February 15, 2002: Open Lines - Immortals
The theories range widely. Some callers attribute their survival to guardian angels, while others suggest predestination or a programmed life scenario that prevents departure before the appointed time. Art raises the philosophical tension between free will and predestination, arguing the two concepts cannot coexist unless free will itself is an illusion. One caller shares a striking precognitive experience, hearing a voice predicting the exact location and severity of a major plane crash days before it occurred.
Between calls, Art covers the day's headlines, including Nevada's lawsuit over Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage, the U.S. military dropping envelopes of cash over Afghanistan, and a mysterious rash spreading across seven states that scientists cannot identify. The night builds a compelling case that forces beyond ordinary understanding may govern matters of life and death.
Key Moments
Art's pitch: are there immortals among us?: Art lays out the night's premise - that some callers describe escaping disaster after disaster without a scratch, like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, and that a 'tiny genetic twist' might make a person effectively immortal, doomed to outlive every spouse and never able to admit what they are.
Hit broadside by an 18-wheeler, walked away: An East-of-the-Rockies caller describes being struck broadside by an 18-wheeler in his first car as a teenager - the vehicle crushed where his left arm sat - and emerging with only a scuff and a day of soreness.
A voice from the center of the brain warns of an O'Hare crash: A caller recounts a disembodied voice rising from the center of his brain over three consecutive mornings warning of a plane crash at O'Hare - escalating in volume each time - and arriving at his friend's house for dinner only to be greeted at the door with news of the disaster.
Art's own precognition: waves crashing before a fender-bender: On air, Art tells of his single experience of precognition - not a voice, but successive 'gigantic crashing ocean waves' of certainty that his car was about to be hit, prompting him to walk outside in time to watch a neighbor back into it.
The musician who floated off a bandstand: A 70-year-old caller describes falling backwards off a bandstand in a chair from about seven feet - should have cracked his skull on cement - and feeling himself float; multiple witnesses from a different vantage point told him the next day it had looked like he moved 'like a cut-out picture' shifted three feet across the floor.