Crop Circles

Messages from extraterrestrial visitors? Evidence of strange atmospheric conditions? No one knows where crop circles come from or what they mean. Except, we do know, but for believers, that's the start, not the end, of the story. The history of crop circles is a case study in conspiratorial thinking...plus art in wheat fields!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Folks.
It's a huge wet us to see you there. Welcome

(00:20):
to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
True and truths that sound like lies.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm the ghost of Danish Swartz and.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm the evil twin of Lizzy Logan. Welcome to the show, Lizzie,
thank you for having me. This is your week.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I don't know why I jumped into start.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
No, because you were excited. That's all good.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I am excited.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's great. I'm really excited about this hoax because I
think it is the epitome of a lie we wish
was true and a truth that sounds like a lie. Great,
so let's just get into it.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
DAYA.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
What do you know about crop circles and absolutely nothing? Well,
you know what they are.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, they're giant circles and crops or shapes that people
think were caused by aliens.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Some people think so.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Honestly, I'm delighted because this is one of those things
where I've just like, I've never looked I'm like, I'll
just take a pass on this one. I've just never
looked into it. But I do find it interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
They are interesting, And the more I thought about this topic,
the more interested I became, because I think crop circles
get put in the same category of I guess like pseudoscience,
as like Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster and flatter Earth
and like hollow moon theories. But if you look into

(01:33):
any of those, and we might cover one of those
on the podcast one day, But if you look into
any of those, when you get to the end of
the line, the answer is just like, no, it's not. Yeah, no,
it's not like this is a picture of Bigfoot. No,
it's not this is evidence that the Earth is flat.
It's not. Crop circles are real. There are crop circles. Yeah,

(01:53):
these formations exist, and so you can actually talk about
them in sort of like a more grounded way where
you're talking about a thing that is real and we
just don't know how it got there, who made it,
what properties it possesses.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
But there are crop circles. I mean, that is fun.
Have you I hope you have the answers?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Know.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Have you watched any of the Netflix TV show I
think it's called Ancient Apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
No, I've seen clips of the show Ancient Aliens that
gets it's from history channel and gets circled around sometimes.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, this is different. This is a thing that, like
my husband Ian sort of keeps on is like a
guilty pleasure where it's like a guy says like pseudo
scientific things that if you think about them for five seconds,
they're not actually true. But he's like what if And
he speaks like that voice and there's a lot of
zooms and effects and a lot of filler to say
absolutely nothing. He was talking about a circle that he

(02:46):
is positing some ancient civilization made and he's like, how
could they have made a circle this big without tools?
And I'm like, a circle is the easiest thing to make.
You put a steak in the ground, you have a string,
and you walk. Yeah, any anyone could do that.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
If you get a group of kindergarteners and you say
make a perfect circle, they all hold hands and they
just walk out until their hands are like as taut
as possible and they're in more or less a perfect circle.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
One hundred percent children can do it. And again, all
you need to make a perfect circle is a steak
and a string. And this man was just like, and
how would they have done a mathematically perfect circle? And
it is, I guess entertains people that there is just
like it just fills an hour. It's a lot of filler,

(03:37):
it's a lot of b roll. But whoof sometimes you
need to think critically.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
No kidding, yeah, all right, So there is a very
famous within crop circle circles wood cutting from sixteen seventy
eight that purports to show evidence of a crop circle.
It doesn't really, but people mention it as like, well,

(04:04):
there's reports of this stuff going back years. Sure, the
reports of crop circles up until the middle of the
twentieth century are very few and far between, and I'm
not going to talk about any of them. I'm only
going to talk about crop circles, specific crop formations that
are verified great and most of them we have pictures of.

(04:26):
Nothing in this episode is based on ai. Nothing in
this episode is based on photoshop. Everything that I'm going
to talk about in this episode like there was a
thing there, right, Really, the story of crop circles starts
in nineteen sixty three. Okay, A letter appears in a
science jourtle describing a circular crater that suddenly appeared in Charlton,
which is in Wiltshire, which is in South England, and

(04:49):
Wiltshire is going to be the place where ninety nine
percent of the action happens.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Wiltshire got it.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Wiltshire is also where Stonehenge is. I've been and Averabury Hinge?
Do you go to the other Hinge?

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I don't think I had time to go to the
other Henge.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Three years later, in nineteen sixty six, George Pedley is
working his farm in Tully, Australia, and he finds what
he calls a nest of reeds in a swamp. They've
all been knocked over into this like circle formation. And
both of these accounts from the sixties are printed in
newspapers with like some speculation about UFO.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
So I'm trying to envision what this is, and it
like it's something heavy plopped down on it and like
knocked all these things over in a circle.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Are you asking what actually happened or what people believe
what it looks like happened. The crop whatever it is
is bent over kind of at the bottom. Oh okay,
So it's like as if you took like a like
a big roller and like rolled everything around.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Got it? So, yeah, it was something pushing it, not
everything coming down from the sea from the sky at once.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Death right, So people think like maybe it is a
landing spot for an alien spacecraft, because like maybe that's
how alien spacecrafts work, they're like covercrafts or whatever.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Maybe it lands in a circle.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, maybe it has you know, if you picture sort
of like an upside down helicopter almost you can imagine
how a whirling propeller might knock things over in like
a you know, clockwise or counterclockwise fashion.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
So both of these are printed in the newspaper alongside
some UFO speculation. Although for mister Pedley who's in Australia,
Australia has these things called williwillies which are like little
dust devils, like they're a little mini tornadoes almost, and
everyone's like that's just left over from a Williwilli. So
like there already is another explanation, but these are the

(06:41):
early sightings. In nineteen seventy eight, Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Marcel
gives an interview saying that he was part of the
cleanup team at Roswell, New Mexico, in nineteen forty seven,
and he thinks that the debris found there is extraterrestrial
and this has basically nothing to do with crop circles
except that it sets off like the UFO mania of

(07:03):
the eighties. In nineteen eighty circles start cropping up in Westbury,
which is in Wiltshire, and they're just circles. So Wilcher
is where the Averbury hinges, it's where stonehenges, and it's
also where Silbury Hill is, which is like a very
old man made hill that people think maybe in ancient

(07:25):
times was like used for rituals or it was some
sort of important place. But basically there's a lot of
spooky stuff happening in Wiltshire.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Archaeologists love to say ritualistic purposes for rituals or not.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
But like, why would you make a hill There's already
plenty of hills in this area.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Rituals obviously, I guess it just feels like a catch all.
If you're an archaeologist who doesn't know an answer, or
an anthropologist, you're like, obviously a ritual of some sort.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
In nineteen eighty three, some circles are found in this
place called cheese foot Head fun which I really liked,
And I'll show you a picture.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Okay, I'm getting a better idea. I think I was
imagining them just as like circles, but just the circumference.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
But it's the entire wing, the whole. It's like a
filled in circle. Yeah, because an area.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
It's the full circle. It's not just someone walked around
on the outside of a circle.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
No. So this is nineteen eighty three cheese foothead. And
then in the late eighties there's like a triple one.
Can I ask.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
How big are these in these photos? It's sort of
hard to gage the size.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
They're all different sizes, but they're like pretty big. They're
later on we're gonna get to crop formations that are
like the size of multiple football field. Yeah, this is
not that. Yeah, this is.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Looks like maybe like ten yards.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, maybe like a diameter of like ten to twenty
yards of the big one. And then there's a couple
of smaller ones nearby.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
I mean there's strike looking. I understand why people are
like aliens, because there is something eerie about the perfection
of a perfect circle in nature. I mean, it looks interesting,
it's a good art project.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
It looks interesting, and they appear overnight. Suddenly all of
these pictures will be available on our Instagram. So through
the eighties, more and more crop circles are emerging. They're
emerging in many developed countries that have farmland, but mostly
in Wiltshire, and some patterns start to emerge. First of all,

(09:33):
they only happen in the summer when the crops are
really big.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Then, which makes them more striking and visible.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yes, and also which makes it like not super cool
out in the middle of the night if you're a
human mammal, red blooded mammal making a crop circle. They
often appear in wheat and barley, not so much corn.
Corn is not great for making a crop circle. And
they also appear I mean, I knew that this existed,
but they appear a lot of times in which is

(10:01):
the name of a crop. So it's just funny. We're
researching this, they're constantly like we were out there in
the rape and I'm like, warre you.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Here's what I learned. Rape seed oil very important and
very easy oil that people use like an old oil.
In America. We added a g and they call it
grape seed oil.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
I know, but it's not. But then if you look
up grape seed oil, because I did, there's also oil
that you can make from grapes and it's not the
same thing, so we need a third for the grain. Yeah,
I because you know, it's similar to like people get
confused because there's no apples and applejacks. If you call
something grape seed oil, people are gonna think it's made

