Art Bell opens with updates on the upcoming Hoagland press conference at the National Press Club, reporting conflicting signals from C-SPAN and CNN about coverage plans. He confirms the event will be carried live on his IRC Internet Relay channel. A fax from Valdez, Alaska, alerts the audience that HAARP tests are scheduled to begin that Friday in conjunction with the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission.
Art Bell reviews the day's news, including the Menendez brothers' guilty verdict on first-degree murder with special circumstances, the murder of New Jersey teacher Kathleen Weinstein during a carjacking, and the growing wealth gap documented by a Rand Corporation study. He introduces two themes for the evening: building a list of signs contributing to what he calls the quickening, and exploring hypothetical scenarios. Callers contribute observations ranging from senseless crime and declining social trust to the conversion of solar energy into planetary mass.
The program features wide-ranging calls including a debate on gun ownership and self-defense, a discussion of Ross Perot's presidential ambitions, an update on Comet the feral cat's recovery from surgery, and a caller from Oregon proposing to claim a volcanic island as a new nation.
