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Oct. 17, 2004 - Art Bell

02:53:07

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Michael Shermer - The Skeptic's View

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	So, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to go ahead and start the video.
	Music 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 prolific time zones, all
	of them covered by this program, Post Covfea.
	Those girls, they are mine.
	I'm Art Bell.
	An honor and a privilege to be through about halfway through the weekend that I get to spend with you.
	And that means we've got a full show ahead.
	First, there is some sad news.
	It seems that Betty Hill has passed away.
	I'm getting a number of reports.
	That's not absolutely confirmed yet, but it's popping up on web pages and such that Betty Hill has passed away.
	An update on Ann Streber.
	I spoke with Whitley several hours ago, and for those of you that don't know, during the first hour of last night's program, I was supposed to have Whitley on.
	I got a panic call saying, my god, Archie's collapsed, and he hung up.
	And the next thing I knew, his brother had called and said, well, it looks like Ann may have had some sort of diabetic episode.
	Then I heard from Whitley that no, very much more serious, a stroke.
	And today he says, indeed, an aneurysm, which is really something, I guess.
	She still has full movement, amazingly.
	She can move everything and she can talk, although she can't talk because of all the tubes that they give you when you have something like that.
	But generally alert, I guess.
	In stable condition, but a very serious situation, an aneurysm.
	And there's some kind of procedure where they pass something through your veins To get to the aneurysm in your brain, if you can believe that, and that's what she may undergo as opposed to brain surgery.
	So it's a very serious situation, and your prayers for Ann Streber will very much be appreciated, of course.
	If we get an update during the program tonight, we'll be sure and get it to you.
	So the passing of Betty Hill, and there's your status report.
	So far this evening on Ann Streber there has been some help by the way.
	Thanks to people who are listening to this program and I'll let Whitley if he does call and update us.
	He's been there 20 hours and by now 24 hours without sleep and so because it occurred just prior to showtime last night so he's at the hospital where he's sure he'll be for at least a week and so she has quite a procedure to undergo Anyway, that's the update, and Betty Hill, very sad.
	Now, if true, now, an awful lot of the believers, the witnesses, the researchers have passed on, but the skeptics live on!
	The skeptics definitely live on.
	Tonight we'll have one of them here.
	Dr. Michael Schirmer is a skeptic of almost everything we talk about.
	So actually, it should be a very interesting show.
	Really should be.
	And, by the way, this interesting show can be heard free of charge on the web tonight.
	It is our Streamlink Weekend, and it just kind of kicks off a demo of what we can do here on the web.
	It is way cool.
	I mean, you can listen tonight for free until 6, I think, in the morning.
	And you can also, if you're a member, which is very cheap, you can make MPEG-3s of the programs, you know, like 30 days or so.
	It's a Wacol, anyway.
	If you want to see what it's all about, go on to your computer and listen free of charge, and we're happy to offer that as a way to introduce you to its many charms.
	We will be back in a moment.
	Sound of a rocket launching.
	Sound of a rocket launching.
	Looking...
	Sound of a drum beating.
	Music.
	A very quick look into the world.
	The most feared militant group in Iraq, that would be the Movement of Terror, masterminded by al-Zaqqari, declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden, so they're getting together.
	This occurred Sunday, saying, why, it agreed with al-Qaeda over strategy, the need for unity against the enemies of Islam.
	That's in quotes, that'd be us, of course.
	The declaration which appeared on a website often used as a clearinghouse for statements by militant groups in general began with a Koran verse encouraging Muslim unity and said that al-Zaqqari considered bin Laden, quote, the best leader for Islam's armies against all infidels.
	Massachusetts Senator Kerry accused President Bush on Sunday of planning a surprise second-term attempt to privatize Social Security and forecast a disaster for America's middle class.
	End of the road for the middle class.
	The U.S.
	Army Reserve soldiers, this was an interesting story tonight, who refused orders to drive a dangerous route, were members of one of a few supply units whose trucks Are still unarmored, said their commanding general.
	The soldier is now under investigation, previously focused on local missions in safer parts of Iraq, and had never driven a convoy north along the attack-prone roads passing through Baghdad.
	And so, when it came time for them to do that, they considered and said, mm-mm, too dangerous.
	Police on Sunday were still trying to determine who was driving a stolen truck loaded with illegal immigrants that smashed into other vehicles, rolled over, killed six, injured 15, some critically.
	Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials questioned a man they said was a driver, but it turned out instead to be a passenger.
	So we'll have to wait and find out about that.
	I want to say again tonight the Federal Communications Commission has passed Our regulations governing and essentially saying okay to broadband over power lines, that means that now across America they will begin to put the internet on power lines.
	This is an interesting technology that is feared by many who think it's going to be the end of shortwave broadcasting and indeed In areas where BPL passes by, and I might add through your home, you're not going to be able to hear shortwave broadcast.
	You're not going to be able to hear Radio Moscow, or the BBC, or Radio France International, or any of the other zillion shortwave broadcasters out there anymore, because BPL will be virtually broadcasting from your power lines and covering all of those frequencies that you can now hear those short ways so good listening folks it won't last long if BPL is what it is feared to be the headline actually I read this to you last night but I want to just go over it one more time Air Force
	Pursuing anti-matter weapons program was touted publicly.
	Then came the official gag order.
	The U.S.
	Air Force, apparently, is working on an anti-matter weapon.
	And then there was a lot of reports that then they had a gag order and they can't talk about it anymore.
	An anti-matter weapon!
	Boy, I'll tell you, science fiction is beginning to sound more like science now, isn't it?
	An anti-matter weapon.
	Yikes.
	Seven young Japanese were found gassed to death in a car yesterday in what appeared to be the latest in a group suicide involving strangers who met over the internet.
	The four men and three women are believed to have been teenagers.
	God, that's sad.
	Or in their twenties, perhaps.
	The rented vehicle was found in a secluded car park In Monano, north of Tokyo, portable charcoal stoves were used to fill the car with carbon monoxide, the windows sealed with tape, and the vehicle covered with a plastic sheet.
	And now, police began to search Monano on Monday after a friend of one of the dead received a text message saying, simply, I'm in Monano, there are several, seven of us, pardon me, in the car, and we committed suicide with stoves.
	The number of dead, of course, shocked Japan.
	The group suicide fits, though, a pattern.
	This goes over the last 18 months or so, and 50 have died in similar suicides in Japan.
	All of a sudden, the young people in Japan are beginning to kill themselves.
	That's, uh, so weird, isn't it?
	Newspapers have reported dozens of cases in which depressed young people have used the internet to find someone else with whom to die and then do it.
	Last month, Ford found dead in almost identical circumstances.
	So they're making packs, getting together, and committing group suicide.
	Now, they're facing an epidemic of suicides, actually, in Japan.
	The last 12 years, really.
	There was a long recession, a national loss of self-confidence since the bursting of the bubble economy they had there.
	Hmm.
	Well, I wonder how our bubble is doing.
	The FDA on Wednesday approved, oh you're going to love this, this is right down many alleys, approved an implantable computer chip That can pass a patient's medical details to doctor's speeding care.
	VeraChips radio frequency microchips, the size of a grain of rice, have already been used to identify wayward pets and livestock, and nearly 200 people working in Mexico's Attorney General's office have been implanted with the chips to access secure areas containing sensitive documents.
	It is the first time the FDA has approved the use of the device.
	Though in Mexico more than 1,000 people now, scannable chips have actually been implanted in people.
	The chip serial number pulls up the patient's blood type and other medical information.
	All you've got to do is pinch a syringe and the microchip is put in onto the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes, leaves no stitches, but radiates like a bandit.
	So, I wonder how you feel about that.
	And when they cometh to you, to delivereth your chip beneath the epidermis, how are you going to react?
	Are you going to say, why, yes!
	Have my arm!
	Let's have that baby!
	Or will you say, no, it is the devil, the very devil itself.
	666 has arrived.
	And it shall not be implanted in me.
	You'll hear a lot of different answers to that one.
	Hey, you know, we'll ask tonight's guest, Dr. Schirmer.
	He would have to say yes, right?
	Being a skeptic of anything of that, well, we'll ask.
	This is kind of interesting.
	It relates to the show that I did with Tess Gerritsen.
	You remember she talked about the rebellion that occurred on the shuttle?
	The mutiny, as it were, on Skylab 4.
	Well, I've got somebody who was on the inside.
	Dave writes, I've met Gary Carr, the commander of that mission, several times, and spoken with him at length on several topics.
	Mr. Carr informed me that his crew was ahead of schedule in every regard, and had been for several days.
	They gathered enough solar astronomy data to keep the scientific community busy for the next decade.
	After repeated requests on the day of the mutiny to take a little personal and Earth observation time, Astronaut Lingo, for looking out the window, and having those requests refused, dismissed, and ignored by Mission Control in Houston, Commander Carr, with the morale of his crew in mind, informed Houston, well, they wouldn't be accepting any further assignments on this day, and they turned the receiver off.
	Click!
	That was the day of the mutiny, December 25th, 1973, Christmas Day.
	Harry Carr would probably never admit this, but at the time, writes Davey, he was one of NASA's top astronauts.
	Motivated, energetic, as smart as they come, being groomed for Mars in the early 80s if funding had been there.
	Then shuttle flights, he would have commanded a lunar landing had he been about five years older.
	And had joined the astronaut corps about five years earlier.
	His action to boost the mental and emotional health of Bill Pogue, Ed Gibson, and himself absolutely and without question killed his flight career.
	And rightfully so, some would argue.
	Perhaps the crew of Skylab 4 would have been in better spirits had the NASA PAO and administrators not bowed to a temperance league.
	And allow the boys to bring a little white wine, for example, to celebrate their freeze-dried, dehydrated, irradiated, and thermostabilized Christmas dinner!
	How did the Russians and the Miracruz tolerate the hardships of long-duration spaceflight?
	Vodka!
	And lots and lots of vodka!
	Hope you enjoyed reading these little factoids half as much as I did hearing your voice on the air, Dave.
	And I won't give Dave's last name, but Dave, thank you.
	So there's the real story of what happened.
	And then there's this little nugget.
	Only in China would you have this reaction.
	The headline is, Satellite Smashes Chinese House.
	A Chinese satellite has smashed into a villager's house on its return to Earth According to the country's media reports, the satellite destroyed the building in Sichuan Province, but officials say no one was hurt.
	A local newspaper printed a picture of a kettle-shaped capsule, which appeared to be about two meters long, lying amid broken bricks, beams, and roof tiles.
	The satellite was part of a space probe to carry out land surveys and other research, according to the news agency there.
	Quote, the satellite landed in our home.
	Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year, said the tenant of the wrecked apartment.
	And that was a direct quote.
	Well, the satellite landed in our home.
	Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year.
	Only in China would you get a reaction like that.
	Completely destroyed the apartment.
	But otherwise, it's going to be a good year.
	Want to do some open lines?
	Why not?
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello?
	Hello, this is Mr. Bell.
	It is.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	I got it off.
	Excellent.
	Okay, what I was wondering... Who and where are you?
	Oh, this is Jerry, and I'm in Tempe, Arizona.
	Alrighty.
	What's up, Jerry?
	Okay, several... I think it was several years ago, Mel was supposed to give a dime to Richard Hoagland.
	Oh, yeah.
	I remember that.
	Yeah, I never heard anything else about that.
	Well, me either.
	I don't know how that turned out.
	I don't know how that turned out, but interesting.
	I'll see if I can find out.
	Okay, that's all I have to say.
	Have a nice night.
	Yeah, you too.
	One of those through time things, right?
	Yeah, I remember that.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Oh, yeah, I was wondering about Who is this?
	Who were you expecting when you called?
	I wanted to talk to Art.
	Uh-huh.
	That would be me.
	Yeah, I was wondering what you thought about the oil for food scandal.
	Oil for food scandal?
	Yeah.
	Which scandal is that?
	Oil for food.
	What scandal?
	What are you talking about?
	Yeah, like Kofi Annan and all the people that, you know.
	No, I don't know.
	I'm not sure what you're talking about.
	you know no I don't know I'm not sure what you're talking about well I guess
	uh you know they're saying on the news that uh they they had some kind of
	sanction thing going on with them and you know you know you haven't heard
	anything about it no no no no it doesn't mean it's not going on I just heard
	Anyway, what do you think about this scandal since you called?
	Well, I just thought it was interesting that, you know, they didn't support us with the war, and then all of a sudden they... All of a sudden it turns out that they had dealings with Saddam, you know, when they were... Well, was there any doubt about that?
	If you're talking about China and France, of course they had dealings with Saddam.
	France had tons of dealings with Saddam.
	There were all kinds of contracts and things going on, sure.
	I am well aware of that, if that's the scandal.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Card?
	Yes.
	Tell me it isn't so.
	Tell me this BPL thing isn't going to really happen.
	No, it is.
	You mentioned it last night on the Streamlink.
	I caught that.
	I've just been sick all day about it.
	It is sickening.
	BPL will start Perhaps just above the broadcast band, if not in it, and go to about 80 megahertz, I guess.
	And that's going to wipe out Goodbye Citizens Band, Goodbye Shortwave Broadcasting, Goodbye Amateur Radio to some degree, Goodbye Public Safety stuff to some degree.
	I mean, it's incredible what they are getting ready to do.
	It's just unbelievable.
	Isn't the FCC supposed to stop that type of interference?
	I mean, aren't they supposed to weigh the pluses and minuses of this?
	Or is Michael Powell just on the take, and he's just as corrupt as anybody else on the Hill?
	Look, I don't know what to tell you.
	I can't imagine a nation that would intentionally destroy shortwave listenership across an entire continent, a whole country like this.
	To me, it's unbelievable what they're doing.
	I don't have an answer for you.
	You know, all we can do is pray that it's not going to be as bad as it seems like it will be in those areas affected.
	That's it.
	Pray.
	Okay.
	I mean, it's past.
	It's a done deal.
	So, uh... I'd like to see Powell out somebody else in and fix this.
	Well... He fixed it in Japan.
	He threw it out.
	We can throw it out, too.
	Remember this, sir.
	There's a lot of countries that tried it and then threw it out the door.
	So, maybe we'll be one of those countries.
	I'll get my shovel ready.
	Alright, you have a good night, sir.
	to make a deal broadband over the power lines the death knell for shortwave
	listening and information from outside the USA want to time travel
	Go back to Past Joe's on Stringlink.
	Sign up online at www.coasttocoastam.com Thank you for watching!
	Please subscribe to my channel!
	Thank you for watching!
	Please subscribe to my channel!
	When you hold me up in your arms so tight, you let me know everything's alright.
	I'm hooked on a feeling I'm high on a reason That you're in love with me
	Lips as sweet as candy His face is on my mind Girl, you got me thirsty for another cup of wine
	Got a thought from you, girl But I don't need no cure I'd just stay up and dance if I can for sure
	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 to the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	From west to the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
	To talk with ArcBel from east to the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
	From west to the Rockies, call ART at 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach ArcBel by calling your in-country Sprint Access number.
