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Aug. 3, 1999 - Art Bell
01:50:48
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Joe Firmage - UFO Research
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🎵 From the high desert and the great American Southwest,
I bid you all good evening or good morning, wherever you may be across this great land of ours.
Great it is indeed.
Still great with all its difficulties.
From the Hawaiian and Tahitian island chains in the west, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands, and now shortly Puerto Rico.
Coming soon, folks.
South into South America.
North all the way to the poles.
And worldwide on the internet, thanks to Broadcast.com for distribution.
Joe Firmage, I believe, is a millionaire times hundreds.
He has a remarkable amount of money.
Joe, welcome to the program.
Hello, Art.
How are you today?
I'm just fine, and very, very excited to discuss a whole bunch of stuff with you.
But first, since it's been so long since you were on the program, I've got to ask you the stock question that I'm sure you're sick of answering by now, and that is, a man in your position, running this incredible multi-billion dollar corporation, moves aside, voluntarily steps aside, in order to pursue what, Joe, and why did you do it?
Well, first of all, I thank you, Art, for the very, very kind introduction.
But these commercial bios make you sound all so distant.
I'm just an ordinary guy who happened to have a rather fortunate opportunity to participate in the emergence of a new sector in our economy, the Internet sector.
And that's been just a remarkable and remarkably fun time over the past five years of my life.
But in 1997, I had the opportunity to revisit really the passion of my youth, which was science, and perhaps more to the point, the core or a core discipline of science physics.
And you know, I've studied in the late 80s, both in college, the classic physics concepts,
also outside of college, the popular books on, you know, things like quantum mechanics
and rather exotic ideas from the leading edge of science.
And one of the subjects that they discussed were anomalies that defied seemingly the known
laws of physics, such as UFOs.
I, ten years ago, like most people then and now, dismissed the whole domain as,
it just simply must have been misinterpreted natural phenomena.
The reason one tends to do that is very understandable.
It's because you've been educated to believe that the kind of breakthrough that would make a UFO's behavior possible is impossible.
There's no physics that could underlie that type of observation.
Well, what really struck me in 1997 was that late in the year I had the opportunity to use the internet to network into new relationships with new scientists and new thinkers who clearly were making breakthroughs that basically, to put it bluntly, blasted apart that more constraining world view and opened Much more remarkable ideas into the realm of the plausible.
The implications of this for all of us, however long it takes ultimately to understand it, the implications for all of us are just stunning.
And the type of implications that can really help us gain better perspective as we attempt to tackle significant world challenges and the things that tend to trouble us from day to day.
With the investigation that you've done so far, and I know that you also funded a very great deal of research work, like Bob Bigelow.
You've funded a lot of research out there.
Have you determined, Joe, after leaving this position and beginning to investigate all of this, that in fact, this physics is real and it's only a matter of nailing it down?
In other words, are you firmly convinced?
I'm firmly convinced.
That 20th century physics is significantly incomplete and that in the 21st century, perhaps early in the 21st century, perhaps very soon, I don't know precisely, but I do believe that in many of our lifetimes we will see fundamental breakthroughs in physics which will, as I said in a presentation a few days ago, widen the cone of reality.
widen the cone of permitted reality as far as sort of scientific thinking is concerned and
What will be included in the in the in the the the realm of the plausible?
That has up to this point in this century been implausible will include things like
remarkable objects in the sky that Perhaps one day in the future we might ourselves create
Um, oh, yeah, I mean I'm convinced that there's something very real to this and it's so important
that I'm willing to Invest a significant portion of my life in this effort and
I you know It's a very complex, difficult-to-execute challenge.
Let me try a real bone breaker, and you can tell me to get stuffed if you don't want to answer.
You can ask anything you want.
of the specific projects that we have underway to give people a much better first-hand feel
for what exactly it is that we are trying to accomplish.
Let me try a real bonebreaker and you can tell me to get stuffed if you don't want to
answer.
You can ask anything you want.
We all, millions of us, Joe, myself included, believe me, I've seen things in our skies
that are inexplicable completely from the physics that we understand now.
Do you believe that these things are extraterrestrial?
Do you believe that our government is doing it?
Do you think there has been a deal made?
What have you come to believe about what is going on out there?
I'm happy to answer that question as completely as I can.
But I would like to preface my answer with an observation, and that is that I think the reality of the phenomenon is far more, far more important to all of us, ultimately, to understand than whatever has or hasn't happened as far as human institutions are concerned involving it.
And I've said that a couple of times, but I just want to say that as a preface.
Because I want to make sure that people put things in perspective.
Well, I'm not sure I understood what you just said.
Let me say it differently.
What I mean to say is the reality of UFOs is far, far more important than whatever the government does or does not know about them.
I agree.
In terms of trying to frame what are the really crucial issues for us all to think about ultimately, They go to issues deeper than exactly what we have or may not have in our own possession.
But let me answer your question.
I believe that the best place to start answering your question is to say that I think UFO, as an acronym, standing for the phrase Unidentified Flying Object.
Would probably be better phrased or better interpreted as unidentifiable flying objects, ultimately.
Because if the future we face involves the ability for lifeforms to come and go from the surface of worlds, practically, then one could imagine a time when the interaction with lifeforms out in the cosmos is so fluid that all kinds of strange things are flying by all the time.
Or at least from time to time, that will perpetually break the boundaries that we've been exposed to in the past.
So, that's the kind of awesome sweep of possibility that we've got to be thinking about when we think about UFOs.
I think that breakthroughs in physics allow us to understand more deeply than ever what exactly we are, and perhaps might give us far better understanding of what They are, as well.
Physics is a remarkably successful domain of science in predicting so many phenomena.
But one of its deficiencies in this century is failing to teach people one of its most remarkable accomplishments in this century.
Namely, it's discovered that we're all beings of energy.
You are, I am, the Earth is, the oceans are, a table is, a rock is.
Beings of various sophistications and different patterns of energy.
I think that the beings that are, no doubt, involved in the UFO phenomenon, in my view, are very likely beings that could be described from other worlds.
I think that the question of exactly what form they take, and how they might propel themselves from world to world, precisely, are questions with less clear answers.
But I do think that the extraterrestrial hypothesis represents the simplest explanation of the available data.
Do you think there is... You mentioned that we are all energy.
I agree with you on that, including the Earth and the environment and all the rest of it.
Do you think there is a commonality between our energy, the Earth's energy, the energy of others, sort of a...
I don't know, a mass consciousness, if you will, for lack of a better phrase.
I think that's precisely on the right track, and I would go one step further, and I would say it's not a connection.
It is unity.
It is the same energy.
It's not even like the same energy.
It's the same energy formed into different patterns.
So, as we think about what we are, how we evolved here on Earth, how we live our lives, I think we'll come to understand, perhaps in the next century, more deeply than we've ever known in the history of Earth, our true nature and the true sweep of our possible future.
Well, Einstein, of course, discovered the theory of relativity.
What he did not discover and was working on was the theory of everything.
And when I have people like Dr. Michio Kaku, who is one of our nation's greatest theoretical physicists, he says that we are well on the trail now of the theory of everything.
And somehow I imagine that discovery or revelation tying into what you're talking about right now.
Oh, I think without question that's right.
I think that That what's vitally important for scientists to remember, and for the public to remember as they study science, is that, number one, their fundamental process is to measure.
You are not science, as I say.
You're measured by science.
So whatever the fundamental theory of everything is, isn't a theory.
It's a being, remember.
being already exists in a unified system of existence.
We are simply teasing the secrets one by one of precisely how this being functions.
So physicists need to remember where reductionism points.
It points to one.
Precisely.
Now, I have seen something directly over my head with my wife that I've talked about too much on the air.
But I talked about it because it was an impossibility, a triangle that came over me about 150 feet above me, Joe.
It wasn't flying.
It was defying gravity.
I saw that, Joe.
It changed my life.
How big would you say it was laterally?
I would say from one point of the triangle to the other, at least 150 feet or more.
When it came over, Joe, classic.
The stars went away.
