Thinking Sideways: Area 51 Broadcast Interruption

On September 11, 1997, on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM show, a frantic caller claiming to be a recent employee at Area 51 made some startling revelations. A few minutes into the call, the Coast to Coast AM broadcast is mysteriously disrupted. Seventeen years later, a man calls a different show called Fade to Black, claiming to have made the whole thing up. Was the call really a hoax? And if so, what took out the broadcast?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by a seagull
playing guitar. Instead, it's supported by the generous donations of
our listeners on Patreon. Visit patreon dot com slash thinking
sideways to learn more and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't
understand you stories of things we simply don't know the

(00:30):
answer too. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways.
I think none of us listen to our show. That's
what we're getting from this. I was, I was doing

(00:51):
the other theme song for the show. That was a
bad version. Oh I never said I was. That's the
dumb step version of it. Okay, it was the remix. Yeah,
the Scrilllox remix. Well, I'm Devin, joined as usual by
and Steve remix. No, he doesn't know how he knows

(01:12):
how to mix our show pretty good. And that's about
it at yeah. Yeah. Um, So this week we're going
to talk about mystery that I'm calling art Bell in
the Area fifty one broadcast. You'll sometimes see it as
like the Coast to Coast AM broadcast interruption caller, lots

(01:36):
of different stuff, and you did see Area fifty one
in the name here, but please know this is not
an episode about fifty one. We're going to spend paltry
little time talking about. Yeah, we will talk about in
the future. We actually we're going to do a twelve
part series. Absolutely. We actually we're gonna release over twenty
four months. We have an intern who's working under cover

(01:58):
there right now, and so we'll have lots of juicy
video and tapes and stuff like that for you guys.
Did that just out our internal Well you didn't give
Billy's names, Okay, so Billy, no, we got to pull
him out. We gotta pull ow he's dead, alright an
oh man, No, that's a lie. But we will probably
at some point to area fifty one or at least

(02:21):
different aspects very fifty one. But actually, but please know
that this is not that episode. This is very specific
to a show, um and it was a listener suggestion
from June ish of fifteen. This person's name that was
about when it was suggested. It was suggested by a

(02:43):
gentleman by the name of Derek. I didn't actually know
it was a listeners suggestion until after I decided to
do it because I saw it on one of those
do you guys ever watch those YouTube like top Ten's
Weirdest unsolved artifact mystery. I love those. They're like background
noise in my apartment. I think that before and I
saw this, I we were watching one that was like

(03:05):
weirdest broadcast interruptions, and I was like, I know all
of these, and it was like, yeah, got it, got it?
What so? And then also, before we get too terribly far,
I want to give a huge thanks to Jonathan, who
wrote a seventeen page summary about every fifty one an
expert for us. He is an expert for us. He

(03:26):
also happens to be an actual, real life freemason. Um,
if he was really a freemason, would you tell us? Yeah? No,
they I mean they're a real thing. He emailed this
picture of him with his certificate, like it's real. He's
a real thing. Uh, he's a real thing. And the
and he's a real freemason. So everything that we say
he told us, I guess with a grain of salt

(03:46):
because probably he's lying to us to throw us off
the track. He probably is one of the at all.
I'm pretty sure that's true. Just yeah, and also just
as a quick aside, because this is probably going to
come up. There's a light blinking in our studio. So
if we seem a little extra distracted or giglyto that,

(04:08):
it's it's not because we're worried about the government, but
it just flickering off and on. We should pause and fix.
That's okay, we'll be right back. Okay, okay, we're back.
It's fixed. Three podcasters to fix a light. It actually
did past light bulb answers three. Yeah. Um, well there

(04:31):
we've just solved into the mystery. Yeah, we're done, taking
a break. We'll do the next week. Guys, Fine, just kidding.
What we're talking about today is a specific incident that
happened um in seven on the AM radio show Coast
to Coast AM. I hope that most of our listeners

(04:52):
are at least vaguely familiar with the show, but we
might have like a fair number of bandwagon er listeners,
people who were just to the unsolved mysteries community. Uh So,
for those of you who are uninitiated, let's talk about
Coast Coast AM for a second. Actually, we mentioned Art
Bell and Coast to Coast in our Wholes episode. Yeah,

(05:15):
that's probably true. We talked about him sometimes. I like him. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
are all about the paranormal and UFOs and stuff like that. RNA. Yeah,
we'll talk about him in a second, but first, sorry, everyone,

(05:38):
we had to I used to listen to this show
on my little like handheld radio under my covers. You guys,
remember those little handheld a m FM radios with my
parents thought I was asleep and I was just like
huddled under the covers listening to Coast Coast AM. I know.
I think both of you have at one point listened
to Coast Coast AM as well. Never like it was

(06:01):
just when I was a kid, I listened to you
if I listened to it, it was accidental, I think
we just before. I'm not a big fan of talk radio,
which is but I actually, yeah, I actually liked talk
radio except for the commercials, and so I listened to
it in my car, you know. But it's it's a
three minutes of talking and it's time to go to
five minutes of commercials. So I switched to another station
and I might remember to switch back. Yeah, so that's

(06:24):
otherwise I like it just fine. That's why I like,
you know, MPR or whatever that's like no commercials, but
they have commercials. Yeah. The goal of the show was
to offer quote a forum where callers would not be
openly ridiculed unquote for their claims. Though art Bell openly
admitted that he didn't really accept every claim, he tried

(06:46):
to take a kind of more skeptical view towards things,
whether or not he led on too that in his
show when he was actually interviewing people, you know, he
was always he tried to be kind of politic and
say oh, yeah, huh, and then ask questions. And I
think he was a really good interviewer really when it
come He tried. He didn't just take things at the
surface and bat him down or take a messy work.

(07:07):
He he tried to find out what your point wasn't
how you substantiated at least in some way, even if
he couldn't get it. Yeah. I actually, personally, as we've
mentioned before, I take his style towards our podcast. Yeah,
I think he might not have believed any of that stuff,
but he you know, made at least made that that
he believed a lot of it. Yeah. Well, I think

(07:28):
it's the open minded skeptic. Yeah, but you know there's
other guys like you know, our friend Clyde who's on
ground zero. I sometimes wondered, I've never actually asked Clyde,
and I should ask him sometimes, like Clade, do you
really believe all the stuff that because there are times
where you can tell that it's stung in cheap and
then there are times where what is going on right now?
And are you serious? Yeah? Really no, really I'm not

(07:53):
I'm serious, like you just can't tell yeah, totally yeah. Yeah. So, um,
that's a little bit about Art Bell and he he
no longer does Coast Coast AM. Coast Coast AM is
still a thing, um, but he's not a part any
part of it anymore, and he in fact thinks it's
totally ludicrous now he hates it. Really, What's what's what's

(08:14):
going on with Coast It's a long story. And this
is not a show as um as I was about
to mention, not only is this not a show about
every fifty one, but it's also not a show about
Coast Coast a m just about this one incident kind
of we don't want to do a show about them
because then they might do a show about us, and
then we really we would be so sad. Yeah, we
would do that. Okay, So the format of Coast Coast

(08:38):
AM was a call in talk show plus news and
a long form interview was usually an hour long interview
and then open lines for callers to call in on
UM and then the news a little bit. At the
very beginning of the episode, there were a few different
call in numbers. They were all open lines. There were
none of them were There was no screeners whatsoever. That's

(09:00):
amazing to me. Yeah, it was crazy. What talk show
doesn't have screeners? Coast Coast AM. Yeah, I mean I
think they do now, and I think it's possible that
later he had Actually it's not possible. It's true that
later in the shows when he had to when he
moved overseas, they had to have screeners because they just
like the call volume that they had. It was too

(09:21):
expensive him to have open lines. But he did have
open lines. He would just you know, pick up the
line and hit an extension and go, okay, you're on there.
Start talking about whatever you want to talk about. Yeah,
I mean that that that. I've called in a few
radio talk show things before local ones, and there's always
a screener who wants to know what you want to
talk about, what your point is going to be, because
they want to give the guy the host of heads Up. Yeah.

