier was hit in the arm. The person who shot him was last seen running east on Century Boulevard. Let's say good morning now to Richard Simon, the author of Unplug, How to Break Up with your Phone and Reclaim your Life. Good morning, Richard, Good morning Amy. Great to be here, Great to have you. Thanks for getting
up early with this. So you wrote this book, and I saw the press release on it and I go, oh my gosh, I have to read this book. And I will tell you that since reading it, I've noticed even more how perve our phones are. Like I'll find myself sitting on the couch just playing Solitaire and other word games four hours at a time, and it's just this time suck and then like I'll put the phone down and then I'll get this feeling like I need
to pick it up and play another game. And I was like, oh my gosh, why is that?
Yeah, the core piece of dopamine. Dopamine is the most powerful, one of the most powerful molecules in the brain. And each time you tap your phone, whether it's with Solitaire or whether it's Internet browser or WhatsApp, whatever it might be, it releases dopamine. So it just becomes more and more pleasurable. And the smartphone is literally a shortcut machine. And that's what's going on behind the scenes in your mind.
Okay, So the premise of the book seems pretty straightforward. You know that it may be time to break up with your phone. But I want to ask you kind of what is the goal of the book, Like what gave you the idea to write it?
Sure, with me, I was thick of my smartphone taking up hours of my day. The average American adult spends more than five hours a day on their smartphones. We don't get that time back. And I was a father to young kids in twenty nineteen, I realized this.
I had enough.
So in twenty twenty, I turned my smartphone off for an entire year and was one of the most transformative moments of my life. And what I realized is that you look at all the various self help articles and books everyone is espousing hacks noble as they might be, but deleting social media, putting a rubber band around your phone, digital status. All these things are great, but presenting as addictive as a phone as you were just talking about
it doesn't go far enough. So I ended up interviewing dozens of people over the course of the last couple of years and found that the first step to establishing a more effective relationship with your smartphone is to turn it off.
Okay, so turn off completely, So no GPS, no texting, no social media, just done.
Yeah.
So therefore to diferent styles that outline the book in terms of turning it off. The most popular one I think that will resonate for your listeners is to switch to a basic phone. And I say basic phone, I mean basic like calling and texting. There are some like Kosher phones or Wise phones that have more features. For the sake of recalibrating the reward pathways in your brain,
I highly recommend switching over to a basic phone. You can have your same phone number, you can switch over the simcard at your local AT and T Verizon your T Mobile story. And by doing that, by switching over to a basic phone, you're going to regain the most precious resource source in life, which is time. You're going to get hours back because you're not going to want to text on this terrible device because it takes forever
to text and it'll completely reset you. So one of the four breakup styles of recommend is switching to a basic phone.
Okay, So then Richard, also tell me, like you said that one of the things you noticed when I was reading your book, you said you you and your wife would come sit down on your couch at night and you wouldn't talk to each other because you just stick your noses in your phones and you're doing your own thing. How did that immediately change when you turned your phone off.
Yeah, my wife and she's a doctor, she's a physician. She's very very busy in terms of her hours and what would end up happening is during the day. I'm sure many other married couples who are listening go through this. You text each other throughout the day, spouses, and there's dozens of texts that are happening. You know, this is happening, This is happening.
What do you think of this?
How about this for dinner? This? And before you know it, you get back home and you're already caught up. When everything had happened during the day, it's nothing to catch up on. And all of a sudden, you know, we stopped this texting throughout the day and we actually like sit down and have dinner as a family, and like, I'm genuinely curious about what happened during the day, and same for her in terms of what happened for my day.
It completely reset our relationship and it grew tremendously since I went through this process, and with the dozens of people I interviewed in the book in my profile, it was the same. Relationships with family just improved so much.
Yeah, well, we hear a lot about how like kids who have grown up, they've had smartphones since, you know, since they were very young. That they don't communicate as well. They don't have those same communication skills because, like you said, they text and do short little blurbs as opposed to having full on conversations like we used to when we were growing up. So I could I can see that correlation. If somebody wants to dip their toe in, is there a way to dip their toe in?
