Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3: Our colleague Noel is on Adventures and shall be returning
Speaker 3: forthwith They call me Ben. We're joined as always with
Speaker 3: our super producer Ball, mission control decads. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here that makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know, And fellow conspiracy realists,
Speaker 3: for your faithful correspondence. This is a bit of a homecoming.
Speaker 3: Not too long ago, we were brainstorming as we do,
Speaker 3: different future episodes and investment stigations, and it hit us
Speaker 3: that we have never done a podcast episode on the
Speaker 3: phenomenon known as crop circles. But Matt, as you and
Speaker 3: I were talking about off air, we did videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah we did, Yeah, we did well. We were young,
Speaker 2: young boy. Oh back in twenty eleven. How weird is
Speaker 2: that September twenty eleven we put out our first crop
Speaker 2: circle video on the Old House Stuff Works YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: But actually before then it was on iTunes video, So
Speaker 2: I don't know when it published then versus on YouTube, but.
Speaker 3: We still I think at that point we didn't have
Speaker 3: our own channel yet, right.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that was the house Stuff Works proper channel.
Speaker 2: It got on our channel May twelfth, twenty fourteen as
Speaker 2: a classic.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, it was a classic. Twenty fourteen, we didn't
Speaker 3: have the we'd have the dialogue that we'll have here.
Speaker 3: Now we have more time, by the nature of an
Speaker 3: audio medium, to really dive into some stuff. I think
Speaker 3: we're both surprised that we had not done a podcast
Speaker 3: on this, But Matt, I don't think i've I think
Speaker 3: maybe in twenty eleven we talked about this where we're
Speaker 3: working on our videos together. But have you ever seen
Speaker 3: a crop circle?
Speaker 2: No? I haven't, well, and that's mostly because I've only
Speaker 2: traveled to England one time. I was in the UK
Speaker 2: once or actually twice in Spain back to the UK
Speaker 2: than out, but again, I pretty much stayed around in
Speaker 2: airport or hung out, you know, downtown somewhere. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: So I'd have to go a bit further south I think,
Speaker 2: to see at least where the most of the crop
Speaker 2: circles occur. And I've also not spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time out in the Midwest where there are a lot
Speaker 2: of crops here in the United States.
Speaker 3: Right, right. Crop circles have fascinated people for a long time,
Speaker 3: and being on when you grew up and your what
Speaker 3: your predilections were like as a kid, you might be
Speaker 3: most familiar with crop circles in terms of fiction or
Speaker 3: in terms of books about the paranormal, right, or maybe
Speaker 3: later deep dive documentaries like I was rewatching the X
Speaker 3: Files intro and don't they have a crop circle? They
Speaker 3: just they're just throwing stuff at the wall, right, weird things.
Speaker 2: Crop circles were such a fascination, especially for kids growing up,
Speaker 2: like coming of age in the nineties like we did,
Speaker 2: or like you know, becoming almost a teenager to a teenager,
Speaker 2: where some of this stuff is in the zeitgeist and
Speaker 2: it was talked about on the news. Oh yeah, mainstream news, going, wow,
Speaker 2: another weird crop formation has occurred. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 2: taken not It's not that it was taken seriously. It
Speaker 2: was just a fascination, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was. The journalistic ethics were still very much in play,
Speaker 3: so people weren't making extravagant claims, but they were leaning
Speaker 3: into the mysterious aspect of the crop circle. And we're
Speaker 3: going to this evening explore what crop circles are, how
Speaker 3: they come to be, why people are fascinated with them,
Speaker 3: and what if any motivation lay behind their creation. Also,
Speaker 3: you know we're gonna have to bug Paul off, Mike,
Speaker 3: but Paul hailing from you know, a heavily agricultural part
Speaker 3: of the US. I'm wondering if you've seen some crop
Speaker 3: circles or made.
Speaker 2: Some oh and then filmed it and made a documentary
Speaker 2: and then profited. Did you did you already drop your
Speaker 2: your lyric that you found what?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: From Soul Coughing. All right, So there's a there's a
Speaker 3: band called Soul Coughing. They have a song called Circles.
Speaker 3: The chorus is, I don't need to walk around? Didn't
Speaker 3: circles walk around? Didn't circles walk around? In? And it
Speaker 3: goes on because it's like form and functions. They're kind
Speaker 3: of in a circle.
Speaker 2: While they're making a crop circle.
Speaker 3: Maybe making a crop circle.
Speaker 2: Maybe I found one from the band Monster Magnet. I
Speaker 2: wish Nola was here because I don't know any of
Speaker 2: these references. I remember hearing the name of this band,
Speaker 2: but I never had one of.
Speaker 3: It was great.
Speaker 2: It seems I think I saw a video. I'm just
Speaker 2: looking at a picture of Power Trip is one of
Speaker 2: their I guess albums, and they have a song called
Speaker 2: crop Circle and it says, instead of dragging your swamp
Speaker 2: for your lost love, come to me, I'm your living
Speaker 2: crop circle. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: You know, I was skeptical till they added yeah at
Speaker 3: the end, because now it makes sense. And also, our
Speaker 3: good pal Paul Mission Control Deck and confirms that he
Speaker 3: has neither witnessed nor and he's saying this on public record,
Speaker 3: nor has he created a crop circle.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, here are the.
Speaker 3: Facts, all right? What is a crop circle? In general,
Speaker 3: it's a large pattern of flattened crops. Usually they're going
Speaker 3: to be cereals like grains, you know, they might be
Speaker 3: they might also be grass. We'll get into it.
Speaker 2: But we've seen it depicted often in corn.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, And it sounds deceptively simple, but
Speaker 3: that's it. Sometimes they're called corn circles because frequently, as
Speaker 3: you noted, corn is.
Speaker 2: The well and wheat and those are the two that
Speaker 2: I've seen. Those are the two big yeah.
Speaker 3: And then also they are grasses right, and in one
Speaker 3: famous case, swampland. But they're also sometimes called crop formations,
Speaker 3: and the the big deal here is the crop circle.
Speaker 3: Purest will tell you that a true cop crop circle
Speaker 3: is not a burned pattern in the ground, and the
Speaker 3: plant matter itself is not broken. Instead, it is folded down.
Speaker 3: It's bent or a gami.
Speaker 2: Style almost threaded. At times it appears to be strangely
Speaker 2: laid down and intertwined. And it is important to note
Speaker 2: that generally the circle is one of the primary shapes
Speaker 2: you're gonna find in a crop circle. It's wise name that,
Speaker 2: but there are other patterns and like variations on a circle,
Speaker 2: and you know, like cuts through a circle where the
Speaker 2: crops haven't been put down. It's very very cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just objectively, like an image of a fractal
Speaker 3: or an old magic eye poster, which is also very
Speaker 3: much in the zeitgeist of the crop circle face. It's
Speaker 3: just it's fun to look at, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll get into it. But there are mathematical principles
Speaker 2: at play in some of these patterns that are intensely complicated,
Speaker 2: and it is mind blowing no matter how these were formed,
Speaker 2: that they were able to whoever made them, the circle
Speaker 2: makers they were, that they pulled it off.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah. And we'll get into some of the
Speaker 3: math as well, because it's way past the level of
Speaker 3: mathematics that would be common knowledge to the average person.
