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Jan. 18, 1999 - Art Bell

02:43:09

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Apocalypse Pretty Soon - Alex Heard

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	To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S., first dial your
	number to the USA.
	Then, 800-893-0903.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
	Call Art at 1-800-618-8255.
	Or call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
	This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nine.
	A stunning brunette and blonde are walking down the street when the brunette notices a dead bird on the sidewalk.
	Brunette says to the blonde, oh look!
	Look at that poor dead bird.
	It's not moving.
	Blonde-looking Skyward remarks where?
	Didn't really mean to get these opened up again, but a couple I couldn't resist.
	I'm...
	Alright, coming up is an editor of Wired Magazine.
	Wired Magazine, pretty hip stuff.
	And he's written a book called Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
	Which is an interesting title.
	May give you some hint of where he's coming from, but maybe we'll be surprised.
	I don't know.
	But I have a feeling it's got a tongue planted firmly in cheek.
	Perhaps not.
	Anyway, we'll find out about Alex Hurd coming up in just a few moments.
	Stay right where you are.
	Alright now...
	out.
	Let's see.
	He's an editor and writer at Wired Magazine.
	Kind of a hip magazine.
	All this after working three years at the New York Times Magazine.
	Oh my!
	That's an interesting transition.
	And he's written a book called Apocalypse.
	Pretty soon!
	And we're going to talk about a lot of millennial belief here, I think.
	That sort of stuff.
	It should be a really interesting interview.
	His name is Alex Hurd.
	Alex, welcome to the program.
	Thank you.
	Thanks for having me.
	Where are you, anyway?
	I'm in San Francisco.
	Oh, San Francisco.
	What kind of transition is that for somebody?
	I mean, you're at the New York Times Magazine, really prestigious, Mainstream, as you can get, and then to Wired, which is sort of at the other extreme.
	They have more colorful stationery here.
	One difference, but it's not really that much different.
	I mean, Wired is a little more mainstream than that.
	It covers Silicon Valley.
	That's true.
	So it's not a fringe publication.
	It's owned by Condé Nast at this point.
	But it has been a change.
	But it is kind of a hip magazine, I mean.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You've got interesting columns.
	I was in one of them.
	I was actually one of the wired people then.
	It said Art Bell's wired and somebody else who I won't mention is tired and blah blah blah and one of these great lists in your magazine.
	Well, we're going to turn that around.
	Yeah, I'm sure.
	We're going back into the wired category.
	Oh no, no, I was in wired.
	I thought you said they listed you in the Tired.
	No, no, no.
	They listed me as Wired and some other talk show host as Tired.
	Alright, I support that.
	That was cool.
	Anyway, that was my mention in Wired and everybody.
	So a lot of people get it.
	In fact, prior to your coming on tonight, I had a call from somebody who said Wired is a very, very cool magazine.
	I mean, he really I'm glad they like it.
	As you can imagine, we'll be covering Y2K a lot this year.
	I bet you will.
	The magazine actually did an interesting story last summer about Y2K.
	They found a couple of programmers who were working on debugging, and these particular guys decided to head for the hills instead.
	You serious?
	Yeah.
	I think you'd find it interesting.
	Tell me about it, would you please?
	I am very, very interested.
	Were these COBOL programmers, or what kind of programmers were they?
	I don't know if they were old COBOL guys, but they were legitimate people working in the business.
	I don't remember their names at the moment.
	It's just as well.
	Right, but they were taking it very seriously.
	One of them had taken to the hills.
	I think he was in the desert.
	in Southern California.
	Really?
	But you know, as it also pointed out, most programmers working on the problem aren't
	doing that.
	No, they're making money.
	Right.
	But the question is, we should watch them, I think, don't you?
	Very carefully.
	These people doing the rewriting and making all the money.
	You want to sort of profile them and see if they're buying generators, buying country homes up in the mountains, and doing other things that might be a little tip-off as to what's coming.
	And we'll actually be having stories about that topic in the months ahead.
	We are trying to keep on top of that.
	Obviously, whether you think it's doomsday or just that it's going to be a headache, it's a real thing, whatever ends up happening with it.
	Let me tell you, I had an expert on the power grid on a few nights ago, but discounting his guest appearance, I opened the line to power company employees.
	And I bet you I had no less than 10 calls from power company employees who said, guess what?
	Our bosses, our management, they're all going out and buying generators and putting solar power in.
	That's interesting.
	I thought so.
	I thought so.
	So, what do you think?
	I mean, everybody has an opinion, like every other appendage, and so What's yours?
	You've looked into Y2K.
	What do you see?
	Well, let me preface the answer by mentioning that I haven't been at Wired very long.
	I've only been here a month, and I'm not a technology expert.
	Right now, I'm in the same position as most people.
	I look to experts to guide my opinions on these things, and as you know, expert opinions are all over the map.
	I know.
	My gut feeling, I tend to believe that There could be some problems, but I definitely do not believe there's going to be some kind of riots in the streets and doomsday scenarios.
	I think the worst thing you might see, again this is just my feeling at this point, if you look at an area that has a big ice storm, And the power goes out for a few days, or a few weeks.
	Right.
	I don't see how much of anything could be worse than that.
	People that go through that really suffer.
	You remember the Quebec and New York State ice storm last year?
	But, remember now, there is one difference.
	In other words, everybody, even though it's a horrible inconvenience, everybody understands about an ice storm.
	It comes down the line, the power goes off, Y2K is in a slightly different category in that if it went off, you might or might not have a reasonable expectation that it was going to be on again soon.
	Right.
	And I guess there's also the worry that when it goes off in one sector because of a storm, the other parts of the grid can help that area get back up to speed.
	Well, that's the theory.
	Yeah, in theory.
	I've also seen it.
	See, the theory works the other way around, too.
	And that is, remember when the western third of the U.S.
	went out of power for quite a while?
	Yes.
	They said that was one little power station in Idaho somewhere.
	Right.
	And so it's like you can draw a mental picture of somebody flicking the first domino.
	Well, I can't afford a generator, so I guess I'll have to get by on backpacking gear.
	Well, whatever gets you through the day and night, I guess.
	Anyway, you deal with a lot of Millennium issues, don't you?
	Right.
	When you mention the title, it is kind of meant to be a funny title, and I think the book is funny, but I do want to make clear to people so they don't get the wrong idea.
	This isn't one of those books where I go out and just make fun of everybody.
	I think we've already seen a lot of that when millennial ideas come up.
	I spent several years working on this and what I tried to do is, I was interested in American subcultures that in some way touch on the millennium or utopian visions of the future, anything having to do with the idea that the existing order is in for a big surprise, a big change and there's going to be a transformation It may be violent or it may be peaceful, but in some way we're in for a major transformation.
	That includes various completely different types of groups who would never see eye to eye on much of anything.
	The major ones would be Christian pre-millennialists, the kind of people who talk about what Jerry Falwell was Well, yeah, that's what I was just about to say.
	Did you hear what Jerry Falwell just said?
	Oh, yeah.
	The Antichrist is here on Earth now, and he believes Christ will come back within ten years.
	Right, and the other part of that that was, I think, raised eyebrows was his statement that he's sure the Antichrist is a male, which seems logical, and that he's certainly a Jewish male.
	Yes.
	And a lot of people assumed No, I didn't regard it that way.
	I understand some might have.
	I didn't think so.
	reviewing my anti-christ materials and oddly enough from his perspective it really isn't meant that way
	you know I didn't regard it that way I understand some might have I didn't
	think so I thought it would make sense really wouldn't it
	I mean that that one view He's operating from the idea that the Antichrist is the false messiah, so therefore he would have to be a Jewish man.
	But if you look at the history of Antichrist theorizing, various people who aren't Jews have been assumed to be the Antichrist.
	Nero was one, Napoleon, Hitler, Ronald Reagan was perceived by some people to be the Antichrist.
	I remember.
	Is Ronald Wilson Reagan?
	I know, 6-6.
	But it doesn't really say anywhere in the Bible that the Antichrist has to be Jewish.
	He could be an imposter.
	Well, I'll tell you one thing.
	There's a lot of people out there that think they're the Antichrist.
	I did something that, you know, I do a lot of things on radio that, you know, they probably will come and get me for eventually, but I opened a line one night, the Antichrist line.
	For people who don't laugh, or for people who thought they were the Antichrist.
	And I'm telling you right now, that line didn't stop ringing all night long, and now that the Reverend Falwell has said what he has said, I'm going to have to open it again soon and do it again!
	Because obviously he's out there, and he could be an American Jew.
	Right.
	I think you've had, or may have spoken in the past with Dolores Cannon.
	Of course.
	She's coming from another tradition.
	She's a New Age kind of person.
	For listeners who don't know, she believes that she established contact in real time with Nostradamus, who helped her.
	He was an ancient, long-ago French prophet who helped her piece together what the Antichrist looks like.
	She describes it as he's alive too, but he's living in Egypt.
	She doesn't say he's Jewish or anything like that.
	But you're right.
	There are a lot of people who think that's who they are.
	There are a lot of people who think... There are also a lot of people who think they're the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation, which is another sort of dangerous thing to believe.
	A lot of people think I am the Antichrist.
	No, I don't think so.
	Yes, they do.
	Oh, yes, they do.
	No, I'm saying I don't think so.
	Oh, thank you.
	But, I mean, a lot of people do.
	They say that.
	I get emails, I get faxes, and they are convinced I am the Antichrist.
	I had an angry email on my website referring to you today.
	It just said, Art Bell equals Millennial Kook.
	I asked them to elaborate on it and they sent it back with the type magnified several times.
	So that's all they had to offer?
	That wasn't too helpful.
	No, I have decided, I know that this year the press is going to paint me into that corner, and so I'm making it easy for them.
	Last week I got a black cape with MM from Millennium Master on it, and I had a crown, and I'm going to even get a fancier outfit, and I'm going to submit this so the press, when they start writing these stories about how I'm this one who's going to usher in something horrible
	uh... and if someone label you millennium master is that your own title
	that was not i'd i'd put that label on myself
	one of the things i try to talk about this book and i think it
	kind of important for people to keep in mind the only time we
	came here about millennial groups or when they do some
	people do something naughty you know the most recent or the this group called concerned
	christians who were thrown out of israel
	for an alleged plot too started gunfight
	in the year two thousand A gunfight?
	Right.
	Did you read about it?
	No, no.
	Oh, I thought you might have.
	It's a group based in Denver, headed by a man named Monte Kim Miller.
	He and his followers disappeared from Denver last fall, and then they started turning up in Jerusalem.
	Really?
	And the authorities there, as you know, are worried about Millennialists and Christians showing up there and causing trouble.
	Of course.
	And over the holidays, 14 of the group were arrested, and the allegation was that they were plotting to go on a rampage in the streets of Jerusalem with guns, which in some way would supposedly hasten the return of Christ.
	What it would hasten is their demise.
	Have you ever been to Jerusalem?
	Yeah, I wouldn't.
	Been to Israel?
	No, I haven't.
	It's like everybody's got a gun.
	I mean, you can't go five feet without seeing people with automatic weapons, so it would seem to me that what they would bring about would be their immediate demise.
	That's true.
	But my point is that a group like that is actually by far the exception.
	If you look at statistics, there's something like 20, 21 million people who believe in prophecies.
	Well, that's a different story.
	Most of those people are never going to hurt anybody.
	They're passively waiting for prophecy to unfold.
	What I found out in my book, what I tried to do was spend a lot of time with specific individuals who are living these things out in their lives.
	I found over and over again that, surprisingly, it's not Quite that bizarre, the closer you get to it.
	I know, I know.
	As you point out, there's prophecy laid out very carefully in the Bible, and there's every reason to believe that one day, though it is said no man shall know that day, it's going to come true.
	Right, but my perspective is a little different.
	I don't necessarily believe that, but I was interested in kind of running my Basic skepticism about these things against the experience of being around these people and learning, what is it really like when this is the driving force in your life?
	I found it to be very educational.
	It taught me a lot about the fact that simple binary skepticism about these things, in other words, the sort of skeptical inquirer view that If it's not science, and if it's not reason as we define it, then it's bad.
	I don't really believe that, and I especially don't believe it.
	Well, good for you, because that's just as bad as the other at the extreme.
	Right.
	In a way, it's a kind of fundamentalism itself.
	And I think it's basically saying to people, science is the dominant force in society now, and that's the only choice you have.
	You know, they get upset if people are religious.
	Oh no, you're exactly right.
	Stay right there.
	That's right.
	There is science.
	That you can prove and see and touch and feel, and that's all there is.
	That is an extreme view.
	Because there is an awful lot of stuff going on that does go on, that deserves fair examination, that lives outside those boundaries.
	You know, things you cannot put neatly in a box.
	There's lots of those.
	Do we understand all about ourselves?
	Not a chance.
	we'll be right back the
	the you could be
	world prospered
	tell Just like an old time movie about a ghost from a wishing
	just like a no time
	about those who wish him well yes
	well In a castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon my
	or for the strong If you could remind my love what a tale my thoughts could
	feet You know that ghost is me and I will never be set free
	As long as I'm a ghost you can't see From the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Coast to Coast AM with
	Art Bell.
	From east of the Rockies, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, at 1-800-618-8255.
	First time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
	Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico at 1-800-618-8255.
	First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
	And you may fax Art at area code 702-727-8499.
	Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Now again, here's Art.
	Isn't that pretty?
	♪♪♪ Bye.
	Alright, back now to Alex Hurd of Wired Magazine, and just prior to that, the New York Times Magazine, and here's a fax for you.
	It says, Hi Art, over the weekend I linked from your website and visited the Apocalypse Pretty Soon site.
	I immediately laughed at the name, but my mood went from wired to tired.
	The popular print and broadcast media Has been much too eager to broadly label anyone who predicts problems within the next few years, including Y2K, as millennial loonies.
	So, you might want to comment on that.
	Now, 60 Minutes did a big piece on Y2K, and I thought it was quite serious.
	Jesse, you saw that?
