on Art Bell (Apr 1 1999) - April Fool's Y2K

From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I did you all a good evening or a good morning, as the case may be, across this great land of ours.

Actually, commercially, from the Hawaiian and Tahitian Islands out west, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands,

tally-ho there in the Virgin Islands, actually all of them, south into South America, north all the way to the pole,

and worldwide on the internet, thanks to broadcast.com and Intel and, of course, our G2 streaming video,

which I trust is back up and running tonight.

If you want to see us actually do the show, as well as hear the program, you just go to my website, www.artbell.com,

download the G2 player, come back up, and you will get what I call almost television,

the most remarkable thing you've ever seen on the net.

I would like to welcome WNTK, New London, New Hampshire, 10 big kilowatts on 1020.

I'm sure they're heard all over the place.

We'll be, as a matter of fact, later in the morning doing an interview tomorrow morning on that radio station,

WNTK, New London, New Hampshire.

Also, we'd like to welcome KOTA, Rapid City, South Dakota, 5 kilowatts on 1380, a good regional signal,

and WSKY-FM in Gainesville, Florida.

Now, they are no less than 100,000 radiated watts on 97.3.

They call themselves the sky.

So, welcome to the sky.

Welcome to all of you, as the network continues to grow at an incredible, incredible pace.

Now, I will have a comment on Kosovo next hour, before Terence McKenna joins us.

We'll talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nigh, from east of the Rockies, dial 1.

800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.

First-time callers may reach out at area code 702-727-1222.

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To reach out from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the U.S.A., then 800-893-0903.

This is Coast to Coast AM, from the Kingdom of Nigh, with Art Bell.

Want to take a ride, huh?

Well, you're going to tonight, because around the corner is Terence McKenna.

Do you know who Terence McKenna is?

If not, you will shortly.

He is a brilliant, fast mind with a lot to say.

And it shouldn't be that way, because his mind should be fried rice, actually.

But it's not.

We'll talk about that, too.

Well, listen, good morning, everybody.

I've got a couple of things I've got to get on.

Actually, several.

Our affiliate base continues to grow.

And once again, I would like to welcome WNTK.

New London, New Hampshire, 10 kilowatts.

On 1020, big time, huh?

KOTA, Rapid City, South Dakota, 5,000 watts, 1380, and WSKY Sky FM, Gainesville, Florida, 100,000 watts on 97.3.

As we race, in fact, actually, edge ever so close to the 450 affiliate mark.

We're operating under unusual conditions right now.

Well, my entire valley is out of power.

I don't know if somebody's practicing for Y2K or what's going on, but the Pahrump police report to me that the power is out over my entire valley.

And that's now a lot of people here in the Pahrump Valley.

I have no idea how much more widespread power outage is.

I do still see a glow over the hill, but that could be generators operating Las Vegas.

I have no way of knowing.

It's absolutely astounding.

So everything is dark.

The entire valley here is particularly dark.

We, however, are lit up thanks to a generator and a nearly endless supply of propane.

By the way, my guest who's coming up is also on a generator to be coming to us.

So you're really into generator city tonight.

All right, a lot of you will not, just before we get to Terrence, a lot of you will not have been privy to this since it went on on the Internet on my website.

We, as an April Fool's joke, which really was not a joke.

What I did, I did for a very serious reason.

But I figured April 1st was a good day to do it.

We put up a page ostensibly berating NATO, a Yugoslav page, as if the Yugoslav hackers had hacked our site.

Well, they didn't.

We hacked our own site.

That's right, we hacked our own site.

Now, I did it for a very serious reason, actually.

And I'm going to read to you, you may recall, prior to my going on vacation, this is, of course, my first day back.

I told you that I'd bet within hours of my going on vacation, we would begin bombing in Yugoslavia.

And, of course, we are doing that.

We did that.

I don't think it was six hours.

Six hours after I went on vacation, the bombing began.

So I'm afraid I was right about that.

And I'm afraid I'm right about what I'm going to read you now.

And a lot of you are going to disagree with it, so be it.

I want to read it to you.

This is what we put on our website, my answer.

I wrote, the hack, computer hack, meaning computer hack.

The hack scene on this site was an April 1st prank by myself and Keith Rowland.

However, it was also, and I would add more importantly, to make a point.

Though I do not agree in any way whatsoever with what the Serbs are reported to be doing,

it's my view that it's none of our damn business, and I mean that.

The UN might make a case for intervention when one nation invades another.

Witness the Gulf War, of course.

But as a libertarian, even that causes me some pause.

To bomb until the Serbs agree to change their internal policy is absolute folly.

Will we bomb for a few more days?

Weeks?

Months?

Will we declare victory if they agree to talk?

Will that end differences that have been festering longer than we've been a nation?

Is this the new world order?

If so, I want no part of it.

If we must act beyond our borders, then let us help those displaced by the madness.

The real flow of refugees, you might note, did not begin until our, in quotes, goodwill bombing, end quote, began.

What's going to be our next act?

Hmm?

To send American troops onto the ground there?

Would you see your son, your daughter, die to change attitudes in Serbia?

Yeah, if war is to begin again, once again in Europe, that is indeed sad.

But we should not be the ones to light the fuse.

If this is the new world order, then where were we, pray tell, when half a million Africans were hacked to death?

Where were we, pray tell, when millions were slaughtered in Cambodia?

The world is not a nice place, ladies and gentlemen, and our bombs will not make it so.

And so I did what I did to drive exactly that point home.

I think what we're doing is absolute insanity.

Absolute insanity.

Anyway, coming up in a moment, by the way, quite a few of the press bit on our little April Fool's item.

I won't name them.

I knew quite a few in the mainstream press bit.

But that was exactly the idea.

That's the way you drive a point home.

And I really wanted to drive this point home.

If we continue on our present course, then we've lost all direction.

As a sovereign nation.

How can we expect to remain ourselves sovereign if we do not respect the sovereignty of others?

Well, that's my soapbox on what's going on with the bombing.

Anybody out there know what the exit strategy is?

Do we simply declare victory?

Well, anyway, I could go on and on.

And I probably will because this one really sticks in my craw.

Terrence McKenna coming right up.

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All right.

Well, actually, let's do it right now.

All the way across so much water we go to connect now with Terrence McKenna,

who's safely tucked away, I think, the side of a volcano or something, isn't it, Terrence?

That's right, Art.

How are you this evening?

I'm fine.

God, it's great to hear your voice again.

Yes, I think it's been about a year.

It's been about a year.

That's right.

I'm curious.

Don't hold back.

I'm sure that you have been watching or at least listening to or vaguely aware of what

we're doing in Europe right now, and I thought I'd probably start out by asking you your comments.

Well, I'm glad I listened in on your reading of your statement, so I know where you're coming

from, well, as you said, it's a complete mess.

For the third time in the 20th century, the Balkans appear to be the place where Europe could

potentially push itself into some kind of war nobody could foresee the end of.

I read analysis of Milosevic and his regime five years ago that predicted this would be the

end game, then Kosovo was where push would come to shove, and now here we are.

Push even showing.

There's only a few months left in the 20th century, but time for one more atrocity, apparently.

Apparently.

And now I understand, by the way, Terrence, late news, there are seven Russian warships

on the way to the area to, they say, observe, but I don't know.

You get seven Russian warships, and of course the Russians are not at all happy with us.

They've been rattling all kinds of sabers about this, and it really could still happen.

The old days of duck and cover, you remember that, Terrence?

Duck and cover?

No, I think, you know, Vietnam gave the domino theory a bad name, but I think in the Balkans,

the domino theory may well have something to say.

Watch Macedonia.

Watch Albania.

As the destabilization spreads, Greece and Turkey could be pulled in.

The Russians are beginning to move toward it.

And don't think anyone is in control of all this, or as you say, what's the exit strategy?

It's easy going in.

Nobody knows how you get out of this kind of thing.

We're throwing, of course, these cruise missiles, firing these cruise missiles, beginning to run

out of them, incidentally, but we are firing what we have.

When they run out, that means more airplanes.

And then eventually, when that strategy fails, then you're faced with a choice of either retreating,

and it's another Vietnam, or putting in ground troops and starting down the same horrible road of no return.

Well, and remember, ground troops couldn't make a difference in Vietnam either.

Yes, I think aerial bombing, how many times in the 20th century are we going to learn that it's insufficient,

and it's a very weak-kneed approach if you're talking about all-out war with fascists?

And then, Terrence, also, even if we did bomb them, which I suppose is conceivable,

to the point where they said, okay, we'll talk about peace,

and then we move peacekeepers, we're peacemakers now, not peacekeepers,

but we finally get peacekeepers in there, there is no exit strategy at all.

Look at Bosnia.

They said we'd be there for a year, and then a year and a half, and then on and on and on.

We'd never get out, and when we do finally leave, they will resume the same thing they were doing.

Yes, well, NATO seems to have become the kind of military arm of the world corporate state that many people feared.

Yes, sir.

What the Serbs are doing, there's no way to countenance, but I'm not so sure I'm so happy with this new world of ours.

Well, as you say, you can't countenance what is happening in Kosovo.

On the other hand, what happened in Rwanda, what happened in Cambodia, these things didn't raise anybody's radar.

No, it's really, rarely does something politically grab me these days.

I've been really bored to death with politics, especially the whole damn Monica thing.

Thank God that seems to be over, maybe.

Well, you remember, you and I talked when we were about six weeks into it last year,

and I said that I didn't think this was going to bring happiness to the right wing.

Well, it didn't.

As a matter of fact, it kind of tore the right wing all to pieces, and I don't know what's going to happen.

It's going to be a very interesting election coming up.

What do you think will happen?

Oh, I assume that if the Democrats can't win this one after what the country's been through,

then they're probably finished, but I think it'll be an easy win for Gore.

I think the Republicans are flirting at the end of the 20th century with the kind of fate of Whigs

we're looking at at the end of the 18th century.

They need a program and an agenda running against the president has gone about as far as it can go, I think.

Yeah, that's right, and I think a lot of people are just running away from that one now.

Well, how's it going there?

I mean, look, there's a whole new audience.

I keep forgetting.

I probably have 100 affiliates since the last time I talked to you.

So maybe we ought to take a second, and you should tell everybody who Terrence McKenna is.

Who Terrence McKenna is.

That's right.

If you were to have to answer that, which you do now, what would you say?

Well, I guess my bio says writer and explorer.

Explorer means explorer of hallucinogenic plants, strange usages of exotic plants by exotic people,

and then coming back and talking about these things, advocating them.

Alteration of consciousness leads to all the big philosophical issues.

What is culture?

What is history?

Where are we going, and how are we going to get there,

and what's going to be so great about it when we get there?

So I'm an itinerant philosopher at the end of the 20th century.

Well, the average Joe out there, maybe driving a truck, you know, across Indiana somewhere,

probably is saying to himself right now,

well, why should I listen to anything emanating from this drug-scorched brain?

But, of course, that's the only problem with you, Terrence,

is your brain doesn't appear to be drug-scorched, and it should be.

If what the establishment tells us about drugs is even partly true, you should be a basket case.

Well, maybe I am.

No, you're not.

But I think the guy driving is semi across Indiana.

He may be a little scorched himself this time of night.

Well, he's scorched in a different way, trying to keep his eyes open, you know,

get the load delivered.

That's right.

Well, it's certainly true, you know, the stereo of the cannabis enthusiast,

can't think straight, can't remember where they put the keys.

I've never felt that way about these things.

I think cultures choose the drugs they want to stigmatize, and then they glorify others,

and it differs from culture to culture.

The social consequences differ according to the choices made.

But alteration of consciousness by human beings is as old as human beings themselves.

That's quite true.

Do you think that it would be fair to suggest it would be certainly something that would probably

get us in a lot of trouble, but that there are some hallucinogenic drugs that do, in fact,

give people legitimate, underline that word, insights that they would otherwise perhaps not realize?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, you give me a lead-in to talk about one of the things I'm doing at the moment,

which is after a conference in Mexico on hallucinogenic botany this year,

a couple of friends of mine and I decided to organize a conference on the theme you just stated,

a conference on the creative process and hallucinogenic substances because there's a huge amount of the art,

design, and fashion world that has for years been using these things to fuel the engines of creativity.

Precisely.

But it's all been in the closet.

Okay.

