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. I got it, proved a good call yours, Amy Kay, Good morning. This is your wake up call for Monday, May sixth. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Amy King. I hope you had a great weekend. Ready to get back to it. It was crazy busy for me. I had a friend in town and so we just decided to
do everything. Started off with the fall Guy on Thursday night, and then we went to the La County Fair for opening day on Friday night, and I spent way too much money. If you remember, I was talking to the CEO of the fair and we were talking about how my friend and I
liked to shop at the fair. Yeah, we did it upright. Then also went to Netflix is a Joke and got to see Leanne Morgan and I hadn't seen her before, but she is huh hilarious, Oh my gosh, so funny, so funny in fact that I got up on Sunday morning and watched her Netflix special. But she's really a hoot and very family friendly, but gosh, she was good. And then this morning we get to talk to another star of Netflix as a joke. Matt Rife is going to be
on with us. He's headlining one of the shows this week. And then of course we wrapped up our extravaganza weekend with the Dodgers who Killed Atlanta Saturday night eleven to two. That was a super fun game. But now it's Monday. Time to get back to it, and here is what it's ahead on Wake Up Call. UCLA will resume regular operations today. Classes are also scheduled to be back on at USC now that police have cleared out an encampment.
Over the weekend. Former President Trump will be back in court in his hush money trial in New York, following Friday's testimony from former top aid Hope Hicks, who testified that Trump was worried about his wife's reaction to paying off a former play by Playboy playmate, and a whole lot more. We're going to be talking with ABC's Peter harral Lumbus, who is in the courtroom to
find out what's on tap for today. Our own Steve Gregory's going to take a look at some of the failures at UCLA and how if plans had been implemented correctly, the mess and the mass arrests could have been prevented. Also, we're going to be talking to Plastic People director Ben Adelman. He's got a new documentary out, fascinating. That's all coming up. I told you it's going to be a big one. At six ZHO five it's handle on
the news. Palestinians have been ordered to evacuate Rafa, another sign that Israel is about to launch its ground offensive in the South. Let's get started with some of the stories coming out of the KFI T twenty four hour newsroom. UCLA and USC are set to resume regular campus operations following days of pro Palestinian protests that took police to clear out. Uclas's faculty can continue to hold classes remotely if they want through next Friday. Thelice and public safety officers at USC
cleared out a protest camp their early Sunday morning. At least a dozen student protesters received interim or full suspensions from the university, and several who lived in USC housing were given until five tonight to pack their stuff and leave the remains of two Australian men and an American who disappeared during a surfing trip to Mexico have been found. The men had been missing since late April. ABC's Matt
Rivers's. The remains were found in a well near Ensinata. The state Attorney General's office calling this a case of a robbery gone wrong, saying the culprits attempted to steal the tires from the group's car and when the men resisted, they were killed. The Ensinata Medical Examiner's Office had Friday the three were killed by gunshots to the head. Three people were being questioned by police, including a woman found with a cell phone that belonged to one of the murdered men.
A man from Fountain a Valley has been disqualified as the men's winner of the OC marathon because he took fluids from a spectator. Runners are only allowed to get water from official hydration stations. A runner from San Pedro was then declared the winner yesterday with the time of two hours, twenty five minutes, eleven seconds. A woman from Virginia won the women's race. Well, that's
got to be a bummer. Disqualified for taking a sip I guess you got to do it because maybe it's going to be a performance enhancing hydration or something like that. Let's say good morning now to ABC's Peter Harralumbus, who is in the courtroom in New York. It's day twelve of New York versus Trump. So let's turn back and talk about day eleven for a second. Trump's former aid Hope Hicks was on the stand. Yeah, it was an emotional day of pest on you. On Friday, Hope Picks testified for about two
and a half hours in the prosecution stse against Trump. She offered some really damaging blows to Trump's defense, acknowledging in a way that Donald Trump preferred the story about Stormy Daniels to come out after the twenty sixteen election rather than before when it could have hurt his chances of winning the actual election. That's a really major blow to support the prosecution theory that Trump was fundamentally concerned about winning
the election and wanted to height information from voters. Moments after she made that keeal mission, she broke down on the witness stands began to cry. Judge Maschawn called a brief break. She regains her composure just minutes later, she apologized to the jury, and she did a relatively gentle cross examination from Trump's lawyers. During that time. She gave them some minor wins, suggesting that Donald Trump fundamentally was concerned about hurting his family and wanted to protect them.
