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Aug. 28, 2004 - Art Bell

02:52:52

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Eric Brende - The Simple Life

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	Thanks for watching.
	From the high desert and the great American Southwest.
	I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's 25 noontime zones.
	We cover them all like a blanket with this program known as Coast to Coast AMI Mart Bell.
	I bid you a good darkness.
	Great to be here.
	It is great to be here.
	And I guess I've got a note packed with one that I love so much.
	It's not Laura Brannigan dead at 47 years of age.
	I play her record frequently, Self Control, because I love the message, and I love the music, and she went, I guess, instantly in her sleep with a brain aneurysm, and that's awfully early, but if you gotta go, I would imagine that's one of the better ways.
	It's relatively instant, and you just never see it coming, and you're asleep on top of that, so, um, sad, There probably are worse ways to go.
	Goodbye.
	Laura, you were one hell of a singer.
	That's for sure.
	Now, we're going to do all kinds of interesting things tonight.
	In the next hour, I think this is going to be a blast, because it's so foreign to me.
	Eric Brindy will be here.
	And he is a real tech type.
	Yale, looks like.
	National Science Foundation.
	Mellon Foundation?
	You know, this guy has tech written all over him.
	Well, he decided to just flip off the switch and go live a life with a group called the Minimites.
	That's a good name, right?
	Minimites, as in minimum.
	In this case, less than minimum.
	In other words, He just, he threw away all technology.
	Television, I guess, and radio, and the internet, and all, everything.
	I'm so into technology.
	He and his wife went and lived with the Minamites.
	And, uh, they, you know, the Minamites, I guess, uh, make those in Pennsylvania who drive a horse and carriage around look like tech people.
	So, he, imagine what it must have been like.
	Coming up in a moment, In the first hour, a surprise for you.
	Whitley Strieber is here, author of War Day, co-author actually of War Day, co-author of The Coming Global Superstorm, which became, as you know, the incredible hit movie, and boy, it was about 28th, I believe it is now, in international earnings of movies of all time, the day after tomorrow.
	28th, can you believe that?
	And the DVD will come out next month.
	No, no, no, no.
	In October, actually.
	Early October.
	Also, of course, Communion, I think he's probably best known for Communion, is Whitley Strieber.
	We're going to talk about several things.
	Last week I was totally blown away by La Palma.
	Remember that?
	This incredible thing that could occur out in the Atlantic Ocean that would put 300 foot waves on shore.
	We'll talk a bit about it.
	And the Elmendorf Beast.
	Now, strange beasts are always fun to talk about.
	This, though, is a real one.
	A real in that it existed.
	Now, whether it was a product of Mother Nature or a product of a lab somewhere, May be in contention.
	That's the Elmendorf piece.
	We'll talk about that.
	And of course the magnetic poles shift.
	That's a lot of territory.
	story, so in a moment we will begin.
	He's turned into quite a researcher, actually.
	And, of course, a broadcaster doing Dreamland as it continues in present form on the Internet.
	He's an incredible guy.
	This is Whitley Streber.
	Hey, buddy.
	Hey, Art.
	It's great to talk to you again.
	I'm back on coast.
	Yeah, it's always great to talk to you.
	I take it you're following our movie rather closely.
	The Day After Tomorrow, now the 28th greatest earner of all time, of all time in movies.
	Of all time, and it may be one of the most prophetic movies of all time, too, there have been some just literally moments before we got on the air.
	I found a story that has been apparently posted on Space Daily within the past hour, or maybe two, to the effect that temperatures in the High Arctic Ocean have risen more in the past year than is to be believed.
	One degree of Fahrenheit in a single year.
	Oh my God.
	A whole degree?
	A whole degree.
	I mean, we say, well, that's not much.
	Oh, yes it is.
	But for millions of tons of water, it's major.
	Yeah.
	It is major.
	It really means that there is a significant Arctic melt going on.
	You bet.
	You know what that means.
	It means those ocean currents are going to get weaker.
	If you look on Unknown Country and you see this, you go to the Quick Watch section and you click on the part about the Gulf Stream, it doesn't even look like a Gulf Stream anymore.
	I know.
	It's just a... I know, and Whitley...
	The Bush administration, as of today, actually, has acknowledged that there is apparently some human element, or they now are beginning to believe there is some human element involved in global warming.
	That's like a gigantic step for the administration.
	So there's all kinds of breaking news about this.
	You're right.
	Look, we don't have a lot of time.
	We've got a lot of ground we've got to cover.
	Anytime there's a report of a Feast, it's our kind of story here, and your kind of story, and I understand it's number one right now in unknown country, right Papa?
	Papa, the hit list there?
	Right.
	You go to unknown country, and the mystery of the Elmendorf Feast is the lead story.
	There are some great pictures there.
	But let me back up a little bit and tell you the story of the Elmendorf Feast.
	Yeah, back up all the way, would you?
	Because this is the very beginning.
	Thank you.
	A rancher down in South Texas began to notice That his chickens were being attacked by something.
	And he began looking for it, and soon began to see around his ranch a rather strange animal.
	It was hairless, had a long tail, had very exaggerated rear haunches, shorter front legs, and a coyote-like head, but with very big canines.
	Fang-like teeth.
	He got a shot at this animal, and it fell over.
	And he thought that the creature was playing possum.
	There's any number of different animals which are shocked like that will just literally fall over.
	So he walked up on it closer, shot it three more times, and then left the area to do other things on his ranch.
	I might say just at the outset, we have been encouraging ranchers in the area not to shoot these animals, but rather to try to trap one.
	And there's a lot of concern down there because other people are finding goats and chickens and so forth are being destroyed.
	And these fellows are not, you know, they're not animal rights activists.
	They're going to shoot it if it eats their They're animals.
	They're farm animals.
	So, in any case, we're hoping to stop the shooting, but to go back to the story.
	He couldn't find any... Later, a friend of his said, well, he described what he'd shot, and he said, she said, no one's going to believe you.
	You better go back and take pictures.
	So he went back and he took pictures of it, and he was...
	Surprised to see there was no bullet holes in it.
	And he eventually went back and buried it.
	But wait a minute, the guy shot it four total times, right?
	Four times.
	That's right.
	No bullet holes.
	He did not see any.
	And he thought that was quite unusual, because he was a marksman in the army, as he told me.
	And he was... He didn't, you know, he didn't think too much of it, because this is a guy on a ranch, he's not thinking about anything Weird.
	He just has this strange animal there.
	He's taken his pictures.
	He buries it.
	And eventually, by hook or crook, none other than Linda Moulton Howe hears about this.
	Wow, this is right down her alley.
	It's right down her alley.
	So guess who finds out who he is and calls him up and does all of her usual great stuff?
	Linda does.
	And sure enough, we have on August the 31st, I mean on July the 31st, a report I have a question already.
	in their regular segment at the end of the show and incidentally if you want to listen to that report at
	some point you can go to
	unknown country click on dreamland on the upper right hand side
	the very last program there are five programs there the fifth program
	is just this report i have a question already i'm i'm on your page and i'm
	looking at a picture of the skull
	This creature obviously is very decomposed.
	How long ago?
	I think it was a couple of months before... Boy, that's fast decomposition!
	Well, if you went down to South Texas, you'd find out why.
	First of all, the fire ants got the thing before he buried it, within hours.
	Then he buried it.
	Not quite as fast as the middle of the Mato Grosso in the Brazilian jungle, but it's definitely up there in terms of speed.
	This is very humid and very hot this time of year, so yeah, the decomposition was profound.
	Quickly.
	In any case, he buried the creature in sand and eventually realized that there was something more here than just another annoyance and a loss on his ranch.
	The story began to get out.
	The local media picked it up, and Linda picked it up.
	It came onto Dreamland.
	And I was immediately fascinated.
	My brother is a... Richard Streber is an amateur naturalist, but more than an amateur, he's a very advanced amateur naturalist.
	And I told him about it.
	He was immediately fascinated.
	Gathered together a team, including a biologist and some other people.
	Your brother did this?
	My brother did.
	He lives in San Antonio and he's quite capable and has access to all the right kinds of scientists who would be able to go down there and gather samples properly at a scientific level of recovery.
	Way to go!
	Yeah, so they went down and recovered it.
	Our website paid for DNA analysis which is underway right now at one of the world's leading labs and in Three to four weeks, we should get the first set of results.
	And we will see whether or not this is a canine.
	What do you think we have on our hands here?
	I mean, it has canine characteristics, but... Well, it doesn't, it doesn't.
	There's something about it.
	Yeah, I'll say.
	Looking at the skull, there certainly is.
	Well, you look at the teeth.
	Yeah, I am.
	What you're looking at is really quite remarkable.
	Chief biologist at the San Antonio Zoo has seen the skull.
	The rancher has taken him the skull.
	And they immediately thought the same thing our biologist did, that this is a canine skull of some kind.
	But these teeth are not only not canine, they're not even mammalian.
	I take it, Woodley, that the sample you provided is, I mean, it's deteriorated, obviously, but it's going to be very good, fresh, relatively fresh DNA, right?
	Absolutely.
	It's a molar, and we actually had a dentist participating in this to be sure we could remove a tooth correctly.
	So that it would be there would be DNA from within the tooth from nowhere else.
	That's going to give you very high quality DNA.
	Very high quality DNA from inside the tooth and from some ribs that we took.
	So we will definitely get excellent and copious DNA for many tests.
	No question whatsoever about it.
	We have this and we have it from two different parts of the body as well which helps.
	So if If we can understand this, we will.
	I mean, we will find a scientific answer to this question.
	Well, in some of the brief material you sent me, you seemed to indicate that you might be speculating or leaning toward the possibility that this could be a designer animal or a lab animal?
	Well, the problem is this jaw.
	The biologists who have looked at that jaw, looking at, if you go to the website and you click on the Third picture, I guess, on the story.
	If you click on the full story, you see a blow-up of the skull itself.
	And you look at those canines.
	The thing is that this is not really well-formed.
	It's not a deformity.
	Because if it was a deformity, it would be a repeat of some other part of the animal.
	But dogs, canines, don't have the genetic encoding for this type of tooth.
	Really, the structure of the jaw is not mammalian, as the biologist from the zoo pointed out.
	It's something else.
	And that does suggest some kind of genetic manipulation, yes.
	Manipulation or mutation?
	Both M words.
	Could it be either one?
	Mutation is a possibility, too, of course.
	And whether the animal had sarcoptic mange, which is full body mange, or was just hairless, we don't know.
	But it was observed eating mulberries and as well as killing chickens, which means it's omnivorous, like canines are.
	Right.
	We're fairly sure that there's something in the dog family in this animal.
	But there's something else in it, too.
	You know, there have been some other pictures.
	There's some pictures from Maryland that we feel is not the same animal.
	It's a creature with sarcoptic mange, probably a fox or a coyote.
	But there are a couple of other pictures that were taken, oddly enough, up near the Nidd's Ranch, which are too blurry to really be sure, but they do have the same pronounced rear haunch, where the creature almost looks kangaroo-like when it's standing up.
	And it seems possible, I mean, the Nidd's Ranch, as you know, is the ranch owned by Bob Bigelow up in Utah, I guess, which is a place where very strange things occur.
	Many very strange things occur, and among the people who have seen the animal up there is John Alexander, none other than Colonel John Alexander, whom I'm sure you've had on your show before.
	Absolutely.
	And I have... We need a clear picture of this animal alive and on the ground before we can begin to make any Comparisons, unfortunately, the two snaps that we have of the animal that was taken up in Utah are so blurry and from so far away, there's just absolutely no way to be sure.
	Alright, but we do have some really hard evidence here, so how much will the genetics tell us, do you know?
	I mean, how specific can it be?
	They'll tell us everything that they can, and they can tell us, certainly, if this is in the In what species range it is in.
	If it is, in fact, a definite specific subspecies, they can tell us right down to the breed that it is, if it's a dog, for example.
	They can tell us what coyote and what type of coyote.
	They can get very, very detailed and very specific.
	I have a question, Whitley.
	Maybe you will not have the answer to this, but is it legal in this country to genetically manipulate animals and create, essentially, new breeds?
	We are allowed, aren't we, I think, to tamper with the genetics of animals at that level?
	Yes, as far as releasing breeding pairs into the wild, in ranch land in South Texas, I think they'll try hard to find a log that has been violated, because The rancher feels that this was a female and that it was pregnant and therefore these creatures are breeding down there and if that happens obviously there's going to be a considerable amount of trouble.
	Do you know what it was that made him think this creature was pregnant?
	Yes, he saw udders on it, developed udders and it seemed to be fat in the belly when it was dead.
	Oh my goodness!
	So he was concerned that it was a pregnant female.
	And other ranchers in the area have seen similar things.
	They feel.
	There was one fellow who had a very definite sighting of one which was tracking his goats.
	And so he felt like, you know, they feel like there are others down there.
	Whitley, isn't it possible that every now and then nature gives us a new animal?
