December 10, 2025 • 32 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (12/10) - ABC Correspondent Alex Stone joins the show to talk about how social media continues to cause teenagers distress, prompting serious conversations about mental health, body image problems, and more. MacArthur Park has established itself as the largest park of homeless encampments.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can'f I Am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on every day one until four o'clock. After four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart app
and you can hear what you missed. Next hour, Steve
Hilton coming on, one of the top Republican candidates for
governor here in California. We do need to change, don't we.
(00:23):
He's going to talk about Gavin Newsom because Hilton thinks
that if you look at the fraud we found out
about in Minnesota with the Somali Americans, and now yesterday
another story in Maine, of all places, imagine.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
What's going on here in California.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
You imagine all that homeless money that's disappeared by the
tens of billions, and high speed rail money that has
disappeared by the tens of billions, and all the unemployment
money that disappeared by the tens of billions, and no
one can account for it. And when anybody tries to
invest gate, Karen Bass hires fifteen lawyers to protect yourself
here in La Well, Steve Hilton, it's calling it calif fraud.
(01:08):
And he wants whistleblowers to start talking. That's next, let's
get at three o'clock. Alex Stone is now ABC News correspondent.
They're banning social media for anyone under sixteen in Australia.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Alex, how are they possibly going to enforce this?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Well, that is a good question because Day one we
already know John that because it is tomorrow mid morning
in Australia. We know how Day one, which was today Wednesday,
how it went. And already a lot of kids say
all they had to do is just change their birthdate
on the app, and all of a sudden they had
no problem getting on it if they changed the year.
And so if that's all it takes, then what's really
(01:46):
the point of it?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, that's really that's a really stupid law. If all
you have to do is change your birthday at a form, right,
and then.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
You tell kids that don't do it and they go, well,
all I have to do is make it born and
what like two thousand and five, twenty ten, Yeah, and
then they're good to go. But so what the law says,
I guess be like two thousand and nine they would
have had to be. So beginning today it was if
you are sixteen years or under. It is now a
(02:16):
crime in Australia for social media platforms to allow you
to use them. So that is TikTok, Instagram, even YouTube
is on that, and that there are daily fines of
a lot of money if the social media apps don't
take action to try to prevent kids from getting in there.
But understandably, just like we would hear in the US
(02:40):
that Australian kids, they are very angry about all this.
They say, this is not fair. Listen to this kid,
it'll be completely silenced and cut off from our country.
And they're still yeah, but not too cut off because
all you apparently have to do is change the date.
But there are a lot of now American don't doctors
(03:02):
social media safety groups who say, look, it's time for
the US to think about doing something like this, and
yet Florida has been trying. It's been tied up in
the courts for quite a while. They want to go
I believe fourteen and younger where they wouldn't be allowed
to use social media. But this is a topic where
left run states and right run states all are kind
(03:23):
of coming together and saying, you know what, this kind
of makes sense of why the kids need to be
on social media. Sarah Gardner the CEO of the Child
Safety group Heat Initiative, and she's been here in LA
holding protests. She's telling us Jillian's.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Aily taking the lead, and the question is what.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
The U that's going to do, and so it's kind
of the will the US counter this and come back.
They've been holding protests outside of an Apple store demanding
that Apple add in safeguards. But she says that the
science is there, the research is there, the keeping kids
off of social media is something that can save their life.
But that yes, the government needs to do, she believed,
(04:00):
but the parents need to do it as well. That
they need to take action and say you know what,
you are not allowed to be on social media.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
It's not just the addiction, which is enough of the
harming of itself. It's exposure to eating disorder content, to
suicide content, how sexual abuse of thia needs the real
dangerous that keep experience on these platforms.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
And that's the argument in Australia as well. They say
social media use, that the research shows it leads to
a spike in serious problems for children. Four years ago,
there were internal documents from Meta the parent company of
Facebook and Instagram that leaked out showing that their social
media platforms at the time contributed to suicidal thoughts and
body image problems in teenagers. Meta says that they have
(04:40):
implemented safety features. That's not the case any longer, but
still there is that concern. Now Malaysia and Denmark they're
looking at bands similar to what Australia is doing. We
don't know of anything nationally for the US at this point,
but there are groups who are saying, look, Australia is
now going down the right track, and watch what they're
(05:00):
doing and let's see how it goes.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely causing a lot of distress
for teenagers and so people can object all they want,
but at the end of it, we got a whole
generation whose brains have been scrambled in a bad way
by the social media addiction. But really they got to
come up with something better than what they have to
(05:23):
enforce this.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I mean, I don't know how they're going to enforce it.
Maybe you're gonna have to show an ID at some
point or you know. Now, how kids take tests online,
the remote tests where there's a procter watching them, I
don't know. I don't know how you would do it,
but to follow the law right now, it's they're just
going based on birthday, so as we would have done
if you know, it was getting around getting a copy
(05:44):
of Playboy, you know, online, and they got creative, they
just changed the year they were born.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Do you know how long this law was in the works,
because I wondered if if the if the social media
companies already had some kind of plan, or did this
catch them month short notice or by surprise They've.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Been working on it for a fair amount of time.
