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Sept. 18, 2002 - Art Bell

02:45:50

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Underground Expeditions - Bonnie Crystal - Billy Rogers - Legalizing Marijuana

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01:00:47

bonnie crystal

01:03:49

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all.
		Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you may be across the world's many time zones.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		This is postponement a.m.
		Something we're going to be doing tonight.
		A lot, actually.
		In the first hour, I told you I would go on a hunt for Billy Rogers.
		He's the man here heading the initiative.
		The amazing initiative.
		Here in Nevada, we've always been a very staunchly in many ways.
		You know what?
		Not conservative, libertarian kind of state.
		In other words, people here have always been more or less kind of rough, tough, outwest libertarians.
		They still are.
		Believe me, in my opinion.
		And marijuana has always been a very serious offense here.
		In fact, marijuana was a felony.
		And then not too long ago, that suddenly became changed.
		I mean, I live in a very unusual state where we have legal gambling, galore, everywhere, where we have legal prostitution in many more counties than not.
		And things happen here that don't happen elsewhere.
		It's just a very unusual state.
		Soon we'll have all that nuclear waste here.
		Now, I have for years said that the madness really, it's time the madness stopped.
		I'm talking about reefer madness.
		And not the madness described by our government so long ago, but the madness of continuing to put people in jail for this.
		Now, I know the money forces, and I know what's going on, and I really do politically.
		I understand the forces aligned against marijuana, not the least of which is the government.
		But there are certain facts, in fact, most facts surrounding marijuana that have simply been lied about, misrepresented.
		Use whatever word you want to use.
		And along comes this AP story, and I just flipped out, and they're getting ready to try and legalize the voters have approved, signed enough signatures to approve a ballot on the ballot question that would legalize three ounces of marijuana for personal use.
		Now, this in a state where it was a felony not very long ago, and I flipped out, and furthermore, the Associated Press story that I read to you said that the organizers and promoters of this, it's about 50-50 right now, you know, split down the middle, and the organizers are gaining ground.
		And so I thought, let's find out what's going on.
		And so here comes Billy Rogers.
		Billy Rogers is campaign manager and spokesperson for Nevadans for responsible law enforcement.
		He's a man behind the drive to make Nevada the first state with legal marijuana.
		An avid sports fan and blackjack player.
		He has made three or four trips a year to Las Vegas since he was 21.
		Rogers moved to Las Vegas in May to take over the petition-gathering drive of Nevadans for responsible law enforcement.
		He had been hired in December by the Washington, D.C.-based Medical Marijuana Project as its director of state policies.
		During the spring, he worked on efforts so far unsuccessful to establish medical marijuana programs in Vermont and Massachusetts.
		Then, the marijuana policy project offered him a job here in Nevada for what we're about to talk about.
		With passage of question 9 in November, and again in 2004, adult Nevadans would be permitted under the state constitution to possess up to three ounces of marijuana in the privacy of their homes.
		Nevadans have already approved the use of medical marijuana, and about 200 have signed up for that program.
		For most part of his adult life, Rogers ran political campaigns.
		That's what this is, after all, right?
		He and his parents have all served as campaign managers for Democrats seeking the governor's office in Texas.
		It's just like a political campaign when you're trying to get something through.
		In the early 1990s, Rogers spent three years in Russia editing the Moscow Guardian magazine and conducting seminars to try to teach ex-communists the benefits of capitalism.
		And so we shall have now a little capitalism, then we shall have Billy Rogers.
		It seems to me we do incredible amounts of harm to our young people when we lie to them.
		When we tell them lies about drugs like marijuana, when we tell them it's addictive, it will lead you down the long path to self-destruction and all the rest of that sort of thing.
		It's not physically addictive.
		We don't have to, I suppose, sell its properties here, but I would be sure proud to be the state, the first state, to tell its young people the truth.
		And that doesn't mean marijuana or anything else you would smoke or any drug is good for you, because probably the answer is it's not.
		But, you know, this is reality, folks, and people use things like alcohol and drugs and all the rest of it for at least some escape from what they consider to be their everyday reality.
		I mean, it's always going to be around.
		It's always been around.
		It's probably the second world's oldest commodity.
		Here is Billy Rogers.
		Billy, hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		It's good to be on your show.
		I'm a longtime fan, and this is a real thrill for me to be on you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you've listened?
unidentified		Been listening for about six or seven years, especially on those long drives to Las Vegas from Texas.
unidentified		You keep me awake at night, and always a pleasure to listen to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I can hear the Texas in your voice.
		Absolutely.
		Hold on one sec.
		We have a little echo.
		Let me see if I can get rid of that.
		Might be better.
		I don't know.
		Anyway, you obviously were brought in by this local group who had decided they wanted to try and make marijuana virtually.
		Would it do that?
		Question 9.
		If it passes, would it virtually make marijuana legal?
unidentified		Well, it does a few things.
		First of all, adults 21 and older would be allowed to possess three ounces or less of marijuana in the privacy of their own home.
		We also have a medical marijuana provision under the care of a doctor.
		Seriously ill patients, cancer patients would have much easier access to medical marijuana.
		But smoking marijuana would be prohibited in all public places.
		Anyone who sold marijuana to children would go to prison under this initiative.
		Marijuana would be taxed just like tobacco products, which should provide the state with millions and millions of dollars.
		And most importantly, law enforcement officers wouldn't be wasting their time and resources arresting people for small amounts of marijuana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now I want to understand how that would work.
		In other words, people would assume, I think we'll assume, that when this passes, if it passes, there's no chance they're going to get arrested for getting caught with pot or being in possession of marijuana under three ounces.
		Would that really be the case?
		Or, you know, I was listening to Washington earlier today, and man, they're making all kinds of noise about the war on drugs continuing to include marijuana and marijuana being awful.
		And, you know, they're really going to bore in from the Fed side of things.
		So where would that leave us if we did pass this?
unidentified		Well, the federal drug czar was in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, and he was asked point blank, will you arrest people for small amounts of marijuana if this initiative becomes law?
		And he said the federal government would not crack down on Nevada, that they would not arrest people for small amounts of marijuana.
		Nevertheless, he said he was against it.
		And I read in the newspaper this morning where the federal drug czar is coming out here on October 9th and 10th to tell Nevadans how to vote.
		Now, I offered today to pay for his plane ticket.
		Now, we will put him on economy class, so we're not going to spend a lot of money to get him out here.
		And I don't think they'll take us up on his offer, but the fact of the matter is what the federal government is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very unlikely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very unlikely, Billy.
unidentified		But what they're doing right now is using federal tax dollars to campaign against Question 9.
		And our point was if he's going to come out here, we'll go ahead and pay for his plane ticket so the taxpayers don't have to.
		I see.
		But my guess is he doesn't want to get in line on Southwest Transportation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You make a very, very good point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The U.S. tax dollars then are being used to effectively do what you're being paid to do on the other side.
unidentified		Well, absolutely.
		I mean, we have to go out and raise money, and we have to report all of our contributions and all of our expenditures, and the Federal Government doesn't have to do that.
		We've already had the drug czar out here one time.
		We've had the head of the DEA out here one time campaigning against this.
		The good news is most Nevadans really don't care what they think, and Nevadans don't like being told how to vote, especially by a couple of Washington bureaucrats.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know they don't.
		Nevadans, as I outlined at the beginning, are quite libertarian.
		I mean, they tend to be conservative, but they tend to be libertarian conservatives.
		And it's kind of like, stay the hell out of my face, and I'll stay out of your face.
		And really, that's what this is all about, to a large degree, isn't it?
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My personal life, and if I want to smoke pot and I'm an adult in the privacy of my own home, just stay the hell away from me.
unidentified		That's all it does.
		I mean, opponents will try to tell you a lot of different things that this will do, but ultimately it protects responsible adults in the privacy of their own home.
		And most people in Nevada, as you know, really don't have a problem with what people do in the privacy of their own homes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so who would be allowed to possess marijuana should this pass?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would it apply only to state residents or could Californians and others who come from, I don't know, all over the place?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, any adult over the age of 21 would be allowed to possess up to three ounces of marijuana.
		So, yeah, somebody coming in from out of state could certainly buy a little marijuana and use it here in a private residence.
		And one of the things we're looking at is how many tourists come into the state and what would be the economic impact of tourists buying marijuana when they came here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would be the impact?
unidentified		Well, we've asked for an economic impact study.
		The estimate that I got was about 1.5 million tourists who come through Las Vegas every year are regular users of marijuana.
		The economists are putting together the economic model for us.
		But I think we're talking about millions and millions of dollars in tax revenue, not only from Nevada citizens, but also from people coming in from that state.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's very nice here in Nevada as it is.
		We have no state income tax.
		That is thanks to gambling.
		So you're saying this would even offer is a little more?
unidentified		It probably, yeah.
		Yeah, I don't think there's any question that it'd be a good tax revenue source.
		And of course, here in Nevada, like a lot of other states around the country, there's a budget deficit, and certainly that could help with the budget deficit.
		And certainly, you know, it could mean more money for education, more money for other government services, or maybe even a tax cut somewhere down the road.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you say to people about children?
		This is the reason that I'm so adamant about this and have been for all of my career, and that is that we seem to lie to our children about this.
		And I've always thought, you know, these poor children, they get up into high school or even earlier now, I suppose, and they try marijuana.
		And they say, damn, they lied.
		This is okay.
		There's nothing wrong with this.
		It's all a big lie.
		And then what's worried me is that they tie this lie in with what I consider to be truth about cocaine, heroin, these harder drugs.
		And so these poor kids, it's like if you lie to them once, they're going to figure, and who wouldn't, that you've lied to them about the rest of it.
		And that makes it more likely they're going to go on and try these hard drugs and really get hooked.
		So I always thought we ought to tell these kids and the adults out there the truth instead of a lie.
unidentified		I agree.
unidentified		I mean, we ought to be telling kids that they shouldn't do any drugs, whether it be marijuana or alcohol or cigarettes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course, yes.
unidentified		You know, I was watching ABC News did a little focus group after John Walters previewed his new anti-marijuana campaign.
		And what the high school kids were saying was, well, if that's really a problem, and the problem was that I don't know if you've seen the TV spots, but they say Joe bought a marijuana cigarette and that money was used to gun down eight people in Columbia.
		Well, what the kids in the focus groups were saying is, well, if that's a problem, why don't you just legalize it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, if you grow it here, nobody has to kill anybody in Columbia.
unidentified		Well, exactly, and especially in a regulated marketplace.
		I mean, what happened when you got rid of prohibition?
		All the bootleggers were out of business.
		So, you know, and you don't see people, you know, you don't see people in front of schools trying to sell six pack of beers to kids.
		I mean, that just doesn't happen.
		So, you know, in a regulated marketplace, first of all, we believe that marijuana would be much less available to children.
		I mean, there's a difference between the clerk at the 7-Eleven and a drug dealer.
		The clerk at the 7-Eleven will card a 16-year-old kid trying to buy beer.
		The drug dealer doesn't card anybody.
		There's a Columbia University study recently.
		It came out last month that said that they polled more than 1,000 kids between the ages of 12 and 17, and they reported that it was three times easier to buy marijuana than it was to buy beer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I imagine that to be true.
		So at least let us begin to tell the truth.
		And what is, you know, in a nutshell, Billy, what is the truth about marijuana versus what we're told?
unidentified		Well, I don't think anybody on our campaign is going to advocate that people use marijuana.
		I understand.
		But what the scientific evidence shows is that marijuana is much less addictive than alcohol, much less addictive than cigarettes, much less addictive than cocaine or heroin.
		A small percentage of people do develop addiction, but the vast majority...
		Absolutely.
		But the vast majority of people who use marijuana, and 80 million Americans have tried marijuana, 80 million Americans haven't tried cocaine.
		80 million Americans haven't tried heroin.
		So I think the evidence is pretty clear that marijuana is not a gateway drug and that marijuana certainly is not as dangerous as drinking alcohol.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For a second, let's say with the question of marijuana, with alcohol, some people get sad, more people get bold.
		People drive horrendously.
		In other words, the effects of alcohol are pretty well known by everybody.
		You've got a lot of really nasty drunks.
		Generally, what are the effects of marijuana versus alcohol?
unidentified		I don't smoke marijuana now.
		It's been a long time, but I would say probably the worst thing that happens when somebody's smoking marijuana is they watch a little bit too much television.
		You don't hear stories about people smoking marijuana and getting in fights.
		You don't have marijuana brawls like you've got bar brawls.
		Bar brawls, yeah.
		Again, I think 80 million Americans have tried it.
		We've got two presidents who've tried it.
		I think there's enough evidence out there to suggest that it is certainly not as dangerous as the other drugs.
		Again, some of the worst consequences are probably gaining weight from the munchies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here in Nevada, we already have gambling, and we also, along with it, have a lot of drinking.
		Now, what's the alcohol lobby like to take on?
		Because in a sense, you are taking them on.
		They must be very concerned about this.
unidentified		We certainly haven't seen any evidence of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		No, not at all.
		The opponents, the most vocal opponents in this campaign have been the federal drug czar and the head of the DDA.
		We've got some local law enforcement officers who've taken it upon themselves to wage a campaign against us.
		I think what's interesting, though, is of all the people who are opposing us publicly, every single one of them gets a check from the taxpayers.
		There is yet to be any vocal opposition from anyone who actually earns their money in the private sector or through a political campaign.
		And it's interesting to me that the opponents of this measure, I guess if I had, if my salary were paid by the taxpayers and I could fly around on an airplane across the country, I guess I wouldn't want to set up a political action committee either to wage a campaign.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was in Alaska and read the teletype on KENI when Alaska actually legalized small amounts of pot with a decision by the U.S., or rather the Alaskan Supreme Court.
