Michael Markham, dubbed "Madman Marcum," built a high-voltage Jacobs Ladder on his porch in 1995, achieving 20,000 volts before stealing six transformers (12,000–76,000V) to scale up—only to be arrested when a BB gun shot alerted police. He claimed a screw vanished in a "time vortex," sparking debates on Tesla’s theories, the Philadelphia Experiment, and fringe concepts like tachyons or psychic resonance. A retired Air Force officer with SSIR clearance hinted at classified UFO reports from Tempo-E in D.C., while callers questioned government secrecy, from BATF detentions to federal inmate privileges. Ultimately, the episode blends bizarre experiments with broader skepticism of authority, from time travel claims to political conspiracies, all under Art Bell’s signature blend of curiosity and chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be across all these many time zones.
And welcome to another edition of Coast to Coast AM Live Talk Radio throughout the nighttime.
It's good to be here.
We're going to do something a little different first.
You may recall, I think it was the end of last week.
Yes, it was.
Saturday morning.
I read you a story that was faxed to me by somebody in Columbia, Missouri, and I thought it incredible.
The story is entitled, Kansas City Man Tries to Build Time Machine on Porch.
Now, in case you don't remember the general tenure of the article, I'm going to remind you now, Kansas City Associated Press.
When a Missouri factory worker set out to make a time machine on his back porch, the contraption he came up with was not completely off the mark, theoretically, according to scientists.
But the high-voltage electrical transformer that Michael Markham had hooked up to two vertical metal rods would more likely have killed him or blown up his house than carried him into the past or future.
Time travel, though enticingly possible in the mathematics of Einstein's theory of relativity, is not likely in the physical universe, they say.
They go on, quote, it is a very interesting area, though.
There are theoretical physicists working on those areas, and I will not say that it's total nonsense.
This was according to the chairman at the physics department at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
But he went on, it's not something that you can demonstrate with batteries.
And I guess that was Michael's problem.
So are the Stanbury police, who say the voltage that Markham had diverted into the contraption caused power interruptions in and around the northwest Missouri town of about 1,300.
Markham had connected the metal rods to the terminals of a transformer, one of six stolen from a utility company, in hopes of creating a large spark gap with ascending electrical arcs.
Markham was arrested January 29th on a felony charge of stealing the transformers from a St. Joseph Light and Power Generating Station in King City.
He pleaded guilty last month, was placed on five years probation.
Police said the transformers had a capacity of 12 to 76,000 volts each, enough to easily cause electrocution or an explosion.
Markham, who told police that he has two years of college-level electrical engineering, said he was building a time machine, but didn't have enough power for it.
That's according to the Stanbury police chief, Tom Hampton.
Hampton said, quote, he's not nuts.
He appears to be an intelligent person with a lack of common sense.
Maybe.
Hampton said Markham told officers he had not tried to enter the spark gap, and neither had anyone else.
If anyone had, they probably would have been electrocuted, not transported in time.
Presumably, he decided that if he got enough electricity to go there, he could build a time machine, because there is the concept that if you're going to do it, it's going to require an enormous amount of energy.
So there it was, and you know me and these kinds of stories and how I'm fascinated by time.
So I set out to find young Mr. Markham, and I found him.
I found him.
It wasn't easy.
I went through a couple of our affiliates, and then I just started going to phone directories and rooting about, and lo and behold, there was a new number, and it was Michael's.
And I've got Michael here.
And so I thought I would ask him, and I did a little earlier today, and we're going to go through it right now and find out exactly what it is Michael was trying to do.
unidentified
we'll get back to him in just a moment Michael, are you there?
And uh and it's it like is it like making a giant ball of string or something?
In other words, you just keep winding and winding and winding around?
unidentified
Yeah, well, there's like technical things.
But simply, yeah, simply put, it's like, yes, like your primary coil will have like maybe 400 turns, or it depends on how many watts you want to make it to.
Right.
Let's say it's 400 turns in your primary, and say there's 4,000 turns in your secondary.
10 times the turns, and then you'll get 10 times the voltage.
You mean kind of like a haze, a hazy glow or something?
unidentified
Well, kind of like wavy.
If you ever like, if you like, take a lighter and like look right above it, you'll see like you'll see the heat from it.
That's right.
It's like real faint.
But I was expecting, I know that it was going to be probably an extra, like, like a bigger heat signature from the laser, but this one was strange.
Like, almost right above it, it was like the regular heat signature, but it was like a kind of like, it was like almost kind of like circular shaped in the center.
Sort of like a glow.
It's not really a glow.
It's like if you don't really look at it, you can't see it.
It really is, because there are aspects of what you have done that are very much like I've interviewed the people who did the Philadelphia experiment, Michael.
Well, all right, so your equipment was smoldering.
unidentified
Yeah.
And it's like I was thinking about just like rebuilding the laser, because the basic part of the laser is fine, but the part of the electronics, they were totally ruined.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking about doing, but I figured if I'm going to refine, because basically I almost have to start from scratch because I'll build in the transformer.
But so I figured I'd make just a bigger version of what I did.
It's like at 2,000 volts, it has to be within half the bottom, the space between the rods at the bottom has to be like half a millimeter apart for a arc.