(10:39):
of the seeds of grapes and not a grain that
was previously called rape.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
It's true. Come up. I mean, good on them for rebranding.
That was a smart idea, but it is. It is confusing.
You assume grape seed oil comes from grape seeds because
grapes do have seeds.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
They do. Yeah, but there's also this grain that's a
total tangent. But leave it in. Why not. People report
seeing orbs of light, strange objects, and strange noises, like
around the time that crop circles are forming aliens. They
report that if you go into a crop circle, like

(11:13):
your watch might stop, you might feel weird, like a
compass won't work, your car battery might die.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
I like this.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
There are some very early videos of like floating orbs
that just sort of look like little white dots out
over the crop circles. To me, they look like white
birds flying around, But if you are looking for a
different interpretation, they could be orbs of light. And there's

(11:42):
also people who are looking at it as like maybe
the wind is creating this, like maybe there's like a
weather explanation. Sure, like the williwillies, like the williwillies, or
like some kind of polarity. Something is happening, like I
don't know, the tectonic plates are shifting and it's affecting
the grains in some strange way. Uh. Stephen Hawking thinks like, yeah,

(12:04):
there's some merit to that argument. He's not the one
doing the research and coming out with it, but he
like co signs that theory interesting.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
I mean, look, I don't know what's happening with magnet
I'm gonna be completely honest. And magnets, how do they work?
Magnets how do they work? I like kind of pretend
like I get the gist, but I don't. I really
don't know all that well. I don't think I could
explain it to a child, and something could be happening
with that.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Something is happening. On the other hand, people point out,
you know they're often found kind of near roads.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, Like that's sort.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Of points to it being people and it becomes a phenomenon.
So they're the people who study crop circles call themselves seriologists, like, uh,
like cereal or like Ceres, who's like the god of
I think like grain or farm or something. It's the
same root word, So they're cereal. Get with a C.

(12:57):
Sorry about that. They have conferences, there are periodicals. They
organize themselves into different societies, like people who believe that
it's Mother Nature sending us a message, people who believe
that it's aliens like leaving graffiti basically, or people who
are interested in some sort of like you know, weather explanation.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Are there any serious seriologists who believe they're man made?
Or is this a society of people looking for a
more challenging explanation.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
No, there are, there are at this point. There are.
There are people who are like I want to know
what's up with them, and they're man made and I
would like to know who and how. Yeah, but they're
kind of different from the main seriologists who believe that
it is like worth studying because if you think it's
man made, there's not really that much to look at.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
No, it's not going to be a field of study. Yeah,
where if it's either aliens or some weird tectonic plate thing.
Both of those are very important and very interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Very very very interesting. Nineteen ninety is like a banner
year for crop circles. There are hundreds in Britain. It
also becomes a huge problem in Illinois, which is where
you're from. You weren't born yet, but were your parents
out there making crop circles.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yes, in the suburbs of Chicago where the crop circles
ran rampant.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
It was like in the newspaper that it was like,
we gotta do something about these crops circles.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
I mean, look, I've driven through southern Illinois. There's a
lot of fields of cereal that could be ripe for circling,
That's all I'll say.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
And farmers are not super happy about it because you're
destroying their livelihood. Yeah, and then people find out about
it and come to see it and walk into your
farm and destroy it even more. And also like, are
you liable for if they injure themselves on your farm?

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah? If I was a farmer, I would not be
happy with either the aliens, the weather or the human
beings doing this for attention and as a prank.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
In May nineteen ninety we get our first pictogram, which
is how you like it's not circles, so I'm gonna
show you ooh, so there's some straight lines and some
like little dashes.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
It looks like a Wi Fi signal. It does look
like a like a different a pitch for how wi Fi.
Like that's a little symbol. It's it's not the Wi
Fi symbol. But if that was like a draft of
like should WiFi look like this?

Speaker 2 (15:19):
We also this summer get the Eastfield pictogram.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Oh, that one's good.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
It's really cool and you can I'm bad with measurements,
but there's people in this photo. So yeah, it looks huge.
It's really big. And this is like a very famous one.
It ends up on the cover of a Led Zeppelin
Remasters album.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I will just say like, as an art project, it
looks striking. It's very impressive. There's something very striking to
me again about like the man made almost like scientific
vibe of it in contrast and direct juxtaposition to the
nature of the field.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
It looks cool if you want to get sort of
philosophical about it, like farming rep presents man's desire to
sort of tame nature and use it for its own
ends and crop circles represent like just a different version
of that, Like I will also go out into nature
and do a thing for man made reasons.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, it's something. Again, I'm going to go on the
assumption that people are doing this philosophically. It is very
funny that they're sort of enacting prehistoric ritual purposes because again,
looks Stonehenge and things like, we don't know why these
ancient people built these things or just like, ah, they

(16:35):
were doing rituals. A human being making this, it's like, ah,
a ritualistic purpose, and that ritual is in order to
have fun yep, in order to prank people to get attention.
Just like, that's funny to me that we're doing things
that people did thousands of years ago for a silly
reason that we can comprehend now but might be incomprehensible

(16:56):
thousands of years from now.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yes, correct, we are. Humanity doesn't really change.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, I assume Stonehenge wasn't a prank. That seems like
a lot of work to bring the stones there. But
maybe the.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Farmer who owns this field says that they charged people
to go into it, and they made some key rings
and some T shirts, and he says it was probably
our most profitable quarter of an acre ever.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Good for him.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
So you know, there's like reasons to sort of let
the crop circle phenomenon continue.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, farmers, look, being a farmer seems hard. If it
hurts the farmers, that's bad. If the farmers can benefit
from it.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Great, absolutely. Later in summer nineteen ninety, there's something called
Operation Blackbird, which is the BBC with the help of
a Japanese TV station and also the British Army OH
which owns the land, setting up surveillance to see if
they can catch a crop circle maker in the action. Great,
and this is not the first time that anyone's done this.

(17:59):
There was also Project Whitebird, but this is like the
big one that becomes famous. So they set up a test.
They take two I'm gonna call them enthusiasts slash researchers.
They sort of self style themselves as like scientists slash experts.
I would maybe push back about that.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Put that put experts are scientists both in air quotes.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, their names are Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews. And
they're gonna stake out the field and see what they
can see. They've got night vision cameras, they've got thermal imaging,
they've got all the highest tech stuff, and on the
second night of their experiment, a crop circle appears great

(18:43):
good for them, and they're like, look, if you look
on the night vision, all you see are like weird
light shapes, and if you look above, this is a
crop circle. And they're like, this is real. This is real.
This is real. And they say that for cameras, and
then they go into the crop circle and they're like,

(19:04):
this is not real because a big part of what
distinguishes a real crop circle from like a prank crop
circle is the way that the grain is laid down,
if it's broken versus if it's like woven, how damaged
it is, how clean the edges are. So they go
into the crop circle and they're like, this looks terrible.

(19:26):
This is just some amateur human crop circle maker. And
they had also left behind a wooden cross, a bit
of the rope that they had used, and a like
astrology board game. Ah, so they're like clearly making fun
of them. Yeah, and they're like, this is proof that

(19:48):
we are onto something because the army went through so
much effort to set us up, to make us look stupid.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Oh no, as opposed to just to like, oh no,
it's actually very eas to fake a crop circle, and
people are having fun.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, they're like, it is easy to fake a crop circle,
and they want us to believe that all the crop
circles are fake, but there are real crop circles, so
they're muddying the waters.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Oh I got it, I got it.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
This is a thing that crop circle enthusiasts will forever
insist is that a lot of crop circles are made
by people who are, whether intentionally or not, getting in
the way of their very valid research into the quote
unquote real crop circles.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
I mean, I get it. It's like false flag crop circles.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
It is a syop. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
And also that would be if you are someone who
is a true believer, that would be devastating because you're like,
the more we talk about crop circles, the more copycats
they'll want to be ben to like cashing it on
the publicity. So how do you talk about them without
inciting new copycats?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
It's very difficult. Then Andrews and Delgado will go on
to claim that like they're being tapped by the CIA
and journalists are following them home and asking all of
these invasive questions, and there's all this sort of like
circumstantial evidence that then bolsters their theory that there's something

(21:13):
that like, quote unquote they don't want you to know.
I'm not saying that they weren't having their phones tapped.
I'm just saying that's not evidence of like aliens.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
And also I'm sure journalists did want to talk to
them because this big funny thing happened. But yeah, they're
operating from a place where the government knows that crop
circles are caused by some nefarious or you know, oh
worldly Yeah, and they they are purposefully keeping it from
us and also hiding it with fakes.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yes, and also there's not really any evidence to talk
about in crop circles, so instead they have to talk
about the other stuff. Sure, like that's the only way
that they can claim that this thing is still happening. Yeah,
I'm not really going to talk about him because I
think that the crop circles are what's interesting, not the people.
But Colin Andrews remains to this day like mister crop circle,