	You know, I'm going to rely very heavily tonight on fast blasting.
	893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
	with Art Bell.
	And those are the phone numbers. You know, I'm going to rely very heavily tonight on
	fast blasting. It's going to be so much fun having a skeptic here. I mean, what is a skeptic
	Is it somebody who disbelieves everything?
	I mean, these are the things we'll ask.
	Do you disbelieve everything automatically?
	Are you just automatically, absolutely skeptical of everything?
	Until somehow it happens right in front of your nose or to your nose.
	I don't know.
	But it's going to be fun to have a skeptic here, I think, and we'll pummel him with questions.
	And we'll see what he's all about.
	And so I'll rely, you know, on the computer.
	so if you get a chance go to the website coast to coast am.com go to
	fast blast and Should something occur to you that just has to be asked why
	in the course of conversation?
	I'll try and monitor the screen fairly closely and see if you come up with any zingers
	For now it's back into the unexpected darkness of the night with the first time caller line in
	the first time caller line in You are on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi, how you doing?
	I'm doing quite well.
	Thank you.
	Who are you and where are you?
	My name is Linda and I'm in Paonia, Colorado.
	All right.
	Yeah, I had a special request.
	Last night I heard Whitney's wife.
	What happened to her?
	It's an aneurysm and there's a lot of bleeding in the brain and they're going to try and fix this aneurysm, Whitley told me, with some kind of really weird thing where they put something through your vein and go all the way into your brain and then do... it's really wild.
	Wow.
	Yeah, wow is right.
	That is amazing.
	Well, you know, I really have listened to your show for about 10 years and I really I believe in the power of prayer.
	My husband and I have been trying to have a baby, and I've had my first ovary removed and most of my second one.
	They said there's a chance there could still be a possibility, but I was just wanting to see if you could ask all the listeners.
	No, but you can.
	Okay.
	Which is what you're doing, really.
	I am.
	Really, really, with all my heart.
	You would like them to pray for a connection?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	This is the first time I've called and I just really felt like this is what I needed to do.
	Well, I wish you luck.
	Thank you, Art.
	Good night.
	Good night.
	Very good luck, yes.
	Stay very active.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Art, how are you doing tonight?
	Quite well, thank you.
	This is Bill in Memphis.
	It's funny, you should mention the broadband over power lines being approved.
	I'm trying to find humor in it, but I haven't actually yet.
	Right, that's kind of going to mess a few things up.
	We rely on that a little bit.
	But my wife anoxiously bought a popular mechanics magazine, just for no great reason, in November 2004.
	And she was reading to me, About HDTV.
	Is HDTV ready is the article's topic.
	In big letters it has, analog TV is to be phased out by the FCC in 2006.
	That's right.
	Yeah, that's right.
	That's right.
	Here comes digital television and it's going to have to happen.
	And the answer, I've got HDTV, sir.
	And not only is it ready, but when most Americans see Real high-definition television.
	Their jaw is going to drop as far as it did on the day that they first saw color from black and white.
	Oh, it's phenomenal.
	But just check this little caveat about the equipment on the second page.
	Yes.
	It says, don't feel like dealing with HDTV yet.
	You may not have a choice.
	The FCC says it's phasing out analog TV transmission in 2006.
	Well, you know what, though?
	I know it's going to be a stressful thing on the American public, and I know it's going to be, it's already stressful on the broadcasters who are having to install new equipment, but I am in favor of this.
	And I'm telling you right now, it's high time the U.S.
	revolutionized its television system.
	The rest of the world has been ahead of us too damn long.
	The Japanese and the Europeans have television And have had for years.
	It's been much better than ours.
	But on the plus positive side, what the caller said is true.
	2006, it's going to have to change.
	And it will be worth it in the end.
	I'll be at some pain now.
	I'm telling you right now that if you have not yet seen real high-definition television, when you first do, your jaw will drop every bit as far as it did the day you first saw color from black and white.
	That's how different it is.
	And it's high time America caught up.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Very quickly on your subject of the moment, it would be wonderful if you would express that new television system and pixels.
	There are so many people with cameras now that would understand that without seeing it.
	Well, the format that I like is called, there's several, 1080i, and basically my screen, for example, will display 1025 by 1025.
	Beautiful.
	And I can assure you, sir, after the normal 525 scanlines, you're going to just drop your jaw when you see it.
	The present television is as bad as my old vision.
	The subject of the internet coming in over your power lines, that equipment has existed as an industrial product for the purpose of the transmission lines.
	Clear back as far as I would know anything about.
	Yes, well, what you're saying is true.
	all they've done sir is transmit somewhere below 500 KC, killerhertz
	some kind of signal that reads your meter That's all they've done.
	What I'm trying to get through to you is what they're going to do is they're going to go from the top of the broadcast band all the way to the top of shortwave at 30 megahertz and then beyond and they're going to be transmitting this awful jamming sound that's going to block out all the foreign broadcasts.
	I understand that.
	The point I want to accomplish is in the power industry They would not use that equipment itself, particularly on the northeast coast.
	The power grid is so bad in shape, and the telephone lines that coordinate this are in such bad shape.
	I had to go back 50 years and put in my own equipment to prevent reclosures on power generation.
	But the one I want to really accomplish is if they can shut off all this foreign news coming in here that doesn't come through our Censorship.
	Oh, very good.
	You've hit it.
	You've hit it.
	That's exactly what this is all about.
	And for you to not think they're going to put it in the Northeast is naive at best.
	Oh, baby, it's going in.
	The dollar bill rules here.
	And if you can deliver Internet over those very same power lines, no matter their condition, and I might have the worst their condition, the more radiation there's going to be.
	So this is a real setup for disaster.
	A number of countries have tried what we're about to do here in the U.S.
	and decided the hell with this and kicked it out.
	There were some tests done in scattered communities from Virginia down to Arizona.
	And it terrorized local amateur operators, shortwave listeners, and people like that.
	And so I'm telling you, this is going to be something.
	And not something good.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Yes.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	I just turned it off.
	Thank you.
	Yes, I was going to say about how people are skeptics and everything.
	Yes.
	I had a chance, first time, to see you on your internet.
	I've been listening to your show for about a year, at least a year.
	Yes.
	By chance.
	Thank God you're showing.
	I did get a chance to see on the internet some of the photographs you guys had about all these things and everything.
	A friend of mine was wondering, some of them are fake and everything.
	Of course they are.
	Yeah, they are.
	And I've noticed that some actually seem more real than fake.
	Well, some of them seem very real and some of them are fake.
	Look.
	This program does not, or should not, give you the expectation of absolutism.
	In other words, if we put up a picture, let's say, oh, I don't know, of a beast, for example, like the Elmendorf beast, that is not recognized and not understood, not genetically right with anything on earth, that doesn't mean that we've found something totally new.
	We're always out on the edge, and so a lot of what we put up, maybe somebody cooked up in Photoshop, you know, or maybe somebody... One thing or another, these days it's getting much harder to tell.
	So you always have to be wary, and you have to imagine that what you see and hear on this program may be total bunk.
	Or it could be a jewel of information, a virtual diamond that you will not pick up anywhere else but here.
	And so that's what happens when you live out on the edge.
	That's what this program is all about.
	International Line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art.
	Hi.
	Two points.
	One about sunspots and one about aliens.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	In the Edgar Cayce readings, he actually says as much that the sunspots are aggravated by the Well, do you think the sunspot cycle of 11 years then is actually a cycle created by the actions of mankind?
	Not necessarily.
	he says this repeatedly through a certain reading it's reading number
	five seven five seven dash one well do you think the sunspots cycle of eleven
	years and is actually a cycle created by the actions of mankind is not
	necessarily there may be a fun spot cycle and uh... from spots themselves may get
	aggravated and exaggerated by simple activity on earth soon i don't know if i buy that one
	Maybe I'd be the skeptic on that one.
	Sunspots are not completely predictable at the macro level but, you know, the fuller look at this and we can precisely tell you how the Sun is going to build and wane in actually 22-year cycles and break it down to 11-year cycles and be quite right.
	For any given day or week we can be wrong and there can be very large amount of activity.
	Suddenly.
	But over an 11-year cycle, it's completely and utterly predictable.
	Now, whether within that cycle, mankind in some way influences the action of sunspots, I don't know.
	That's pretty speculative.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Yes, Art.
	I'd like to talk about the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump site, proposed dump site.
	More than proposed, it's the law now, I understand.
	I'd like to talk about it, too.
	Yes, and I wanted to mention that You know, I do think there's a reason not to go for Bud Narek or one of the third-party people, because this is a very serious issue, and Kerry has been very consistent against it, despite what the other side is saying.
	And Bush implied to Nevada voters that he had an open mind... Listen, I can tell you right now, in the Review Journal, which is a Las Vegas newspaper...
	It quoted Kerry as saying definitively, no wiggle room.
	If he's elected president, there will be no dumpsite at Yucca Mountain, period.
	He made that absolute statement.
	We're in a swing state here in Nevada, and so it means a lot.
	We'll see how much it means shortly.
	And I wanted to ask you, isn't that site about 75 miles by the crow flies from where you are?
	Oh, probably about that, yeah.
	Okay, and I think, if you go on their website, I can't get into detail, it's too detailed, but if you go on their website, if you look at the math of what they claim, how much it'll cost over a hundred year period, they claim it'll only cost $655 billion, and you actually look at the scale of the project, the whole thing is completely phony.
	It's going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars more than that.
	Considering the scale of the project, and considering it's more than a hundred years, they're projecting it.
	So, of course, it'll really go on longer than that, we know, but they only go up to a hundred years.
	Alright, well, if you're actually looking at danger, though, and this is the part, you know, everybody thinks, well, screw Nevada.
	They actually had a bill, the screw Nevada bill, and they did.
	You know, it's coming here.
	But I'll tell you what, There's much more danger in its transportation than there is its end destination.
	In the transportation of this awful stuff, there's a tremendous amount of danger.
	I mean, compared to the amount of danger there will be to store it at Yucca Mountain.
	Let me phrase it that way.
	And that danger extends to just about everybody in the U.S.
	I mean, the routes covered Particularly in this day and age of terrorism and people with shoulder-fired rockets and all that baloney.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello, excuse my phone, Mr. Bell.
	That's alright.
	You mentioned the three sixes earlier in the show.
	The implantable chip, yes.
	I found out that the three sixes, they stand for a man, And what I found out is that, which is his title, while he's here on the planet.
	Alright, well anyway, the bottom line is, sir, when they come to you and say, alright, it's time for your chip, what are you going to say?
	Well, it's not so much a chip, it's actually a religion.
	Well, are you going to take the chip or not?
	What?
	I'm not.
	I can't do it.
	Even if you, they won't let you drive a truck if you don't take your chip.
	Now what?
	you hear that i get it uh...
	it the what it is is that the person of god will tell you what about a take away
	your cell phone now will you go for it uh... i i i got a ghost of thank you very much
	it's a good truck in the cell phone offers a whoops would have been a wildcard liner on the air
	alone yeah i just wanted to give you a heads up about tuesday d-day
	yeah that's fine june the sixth
	The date will be 666.
	Yes, I'd like to talk to Art Bell about BPL.
	Oh, I see. All right. So that would be doomsday merely because it's 666. Really?
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Yes, I'd like to talk to Art Bell about BPL.
	Well, this is Art. I am Art. I am Art.
	Am I on the radio?
	Good guess.
	Yeah, Art.
	Yes, turn your radio off or it will confuse you.
	Yes, hold on one second.
	Alright, good.
	No, all the way off, sir.
	Okay, it's off.
	Art, you're saying that one thing to the truckers of the United States that I don't believe that they caught, that BPL will eliminate their CB radio.
	Yeah, I know.
	I wonder, do you think they were listening?
	They are now.
	It's a little late.
	I'm telling you, the horse is out of the barn, sir.
	The horse is out of the barn, but the truckers control the barn door in this country.
	Everything you get comes by a truck.
	I know.
	And what's going to happen is these truckers, there's a... You think maybe there's going to be a convoy?
	Like you've never seen before.
	You get these truckers mad, they're mad.
	These 18-wheelers are going to surround Colin Powell, or excuse me, Mr. Powell, not Colin, they'll go after the other Powell, and surround him until he finally looks at their majesty and their diesel engines humming deeply and those big horns and he says, that's it, BPL's toast.
	I would hate to be the first city to install BPL, because you're going to inspire these truckers to just shut it down.
	This is no kidding.
	You really think they would be that?
	Absolutely.
	You know, I'm a retired trucker.
	You have no earthly idea the safety factor involved in just lifting Yes, I do.
	Listening to, if you've been on the road... No, look, I own a very large RV, 37-foot RV diesel, and when I'm out on the road, brother, it's the truckers who save my butt, I can't tell you how many times.
	You're preaching to the choir here, but it's going to be history.
	BPL is going to push it right out of the way, along with shortwave and foreign broadcasting.
	We're going to look back on these as the good old days, my friend.
	I mean, I hope you're right about the truckers.
	I hope they'll be that angry.
	Well, I hope for one thing that the truckers will do, and if they will do this tonight, burn your phone lines up.
	Burn it, burn it, burn it.
	And let's see how mad these truck drivers can get.
	And call who?
	Call you?
	Call me.
	I'm about to have a guest on.
	No, look.
	I know that.
	If BPL would be six feet in the ground if it was up to me, you preach into the choir.
	You've got to get somebody like Powell at the FCC or, you know, like, now it's too late.
	I mean, I've been warning about BPL for I don't know how long, and warning and warning, and now it's past.
	It's too late.
	Listen, I've got to go.
	Thank you.
	All right, take care.
	We've got a skeptic.
	Coming up next on the program, that should be a lot of fun.
	His name is Dr. Michael Shermer.
	In the nighttime, I'm Art Bell.
	Subscribe to After Dark.
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	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
	Blowing it sky high is the job of my guest coming up, Dr. Michael Shermer.
	He is a skeptic.
	In fact, Dr. Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, so he's got to be like the 800-pound gorilla of skeptics.
	He's director of the Skeptic Society.
	See, there you go.
	Monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics' Distinguished Science Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology, and the co-host and producer of a Fox Family series entitled Exploring the Unknown.
	Wow!
	Dr. Shermer received his B.A.
	in Psychology from Pepperdine, his M.A.
	in Experimental Psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D.
	in the History of Science from Claremont Graduate University.
	He's author of several books, including The Science of Good and Evil, Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share, Care, and Follow the Golden Rule, On the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God.
	Can you be good without God?
	In addition, he has appeared on many national television programs as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims.
	tonight he is here.
	And now here is Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hey, welcome to the program, Doctor.
	Good evening.
	Good evening, it's great to have you.
	Where are you?
	I'm in Altadena, California.
	Altadena, California.
	That's right out on the borders there of Pasadena.
	Okay.