When I buy them from the factory, I buy them at wholesale.
But the St. Joseph Light and Power, the power company I stole them from, they value the six transformers I took, they value them at $13,600 some dollars.
The main thing, they were like, see, it's like they were like, that's one of the reasons I moved from Stantonbury, because half that time once my head on a pole, I had the feeling.
Well, it's like, I don't know if this is like, I don't know if this is just another unfounded rumor or not, but like a lot of those people's television sets are ruined and stuff like that because I was like drawing so much power and it was like normally it's between 110 and 120 volt outlet.
Well, it's like they were estimating this is this what I've heard.
I don't know if it's a fact or not, but they were estimating I was like bringing it down to like 80 volts, 80, 90 volts.
That way, a whole lot of people are like, I figured it'd be, well, that's see, these transformers ain't as efficient as I I first thought they would be.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, well, it was like drawing a heck of a lot more than I thought.
You weren't going to walk into the middle of that spark gap, were you?
unidentified
No.
I was like, if made the big version, if it did the same thing, I was like going to like do something like throw something else for it, like something that's like.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your guest there and yourself, I am just really blown away by exactly what you have been talking about because I've always been real impressed with you, Art, as far as I've always thought you to be a person of high intelligence, what have you.
Your guest you've had on your show in the past, I've always been impressed with that.
But this has got to be the lamest thing I've ever heard in my life.
Because of the subject that you are discussing, you know, basically there are adults out there in this world who have a childlike mind who will be ignorant enough to try this kind of thing at home.
And Michael, I read this story last week, and I'm not going to go through it again, but it's entitled Kansas City Man Tries to Build Time Machine on Porch.
Now, long story short, he built a small wasn't supposed to be a time machine to begin with.
It was just supposed to produce an arc and be cool.
And his small model, which he used a laser from a CD to cause the spark to begin to move up Jacob's ladder.
It's what it's called Jacob's ladder.
When he got it all going, he noticed a very strange sort of shimmery effect above the arc, and he threw a screw into it, a common screw, and the screw disappeared.
Well, now we're into Something else.
So our hero, Michael, went over to the power company and appropriated, stole, six power transformers, which he then hooked up to his line at home and made a giant model on his back porch using two gigantic poles about four feet high.
And he got himself a big Jacob's ladder.
He also ruined a number of appliances, browned out most of the town that he lives in.
And that, of course, is where the police entered the picture and appropriated Michael's transformers.
He lost his job.
He went to jail.
He's recently out.
I somehow found him yesterday.
We've been interviewing him for an hour, and we will continue to do so in a moment.
Every line is jam-packed full, so a lot of people want to talk to Michael.
A couple of facts that have come in.
Here's one.
Art, all my life, I've been reading books and collections of unsolved mysteries and events.
Several times, I've come across a story about archaeologists discovering a perfectly machined, completely modern sheet metal screw.
This screw was embedded in a piece of quartz that is at least 10 million years old.
This has always been a totally unexplainable, unsolved mystery until tonight.
Dave in New Brownville, Texas.
Then this, Great John, if time travel is possible, be aware the Earth, solar system, and universe are traveling thousands of miles per hour.
If Michael Screws traveled through time, they'd be far from here in space.
That's from Albany, Oregon.
And this, I'm going to fax a diagram to you, basically what your guest is talking about, except that it will not work with electrical energy.
A massive power source, such as your guest is speaking about, would create something that is more than anyone at this time would want to deal with.
This system was being played with in Colorado, without getting into names, using low-frequency EMF.
This.
Hayard, I think the time machine idea is interesting, but did the bolt come back exactly the same?
Was the bolt analyzed to see if the material had changed at all?
And on and on and on.
I've got a whole pile of faxes here.
Michael, did anybody analyze the bolt?
unidentified
No.
Just by looking at it, it weighed the same.
It looked the same.
It looks exactly the way it did before I threw it in.
He says he's not particularly welcome in that town now, that a number of people feel as though their appliances may have gone belly up because of his experiments.
unidentified
Well, I haven't personally had any comments of that nature.
I did hear your earlier part of your broadcast where he browned out the majority of town, which was not right.
It was just a small section, approximately two blocks, where we had a little problem where the lights would flicker and brown out a little bit.
You know, there were physicists in this article who commented that you were actually more or less on the right track.
I mean, they sort of, even though they didn't think you should be doing it, they more or less endorsed the direction you were going in with regard to time travel.
And with the comment of the physicist here in the article, I mean, I really do understand his investigative curious mind.
I'm very much the same way.
unidentified
Right, because anything's possible unless it's already been proven physically not to be possible.
But just a couple comments and then one question.
One, I hope you're taking and leaving very good note because, you know, you may send yourself into the wild blue yonder and someone can maybe pick up where you left off, even though we would say we'd miss you.
And the next thing is, if you do see yourself making progress, I'm sure you'll be taking everything, you know, wisely and step by step.
Do not let any kind of big company bureaucracy or anything horn in or try and get in on a piece of action because you know what that will end up being like, just like everything else.
It'll be totally taken away from your control and you'll just be more or less cast to the wayside.