(09:43):
So for this one, he actually had a bunch of
different dedicated lines. He had an East of the Rockies line,
a West of the Rockies line, the first time callers line,
in international line, and then what he called a wild
card line, and then often he would introduce specialty lines
for themed callers. Usually he just took away the first
time callers line and said, Okay, the first time callers

(10:05):
line is now this themed call in line. Swap it
out for some other And that was the case on
September eleven, which is the specific show we're going to
talk about, he had opened up the first time Callers line,
the number that was usually for that for Area fifty
one employees and ex employees specifically, so it was only

(10:28):
meant for those people, and he was trying. He tried,
you know, as much as you can say, like, okay,
well did you work there, how how many calls from
how many how many actual area you want people called
in actual or claiming? I mean, I don't know that
he there was no way to keep track of the
number of people he took calls all throughout the night. Um,

(10:48):
I think I listened to that episode and I don't
recall him actually talking to anybody other than Area fifty
one line callers before this incident. So we're talking dozens.
And do I mean likely, I mean he was he
talked to I think five that night, but I think
it's likely that there were at least a dozen more

(11:09):
than that. Yeah, but I have no idea, and I
don't know that any of us know. I don't think
that there's any way to know how many people called
in on any given night because it was an open line. Yeah,
you know, you didn't have somebody answering a lot of
people get a busy signal. Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's all
squared away. Now we can actually jump into the mystery.

(11:29):
I know that are preambles sometimes annay people, but it's
important in this case. Yeah. So, like I said, on
September eleven, at as far as I can tell, the
only time Stamp I've actually heard is one am Eastern

(11:49):
Time on the twelve and art broadcasted from Arizona, which
is Pacific, which is mountain time, So that would have
been I think eleven on the eleventh ish. For some reason,
I was taking at art bill broadcast from the Bay Area. No, okay,
it was Arizona. I'm pretty sure was Arizona anyway, Yeah, anyway,

(12:13):
it was. It was the eleven. It was actually the
eleventh when he took the call where he was, but
it was late in the night. It was a late note,
late night talk show. Definitely not prime time. No, definitely
not prime time. It was actually the most listened to
late night show on air when it was on air. Um,
so that was pretty interesting. So around that time, he

(12:34):
got a phone call. As I mentioned, there were a
lot of it was the area fifty one line that
he was answering, and he had been talking to other
people earlier in the night who said they worked in
area fifty one. One guy I listened to said he
worked from Area fifty one and that he had been
ordered to call to talk about all this stuff because
stuff was going to come to light in the next

(12:54):
couple of days. And then acted very coming. It's it's
a really interesting show if you can get your hands
on it, it's really interesting to listen to. But this
specific caller called in, and we'll listen to part of it.
But he called in and he was very frantic, was
upside down in a ditch and he'd been stuck there
for years you are. Anyway, we'll listen to most of it,

(13:21):
and just as a pre warning, the thing that happens.
I like to keep a little mystery on my mysteries
before they drop. But the thing that happened is this
guy is frantic and he's talking about all of the
information he has about Area fifty one, and then Coast
Coast AM was knocked off the air, literally knocked off

(13:42):
the air. So this soundclip that we're going to play,
it's it's about four minutes long. I do apologize for
the length of it. We try to keep our soundclips
down to a minimum, but I think in this case,
since the mystery is the soundclip, we may as well
throw it in there. Okay. So the way that this
soundclip goes is you'll hear the frantic caller, and then

(14:02):
you'll hear dead air for a little while, and then
you'll hear the theme song starting. Because as I said that,
it was totally not chops up, and then it goes
completely silent, and then it's a little silent and then
a little silent, and then it starts up again. It's
edited down the silence in between from what people actually
heard that night and so, yeah, so the show was

(14:23):
off the air for how long? I believe it was
about a half an hour. They went they the station
cut to archive some other show. I can't remember what
it was off the top of my head, and then
Art Bell picks back up. But I think it was
about a half hour that they were down for um
and I think that it took them that long because
part of the problem was Art didn't know that they
had been knocked off the air. It's not like you

(14:44):
have a thing that you know started the red light
didn't turn off. Yeah, I mean, you know, he was
in a sound studio room basically a soundproof room that
you would be broadcasting from, and you know, all the
transmitters and everything are in a different room. You don't
want that in there with you because it makes noise.
So he had to actually get up out of his
chair to see, oh, we're not broadcasting anymore. I don't

(15:05):
even have the transmitter there. It's a satellite feed right,
They had a transmitter in the other room to translate
to transmit the feed out. And actually a network representative
called him and was like, hey, your shows off the air,
and he was like what, But he'd been taking calls
and if he had an engineer. Yeah, So it was crazy.
So it took them a little bit, and then it

(15:26):
took them a little while to establish a backup for everything.
So it was about half an hour as far as
I can tell. So, yeah, we'll listen to this thing
and then we'll pick you up on the other side. Line.
You're on the air, all hello, Yeah, I don't have
a whole lot of time. Um, Well, let's begin by
finding out whether you're using this line properly or not.

(15:52):
Where are you an employee or are you new a
former employee, former room. I would let go on a
medical discharge about a week ago, and and I've kind
of been running across the country. Um man, I don't
know where you start. There. They're they're gonna, um build

(16:13):
triangulate on this position. Really released soon. Um. You can't
spend a lot of time on the phone, So give
us something quick, okay, um um, okay. What we're thinking
of as as aliens are there? Uh they're they're extra
dimensional beings that an earlier precursor of the Space program

(16:38):
made contact with. Uh. They they are not what they
claim to be. Uh. They have infiltrated a lot of uh,
a lot of aspects of of of the military establishment,
particularly the area fifty one. Uh, the disasters that are
coming made, but the military, I'm sorry that the government

(17:03):
knows about them. And there's a lot of safe areas
in this world that they could be in moving the
population to now are but they're not doing They're not
doing anything. They are not They want the major population
centers wiped out so that the few that are left

(17:27):
will be more easily controllable. This chart I started getting

(18:34):
in some way. Something knocked us off the air and
we're on a backup system. Now it's a government or
I don't know. It has to be something though, Well
did you hear now you'd tell me because you were listening.
That was awful strange. It was a really weird guy
on the air when it went off. Ye, real weird,

(18:54):
oh like going sort of sort of stunning paranoids etronic
like crying and everything. Yeah. Yeah, And how far into
the conversation was it when when it went off, just
a couple about fifty I didn't say you guys missed?
Were you really missed a call in? And I've got
a feeling somebody who didn't want you to hear it. Yeah, hey,

(19:19):
guys were back. Jesus, what a trauma, queen. No, I mean, yeah,
but no, but yeah, but you seem rather upset. Yeah
he did, didn't he frantic? Even frantic, even frantic color ye.
Art does go on to say that in all his
years in broadcasting, he had never heard of anything getting

(19:39):
knocked off the air like that, And as far as
I know, that's the only time in the thirty one
year history of Coast Coast a M that they have
been knocked off the air. So it's a pretty big
deal that they just disappeared from the airwaves for a
little while. By the way, did Art bells the studio
did they didn't re toward these calls? Did they know?