The almost full moon went away.
It drifted directly above our heads.
I felt like I could have thrown a rock at the damn thing.
And it just drifted out across the valley.
And my wife and I went home and had Some spiritual moments together after that.
But I mean, once you've seen something like that, it changes you forever.
And I've heard, and we really didn't discuss it on the air, and I don't know if you want to, but I think you've also had an experience that changed you, didn't you?
I sure did, but it's, you know, it's kind of been somewhat inaccurately reported.
I'll be happy to talk about it this evening.
You know, my father also had a sighting when he was younger.
His was a far more classical UFO sighting.
We had a family department store in Provo, Utah.
One day he walks out of the store and looks up in the sky.
It's huge.
It seems like the bottom of a sphere or a round shape, in any event, hovering in the sky.
He said, minutes after minutes, and then he looked away and looked up again and it was gone.
A lot of people in Utah saw it that day.
But, you know, I've had many of my best friends, as a matter of fact, personally have talked to me of these types of events.
Obviously, I'm certainly waiting for my own first such event, if that can happen.
But I think that we have in our hands better evidence than not that such a breakthrough in physics is possible.
And not only possible, but possibly near in the future to us now.
And that's the type of stuff that we do, in fact, study with rigor, with respect, with the best scientific methodologies at ISO.
And that's one of the things I want to chat about tonight.
Yeah, I want to talk about that too.
When we make that breakthrough, is that effectively when we join the others?
I would say that that is the most rational explanation.
Certainly, it's my belief.
That's the belief that I've articulated in my writings to date, that when a species discovers the sea within which it exists, when we can look out at the stars at night, look up, And recognize that, very roughly speaking, generalizing overly, I would say, but the brighter the object you see, the closer it is.
The dimmer, the further away.
And when you look at the stars with that frame of mind, the third dimension, the depth, leaps out at you.
And what you see and what you feel, you know, in your gut is is the ocean. You feel the distance as an energy.
You also feel connected. When you come out to the desert where I am and you look up at the sky, Joe,
it answers your questions, you know?
Believe me, I grew up in Utah, and I sure enjoyed many of those types of evenings in the desert.
All right, hold tight.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
My guest is Joe Firmage.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
I found out today, today, incredibly, a full two page article came out on this program
and on me in Time Magazine.
And for a change, they got it right.
They actually got it right.
Is not the norm.
Believe me, Time Magazine this time got it right.
I was very flattered to see it.
It's a beautiful article.
Pick it up.
It's in the current Time Magazine that just hit the stands or your home, depending.
But Joe Firmage had an experience and a lot of people wrote about that experience.
A lot of people got it wrong.
And so the best person to ask, it seems to me, would be Joe Firmage.
Joe?
Well, it's been an interesting year.
Perhaps I'll start with the one year ago mark for me, I'm sorry, the two year ago mark for me, which would set this up more appropriately, and wrap right into the other comments that I might share with your audience tonight.
Two years ago, in July of 97, I was engaged in the midst of building a Building the U.S.
Web Enterprise, and just it was a remarkable time in my life.
We were preparing just in the beginning stages of preparing to go public, and I remember the presentation to our investment bankers who were gathered in the room there, you know, surveying with magnifying glasses, the presentations and the data that we were presenting on what we wanted to accomplish.
Sure.
So it was a very busy fall.
hectic activities also the Asia currency crisis Basically began to unfold in the midst of that which was
awfully Complicating and troubling for us all in Silicon Valley
during that period of time. Yeah, I'll bet yeah most people actually as a quick side note don't appreciate
how close we all came towards a real economic crisis of Global
Dimension including this nation and it was only through rather remarkable action that that was avoided
What was just very quickly what was done Joe because I saw it all coming down like so many dominoes myself
And if we pulled back from the brink how did we do that?
Well, in a sense, we pulled back from the brink through two things.
financial engineering meaning engineering of interest rates uh... which governed the
uh... de facto flow of capital from country to country from uh...
investment vehicle to investment vehicle we can't we uh... influence the currency
uh... pricing strategies through our world economic institutions and
basically helped to steer a course uh...
uh... back to help the other thing we we did was stimulate consumer demand
which of course is the cure-all for uh... growth economy
a lot of people are are have been savvy enough to recognize that that was a
warning it was a a clear warning that we need to make sure we
understand the systemic uh... shift
and movement the economy can can make and understand uh... that
whatever long-term strategies we create for the future we've got to take those
into account and that actually ties back to one of the last things that
i was uh... can attempt to about this evening which is
one of the issues that i've been personally struggling with in some of the treatment of my writings and uh... and some
of the writings of i have to sell
i the economy of the fascinating subject and perhaps in another program we can
chat about it in some detail uh... but the year
uh... two years ago uh... in the fall that is uh... approaching october
i began to have the opportunity with some with a few extra hours
between all the uh... heavy lifting at work
i had the opportunity to to go back and research some domains that i've left
ten years uh... i i left the domains of advanced physics studies and
you know any type of anomaly research uh... ten years ago
after having read everything I could get my hands on back then.
But in October of 1997, there were all sorts of new research tools available to the interested student.
And it was one evening coming home that I packed some papers that I'd printed out from my searches on the web.
And I had come across a press release from Lockheed Martin from one of their more prominent astrophysicists, Bernard Heisch.
And Bernard is a very respected and wise scientist, had developed with a number of other gentlemen a startling new perspective on a basic question in physics, which is, what exactly is mass?
What is it that causes the force when you push on an object and it pushes back?
Why does it push back on you?
Why do you feel the pressure on your rear end when you sit down in a chair?
That's basically the question that they were making some fundamental and profound new observations
regarding.
And so I went to sleep that night as a physicist understanding the ultimate implication of
this general line of reasoning.
However perfect or imperfect these first efforts are.
Namely, while we understand how to engineer electromagnetism, or the energy that Bernie was describing as causing inertia, And causing mass, if you will.
So in a sense, the suggestion was being made, and this has been echoed now by many in the physics community, it's almost a chorus now.
Yes, it may in fact be possible for advanced beings to one day figure a way to move about the cosmos using tools more sophisticated than controlled firecrackers.
Rockets.
Rockets, right.
I mean, is it so outrageous an idea to suggest that one day, somewhere, advanced life across the cosmos can develop a more advanced form of propulsion than shooting stuff out the back of a nozzle?
It's more than just possible.
I'd probably say it the other way around, that I would be very shocked indeed if it's not already happened.
Well, I agree with you now.
I really do agree with you.
And obviously, I agree with you.
I wouldn't have been doing what I've been doing for the last two years.
That was the discovery that struck me that night, in the fall of 1997.
And the next morning at 6.10 a.m., my alarm clock goes off.
I usually headed into the gym during those days, those early, wonderful days, when I had two hours to do that to my schedule.
But my head slammed down on the snooze button to sleep ten more minutes, and I was hovering between kind of sleeping and waking state, and this image, kind of like a translucent image of a man, was suddenly hovering over my bed.
Now, people have described this as some sort of hypnagogic state or sleep paralysis or whatever, and my response was, I do not know what it was.
I'll just describe it, but it did leave a real physical effect.
This individual, or image, or vision, or whatever you wish to call it, looked disturbed.
He looked kind of bothered.
He said, why have you disturbed me?
Why have you disturbed me?
That was his question, and I was again thinking almost automatically, and I just responded, because I want to travel in space.
And he laughed skeptically.
He chuckled.
Why should you have that opportunity?
Why should you deserve that opportunity, is what he said.
And I said, again, almost automatically, because I'm willing to die for it.
Because I'm... Because I'm willing to die for it.
It's certainly been... That might sound like kind of a shocking response, but in reality it was a natural response for a young, A boy growing up with a diet of remarkable science fiction, now having just recently discovered that it might actually be possible to accomplish one day.
So, coming to that realization, you know, making that kind of statement is not all that remarkable.
It's the same kind of statement that any astronaut would make before Absolutely.
And that's what makes the role of the explorer such a remarkable role in the history of civilization.
