Arthur William Bell III was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina on June 17, 1945. At the age of 13, he became a licensed amateur radio operator. He was an Air Force medic during the Vietnam War and later a disc jockey for an English-language station in Okinawa. He enrolled as an engineering major at the University of Maryland but dropped out to return to radio. His Coast to Coast show was syndicated and broadcast from 1989 to 2003. It was followed by a program called Midnight in the Desert, which ended in 2015. He received the Snuffed Candle Award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 1998. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2008.
He wrote several books including The Quickening: Today's Trends, Tomorrow's World and The Art of Talk. He and Whitley Strieber wrote The Coming Global Superstorm, which was adapted into the movie The Day After Tomorrow starring Dennis Quaid. Bell died on April 13, 2018 at the age of 72.
030