Yeah, that's what I'm worried about right now.
I would just move carefully before you make any decision or any step because I've got some government experience.
And just take a very careful step.
Don't ever jump into anything.
And my last question is, next time you get that vortex, I guess for lack of a better word, it doesn't sound like exactly what it was.
But anyway.
Best way to describe it.
Yeah, because, well, anyway, you know what a vortex is.
What about a digital stopwatch?
You know, measuring into the hundreds of a second at least.
I got into about three years ago, started collecting information.
I've got a bulletin board, computer bulletin board service where I try to get all this stuff together and get people to talk about it.
Because I ran into a buddy who originally had taken, he was using a lot less voltage, but he was just using DC batteries, made a couple of coils and was using a police radio that he would key, well, excuse me, a ham radio, a handheld, and he would key it and then tweak through the frequencies.
And I guess he hit the resonant frequency of the circuit.
And cut a long story short, he ended up in the loony bin for a little while.
And he's okay now, but I went down and snuck a tape recorder in to interview him, and I got it all on tape, about an hour's worth of conversation.
And he told me, he was telling me all about his time travels and how he had gone through this portal and that portal and had to go through 12 worlds to get back.
And quite frankly, I thought he'd lost it.
And I'm not even sure now.
But that was kind of interesting.
So I did more research.
And then I presented this to another buddy of mine who fools around with electronics like I do.
And I said, hey, what do you think of this?
And at first he stopped, and then he looked at me and he goes, well, I could see how you get some kind of interesting effect out of that.
And then about two weeks later, he kind of came up to me.
Well, he came to me and he was kind of pale in the face.
And he said, wow, one of the engineers upstairs at where I work, which is where they manufacture medical equipment, said that he had taken two four-foot square capacitors out of an x-ray machine and hooked them up to a short length of 12-gauge wire.
You know, that's very thick wire for somebody who wouldn't know.
Laid it on the floor and threw a quarter in it.
And he pushed the conductors together, the electrodes, together until it got close enough to arc.
I don't want to know how he did that.
And apparently, after the spark, it disintegrated the 12-gauge wire, and the quarter was reduced to the size of a dime, but a quarter inch thick, and apparently still in good shape.
Oh, I don't want to be arrested for being part of this.
Nevertheless, it's a good offer.
How do you feel about the possibility, Michael, of somebody coming along and being your mentor even more than this, maybe contributing money to build a great, big, gigantic version?
I'm not like 100% certain what it is, but I'll say this much, Michael.
All kidding aside, you know, I think that if I had done what you've done, and I'm kind of person likely to do that, I disassembled all my mom's appliances when I was about eight or nine years old.
My question would be, I'd like to know if you guys would explore some of the more technical aspects, such as which direction in time it might be going.
If indeed he did get to a point where he himself could step through it, how he would be sure that he could get back from which direction he went.
It's like real hard to find information on that in libraries.
So I'd like this past conference I went to just a few days ago, found out like information on that, information on the Montauk project, which is a spin-off for the Philadelphia experiment.
Yes, he didn't hear the answer of the question on the high voltage, and he was just wondering, you know, he didn't hear the answer because he had to turn his radio off, and he called me and said he's only allowed one call night.
Well, all right, rephrase the question then for you.
unidentified
Well, I'm not sure exactly what he asked.
He just said that he asked a question about the high voltage, something about where did he get the information for that.
And I think that, you know, I've been listening, and it's amazing about the way that works, you know, and I'd like to hear the answer and if you would give me a few seconds to go and shut my radio off.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Michael Markham.
Good morning.
unidentified
Well, good morning, Art.
I think I'm going to go out and play the lotto now.
Hey, listen, I've really enjoyed this show.
That woman that called in, a couple of the people, a couple of the naysayers that have called up, I'm going to have to say they're all but persistent.
This has got to be the funnest show you've ever done, anywhere from getting this guy after I heard the story initially last night on your show, and then this morning, and then the police officer calling up art.
This has got to be the greatest show that I have heard in a long time.
I want to know, though, is, Mike, are you going to be publishing?
Maybe if you, on a larger scale, get to try the experiment.
unidentified
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's another thing, too.
If I get this thing in and it actually, like, it actually works, heck, there's always, I mean, heck, I could write a book, do a movie, and do all kinds of stuff in.
All right, Michael, I would like your reaction to this.
Art, thanks so much.
I've really been tiring of hearing all the crap that's going on in the world, the dollar-yen crisis, the Iran, Russia, China, nuclear crisis, everything in the U.S. is in crisis, the OJ crisis.
It's refreshing not to have to listen to any of it at 11 o'clock tonight.
No, instead, you've chosen to share with all of us someone near Kansas City, my hometown, who is either truly on the cutting edge or merely yet another deranged madman.
I frankly don't care if he is.
It's just so nice to hear the tale of somebody's courage and following their intuition and going for their dream.
Well, what I'd like is, if he ever does go to the whole publishing stage, is to see if I could get him to send me the information on what the outcome is.
Maybe not exactly what he's doing, because, of course, he might want to keep that to himself, or keep other people from trying it.
Basically, get an overview of what type of information he's dealing with, what he's doing, what the outcome is, and possibly show it to the public to see if they like it all.
