At around the 1:21:00 mark of Ep69 we get into extreme internet nostalgia when Art's brand new website gets overloaded after announcing some new photos he uploaded. He got his web guy on the air to explain the phenomena.
Just a great little bit of internet nostalgia from the 90's in living AM filtered audio. Worth a listen on the 1 hour and 21 minute mark.
I used to work obscenely late hours in my QA days at Bliizard and I would listen to Art Bell alone in my car late at night outside an undeveloped area of Irvine looking at the hills and the stars at 1am for my dinner break. I still listen to Coast to Coast for 30 minutes every night for the bumper music or more if the topic is interesting.
It's funny... pretty much the only time/place I ever want to listen to Coast to Coast AM is when I'm in my car, driving somewhere overnight, and it's 2:00 in the morning and I'm on the Interstate halfway between Bumfuck and Nowhereville. In that setting, there is something magical about it.
Yes! That is exactly me. Coast to Coast AM at 11:30 in the morning, through headphones, in a cubicle is just wrong.
Also the audio needs to go out when you go through a tunnel or around a bend. And then you have to hunt for it again on the dial through all the static on another station.
Nothing beats late 1990’s Art Bell on the middle of the night, growing more enthralled (and paranoid) by the minute!
The only exposure I've had to Art Bell was on a drive from Chicago to San Francisco with my brother, who turned it on in the middle of the night driving somewhere in Wyoming.
Art's appearance in the 2006 videogame Prey was pretty great. Several sections of the game play Art's show in which the callers are experiencing similar events to the game's protagonist.
Yup, same. Driving somewhere in between Elizabeth, NJ and Montreal every 2-3 weeks overnight. Co-driver is saying stuff like "I'm getting sleepy, find the lizard people on the radio."
Back in the 90s, my girlfriend and I would go out drinking and end the night in the back of her van listening to Art Bell and sobering up. The show I remember most was when a guy called saying he was flying into area 51 and Art was trying to talk him out of it.
Yep that one and the just as chilling and lesser known one where the line gets mysteriously cutoff after some guy claims he discovered the secret to all phenomena being in the form of inter dimensional beings living amongst us.
If you're flying in airspace where you have legal permission to fly, and communicating with Air Traffic Control where required, then you can take pictures of anything you can see.
Also note the difference between flying into restricted airspace and flying by it.
I worked a graveyard shift for a while and would listen to C2C on my "lunch" breaks at 2AM. It was a fun show to listen to at that weird time of night by yourself.
It was far less fun any time George Noory was guest hosting. He just let guests run unchallenged. Art Bell was good at going on the guest's journey without letting them go too far off in the weeds.
The few times I’ve listened to Noory since he permanently took over, it seems like his guests almost always have something to sell. The funniest example I can remember (and this was > 5 years ago) was a guy whose spiel was, “the Pope is the Antichrist, one day soon the UFOs will appear above the balcony at the Vatican, the Pope will introduce the alien ambassador, that will be the beginning of the end times… and if you want to know more, buy my $29.95 book and DVD set!”
If it’s not like that, it’s healing crystals or some other weird alternative health stuff. In that way, Noory practically turned the show into SkyMall for the conspiracy subculture. Art’s guests just as often exhibited an earnest belief in whatever weirdness they were bringing.
Request for advice: I don't know Art Bell, though the name seems like one I have heard previously. Would you advise me to just start listening, or would you advise me to use a search engine first? As a guide to your advice, were it Andy Kaufman or Henry Fielding, the advice I'd want would be "just start watching" or "just start reading"; but if it were Robin Hanson, the advice I'd want would be "read this report about Hanson at the academic philanthropy meeting first."
I listened to Art Bell's coast to coast AM program a few times as a kid, and I think it doesn't need to much in the way of introduction. I vote that you just dive in, but I will say that just diving in is a strong bias of mine.
Art Bell was an American broadcaster and author. He was the founder and the original host of the paranormal-themed radio program Coast to Coast AM, which is syndicated on hundreds of radio stations in the United States and Canada. He also created and hosted its companion show Dreamland. Coast to Coast still airs nightly.