(22:02):
Like he is the foremost guy, and if you start
looking into crop circles, his name will pop up everywhere.
So that's who that is.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I mean, good to have a hobby. Yeah, men need hobbies.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
This is his full time job. Oh great. So the
seiologist movement is a little bit over and now enthusiasts
basically go by the title croppies.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Which it makes it seem less serious.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
It does, it does. Doctor Terrence Maiden Madden still thinks
that it's the weather and he is on the verge
of getting some government funding to figure out what's going
on with this weather. So the idea has been a
little bit deflated, but the enthusiasm is all still very
much there.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I'm gonna say, maybe I'm gonna sound stupid. I believe
I'm like, there's a possibility that some crop circles are
caused by a weird weather thing or a weird magnet thing,
or like the willy willies in Australia. And also then
because some god attention and publicity, human beings started making them.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
This is the exact argument of crappies.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yes, oh so crappies believe that it's nature and also people.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yes, every crop circle enthusiast will say some of these
are made by people. Okay, great, Yeah, which is very
convenient because every time you disprove one, they go, I
told you some of them were made by people. Yeah,
and they can never tell you how you're supposed to
tell the real ones from the fake ones. But I
just say there are real ones crappies basing this like scientifically,
Like again, I don't know about tectonic plates and magnets

(23:34):
all different. Crappies is an umbrella term great.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Because I'm like, look, not to generalize, but people who
think these are alien I'm imagining it's a lot of
circumstantial evidence.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
It's a lot of circumstantial evidence, and it's a lot
of just like they want to believe that. Yeah, it's
like a lot of like my gut tells me sure, yeah.
And then it's a lot of like weird coincidences to
other things that they believe to be alien. Cus. So
there's no evidence anywhere. It's just if you connect the
dots in a certain way, it paints a picture.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
People believe what they want to believe. I was at
breakfast the other day and overheard a woman with a
baby say that her baby was acting a certain way
because it's a double libra, And I'm like, that's a
very funny way to explain your baby's behavior.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
What was the behavior of the baby.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
I don't remember some sleep thing. Baby's just sleep weird,
it's not according to their horoscopes.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
In nineteen ninety one, a group called the Wessex Skeptics
Great do their own test just to see if this
is possible. So, like it's similar to sort of the
Urn Malley thing where they're like, if we go out
and we just try to make a crop circle, will
these people be rigorous in their analysis of it or
will they believe it whole cloth? Yeah, And they make

(24:52):
some crop circles and wait for them to get discovered.
And when they're discovered, like when the circles are discovered,
people are like real real whirl who.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
In August nineteen ninety one, we get the Mandelbrot set
crop circle.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Oh this one I've seen before for some reason.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah. So this sort of sets off what I'm going
to call like the fractal category of crop circles.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, it's more decorative, it's beautiful, and it a fractal
is a like visual expression of a mathematical phenomenon with
like repeating shapes.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
So this is sort of the first example of one
and it's one of the very famous ones. All right,
end of the season. September nineteen ninety one, two dudes
in their sixties go to the press and they're like,
we've been making crop circles and we will tell you
how we did it. Great, and we have been behind

(25:53):
two hundred crop circles, two hundred. They're like, we're the
ones who started it. It was the late seventies. Everyone
was all into UFOs and we'd heard about these like
willi willies and stuff back in the day, and people
started talking about UFOs and we thought it would be
so funny, Yeah, to make it look like there were
UFOs and wheelchair men and their hobbies. Men and their hobbies.

(26:15):
And they're like, and we have records, Like we can
show you the pieces of paper where we would like
map them out, Yeah, and we can show you how
we did it.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
I if this is I mean, I hope that nothing.
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop it. Right now.
It's two adult male friends doing a thing, and I
find that delight. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
They were just like drunk at the pub and thought
it would be funny. They their main tool that they
use is like a plank of wood with a rope
tied to it, and you sort of grip the rope
and then that way you can lower the plank of
wood with like your foot on it, like press down,
and that's how you press it down, and you just
go like a little bit out of time in.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
A circle, crush it with a plank of wood and
a rope, and.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
That's how you make you know, a circle or a
line or any shape you want.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
They said that the reason that they started making pictograms
is because they specifically wanted it to be a UFO hoax. Yeah,
And when people started talking about the weather, they were like,
we need to make some stuff that couldn't have been
made by the weather.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Ron hoax ron huks.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, they're like no. And I think they also were like, God,
if this guy's going to get funding from the government
to research whether or not this is made by the weather, A,
he's probably gonna find us. Yeah, and B I don't
really want the government like wasting its money like this
is supposed to be funny. We're not really like whoh,
it's gone a little far. And they're also they're getting older.
They want to stop, and so they're like Okay, we'll

(27:35):
come forward and we'll tell you about it, and we'll
tell you how we did it. There are a few
what crappies would call holes in their story, okay, which
is that in interviews over the years, they sort of
change the date at which they started this hoax. They
say in nineteen seventy eight, and then they say the
mid seventies, which apparently is incompatible to them.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah. To me, I'm like, if someone's giving an interview,
they'll sometimes just be general. You're like, yeah, sometime in
the mid seventies, You're like, yeah, seventy eight.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
They are a little on the old side to be
going out and doing this in the middle of the
night at the speed at which they claim they have
done it.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Fair Maybe I don't know what shape these guys are in.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
They can't adequately to the high standards of the crappies
explain how they were like getting into and out of
the fields without leaving like tracks of broken crops. And
they're like, oh, we pull vaulted, which I think is
clearly a joke.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, that sounds funny, But at least.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Some experts are like, and we know they couldn't pull vaulted.
So they've never adequately explained it. I'm like, no, they
just didn't tell you.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, that's not the explanation.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
They just didn't answer that question. They gave a joke
answer to that part of the question.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
That is a funny to me. I'm like, that proves
they did it because they're funny. They're funny.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, this is Doug Bower and Dave Chorli. I forget
if I said their names. And the big question that
answers itself is like, well, they only did the ones
in Wiltshire. Yeah, and they only did two hundred of them,
but there's hundreds more in other places that they didn't do.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Copycats, Yes, copycats, but it got publicity, it was in
the news. Other people were like, we should do that.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
What the crappies are getting at, which is true, is
that the crop circle phenomenon cannot be solely attributed to
Doug and Dave.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Fair enough, but the crappies should look at something like planking,
like a phenomenon where when things are popular, other people
want to do them.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yes, so obviously the reporter is like, okay, go make
me a crop circle. And this is the crop circle
that they make. It's just two circles sort of connected
by a line, and it doesn't look that good.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, it's actually pretty bad. The circles don't look perfect.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
No, and they're not good, and they're not convincing to
the people that they're trying to convince.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
But also decades have gone by, they're older.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
They're older, And I also think that they were probably
trying to take credit for as many as they could.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, and maybe they just made like the.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
First ones set off the phenomenon and they were like, well,
we should get credit for the whole phenomenon, so we'll
just say that all of these are ours. Yeah, and
maybe they only made a few.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
It. Also, I just think proves, even if that's not perfect,
that man made crop girls are possible. Like, again, you
can make a perfect circle with a string, it's not
that hard. You can make straight lines, that's not that difficult.
So even if these guys in the nineties couldn't do
it perfectly, that doesn't prove that human beings couldn't do

(30:38):
them perfectly in the late seventies.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Also, the pictures if you google crop circles, the amazing designs,
none of them are before the nineties. Yeah, none of them.
So this interview, this hoax gets a lot of mainstream attention,
and it has two sort of knock on effects. One
is that all of the sort of like how you

(31:03):
were talking about, like are there any sort of seriologists
who are not entertaining paranormal explanations? Those that there are
leave because they're like, Okay, my curiosity has been satisfied,
and all that's left in seriology is like I want
to find a respectful word the most open minded enthusiasts

(31:24):
and the most passionate believers.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
That is such a generous read, and they're going to.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Feed off each other in a pretty big way without
anybody in their community who they believe and talk to
you on a regular basis, who's more grounded in scientific evidence.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yes, and especially when you're in a community where people
have a shared set of like what are considered established beliefs,
those established beliefs will seldom get challenged.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Well, it's funny because they don't have a shared set
of established beliefs, but they still don't like challenge like
they have every there's like twelve different theories and they
all in fight each other, but none of it's based
on evidence, So they still there's still an outgroup. The
in group is fighting with each other, but there's still
an outgroup, which is just like people who were insisting

(32:11):
on using science. But all of those people who are
insisting on using science have now gone home, Yeah, because
they're they're fine with the explanation.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
All that's left are the people who aren't holding this
situation to what we would call scientific rigor exactly.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
The other thing that happens is now everybody knows how
to make a crop circle, and so there's way more
copycats and they're like, well, I want to make a
better one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
People are challenging each other.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah. In nineteen ninety two, a pair of you know
sort of I would say, like borderline crappies, like who
are sort of one foot in each camp, team up
with a newspaper to have a crop circle competition. And
the idea is, let's see the limit of what humans
can do, because some of these crop circles are really impressive.