Consider, if you're an astronaut, you spend some moments before you ever take that first
ride understanding that you may die for what you're about to do.
Absolutely.
And that's what makes the role of the explorer such a remarkable role in the history of civilization.
There's so many explorers in science that are unsung.
But I certainly always wanted to be an astronaut, and if our nation had funded the space program
as liberally as it surely should have, perhaps I would have been.
But in any event, that was the response I gave this image that morning, and it was at that moment when he sort of became more sober and nodded, and out of him came this I don't know, a basketball sized or perhaps slightly smaller blue electric glowing sphere of energy.
It seemed to have almost electrical arcs within or around it and it sort of floated down from him and into me and it was when that thing entered me that I was just absolutely overcome with just an incredible It was absolutely indescribable.
I've never felt anything like it before or since.
Interesting.
And I know people say, again, it was just some sort of weird hypnotic event or hypnagogic event or some kind of other unusual psychological experience.
And my response is, again, I don't know, but I'll tell you this.
My hand was certainly shaking from this physical effect when it hit the alarm clock again at 619.
So something interesting happened.
But apart from the enormously light feeling that I had that day, I didn't leap out of bed and say, OK, I'm going to go write this book and go build a science institute and all this and that.
Actually, it served to be Perhaps a more than just figurative wake-up call to a broader reality that must include a more expansive definition of what forms consciousness can actually take.
And of that point, I am perhaps more certain than any other in this rather hard-to-nail-down category of aerial anomalies.
Alright, let me just interject this and see if there is a commonality here, Joe.
I have interviewed countless people about out of body experiences.
You know, the paralyzed feeling you get, the buzzing, the whatever.
I went to Paris on vacation with my wife.
And I had an instantaneous, uninvited, kind of half between sleep and wakefulness.
But Joe, I'm telling you, I was up above Paris.
Instantly, nothing, no precursor to it, nothing, and I have never in my entire life felt the kind of ecstasy, ecstasy is an underdone word to describe what I felt, it was the most joyful, Incredible experience of my life, and I woke my wife up, and I told her all about it, which, by the way, is not a good idea, folks.
Believe me, but she was then very understanding, finally, when she woke up.
But I felt that, and I've never in my life felt anything like it before, and I don't know what to call it, but I've been dreaming all my life, Joe, and that was no dream.
That's for damn sure.
Well, listen, I'll tell you this.
Again, I think the question of exactly what consciousness can do, what forms it can take, what ultimate powers it can acquire, is a very interesting set of questions to study.
And those are among the very interesting questions that we're studying at our new science institute here at ISSO.
But I really do resonate with the idea that there are deeper understandings of physics and of consciousness that will tie back to each other in fundamental ways, and they will open up new sweeps of possibility of our future.
And that those are, again, just such fascinating and important subjects to study.
That I've chosen to again invest a good portion of my life in pursuit of a better understanding.
Is it the pursuit of the understanding of our creation, Joe?
Oh, without question.
That is, you know, I'm seeking a more coherent understanding of ontology, a more coherent understanding of the nature of being or existence.
And it is not often understood that physics is one particularly intellectual approach to teasing the secrets out from that hidden question or the answers to that question.
There are other approaches.
There are direct mystical experiences.
There are sort of the Eastern contemplative approach.
There is a Western rational approach.
And the two together perhaps offer some of the most remarkable insights into the nature
of this phenomena.
How profoundly did that affect you with regard to what you're doing now?
It was a significant effect.
However, I was...
Actually, I had dinner this evening with a group of folks from one of the magazines here in Silicon Valley that tracks new companies, some of the writers at Red Herring.
We had a get-together just to chat and do an interview, and one of the interesting questions that they asked was exactly the same, but perhaps more to the point.
Would you have still done what you've done?
Had that not happened to you?
More to the point, right.
And my answer was almost certainly yes.
And that might surprise people, but the reason why the answer is yes is, as others can attest, I began the process of reentering this domain before that event happened.
And it was indeed the physical understanding of it that has given me the sure-footedness to venture off into this new pursuit.
My physical understanding of phenomena such as UFOs and such is by no means complete.
However, it is sufficiently coherent that I have greater faith, if you will, in the reality of such remarkable phenomena than I do in their impossibility.
And that is all it takes To justify a scientific reproach to this entire category of ideas.
So I guess the question for you now, the operative question is, obviously you've thought a lot about this, had meetings, talked to the best people in the field.
How best to pursue the acquisition or the beginning of the acquisition of this knowledge?
Yes, that's exactly right.
And one of the first things I recognized was I could not do it in secret.
I wanted in, if you will, into the debates and the discussions on what I think will be among the most important transformations to occur in a millennium, and I wanted the opportunity to contribute and help this process along in whatever modest way I might be able to do.
I came to the realization a year ago that in order to be involved, I would have to make a contribution that was public.
I would have to, at some point, go public with my views.
And I came to the conclusion... That's dangerous.
Joe, hold it right there.
We've got a break.
We'll be right back.
...into a man who has the means to follow his dreams.
He's Joe Firmage.
And Joe, we were talking about the acquisition Of this, whatever you want to call it, this ultimate knowledge, this invitation into what is beyond.
There are interesting people doing interesting things.
Bob Bigelow is about to send a cruise ship around the moon for people, so who knows, maybe we'll get to ride in space, close space anyway.
The clergy is looking at another angle of it.
You know, the various religions around the world are looking From that point of view, your investigation, ISSO's investigation, how does it turn the corner and look in a different direction?
We need to be looking in all these directions, don't we?
Yeah, I think so.
I think that one of the things that I'm most confident of in the overall hypotheses that
I've been articulating in writings and speeches and such is the idea that what is in play
in our skies now has been in play for thousands of years.
It's the same phenomenon.
So the thing that we should be perhaps thinking about as much as any other facet of modern
debate over the nature of UFOs such as abductions or whatever, we should be reminding ourselves
that these phenomena have been going on for more than 50 years and they must in fact have
some significant relation to cultural myths, spiritual traditions, and other types of events
in human history that are fairly well recorded.
We're going to have to wait and see.
When the blinders of physics theories are swept away, What happens is not only transformations of what we think our future may ultimately be like, but also what our history has been like as well.
So from my perspective, it's very important to be highly respectful of spiritual traditions, of philosophical thought over hundreds and hundreds of years.
To inform a better understanding of what it is exactly that we've been seeing in our skies.
So, how again, coming back to the question, ISSO's approach to this is going to... Okay, so we are studying four things at ISSO.
First, is we're studying new physics theories that will give us insight into ways to
create breakthrough propulsion systems.
In other words, understandings of how to engineer new types of devices
which accelerate as if they were falling in directions other than down.
You know, having a spacecraft fall in a new direction like up.
I've got you.
Okay, new physics?
That's the kind of propulsion system that we're trying to understand, ultimately.
The second thing we study are a related group of ideas on how we can create new forms of energy which would relieve Humanity's dependence upon fossil fuel technologies.
We all understand, those of us who study the trajectories of ecology, the depressing statistics, understand that one of two things must happen.
Either we must cease the degree of dependence upon energy or we must find a better way than obtaining energy
from coal and oil reserves.
We absolutely must develop sometime in the next 20 years a vastly superior method to heat our homes
and power our vehicles than we have today. Or else. Or else.
Now it seems to me your number two objective or hope is directly related to number one. In
other words, once you get number one, number two is going to be well
within your grasp.
You are precisely correct.
It is possible to get two without precisely figuring out one, but if you do figure out one, you will have solutions to two.
My understanding is that at present levels of consumption we might have 45 years of oil
left anyway.
So we better get busy on number two while we are trying to pursue number one.
Precisely, and that is why it is a distinct category of thought for us.
The third thing we are studying are the societal implications of success in one and two.
Remember that there is a massive system called economics.
There are important systems called governance and institutions of science and religion and
culture that will all be significantly impacted by progress in one or two.
All right.
And so we need to think about that.
We need to think a lot about that now.
