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SYSK Selects: What's the Deal with Crop Circles? · Stuff You Should Know

0:04
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, this is Chuck. I hope you had some breakfast,
0:07
Speaker 1: cereal and cartoons this morning, and now you're moving on
0:09
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know selects. My pick is what's
0:12
Speaker 1: the deal with crop Circles? From November two. Uh. This
0:17
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting to me because crop circles are clearly
0:20
Speaker 1: man made and just h there for Internet weirdos to
0:25
Speaker 1: think are made by aliens? And what's better than that? Right?
0:28
Speaker 1: Please enjoy? Right now, welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
0:32
Speaker 1: a production of five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:40
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
0:44
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant and Jerry, which makes this whole thing Stuff
0:48
Speaker 1: you Should Know the podcast. That's right, let's go on,
0:51
Speaker 1: good man. I got on my snow shoes and I'm
0:54
Speaker 1: walking in a wheat field making geometric patterns. Hey, run
0:58
Speaker 1: into snowshoes. Well, let's sort of a large snowshoe. I
1:02
Speaker 1: could see that though. Yeah, that would definitely work. Yeah right,
1:06
Speaker 1: but it's easier you can do something else with your
1:08
Speaker 1: hands while you're using this. That's a good point. So, uh,
1:12
Speaker 1: did you ever have the led Zeppelin box set? From?
1:17
Speaker 1: Uh my college roommate did. Yeah, so you're familiar with
1:20
Speaker 1: the crop circles and the suggestion that by led Zeppelin
1:24
Speaker 1: that it was there Zeppelin that was responsible for all
1:27
Speaker 1: of them. Was that what that was? Yeah? I didn't
1:29
Speaker 1: pick up on that because on the cover of the
1:31
Speaker 1: box set there's like this awesome, very real life crop
1:34
Speaker 1: circle formation and then the shadow of the Zeppelin floating
1:38
Speaker 1: over it. Oh, I don't think I noticed the shadow
1:40
Speaker 1: every Okay, Yeah, that was the whole thing. Like said,
1:44
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin took responsibility for those, right, And by the way,
1:47
Speaker 1: we got a lot of responses on how they got
1:49
Speaker 1: the name led Zeppelin, So thank you to the hundreds
1:52
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, where the e where the A went.
1:56
Speaker 1: They didn't want people to think it was lead Zeppelin
1:59
Speaker 1: exactly makes total sense, right, the Zeppelin in front the
2:03
Speaker 1: lead Zeppelin. Anyway, it turns out that it's complete fabrication
2:06
Speaker 1: that the led Zeppelin Zeppelin was responsible for crop circles.
2:11
Speaker 1: But that's one of the few suggestions that have been
2:14
Speaker 1: made for what makes crop circles. And this is really
2:19
Speaker 1: strange topic, frankly, because it's been out for about a
2:25
Speaker 1: quarter of a century. How crop circles are made who
2:29
Speaker 1: makes them? And yet there's still a lot of people
2:32
Speaker 1: called seriologists after series The Goddess of Agriculture um, who
2:39
Speaker 1: are like, no, this this those people, that's the that's
2:42
Speaker 1: the whole catch. It's a hoax. They're responsible for crop circles,
2:47
Speaker 1: which leaves on accounted for. Yeah. I don't even call
2:51
Speaker 1: it a hoax. I just call it art. Well, yeah,
2:53
Speaker 1: so I saw somewhere at one point somebody say it's
2:56
Speaker 1: the most scientific, most science based art there because the
3:01
Speaker 1: stuff that crop circles are made of, a lot of
3:05
Speaker 1: them is some really impressive Euclidean geometry. Yeah, some smart
3:11
Speaker 1: people are behind these, uh what I like to call art.