Speaker 2: That I could do. It's it's not Pythagorean's theorem. It's
Speaker 2: a way it's way above this stuff. Understanding how circles intersect,
Speaker 2: where they intersect, and like the proportions.
Speaker 3: And visually representing it in an elegant way. It's nuts,
Speaker 3: all right. Whomever is making these, they are quite intelligent.
Speaker 3: The big issue with crop circles it's not that they exist.
Speaker 3: Nobody's saying they're not real. They've been extensively studied, photographed,
Speaker 3: documented pretty much every harvest season. The controversy instead is
Speaker 3: the why and the how of crop circles. Right, We've
Speaker 3: gotten all kinds of all kinds of explanations for how
Speaker 3: these came to be and why.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, there are tons of explanations. Early on, I
Speaker 2: remember when thinking about this as a kid, at least
Speaker 2: all I could see was the image of some form
Speaker 2: of extraterrestrial spaceship dropping down in whatever the shape of
Speaker 2: that spaceship was whatever their thrusters looked like exactly. It
Speaker 2: just went into the grass or into the wheat and
Speaker 2: then lifted off after staying there for a while to.
Speaker 3: Do whatever to alien stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they just came down, they did their thing,
Speaker 2: and they just happened to land in an open area
Speaker 2: because that's safe to do. And there were just crops
Speaker 2: down there, and they made a mark.
Speaker 3: Right, And when you are thinking with that information or
Speaker 3: thinking that way, then our closest analog is going to
Speaker 3: be something like a vertical takeoff vehicle or a helicopter. Right,
Speaker 3: so we know that when a helicopter lands somewhere, of
Speaker 3: course places stuff on the ground because of the nature
Speaker 3: of the rotors. So it's not unreasonable. And then there
Speaker 3: were other scientists who would say, or i should say
Speaker 3: researchers who would argue, look, the crops, we don't need aliens.
Speaker 3: The crops are made by bizarre, obscure natural phenomenon. And
Speaker 3: someone say like what, and then the other person would say, ah, no, man,
Speaker 3: rain is weird. Was that was kind of the explanation.
Speaker 3: That was the moment, that was the pause in the
Speaker 3: conversation where someone is clearly smoking weed and yeah, rain's
Speaker 3: weird though, you know, and and wind probably probably wind.
Speaker 3: And then other people, of course say that these circles
Speaker 3: are purposely made to buy extra terrestrial or extra dimensional life,
Speaker 3: and that they are not just pretty works of art,
Speaker 3: that they are indeed messages, encoded messages to the humans
Speaker 3: or to life on Earth. And I don't know. It's
Speaker 3: also looking into the folklore is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 3: I was trying to find, you know, the first idea,
Speaker 3: the first idea in the historical record of a what
Speaker 3: we would call crop circle today. And there's one thing
Speaker 3: we found is surprisingly early. It is a wooden tablet
Speaker 3: version of a tabloid newspaper and it's so picture picture
Speaker 3: a short article from the National Enquirer or something, but
Speaker 3: it is hun in wood. It's called the Mowing Devil
Speaker 3: or Strange News out of Hertfordshires.
Speaker 2: Right up our alley. Should we just read this whole thing?
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we can row Robert because it's a
Speaker 3: it's a short story, but it's a fun one.
Speaker 2: It is. I will begin here being a true relation
Speaker 2: of a farm who bargaining with a poor mower about
Speaker 2: the cutting down three half acres of oats. Upon the
Speaker 2: mower's asking too much, the farmer far or swore that
Speaker 2: the devil should mow it rather than he.
Speaker 3: And so it fell out that that very night the
Speaker 3: crop of oats shewed as if it had been all
Speaker 3: of a flame, but next morning appeared so neatly mowed
Speaker 3: by the devil or some infernal spirit, that no mortal
Speaker 3: man was able to do the like.
Speaker 2: Also, how the said oats lie now in the field,
Speaker 2: and the owner has not power to fetch them away.
Speaker 3: So's a banker. That's the entire story. That's the entire
Speaker 3: parable or the ap equivalent of the day. And at
Speaker 3: the bottom here you see an image of a sinister looking,
Speaker 3: dark figure with a scythe making what appears to be
Speaker 3: I would describe it as a spiral pattern in the field.
Speaker 3: And maybe it's wreathed in flame, or maybe those are
Speaker 3: just oats that have been waylaid these, who knows.
Speaker 2: He's also got hoofs of a devil, and he's also
Speaker 2: got a little tail.
Speaker 3: He's got a little tip for balance, yea. So also
Speaker 3: we want to shout out the author of this to
Speaker 3: our best understanding, this anonymous author. The it's got weird itally,
Speaker 3: it's from the sixty hundreds, so that there are weird
Speaker 3: things that are italicized where you don't know why they're
Speaker 3: emphasized that way, like is mower an insult?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know. And also the s's all
Speaker 2: the s's are like f's the f s is yeah,
Speaker 2: difficult to read and says.
Speaker 3: Right, right, right. And and also the weird italicization of oats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, like it's specific.
Speaker 3: There's there may be some dog whistles that we're not
Speaker 3: clocking here, you know what I mean? The devil and
Speaker 3: the oats.
Speaker 2: This is really cool. They also spelled lie l y.
Speaker 3: Yes, they were in a hurry, which is weird. With
Speaker 3: typos in a woodcut, you would think you have some
Speaker 3: time to think about the letters.
Speaker 2: But you know, who are Maybe that's just how everybody
Speaker 2: wrote and spoke.
Speaker 3: And you're right, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then there are other things that are kind of
Speaker 3: we would say crop circle analogus, like fairy rings, the
Speaker 3: arcs of mushrooms that seem to often just spring up
Speaker 3: after a good rain or a time of heavy moisture.
Speaker 3: They get lumped in with crop circles, but it's really
Speaker 3: we have a couple pretty solid scientific theories about how
Speaker 3: those things occur, and it all boils down to the
Speaker 3: fact that the fungus is fascinating and humans don't really
Speaker 3: understand fungus.
Speaker 2: The fungus is of the best mm hmmm.
Speaker 3: It's our number one pick for successful organic asternite.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh yeah, unless it gets in your lungs. Don't
Speaker 2: let it in your lungs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't let it in. Trust it, but keep it
Speaker 3: at at arm's lengked. Also unrelated, did you see the
Speaker 3: ISS is Uh, it's going to be dismantled. Wait what Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a funding thing.
Speaker 2: Is that new news or is that something they've been
Speaker 2: cooking up for a while.
Speaker 3: It's happened before, But if I recall correctly, the new
Speaker 3: news is that the ISS may not have the funding
Speaker 3: it needs in the current NASA iteration, So they're gonna
Speaker 3: make a plan, possibly with tests with Ela musk Outpit,
Speaker 3: to safely sunset it.
Speaker 2: That's very sad, uh, because it's a it's a really nice, symbolic,
Speaker 2: large sophisticated piece of metal that represents working together, and
Speaker 2: it does make me very sad that's going.
Speaker 3: Away go to military dot Com. You'll see one of
Speaker 3: their recent articles NASA chooses SpaceX vehicle to de orbit
Speaker 3: ISS as the crew takes cover from a near collision.