And in fact, I have some thoughts later tonight on, if we get around to it this evening, on one of those domains that's been particularly troubling to me and presenting a challenge that I've been trying to overcome.
And I think I have some interesting thoughts to share, namely economics.
But the fourth area, which I SSO studies, are the physical dynamics of consciousness.
What, in fact, are the limits of the powers of consciousness?
What are the possibilities of intent?
What is it possible to do with the mind?
And you, of course, are very familiar, Art, with many, many studies, some of which
are strikingly convincing, in my view, completely convincing.
Princeton work, for example.
Princeton work is right up there among them, that tell us that we have enormous amounts of, well,
enormously important new ideas to uncover, to discover, and to interpret for our future.
And they all relate to the mysteries of consciousness.
I personally believe, Art, that as potent and powerful as electromagnetic propulsion systems might be when they're
mechanically engineered, the ultimate powers of consciousness may be staggeringly more potent,
more powerful, and ultimately more meaningful as humanity evolves.
has occurred millions of years in the future.
Has it occurred to you, Joe, that in the area of consciousness, some of the phenomena that we observe Maybe a function of human consciousness.
Sure, of course.
In fact, there are several theorists who have proposed the UFOs.
In fact, one of the earliest propositions of such was Carl Jung.
Uh-oh.
We lost you for a second.
We lost you for a second.
It was very early in any event.
He articulated the idea that has been picked up on by many people since.
That these things could in fact be projections, or at least in part projections of human consciousness, as sort of the future becoming increasingly real as our imagination meets our ability to realize our imagination in tangible form.
That is a concept which I find appealing.
It works in many ways.
It also doesn't work in several ways as a complete description of all UFO phenomena.
By any means, it doesn't seem to work as a complete description of all phenomena that have been observed.
So perhaps what we are observing is a combination of the two.
I like to say sometimes that as a A chimpanzee is to a human.
So may a human be to a visitor of an extraterrestrial origin.
And in that case, what are the limits of the consciousness of these beings?
Could they in fact project arbitrary images from time to time as a The process of familiarization, of desensitization, if you will, to remarkable new ideas.
Demonstrations?
Demonstrations, for sure.
I mean, it's almost impossible to conclude that UFO sightings, at least in part, aren't some stage of a conditioning process.
Jacques Vallée and others have observed that, indeed, the patterns of UFO waves and some of the aspects of their timing in modern history Could be interpreted as a pattern of intended reinforcement towards ultimate understanding at some point.
So I think, again, those are the four areas that all intersect.
I think those of us who studied the UFO domain for a long time see that they overlap on each other all over the place.
And as you know, Art, last week I launched our our organization formally in a presentation and we launched
our website.
Unfortunately, we had still been in beta so we had a few kinks, particularly for Netscape
users to whom I apologize.
But generally speaking, we tested our systems out and we are going to in the future be able
to conduct very large scale live presentations on the web that are synchronized to our audio
discussions.
Wow.
So it's going to be a really remarkable new facility for me to be able to show images
in real time to hundreds of thousands of people at the same time that describe some of the
remarkable discoveries that we make at ISSO.
Alright, so you're going to share the information as it comes?
Absolutely.
That is the point of ISSO.org.
It's a non-profit function to serve as a public education vehicle The information up on the site right now is purely a skeleton that you will observe gains a lot of flesh over the next half year or so.
So people need to keep coming back and back and back because it's about to change.
And subscribers will be notified of major updates as well.
Let me yank you back to number three for a second.
The Brookings Institute did a report years ago that indicated that Such information as you're seeking publicly wouldn't go down too well.
Institutions, people would panic, Mad Max theory, that whole thing.
And then, here most recently, NIDS did a study, a pretty good comprehensive study with a very small error factor that indicated, it came up with a very interesting result.
Eight out of ten people said, if our government is aware Of these things in our skies, 8 out of 10 of the people said they believed our government would hide them.
Now, that was one result.
The second result was that while everybody surveyed thought that everybody else mostly would go crazy, I'm generalizing here, when asked about their own reaction, should they become aware of the kind of thing that you are pursuing, they'd be okay.
They think everybody else would not be okay.
How do you explain that?
Let's tackle the second one first.
There was an interesting event that occurred on July 9th, from July 9th through July 11th in Denver, Colorado.
I was one of the co-sponsors of a contact planning session, the second in the series.
That gathered a whole bunch of very bright thinkers together from different domains of society.
Military, entertainment, journalism, business, religion, science.
And we analyzed and asked ourselves these types of questions, trying to understand exactly what would be the full range of possibilities of public response to some kind of unambiguous, In your face contact event on a mass scale.
And we came up with eight scenarios that will be summarized in a future posting on the website as the wonderful work of Michael Lindemann comes to an initial conclusion as he puts the report together.
He's just done an outstanding job on the project.
It was a genuine pleasure to help sponsor it.
But one of the things that was viewed As likely by the group, was that the fears of a severely problematic response by the public heavily depend upon the nature of the kind of contact event that occurs.
And if, in fact, the contact events were graceful and over a period of decades, as it most likely has been, at least in my personal view according to the data, Then, when you do have a more pronounced event, people will have a degree of maturity in their response that would, I think, surprise many institutions.
I personally think that the public is way ahead of the general media and, in fact, significantly ahead of the scientific establishment in being able to deal with such a staggering event with equanimity.
I think the public would Actually, as long as the contact events were not demonstrably destructive, the public would be responsive in a more positive way than the Brookings Institute imagined.
Of course, done so many years ago, that report may have in fact helped to incite the type of public education that has happened in the last Thirty years or so.
Well that and it also though may have inspired the government to do what it does best and that's keep secrets.
Yeah, I am certainly of one one who believes that if in fact such a remarkable series of events as definitive UFO sightings by military personnel who internally at least were not ridiculed At the very least, and at the very most, if in fact a crash event of some kind did occur, that if anything within that range, in fact, rose to the level of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, almost surely the phenomena would have been put under lock and key until it was understood.
You bet.
And if that process of understanding took 50 years, it would probably still be kept secret.
There are all sorts of debatable questions of whether that's the right answer or the wrong answer, but I would hope that we're all mature enough to understand that we are dealing here with a phenomenon of extraordinary significance to humanity.
I've even cautioned myself more recently, more than I ever have before, to make sure that I don't throw stones at people who have worked their lives for generally the betterment of humanity.
There are all sorts of problems with institutions of government.
We all know them.
You know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
There are enormous accomplishments that government can be very proud of.
Well, look, I've talked with many people about this social question, and it may well be that if there was a crash, the government, in not revealing it point blank in your face, Did the wise and proper thing.
That has to be considered, that they did do the right thing.
I completely agree.
Remember, you're dealing with people at the time who would have been familiar with technology no more advanced than the Studebaker.
That's right.
Many people at the time would not have known the real difference between a moon and a planet, or what exactly those lights in the sky are called stars.
We didn't have chips in computers, we didn't have computers without pocket calculators, and we put up a man on the moon with slide rules.
You know, we've come a long way in 50 years, huh?
Yes, we have.
All right, good.
Hold it right there.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
You mentioned Michael Littleman, and what I want to pursue when we get back is CNI News, we've got a breaking story.
I mean, this is a big story in my opinion.
Folks, there's something happening in France that Joe can tell you about, because he has financed the work of Michael Lindemann, and Michael Lindemann is breaking this story.
We'll tell you all about it when we come back, but it's from France.
I'm Art Bell from the desert.
♪ Before the data from France that I'm treating as a breaking
story, Michael Lindemann really let loose with this one,
I do want to just for one second go back and revisit something that you were saying
about the type of revelation and the way it might be greeted by society.
I had Seth Shostak on the other night from SETI and he said exactly the same thing that you just said, Joe.
He said that It would depend on the kind of signal, the kind of, you know, if they should suddenly pick something up and it's close and it's ominous, then you've got panic city.
If you pick something up that's, you know, 30 light years, 100 light years out, people are going to greet it very calmly and rationally.
So he said about same thing you did.
Yeah, well, we happen to share similar points of view on that question.
