Crop Circles

Summary

Podcast Summary: Hoax! – “Crop Circles”
Date: March 2, 2026
Hosts: Dana Schwartz & Lizzie Logan
Podcast: Hoax! from iHeartMedia

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan dive into the mysterious and often debated phenomenon of crop circles. They explore the history, theories, artistry, and hoaxes behind these striking formations found in fields around the world, focusing on why people are so eager to believe extraordinary explanations even when more mundane ones suffice. Blending humor, skepticism, and historical context, the hosts unpack crop circles as a case study in social psychology, human creativity, and the persistence of belief in the face of evidence.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are Crop Circles—And Just How Mysterious Are They?

• Crop circles are real physical formations in fields, not mythical like Bigfoot or Loch Ness—but the mystery is about how and why they're made.
  • “Crop circles are real. There are crop circles. These formations exist, and so you can actually talk about them in a more grounded way." (Lizzie, 03:01)
• The debate: Are they natural, supernatural, or simply man-made artistic pranks?

2. A Brief History of Crop Circles

• Early records: Reports date back occasionally to the 17th century (e.g., 1678 wood cutting), but few and far between.
• The real “action” starts in Wiltshire, England in the 1960s, with notable events in Australia too.
  • Major crop circle activity coincides with increased UFO mania (post-Roswell, 1980s).
• 1980s-1990s: Crop circles proliferate, patterns become more complex, and "pictograms" (non-circular shapes) emerge.

3. The Theories: Weather, Aliens, or Humanity?

• Explanations range from natural phenomena (mini-tornadoes, ‘willy willies’), magnetic forces, and tectonic effects, to UFO landings or messages from Mother Nature.
  • Even Stephen Hawking once considered weather-based explanations plausible. (Lizzie, 13:51)
• Seriologists are crop circle researchers—some “mainstream” and some “crappies” (less scientifically rigorous enthusiasts).
• The community splits between those who seek earthly explanations, alien believers, and artists/pranksters.

4. Crop Circles As Art, Hoax, and Subculture

• The circle-makers themselves eventually come forward (Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, 1991):
  • “We’re the ones who started it... Everyone was all into UFOs... We thought it would be so funny to make it look like there were UFOs in Wiltshire.” (Lizzie, 31:55)
• Circlemakers.org emerges as a hub, and crop circle artistry becomes both a game of one-upmanship and a community activity.
• The rise of artistic patterns: from simple circles to fractals (Mandelbrot and Julia sets), math-based designs, coded messages, and giant science-inspired artwork.
• Corporations get involved by commissioning crop circles for advertising.

5. Copycats, Competitions, and the Power of Human Ingenuity

• Skeptics and believers alike are fooled during competitive and controlled crop circle creation experiments—proving humans can produce even the most intricate designs overnight.
  • “Like any piece of art, you can look at it and you see what you want to see.” (Lizzie, 40:04)
• The phenomenon snowballs as more people attempt to outdo each other.

6. Persistent Belief, Conspiracies, and Resistance to Evidence

• Despite mounting evidence of human origin, some enthusiasts insist on supernatural origins, citing:
  • Strange feelings inside the circles
  • Reports of orbs, electromagnetic effects, or bizarre plant properties
  • Theories of government or CIA coverups (often with circular reasoning)
• The hosts point out that “unexplained” aspects are often simply unstudied (because most scientists moved on after the hoaxers confessed).
• “Just because someone says something confidently ... does it actually prove the thing they’re saying it proves?” (Lizzie, 74:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Human Appeal:
  • “To me, it’s more impressive if it’s humans... If it’s just people with planks of wood, it’s so cool.” (Lizzie, 90:42)
  • “Skeptics are not out buying books of the most interesting crop circles just because they’re pretty, even though they are.” (Lizzie, 89:57)
• On Conspiracy Thinking:
  • “It’s a great example of why conspiracy theory thinking is so pernicious. Because it’s very, very hard to disprove ‘this is suspicious.’” (Dana, 80:08)
• On Suburban Teenagers:
  • “One of the reasons that there are fewer now is exactly what you were saying. Bored teenagers go on the Internet now. They don’t go make crop circles.” (Lizzie, 69:47)
• On Folklore Becoming Reality:
  • “Ostension is the phenomenon where folklore becomes true... People acting out folklore.” (Lizzie, 86:44)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & What Crop Circles Are: 02:06–04:46
• Historical Origins and Early Theories: 06:09–11:37
• Crop Circle Theorists and the Rise of the Subculture: 14:26–15:29
• 1990s Boom, Hoaxers Step Forward: 16:00–34:49
• Skeptic Debunking and Artistry Competitions: 36:18–40:34
• Julia Sets, Artistic Flourish, and Circlemakers.org: 42:12–46:41
• Modern Subculture, Corporations, and Lasting Appeal: 67:15–71:18
• Why Belief Persists, Mysteries, and Scientific Apathy: 72:25–79:52
• Ostension, Local Culture, and Social Psychology: 86:44–89:57
• Closing Thoughts & Celebration of Human Creativity: 90:05–93:13

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Tone & Atmosphere

Playful, witty, and curiosity-driven. Dana and Lizzie move fluidly between skepticism and open-mindedness, often pausing to appreciate the artistry of crop circles—even as they debunk their supernatural reputation. The hosts reflect a celebratory view of human ingenuity and the complex psychology of why people so badly want to believe in mysteries.

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Final Takeaways

• Crop circles are first and foremost large-scale, collaborative human art projects that have inspired genuine wonder, debate, and creativity.
• The belief in supernatural origins persists because people are wired to find wonder and meaning, even when the real explanation is just as impressive.
• The episode highlights the importance of critical thinking, the fun of a good prank, and the way stories can ripple through culture, shaping real actions.

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For more information and photos, follow @hoaxthepod on Instagram or email the hosts at hoaxthepodcastmail.com.
“Hoax!” encourages listeners to appreciate the artistry—human or otherworldly—in the world around them, while always hoaxing responsibly.

Transcript

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything.

[Lizzie Logan]

I was a monster.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to Burden of guilt season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lizzie Logan]

14 years in prison for killing a young woman. A 15 year sentence for a crash that caused three deaths. 12 and a half years for killing a child and critically injuring her mother. All true stories, all caused by marijuana. Impaired drivers. No matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

[Narrator/Announcer]

When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his own rules.

