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Jan. 9, 2002 - Art Bell

02:41:26

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - David Brin - Technology Advances. Jim Hughes - Spacecraft Artifact

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55:06

david brin

01:14:16

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever in the world you may be, all 24 of its time zones covered by this program.
		I'm Mark Bell, and this program is Coast Coast AM.
		Should be a very, very interesting one tonight.
		I would like to welcome new affiliates, First WBMQ, in Savannah, Georgia.
		Good place to be.
		630 on the dial, 5,000 watts, probably just goes and goes and goes.
		All across Georgia, IT.
		Say hi, it says to Tim Conley.
		Hey, Tim, he's the general manager there.
		And the program director, Jeff Taylor.
unidentified		Really good market, Savannah, Georgia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		630 on the dial, too.
unidentified		So, you know, down there they just go and go and go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And also, the network, this is a happy little duty.
		The network never gave an official welcome to KNYE in Perump, Nevada.
		I gave a big unofficial welcome, you know, before all the paperwork got done, and it bounced back to me through network channels.
		Isn't that interesting?
		It's bouncing back now.
		KNYE, 95.1 on the dial.
		That would be our radio station, as in Ramona and myself.
		We both own it.
		It's 95.1 megahertz, 6,000 big watts right here in Pahrump, Nevada.
		And it says here, say hi to the beautiful and talented PD and GM and co-owner, Ramona Bell.
		That would be my wife.
		So we get to do our own welcome.
		If you're anywhere near the Perump Valley, you might try tuning in.
		In fact, get an antenna.
		Somebody in Las Vegas should try this as an experiment.
		Get an antenna in Las Vegas.
		Point it toward Perump and see if you can hear 95.1.
		My guess is a few will.
		Now, the Arbitron surveys come out on, what is it, a quarterly basis or are there five of them?
		I don't know.
		I'm not even sure.
		But the new survey is out, and the first market surveyed is always New York City.
		And I always try to keep you informed, and so I shall.
		Check this out, folks, on WABC, the radio station of my childhood.
		It sure was.
		I grew up with WABC, and so I'm very proud to be on there.
		Persons 12, all persons 12 plus surveyed, we increased the audience there by 69.9%.
		Pretty cool.
		Now, if you consider persons 25 to 54 years of age, we increased the audience there by 175.8%.
		Good Lord.
		So we've obviously done well in the Big Apple.
		Thank you all.
		W ABC listeners there.
		Now, we're going to do things a little different.
		Oh, one more thing.
		Anybody who's got any good music, I'm on a Music List Fest hunt.
		You know me and New Music, right?
		So what I'm looking for are lists of really good music.
		The top music between, well, I don't know.
		What do you say, the 1950s all the way to the 1990s or 2000 or present or whatever.
		But especially the 50s, the 60s.
		I'm particularly interested in those years, the 70s, a little bit in the 80s.
		And, you know, it gets...
		The rate of return of music from the 80s on, in my opinion, in my aged, long-toothed opinion, the harvestable music gets much less as you get into the 90s and then the 2000s.
		It just whittles on down, which tells you...
		Music is headed back.
		There's a sort of a renaissance going on, I think, with music.
		And those who perform it and those who write it and those, you know, all those people, they're beginning to realize that actually people like tunes and they like things they can understand and they like things they can tap their toe to and they really like things they can sing to.
		Music, it's called.
		And so there's a bit of a renaissance going on.
		Anyway, anybody out there with good lists of the top music in those years, please send them to me at artbell at mindspring.com.
		That's A-R-T-B-E-L-L.
		All strung together.
		All lowercase at mindspring.com.
		Artbell at mindspring.com.
		Now, this is pretty interesting stuff, what's coming up.
		It seems there's a man in Florida.
		In fact, he took out a classified ad which says, would you pay $9 million for a piece of a UFO drive mechanism?
		It may contain the secret of anti-gravity.
		Ring Back America's Greatness Call.
		And I don't know if I should give the number out here nationally, but you know, of course, in Florida today, I think it was newspaper.
		Yeah, Florida today is where it ran.
		And they give his number.
		If he wants to give it out, I don't care.
	I'll let him give it out.
	And we were so intrigued with his ad, we got hold of James Hughes, the man who placed the ad, to find out what this is all about.
	Have James on the line.
	And so in a moment, we're going to try and find out what it is all about.
	Now, earlier today, I heard, and this could be wrong, I could swear I heard on USA Radio News, they reported on this ad too.
	And then they said something about a $7 million and something or another offer being tendered already.
	And so we'll ask about that too.
	I don't know if I heard that correctly or not listening to KNYE.
	I was earlier.
	We have USA Radio News, and I could swear that I heard that mentioned on the news.
	So, anyway, all of that coming up in a moment, you will meet James Hughes.
	Stay right there.
	Here we go.
	The man's name is James Hughes, and I think he's in Coco, Florida.
	Is that right, James?
unidentified		Yes, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Coco, Florida.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Coco, that's near the launch place, right?
unidentified		Yes, it's just across the water there from Cape Canaveral launching.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you get to watch them go up all the time?
unidentified		We watch from a distance of probably two miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's it like?
unidentified		Well, it depends on what they're launching.
		If it's just an ordinary rocket, it's kind of small.
		But if it's the shuttle, then, you know, it has its two external tanks.
		And it's quite a bit bigger than the...
		Oh, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That must be kind of cool.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'd like to be near one.
unidentified		Yeah, you wouldn't want to live near it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't want to live near it.
unidentified		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I think it'd be kind of cool.
		I guess the first few times it is, and then after that it kind of wears on you.
unidentified		Yeah, well, when I say near it, and how much of disturbance it is, it's not much disturbance at my distance, but if you were over there next to it, then it'd probably be breaking your windows.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, listen, anyway, the reason I've got you here is because you placed this ad in Florida today, right?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This ad about asking if you pay $9 million for a piece of a UFO drive mechanism.
		Okay, where did you get what you think is maybe a piece of a UFO drive mechanism?
		That'd be my first question.
unidentified		Okay, 44 years ago, a friend of mine was down at a New Jersey dump on his motorcycle, and he saw a cigar-shaped UFO come in and hover over the dump.
		Then a door opened in the side, and he could hear a banging as if on radiator pipes.
		Then the...
		Sort of?
		Well, presumably they have no dumping laws in outer space, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but when is the UFO going to follow any sort of anything about dumping?
		I mean, they obviously, you said they came right over a junk yard.
		By the way, what was your friend doing in a junkyard?
		You don't often...
unidentified		And he would ride his cycle into different places.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Including junk.
		In other words, just sort of...
		Cruising the junk.
		Okay, well.
		All right, so a cigar-shaped something or another.
		came over and what?
		Paws stopped over the...
unidentified		Then the door closed, and the UFO flew away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it sure sounds like they were dumping.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Well, yes, something was not working.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Who knows?
		So some stuff came out.
		Your friend, obviously, on the motorcycle by now is probably freaked out, but nevertheless, the cigar shape, I take it, after dumping, moves on, and your friend moves toward whatever fell.
unidentified		Well, he went down and rode his cycle down and picked up some pieces.
		We're not sure now if he picked up more than one piece.
		And he later said that he was giving that the piece that I have, he said, I'm giving this piece to you because you can do more with it since you have a degree in physics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you do?
unidentified		Yes, I have a degree in physics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		Well, that's one heck of a present to get from somebody.
		Why?
		Now, you've held on to this for 44 years?
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ever talking to anybody about it or just always...
unidentified		A few people.
		Maybe 10 over those period of time.
		But most of the time, the item was in a safety deposit box or just in a drawer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, most people would say, but my God, if it's really a piece of a UFO, maybe a piece of the drive mechanism itself, or you wonder why they throw that out the door.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, if it is that, to hold on to that for 44 years without some further examination...
unidentified		No, I did examine it further.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, what can you...
unidentified		It's about two inches long by an inch and a half wide, and it's roughly the shape of a pyramid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		Yeah, not an accurate pyramid like in Egypt, but very roughly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about it makes you think that it has unusual properties?
		I mean, does it look like any sort of mechanism or machine, or is it smooth metal, or what?
		We don't know what it is.
unidentified		Yeah, the different sides of it have different properties.
		On one side, one side is smooth.
		Another side has a bubbly structure.
		And the bubbly structure apparently was melted.
		Another part looks like a stone.
		And the most interesting and important part is that part of it has a layered structure.
		And I have a theory, my own theory of the universe, and in my theory, anti-gravity has a layered structure.
		And I was really startled to find that I had been looking all these years at this piece and didn't notice the layers.
		These layers are about half a millimeter in thickness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When did you notice these time-wise?
unidentified		Two days ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Two days ago?
		Yeah.
		you went down to your safety deposit box and just said to yourself, you know, I haven't seen that piece of that UFO in a long time.
		I'm just going to take it out and take a look or what?
unidentified		Well, no, we had a little meeting here.
		There was about six people here who were interested in it.
		And we just haven't formed any formal group yet.
		But we wanted to see, and everybody, we passed the piece around.
		Everybody looked at it and had an opinion.
		And as I say, I have a theory that anti-gravity, gravity should have a layered structure.
		And when I saw that this piece actually had a layered structure, I was amazed.
		Now, the layered structure was suggested by someone on the telephone, because of the ad.
		Somebody on the telephone called and said, have you considered a layered structure?
		And I said, my God.
		I thought, my God, here I am 44 years with this thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And I didn't realize it has a layered structure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And how were you able to determine that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you take out a microscope and look at it?
unidentified		Well, you could just look at it.
unidentified		See, with the layers about half an inch thick and half a millimeter thick, it's easy to see them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, wow, first time you noticed.
unidentified		Yes, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And because of your theory, you think that this layered structure may represent part of some sort of drive mechanism to...
unidentified		I used to, before observing the layers myself, I suspected strongly that it was part of the drive mechanism or part of some part of the drive to the drive mechanism.
		It could have been auxiliary to the drive mechanism.
		But after I saw the layered structure, now I have a great deal of confidence in the idea that this does contain the secret of anti-gravity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a pretty serious secret, Ari.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever had it to a lab to determine what properties it has and what it's made out of?
unidentified		Yes, I have.
		First of all, I did my own testing, and I found that the metal would not dissolve in concentrated nitric acid.
		But it turned into a white-yellowish powder, but it did not dissolve.
		And chemistry books say that apparently that all nitrates are soluble.
		But then we went to the professional testers, and I had Lehigh University test the piece, and they said it was made of indium antimonide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What the heck is that?
unidentified		Well, indium is a metal in group 3 of the periodic table, and antimony is an element in group 5.
unidentified		And this is an alloy of indium and antimony, so it's called indium antimonide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very unusual?
unidentified		Well, it seems to have been more unusual back in the days when we picked up the pieces, first picked it up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		More common, perhaps, today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Others have made it.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, today is much more common.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about any measurements of radiation of any sort from the operation?
unidentified		I measured radiation and I got nothing.
		But there's also one thing I should tell you is that we also had it analyzed by EMSL in Collingswood, New Jersey.
		And EMSL said it was pure antimony.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is EMSL?
unidentified		EMSL, that's a laboratory services company.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they said it was...
unidentified		They said it was pure antimony, whereas Lehigh University said it was indium antimony.
		And the two of them were in vehement disagreement with each other as to, you know, like...
		Meo.
		As to what it was, yeah.
		And the thing is, how could it be two different things?
		Well, I never figured that out until somebody over the phone in the conversation told me that asked me if I had ever asked me over the phone if I had ever considered a layered structure.
		And immediately, I was, I almost passed out.
		Because yes, I had figured on a layered structure, but I hadn't connected with the piece.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And indeed, I think that Oh, Morris, you said?
		Well, I mean, you said you got two reports of it being...
		We're at a breakpoint.
		I've really got to get this straightened out in my own mind.
		How are you this morning?
		James Hughes is here.
		He wants $9 million.
		You absolutely know God is smiling on you, and he brings you people like James Hughes.
		We put an ad in Florida today for anybody who wants to save America's greatness for $9 million because he's got peace.
		He's got the secret.
		It may be the secret of anti-gravity, and that would easily, easily be worth $9 million.
		Probably $9 billion, actually.
		So, on the one hand, sounds like a lot of money.
		Definitely nothing you could do this payday, right?
		But on the other hand, if it really was or is anti-gravity, $9 million would be a great bargain.
		More in a moment.
		Oh, the Internal Revenue Service.
		They'll be interested in James If he gets his 9 million, James, welcome back.
		You're back on the air again.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
		Okay, so by the way, somebody writes to me, Mark and Phoenix sends me on the computer, Art Pure Antimony is very rare on Earth.
		It must be extracted from an ore.
		So antimony would be very rare, huh?
unidentified		Well, I really don't know how rare it is.
unidentified		We were studying it, studying some of its properties, but the commonality of it, the percentage of it, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So was there any I don't know how much testing they did, but they can actually do all kinds of interesting tests and see if there's any sort of not just radiation radiation coming from it, but whether it's got off-worldly counts in it.
		I can't exactly remember what it is, but they can actually determine if something comes from Earth or elsewhere.
		Oh.
		Did you know that?
unidentified		No, who is that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean who can do that?
		Labs can do it.
		They can actually determine if these are things, if it's material that came from off-world.
		For example, that's how they know when they get a Mars rock or something like that.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, I know how NASA does that, but they but this was a levitating machine.
unidentified		So.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean the UFO?
unidentified		Yeah, the UFO.