Just dive in. You could find a list of the more far-out episodes. But the fun of Art was not knowing what to expect. Even when the guest was boring, there might be a caller who wants to talk in detail about the starship that abducted them last night.
There are some real classic episodes that are an amazing introduction. There’s one where a guy calls in from his cell phone while ion a Cessna about to fly over Area 51. Art urges him not to do it . The last we hear from him is his reports of fighter jets approaching.
That’s not even an interview it’s just a caller!
Even if completely fake, the entertainment value was huge.
I’ll reply later with some links to 2-3 of the best classics in my opinion.
Thanks! Remember “Mel’s Hole”? The bottomless pit in rural Oregon or Washington where people had been throwing down all sort of stuff (like refrigerators) without the hole filling up in the slightest. It was taken over by the military, according to Mel, on his second interview.
Art Bell had the absolute best voice for late night radio. Used to listen to him on my overnight road trips between Salt Lake and Vegas. Just the endless desert under a full moon, and Art's guest is rambling on about interdimensional beings. Could almost believe it for that moment.
One of my favorite things about Art was the tension. Did he believe what his guests and callers are saying? Or is he just humoring them for the show? I never knew the answer. Not sure if I would want to know.
Sometimes shame is useful. Cigarettes are gross and unhealthy, not just for the user, but for the people around them. It is a costly habit, and most importantly, often leads to premature death. If anybody I care about smokes, you can bet your ass I'm shaming them. They shouldn't be doing it.
Shaming single mothers or having a baby out of wedlock or shaming someone for being gay are great examples why you shouldn't shame people and why the practice should shamed out of existance.
I'm not going to speak to those particular examples, but shaming someone for a voluntary act, such as committing a crime, is very different from shaming someone for something they are and cannot control, like their race or their gender. Those why the latter are considered "protected classes" for the purpose of anti-discrimination laws.
I'm not sure where the option to make a choice can be found. People go where their will takes them.
If the impulse to commit a crime is strong enough, they'll commit a crime. If some internal voice of reason holds them back, then they'll hold back. But in both instances, their actions were guided be preexisting circumstances, not by any choice they made.
Being a single mother or having relations outside of marriage can be a choice.
Shaming someone for choosing a religion different than their parents or shaming someone because they have picked a job you think lowly because they are not a protected class is not a good enough reason.
That's a very common rubric, but also a very offensive one. The reason we should consider those protected classes (under particular circumstances) is because we have judged discrimination against them in areas of employment and housing to be both irrational and damaging (because limits on employment and housing are damaging.)
It's not because it's morally wrong to punish someone for being bad if they can't help being bad. That's why we allow people to plead not guilty for reason of insanity. People in protected classes aren't bad.
edit: this is the kind of thinking that leads people to desperately look for gay genes - because otherwise, they wouldn't be able to justify laws barring discrimination against gay people.
I relate it to modern child-worship: the belief that babies are born purely. without stain, and are thereby most deserving of life and happiness; but from the first moment of life the decisions that they make cover their souls with filth, gradually making them less deserving of life and happiness. Therefore, by applying this extreme Protestant reasoning to modern science, the things in your genes can't be judged because they were placed there by God. If you die because your sin literally turns your lungs black and diseased, the most important thing to do is condemn your corpse so no babies will follow your example.
As a society we've largely dealt with the latter problem by deeming children less capable of making rational decisions, and therefore holding them to a different, lower level of responsibility for them. This can be observed particularly in how we punish them differently than we do adults for their misdeeds.
Only something like 10-15% of lifelong heavy smokers in the United States develop lung cancer. Something like 20-30% of all lung cancer comes from life-long non-smokers.
Shame doesn't work in the way you think it does. Especially when the target of the shaming knows the reasons why they're being shamed. More likely you're just going to be traumatizing and pushing away your loved ones.
> In the United States, cigarette smoking is linked to about 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths.
> People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke.
