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Nov. 6, 1998 - Art Bell
01:16:00
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Ancient Astronauts - Eric Von Daniken
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♪♪♪ From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid
you all good evening or good morning, wherever you may be in this great cosmos, this greater
earth of ours.
Actually, this program, stretching from the Hawaiian and Tahitian Islands out west eastward to the Caribbean south and to South America north, all the way to the pole, that's commercially, and then worldwide on broadcast.com.
Thank you, broadcast.com.
This show is Coast to Coast AM, and I'm Art Bell, and it's great to be here, Friday night, Saturday morning.
Always a very strange show.
Tonight, a man I have heard about all my life, but I have never interviewed, never spoken with, and I have never heard him speak.
Eric Vondonikin.
His latest, The Arrival of the Gods.
Hey, remember?
Chariots of the Gods, of course.
Now, Arrival of the Gods, and we'll talk with Eric von Bonneken, if all goes well, next hour.
Alright, in a moment, as promised, Eric von Bonneken, author of, originally, of course, Chariots of the Gods.
Chariots of the Gods, and now, kind of an update.
The Arrival of the Gods.
Interested?
Eric Vondonican coming up next.
First discovered in 1927, the origins of the massive earth etchings at Nazca.
High in the remote deserts of Peru have for years puzzled archaeologists, until now that is.
Eric Vondonican, author of the best-selling Chariots of the Gods.
And over 20 other books on unsolved phenomena.
Recently uncovered startling new evidence on the riddle of Nazca in Arrival of the Gods.
Arrival of the Gods, I said.
He exclusively reveals his story about the mile-long landing strips, vivid etchings of people, birds, and animals, and the immense geometric designs.
This extraordinary book begins with the history of the theories of Nasdaq's origins and purposes.
Then, using over 140 integrated photographs, specially designed maps, models, and drawings, von Donegan begins to explain his solution to one of our planet's greatest enigmas.
Eric von Donegan was born in Switzerland in 1935.
And, of course, his first book, Chariots of the Gods, published in 1968, became a bestseller in thirty-eight countries.
His twenty-one titles have sold more than fifty-five million copies worldwide.
And here from New Hampshire is Eric Vondonikin.
Eric, welcome to the show.
Well, I'm happy to be here.
It's great to have you.
Ever since I was relatively small.
I've been hearing about you, and hearing about you, and hearing about you, and here I am talking to you.
What an honor.
Well, it's great.
It's a great honor for me to talk with such a celebrity like Abel.
Celebrity?
I'm not a celebrity.
They're giving me the Purple Melted Candle Award or something.
You know the SISOP people?
Have you ever heard of them?
No, not yet.
The Skeptical Inquirer?
Of course, I know of them.
We have them in Europe, too.
Oh, you do?
Well, to me, it's just a group of conservative believers.
Yes, conservative believers is very kind indeed.
All right.
Let's go back, I guess, to your first book, because we've got to lay the foundation for the second book.
And I'm sure you've talked about this a million times over, Chariots of the Gods.
Its basic contention is there are long landing strips in Peru and elsewhere, where you believe there is evidence that at an earlier time in Earth's history, there were ancient astronauts who visited us.
When do you believe that occurred?
Well, that's a good question, because there is no answer.
No answer?
I am familiar, very, very familiar, with the holy text of ancient India.
And in ancient India text, you really can read that long, long time ago, and with long time ago, they mean at least 6000 B.C., gigantic ships, cities, surrounded the Earth in an orbit.
And from these cities, smaller vehicles have come down to Earth.
The old Indians called these smaller vehicles the Vimanas.
And they described very precisely different types of Vimanas.
And I really suggest that one type of Vimana once made a landing in Nazca.
Nazca is in Peru, it's about 500 kilometers south of Lima.
Now, the question, of course, comes up, why, for good sake, should somebody land in a desert in Nazca?
Well, Nazca, still today, is full of raw material, like minerals of all kind, including gold and silver.
Still today, around Nazca, and on the desert of Nazca, some digging is going on.
So this could have well been an idea why extraterrestrials made a landing there.
In other words, they wanted our resources, our minerals.
That's the idea.
Now, of course, I was always aware that an extraterrestrial spaceship would not need a landing strip, because they have other technologies.
But it doesn't matter with what technology they have came down, in any case, they would leave traces behind.
Indeed.
I mean, if I drive my car in Jeep, then my wheels would leave traces behind.
So, these extraterrestrials, they left traces, they did their job, they did their digging and whatever, and they were observed by the natives.
And the natives, at that time, they did not understand what was going on, so they believed that these extraterrestrials must be some gods.
Now, of course, we all know that there are no gods.
But they believe that there must be some gods.
And after the gods have left the plane of Nazca again, now the cult starts.
And only now, not before.
Now the Nazis start to imitate, to copy what they saw, what the gods did.
And now they construct gigantic lines to the east, north, west and south.
Long lines, small lines, airstrip-blocking lines.
Um, so you believe all of this occurred at least 6,000 years before Christ?
Uh, yes and no.
so that the god should return again. They wish to have their visit again on earth.
Um, so you believe all of this occurred at least 6,000 years before Christ?
Yes and no. The 6,000 years figure stems from the old Indian literature.
But it has occurred to me during my research in the past 40 years
that we must have been visited from outer space at least two times, if not three times.
Now, the dating in Nazca itself is very controversial.
The oldest dating which we have found so far goes back 1400 B.C., but the youngest is 800 D.C.
So between 1400 B.C.
and 800 D.C.
there's quite a big lap of time.
In one of your older books, Gold of the Gods, you described going to an area in South America where there was a giant ancient cave.
This cave or tunnel, you seem to say, was carved out of the earth by some device that used great heat to melt and fuse the surface of the walls.
One of the rooms was said to be about the size of a football stadium, I believe.
And it's been a long time, but one question that comes to mind is, what happened there, and why has nothing more been said about that?
Have you done any further research?
Yes and no.
After my publication in the Gold of the Gods, I was first criticized worldwide, and I was crashed down completely.
And I have to admit, there were quite some misunderstandings between myself and some of the journalists.
Because I had published in the book one entry to the subterranean world In which entry I was not in person, but I was in another entry to the same subterranean tunnel system.
