Loading summary
Transcript414 lines
- [00:00]
A
There's more than one way to bend a corn. And every corn is a glamorous woman. Every corn is a glamorous woman. Welcome to youo Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall. With me today is our hoaxer in chief, Kelsey Weber Smith. And today we're going to talk about crop circles, cereologists, and extraterrestrials. And we won't meet any extraterrestrials, but we will meet a lot of British people. And I think that's even more exciting in a way. Chelsea, how are you doing?
- [00:36]
B
You know, I am. I am of England, so I can confirm that we are freaks from another planet. That planet being England. Here, I want to try my. Let me try my. My crop circle noise.
- [00:52]
A
Yeah.
- [00:53]
B
Wait.
- [00:56]
A
Wow.
- [00:56]
B
Did that sound cool?
- [00:58]
A
Yeah, that sounded great. Is that supposed to be a flying saucer landing or flying up? Okay.
- [01:04]
B
Landing or sucking up? Nice person. I was gonna say sucking up a baby, but I don't know how often they abduct babies.
- [01:11]
A
I haven't heard that specific one, but that would be cool, you know?
- [01:14]
B
Yeah.
- [01:15]
A
I mean, not for. Well, I don't know. I think the baby would have a great. A great day. That would be a good children's book. It would be like baby's Day out, but he goes to space.
- [01:23]
B
Yeah. Or like an 80s buddy mov where the aliens are the buddies, and they're like, how'd we get this baby? We gotta watch this baby all day. I was trying to beam up that beautiful woman.
- [01:34]
A
It's actually the forgotten sequel to Flight of the Navigator. Yeah, it was destroyed by Disney. Chelsea, what are your associations with crop circles? Is this something that you grew up watching cheesy 90s TV about at all?
- [01:50]
B
Oh, I mean, definitely. I feel like I caught a few Fox specials on it, as most people did. But I was just thinking before this about how weird it is that me of all people has not done, you know, a deep dive, even of my own, for fun, into crop circles. So I'm really coming in pretty fresh. I have, like, UFO alien abduction knowledge. Definitely. But. But just not crop circles. And I know, like. I know like, the. The skeleton of the story, but I am excited for it to be filled in with blood and guts and muscle by you.
- [02:32]
A
And as we like to. We are coming back to the corn because corn fields are one of the notable fields in which these crop circles are made.
- [02:43]
B
Yes.
- [02:43]
A
And first started turning up historically. And much like UFO abductions, which you just mentioned, this is a phenomenon that, like, growing up and watching these kind of history channel type shows about you would have thought had been around for, like, way longer. And then it turns out that there's a very distinct point in time, actually, where we started seeing what we might call a classic presentation of them. And in this case, it's 1981, which
- [03:11]
B
is amazing, because when we did the corn mazes, one, the Companion to this episode, you taught me that corn mazes started in, like, the 1990s, and I was shaken. Shaken to my core.
- [03:22]
A
Yeah. And of course, there's beautiful historical hedge mazes and things like that and different kind of iterations of these ideas, but, yeah, these specific things that feel timeless to us sometimes are of our own lifetimes, maybe for some interesting, specific reasons. And can you talk just a little bit about kind of the point in time at which the classic idea of the UFO abduction begins?
- [03:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. Let me just, like, tap into my memory here. I mean, we started really, like, seeing UFOs around the 1940s, around World War II. There's a really great book by Carl Jung. It's called Flying Saucers A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
- [04:10]
A
Carl Jung's contribution to UFO stuff has been really overlooked.
- [04:15]
B
It has been, because it really was the book for me that inspired me, my podcast, American Hysteria, because it was this look at, like, how we externalize our anxieties and fears into these vessels. Like, for example, UFOs. Right. Or Satanists, in the case of what you and I talk about. Right. So it's like that happened during kind of the war years when we were afraid of, like, being bombed on our own territory and things like that. So we started to see these things. And what I love to always mention about UFOs, because I think it's so cool and so interesting, is that the fir. It was either the first or one of the very, very first UFOs that was seen was described not as a flying saucer, but as an object that moved like a saucer skipping across the water, and newspapers printed it incorrectly. And from then on, what did we see?
- [05:13]
A
Who's skipping all these saucers? Don't they have flat rocks?
- [05:16]
B
I mean, it's.
- [05:17]
A
It's.
- [05:17]
B
It's wasteful. Let's say that it's indulgent and wasteful. I think that that's just a great example of how our perceptions can really be changed based on what we're expecting to see. And I just think that's so fascinating
- [05:31]
A
and sort of like the way words change definition.
- [05:35]
B
Absolutely.
- [05:36]
A
What about the kids? They could cut their feet on all
- [05:39]
B
the saucers and you know, I mean, in terms of abductions, it's so like married into the movements around recovered memory therapy, a lot of people would have something they barely remembered, like maybe sleep paralysis experience that they just can't quite explain. They'd go and see a therapist that, that had their own belief in alien abduction. And, you know, the rest is history. There's this, the. The ability to influence someone into believing something different about what had happened to them and kind of extrapolating that experience. It's a great. We have a two part episode on it called Alien Abductions, I think. I don't know, something like that.
- [06:23]
A
That sounds right. It's one of my favorite episodes that you've done that I've heard, because you've done many, many, many shows.
- [06:30]
B
Thank you.
- [06:31]
A
And in this case, would it be correct to say that this phenomenon kind of began or that there are sort of these scattered stories that people, you can tell people are starting to kind of hear about maybe from disparate parts of the country or even the world. But we now have newspapers that are capable of having a wire service that picks up a. Takes it national in a way that technology is aiding and news is starting to travel a bit faster and that often we see this in the satanic panic too, that there are elements of a bigger story that coalesce. At one point that's like a flashpoint appears or these things that people in the culture are talking about and thinking about sort of get melted into a crucible and then form this overarching narrative. And it seems like in this case there were like a couple of people who experienced or told this story in a way that made it make sense to people in a way that could then be replicated. Yeah.
- [07:34]
B
Will you say more?
- [07:35]
A
Well, would it be fair to say that the classic UFO abduction story for Americans was started by this one couple?
- [07:42]
B
Yes, I know.
- [07:43]
A
Who came forward with an abduction story. Yeah. And in a story and in a case that also involves a lot of hypnosis and recovered memory type stuff.
- [07:49]
B
Yes, yes. And I mean, as you mentioned, like this, this flashpoint, you know, Betty and Barney Hill, this was in, I believe, early 1960s, they're driving along a road, they have a strange experience they can't explain, of missing time. And from there they start to, you know, or at least Betty begins this kind of therapy. And the recordings of the therapy are wild, where she is kind of like remembering this abduction. And from there there's the movies that came out of it and it just becomes, you know, like you said, like it is this flashpoint that then is absorbed into all of our psyches and we start to view things through this, like, previously available story that we can then synthesize our own experiences with. So I think that that's. Yeah, and I will say I have. I'm not here to say aliens aren't real. So, you know, I may be a skeptic, but me neither.
- [08:48]
A
I just don'. That they're recreationally sexually assaulting us. And it's interesting to me that that became the dominant narrative for Americans in, like, the 60s and 70s.
- [08:57]
B
That's. That is very true. Yeah. That's very much a part of this.
- [09:00]
A
Right. And it's like. Well, we do have a culture that, like, really represses, you know, the kinds of crimes that we're saying aliens are carrying out, you know, and that. That doesn't mean nothing, in my opinion.
- [09:11]
B
No. And it's interesting because there's, like, different schools of thought. Like, John Mack is so interesting. He was a Harvard professor who was eventually totally, like, disgraced, quote, unquote, by, like, the institution, because he interviewed a bunch of abductees and believed what they were saying. And generally, I think John Mack is pretty cool. I don't believe in a lot of the things that he talks about, but he's created, like, a really nice space for people who have these, you know, these experiences that are, you know, we don't understand. But a lot of the people that he interviewed and, like, it seems like the interviews that were most important to him had more to do with aliens showing us environmental destruction and, like, leading us toward a better way, which is much nicer than the narrative of, like, you know, experimentation.