Well, listen, we're at the bottom of the arm.

We'll pick up on this when we come back.

Terrence McKenna in Hawaii is my guest.

This is Coast to Coast.

Yeah.

With Art Bell, in the kingdom of Nye, from outside the U.S.,

first, dial your access number to the U.S.

Then, 800-893-0903.

If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.

From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico,

call Art at 1-800-618-8255.

Or call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.

This is Coast to Coast AM from the kingdom of Nye.

Terrence McKenna is probably unlike anybody you're ever going to have the pleasure of listening to and meeting.

Terrence McKenna really has picked up the gauntlet from Timothy Leary.

And you may reject what he has to say,

but at the very least, if you claim to have an open mind,

you really, really must consider it.

All right.

Well, the old myth, you know, is that try this.

If you think your creativity is heightened when you're on some sort of hallucinogenic drug,

then make notes, write a story, paint a painting, conduct some music, play some music, sing,

and see if when you're down, it was really as good as when you were up.

And I think that's kind of what we're talking about here, in a way, isn't it, Terrence?

Yeah, well, most of us probably would come in on the low end of that scale,

although there are some spectacular counter-examples.

Samuel Taylor-Coldridge wrote Kublai Khan, Stoned on Opium.

The insight to the structure of the benzene molecule came to someone after a cognac-inspired dream.

The character of creative breakthrough is like a revelation, the aha experience.

And sometimes it's a bump on the head, and sometimes it's a hallucinogenic experience,

but it always has the character of sort of arriving in a completed form, you know what I mean?

Yes. Why are there so many striking counter-examples? Why?

That's a question you never hear dealt with in the public.

In fact, you never hear about it at all. They suppress that information.

But why sometimes is a drug a key to creativity that you would not have otherwise? Why?

Well, I think it's because of the larger effect of these drugs, which is that they dissolve boundaries.

And many of the boundaries which enclose us are boundaries of habit, convention,

and under the influence of the drug, we see beyond those boundaries.

The job of artists has always been to sort of be an antenna into the future,

and bohemians have always been associated with the drug-taking to some degree.

So I think it's a very understandable process.

It's simply that we're now beginning to understand it, and we have to,

because the number of substances available and being discovered all the time

is beyond the power of the courts and the scientific establishment to really manage.

Well, I don't know.

If you go to a doctor, you will notice these days, Terrence, I don't know whether you ever go to doctors,

but when you do, a doctor will say, you know what, I know you're in a terrible amount of pain,

and I really wish that I could prescribe more to keep you out of pain,

because that's the way a doctor feels.

You know, they're trying to ease your suffering, but the doctor will tell you, frankly,

the DEA is looking right behind my shoulder, and a number of my colleagues have lost their licenses,

and so, frankly, I can't really give you what you need.

That's prescribed.

Oh, well, this is a part of the drug problem.

The hysteria on drugs has made so many different people and institutions crazy in so many different ways.

I really, on the general larger question of hard drugs, I'm quite despairing,

because so many people and institutions make money off the present mess.

Yes.

You know, the prison builders, the rehab people, the criminal syndicates, the bought-off cops,

the paid-off judges, everybody is making money on this racket that they pretend to wring their hands over.

That's absolutely correct, and heaven knows what the police would do if they couldn't chase narcotics people.

They would literally have about 10% or 20% at most of their job left,

and I think our prisons would be more or less about 60% or 70% empty as compared to their present content.

The courts would unclog, and lawyers would have to find honest work.

So, in other words, it's never going to happen.

You got it, Art.

Well, what are you doing in terms of researching this interesting, creative truth?

How are you going to do that?

Well, I don't know if I've ever talked to you about this, but I'm interested, of course, in what these substances do to me and to other individuals.

But then there's a whole other area, which is what has the impact of substances and drugs been on large populations over long periods of time?

And I'm willing to argue that the evolution of human language and complex cultural forms themselves were caused by disruptions in the ordinary mental functioning of perfectly happy primates about 150,000 years ago.

In other words, that the evolution of complex human culture based on language is actually an effect of brain perturbations and unusual states of consciousness that were eventually assimilated and became part of the behavioral toolkit of early human beings.

So you're saying it's actually a part of and a continuing part of evolution itself?

That's right. And the important thing for modern people is a continuing part of.

So when you talk about drugs, you know, today we're focusing on the drug of the day, whatever it is, heroin or methadrine.

But in fact, over the past thousand years, it's been drugs that have built the empires that created Western civilization.

Sugar, tobacco, alcohol, opium, tea, chocolate, these are the drugs that shaped civilization.

Coffee.

Coffee, another big one.

And of course, we don't think of these as drugs.

We call them foods or whatever we call them because a drug is a bad thing, a food is a good thing.

But eventually, I think people are going to wise up to this racket and they need to because we need to educate our children about this complex area of human behavior.

There are dangerous drugs.

There are drugs that used carefully can be a tremendous enhancement of life, but you have to know what you're doing.

It's not something you just blunder into and all generalizations will have exceptions.

And they do, indeed.

Recently, as you well know, we have a drug czar.

And recently, our czar actually came out and made a couple of really remarkable statements.

He said that he thought the debate over medical marijuana was now a legitimate one.

And he even went further and he said, it may well be that the use of marijuana recreationally may be a valid debate for our society to have.

And I almost fell on the floor when I heard him say that.

Well, it would be a wonderful thing for Clinton to do, for Gore and the country, to make some headway in the end of this administration on this issue

so that it doesn't all have to be left to the first term of a new Democrat.

I mean, how long are we going to dog this matter?

Well, it really should be part of the agenda of the new century to make drug suppression a 20th century phenomenon along with racism, fascism, aerial bombing of civilians and so forth and so on.

As I said, it's a racket.

The insurance companies know that people who smoke cannabis are not at greater health risk.

Well, you know, that's a good point because they always ask whether you smoke.

They don't ask whether you smoke pot.

They ask whether you smoke cigarettes.

Of course.

And they're really concerned about that.

In fact, a lot of cases...

Yeah, well, they've got the numbers on that.

Yeah, in fact, a lot of cases you can't even get insured if you are a smoker.

But the fact is, cannabis is such an effective stress reducer that whatever effect the tar in it is having on you,

it's more than offset by your low blood pressure, excellent digestion, good sleep, and so forth and so on.

Do you think that there will be any progress soon based on the recent statements made?

Is there going to be some sort of...

Even my state, Nevada.

Now, Nevada, Terrence, does not look kindly on even marijuana.

It is a felony in Nevada.

And recently, we had a statewide initiative here in which the people of Nevada said yes to, you know...

Call toll-free 1-800-618-8255.

Oh, my.

Well, it looks like we just went through another brief blackout, ladies and gentlemen.

So we're going to have to get Terrence back on the line.

And you may have heard a little sort of a noise in the background, and that was indeed the blackout.

So we're going to have to try to get Terrence back on again and continue to revise and look at our power situation here.

We are in a power outage.

So I will continue to disable things that we don't need.

And we will continue to run on...

Well, I'll tell you, welcome, huh?

April 1st, coming in like a storm, to be sure.

So, Terrence, if you're out there listening, my friend, we're going to have to take a bit more of a break here so that I can get you back on the line.

Sorry about that, buddy.

It's just one of those things.

So, in a moment, once again, Terrence McKenna.

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Well, it just looks as though we're going to have this and that going on for a while.

I think we're almost restored, almost restored.

So, everybody hang in there.

We'll do one more thing and bring back Terrence McKenna.

I'm sure we will.

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Boy, I wonder if we're getting kind of a preview of Y2K or something.

This has really been a trip.

Terrence, welcome back.

Yes, I was thinking, you know, isn't April 1st one of those rollover dates for Y2K?

Yes, it is.

And I'm not...

The Federal Republic of Germany and California and New York State all go to their long-term

physical projections.

I think that's true, Japan as well, I think.

By the way, since you mentioned it, or I mentioned it, what do you think about Y2K there?

You know, there's kind of a range from, hey, nothing's going to happen, to, hey, everything's

going to come to a screeching halt.

Where are you in that scale?

Well, I guess I'm sort of a mugwump on this one, with my mug on one side of the fence and

my wump on the other.

It seems to me it'll probably be locally, there will be local breakdowns, but the whole

system, I imagine, will flow around it.

I mean, that's my expectation.

It's one of those problems where people are highly motivated to solve it, so if they can't

solve this, I don't know.

What are they going to do in Kosovo?

Oh, don't get me started.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I, too, think that a lot of the warnings that have gone out and a lot of the scare stuff

really has motivated a lot of people to action, but still there may be lurking out there,

Terrence, hundreds of thousands of embedded chips in power companies around the country,

and it's going to be sort of interesting to see what happens.

And if we were to lose power on a major portion of the grid, for even some fairly serious amount

of time, how long civilization, as we know it, would hang together?

You wonder about that?

Ever wonder about that?

Well, I wonder about it from the confines of a tropical island with mild winters.

Always, yeah.

You'll have our sympathy, Art.

Maybe you should think of a Hawaiian vacation at the end of the year.

Oh, I've been thinking about it for some time now, Terrence, and I fully intend to come

and see you.

What's it like where you are?

Well, what's it like?

It's at about 2,000 feet in a rainforest of hardwood trees and tree ferns, 80 inches of rainfall,

temperature never below 55, never above 95.

In other words, paradise.

It's a word they use around here.

I think the Visitor Bureau has a lock on it, but yeah.

You are on the side of a volcano.

The world's largest active volcano, which is Mauna Loa, which is a mighty, mighty mountain.

It actually is the world's highest mountain because it rises 13,000 feet from the sea floor

or about 17,000 feet from the sea floor to sea level and then 12,000 feet more.

All right, we're at the top of the hour, and so we'll make some power adjustments here

and be right back.

This one's for you, Terrence.

Stay right where you are, okay?

Okay.

Indeed, this one's for you.

Take a ride to the last new side of your mind.

Come along if you dare.

Take a ride to the last new side of your mind.

Beyond the feet of God.

Beyond the realm of what?

Across the streams of hope and dreams where things are really hot.

You'll probably be done this.

From the kingdom of Nye, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

From east of the Rockies, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico,

at 1-800-618-8255.

First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.

And you may fax Art at area code 702-727-8499.

Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.

This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

Now again, here's Art.

Oh my, how we depend on our civilization.

We've been going through gigantic power spikes and drops here.

It's been amazing.

He's a guy who'd know what it's like to be without commercial power.

Because I don't think he has any.

For a long time, the only way he could get out by phone was some sort of radio phone,

internet phone, and that's probably what I'm talking to him on right now.

He's a very, very interesting guy.

Terrence is fascinating.

I've got a lot of questions for him.

And he'll be back in a moment.

Coast to Coast AM, back on commercial power and trying to get the computers back up.

Oh my, how we depend on technology.

Once again, Terrence McKenna.

Terrence, you know, I talked, in fact, I'm going to be talking to one next week,

another brilliant theoretical physicist.

I talk frequently with Dr. Michio Kaku.

And it is his view that the odds of our making it through to the other side of the discovery

and dealing with element 92, that our odds are very, very teeny-weeny indeed.

In other words, when any civilization, and there must be many out there,

discover element 92 inevitably, almost inevitably, they end up destroying themselves.

Any thoughts on that?

Do you think we'll make it through?

Well, I think it's remarkable that we've had atomic weapons for over 50 years now,

and they were only used very shortly, within weeks after their perfection.

And after that, somehow, in all the wars, revolutions, and posturing that's gone on,

we've never resorted to the nuclear option.

And so I would argue that maybe the discovery of the transuranium elements and their properties

had a marvelously sobering effect on carnivorous monkeys like ourselves.

But I can usually find a silver lining, aren't you?

Good.

Then you may want to find one in the fact that seven Russian warships are now headed to meet up with,

and or, in their words, observe what we are doing with regard to the bombing of the Serbs.

Well, you just keep going back to that.

I think that's a case of trying to make a purse out of a cow's ear or a sow's ear.

That's exactly right.

Anyway, I hope that we make it through.

I have great doubts.

Well, there are many other challenges.

I mean, I'm sure you've probably discussed on your program the Terminator gene.

Oh, yes.

Isn't that wonderful?

That's a good one.

There's the gray goo scenario of a nanotechnological breakout.

There's, you know, you've got Earth changes.

