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This is it's five o'clock. This is your wake up call for Thursday, April tenth. Good morning, I'm Amy King. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Keep your radios close. This morning we get to talk to Colonel Nick Haig. He's a Space Force guardian and NASA astronaut, and last time we talked to him, he was live on the International Space Station. Now he's got his feet back on the ground and he's gonna come visit wake up call that's happening a little bit later this hour, so please
do stick around. Can't wait to talk to him about his adventures and a spacewalk and you know, like everything that is just something that none of us get to experience except for you know, a handful of people on this planet. I'm just so excited to have Colonel Hag back with us again. Here's what's ahead on wake up Call. Stock futures are down this morning after a huge bounce
back on Wall Street. The Dow gained more than twenty nine hundred points yesterday following President Trump's announcement that a ninety pause was being put on tariffs for everyone except China. The President announced tariffs against China would increase to one hundred and twenty five percent. A US Russian national from Los Angeles has been freed in a prisoner swap between the US and Russia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Ballerina Casina Krolina is on her way back to the US.
Garolina was serving a twelve year sentence after being convicted of treason last year for making a fifty two dollars donation to a charity aiding Ukraine. Construction on the first house to be rebuilt following the fire in Pacific Palisades is underway. Mayor Bass toured the construction site yesterday. She said for those who want to rebuild, she's looking at what permit fees can be waived. Sixty eight hundred homes, businesses, and other buildings burned down in the Palisades fire in January.
Bloomberg's Courtney Donaho joins us a little earlier than normal this morning. She's going to be with us at five point twenty. We will of course be talking about the near history day on Wall Street, the Dow closing, of course up more than twenty nine hundred points. We're gonna also go to check in with ABC's Karen Travers and talk to why the President announced those ninety day tariffs, and then, of course, at the bottom of the hour, Colonel hag Fresh office six months in space leading the
Crew nine mission to the International Space Station. Let's get started with some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. As construction to rebuild the Palisades gets underway, La Mayor Bass says she's looking at ways to ease traffic congestion around the burn area in the Palisades. Speaking to KTLA outside of home where construction has begun, Bass says she's got some ideas, so we're looking at a lot of options.
Maybe we do the debris removal at night, maybe we have some of the trucks go at night.
So we're examining all of that right now. Bass was in the Palisades to visit with a homeowner who has received a permit to rebuild. She says she's also looking at which permit fees can be waived as rebuilding efforts pick up. LA. School district officials say federal officials, we weren't allowed to go into two elementary schools this week. The district says the Homeland Security Department officials were denied entry to the Lillian Street and Russell Elementary Schools. Both
schools are in South LA. The feds are jumping into the homeless problem in the Southland.
US Attorney Bill A. Saley and US District Judge David Carter visited LA's skid row. As Salely tells kfi's Tim Comway Junior, his office has begun an investigation into how money for homeless programs has been spent in the area.
All we know right now is that there's at least two billion dollars that's unaccounted for voting to an audit that was just conducted last month, and that's not a rounding, era.
Judge Carter ordered an audit of the LA Homeless Services Authority and the City of LA's homeless spending. Saley says it found the more than two billion dollars had been poorly accounted for with limited evidence of results. Michael Krozer KFI News.
Today is Delores Horta Day in LA. The La County Board of Supervisors voted to honor the legendary lab and civil rights activist's ninety fifth birthday. She was born April tenth, nineteen thirty in New Mexico and moved to Stockton as a child. She co founded the United farm Workers' Union with Caesar Chavez. Let's say good morning now to ABC's Karen Travers. So, Karen, if there's one predictable thing about President Trumpet said, He's unpredictable.
Yes, And you know, this is a complete reversal from what he had said on Monday, where he told my colleague Mary Bruce that he was not looking at a pause on tariffs to allow for negotiations. And that's exactly what he did yesterday. His team said yesterday that this was the strategy all along, that this was the president's
negotiating strategy. But the President then undercut that message by saying that he was looking at the markets, that he saw people getting a little yippie, a little afraid, and that the markets were looking a little glum over the last few days, and that that was driving his decision to put this pause in place.