		Sure.
		And NASA does it like they pick up rocks from glaciers and also iron and nickel from glaciers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's all correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did you and why did you decide to try and sell this for $9 million?
unidentified		Well, first of all, it's worth, if it is, if it represents the science of the future, then essentially its value is infinite.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's certainly true.
		Yes.
		I mean, if it's anti-gravity, I mean, there's no question about it.
		$9 million is a pittance.
		Absolute tittance.
unidentified		Yes, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was curious how you arrived at the figure of $9 million.
unidentified		Oh, well, that's funny.
		People think there's a conspiracy or something, but what actually happened here, you can actually learn what, a presumed conspiracy or something, how it happened.
		The Florida Today, the newspaper, said that they would run your ad forever or until you sold your item.
		But after two weeks, you had to reduce the price by 10%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
unidentified		Well, so it was $10 million and reduced by 10% to get $9 million.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, so you originally asked $10 million, but you had to reduce it 10%.
unidentified		I don't know how they arrived at the reduction by 10%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, is that every week they reduce it that much?
unidentified		No, they don't.
		They've been very honest so far.
		They just keep running it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it's been running for how long?
unidentified		About three weeks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Three weeks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Will there come a time when it'll have to be reduced more yet to stay in?
unidentified		No, well, not according to them.
		There will come a time when the offer stops.
		But they said, like yesterday or the day before, that they had no intention of dropping the offer at the present time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, okay, good.
		And now I heard, I'm sure, I'm sure I heard earlier on USA Radio News that you had this for sale.
		They talked about your ad, and then they said, I'm sure they said, I thought they said something about you're already being offered $7 million and change.
unidentified		Yes, $7.5 million.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's a true story then?
unidentified		No, the thing is, the man who made that up, it was on a Friday, and he must have changed his mind over the weekend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Oh, geez.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, well, see, sometimes when you're selling something like this, you don't want people to get buyers' regret, and so you want to do the deal, boom, like that.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so I guess you're probably regretting not having done it right on the spot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or were you in soldiers?
unidentified		Well, I wanted a certified check, and he went to the bank to get a certified check.
		In fact, from the bank, he accidentally dialed my house, and I heard him talking to the bank, you know.
		Right.
		And the deal should have gone through then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, I'll tell you, life will give you ups and downs, huh?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, so you obviously then would have cut the deal for that $7.5 million.
		Can I ask you what is your real rock-bottom price?
		I mean, if you were like one of those car dealerships that you go in where they don't have any bargaining, and it's just like you get the lowest price, and there's no bargaining that goes on, they've started doing that with car dealerships.
		I mean, do you have a price like that?
unidentified		Yes, I would say a million dollars or more.
unidentified		Or more, because some, let's suppose some company in Germany realizes that if they get this piece, they will be able to analyze the effect of the structures, whereas they can't do that unless they have the particular structures, the particular layers which this piece has.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you taken any pictures of this jewel?
unidentified		Oh, yes, we have.
unidentified		There's been a lot of pictures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you released any of them?
unidentified		Well, Channel 6, oh, tomorrow, this is tomorrow now, but Florida today is going to have a feature article, a feature.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they're going to have a picture of it?
unidentified		Well, they should, because when they were at the house, they must have taken 30 or 40 pictures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, it's okay.
		It's going to be public.
		So do you have any pictures that you could send me on a computer that I could put up on a website?
unidentified		Oh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a computer?
unidentified		Yeah, I have a computer, but I'm not set up easily.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe you could get a friend.
unidentified		Yeah, the friend is right here right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he is.
unidentified		Yeah, his name is Paul.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is Paul a computer guy?
unidentified		Yeah, Paul is a computer guy.
unidentified		He's specifically a website guy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, then he'll know exactly what.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Put him on the phone for just a sec.
unidentified		Okay, I gotta get him here.
unidentified		I see where he is here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Hey, Paul.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Paul.
		We need Paul.
		I want a picture of him.
unidentified		Wait, wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Paul's the obvious avenue to a picture.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		Here, Paul, can you talk to Paul for a second?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yo, Paul.
		Hey, Art.
		Hey, Paul.
		So you're a webmaster?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		James tells me that the TV station has been there and taken pictures and so forth and so on and so on.
unidentified		Yeah, that was last Friday.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was wondering if I could talk you into a favor.
		Okay.
		You obviously would know how to do this.
		If you already have any, what I'd like to do is get a couple of JPEGs sent to me of this item.
		Would that be something you could do?
unidentified		Sure.
		As a matter of fact, if you like, the video footage that we took the day that we met with Jim, that didn't turn out as well as we would have liked to.
		I guess the lighting in the place that we took the pictures wasn't sufficient.
		What we'd like to do is retake those video shots, and I could even send a video because really the piece itself, the thing that's unusual about it is that each of the sides does show different colors.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I'm with you all the way.
		You don't happen to have a digital camera of any kind, do you?
		Oh, yeah, yeah.
unidentified		What we'll do is take video footage off videotape and then put it onto the computer, just capture it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's one way to do it, but if you actually have a digital camera, boy, digital camera?
unidentified		I can find a digital camera.
unidentified		That's not a problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you could send me a JPEG or two that I could put on the website.
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just send it to artbell at mindspring.com.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could you do that?
		That's A-R-T B-E-L-L all lowercase at mindspring.com.
		Okay.
		And then when you do, I'll put it up on the website.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would that be all right?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Actually, what I'll do is I'll send you a link, too, because last night one of the things...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you fire me a link, I'll get that up.
unidentified		Yeah, the link that I'm talking about has to do with indium antimonide.
		And one of the uses that I looked up yesterday on the internet talks about using it for semiconductors.
		But the article that I was reading about today talks about using it in layers.
		And that's what caught my attention in the article was that they're talking about nanotechnology and layering to such a degree that's so micro that it's like four atoms wide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I have a very similar piece which is very, very interesting, and I've had that for years.
		It is also a layered piece, and it's a whole other story.
		Anyway, if you could get me some JPEGs and get me that link, we'll get up the information on all of this.
unidentified		Okay, sure, no problem.
unidentified		I'll put Jim back on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, very good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, James.
unidentified		Yeah, hi, Arthur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi there.
		Okay, good.
		Well, then he knows exactly what to send me because I'm sure that everybody would like a look at this.
		Again, 44 years, Jim, that's sure a long time.
		Did people come to you and say, look, bring it out.
		We're going to have a meeting.
		We want to see what you've got?
		Or I still don't quite understand how, after all this time and why, you decided to suddenly bring it out?
unidentified		Well, part of this is due to my own theory of the universe, which the establishment has never seen fit to publish a single word of it.
unidentified		And I thought, I mean, this is the country of freedom of speech and all that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure is.
unidentified		Yeah, so I thought, well, if I have to pay to have my theory noticed, then I'll pay to have it noticed.
		And I mean, I had gotten tired of being ignored, so I put the ad in the paper.
		Now, I didn't expect this big response, you know.
		But I just put that in there because I thought, well, for one thing, with the price tag which I placed on it, I would be able to get involved in airport security and different types of security, the detection of explosives of various types.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's what you would do with the money?
unidentified		Yeah, that's what I intended to do with the money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you already independently wealthy?
unidentified		No, I'm not.
		No, I'm not independent.
		No.
		No, I'm not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But this would be a sudden change in your lifestyle.
unidentified		Oh, yes.
unidentified		But I think ideas, a lot of ideas, could help the country, I believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you say in the ad, you know, to bring America back to its greatness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you think that America should have anti-gravity technology.
unidentified		I think that we should invent it.
		We represent all of mankind.
		We have always done that.
		And I think that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		America represents all of mankind?
unidentified		Sure.
unidentified		You have all people moving, coming here from overseas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we're a great country, still a very great country.
		And having anti-gravity, that...
		You know, that the military has met with the people who fly the kinds of things that dump this in the dump.
unidentified		Yes, I understand.
		But the thing is, I decided years ago that nobody was going to provide this secret for me.
		I was going to have to discover it myself.
		And I have my father asked me my entire life, well, for many years, my father asked me to invent anti-gravity, and that became part of my soul.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a big charge to lay on a son.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I'm going out there and invent anti-gravity.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I have a theory, which I can explain gravity to the average person in three minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've got that long, just about, so let's hear it.
unidentified		Okay.
		First of all, do you agree that everything is infinitely complex?
		Yes.
		Okay.
		Now, then do you believe that all things have to eat and that they have to absorb specialists?
		Specialists because their infinitely complex daily activities require special things, you know.
		Therefore, they have to eat.
		Everything has to eat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everything has to eat.
		You mean like inanimate objects?
		They eat something alive.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, there are no inanimate objects.
unidentified		Everything is alive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What we regard as inanimate objects.
unidentified		Well, we do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The desk, the desk in front of me, the good old rotten telephone here, these kinds of things.
unidentified		Yeah, but the electrons of which those things are composed, the electrons, in my theory, are themselves composed of little tiny creatures which I call kinetes for their kinetic motion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they're all eating something.
unidentified		Well, kinetes actually eat something.
unidentified		They eat a thing called MAS, but their activity is for soul growth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Soul growth.
unidentified		They're searching through the spatial lattice for elements which will be added to the external souls of plants and animals and people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you believe plants, animals, and people have souls?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Organic living things, but my telephone doesn't have a soul, right?
unidentified		I think it's hard to accept, but I believe it does, yes.
unidentified		That's something that I don't theorize much about because it's kind of too subtle for the theory at present.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, people aren't exactly ready to accept that.
unidentified		Yeah, I would say that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This phone might have a soul.
unidentified		But anyway, you see, the kinetes, okay, the electron, the electron eats something, and I call it MAS for metabolic action substance.
		If you put an electron near the sun, then the parts of the, then the electron, let's say the electron is vibrating, but it's vibrating all in phase, and then you bring the electron up near the sun, and the sun is eating the MAS, so therefore it's depleting it.
		And as it depletes the MAS, its vibrations slow down.
		Now we have the obvious conversion of an in-phase sinusoidal vibration into a wave, a wave.
		And the wave is either moving toward the sun or away from the sun.
		Now, if you think about it, and I don't want to go...
		The wave is moving toward the sun, and that's gravity.
		And this took only three minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Listen, you gave out your phone number in the Florida Today ad, but you've got to realize now we're on national radio with well over 500 affiliates listening.
		So do you want to give out your phone number here?
unidentified		Yes, I want to give it out.
		I do.
		If worst comes to worst, I just won't answer the phone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
unidentified		The thing is, you know, anti-gravity belongs to everybody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, I've got that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's give out the number, all right?
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Florida, then the number is 321-504-3089.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that correct?
unidentified		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got it in the ad here.
		let me give that again so everybody gets it and you answer that phone personally or do you have a Personally.
		All right.
		Are you going to code 321-504-3089?
		Now, suppose somebody calls you and says, look, I might have the money or part of the money for you, at least some millions, if you're willing to allow me to do this test or that test on it, you know, before I buy.
unidentified		well what we want to do is uh...
		having a good relation with this the potential buyer i will go or maybe paul will go and we will uh...
		kind of safeguard Yes, but you know what you can do?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, we're ending up without any more time.
		I've got to go.
		So, James, I'm going to say thank you and wish you well.
		And listen, when you sell it, call me, will you?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Take care, James.
		That's James Hughes in Florida.
		They just opened the door, dumped it out 44 years ago.
		He's got it.
		He's gots it.
		He's got it.
		He'd like $9 million for it.
		In a moment.
		In the moment, David Brin, a scientist, public speaker, and author.
		Several of his novels have been New York Times bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula, and other awards.
		His 89 ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyber warfare, and near-future trends like World Wide Web.
		A 1998 movie directed by Kevin Kostner was loosely based on The Postman.
		His 15 novels have been translated into more than 20 languages.
		Several studio-finance screenplays under pre-development consideration right now.
		Brin's 98 nonfiction book, The Transplant Society, Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy, deals with a wide range of threats and opportunities facing our wired society during this incredible information age.
		We live in.
		His papers in scientific journals cover an eclectic range of topics from astronautics, astronomy, and optics to alternative dispute resolution, and it just goes on and on.
		His latest novel is called Kiln People.
		Kiln People.
		That's K-I-L-N, Kiln People, released by Tor Books in December of 2001.
		We'll talk about that.
		He's also recently completed two major science fiction trilogies with Heaven's Reach and Foundation's Triumph, the latter bringing to a grand finale Isaac Azimunoff's famed Foundation Universe.
		So this is an interesting man.
		David Brin is his name, and in a moment, he will be here.
		The End Would you like to lose a few pounds around the middle?
		It's a worthy goal to have, and you really can do it.
		I have done it, so you can do it.
		And if I can do it, I am the world's most sedentary individual.
		All I do for a living is sit and talk.
		It doesn't get any more sedentary than that, does it?
		I intersperse just sitting and talking with sometimes leaning back and sitting and talking.
		So I don't move around a lot, and that's why Ultimate Slim is good for me, and for a lot of the same reasons, it's probably good for you, too.
		Listen, here's what it does.
		It gets your metabolic rate going faster, even though you're not.
		So everything is moving faster.
		You're feeling better.
		You know, you're more alert.
		You're sort of right there.
		And it burns away fat.
		That metabolic increase burns away fat, sitting or not.
		It reduces water weight.
		So you actually see yourself beginning to get thinner.