Yeah?
I mean for starters, go for a walk. Go for a walk around the neighborhood for forty five minutes an hour, and don't bring your phone. You're going to be going crazy inside the first time you do it, because this is how addictive a smartphone is. But go for a walk for forty five minutes to an hour and do it by yourself for the first time. Don't bring someone
else and just have to embrace your own thoughts. That's way to say a smartphone has done is that we are no longer able to embrace solitude, We're no longer able.
To truly think.
So that's the first step I would do, And after you do it a few times, you're going to realize this is really really nice. Start tonight when you go out to dinner with friends, leave your phone at home. The first time you're in the car, you might be completely freaking out. That's the withdrawal, It's completely natural. Then you're going to realize how special that is. So before you go through any sort of detox, in terms of turning your phone off, I have a whole section in
my book about preparation. I think those were some of the initial things you can do to start to realize that, okay, I can do this.
Okay. And another example that you gave Richard that I absolutely loved was you said after you turned your phone off or you left it behind. I'm not sure if it was before you or after you actually turned the smartphone off. As you said, you went to the grocery store and you were standing in line and you just had to stand there because you didn't have a phone to check. And how weird that feeling is because we're so used to be being connected all the time.
Yeah, it's so true.
Yeah, the first day of my of my detox, Yeah, I was at the grocery store and yeah, even just for three four minutes, I could only scan the tabloids for so long around me and I'm literally freaking out inside. And I'm literally standing in line at a grocery store. You figure, Okay, you can deal with it for three or four minutes. But I was not comfortable enough being in my own skin. Now, looking back, when it's five years later, I mean, I don't go to the grocery
store with a smartphone ever. So now I'm totally comfortable with it. So this whole process to talk about in the book, it really will recalibrate the low word pathways in your brain.
Okay, Richard Simon, the book is Unplugged, How to Break Up with your Phone and Reclaim your Life. I wish we had more time to talk because this is so interesting and it really opened my eyes to how much we spend time on our phones and don't spend our time living our lives. Where can we get the book, Richard.
Unplugged if you found at all major booksellers, Amazon, Targets, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, your local independent bookstore wherever books are sold.
All right, Thank you so much, Richard Simon. Again, the book is Unplugged, How to Break Up with your Phone and Reclaim your Life. It's quick read and it's really a good read. Richard. Appreciate and have a great day.
Thanks so much.
Amy you too, Okay, it really it's really worth it, and I swear. Then we went to a Dodger game and we were sitting we went to the speakeasy, which we get to do every once in a while, and we were looking at the table next to us and there were four people sitting there. None of them were talking to each other. All of them had their phones out and their faces in their phones. And I'm like, you're in a cool speak easy at a Dodger game.
Come on, I mean, it's just crazy anyway. All right, we have in studio NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, now back on Earth, touring the US to talk about life in space, and he's here with us in studio. Welcome Colonel Haig.
Thank you, Amy, it's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for the warm welcome.
Oh well, we had a little welcome home party and we have some treats and all of that stuff. And you know what, when did you get back? It was in March.
Yeah, so the end of March is when we landed. So it's been about three months. Time fly a couple of those months. It flies because I'm just heads down trying to rehabilitate and figure out how to live in gravity again. You spend a while floating around on orbit and you forget just how strong gravity is.
Well, we had talked one other time, and you were talking about how you go from completely not knowing which direction is up or down and weightlessness, and we talked about how you said you got the best sleep of your life in space.
Indeed, indeed, and now I have to suffer an earthing Earthlingk's fate and sleep in a bed.
Is it difficult?
It's different? You know, you wake up and maybe I have a little toss and turn a little bit, or my back doesn't feel quite right, or I'm on an arm and it just you know, kind of falls asleep and I'm like, dang, I wish I was back on orbit because that was the best sleep ever.
Okay, so up in orbit you were up there for it? Was it one hundred and seventy days? Right around there?
One hundred Yeah, a little over one hundred and seventy days.