Okay, And what exactly happened? And why does he say that he did it. I mean, you said that it was because they were yippie.
That's what he said. I mean his reason yesterday was because of the markets, That's what he said. His advisor said it was because countries were reaching out to negotiate. But we asked him on Monday, why not put a pause in place before they go into effect? Because countries had already started reaching out to negotiate at that point. Why not not move forward with it and just do negotiations. Why announce it last week when you know you could
have had negotiations already. But the President said, you know, no, we're full steam ahead. He wasn't looking at a pause. The tariffs went into effect. They were in effect for thirteen hours before the President announced this reversal, and the reasons he cited yesterday all related to the stock market. Okay, and the bond market, I should say, okay.
And then the big exception to pausing all the tariffs is China.
Yes, China now has one hundred and twenty five percent tariff all goods coming into the US from China. China has retaliated significant teriffs on US goods. They've also said this morning that they're going to limit the number of Hollywood films that will be shown in China as a way to strike back at you know, American cultural exports as well. And this is showing no signs of flowing down that Chinese have not engaged at all with the White House. Despite the White House please to reach out,
let's talk, let's have negotiations, they're not doing that. They have said they're going to fight this to the end, and that the United States trade policy right now amounts to economic bullying. So it's not clear where this goes, Like what's the end in sight here when it comes to China. One thing though, is that like this could grind trade between the two countries to a halt.
Okay, and there's a lot of it. I mean that's a huge amount of.
Trade, Okay, significant amount of trade. And also you know you think, well, you as a consumer. People out there by a lot of products, and then you think of the materials that go into things for small businesses, a lot of that comes from China, and that's the significant concern for companies that are, you know, getting parts and things. People that have already placed orders at this point, they've already paid for things and now they're on their way here.
They've bought their stuff whatever that is. Well, should say widgets. You know, you bought one hundred dollars of widgets and now that widget when it gets offloaded at the ports in California, is going to have an additional one hundred and twenty five dollars charge to it. You didn't factor that in when you made your business plan.
What are you going to do?
Right? And what happens if you don't accept the shipment? I mean, I just could imagine at the ports it could be kind of a nightmare.
Okay, Yeah, I mean it's going to be. And that's all coming in the next couple of weeks.
Okay, and we will be watching it because, as we were just talking about the everything changes so quickly these days, kind of hard to keep track of it. But thank you for helping us make sense of it. Karen Travers, have a great day, all right, you too. Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. House Speaker Mike Johnson has
delayed a vote on President Trump's budget bill. The bill, which passed the Senate, includes tax cuts, more immigration enforcement, more defense spending, and a higher debt limit. The House was set to vote last night, but some Republicans opposed it, mainly because the Senate's version only includes four billion dollars in spending cuts. The House wants up to two trillion in cuts. The vote's been pushed back to today at
the earliest. The Department of Homeland Security says the Trump administration will keep deporting alleged gang members to El Salvador. ABC's Matt Rivers says they're being held in a notorious prison. There's a reason why it's become known as infamous.
It is an incredibly harsh place, is brutal. Frankly, it is depressing, and it is designed to be that way.
He says. It was built as part of the El Salvador government's push to clean up crime in that country. Forty five thousand pounds of cocaine worth a half billion dollars has been seized by the Coast Guard in Florida. Attorney General Pam Bondi says the Coastguard used drones, aircraft and ships to ter intercept the traffickers leading to the bus yesterday.
What they did saved countless American lives.
Countless lives.
This cocaine would have been distributed throughout our country and perhaps throughout our world.
Bondi says the drugs originated from Mexican cartels. Eleven people have been arrested in connection with the bust. The Supreme Court has reversed a lower court ruling that ordered the Trump administration to reinstate two heads of watchdog agencies. The High Court says it will hear arguments from the lawyers for the head of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board on why they should be
allowed to keep their positions. The search for survivors of the nightclub roof collapse in the Dominican Republic is over, and victim recovery efforts are now underway. ABC's Victor Akendo says the death toll is at at least two hundred and eighteen.