		It helps reduce sugar cravings.
		So you don't want that candy you might have otherwise craved.
		It even reduces the appetite.
		So not only do you lose weight, but you do it fairly painlessly.
		How does that sound?
		Want to try it?
		Well, here's a number.
		Great American Products has it at 1-800-557-4627.
		That's 1-800-557-4627.
		Now, here is a fact to consider.
		The stock market over a recently fairly substantial measured period of time, I mean, I'm sure you've seen it, has dropped anywhere from 15 to 25% on average.
		Now, maybe there's a miracle child out there who's done well in this market, but that's an average.
		So that means the average person out there is down 15 to 25 percent.
unidentified		Rough, huh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gold during the same period of time has risen 30 percent.
		So if you'd taken my advice a long time ago, where would you be now?
		You'd be happier, right?
		Because you should never have all your eggs in one basket, and gold is a good balance to anybody's portfolio.
		Nobody in their right mind would go spend all their money on gold, and I'm not suggesting you do that.
		I'm suggesting that you balance your portfolio with something that is going to stabilize when times get tough, gold gets good.
		So call my friends at Lear Financial.
		They'll send you a first-rate audio seminar.
		You can listen to at your leisure.
		And make up your own mind.
		That's it.
		Use my name, Art Bell.
		Say, I want the free stuff at 1-800-474-4259.
		That's 1-800-474-4259.
unidentified		1-800-474-4259.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And now we enter the world of David Brin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		David, welcome to the program.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Great to be here, Art.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Hello, everybody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, David?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		San Diego, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, San Diego.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's Cogo country for us.
		Yes, beautiful Cogo.
		All right, so you've got quite a history.
		You've been writing for how many years?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, off and on since I was a kid, but it was a hobby, and I always advise bright, young, aspiring writers to keep it a hobby.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		If they were meant to become writers, it'll eventually take over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's something, though, that more people, I take it, starve at than do well at?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, the arts are all pyramidal shaped, like all the old societies were.
		Our society is the first society that's shaped like a diamond, where the middle class outnumbers the poor.
		And engineering is like that.
		A lot of the professions are like that, where, you know, if you're a decent engineer, you're pretty sure to be in the middle.
		But the arts are like old-fashioned societies, a few at the top, and then a few more at the next layer down, and then a few more the next layer down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it's no diamond.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It's no diamond.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a very interesting analogy about our society versus others.
		Most are certainly pyramids, and ours is more like a diamond.
		You're absolutely right.
		I'm going to remember that one.
		That's very good.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I think it should be on our flag.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a symbol of the thing that we have the most to be proud of, and it has nothing to do with the day-to-day agendas of Democrats and Republicans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's very insightful.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to remember that forever and steal it from you if I can.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		You're welcome to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We're going to sort of work backwards, I guess.
		You've written a really, what I think is a really cool novel called the Killin' People, or Killin People.
		And what is that?
		What's the scenario behind Killing People?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is another of my near-future experiments.
		I try to alternate in my novels between things that are very near future and plausible, intermediate future and a little bit crazy, and then far future, you know, extrapolating to where destiny might take us.
		This is kind of in that middle ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you get way out there like an Edgar Casey, sort of.
		Only you can write it.
		You don't have to write it in some sort of mysterious way.
		You can just lay it right out.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I try to make my novels as accessible as possible so people can enjoy them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So this comes under the category, then, of near future.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Intermediate future where there's one big change in our world.
		And the big change is, well, look at it this way.
		The last couple of generations, the last three generations, Americans have made ancient dreams come true.
		Our ancestors dreamed of being able to go places fast and conveniently.
		We can now do that, at least on the Earth.
		They dreamed of knowing a lot.
		And now you can get on the Internet and get access to whatever information you want.
		So we've made dreams come true.
		Well, this is another dream.
		How many times have you wished to yourself, I wish I could be in two places at once.
		I've got stuff to do in lots of different places.
		Well, in this future, people have solved the notion of the home copier, and it's not just copying a document.
		You lay your head on the copier in the morning, and out comes a temporary clay copy of yourself.
		Clay, that leads to the title kiln, because they're baked in a little automatic kiln everybody has at home.
		And you can send these golems, because it's based on the old myth of the golem.
		They're not clones, because they have no rights.
		They're not organic.
		At the end of the day, they dissolve.
		But they have your personality and your memories.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they're only good for one day.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		They're good for one day.
		And their only hope of continuing to survive is before they dissolve.
		At the end of the day, they come home and they download the day's memories back into you.
		And so if it works right, you've essentially been two places.
		And you don't care about the death or the dissolving of the golem's body.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they have a volatile memory then.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And at the end of the day, you simply download the golem's memory.
		Well, you've been in two places.
		Or three or four.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does the resulting short-term memory have self-awareness?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
		As a matter of fact, in the novel, I take the detective.
		It's a detective story.
		It has all the rhythms of a noir murder mystery.
		I love those.
		The detective basically makes three or four copies at the beginning of the day, and I follow several of them.
		And he notes wryly that a number of his dittos have been shot and killed and drowned over the years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And he takes it with a lot more aplum than one of Raymond Chandler's characters would.
		I'm able to follow the conventions of the murder mystery a little more rigorously.
		Instead of the character being beaten up several times, he's killed several times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is set, then, in a time where creating killing people is a regular thing.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, that's a very good point, Art.
		One of the things that you have in an awful lot of fiction, whether it's science fiction or murder mysteries or whatever, is a tendency to go with a cliché that's really started bugging me.
		And that is you take whatever's different, whatever's unusual, and you give it to some conspiratorial secret cabal.
		You give it to some secret government agency, you give it to some dark corporation, you give it to some rich guy or some mad scientist.
		And that's actually getting to be a bit tedious because what it is, it's the idiot plot.
		It's the most extreme example of the idiot plot is a dozen spoiled white teenagers enter a haunted house, the lights go out, somebody screams, and then someone says, I know, let's split up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, let the decapitations proceed.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		You know, a cokehead Hollywood screenwriter can write what happens next.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		You don't need to have any imagination.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, the large, busted young teenager goes to the basement, of course.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and the fundamental rule in Hollywood movies today is thou shalt never show any Americans with any brains or any American institutions functioning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And she's usually undressed just prior to being dismembered.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever seen anybody in a modern Hollywood movie dial 911 and have skilled professionals leap to their aid?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		If they show up, if the cops show up on time and they look effective, then they're in the hands of the bad guy.
		If they show up late and stumble around, then they're honest.
		So I got sick of all that.
		And so my trademark in my novels is if there's something new, instead of it being monopolized by some secret government agency or some cliched corporation or mad scientist, instead do with it what we do as a civilization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's part of society.
		It's just part of society.
		Bottle it.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Sell it.
		Give it to everybody.
		So everybody can make these copies of the future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know that before it existed, you wrote about something like the Internet as fiction.
		And I wonder if you did it then.
		If you sort of just dropped us into a society where there was this incredible connection between everybody.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Same thing.
		I saw the Internet because I was a scientist, so I saw it early.
		I didn't invent it.
		I didn't Al Gore it.
		But what I did do is I said, what if this thing that scientists are all using, what if everybody had it?
		So my novel Earth had web pages.
		So why aren't I rich?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why aren't you rich?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And also, why didn't you bitch at Al Gore?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Hey, I invented it.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No, the web pages in Earth, not one of them had a banner ad, because it just never occurred to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No banner ads.
		No banner ads.
		This was done how long ago?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		This was around, well, I started the novel in 88.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, banner ads shouldn't have been too hard to imagine.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, it shouldn't have been.
		I guess I was naive.
		But the thing is, you see, you ask science fiction authors to brag about their predictions.
		And you know what we're really good at?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Is not so much predicting stuff, although there are some pretty good things.
		You know, I'm on record back in about 084, 85, predicting the fall of the Berlin Wall.
		But what we're really good at is preventing futures.
		The self-preventing prophecy is by far the most powerful form of science fiction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take a look at...
david brin ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		For instance, Doctor Strangelove and On the Beach, scaring people into re-examining potential ways that nuclear war might happen by accident.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I just saw On the Beach, they're running it now.
		I think, is it Showtime?
		I'm not sure.
		Whoever it is running it is running it now, and I just happened to catch it the other day.
		That end scene, you may recall, when they give the baby the injection, they take two pills, and they all go away right at the very end of the day.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		That scary, horrifying view of a possible future, or Soylent Green, or the best of all the self-preventing prophecies, George Orwell's 1984, which armed us all with not only the vocabulary,
		big brother, and watch out for telescreens that only look one way, which I think we'll talk about later when we talk about transparency, but also just basically girding ourselves as citizens to never let that particular failure mode happen.
		And we won't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I hate to just jump to it, but you mentioned to it and mentioned it, so it occurs to me.
		I have webcams all over the place.
		I have them all around me, and I use them.
		You know, I turn them on when I want to smile at the camera and tell the audience, yo.
		And there's a webcam photo that will stay up there for 24 hours, or I can change it every minute.
		But, you know, when it's off, it's off, and I relax.
		I heard the other day that it's possible to get inside somebody else's computer, and if they have a webcam hooked up to their computer, once you're in, you can turn it on and watch them, and they'll never even know you turned it on.
		They're sitting a thousand miles away watching everything you do.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is a scenario.
		That's a technological scenario.
		And under the right circumstances, of course, it can happen.
		The question that we have to face when we're looking at all these things that are rushing toward us is, A, how are you going to stop the advance of technology?
		And B, what's the best approach for preserving the core privacy and freedom that you need?
		The thing that's angered me the most since 9-11 has been the rift, the cross-rift that we've seen between the security pundits and the civil liberties pundits on all these talk shows.
		They're like pro-wrestlers screaming at each other.
		One says, we must be prepared to sacrifice some freedom for security, and the civil libertarians screaming, we must be prepared to put up with some insecurity in order to protect precious liberty.
		And what they are both pushing is an underlying assumption that I despise, and that is the notion that I must choose between freedom or security for my children.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the fact, though, that you don't like the choice doesn't make it go away.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it sure does make it go away because I am capable of looking at it and seeing what a stupid choice it is.
		I'm an American, excuse me.
		I was raised to believe that I can not only have my cake, I can eat it, I can watch it grow bigger, and aggressively shove pieces of cake in the face of the poor.
		That's the American way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a congressman or a senator the other day, I forget which, who said he went to the airport, and he was forced to strip and then felt up like a prized bull, I think he said, or something like that, as a quote.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, there's a lot of that going on now at the airports.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, sure.
		These things are happening to some degree, and they will always happen.
		Then there will be excessive overreactions.
		But take a look at how people feel about it.
		They don't like that.
		And we Americans have a tendency to get what we want over the course, not of one year or two years, but over the course of ten years, you betcha.
		We tend to get what we want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what do you think we want in this regard?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For example, with air safety, what do you think we want?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I think we want safety, and I think we want convenience, and I think we want freedom, and I think we will not put up with it if we don't get all of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then you wish to have your cake and eat it too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Unlikely.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		But that's my point.
		We have always, as Americans, had our cake, eaten it too, watched it grow bigger, and shared it aggressively.
		It's always been the case for me.
		It's always been the case for most of your listeners.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But this was the case when we, David, when we could fight wars on foreign lands and when nobody really worried about anything happening here.
		That was the case then.
		That was then.
		This is now.
		There is a changed circumstance.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Of course there are changed circumstances.
		I'm a science fiction author.
		We all live with changed circumstances.
		And maybe some of the illusions are going away.
		The fact is that statistically, the number of people who died on 9-11 was not a huge number in the losses that a great nation experiences over the year.
		So the types of ways that we worry change from year to year.
		And I'm not saying we have no causes for worry.
		We have plenty of cause for worry.
		We are at a new kind of war, one that requires network skills, new types of agility.
		But let me just point out one basic fact that happened on 9-11.
		And to the best of my knowledge, my little web thing about this is the only thing that's pointed this out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is that?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		On that day, the only effective actions that were taken to palliate the damage, to combat the terror, to record it, to document it, to prepare for the fight were taken by private individuals.
		Now, people do know the one big example of that, and that's UA-93.
		United Airlines.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, I understand.
		Oh, I want to talk about that.
		Flight 93 indeed.
		That was American 93, right?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No, I think it was the United Flight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it UAL?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, we'll talk about that when we get back.
		An amazing, amazing, amazing story.
		Flight 93.
		And it's the best part of America I've seen in a long, long time.
		My guest is David Britton.
		We're going to cover all kinds of ground.
		So tell me, would you like a kiln person from the high desert?
		I'm Mark Bell, and this is Coast to Coast, A.M. Well, I'm trying to reach Keith Rowan because I've got the link.
		I've got the Florida Today article, and in it, there's a picture of James Hughes, the man we interviewed the first hour, holding his $9 million baby.
		Keith is at the Consumer Electronics Show.
		So if I can get hold of him, we'll get that link up.
		Pronto, we can all take a look.
		And when you see James, you will, I think, understand that he looks exactly like he sounds.
		But the item he's holding is certainly extremely interesting.
		So we'll work on that for you.
		We will get that link up, I promise.
		In a moment, David Brin will be right back.
		Yes, the case of UAL, or I think it was UAL 93, anyway, Flight 93, the one that probably would have crashed into the White House or the Capitol building, you know, it was obvious the people on the aircraft knew exactly what was up because they had received cell phone calls.
		And the passengers decided, go get these bastards, and they weren't going to, damn well weren't going to let that airplane do what it was going to do.