	No, I didn't, but I heard about it.
	Yeah, very serious.
	I didn't label anyone millennial loonies.
	No?
	You must be talking generally.
	Perhaps.
	There are probably millennial loonies out there.
	I'm certain of it.
	I think there are, but my point is, millennialism and utopianism do not make you loonies.
	Sometimes loonies attach to those ideas, but it's a mistake to act like anyone who has those urges is crazy
	Well What what kind of what kind of things at wired are you
	covering?
	Thank you.
	At Wired?
	Yep.
	Well, we cover anything to do with Silicon Valley, computers, culture related to that, including music, books, and right now I'm editing a couple of articles about Y2K, an article about the science writer James Glick.
	An article about extreme candy.
	I don't know if you've ever heard that term, but kids' candy these days is getting weirder and hotter.
	I don't know if you remember cinnamon toothpicks when you were a kid, but the thing now is super sour candy that is so sour you can barely stand to have it in your mouth.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	So we're going to convene a panel of test kids With the most extreme candy we can get our hands on from various manufacturers and see what they can take.
	What do you think will happen to them?
	I think they're going to make a lot of faces, but they'll generally be happy.
	What if one of them screws up his little face and drops dead?
	Then you're in trouble.
	We may have to ask them to sign liability waivers.
	That would be the parents.
	Extreme candy.
	Well, you must have fun, Alex.
	It is fun.
	It's a fun place to work.
	What made you write... I mean, why did you decide to write Apocalypse pretty soon?
	Well, this started a long time ago when I was a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.
	I was doing a weekly column for the Washington Post magazine, and I just started to kind of haphazardly I attended the World Futurist Convention one year.
	It was held in Washington.
	At a convention like that, as you know, you start running into people you don't see anywhere else.
	I met a man who created a sperm bank for people to purchase sperm from for artificial insemination.
	All the donors were supposedly geniuses.
	So if you bought from this gentleman, and it was a completely legitimate operation, you were guaranteed to have genius sperm.
	I wonder how lucrative a business this is for the genius.
	I think they probably do pretty well.
	This thing was, I think, set up as a non-profit kind of educational foundation, and he was completely serious.
	Oh, I understand.
	For him, it wasn't a strange thing.
	He was doing something good for mankind.
	I know.
	It just makes me think about that kind of thing.
	One of the first things I fell into, I was at a conservative political action conference, and I ran into a guy giving out pamphlets about starting your own country because you're dissatisfied with the existing order.
	Well, I've thought of doing that.
	Yeah, and as you probably know, there occasionally are experiments like that.
	There's one going on right now involving a man who calls himself Prince Lazarus Long.
	Really?
	He's based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
	Prince?
	That's not his real name.
	That was Prince, you said, right?
	He has a plan to build an artificial island in the Caribbean.
	I know all about him.
	Actually, the company.
	I did a show on that.
	Okay, I wrote an article about him.
	Did you?
	They're going to have a whole new social order.
	They're going to have their own country.
	There's another plan.
	I don't know if it's the same one.
	This one was going to go off Central or South America, and it was going to be a floating island nation.
	Right, that was the Atlantis Project.
	Yeah.
	And what happened was, at that conference, a man was selling a book that I'd never heard of called How to Start Your Own Country by a writer in Virginia named Erwin Strauss.
	He had done a wonderful history of all the attempts he had heard about to do this.
	There were several in the 60s and 70s that were very elaborate and even got as far as people dumping tons of sand on atolls in the Pacific.
	Trying to make them bigger?
	Yeah.
	What I wanted to find was a current project.
	This was a few years ago.
	I ran into a group out in I went to Los Angeles, a libertarian group, and they called themselves the New Island Creation Consortium.
	Their plan was to use coral accrete process, which is a way to build hard structures using seawater and electric current.
	They would use this and build a floating island that would be near the equator in the South Pacific.
	I went out and spent time with these guys.
	I decided within 30 minutes that they would never do anything.
	Why?
	Well, they were completely serious, but they also needed billions of dollars and they had nothing.
	So that confused me.
	I was like, how do you even spend time doing this?
	And I realized that in a way it's like that urge people have to build a sailboat in their backyard.
	I like the idea myself.
	I do too.
	years working on a cement boats remember that cement boats may never get done but
	just the act of thinking about it and working on it gives them i'd like the
	idea myself i do too i it would be interesting and fun if
	anyone were able to pull it off but what i found out
	when you read about the past history these people who are
	libertarians tend to start arguing with each other a lot Now, I'm a libertarian, you be careful here.
	Right, well, there's nothing wrong with arguing.
	Of course, Americans, every, look, Republicans, Democrats, they argue, libertarians argue, everybody argues.
	All they need is somebody with a few billion dollars to help them get it going.
	Is that all?
	But Prince Lazarus is completely serious.
	Well, why would Prince Lazarus offhand?
	Imagine that somebody would come along with billions of dollars and he would be the prince.
	The guy with the billions of dollars would be the prince, if not the king.
	That is a good question.
	I've never seen a libertarian scheme like that that involved having royalty.
	But as you probably remember, he's obsessed with the style of Monaco.
	That's how he wants this island to be.
	I think he wants it to look sort of Venetian.
	I don't think it will ever happen.
	Kind of an anything-goes place, probably, if it's libertarian, right?
	Right.
	Some of the other groups I talked about, I spent time with a UFO group in Southern California.
	Their religion sounds a lot like Heaven's Gate, but it doesn't have a dark side like that.
	People who want to live forever, and you may know a couple of them.
	I do.
	Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw.
	Not specifically, but I know.
	You know, there's a science side of this, and I've interviewed some pretty sharp people who say that, look, if we can make it the next 30 or 40 years, it may be possible not only to stop your aging, but to even regress yourself.
	Right.
	This is one of those areas in which there is an overlap with real world science.
	Now, no one is promising that tomorrow or next week we're going to have these scientific miracles, but people do talk about lifespans of There are people who believe now, Alex, that there are people out there who have in the past discovered the secret to longevity and have been alive for hundreds of years, but do so in a very undercover way.
	Immortals, if you will.
	That I didn't run into.
	I met several people who are In this sort of strange period where they believe these things will happen someday, but they're obviously not available yet.
	So they're doing all these things that people think they can do now to increase their longevity enough so that they might hang on until these scientific miracles occur.
	That means things like injecting DHEA and human growth hormone.
	And of course, I spent time with cryonics people.
	Some of it seemed harmless and some of it was a little upsetting.
	I was with a group of researchers in Southern California who were doing experiments on dogs, live animal experiments, trying to figure out ways to preserve the brain after death.
	To preserve the brain after death?
	Do you know who Dr. White is?
	Oh, yeah.
	You do?
	I interviewed Dr. White.
	Who kept monkey brains alive.
	Are you aware of those?
	Oh yeah.
	That chapter about the immortality seekers is intercut with a time I spent with a fascinating man who calls himself Chet Fleming.
	Chet Fleming.
	And years ago he wrote, and I'll explain how this connects to White.
	Years ago Fleming wrote, he's actually a lawyer and a patent attorney.
	A few years ago it occurred to him, again this will sound crazy, but he was completely serious.
	He decided that one day it might be scientifically possible to keep a severed head alive on a cabinet or a console.
	He took it on himself to write up a patent application.
	His idea in doing this was to block anyone from doing this kind of research, the same Isn't that what Dr. White noted?
	Yeah, right.
	When he was researching it, people hear that and they go, that's crazy.
	Why would anybody do anything like that?
	Chet Fleming looked into it, and as you have already mentioned, found that there had been experiments in which dog heads had been severed and monkey heads had been severed.
	He was transferred to other bodies and kept alive.
	In the case of Dr. White, it's pretty freaky stuff.
	The monkey would follow you with its eyes.
	It was in every way you could discern alert.
	Right.
	White is very controversial.
	I remember a few years ago in the Washington Post, he said, if someone gave us the money and gave us the time, we could transplant a human head.
	That's right.
	I find that very scary.
	I don't know, but my friend Chet Fleming found it so scary that he decided to get this patent to stop anybody from looking into it.
	According to Dr. White, the only thing holding him back from doing this was the attachment of the spinal cord.
	Now, if you could attach the spinal cord, you could literally take a 70-year-old head and transplant it to a 20-year-old body Right.
	And away you go.
	Now, that actually is just about possible.
	There have been some recent advances with regard... they've got a new drug which actually begins to re-establish neural connections in the spine.
	There's some really interesting work going on.
	Can you imagine that?
	Being about 70 and waking up with a brand new 20-year-old body?
	I hope they put the head on the right direction.
	Well, it really will happen one day, I suppose.
	It might.
	He ended up losing his patent because he had failed to take note of one of those prior experiments.
	The patent office ruled that he had ignored prior art, as they say.
	He lost the patent, so in a way, there's no one standing in the way of someone doing that.
	That's right.
	Who do you think would be the prime candidate of all the people in the world that should be maintained for one reason or another?
	Who would you see maintained in such a way?
	I don't know, but I'd mention that Chet Fleming thought of that very question and also wrote a novel that was never published that attempts to set up that exact situation.
	Really?
	He wrote about a governor of Texas who was a politician who was so great and virtuous that he's not like anybody.
	It's like if you threw Gandhi and Martin Luther King together and added a few other good people, you'd get this guy.
	This governor develops Lou Gehrig's disease, so he's doomed.
	You know what that disease does to people.
	I do.
	It emerges in the novel that researchers at the University of Texas Medical School or somewhere are working on this and they decide if anyone deserves to be kept alive this way to continue what he's doing, it's this guy.
	So Fleming talks about that a lot in his book because you hear about this and you think it's insane, why would anybody want it?
	He talks about the kinds of people who would want it, some of whom obviously Would be evil people who want to keep going.
	Let's forget those for a second.
	What about atheists?
	Seems to me atheists would really want it.
	Yeah.
	Extend life at all costs because, or at least reasonable costs, because when it's over, it's over for them.
	It just doesn't sound like much fun as a way to live.
	I mean, Chet Fleming tries to describe Well, yeah, nobody would want to be in a console, and I don't like that idea.
	He says you could have a console on a motorized wheelchair, and you could go to art museums just like anyone else.
	I think that would probably clear the place out.
	I don't think I like that idea.
	You know, for one thing, the company I work for probably would have me mounted in front of a microphone, and it would never be over for me.
	Never.
	That's right.
	You can never anticipate how technology will actually be used.
	And in television, the meaning of talking heads would take on a very literal one.
	Evans and Novak preserved for 500 years.
	That is scary.
	You know, while we laugh, the darker side of this really, really is.
	That they're on the edge.
	They actually may even almost have the technology to do it now.
	And if we can think about it, Alex, there's a pretty good chance that some private lab somewhere in the deep, dark nighttime is doing something like this.
	Don't you think?
	Possibly.
	I asked Chet Fleming about that, and I said, did you ever get any weird calls in the middle of the night?
	And he said he was called one time by someone who swore to him that he had seen military records that said severed head experiments had been conducted during the French War in Indochina.
	There you are.
	Well, I don't necessarily believe.
	If someone calls you, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true.
	No.
	Did he give you anywhere to chase this down?
	No, but I really have found most of what we can think about can happen, Alex, and may well be happening.
	It's turned out to be true so many times.
	Hold on, we're at the top of the hour.
	You've got a good break here.
	Alex Heard from Wired Magazine.
	Editor at Wired is my guest.
	I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM racing toward the Millennium.
	Well I think it's time to get ready To realize just what I have found
	I have been on the path of what I am It's all clear to me now
	I've been feeling this way all the time Well I know you don't matter, everything I say
	Leave me in the country for all day To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye
	From east of the Rockies, Dial 1-800-825-5033 West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.
	1-800-618-8255.
	First time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
	And you may call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1222.
	To reach Art from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.
	This is Coast to Coast AM, from the Kingdom of Nye, with Art Bell.
	It sure is.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Alex Heard, an editor from Wired Magazine, is here.
	He used to work for the New York Times Magazine.
	We're discussing the millennium and things attendant to it.
	Apocalypse Pretty Soon!
	That's the title of his book, Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
	Guess what?
	Guess what, folks?
	I just got, in the years that I've been doing this program, I have received, I think, maybe two, perhaps three, really good ghost photographs.
	My wife, Ramona, is opening mail in the other room and she has come upon a serious photograph.
	I have the original photograph here in my hand.
	I got this five minutes ago, five minutes ago, and it's a mind-blower, I'm telling you.
	It comes from Jeff in, uh, where is he anyway?
	Michigan.
	It says, all right, the picture was taken on Denton Road in Canton, Michigan about two months ago.
	We were taking photographs with a normal 35 millimeter camera.
	This road has a very long legacy of being a haunted road.
	Hence the reason we were out there at one in the morning.
	Feel free to use it on www.artbell.com Jeff Burden.
	Oh, and he puts his phone number down here, too.
	Cool, so I could call Jeff.
	Well, I took one look at this and I went, wow!
	And I went over to my scanner in the last five minutes, scanned it.
	I've got the picture right here in my hot little palm.
	I'll show it to you on my studio cam so you can know I'm serious.
	I scanned it and I sent it to Keith now.
	Keith usually listens to the show.
	Keith, if you are listening to the program, please retrieve, as soon as it hits your mail, this photograph and get it up on the website for everybody.
	Yeah, the world is wired, isn't it?
	That's how fast we can do things.
	But I'm telling you, this particular photograph is going to blow your mind.
	I really love the net.
	It's the only thing that lets me do this kind of thing.
	I mean, my wife opens an envelope.
	Here's one of the better ghost photographs we've ever received.
	Poof!
	Here it is!
	Incredible!
	Jeff, thank you!
	Keith already has it.
	Now, it may not be up yet.
	It'll be a few minutes, but in a few minutes we'll have it posted for all of you and I just...
	So that all of the people out there who will say, oh, it's a manipulated computer file, won't do that.
	I have a copy of the 35 millimeter photograph that I have scanned, and I've just held that up to my studio camera, so you might know.