(20:01):
They didn't? Yeah, I think because it's a live broadcast,
so I don't know if they I don't know how
they were trapping it at that time. I don't know
if they were recording in studio or if they had
somebody else like recording the transmission or what. Because they
don't I would expect, I don't know. I'm presuming Joe
that you're asking that to see if we can if
there was some way to get the conversation up until

(20:25):
the point aren't realized he was cut off. Is what
you're after? Yeah, and it said, what we have is
what it appears most of the stuff online is what
listeners had recorded themselves. Yeah, okay, and so and did
Arn't Bell ever say how long the conversation went on
for after it got cut off? He said, a couple
of minutes. Yeah, And this was the interesting thing about this.

(20:48):
What let's keep going a little bit and we'll talk
a little more about what aren't because then what we
know about this broadcast according to only one report. So
this is the information that you're looking for. And it's
since there's only one report, and I can't I really
can't substantiate this at all, but it's probably worth mentioning.
But take it with the hugest grain of salt you've
ever seen in your entire life. When the transmitters went dead,

(21:11):
Art switched to a digital line for transmissions, but shortly
after this his analog phone lines went down um and
they weren't able to transmit for this half hour time frame.
Apparently the caller had continued for uh about a minute
is what they said, and then screamed and the line

(21:32):
went dead. And this is all according to a website
that says it's according to a Penthouse reporter who happened
to be in the studio doing an article about the
show on that night. I have looked for, I have searched.
There's no such Penthouse article on Coast Coast AM as
far as I can tell, Penthous some clean work. I mean, yeah,

(21:55):
but I just mean that I was searching through everything.
I was looking for the articles, looking through the article. Yeah,
but I didn't. I couldn't find anything to substantiate that
there was, in fact a Penthouse reporter. I couldn't find
any sources for this information other than this, you know,
mystery Penthouse reporter. So I don't know that I necessarily

(22:16):
believe it. But apparently according to this same source, Well,
the only thing I'm gonna say about that is just
just because this guy is in the studio doesn't mean
he's writing a piece. Well, apparently he was in the
studio to write a piece about Coast Coast AM and
started taking notes like feverishly when the feverish caller called in.
And there's also we've got to keep in mind that

(22:37):
as a journalist, you start and work a lot of
stories cut. Yeah, but that's the only thing I want
to say it. I mean, whether it's Penthouse, Playboy or
The New York Times, if it's a reporter in the
room and it gets caught, we would that would explain
why we don't see it. I'm not I'm not saying
that I think that this guy was really there. Well, yeah,

(22:58):
because I guess in my my brain if you had
the inside scoop on something like this, Hey, this radio
station got knocked up the air in the middle of
this really frantic call, and I have the notes and
was there and heard the rest of the conversation that
nobody else is talking about. Why wouldn't you just release
that lure out of it? Okay, but yeah, yeah, take

(23:20):
the lure out. It's like they got knocked off the
air and totally sucked its screwed my story totally up.
I'm not doing this, that's true. Well, I never know.
Since this became a big thing, you think he would be,
you know, sort of motivated to publish something about what
you hear that cut off a carriage, you would think
that the thing about it is is like the area
if you want guys are sure are like you know,

(23:40):
just mercilessly efficient. But tracing the phone call and getting
a black helicopter to the spot where the guy is
and murdering him within five six minutes is remarkably efficient. Yeah,
he does say that they're going to triangulate his call
really quickly, but we'll talk about that. We'll talk about
that in the theory section. Okay, the this same weird

(24:02):
source that I can't substantiate at all goes on to
say that the very first call that aren't picked up
after the transmission had gone dead was a guy who
claimed to be the quote unquote security guy from Area
fifty one whose job it was to quote close gaps unquote.

(24:23):
What does that mean? People means? People give him? Is
he a cleaner? Does he fix the fence gaps? In defense?
Like I was just apparently that that's the only information
I have is that he called and said he was
there to close the gaps, and that he had pulsed
to the network with an E M P H. But
of course if he if he had actually pulsed it

(24:43):
with an MP, then it wouldn't have been back up
in thirty minutes, right right? Yeah? Yeah, especially, and but
then you know a couple other callers. The problem with
the live call in format is that you can be
listening to the show and think, ah, I will call
and say I saw the same thing exactly and cranking
them all. Yeah. So a few other people I guess

(25:04):
called that night. Again, I didn't hear this on that
on the episode that I listened to. But could you
listen to this? I did miss broad into this broadcast. Yeah,
and it recently. And just so, I mean, you didn't
listen to it at the time. You listen to it
as you're doing the research. I was ten when this happens.
I was going to say, you know, I just want
to clarify that for people like, well, god, it's been
a long time your memory. No, I listened to it

(25:28):
like today, um and it. I didn't hear any of
that stuff. But hey, but apparently some people called him
and said, oh, yeah, no, I saw an EMP or
like I. One of the guys said apparently allegedly said, uh,
oh yeah, I have a wall of firewall up around
all of my things that are sensitive to E m

(25:49):
p s, but I saw an EMP bounce up into
the clouds off of my like firewalls or something. I
don't know, man, as you using words that you don't
know the meaning it really is. It's just putting English
words together. I mean, I didn't know anybody could see

(26:10):
in the MP's well, by the way, Yeah, for those
of you who know know what the MP is, it's
electromagnetic pulse. Uh. That's the kind of thing that can
be reproduced like artificially. Like the military is working on
a directed energy weapon that can do this. But it's energy,
not light, not a light energy yeah, not light. Yeah.
So any MP is produced by a nuclear explosion. Um,

(26:31):
and it's also can be produced by just a solar flare.
All kinds of things can overload and and fry or
delicate electronic devices. Did you see did you see Oceans twelve? Yes?
I have not seen that yet. If you saw, you
know what an MP is. Yeah, right, and that's clarified.
Set it off, I know you do. Yeah. Anyways, some

(26:53):
of you may be familiar with this story and you
may be a little confused about why we might talk
about it. And for those of you who don't know
why they might be confused, it's because on April a
man calling himself Brian called into the east of the
Rockies line and says that he was the Area fifty

(27:13):
one caller and that it was all a hoax. He
says that had the call not then cut off, the
whole thing would have blown over and no one would
have been the wiser. He says that he often called
wild card or themed lines on the Art Bell Show,
doing quote unquote fun characters, wacky characters, uh, and that
this was just one of those, and that you know,

(27:35):
if it hadn't been interrupted in the middle of it,
everybody would have just written it off. And of course,
Art being an intelligent human being to that point, says, Okay,
so why if it was a hoax, why did we
get knocked off the air? That's a good question, a
good question, and um Brian of course has no answer. Yeah.
And they also wanted to, like pi Ryan down on

(27:56):
like what they talked did they ask like what they
talked about like just before but also after they got
knocked off the air. No, I didn't hear that part. No,
I don't remember that being a thing. I don't think
he asked him like what did we talk about? He
wanted him to reproduce the character. Yeah, he just wanted
to see if he if this guy could prove to
him that he was a and he does try. Uh,

(28:20):
we'll talk a little bit about our individual feelings about
said call, but again, since we can play it, we
may as well, So we're just gonna play a little bit.
Any buttons running. I always get very nervous when when
I call you. I'm Brian, I hung up on your
last week. I see, and uh, I just figured, damn
the torpedoes. I'll just do this and let the chips

(28:44):
fall where they will. Um, everybody, I am the Area
fifty one caller. Um, that's that's my statement. And let
you or whatever tear it apart. You claim you're the
Area fifty one. I I am the man. How do
you account for the fact Area fifty one that part

(29:06):
of the way through your spiel the satellite went down.
I have no idea, and it scared the heb gbs
out of me that night. I've called a number of
times on your specialty, lying nights, doing different and all
kind of wacky characters. And that's all that one was
supposed to be. And if the call had been completed,