Just an incredibly difficult scene. Here outside of the jets at nightclub.
You can see where the roof collapse.
There's all that heavy machinery.
He says. At least one American has died ahead of the trial in the Idaho college killings. The defense is pushing for the death penalty to be taken off the table because of Brian Cooberger's autism spectrum disorder. At a pre trial hearing yesterday, Judge Stephen Hipler said he didn't think that's relevant.
Stay should not make the general argument that somehow the diagnosis is an aggravating factor.
The trial is set to start later this summer. Flying could soon become less stressful.
American Airlines is teaming up with Customs and Border Protection on a plan. They say we'll make international flights move more quickly. Passengers would no longer pick up their bags when they arrive and then recheck them for a domestic connecting flight. Instead, the luggage would be transferred automatically. The carrier says this will enhance safety. The pilot program will be tested on flights from Sydney to Los Angeles, dep remark KFFI.
News speaking of airlines Delta Airlines has pulled its financial outlook for this year, saying it's because of concerns about where global trade is headed. Virgin Atlantic is cutting back its scheduled flights from London to New York and Seattle this winter. The travel and tourism industry is a big part of the US economy. It contributed more than two trillion dollars in twenty twenty two. It also supports more
than nine million jobs. You'll soon be paying more to wish people happy birthday, happy anniversary, or congratulations the old fashioned way. The Postal Service is raising the price of a first class stamp from seventy three oh I believe seventy eight percent Tito there sorry. Postcard stamps will go up from fifty six to sixty two cents. The USPS says prices are still among the most affordable in the world. Two La City council committees have advanced a plan to
hike trash collection fees by more than fifty percent. If it's approved by the city council on Friday, it would be the first increase in seventeen years. Cities looking for ways to raise revenues as it faces a nearly billion dollar budget shortfall. A fifth person has died following a high speed crash into a tree in Santa Anna. Authority say a thirteen year old girl, who was on life support following the crash late Saturday night, has succumbed to
her injuries. Most of the people killed were teenagers. Police are still investigating what led to the deadly crash. Pope Francis has met privately with King Charles the Third and Queen Camilla at the Vatican. The royal couple is in Italy to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. It was the first confirmed meeting for the Pope since he returned to the Vatican after spending five weeks in the hospital with
life threatening double pneumonia at six zho five. It's handle on the news, was it art of the deal or a fix because of a falling stock market. Bill's going to be talking about the huge gains on Wall Street following the president's announcement of a ninety day pause in tariffs. Okay, so we had to switch stuff up a little bit this morning because we get to talk to Colonel Nick Haig, a NASA Astronaut Space Force guardian. We've talked to him several times as he was getting ready for his trip
to the International Space Station. And then we were so lucky we got to talk to him while he was on the International Space Station. And now he's back on Earth, so we're going to be talking to him in about ten minutes. And so we moved Courtney Donaho, Bloomberg's Business Specialist, Getting In Your Business, to five twenty. But maybe she didn't get the message because we haven't heard from Courtney, so we're going to try to reach out to her.
And there's a lot to talk about with his stock market. Man, was that crazy? When President Trump announced the pause and tariffs at about ten o'clock yesterday Actually it was just about ten fifteen yesterday morning, and immediately the stocks shot up and ended the day up for Dow twenty nine hundred points. Right now the Dow futures are down like four hundred and eighty one points or down. Now it's down five point fifty nine, so maybe things are looking
a little better. But now we have Courtney Donahoe, So glad you could join us early. We're Getting in Your Business with Bloomberg's Courtney Donahoe. Thanks so much for joining us early today. Courtney. I guess the only thing we can say is buckle up. We were just talking while we were waiting to connect with you about the crazy day it was on Wall Street.
Oh my goodness, it was unbelievable. All the tariff twists and turns continue with the President announcing that ninety day tariff pause. The New York Stock Exchange actually exploded in huge roar as the news hit, but Wall Street was practically begging for some relief, and yesterday traders got it, with the S and P five hundred, ending the day up nine and a half percent. Now this morning, it's
not looking so good. It's looking pretty rough out there, looking at Dow futures down five hundred eighty eight points, SMP futures falling one point nine percent. But kind of buried in all of this news in just a few minutes from now. And why I kind of have to jump here is the March consumer price report is going
to be on an economisty. Inflation likely stepped down last month, but the information it contains is somewhat stale compared to some of the big economic policy changes that came in the past week.