I guess we've probably talked about how Alfred North Whitehead said the business of the future

is to be dangerous.

Well, we're doing good business.

Boy, it's a dangerous world out there right now.

It's a really dangerous world.

Listen, here's somebody who asks,

would you please ask Terrence if the drug DMT, which occurs naturally in our bodies,

is released at death?

And if it is, could this possibly account for some of the near-death experiences that people report?

Well, yeah, I think that's a very reasonable suggestion.

I first heard that notion put forth from Rupert Sheldrake,

and I think he called it a necrophogen, a drug which simulates the symptoms of near-death.

It certainly is, the near-death experience is a dramatic analog to the DMT experience.

But I also think we produce DMT in deep dream states.

I would lay money on that.

I mean, it's known that it's produced in cerebrospinal fluid at the same time that there's high REM activity in the brain,

which usually indicates deep dreaming.

If DMT is indeed the coach that drives NDEs,

then what does that tell us, if anything, about what does or does not lie beyond this short mortal life?

Well, I've thought a lot about that.

If we take the evidence seriously, the DMT state seems to indicate some kind of hyper-dimensional matrix

that is actually inhabited by some kind of language using form of energy

that can at least relate to the presence of human beings.

I've said maybe these were dead souls, an ecology of souls.

This is certainly what shamans would claim.

Dead souls.

If that's true and can be verified by something as simple as a psychoactive drug experience that lasts 15 minutes,

then we really, scientifically, at the end of the 20th century, have been looking in all the wrong places.

I think we have been looking in all the wrong places,

and that the real frontier of science is the human mind and its potential,

and we're not going to unlock that until we get over all this queasiness and hand-wringing

on the issue of drugs and drug research and drug use and so forth and so on.

Well, I guess you could either view the use of some of these hallucinogenics as a peek at the other side,

a peek at what lies beyond the physical and truly lies beyond the physical.

In other words, there are a lot of things that I believe our brains can do, after all,

and I think it's Princeton and other prestigious universities.

They're proving that the mind can affect random number generators, that we can do that.

The proof is quite substantial, actually, but that's something that a conscious mind does.

It's not something that a dead mind does.

There are many other things that our living minds can do.

For example, they can enable us to travel outside our bodies.

I did it once.

I know now it's true.

You can, in effect, be outside your body.

But I have not decided yet, Terrence, whether that experience represents something that I will find

after my mortal experience.

Do the wild thing.

It's 702-727-1295.

Human brain, and we just lost it again.

Boy, we really are just having quite a night of it here, folks.

Terrence, poor Terrence.

After all that buildup, I'm going to have to do something and get him back on the line.

There are obvious severe power difficulties going on here right now, folks.

So all I can say is bear with us, and Terrence will be right back.

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Yeah, that's right.

All right, well, we're really getting a Y2 case example out here in the Prompt Valley right now.

It's really a serious situation tonight with the power.

I have no idea what's going on, but whatever it is, it's not good,

and it's covering a great deal of geography, so bear with us, everybody.

Once again, here's Terrence.

See, every time that happens, our phone connection separates,

and there's Terrence out in the middle of nowhere with a generator staying right on line as I drop off.

Anyway, Terrence, look, I did this big buildup, and then the phone went away.

I was, I guess, approaching what I know about the conscious mind.

I know to be true, and what I wonder about.

And, of course, what I wonder about is whether there really is some sort of continuation.

What's your view?

Terrence?

Yeah, I know.

Oh, I was just saying, that was a long pause.

I'm formulating my thoughts here.

No, on a night like this, long pauses probably mean the power is going out.

Well, I agree that you can't be sure that DMT is showing you the great beyond.

It may be showing you the dying brain.

It may be taking you to the very edge of death, but that is not death itself.

It may be showing you the great within.

That's what it may be showing you.

Yes, and it doesn't settle the metaphysical questions, except it certainly is strong evidence

that everything we've been told about entities, about the capacity of the human mind,

that things are a good deal more complicated than that.

To me, it's the great exception to all rules.

What it itself says, other than that all rules have exceptions, I'm not sure.

Terrence, if the power were to go out and stay out, I'll pick Honolulu, all right?

In Honolulu, that's a big city, close to you.

Yes.

If the power went out and stayed out for a month in Honolulu, what do you think would happen socially?

Well, in any city, I think push would come to shove in a hurry, because water pumps would not work,

and so the city water supply would be only what was in the pipes, and you can take the scenario from there.

I live on an island hundreds of miles from Honolulu, and thankfully so.

I'm not a survivalist, at least not consciously, but I've certainly built a system that is redundant,

off-grid, wireless, and capable of maintaining itself without any help from anybody else.

I'm concerned about people in cities.

Even if Y2K does not bring the end of the world, in very dense population centers like Tokyo and Manhattan,

where simply the number of embedded chips is exponentially high,

the possibility of some kind of chain reaction failure is consequently high as well.

So I think people should give consideration to moving out of those kinds of areas, even if just temporarily.

That's quite a bit of advice.

Now, understand that as you dispense that device, you're being heard right now.

Now, in every major city in America, every single major city, New York City, Atlanta,

I won't even go through them all, every major city in America, you're speaking to these people,

and so that's some serious advice you're handing out there.

Well, one of the things on this Y2K thing, Art, and today is an interesting day to discuss it,

is it should clarify as we get closer, there are going to be...

A couple of rollover dates this month, I can't believe that we're just going to slam into the millennial date

with half of the population thinking it's the end of the world and half assuring us it's no big deal.

Is it not going to become more clear?

I guess it is, but in the end, your advice is, in other words, you think there are going to be problems in cities

and how long do you think that threat of civilization would last?

A day? Half a day? A day? Two days?

They did a very...

Seventy-two hours in most places.

Seventy-two hours.

And then, of course, the concern is, I suppose, is that the grid will fail in areas where there's bad weather and deep snow

and it will be very hard to get it back up and going.

I am not an electrical engineer.

I don't think anybody who isn't can make an informed judgment on that.

Yeah, I can't.

And, you know, I'm accused of being gloom-doom about all of this, but I do see what would occur.

I think at least I know, frankly, what would occur if we lost our power.

There was a movie called The Trigger Effect.

Did you ever get to see that? Probably not.

I didn't.

It really shows how quickly civilization would deteriorate if the power went off and people began to conclude it wasn't going to come on anytime soon.

And people reverted to early animal states rather quickly, a matter of days, as you just said.

Well, all, you know, all these disaster scenarios raised the opportunity for people to imagine that civilization will just slide out from under us.

I went through a flood in Northern California years ago where the power was off for six and a half days, and it did.

Call us toll-free at 1-800-618-8255.

Oh, my.

Here we go again, folks.

This is not going to be an easy night.

I can see that.

I have no idea what they're doing out there.

No idea whatsoever.

But I guess all I can do is roll with the punches.

One good thing, we will get all of the commercials caught up as I continually go back and retrieve Terrence.

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Well, once again, Terrence McKenna, we'll just have to keep getting him back as the power glitches.

And it's not, it's, we can handle it either way, but what we're getting, Terrence, are these short little ba-boom type breaks.

And when that happens, my phone system goes, goodbye, everybody.

It's absolutely amazing.

I, even, I'm getting a good lesson tonight.

I'm getting a really good lesson tonight.

So, anyway, Y2K.

So you, you think, as I do, that you simply aren't going to predict what will happen,

but are pretty sure what will happen socially if it does happen.

Well, and you know, here in Hawaii, we're at the end of the time for the day.

So it will have happened in 22 time zones before it gets here.

So we'll have a notion of it if it's rolling toward us.

Yeah, I guess that's right.

So will you, what do you plan to do, by the way, on New Year's Eve?

Well, go to a party, of course.

Really?

Go to a party, really?

Well, fortunately, the party is only about three miles away.

I can, I assume I can fight my way back here in the confusion afterwards.

Did you know, Terrence, the communist Chinese government has ordered all of the management

personnel of all of the airlines to be in the air in a Chinese aircraft flying the 31st

into the 1st.

Why?

Why, you say?

Yes.

Well, I think twofold.

One, to give the people of China confidence that their airplanes will be safe.

And two, if they're not safe, then there won't be any concern about the management personnel

who were on the flights.

They'll have a whole new regime.

But that is true.

They're doing that, Terrence.

Hold on.

The old socialist ways linger on.

That's right.

Stay right there.

We'll be right back.

I think Terrence McKenna is here.

And this is Coast to Coast AM on and off.

To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.

First-time callers may reach out at area code 702-727-1222.

And you may call out on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.

To reach out from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA.

Then 800-893-0903.

This is Coast to Coast AM, from the Kingdom of Nye, with Art Bell.

Good morning, everybody.

Wow, what a wild night this has been.

First night back from vacation.

And we have been experiencing wild times with power.

Indeed.

Why 2K?

Question mark?

I don't know.

But it's been wild here.

We'll find out eventually what's causing all this.

In the meantime, we'll try as best we can to stay on the air.

Well, this would at least serve as a pretty good example of just a very little example of what can happen

when everything is not just so.

I mean, I have computers.

I had to reestablish ISDN connections.

I had computers coming up in safe modes.

I've got all kinds of things going on here.

Once again, here's Terrence McKenna.

Terrence, how much of a loner are you there on your volcano?

Well, I'm somewhat of a hermit.

I live up here with my girlfriend up a four-wheel drive road that's pretty hairy.

And we try to go to town on Mondays and Fridays.

And that's the lifestyle when I'm out on the road.

When I'm on the road, I feel like I'm running for president.

So it's always a pleasure to get back here.

What takes you on the road?

Lecturing.

That's where I make my money.

That's what butters the bread.

When you lecture, what do you lecture about?

I lecture about technology, shamanism, hallucinogens, human evolution, language of the virus from

outer space, syntactical aliens, epistemic balkanization, stuff like that.

Sheesh.

That's a lot to lecture about.

Do you generally serve up a smorgasbord when you do a lecture of all of these things?

Or do you do specific lectures?

Or both?

I do both.

But usually my audiences are familiar with my material.

And they come primed with questions.

And it's usually pretty easy to get a self-generated discussion going based on what people there are

interested in.

I am very, very, very interested in time.

Really interested in time.

And this has been one area I know that you've talked a lot about.

What do you believe about the nature of time, Terrence?

Well, what I believe about it that is different from what you'll hear anywhere else is I believe

that probability actually fluctuates in time.

That time is not an abstract idea.

It's actually a medium.

And that there's an ebb and flow in time on many scales of what I call novelty and habit.

And that over time, novelty is in ascendancy.

You could say that the cosmos is a novelty producing and conserving system of some sort.

So the evolution of higher animals and human cultures and high technology is all in response

to this universal appetite for complexification, which I call novelty.

And mathematically, we've produced graphs of this that allow you to predict where in historical time

and where in the future there should have been great advances in novelty.

And really a way of...

I think that I'm beginning to grasp the concept of novelty.

If I understand it correctly, then you can look back and you can see what occurred with novelty

as we have evolved.

And then you should also be able to look ahead, should you not?

That's right.

Nobody would argue that the development of novelty has been even in the historical past.

It's obviously preceded in spurts and then periods of quiescence and so forth.

And when you apply that to the future, you see the same thing, except that it leads to an observation

which you and I have achieved by different means.

You call it the quickening.

I call it the concrescence, but I think both our notions have been drawn toward the idea

that this explosion in novelty will keep accelerating.

Things become more and more and more novel, faster and faster.

And this is really the character of the world that we're living in

and it's destined to become ever more intense in this particular direction.

Surely it is headed toward a climax of some sort.

Or perhaps even a series of climaxes, if you were to be able to look down

two, three hundred years, four hundred years, a thousand years,

a series of climactic occurrences and changes.

Well, I think we're mastering energy.

We're mastering our genetic code, time and space.

Yes, I agree.

A series of climaxes, each one more awesome and unimaginable than the ones that preceded it.

And this is becoming the dominant characteristic of human existence

is the anticipation and then the experiencing of these surges in the system

toward ever greater self-expression of novelty.

What great examples of spikes up out of the noise in novelty would you cite in the past?

Oh, well, the Italian Renaissance, the Greek Enlightenment that gave us Plato and Aristotle

and mathematical theories of nature.

Eras where invention movements of people and the birth of ideas were very concentrated.