It seems like that there was plenty of warning. The
bigger issue would be here in the US where these
platforms were created and it's impacting children here. But the
lobbying effort, and we've seen it in Florida with what
they're trying to do, The lobbying effort would be gigantic
and a lot of money would be put into it
(06:23):
by the social media companies, and so there would be
a fight and it would get tied up in the
courts over freedom of speech and everything else. But there
is a growing chorus of people who are saying, look,
something's got to be done here in the us as well.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
All right, Alex Stone, ABC News, thank you for coming
on again. You got to think Sean Jonathan Hate is
a social psychologist, a researcher. If I wanted to cover
this story every day about how social media and the
Internet has rotted out a generation of children's brains, I'd
(06:58):
be talking about Jonathan Hate every single day. Nobody has researched,
more written, more involved in documentaries, books, articles. Really, hardly
a week or two goes by without Jonathan Hat with
another insight into what's going on. He had a piece
(07:19):
that he wrote for The Free Press, which is a
site you have to pay for, the FP dot com,
and the headline is Jonathan Haate says the Devil's plan
to ruin the next generation. And what he did is
he asked chat GPT this question, if you were the devil,
(07:41):
how would you destroy the next generation without them even
knowing it? And I'll tell you what artificial intelligence told
Jonathan Haate and what his conclusion was, because it's been
going on now for about fifteen years.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Almost next you're listening to John Cobelt on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Steve Hilton running for governor. One of the leading Republican candidates.
He'll be on with us after three o'clock. He has seen,
like we all have, the tremendous amount of fraud in
Minnesota with the Somali Americans and those nonprofits, nonprofits, they
are going to be the death of us. It's killing California,
(08:28):
it's sucking out so much money. And the same thing
in Maine. Yesterday we got a story from Rich McHugh
of Newstation again, another solid Somali American community that was
funneling welfare money, medicaid money back.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To the home country.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
And that's the thing with the fraud, and it happened
here in California when Gavin Newsom let thirty two billion
dollars in unemployment COVID money go out the window.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It went to foreign countries.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Most of the money wast by people out outside the
United States. So they're stealing our tax money in all
these instances, and it's not even being recycled in our economy. Outsiders,
foreigners are enjoying our wealth. He's trying to get California
(09:22):
whistleblowers to speak up about what's going on inside our state.
And we'll talk to him after three o'clock, all right,
So we just Adlex Stone on from ABC News about
the social media ban. This is day one in Australia.
But they have no enforcement mechanism. Really the social media
companies and it's the same social media companies that we
(09:44):
have here, you know, Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And all the rest.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Social media companies really don't have anything implemented to.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Test to see how old you are.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So kids are just changing the day on their birth
date form whatever you use to register to get on
these things, and you know, they're continuing to enjoy life
on social media, continuing to rot their brain. So I
mentioned Jonathan Hate. He's a social psychologist and he's written
(10:19):
more and researched more than any other person in the
United States on what happened to the mental health of
gen z. These are the people born between nineteen ninety
six and twenty twelve. And what he found is that
their mental health plummeted not only here in the US
(10:42):
but in many countries starting in the early twenty tens.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And he was baffled by this.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And we're talking about serious mental health issues right up
to suicide. And at first he focused on overprotection, coddling
kids and they don't really build up the toughness and
the resilience they need to deal with life. But he says,
since then, there's been a growing body of evidence that
(11:09):
it's the technology smartphones and social media which has done
more damage to teenagers' mental health than anything, really, anything
in the history of humanity. So he wrote a piece
for the Free Press, and it's the FP dot com.
But you have to pay. He asked chet Gpt, if
(11:31):
you were the devil. Actually they started a few months ago.
Somebody asked, if you were the devil, how would you
destroy the next generation without them even knowing it? Artificial intelligence,
which is a whole, separate, potential evil. But chet Gpt said,
I wouldn't come with violence to destroy the next generation.
(11:54):
I'd come with convenience. I'd keep them busy, always distracted,
watched their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently, And the best
part is they'd never know it was me. They would
call it freedom. Now, it's pretty chilling, first of all,
that you have artificial intelligence thinking in such a sophisticated manner,
(12:17):
and that their message is so ominous and frightening. Really,
I mean, again, this is not a person. But how
did you destroy the next generation. I wouldn't come with violence.
I'd come with convenience. Keep them busy, always distracted. I'd
watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently, And the best
part is they would never know. They call it freedom. Well,
(12:39):
what's the complaint from the Australian teenagers right now that
Alex just told us about day one? You can't go
on social media? That's our freedom you're taking away. What
would be the biggest obstacle to doing that here in America?
People going to court and saying, hey, freedom, freedom of speech.
(13:00):
It's like, okay, you're right, freedom of speech. Freedom to
rot out your mind until you're emotionally damaged and useless
and possibly suicidal.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Excellent, so he said.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
He said. He talked to chat GPT himself how it
would stunt adolescent development in the digital age. The most
effective way, said chat GPT, was through slow, invisible corrosions
of the human spirit rather than obvious attacks, which is
(13:43):
something that Jonathan Hate wrote about in a book called
The Anxious Generation Spiritual Degradation. See he writes, so much
of life online pulls people downward. Growing up, kids learned
to live in ways that contradict the vice given to
us by all the world's great spiritual traditions. Kids get
(14:08):
constant stimulation, pressure to judge others, instantly, videos showing violations
of every conceivable taboo. And he said, you could see
a sudden change in the spiritual health of young Americans.