	Now, it's not to say that photographs cannot be manipulated, but I don't think this is.
	At any rate, one thing's for sure, it's not a computer file.
	It's a 35 millimeter photograph, and if you doubt that, go look at my Webcam, and then Keith will notify me when it's up.
	I would imagine nearly any minute, and I'm telling you this is one really, really good ghost photograph.
	Really good.
	So, it'll be up in minutes.
	Also up, by the way, is the version of the book, online book, By Joseph Firmage.
	Keith has translated it and put it up on our website because we've got a lot of, you know, we've really got a lot of bandwidth, it says here in fine print.
	So we've got it up there for you.
	Joseph Firmage.
	Very interesting guy.
	All right, back to my guest, Alex Hurd.
	Alex, you should be wired.
	You can get on the net, right?
	I'm on it right now.
	As long as we're talking at the net, can you mention my nifty website?
	Aren't we linked to it?
	Yeah.
	I was wondering if I could give them...
	I'm not in any of the search engines yet.
	Oh, well, listen, you're on my site.
	That's probably better than being on some of them.
	Oh, great.
	A lot of them.
	So people will go to my site and just scroll down to the name Alex Heard.
	My audience is very used to this.
	Just click on www.apocalypseprettysoon.com.
	Or, Apocalypse Pretty Soon, the book, travels in end time America.
	So that's a subtitle, I guess.
	Travels in End Time America.
	Right.
	Absolutely excellent.
	And so my folks can go down and read much more about you and your book, and even order it at Amazon.com right through my website.
	Being wired is wonderful, huh?
	It's fun.
	Tell me when the ghost picture is visible.
	It's there now.
	Okay.
	It's there now.
	Obviously, since I just said what I said.
	I did all this during the break.
	I got it.
	I went out.
	I talked to my wife.
	I got photographed.
	I scanned it.
	I got it to my webmaster.
	And it's up right now.
	Now, is that a wired world or what?
	Can't beat it.
	Absolutely unbelievable.
	Just unbelievable.
	So, it may run a little slow.
	But you'll get to it.
	A lot of people are suddenly going up this.
	By all means, please click on this photograph and take a look and tell me what you think.
	Have you done any research in that area?
	Ghosts, poltergeists, that whole area?
	Yeah.
	My wife and I went to the Monroe Institute for a week.
	Oh, you did?
	Yep.
	I interviewed Robert Monroe on the air.
	Wow, that must have been interesting.
	It was.
	He was, of course, gone by the time we got there.
	This was just in 1997.
	Right.
	And we took the one-week course called Gateway for beginners, for people who don't know it.
	The Monroe Institute tries to show people how to have out-of-body experiences.
	They use something called Hemisync, which is sort of a tape that you play that gets you in sync with the ability to move to different dimensions, really.
	Right.
	That's a good way of describing it.
	It reminded me of, and while you're hearing these tones, the way they describe it, they're supposed to synchronize the two sides of your brain.
	Monroe takes you through various exercises as you try to ascend to these levels that he enumerated.
	It's all broken down pretty clearly.
	It didn't really work for me, but it was a very interesting thing to do, and it did work for some of the people there.
	There were definitely dramatic results in some cases.
	Well, I know that it works.
	I mean, out of body works.
	I'm not going to dredge anybody through that story, but I've had an experience.
	I heard you talking about that last night.
	You actually heard about it?
	Oh, good.
	Did you experience anything at all like that?
	What I experienced personally was the tapes definitely put you in what they call a sensory
	deprivation.
	Well, they call it a check unit, controlled holistic environmental chamber.
	Right.
	It's basically a blacked out little chamber built into a wall.
	That's like a sensory deprivation chamber.
	Right, you're on a bed and you have headphones on, and then the tapes are playing, it's completely dark in there, or as close as you can get, and you know it's It was definitely a shift from reality, and there were times during trying those tapes where I felt like, in college I went to a couple of parties where medical students had swiped some nitrous oxide, and I felt like that sort of feeling coming on, but I never really went any farther than that.
	Well, then you must be something of a control freak.
	Yeah, I think that's fair.
	I mean, I was trying.
	I was giving it my best.
	I am.
	I felt that myself, and there's no way that I'm comfortable going any further with it than that, but I felt that coming on.
	What I had, I had without asking for it.
	Thank you very much.
	No warning at all.
	Have you seen the ghost photograph yet?
	No.
	Now, where do I find it once I get to the main site?
	Okay, well, once you get to the main site, All you do is reload the page, because it probably just got there, under the latest news and site additions, which is the very first thing you come to as you get below the photograph.
	Right.
	You'll see Ghost Photo Received and Scanned by Art.
	I got it.
	You got it?
	Yeah.
	Alright, well go over there and then blow that up, and when you finally get it blown up to proper size, let me know what you think.
	This is one weird picture, boy.
	I love weird radio, and we do weird radio here.
	There's no question about that.
	That's pretty nifty.
	It just came up.
	Can you see the whole thing?
	She's smoking, so the ghost might be telling her to stop smoking.
	Well, maybe.
	And that might even account for what's near her, but that sure as hell isn't going to account for what's back there, is it?
	Yeah, that's a neat picture.
	Yeah, I've had in my life, this would be about the third really, what I would consider really good ghost photographs.
	Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
	If I had something like that come back on a roll of my film, I'd stop taking pictures.
	So you just got that, eh?
	Yeah, minutes ago.
	Wow.
	I noticed an A there.
	You're not Canadian, are you?
	No, I'm from Kansas.
	Kansas?
	That's right.
	That gets more laughs than saying you're a millennialist.
	Really?
	People don't give Kansas enough respect.
	Actually, it's a really neat place, particularly if you like violent weather.
	And I like violent weather.
	Yeah, they do have that.
	You're going to have to bear with me.
	I'm weird in a lot of ways.
	I used to chase tornadoes with a friend of mine.
	Now, where were you from?
	In a Volkswagen.
	No, I mean, what state were you doing that in?
	Amarillo, Texas.
	Oh, that's a prime, prime hot spot.
	You know, we used to chase the damn things in Volkswagen, in a Volkswagen.
	Not your best choice of vehicle.
	Why?
	Well, it was the only one we had at the time.
	We were out of our mind.
	Actually, we chased some tornadoes all the way up into Oklahoma, you know, out of the panhandle.
	Yeah.
	And how we lived through all of that, I'll never know.
	But we did.
	We used to take film and sell it to the local TV station in Amarillo years ago.
	Well, I'm the only person who grew up in western Kansas that never saw a tornado.
	What?
	I don't know how I missed it.
	Really?
	No, never did.
	A friend of mine saw them frequently.
	Here's a picture of him standing in his front yard with a tornado over his shoulder, several miles away.
	Right.
	But I just was never at the right place.
	Well, you've also looked at Dr. Greer, Stephen Greer, Annie and Byron Kirkwood.
	I've interviewed all of these people.
	What kind of conclusions did you come to?
	Well, on the Earth Changes, I spent a lot of time, that was one of the other groups that I learned about long ago.
	I was at a New Age Expo in New York, and a guy who I've lost track of named Matthew Stenger was giving a lecture about the Earth Changes, and everything he talked about I'd never heard before, and he showed the map that Lori Toy produced.
	Oh, I know Lori, I've interviewed her, I've got the map.
	She's a nice person and he talked about Sun Bear who has since passed away and he just described the basic idea of it.
	Do you think all your listeners know what it is or earth changes?
	Well, you're welcome to fill them in.
	Let me tell my audience just quickly, tomorrow night I'm going to have Paul McGuire on, and he is very much into biblical prophecy.
	Now, is this timely or what?
	And guess what?
	Earth changes tomorrow night.
	Well, just briefly, the idea usually is that the planet is... that there are more earthquakes and volcanoes and hurricanes and diseases And in a map like Lori's or Gordon Michael Scallion's, you'll actually see huge physical changes in the United States.
	You betcha.
	Yeah, you betcha.
	In fact, if you look at the map, you'll find out here in Nevada, I'm swimming.
	Right.
	You're underwater.
	That's because an asteroid hits Nevada, according to Lori.
	I know.
	In fact, just about dead center where I am, I'm not far from Death Valley.
	Well, do you worry about that, or is it one of the things you don't give much credit to?
	Well, when she was here, I give a lot of credence to Lori Toye.
	I don't ignore her.
	She's a very serious person.
	Here's a housewife who had a vision, who saw a future world, who sold everything she had, put it all on the line.
	With her kids, and went out and published this map.
	I mean, it's an amazing story when you hear Lori tell it.
	And so, I thought about it a whole lot when I had her on the air, but in an average 24 hour day, how much time do I spend thinking about it?
	Hardly any time at all.
	Yeah, but you mentioned something interesting.
	I mean, in her case, I remember her telling me, it was back in 1978, and she believed Four beings in white robes appeared to her and rolled out these maps showing the earth changes.
	Very much like Gordon Scullion, actually.
	Yeah.
	And again, coming from a slightly skeptical side of things, the thing that surprised me was utter sincerity.
	I have no doubt that this is truth to her.
	Oh, I know.
	And I know I keep returning to that, but I do think most people If they're not into this stuff, they think there has to be a catch, like that she's probably doing that because she's trying to make a lot of money.
	No, oh no.
	But there usually isn't that much money being made.
	A lot of people are paying a price to do these things.
	I know.
	So they're driven by a real faith.
	I know.
	Anyway, on the earth changes front, as soon as I heard about it, I kind of got a...
	What I wanted was to see someone's survival shelter, because I quickly ascertained that for some people this was taken so seriously that they felt they needed to dig an underground shelter or a survival pod in Appalachian somewhere.
	So I kind of spent a few years off and on trying to find someone who would let me see their home away from home, and I finally did see one.
	Again, through those years, and especially with a lot of help from Byron and Annie Kirkwood, I attended their Earth Festival in Texas a few years ago.
	Again, I learned that I was being a little bit too literal.
	It's not just about survivalism for some people who believe in it.
	As you know, there's a spiritual side to it, and you'll find that some people don't really Literally believe that those changes are going to happen.
	I mean, they believe they could, but they're more attuned to the idea that if people just change enough that we can ward this off.
	Yeah, that we can prevent it.
	That's one line of thought.
	Yeah.
	There's another line of thought that would say, as I have said, That like the piston aircraft going across the Pacific, the little red light comes on saying, point of no return.
	Right.
	And as a matter of fact, I interviewed some Hopi elders who said, essentially in their own way, exactly the same thing.
	Sorry, the reason we're coming on the air with you is because it is too late.
	These changes are not only coming, but they are now actually upon us.
	They have begun.
	Right.
	And, um, I have an article coming out this month in Outside Magazine.
	Yes.
	Oh, Outside, really?
	It's all about the earth changing.
	Oh, I know about Outside.
	I want to talk to you about that, too.
	Okay.
	But this article is about the earth changes, and I spend a lot of time in the middle talking about how someone skeptical like me, I nonetheless keep a big file of news clips that seem to kind of dovetail with what earth changes people are saying.
	And 1998 was a big year for that.
	Oh, you bet.
	The hottest year, and bizarre weather all over the country.
	Oh, that one's a no-brainer.
	Hold on, we're at the bottom of the hour.
	Alex Hurd from Wired Magazine is here.
	i'm art bell and when i tell you you've got to go see that goes photograph on my
	website i'm telling you those days
	do to talk with our film
	in the kingdom of money from outside the u.s.
	first dial your access number to the u.s.a.
	Then, 800-893-0903.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.
	I told you I got a photograph.
	or call art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
	This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nye.
	It is, and I guess Lorena McKinnon's music is a good background for what I'm about to do.
	I told you I got a photograph. Oh man, what a photograph.
	Now, so that you might know, it's a real 35 millimeter photograph.
	As a matter of fact, let me see if I can read the back of it.
	With a Kodak stamp on it.
	Processed by Kodak.
	I scanned the photograph when my wife brought it in all of, I guess, about 35 minutes ago.
	Got it over to Keith, who got it up on the website right away.
	This is easily in the top three ghost photographs I've ever, ever seen.
	And this comes from Jeff Burden in Canton, I guess it's Canton, Michigan.
	And I called him up, and I'm afraid I woke him up, but I couldn't resist.
	He put his phone number down here, so I want to say hello to Jeff.
	Jeff, hello.
	Hello, how are you doing?
	I'm okay.
	I'm in the middle of an interview with a really nice editor from Wired Magazine, but when I got this picture, it just blew my mind.
	It is amazing.
	Yes, it's amazing.
	Can you give us any background here?
	Well, first off, it's a really interesting picture because of the fact that we took it on a road that has been rumored around here in the Detroit area as being haunted.
	You're near Detroit?
	You're in Detroit?
	I'm in Westland, actually.
	The picture was taken in Canton, Michigan.
	In Canton, okay.
	But I actually live in Westland.
	Alright.
	And the picture was taken on Denton Road.
	Which is very notorious around here for a lot of, you know, urban legends and stuff like that.
	Yes.
	And we were all out scooping around late one night, and we were like, hey, if we could get our pictures taken by the sign on Denton Road.
	So we're just, you know, grabbing a lot of pictures, no big deal.
	And about, I guess a week later, maybe two weeks later, we got the film developed, and oh my!
	No.
	And it completely floored all of us.
	Is it?
	This is a young lady in the photograph, isn't it?
	Yes, it's one of my sister's best friends.
	It's one of your sister's best friends?
	It's Carrie, yes.
	Carrie.
	Carrie.
	Figures.
	Well, it easily goes down in... I mean, you guys must have really, really totally freaked out, because I've seen some pretty good ghost photographs, but this one's right up there.
	I was extremely scared by it, and I'm like... I was sitting at home by my computer one day, And I was like, well, let me send this to Art and see what he thinks about it.
	And I figured you'd get a kick out of it.
	Well, I'm glad you sent me the actual print instead of a computer rendition of it.
	That's what I know.
	I emailed Keith at his web store, his email address, and he told me I should probably just send the original picture.