Michael, are you taking, you know, the dye asks, are you taking notes?
I mean, are there any notes so that if you stepped into the gap and turned into a french fry, that people could read and see where you went wrong, maybe?
unidentified
Yeah, overall, like a general, like write down every little thing, but I'm like keeping the general idea down.
When you approach the day when you build the quote-unquote Ark of Triumph, give me a call because I want to make sure I plug in my surge suppressor first, okay?
Okay, well, he says, when you're coming back out the other way, you meet yourself.
Now, I often wondered, if you threw the screw in, did you take a look at the screw and see if it was turned left or right-handed thread when you found it?
If you just start tuning in, we've spent the last two hours.
How do I explain what we just have done?
If you're just tuning in, you'll never understand.
I read a story last week about a Kansas City man who tried to build a time machine on his porch.
I tracked him down.
I mean, I tracked him down.
And he went on the air with me tonight, and it was the most incredible two hours you've ever heard.
He explained exactly what he did, why he got in trouble for stealing the transformers from the power company, how his experiments proceeded.
He actually caused something to disappear and reappear, possibly moving in time or dimension.
And the arresting officer in the case called up during the course of the interview.
It was just absolutely incredible.
So it's hard.
The man's name is Michael Markham.
And I said I'd give his phone number out one more time.
He okayed that.
He'll be sorry.
You all know about the C-21 mystery.
Eight men dead when an Air Force Learjet went down in Alabama.
Nobody knows quite what brought it down.
It was completely destroyed, but they did get the black box, the flight recorder, so we may be able to find out.
Killed Air Force Assistant Secretary Clark Feaster and Air Force Major General Glenn Proffitt.
Among those killed.
A possible cause they're toying with is a fuel imbalance.
In other words, the Lear has fuel stored in the wings, and if you get too much of an imbalance, obviously you can't fly.
We'll find out.
Economic news, housing starts are down about 8%.
Down in the West as much as 20%.
Down despite falling mortgage rates.
Signs are that the housing market will continue to fall.
Now I've got all kinds of news about the dollar.
We've got a serious problem here, folks.
So let me read you a couple of facts.
As Art, the U.S. economy, as well as the world monetary system, is in serious jeopardy.
The dollar is collapsing and rapidly losing its status as the world's premier currency.
I've included a copy of a record-breaking drop it took on the overseas market this evening when it plummeted to an incredible 1.345 marks to the dollar and an astounding 79.7 yen.
When will the American people wake up and take notice of what's happening?
Will they wait until it has completely collapsed under the tremendous burden It now shoulders?
Or will it be when the value of the dollar is measured by its weight rather than its denominational value?
When the day comes that a $100 bill only puts a couple of gallons of gas in one's car, it's going to be too late.
Something must be done now.
The crash of the dollar is not some futuristic event.
It's taking place right this moment.
Indeed, Tokyo, the Associated Press, the dollar fell to a new low against the Japanese yen in early trading Wednesday following a decline overseas due in part to pessimism with regard to talks between the U.S. and Japan.
Tokyo stock prices nosedived.
The dollar fell to 79.75 yen from 81.12 late Tuesday.
It did climb back to 80.08 yen.
My God, it's the lowest dollar yen rate since the modern exchange rate system was set up in the late 1940s.
My.
NBC did a piece last night on sexual harassment.
What is sexual harassment?
Who knows?
I used to think that it meant that you were grabbing at a female or you were being sexually aggressive in some unwanted, unwelcome way.
I always thought that was sexual harassment.
Anyway, whatever it is, since Anita accused Clarence, the number of sexual harassment complaints to government agencies has risen, get ready for this now, 109%.
109%.
So far, $22 million has been paid in claims.
There is a Los Angeles fire captain, Steve Johnson, who is challenging a policy in his fire department, apparently, which says that he's not even allowed to have a Playboy magazine at the fire station.
Apparently, these days, one can be charged with sexual harassment for looking at a woman.
And I think we've gone too far.
This is really pathetic and sad.
I mean, look, women, to me, are beautiful creatures.
And if there's one nearby and there's something to be seen, I do not now know the harm in looking.
I've never known the harm in looking, and if you can actually be charged with sexual harassment for merely looking...
Do you think he wrote the book to tell his story or to earn more big money?
I'd feel better if he donated the proceeds to a veterans organization.
I believe Charleston, South Carolina, by the way, suffered major damage from an earthquake sometime back in the mid-19th century.
Enjoy the show.
You're fair and reasonable.
Longboat Key, Florida.
Wow, down in the Florida Keys.
Longboat Key, Florida.
I've always looked at the Keys as a wonderful place to be.
It's beautiful there.
And then this, and then we'll get the phone lines open.
Art, you have a great show.
Art, this country has to legalize drugs, whether we like it or not.
The present situation is not tolerable.
The arguments now are the same as were used during Prohibition.
As it was then necessary to legalize alcohol in order to control the rum runners, it's now necessary to take drug money out of the hands of the dope gangs.
This is the major issue, though there are many others involved.
Many people think this problem is unique to modern-day America, but it's occurred throughout history and the world.