Speaker 2: Takes cover from a near collision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with that, with that near collision, it seems that
Speaker 3: the crew of the ISS had to unexpectedly board their
Speaker 3: own their separate capsules.
Speaker 2: Like the ships that got them to the ISO.
Speaker 3: Right, just so, Yeah, everybody got grounded, had to go
Speaker 3: back to their room because space debris. From my belief,
Speaker 3: a Russian satellite almost hit the ISS.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: So that is nothing or does it have something to
Speaker 3: do with crop circles?
Speaker 2: Well, and in this comes maybe when it comes right
Speaker 2: on the heels of oh what what is it? The
Speaker 2: the other of the Boeing spacecraft where the crew is
Speaker 2: stuck on their capsule come down and they can't leave,
Speaker 2: and they've been up there for a month now or more.
Speaker 2: Now that when this comes.
Speaker 3: Out, yeah, oh yeah, And hope they stay safe, hope
Speaker 3: they get back to the ground safely. We also know
Speaker 3: that people were people were associating crop circles with speaking
Speaker 3: at ISS heavenly passage for a long time, right, and
Speaker 3: connecting the existence of crop circles around lay lines or
Speaker 3: around ancient sites of significance and purported power. As far
Speaker 3: back as the late eighteen hundreds, though, scientists were also
Speaker 3: trying to describe them as a result of weird weather
Speaker 3: phenomenon like they was. John Rand Caprin in the late
Speaker 3: eighteen eighties said he had it all figured out. He said,
Speaker 3: it's cyclonic wind action.
Speaker 2: Cyclonic wind action.
Speaker 3: Thinking like tiny tornadoes.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's amazing. They're just so perfectly round. I
Speaker 2: don't know how a natural force like that would create
Speaker 2: such a perfect shape. Generally, when we observe nature, it
Speaker 2: does things we you know, we call them organic shapes
Speaker 2: on purpose because they're not perfect unless you're talking about
Speaker 2: the geometry like crystal crystal informations and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like when you see the path of
Speaker 3: a of a real tornado, right, It's kind of like
Speaker 3: the difference between seeing the way a vampire bite looks
Speaker 3: in film versus n actual human bite. They're much messier,
Speaker 3: and a tornadoes path is much much messier than this
Speaker 3: kind of perfect, just so thing that happens to depict
Speaker 3: complex mathematical patterns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, often a tornado will go a bit catawampus. No,
Speaker 2: that's not our correct use of that term. It'll go,
Speaker 2: it'll meander, let's say, a bit in its pathway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a natural disaster that walks in the
Speaker 3: way that people walk into target. You know, No list,
Speaker 3: just vibes.
Speaker 2: Just kind of feeling it, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Just sort of we're both doing like a lazy person sway.
Speaker 2: Wherever the wind blows, you know.
Speaker 3: There It is classic, classic tornado. And there are more
Speaker 3: sporadic reports of crop circles again, most often in England.
Speaker 3: These occur over subsequent decades, but things really start to
Speaker 3: heat up in the nineteen sixties and seventies due to
Speaker 3: a couple of events that just occupy. They get global
Speaker 3: coverage all of a sudden. Everybody outside of England knows
Speaker 3: about crop circles as well. And I think one of
Speaker 3: the big things is that they increased sightings of crop
Speaker 3: circles increased in step with sightings of UFOs.
Speaker 2: Of course they did. Why do you think we connected
Speaker 2: the things, guys, and the cows started getting mutilated. It
Speaker 2: was all happened in the sixties and seventies, y'all. Back
Speaker 2: in those nineteen hundreds, mid to late nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: And weirdly enough, predominantly occurring in the anglosphere in English
Speaker 3: speaking countries. In Alberta, the Canadian Department of National Defense, Oh,
Speaker 3: we should do an episode on this in the future.
Speaker 3: They had their own Project blue Book ooh, which we
Speaker 3: talked about.
Speaker 2: Have we mentioned it? But maybe we haven't gone in
Speaker 2: depth on it.
Speaker 3: We had to have mentioned.
Speaker 2: It's got a name too. It's not Project Sign or
Speaker 2: Grudge like the old ones. Oh, it's a It was
Speaker 2: a project name. I remember this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Magnet Magnet that's right, right, not monster magnet. But
Speaker 3: now are they related? Yeah, Project Magnet from nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: to nineteen fifty four, and.
Speaker 2: It went away, not really probably, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It went away with nothing but crop circles in its wake.
Speaker 3: On August eighth, nineteen sixty seven, something called the Douhammel
Speaker 3: Crop Circles incident occurred, and the Department of National Defense
Speaker 3: in Canada examined these and said, ultimately they said these
Speaker 3: things are artificial or the providences, meaning they were made
Speaker 3: by someone or made by something, but they didn't know
Speaker 3: who made them, know how they were made, and they
Speaker 3: had no idea why someone, anyone alien or human would
Speaker 3: bother doing.
Speaker 2: This, dude?
Speaker 3: What that's mysterious?
Speaker 2: Right? And right after that is the Shag Harbor incident. Yes,
Speaker 2: immediately after that, in the same year, but October nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven, which we've talked about Shag Harbor. I think
Speaker 2: we have a whole episode on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then around this time, actually just the year prior,
Speaker 3: one of the most famous slash infamous crop circle incidents occurs,
Speaker 3: the Tully Saucer nest. All right, Paul, can I get
Speaker 3: some creepy like we're out in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 3: at night music? Perfect? All right. There's this farmer he's
Speaker 3: near a place called Tully in Queensland, Australia, and he
Speaker 3: says he sees a flying saucer rise from the swamp
Speaker 3: at Tully and he runs to investigate. Once he tamps
Speaker 3: down his fear and he and he clearly he describes
Speaker 3: this saucer in depth, and when he gets to where
Speaker 3: he thinks the saucer lifted off from the ground, he
Speaker 3: sees a nearly circular big area thirty two feet long
Speaker 3: twenty five feet wide, and the grass is flattened in
Speaker 3: a clockwise curve. He calls there's a rural area again,
Speaker 3: so instead of calling the police force, he calls the
Speaker 3: one police officer. That guy goes and looks at it.
Speaker 3: They call the Australian Air Force and the University of Queensland.
Speaker 3: All of these institutions take a look and they ultimately
Speaker 3: conclude this was created by some sort of natural phenomenon.
Speaker 3: They just don't know what a waterspout why.
Speaker 2: Not, No, it was something weirder than that, guys, it.
Speaker 3: Had to be, And no offense to the weirdness of
Speaker 3: water spouts, but that is kind of a band aid
Speaker 3: of an explanation. And then as soon as that happened
Speaker 3: and it gets reported, along with that incident in Canada,
Speaker 3: the world learns about crop circles and boom. Starting the seventies,
Speaker 3: crop circles start appearing regularly pretty much anywhere in the
Speaker 3: Anglo sphere where people grow crops, especially as you mentioned earlier, Matt,
Speaker 3: especially in southern England, in some very specific parts of
Speaker 3: southern England.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the rural places where there tend to be a
Speaker 2: lot of crops to circle in. Yes, it makes a
Speaker 2: lot of sense. Oh should I try and pronounce these?