- [10:03]
A
Yeah. Which is kind of the premise of James Cameron's the Abyss.
- [10:07]
B
Yeah, that's true.
- [10:08]
A
Yeah. Yep. Which is. Which I really love, actually, is something for aliens to do, because you have to ask if they've come all the way here, like, surely their only goal wasn't just to, like, fuck with us. Yeah. I mean, unless they're, like, teenage aliens who are just being incredibly extravagant with fuel. But even. I mean, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Okay, but tell us about, like, have you ever found a crop circle creepy?
- [10:39]
B
I mean. Yeah, I think so. I think they're really creepy.
- [10:42]
A
Well, I. Oh, nice.
- [10:43]
B
I'm really scared of aliens.
- [10:46]
A
Okay. I'm a little bit scared of aliens. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm in the right mood and I. And I start picturing aliens, I'll get scared of aliens.
- [10:54]
B
Yeah, totally, totally.
- [10:55]
A
And by that, of course, I mean the little. The little Gray guys with the big heads. Which are, again, another classic 60s presentation, to my understanding.
- [11:03]
B
Yes, definitely. And I think Barney and Betty Hill were a big part of that too, because they saw gray aliens. But I feel like, for me, I watched Mars Attacks Too Young and the rest is history.
- [11:15]
A
You know, I've never seen that because when it came out, I was like, hell, no. I'm. I'm a baby. I can't possibly see the scary movie.
- [11:22]
B
Literally have no idea how I got my mitts on it.
- [11:25]
A
But, yeah, I might. I might still not be ready.
- [11:27]
B
It's scary.
- [11:29]
A
Although I would like to see all of Sarah Jessica Parker's.
- [11:32]
B
Ooh, she's good in it, for sure. I think it's a good movie. It's fun. It's a lot of fun, but very scary for a child. And it really cemented my fear, as did those, like. Like, I think the, like, shaky cam videos of UFOs are scary.
- [11:47]
A
Yeah. Well, there's something inherently scary about a shaky camera, arguably because the Zapruder film really put the kibosh on the shaky camera party.
- [11:56]
B
Yeah.
- [11:57]
A
But also because I'm sure that there's like a. It's like, it's jarring, you know, you don't know what you're supposed to be looking at. And it's. You know, the image is shaking around. And also you have the reasonable expectation that you're gonna. You're about to see something scary because that's usually the context. There's.
- [12:15]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [12:15]
A
So you could, like. I mean, if you showed me a really shaky camcorder recording of a child's birthday party, I would be pretty terrified.
- [12:25]
B
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the. The Blair Witchian sort of idea is like, you know, it's like riding through the dark woods with the handicap.
- [12:33]
A
Yeah. I mean, I guess that's what happens in Signs.
- [12:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Signs is really good. I mean, it's insane. Like, the ending of it is crazy.
- [12:43]
A
Signs are scary. They do. They have to show too much of the aliens at the end. And you're like, well, that might have been too much of the aliens.
- [12:51]
B
No, it was too much. I think they should never have shown the aliens, is my opinion. And it shouldn't have ended with him becoming a Catholic priest again.
- [12:59]
A
Yeah.
- [13:00]
B
Spoiler.
- [13:01]
A
Well, the aliens had something to tell him about the Lord, I think. But, I mean, but the idea that we think aliens are coming to tell us to not fuck everything up is really nice. And if I am to believe in an alien or sort of like the Story of aliens making meaning in my life. That's the kind of alien that I like to imagine. And it kind of maybe fits with crop circles because the idea behind crop circles, which people start talking about in the early 80s and which really pick up traction in the late 80s, and there are still many, many crop circles. There are still people who love crop circles and study them and have theories about them, but they really had their first Top of the Pops heyday in the late 80s. And basically, they're circles made in the crops. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a fairly precise circle made by bending but not breaking corn or wheat or some kind of cereal grain. And they started showing up not just specifically in England, but specifically in Hampshire and Wiltshire. Okay. Which is also great. The aliens have come all the way across the universe to Hampshire specifically.
- [14:22]
B
It's an honor, you know, only to
- [14:26]
A
the south of England. And a lot of the story takes place, therefore, around Stonehenge, which, as you can imagine, is very exciting to paranormal type research. Circulators.
- [14:37]
B
Yes.
- [14:38]
A
And Stonehenge is also relatively close to Southampton, which in American is where Jack Dawson wins the tickets on the Titanic.
- [14:44]
B
Thank you for translating that.
- [14:48]
A
And we're going to watch some Unsolved Mysteries featuring a lot of English farmers who have what I think it's fair to call hot fuzz accents. And I'm so excited to just share this little moment in time with you. This is from season two of Unsolved Mysteries. So 1988 or 89, I think our birth year.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah. We were older than corn mazes, but we're the same age as our twin crop circles.
- [15:21]
A
Isn't that nice?
- [15:23]
B
Yeah, I guess that that's not true because we're just twins. With the episode about crop circles of Unsolved Mysteries.
- [15:30]
A
That's still pretty good. We're twins would die hard.
- [15:32]
B
We'll take it.
- [15:33]
A
Not everybody can say that.
- [15:34]
B
Hey, that's tr.
- [15:36]
A
Think it's funny how, like, everyone who can remember the 80s is starting to act like the people I remember watching in a documentary about the Roaring Twenties when I was in AP US History. Yeah. I have to let people know it was ap. I'm proud of it. Okay. You should. It was hard.
- [15:52]
B
It is hard. I only lasted one year and I was like, nope, I'm going to smoke weed.
- [15:57]
A
That was my 1 AP class. I was like, that is enough. I am ready for regular placement.
- [16:03]
B
Made everything a lot easier after that.
- [16:05]
A
Yeah. I also learned because I've been rereading the Ramona books because they're so good that when Ramona Quimby's dad goes back to school, he goes to psu and I went to psu.
- [16:17]
B
Wow, that must have felt really good.
- [16:19]
A
And I really think that that should be on their website that it's where Ramona's dad went.
- [16:24]
B
I think it should be on your website that you went to the same school as Ramona's dad.
- [16:29]
A
Yeah, you're right. I should put that on there, jam
- [16:32]
B
it in, shoehorn it in somewhere.
- [16:34]
A
That'll just be what I start off with.
- [16:36]
B
Perfect.
- [16:41]
A
The unexplained.
- [16:46]
C
Stonehenge. The great megalithic monument.
- [16:49]
B
Music to my ears.
- [16:51]
C
Stonehenge is only one of hundreds of such monuments scattered throughout the world.
- [16:54]
A
Robert Stack described Stonehenge.
- [16:56]
C
For centuries, these puzzling formations have baffled scientists and laymen alike. But recently, scientists have identified another phenomenon that may relate to the mysterious British monuments.
- [17:06]
D
Wheat circles.
- [17:07]
B
Wheat circles. Wheat. With wheat circles.
- [17:09]
C
Wheat.
- [17:10]
B
Oh, there he is.
- [17:11]
C
This photograph was taken recently in England. It shows circles and wheat fields seem simple enough, but in fact, they are not simple at all.
- [17:19]
A
Oh.
- [17:19]
C
No one knows how these enigmatic circles got there. Molded gently from unbroken stalks of wheat and corn, they may just represent one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries of the century.
- [17:30]
A
But maybe not.
- [17:31]
C
Nearly 95% of the circles occur within 30 miles of Stonehenge. And all the rest are near other stone monuments similar to Stonehenge. Are the circles caused by something we can explain, like whirlwind?
- [17:42]
A
Whirlwind?
- [17:43]
C
Or are they caused by something we cannot even begin to understand?