[Dana Schwartz]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[Lizzie Logan]

It was like stepping in another world.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Was he a businessman? A criminal?

[Dana Schwartz]

A hero?

[Lizzie Logan]

Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Charlie's place from Atlas Obscura and visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lizzie Logan]

Hey, everyone, it's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the Diddy verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dana Schwartz]

You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart podcasts.

[Lizzie Logan]

Folks, it's a Hoax album. No one ever seems to believe me

[Dana Schwartz]

when I swear I never was deceiving our blast wondering. Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were TR and truths

[Lizzie Logan]

that sound like lies.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm the ghost of Dana Schwartz.

[Lizzie Logan]

And I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.

[Dana Schwartz]

Welcome to the show, Lizzy. Thank you for having me. This is your week. I don't know why I jumped in to start.

[Lizzie Logan]

No, because you were excited. That's all good.

[Dana Schwartz]

I am excited.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great.

[Lizzie Logan]

So let's just get into it. Dana, what do you know about crop circles?

[Dana Schwartz]

Absolutely nothing.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, you know what they are?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. They're giant circles and crops or shapes that people think were caused by aliens.

[Lizzie Logan]

Some people think so.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 Loch Ness monster and flat Earth and like, hollow moon theories. But if you look into 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. No, it's not.

[Lizzie Logan]

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. These formations exist, and so you can actually talk about them in sort of like a more grounded way where you're. 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. But there are crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, that is fun.

[Lizzie Logan]

Have you.

[Dana Schwartz]

I hope you. The answer is no. Have you watched any of the Netflix? I think it's called Ancient Apocalypse.

[Lizzie Logan]

No, I've seen clips of the show Ancient Aliens that gets from History Channel and gets circled around sometimes.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, this is different. This is a thing that, like, my husband Ian sort of keeps on as, 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 in, 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 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 stake in the ground, you have a string, and you walk. Yeah, any. Anyone could do that.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

100% children can do it. And again, all you need to make a perfect circle is a stake 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, it's a lot of B roll, but woof. Sometimes you need to think critically.

[Lizzie Logan]

No kidding.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

All right. So there is a very famous within crop circle circles, wood cutting from 1678 that purports to show evidence of a crop circle. It doesn't really, but people mention it as, like, well, there's reports of this stuff going back, you know, hundreds of years.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure.

[Lizzie Logan]

The reports of crop circles up until the middle of the 20th 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great.

[Lizzie Logan]

And most of them we have pictures of. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Right.

[Lizzie Logan]

Really. The story of crop Circles starts in 1963. Okay. A letter appears in a science journal describing a circular crater that suddenly appeared in Charlton, which is in Wiltshire, which is in South England. And Wiltshire is going to be the place where 99% of the action happens. Wiltshire, got it. Wiltshire is also where Stonehenge is. I've been and Ava bury Henge. Did you go to the other henge?

[Dana Schwartz]

I don't think I had time to go to the other henge.

[Lizzie Logan]

Three years later, in 1966, 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 60s are printed in newspapers with, like, some speculation about UFOs.

[Dana Schwartz]

So I'm trying to envision what this isn't it like it's something heavy plopped down on it and knocked all these things over in a circle.

[Lizzie Logan]

Are you asking what actually happened or what people believe happened?

[Dana Schwartz]

What it looks like happened?

[Lizzie Logan]

The crop, whatever it is, is bent over kind of at the bottom. Oh, okay. So it's like as if you took a big roller and rolled everything around.

[Dana Schwartz]

Got it. So, yeah, it was something pushing it. Not everything coming down from the sky at Once down.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 hovercrafts or whatever.

[Dana Schwartz]

Maybe it lands in a. In a circle.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, maybe it has, you know, if you picture sort of like, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So both of these are printed in the newspaper alongside some UFO speculation. Although for Mr. Pedley, who's in Australia, Australia has these things called willy willies, which are like little dust devils. Like they're little mini tornadoes almost. And everyone's like, that's just left over from a willy willy. So like there already is another explanation, but these are the early sightings in 1978. Lt. Col. Jesse Marcel gives an interview saying that he was part of the cleanup team at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. 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 the 80s. In 1980, circles start cropping up in Westbury, which is in Wiltshire, and they're just circles. So Wiltshire is where the Avabury Henge is, It's where Stonehenge is, and it's also where Silbury Hill is, which is like a very old man made hill that people think maybe in ancient 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Archaeologists love to say ritualistic purposes for

[Lizzie Logan]

rituals or not, but like, why would you make a hill? There's already plenty of hills in this area.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

In 1983, some circles are found in this place called Cheesefoot Head.

[Dana Schwartz]

Fun.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which I really liked. And I'll show you a picture.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, I'm getting a better idea. I think I was imagining them just as like circles, but just the circumference. But it's the entire thing is the whole.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's like a filled in circle. Yeah. It has an area.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's the full circle. It's not just someone walked around on the outside of a circle.

[Lizzie Logan]

No. So this is 1983, Cheesefoot Head, and then in the late 80s there's like a triple one.

[Dana Schwartz]

Can I ask how big are these in these photos? It's sort of hard to gauge the size.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 fields. Yeah, this is not that. Yeah, this is.

[Dana Schwartz]

Looks like maybe like 10 yards.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, maybe like a diameter of like 10 to 20 yards of the big one. And then there's a couple smaller ones nearby.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, they're striking 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

It looks interesting and they appear overnight. Suddenly all of these pictures will be available on our Instagram. So through the 80s, 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, they only happen in the summer when the crops are really

[Dana Schwartz]

big, which makes them more striking and visible.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. And also which makes it not super cold 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's not great for making a crop circle. And they also appear. I mean, I, I knew that this existed, but they appear a lot of times in rape, which is the name of a crop. So it's just funny if you're researching this, they're constantly like, we were out there in the rape. And I'm like, were you?

[Dana Schwartz]

Here's what I learned. Rapeseed oil. Very important and very easy oil that people use, like canola oil. In America, we added a G and they call it grapeseed oil.

[Lizzie Logan]

I know, but it's not. But then if you look up grapeseed oil, because I did.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

There's also oil that you can make from grapes and it's not the same thing. So we need a third. We need a third word for this. For the grain.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Because, you know, it's similar to, like, people get confused because there's no apples and apple jacks. If you call something grape seed oil, people are going to think it's made of the seeds of grapes and not a grain that was previously called rape.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 grapeseed oil comes from grape seeds because grapes do have seeds.

