The Fifth Hour: George Noory, Late Night Legend

of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in the air everywhere and welcome back into the podcast dojo for a brand spanking new addition of The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller and Danny g Radio in an extra special, extra special edition of the Fifth Hour, And I'm so excited.

You know, doing the overnight show for so many years talking sports, the goal has always been to be at the very top, right, you know, you always want to have the most success you can have in anything that you do. And in our business, the most successful overnight show is Coast to Coast AM. It has been on since the late nineteen eighties and it has dominated. It is the most popular overnight show in the country. Now, you you're probably thinking, why am I talking about this?

That's a competitor, But we're all under the same umbrella as you. Know Fox Sports Radio is a partnership with the Premier networks. I work out of the Premier Network studios. We do the Ben Maller Show out of that studio, and George Nori does his show as he talks paranormal conspiracy theories and all of that, he does his show from our studio base. He's on a different floor than we are, but we're in the same building and so I often will run into George, more his car than

anything else. But I have been a fan of Coast to Coast going back to Art bell Uh, the man that started that show at its inception back in the day, and I just love the variety of topics and the way they approach radio. I love radio when it's done well.

And every time I've met with the bosses over the years at Fox, the people that are in charge of my show, I've always said, listen, my goal with the Overnight I wanna I wanna make this like Coast to Coast, right, I want to make this as important a show as Coast to Coast is for the overnight listener. And we're not quite there yet. We're getting there, We're not there. There's a lot of work to still be done to

close the gap and whatnot. But the man that has all the answers, and someone who I'm a fan of, I don't hear him that much. But I don't really hear him on the way home. Actually, I'll flip on Coast to Coast, got a long drive back to the north Woods, and we are welcomed in now by George nor the host of Coast to Coast AM and Art Bell. Of course, as I mentioned a legend of late night radio, George,

he retires, and I'm gonna give you credit. You have seamlessly guided Coast to Coast for twentysomething years without missing a beat. And I know in our world, the sports world, when a star quarterback exit stage right, normally things fall apart. For example, the New England Patriots with Tom Brady. He goes to the Buccaneers and the Patriots go from Super Bowl team contender for the Super Bowl year after year to a very mediocre product without Tom Brady because they

haven't been able to replace him. But you have done above and beyond, gone above and beyond the call of duty, George, And how have you been able to do it? Placing an icon and continuing to grow and evolve and improve the show. It's kind of interesting, Ben, I have been interested in this subject matter since I was a kid. We can get into that in a moment. But I groomed myself to do this years ago. And so when

I got into broadcasting, I was nineteen years old. I got my first job as a television production company a worker in Detroit for an ABC TV station, and I just worked my way up. I got was twenty one years old. I got my radio job, my first one, and then went into television as an executive and kept marketing and pushing myself. But I was always interested in the unusual, the unexplained, and so when the time came to replace Art Bell or fill in for him, there

I was. I was in the right spot. And then many of the guests that I had on local shows in St. Louis, for example, we're the same people who are on coast to coast, So it was a seamless move for me. And what I just did is I just kept tweaking the program and I've been doing it now we're going on twenty years this year. Well congratulations on that. And what is it? Maybe it's just the late night hours, but the the topics, which obviously you're you're a big fan of You've been doing a long time.

But why does that show do so well? You guys have dominated late night syndicated radio everywhere I go when I travel anywhere, George, I turned on the radio late at night. Coast to coast is everywhere. What is the magic recipe about these topics? I think people are bombarded during the day ben with political information, breaking news tragedies, and they just want to get a little break at

night and just relax. Whether they're driving in trucks, driving home from work, security police officers, or just home in bed, they just want to relax and chill out for the day. And that's what our program brings them. It brings them not only comfort, but it brings them the ability to let their minds wander. I mean, is their life after death? Are their UFOs? Are these strange things happening? Are there conspiracies? And uh, it's kind of fun for people to sit

back and enjoy it. Yeah, now we both have this in common. I do a late night sports show, George, and I get some really zany people that call up and and you know, it's in the sports world and all that, but you hosting coast to coast, you get like next level uh callers some really wild stuff and I've heard some of it. I've heard stories about some of the people that have called over the stretching the boundaries of the imagination and the thing. I will give

you credit because I'm not like you, Georgie. You are able to stay very calm. You listen. You how do you have so much patience dealing with some of the really extreme things that happen when people call up on open lines Bead. My favorite phrase when I get a strange call is really, but I let them talk. You know. One of the secrets I have learned of interviewing is to listen and let your guests or the caller call.