- [17:46]
A
Really, Kelsey, that's not a good explanation. You don't think it's whirlwinds?
- [17:51]
C
Charity Down a farm two hours drive from London, England. In the early morning hours of June 15, 1988, 37 year old farmer Chris Wood slowly drove a tractor through one of his wheat fields.
- [18:03]
B
I'm a 37.
- [18:04]
A
What does it mean?
- [18:05]
C
Just after sunrise, he saw something in the field that he had never seen before. He couldn't explain it. A huge circle had appeared in the field.
- [18:15]
D
Wheat.
- [18:19]
A
It's really, really amazing. You know how the actual crop was
- [18:22]
D
laying on the ground and it was so, so perfect.
- [18:25]
A
Really, he looks exactly like Prince Charles.
- [18:29]
C
The circle Chris Wood found that morning has never been explained. During the last 12 years, more than 750 large, perfectly symmetrical circles, some of them as big as 100 yards in diameter, have formed overnight. And seemingly random fields of wheat, corn and other crops. The question no one can answer is how did the circles get there?
- [18:51]
B
Honestly, they're a Lot sloppier looking than I remember.
- [18:54]
A
Hold on to that observation.
- [18:55]
C
The first circle I found was in 1985.
- [18:58]
A
Busty Taylor is being interviewed in the evening.
- [19:01]
D
It was the last sort of flight of the night, and we were flying around.
- [19:05]
A
And as the aircraft banked around it,
- [19:07]
C
the right, I looked into the wingtip,
- [19:10]
D
and there below me was this beautiful
- [19:11]
C
quintuplet set, a large circle with four
- [19:14]
A
smaller ones around it, the mummy and the babies.
- [19:17]
D
And I questioned myself then, what on earth did that? We were harvesting. It was the last day of harvest. We went out there with the combines in the morning to cut our last field, and we come across this circle. There was no real damage as such. The corn was flattened down.
- [19:35]
B
And it was just so weird for them.
- [19:37]
D
It was just odd, strange.
- [19:38]
A
The crown was flattened down.
- [19:40]
D
I've been here since October 1957. And the first circles we saw were, I would say, 72, 73. That was a small circle about four yards across. And then we saw another one the following year, about the same size. And as the years have gone on, we've seen them 12 yards across with the small ones either side of them. He said the 70s, they vary in diameter.
- [20:08]
A
The smallest we've had would be about 5 meters. The largest would be, I suppose, 15, perhaps.
- [20:13]
D
They have a neat, perfect pattern from a center where it's flattened. The edges are very distinct. The most wonderful thing about it is when you actually go out the night
- [20:26]
A
before, there's nothing there.
- [20:29]
D
It's just a lovely field of growing corn. And then the following morning, when you
- [20:33]
A
get up early in the morning in
- [20:34]
D
the first light of day, and suddenly there is the circle, you just can't believe it.
- [20:40]
A
All right, let's pause a moment.
- [20:41]
B
Okay.
- [20:42]
A
What are your thoughts so far?
- [20:45]
B
Well, I think part of it is definitely that I maybe I think I'm understanding, right, that he. One of the witnessers is talking about, like the early 70s, was that right? So I didn't know that it was going on for such a long time. I think I thought that it was like a phenomenon that happened over, like the course of a few months, and then that was kind of it. So at least for the initial, you know, the ones that sparked this. This idea and this thing. And then. Yeah, the other thing is I always think of, or we always hear maybe that crop circles are like these incredible mathematical feats that are so perfect. And. Yeah, I. The video that we just saw, they definitely didn't look very perfect to me.
- [21:35]
A
Ooh, sick burn. Yeah. Well, it's funny to call Something a symmetrical or a perfectly symmetrical circle, because I didn't major in geometry, but I'm pretty sure circles are symmetrical by definition. That's why they're circles.
- [21:49]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
- [21:52]
A
And you're right, some of them are, you know, certainly not perfectly symmetrical, but they're very good.
- [22:01]
B
Of course. Yes.
- [22:02]
A
Yeah. And so in terms of media coverage, this started showing up in the news in 1981, or it started getting public attention. But then when people kind of looked back on their experience, there's people, as we see in these interviews, remembering encountering them in the early 70s. And a case that people also point to as evidence of these being patterns made perhaps by UFOs landing and taking off is a story out of Queensland, Australia, on a sugarcane farm in 1966, where a bunch of cane was flattened and some farmers had witnessed some UFO type phenomena. I think flashing lights was one of the things that people talked about, or at least one person did.
- [22:49]
B
Okay, interesting.
- [22:50]
A
And so again, it's like one of these things where there's like, if you're reading news from around the world, which people are able to at this point, there are these ideas that kind of are shifting around in people's minds, or aliens are visiting different parts of the world.
- [23:03]
B
That could happen.
- [23:04]
A
And they went to Australia first.
- [23:06]
B
Yeah.
- [23:06]
A
You know, but what do you make of the fact that this is all happening around Stonehenge?
- [23:12]
B
I mean, it's very convenient for this story that whomever, whether they be man or alien, you know, is. Is cooking up here. I've been to Stonehenge and it is very much a tourist trap at this point. So it's hard to feel very mystical there. I think there are like, fun druid gatherings that maybe can. Can give you that experience, but it's really, it's very big parking lot at this point.
- [23:44]
A
I remember going in like 2005 and being very offended that they were selling rock. And thinking about it now I'm like, I want to eat the Stonehenged rock candy. Yeah.
- [23:54]
B
I mean, that's just good branding, you know. It is, but I mean, I think it makes sense that people would be more likely to be able to view this through a mystical lens because of the proximity to one of these, like, deeply mysterious aspects of Europe.
- [24:15]
A
Yeah, right. And it does kind of lend some, like, secondhand credence to the idea of, like, oh, well, like, yeah, it's a magical place where there's energy. So of course the aliens are showing up there, or as Robert Stack or whoever was working their ass off writing this voiceover for him, says at the end, perhaps the ancient Druids saw circles left by the aliens and were inspired to make Stonehenge, which is quite a fun idea.
- [24:46]
B
That is a fun idea and quite the jump as well.
- [24:50]
A
I mean, many people far smarter than me have pointed out these sort of Chariots of the Gods ideas, which, by the way, the guy who wrote that book just died in the past year, I think, R.I.P. but there's an intrinsic racism to them because the idea is that the Egyptians couldn't possibly have figured out how to build the pyramids. So the aliens must have helped them. The aliens must have created Mayan civilization. But then, not to say that Robert Stack is necessarily in conversation with Chariots of the Gods, but I like that when we're imagining the Druids, we're like, no, they did that themselves. The aliens just kind of gave them the idea it was more of an homage. Totally. Yeah, totally. One cool thing about the area is that there is a formation. Not a formation, actually a man made piece of art which is probably from the Bronze Age, so from pre Roman Britain called the Uffington White Horse, which is this giant ancient pictograph of a horse made by, I think, essentially building a trench into the landscape and exposing the white chalk underneath and keeping it free of vegetation. I'm going to send you. Okay. Send you a picture of that so you can see it.
- [26:02]
B
Oh, very cool.
- [26:04]
A
Isn't that great?
- [26:05]
B
That's really cool. And, and does definitely kind of hearken to crop circles. Like what, what I'm looking at, people, is this. Yeah. Like a very kind of spindly version of a horse.
- [26:20]
A
360ft long.
- [26:21]
B
Yeah.
- [26:22]
A
Oh, gosh, 10 meters.
- [26:23]
B
Yeah. And it kind of reminds me of like if you connected the dots of a constellation. It's giving, you know, Big Dipper vibes for sure. Or like, you know, there's probably a better one to compare it to, but
- [26:39]
A
it's giving big cave painting.
- [26:42]
B
Totally, totally.
- [26:43]
A
And there's, you know, debate over whether it's maybe some other animal. But I mean, in any case, it's just this big beautiful piece of art made out of nature. And I guess something I would suggest is if humans could make that, then why can't they make circles in some corn?
