Speaker 1: You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Folks.
Speaker 1: It's a huge wet us to see you there. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.
Speaker 2: True and truths that sound like lies.
Speaker 1: I'm the ghost of Danish Swartz and.
Speaker 2: I'm the evil twin of Lizzy Logan. Welcome to the show, Lizzie,
Speaker 2: thank you for having me. This is your week.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I jumped into start.
Speaker 2: No, because you were excited. That's all good.
Speaker 1: I am excited.
Speaker 2: It's great. I'm really excited about this hoax because I
Speaker 2: think it is the epitome of a lie we wish
Speaker 2: was true and a truth that sounds like a lie. Great,
Speaker 2: so let's just get into it.
Speaker 1: DAYA.
Speaker 2: What do you know about crop circles and absolutely nothing? Well,
Speaker 2: you know what they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're giant circles and crops or shapes that people
Speaker 1: think were caused by aliens.
Speaker 2: Some people think so.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I'm delighted because this is one of those things
Speaker 1: where I've just like, I've never looked I'm like, I'll
Speaker 1: just take a pass on this one. I've just never
Speaker 1: looked into it. But I do find it interesting.
Speaker 2: They are interesting, And the more I thought about this topic,
Speaker 2: the more interested I became, because I think crop circles
Speaker 2: get put in the same category of I guess like pseudoscience,
Speaker 2: as like Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster and flatter Earth
Speaker 2: and like hollow moon theories. But if you look into
Speaker 2: any of those, and we might cover one of those
Speaker 2: on the podcast one day, But if you look into
Speaker 2: any of those, when you get to the end of
Speaker 2: the line, the answer is just like, no, it's not. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it's not like this is a picture of Bigfoot. No,
Speaker 2: it's not this is evidence that the Earth is flat.
Speaker 2: It's not. Crop circles are real. There are crop circles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: these formations exist, and so you can actually talk about
Speaker 2: them in sort of like a more grounded way where
Speaker 2: you're talking about a thing that is real and we
Speaker 2: just don't know how it got there, who made it,
Speaker 2: what properties it possesses.
Speaker 1: But there are crop circles. I mean, that is fun.
Speaker 1: Have you I hope you have the answers?
Speaker 2: Know.
Speaker 1: Have you watched any of the Netflix TV show I
Speaker 1: think it's called Ancient Apocalypse.
Speaker 2: No, I've seen clips of the show Ancient Aliens that
Speaker 2: gets it's from history channel and gets circled around sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is different. This is a thing that, like
Speaker 1: my husband Ian sort of keeps on is like a
Speaker 1: guilty pleasure where it's like a guy says like pseudo
Speaker 1: scientific things that if you think about them for five seconds,
Speaker 1: they're not actually true. But he's like what if And
Speaker 1: he speaks like that voice and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: zooms and effects and a lot of filler to say
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. He was talking about a circle that he
Speaker 1: is positing some ancient civilization made and he's like, how
Speaker 1: could they have made a circle this big without tools?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, a circle is the easiest thing to make.
Speaker 1: You put a steak in the ground, you have a string,
Speaker 1: and you walk. Yeah, any anyone could do that.
Speaker 2: If you get a group of kindergarteners and you say
Speaker 2: make a perfect circle, they all hold hands and they
Speaker 2: just walk out until their hands are like as taut
Speaker 2: as possible and they're in more or less a perfect circle.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent children can do it. And again, all
Speaker 1: you need to make a perfect circle is a steak
Speaker 1: and a string. And this man was just like, and
Speaker 1: how would they have done a mathematically perfect circle? And
Speaker 1: it is, I guess entertains people that there is just
Speaker 1: like it just fills an hour. It's a lot of filler,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of b roll. But whoof sometimes you
Speaker 1: need to think critically.
Speaker 2: No kidding, yeah, all right, So there is a very
Speaker 2: famous within crop circle circles wood cutting from sixteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight that purports to show evidence of a crop circle.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really, but people mention it as like, well,
Speaker 2: there's reports of this stuff going back years. Sure, the
Speaker 2: reports of crop circles up until the middle of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century are very few and far between, and I'm
Speaker 2: not going to talk about any of them. I'm only
Speaker 2: going to talk about crop circles, specific crop formations that
Speaker 2: are verified great and most of them we have pictures of.
Speaker 2: Nothing in this episode is based on ai. Nothing in
Speaker 2: this episode is based on photoshop. Everything that I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about in this episode like there was a
Speaker 2: thing there, right, Really, the story of crop circles starts
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three. Okay, A letter appears in a
Speaker 2: science jourtle describing a circular crater that suddenly appeared in Charlton,
Speaker 2: which is in Wiltshire, which is in South England, and
Speaker 2: Wiltshire is going to be the place where ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of the action happens.
Speaker 1: Wiltshire got it.
Speaker 2: Wiltshire is also where Stonehenge is. I've been and Averabury Hinge?
Speaker 2: Do you go to the other Hinge?
Speaker 1: I don't think I had time to go to the
Speaker 1: other Henge.
Speaker 2: Three years later, in nineteen sixty six, George Pedley is
Speaker 2: working his farm in Tully, Australia, and he finds what
Speaker 2: he calls a nest of reeds in a swamp. They've
Speaker 2: all been knocked over into this like circle formation. And
Speaker 2: both of these accounts from the sixties are printed in
Speaker 2: newspapers with like some speculation about UFO.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to envision what this is, and it
Speaker 1: like it's something heavy plopped down on it and like
Speaker 1: knocked all these things over in a circle.
Speaker 2: Are you asking what actually happened or what people believe
Speaker 2: what it looks like happened. The crop whatever it is
Speaker 2: is bent over kind of at the bottom. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: So it's like as if you took like a like
Speaker 2: a big roller and like rolled everything around.
Speaker 1: Got it? So, yeah, it was something pushing it, not
Speaker 1: everything coming down from the sea from the sky at once.
Speaker 2: Death right, So people think like maybe it is a
Speaker 2: landing spot for an alien spacecraft, because like maybe that's
Speaker 2: how alien spacecrafts work, they're like covercrafts or whatever.
Speaker 1: Maybe it lands in a circle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it has you know, if you picture sort
Speaker 2: of like an upside down helicopter almost you can imagine
Speaker 2: how a whirling propeller might knock things over in like
Speaker 2: a you know, clockwise or counterclockwise fashion.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So both of these are printed in the newspaper alongside
Speaker 2: some UFO speculation. Although for mister Pedley who's in Australia,
Speaker 2: Australia has these things called williwillies which are like little
Speaker 2: dust devils, like they're a little mini tornadoes almost, and
Speaker 2: everyone's like that's just left over from a Williwilli. So
Speaker 2: like there already is another explanation, but these are the
Speaker 2: early sightings. In nineteen seventy eight, Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Marcel
Speaker 2: gives an interview saying that he was part of the
Speaker 2: cleanup team at Roswell, New Mexico, in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: and he thinks that the debris found there is extraterrestrial
Speaker 2: and this has basically nothing to do with crop circles
Speaker 2: except that it sets off like the UFO mania of
Speaker 2: the eighties. In nineteen eighty circles start cropping up in Westbury,
Speaker 2: which is in Wiltshire, and they're just circles. So Wilcher
Speaker 2: is where the Averbury hinges, it's where stonehenges, and it's
Speaker 2: also where Silbury Hill is, which is like a very
Speaker 2: old man made hill that people think maybe in ancient
Speaker 2: times was like used for rituals or it was some
Speaker 2: sort of important place. But basically there's a lot of
Speaker 2: spooky stuff happening in Wiltshire.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists love to say ritualistic purposes for rituals or not.
Speaker 2: But like, why would you make a hill There's already
Speaker 2: plenty of hills in this area.
Speaker 1: Rituals obviously, I guess it just feels like a catch all.
Speaker 1: If you're an archaeologist who doesn't know an answer, or
Speaker 1: an anthropologist, you're like, obviously a ritual of some sort.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty three, some circles are found in this
Speaker 2: place called cheese foot Head fun which I really liked,
Speaker 2: And I'll show you a picture.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm getting a better idea. I think I was
Speaker 1: imagining them just as like circles, but just the circumference.
Speaker 2: But it's the entire wing, the whole. It's like a
Speaker 2: filled in circle. Yeah, because an area.
Speaker 1: It's the full circle. It's not just someone walked around
Speaker 1: on the outside of a circle.
Speaker 2: No. So this is nineteen eighty three cheese foothead. And
Speaker 2: then in the late eighties there's like a triple one.
Speaker 2: Can I ask.
Speaker 1: How big are these in these photos? It's sort of
Speaker 1: hard to gage the size.
Speaker 2: They're all different sizes, but they're like pretty big. They're
Speaker 2: later on we're gonna get to crop formations that are
Speaker 2: like the size of multiple football field. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: not that. Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1: Looks like maybe like ten yards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe like a diameter of like ten to twenty
Speaker 2: yards of the big one. And then there's a couple
Speaker 2: of smaller ones nearby.
Speaker 1: I mean there's strike looking. I understand why people are
Speaker 1: like aliens, because there is something eerie about the perfection
Speaker 1: of a perfect circle in nature. I mean, it looks interesting,
Speaker 1: it's a good art project.
Speaker 2: It looks interesting, and they appear overnight. Suddenly all of
Speaker 2: these pictures will be available on our Instagram. So through
Speaker 2: the eighties, more and more crop circles are emerging. They're
Speaker 2: emerging in many developed countries that have farmland, but mostly
Speaker 2: in Wiltshire, and some patterns start to emerge. First of all,
Speaker 2: they only happen in the summer when the crops are
Speaker 2: really big.
Speaker 1: Then, which makes them more striking and visible.
Speaker 2: Yes, and also which makes it like not super cool
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the night if you're a
Speaker 2: human mammal, red blooded mammal making a crop circle. They
Speaker 2: often appear in wheat and barley, not so much corn.
Speaker 2: Corn is not great for making a crop circle. And
Speaker 2: they also appear I mean, I knew that this existed,
Speaker 2: but they appear a lot of times in which is
Speaker 2: the name of a crop. So it's just funny. We're
Speaker 2: researching this, they're constantly like we were out there in
Speaker 2: the rape and I'm like, warre you.
Speaker 1: Here's what I learned. Rape seed oil very important and
Speaker 1: very easy oil that people use like an old oil.
Speaker 1: In America. We added a g and they call it
Speaker 1: grape seed oil.
Speaker 2: I know, but it's not. But then if you look
Speaker 2: up grape seed oil, because I did, there's also oil
Speaker 2: that you can make from grapes and it's not the
Speaker 2: same thing, so we need a third for the grain. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I because you know, it's similar to like people get
Speaker 2: confused because there's no apples and applejacks. If you call
Speaker 2: something grape seed oil, people are gonna think it's made
Speaker 2: of the seeds of grapes and not a grain that
Speaker 2: was previously called rape.
Speaker 1: It's true. Come up. I mean, good on them for rebranding.
Speaker 1: That was a smart idea, but it is. It is confusing.
Speaker 1: You assume grape seed oil comes from grape seeds because
Speaker 1: grapes do have seeds.