Speaker 2: I'll get them wrong, we'll lead to it. Yeah, Wiltshire, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Somerset.
Speaker 2: That's going to be wrong. And this is the one
Speaker 2: that can never pronounce correctly. And we've done it like
Speaker 2: four times, we've been told how to do it.
Speaker 3: Gloucester, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Up, Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: we're looking forward to the email folks. Let us let
Speaker 3: us know. We would love to visit these places because
Speaker 3: apparently still they have a continuing prevalence of crop circles
Speaker 3: and they appear overnight, or at least they did in
Speaker 3: the seventies, and then over the years they became more
Speaker 3: and more complex, and they grew in size as well.
Speaker 3: They turned into crop circle Kaiju and some people who
Speaker 3: studied them. We're convinced that the fact that the plant
Speaker 3: seemed bent but not broken meant that a human could
Speaker 3: not have done this, and then without humans as a
Speaker 3: possible explanation. Instead, it has to either be some weird
Speaker 3: weather thing or you know, aliens.
Speaker 2: Or unexplained right, something we don't know yet, we don't
Speaker 2: understand yet, which is a.
Speaker 3: Very fair answer, right, that's one of the best, and
Speaker 3: then as soon as these things get worldwide public attention
Speaker 3: crop circles, there are all sorts of folks who incorporate
Speaker 3: the existence of crop circles into their pre existing ideas,
Speaker 3: schools of spiritual thought, scientific research that needs help, conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: You can just attach the crop circle to this whatever
Speaker 3: concept you wish, and then present the crop circle's existence
Speaker 3: as proof of all the other stuff you're claiming.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And there's also almost an agnostic version of this,
Speaker 2: That is, I would use the term circle makers, as
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter who they are, where they came from,
Speaker 2: what it is, if they're aliens, if they're spirits, whatever
Speaker 2: mystical magical thing it is, they are the circle makers,
Speaker 2: and they've got messages for us, and we should listen
Speaker 2: to whatever that message is. There's an agnostic not worship
Speaker 2: of them, but almost just reverence for these things and
Speaker 2: their potential messages.
Speaker 3: And again, that's a very valid way to look at
Speaker 3: this stuff. Right. Our question tonight is is any of
Speaker 3: this stuff true? How did the circle makers make these
Speaker 3: crop circles? What if we told you we're pretty sure
Speaker 3: we have.
Speaker 2: The answer, at least in some cases, and answer we
Speaker 2: have and answer yes, yes or some.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. All right, we have to
Speaker 3: do it. It is the ethical responsibility of this show.
Speaker 3: First things First, might be a bummer. We don't have
Speaker 3: a solid explanation for every single crop circle, mainly because
Speaker 3: we don't know how many have come and gone, but
Speaker 3: we do know the providence of quite a few of them. Actually,
Speaker 3: they were later proven to be hoaxes by the hoaxers themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's some reporting, isn't it from the early
Speaker 2: nineties when we finally learned about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, Okay, some classic mad lads. Oh oh,
Speaker 2: I really those so close to libs. I was almost
Speaker 2: with you there, But yes, they are mad lads. Some
Speaker 2: guys named Doug and Dave. I guess we'll give their
Speaker 2: full names, Doug Bauer and Dave Chorley. They live in
Speaker 2: a place called Southampton in England, and they confessed openly.
Speaker 2: They said, hey, guys, we've made over two hundred crop
Speaker 2: circles since the nineteen seventies, and you know how we
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 3: It's brilliant. It's brilliant in that it's simple. They used
Speaker 3: ropes and boards. They also had a baseball cap that
Speaker 3: they fitted with a loop of wire to help make
Speaker 3: sure their lines were staying straight. They essentially created a
Speaker 3: large compass. If you've ever been in geography class, they
Speaker 3: create a large compass. They were inspired by the tulleyed
Speaker 3: nest incident that we mentioned earlier. And as these circles
Speaker 3: became more prominent in the media, as there were more
Speaker 3: crop circle copycats, we could call them these two guys,
Speaker 3: Doug and Dave, they kicked up their game. They made
Speaker 3: more and more complex patterns. This was like their hobby.
Speaker 3: They hung out and did this. It was their fun,
Speaker 3: non day job thing, and they took a lot of
Speaker 3: They thought it was hilarious that people would study these
Speaker 3: circles and then, with strident confidence, come out and say,
Speaker 3: this is what teaches us about the messages from the heavens,
Speaker 3: and you know this is the ancient technology by my
Speaker 3: book or about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but think about how truly impressive this is. If
Speaker 2: these guys are to be fully believed, and they have demonstrated,
Speaker 2: these guys and other crop circle makers use the same
Speaker 2: techniques that are described by Doug and Dave to make
Speaker 2: crop circles effectively that do represent mostly what others have
Speaker 2: observed in crop circle formations. So I guess what I
Speaker 2: mean is it can be done. But just think about
Speaker 2: how much planning and math maths go into creating one
Speaker 2: of these things in what eight to ten hours maximum
Speaker 2: that you could actually create one of these crop circles
Speaker 2: because they're always done from the moment there's really no
Speaker 2: light outside where they could be in the cover of
Speaker 2: night to when the light the sun comes back up
Speaker 2: in the morning. And some of these are absolutely massive.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, they are huge to the point where
Speaker 3: you know, there are a lot of dark agricultural folk
Speaker 3: tales right all the world around, and if you live
Speaker 3: in or if your family is from certain rural areas,
Speaker 3: then you may have stories that are very similar to
Speaker 3: that of the mower devil. That just goes to show
Speaker 3: that there is commonality here that these stories tap into.
Speaker 3: So to be clear, in Doug and Dave's defense, they
Speaker 3: were not out to hurt people and weren't swindling folks
Speaker 3: out of cash. They were definitely not trying to injure
Speaker 3: or kill anyone. We're talking about this earlier before we recorded.
Speaker 3: They were essentially bros doing a fun bro prank. And
Speaker 3: it is oddly wholesome. Plus, if you look at the
Speaker 3: newspaper article that came out around the same time in
Speaker 3: Today on September ninth, nineteen ninety one, by journalist Graham bro,
Speaker 3: you will see, Graham bra you will see pictures of
Speaker 3: these guys who are in their sixties at this point,
Speaker 3: showing how they did this. And then also in every
Speaker 3: picture they have these shading grins. Yeah, and it's so
Speaker 3: delighted with themselves.
Speaker 2: And on the front page of this article, or the
Speaker 2: first page of it, there's pictures of them and underneath
Speaker 2: it says joker, Doug Bauer, joker Dave Charlie.
Speaker 3: Because what could you call them? And this has been
Speaker 3: like thirteen years. This is in a way, this is
Speaker 3: an ultimate dad joke, you know, and we it's this
Speaker 3: is what blew my mind. So we would assume that
Speaker 3: when these two guys, these career crop circle common finally
Speaker 3: went public with their corn LADENI, this would have settled
Speaker 3: a lot of those controversial claims. In fact, they have
Speaker 3: someone in that article who was a true believer in
Speaker 3: extraordinary stuff about crop circles, and he talks to Doug
Speaker 3: and Dave, you know, and he talks about the moral
Speaker 3: and philosophical implications of their grift.