Anybody who is generally concerned with this topic ought to take the time to read the forbidden game, A Social History of Drugs.
It is a scholarly work that provides much thought-provoking information.
As a true believer in Republican government, I can see no other course but legalization.
People must be allowed to injure themselves if they wish to.
Of course, they should also be absolutely responsible for their actions and left in their own mess, as it were.
Government must get out of the business of protecting people against themselves.
It makes us lazy, docile, and atrophies the reason.
Freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin, and if the American people don't realize it, they're going to lose both.
That's Mark from Clackamas, Oregon, and I thought it was a profound argument for legalization, and there are reasons to argue for it as well as against it.
All right.
We're going to open the lines now.
If you want to comment on the show we had on between 11 and 1 Pacific time, the first two hours of the program, you're welcome to do it.
Time travel, what Madman Markham is doing, has done, plans to do, you're welcome to comment on that or anything I just brought up or anything that you would like to bring up at all.
And I would like to say once again to everybody that in my estimation, talk radio is many things.
It's not just politics.
It's not just, at least to me, it's not.
It's my style of talk radio, and you will hear me do many, many different things on this program.
I'm convinced over the years that that has contributed to and is part of the reason for its success.
It sometimes upsets people, but in my estimation, if you make no waves, then you're not really doing anything at all.
So I will continue to do what some people think of as a little more than passing strange every now and then.
It's just me, folks.
On the first time caller line, you are on the air.
unidentified
Hi, I'm an air traffic controller out of Salt Lake City.
I don't suppose they hang portraits of Ronald Reagan up in the air traffic control area, do they?
unidentified
No, no, they certainly don't.
You know, and also this attack on federal retirement, it concerns us because this attack, as I call it, will send a signal to the rest of America, corporate America, to slash the retirement benefits that our workers have struggled so long and so hard to get.
And ultimately, it's going to probably include Social Security as well.
So everybody's at risk here.
You know, either we get it together or just about everything's at risk.
unidentified
Well, you know, and federal employees have been taking a hit for a long time, you know, as far as being unprofessional, unserviceable, and things of the nature.
But unfortunately, you know, the airplanes fly through the skies safely, and no matter what you say about the post office, that mail does get delivered.
And yet I don't know of any air traffic controllers that have gone bonkers and grabbed a gun.
Any thoughts on that?
unidentified
No, they haven't.
I think a lot of the problems in the post office are related to the supervision of their employees.
From what I understand, you know, the employees felt they were being harassed, being watched too closely.
Also, at one time in the Postal Service, they had one supervisor for every two employees.
Now, that started to reverse the trend on Al Gore's reduction in government, the elimination of 252,000 jobs, and the supervisor-to-employee ratio of 15 to 1.
So my question is, how many times as an air traffic controller would you admit to have been tracking some sort of UFO, something that is traveling in the sky that you cannot account for?
unidentified
Well, there's a lot of times out there.
On the radar, we now have what they call, what the government alludes to, false targets.
And they say it's a radar glitch in the radar problem.
Well, I think that these radar glitches may be something else out there.
Well, I'm sure, and I guess you can be fooled, but over the years, you've kind of learned to recognize a real return, don't you?
unidentified
Yeah, but just by their track and their movement.
I've seen some suspicious things.
In fact, we have a UFO hotline number up that we do call.
But most controllers do not do that because then we may be, if we report that, we may be subject to some government testing that they don't want to admit to, so we generally don't call and report it.
Well, there's nothing more devastating than think that the earth's going to pieces out from under your feet.
But the Christian reads the Bible and says that, well, there's a thousand years at least of millennia ahead of us, so we don't have to worry about the end of the world for a thousand years.
You know something I've always wondered about, Leonard?
Whether it's the religious people like yourself, or it's a psychic predicting the end of the world, or, you know, a gigantic earthquake or something, and they do it and they talk about it and they think about it and they dwell on it and they cogitate about it.
And then the day comes and it doesn't happen, do they feel disappointed?
unidentified
Perfect peace have they which love thy law and nothing shall offend them.
He's rolling, he's the rolling stone He's rolling, he's the rolling stone To access the audio archives of Coast to Coast AM, log on to CoastToCoastAM.com.
You're going, you're going home.
Thank you.
Thank you.
But I'm holding every day.
I've been on a heart.
Didn't make one of my way of having time.
But nothing had you more near when I get here.
Nothing but a heart, never waiting.
And I'm awake and I can feel with him.
If I can hear him, I got a lot of money.
I got a lot of those kids up all day.
Kids up all the way.
Nothing but a heartache every day.
Everywhere a heartache every day.
Nothing but a heartache every day.
Thank you.
I've made a lot of party.
I'm a lot of the people.
From the Kingdom of Nye, this is the best of Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell.
Tonight's show originally aired on April 18, 1995.
To Art Bell, Art, did you notice that there were no women calling in on your interview with the time machine mechanic, except women who thought he was a radical extremist or a madman?
I'm 49 and laud him for trying things experimental.
We still don't know the real effects of how electricity and radio waves affect the dimension we live in.
It's pure theory, and for all we know, it may tamper with one of the other 13 dimensions suggested in Davies'Super Strings book, Good Show.