	Is that possible?
	You know, that's the so-called punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution, and we can see instances of it in the past, yes, where it now appears from the fossil record that new animals do occasionally show up very abruptly.
	And that's always a possibility.
	But I have a feeling that with this strange jaw It doesn't look like a good jaw.
	It doesn't look like a jaw that's going to really be a very effective tool for an animal.
	That is not what leads you to believe, well, perhaps the hand of man tinkered where it ought not.
	There's something very dramatic about it, and scary, and it, you know, those big long teeth, and it just, I have the feeling that the hand of somebody other than God is in this.
	Let me put it that way.
	Well, all right.
	Are there more sightings going on?
	Well, as they say, the ranchers reported one other sighting from a friend of his.
	One other?
	Well, that's not too much yet, but you have to wonder... Well, there are liable to be more.
	I mean, there's... Whitley, we're at the bottom of the hour.
	Hold on for a moment.
	The Elmendorf beast, a new or old thing, but certainly Never before seen.
	The testing is going on now.
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	to Coast travel and fishing.
	Thank you for watching.
	Coast to Coast Travel Channel.
	You got me living only for the light.
	Before the morning comes, the story's told.
	You take my self, you take my self control.
	Another night, another day goes by.
	I never stop myself to wonder why You have to forget to blame my own
	You take care, you make myself unruly I, I live among the creatures of the night
	I haven't got the will to try and fight Against the new tomorrows
	So I guess I'll just believe it's quite tomorrow I never pause, I say tonight
	I'm living in the forest of a dream I know the night is not the one I've seen
	I must be leaving something for us Wanna take a ride?
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	Laura Branigan, gone at 47 years of age.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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	bell from east to the Rockies call toll-free 800-824-9000.
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	International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access Number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	So sorry she's gone.
	Good morning, everybody.
	I'm Art Bell.
	In a moment, we'll continue with Whitley Strieber, and we're going to talk about La Palma.
	If you don't know what La Palma is, I didn't, you're gonna want to listen very, very carefully.
	Switley and I were the genesis of what became The Day After Tomorrow. Whenever there's a
	reference to it, you know, in the media, I obviously, you know, something like that,
	the baby, so I noticed right away. And there was this story last week about La Palma, and
	it basically said if there's another eruption, the west side of La Palma falls into the ocean,
	it'll create waves that'll make, I think the reference was The Day After Tomorrow look
	like, you know, a day in the bathtub or something. And I'm going, what?
	What?
	And so apparently it's true, and I mentioned it to Whitley, I don't know, very early in the week, and researching he went, and Whitley, what's up with La Palma?
	Well, I'm embarrassed to say that I found a story on my own website that I hadn't read.
	Big wave coming from August the 12th.
	Tens of millions of people along the east coast of the US and Canada "...may drown if a volcano off North Africa slides into the sea."
	Now, get this.
	A volcanologist named McGuire says, quote, "...the U.S.
	government must be aware of the threat.
	I am sure they are not taking it seriously.
	They certainly should be worried, as should the island states of the Caribbean.
	A future President of the United States must make a call on what to do when La Palma collapses.
	Uh, not if.
	What do you do?
	Get a snorkel?
	Not if, but when, right?
	In other words, this baby has let go any number of times in the past, but now we have this precipitous western part, and if it goes into the ocean... You know, I looked up La Palma on the web, and it showed a picture from space, and I was thinking of La Palma as this small little place, Whitley, Yes.
	But hell no, man.
	It's got mountains that have snow on them for several thousand feet.
	I mean, it's a monstrous thing.
	The Cumbre Vieja volcano dominates the island of La Palma.
	It is the island.
	So this thing is set, or it's like at a precipice point.
	It explodes fairly often.
	It erupted in 1949.
	It erupted in 1971.
	Now, in 1949 is when this process of collapse began.
	Oh, really?
	And it is now at the point of where it's possible that another eruption might either cause the cliff, which underwater is just this enormous precipitate cliff going down at vast distances into the deep To fall in part, or the whole thing could collapse.
	And if the whole thing collapses, you're going to see a vast tragedy, and we need to know what is going on down there.
	Somebody had better get down there and get looking at that.
	I guess so.
	I mean, it's not like you hear about it a lot on the news, or even at all.
	And it would go wipe out Caribbean islands, I suppose.
	They wouldn't exist anymore, would they?
	Well, it would, and I've been doing some research on tsunamis, and it's interesting that every so often on this planet, a really big wave comes.
	Apparently.
	Almost all of China was inundated by a wave about 15,000 years ago, so much so that there are areas in China that are called Ivory Mountains, where they mine ivory from animal tusks.
	That these enormous quantities of animals were swept up into this area in central China like seaweed is swept up at the edge of the beach when the tide comes in.
	So if this baby goes, the United States would have about 7 hours notice, maybe.
	They would be the 7 worst hours in history.
	And we would have 7 to 10 hours.
	New York would have Seven hours, of course.
	Bermuda would have about two.
	The Bahamas, I mean, we wouldn't get that far, but down in the central and eastern Caribbean, they'd have eight or nine hours.
	And Canada would have seven, about, also.
	And that wave could range anywhere from 50 or 60 feet to 300 feet in height.
	There was some line in the story I read saying, and it wouldn't just be a wave, it would keep coming and keep coming and keep coming.
	Yeah, it would be exactly.
	As the volcano collapsed, as the undersea cliff collapsed, it would come again and again and again.
	There would be waves of various heights involved.
	It would be absolutely devastating, and it seems clear that we need to Do a lot more study of that volcano and, above all, to get analysts down under the water to see exactly what the state of the cliff is.
	Maybe there's this, Whitley.
	Maybe there's a sort of mentality out there that, well, we can't stop it.
	There's nothing we can do about it.
	However, you would think evacuation plans would be the very least that we could do for the people on the coasts who otherwise aren't going to exist.
	The first thing we need to do is find out the degree of likelihood, and that we certainly can do.
	We can analyze the state of the cliff.
	We can look at the likelihood of... We can monitor the volcano.
	Very effective volcano monitoring these days.
	We can get it to the point where We have an idea of what's going to come down.
	Now, what if they find out the worst case scenario, and they figure out that the volcano could go off at any time, and when it does, it's going to cause, essentially, the destruction of the entire east coast of the United States?
	What are they going to say, then?
	You know, I think, Whitley, that I may have seen one You know, like 60 Minutes or one of those programs did something on it a long time ago, and I sort of remember going, oh my God, how come none of us know about this?
	And it hit me exactly the same way last week.
	How come we're not, I don't know, monitoring, testing, talking about it, making plans, something or another?
	Maybe we are.
	But you'd think that if that was true, the President would spend even more time in Crawford Well, I suppose the president with seven hours notice, he'd be able to get out of the way no matter what.
	That's true, but I don't think any president who knew this would fail to do as much as he possibly could about it.
	Well, we're not in error about any of this.
	In other words, it is as we described.
	We're not exaggerating.
	And not only that, the volcano is not quiescent.
	It's an active volcano.
	I mean, it erupts every 25 to 200 years.
	The last eruption was 1971.
	There's every reason to think that it might happen again.
	It'd be a hell of a target for a terrorist, wouldn't it?
	Well, I don't think they've learned yet how to actually cause volcanoes to go off, thank goodness.
	No, but I don't know what a nuke would do off the cliff.
	Uh, and everybody will immediately say, I don't get my ideas!
	Well, you know, they're thinking of nothing else but, so this kind of stuff has already crossed their mind, it just crossed mine suddenly, you know, if somebody were to set off that western cliff.
	Anyway, time is short, and there is one other thing I definitely want to cover with you, but I hope people will take what we just said to heart, please, and learn more about it.
	The Earth's magnetic field, a fascinating topic all by itself.
	A lot of stories lately, Whitley, of birds.
	You know, large flocks of birds flying weirdly in circles, not knowing where to go, found dead because they couldn't migrate to their normal places.
	And butterflies have ended up in Canada, that are supposed to come up across the United States.
	Their migration pattern changed also.
	Really?
	Yeah, just recently.
	This is fascinating.
	Every 500,000 years, the magnetic pull, not the planet itself, Right.
	But the magnetic pole flips and North becomes South and South becomes North.
	This is the thing that makes your compass point North.
	The attraction is North and suddenly it flips.
	So North is now suddenly South.
	And I guess, how much do we know about how fast it flips?
	Well, that's what we don't know, unfortunately.
	The last time it did this was 750,000 years ago and it has definitely been confirmed that it is in the process of doing it now.
	Now, we We don't know how fast this takes place.
	Some scientists feel that the magnetic field will immediately reconstitute itself, because the solar wind will cause that to happen.
	And others feel that it will remain in chaos for quite a period of time.
	If this happens, and there's a solar flare, and a lot of Gamma radiation and so forth comes towards Earth, it would be conceivably like an electromagnetic pulse atom, series of electromagnetic pulse atom bombs going off.
	Everybody bear in mind the magnetic field protects us from the more dangerous of the sun's eruptive particles, so if that were gone or neutralized for a period of time, then shields are down in Star Trek talk.
	That is right.
	Shields are down, and we would experience... It would be a mess, actually, and there would be effects.
	There already are effects like this.
	For example, satellites in the Southern Hemisphere were damaged a few weeks ago during a solar flare because they were inside the Earth's magnetic field.
	Yes.
	And the part of the magnetic field they were in at that time was in flux.
	It was very weak and the field keeps opening up holes.
	A hole in the magnetic field, really?
	Yes.
	And I think, I can't prove this, but there was a period of time in a town in Sicily where there were a lot of very bizarre electromagnetic effects.
	Car doors were suddenly locking for no reason.
	A similar thing happened in Utah.
	A similar thing happened in England.
	In India, there were these spontaneous electrical fires erupting where people would be sitting in their house and all of a sudden the refrigerator would burst into flames or something.
	In Sicily, there were other types, slightly Different types of fires in India where they don't have refrigerators.
	So is the speculation that when this really got underway, that kind of thing would become the norm?
	Things bursting in flames?
	Well, yeah, if there was a lot of static in the air generated, because these effects all happened during periods where there were apparently, the magnetic field above these areas was weak.
	And also there were solar storms taking place, and high levels of electromagnetic energy were reaching the ground.
	But it gets much worse than that.
	It does?
	If there was a gamma ray burst, every part of the planet that it touched would be sterilized.
	What about if you had a flare the size of the one we had a couple of years ago?
	Now, that one, you'll recall, actually exceeded the measurement capabilities of the specific satellite designed to watch the Sun.
	It was by far the largest solar flare ever recorded and if a flare of that wouldn't really take a flare that big.
	We'd be in danger from even an R-class solar flare or a mass ejection if it was directed at the Earth without it, if we didn't have a magnetic field.
	We wouldn't need A big one like that, you could forget.
	We have B, C, M, X, and then put your head between your legs kind of thing.
	Right.
	No, if a really big one like that happened, you really could forget it.
	I mean, that would be that.
	We would be finished.
	I think there would be a megadeth on the planet.
	Do you think that the birds, the butterflies, the weird things that we're chronicling now in modern day really do indicate, is that part, is that a symptom of the magnetic field beginning to get fluxy and changey and getting ready to move?
	Yeah, because their migratory, their ability to migrate is dependent upon a little bit of magnetite that's in the brain.
	All creatures have this.
	We have it, by the way.
	It's located quite near the pineal gland in the brain.
	We don't really know whether or not it has any function in our brains.
	Oh, I bet it does.
	When this happens, we're liable to find out that it does.
	So then if the pole slipped, migratory birds would migrate the other way?
	Or do we not really have to?
	There would be extinctions among those species, probably, that have committed themselves to the magnetic field being in this particular direction.
	Oh.
	Oh.
	I'm not so sure that they would.
	It would depend if they ended up being sent to places that were viable, their migrations might continue, but those migratory animals, the migrations all came up in the last ice age or the last two ice ages.
	When there were flying animals and some creatures like elk and so forth that evolved migratory patterns to get away from the extremely harsh winters, and their bodies made use of the Earth's magnetic field, and if the magnetic field changes, I don't think they're going to work right.
	I wonder how much of the world would work right, and is that something somebody is studying somewhere?
	I mean, do the best scientists know what would happen, what would go wrong with our electronics and maybe our computers and ourselves?
	We would have a complete electronic failure.
	Every exposed electronic device would be overwhelmed, and you would have power grids going down worldwide because they were just be
	too much too much electromagnetic energy being poured in the
	into them from above it would not this would not survive even of few hours without a magnetic field
	if there was 24 hours without a magnetic field the world would be in complete
	chaos in your view with me here's an interesting question for
	everybody in you too
	if everything got wiped out Let's say we remained alive, but all computers, all records, all control, all electronics, all communications suddenly ceased.
	Would we survive it?
	Well, you know, back in the end of the Roman Empire, people were sick and tired of taxes.
	They were sick and tired of all of the order, of the laws, etc.
	and so forth.
	And they kind of walked away from it.