	Oh, he said that to you?
	Yeah.
	Good for Keith.
	And I was going to send you a copy of it, but he said, Better accuracy and stuff like that.
	Just to send the picture.
	I know that he's correct.
	It's no big deal.
	I'll just send the picture.
	We had a copy of it.
	And, I mean, we still have the negative and everything.
	So, I mean, it's just completely not fake.
	Oh, no, I hear you.
	How does this young lady feel about this photograph?
	She blew it off.
	She didn't really think much of it.
	She was like, oh, well.
	Oh, well?
	She wasn't as freaked out as I necessarily was.
	I don't, it stopped me taking pictures.
	Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on here in the middle of the night with us, Jeff.
	Congratulations on taking one of the top ghost photographs I've seen.
	No problem.
	And stay safe, huh?
	I will do that.
	Alright, see you later.
	There you are.
	There you are, Alex.
	That was interesting.
	Yeah, the guy took the photo.
	I think a lot of people will be interested in that.
	Yeah, so do I. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
	Well, okay, so let's see.
	You mentioned Outside Magazine.
	Yeah, that's right.
	You know about the disastrous Everest expedition?
	Yeah, I used to work at Outside.
	You did?
	Yeah, that was where I worked before I worked at the New York Times.
	I was an editor there for four years.
	You're aware of the book Into Thin Air?
	Yeah, I mentioned in the acknowledgements.
	Oh, you... Oh!
	Yeah, I was one of the editors when that story was assigned.
	And the author of that book is?
	John Krakauer.
	John Krakauer.
	And you know, I'll tell you what.
	I'll tell you a little story.
	Okay.
	I read In the Thin Air on the way to Paris.
	I was on my way to Paris and I read it there.
	And it blew my mind, so I held on to that book, came home, found out how to contact John Krakauer.
	I did talk to him.
	And his attitude was, I tell you Art, someday maybe, but right now my life was shattered by what happened.
	I'm trying to get my life back together.
	Yeah.
	And I don't, I don't, I really don't want the publicity.
	I don't want to bring the whole thing up again.
	That, that was an absolutely astounding book into thin air.
	It was, it was great.
	Of course, a lot of people agreed.
	It sold, I think, 800,000 copies in hardcover.
	And so, well, it should have.
	Yeah.
	It was great.
	Do you have any perspective, since you worked for Outside, on Krakauer's take on things?
	I mean, there are others who look at it differently.
	You mean that look at the way that whole thing played out?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, that assignment was made.
	He's been writing for the magazine a long time.
	He's one of the best writers there.
	He was really going to go over there, obviously, with nothing in mind like that.
	He was going to try to write about the fact that Everest these days is overcrowded and overworked and there are just too many people up there.
	That was the year where it really came home to roost for people.
	There are other years where equally bad things happen.
	That just happened to be the year where everybody really paid attention to it.
	A lot of that is because of the coincidence that a great writer was up there when it happened.
	There aren't many people who can write and report like he can and also have the physical ability and skill to just be there.
	It's incredibly difficult.
	So it was something.
	And just like he indicated to you, it had a serious effect on him.
	I think you know there have been controversies about it.
	There are people who think Krakauer should have been criticized more for his conduct up there.
	I tend not to really feel that way, but I guess I'm biased.
	But it's something people are still very passionate about.
	It's true.
	You can't read that book and not be passionate about it one way or the other.
	And if you were there, I'm not even sure you could talk about it, no matter whether Krakauer's version is accurate or somebody else's.
	There's a lot of finger-pointing and blame.
	Something that might interest you, the anti-account is by the late Anatoly Bukhariev, who was also up there and came in for a lot of criticism.
	crack hours book he wrote his own book the russians came in for a lot of
	criticism period yeah and book reviewed of dying on a different mountain
	subsequently but it there there is a good article down on salon magazine
	the online publication
	that talked about how the controversy over
	who was right who is wrong bill playing out that was published last year but
	people could still read it on can you give people a brief uh... rendition
	of what happened on that mountain and when.
	There's a lot of people out there, obviously, who have not read anything and have no idea what we're talking about.
	Can you tell them what we're talking about?
	Yeah, and if I get any details wrong, I apologize, but it was, I believe, May of 96?
	Yes, that's right.
	And Krakauer, who's a climbing journalist, went on an expedition to Mount Everest.
	And it was a guided expedition.
	And there were a lot of guided expeditions on the mountain at that time.
	Krakauer was with a New Zealand group.
	The guide was a man named Rob Hall.
	And another group that was prominent that day was a big group guided by a man from Washington State named Scott Fisher.
	And basically, just to make it very short, a lot of them summited, but they were They were behind schedule.
	You need to get up there and get down.
	People need to understand, Everest is roughly how high?
	It's 28,000, no, excuse me, 29,000 feet.
	Yeah, in other words, where a lot of jetliners fly.
	Right.
	I mean, some people, if you can get up there at all, some people can't do it without oxygen.
	Some people, over the years, have managed to climb to the top.
	Just breathing whatever oxygen is up there.
	You'd have to be awfully well conditioned to do that.
	Yeah.
	And there were people that did it, but Krakauer had oxygen.
	What happened, though, was people were a little slow getting down, and it was crowded.
	And about that time, a big front came in, and they were just walloped with a blizzard.
	A weather front?
	Yeah.
	You know, a blizzard.
	Some people got lost and scattered.
	A lot of people died a few feet from help.
	Yeah, and both the main guides died.
	Scott Fisher and Rob Hall both died.
	Krakauer almost died, it sounds like, the way he describes it, but he managed to get back down to a base camp.
	It was just a terrible thing.
	But, you know, the moral of the story is, in the old days, people Who made those kind of climbs, every single person who did it was someone who had been climbing for an entire life.
	And they had the skills to do every aspect of what was required.
	What's different now is that people who are in incredible shape but aren't necessarily that experienced as climbers can get on an expedition to a mountain like that.
	Mount McKinley in Alaska is another one.
	You can pay and you can be guided up there.
	Money.
	Yeah, and so you have people up there who are in physical condition to do it, but aren't necessarily, don't have the proper experience.
	But the thing is, that said, when something like that blizzard hits, it doesn't really help.
	There are some things about that kind of mountain climbing that you can't You can't do anything about it.
	No one can control that kind of weather.
	So in some sense, no matter how well you're prepared, you're rolling the dice just by going up there.
	Yeah, that's right.
	And you have to imagine you might not come back.
	Hold on.
	We forgot to take our break because I went to the gentleman who took this unbelievable picture in Michigan.
	and we'll be right back.
	Alright, back to Alex Hurd who is my guest and uh...
	Alex, are you friends with Jon Krakauer?
	Yes, not close friends.
	I was more of a colleague.
	I edited a couple of stories he worked on.
	I was going to see if I could put some backdoor pressure on, but I guess not.
	I think that he's still feeling the same way and not really doing much.
	Yeah, I do too.
	The day may come when he wants to talk about it, and that's the way we left it.
	He said, look, if it does come, and it may, I'll call you.
	This is millennial stuff, too, I guess.
	I sort of coined a re-coined term some time ago and wrote a book called The Quickening.
	Right.
	All right.
	Here's somebody who just sent me something from ABC News, that just cleared ABC News, entitled, Ocean's Health Linked to Ours.
	Says, for thousands of years humans have regarded oceans of the world mostly apart from our own terrestrial lives, but in recent decades it's become increasingly clear the oceans are changing at least in part as a result of human activity.
	Stunning new discoveries and revolutionary new insights about the connections between the ocean and human life have begun to sweep away complacency about the state of the sea.
	So they're saying virtually In fact, it says in the article, if the oceans are in trouble, so are we.
	Well, guess what?
	We've got fish with hysteria.
	We've got coral reefs that are dying at a rate that would scare the hell out of you if you heard about it.
	We've got things going on in the oceans and fish where they ought not be.
	We've got temperatures in the ocean that ought not be.
	A lot's going on in the ocean right now, and not much of it is very good.
	What do you think about that?
	Well, I mean, I agree that anything like that is something to watch, and that's what I was saying about the areas where earth changes prophecy kind of overlaps with things that scientists are saying.
	Exactly.
	Obviously, the scientists would never go, yeah, yeah, we agree with that prophecy, but that's what I explore in this Outside Magazine article.
	I try to look at the ways, you know, okay, stripping that aside.
	Putting that aside, what are some things that are really going on that people should be worried about?
	You know, you can't laugh off a lot of the news about the planet in recent years.
	The question is, what do you do about it?
	I think the answer is nothing.
	I don't think anything can be done.
	And if you think something can be done, tell me what it is, because we've got a world full of nations who want what we've got.
	And if they get it, then we're absolutely out of the ballpark, I'm telling you.
	I mean, what we're doing right now is bad enough, but you go around and look at the rest of the nations that want a car, that want a house, that want all the basic luxuries and comforts that we have.
	If they get them, we're cooked.
	Yeah.
	Well, I try to remain more optimistic than that, but I can see why people feel kind of depressed sometimes.
	But, you know, we'll just have to see.
	Now, one interesting experience I had when I wrote about earth changes, I participated in a workshop, this may have been the strangest thing I did, called the Council of All Beings.
	Have you ever heard of that?
	No, sir.
	Well, the idea behind it is to try to, these are people who are pretty hardcore environmentalists and are really worried about the kinds of things you talked about, and they tried to develop a ritual to let them, in kind of a Religious, spiritual way, let them work out the anger and fear they're fearing about all these changes that people are observing the planet.
	It's a good idea.
	It's kind of bizarre because you spend a weekend pretending that you're an animal or an entity.
	It has Native American themes.
	I went through it.
	entity or an animal or a bird and you are speaking for that entity, telling mankind
	everything that it is doing wrong and really cursing mankind out to let us all know that
	this has to stop.
	The purpose of it, I think, is to induce a sort of catharsis.
	Were you an animal?
	Did you become one?
	Yeah, I went through it.
	And what were you?
	I was a blue jay.
	jay bluejay i shrieked loudly did you and and what?
	What were you shrieking about from your Blue Jay perspective?
	Just general things about the forest and insect populations.
	That was one of the things that was hardest for me.
	I tried to get into all these things a little bit.
	That was one that was hardest for me, partly because I don't do too well.
	Yeah, it was hard.
	I felt like once I survived that I could do anything.
	But again, it worked for some of these people.
	I don't know what they got out of it in the long run.
	It was hard.
	I felt like once I survived that I could do anything.
	But again, I worked for some of these people.
	I don't know what they got out of it in the long run.
	In their case, the idea was to empower them to go back out and do something.
	Their perspective is different.
	They still believe we can turn it around.
	And that was the idea there.
	It was interesting, though.
	Do you believe that?
	I mean, you said you are somewhat more optimistic.
	Do you think all this can be turned around?
	I still believe in civilization and society's ability to solve problems.
	I mean, that's sort of at the heart of this magazine, the idea that the future is going to be a good thing and not a big and not a disaster area and maybe I'm wrong but that that that's where I'm going it'll be a good thing if science really comes through on its promises to pull our fat out of the fire and maybe it will there's no denying the fact that it it may do that and we may turn a lot of this around but
	Well, I forget.
	When you talk about the quickening, is there a way out, or is it all past the point of no return?
	Well, if you're asking my opinion, it's past the point of no return.
	In other words, I'm not saying, because I'm not a fool, that the world is going to end.
	I don't think the world is going to end.
	I'm not that foolish.
	We're not that strong.
	We're not that powerful.
	Do we have the ability to, in essence, make this a place where nowhere near as many people can live as are here now?
	Oh, yes.
	That's in our realm.
	And I would say we're working in that direction.
	So I think my conclusion in the quickening is that we're headed toward an event of change.
	I'm not really sure what it is.
	I don't think it's the end of the world.
	But I do think there's a change coming.
	Yeah, there definitely is.
	I mean, if you just think of the year 3000.
	I'm not a prophet.
	There's no way things will look exactly like they do now.
	I mean, I think that's the one thing we're sure of.
	Have you ever heard of Marshall Savage, author of The Millennial Project?
	No, what's that?
	That was a book that came out a few years ago, and it's similar in some ways to what we were talking about earlier, these libertarian free nation ideas.
	Ah, yes.
	There's an interesting guy based in Colorado who wrote this much more grandiose tract about not just colonizing the oceans, but low orbit and then the moon.
	Oh, you mean living in space?
	All right, hold on.
	We've got a break here at the top of the hour.
	We'll be right back in Open Phone Lines.
	Thanks for watching.
	Thanks for watching.
	And thank Him for living in love with me.
	From the Kingdom of Nye, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	From east of the Rockies, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, at 1-800-618-8255.
	First time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
	First time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222 and you may fax Art at area code
	702-727-8499.
	Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Now again, here's Art.
	Once again, here I am.
	Alex Hurd is my guest.
	And what a background he's got.
	He currently works for Wired Magazine.
	And he's worked for the New York Times Magazine.
	And he's also worked for Outside Magazine.
	These are discoveries I've made on the air tonight.
	So he's a fascinating guy and we're talking about the millennium and millennial issues, I guess.
	He's done a lot of investigation into that area.
	And I'm not sure how you'd classify him.
	A skeptic?
	Or maybe a hardened skeptic at one time and now quite not quite so hardened?
	I'll ask him.
	Listen, I've got a ghost photograph that is as good as I've seen.
	And I've had two interesting faxes quickly on it.
	Number one from Brad in Illinois.
	I just looked at the ghost photo.
	Notice there was also a red glow beside or behind her head.
	What do you think that is?
	It's one of the best.
	Keep it up.
	And then this.
	Art, I lived in Michigan for about 30 years, in a location not very far from Denton Road, from the Denton Road ghost photo.
	And I can vouch for the validity of the statements made by the gent you had on the air who sent the photo.
	The area has been a hotbed of sightings.
	Of strange lights, ghostly images, and so forth, for at least 40 years.
	Yeah, that's a pretty wild photograph.
	You've got to see it.
	It's on my website at www.artbell.com.