Of course, I think Where we depart our beliefs a bit is in the area of exactly what form of contact will ultimately occur.
Indeed.
But we needn't go there.
I think your audience pretty well knows our different perspectives.
But I'll tell you, the contact discussion among such a brilliant group of multi-talented professionals and thinkers uh... strategist was very illuminating and i think that the
ultimate research paper that gets published
will represent uh... first of its kind assessment
frame uh... a robust healthy and very scientific debate
on the implications of contact when might that be a well i'm not quite certain i won't put uh... any words in
michael's mouth uh...
but i i i would imagine it will be within uh...
a a certainly a matter of a few months at most most likely a few weeks
alright yeah i know that i know that you're funding michael in a
minute and have funded him in his research and he's not like let me make a
very quick clear i i have actually not funded michael indeman although i'm
happy to uh...
Except in this first project that we've worked on together, this contact conference, and he's essentially spearheaded that and done a masterful job.
All right.
He's really got a hell of a breaking story today.
It was sent to me, CNI News, which is Michael Lindemann's distribution service for information, is breaking this incredible story about something going on in France.
Can you break it down for us?
Well, I can tell you what I'm comfortable summarizing from Michael's report and from my own independent knowledge, and it is something like this.
A group of former defense officials from the government of France and from their equivalent of our NASA Space Agency, the French Space Agency, have Issued a rather lengthy and very detailed report, which in my opinion, based upon early translations from the French version, is one of the most important statements ever to have been made by a government.
That is certainly a more pronounced statement than has ever been made by the United States government.
And again, this is an official arm.
In other words, the equivalent of NASA in France.
Well, it is from former officials of these organizations.
So, in a sense, it's, if you will, a polite way of former officials saying, here's what we believe.
And their beliefs are remarkable.
They are gratifying and they're courageous at the same time.
I congratulate these men and women for their courage to carry through the observations to the most obvious conclusions.
And I think they're very disciplined and conservative in their assessments of what the evidence actually means.
The group has come out with the statements to the effect that the weight of evidence of sightings and other forms of tracking and visual radar and other forms of evidence indicate that we are dealing with a genuine unknown phenomenon at work in our skies for which the most efficient explanation is the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
Oh my.
It is a very well-reasoned argument that I think will be well-received by genuinely open-minded, rational thinkers.
And I do really strongly believe that when this is translated from French into English, it will be a very important study for people to absorb and integrate into their worldview.
What an incredible thing for them to have said.
I also understand And correct me if I'm wrong, but someone told me that their view of America, of America's attitude about all of this, is that we're kind of strange.
Well, a lot of countries have that view of America, in certain respects.
We are strange in the sense that we have denied The evidence for remarkable phenomena simply because we have no theory to explain the unexplained phenomena.
I have been guilty of that in my past.
Many scientists have been guilty of that in their past.
And it's something we need to ultimately rid ourselves of from the scientific process.
We need to understand that there will almost surely always be anomalies that we do not Yes.
We don't understand them until they're researched, interpreted, and ultimately understood.
The UFO phenomenon is certainly one of those, and for me it's one of the most interesting.
The French report goes through specific histories of UFO sightings in France and elsewhere on the planet.
It discusses the alternative explanations for these types of events.
It considers various interpretations of remarkable explanations, such as Are these things purely consciousness versus is there some strong evidence of materiality to the phenomenon?
And they come to conclusions that are very, very similar to the conclusions that I come to.
How do you think this report is going to be greeted by the academic and scientific community in this country?
Its origin is unknown the most efficient explanation that has would have something to do with extraterrestrial visitation
How do you think this report is going to be greeted by the academic and scientific community in this country?
It will be greeted with Silence from
People who are on the fence It will be greeted with scorn from people who are intransigent
It will be greeted with open arms for those who are ready to begin having a serious discussion about this remarkable
possibility I personally think again that it what what perhaps it will
serve to accomplish More than anything else in
Is motivating the next group to come forward, wherever that group may be, in whatever country, in whatever discipline of study, to come forward and start to talk about some of the remarkable ideas that we should really be talking about.
In other words, small steps.
Leading to bigger steps that ultimately perhaps lead to the biggest step of all.
Namely, that humanity is courageous enough to be able to discuss UFOs and other such remarkable ideas In a manner that's open, respectful, and appropriately cautious in dealing with such remarkable ideas.
But I think that, if there is any test for humanity before our visitors would want to show themselves in a more pronounced way, surely that step has to be taken by humanity.
After all, can we Should we be expected to experience a UFO reality before we are ready to talk about UFOs?
Yes, I do know, and I was about to bring up again, you know about NIDS and you know about the farm and the things they've done out there that are utterly, utterly beyond explanation.
Is this a possible path?
This path or type of experimentation and documentation, is that going in the right direction?
Do you support that kind of work?
I support that kind of work.
I do not know whether it's going in the right direction or not.
I know of the work.
I have not been briefed recently on the details.
I will tell you that, again, there is very unusual phenomena that Uh, is being observed, has been observed for a long time, and it does not fit simply in the box with the description that reads, uh, three and a half foot gray being in shiny metal craft, uh, flying around probing people.
It's not that simple, and it almost surely has something to do with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the power of consciousness.
And how consciousness, in fact, guides and interacts with material reality.
But this opens up a larger question, Art, which, as a brief step to the side for a moment, I think it's really useful to share with your audience an example of how little we truly know about the cosmos.
There's a wonderful book that I'd advise interested listeners to pick up, and it's called Quasars, Red Shifts, and Controversies by Halton Arp, who is a very well-educated and appropriately credentialed astrophysicist or cosmologist.
In any event, I had the opportunity and good fortune to read and come upon his book about two weeks ago, two or three weeks ago, and I must tell you, it was one of the most remarkable experiences of the last year for me.
Here is a very readable discussion of a very interesting anomaly.
You're familiar, Art, with the concept of redshift, right?
I am.
That would mean an object would be leaving us, moving away from us.
Yeah, we observe distant objects in the, quote, distant objects, unquote, in the cosmos called, well, of course, galaxies, and also quasars.
The landmarks that are out there, these quasars, these incredible things that are spinning and creating noise, radio noise and light, and they're incredible.
Yeah, they're very concentrated sources of emission of radiation.
Right.
And they have extremely, as a rule, they have extremely high red shifts, which have been presumed and interpreted by physicists to mean
that these objects are in fact the most distant objects observable in the universe. Right. And they
are flying away from us at astonishing velocities and thereby leaving us with red
shifted light arriving here at Earth.
Correct. Well it turns out in fact that beginning in the 60s observations began to accumulate and
have since reached well by the time this book was published over 10 years ago.
So, the...
The evidence is huge.
It's just absolutely astronomical, so to speak.
The amount of evidence that now suggests something very, very unusual.
Namely, that high redshift quasars ...are being ejected from low-redshift galaxies nearby.
In other words... Ejected?
In other words, when you look at the images of these objects, you see tendrils from the originating galaxies reaching out and touching these intense sources of radiation that are Far more red-shifted than their galaxy to which they're connected.
Meaning, they're moving away at a much greater velocity, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
Or that's what it's supposed to mean.
Well, that's, well, that, yes, exactly.
That what the traditional cosmological view would say would be, well, the quasar is billions of light years further away from us than the galaxy.
Well.
These observations fly directly and unequivocally in the face of that idea.
So, what we are staring in the face here is something very, very fundamental.
If it is, in fact, proven out.
It is this.
Redshift can be caused by something other than recession.
In other words, the entire hypothesis of the expanding universe based on redshift among a small number of other ideas, like cosmic background radiation, is open to question.
Could be wrong.
It could be profoundly wrong.
In other words, what we could be staring at in the face here is a genuine cosmological revolution when we understand that galaxies are giving birth to quasars, whatever they are.
Well, I read a wonderful book about Palomar Observatory, and they of course look at quasars.
They're the most distant objects they think they can see.
And they think they're looking out in the order of somewhere between 12 and 15 billion years.
If this whole theoretical line is incorrect, and in fact the redshift is not a factor of speed and
distance from us, What might that mean?