(29:27):
it would have been ancient history by now. And has
it Has it occurred to you as Barbara Mars Hubbard
suggested tonight that perhaps if you're really what you say
you are, you created the reality of the rest of
the situation and took down my satellite. That scares the
heb gbs out of me because it means that what

(29:49):
I was saying was somehow correct and it was fabrication,
kind of creating, creating a reality. Yeah. If if that
was the case, I humbly apologize to you, because I
love your show and the last thing I would ever
want to do is not being all the air m
So what what what can I do to prove my

(30:11):
claim here? Well? I guess you could. You could you
could give us a little of what you gave us then,
so that we could hear it and know it to
be you. Are you sure you want me to do that?
I'm positive? Don't please, I don't want you to ask

(30:33):
me to do this. Um, if if I start doing that, guy, Okay,
so now you've heard that too, and I've got to
do a passible limitation there. I I agree with that.
Steve has some other thoughts, but he's going to keep
his mouth shut for a little while. Steve, Yes, The

(30:56):
thing is is, I've read some reports that this guy
called back even a few months after this April nineteen call,
after the confession and says, oh, no, I was brainwashed
and told that I had to do that they would
kill me. But my first call was true. And then
they were trying to cover their tracks, which is the

(31:19):
perfect con Oh, it absolutely is. And also I've never
seen a date attached to this claim that he called back,
so I wasn't able to. I looked around the time.
I thought it might have been. But these episodes are like,
his show was three hours long, and frankly, I just
don't have the time to listen to a lot of
a couple of months worth of three hour episodes. Why

(31:42):
don't you quit your job? I art was on how
many days a week? Every day? Seven days a week?
Five that love? That's that's a lot. Actually, I assume
the commercials were pruned out, so it was probably more
like about an hour and a half. It's two hours solid,

(32:02):
two hours of content at least. Yeah, yeah, it's not
that's hard to find. Yeah, and especially since it's just,
you know, a couple of minute call and the whole thing.
This guy Brian, maybe not Brian, maybe somebody else did
call a different show called Fade to Black seventeen years later,
and he sounded real crazy. Again. It may not again,

(32:23):
it may not have been him with a call in show.
There's you can only take a person at their word.
But he he sounded real crazy, like extra crazy, like
scary crazy. But that was the last we've heard from him.
But there have been these reports of sporadically this same
person or somebody imitating this person calling in to the

(32:47):
art Bell Show, and then subsequent shows that are connected
to the Art Bell Show or any of art Bell shows.
So at this point we have more than one mystery. Yeah,
am I correct? Yeah? Yeah, we do. Okay, So stellar
what what? What specifically are the mysteries at this point.
Here's the two mysteries that we've been talking about. One

(33:08):
is is the caller a hoax? And two what kicked
the broadcast off the air? Okay? Okay, cool, cool cool.
So now that we've talked about what our mysteries are,
we have to take another step back and talk a
little bit about Oh goody, I thought we were going
to talk about it. No, it's not an episode about
at one, but we do have to talk a little bit.

(33:31):
We have a little bit Yeah. As I said, Jonathan
did quite a literal seventeen page synopsis of Jonathan our
expert Omason expert, Yeah, which was super helpful and I'm
not going to even touch like of the information that
he gave us. It was huge and I read every

(33:55):
single word of it and we'll use it later at one.
Um is top secret, like so top secret that it
wasn't until two thousand thirteen that the CIA slash the
government officially recognized that it was a real thing publicly. Yeah.
They Until then, the government had been saying, no, there's

(34:18):
nothing there, what are you talking about? Even though this
entire air force based complex is huge. The US government
actually owns of Nevada, the state of Nevada, they do,
and Area fifty one, for those of you who don't know,
is part of the Nevada Test and Training Range in
book You Guessed It, Nevada if the testing facility made

(34:42):
up of two areas, the Nellis Air Force Range and
the Nevada Test Site. Together they form the quote largest
contiguous air and ground space available for peacetime military operations
in the free world unquote, which is four thousand five
it and thirty one square miles, which equates to eleven thousand,

(35:06):
seven hundred and thirty five square kilometers for those of
you who are not Miley inclined, that's the technical term.
So literally the rest of the world is only three
countries that used the system. Where Yeah. UM. For for comparison,
if anybody's interested, Uh, the entire state of Connecticut is

(35:28):
five thousand, five hundred and forty three square miles, so
they're almost bit smaller than that entire state. Yea should
be a state of their own. Yeah. Originally Nevada as
a donut state originally. Uh. This base was broken into

(35:50):
areas which were numbered, which is why Area fifty one
is called are one. It was the fifty first area
that you see. Area twelve you see yet it's it's
as a very military way to go about up for military. Uh.
And then there are facilities within Area fifty one. One

(36:10):
is the Homey Airport, and then there's a salt flat
that they use for the testing facility, which is called
Groom Lake. UM. And as a fun aside, when the
facility was being built there, they called it Paradise Ranch
so that the workers would come work there because they
didn't want to call it like some weird unnamed secret
test facility. They were like, it's Paradise Ranch. Build this

(36:34):
giants salty. So that's why sometimes you'll see it called
Paradise Ranch or Paradise or the Ranch. UM. It's officially,
I think officially they call it Dreamland. That's its official nickname,
but everybody else calls it Paradise Ranch. Also important, there's
a military contractor firm called Edgerton, Gurmashausen and greer Ink

(36:59):
or G and G, which was wholly owned by the
shadowy Carlisle Group from one they're owned by a different
contracting firm. Military contracting firm E G and G also
operated Janet for a while, which is one of the
most fun parts of the military for me. People think

(37:20):
that it's just it's an acronym for just another non
existent terminal, which is UM operated out of Las Vegas
McCarron International Airport, and it's the U. S. Air Forces
small fleet of passenger planes that applies mill military personnel
from mccaren to like Area fifty one in places like that.
Of these guys, yeah, they've got some seven thirty seven's

(37:41):
and their their planes are there notable there for their
their red and white. Yeah, they have been spotted mostly
in Vegas. But yeah, they're very distinctly made so that
you can, you know, like somebody at the Air Force
can look up and say, oh, yeah that planet, that
plane is supposed to be landing here, or oh no,
that's not all right. Steve looks like he has things

(38:01):
to say. Oh no, I was just gonna I just
just suddenly popped into my head, is I realized it's
not at air at least that I know of. But
a guy I know, his son was stationed in Nevada
in somewhere in this space, and it has the ranges.
And it's a funny story is that, you know, they

(38:22):
have their testing ranges where they're blowing stuff up and
they're shooting munitions off all the time, and they all
enjoyed great self service with Verizon, and then one day
their self service was toast. It didn't work. The Eventually
they figured out that what happened is somehow and I

(38:44):
think it's this is the right areas that Verizon had
put a tower inside of the range accidentally somehow, you know,
plat map whatever, somebody got their location wrong, and so
the tower was actually on the base in the range
and they blew it up and was doing a bunch

(39:06):
of hand waving of US military you've got to pay
for this, and US military going, you built it on
our land, which happens to be a firing range. I
think you know where you can put your antenna and
obviously never paid. This episode brought to you by a
Verizon wireless No, we don't, but no. I thought it

(39:30):
was hilarious that it was one of these ranges and
it just somebody put the tower in the wrong but
you know, the munitions could have easily overshot the range.
That's what happened. Area. You can look up pictures if
you haven't ever. It's real easy. It's just desert and
there's just signs. And I mean, as far as I
can tell, the reports are if you accidentally wander into

(39:52):
the wrong place, somebody will drive up to you in
a truck and say, uh, nope, get out of here,
get out of here, and you go, well, I don't know,
they go no, seriously, gun point out you get out
of here. But I've never had that happened. And I imagined,
if it's on a range, at the firing range, it's
for girls. Oh yeah, sure, So Okay, so we've gotten