	Also, you can see the website of Alex Hurd, which is, I guess, kind of a work in progress.
	And you can go take a look at his book www.artbell.com.
	Apocalypse Pretty Soon is his website.
	We've got that link, and then, of course, one to his book as well, if you would like that.
	He'll be back in a moment.
	If you have questions for him this hour, we are going to open the lines and do what we do best, which is, anything goes, talk radio.
	So, if you're so inclined, pick up a phone.
	Are you a skeptic, softened somewhat?
	Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it.
	All right.
	So your perspective as you write is from about that place, generally?
	About what you just described?
	In other words, you come from about that place when you write?
	Yeah.
	And, you know, I guess I'm kind of smart-alecky sometimes, but these stories are also presented What I spend a lot of time doing is trying to figure out where these ideas come from and why are they so important to people.
	There's a lot of historical research.
	Anytime I enter a specific subculture, I try to read the books that the people involved have read and try to figure out the sources of the beliefs.
	As I'm sure you know, You always find out that they go back much further.
	People tend to think these things are popping up in the 90s, or that they all came from the 60s.
	They've always been there.
	They've been there a long time.
	The drug subculture is a big one.
	Does Wired write about that?
	Yeah, they do a little bit.
	You may remember a few years ago, I don't know how much these guys got into it, but there was a lot of talk about smart drugs.
	Oh, yes.
	Now, it seems to me, we got into this at The Times, there's a lot of enhancement drugs making people better sexually or mentally.
	They claim ginkgo biloba, isn't it?
	Right.
	It makes you brighter.
	What's the new sex drug?
	Viagra.
	St.
	John's Wort.
	That's actually being studied by the National Institutes of Health.
	I had a doctor on.
	Do you know Dr. Klatz?
	No, I don't.
	He's a life extension specialist physician.
	He tried Viagra.
	He said on the air, he said, uh... it would kill me i he said i i took it over a weekend
	i never had so much sex my whole life
	she's got a few seconds absolutely worked he said though you would last
	long and i mean uh...
	i'm adding for heading for a future where you can dial up a lot of
	performances moods and behaviors with with drugs that will be
	you know this time around it seems like most of them will be pharmaceuticals
	that are available rather than banned substances
	Think so?
	Yeah.
	My view is, though, that any time anything is good or makes somebody feel too good or gives them too much of an escape, society automatically passes laws against it.
	Yeah, I think it's going to get muddy as substances are developed by big companies.
	Maybe they'll be I don't know.
	We'll see.
	It's hard to believe.
	You know what they're doing right now?
	This might be something for you to research.
	The government is actively producing this fungus that's supposed to kill all the marijuana in the world.
	Oh, interesting.
	Yeah, that might be one for you to follow up on.
	I don't know.
	Maybe in the future they're going to get a little liberalized, but right now they're still in the labs trying to do their worst.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hello.
	Hi, this is Michelle in Washington State.
	Michelle, you're going to have to yell at us, but you're... Oh, sorry.
	Is that better?
	Oh, boy, is that better.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I do have a... I have to say, I love your show, Art.
	I'm ever so slightly addicted.
	And Alex, I really enjoy your magazine, and I was wondering, regarding the ocean, this is one thing I learned ages ago when I was taking oceanography and marine biology, that most of the air we in fact breathe comes from the ocean.
	That's true.
	And that, you know, killing the ocean, we are killing ourselves, shooting ourselves in the foot, as it is, and that was just one comment.
	The other was, Do you see any correlations between the Roaring Twenties and the way people were kicking it up and living it big and to now, where it seems like everybody is very carefree, times are very good, the stock market fluctuates extremely?
	Do you see any correlations there?
	Well, that's an interesting thought.
	I guess the only major difference I would point out is that People in the 20's were coming out of World War I and having survived that, it seemed like they had a pretty good excuse to live a little and we've been doing it.
	The 80's to me are very similar to the 90's.
	There was a lot of growth and boom and that collapsed pretty well in 87 but then it's come right back.
	I guess maybe you're suggesting we're heading for a big fall?
	It seems like there are a lot of correlations.
	Definitely possible.
	I don't have a crystal ball, but you do have to wonder if this kind of growth and prosperity can be sustained.
	So far it's going along alright.
	That's really nice.
	So far you have to really enjoy it.
	Alright, thank you.
	I was wondering, can I share a really short poltergeist story?
	Yes.
	I was in the ninth grade.
	And I was doing a report on poltergeist, and one night I was sitting in my room by myself.
	My sister was away.
	I was on the top bunk of my bed, and nobody was in the room with me, and I just thought out loud.
	I thought, gosh, I really would like a piece of gum.
	And behind me, softly, I heard a little thump, and I looked, and there was, and I didn't do drugs or anything.
	There was a piece of gum sitting on my bed, and I just looked at it.
	I touched it.
	Well, let's see.
	You were in ninth grade.
	You were how old?
	Grade 9, so I was what, 15, 16?
	14, 15, something like that.
	Yep.
	You know, um, poltergeists, how old are you now?
	I am 30.
	30.
	Poltergeists, frequent young teenage girls, just like you, were.
	And it was amazing.
	It's not, believe me, it's not unheard of.
	Thank you very much, Alex.
	I don't know if you've done much investigation into the world of poltergeists and ghosts.
	God, I'm glad I got that ghost picture tonight.
	Man, what a photo.
	Anyway, teenage girls, young teenage girls, seem particularly Um, likely to produce in their, in their particular area, their own area, the area surrounding them, polargeists.
	And is that, what's the theory on that?
	Uh, young teenage girls of about that age are going through raging changes, uh, and they have great power.
	In other words, they're very intense, extremely intense for just a few years in there.
	And they have great power at that time.
	And there are many cases of poltergeist activity occurring around girls that age.
	Did you know that?
	No, that's interesting.
	They definitely have great power at that age.
	Oh, they do?
	If you remember being a ninth grade boy.
	Oh, I do.
	Energy that just simply can't be accounted for.
	It was so great.
	And I remember my discovery.
	That's when, of course, you discover girls.
	And that's when you discover that a classroom is a hard place to sit in with all those girls that you want around you.
	Yeah.
	So many in so little time.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I just want to say I'm a big fan of yours.
	Thank you.
	I'm calling from Rockport, Texas.
	Yes, sir.
	My name's Lloyd Van Vant.
	No, no, no.
	Not your whole name.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	Lloyd will do.
	Okay.
	Well, anyway, do you remember that meteor shower?
	I beg your pardon?
	About that last meteor shower?
	Yes.
	The Leonid?
	Oh, are you hearing me right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	The Leonid, as he points out.
	What about it?
	Do you remember that?
	Okay, well anyways, um, okay, uh, that, that, and um, that, that same night I was watching that meteor shower?
	Yes.
	And, and, and both me and a policeman seeing the, a meteorite fall, it looked like into the ocean, right?
	Yes.
	Well, a little bit past Corpus Christi.
	Yes.
	That's what it looked like, right?
	Right.
	I come to find out the next day, uh, I have a friend that works at the Best Western.
	Yes.
	And then I went down with her to this ranch and there's this thing and something... I've got to rush to the point here.
	What was it?
	It was a meteorite.
	But anyways, I'm going to get to the point.
	By the time we went over there to see her, it's her mom's friend who owns the ranch anyways.
	And we got on a truck and drove back there and come to find out that there were some military vehicles that pulled up and, you know, they told us to get out of here.
	We can't take pictures or nothing.
	Oh.
	And I just want to know why.
	Why is the government trying to hide a meteorite?
	Alright, well, fine.
	That opens up a nice wide area of discussion for us.
	Alex, and that is what our government knows and doesn't know.
	Now, take that story as you will, but there are an awful lot of people these days who think, who believe that our government is lying to us about what it knows with regard to them.
	In quotes.
	UFOs and also free energy machines.
	All of that stuff, yes.
	In other words, a lot of people just believe our government lies its tail end off to us, and I've got to admit, it's possible.
	I don't have the answer.
	I do have one thought about that, though, and I have a chapter on UFOs and free energy inventors and the kind of fears you're talking about.
	Fears?
	Fears.
	Do you have any fears of persecution from the government or someone else?
	Oh, I don't know if that's what I said.
	I said that a lot of people believe the government's lying to us.
	Well, I'm sorry, I jumped the gun a little bit.
	I'm referring to the fact that some people will tell you that inventors of free energy devices or people who investigate UFOs are actually murdered.
	I'm sure you've heard that.
	I have heard that.
	And I don't have anything to say about that other than You can see where, when you look at the history of something like free energy research, or what's called perpetual motion machines, you see where that came from, because sometimes the government is a bully, and does throw its weight around, and the classic case of that involves Wilhelm Reich.
	And Tesla?
	Yeah, and Reich was treated in ways that I think almost anyone, whatever you thought of his ideas, he got some rough handling when he ran up against the FDA.
	He was thrown in jail and his books were basically banned.
	It's the kind of thing that a lot of people who are only interested in First Amendment issues and civil liberties were upset about that.
	There was a case where He had ideas that were forbidden, whether they were right or wrong.
	He was come down on pretty hard.
	If I run into a free energy inventor now, and I did, who said, I can't talk about this invention in public because I'll be killed.
	I don't really believe that, but I see why somebody might feel that way.
	Yeah, me too.
	But, you know, the inventors of these alleged machines also die like the rest of us.
	Yeah.
	And whenever somebody who makes a claim like that dies, I think that the people who believe these things automatically attach, you know, some sort of meaning, hidden meaning to their death.
	You know, I mean, you'll hear it.
	Massive heart attack.
	Yeah, right.
	Right.
	Well, do you remember Stanley Meyer?
	No.
	Oh, he was a free energy inventor in Ohio who I wrote about.
	And he wildly made those claims that the government was after him, that corporations were out to get him.
	And what came of him?
	He ended up dying, I think, of a heart attack or coronary.
	See?
	There you are.
	Right away on the grapevine.
	The word was that there was something suspicious about it.
	Yes.
	I don't think there was, but he was always convinced that someone was out to get him.
	Well, let's think about this for a second, Alex.
	Let's just say, for the sake of conversation, I'm just making an argument here to see how you respond to it, alright?
	Okay.
	Let's say that you were an inventor.
	And you did invent something that would allow every American home to disconnect the power lines, be completely independent of the power company and say, screw you, we've got our own power more than we need.
	In fact, would you like to buy some back?
	Some device like that.
	You invented that.
	Now, we've got Alex Hurd, who's got his box on one side, and on the other side we have every large oil consortium Worth gazillions of dollars, whose entire profit would be threatened.
	Now, can you in your mind imagine the possibility that somewhere along the line there, one of those companies wouldn't think two seconds about having you, you know, put between, down into the middle of whatever the next concrete stadium built is in some new city for a franchise expansion or something.
	I can imagine that, but let me suggest one other thing based on something I reported on one time.
	There was an inventor from Japan named Nakamatsu.
	Right about the time of the end of the Gulf War, he came to Maryland and he claimed that he had invented a motor that ran on water called the Enerex.
	Oh yeah!
	Bob and Zoe Hieronymus, who you may have heard of, they do a radio show.
	They're based near Baltimore.
	No, I haven't heard of them.
	I've heard of the machine that ran on water, though, the engine.
	Okay, but what was interesting about that, during his visit, just the opposite happened.
	This couple who hosted him told everybody about it, and the governor of Maryland, Hold your story right there.
	It's a cliffhanger.
	See, I like cliffhangers.
	Bottom of the hour, Alex Hurd is here.
	I'm Art Bell.
	even from congressional subcommittees on energy came out to meet this guy and that's what your story right
	there okay it's a cliffhanger so i like the players
	bottom of the hour alexa it is your mark bill will be right back
	the i've come to talk with you
	because it is in softly left it seems like
	That was planted in my brain Still remains within the sound of silence
	To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.
	of the Rockies including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. 1-800-618-8255. First
	time callers may reach out at area code 702-727-1222. And you may call out on the wild card line
	at area code 702-727-1295. To reach out from outside the U.S.
	first dial your access number to the USA then 800-893-0903. This is Coast to Coast AM
	from the Kingdom of Nye with Art Bell.
	Gee, here's another one.
	Check this out, regarding the photograph I just posted.
	Art, been there, done that, summer of 69, scariest dang thing I ever saw.
	Was different from your photograph.
	Linda Howe interviewed me about this.
	He's talking about the photograph of that road.
	That same road.
	That haunted road in Michigan.
	Now, please, Lord, save me from the pixel people.
	That's what I call them.
	I'm already getting these, uh... Art, I used my super-duper Adobe number 7 and I zoomed in on pixel number 768.
	It's got a curlicue in it, so it's fake.
	Save me from those people, please.
	Don't write me those messages, please.
	If you think it's a fake or a fraud, then fine.
	Keep it to yourself, but don't Please, pixel people, don't come at me.
	I scanned this myself.
	I've got the Kodak photograph, so I know.
	You don't like it?
	Fine.
	But don't pixel me to death.
	I hate those messages.
	Hello there again.
	We're back on the air.
	Alex.
	And we were at the crescendo point of a story.
	They had named a whole day after this man with this wonderful new free energy machine.
	And?
	Right.
	And they had a lot of officials come out.
	And the thing is, real quickly, they weren't there to kill him.
	They were there to Basically kiss his feet.
	Yes.
	And, you know, that day he declined to show what the device could do.
	And I think it was kind of a sham.
	You know, that's, I have asked, you know, I get a lot of free energy calls, you know, people telling me, yes, it exists.
	Yes, these people have been killed and all the rest of it.
	I keep asking for it.
	Look, just bring me an over-unity toy.
	Any little thing that hops around and puts the Energizer Bunny on his back with four in the air.
	Bring me something like that and I'll jump on the bandwagon.
	I've never even seen a toy.
	That's one of those areas.
	I don't know.
	That's pretty shadowy stuff.
	But, that being said, it is true, I think, that, you know, there's so much money behind what we have now, that would they hesitate to squish you like a bug if you really did have something?