Okay, and you have to jump, yes, I do. It's so busy here today. I'm sorry, well, and we appreciate you, you know, adjusting your schedule. So we'll be watching and see what happens, and then we'll talk to you tomorrow and get a recap of everything. Exactly, exactly. Have a great day to all right, Bloomberg's Courtney Donahoe getting in your business in an abbreviated version today, I would imagine if you have anything to do with the financial industry,
things are a little hectic. It's crazy. Okay, let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. The LAPD says it's looking for a father who allegedly abducted his nine year old daughter and seven year old son in Silmar after he lost custody. The children were last seen at their elementary school around eleven am on Tuesday. He was picked up
by their father, who's Ukrainian. Police say Rhodian Colomets was presumed to be driving a twenty sixteen gray Toyota Prius with California license plate ending In nine six six, a man is dead after confronting shoplifters in a parking lot in South Almani. The man's brother, Yamshid Yagoubi, says it all happened really fast yesterday afternoon.
It was three guys.
Two was in the car. They opened the door, they come out and one of them they punched my brother.
He go down.
The sixty year old man was helping at his brother's stores. No arrests have been made and police have not at least a description of the shoplifters who got away in their car. Plans to expand the La Convention Center have been approved by the full city Council.
The project is estimated to cost more than two billion dollars, but city council wants that price tag and other risks to come down. Councilman Isabelle Herado says the city can't wait any longer to improve its outdated center.
Moving forward with this project, albeit cautiously and responsibly, will help us regain our competitive bitch.
Plans to revitalize the Convention Center seemed dead earlier this year because of the city's financial condition. Now the plan is for a phased approach, with work done until the Olympics had been finished. After the games. Michael Monks KFI News.
Some Democrats say they want Congress to investigate if anyone may have known about President Trump's tariff moves in advance. ABC Jurine Shaw says they want to know if anyone may have benefited from the drastic market shifts.
About six trillion wiped out from the S and P five hundred, a major selloff in American bonds led by China and Japan.
Some experts belief could have swayed the president. The Dow Jones, S and P five hundred, and NASDAK all reversed their losses yesterday. Amazon says it's canceling orders for a lot of products made in China and other Asian countries so it won't have to pay tariffs on them. The products are mainly summer things like beach chairs, air conditioners, and scooters. You know the things we need during the summer. Bloomberg says.
One company that's been selling Chinese made beach chairs to Amazon for years got an email from the online merchandiser saying it was canceling its orders and not to ship them. Calfires urging residents cross the state to take precautions as peak wildfire season approaches. California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crawfoot says the government is ready and the public needs to be too.
The state, federal, local partner sets remain intensely focused on helping these communities are recover and rebuild and protecting Californians from catastrophic wildfire. Remember, everybody has a role to play.
Grofoot says. The fires in the Palisades and Altadena have shown the importance of being prepared. He says home hardening and having defensible space are among the most important preparations. CalFire does offer a fire planner tool, It's at readyfor Wildfire dot org. The president of the La Urban Policy Task Force is calling on police to do something about what he calls the epidemic of hit and runs in
South LA. Earl Offari Hutchison is asking police to set up a task force to help prosecute what he calls hit and run murders. Half dozen people have been killed in hit and run recks in South LA in just the last three months. A new bill could make it harder to force people in California government to keep secrets from the public.
A build to block non disclosure agreements in the government is moving forward in the Legislature AB thirteen seventy's goal is to update California's Political Reform Act of nineteen seventy four to prohibit lawmakers from signing or asking others to sign NDAs. An exception can be made for NDA's used to shield information for private businesses. The bill's text states a violation of the Act as nishable as a misdemeanor.
Experts say the use of NDAs in government is a violation of the First Amendment that limits free speech and freedom of the press. Mark Ronner KFI News.
