Drosnin explains how the code was validated through a double-blind experiment published in a peer-reviewed mathematical journal, comparing results in the Bible against control texts like War and Peace. He emphasizes that the phenomenon is statistically real regardless of who or what created it, and that he regularly briefs heads of intelligence agencies because the code keeps proving accurate. Art asks whether the future it reveals can be changed, and Drosnin insists that free will remains central to the code's purpose.
The conversation shifts to Drosnin's book Citizen Hughes, based on nearly 10,000 secret documents he obtained after tracking down the burglars who stole them from Hughes' headquarters. Drosnin reveals how Hughes bribed presidents with bundles of cash, bought the Las Vegas gaming commission, and persuaded Richard Nixon to move nuclear bomb tests to Alaska. Art and Drosnin discuss the bizarre reality of the world's richest man living as a reclusive, unclothed figure in a blacked-out penthouse.
Key Moments
Drosnin warned Rabin a year before assassination: Drosnin says he personally warned Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a year ahead of his 1995 assassination based on a Bible Code prediction; when Rabin was killed in the predicted place and year, he said aloud 'oh my god, it's real.'
Hughes bribed presidents with bundles of cash: Drosnin states flatly that Howard Hughes bribed sitting U.S. presidents with bundles of hundred dollar bills, exerting James Bond villain-style control of CIA, FBI, Pentagon, White House, and the mafia from hiding.
FBI and CIA chose not to investigate the heist: Drosnin says Freedom of Information Act files revealed FBI and CIA only pretended to investigate the 1974 burglary because real investigation would force them to prosecute Nixon over $100,000 in secret cash from Hughes.
Three phone calls cracked the Hughes case: Drosnin recounts that within three phone calls he realized the federal investigation was a fraud because the three obvious people any reporter would call had never been contacted at all.
Billionaire junkie shooting codeine: Drosnin describes Hughes in his last years: never wore clothes, lived in filth in hotel rooms, was a billionaire junkie shooting up codeine, mad as a hatter on one level yet completely lucid and a good writer on another.