	200 years later, there were no roads.
	There was not even any money in use.
	Most people couldn't read or write.
	The lifespan had declined from 45 years to 26 years.
	It was not fun.
	And that would be the sort of thing that was on the cards if we had a collapse that profound and that sudden.
	Because we would not have the infrastructure available to fix it.
	We would not.
	Clearly, countries like the United States that are, I guess we're the most dependent on technology of any country on Earth, we would be the hardest hit.
	And Europe, we would be.
	Absolutely.
	Ironically, the people that would be the least affected would be like in Africa, where they probably wouldn't even mess, unless there was a gamma ray burst that hit the planet, they wouldn't even
	know it was happening.
	Well maybe that would be the weak inheriting, Whitley.
	Maybe, the weak inheriting the Earth, yeah.
	The question of when it will happen...
	Of course, one of the troubles with the scientific community is
	nobody wants to say anything that's too controversial.
	It would draw too much attention to them.
	Because then their careers are on the line.
	It's the most unfortunate thing.
	Listen, my career's on the line.
	If I don't end this one, I'm supposed to.
	And I'm supposed to now say, hey, buddy, your website is unknowncountry.com.
	Dreamland airs Saturdays, right?
	It's on Saturdays from 1 o'clock Pacific.
	And it's Really, keepin' on, keepin' on, so... Alright, and you do the same thing.
	You keep on keepin' on.
	Take care, my friend.
	You too.
	Whitley Streber, my co-author.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Subscribe to the After Dark newsletter online at www.coasttocoastam.com.
	Just click through the orange pipe to the secure server.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Great.
	I'm out.
	I'm gonna open up your game And maybe tell you about Phaedra And how she gave me life And how she made it in Some velvet mornin' when I was dreamin'
	Flowers growin' on our hill Drownin' flies and daffodils
	Learn from us very much Look at us, but do not touch
	Fedra is my name Do talk with Art Bell. Call the wildcard line at area...
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	International callers It is indeed.
	This is going to be a really interesting program.
	That's good music to sort of launch it.
	I don't know why, I just feel it is.
	Dialing toll free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	It is indeed.
	This is going to be a really interesting program.
	That's good music to sort of launch it.
	I don't know why. I just feel it is.
	That's the thing about music.
	It establishes a kind of move for what's about to happen or what just did happen.
	And that's why Bumper Music is so much fun.
	Anyway, we're going to talk about technology tonight.
	Or maybe it's an anti-technology show.
	I'm not sure.
	But you know how wrapped into technology I am.
	It's all around me.
	My whole life is technology.
	And that's not an exaggeration!
	One of my best friends here in town runs the best internet company here in town.
	I guess I could give its name, couldn't I?
	Air Internet.
	And so as a result, running a company that is an internet provider, he's incredibly immersed in technology all the time.
	That's his business.
	Computers every minute of his day.
	He's the kind of guy that goes around with a headphone Earpiece combination and is talking on his cell phone all the time.
	You know, totally immersed in technology.
	He and I run various experiments.
	We're techno buddies and he just got back from Bermuda.
	Bermuda is a very unusual place.
	It doesn't allow VHF radios, so you can't take a radio with you.
	While there is internet, barely was he able to connect with the regulated situation they've got going.
	There's something about Bermuda And you're only allowed one car if you live in, if you're a Bermudan, you can only own one car.
	Can't have that many on the island, and they've got import taxes and restrictions and all kinds of things, and it's like, he suffered for a whole week.
	Paul suffered.
	And he got back tonight, just about an hour before the program, I said, hey Paul, how'd you do?
	Well, it was all right.
	We had fun.
	I said, well, how long was the withdrawal?
	And he said, well, it was just the first day.
	He said that I went nuts the first day, and then I was all right.
	And I said, well, I don't know.
	I don't know if I believe that.
	I don't know how you decide how you're going to buy a book.
	I read the inside cover, you know, when I go to the bookstore.
	And this one really sounds good.
	What happens when a graduate of MIT, the bastion of technological advancement And his bride moved to a community so very primitive in its technology that even Amish groups consider it antiquated.
	Ho, ho, ho!
	Eric Grundy conceives a real-life experiment to see if, in fact, all our cell phones, widescreen TVs, and SUVs have made life easier and better, or whether life might be preferable without them.
	By turns, the query narrows down to a single question.
	What is the least we need to achieve the most?
	With this in mind, the Brindis ditch their car, their stove, refrigerator, running water, everything else motorized or hooked up to the grid in any way, and begin an 18-month trial run, one that dramatically changes the way they live, oh, I guess, And proves entertaining and surprising to readers.
	So, this is the name of the book, Better Off, Flipping the Switch on Technology, by Eric Rende.
	And Eric is here, and in a moment we shall talk to him.
	This should be quite an experience.
	If you're half as involved in technological stuff as I am, you might want to listen very
	carefully.
	Well, here's what I was really supposed to read.
	Eric Brendy has degrees from Yale, Washburn University, and MIT.
	He's received a Citation of Excellence from the National Science Foundation and a Graduate Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation in the Humanities.
	His book, Better Off!
	Flipping the Switch on Technology, describes the journey that he and his wife took from the fast-paced life of high technology at MIT of all, To a richer, more leisurely and savory existence, living in the country with an old order Anabaptist group that he calls the Mennonites.
	Mennomites.
	Mennomites.
	That's it.
	Here they learned practical knacks and principles of technological selection that they now apply in their urban home.
	The Brindys have recently relocated to Old Town section of St.
	Louis, I guess, where Eric Mix is living as a soap maker and rickshaw driver.
	A soap maker and a rickshaw driver.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Hi, Eric.
	Welcome to the program.
	Thank you very much.
	OK, so we're going to go into country here with you that You know that I just probably am completely unprepared to go into.
	I live in an absolute, you know as you might imagine, somebody in my business, an absolute technological connected life.
	And I take it, I mean, describe for me what you were living in before you took the plunge.
	Well, actually if you had seen me in my early days where I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, You would have probably found me most of the time lying around the house watching television or lying around the house reading science fiction, and Isaac Asimov was my favorite science fiction writer.
	I looked forward to a future of almost complete roboticization of human life, and I could hardly wait to float around in the little glass bubbles, and so I would say I was Technologically, as fanatical, if not more so than you are, at one point.
	Well, we could debate that.
	That's not the purpose of the program.
	The purpose of the program is to find out why a man, seemingly obliviously happy doing what you just described, would even consider chucking it all.
	I mean, what influence caused you to even begin thinking about this?
	Well, as I grew older and got into my middle and later teens, I think I did start to become disillusioned.
	Although I can't really pinpoint an exact date, it might have been possibly the time my father went out and got one of the first word processors ever made.
	Of course, the idea of this was to save the time and trouble of writing and make it a lot faster and easier.
	Of course.
	But my dad spent so much time with that device, I almost never saw him again.
	There's something kind of eerie about having your father physically present in the room with you, but mentally a million miles away.
	Although I was not able to articulate it to myself at the time, I think I began to have the first inkling that maybe Our time-saving devices are not so much saving time as gobbling
	up our time and maybe even gobbling us up Um
	Yes, you'd have to say I'd have to respond yes to that.
	They do gobble up our time, but they also create a different... I mean, it's a completely different lifestyle From what you... So anyway, so you were truthful.
	This began for you very young and kind of with the loss of your father in a way, right?
	Possibly.
	Yeah, I think that that was something that disaffected me, not only against technology perhaps, but maybe against just life in general.
	And that was at about what age, please?
	Oh, I'd say that was maybe 13, 14.
	Somewhere in there.
	Okay, here's the part I don't get.
	If you were forming all of that, even then, you ended up at MIT and so forth and so on, so obviously it hadn't taken root or even close to it, or you never could have jumped into that technological education.
	Well, I have to admit that I went to MIT not as a proponent of technology at all, but as a subversive.
	Whoa, whoa, what a word.
	Wait a minute, a subversive?
	Yes, I was trying to infiltrate the technological establishment in order to do my part to overthrow it.
	Oh my God, really?
	This sounds like the Unabomber minus the bombs.
	Well, the sabotage I was trying to do was at the level of ideas, not actually physically destroying things.
	How do you sabotage ideas, specifically?
	Well, that's where my experiment comes in, the one you described at the beginning of the program.
	Yes.
	I set out to try to get some concrete data to do my own personal experiment, and that's what most of the book is about.
	I was very lucky.
	I was kind of swimming around at MIT at first.
	I won't say that everything fell together at once.
	But on one of the trips from Topeka to MIT, I took a Greyhound bus.
	And by the way, I took it even though the airline price was the same in order to walk the talk.
	For me, it was a very primitive form of technology, and I kind of gritted my teeth, took the bus, and actually enjoyed it.
	But the reason I mention it is that partway through the country on this trip, A man with a big black hat got on the bus in solid black colored clothing.
	I assumed he was Amish.
	Wheels started turning in the back of my head.
	I sidled over to him the next time we had a rest stop and struck up a conversation.
	Before you know it, I was getting along great with this guy.
	I was very surprised.
	He was actually much friendlier than I was expecting.
	But I got more than I bargained for.
	came from one of those rare old order Anabaptist sects, and I don't specify its name in the book because I'm trying to protect their identity.
	Absolutely, it's not necessary.
	I nickname them the Minamites.
	But anyway, a very rare group, one of a handful, that not only prohibits the use of electricity and motor vehicles, which most Amish groups do, but also did not allow The use of any motorized or automated equipment whatsoever.
	This is very different from most Amish groups.
	You may not realize this, but most Amish groups use a whole lot of machinery that's motorized.
	No, you're right.
	I'm really not aware of the extent of their abstention or whatever.
	It's gotten so prevalent that in Lancaster County, they can do with a substitute device Almost everything that we can do with our electronic devices.
	They have figured out a way to hook up pressurized air hoses.
	And in their kitchen, they can use different appliances on pressurized air, which they plug into a socket.
	It's just not an electric socket.
	It's a pressurized air hose socket.
	So anyway, it's very extensive among the Amish to use chainsaws, pumps, stationary farming equipment.
	And for most Amish, The people in this group, the man that I met, were so far back in the past that it would be like, for us, going back to what most Amish are like.
	It was a very unusual group, and my heart went pitter-pat when I found out about this.
	So he would be described then as sort of a radical Amish?
	Yeah.
	And yeah, this group, they would trace their origins back to the early 1500s.
	Maybe a better word should have been fundamentalist.
	Well, I wouldn't call them a fundamentalist, not really, because I associate that with Bible-thumping Christians.
	And this group, they're very undemonstrative.
	I mean, they're not trying to go out and get converts.
	They're just trying to lead a simple and No, I just meant fundamentalists within the mainstream structure of people of a like mind.
	Yeah, their way of thinking, certainly, they were going to the fundamentals and to the roots of their beliefs.
	So I'm curious, he obviously, as he talked to you, he intrigued you in some way with this very strict lifestyle.
	And how do you do it?
	What do you say that, I don't know, drew you?
	Well, I don't know if it was anything specific, because it was a very sketchy conversation, but there's something about the twinkle in his eye, and his somewhat jovial manner, that made me think, wow, there's something intriguing here, and I want to find out more.
	I want to know why this man is so happy!
	Everybody knows you should be frowning and concerned and up-to-the-minute and hyper-tensive and all that, right?
	Yes.
	So, probably his calm, good humor struck you as so unusual that you want to know where it came from.
	Oh, definitely.
	He did not give me the closed-off feeling at all.
	He seemed to be glad that I was interested in what they were doing.
	Another thing that made this group unusual when we got there is that, indeed, unlike a lot of Amish groups, they were open to outsiders.
	And they had several outsider families that had come in and joined them.
	Do you think the reason, I'm sure you investigated to some degree, that the other outside groups who were with these folks had made the decision, did it correlate with yours?
	To some extent, yes.
	And to some extent, no.
	There had to be a very strong religious dimension for people to actually join the group.
	I mean, formally join.
	We never formally joined because, of course, we were there to look at the technology and how that affected their way of life, and only for a limited time were we there.
	Or the lack of it would be more to the point, I guess.
	I mean, how simply Do they honestly live?
	You said no machines, no computers, no TV, no telephones.
	How far did it go?
	Well, they didn't have indoor plumbing.
	Now that was one thing that I wasn't that interested in that particular thing because I didn't view that as an automated labor-saving device so much.
	But they didn't have indoor plumbing.
	They didn't have, as you say, telephones.
	They didn't have Automobiles.
	They didn't have refrigerators.
	Of course, none of the other electric kitchen appliances.
	Wow.
	No vacuum cleaners.
	Really?
	Well, that's pretty radical.
	Yep.
	And so what do they do to entertain themselves?
	I mean, what does a typical Minamite family do?
	Well, that's a good question.
	That gets to the whole heart of everything.
	One of the things that I've found is that it's often very hard to distinguish between what is work and what is recreation, or what is work and what is festivity.