(32:59):
Let's science and typically see if this is possible. So
they draw up a design that each team has to do.
The reward is three thousand pounds. They have from ten
pm to three am to do it, but they can
do it kind of however they want. They invite the
Wessex skeptics to participate, but the skeptics are like, no,
you've made this too hard. This is a setup. You're

(33:21):
trying to prove that people can't make crop circles, Like,
no one could do this, okay the time given.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Well, that's very interesting that even the skeptics think it's
too hard.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, they're like, you're you're you're trying to prove a point,
you have an agenda, okay. And then the Wessex skeptics
are proved both right and wrong because yeah, all the
groups totally make the design. Yeah, it's one hundred percent
possible to make this design that they've laid it between
ten pm and three am, between ten pm and three am,
and they're not really seen, and the crop circles look

(33:52):
pretty good. The winning team uses like a PVC pipe
on a string, so instead of making individual like steps,
they can sort of like bulldoze. Yeah, so everybody takes
from this competition.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
I'm sure some minds are changed.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
But basically, like any piece of art, you can look
at it and you see what you want to see.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
I will say for me as someone who did try
to come into this episode with an open mind about
weather stuff, I'm convinced.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, it has been people all along, people who believe
that there are real crop circles. In fake crop circles,
they look and they're like, look, they didn't do any
of Look, they point out every little flaw. Yeah, and
they're like, see, you see, people can't do it. And
then people who believe that all crop circles are man
made or like, see, people can do it. So there's

(34:43):
always some new goalpost that the evidence is not meeting.
Of course, a big thing in croppyism is like the
exact pattern of how the grain is smooshed, and if
you look up you can find these like really at
weavings that people sometimes do or I guess not people

(35:04):
sometimes do, And it does seem like that would add
a lot of time and effort, especially in the dark.
But it's like a very particular personicty thing to disqualify
most crop circles because they didn't do that one thing.
And then even though there's nothing to suggest that only

(35:29):
an alien could do a weaving pattern with the floor
of the crops, haha, I got ya. But anyway, that's
their big, that's their big gotcha.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Well, the thing is, again, humans can braid. It seems
like a hassle, It seems annoying, and it seems challenging,
but it doesn't seem impossible. And if there's one thing
I've learned from watching every season of The Great British
Bake Up as it progresses, is like people up the
ante for themselves. You watch that show. In season one,

(36:00):
the challenge is like make a sponge cake, uh huh,
And like now the challenges are like use cake to
carve a bust of a historical figure, and it's way
harder and people still nail it.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yep. Speaking of which, in nineteen ninety six, we get
what I'm going to call the Julia sets. So a
Julia pattern is again like a series of circles basically
that represents a mathematical concept that honestly I don't understand.
It's pretty, it's it's beautiful. I'm showing Dana one that

(36:33):
was from June of nineteen ninety six that isn't actually
strictly a Julia set, but I will I included in
this and I'll explain why. In a sec it sort
of looks like a double helix of chains of circles
of varying sizes, and it's really pretty and really cool.
In July we get what's called the Stonehenge Surprise. So

(36:54):
this is a Julia set and it looks like a
spiral made up of circles, and then coming off of
those circles are more spirals made of more circles. Yeah,
and the spiral is in a like golden ratio Fibonacci
sequence proportion. Yeah. So it's very mathematically significant. And it
appears just across the road from Stonehenge seemingly overnight, and

(37:17):
Stonehenge is guarded twenty four to seven and the guards
see nothing. It's a good practice for critical thinking, because
yes there are guards. I know they didn't see anything unusual.
The field that the Julia set appears in is across
the road, and the guards probably don't care what happens
across the road they're guarding Stonehenge.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, it also does not look I'm just going to say,
I'm this photo which Lizzie will post to the Instagram,
it's not that close. If you're a guard posted around
Stonehenge looking at Stonehenge, I really don't think you would
be able to see what is happening this far away
across the road.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
People also point out that nobody driving on this road
noticed anything, and it's like, yes, because they were looking
the other way at Stonehenge.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Also, it was looking at the field, like you're not
looking away from Stonehenge, and if you're looking at anything,
you're looking at Stonehenge. But it's also the middle of
the night, right.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah, it's the middle of the night, and I guess
that would make it easier to see. I mean, you
have to use lights to make these things so like.
But it's one of those classic examples of and nobody
saw anything That sounds really convincing at first until you
realize a lack of seeing something is not evidence of

(38:32):
supernatural phenomena. And once you start poking it, there's no
reason anyone would have seen anything, because there's no reason
that anybody would have been looking at that field. You
know what.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
The guards might have seen a UFO coming down and
they didn't. Yeah, I'm just saying from the sky that's
more vantage as opposed to people in a field across
the way.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
There are also those who claim that this didn't pop
up overnight, because that it popped up in the middle
of the day in forty five minutes. Oh, because a
pilot supposedly flew over the area didn't see it, and
then flew back the other way forty five minutes later
and did see it. And he's like, well, it popped
up in forty five minutes in broad daylight and nobody

(39:12):
saw who did it? That's spooky. And it's like, man,
just because you didn't notice it.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, Like, if your evidence is that one guy flying
a plane, probably dealing with flying a plane, didn't notice it,
that's not quite as compelling for me.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah. Later in July we get the Triple Julia, which
is truly stunning.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
That looks impressive.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
It looks so cool.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean if the aliens made that, good
on them.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
All Right, We're gonna go back to the Julias in
a few minutes, okay, so keep them in your mind.
In nineteen ninety five, circle makers dot org launches, okay,
and that is a site for circle makers to share
their no how and pictures of their creations.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
So it's people are admitting that they're doing this.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Oh, absolutely, So it is like it's a subculture. Yeah,
circle making is a subculture and it's a subculture of
artists who are doing it for various reasons, and they
both do and don't want credit for their work because
they don't like when people say that it couldn't have

(40:22):
been made by people, because part of what they're doing
is just like you said, upping the ante of what
is possible to be made by people. But they also
mostly don't claim their individual creations because a trespassing is
illegal yep, and be like that would kind of take
some of the fun out of it. It would like
take the mystery out of It's like magicians. It's like

(40:42):
a magician, you don't really want to say how you
did it or even who did it, but you do
want I pulled this off, like I didn't just tap
into some mystical power. So it's a it's a sort
of uneasy balance of what exactly they want in terms
of credit, but they do get into it. This is

(41:03):
like an artistic movement, it's a community. It has its
own reasons for being and like I will say, they're
well aware of the hoaxy parts of it and they're
leaning into it.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
They sort of claim that they're not trying to be mean,
but they're definitely trying to be pranky.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Which you know what what I love is people getting out,
making friends, doing an activity. It's not sitting in front
of or screen Lizzy scrolling on TikTok to people with
an active hobby, and that's great.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
It's people with an active hobby. You know, they will
bait people a little bit, Like on the website in
the I guess like metadata, one of the tags is
am I five. That's like this conspiracy theorist video that
I watched. They were like, why is it tagged am
I five. I'll tell you why. It's a double bluff.

(42:01):
It's to make us think that it couldn't be a
part of mi I five because who in mi I
five would actually just tag it mi I five. So
it's all a siop. And it's like they'll just they're
just being funny.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, they're trying to be that seems fairly obvious.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yeah, And like if you go on the website, it
looks spooky. I don't know how to describe it, but
it's in like alien font right, it's not in an
artsy fartsy like look at our cool group project thing.
It's like, we know why you're here, we know you
want to know about the Aliens. In nineteen ninety six
is when what's called the Oliver's Castle video appears, which

(42:41):
purports to show a crop circle like forming spontaneously. I
understand how in the nineties people would be like, oh,
that looks like, you know, real shakycam footage. Now that
we've seen, you know, decades of special effects, it doesn't.
It just looks like a field.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Let me say, maybe you are right. Ooh, okay, So
it's a video that's pretty dark. It's a good video.
It's like two glowing orbs circling a field, and then
the crop circle just does sort of appear. You kind
of almost don't notice it until it's already there, Like yeah,
classic misdirect.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
They say that this video was taken in nineteen eighty nine.
I think it gets passed around more in nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Can I watch it again?