As construction gets underway on the first house destroyed in the fires and Pacific Palisades, La Marebeth's roads are going to be packed with big trucks. Trucks moving debris out have been clogging streets. She says. One thing to look at is having the trucks only move at night, but that could result in a lot of noise for people who still live in the area, So they're still trying to figure that one out. LA City Council's voted to move forward with plans to modernize the La Convention Center.
The project would connect the South Hall and West Hall above Pico Boulevard with a new building. A new study suggests hearing loss can increase your risk of heart failure. Researchers at uk Biobanks say they found that those with mild hearing issues had a fifteen percent increased risk. If they were poor hearing, that was a twenty eight percent increased risk of heart failure. We've got Handle on the news coming up at six oh five. Of course he's going to be talking tariffs in the stock market a
whole lot more. But right now we have a very special treat we'd like to say good morning to NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, the first Space Force Guardian ever on the International Space Station, the commander of the Crew nine mission. Colonel Haig, I'm guessing you hear this a lot, but welcome home.
Thanks Amy, it's great to be with you this morning.
So you spent one hundred and seventy one days in space, you did a space walk, you had a successful splashdown obviously back down on Earth along with Alex and of course Sonny Williams and Butch Willmore. It's been an exciting six months. How are you and everybody doing?
Yeah, you know, it's hard to believe the six months goes by really fast, and you know, we're back on the ground and just over three weeks back in gravity and adjusting and everything's going pretty good.
Okay, So I want to ask you about that gravity because we saw you when the capsules splashed down and saw you come out of the capsule with a pretty big smile on your face. Can you tell us what you were feeling at that moment and what it feels like to go from weightlessness to full on gravity gravity in a matter of minutes.
Yeah, you know, the smile coming out of the capsule is just the thrill of you've just re entered. You've gone from seventeen thousand, five hundred miles an hour down to zero, and we do that by writing in the center of essentially a fireball. And then you know, the adrenaline rush from that experience, and then watching your parachutes open and landing safely. You're just ecstatic to be home.
And so there's a lot of that going on. But then you're also starting to realize, hey, you know, gravity's real and I've been able to ignore it for the last six months. You're strong, you know you can stand up, you can carry your own weight, but your sense of balance is really not there, and so that's why they pull us out. They put us on ajourney, they wheel us around. You know, so the first day or so, somebody is there making sure that when we're walking, we
don't we don't stumble. But after a few days the body snaps back. It is just truly amazing how adaptable our bodies are.
Okay, so when you say that that it's hard because your balance is off, do you have sort of like a vertigo feeling, or just you're just not used to having to balance.
You haven't used that part of your brain, you know, your inner ear you've kind of ignored for the last six months while you've been in space. And then when you get down on the ground, you know, if I stand up and close my eyes, my mind really doesn't know how to figure out which ways up and which ways down, and so you get a little bit off balance and then gravity takes over. So you've just got
to be really careful. But like I said, it's amazing because you know, I'll take a nap, wake up, and there's this just huge increase in the amounts that my body has already adapted. And so over the course of twenty four hours, you're you know, you're pretty close to having your balance back. Even within the first six hours or so, you go from needing somebody to hold your arm everywhere you go to being able to walk on your.
Own, okay. And then I was trying to figure out what that might feel like, you know, like we were talking about going from no gravity to having full gravity and having to deal with that, and I was I was like, would it be sort of like when they put those weighted vests on you when you get X rays at the dentist and then you have to walk around all day with one on? Does it do you have that heavy feeling or what does it feel like?
Yeah, you know, when you described it perfectly, it's like you're wearing this body suit that adds just this excessive
amount of weight. Everything feels like it's twenty pounds heavier than it should be, and so just lifting your arm takes effort, or or moving your head takes effort, and it feels strange because it, you know, for the last six months it's taken no effort, and then slowly, over the course of a couple of days, that just becomes your new normal, and you know, I've been back just over three weeks, and you know, after I get off the off the call with you, I'm going to go
over and continue with my reconditioning and my strength and conditioning coaches are going to have me, you know, running and lifting and doing all the things that you would expect somebody to be doing, you know, just trying to stay in shape. And so we bounce back so fast.