[Lizzie Logan]

They do.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

But there's also this grape 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Aliens.

[Lizzie Logan]

They report that if you go into a crop circle, like your watch might stop, you might feel weird, like a compass won't work, your car battery might die.

[Dana Schwartz]

I like this.

[Lizzie Logan]

There are some very early videos of 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 also people who are looking at it as like maybe the wind is creating this. Like maybe there's like a weather explanation.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure. Like the willy willies.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like the willy willies 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. Stephen Hawking thinks like, yeah, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Interesting. I mean, look, I don't know what's happening with magnets. I'm going to be completely honest. And it's magnets.

[Lizzie Logan]

How do they work?

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Something is happening. On the other hand, people point out, you know, they're often found kind of near roads. Yeah, like that's sort of points to it being people and it becomes a phenomenon. So they're the, the people who study crop circles call themselves seriologists. Like, 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 there's cereologists.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, I get it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Okay. I get it. I get it. With a C. Yeah. Seriologist with a C. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Are there any serious seriologists who believe they're man made or is this a society of people looking for a more challenging explanation?

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

No, it's not going to be a field of study.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Where if it's either aliens or some weird tectonic plate thing. Both of those are very important and very interesting.

[Lizzie Logan]

Very, very interesting. 1990 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?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yes. In the suburbs of Chicago where the crop circles ran rampant.

[Lizzie Logan]

It was like in the newspaper that. It was like, we gotta do something about these crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

And farmers are not super happy about it because you're destroying their livelihood.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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?

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

And as a prank, in May 1990, we get our first pictogram, which is how you like. It's not circles. So I'm going to show you.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ooh.

[Lizzie Logan]

So there's some straight lines and some, like, little dashes.

[Dana Schwartz]

It looks like a WI FI signal.

[Lizzie Logan]

It does look like a wifi signal.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like a different. A pitch for how WI fi. Like, that's a little symbol. It's not the wifi symbol. But if that was like a draft of, like, should wifi look like this?

[Lizzie Logan]

We also this summer get the Eastfield pictogram.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, that one's good.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's really cool. And you can. I'm bad with measurements, but there's people in this photo, so you can. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

It looks huge.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's really big. And it's. This is like a very famous one. It ends up on the COVID of a Led Zeppelin Remasters album.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 the man made almost like scientific Vibe of it in contrast and direct juxtaposition to the nature of the field. It looks cool.

[Lizzie Logan]

If you want to get sort of philosophical about it, like, farming represents man's desire to sort of tame nature and use it for its own ends. And crop circles represent just a different version of that. I will also go out into nature and do a thing for man made reasons.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's something. Again, I'm gonna 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, like Stonehenge and things like we don't know why these ancient people built these things. We're just like, ah, they were doing rituals. A human being making this. It's like ah, ritualistic purpose. And that ritual is in. 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 thousands of years from now.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes, correct. Humanity doesn't really change.

[Nancy Glass]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

I assume Stonehenge wasn't a prank. That seems like a lot of work to bring the stones there.

[Lizzie Logan]

But maybe the farmer who owns this field says that they charged people to go into it and they made some keyrings and some T shirts and he says it was probably our most profitable quarter of an acre ever.

[Dana Schwartz]

Good for him.

[Lizzie Logan]

So, you know, there's like reasons to sort of let the crop circle phenomenon continue.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, farmers. Look, being a farmer seems hard. If it hurts the farmers, that's bad. If the farmers can benefit from it, great.

[Lizzie Logan]

Absolutely. Later in summer 1990, there's something called Operation Blackbird, which is the BBC with the help of a Japanese TV station and also the British Army. Oh, okay. Which owns the land, setting up surveillance to see if they can catch a crop circle maker in the action.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great.

[Lizzie Logan]

And this is not the first time that anyone's done this. There was also project White Bird, 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, experts. I would maybe push back about that.

[Dana Schwartz]

Put that, put experts or scientists both in air quotes.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Their names are Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews. And they're going to 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great. Good for them.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 to the cameras, and then they go into the crop circle, and they're like, this is not real.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh.

[Lizzie Logan]

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. 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. So they're, like, clearly making fun of them.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they're like, this is proof that we are onto something because the army went through so much effort to set us up to make us look stupid.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, no. As opposed just to, like. Oh, no. It's actually very easy to fake a crop circle. And people are having fun.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, I got it.

[Lizzie Logan]

I got it. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, I get it. It's like, false flag crop circle.

[Lizzie Logan]

It is a psyop.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. 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 to, like, cash in on the publicity. So how do you talk about them without inciting new copycats?

[Lizzie Logan]

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 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

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, otherworldly.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

And they are purposefully keeping it from us. And also hiding it with fakes.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 Mr. Crop Circle. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, good to have a hobby.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Men need hobbies.

[Lizzie Logan]

This is his full time job.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh great.

[Lizzie Logan]

So the seriologist movement is a little bit over and now enthusiasts basically go by the title crappies, which it makes

[Dana Schwartz]

it seem less serious.

[Lizzie Logan]

It does, it does. Dr. Terence 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm going to say maybe I'm going to 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 got attention publicity, human beings started making them.

[Lizzie Logan]

This is the exact argument of crappies. Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, so crappies believe that it's nature and also people.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. Every crop circle enthusiast will say some of these are made by people.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, great.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Which is very convenient because every time you disprove one they go, I told you some of them were made by people.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they can never tell you how you're supposed to tell the real ones from the fake ones. But they just say there are real ones are crappies.

[Dana Schwartz]

Basing this like scientifically, like again, I don't know about tectonic plates and magnets.

[Lizzie Logan]

All different. Crappies is an umbrella term.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great. I'm. Because I'm like, look, not to generalize, but people who think these are aliens, I'm imagining it's a lot of circumstantial evidence.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 coverups. So there's no evidence anywhere. It's just if you connect the dots in a certain way, it paints a picture.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

What was the behavior of the baby?

[Dana Schwartz]

I don't remember. Some sleep thing. Babies just sleep weird. It's not. According to their horoscopes.

[Lizzie Logan]

In 1991, a group called the Wessex Skeptics.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great.