(40:12):
way off topic because we were talking about E. G
and G. And the reason that that's important is they
provide technical and development services to the government, um since
pretty much forever, like starting in like World War two, forever.
In fact, they did contract at Groom Lake starting in
the fifties working on atomic weapons and aircraft. H And

(40:33):
it's important because this sets a little bit of a
president's because in the mid ninety nineties it's accepted lore.
I couldn't again you know, of course you can't find
it corroborated anywhere, but it's like very well accepted mainstream
lore that there was a class action lawsuit filed against
US government by current and former employees of E. G
and G. Well, we'll talk about that in a second,

(40:57):
since everything here, you know, every one at all is
top secret or above top secret. And there's some discussion
about how some hogwash about the president isn't even briefed
on the things that happened at Area fifty one, which
is total bunk because that's stupid. Will Smith movie, Yeah
that had the aliens in the Yeah, it might be

(41:18):
one of those things and not actually bring up to
the president. But if the President asked about it. Maybe
who wouldn't I mean my first question. Yeah, no, Anyways,
since it is so top secret, even the trash at
the facility is top secret, Like you could throw away
wrapper and they're like, that's top secret, and they burn
it all. They run all the trash, and this has

(41:39):
caused some very serious health I can't imagine. Yeah, it
turns out it's actually a lot of health problems. And
apparently did an episode on this, but I wasn't able
to find that. I did read an article UM on
the Washington Post that was called Area fifty one. Colin's
Secrets under the Sun details a lot of this stuff

(42:01):
that UM construction workers and people who are local and
people who claim to have worked in area fift to
one Groom Lake sort of area. It's very well documented
they do have health problems, and it's most likely, of course,
it's from that stuff, because like, why wouldn't it be
If you're burning trash, you're burning a lot of stuff
that you shouldn't be in Haley. Yeah, so this sets
some precedents for employees having to be put on medical leave,

(42:25):
whether or not that was common knowledge in the mid
to late nine nineties, is up to you. That's so
that's why that aside was important. Okay, cool, So well
let's talk about why the broadcast drop first. There's a
lot of theories about what caused the broadcast to drop,
so we'll talk about that first, because I I don't

(42:45):
know why. That just seems to flow better that I
think that we can get to. So I agree with this,
and we have to decide if, if why the broadcast
went down, to decide if it was a hoax. True, yeah,
well actually they could be unrelated. No, there's no such
thing as a coincidence. As I mentioned, Art Bell is
a very experienced broadcaster, and for him to publicly and

(43:08):
openly say that he doesn't know what happened, which he
maintains still to this day, I think it's pretty big.
I personally like, just because I guess he's a hero
of mine. It turns out or something choose to believe
that if it were something mundane like a like an
accident happened in the studio or you know, something like

(43:28):
that simple text, he would he would come out and say, Oh,
somebody you know, for instance, Joe's theory that will discuss
tripped over a wire. He would say some due tripped
over a power cards. Sorry, guys, that sucked, but it happened.
But it's also in his interest to build the theater,
because what he does is make theater. And I'm not

(43:51):
I'm not saying theater in the way of belittal, but
he has an audience who wants to hear a certain
kind of thing, and it is kind of a beautiful opportunity.
I just think that he would have said that later.
Um sure, the first couple of years short when somebody

(44:12):
asks him thirty years later, hey did this happen? And
he says, hmmm, he's not saying that, and we'll get
to that. But so theory number one, Joe's theory. Somebody
tripped over a wire and accidentally not plugged the transmitter
or something. Yeah, so let me ask you this. Um.
So it went out and then the network put archives,

(44:36):
put the archives sound archives audio. That's what it sounded
like happened on the broadcast because his first caller when
they start broadcasting again, says, oh, it was weird. I
was I was hearing this frantic caller and then suddenly
I was hearing this other show which the I guess
the channel the AM channel put on there. That seems

(44:58):
wrong to me. Well, what I'm trying to understand. I
mean it was so he's broadcasting out of a building
that is a radio station, which is an affiliate of
the network that he's on. Correct, Sure, Okay, I don't
know how set up. And so they either have a
landline link to the network or they have a satellite

(45:18):
up link. Satellite, so it was a network and not
his local affiliate that plugged in the archives audio, right,
that would make the most that would otherwise. I mean,
they were broadcast on hundreds of different channels. It wasn't
like one channel was just a radio show on FM
channels on affiliate channels around the country. Yeah, but yeah,

(45:41):
he had a I know, he had a satellite up
There was a satellite up link and all that stuff. Okay,
I just wanted to clarify all that. Yeah, No, it's
a good clarification for sure. Yeah. So next theory is
the official line the satellite lost its earth link. I
did some digging on this because that sounds like a
thing that shouldn't really happen. Um, But it does. They

(46:06):
are complicated, but they do actually track this sort of stuff.
You can find a record, um, even specific to the satellite.
I did look up which satellite they were using for
this specific one. It's a satellite called g E one
slash AMC one, and apparently, according to the official line,
it lost its earth lock, rolled into an attitude that

(46:27):
didn't point to the station up links anymore, which apparently
caused about fifty channels to go off air for about
thirty minutes. There were a couple shows stations that went
off for much longer than that. Reportedly, Again, I didn't
find any reports of other channels going down that night,
but that was the official line. And he even says
the next day, um, I listened to the show that

(46:48):
happened on September twelve, and he says, this is what
this is what our engineers told us happened. There's he
names another show. He says they were off for like
an hour. So that was the official line. I guess
I kind of accept that. Well, I was looking for
any information out there, and there's a there isn't anything

(47:10):
pertaining specifically to this satellite, but there is actually a
ton of information about satellites, and I've did I dug
into that because while I know this drives people crazy,
I personally totally buy the official line. Yeah. I mean

(47:30):
that's just the way I am. And I know that
I've got some stuff that I looked into, and I
know Joe and I were digging into some stuff earlier
today boilering me. Okay, whatever, a little, a little bit okay.
So it turns out satellites go of course pretty easily,
because we've talked about this before with the UM the
Black Night satellite. That satellites they run basically around the

(47:51):
equator and it's a ring and then there's a ring
around that. So there's two set rings of satellites around
their planet. That's it would have been in one of
those rings. But things that throw them off course are
geomagnetic storms because they screw with the electronics and that's ah,
but it doesn't that's not going to really throw it
off course. It's orbit. It's going to remain unchanged. Well,

(48:14):
but if they are trying to correct anything in an orbit,
or if it initiates an orbital change by screwing up
the software, because geomagnetic pulses are their solar flares, right,
Because we were looking at this and there was a
notable one on the tent. So one day before it

(48:34):
was one of the was the top fifty. Yeah, in
the list of the top the top. So so it's
a big storm. And so that can screw up the
program because the things that happened with the software is
that there can be glitches where it tries to do
things that it shouldn't be or it stops responding to command.

(48:55):
So ground command says, nop do this, and it says
I can't. I can't rive gets an attitude problem exactly. Um,
So that can happen. And the way that they move
satellites is they have a thing inside of them which
is called they call them momentum wheels, their flywheels. Correct, Yeah,

(49:17):
they're well, yeah, they're just they rotate and there's three
of them and this is the simple, simple version. But
there's three of them, one on each axis of the satellite.
And what happens is the problem is that if it spins,
it'll spin clockwise or counterclockwise version. Keep it as simple
as that. And it has a maximum rpm. And once
it reaches its maximum rpm to try to force the

(49:41):
rotation or or stop the rotation, then that reaches what
they call for satellites, the saturation. So let's say that
the wheel is spinning at maximum and then something happens
to stop that. Well, the damn thing is then going
to start twisting in space and roll out of its orbit.