In a long running national survey high school seniors, they
were asked whether life often feels meaningless. The numbers were
(14:30):
always low and even declining back when other generations were
in high school. But when gen Z entered the database
around twenty thirteen, meaninglessness surged. Kids say they agree or
strongly agree that life feels meaningless because they were, especially
with girls, their attention was eroded. They were no longer
(14:58):
present in conversation and in relationships. And then there's other
aspects here that he writes about. It's a great story,
but he noticed that if you drew charts, starting in
twenty thirteen, teenagers' mental health declined sharply. But all the
(15:20):
different ways you can measure that, and he wondered, well,
what was twenty thirteen. Well, the social media had been
around for a few years, not many, but that's when
the smartphone hit in twenty thirteen, so they carried it
around the device all day and did nothing but read posts,
(15:40):
look at photos, start comparing one another their looks, start
seeing all kinds of terrible things online, all kinds of
terrible ideas. That sapped a teenager spirit, sapped their purpose,
huge distraction. They were no longer having normal relationships and
(16:02):
friendships or connections with their family, normal romances, normal adventures
because it was all staring at the screen, locked in
their room. So Australia's going to ban it. We should too,
but might not be legal. They're entitled to their freedom.
You're entitled to ruin your life. I mean, you know,
(16:23):
we just got to accept that.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
You're listening to John cobelts on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
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Speaker 1 (16:55):
All right, coming up after three o'clock.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Steve Hilton, who's running from governor, is a Republican one
of the candidates, and he wants state workers to start
acting as whistle blowers. You people who work for the
state government, you know how much money is being stolen.
We get a good idea of how much is stolen
when we see twenty four billion in state homeless money disappear,
(17:21):
about two three billion dollars in LA City and County
homeless money disappear, High speed rail money seventeen billion, much
of that disappeared, thirty three billion dollars in COVID money,
COVID pandemic unemployment benefits disappear off of the foreign countries. Well,
(17:43):
you know what's going on, Steve Hilton wants to hear
from you. Let's get the California whistleblowers in the game,
like they've done in Minnesota and in Maine just in
the past week. All right, boy, imagine the whistleblowers here
in LA could describe what's really going on with Bass's
homeless agencies. Every few months, she waddles off to MacArthur
(18:09):
Park to claim that something has to be done about
all the disgusting things that are going on there. You
got the homeless people, you know, which is primarily mental
patients and drug addicts. You've got criminals, You've got gangs,
You've got their openly selling drugs and weapons in the park.
You have all sorts of crazy behavior, not to mention
(18:33):
all the illegal alien businesses. New York Post did their
own walk through investigation of MacArthur Park and they watched
the LA Fire Department Station eleven what they have to
do all day and really all year. And I found this,
(18:55):
I found this fascinating. They wrote, a cramped age fire
station jammed up against MacArthur Park has been dragged into
a street war.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It never asked for.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
That fire station, they say, is now a triage unit.
Because MacArthur Park is one of the nastiest fentanyl zones
in Los Angeles. And you see them the fentyl addics,
some of them on xylazine because the dealers started cunning
fentanyl with xylazine, which I believe is some kind of
horse tranquilizer and whatever. The effect of the drug is
(19:34):
a more powerful impact on your brain, but it causes
your skin to rot. You end up with these gaping, open,
rotting wounds. And that's what wanders around MacArthur Park, these
these zombies with their gaping wounds. Post says LA Fire Department.
Station eleven has fourteen firefighters on daily duty, sometimes sixteen.
(19:58):
They have an ambulance, a fast response truck, and the
pace at which the firehouse must keep up with calls
is almost incomprehensible.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Listen to this.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Station eleven had eight thousand, five hundred and sixty eight
ambulance runs in the first eight months of twenty twenty five.
Eight five hundred and sixty eight ambulance runs in eight months.
That's over a thousand ambulance runs a month, and there's
only thirty days in a month. They only had fifty
(20:35):
five structure fires. So most of what they do is
they deal with fires started by the bums, the bumfires,
rubbish fires, garbage fires. That's what the homeless do all day.
The firehouse is one of the busiest in the country
primarily putting out homeless fires. How insane is that that?
(20:58):
Karen Bass and now she's been at this for three years,
runs the city where we're at the top of the
charts for homeless fires.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
In just in this one district, MacArthur Park. You can't stop.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
That's arson, right, that's like eight thousand cases of arson
now compared to other stations. Right, they looked at Venice
fire Station sixty three. They had twenty five hundred ambulance
calls over the same period, less than a third nineteen
fires MacArthur Park. They have to put out the rubbish
(21:47):
fires at a breakneck pace, forcing crews to douse one
fire and race straight and race straight to the next one.
And that's what one of the firemen told the Posts.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Exhausting.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's going to be infuriating, running around putting homeless garbage,
putting out fires set by homeless fires of trash where
their stupid encampments or their propane tanks. MacArthur Park has
established himself as a destination for LA's hardest hit hardest
(22:23):
drug addicts, a chaos soaked corridor or overdoses. Hit by
the hour, criminal crews muscle in on the trade. This
is the largest park in the district. It's a sprawling encampment,
hundreds of people in and around the park on any
(22:45):
given day, many of them young drug users in their twenties,
shooting up with needles or smoking from glass pipes, some
pipes for fashioned to look like shotguns. Other atticts passed
out or waiting on their next free meal. The post
also saw straight barrel versions of crack pipes getting handed
(23:07):
out by city and county employees. They're called safe smoking kids.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
You believe this.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
So you got these vaguarant drug addicts smoking crack. It's
starting fires, and we're paying our taxes for county employees
to hand out the crack pipes, and then we have
to pay for the firefighters to put out the fires
(23:39):
started by the people who are smoking from the taxpayer
paid crack pipes. I wonder what started the fire yesterday
that my sister saw. Yeah, I don't know. I mean
sometimes it's propane tanks or grills that they have, or
sometimes they just start acting crazy and they set fires.