[Lizzie Logan]

Do their own test just to see if this is possible. So, like, it's similar to sort of the Ern 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they make 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, real, real, real.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

In August 1991, we get the Mandelbrot set crop circle.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, this one I've seen before for some reason.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. So this sort of sets off what I'm going to call, like, the fractal category of crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's more decorative.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's beautiful. And a fractal is a visual expression of a mathematical phenomenon with, like, repeating shapes. So this is sort of the first example of one, and it's one of the very famous ones.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumprite became the victim of a random crime.

[Lizzie Logan]

He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground.

[Nancy Glass]

He identified Tremaine Hudson as the police perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years.

[Lizzie Logan]

I'm like, lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth.

[Nancy Glass]

For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything.

[Lizzie Logan]

I was a monster.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to Burden of guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dana Schwartz]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[Narrator/Announcer]

When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules.

[Lizzie Logan]

We didn't worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Inside. Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[Lizzie Logan]

You saw the kkk.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[Narrator/Announcer]

From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach comes Charlie's Place. A story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dana Schwartz]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[Narrator/Announcer]

When segregation was the law, One mysterious black club owner had his own, own rules.

[Lizzie Logan]

We didn't worry about what was going on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[Lizzie Logan]

You saw the kkk. Yeah. They was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example power they had to crush him.

[Narrator/Announcer]

From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach comes Charlie's Place. A story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lizzie Logan]

On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. It's an all out manhunt for John Audrey. Every search and rescue team in LA county has been called in to help.

[Dana Schwartz]

Within days, tips started flooding into the sheriff's department.

[Lizzie Logan]

The rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of. Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover up in the Inside the nation's largest sheriff's department. A homicide captain saying, detective, do not

[Dana Schwartz]

find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that?

[Lizzie Logan]

Valley of Shadows, a new series from

[Dana Schwartz]

Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert.

[Lizzie Logan]

Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance? I wouldn't do it alone.

[Dana Schwartz]

Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lizzie Logan]

All right, end of the season, September 1991. Two dudes in their 60s go to the press and they're like, we've been making crop circles, and we will tell you how we did it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great.

[Lizzie Logan]

And we have been behind 200 crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

200.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're like, we're the ones who started it. It was the late 70s. Everyone was all into UFOs, and we'd heard about these, like, willy willies and stuff back in the day, and people started talking about UFOs, and we thought it would be so funny.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

To make it look like there were UFOs in Wiltshire.

[Dana Schwartz]

Men and their hobbies.

[Lizzie Logan]

Men and their hobbies. And they're like. And we have records. Like, we can show you the pieces of paper where we would, like, map them out.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And we can show you how we did it.

[Dana Schwartz]

I. If this is. I mean, I hope that nothing. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. But right now it's two adult male friends doing a thing. And I find that delightful.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. They were just, like, drunk at the pub and thought it would be funny.

[Dana Schwartz]

And they were right.

[Lizzie Logan]

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. You, like, press down, and that's how you press it down. And you just go, like, a little bit at a time in a circle,

[Dana Schwartz]

crush it with a plank of wood and a rope.

[Lizzie Logan]

And that's how you make, you know, a circle or a line or any shape you want.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They said that the reason that they started making pictograms is because they specifically wanted it to be a UFO hoax.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Wrong hoax. Wrong hoax. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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, it's probably gonna find us.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And B, we don't really want the government, like, wasting its money. Like, this is supposed to be funny. We're not really like, oh, 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 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which is that in interviews over the years, they sort of Change the date at which they started this hoax. They say 1978. And then they say the mid-70s, which apparently is incompatible to them.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. To me, I'm like, if someone's giving an interview, they'll sometimes just be general. They're like, yeah, sometime in the mid-70s. You're like, yeah, 78.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Fair, maybe. I don't know what shape these guys are in.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 pole vaulted. Which I think is clearly a joke.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, that sounds funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

But at least some experts are like. And we know they couldn't have pole vaulted, so they've never adequately explained it. I'm like, no, they just didn't tell you. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

I don't know. I'm like, that's not the explanation.

[Lizzie Logan]

They just didn't answer that question. They gave a joke answer to that part of the question.

[Dana Schwartz]

That is a funny to me. I'm like, that proves they did it because they're funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're funny. Yeah. This is Doug Bauer and Dave Chorley. I forget if I said their names. And the big question that answers itself is like, well, they only did the ones in Wiltshire and they only did 200 of them, but there's hundreds more in other places that they didn't do.

[Dana Schwartz]

Copycats.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes, copycats.

[Dana Schwartz]

But it got publicity. It was in the news. Other people were like, we should do that.

[Lizzie Logan]

What the croppies are getting at, which is true, is that the crop circle phenomenon cannot be solely attributed to Doug and Dave.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's actually pretty bad. The circles don't look perfect.

[Lizzie Logan]

No. And they're not good. And they're not convincing to the people that they're trying to convince.

[Dana Schwartz]

But also, decades have gone by.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're older, they're older. And I also think that they were probably trying to take credit for as many as they could. And maybe they just made, like, the 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 and maybe they only made a few.

[Dana Schwartz]

It also I just think proves even if that's not perfect, that man made crop circles are possible. Like again, you can make a perfect circle with a string. It's not that hard. You, you can make straight lines. That's not that difficult. So even if these guys in the 90s couldn't do it perfectly, that doesn't prove that human beings couldn't do them perfectly in the late 70s.

[Lizzie Logan]

Also the pictures, if you google crop circles, the like amazing designs. None of them are before the 90s.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 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 and the most passionate believers.

[Dana Schwartz]

That is such a generous reading.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they're going to feed off each other in a pretty big way without anybody in their community who they believe and talk to on a regular basis who's more grounded in scientific evidence.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 12 different theories and they all infight each other, but none of it's based on evidence. So they still, there's still an out group. The in group is fighting with each other, but there's still an out group which is just like people who were insisting on using science. But all of those people who were insisting on using science have now gone home.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So they're fine with the explanation.

[Dana Schwartz]

All that's left are the people who aren't holding this situation to what we would call scientific rigor.