> Cigarette smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in the body. Cigarette smoking causes cancer of the mouth and throat, esophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, liver, pancreas, voicebox (larynx), trachea, bronchus, kidney and renal pelvis, urinary bladder, and cervix, and causes acute myeloid leukemia.
That's not a direct response to "Only something like 10-15% of lifelong heavy smokers in the United States develop lung cancer." Instead it's a copy-pasted list of large numbers.
Jet ski riding causes 100% of jet ski accident deaths, but that tells me very little about the safety of riding a jet ski.
Not here to defend smoking, but to defend argument.
It's funny how fast that attitude changes when someone you know dies of something you could have helped prevent. Suddenly you feel like you've got blood on your hands, and that maybe sometimes other people need a nudge or a kick in the right direction.
Guilt is common after a loved one dies. If you only stopped them from eating butter they may have not had a heart attack. If you were there you your grandma might not have slipped.
I don't think we have the control we brainwash ourselves into believing.
For every nag or nudge you create a riff where you are trying to impose your will. Whether it is about smoking, the person they are dating or their career choice your nudges are probably less helpful and more harmful then they appear.
Used to listen to him on my overnight road trips between Salt Lake and Vegas. Just the endless desert under a full moon, and Art's guest is rambling on about interdimensional beings. Could almost believe it for that moment.
Yeah, there's something about that time of night, being out on the open road. Reality seems a little bit, erm, looser, or something. I think it's just that all you have is you, the radio, blackness, stars, maybe the moon, and possibly a cow or a coyote or something. In those moments, there's less "stuff" to slap you in the face and remind you "Hey asshole, there's no such things as aliens, UFOs, ghosts, zombies, time-traveling Titors, etc." You just stare off into the black, see the millions (or so) of stars you can see, listen to the static-crackling AM radio, and, wait is that light really a star? NO... it's blinking wrong...
I loved listening to Art Bell in the 90s when I was doing college homework or just hanging out at home. I’ll never forget listening to the Sept. 11, 1997 show live with my roommate - that was kind of freaky. (https://kprcradio.iheart.com/featured/the-pursuit-of-happine...)
Do they actually own the rights to these old broadcasts? I'd be surprised. Coast to Coast's website has an "Art Bell Vault" with old episodes. I bet they're the rights-holder, rather than whoever is behind this podcast.
Edit: the matter of ownership doesn't necessarily matter to me, but I am curious as to who is behind this.
Art owned the name and other branding for at least a period of time, but it’s entirely possible Premiere (part of iHeartMedia now I believe) eventually acquired it. The actual shows are probably Premiere’s.
Unless I have been misinformed, the vault has been done with the estate’s approval and his widow and kids support the Patreon based on the C2C FB groups; who is directly managing it has never been made publicly clear that I can find.
Art Bell was amazing in the late 1990s........then I think his son being sexually assaulted messed him up because was all downhill after that. He would constantly flake out and always had an excuse. He finally got a new show, then claimed people were shooting guns outside of his house so he had to cancel his show. Always some kind of drama with him for the last 15 years of his life.
Oh man I remember a series of episodes about a tech ceo (American Computer Co or something like that) spilling the beans about all the info tech came from reversed alien craft, the Shockley semi conductor was a cover and bell labs was so productive because they were working from examples. My younger self ate it up, lots of nostalgia for those late night spooky revelations.
This is a scam. Period.
I just said. In my phone three times in a row. Abel didn’t on the rights to most of the shows he did. Clear Channel did. They didn’t sell them to his wife or anyone else. Whoever is running the site is making money off art bell. Art probably wouldn’t of minded this at all by the way but I do. I happily gave money to Art when he was alive but when he checked out he checked out. There’s a better option on Apple anyway for art bell. Rekola Midnight. I’m sure that’s not anything to do with his family either. It’s just that they’re not looking for Patreon donations. Have people no shame that they’ll stoop so low to prey on a dead man’s legacy?
That's an interesting point you're bringing up. Needs to be looked into further. Maybe you could alert Apple to potential copyright infringement? I personally just found this on my Spotify feed and got a nostalgia pang so wanted to share. The only link I could find was for Apple...