- [27:03]
B
Yeah, completely agree.
- [27:04]
A
And more to the point, if humans want to make that, then why wouldn't they want to make circles in the corn? Because one of the things I remember learning actually about cave paintings in my art history classes is that some of them were actually executed in A place that it would be very difficult to get to, to paint in or to view the painting. Which just kind of suggests, you know, the importance of the act. I think in a way the fact that it wasn't casual in some of these cases at least, and that the sort of human drive to create, I mean, I would certainly call all of this art is deep seated and kind of hard to explain, often in the ways that we can maybe explain other human behaviors with more of a cost benefit analysis kind of a thing.
- [27:53]
B
Yeah, and how nice is that? I mean, I guess it's the same kind of thing of like, why do we like across time and culture create religions? You know, it's like there's a bonding aspect, right. It's like bringing people together around shared ideas and shared reality, I guess, you know, it makes sense that you bring people together to understand the world in different ways by making art about it. That's what we do now. Now that's what we're doing right now in this. Oh my God, gorgeous tapestry.
- [28:26]
A
Are we the crop circle we wish to see in the world?
- [28:29]
B
I think we are. I think we goddamn are.
- [28:33]
A
Okay, let's look at, let's look at some of our serologists here in this episode. Let's skip to 8 minutes and 45 seconds and we're going to watch some
- [28:44]
B
on the same thing, right?
- [28:44]
A
Crop circle researchers. Yeah, same Unsolved Mysteries segment. And we're going to hear first from Professor Archie Roy of Glasgow University.
- [28:53]
C
There are quite a number of them. There is the frankly unacceptable one of circles being formed by hundreds of hedgehogs all marching around in circles. What another one is that they are the.
- [29:07]
B
That's the most British explanation.
- [29:09]
C
Marks of flying saucers. Another is that they are due to the downdrafts of helicopters or that they are caused by werewolves. That they are hoaxes by human beings.
- [29:21]
A
I like that he started so many of them.
- [29:24]
C
Yeah, I think that it's very reasonable
- [29:26]
B
for a person that hoax one is looking pretty good. He looks artificial.
- [29:30]
C
But I don't think that the hoax theory can be held very strongly because there are so many of these circles now. In eight or nine years they've logged about 700, 250 this year, this summer alone. The amount of time have to be spent by a very big team of people making those circles is getting quite enormous. I simply don't see the hoax theory as a very strong contender. As part of a televised experiment, British military personnel attempted to create an artificial crop circle.
- [30:06]
A
What?
- [30:08]
B
That's what the military is doing In England, something mechanical.
- [30:12]
A
I know. I mean, I guess the military maybe doesn't have anything better to be doing, but.
- [30:16]
B
And may that be very, very quickly.
- [30:19]
A
Honestly, good use of military.
- [30:20]
D
Whether it's crop circles that is mechanically made or it is a naturally created.
- [30:27]
B
They made a pac Man.
- [30:28]
D
When we examine a natural, the portion of plant that just comes out of the ground must be softened, bent over and then hardened up again. So not only is the mystery in the circle itself, but what is it that is softening the plant, bending it over and then hardening up Skinny little mustache. A real mystery.
- [30:52]
A
Vincent Price. Yeah.
- [30:54]
C
If the circles are not a hoax.
- [30:56]
A
Okay, let's pause. So this is interesting too, because now we're seeing so many crop circles proliferating in the late 80s and, and the naturally occurring observation that maybe this is just a human created hoax. And then the crop circle ologists are saying, no, no, no. Even if some of these are hoaxes, I can tell which ones of them are hoaxes because they are different.
- [31:20]
B
Okay, okay. Maybe that accounts for the sloppiness that I noticed in the previous video.
- [31:25]
A
Well, I mean, if you were committed to crop circles being alien created, then you could certainly say that. Sure.
- [31:32]
B
And I'm committed to that.
- [31:34]
A
Let's see. Okay, I have another I have so much fun stuff on this one. Ah. Oh God. The cat was scratching his ear and his foot was bonking the glass.
- [31:45]
B
I was horrified that there was someone at your door.
- [31:48]
A
Yeah, I thought someone was knocking on the window within that creepy way men do.
- [31:52]
B
Oh, that's scary. That's really scary. You know, I stay up and I read my stories about froggers meeting people that are living in people's houses without them knowing. That's my bedtime story. And the other night there was all these scratching sounds and I was so freaked out and I was like, where are they coming from? But then I figured out that there was a possum in our compost bag outside. So it was really a great, a great surprise. And it all ended up really good because he was a beautiful boy. I don't know, I don't know if he was a boy, but.
- [32:26]
A
Well, you know, possums actually can see 27,000 genders.
- [32:32]
B
Yeah.
- [32:32]
A
And may we all like mantis shrimp. Okay, I'm gonna read to you from of course that most wonderful publication, Skeptical Inquirer from the Winter 1992 issue. And of course our pal Joe Nickel.
- [32:45]
B
Ah, I knew, I knew it was gonna be.
- [32:48]
A
Saw some people acting silly across the pond and said, I'm gonna Get in on this one.
- [32:54]
B
God, I love Skeptical Inquirer. I do get the digital magazine.
- [32:58]
A
I don't. I should get it.
- [33:00]
B
You should.
- [33:00]
A
Okay. So the cereologist we heard from talking about the difference between man made and authentic crop circles was Pat Delgado. And he, at the time this issue of Skeptical Inquirer has come out, has just co authored a book with another cereologist, Colin Andrews, about crop circles. And they're also heavily featured in this Unsolved Mysteries episode.
- [33:22]
B
Is Joe Nichols in it?
- [33:24]
A
Joe Nichols is not in the Unsolved Mysteries episode for some reason, because he
- [33:28]
B
was in the one that we did when you were on our show doing spontaneous human combustion. So I thought maybe they would have brought it back.
- [33:36]
A
Yeah. Which I loved doing that one.
- [33:38]
B
That was fun.
- [33:39]
A
And I was very glad that they had him on. But no, this one is Skeptic free. And there were three books on crop circles that came out in 1989 alone, according to this article. Wow. Which really also speaks to how well publishing was doing.
- [33:56]
B
Yeah.
- [33:58]
A
So this article gets into the idea that they're like a weather phenomenon. And there's another theorist who's put together the idea that they're coming from a phenomenon similar to globe lightning, but involving plasma somehow. I don't understand all the words, but it's interesting how there's patterns that start emerging. And what people also point out is that there's more and more with each passing year, like exponentially so, and they're increasing in complexity. Perhaps because the aliens are trying to communicate more and more complex messages with us, or perhaps because things escalate when there's a fad. And perhaps this is a human driven fad because it's getting a lot of attention.
- [34:46]
B
Well, and the aliens, I would think, would be smart enough to know that we are not getting it. You need to make it simpler, not harder.
- [34:53]
A
Right. And what are we supposed to be getting from it?
- [34:56]
B
And they're like, like, do your math homework.
- [34:59]
A
There are also people studying crop circles who think that quite a lot of the crop circles are based on human driven hoaxes. But again, there's this continued belief that even if some of them are imitations, it's like a copycat crime in a way, and that they're all based on something real.
- [35:20]
B
I mean, it is a lot of crop circles. Like that was. That number was a lot higher than I was expecting. And I understand why people would. Would think that at least some of them are legit because they're happening in different locations too. So that also, you know, it Always makes it a little less easy to designate something as a hoax.
- [35:41]
A
Yeah. And we have one of the academics that we heard from arguing that it would be too huge a team of people required to do all of this. And what occurs to me is that if it is a human driven hoax, then these people don't have to be communicating about it. It's something like a meme. And the way that trends spread today, which we can observe very easily on social media where people don't have to talk to each other in order for an idea to catch on, as long as it's picked up by media outlets, because then it can spread quickly and easily and of course, much quicker and easier now than it did back then. But in the closing narration of this segment, Robert Stack is like, even more crop circles have been reported since we aired this segment, including outside of Britain for the first time. And it's like, yeah, yeah, because you aired the segment, that's why that happened.