[Lizzie Logan]

Exactly. The other thing that happens is now everybody knows how to make a crop circle. Yeah. And so there's way more copycats. And they're like, well, I want to make a better one.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. People are challenging each other.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. In 1992, 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. Let's scientifically see if this is possible. So they draw up a design that each team has to do. The reward is £3,000. They have from 10pm to 3am 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 trying to prove that people can't make crop circles. Like, no one could do this at the time given.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, that's very interesting that even the skeptics think it's too hard.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. They're like, you're trying to prove a point. You have an agenda.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

And then the Wessex skeptics are proved both right and wrong because, yeah, all the groups totally make the design.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's 100% possible to make this design

[Dana Schwartz]

that they've laid out between 10pm and

[Lizzie Logan]

3am Between 10pm and 3am and they're not really seen. And the crop circles look pretty good. The winning team uses, like a PVC pipe on a string. So instead of making individual steps, they can sort of like bulldoze.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So everybody takes from this competition. I'm sure some minds are changed. But basically, like any piece of art, you can look at it and you see what you want to see.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. It has been people all along, people who believe that there are real crop circles and fake crop circles. They look and they're like, look, they didn't do any of. Look. They point out every little flaw.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they're like, see? See? People can't do it. And then people who believe that all crop circles are man made are like, see? People can do it. So there's always some new goalpost that the evidence is not meeting. Of course, a big thing in crappieism is like the exact pattern of how the grain is smushed. And if you look up, you can find these really intricate weavings that people sometimes do, or I guess not people 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 persnickety 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 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 off as it progresses, is like people up the ante for themselves. You watch that show in season one, the challenge is like, make a sponge cake. And 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yep. Speaking of which, in 1996, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's so pretty.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's beautiful. I'm showing Dana one that was From June of 1996 that isn't actually strictly a Julia set, but I will. I included it 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 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. And the spiral is in a, like, golden ratio. Fibonacci sequence proportion.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So it's very mathematically significant. And it appears just across the road from Stonehenge, seemingly overnight. And stonehenge is guarded 24 7, and the guards see nothing. It's a good practice for critical thinking because, yes, there are guards and no, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. It also does not look, I'm just going to say on 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Also, it was night.

[Lizzie Logan]

You're not looking at the field.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like, you're not looking away from Stonehenge. If you're looking at anything, you're looking at Stonehenge. But it's also the middle of the night, right?

[Lizzie Logan]

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 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?

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. There are also those who claim that this didn't pop up overnight because that it popped up in middle of the day in 45 minutes because a pilot supposedly flew over the area, didn't see it, and then flew back the other way 45 minutes later and did see it. And he's like, well, it popped up in 45 minutes in broad daylight and nobody saw who did it. That's spooky. And it's like, man, just cause you didn't notice it.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Later in July, we get the Triple Julia, which is truly stunning.

[Dana Schwartz]

That looks impressive.

[Lizzie Logan]

It looks so cool.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. I mean, if the aliens made that, good on them.

[Lizzie Logan]

All right, we're going to go back to the Julias in a few minutes.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

So keep them in your mind. In 1995, circlemakers.org launches.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

And that is a site for circle makers to share their know how and pictures of their creations.

[Dana Schwartz]

So it's people are admitting that they're doing this.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yep.

[Lizzie Logan]

And B, like, that would kind of take some of the fun out of it. It would, like, take the mystery out of it.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's like magicians.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's like 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 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They sort of claim that they're not trying to be mean, but they're definitely trying to be pranky, which, you know what?

[Dana Schwartz]

What I love is people getting out, making friends, doing an activity. It's not sitting in front of your screen, Lizzie, scrolling on TikTok. People with an active hobby, and that's great.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 MI5.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which, like, this conspiracy theorist video that I watched, they were like, why Is it tagged MI5? I'll tell you why. It's a double bluff. It's to make us think that it couldn't be part of MI5, because who in MI5 would actually just tag it MI5? So it's all a psyop. And it's like, they'll just. They're just being funny.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, they're trying to be. That seems fairly obvious.

[Lizzie Logan]

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. Great. 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 1996 is when what's called the Oliver's Castle video appears, which purports to show a crop circle, like, forming spontaneously. I understand how in the 90s, people would be like, oh, that looks like, you know, real shaky cam footage. Now that we've seen, you know, decades of special effects. It doesn't. It just looks like a Field that.

[Dana Schwartz]

Let me tell you, the video.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. All right.

[Dana Schwartz]

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, classic misdirect.

[Lizzie Logan]

They say that this video was taken in 1989. I think it gets passed around more in 1996.

[Dana Schwartz]

Can I watch it again?

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. It's a grainy video of a field at night, and then crop circles sort of like, fade into view.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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, wishful logic. I don't even know what the term is. Basically, people were saying, is it possible to fake this? Is it possible with the technology we have today to fake this? And the answer was, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

You mean video would take a lot of equipment and a lot of time?

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

They were like, no one would spend that much time and that much money on it. Yes, they would. 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 to fake this video. Therefore, we cannot take this video as gospel. All right. In 1998, there's a BBC documentary about crappies 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 science is they're like, well, it's a matter of faith, not science.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, yes, that is what faith is.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. 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 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 the real research into the real crop circles, and they're muddying the waters, and I'm gonna attack you online about it. And I'm like, that's not faith. That's denial of reality.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's real five dimensional chess thinking.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's just. It doesn't make any sense.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's conspiracy thinking.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's illogic. And they. They're kind of mean in the way they talk about skeptics. They're like, oh, if you don't. If you don't believe that there's anything here with the crop circles, you got a closed mind and you're not gonna be happy in life because you. You have no faith and you have no wonderment. And I'm like, no. Looking at things in the scientific way is perfectly healthy also.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Which is a, I think, a delightful way to live your life.

[Lizzie Logan]

So there's a range. There are people who are a bit culty about it, and then there are just like hippies.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 sprinkle fairy dust on. It's man made.

[Dana Schwartz]

But.

[Lizzie Logan]

Okay. You believe that the circle makers are also a little culty.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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, you know, lifted their spirits, blah, blah, blah.

[Dana Schwartz]

And, oh, they're getting off on the power of it.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 make a thing, and you hope that it looks cool. And then people flock to it. Well, imagine in awe of it.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 I. 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Oh, absolutely.

[Dana Schwartz]

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. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's like that level of effort and that level of payoff.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

In the year 2000, 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, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh. So he snitches on himself.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 Glickman then calls the cops.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, no.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which is so Rude.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's so rude.

[Lizzie Logan]

This guy is trying to interact with your theory. This guy is like trying to, you know, he's doing the change my mind thing. He's showing up to the debate and you fucking call the cops on him.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, that's such a weenie move.