		And there was never a problem in Alaska with people using marijuana.
		I was there.
		I know.
		The problem came when the federal government came to town and said this just can't be and waged a real war until it was turned around.
		Billy, hold on, we're at the bottom of the hour.
		We'll be right back with a little more of this.
		Bonnie Crystal up at the top of the hour.
		Whoa, what a fascinating lady.
		One of the more fascinating women you're ever going to meet in your whole life.
		Bonnie Crystal, she's a shaver, and she's a whole lot more.
		I'm Arthell.
		It's coast to coast AM in the nighttime.
unidentified		Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell.
		Jimmy Raja on the victor up high.
		I was dancing with baby on a shoulder.
		It's time to step in my life.
		A very old friend came by today.
		Because he was telling everyone in town.
		Of the love that he just found.
		And Marie's name.
		Of his latest friend.
		He talked and talked.
		And I heard him say.
		That she had the longest, quietest hair.
		The prettiest green guys anywhere.
		And Marie's name.
		Of his latest friend.
		Though I smiled at tears inside the world.
		Of burning.
		I wished him luck.
		And then he said, Bye.
		He was gone.
		But still his words kept returning.
		What else was there for me to do?
		We'd cry.
		True.
		Recharge bells in the Kingdom of Nine from west of the Rockies dial 1-800-6188255 East of the Rockies 1-800-8255033.
		First time callers may recharge at 1-775-727-1222 or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A gigantic night ahead for you.
		I am Art Bell, and we are going to explore many mysteries.
		By the way, speaking of exploring mysteries, the pyramid thing the other night, I think I've got the smoking gun on the pyramid show the other night.
		I really think I've got...
		And I'm not saying that the whole thing was staged and fake, because I'm a personal friend of Zahia Wass's, and I don't want to believe that.
		I'm going to have to send you to my website.
		And any of you who still have this program on tape are welcome to check it out for yourself.
		At the beginning of the show, and at least five times at the beginning of the show, they showed the shaft that they were going to attempt to penetrate at the end of the program.
		That is represented by the top photograph under What's New Right Now.
		That's what they showed.
		And then when they went live, and the program was in and out of live, you know, they said when they were live, there was no hanky-panky there.
		They were live, and then they went to tape segments, came back live.
		When they finally came back live and penetrated the door in the pyramid, it wasn't the same.
		And if you doubt that, go take a look.
		Just go take a look.
		Be my guest at the picture taken in 1993 and the picture taken in 2002.
		The very same photographs that you could see on the television show itself, and you're welcome to go back and compare.
		And I don't know, folks.
		They didn't go through the same chamber.
		Unless these pictures lie, unless the same pictures they had on the show lie, they did not go through the same chamber.
		And I've got the photographic smoking gun.
		And if anybody has any argument with this, you're welcome to make it.
		Happy to have you.
		In a moment, we'll return to Billy Rogers.
		Stay right where you are.
		Once again, here's Billy Rogers.
		And as I explained, Billy, I was in Alaska.
		I actually read the Associated Press bullet when it came across the wire.
		The Alaska Supreme Court allowed marijuana announce, I think it was, or whatever it was.
		And this went on for a long time after the Supreme Court decision in Alaska.
		And everything was just spiffy.
		I mean, there really were not problems with it at all in Alaska for a long time.
		That is until the government declared the war on drugs.
		When they declared war on drugs, they sent people up to Alaska and got it overturned.
		I mean, campaigned in chill it was overturned.
		Is that the way you recall it?
unidentified		That's absolutely the way I recall it.
		And, you know, again, they've got a lot invested in this war on drugs.
		I mean, John Walters just announced that he's going to spend $1 billion over the next 10 years on television commercials.
		I mean, there's a whole bureaucracy behind this.
		And, you know, they want to protect the money that they're getting.
		I mean, I think that's a big part of the opposition.
		And I think that's why you see that most of the opposition is not coming from just ordinary people, but the opposition is coming from people who work for the government.
		I did want to let your listeners know, you know, we are going up against the federal government on this issue, and it costs a lot of money to run a political campaign.
		We're up on television right now, and we bought television ads through October 1st, but we're going to need more money to complete this television buy during the month of October.
		And I did want to let your listeners know if they want to make a contribution to our campaign, they can go to nrle.org and make a contribution right on the internet to our campaign.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's nrle.org.org.
unidentified		Nevadans for responsible law enforcement.
unidentified		Acronym NRLE.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, NRLE.
unidentified		N-R-L-E.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, got it.
unidentified		Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement.
		NRLE.org.
		The federal government, I mean, they just launched just this year they're going to spend $120 million on these anti-marijuana ads.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you're in a political campaign, really, against federal dollars.
unidentified		Exactly.
		I mean, it's really interesting.
		I mean, we've raised about $900,000 thus far for this campaign, but we're going up against the drug czar and his $1 billion advertising campaign over the next 10 years.
		So it's really important that we stay on television through the month of October.
		We're running dead even right now in the polls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I read that.
		I was going to bring that up.
		I read that in the Associated Press story.
		It said dead even in the polls, but it said also that proponents, meaning yourself, are gaining.
unidentified		Yeah, we're seeing it, and we went up on television last week, and I've got a lot of people in this town, some days 50 or 60 people, going door to door in Las Vegas, asking People to vote for Question 9.
		The reports we get back from them are good.
		We're also conducting our own polling in the campaign.
		We've seen a surge over the last few days.
		I mean, obviously, our television commercials are having an impact.
		We're defining what this issue is for voters.
		This is about protecting people in the privacy of their own home or under the care of a doctor.
		And I think when people understand what this initiative really does, we win.
		And we're in a real fortunate position in this political campaign, and it's kind of unique to political campaigns.
		All we have to do to win is get the truth out and tell the truth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I hear you.
unidentified		The only way they beat us is if people buy the lies of the opposition.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's say it passes.
		What about local law enforcement?
		If local law enforcement happened to be in your home or something and saw marijuana, what would they be able to do or not be able to do?
unidentified		Nothing.
		I mean, if this thing passes and you've got less than three ounces of marijuana in your house, it'd be like if a law enforcement officer walked into your living room and saw a six-pack of beer.
		They wouldn't be able to do anything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here's somebody in Lawrence, Kansas, who fast blast me.
		It's like they say, the difference between a drunk driver and a stone driver is that a drunk driver will run a stop sign while the stone driver waits for it to turn green.
		But, you know, nobody is suggesting that anybody ought to be out driving under the influence of marijuana, are they?
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		And this initiative bans driving under the influence of marijuana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As it should.
unidentified		Absolutely, as it should.
		And, you know, basically, this is the way we look at it.
		If you want to smoke marijuana in the privacy of your own home, the government shouldn't be banging down your front door and taking you to jail.
		But if you take marijuana out of the house and if you smoke it in a public place or if you get in a car under the influence of marijuana and you kill somebody, you should go to prison.
		That's the current law and that will be the law if this initiative passes.
		I mean, it's real interesting, though, what opponents have been saying.
		The assistant district attorney here in Las Vegas initially made the claim that if this passed, it would throw out all drunk driving laws.
		And then he amended it, and he said, well, it would throw out driving under the influence of marijuana.
		And so we had a legal scholar go in and find 30 cases, 30 legal cases, that proved that he was wrong and that DUI laws would remain in effect as they currently are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it says driving under the influence, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's right.
unidentified		Driving under the influence.
		Absolutely.
		It would remain illegal.
		But what our opponents are doing in this campaign, see, they can't argue on protecting people in the privacy of their own home.
		Most people are with us on that.
		So what our opponents do is they just start making things up.
		And, you know, they've, I mean, from this will abolish all drunk driving laws.
		They claim that three ounces of marijuana is 300 marijuana cigarettes, which is absurd.
		You know, the federal drug czar said the state of Nevada would be a mecca for drug dealers if this passed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, what about that?
unidentified		Well, the legislature in our nation...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He said a mecca for drug dealers.
unidentified		For drug dealers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, wait a minute.
unidentified		I don't think the drug dealers would leave the state.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so do I. In other words, didn't you say that it would be sold in stores under control?
unidentified		In state-licensed shops, and I guess here's my point.
		I don't think the state of Nevada is going to license drug dealers to sell marijuana.
		And I think what we know in a regulated marketplace, which is how this would work, that it puts the bootleggers, it puts the drug dealers out of business.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would rip it out of their hands.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		And when we rip it out of their hands, all of a sudden we are going to be able to reduce underage use of marijuana.
		It's just simply not going to be available to kids in high school and up to the age of 21 because under our provision, if anyone sells marijuana to a minor, they'd go to prison.
		So if you're a clerk at a 7-Eleven and you sell a beer to somebody, about the worst thing that can happen to you is that you'll get fired.
		Now, if you're a clerk at one of these state-licensed shops and you sell marijuana to somebody under 21 years old, you're looking at doing some time.
		So I think there's evidence out there based upon when the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21, underage drinking went down simply because it was less available.
		And I think the same thing would happen with this initiative.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Villa, it would be my opinion that you have come to the right state for a number of reasons.
		Number one, because Nevadans are so libertarian, so individualistic, they're very likely to.
		Besides, we just got screwed by the federal government with regard to what's happening up at Yucca Mountain, and Nevadans are pretty ticked off at the federal government, and so the mood may be just right.
unidentified		well yeah and i'm surprised i'm surprised anyone from the federal government would come here and tell them that it's had a vote and uh...
		with john walters comes here at comes here in october i think we're gonna tell this take that nuclear waste with the back of washington units it's uh...
		yeah i mean i think nevadas are outraged federal government and you know it it surprises me how vocal these Washington politicians and bureaucrats have been.
		But they've got big egos, and I'm sure they don't see what we think here in Nevada, that their opinions on this issue really aren't welcome here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		What is important in Nevada, I'll tell you right now, is tourism.
		That is the most important thing.
		That is what supports everything, hotel rooms, gambling, all the rest of it.
		There are ancillary industries in the state of Nevada, like prostitution, for example.
		But what do you think this would do with regard to tourism?
		I mean, you could make one case that it would hurt it.
		People would say, oh, my God, they're going to be smoking joints in casinos and stuff like that.
		They won't, will they?
unidentified		No, first of all, it's banned in all public places, and that includes anywhere where gaming is allowed, marijuana smoking would be banned.
		So you're not going to walk up to the blackjack table and have to sit next to some guy smoking a joint.
		I mean, that's just not going to happen.
		What the head of the tourism and convention center here, what she said was that people come to Las Vegas to do things that they can't do at home.
		And what she said was people in Las Vegas aren't exactly dropping their jaws over this issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She's a smart lady.
unidentified		Yeah.
		And, you know, so in terms of whether it would help or hurt tourism.
		There could be a case made that would help.
		I think it would.
		And, you know, whether you was up in Vermont working on the medical marijuana issue earlier in the year, and whether you approve or disapprove of gay marriages, they have the civil union legislation up there.
		But what it has done is it has attracted tourism from all over the country, gay couples who come into Vermont to have a civil union.
		So, you know, I think on a, you know, if Nevada is the first state that actually does this, you know, I do think you'd have people who might take a trip to Las Vegas or Reno instead of just to experience doing it legally.
		What's that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I say just to experience doing it legally.
unidentified		To experience doing it legally, and also I think it lets the rest of the country know that Nevada really is in touch with the rest of the country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The lady you spoke to at tourism, she hit it dead on the head.
		People have always come to Las Vegas and to Nevada in general to do things that they cannot do elsewhere.
		And this would fall squarely in that category.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		And I certainly don't see any evidence that it would hurt tourism.
		And I think if there were evidence out there that it would hurt tourism, I think the casino industry would probably be spending a lot of money to defeat this issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many people are in jail across America because of marijuana?
unidentified		I don't have an exact number in terms of the number of people currently in jail for marijuana possession, but what I can tell you, in the year 2000, the most recent year that they have records for, the FBI Uniform Crime Report says that almost 750,000 people across the country were arrested for possession of marijuana.
		And here in Nevada, 3,742 people were arrested for small amounts of marijuana in the year 2000.
		Law enforcement officers tell me that that took law enforcement officers off the street for 10,000 hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		10,000 hours.
unidentified		10,000 hours that could have been spent patrolling our neighborhoods to protect us from violent criminals.
		10,000 hours that could have been spent on our roads and highways protecting us from drunk drivers.
		That's an awful lot of time for law enforcement officers to spend going after a penny anti-crime.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you talk to the average cop, and I'm sure you had the opportunity to do that, I'm sure at the top there's one position, but at street level, there's probably another position.
		And I know a lot of cops turn their back on marijuana anyway, small amounts of marijuana.
		They just blow it off because they just are unwilling to give people a terrible record for that.
		I mean, they're just unwilling to.
		So what kind of attitude do you see on the street level?
unidentified		Well, yeah, I've talked to a lot of cops, and what cops will tell you privately is it's a tremendous waste of time.
		What they'll also tell you is what's happened in recent years is they have a lot less discretion.
		You know, if they come across somebody with a little over an ounce of marijuana, they have to arrest them here and charge them with a felony.
		It's still a felony for more than an ounce of marijuana here.
		So they have very little discretion on the street.
		And what's real interesting when you look at the national numbers, in 1990, only about 300,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession.
		Ten years later, it goes up to 750,000.
		Well, marijuana use didn't increase.
		What happened was law enforcement officers have been given much less discretion through the years in terms of who they can arrest and who they can't.