	I am most curious to know what kind of person a skeptic is, and boy, you're really at the top of the list after having Read what I read introducing you here.
	You're really at the top of the list.
	So, I mean, what kind of person becomes, I don't know, a skeptic?
	What kind of guy are you?
	I mean, do you dig cats?
	Really, a skeptic is not a noun so much as it's just a way of thinking.
	A way of thinking?
	Yeah, it's a scientific way of thinking.
	Just looking for the evidence.
	Checking to see what's the quality of the evidence.
	How sound is the logic and rationality behind a particular claim.
	You can't just be a skeptic because it depends on the claim being made.
	There are people who claim that the Holocaust never happened and they're Holocaust skeptics and I investigated that and ended up becoming a skeptic of the skeptics instead of the claims.
	Have you investigated the 9-11 event?
	Yeah, sure.
	Are you at all skeptical of the official explanation of what occurred?
	In general, no.
	No?
	I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming.
	You think so?
	There's a growing body of people out there, doctor, that are, oh, I tell you, it's a movement.
	You know, there was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon, and on and on and on and on.
	Yeah, it depends on the particular claim.
	Again, it's not that conspiracies can't happen, they do.
	Lincoln, for example, was assassinated by a conspiracy, but Kennedy wasn't, in my opinion.
	So, again, we have to take them one at a time.
	You know, where's all the evidence for the plane that hit the Pentagon?
	Well, where's the evidence of the planes that hit the World Trade Center?
	They disintegrated, too.
	The planes disintegrate.
	There's no body parts because they disintegrated.
	That's what happens when planes hit at high speed like that.
	So, you know, again, we have to take these one at a time, like the claim we never landed on the moon and the people, I call them the no moonies.
	Yeah.
	You know, they have like 20 to 30 different specific arguments that they make, and... So far I'm in agreement with you.
	I mean, I'm sure we went to the moon.
	I've had very compelling, strong, impassioned arguments made by people who say we didn't, and, you know, they throw out certain facts, or what they think are facts, but I don't buy it.
	We landed on the moon.
	The 9-11 thing is, you know, so you're in safe territory with me so far, but... but there's, you know, there's a lot of other things.
	My goodness, a lot of other things.
	I became a skeptic.
	I actually still believe a lot of the paranormal stuff.
	When I was in a graduate program in experimental psychology in the mid-1970s, Uri Geller was all the rage, the Israeli spoon-bending psychic.
	I remember seeing articles about him by experimental psychologists, PhDs who had tested him.
	These are people that were really smart and well-educated, and I wanted to be a Ph.D.
	psychologist, and I thought, well, they say there's something to it.
	There must be something to it.
	There was a paranormal lab set up at UCLA by Thelma Moss, and I thought, wow, those people are really smart and educated, so there must be something to this.
	Then I saw the amazing James Randi on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
	He was doing all the same so-called paranormal tricks that the psychics were doing, and I Well, there's something going on here, and Randy made an interesting point that I'll never forget, and that is that scientists are not trained to look for intentional deception.
	They're looking for unintentional deception by nature, camouflage, hidden patterns, and things like that, but sometimes people just cheat, and lie, and make stuff up, and scientists are no better than anybody else at detecting that.
	So that told me that We can all be fooled.
	And then the study of illusion and magic showed me how easy it is, actually, for any of us to be fooled.
	Then when you get into the study of self-deception, it becomes even more powerful and obvious.
	I know a number of witches.
	Witches, Doctor, and they fully believe their power is absolutely real, that the magic they do is very, very real.
	Have you ever encountered a witch, looked into witchcraft at all?
	And what have you found?
	I think there's a similar effect as with the psychics, that there's a lot of self-deception going on there.
	They get a lot of reinforcement from their followers that they're doing something very effective, and that makes them think that they are effective.
	And so what kicks in then is something called the confirmation bias, where we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe, We ignore disconfirmatory evidence and so this is what fuels conspiracy theories.
	Once you have the conspiracy theory in place, it's easy to find evidence to support it and just ignore all the evidence that doesn't fit.
	You don't need much evidence to reinforce something you really want to believe.
	For example, people that go to psychics, we've tape recorded the readings and you can count the number of hits and misses just based on the people nodding yes or no.
	And the hit rate is pretty low.
	It's like 10 to 15 percent.
	Correct.
	And in that context, you think, well, why would anybody believe that?
	But in fact, what you see is them saying, well, it's incredible that he got this particular fact.
	Let me just stop you for a second.
	Going by your own words, you said the hit rate is 10 to 15 percent.
	when you're talking about somebody reciting completely
	random uh... things that are not that they're not random all in
	fact they said well then what you call for his hits
	things like he got the name of my uncle george or something like that
	Well, when you actually look at the reading, you see the psychic rattling off names.
	I'm getting a Michael, a Mark, a Mary, a Sam, you know, and so on, and finally it's the name, and the person says, yeah, well, George, right, that's my great uncle who passed on.
	Oh, okay.
	And then they just feed it back to them and say, no, don't tell me who it is, I'm getting a George here.
	And the person will actually forget that they told him, and then misremember it as being something that the psychic got instead of what they gave him.
	Or they'll say things that are true for everybody, like if it's a psychic who talks to the dead, which, by the way, anybody can talk to the dead.
	It's getting the dead to talk back that's the hard part.
	It's a matter of just repeating things that are true for everybody.
	So anybody that's lost somebody will have a keepsake with them.
	do you have to go to these readings of the photograph a piece of jewelry
	men who've lost their fathers typically have their father's watch on yes
	and that kind of thing so you'll see the fact that they did every reading i'm
	getting a watch he's telling me something about a watch i don't know
	what this means person knows what it means
	you know so sometimes just an outright scam
	uh... that is being perpetrated on people and they don't realize that but doctor
	uh... surely we do not understand everything about the human brain yet
	we're far from that here right so uh...
	it doesn't stand a reason that perhaps there are
	people uh... scattered among the the frauds out there
	uh... who really have developed a portion of the brain that we don't know
	anything about yet and are able to do things like
	predict events or uh... look uh... oak
	Take remote viewing for example.
	Something that apparently most people have a discipline.
	Have you looked at remote viewing?
	Yeah, I took a course in it and taped the whole show on it and so on.
	Okay, the first part of your statement was correct.
	There's a lot we don't know about the human brain and the mind, and what is mind, and where is consciousness located, where is the sense of self located, things like this.
	Yes.
	But to go from that to, and therefore, isn't it possible that some people have developed some part of their brain?
	Well, no, that's not a conclusion you can draw from a simple unknown fact.
	Why not?
	Because that would require something completely different.
	For thoughts to actually leave your skull, And traverse across space and go through somebody else's skull into their brain and influence their neurons.
	We know how neurons work.
	Well, I know it sounds fantastic, Doctor, but have you been looking into the quantum world?
	Yes.
	Well, have you now?
	In fact, I just reviewed this film, What the Bleep Do We Know?, for Scientific American.
	Yes.
	And here's the problem there, is that quantum effects occur at a subatomic level.
	Yes.
	Neuronal effects of where thought occurs is at a molecular level.
	It's about three orders of magnitude too big for quantum effects to take effect.
	They simply can't.
	It's too big of a leap.
	It's a quantum leap, if you will.
	Well, this whole statement you're making is a bit of a quantum leap, isn't it?
	Listen, there's a simple physics problem here.
	These quantum effects, weird as they are, all occur at the level below the size of the atom itself.
	They're happening down at the size of electrons.
	But, Doctor, let's just stop at quantum for a second, okay?
	I mean, just the fact that these effects occur at all are beyond everything we know.
	Now, we've confirmed they do occur.
	These quantum effects do occur.
	Doesn't that make you scratch your little skeptic skull?
	No, because they've been confirmed experimentally.
	Yes, indeed so.
	They're true.
	But yes, but we don't know how, do we?
	Well, we have some idea of how, in that the fact that there's a level of uncertainty, that itself is built into the fabric of nature.
	But that doesn't mean that the level of uncertainty leaps across that space gap to a macro level at which neurons occur.
	So, although it's true that the wave function doesn't collapse until it's observed, The moon exists, whether it's observed or not, because the quantum effects are all washed out at the macro level.
	So there's no application across that gap.
	Nevertheless, we don't understand how the macro communication, or the quantum communication, which appears to occur at the speed of, well, gee, much faster than light, instantaneously, we just don't even begin to understand.
	That's correct.
	Okay, so that's the quantum level, not the macro level at which we live at.
	Well, if there's that much we don't know about the quantum process, then, gee, reasonable speculation could go all over the place here.
	Okay, here's the problem.
	We have two mysteries.
	One is, how does the quantum effects occur?
	And two, how do you explain consciousness from neurons firing?
	Okay, it's possible that the Causal arrow goes down to the subatomic level.
	I think that's too much physics envy.
	One of the problems of science is that there's too much physics envy.
	Everybody thinks the big brother physics is the place we have to go to to explain something ultimately, and I think that's wrong.
	I think we have to go in the other direction toward emergence, self-organization, chaos theory, complexity theory.
	Consciousness as a problem to solve is going to occur at a higher level than neurons firing.
	It's going to occur at groups of neurons firing, patterns of neurons firing.
	Patterns, systems, networks, neural networks, things like that, that's where the explanation for consciousness is going to come from, at a higher level.
	Biology and systems theory is where the causal arrow should go, not down, down, down into the world of physics, but up into the world of systems.
	Well, it just seems to me, though, that the amount we don't understand about the Klan process alone should cause you to be at least a little concerned.
	Concerned about what?
	Well, from a skeptic's point of view.
	In other words, that Well, see, you know, if this actually is really happening, it's so impossible, according to everything we understand with physics, right?
	It's just beyond... Here's the problem, is that we have this micro-quantum level and this macro level of classical physics.
	Yes.
	And there's two different physics going on, and no one has figured out how to unite the two.
	That should be a problem for you, too.
	I mean, you can't have two different sets of physics, right?
	Something we can't explain doesn't open the door for all mysteries to be real.
	Well, it does open a lot of doors, though, you know, when you talk to the remote viewers and you do observe them.
	Okay, but look, there's nothing in remote viewing that needs explaining because there's no phenomenon to explain.
	Oh?
	Yeah, I've looked into this, and what happens when remote viewers are remote viewing is they're doing this kind of psychological game Where they're drawing little pictures of things and then at some point somebody has to make an interpretation of whether that drawing is a hit or a miss and that's where the subjectivity comes in.
	It's not an objective science.
	It's not where you have a multiple choice and they've statistically gotten a significant number of hits above chance.
	And when you do set it up like that, there is no effect that needs explaining.
	It's the same thing with all the psychics.
	There's simply nothing to explain.
	Whether quantum effects are weird or not, they don't have to be employed because there's nothing to explain.
	When you put psychics under controlled conditions, the effect fades.
	It disappears.
	They only operate well when there's a subjective element of what constitutes a hit.
	So I'm getting a red dress.
	What does that mean?
	Oh, the red dress means my mother gave it to me when I was eight.
	Okay.
	That's a hit?
	No, no.
	That's too subjective.
	No, but if there's a target, for example, of a remote viewer staring at a bridge in Great Britain and somebody over on the side draws a bridge and the surrounding countryside, I mean, that's a pretty good hit.
	Isn't it?
	Well, from what you just described, yeah, but that's not actually what happened.
	No?
	No, you read the sort of tabloid equivalent explanations of these things and it sounds impressive.
	When you actually read the scientific papers about it, you see where the flaws are and the effects are not real.
	The effects are not replicable.
	This is one of the problems of voodoo science, where one lab gets an effect and no one can duplicate it, like with cold fusion.
	It's not impossible.
	It's entirely possible.
	It's just that once the announcement was made and other scientists rushed out in their labs to do it and nobody could replicate it, Well, within weeks we realized, okay, there's something else going on here.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Nobody said nobody could replicate it.
	Not everybody could replicate it.
	Some did replicate it, others did not.
	Be fair.
	You're talking about Cold Fusion?
	Yeah.
	Well, obviously, if Cold Fusion was real, we'd have Cold fusion machines in our kitchens by now, and we doubt.
	Well, you know, this jumps into another interesting area.
	There's something wrong with the claimed effect.
	Virtually no one can get it to occur again.
	Well, but that wasn't true.
	There were a number of universities that did, and then a number that didn't, and a big controversy I'll grant you.
	And I'm not saying that cold fusion is real, although the experiments now have been relegated to Europe, as I'm sure you're aware.
	Well, fine, yeah.
	I mean, even if Americans are too dogmatic or closed-minded or whatever, Yeah, people in Japan are trying to replicate Cold Fusion.
	There's some people in Europe.
	If it was real, somebody would have nailed it down by now, because it's been, you know, 15 years now.
	Yeah, 15 years.
	So, when an effect goes on and on like that, like aliens, UFOs, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, you know, decades go by and no one can find a body, no one can find physical evidence.
	That should be a clue that skepticism is probably most appropriate.
	Well, it is appropriate in many cases.
	I'm also kind of skeptical about a lot of things, but also very open, and that's where I think the division is between yourself and myself.
	I'm open to some possibilities, and I don't see how you couldn't be.
	It depends what you mean by open and which particular claim you're asking somebody to be open about.
	Well, all right.
	You can't just be open about everything.
	All right, I'm open, for example, about EVP.
	I bet you're familiar with that.
	Electronic voice phenomena.
	The voices of the dead being recorded.
	You're familiar with that.
	That one leaves me open.
	I'm unable to shoot a hole in what a lot of these people are doing.
	And are you?
	You get holes shot in that very easily?
	You shoot holes in it?
	Or what?
	Voices on machines, the few I've heard, they always sound kind of unclear.
	It's not amidst a bunch of noise.
	What is it exactly we're hearing?
	Alright, there's a good place to stop.
	It's the bottom of the hour.
	Hold it right there.
	What exactly are we hearing?
	I agree with that.
	The voices of the dead or a host?
	Now that you're gone, needles and pins, White lights at dawn, watching black flies,
	Till you return, lighting the black door, And watching you burn.
	Now it begins, day after day This is my life
	Now it begins, day after day, Lighting that torch and watching it burn
	The burnings on them beard hens gonna be buried in them landfills
	No deposits, no sad songs and no return Yeah, it's only gonna take about a minute or so
	Till the factory's blocked the sun out But you're gonna have to turn your lights on just to see
	And them lights are gonna be neon, saying Fly our jets to paradise
	And the whole damn world's gonna be made of styrene So listen, little my brothers
	If you hear the night wind sigh And you see the walking sky
	Into the great polluted sky There won't be no country music
	There won't be no rock and roll Cause when they take away our country
	They'll take away our soul To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code
	7 The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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	may reach our bell by calling your in-country sprint access number
	pressing option 5 and dialing toll-free 800 893 0903 I'm already getting fast last thing all right I can't stand
	up I blood pressure is going up this guy driving me crazy
	well This guy is Dr. Michael Shermer.