3:15
Speaker 1: They're not just a bunch of dummies walking around on
3:17
Speaker 1: a cornfield. No, but they are people, Yes they are,
3:21
Speaker 1: and we've kind of spoiled it. So if you wanted
3:23
Speaker 1: to find out who makes crop circles it's art, you
3:27
Speaker 1: can turn the episode off. But if you do, you're
3:28
Speaker 1: gonna miss out on some kind of some cool interesting
3:31
Speaker 1: stuff if you ask me. Yeah, And what I think
3:34
Speaker 1: is weird is that despite the fact that it is
3:36
Speaker 1: definitely not aliens and all this stuff that people propose,
3:40
Speaker 1: we'll get into all that is that even when the
3:42
Speaker 1: people came out and said no, we've been making crop
3:44
Speaker 1: circles for years, some people like no, no, no, they're
3:47
Speaker 1: being paid to say that, Yeah, there's aliens. In fact,
3:50
Speaker 1: that's something that you run up against with conspiracy theories.
3:53
Speaker 1: Those just admitting that you're responsible, you suggest that you
3:59
Speaker 1: you're Yeah, somebody's put you up to admitting it, you're
4:02
Speaker 1: it's disinformation basically, and that's what a lot of people
4:05
Speaker 1: have said. A lot of people say it's m I five.
4:08
Speaker 1: And the reason they say it's m I five is
4:10
Speaker 1: because if you start tracing the history of crop circles,
4:14
Speaker 1: they originated basically the hoax did um in England, specifically
4:20
Speaker 1: in a couple of counties in England. Yeah, I mean
4:23
Speaker 1: not only originated, but I think um of all crop
4:27
Speaker 1: circles have existed in southern England, even though they're they're
4:32
Speaker 1: you know, they've had someone like Japan and the United States,
4:35
Speaker 1: some other parts of Europe, but yeah, ninety over in
4:38
Speaker 1: southern England. They clearly are inspired in that area to
4:42
Speaker 1: undertake the process of circle art exactly for one reason
4:46
Speaker 1: or another. Who knows, well, I can tell you how
4:50
Speaker 1: it started out yeah, so there crop circles. If you're
4:54
Speaker 1: a seriologist, you will point to the sixteenth century maybe
4:59
Speaker 1: when somebody he's like, the first what could be described
5:03
Speaker 1: as a crop circle is accounted for. Um. I couldn't
5:07
Speaker 1: find anything to back that up, but apparently in the
5:10
Speaker 1: sixteenth century that's where the first description came from. I
5:14
Speaker 1: did find in the seventeenth century, and there's a wood
5:17
Speaker 1: cut of something called the mowing Devil, and it's a
5:21
Speaker 1: it's a devil, and he's clearly making a crop circle.
5:25
Speaker 1: But there's a pretty good explanation for the whole thing. Well, yeah,
5:28
Speaker 1: he I don't understand how this became some sort of
5:31
Speaker 1: weird pseudo proof that they had crop circles back then,
5:35
Speaker 1: because if you look at the wood cut, it is
5:37
Speaker 1: satan with a scythe and he is clearly cutting down
5:43
Speaker 1: corn or something some wheat harvest. But cutting, yeah, he's not.
5:48
Speaker 1: It's not that's a distinction. Crop circles aren't cut. They're like,
5:51
Speaker 1: you know, it's a cornstock that has laid down but
5:54
Speaker 1: not damaged supposedly, right, they yield the pressure without breaking.
5:58
Speaker 1: So this is this is just complete WHOI to me?
6:01
Speaker 1: And there's even more so the there's an explanation on
6:04
Speaker 1: the wood cut itself. Well, it's a story. Yeah, basically
6:08
Speaker 1: a um, a man uh balked at the price that
6:14
Speaker 1: he was quoted by a laborer to harvest his grain.
6:17
Speaker 1: And the man said, I would rather have the devil
6:19
Speaker 1: harvest my grain than you. And so when he woke
6:22
Speaker 1: up the next morning, he was quite surprised to find
6:24
Speaker 1: that the devil was harvesting his green and he probably
6:27
Speaker 1: went to hell for it. But that was the whole
6:30
Speaker 1: story behind the mowing devil. If you're a seriologist, this
6:33
Speaker 1: is the first evidence of crop circles, which kind of
6:36
Speaker 1: says a lot if you ask me. But um, something
6:40
Speaker 1: that does kind of pop up that's a little a
6:42
Speaker 1: little less easily explained, came along in eighty in the
6:46
Speaker 1: issue of In an issue of Nature, there was an
6:49
Speaker 1: Englishman named John Rand Capron or Capron, and he was
6:53
Speaker 1: from Surrey, and he said that he found a field
6:56
Speaker 1: of wheat that appeared to have been knocked about as
6:59
Speaker 1: if by wind. Yeah, and they say there's a crop circle. Yeah,
7:05
Speaker 1: maybe it's possible. He said that it's to him, he
7:09
Speaker 1: thought it was cyclonic wind action. And again we'll get
7:12
Speaker 1: into other explanations later, but one of them is that
7:16
Speaker 1: they are the result of like a tornadoes or cyclones. Yeah.