		I mean, back in the 70s and 80s, I mean, you know, law enforcement officers generally have a pretty good idea of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
		And during certainly the 70s and 80s, I think what happened a lot was if a law enforcement officer thought an individual who possessed marijuana was an otherwise law-abiding citizen, they'd pour out the marijuana or whatever and just tell them to go on their way.
		But what law enforcement officers are telling me now is they don't have that kind of discretion anymore and that they do have to make arrests of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think there's quite a bit of grassroots support at the street level with cops for what you're doing?
unidentified		I think there's some.
		I think the law enforcement community is divided, just like the state is divided on this issue.
		I mean, I've had a lot of cops tell me privately that they support this.
		We've had people going door to door.
		Obviously, we've been knocking on law enforcement officers' door.
		They say, you know, we're supporting it, but I can't sign your volunteer card.
		I can't sign your supporter card.
		I might get fired.
		You know, at the top, you know, and again, you have to look at law enforcement agencies, and they make money off of this.
		And it justifies their budgets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's not like police are going to be out of jobs if marijuana laws change.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's plenty of crime out there.
unidentified		Andy Anderson, who's the former president of the largest police union here, I think he said it best when he said, you know, what law enforcement officers live for is to be there when the big one happens.
		When the big crime happens.
		They don't want to be in the station doing the paperwork on some guy for a small amount of marijuana.
		I mean, law enforcement officers, what they tell me is they want to be out there to stop the big crimes, to stop the violent criminals.
		And, you know, this has taken, you know, nationwide, you're talking about 2.5 million hours a year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Look, even locally, if you could talk about 10,000 hours devoted to finding children who have been snatched by somebody for God knows what horrible reason, maybe we'd solve more of those crimes.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		And again, I think law enforcement officers know this.
		They've certainly told us this.
		We briefly had the endorsement of a large police union here.
		The board had voted unanimously 9 to nothing.
		And then they got all this heat from the bosses.
		They were street cops.
		And I think they had it right the first time and ultimately couldn't withstand the pressure and the heat from the law enforcement establishment here.
		But again, I think that will change.
		Excuse me, if you look at the medical marijuana initiatives around the country, in many of the states where it was passed, law enforcement initially opposed it, and then it became law and law enforcement became supportive of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I saw the recent thing in Santa Cruz last day or so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does that go all right without people getting arrested?
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		I mean, and I think that makes the case that Nevada can set up a program to distribute marijuana.
		Yeah, it went fine.
		The Drug Enforcement Administration didn't show up and arrest the mayor.
		And, you know, when people say the federal government is going to shut down the state from distributing marijuana, I just kind of say, what are they going to do?
		Arrest the governor?
		I mean, the bottom line is I think there's a difference when I wouldn't rule out anything, Billy.
		Well, I know.
		And they've really gone overboard in California.
		But I do think there's a difference between the government oppressing somebody who's growing medical marijuana in California and arresting them and the federal government coming in and trying to stop the state government from doing it.
		And also, there's one other issue.
		We're putting this in the Constitution, and we believe the state constitution trumps federal statutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, having said that, Billy, we are out of time.
		Thank you for being here.
		one more time please if people would like to make donations to your cause Go to nrle.org.
unidentified		NRLE.org, and you can make a contribution right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Billy, thank you for being here.
unidentified		Thank you so much, Archie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we'll have you back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
unidentified		Looking forward to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, my friend.
		We'll watch question nine on the ballot here in Nevada.
		Nevada may be the first.
		And if it is, I'd be very proud that we'd be the first state that would say, not reefer madness, but stop the madness.
		From the High Desert, I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Don't you love her, Betty?
		And don't you need her, Betty?
		Don't you love her, wait?
		And tell me what you say.
		Don't you love her, Betty?
		Wanna be her day.
		And don't you love her, faith?
		Don't you love it out the door that you did one before?
		Don't you love her face?
		What you say, don't you love her as she's walking out the door?
		All your love, all your love, all your love, all your love, all your love is gone.
		Sing a long whistle of a deep blue dream, seven horses seem to be on the mark.
		Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
		And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nye.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, don't you love her face?
		Don't you want to be her daddy?
		This song goes out to Amy of Big Brother, the Big Brother television show.
		You see, tomorrow, in all likelihood, or in all probability, she's going to be walking out the door, just like they say.
		She's got to be one of the cuties ever delivered to the face of the globe, actually.
		I'm Arbell, coming up in a moment.
		Bonnie Crystal, who first and foremost is a very close friend of mine, very good friend of mine, and she's an amazing woman.
		I've been in electronics all my life, you know, microwave and broadcast and you name it, ham radio, and I've just been there all my life, and so I know a fair amount, about a fair amount.
		but money crystal puts me into the dirt i mean this lady is she's amazing so this is an amazing year Bonnie Crystal is a 21st century explorer and technologist.
		As an explorer, she carries her unique viewpoint and quest for adventure to the far reaches of the globe.
		She brings back amazing tales of the unknown, wonderful images of her expeditions into the underground world of caves.
		While seeking to unlock the mysteries below ground, she is discovering deep caves and venturing into places inside the earth where no human has gone before.
		Sounds like Star Trek, and in a way it is, isn't it, for below ground.
		Where no human has gone before, walk ever.
		As a technologist, her inventions have touched our lives.
		She continues to create new technology to benefit present and future generations.
		Listen to this.
		Bonnie is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Telegen Corporation, the Silicon Valley company known for its new flat panel television monitor called High Gain Emissive Displays, or HGED.
		We'll tell you about that.
		It's going to revolutionize everything.
		Ms. Crystal is a prolific inventor.
		Her invention, VNR, or video noise reduction, listen now, shrunk the size of satellite dishes back in the 1980s, making satellite TV a household word.
		She's the one who got the dishes down.
		She was instrumental in the field of medical imaging using magnetism by designing higher resolution MRI machines.
		Used everywhere now.
		I know about MRI.
		Bonnie's most recent invention is for broadcasting digital television.
		That's known as Telezar Separate Video Program.
		Bonnie is an advocate of personal communications.
		She's a licensed ham radio operator with a call sign of KQ6XA.
		That's KQ6XA.
		Her station can be heard late at night all over North America on our 3830 group.
		That's 3.3, excuse me, 3.830.
		She's also the author of a Bessler book, The World of CB Radio.
		Really?
		With over 3.8 million copies sold, it is a humorous and informative look at the history and use of citizens banned radio in America.
		We'll talk about that.
		As a cave scientist, Bonnie Crystal has been involved in over a decade of cave exploration, cave mapping projects, leading the use of electronic technology for the advancement of cave science.
		She wrote the standard for through-the-rock cave radio communication using low frequencies and was the cave technology columnist for America's Caving Magazine.
		She is an amazing woman, and she's coming up in a moment.
		First, I would like to welcome Bonnie officially to the program.
		Officially, welcome to the program, Bonnie.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you, Arch.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's nice to be here with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're up in the Bay Area?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I'm here just south of San Francisco.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Bonnie, just so we have this straight for everybody in the audience, because this is an amazing story I'm about to tell, and I'm not sure how to tell it except just to briefly tell it again.
		I put up a gigantic antenna.
		I had my contractor come and pour concrete and put up these big two-inch steel poles.
		They're made out of steel.
		And in preparation for what my dream was, my dream was to put up this monster biggest ever ham antenna.
		I thought it was a cool idea.
		Yeah, we did that.
		Anyway, the contractor did his thing very proficiently.
		And then you, being the wonderful friend you are, knowing the condition of my back, which is lousy, came down and volunteered, flew down here and volunteered to help put up the wire, the actual antenna itself, which you did.
		And this antenna is now in the air at the highest point about 100 feet, and then the rest of it's about 60 feet in the air.
		It's a big antenna, 1,000 feet in circumference.
		It's a big mama.
		And it performs as you would imagine such a magnificent antenna would perform.
		I mean, the world is mine.
		And I've made a couple changes since we first put it up, as you know.
		But Bonnie, there is this thing.
		I began noticing that I was getting terrible shocks.
		I mean, really, electrical, big-time shocks from the antenna.
		When I would touch the antenna and then I would touch the ground, I would get these damn shocks, big shocks.
		And so I measured the voltage with an automatic voltometer, probably 10 or 20K, I don't know what it was, and it showed 349, 350 volts on this wire.
		Now, you told me that's not good.
		It's eventually going to blow up some of my equipment or me.
		So you're definitely right.
		So I began a quest to get rid of this voltage.
		And we'll get to that in a moment.
		I have finally gotten rid of the voltage thanks to you, thanks to your help.
		But this is a pretty big question, Bonnie.
		All I've got is 1,000 feet of wire high up in the air.
		And here's all of this intriguing voltage, enough to make every time you touch ground with it, a big blue arc.
		Now, with no wind outside, it's coated wire.
unidentified		You can take the antenna and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Every time you tap, you get this nice little blue spark arc, actually a blue arc.
		And so that's quite a bit of voltage.
		I mean, and the big question here is where in the hell is it coming from?
		Where is the voltage coming from?
		Now, I called my local, I've got a power cooperative here in Peru, Nevada, and I called them today, Bonnie, and I spoke with their chief engineer who was absolutely intrigued.
unidentified		I said to the guy, look, you guys, you're a power company.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've got probably two miles of wire sometimes up there that you're not running anything through.
		It's just real high wire in the air.
		And he said, yeah.
		I said, what do you guys do?
		He said, oh, we always ground it.
		I told him when I got out here, and I said, is it possible I'm coupling somehow to your lines?
		And he said, how far?
		I said, well, about 20 or 30 feet horizontally and about 20 feet above yours.
		That's a 12-kilovolt Line.
		He said it's loaded.
		It wouldn't couple.
		So he's so interested, Bonnie, in where this power is coming from.
		In the next week or so, he's going to come out and do some tests, bring equipment, and do some tests on this wire to ground and find out what the hell we've got here.
		He doesn't know either.
		I mean, I think we're perhaps talking about, I mean, Tesla was working on two things.
		One, free power from the air, and two, trying to transmit power through the air.
		And maybe that's not what this is, but Bonnie, I think that it might be.
		Could it be?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, throughout the world, all in the atmosphere, there is an electric charge.
		And it gets more and more as you get higher above the surface of the earth.
		And there's even a differential between your feet and your head as you stand there outside.
		There's hundreds of volts of difference between your head and your feet.
		And now you've got this big wire that's stretched up high in the air, and it's picking up that voltage.
		And it's probably enough to charge a battery, charge up a flashlight or something like that with it.
		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, for a ham like me, this is a monster antenna.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And it works great.
		I will vouch for that.
		I was up in my car in Northern California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you were as loud as the Voice of America on your ham station.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		Voice of America.
		I'll ask you.
		Yeah, as an antenna, of course, does its job.
		At any rate, last night, I finally took your advice.
		I said, this is too much.
		I can't stand getting shocked anymore.
		So I went out there with 10 megohms of, I had 10 1 megohm resistance for each side of the line, and I put them in, and the voltage was still there.
		I was still getting shocked.
		I got shocked 10, 12 times last night, Bonnie.
		I got so sick, I knocked everything over in the room from jumping around from these shots.
		Finally, I kept reducing the resistance until I got to about 250,000 ohms at 4 watts.
		In other words, 4 of those resistors in parallel instead of 10 in series.
		And that knocked out the voltage.
		But the moment I take them out, it's going to be there again, and I can experiment, and I'm going to do that.
		So do you think this, could this be what Tesla initially got onto when he began talking about free power, free Power, free power.
		Well, hell, this is free power in a sense.
		I mean, what if you had two or three miles of this wire up 300 feet?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, for sure, Tesla experimented with this, and a lot of other people experimented with this.
		Ben Franklin, as a matter of fact, was an experimenter with electricity from the air, and he went a step further and actually started flying kites in thunderstorms and that sort of thing, which is not a very good idea.
		No.
		But certainly, you know, we get these kind of static charges.
		And the static charge just walking around, you experience this, you know, when you're walking around on a carpet or something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And touch metal.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And every time you feel that arc, anytime you can actually feel a shock whenever you walk across or get a spark, you're up above 300 volts.
		And although it's a very small amount of current, it's a high voltage.
		And your body just picks it up and metal in the air picks it up.
		So I think there have been a lot of schemes as to how to harness this kind of power.
		But by and large, there hasn't really been a big effort in the alternative energy alternative.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, I could probably use this if I wanted to, harness it to charge batteries or something or another.
		But I mean, it's virtually always there.
		It's out of the air.
		I think it's what Tesla was up to.
		And he may have gone further along with it than this.
		And then, of course, we know that the government came in and took all of Tesla's records.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, he was trying to broadcast power, too.
		He was taking big generators and hooking them up to a giant tower and broadcasting at RF frequencies like we do on our ham radios, on our AM radio stations and that sort of thing, only at much higher power levels.
		And then picking them up, he would walk around with round globes filled with gas that would light up in the presence of this radio frequency field.
		And, you know, not connected to any wires.
		You'd just walk around with this sphere of glowing gas in a glass envelope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No doubt while you're irradiating yourself as well.
		Yes.
		Bonnie, we're going to get to Caves and the Underground in a few moments because there's so much I want to ask you about that.
		But while we're on the subject of radio, you wrote a book about CB, huh?
		I didn't know that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It was the most popular book ever about citizens band radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, it just, I was there during the real bad, the heyday of CB radio.
		And at the time, I was traveling a lot, out on the road a lot, and with my RV.
		And I used to talk to lots and lots of people on the CB radio.
		And it was a lot of fun.
		And there was a whole culture that grew up around it.
		It was like, in a way, it was like a predecessor to cellular phones or the Internet because people were talking to each other who had never come in contact with each other before.
		So it became a way to exchange information.