And it was simply an agreement then between the discoverer, a Hungarian with the name of Juan Moritz, and myself, that I should not name the real entry so that not everyone can simply go in there, you know, and make diggings and steal something.
Now, since that time, more than 20 years have passed, and I was in Ecuador several times.
The last time, it was about three years ago, where I had a public speech in Quito, in Ecuador.
And all these gigantic things, like the Metallic Library, which I once saw with my own eyes, They are not in the same cave anymore.
But in the meantime, another researcher, a native of Ecuador, his name is Stanley Hall, and he originated from Scotland.
He's living up there now because he's married with an Ecuadorian, has many children.
Now this Mr. Stanley Hall, he rediscovered The same object which I was talking 20 years ago, but this time in another cave.
And Stanley Hall is just trying to publish his own manuscript on the subject.
Now, there are many people who believe if, in fact, ancient astronauts or extraterrestrials landed, there should be some sort of artifacts left over aside from runways.
There should be some sort of technical devices or something that would be uncovered that would tend to prove this.
What do you say to that?
I absolutely agree.
It would perfectly make sense that they left something on Earth.
Now we have to differentiate between two possibilities.
The one object could be simple tools, let's say a hammer or a screwdriver or just simple things.
Now this kind of tool naturally rusts and during the centuries or the thousands of years is destroyed.
The other possibility is that they left something on purpose.
Something like a present for mankind.
And here I believe we have these things.
The problem is just we cannot go through.
Look.
We know, for example, that the Ark of the Covenant, handed down in the Bible, existed once.
And we know that the Ark of the Covenant was an object from God, as it is called in the Bible.
Now, it was something technical.
And we know exactly from the old literature, especially from the Tibetan holy books, the so-called Kebrat Negev, where the rest of the Ark of the Covenant are today.
Ethiopian city of Axum, deep beneath under the cathedral of the Virgin Mary.
Where it is being very, very carefully guarded with people with guns.
How do you know that?
Well...
Okay, so of course I was there, and of course I tried to make a digging, but this is impossible in practice because it's a holly place.
You would never receive a permission to do anything there in practice.
That's right.
That we have, with the example of the Ark of the Covenant, some extraterrestrial objects left on this planet, but because of our religious belief, it is practically not possible to go there.
And this is only one example.
I have more of them.
Do you think, Eric, that the God of the Bible is actually the God of space?
The gods that came from space?
I myself am a deep believer in God.
I have never lost my God.
I am one of these persons who still pray to God.
But, when I was a young boy, I was educated in Switzerland in a boarding school.
It was a strict Catholic school, school lead by Jesuits.
And there we had to make translations from part of the Bible, Greek to Latin, Latin to German.
And when you make these translations, you sooner or later realize that they do not speak about the almighty, timeless, omnipotent God.
They do speak about someone different.
I mean, you take a prophet like Ezekiel in the Old Testament.
He describes the noise he hears.
He describes the wings.
He describes the legs.
He describes everything of something technical.
Now, my God, in whom I believe in, does not need to have any vehicle in which to move around with smoke and fire and loud noise and so on.
So, if it's not God they were describing some thousands of years ago, who is left?
Sooner or later you come up with the question of extraterrestrials.
But God still is something different.
God is what we call the creation, the spirit of the universe.
This is not comparable with the extraterrestrials.
So then you believe, if we were to be able to open the Ark of the Covenant, something I would not personally do, but somebody could do, that we would find a technological device.
We didn't even have to open it, we just had to found it, and to make measurements.
You know, that will be enough to realize that this is something which is not from this planet.
Look, in old Champagne, about 800 B.C., the first Japanese emperor, he believed himself, or he said about himself, he was one of the sons of these gods.
So he was a child of the extraterrestrial.
And he said that from his father, from his heavenly father, he received a sort of mirror.
And with this mirror, it was possible that he could see what happened all over the thousands of islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Now, when this emperor died, this mirror was buried with him in a tomb.
And this tomb still exists, and the mirror is still in there.
Now, what mirror is this?
The problem is you cannot go there, comparable to the Ark of the Covenant, because it's a holy place of the Shinto religion, and they do not allow to examine this mirror.
Do you believe that these extraterrestrials who were here Did more than just dig for gold and other minerals, do you believe that they tampered with the early human beings who were here, in fact changing our course genetically or in some other way?
This is one of the old theories of mine, and the older I became, in the meantime I'm 63, I'm absolutely sure about this.
On the one hand, we have evolution, and evolution tries to explain everything.
Of course we came from the family tribe of apes.
There is no doubt.
We can prove this.
But we are the only intelligent being on Earth.
Now we do not have time to make a definition of intelligence, but Intelligence means also religion, means curiosity, means art, means painting, means music, and so on.
So we are the only intelligent being on this planet.
Now, evolution explains this just as coincidence.
It was selection, mutation, and so on.
But the old holy scriptures on earth, and every holy scripture, the olden, they say the gods created man according their own image.
Now with our today's genetical knowledge, this makes perfectly sense.
Just imagine an extraterrestrial crew arrives on this planet.
They realize the planet is full of life.
Now they chose one most advanced form of life, which was one of our primitive forefathers, so to say, Neanderthal man.
From this one, they simply take a cell, and in the cell they make a genetical change.
They change the basic in the DNA, what we are doing every day.
Now, the cell grows in a liquid of nutrition.
Now, after a certain time, they plant a cell into the womb of a female of the same species.
The female will give birth to a child.
Of course, the child has the evolution, I mean the bones and the skeleton and everything, of the family.
But, because of this artificial mutation, the child has something new, which the rest of the family tree doesn't.
As soon as you want to have a new population, you need two of them.
Female and man.
And what happens?
You land in the legend of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.
Alright, let's hold it right there.
It is the bottom of the hour.
Eric Vondonikin is my guest.
And so the genetically changed two would be Adam and Eve.
And from them has come all that we now know.
We'll be back in just a moment.
I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AF.
And my guest, Eric Vondonican.
Were we visited, perhaps thousands of years before Christ, by people in big ships who needed big landing strips?
People who made just a little change in some DNA, creating what we now think of and know of as Adam and Eve and the beginning of mankind, modern as we know it now.
Changed from the apes.
We'll take off from that point in just a moment.
We'll be right back.
Well, I have a question for Mr. Von Daniken.