- [36:34]
B
It does also like, it reminds me of the whole conspiracy theory thing where it's like, you know, how could so many people be keeping a secret at the same time? And it is kind of like, how could so many people be making crop circles and also keeping it quiet? And maybe they're not, you know, maybe it's just not getting any coverage because they're telling guys at the pub and then the next day the guys are like, well, I'm not like calling the news about it. I'm just gonna slap Tommy on the back and buy him a beer. Because that was a lot of fun.
- [37:07]
A
Let me read this quote from the Skeptical Inquirer. Few would have underestimated the seriologists will to believe had they known of the crop message incident of 1987. The message, written in the typical flattened crop style and with the words all run together, read, we are not alone. Delgado told readers of Flying Saucer Review, at first sight it was an obvious hope, but prolonged study makes me wonder of the crop circles. He said, maybe these circles are created by alien beings using a force field unknown to us. They may be manipulating existing Earth energy, or the beings may be terrestrial ones laboring by the sweat of their brows. That's Schoenickel again.
- [37:51]
B
Of course, the message is really fun.
- [37:54]
A
And also, wouldn't the aliens have written, you are not alone. Like, let's use our heads, everybody.
- [37:59]
B
That's a great point, Sarah. That's a very good point. Unless the aliens are like, maybe there are aliens that are alien to both humans and us.
- [38:12]
A
Yeah, wow, they're alien.
- [38:14]
B
Aliens or it's bullshit or that.
- [38:18]
A
Yeah. So we also have the issue that they happen overnight, right. They happen unobserved because if you could catch an alien doing it, then you could, you know, have an alien. And so farmers, you know, will wake up and come out in the morning and see a crop circle and say, well, I'll be God damned. And this article continues. Not only does the circle forming mechanism seem to prefer the dark, but it appears to specifically resist being seen as shown by Colin Andrews is Operation White Crow. Come on you guys.
- [38:53]
B
Wow.
- [38:53]
A
This was an eight night visual maintained by about 60 seriologists at Cheese Foot Head. A prime circles location. Cheese foot heading 6-12-1989. Yes. Winner of the most English location award. Cheese Foothead. It, it sounds lovely, I have to say.
- [39:13]
B
Gorgeous.
- [39:14]
A
Hey, I mean in Portland there's Cornfoot Road by the airport.
- [39:18]
B
Again, gorgeous.
- [39:20]
A
Yeah, gorgeous. I hope I never get Corn Foot though. Not only did the phenomenon fail to manifest itself in the field under surveillance, but although there had already almost 100 formations that summer, with yet another 170 or so to occur, not a single circle was reported for the eight day period anywhere in England. Then a large circle and ring, the very set that being swirled in the same direction, seemed to play a joke on Meaton by upsetting his hypothesis because interestingly, researchers will hypothesize that, well, it always goes clockwise and then the next circle will be counterclockwise and things like that keep happening.
- [39:57]
B
Okay.
- [39:58]
A
A large circle and ring was discovered about 500 yards away on the very next day. Then we have another top secret operation, Operation Blackbird, another surveillance operation using, I believe the help of the actual military, including their infrared surveillance equipment, putting it
- [40:20]
B
to good use, I see.
- [40:22]
A
And things are really escalating. And so in 1991 something really fun happens, which is that two guys come forward and say that they were the ones who did the first crop circles in 1978. Nobody noticed them for three years. And they got the idea when they were at the pub having had a few beers and had heard about the case out of Australia, where the idea was that the cane had been bent down by a flying saucer and thought that they would make a circle out of in the field for a laugh. And so they did, and then they just kept doing it. And we're gonna watch some news coverage about it from the time because I just really love that this is where the story is leading us now. Yeah.
- [41:10]
B
And it's just so interesting that it wasn't the first.
- [41:14]
A
Yeah, well. And Then of course there's like the question of, like, what is art? Art is intent. What are crop circles? Are crop circles intent? Where did those initial ones come from? And were those previous attempted hoaxes or were they accidental? Because the thing is, grass or corn or whatever, especially old dead corn, can get pushed down by all sorts of things for all kinds of reasons. And a lot of these phenomena only become phenomena when people start looking for them.
- [41:44]
B
Yeah. And I would also venture to say that if you're just walking through your field and seeing a bunch of corn pushed down without the aerial view, you're not seeing that it's forming like a truly meaningful pattern. I'm sure you could see that it is circle esque. But beyond that, it'd probably be hard to like fully actually visualize what you're seeing as something that fantastical.
- [42:10]
A
Right, exactly. Because they're designed to be seen from a distance, from a hill. So vantage is important. But ideally aerially, which is how we get to see them now. Because of course, there are still many lovely crop circles to this day.
- [42:26]
B
That's why.
- [42:26]
A
And I don't know who all is making them, but I'm glad that they
- [42:29]
B
are hats off to you on this week of our Lord April Fool's Day.
- [42:35]
A
I have my fingers crossed that somebody is going to write in and say, I like to listen to your shows while I'm making crop circles.
- [42:43]
B
Oh, man, that would be so cool. I would love to meet somebody that did this. Maybe we should do this. Yeah, maybe we should be the change we wish to see.
- [42:56]
A
Although I'd also like to know about best practices for doing crop circles in a way that doesn't interfere with anybody's crops, ironically.
- [43:04]
B
Yeah, because I don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to take away any income from our already, you know, underserved farming community.
- [43:12]
A
Yeah, but you know, crop circles, corn mazes. What about a crop circle corn maze?
- [43:17]
B
I feel like we could hit up some local haunts, you know, like some of the, the seasonal Halloween farms, and see if they'd be interested. Yeah.
- [43:29]
A
What about a crop circle corn maze with aliens in it?
- [43:32]
B
That would be so cool.
- [43:33]
A
Yeah, that would be sick.
- [43:36]
B
Okay, more onto something here. I mean, we've long discussed having a, a farm in which there is a haunted house. So maybe this is the. Yeah, the obvious extension of that plan.
- [43:46]
A
Yeah, there's, there's, there's a lot of potential because there's a lot of pumpkin patches and there's a lot of haunted houses. But there aren't that many haunted pumpkin patches. At least that I've seen.
- [43:56]
B
No, it's usually like the corn maze down the way.
- [43:59]
A
Right.
- [43:59]
B
Or, well, a lot of times the corn maze itself is not haunted, which I always feel is quite tragic. Yeah, just a regular corn maze.
- [44:07]
A
But any maze can be haunted by the spirits of the people who got frustrated when. Or the people who took their boyfriends who were too dumb to figure it
- [44:16]
B
out amongst the corn.
- [44:21]
A
Okay, let. Let us watch coast to Coast. Let's get some breaking news.
- [44:25]
B
Oh, fun. A coast coast breaking news.
- [44:28]
A
It's 1991, and Britain has been haunted by crop circles for 10 years.
- [44:33]
B
Hell yes. Okay.
- [44:34]
A
Yeah. This is not Art Bell's coast to Coast. Tragically, this is just a normal new show.
- [44:38]
B
Okay.
- [44:39]
A
For southeastern England. I know. Bummer.
- [44:42]
B
Sorry.
- [44:43]
A
That's why we're not listening to the Chase by Giorgio Moroder right now.
- [44:46]
B
Okay. Oh, I love this theme song.
- [44:52]
D
Wow.
- [44:53]
A
Good evening.
- [44:55]
B
Experts are tonight divided over claims by two men from Hampshire that they're responsible for the South's famous crop circles. Dave Chorley and Doug Bauer say they created the strange patterns with nothing more
- [45:09]
D
than a wooden board and a length of rope.