		And of course, you know, you have a whole cross-section of society, so there was good and bad to it, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what was the premise of your book?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, was it just sort of the.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's only the how-to and how it works and about the culture of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I thought I was going to ask, the culture of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was the good of it and the bad of it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the good of it was that it's a free communication system for everyone in the world that has a country that allows it.
		And that's a lot of countries now.
		And it's independent communication, independent of the Internet, independent of cellular phones, free.
		You can talk to each other over short distances less than, say, 20 miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Although, there is this guy, Bonnie, in Europe.
		I think maybe France.
		I can't remember somewhere, Italy, France.
		And he's claiming that he's using FM to talk to American CBers.
		I don't know if you've heard about that or not.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you have?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		The Europeans adopted the FM system of CB, and the Americans originally had the first CB, and that was AM.
		Well, just like FM television in Europe, they like FM in Europe.
		So Americans usually break ground first, and then the Europeans have followed along with the different ways of communicating.
		So they did the same thing with C V radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they put their FM illogically just where we did on 27 megahertz, huh?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And, you know, you can actually, a lot of people don't know the difference between AM and FM, although they know that when they punch their radio, if you reach down and punch your radio dial from AM to FM, you know that a different set of stations come in and it's kind of a different quality.
		But the difference really is that AM is for amplitude modulation, which changes the power of the frequency that's being sent out.
		And FM changes the frequency of the signal that's being sent out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Should we have logically been FM here?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would that have been a better deal?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think it probably would have been good from the standpoint of clarity of communications.
		But I think that when it started back in the late 50s, FM was a little more expensive to put together.
		And it started out as a very small radio service.
		And it just grew in such great proportions that it kind of took over itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's the downside of CB that you wrote about?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess the downside is that there are people who just like, you know, if somebody cuts you off as you're driving along or gets in front of you, there are people who will get on there and cuss you out, I guess.
		But that sort of thing.
		And then they tend to get out of hand, some of them, with the big amplifiers.
		And the fact that there was no licensing Of it really made it sort of a renegade service of the FC.
		It's been a thorn in the side of the Federal Communications Commission for years and years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're pretty tightly regulated as amateur operators, but CB is not particularly, I mean, there are rules.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I've heard they have these shootouts, Bonnie, where they have people who have their amplifier on a trailer behind their vehicle running thousands of watts.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		10,000 watts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		10,000 watts.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So much so that the antennas that are on their vehicles have coronal discharges coming from the tops of the antennas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean like they're glowing?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Glowing balls of plasma ionized gas, glowing purple and fuchsia-colored.
		It's really amazing.
		You can actually hear their voice modulating the air like a flame loudspeaker.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they demonstrate these in these shootouts to see who's loudest?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, they have big shootouts, and people come from all around and get together in a parking lot or in a vacant area of a bar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why wouldn't the FCC come to these, you know, come visit one of these shootouts?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, these people only run out.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I'm not surprised if they do turn up occasionally.
		But this is sort of, you know, under it's almost like a little black world of itself where they talk to each other and they get together and decide to do it.
		It's almost like a secret organization, so to speak, you know, amongst them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, and then they talk about it afterwards.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		Isn't that interesting?
		Well, I have an RV, as you well know, and I have a ham rig in there, but I also have a CB rig in there.
		I wouldn't be without it, because when you're out on the road and the truckers are your best friends, and they've all got CB, and most of them.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Most of the truckers talk to each other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They have saved me more times than I can tell you.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		If you really want to know what's happening out there on the freeway, turn on the CB.
		Listen to the truck drivers because they know way ahead of time.
		They can save you so much time.
		They can save you so much effort.
		And, you know, if you can put up with the way, the rough manner that they talk, I know there's a lot of truckers out there listening right now.
		It's a lot of fun.
		I've talked with lots and lots of you guys out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've run with them on the highway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they also, by the way, know the very best places to eat.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		They sure do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so this is all the kind of information you can get from CB.
		And that's right.
		The best, cheapest places to get gas.
		And if there's an accident, you hear about it.
		If there's a road problem, you hear about it.
		If you've got to take a road to avoid an hour's wait, you hear about it.
		That's what you get on CB.
		Bonnie, hold on.
		We'll be right back to Bonnie Crystal.
		The big part of the show lying directly ahead of us.
		Well, I'm having Bonnie look at the photographs on my website of the thing from Egypt the other night.
		We'll talk about that here in a moment because Bonnie's an underground cave explorer, some of the deepest caves in the entire world.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Music Be it sight, sand, smell, or touch, there's something inside that we need so much.
		The sight of the touch or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak roots deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
		Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
		To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing, all these things in our memories hold.
		And the universality?
		Call Art Bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may reach ART at area code 775-727-1222.
		Or call the Wildcard line at 775-727-1295.
		To talk with ART on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie Crystal, an incredible woman, is my guest and a very good friend.
		Now, listen, do me a favor, do everybody a favor, go up to the website.
		If you happen to see this special, even if you didn't see this special on the opening of the, or the drilling of the hole and the looking through the stone block in the supposed Gent Brink chamber, of course, I had Gent and Brink on the other night.
		Now, I want you to look at these photographs.
		Number one photograph is from 1993, and it's one they showed early on in the program, of what was at the end of the shaft that Ghent and Brink explored, that they were just about to drill a hole in, which they did drill a hole in, and then look through to another empty sort of chamber and another door, you know, increasing the mystery.
		The problem I have here is that the picture from 1993 and the reality of the program's video itself from now or this week, they're not the same thing, not to my eye.
		And I have a listener who sent this in and shows us the two photographs, one above the other.
		Now, if you can tell me that's the same.
		Anyway, Bonnie's, you know, somebody who explores underground.
		Now, of course, this is above ground in the pyramids, but still locked in stone.
		And so I asked her to take a look at it.
		We'll get her evaluation and no doubt yours as the program continues.
		But I think this is a smoking gun.
		These cannot be the same doors.
		All right.
		Now we're going back to Bonnie Crystal, and she's got extensive experience underground, the world's deepest caves.
		In fact, she was in Peru the last time we had her on.
		We actually talked to her from Peru, and then I talked to her by ham radio when she was in Peru, and since she was able to hear me very well.
		Remember that, Bonnie?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That was a lot of fun talking to you from base camp.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We actually named our base camp Gringo Bamba because we were the only Gringos down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gringos.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It was at elevation 14,000 feet, and we had quite a good contact with you there over the ham radio and also by satellite phone on the show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That was in July of 99.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it that long ago?
		Wow.
		Bonnie, you know, my audience got all hyped up about this program coming on Fox about the pyramids.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I saw it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And thank God you saw the show.
		All right.
		During the show, they showed the Scantonbrink tunnel and the door, I don't know how many times in the beginning of the show, in the first two-thirds of the show.
		And every time they would show it, they would show the top photograph, the one that we've got here under What's New on my website right now.
		They'd show the top photograph.
		And then at the very end, and what we have here is a grab from the actual video.
		Yeah.
		Bonnie, are these the same or not?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm looking at two rock blocks inside the pyramid, inside the great pyramid, which was Khufu's pyramid, the pharaoh Khufu.
		That's right.
		Khufu was the pharaoh who claimed that he was the sun god incarnate.
		And prior to that, all the other pharaohs had said that they were going to become the sun god after they died.
		So maybe they did something different here with the construction of the pyramid with these different passages to let his spirit back out to go back up to the sun or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's one of the theories about what they are, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But I'm looking at these pictures of these blocks that are in the pyramid, and I saw them on TV, run the $250,000 robot up through this diagonal passage up into the pyramid.
		That's right.
		And there's two decayed metal handles on this block, right about the mid-part of the block.
		And you see the 1993 photo, and one of the handles on the right is a little bit longer than the one on the left.
		And then you look at it in what they showed the other night, and it shows that the two handles are the same length.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How could that be?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it looks to me, you know, I've been in these kind of situations where, you know, archaeologists get to a place and they start stumbling around or they start doing stuff, and sometimes they break things.
		And they try not to make a big deal out of it.
		And I can see why they wouldn't want to say on TV that they broke the handle off the block.
		But it looks to me as if between 1993 and 2002 that they tried to grab a hold of that right handle there and pull on it.
		And it looks like it's broken off.
		Otherwise, the block looks pretty similar.
		If you look at the right side of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What I don't understand is that in the live picture on the bottom there, the block would be, in essence, repaired.
		In other words, there's less of a hole than there was in 1993.
		How can that be?
		If there was damage inflicted, it would be larger or more ragged or somehow or another would reflect the damage.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the dark objects that you're looking at that look like holes in the photo, they're actually metal pieces of metal sticking out from the block that have gotten dark over the ages.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, so you think they might have hit one of those?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think they might have either hit it or went up and grabbed it with a robot to pull on it or to check it out and see what it was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So either that's true or it's not the same.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One of the two.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		But if you look at the bottom right edge of the block and the top right edge of the block, it looks like the same block.
		I was looking at it pretty closely between our commercial right there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you think they might have damaged it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think it's very possible.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It also looks like they've kind of gouged the top of that passage with the robot as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, if that really happened, Zahi would have gone ballistic.
		I mean, Zahi took great pains to say, well, you know, we're going to do this or we might do this, but safety comes first.
		I don't want any damage whatsoever.
		So if it was damaged, then they didn't bother to mention it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's true.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know if anybody else noticed on TV, I saw Zahi himself with a crowbar damage one of the sarcophagi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, I saw that too.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Did anybody else notice that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I noticed that, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The first plunge that he took.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think that's true.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It happens in most archaeological digs.
		It happens in caves.
		People accidentally, you know, or sometimes, you know, vandals on purpose, of course, do this kind of stuff.
		But even with the best of intentions, I think it's very difficult for us to go through these ancient places and not be like elephants in a China shop.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I want to get a little bit more on technology.
		You've been part of the Silicon Valley technological revolution.
		It seems like, boy, you watch the stocks of the NASDAQ companies and computer companies and everybody's in so much trouble, more than even average the rest of the economy.
		I mean, what's going on up in Silicon Valley now?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a big temporary downturn in it right now.
		But the thing about it is, is that if you think about why Silicon Valley is here and what it's doing and the fact that it's creating new Stuff, and that the only stuff that can be of any real worth in the future is being created from people.
		And I like to say that there's really only two places in the world where property is being created every day.
		One of them is over in Hawaii, there's a volcano that's spewing rock down and moving the ocean out.
		And the other are these property that's being created in the minds of inventors and technologists.
		And I think that I'm kind of like a real estate developer of the intellectual property world, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		There was a rumor that went around that your company, Telligent, was part of a government scientific program to recover extraterrestrial technology.
		Where did that come from, and is there any basis to any of it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was part of one of our trade shows.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We went to the Consumer Electronics Show in 1997 when we first leaked out information about one of our new display technologies, which is called HGED, High Gain Emissive Display, which is a combination of vacuum technology and semiconductor technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Marrying vacuum tube and semiconductor?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		It's like the union of the two, you know?
		And so we went to this trade show and we said, okay, we're going to make a big splash, and this technology is so revolutionary that a lot of people think that it came from somewhere out of this world.
		And so some of our marketing people said, yes, well, maybe we can play on that.
		And so we built this giant metal disc spaceship.
		And it was like 30 or 40 feet across.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we rented out the whole parking lot of the Consumer Electronics Show down there near the Hilton in Las Vegas.
		Put up a big barbed wire fence and chain-like fence.
		We hired actors with fake machine guns to patrol in fatigues and military uniforms and that sort of thing.
		We rented Robbie the Robot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You generated all this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You did it yourself.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We bought the robot from the day the Earth stood still.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you did?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we put it out there for everybody to see, and we called this place Area 51.
		And we put a big restricted signs, and we converted the disc into a kind of a ride that people could come in and look at our technology.
		And so the company got this myth around it that maybe it was aliens recovered technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's so new and so revolutionary that I understand how people could believe that, but pretty good bit, I would say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, the rumor was true in the sense that you generate.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, it was funny because the very first day we put up this trade show booth, we call it, or an exhibit, although it was nothing like anyone had seen before, people didn't want to come in.
		They would walk by and it would say restricted.
		Area 51, and they'd go, well, you know, this is Las Vegas.
		Maybe this really is restricted.
		And so they didn't go in.
		Then a few people came up and started asking about it.
		And the next day, there was a line a half a mile long to get into it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, tell me a little bit about the reality of television.
		You're producing these flats-a-panel displays.
		What's the difference?
		Why is what your company is producing or invented, I guess you're not producing yet, but invented.
		Why is it revolutionary?
		How is it different from, I don't know, the monitor I have in front of me or my laptop or whatever?
		How is it different?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The way that it's different is that it's much less expensive, and it's a new type of technology.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Previously, we've had television tubes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And those were invented over 50 years ago, well, way a long, long time ago, back in the 20th century.
		And they were used for about 50 or 60 years.
		They're still one of the best displays there is for watching TV.
		But they're bulky and they take up a lot of space on your desk, on your computer desk, and that sort of thing.
		So we said, okay, you can take this vacuum technology and shrink it down so that it's flat and then combine that with semiconductor technology to drive the electrons in it and make a display that looks like a regular T V but it's flat.
		But it's flat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it runs on low voltage comparatively.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right, and lower voltage.
		No longer is it thousands of volts.
		It doesn't put out x-rays.
		And what this is going to do is supplant or replace some of the existing expensive technologies like plasma and L C D that have drawbacks to them.
		Like L C D is very sluggish.
		You can't really, although they have television pictures that run on L C D and you can have L C D televisions, they're not quite as fast as a regular television set.
		That's right.
		And the image is not quite as good.