Okay, well, it means a couple of things, potentially.
Number one, that's not to say that all redshift is non-velocity redshift.
Right.
But what it does mean is that redshift can be non-velocity redshift.
And in the case of quasars, it's almost certainly not velocity related.
There's another researcher that I've managed to locate who has an answer to this question.
A proposed answer, let's say.
More accurately said, he proposes that the redshift effect is caused by clouds of electrons surrounding these objects.
And that the light interfering with these clouds is somehow losing energy in transit.
Now, here's an interesting question.
If the same effect were occurring in some way as light from distant galaxies traverses space between our eyes and those galaxies, then what we would observe is a linear relationship between apparent distance and redshift.
In other words, we would observe what we observe.
But, the galaxies may not, in fact, In fact, the most important possibility from all of this is that the universe may, in fact, be infinite.
Infinite in the truest, literal sense of that word.
And steady?
Infinite and steady state in terms of a perpetually evolving system of matter forms called galaxies, creating, being destroyed or dying if you
will, creating and dying in the same type of cosmic cycles that
all other types of beings we see in fact live through.
Boy, that's a tough one to get your mind around.
Infinity always is.
All right.
Hold on, Joe.
Clock is clocked, so we'll take a break here and we'll pick right up where we left off.
Have you ever done that, folks?
Have you ever considered infinity?
Instead of everything moving away, and of course that goes back to the Big Bang, question mark, if everything's steady and has always been there and always will and is infinite.
Think about it.
...steady and endless...
Well, why not?
As I told you in the first hour of the program, here's the Associated Press right now saying sunscreens may increase cancer risk.
In other words, science every day seems to be revising what it thinks might or might not be true.
So, if we're revising things down here on Earth as I mean, the whole point of that story is only twofold here.
else so you're right on Joe what yeah I mean the whole point of that story is is
only twofold here number one is a great read for anybody who's interested in
understanding a bit better about the cosmos in which they live it's very
readable by the non-technical individual and it's just stunning in both it's in
both its cosmological implication and in its description of how the institutions
of peer review need to democratize themselves a bit better so we don't sit
here waiting for in some case decades for these types of observations merely
to be seriously discussed well at least you're not doing that yeah the second
thing it tells us again is how much we have to learn and really that's the
wonderful thing that we as scientists should always remember the anomaly is
the gem it's the jewel that we seek because those are the things to spend
lifetimes trying to understand Instead of the thing that, since you don't understand, you just put in a closet somewhere and let it rot away until you can explain it.
Yeah, exactly.
I sure agree with that.
How can the public help?
Now, obviously, some portion of our population right now has computers.
They can go to your website, they can pursue the whole thing or contact you or your organization that way.
What about the larger percentage of the population not yet computerized?
Is there any... What can they do?
Anything?
Is there an address?
Is there a phone number?
Is there a way to get involved?
Well, as far as ISSO is concerned, there's not yet a way that has been institutionally set up for the general public to get involved.
I'll tell you that the website at isso.org now has a number of resources that that are live and those resources will grow over the next
few weeks and months.
Discussions, ISSO discussion boards just went live this morning and there are a number of
interesting threads and series of questions that have already begun to pop up on the boards
and hopefully over time we'll be able to indeed have these types of discussions.
Now, that doesn't do anybody who doesn't have a computer any good, and for those folks, again, I just encourage you first and foremost just to read.
yellow line part of it then has already begun yes i have a lot
it sure has now that doesn't do anybody who doesn't have computer any good
uh... and for for those folks i think they're not just encourage a person for
most history there's a lot to learn out there
i made reference to many interesting books in each of the shows that i've
of uh... participated on art yes and uh... i'll continue to do that
and they're just uh... of there's a large library for people to build
does not in any manner require an understanding of computers to to appreciate
we are at i have to tell uh...
uh... conducting our part Before we close tonight, I just wanted to update people on where we stand and what we're studying here, what we're about to study.
Please.
We are very, very happy to announce the appointment of our Director of Research for ISSO, a very well-respected scientist, a visionary thinker, And a person who's skilled in precisely the diverse range of professional and educational talents that we need to organize the projects we're tackling at ISSO.
We announced late last week, and the press releases are just going over the wires over the past couple of days, that ISSO has recruited a gentleman by the name of Creon Leavitt A 17-year veteran of NASA to join our organization as Director of Research.
Let me give you a quick background on Creon and talk about some of the projects that he's already organized this summer for us.
Creon comes to us from the NASA Ames Research Center where he was, in 1997, the recipient of the Richard Feynman Award for his work in molecular nanotechnology.
Creon is an expert in visualization of aerodynamic flows for aircraft.
He is an expert in nanotechnology and indeed was the founder of the nanotechnology, molecular nanotechnology group at NASA and has been a very, very serious student of physics throughout his entire career.
So he is organizing a number of studies With particular focus in the domains that I mentioned at the outset of our broadcast.
One of the particular projects that we're working on, perhaps the most fascinating project for students of advanced propulsion, is a project we've codenamed Santa Maria.
Santa Maria, you may catch the reference to one of the three ships that cross the Atlantic in the Columbus voyage, but Santa Maria It is a physics research project that aims to identify the
most promising breakthrough ideas that are emerging from the physics community.
Let me just chat about one of those new ideas that hasn't received hardly any attention
in any media here in the West.
But this summer, ISSO has invited, beginning in June, one of the world's greatest physicists,
Jean-Pierre Vigier, to visit San Francisco from France and conduct a summer's worth of
meetings and symposia on his ideas of impending breakthroughs and revolutions, indeed, in
our understanding of physics.
The reason why his ideas are so interesting is because this is a man whose history stretches all the way back to some of the great original discussions in the time of Einstein and de Broglie and others, and his insights have been long recognized in the physics community as some of the most insightful in this century.
He, like several others here in this country, such as Hal Puthoff, Bernard Heisch, and others have theories which generally agree on one idea.
Space is in fact a medium of energy which one day we may be able to engineer in new
remarkable advanced ways that can give rise to things like interstellar travel.
And I want people to understand that what we're trying to do at ISSO is take the fiction
out of the science fiction that is permeated around the whole discussion of ufology and
bring real scientists there on studying these very, very important questions.
So, Project Santa Maria has identified Vigier's theories among six others as Presently, the leading candidates for the revolutions we seek, and whether the ultimate control mechanism for these new discoveries turns out to be some kind of metallic spacecraft, or perhaps even a more exotic idea that consciousness in some manner can one day control matter at a distance.
Whatever the ultimate implication may be between those two possibilities, We hope to understand the underlying mechanism and the underlying process better.
That is what we're seeking here at IFSM.
Well, there is no greater search.
Well, it's hard for me to imagine a greater search.
And perhaps in a future discussion on your show and others, we can talk about some of the implications of these new insights.
Let's say for the sake of discussion, Art, that we're really on to something here, that sometime in the foreseeable future, measured in years, not decades, we gain remarkable new knowledge about our place in the cosmos and about our possibilities ultimately one day to voyage.
The implications for human civilization are remarkable and stunning.
So regardless of what type of contact event occurs, whatever type of circumstance that ultimately yields for us, we've got to start thinking about what the implications would be for systems of government, for systems of economics, for science, for religious institutions, And what I plan on doing in future discussions is taking each of these aspects of human civilization and assessing what the implications would actually be and talking about scenarios and perhaps even new ideas that might make it more comfortable for us all to imagine what life might be like post-transformation.
Post-transformation.
I don't know if we have time for this, we've got to get into it, but without any doubt, our government, the military, whoever, they have observed these objects themselves.
There have been reports of craft traversing the North Atlantic at incredible speeds, incredible size, observed by airliners, recorded.
I mean, these things are there, and would it be your view Joe, that our government, since it cannot, this is an alternative explanation, since it cannot explain and control what it sees occurring, simply says nothing.
Or denies the, in other words, is that why the French think we're a little strange in our approach?
Well, yes.
I think that the French think we're somewhat strange in our approach in Large part because they see good evidence that is ignored here.