That goes towards the major defense points. But in a way, the damage was already done at that point. Hopepick's really delivering a major point. That computer's promise when they made their opening statements two weeks ago. Okay, And then how did former President Trump react to Hicks's testimony. It's interesting it was more of a non reaction in a way. Donald Trump wasn't very alert or active during most of the testimony. He was closing his eyes a lot of
the time. The two appear to avoid eye contact or looking at each other for a significant period of time. When Hicks, for example, began to cry and walked off the witness stand, she had to walk past Donald Trump in the courtroom, no real visible reaction from Donald Trump in that moment. When she re entered the courtroom, he barely moved his head to watch him
watch her enter. It was kind of stunning. These two are Hicks was one of Donald Trump's closest advisor's most trusted aid, akin to family in a way, and the lack of reaction between the two was a kind of surprise, especially after we saw Trump, for example, and his assistant Ronograss interacting in person after her testimony in the case. Trump for a Ronographs case, you know, got up in and shook Graft's hand basically and whish for some
words in his ears. No such interaction with Hicks, okay, And for then day twelve, we know that there's going to be testimony, but we don't know who's going to be on the stand. Is that right? That's correct. We still don't know publicly witnesses from the prosecutions in this case who's going to come next, though it does appear that the prosecutions needs to begin pivoting their case basically. Over the last two weeks, we've heard plenty of
salicious tales about this catch and kill scheme. Before the twenty sixteen election, we were testimony from David Pecker of the National Inquirer, Stormy Daniel's former lawyer, but really jurors have not heard anything about the falsification of business records that
comprise the thirty four criminal accounts in this case. So over the next few days, we expect prosecutors to begin following witnesses who can speak to that talking about Michael Cohen submitting fraudulent invoices for legal expenses when in reality he was just asking for reimbursement for the Stormy Daniels payment and the effort to get Trump to
sign those checks. So that's what we kind of expect over the coming days, though we don't necessarily know who prosecutors are going to call to make that point, Okay, and Peter, is it just us who don't know who's going to be getting in the testimony or does defense? Does the defense team also not know who it's going to be. It appears that defense team is
largely kept in the dark as well. Oftentimes we understand that they've been getting kind of an overnight notice of who's coming next, but the element of surprise has kind of been maintained throughout this entire trial. The main argument from prosecutioncy to defend that practice is if, for example, they declare the witness on Friday, Trump could spend the entire weekend attacking that witness on social media and
potentially intimidate that intimidate the potential witness. So that appears to be the case. Rashaan has had no problem with it, and defense attorneys they just had to work around that constraints and has that been done before, because it seems like the defense team should be able to prepare and they're not able to really do that if they don't know who's coming next. You know, it varies in a case by case basis in terms of how much advanced note you have
to give that's your next witness. There's no like formal rule on it. But at the end of the day, you know, defense lawyers have complained about this on at least two occasions publicly. On each occasion where Shawn has wighed kind of the benefits of advanced notice versus the threat of Donald Trump intimidating those witnesses, and he's continually sided with prosecutors. Again, Donald Trump at
this point has been held in criminal contempt nine times in this case. That doesn't really help his case when it comes to making a case for advanced notice when prosecutors say you might threaten witnesses. Okay, and then one last question before I let you go, what's happening outside court. Is it just sort of business as usual or are there are there people gathering outside or is there anything unusual going on so that the heavy police presence. For sure, there's
metal barricades all over the place. I'm looking out across the park outside of the courthouse. There have been minimal Trump supporters or protesters. For example, in the park right now, I see what appears to be five people wearing red Trump hats. But generally speaking, it's been a low presence of support. Trump is blamness on police presidents. I don't know if that's true at all. Really, there's been a slow trickle of support coming by holding mini
rallies in this park, but nothing too significant. All right, Well, we know you got to get to court, so we're gonna let you go. Peter Hira Alumbus, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All Right, we'll talk soon. So interesting to hear what's going on in the court to me, Like I said, I mean, you don't just sit and watch it. Well we haven't since you know Oj Simpson, and since there's no cameras. It's Peter My favorite thing still was listening to him.