And the only thing I don't tolerate his profanity. Obviously you know that they get booted off for that, and they know that. So they talk about some outlandish things and it's my job to kind of pull it out to get more and more information from them. And that's what I do. I you know, I'm I'm seriously interested

in what they're talking about. I'm listening to what they're talking about, and uh, I mean, I've heard some talk show hosts that somebody will say in uh, six people in my family got sick last night, and then his next question is how many people got sick last night?

You have to listen and uh. And I think that's one of the things that has kept the program successful with the callers is they know that they can become part of the show without being put down, offended, and then to say what they want and that it will get on. Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned you were kind of groom growing up. You're into paranormal activity and whatnot as a as a kid, was there anything specific, George? I mean you think about your your in your days.

Did you did you see something in some UFO or something. Was there a moment in time where you realize, Hey, this is something that I love and that that's what led you down this path his career. When I was a youngster, my mother brought me home a book by

Walter Sullivan, New York Times science writer. And when I had an opportunity to read that book called We Are Not Alone, I was obsessed with the possibility of extraterrestrial life out there in the universe, and at that young age that just kept pushing me and pushing me and pushing me, and then Look magazine came out with an article about Barney and Betty Hill. They were the couple abducted in the sixties, and I just couldn't get enough, and I just kept pushing myself even more. And uh,

it has just grown and grown and grown. But I mean, these things happened to me at a very young age, and I never stopped. She always gave me alternative medicine ideas when I was ten years old eleven years old, and I've used that to do a lot of those kind of shows on the program. I had an out of body experience at eleven years old. I was one of one of the rare days I stayed home from school and I woke up and I'm on the ceiling looking down at my body, and I'm going, WHOA, what's that?

At that moment, I snapped back into my body and then ended up going to the library to try to find a book on what had happened to me, and I stumbled into the occult section and they had a book on astral projection, and on the cover of the book they had a picture of a body floating above a body, and I want gosh, that's what happened to me. So I grabbed that book, picked it up, read it, and just learn more about that. So at a very young age, I was really grooming myself to all of this.

As far as the topics that you guys talk about, I know recently and I know you've talked about this from time to time, these shape shifters. And for people who may be listening who don't know that that is someone who has transformed into an animal. Uh, where does that rank on coast to coast topics? George, the shape shifters. A matter of fact, just recently I did a major

show on shape shifting. And I think all of us, at some point in our lives ben have met people who have changed right in front of us, not necessarily into an animal, but into a different person. I mean, and uh, these things are strange, but they're out there and you know people, And we use the example during Halloween.

People shape shift on Halloween. They get into a costume and they become that costume, whatever it might be, whether it's a witch, a dracula, people change, and that is happening in real life to a lot of people, whether it's emotional alcohol, who knows what, but they do shape shift. George Nori, I I gotta ask you. I have a buddy of mine who loves talking about Roswell, New Mexico, and he's convinced that there was a spacecraft that landed there and the government covered it up and and all that.