[Lizzie Logan]

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. And he's like, yeah, not all of them though.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ah, even the skeptic, even this skeptic

[Lizzie Logan]

can't, he can't get his mind around.

[Dana Schwartz]

Even as you're proving that people can do them, that two dudes can do it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, this is the one that they make. It's not the best.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's pretty good looking. It's not the best one I've seen. I like those Julia sets more.

[Lizzie Logan]

The Julius Etz rock. All right, going back a little bit. In 1974, a group of scientists, including Carl Sagan, mapped out a message in binary that if you plot it on a grid, a, I think 23 by 73 grid, it's like two prime numbers, okay, 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 like we're a carbon based life form. And it has sort of a layout that is reminiscent of the solar system. There's like a big sort of dot and then there's like, you know, nine little dots. And the, 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 25,000 light years away just to be like, just in case. Just in case. I mean, that was like very popular in the 70s to like shoot shit into space and like see what, what comes of it. Everyone should look up Carl Sagan and the Golden Record, which is how he like met the love of his life as they were. They were working on this project together and they never even dated. And then one of them called the other out of the blue and was Like, I think I'm in love with you and we should get married. And then they did.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's so sweet.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 2001, we get what's called the Arecibo response, which is next to a different radio telescope. This appears, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's like V's.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. And instead of the picture that would represent carbon, it's a picture that represents silicon and it's a picture of a different solar system. And so it's like the idea is that it's what the aliens would have sent back.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. That they're a weird silicone based life form with V DNA and why they

[Lizzie Logan]

would carve it into a field instead of beaming it back in binary like we beamed it to them. It's also only been 30 years, not 50,000 years, which is sort of the minimum time that it would take to get a response from this star.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, Lizzie, I have an answer for you. A fun.

[Lizzie Logan]

Uh huh.

[Dana Schwartz]

A person doing a little fun little thing and they.

[Lizzie Logan]

The other part of the crop formation that appears in 2001 is this. Oh, it just looks like an alien face.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's kind of. You know what it looks like if you've seen the Twilight Zone episode of terror at 20,000ft 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. It looks like it's made of dots. The way like old comic book art was just made of dots.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. You have to squint to see the face.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. It just is a generic, like two dark spaces for eyes, a little nose and like dark area for mouth.

[Lizzie Logan]

So that's another significant crop formation.

[Dana Schwartz]

Elvis. If I had to guess, I think it's Elvis.

[Lizzie Logan]

I think it's Jim Morrison.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Also in 2001, we get this spiral. Ooh. Which is like six Julia sets into a big spiral. It is 900ft wide. It's huge.

[Dana Schwartz]

A lot of people must have done that.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's in a place called Milk Hill. So if you want to look up the Milk Hill spiral, it's beautiful.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's good.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's good. And it also, Dana, the fact that all of these Julia sets exist, what does that lead you to believe?

[Dana Schwartz]

What do you mean?

[Lizzie Logan]

If you just had to. To make a guess about this entire phenomenon based just on those pictures, just

[Dana Schwartz]

someone doing it in a field.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's the same person.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like, this, to me is such a clear mark of an artist with a particular style.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's someone who likes making circles in this way. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they've gotten really good at it. That first one with the two strands was like a practice one. And then they made a single and then they made a triple, and then they made a six sided one with, you know, 409 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 no one, no one, none 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. Of human progression here. It's the same group of people making all of these.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 Bake Off. The challenges have to get harder because people keep getting better.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. And it's also like. And it's clearly the same person masterminding these particular.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's his design Mo.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, that's like the vibe. That's like his style.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 2002, we sort of hit another, like, peak for crop circle interest. There's in a Discovery Channel documentary where they challenge MIT students to make a crop circle. And they do.

[Dana Schwartz]

I told you. College kids.

[Lizzie Logan]

College kids. The movie Signs comes out.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

We get the Hampshire face and message.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, that's cool. I like that. It looks like a very old school alien. Like a very, like, gray skin, 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

It is a message in binary. So it looks like a sort of blurry picture of a, you know, 50s 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 2008, 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 PI. You can even see the decimal point there. So if you. If you. Yeah, if you. If you consider that this is like three units long, then this is one unit long and this is five. Three more.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ah, that's fun.

[Lizzie Logan]

And it's PI out to 10 digits. Great. So, like, very cool.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, people, I'm really impressed, genuinely. People are doing a good job.

[Lizzie Logan]

People are doing a great job.

[Dana Schwartz]

Or the aliens are doing a good job.

[Lizzie Logan]

The whole thing, it evolves far past anything to do with circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Here's one in Switzerland that just looks like a cool flower.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. People are just realizing, like, you can do large scale art in fields.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's just big art.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumprite became the victim of a random crime.

[Lizzie Logan]

He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground.

[Nancy Glass]

He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years.

[Lizzie Logan]

I'm like, lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth.

[Nancy Glass]

For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything.

[Lizzie Logan]

I was a monster.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to Burden of guilt season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dana Schwartz]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[Narrator/Announcer]

When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules.

[Lizzie Logan]

We didn't worry about what was going on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Inside Charlie's place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[Lizzie Logan]

You saw the kkk.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[Narrator/Announcer]

From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach comes Charlie's place, a story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dana Schwartz]

Segregation in the day, Integration at night,

[Narrator/Announcer]

when segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules.

[Lizzie Logan]

We didn't worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[Lizzie Logan]

You saw the kkk.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[Narrator/Announcer]

From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach, comes Charlie's Place, a story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lizzie Logan]

This is Ryder Strong with a podcast called the red weather. In 1995, my neighbor Anna Traynor disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So, no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. You can now binge all episodes of the Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It also becomes a business there. People who get good at crop circles can then, you know, Nike commissions, crop formation. You know, I mean, in this case, they're, like, paying the farmer and doing the artist. But, like, there's a. There's a tech company that has, like, an image of their new computer chip sort of cropped into a hillside, and they let the story go for a few days, and then they're like, it was us because we have a new chip out. Yeah. Here's one that I just want to talk about because it's fun. This one is made in 2009 in Tasmania, Australia. And is there anything, anything you want to say about this formation?

