Annotated Bibliography

Academic, popular, and misc articles related to Art Bell / Coast to Coast

Biographies & interviews

Art Bell: Radio's Master of the Unexplained Explains Himself. (2009, April 20). Wired. https://www.wired.com/2009/04/st-hotseat-3/

Online communities

Arras, P. (2022). Art Bell’s Open Forum: Conspiracy Talk on Coast to Coast AM and its Legacy in the Internet Age. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2022.211686

Oravec, J. (2009). A Community of Iconoclasts: Art Bell, Talk Radio, and the Internet. Journal of Radio Studies, 7(1), 52-69. DOI: 10.1207/s15506843jrs0701_6

Cultural commentary

Bailey, S. (2002). Sherlock Holmes Meets Art Bell: Masters of Knowledge at the Fin-de-Siecle. Popular Culture Review, 13(2), 67-76.

Robertson, J. (2022, November). The Truth Was Out There: On the Legacy of Art Bell. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-truth-was-out-there-on-the-legacy-of-art-bell/ Robertson explores Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM against the backdrop of its cultural, historical, and social context. He documents Bell's personal history, and Coast's capturing of a particular moment in American history: millenarian anxieties, the rise of technocracy, and the uncertainty of the future. Coast's popularity was an outgrowth of the time's wonderment, and - as Bell aged and left the show - its initial premise of non-political, fringe exploration dissolved. The article is a qualitative commentary Bell - and Coast - without extensive research beyond personal narrative and superficial biographical information. This article has a similar framing to my approach to the subject: not Bell or Coast to Coast as singular subjects, but part of a larger tapestry of cultural preoccupations during late 1990s/early 2000s.

1990s Conspiracy culture

Jacobson, M. (2018, August). The Grandaddy of American Conspiracy Theorists. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/william-cooper-conspiracy-theory-711469/ An excerpt from Jacobson's book, Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America. Jacobson's article retroactively examines William Cooper's predictions about millenarian America, up to and including (1) an attack on America that will be attributed to Osama Bin Laden, and (2) his death - late in the night, at the hands of government actors. The article, and the book, frame Coopers' views and media (radio show, newspaper, book) as a fringe, though prescient, voice in assessing technology, government, and media manipulation. The article is useful for providing a broader context of the 1990s conspiracy culture, and as a foil to Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM. The article is short and limited in scope, which prompts me to read Jacob's book on the subject.

Articles to be read and annotated

Genoni, T. Art Bell, Heaven's Gate, and Jouranlistic Integrity

Jaroff, L. The Man who Spread the Myth

Hammer, J. Strange Signals from Area 51

Baker, R. Profits of Doom: Weekly World News Goes Mainstream

Allins, A. Missing Time with Art Bell

Bachman, K. Bell Beams out of Broadcast Again

Roberts, S. Art Bell, Radio Host who Tuned in to the Dark Side, Dies at 72

Genoni, T. Host of Paranormal Radio Show Creates a Mystery of His Own

Radford, B. Woomonger Radio Host Dies at Seventy-Two

Hughes, W. RIP Art Bell, King of Late-Night Conspiracy Radio

Grant, P. Art Bell and the Eeri Joy of Late Night Radio

Green, W. The State of the Art

Potter, D. Confronting the Art of Radio: Examining Paranormal Belief

Vago, M. In the Year 2000, a Time Traveler Appeared to Predict the Future

Jensen, K. The Oral History of John Titor, the Man who Traveled Back in Time to Save the Internet

Eisenberg, A. Disliking the Internet.

Cramer, J. Sounds in the Dark: All Night Radio in American Life

Kaplan, E. My Love Affair with AM Radio

Shermer, M. The Pentagon's Psychic Friends Network

Sheaffer, R. Apocalypse Soon

Viera de Oliveria, P. 'Every possible thing that can happen or will happen has alreayd happened somewhere': John Titor, Hoaxes, and the Mass Dreams of the Future

Mohamed, I. Heaven's Gate: The End, a Religious Belief

Arras, P. Somewhere in Time: Art Bell's America on Coast to Coast AM

Dickensheets, S. Art Bell's Strange Universe

Layne, K. Radio's Hero of the Weird, Art Bell, Announces (Maybe) His New Show

Barker, D. The Talk Radio Community: Non-Traditional Social Networks and Political Participation

Bell, A. The Art of Talk

Bell, A. The Quickening

Bell, A. The Source

Bell, A. The Coming Global Superstorm

Dean, J. Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace

Douglas, S. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination

Krippner, S. New Mythos for the New Millennium

Lindlof, T. Media Ethnography in Virtual Space: Strategies, Limits, and Possibilities

Middleton, D. Conversational Remembering - A Psychological Approach

Niemark J. Dispatch from Dreamland

Pinsker, S. America's Conspiratorial Imagination

Pipes, D. Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From

Rheingold, H. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

Rosenfield, J. Millennial Fever (American Demographics)

Waters, A. Conspiracy Theories as Ethnosociologies

Wildermuth, M. The Edge of Chaos: Structural Conspiracy and Epistemology of the X-Files

Wood, G. Conspiracy and Paranoid Style Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century