What does it mean that women...
So I think that's your answer.
I don't know what it says, though.
And then this, Hiart, I really liked your guest tonight.
I've always been a physics buff.
One thing that bothers me about time travel, though, as a consequence of Einstein's theory of relativity, which stemmed from something called the Lorentz transformations mathematical equations, which describe space and time dilations, a couple of things are apparent.
One, in order to experience time dilation, one must reach the speed of light, at which point the person's momentum and hence mass become infinite.
Two, the speed of light is an absolute maximum.
It can't be exceeded.
Not to say that these concepts from special relativity are absolutes, but they do seem to preclude time travel unless some grossly unobserved physical law exists.
Time travel is a cool concept worth studying, but I'd love to hear from someone more educated in physics than myself a comment on this.
Tom, Columbia, Missouri.
Well, I'm not sure of what I'm saying, but I believe that there was some theory or even possible proof that quarks have exceeded the speed of light, or a theory that they might exceed the speed of light.
And I think that that's one of the things they were going to look at with a gigantic accelerator they were trying to build down in Texas.
But I'm certainly not a physics person myself, so it's open for comment if anybody out there wants to come in.
Art, a little information on the Palmdale Bulge.
It is an anomaly, also known as an uplift.
It is literally the ground surging upward.
This particular uplift was discovered about 1980 and thought it was developed during the late 1960s or early 70s.
But most seismologists agree that it has been rising continually ever since.
Ooh, that's bad.
That's Carol listening also to KFYI and Mesa.
So, Carol, I don't know what to tell you.
To me, the layman in these areas, it seems like a sort of like an aneurysm.
And I also wanted to mention, you know, if your time traveler there ever does succeed, it'd be nice if he could maybe throw a dollar bill through there to see what shape that comes back in.
Well, speaking of other big stories, I got home today to a message on my answering machine, which was sort of chopped off because I have a really lame answering machine.
But it's from my friend in Arizona who works in the parks and went camping with some geologists.
And he mentioned about the Palmdale Bulge.
Apparently, they had a very spirited discussion about that, which I don't know what the Palmdale Bulge is.
I would think of it just off the cup as sort of an earth aneurysm.
unidentified
I like that.
I like that.
I'll get back to you as soon as I find out anything more specific, and I'll see if maybe one of these geologists would be gutsy enough to get on the air with me.
And, you know, I notice a lot, I drive by there every evening after I leave work.
And one thing I notice is from the University of Oregon, I think it is, they have geologist trucks down here, but they're volcanologists, and they have a little volcano on the side.
There's a whole lot of geological rumor-mongering going on, and there's something to it.
I think there's something to it.
Thank you very much for the call.
You know, it's just sort of a collective input.
I'm getting information and faxes you guys just flat wouldn't believe regarding people who think there's getting ready to be a geological upheaval of some sort.
You, of course, are aware that the FCC limits the amount of fun you can have in a two-hour period, and you grossly exceeded that in your first two hours.
That brought back a lot of memories of my childhood.
I played a lot with electronics and electrical circuits, and I used a lot of spark coils, and did a lot of Jacob's letters type stuff, and I enjoyed all that.
And that kind of thing really needs to be encouraged.
It's not a really hidden madman type of thing.
It's just a curiosity type thing that is really the basis of a lot of experimentation.
And while we have, you know, the things that were developed, the technological things that we have today, really came from that kind of curiosity.
There are a million different areas and things that you can talk about.
And I'd just as soon let this program as I have for all the years I've been on the air, over, you know, going on a decade, about a decade, doing this particular program.
You know, what makes your nose your nose, what makes your eyes your eyes.
These things come down in a literal form.
And supposedly that's why the Philadelphia experiment worked so well, because everything was tubes of its own transistors and had a natural resonance at that time.
I was talking to a man up in Washington State earlier tonight who claims to be working with dual resonance technology and claims to be able to move in time.
I read an article in Discovery a while back that talked about this concept of different universes where when you travel in time, you don't actually travel in time, you just travel to a different universe.
And every universe is just a different setup of each other and how just each concept, like if I went back in time and killed my dad, you'd think I would be born, but actually I would have gone to a different universe.
It seems to me that to be consistent, you would, in effect, when you killed your father, blow yourself out of this universe, find yourself in another universe where your continuity can be accounted for.
In other words, where your father still lives if he was supposed to be alive, and you could only exist there.
You know, I was wondering, did you ever think that the space, you know, all the space that they do at Nassau has changed what's going on with the earthquakes and the floodings and all that and the pollution?
I always thought that maybe that has a lot to do with the climate change and everything.
Well, I had a lady who called up not long ago and thought that every time they fire off the shuttle, it's like firing it off from the center of a balloon.
And when the shuttle goes through the balloon, a bunch of stuff blows out before the hole seals up.
Well, years ago when I was in high school, our science teacher said that when you would put something through the stratosphere, that you would change the molecules, which would have a lot to do with the weather and what have you.
And every time they go up, it seems that there is freak floods, freak earthquakes.
And I really think that it has a lot to do with ozone and everything else because it's bound to have pollution from the fuel they use.
Some people would say, well, but God gave us the knowledge to do these things.