(50:04):
Because that's what happened, is it rolled. Satellite is pointing
down the dish, pointing to where it's supposed to be,
and then it rolls in one of three directions, whichever
the case may be, but enough that it loses the link.
So it's a it's a role is the problem. Yeah,
it's like again, it stays in the same stays in

(50:25):
the correct or, but it just isn't pointing exactly what
it needs to be pointing any right. And the other
thing that happens with satellites, and this isn't anything. I mean,
the official explanation is that it uh, it went, it
lost its locket rotated. But I've also read about satellites
that get a power surge, and one of their safety

(50:48):
functions when they get a surge is to shut down
and dump all of the battery power to just you know,
to get rid of it and start from a new charge,
which means it stops transmitting, which is a problem. And
this is the reason I bring this up is that
there are in the last couple of years a couple

(51:09):
of satellites that we know have had problems. And so
when we talk about, well, some of these other affiliates
didn't go down, well, these affiliates may have. I'm not
gonna I don't want to say that the folks that
were working with Art or whoever he was he was
working with, weren't necessarily the best, but they may not
have been aware of the fact that there was a
problem with the satellite, because sometimes you can't fix them,

(51:33):
and they slowly drift and they'll drift into another satellites
orbit and get screwed up or screw that satellite up,
and a lot of times what they do is they
switch the feeds from one to another. But if you're
not paying attention and you don't know if that's going
to happen, the thing just stops working and it's in space.
It's not like you can just send the cable guy

(51:54):
up there and fix it. So then you're off the
air for a half hour until either it drifts out
or range, or it comes back online, or you switch
to a different satellite. Like there's all these really really
logical reasons why the stupid thing just went out, and
it doesn't happen all the time, which is why for
Coast to coast it's only happened once. Yeah, I guess

(52:18):
we can talk about this a little bit when we
start talking about is it a hoax or not? But again,
we talked a lot about coincidences, and this is a
hell of a coincidence, you know, and I guess I'm not.
I'm I'm happy to say this collar was a hoax,
and we'll talk about all the reasons why am I not?

(52:39):
And I'm happy to say that it just happened that
the satellite happened to lose its Earth block at exactly
that right time. But like what a time to lose that,
you know, if it had happened five minutes beforehand, when
he was in an ad or half an hour beforehand,
when he was on the line with some other caller

(53:00):
or some interview, we'd never give out, which which is
the same thing that we've heard from a lot of
the reading had a lot of folks, and I kind
of agree, like I think that it's only the coincidence
that has made this stand probably, but let's keep talking
about what happened before, you you know, really lost boilery.

(53:22):
Me can't do broadcast things anymore. You guys always ruin
it for me. Okay. So next up is UM the
conspiracy and e MP from the US Air Force as previously,
like I talked about earlier, from Verizon Wireless definitely not

(53:43):
our sponsor. So yeah, there's some conspiracy theories that say
that the US Air Force was listening into the broadcast
and that the caller was speaking truth, so they had
to knock Art off the air. I don't give this
one much stock, specifically, if it was just this like
e m P, it wouldn't have knocked all fifty of

(54:04):
these things out, although maybe they sent an electrical surge
up to this one satellite. Satellite satellite basically be a laser. Yeah,
they would have to use They could use harp. I
don't know probably that right that herp is one of
the things that people talk about this. If you don't
know what harp is, go google it. Not not the

(54:24):
musical instrument a A r P A A r P
or h A r r P. I can't remember one
of the two. Someday someday we will probably cover that too,
but not to But yeah, I say the so he
this is this whole thing. Is he e m P
d art bell? So that does that mean the e

(54:45):
MP arts equipment at the at the affiliate. Good question, Joe.
And how the hell did he move is his his
MP gear into this? Good question, Joe. Actually, one of
the callers earlier that night says, so, um, this September
eleven broadcast was meant to actually happen on September the

(55:05):
Area one open show, but Art was sick that day.
He had totally you know, said he'd been saying for
weeks and months, maybe even that we're going to do
an Area fifty one caller show. We're gonna do it.
It's gonna be on this night. It's gonna be on
this night. And then he got sick, so they didn't
do it on that night. Then the next night, and
one of the earlier callers from that September eleven show said, oh, yeah, no,

(55:27):
we knew you weren't gonna do it last night, so
I just went to bed, so I called you. I
called you tonight instead. We knew the government that I
worked for, we knew. So I guess by following that logic,
the Air Force could have known that they were going
to do that show, and that it was possible that
this guy they had left out, you know, let out
no no nice try though. Yeah, I know that the military,

(55:52):
our military has been working on directed energy weapons and
essentially they want to control the m people. It's weapons,
so you can take take out out of the aircraft
of course, you and other electronics. Yeah, yeah, it's a
cool idea, it is. I don't know if we had
the operational versions of that stuff at I don't think.
You don't know, maybe we did. Yeah, that's true. The
one other theory that I have we actually we're actually okay,

(56:13):
we are going to talk about it is an interesting one.
And like, this show is not about Area fifty one
or coast Coast a m. This is not a show
about actualization. However, it just so happens that when the
caller called back in April, Art had been interviewing a
woman named Barbara Marks Hubbard, who's a futurist and a

(56:39):
yeah for the confession call, it's a she's a co
creationist or something like that. You can look all this
stuff up, just google her and read about her stuff.
But one of the things she was apparently talking about
was that you can turn reality into the thing that
you've been visualizing, if under the right circumstances. I don't know.

(57:04):
Don't look at me like that. This is the I
think positive Well, it takes further than that. It's that's
the simplified, at the most simplified version. Yeah, I think
it's an interesting concept. Whether or not I believe it,
who knows not you um, but Art does suggest when
this caller comes back, calls back to confess in April,

(57:29):
he says, well, what do you think about what Art
is talking about? And he said, you know what, it's
possible that I just was creating this character that was
so freaked out that it knocked your show off the air,
which sounds wrong to me, but I'm willing to mention it.
At least we've mentioned weirder, more far out things. So

(57:52):
those are the theories about what knocked the broadcast off
the air. We'll talk about whether or not this was
a hoax. So yeah, I mean, obviously it's a hoax, right,
I mean, he called back and he said it himself,
he said he made it up. He did well, or
somebody who sounds like yeah, there's that, I have to
say what he swung into his invitation of the previous color.

(58:13):
He did a pretty credible did I have some problem
he sounds? It's his impression. The first time I heard it,
I laughed actually, because it sounded like he was trying
really hard to sound like the guy before. Does that
make sense? Yes? Yeah, and I work very hard to imitate. Yeah,
And it sounded almost funny because it was like a

(58:36):
funny imitation a little bit of this guy's freak out.
But I know that Steve, you played with the audio
a little bit and you did get it to sound
pretty dang close. Yeah. That The hard part is when
you listen to this and you get the YouTube videos.
Of course, you can't play him one right next to
each other, and that makes it hard. And the original
call is in a much lower quality than the second call.