		So we developed this really brilliant image and it's just everybody loves it.
		We really had a great time.
		I co-invented it with Jessica Stevens.
		She is the original inventor of the first part of the technology.
		We got together and produced a lot of prototypes of it.
		We have development going on.
		We've been working on it for the past 15 years.
		And finally, now, just recently, we've been able to start commercializing it.
		And that's really one of the big breakthroughs.
		It's going to be low cost.
		It's going to be the cost of a regular TV set only flat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Only flat.
		Wow.
		And it's as bright and as detailed as regular TV?
unidentified		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And eventually it's going to replace plasma.
		You know, plasma is so expensive, it's so bulky.
		You put the plasma screen on your wall and it becomes a heater for your room.
		It's so hot.
		And it's just, you know, they have a short lifetime.
		And so this new technology, high gaining as a display, will eventually replace plasma and CRT and a lot of applications.
		Of course, we'll still have L C D on our cell phones and that sort of thing.
		We'll still have it in our laptops.
		But think about it, every 50 years or so, a new display technology comes along.
		And typically they have a lifetime of about 50 useful years before they're replaced by a newer, better way to view images.
		If you think about the very first projections of images, they were done, this was like hundreds of years ago.
		A German priest figured out a way to make a candle display an image on the wall.
		And the Chinese used shadow images to make plays and that sort of thing.
		Well, every 50 years or so, there's a new way, a new and better way.
		And I like to think that, you know, my grandchildren are going to be watching the flat panel TVs that I'm creating today for the next 50 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you and Jessica have found the better way.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We've found a better way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Will you be able to prevail?
		I mean, there's competitive forces all over the world, of course.
		The Japanese.
		There is.
		I mean, the Chinese.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We're working with all of those people, and we feel that we are not like the Sony Betamax.
		We are not the Sony Beta.
		We are the VHS.
		We will license to other countries.
		We will license to other companies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, my understanding is in the vacuum tube technology aspect of what you were doing, it was so hard to find anybody who knew anything about vacuum tubes anymore that you had to go to Russia.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		We brought some PhDs and a few other people who knew a lot about vacuum tubes over from Russia to work with us.
		Here in America, in the 60s, vacuum tubes reached their zenith.
		They reached the best that they could be over a long period of time.
		And then semiconductors came in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we forgot about vacuum tubes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, to the degree that people retired and died, and if you wanted to make a vacuum tube, you couldn't find anybody.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and it was a lost art.
		And so we've had to recreate that here.
		And we brought in a lot of people that knew about vacuum technology.
		I came from the old school.
		I learned about vacuum tubes.
		I worked with vacuum tubes.
		And we got together a bunch of folks, engineers, scientists, who knew enough about vacuums and vacuum devices to be able to marry the latest inventions in semiconductors with the best parts of the vacuum tube and bring that into something that is more than just a semiconductor or a vacuum tube.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
		Hold on, Bonnie.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		Take a breather.
		We're going to talk a lot about the underground, the deepest caves in the world and that sort of thing, with one of the most interesting women you're ever going to meet.
		Her name is Bonnie Crystal, and she's a genius.
		So's Jessica, by the way.
		I have to have Jessica on sometime.
		I could tell you stories, only I'd have to kill you.
		From the high desk at High Mark Bell.
unidentified		But I couldn't find it.
		So I'll settle for one day, you're leaving me.
		Tell me, tell me lies.
		Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
		Go, go, go, round by the wind.
		Throw, go, go, down in a spin.
		I gave you love, I thought that we had made it to the top.
		I gave you all, I have to give.
		Why did it have to stop?
		You blow it all sky high.
		By telling me a lie.
		Without a reason why.
		You blow it all sky high.
		Do Recharge Bell in the Kingdom of Nai.
		From west of the Rockies, aisle 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may recharge at 1-775-727-1222.
		Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is.
		My guest is my friend, Bonnie Crystal.
		Her vocation is what you've been hearing about with this high-definition flat-screen technology that Television Corporation is developing, which she is a part of.
		But her avocation is caving, going down into the deepest holes in the world, the deepest caves in the entire world.
		I mean, that's freaky stuff, and we're going to talk about that coming up after one more flat panel question from Chicago.
		We'll be right back.
		Going back now to Bonnie Crystal, and by the way, when we're done with the show tonight, maybe I can prevail upon Bonnie to jump on 3830, our favorite frequency.
		We move around a little bit because of this odd thing coming out of the Far East.
		We ought to talk about it a little bit.
		This odd noise coming out of the Far East.
		But 3830, we'll try 3830 at about 2 a.m.
		Bonnie, can you get on for a brief period after we're done here?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure, we'll be on the air with you, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That'll be fun.
		So if you're a shortwave listener out there or whatever, 3.830, 3830, 75-meter band, and we'll do a little chatting of program and stuff.
		So one more question about your flat panel display from Chicago.
		He says, look, the big one, here's the big one.
		Is it going to be high definition?
		That's a good question.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, absolutely.
		That's the wave of the future is high definition, high resolution.
		The new kind of television that is coming out, which is wide format, widescreen.
		And our level 5 technology, Telegens, HGED, Level 5, we have various levels of the technology.
		Level 3, level 4, level 5 is widescreen, high definition, as big as a plasma display, hang on the wall type thing.
		And you can really see how all the technology is on the website.
		There's like a little technology thing, diagrams of how it works, telegen.com website.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, can I ask you a question?
		Is America bungling high definition?
		I mean, in Japan, it's already well entrenched.
		It's there.
		It's operating.
		I think in parts of Europe, it's already well underway.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are we doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are we going the right way, wrong way, what?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a little bit more difficult for America to change than it is some of the other smaller countries.
		They can make a mandate, and they've only got a limited number of stations to change over, a smaller market, so it's easier for them to move quicker.
		That's true.
		America has a lot bigger area to cover.
		And, you know, we picked our method of transmission a little earlier than the Europeans and the Japanese.
		And I really think that, personally speaking, I think we picked the wrong type of transmission for this, although we're kind of stuck with it now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's like CB.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's like CB, yeah.
		FM, we picked a M, and now we've got this ATSC, they're calling it, and it's the American Transmission Standards Committee.
		You know, we do things by a committee, whereas these other countries, they get together and they just say, it's going to be this way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's how you're going to do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or else.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You know, you design something by a committee, and who knows what's going to happen, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we can see what's happening.
		And it's a patchwork quilt of kind of insanity out there.
		All right, well, look, this is all your vocation.
		Your avocation is what a lot of people are interested in.
		When I did last speak with you, you were down in Peru getting ready to descend into what you thought would be the world's deepest cave, the world's deepest hole.
		And there's something about holes that really fascinate people, including me.
		But, Bonnie, I wouldn't, not for all the tea in China and all the money that could be offered would I descend into a hole in the ground.
		You do that kind of stuff for fun, don't you?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I go because no one's been there before, and that's what I enjoy.
		And, you know, seeing a deep hole in the ground where you shine a light down it and you can't see the bottom, oh, it just makes me so happy to throw a rope down there and rappel down the side of the cliff to get to it or down into the hole.
		And, you know, you get to the bottom of the rope and you have to tie another rope on that and keep going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's nothing I could think of that would be scarier than, I mean, bad enough, you're going down to a hole and nobody's ever gone down into where light disappeared, but then you get to the bottom of your rope and you've got to attach another rope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God, Bonnie.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's exactly what happened.
		The last time I talked to you, this was in July of 99.
		We were on the air talking by satellite phone for about an hour on this show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From Peru, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And then the very next day, we went out and we found the deepest free fall pit in the southern hemisphere, 1,000 feet straight down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We didn't know how deep it was at first.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's only about 8 feet in diameter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's grass around the outside of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it's just a hole in the ground.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's just a hole in the ground.
		You're walking along, unassuming.
		Picture yourself walking along in a field.
unidentified		Oh, geez.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And then there's this hole.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of got grass around the edges of it, and you can't see it until you're right up on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good Lord.
unidentified		I wonder how many people and animals and stuff are at the bottom of it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we found the skeletons of some animals and some, you know, in some of the other pits nearby, one of the other pits that was 850 feet deep, that was very near this pit, we found a complete horse and rider, hundreds of years old, together at the bottom of the skeleton of the horse with the rider on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
		All right, so going back to this, you threw a rope down.
		How long was the rope you threw down this unknown depth?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the first rope we had with us was a 650-foot rope, which is kind of a long rope for caving.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Usually you take 300-foot rope or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a really long rope.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So we attached this with anchors up to the rock above the hole.
		We didn't know how deep the hole was.
		We threw a rock down, and it takes about seven seconds to hear the rock hit the bottom from the time you drop it if it's a 500-foot pit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we had only been seeing 500-foot pits prior to this, and so we threw this rock down.
		We didn't hear it hit, and we figured, well, maybe there's some plant matter or something that the rock fell on that cushioned the rock so we couldn't hear it.
		So we started to walk away to get another rock to see if we could try it again.
		And we got a ways away, and we had to go like 20 seconds later.
		And so we figure, well, maybe we've got something here.
		And so we threw this 650 feet of rope down the pit.
		You get down, You tie a knot on the end of the rope so you don't slide off the end of the rope with your hands.
		And then you get down there and it's nowhere close.
		You can't even see the bottom.
		It's real dark except for you're looking up above you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Were you the one who did that descent?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God, buddy.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Several of us did it.
		I mean, we're a team.
		Caving is a team effort.
		And we had nine people on this expedition, nine experienced cavers.
		And I've got a picture of them, the whole group, on my website.
		If you click on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, we've got a link.
		As a matter of fact, we've got a couple things on the website.
		If you'll go to my website, artbell.com, go to program, tonight's guest info, you will see below Billy Rogers' name, you'll see Bonnie Crystal.
		And then we're going to get to the wildcard cave diagram.
		That's really cute.
		You've got to see that.
		And then, of course, a link to Bonnie's website.
		And what all is on the website?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've got the world that time forgot, which I'll talk a little bit more about this later in the show.
		But underground world of Bonnie Crystal.
		We've got South American Caving Expedition.
		And pictures, images of some of the different fantastic caves I've been in, such as Lachaguilla Cave, which is in New Mexico, the most beautiful cave in the world, where you've got hanging chandeliers made out of clear gypsum crystal that are 20 feet long hanging down from the ceiling.
		You've got flowing rivers underground where you can swim totally underground lakes, holes in the ceiling where you have to drop a rope down into this lake and then swim off the edge of that rope out into the lake, underwater, into flowing rivers.
		You've got vampire bats down there.
		You've got fish swimming in, blind fish.
		You've got reptiles, you know, 20 feet.
		You've got the footprints of biped lizards that you run into occasionally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Two-legged lizards?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yep, that's certainly what it looks like.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How big are the footprints?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we estimate that the lizards are only about 20 pounds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		20, 20 pounds.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But I don't think I'd want to run into one, and I didn't run into one at that particular instance.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I just was right near it and saw the tracks of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man, it's got to be on your mind, though.
		I mean, if you see the tracks, then obviously it's been there and might be there, so you have to imagine you might run into it.
		A 20-foot or a 20-pound lizard on two legs.
		You know, I'd have a heart attack.
		I mean, if I saw something like that underground, that far underground, where no man has been, I would have, on the spot, a heart attack.
		No question about it.
		I mean, haven't you worried over this kind of thing and what you might meet that far underground?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think I'd want to get up real close to one first off before figuring out whether it was going to, you know, lunge at me or something like that.
		But I would love to find one and see one.
		And I came so close to it that it was just, you know, we were looking all around to try and find where it was.
		But it had been there in the passage right before we walked through the passage.
		And I've got a picture of the tracks on my website there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you do?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, it's the world that time forgot.
		This cave is just amazing.
		You go through the jungle to get to this cave.
		You come to an arroyo, which is kind of a river that flows occasionally when there's a lot of rain, sort of like a wash in the water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can I stop you for a second?
		Can you guide me?
		I'm on your website.
		How would I get to the track pictures?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to the Underground World of Bonte Crystal, which is on the main website here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boom, I'm there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm trying to find it here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have a fast connection.
		I would love to see these tracks.
		You know, it's just, oh my God, these are cool pictures.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Where it says go thousands of feet under the earth, the underground world of Bonnie Crystal, right below my picture there, on the right side.
		Go thousands of feet under the earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I see your picture.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And then you'll see, as soon as you click on my picture.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On your picture?
		Yes.
		Well, there's your picture on the left or the right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		On the right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I've got several pictures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm explore the world of Bonnie Crystal.
		Bonnie Crystal, 21st Century Explorer and Technologist.
		The Underground World of Bonnie Crystal.
		Your picture on the right won't let me click on it at all.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay, do you see where it says go thousands of feet under the earth?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You're on telegen.com slash crystal.html.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go thousands of feet, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Click on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay, it brings up another one, the underground world.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And then you will see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see.
		I've got to click on an underground world one, world two, caving information, the world that time forgot.
		How about that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure, the world that time forgot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm clicking on that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if that took you to it or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, here's the wildcard cave.
		And here's the art bell chamber.
		And Ramona Rock.
		I guess we'll have to explain all that, but where do I go now?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Click on Underground World 1.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, yeah, here it is, Underground World 1.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And now if you page down, you'll see below the crystal chandeliers that are on the left, you'll see the picture of the yellow helmet there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God, I see.
		All right, here they are.
		Yeah.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Those are the footprints there of a biped lizard.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And my friend Ernie there, who I was taking a picture, I had him point at the lizard tracks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At the tracks, yeah, I see him here.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Get some scale.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, what could be?
		I mean, you've been as far underground, maybe, as any human.