		They decided if we're going to die, and they discussed it.
		Then we're going to die right now, our way, not their way.
		And they took that plane into the ground.
		They deserved the Congressional Medal of Honor, or its equivalent, whatever.
		David?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I totally agree.
		It's too bad that somebody there wasn't there to give them.
		Just a couple of pieces of advice.
		I would have had the football player go past everybody and sit on the control panel and just hold the stick and push the throttle and then let everybody else do the fighting.
		Instead, they probably had him be in charge of the fighting and nobody else had the strength to hold the stick.
		But, you know, one can't fault them.
		The fact of the matter is that they did something magnificent that's an example to us all.
		And yet, I think there's an aspect to what happened there that the pundits have not been talking about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would that be?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, for one thing, security as such did not let us down that day.
		It was not security.
		The fact of the matter is that the only thing those people were able to carry aboard that plane were things that were legal to carry aboard that plane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At that time, box cutters.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, that with proper doctrine could not have enabled them to do what they did.
		The thing that was wrong that day was doctrine.
		In other words, the official policy that pilots were trained to hand over planes filled with 100,000 gallons of jet fuel to people with box cutters.
		Now, that doctrine...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, up until that point, we'd never had anything like that.
		It was always hijacking, and you knew pretty well that if you cooperated, you'd have a pretty good chance of staying alive and getting on the ground.
		At that point, that doctrine would make sense, right?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, yes.
		There were several science fiction novels, and also LL Airlines had been warning about this.
		But the point is, you see, that what's very interesting is that the doctrine said, don't resist, you plow the plane in the ground.
		That's right.
		The old doctrine was right.
		They did resist, and the airplane plowed into the ground.
		But the new doctrine is that it's better to have an airplane plowed into the ground than have it plowed into a giant skyscraper.
		Now, what's very interesting to me is all this emphasis on security breakdowns, and mind you, I think we should spend billions on learning how to get more security at airports, but I think we're overreacting to the actual event.
		Specifically, 9-11, there were almost no failures of security.
		It was a failure of doctrine.
		And here's the interesting thing.
		The interesting thing is that using their own means of communication, their own technologies, the people aboard that plane not only found out what was going on, they held a committee meeting and changed the doctrine within 20 minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		They didn't have to wait for the FAA.
		They didn't wait for the government because they were trained with something that you might find, remember this line, Dr. Strangelove, you know, Americans are trained, our teenagers are trained, to have initiative.
		It's just about the only thing teenagers learn.
		They take initiative.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They sure do.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And that's what these people did.
		And the interesting thing is you keep running into Muddites who say that these new technologies are threatening our freedom and threatening to bring us Big Brother when every day the cell phones, the cameras, everything pervades more into the hands of the people than it is into the hands of corporations and government.
		Every day we become more agile with this technology quicker than the government is getting.
		I mean, pretty soon, all these airplanes that they're developing for the squad commanders and things like that and the platoon commanders to little handhelds that will go behind a bush and see where the sniper is.
		Well, that's going to be very valuable, but how many more years before that's in Radio Shack?
		And we're going to have to adjust as a people, but there ain't no way we're going to have a dictatorship under those circumstances.
		We may be slaughtering each other over these spy planes, but there's no way that Big Brother is going to have a monopoly on sea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you do understand the need, at least right now, for increased security at airports, that kind of thing.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I totally agree with that.
		I just don't agree with the panic over it and the incredible excesses that we're seeing, you know, shutting down the whole eastern seaboard when somebody makes a threat, that sort of thing.
		We've got to, as the President said, live our lives while asking our skilled professionals to come up with new solutions.
		But let me make a point about that.
		The 20th century was one long increase, year after year after year, in the degree to which the average American relied on professionals to handle things.
		From the growing of food to transportation to protecting us, to raising our kids, and so on and so on and so on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A natural product of an increasingly technological society.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Up until a point.
		And 9-11 pointed out something very interesting.
		Actually, I kind of predicted this in the Transparent Society where I talk about something called the century of amateurs.
		I predict that the 21st century will see a reversal of this trend.
		As each of us gets more and more powered by high technological gadgets and instant access to information, each of us is going to become more and more empowered to argue with the professionals.
		You're already seeing it as these support groups for each disease.
		Every disease under the sun starts getting its internet support group and people start arguing with their doctors and studying the disease.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I predict this is going to happen more and more and more.
		In this century, the average citizen is going to be armed and empowered, and gunpowder will be obsolete.
		We're going to be armed with knowledge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Some of this is going to come at a price.
		And, you know, you just did kiln people.
		In the real world, right now, we have doctors who say they are about to clone a human being.
		They will clone a human being.
		And they will do so whether we pass a law against it or not.
		And if we do, then they will go to Europe and they will clone babies to order for American citizens who have the bucks and want them.
		So, you know, the road to the kiln people is they've broken dirt on it already.
		So I wonder how you feel about this.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have a tendency when we're talking about things that are going to change in the future to always ask people to be very specific about what harm they're talking about.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		People get the shudders when they talk about clones, and they don't realize that one out of every thousand human beings born is a clone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Twin.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Identical twins.
		Now, an awful lot of the scenarios, when I ask people to get specific, they say, well, all right, some rich guy may make a clone of himself.
		He's 60 years old.
		He has this 12-year-old clone of himself in the basement, and he's cutting him open for spare parts that will fit in perfectly without any rejection.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's forget that horror scenario.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's make it.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Because we know that that's already illegal.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It's already been ruled by identical twins that a clone is a living, breathing person.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All the rights of a person.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But let's back up from that.
		Let's just say a rich person wants a clone of himself or herself.
		Do you have any problem with somebody being able to order such and pay for it?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it all depends.
		I am in favor of any child who's born being born into a loving family, and I'm not in favor of manipulative people treating a child like childhood property.
		Now, if a person, if a husband and a wife want to give birth to the husband's twin, which is in effect what's going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it sounds a little weird.
		It sounds a little kinky.
		We certainly should go into discussions about it.
		I don't particularly like it, but you know what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't see a big problem with it.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I would like to ask people to actually parse out what the harm is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe there's none.
		I don't know.
		I was just curious how you can.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would like to make sure that that child is loved.
		I'd like to make sure, first off, that there's not a huge expectation that this is going to be a duplicate of this person because he's not.
		He's going to be raised differently and that he deserves to run his own life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		What about the prospect then taking another leap?
		And that is it would be possible to have designer people.
		For example, you could certainly in the cloning process ensure that some functions of the brain are essentially disabled and that this being is and would be a very nice, happy, fulfilled, willing slave.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, we have to make decisions ourselves in ways that, well, it goes back to what we were talking about before.
		The ideal set of laws for Americans is a set of laws that lets us have our cake and eat it.
		In other words, we're used to trying our best to get the good and eliminate the bad.
		And we've been very, very good at it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's one school of thought that would say that such a generation of happy, working slaves would raise the living standard of the American people immeasurably.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And I would love to see what percentage of the population actually ascribes to that.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I'll bet it's about 0.00001%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think you'd be really surprised.
		I asked one night on this program if you could have something that would not really, as we understand it, be human, but would be very happy to be doing what it's doing, fulfilled in its life doing what it's doing, having no other wants nor needs other than making you happy.
		We're talking essentially about a biological robot engineered genetically.
		It could be done.
		Would you have such, would you buy and pay for such a being?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about a schmoo.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you would be, well, whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you would be surprised how many people, a high percentage, said hell yes.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you might recall Little Abner had the schmooos, and these were creatures from lower Salabovia.
		They did not look like people.
		They were, you know, squat little, little, little, lumpy Pillsbury Doughboy-like creatures.
		And they would clean your house and then chop themselves up and jump into the frying pan.
		And the Little Abner strip was wonderful in that regard, and it was very convenient.
		And Douglas Adams did something like that in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, this is what I'm talking about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how you feel about that.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, we are heading into a world in which there are going to be a lot of ambiguities.
		And as modern, sophisticated citizens, we're going to be asked to debate, argue, and regulate things that are ambiguous.
		It's like the whole argument over abortion.
		And I know I'm setting a fire started here.
		But the tendency is, when you're scared, to demand very, very simple criteria and simple rules.
		But God didn't make a simple digital on-off world.
		The world is filled with analog type things that are murky, that are ambiguous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's nothing ambiguous about the fact that stem cells, which are retrieved from very early fetuses, could save your life, could prolong life, could change humanity in so many ways that we can only begin to even imagine them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're so fantastic.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I agree with you there.
		And the point that I'm getting at is that the instinct, the general trend to want to protect human life, to want to protect innocent life, is a good one.
		But the tendency to believe that we must regulate, find some on-off switch and say that there is where human life begins.
		Look, some of my science fiction deals with this issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't it worthy trying to figure out when it does begin?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's worthy to argue the point.
unidentified		No, no, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, forget arguing.
		Although, it's fun.
		I was thinking, isn't it worthy to pursue the knowledge of when it actually does begin?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		But we honestly don't know.
		There is a huge ambiguity during gestation, during the development of the fetus.
		For instance, two-thirds of embryos that are created by fertilization inside a human woman self-abort.
		I mean, you know, if this was such a terrible thing, why would that be allowed to happen?
		It's because there's an editing process that goes on during the first three months in any event.
		There's a choice that the mother makes.
		Well, this one's not working out.
		I don't want this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of a quality, natural quality control process.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And so the objection isn't to this sort of thing happening.
		The objection is to bringing the conscious mind into the process.
		Well, it's a process that's already happening.
		It's already taking place.
		Let me give you another example of ambiguity.
		One of my most popular science fiction novels, Star Tide Rising, won the Hugo Award, all that sort of thing.
		It's about dolphins in the future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, dolphins.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And we can talk about dolphins.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'd like to.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It's quite fascinating.
		And the notion is that perhaps in 200-300 years we will have genetically engineered dolphins to give them speech, to give them the skills that they might need to become co-citizens in our civilization.
		Now, previous authors have talked about what I call the uplift, and one of my novels is called The Uplift War.
		The uplifting of animals, but every single one of them went for that idiot plot that we talked about before.
		In other words, giving it to some mad scientist.
		H.G. Wells did it in The Food of the Gods.
		Pierre Boulet did it in Planet of the Apes.
		The notion that the animals are upraised and made to be slaves and treated horribly and then rebel.
		And I got a little bit sick of the cliché.
		So in my future history, we all do it openly.
		We help the dolphins along.
		And as soon as they're smart enough to vote, we give them the vote.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We give them the vote.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		The vote.
		And we try our best to treat them nicely.
		In other words, the opposite of the cliché, the mad scientist, the enslaving them cliché.
		And then I ask the question, wouldn't these creatures, wouldn't these people, these new people, have interesting problems anyway?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would be really interesting because it would absolutely ensure in every presidential election that there would be a gigantic debate about environmental issues as they impact the dolphin world.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you'd need the dolphin vote.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course.
		And this is just an extension of the process of inclusion that we've been engaged in, Republican and Democrat, for the last 40 years.
		And that's one of the philosophical underpinnings deep underneath science fiction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But here's why the dolphins would never get vote, because they would generally tend toward the Democrat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		How do you know they won't be great entrepreneurs?
unidentified		Or you balance them by uplifting chimpanzees?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm just sort of presuming the obvious, that they'd be really ecologically concerned, so they'd tend toward the Democrats.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Republicans would never let them have the vote because they'd know exactly where that vote was going to go.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, making assumptions about that, people made the same assumptions about Catholics and Hispanics.
		And they're drifting.
		All you have to do is work hard to sneak an entrepreneurial gene while you're uplifting these dolphins.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Sneak one of those in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And now they're concerned about their businesses.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And suddenly, instead of Republicans and Democrats, they're libertarians.
		Libertarians in faith.
		Or you counterbalance them, as I do in my series, by also uplifting chimpanzees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are we within thinking distance of uplifting an animal like a dolphin, for example, to the point where it could achieve speech?
		Is that something we could work on and do?
		Is it possible?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's fascinating.
		We are building...
		We can't even design the project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know, but is it thinkable?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It is definitely thinkable.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And some of my friends who are engaged in dolphin research, they say something very interesting.
unidentified		Listen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, hold it.
		We're right at the top of the ice cream, so hold on.
		You can take a woman, for example, and uplift her by putting her in a beautiful black dress.
		I'm Ardel from the high desert, covering the world.
		This is Coast to Coast AF.
		It certainly is.
		Good morning, everybody.
		How are you?
		Incidentally, another author that we're going to have on very soon, I think, is Dean Koonz.
		Dean Koos has kindly mentioned me in one of his latest novels.
unidentified		So, I thought, why not?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't he be an interesting person out of the program?
		Dean Koos, coming up soon.
		Right, tonight we've got David Brin with us.
		Right now, we're talking about the uplifting of dolphins.
		Now, there's a concept for you, simply modifying them so they would.
		They probably already have self-awareness, intelligence.
		We just need to give them the ability to have speech.
		Maybe a little more, who knows?
		We may be toying around with all kinds of things as time goes on.
		That's the kind of thing we were talking about.
		Be right back.
		Once again, here is David Brin.
		Welcome back, David.
		So, you think mankind within the foreseeable future might have the ability to manipulate genetics, and probably we would begin on animals before we would human beings, hopefully.
		What am I saying?