	He is a skeptic, and he's telling us why.
	I will be right back.
	Dr. Shermer, welcome back.
	I've heard some rather clear recordings, actually, over many, many shows of people... I don't know.
	These people are pretty good people up in Utah, and they haven't written a book.
	They're not making any money.
	They never come on here and sell anything at all.
	They simply gather together with recorders and go to graveyards, places like that, and get these voices for which there appears no other possible explanation.
	You rule out, you know, radio stations.
	They're brand new tapes, never been recorded on previously.
	So, you know, where do the voices come from?
	I try and shoot holes in it myself, but the voices are there.
	Saying relative things, by the way, I might add.
	Contemporary things.
	Showing they're in the moment.
	That sort of thing.
	It's pretty wild.
	Well, in a way, this is a signal noise problem.
	It's the same problem that SETI people have in determining Whether a signal that's coming from outer space is part of the regular background noise you get, or whether it's a signal like aliens are sending a significant number or something like that.
	I haven't heard every single tape anybody's made, but the ones I hear, they're never really all that clear.
	Usually the claim it says something like, here you can clearly hear he says whatever.
	When you hear it without that context, it just, to me, sounds like noise.
	I don't hear it.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Well, some of them, I will grant you, can be very interpretive, but a few times I've heard ones where there's nothing interpretive about them at all.
	I mean, they're exceptionally clear.
	This is a little bit like the Play the Beatles albums backwards, for the spooky words.
	You're going to get that, where random noises occasionally sound like words.
	Because it's like the face on Mars business.
	We see faces because that's what we look for, because we're human.
	Faces are important for us.
	Our brain wants to see something we relate to.
	Right.
	So, sure, there's some of that.
	And then, would you then also attribute that to all of these millions of UFO sightings?
	You know, just millions.
	First of all, there aren't millions.
	Well, there are, actually.
	Different sightings have different explanations.
	There's not one universal explanation for all UFO sightings, and most serious ufologists will admit that a good 90% or so of the sightings are explainable.
	So what we're down to here is looking at that 10% Anomalies that are unexplained by traditional methods.
	Granted.
	So, for me, it's perfectly okay to just say, I don't know.
	We don't know.
	We don't have a good explanation for it.
	Let's just leave it at that.
	It's not perfectly okay to say that.
	It's perfectly okay to say there's 10% we cannot explain.
	But wouldn't that justify a serious scientific investigation of... That was a yes?
	Yeah.
	Okay, good.
	But a serious scientific investigation is not the same thing as aliens landed here.
	No?
	It isn't.
	In science, we have what's called the residue problem.
	There will always be a residue of unexplained anomalies that the dominant theory at the time cannot explain.
	And that's just simply the way it is.
	It's just the built-in limitations.
	You can't explain everything.
	So before you overturn the dominant theory that explains 90% of the data, however, your new theory has to explain the 90% and something more.
	And that's the problem with trying to introduce a new theory.
	It's not that paradigms can't shift and new theories can't be introduced.
	That happens all the time.
	Yes.
	It's just that it has to be a better explanation, and typically the new explanations that are offered are not better.
	They're worse.
	It's just that they claim to explain a few of the anomalies, but they don't explain most of the other stuff.
	Well, let's stick with the ghost part of it for a second and drift over toward, are you skeptical entirely of life after death?
	Or continued consciousness of any sort after physical death?
	Yeah, I don't think there's any evidence for it at all.
	I think the best chance we have for that ever happening is through computer technology.
	That is, if we eventually can scan our neural patterns, our networks of information that represent our personalities and memories, ourselves, into computers, silicon is a much more durable medium than the electric meat of our protein, and that can last a lot longer until we have a still hardier medium to download our memories into the distant future.
	But that's pure science fiction at the moment, although there are some people that are working on that.
	So you think the only way there'll be life after death is to leap into Microsoft's world?
	Yeah, something like that.
	I'm not sure I'd want to Trust a Windows platform for my eternal life, but yes, it's one of those things.
	My eternal life!
	Oh, well.
	Have you given it any consideration?
	I mean, faced with what you, as a skeptic, and I guess, well, gee, we could use other words, are you... Would you say you're agnostic?
	At this point, I would be shocked.
	If it turned out there's a God in an afterlife, I would be amazed.
	Really?
	Yeah, I'd be sitting there going, oh my God, I can't believe it!
	Well, you know, great!
	I'm very fortunate, I'm happy that there's an afterlife, and I hope the God is a good God.
	But you don't believe for one second there is, do you?
	No, practically speaking, no.
	I mean, philosophically, technically, yeah, I can't prove there's no God, I can't prove there's no afterlife.
	But I don't think there's good enough evidence for it to make a... Well, what about the evidence there is?
	I mean, like the Bible, for example.
	I mean, you know, there's so... The Bible has written all over it evidence of human construction.
	It's socially, culturally bound.
	It's an edited book.
	It's obviously an edited book.
	All biblical scholars agree, virtually all biblical scholars agree that this is the case.
	It's obviously edited.
	The authors are writing against each other.
	They're arguing amongst themselves.
	There were books that were left out.
	Well, why were they left out?
	Because there was a committee that voted which books should go in, which books should go out.
	What do you mean, a committee that voted?
	Yeah, there was.
	So, you know, and the stories are very human.
	You know, they have written all over them, the culture of the times.
	I mean, the laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, for example, are absurd.
	I mean, you know, that adulterous women should be put to death.
	Gee, that's not something we would obey today.
	Disobedient children should be stoned to death?
	Come on!
	And about not wearing certain clothing fabrics together, not eating certain kinds of food.
	These were rules written for people 4,000 years ago.
	I'm not in favor of any of that.
	In a very different context.
	But I don't know that that invalidates the whole Bible.
	You obviously then don't embrace the concept that Jesus walked on earth as a man, huh?
	I think there probably was a man named Jesus who definitely was a man who walked on earth.
	What I cannot make the leap of faith, and that's really what it has to be, is that he was God, that he was reincarnated, that essentially he was brought back from the dead.
	That, I think, is not a provable tenet.
	That is an article of faith.
	You either take the leap of faith and believe it, or you don't.
	And if you don't believe it, there's no point in being a Christian.
	You should be a Jew or something else.
	And this is the problem I see.
	The whole science and religion business is that the attempt to use science to prove articles of faith is diverting the whole point of religious faith.
	The whole point is just to believe, not to prove it.
	If you could prove it, what's the point of just believing?
	Everybody should be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim.
	How do you characterize those with very strong faith?
	I mean, how do you personally characterize them?
	Well, no different than a commitment of anything else, like a political commitment.
	People that are hardly supporting Carrier Bush are no different than people that hardly support Christianity or Judaism.
	These are beliefs that are arrived at for mostly psychological and emotional reasons.
	They're behavioral commitments that have to do with how you were raised, the beliefs of your parents, your peer groups, Teachers, your upbringing, that sort of thing.
	It has very little to do with science, reason, logic.
	It's a whole host of psychological factors.
	So people believe in Christianity for the same reason that they're Democrats or Republicans.
	That's how they were raised.
	That's something.
	You don't think there's a... Well, do you think there's a natural propensity for people to worship?
	I had a guest on the show who wrote a book called I think there's something to that, although I don't think there's a God gene or a God module specifically.
	I think it has to do with a larger suite of behavioral, psychological things that are going on.
	I think there is something to that, although I don't think there is a God gene or a God
	module specifically.
	I think it has to do with a larger suite of behavioral and psychological things that are
	going on.
	For example, the whole idea of using God as an explanation for things is one aspect.
	Most people don't go to church in order to have some explanation for the origins of the
	universe and that if you can only teach about the Big Bang then people wouldn't
	believe in God anymore or something like that.
	Why do you think it is that even if you go to the deepest jungles of South America, where you find a tribe that has never encountered the rest of modern humanity at all, And they indeed worship something or another.
	Inevitably, always.
	Yeah, but that something or another is so radically different than the God that we worship.
	Yes.
	What it is, again, that's just an explanation for something.
	Most, let's just take modern Americans.
	Do they go to church on Sunday in order to hear a sermon about the origins of life?
	No.
	They go for the social aspects, the music, the culture.
	Their friends are there.
	A little moral uplift, and more homilies for the children.
	Sort of a nice tea party for everybody.
	In a way it is, but more than that, it's a social cohesiveness, it's a binding, a bonding of people together.
	Religion plays a really important role in uniting people, encouraging cooperation, and this is where my book comes in, The Evolution of Morality.
	Religion plays a really important social role of Reinforcing altruistic, pro-social, cooperative behavior.
	In other words, you should be nice instead of nasty, because we all know humans have a propensity to do nasty things.
	So religion was the first organized institute on the scene that codified the rules of good behavior into writing, to actually put it into stone, literally.
	And so what happened was, about 5,000 years ago, before that, all humans were living in small bands and tribes of a couple of dozen to a couple hundred individuals
	in which most behavior control could be enforced through informal means like shunning and guilt and shame
	and pride and joy and things like that.
	And most everybody was either related to one another or they knew one another.
	So it's easy to control people's behavior that way.
	Once populations started to grow to larger sizes and thousands, tens of thousands
	and even hundreds of thousands, there was too much anonymity.
	People didn't know one another, weren't related to one another, so why should I be nice?
	Why should I be cooperative?
	Why not be an outlier, a cheater?
	Why not be a freeloader?
	Doctor, aren't these all questions that would apply to you who would doubt all of these things?
	So without the restrictions applied because of religion or whatever else we could talk about, I mean, why aren't you an outlaw with low moral... I mean, or are you?
	Okay, so what happened was, five to seven thousand years ago, is religions and state societies developed in order to codify the rules of behavior for all of us to obey a certain set of rules that make us all better, that makes us as a society better.
	So you actually have sort of a group selection going on here in evolution, where groups that are more cooperative and pro-social are more likely to Be successful.
	So we actually have within us, I argue, a tendency to be moral, to be good, if it can be reinforced through culture and society.
	And that's what these institutions are for.
	I'm not saying religion is bad.
	In fact, religion is really good for a lot of these things.
	It's just that it was the first on the scene, so it has a 4,000 year head start over secular institutions.
	So what happened in the Enlightenment 400 years ago was the thinkers said, look, These are values that are good in and of themselves, even if there is no God, or even if you believe a different God, or you're committed to a different religion, we still hold these values to be self-evidently true, sacred, whatever term you want to use, and those are the founding fathers of our country.
	So the separation of church and state is actually better for religion, because it protects religion, and it says to everybody who lives here, these are the rules we're going to live by, And I don't care if you believe in God or not, you still have to do this.
	You still have to be good.
	And that's good for everybody.
	Right.
	But, but, if you don't believe in all of these things that dictate this control you've talked about, well then where are you?
	Well, that's what states are for, too.
	States have laws.
	Actually, states are better at it than religion.
	Religion just has moral precepts.
	You're going to be punished in the next life if you're not good.
	So your morality, personal morality... They say you're going to be punished now if you don't change it.
	Then your personal morality stems from just the fact that you don't want to break the law and get in trouble?
	No.
	In fact, that's the limitation of religious morality, is it's based on a reward and punishment system.
	What a secular system of morality says is that these values exist in and of themselves, that people have value in and of themselves, and we'll be better as a group If everybody does these things.
	And it's better if you do it now, because there is no next life to be rewarded or punished.
	The reward has to come now.
	Oh, it jumps that far, huh?
	I think so.
	I think it's a higher moral value to be good, rather than to not be good, because people have value in and of themselves, and it's better for the group, then the religious system, which is based on some payoff in the distant future, I would rather know that you want to be good and nice to me, because you value me, as opposed to because you think you're going to get paid off, or you have fear of punishment from God.
	I think it would be a higher moral value if you just held those values in and of themselves, because people have value.
	And that's the point, I think, of the Enlightenment values that we cherish in this country, that are built into the Constitution.
	Regardless of your religion, these values are important.
	Okay, well, yes they are.
	Yes they are.
	Although I'm not sure how they're inculcated without religion, and then all you have is fear of punishment in the real world, the court sending you away to jail or whatever.
	Because we're used to religion.
	Again, religion's had a 4,000 year head start.
	What the secular system in America is trying to do is to say, we should raise our kids to be this way and have these values, regardless of what religion you are.
	Even if you're not religious at all, these are still good values, and so we've only had, you know, a little over 200 years to think about this and talk about it culturally, but, you know, religion's been doing this for thousands of years, and, you know, they do it pretty well, but we can do it better.
	Really?
	Well, but see, in the modern world, a lot of people have let their religion go.
	They've lost their religion, basically, and we see a corresponding rise in the crime rate, and particularly the Well, I'm talking about a larger span of time.
	I mean, you know, modern man.
	Well, okay.
	As religion has sort of slipped away.
	are much lower than they've been since the 60s.
	Well, I'm talking about a larger span of time.
	I mean, you know, modern man.
	Well, OK.
	As religion has sort of slipped away, well, I...
	Life is much better than it was even 500 years ago.
	All of us are much safer than we've ever been.
	Healthier, longer lives, less likely to get mugged, raped, and so on, than compared to 500 years ago.
	It's much better, thanks to liberal democracy and free markets.
	Well, it may, of course, depend on which part of the world you're talking about.
	Well, yeah, okay.
	But those are theocracies in these awful third world nations.
	They're either dictatorships or theocracies.
	So, it's not that religion is bad.
	It's that any form of extremism Where there's a monopoly of power, whether it's a theocracy, a dictatorship, or whatever, that's the danger.
	Religion's fine most of the time.
	It's extreme religion, just like extreme Marxist cultures are very dangerous.
	Any kind of extreme monopolistic power, like dictatorships and theocracies, that's the problem.
	Like those we face now in this war on terrorism.
	One of the reasons that Americans are so much more religious than Europeans is that Europeans don't have a free market of religion.
	We have a free market of religion here.
	Religions have to compete for limited customers, and they've gotten much better at doing religion.
	They're more flexible, they're more tolerant, they're more willing to change in order to give people what they need and want, and that's what free markets do.
	In Europe, the churches all get the same amount of tax dollars, no matter how many people are out there in the pews.
	So, they're not motivated to try to update their religion, try to make their religion relevant for the people sitting in the pews, whereas American religions are very vibrant and flexible, because they have to be.
	That's the value of separating church and state.
	It's much better for religion.
	Christians that are in favor of blending church and state, they don't get that.
	They don't see that it's actually bad for them to do this.
	Well, heaven knows, that keeps up.
	Pretty soon we'll have rap in church.
	You'll get a Sunday church service and they'll rap it to you.
	Maybe that's the future.
	Dr. Michael Shermer is here.
	There's something happening here.
	What it is ain't exactly clear.
	There's a man with a gun over there.
	Telling me I got to beware Thank you. Sam. We stop children. What's that sound?
	Everybody look what's going down?
	This battle lines being drawn Where are those happy days? They seem so hard to find.
	Where are those happy days? They seem so hard to find.