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah, it's grainy video of a field at night and
then crop circles sort of like fade into view.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Again. This is now widely accepted as having been debunked,
but at the time that it was floating around and
people were believing it, it was a great example of
like like wishful logic. I don't even know what the
term is. Basically, people were saying, is it possible to

(43:54):
fake this? Is it possible with the technology we have
today to fake this? Is? Yes, it would just take
a lot of equipment and a lot of time. And
for some reason, for some believers, they were like, so
it's not fake.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
You ido would take a lot of equipment in a
lot of times.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah, okay, they were like, no one would spend that
much time and that much money on it.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yes they would.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
What you're telling me is that it's possible. Like that's
the answer. What you're telling me is all it takes
is time and equipment, Then yes, it's fake. Like the
lengths that they believe a human would go to is
so short that they must immediately switch to there must
be another explanation, because nobody would put that much effort
into a hoax when really the answer is it's possible

(44:42):
to fake this video. Therefore, we cannot take this video
as gospel, all right. In nineteen ninety eight, there's a
BBC documentary about Croppies and circle makers that I watched
that is just delightful and provides a lot of insight
into the headspace that these people are in a lot
of them. The reason that they dismiss all of the

(45:02):
science is they're like, well, it's a matter of faith,
not science.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
I mean, yes, that is what faith is, right.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Faith is also a belief in a force that we
can't see. It's not a denial of the forces we
can see. So there are crappies that are like, listen,
I understand that the vast majority of these are man made,
but when I go out into a crop circle, I
feel something and I can't explain that feeling, and I

(45:31):
believe it comes from nothing to do with science. And
I'm like, all right, all right, you feel that. I
think it's probably psychosomatic that you feel that because you're
excited to be in a crop circle. But I'm not
gonna discount your feeling. And then there are people who
are like, yeah, all those people who make crop circles
being paid by the government because they want to discredit

(45:55):
the real research into the real crop circles, and they're
muddying the waters. And I'm gonna attack you online it.
And I'm like, that's not faith, that's denial of reality.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
That's real five dimensional chess thinking.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
It's just it doesn't make any sense. It's conspiracy thinking,
it's illogic, and they're kind of mean in the way
they talk about skeptics. You feel like, oh, if you
don't believe that there's anything here with the crop circles,
you've got a closed mind and you're not going to
be happy in life because you have no faith and
you have no wonderment. And I'm like, no, looking at

(46:29):
things in the scientific way is perfectly healthy.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Also, I think actually it's having a lot of wonderment
and delight actually in man's capacity to make fun and
cool things and get together and pull off silly little pranks.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah, which is I think a delightful way to live
your life. So there's a range. There are people who
are a bit culty about it, and then they are
just like hippies. Yeah, So you know whether or not
it's destructive. It's certainly one of the least destructive cults
because you know, they're ultimately just yelling at each other online.
So there's all these different groups. There are people who
believe that it's a message, a warning, a natural phenomenon,

(47:04):
a hoax, it's art, it's proving a point. Some people
believe that it is man made by people who tap
into some sort of collective unconsciousness, okay, where they'll be
like I had a dream about a crop circle, and
then somebody went and made it that night, and like
we're being guided by spirits into making these crop circles.
And I'm like, yeah, that's a way to sort of

(47:24):
sprinkle faery dust on it's man made. But okay, you
believe that the circle makers are also a little culty.
They talk about getting addicted to it, like the rush
that they get from pulling it off and one upping
each other and all of the excitement around it. And
they're like, yeah, people go out into the middle of
my art and form drum circles and claim that it like,

(47:46):
you know, lifted their spirits blah blah.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Blah, and oh they're getting off on the power of it.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
They're getting off on people. You know, I think a
lot of people. You make art and you hope that
people will have a reaction to it, and this is
like people are really having a reaction to it. Like,
you know, I'm sure it's thrilling. If you're a singer
and you do a concert and everybody sings the song
back to you, this is sort of the sculpture version
of that, almost, which is like, go out and you

(48:14):
make a thing and you hope that it looks cool,
and then people flock to it. Well, imagine in awe
of it.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Imagine people making you make a thing, and then people
are like, oh my god, this is so amazing. Obviously
only aliens could have made this. And it's making me
feel a crazy, weird feeling. You know, not to bring
up a past hoax, but it kind of reminds me
of the William Henry Ireland forgery.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Absolutely, Like he's right, this is a young man to
remind you who's writing a fake play by Shakespeare. And
he sort of then like got excited when people are
like this is definitely by Shakespeare, You're like, oh my god,
I'm making something as good as Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Yeah, it's like that level of effort and that level
of payoff.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
In the year two thousand, an unemployed computer programmer becomes
the first person to be fined for making a crop circle.
Oh this guy, it's so funny, so caught in the act.
He did it with a buddy over the course of
three nights, and he did it after hearing this. Professor
Michael Glickman, who is a believer on the radio saying

(49:13):
people couldn't have made these crop circles. And he calls
up like the radio presenter and he's like, that guy
should prove it, Like where's his proof. And the radio
presenter is like, well, where's your proof that they can yeah,
And he's like, all right, you got me, I'm gonna
go prove it. So he and his buddy go out
and over the course of three nights they make a
crop circle. And then he calls back the radio presenter.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Oh, so he snitches on himself.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
He calls back the radio presenter and he's like, see
that crop circle that's in the paper. I did that, gotcha.
And the radio presenter's like, okay, good point. I'll contact
Michael Glickman about it. And Michael Clickman then calls the call.
Oh no, which is so rude.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
That's so rude.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
This guy is trying to interact with your theory. This
guy is like trying to have you know, he's doing
the change my mind. He's showing up to the debate
and you fucking call the cops on him.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Oh, that's such such a weenie move.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
It's such a weenie move. And so he has to
pay a fine. But then they interview this guy who
this unemployed computer programmer, and they're like, yeah, so you've
you've done all this all this stuff, and he's like yeah,
and I was also. I was just I'm trying to
prove a point, which is that a lot of these
are man made, and they're like a lot of these

(50:25):
And he's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Not all of them.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Though, even the skeptic, even this skeptic can't he can't
get his mind around.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Even as you're proving that people can do them, that
two dudes can do it.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Yeah, this is the one that they make. It's not
the best.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
It's pretty good looking, it's not the best one I've seen.
I like that Julius.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
That's more the Julius Set's rock, all right. Going back
a little bit, in nineteen seventy four, a group of scientists,
including Carl Sagan, mapped out a message in binary that
if you plot it on a grip I think twenty
three by seventy three grid, it's like two prime numbers

(51:06):
forms this like pictogram and the pictogram it sort of
shows like some numbers. It shows a double helix to
represent DNA. It shows like a little picture of a man,
and it shows like sort of symbols that indicate various elements,
with carbon being like the main one to indicate that,

(51:29):
like we're a carbon based life form. And it has
sort of a layout that is reminiscent of the solar system,
and there's like a big sort of dot, and then
there's like you know, nine little dots, and the third
one is lifted to be like this is where we are.
We're on the third one, and they beam this out
to a star cluster that's twenty five thousand light years away,

(51:52):
just to be like.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Festing Case, Fasting Case.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
I mean, that was like very popular in the seventies
to like shoot shit into space and like see what
comes of it. Everyone should look up Carl Sagan and
the Golden Record, which is how he met the love
of his life. As they were try they were working
on this project together and they never even dated, and
then one of them called the other out of the
balloe and was like, I think I'm in love with
you and we should get married.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
And then they did.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
That's so sweet, it's really incredible. So they This is
called the Arecibo message because it is beamed out of
the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and in two
thousand and one we get what's called the Arecibo response,
which is next to a different radio telescope. This appears,

(52:37):
which is basically a version of the picture that had
been beamed out, except instead of a normal looking double helix,
it's a strange looking double helix. It's like vis yes,
and instead of the picture that would represent carbon, it's
a picture that represents silicon, and and it's a picture