Speaker 2: But at that time, their crop circles were fairly elementary,
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 3: Right in comparison to later work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think once people, once some people at least
Speaker 2: got a hold of the technique, they wanted to see
Speaker 2: how far they could push it.
Speaker 3: A million percent, which is technically not good math. But this,
Speaker 3: you're absolutely right. I thought I had assumed incorrectly that
Speaker 3: when this stuff was disproven, or when it was proven
Speaker 3: that a lot of it was done by humans, I
Speaker 3: would have thought it tamped down on some of the
Speaker 3: more extraordinary claims. But the opposite occurred.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Because the media attention, this became a bigger global phenomenon,
Speaker 3: thousand crop circles across the world over that locations like
Speaker 3: the UK, the Canada, the US, Australia, the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: At the time, Japan crop circles were having what pr
Speaker 3: folks call a moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, they definitely were. Well, And you can imagine
Speaker 2: if you are in to the concept that these circles
Speaker 2: are being made or formations are being made by someone
Speaker 2: something else. This feels a lot like a men in
Speaker 2: black scenario. We'll plant a story with two guys who
Speaker 2: say they made it with planks. Yeah, that'll be that's
Speaker 2: a great explanation. It's our swamp gas for these crop circles, right,
Speaker 2: I mean you can I can imagine being in that position,
Speaker 2: and I think I probably was, to be honest, like
Speaker 2: what two guys with Nah?
Speaker 3: How think about the speed? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: These aren't young guys either. And when we look at this,
Speaker 3: we also see that I don't necessarily want to call
Speaker 3: them skeptics, but less credulous people started trying to make objective,
Speaker 3: mundane connections between all these crop circles. Find commonalities, not
Speaker 3: stuff like lay lines or spiritual beliefs, but what let's
Speaker 3: look at the locations and the times in which these
Speaker 3: crop formations occur, and let's see if those locations and
Speaker 3: times have any commonalities. And they saw a pattern emerging. Oof. Ouch,
Speaker 3: we're keeping it, they said. Look, the two main factors
Speaker 3: are if there's a lot of recent media coverage about
Speaker 3: crop circles from somewhere else, and if this media coverage
Speaker 3: reaches a place that is an agricultural community that doesn't
Speaker 3: have a lot of fencing or surveillance or anti trespassing laws.
Speaker 3: So the aliens are read up on local municipal policies.
Speaker 2: Yeah they must. I think you're right. That's it.
Speaker 3: And they didn't say They were very careful not to
Speaker 3: say much past these commonalities. They would say, all right,
Speaker 3: this implies that a lot of these are human made
Speaker 3: and their thesis or their idea was later proven correct
Speaker 3: in two thousand and two, where we saw another wave
Speaker 3: of crop circles, all due to one film signs Yes, yep,
Speaker 3: nailed it. Hold on one yeah, Shyamalan does. It is
Speaker 3: all about a former priest who discovers he becomes a farmer,
Speaker 3: He discovers a series of crop circles in his cornfield
Speaker 3: and they are sending some sort of message. You don't
Speaker 3: want to spoil it for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, then the aliens actually show up and there's
Speaker 2: a thing they don't like. We're not going to say.
Speaker 2: But then if you jump ten years later, So nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one is when Doug and Dave come forth and say, hey,
Speaker 2: it's us. Jump forward ten years to two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: and in Science magazine you can see images of crop
Speaker 2: circles that were still being reported on when they would
Speaker 2: occur like Ben, I'm gonna show just this. This is
Speaker 2: what I think both recall from the video years incredibly
Speaker 2: complex series of circles that make spirals, and it's huge,
Speaker 2: it's four hundred and fifty meters across.
Speaker 3: And it looks a bit like some kind of maritime life.
Speaker 2: Actually, oh yeah, very fractal in nature. And it's just
Speaker 2: I know, to me, it's incredible that that kind of
Speaker 2: thing could still happen. Four hundred and nine circles in
Speaker 2: total that are in this pattern. This kind of thing
Speaker 2: is still occurring, no matter like why it's happening or
Speaker 2: how it's happening. The media, even ten years after it
Speaker 2: gets fully debunked, is still writing about it within era mystery.
Speaker 3: H yeah, exactly, And at what point is it ethical
Speaker 3: to pretend that there's a mystery or to you know,
Speaker 3: cherry pickfacts and stuff. And I'm not excusing them of
Speaker 3: unethical behavior. That stuff's subjectively amazing, and in many cases
Speaker 3: people still don't know exactly who made a given crop
Speaker 3: circle or why you know.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, for sure, but it does move magazines.
Speaker 2: Back in two thousand and one, magazines were on shelves
Speaker 2: and your bottom and that's how it worked.
Speaker 3: Red magazines with their hands been eyes.
Speaker 2: They had monthly subscriptions like you have one for Netflix
Speaker 2: for a thing that shows up in the mail. But
Speaker 2: it also you know, if it was on the evening news,
Speaker 2: another crop circle, it would get eyes on. People are like, hey, honey,
Speaker 2: they're talking about crop circles again.
Speaker 3: Time to break out the rope in the plank.
Speaker 2: Put it on channel four.
Speaker 3: We'll teach them about crop circles. And we're going to
Speaker 3: pause for a word from our sponsor, which is hopefully
Speaker 3: the two thousand and two Banger Signs by m Night Shyamalan,
Speaker 3: because we've got our fingers on the bulls here, and
Speaker 3: then when we get back, we're going to talk a
Speaker 3: little bit more about crop circles in society, artistic arms, race,
Speaker 3: and even crazier things. We're back, all right. There's another
Speaker 3: aspect to this story that needs to be considered, and
Speaker 3: I would think of it kind of as the mothman
Speaker 3: argument or the haunted house argument. A lot of this
Speaker 3: occurs in semi rural environments. Yeah, farmers don't dig crop circles.
Speaker 3: Why would they, It's happening on their stuff. They need
Speaker 3: those crops to live well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but really quickly. And I wonder if Paul has
Speaker 2: insight on this and he can throw something in the
Speaker 2: chat just because his family does. As we said before,
Speaker 2: his family does have a lot of experience with crops.
Speaker 2: If crops get pushed down like this in the way
Speaker 2: we're describing crop circles are is it impossible for a
Speaker 2: threshing machine or you know, another piece of machinery to
Speaker 2: go across that and then harvest it. It seems to
Speaker 2: me like it would be impossible to get underneath wherever
Speaker 2: they're pushed down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for Paul and Chat. It may also be a
Speaker 3: thing where it's it depends upon how far pressed they are.
Speaker 3: But it seems like it would be a difficult proposition, right,
Speaker 3: It's definitely complicating your process. Paul says he thinks it
Speaker 3: would be very difficult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think you're right back. I think
Speaker 2: it would be lost crops. Basically. However, whatever the volume
Speaker 2: of crops that were pushed down, those are gone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be tough to walk
Speaker 3: back from that. So it's thinks for the farmers, right,
Speaker 3: especially if they're not in on the thing, but the
Speaker 3: local public generally loves crop circles. They love it when
Speaker 3: they when a crop circle visits your town. It's like
Speaker 3: the carnival or the circus.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it sounds like fun. You can
Speaker 2: go see it and go hang out in the crop
Speaker 2: circle if it's if everybody's cool with it. The landowner
Speaker 2: is like, yeah, whatever is a crop circle? Give me
Speaker 2: two bucks? Hey, right? Hey? The way to get people
Speaker 2: to come hang out of your farm, it's like tourism money.