	Are all those happy days they seem so hard to find?
	I tried to reach for you, but you have lost your mind.
	Whatever happened to our love?
	I wish I understood.
	It used to be so nice, it used to be so good So when you need me darling, can't you hear me SOS
	The love you gave me, nothing else can save me SOS When you're gone, how can I even try to go on
	When you're gone, though I try, how can I carry on To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code
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	Dr. Michael Shermer is obviously a bright guy and that makes it a lot harder to...
	I guess to listen, really, if you're out there listening.
	He's obviously a very bright guy.
	Now, if we had someone on the air saying, well, you know, I don't believe in the afterlife because, well, I ain't never seen it.
	Well, you could deal with that.
	But this is a really bright guy saying, well, no.
	In a moment, we're going to take a few moments out, actually, and try and connect with Lee Streber, whose wife collapsed about an hour before the program in his airtime last night.
	Get an update on How she is.
	is that coming up if we're lucky all right about an hour before he was due to be on the air
	last night i talked to with lee who's just uh... in a panic
	uh... told me it might not our dance Collapsed.
	Click.
	That was it.
	And we've been following this story ever since.
	First thought to be perhaps diabetes-related, and then perhaps a stroke.
	Here's Whitley Streber, my co-author and my very good friend, with the latest on Ann's condition.
	Hi, Whitley.
	Hey, Art.
	How long have you been up now?
	Twenty-six hours.
	Twenty-six hours.
	And I'm just about to go to sleep for the first time since Friday night.
	Well, I sure appreciate you coming on to give us an update.
	God, what a trauma.
	Where are we?
	What's going on?
	Well, first of all, thank everybody for prayer.
	I believe in prayer and we were not as bad off last night as we could have been.
	In cases like this, half the people who have this die on the way to the hospital.
	The other half 50% of those come out with no deficit.
	In other words, they recover fully.
	The other 50% have some deficit and so let's pray for recover fully.
	Okay.
	We have a very important operation tomorrow morning and then after that we go on the recovery wagon and let's see what we can do.
	Alright, so we're clear.
	This was an aneurysm, right, in the brain?
	It was a brain aneurysm.
	It came out of nowhere.
	She just It was the single most shocking moment of my life when she simply fell over in the bathroom without warning.
	I got her before her head hit the floor.
	And this vital, brilliant, immensely wonderful woman was just laid low.
	Ouch.
	Yeah, just like that.
	And I just have to tell you that I can't help thinking about How many others of us in this community have had sudden catastrophic accidents and so forth just in the past few years?
	John Mack died only just a couple of weeks ago.
	Yes, there have been many.
	In fact, Betty Hill is said to have passed.
	Betty Hill passed.
	Betty Hill passed is what I'm hearing, yes.
	Ann has not.
	Ann is alive.
	She has what, I guess, they've done an MRI or whatever, a CAT scan?
	Well, they've done all the basics, and I might also thank the Art Bell listeners who were part of the Kaiser Permanente staff who came to the hospital last night immediately, and they were useful.
	People were our lifeboat, and it was a tremendous thing, and now there's a... It's a good audience.
	Now, there's a doctor who has come forward who helped us get into a hospital that was very difficult to get into where it is.
	Okay, let me ask you this, Willie.
	You described to me sort of a procedure she's going to go through in which something is Inserted through a vein somewhere, and it goes all the way up to the brain to try and fix the aneurysm?
	Is that what's up?
	Yeah.
	What's going to happen is, they're going to insert this thing in her leg, goes all the way up the body, through the veins, into the brain, and into the aneurysm, where it becomes a coil.
	And it just replaces the aneurysm with the coiled platinum.
	That's incredible.
	Listen, it is incredible.
	When might they attempt this?
	They will start at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning.
	As in this morning?
	Yeah, this morning.
	Oh my God.
	All right, you really need to get sleep.
	Man, I'm telling you, I am crashed.
	I just wanted to come on to just thank everyone who helped us and everyone who prayed because I know this is a group of people who knows how to pray a lot of when you're serious about it as we are.
	That's right.
	I think it helped and I want I would humbly request that you do it again for her to get full recovery because we could get that.
	Done.
	Done.
	Thank you.
	Whitley, take care.
	Go get some sleep.
	We'll look forward to a report shortly.
	Thank you so much.
	Good night.
	Good night, my friend.
	Oh, there's Whitley Streber.
	All right.
	All right.
	So this is going to launch a pretty good discussion, actually.
	A really good one.
	Dr. Schirmer, welcome back.
	Hey.
	Dr. Schirmer is a skeptic.
	Now, Dr. Schirmer, there have been... Let's talk about power of prayer for a second.
	We're asking people to pray for this man's wife, Anne, who has... Well, you just heard.
	Now, there have been double-blind studies, doctor.
	On the power of prayer.
	Very well-controlled, scientifically controlled experiments on the power of prayer, in which a group of sick people are prayed for, double-blinds, and then a group of... they're divided, and one's prayed for and one's not, and inevitably, the one prayed for makes a far faster and better recovery.
	The results have been fantastic and documented.
	And so, I wonder what you say about that.
	Wow.
	Right.
	Well, on the heels of the story of your friend and, you know, gosh.
	That's all right.
	You go right ahead.
	I mean, these are scientific studies.
	And moreover, Doctor, let me finish.
	On this program, I did a series of experiments.
	I'm going to add to the equation here a little bit.
	And in these experiments, young and foolish years ago I did all I don't know eight or nine or ten regarding several regarding people's health and then a few that produced rain in areas that had absolute drought and no forecast for rain we did some amazing things not in the name of God we just did mass concentrations and so I guess what I'm saying is
	You know, either leave God's name in this or not, if you wish.
	But I'm concluding, and many others are, scientifically, that there is a mass consciousness effect.
	And that it's real.
	And there's quite a bit of science behind it.
	Princeton is doing some very good things with that.
	Duke University is doing some things.
	I mean, there's some serious people doing things with this.
	So, can you, as a skeptic, say, oh baloney!
	Yeah, well, there's been some really good critiques of the methodologies that I just summarized in an article for Scientific American that'll be out next month.
	I'm listening.
	And there's numerous problems, but let's just start with the theological problem that I find most problematic.
	And that is, does God need to be reminded that somebody is ill?
	An all-knowing, all-powerful being doesn't know that Mr. Stryber's wife just collapsed.
	He doesn't know this and he has to be, what, reminded or asked?
	I mean, what does it mean?
	I took it beyond that.
	You take it beyond that.
	Whether it's in God's name or it's simply a function of the human brain in consecration.
	Okay, so let's say it's not God, that it's tapping into some universal spirit or something like that.
	Okay.
	Okay, here's the other problem.
	In the prayer studies themselves, it's never explained exactly what the dosage is.
	That is, are two 20-minute prayers the equivalent of one 40-minute prayer?
	Is it better to have a priest praying than a parishioner?
	Is a priestly prayer worth 10 parishioner prayers?
	This would be like saying, extract of seaweed cures cancer.
	Okay, well, what was the dosage?
	I don't know.
	Where'd you get the seaweed?
	I don't know.
	Well, what kind of seaweed was it?
	I don't know.
	It doesn't really tell us anything.
	Nor does it disprove.
	But the more serious problem, methodologically, is, this is pointed out in several studies in Lancet, in which they did an analysis of all the significant studies you referenced.
	And that is, there's no consistency across the studies.
	So like, for example, In the two famous studies with heart patients, they measured lots of different things.
	Twenty-five different outcome measures were taken, and the difference between the prayed-for group and the non-prayed-for group was insignificant for all but, I think, six of the measures.
	No, I think it was four of the measures.
	And in the other study, it was four different significant measures.
	That was another methodological problem there.
	And so, these things are fraught with, well, methodological difficulties, to say the least.
	So there was no consistency across the studies, no replication across the studies.
	That was another methodological problem there.
	And so these things are fraught with, well, methodological difficulties to say the least.
	And it sounds nice, and it is a warm human social thing to do,
	to care for our friends and loved ones.
	And that's fine.
	And to know that you are a member of a community and a family with people and friends that love you,
	that does make a difference.
	But your own personal view would be that prayer is just a waste of time.
	Well, intercessory prayer, that is where you're...
	Where the person doesn't know they're being prayed for, and you're asking something or someone out there to intercede on some higher spiritual plane or dimension or some such thing.
	Indeed, yes.
	At present, there's no evidence that that really does have an effect.
	But there is some evidence.
	I mean, you may have problems with the methodology, but there is some evidence that's actually the problem.
	There are some really big studies being done, as you said, at Duke and Princeton, and there's one at Harvard.
	That's being done, and that's good.
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing tests.
	But the harder problem is, what is it that's being tested?
	What do you mean by prayer?
	Why do you think that the studies would have reached these prestigious universities if there wasn't significant reason for somebody with an awful lot of education to say, There's something going on here!
	Maybe.
	Well, a couple things.
	One, we live in a very religious country, and two, there's a huge movement to unite science and religion, and it's largely driven by the Templeton Foundation.
	This is one of those interesting social phenomena where you follow the money.
	A lot of these studies, most of them in fact, are funded by Templeton money.
	And that's okay, this is a free society, and temples can do whatever they want.
	Maybe science and religion are going... Have you considered the possibility that, boy, it would be a rough day for skeptics, I know, but that science eventually is going to be able to prove some of this.
	Then what?
	Well, okay, we can deal with that.
	No, but what does it mean to say something is supernatural?
	As soon as science offers an explanation, what science is doing is offering a natural explanation.
	As soon as it has an explanation, it's no longer part of the supernatural.
	So, if you expand the sphere of science into the unknown, The supernatural and the paranormal are simply going to disappear.
	They just won't exist anymore.
	Well, maybe what you're scoffing at now, though, will become fact.
	That's right.
	If it does, fine.
	But we would want to know, what's the mechanism?
	What do you mean by prayer?
	Do you mean thinking positive thoughts?
	Do you mean actually asking something else to intercede?
	Again, I want to leap beyond just prayer, if we can.
	Not that there's a thing in the world wrong with prayer.
	We're asking for it for Ann, in fact.
	But I'm saying that there's an awful lot of consciousness work being done at these universities that is absolutely astounding.
	I'm going to give you another one, all right?
	So we move away from God for just a moment.
	With computers, or eggs, they're called.
	I'm sure you're at least a little up on that, aren't you?
	On the which?
	I didn't hear you.
	Well, what they're doing at Princeton with this large computer that's then connected to a whole bunch of other computers geographically scattered around the globe.
	They report back to the Mama computer, and they have seen incredible things, like the needles going right off the charts a few hours before 9-11.
	They're doing all this mass consciousness stuff.
	You're not up on that.
	No, I don't know that.
	Oh, darn.
	Oh, darn.
	I can't know everything.
	That's right.
	Well, it's incredible stuff.
	I mean, it's all sort of in the same alley, this mass consciousness kind of thing, where there are some prayer results that are startling to, I think, even scientists.
	I mean, we could certainly use the Internet as an example of this sort of Networking of human individuals across the globe, certainly.
	Yes.
	Is there some other form of energy that we don't know about that acts like the Internet?
	The so-called 100th monkey phenomenon or something like that that I do know something about.
	No, I don't think so.
	I mean, not that we know of.
	What we have are a lot of weird anomalous things that happen that we try to explain.
	And since science can't explain all these things, we then turn to supra-science or paranormal explanations or whatever.
	I think it's okay to just say, you know, this is a really weird spooky thing and we don't know what the explanation is and maybe someday we'll have a natural explanation.
	But before we say something is out of this world, let's first make sure it's not in this world.
	Let's try to use the best science we have.
	Well, I certainly agree with that.
	I'm just suggesting that Some of the things... Are you familiar with the Brookings Institution study that says that if aliens landed, you might not want to tell the populace because they couldn't take it?
	I completely disagree with that.
	I think it's absurd.
	I think the public would be fine with it.
	I think it would be a news story.
	In other words, if SETI deals with this, what if we actually found a signal?
	What would happen if the stock market collapsed?
	No, I don't think so.
	Remember back in 1996 when the Mars rock story hit and they found life on Mars?
	This was a huge news story and Clinton made a big speech about it.
	It was very exciting.
	We all got tons of interviews for a couple of days and the cover of Time magazine.
	But within two weeks it was a dead issue.
	There was nothing more to report.
	And you know business went on as usual and I think that would be the case.
	I don't think the government's covering up aliens in Area 51 because they're afraid to tell the public because the stock market would collapse.
	I think that's just baloney.
	I don't think any of that would happen.
	You don't think there's any chance that our government perhaps has had contact with aliens and might have craft or I think that's probably not the case.
	I mean, does the government lie to us about things?
	Yeah, they sure do.
	Really?
	You admit that?
	They do.
	And I think that probably explains a lot of these anomalies.
	I mean, the line about national security secrets, which we know goes on all the time, That can account for why information has big blocks of blacked-out type on it, that kind of thing.
	Well, then, what do you think?
	The government would just say, hey, you know, guess what?
	An alien did land, and we've got visitors.
	Well, here's one of them.
	Let's bring him out with the President here.
	Yeah, I think somebody would.
	It's hard to keep people quiet.
	There's two problems with conspiracy theories.
	I heard this from G. Gordon Liddy when I was on his talk show, and I figured, well, this guy knows more about conspiracies than I do, because he was in on one, and I'll ask him, and he explained to me that the problem with conspiracy theories are twofold.
	One, competence, and two, the leakage problem.
	One, competence.
	Government officials are generally fairly incompetent.
	generally unable to pull off their jobs, let alone elaborate conspiracies.
	And two, there's a leakage problem.
	You can't get people to keep their mouths shut.
	People just like to talk.
	And the bigger the conspiracy, the more people would have to be involved, and the chances
	of keeping them from going on Larry King Live and Next on Oprah and so on, book contracts,
	television shows and so on, that would be so appealing.
	How do you suppose we ever kept the secret of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project, that we did keep that secret?
	Well, we didn't.
	I mean, the secrets were pirated out and given to the Soviets.
	We know this.
	We're talking about much later.
	I'm talking about during the discovery and construction phase.
	Even there, they were sneaking stuff out.
	Yeah, even still in the 40s.
	Back during the construction phase of the atomic bomb?
	Well, toward the end.
	But I mean, the Manhattan Project was a successful success.
	Yeah, and boy, they had to go to elaborate means to do that.
	Well, they did, but they did do it.
	For a while.
	Yeah, yeah.
	All right, hold on.
	I think it's time to get ready To realize just what I have found
	I have been holding hell above my head So clear to me now My heart is on fire
	Can you talk about anything?
	He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands.
	And then he'll settle down.
	Give up the booms and the one night stands And then you settle down, it's a quiet little town
	And forget about everything But you know he'll always keep moving
	You know he's never gonna stop moving Cause he's rolling, he's the roll
	The sun is shining, it's a new morning.