Okay. What has to be like one thing that you absolutely miss about it?
Yeah?
Or is there just one?
There isn't just one. The obvious stuff is being able to float around and flip and just play in microgravity where everything floats, or to float over to the window and then be able to see the Earth and the universe in front of you in a way that just
you can't do on the ground. But you know, probably the other thing that you might not think about missing as my crewmates, I spend six months with six other people inside this really confined space, and you get to know each other so well, and then when we hit the ground, we kind of go all our separate ways and we're doing all these different things, and so you don't see them as much as you did while you were up there, and so you miss those friendships.
Yeah, do you still communicate with them a lot?
Yeah, as you know, as much as we can, and unfortunately most of it on a on a phone because we're not in close proximity together. Uh necessarily, but yeah, you know, we'll run into each other and it's a it's a big hug, and hey, how you've been, how's the how's how's rehab going? Yeah, you know, we're all all suffering all the aches and pains and and and everything that comes with trying to figure out how to
walk in gravity again. And uh and you know, we finally get to the point where those aches become age appropriate and uh, and you're back to normal.
And you said that you do get it back pretty quickly though, that that when you're when you come back to Earth, all of a sudden, you got all of this weight on you that you didn't have, and your muscles are all screwed up because they don't know how to work again. But it snaps back, I think, is what you said.
It does. The mind. There's a couple of different layers. The mind snaps back and starts to appreciate that you're in an environment where everything doesn't float, and and it understands what's happening. Your balance comes back fairly quick within a couple of days. Uh. But the and you're strong because you're while you're on the space station two and a half hours a day every day, we're lifting weights and working.
Saw some videos if you work it out.
And so you come back strong, but you haven't had to balance and you know, stabilize your body, and so all the little muscles, all the joints take time to kind of reacclimate. And that's kind of the long pole.
So does it feel a little bit like you're drunk or something like. You just can't lose your balance.
So the wobbly goes away. It feels like you went and ran a marathon and it's the day after, and the joints ache, the muscles.
Ache, yellow legs a little bit.
You're a little slow trying to, you know, get up from sitting. Feels like you're twenty years older than you actually are. But slowly the body responds, and after a while it's like somebody flipped a switch and hey, I'm back to.
Normal, and you are you back to one hundred percent? You think, yeah, for it'll fall over when you're walking anywhere.
I have fallen over recently. Now back to as normal as I can be. The kind of the thing that I'm still waiting is you do lose some bone mass while you're up there, some bone density, and so your body will slowly accumulate that, and that's about a day per day. So at about the six month point, I'll truly be back to about one hundred percent.
Okay, So you mentioned cell phones and how you guys text each other because you don't get to see each other as much. But we were just talking with the author of a book called unplug who We were talking about how cell phones just rule your lives and is it possible just to turn it off and disconnect for a while. You had to do that, you had no choice.
Yeah, no cell phone coverage on the space station.
So even with all those Starlink satellites.
Even with all the satellites, you know, we still have email. We still have the ability to make phone calls, which is crazy, talk to somebody on the phone. And that's actually one of the things that I enjoyed doing, you know,
representing the Space Wars, being a guardian in space. I would take the opportunity every week steal some minutes at the end of a day and call down to one of the ops floors and surprise, one of the Space Force guardians is sitting there doing the mission that's helping protect me and say, hey, you know, just it's Nick on orbit. Just want to say thing I want to
say and see how things are going down there. And so it's the power of talking with somebody and hearing their voice and the emotion and the inflections and their voice. It's something that you really appreciate. But yeah, you're unplugged up there.
I love that. I love that Okay, we have one hundred other things to ask you, and I thought you were going to talk about talking to students and STEM because I believe you did that while you were up there as well. Absolutely, i'd love to ask you that when we come back. Plus, we want to find out more about life in space and then life back on
Earth and what's next for Colonel Haig. So if you'll hang tight, absolutely all right, this is NASA Astronaut Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig live with us in studio this morning. Real quick, we're going to get in your business with Bloomberg's Courtney Donaho. Good morning, Courtney. I know that we are abbreviated today, but we have just a couple of things to check in on, and one is how are the markets looking today.