I mean, when you're talking about when you're talking about,
(24:00):
you know, eight thousand ambulance calls, it's all overdoses and.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Garbage fires.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Some people told the posts they have rooms or apartments elsewhere,
but they come to MacArthur Park every day because this
is where the handouts are that we're paying for.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Post visited twice.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Lines formed for food, medical vans and safe use supplies.
Look at the terminology, it's always it's always BS terminology
safe use. It's an assembly line of AID twenty seven
million dollars has been poured into revitalizing MacArthur Park, paying
(24:46):
for overdose response teams. Peace ambassadors, Peace ambassadors. How do
you bring peace to crack addicts? USC and L street
medicine teams and the overdoses keep coming. They called unicus Hernandez,
(25:08):
who is just a human vegetable. He's she's a councilwoman
called multiple times. Don't she doesn't call back, she doesn't respond.
Los Angeles has has saved. Has A says he're a master.
Twenty two million dollar o BID Opioide Settlement Trust Fund.
(25:32):
I guess this is from lawsuits of the drug companies
and a big part of that money goes to MacArthur
Park in the Westlake area. In fact, the city council
set aside three million dollars to build a Westlake area
harm reduction service.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yeah, they call it harm reduction.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They're giving them crack pipes so they can keep frying
their brains and they call it harm reduction. So this
Westlake Area Harm Reduction drop in center is going to
offer the lock zone distribution wound care. Remember I told
you the xylazine that makes it the fentdel causes your
(26:15):
causes open wounds to form test strips for fentanyl and xylazine,
mental health assessments, referrals and treatment. They spend more and
more money on contracts for syringe exchanges, so handing out
free syringes, safe smoking kits, which is they're double talk
(26:36):
for crack pipes, overdose education. Yeah, that's working wound care kits. That.
This is the Department on Disability that spends this money.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
This is insanity. What how could how could you? How
could how could we pay.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
For a government that hands out the crack pipes, hands
out the syringes, then watches people die of fenton ill
and xylism poisoning, watches the wounds start opening up on
their skin and get infected. And we've got county workers
(27:19):
who're paying their paying for standing there. This is Karen Bassis,
Los Angeles, and all these progressives think this is entirely
normal and proper. They're really really crazy. This is insane
and I don't have a word for it. All right,
(27:39):
We've got more coming up. Steve Hilton after three o'clock
running for governor. He's looking for California whistleblowers. Why don't
you start telling us what's going on with all the
money being stolen in the state and in the city.
Speaker 5 (27:51):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Moistline for Friday eight seven seven Moist eighty six, eight
seven seven Moist eighty six, or use the talkback feature
on the iHeartRadio app eight seven seven sixty six four
seven eight eighty six. So let it rip anything that's
making you crazy, pissed you off. After three o'clock we're
going to have Steve Hilton on one of the Republican
(28:17):
the leading Republican candidate for governor. God, we need to
change badly. In fact, you want you have the podcast.
Listen to the first hour went through the list of
all the things. California is first in the nation at
and it's all bad stuff. And all the things were
last in and it's all bad stuff. And it's like,
(28:41):
how did anybody look at him as presidential material with
the disastrous record he has again, take his name and
the party off.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Just look at what's happened here.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
You would think that the Democratic voters would want somebody
better who does not have such a disaster US record. Uh, well,
you can hear that. It's the first hour of the podcast.
Uh waimo. All right, So the other day there was
like a three car waymo jam up in San Francisco.
(29:14):
One car was trying to do a three point turn.
I think they pulled into a driveway and then and
then stopped and had a second car trying to get
through was blocked and the third second WAYMO, third weamo
and all three waymos were all facing each other in
the middle of the road and none of them could move.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Uh, because.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
You can't wave at somebody, hey, back up, turn right,
move along, can't do that. The wamos were just frozen.
Now today's Weimo story. Yeah, if you're pregnant, like real pregnant,
like about to give birth, pregnant, do you go in
(30:04):
a weymo. Well, this woman did, and she was riding
in one of the Weimo cars. She was on her
way to u SEE San Francisco, one of their medical facilities.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
I guess she was.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Going because she felt some movement some I don't know
for water broke ers. You start to feel labor pains.
But if you think the birth process is starting, you
go into an unmanned car. Well, she did, and she
gave birth in the back of the Weymo Monday night.
(30:42):
WEIMO said that their systems and processes were effective in
managing the situation. Our remote writer support team detected unusual activity.
I guess some sensors were going off in the back seat.
So they called to check the writer and she said,
I'm giving birth. So they called nine to one one
(31:06):
and emergency services took her to the hospital and she
gave birth. Now, you don't want to be the next
passenger to the back of a weymou after a I mean,
actually I should be clarified. She birth inside the weymouth.
By by time the emergency showed up, baby was out
(31:31):
on WEIMO said they immediately removed the car from service
for cleaning because birthing process can be can be very
very messing, and no word on the identity of the
woman or how she and the baby are doing. I
that that that that is baffling that because I mean,
(31:52):
most women I know are ultra careful, especially in the
final days and minutes that you don't want to be alone.
You don't want to jump into a Waimo by yourself.
We come back, We're gonna talk to Steve Hilton. He
is running for California governor. Former Fox News host, former
(32:13):
advisor to the British Prime Minister, Steve Cameron, tech businessman
and entrepreneur, and he's running a very strong campaign. And
Steve Hilton is calling for a complete public audit of
all of California's programs and he wants whistleblowers to start
talking like they did in Minnesota and Maine in the
(32:34):
past week.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
So Steve Hilton coming on next.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Hey, you've been listening to the John Covelt Show podcast.