Speaker 2: They do. Yeah, but there's also this grain that's a
Speaker 2: total tangent. But leave it in. Why not. People report
Speaker 2: seeing orbs of light, strange objects, and strange noises, like
Speaker 2: around the time that crop circles are forming aliens. They
Speaker 2: report that if you go into a crop circle, like
Speaker 2: your watch might stop, you might feel weird, like a
Speaker 2: compass won't work, your car battery might die.
Speaker 1: I like this.
Speaker 2: There are some very early videos of like floating orbs
Speaker 2: that just sort of look like little white dots out
Speaker 2: over the crop circles. To me, they look like white
Speaker 2: birds flying around, But if you are looking for a
Speaker 2: different interpretation, they could be orbs of light. And there's
Speaker 2: also people who are looking at it as like maybe
Speaker 2: the wind is creating this, like maybe there's like a
Speaker 2: weather explanation. Sure, like the williwillies, like the williwillies, or
Speaker 2: like some kind of polarity. Something is happening, like I
Speaker 2: don't know, the tectonic plates are shifting and it's affecting
Speaker 2: the grains in some strange way. Uh. Stephen Hawking thinks like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's some merit to that argument. He's not the one
Speaker 2: doing the research and coming out with it, but he
Speaker 2: like co signs that theory interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I don't know what's happening with magnet
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be completely honest. And magnets, how do they work?
Speaker 1: Magnets how do they work? I like kind of pretend
Speaker 1: like I get the gist, but I don't. I really
Speaker 1: don't know all that well. I don't think I could
Speaker 1: explain it to a child, and something could be happening
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Something is happening. On the other hand, people point out,
Speaker 2: you know they're often found kind of near roads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's sort.
Speaker 2: Of points to it being people and it becomes a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: So they're the people who study crop circles call themselves seriologists, like, uh,
Speaker 2: like cereal or like Ceres, who's like the god of
Speaker 2: I think like grain or farm or something. It's the
Speaker 2: same root word, So they're cereal. Get with a C.
Speaker 2: Sorry about that. They have conferences, there are periodicals. They
Speaker 2: organize themselves into different societies, like people who believe that
Speaker 2: it's Mother Nature sending us a message, people who believe
Speaker 2: that it's aliens like leaving graffiti basically, or people who
Speaker 2: are interested in some sort of like you know, weather explanation.
Speaker 1: Are there any serious seriologists who believe they're man made?
Speaker 1: Or is this a society of people looking for a
Speaker 1: more challenging explanation.
Speaker 2: No, there are, there are at this point. There are.
Speaker 2: There are people who are like I want to know
Speaker 2: what's up with them, and they're man made and I
Speaker 2: would like to know who and how. Yeah, but they're
Speaker 2: kind of different from the main seriologists who believe that
Speaker 2: it is like worth studying because if you think it's
Speaker 2: man made, there's not really that much to look at.
Speaker 1: No, it's not going to be a field of study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where if it's either aliens or some weird tectonic plate thing.
Speaker 1: Both of those are very important and very interesting.
Speaker 2: Very very very interesting. Nineteen ninety is like a banner
Speaker 2: year for crop circles. There are hundreds in Britain. It
Speaker 2: also becomes a huge problem in Illinois, which is where
Speaker 2: you're from. You weren't born yet, but were your parents
Speaker 2: out there making crop circles.
Speaker 1: Yes, in the suburbs of Chicago where the crop circles
Speaker 1: ran rampant.
Speaker 2: It was like in the newspaper that it was like,
Speaker 2: we gotta do something about these crops circles.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I've driven through southern Illinois. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of fields of cereal that could be ripe for circling,
Speaker 1: That's all I'll say.
Speaker 2: And farmers are not super happy about it because you're
Speaker 2: destroying their livelihood. Yeah, and then people find out about
Speaker 2: it and come to see it and walk into your
Speaker 2: farm and destroy it even more. And also like, are
Speaker 2: you liable for if they injure themselves on your farm?
Speaker 1: Yeah? If I was a farmer, I would not be
Speaker 1: happy with either the aliens, the weather or the human
Speaker 1: beings doing this for attention and as a prank.
Speaker 2: In May nineteen ninety we get our first pictogram, which
Speaker 2: is how you like it's not circles, so I'm gonna
Speaker 2: show you ooh, so there's some straight lines and some
Speaker 2: like little dashes.
Speaker 1: It looks like a Wi Fi signal. It does look
Speaker 1: like a like a different a pitch for how wi Fi.
Speaker 1: Like that's a little symbol. It's it's not the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi symbol. But if that was like a draft of
Speaker 1: like should WiFi look like this?
Speaker 2: We also this summer get the Eastfield pictogram.
Speaker 1: Oh, that one's good.
Speaker 2: It's really cool and you can I'm bad with measurements,
Speaker 2: but there's people in this photo. So yeah, it looks huge.
Speaker 2: It's really big. And this is like a very famous one.
Speaker 2: It ends up on the cover of a Led Zeppelin
Speaker 2: Remasters album.
Speaker 1: I will just say like, as an art project, it
Speaker 1: looks striking. It's very impressive. There's something very striking to
Speaker 1: me again about like the man made almost like scientific
Speaker 1: vibe of it in contrast and direct juxtaposition to the
Speaker 1: nature of the field.
Speaker 2: It looks cool if you want to get sort of
Speaker 2: philosophical about it, like farming rep presents man's desire to
Speaker 2: sort of tame nature and use it for its own
Speaker 2: ends and crop circles represent like just a different version
Speaker 2: of that, Like I will also go out into nature
Speaker 2: and do a thing for man made reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something. Again, I'm going to go on the
Speaker 1: assumption that people are doing this philosophically. It is very
Speaker 1: funny that they're sort of enacting prehistoric ritual purposes because again,
Speaker 1: looks Stonehenge and things like, we don't know why these
Speaker 1: ancient people built these things or just like, ah, they
Speaker 1: were doing rituals. A human being making this, it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: a ritualistic purpose, and that ritual is in order to
Speaker 1: have fun yep, in order to prank people to get attention.
Speaker 1: Just like, that's funny to me that we're doing things
Speaker 1: that people did thousands of years ago for a silly
Speaker 1: reason that we can comprehend now but might be incomprehensible
Speaker 1: thousands of years from now.
Speaker 2: Yes, correct, we are. Humanity doesn't really change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I assume Stonehenge wasn't a prank. That seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of work to bring the stones there. But
Speaker 1: maybe the.
Speaker 2: Farmer who owns this field says that they charged people
Speaker 2: to go into it, and they made some key rings
Speaker 2: and some T shirts, and he says it was probably
Speaker 2: our most profitable quarter of an acre ever.
Speaker 1: Good for him.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's like reasons to sort of let
Speaker 2: the crop circle phenomenon continue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, farmers, look, being a farmer seems hard. If it
Speaker 1: hurts the farmers, that's bad. If the farmers can benefit
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 2: Great, absolutely. Later in summer nineteen ninety, there's something called
Speaker 2: Operation Blackbird, which is the BBC with the help of
Speaker 2: a Japanese TV station and also the British Army OH
Speaker 2: which owns the land, setting up surveillance to see if
Speaker 2: they can catch a crop circle maker in the action. Great,
Speaker 2: and this is not the first time that anyone's done this.
Speaker 2: There was also Project Whitebird, but this is like the
Speaker 2: big one that becomes famous. So they set up a test.
Speaker 2: They take two I'm gonna call them enthusiasts slash researchers.
Speaker 2: They sort of self style themselves as like scientists slash experts.
Speaker 2: I would maybe push back about that.
Speaker 1: Put that put experts are scientists both in air quotes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their names are Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews. And
Speaker 2: they're gonna stake out the field and see what they
Speaker 2: can see. They've got night vision cameras, they've got thermal imaging,
Speaker 2: they've got all the highest tech stuff, and on the
Speaker 2: second night of their experiment, a crop circle appears great
Speaker 2: good for them, and they're like, look, if you look
Speaker 2: on the night vision, all you see are like weird
Speaker 2: light shapes, and if you look above, this is a
Speaker 2: crop circle. And they're like, this is real. This is real.
Speaker 2: This is real. And they say that for cameras, and
Speaker 2: then they go into the crop circle and they're like,
Speaker 2: this is not real because a big part of what
Speaker 2: distinguishes a real crop circle from like a prank crop
Speaker 2: circle is the way that the grain is laid down,
Speaker 2: if it's broken versus if it's like woven, how damaged
Speaker 2: it is, how clean the edges are. So they go
Speaker 2: into the crop circle and they're like, this looks terrible.
Speaker 2: This is just some amateur human crop circle maker. And
Speaker 2: they had also left behind a wooden cross, a bit
Speaker 2: of the rope that they had used, and a like
Speaker 2: astrology board game. Ah, so they're like clearly making fun
Speaker 2: of them. Yeah, and they're like, this is proof that
Speaker 2: we are onto something because the army went through so
Speaker 2: much effort to set us up, to make us look stupid.
Speaker 1: Oh no, as opposed to just to like, oh no,
Speaker 1: it's actually very eas to fake a crop circle, and
Speaker 1: people are having fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, it is easy to fake a crop circle,
Speaker 2: and they want us to believe that all the crop
Speaker 2: circles are fake, but there are real crop circles, so
Speaker 2: they're muddying the waters.
Speaker 1: Oh I got it, I got it.
Speaker 2: This is a thing that crop circle enthusiasts will forever
Speaker 2: insist is that a lot of crop circles are made
Speaker 2: by people who are, whether intentionally or not, getting in
Speaker 2: the way of their very valid research into the quote
Speaker 2: unquote real crop circles.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get it. It's like false flag crop circles.
Speaker 2: It is a syop. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also that would be if you are someone who
Speaker 1: is a true believer, that would be devastating because you're like,
Speaker 1: the more we talk about crop circles, the more copycats
Speaker 1: they'll want to be ben to like cashing it on
Speaker 1: the publicity. So how do you talk about them without
Speaker 1: inciting new copycats?
Speaker 2: It's very difficult. Then Andrews and Delgado will go on
Speaker 2: to claim that like they're being tapped by the CIA
Speaker 2: and journalists are following them home and asking all of
Speaker 2: these invasive questions, and there's all this sort of like
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence that then bolsters their theory that there's something
Speaker 2: that like, quote unquote they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that they weren't having their phones tapped.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that's not evidence of like aliens.
Speaker 1: And also I'm sure journalists did want to talk to
Speaker 1: them because this big funny thing happened. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: operating from a place where the government knows that crop
Speaker 1: circles are caused by some nefarious or you know, oh
Speaker 1: worldly Yeah, and they they are purposefully keeping it from
Speaker 1: us and also hiding it with fakes.
Speaker 2: Yes, and also there's not really any evidence to talk
Speaker 2: about in crop circles, so instead they have to talk
Speaker 2: about the other stuff. Sure, like that's the only way
Speaker 2: that they can claim that this thing is still happening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not really going to talk about him because I
Speaker 2: think that the crop circles are what's interesting, not the people.