	To understand why I say that, maybe I should Get to maybe the central feature of my findings, if you will.
	As we talk here, would you like me to maybe read something from the book to give you a taste of it?
	Or would you rather I just describe it?
	Yes, just describe it.
	Okay.
	Well, what happens is when you are doing the manual labor, which of course is very prevalent
	when you don't have automated machinery, and you are doing the manual labor for your daily
	bread or your livelihood, whether it be in the house, in the kitchen, or out in the fields,
	what happens is manual labor has this curious property of becoming self-automating.
	You start to forget you're doing it.
	If you're working with other people, you start to talk.
	You start to enjoy each other's company.
	I suppose.
	And they have a saying, many hands make work light.
	And it's very true.
	When you get together with people you forget you're even working.
	And look at the, by the way, the economy here.
	You're getting exercise and you're not even aware of it because you're talking.
	You're getting physical exercise that your body needs and you're also getting a kind of social experience.
	Which your social self needs.
	I suppose all of that's true.
	Hold on one moment, Eric.
	We're here at the bottom of the hour.
	Eric Brendi is my guest.
	And he just... You know, we're going to have to explore that early time.
	That subversive nature.
	That's pretty interesting.
	Anyway, imagine it.
	All of that That you use now every day in your life.
	Gone.
	just flat gone.
	I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff. I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff. I'm going
	to be doing a lot of stuff. I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff. I'm going to be doing
	a lot of stuff.
	I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
	It is indeed.
	This man walked away with his wife, I might add.
	We're gonna ask about that.
	Walked away from everything.
	Eric Brindy.
	And he went to live with this group called the Minimites, who virtually don't have anything.
	I mean, nothing that you and I use.
	No internet, no refrigerator, no flushing john.
	That one's really over the top.
	But I mean, all the rest of it, too.
	Everything that you use and do just about every day, they didn't have any of that stuff.
	And he went to live there with his wife.
	That we're about to ask about.
	We're going to withhold the name of the village that Eric and his wife went to,
	but we are going to learn some more about this uh... village
	And one thing I really want to ask you, Eric, my wife, I'm asking on behalf of my wife, by the way, your attitude about technology and so forth is pretty apparent, maybe even antagonistic or worse.
	I mean, when you made the decision, finally, to do this, did you go to your wife and say, listen, hon, I got this idea?
	Or did you... How did you approach that?
	Or was she already in every step of the way toward this decision?
	Well, it was a lot dicier than even that, because she was only my fiancé.
	And I made sure that she had completely fallen in love with me before I broke to her the news of my research interests, at least in detail.
	She did know something about my interest in the Amish, and she said, oh, I've always wanted to live on a farm.
	But by a farm she meant a three-acre suburban lot in Ayer, which is a suburb about 30 miles west of Boston.
	The train did take a ride by Walden Pond, though, I guess.
	That was her idea of simple living.
	So, you just made sure that she'd die for you before you popped it.
	I guess it was, you know, it just sort of happened that way.
	Maybe it was conveniently timed.
	What was her life like prior to your popping this question?
	She worked as an accountant in downtown Boston and she managed She used computers to manage several office buildings and keep their books.
	Oh, I bet.
	And she had a tenth story office with a little window overlooking the utility shaft and she had one potted plant in her office to remind her of the country.
	So in one sense she was primed for change.
	She had so much stress from her job and from the monotony of it and from grinding those numbers day in day out that she actually was grinding her teeth away and she had to have an orthodontic kind of a harness put on her mouth at night so she wouldn't grind her teeth.
	Well, we do lead really stressful lives, don't we?
	That is part of the... I guess it's what you buy when you buy into all this technology.
	That's what you buy.
	Well, and I think that in my wife's case, or she was my fiancée at the time, it shows that The lack of physical exercise is actually stressful in a way because she couldn't move.
	Her body had to make up for that by grinding something.
	I think that today they talk about carpal tunnel syndrome.
	One of the factors behind that is the lack of physical resistance that a keyboard offers your fingers.
	I think our bodies and our fingers crave Well, I think it's kind of like, I think of an analogy of, you know, whole wheat bread.
	and if they can't, they go bonkers.
	I'm thinking about that.
	Yeah, the keyboard's easy, but you think we're meant to get physical.
	Well, I think it's kind of like, I think of an analogy of whole wheat bread.
	It used to be that they took all of the bran out of bread so it would be white and fluffy
	and easier to chew.
	And then they discovered that no, our bodies need a certain amount of fiber and roughage
	for our digestive system to work right.
	And...
	And so they put the fiber back in.
	And I'm saying, why take all the physical exercise out of our daily tasks?
	Why not leave that in as well?
	Because we need that squeezability in our hands.
	We need to work our hearts a little more.
	And if you take it out, Then you're just going to have to go back and recover it, and that explains a lot of the lost time in our modern life.
	We're always playing catch-up.
	We're having to do these self-imposed exercise regimens on top of our daily work in front of the computer, and we're having to create quality time to make up for the lack of real-life social interaction when we're in our cubicles.
	Our cubicles.
	How antagonistic toward I don't know, things like television and computers and the internet, that sort of thing.
	How really antagonistic are you toward it?
	Well, I would say... Being honest?
	Very, because I don't have a computer or a TV or a VCR in my house.
	Do you think these things are evil?
	No, not in themselves.
	I mean, they're not bad in themselves, but I...
	I think that especially any kind of device where you sit in front of a screen and see only a two-dimensional image while your body is motionless is a very inefficient use of your time.
	Not to say that you can't achieve certain things that might be necessary and valuable during that time, but it's a very inefficient use of your time.
	Because very little is happening.
	Your eyes are just flickering a little bit.
	Your fingers are twitching a little bit.
	Well, there is input, though.
	I mean, if you're on the internet, conceivably, unless you're cruising porn or some such, then otherwise you may be getting educated.
	Sure, but I'd say that's sort of single-dimensional as opposed to a kind of an experience that's Many-layered, and it's the many-layered experience that we found working with these people we call the Minimites, where you have the physical exercise at the lowest level, the lowest layer, that becomes unconscious, and then you have the social experience, another layer, and then you're experiencing nature, you're feeling the breeze, you're hearing the birds at another level, and then you might be sort of half-pleasantly daydreaming.
	So you have this multi-level Oh, and then you're exercising a certain amount of physical skill and know-how.
	So at several levels, your body and your mind are being gratified.
	They're being used.
	And it's a very compressed, much more efficient use, I think, of time, so that at the end of the day, you don't say, now I've got to run to the gym to do my workout, or now I've got to hunt down my kids so I can create some quality time with them, because you've been getting that You've been getting it all along.
	But, you know, with this attitude, which, you know, I'm not in a position to judge.
	I guess maybe it's fine, but you did, after all, a degree from Yale, Washburn University, and MIT.
	Now, I can't imagine that you made it through to a degree with your attitude about these things, because you would have had to have been using these things to a great extent to even make it through.
	Actually not.
	I typed all my papers on a manual typewriter, even through graduate school.
	Really?
	Yes.
	I had been a pianist growing up.
	I played the piano.
	So I was used to that physical resistance, and I was pretty dexterous with my fingers.
	You must have read a lot.
	Read a lot?
	Oh, you mean by reading a book?
	Well, yes, as in studying.
	But my body really rebelled against it.
	I got cabin fever in a library.
	I never really savored that.
	It was kind of like being on a bed of nails for me.
	I was restless.
	I was always restless in graduate school.
	I really was eager to get out there and do my field work.
	Well, field work.
	Let's delve into field work a little bit.
	Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but it seems I'm getting the vibration that your attitude about technology was so radicalized, stick with me on this, that you were out to perhaps sabotage it, to in some way stop the march forward of civilization altogether and to turn the clock way back.
	Is that an exaggeration?
	Well, I would say it's just a little bit of a mischaracterization in that I don't see progress as something moving in a linear way.
	If you go back in time, it's worse, and if you go forward in time, it's automatically better.
	I think that there have been periods of time in history when culture was in a state of balance and harmony, and we've had periods of time in history when it was very discordant.
	I'm just aiming for a balance.
	Whether you call it backwards or forwards, it doesn't really matter.
	I just think it's pretty apparent that we're out of balance right now, that we are spending
	more time meeting the needs of technology than our own needs, and that we're chasing,
	running around, trying to always play catch up because our technological responsibilities
	seem to outweigh our own personal responsibilities so often.
	I'm trying to digest that and see if you could in any way be right.
	In other words, we're becoming a slave.
	We're becoming a slave to this stuff.
	Yeah.
	A car, for example, is not just a neutral tool to achieve your end.
	It's a complex, energy-consuming being that has needs of its own.
	Yes.
	It has a need for fuel, it has a need to occupy space, it has a need to be maintained, and it's quite expensive.
	Its first need is to be purchased, and that's quite expensive.
	All these things take a lot of time because we have to earn a lot of money to pay for them.
	Try living in L.A.
	without one.
	Yeah, and then you'd spend a lot of time just sitting in the car too.
	One time, Somebody asked Henry David Thoreau why he didn't take the train from Concord to Boston.
	And he said, hey, it's just faster to walk.
	And what he meant by that was by the time he earned the money to pay for the train ticket, he would have already been there.
	And then he would have also gotten some exercise on the way.
	Yeah, I guess.
	I'm going to be a hard sell.
	I'll tell you.
	Keep trying.
	What do you mean?
	Keep picking away at me and see if you can find a weakness in my argument.
	Well, I'm not really trying to find a weakness in your argument.
	I'm more trying to understand why it's better.
	I think that's important for me to understand.
	How long did you live with this group of minimites, by the way?
	We were there for 18 months.
	Although, at the end, we were torn.
	We tried to think of a way to stay.
	Really?
	But, for various reasons, there were many factors hanging in the balance.
	We ended up tipping towards not staying.
	Well, you were in big trouble, in a way, because you were going to write a book, which you I guess that was in the plan the whole time, wasn't it?
	Or was it not?
	Well, it sort of was in the back of my mind.
	I wrote a series of articles while I was there, too, that were published in various magazines.
	And from that, once I had amassed those, then I thought I had enough for a book.
	Well, that had to be somewhat technological as you launched yourself into that thing.
	Word processors?
	No?
	Well, eventually I did get a word processor.
	I don't have a computer, although I write out this stuff longhand, and I do put it on a word processor.
	But, you know, let me say, too, that as wary as I am of technology, and specifically our modern labor-saving devices, I never say that any particular thing is bad in itself, and all of them do have a legitimate use.
	I can't think of even a nuclear bomb.
	If you take the scenario in that one movie about Armageddon, there was this asteroid coming towards Earth, and that was the only way that anyone could think of to stop it.
	That might happen someday in the future.
	So even a nuclear bomb has possibly a healthy use that would benefit mankind.
	So, I just think it's the overuse or the misuse that's really detrimental, and it's so prevalent that I can't sound like I have a very negative attitude towards technology, but I think it's more of the attitude that something good can be made very bad through excess, like gold under the King Midas touch.
	Gold is a great thing, but if everything you touch turns to gold, That's not a good thing.
	What do you think would happen if suddenly this country, for whatever reason, just got on a limb here and imagined it suddenly embraced everything the Minamites did and it threw off all its technology, a country as dependent on it as we are, but we all somehow came to this great understanding of the better way to live, the one you've been describing tonight.
	Do you think this country would survive?
	Well, if it were sudden, no.
	I mean, it would be a cataclysm because everything would fall to pieces.
	Technology is the pillar that supports our society.
	If you pull the pillar out right now, it would cave in.
	But, on the other hand, if there were a gradual change in consciousness, I do think that our economy is simply the expression of a multitude of individual economic transactions, and as individuals Gradually change their habits and their spending habits and how they get around and what kinds of technologies they use.
	Then the economy would just change accordingly.
	The economy exists to serve us, not we the economy.
	I think that's a more plausible scenario because I don't really think that suddenly everybody after reading my book is going to rush out and throw away all their technology, as much as I might fantasize about that.
	And you would like that?
	Well, no, I'd have to say, I mean, I might fantasize about it, but I don't think that realistically I would want it, because as I said, it would be cataclysmic.
	Cataclysmic.
	But if a few people do it, that'd be alright.
	What is it in the Minamites' religion that mandates to them, apparently, that they live in this manner?
	Very good question.
	Well, as I mentioned, Minimites are part of the larger Anabaptist movement that dates back to the early 1500s.
	There's a couple of things that go together to make them predisposed to less technology.
	One is that unlike other Protestant religions, they place a real premium on community interaction, and they always have.
	In their theology, The salvation of an individual is partly dependent on the efforts of the group.
	You're partly accountable for your neighbor's salvation.
	So they became very sensitive, especially in modern times, to technologies that undermine the cohesion of their community, such as the automobile, which spreads people out and dilutes the quality of your interaction with your next-door neighbor.
	Why couldn't you argue that the automobile allows more interaction among individuals that otherwise, geographically, would be prevented from interacting?