You can always hear the show live on KFI AM
six forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Can'f I Am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on every day one until four o'clock. After four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart app
and you can hear what you missed. Next hour, Steve
Hilton coming on, one of the top Republican candidates for
governor here in California. We do need to change, don't we.
(00:23):
He's going to talk about Gavin Newsom because Hilton thinks
that if you look at the fraud we found out
about in Minnesota with the Somali Americans, and now yesterday
another story in Maine, of all places, imagine.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
What's going on here in California.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
You imagine all that homeless money that's disappeared by the
tens of billions, and high speed rail money that has
disappeared by the tens of billions, and all the unemployment
money that disappeared by the tens of billions, and no
one can account for it. And when anybody tries to
invest gate, Karen Bass hires fifteen lawyers to protect yourself
here in La Well, Steve Hilton, it's calling it calif fraud.
(01:08):
And he wants whistleblowers to start talking. That's next, let's
get at three o'clock. Alex Stone is now ABC News correspondent.
They're banning social media for anyone under sixteen in Australia.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Alex, how are they possibly going to enforce this?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Well, that is a good question because Day one we
already know John that because it is tomorrow mid morning
in Australia. We know how Day one, which was today Wednesday,
how it went. And already a lot of kids say
all they had to do is just change their birthdate
on the app, and all of a sudden they had
no problem getting on it if they changed the year.
And so if that's all it takes, then what's really
(01:46):
the point of it?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, that's really that's a really stupid law. If all
you have to do is change your birthday at a form, right,
and then.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
You tell kids that don't do it and they go, well,
all I have to do is make it born and
what like two thousand and five, twenty ten, Yeah, and
then they're good to go. But so what the law says,
I guess be like two thousand and nine they would
have had to be. So beginning today it was if
you are sixteen years or under. It is now a
(02:16):
crime in Australia for social media platforms to allow you
to use them. So that is TikTok, Instagram, even YouTube
is on that, and that there are daily fines of
a lot of money if the social media apps don't
take action to try to prevent kids from getting in there.
But understandably, just like we would hear in the US
(02:40):
that Australian kids, they are very angry about all this.
They say, this is not fair. Listen to this kid,
it'll be completely silenced and cut off from our country.
And they're still yeah, but not too cut off because
all you apparently have to do is change the date.
But there are a lot of now American don't doctors
(03:02):
social media safety groups who say, look, it's time for
the US to think about doing something like this, and
yet Florida has been trying. It's been tied up in
the courts for quite a while. They want to go
I believe fourteen and younger where they wouldn't be allowed
to use social media. But this is a topic where
left run states and right run states all are kind
(03:23):
of coming together and saying, you know what, this kind
of makes sense of why the kids need to be
on social media. Sarah Gardner the CEO of the Child
Safety group Heat Initiative, and she's been here in LA
holding protests. She's telling us Jillian's.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Aily taking the lead, and the question is what.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
The U that's going to do, and so it's kind
of the will the US counter this and come back.
They've been holding protests outside of an Apple store demanding
that Apple add in safeguards. But she says that the
science is there, the research is there, the keeping kids
off of social media is something that can save their life.
But that yes, the government needs to do, she believed,
(04:00):
but the parents need to do it as well. That
they need to take action and say you know what,
you are not allowed to be on social media.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
It's not just the addiction, which is enough of the
harming of itself. It's exposure to eating disorder content, to
suicide content, how sexual abuse of thia needs the real
dangerous that keep experience on these platforms.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
And that's the argument in Australia as well. They say
social media use, that the research shows it leads to
a spike in serious problems for children. Four years ago,
there were internal documents from Meta the parent company of
Facebook and Instagram that leaked out showing that their social
media platforms at the time contributed to suicidal thoughts and
body image problems in teenagers. Meta says that they have
(04:40):
implemented safety features. That's not the case any longer, but
still there is that concern. Now Malaysia and Denmark they're
looking at bands similar to what Australia is doing. We
don't know of anything nationally for the US at this point,
but there are groups who are saying, look, Australia is
now going down the right track, and watch what they're
(05:00):
doing and let's see how it goes.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely causing a lot of distress
for teenagers and so people can object all they want,
but at the end of it, we got a whole
generation whose brains have been scrambled in a bad way
by the social media addiction. But really they got to
come up with something better than what they have to
(05:23):
enforce this.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
I mean, I don't know how they're going to enforce it.
Maybe you're gonna have to show an ID at some
point or you know. Now, how kids take tests online,
the remote tests where there's a procter watching them, I
don't know. I don't know how you would do it,
but to follow the law right now, it's they're just
going based on birthday, so as we would have done
if you know, it was getting around getting a copy
(05:44):
of Playboy, you know, online, and they got creative, they
just changed the year they were born.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Do you know how long this law was in the works,
because I wondered if if the if the social media
companies already had some kind of plan, or did this
catch them month short notice or by surprise They've.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Been working on it for a fair amount of time.