And I must tell you, the peer review process in American scientific literature is startlingly arthritic these days in many respects.
And that's unfortunate because some of the greatest discoveries in science may be unfolding before our very eyes.
But I'm sure that that's I'm going to self-correct.
Science is wonderfully self-corrective over time.
It's just a question of how long it takes.
On the government side, however, I think I do agree that there is knowledge that's held in a relatively small group of people's hands that is of a far more exotic nature than the stuff that we've been told about by the government.
That is situation we need to understand and try to figure out how
to move beyond and I think one of the great secrets are to motivating whatever
such knowledge may be to be ultimately released if if indeed it's our choice
to release it is to offer to extend an open hand of friendship and mutual
respect for people to share remarkable new ideas.
There are those out there who are trying to pry this information loose through the political process.
Do you hold out much hope for that avenue?
I hold out admiration for the attempt.
Indeed.
Unfortunately, I'm somewhat skeptical that it will ultimately be successful in and of itself.
But I would say, Art, that it's another set of hands pulling on the rope from perhaps a slightly different angle, but generally in a similar direction.
So perhaps it will serve to provide one more motivation for more open discussion on these issues.
A definitively clear understanding of what, in fact, is known in official circles that is not shared publicly.
I believe, as I've stated many times publicly, that the evidence presently points to the reality of some kind of physical recovery event that occurred in the late 40s that has yielded material in our hands.
At the very least, if not that, A remarkable program of disinformation to present such an idea through back channels into this network of ufology.
So either it's a spectacular disinformation campaign for whatever unusual purpose or in fact we really do have some exotic hardware.
The best information I have, Art, would suggest that we still haven't figured it all out.
All I can tell you is somebody has it.
You know, in dissecting what I saw, the close-up reality I saw, there's only two explanations.
It's ours, or it's theirs.
I don't think it's ours.
But those are the only two practical explanations that a human mind can consider after viewing something like that.
It's got to be one of the two.
And as far as I know, I don't think we have anti-gravity technology just yet.
Neither do I. I do not believe we do.
But I do believe that, at the very least, it's time for a robust and healthy discussion about these fascinating possibilities.
After all, what we're talking about is the opportunity We're talking about the opportunity to teach people rather than criticize people a belief system that includes the possibility that one day in their lifetime they may have the opportunity to voyage into the cosmos.
I can't imagine anything more effective at bringing together a fractious and in some
cases dysfunctional world at this time.
Well that's what you're going after and it's some kind of journey you're on.
I hope that you will come back and keep us updated on your journey.
I sure will.
Be happy to, Art.
Well, Joe, it's been a pleasure.
I wish we could have taken calls, and maybe the next time Maybe we can allow some of the people to ask you questions on the air.
No problem.
We'll look forward to it, and best wishes to your audience this evening.
Good night, Joe.
Good night.
Well, there you have it, folks.
There's Joe Firmage.
And my goodness, what an interesting approach, and one that I think almost all of you, as you sit there and listen, understand, don't you?
We may know soon.
And I think that's what he just said to us.
We may know soon.
Now listen, I want everybody to go to my website.
Aside from seeing ISSO, which you've got to see if you've got a computer, I really, really, really want you to go up and take a look at my webcam or the streaming video, because I've got the SETI, I've got the SETI program, which is simply Absolutely amazing.
After the break, I will endeavor to tell you more about it, in case you were not tuned in earlier.
But it's something you can go to my website and download and actually be part of.
It is the most exciting thing.
It's the reason I've had it on the screen this morning.
It's the most exciting thing you can imagine.
I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
One is for my wife Ramona.
Folks, this is our eighth anniversary together.
Just about right now, actually, our eighth anniversary.
Eight years together, and let me tell you, we've been there and back a lot of times.
It's been incredible.
It has been the best eight years of my life.
And so that's it.
It's our anniversary today.
Actually, we're within about an hour of it.
And I guess I ought to add also, you know, we got married in Las Vegas and somehow we found our first cat, Abby.
Who was named for... Actually, Abby's full name was Abby Chapel.
Because we found Abby, our cat, now our 20-pound cat, at the chapel where we were married eight years ago.
This morning.
And that's it.
I'd do it again.
And again.
And again.
As well.
And I thought this song was kind of meaningful for us, so... There you have it.
Our anniversary.
Alright, well, Joe Firmage...
Joe Firmage was quite something, wasn't he?
You've got another giant who is prepared, not just prepared, but has launched an investigation into the questions that all of us deeply want answered.
And so I thought that the exposure would be good for us all this morning.
Had a lot to think about lately.
We've got open lines, frankly, coming up in a short while.
You may want to react to the French report Which is so, so very different than what former members of NASA or NASA or other government agencies or the government as a whole in this country is willing to discuss.
It's so very different.
It's going to pry something open.
Little steps, you know, but here's a pretty good one for mankind.
So you may want to comment on it.
It's really It's quite something.
Again, we have had an X-class flare, so the Sun is very active right now.
Very, very active right now.
You might want to know that if you are familiar with, you know, any of the websites that monitor the solar terrestrial conditions.
Embassies, they call them.
It's getting pretty wild up there, folks.
Now, I want to take a minute to do something that I consider to be It's one of those things that we stumbled into, I guess, and when Seth was on from SETI, some kind caller called up and mentioned SETI at Home.
And I, of course, had heard about it.
But Keith, my webmaster, Keith Roland, he took the first step.
Keith downloaded the SETI at Home program.
And he called me up one afternoon and said, Oh my God, Art, you've got to see this!
And so I went through the little five minute process, that's all it takes to download the program.
And I looked at it, and I guess I was just so blown away that I had to figure a way to come up here and translate that kind of excitement to you.
If you have a computer, you can go to my website right now, my website, and there's a link there.
It'll allow you to download the SETI program.
And the way it works is, you download it, you put it into your computer, and then it will contact a mainframe computer, and it will download a block of data from Arecibo.
From the Arecibo, you know, the biggest radio telescope in the world.
It downloads a block of data, And you can actually sit there and watch your computer.
I had no idea it was this sophisticated.
You can watch your computer process this data.
It only goes to work when you're not working on your computer.
It's like a screensaver.
And of course when it goes back into the screensaver mode, it picks up where it No, it will process the entire amount of data sent to it by Arecibo, and it will send the data back to the mainframe computer.
But the cool part, really, is watching it.
You can actually see the noise floor, and you can see the signals, the noise spikes, and or, hopefully, That we're all waiting for.
Now, it may or may not come in that way, as we discussed with Joe.
But, you know, I'm sure you've seen Contact, right?
It just might come this way, and you might be the one to find it.
And yes, you would know if you were the one who found it.
And so watching this run, It does a data analysis.
It tells you what frequency you're monitoring, the peak power.
It just gives you all kinds of information that you can use.
It tells you where it's from.
Again, the frequency that you're monitoring, and out to many decimal points.
It is extremely precise, and it's one of the most fun things that I've done in I don't know how long.
Now, after you've downloaded this, You can join Team Art Bell.
There is, I just learned yesterday, Keith told me, there is a Team Art Bell, now beginning to number well above 1,300 members, and we will shortly be, believe me, the biggest team out there.
Now what does that mean?
Well, maybe something, maybe nothing.
But you see, if we're the largest team out there, We then have the best chance of being the ones who find the signal.
So, I can't urge you strongly.
What I've done tonight, I'm going to play around differently with a webcam, so that you can understand what it would look like.
I have pointed my own webcam at my own monitor.
Which is processing the data as we speak.
So you can either go look at my webcam picture, or if you've got streaming video, you can go to the streaming video location, and you can take a look at what you'll get.
It's free!
Free!
Now, so go up there.
I'm telling you, go up there and download it yourself.
If you want, put it on several computers, and then join Team Art Bell.
You can do that all right on my website, right now.
This is exciting stuff, folks.
I'm telling you.
www.artbell.com and you can go up there right now and download it and it'll just, it'll blow you away.