(53:01):
of a different solar system. And so it's like the
idea is that it's what the aliens would have sent back.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, that they're a weird silicone based life form, yes,
with the DNA, and why.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
They would carve it into a field instead of beaming
it back in binary like we beamed it to them.
It's also only been thirty years, not fifty thousand years,
which is sort of the minimum time that it would
take to get a response from this star.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Well, asie I have in the answer for you, a
fun a person doing a little fun little thing.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
And they owe. The other part of the crop formation
that appears in two thousand and one is this, Oh,
it just looks like an alien face.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, it's kind of you know what it looks like
if you've seen the Twilight done episode of teara at
twenty thousand feet and a guy there's like a crazy
monkey out his window. That's really scary. It's sort of
like that in lace almost.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, it looks like it's made of dots, the way
like old comic book art was just made of dots.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah. Yeah, to squint to see the face.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
And people you can take a picture of like any
celebrity and find a picture where they're making that face
and be like, oh, it's them.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yeah. It just is a generic like two dark spaces,
four eyes, a little nose, and like dark area formouth.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
So that's another significant crom If I had to guess,
I think it's Elvis, it's Jim Morrison.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Also in two thousand and one we get this spiral
which give is like six Julia sets into a big spiral.
It is nine hundred feet wide. It's huge.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
A lot of people must have done that.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
It's in a place called Milk Hill. So if you
want to look up the Milk Hill spiral, it's beautiful.
It's good, it's good, and it also Dina the fact
that all of these Julia sets exist. What does that
lead you to believe? What do you mean if you
just had to make a guess about this entire phenomenon
based just on those pictures.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Just someone someone doing it in a field, it's the
same person, yeah, yeah, yeah, This to me is such
a clear mark of an artist with a particular style.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah. It's someone who likes making circles in this way.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah, and they've gotten really good at it. That first
one with the two strands was like a practice one, yeah,
and then they made a single, and then they made
a triple, and then they made a six sided one
with you know, four hundred and nine circles, And it's like, yes,
this is one person who is teaching a bigger and
bigger group how to do this particular thing. And none

(55:30):
of the crappies are like ascribing a particular meaning to
the Julia sets that I'm now like getting riled up about.
But to me, it's like, yeah, this is what's happening,
Like you can see evidence of human progression here. It's
the same group of people making all of these.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
It does seem like a big group of people probably
made this. If it's so big but also again yeah,
like they're getting better. Yeah, it's the Great British bakeoff.
The challenges have to get harder because people keep getting better, right.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
And it's also like and it's clearly the same person
masterminding is particular.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
That's his design, Emma.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, that's like the vibe, that's like his style.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Anyway, So I just thought that was so interesting where
it's like if you line these up, it's like it's
very clear what's happening, which is like a person getting
better and better at this all right. In two thousand
and two we sort of hit another like peak for
crop circle interest. There's in a Discovery Channel documentary where

(56:30):
they challenge MIT students to make a crop circle, and
they do.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I told you, college kids, college kids.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
The movie signs comes out, Oh yeah, we get the
Hampshire face and message. Oh that's cool.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
I like that. It looks like a very old school alien,
like a very like grace get like you know, old
big head alien and then like a yeah, a circle
with I'm sure a message in it in binary or something.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
It is a message in binary. So it looks like
a sort of blurry picture of a you know, fifties alien,
and then there's a circle with all these dots in it,
and someone finally decodes it and it says, beware the
bearer of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain,
but still time believe there is good out there. We
oppose deception conduit closing, all right. In two thousand and eight,

(57:20):
there is this design which it looks like a circle
with then sort of a line spiraling out of it
that's divided up into chunks, and someone figures out that
the chunks represent the digits of pie. You can even
see the decimal point there. So if you yeah, if

(57:41):
you consider that this is like three units long, then
this is one unit long, and this is fine. More. Ah,
that's fun and it's pie out to ten digits.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Great, so like very cool. Yeah, people, I'm really impressed, genuinely.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
People are doing a good job.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
People are doing a great job.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
The aliens are doing a good job.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
The whole thing. It evolves far past anything to do
with circles. Yeah, here's one in Switzerland that just looks
like a cool flower.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Yeah. People are just realizing, like you can do large
scale art. Yeah, in fields it's just big art.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
It also becomes a business there are people who get
good at crop circles. Can then you know, Nike commissions
a crop formation, you know, I mean in this case,
they're like paying the farmer and they're paying the artists.
But like there's a there's a tech company that has
like an image of their new computer chip sort of

(58:38):
cropped into a hillside and they let the story go
for a few days and then they're like it was
us because they got a new chip out. Yeah, here's
one that I just want to talk about because it's fun.
This one is made in two thousand and nine in Tasmania, Australia.
And is there anything anything you want to say about
this formation?

Speaker 1 (58:58):
I mean, I will say maybe it's because they closer up,
but the grass does look like braided or matted in
a special way. It just kind of looks like not
that good of a circle, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
So this one, this is an opium field. Ooh, it's
a legal opium field. It's used to make like morphine.
What they believe happened here is that wallabies got in
huh ate the opium got really high and jumped in
a circle.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
A yeah, it's like not that good.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Yeah, So that's a fun. One twenty seventeen, there's randomly
another spike in crop circle making, and at this point
all of the farmers are like, please stop, please stop.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
In twenty twenty there's a crop circle crop formation that
sort of looks like a COVID protein. That's another interesting one.
And in twenty twenty two, Brian May, the guitar player
for Queen, is in a plane and spots a crop
circle and posts it to Instagram and it's like, hey,
what's up with these crop circles? Huh? So you know
that's there still happen and they're still of interest, but

(01:00:07):
we are well past crop circlemania. There are far fewer now.
There used to be hundreds in Britain every year. Now
there are about thirty a year in the UK, and
eighty percent of them are in Wiltshire.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
I mean, that's cute that they're still homegrown. It's like
a a sport for them, a national county pride.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
It's like a little local culture quirk and people visit
and there's a visitor center and it is very much
like a self sustaining illusion, because the only people who
are left are the ones who have looked at all
of the evidence and decided that there must be something

(01:00:46):
more to the story. One of the reasons that there
are fewer now is exactly what you were saying. Board.
Teenagers go on the internet now, they don't go make
crop circles.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Lizzie. This is one of the biggest problems in society today.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
We have to get boys back to making crops.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Boys need social lives, they need hobbies, They need groups
of friends that go out in the world and make
crop circles.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
I know, and I mean, you know, maybe they are
doing social things on roadblocks or whatever. But I'm just
saying they build all this stuff in Minecraft. Before Minecraft,
you have to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Go build it, and you have to go trespass in
a field.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
You have to go dresspass in a field. There is
sort of an uneasy alliance between the farmers, the circle
makers and the visitors. In Wiltshire, there's a website you
can go to to see which farms are like open
and like will allow access. So there are some farmers who, now,

(01:01:38):
even though I don't think any of them want crop circles,
They're like, if a crop circle happens in my farm
over the summer, I will charge people admission. So there
are like I guess legitimate ways to visit a crop circle.
If that's something you're interested in, go.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
To Wilchair pay a farmer.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Yeah, look on the website, see which ones are open,
and pay your little cover fee.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
It is true because you kind of have to be
scientifically minded to like engineer a crop circle, which does
require some planning and forethought and understanding of geography. And
nerdy young adults are spending more time on the Internet,
and if you are a nerdy, engineering minded twenty something,

(01:02:17):
you'll probably be putting that creative energy elsewhere these days.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Probably this has not diminished the excitement around crop circles
in like online conspiracy groups. Yeah, I didn't. I mean,
Colin Andrews is sort of retired, so I didn't really
know who to look at for like what is the
conspiracy theory these days? So I watched them talk about

(01:02:42):
it on Joe Rogan, Oh, I'm so sorry, And then
the guess that he had on has like an hour
long YouTube video about crop circles, and I watched it
to see, like, Okay, what is the state of this
movement now?

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
Was it convincing?

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
I really do think I learned a lot about how
people fall for conspiracy theory hoaxes because he doesn't have
hardly any evidence, but he makes claims that are related
and then he has so much evidence for those claims.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Oh my god, Lizzie, this is the entire Netflix show
that I was talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Literally, I was like, we're gonna get to this. So
and it's he's not a dumb guy, right, his name's
Andrew Genteel. He the YouTube channels called the y Files.
Like why, He'll be like, this seriologist believed that this
reporter had been sent from the government, and then he'll
list all of this history of the government using reporters. Yeah,

(01:03:43):
and it's real. It's like, yeah, that totally happens. The
government totally uses reporters.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
But there's no evidence that that reporter was used.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
That has nothing to do with crop circles. Yeah, that
has nothing to do with crop circles, Like the FBI
nothing to do with crop circles. And then he'll be like,
you know this other he uses this one example of
like this woman who got really interested in crop circles.
She thought maybe they were two dimensional expressions of like

(01:04:11):
three dimensional shapes, which is a cool idea. So she
sort of like three D mapped them and put them
together and tried to make a machine by like, you know,
sort of spinning the image around an axis. Yeah, and
the image didn't do anything but the spinning. And then
he goes into all of these like hidden Nazi science
projects and UFO technology that uses spinning and it's all

(01:04:35):
really interesting and you're like, and it has nothing to
do with crops.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
You're like, spinning is now what we're talking.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
We not talking about whether or not spinning is cool.
It uses up time in this hour so that at
the end you're like, wow, I watched an hour of
evidence for crop circles and he had citations for all
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
It's like yeah, because he didn't talk about crops or
You're like, eighty percent of the words coming out of
his mouth were true historical facts.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
They just didn't have to do with crops.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Just find that is exactly you know, kids these days,
with their with their minecraft not learning, They're not learning
logical fallacies.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
I think people of all ages are eating this up.
Joe Broken just sits there and goes, WHOA at every
picture of a crop circle.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
I here's what I will posit to listeners who listen
to anyone making any claims on a podcast, including ours
or a YouTube channel, think about whether the evidence they're
presenting actually proves their claims. Just because someone says something
confidently and something that is historically interesting and maybe probably true,

(01:05:36):
does it actually prove the thing they're saying it proves?