You know, there was a 40-year period in the 5th century B.C.

when Lao Tzu, Mencius, Confucius, Parmenides, Ezekiel, and several other luminaries,

all, if they had air tickets, could have had a dinner party together.

Well, that's phenomenal.

It is phenomenal.

And are we able in any way, based on what has occurred in the past with regard to these spikes,

able to predict where this particular cycle is going?

In other words, what's coming?

Well, I've noticed in trying to track different things with these curves that I produce,

I look at movement of languages, immigration of people, energy production.

What the curves describe best is technological innovation.

So I've come to see human history as a kind of alchemical process of bootstrapping ourselves

to higher levels of, I suppose you'd call it, spiritual existence,

but through machines, through prosthesis.

The machine, far from being alienating and other, is in fact basic somehow.

The machines are the prosthesis of the new human.

Of course, the new human is the prosthesis of the new machines.

This is all going to take some getting used to.

Are we headed towards some brave new world where machines perhaps might even one day

take the initiative from us and, in fact, become our masters, as many worry,

the coming miniaturization of everything, the possibility of sentient computers,

all the rest of it, that kind of world?

Well, I don't know if they will take control, but I think within 20 years, Art,

you will encounter machines that will claim to be smarter than you are

and be able to convincingly behave as though they were.

And the issue, are they more intelligent than the average human being?

Are they sentient entities?

That will just be left to philosophers to sort out.

Well, right now, in Europe, we are again demonstrating how we kill each other

over religious, ethnic differences.

We have always done that, and would not some machine that became at least as intelligent,

if not more intelligent and coldly logical, conclude that something has to be done about this

and begin to, if it could, take steps?

Well, I read a very interesting book by a guy named Michael DeLanda,

who would make an excellent guest for you.

He wrote a book called War in the Age of Intelligent Machines.

And if you want a hair-raising look into the future, this is somebody who can give it to you.

There's a lot of debate among the AI, the artificial intelligence people,

about what this superintelligence that seems to be emerging will be like.

If it doesn't have the ethics of Buddha, the human race may be down for the count.

Precisely.

Or at least controlled for the count.

Well, yes.

It's very hard to imagine what superintelligence would actually look like

and what it would make of us.

Well, certainly it would conclude we are acting irrationally, damaging ourselves.

It would look at that coldly and logically, and then it would begin, if it could, I think, to take some steps.

Well, maybe by thinking along these lines, we can anticipate those steps

and take them ourselves in a gentler style.

In other words, the first thing any superintelligence would conclude about human beings

is there are too damn many of them.

That's correct.

And that would be one of the first steps, Terrence.

Yes.

Well, so are we to turn ourselves into hamburger,

or shall we have a gentle program of sexual education on the subject of abstinence and restraint?

Well, do you think you would be invited to speak at the Vatican about that?

No, probably not.

My Polish is pretty rusty.

There are a few things that stand in the way of that reality.

I suppose an intelligence might conclude,

well, the wars do seem to be serving some purpose in limiting the numbers.

Well, but it's a testament to our own primitive state,

if we have to rely on primitive Darwinian culling of the herd to keep us vital.

It indicates it's a failure of civilization.

It's precisely what it is.

It's a reversion to barbarism.

The 20th century has been embarrassingly scarred by these episodes,

where very supposedly advanced civilizations with long histories have slipped into the darkness.

And we need to understand what causes that,

because as weapons grow more deadly and populations more restive,

there's going to be a recurring problem.

And the consequences are far more final.

Have I spoken with you about Matthew Alper?

I don't believe so.

Matthew wrote a book called The God Part of the Brain.

And it simply concludes that man's greatest fear long ago and certainly now is of death.

It is our greatest fear.

It is the one fear our minds cannot contend with.

It is the fear we cannot face.

And therefore, in the process of evolution, our brains have developed a God part,

what he calls a God part of the brain,

which demands that we worship something and believe in an afterlife.

And without that, there would be virtual anarchy.

And yet, that is the very thing that causes us to kill each other constantly.

Even when you go down into the recesses, the wilds of Brazil,

and you find a tribe that has never encountered civilization before,

sure enough, inevitably you find they worship something, Terrence.

Interesting theory, huh?

It sounds like he's sort of working off some of the theories of Julian Jaynes.

He suggested in a book about the evolution of consciousness from the bicameral mind,

Jaynes suggested that as recently as the time of Homer,

people had no egos.

They actually, God spoke directly to them in situations of crisis and threat.

And that it was only after centuries of this,

that this God consciousness part of the psyche was incorporated into the structures of the psyche

as the human ego,

and that it's actually an invention less than 3,000 years old.

Do you believe that travel in time, in any direction,

actual travel in time will be possible,

or perhaps even go out on a limb and suggest that not only is it possible,

but no doubt we are being visited now?

Well, I certainly believe it's possible to travel in the forward direction.

I think Kurt Gödel, as early as 1949,

pretty well nailed that down.

The mind is,

cultures create our mental confinement in time.

This goes back to the psychedelic statement that psychedelics dissolve boundaries.

Really, a shaman is a human mind capable of traveling in time.

So I think when we understand our own consciousness,

phenomena like time travel will be a part of that understanding.

It will just kick out as a natural part of it.

I'm sure you've probably discussed on your program

these quantum teleportation experiments over the past couple of years.

Well, that's way out science,

but nobody expected that for 1,000 years.

Yes, a lot of people may not know,

but IBM actually has done some very crude teleportation.

They've actually moved.

Can you describe what they did?

Yes, you're absolutely right.

They moved photons in some kind of teleportation experiment.

They moved them several meters at greater than the speed of light.

In fact, at a travel time of zero, as far as anybody can tell.

Apparently, the quantum mechanical equations which allow this effect

don't prohibit larger objects or even living objects.

It's just a matter of scaling up the power input.

Well, good Lord, if we're five or ten years away

from being able to teleport objects and possibly human beings,

you can't even begin to imagine the sociological and political consequences

of something like that.

Well, it would completely change everything we know and do.

every concept we have nearly would collapse,

and it would indeed be a whole new ballgame, wouldn't it?

It would be a whole new ballgame,

and a concept like that has to compete with a concept like nanotechnology

or digital copying of human beings or cloning.

Or there are half a dozen of these potential technologies out there,

any one of which would remake the world beyond recognition

if it were to be perfected.

Oh, you know, Terrence, I think we're already cloning.

You know, they already absolutely have the technology.

Now, they claim they are not doing it,

and they're doing it with sheep,

and we see Dolly, and we see this, and we see that.

But they have the technology now to clone human beings,

and I don't for one second think that somebody somewhere in some lab,

and I don't exclude our country from this, is cloning.

What do you think?

It wouldn't surprise me at all.

It would surprise me if it was happening inside the United States,

because then there'd be hell to pay.

But somewhere in the Middle East, somewhere in India or Indonesia or China...

We've always done stuff that gives us hell to pay later.

True.

The trick is to make it much later.

Yeah, usually something disclosed about 50 years later.

When they don't want you to know something, they wait about 50 years.

We fed plutonium...

That's going to be the half-life of hot information.

That's right, that's right.

Wait until most of those who are going to be really angry die off, right?

That's right.

That's how it works.

So I wouldn't be surprised.

I mean, how could we allow ourselves in the black budget world to be behind the cloning curve?

I just can't imagine that.

I mean...

Of course.

And people talk about, you know, the perfect soldier out of the infantryman,

find the right one, and then make 50,000 of that guy.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

So we have all these dark black military budgets, and what are they doing with them?

Well, they're not going to want to duplicate Mother Teresa.

You can be sure of that.

Deep underground somewhere, they're not turning out more Mother Teresas.

They're trying to get the perfect killing machine.

Well, but they're going to tell you, Art, that if you clone every soldier,

then when he's wounded in battle, there'll be a nice crop of organs back on ice in the clone ward for him.

Well, that's what you'd tell the perfect soldier, I guess, to keep him happy.

Well, that's what you'd tell the public relations officers.

So we're moving very rapidly toward all sorts of things that are going to require...

Are we really up to making the proper moral decisions?

Is all of this keeping up with technology?

Well, this is the great question.

You know, H.G. Wells, 100 years ago, he said,

history is a race between education and catastrophe.

God, you're a blast to talk to.

All right.

Hold on, Terrence.

You've got a good break here, assuming that our power lasts.

When we come back, we will go to the lines.

Terrence McKenna is here.

He's more or less unlike anybody you've ever heard.

So assuming that our power stays up,

he'll be back, and we'll get you on the air with him if you would so desire.

He kind of gave you a range of subjects that he enjoys.

It's a wide range indeed.

So, pick up that phone.

He's more or less than anything you've ever heard.

To talk with Art Bell in the kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S.?

First, dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.

If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.

From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, call Art at 1-800-618-8255.

Or call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.

This is Coast to Coast AM from the kingdom of Nye.

Once again, Terrence McKenna. Terrence, it looks like we're okay to go here.

Power's been on for almost an hour now.

Feeling confident, are you, Art?

Yeah, that's just when it gets you. I know.

But what the heck, I'm going to try it.

I've got a bunch of people on the line who would like to say hello to you.

Great.

It's a rare opportunity, so let's do a little bit of that.

East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna in the wilds of Hawaii.

Hi, this is Adam from Austin.

I have an experience I'd like to relay to Mr. McKenna.

Sure.

I've been experimenting with visionary substances now for several years.

Recently, I tried DMT for the first time in freebase form, and I, quite frankly, was mesmerized.

It shook me.

All I can say is it hit me in the soul.

I did experience the self-transforming elf machines and what Terrence refers to as the self-transforming elf machines.

Maybe somebody could help me out here, either one of you.

Self-transforming elf machines, Terrence, please.

Well, it's not an elf, and it's not a machine, but it's rapidly changing from one to the other right in front of your eyes.

Well, it's interesting to hear your story.

Yes, when it works, it makes an instant believer out of you.

I'm not sure a believer in what.

A believer in the power of possibilities, I would think.

Oh, absolutely.

And the part of the experience that hit me hardest was they were actually, I believe, attempting to translate to me your time wave zero theory.

The acceleration of technology to the point of, I'm not sure, it was...

Integration, disintegration.

Exactly.

Yes, well, there is something, the strange thing, Art, about these plant psychedelics is the sense at high doses that they want to communicate something, something very specific.

It's not love one another.

We have that message.

It's some kind of very specific message about time and genetics or humanity or something.

What is time wave zero, actually?

Well, time wave zero is this set of theories that I alluded to a few minutes ago that take the position that time is this flux of novelty and habit that has been built into the genes and natural processes from the quantum mechanical get-go way back at the Big Bang.

And that probability is actually a kind of blurred lens for looking at nature and that until we understand the actual fractal nature of time where the same patterns are repeated at many, many different scales and create an interference pattern that then accounts for what we experience as reality.

What does the zero part of it mean, Terrence?

The zero part of the time wave theory is that this interference pattern, which keeps pushing habit and novelty around over very long periods of time, novelty begins building up faster and faster, and eventually it reaches infinity.

In other words, habit falls to zero, and you get the notion of everything happening at once or somehow all possibilities becoming realized, that being the only logical consequence of this tendency of the universe to complexify itself faster and faster.

And I don't know if you and I don't know if you and I have ever talked about it, Art, but the most fascinating scientific discovery of last year, according to Science Magazine, was this cosmological constant called Omega.

I'm sure Michelle Kaku, I'm sure Michelle Kaku, can talk to this, but the discovery that all of space and time is ruled by an outward expulsive force that's embedded in the space-time matrix itself.

And the interesting thing about that force is, like the time wave I theorized, it accelerates through time, it's moving faster and faster.

So the new cosmology, just eight months old, holds that the universe is basically going to undergo this kind of inflationary expansion, like the quickening, like the novelty and crescents that we've been talking about.

This has now emerged as the paradigmatic notion in astrophysics after being resisted for 50 years.

As Einstein played with the idea, called it his biggest blunder and dumped it, but now observational astrophysics is forcing them to realize this is actually, this force exists, and it is, in time, going to emerge as the dominant force shaping the physics of the universe.

Fascinating.

West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Where are you, please?

Hi, Art.

My name is Maureen.

I'm calling from Reading, California.

Well, hi there.

Hi.

We have some funky power struggles going on.

I'll tell you.

Hi, Terrence.

