I picked up from the bit torrent community a rare and complete collection of a radio show called
Open Mind with Bill Jenkins. It was based in Los Angeles and ran for 7 years in the 1980’s. This ground-breaking show covered such subject matter as UFOs, alternative energy, spirituality, ancient religions, out-of-body and near-death experiences and more and was fraught with government conspiracies, cover-ups, media manipulation, military secrecy, etc. It’s great fodder for a heretic like me, I’ve been listening to different episodes every night.
What’s equally fascinating as the subject matter is how dated it is. Often it simply feels like I have the radio on until they say something like, “…as we continue to mourn the tragic loss of the astronauts in the Challenger explosion…” or “before Carter left office” or something regarding a task performed by some enigmatic device called a supercomputer. And since this was (perhaps) the first radio show if its kind some older topics had to be discussed anew like the Roswell incident and the Philadelphia experiment.
The one I listened to last night, from about 1984, involved discussion on this newly developed “theory” called the greenhouse effect. The new age thinkers on the show, however, claimed we were on the verge of a new energy era that would do away with the consumption of fossil fuel. Not so fast, boys (talk about optimism, or procrastination). Also mentioned was a revolutionary electric automobile that Nikola Tesla made for himself by gutting an AMC Pacer and dropping in a homemade battery. It seems Tesla was not without a sense of
Garth.
What’s also funny, like looking at your hairstyle in an old photo, is the cold war-era paranoia. Some callers were very concerned that people in Alaska were suffering the ill effects of Soviet ultra-low frequency testing. (Something which Senator Palin could speak to?) Other well-informed patriots were very curious about how far along those damn commies were in their weather control technology.
One particular recording made my blood run ice cold while I was up late at night in the darkness of the house. It was brought in by a guest who was an authority on Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Remember the movie
White Noise? On the air, they played a recording of a conversation between a researcher and someone they knew had been dead for 16 years. The ghostly voice was monotone yet tortured, almost straining to be heard on the magnetic tapes. Fucking creepy.
So I sit and listen in this 25 year old time warp cocoon to the state of affairs in modern science and new age research of the early 80’s. And I hear him repeat the phone number over and over again. And I listen to callers call in with related examples of personal events that happened just a couple days ago. And I think it would be so cool to call in and say, “Long time listener, first time caller.”
And then I would astound the shit out of them with prophetic knowledge of the future. I would tell them that there are no commercial hover cars but there are hybrid cars. And I would tell them about global warming and the Soviet break up and the Berlin Wall and their neighbours San Jose and Anaheim getting hockey teams and home computers which are all connected through an internet and that the Loch Ness Monster was a hoax. And I would tell them that everyone has their own personal pocket calculator on which you can tell time, set alarms, manage your calendar, record and playback video, send and receive silent letter messages, take and store pictures, manage contacts, listen to music, browse this internet thingy, and even talk to other people live just like a phone. Then they’d say, “Yeah, right. Beam me up, Scotty.” Then they’d laugh at me and high five while disconnecting the line to pocket calculator.
What would you tell those millions of unsuspecting listeners about the next 25 years if you could?
a hundred years ago, technology that could have rid us of our reliance on fossil fuel. Considering factors like the greenhouse effect and wars over oil, I ponder how the last century could have been different if his primary financier, J. P. Morgan, had continued to finance Tesla's endeavours instead of pulling the plug (no pun intended) because there was no way to meter and therefore charge for the power consumed.