(58:59):
I I don't know why that is, whether it's the
phone line, the phone whatever, it doesn't matter. The quality
is different, so they they sound very different. But I
was able to degrade the confession call so that it
matched as roughly as one could do it very simply,
and they sound similar. But you know, the thing that

(59:21):
I keyed in on it wasn't his voice, because the voices,
I mean it's close, and would you not agree it's close?
But I mean, like you guys can sound make your
voices sound kind of the same. I mean, but what
I keyed on is we all have a speech pattern
and a speech rate, and if you listen to that guy,

(59:42):
he takes a lot of stuttered gaspings. He makes a
lot of stutters and gasps, and he doesn't very repetitive
and kind of close, and they are to me, they
that sounds exactly the same. And he does it many
times in the first call, and he doesn't I think
at least twice in the second call, I guess, and

(01:00:04):
I cut those up. I actually cut him out and
tried to play him in in sequence to each other,
and it is almost identical. And that's not something that
you can just change or mimic very easily because it's
a breathing pattern and the way you know your voice,
your diaphragm, all that stuff works like they're So that's

(01:00:25):
why I was like, oh, it's the same dude, totally
same dude. The voice changes because of the quality, but
there are these things that he can't control. There have
been moments in like listening and relistening where I've said
to myself, I could probably do a fair impression of this.
I can't right now if I haven't actually been listening
to it. But can everybody stop Devin do it? No, No,

(01:00:48):
I can't do it. You really want me to do that?
It was pretty good. It was good, No realistic. I'm
gonna put you in with the same effect do Yeah,
it's going to be perfect yet. So another point to
bring up is at one point that when the caller
calls back, he's he says, when you listen to his

(01:01:11):
call back, it's really weird. Uh. The first callback in
in he says, Okay, I hung up on you a
week ago. So he had apparently been trying to call
um and got kept getting freaked out, and he says
he says things like I just don't I just didn't
know what you wanted from the art, or um, I'm

(01:01:33):
all better now, or either's just like little bits. Hang
on just a second. So the first call happened in
September eleven, and the confession call happened in April. So

(01:01:53):
that does bring up a question because he said I
called you last week. Can you hung up on you?
Know I hung up on you or I hung up
on you. I'm sorry flipping around, which then I could
never find the dates. I had of real difficult time
finding the dates of the broadcast. But that, to me

(01:02:14):
makes me feel like the confession call should be slid
back in time into in the second or third week
of September. If he says I called, I called last
week and I hung up on you, I'm presuming he
meant I hung up on you when I was doing
my wacky, crazy character and at the end of my

(01:02:35):
crazy character call, I hung up. The long would seem
that way, but I listened to the April episode of
Coast Coast AM that is when he called from the
east of the Rockies line and said, I hung up
on you last week. I want to confess I am
the area fifty one caller in that event, and he

(01:02:55):
was just frustrated about like not being on hold for
hours or something like. I mean, I think that, he says.
He at one point mentions that he's called a fair
number of times to do you know the way, But
he also he says, for the last year it's been
it's been crazy, And he says, I called you last
week and I hung up on you because I was
nervous basically, So I don't know. Okay, that that solves

(01:03:20):
the time frame question. You yeah, absolutely, yeah, because that's
that was one of the things I always presumed, incorrectly
obviously that he was infection was a week or so late. No,
And he maintains throughout the entire thing, he maintains that
he has no idea what caused the shutdown the shutdown,

(01:03:40):
and as far as I read it, it's hard to tell.
It's it's hard to tell if the phone line stayed
up through the entire thing, or if his entire performance,
if it was a performance, yeah, or if they shut
down with whatever was going on or what was happening again,
because I don't I can't find anything from art Um

(01:04:02):
or any of the producers or anything like that, and
he firsthand accounts. It's all just kind of conjecture of
what happened during those thirty minutes of of that. But
he does, I mean, you know, he says some weird
things when he calls back, things like he does say
I'm all better now, and he says, I don't know
what you wanted for me, And that has led some

(01:04:22):
people to think that Art was even coaching him. It
could be some of the stuff could actually be just
set ups. You know, he actually has people call in
and sationalist again, But I don't to be fair, the
fans of Coast Coast AM were perfectly capable and willing
and did do that stuff all all on their own.

(01:04:43):
There was no need for art Bell to fabricate any
of that stuff. But he might have picked out a
few who seemed rather talented at it. I mean, let's
let's be honest. I've I don't know, I think you
two have listened to podcasts. I mean, let's just look
look at podcasts. There are podcasts that take phone calls,
either live or pre or they record them, and I've

(01:05:08):
listened to some of them, and after a while it's
become obvious that the people that are calling in are
their friends. Yea, they have coach about what to say. Now,
let's take this to a broader scale of a guy
who's actually got a nationwide show, and you find somebody's

(01:05:28):
pretty good at this, let's work with them, let's make
let's see where we can get out of it. So, actually,
on on the this is a hook side. Um, there's
as His name is Brian Cook. He's a comedian. He's
a stam a comedian, and he has since claimed I'm
the Brian who was the Brian J. L. Cook something

(01:05:48):
like that. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't really look
very much into him, I'll be honest, I did. I
did a little bit of looking, and I couldn't find
a whole lot on him. Well, you know what the
thing is, though, I was, actually I was really peeved,
is that this guy, amongst all the other things that
he does, evidently he's involved through image comics making a

(01:06:09):
comic as a several different comics, and I was trying
to get to a store that had one of these
so that I could read it, to see how good
he was at creating a story and to see what
his role was. You know, if he's the inker, because
if he's the inchor his story creating ability doesn't count.

(01:06:31):
But if he's a writer or anything like that, then
that would give him some credit. Unfortunately, we had some
weird weather here and it kind of stuck me in
my house and I couldn't get to a store. I
got to some stores, but they didn't have it. I
couldn't call him the city. But the point is that's
that was what really made me curious, is because they

(01:06:52):
see two reasons that this guy would claim it. Either
A he is a good creative and he did it,
or be he's a good enough creative to realize when
you need to latch onto a really good story to
give yourself a little more CREDA. But the thing about
it is is his his story, they told Art, at

(01:07:14):
least before he got cut off, was not particularly creative
or original. He worked at extra dimensional beings, and you know,
we're in extreme peril. The government could save us. This
is all my story. My story capability is like him
realizing after the fact he can capitalize on it and
build it. I mean I could. I could call into
shows like this all the time and crank him once

(01:07:36):
a week if I wanted to. But I think the
genius if it is a hoax, is admitting it's a hoax,
because nothing gives a hoax more legs than saying, oh no,
it was really just totally a hoax. Sorry, folks, was
it real? I swear it's really. They've got a gun

(01:07:57):
into my head and all that stuff. So that's that's
where that's where I'm trying it. But I couldn't his
you know, his information on him as kind of shoddy
and obviously self written. Yeah uh so, yeah. The only
other thing I'll mentioned, I guess, and the like hoax.
I don't know. We're kind of learning the lines between
was it a hoax? Was it not a hoax? Um.
He mentions they're going to triangulate this call real soon.

(01:08:19):
But like, by the late nineties, cell phones were definitely thing,
and prepaid cellphones or burner cell phones were absolutely a thing.
And he he essentially claimed to have been a technician
at Area fifty one, which may mean that he would
be up on the latest technology, which one would assume
if you're in a call into a show like this,
he would like grab a burner and just toss it.

(01:08:41):
He also, but that's also again, that's let's talk about
this as if it's totally real. Okay, this guy is
in an utter state of panic and sounds like he's
in some kind of psychotic break. And I'm not gonna
say what caused it or what it is, but he's
in some kind of break. Now, people that are in
those sitch wations don't think clearly. And then we've also

(01:09:03):
got to I can't believe I'm doing this but we've
also got to bring into that. Well, if the government
really does have the ability to knock art bell bel
art bells satellite, of course, well then they're so technologically
advanced then the rest of us that of course they've

(01:09:23):
got away to track a cell phone regardless of if
it's a burner or not. Dun, dude, Like, if you
have a phone number, you can triangulate the call according
to c S. I um like, no matter what, in
resources to that spot to grab the guy and and
and you know, Haullow off to somewhere to be brainwashed.