Hi, how are you?

I'm fine, thanks.

I was just wondering, are you familiar with contrails at all?

With who?

Contrails?

Yeah.

That's something we've been discussing on the show.

Right.

Oh, is it the thing about the large numbers of contrails that people think are a viral feeding or nanotech project?

Absolutely.

Well, fortunately, I only know of this because I follow the Internet.

I haven't seen any contrails here.

We got a photograph of a DEA helicopter where you could see the rivets on the sucker yesterday morning.

Wow.

No contrails.

Was that over your house, Terrence?

Oh, yeah.

They fly this neighborhood like crazy.

There are true believers in it, but they're not supposed to come closer than 200 feet to the ground, and this guy was well under 200 feet.

Oh, well, you know, they make the rules.

Oh, well, for the wise men and the fools.

So, I'm not oblivious to the possibility that, for example, let's just draw a quick little scenario.

If our government thought that we were on the verge of a biological attack of some sort, and they had what they thought was a remedy for it in terms of some sort of mass inoculation,

I don't think for a second that they would not consider an inoculation without our specific permission, and what better way to do that than to add to what, to most people, are just harmless little contrails cutting across the sky?

So, that's one, you know, possibility.

There are other more sinister ones, but that's at least one that would make sense to me.

Well, do you remember those experiments that came out a few years ago where they spread powder in airports and railway stations back in the 60s, some kind of bacterial powder that they could then follow?

It was some study of a possible contamination.

New York subways, Terrence, San Francisco, gee whiz, they did a whole bunch of that sort of stuff.

Yeah, well, so it would be nice to think that they're inoculating us for our own good against the evils hatched in the laboratories of Serbian fascisti.

I like that scenario.

Let's do the movie.

All right.

First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Hello.

Is this me, Art?

Only you know that for certain, but it sounds like you.

Well, thanks, Art.

Where are you?

In Indiana.

Okay, you're going to have to kind of yell at us.

You're not too loud.

Oh, yeah.

I don't hear him.

Yep, see?

So yell at us.

Well, I wanted to thank you for the response on the email first, Art, because, you know, I didn't expect to get one back so quick from you.

Oh, with regard to?

Crystal Gale's dress.

I don't know if you remember this or not.

Of course I remember, yes.

Okay.

And as far as the question that I wanted, I think what I wanted to do was compliment this person.

I've never heard him before, but he's awful good.

Yes, he is.

He's very good, yes.

And I had a question as far as to possibly ask him if this would work over in Yugoslavia, since he is, you know, so bright.

Can I ask you?

If what would work?

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I mean, I really believe we have a major problem, and I don't think we should look at it too lightly.

Nor do I.

So anyway, if you think this would work, I would like to know, and that is to, you know, give the president over there, the dictator, three weeks to eliminate all the people in his town, Belgrave.

Belgrave, the capital?

Yeah.

Yes.

So they could all move out, like they've moved everybody from Kosovo.

Yes.

And they would have a chance to get away from that town.

And then we would do what to Belgrave?

Well, we would destroy it, like they've destroyed those villages.

I see.

All right.

Well, let's see.

Would that work?

Well, I don't know whether it would work or not.

What do you think of that little gem of an idea?

Terrence?

Well, I think the word quagmire comes to mind.

I also think that Belgrade may be being destroyed as we speak.

I keep going over to Reuters' top stories, but I don't think anybody's going to be given three weeks' notice.

I think it's tonight or tomorrow night, judging by the pace of things.

Will it have an effect?

I don't know.

Dictators are extremely immune to popular pressure.

Unless their generals come to them and lay their pistols on the table, these guys have a tendency to hang on.

I think we've bitten off a hell of a lot to chew, and I'm certainly in favor of confronting fascism, but I think you need to chew your fights carefully.

Well, I also think that some of the people who make these decisions, these goodwill decisions to go and bomb until there is peace, should be required themselves to do some of the heavy lifting.

But they just make the intellectual decisions and spew out the orders to those who must go and do the work.

Well, and it's a strange way of handling the problem, isn't it?

I mean, we'll spend probably half a billion dollars, a lot of peasants will be pushed around, some people will be killed.

What do we have covert operations for?

What do we have special forces for?

The guy to get is Milosevic.

That's right.

And I would also note that this horrid flood of refugees really did not seem to begin until our bombing did.

Did you notice that?

Yeah, well, people are just trying to get out any way they can.

I think ethnic cleansing in Kosovo is feet to complete at this point.

Yeah.

Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna in Hawaii.

Hello.

How are you?

Just fine.

I can't believe I'm finally talking to you.

Where are you?

Actually, I'm on the West Coast.

I'm in California.

On a cell phone.

How do you know?

Just a guess.

Well, the question that I had was in regards to marijuana use.

And I don't know if that's one of the topics that he was talking about.

Absolutely.

Go right ahead.

Okay.

Because I heard the other guy talking about DMT.

I'm not really, really, really sure about, you know, exactly what that is.

What exactly is DMT?

Do I miss something?

It's a good question.

What is DMT?

DMT is dimethyltryptamine.

It's a human neurotransmitter and an alkaloid that occurs in plants and a kick-ass hallucinogen that you smoke.

Oh, okay.

So, is it contained in marijuana or?

No, no, no.

Marijuana is THC and various cannabinoids.

But what was your thought on marijuana?

Okay.

Well, Terrence, the question I had about it was, I actually, I'm 25 years old and I've experimented with marijuana since the age of eight.

And, well, I can't say experiment.

I was just more than experiment at this point.

But I stopped for several years.

I did some military service and so forth, so I wasn't able to do that.

But I did notice that when I stopped, I experienced some depressive anxiety kind of like side effects from not using it.

And I don't know if this was because of the long-term effects of using it.

You're saying you went through withdrawal?

Yes.

Well, I can't say withdrawal.

But I think that what happened was I tried to substitute it for something else because I wasn't able to use it.

So I went over to smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, which was the substitute for it.

And from that, it just seems like it was more of like trying to substitute it.

So part of what you're saying here is that marijuana was a gateway drug for you to alcohol.

Well, something like that.

It was illegal.

I understand.

Let me interrupt.

What he's saying is that when he couldn't do pot anymore, then he resorted to smoking and booze.

Yeah, well, most drugs are used by most people to relieve stress.

That's right.

You know, if you only smoke cannabis once a month or something, it's pretty spectacular mentally.

But if you smoke it every day or two, you're basically using it to handle stress, which is legitimate, of course.

I mean, that's why somebody has a drink in the evening or even watches TV.

I mean, TV is a drug that is used to relieve stress, although arguably long-term it may add to your stress.

But, yeah, habits are difficult to break.

And chemical habits are the most difficult habits to break.

Nature sets us up to chemically addict us to the people around us, our routines, the foods we prefer.

This is something that, as I said earlier, we're not facing and talking about and educating our kids about.

It's like the way the 19th century approached people's sexual fantasies and desires is sort of the way we approach our relationship to drugs.

We're not really owning up to how complicated it is.

Can I ask you a straight-out question?

That's why.

In other words, what is it that our government, our elected leaders, our institutions can't handle about people doing drugs?

Very simply, drugs are, for mysterious reasons, deconditioning agents, and they cause people to question cultural values.

And every political system on earth is in the business of maintaining cultural boundaries.

So, it's an implacable opposition there that's not easily negotiated away.

It's a very brave, self-confident society that can legalize all drugs, because it means that society is not afraid of looking in its closets and playing with a fair deck.

Are there examples we can point to where such a policy is in place and working well?

Well, everyone talks about the Netherlands, you know, legal prostitution, lowest AIDS rate in Europe, legal heroin, lowest heroin addiction rate in Europe, no prison building going on.

Young people are using cannabis, yes.

They are not using hard drugs.

The connection between the soft and hard drugs seems to have been broken by legalization there.

But our own drug czar completely distorted the Dutch position in public statements to the point where he later had to publicly retract what he said.

I know.

It was horrible.

It was absolutely horrible.

Yeah, it was just a disgrace.

All right.

Hold on, Terrence.

We're at the bottom of the hour already.

As I confidently say, maybe our power now will stick with us.

It is true, our drug czar said so many just flat untruths with regard to what happened there, that he had to retract it.

It's simply untrue.

And yet, we continue to maintain this fear-based regulation and law that comes from Washington nonstop.

I wonder why.

I'm Art Bell.

This is Coast to Coast AM.

Listen here, I'm beginning to get reports from the West

that we've had a power surge in more than just one place.

I just got a report from Seattle.

If you've had a big power surge, do me a favor

and fire me some e-mail very quickly, would you please?

And we'll try to find out how widespread this was.

My e-mail address, of course, is artbellataol.com.

So I'll kind of monitor my e-mail for a while here,

and we'll try and decide how wide this was.

Good morning on the net.

We'll order, oh, I don't know, about 30 seconds from there.

From the kingdom of Nye, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

From east of the Rockies, call art at 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico,

at 1-800-618-8255.

First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.

And you may fax Art at area code 702-727-8499.

Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.

This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

Now again, here's Art.

Once again, I do seem to be here, and the power continues to remain on.

And we're getting some interesting reports that may indicate this was a little more widespread

than we thought at first.

But we'll check that out in a moment.

Terrence McKenna's here, and he's just one moment away.

That's right.

Now, back to Terrence McKenna in beautiful Hawaii, beautiful paradise, Hawaii.

It really is a paradise.

I don't know how many of you have ever had the opportunity to get away from the main island

and go to, for example, Maui.

I've spent a lot of time there, and it really is like living in paradise.

And I don't know how anybody could leave there and go anyplace else, though I did that.

All right, Terrence, here we go.

A lot of people want to talk to you west of the Rockies.

You're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Oh, you're up in Seattle, aren't you?

Right.

It's Carl up in Seattle.

Carl, what happened up there?

Well, you know, I just heard on Como because I was, you know, thank God they have redial buttons

on these phones.

Yeah.

But anyway, I was busy redialing.

I was listening to it, and they said we had a power surge about an hour or so ago.

That would be about right.

And I wasn't looking out the window, but they just mentioned it because there was a peak,

and I heard a click, and I noticed the light flickered.

I'm just lying in my apartment with the lights out here, listening to you on the radio,

but I noticed there was a little flicker in the lights.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it's very interesting that this should occur on a day when they said that there would

be some sort of possible beginning Y2K effect.

Precursor.

Yeah, precursor.

There you go.

That's Ed's word, precursor.

Anyway, Art, you know, I've got to tell you, one thing I like about you is you've got an

old-time radio voice.

You speak in fonts.

And I really enjoy that.

And I have a question for Terrence.

Yes.

Terrence, can you hear me?

Sure.

Okay.

Talk to me about Salvia DeVenorm.

I'm growing some this year.

I've been growing up for the last three years, but the last time I tried that stuff, it scared

the hell out of me.

I thought that Jay Leno was talking about me on TV, and I thought it was like Philip K.

Dicknow, where they were sending out telepathic police.

And your question is?

What's been your experience with it, and what is it trying to tell you?

Because it doesn't seem to be a very friendly teacher.

Well, it's certainly different chemically and in terms of its effect, but I've found

it very interesting.

I know most people seem to be smoking it.

I did most of my experiments with it a few years ago.

I enjoyed chewing it.

I laid down in silent darkness, and it swept me away to a very interesting, three-dimensional

kind of place.

I've enjoyed the link to Daniel Siebert's page from your homepage, and I must say your

homepage is a very professional website.

Oh, well, thank you.

It's going to all change soon.

I designed that one.

And my son is going to take over the design process, but I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The new one is going to have a lot more links, so check it out.

I've got to say also that you guys are talking about, I think the history of drug enforcement

in this country is just sort of like a series of unhappy accidents.

But they used to say that Social Security was the third rail of American politics, and

now it's drugs.

I don't think we can do anything about it.

And what really gets me is they start talking about kids using solvents.

Well, I think there's a natural urge to go out there and break down those boundaries,

because language encodes stuff for you.

And I think one of the reasons people take psychedelics is because it breaks down the

barriers, and you get to see stuff real again.

Well, in shamanic societies, you know, they take the young kids out, and the men give the

young boys psychedelics, and the women initiate the young girls.

And instead of the taking of a substance being a symbol of the rejection of social values,

it becomes the doorway to the full acceptance of social values.