Well, it's looking a little rough out there. Good morning. We just got a report on the health of the consumer. Retail sales felled by the most since the start of the year since May, suggesting that the new tariffs are holding back consumers from spending. So this is continuing to weigh on stocks, which were already under pressure from the conflict between Israel and Iran. Dow futures right now down
one hundred and ninety five points. It was a different story yesterday because stocks saw solid gains on a report that Iron wanted to rest our talks over its nuclear program. That Dow rose three hundred and seventeen points to wrap up the session.
It's amazing how much what's going on in the world affects these markets like this, and then wanted to take a quick look at Red Lobster. It's cooking up a comeback.
Yes, they're looking to attract a new generation of fans with some old favorites. The chain has brought back fried hush puppies and the crispy crunchy popcorn shrimp.
That was always my favorite.
But Red Lobster also has refreshed its menu with some new items to try to track people, including lobster pauper deli pasta, and bacon wrapped scalps. All right, Yeah, there's also they fought for bankruptcy, you have to remember last year for a number of reasons, including their unprofitable unlimited shrimp deal. So they're trying to do some things to try to correct all of that.
But delicious unlimited shrimp deal. Yes, getting in your business with Bloomberg's Courtney, donaho, let's do it again tomorrow, shall we definitely see you later? All right, thanks Courtney. We are talking to a true rocket man. It's NASA astronaut and Spaceforce Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, fresh off a trip to the International Space Station. And Colonel Haig, this was your second time up there. Oops, I got to turn your mica on.
There we go. Yeah, second time to the space station. I first, My first time up there was for seven months in twenty nineteen.
Okay, and we got to go back just a little bit because it was it was his second attempt when he got to the space station for the first time. What happened for the first attempt?
You know, if at first you don't succeed, try again. In fall of twenty eighteen, I was launching to the space station for a six month mission with a Lexey of chennin on a soy Use rocket and we had a failure in the middle of the launch that caused us to you know, a board to safely eject and the capsule came back down. So what was supposed to be a six month mission was a twenty minute flight. Wow.
So you launched, everything looked good, and then how far in. Did you know something was.
We were two minutes in. Everything was going fine. The first stage was separating and there was a problem where it didn't separate cleanly and it impacted the rocket that was continuing to burn, and it rapidly disassembled.
And so I love how you guys did it rapidly disassembled. I think that when SpaceX did their what's the name of the big rocket starship? Yeah, the starship, they said it went for like thirty minutes and then it rapidly disassembled.
Like yeah. So, so it all happened so fast. We were thirty miles up, going four thousand miles an hour in you know, the snap of a finger, The alarm goes off, the injection system fires some rockets and pulls us away and and there's some side to side shaking, and then we're just kind of coasting. We were going so fast. We continued to coast uphill until we got right to the edge of space.
Wow. Okay, So then when you eject, you don't eject like a fighter pilot ejectory, and you're still in the capsule.
So the rockets pulled the capsule away and then we landed in the capsule with parachutes just like we normally would actually really close to where we were going to land six months later, just a little bit earlier than we were expecting.
Okay, And this time when you came back after your six months, you brought Sonny and Butch back with you. You had to make some changes. And if you've been listening to Wake Up Call, we talked. We got to talk about some of those changes as it progressed, where it went from a four person crew to a two person crew. That made you the commander of the crew nine mission. And then you went up with two you came back with four. Yeah, And I have to ask you when you came back, it was the coolest thing
that we saw. Because several people that I've talked to, and of course I was watching when you splash down back on Earth and all of a sudden, a pod of dolphins shows up in the water like twenty feet from the capsule. Did you guys get to see that?
Yeah? Inside the capsule, we couldn't see it. The windows at that point had been charred over from re entry. And then they pull us all the way to the boat and then take us out. And it wasn't until I got back to Houston, and somebody showed me, you know, pulled put a phone in front of me and said, did you see this video? And I was like, dolphins.
It was the most amazing, surreal thing.