It seems like that there was plenty of warning. The
bigger issue would be here in the US where these
platforms were created and it's impacting children here. But the
lobbying effort, and we've seen it in Florida with what
they're trying to do, The lobbying effort would be gigantic
and a lot of money would be put into it
(06:23):
by the social media companies, and so there would be
a fight and it would get tied up in the
courts over freedom of speech and everything else. But there
is a growing chorus of people who are saying, look,
something's got to be done here in the us as well.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
All right, Alex Stone, ABC News, thank you for coming
on again. You got to think Sean Jonathan Hate is
a social psychologist, a researcher. If I wanted to cover
this story every day about how social media and the
Internet has rotted out a generation of children's brains, I'd
(06:58):
be talking about Jonathan Hate every single day. Nobody has researched,
more written, more involved in documentaries, books, articles. Really, hardly
a week or two goes by without Jonathan Hat with
another insight into what's going on. He had a piece
(07:19):
that he wrote for The Free Press, which is a
site you have to pay for, the FP dot com,
and the headline is Jonathan Haate says the Devil's plan
to ruin the next generation. And what he did is
he asked chat GPT this question, if you were the devil,
(07:41):
how would you destroy the next generation without them even
knowing it? And I'll tell you what artificial intelligence told
Jonathan Haate and what his conclusion was, because it's been
going on now for about fifteen years.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Almost next you're listening to John Cobelt on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Steve Hilton running for governor. One of the leading Republican candidates.
He'll be on with us after three o'clock. He has seen,
like we all have, the tremendous amount of fraud in
Minnesota with the Somali Americans and those nonprofits, nonprofits, they
are going to be the death of us. It's killing California,
(08:28):
it's sucking out so much money. And the same thing
in Maine. Yesterday we got a story from Rich McHugh
of Newstation again, another solid Somali American community that was
funneling welfare money, medicaid money back.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To the home country.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
And that's the thing with the fraud, and it happened
here in California when Gavin Newsom let thirty two billion
dollars in unemployment COVID money go out the window.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It went to foreign countries.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Most of the money wast by people out outside the
United States. So they're stealing our tax money in all
these instances, and it's not even being recycled in our economy. Outsiders,
foreigners are enjoying our wealth. He's trying to get California
(09:22):
whistleblowers to speak up about what's going on inside our state.
And we'll talk to him after three o'clock, all right,
So we just Adlex Stone on from ABC News about
the social media ban. This is day one in Australia.
But they have no enforcement mechanism. Really the social media
companies and it's the same social media companies that we
(09:44):
have here, you know, Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And all the rest.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Social media companies really don't have anything implemented to.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Test to see how old you are.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So kids are just changing the day on their birth
date form whatever you use to register to get on
these things, and you know, they're continuing to enjoy life
on social media, continuing to rot their brain. So I
mentioned Jonathan Hate. He's a social psychologist and he's written
(10:19):
more and researched more than any other person in the
United States on what happened to the mental health of
gen z. These are the people born between nineteen ninety
six and twenty twelve. And what he found is that
their mental health plummeted not only here in the US
(10:42):
but in many countries starting in the early twenty tens.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And he was baffled by this.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And we're talking about serious mental health issues right up
to suicide. And at first he focused on overprotection, coddling
kids and they don't really build up the toughness and
the resilience they need to deal with life. But he says,
since then, there's been a growing body of evidence that
(11:09):
it's the technology smartphones and social media which has done
more damage to teenagers' mental health than anything, really, anything
in the history of humanity. So he wrote a piece
for the Free Press, and it's the FP dot com.
But you have to pay. He asked chet Gpt, if
(11:31):
you were the devil. Actually they started a few months ago.
Somebody asked, if you were the devil, how would you
destroy the next generation without them even knowing it? Artificial intelligence,
which is a whole, separate, potential evil. But chet Gpt said,
I wouldn't come with violence to destroy the next generation.
(11:54):
I'd come with convenience. I'd keep them busy, always distracted,
watched their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently, And the best
part is they'd never know it was me. They would
call it freedom. Now, it's pretty chilling, first of all,
that you have artificial intelligence thinking in such a sophisticated manner,
(12:17):
and that their message is so ominous and frightening. Really,
I mean, again, this is not a person. But how
did you destroy the next generation. I wouldn't come with violence.
I'd come with convenience. Keep them busy, always distracted. I'd
watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently, And the best
part is they would never know. They call it freedom. Well,
(12:39):
what's the complaint from the Australian teenagers right now that
Alex just told us about day one? You can't go
on social media? That's our freedom you're taking away. What
would be the biggest obstacle to doing that here in America?
People going to court and saying, hey, freedom, freedom of speech.
(13:00):
It's like, okay, you're right, freedom of speech. Freedom to
rot out your mind until you're emotionally damaged and useless
and possibly suicidal.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Excellent, so he said.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
He said. He talked to chat GPT himself how it
would stunt adolescent development in the digital age. The most
effective way, said chat GPT, was through slow, invisible corrosions
of the human spirit rather than obvious attacks, which is
(13:43):
something that Jonathan Hate wrote about in a book called
The Anxious Generation Spiritual Degradation. See he writes, so much
of life online pulls people downward. Growing up, kids learned
to live in ways that contradict the vice given to
us by all the world's great spiritual traditions. Kids get
(14:08):
constant stimulation, pressure to judge others, instantly, videos showing violations
of every conceivable taboo. And he said, you could see
a sudden change in the spiritual health of young Americans.
In a long running national survey high school seniors, they
were asked whether life often feels meaningless. The numbers were
(14:30):
always low and even declining back when other generations were
in high school. But when gen Z entered the database
around twenty thirteen, meaninglessness surged. Kids say they agree or
strongly agree that life feels meaningless because they were, especially
with girls, their attention was eroded. They were no longer
(14:58):
present in conversation and in relationships. And then there's other
aspects here that he writes about. It's a great story,
but he noticed that if you drew charts, starting in
twenty thirteen, teenagers' mental health declined sharply. But all the
(15:20):
different ways you can measure that, and he wondered, well,
what was twenty thirteen. Well, the social media had been
around for a few years, not many, but that's when
the smartphone hit in twenty thirteen, so they carried it
around the device all day and did nothing but read posts,
(15:40):
look at photos, start comparing one another their looks, start
seeing all kinds of terrible things online, all kinds of
terrible ideas. That sapped a teenager spirit, sapped their purpose,
huge distraction. They were no longer having normal relationships and
(16:02):
friendships or connections with their family, normal romances, normal adventures
because it was all staring at the screen, locked in
their room. So Australia's going to ban it. We should too,
but might not be legal. They're entitled to their freedom.