		What could be really below the Earth?
		I mean, I have a million questions.
		When you get down 1,000 feet, has it cooled off or is it beginning to warm up?
		I mean, we imagine the center of the earth to be warm.
		If you go down 1,000 feet, what begins to happen?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It does.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It starts to get hot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It starts to get really hot the further down you go.
		But when you really take into account the historic nature of where we've gone under the crust of the earth, we have only touched the very surface.
		We've only explored down to less than 0.2% of the 4,000 miles that it is to the center of the Earth.
		The deepest hole in the Earth is 7.5 miles deep, and it's a research project up in Russia's Kohl Peninsula.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they're drilling a hole, and they've gone down 7.5 miles.
		But the deepest caves, the deepest natural caves are not quite that deep.
		They're only a little over a mile deep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A mile deep.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But the nature of the way that caves are formed, there's several different types of cave formations.
		There's caves that are formed in volcanic rock by volcanoes.
		And actually, sometimes right in the center of the volcano, you have these giant pits that go down very, very deep.
		And I've rappelled down into these volcanic pits.
		And they go real, real deep.
		And then there are side fissures in the rock where the lava flows down the mountain.
		And those form what's called lava tubes.
		And the lava tubes, eventually the lava flows out of them.
		It's molten and forms a shell.
		And some islands in the Pacific, such as Hawaii and various other volcanic islands, have been totally formed by caves.
		They are the Hawaiian islands themselves are totally honeycombed with caves.
		The lava tubes are what have formed the islands, and you can go through these caves.
		There's a couple of caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, isn't it possible, Bonnie, that a lava tube, if you found the right one, could take you way down into the earth?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because after all, this lava has come up from way down below the earth, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It is very possible.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		In fact, one of the lava tubes that I went in in Hawaii, it was what's called a steam vent where steam flows out of the lava.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you went in there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we timed the steam.
		It was sort of like Old Faithful.
		Every 40 minutes, it would gush steam out.
		And it was very, very hot near what they call the wrist zone where magma flows up into the Kilauea crater and then eventually flows out of Kilauea and on down to the sea and forms this new property, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so you timed it and descended?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We went in for a certain amount of time back as far as we could, and we accounted for the amount of time, and we could only go in for less than 20 minutes at a time so that we could run back out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course, before the eruption.
		Oh, body.
		You know, to the average person, that sounds like madness.
		I mean, if anything went wrong that were to delay you for 10 minutes, I mean, anything serious, then you would have to be ready for what would be coming, wouldn't you?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		A big gush of steam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which would potentially, what, boil you alive or something?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's very possible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		All right, hold on.
		Bonnie Crystal is my guest.
		Can you imagine that timing when the steam would come rushing out, not to count the possibility of lava, and then descending for 20 minutes, half the time, because you've got to get back up before old Faithful there lets go.
		How many of you would do that?
		Lava tubes.
		You can imagine, can't you, that a lava tube, if you found the right one, might take you down toward the center of the earth.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
		I'm Art Bell.
		The white bird drinks up the aster tree with his dying feet turning bold.
		But the white bird just sits in her cage growing old White bird must fly or she will die
		White bird must fly or she will die The sunsets come, the sunsets go The clouds blow by and the earth turn the soul And the young bird's eyes will always grow And she must
		fly, she must fly She won't die Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
		And the Wild Guard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Die.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		Bonnie Crystal, cam radio operator, KQ6XA, and Vergenfriend is my guest.
		She's at the top of the technological world in terms of innovation.
		She's got many inventions and patents under her belt, along with Jessica Stevens.
		But her havocation is to go to the deepest pits, the deepest caves, get as close to the center of the earth as she can.
		All right, I'm trying to imagine, you know, getting my butt back up before the 20 minutes passes and this thing explodes on my butt, frying me alive.
		That's incredible.
		But is it possible, Bonnie, that one day you'll discover a lava tube that goes substantially further toward the center of the Earth?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's very possible that we can get one that maybe could take us down to molten lava.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's very possible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far down is that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Probably.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, on some islands in the Pacific, such as Hawaii, that may not be very far.
		That may be only 1,000 feet or hundreds of feet in some cases, depending on when the lava is there.
		But there are definitely fissures in the earth in Iceland and in Hawaii that go 500 feet or so deep and that have still not reached the lava.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Iceland.
		Isn't that where Journey to the Center of the Earth, the old Papoon movie, isn't that where they went?
		Iceland?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right, what a classic picture.
		I love Journey to the Center of the Earth.
		And as a little kid, I watched that Journey to the Center of the Earth and I thought, take me there.
		That's where I want to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		All right.
		Here's something on my website that I would like to explain.
		When I first saw it, of course, we had proposed to do a show with you a long time ago, and my back prevented that.
		But you have this diagram.
		Again, folks, go to my website, artbill.com, program tonight's guest, Bonnie Crystal, and you'll see related info.
		There's this wildcard cave diagram, and we've got it separately listed here.
		And when I first saw this, I exploded, laughing.
		This is in the Andes in South America.
		This is the cave that you talked about?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's one of the caves.
		The day that I talked to you on the satellite phone, on this program, back in 99, in July 99, I discovered this cave and explored it, threw a rope down, and I was with my friend Cynthia, who was also on the expedition with me.
		It was just the two of us out there.
		And we nearly stumbled into this cave.
		Literally, some of the places around there, you walk along and you have to really watch every step or you might drop down a hole like this.
		But that very day that I talked to you, I found this cave and I thought, and it was right on the ridge.
		If you consider the Rocky Mountains as they go down through North America and then they kind of go down, and think of them as extending down through Central America and down into South America and eventually become the Andes.
		It's really, in a way, geologically speaking, it's kind of like a long mountain chain that goes down through the spine of the continents.
		And you always say on your program, east of the Rockies call this one number, west of the Rockies call this.
		And the wildcard line, well, here we were on the top of this continental divide down there.
		And I said, this is the wildcard cave.
		It's neither east of the Rockies nor west of the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so you called it the wildcard cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How high up in the Andes were you when you found this?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		This was at elevation 14,000 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh man, that's pretty high already.
		14,000 feet.
		That's way up there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You breathe a little bit hard when you're climbing a rope down in a cave at that high of altitude.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure that's what, two miles, better than two miles up.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like three miles.
		And so you go down this rope, and there's this rock that was sort of wedged on the side of the initial shaft as I went down into the pit on this rope.
		And this rock was like, it was perched there, and it was kind of a heart-shaped rock, only about 30 feet across.
		And it was just kind of wedged there with a little bit of dirt and pebbles holding it in place, almost like glued to there by mud.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Glued by mud.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I thought, I'd better not touch this rock or it's going to kind of heave over onto me and go down in the pit.
		But it was heart-shaped, and I thought, okay, if this is the Wildcart Cave, then I might just say, okay, this is a very interesting cave, and I'm going to have to tell Art about this.
		And so I get down there, and I find this chamber.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, before you get to the chamber, wait a minute.
		You named this rock Ramona Rock.
		That's my wife's name, a heart-shaped rock that is just teetering there.
		And there you are dangling on this rope down below Ramona Rock.
		And I'm thinking, Ramona's heart lets go, and she breaks you into human pieces.
		That must have been, I mean, when you got down below Ramona Rock, didn't you start thinking about it possibly, you know?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's something you have to watch out for in any cave is rockfall.
		There's a lot of danger in the cave.
		It'll kill you.
		And if you're not trained, this is extreme caving.
		This is not something that I would say, kids don't go out and do this.
		I have to say that disclaimer.
		You can get training through the grottos of the National Speleological Society.
		You can learn about this and learn how to do it and learn how to not damage the cave and not damage yourself When you're doing this, okay, so you get down further, and here's this giant art bell chamber.
		It's an amazing chamber underneath there, 50 or 60 feet across and high, and it was shaped like a bell.
		And I thought, what a coincidence!
		What an amazing thing.
		So I thought, okay, I'm going to call this the bell chamber.
		Maybe I'll call it the Art Bell Chamber.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it is labeled.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's the nice thing about being an explorer.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You get to name things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You get to name stuff, yeah.
		Well, I appreciate it.
		And then in the Art Bell Chamber, it says there's orange asparagus?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, as I was crawling into the Art Bell Chamber, I found this plant life down there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And sometimes we find new species of plants, animals underground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I'm not a botanist.
		I'm not a biologist.
		But I recognize strange plants and animals when I see them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so I saw this kind of orange-looking asparagus kind of plant.
		Not that I would eat this or anything, but I cataloged and made some notes in it and made some notes that we should have a scientist who knows plant life better than me study this eventually.
		And that's one of the things we do as explorers is make maps of these caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's what this is.
		And I think my audience would be interested to see it.
		So again, go look at it.
		The wildcard cave.
		And then after the Art Bell Chamber, there's like this impassable area with a question mark on the other side.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, in cave maps, when we can't get to an area or maybe we don't know what there is there or we don't get a chance to survey it, we put a little question mark in there so that we can come back, either us or maybe a future explorer can come back and go on from that point where the question mark is.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's an unknown.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, and then there's across from my cave, well, the one named after me, there's Jessica Junction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And why did you name that Jessica Junction?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, Jessica, I also named a separate cave, Jessica's cave as well.
		She's a very dear friend of mine.
		She's the CEO of Telegen Corporation, who I started Telegen Corporation with.
		And she was who made it possible for me to go on this expedition through her support and her encouragement.
		And also, I think that she can see the crossroads of different kinds of technologies in ways that she's a genius.
		And so I thought, okay, this is the crossroads of this entire cave system here.
		I thought, I'll call this Jessica Junction.
		And it had a catchy name.
		You know, we like to name things in caves funny names.
		If you go into Lechagia Cave, which is an underground wilderness area, we have named, there's 100 miles of passage in this cave and all kinds of beautiful formations.
		But because you're seeing these for the first time, there's no real reference point.
		You don't get to say, okay, here's something that's previously on the map because you make the map.
		So you get to name these places as an explorer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What happens to the map and the names?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, when you get back and you register all this somewhere or you send it into some publication or how does it get remembered and reprinted so the next explorer can take advantage of it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well these maps are generally closely guarded secrets of most cavers and explorers and they exchange them with each other.
		We try to minimize the impact of the public on caves where there's a potential for either danger of the public or that they will be vandalized.
		So we have separate storehouses, you might say, of cave maps.
		In some cases we let the National Park Service, if it's in a national park, know about the cave.
		We give them the cave.
		They hang on to it.
		Sometimes these are used by archaeologists.
		Sometimes they're used by other scientists studying bacteria or microbes in caves or speleosan paleomagnetism.
		But we mark on the cave these little neat little names because we get to do that.
		It's a fun thing.
		Places like Apricot Pit, the China Shop.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, folks, Bonnie sent me this wonderful thing.
		I just took a webcam photograph that you should see.
		It is a wonderfully framed wildcard cave diagram, Amazon-based in Andes Mountains, South America, discovered and explored by Bonnie Crystal.
		And it's inscribed for me inside.
		It says to Art and Ramona for the inspiration in naming this cave, Bonnie Crystal.
		And we shall hang it reverently on our wall here in the house, Bonnie.
		and so i just have a well i took a picture of it with my webcam so anybody lying what my website and see is nicely framed Nobody ever gets a cave named after them, or even a chamber.
		Chamber, that really sounds good.
		Heartbell chamber.
		You know, aren't you to some degree concerned with dying?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And so I train on a regular basis with other cavers who are also concerned about dying.
		And we depend upon each other for our lives.
		And so we put a lot of trust in each other.
		We carry three sources of light.
		We carry backup equipment.
		We go into caves in pairs or threes or fours.
		It's not something that we'd like to do on a solo basis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But at the same time, not a lot of people know because you have to keep these places secret, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, for the public's protection, personal protection.
		And also because, to a certain extent, we feel that these caves have taken hundreds of thousands of years to form.
		They are potentially very delicate formations in them.
		It's real easy to break them off, and they will never again be the same.
		You know, caves are like a time machine.
		You can go into a cave and see the footprints that a person made, you know, a little ways back into the entrance thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago.
		You can see the drawings they made on the cave walls.
		These are priceless.
		And anything that we do in a cave, you know, if we leave our footprints in there, they're going to be there 100,000 years from now.
		And people talk about the cavemen of the old or the people who in ancient history or prehistoric ages of humans, they call them cavemen.
		But really, what I believe, and from what I've seen of caves, we were not necessarily cave people or cavemen.
		We went in some caves, some small number of people went into caves and the cave preserved what was left of them there.
		Their relics, that sort of thing.
		But by and large, over the history of civilization and over the history of ancient prehistoric people, they have tended to stay away from caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, if there's an overall mission in what you do, what is, in other words, what ultimately would you like to do?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you expect or what would you like to find or why are you doing this?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think it's because of the unknown.
		And people in this world, I think there's certain people that search out the unknown and other people that are content to remain at home or content to do what they do without going out there.
		But personally, myself, I want to go and be there in places where no one has gone before and learn things that no one has known before.
		And I have a quest for knowledge and it's something inside me.
		And sometimes people say, well, you know, aren't you a little bit nuts for doing this kind of thing?
		Aren't you scared of spiders or aren't you scared of the dark or claustrophobia or that sort of thing?
		And I say, well, you know, different people have their different phobias, you know.
		And I think caves are the intersection of many people's phobias.
		People are afraid of snakes.
		They're afraid of the dark.
		They're afraid of getting enclosures, enclosed in a tight space, spiders.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All of that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And cavers, for the most part, have to get either, if they're afraid of one of those things, they have to get over it real quick or they have to not be scared of that kind of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are any of those things in your category of fear?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Those are not in my category of fear.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if I want to talk about what is my category of fear or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a pretty interesting question.