Lead it to nature. It's amazing all the technological feats of sending people to space and then and then having them splash down, the challenges of integrating crew members that hadn't trained on a vehicle to be part of a crew and lands, you know, safely, and then and then nature steals the show absolutely.
Okay, so you're back and right now we know that you're touring around and meeting with different groups and talking. And I know one of the things that you did while you're in space is you talked to STEM kids. Yes, And why is that so important for you and for Space Force?
And Vanessa, Well, you know, STEM is that found STEM science, technology education math or engineering math education is such a foundational necessity in our society and and it really is the fuel behind the things that that NASA does or the things that the Space Force does. And so it's important and to reach out to students and let them understand the importance of their education and and just and just what the opportunities that that education is going to
open up for them. So every chance I get, you know, try to get out and uh and and you know, inspire the next generation. I look at the you know, I go to go to K twelve's schools and and look at them, and I'm like, wanted to you do you want to be an Do you want to walk on Mars? Why not? Okay? And and try to inspire them a little bit.
I love that. What what was your first uh like aha moment? Hey, I want to be an astronaut.
I can distinctly remember when I was in elementary school and there was an astronaut that visited our our high school, and we brought the entire school together. It's Kansas, so a small school system. We brought everybody together and and you listen to them talk and and you realize, you know, that's just a person. They came from somewhere. You know, I come from somewhere. So why couldn't I do that? If that's something that interests me.
That So, if you had the opportunity, or maybe you already know about it, would you go back up?
Absolutely? The spaceflight? Is this on a personal level a challenge? Challenges everything you know about the Earth and yourself and the universe that we live in. And then just from being able to serve and do what we're doing for the country as well as for the world. You know,
the space station. We're up there doing scientific research and we're learning about ourselves and the universe around us, and that knowledge is for the benefit of humanity, and so how could you not want to be part of that?
Yeah, And you said, we're learning about ourselves. And I think that when we talked when you first got back, you were saying, you're kind of a science experiment for NASA right now.
You know, you raise your hand and you can be a guinea pig. And quite a few different experiments, and so there was about a dozen this last time around where I was the test subject and they were looking and prodding and then sometimes shocking, and yes they were shocking. Yeah, we were doing some muscle stimulation, trying to see if that might be an effective way to avoid having to bring all of that heavy equipment that we have to
use in order to do weight training. As we go to the Moon and on to Mars, mass and volume become really precious, and so we're trying to figure out alternatives.
Oh that's so fun. Okay, So in the short term, you've got something that I am so jealous of, and any Dodger fan, any baseball fan, has got to be so jealous of. Tell us what you're doing this evening.
Well, I get to go to I get to go to the Dodgers game tonight. Yes, and and get out on the mound and throw out a first pitch.
Can you believe that? Are you excited?
I am excited. Have you been practicing? I've if you may have caught me throwing a ball with my son.
Your son is looking at you right now because he's here in studio with Is he practiced enough? No?
That was a resounding no.
Okay, So we'll be watching you. And as I mentioned, you can channel your inner show hey, because he pitched for the first time last All right, all right, Colonel hag NASA Astronaut, Space Force Guardian. It has been such a pleasure to have you. I wish we had you all day because I have like pages and pages of things that I questions that I would love to ask you. But hopefully we'll get to talk again soon, because I
think that your journey is not over yet. Thank you Amy, all right, Colonel Haig, thank you, thank you so much. That's been Colonel Nick Haig in studio with us here exclusively at KFI. What a treat, that's been so much fun. Okay, 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. And if you missed any of wake Up Call, you can listen anytime on the iHeartRadio app. Go back and find out how
you can break up with your phone. And if you missed any of our interview with NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Hag, you can listen to that anytime on the iHeartRadio app. Also, I believe we're going to put this up on our website where you can go back and listen to all of the interviews that we've had with Colonel Haig over the past what year, year and a half, including video of when we got to talk to Colonel Haig when he was up on
the International Space Station. That was just one of the coolest things ever. If you haven't seen it yet, 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