- [45:11]
B
I remember this.
- [45:12]
D
Men decided to reveal their hoax when they heard the government was planning to finance research into the circles. But some scientists remain convinced the circles are not man made. I shall be talking to one such expert in just a moment. But first, this report from Graham Bowd.
- [45:28]
B
Little mustache Guy.
- [45:30]
D
If their story is true, Dave Chorley and Doug Bauer are probably the most successful hoaxers of all time. The pair, who both live in Southampton, claim to have made more than 200 corn circles throughout the south of England.
- [45:42]
A
And that's what I call success.
- [45:44]
D
According to them, the hoax began as a bit of harmless fun 13 years ago. Since then, the patterns have become more elaborate. Many thought they were made by alien spacecraft. Some scientists have devoted their life's work to the search for a natural explanation. Others have written best selling books on the subject. Mr. Chorley and Mr. Bauer say everyone was conned. And the newspaper which published their story says it spent a week verifying their claims. For the first three years, nothing happened at all. And we realized that we were putting them in fields that the public couldn't see. And we then had to find a slope or a dip in the. In the land that the motorists could see. We decided on the punch bowl. That cheese foot head on the Petersfield road.
- [46:27]
A
Cheese foot head.
- [46:28]
D
And it was only a few hours before the first reports were coming through about the Circle that was found in the punch bowl at Cheese Foothill. The men are scornful of the self styled experts who camped out at known circle sites in the hope of filming the unexplained phenomenon. I can't understand anybody of that intelligence walking and making something of flattened corn and shapes in cornfields. Quite honestly, had it been us ordinary layman and gone, I think we'd have sussed at eight within a year. The men say they planned their designs with geometric precision. Today they set out to show how they did it, carrying the two steps in true watched this time by the world.
- [47:10]
B
And each corn step matters more than a regular.
- [47:12]
D
Curious about this strange article, Mr. Chorley and Mr. Bauer went to work spiraling outwards to make their crop.
- [47:19]
A
So they're showing them doing it.
- [47:20]
D
The secret, they say, is flattening the corn halfway up the stem rope and
- [47:25]
A
a piece of wood.
- [47:26]
D
Basically, day was a luxury for them. Normally they did it by the dead of night. Next day they returned to join the exiltrate their ranks. When they came up circles that we've done, we came up the next night.
- [47:38]
A
That's some wire that he's using to hold some string to kind of make sure that everything is geometrically correct.
- [47:46]
D
Cool.
- [47:47]
A
I don't fully understand it because I'm not good with, with visual spatial stuff, but it's to make, it's to help make the crop circle.
- [47:55]
B
Okay.
- [47:55]
D
And when you get out one of these fields at midnight or two in the morning, we would rather, I'd rather be eating one of these fields and have a week away and then say the France or something because anyone that's not been in one at midnight in an English countryside and you're doing a few beers, cheese rolls, absolutely wonderful, absolutely wonderful. But the circle gurus are not so easily put off. Colin Andrews, who studied them for years, was convinced that this was not like the others.
- [48:21]
A
Oh no, here's Colin Anderson Andrews, who studied them for years.
- [48:23]
D
Straight away we can see this is everything we could ever see with a hoax. The plants are broken, they are rough, the grain is on the floor. There's no symmetry here whatsoever. It's extremely ragged, extremely ragged. And it is obviously a hoax. So is it a hoax or an unexplained phenomenon? It seems tonight that the issue is far from settled. One thing, there will be many more crop circles this year. Almost all the corn has been harvested. This final circle, if it is to be that, lacks the precision of many of the others. It looks as if the controversy is far from over. Graham Bowd coast to coast. Well back from watching that demonstration, corn circle expert Patrick Delgado from alsford in Hampshire. Mr. Delgado, you are not convinced then by the hoaxes? No, I'm not. Except I'm convinced that it's a hoax.
- [49:12]
A
Corn circle expert.
- [49:14]
D
Is there no way at all, deep in your heart of hope hearts that they could be telling the truth? I, no, I, I, the truth they've endeavored, Yes, I suppose they've done their very best.
- [49:27]
B
Just say you think that some of them aren't hoaxes. That feels like a smarter.
- [49:31]
D
But it failed. What I've seen today out of that farm, I had a look at it along with Colin Andrews, and all I could see was that the crop had been been pushed down. And there were things about it that I could see that it was man made. Now you see, with respect, you do have a bit of a vested interest in keeping all this going because you make money out of writing. Yeah, no, you're making it sound very mercenary.
- [49:58]
A
What do you think of our crop circle guys?
- [50:01]
B
I mean, what fun. What fun. I do think it's just, I, you know, I love a hoax that doesn't have a ton of baggage, you know, and aside from the maybe the people who spent a lot of time investigating this and the, the resources spent by the government, you know, it's not a, it's not something that's really causing a ton of harm. It's causing wonder. I like wonder. I like when two guys hang out and do something together and it just seems like a, like it must have just been really exciting to do this and like wait for a response. Like that's always something I think is so interesting about people that create hoaxes is like that between the time you commit the act of the hoax and then the time in which the hoax is discovered and the coverage of the hoax starts. Like, I think that that just must be such an interesting feeling to be waiting for that. I mean, we all have felt it a little bit when we're like doing a prank of some kind between like laying the prank and waiting for the person to, you know, know, interact with the prank in some way. But I just can't imagine doing something I, I, I have too much, too bad of anxiety to, to actually do something like this. But I do appreciate that they came out and stopped a bunch more government funds being dedicated to understanding it. That feels like they were like, okay, this has gone too far. So I think that's cool.
- [51:34]
A
Yeah. And it does feel very in keeping with a pattern that we've Seen many times now in the conspiracy theories of today, where information comes out that should really debunk the phenomenon or provide answers to this mystery that people have been trying to solve. And the very people who seemed most invested in solving the mystery are like, no. No, thank you.
- [51:56]
B
Yeah.
- [51:57]
D
Yeah.
- [51:57]
B
And I mean, I understand that it's really, really hard if you've dedicated that much time in your life to just fully. I mean, it's like your books are already in circulation. It's like, you know, there are times, like, with our shows that comes out, and I'm like, that what I said is no longer true, and it doesn't feel good. I don't like it. And if, you know, I had written entire books about a subject, it would be, you know, it's pretty difficult to fess up to that. And so I get it.
- [52:28]
A
Yeah, exactly. And that if there is something mysterious happening out there, or if extraterrestrials are trying to contact us to help us, which is a very hopeful idea, then that's not negated by the fact that, equally miraculously, two guys are having a laugh. Because also, it's nice to think that aliens aren't putting so much energy into making art in Hampshire and coming all the way here to not give us any particularly useful message. Just give them some circles. They love circles. Yeah.
- [53:07]
B
It's just the sidewalk truck of the great beyond. You know, it's. I don't know. I do think that there would be easier ways to communicate. I mean, unless we just cannot speak any kind of overlapping language. So they're trying to talk to us in math, which I think is what people think about this as, like, a very crude interpretation.
- [53:30]
A
That would be nice. Well, and one of the questions that people also have is like, wow, some of these crop circles are, like, pretty mathematically sophisticated. Like, surely doesn't that point to extraterrestrial intelligence?
- [53:43]
B
And it's like, yeah, maybe it points to nerds, maybe.
- [53:46]
A
But also, maybe the people who do it, like, are really into math. And also, by the way, the reason that they come forward about this at all is that Doug Bower's wife grows suspicious that her husband is spending so much time out on Friday nights. Interestingly, these crop circles only tend to appear on Saturday mornings, at least the ones that these two guys make, because this is the night that they go out to the pub, and there's a lot of mileage on the car. And so she thinks he's having an affair. Wow. And so he has to come clean.
- [54:19]
B
Wow.
- [54:19]
A
And tell her that he's been making crop circles.
- [54:22]
B
That is amazing. The theater of heterosexual monogamy strikes again.