Well, my answer to the drug problem was grow your own.

I think they should just make everybody pay their marijuana stamp tax, and we can just

all grow our own, and that would cut the black market right out of it.

Well, if the profit were removed by any means, either by legalization, grow your own,

or what have you, the drug problem would shrink to a whole new dimension.

Here's an interesting bit of email.

Ken from Bloomington, Indiana says, hey, you know, when I was in the Army, we used to say

killing for peace is like whoring for virginity.

That's how I react to it.

I love it.

Well, remember the logic in 1984?

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

First Time Caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna in Paradise.

Art?

Yes.

This is Kathy in Texas.

Hi, Kathy in Texas.

I've been listening to you for about six months now, and I love your show.

Thank you.

First Time Callers, area 702-727-1222.

Well, so much for my confidence.

What just happened is that we had, now I'm realizing what's going on.

It's not that I'm going off the air.

It's that I'm so sorry, dear, in Texas and Terrence.

What's occurring when we lose power, apparently, is that the phone company is also instantly

losing power, and so it's not that I'm going off the air, but it's rather that my telephone

connections, courtesy of the phone company, are simply disappearing on me.

In other words, even though I'm staying on the air here, we've got plenty of backup, when we have

these instantaneous failures, what is occurring is that the phone company themselves is losing

it for just a second, so there really are some odd things going on with power tonight, folks.

Boy, I'll tell you, strange, April 1st, April 1st.

They'd said something about April 1st and Y2K, didn't they?

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All right, we're back.

We are back, but boy, I'll tell you, this really has been just nothing short of incredible.

Terrence, are you there?

Yes, I'm sorry.

We lost the lady in Texas.

I'm sorry, too, because she was about to say something profound.

I know it.

It sounded like it.

But, you know, now I'm realizing what's occurring.

We're staying on the air here, but the phone company is also affected by the electricity bumping the way it is,

and so they bump all my lines off the air.

Boy, I'll tell you, you know, the knee bones connected to the...

So you lost all the people in waiting?

Yeah, of course.

I've got another line of people now in waiting.

You know, the phones are constantly full, but every time this occurs, it dumps everybody.

It's horrible.

Anyway...

Crazy.

Yeah, crazy is right.

West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Hello.

Hi, this is Aaron from Boulder, Colorado.

Yes, ma'am.

I'm wondering if Terrence could talk a little bit about what the Mayans predicted would happen in the year 2012

and how that coincides with his ideas about what might happen then, too.

Well, that's a very interesting question.

It's funny that you're from Boulder because Boulder is the home of John Major Jenkins,

who wrote a very interesting book published this past year called Maya Cosmogenesis 2012.

And in that book, he discusses the various interpretations of the end of the Mayan calendar.

Basically, what happens in 2012 is it's the end of the 13th Bakhtun,

and Bakhtuns are periods of time longer than 500 years.

13 of them make up a full cycle of the Mayan calendar,

and it appears that this was linked by the Mayans to a certain astrological configuration

where the winter solstice sun heliocally rises at the galactic center.

This is sort of technical stuff, but that's it in a nutshell.

It's an alignment with the galactic center and the winter solstice rising sun

that pegs the whole Mayan world machinery,

and it's coming around after 26,000 years in about 14 years.

13 years.

So what sort of implications does that have for us?

What's supposed to happen then?

Good question.

Well, you know, very little of the literature of the Maya survives,

so we don't know.

The best guess is that for the Maya,

the end of the 13th Bakhtun indicated the beginnings of the first moments of true creation.

So rather than seeing it as the end of the world,

they saw it as some kind of beginning of an era of perfection,

sort of like the thousand years of the millennium predicted in Revelation.

I think we can't know,

but what we can know is that if you wanted to peg your calendar

to the largest cosmic cycle that human beings have observed affecting the Earth,

you would choose this 26,000-year processional cycle,

and they chose it with great accuracy,

even though their own civilization didn't live to see the coming of that.

But we will.

How's that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Daniel.

All right.

You're welcome.

Here's another email.

This is interesting, Terrence.

This email says,

Art, there have been power surges and outages up and down the entire western U.S.

during the last half hour.

This was written at 1 a.m.

It just fried my computer.

What's going on?

So we may be getting a little taste here, Terrence.

Yes, I'm fascinated by it.

There was no report on the tech page at Reuters of any problem in Europe or the East Coast today,

because I checked before I came on the program,

but maybe the April biting in the West Coast.

Maybe it is.

First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Hello.

Hello, this is me.

That's you.

Hey, this is Michael calling from Oregon, long-time listener.

Hi, Michael.

I just want to say first, Art Bell, I think you're a god.

No, I'm not a god.

I'm not a god.

Well, I mean, personal opinion.

And my question for Terrence is,

do you think that with the way that technology and people's self-knowledge is progressing,

that we're going to reach a point in time where all of our mental boundaries will be broken

and we'll just be free of thought?

I think we're going to see all kinds of group mind activities and complicated games

that will slowly teach us how to operate as group minds the way flocks of birds and schools of fish do.

I've been recently spending more time in the virtual and interactive worlds online,

the worlds where you dress up as an avatar and meet other people in designed worlds.

And if you haven't checked in on that lately, it's gotten a lot better.

And you can see the potential for people creating worlds and then sharing them with other people online

so that really we're peeling open our heads and letting it all hang out.

And it's going to have a real impact on community and the human self-image

and the way we think about the individual and the community.

All right.

Definitely.

All right, Carlos.

Thank you.

Terrence, by email, can you shed some light on why some people have such apparent creative and life

call the wild card lines, area 702-727-1295.

Emotionally and physically, and there we just went through it again.

Damn.

This is really getting to be bothersome.

This is just going on and on and on.

Now, what I'm going to do is get Terrence back one more time.

And instead of continuing with him past the hour, I think we'll terminate at the top of the hour

so that I can continue in some coherent fashion instead of being interrupted.

And it pains me to do that, but I can have Terrence back, and I will have Terrence back.

He deserves better than this.

We all do.

It is, to say the least, interesting timing for this, is it not?

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Good Lord.

This is, at least we're getting through our commercial load here rather quickly,

but this is astounding.

This has been the wildest night of power outages that we've had.

Let me think now.

Since the Western power outage, the entire Western power,

the Western third of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico went out,

this is the worst night, and maybe even a little worse in some respects,

because it has been extremely unstable.

I wonder what's going on.

Terrence, did you get the question before we blipped out?

Yes.

The question was, why are the psychedelics so beneficial to some people

and so shattering to other people?

That's correct, yes.

And the simple answer is, there's a lot to be said for going back

and looking at the concept that Leary and his colleagues put forth in the 60s

of set and setting.

Setting is, you know, you take these things.

You don't do it in a noisy nightclub.

You do it in a place that's secure, comfortable, familiar.

And then the set, your mindset, you do it calmly.

You aren't hysterical.

You aren't emotionally wrought up.

You aren't drunk.

And if people will follow these simple rules,

which are basically rules of reasonable behavior and respect for the substance,

most people do fine.

So your answer is, the people that have gone the wrong way have had the wrong attitude.

That's kind of what it boils down to, right?

Being with the wrong people in the wrong places at the wrong time,

that doesn't cover 100% of all unpleasant experiences.

I mean, some people are on prescription drugs that tangle with these things unpleasantly.

And some people, you know, if psychedelics dissolve boundaries,

there's probably 2% or 3% of the population that is involved in trying to maintain boundaries.

And those people should stay away from psychedelics.

They have a different agenda.

All right.

Let's grab one before the top of the hour.

East of the Rockies, you're on there with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Good morning to you.

Hello.

I'd like to, first off, make a statement about the Y2K bug.

Sure.

I have a very good friend who, back in the 80s, he claims that he actually helped code it.

Code the Y2K bug?

Yes.

Well, that might just mean he was a programmer doing what they all did.

It's going to be bad, according to him.

Well, yes.

You're trying to suggest that he was part of some sort of conspiratorial effort to make sure the Y2K bug hit hard?

No, it's not conspiratorial as far as I know.

But from what he tells me is that it is out there and that he did help write the code for it.

Well, a lot of people did that.

All right.

Anything else, sir?

Yes.

First, I'd like to, my first question is about the element that you mentioned earlier, element 92.

Yes.

Where would I find more information about that?

At your local library.

They'll even teach you how to arrange it so that you can cause a massive explosion with that element.

You just have to do a little reading.

All right.

All right?

And my last question would be for Terrence.

What is the drug that he's used that has given him the most powerful experience?

That's a good question.

Terrence?

Well, powerful, I don't know.

In terms of life-changing, I mean, certainly psilocybin at one point changed my life.

LSD at another point.

DMT all along the way.

It seems to be this small family of tryptamines, and then, of course, LSD isn't the tryptamine,

but at high doses, all, and these safe, but high doses, all of these things have had life-changing

impact on me and the people that I'm aware of.

Every time I have you on there, I have to quickly ask this question.

Where, Terrence, are Timothy's 25,000 hits?

Where are they buried?

Well, didn't I tell you last time?

Do you have a little map with an X on it or something?

Somewhere out there in the deserts east of Tonopah.

South of truth or consequences.

All right.

Stay right there.

Terrence McKenna, as we can get him.

This is one strange night, folks.

I'm telling you, I have never, ever seen this many power bumps and failures in one night

of broadcast of my entire life.

Really weird stuff going on.

Kind of synchronistic timing, wouldn't you say?

This is Coast to Coast AM.

You talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye.

From east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.

First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.

And you may call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1225.

To reach out from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the U.S.A., then 800-893-0903.

This is Coast to Coast AM, from the Kingdom of Nye, with Art Bell.

It is indeed, for the time we are here, Terrence is hanging in there with us.

We're experiencing, all night long now, an outage that lasted about 45 minutes,

and then sporadic bumps and surges that have been almost non-stop.

And I hope my surge suppressors can handle the work.

It's been pretty rough, let me tell you.

The timing is at least odd.

So, Terrence McKenna will be right back.

Now, again, the interesting thing with the power surges that I'm experiencing,

and my phone system is on an uninterruptible power supply.

So, as you may have noted, you can actually hear it when it occurs.

You'll hear a little bleeping sound.

And the phones, nevertheless, are disconnecting all of you, so I apologize,

including, of course, my guests.

And the reason that apparently is occurring is because, I guess,

the phone company also is dependent, to some degree, on the electricity.

And it may be that when, you know, where I am at least,

when there's a problem, it just instantaneously glitches the phone lines,

and I lose everybody here.

It's amazing.

It's absolutely amazing.

Terrence, welcome back.

Yes, I'm glad we're still hanging on, Art.

Here's somebody, you're hanging on, in Smith County, Tennessee.

And he, too, had a power failure, went out for about five minutes, two hours ago.

No storms, no winds.

So, kind of strange.

First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Hi there.

Art.

Yes.

Good to talk to you, long-time listener.

Yes, sir.

Where are you?

I'm in Smith County, Tennessee.

You are?

Yeah, that was me.

Oh, you had a power failure?

Yeah.

It just, I wasn't paying much attention.

I heard you talking about it, and it taught me in my tracks.

I turned around and turned up the radio.

I was fixing to go to bed, and I didn't really think anything of it, but it's on.

It's on.

I appreciate your call, sir.

Thank you.

Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Hi.

Oh, hi.

This is Richard from Las Vegas.

Yes, Richard.

I had a question for your guest.

Does he think that due to the fact that the government's losing control of information

through the Internet and the cable news and everything, that it's going to try to become

more repressive in other ways, like in the drug enforcement and things like that?

Well, the question is, the government is indeed, to some degree, losing control because of

the Internet.

Things are happening.

The government, I'm sure, is not pleased with.

So that's a pretty good question in itself.

They created the Internet.

Is the monster that they created now biting them in the butt, or what?

Terrence?

We lost Terrence again.

Wow.

I'm still here.

How's Las Vegas?

I haven't lost power yet.

You haven't lost power yet.

Have you seen it blinking or surging?

No.

In fact, I've been surfing and not listening to you, and I haven't had any problems, except

when your phone lines go down, your website goes crazy, too.

It does.

Yeah.

All right, sir.

I appreciate the call.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

Take care.

I'm going to have to try and get Terrence back.

Now, I have no idea why we lost Terrence this time, because this time, we didn't have a power

failure.