		I already know that may not be true, but you would think we would, and uplifting dolphins would be perhaps a worthy thing to do, or would it?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, first off, while it's on my mind, say hi to Dean Kuntz when he's on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I sure will.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		The interesting thing about all of these daring things is, of course, that I'm not trained as a biologist.
		I simply, as a science fiction author, I get used to the notion that I can go out and make friends with people in any walk of life or any area of expertise that I want.
		And people out there listening should understand that as well.
		In any of these fields, it's possible to subscribe to a magazine or get videos or watch PBS or learn more about any field that you like.
		And this didn't used to be the case.
		Back in the older civilizations, the priesthoods, who were the ones who said, we know how the world works, we know the rules of this cosmos, they would pat the common man on the head and say, you wouldn't understand.
		Today's high priests of knowledge, scientists, well, the very best of them, maybe a lot of the average ones may be smug, but the very best of them compete with each other to get on PBS or to write magazine articles, to write popular books.
		So whatever your interest is, there is some level at which you can find something at Amazon.com.
		You can find a magazine like Science News or Discover Magazine is a very good one.
		Well, in any event, my training was as a physicist, as an astronomer.
		So when I talk about aliens and things like that and astronomical things, I sometimes know what I'm talking about.
		When it comes to biology and uplifting dolphins and uplifting chimpanzees and genetic engineering on people, I have to rely on what I can learn by studying.
		And getting to know Louis Herman, for instance, at the Kuala Basin Marine Lab in Hawaii and Jack Gonzalez here in San Diego studying the Navy dolphins, I've come to understand that these people who care a lot about their dolphins, but they don't mythologize them.
		They don't make up fancy stories, wish fulfillment stories, they come to realize one thing, that the dolphins, like the chimpanzees, are at an edge.
		They're sort of at a threshold.
		And when they work with the dolphins and the chimps, the experts in these fields tell me again and again that they feel as if the creatures they're dealing with are frustrated.
		As if they know that humans know stuff that they don't.
		And they try very, very hard.
		And they can do stuff.
		They can parse out simple sentence grammars, for instance.
		With the dolphins, it's by making squeak tones and pressing buttons.
		With the chimps, it's with sign language.
		But again and again, I hear this from the people who work with them.
		That they feel as if these creatures are frustrated, that they are almost as if they're asking for help.
		So that's one of the reasons why I wrote some of these books like Star Tide Rising and The Uplift War and projecting into a future where we've actually given them this hand, where we've actually lifted them up.
		An awful lot of the clichéd movies that we've seen, science fiction movies, show us as the young upstarts and some other race like the Vulcans being the old guys helping us out.
		But in fact, it looks as if the universe may be the other way around.
		We may be the first ones to show up and help others.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's a concept that you find potentially agreeable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you think there could be a positive outcome to this and that dolphins, for example, if given speech and whatever all else we could bestow upon them, would be great fellow citizens.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I like to think so, but I would hate for anybody like me to make such a decision all by his own opinion and his own impression of what to do.
		That's why we have this wonderful civilization based on argument.
		That's why you, Art Bell, have the job you have of mediating open discussions among free citizens.
		The whole objective of my nonfiction book, The Transparent Society, is to describe how this openness that we have is precious.
		It enables us to have our cake and eat it too, to have both freedom and more safety and more wealth than any other civilization has ever had.
		So I wouldn't want to embark on genetically engineering dolphins or chimpanzees, and especially not changing, genetically meddling in human beings, without an awful lot of discussion, an awful lot of investigation of the ways things might go wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course the best laid plans, right?
		So they might go wrong, and that would be part of the risk.
		But I don't know when that's ever stopped us if we have the technological ability.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, but there's a book out there by a guy named Edward Tenner called Why Things Bite Back, The Tragedy of Unintended Consequences.
		And he talks about many, many situations in which smart guys came up with a scheme, a technological scheme, a military scheme, and things surprised them.
		And I want to write a book called Just in Time, describing all the situations in which, so many situations that didn't make the news or didn't make big news stories, because the open civilization caught mistakes in time.
		I have a friend who worked for ARCO during the building of the, he helped design the Alaska Pipeline, and he said, thank God for the Sierra Club.
		And I said, what?
		They made your life hell for three years.
		And he said, yep.
		If I had had my hands on the necks of any Sierra Club member during those three years, I would have throttled them to death.
		But looking back on it now, I realize that they put my feet to the fire.
		And had I been allowed to go ahead and make the pipeline that I originally was so proud of designing, I would have been known today as Hazelwood.
		But because they looked for every excuse to try to stop my pipeline, they found an awful lot of my mistakes.
		And then civilization was wise enough to say, keep on criticizing, keep on criticizing, keep on criticizing.
		Okay, you're not coming up with anything new now.
		Go ahead and build your pipeline.
		And he said, now we have oil and caribou.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, that's a pretty interesting point, I've got to say.
		Listen, you've written a lot about aliens, contact with aliens.
		Let's take you into the area that you suggest you can speak on easily.
		Not that you seem to have any difficulty speaking on any of these areas, but you've done a lot with aliens, right?
		So I've done a lot with aliens, and I have a feeling that we may be at opposite ends of this spectrum.
		You are actually a participant in SETI, aren't you?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I've been on the International Astronomical Union's committee, Committee 51 on the search for extraterrestrial life.
		I'm a member of one of the NASA groups on exobiology, the study of the possibility of life.
		And I have a paper that people can download from my website, davidbrin.com, that was one of the main review articles about the whole idea of why we don't seem to be in contact and the list of maybe about 40 or 50 possible explanations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'd like to talk about all of that.
		Anyway, since you're interviewed frequently, I interview Seth Shostak.
		You must know him.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		He's a very nice fellow and very bright.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He certainly is.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		We don't agree on everything because I'm more neutral in the SETI question.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I raise a lot of questions, and he's a member of Jill Tartar's community of people who are very optimistic about making radio contact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not as optimistic.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		No, I'm not.
		I believe that there are a lot of reasons to think that intelligent life affects appears to be very rare in the cosmos.
		That's not to say that I don't believe it's out there.
		Of course it's out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just very rare, not common.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it pretty much has to be.
		For one thing, take a look at time.
		There's about two billion years, a window of about two billion years, during which the Earth had an oxygen atmosphere and life in the oceans, and yet, and nobody on the planet who would object to a colony.
		I mean, we've only been around for half a million years.
		That's two billion years during which anybody who came along would have found a beautiful virgin world and could have put an industrial civilization here.
		We would see signs of that in the rocks.
		There's absolutely no trace of anything like that.
		And during those two billion years, during the first one and a half billion of those two bars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But how do you know we are considered an idyllic atmosphere by somebody who may live on a planet that has life based on an entirely different, you know, not life hours at all?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, the oxygen atmosphere, the chlorophyll way of building up sugars, the amino acids.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We think of it as the best, of course.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, the amino acids that we use in our DNA happen to be V20 amino acids that show up in every laboratory trial with every type of reducing atmosphere, zapping it with electricity, zapping it with lightning, zapping it with ultraviolet rays.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All of these experiments show that almost every type of watery environment that has energy coming into it and some kind of carbon and nitrogen in it will make the 20 amino acids that we use.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then, I guess you would speculate then that any life that was found would be in some way familiar or similar to ours?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's likely.
		Look, in my science fiction, I wear two hats when I talk about the alien.
		In my science fiction I roam freely and talk about other kinds of energy using a life that might exist.
		But wearing my science hat, I have to say that the...
		Well, no, I believe it's possible.
		I believe they may be out there.
		But the life forms that we're likely to bump into are the life forms that like Earth-like planets.
		And that think roughly the way we do.
		They make radios, that sort of thing.
		Look, this is a complicated subject, and I don't mean to say that just because the Earth doesn't seem to have ever been touched in 2 billion years, that that means automatically that we're the first.
		But there are about 40 or 50 explanations for the obvious fact that most of us aren't aware of being in contact right now.
		And I go through a bunch of them, and I illustrate some with some short stories, some very entertaining short stories.
		One of the short stories is about a late-night talk radio host who taunts UFO aliens on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, taunts them?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know what he says?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, in fact, I'm going to say this, since this is beaming out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, go ahead.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		Listen, these guys are pretty smart, aren't they, right?
		Right.
		Our technology is child's play to them?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Many say?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, all right.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And they probably been monitoring our broadcasts and stuff like that, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good guess.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Which means that there's a good chance that they're listening to my voice right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well over 500 affiliates, you bet.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		So, if you'll forgive me, Art, I'm going to do a little riff here.
		I'm going to stop talking to your human listeners, and I'm going to talk to the little silver guys monitoring this broadcast.
		You who silver guys, it's me again.
		I know I'm the last guy you ever wanted to hear again, but I'm going to taunt you again.
		I'm going to tell you that this whole business of disemboweling cattle, twirling wheat, grabbing farm guys out of their pickup trucks, doing all sorts of probes on them, is really unimpressive.
		That there's not a single UFO sighting that anybody has talked about that, if it were true, represents the behavior of adults.
		The behavior portrayed in every single UFO reported UFO sighting is the behavior of nincompoops and really lousy visitors, very, very rude people.
		So, I'm going to tell you again, alien guys, call the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
		My friend Dr. Michael Klein there will ask you to put some kind of proof on the moon the next day.
		That's to differentiate you from all the human jerks who will call after hearing my voice.
		And if you do something to the crater Aristarchus tomorrow night, he will be waiting for your call.
		And he'll arrange landing sites, he'll arrange visas of both kinds.
		He'll arrange Leno, Letterman, anything you want.
		You want to date Madonna?
		You got it.
		We'll throw a party like you've never seen.
		You write a list of things that will make you feel secure and safe, and we'll do it.
		And we will throw the biggest party you ever saw.
		That's if you come to us openly.
		If you keep on doing what you have been, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing.
		We're going to snub you, and we're going to spend more money on the Air Force and hope they shoot you down.
		There you go, you silver guy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, a taunt.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A taunt.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Because that's all they deserve.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		If any UFO sightings are true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And I don't believe they are.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		But if any of them are true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't believe any of them are true?
unidentified		Well, I bet they're not true.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		But listen, aliens are my stock and trade, both in science and in science fiction.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I'm on the committees to meet them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, but why would you not then, as a science fiction writer, easily imagine that having observed us and continuing to observe us, they don't want to have contact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, what makes you think that promises of a big party, Madonna's body, or anything else, would suddenly entice them to, you know, throw some dye on a crater on the moon or something?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, there is basic decency.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Every human culture, any human culture that we know of, and they've been pretty darn different from each other, would consider the behavior portrayed by UFO stories to be obnoxious.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about the Prime Directive?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly my point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, but it isn't right here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're trying to taunt them in here, disregarding the Prime Directive, screwing us up.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		The Prime Directive is an example of how mature we're trying to become.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But we have, well, whether we talk it, fine, we talk about it and we have it on Star Trek, but we don't do it in real life.
		Every remote society that we've touched and found and infiltrated, we've more or less ruined, screwed up totally.
		So we don't follow the Prime Directive.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		The Prime Directive is very primitive.
		It says don't touch, and the aliens certainly aren't living by that.
		Otherwise, we wouldn't know about them there.
		On my website, people can click over to a very interesting thing that a guy named Alan Tuff has done at the University of Toronto.
		He looked at the outline of possibilities.
		And among the things that I've written some stories people can download from DavidBryn.com dealing with the notion that aliens might not come in person because the space between the stars is so huge that biological life forms aren't really suited for it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, we're at the bottom there.
		Hold it right there, and we'll pick up on that point when we get back.
		Be right back.
		Once again, David Bryn, David, you've never, I take it, seen a UFO close-up.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Flying saucer or anything like that?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Nothing like it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you generally, you say you're even more conservative than Seth, who also, by the way, doesn't believe we're being visited right now, so you really share that point of view.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you're even more conservative than Seth by a bit, huh?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wouldn't call myself too conservative in that regard.
		After all, I write stories that are considered to be at the hard cutting edge scientifically.
		And I'm perfectly willing to discuss just about everything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Though in the same breath, you seem to be a little bit of a demonstration.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I'll tell you why.
		I'll tell you why.
		I find the universe so much more interesting than the dumb UFO fantasies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
		Okay.
		Do you think that the United States possesses anti-gravetic technology?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you why I don't believe any of that stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, but just if you would.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't believe that.
		I'm in Roswell.
		It's Area 51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good, good, good, good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't believe in Area 51?
unidentified		No, I don't believe in the flying saucer aspect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I live near Area 51.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No, I believe there are all sorts of funny things going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		Okay, well, I want to just tell you a little story, and you can make of it what you will, all right?
		Several years ago, my wife and I were on the way home from Las Vegas, a quarter mile from our house.
		My wife, who was in the passenger seat, you know, I used to have to commute back and forth, so I did this every day.
		She saw something over her shoulder at the back of the car and said, what the hell is that?
		And we stopped the car, and we both got out, a little geo-metro.
		We both got out and stood on the street.
		We live in a very rural area near Death Valley, a little town called Perrone, Nevada.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I was just there a week ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You were, then you know.
		And at night during the summer, it is deathly quiet.
		I mean, it's so quiet that you can hear crickets at a quarter mile away.
		It's wonderful.
		It's a great place to live.
		And so we got out of the car, and you could hear the crickets at a quarter mile away.
		But coming up behind us, David, was this monstrous triangular craft.
		I'd estimate it to be no more than about 150 feet in the air.
		It felt like if I had a rock and I hadn't been so much in shock at the time, I could have picked it up and thrown it at the damn thing.