	Probably not.
	I mean, you know, technologies tend to be replaced by better technologies.
	Yeah, but Alex, look, if you're talking about motivation for murder, I live out here not far from Death Valley, not far from Las Vegas.
	When you look at the desert out here, You know, on a nice calm day.
	There's a lot of lumps out there in the desert.
	And they're not all rocks.
	I mean, these people were placed there in years past by people in Las Vegas who crossed somebody the wrong way.
	You end up a lump in the desert.
	I mean, just for something like that.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, you've got to give it something.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hi.
	Yeah, this is Jay from San Francisco.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, how you doing, Mark?
	I bet you're just doing just fine.
	Thank you.
	I've got this question for Alex, a couple questions.
	I get the feeling, Alex, that you're around some cemeteries, are you?
	Right now, you mean?
	Yeah.
	No, not at the moment, unless I'm not aware of it.
	Now, what made you say that?
	I don't know, I just... Some sort of psychic insight?
	Well, I've called from the same area that he's called from, or from where he's at.
	Sounds to me like you run a 900 line.
	Psychic prediction.
	I heard the same siren earlier in the show.
	I wondered if he was like right around Culver or some city.
	I see.
	I'm in the South of Market region.
	Okay.
	Is that where you are?
	Yeah, pretty close.
	Right around there.
	Anyway, I don't know about cemeteries.
	I don't know the neighborhood that well.
	Oh yeah, you've only been here a month, huh?
	Yeah, I came here about August from Maui.
	My question to you, I was just wondering what you think about this, like most everybody's born with five senses that they develop, right?
	I think we got more than that, like maybe 10 or 20 senses.
	Senses that can be developed, like 6 or 7 would be something like that.
	Alright, well let's ask him about that.
	We refer to the sixth sense all the time.
	Is it reasonable to assume, Alex, that the human brain is capable of doing things that scientists have not yet documented, but nevertheless are true?
	Have you have you come that far?
	Seems reasonable to me.
	I mean, if you think about how much of the brain is actually used.
	But it's a pretty, you know, to to believe that that's happening requires pretty convincing evidence.
	And I'm not ruling it out by any means.
	Have you looked at profits and their accuracy and who's who's really accurate, who's not?
	No, I don't really tend to study that.
	The prophecy I've tended to really study a lot, because of my millennial interest, is trying to understand the complicated details of Christian prophecy and New Age prophecy.
	I'm probably going to be interviewing Gordon Michael Scalion again soon.
	I sent him a message and said, about time for another show, Gordon.
	Have you interviewed Gordon?
	Yes, I have.
	Have you?
	I saw at the Earth Festival, I mentioned the Kirkwood event.
	He was on live remote at that event, talking about what he thinks.
	Scullion is hard to dismiss.
	Really, really, really hard to dismiss.
	Now, the toughest thing about prophecy is dating.
	Prophets, even Cayce, even Nostradamus, all got a lot of dates wrong.
	The prophecies did seem to occur in many, many cases.
	Gordon Scallion, if you've really done an interview, he's a very sincere... If there's the real McCoy, that's Gordon Scallion, in my opinion.
	That's just my opinion.
	He seems very sincere.
	Again, we talked about the visionary experiences that people had.
	I've heard him describe that a couple of times.
	It seems totally authentic.
	He had an experience.
	Whatever it was, it was real to him and it may have been real.
	I don't try to pretend that I could walk in and disprove something that someone believes.
	As far as I'm concerned, anything is fine as long as people aren't exploiting people for uh... taking away their money or exploiting them for
	guilt and trying to manipulate them you know as long as you're not talking about
	crimes against other people i don't anything anybody wants to believe
	it's fine with me okay there are there are a group of people
	who don't feel that way they are not the skeptics but the debunkers
	Yeah.
	Now, I have this neat microphone that allows me to stand up, so I'm standing up right now and I'm going over and I'm looking at this beautiful, beautiful award I have on the wall.
	It was given to me by the Council for Media Integrity.
	It's entitled the Snuffed Candle Award, and it shows this little snuffed candle It says, presented to Art Bell, Coast to Coast AM, for encouraging credulity, presenting pseudoscience as genuine, contributing to the public's lack of understanding of the methods of scientific inquiry.
	November 13, 1998, Los Angeles, California.
	It's all in gold, signed by Steve Allen.
	You know, TV's Steve Allen?
	Oh, yeah.
	So, I received that award, and I thought, And it was from PSYCOP.
	You know who PSYCOP is?
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, I thought, God, what a badge of honor.
	And so I've treated it that way.
	Then I, you know, PSYCOP says, well, you'll never have anybody on who disagrees with you.
	So I invited somebody from PSYCOP.
	And I got Professor Nickel.
	You heard about him?
	Oh, sure.
	I've read his book, and I remember you had him on.
	Oh, you heard the show?
	No, I just heard you mention it.
	Oh, what a shame, what a shame, what a shame.
	Halfway through the show, he suddenly admitted, you know, I mean, here he was representing why I was given this award, and he had to admit he had never even once, not once, listened to the program.
	Kaboom.
	I mean, that sort of intellectually blew him up.
	He'd never heard the program.
	Nevertheless, there he was representing why I should receive this award for these terrible things.
	For doing science in.
	For still thinking the earth is flat or whatever.
	And he'd never heard the show.
	But these are the debunkers.
	These are the people at the other end of the extreme.
	Do you have any comments about them?
	Well, I just think they're a little too grumpy.
	Those guys also produce a lot of decent work because sometimes there are hoaxes and there are things that people are doing to try to defraud people.
	Those need to be pointed out.
	On your end of things, I think it's important to try to sift through some of these claims and be aware when that's going on, if at all possible.
	In a free market of ideas, where anything goes, that's fine, but there is room for rip-offs.
	I felt that when I was looking into free energy, that Stanley Meyer person I mentioned earlier... Well, caveat emptori.
	In other words, buyer beware.
	Right.
	And when it comes to claims of that sort, I don't know.
	You know, you listen to people.
	Now, if they're suddenly lining up investors... Well, that's what he was doing.
	Yeah, for something like a salted gold mine or something like that, you know, some scam like that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you bet.
	That becomes a very big problem.
	I mean, a lot of us, you know, some of these areas of science are almost like the information that's being talked about is It's almost inscrutable to most of us.
	You get into these areas of physics where you start talking about quantum mechanics.
	Most of us don't understand it.
	That's right.
	So some of these free energy people start throwing those terms around and they're basically throwing dust in people's eyes.
	And in a situation like that, skeptical types can actually do a lot of good because they can explain at least why they think that some of these claims are impossible.
	Okay, skeptical people, yes.
	Right.
	But then, as I said, there's another group, which are debunkers, which actively go after everything, whether there's substance for going after it or not.
	And they attack all of that stuff as totally improbable, ridiculous, and so forth, rip-offs and pseudoscience.
	A bunch of bunk.
	In other words, they cannot imagine for one second there could be a ghost or a poltergeist or anything else.
	Right, like James Randi is like that too.
	Somewhat less than amazing Randi.
	Right, and he gives out his own awards.
	I think they're called Pegasus.
	Does he?
	Yeah, you might get one of those one day.
	But I think they're pretty, you know, they're very intelligent, but they tend to be humorless.
	The last place on earth I would want to be is one of those skeptic debunker conferences.
	It doesn't seem like they have a lot of fun.
	No, they don't have fun.
	Oh, no, they don't have fun.
	All right.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hello.
	Yes, hi.
	I'm going to give you two names.
	And the way I have to give it is that it is not my legal name.
	No.
	So I'm saying it in such a way that the U.S.
	government, people that are monitoring your show... Don't give me two names, just give me one.
	Okay, uh... Robin.
	Robin, that's all.
	Okay.
	The U.S.
	government, people monitoring your show, will recognize who and what I am.
	Uh-oh.
	And I have returned And I know about my first four years southeast of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
	Now, the gentleman on your show with you is very analytical in his approach to the millennium.
	It's a little hard to be analytical when you have spent a lifetime with being told one thing and knowing another.
	For instance, since I've returned to the United States in the last five months, I have been called, and these are from people walking down the street, people where I go into a store, they have called me the Antichrist, they have called my son and I at different times computer-like and very intelligent.
	I'm 36 years old and I could pass for a teenager.
	My son and I will be walking down the street and people believe that we are brothers, not father and son.
	So what are you telling me?
	That you have stopped aging?
	Uh, that my age is at least, looks 20 years younger than my actual age.
	I can guarantee you that I was born 63 and that I am 36 years old.
	Well, so, do you believe?
	In other words, I'm trying to discern what you're trying to tell me here.
	Are you trying to tell me that you think you have stopped aging?
	If not stopped, at least very much regressed or stabilized.
	And are you doing this with any kind of substances, or is it done with mind control, or how does it work?
	There seems to be a lot of mind control, yes.
	From what I can understand in my research of my biological background, we are looking at three generations of hybrid, and the interesting part is that The first two generations were grey.
	Human and grey.
	The third one, being myself, from what I can understand, my biological mother, had some sort of relationship or contact with Palladian.
	And you now have a human grey.
	Alright, so you are a hybrid.
	A tri-bred.
	I'm sorry, a tri-bred.
	This is out of my league.
	I realize that.
	It's out of mine too.
	So what do you have to say for yourself, TriBread?
	Well, one, I would like to... Robin TriBread.
	Right.
	I would like to allow a prediction, and it's a very... He's talking about millennium.
	He's talking about millennium fever.
	We don't have a lot of time.
	So if you want to lay a prediction on us, go.
	Earthquake within three weeks.
	It's going to rock the west coast of the U.S.
	from San Diego to Vancouver, Canada.
	All right.
	Duly recorded.
	There you have it.
	A TriBread has just made a prediction.
	West Coast, all of the West Coast rattled by an earthquake all the way up to Vancouver.
	Alex, you heard it.
	I'm writing it down.
	Okay, good.
	Wildcard line, if it can get any wilder, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Turn your radio off.
	Okay.
	Number one.
	This is Richard in Tennessee, Spring Hill.
	Where are you?
	Spring Hill, Tennessee, where the Saturn's built.
	Oh, that's also where the tornadoes came.
	Oh yeah, oh yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	This is mid-January.
	Right.
	Aren't people in Tennessee asking themselves, what are high class, when I say high class, I mean category 4 or 5, tornadoes doing in western Tennessee?
	Yeah, well, a lot of people I talked to today were kind of concerned about it.
	Well, anything like this here.
	I talked to my mom about it today.
	She said about 40 years and it destroyed her house when she was a kid.
	And that was back in about the 14th or 15th of January, about 40 years ago.
	Is that right?
	Right.
	And man, I have never seen it, but it was pretty, pretty crazy.
	It was a lot of businesses down here in Columbia.
	That's Murray County.
	That was where one of the hardest was hit.
	And a lot of businesses were tore up and Texcos were blown over and stuff.
	And it was a pretty big mess.
	Well, you've given us a good launching point.
	Thank you.
	So Alex, here's something I do say.
	I don't know for sure whether it's a short-term cyclical change or a long-term profound change, but I'm a weather watcher and I have never in all my life seen weather like we've had over the last about 18 months.
	Do you think 99's weather has been as... I mean, the later in 98 and 99 has been as strange as the bulk of 98?
	It just seems like this winter has been a little more ordinary.
	No, I don't think so.
	I don't think so.
	Where it should be cold in Alaska, it's not.
	Where it is cold, but usually not that cold, in the upper Midwest, it has been unbelievable.
	The amount of snow has been, I think, record snowfalls in a lot of areas.
	Yeah, but see, I think that's typical.
	Typical?
	I mean, in ice storms, that's what you're supposed to have in the upper Midwest.
	Right.
	Go back to the ice storms in Montreal, in Canada, in the northeast part of the country that had hundreds of thousands of people out of power?
	Yeah.
	I just think that we are under... and tornadoes, I think, are pretty unusual in Tennessee in January, aren't they?
	They're unusual, but they were saying on the Weather Channel today that they're not unheard of.
	So it's not an absolutely freak occurrence.
	It does happen.
	They had some warm air, didn't they?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Hold on.
	We're at the top of the hour.
	You want to stick around?
	Sure.
	All right.
	Stay right there.
	The devil went down to Georgia.
	He was looking for a soul to steal.
	He was in a bind, but he was way behind.
	He was willing to make a deal.
	When he came across this young man sawing on a fiddle and playing it hot.
	And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump and said, boy, let me tell you what.
	I'm a fiddle player too.
	And if you'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
	Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his due.
	I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul just to think I'm better than you.
	But what's that my name's Johnny and it might be a sin, but I'll take your bet you're gonna regret tonight.
	To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S.,
	first dial your access number to the USA.
	Then, 800-893-0903.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
	Call Art at 1-800-618-8255.
	Or call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
	or call art on the wild card line at area code 702 727 1295.
	This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nye.
	Whenever you want a little bit of extra drama, there is nothing in the world like this.
	My guest is Alex Hurd from Wired Magazine.
	He's worked for, not only Wired, but the New York Times Magazine, and Outside Magazine.
	This gentleman's, uh, been around.
	Indeed.
	And he's got a book.
	It's called Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
	And you might want to read it.
	and we'll ask him in just a moment exactly where you can get it.
	Alright, back now to Alex Hurd who writes for Wired A lot of you, I think, probably subscribe to Wired Magazine.
	Alex, your book, Apocalypse, pretty soon, where can people find it?
	Well, you can get it at Amazon.
	It should be in bookstores I know it's in some bookstores.
	It'll be in most of them no later than February 8th, but you should be able to find it.
	So it's still a new book?
	Yeah, it's official publication date is February 8th, so it's not really out yet.
	I've seen it in a couple of places.
	Any idea, best guess, how it's going to do?
	How do you feel about it?
	I hope it does okay, but there's no way to tell.
	A lot of that depends on Word of mouth and the kind of reviews you get.
	I won't be getting a huge promotional push, probably.