Eric, if evolution is in fact an ongoing process, then why do we not occasionally see an ape who makes a leap and begins to speak or begins to do something that would indicate that the process of evolution is continuing now?
Well sometimes we have apes who do this, but then they are educated in our zoological gardens or they are copying man from themselves.
They are not doing things like this.
Precisely.
Precisely.
That's my point.
And shouldn't they be?
If the process of evolution that produced us, which is what we are taught in school, results, you know, from an ape to a human being, then we should occasionally see apes not just mimicking us, but beginning to acquire skills and do things that apes don't normally do.
Yes, but they don't do this in nature.
They are just, as you said, they are imitating something and doing it.
I mean, if you have a bird who is coming out from the jungle and the bird speaks, then you would say this is not normal.
Who taught him to speak?
Who learned him to speak?
Just because he speaks, there was somebody behind it.
Now, because we are intelligent, because we have developed scientific curiosity, because we have developed culture and so on, there was something behind it.
Now, of course, you could go on and say, alright, if we accept the speculation that somebody visited Earth thousands of years ago, and that somebody even created the intelligence of a human being, how did this somebody get intelligent?
Now, again, you could go on and say, this somebody was visited again by another somebody.
Now, you have enough time in the universe, and finally, maybe after billions and billions of years, you would accept Here we have God.
Here we have creation.
So you never lose the concept or the idea of God.
Well, that certainly makes sense to me, and in fact there is a very, very little difference between the genetic makeup of an ape and a man.
Very little difference.
Just a little bit of difference, the scientists say.
And you maintain that difference was, in fact, engineered by people from elsewhere.
Precisely.
This is at least what the holy texts in antiquity say.
Including the Bible, they say, and God created man after their own image.
Now in the Bible, God is used as a singular, but the reality, the Hebrew original, and I know Hebrew, the reality speaks about Elohim, and Elohim in Hebrew is a plural.
So you should translate, the gods created man after their own image. Okay, which gods? Who created man?
Now if we would have such answers only in the Bible, I would not talk about it. But soon as
you know the other old religions, like Hindu religion, Central American religion, there all
over you find the same story.
And this was not just an invention of some stupid ancestor of us, it was at some time a knowledge which everyone had.
The gods made us intelligent.
The question is just, what gods?
What gods?
Another question would be, why?
Why?
That's a good, that's a very good question.
That's probably the most intelligent one.
In my 63 years of life, I and my friends and my colleagues in so many discussions, we haven't asked the same question.
Why?
Until today, we have about 28 possible answers.
One of them is the following.
Let us assume that somewhere in the universe there was the first intelligent form of life.
Now we could start again, but how have they evolved?
We don't know, but we have to start somewhere.
So let's call this first form of intelligence number one.
Number one is intelligent.
Intelligent means to have curiosity.
Curiosity means, automatically, they have to ask themselves, are we alone in the universe?
Are there others?
So they try to find out, in the beginning with radio astronomical methods, to find out if they are alone or not.
Soon as they have no answer, there is no way they have to go out to find if they are alone or not.
Now, They may have the following system.
We look at other solar systems.
On other solar systems, we look for planets who are close to the planet of number one, which means not too hot and not too cold.
As soon as we find such a planet, we have to look for life.
If there is no life at all, we spread it out.
we create life, which is easy by meanings of bacteria or something like this.
If, on the other hand, life exists already, they have to differentiate if life is intelligent or not.
If life is intelligent, then the question is easy, because with intelligent life you can discuss,
you can get into information. Soon as life is not intelligent, then you take the most advanced form
and you change it, by genetic means, into an intelligent form of life.
By doing this, sooner or later, you create in a certain part of a Milky Way, in space and time,
similar beings with which you can talk, you can change information.
And by changing information, this helps your curiosity, because you want to find out everything about the universe,
the beginning, the end and so on. If you would just live in a splendid isolation, somewhere as number one,
then you have no chance to...
Two, find out the answers.
You need more forms of intelligent life spread out in time and space.
All right, well, let us assume then there was a number one and that they have been going about the cosmos, seeding life wherever they are able to do so, finding a reasonable planet and a reasonable sun.
Yes.
Therefore, there should be by now Oh, I don't know.
Thousands, or tens of thousands, or even millions of life forms out there at some form or degree of intelligence.
Yes?
Yes, I fully agree.
That's absolutely the idea.
Well, we have had, despite some recent very exciting hoaxes, we still have not received a signal from any other one of those numbers out there anywhere, and we've done quite a bit of looking.
That's true, at least as long as we know it from our sciences, from the astronomy.
Now, we have on this planet Earth billions and billions of ants.
We have ants in Switzerland, we have ants in South America, we have ants all over the world, and different types of ants.
Well, we have bad ants here in the desert, red ones, they really sting.
Now, does one colony of ants have contact with another colony of ants?
I don't know.
Does the Swiss ants have any contact with the South American ants?
Although there are billions and billions of them, no.
If a man like me, I would go to an ant hill and I would be very charming and I take one small ant out and put it in a little glass.
And then I go in my home and put this ant on my table and I photograph it and then because I'm a nice guy I put the ant back in the glass I go back to the same ant hill and I push the ant hill again into the other animals.
Now this specific ant would run around the ant hill and would say I was abducted by an extra ant form of life.
Yes.
And the family of ants would say there is no extra ant form of life.
We are unique in this ant hill.
Now, even if a man like me would stand very close to the anthill, and the ant would scrub on my shoes, they could not realize that I, human being, a little bit intelligent, exist.
They would not realize my existence also I'm here.
So maybe the extraterrestrials are closer than we think.
We don't see them.
We are in a kind of other dimension.
We don't realize that there are many of them out there.
All right, what about this possibility, Eric, that instead of it being in the past as you have suggested, You instead are foretelling the future, that in fact we are all alone.
We are number one.
If I accept this, then at the same time, I have to dismiss all the proofs in old holy writings and in facts on this planet that we were visited.
Because the facts are here before our eyes, and if you look at it really, you cannot deny these facts.
So if I deny this fact, then I'm scientific stupid, you know, then I'm not honest.
Not seeing the facts.
No, because the facts are here, we have to say to ourselves, there must be something out there.
You know, Arch, sometimes I have the following imagination.
I see two sorts of human being on this planet.
The one sort is educated religiously, and they are sure that God created everything, and on the sixth day he created us.