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, I will say maybe it's because we're 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

So this one, this is an opium field.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ooh.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's the legal opium field. It's used to make, like, morphine. What they believe happened here is that wallabies got in, ate the opium, got really high, and jumped in a circle.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's, like, not that good. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So that's a fun one. 2017, there's randomly another spike in crop circle making. And at this point, all of the farmers are like, please stop. Please stop.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

In 2020, there's a crop circle, crop formation that sort of looks like a Covid protein. That's another interesting one. And in 2022, Brian May, the guitar player for Queen, is in a plane and spots a crop circle and posts it to Instagram and is like, hey, what's up with these crop circles? So you know, that's they still happen and they're still of interest. But we are, we are well past crop circle mania. There are far fewer now. There used to be hundreds in Britain every year. Now There are about 30 a year in the UK and 80% of them are in Wiltshire.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, that's cute that they're still homegrown. It's like a sport for them, a national, you know, county pride.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's like a little local culture quirk.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And people visit and there's a visitor center. And it is very much like a self sustaining delusion 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 more to the story. One of the reasons that there are fewer now is exactly what you were saying. Bored teenagers go on the Internet now. They don't go make crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

Lizzie. This is one of the biggest problems of society today.

[Lizzie Logan]

We have to get boys back to making crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

Boys need social lives, they need hobbies, they need groups of friends that go out in the world and make crop circles.

[Lizzie Logan]

I know, and I mean, you know, maybe they are doing social things on Roblox or whatever, but I'm just saying they build all this stuff in Minecraft. Before Minecraft, you had to go build it.

[Dana Schwartz]

You had to go trespass in a field.

[Lizzie Logan]

You had to go trespass in a field. There is sort of an uneasy alliance between the farmers, the circle makers and the visitors in Wiltshire. Yeah, 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, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Go to a wheelchair, pay a farmer.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, look on the website, see which ones are open and pay your little cover fee.

[Dana Schwartz]

It is true because you kind of have to be scientifically minded to like engineer a crop circle, which is, does require some planning and forethought and understanding of geography. And nerdy young adults are spending more time on the Internet. And like, if you are a nerdy engineering minded 20 something, you'll probably be putting that creative energy elsewhere these days.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 it on Joe Rogan.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, I'm so sorry.

[Lizzie Logan]

And then I. The guest 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?

[Dana Schwartz]

Was it convincing?

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh my God, Lizzy. This was the entire Netflix show that I was talking about.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 Gentile. He. The, the YouTube channel is called the Y Files. Like W H Y. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And it's real. It's like, yeah, that totally happens. The government totally uses reporters.

[Dana Schwartz]

But there's no evidence that that reporter was using it.

[Lizzie Logan]

But that has nothing to do with crop circles. 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 three dimensional shapes, which is a cool idea. So she sort of like 3D mapped them and put them together and tried to make a machine by like, you know, sort of spinning the image around an axis.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 really interesting.

[Dana Schwartz]

And you're like.

[Lizzie Logan]

And it has nothing to do with crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

You're like, spinning is not what we're talking about.

[Lizzie Logan]

We are 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. It's like, yeah, because he didn't talk about crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

You're like, 80% of the words coming out of his mouth were true historical facts.

[Lizzie Logan]

They just didn't have to do with crop circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. That is exact. You know, kids these days with their. With their Minecraft not learning. They're not learning logical fallacies.

[Lizzie Logan]

I think people of all ages are eating this up. Joe Rogan just sits there and goes, whoa. At every picture of a crop circle.

[Dana Schwartz]

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, does it actually prove the thing they're saying it proves?

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. Isn't it suspicious? Isn't it interesting?

[Lizzie Logan]

All right. He and others do point to what I will call the remaining mysteries. Yeah. The woven patterns are mysterious. You can't create that just by stomping on it with a board. Okay. So that's interesting.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

People claim that they've found these iron balls in the crop 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. Sure. So 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They are enlarged within crop circles and that they've burst open in a way that's not consistent with stomping, but that is consistent with, like, microwave radiation.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, they're talking about the plants themselves

[Lizzie Logan]

that were knocked Themselves.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

So this is, like, biology that, like,

[Dana Schwartz]

somehow they've been subjected to microwave radiation.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. And that that has caused them to fall over.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

The supposed discoveries, like there's just not that much evidence of it. It hasn't been proven or disproven because again, all of the rigorous scientists are not paying attention. So 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 solved crop circles. And so then what a lot of the believers come out and say is like, we want scientists 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 anything looks sciency, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's so boring. You won't get the attention or acclaim you want. So much of science is so anonymous.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 people understand that these are man made.

[Dana Schwartz]

But it's also tricky because those quote unquote anomalies have also not been archived in a scientifically rigorous way 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. No.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's an anecdote and maybe a piece of data.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

But it is not anything more than that. Yeah. There's also what's called like Ghost formations, which is like even after you plow the field sometimes the next year, the ones that were trampled in the crop circle making will grow back a different color. And so you can sort of 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. It just means nobody's looking into it because it's just a weird thing. It seems it only happens sometimes.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's most likely a human explanation, even if we don't have it yet.

[Lizzie Logan]

Or they are using radio waves, but probably humans using radio waves.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

But nor do I. Nor do I really care, to be perfectly honest.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

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's not the case.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Even if you come up with an explanation that isn't weird, be like, okay, now on to the next weird thing. Like, it's never enough evidence.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So these days, one of a thesis paper that I read was like, there are as many theories about this as there are stalks in a field. I was like, that's such a good line.

[Dana Schwartz]

Nice little metaphor.

[Lizzie Logan]

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. They're like, oh, I see balls of light when I'm out there making my circles.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's like, I made it, but also something weird happened. Yeah, I mean, interesting. That's like, you know, certain geometrical forms have properties. That's an idea.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's an idea. I don't think it makes any sense,

[Dana Schwartz]

but it's not an idea. I understand, but it is an idea.

[Lizzie Logan]

People link it to cymatic 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. They're 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 on an intersection of two ley lines.

[Dana Schwartz]

Is that some sort of magnet thing?

[Lizzie Logan]

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 spooky things because they are places of great power and they attract, I guess, like a mystical energy.

[Dana Schwartz]

I don't mean to do some cross podcast promo, but on my episode of my other podcast, Noble Blood, we talk about a man named Antoine Lavoisier who was a French scientist who dis publicly disproved animal magnetism. This idea that, like magnets and people and does magic things, it's like this was the late 1700s and they realized that 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.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

I've never seen it.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 a good explanation, which is that it's like a map or it's markers that the alien ships are leaving behind during their explorations of Earth so that when they come back with the army, they know where to go.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, that's smart.