I know you also, you guys have talked a lot about Area fifty one over the years. That's a big topic of conversation, the paranormal world and based on doing coast to coast And you're, as you said, growing up interested in paranormal and all that. Do you think that we've we've been visited here by extraterrestrial George, I mean, how many times do you think it's a regular occurrence? You think all that's just made up? Well, I think number one, this universe is way who asked for us

to be all by ourselves? And we don't taking God out of the equation just for a moment. We don't really understand why we're here, how we're here. And so when you look at the vastness of the University James Webb space telescope, for example, is sending back glimpses of the universe and star clusters being formed and stuff. There's no question in my mind that there are thousands, if not millions, of civilizations out there that have had a head start. I mean, we're, you know, our our planets

four and a half billion years old. The universe is fourteen billion years old. Jumps start another billion or two on another planetary system. Who knows what kind of technology they have. But I think we were visited in the Biblical times, the ancient times. I think we're being visited now. And I think in the context of the Bible, when they talk about fallen angels coming down to Earth, who knows, they could have been talking about extraterrestrials coming on the Earth.

And there was a great author by the name of Zecharia Sitchen. He passed away at nine years old. His theory was that extraterrestrials came to our planet a long time ago from another planetary system and seated us, literally created us from what we are now in their image. Isn't that interesting? The Bible talks about God making us in his image. Who knows what's going on, But but personally, I believe we've been visited and we'll probably still be visited.

I gotta tell you Georgia. I'm going off topic here a bit. But when I look at my iPhone and the computer technology that we have today, and I think some of that stuff, maybe it's just me. I think some of that stuff comes from outside our realm. The technology,

it could be, it could be reversed engineer technology. There was a late Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso who wrote a book the day after Roswell, and he claims that it was his job to take the technology from that crashed UFO at Roswell and give it to companies to reverse engineer. And uh, you know, of course it's no longer with us anymore, but gosh, that's entirely possible. And maybe that's how we got all this technology so fast. Can you imagine what we've done in the last hundred years. We

have exploded technologically. I mean, we had people on the moon in nineteen sixty nine. That's incredible. Yeah, it is. It is wild. But in in terms of the global community, George, and you talk about this stuff all the time, but are people in the world prepared If let's say the government's got together in the Western world and said, okay, they've kind of danced around this in recent months that there have been UFOs, we have had communication. How do

you think we were gonna get the whole story? And how would the world react. It's one thing to say everything to be fine, but we saw what happened during COVID with people running out, panicking, buying toilet paper and all that. What would the reaction be if if the people in charge said here's what happened and laid everything out. I remember what Jack Nicholson said in a few good Men, you can't handle the truth. Well, I think we can

handle the truth. I think most people, if the government officially came out and said what was going on, would probably say I knew it. They'd be ticked off that we've been lied to over all these years, but they would say we knew it, we we we accepted. And I think we're at a point now ben where people would not panic, which they probably would have years ago,

and that was a concern I think of governments. But I think right now most people probably if you went on the street today it asked them about extraterrestrial life and do they believe it? I would think seven out of ten people would say, yeah, it's happening. Interesting and uh,

turning the turning the page on that, George. Over the last ten years or so, maybe a little less than that, there's been a lot of people and in our in our world, the media world, attacking free speech and trying to limit outside opinions, and the word conspiracy has been attacked as you're on the fringes and all that. But doing coast to coast, you've always welcomes, you talked about your welcome free thought, let people talk, tell their stories

and all that. And how difficult has it been to navigate all that with outside entities, uh, you know, screaming and shouting, how you you're not allowed to talk about that? How have you been able to juggle that? We've been able to just make it work. I've never been told by management. I've never been told by outside entities or organizations or groups not to talk about a certain topic. UM. I just try to make sure that when we talk

about something that we're accurate, that we're right. Unless it's just a fun topic like a UFO visitation or something like that, those are difficult to verify. But when we get into some serious stuff too, and we've done that, um, you know, that's where my old newsman and that that newsman ability kicks in, and I want to balance things and make sure that we get equal sides. I think one of the problems a lot of cable channels have

done these days is there's just so one sided. Instead of giving people the story straight and let us decide what we want. Um, you know, they have force fed us, and I think that's hurting journalism a lot. Yeah, George, you worked at TV and radio your entire life. Here as an adult, what do you think it will take to get back? Will we ever get back? Are we is this just a new normal forever? Or or is it possible to get back to playing it more down the middle and not right wing, let wing the extremes