Every other time, we have.

Let me see if we can get him back here.

This is just absolutely astounding.

I'll actually dial him right now.

I've got a break to dial him.

Let's see.

I'll even let you hear it ring.

Here we go.

Watch this.

Hi, Art.

You want to see?

Maybe we should pack it in.

What do you think?

Hold on a sec.

Tell you what.

The next time it occurs, we'll pack it in.

Okay.

I'm game.

You know, this time, the power didn't fail.

You just went away.

I don't know.

On this end, it sounded just like all the others.

Now, we appear to have not such a hot phone connection either.

Do you hear that?

It's the same for me.

You want to call back and try again?

Let's bear with it for a few minutes and see how it does.

Boy, Y2K.

Here we go.

Yeah.

If this is general, I mean, it's 2.30 in the morning where you are.

The load on the system is very low.

It shouldn't be happening now.

That's exactly right.

East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

I hope.

Good morning.

Where are you?

This is Mike from Cleveland.

Yes, sir.

I just called to tell you that this morning, around 3 o'clock at our time, we had a couple

of flashes and about 5.

Our power went out.

And they gave us this, I don't know, it sounds kind of screwy to me.

They were saying because we had a light rain shower and hadn't used or there was salt.

And the salt had caused some 50 telephone poles to catch on, I mean, electric poles to catch

on fire.

So that's what they took.

There were 65,000 people out of power.

65,000 for two hours.

Yes.

Uh-huh.

Longer than that in some cases.

Well, this is beginning to seem to be a pattern to me.

That's what I was thinking.

That's why I wanted to get on the phone and call you.

Well, welcome to the new millennium.

Early.

Great Luke.

Yeah.

Appreciate the call, sir.

Thank you.

West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Hi.

Hey, guys.

This is Eric from Los Angeles.

Yes, sir.

I'd like to, I really like your show, Art.

Thank you.

Thank you a lot for everything.

I was just wondering, are you guys going to go see the new movie, Matrix?

The premise of the movie is a combined nanotechnology, biological hallucination that everyone has more

control over their illusion.

And it should be interesting.

But my question is for parents.

Parents, interdimensional traveling, do you have any concept of what the afterlife for you would be?

No, we've discussed this here in the last 24 hours, and I was shown to be inadequate.

I have noticed in virtual reality that sometimes the landscape builds out ahead of you if you have good processors, and you can actually watch the landscape springing into existence.

I can sort of imagine the end of life is like that process in reverse, you know, just more and more is subtracted.

And my ketamine experiences have convinced me that a consciousness without a body is an entertainable idea.

Consciousness without a body is simply like the volume of your mind turned up until it's all there is.

And then I can imagine just unfolding into thought without a spatial locus.

But does that go on forever?

That's a little hard to feature.

Of course, nothing that we know of goes on forever.

So, to imagine that when you find out what lies beyond death, you've found out what eternity is, may be...

Maybe that's why we come back.

Maybe that's why we maybe reincarnate.

Do you believe in reincarnation?

Well, if reincarnation occurs, it's a way of getting away from this paradox of eternally existing as a conscious form in some other dimension.

Yeah.

One more question.

Has the other side ever communicated to you through light?

Or have you ever seen the all-seeing eye, like from the Egyptian times?

I think that these entities communicate with sound and light, and sound which you can see.

And they seem to have some kind of a language which is, like, has more dimensions than acoustical language.

It's not telepathy, but it's something that you...is sculptural.

You experience it as a visual medium.

A mosaic.

And it's high bandwidth, yes.

It's incredible.

We could be on the brink of engineering something like that as a human mode of communication if we could unleash psychopharmacology and really understand what's going on.

We live really in an incredible time.

Do you think all these prophecies and all these things set in place from the past are ways for us to actually be moving into this new dimension, this new paradigm?

Well, we're at the end of a thousand-year period, and we're at the climax of the agenda of modern science, and we're moving off the planet, and we're going digital.

There are so many transformative tendencies in play that I think you would have to really be resisting the tide to not see that we're ready to make some kind of leap.

It's incredible.

I mean, I really see that this taking the old paradigm, and the old paradigm needs to firmly hold control, and I just think we just keep what we're doing, keep doing like with our show, everything's going to be all right.

Everything's going to be all right.

And that's not through rose-colored glasses either, Art.

All right.

I appreciate the call, sir.

Thank you.

Okay, bye.

Take care.

Here's one by email.

Somebody wants to know, and I really am not sure myself, wants to ask you your opinion on Tim Leary's work with prisoners and the reasons his findings were suppressed.

What do you know about that?

I don't know a whole lot about that.

I assume this refers to Vacaville.

What I know is that there was a whole wing of Vacaville in the 60s that was basically a CIA laboratory for experimenting on controlling and programming people with drugs.

What Tim Leary had to do with it, I'm not a historian of his life.

I couldn't say.

I do think that Sirhan Sirhan passed through that facility, so did Charlie Manson, so did General Sin Q, the character who led the Sin Bionese Liberation Army.

Remember them?

Oh, yes.

And so there was, you know, it's well documented that there was CIA interest in all these things.

Recently, you probably noticed, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who ran that MKUltra program, he died recently.

I heard that, yes.

Yeah, he took a lot of secrets with him, I'm sure.

What would you imagine would occur to somebody given LSD, unsuspecting, totally unsuspecting given LSD?

Well, it depends on, again, the circumstances.

If you were out in public, I think most people would lead to the conclusion, first, that they had been poisoned, and then a few minutes later that they were losing their mind.

And I think it's, you know, one of the most fundamental violations of a person's dignity to give them a drug without discussing it with them and them being fully consensual.

What do I agree?

There is no more fundamental invasion of privacy than such a thing.

William Burroughs once said there was only one commandment, and it was, thou shalt not blow pot smoke in thy pet's face.

I'm going to remember that one, Terrence.

Thanks.

First time caller line, you're on the air with Art Bell and Terrence McKenney.

And why?

Hello.

Hello to you.

Yes, sir.

Where are you?

I am in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, just here doing the computer thing.

Yes, sir.

What I would like to ask is, a few of us are going to take a trip down to Mexico, and we're going to be doing the Mayan thing down there.

And I was wondering if I can get any direction on which way to go.

Well, the Mayan ruin of Palenque in the state of Chiapas overlaps mushroom territory.

It's a little late, but there still may be mushrooms there this time of year.

That's a beautiful ruin.

Uxmal in the Yucatan is a beautiful ruin.

If you get down to Belize, Shanantinich out in the west end of the country, those are my favorite ones.

And Tikal in Guatemala.

But Palenque and Chiapas is the gem of the Mayan archaeological site.

That's way down south.

Can you go that far down south, caller?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, we're pretty much, we just got back from the Andes, and that's what we do is hike in the mountains.

Yeah, well, the Sierra Mazateca behind Palenque is some of the most rugged country in Mexico with some of the world's deepest caves.

But, of course, there's political problems back in there.

The Mexican army is leaning on the Indians pretty heavily, so you want to know your turf.

Did you find any problems down there when you were there in January?

Not at the ruin, but in the mountains, which begin immediately behind the ruin, all bets are off.

Huh, I gotcha.

I just want to also thank you very much for the electronic music culture that's going on, for the work that you've done,

and I guess the spoken word that you've done with them.

I want to thank you very much for that.

Oh, thanks very much.

Yeah, you are definitely in our consciousness around here in the Silicon Valley.

And, yeah, thank you, and thank you for the Santa Cruz visit also.

Thanks for calling.

Okay, bye-bye.

Take care.

Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Yes, sir.

Hi.

I'm a first-time caller.

Where are you?

I'm in California.

Okay.

Los Angeles, and I'm listening to KABC.

The Mighty Flagship Station.

Yes, sir, in L.A.

790.

The reason I was calling was, one reason was my, actually, my brother did slip me some acid when I was 11 years old and have that experience I can share.

Oh, my God.

Four-way windowpane.

And I was never a heavy drug user during my life, but that was a real radical experience.

Other than that, nobody seems to want to talk about how much resources they recently found in Kosovo.

So, someone called me today, because I know a lot of people in the government as well as private, and I'm in international business.

They found trillions of dollars worth of resources in Kosovo.

Well, that may well be.

What happened to you on this uninvited acid trip?

Well, what happened was, my brother was into some sort of satanic rituals with his buddies, and I thought it'd be a great joke to go ahead and slip me four-way windowpane.

And I remember getting really violently ill initially, because I didn't know what was going on.

I was spinning.

I laid down, and I laid down in a waterbed, and the vacuum started running on itself, and it started vacuuming the room methodically, you know?

So, I realized, I knew at that point that, obviously, my brother and his friends had obviously done something to me, you know?

What they had done, I don't know.

They didn't tell me at that time.

Then I started changing colors, okay?

Like blue, green.

I was really, then I started going into what they would say, kind of like a bad trip, but I was still basically barely able to keep a sense of reality, you could say, you know?

Because that's a pretty serious dose at that kind of age.

It's a terribly serious dose.

And I guess in youth, thank you, you would handle such a thing better.

But I would imagine, Terrence, not only would somebody who had that done to them feel like they were losing their mind,

but probably could actually slip out of reality and stay out of reality under such conditions.

That would be one possibility, wouldn't it?

Well, the fear thing starts a cascade, and then people do desperate or foolish things, and yeah.

No, it's a really dumb thing.

Well, this caller comes from a typical dysfunctional American family, satanic rituals, siblings dosing others with LSD.

This is why we need drug education.

We are a dysfunctional nation, aren't we?

All right, hold tight.

Maybe the power will stick with us, Terrence.

This is Coast to Coast AM.

It's a blue moon, too.

It's a bad one.

Here's some e-mail.

Surges, power surges, serious ones in Oklahoma about two hours ago.

That would be about the right time.

To talk with Art Bell in the kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S., first, dial your access number to the U.S.A., then 800-893-0903.

If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.

From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.

West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, call Art at 1-800-618-8255.

Or call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.

This is Coast to Coast AM from the kingdom of Nye.

Ah, good morning, everybody.

Terrence McKenna is here, and the power for the moment seems to be stable.

And I really shouldn't say that, because obviously it'll bring on the worst.

We'll just take it as it comes.

Terrence will be right back.

All right.

Once again, here we go.

I'm telling you, it's wild around here.

This is as wild a night as we have had.

That's all there is to it.

It's just a wild night.

Here's somebody else.

I must have 100 emails here.

Felt the power surge in Provo, Utah.

Enjoy the show.

That's Provo, Utah.

So it's one of those nights, and it's going to be interesting to see if and what the press

has to say about it later today.

Of course, it occurred in the middle of the night, so they may not say a word.

Terrence, welcome back.

Good to be back.

You are there.

I am, I am.

All right.

Here we go, hopefully.

First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell on a weird

night, but fun.

Hello.

Hi, hi, hi.

This is Frank from Cotati, California.

It's Sonoma County.

Hi, Frank.

And I read in Timothy Leary's autobiography flashbacks about some experiments they had done

at some prisons back east, I think when they were still at Harvard, using psilocybin to

rehabilitate inmates.

And the thing about it was they had a far lower recidivism rate, and that just basically

got covered up and ignored.

And then they bounced out of Harvard, so it just kind of disappeared.

But I thought that was one thing that was pretty interesting.

And I want to put in a plug for a book by Dale Pandell.

The name of it is Pharmacopoeia.

Pharmacopoeia, and it's an excellent explication of all the varieties of mind-altering substances.

I think it might be an interesting guest for you.

Is that something you're familiar with, Terrence?

Yes.

Pharmacopoeia, Dale Pandell, he's an interesting character, and he can spin a line of rap.

He would be an interesting guest.

That's an excellent book.

All right.

Well, Terrence, maybe you ought to just sort of construct a list of interesting guests

and how to get hold of them and e-mail it to me or something.

Sure, I'm happy to do that.

I would love that, because it sounds like you've got a lot of very interesting suggestions.

Now, here's an e-mail from Boulder City, right outside of Las Vegas.

And he says, I live just outside of Boulder City, and I'm looking across Boulder City right

now, and all the lights are out.

Now, that's where Boulder Dam is.

So, that's kind of interesting, too.

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.

Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Hi.

Great.

I made it.

This is John in Las Vegas, 105.1.

Hi, John.

How are you doing?

Hi.