Phil Hendrie was my favorite go-to night desert driving companion. That guy was hilarious with his "fake news".
While not an Art Bell fan, I do recall when he was on The Today Show or Good Morning America, the hosts laughed and chided him about his book warning of the coming super storms and rising sea levels from global warming.
Man, what ever happened to Phil Hendrie? I loved his episode where he had the preacher on who was making the case that god hated trailer parks because they were impermanent homes, and he gave the Israelites a permanent home, therefore that's why tornadoes always hit trailer parks.
He still has his podcast. Actually on the anniversary of Art Bell's death, Phil played some of the episodes that he did in collaboration with Art Bell.
Oh man, I remember listening to Ghost to Ghost when Art Bell used to take calls from audience for Halloween. Those were some of the best shows! Also, does anybody remember the show where some dude called him while supposedly flying over Area 51? Thank you for sharing this list!
What was a wonderful pre-apocalyptic buzz guilty pleasure back in the 90s is now the sad precursor to MAGA. Why are people so utterly stupid?
But, for real, I was in the theater next to Art Bell when he watched Contact. And you know how much he loved that movie.
That said, the night the satellite feed was cut after the supposed Area 51 worker called in and said everything about the aliens was real was to die for.
That was back before the fringe was, like everything else in our culture, politically weaponized. It was largely apolitical back then, or if there were politics it was 90s libertarianism of a sort that seems shockingly sane today. Much of the audience and I think Bell himself were pretty skeptical too. It was about having fun and exploring wild possibilities, like a radio version of the old Amazing Stories pulp serials.
No he hated Bill Clinton and he said so many times. It wasn't the beat you to death with a hammer if you disagree with me because you hate America kind of politics but it was always there if you asked him and I actually did to his face because, you know, sitting next to him in the theater and all that.
This is back before the fringe were 1) named the big bad of the media, and 2) networking with each other on the internet. The fringe believed the same stuff they do now (in broad strokes) and was just as large as it is now.
As a collector of John Birch and Communist blacklist material, none of this is new. Look up Eustace Mullins.
The fringe I remember wasn’t the same as what you remember but the fringe is very heterodox by definition. If you want lefty conspiracies look up Mae Brussel and Dave Emory.
Lefty and righty conspiracy theories tend to mix freely in the wild. This soup of weirdness thing is one characteristic of the true fringe.
Maybe there was a previous era of weaponization in the 50s. The time I recall was the post Cold War 90s. The current weaponization started after 9/11 with transparent Saudi money in the “truther” movement and then went into high gear when the Trump team got into it.
Recurrent subjects on his show were things like The Cosmic Watergate, MJ-12, and all sorts of other slashfic derived from the Roswell crash, whatever that actually was. Real-life events like the satellite feed getting cut while on the air, the government stopping an Area 51 lawsuit on the grounds that Area 51 did not officially exist, and hilariously fake found footage kept spraying lighter fluid on the fire to keep it from burning out. But, IMO, none of it was as crazy as the QAnon folk expecting JFK Jr to show up in Dealey Plaza last week.
I mean I choose to believe there's life out there myself, I'm just skeptical that we're worth more than a single disappointing visit.
I loved Art Bell. My wife and I would stay up late rehabbing our first house listening to Art. I’m convinced all of the talk about the wall on the southern border was a smokescreen to hide the extent of the Chupacabra problem in Texas and New Mexico
Remember listening to Art Bell as a teenager when I would go to bed at night. Would scan for channels on my clock radio. Have no idea where the AM signal was coming from but it was interesting listening and was unlike what I was used to hearing on the radio.
Art Bell was probably a sort of proto-Alex Jones, i.e. a controlled and managed outlet for parapolitical topics and a way to mix up the truth with a hefty dose of misinfo and shitcoating.
Mae Brussell's entire back catalog is easy to find if you're looking for something along these lines without the compromised elements. Dave Emory also has a massive library and is still going strong, doing great work on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 in particular. For modern-day parapolitical podcasts there's The Liminalist, Subliminal Jihad, The Farm, Psyop Cinema, and many others.