		Just for fun, because you said you don't know if you want to talk about it.
		What does make you afraid?
		Come on, let's hear it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I used to be afraid of needles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Needles?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Such as getting a shot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like getting a shot.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You know, and there's a lot of people that have that phobia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I used to give shots.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the Air Force, I gave shots.
		It's one of the things I did as a medic.
		And so I gave shots.
		Lots, thousands of shots, in fact.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, then you know that some people are deathly scared of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I had people fall down in front of me, faint.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I fainted because of it, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But yet you'll go down deep into the earth, braving, God knows what, two-legged lizards and falling to your death and being buried alive and, you know, claustrophobia and spiders and all my God knows what else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you're afraid of needles?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, that's just the way it is with people.
		People pick a different kind of phobia and, you know, they're scared of it the rest of their life.
		I had to get over the fear of needles and that sort of thing.
		And I did it because I attended cave rescue classes where we had to learn from doctors how to treat people if we were alone with one of our fellow cavers who had an accident.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you had to have medical knowledge.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And that made me kind of get beyond it.
		But still, there's that little twinge back inside me, you know, that says, ooh, don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are the hardships?
		When you descend really far into the earth, we hear a lot about, you know, the glamour side of it.
		What about the hardship side of it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think, to a certain extent, caving is the dirty science.
		A lot of scientists don't want to do it because you get muddy, sometimes covered in mud or bat guano from head to toe.
		Really?
		You run into spiders as big as your hand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, see, that would.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Black snakes crawling on the cave wall.
		Centipedes that can kill you.
		Things like that.
		It's the dirty science, and so there's no money in it.
		People do it out of the joy of their heart and the conviction to learn things about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold on, Bonnie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		at the top of the hour, and we will be right back with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		I've been where the eagle flies, rode his wings across all the skies, kissed the sun, touched the moon, but he left me much too soon, his ladybird, he left his ladybird.
		Ladybird, come on down, I'm here waiting on the ground, Ladybird, I'll treat you good, ah, Ladybird, I wish you would.
		Riding from the storm, and I'll see you next time.
		Riding from the storm, Riders on the Storm Riders on the Storm Into this house we're born Into this world we're thrown Like a dog without a bone And a actor out of love Riders on the Storm Wanna take a ride?
		Well, call our bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
		The wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
		And to rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is indeed.
		My guest is Bonnie Crystal.
		For shortwave listeners or hands out there, we'll be on 3830 75-meter band following program tonight.
		We've talked her into that, so that should be kind of fun for a little while.
		In the meantime, we've got another hour ahead of us.
		We're going to begin taking questions from you on the phone for Bonnie Crystal in just a few minutes.
		So you know the numbers.
		We get them out all the time.
		If you've got a question, that's what we're here for.
		Well, all right.
		We're going to have to attempt to get Bonnie Crystal back on the phone.
		Sorry about that.
		The phone company, I think it comes to about 1 o'clock in the morning.
		And what they do is just dump everything.
		They make some change out there.
		And all lines die.
		So I'm terribly sorry about that.
		Let's first get Bonnie back, and then we'll sort of go from there.
		Here we go.
		Oh, hi, Bonnie.
		Hi.
		The phone company just dumped every line I had.
		Yeah, you know, they do that stuff in the middle of the night.
		I'm sure somebody out there is listening to the show, and they'll go to their buddy, hey, watch this.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think they run their little test sequence, automatic test sequence out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Well, they just test-sequenced me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Gosh, I've got so many questions, so many things I would like to cover.
		Bonnie, there are underground noises, like they're called the cow's hum.
		There's another one back in the Middle West.
		They just dumped my phone lines again.
		They just dumped my phone lines again.
		This is actually becoming really annoying.
		Let me go ahead and dial here.
		Just dump my phone again.
		this is no fun at all and get my back I guess I shouldn't have joke, huh?
		See if we can do it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We're back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's twice, Bonnie.
		That's twice.
		So, very humorous, guys.
		Go test later, will you?
		Now.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Hey, guys, I used to work for the phone company.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Cut it out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Bonnie.
		The Towel's Hum.
		There's a hum back in the Middle West.
		The Kokomo hum, they're calling it now.
		These underground hums that people are hearing, and actually it bothers people to the point where they are moving out.
		You've heard of these hums.
		Do you have any thoughts?
		Have you ever heard anything underground that was suspicious like that before?
		And do you have any idea what it might be?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've heard some pretty strange noises underground.
		Normally, when you get down in a cave, it's so quiet.
		It's the silence, you know, they say the silence is deafening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of course.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is so quiet and so dark in a cave, it's almost like sensory deprivation, you know, where you can't see anything, you can't hear anything except noises that you make.
		It's so dark that, you know, they say you can't see your hand in front of your face.
		But after you've been in a very cold cave for a very long time, you have a little bit of leftover from prehistoric ages.
		It's like infrared vision, and you can actually, in a cold cave, see the heat from your hand after you get used to the darkness.
		But there are these strange noises that we've run into occasionally.
		One of them, a particular area where we were in a wilderness area 20 miles from the nearest civilization, down deep, hundreds of feet down under the earth, back in the bottom of this 12-mile-long cave.
		And we started hearing this noise that sounded like a machine.
		Like a machine.
		Like some sort of a generator or something running underground.
		And we thought, now this is really weird.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of course.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we didn't know what it was.
		We were back near the very back part of the cave where the passage ends, and there's like an end of the, almost like the tunnel stops or something like that.
		And we hearing this very low noise, we never did exactly figure out what it was that appeared to be coming from inside the rock.
		And other cavers have experienced this, and we just don't know what it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any guesses?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are several different theories, and some of it has to do with the fact that caves react to barometric pressure outside.
		And any time that the barometric pressure changes, even a few inches of mercury, parts of the barometric pressure, you have this enormous exchange of air with the cave and the outside world through the entrance.
		And sometimes caves have micro-entrances that are smaller than a human can fit through, places where it's just like very small fissures in the earth and that sort of thing.
		And so you have this sometimes an oscillation of almost standing waves of acoustic resonance underground.
		And you go to a place like Wind Cave up in South Dakota.
		There are some really neat caves all around the U.S. where you can experience this sort of thing.
		National Park System has tours and that sort of thing.
		But Wind Cave is one place where this does this.
		As for the Taos hum or the Taos, you know, the noise that people are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or Kokomo, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't really know, and I don't think anybody knows at this point exactly what it is.
		But who knows?
		Maybe it's some kind of secret military project or something down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have actually had a picture once on my website of a boring machine that was commissioned and that worked.
		It was just like out of the movies, you know, this thing, you'd point it at the ground and it would start boring its way in.
		Have you ever heard of that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there is a big boring machine, and there are several other types of digging machines that are run for mine rescue and that sort of thing.
		And you remember just recently they dug down a well to release the trapped miners in Pennsylvania.
		But there's these giant boring machines and they can be transported at Scott Air Force Base.
		They have a group that can transport these giant machines for underground rescue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What can they do?
		I mean, really, what can they do?
		One of these big machines, how deep might one of these machines go?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		On the order of hundreds of feet.
		And they don't dig a very big hole in diameter, but it's enough to get down there and get rescue and that sort of thing.
		But they are monster machines.
		They take a lot of setup to bring them, and they take days to put them in position.
		So it's not an instant fix if somebody's trapped underground or that sort of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, how much of the Earth have we explored?
		Are we getting near the end of it?
		I mean, is it where we almost know everything, or are we only at the beginning of our own Earth?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We are less than a percent, less than 1% of the depth of the Earth has been explored.
		Although a lot of the area on the surface has been explored, and probably most of it has been mapped, except for some areas of South America where they don't have topo maps.
		But the underground world, we have just barely scratched the surface.
		It's like you compare it to we know more about outer space than we do what's below our feet.
		Although we know a lot about what's below our feet, we haven't been to the places that are below our feet and we can't see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, you've been down perhaps lower than any living human being or very close.
		Now, you know, there are a lot of people who have theories that there have been civilizations on Earth before modern man.
		And when I say that, I mean that achieved some level of technological development that we don't imagine today.
		If that were true, Bonnie, there might be artifacts or suggestions of that far beneath the Earth that, for one reason or another, geologically, God knows what went on in the Earth.
		Big asteroids hit, things happened, that might be, in other words, artifacts that might be found underground that would not be so easily explained.
		Have you run into any?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We've certainly run into a lot of artifacts and that sort of thing.
		And generally, cave explorers don't touch those kind of things.
		There is some, I will say, some amount of superstition involved among cave explorers as there is among other types of explorers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's one of those?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You don't take anything out of the cave.
		That's one of the number one rules because it's just part of the superstition.
		You don't change anything in the cave.
		You try to go through with the least amount of disturbance of the cave and treat it with respect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But, though, but, but, but, if you found something of great significance, some artifact that could be from some previous civilization or something of that magnitude, how could you leave it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly would talk with scientists, other scientists that are specialists in that particular field about it.
		We would make a map that includes this and exchange that in secrecy to begin with with other scientists.
		And eventually, after a study is made by people who know more about it than the explorer themselves, this information is exchanged to scientific circles and eventually makes its way out to the public.
		Sometimes there's a lag of years before this all happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So something major could occur, and we wouldn't know until years later.
		Look, you know, in space or here on Earth or, God knows, even below the Earth, our government always wants to be out front.
		You would think that various governments, certainly including ours, the Russians we know have done a lot of this kind of work, but ours, our government, would probably have done some below-ground investigation.
		Maybe they've gone deeper and drilled deeper Than anybody knows at secret places.
		I mean, they must want to know the nature of the inner earth in a way as much as we do for various reasons that might not be the same as yours.
		But just to know about what we stand on, our own government must have done and must be doing secret stuff.
		Is that unreasonable to conclude?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think it's reasonable to conclude that there is a certain amount of underground research being done, but I think by and large they've been quite happy just saying, oh yeah, it was formed, the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
		It has an outside crust, and it's mostly iron down there.
		Now, there's been recently J. Marvin Herndon came up with a nuclear Earth model, which looks like a good model of what's happening down in the center of the Earth, and it may be due to nuclear fission,
		because there was an instance of a uranium mine in Gabon in Africa, where they found a natural nuclear reactor in the veins of a uranium mine.
		But this occurred millions of years ago when the Earth was very young.
		So there is that possibility that there could be a nuclear reactor at the center of the Earth.
		But there's a lot of geologists and physicists that still believe that it's mostly iron down there being compressed by the enormous force of gravity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can I go back and ask something?
		Remember I said that it gets hotter.
		When you go down, how many feet do you go down?
		In other words, first it gets colder, I would imagine, certainly than the surface for some period of time.
		And then you get to some sort of depth where that begins to change.
		Is that a varying depth or is it always the same?
		And how far down is it you go when you start to transition to hotter?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well the caves can go down maybe a mile down.
		You have other places like the deep mines, like there's a copper mine up in Michigan that's very, very deep.
		There's other mines in other areas in South Africa that 9,000 feet deep.
		You start to get very hot as you get that deep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, my question was, where does that transition usually begin?
		Is it 100 feet, 200 feet, 500 feet, 1,000 feet?
		Where does it begin to get hotter than cooler?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends a lot on where you start and which part of the globe you're on and what part of the geology, the local geology is.
		Some places the magma is closer to the surface than others.
		Even a couple hundred feet to 1,000 feet deep, you can start to notice it starting to get hotter.
		And in some cases, you know, it can be much, much deeper than that that you notice it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Other than the lava or the steam venting areas you talked about, that I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
		How hot can it get?
		In other words, as deep as you're going to go, and it's starting to get hot, what do you mean by hot?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, for instance, in South Africa, there's a gold mine there that's 10,000 feet deep.
		It gets 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
		And they have to air condition it to allow the workers to go in there to keep mining at that depth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they get down, oh my God, 155 degrees.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they're following a seam of gold that goes down deep, deep, deep, deep towards the center of the earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those are Jessica temperatures.
		Jessica, of course, is funny goes around.
		I live adjacent to, I see them frequently because they love, Jessica loves Death Valley.
		When it gets to be 126 degrees, Jessica's, come on, let's go visit Art and Perumbin, go to Death Valley and roast.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, hike to the lowest point in Death Valley, you know, minus 130 feet below sea level, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With 126 to 30 degrees or whatever.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 282 feet below sea level.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you go along on these expeditions with her, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I sure do.
		I enjoy those hikes out there in the hut.
		In fact, we've been there on some of the hottest days in Death Valley where it was 130 degrees there at the lowest point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you enjoy that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You take a couple of gallons of water with you.
		Maybe you drink three gallons of water on your hike for a mile, but it sure is fun.
		You get out there and you see the way the salt is boiling up out of the earth there, evaporating and forming these little bubbles where spiders are spinning their little web in these little bubbles.
		And they're like clear salt bubbles that are kind of coming up from the bottom of Death Valley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, have you ever, underground, run into anything that you shouldn't have?
		Like, I don't know, like a government project.
		Or like, I mean, I can imagine that you would get close to something and realize you're near something that you shouldn't be.
		Has that ever occurred?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, a friend of mine did run into such a thing, evidently a military project at one of the caves.
		And I was not on that trip with him.
		He was a very dear friend.
		And I did not go back to that cave because I didn't want to mess with anything there.
		But those places are there, and people with guns protect them.
		And it's not something I think I run at the shadow of the whip.
		It's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, hold on.
		We're going to take calls.
		I should have done it this afternoon.
		it you get to it uh...
		directly coming up from the high desert spani crystal on marvell you know you don't come easy you know you don't come easy...
unidentified		music
		Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise.