	Well, I think that it can... I think you could possibly argue that, but what first comes to mind is that you can only enlarge the radius of your mobility by diluting the quality of your interaction.
	You have a less tense but broader
	kind of interaction And I think that's the intensity of the interaction with
	among neighbors Next-door neighbors that's so critical to the vitality of
	these communities Many groups who are radical
	Religiously or otherwise Have an attitude about women that generally is fairly prehistoric
	from modern points of view
	They think of women as walking one step behind barefoot and pregnant
	Is that in the Minamite thinking?
	Well, I think if you looked at them, first of all, I should say that it's hard to generalize
	amongst these Anabaptist sects.
	Some of them are much worse in that respect than others.
	Some are more enlightened than others.
	There's a whole patchwork of these groups.
	But the group that I was with, I would say that perhaps from a distance, a modern observer
	might say, oh, this is antediluvian.
	These are the stereotypical male-female.
	They don't count these heads.
	You know it don't count these heads.
	You don't have to shout or leap about.
	You can even play their music.
	The future won't last It will soon be over To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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	It is, and Eric Brindy, and by the way, how much more technological can you... I tell you what, I got so interested in what Eric was saying, That I blew right through the last break.
	I mean, I'm just absolutely fascinated with this because I'm struggling, really struggling, to get it.
	And I don't exactly get it yet.
	I mean, why would anybody, anybody throw away everything that's modern?
	The internet?
	Television, radio, even electricity, lights, I mean all the very basic things that we use to live today.
	Just totally toss them and start a completely different lifestyle.
	And maybe I've got one answer to that myself.
	Anyway, back to Eric Rendy and all of this in a moment.
	Absolutely fascinating.
	I really mean that.
	And you would have to understand the lifestyle that I lead.
	I mean, I am absolutely, one hundred percent, admittedly, immersed in technology.
	In fact, tomorrow night I just can't wait to tell you about something that's going on in the handbands.
	These mysterious, long-delayed echoes that Cannot possibly be, because radio goes at the speed of light, so you can't have an echo that comes back to you 20 seconds later.
	It's impossible!
	But let me tell you, it's happening, and so I'm dying to tell you about that.
	You know, that's the kind of thing I'm immersed in, right?
	And my wife, well, Ramona spends a lot of time these days watching her favorite reality TV series on the net, streaming video, Big Brother, and we're just so deeply involved in the technological world that you might as well cut off our right arm if you took all that away from us.
	And so I just, you know, you went into a world that I can't even comprehend, Eric.
	What would you say are the three key inventions of the last century that have radically impacted America?
	The automobile, the computer, and the television.
	Really?
	In that order?
	Well, probably more like the automobile, the television, and the computer in chronological order.
	I suppose, yes.
	I think those three alone, if we scale back drastically on those, I think that so many social problems would just go away on their own and so many of our personal psychological problems or problems of lack of contentment of various kinds would also go away on their own.
	So much of the time it's hard to trace The symptoms that we experience in day-to-day life to the actual technologies that may be at the root of those symptoms.
	How old are you?
	Forty-three now.
	Forty-three.
	Well, as you get older, Eric, life seems to speed up.
	I've noticed.
	I'm not exactly sure what it is, what that's all about.
	These days, and especially with the technology, I do acknowledge that it causes the days to blur together, sort of, in the sense that they're so filled and active with all of these things that you're sort of denouncing, that they blur together, and I wonder if you go live the Minamite life like you did, whether life slows down?
	Well, very definitely, and when it When you take your time, each moment holds so much more.
	If you're speeding along using technology, your experience is kind of thin and blurry, just as you said.
	Yes.
	I wonder, when we all get to our deathbeds, what's going to flash before our eyes?
	Is it just going to be this incoherent blur?
	Is it going to be a series of reruns from I Love Lucy?
	Or is it going to be something real?
	Something from a real experience?
	Oh, I think you're probably right.
	I doubt that the last time you were on Google will flash before your eyes.
	You're going to consider, perhaps, the very rare moments of life, living this technological life, that have a lot of social interaction or, I don't know, important moments in life, one way or the other.
	I would hope so.
	Well, I would think that would be the case.
	Okay, so let's investigate this lifestyle a little more.
	What about basics like medical insurance, medical technology?
	Well, suppose, for example, you suddenly had cancer.
	Does a Minamite say, well, it's God's will?
	Or does a Minamite go to the hospital And get radiation treatments?
	Well, you'd probably have to distinguish between what a Minamite might do and what I might do.
	I wouldn't necessarily endorse what a given Minamite might do.
	What would the average Minamite do?
	I think that they often waste a little time in a case like that and say they're going to look around for a natural cure.
	Yes.
	And I knew one, well not a Minamite, but I knew an Amish lady Who did that, and she wasted time.
	By the time she finally got around to what she really needed, it was too late.
	That, of course, is in keeping with a very radical minimization of technology.
	I'm not quite so radical, because my whole complaint is not that we should get rid of technology so much, it's just that our technology isn't interfering with The point is to achieve the good life, so when technology promotes the good life, I'm all in favor of it.
	But there is kind of an Achilles tendon here.
	If you're trying to live a simple life with less technology, as we do, say, in St.
	Louis now, our health care costs and our insurance have become very burdensome, and for many people, It seems to prohibit them from trying to get off the treadmill.
	They think they need to earn the money to pay for the health insurance costs.
	But what I say is that the biggest component today of our high health insurance is our sedentary lifestyle.
	It's so unhealthy to be sitting all day at a computer or sitting in a car and not getting That explains so much of our high cost of medical care.
	All the heart operations.
	They've now reclassified obesity to be an illness covered by Medicare.
	That all goes into the kitty and explains our high health insurance costs.
	Yes, but an argument could be made that we're living longer than ever before.
	The average lifespan has increased, not decreased, and that's due to medical innovation and, you know, I guess, getting immunized against certain diseases, and that's all technological.
	Well, but, you know, actually, if you look at it closely, and this is something I did while I was at MIT, the biggest reason why health, why lifespan has increased, it has to do with things more like sanitary water supply.
	All righty then.
	Sanitary water supply?
	Yeah, that's a technology that I think is fine.
	Oh, I know, but you were telling me the Minamites have got basically a hole in the ground.
	Well, they use springs or wells or cisterns for the water supply.
	But I mean, still, that's a brutal way to live.
	And you know, maybe you talked your wife into everything else, but when you took her there to live with the Minamites and she found out it was basically a hole in the ground, how did she handle that?
	Well, actually, the spring water that we got was very good.
	It was wonderfully tasty, and it was perfectly sanitary.
	I think when you run into really serious problems with drinking water, it's oftentimes in cities.
	That's why typhoid 100 years ago, 150 years ago, was concentrated in industrialized cities, because you had large amounts of people working in these factories, and they didn't have good enough water, and there was raw sewage overflowing.
	And that was actually a A bad technological side effect.
	I know, but you're still not telling me how your wife reacted to the facilities being that away.
	Oh, you mean like the indoor plumbing situation?
	Yes.
	Well, one thing that was a little different from our house, our house was a little bit different from the ones around us.
	It was a cottage that the Minamite farmer next door had just bought from English people, namely American outsiders.
	Like us.
	And it had a toilet in it.
	We didn't have running water because we didn't have the electricity turned on and it was run by an electric pump.
	But we did have a toilet and there was no outhouse.
	So what we did was we would pump water up from the cistern outside and use that water in a bucket to flush the toilet.
	Now there's a whole chapter in my book about this.
	Our neighbors felt sorry for us.
	They felt sorry for you?
	Our Minamite neighbors, actually.
	Yes?
	This illustrates an important point.
	They thought we were going to too much work to have to pump the water up from the outside.
	Because most of them had indoor pumps, or they had water that flowed directly into the house from a spring, sometimes pumped by what they called a ram pump, which is a non-motorized pump that converts The downward pressure of water into upward lift, so you can get for every 10 feet that goes downhill, you can get 100 feet of upward lift.
	And so our next door Minamite farmer generously offered to install a ram pump so that we could get water from our spring directly in the faucet and into the toilet in our house.
	And that astounded me.
	I was resisting at first because I thought that would compromise my experiment.
	But then I realized that many or most of the other minimites in the community use that kind of method.
	And so that illustrates an important point that these people were not about trying to create back-breaking labor or joint-wrenching kind of bucket-lifting and hauling.
	They saw that There was an important place for certain kinds of labor-saving technology.
	So there again, I guess the point is to enhance life using the right selection of technology, not simply to get rid of technology altogether and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be.
	But even the Minamites would have to have dealed with the outside world for various reasons, for basic trade and getting hold of Well, these people certainly interacted with the outside world, and that did create certain kinds of tensions and difficulties.
	household has to run on some kind of budget, maybe mortgages, maybe rent, that sort of
	thing, right?
	Minimal things?
	Well, these people certainly interacted with the outside world, and that did create certain
	kinds of tensions and difficulties.
	I would think so.
	Because the biggest problem in that community was to coordinate produce sales with grocery
	stores, because these people, of course, grew a lot of fruits and vegetables, and the grocery
	stores in the area loved them because they were the best around and very fresh and pretty
	much organic.
	But the problem was to coordinate the shipments, because these are large grocery store chains, and they were on a timetable.
	And so the only way to do that was by telephone.
	And there was a big discussion in the community because it was getting out of hand.
	Although the Minamites did not have telephones in their homes, they did use telephones at pay phones, at convenience stores, sometimes neighbors' phones that they would just pay the neighbor to use the phone as if it were a pay phone.
	I was going to ask where they kept the evil instrument.
	So they just sort of used pay phones or neighbor's phones when they had to.
	Yes.
	There was no other choice.
	Right.
	And that created tension and there were discussions going on when I was there.
	About whether it was a breach of a very closely held belief?
	Well, not that they believed, again, that telephones were evil in themselves, but that Because people were running back and forth to use the telephone, it was becoming a kind of rat race.
	And they were always very critical of what they called the rat race.
	And they wanted a slow and leisurely pace.
	Got that.
	They were being infected by the high pressures and deadlines of the world outside of them.
	Yes.
	Anyway, it settled down, I guess.
	Would this be a Minimite headline in the paper?
	You know, phone use debated?
	Well, if they had their own paper, which they didn't, but... Oh, that's right.
	If they didn't have a paper, what am I talking about?
	And they all were pretty much there in person, although I was not allowed, because I wasn't a member, to discuss their personal intra-community affairs.
	But I did find out about it.
	Somebody leaked the information to me.
	Oh.
	So, leaked the information to you.
	So, hmm.
	They were aware that your mission there was not to become Well, they knew that at some level I might be writing about them.
	I told them that, and that's why I promised them not to disclose their location or their names.
	What is it they're worried about?
	Well, vanity is one thing.
	What do you mean?
	They don't want to get a big head.
	And they're afraid that publicity will make them feel vain and proud about their way of life.
	Oh.
	So I never even tell them when I've written anything about them.
	They don't know about this.
	I haven't told them about this book.
	Because they wouldn't want to know.
	And they sure as hell won't be hearing it on the radio.
	So no problem there.
	But I suppose somebody might tell them.
	I mean, word might make it back that, my God, Eric's gone forth And he's written about us?
	Well, indeed, and it does get back, and I found out indirectly that all of the articles I wrote about them while I was there got back to them.
	Oh-ho.
	Oh-ho.
	And how was that greeted, do you think?
	Well, they pretended not to know.
	Ha!
	Ha!
	And I pretended that I didn't know they knew.
	Ha!
	Really?
	Yes.
	What a charade!
	But there again, They are striving not to feel vain and proud because they know pride goes before a fall.
	All right.
	I'm sure they might look at and discuss and judge various technologies in the world.
	It must be like the latest new evil, awful thing to emerge.
	What do you see emerging now that might potentially be dangerous to the continuation of our species?
	Something Minamites consider so dangerous.
	Oh, well.
	I kind of, to keep informed, I kind of go to, every once in a while, now this is my guilty pleasure, we don't have a television set, but we do occasionally go to the movies.
	You do?
	Oh yeah.
	And I don't think that's bad.
	I mean, it's an occasional form of entertainment.
	Besides, you weren't ever really a Minamite.
	You had Minamite sympathies, maybe, but that's about it, right?
	Yes.
	But anyway, I find that the movies are more candid about what the future holds in technology than our modern scientists are.
	I really think that some of the What I've seen in the theaters give us a pretty good glimpse of the way things may happen in the future.
	I think they're only projecting into the future the kinds of research that's currently going on today.
	At MIT, people like Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil are actively Looking forward to the time when we can download our minds into hardware.
	I have interviewed many people about that coming technology, and gee, Geerak, I can only imagine how the Minamites think about that.
	Well, the critical thing about that to me is that Ray Kurzweil in his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, which I read, He equivocated at a critical juncture in his discourse.
	When it came to the point where he had to say whether our minds will actually survive the transition from our body into the computer, he kind of said, well, it doesn't matter just so long as it simulates our mind when it's on the other end.