	The sun is shining, it's a beautiful morning You're going home, you're going home
	Do talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 7
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	Indeed so.
	Raging through the night this night with Dr. Michael Shermer, who He's a skeptic.
	He's a real skeptic.
	We'll tell you more in a moment.
	Let's stay right there.
	Alrighty then. Uh, up next is a little bit of a walkthrough of the game.
	Alrighty then. Uh, up next is a little bit of a walkthrough of the game.
	Updating you in case you just joined the show.
	On the radio with me is Dr. Michael Shermer.
	And he is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine.
	He's director of the Skeptic Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology, co-host and producer of a Fox Family television series called Exploring the Universe, Has a B.A.
	in Psychology from Pepperdine, M.A.
	in Experimental Psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and Ph.D.
	in the History of Science from Claremont Graduate University.
	Smart guy, but he's skeptical.
	Very, very, very, very skeptical.
	And I wonder, Doctor, are you at all skeptical of why we went to war with Iraq?
	Yeah, of course I am.
	Oh, you are?
	Yeah, I think.
	Good and consistent, at least.
	I think it's pretty obvious that there were a lot of political, economic reasons that really have nothing to do with terrorism.
	I think most people, at least that are not committed Bush supporters, recognize that fact.
	At some point, we were all supportive of Bush going into Afghanistan.
	He had 90% approval ratings at that point and so on.
	The diversion, the sharp left turn into Iraq, I think obviously was a mistake in retrospect.
	At the very least, it would be nice to hear from the administration something along the lines of, it seemed like a good idea at the time, we thought that's what the evidence showed about weapons of mass destruction and so on, obviously we were wrong, so let's just try to make the best with what we have now.
	At least that would make the American people feel like, okay, they're leveling with us.
	The problem we talked about earlier, do governments lie?
	Yeah, they do, and we all know it, and that's what makes it so difficult to get behind the administration when they're incapable of admitting any kind of wrongdoing, or even just mistakes.
	Not moral mistakes, just, you know, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
	Even Kerry voted for the war at the time, because it seemed that's where the evidence was.
	And to have a leader who's incapable of Subtle nuance and saying, I was wrong.
	That's kind of scary.
	We really need, in a complex world like this, we need a leader capable of saying, I changed my mind.
	I have new evidence and I have a different opinion now.
	Well, there's a political word for that.
	They call it waffling, you see.
	You can't waffle.
	You can't be wrong.
	There's a good article in today's New York Times Magazine about the faith of George W. Bush, and the article shows that when you have a deep faith commitment that you're absolutely right no matter what, then you cannot be steered in a different direction no matter what the evidence is, and that's scary.
	That's not what you want in a political leader in a complex world that's always changing.
	You need somebody who's flexible.
	There's plenty I like about George Bush, but this is really a serious problem.
	You know, that's really cool.
	You know, before I even asked, I got so much more in terms of an answer to that question than I expected.
	Only 40% of the audience hated you before I asked that question.
	Now, 60% of the audience hates you.
	You've made a definitive and strong political statement that I didn't expect.
	Well, it's on a specific question, though.
	It sure was.
	George Bush's economic policy, I agree with that.
	I'm an economic libertarian.
	And a social liberal.
	I mean, I'm what I would call a secular Republican.
	A secular Republican?
	Just leave God out of it, yeah.
	Just run the country like a corporation.
	Just, you know, run it as a business.
	It's a political organization, not a religion.
	I don't want to vote for a religious leader.
	We're voting for the commander-in-chief, not the chief chaplain of America, okay?
	We have plenty of chaplains.
	We need a political leader who's savvy.
	Well, you know, all the politicians have to understand the amount of faith out there and be careful with it.
	Well, of course.
	Right?
	You'll never get elected.
	You don't tread that fine line.
	I understand that.
	But what about people?
	People seem to have so many talents for which there is really no explanation.
	Witching, water witching is certainly one of them.
	Maybe there's even a little science perhaps mixed in with this.
	I don't know, but it does seem that some people are blessed with the ability to find water.
	Have you ever looked into that?
	Yes, there's been a number of really good controlled tests of water witchers in a laboratory where there are buckets of water and these are opaque boxes in which inside there are big five-gallon jugs of arrowhead water or just empty jugs of arrowhead water.
	And the water witcher, the water dowser, has to determine which boxes have the water and which don't, when they can't see through the boxes.
	And you're telling me they couldn't?
	And they can't.
	No, they never do.
	They have never once been able to do this.
	Under lots, not just boxes, sometimes they have pipes running through.
	Some pipes have water, they don't.
	The experiments get more or less elaborate, but they are never able to find the water greater than randomly guessing.
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	No kidding.
	So there's just not a thing to it.
	No, there's not.
	I mean, people can find water, but that doesn't mean that they're doing it by that effect.
	It's just that there's a lot of groundwater, and if you make enough guesses, you're going to be right.
	Would the word agnostic or atheist more likely describe you honestly?
	Well, I'm not crazy about labels.
	Agnostic is fine.
	But they have meaning.
	These words have meaning.
	That's right, they do, and that's why agnostic is a good word.
	It was coined in 1869 by Thomas Henry Huxley, who meant by it that God is an insoluble problem.
	Science will never be able to determine whether there is or not.
	So you like agnostic?
	Yeah.
	Well, there's hope then, I suppose.
	If most humans... Listen, no, I don't mean by agnostic, I'm waiting for more evidence, because it could go either way.
	I mean that I'm saying there will never be any evidence to support the claim that there is or is not a God one way or the other.
	It's not a scientific, testable problem.
	It's a fake.
	Not at the moment.
	Yeah, at the moment.
	If most humans in the world were colorblind, And only a very small percentage of them actually have the ability to see color.
	Do you think that would mean that color doesn't exist?
	People like you saying, this color thing is baloney!
	Look, 90-something percent see what we all see, black and white.
	These people claim they see color?
	It's stupid to even imagine that could be true.
	Right, but most people don't believe In God, because they've actually seen God or heard the voices or whatever.
	I mean, this whole idea of the God module that we talked about before, the God module in the brain, I think that goes a ways toward explaining some of the religious visionaries of the past, where they hear voices, they see angels, the angels speak to them, God speaks to them, that sort of thing.
	But most people, when you ask them why they believe in God, they don't say, because God spoke to me one night or You know, I saw a vision and the Archangel Michael appeared in my bedroom.
	You know, most people, that's not what they say.
	Oh, well, you'd be surprised how many callers I would get who would say that.
	Well, you have a selective audience.
	I mean, you know, sociologists of religion, they survey people like hardly anybody.
	I mean, it's a tiny, tiny percentage.
	Most people believe because they were raised that way.
	Why are you a Catholic?
	Because I was raised a Catholic.
	Why are you Protestant?
	My parents were Protestant.
	Oh, yes.
	Same reason why most people are Democrats or Republicans.
	It's a culture in which they're raised.
	Their family, their friends, social circle, their peer groups, and so on.
	Few of us, scientists included, don't arrive at these beliefs for rational, logical, scientific reasons.
	They arrive at them for other reasons.
	The difference with science... Would you go so far as to scoff at faith?
	No.
	I mean, what would be the point?
	Our point here is to understand why people believe.
	So then you're a compassionate skeptic, then?
	I'm a passionate scientist.
	No, I said compassionate.
	Oh, compassionate.
	I'm sorry, compassionate skeptic.
	Yeah, of course.
	I'm interested in knowing why the world works the way it does, and that includes why people believe what they believe, including why scientists believe what they believe.
	I mean, scientists believe all sorts of wacky things, too.
	I wrote a chapter for my Why People Believe Weird Things book.
	I wrote a new chapter for the second edition called Why Smart People Believe Weird Things.
	That's the interesting problem.
	The answer, in short, is that smart people are better at rationalizing beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
	Scientists, professors, academics, and so on, are really good at justifying political beliefs, social attitudes, and so on, that they hold.
	That they really they didn't arrive at those beliefs for any sort of rational academic Logical scientific reasons they arrived at them and hold them for all kinds of emotional reasons, but they're smart So they're good at justifying them and giving reasons for the belief.
	Let me try one out on you here It's interesting.
	It's sort of something that a lot of people believe right now But mainstream everything is in the middle of denial about it There's this amazing thing going on in the world now, where if you look at the North Pole and you look at the South Pole, Doctor, they're melting.
	They're actually melting.
	And this will potentially, according to a lot of people who are studying such things, have a gigantic effect on the ocean currents.
	Which in turn then will have a gigantic effect on our weather and all of a sudden we're beginning to see all these articles written by perhaps some would call them people on the fringe saying something really awful is going to happen with regard to our environment.
	What do you think about that one?
	You mean global warming in general?
	I guess, yes.
	I think there's Really good evidence that global warming is real and happening at a fairly specific rate, and that whether it's human-caused or naturally-caused or a combination thereof is not as clear.
	There's not as much scientific consensus on that.
	Although, in the last year or so, there's been more evidence to show that humans have had some role, although it looks like sunspot activity And other natural phenomena also probably play a part in that.
	We know now from climatological studies that the environment in the past 100,000 years or so has taken some wild swings, huge swings, that could have dramatic effects.
	Not in the course of thousands of years, but dozens of years.
	Not in the matter of days like in that film.
	But in the course of a few years to a few dozen years, you could get some pretty wild swings.
	Now we're starting to see these suggestions that there's a kind of a break point and an acceleration at this break point that occurs.
	It gets past a certain point and it becomes runaway.
	And many, or not many, but some are now starting to say that switch has now been thrown in the process of the acceleration into what you just talked about is actually underway now.
	Maybe.
	I'll tell you one thing that kind of put me off on a lot of the extreme environmentalism movement that began in the 70s when I was in college was I believed all those doomsday claims that were being made by, like, Paul Ehrlich, for example, about the population bomb, and by the 1980s there'd be no more oil, no more rainforest, and so on, and none of that happened.
	And so that kind of turned me off on some of that.
	I thought, you know, these extremists on the environmental movement, They were really wrong.
	But a lot of it did happen.
	A lot of rainforest was burned.
	Well, yes.
	That's right.
	I just think the problem is more long term and systematic.
	But I'm optimistic we can still do something about it.
	I don't think we're doomed.
	I think we can change our ways.
	All right.
	I want to try out another line of thought on you.
	We're going to turn you over to the audience at the top of the hour.
	That will be an experience for the both of us.
	But right now I want to ask this.
	In medicine, it's pretty well known that if you give somebody a sugar pill, you've got a alarmingly high chance of actually achieving a cure.
	An alarmingly high chance of achieving a cure.
	I think you'd agree with that, wouldn't you?
	Well, not for everything.
	Cancer, but other things.
	Don't push me there.
	Not for everything, I agree, but for a lot of... Yeah, the placebo effect is well established.
	Yes, so then I'm going to ask you this.
	Where's the harm?
	If a psychic says something to somebody or if they come to believe something is true and so they proceed with that faith toward their objective What's the harm?
	What's the harm?
	If it actually helped them, no matter the mechanism that produced the drive that got them to go there, then where's the harm?
	Well, I guess it depends.
	In some cases, you know, there may be no harm.
	In other cases, I think it's better to live in a world of reality rather than non-reality.
	I mean, in some cases, doing drugs may be great for stress.
	Drinking may be great for Dealing with some problems, but it has other long-term consequences that are not so beneficial.
	I think paying a psychic $3.95 a minute when it's just a scam rip-off, you'd be better off going to a professional trained psychotherapist or counselor or just talking to a good friend who won't charge you anything.
	Well maybe, but again, if you believe that what that psychic says is true and the placebo effect ...is constant in this area, and I believe that it is, because it's... Don't you?
	I mean, don't you believe the same percentage of placebo would occur with believed words from a psychic as believed words from a doctor, followed by a sugar pill?
	I mean, how much difference is there?
	Not much.
	Yeah, except most of the stuff psychics tell people is just so inane, and it's just so stupid.
	You know, if you burn a purple candle, you know, your career will go better.
	No, it doesn't have anything to do with burning purple candles.
	It has to do with you making an effort.
	I know that.
	I'd rather... The context of the question is that the person burning the purple candle does believe... Yeah, but wouldn't it be better... I mean, I'd rather they go for somebody like a Tony Robbins, who is at least telling them to set goals and some practical things rather than, you know, pure foo-foo stuff.
	Where's the harm?
	And maybe I could even argue that it's a high enough percentage that there's a benefit.
	Well, and so, for example, somebody, let's say, is suffering loss, death, and grief.
	They've lost a child or some such thing.
	They go to a psychic.
	Are they really going to be able to deal better with grief by pretending that their loved one is not really dead, but is still alive on a different plane?
	Well, if they believe that, if that's really what they... Yeah, but I don't think so.
	I don't think that's the case.
	I don't think they're really better off.
	Maybe you don't, but if that person believes that, then they go away comforted.
	Maybe for a while.
	I don't know that that really has long-term healing effects.
	Well, probably not on you.
	I see the point you're making.
	I'm just not comfortable recommending that somebody pretend something is real.
	I'm not even comfortable with doctors lying to patients.
	If there's some possibility that they may get better, then by all means, tell the patients that.
	But I'm not comfortable with doctors lying to patients.
	It's a form of deception, and deception has long-term consequences that are difficult to see in the short run.
	So, then, little Johnny with terminal cancer, you'd have the doctor go, listen, Johnny, you're toast.
	Well, no, there's more humane ways to handle it and deal with it.
	Cancers do go into remission.
	Doctors are never certain.
	But what if a doctor believes that, and for good reason I might add, maybe even verifiable reason, that a patient who believes that they will get better by a giant percentage will.
	And a patient who thinks they're going to die is damn well going to die.
	And if there's a difference in belief, then it's on the doctor's side.
	I see your point.
	It's a good point.
	What about the patients who are told this by the doctors and they die anyway?
	What are they supposed to think as they're dying?
	That I had bad thoughts, that the family members think, oh, we didn't pray hard enough, or we didn't think positive enough thoughts, it's our fault he died because the doctor said if we thought positive thoughts or if he thought positive thoughts, his cancer would go away and it didn't.
	Well, then there's God's will.
	I mean, that's the way it's said.
	Most of these diagnosed terminal cancers, the patients die.
	We only hear about the miraculous recoveries because, well, they're so unusual.
	But, in fact, most people that get these kinds of cancers, they just die.
	No matter what new therapies they're trying, whatever placebo effects, whatever positive thinking, none of that has any effect.
	They just die.
	We don't hear about them.
	But the family members who are told, well, you know, you should have done this, or you should have done that.
	Maybe it works a little more on the margins, Doctor.
	In other words, you're taking terminal cancer as your example.
	There's an awful lot more that's in between.
	Sure.
	Clinical depression, headaches, things like that are more subjective, and there the placebo effect has a much stronger effect.
	Okay, I've got to take a break here.
	We are indeed at the top of the hour, and when we come back, Dr. Michael Shurm is going to be all yours.
	He's a pretty bright guy, so you better come well armed.
