In the first half, Director of the Trends Research Institute, Gerald Celente, joined George Noory to discuss the emerging trends for 2018 including cryptocurrency and block-chain technology, driverless cars, and a correction in the stock market. While initially viewing cryptocurrency such as bitcoin as a fad, he has come to believe it has a libertarian aspect, and a utilitarian function as a means of exchange as the world goes increasingly cashless. He does think that the values for different cryptocurrencies are in a bubble, but after that bursts, some will rise again. Further, the blockchain technology can be used to bypass the traditional banking system, he enthused.

Stocks, he noted, are overvalued at the current time, and a "black swan event" like a sudden war breaking out or a 9-11-type attack could lead to a swift correction. Celente believes the driverless car revolution is over-hyped and still a good number of years away from realization. He sees it initially adopted for specific routes rather than everyday driving. In other trends, he foresees the continued decline of many retail chain stores, but unique and interesting shops as doing well, particularly in walkable neighborhoods. He also cited a "coming together" trend that could be used by marketers and others to bring people together in a unified spirit to combat the current mood of divisiveness.

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Professional photographer and journalist Shannon Taggart first became aware of the paranormal as a teenager after a chilling experience with a medium. She talked about her investigation into the American-born religion of Spiritualism which teaches that humans can communicate with spirits of the dead, and her experiments photographing the paranormal, and what may be invisible to the human eye (view a gallery of images here). Initially, she embarked on a traditional photojournalism project to take portraits at spiritualist communities like Lily Dale, when "happy accidents" or anomalies started showing up. One of these included a huge purple orb on a woman's shoulder at the Lily Dale Museum. "Oh, that's Bob," my deceased husband, the subject declared after seeing the photo.

In her continued exploration of these communities, Taggart began to approach the photographic process in a playful or experimental manner, such as taking long exposures when photographing mediums in their trance state. This could yield some fascinating results such as medium Sharon Harvey's appearing to split into her spirit guide. In another instance, she was photographing physical medium Gordon Garforth during a séance in England. He explained that he would be working with ectoplasm which would make his hand appear enlarged, and Taggart said this was surprisingly caught in her physical vision as well as in her camera.

News segment guests: Robert Felix, John M. Curtis

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