	I kind of thought, wait a minute, isn't that the all-important question?
	Well, yes, of course it is.
	But yes, of course it is.
	And I had no idea there was equivocation in that area.
	I thought that if you were to transfer your mind to a computer, why, you'd be in that computer fully aware.
	But Eric's saying, well, hey, maybe not.
	Maybe you'd just be part of a machine with no awareness at all.
	How bad would that be?
	We'll be right back.
	Welcome to the World of Tanks!
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	It is indeed.
	I wonder if the Minamites had...
	I wonder if their ideas...
	I mean, after all, they're not exposed to television and radio and all these things that make us think about different things and expose us to ideas.
	So I wonder if they've minimized their own flow of not just information, but ideas that flow from that information as well.
	So, the whole topic is absolutely fascinating.
	Eric Brindy is my guest.
	He lived, by the way, for 18 months.
	We'll be right back.
	In modern society, I know my friends and I are constantly debating what's going on in
	You know, we've got the presidential race and a lot of sharp differences and things to talk about, and I wonder if being a Minamite doesn't mean that to some degree you're minimized, your worldview is all local and no global.
	In other words, The flow of ideas must be very minimal indeed, Eric, isn't it?
	Well, I think you've latched onto something there, and I wouldn't go necessarily to the extent that the Minamites do in this regard, but let's look for a second at the value of it.
	I think there is a drawback to being ultra-aware of everything around the globe because you
	have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of awareness space in your brain.
	It's going to inevitably take away from your awareness of your immediate local community
	to some extent.
	I mean, there is the paradox that most of us today know a whole lot more about what's
	happening on the other side of the globe than we do about what's happening with our next
	door neighbors, and they certainly don't have this problem among the Minamites.
	That's probably a true statement.
	We know more about the other side of the globe than we do about our own neighbors.
	I'm sure you're correct.
	And for them, it's the opposite.
	Of course, almost all the news is the local news.
	You know, what's going on in the community.
	Yes.
	I was surprised so often, something might have occurred, like say in the morning, that maybe I, one time I bought a pig from the guy next door.
	By noon, if I went to the general store, somebody there would say, oh, how'd you like the pig you just bought?
	And they didn't have telephones!
	That went in place of a bulletin about the Middle East.
	Yeah, you had to be careful, too.
	Never to give the wrong impression about anything.
	There was a lady who was interested in converting and joining this community.
	She and her husband.
	Yes.
	And she made a very serious mistake very early on in her stay when a neighbor donated to her a jar of green beans that she canned.
	Yes.
	To tide her over until they could get their own stuff going.
	Yes.
	And she made a comment that was a little bit disparaging about the flavor, that she preferred the flavor of the kind of green beans that she got in the cans at the store.
	Yes.
	And this, I don't know how it came out, I'm sure she didn't mean it to be not nice, but this spread like wildfire throughout the community, that our food was not good enough for her.
	And she never, I don't think she ever quite recovered from that.
	She had to be really careful, because there was like a megaphone that said something and it was broadcast.
	Dude, was she driven from the community or something, or what?
	Well, there was just...
	They just, she got off on the wrong foot.
	Yeah.
	And I think that she, yeah, they eventually moved away within about four to six months.
	Aye, aye, aye.
	This sounds like a very, very strict culture.
	Well, that's, you know, and that's one reason why I don't think we would have ever conceived of joining in a formal sense and, you know, being baptized in the community.
	Well, all right, but you said that when you left, There was a debate.
	You said when you left the community, there was... Right.
	Well, we never were considering joining, but we were considering remaining neighbors and staying in proximity.
	And what?
	Beginning to get a TV and a telephone?
	I mean, obviously, if you're going to remain there to some degree, you couldn't become the enemy.
	Well, yeah.
	We would have changed some things, but not Not major things.
	We ended up at the end of our stay getting a horse and buggy and selling our car.
	We could only afford it by selling our car.
	This is kind of a radical thing.
	We did buy some land there as a hedge.
	My wife had some savings that we weren't using during our stay, but we were reserving them for a possible down payment.
	And we did buy a place as a hedge, because it came up and we knew if we didn't buy it, it would slip out of our fingers, so we bought it as a hedge.
	You mean a Minamite piece of land?
	Yes, because one of them was relocating.
	There's kind of a story behind that that I wouldn't take too long to go into.
	And so we were on the fence.
	There were several factors that went into the decision.
	Ended up leaving and selling the place.
	Who would you say of the two of you, you and your wife, was more in favor of returning to some portion of the new world?
	Ironically enough, even though the deal that I finally did strike with my wife before coming, now this is backtracking in time, before leaving Boston.
	I wish I'd been a fly on the wall for that discussion anyway.
	The deal I struck with her was that If she agreed to join me for the first 18 months of our marriage, and we did get married just shortly before arriving, if she agreed to join me, then at the end of this day she would have a deciding vote in where we would move after that.
	But, ironically enough, she was the one who was more reluctant to leave than I was.
	She had become more minimized than you.
	Yeah, I think she would have been perfectly happy.
	But there is a wrinkle in the plot that I don't want to give away.
	There's a couple things that happen in the book that I don't want to reveal right now.
	Alright, let's talk about the book for a second.
	That's fair, right?
	The book is Better Off, Flipping the Switch on Technology, and two people, one year, zero watts!
	Now that's pretty cool.
	Zero watts.
	Zero energy used, and the story of his life for 18 months.
	He and his wife, and You know, there are various ways to get this book.
	I've got a hardback copy of it right here.
	Eric is willing, he told me just before the program, he's willing to sign the book so you can get an autographed edition of this book.
	It's a very nice hardcover book by doing what we're about to tell you.
	We're going to give you some information here that will let you get a hardcover of the book signed, which is very valuable.
	How did they do that, Eric?
	Just send me a check to my home address.
	I have some books that I got from the publisher.
	My name is Eric Brendy, spelled B-R-E-N-D-E.
	There ought to be another E on the end of that, but all right.
	Just one E at the end.
	Right.
	And that's 2037 Allen Avenue.
	Thank you.
	Louis, Missouri.
	And the abbreviation for Missouri is MO.
	And the zip is 63104.
	And the book is $24.95.
	This check would be made out to you personally, right?
	Right.
	And I'd appreciate it if you could throw in $3 shipping, but if you're poor, I'll even send it to you without the shipping charge, because I get a somewhat of a discount from the publisher.
	If you're in Missouri... Alright, I'm sorry, so what is the price of the book?
	$24.95.
	$24.95, and as long as you're poor, that would be it, but then otherwise make it $27.95, right?
	Right.
	So $27.95 for most.
	That's a pretty cool thing about the poor there.
	Otherwise make it $27.95, right?
	Right.
	So $27.95 for most.
	That's a pretty cool thing about the poor there.
	And if you're in Missouri, add 7.5% sales tax.
	But only if you live in Missouri.
	Only if you live in Missouri.
	Right, otherwise it's an export, so no sales tax.
	And so if they live in Missouri, you will sign it and then walk it to their house, right?
	Possibly!
	You know, you pretty much now... I mean, tonight must be a big exception.
	I mean, let's think about this, Eric.
	Not only are you on a telephone, But, you're hooked up to me, which means that you're on satellite, which means that you're on 500 radio stations, radiating all this RF, FM and AM alike, in the giant mass coverage of the United States, in fact, the whole world.
	Now, how does that strike you?
	Well, I guess my first response would be to say that you've got to go where the people are.
	If I'm going to reach people in technological society, I don't go to Fiji.
	No, you've got to use technology to reach them.
	Right.
	And again, too... When you finish the program tonight, are you going to go sit in the corner and whip yourself a little bit?
	Well, we do have a telephone, and that's at the end of the book.
	I do mention there are some things that we would do differently than the Minimites.
	Because it was an experiment to try out what they did and see what would be the right level of technology.
	Not to decide in advance that this must be the level of technology.
	And one of the things we do differently is we would have a telephone.
	And we do have a telephone.
	One problem with not having a telephone was when we had our Our child, we did give birth to a child during the stay there in the first year.
	We had a real snafu because my car broke down and I had to retrieve the Minimite midwife.
	There's a harrowing account of what happens there.
	So telephones come in handy.
	Well, yes they do.
	Your wife, then, is in labor, and you're probably having a sort of a panic, and you're thinking, I'm going to call a hospital, or I'm going to call a doctor, or something, right?
	Well, we had prepared for this labor, of course.
	Of course.
	And we had not yet sold our car to buy the horse and buggy.
	Where were you hiding your car?
	There was a shed in the back.
	Camouflaged it back there.
	Oh, but their eyes should be Have to see a car, okay.
	But we had planned for this well in advance, that I would drive to the midwife's house, and she lived about six miles away, on the very opposite side of the community.
	The problem was that my wife's labor was not very typical.
	It was a sudden, stabbing labor, and her contractions Within a few minutes, we're only 30 seconds apart.
	And we were told, ugh, they'll be 20 minutes apart for hours before they start to get closer together.
	Well, I went into a real panic and dove into my car, drove it too fast, hit a bump on the road, and unbeknownst to me, I triggered the fuel shutoff valve.
	I didn't know that had happened.
	All I knew was that my car would not go anymore.
	Where were you on the way to?
	Well, before going to the main midwife's house, my wife suggested in the middle of the throes of her labor that I go to the assisted midwife's house.
	She was only a mile away.
	So that's what you were going to use the car for?
	Well, yes.
	I used that car to go there, and I had to jog the last half a mile to that house and get in her horse and buggy in the middle of the night and then come back.
	Luckily, my wife had not given birth yet, but that took about ten minutes.
	Well, while you were sitting in that horse and buggy on the way back with midwife, were you thinking, I wish to God I was in my car right now?
	Yes.
	So there's another use of modern transportation that I think is legitimate.
	Rapid transit in cases of emergency.
	And that's one of the reasons why our life expectancy is higher than in ages past.
	When you had emergencies, medical emergencies, there was no rapid form of transportation and people would just die before the doctor ever got there.
	So that's, you know, I will hand it to the Honorable Bill for that.
	That's a very important I'll concede that.
	All right.
	What about the Minamites themselves in an exactly similar situation?
	I suppose a Minamite would not have access to a car under any circumstances, so it would be horse and buggy no matter what, right?
	Well, that's not quite true, because in this community, if there were urgent reasons They would allow somebody to borrow a neighbor's car, or at least not borrow the car, but ask the neighbor to take them somewhere and then make an offering and pay for the trip.
	Plus, there was a doctor in town who backed up the midwife.
	That doctor had screened Mary, by the way, to make sure she was not a high-risk pregnancy.
	He also was available.
	You could phone him up and then he could run out.
	Well, it's just been amazing to even think about this for me.
	I can't say that I've properly absorbed enough, you know, I guess, I don't know, emotion from you about why this kind of a lifestyle would be in any way preferable so that I can understand it.
	Maybe it's so foreign to me and so Just so completely foreign, you know, that I can't imagine.
	I just can't imagine doing it, Eric.
	I can't.
	And... Well, you know, that's a very valid reaction.
	The real test of whether it's for you or not is whether you feel a need for it.
	You may be perfectly contented, you know, within technological society.
	I am.
	I am, Eric.
	Can't deny it.
	I am.
	But I do think that there are lots of people out there... How many people do you think, listening from a percentage point of view this morning, who have listened to what you've said, are thinking to themselves right now, you know, in my heart I know he's right, I've longed for this, and I would love to give it all, everything up, and go and live that life?
	Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it were over half.
	For a couple years after we did this experiment, I was a cab driver in Boston, which is a diametric thing.
	It certainly is.
	And I did that because we decided we wanted to earn money so we'd have enough money to pay off a mortgage so we wouldn't have to carry a mortgage.
	Yes.
	And I just decided to just do whatever I could do, and that was the only thing I could do in Boston to make money.
	But anyway, the reason I mention that is that I'd often get people whose Jobs were directly related to high tech.
	People from MIT, people in the high tech industry, venture capitalists in high tech.
	Almost always, the more high tech they were, the more wistfully they talked about the way of life I was describing.
	I just come back from it and I would always be talking about it.
	I thought that was rather curious.
	They seemed drawn to it.
	Eric, did you ever read the Unabomber's manifesto?
	I did, actually.
	I did after the whole thing blew over, yes.
	Well, you know, I thought, crazy as he was with respect to the bombing and the killing and all of that, that parts of the manifesto somehow made sense.
	Did you feel that way about it?
	Yeah, and I thought that the main drawback of the manifesto was that it was written in a kind of a rigid, student-y prose.
	Yes.
	yes uh... but if it had been written by somebody like calvin trillin
	it could have been a very good book uh...
	by the way the one of the victims of the unabomber
	one of the blurbs for my book jacket his name is david to learn to resist no
	hearing yeah yeah All right.
	Well, you know what?
	I think I'm going to love it, too.
	And maybe that'll lead to more of an understanding that I've been able to wrap my intellectual tentacles around tonight.