We are the crown of creation.
The other sort of human being are more or less scientifically educated.
They know everything about evolution, and they say to themselves, okay, but on the top of evolution, that's us.
Now, in both cases, if we take us as the crown of creation or the top of evolution, we are the unique ones.
We are something absolutely unique in the universe.
We look down at our neighbor and we do not want it.
It's a psychological problem because if these extraterrestrials exist they would cut our uniqueness.
So I have the feeling sometimes mankind is not ripe for extraterrestrials.
They are still too self-selfish.
Self-centered, yes.
Ego-centric.
Self-centered, yes.
Do you believe, as you look about the planet now, and you look at the environmental problems we have, and the social problems, and the economic problems, do you believe that we will last long enough for those who created us to consider us worthy to come back and visit with?
Of course we will.
I mean, we had terrible problems in history, and I know a lot of histories, and we had
these destructions and we had terrible wars and so on.
And of course we have all these problems which you just mentioned.
We have problems with pollution and all this.
It would be ignorant to ignore these things.
But at the same time, we have an intelligence.
We are intelligent.
We see the problems, and of course we will solve these problems.
And sooner or later, we have no alternative.
We will go out into the universe.
We have already started with a little step.
With a little step, yes, indeed, a little step.
Actually, we went to the moon, we came back, and we have gone nowhere of substance since then.
The space program has been very stagnant.
Well, that was a political problem.
Yeah, and maybe an economic one, too.
Yeah, well, political and economic are linked together in this case.
Do you think that, as many think, as was depicted in 2001, That when we do get to a certain point, there will be an obelisk or there will be something that will signal those who put us here that we have evolved.
It would make sense.
The first thing I would expect is some sort of thousand years old satellite somewhere in our solar system running around and waiting to be detected.
And then we have theoretically a small possibility that we find something on the moon, something artificial I mean, and later on Mars.
Now, we have already been on the moon, and the surface of the moon was photographed very perfectly.
To my knowledge, they found nothing extraordinary.
So maybe the proof is out there on Mars.
Or, as in 2001, it may lay below the surface of the moon.
Why not?
Why not?
You know, in this theory, everything is possible, and this is what makes it fascinating.
I always repeat, because we are intelligent, we will find it.
We have no way out.
We will find it.
What is the best evidence that they were here?
I think most people listening have seen the photographs of what are said to be runways.
You ask for the best evidence.
Best evidence.
I differentiate between best evidence in Old Holy Scriptures and in facts.
In Old Holy Scriptures, we have the Hindu mythologies, which are very precise.
It's not a question of translation.
And also, part of the Book of Enoch.
Enoch was a prophet before the Great Flood, and there is a Book of Enoch.
It's not in the Bible, it's part of the apocryphic text.
And there Enoch, in the eye form, in the first person, explains us what happened at this time.
That these 200 beings descended and so on.
So this is Holy Scripture.
Going back to the facts.
The optical view.
In Palenque.
Palenque is in Mexico, and there is a pyramid called the Temple of Inscription, and deep down under the Temple of Inscription, there is a big slab.
It's a tombstone.
3 meter 80 long, 2 meter 20 large, one big block, 10 tons heavy.
And on this block, you see an incredible drawing.
There is a man sitting there bending forward and using his hands to manipulate some control on his heel of his left foot is on a kind of pedal he's inside a frame outside the frame you see something like a linking flam coming out so if you see this and I know Well, alright, you have seen all of these things that you have just spoken of, right?
you cannot deny anymore extraterrestrials.
And the second point, hard fact, is NATCA.
NATCA in Peru, there we can speak about the next five hours if you wish.
This is absolutely incredible, and everyone can see it.
Well, alright, you have seen all of these things that you have just spoken of, right?
Yes, of course.
You are so convinced, and there have been many television programs, of course, about these things,
and you have been mentioned in many of them in your work, but generally...
Frankly, a lot of your... they've gone after you.
I mean, they actually went after you personally to discredit you.
And why do you think that would be, if the evidence is so overwhelmingly clear?
Well, first of all, it's a question of my person.
In chariots of the gods, I have to admit, I made mistakes and there were errors.
When somebody rides as a young man, and I mean 30 years ago I was much younger than now, then you make errors.
You are too enthusiastic and so on.
In Challenge of the Gods, I had 238 question marks.
Nobody realized the question marks.
Now, I was attacked, I was crushed down, which is in a way because my writings are not published and presented in a
scientific way.
They are published in a popular way. But later on, all the new books we have now finally on the American market, like
The Eyes of the Things or The Arrival of the Gods, they are written and proven in a scientific manner, all
through the style of writing, is of course still popular.
But every quotation has its file, has its number.
Every picture is clear, so Erich von Däniken now is controllable and is not attackable as he was when he was a young man.
So, then you think because you did not do this as a PhD scientist and submit your paper to a university for peer review and go through the normal Oh yes, it was easy.
And it was my fault, of course.
the popular forum they it was easy for them uh... with a few mistakes uh...
made as a youth to destroy you all your people will be
and it was my fault of course i think partly with my fault but i mean
someone uh... becomes older and older and he doesn't need to repeat the same
mistakes he made thirty years ago so i really suggest to the critics
that they read one of my newest book and then stop criticizing eric von der linken again
well that's exactly what we're going to talk about when we come back to use one
of your newest books enticingly entitled
the arrival of the gods
Hehehehehehe.
The arrival of the gods.
So, indeed, we live in interesting times, as the Chinese have told us.
I'm Art Bell, and my guest is Eric Von Donaghan, author of Chariots of the Gods, which I presume the majority of you out there have read, but he's got a new book.
This time, it's called The Arrival of the Gods.
Somewhat tantalizing, eh?
In a moment, we're going to get down to talking to Eric about what he means by Arrival of the Gods.
Still referring to that which occurred, or perhaps that which is about to occur?
Sounds pretty good to me. All right, Eric von Aneken, welcome back. Here we are again.
Your new book is The Arrival of the Gods. Now, by that, do you mean the proof of the original
arrival of the gods, or do you mean the return of the gods?
Well, first of all, the original title is, of course, in German, and the German original
says something completely different.
It does?
The German title says, Signs for the Gods.
Signs?
Now, because all my books in the English world, they have to do with the gods, so the American or English publisher felt we have to call it the Arrival of the Gods.
