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