But it seems to me like it's one place where the budget should be cut.
I don't think they need to spend that much money on NASA when they could take that same money and use it for research that NASA, yes, they have come up with a lot of good things, but they should take that money and work on the good things that they've come up with and maybe use their knowledge to help people down here, not up there.
We're just open line, unscreened, rip from tarum, let it happen top radio.
And that's the way I like it.
Mr. Bell, I have been meaning to write you about an event that occurred two days prior to the San Francisco earthquake.
My neighbor has a well, and it overflowed a surge from very deep.
It flooded my yard as if a 12-inch line had broken in his yard and poured into mine.
Two days later, the quake hit.
And one comment about particles being faster than light.
About five years ago, I recall that an Italian astronomer in Italy, and at the same time in England, an English astronomer, observed the same particle shoot from a distant star, and they made the same measurement.
The particle had traveled faster than light.
And then this.
Art, a woman should be able to walk down the street safely, nude if she so chooses, discounting the reactions of the local police.
But I get the feeling that some of the really rabid prosecutors of the sexual harassment cases feel that she should be able to do the same without anyone read, hear, men even looking or taking notice.
That is just not realistic.
While she should be free from assault, physical and verbal, people are just naturally going to look, maybe even stare.
Some might even take vocal notice as opposed to propositioning her, but I guess it's all the same to a feminazi.
Do you think that feminazis would be nearly as offended if they were to be leered at by a lesbian?
Or if they just knew which ladies they walked by were lesbian and the unpure thoughts that were having Jim in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Well, you know, basically, Jim, I really do agree with you.
And I'm sorry about what's happening between men and women in this country.
I know it makes me sound like an old bogey, but I surely do miss the good old days.
When a man could look at a woman, and maybe even, you know, if he's out there on a construction site or something, and give a big wolf whistle at her without her going to court and taking everything he has.
The Wall Street Journal ran an article saying the government could realize half a trillion dollars a year in profit from the various industries that would spring up from hemp.
unidentified
Hemp, and also the point that I would like to get across is that rather than planting More trees rather than using things as hemp, even though I do think it is a positive alternative that can definitely be used.
Other than doing things like that, what needs to be embedded in the minds of Americans is the need for a recycling program.
Americans need to know that recycling does help, that recycling does help our forests.
Forests are being cut down at an amazing rate.
They're killing all sorts of species, all sorts of waters.
They're killing our trees.
There's been today, especially all over the United States and internationally, actions that were planned against multinational corporations in paper.
Okay, but look, there was a day in America where a wolf whistle from, you know, a construction guy or something wasn't, it was either flattering or she'd blush, but it wasn't a matter for litigation.
unidentified
Right.
Okay, well, I'd like to move on to politics.
Okay.
First, Bill Clinton is going to be running for a re-election in 1996, and I do believe he is unbeatable.
Well, unfortunately, Bob Dole isn't going to do it for the Republican Party, and you're going to have Bill Clinton in there, thank God, for another four years.
I'm sorry, but the numbers I think are real and horrifying.
And frankly, of all the cities you could be making that statement from, I find it a little more than passing strange that you're coming from New Orleans.
About these earthquakes, we've been, well, my hair's standing up on the back of my neck, too, for a long time.
And I've been, I worked from 8 to 4 in the morning, and I got you all night long every night, and this is my night off, so I got up to see if I could call you.
And I was out, I'd drive a patrol car, and I'd finish the patrol where I parked, and all of a sudden something hit the back of my trunk, and it was snowing and sleeting.
And I had my dome light on, and I looked back there, and here's this great big old bird sitting back there, one of those buzzards.
Well, I'm working on the assumptions these wild animals and stuff, they act peculiar around earthquake time.
Yes, sir.
And here I'm looking at this thing just scared the daylights out of me, so I had my motor running, I had the radio playing, and it was unconcerned, so I just put my car in gear and I took off down the road.
And here this old bird was flying out in front of me and off to the side and back and forth.
And I went up to the end of the road.
There was a code factor, and I turned around, and it flew around me and went down into the canyon, into the valley.
So I drove back around the residential area a little bit, trying to figure it out, and I drove back to where I was sitting before, and I sit there in the dark, and darn if he didn't come back again.
And anyways, this time, I'd sign my flashlight right in his face, and I didn't have the dome light on in the car, and he wouldn't move, just looking at me, his head just kind of bobbing back and forth.
So I started slamming on the seat on the driver, passenger side seat, slamming that hollering and hollering.
He just slid off the back like he had one foot on the bumper and went down on the ground.
And I didn't see him no more, so I pulled out and I drove around, and there's a lot of equipment parked there, and I shined him with headlights all over him, and he disappeared.
And I'll tell you, here in Perrump, Nevada, we have got the biggest birds I've ever seen in my life.
I mean, these birds are freaky.
Do you remember the movie, The Stand?
Do you remember the bird, the big black bird in the stand?
That bird came from right here in Perrump, Nevada.
We've got them all over the place.
This guy's not lying.
You can get 20-pound birds.
I mean, these birds are big.
And these birds feed on roadkill.
You know, I mean, they really feed on it.
I mean, these are big birds.