Which is not what the German title says.
It doesn't matter, finally, because I'm still convinced that these so-called gods will arrive sooner or later.
Because in every great religion of our day, we have the expectation of someone to return.
I mean, we, as Christians, we wait the re-coming of Christ, but as we know, the Jewish community, since long, long time, they are waiting the re-coming of their Messiah.
And even the Muslim society expects the returning of their Mahdi.
No, this is not the fact only in the big today living religion.
It also happens in the small, small cults of the past.
And my idea really is...
If somebody was here, from outer space, thousands of years ago, and one day this somebody disappeared, he promised, we will return in a far away future.
So it went into the legends, into the myths, and even into the great religions, until today, and sooner or later they will arrive.
Are we now close to that time, do you believe, or is it still far away?
Nobody knows.
I would love to know it, but there is no answer.
Well, if you look at what we do and think of us in the civilized world as number one, there are many number twos and threes and fours in the jungles of Brazil that have never before met number ones.
And unfortunately, when they meet number ones, we usually destroy their culture quite quickly.
What makes you think that a visit from number one would not now destroy our culture?
Well, at least I hope that number one is intelligent enough and fair enough To act in a way which will be fair to us too.
I mean, if we, number one, go to the jungle and we find, let's say, a group of orang-utans.
Yes.
As civilized beings, we will not disturb them.
We will not destroy them.
We will maybe study them from distances and we will be helpful to them.
So I hope an extraterrestrial civilization who is able to reach the distance between the stars has enough culture to observe it in a similar way.
Well, you're very optimistic, because generally when we discover number twos and threes, we give them television, radio, guns, TNT, the ability to make roads and burn down the rainforest, and so forth.
Well, I hope we have learned from all this in the past, but in the future we will do it in a better way, because we see the result, what comes out.
Do you believe there are many, many people who believe that there has been contact, and there are people being contacted now.
Do you think that is wishful thinking, or that it could be true?
First, I have to confess, although I'm still 63 years old, I never saw a UFO.
Maybe.
I'm afraid that when Erik von Däniken shows up, they run away.
But on the other hand, I know that in the UFO communities, there is a lot of rubbish and nonsense going around.
Yes.
And a lot of belief and skepticism, too.
But still, we have some honorable, integral personalities on this planet who had, obviously, contact with extraterrestrials.
So I have no alternative as You are Swiss.
Yes.
Billy Meyer is Swiss.
Yes.
Would you care to comment on the Billy Meyer case?
which has been observed by them.
You are Swiss.
Yes.
Billy Meyer is Swiss.
Yes.
Would you care to comment on the Billy Meyer case?
Well, I don't trust Billy Meyer.
Of course, I know him in person, but not very close.
The last time I met him is about 20 years ago.
And I do believe him that he had, in a certain time, a contact or that he saw something strange in the sky.
But since then, he has created his own religion.
And you know, he's collecting money from his believers.
And I think this is the wrong way to go and to speak about extraterrestrials.
All right, I would like to take some questions from the audience, if you would be willing to do that.
Of course.
I'm sure they're very curious.
So, line one, first-time caller line, actually.
You're on the air with Eric Vondonikin.
Hello.
Hi, how are you doing, Art?
Fine.
Oh, wonderful.
Dan from Crestline, California.
California, all right.
Yes, indeed.
Well, Eric, I heard you talk about Ezekiel and, well, many of the In fact, all of the prophets in the Bible, when they speak of the visions they had, they're talking about things they saw in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, rather than things they walked outside their front door and saw.
And your comment about the technical devices under that context is kind of moot to me.
Can you comment?
Well, the story of Ezekiel, I really have studied very thoroughly.
and this in many languages and also as I said before I'm a deep believer in God.
I think that Ezekiel described something technical not just a spiritual experience
because his descriptions are too precise.
Not only what he says about the wings, and the legs, and the wheels, and the noise he hears.
Not only this, but starting with chapter 42 in the book of Ezekiel, he gives exact descriptions and exact measurements of what he calls a temple.
Well, that's true, that's true, Eric.
But if you look back, Moses Received very, very, very, very detailed instructions for God on things He was to do in terms of preparing the law and all that.
And you also have situations where many of the prophets were given very detailed instructions on what to do in these visions of the Holy Spirit.
Ezekiel is one of the most illustrious and visionary of the prophets.
He presents some of the most beautiful and interesting visions in the Bible.
But again, all throughout the Bible, if you look, all these things were motivation for
the Holy Spirit of God and not necessarily something any of these people walked out and
looked at.
Look at Noah.
Noah didn't go out and look outside of his front door and find a letter in the mailbox
telling him how to build the ark.
God told him in a vision that was motivated by the Holy Spirit.
All right, well, he keeps using the phrase, the Holy Spirit, and you would maintain that today, if a civilization that advanced came down, we would regard them now as gods, would we not, if they were sufficiently far ahead of us?
Maybe we would even regard them as spirits.
Because whenever a high technology comes together with a technologically underdeveloped society...
The underdeveloped would not understand, at least not in the beginning, what was going on.
Now the gentleman just mentioned Noah, and I think Noah is a very good example.
We know, in fact, from the Bible, and not only from the Bible, because the Noah story you find older than the Bible in Sumerian descriptions.
So it's not a Biblical story in the beginning, the original is much older.
But exactly there you find that a so-called God He gives a warning to a man, and he says to him, you must construct now a ship, because this and this will happen.
A certain flood will happen.
Mankind will be destroyed.
Now, as a believer in God, I do not think that the almighty, timeless God needs to make an experience, and then to wait what the result is coming out.
I mean, God, according to the Bible, created Adam and Eve, He created mankind, and He saw it was good.
So if it's good, why then he has to destroy the whole thing again?
If it was good from the beginning on, why did he make a mistake?
So it was not God in this case, it was extraterrestrials.
Well I'm sure those in the religious community would say, God perhaps made a mistake, but gave us free will, and we're the ones that screwed it up.
Well, in my opinion, in my belief, God is timeless.
God is almighty.
God is omnipresent.
And God never makes a mistake.
All right.
Wildcard Line, you are on the air with Eric Vondonican.
Hello.
Yeah, hello.
Chuck from Arlington, Texas.
Texas, yes, sir.