- [54:30]
A
So cool. Oh, man.
- [54:33]
B
So they didn't really come out because of the government funding. They came out because he didn't want to get yelled at by his wife again.
- [54:40]
A
Let's call it a little bit of. Yeah. And they just. What the story ends in is a phenomenon that has outlived its creators. And also that, I think, took off because it wasn't entirely created just by these two guys. Right. They were acting off of stories they had heard elsewhere, some of which also, I think, were probably inevitably human created as well. Although, of course, you know, there's lots of things that happen when people aren't looking that we don't necessarily understand intuitively in an actual world and that we can only find the answers to by studying more. But I love that clip where they're talking about it being just delightful and fun, and you have a couple of beers and cheese rolls, and you're out in the moonlight in the wheat field with your rope and your piece of wood.
- [55:37]
B
Not if they're gay. I know that's, like, the obvious joke to make, but this would be a great cover.
- [55:42]
A
It's not a joke. It's fan fiction. It's the heated rivalry.
- [55:47]
B
It is fanfiction. And how incredible to. To be like, this generation of, like, a straight married couple that just has no idea what the other one is doing. Like, this is, like, this man's entire life at this point, it feels like. And she just has no idea. You would think he would come home and be like. Like, honey, look at the. Look at the one I made tonight. But nope, it's just for him. It's just for him and his boy Buddy.
- [56:13]
A
Yeah, well, that's the direction that we hope that marriage can move toward if we're going to keep it around as an institution. If you. If you're going to marry someone, you should know about each other's crop circles.
- [56:26]
B
I think so, too. But, you know, everyone's also entitled to their secrets and their private thoughts and their private life, I guess. So I also respect it in a
- [56:35]
A
way that's true, too. But if I'm going to marry someone for love, I want to be making crop circles with them. Not every night, but, you know, at least once, unless they're scared of the dark or something.
- [56:46]
B
And, like, maybe she could just come out one night and just be like, I want to know what you do. I want to know about, like, what really lights you up. I think that could have been nice.
- [56:56]
A
But, yeah. And she could, just as I feel about baseball, come have a beer and read the New Yorker.
- [57:03]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [57:04]
A
And be supportive that way.
- [57:05]
B
But maybe she was no fun at all. So it's hard to say.
- [57:08]
A
Or maybe she was super fun, like, cheers. And everyone was fun. Yeah. Maybe everyone's gay in the story. Maybe she is fun and gay.
- [57:17]
B
What do you think she would be doing with her best friend on Friday nights?
- [57:23]
A
You know, we have no data on her.
- [57:24]
B
We have no data.
- [57:26]
A
But just. If I'm gonna imagine something out of nowhere, let's say line dancing. It was 1991, after all.
- [57:31]
B
What immediately jumps to mind for me is looking at tide pools.
- [57:36]
A
Yeah.
- [57:37]
B
Looking for, like, little critters in tide pools.
- [57:39]
A
Well, we are near the ocean.
- [57:40]
B
Yeah, exactly. And then maybe they, like, play a little. Like, they, like, create a little family of all the different creatures, and then they, like, take pictures of them, like the Cottingly fairies.
- [57:51]
A
You know, the thing about Wuthering Heights is that it's made me want adaptations of all these sort of prestige costume drama novels where everyone is wearing latex and having sex the whole time. And so when he said tide pools, I was like, did they see any tide pools in Persuasion? And I was like, sexy Persuasion. That could be good.
- [58:11]
B
That could be really good.
- [58:13]
A
Yeah. Well, anyway, so this is a tale of British people and the things they do. And I find it, as with the Cottingleaf fairies, as you just mentioned, very, very, very charming and nice and great that the motive that no one predicted, who was in this sort of paranormal research area when this phenomenon started, was that it. That the people who did it, whether alien or not, were doing it for fun.
- [58:44]
B
I know, for friendship.
- [58:47]
A
And fun is the mode of fun and friendship and doing and making something under the moonlight. And I was looking at some Reddit discussions of crop circles and, you know, which I love to do for any kind of paranormal thing. And one of the questions was, what happened to crop circles? And the answer is, we still have them. They're still around, but they're just not a craze the way they were back then. You know, I think that the debunking of them certainly became something people could point to, an answer. Although that didn't stop us from growing up watching creepy segments on History Channel shows about crop circles and what did they mean, despite the fact that we already knew, but also, we don't know who's made all of them over the years. And the question of how an idea like this spreads around and why, and whether there are kind of different human motives that we can see in the people who create them is all very interesting. And I would like to know more about all of that. You know, the story is by no means sewn up.
- [59:45]
B
Yeah.
- [59:46]
A
And one of the jokes that people made in this thread, which I feel is somewhat true, although I don't not, not totally true, is that kids today don't have to bend over corn in order to hoax adults. They can just do it on their phones.
- [59:59]
B
They can like use AI to do
- [60:01]
A
it at this point.
- [60:03]
B
Yeah.
- [60:03]
A
But I just know, know that there are pranksters out there right now hanging out in the corn in the moonlight. And if you haven't tried it, maybe this is the night.
- [60:14]
B
What a beautiful thing to do. I, I, I really want to give this a shot. Yeah, I, I think that, you know, the meme thing really makes sense, putting it like that. And it's just like there are still a lot of mysterious elements to this, which is really fun. You know, I think it's nice when we talk about something like this and it doesn't end up being tidy because, you know, both of us love some paranormal stuff in our lives and that
- [60:40]
A
we have an answer to some of it, which is like, why did it show up in Southern England at this specific time period and why around Stonehenge? And it's funny to realize that the answer is because these guys lived near Stonehenge and they could only get so far in a night.
- [60:56]
B
It's like such, I mean, okay, so there are two possibilities here. You know, it would be like, either they had heard about farmers finding these patterns of bent over crops, and then they were like, okay, like we could do something like that, or they just came up with it as an idea. And if they just came up with it as an idea, that's really, really brilliant and really very, very, very cool.
- [61:24]
A
Well, we know they'd heard about this, the story in Australia, but I don't think that there was any media super locally about this kind of thing. I think it's the kind of thing that once it became a phenomenon, farmers locally were like, yeah, I kind of remember something like that. Yeah. You know?
- [61:39]
B
Yeah.
- [61:39]
A
But I think that they were inspired by like, news stories from elsewhere in the world.
- [61:43]
B
Okay, see? And then there's the mystery, right? It's like, who are the originals? And I think, you know, if I was gonna go full skeptic, I would say that, that there was something explainable that happened that wasn't actually creating such perfect shapes and that it was like a memory of like, Yeah, I saw these really strange, like, patterns of my crops being bent down. But from that point, like, it wasn't necessarily that they had this evidence that it was so perfect. But then, you know, you can extend that out into being something else. I don't know. I'm not sure.
- [62:23]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's. There's more meat on the.
- [62:26]
B
Because the Australian ones were, like, seen from above.
- [62:30]
A
No, they were noticed by. I think it was just one that was noticed by a farmer.
- [62:34]
B
Okay. All right.
- [62:36]
A
But again, it's like something that sort of solidified into this thing that could be understood and replicated in these cases around Stonehenge, where it's like, it's a circle in the corn or the weed, typically. And also, when you think about making a perfect circle, if you have rope, it's like the same mechanism by which, you know, you draw a circle with a compass in geometry class.
- [62:59]
B
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that. That was something I was thinking is like, how could you really possibly achieve this? And it's like, actually, it's. You use a string. So many things that were like, how could you possibly achieve this complicated, like, outrageously difficult act? And it's like, well, you just tie a piece of string to something and walk around. You're like, oh, yeah, duh.
- [63:22]
A
And it's like. It's heartening to be like, you know what? We actually underestimate our theories because they're smart. They know things. We know different things from each other. Things that would seem magic to somebody else who doesn't have your background of knowledge, even if it's maybe something that seems pretty simple to you. And we like to have fun in ways that kind of leave behind something beautiful or at least mysterious. It's like, why did we make that horse? I suspect it was fun.