as you talked about. Well, we need to get back. I mean, there's no question about that. And I think

people are going to slowly eventually demand it. Uh. And you'll be able to tell that by ratings, of course, and ratings mean the money for the networks, and if they start losing their ratings, they're going to change and I think that's going to force it in the In the long run, we're just so as as a nation, we're so divided, and then you know, years ago you could be in favor of a politician or individual or sports figure and talk about it with somebody who was

opposed to you, and and talk about it with great dialogue. Nowadays, if you're talking about some sports issue in a bar, you're gonna end up getting into a fight with somebody. It's crazy. Yeah, it is in the in the athletes, every issue, even the most mundane. I know from doing my show, George, people make it political, like certain athletes Lebron James, for example, has become a political figure over

the years and whatnot. It's it's wild. I'll be talking about something that's I'm talking about sports and I'll get people on one political side getting upset with me because I mentioned that. It's a wild, wild time. But as far as your experience, and we we all went through the COVID thing doing radio shows from home or different

locations and whatnot. But during that shutdown in and how long that lasted, what was what was your experience like dealing with all that and you know, doing the show night after night and having people who were really scared freaking out and all that. How did you how did you hear that? How did that that go? For you. Well, we broke the story back in December of two thousand nineteen that COVID was in that Wuhan lab, where everybody else denied it. At that time, it was just I've

always believed there are no coincidences. And when I saw a little tiny story that said there was a lab in Wuhan, China that worked on viruses, it just hit me and I said, this thing didn't happen in the market. It just didn't come from some tainted bat. And I went on the air and said, folks, I really believe it was concocted and got released accidentally. Never said it was intentional, but it was made in that Wuhan lab.

And now most people, most people believe that's the case, even though they still haven't gone to the bottom of all this. But when COVID hit, it was devastating for a lot of people. They stayed home, they had to do a lot of different things. But we didn't miss a beat on coast to coast. I mean, we we kept with the story. We kept reporting on um. My big issue at the time was thirty to sixty people die every year from the flu. But I have not heard one story of flu deaths in two or three years,

have you no No. And that's the other thing, and the thing that really told me a lot. You know, my um my dad was sick at the time and I obviously couldn't he didn't have COVID, but I couldn't take him to the hospital. They told me not to dig him the hospital and it ended up ended up

costing him dearly. But but all the people that have cancer and other illnesses, they were not able to get checked up in that for for seven, eight, nine months, whatever whatever it was, and that just nobody brought that up. It seemed like they just didn't worry about that was all about about the COVID stuff. It's pretty pretty wild how that all worked out. And and we're also seeing, i think now a couple of years later, George, the fallout from that from people still trying to recover from

having their lives shut down. I've noticed absolutely. And now we're going in the monkey poks. Then it doesn't stop, yeah, which is well, there's always something for you guys to talk about on coast to coast, George Nori. Now you you worked in RAID. I'm fascinated by people in the business and how they rise to the top like you have, George. But yeah, you mentioned you you're in the paranormal as

a kid. You've had a very interesting life experience. You did TV Big Star in St. Louis before Coast to Coast. What what is Chiefe? What have you noticed working your entire life in radio and TV and whatnot. What is the biggest change in the business that you've noticed over the years. Consolidation, I think has been one thing. You know, in the old days, you had a company that owned a couple of TV stations and a couple of radio

stations and that was it. And now you know, they're conglomerates all over the place, controlling a lot of stations and a lot of media. But the biggest change has been the technology with streaming, podcasting as you're doing now. These things were unheard of several years ago. Nobody would even anticipate that. I mean, the poor guys that used to work at Blockbuster Video that had all these stores

that are all gone. Now. Some guy probably went up to his boss and said, you know, what we should be doing is beaming these things into people's home homes. And the guy probably said, you're nuts. And now look what's happening. The world is streaming. Technology has changed the business dramatically. People are listening on their phones. Um, those people who have radios, thank god they still have them