Okay, And when you were up on the space station, weren't you exercising a couple hours a day.
Yes, at two and a half hours a day every day. Yeah, so you come you come back so much stronger. You know, I came back stronger than when I launched because I was lifting every day, and so the big muscles, the you know, my skeleton remains you know strong, My big muscles remain strong. The real challenge is all of the little muscles that stabilize everything and keep all my joints in the right position. Those are a little bit you know,
those are a little bit atrophied. And so we spend a good forty five days after we land getting all of those conditions so that my joints go back to the right positions that they're supposed to be in uh, and you've got to be really patient because you're strong, so I can go and out, you know, outperform those and end up hurting myself. So it's it's a very regimented program.
Interesting. Okay, And are you taller too. I've heard that some astronauts come back taller.
So I came back taller and then I lost it all. Gravity took it away, so it.
Was short lived. Okay, I want to go back up into space for a second.
I want to.
We'll talk in a minute about like what you were doing on the space station and stuff. But the whole journey is so fascinating to me. We followed when you undocked from the space station, when you were finally ready to go home, and there's this pretty large lag time between when you separate from the station and when you re enter the Earth's atmosphere. How long was that and what do you do during that time?
So it was seventeen hours for us, It varies depending. The reason there's that delay is you're waiting essentially for the alignment of your orbit and the position of your capsule to line up with your target for your splash down, and depending on where the station is when you undock, that could change anywhere from seven hours to forty hours, and that's just orbital dynamics, and so what do you
do during that time. We had a fairly long day prior to undocking, and so as soon as we undocked, we got our suits off and got into some comfortable clothes and we all went to bed, and so we slept solid eight hours and then we got up and we still had a lot of time, and so we did what you might expect a crew coming home from
space would do. We were glued to the windows, looking out, enjoying, you know, the last views we have, you know, for the foreseeable future of the you know, the night sky and all the stars and galaxies and looking down on the Earth during the daytime and just trying to soak it in as much as we could.
That's so great. And then for the re entry again we're talking to Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, who just returned from the International Space Station. For the re entry, I mean, it's got to be nerve wracking because you're still going thousands of miles an hour, and then when you do the entry, you're super heated. You're basically like you said, a big fireball, Like, what does that feel like? Do you guys? Are you guys talking and joking during
that time? Are you just kind of holding on? I mean, what do you do during that time? And what does it feel like?
Yeah?
So, you know, the first when you're in the space station, you're four hundred kilometers two hundred and fifty miles above the surface of the Earth, and so as the Earth goes by below, because I mean, you're really traveling over the Earth, but you see it as the Earth going by below, you don't really realize what five miles a second means in terms of speed. But once you start to descend the lower we really don't slow down until we start to get into the thick part of the atmosphere,
or a thicker part of the atmosphere. So that's four hundred kilometers down to about eighty kilometers. At that point, all those clouds that look really small start to look really big and they are screaming by the windows, and so you get this sense of we are going really fast. And then the air starts to impact our heat shield and that drag builds up and you can kind of
feel the rumble the vibration. You know, we've spent the time leading up to this kind of turning the air conditioner on, if you will, to max to try to get it as cool as we can inside, because that that aerodynamic heat, that that friction from all that drag is going to start to heat up all the atmosphere around the capsule, heat up our each shield, and essentially it creates a fireball around us that's about three thousand degrees and we're in the center of that, in the
calm the eye of the storm, and you what we feel is essentially just G. So we get squashed into our seat and it goes from six months of not feeling anything and floating to all of a sudden, the G meter reads point zero one g's or point zero two by the time it gets too point one one
tenth of the gravity everybody feels every day. It feels like somebody's sitting on you because you just haven't been used to feeling it, and you know, it's it's surprising that the first half a G it's like a man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle this, uh, And then your body kind of gets used to it, and then by the time we reach our maximum g which is just under five gs. You you're kind of comfortable. So I'm you know, looking at
the displays. I'm talking the crew through everything that's going on where we're at, what what to prepare for next, getting ready for shoots to deploy, and so it's a it's kind of a normal conversation. Uh and you just you know, you just get you get used to having an earth squashy a little.