	Well, maybe it'll come out and absolutely captivate the mind of everybody who reads it.
	I hope so.
	That's the spirit.
	So you can go up to Amazon.com and order it there.
	Yep.
	All right.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hi.
	Yes.
	Mr. Hurd, I'll just have another question here.
	Now, you know, for the Freemasons, you know, the Albert Pike, you know, Lucifer-worshiping Freemasons, they have a certain symbology.
	Oh, oh, oh.
	First of all, turn the radio off.
	Number two, I don't know what you mean by Lucifer-worshiping Freemasons.
	Well, Albert Pike.
	Well, I don't know of any single individual, but to paint all the masons or the hierarchy as Lucifer-worshipping is pretty nasty millennium stuff.
	Well, Albert Pike is part of their ideology.
	He's one of the guys who leads their writings.
	But I want to talk about the Freemasons are planning an observance of the planets that will be aligned.
	I defer on all masonry questions to my friend Jonathan Bankin.
	or or from apology for the photos two thousand and five actually
	well yes but it's coming up most coming up uh... well there you go
	uh... now it's what do you know about the freemasons
	i'd defer on all masonry questions to him
	my friend jonathan bank and are you familiar with them no you don't have a book called the seventy greatest conspiracies
	of all time Where does this one rank?
	Rank?
	It's up there.
	The Masons are blamed for a lot more things than they've had time to do.
	I've heard people calling you about that.
	I think they're a pretty harmless group.
	I always thought they went around Genway and did pretty good deeds.
	Yeah, and then they had... And somehow they got this rep for being some terrible secret society orchestrating everything behind our backs.
	Yeah, that goes way back.
	It's the same sort of stuff you hear about the Bavarian Illuminati.
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, I hear about the Illuminati.
	I get Illuminati calls all the time.
	I once opened an Illuminati line And they all came and admitted it and said, yes, their goal is to control the world.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	All right.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Alex Hurd from Wired Magazine.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	How you doing?
	OK.
	If I can make a couple comments.
	I just heard the gentleman saying something about the Masons.
	That's right.
	I'd totally forgotten about it.
	And I heard one of your shows.
	A couple weeks earlier.
	The thing about us being satanic or whatever, that's a lot of bull.
	You're a mason?
	Yes, I am.
	Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but part of my initiation I had to kiss the Bible.
	We're definitely not satanic.
	You had to kiss the Bible?
	Yes, I did.
	And what degree, Pridhell, are you?
	32nd.
	I'm trying to remember.
	I got involved in it.
	I took all the initiatives.
	Well, now you would know.
	Come on now.
	Then I got sick and I haven't been to a meeting in about three years, which I'm ashamed to
	admit.
	I don't know all the ins and the outs.
	From what I know at this point in time, it is not a satanic organization at all.
	Well, look, I appreciate the call, but I don't know about you, Alex.
	The minute he says, I don't know if I'm 32nd or 33rd, I've got to say.
	Yeah, I remembered my Boy Scout rank.
	Even after I quit.
	Really?
	How about all your merit badges?
	I didn't have many.
	I was only a star scout.
	You made it even farther than I did.
	I was in the Cub Scouts and I got kicked out.
	Actually kicked out.
	Do you know why I got kicked out of the Cub Scouts?
	Because I came late to a den meeting and the den mother refused to give me a cupcake.
	That's pretty strict.
	I thought it was horrendous.
	I mean, I thought it was horrendous.
	Here's all these chocolate cupcakes, and the remnants of which are all there, and there's my cupcake sitting there, and she wouldn't give it to me because I got there late.
	And then what did you do?
	I quit.
	Oh, I would have gone postal.
	You come, and you're in uniform, you get your cupcake.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hi.
	Hi, how are you doing this evening?
	Alright, I've got a question for you.
	I'm in Colorado Springs, and I am in one of the military organizations that are here.
	Yes?
	Do you care to name which one?
	Of course not.
	Last week, early in the morning, there was an object that appeared over NORAD.
	I didn't know if you'd heard anything about this or not.
	Over NORAD?
	Over top of NORAD.
	No, I haven't heard about that yet.
	Tell me.
	Okay.
	An object appeared over NORAD.
	Later in the morning news, all that was was they had an object appear over NORAD.
	They said it was probably just a low-flying plane.
	There was nothing, you know, a typical news media story.
	Well, I have to know for a fact that from the Air Force base that is located here, there were several, several airplanes dispatched to Well, I'm sure anything that would be in NORAD's airspace would be noticed real quick.
	You would think so.
	There's more things that slip by than what you would think.
	Do you know more about this incident than you're able to tell us?
	Yes, pretty much.
	I can give you some vaguelies without being totally specific.
	What they saw, or what they thought they saw, they saw for a mere 8.7 seconds.
	And it was totally gone.
	Do you have a description of what they saw?
	I don't have the description.
	I was not on that end where I could actually tell exactly what it was.
	I can tell you exactly how big it was.
	How big?
	It was about 35 yards in diameter.
	About that size.
	And it was about 1 1⁄2 stories tall.
	Okay, that diameter indicates it was round, right?
	Yes.
	And 1 1⁄2 stories tall?
	1 1⁄2 stories tall.
	And this thing appeared over NORAD for 8 seconds?
	It was over NORAD.
	It was intercepted by the aircraft.
	It stayed another 8.7 seconds visually by radar, visually by people in the air that were there.
	Did they get gun camera footage?
	I don't know.
	That's definitely not my end.
	Holy smokes!
	Yes, holy smokes.
	And you swear on the UCMJ what you're telling us is true?
	Yes.
	There you go, Alex.
	There you go.
	Did you see this or just hear about it?
	Well, I got a chance at first when I first heard about it, when we discovered it.
	There were several of us that took off outside.
	And, you know, maybe a half a second somebody said, yeah, there it is.
	And then, you know, back to work, the buzzer.
	So we went back in and we went back to work.
	Did anybody get a picture?
	Excuse me?
	Did anybody take a picture of it?
	No, there's no personal photographic.
	Well, no, I mean like an official.
	You're talking to a man who apparently is in the Air Force.
	Okay.
	Well, yeah.
	The news media had a picture of something.
	Oh?
	And it was played on the local news.
	Oh?
	And what it was played on the local news is absolutely not what the object was.
	Okie dokie.
	Well, there you go, Alex.
	What do you do with that one?
	Not enough info for me to draw any conclusions.
	Certainly interesting.
	It certainly is.
	You know, I mean, those stories are all, there are a lot of stories like that and they're usually beyond the reach of anyone to understand them.
	That's how that'll end up, I imagine.
	Well, Norad, and there's somebody who claims, I guess, he was trying to tell us without telling us that he works with Norad.
	That seemed to be what he was saying.
	That's what I was getting out of it, anyway.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Alex Hurd.
	Hi.
	Yeah, hi.
	This is John in Houston.
	Hello, John.
	Hello.
	First of all, I'd like to let you know that the show's already up.
	You're over here, and I need to hear the answer while I'm still on the phone.
	I'll do what I can.
	Okay.
	First of all, I'd like to make a quick comment.
	I think you have an interesting point.
	There's a group of people in America that I think would be laughing their heads off because they're not going to care about anything that happens with the Y2K, the Amish.
	Oh, absolutely.
	That's true.
	No telephone, no electricity, no car, no nothing, you know?
	If you lived that way and the world collapsed electronically, you wouldn't notice.
	That is, of course, until there's a series of little towns.
	Ohio and stuff.
	Well, there's Intercourse Pennsylvania, I think.
	Yeah, Lancaster County.
	That's right.
	And they wouldn't notice until everybody began to come and take from them what they have.
	Then they'd notice.
	Exactly.
	Okay, the question for your guest is that I'm a telemarketer, which means I call all across the country every day for a living.
	And I've been getting these for a year now, actually.
	It's nothing new.
	I try to call certain area codes, and I keep getting a recording that says all circuits are busy.
	Yes!
	This should be a Wired Magazine kind of thing.
	I've been complaining, Alex.
	I'm sure you've heard me lately.
	I have.
	Exactly the same thing.
	I make long distance calls all the time, like I did to you earlier, whenever it was I talked to you, Alex.
	I get circuit, I'm sorry, all circuits are busy over now, over half the time.
	Or a fast busy signal.
	Or a fast busy, same deal.
	What the hell's going on with the phones?
	What's something's going on with the phones?
	I don't have an answer.
	I haven't experienced that, but I have heard you say that you've been.
	So, it's worth looking into, but I definitely do not have an answer about that.
	Particularly the Midwest right now, that I'm calling 612 area code.
	uh... exactly but uh... also i hope this don't become a trend but it might be
	limited just to one little area but now i'm getting a recording thing
	due to system failure your call can i go through
	why never had one of those so i hope that that's just limited to one little area
	That is a good idea.
	that's that's about it soon somebody will come on and say sorry i want to pay
	uh... i think you well but he is right about that alex and that seems to me like
	it would be a good area of investigation for wired
	magazine that is a good idea
	i'll try to look into it and i'm not sure if it's going to be very easy to
	and in the first thing to figure out is that that really is happening more
	Oh, it's happening.
	Look, I made calls.
	I called Nevada Bell, and they blamed AT&T.
	They're my service carrier.
	So I called AT&T, and they blamed Nevada Bell.
	That sounds about right.
	Well, it is right.
	That's exactly what happened.
	I don't know whose fault it is, and I don't care, but something has changed.
	It may be the Internet.
	The fact that so many people are tying up lines for such a long time on the Internet.
	Yeah.
	And there's speculation that kind of goes alongside with the Mason thing, that the phone companies are angry about not getting per-minute charges, which is the latest rumor on the Internet, for local calls, and they're going to let this get worse and worse until they get their way.
	Well, I'll ask our technical expert about this one.
	Okay.
	Well, that's a good mission for you.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Wired Magazine's Alex Hurd.
	Hello.
	Good morning, Art.
	This is Gina in Pasadena listening to KBC Talk Radio, where L.A.
	comes to talk.
	It sure does.
	That's a way to do a promo, too.
	One question.
	My boyfriend wants to know real quick, did you get the beaded necklace that he sent?
	Answer, yes.
	Thank him so very, very much.
	Okay, thank you. Glad you enjoyed that. Thank you. One thing I wanted to let you know first of all that don't feel
	bad about stepping on your commercials.
	Do you know your network steps on you? Whenever you play the opening to the 2001 theme, they hear that dead air and
	they kick in the intro music off the network.
	Well, you know why?
	Because it's a very low frequency.
	Yeah, it's very low and very long.
	I'll talk to them.
	And it sounds like dead air.
	I'll talk to them about that.
	So they step on you.
	That's just... It's drama, for God's sake!
	Yeah, up there at the network, would you mind...
	Paying attention?
	There's actually something there.
	It's very dramatic.
	It's a very low humming sound.
	Yeah, they've done it twice that I've heard so far.
	Really?
	But anyway... Alright, here.
	Hold on, ma'am.
	Hold on.
	Let me please put this on just so he can know.
	This is what you are not supposed to step on.
	Now, Alex, can you hear that?
	I cannot hear it.
	I can hear it.
	Oh, I see.
	Maybe my board op... Very low drone.
	Maybe my board op has the same problem.
	You know, humans have not all identical hearing ranges.
	I always... Well, me too, but maybe my board op simply doesn't hear in that range.
	That would do it.
	Of course, I've seen that movie so many times that, you know... That's a great observation.
	Thank you.
	Anyway, it's a question in a...
	Out here on Mr. KBC Show one morning, he had a computer geek on who was saying that the majority of the Y2K panic is way overblown.
	And he was speculating that the majority of it is more along the lines of, you know, not so much a scam as it is just money making.
	Well, a lot of people try to cash in on it, and if you look in, I don't know if you've seen this, last week's Time Magazine, their cover story was Y2K, and it talked about the same thing.
	All these people who have, you know, there's just scabs of books all of a sudden have come out, the people who do, I don't know about the company that you advertise, but a lot of these companies with storable food, No, they're all taking advantage of it.
	Even the Babe Jim with the light, all of that is getting ready kind of stuff.
	Yeah, this geek was saying that a lot of this, from what he could tell, was completely overblown.
	And it might be.
	The majority of the systems are going to work just fine.
	You know, you're going to get a little hitch, and you're going to get along somewhere along the line.
	Hold it.
	Hold it.
	60 Minutes is a pretty big investigative organization, right?
	Hello?
	Right.
	No, not you, Alex.
	I'm talking to the caller.
	60 Minutes is pretty big, right?
	I have one more comment, too, from a news story out here.
	Well, for heaven's sake, answer my question.
	Yes, it is.
	Alright, did you see the piece they did on it?
	No.
	No?
	They said, then let me fill you in a little bit, alright?
	Mike Wallace, or whoever it was, went to a bank, and he said, look, is it possible that in 2000, because of the bug, and the bank manager said, look, what can happen is, you might put a deposit in your bank, and it will register as zero, And you'll write a check against it, and that check will bounce higher than a kite.
	He said, yeah, that's possible.
	Well, you know what?
	What?
	There was a news story out here locally, on one of the, not one of the main networks, one of the, you know, Channel 9 or whatever it is.
	And they were talking to, oh, it was network, I think it was Channel 2.
	They were doing a thing on banks, and they said that all of the banks they interviewed, They said they're all Y2K compliant so far, and one of the big ones they talked about was Sanwa.
	And they said that they, um, you know, the guy says, um, ATMs?
	Yes.
	Deposits?
	Yes.
	Everything, you know, and they said the majority of these banks are claiming now to be compliant.
	Oh.
	It's gonna be interesting.
	Oh, I don't think so.
	Hold on, I'll hold you through the break.
	Actually, have I even heard of one bank, large bank, saying it's compliant?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think I've heard of one.
	All of them send letters saying we are aware of the problem, we hope to have it fixed by mid-year or something like that, or we're working on it.
	But I have never seen a blanket statement of compliance yet.
	I'm pretty sure that's true.
	I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
	Take me along where you want me, take me along where you don't want me.