		It didn't fly, David.
		It floated.
		It was maybe doing 30 miles an hour, you know, nothing that would support aerodynamic flight.
		It was, David, defying gravity.
		It was really, really big.
		Big enough so that when it came over our head, and it came directly over us, David, it blotted out the stars and the moon, you know, just like in a classic movie or something.
		And we stood there with our mouths open and watched it float out across the valley, headed in the direction of Area 51 over the mountains from us here.
		And, David, that happened.
		Period.
		That happened.
		It was, I don't know how close an encounter you would call that, but real close.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you why I find that more plausible than UFOs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was a UFO, David.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course it was a UFO in the classic sense of being unidentified and being flying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, floating.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Floating.
		I am perfectly willing to concede that the government can keep some secrets temporarily.
		We saw this with stealth, with stealth fighters, with stealth bombers.
		But as I talk about in the transparent society, we're entering into a civilization in which it's going to be more and more difficult to keep secrets that anyone has a strong reason to blow the whistle on.
		One of the things that I predict in the next few years is, for instance, the henchmen's law that will draw henchmen from all over the world to blow the whistle on their masters.
		Let me take the extreme example, and then we'll get to the business of governments, keeping technology secret.
		The extreme example is UFO's Roswell in particular.
		50 years ago, a spacecraft crashed, and since then, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Hangar 18, they have been analyzing this thing for, I guess now it is 52 years.
		53 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the story goes back to engineering, technology, and so forth.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		That is three generations.
		Now, If you were going to study this stuff, you put a high priority to it, right?
		You assign your best people, as many as it took.
		Now, I know a guy who works at Wright-Patterson, and he says that no part of the base has been black for that entire time.
		It's all shifted around.
		But that's beside the point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is because he might not know.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, of course.
		But he stuck out his lower lip, and he said, I thought I was the best.
		You know, he said, if they've been studying this thing, why was he left out?
		Now, of course, he could be lying to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far into it have you looked?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let me talk about the fundamental sense of this.
		Three generations of our very best people.
		Now, what happens when they turn 65, 70 years old?
		They move to Arizona.
		They got a rifle on the back above the window behind their heads in their pickup truck.
		They are Americans.
		Do you know any scientists, any engineers?
		They are among the most libertarian people around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do know some people that at the end of their life decided to tell the truth, like Colonel Corso.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I interviewed him some number of times, David.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and you know what?
		You know what?
		He doesn't qualify into the category that I'm talking about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I interviewed Jesse Marcel's son, who held some of this stuff in his hand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've interviewed a lot of people.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Not one of them comes into the category of the people who would have blown the whistle by now.
		Three generations.
		Three generations of our very, very best.
		And we would have had to throw hundreds of them at this.
		Hundreds of our very best.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're a bright guy.
		I assume that you saw the Air Force several years ago, the Air Force had a press conference in which they actually decided they were going to try and debunk Roswell once and for all.
		Did you see that?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You did?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Did you see it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's ask it this way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was your impression of the presentation?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I found it depressing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Depressing?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they certainly didn't put their first theme forward.
		They were a bunch of publicity hacks.
		They were excruciatingly dumb and boring to listen to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I wonder if it was on purpose.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You do?
unidentified		Well, of course.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Look, I'm not going to say there's no such thing as any conspiracy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		What I am going to say is that the universe is so interesting.
		Real aliens would be so interesting.
		The kinds of things that we're talking about in most of these UFO stories are previously dumb and unimaginative.
unidentified		It's 1954.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Schlock science fiction.
		It's not at all like the universe is.
		Show me something that's interesting and my imagination might have something to feed on.
		As it is, I'm going to look at these UFO stories and I'm going to pick them apart.
		And they're so easy to pick apart.
		Phil Klass has been doing it for years.
		Oh, please, Art Krishna.
unidentified		No, no, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
		Phil Klass is right up in there with the fellows who did the Air Force presentation.
		I've had Phil Klass on the Air Force.
unidentified		Well.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, come on.
		The UFO guys try their best to impress Phil Klass.
		He attends all their gatherings.
		They like him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course they like him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Don't you know why they like him?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Go on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, I just told you why they like him when I made the analogy to the Air Force presentation.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, perhaps.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I know the guy to be very, very smart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course he's a bright guy, but he takes off on some tangents that have those who would believe smirking.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, that may very well be, Art, but here's the quandary that both Phil and guys like I face.
		If you do investigate one of these cases and you work your way through it and work your way through it and work your way through it and solve it, in the end, the guys you're talking to will say, oh, fine, here's another.
		Well, sure.
		And so what I've done is I've backed off and I've talked about, for instance, the execrably stupid behavior that these UFOs suppose.
		If any of these sightings are true, the behavior described is stupid.
		And the whole business of Roswell, three generations of our very best people, these, if you've ever known the very best engineers and scientists, they're the most libertarian people you've ever met.
		They might keep something secret if there's a good reason.
		But like those people on United Airlines 93, they're Americans who believe, show me a reason.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, this thing that flew over myself and my wife soundlessly, I might add.
		I mean, what do you believe about that?
		You don't believe that we have anti-gravitic technology?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I believe that there may possibly, you know, if we had anti-gravitic technology and it was in a very early prototype phase, I believe that these engineers and scientists would be willing to keep that secret.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		So if they have a different level, my doubt about that is at a different level, it doesn't totally defy human nature or especially American nature to believe that the Air Force might have a fancy new technology and that nobody's blown the whistle on it yet because they're afraid, because they're a little concerned about other people getting it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's move back to SETI because you know something about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		SETI has been spending a great deal of time looking near the hydrogen frequency for some sort of signal because it's a pretty good marker out there, right?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And it's very quiet.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Radio waves can convey a quarter rate distance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it seems like a good place for a message from people who would be like us, which you imagine they would be if they're out there at all.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And who don't consider radio to be like Tom-Tom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		SETI, I notice now, is moving in a new direction toward some sort of light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that right?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		What's happening is that technologies are becoming so inexpensive that the natural American Western tendency to want to be special at something is affecting all the people who are interested in SETI.
		So while the older groups are staying at the hydrogen line, people who are new in the field, who want to make a name for themselves, who want to strike out and do something new are trying new things.
		Today, an amateur astronomer can have in his backyard a telescope that will automatically check the weather, automatically open up, and automatically start scouting for comets to name after its master.
		Sure.
		So this is going to be very useful in finding asteroids that might threaten us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One of those just zoomed by us.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Just wasn't that interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		For a change, we heard about it a little bit ahead of time.
		Normally you hear about it.
		Actually, most of the public did after it happened anyway.
		I heard the stories today.
		Well, we had a very close encounter on Monday.
		We did on this show know about it a little ahead of time, but the mass public didn't know about it until after it had passed by.
		Now, had it hit...
		But it would have created a hole about two miles in diameter and ruined Earth's day totally.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would have ruined Earth's day, it would have ruined Earth's year, but it wouldn't have destroyed our civilization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		A thousand feet is considerably smaller than 1,000 meters, which would blast us to the Stone Age.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Still, it would have been a bad event.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, making 911 look like.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And again, look, I'm a science fiction kind of guy.
		I'm a scientific kind of guy.
		I'm all in favor of everything that involves getting cameras in the hands of people, getting telescopes in the hands of people, getting computers and cell phones into the hands of people.
		Because the more that happens, the more educated and savvy we are, the brighter our kids are, the more technologically savvy.
		Number one thing is we'll never get Big Brother.
		And that's what I talk about in the Transparent Society.
		And the number two thing is that we'll answer these questions.
		We'll find out if the UFOs, if I'm wrong or if I'm right.
		Because the interesting thing about UFOs is that as more and more cameras, every five or six years, the number of cameras quadruples.
		As the cameras get better and the number of them spread around, the distance of the spotted UFOs doubles at the same speed that the number of cameras does.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now we're going to be getting better and better photographs.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no, no.
		You don't understand, Art.
		The distance of the reported sighting is always increasing to the blurry limit of the camera.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What if we start getting better photographs?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I'd love it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		But you don't get it.
		I'm on the committees.
		I would love nothing better.
		I would just refuse to be the guy who steps forward with the flag.
		I've seen that movie too many times.
		But I'm on these committees.
		Are you kidding?
		I'd be on people.
		I'd be one of the guys assigned to meet these guys.
		I'd be the first to taste their cuisine.
		I'm Californian.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, would you actually be first on the committee to meet them, do you think?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I know the people who would be first on the committee.
		There's a former diplomat named Michael Michaud who's written in to show how open-minded our civilization is getting.
		Ten years ago, the Foreign Service Journal would never have published this article that it just published by my friend, a former Foreign Service officer, about the diplomatic implications of contact with alien life.
		So we're becoming a far more easygoing and far more interested and interesting people.
		And the proof of that is you and I, Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are familiar, are you not, with Brookings report?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, which one is that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Brookings report, briefly, you know, the Brookings Institute was commissioned to study some time ago what the sociological reaction would be if there was contact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it actually concluded that it would be better kept secret.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I'm familiar with that.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And it's the biggest pile of lard I ever saw.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lard.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's awful.
		It's Drac Lard.
		Lard is a euphemism for what I really mean.
		Look, we have been hearing this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, are you saying that based on your own reaction, should there be contact, or based on what you really believe a society as a whole would do?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, of course.
		I grew up in California, and I know what Californians would do if an alien spaceship landed in a parking mall.
		The closest science fiction story to depict what we would really do was a movie called Alien Nation, which portrayed a ship taken over by 250,000 escaped alien slaves.
		They land in the Mojave Desert.
		They're put in camps.
		The ACLU gets them sprung, and they become the latest ethnic group in L.A. That's what we would do.
		That's what Americans would do.
		You see, what the Brookings Institute did was the same old idiot thought.
		We get off on thinking that our fellow citizens are jerks.
		If you're a Republican, you think all Democrats are idiots.
		If you're a Democrat, you think all Republicans are idiots.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, not jerks, but people do, after all, have belief systems.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't cause them to be jerks in my mind that would be threatened depending on the nature of what landed.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, you still think, Art, that you'll handle the information well.
		Your pals will, but the average citizen will go crazy.
		Well, you know what?
		I think the average citizen, you know, the stereotype is the alien spaceship lands, the National Guard surrounds it shaking in their boots and people run and scream.
		Well that's exactly what would happen only the National Guard would be facing outwards trying to protect the aliens from people running and screaming take me for a ride expand my consciousness and have you got any new cuisine?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there would also, though, be another group they'd have to be protected against.
		And those would be the ones who would be the religious fundamentalists who, David, I guarantee you, would regard these not as aliens at all, but as representatives of the lower hierarchy.
		You know, the devil.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Some would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lucifer.
		Some would.
		And they would think that it would be their duty to eradicate these little guys.
		And I've always had the theory before he could ever get to the bottom of the ramp, he'd be full of so much lead, he'd never make it to the bottom of the ramp.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I have more faith in my fellow Americans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good.
		Stay right there.
		We're up to five megapixels now, so...
		Those UFOs are going to really have to get out there.
unidentified		My life's education hasn't hurt enough.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The mechanical zoom lenses and the digital ones, they're getting so good.
		I mean, they're just going to have to go right back to their own planet.
		Pretty soon, we're going to be able to get them wherever they are.
		From the high desert?
		This is coast-to-coast AM.
		All right, David, before we go to the phones, I really want to ask you about this, because it was in a list of questions that they had you prepare, I guess, to do the show.
		The thing about the Postman, your experience with the Postman movie, I would like to ask why you are, are you soured on Hollywood, and if so, why?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, no author is completely soured on Hollywood.
unidentified		They can always sweeten a deal with money.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		As far as the Postman is concerned, you know, when they make a movie of one of your books, you want five things.
		You want it to at least be morally related to what you were trying to say.
		You want it to be exactly what you were trying to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		You want it to be a huge success as a movie.
		You want it to make a lot of money, and you want it to be treated well by the people, those Hollywood people.
		I got one out of five.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which one was that?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It was the most important one.
		It was the only one that really mattered.
		Costner's movie is a great, big, somewhat dumb, somewhat lobotomized, but truly faithful version of the book in that it had the heart.
		It had the basic message that we're in it together, that we should love our civilization, and give it a little loyalty.
		The interesting thing is that the critics all slammed the Postman for its patriotism four years ago when it came out, and for the ludicrous notion that postal workers would be a symbol of courage in a post-bio-terror world.
		Which, you know, he was just four years early.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he sure was.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		But the thing that he absolutely nailed was the basic, basic decency and the basic moral heart of what I was trying to say.
		He didn't capture very much of the intelligence of the book, but it's visually a gorgeous movie.
		It's almost as beautiful visually as Dances with Wolves, and I think it should have been treated better.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Were you present while it was unfolded?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I showed up for about two days, and they treated me with minimal courtesy.
		They never consulted me.
		So they were fools in that regard.
		But, you know, people tend to take themselves too seriously, and people tend to have too high expectations.
		And I try to be a grown-up about this, after all.
		You know, how many people get a movie?
		True.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope the money part turned out right.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It turned out all right.
		The main thing is that a lot more people got to enjoy the book itself and send me messages saying that the book's better.
