recorded appearance of Hale–Bopp is Heaven's Gate, a religious cult in San Diego led by Marshall Applewhite who preached that an alien spacecraft was following Comet Hale–Bopp. The cult members believed that transporting their souls to the spacecraft and evacuating the Earth – which was soon to be "recycled" – would permit them to achieve salvation. Applewhite and 38 followers poisoned themselves over three days in March 1997 in the belief this would allow them to pass through "Heaven's Gate" and achieve "the Evolutionary Level Above Human." The rationale for taking their lives was (and is, as of this writing) clearly detailed on the group's website which is maintained by surviving cult members. When news broke of the Heaven's Gate mass suicides and their relation to Comet Hale–Bopp, Hale's phone "never stopped ringing the entire day." Hale did not respond until the next day, when he spoke at a press conference on the subject, only after he had researched details of the incident. At the 20th annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) in Tampa, Florida, in 1997 Hale was a featured speaker and discussed the suicides, calling their death pact and other religion-fostered violence "another victory for ignorance and superstition." Speaking at the Second World Skeptics Congress in Heidelberg, Germany on July 24, 1998: Hale said that, well before Heaven's Gate, he had told a colleague: Media appearances Following his discovery of Comet Hale–Bopp, Hale was in demand to speak about the comet bearing his name, and this gave him a platform to discuss Hale-Bopp as well as general astronomy and science. Hale was a guest speaker at the February 16, 1996, meeting of New Mexicans for Science and Reason (NMSR) which according to member and Science Watch host Dave Thomas "was one of our most memorable and well-attended ever." Hale spoke on "Comet Hale–Bopp: Potentials and Opportunities" and cautioned against complacency about asteroid and comet impacts on the Earth, saying that: On February 26, 1997, Hale was the guest speaker for two public lectures sponsored by the Center for Particle Astrophysics at UC Berkeley. Hale has been a periodic guest on The Space Show, an Internet radio talk show centering on space commerce and exploration, which is also available as a podcast. On the March 19, 2002 broadcast, Hale spoke of the importance of the search for Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and their danger to civilization: