Guy at Carnegie was Right about Cleaning Up the Oil Spill

Last night Richard Hoagland, a former science reporter for Walter Cronkite, was on Coast to Coast explaining that the BP oil spill can be cleaned up using oil-eating microbes. It's a process called bio-remediation. It works, he said. It was done 20 years ago in Texas.

Hoagland asked listeners to e-mail the White House recommending that they try this.

I actually first learned that microbes could clean up an oil spill from a guy at Carnegie last month.

Cats Do the Darndest Things

Tonight Art Bell guest hosted the late night radio show Coast to Coast, a show which has a loyal following amongst the unemployed on the Downtown Eastside who don't have to get up in the morning.

The retired Bell, who has a bit of a cult following, hosted from his home radio studio in the Philippines. [He is fascinated, he said on a previous show, that technology actually allows him to broadcast half way around the world and sound like he's in the U.S.] When he guest hosts, he treats his fans to photos of his Filipina wife forty years his junior, his growing daughter, and his cats.

Cats do the darndest things.

So do older men. A die hard Art Bell fan on the Downtown Eastside has said several times that he lost respect for Bell when he took up with a woman who was almost a kid. He reminded me that Rick, a guy who goes to Carnegie off and on, had done the same thing. Rick had shown him photos of his life in the Philippines. He showed a photo of a wife he'd had there; she was nude. He showed a photo of her cousin; she was nude. He showed a photo of the maid; she was nude.

I know Rick too. He told me that both of his young wives had left him after he brought them to Canada. "As soon as their feet hit the tarmac at the airport," he told me, "consider them gone."

Racist Comments Follow Art Bell's Obama Endorsement

Art Bell was hosting Sunday night's Coast to Coast radio show and once again endorsed Barack Obama. "I'm a big Obama fan," he said.

But Bell told his audience that he had been amazed at the reaction to his endorsement of Obama during Friday night's show. He was barraged with "intensely racial" fastblasts. Fastblasts are messages that can be sent through the Coast to Coast website to allow listeners to give feedback during the show. Bell said the response was "totally racial and bigoted beyond all belief."

He said it appears to be anonymity that gives listeners the nerve to make such comments.

Bell is raising a mixed race daughter, Asia, whom he had with his Filipino wife.

Art Bell Endorses Barack Obama

It's almost as good as an endorsement from Oprah. Radio host Art Bell endorsed Barack Obama last night on the late night Coast to Coast show. Coast to Coast gets up to 10 million listeners a night.

"I think I'm an Obama guy," Bell said during his opening remarks on the show. Then he repeated himself, explaining that after listening to the speeches and "watching the sparks fly" between Barack and Clinton, he believed himself to be "an Obama guy."

"I like Obama", Bell added later in the show. "I think Obama has the ability to bring this country together in a way that has not been done since John Kennedy."

When a caller expressed the opinion that Obama's Muslim ancestry could work in favor of the U.S. internationally, Bell disagreed. "We're very much a warrier-like people and I don't think the race or background will make any difference to those attacked."

Bell, a self-described Libertarian who had earlier in the primaries praised Republican Ron Paul for his "revolutionary" ideas, commented last night on John McCain becoming the Republican candidate for President. "I've always liked John McCain but would have liked him to achieve that last time."

Bell's endorsement of Obama carries weight, even though Bell now only does the occasional Coast to Coast show. Bell built up a loyal, almost cult-like, following during his years as regular host of the show which not only focuses on UFOs and the paranormal but has a steady stream of interviews with political authors and scientists.

One caller told Bell last night, "You're a legend." Bell responded, "I really would prefer not to be thought of that way." In the past Bell has attempted to knock himself off the pedestal listeners put him on, advising them not to assume that he has the answers, that he is no more qualified to figure things out than they are.

Related Story: Racist Comments Follow Art Bell's Endorsement of Obama

Is Psychic Sylvia Brown No Longer Welcome on Coast to Coast Radio?

On Saturday night on Coast to Coast, host George Noory (during the segment before host Ian Punit came on) told the audience that psychic Sylvia Brown had not been on the show for awhile and they weren't sure they would have her on again. He said he was put off by a comment he saw her make on the Montel show. He said a woman had asked Brown how a fireman, a relative of hers, had died on 9/11. Brown said he had drowned. The woman said he couldn't have drowned but Brown insisted he had. Noory wasn't more specific than that about what had put him off.

Noory didn't mention the jam Brown had gotten into last year on his own show. I was listening to Brown on Coast to Coast when it happened. It was during a period when, if I remember correctly, there was a great deal of media attention on miners in the U.S. who were buried and rescuers were working to save them. Brown said -- my memory is not 100% on the details here -- that the miners were no longer alive. But a few minutes later news came in that the miners had been found alive. Noory pointed out to Brown that this news contradicted what she had said. She insisted that it was in fact what she had said. So Noory played the audio tape a few times for the audience and told us we could decide for ourselves. Although Brown's words had not been precise on the original tape, it seemed clear to me that she had been wrong.

There may be times when people have psychic moments. But I have never known what to make of Sylvia Brown. Terry Johnson, a bright guy and committed skeptic who lived on the Downtown Eastside who has since died of a heroin overdose, thought Sylvia Brown was a complete fake. I talked to him a few years ago about seeing her on Larry King Live and he said King was "gullible". I have a psychic prediction: Sylvia Brown is finished on Coast to Coast.

Art Bell's replacements announced

George Nori announced last night, July 3rd, that Ian Punit will take over the Saturday night slot of the Coast to Coast radio show left vacant by Art Bell's retirement. Punit, an Episcopalian minister from Minnesota who is prone to eczema on his hands and a racy sense of humor, has previously hosted on Saturday nights when Bell was away.