		Run in the shadows, damn your love, damn your life.
		And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again.
		I can still get insane, it will never break the jammer, baby, say.
		Wanna take a ride?
		Call Art Bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may reach Art at 1-775-727-1222.
		The wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
		And to call Art on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Ark Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, it is.
		Bonnie Crystal is my guest, and I want to remind everybody, showwave listeners and hands, we'll be on 3830 or thereabouts when we get off the air here for at least a brief time.
		Bonnie's a ham, KQ6XA, as I am.
		I'm sure you're aware, W6OBB.
		So that's where we'll be.
		In the meantime, we've got Bonnie Crystal and lots of people who want to ask her questions.
		So stay right there.
		Well, all right, once again, here is Bonnie Crystal, and I've been so fascinated I've no I've hogged it.
		So Bonnie, I want to take some calls, if that's all right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure, let's talk to all those great people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure, let's do it.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Memphis, Tennessee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Memphis, all right?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Bonnie, I was wondering what your opinion is about two other flat-screen technologies, that organic lab, organic LEDs, and the flexible L C D screens with chips mounted on them.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right, you're talking about O LED, the display technology and the flexible L C D. I think that the thing about O LED is that it's a very speculative technology right now, even though there's a lot of money being dumped into it.
		It's really not proven yet.
		It's a very high-cost technology.
		Although, you know, more power to them.
		If they can produce something like that, OLED is sensitive to heat.
		It can decay over a period of short time.
		There's a lot of stuff to be solved with it, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, that one went right over my head.
		A wildcard line.
		Probably should have gone there first for tradition.
		You're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Hello.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		My name is Catherine.
unidentified		I'm in Oregon, but I live in Kauai, Hawaii.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
unidentified		And on the north shore there, we have a wet cave, and it is an old lava tube.
		And they've done explorations, Jacques Houston and stuff, and they've made it, I think, something like 800 feet down, and they were going to send a thing even farther.
		Do you know of that one?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and that's a very interesting cave.
		And there's quite a few very interesting things.
		In fact, the longest lava cave in the world is there in Hawaii.
		It's called Kazumura Cave, and it's 41 miles long and 3,600 feet deep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
unidentified		Do you dive in wet caves or in water?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I swim in caves, but I don't use scuba gear, although I have friends who actually go under with scuba equipment, and I've helped them and carried their tanks and that sort of thing.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I've gone on expeditions where we carried the scuba gear down to the underground lake, and then the divers take it from there, and they go even further down underwater, and then maybe they pop up into a dry part of the cave and continue on from there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, Bonnie, speaking of all that, here in Nevada, not all that far from me, we have this unique, weird, underground water thing where there are these protected pup fish.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you know what I'm talking about?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, that's not far from you, and it's part of Death Valley National Monument.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do we know about that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a water-filled I say Death Valley National Monument.
		It's a park now, I'm sorry, Death Valley Park.
		But it is a water-filled cave, and it has pufffish, it has a strong current of water.
		We lost some cave divers in that.
		Three cave divers died about ten years ago in that cave.
		So it can be very dangerous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So is that the reason you don't?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can't come up for air very well with scuba, although, you know, there's not a whole lot of cave diving accidents.
		There's mostly just cave diving fatalities.
		So, you know, I find that it's enough for me to just swim in caves, and that's about as far as I'll take it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All right, all right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm currently in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but I'm originally from Mamu.
		Okay.
		And my question just answered, whether you enjoy cave diving.
		Oh.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, caves are very fascinating because some types of caves you go down and you get to hot lava.
		And other types of caves you go down into the cave.
		And further down, you get to get to water.
		Okay, because there's a lot of water, subsurface aquifers where there's this vast underground lakes or filled with water.
		And so if you want to keep exploring deeper, then the only way to do it is with scuba equipment or even what they call rebreathers, which were really originally developed to explore caves.
unidentified		I'm trying to get my hands on a rebreather.
unidentified		How much does a rebreather run?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		They're pretty expensive, and they're very, very bulky.
unidentified		And thousands of dollars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's the concept behind a rebreather, Bonnie?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have the regular oxygen tanks that a scuba diver has, but then when you exhale, you exhale a certain amount of CO2, and so you have this various combinations of scrubbers that scrub the exhaled gases that you exhale and pull out the oxygen out of that and feed it back to you.
		And they use lithium hydroxide, which is the same thing that they use up in the space shuttle to clean the air in the space shuttle.
		And it removes CO2 from the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So how long does that mean you can stay underwater?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It increases tremendously the length of time you can spend underwater, 12 to 24 hours maybe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God.
		Really?
		I have no idea.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It depends on how much work you're doing underwater, you know, as to how much oxygen you're using, how much you're inhaling, exhaling, and that sort of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would the water in a cave, by nature, because of how deep it is, either be cold or hot?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Generally, it's about the same temperature as the adjacent rock.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And that is close to the ambient temperature of the area where the cave is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wherever you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if it's hot, then it's hot.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that makes sense.
		All right.
		West of the Rockies, you're on there with Bonnie Crystal.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Bonnie.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
		This is Kathy in Phoenix.
		Got a question.
		Recently, a friend told me about a Reader's Digest article, and they were talking about these gigantic crystals that had been recently discovered somewhere.
		And she said it looked like they were maybe 50 or 60 feet long.
		Yes.
		Do you know what that is?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Those are in Lechikia Cave, which is an underground wilderness area.
		In fact, just recently, it was designated a protected environment by an act of Congress.
unidentified		Oh, my goodness.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And it's one of the very few caves to receive that kind of special protection.
		And it is formed by the action of sulfuric acid in the ancient earth.
		And it formed these gypsum crystals.
		And the gypsum is amazingly clear.
		But when you look at it altogether in a photograph, it looks like it's white.
		There's a picture of those crystal chandeliers on my website.
unidentified		Well, is there really?
unidentified		I missed that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they're about 20 feet long, maybe 30 feet long, and they're hanging from the ceiling of this cave.
		And there's this huge underground room.
		It's near Carlsbad Caverns.
		In fact, it's part of the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, where you can go yourself to Carlsbad Caverns.
		It's in New Mexico and near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
		And I would urge anyone who has an interest in caves, go to one of the national parks that has a cave, like Mammoth Cave, Wind Cave, Lehman Caves at Great Basin, or especially Carlsbad Caverns.
		It's one of the most magnificent caves that you can go to.
unidentified		I'll probably never get to see it.
unidentified		I developed a All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you heard it.
		We just lost every single telephone line here.
		Did you hear that noise?
		It just about blew my ears off.
		So I should like to know, telephone company, what the hell are you doing out there?
		Well, once again, of course, we've lost Bonnie.
		So let me try and get Bonnie back on first.
		I'm terribly sorry about this.
		There's nothing I can do about it.
		The phone company, all of a sudden, just for whatever reason, dumps everything.
		See if we can get Bonnie back.
		Got to be first.
		Bonnie, that's three times in one show.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Three times a charm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Three times a charm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, is there anything else you wanted to finish saying?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, Carlsbad Caverns and also Mammoth Cave, the passages are so big that even people who tend to get claustrophobia will tend to be able to enjoy Carlsbad Caverns because it's as big as rooms that you walk in in the building.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be perhaps okay, depending on what it takes to get to them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, can you walk right in literally?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You can walk right in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's my kind of cave.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Beside the cave, and it's huge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's my kind of cave.
		All right, let's continue.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, this is Miles from New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Miles, what can we do for you?
unidentified		Yeah, I was wondering if she knew about the lizard people.
unidentified		You got that Irish Indian guy.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		He's always loving Jesus.
unidentified		He was talking about some hole.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lizard and lizard people.
		Yeah, all right.
		Why not?
unidentified		I mean, we're talking about the lizard people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You talked about big lizards, 20 pounds on two legs, and we've seen the tracks.
		So maybe it's outlandish, maybe it's over the top, but there are people.
		We just lost the phone lines again.
		I'm going to have to take a look at what's going on here.
		This is ridiculous.
		I am so sorry.
		Let me go ahead and redial Bonnie's number again.
		We're losing the phone lines faster than I can dial.
		This is ridiculous.
		This has never happened with this frequency.
		I don't think it's my equipment here.
		In fact, I heard the crackle horrible telephone noise there.
		Bonnie?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, this has never happened this many times, I'm telling you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if they're afraid you're going to say something.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Maybe they are.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Maybe it's my old friend Bob.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your old friend Bob in the phone company?
		Damn it, Bob.
		Cut it out.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I was on a show where they wanted to talk about lizard people and that sort of thing.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I was on the Conspiracy Zone with Kevin Nealon there on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does that show still survive?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, in fact, it's in reruns now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you could be on there again.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's where they get serious people like Bonnie and get them on and ask them insane questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they actually have comedians as part of the panel, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's hilarious.
		You know, a lot of good things come out about it, but, you know, it's got so many jokes associated with it that, you know, you've got to take it with a grain of salt.
		But cavers tend to be humorous people.
		I mean, where else would you find people who call some underground place the chandelier ballroom?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The chandelier ballroom.
		All right.
		Oh, there was somebody on the line that was going to ask you how to get in contact with you.
		Do you have a public email address or an address or a way to be contacted?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		My email address is CaveScience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Cave Science?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Cave Science.
		C-A-V-E-S-T-I-E-N-C-E at AOL.com.
		CaveScience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		CaveScience at AOL.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's easy.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Or you can just, you know, plug it in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, that's plural, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You said caves.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's cave, not plural, cave science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, cave science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One word, cave science at aol.com.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Or just plug my name into Google or any search engine, and you'll get lots of stuff up there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		All right.
		Well, let's try a couple calls here, see what happens.
		First time caller align, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, sir.
unidentified		This is Tom from Detroit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Tom.
unidentified		I got a question for your guest there.
		She likes going into hole so much.
		How about Mel's Hole?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, have you heard the stories about Mels Hole?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I've heard lots of stories about Mels Hole.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		In fact, I've heard stories about lots of other types of things like Mels Holes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, this is up in central eastern Washington area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are, in fact, a lot of very deep holes up in that area, aren't there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and mostly volcanic lava tubes is mostly what's up there.
		And it's very possible it could be a very deep hole there.
		In fact, a lot of times, as cavers go, you know, we hear from local farmers and people out in the boonies about so-called bottomless pits.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And a lot of times, you know, they drop a flashlight and a string down there and it goes down and they can't see it.
		And we tend to go and check these things out.
		And we make maps of them.
		And we throw a rope down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You were talking about that incredible experience of throwing the rock and then walking away and 20 seconds later you hear this kaboom.
		Would that be the best test to do?
		I mean, drop a rock.
		And if you don't hear that rock land, then you don't know what you've got on your hands, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Or there could be just a bunch of leaves down at the bottom that are preventing it from being hurt, too, that we've had that happen to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, there might be some people out there tonight listening, Bonnie, that know of a bottomless pit, essentially a bottomless pit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I assume that you would be interested in exploring such a pit.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that if somebody were to contact you at cavescience at aol.com, you would treat their information with respect and you wouldn't leak it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Confidentiality.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But yet you would explore.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, folks.
		So if anybody's got one of those out there and we know they're out there, we think they are, just jot off a quick note to cave science at aol.com.
		That's Bonnie.
		CaveScience.
		C-A-V-E science at AOL.com.
		All right, running out of time quickly.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Hello?
		Hi, this is Anthony and Fairbanks.
		I was wondering, is there any known haunted caves or caves that have any sort of paranormal connection?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, we believe that there are quite a few.
		In fact, there's a lot of caves.
		We treat them as though they all have spirits in them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you do?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we certainly would respect the spirits that are in any cave.
		Up around Mount Shasta, of course, there are caves that have spirits.
		In fact, a lot of the Native Americans consider certain caves to contain the spirits of ages past.
		And they talk about the aliens underneath Mount Shasta.
		Well, we've been in those caves under Mount Shasta.
		And so far we haven't found many aliens, but we have recognized the spirit that is part of the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's what we're part of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're all part of the Earth, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We come from the Earth, we come from the stars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we go back there.
		We return to be part of it.
		And it seems like, it just seems, Bonnie, like we've gone out of space, we've gone into the oceans, we've explored the land masses pretty much now, but we've ignored all of that below us.
		It seems incredible that we have, that there wouldn't be something like our space program only devoted to going down where Pat Boone went.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's fascinating, and it's an unknown, and it's a frontier.
		And it will continue to be a frontier probably as long as outer space is, because it is so difficult to get down very far underground.
		And we are continually finding new caves and finding new areas.
		And if there is evidence of old civilizations, it's very likely that we will find some of that in caves.
		And it's like a time machine going somewhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if that occurred, if you find that, Bonnie, you would turn that to science and it might be years before the rest of us would know about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there would be solid reasons for that, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You wouldn't just go to a newspaper and say, look what I found.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		As scientists, we want to make sure that we've, you know, protected what we found as well as making sure that people know about it in a good way and that it's really covered, that we can protect it and make it something that people can cherish for the rest of their lives.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All the way around.
		You're an incredible person, Bonnie, and I want to thank you for being on the program tonight.
		And don't forget, folks, CAVESIENCE at AOL.com is a way to get hold of Bonnie.
		And you will answer email?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I will answer email, and I look forward to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're in for it.
		All right, Bonnie, thank you for being on the program.
		And in a few minutes here, five or ten minutes, see you on 3830, huh?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We'll see you on the other part of the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On the flip side, huh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night, Bonnie.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's it, folks.
		As we just said, we'll be on 3830 75-meter band here in a little bit.
		I'm Art Bell from the High Desert.

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