Speaker 3: That's the key, ding ding ding. Local scientists come to investigate,
Speaker 3: Journalists hit the bricks for interviews. Folks come on their
Speaker 3: own just to see something weird, you know. Yeah, if like,
Speaker 3: let's be honest, if we got news that there was
Speaker 3: a crop circle that emerged and say, l a J Georgia, right,
Speaker 3: that would be a great weekend trip, just a nice
Speaker 3: little day trip. Take the kid, you know, take your
Speaker 3: partner or something, and say like, hey, let's do something
Speaker 3: different for fun today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's commune with the circle makers. Man, I'm into it.
Speaker 3: I'm one hundred percent into it. Make a crop circle
Speaker 3: and you know, each one of these. There are also
Speaker 3: people who come for a search of a spiritual or
Speaker 3: extra terrestrial experience of some sort. And the thing is
Speaker 3: each one of those people, whatever their motivations, they also
Speaker 3: bring along cash with them into the town. Sometimes they
Speaker 3: lodge at the local bed and breakfast, They eat at
Speaker 3: the restaurants, the diners, the chip shops, what have you.
Speaker 3: So crop circles may not be proof of alien life,
Speaker 3: but they do make a provable positive difference for local economies.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 3: It's just a good idea to have them if you
Speaker 3: need some tourism money.
Speaker 2: It's not a bad idea to have them if you need,
Speaker 2: if you need.
Speaker 3: Or you could hear the italics. We're being very careful
Speaker 3: not to say as aligrift, but we are saying crop
Speaker 3: circles are to your excellent point earlier, Matt. They're also evolving.
Speaker 3: The formations are becoming more sophisticated, more complex. The size
Speaker 3: just keeps increasing. There's some very American about that part.
Speaker 3: There's this artistic arms race because it seems like, you know,
Speaker 3: Doug and Dave were no longer alone. There were people
Speaker 3: and that happened for a while who are very transparent.
Speaker 3: They're saying, I'm making these as an artistic statement, or
Speaker 3: I'm even a couple of cases where they say, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm human, I'm making these, but I'm making them to
Speaker 3: communicate with the aliens the same way like when you're
Speaker 3: wrecked on a desert island, you put a lot of
Speaker 3: rocks together so you can see sos from the plane.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well do you remember this one crop circle?
Speaker 2: I just had the hardest time finding an image of
Speaker 2: it or even a bunch of information about it for
Speaker 2: this episode. But there was a thing, a broadcast that
Speaker 2: went out from Earth back in nineteen seventy four called
Speaker 2: the Arasibo Message. It was a single broadcast kind of
Speaker 2: like the Golden Record that was sent out on Voyager
Speaker 2: Voyager two. I think you remember that that had a
Speaker 2: bunch of information about planet Earth, humans, all kinds of
Speaker 2: information that went out on the actual physical Voyager two spacecraft.
Speaker 2: The Aricibo Message was broadcast out into space one time,
Speaker 2: and there was a crop circle that was allegedly a
Speaker 2: response to that message with a bunch of different information
Speaker 2: about whatever this extraterrestrial species responding.
Speaker 3: Yeah was and it.
Speaker 2: So nineteen seventy four is when the message was broadcast,
Speaker 2: and then in two thousand and one is when the
Speaker 2: crop circle appeared where what they called it the Hampshire
Speaker 2: pattern or the Chiboltan code formation.
Speaker 3: We should just do the conspiracy hip hop album. There
Speaker 3: are enough songs about crop circles out there.
Speaker 2: Agreed a system of a down done anything on crop circles.
Speaker 2: We need you guys, Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we'll work with you on We'll work with
Speaker 3: the other concepts. I'm just hitting that, Matt, because it
Speaker 3: occurs to me what you're talking about with the receivo message.
Speaker 3: It also really hits the zeitgeist. Right. The primary mission
Speaker 3: of the primary philosophical mission of humanity is to prove
Speaker 3: to itself that it's not alone in the universe. Right,
Speaker 3: So it shouldn't be of no surprise that any potential
Speaker 3: for communication with something not like the human is very
Speaker 3: like any small potential is still worth pursuing, Right, That's
Speaker 3: the logic. So we can't, you know, even if we're
Speaker 3: listening tonight and we're some of the folks who consider
Speaker 3: ourselves more skeptical, we can't immediately dismiss people who are saying, well,
Speaker 3: let's look into it, right.
Speaker 2: Oh we yeah, we shouldn't dismiss anyone who's interested in
Speaker 2: this stuff. And is willing to look into it, right.
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing. You have to both be
Speaker 2: interested and have the time to do it, right, because
Speaker 2: if we don't think about this stuff any further, we
Speaker 2: just dismiss all of it, then, my goodness, where there's
Speaker 2: no chance that we could ever learn anything more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's very well said. I'd agree with that.
Speaker 3: And we also want to give a shout out to
Speaker 3: to just the mathematical beauty of a lot of crop circles.
Speaker 3: We mentioned that it goes beyond pie. There are crop
Speaker 3: circles that have visual representations of pie. One that really
Speaker 3: stuck out to me was a crop circle that is
Speaker 3: a visual depiction of a mathematical formula called Euler's identity. Okay,
Speaker 3: sick name right, I'm not even going to attempt to
Speaker 3: describe it, but this is often known as the most
Speaker 3: beautiful and profound mathematical equation in the world. And if
Speaker 3: you want to read more about it, there's a great
Speaker 3: article from twenty ten in The Independent by Matilda battersby
Speaker 3: very British name, and this describes how in Wilchair, which
Speaker 3: is kind of ground zero for a lot of crop circles,
Speaker 3: a three hundred foot design got carved into a crop
Speaker 3: and it is what people are calling a tantalizing approximation
Speaker 3: of Euler's identity of that mathematical formula. But is how
Speaker 3: far does an approximation go before it becomes kind of
Speaker 3: reading tea leaves?
Speaker 2: Is this the one that looks like a circle that's
Speaker 2: broken up into a pie formation, right, slices of a
Speaker 2: pie formation, and that has notches around it that create
Speaker 2: that Euler's identity?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a cool one.
Speaker 3: Sure, it looks like it's straight out of Assassin's creed.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it does have some.
Speaker 3: Kind of weird technology. But you know, the other weird
Speaker 3: thing is, even now in twenty twenty four, the majority
Speaker 3: of crop circles still appear in England and people are
Speaker 3: still trying to I guess profile the circle makers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they are because just to go back to
Speaker 2: that dealer's identity crop circle, how would an extraterrestrial civilization
Speaker 2: or intelligence attempt to communicate with another intelligence that doesn't
Speaker 2: speak a language. It would be through math, right, it
Speaker 2: would be through numbers. It would have you through universal
Speaker 2: concepts like that, And that's something that's been gosh, theorized
Speaker 2: since humans have thought about other existences off this rock.