in cars. But the technology has changed things dramatically and we as people in the media need to be abreast to that. We need to react to it and change that. My granddaughter, who was twenty seven years old, I asked her, I says, how do you listen to shows? My show? She says, on my phone, Papa, I mean different age

groups are doing things differently. Now you talk to somebody who's in their fifties or sixties, they've got a radio in their home, and uh, it's it's They would never think of listening on the phone, but it's it's happening, and we as media people need to adjust to all these changes that are happening out there. Well, it's great for guys like us George that are on late at night because now before what you just did the show that was it, the show vanished and you moved on

to the next show. But now people during the day can listen. I'm sure you guys do great on downloads on your podcast during the day and people listening who are sleeping at night and can't listen live, that will listen during the day and I I have the same experience on my show doing sports at night that we we can really double the audience if you will, in many ways because people can listen to all So there's

no question. We have what is called Coast Insiders, which is a very nominal membership, and people listen to us in their office the next day. You know, the world has changed technologically and we as media people just need to keep abreast to that. All right, Well, there's obviously a large audiences we've talked about for Coast to Coast.

Is there anybody over the years, George, that reached out to you that is a someone we might know, big celebrity or influential type person who you've you've heard is a listener That kind of surprised you because you never know. The great thing about radios, you never know who's who's tuned in. You know, the regular guy and also the celebrity. We've had regular listeners. Billy Gibbons from CZ TOPP as

a regular listener. He's been on the program with us UH legendary Pat Boone, John Fogerty, the Great singer from Greedence Clearwater actor Russell Crowe. I mean it just the list goes on and on and on, Ben, And they're just people who are They love the program, they love the subject matter, and you know, they're people they you know, get dressed the way we get dressed. They cry, they eat, and they just love what they we're doing, and thank god we keep doing it. Absolutely. How many how many

more years you want to do this year? You've do us a long time? You know you have a you have a plan. Have you laid out? How many more years you gonna keep going as long as you can? What's the plan on this? I've told my producer it's his job, Tom dan Huiser. They're in a commercial break. When I I one day to go on the air and say, well we finally lost them, I decided I'm not going to retire. The network has signed me to

another long term contract. I'm just gonna keep going as long as my I got a face for radio, right, but as long as my voice keeps staying as young and powerful as it sounds, I'm gonna keep doing it. Oh good, And you've got the tremendous pipes here, so we'll get you out on this, George. Now we're working late night overnight radio. I'm biased here, but I think I think you'll you'll agree with you, maybe not. My belief is the the late night radio audience. I did

do a daytime show. I've worked the full radio clock over the years where I worked every day part during the day, mornings, afternoons, mid days, nights, late nights. But for me, the people late at night that listen to the radio overnight, I just think they need what we do a little bit more for companionship. It just seems different to me then when I worked during the day. What I did work during the day. You agree with that? Is you disagree with that? And why do you think

that is? You're absolutely right. And one of the things we do here ben at Coast to coast, and it's a pledge I made to my audience. We will be live seven nights a week. We will not run tapes on holidays. I mean, God love the hosts who want to go home and spend time with their families and they run tapes on special holidays. I understand that and appreciate that. But as you have just said that, there are a lot of people out there who love radio.

It's their family, it's their life. They're lonely during holidays. So I made a pledge when I came in here twenty years ago that we will have live programs on holidays and every holiday that falls on my regular scheduled work day, personally, I work, whether it's Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Labor Day, we will have live programs. And if they happen to fall on a weekend, my weekend hosts, who I'm not going to take any money out of their pocket, they'll come in and they'll be live as well.

But I made a pledge to my audience twenty years ago, no tapes on holidays, and they truly appreciate that. Now it is great. Well, George, I appreciate you doing this. I know you don't do a lot of these things, and I run into you every once in a while the Premier Networks studios from time to time. We obviously work head to head, but continued success and it's a great having you on and I appreciate it. YouTube then you're one of a kind, my friend. Keep doing what you're doing.