	I'm Art Bell, and in the nighttime, this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
	We're going to turn it over to all of you in a moment.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Oh, I'm waiting by your side.
	Thank you.
	It's the lounge of the blinds.
	Peace.
	Remember the night that sometimes I was afraid.
	Turn it back again, can we be gone again?
	Oh, look down to the shady groves, the sun, the shadow, the sea
	The tide a-ringing on the children's arms in the springtime of May
	The sounds of the girls seem to fill the world, and when the figure plays
	All the voices can be heard long past the woodlanding To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
	at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
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	number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	This is really interesting.
	Reaction to Eric Rendy tonight is really interesting.
	A lot of extremely positive comments are coming in, you know, fast blasted and otherwise.
	And people are assessing Eric as absolutely genuine and, you know, a true believer in what he's saying and what he did and all the rest of it.
	A lot of people are agreeing with it, too.
	Here's something from the back of the book, one of the reviews.
	This calm and unjudgmental account of living a little more lightly on the earth will do readers more good than a thousand of the self-help books crowding the bestseller lists.
	It'll make you think about your own life more than you've thought about it for years.
	And for that service, we can be deeply grateful to the talented Eric Brindy.
	And it goes on and on.
	And that's kind of the... That's the kind of fast blast I'm getting right now, for the most part.
	Now, I do have one here I want to read in a moment by you'll never guess who.
	to remember I told you about my friend Paul who owns the
	Internet distributor here in town one of the best and
	Ha ha ha.
	Paul fast blasted me, and he makes a very good point that Eric might want to try and answer.
	I mean, the Minamite lifestyle is one thing, but Paul fast blasts, hey, try being a Minamite here in our Nevada desert heat, without air, air conditioning, you could die.
	Now, there's an interesting conflict potentially, Eric.
	I mean, if you applied that lifestyle out here in the middle of the desert where I live, oh, about 20 miles from Death Valley, in the middle of the summer, you'd probably be deader than a doornail.
	And so the only alternative would be air conditioning or some facsimile thereof, or you're dead.
	Yeah, but you could say Something very similar about what if the Minamites had to live in northern Alaska?
	Yeah, I do say that.
	What if they did?
	Well, but I don't think they have to.
	I mean, if global population pressures get to the point where people will be forced to live in otherwise inhospitable areas, then of course, by all means, Bring in the technology that will make that possible.
	If we have to colonize other planets, for that matter.
	But would your position be, the fact of the matter is, people don't have to live in Alaska.
	People don't have to live in the desert.
	People don't have to live in these places.
	They can darn well live someplace where a minimized lifestyle works.
	Is that it?
	Well, I mean, I think that's the short practical answer, but I mean, if I really wanted to address what he's getting at is, you know, if we have to live in a place that is very inhospitable Yes, indeed.
	We would have to, wouldn't we?
	and we have no other option, then of course bring in the technology that will make it
	habitable.
	If we ever have to colonize other planets, if we run out of room here, I'm sure we're
	going to have to make technological adaptations.
	Yes, indeed.
	We would have to, wouldn't we?
	In the meantime, though, the Minamite position would be, don't live in those places.
	Sure.
	But let me address too the issue of air conditioning if I might.
	You might.
	I do think that, not that there aren't times when air conditioning may be a very good idea, but I do think that in general its use is greatly overrated because what it does is it overrides the body's own natural air conditioning system.
	I mean, all other air conditioning systems borrow this idea from the body that by evaporating a liquid from a surface, it draws heat from that surface and therefore cools it off.
	The liquid on our bodies uses sweat, and the liquid that the air conditioning uses is freon.
	But if you have air conditioning, Your body never makes the adjustment.
	It never acclimates to the ambient temperature.
	That is true.
	That is a physiological process.
	It takes about two weeks.
	The body has to sweat differently.
	It has to reroute the blood flow differently.
	It takes about two weeks for that to take place.
	If you are always in an air-conditioned environment, you never allow the body to do that.
	Here in St.
	Louis we haven't turned on the air conditioning at all this year or last year.
	Very laudable.
	And that frees us up to go outside and not feel the horrible blast of heat.
	So we actually gain a season and we don't really lose that much in the way of comfort.
	Now there are some days when it is really brutally hot and for those days we just go to the swimming pool.
	We just say, hey, Uncle, we'll go to the swimming pool.
	All right, look, I've got a lot of people who would like to ask you questions.
	And remind me before the hour's up, and we'll again give the address where you can get an actual autographed copy of this, of your book.
	But in the meantime, a lot of people do want to ask questions.
	First time caller line, you're on the air with Eric Brindy.
	Hi.
	Yes, my name is Alan Rhodes.
	Just give me your first name only.
	I'm from Georgia.
	I just want to make a few comments about your guest.
	I didn't get the first part of the show, and I apologize for that, but I think a distinction should be made between the Amish and the Mennonites USA.
	Now the word is Mennonite, not Menomite.
	Now this is a name he assigned to a specific sect
	so that uh... you wouldn't have to give their real name sir what what group was
	i mean can you talk about what group is identifying with no because uh... he
	wants to give them that you know they would like to keep their anonymity so
	he agreed to do that i i understand that i hope you do too i
	very disturbing
	mixing up of that name with the Mennonites, which is the main line, Mennonite Church
	USA.
	Do you want to address that, Eric?
	Which is totally different.
	Yeah, I've got that.
	Totally different.
	I understand.
	Do you want to address that, Eric?
	Well, okay.
	The group that I was with was a part of the larger Anabaptist movement, which has three main branches we know today as the Amish, the Mennonites, and the Hutterites.
	That's correct.
	There is a spectrum among the Mennonites.
	You have old order Mennonites.
	That's correct.
	drive horse and buggies, and then you have a more mainstream Mennonite that are very
	similar to everybody else.
	Sometimes they wear head coverings, but even in the more liberal groups sometimes they
	don't.
	Are you with the old orders?
	I was with a group that was with the old order, whether it was Mennonite, Amish, or Hutterite
	I don't want to say because I don't want to give too many clues to their identity.
	That's why I nicknamed them Minimites, because the one characteristic they really have is that they minimize the use of technology.
	So we're past that color.
	Anything else?
	That's all I want to say.
	And then I coined another word, minimation, for minimizing the amount of automation one uses in one's life.
	And that was the principle of technological selection.
	No, I've got it.
	Okay, clear on that.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Eric Brendy.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	I'd like to say one thing.
	I'm a long-time listener to Art Bell.
	I've been listening for a long time to you.
	My wife and I, we've joined a Vichy Amish Mennonite community here in California.
	And one thing that was very hard for me to let go was my wind-up radio to listen to The Evening News with Art Bell.
	Well, apparently you have not yet let go of it because... It's that one thing, yes.
	Well, I don't know about that one thing.
	I mean, you're calling me now.
	Well, we allow phones.
	Oh, I see.
	Business.
	Sorry.
	The other things I let go of are TV and a lot of other things, though, like TV entertainment, computer nets, things that go along with Uh, technology that your guest has been speaking about.
	Well, how are you faring without those things?
	I remember you were commenting about your friend who went to the Bahamas and he had that.
	I had the same thing where I missed it a great deal.
	Actually, Bermuda.
	Oh, Bermuda.
	I'm sorry.
	They're really tight.
	I mean, no radios, no computers.
	Yeah.
	Pretty minimalistic.
	Anyway.
	So, how are you faring without these things, sir?
	Are you happy?
	Oh, yes, yes.
	That's one thing that really made it worthwhile, was the community.
	I mean, really, when you join the community, you're part of the body.
	It's just like your body.
	If you stub your toe on a door, you don't scold the toe for hitting the door.
	You take care of your toe.
	The same thing is true with the members of the community.
	Yes.
	Well, I'm glad you're happy.
	they all help. And so even building a house or making sure you get food, all your necessities
	basically are communal. It's very communal. Yes. Well, I'm glad you're happy. For my part,
	Eric, frankly, I don't like people that much. In other words, this requires, that's a very
	harsh statement to make, I understand, but this requires a very harsh interdependence
	and it is a very community-oriented, I don't want to say communistic because that wouldn't
	be fair at all, but certainly communal, I don't know, kind of living, right?
	Where all for one and one for all, that sort of thing.
	Oh, yeah.
	But I think that one of the reasons why it is so inviting, the community is so inviting, is that, as I put in the book, manual labor craves collaboration.
	When you're working together, or when you're working, there is something about working physically that draws out of people their personalities.
	Sure.
	And I think it's partly because since you're there to work and not necessarily in order to get to know people, but the purpose is the work, it actually paradoxically frees up your social self to get out of its shell.
	Oh, sure.
	You're not trying to get to know people and so you do.
	And so you do.
	Right.
	It makes absolute sense.
	In a minimized community, I mean, it's got to be essentially like everywhere else.
	In some ways, there are going to be some people whose guts you absolutely hate.
	I'm sure the Minamites have that kind of stuff going on, don't they?
	That's just human.
	Yes, it is, and it does happen.
	That can be a real thorn, but there was a rule of thumb that one of the women in the community said, told me, that helps their community succeed.
	Which is that whenever you get a comment or a reaction that strikes you the wrong way and you think you feel offended, never assume that it was the way the person intended.
	Always go back and make sure you understood what they said.
	Nine times out of ten, you misconstrued what they were saying.
	And then pull out the taser gun.
	All right, let's keep going.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Eric Brindy.
	Hi.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	This is Sherry in Fort Worth.
	Hey, Sherry.
	I grew up in a middle class, old school, bohemian type family.
	I was raised by my grandparents, and everything was kind of slow paced.
	And I was just wondering, How do children fare in that type of setting, in the Minamite setting, as far as when they get older?
	Because, you know, when I got older, I went a little crazy.
	Ah, yes.
	The old Catholic girl theory.
	Yes.
	Right?
	Big time.
	The wild ones.
	Oh, yes.
	Well, Eric, that's a pretty good question, in a way.
	As the Minamite children grow, Do they reach a stage in maybe their teen years or just beyond where suddenly they rebel and go out and taste the world?
	Well, unlike the Amish in Lancaster County that have a wild rumspringa and run around all over the place and drink a lot of beer and go crazy, these people did not.
	These adolescents One reason was that the people in this community had congregated in this remote part of the country where we were precisely to get away from that wildness that was in a lot of other of these settlements.
	I will have to say that the results were pretty successful.
	I found that the youth there were extremely mature and self-possessed at a young age.
	There was an eleven-year-old boy, eleven years old, mind you, living next door to us, one of the Miller children.
	He would come down and monitor our activities and make sure we were picking our beans at the right stage.
	He had this air of authority, of a seasoned experience about him that I've never seen, even in kids a lot older than he is.
	So he was completely immersed happily within the Minamite lifestyle.
	He almost glowed.
	He had kind of a halo.
	Was that typical of Minamite youth or was that abnormal?
	Well, I don't think it was atypical.
	I think he might have been more so than most.
	And he was the youngest in the family, so maybe he was doted upon a little bit more.
	Okay, but again, most Minamite children don't go through that kind of rebellion and go out and become part of the world and say, there's more of a world out there?
	I never heard of it there.
	They had very well-organized hoeing and other activities, singing, for the youth.
	There's a chapter in my book It's called a hoeing and it describes what the hoeing is like and it's very charming.
	Alright, so ma'am it sounds like that's the answer to your question.
	Can I ask another quick one?
	Sure.
	What about the outside people that emerge into that type of setting?
	Don't you feel that's kind of a regression?
	I understand that every once in a while we need to step back.
	Take a look at the big picture before we can move forward, you know, if we've got a certain problem that we need to work through, but to me it almost seems like you're regressing.
	Is there a specific reason or was there something that possibly you felt like you missed out on as a child that might have brought you to this curiosity?
	Well, I missed out on a lot of things as a child because I was in such a televisionized environment growing up.
	My father was so preoccupied with his technology and his profession that, yes, I did crave to have real human contact and do something real with my body and not feel cut off.
	For that very reason, for me, it was not a regression.
	At all.
	It was a way to progress and recover things that technology had deprived me of.
	But Eric, I'm sure any psychologist would just have a field day with you with regard to your father, wouldn't he?
	In other words, you probably have an incredible amount of suppressed anger at technology for what it took away from you in terms of
	your relationship with your father and that could manifest itself. Well in your case I guess
	it's cathartic. You wrote a book for the Unabomber. The Unabomber might have experienced
	something like you did Eric, only it manifested itself in a different way. Is that
	fair?
	Well, even if it's true that there's a really powerful psychological
	motive for what I wrote, I don't think that takes away from the
	actual substance of what I wrote.
	Oh, not at all.
	It provided me an incentive that the average person wouldn't have had.
	Absolutely not at all.
	That isn't what I was trying to say, just that you unleashed your, I guess, anger over What happened with you and your dad by writing about it, by going and living this lifestyle.
	Anyway, there certainly are parallels.
	Darkness, quiet, silence.