Speaker 2: But Colin Andrews remains to this day like mister crop circle,
Speaker 2: Like he is the foremost guy, and if you start
Speaker 2: looking into crop circles, his name will pop up everywhere.
Speaker 2: So that's who that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, good to have a hobby. Yeah, men need hobbies.
Speaker 2: This is his full time job. Oh great. So the
Speaker 2: seiologist movement is a little bit over and now enthusiasts
Speaker 2: basically go by the title croppies.
Speaker 1: Which it makes it seem less serious.
Speaker 2: It does, it does. Doctor Terrence Maiden Madden still thinks
Speaker 2: that it's the weather and he is on the verge
Speaker 2: of getting some government funding to figure out what's going
Speaker 2: on with this weather. So the idea has been a
Speaker 2: little bit deflated, but the enthusiasm is all still very
Speaker 2: much there.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, maybe I'm gonna sound stupid. I believe
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's a possibility that some crop circles are
Speaker 1: caused by a weird weather thing or a weird magnet thing,
Speaker 1: or like the willy willies in Australia. And also then
Speaker 1: because some god attention and publicity, human beings started making them.
Speaker 2: This is the exact argument of crappies.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh so crappies believe that it's nature and also people.
Speaker 2: Yes, every crop circle enthusiast will say some of these
Speaker 2: are made by people. Okay, great, Yeah, which is very
Speaker 2: convenient because every time you disprove one, they go, I
Speaker 2: told you some of them were made by people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they can never tell you how you're supposed to
Speaker 2: tell the real ones from the fake ones. But I
Speaker 2: just say there are real ones crappies basing this like scientifically,
Speaker 2: Like again, I don't know about tectonic plates and magnets
Speaker 2: all different. Crappies is an umbrella term great.
Speaker 1: Because I'm like, look, not to generalize, but people who
Speaker 1: think these are alien I'm imagining it's a lot of
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of circumstantial evidence, and it's a lot
Speaker 2: of just like they want to believe that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like a lot of like my gut tells me sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then it's a lot of like weird coincidences to
Speaker 2: other things that they believe to be alien. Cus. So
Speaker 2: there's no evidence anywhere. It's just if you connect the
Speaker 2: dots in a certain way, it paints a picture.
Speaker 1: People believe what they want to believe. I was at
Speaker 1: breakfast the other day and overheard a woman with a
Speaker 1: baby say that her baby was acting a certain way
Speaker 1: because it's a double libra, And I'm like, that's a
Speaker 1: very funny way to explain your baby's behavior.
Speaker 2: What was the behavior of the baby.
Speaker 1: I don't remember some sleep thing. Baby's just sleep weird,
Speaker 1: it's not according to their horoscopes.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety one, a group called the Wessex Skeptics
Speaker 2: Great do their own test just to see if this
Speaker 2: is possible. So, like it's similar to sort of the
Speaker 2: Urn Malley thing where they're like, if we go out
Speaker 2: and we just try to make a crop circle, will
Speaker 2: these people be rigorous in their analysis of it or
Speaker 2: will they believe it whole cloth? Yeah, And they make
Speaker 2: some crop circles and wait for them to get discovered.
Speaker 2: And when they're discovered, like when the circles are discovered,
Speaker 2: people are like real real whirl who.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In August nineteen ninety one, we get the Mandelbrot set
Speaker 2: crop circle.
Speaker 1: Oh this one I've seen before for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this sort of sets off what I'm going
Speaker 2: to call like the fractal category of crop circles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more decorative, it's beautiful, and it a fractal
Speaker 1: is a like visual expression of a mathematical phenomenon with
Speaker 1: like repeating shapes.
Speaker 2: So this is sort of the first example of one
Speaker 2: and it's one of the very famous ones. All right,
Speaker 2: end of the season. September nineteen ninety one, two dudes
Speaker 2: in their sixties go to the press and they're like,
Speaker 2: we've been making crop circles and we will tell you
Speaker 2: how we did it. Great, and we have been behind
Speaker 2: two hundred crop circles, two hundred. They're like, we're the
Speaker 2: ones who started it. It was the late seventies. Everyone
Speaker 2: was all into UFOs and we'd heard about these like
Speaker 2: willi willies and stuff back in the day, and people
Speaker 2: started talking about UFOs and we thought it would be
Speaker 2: so funny, Yeah, to make it look like there were
Speaker 2: UFOs and wheelchair men and their hobbies. Men and their hobbies.
Speaker 2: And they're like, and we have records, Like we can
Speaker 2: show you the pieces of paper where we would like
Speaker 2: map them out, Yeah, and we can show you how
Speaker 2: we did it.
Speaker 1: I if this is I mean, I hope that nothing.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop it. Right now.
Speaker 1: It's two adult male friends doing a thing, and I
Speaker 1: find that delight. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They were just like drunk at the pub and thought
Speaker 2: it would be funny. They their main tool that they
Speaker 2: use is like a plank of wood with a rope
Speaker 2: tied to it, and you sort of grip the rope
Speaker 2: and then that way you can lower the plank of
Speaker 2: wood with like your foot on it, like press down,
Speaker 2: and that's how you press it down, and you just
Speaker 2: go like a little bit out of time in.
Speaker 1: A circle, crush it with a plank of wood and
Speaker 1: a rope, and.
Speaker 2: That's how you make you know, a circle or a
Speaker 2: line or any shape you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They said that the reason that they started making pictograms
Speaker 2: is because they specifically wanted it to be a UFO hoax. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And when people started talking about the weather, they were like,
Speaker 2: we need to make some stuff that couldn't have been
Speaker 2: made by the weather.
Speaker 1: Ron hoax ron huks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like no. And I think they also were like, God,
Speaker 2: if this guy's going to get funding from the government
Speaker 2: to research whether or not this is made by the weather, A,
Speaker 2: he's probably gonna find us. Yeah, and B I don't
Speaker 2: really want the government like wasting its money like this
Speaker 2: is supposed to be funny. We're not really like whoh,
Speaker 2: it's gone a little far. And they're also they're getting older.
Speaker 2: They want to stop, and so they're like Okay, we'll
Speaker 2: come forward and we'll tell you about it, and we'll
Speaker 2: tell you how we did it. There are a few
Speaker 2: what crappies would call holes in their story, okay, which
Speaker 2: is that in interviews over the years, they sort of
Speaker 2: change the date at which they started this hoax. They
Speaker 2: say in nineteen seventy eight, and then they say the
Speaker 2: mid seventies, which apparently is incompatible to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. To me, I'm like, if someone's giving an interview,
Speaker 1: they'll sometimes just be general. You're like, yeah, sometime in
Speaker 1: the mid seventies, You're like, yeah, seventy eight.
Speaker 2: They are a little on the old side to be
Speaker 2: going out and doing this in the middle of the
Speaker 2: night at the speed at which they claim they have
Speaker 2: done it.
Speaker 1: Fair Maybe I don't know what shape these guys are in.
Speaker 2: They can't adequately to the high standards of the crappies
Speaker 2: explain how they were like getting into and out of
Speaker 2: the fields without leaving like tracks of broken crops. And
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, we pull vaulted, which I think is
Speaker 2: clearly a joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds funny, But at least.
Speaker 2: Some experts are like, and we know they couldn't pull vaulted.
Speaker 2: So they've never adequately explained it. I'm like, no, they
Speaker 2: just didn't tell you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, that's not the explanation.
Speaker 2: They just didn't answer that question. They gave a joke
Speaker 2: answer to that part of the question.
Speaker 1: That is a funny to me. I'm like, that proves
Speaker 1: they did it because they're funny. They're funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Doug Bower and Dave Chorli. I forget
Speaker 2: if I said their names. And the big question that
Speaker 2: answers itself is like, well, they only did the ones
Speaker 2: in Wiltshire. Yeah, and they only did two hundred of them,
Speaker 2: but there's hundreds more in other places that they didn't do.
Speaker 1: Copycats, Yes, copycats, but it got publicity, it was in
Speaker 1: the news. Other people were like, we should do that.
Speaker 2: What the crappies are getting at, which is true, is
Speaker 2: that the crop circle phenomenon cannot be solely attributed to
Speaker 2: Doug and Dave.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, but the crappies should look at something like planking,
Speaker 1: like a phenomenon where when things are popular, other people
Speaker 1: want to do them.
Speaker 2: Yes, so obviously the reporter is like, okay, go make
Speaker 2: me a crop circle. And this is the crop circle
Speaker 2: that they make. It's just two circles sort of connected
Speaker 2: by a line, and it doesn't look that good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually pretty bad. The circles don't look perfect.
Speaker 2: No, and they're not good, and they're not convincing to
Speaker 2: the people that they're trying to convince.
Speaker 1: But also decades have gone by, they're older.
Speaker 2: They're older, And I also think that they were probably
Speaker 2: trying to take credit for as many as they could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe they just made like the.
Speaker 2: First ones set off the phenomenon and they were like, well,
Speaker 2: we should get credit for the whole phenomenon, so we'll
Speaker 2: just say that all of these are ours. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: maybe they only made a few.
Speaker 1: It. Also, I just think proves, even if that's not perfect,
Speaker 1: that man made crop girls are possible. Like, again, you
Speaker 1: can make a perfect circle with a string, it's not
Speaker 1: that hard. You can make straight lines, that's not that difficult.
Speaker 1: So even if these guys in the nineties couldn't do
Speaker 1: it perfectly, that doesn't prove that human beings couldn't do
Speaker 1: them perfectly in the late seventies.
Speaker 2: Also, the pictures if you google crop circles, the amazing designs,
Speaker 2: none of them are before the nineties. Yeah, none of them.
Speaker 2: So this interview, this hoax gets a lot of mainstream attention,
Speaker 2: and it has two sort of knock on effects. One
Speaker 2: is that all of the sort of like how you
Speaker 2: were talking about, like are there any sort of seriologists
Speaker 2: who are not entertaining paranormal explanations? Those that there are
Speaker 2: leave because they're like, Okay, my curiosity has been satisfied,
Speaker 2: and all that's left in seriology is like I want
Speaker 2: to find a respectful word the most open minded enthusiasts
Speaker 2: and the most passionate believers.
Speaker 1: That is such a generous read, and they're going to.
Speaker 2: Feed off each other in a pretty big way without
Speaker 2: anybody in their community who they believe and talk to
Speaker 2: you on a regular basis, who's more grounded in scientific evidence.
Speaker 1: Yes, and especially when you're in a community where people
Speaker 1: have a shared set of like what are considered established beliefs,
Speaker 1: those established beliefs will seldom get challenged.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny because they don't have a shared set
Speaker 2: of established beliefs, but they still don't like challenge like
Speaker 2: they have every there's like twelve different theories and they
Speaker 2: all in fight each other, but none of it's based
Speaker 2: on evidence, So they still there's still an outgroup. The
Speaker 2: in group is fighting with each other, but there's still
Speaker 2: an outgroup, which is just like people who were insisting
Speaker 2: on using science. But all of those people who are
Speaker 2: insisting on using science have now gone home, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: they're they're fine with the explanation.