Bit another day at the office.
It sounds like indeed, you know, it's like having a conversation why while you're writing a roller coaster.
Okay, okay, nice, that's a great analogy. We are joined on wake up call this morning by NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haigh. He's the first Space Force Guardian ever on the International Space Station and also the commander of the Crew nine mission. Colonel Haig, thanks again for joining us. We so appreciate you spending some time with us this morning. Yeah.
Absolutely, it's fun to share the experience.
Well, I know that last time we talked to you, Colonel Haig, we were well, I was kind of jumping out of my skin thrilled we got to talk to you live on the International Space Station, and that was back that was about six months ago. It was pretty early in your mission since you had gotten there, and so we wanted to kind of check in and see what it was like for the last six months. So I know that one of the things that you guys
do is you do a lot of experiments. Are there some of the experiments that you can tell us about that we're kind of notable to you?
Yeah?
Absolutely. You know, the reason we're up there on the space station, the International Space Station to begin with, is to conduct science experiments. You know, I talked about all the all the you know things that being in weightlessness does to my body. It does those same things to all of our experiments, and it helps us learn a
little bit more, a little bit deeper about everything. And so there we in the course of six months, was part of one hundred and fifty plus different types of experiments, and it's it's everything from looking at at our bodies. You know, how being weightless affects my immune system, how
it affects the age of my vascular system. Uh, you know, being in weightlessness can cause my arteries to accelerate in their aging or mimic what it's like to have accelerated aging, and so we we research what those what those changes are, and then by better understanding those we can we can help inform medicine on the ground for for people that are experiencing aging of their vascular system or have you know, suppressed immune systems. So that's a couple of examples, but
it spans the whole game. I grew lots of things up there because we're trying to figure out how do we sustain crews when we send them on missions beyond Earth orbit? How do we grow the food that we're going to need to take because we can't resupply them.
All the.
So it's it's it's just a lot of fun to be up there in the middle of it all. If you enjoy a if you're a curious person, it's an amazing job.
Okay, and Colonel Haig, were the experience that you did, were those for NASA only or for they were they also for Space Force because again there's this this symbiotic relationship between the two. Even though NASA is a civilian organization, of course, Space Force is a military organization.
Yeah, and so you know, I'm a Space Force guardian and and my job is to work for NASA conducting the Civil Space Mission, not the not the you know, the National Security Space Mission, and it is a symbiotic relationship. And so you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank all of my fellow guardians that are stationed around the globe that provided all those essential things like you know, keeping us clear of debris up there, and helping us move the station to get out of the way, or
helping us launch and land. You know, they do some fundamental things that make it possible for us to even go up there and do those science experiments and there. You know, it's just phenomenal to be associated with that team and to be a representative of the Space Force.
But yeah, those experiments up there. It's an international space station, and so I'm conducting experiments across you know, for for universities across the nation, you know, the United States, but I'm also conducting them for other governments, you know, whether it's Japan or the European Space Agency and all of the countries associated with that. It's a little you know, agnostic.
I don't necessarily care where the research is coming from, because in principle, we're sharing that information with everyone, and so the discoveries on the space station come back and benefit the whole world.
Good to see that we all get along in space. Okay, So when we talk to you, when you're on the space station, no space had been done. But as it turns out, you got to do one. How long was that and what did you do and what was it like?
You know, a spacewalk is effectively eleven hours in a spacesuit. It takes a while to put it on, and then once you're in it, before you even step out of the space station, you have to purge all of the nitrogen that's naturally in your body because you go down to a lower pressure when you start to work outside
in the vacuum of space. So after about four hours, then we go out the hatch, and you know, from a thrill perspective, you open the hatch and you look down and two hundred and fifty miles below there's the Earth kind of just gliding by, and you can see snow covered mountaintops and fan dunes and oceans and it's just spectacular. You know, it's an office. It's the best
view you could have at work. And you go out and you're you know, at some point the suit just kind of melts away and you're just working outside with your with your coworker.