I have been trying to find the episode where he talks about monsters that are almost human, but have two rows of teeth.
I took all the mp3s I collected of the show, dumped them through dictation, and grepped like a madman. I have a real appreciation for people that are good at this.
We listened to it in the late 90s as teens turning 20 and we would be absolutely petrified by the combination of being that age, from that time, and up that late. It was great.
The 90's while in college, pulling late nights working on homework listening to Art Bell was like an old friend telling you crazy stories and bringing in guests to tell even crazier stories. And every once in a while you'd think really? Is that true? Nah...couldn't be.
My dad loves going to sleep with the radio on. My mom isn't a fan, and is more of a night owl. She would roll into bed between 12 and 4 and hear the quiet voices on the radio discussing all manner of alien visits, conspiracy theories, etc. She would turn it off, go to sleep, and he would turn it back on if he woke up.
Lots of late nights in high school learning about Linux and basic networking things while listening to Art Bell in the background.
Many drives across the country Art kept me awake. The more crazy and outrageous, the more alert I remained. Seemed like a feature I’m sure saved lives in the short term; and seemed, at the time, harmless in the long term.
I'm in the UK, and I would listen to Art Bell recordings late night in the office (absolutely HAS to be listened to late at night!).
I always loved the slightly lonely, ominous vibe it conjured up, and I'm delighted to hear other people describe the EXACT same thing! Reading some people's memories on here about listening while driving through the night desert in the South Western US - proper UFO country! That must have been super intense.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadJust a great little bit of internet nostalgia from the 90's in living AM filtered audio. Worth a listen on the 1 hour and 21 minute mark.
Also the audio needs to go out when you go through a tunnel or around a bend. And then you have to hunt for it again on the dial through all the static on another station.
Nothing beats late 1990’s Art Bell on the middle of the night, growing more enthralled (and paranoid) by the minute!
The Area 51 call in shows were amazing. Mel’s Hole is another one.
Was a great time to appreciate radio. RIP Art Bell. You are missed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enb_vZTFcdc
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32919/pilot-takes-amaz...
Also note the difference between flying into restricted airspace and flying by it.
It was far less fun any time George Noory was guest hosting. He just let guests run unchallenged. Art Bell was good at going on the guest's journey without letting them go too far off in the weeds.
Noory is just another radio guy and tends to inject conservative radio trope into something that was really pure fun and wacky stuff.
If it’s not like that, it’s healing crystals or some other weird alternative health stuff. In that way, Noory practically turned the show into SkyMall for the conspiracy subculture. Art’s guests just as often exhibited an earnest belief in whatever weirdness they were bringing.
He died in 2018.
That’s not even an interview it’s just a caller!
Even if completely fake, the entertainment value was huge.
I’ll reply later with some links to 2-3 of the best classics in my opinion.
One of my favorite things about Art was the tension. Did he believe what his guests and callers are saying? Or is he just humoring them for the show? I never knew the answer. Not sure if I would want to know.
If the impulse to commit a crime is strong enough, they'll commit a crime. If some internal voice of reason holds them back, then they'll hold back. But in both instances, their actions were guided be preexisting circumstances, not by any choice they made.
Shaming someone for choosing a religion different than their parents or shaming someone because they have picked a job you think lowly because they are not a protected class is not a good enough reason.
It's not because it's morally wrong to punish someone for being bad if they can't help being bad. That's why we allow people to plead not guilty for reason of insanity. People in protected classes aren't bad.
edit: this is the kind of thinking that leads people to desperately look for gay genes - because otherwise, they wouldn't be able to justify laws barring discrimination against gay people.
I relate it to modern child-worship: the belief that babies are born purely. without stain, and are thereby most deserving of life and happiness; but from the first moment of life the decisions that they make cover their souls with filth, gradually making them less deserving of life and happiness. Therefore, by applying this extreme Protestant reasoning to modern science, the things in your genes can't be judged because they were placed there by God. If you die because your sin literally turns your lungs black and diseased, the most important thing to do is condemn your corpse so no babies will follow your example.
