October 19, 2001: Open Lines - Princeton University Mass Consciousness Experiment
Callers flood the lines with reactions ranging from awe to apprehension. Several propose using the power for healing diseases, influencing peace, or targeting terrorists, but Art repeatedly counsels caution. He draws parallels to the Twilight Zone, warning that wielding a force no one fully understands could produce unintended and dangerous consequences. He recounts how earlier weather experiments worked too well, producing floods in previously drought-stricken areas.
Crystal Gale calls in from Las Vegas after performing a show, discussing her visit to Art's desert home and the original song she composed about the program. Princeton scientist Dean Radin responds with mild scientific interest, requesting repeatable results. Art announces he will pause before conducting further experiments, recognizing the profound and possibly perilous nature of what has been demonstrated.
Key Moments
The Princeton graph arrives: Minutes before airtime, Hoagland emails Art the Global Consciousness Project graph from the previous night's experiment. Art reveals on air that exactly when listeners concentrated for Rush Limbaugh and again for Princeton, the egg network fed two enormous vertical spikes that drove the chart almost off-scale.
Two gigantic spikes, no others nearby: Art describes the chart in detail: two days of monitoring with normal grass-on-a-graph noise, and then at the precise moments of the two experiment segments the trace becomes an absolute vertical spike, with no other event remotely close in the watch period.
Crystal Gale writes a song about Coast: Art reveals that Crystal Gale visited his Pahrump home that afternoon and gave him an unreleased song she wrote about Coast to Coast AM and Art himself - 'Tonight in the Desert' - which he plays for the first time on the air.
Staggering power, scared to use it: Art reflects on what the graph means: he stopped the grand experiments years ago because he was scared of how well they worked, and now Princeton's data has confirmed it on paper. He warns the audience this 'magnitude of power is sobering to even consider.'