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
And the other really convenient thing about his argument is
that he makes no claim about what crop circles actually are.
He just says that there's more to it that we
don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Yeah, isn't it suspicious? Isn't it inspicious?

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
All right? He and others do point to what I
will call the remaining mysteries. Yeah, the woven patterns are
are mysterious. You can't create that just by stomping on
it with a board. Okay, so that's interesting. Yeah, people
claim that they've found these iron balls in the crop

(01:06:13):
circles and where did they come from? And some people
think that there's like interesting electromagnetic properties to the little
iron balls that they've found. Okay, your hands sort of
get red and blotchy if you go into a crop circle.
Maybe I've seen a video of it. It didn't look
like anything to me, but there are eyewitness accounts, So

(01:06:37):
that's interesting. There is some scientific papers that the sort
of like they're called apical nodes. The apical nodes basically
like the like the knuckles or like the joints on
the stem. Yeah, that they are enlarged within crop circles, okay,

(01:07:01):
and that they've burst open in a way that's not
consistent with stomping, but that is consistent with like microwave radiation.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Oh, they're talking about the plants themselves. Plants themselves, Okay,
So this is like biology that like somehow they've been
subjected to microwave radiation, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
And that that has caused them to fall over, okay,
in this interesting way. There's a like most wheat sort
of ends up curved by the time it's mature, but
the wheat that's in crop circles is like not curved.
And they're like, well, are the circle makers using batteries?
Are they doing all of like are they using some

(01:07:40):
tool that we haven't figured out yet, or is this
evidence that points to someone who's not a human or
someone who's more than a human making the crop circles.
They don't say exactly what it could mean. These papers
are not very good. Yeah, the supposed discoveries like, there's
just not that much evidence of it. It hasn't been

(01:08:02):
proven or disproven because again, all of the rigorous scientists
are not paying attention. So like the like, you can't
even get these papers really published in mainstream journals that
would then invite peer review, because as far as the
majority of the scientific community is concerned, we already solve
crop circles. And so then what a lot of the
believers come out and say is like, we want scientists

(01:08:23):
out here, we want you to take measurements, we want
the you know what I mean. Like they're saying, we're
not anti science, we want more attention, we want more
research to be put into this because we think there's
something there. And I do sort of understand the frustration
of them being like, we believe that this is worth
scientific inquiry, and none of the rigorous scientists will do
anything about it. But what you're left with is if

(01:08:45):
anything looks science y, it has not been peer reviewed,
it has not been fact checked, because the people who
you know, science doesn't mean finding one anomaly one time.
You have to go to every crop circle and take
the same measurements over and over. That's the scientific method,
and no one's doing it because nobody cares.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
It's so boring you won't get the attention or a
claim you want. So much of science is so anonymous.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
There's no funding behind it. Like you know, there's no
money behind finding out what's going on with crop circles
because there's no money to be made from what's going
on with crop circles because as far as scientists are concerned,
they're all man made. Yeah. So, yes, there are a
couple of anomalies that have not yet been explained or debunked,
but because nobody is doing the debunking, because most learned

(01:09:31):
people understand that these are man made.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
But it's also tricky because those quote unquote anomalies have
also not been archived in a scientifically rigorous way.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Where it's like when you say, like, oh, isn't it
weird that your hands get red and blotchy in crop circles?
That's not a scientific claim.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
No, it's an anecdote and maybe a piece of data, yeah,
but it is not anything more than that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
There's also what's called like ghost formations, which is like
even after you plow the feet old, sometimes the next
year the ones that were uh trampled in the crop
circle making will like grow back a different color, and
so you can sort of like still see it for
a few more seasons, and that's interesting, and nobody's really
looking into it. But again, like that doesn't mean anything.

(01:10:18):
It just means nobody's looking into it because it's just
a weird thing. It seems like it only happens sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
It's most likely a human explanation, even if we don't
have it yet.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Or they are using radio waves, but probably humans using
radio waves.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
I mean, if people are using radio waves to make
crop circles, I would love to know what's happening there,
because I don't really understand radio waves.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Nor do I nor do I really care to'd be
perfectly honest.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
This is fascinating. I think it's a great example of
why conspiracy theory thinking is so pernicious because it's very
very hard to disprove this is suspicious. Yeah, if that's
your only claim, that you're just like this is weird,
there's almost nothing you can do to prove that that

(01:11:00):
that's not the case.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
Yeah, even if you come up with an explanation that
isn't weird, be like okay, now, wand of the next
weird thing like it's never enough evidence. Yeah, so these days.
One of effusis paper that I read was like, there
as many theories about this, as there are stocks in
a field.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Oh that's such a good line, nice little metaphor.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Some people link it to sacred geometry. Some people believe
that even though the formations are man made, that then
they can sort of like attract energy. Like a lot
of circle makers are like, oh, I see weird stuff
when I go out and do them. Oh I see
balls of light when I'm out there making my circles.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
I made it. But also something weird happen, Yeah, I
mean interesting. That's like, you know, certain geometrical forms have properties.
That's an idea.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
It's an idea. I don't think it makes any sense.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
It's not an idea, I understand, but it is an idea.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
People link it to simatic patterns, which is like if
you you know, put like whatever, like a bunch of
little dust on a piece of paper and like play
it a really loud sound. It's sort of like the
pattern that the radio wave will make. Yeah, like it's
in that shape, which like maybe it is. Again, that's
not really evidence of anything. The one thing you'll hear
tossed around a lot. A lot is that Wiltshire is

(01:12:19):
on an intersection of two lay lines.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Is that some sort of magnet thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
It is a not yet proven or I guess disproven
theory that there are these sort of lines of electromagnetic
power that run under the earth and in places where
they cross, that is where you find like the Bermuda
Triangle and Stonehenge and all of these other sort of

(01:12:46):
spooky things because they are places of great power and
they attract I guess, like a mystical energy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
I don't mean to do some cross podcast promo, but
on my episode of my other podcast, Noble Blood, we
talked about a man named Antoine Lavoisier who was a
French scientist who publicly disproved animal magnetism, this idea that
like magnets and people and does magic things. It's like
this was the late seventeen hundreds and they realized that

(01:13:17):
a lot of these magnetism claims were not true. So
this is a thing that people have been claiming for
a very long time and scientists have been saying is
not true for also a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
In the X Files, the explanation is that it's like
the print that's left behind when an alien spaceship leaves
in the movie Signs, which I was very entertained by.
I watched for this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
I've never seen it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
I thought it was fun. People kind of make fun
of it, but I thought it was pretty fun. They
have what I think is like a good explanation, which
is that it's like like a map or like it's
like markers that the alien ships are like leaving behind
during their explorations of Earth so that when they come
back with the army they know where to go.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Oh that's smart.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
And so spoiler for the movie Signs, they don't like.
Their weakness is water, and that's why they're doing it
in these fields not near water, yeah, very dry wet fields.
I thought that was pretty well. Okay, So like taking
the crappies seriously, Apart from the science, there are still

(01:14:23):
a lot of things about their theories that don't make
any sense. Like, if this is a message, why hasn't
anything ever come of it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Why isn't more weird stuff happening in Wiltshire?

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Why is the extent of either this alien or supernatural
phenomenon just funky little designs?

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Why have our pictures of all of these phenomenon gotten
so much better, and yet no one can get a
picture of these bowls of light.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
It also feels like, Okay, if this is like some
with the electromagnetic lay lines or whatever, why would they
come in clumps? Wouldn't this happen regularly around the year, Yeah,
around the year, regular intervals. Why is it not like, oh,
it seems like this is a popular thing that people
are doing, and then it falls out of fashion and
people start doing it again, so there's publicity.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
Why would the government bother to cover this up? Like
what is the thing that they're so scared of people
looking into?

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
And then also why would they get progressively more complex? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
And this is and any of these questions, they're just like, well,
it's a syop they're making. The humans are making the
more complex ones to distract you from the real one.
I'm like, okay, but what are the real ones? What
is the parameter by which we judge a real one?
And they never have an answer And also for why
for what?