Yeah, and I heard Mr. Vondonican say that he was Catholic.
Yes, educated as a Catholic.
Yeah, I was raised Catholic, too.
I was in high school, going to Catholic school when I was reading your book, and I really caught a lot of flack from some of the teachers.
I just wondered if the church has ever said anything to you about your writings and your ideas.
That's a very good point.
Have you ever officially heard from the church?
Well, officially not now, but unofficially a lot.
Especially in the newspapers and the magazines which belong to a certain church.
Or, we had books on the world market against my books, in controversy of my books.
Well, this is very normal.
I have to accept this.
And sometimes, the publicity said, well, finally, this professor, doctor in archaeology, had the courage to attack Erich von Däniken.
And later, some years later, I met a certain author in person, and it always turned out that he was not a professor in archaeology or whatever.
He was always a minister or a priest.
You, of course, are familiar with Zacharias Sitchin.
Of course, I know him very well.
I've interviewed him several times and will again soon.
How much of his belief in his work do you share?
Well, a lot of it, but not everything.
It's the same thing with him.
I respect him, he's a great researcher and he does translations from the Sumerian and the old Hebrews and so on.
But his idea about the 12 planets, I would not subscribe.
Because at least to our astronomical knowledge, it is not possible that the planet surrounds our sun in an orbit of 3,600 years.
Because in such an orbit, it would be very, very cold out there.
It would be very far away from the sun.
And to our knowledge, there is no possibility to evolve life.
So you both believe that it began in roughly the same way, just simply not in exactly the same manner?
Exactly, yes.
I would suspect this.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Eric Vondoniken.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Where are you?
Yeah, I'm Jack Feller.
You're from, excuse me, from Granville, Michigan.
Okay, Jack.
Hey, I'd like to just say, Art, I'm a former native Peruvian there, too.
There aren't many of those out there.
Yeah, that's a fact.
Anyways, it's an honor to talk to Mr. Von Donaghan, and I was wondering his opinion.
Now, I read a book by a French fellow published about the same time Charity of the Gods came out,
and I can't think of what his name is, but he contends that the people that created the Nazca Lines are coming back
Christmas of 99.
What's your opinion on that?
Well, I know of many French authors.
In the past, about 30 years and 25 years ago, we had two French scientists, Louis Pauvels and Jacques Pergier, who published a book at the time, The Morning of the Musicians.
And later, Robert Charu, who was a friend of mine, also was an author in the same direction.
Now, concerning Nazca, I don't know what they said, but in my newest book, I really come up with every scientific theory about Nazca, and then I disprove it and everyone and say, I'm sorry, this is not more than scientific rubbish!
I have spent all together, maybe about eight months in Natsuka in the past 30 years.
I was there last week again.
I have made photographs in the mountains which have never been published.
I have examined the lines and the so-called airstrips.
And so, really, whatever has been said in the past is out.
It's not possible.
And still, Nazca is the greatest mystery expected of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
It's the greatest mystery on Earth.
Eric, with all that you have seen over all this time, and you believe to be true, do you in some little part of your mind still admit to yourself that you might be wrong?
No and yes, both.
Of course, I have learned in the past that I made errors.
I, in my puzzle, there were quite some things which I always had to push away again.
And that I had to learn from the critics to say, OK, Eric, here you are wrong.
We have another, a better explanation which is more reasonable from the scientific point of view and so on.
But generally spoken, Definitely this planet was visited by beings from outer space, and definitely they left mysteries behind them.
And this point I can prove in the meantime.
All right, very good.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Eric Vondonikin.
Hello.
Yes, is this me?
That's you.
Yes, indeed.
Where are you?
Oh, I'm Karen from Norway, and I am in Tucson.
Tucson, all right.
Yes, very interesting program.
Thank you.
You were talking something about the Ark of the Covenant earlier on in your program, and I just want to say that I had the honor of meeting a biblical archaeologist, Ron Wyatt, a couple years ago, and he was the finder of Several things in the Middle East.
Among them was also the Ark of the Covenant in Israel.
And he said that when he exposed it down in these tunnels, he was blinded by light and he fainted, like, 45 minutes.
And he also found the true Mount Sinai, in which Moses went up and got his messages.
And behind him on this video, there was two peaks.
No, not yet.
ordinary colored one was very black like radiation and I thought maybe I don't know if you've
heard about this archaeologist Ron Wyatt. No not yet is a publication on the market?
Publications are on the market he's also got several videotapes he found the Red Sea crossing
point he found the Mount Sinai Noah's Ark he's found incredible findings and of course
for an archaeologist to find one site is wonderful but when an archaeologist or any researcher
finds too many truths it becomes a detrimental.
Alright, well, the comment here might be, even though you are not familiar with this author, archaeologist, it's like the killing of our President Kennedy, Eric.
There are so many theories now, so many conspiracy theories about who did it, how it happened, Um, that if somebody were to come to a podium and stand up and say, here is the true story of Kennedy's death and he were to tell the story, whatever it is, it would be just one more story.
Even if it was absolutely true, we wouldn't see that.
We would just hear one more story and add it onto the pile.
I understand.
So you were very early, no doubt.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Eric Vondonican.
Hello.
Great.
I couldn't be more pleased.
Where are you?
I am in Boise, Idaho.
Boise.
All right.
Turn your radio off, please.
Okay.
Turn that off, please.
Off.
All the way off.
Got it.
That's good.
No, I still hear it.
Now there you go.
All right, go ahead.
Yeah, I'm really pleased to have Eric on tonight.
One of your best guests ever, I think.
Thank you.
Pardon me?
Thank you.
Ah, quite welcome.
I've been a fan of yours for over 20 years.
I'll now read the newest books of mine.
I certainly will do so.
Eric, I had a question about some other, I believe it was one French author, and you kind of alluded to this at the beginning of the show regarding Ecuador.
Yes.
This was, uh, I believe you wrote the introduction and you were also in the storyline.
It was written in a fictional form, but it was about the tunnels you were talking about.
Yes, I know.
Do you, uh, can you remember the name of the book?
Of course.
The Day When the Gods Arrived.
No, The Day When the Gods Died.
The Day When the Gods Died.
And what was the author?
Yes.
Who was the author?
The author was a German, Walter Ernsting is his name.
All right, we're going to have to hold it right there.