	When you're up on the stage, it's so unbelievable, unforgettable.
	I'll tell you all, then your wife seems to take you loose and resign at you.
	Oh, solemnity with an open heart.
	From the Kingdom of Nile, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	From east of the Rockies, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.
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	First time callers may reach out at area code 702-727-1222.
	And you may fax out at area code 702-727-8499.
	Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Now again, here's Art.
	Once again, yes, I do seem to be here.
	Well, it's nice to know that they listen to us at Amazon.com.
	Check this out.
	Greetings from Amazon.com.
	I enjoy listening to your show while I work the night shift here at Amazon.com.
	I'm providing you with instructions for any listeners who email you for more information on how to find the book Apocalypse Pretty Soon Travels in End Time America by Alex Hurt.
	To find this item I used the keyword search tool found at the top of our homepage.
	This tool allows you to locate an item in our catalog with just a few keywords from the item's author, title, or subject.
	Using the information you provided in your message, I entered Alex Hurd into the search field and pressed the Go button.
	Here's what I found.
	Apocalypse Pretty Soon Travels in End Time America by Alex Hurd.
	List price $24.95.
	Hour price $17.47.
	You saved $7.48 or 30%.
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	$57.48 or 30%.
	Availability, this title usually ships within two to three days, it says.
	Hardcover, 254 pages, January of 99.
	W.W.
	Norton & Company, ISBN number and so forth and so on.
	And so there you are.
	So we got an advertisement for the book and Amazon.com and the whole thing.
	Well, it's good to know that you guys over there are listening.
	They're a busy, busy place, Amazon.com.
	All right.
	in a moment alex hurtle be right back all right back now to my guest uh...
	from wired magazine who is still awake i hope uh...
	I'm fine.
	You're still OK, huh?
	Uh-huh.
	I bet this is one weird night that you could write about, huh?
	It's been a lot of fun.
	All right, well, back to our caller.
	And you were talking about Y2K caller, right?
	Yeah.
	By the way, I'm going to correct myself.
	It was Channel 9.
	Okay.
	Out here.
	So somebody probably else had hopefully heard it.
	But they were, yeah, they talked about, they said that many of the banks, the way they made it sound, it sounded like every bank they contacted.
	Now, they didn't say how many they contacted, mind you.
	Here's what I heard.
	The only one they contacted was compliant.
	Yeah, right.
	Let me recommend something to you.
	I have been, I was at Bank of America.
	They said they're compliant.
	Who did?
	Bank of America.
	Bank of America.
	Did you ask for that on paper?
	No, I didn't.
	Do me a favor.
	Call her.
	Call her.
	Take a breath.
	Do me a favor, alright?
	Go to your Bank of America.
	That's your bank?
	That's my boyfriend's bank.
	That's your boyfriend's bank.
	Ask your boyfriend to ask for a piece of paper stating they are 100% Y2K compliant.
	Let me know how it comes out.
	Okay.
	Okay?
	And I know, well, the credit unions I go to, they've got big signs up, you know, Y2K.
	And it was amusing because they've had the computer system up and down for like the last four months.
	Amusing.
	You know, they said the reason they've had it up and down was because they were getting everything, you know, squared away.
	And so now they've got big signs up in the credit unions saying, you know, we are ready!
	You know, with the big Y2K.
	Alright, well, it's a very upbeat color on Y2K, and I suppose In this country, here's what's bugged me about Y2K.
	In this country, I think we are making pretty good strides toward getting ready, but computers worldwide are all hooked up together.
	And in a lot of other countries, they're not even bothering to try.
	Russia, for example, says they're going to wait and see what happens, which worries me a little.
	So, I haven't made up my mind altogether about I haven't, but I'm learning a lot about it, but I just don't know enough to start throwing opinions around.
	People might expect that since I work here, but I'm not really well-versed enough yet.
	I don't think anybody is.
	I think anyone who knows anything about it admits there's an element of the unknown.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I just don't know.
	I just don't know.
	We're going to find out.
	We're going to find out is right, because the clock is sure ticking.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, how are you doing tonight?
	I'm all right, sir.
	I'm calling from Wichita.
	It's funny, I tried to call you the other night when you had mentioned about the problems with your phone.
	I happen to own a small telecommunications consulting firm out here in Kansas.
	Yes.
	The problem that you're talking about with the busy signals and the fast busies and the all-circuit busies is actually a combination of a bunch of different things.
	Primarily, though, the problem is a long-distance problem and not a local problem.
	And you touched on a couple of the things.
	It is, in part, the Internet.
	It is, in part, Additional callers, more people accessing it through new phone lines.
	All right, let me tell you what AT&T told me when I called them, all right?
	They said, at the end of the all-circuits are busy, do you get something that sounds like 702-3K or something like that?
	And I've heard that before.
	That comes from your long-distance carrier.
	And I said, no, I don't hear anything like that.
	And she said, well, then it's Nevada Bell.
	Well, see, the thing is, when your call is processed, it goes to a switching station.
	And different phone companies have different switches.
	And the problem is, it's much like a computer network system in that there are bottlenecks.
	And different phone companies use different types of switches.
	And depending on where you are in the country, they might have one switch in one part of the country and a different switch in a different part of the country.
	It's not all the same thing.
	And what complicates that fact even more is that nowadays there's over 2,000 different long-distance phone companies And with the legislation that passed back in 96 allowing equal access, companies like AT&T and Nevada Bell and MTI and all the other companies have to allow access and sell time to a lot of these Mickey Mouse companies.
	So they not only have their own traffic to worry about now, but they also have these prepaid calling card companies and Bob's Phone Company and so on and so forth.
	And so at certain times it really peaks out their switches.
	Not to mention now that they're also getting the local service It's probably, until we develop some new technology, going to be a continuing problem in certain parts of the country.
	Well, all I know is when I was a kid, it never happened.
	Yeah, and that's actually part of the question I was going to talk to Alex about, and it's been a real pleasure listening to him, because he's much of the same mind as me, in that I've been listening to your show for a little while now, and I take a lot of the things I hear in here with a grain of salt, in that... Oh, you should!
	I tell everybody that.
	And it's very interesting stuff, and it's nice to hear that.
	My question, Alex, is, you know, I deal with this stuff at the Y2K stuff every day for my customers, and I'm, just like you said a few minutes ago, I'm kind of up in the air about it, too, and still learning, but my biggest concern is more so the panic that's going to be caused by the people than the actual technology failures, and I was trying to find out if you've looked into that at all, and what your feeling is on that.
	Oh, good, good, good, good, good question, Alex.
	CNN ran A little stat the other day, you know, one of their little factoids, that said that 47% of the American people are concerned enough that they will draw extra cash out of the bank for Y2K.
	47%.
	Now, if 47% really did do that, I'm not sure the banks would have enough cash.
	Yeah.
	Well, they say they're preparing for that.
	But back to the question, Y2K, as far as Sitting aside the technical aspects of it, it is definitely a very hot area for people with millennial beliefs, as I'm sure you know.
	It is going to cause a lot of panic.
	I have no idea how much, but I have noticed, as I look at the groups of people I know the most about, almost all of them have taken Y2K and sort of worked it into their beliefs.
	Christian pre-millennials will take it and say, yeah, yeah, this is what we were talking about.
	I just saw an online paper someone wrote today explaining how Y2K was predicted in the Bible, and Earth Changes people talk about it.
	Really?
	Really?
	Sure.
	To them, it's just another sign that we're heading for a period of chaos.
	And then, of course, people on the far right, who we haven't really talked about much, They're all over it because they had run out of things to do with their survival gear.
	Now they've got a mission again.
	Now they've got something.
	Yeah.
	So there's a lot of superstition around it, you know, and he's right about that.
	But even if you take all the technical aspects of Y2K and throw them away and say they're total garbage, There's the social aspect.
	In other words, what people will do, which could be a self-fulfilling kind of prophecy.
	Right.
	Will people's expectations about it create the worst?
	That's always possible.
	I tend to think we're going to muddle through without major dramas and upheavals.
	I don't really back that up.
	That's just the way I feel about it right now.
	Too bad Orson Welles is not still alive.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Alex Hurd and Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Great to talk to you, Art.
	I really enjoy your show.
	You're doing great work.
	Thank you.
	My friend hooked up a device onto his car, and there's no exhaust coming out.
	The tailpipe is cold to the touch and it increases his gas mileage like 30%.
	Oh, here we go.
	Here we go.
	This is serious urban myth stuff we're getting now.
	No, it's not.
	It's not a myth.
	Nothing coming out of the tailpipe, not even a wisp?
	Well, yes, there's a water vapor, a little bit of water vapor.
	A little bit of water and cold to the touch.
	Cold to the touch.
	And he says it uses implosion.
	It's a relatively simple device.
	Implosion?
	Implosion, whatever that is.
	I don't know what that is, but I've heard it mentioned.
	Well, implosion was used in the A-bomb.
	That's right.
	Very good, Alex.
	That's right, it was.
	In fact, that was the breakthrough that allowed the A-bomb to happen.
	And what it does, it works best in four-cylinder cars.
	What kind of car does your friend have?
	He's got like a late 80's sports car, a Japanese Nissan 200 something or other.
	One day probably it will implode.
	It shuts off one cylinder, it works best on four cylinder cars and I guess it uses that
	for suction or something.
	It's just amazing.
	Well, so then why isn't your friend richer than Bill Gates?
	Well, he met an inventor at a Tesla conference in Colorado, and the guy is trying to sell these things.
	Of course.
	Why doesn't your friend just bring one of these to NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, me, anybody.
	Yes, I was suggesting maybe he could send you one or something.
	Just drive over, you know?
	I think it cost him like $150 and it's a relatively simple device.
	Tell him to send one to the Bureau of Standards.
	Well, it's not called that anymore, but it's the same.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, I don't believe it.
	I don't either.
	I appreciate the call, but if it drives up my driveway, I'll go look.
	It's just that... I mean, there you are.
	Isn't that funny?
	The exact things that you and I have been talking about, that's what we've been getting on the phones.
	The exact things.
	It's like it's made to order or something.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Alex Herd and Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Yeah, Art, my name is Dave, calling you from Central Illinois.
	The first time I've listened to you for a couple of years, this is the first time I've ever been able to get through to you.
	Glad you did, Dave.
	I'm a retired employee from the telecommunications industry, 25 years with Ameritech.
	Yes, sir.
	I can probably shed some light on the long-distance issue.
	Please go right ahead.
	I think it's more of a matter My guess is it's more of a matter of competition and growth.
	The telecommunications industry is a growing industry, and it's probably growing faster right now than it normally grows.
	When systems like this grow, they have to continually add additional circuits annually, probably.
	And I'd say the competitiveness If they add additional circuits, it cuts the bottom line.
	In other words, there has to be a balance between how many extra circuits you have out there ready for somebody to use and how much profit you put on the bottom line.
	Because those circuits don't get used all the time.
	You see what I mean?
	Not fully.
	Well, the telecommunications industry is terribly complicated.
	Call our couple callers back alluded to.
	Well, I hear there's going to be a vote in the House in the next couple weeks about something about local line charges per minute when you're on the Internet.
	I'd say the Internet has a lot to do with it because I got a feeling, see, the typical talking long-distance call probably only lasts maybe two to three minutes.
	Seven and a half.
	That's what it is, seven and a half.
	Whereas the average Internet call is about an hour and a half.
	Yes.
	The long distance circuits are designed to be used for that short duration, then freed up and used by the next caller.
	Whoa, whoa, whoa.
	Hold on.
	That's where that theory breaks down, because you're only calling your local phone company, and then you're accessing some guy who's got Once a long distance call is established, there is a four wire circuit between point A and point B for the duration of that call.
	Once a long distance call is established, there is a four wire circuit seized between
	point A and point B for the duration of that call.
	All long distance calls are four wire circuits.
	In other words, a talking path in one direction on a pair of wires.
	No, I understand that.
	That's for a long-distance connection.
	That's not what we're talking about here.
	We're talking about people who have massive bandwidth available.
	Yeah, but that massive bandwidth is simply a whole bunch of those long-distance connections.
	And let's talk about the call from Las Vegas to Chicago, let's say.
	Okay.
	So at 9 o'clock in the morning, you try to make a call from Las Vegas to Chicago.
	Right, and I get all circuits busy.
	AT&T has like five ways to get you from Las Vegas to Chicago.
	I bet it does.
	They picked their first choice, and it's busy.
	So your call automatically, within the three or four seconds that that call is dialing, it picks them.
	Okay, listen.
	What's happening here is my show is ending.
	We're never going to have time to get all of this in.
	Okay.
	But I'd say it's a lot to do with growth and profitability and inability or decision not to put additional circuits in place before they have to.
	Alright.
	I appreciate the call, and we're going to have to go into this much more, but the show's coming to an end, Alex.
	This is definitely something for Wired.
	I think so.
	You know, somewhere there's a big story here, and I don't know where it is, because they all blame each other.
	I'm telling you, it's the truth.
	So I hope Wired will go.
	It's just the perfect thing for Wired Magazine.
	And it's been a blast having you on the air.
	Thanks a lot for having me.
	I really enjoyed it.
	Well, we'll have you back.
	How's that?
	I'd love it.
	All right, then.
	Thank you, my friend.
	And good night.
	Good night.
	And I hope you sell a lot of your book.
	I hope you sell bunches and bunches of your book.
	Which is Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
	Which is an interesting title for a book.
	You've got to admit.
	Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
	Maybe you could have named it Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
	Maybe.
	Well, listen.
	I'm sorry.
	We're out of time.
	It has been a blast.
	We'll be back tomorrow night with a prophet.
	That's right.
	And what will we talk about?
	Earth changes?
	That sort of thing?
	I think you're going to find it instructive indeed.
	Paul McGuire is going to be my guest.
	That'll be tomorrow night.
	So we sort of move back and forth through all kinds of realms on this program.
	You just really never, ever know what's going to happen.
	For now, folks, that's all there is.
	Thank you for being here.

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