Speaker 2: So it really is if there was going to be
Speaker 2: a message, it would be something representing maths in some way,
Speaker 2: or a constant formula, or something that we would understand
Speaker 2: someone speaking to us.
Speaker 3: Yes, one hundred percent. And we have precedent for this
Speaker 3: in the human world because when disparate civilizations or communities
Speaker 3: would run into each other, sometimes their one shared language
Speaker 3: was math, rightep or of course violence, but you know,
Speaker 3: not all the time was a violence. Sometimes they did math.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it was sexy times, sometimes.
Speaker 3: It was sexy times, sometimes it was all three. We're
Speaker 3: just gonna be very honestly. Yeah. But in two thousand
Speaker 3: and two a researcher named Jeremy Northcote did some more
Speaker 3: objective profiling, and of course this is right around the
Speaker 3: time Science comes out the film, and he said, look,
Speaker 3: these crop circle formations, even in places where they're pretty common,
Speaker 3: they're not randomly spread across the landscape. Like if we
Speaker 3: mathematically envisioned a random distribution in a given area, crop
Speaker 3: circles would not obey this. Instead, they tend to have
Speaker 3: a type when it comes to geography, near roads, near
Speaker 3: areas of medium to dense population. It's not London but
Speaker 3: not you know, like a ramshackle shat shed in the
Speaker 3: middle of nowhere. And they also tend to appear closer
Speaker 3: to what are called cultural heritage monuments like Stone Hinge,
Speaker 3: you know, old castles and stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, let's put our minds in Dug and Dave's shoes,
Speaker 2: not in their shoes. Let's put our minds in their
Speaker 2: heads for a second. If you take the time and
Speaker 2: effort to create one of these things, don't you want
Speaker 2: people to see it, to notice it, to photograph it,
Speaker 2: to talk about it. I mean other If you don't
Speaker 2: do that, then you guys just take a trip out
Speaker 2: there a couple days later and it's kind of going
Speaker 2: away by that time, you know, and that's it. You
Speaker 2: get your little laugh and that's it. But if people
Speaker 2: are talking about it and noticing it, then you're getting
Speaker 2: whatever that hit is that we all feel every time
Speaker 2: somebody likes a post on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Oh geez, yeah, it's their dopamine rush. It's their dopamine casino.
Speaker 3: I think that's a fair uh, I think that's a
Speaker 3: fair comparison. Man. We also know this researcher found that
Speaker 3: these crop circles always appear in areas that are easy
Speaker 3: to access, So that's not carved into you know, there's
Speaker 3: not a stone circle being carved into the inhospitable cliffs
Speaker 3: of Dover to like that.
Speaker 2: Now, that would be something if a crop circle formation
Speaker 2: showed up in stone like yeah, on the side of night.
Speaker 2: Oh man, come on now.
Speaker 3: I mean you know what I mean. Like, that's if
Speaker 3: you're an alien and you're listening to us, follow us
Speaker 3: for more ideas, reach out. We won't snitch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do do something to Stone Mountain overnight. Don't tell
Speaker 2: anybody about it.
Speaker 3: Just don't tell us, just do it. Yeah, we want
Speaker 3: to be some we want plausible deniability. Yes, So it's
Speaker 3: also not that all bad news. We don't. I don't
Speaker 3: even think we should say crop circles are debunked. They
Speaker 3: are real. You can find them, They do exist, and
Speaker 3: I would say knowing how humans make a lot of
Speaker 3: them doesn't make them any less cool. It's also it
Speaker 3: might surprise people. Crop circles have become a legitimate business.
Speaker 3: There's an art collective called circle Makers based in what
Speaker 3: you guessed it, the United Kingdom, yep, circle Makers.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 3: They do it. They create crop circles publicly. It's just
Speaker 3: for the love of the game. You know. They also
Speaker 3: got they also made a profit by creating circles for
Speaker 3: some paying clients.
Speaker 2: Uh that, yeah, I want that. It's probably crazy expensive, isn't.
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of expensive. And it's like it's
Speaker 3: like an ice sculpture. It's expensive and it doesn't last,
Speaker 3: you know, because because we didn't point this out yet,
Speaker 3: crop circles, by their very nature are a seasonal conspiracy.
Speaker 2: And the real cherry on top here. Let's say you're
Speaker 2: gonna make some money on it, do that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: What if you're a hobbyist and you're just really good
Speaker 2: at it. It's your love, right, this is your passion,
Speaker 2: but you don't have startup cash to make a company
Speaker 2: or whatever. What if you could go and compete against
Speaker 2: other circle makers and come out on top potentially and
Speaker 2: again get that dope. I meane of I'm the best
Speaker 2: crop circler out there. That's cool. And it existed, or
Speaker 2: at least for a time. I don't know if they're
Speaker 2: still around, but there have been competitions in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and it's kind of at this point, it's
Speaker 3: like an engineering competition.
Speaker 2: Yes, right.
Speaker 3: They had a three thousand pound prize for a recent
Speaker 3: or several years back, a UK based crop circle making competition,
Speaker 3: and the people who were in the competition didn't move
Speaker 3: under cover a night they had their They had a
Speaker 3: night to do this, but they were monitored. People knew
Speaker 3: what was happening. They were open about their techniques. Dude.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine attempting to make one of these in
Speaker 2: like the Atlanta weather we've been having recently, just the
Speaker 2: mid day.
Speaker 3: And not midday. You know, I don't move during the day, man,
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 2: I just it's one of those times where anytime you
Speaker 2: get in your car and if there's any metal bits
Speaker 2: in your car, it will literally burn you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna show you something. This is. It's better now,
Speaker 3: but this is the b from when my elbow touched
Speaker 3: the little table that I write at.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 3: In the shade?
Speaker 2: And that's how bad burn you guys. I'm sorry, Ben,
Speaker 2: that's awful.
Speaker 3: It's fine, man, it's cool to It's a cool stimulus.
Speaker 3: The Also, the the other thing is even at night
Speaker 3: here now, while we're two old entities complaining about the weather,
Speaker 3: I get so excited, I get most I get all
Speaker 3: my stuff done at night, and even at two three
Speaker 3: am it's still almost ninety degrees. It's egregious. It's the
Speaker 3: heat of the night for real or vast. We contain multitudes,
Speaker 3: and that's why there's so many. Still, this might be
Speaker 3: the most surprising thing. There are still a lot of
Speaker 3: die hard kind of out there claims about crop circles.
Speaker 3: There are a ton of people who will say, look, yes,
Speaker 3: some of these may have been made by humans, some
Speaker 3: may be made by weird dust devils and water spouts
Speaker 3: and whatever that earlier guys said about rain patterns. But
Speaker 3: this doesn't mean some crop circles are not the creation
Speaker 3: of unusual, extraordinary paranormal things. And often they point, they say,
Speaker 3: you can differentiate these quote real crop circles from the
Speaker 3: fake ones by looking at the soil and the plant matter.
Speaker 3: Have you heard about you've heard about this.