	I've come to talk with you again, because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while
	I was sleeping, and a vision that was planted in my heart, and I'm not sure what it was
	planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence
	in restless dreams I walked away find out more about tonight's guest
	log on to coasttocoastaf.com I see trees of green, red roses too
	I see them bloom for me and you and I think to myself
	what a wonderful world I see skies of blue and clouds of white
	The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
	The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people going by
	I'm...
	I see friends shaking hands, saying how they feel.
	They're really saying, I love you.
	I hear figures cry, I watch them grow, they'll learn much more than I'll ever know.
	And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
	The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
	To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
	at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number,
	pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
	Does it get any better than this song?
	It's the Minimites, for sure.
	The Minimites.
	We'll get it straight.
	Anyway, what an incredible... Well, what an incredible program, really.
	Eric Brindy is my guest.
	He's written a book.
	You can get a copy of it.
	And I'm just about to tell you how to do that again.
	So get a pencil and paper if you would please.
	I wonder if it's fair to say that leaving this lifestyle
	uh...
	as Eric led it, would lead automatically or maybe even it would be preceded by a very large
	turn among anybody to uh...
	oh I don't know religious embracing uh... some very deep religious
	belief some very
	personal, very strong belief that all of this is the way human beings should be living and
	that what we are doing in society right now, particularly American society, is so out of
	balance.
	Is that so, Eric?
	Well, I do think there is a natural compatibility between religion and living less technologically
	because in both cases you are pursuing a goal that is intangible.
	And so there is a natural affinity.
	A person conceivably could go without a lot of technology for other reasons, for humanitarian reasons or for ecological reasons.
	So it doesn't have to be, but there is a natural compatibility between the two things.
	A lot of people want to speak to you, and I'm about to get that, but you did write this book.
	Is that what you are now going to become, Eric, that you're back in the world?
	Are you going to become an author?
	Are you going to continue down this road?
	I'm definitely going to continue the way I am.
	Writing is just one of several irons I have in the fire.
	I have the soap making, the rickshaw.
	Oh yes, I meant to ask you about that.
	A rickshaw?
	You're a rickshaw driver?
	More properly called a pedicab.
	Yes.
	A taxi that's pedal powered.
	Yes.
	And I have a prototype.
	It's the only one of its kind in the world.
	There's, besides the driver, there's room for four passengers, one of whom can pedal.
	Yes.
	And it's a very snazzy design.
	Oh, a passenger has to pedal or they're simply One of the passengers may pedal if he or she chooses, sitting beside the driver.
	Sometimes I take my son out who's 11 and put him in that seat and give him 50 cents a ride.
	He's my assistant when I do that.
	Do you take calls?
	Like a taxi company?
	I need a rickshaw over here at so-and-so.
	That's why I did get a cell phone, because otherwise people couldn't get a hold of me.
	A cell phone?
	Yeah.
	I don't really like having it, but I'm trying it out with the cell phone.
	But most of the time people really just tail me on the street.
	And how's the rickshaw business in St.
	Louis?
	Actually surprisingly good.
	Downtown St.
	Louis has a lot of restaurants and hotels.
	There's a lot of conventions, and there's two major sports stadiums for the Rams and the Cardinals.
	Oh, indeed.
	So there's a lot of activity going on down there, and the distances are far enough that people don't necessarily want to walk, or they don't want to necessarily take a regular cab.
	Well, how does a rickshaw navigate on the street without getting into trouble?
	I was just in New York on my book tour, and I saw them all over the place in Manhattan.
	Well, what about St.
	Louis, though?
	Well, if you can do it in Manhattan, you can do it in St.
	Louis, because the traffic is 20 times more heavy in Manhattan than in St.
	Louis.
	Downtown St.
	Louis is not that heavily trafficked.
	It's not that busy of a downtown center.
	A lot of the business has shifted over to Clayton, which is a near suburb.
	Look, I don't want to let this pass.
	If you'd like a copy of the book, it's $24.99.
	If you're poor, He'll actually send it to you for that price, if you can afford it.
	And I assume most of you can.
	It's $27.95.
	That's three bucks for shipping and handling.
	You'd write a check to Eric Brende.
	He's my guest right now.
	E-R-I-C.
	You're going to send this to his home.
	Last name Brende.
	B-R-E-N-D-E.
	And I'll autograph it.
	And he'll autograph it for you.
	And you'd send it to 2037.
	Allen Avenue, that's 237 Allen, A-L-L-E-N Avenue.
	2037.
	2037, I'm sorry.
	2037 Allen Avenue, St.
	Louis, Missouri.
	That's M-O for Missouri.
	63104, is that correct?
	Right.
	Zip code 63104, and he'll send you an autographed copy.
	And I guess the book, Eric, is kind of like a tour through Your entire experience, is that it?
	It starts out with some of my childhood, then moves on to MIT, and that's the launch pad for the experiment.
	All right.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Eric Brindy.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	How are you?
	Quite well, thank you.
	Good.
	Well, this is Anne from Walnut Creek, California.
	Hi.
	Hi, Anne.
	First of all, I'm an ex-computer programmer and I started programming in 1963 and retired from the Harvard Computing Center in 1967, and I hate the direction that computers took.
	I still don't have a computer.
	I'm going to break down and get one, but I do think that the direction computers took has really dumbed down our society.
	In what sense?
	Explain.
	In business, what's happened is that employees are trained to use the computer screen and they're trained to use it exclusively, to not go outside the box of that computer monitor frame.
	They're not trained to know what their company does.
	Whereas it used to be that one could talk to somebody in an organization, This includes like our legislator's offices for instance
	and get information but now they don't know anything and they've lost their natural
	curiosity.
	They've accepted the situation.
	They've become passive and apathetic.
	And then with TV, now I haven't watched TV in four years.
	So in other words you're charging that with email and computer contact there's no more human contact, even though it might be by phone or in person or whatever.
	Well actually I wasn't thinking of email and contact by computer.
	I finally reached the point where I can no longer be effective in doing research Other than by computer, because everything's on websites now, be it whether or not it's good information, it's the only information.
	Well, you're making a case for it though, not a gimmick.
	No, I'm saying that it's a fait accompli, and so I've got to, I've got to join the fray, but I'm going to be very reluctant.
	And I think that it's done a number on our brains, and it's also lowered The level of general knowledge in this country.
	I don't know if that's true.
	The World Wide Web, I agree that a lot of it's trash, but, you know, it's like anything else, depending on how you use it, it can also be a treasure trove.
	Well, I hope that'll be true, because I'm going to get a computer soon, but I think the average person, you know, because they're not learning things from others, sources, including the classroom, the average.
	And well, there's not as much conversation going on at home, but that's for a lot of
	reasons.
	Alright, well my guess is Eric agrees with you on all the negatives about the computer,
	but you see Eric, there's somebody, she's going to go ahead and take the plunge anyway,
	fait accompli she said, and she's got to go ahead and do it.
	Would you try and talk her out of it?
	Well I'd encourage her to read the short novella by E.M.
	Forster, The Machine Stops.
	Thank you.
	It's a wonderful, wonderful piece.
	Even though it was written way back in the 1920s, it accurately forecasts our modern work and home environment in which people sit in front of this video monitor all day long and never leave.
	All of their limbs have atrophied To the point where they can almost no longer walk or go anywhere.
	Of course, that's not quite how it's turned out.
	But I do think that there is something very insidious.
	Do you remember the words from the year 2525?
	Our arms and legs hanging uselessly by our side.
	Remember that?
	Is that where it's going?
	Well, I do think that we are suffering a lot of physical symptoms.
	The lack of use of our bodies, and even though our arms might not be shriveling, our hearts are suffering from plaque buildup because of the lack of exercise.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	How are you doing?
	Okay, sir.
	there with eric brandy hello they didn't focus on
	uh...
	uh... i had more like a comment What kind of comment?
	Kind of a general comment, just about tying in, you know, the minimalists, the minimites, with the things that are happening globally, as far as the whole planet, you know, kind of dying here, supposedly.
	Well, you know, in a way it's a very good question.
	The planet We can argue, I think, reasonably, is in ecological trouble, Eric.
	And I wonder if the Minamites are even aware of this, or anything else outside of their locked... I mean, they really lock themselves away from any world news, right?
	It doesn't come by TV, it doesn't come by radio, it doesn't come... I don't even know if they read newspapers.
	Well, and it's not even part of their real purpose.
	They don't see this as environmentally responsible.
	They just see it as a good way to live, and then one of the benefits of it is that it is environmentally responsible.
	That's one reason why I wrote this book, as a pitch to the individual to lead a better life, not as some way to improve the environment.
	Yes, but again, are the Minamites aware of the state of our environment?
	Well, I think that they are aware, and some are more aware than others.
	You have degrees of that, and there are some who take it very seriously, but they're not members of the Sierra Club.
	Right, they're members of their own club.
	No, I've got that.
	I was just wondering, how do they get an awareness of the world, if you don't mind?
	In other words, some news in some way of what's going on in the world must reach them, or does it not?
	Well, if it's important.
	They'll find out about it.
	In a way, they're luckier than we are with regard to the filtering of hype.
	They don't get all of the made-up news that's only transitory.
	But if, say, the World Trade Center collapses or something momentous, their customers will tell them.
	They'll immediately tell each other.
	We serve as their filtering device.
	I see.
	And so unless it's really happening or has really happened, the news wouldn't make it to them.
	So that would be a filter for all the baloney, I suppose you're right.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Eric Brindy.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	This is Bill from California.
	Yes, Bill.
	I'm struck by two things by your guest this evening.
	One is, it's kind of a throwback to the ancient Greeks where you had a wanting a blend of the physical and the mental to have a perfect kind of a of a person or a human.
	And also I'm struck by the fact that if Professor Kaku and others are correct, that as we connect
	more as a planet, as a world of peoples through communication, that to survive in such large
	numbers as we are on the planet today, it simply cannot be that we go back to living
	in this kind of situation.
	It's simply, as the earlier caller said, the lady talking about computers, that's a bell that cannot be unrung.
	Information simply is too vast.
	Well, alright.
	That's a pretty good point, Eric, that there are a lot of bells out there.
	The Internet's one of them.
	I think there's always room for us to do less than the powers that be would have us do.
	where it is a fait accompli and you simply have to give in and become part of it.
	I think there's always room for us to do less than the powers that be would have us do.
	I don't think that, even if somebody has a job that they're locked into for one reason
	I think that they can find ways to minimize the technology in their daily life without necessarily quitting their job.
	I think there's always room for that, and I think to the extent that we make intelligent choices like that, our economy will change and, in turn, the kinds of jobs we have will change.
	It's reciprocal.
	So I think we're the participants, and if we change our lifestyle, then everything else will change accordingly eventually
	what would happen to a minimite who snuck out
	and went to a computer cafe and was seen by a neighbor going into a computer
	cafe well
	i don't even know if they have a rule against going into a computer cafe
	because it never happens well
	but if there were a rule against that
	and they had a vigilant
	people watching around to make sure people aren't doing it, then they would get reported and then
	Do they have vigilant people watching?
	Not that kind of thing, but let's say if somebody does violate a rule in their community, then assuming that the person was a member who joined the community and made the vow to If you observe all of the rules in the community, then that person would be asked to repent of that.
	It's a religious thing for them, so it would be something they would repent of, because it was something that implicitly they prophesied.
	That would be a sin.
	Put another way, that would be a sin.
	Yes, for them who are the core members of the group.
	I mention that in my book, that perhaps I wouldn't Put it that way.
	That's one of the reasons why we wouldn't have ever joined the group formally, because we don't put it in terms of sin to use or not use a certain kind of technology.
	That's where we might have differed with them.
	Luckily, our landlord who rented us the house that we were in was an affiliate of the community, but he was not a member, and for that very reason He was a little bit reluctant to tie those two things
	together.
	Well, you know, we're about done here.
	We're running out of time.
	But I must say, this has been incredible and amazing.
	I detected the same thing, you know, that the audience did through the interview, and
	that is that you're absolutely sincere, both in what you believe now and what you did then.
	And so that's going to make it a really interesting book for a lot of people.
	And you just wouldn't believe, I don't believe, how many people are fast blasting me on a
	computer, mind you, that, oh, you know, I've been thinking about that, and that kind of
	lifestyle actually appeals to me, and I'd like to know more, and therefore, I think
	your book probably will sell.
	Oh, wow.
	Doesn't take much.
	Well, anyway, I'm glad you're happy, and I think you got your ideas across just fine.
	Eric, thank you for being here tonight.
	Good luck with your book, and I don't know, keep it minimized there, buddy.
	Well, thank you very much.
	It was a pleasure to be here.
	Take care.
	All right, Eric Brende.
	The Minimites.
	I'm going to remember this one for a long time, and I'm not sure why.
	There was just something Sincere and real about it all, and so far beyond my understanding that I guess I still can't even begin to contemplate it.
	But that's what it's all about here.
	Learning about new things.
	See you tomorrow night.

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