Speaker 1: All that's left are the people who aren't holding this
Speaker 1: situation to what we would call scientific rigor exactly.
Speaker 2: The other thing that happens is now everybody knows how
Speaker 2: to make a crop circle, and so there's way more
Speaker 2: copycats and they're like, well, I want to make a
Speaker 2: better one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People are challenging each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In nineteen ninety two, a pair of you know
Speaker 2: sort of I would say, like borderline crappies, like who
Speaker 2: are sort of one foot in each camp, team up
Speaker 2: with a newspaper to have a crop circle competition. And
Speaker 2: the idea is, let's see the limit of what humans
Speaker 2: can do, because some of these crop circles are really impressive.
Speaker 2: Let's science and typically see if this is possible. So
Speaker 2: they draw up a design that each team has to do.
Speaker 2: The reward is three thousand pounds. They have from ten
Speaker 2: pm to three am to do it, but they can
Speaker 2: do it kind of however they want. They invite the
Speaker 2: Wessex skeptics to participate, but the skeptics are like, no,
Speaker 2: you've made this too hard. This is a setup. You're
Speaker 2: trying to prove that people can't make crop circles, Like,
Speaker 2: no one could do this, okay the time given.
Speaker 1: Well, that's very interesting that even the skeptics think it's
Speaker 1: too hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, you're you're you're trying to prove a point,
Speaker 2: you have an agenda, okay. And then the Wessex skeptics
Speaker 2: are proved both right and wrong because yeah, all the
Speaker 2: groups totally make the design. Yeah, it's one hundred percent
Speaker 2: possible to make this design that they've laid it between
Speaker 2: ten pm and three am, between ten pm and three am,
Speaker 2: and they're not really seen, and the crop circles look
Speaker 2: pretty good. The winning team uses like a PVC pipe
Speaker 2: on a string, so instead of making individual like steps,
Speaker 2: they can sort of like bulldoze. Yeah, so everybody takes
Speaker 2: from this competition.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some minds are changed.
Speaker 2: But basically, like any piece of art, you can look
Speaker 2: at it and you see what you want to see.
Speaker 1: I will say for me as someone who did try
Speaker 1: to come into this episode with an open mind about
Speaker 1: weather stuff, I'm convinced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has been people all along, people who believe
Speaker 2: that there are real crop circles. In fake crop circles,
Speaker 2: they look and they're like, look, they didn't do any
Speaker 2: of Look, they point out every little flaw. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they're like, see, you see, people can't do it. And
Speaker 2: then people who believe that all crop circles are man
Speaker 2: made or like, see, people can do it. So there's
Speaker 2: always some new goalpost that the evidence is not meeting.
Speaker 2: Of course, a big thing in croppyism is like the
Speaker 2: exact pattern of how the grain is smooshed, and if
Speaker 2: you look up you can find these like really at
Speaker 2: weavings that people sometimes do or I guess not people
Speaker 2: sometimes do, And it does seem like that would add
Speaker 2: a lot of time and effort, especially in the dark.
Speaker 2: But it's like a very particular personicty thing to disqualify
Speaker 2: most crop circles because they didn't do that one thing.
Speaker 2: And then even though there's nothing to suggest that only
Speaker 2: an alien could do a weaving pattern with the floor
Speaker 2: of the crops, haha, I got ya. But anyway, that's
Speaker 2: their big, that's their big gotcha.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is, again, humans can braid. It seems
Speaker 1: like a hassle, It seems annoying, and it seems challenging,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem impossible. And if there's one thing
Speaker 1: I've learned from watching every season of The Great British
Speaker 1: Bake Up as it progresses, is like people up the
Speaker 1: ante for themselves. You watch that show. In season one,
Speaker 1: the challenge is like make a sponge cake, uh huh,
Speaker 1: And like now the challenges are like use cake to
Speaker 1: carve a bust of a historical figure, and it's way
Speaker 1: harder and people still nail it.
Speaker 2: Yep. Speaking of which, in nineteen ninety six, we get
Speaker 2: what I'm going to call the Julia sets. So a
Speaker 2: Julia pattern is again like a series of circles basically
Speaker 2: that represents a mathematical concept that honestly I don't understand.
Speaker 2: It's pretty, it's it's beautiful. I'm showing Dana one that
Speaker 2: was from June of nineteen ninety six that isn't actually
Speaker 2: strictly a Julia set, but I will I included in
Speaker 2: this and I'll explain why. In a sec it sort
Speaker 2: of looks like a double helix of chains of circles
Speaker 2: of varying sizes, and it's really pretty and really cool.
Speaker 2: In July we get what's called the Stonehenge Surprise. So
Speaker 2: this is a Julia set and it looks like a
Speaker 2: spiral made up of circles, and then coming off of
Speaker 2: those circles are more spirals made of more circles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the spiral is in a like golden ratio Fibonacci
Speaker 2: sequence proportion. Yeah. So it's very mathematically significant. And it
Speaker 2: appears just across the road from Stonehenge seemingly overnight, and
Speaker 2: Stonehenge is guarded twenty four to seven and the guards
Speaker 2: see nothing. It's a good practice for critical thinking, because
Speaker 2: yes there are guards. I know they didn't see anything unusual.
Speaker 2: The field that the Julia set appears in is across
Speaker 2: the road, and the guards probably don't care what happens
Speaker 2: across the road they're guarding Stonehenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it also does not look I'm just going to say,
Speaker 1: I'm this photo which Lizzie will post to the Instagram,
Speaker 1: it's not that close. If you're a guard posted around
Speaker 1: Stonehenge looking at Stonehenge, I really don't think you would
Speaker 1: be able to see what is happening this far away
Speaker 1: across the road.
Speaker 2: People also point out that nobody driving on this road
Speaker 2: noticed anything, and it's like, yes, because they were looking
Speaker 2: the other way at Stonehenge.
Speaker 1: Also, it was looking at the field, like you're not
Speaker 1: looking away from Stonehenge, and if you're looking at anything,
Speaker 1: you're looking at Stonehenge. But it's also the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the middle of the night, and I guess
Speaker 2: that would make it easier to see. I mean, you
Speaker 2: have to use lights to make these things so like.
Speaker 2: But it's one of those classic examples of and nobody
Speaker 2: saw anything That sounds really convincing at first until you
Speaker 2: realize a lack of seeing something is not evidence of
Speaker 2: supernatural phenomena. And once you start poking it, there's no
Speaker 2: reason anyone would have seen anything, because there's no reason
Speaker 2: that anybody would have been looking at that field. You
Speaker 2: know what.
Speaker 1: The guards might have seen a UFO coming down and
Speaker 1: they didn't. Yeah, I'm just saying from the sky that's
Speaker 1: more vantage as opposed to people in a field across
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There are also those who claim that this didn't pop
Speaker 2: up overnight, because that it popped up in the middle
Speaker 2: of the day in forty five minutes. Oh, because a
Speaker 2: pilot supposedly flew over the area didn't see it, and
Speaker 2: then flew back the other way forty five minutes later
Speaker 2: and did see it. And he's like, well, it popped
Speaker 2: up in forty five minutes in broad daylight and nobody
Speaker 2: saw who did it? That's spooky. And it's like, man,
Speaker 2: just because you didn't notice it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, if your evidence is that one guy flying
Speaker 1: a plane, probably dealing with flying a plane, didn't notice it,
Speaker 1: that's not quite as compelling for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Later in July we get the Triple Julia, which
Speaker 2: is truly stunning.
Speaker 1: That looks impressive.
Speaker 2: It looks so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean if the aliens made that, good
Speaker 1: on them.
Speaker 2: All Right, We're gonna go back to the Julias in
Speaker 2: a few minutes, okay, so keep them in your mind.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, circle makers dot org launches, okay,
Speaker 2: and that is a site for circle makers to share
Speaker 2: their no how and pictures of their creations.
Speaker 1: So it's people are admitting that they're doing this.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, So it is like it's a subculture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: circle making is a subculture and it's a subculture of
Speaker 2: artists who are doing it for various reasons, and they
Speaker 2: both do and don't want credit for their work because
Speaker 2: they don't like when people say that it couldn't have
Speaker 2: been made by people, because part of what they're doing
Speaker 2: is just like you said, upping the ante of what
Speaker 2: is possible to be made by people. But they also
Speaker 2: mostly don't claim their individual creations because a trespassing is
Speaker 2: illegal yep, and be like that would kind of take
Speaker 2: some of the fun out of it. It would like
Speaker 2: take the mystery out of It's like magicians. It's like
Speaker 2: a magician, you don't really want to say how you
Speaker 2: did it or even who did it, but you do
Speaker 2: want I pulled this off, like I didn't just tap
Speaker 2: into some mystical power. So it's a it's a sort
Speaker 2: of uneasy balance of what exactly they want in terms
Speaker 2: of credit, but they do get into it. This is
Speaker 2: like an artistic movement, it's a community. It has its
Speaker 2: own reasons for being and like I will say, they're
Speaker 2: well aware of the hoaxy parts of it and they're
Speaker 2: leaning into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They sort of claim that they're not trying to be mean,
Speaker 2: but they're definitely trying to be pranky.
Speaker 1: Which you know what what I love is people getting out,
Speaker 1: making friends, doing an activity. It's not sitting in front
Speaker 1: of or screen Lizzy scrolling on TikTok to people with
Speaker 1: an active hobby, and that's great.
Speaker 2: It's people with an active hobby. You know, they will
Speaker 2: bait people a little bit, Like on the website in
Speaker 2: the I guess like metadata, one of the tags is
Speaker 2: am I five. That's like this conspiracy theorist video that
Speaker 2: I watched. They were like, why is it tagged am
Speaker 2: I five. I'll tell you why. It's a double bluff.
Speaker 2: It's to make us think that it couldn't be a
Speaker 2: part of mi I five because who in mi I
Speaker 2: five would actually just tag it mi I five. So
Speaker 2: it's all a siop. And it's like they'll just they're
Speaker 2: just being funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're trying to be that seems fairly obvious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like if you go on the website, it
Speaker 2: looks spooky. I don't know how to describe it, but
Speaker 2: it's in like alien font right, it's not in an
Speaker 2: artsy fartsy like look at our cool group project thing.
Speaker 2: It's like, we know why you're here, we know you
Speaker 2: want to know about the Aliens. In nineteen ninety six
Speaker 2: is when what's called the Oliver's Castle video appears, which
Speaker 2: purports to show a crop circle like forming spontaneously. I
Speaker 2: understand how in the nineties people would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: that looks like, you know, real shakycam footage. Now that
Speaker 2: we've seen, you know, decades of special effects, it doesn't.
Speaker 2: It just looks like a field.
Speaker 1: Let me say, maybe you are right. Ooh, okay, So
Speaker 1: it's a video that's pretty dark. It's a good video.
Speaker 1: It's like two glowing orbs circling a field, and then
Speaker 1: the crop circle just does sort of appear. You kind
Speaker 1: of almost don't notice it until it's already there, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: classic misdirect.