I think we talked to him last week, and he was talking about some of the only sounds you hear in court are the mad, frantic typing of all the reporters who are in the room because they have to send updates out to their news organizations, and so they're all just tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. Anyway, let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty for our newsroom. Early this Monday morning.
Strong winds have caused some problems around southern California. Man, it was blustery yesterday afternoon. Scaffolding at a construction site in Hollywood got blown over yesterday onto some power lines. A couple of fires in the San Fernando Valley were pushed by wind gusts, and the wind may have helped push over a large tree onto a street in mar Vista, hitting two cars. Strong winds also caused organizers of the Beachlife Festival in Redondo Beach to shut down a few hours early.
That's a bummer. A dash bus driver in La has been attacked by a homeless woman, days after transit operators staged a sick out amid ongoing safety concerns. The woman yesterday went after the female driver after refusing to pay fifty cents for a ride. Video shows the woman pulling each other and throwing punches. The driver, who had been behind a partition, was pulled off the bus. She was eventually able to get back into the vehicle, shout out
the homeless woman and drive off. A college student in the Inland Empires been suspended for having an assault rifle on campus. That's not all police found. When authorities executed a search warrant at an apartment complex on Friday eight uc Riverside, they also found AMMO, five high capacity magazines, and hand drawn images in a journal that depicted a violent act. The content of the images has not been disclosed, and authorities will submit the case to the Riverside County DA
following a hearing at the college. Authorities also say that the student is ordered not to return a camps pending the outcome of the hearing. Andrew Caravella Kafi News UCR police say does not appear the incident is related to any recent campus protests. Six people have been hurt in the capsize of a boat near the Port of Los Angeles, and La County Lifeguard boat picked up the six from the sinking boat late yesterday afternoon. LA fire boat crews worked to upright the
boat after the rescue. The Fall Guy's number one at the box office, but the Ryan Gosling Emily Blunt movie about stuntmen opened below projections twenty eight and a half million dollars in ticket sales. I think the last I heard it was expected to bring in like forty million. A re release of Star Wars The Phantom Menace finished in second place with just over eight million dollars. Zendea's Tennis Love Triangle movie was third in its second week and release. Laped.
Officers in riot gearv cleared out a pro Palestinian encampment on the campus of USC. Officers formed a perimeter around Alumni Park, where dozens of tenths have been for the last couple of weeks. Officers reportedly corraled demonstrators outside the main section of campus and shut the gates. The tent camp is being cleared. No reports of arrest made. The latest round of Gaza ceasefire talks appear to have broken off, at least for now. Israel and hamaser trading blame for the
impasse in the long running negotiations. Involving Katari, Egyptian and US representatives. A lot of people partied to celebrate Sinko de Maya. Of course, that was yesterday, but a new poll shows most people don't know what they're celebrating. The poll, sponsored by Avocados of Mexico, shows only twenty two percent of people know that it's not Mexican Independence Day. Holiday celebrates the Battle of Puebla in Or eighteen sixty two, when the Mexican army defeated an invading French
occupation force at six o five its handle on the new South Dakota. Governor Christy Noem's book is about to be released and people are losing their minds over it. We'll tell you about that. Kfi's Steve Gregory says a report from the University of California shows UCLA failed to implement civil unrest protocols during those protests last week. The Robinson Day Report was compiled in twenty fourteen as a way for campuses in the UC system to find a universal way of handling various types
of protests, including one to ask for outside help. KFI News acquired a copy of the one hundred and four page report, which shows recommendations for ten campuses, including UCLA. Some of the recommendations are specific to a campus and others are system wide. But according to the president of the union representing police officers in the uc system, UCLA leadership dropped the ball when it came to handling the events leading up to and including the night the chpn LPD broke up
an encampment and made dozens of arrests the university itself. I don't know what they're guided by and how they make those decisions. I think oftentimes they want to try to solve the problems themselves, which is fine most of the times. But the warning signs were all there right when they started to fortify the encampment, when video from up above showed them gathering fire extinguishers, PPE and