	I would suggest.
	from the high desert middle of the night i'm art
	i'm art i'm art
	i'm art 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 to the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
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	800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach It is!
	My guest is Dr. Michael Shermer, who's a compassionate skeptic.
	What is a compassionate skeptic?
	option five and dialing toll-free eight hundred eight nine three zero nine zero
	three from coast to coast and worldwide on the internet
	this is coast to coast a m with art fell it is my guest is doctor michael
	schumer is a compassionate skeptic what is a compassionate
	well somebody doesn't leave it all skeptical of everything but
	they watch their words a little bit when they talk of those uh... who have faith
	and and
	Once again, Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Dr. Shermer, are you at all skeptical of our government's claim to be able to take all of this horrid, horrid nuclear waste that we have and put it in a mountain about just not that many miles away from me called Yucca Mountain and that the claim is that they can keep it safe for tens of thousands of years if they have to.
	Are you skeptical of that at all?
	Yeah, I haven't really investigated that at all.
	From what I've seen on some 60-minute pieces and So, so forth.
	It looks like it's a bigger problem than they thought it would be.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Leaving that to bureaucrats seems like a bad idea.
	I would put it out for bid in a marketplace of people that specialize in that sort of thing and, you know, sort of let the best contractor... So anyway, you are skeptical.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hello, Art.
	I'm a great fan.
	I wish you had a TV show, though.
	Dr. Shermer?
	Hey.
	I'm as big a skeptic as you are, and I agree with 99% of everything you've said.
	And I even share your religious and political views to the extent that you express them.
	But, now, some things are pretty hard to explain.
	For example, during one of the solar eclipses, it was Going to be visible 100% down in Mexico.
	Astronomers, as you can imagine, and just amateur astronomers, professionals, and TV cameras of high quality recorded a multiple sighting of UFOs that were physical.
	They reflected sunlight.
	There was shadow underneath them.
	It was thousands of witnesses.
	And pictures from different angles, right, observed a phenomenon that were between, I don't know, 10 and 25 of them doing maneuvers that are just impossible by modern aircraft of any known kind.
	I mean, that might not be secret.
	Now, how do you, and in a related sight, well not a related sighting, where are you going with this?
	Are you wanting to ask him how can you ignore something so universally seen, photographed, and witnessed?
	Is that the question?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean... Okay, alright.
	Hold on.
	Hold on, let him answer the question.
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	I don't know about the one in particular that you're bringing up.
	I haven't heard of that one.
	But, in general, it's a good question because a lot of these things are not just the planet Venus or A weather balloon or a visual hallucination or illusion or something like that.
	In fact, we have a very interesting UFO that flies over our house every New Year's Day morning at 8am.
	It's the stealth B-2 bomber that flies from Edwards Air Force Base right over the Rose Parade Right down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena and then it circles around right over my house and does another flight down the boulevard.
	Sure.
	I went to the Super Bowl, they flew the B-2 right over here.
	It's really an amazing thing to see.
	It is so unbelievable that if we didn't know about stealth technology, if it was out in the desert and it was kind of dusk and you weren't quite sure and you believed in UFOs and And you saw that thing?
	You would definitely think it was some sort of UFO.
	I mean, it's really weird looking.
	It just looks like a black hole in the sky.
	Triangular hole in the sky.
	It's pretty spooky.
	But we know what it is, that case.
	So, what are the chances that the other things we don't quite know what they are represent aliens from another planet or just another form of type of stealth aircraft that we just don't know what's going on?
	In our top-secret government.
	I mean, these things do happen.
	Do you think SETI is a waste of money?
	No, I think it's a long shot that they'll succeed.
	A real long shot.
	However, it's so cheap to do compared to where else we spend our money.
	I think it's well worth the cost.
	In any case, it's not a government-funded thing anymore.
	It's all privately funded, so people can do whatever they want with their money.
	And if Paul Allen wants to fund that, like he did the They ship one.
	I think it's terrific.
	Would you be against government money being used as any part of that effort?
	Well, as a libertarian, I tend to be against government programs.
	However, there's a lot of big science that can't be done without it.
	I suppose I'd be in favor of it, but it would be a little bit inconsistent of me to do so.
	It's so cheap compared to, say, the cost overrun on a single aircraft.
	Yeah.
	I mean, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is such a worthwhile project, and success would be so spectacular.
	It would be wonderful if we had success in finding an extraterrestrial intelligence.
	I certainly agree with that.
	All right.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art.
	Hi, Dr. Shermer.
	Yeah, I would like to propose an experiment.
	I'm sure both of you are familiar with the curse of the Bambino.
	Well, the socks got through tonight.
	I say the odds of them going on to win the series is astronomical.
	I'd like to propose one of Art's mass consciousness experiments.
	No, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	Do you have any?
	Well, no.
	The answer is no.
	I'm not doing them for... You know, I'll have a serious talk with you about that maybe, but in the meantime, call her no.
	Okay.
	No dice.
	The Yankees are evil.
	Good try.
	The Yankees are evil.
	Good bye.
	He's a good guy, but... Come on, everybody, let's root for the Sox.
	Ease to the Rockies.
	I like it, I like this guy.
	He's a good guy, but...
	Come on everybody, let's root for the Sucks.
	Ha ha ha ha ha.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Schirmer.
	Oh, good morning Mr. Art Bell.
	Hi there.
	Yes, sir.
	Hi, this is Tony.
	I'm calling just outside of Statesville, North Carolina.
	I'm a truck driver.
	I don't have any PhDs or MDs or anything, but I wanted to ask the fine doctor, If he can explain the origin of the Big Bang as far as who did it, what did it, and how it was done, if he doesn't believe in God.
	Well, yeah, okay, fine.
	The Big Bang is indeed a mystery, a big mystery, Dr. Shermer, that all of this that we know of, apparently, according to science, came from something smaller than a quark.
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	You certainly don't need a PhD to ask that.
	What came before the first beginning, and what created the first cause, and so on?
	That was a question.
	Of course, you could ask that about God.
	Who created God?
	What came before God?
	Yeah, but you don't believe in God.
	Hold on, hold on.
	No, this isn't fair.
	I mean, you're shifting it out of the realm of... After all, materially, this deal... Okay, alright, fine, fair enough.
	We have some explanations of what might have triggered the Big Bang.
	One explanation is collapsed There might be multiple universes.
	I know you know about this because you've had guests on your show talking about this.
	I do, I do.
	Multiple bubble universes.
	Our universe is just one of many universes, perhaps an infinite number of universes.
	And any universe that has the kinds of laws of nature that we have that create atoms, which lead to the creation of stars, which leads to stars to collapse into black holes, which might create other universes, are more likely to survive.
	That is, they're more likely to launch other universes.
	Then you really are buying into all these possibilities.
	I think it's very possible, yes.
	Then why be in denial, then, about interaction between them?
	Which is perhaps what we're talking about in so many of these areas.
	Yeah, that's slightly different.
	Those are like parallel universes, or quantum Copenhagen interpretation quantum mechanics, where all possible choices are real.
	That's a slightly different model than the one I just described, but that's also possible.
	I definitely don't deny that.
	It's entirely possible.
	But it might be the answer to an awful lot of what we observe is simply not possible.
	I mean, if we're observing... Yeah, not ESP stuff, but quantum effects, yes.
	Uh-huh.
	Yes.
	Yes, well, that's where science and metaphysical may go and get married.
	So, you know, when the individual photons go through the slit in the double slit experiment, And they appear to interact with other photons that aren't really, they don't seem to be there in our universe.
	Yeah, maybe they're there in some other universe.
	That's possible.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Shermer.
	Hi.
	Yeah, Art.
	Yes, sir.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	Off, off, off.
	Okay, it's off.
	That's good.
	All right.
	Listen, I wanted to bring the NDE subject up to it.
	Good.
	There's a Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross that did a study of about 20,000 patients Uh, who went through that, and one of the things that popped out to me was that people who are blind from birth, blind from birth, when they had an NDE could see and describe down to the detail of colors of a shirt, jewelry, facial expressions, etc.
	Yes, I interviewed such a person just a couple of weeks ago.
	So, fine, Dr. Schirmer, let's talk about it.
	Near-death.
	Thousands of people have come back and they've been interviewed and they've related so many similar things.
	The evidence is beginning to be very large.
	It's sort of a mountain of anecdotal evidence that does add up to something.
	What do you say?
	Yeah, real effect.
	There's definitely something going on with out-of-body and near-death experiences.
	Oh?
	The question is, what?
	Do these things represent something out there or inside our heads?
	I think it's an inside-the-head phenomenon.
	I think it's a kind of experience that has to do with oxygen deprivation to the brain, shock and trauma, the kind of thing that happens in surgeries, near-drownings, car accidents, heart attacks, that sort of thing.
	That people experience.
	Part of the problem is we don't have a full, really satisfactory explanation for it.
	We have some ideas.
	The oxygen deprivation as being one.
	But because we don't really quite understand what consciousness is, we're not going to know what an altered state of it is, whether it's a hypnotic state or a near-death experience or out-of-body experience or whatever.
	So this is one of those areas where there's still some mystery.
	Oh, I'll say.
	I'm glad to hear you say that.
	There are things that you find mystifying about.
	What about the commonality of the experiences?
	I mean, that's got to be shocking.
	Well, because our brains are all structured in the same way.
	They operate in the same neurotransmitter substances.
	They all have synapses, and the neurons talk to each other the same way.
	So, of course, we're going to have common experiences.
	You would expect that.
	And culture determines these things in large part.
	I think the whole alien abduction experience, the whole phenomenon, is a cultural experience.
	It has to do with the fact that we live in the age of science and science fiction and space exploration.
	People 500 years ago had similar experiences, but they were describing demons, incubi and succubi, because they lived in a demon-hunted world.
	We live in an alien-hunted world.
	The brain phenomenon is all the same.
	All bad dreams?
	Yes, and the culture tells you how to interpret those dreams.
	The culture tells you what the The iconography of the dreams we're supposed to mean.
	So you don't think there's anything to any abduction theory?
	No.
	Well, I think there's something to it.
	I think it's fascinating as all get-out that people are having these experiences.
	But I don't think they're any different than the demon haunted experiences.
	Well, you know, I've interviewed people like Travis Walton.
	You probably know that case.
	Remarkable.
	And I interviewed Travis's boss and there were others who, you know, they all saw this happen.
	They've taken lie detector tests.
	The story is pretty detailed, very specific and backed up by everybody who was there.
	Do you look into that?
	I don't know that much about the Walton case.
	I mean, I saw the movie and I read a few bits and pieces about it.
	You know, I'm skeptical about the lie detector test, also.
	It's really easy to beat the lie detector test.
	And if you really believe your story, then of course you're going to pass the lie detector test.
	Well, those people would, yes.
	But to cheat, I've had experts on lie detection on the show, too, and they say, no, no, no, it's not easy to beat it.
	Unless you actually believe your lie.
	No, it's actually easy to beat it with a system.
	I did a show on How to beat the lie detector test once.
	We brought in this ex-cop who makes his living giving courses mainly for defense attorneys and their clients on how to beat it.
	It's really easy to beat.
	Is it now?
	Yeah, I probably shouldn't give you the technique over here.
	Well, why not?
	I'd love to know how.
	Well, what you do is you spike the readings on the normal questions.
	You know, is your name Art?
	You know, do you live in Nevada?
	You know, those kinds of questions, such that there's no difference between the normal questions, you know, the norming questions versus the... And what method do you use to spike it?
	Well, the easiest, simplest way to spike, particularly the blood pressure.
	The blood pressure one is the most sensitive one.
	You can spike it.
	And you can spike it by squeezing your sphincter muscle.
	When you give the answer to the normal question.
	I'll be damned.
	And that's what I said.
	When this guy told me, I said, oh, come on, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this.
	And so I tried it and I could spike my blood pressure by like 60 points in a matter of seconds just by squeezing your sphincter muscle while you give the answer.
	It's the most unbelievable thing, but it's absolutely true.
	The lie detector test is not a reliable thing.
	It should not be used in court.
	Well, it isn't allowed to be used in court.
	And it shouldn't be, because it's not reliable, and it's easy to beat.
	Well, I've heard some things on this program that would definitely spike your sphincter.
	First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Schirmer, hello.
	Hello.
	Going once, going twice, gone, wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Schirmer, hello.
	Hello there.
	Do we have a human or not?
	Yes.
	Yes, proceed, you're on the air.
	Got that part out of the way.
	Go ahead.
	Yes, I got a question for the doctor.
	Good.
	What did he believe about John Edwards and the type of where he can contact the dead?
	I was kind of a skeptic about it for the longest time until my mom actually went to a reading.
	And at the end of the show, my mom did not have anything with her about what he was going to tell her.
	And all of a sudden he said, do you still have the flag from your grandpa's funeral?
	And there's no way he would have known that or anything.
	Okay, look, that's a great question.
	It's very specific.
	There are several techniques at work.
	First of all, as I mentioned earlier, anybody can talk to the dead.
	I'm going to talk back.
	That's the hard part.
	What are the techniques that they use to make it seem like they're doing that?
	It's called a cold reading technique and warm reading technique.
	Cold reading technique, you literally read somebody cold you've never met, throw out lots and lots and lots and lots of comments and questions, hundreds of them in a one-hour reading, dozens in a two-minute reading.
	You see what sticks, and oftentimes you'll get one or two of these kinds of specific things.
	I wrote an article about this, How to Be a Psychic for a Day.
	On our webpage, we have the techniques and the kinds of statements that you just made.
	There are hundreds of those that work really well with people, like the watch.
	He's telling me something about the watch.
	It turns out most men keep their dad's watch.
	Women's jewelry, the flag at the funeral, that's a common one.
	There's a whole list of these things that are true for general psychic readings, like I'm getting something about a scar on your left knee.
	Do you have a box of photos in your cupboard you've been meaning to put in a photo album, if it's a woman?
	You have an earring that you've lost the pair to, but you're hanging on to it in case you find it.
	There are dozens of things like that that are very successful.
	Not for everyone, every time, but if you rattle off a couple dozen of those, you'll get three or four very specific, really weird hits, such that people like the caller will say, wow, it's incredible, I can't explain how he got X. Well, that's how you explain it, that they throw out a lot of things like that.
	So from your point of view, nothing but frauds, psychologically well-armed frauds.
	Yep, it's an act.
	This is all an act?
	Yep.
	There's nobody communicating?
	Nope.
	Absolutely not.
	To me, there's no gray area in this one at all.
	It's pure fraud.
	There is the what's the harm question, though, again.
	Yeah, well, I mean, what's the harm of lying to people?
	What's the harm of deceiving and fraud?
	What's the harm of bank scams?
	Well, because it's a scam.
	It's wrong.
	It's immoral.
	It cheats people out of their money and their well-being and so on.
	It's wrong.
	Even if it's Yeah, lying and deceiving and fraudulently deceiving people out of their money is wrong.