I kind of almost hit one one day.
They get so bloated, they get so fat eating rabbits that have been squished on the road that they can't even get into the air.
You know, they, I mean, these are big birds, and they start flapping their wings, and they're flapping their wings, you know, and you're coming down the road, and they're trying to get airborne, and they're trying to get airborne, and their fat little bellies won't let them get up in the air.
And I grazed one one day that way.
That sucker couldn't get into the air fast enough.
I mean, he was lumbering, trying to get in.
So we've got these big birds out here.
They're big.
Probably big enough to pick up a cat.
Maybe not my cat, but a cat.
And they're pretty frightening.
That's where the bird in the stand came from, right here.
I've got them all over the place.
They're big.
They're eerie.
And if they ever got a mind to start doing what this man just said, it would be not tolerable, I'll tell you.
The illness and medications had made my face puffy, and about one-fourth of my hair had fallen out.
In short, I was feeling down, doobie-doo, down, down.
About three weeks after I'd been released, I was walking the six blocks to my grandma's house.
That's where wolves always get you, Bryn, on the way to grandma's house.
Suddenly, I heard a wolf whistle.
I looked around, saw a city worker with his head sticking out of a manhole.
He whistled again.
When I made eye contact, smiled, and went back to work.
I felt 10 feet tall, and not just because the guy was standing in a hole.
The man did more for my self-esteem with that simple gesture than anything else possibly could have.
Since then, when I've been to visit my dad, I've noticed that on occasion he'll give a wolf whistle at a woman.
Most often, to the bedraggled young moms with several very small kids in tow, I've seen those women stand a little taller, too.
I have to conclude that not all people are as nice as that city worker was, and that if you cannot say something sincerely complimentary about someone's looks, it's probably wise to stay silent.
But I won't forget that worker.
Not in a million years.
That's Bryn Marie.
And back to the lines we go.
East of the Great Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
unidentified
I'm a retired Air Force field grade officer who has been one of the few fortunate ones to probably read all of the UFO reports that were available outside of Project Blue Book in a building in Washington, D.C. years ago called Tempo-E.
Would somebody like yourself who read them come to a conclusion?
unidentified
I came to the conclusion that there were many, many sightings that were never reported anyplace else except to this investigative intelligence agency and then just filed, except what they were then subsequently transferred to DIA, a defense intelligence agency.
And I'm not sure about the NSA or CIA because it's been too long ago that I've read them all, but there was a room with nothing but five-drawer filing cabinets, and I had gotten special permission to go in and read them because I was in a special training situation.
And I was just interested in the subject at the time.
It wasn't until recently, until I moved out here in Nevada, that I've gotten more intrigued because of what we allegedly have out here in Area 51.
Again, I'll say, did you sign a security statement?
unidentified
No, I was at the time holding the highest possible security clearance available in the Air Force at my level, which was an SSIR clearance, and it allowed me access to special intelligence.
Okay, that's why I asked you, a person reading them like yourself would conclude what?
That we are being visited, that there are extraterrestrials, that the UFOs are really craft of some sort built by some kind of intelligence.
Would you conclude that?
unidentified
I would conclude that, and I would also deduce that there are many, many, many visits and sightings that have never been reported anywhere except in this data bank of files.
Now, whether they've been subsequently reduced to microfish, destroyed, or what have you, I really don't know.
I've never followed up on it myself.
I've been told that other people have tried to get to these files, but I haven't had the right nomenclature or coding, and I've been turned down by the Air Force because they said we didn't we don't have these files.
I don't fully embrace them, and I don't reject them.
unidentified
Yeah, but I know you're an agnostic, and that's kind of a terrible place to be in because I was there once, and then finally I truly decided or I accepted Christ as my Savior is what I did.
And then I started reading the scripture, and I thought, oh, this is true, this is true.
And it seemed like his spirit was communing with my spirit, and I just knew that it was true.
I have this horrid little intellectual thing that burdens me that I have to be able to lay my hands on.
I have to be able to see it and prove it and touch it and understand it and pick it apart and be able to be satisfied myself that this is so, whatever it is.
And it makes it very difficult for me to accept things purely on faith.
Okay, first off, whatever happened to that guy, I believe it was in San Diego who got verification from the government of some UFO activity that he was in the local news in San Diego, I believe?
But my theory on the black helicopters is that they help out the local police.
Well, yeah.
I don't think so, but I know that the local police told me that the NLPD told me that they didn't have any record of any federal activity, and I gave a call to the Louisiana FBI department.
And if everybody knew, actually, the access that these people have things to and all the things they have, just for one example, everybody that paroles in California, we give them $200 and they leave.
Well, to twist an old phrase I've used in a commercial, you cannot buy a fine wool suit for $200 today.
unidentified
That's true.
I like that commercial.
Things even such as they have rights to anything that is sent to them from a publisher.
One guard found child pornography in somebody's locker, took this away from him, and the warden said, you will return this person's property because he received this.
But anyhow, this president, you know, he's going to get some action done here on these issues because, you know, for two years, the Republicans filibustered everything he wanted to do.
All these ideas, half of these ideas that the Republicans are doing were Bill Clinton's ideas.