other items. Those are telling signs that they're preparing for something, and so why they chose to wait to go into there, You'll have to ask them. Wade Stern is an officer with the UCU Riverside Police Department and the president of the Federated University Police Officers Association. He says they use the Robinson Eddy Report to establish rules of engagement, and one of the priorities on the list is first, using the university's own system Wide Response Team or sr team,
they're able to respond to civil disobedience and civil unrest on our campuses. That's what we're trained for. We are guided by the Robinson Eddley Report with our community Safety plan that's been put together by the university itself, the Office of the President. At the time our SRT team prior to had been called police did ask for our officers to respond for an SRT call out and then it
was canceled twice. The report also made forty nine recommendations for all ten uc campuses, which includes number fifteen requiring each campus police department to ask for help from other campus police departments before calling in outside agencies. Or number nineteen, which increases the training of campus police in the areas of crowd management, mediation
and de escalation. And how about number twenty two, which requires formal training of administrators at the state and local levels in the areas of crowd management, mediation and de escalation, the federal incident command structure, and police force options, all of which are to be refreshed annually. Stern says there's been no
new training since twenty twenty because of lack of funding. The report also includes a letter from UCLA Chancellor Gene Block dated October twenty third, twenty thirteen, certify the recommendations and the commitment to implement them. During my interview with Stern news Broke, the Chancellor Jean Bloc created a new Office of Campus Safety, which will be led by a former Sacramento Police chief with thirty years of public safety experience. So this is now trying to take police out of the direct
hands of the vice chancellor, which is executive leadership at the campus. And so now what you're going to have is is you're going to have a chief that is going to report to this guy who was going to report to a vice chancellor who's going to report to the chancellor. More bureaucracy, more bureaucracy. What you're going to have is you have a chief that you've been trusted, right, that has over a thirty years experience in law enforcement, that
you hire to handle law enforcement on campus and safety on campus. And now you're bringing in another person with the same amount of experience. Because the chief over at UCLA oversees the police department and emergency management. So you're bringing in somebody else with thirty year years of experience to oversee the chief and emergency services. I don't understand. I'm trying to make sense of that. Does it sound more like an ass covering move than more of a tactical move. Yeah,
I mean the timing of this doesn't look good right, students. Is a good example of just how UCLA's police department was restrained by campus leadership can be illustrated by this phone call between a UCLA police dispatcher and the mother of a Jewish student who claims her son had been refused entry to the campus library by pro Palestinian protesters. Unfortunately, the police are not interveaning with that right now. And this is coming from the university. So if you had any
concessions to concern you with taking with the university itself. So the university has taken a stance that they will not in fact allow or help Jewish students get to their classes. That this is going to be tolerated as the directive cannot
entertain at this time year. In the statement last Thursday, Chancellor Jeene Block said the university's approach to the encampment that was established on Royce Quad had been guided by several equally important principles, the need to support the safety and well being of bruins, the need to support the free expression rights of the community,
and the need to minimize disruption to the teaching and learning mission. Locke said they'll continue to investigate the violent incidents, especially that horrific attack by a mob of instigators. When physical violence broke out that night, leadership immediately directed the university's police chief to call for the support of outside law enforcement. Leadership
is carefully examining the security processes that night. Wade Stern says he hopes the investigation will reveal all of the events leading up to the moment the HP and LAPD went in. He says, it's a lot like the scene of a plane crash. Investigators don't focus solely on the crash itself, but the chain of events that led up to the event. The theory being all crashes have a chain of events, long or short, that lead to a crash.
A crash doesn't happen without warning, and if the sequence of events is recognized and acted upon, the chain of events is broken and the crash avoided. For wake up call, I'm Steve Gregory. Kay if I news pretty interesting stuff. Huh. Hopefully they'll get their acts together. I'm watching American Idol.