You're entitled to ruin your life. I mean, you know,
(16:23):
we just got to accept that.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
You're listening to John cobelts on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
You can follow us at John Cobelt Radio, on social
media at John Cobelt Radio, or subscribe on YouTube YouTube
dot com, slash at Johncobelt Show YouTube dot com slash
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segments that we post on YouTube frequently, and you can
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Speaker 1 (16:55):
All right, coming up after three o'clock.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Steve Hilton, who's running from governor, is a Republican one
of the candidates, and he wants state workers to start
acting as whistle blowers. You people who work for the
state government, you know how much money is being stolen.
We get a good idea of how much is stolen
when we see twenty four billion in state homeless money disappear,
(17:21):
about two three billion dollars in LA City and County
homeless money disappear, High speed rail money seventeen billion, much
of that disappeared, thirty three billion dollars in COVID money,
COVID pandemic unemployment benefits disappear off of the foreign countries. Well,
(17:43):
you know what's going on, Steve Hilton wants to hear
from you. Let's get the California whistleblowers in the game,
like they've done in Minnesota and in Maine just in
the past week. All right, boy, imagine the whistleblowers here
in LA could describe what's really going on with Bass's
homeless agencies. Every few months, she waddles off to MacArthur
(18:09):
Park to claim that something has to be done about
all the disgusting things that are going on there. You
got the homeless people, you know, which is primarily mental
patients and drug addicts. You've got criminals, You've got gangs,
You've got their openly selling drugs and weapons in the park.
You have all sorts of crazy behavior, not to mention
(18:33):
all the illegal alien businesses. New York Post did their
own walk through investigation of MacArthur Park and they watched
the LA Fire Department Station eleven what they have to
do all day and really all year. And I found this,
(18:55):
I found this fascinating. They wrote, a cramped age fire
station jammed up against MacArthur Park has been dragged into
a street war.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It never asked for.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
That fire station, they say, is now a triage unit.
Because MacArthur Park is one of the nastiest fentanyl zones
in Los Angeles. And you see them the fentyl addics,
some of them on xylazine because the dealers started cunning
fentanyl with xylazine, which I believe is some kind of
horse tranquilizer and whatever. The effect of the drug is
(19:34):
a more powerful impact on your brain, but it causes
your skin to rot. You end up with these gaping, open,
rotting wounds. And that's what wanders around MacArthur Park, these
these zombies with their gaping wounds. Post says LA Fire Department.
Station eleven has fourteen firefighters on daily duty, sometimes sixteen.
(19:58):
They have an ambulance, a fast response truck, and the
pace at which the firehouse must keep up with calls
is almost incomprehensible.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Listen to this.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Station eleven had eight thousand, five hundred and sixty eight
ambulance runs in the first eight months of twenty twenty five.
Eight five hundred and sixty eight ambulance runs in eight months.
That's over a thousand ambulance runs a month, and there's
only thirty days in a month. They only had fifty
(20:35):
five structure fires. So most of what they do is
they deal with fires started by the bums, the bumfires,
rubbish fires, garbage fires. That's what the homeless do all day.
The firehouse is one of the busiest in the country
primarily putting out homeless fires. How insane is that that?
(20:58):
Karen Bass and now she's been at this for three years,
runs the city where we're at the top of the
charts for homeless fires.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
In just in this one district, MacArthur Park. You can't stop.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
That's arson, right, that's like eight thousand cases of arson
now compared to other stations. Right, they looked at Venice
fire Station sixty three. They had twenty five hundred ambulance
calls over the same period, less than a third nineteen
fires MacArthur Park. They have to put out the rubbish
(21:47):
fires at a breakneck pace, forcing crews to douse one
fire and race straight and race straight to the next one.
And that's what one of the firemen told the Posts.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Exhausting.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's going to be infuriating, running around putting homeless garbage,
putting out fires set by homeless fires of trash where
their stupid encampments or their propane tanks. MacArthur Park has
established himself as a destination for LA's hardest hit hardest
(22:23):
drug addicts, a chaos soaked corridor or overdoses. Hit by
the hour, criminal crews muscle in on the trade. This
is the largest park in the district. It's a sprawling encampment,
hundreds of people in and around the park on any
(22:45):
given day, many of them young drug users in their twenties,
shooting up with needles or smoking from glass pipes, some
pipes for fashioned to look like shotguns. Other atticts passed
out or waiting on their next free meal. The post
also saw straight barrel versions of crack pipes getting handed
(23:07):
out by city and county employees. They're called safe smoking kids.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
You believe this.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
So you got these vaguarant drug addicts smoking crack. It's
starting fires, and we're paying our taxes for county employees
to hand out the crack pipes, and then we have
to pay for the firefighters to put out the fires
(23:39):
started by the people who are smoking from the taxpayer
paid crack pipes. I wonder what started the fire yesterday
that my sister saw. Yeah, I don't know. I mean
sometimes it's propane tanks or grills that they have, or
sometimes they just start acting crazy and they set fires.