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
Yeah, if it's like, oh, this is just an electromagnetic phenomenon,
why would the government care?

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
No, they wouldn't, They wouldn't things to remember, Yeah, you
can totally do this overnight. All of these things that
people are like, you couldn't possibly have done this in
a night, Yes you can, Like that's just the answer
is like, yes you can. Anything like the braiding. Yeah,
it's just really hard, but yes you can do it.
People who report feeling different inside them. You're excited to
be in a crop circle. It's very easy to not

(01:16:17):
leave footprints. One of the teams showed how you do it.
You just get like barstools and you sort of step
from one to the other. We built the pyramids, we
built Machu Pichu, We've built making hedge mazes and corn
mazes for years. This is just sort of another example
of that. There's also the fact that a lot of
these crappies are city folk who don't understand how farms work.

(01:16:43):
You don't go out into your field every single day.
You leave it out there to grow. So this thing
of like, how could they not have noticed this stuff
happening in the field. Why would they be walking through
every square inch of their barley field every single day?
Why would they have cameras on it all hours of
the night. You can only really see these things if

(01:17:05):
you walk straight into one or if you fly over
it and that's not what that's not how you run
a farm.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Yeah, they have acres and acres of land that they
are not walking through daily.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
It's an example of a new word I learned called ostension. Oh,
it's sort of like teach me. It comes from the
same sort of root as like ostensibly. Ostension is the
phenomenon where like folklore becomes true, okay, and there's like
quasios tension and pseudo ostension and semi as tension and stuff.
But basically it's like fake evidence. It's evidence to support

(01:17:37):
a fake claim that becomes real. It's people acting out folklore.
So an example is like the urban legend of like
razors and Halloween candy, uh predates actual reports of razors
and Halloween candy. And it's probably that the chicken came
before the egg.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
This is such an interesting and important word. I also
think it happens a lot with Internet discourse. M I
think that like bots try to manufacture fake controversies, and
then the fact that then people are like this is ridiculous,
then it becomes a conversation point.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
There's a really interesting story I read about on like
ostension dot com. Or whatever about at the height of
the AIDS crisis, there was this urban legend in Dallas
that there was a woman who was intentionally giving men
AIDS and then there was this huge spike in reported
cases of AIDS in straight men. The woman never existed,
but the rumor made a bunch of straight men go

(01:18:30):
get tested.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Oh God, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Which is kind of a good thing. But so it's
it's self fulfilling prophecies with a folklore edge. And this
is an example of it. Because if you go to Stonehenge,
you're likely to encounter a lot of people who like
believe in UFOs. And I know that UFOs are RELIGI
just needs unidentified flying object, but you know, they believe

(01:18:52):
in terrestrial they believe in extraterrestrials. So of course there
are a lot of sightings of extraterrestrials around Stonehenge because
that's where all the rural believers are hanging out.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
So yes, people who are naturally predisposed to be into
this kind of stuff they gather in this area and
then they notice all of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Because that's the type of person they are.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Not because there's anything supernatural happening in Wiltshire. Yeah, I
will also say, like I.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Will say anecdotally, I went to Stonehenge. It was kind
of cool. I took a picture, didn't notice anything supernatural happening.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
I just paid.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
The government has paid, but I just want my anecdote
of non evidence just to be on their record.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
And where can the government? Where can I pick up
my check for saying that exactly. Another interesting thing about
Wiltshire is that it does have actually a pretty long
history of people carving pictures into like the sides of hills.
If you look up the Wiltshire white horses.

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
Yeah, I know what this is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Yeah, Like it's kind of part of the local culture
in a really cool way. I do think crav circles
are really cool. It's this weird, uneasy symbiosis where the
crop makers want humans to get credit. Yeah, but they
without the people who believe that it's not done by humans,

(01:20:12):
there wouldn't be nearly as much attention or interest.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
It would just kind of be irrelevant. That's so, and
that is interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
The only reason people are taking pictures of these things
is because they know that there's a market for them,
of people who will buy books of these pictures, and
those people are believers. Yeah, skeptics are not out buying
books of the most interesting crop circles just because they're pretty,
even though they are well, let's hope skeptics are listening
to podcast episodes. Yes, please, please, please please.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
To me, it's kind of interesting also in this case,
because usually skeptics are the ones who are cast as like, oh,
you keep a closed mind. Don't you want joy and
delight in your life? Where the closed mind did? People
are our nags and scolds? Where in this case, I
actually think being a quote unquote closed minded person who
thinks that humans did this actually is a point of

(01:21:00):
view for wonder and delight because people are making these
amazing things. Isn't that great that for no or very
little profit, people as a hobby are going out in
fields in the middle of the night to make art projects.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
That's exactly how I feel. Why can't it be enough
that it's humans. I think it's incredible that it's humans.
They're so there are so many crop formations that are
just stunning and interesting, And to me, it's more impressive
if it's humans, like if it's aliens, and like, you
used all of that technology to do this, you came

(01:21:33):
from light years of way to do this. But if
it's just people with planks of wood, it's so cool.
Aliens tarns and lasers, but it's so cool. Aliens cure cancer. Yes,
give us something else. Oh my god, we don't want
your pictures.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
And the pictures in the hills. We're done.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
We have enough for both groups of people. It's just
like a thing to be into. Ultimately, it is like
sort of social. But I think again like comparing it
to Bigfoot in the Lockness Monster, where usually the people
who are sort of like creating the fake evidence are
kind of also the same people who are consuming it. Yeah,
and they're just all trying to then convince the outside world. Here,

(01:22:09):
it's really interesting where you have a group of people
creating this thing and a different group of people interpreting it,
and they are at odds, but they need each other.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
So anyway, that's where I come down is that crop
circles are an example of like modern big installation art. Yeah,
And if you're into big installation art, I have some
more stuff for you to look at. There's this guy,
Joseph Reginella in New York who makes like commemorative busts

(01:22:39):
and plaques to episodes from New York's history that never happened.
That's funny, like a squid attack, or like the man
who introduced pigeons to New York. He made like a
statue of him.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
That's very funny.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
They're really funny. And if you look up Simon Beck's
snow art, I'll show you. He's a guy who basically
makes crop circles but in the snow by walking around,
and it is gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
He makes Oh my god, those are amazing, all.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Of these incredible designs. They sort of look like snowflakes,
they look like interesting pattern frozen frectals. He makes these
sort of like Mondola designs. And again like it's impressive
because it's a human.

Speaker 1 (01:23:24):
Yeah, it's great. Human creativity is worth celebrating. I'm really
proud of everyone who makes art and puts it out
in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
Yeah, it's just large scale art installations. Humans are totally
capable of it. You don't need to fall down any
Internet rabbit holes to be into crop circles. And I
don't think the government is hiding anything about them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
I want to also point out a lot of his
snow art is in the same pattern a lot of
similar patterns and designs as crop circles. And I think
it's because those are easy patterns to make regularly in
a large on a large scale format.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
Absolutely, Lizzie, thank you so much for this.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
I feel so much more knowledgeable about crop circles.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Oh yes, I feel much more knowledgeable about crop circles too.
And I really like crop circles and I really don't
like disinformation.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Yeah, Where can the people find you? You can talk
to me at at hoax Thepod at on Instagram. Where
can the people find you?

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
You can email me at Hoaxthpodcast at gmail dot com.
I will read your emails, maybe not as quickly as
I should be, but I will read them, probably on
like a weekly basis, and on Instagram and TikTok at
at Danish Schwartz. And if you're a listener of this podcast,
I do have a personal favor to ask. I have
a book coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
It's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
It's called The Arcane Arts. Lizzie Logan has already read it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
It's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
Thank you so much. It is about magic and magic
that is real, not a hoax. But it's a book.
It's fiction. And if you could pre order that book
for you or a loved one in your life who
likes sort of sexy, romanticy thriller if any of those
words apply. Pre Orders matter kind of the most in
the book world because they tell the publishers that this
book is actually worth putting in bookstores. So if you

(01:25:11):
are listening to this and you're like, I'll pick up
a copy when it comes out, I would just beg
you please just preorder it. It would make a world
of difference. It's called The Arcane Arts. It's by S. D. Coverly,
even though my name is Danish Swartz because I co
wrote it with a friend of mine named Dan Frye,
and we did it under a pseudonym because it's a
different genre than both of us write in usually. But

(01:25:32):
I did write it. That is not a hoax, So
thank you in advance.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
We will see you next time. Please hoax responsibly. Bye.
Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Danish Schwartz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima Kayali and

(01:26:01):
producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse funk. Our theme music was
composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.