Are you watching American Idol? They're down to the top five, and I think that I finally got a little vindication for my Abby Carter, who I told to you about it last week and said, I think she's fabulous. I thought she was gonna win. Then I didn't think she was going to win because I didn't think the judges were with her. But they might be back in her quarter corner. She did Hello by Adele last night,
and here's just just a piece of it. He's so true and so it so for good Jenny go Home. She practically brings me to tears every time she sings. And the judges even said that that was angelic and beautiful and they really liked it last night. So and she's still in it. So oh, if you haven't watched it, sorry, Okay. About twenty UCLA faculty members have called for amnesty for pro Palestinian student protesters who were arrested at
the university at a protest Saturday night. In addition to amnesty for the students, they called for Chancellor Jene block to resign. Two bodies have been found in a makeshift cave in Northridge. LA Fire says it found the bodies along with a white powder in the cave yesterday morning near North Lindley Avenue. Willy say the two people found were transients. Former President Trump will be back in court in his high money trial in New York following Friday's testimony from former top
aid Hope Hicks. She testified that Trump was worried about his wife's reaction to paying off a former playboy playmate, but also said that the story coming out before the election wasn't a good thing. At six oh five, it's handle on the news. Another bus driver in LA has been attacked. At five point fifty, we're talking to the director of a new documentary called Plastic People. And it's not about plastic surgery. It's very scary, very disturbing,
and you're gonna want to be listening for that one. All right. Now, let's say good morning to the star of Natural Selection on Netflix. And one of the stars of the Netflix is a joke festival comedian Matt Rife. Now, Matt, Natural Selection got ten million views in its first week of release. That's pretty impressive. You know, I think it did okay. Thank you for having me, good morning. It did do okay, And
I will tell you that I had not seen it until just recently. Dang, you're funny, but you kind of leave no stone unturned and it's not for the faint of heart. Oh well, thank you. I think that's a compliment. It is. I mean, it's comedian. It's a comedian's job to push boundaries, right, And if we have a unique comedic perspective on something, why not talk about it exactly? And in your special you say that at the very beginning, you kind of say, yeah, I'm
kind of testing the waters with the audience. I'm wondering, do you really test the waters or is it kind of damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. Now, every comedian does that. That's why you usually choose which couple of jokes you're going to start a show with to like just kind of test the tone of an audience, because every audience at every show, at every city
across the country is completely different. Right. Yeah, you might do a joke in one city and it could crush, and you go try the exact same joke in another city and nobody likes it at all, So you do have to theoretically just test the water and see what the tone of the audience is and figure out what they're going to be into and the kinds of things that you might be able to even steer them in a direction they didn't think
they were going to be comfortable going, and then you show them that there's actually a very funny way to talk about the thing that makes them feel uncomfortable, and now you have a great show. Yeah. I'm wondering, Matt if you've found or had to change anything in any way because everything is so PC. Comedy seems to sort of be the last bastion of political incorrectness.
Does it play into your performances? No, I do not care the things that the things that upset you and offends you comedically are not my problem. I'm sorry. I don't pander to the audience that doesn't like my comedy. I perform to the people who do like what I have to say and the kind of jokes I do like to tell. You can't sit around and base your whole life off of the things that people don't like about you, and there's so many things that people do like about you. And I don't believe
there's any limit for comedy whatsoever. There's nothing you can't make a joke about if it's all done creatively and with the right intentions, which are just to make people laugh. Do you think that being a good observer helps make you be a better comic? Oh, yes, ma'am. You're happy to have to take in your surrounding, especially especially if you're gonna do some crowd work.
I mean, that's what I've found to be the most effective is so simply just be present, listen to what they have to say, really observe the story they're telling you, and ask inquisitive questions that are going to lead to unique, funny answers, not just not just where you're from, how long you've been dating, you have kids, you know what I mean, Like the basic setups, being present and being informed is definitely a comedian's best
tools. Yeah. And I watched some clips of you on YouTube. You were just completely off the cuff and interacting with some people who had disabilities in the audience, and it was no holds barred, and I was like, Wow, you did that in a way that was funny, a little bit uncomfortable, but made sense and wasn't like nasty, rude or anything like that. It wasn't demeaning or anything like that. I was really impressed by it,
and it was darned funny. Well, thank you. I mean, that's the purpose of comedy is it's supposed it's with the intention for everybody to laugh. You're obviously not going to appeal to everybody. That's an impossible task. There's eight billion people on the planet not anything to like you. You've got thirty three million of them following you though, So thank you. And
I'm even more happy that a few of them are handicapped. When these people come to shows, they're also there to have a good time, like they they are aware of the conscious decision being made to come laugh at a comedy show tonight. And so many comedians, and not just comedians, by the way, normal human beings greet people so different, like they're not just normal