Speaker 2: They say that this video was taken in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: I think it gets passed around more in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: Can I watch it again?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's grainy video of a field at night and
Speaker 2: then crop circles sort of like fade into view.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again. This is now widely accepted as having been debunked,
Speaker 2: but at the time that it was floating around and
Speaker 2: people were believing it, it was a great example of
Speaker 2: like like wishful logic. I don't even know what the
Speaker 2: term is. Basically, people were saying, is it possible to
Speaker 2: fake this? Is it possible with the technology we have
Speaker 2: today to fake this? Is? Yes, it would just take
Speaker 2: a lot of equipment and a lot of time. And
Speaker 2: for some reason, for some believers, they were like, so
Speaker 2: it's not fake.
Speaker 1: You ido would take a lot of equipment in a
Speaker 1: lot of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, they were like, no one would spend that
Speaker 2: much time and that much money on it.
Speaker 1: Yes they would.
Speaker 2: What you're telling me is that it's possible. Like that's
Speaker 2: the answer. What you're telling me is all it takes
Speaker 2: is time and equipment, Then yes, it's fake. Like the
Speaker 2: lengths that they believe a human would go to is
Speaker 2: so short that they must immediately switch to there must
Speaker 2: be another explanation, because nobody would put that much effort
Speaker 2: into a hoax when really the answer is it's possible
Speaker 2: to fake this video. Therefore, we cannot take this video
Speaker 2: as gospel, all right. In nineteen ninety eight, there's a
Speaker 2: BBC documentary about Croppies and circle makers that I watched
Speaker 2: that is just delightful and provides a lot of insight
Speaker 2: into the headspace that these people are in a lot
Speaker 2: of them. The reason that they dismiss all of the
Speaker 2: science is they're like, well, it's a matter of faith,
Speaker 2: not science.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, that is what faith is, right.
Speaker 2: Faith is also a belief in a force that we
Speaker 2: can't see. It's not a denial of the forces we
Speaker 2: can see. So there are crappies that are like, listen,
Speaker 2: I understand that the vast majority of these are man made,
Speaker 2: but when I go out into a crop circle, I
Speaker 2: feel something and I can't explain that feeling, and I
Speaker 2: believe it comes from nothing to do with science. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, all right, you feel that. I
Speaker 2: think it's probably psychosomatic that you feel that because you're
Speaker 2: excited to be in a crop circle. But I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna discount your feeling. And then there are people who
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, all those people who make crop circles
Speaker 2: being paid by the government because they want to discredit
Speaker 2: the real research into the real crop circles, and they're
Speaker 2: muddying the waters. And I'm gonna attack you online it.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, that's not faith, that's denial of reality.
Speaker 1: That's real five dimensional chess thinking.
Speaker 2: It's just it doesn't make any sense. It's conspiracy thinking,
Speaker 2: it's illogic, and they're kind of mean in the way
Speaker 2: they talk about skeptics. You feel like, oh, if you
Speaker 2: don't believe that there's anything here with the crop circles,
Speaker 2: you've got a closed mind and you're not going to
Speaker 2: be happy in life because you have no faith and
Speaker 2: you have no wonderment. And I'm like, no, looking at
Speaker 2: things in the scientific way is perfectly healthy.
Speaker 1: Also, I think actually it's having a lot of wonderment
Speaker 1: and delight actually in man's capacity to make fun and
Speaker 1: cool things and get together and pull off silly little pranks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is I think a delightful way to live
Speaker 2: your life. So there's a range. There are people who
Speaker 2: are a bit culty about it, and then they are
Speaker 2: just like hippies. Yeah, So you know whether or not
Speaker 2: it's destructive. It's certainly one of the least destructive cults
Speaker 2: because you know, they're ultimately just yelling at each other online.
Speaker 2: So there's all these different groups. There are people who
Speaker 2: believe that it's a message, a warning, a natural phenomenon,
Speaker 2: a hoax, it's art, it's proving a point. Some people
Speaker 2: believe that it is man made by people who tap
Speaker 2: into some sort of collective unconsciousness, okay, where they'll be
Speaker 2: like I had a dream about a crop circle, and
Speaker 2: then somebody went and made it that night, and like
Speaker 2: we're being guided by spirits into making these crop circles.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, that's a way to sort of
Speaker 2: sprinkle faery dust on it's man made. But okay, you
Speaker 2: believe that the circle makers are also a little culty.
Speaker 2: They talk about getting addicted to it, like the rush
Speaker 2: that they get from pulling it off and one upping
Speaker 2: each other and all of the excitement around it. And
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, people go out into the middle of
Speaker 2: my art and form drum circles and claim that it like,
Speaker 2: you know, lifted their spirits blah blah.
Speaker 1: Blah, and oh they're getting off on the power of it.
Speaker 2: They're getting off on people. You know, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people. You make art and you hope that
Speaker 2: people will have a reaction to it, and this is
Speaker 2: like people are really having a reaction to it. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure it's thrilling. If you're a singer
Speaker 2: and you do a concert and everybody sings the song
Speaker 2: back to you, this is sort of the sculpture version
Speaker 2: of that, almost, which is like, go out and you
Speaker 2: make a thing and you hope that it looks cool,
Speaker 2: and then people flock to it. Well, imagine in awe
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Imagine people making you make a thing, and then people
Speaker 1: are like, oh my god, this is so amazing. Obviously
Speaker 1: only aliens could have made this. And it's making me
Speaker 1: feel a crazy, weird feeling. You know, not to bring
Speaker 1: up a past hoax, but it kind of reminds me
Speaker 1: of the William Henry Ireland forgery.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Like he's right, this is a young man to
Speaker 1: remind you who's writing a fake play by Shakespeare. And
Speaker 1: he sort of then like got excited when people are
Speaker 1: like this is definitely by Shakespeare, You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm making something as good as Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that level of effort and that level
Speaker 2: of payoff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the year two thousand, an unemployed computer programmer becomes
Speaker 2: the first person to be fined for making a crop circle.
Speaker 2: Oh this guy, it's so funny, so caught in the act.
Speaker 2: He did it with a buddy over the course of
Speaker 2: three nights, and he did it after hearing this. Professor
Speaker 2: Michael Glickman, who is a believer on the radio saying
Speaker 2: people couldn't have made these crop circles. And he calls
Speaker 2: up like the radio presenter and he's like, that guy
Speaker 2: should prove it, Like where's his proof. And the radio
Speaker 2: presenter is like, well, where's your proof that they can yeah,
Speaker 2: And he's like, all right, you got me, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go prove it. So he and his buddy go out
Speaker 2: and over the course of three nights they make a
Speaker 2: crop circle. And then he calls back the radio presenter.
Speaker 1: Oh, so he snitches on himself.
Speaker 2: He calls back the radio presenter and he's like, see
Speaker 2: that crop circle that's in the paper. I did that, gotcha.
Speaker 2: And the radio presenter's like, okay, good point. I'll contact
Speaker 2: Michael Glickman about it. And Michael Clickman then calls the call.
Speaker 2: Oh no, which is so rude.
Speaker 1: That's so rude.
Speaker 2: This guy is trying to interact with your theory. This
Speaker 2: guy is like trying to have you know, he's doing
Speaker 2: the change my mind. He's showing up to the debate
Speaker 2: and you fucking call the cops on him.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's such such a weenie move.
Speaker 2: It's such a weenie move. And so he has to
Speaker 2: pay a fine. But then they interview this guy who
Speaker 2: this unemployed computer programmer, and they're like, yeah, so you've
Speaker 2: you've done all this all this stuff, and he's like yeah,
Speaker 2: and I was also. I was just I'm trying to
Speaker 2: prove a point, which is that a lot of these
Speaker 2: are man made, and they're like a lot of these
Speaker 2: And he's like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Not all of them.
Speaker 2: Though, even the skeptic, even this skeptic can't he can't
Speaker 2: get his mind around.
Speaker 1: Even as you're proving that people can do them, that
Speaker 1: two dudes can do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the one that they make. It's not
Speaker 2: the best.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good looking, it's not the best one I've seen.
Speaker 1: I like that Julius.
Speaker 2: That's more the Julius Set's rock, all right. Going back
Speaker 2: a little bit, in nineteen seventy four, a group of scientists,
Speaker 2: including Carl Sagan, mapped out a message in binary that
Speaker 2: if you plot it on a grip I think twenty
Speaker 2: three by seventy three grid, it's like two prime numbers
Speaker 2: forms this like pictogram and the pictogram it sort of
Speaker 2: shows like some numbers. It shows a double helix to
Speaker 2: represent DNA. It shows like a little picture of a man,
Speaker 2: and it shows like sort of symbols that indicate various elements,
Speaker 2: with carbon being like the main one to indicate that,
Speaker 2: like we're a carbon based life form. And it has
Speaker 2: sort of a layout that is reminiscent of the solar system,
Speaker 2: and there's like a big sort of dot, and then
Speaker 2: there's like you know, nine little dots, and the third
Speaker 2: one is lifted to be like this is where we are.
Speaker 2: We're on the third one, and they beam this out
Speaker 2: to a star cluster that's twenty five thousand light years away,
Speaker 2: just to be like.
Speaker 1: Festing Case, Fasting Case.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was like very popular in the seventies
Speaker 2: to like shoot shit into space and like see what
Speaker 2: comes of it. Everyone should look up Carl Sagan and
Speaker 2: the Golden Record, which is how he met the love
Speaker 2: of his life. As they were try they were working
Speaker 2: on this project together and they never even dated, and
Speaker 2: then one of them called the other out of the
Speaker 2: balloe and was like, I think I'm in love with
Speaker 2: you and we should get married.
Speaker 3: And then they did.
Speaker 2: That's so sweet, it's really incredible. So they This is
Speaker 2: called the Arecibo message because it is beamed out of
Speaker 2: the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one we get what's called the Arecibo response,
Speaker 2: which is next to a different radio telescope. This appears,
Speaker 2: which is basically a version of the picture that had
Speaker 2: been beamed out, except instead of a normal looking double helix,
Speaker 2: it's a strange looking double helix. It's like vis yes,
Speaker 2: and instead of the picture that would represent carbon, it's
Speaker 2: a picture that represents silicon, and and it's a picture
Speaker 2: of a different solar system. And so it's like the
Speaker 2: idea is that it's what the aliens would have sent back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they're a weird silicone based life form, yes,
Speaker 1: with the DNA, and why.
Speaker 2: They would carve it into a field instead of beaming
Speaker 2: it back in binary like we beamed it to them.
Speaker 2: It's also only been thirty years, not fifty thousand years,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the minimum time that it would
Speaker 2: take to get a response from this star.
Speaker 1: Well, asie I have in the answer for you, a
Speaker 1: fun a person doing a little fun little thing.
Speaker 2: And they owe. The other part of the crop formation
Speaker 2: that appears in two thousand and one is this, Oh,
Speaker 2: it just looks like an alien face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of you know what it looks like
Speaker 1: if you've seen the Twilight done episode of teara at
Speaker 1: twenty thousand feet and a guy there's like a crazy
Speaker 1: monkey out his window. That's really scary. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like that in lace almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like it's made of dots, the way
Speaker 2: like old comic book art was just made of dots.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, to squint to see the face.