Caller, hold on.
If you have some follow-up you want to do, it's going to have to be after the break.
It's the bottom of the hour already.
Time does fly.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
Well, I think it's time to get ready To realize just what I have found
I have been only half...
My guest is Eric Vondoniken, and back to him we go.
He's in New Hampshire, where it's very late going on, I suppose, four o'clock in the morning now.
I believe it is Sitchin who has said that he thinks that they came to make us into worker bees, or worker ants if you would like, to mine gold and to mine minerals for them.
Do you subscribe to that?
Well, I know this story and I don't agree here with Zachariah Sitchin.
All true, according to the Book of Enoch.
Again, the Book of Enoch was written before the Great Flood.
It is not part of the Bible, it is part of the apocryphal text.
And according to the Book of Enoch, there was something like a Mew Tree.
Uh, under the crew of the extraterrestrials.
And one part of the crew disappeared again into the sky, and the other part stayed on Earth.
Now, it is possible that this part who stayed on Earth had such silly things like slaves and so on.
But this is not more than a speculation.
Well, it certainly is true that we have a special place in our hearts for gold, and there is something very special to us, still today, very special about gold.
That it's hard to describe, but when you hold it, and you feel it, and you see it, and you feel the weight of gold and its color, there is something special to human beings about gold.
Surely, because it's a unique metal.
And even if the value of gold changes from time to time, by the end of time, the value is always higher.
Because it's unique.
You cannot produce gold artificially.
It is true.
Alright, first time caller on the line, you're on the air with Eric Van Donneken.
Hello.
Hello.
Art, first of all, I did want to congratulate you on the award, and also on maintaining your ethics in pursuit of the truth.
It's to be congratulated.
Thank you.
Where are you?
It's still in Boise, Idaho.
Oh, that's right, of course.
My 14-year-old likes listening to your show.
Very good.
And I was wondering up front, does Eric have any email or a website?
Oh, sure, sure, I have.
Take your pencil and write.
It's www.aas-ra.org.
Okay, thank you.
That's in Switzerland, and once you are in my website, you really can see everything, because we have a new organization in Switzerland, the United States, I have a theme park coming, and so on.
It's absolutely very well-informated, this website.
Yes, I heard about this theme park.
Tell me about the theme park.
Look, I know that we have many mysteries of the world.
Nazca is one example, but there are other ones.
Most of the people have neither money nor time to visit all these countries, to go into the jungle or to climb into the desert and so on.
So if people can't go to the Mysteries, Erich von Däniken brings the Mysteries to the people.
Now, in Interlaken, that's where I live in Switzerland, in the center of the mountains, we will, within the next four years, construct a theme park which is called the Mysteries of the World.
No, this will not be a sort of museum, you know.
It will rather be something like Epcot.
Very electronically, three-dimensional, absolutely sensational.
And once you visited this park, you don't have answers at the end.
You go out of the park with a hat full of question marks.
Uh, that's normally the case.
With most mysteries, they create more questions than they do answers, but it certainly is intriguing.
That's really a good idea.
And also, what I said before, concerning this theme park, you read everything on the website.
Oh, it's on the website now?
It's always on the website.
www.aas-ra.org.
Okay, the dash, is that a straight dash or underscore?
It's a straight dash.
Straight dash.
Alright, well I'm sure, and I'm sure that we've got a link on my website to yours right now.
I hope so, thank you.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Eric Vondonican.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi, where are you?
I'm in rainy San Antonio.
San Antonio, Texas.
Right.
Alright.
It's an honor speaking with both of you.
Thank you.
I read Harry to the Gods when I was just learning how to read.
And I'm very honored to be speaking with you.
I do have a theory that I heard regarding the Nazca Lines, and that the old Indian shamans would take herbs and whatnot, and that would cause them to have out-of-body experiences, and these lines and pathways created were not for alien beings, but for their Astral beings to be able to find their way back to their bodies.
I know the story.
It was even produced in a TV which was made by BBC in England.
But it's one of the scientific theories.
Just one of the 15.
And I personally don't believe in it.
Because Nazca is so real that the airstrips look really like airstrips.
Then we have big geometrical figures on Nazca.
and these geometrical figures, they definitely have to do with the airflip
because they are linked together.
And I don't believe the story of the Charmains concerning Natsuka.
Although I know it's possible that people have out-of-body experiences.
Right, because I've had them and sometimes, you know, you end up feeling like you're almost getting lost but
somehow you find your way back but...
Never get lost.
Right.
Always find back.
No, I agree with that.
I have had one great out-of-body experience, and I didn't have to find my way back at all.
I just snapped back.
It was absolutely amazing.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Eric Vondonikin.
Where are you, please?
I'm calling from Columbus, Ohio.
Yes, sir.
Chaos capital of the Midwest.
This is Wes speaking.
Hails to Coyote, Falcata, and Mr. Vondonican, I've got to tell you, I've never read your book.
I'm going to go out and get it and I'm going to read it, but I've watched the movie over and over and over again and it's nothing short of awesome.
I would love to be able to come and see the theme park one day.
The question that I had, kind of in the same vein as the last caller, but a little bit different, is that the The indigenous people there had shamanic beliefs in South America, Mexico in particular, the pyramid complex with the warrior women on top of the one pyramid there, and also Easter Island.
They were in possession of a mental capacity that we could never even begin to understand, and making solid their imaginations and meditations.
And these were the physical manifestations of those.
Well, Natsuka is very, very real.
All the signs, the figures... You know, in Natsuka we have, as I said in the beginning of the show, we have some figures of fishes, birches, monkeys, spiders, and so on, in the desert.
They are made in such a gigantic way that they can be seen only from the air.
Now, I do not exclude that such figures are made maybe for shamanistic ideas or out-of-body experiences.
On the other hand, we have Over 2,700 narrow lines, some of them who are over 20 kilometers long.
And you have really air-stripped, and I can prove it in my book, there are 150 pictures.
The title is Arrival of the Gods.
And also gigantic geometrical figures.
All this, in my eyes, has nothing to do with shamanistic experiences.
I totally agree with you on that.
I was going to ask you another question also.
Were you in the plane when they were shooting the footage there, over the Nazca Lights?
Of course, of course.
And it looks like a really rough surface, but if you could have, if it would have been smooth enough, would you have liked to have landed upon it?