Nori will now be hosting on the first Sunday of every month, in addition to his regular week night shows.

The other slots left vacant will be filled by guest hosts for the time being. There will also be the occasional re-run or "best of" show.

New baby for Art Bell

Radio host Art Bell, who will be 62 years old in a week, announced on Saturday night that his wife, Airyn, had given birth to a girl, Asia Rayne Bell. Bell married Airyn last year and described her at the time as being in her "early twenties." She had just finished teacher training in the Philippines.

Bell founded the Coast to Coast talk show on which he interviews guests on topics ranging from the paranormal to Middle Eastern politics. Bell's late night show is broadcast from Nevada and has a following on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where unemployment is high and people get into the habit of staying up late. Bell gets many Canadians on his call in line; in fact they dominate the International Line he set up for listeners outside America.

Bell announced at the opening of last night's show that Airyn, 4 ‘ 8” tall, gave birth to the 8 lb. 5 ounce Asia by cesarean section. The baby was born on May 30th at 6 a.m. She was conceived during a visit to Hong Kong. Hence the name, Asia.

Bell says Asia is an "alert, advanced beyond her days" little girl. It's as if she is three months old, he said. But he does not intend to "dwell" on his new offspring because he knows that new parents sometimes do that and for those who are not the parents, "it probably bores them to death."

Bell met Airyn in 2006, just weeks after his second wife Ramona, 47, died suddenly of an asthma attack in their RV in January. Bell told his listeners when he returned to the air that Ramona’s death had left him in almost unbearable emotional pain and he had even considered suicide. But after a few weeks of mourning, Bell began to sound upbeat on his show, almost giddy. When interviewing theoretical physicist, Lisa Randall, he repeatedly kidded her about how a woman so good looking could be so smart. He told her that he knew he was being sexist, and she agreed. He just didn't seem like himself. But his listeners would later discover something.

He was high on Airyn.

An American friend of Bell's who was engaged to Airyn’s sister in the Philippines, had Bell's personal e-mail address and had given it to Airyn. Bell was not aware of this. But he began to receive e-mails from Airyn and they began to correspond. He went to the Philippines to meet her and after a couple of weeks of getting to know her, married her in a double wedding with her sister and his friend.

That was less than four months after the death of Ramona who was half-Filipino. Bell, who regularly interviews people who believe that the dead can communicate with the living, had attempted to check in with Ramona before the marriage. If I'm making a mistake, he told her, "Kick my ass." Bell explained to his listeners that his marriage to Ramona had been good, an experience that left him eager to marry again.

Bell had managed to keep his wedding to Airyn a secret until it was over. Then he put a photo of his wife on the Coast to Coast website and announced to his listeners that he was once again married, in love, and happy. "Life is very short", he repeatedly reminded them, recalling that the coroner had reminded him of that fact at Ramona's death.

Some of Bell's roughly 10 million listeners looked askance at him snapping up a wife almost 40 years his junior from the provinces in the Philippines, where young women are notoriously desperate to marry Americans who can rescue them from poverty. As Jim Arkansas, a Downtown Eastsider who has been devoted to Bell for years, looked at the photo of his wife and said, "She looks like a little girl...I lost respect for Art." But Bell dismissed critics with, “Some people are not happy unless I’m unhappy.”

After marrying Airyn, Bell told listeners that he "retired her" from the teaching profession, which in the Philippines requires that new teachers work in remote areas.

Bell completely relocated to the Philippines, getting a condo -- an entire floor actually -- in a high rise in an American section of Manila and broadcasting his radio show from there. But the typhoons there where making his windows buckle inwards. And his life was in danger when a phony letter, circulated years earlier and traced to a computer at a university in California, was published by a newspaper in the Philippines. The letter falsely presented him as the author of disparaging commentary about the Philippines, that he considered the Philippines to be a "dirty" place, etc. Bell noted that it is not unusual for media personalities to get assassinated in the Philippines.

In 2007, months after announcing to his listeners that his young wife was expecting a baby in June, Bell secretly moved back to the U.S. He returned to the Nevada compound where he has his own radio broadcasting towers. When springing the news on his listeners that he was now back on U.S. soil, Bell noted that many had not been pleased about him picking up shop and moving to the Philippines. He has an almost cult following in the U.S.

Bell gave only one reason on the air for his return to Nevada: he wanted his daughter to have U.S. citizenship and that would involve much less paper work if she were born in the U.S. rather than the Philippines

Bell's newborn daughter is not his first child. He has a grown son, Arthur Bell Jr., from an earlier marriage. It was due to his son that Bell left his radio show abruptly in Apr. 2000, saying at the time that it was "to resolve a family crisis". Listeners would later learn that he had left to deal with psychological trauma suffered by his son, who as a 16 yr. old in 1997 had been raped by a substitute high school teacher with AIDS. Bell sued the Nevada School District on behalf of his son and the court papers ended up on the internet. Bell returned to his show in 2001. He recently mentioned that his son lives with his mother in the U.S., and that it is a "tragic" situation.

Bell, who acknowledges that he is a night hawk and that at Coast to Coast the middle of the night is "when we do our best work", says the new baby has not been causing him much sleep deprivation. She tends to wake up at night which is when he and his wife are up anyway. "Airyn and I go to bed typically at 4 or 5 in the morning."

Bell put a photo of Asia at 10 days of age on the Coast to Coast website. That prompted a listener, Heinrik from College Station, Texas to send Bell a 'fast-blast' e-mail, asking if he was going to put a photo of Asia's first poo on his site via the web cam. Bell responded, "No, Heinrik, but for free samples write to the network."

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See related Story, "Is Art Bell Hinting at a Comeback?", at:
Is Art Bell Hinting at a Comeback?