[Lizzie Logan]

And also, 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, very dry wheat fields.

[Lizzie Logan]

Oh, I thought that was pretty. Well, okay, so, like, taking the crappies seriously, apart from the science, there are still 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? Yeah, why isn't more weird stuff happening in Wiltshire?

[Dana Schwartz]

Why is the extent of either this alien or supernatural phenomenon just funky little designs?

[Lizzie Logan]

Why have our pictures of all of these phenomenon gotten so much better and yet no one can get a picture of these balls of light?

[Dana Schwartz]

It also feels like, okay, if this is like something with the electromagnetic ley 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 because there's publicity.

[Lizzie Logan]

Why would the government bother to cover this? Like, what is the thing that they're so scared of people looking into?

[Dana Schwartz]

And then also, why would they get progressively more complex?

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. And this is. And any of these questions, they're just like, well, it's a psyop they're making. The humans are making the more complex ones to distract you from the real ones. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

And also for why? For what? Yeah, if it's like, oh, this is just an electromagnetic phenomenon, why would the government care?

[Lizzie Logan]

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 leave footprints. One of the teams showed how you do it. You just get, like, bar stools, and you sort of step from one to the other. We built the pyramids. We built Machu Picchu. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

You don't go out into your field every single day.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 you walk straight into one or if you fly over it. And that's not what. That's not how you run a farm.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. They have acres and acres of land that they are not walking through daily.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's an example of a new word I learned called ostension. Ooh. 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

And there's like quasi ostension and pseudo ostension and semi ostension and stuff. But basically it's like fake evidence. It's evidence to support 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 predates actual reports of razors and Halloween candy. And it's probably that the chicken came before the egg.

[Dana Schwartz]

This is such an interesting and important word. I also think it happens a lot with Internet discourse. I think that like bots try to manufacture fake controversies all of the time. And then the fact that then people are like this is ridiculous, then it becomes a conversation point.

[Lizzie Logan]

There's a really interesting story I read about on like ostension.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 get tested.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh God. Yeah, of course.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which is like kind of a good thing. But so 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure.

[Lizzie Logan]

And I know that UFOs are real, it just means unidentified flying object. But you know what I'm talking about.

[Dana Schwartz]

Extraterrestrial.

[Lizzie Logan]

They believe in extraterrestrials. So of course there are a lot of sightings of extraterrestrials around Stonehenge because that's where all the extraterrestrial believers are hanging out. Yeah. 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 because that's the type of person they are, not because there's anything supernatural happening in Wiltshire.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

I will also say, like, I will

[Dana Schwartz]

say anecdotally, I went to Stonehenge. It was quite kind of cool. I took a picture, didn't notice anything supernatural happening.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's been paid by the government.

[Dana Schwartz]

But I just want my anecdote of non evidence just to be on their record. And where can the government. Where can I pick up my check for saying that?

[Lizzie Logan]

Exactly. Another interesting thing about Wiltshire is that it does have actually a pretty long history of people carving pictures into the sides of hills. If you look up the Wiltshire white horses.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, I know what this is. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like it's kind of part of the local culture in a really cool way. I do think crop circles are really cool. It's this weird uneasy symbiosis where the crop makers want humans to get credit.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

But they. Without the people who believe that it's not done by humans, there wouldn't be nearly as much attention or interest.

[Dana Schwartz]

It would just kind of be irrelevant. That's so. That is interesting.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Skeptics are not out buying books of the most interesting crop circles just because they're pretty, even though they are.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, let's hope skeptics are listening to podcast episodes.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes, please, please, please, please.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 minded people are 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 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?

[Lizzie Logan]

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. 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. I'm like, you used all of that technology to do this. You came from light years away to do this. But if it's just people with planks of wood, it's so cool. Aliens and drones and lasers, but it's so cool.

[Dana Schwartz]

Alien to cure cancer.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. Give us something else. Oh my God. We don't want your pictures in the hills.

[Dana Schwartz]

We want pictures in the hills. We're done. We have enough for both groups of people.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's just like a thing to be into. Ultimately it is like sort of social. But I think again, comparing it to Bigfoot and the Loch Ness 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they're just all trying to then convince the outside world. Here 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.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So anyway, that's where I come down, is that crop circles are an example of like modern big installation art.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

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 and plaques to episodes from New York's history that never happened.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like a squid attack. Or like the man who introduced pigeons to New York. He made like a statue of him.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's very funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're really funny. And if you look up Simon Beck 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. He makes.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, my God, those are amazing.

[Lizzie Logan]

All of these incredible designs. They sort of look like snowflakes. They look like interesting patterns.

[Dana Schwartz]

Frozen fractals. I shouldn't have said frozen.

[Lizzie Logan]

He makes these sort of like mandala designs. And again, like, it's impressive because it's a human.

[Dana Schwartz]

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.

[Lizzie Logan]

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.

[Dana Schwartz]

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 on a large scale format.

[Lizzie Logan]

Absolutely.

[Dana Schwartz]

Lizzie, thank you so much for this. I feel so much more knowledgeable about crop circles.

[Lizzie Logan]

Oh, yes. I feel much more knowledgeable about crop circles too. And I really like crop circles and I really don't like disinformation.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah. Where can the people find you?

[Lizzie Logan]

You can talk to me @hoaxthepod on Instagram. Where can the people find you?

[Dana Schwartz]

You can email [e-mail] 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. Aina Schwartz. And if you're a listener of this podcast, I do have a personal favor to ask. I have a book coming out.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's really good.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's called the Arcane Arts. Lizzie Logan has already read it.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's really good.

[Dana Schwartz]

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, romantasy 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, actually worth putting in bookstores. So if you 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 pre order it. It would make a world of difference. It's called the Arcane arts. It's by S.D. coverley, even though my name is Dana Schwartz, because I co wrote it with a friend of mine named Dan Fry. And we did it under a pseudonym because it's, you know, a different genre than both of us write in usually. But I did write it. That is not a hoax. So thank you in advance.

[Lizzie Logan]

We will see you next time. Please Hoax responsibly.

[Dana Schwartz]

Bye.

[Lizzie Logan]

Hoax is a production of iHeart podcasts. Our hosts are Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima El, Kevin Kayali and producers Gnomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music was composed by Lane Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

[Narrator/Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.