Shame doesn't work in the way you think it does. Especially when the target of the shaming knows the reasons why they're being shamed. More likely you're just going to be traumatizing and pushing away your loved ones.
> In the United States, cigarette smoking is linked to about 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths.
> People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke.
> Cigarette smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in the body. Cigarette smoking causes cancer of the mouth and throat, esophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, liver, pancreas, voicebox (larynx), trachea, bronchus, kidney and renal pelvis, urinary bladder, and cervix, and causes acute myeloid leukemia.
And https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... :
> Smoking causes more deaths each year than... [HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol, automobile injuries, and firearms]
> Smoking causes about 90% (or 9 out of 10) of all lung cancer deaths.
> Smoking causes about 80% (or 8 out of 10) of all deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The second link includes a lovely list of other smoking-related health risks.
Jet ski riding causes 100% of jet ski accident deaths, but that tells me very little about the safety of riding a jet ski.
Not here to defend smoking, but to defend argument.
I don't think we have the control we brainwash ourselves into believing.
For every nag or nudge you create a riff where you are trying to impose your will. Whether it is about smoking, the person they are dating or their career choice your nudges are probably less helpful and more harmful then they appear.
Yeah, there's something about that time of night, being out on the open road. Reality seems a little bit, erm, looser, or something. I think it's just that all you have is you, the radio, blackness, stars, maybe the moon, and possibly a cow or a coyote or something. In those moments, there's less "stuff" to slap you in the face and remind you "Hey asshole, there's no such things as aliens, UFOs, ghosts, zombies, time-traveling Titors, etc." You just stare off into the black, see the millions (or so) of stars you can see, listen to the static-crackling AM radio, and, wait is that light really a star? NO... it's blinking wrong...
Who’s behind this patreon and podcast, though? I don’t see any evidence that his estate is benefitting.
Edit: the matter of ownership doesn't necessarily matter to me, but I am curious as to who is behind this.
Unless I have been misinformed, the vault has been done with the estate’s approval and his widow and kids support the Patreon based on the C2C FB groups; who is directly managing it has never been made publicly clear that I can find.
"North of the rockies ... South of the rockies ..."
While not an Art Bell fan, I do recall when he was on The Today Show or Good Morning America, the hosts laughed and chided him about his book warning of the coming super storms and rising sea levels from global warming.
Also, the characters’ voices all sound suspiciously similar in a way that they didn’t over shitty AM radio…
Phil was amazing back then. I have a “Best Of” CD somewhere; I should rip it.
But, for real, I was in the theater next to Art Bell when he watched Contact. And you know how much he loved that movie.
That said, the night the satellite feed was cut after the supposed Area 51 worker called in and said everything about the aliens was real was to die for.
As a collector of John Birch and Communist blacklist material, none of this is new. Look up Eustace Mullins.
edit: or for the mystic, Savitri Devi.
Lefty and righty conspiracy theories tend to mix freely in the wild. This soup of weirdness thing is one characteristic of the true fringe.
Maybe there was a previous era of weaponization in the 50s. The time I recall was the post Cold War 90s. The current weaponization started after 9/11 with transparent Saudi money in the “truther” movement and then went into high gear when the Trump team got into it.
I mean I choose to believe there's life out there myself, I'm just skeptical that we're worth more than a single disappointing visit.
Mae Brussell's entire back catalog is easy to find if you're looking for something along these lines without the compromised elements. Dave Emory also has a massive library and is still going strong, doing great work on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 in particular. For modern-day parapolitical podcasts there's The Liminalist, Subliminal Jihad, The Farm, Psyop Cinema, and many others.
I took all the mp3s I collected of the show, dumped them through dictation, and grepped like a madman. I have a real appreciation for people that are good at this.
We listened to it in the late 90s as teens turning 20 and we would be absolutely petrified by the combination of being that age, from that time, and up that late. It was great.
https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/from-art-bell-w6obb...
Lots of late nights in high school learning about Linux and basic networking things while listening to Art Bell in the background.