human beings who happen to have a slight disability. You know, so many people are so uncomfortable or afraid to laugh about the same things that these people also might want to laugh at. Like nobody even takes the time to ask than what they find funnier or their perspective on things. So when these people get to come and I get to just have a normal interaction with them, it stuns more people than it should. Honestly, I'm just so happy they
get to come and have fun. Absolutely, I think, especially today, we all need a good laugh, and I think a lot of people are going to be laughing a lot because you're headlining for the Netflix is a joke comedy series, and that's happening May e that the Hollywood Bowl go Mad May eight. I'm so excited about it. I've wanted to play this venue since the first time I ever visited LA when I was sixteen. The Beatles played
there in nineteen sixty four. I mean, it's it's the most iconic venue in LA And the fact that I get to now play it and headline it as the youngest comedian to ever get to play the Hollywood Bowl, It's a dream come true. And I'm planning on it being the best show of the entire five hundred show tour that we're on right now. So I think people have they come out expect to see me for an hour. I have a
lineup of a bunch of my hilarious friends. We have some prize guests popping in, as well as a musical performance by rapper performer Core Day as well one of my very good friends. It's a jam pack show, okay, and Matt Rife, Where can people follow you? Because I know, like I said, thirty three million are following you. But if you know you're one of the people who hasn't followed him yet, where do they do that? Pretty much? Everything is just my name, just Matt Rife, m
Att rif e TikTok. I think has an underscore in between my first and last name. But other than that, just my name. Go search it see if I'm funny or not. All right, Netflix is a joke and Matt Rife is a star, and we appreciate your time. Knock him dead, Matt, have a great time, and thanks so much for taking time to talk to us on wake up call. Thank you so much. I'll
see you, sir. I hope so very funny guy. Netflix is a joke, is going on through May twelfth, and it's everywhere and if you go down I hadn't been down to Hollywood, so when we went down there on Saturday to the Pantagious, there's just signage everywhere, and it's like at all the theaters. It's at the Egyptian and the Welter and and the Pantagious, and the and the Bowl and the Kia Forum and several other locations.
And if you are looking for a good belly laugh, the shows are going on again, as I mentioned, through May twelfth, and you can just go to the Netflix is a Joke website and see all the shows. They're still even adding shows and there are some that are sold out, some that are getting close to being sold out. But I was literally crying at Leanne Morgan on Saturday, and I haven't been to a comedy show for a while,
so that was a lot of fun. Highly recommend it. Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. You CLA and USC are set to resume regular campus operations following days of pro Palestinian protests on campus. Of course, police had to come in to clear those out. UCLA says faculty can continue to hold classes remotely if they
want through Friday. Police and public safety officers at USA cleared USC rather cleared out of protest camps yesterday early early in the morning At least a dozen student protests received interim or full suspensions from the university, and several who lived in USC housing were given until five tonight to pack their stuff and get out. The La County Youth Climate Commission has submitted its report to the Board of Supervisors.
After ten months of work, including surveying and meeting with young people under the age of eighteen, The county's first youth Climate Commission has found their top priorities cleaner air, green spaces, and green buildings. Commission member Isaac Michael Lebara says he learned how younger people feel the impact of climate change differently, like during a power outage, air conditioners don't work, and then when that happens, you know, students can't sleep at home and they're expected to sit
in classrooms that are just as hot, if not worse. The commission is made up of young people from around the county and is believed by the Board of Supervisors to be the first of its kind in the nation. Michael Monks KFI News Attention shoppers, there's a new push to get rid of self checkouts in California. A bill making its way through the legislature would change regulations in hopes of cutting down on theft. The bill says it would also boost employment
by increasing the number of employees monitoring the stations at the checkouts. The California Chamber of Commerce is against the move, saying it could hurt business. The Dodgers take on the Marlins tonight at seven o'clock. Listen to every play of every Dodgers game on AM five to seventy LA Sports live from the Gallpin Motors Broadcast booth. You can stream all the games in HD on the iHeartRadio app Keyword AM five seventy LA Sports. And as I mentioned, I was a
game Saturday night, eleven to two win over Atlanta. It was fabulous Love the Dodgers. A UC Riverside student has been suspended and ordered to stay away from campus after an assault rifle was discovered in the Students on Campus apartment Please Say A rifle, ammunition, and a journal with drawings depicting violence were found in the apartment when a search warrant was issued at North District apartments. The
Riverside County DA is going to decide if charges will be filed. The latest round of GAZA CSP talks appear to have broken off, at least for now. Israel and Humas are trading blame for the impasse in the long running negotiations involving Katari, Egyptian and US representatives, and California's tourism is at an all
time high. In a social media video recorded from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday, Governor Newsom says visitors are coming to experience the wonders of this state, from a world renowned coastline to the world's tallest trees, to iconic cities and theme parks. New data shows last year's spending topped a record breaking one hundred and fifty billion dollars. We're just minutes away from handle on the news this morning, Boeing is about to go out of this world.