With great pleasure.
Look, there is one of the airstrips, the so-called airstrips, which is three point kilometers long, and today's pilots who drive, who fly tourists over the plain of Nazca, they make a nearby landing over this line.
They call it the E.T.
Airport.
Altogether, in the past thirty years, if I count it all together, I was at least eight months in total in Nazca, and I have I know it very well.
Well, it was very much a pleasure to talk to you.
I'm glad you're back, Art, and I hope you get everything worked out to the T's.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Eric, who was Jesus?
Well, that's a controversial story again.
To the believers of Christianity, Jesus was the founder of our religion, and Jesus' Saved mankind from the original sin.
That's the one part.
That's the believer.
I personally do not believe in this story.
I believe Jesus was definitely on earth, but he was a human being.
He was a wonderful, extremely great personality who created this new religion of love and so on, but he was not the son of God, because God has no sons.
What about the miracles that are recorded that Jesus did?
Well, if you know other religions, for example, you have miracles in Hindu temples also.
You have miracles in some Muslimic temples.
And I know about the miracles in the Christian world because I have a book on it.
It's called Anyhow, it's an old book.
It doesn't exist anymore.
So, I know there are miracles, but I can't answer the question, who made these miracles, or how did it happen?
I don't know.
All right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Eric Von Donaghan.
Hi.
Hi.
This is Dan in Spokane, Washington.
Spokane, Washington.
Yes, sir.
Art, I'd like to say I'm glad you're back.
Thank you.
I felt sick to my stomach when I found out you were gone.
Me too.
One true news source out there.
I knew about El Nino a year before anybody else was talking about it.
I'm glad you're back.
Thank you.
Mr. Bondonican, it's an honor to speak to you.
Thank you.
Ever since before I could read, I was looking at your books and all the interesting pictures in there.
My question is, in doing research for a college project, I had studied some Sumerian legends
and several pre-Columbian legends and even in biblical legends I noticed that there are
giants mentioned throughout all these different religions and legends spread throughout the
world.
I was kind of wondering if there were any other archaeological finds that might indicate
who these beings were.
In other words, are there any other commonalities?
Or anything about the nature of the petroglyphs, whatever you found down there, archaeological
finds that would give us hints of what these beings were like.
Were they giants?
In anthropology, giants are not expected.
They think that the bones were just the bones of a giant orang-utang or something.
But in the literature, in the old literature, giants definitely do exist.
Not only in the Bible.
You have two references on giants.
I mean, David, for example, was fighting against Goliath.
Goliath was a giant.
And other ones.
Not only in the biblical literature you find giants, you find them very very precisely again in the book of Enoch.
There Enoch says that the extraterrestrials, of course he don't call them extraterrestrials, he calls them the guardians of the sky, that the extraterrestrials had sexual contact with females on this planet, and the result were giants.
Uh, or Nephilim, perhaps.
Or Nephilim, whatever.
I don't want to make too much promotion for my book, but the book before the one which we are talking about now is The Eyes of the Sphinx.
It's a paperback, it's available, The Eyes of the Sphinx.
And there I have a full chapter about the giants.
While we're talking about the Sphinx and the pyramids, I was there a couple of years ago.
Actually, not even a couple of years ago, less than that, at Giza.
What do you believe the Sphinx and the pyramids are?
Well, it's a long story.
We don't have enough time.
Everyone knows our archaeological knowledge about the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid.
It was constructed by a pharaoh with the name of Theops 2500 BC, and the Sphinx is younger of this.
But nobody knows, in our Western Hemisphere, the old Arabian writers.
The old Arabian historians like Abdulmas, Udi, etc.
and they tell us a complete different story.
The Arabians tell us it was before the Great Flood.
Mankind was so primitive that men eat and drink together with the animals.
Then the heavens opened and ships have come down from the heavens.
Now out of these ships the teachers have descended.
The teachers first installed schools and then they fought forced mankind to visit these schools.
Finally they found out that one of the men was very intelligent, his name was Sohrid,
and they teached him how to write.
And finally they took him with them away from earth in a fiery chariot.
But before he left, he put all his writings into the Great Pyramid, which he constructed.
So according to Arabian historians, Zawrid is the constructor of the Great Pyramid, and he left many secret chambers inside, and in these secret chambers, the mankind of the future should find the books of the past.
There is a prediction that was made by Edgar Cayce that this information, this lost library of information would be found this year.
Do you believe that we are close to finding it?
Well, I think we know since a few years at least that a new secret was found in the Great Pyramid.
You know, a little doll was found in a secret chest.
This was a German engineer who had the luck to do it.
Gandenbreg, yes.
Yeah, Rudolf Gandenbreg.
I know him very well.
So we know at least that there is something more in the Great Pyramid than what we did believe until today.
So we have to go on.
But the whole story of all this, in every detail, I really had in my book the eyes of the things.
Do you believe that if this information is uncovered, found, that it will be shared with the world, or kept secret?
In the beginning it would be kept secret.
Look.
We have in astronomy a research which is called SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Yes.
And some radioastronomical stations are looking for signals from outer space.
I know.
Now, these SETI astronomers, they have something like a self-censorship.
That is what I believe, but I have interviewed people from SETI who say, no, that's not true.
go to public. First, he has to do a certain amount of research and talking with the politicians
and so on. That is what I believe, but I have interviewed people from SETI who say, no,
that's not true. We would tell the world, it would get out on the internet right away.
Eric, we are... That's not the case, because there is a document which they have signed,
and I have the document in my book, The Return of the Gods.
Oh, you do?
Now, I would very much like to see that document, so I guess I must read your book.
Listen, we're at the end of the hour.
You promised two hours.
I could give you more if you wanted.
It's 4 o'clock.
I really, I'm dying for sleep.
Ah, dying for sleep.
Alright, well then, sleep it shall be.
It has been a great honor and I would like to do it again sometime.
I would like to do it again too.
By the way, if people are near here, near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Sunday afternoon, for the first time since 20 years, I give a public speech.
And where?
Where is that again, please?
This is Sunday afternoon at the Jochens Center in Portsmouth.
New Hampshire.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Alright, well I hope you get a big crowd.
Lights and videos and just great.
Eric, thank you.
Thank you very much, Art Bell.
You are the greatest.
Thank you and good night.
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