October 21, 1997: Open Lines - Weird Person Line
The results do not disappoint. Callers include a man who manufactures and sells orgasm machines as a legitimate business, a collector who keeps a coffee can full of celebrity toenails and once followed a single ant for five hours, and a listener who claims he can control the wind within a fifteen-mile radius. A caller with the ultra-rare blood type "RH equal" says he never catches colds or the flu, prompting Art to joke that science needs his blood.
Between calls, Art plays exclusive audio recordings from his recent trip to Egypt, capturing Zahi Hawass splitting a five-ton granite block and dismissing claims that anything significant lies beneath the Sphinx. Art also discusses global warming, the finite supply of fossil fuels, and the profitable industry built around the common cold.
Key Moments
Egypt audio: one man splits a five-ton block of granite in two minutes: Art rolls camcorder audio he dubbed down from his recent Egypt trip: a single workman with a sledgehammer cleanly splits a five-ton block of pure granite in about two minutes. Zahi Hawass, then Director of Antiquities at Giza, comments on tape that 'this man cut five tons of stone in two minutes' and that the modern workmen are descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
Hawass at the Sphinx shaft denies hidden chamber, names Bauval and Hancock: Second Egypt clip: Hawass standing beside a shaft at the Sphinx, opened in 1926 by Baraize, addresses claims by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock that he is hiding a discovery. He insists the shaft has been opened before and is empty, and that no single artifact found on the Giza plateau proves the existence of Atlantis.