But right now we're going to say good morning to Ben Adelman. He makes documentary films, TV shows, commercials. He's made several award winning feature documentaries that have been featured at film festivals including sun Dance. Also, you can see some of his work on Apple TV, Disney Plus, Netflix and others. Let's say now good morning to the director of a new documentary called Plastic People, Ben Adlman. Good morning, Ben, Hi there, good morning,
nice to be here. Well, I appreciate you getting up to talk to us this morning. I just watched Plastic People yesterday. I wanted to have it fresh in my mind, and I tell you, it's a pretty stark reality that we're facing. And right out of the gate, this documentary says, you know what, we're in trouble. We're basically becoming plastic people. So tell us what the documentary is about, Ben, sure, Well, it's basically about the human health impacts of microplastics and microplastics if it's a
new term to some people. They're just basically very small, tiny pieces of plastics, so that would be like five millimeters or smaller. And they're here because one of the things we're sort of learning about plastic now is that it's basically an indestructible material. That's why it's such a useful material. It never really disappears or bio degrades. It just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until it becomes essentially microplastics or microscopic, I should say, which
is sort of the same thing. So you could say, we say in our film that you know, basically every single piece of plastic that's ever been made, you know, over like you know, the you know, one hundred year history of making plastic still exists here on earth, like in some form, just as smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller form. And of course, you know, I'm sure people know that we've made a lot, a lot, a lot a lot of plastics, and we're just making more
and more and more and more of us. So basically it's everywhere. It's in the air, in the water, in the dust, in the food, you know, everywhere on Earth, like the top of the Arctic, in the bottom of the ocean, and the latest frontier. And this basically what our film looks at is that it's getting into our into our bodies. So essentially everywhere you look for microplastics, they find them everywhere. You say, was there anywhere that you said that you didn't test it? Because I
was watching the documentary. I don't want to give it all away, because I want you to watch it. This is it was fascinating, But like all the tests, it was like everything everywhere in your food, in your blood system, in the air, I mean everywhere. Yeah, I mean
it's essentially a new but growing field of sort of study and science. But I don't know one hundred percent, but I in all the research I did for more than a year, and other people working in the film, they didn't look anywhere and not find it, including all all over the human body.
So you know, obviously it's hard to sort of look in the human body, but you know, they found it in lung blood, people's species, you know, more disturbing in like placentas of pregnant women, and then our sort of film climaxes with fighting it in the human brain for the first time. Yeah, so that's it. And you know, they really are everywhere in the sense that like you're breathing them in right now. I'm breathing
them in right now, and I'm sure everybody listening also is okay. And then bed you also go into in the documentary a little bit about how plastic became so popular and whether it was like, oh, we could use this and it's sort of a natural evolution that it became so popular, or was
it kind of pushed on us. Yeah, it's definitely pushed us. I mean, especially you know, these sort of miracle materials were invented, you know, in the twenties and thirties, and it became super useful and got more and more in youth, and you know, not to go too far back in history, but in World War Two is when they really really really ramped up production, especially in the US, kind of like, you know, make this useful material and sort of push it out. And it was
extremely useful. But then at a certain point, you know, they reached the limits of how much plastic they could sell, and this concept of single use or disposable throwaway material, with classic being a big part of it, came into use. And you know, as you say that, people didn't take to that super easily at first, because you know, our grandparents are great grandparents, you know, they weren't you know, accustomed to just using
things once and then throwing them away. So there were literally campaigns to teach people, yeah, you should throw it away. It's good to throw it away. There was an article in Time magazine or is it Life magazine, Life magazine called Throwaway Living, and it was sort of like advertising this concept of just like this entire meal, this entire sort of picnic, that this nice family's having everything here could just be thrown away. You don't have to
bother cleaning anything out. So we were trained to be a throwaway society. We were basically trying to do it. Yeah, yes, and advertising played a big role in it, and people resisted for a while until, you know, we get some sort of the point where we are now, where fifty percent of the plastic made, you know, which is a huge amount, is made for single use applications. So this indestructable material is used designed to be used once and then thrown away and then it essentially lives forever.