Speaker 2: And people you can take a picture of like any
Speaker 2: celebrity and find a picture where they're making that face
Speaker 2: and be like, oh, it's them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It just is a generic like two dark spaces,
Speaker 1: four eyes, a little nose, and like dark area formouth.
Speaker 2: So that's another significant crom If I had to guess,
Speaker 2: I think it's Elvis, it's Jim Morrison.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also in two thousand and one we get this spiral
Speaker 2: which give is like six Julia sets into a big spiral.
Speaker 2: It is nine hundred feet wide. It's huge.
Speaker 1: A lot of people must have done that.
Speaker 2: It's in a place called Milk Hill. So if you
Speaker 2: want to look up the Milk Hill spiral, it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's good, it's good, and it also Dina the fact
Speaker 2: that all of these Julia sets exist. What does that
Speaker 2: lead you to believe? What do you mean if you
Speaker 2: just had to make a guess about this entire phenomenon
Speaker 2: based just on those pictures.
Speaker 3: Just someone someone doing it in a field, it's the
Speaker 3: same person, yeah, yeah, yeah, This to me is such
Speaker 3: a clear mark of an artist with a particular style.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's someone who likes making circles in this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they've gotten really good at it. That first
Speaker 2: one with the two strands was like a practice one, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then they made a single, and then they made
Speaker 2: a triple, and then they made a six sided one
Speaker 2: with you know, four hundred and nine circles, And it's like, yes,
Speaker 2: this is one person who is teaching a bigger and
Speaker 2: bigger group how to do this particular thing. And none
Speaker 2: of the crappies are like ascribing a particular meaning to
Speaker 2: the Julia sets that I'm now like getting riled up about.
Speaker 2: But to me, it's like, yeah, this is what's happening,
Speaker 2: Like you can see evidence of human progression here. It's
Speaker 2: the same group of people making all of these.
Speaker 1: It does seem like a big group of people probably
Speaker 1: made this. If it's so big but also again yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're getting better. Yeah, it's the Great British bakeoff.
Speaker 1: The challenges have to get harder because people keep getting better, right.
Speaker 2: And it's also like and it's clearly the same person
Speaker 2: masterminding is particular.
Speaker 1: That's his design, Emma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the vibe, that's like his style.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So I just thought that was so interesting where
Speaker 2: it's like if you line these up, it's like it's
Speaker 2: very clear what's happening, which is like a person getting
Speaker 2: better and better at this all right. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and two we sort of hit another like peak for
Speaker 2: crop circle interest. There's in a Discovery Channel documentary where
Speaker 2: they challenge MIT students to make a crop circle, and
Speaker 2: they do.
Speaker 1: I told you, college kids, college kids.
Speaker 2: The movie signs comes out, Oh yeah, we get the
Speaker 2: Hampshire face and message. Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1: I like that. It looks like a very old school alien,
Speaker 1: like a very like grace get like you know, old
Speaker 1: big head alien and then like a yeah, a circle
Speaker 1: with I'm sure a message in it in binary or something.
Speaker 2: It is a message in binary. So it looks like
Speaker 2: a sort of blurry picture of a you know, fifties alien,
Speaker 2: and then there's a circle with all these dots in it,
Speaker 2: and someone finally decodes it and it says, beware the
Speaker 2: bearer of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain,
Speaker 2: but still time believe there is good out there. We
Speaker 2: oppose deception conduit closing, all right. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: there is this design which it looks like a circle
Speaker 2: with then sort of a line spiraling out of it
Speaker 2: that's divided up into chunks, and someone figures out that
Speaker 2: the chunks represent the digits of pie. You can even
Speaker 2: see the decimal point there. So if you yeah, if
Speaker 2: you consider that this is like three units long, then
Speaker 2: this is one unit long, and this is fine. More. Ah,
Speaker 2: that's fun and it's pie out to ten digits.
Speaker 1: Great, so like very cool. Yeah, people, I'm really impressed, genuinely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: People are doing a good job.
Speaker 2: People are doing a great job.
Speaker 1: The aliens are doing a good job.
Speaker 2: The whole thing. It evolves far past anything to do
Speaker 2: with circles. Yeah, here's one in Switzerland that just looks
Speaker 2: like a cool flower.
Speaker 1: Yeah. People are just realizing, like you can do large
Speaker 1: scale art. Yeah, in fields it's just big art.
Speaker 2: It also becomes a business there are people who get
Speaker 2: good at crop circles. Can then you know, Nike commissions
Speaker 2: a crop formation, you know, I mean in this case,
Speaker 2: they're like paying the farmer and they're paying the artists.
Speaker 2: But like there's a there's a tech company that has
Speaker 2: like an image of their new computer chip sort of
Speaker 2: cropped into a hillside and they let the story go
Speaker 2: for a few days and then they're like it was
Speaker 2: us because they got a new chip out. Yeah, here's
Speaker 2: one that I just want to talk about because it's fun.
Speaker 2: This one is made in two thousand and nine in Tasmania, Australia.
Speaker 2: And is there anything anything you want to say about
Speaker 2: this formation?
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say maybe it's because they closer up,
Speaker 1: but the grass does look like braided or matted in
Speaker 1: a special way. It just kind of looks like not
Speaker 1: that good of a circle, to be honest.
Speaker 2: So this one, this is an opium field. Ooh, it's
Speaker 2: a legal opium field. It's used to make like morphine.
Speaker 2: What they believe happened here is that wallabies got in
Speaker 2: huh ate the opium got really high and jumped in
Speaker 2: a circle.
Speaker 1: A yeah, it's like not that good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's a fun. One twenty seventeen, there's randomly
Speaker 2: another spike in crop circle making, and at this point
Speaker 2: all of the farmers are like, please stop, please stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty there's a crop circle crop formation that
Speaker 2: sort of looks like a COVID protein. That's another interesting one.
Speaker 2: And in twenty twenty two, Brian May, the guitar player
Speaker 2: for Queen, is in a plane and spots a crop
Speaker 2: circle and posts it to Instagram and it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: what's up with these crop circles? Huh? So you know
Speaker 2: that's there still happen and they're still of interest, but
Speaker 2: we are well past crop circlemania. There are far fewer now.
Speaker 2: There used to be hundreds in Britain every year. Now
Speaker 2: there are about thirty a year in the UK, and
Speaker 2: eighty percent of them are in Wiltshire.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's cute that they're still homegrown. It's like
Speaker 1: a a sport for them, a national county pride.
Speaker 2: It's like a little local culture quirk and people visit
Speaker 2: and there's a visitor center and it is very much
Speaker 2: like a self sustaining illusion, because the only people who
Speaker 2: are left are the ones who have looked at all
Speaker 2: of the evidence and decided that there must be something
Speaker 2: more to the story. One of the reasons that there
Speaker 2: are fewer now is exactly what you were saying. Board.
Speaker 2: Teenagers go on the internet now, they don't go make
Speaker 2: crop circles.
Speaker 1: Lizzie. This is one of the biggest problems in society today.
Speaker 2: We have to get boys back to making crops.
Speaker 1: Boys need social lives, they need hobbies, They need groups
Speaker 1: of friends that go out in the world and make
Speaker 1: crop circles.
Speaker 2: I know, and I mean, you know, maybe they are
Speaker 2: doing social things on roadblocks or whatever. But I'm just
Speaker 2: saying they build all this stuff in Minecraft. Before Minecraft,
Speaker 2: you have to.
Speaker 1: Go build it, and you have to go trespass in
Speaker 1: a field.
Speaker 2: You have to go dresspass in a field. There is
Speaker 2: sort of an uneasy alliance between the farmers, the circle
Speaker 2: makers and the visitors. In Wiltshire, there's a website you
Speaker 2: can go to to see which farms are like open
Speaker 2: and like will allow access. So there are some farmers who, now,
Speaker 2: even though I don't think any of them want crop circles,
Speaker 2: They're like, if a crop circle happens in my farm
Speaker 2: over the summer, I will charge people admission. So there
Speaker 2: are like I guess legitimate ways to visit a crop circle.
Speaker 2: If that's something you're interested in, go.
Speaker 1: To Wilchair pay a farmer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look on the website, see which ones are open,
Speaker 2: and pay your little cover fee.
Speaker 1: It is true because you kind of have to be
Speaker 1: scientifically minded to like engineer a crop circle, which does
Speaker 1: require some planning and forethought and understanding of geography. And
Speaker 1: nerdy young adults are spending more time on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and if you are a nerdy, engineering minded twenty something,
Speaker 1: you'll probably be putting that creative energy elsewhere these days.
Speaker 2: Probably this has not diminished the excitement around crop circles
Speaker 2: in like online conspiracy groups. Yeah, I didn't. I mean,
Speaker 2: Colin Andrews is sort of retired, so I didn't really
Speaker 2: know who to look at for like what is the
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory these days? So I watched them talk about
Speaker 2: it on Joe Rogan, Oh, I'm so sorry, And then
Speaker 2: the guess that he had on has like an hour
Speaker 2: long YouTube video about crop circles, and I watched it
Speaker 2: to see, like, Okay, what is the state of this
Speaker 2: movement now?
Speaker 1: Was it convincing?
Speaker 2: I really do think I learned a lot about how
Speaker 2: people fall for conspiracy theory hoaxes because he doesn't have
Speaker 2: hardly any evidence, but he makes claims that are related
Speaker 2: and then he has so much evidence for those claims.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Lizzie, this is the entire Netflix show
Speaker 1: that I was talking about.
Speaker 2: Literally, I was like, we're gonna get to this. So
Speaker 2: and it's he's not a dumb guy, right, his name's
Speaker 2: Andrew Genteel. He the YouTube channels called the y Files.
Speaker 2: Like why, He'll be like, this seriologist believed that this
Speaker 2: reporter had been sent from the government, and then he'll
Speaker 2: list all of this history of the government using reporters. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's real. It's like, yeah, that totally happens. The
Speaker 2: government totally uses reporters.
Speaker 1: But there's no evidence that that reporter was used.
Speaker 2: That has nothing to do with crop circles. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with crop circles, Like the FBI
Speaker 2: nothing to do with crop circles. And then he'll be like,
Speaker 2: you know this other he uses this one example of
Speaker 2: like this woman who got really interested in crop circles.
Speaker 2: She thought maybe they were two dimensional expressions of like
Speaker 2: three dimensional shapes, which is a cool idea. So she
Speaker 2: sort of like three D mapped them and put them
Speaker 2: together and tried to make a machine by like, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of spinning the image around an axis. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: the image didn't do anything but the spinning. And then
Speaker 2: he goes into all of these like hidden Nazi science
Speaker 2: projects and UFO technology that uses spinning and it's all
Speaker 2: really interesting and you're like, and it has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with crops.
Speaker 1: You're like, spinning is now what we're talking.
Speaker 2: We not talking about whether or not spinning is cool.
Speaker 2: It uses up time in this hour so that at
Speaker 2: the end you're like, wow, I watched an hour of
Speaker 2: evidence for crop circles and he had citations for all
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, because he didn't talk about crops or
Speaker 1: You're like, eighty percent of the words coming out of
Speaker 1: his mouth were true historical facts.