I talked to you guys last year on March 19th.

I called and related the experience about the dream and the geometry book, and I wrote

a short story about it called Times Square.

I sent it out on March 13th, Saturday.

Sent you a copy, Art?

Yes, sir.

Did you get it?

I got it.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Terrence, if you would care to receive a copy, I'd love to send you one.

All right, yeah.

Go to my website at levity.com, and my email button is right there on the Terrence McKenna

page.

Well, I'm not really wired, or I don't have a computer.

Go to a library.

Right.

But this involves 11 pages with color scans and stuff.

I don't know if I can send that out that way.

Well, actually, if you go to that website, my P.O. box is there, too.

Oh, great.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

I'm not computer literate.

All right.

Well, listen, I'll tell you what.

We'll even do you another favor.

Why don't you give out your P.O. box, Terrence?

Sure.

It's P.O.B.

677, and the name of the town is H-O-N-A-U-N-A-U, Hawaii, 96726.

So that's H-O-N-A-U-N-A-U-H, Hawaii, 96726, and I'm P.O.B. 677.

Post Office Box 677.

Spell that town one more time.

H-O-N-A-U-N-A-U.

N-A-U.

That's a weird name.

And you pronounce that?

H-O-N-A-U-N-A-U.

It must have taken a while after you moved there to get that town.

Oh, well.

Or did you name the town?

No, no, it's a lifetime struggle for the poor Howley to be able to pronounce Hawaiian and even closely to correct.

East of the Rockies, you're on there with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell. Morning.

Good morning, Terrence, and good morning, Art.

Yes, sir.

I went through Vacaville and another state mental institution in California.

They have used those mental institutions not only for programming, but to destroy any political prisoner that they deem a threat to, quote-unquote, society.

And then when were you in Vacaville?

I was in from 90, let's see here, 91 until 94.

So that was well after all these things that were charged about the 60s.

But I'm sure, you know, all this work goes on.

I mean, as Art said, these black budget agencies wouldn't be fulfilling the taxpayers' mandate

if they weren't pursuing all these horrifying technologies and possibilities.

This is always the argument.

Yes, they continually do their little tricks and tricks of the trade.

And I was very aware of it due to some connections that I had prior to going in,

and that's one of the reasons that I was in.

And they, in fact, held me six and a half years illegally without due process of law.

Silence?

Are you there?

Well, I'm just wondering how much of this goes on that we don't hear about, you know.

I mean, we have a tendency, you and I mentioned it earlier, to expose the sins of 25 years ago.

But what's going on tonight?

I don't, you know what, Terrence?

I wish that I believed that we had had some great transformation,

that we are now this moral, ethical government that we thought we had years ago

and now have found out, of course, we didn't have.

But I don't think anything's changed.

I think the players have changed.

And I think 25 or 30 years or 50 years from now, we'll find out all the crap we're doing now.

I'm sure that's true.

I mean, I think it's a very cynical game.

Anybody who thinks we emerged into the light with Watergate or something like that

just has bought a very obvious establishment line.

Hear, hear, hear.

West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Hello.

Hi.

That's you?

Oh, hi.

Hi, where are you?

I'm in beautiful Vancouver, B.C.

Vancouver, all right.

Wow, I can't believe I'm on here.

Gee, well, it's really a treat to hear you're on the air again there, Terrence.

Anyway, one of the things I wanted to ask you is that typically DMT,

and I've read most of your books in there,

or the connection, the possible connection,

has there been any more, have you looked into,

or has there been any more research into the possible connection of the tryptamines

being a connection to what was known as SOMA,

or what we know as writing for the illusion mysteries?

Well, the SOMA continues, you know.

I mean, there's endless discussion about what was this fantastic calisthenogen

that inspired the writing of the Vapis.

I, let's see, in the recent issue of Eleusis,

Jonathan Ott reviews all theories, including my own,

and finds mine inadequate, and everybody else's as well.

I think it's pretty clear it was psilocybin.

Some people want to say it was Amanita muscaria,

but Amanita muscaria is an unreliable and sometimes dangerous intoxicant.

If it was neither a psilocybin mushroom nor Amanita muscaria,

then the candidates are not very promising.

So this is an area that needs to be looked at.

It was all regarded as settled, and that Watson had figured it out,

but now we know that he, there was a lot of evidence that's come to light since he did his work

that pushes the argument in new directions.

I talk about this in Food of the Gods.

There are two chapters related to SOMA.

Yeah, I was asking if there was anything new that's come to light since then.

Well, Giorgio Samarini, who studies iboga cults in Gabon,

told me that in the inner mysteries of these iboga cults,

there is mushroom symbolism and the use of the colors red and white.

So that's evidence of a possible mushroom cult connected with hallucinogenic substances in Africa.

That was a previously missing piece of the puzzle.

But no, I wouldn't say this argument has advanced dramatically.

I think until Algeria is politically stable enough to permit archaeology in the southern Sahara,

the early human use of hallucinogens in Africa and the Middle East is going to remain unclear.

Let's see.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for the call, sir.

First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Hey, Art.

How are you doing?

This is Jim over the hump from me in Vegas.

Yes, Jim.

Hey, I kind of tuned in late tonight.

Yes, sir.

But I've understood that there's been a lot of squirrely things going on with power and computers tonight.

Yep.

I'd just like to relate what went on in my world tonight.

What was that?

I work at a major hotel here with production shows.

Right.

And all the intelligent lighting was just unbelievably whacked out tonight,

and everybody was just throwing up their hands, couldn't figure it out.

During the big wind we handed, did you get wind out there yesterday?

Oh, did we get wind?

Yeah, I kind of said it.

Anyways.

Was it like a hurricane?

Well, you know, we were experiencing power surges then and fluctuations,

and the whole idea was to shut it off.

So everything was shut down.

So that's like what's kind of really weird about it is it's either possibly the power beforehand,

but these lighting boards and controllers, which is all high-tech computer-controlled stuff.

And everything was just unbelievably out tonight.

Nobody's going to...

Held up, huh?

Hey, another thing.

I just wanted to plug one of your sponsors there.

I'm talking to you on that Sanyo 917 right now.

You see, folks, all the bad phones you hear,

and until he just told you he was on a portable phone, you would not have known it.

I can sit in my neighbor's kitchen and actually, you know,

I don't have that external antenna or nothing, but I can get about a quarter of a mile away.

I know.

But, hey...

Listen, I appreciate it, sir.

I've got to scoot, but thank you.

And there is no better advertisement than proof here on the air.

Anyway, onward.

Let's see.

Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Good morning.

Hi.

My name's Michael, and I'm in California.

Hi, Michael.

Terrence, 30 years ago this month, I was sitting in a coffee shack

and below Honanau now making a wine club, getting ready to go to my draft physical.

Well, so you know Honanau now.

Oh, I do.

Well...

Yeah, well, it hasn't changed that much.

It's a well-kept secret.

With a spelling like that, we figure we're off the map.

I love Captain Cook, the whole area.

Yeah.

In something additional to the DMT lore of Sleeping Beauty that kissed the frog and turned

him into a prince.

Right.

Well, you know the toad DMT source, right?

Well, yeah.

This is something we haven't mentioned maybe on the air.

I thought maybe you shouldn't...

There's not too many toads left.

Well, we don't want to deplete the toads, but there are near relatives of DMT in some toads.

Let's just put it like that.

Well, I just thought of turning the frog into the prince might have something to do with that.

That's right.

Okay.

Good evening, guys.

Thank you.

East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna and Art Bell.

Good morning.

Where are you?

I'm in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin.

Yep.

Now, here's an example of a bad portable phone.

Yep.

Some of us don't have a lot of money to buy.

All right.

Yell into your bad phone and ask your question.

Some of us don't have a lot of money to buy good...

I hear that.

Anyway, I've been growing psychoactive fungus and plants for a number of years now.

And I've recently been trying to find plants which contain DMT.

And I used the plant mimosa and I grew that.

And it contained the substance, but not in high enough quantities.

And I was wondering if Terrence could recommend any obtainable plant for DMT.

Okay.

Well, Socotria viridis is the preferred source of DMT in the Amazon.

I know it's hard to get and hard to grow.

The Mimosas hostiles and the Mexican conspecific species, the name of which escapes me because

it's so late at night, those two in the root bark are pretty competitive.

There's also Anadonanthra, Peregrina, Variety, Sibyl.

The seeds of that also contain a fair concentration.

In fact, a high concentration.

Acacia confusa is an eastern, meaning an oriental acacia that has a lot of DMT in it.

But Socotria viridis, if you can get it.

All right.

Wild card line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna in the waning moments.

Hi, from Vancouver again.

Yes, sir.

Going back to the Mayans.

Sir, you were on earlier?

No, in relation to that subject.

Yes.

And the coming about of the 2013, do you see, Terrence, the realization of galactic citizenship

as a precursor or a result of that time?

All right.

Well, I can fly with that.

In other words, technologies seem to be converging toward opening up the bell, non-local quantum realm

where presumably all the intelligences of the universe are communicating in some kind of standing waveform.

So, I don't know how it is that it's keyed to this conjunction with the galactic center.

But I do think that we will fulfill the dreams of the ancient Maya.

We will fulfill the dreams of the medieval alchemists.

We are on a collision course with some kind of revelation of our own place in the cosmos.

And exactly how it's all going to hang out, we can't say.

But that it is happening is visibly evident all around us.

How close do you think we are?

Well, I still feel comfortable with 2012.

I still think that gives us ample room to put in place the understandings, the technologies.

I think we have to get over the millennial speed bump.

I think a lot of squirrels have seized the high ground.

And we have to sort through the prophecies and the revelations one by one.

But the wiser voices will be discerned in this process.

But this is something you contribute to, Art, by letting everybody tell their story

and letting the Darwinian selection of these memes take place.

Indeed. Indeed, I do that.

All right.

West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.

Hello.

Is that me?

That's you.

I had a question.

I wanted to tell you something, Art.

Yes?

Did you know you're going to be on repeat of Millennium tonight?

Oh, you know, I meant to tell my audience that.

Thank you.

That's right.

The show, the Millennium program I did, is going to, indeed, repeat tonight on NBC at, what,

8 o'clock or something?

I think it's 9.

9 o'clock?

Yeah.

Okay.

On the West Coast.

So wherever you are, that's right.

I'll be on Millennium.

Thank you.

And I have a question.

Sure.

What about people that take prescribed Medicaid drugs and they don't get the right one?

Is that anything like that, like you're talking about?

No.

You mean in terms of the kinds of effects?

Yeah.

No.

I think we're talking about something, well, bad medication can go any direction, but psychedelics

are certainly more than simply misprescribed responses to drugs.

Well, do you think...

Is that what you mean?

Well, I think that's what you mean.

Do you think that drugs ought to be prescribed at all?

And if you do, then should psychedelics be prescribed?

Well, see, we don't have any place in our culture or our medical practice for the concept

of self-administered recreational drugs.

Our culture sets us up to think drugs are for sick people.

No, no, I know, but I mean in some greater future that we might sit here and imagine for

a moment.

Well, I think we're going to see psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and in fact, that already flourishes

in an underground form, sure.

So that you could see it go that direction.

In other words, there would be legitimate use, legitimate prescription.

You would go to the doctor and you would say, I'm depressed.

I'm in an unrecoverable state of depression or something, or I'm whatever, and they would

prescribe something that would literally alter your perception.

Well, the cure rate of chronic alcoholism with one trip of LSD in the early 60s was 50%.

Really?

One trip, yes.

Oh, my God.

At the Saskatoon Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan.

All this was published.

Now, but where, and why don't we read about it now?

Well, because once LSD was demonized, the idea that it might cure addiction to the drug of

choice of the culture just contained too many contradictions for the scientific and medical

establishment to want to plow ahead with it, you know.

Terrence, we're out of time, as always.

Listen, thanks on a really rough night for hanging in with me through all the bumps in

this road.

It was whitewater training, Art.

We'll do it again, of course, one day.

Thank you, Terrence.

All right.

Good night.

Good night from the desert to paradise.

That's it, folks.

That's all the time we've got tonight.

We really have a wonderful lineup of guests coming up, and you can see them on my website

right now, assuming the power holds.

That's www.artbell.com.

And yes, I will be on Millennium tonight.

From the high desert, night all.

Thank you.