		I'm always glad to hear that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'm going to...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		to be most interested in what the audience has to say to you you might imagine that some of them will not necessarily be in agreement with you with regard to the fact that we may or may not be visited right now so prepare yourself for that I am prepared you sound like you are so here we go first time caller line you're on the air with David Bryn hi this is Devin in Maui Maui Hawaii yes doing it mr. Bryn I'm a big fan of yours I'm
unidentified		I'm very familiar with the Earth series as well as the Uplift series, and I just want you to know that you're one of the best science fiction writers out there.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you very much.
unidentified		As far as your comments on the UFO situation and as to whether or not we're being visited, I don't think you've considered the full mythological and cosmological evidence as folklore.
		For example, every religion in the world has a sense of the supernatural that can date back thousands of years
		of years and specifically in the last oh I'd say 300 400 years we've had similar alien concepts that can be attributed to things like leprechauns and demons and things that today in the 21st century we see as aliens and I wanted to know what your comments on the folk aspect of this and whether or not that could be another angle for you.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Excellent, excellent question.
		And it really latches onto something that my wife noticed one day when she picked up a book, Whitley Strybert's book on aliens, and it had one of these grays on it.
		And she said, huh, when I first glanced at this out the corner of my eye, I thought it was about elves.
		And it suddenly occurred to me that that's exactly what they are.
		They fit exactly the same profile.
		Meddlesome, long-fingered creatures that sneak in and snatch people and give them something exciting in exchange for a viscerally fearful experience.
		That's exactly what happened at the rim of the firelight.
		Only our ancestors always glimpsed these people just beyond the fire at the mouth of the cave.
		Then when they had towns, it was always the woods nearby that they warned the children not to go into.
		Today, Cub Scouts go running through the same woods with flashlights and middle-class Americans go up into the Himalayas screaming, Yeti, Yeti.
		So I decided to write a story called Those Eyes, which is the one that I cribbed for my little haunting rant.
		And you can download it from DavidBrin.com.
		And art in particular will get a giggle out of it because it's about a late-night talk show host.
		And it's the notion that every culture has these myths for a reason, and that is grandpas.
		Grandpas can be counted on to be curmudgeons and say that things were better when they were kids.
		Every previous civilization believed in the look backward notion towards a golden age, that there was a golden age from which we fell because of arrogance or because of some sin or something.
		We're the first civilization in all of human history that has reversed the direction to which we look to a golden age, and science fiction is part of this.
		We tend to see a golden age as something that we will eventually, with hard work and goodwill, build for our grandchildren, or maybe that they'll build, having learned from our mistakes.
		It's a sea change.
		It's a total change in our direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but what that man really was asking was, why aren't you willing to consider all of this mythology over all these years as bolstering the possibility that we've been visited all along?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Because every culture believed it, and every culture wasn't visited.
		Every culture believes in a golden age, and they can point to no physical evidence.
		It's zero.
		So the combination of this tends to make one believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's because they're good.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		If they're good, fine.
		Then leave us alone, is what I say.
		And people who go to DavidBrin.com can see something else very interesting.
		This guy named Alan Tuff at the University of Toronto figured out that there was one kind of study that hadn't been tried.
		And that is the notion that they or their machine emissaries might already be in the solar system, lurking and reading our Internet right now.
		Absolutely.
		So he set up an Internet site saying, hello, aliens.
		This is for you.
		This is a discussion group.
		We invite you to join.
		Instead of having to beam the message into outer space, it simply says, here's a website.
		And he invited me to join.
		And I put on my contribution to this site that lists 11 reasons why aliens might be lurking and reading our websites but not talking to us.
		And discussing those 11 reasons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what are some of the reasons?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, one of them might be a prime directive, but you have to take apart the prime directive into some of the reasons why they would have one.
		And some of them aren't so nice.
		Like, for instance, stealing our culture without having to pay for it.
		Because we're putting our encyclopedias, our art forms, our music all on the web.
		What would an impresario best be able to do?
		You saw this in the 1950s during the folk song era.
		Producers used to go up into the Appalachians and record folk songs for free just by flattering old-timers and then take them down and make millions off them.
		So it's the intergalactic version of Payola.
		So, you know, the thing is, you see, I am not skeptical about UFOs because of closed-mindedness.
		I'm skeptical about UFOs because of open-mindedness.
		There are so many possibilities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And one of them has to be that some of these sightings are real.
unidentified		I have never said.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you sort of said, but they can all be just explained away.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		No, I never said that.
		I never said that.
		What I said was that I'm willing to concede that a certain fraction of these might be little silver guys and spaceships, but isn't it funny how they're always at the edge of vision and their behavior is always what we would call deeply despicable?
		Well, no, maybe they don't think of it that way.
		I'm perfectly willing to admit that.
		One of the great advances of our culture has been to accept the possibility of cultural differences.
		That's why Star Trek has been preaching the politically correct stuff that it's been preaching, unlike all the previous science fiction.
		We're working our way towards trying to figure out a more empathic, a more listening to the points of view of others way of looking at things.
		That's part of what I'm talking about in my nonfiction book, The Transparent Society.
		And it's also why I do thought experiments, like in my new novel, Killing People.
		The point is, though, that I have yet to see anybody come up with a reasonable reason why UFOs should be forgiven if they are behaving that way.
		Because they behave like chirks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, there are many stories of apparent genetic interest based on the kind of experiments that are reportedly done on abductees and that sort of thing.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's unfriendly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, whoever said that they're going to be friendly, there have been lots of people who have written that, you know, all of that is silly myth itself, and it's silly supposition that they would be friendly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		After all, we're not friendly to a lot of remote societies that we encounter.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		In which case, somebody needs to taunt them, and I just did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you did taunt them.
		Yes.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with David Brin.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good evening, gentlemen.
unidentified		This is Brad the Paperboy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where are you?
unidentified		Morton, Illinois, listening on 1470 WMBD.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I was wondering, Mr. Brin, it seemed like you would like to explain that a lot of UFOs are government technology that we are just keeping on the shelf.
unidentified		So I would just like to know a few scenarios for when that technology would be taken off the shelf.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, after all, David, you did take apart the whole secrecy question that we just for three generations would not be possible to keep secret, but then did allude to the fact that we could keep secrets about, say, anti-gravity.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, I didn't say that I believed it, but what I say is that it's much more plausible that instead of three generations, that you might get 10 or 15 years of a small number of engineers saying, this is dangerous stuff, we don't want the Russians to have it, or the Chinese or somebody else.
		Or this is dangerous stuff, we don't want people burning their fingers with it until we figure out how to keep it from exploding in our faces.
		That I consider to be much more plausible.
		I didn't say that I believe that UFOs are strange ships over Area 51, but your story art is highly plausible.
		I've heard several like that.
		And I would find it thrilling to suddenly find out that we can get past this awful, awful drudgery of having to put things on top of these gigantic, horrible Roman candles that we can do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you had been in my place and you had seen this, would it have made any sort of attitude adjustment, do you think, in the way your presentation is unfolding tonight?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I am open-minded enough to say that your own testimony about this has tweaked my opinion.
		I have probably this evening notched up a couple of notches my belief that there's stuff going on in Area, that there's some very interesting new developments waiting to come out of Area 51.
		I urge all engineers and scientists within hearing range of this to always consider whether or not this is the year to blow the whistle on whatever secret you've got.
		Because the rest of us will defend you.
		We're out here.
		Our bill will drum up the public opinion.
		So that all leads into what I talk about in the Transparent Society, where the only secrets that can be kept or should be kept are temporary ones, not ones that stand in the way of governments or corporations or anybody being held accountable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, surely this kind of secret, anti-gravity, would fit well within that category, one that shouldn't be kept.
		You could make a million military good reasons, I suppose, for keeping it secret, but it would be technology that would free us from the environmental nightmare that we're in right now.
		It would do so many things to change the world that it's hard for me to believe that a majority of scientists would agree to keep such a massive secret.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Don't challenge a science fiction author not to come up with possible ways, reasons why legitimate scientists might believe that it's in our best interest.
		For instance, what if this anti-gravity technology used micro-black holes?
		And that if people were using them willy-nilly, some would drop into the Earth.
		My novel, Earth, was about such a scenario being the ultimate pollution.
		So if you're going to challenge me, Art, I could take the devil's advocate.
		I could swing right around and come up with some reasons why decent, libertarian American scientists might decide that something is too dangerous.
		But what I'm saying right now out there, to the listening audience out there, is all people, consider whether your secrets really are in the best interest or whether you're just rationalizing some excuse.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a better taunt.
		I like that taunt better.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with David Bryn.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, how you doing?
		My name's Ken.
		I'm calling from Lexington.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And my question to your guest and to you are too, it has to do with Bentwaters.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		It seems that there's a lot of evidence there as far as radar, witnesses, documentation, and a lieutenant colonel, who's the deputy commander, actually puts out a report.
		What's the take on that?
		I mean, what was the Air Force thinking or why, you know, where's the angle on that?
		Plus, it's not went anywhere.
		It seems like it just they popped it up, they put all this stuff up, and then, you know, nobody's stirred it or, you know, done anything with it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's referring to the Bentwaters case, and I'll bet you know all about it.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, you're going to have to inform me about this, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My goodness.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it might be that I know it under a different name, but let's see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
		Bentwaters is correct.
		You know, we really can't take the time right now to lay out the whole Bentwater affair for him.
		We just can't do it.
		But there were people like the Lieutenant Colonel that he spoke of.
		They have this close encounter in the woods, I mean, with beings and the whole ball of acts and witnesses and the lieutenant colonel and all the rest of it.
		And it's a very famous case.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Look, the thing that I can do in this short time is, and the thing that I can do with both my fiction and the nonfiction is not to answer specifics, but to try to provoke looking at things from a different angle.
		Here's another, here's a metaphor that I think may help.
		Take a look at the movie E.T. Now, you are manipulated throughout that movie to worry about the dark government because the music is set that way.
		But when you finally meet the guy with the keys, he's Elliot grown up.
		He's the guy qualified to make contact.
		Take that movie E.T. and go through that whole first scene in which the music and the tension is set up so that you're fearful for E.T. and you're fearful and you're all intense about the humans chasing through the forest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're on a break here.
unidentified		All right.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		See if you can find any gun.
		There are no guns.
		Humans are just using flashlights trying to find out what's going on.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold it right there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		David Bryn is my guest.
unidentified		I'm Mark Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		of course is coast to coast AM raging through the night time racing with the shadows.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
		New Comp Radio 630.
		WPO Providence.
		Southern New England depends on WPRO's exclusive AccuWeather forecast.
		Partly cloudy overnight, low 34.
		Thursday, breezy and mild, with clouds and sunshine, high 52.
		Thursday night, mostly cloudy, low 34.
		Friday, cloudy to partly sunny and cooler, high 44.
		With WPRO's exclusive AccuWeather, I'm Reggie Luff.
		You can depend on AccuWeather at News Talk Radio 630, WPRO.
		Search and rescue teams were hampering their efforts to get to a downed refueling plane in southwest Pakistan because of rough, mountainous terrain.
		Seven U.S. Marines were killed in the crash, including the first servicewoman killed in the Afghanistan operation.
		ABC's Vic Ratner has more on the plane itself.
		The plane that went down is a workhorse of the military.
		Variations of the C-130 are used for everything from gunships to refueling systems.
		This particular model was used by the Marines to refuel helicopters, and it was also used to carry cargo and troops.
		Seven people on board when it crashed into a mountain.
		There was no Mayday call from the pilot.
		The investigation into why the plane went down is underway.
		President Bush is expressing sympathy to the families of those killed, but he says the battle in the war against terror must continue.
		I'm proud to report the Americans are patient.
		That we're entering into a dangerous phase in our war against terror.
		I'm Sherry Preston, ABC News.
		Steve Cass and Rush Limbaugh back to back on WPRO.
		Steve Cass takes your calls mornings following Paul Harvey at 835.
		Are they doing some profiling?
		Sure they are.
		Last time I checked, everybody who was a terrorist has been of Arabic descent.
		And at noon, it's Megaland of the Free Dittos with Rush Limbaugh.
		What's the Senate been doing?
		Well, turns out the work of the American people has ground to a near standstill.
		Steve Cass and Rush Limbaugh back to back.
		On AM 630, WPRO.
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		I know it's basketball and all, but you got a little dribble on your lip, cuz.
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unidentified		Term Life Insurance Form TL06.
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		Speak with a Matrix Direct professional.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		Use only as directed.
unidentified		This is Coast to Coast with Art Bell, Afternoons at 3.
		It's the Dan York Show on WPRO.
		Give him a week and you'll be hooked.
		On AM 630, WPRO.
		WPRO.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is.
		We're taking calls for David Brin.
		Very, very interesting program in so many ways.
		Stimulating.
		It should make you all think out there.
		And I'm sure you're doing that, aren't you?
		So, stay right where you are.
		There's much more ahead.
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		I know my child, my daughter.
		My son.
unidentified		She's just like me.
unidentified		He knows exactly when to lead his girlfriends to beat curfew.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He tells her friends he gets to see when he knows he gets naked.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She thinks her thighs are too big.
unidentified		He sits at that same pizza place every day after school with the same guys.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, my daughter.
unidentified		His chemistry teaches a bit once she's home.
		She breaks her neck for every grade she gets.
		I know he hates me sometimes.
		He knows kids.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He knows cooks.
unidentified		Who take drugs, and it scares me to death.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		Back into tonight, once again, David Brin is my guest, and we're going to continue on the telephones with him.
		There's been plenty of setup here, so if you don't have questions, then you're just not thinking, are you?