Speaker 2: They just didn't have to do with crops.
Speaker 1: Just find that is exactly you know, kids these days,
Speaker 1: with their with their minecraft not learning, They're not learning
Speaker 1: logical fallacies.
Speaker 2: I think people of all ages are eating this up.
Speaker 2: Joe Broken just sits there and goes, WHOA at every
Speaker 2: picture of a crop circle.
Speaker 1: I here's what I will posit to listeners who listen
Speaker 1: to anyone making any claims on a podcast, including ours
Speaker 1: or a YouTube channel, think about whether the evidence they're
Speaker 1: presenting actually proves their claims. Just because someone says something
Speaker 1: confidently and something that is historically interesting and maybe probably true,
Speaker 1: does it actually prove the thing they're saying it proves?
Speaker 2: And the other really convenient thing about his argument is
Speaker 2: that he makes no claim about what crop circles actually are.
Speaker 2: He just says that there's more to it that we
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't it suspicious? Isn't it inspicious?
Speaker 2: All right? He and others do point to what I
Speaker 2: will call the remaining mysteries. Yeah, the woven patterns are
Speaker 2: are mysterious. You can't create that just by stomping on
Speaker 2: it with a board. Okay, so that's interesting. Yeah, people
Speaker 2: claim that they've found these iron balls in the crop
Speaker 2: circles and where did they come from? And some people
Speaker 2: think that there's like interesting electromagnetic properties to the little
Speaker 2: iron balls that they've found. Okay, your hands sort of
Speaker 2: get red and blotchy if you go into a crop circle.
Speaker 2: Maybe I've seen a video of it. It didn't look
Speaker 2: like anything to me, but there are eyewitness accounts, So
Speaker 2: that's interesting. There is some scientific papers that the sort
Speaker 2: of like they're called apical nodes. The apical nodes basically
Speaker 2: like the like the knuckles or like the joints on
Speaker 2: the stem. Yeah, that they are enlarged within crop circles, okay,
Speaker 2: and that they've burst open in a way that's not
Speaker 2: consistent with stomping, but that is consistent with like microwave radiation.
Speaker 1: Oh, they're talking about the plants themselves. Plants themselves, Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is like biology that like somehow they've been
Speaker 1: subjected to microwave radiation, yes.
Speaker 2: And that that has caused them to fall over, okay,
Speaker 2: in this interesting way. There's a like most wheat sort
Speaker 2: of ends up curved by the time it's mature, but
Speaker 2: the wheat that's in crop circles is like not curved.
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, are the circle makers using batteries?
Speaker 2: Are they doing all of like are they using some
Speaker 2: tool that we haven't figured out yet, or is this
Speaker 2: evidence that points to someone who's not a human or
Speaker 2: someone who's more than a human making the crop circles.
Speaker 2: They don't say exactly what it could mean. These papers
Speaker 2: are not very good. Yeah, the supposed discoveries like, there's
Speaker 2: just not that much evidence of it. It hasn't been
Speaker 2: proven or disproven because again, all of the rigorous scientists
Speaker 2: are not paying attention. So like the like, you can't
Speaker 2: even get these papers really published in mainstream journals that
Speaker 2: would then invite peer review, because as far as the
Speaker 2: majority of the scientific community is concerned, we already solve
Speaker 2: crop circles. And so then what a lot of the
Speaker 2: believers come out and say is like, we want scientists
Speaker 2: out here, we want you to take measurements, we want
Speaker 2: the you know what I mean. Like they're saying, we're
Speaker 2: not anti science, we want more attention, we want more
Speaker 2: research to be put into this because we think there's
Speaker 2: something there. And I do sort of understand the frustration
Speaker 2: of them being like, we believe that this is worth
Speaker 2: scientific inquiry, and none of the rigorous scientists will do
Speaker 2: anything about it. But what you're left with is if
Speaker 2: anything looks science y, it has not been peer reviewed,
Speaker 2: it has not been fact checked, because the people who
Speaker 2: you know, science doesn't mean finding one anomaly one time.
Speaker 2: You have to go to every crop circle and take
Speaker 2: the same measurements over and over. That's the scientific method,
Speaker 2: and no one's doing it because nobody cares.
Speaker 1: It's so boring you won't get the attention or a
Speaker 1: claim you want. So much of science is so anonymous.
Speaker 2: There's no funding behind it. Like you know, there's no
Speaker 2: money behind finding out what's going on with crop circles
Speaker 2: because there's no money to be made from what's going
Speaker 2: on with crop circles because as far as scientists are concerned,
Speaker 2: they're all man made. Yeah. So, yes, there are a
Speaker 2: couple of anomalies that have not yet been explained or debunked,
Speaker 2: but because nobody is doing the debunking, because most learned
Speaker 2: people understand that these are man made.
Speaker 1: But it's also tricky because those quote unquote anomalies have
Speaker 1: also not been archived in a scientifically rigorous way.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 1: Where it's like when you say, like, oh, isn't it
Speaker 1: weird that your hands get red and blotchy in crop circles?
Speaker 1: That's not a scientific claim.
Speaker 2: No, it's an anecdote and maybe a piece of data, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it is not anything more than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's also what's called like ghost formations, which is like
Speaker 2: even after you plow the feet old, sometimes the next
Speaker 2: year the ones that were uh trampled in the crop
Speaker 2: circle making will like grow back a different color, and
Speaker 2: so you can sort of like still see it for
Speaker 2: a few more seasons, and that's interesting, and nobody's really
Speaker 2: looking into it. But again, like that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: It just means nobody's looking into it because it's just
Speaker 2: a weird thing. It seems like it only happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's most likely a human explanation, even if we don't
Speaker 1: have it yet.
Speaker 2: Or they are using radio waves, but probably humans using
Speaker 2: radio waves.
Speaker 1: I mean, if people are using radio waves to make
Speaker 1: crop circles, I would love to know what's happening there,
Speaker 1: because I don't really understand radio waves.
Speaker 2: Nor do I nor do I really care to'd be
Speaker 2: perfectly honest.
Speaker 1: This is fascinating. I think it's a great example of
Speaker 1: why conspiracy theory thinking is so pernicious because it's very
Speaker 1: very hard to disprove this is suspicious. Yeah, if that's
Speaker 1: your only claim, that you're just like this is weird,
Speaker 1: there's almost nothing you can do to prove that that
Speaker 1: that's not the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you come up with an explanation that
Speaker 2: isn't weird, be like okay, now, wand of the next
Speaker 2: weird thing like it's never enough evidence. Yeah, so these days.
Speaker 2: One of effusis paper that I read was like, there
Speaker 2: as many theories about this, as there are stocks in
Speaker 2: a field.
Speaker 1: Oh that's such a good line, nice little metaphor.
Speaker 2: Some people link it to sacred geometry. Some people believe
Speaker 2: that even though the formations are man made, that then
Speaker 2: they can sort of like attract energy. Like a lot
Speaker 2: of circle makers are like, oh, I see weird stuff
Speaker 2: when I go out and do them. Oh I see
Speaker 2: balls of light when I'm out there making my circles.
Speaker 1: I made it. But also something weird happen, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean interesting. That's like, you know, certain geometrical forms have properties.
Speaker 1: That's an idea.
Speaker 2: It's an idea. I don't think it makes any sense.
Speaker 1: It's not an idea, I understand, but it is an idea.
Speaker 2: People link it to simatic patterns, which is like if
Speaker 2: you you know, put like whatever, like a bunch of
Speaker 2: little dust on a piece of paper and like play
Speaker 2: it a really loud sound. It's sort of like the
Speaker 2: pattern that the radio wave will make. Yeah, like it's
Speaker 2: in that shape, which like maybe it is. Again, that's
Speaker 2: not really evidence of anything. The one thing you'll hear
Speaker 2: tossed around a lot. A lot is that Wiltshire is
Speaker 2: on an intersection of two lay lines.
Speaker 1: Is that some sort of magnet thing.
Speaker 2: It is a not yet proven or I guess disproven
Speaker 2: theory that there are these sort of lines of electromagnetic
Speaker 2: power that run under the earth and in places where
Speaker 2: they cross, that is where you find like the Bermuda
Speaker 2: Triangle and Stonehenge and all of these other sort of
Speaker 2: spooky things because they are places of great power and
Speaker 2: they attract I guess, like a mystical energy.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to do some cross podcast promo, but
Speaker 1: on my episode of my other podcast, Noble Blood, we
Speaker 1: talked about a man named Antoine Lavoisier who was a
Speaker 1: French scientist who publicly disproved animal magnetism, this idea that
Speaker 1: like magnets and people and does magic things. It's like
Speaker 1: this was the late seventeen hundreds and they realized that
Speaker 1: a lot of these magnetism claims were not true. So
Speaker 1: this is a thing that people have been claiming for
Speaker 1: a very long time and scientists have been saying is
Speaker 1: not true for also a long time.
Speaker 2: In the X Files, the explanation is that it's like
Speaker 2: the print that's left behind when an alien spaceship leaves
Speaker 2: in the movie Signs, which I was very entertained by.
Speaker 2: I watched for this episode.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was fun. People kind of make fun
Speaker 2: of it, but I thought it was pretty fun. They
Speaker 2: have what I think is like a good explanation, which
Speaker 2: is that it's like like a map or like it's
Speaker 2: like markers that the alien ships are like leaving behind
Speaker 2: during their explorations of Earth so that when they come
Speaker 2: back with the army they know where to go.
Speaker 1: Oh that's smart.
Speaker 2: And so spoiler for the movie Signs, they don't like.
Speaker 2: Their weakness is water, and that's why they're doing it
Speaker 2: in these fields not near water, yeah, very dry wet fields.
Speaker 2: I thought that was pretty well. Okay, So like taking
Speaker 2: the crappies seriously, Apart from the science, there are still
Speaker 2: a lot of things about their theories that don't make
Speaker 2: any sense. Like, if this is a message, why hasn't
Speaker 2: anything ever come of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Why isn't more weird stuff happening in Wiltshire?
Speaker 1: Why is the extent of either this alien or supernatural
Speaker 1: phenomenon just funky little designs?
Speaker 2: Why have our pictures of all of these phenomenon gotten
Speaker 2: so much better, and yet no one can get a
Speaker 2: picture of these bowls of light.
Speaker 1: It also feels like, Okay, if this is like some
Speaker 1: with the electromagnetic lay lines or whatever, why would they
Speaker 1: come in clumps? Wouldn't this happen regularly around the year, Yeah,
Speaker 1: around the year, regular intervals. Why is it not like, oh,
Speaker 1: it seems like this is a popular thing that people
Speaker 1: are doing, and then it falls out of fashion and
Speaker 1: people start doing it again, so there's publicity.
Speaker 2: Why would the government bother to cover this up? Like
Speaker 2: what is the thing that they're so scared of people
Speaker 2: looking into?
Speaker 1: And then also why would they get progressively more complex? Right?
Speaker 2: And this is and any of these questions, they're just like, well,
Speaker 2: it's a syop they're making. The humans are making the
Speaker 2: more complex ones to distract you from the real one.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, but what are the real ones? What
Speaker 2: is the parameter by which we judge a real one?