(01:09:45):
Well that's a different story, absolutely, Yeah. I mean, I
guess the theory could be that they had been tracking
him across the country the entire time, and they just
needed his exact location and the call was just long
enough that they found his exactly. I mean, you can
go for hours. This is the proverbial rabbit hole it is.
Here's here's the delio. I don't think, I think for

(01:10:07):
Joe's corner man. Yeah, no, I mean, by if if
they if the government actually did take the guy to
either murder him or maybe grab him and brainwash him,
or threatening him and make him call back and claim
it was a hoax. Medication. Yeah, they called far more
attention to the whole thing. And think about it is

(01:10:28):
is people are talking about Area fifty one all the time.
Nobody takes it seriously. Nobody would have taken this seriously
if not for the signal and interruption, you know. So
this whole idea that you know that the government shutdown
their signal, it's like kind of that. I don't really
have a huge amount of respect for the government. I
think they're kind of dumb and inefficient most in most ways. Yeah,

(01:10:50):
but you know, the fact of the matter is, is
somebody in charge it Area fifty one cover up dot com?
Is it would probably be smart enough to not call
this kind of attention to their cause. Yeah. The other
reason I think it's a hoax. This happened more than
eighteen years ago, and according to the call in frantic
collar U, the Earth was under imminent threat from extra

(01:11:13):
dimensional beings. Well, so far, we're all still alive and
the extra dimensional beings haven't slaughtered billions of us happening
there's yeah, that's nothing I can see. Last of all,
is it doesn't make any sense because this whole idea
that will slaughter will slaughter almost everybody, and our at
least will like that a lot better because fewer people

(01:11:33):
are easier to control. Well, you have a fewer people
means if you if you do await with the population,
that means you don't have this thing called an economy anymore.
It means you know, so this is this is the
new world Order. It's actually interesting. One of the websites
I read um so fascinating. It was about how apparently

(01:11:54):
ten of the population is easily hypnotized God, and then
the other nine could be hypnotized by using a drug,
a mind controlling drug like fluoride in the water that
the general population has to consume, and then they are
more subjectible to hypnotism, and that we are all going
to be cold, so that we're all just in these

(01:12:16):
major places where we can all be hypnotized and do
the biddings of the new world Order. So obviously that's
a real thing that's happening right now. And if you
would just wake up sheeople, you would know. I'm opposed
to fluoride the water supplies simply because I think people
should just brush their fragrant teeth. Well, yeah, I mean,
the good news is is that Portland is immune to

(01:12:38):
being hypnotized because we don't have florid in our water.
Didn't do a hypnotist and their junk. Yeah, I know
you think that, Rosebud, But yeah, yeah, so yeah, I
guess that's the whole story. There's you know, pros and
cons was a home Okay, but where's the where's the

(01:12:59):
it's not hoax side? I mean, is that where you're going?
I mean, we've kind of been talking about it, We've
just been debating it. Really, I just wanted to make
sure that we didn't there's no solid argument for it's
not a hoax. Okay, I was pretty sure that, but
I just want to make sure. I mean, the most
solid argument you can come up with is that it's
a different guy that calls in the second time, and

(01:13:19):
that the first guy was taken care of and they
just found a guy who sounded kind of like him,
and the third guy years later was I don't know,
maybe the original guy with I don't know, because I
don't think have we clarified here? Is that the seventeen
years later? Oh yeah, we I guess we didn't. Seventeen
years later he calls back on and yeah, fade to black.
We'll post a link to that one. I didn't want

(01:13:41):
to play the audio, but he ye crazy, like actually
like yelling. The host are saying, okay, you gotta calm down, dude,
you're yelling, and he's like, I'm not yelling, and you're like,
oh my god, it's right now. It was scary. It
was startling to listen to that until it finishes in
Then you realize what it is and it turns into

(01:14:02):
an interview with this guy who is the comic book dude,
is it a cook? Yeah, jail, yeah, yeah. So it's uh,
that's the interesting bit of seventeen years later, I guess.
And that's the part where I was getting at where
I'm saying he could be a really brilliant creative in

(01:14:24):
terms of let me drag up this thing from so
long ago that people have said, dude, you know you
sound like that guy, and let me go ahead and
use that because he goes to I mean, he writes
a comic and you see him at comic book conventions.
There's so many videos of him at comic book conventions.
You know he's using that to drum up. You wouldn't.

(01:14:46):
So that's that's why I say he possibly, Yeah, that's fair. Yeah,
So I just I just think it's a really big coincidence.
I know, you know, Steve and I were kind of
talking about before we started recording. I don't believe I
believe it was a hoax this call, and I believe
that the satellite just happened to lose its Earth track

(01:15:07):
at that particular moment. But I do think it is
one heck of a coincidence that it happened to happen
at the same time. I mean, it is true. It's
it could have gone off five minutes before and nobody
would really care, you know, and it's it's just so
crazy that this happened at this time. But in fairness,
it happened to fifty other channels, and we've like it
doesn't matter. Yeah, because they were talking about Martha Stewards

(01:15:32):
duck soup recipe, or like, the thing that was in
the news that year was that the state of Princess
Diana was going to sue the hotel that the driver
had been drinking at. That was what was in the
news at that point, So they were maybe talking about that.
I don't know, maybe maybe, oh my god, maybe it
was actually the British royal family because they didn't have

(01:15:52):
everybody else talking about it. What what happened with that lawsuit?
By the way, I don't know. You know what this
is also not a show about. Is Princess Diana did that? Yeah?
So I never want to do it again. I don't know.
Do you guys? You guys disagreed? You do you agree?
You think it was a hoax? What's up? Yeah? I
think that the call the call was a hoax and

(01:16:14):
it was just a coincidence. Yeah, that's what I think,
because again, this guy had really nothing to say. He
calls him, pretending to be in hysterics, and he says
some vague crap about extra dimensional beings and there's a
huge threat. YadA, YadA, YadA. Come on, dude, if you
were really an Area fifty one, you would actually have
some good choose the original information for us instead of

(01:16:34):
just as well. I guess. I will just point out
that this is in your frame of reference of in
two thousand and sixteen, versus less was out there about
or about Area fifty one. But I well, but but
out there doesn't matter. If he worked at Area fifty one,
the logic is he would be privy to what I'm

(01:16:58):
just saying, is that out there are means like that.
It could have seemed like the stuff he was saying.
He it was revelations, right, I got you verses now,
but I agree, I totally he should Yeah, if he
actually knew something about what was going on, he should
have said so. He would have said so he said that,

(01:17:19):
he said nothing but vague bs. Yeah, yeah, and so
there you go, Steve no. I I totally think that
it's a coincidence. I mean, if this guy had been
if it had been a different color. Five minutes later,
talking about the reptilians in the Flat World, we be
talking today about the art Bell Flat World broadcast interruption,

(01:17:42):
or if it had happened during a commercial break, nobody
would have given a yeah it doesn't. There are outages,
you know, I mean the TV stations and radio stations
getting knocked off the air temporarily for all kinds of reasons.
So this is this is the first. It's a consensus. Oh,
it's not a it's not first, it's a rarity. It's yeah,

(01:18:04):
So I think the lizard people did it. That's our show.
So if you want to some of the links, if
you'd like to listen to the seventeen years later quote
unquote broadcast. If you want to leave us a comment,
if you want to listen to the show, you can
do all those things at our website. That website is
Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Um. You can also find

(01:18:27):
swag type stuff there we'll call it swag type stuff,
and a link to our Patreon uh and our PayPal
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(01:18:51):
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(01:19:11):
You can find the link on our website, but you
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(01:19:33):
which was pretty interesting discussion. An email. The email, by
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(01:19:55):
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We literally have no way to Yeah, we're soaked on that. Yeah,
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you to the list. Just let us know what you

(01:20:15):
know a lot about. And all of that having been said,
we're gonna thank thank thank thank thank thank thank thank