		All right, David, once again, are you ready?
unidentified		Ready.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here they come.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with David Brin.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you guys tonight?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're all right, sir.
		Where are you?
		Tusculous, Alabama.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		I was going to put this question to you guys, and you might have to stretch your imagination a little bit here now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what we're here for.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Did you ever consider the possibility that the dead may be waiting to be rescued by the living?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hmm.
		Actually, that's a pretty intriguing question in a lot of ways because cloning brings with it one other possibility that we didn't discuss with David, and that is the cloning of the dead.
		You thought about that one, David?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, it's a fascinating notion that's been a lot in the literature lately in several different ways.
		For instance, a physicist, one of the best physicists in the world named Frank Tipler, wrote a book called The Physics of Immortality about five years ago in which he suggested the possibility that physics itself predicts that at the end of the universe,
		all the intelligent life forms would have so much energy and computing power available to them that they'd be able to take all the infrared radiation in space and use it to see the people who stood outside and radiated it from their bodies into space and therefore know who they were and compute, simulate, bring them back.
		That's sort of, it's a fascinating notion that is sort of very, very much in many ways parallels some of the religious notions of resurrection of the dead.
		Now, on a more near-term basis, there's a notion of potentially cloning, but that only brings back the body, not the mind.
		There are people who talk about freezing, who sign up to have their head frozen.
		I know several of them.
		Until some future time when the exact location of every synapse and every neuron in the brain could be, and every chemical in the brain could be mapped, and then the personality could be recreated in a computer and then maybe in a real person.
		Science fiction has covered a number of these things, and I can recommend on my website, I'll try to post the names of a number of science fiction stories by very prominent and excellent writers who have done their homework that deal with many of the parameters and many of the interesting thought experiments that have been done on human immortality.
		I've noticed something very interesting, though.
		Often when I'm at a supermarket or something like that, somebody will say, the cashier will say, that'll be 3092.
		And I've started doing a little survey by saying, may you live until that year.
		Somebody says, 3940.
		May you live until that year.
		And I find an interesting difference between men and women.
		Men who are behind the cash register say, huh, another 2,000 years.
		I'd have to go back to school a few times, I guess.
		Trade in the old body.
		Sounds good.
		Thanks.
		Women, except for the women who work at Home Depot, women universally say, God, I hope not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And why the difference in those at Home Depot?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		This is very, very interesting because it's one of the few cases in which I'm rendered completely speechless.
		I have no theory to explain why men and women give this different answer.
		I'm at a loss.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm more interested in the Home Depot people.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, because they hang around men.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see.
unidentified		I hope I at least have used the collar.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		In a sense, my new novel, Kiln People, and again, let's emphasize that's K-I-L-N, that's about making clay duplicates of people.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		In a sense, this is a kind of immortality, only instead of extending the human lifespan linearly in the number of years you get, it's about extending the human lifespan in parallel, where each day you can live the same day with three bodies, then bring them together, get the memory back, be in two places, three places at once at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But doesn't killing people, fascinating as it is, fall short of the application of the technology at that point?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, I explore lots of different possibilities of that technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you do?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All sorts of possibilities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, once you can download memory into something and have the conscious, self-aware being, then you don't have to limit it to a short-term volatile memory.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, for one thing, what about being able to download your mind into different kinds of bodies.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Animal bodies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dolphin bodies.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Dolphin bodies, the opposite sex.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Boy, would we have more empathy with each other?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, wouldn't we?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		If you could spend a couple days as the opposite sex, you'd sure learn a thing or two.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with David Bryn.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		This is Steve in Idaho.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Steve.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I'm listening to KDIO.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		K-I-D-O, actually, I think.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		K-I-D-O, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and I'm a longtime fan of both, of you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I've read your books ever since I was in high school.
		And Stark Eyed Rising had me so engrossed I nearly flunked a communications class.
		Do you know that that is the kindest thing you can possibly say to an author?
		To come up to them and curse them and say, you made me late for class, late to work, late to study, late to feed the cats, and especially you made me miss making love.
		What's your question?
		Well, I've tried to limit it down to two.
		I won't even mention, well, limit it to what as a kid, I grew up on a ranch and caught a fledgling sparrow hawk, and since it's a falcon, tried to train it.
		And I always thought how wonderful it would be if it was smart enough through some surgery to be smart.
		And after raising a lot of pigs and hogs, one of our hogs was so intelligent he knew how to short out the electric fence to escape.
		And if we get to the point where we can uplift animals and someone goes and starts uplifting produce animals like cows or hogs, what kind of repercussions would that have for the produce industry?
		And also the probability of when we actually do or if we actually do get into space, will it be, do you think it could be possible that it'd be more like Star Trek meets Call of Cthulhu?
		In other words, there'd be hideous intelligence out there that their minds are so strange and psychology is so foreign that it would just short-circuit our ability to comprehend them.
		Two excellent questions.
		Boy, you have great listeners, Ark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I do, sure.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, the first one is the moral aspect of the possibility of eating animals or misusing animals who might have descendants who might sue us for it.
		I mean, dolphins and chimpanzees clearly are candidates for uplift, and my novel Star Tide Rising and the Uplift War portray this in the future.
		Pigs are probably on, and parrots and sea lions are probably on the upper, are probably over the line in having this potential.
		And one could make an moral argument of drawing the line on what you can eat at what might potentially be uplifted someday.
		I cannot picture cows and chickens piloting starships.
		For some reason, I can picture pigs.
		But your other question has to do whether or not if we meet aliens, could we conceivably understand them?
		And my problem is that I get the heebie-jeebies over any cliché.
		Anytime somebody tells me I can't do something, I'm tempted to think about a way that I might be able to.
		And we hear this cliché again and again and again.
		The alien is going to be incomprehensible to us.
		And the reason why I don't think this will happen is because, again, I'm a Californian.
		If you send a spaceship of Californians out into outer space, we met some strange, cosmic, weird Kthulu alien, cosmic space muffin, weird thing, I believe we'll be able to talk to them because 1% of Californians would try to date them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Easily.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Easily.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		2%, 3%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What makes you think that if Californians were, in fact, the unintended ambassadors of the entire human race, that we simply would not be sterilized as a planet immediately?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It would depend on which Californians and how tolerant they were.
		The point is, I use Californians as a metaphor for Americans, which is a metaphor for Western civilizations.
		I think that we would hunger for the alien.
		It shows in all of our movies.
		If we met somebody we didn't understand, we'd keep trying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, anything else?
unidentified		Well, yes, if I may ask one more question.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		It's regarding the, I believe the mummy's name was Harvey.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Hervey.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hervey, yes.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, you know, this is one of the problems with dealing with a guy who does not want to just write one series, is that you have to wait for me to get around to telling some of the stories.
		There is an additional uplift story that I've given free on my website that you can download.
		It's davidbrin.com.
		Right next to the stories about UFOs and some of the possibilities there, you can also download one called Temptation, which is an extension, sort of a freebie extension of my uplift universe.
		But my problem as an author is I get bored.
		Even something as interesting as Uplift and Dolphins in Space and things like that, I have to alternate.
		I have to do that far future stuff.
		Then I have to do something very near-term and realistic, like The Postman and Earth.
		And then I go to something intermediate like my new novel, Kiln People.
		So you're just going to have to be patient and hope that we all live a real long time.
		Great.
		Thank you again.
		Postman was also a good book.
		And the libertarian streak in me always comes out when reading something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, my friend.
		Thank you very much.
		Best of luck.
		Take care.
		First time caller line, you're on here with David Brin.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Art.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, I'm kind of confused.
		I listened to you on, I've got that XM satellite radio now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And you're carried by Clear Channel International, I believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
unidentified		Or something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's it.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Anyway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You got it.
unidentified		Okay, I'm having a time lag.
unidentified		The show that I'm listening to is you with David Hoagland.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Richard Hoagland.
unidentified		Richard Hoagland, yes, I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's Time Travel.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I know Richard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you are.
		Time Travel Indeed.
		Yes, they are not carrying it live yet, sir, so I don't know what to tell you.
		It's just not happened yet.
unidentified		Okay.
		Well, I apologize.
		The reason I called mainly is just to thank you for such a quality program.
		I drive a truck for a living, and I work the night shift mostly.
		Okay.
		And it's really just a great thing to be able to listen and keep your mind focused on something other than driving all the time.
		And I really enjoy your show and your.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very kind.
		I agree with you.
		Driving all night is the only way to do it.
		Music will never cut it.
		You'll fall asleep eventually.
		Do you have a question for David?
unidentified		Well, my biggest question about aliens, I guess, would be if they're so well known by our government and our government knows or is believed to know so much about them, why are they not more known to the general public?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, actually, that's something we only sort of covered a little bit or maybe didn't cover at all, and that is how much knowledge you think the government might have about aliens.
		I guess your answer would be none at all because they aren't here and they haven't made contact with us or them, meaning the government.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I have a sliding scale of what I believe.
		I don't believe anything absolutely.
		I've got an open mind.
		Even though I'm on the official committees for contact, my guess is that if something really sneaky and secret is going on, that they would not include me because of the philosophy that I talk about in the Transparent Society that's in all my works.
		And that is that we're more likely to be a wise civilization if we openly discuss stuff.
		So, you know, I'm not saying that some secret group is not in contact with aliens as we speak.
		As a matter of fact, if you look at DavidBren.com, that is one of the possibilities that's listed in that discussion of alien life.
		It's just that, as I said about Hangar 18, it's kind of implausible that such a secret would last for three generations.
		And it's kind of implausible that sooner or later, because they would have to assign our best human minds to this.
		They'd have to assign our best scientists, our best engineers.
		And these people have a tendency to be the most American of Americans.
		Sooner or later, they're going to say, enough of this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, you know, the Brookings report, which you did pretty much dismiss, suggests that the group impacted the most by the realization of alien presence would be, believe it or not, scientists.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, scientists would be, well, they'd be thrown.
		They would feel it intensely.
		They would be fantastically thrilled.
		They'd be curious.
		Some of them would be deeply worried that all of their knowledge would be made obsolete overnight.
		The best scientists would be instantly thrilled and want whatever.
		They hunger to find out what's going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of curiosity, what percentage would you make that out to be?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you know, it's a sliding scale.
		One goes into the other.
		You know, I knew when I was at Caltech, I knew some of the best in the world.
		And they all had artistic hobbies.
		They were all irascibly independent.
		You read the stories of Richard Feynman, and during the Manhattan Project, he couldn't keep a secret.
		He broke into all the states.
		They had to let him go because he was too valuable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, though, the question was, what percentage would you guess would be in the thrilled category?
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I would say that at least half of all the scientists in the world and engineers would at least feel some thrill.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		And I'd say that the top 20% would have been heaven and earth to meet an alien.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
		Let's see.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with David Bryn.
		Hello, where are you, please?
unidentified		I'm Craig from Peoria.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Craig.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Well, I've got a question and maybe kind of a comment.
unidentified		You mentioned earlier about how the pixelation and these UFOs seem to be getting further and further out from our cameras.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As the cameras get better, they get further out, he said, yes.
unidentified		My question is, he doesn't really believe, or you don't believe, that we have been technically contacted by aliens.
		What's the possibility of us being the first?
		Someone or something has to have been the first somewhere.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		That might be the reason why we're always trying to search for our God or our gods or whatever.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		I think that's an utterly fascinating subject, an utterly fascinating possibility.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Two of my short stories, one of which won a Hugo Award to toot my own horn, but that's just to give it some credibility there, deal with the notion that maybe we might be the lonely ones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All alone.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		We may be the first to go out there, and there may be something that's systematically winnowing and chaffing, just cutting down the numbers, cutting down new life forms as they make it up.
		Now, we used to think that it would be nuclear war, but we seem to have at least proved that it's possible to get past it.
		Even if we fry ourselves in the nuclear war, we proved that we could have not done it.
		Maybe it's ecological self-destruction.
		But you know what?
		Each time we run into one of these things, we turn out to be a little smarter than we thought we were.
		Just as we're proving to be a little nicer and a little wiser than we thought we were a few years ago.
		Now, I may be known as this freaking optimist, but it may be that we will be the first intelligent life form to evade all of these traps and get out there and teach the others.
		In other words, instead of like the Earth stood still, aliens coming down and lecturing to us, maybe we'll be the ones to get out there and rescue Not only dolphins and chimps from their frustration here on Earth, but to go out there and rescue everybody else who might get trapped or might get destroyed by their own self-indulgences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, and or even going a step further, there is no other life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, we are alone.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		In which case, what we'll do is what Americans dream of doing in science fiction.
		We'll create the alien.
		We'll create the alien by creating artificial intelligences and computers.
		We'll create the aliens by uplifting dolphins and chimpanzees and other animals.
		We'll create the alien culturally, as we're doing right now as we speak, in every high school, every community in America.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe we'll just uplift the Pentium 34 chip.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Because we hunger for the alien.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, you know what?
		We're out of time.
		I mean, like, the show's over.
		So, what a pleasure it has been to interview you.
		You're a lot of fun, David, and I would like to have you back sometime.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Art, you're a treasure, and people can look up any of these things that they want on DavidBryn.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, my friend.
david brin ▲ ● ▼		Good luck.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good luck.
		Good luck, indeed.
		Luck we all need.
		All right, folks, that's it.
		For tonight, anyway.
		Tomorrow we continue the trek through the night.
		From the high desert, I'm Mark Bell.
		Hot on.

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