Speaker 2: And they never have an answer And also for why
Speaker 2: for what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's like, oh, this is just an electromagnetic phenomenon,
Speaker 1: why would the government care?
Speaker 2: No, they wouldn't, They wouldn't things to remember, Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can totally do this overnight. All of these things that
Speaker 2: people are like, you couldn't possibly have done this in
Speaker 2: a night, Yes you can, Like that's just the answer
Speaker 2: is like, yes you can. Anything like the braiding. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just really hard, but yes you can do it.
Speaker 2: People who report feeling different inside them. You're excited to
Speaker 2: be in a crop circle. It's very easy to not
Speaker 2: leave footprints. One of the teams showed how you do it.
Speaker 2: You just get like barstools and you sort of step
Speaker 2: from one to the other. We built the pyramids, we
Speaker 2: built Machu Pichu, We've built making hedge mazes and corn
Speaker 2: mazes for years. This is just sort of another example
Speaker 2: of that. There's also the fact that a lot of
Speaker 2: these crappies are city folk who don't understand how farms work.
Speaker 2: You don't go out into your field every single day.
Speaker 2: You leave it out there to grow. So this thing
Speaker 2: of like, how could they not have noticed this stuff
Speaker 2: happening in the field. Why would they be walking through
Speaker 2: every square inch of their barley field every single day?
Speaker 2: Why would they have cameras on it all hours of
Speaker 2: the night. You can only really see these things if
Speaker 2: you walk straight into one or if you fly over
Speaker 2: it and that's not what that's not how you run
Speaker 2: a farm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have acres and acres of land that they
Speaker 1: are not walking through daily.
Speaker 2: It's an example of a new word I learned called ostension. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's sort of like teach me. It comes from the
Speaker 2: same sort of root as like ostensibly. Ostension is the
Speaker 2: phenomenon where like folklore becomes true, okay, and there's like
Speaker 2: quasios tension and pseudo ostension and semi as tension and stuff.
Speaker 2: But basically it's like fake evidence. It's evidence to support
Speaker 2: a fake claim that becomes real. It's people acting out folklore.
Speaker 2: So an example is like the urban legend of like
Speaker 2: razors and Halloween candy, uh predates actual reports of razors
Speaker 2: and Halloween candy. And it's probably that the chicken came
Speaker 2: before the egg.
Speaker 1: This is such an interesting and important word. I also
Speaker 1: think it happens a lot with Internet discourse. M I
Speaker 1: think that like bots try to manufacture fake controversies, and
Speaker 1: then the fact that then people are like this is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: then it becomes a conversation point.
Speaker 2: There's a really interesting story I read about on like
Speaker 2: ostension dot com. Or whatever about at the height of
Speaker 2: the AIDS crisis, there was this urban legend in Dallas
Speaker 2: that there was a woman who was intentionally giving men
Speaker 2: AIDS and then there was this huge spike in reported
Speaker 2: cases of AIDS in straight men. The woman never existed,
Speaker 2: but the rumor made a bunch of straight men go
Speaker 2: get tested.
Speaker 1: Oh God, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: Which is kind of a good thing. But so it's
Speaker 2: it's self fulfilling prophecies with a folklore edge. And this
Speaker 2: is an example of it. Because if you go to Stonehenge,
Speaker 2: you're likely to encounter a lot of people who like
Speaker 2: believe in UFOs. And I know that UFOs are RELIGI
Speaker 2: just needs unidentified flying object, but you know, they believe
Speaker 2: in terrestrial they believe in extraterrestrials. So of course there
Speaker 2: are a lot of sightings of extraterrestrials around Stonehenge because
Speaker 2: that's where all the rural believers are hanging out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yes, people who are naturally predisposed to be into
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff they gather in this area and
Speaker 2: then they notice all of these things.
Speaker 1: Because that's the type of person they are.
Speaker 2: Not because there's anything supernatural happening in Wiltshire. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: will also say, like I.
Speaker 1: Will say anecdotally, I went to Stonehenge. It was kind
Speaker 1: of cool. I took a picture, didn't notice anything supernatural happening.
Speaker 2: I just paid.
Speaker 1: The government has paid, but I just want my anecdote
Speaker 1: of non evidence just to be on their record.
Speaker 2: And where can the government? Where can I pick up
Speaker 2: my check for saying that exactly. Another interesting thing about
Speaker 2: Wiltshire is that it does have actually a pretty long
Speaker 2: history of people carving pictures into like the sides of hills.
Speaker 2: If you look up the Wiltshire white horses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what this is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's kind of part of the local culture
Speaker 2: in a really cool way. I do think crav circles
Speaker 2: are really cool. It's this weird, uneasy symbiosis where the
Speaker 2: crop makers want humans to get credit. Yeah, but they
Speaker 2: without the people who believe that it's not done by humans,
Speaker 2: there wouldn't be nearly as much attention or interest.
Speaker 1: It would just kind of be irrelevant. That's so, and
Speaker 1: that is interesting.
Speaker 2: The only reason people are taking pictures of these things
Speaker 2: is because they know that there's a market for them,
Speaker 2: of people who will buy books of these pictures, and
Speaker 2: those people are believers. Yeah, skeptics are not out buying
Speaker 2: books of the most interesting crop circles just because they're pretty,
Speaker 2: even though they are well, let's hope skeptics are listening
Speaker 2: to podcast episodes. Yes, please, please, please please.
Speaker 1: To me, it's kind of interesting also in this case,
Speaker 1: because usually skeptics are the ones who are cast as like, oh,
Speaker 1: you keep a closed mind. Don't you want joy and
Speaker 1: delight in your life? Where the closed mind did? People
Speaker 1: are our nags and scolds? Where in this case, I
Speaker 1: actually think being a quote unquote closed minded person who
Speaker 1: thinks that humans did this actually is a point of
Speaker 1: view for wonder and delight because people are making these
Speaker 1: amazing things. Isn't that great that for no or very
Speaker 1: little profit, people as a hobby are going out in
Speaker 1: fields in the middle of the night to make art projects.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how I feel. Why can't it be enough
Speaker 2: that it's humans. I think it's incredible that it's humans.
Speaker 2: They're so there are so many crop formations that are
Speaker 2: just stunning and interesting, And to me, it's more impressive
Speaker 2: if it's humans, like if it's aliens, and like, you
Speaker 2: used all of that technology to do this, you came
Speaker 2: from light years of way to do this. But if
Speaker 2: it's just people with planks of wood, it's so cool.
Speaker 2: Aliens tarns and lasers, but it's so cool. Aliens cure cancer. Yes,
Speaker 2: give us something else. Oh my god, we don't want
Speaker 2: your pictures.
Speaker 1: And the pictures in the hills. We're done.
Speaker 2: We have enough for both groups of people. It's just
Speaker 2: like a thing to be into. Ultimately, it is like
Speaker 2: sort of social. But I think again like comparing it
Speaker 2: to Bigfoot in the Lockness Monster, where usually the people
Speaker 2: who are sort of like creating the fake evidence are
Speaker 2: kind of also the same people who are consuming it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they're just all trying to then convince the outside world. Here,
Speaker 2: it's really interesting where you have a group of people
Speaker 2: creating this thing and a different group of people interpreting it,
Speaker 2: and they are at odds, but they need each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that's where I come down is that crop
Speaker 2: circles are an example of like modern big installation art. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And if you're into big installation art, I have some
Speaker 2: more stuff for you to look at. There's this guy,
Speaker 2: Joseph Reginella in New York who makes like commemorative busts
Speaker 2: and plaques to episodes from New York's history that never happened.
Speaker 2: That's funny, like a squid attack, or like the man
Speaker 2: who introduced pigeons to New York. He made like a
Speaker 2: statue of him.
Speaker 1: That's very funny.
Speaker 2: They're really funny. And if you look up Simon Beck's
Speaker 2: snow art, I'll show you. He's a guy who basically
Speaker 2: makes crop circles but in the snow by walking around,
Speaker 2: and it is gorgeous.
Speaker 1: He makes Oh my god, those are amazing, all.
Speaker 2: Of these incredible designs. They sort of look like snowflakes,
Speaker 2: they look like interesting pattern frozen frectals. He makes these
Speaker 2: sort of like Mondola designs. And again like it's impressive
Speaker 2: because it's a human.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. Human creativity is worth celebrating. I'm really
Speaker 1: proud of everyone who makes art and puts it out
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just large scale art installations. Humans are totally
Speaker 2: capable of it. You don't need to fall down any
Speaker 2: Internet rabbit holes to be into crop circles. And I
Speaker 2: don't think the government is hiding anything about them.
Speaker 1: I want to also point out a lot of his
Speaker 1: snow art is in the same pattern a lot of
Speaker 1: similar patterns and designs as crop circles. And I think
Speaker 1: it's because those are easy patterns to make regularly in
Speaker 1: a large on a large scale format.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Lizzie, thank you so much for this.
Speaker 1: I feel so much more knowledgeable about crop circles.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I feel much more knowledgeable about crop circles too.
Speaker 2: And I really like crop circles and I really don't
Speaker 2: like disinformation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Where can the people find you? You can talk
Speaker 2: to me at at hoax Thepod at on Instagram. Where
Speaker 2: can the people find you?
Speaker 1: You can email me at Hoaxthpodcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I will read your emails, maybe not as quickly as
Speaker 1: I should be, but I will read them, probably on
Speaker 1: like a weekly basis, and on Instagram and TikTok at
Speaker 1: at Danish Schwartz. And if you're a listener of this podcast,
Speaker 1: I do have a personal favor to ask. I have
Speaker 1: a book coming out.
Speaker 2: It's really good.
Speaker 1: It's called The Arcane Arts. Lizzie Logan has already read it.
Speaker 2: It's really good.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It is about magic and magic
Speaker 1: that is real, not a hoax. But it's a book.
Speaker 1: It's fiction. And if you could pre order that book
Speaker 1: for you or a loved one in your life who
Speaker 1: likes sort of sexy, romanticy thriller if any of those
Speaker 1: words apply. Pre Orders matter kind of the most in
Speaker 1: the book world because they tell the publishers that this
Speaker 1: book is actually worth putting in bookstores. So if you
Speaker 1: are listening to this and you're like, I'll pick up
Speaker 1: a copy when it comes out, I would just beg
Speaker 1: you please just preorder it. It would make a world
Speaker 1: of difference. It's called The Arcane Arts. It's by S. D. Coverly,
Speaker 1: even though my name is Danish Swartz because I co
Speaker 1: wrote it with a friend of mine named Dan Frye,
Speaker 1: and we did it under a pseudonym because it's a
Speaker 1: different genre than both of us write in usually. But
Speaker 1: I did write it. That is not a hoax, So
Speaker 1: thank you in advance.
Speaker 2: We will see you next time. Please hoax responsibly. Bye.
Speaker 2: Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Speaker 2: Danish Schwartz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Speaker 2: Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima Kayali and
Speaker 2: producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse funk. Our theme music was
Speaker 2: composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.