I mean, when you're talking about when you're talking about,
(24:00):
you know, eight thousand ambulance calls, it's all overdoses and.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Garbage fires.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Some people told the posts they have rooms or apartments elsewhere,
but they come to MacArthur Park every day because this
is where the handouts are that we're paying for.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Post visited twice.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Lines formed for food, medical vans and safe use supplies.
Look at the terminology, it's always it's always BS terminology
safe use. It's an assembly line of AID twenty seven
million dollars has been poured into revitalizing MacArthur Park, paying
(24:46):
for overdose response teams. Peace ambassadors, Peace ambassadors. How do
you bring peace to crack addicts? USC and L street
medicine teams and the overdoses keep coming. They called unicus Hernandez,
(25:08):
who is just a human vegetable. He's she's a councilwoman
called multiple times. Don't she doesn't call back, she doesn't respond.
Los Angeles has has saved. Has A says he're a master.
Twenty two million dollar o BID Opioide Settlement Trust Fund.
(25:32):
I guess this is from lawsuits of the drug companies
and a big part of that money goes to MacArthur
Park in the Westlake area. In fact, the city council
set aside three million dollars to build a Westlake area
harm reduction service.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yeah, they call it harm reduction.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They're giving them crack pipes so they can keep frying
their brains and they call it harm reduction. So this
Westlake Area Harm Reduction drop in center is going to
offer the lock zone distribution wound care. Remember I told
you the xylazine that makes it the fentdel causes your
(26:15):
causes open wounds to form test strips for fentanyl and xylazine,
mental health assessments, referrals and treatment. They spend more and
more money on contracts for syringe exchanges, so handing out
free syringes, safe smoking kits, which is they're double talk
(26:36):
for crack pipes, overdose education. Yeah, that's working wound care kits. That.
This is the Department on Disability that spends this money.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
This is insanity. What how could how could you? How
could how could we pay.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
For a government that hands out the crack pipes, hands
out the syringes, then watches people die of fenton ill
and xylism poisoning, watches the wounds start opening up on
their skin and get infected. And we've got county workers
(27:19):
who're paying their paying for standing there. This is Karen Bassis,
Los Angeles, and all these progressives think this is entirely
normal and proper. They're really really crazy. This is insane
and I don't have a word for it. All right,
(27:39):
We've got more coming up. Steve Hilton after three o'clock
running for governor. He's looking for California whistleblowers. Why don't
you start telling us what's going on with all the
money being stolen in the state and in the city.
Speaker 5 (27:51):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Moistline for Friday eight seven seven Moist eighty six, eight
seven seven Moist eighty six, or use the talkback feature
on the iHeartRadio app eight seven seven sixty six four
seven eight eighty six. So let it rip anything that's
making you crazy, pissed you off. After three o'clock we're
going to have Steve Hilton on one of the Republican
(28:17):
the leading Republican candidate for governor. God, we need to
change badly. In fact, you want you have the podcast.
Listen to the first hour went through the list of
all the things. California is first in the nation at
and it's all bad stuff. And all the things were
last in and it's all bad stuff. And it's like,
(28:41):
how did anybody look at him as presidential material with
the disastrous record he has again, take his name and
the party off.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Just look at what's happened here.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
You would think that the Democratic voters would want somebody
better who does not have such a disaster US record. Uh, well,
you can hear that. It's the first hour of the podcast.
Uh waimo. All right, So the other day there was
like a three car waymo jam up in San Francisco.
(29:14):
One car was trying to do a three point turn.
I think they pulled into a driveway and then and
then stopped and had a second car trying to get
through was blocked and the third second WAYMO, third weamo
and all three waymos were all facing each other in
the middle of the road and none of them could move.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Uh, because.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
You can't wave at somebody, hey, back up, turn right,
move along, can't do that. The wamos were just frozen.
Now today's Weimo story. Yeah, if you're pregnant, like real pregnant,
like about to give birth, pregnant, do you go in
(30:04):
a weymo. Well, this woman did, and she was riding
in one of the Weimo cars. She was on her
way to u SEE San Francisco, one of their medical facilities.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
I guess she was.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Going because she felt some movement some I don't know
for water broke ers. You start to feel labor pains.
But if you think the birth process is starting, you
go into an unmanned car. Well, she did, and she
gave birth in the back of the Weymo Monday night.
(30:42):
WEIMO said that their systems and processes were effective in
managing the situation. Our remote writer support team detected unusual activity.
I guess some sensors were going off in the back seat.
So they called to check the writer and she said,
I'm giving birth. So they called nine to one one
(31:06):
and emergency services took her to the hospital and she
gave birth. Now, you don't want to be the next
passenger to the back of a weymou after a I mean,
actually I should be clarified. She birth inside the weymouth.
By by time the emergency showed up, baby was out
(31:31):
on WEIMO said they immediately removed the car from service
for cleaning because birthing process can be can be very
very messing, and no word on the identity of the
woman or how she and the baby are doing. I
that that that that is baffling that because I mean,
(31:52):
most women I know are ultra careful, especially in the
final days and minutes that you don't want to be alone.
You don't want to jump into a Waimo by yourself.
We come back, We're gonna talk to Steve Hilton. He
is running for California governor. Former Fox News host, former
(32:13):
advisor to the British Prime Minister, Steve Cameron, tech businessman
and entrepreneur, and he's running a very strong campaign. And
Steve Hilton is calling for a complete public audit of
all of California's programs and he wants whistleblowers to start
talking like they did in Minnesota and Maine in the
(32:34):
past week.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
So Steve Hilton coming on next.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Hey, you've been listening to the John Covelt Show podcast.
You can always hear the show live on KFI AM
six forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The John Kobylt Show News
Host
John Kobylt
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