So I'm devoting my webcam to trying to demonstrate this to you tonight so that you will be tempted, as I was once I saw it, I was blown away, to become involved and join Team Art Bell and maybe, just maybe, be the one.
Who discovers the signal.
You can watch it in real time happening on your own computer.
It's awesome.
Absolutely awesome.
Alright, with that in mind, the rest of the program is open lines.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
My name is Carol and I am a first time listener.
I just happened on this.
Okay, you're going to have to get real close to the phone and yell at us a little, hon.
You're Carol?
Yes.
Okay, where are you, Carol?
I'm in Logan, Utah.
Logan, Utah.
And I stumbled upon this, and now I've been wide awake for two hours and 45 minutes.
It is blowing my mind.
I'm thrilled.
I'm delighted.
I love it.
Yes, Joe Firmage is a dynamic, dynamic person, isn't he?
Yes, he is.
And I, you know, as I was listening to the first two hours, I wanted to call and make a dumb little comment or, you know, whatever, and I thought, no, I don't want to interrupt this, but I understand now that you wouldn't have been taking calls anyway.
In any case, when he was talking, even before he talked about the lines of study that ISSO is going to pursue, I had been thinking things and By the time he got to number three, I started writing down thoughts, and I thought, gee, I wish there was someplace for my particular love in here.
And when he got to number four, I'm going, hallelujah!
Obviously, it's so nice to see somebody with the resources of Mr. Firmage combine it with
the dedication to find the answers that others apparently don't have the guts to go find.
Absolutely.
Joe Firmage, another one you may not have heard, Bob Bigelow, somebody else doing the same kind of work in a different direction perhaps, but complimentary.
Things are changing fast.
They really are.
It's an exciting time.
You know, it's interesting and I agree, but I almost want to amend that at least from my I don't know.
and in my belief to say that things are falling into place, they're coming to a
head so to say from the way I'm looking at it because from what I heard tonight
yes I'm thrilled I'm delighted and I'm just totally blown away but I realize
and this is what I wrote down my four little thoughts that I've been being
prepared to hear this and be thrilled by it for at least 15 years and I think we
all have you know I honestly 15 years ago I was I attended a funeral of a
young man and the speaker who knew him more closely than most of us did
He said that right at the end of his life he began to have spiritual conversations with
his closest friends.
And he stopped and looked at this particular speaker who was telling us this story one
time and looked at him very earnestly and said, thought, you know thought is the most
real thing in the universe.
No, no, you're absolutely correct.
Now, he was talking about consciousness.
Right.
That's thought.
That is thought.
Yes, and when Joel Furmidge was talking about consciousness, that popped into my head.
Yeah.
Oh, definitely.
No, I think the man's on the right track.
I do, too.
I'm glad you appreciated it.
I really did, and I just can give you another more, a little bit more recent, what do I say, affirmation.
There are younger people than I. I'm 50, okay?
Younger people than I who have it already within their capability.
The one I'm thinking of particularly has studied a lot of math and chemistry and I can't remember what he majored in but it was something marvelous that was totally over my head, okay?
And I had a conversation with him one time.
And do you know, he just looked at me and said, have you ever experienced levitation when you thought you were asleep?
And so we talked about what the definition of levitation was and I agreed with him because... Yes, well a lot of people call that out of body.
Not levitation.
In other words, you actually rise out of your physical body.
And I have thought about that, but I have also realized that if you feel your spirit, and it isn't floating, okay?
Your spirit has got to be made from something substantive.
You betcha.
that we can measure because it wasn't a floating experience.
Oh no, you're right.
You're exactly right.
I was being supported, upheld.
I understand.
And then when I woke up, that was when the, it was a shortfall, but it was a falling sensation.
And the thump came when I'm going, oh, I just must have been dreaming that.
Believe me, I know exactly what you're saying.
I'm going to have to go because I have a couple of things I've got to attend to, but I know exactly what you're saying.
I have felt what you have felt.
Now I understand why you're so excited.
Well, I am, but I have to tell you that this fellow, He told me about an experience that he had.
All right, well, that'll have to be next call, because I've got to run.
Thank you very much.
It's been a very, very interesting call.
And right on the money, exactly on the money.
And if I don't do this, there won't be any money.
Whoever heard of a person losing weight while eating whatever they wanted?
Unfortunately, you see, the more fat you eat, the more fat you... I've got to open lines, and that's what it's going to be for the balance of the show.
And I don't know, I'm holding Thursday open as well.
Uh, we may do open lines then, too.
I don't know.
I'm kind of getting in an Open 9 mood.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hello there in a truck.
I think you're in a truck.
Pardon me?
If I were guessing, you're in a truck.
Yes, I am.
How are you doing tonight, Art?
Just fine, sir.
Welcome.
Uh, Mark Oling from Manitoba.
I've, uh, downloaded the Citi program.
I've had it up and running for a while now, and I'm on T-Mark Bill, but I'm running into a few problems with it.
Like what?
Well, I've got kind of an ancient machine, I guess.
It's a Pentium 120.
It's pretty hopped up and everything, but, uh, as for security purposes, the, uh, Steady Institute, uh, usually sends... resends those packets out every week if they don't get them back from the original, uh, recipient.
Well, that would make sense.
And, uh... Well, you ought to be able to... You ought to be able to finish a packet in about two days.
Well, mine, uh... I don't know if there's something wrong.
I don't have anything running in the background at all.
And, uh...
I have it running constantly.
Most people take 20 to 60 hours to do.
Mine takes exactly 164.
My God.
So that's over a week.
And, uh, by then, uh... Well, that's too long.
Listen, um... Get a new computer!
I don't have Art Bell money, eh?
No, no, you don't need Art Bell money.
Look, computers are getting really... That's right, yeah.
I mean, you can go out and buy a 400 or 500 megahertz machine now for...
Actually, it's disgusting what you can buy it for now.
Yeah.
But I guess, I don't know, CPU power must run exponentially or something, because I know a friend who's got a 266, which is just over twice what mine is, and he's running about 35 hours.
Yeah.
Yep, yep, yep.
That's about right.
It is, though.
Tell everybody.
Is that exciting to watch run, or what?
It is, yeah.
It's a really neat concept.
All right, sir.
I appreciate the call.
Thank you very much.
It is extremely exciting to watch run.
In fact, I can't even translate to you.
Even if you're a non-technical person, watching this data come across and be analyzed by your own computer, looking at the spikes of what could be signals, It's just, it's kind of beyond description, to be honest with you.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air, hi.
Yeah, Art?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, I was wondering, I've kept up with this UFO subject for, I don't know, the last 15 years.
I don't think I've missed the show you've had on it all the way back to Ray Santelli.
Yes, sir.
And I was wondering, Have you followed up any on Philip Corso, Colonel Philip Corso?
I got one more question I want to ask you.
Sure.
Are any of his colleagues or anybody that he worked with, out of all the stories that I've heard, his has got to be the most incredible.
Being 86 years old, I think he was, to remember all the names, places, How he tried to fuse the technology and the different industries, and how he remembered all that, it's got to be true.
Sir, you will never know how much I agree with you, and if we'd had a longer time with Joe, I would have asked him about the former colonel.
I too found the colonel to be credible, and at 86 years of age, the man had No reason to be lying to us at all, I believe what he had to say.
Uh, yeah, I do too, most definitely.
I wanted to ask you, have you ever heard of Real Foot Lake?
Of what?
Real Foot Lake.
No, sir.
I live in Tennessee on the bank of a lake called Real Foot, and it was formed by an earthquake in 1811 and 12.
Right.
One of the biggest in the United States.
It was like 9.1.
Right.
And it caused the Mississippi to run backwards.
That's a natural fact.
And people... I've got to run.
People need to remember that.
It did do that.
It could do that again.
So... I don't know what you're going to do with that information, but the man is right.
It could do that again.
Did it once, it could do it again.
in our lifetimes.
All you guys, girls, and you freaking weirdos in between.
This is Helldog with a look at hot happenings around town.
Coming up at the House of Blues is Ziggy Marley.
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