Speaker 2: Yes, there have been some very interesting discoveries from people
Speaker 2: who were looking very closely at this stuff. The Wiltshire
Speaker 2: Crop Circle Study Group found that composition of soil and
Speaker 2: at least a couple of crop circles that have formed
Speaker 2: that they've studied over the years, they think that it's
Speaker 2: it's very different. And they because they find stuff like silica,
Speaker 2: silica mixed amongst the crops in the soil there or
Speaker 2: it's almost like it pulls it out of the soil.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And they're quoting the Crop circle study group here.
Speaker 3: They're arguing that they've spoken with scientists who have told
Speaker 3: them that, but it's difficult to track down an actual
Speaker 3: scientific paper ah that confirms this. But there, yeah, there
Speaker 3: are argument is the silica. And they say there are
Speaker 3: only two things that could explain this. One the passage
Speaker 3: of a glacier to input of heat with the magnitude
Speaker 3: of a direct bolt of lightning, you know, like how
Speaker 3: lightning might strike in the desert and the betrail of glass.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, or some type of plasma engine from a.
Speaker 3: Ship, some sort of zero point to energy m Maybe
Speaker 3: now we're going to our alien voices. Yeah. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 3: majority of scientists seem to disagree with these conclusions, or
Speaker 3: at least the most fair way to say it is
Speaker 3: the majority of scientists don't see the soil composition beneath
Speaker 3: the crop formation changing in a predictable, consistent way, so
Speaker 3: they can say, hey, maybe the ground here was already strange,
Speaker 3: and maybe we can explain that, maybe we don't need
Speaker 3: crowd circles or aliens to do it. I don't know.
Speaker 3: They say the same thing with the plants too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, same stuff with the plants. And there have
Speaker 2: been a lot of researchers that go out with like
Speaker 2: things that detect radiation levels or you know, there have
Speaker 2: been some anomalous findings over the years. And I say
Speaker 2: anomalist because at like one crop circle there will be
Speaker 2: elevated levels of background radiation or something, but you won't
Speaker 2: find it across the board, even in the same general area.
Speaker 2: You won't find it, which is kind of weird, but
Speaker 2: it's like a one off thing and you kind of
Speaker 2: have to put it away because there's no way to
Speaker 2: even retest for that, right unless you go out to
Speaker 2: another crop circle and you find the same I'd like
Speaker 2: the same readings at the same differences in background radiation.
Speaker 2: It's just I haven't seen anything about that. Maybe you
Speaker 2: have right to us if you have, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, please do.
Speaker 2: But with the plant matter, there were also what was
Speaker 2: it arguments about the plant matter was effect? It wasn't
Speaker 2: just folded like in order to get it to fold
Speaker 2: and intertwine the way it was it was affected by heat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The idea was that it was subjected to very short,
Speaker 3: very intense burst of some sort of energy. Okay, and
Speaker 3: that burst of energy apparently could also put into the
Speaker 3: true believers affect people who are nearby. Dogs would get sick,
Speaker 3: compasses wouldn't work, et cetera, et cetera. Some of that
Speaker 3: stuff is more difficult to prove or disprove because, similar
Speaker 3: to Havana syndrome, some of it is subjective. Right, you
Speaker 3: got that bad vibe. How do we measure a bad vibe.
Speaker 2: A burst of energy unless it affected your cells, right,
Speaker 2: or your physiological function in the same way every time
Speaker 2: it occurred.
Speaker 3: Even electronic autrement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then maybe maybe you could again, like I think
Speaker 2: about I don't know why I think about these the
Speaker 2: new what is it ion engines and plasma engines stuff,
Speaker 2: that stuff that all of these space companies are attempting
Speaker 2: to make new new propulsion methods. Yeah, and just thinking
Speaker 2: if you extrap that and you could have a ship
Speaker 2: of some sort that came down and did some kind
Speaker 2: of short energy bursts. I just don't know why you
Speaker 2: would need those unless it was to keep it aloft right, short, little.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe kind of bouncing like a pogo stick approach.
Speaker 2: Why would you do it that way for you.
Speaker 3: Know, fun, for cool stuff. I mean maybe it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, how people will customize their cars. Maybe the
Speaker 3: thrusters are customized, and it's a flex to put Euler's
Speaker 3: identity in your in your thrust pattern.
Speaker 2: It's some music that's exactly yeah, oh yeah, or the
Speaker 2: way you can get a specific horn that does that,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, plays a song or something.
Speaker 3: Oh god, oh I have another. I don't even know
Speaker 3: if there's a conspiracy theory. This might be a bit
Speaker 3: two car stuff for us. But I was sitting in
Speaker 3: traffic the other evening and I'm increasingly convinced that auto
Speaker 3: manufacturers have purposely made horns sound kind of twerpye so
Speaker 3: that people are less likely to lay on them, because like,
Speaker 3: newer cars have a much less assertive horn. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: have more of a maybe you know they got that.
Speaker 3: They went from bellowing t rex, you know, just to
Speaker 3: a road runner.
Speaker 2: Some people who lived in New York for a little
Speaker 2: while and they're like, oh, we got to change this.
Speaker 3: This is over. It's too much it's been too much.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, one thing we've been I think
Speaker 3: very careful about here is, to be clear, humanity right
Speaker 3: now does not have an explanation for one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of the crop circles. So we are not saying that
Speaker 3: there is some extraordinary explanation for some of these. We're
Speaker 3: saying that it hasn't been confirmed that there is not.
Speaker 3: That's a little hair splitting, but I think it's fair
Speaker 3: just because you know, I know you well, we both
Speaker 3: really want to believe, you know, that the truth is
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do. And you know, if the truth is
Speaker 2: just Doug and Dave, that makes me sad, and I
Speaker 2: don't want to be sad.
Speaker 3: I do like Doug Dave, I know.
Speaker 2: To be clear, they're great, but come on, there's got
Speaker 2: to be something else. The New York Times article what
Speaker 2: is it called crop circles were made by supernatural forces
Speaker 2: named Doug and Dave? Like, no, come on, come.
Speaker 3: On, don't do us like that, NYT. And also, don't
Speaker 3: let this be a bummer, folks. It does appear that
Speaker 3: the majority of crop circles are man made, but for
Speaker 3: any number of fascinating reasons, and Earth is chock full
Speaker 3: of weird art, from the Noazca lines to the Pyramids,
Speaker 3: even unto crop circles. Humans are capable of doing amazing stuff,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times they do it just for
Speaker 3: the sake of doing it. That itself, I would argue,
Speaker 3: is a mysterious, fascinating your urge we still don't understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, and hey, if you don't understand it,
Speaker 2: but you want to know more, or you've got some
Speaker 2: insight that we didn't talk about in this episode, why
Speaker 2: not reach out to us. You can find us all
Speaker 2: over the place. Mostly we are conspiracy stuff on the socials.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we're conspiracy Stuff show. If you want to watch
Speaker 2: our older videos, go to YouTube dot com slash how
Speaker 2: stuff works and search crop circles or YouTube dot com
Speaker 2: slash conspiracy Stuff and type the same thing in there
Speaker 2: and there again it's the same video. The newer one
Speaker 2: on our channel has a little updated like top and tail.
Speaker 2: That's kind of cool. If you want to call us,
Speaker 2: we have a phone number.
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