	I don't care what the good benefits of it might be.
	Technically and legally, you're correct.
	I'm not sure that you're morally correct.
	I'm not sure you're morally correct.
	I mean, if you are the other two, I'm not sure you're morally straight on there at all.
	To comfort somebody who has lost a loved one may be a life Continuing Act.
	Maybe.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Good morning.
	realistic close to close to you boom boom bah
	boom boom bah boom boom bah
	If you ask about me in the room boom boom bah
	Can you hear my heartbeat in this song?
	boom boom bah Do you know that the heart...
	... is beating in my chest?
	boom boom bah If you ask about me in the room
	boom boom bah Can you hear my heartbeat in this song?
	boom boom bah Do you know that the heart...
	... is beating in my chest?
	boom boom bah Riders on the storm
	Into this house we're born Into this world we're thrown
	Oh, oh.
	Like a dog without a bone and Hector alone.
	Riders on the storm.
	There's a killer on the road.
	His brain is squirming like a toad.
	Take a long holiday.
	Let your children play.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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	From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	to believe in nothing or...
	Or to be in doubt about everything in life, even the existence of our immortal soul and God and everything.
	That's a strange place to be, but it is the one that my guest is in, Dr. Michael Shermer,
	and he's all yours more in a moment.
	Sound of explosion Music
	Once again, Dr. Michael Shermer, you know I said it during the break, Dr.,
	you know to believe in nothing literally, to be in doubt about virtually everything
	must be a very bleak, cold existence, isn't it?
	Well, first of all, I don't.
	That's not me.
	I believe all sorts of things.
	I just try to base my beliefs on some sort of reason, rationality, science, or whatever.
	But scientists believe all kinds of things.
	My worldview is anything but bleak.
	It's incredibly optimistic.
	What do you have faith in?
	What's that?
	What do you have faith in?
	Faith is not the word I like to use.
	I have confidence in certain things.
	Like the theory of evolution, for example.
	I have a high degree of confidence in that.
	You do?
	Because the evidence is so overwhelming.
	But isn't there this missing link thing?
	No, there are so many missing links, it's an embarrassment of riches.
	It's quite incredible how many transitional fossils we have now.
	Much better than it used to be.
	Better, but not complete.
	The theory is so well supported.
	Not just fossil evidence, but particularly the genetics now.
	The genetics is so detailed and so good that you can definitely see the lineage all the way back.
	It's very impressive.
	This is one of the best arguments against the alien stories that we hear.
	They look hominid.
	They're not going to be hominid.
	They're not going to look like us.
	They're not going to look like primates.
	They can't.
	But doesn't the mere fact of our existence alone, our existence, the fact that we evolved however it happened, Isn't that a good case for life being elsewhere?
	There's a good case, I think, for bacterial grade life being elsewhere.
	Why not more?
	I think it's easy to get from nothing to something.
	I think it's much harder to get from something to us because of so many more steps between bacteria to big brains.
	I mean, you can get all the way up to Neanderthals and still have no... What?
	It happened here?
	I mean, is it a miracle?
	It's pretty damn unlikely to happen.
	Would you say miracle?
	It's a miracle if we define a miracle as a million to one odds.
	But if you have enough places to try it, it will happen.
	But here's where it happened.
	Yeah, but wherever it happened, the people who it happened to are going to think like the lotto winner.
	Wow, what are the odds that I won?
	So you think we're lotto winners.
	That's why we're here.
	Yeah.
	There's just enough planets out there.
	There's so many planets.
	I know.
	That's why I think... In my email, they keep telling me I'm a lotto winner.
	So it must be, huh?
	There you go.
	First time caller on the line, don't give us your last name.
	Only your first name.
	That's one rule.
	Okay, so you're Tony?
	This is Tony, and I'm calling from the island of Kauai, Hawaii.
	Excellent.
	And I have had Numerous experiences since 1985 that I cannot explain and it's caused me to actually read and study and try to understand.
	What kind of experience?
	One of the experiences was completely drug-free.
	My body started billowing with smoke.
	Thank God the person I was partnering with at that time was in bed with me and I woke him up And, uh... Are you telling me you began to ignite?
	Not ignite, um, it was, uh, smoke was coming off my body.
	It was not cold.
	This is in Southern California.
	Yeah, but where there's smoke, there's... Right?
	I know, I know.
	And what I actually, um, and he witnessed it, uh, as well.
	And when it started happening, um, I did then began to do some research and wondering what was I keen off that I could actually see this?
	Is this something that actually exists that we don't really have the eyes to see?
	I've asked a lot of questions.
	Another situation that happened... Let's stay with that one for a moment.
	Did you ever get a picture of yourself smoking?
	No, because it was a one-time event.
	It never happened again, and like I said, it was drug-free.
	I know what Dr. Schirmer's going to say, but go ahead, Dr. Schirmer, say it.
	Say it.
	I mean, go ahead.
	Well, I don't know, because I wasn't there.
	I mean, it's a one-time event.
	Those things are hard to explain.
	I guess what you're describing is something like spontaneous human combustion.
	Sounded like it.
	Usually, you know, there's some explanation.
	The person's a smoker and they fell asleep in bed smoking.
	Something like that.
	So that's a possibility.
	Maybe the guy she was with was a smoker.
	I don't know.
	Maybe he's a smoker.
	A wild card line.
	You're on the air with Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hello Art, this is Jean calling from Sacramento.
	Hi Jean.
	I have a question for the guest about spiritualism.
	This is a religion that bases all their beliefs on scientific proof, and it's been in existence since the 1800s.
	I just wondered if he's familiar with that, and what he thinks about that.
	Do you mean like the Theosophical Society and Anthropocene?
	No, I mean the National Spiritualist Association of Churches.
	One of their principles is they affirm the existence and personal identity of individuals after they die and they also affirm that communication is possible through mediumship.
	I'm familiar with that.
	And there's physical phenomena.
	In fact, the religion strikes me.
	I've just been learning about it.
	It strikes me as a religion of skeptics because they're continually searching for proof and evidence.
	Yes, that's good.
	However, I think the evidence for an afterlife and talking to the dead is very poor.
	Unfortunately, it would be nice if it were real.
	I'd love to believe in an afterlife.
	It would be nice, but I just don't see it.
	Well, I'm just wondering, you sound more like a spoiler than a skeptic at this point.
	It's just that the particular subjects we're dealing with here, there's a lot of room for skepticism, I guess you could say.
	Well, I suppose.
	It just seems that there seems to be... I wish it was clearer.
	The evidence for God, for the afterlife, it's always this kind of fuzzy game that people have to play, like the mediums.
	They play this game of questions and answers.
	Well, in my experience with the spiritualist mediums that I've seen, who have not known me, by the way, at all, there were no questions.
	They spoke with utter certainty and the things were very specific and nothing common like you're describing.
	An example I'll give you is the first word With one reading was lemurs, which are little monkeys.
	That had a meaning.
	They had no idea what that meant to me.
	What did that mean to you?
	Well, it has to do with a friend whose nephew had passed away.
	He was very fond of lemurs.
	And so what she was bringing was a communication that was the symbolism that he was there.
	That is pretty obscure.
	But you would say, Doctor, what?
	Right.
	Well, you're finding the meaning in the word.
	The psychic's not telling you what that meaning is.
	So you will see them say things like, red dress.
	I don't know what it means.
	What does it mean?
	And the person will then sit there and think for a minute and say, oh, I know that my beloved, before they passed over, they bought a red dress for my sister, or something like that.
	So it's not the psychic telling the person getting the reading what the meaning is, it's the person getting the reading telling the psychic what it is.
	It's really a psychodrama where the person getting the reading, they're the ones really doing the reading, not the psychic.
	I would like to ask you to look inward a little bit, if you're able to do that, into the world of skeptics that you inhabit.
	Those who follow your very skeptical leadership.
	Listen, I've interviewed a lot of them, and I must say, it is not true of you, but most of the skeptics that I've interviewed are actually manic.
	About it.
	And I wonder if you've noticed that trait in those that follow you, that there are many who are just, they actually do their cause more harm because they're so manic about it.
	You're not like that.
	So, I wonder if you acknowledge that within your group of believers.
	Yeah, of course.
	All social movements have extremists on all ends.
	You know, born-again evangelical Christians, most of them are very thoughtful, nice people, and they're embarrassed by the abortion clinic bombers and extremists like that.
	Most thoughtful Muslims are embarrassed by the extreme fundamentalists.
	So you would use that strong an analogy?
	Every movement has that, because we're human.
	So you acknowledge it, and you equate it to that level of embarrassment?
	Well, okay.
	Skeptics don't fly planes into buildings.
	You know, religion does that probably better than anybody else.
	But really again, skepticism is not a thing.
	It's not a noun.
	It's a verb.
	It's science.
	It's a way of living.
	Yes, East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hi, Dr. Shermer.
	Hi.
	Listen, you brought this up before about photons and through the slit.
	So I have a scientific question for you.
	What is your experience, or have you heard about the recent scientific advancements in the lines of bio-photons?
	And how that relates to the light body of human beings.
	I don't know anything about bio-photons, so either do I for that matter.
	So what are they?
	What are bio-photons?
	Bio-photons, the science behind it is that it comes from your DNA and it's like an antenna.
	Emitting and receiving photons.
	We're back to quantum... Well, he mentioned photons through the slit and that it might be crossing dimensions or universes.
	I was just wondering if he was aware of it.
	He is, and we talked about it, and he admitted what?
	How far can we go here?
	That there seem to be some mysteries involved in it?
	Was that it?
	Yeah, I guess.
	I don't know anything about biophotons.
	Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hello.
	Yeah, hi.
	Thanks for having me on.
	Yes, sir.
	I'd like to ask a question concerning psychology.
	Considering the subjective philosophy behind the roots of it, is there any skepticism concerning his own profession?
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	Should we be skeptical of the skeptics?
	Yep, you should be.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, one of the Beauties of science is that it has this built-in self-correcting machinery in which, if you're not skeptical of your own claims, somebody else will be.
	In fact, they'll get bonus points for finding out where you went wrong.
	That's part of the system, and it's a pretty brutal, harsh system, the whole peer review system, where somebody is going to look for, specifically try to find where you screwed up and where you went wrong.
	That's the harsh part of science, but it's also its greatest strength.
	Dr. Schirmer, do you think you were born a skeptic or do you think that your environment made you a skeptic?
	Oh, I think more environment.
	Really?
	Just exposure to a driving curiosity in myself and then exposure to a lot of fraud and nonsense that I personally experience just trying all kinds of wacky things just to see what works.
	Was there any moment when you had an epiphany and you You just said suddenly, my God, I'm a skeptic!
	Really more, my God, I'm a scientist, or I want to take a scientific perspective.
	It wasn't a moment, it was a lot of moments.
	Really, in graduate school, I was taking a course on evolutionary theory that met Tuesday nights from 7 to 10.
	And then the class adjourned after that and went to the local bar where we sat and had adult beverages and talked about, you know, the Big Bang and God and religion.
	So that's where you figured it out.
	That's where it happens.
	Only over a six month period.
	Also, I'd like to ask another question concerning intuition.
	You keep talking about psychics and mediums and that type of thing.
	It would be totally subjective to assume any attribute within the human I don't think so.
	discount intuition altogether and support intellect so strongly.
	Intuition is important.
	Actually, there's a lot of really interesting research on intuition.
	It turns out on many things we're very intuitive.
	We're very accurate with our intuitions in that particularly social relations, the ability
	to read emotions in people's faces, the sense of a situation being dangerous, that there's
	something wrong, the sense you have about another person's integrity, the quality of
	There's even studies, Doctor, that people can tell when they're being stared at.
	You heard about that?
	Well, that's slightly different.
	No, it's an intuitive response.
	Yeah.
	So, what do you think's going on there?
	You mean with the stared at stuff?
	Here's what I think is going on with intuition in general, is that we evolved in a social environment as well as a physical environment, and it was really important for our ancestors to be able to read social situations, to be able to judge other people quickly, to be able to assess relationships between people.
	That's equally as powerful a part of our evolutionary history as is other things, the physical environment, for example.
	So I think we've developed Good skills, intuitive skills at that sort of thing.
	And I think some people are better at it than others.
	We talk about women having more intuitive power than men, something like that.
	I don't think it's a secret, mysterious, paranormal power.
	I think it's just being tuned into your social environment, and women tend to be more tuned into the social environment than men are.
	And so, yeah, I think there's something to intuition there.
	Doctor, when you die, are you hoping you'll be surprised?
	Yeah.
	Sure.
	Absolutely.
	I think it'd be terrific.
	What do you think?
	No one's ever asked me that.
	Yeah.
	I'm hoping I'll be surprised.
	That's a good way to put it.
	Trying to peel back the layers.
	I like that.
	Hoping to be surprised.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Michael Shermer.
	Hello.
	Yes, this is Jeff.
	Yes, Jeff.
	I don't have a lot of time.
	Dr. Shermer, this is kind of a broad question for you.
	On the aspects of mental illness and how, you know, the people go through psychotic stages of hearing voices and, you know, they are a danger.
	Okay, they get locked up, they get on medication and generally they're dealt with in a way, you know, that just seems like Okay, you're mentally ill, you're touched, and it sounds like that's what some of the stuff is like in the Bible and stuff like, you know, people always say they talk to a spirit or they heard voices and, you know, stuff like that.
	I was just wondering your thoughts about, is there really a cure in the, I'm not telling people to get off their meds or anything, but I'm saying, do you think there's a real cure For mental illness?
	I think in the long run there will be.
	It's a very difficult problem.
	The meds are getting better.
	I think just doping people up is not great, but leaving them homeless on the street is also not great.
	As the drugs get better, they'll be able to be targeted for more specific things.
	This is true for all diseases.
	Targeted drugs for cancers and tumors.
	Right.
	I want to plug your book, because we're at the end of the show.
	We're out of time and all that.
	It's the science of good and evil, why people cheat, gossip, share and care, and follow the golden rule.
	Why should people buy this?
	Is it a good book?
	Well, you're asking the author, yeah.
	It's the third of my trilogy, why people believe weird things is about science and pseudoscience, how we believe is about science and religion, and the science of good and evil is about the science of morality.
	So, you know, it's all sort of a package of Of trying to set up a scientific worldview and live a life that is based on reason and science.
	And the book will take you through all that.
	All right, listen, thank you so much, Doctor.
	Thank you for having me.
	Absolute pleasure.
	My pleasure, too.
	You're a lot of fun to interview.
	Take care.
	That's Dr. Michael Shermer, and that is The Weeknd.
	Boy, they go quickly.
	I'm Art Bell, and here's Crystal Gale.
	That's her last name.
	She's the one with just the right words to get us out of here.
	Listen carefully.
	Midnight in the desert Shooting stars across the sky This magical journey Will take us on a ride Filled with a longing Searching for the truth Will we make it to tomorrow?
	Will the sun shine on you?

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