- [63:48]
B
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it does make sense. Like, you can really account for the different ways that the circles look. Looked, meaning, like, the, like, you know, the one guy was like, well, these stocks are bent down in a different way. And. And that would be because people were hearing about these crop circles and had different technique. And had a different technique. They, like, looked at that, and the person was like, how could this ever be made? And they're like, well, I'm a smart person who understands math, and I could make this. But of course, you have to come up with your own technique. They're probably not doing the same technique as our two best friends with the rope and in the thing.
- [64:26]
A
Because they're hearing about it, they're not typically seeing it. The people who Are replicating these.
- [64:30]
B
Yeah, perhaps. And so it makes sense. It's. It's just like a meme.
- [64:34]
A
There's more than one way to bend a corn. And every corn is a glamorous woman.
- [64:39]
B
Every corn is a glamorous woman. Thank you for bringing that back up just in case it was out of anyone's head since last.
- [64:46]
A
We're back in the corn. Glamorous woman. Yeah. And I also, I do feel bad for these guys who staked so much of their identity on being crop circle researchers and.
- [65:00]
B
Yeah.
- [65:00]
A
Having it be not some guys, but, like, isn't it exciting to find out an answer? And the answer is that it was two guys having some fun. I love that the answer was guys having fun. That's like, never the answer. Yeah, let's enjoy this one. The answer to the Dyatlov Pass mystery wasn't some guys had fun.
- [65:19]
B
No, it wasn't.
- [65:20]
A
It was an avalanche.
- [65:21]
B
Yeah, not. Not fun at all. But yeah, I, I think it is. It does just remind me of a meme. You got a template and everyone's going to do something different with it. And so it goes on and on and on.
- [65:34]
A
Yeah.
- [65:35]
B
And it's like if you. I, I do feel that it's always a good idea. A lot of skeptics don't do this. And if only for self preservation in the future, you know, just leave the door open for all possibilities. Like, you and I, we're going to leave the door open that there were some aliens. Aliens.
- [65:52]
A
What if the aliens were inspired by those guys having fun?
- [65:55]
B
There you go. And they were like, we could have some fun. I hate my wife.
- [65:59]
A
And then they went to their own planet and made crop circles there and drank alien beer, which to them was just beer.
- [66:07]
B
Yeah, just. It's just, it's plasma. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think that leaving the door open for wonder is never a bad thing. I think making a career out of a mystery. Mystery might be a. Might be shaky ground because, you know, I also respect it. I like people who are passionate about things and really go for it. So everyone in this story has a passion and it worked out better for some, worse for others. And I just wish everyone the best.
- [66:49]
A
I like that some people just thought to enjoy themselves in a way that nobody could have necessarily imagined. You know, I love it when any of us think of something that we want to do and we know it's something that we want to do and not what we've absorbed from, like, cultural messaging that we should be wanting to do because it's just, you know, who would have thought of that? And where did that idea even come from? And then you're doing.
- [67:15]
B
I would love to hear that conversation where they came up with the idea in the pub. Like that would be some precious audio to me.
- [67:24]
A
I know that it's like we've made way too many TV shows about too many historical events, but this one probably does need to exist.
- [67:32]
B
Yeah.
- [67:32]
A
And it could be just like with everyone from Hot Fuzz.
- [67:37]
B
Yeah, it would be perfect.
- [67:40]
A
It's already cast wheat circles.
- [67:43]
B
Wheat Whe.
- [67:47]
A
Kelsey, you do a very mysterious show called American Hysteria. What topics have you covered lately over there?
- [67:54]
B
So at the point that this episode will be out for all of you, I will have just put out our two part series on the cultural history of dinosaurs and their relationship to American popular culture as well as American culture in general and how we interpreted the discovery of fossils. To me, so many different, very American things and they were used to bolster popular support of capitalism is one of the things.
- [68:28]
A
Incredible how we made that work.
- [68:30]
B
I know, right?
- [68:31]
A
Yeah.
- [68:32]
B
Life finds a way.
- [68:33]
A
What topics have you covered that perhaps someone who likes crop circles would enjoy?
- [68:39]
B
Well, you know that alien abduction series we mentioned? I think the episode that you did of spontaneous human combustion is a really nice companion into this as well. I mean, gosh, it's like we've just done so many things around the paranormal. I am both a skeptic of the paranormal and a believer in the paranormal. So anytime we get to delve into those topics is a lot of fun.
- [69:04]
A
I believe the paranormal deserves, you know, adequate research.
- [69:09]
B
Yeah, you know, yes, definitely. Definitely. And also space for the mysterious. Mysterious. Because when we lose the mysterious, things get pretty stale and you're not out in the moonlight with your boys. So stay curious, people.
- [69:25]
A
Stay bi curious, everybody.
- [69:28]
B
Yep.
- [69:38]
A
And that was our episode.
- [69:39]
D
Thanks.
- [69:40]
A
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being an April fool, a wise fool, a fool for love. We, of course, have a wonderful bonus episode to share with you. And this month it is the Orca Report with our Deep sea correspondent, Brianna Bowman. There's been a lot of ORCA news in the last few years and don't worry, this bonus is two hours long and we had such a good time making it for you. And if any of you want to hear more about fishery science specifically, let us know. Brianna's very excited to share more of that with us. We are putting together another listener episode. I don't know if you caught the one that we put out last holiday season, but it's one of my favorite things that I have. I can't really say made lately because I told Miranda to make it, but I got to listen to all of the voice memos that you sent in about where you're from, where you call home. And it meant so much to me to get to help stitch that all together and to hear from you all. And so I decided that we should do that again. Summer is approaching, kind of. This will be our last episode for June, and I went through a few prompts before I realized I had kept coming back to the same basic theme, which is that I want you to tell me about what you love, whether it's a hobby or a practice person or a place or an inanimate object. I'm not going to do a full Liza Minnelli impression, but I am thinking that a fact that you think more people should know. I talked in this recent bonus episode. I think about something I learned on an episode of Ologies. It has never left my mind, which is that when sharks eat something they can't digest, they can just reverse their stomachs like a tote bag that they're trying to get muffin crumbs out of. And I just think that's great. I want everyone to know that. Not everyone wants me to tell them that, but that's okay. So something that you love, whether it's a feeling, a place, a thing, the moment when you take the first bite of a really good apple, a particular moment of the day, anything and everything, I just want to hear about it and so do the rest of us. So you can send a voice memo. Try and keep it about three minutes or less. I know that's a very short amount of time, but we want to listen to as many of these as we can. We do always listen to every submission that we get, but we want to fit in as many as we possibly can. And you can send those to sloppyandalivemail.com that's our email address for these submissions. It's a Stepford Wives reference. SloppyAndAlive. S L, O P P Y A N D A L I v e mail.com and we will listen to them and enjoy them. And. And we're going to keep those submissions open until. I don't know, let's just say through April. If you're listening to this and it's no longer April, technically it's over. But listen, I'm not huge on rules, so take that as you will. So that's what we're putting together. We're so excited to share it with you and we're so excited to keep heading into the spring. You should know that Miranda Zickler is our producer and our editor and that Nicole Ortiz is our administrator administrative assistant. And I am so thankful to them both. And Chelsea Weber Smith was our guest. Go listen to American Hysteria. That's Kelsey's show. You can listen to it wherever you find good podcasts. It is this show's sassy outdoor sibling. We are the indoor one and I love getting to make shows with Chelsea. I love getting to share our tween fixations with you. And that's it. Thank you so much much for listening. I can't wait to hear from you. And if you want to send something in but you don't get it together to do it and too much time passes and you overthink it like I would, that's okay. I can still appreciate your thoughts from far away and I'm so thankful for them too. See you in two weeks.