That's that's encouraging. So I think it's been The way that you chose to film the documentary was very interesting. It's in the present day, but it looks and sounds more like it was made in the seventies. Just so the way that the film presents itself. Why did you choose to do it that way? Well, yeah, well yeah, I mean that's as you to say. It was sort of I guess it was sort of style, a style choice to give it a bit of that, you know, it's a
bit of a dark subject. We wanted it also to sort of have a fun element and a watchable elements, so that sort of you know, that retro futuristic plastic world. You know that was sort of promised to people in like the sixties, seventies and a little bit the eighties. We were using a lot of footage from that era, so we kind of incorporated that style into the film in general. It makes it really a little bit ironic,
a little bit fun to watch. Yeah, Okay. What I appreciated about the documentary too, Ben, is that you don't just show us the sobering reality of what the current situation is and kind of push us off the cliff and walk away. There is a glimmer of hope in there too, which I appreciate. Sure, yeah, thanks. I mean one of the easiest things to sort of address is all this sort of single use plastic. And
you know, most of us remember time. I mean I don't remember time without plastic, and I'm sure most people don't really, but a time when you know, most of the time you went to the seven eleven, you know it was glass, not plastic that you bought your like iced tea in, or you know, apply that to like almost everything. You know, pickle jars would always would have been glass. So I mean, we know
how to do it in a lot of ways. And could take a big, big chunk out of the extra plastic that we make pretty easily without you know, affecting people's lives too much. So yeah, that's where I would start. And then there's all kinds of other things being worked on, technological
solutions and other things. Yeah. You know, I've got my reusable shopping bags, and I've not been a huge prop proponent of getting rid of them because, you know, like you said, they they've taught us that they're very convenient, and like they're now looking at getting rid of the plastic vegetable bags and plastic bottles. But after seeing this, I'm really kind of rethinking it. And then also, like when I was getting ready for bed last night, I'm like, Okay, I'm brushing my teeth. It's plastic.
My toothpaste is in plastic. Oh but that container over there is plastic. It is everywhere. It's so pervasive. It's like, how do you get away with it? Get away from it? Yeah, it's pretty overwhelming to me. I Mean what I've done in my sort of personal life is just tried to just focus on the single use. Yeah, you know, I work in like on film crewise and they men it's about as bad as it
gets. You know what. People just the first thing that the you know, production saysiness do is buy like a case of bottled water, and we do. We do do a lot less of that now And it just happened kind of instinctively. But yeah, it does feel like in a big problem. But you know, there are people working on it. There are people trying to regulate these things, make less toxic plastic, plastic that actually biodegrades, which is early doesn't really happen. There's a study you see you see
San Diego. They're working on it, and they're saying that they've discovered some way that makes the plastic biodegrade. So it'll be interesting to see if they actually can pull that off. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people are working on it. I mean, the promise of biodegradable plastic was a little you know, ahead of itself because it turns out that biodegradable plastic or you
know, still created these microplastics and still was pretty toxic. But people are working on the non toxic version of it now, you know, as we speak. Well, I think in the meantime, the easiest thing for people to do is just sort of reduce a little bit of there's the single use plastic. You know, it's all often unnecessary, and I'm not saying every
single use obviously there's there's very useful uses. And also people should be aware that you might get the impression that we're using less plastic because like you said, of usable you know bags that we take the grocery stores. But we're actually making more and more and more and more plastic, and if you look closely, you'll see it in places you don't expect. Yeah, it's it's everywhere. Yeah, Okay, Ben, thank you so much. How how
can we see this video this documentary? Well, well, we're on Canadian and it was a Canadian production, so right now it's going to be broadcast in Canada, but we we're working on the American distribution. There's a distributor working to like get it onto streamers and it'll definitely be in you know, theaters all over the US and like community screenings and university screenings and things like that. So there's a website, plastic People doc dot com that people could
look at and soon enough there will be US screenings and streaming. Okay, for now, plastic people dot dot com. The movie or the movie documentary is called Plastic People, and Ben Adelman, one of the people interviewed, says, we didn't get there in a day. We're not going to get out of it in a day. But it's a really fascinating documentary and on this day, we appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about Plastic People. Thanks Ben, oh, thank you very much, my pleasure.
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