You know.
Sonny was out there with me and uh and we uh, we got to work. We we were working on repairing a couple of things.
Uh.
You know, the station is old, it's been up there for two and a half decades.
Uh.
And and so we repaired a couple of pieces of equipment that needed to be replaced.
Uh.
And then I also got to work on an X ray telescope, which we used to kind of try to answer those deep questions about why are we here and how did the universe? How did the universe come into being? You know, it studies neutron stars and the you know, the remnants of of of massive explosions in space. And so I got to work on that and help repair it.
That's so cool. Okay, So we only have a couple of minutes left, So I got to ask you a couple of questions about life on the space station. You were up there for Christmas? Did you get to like did what is that like? I mean, did you get to take the day off? Did you celebrate or was it just another day in the office.
You know, we still have to we still have to make sure that the station goes and keeps running. And so there's a little bit of work on every day. But holidays, it's an international space station, so we celebrated. We celebrated Christmas just like everybody else here in the United States, but we also ended up celebrating Russian Orthodox Christmas. Uh and and so we celebrate international holidays up there
as well. And so we find time to get together as a crew of seven and and have a meal, you know, make a cake, put out, you know, a spreadshare our you know us food or or partake in you know, the international food that's there, and and really just commune with each other as as people and and talk about you know, families and everything that's going on in each other's lives, and share our favorite music with each other and tell jokes and and just be uh And those are a really special time up there.
And I would imagine for New Year's no one got to pop Champagne. I would think that might be a.
Little dangerous, a little bit dangerous. All right.
I did see one of your videos, and I noticed that your hair was shorter than when we talked to you. So you've got a haircut in space, and I want to know this is important question stuff, How does that work? Because I would imagine it would be very problematic to have hair floating around the space station.
Absolutely anything floating around is if it floats around, it can get in your eyes. Even worse, you could breathe it in than it gets in your lungs. And so we're always trying to scrub the air up there to make sure that stuff that's floating around gets taken out of it. So a haircut, essentially you're hooking a vacuum cleaner hose to the hair trimmer. But an interesting fact is we receive no training on how to give a haircut. So the first one is a little you know, dicey, but we learn as we go.
I love that, okay, And we're coming up at the top of the I know we got to go. You got to go in thirty seconds. Colonel Hag what's next for you?
So the mission doesn't end when you land. Surprisingly, I'm going to do rehab. But there's also those science experiments. They're still collecting data on me for the next thirty days, sixty days. Some of them will collect data on me up to two years after I land. That's the science aspect. The other aspect is for the next four or five months, my focus is going to be on going out and engaging the public and sharing the story, and so that post flight tour I'm looking forward to.
Well. We hope that your tour includes a stop in Los Angeles. We would love to welcome you home in person. And again, Colonel Haig, we can't thank you enough for all of your time and everything that you're doing. It's been such a thrill to get to talk to you and get a little bit of insight into what it's like to be an astronaut. So we thank you so much.
Yeah, no, my pleasure, Amy, and I do look forward to visiting.
LA all right. Again. That is Space Force Guardian NASA astronaut Colonel Nick Haig, fresh off his trip around the Earth six months in space. Amazing stuff. This is KFI and kost HD two Los Angeles, Orange County south Land.
Weather from KFI. Some clouds this morning, then sunny with hies in the low seventies at the beaches, seventies and eighties for Metro LA and Inlando, c upper sixty are actually upper eighties to low nineties in the valleys Inland Empire, seventies to mid eighties in the Antelope Valley, partly cloudy tomorrow, Heights in the seventies along the coast, eighties to low nineties Inland. It's fifty four in Diamond Bar, fifty four in Newport Beach, fifty seven in Inglewood, and fifty one
in Palmdale. Live from the KFI twenty four hour news room for producer and and technical producer Kno along with traffic specialist Will I'm Amy King. This has been your wake up call. If you missed any of Wakeup Call, you can listen anytime on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to wake Up Call with me, Amy King. You can always hear Wakeup Call five to six am Monday through Friday on KFI Am six forty and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app.