7:19
Speaker 1: But what what he didn't say was that it was
7:21
Speaker 1: like a perfect circle. And this circonference was you know,
7:26
Speaker 1: I mean it could have just been a windy spot
7:28
Speaker 1: where some stuff was knocked down, you know, right the yeah, exactly.
7:32
Speaker 1: He didn't say it was in the shape of an
7:33
Speaker 1: Egyptian arc or anything like that, right, or an alien
7:37
Speaker 1: smoking pot. That's a real one. That's really um. So
7:44
Speaker 1: that those are like the earliest evidence of crop circles.
7:48
Speaker 1: And then in the sixties the first modern idea of
7:51
Speaker 1: a crop circle came about in Um Australia and there
7:55
Speaker 1: was supposedly a depression in a bunch of grass, a
7:59
Speaker 1: circular depression, UM, and it had been associated with the
8:03
Speaker 1: UFO sighting, and you know, it made the rounds in
8:06
Speaker 1: the media and even then a lot of people said
8:09
Speaker 1: it was probably a tornado or a cyclone or something
8:11
Speaker 1: like that. Um. But there was a dude who happened
8:16
Speaker 1: to be in Australia at the time when it was
8:20
Speaker 1: being reported on. It was you know, a big hubbub
8:23
Speaker 1: and everything, and um his name was Dave Crop circle,
8:28
Speaker 1: Dave crop circle, No, I'm sorry. His buddy's name is Dave,
8:33
Speaker 1: Doug Bauer, and Doug Bauer when he got back from Australia,
8:37
Speaker 1: he was hanging out with a friend of his one
8:39
Speaker 1: night in drunk there. They'll just come out and admitute
8:43
Speaker 1: they were drunk at the pub and he told his
8:45
Speaker 1: buddy about that, and they said, wouldn't that be hilarious
8:47
Speaker 1: if we went out and made our own crop circle?
8:51
Speaker 1: And Dave said, I think that would be really hilarious
8:54
Speaker 1: so much, so let's go do it. So they figured
8:57
Speaker 1: out how to do it, and they made the first
8:58
Speaker 1: crop circle in nineteen like the first crop circle, the
9:02
Speaker 1: first hoax crop circle what you call art was made
9:05
Speaker 1: in and um, what's funny about the whole thing is
9:09
Speaker 1: they made these things for years, hundreds of them, yes,
9:14
Speaker 1: but say the first couple dozen maybe nobody noticed because
9:20
Speaker 1: they made them on flat fields. And then they finally
9:22
Speaker 1: figured out, why what if we made one on like
9:24
Speaker 1: a field that was on an incline. They made that one,
9:28
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the whole crop circle paranormal
9:31
Speaker 1: phenomenon took off like a rocket. Yeah, and people, uh
9:36
Speaker 1: caught on obviously, and started making their own crop circles
9:39
Speaker 1: all over England UM and all kinds of cool designs UM.
9:44
Speaker 1: By the nineteen nineties it was a genuine tourist attraction.
9:47
Speaker 1: Even farmers were saying, come to my farm and pay
9:50
Speaker 1: me some shillings and come look at my cool crop circle.
9:54
Speaker 1: Apparently they were charging to offset the damage under their
9:57
Speaker 1: crops by so many people flocking to these farms. Yeah,
10:00
Speaker 1: I saw where it could. It didn't damage the crops.
10:02
Speaker 1: I just don't see how that's possible. The actual crop
10:06
Speaker 1: circle itself. Yeah, yeah, I think it can damage it.
10:09
Speaker 1: But the I mean, the hallmark of it is that
10:11
Speaker 1: the grain is bent but not broken, So as long
10:14
Speaker 1: as it's not broken, there's still a pretty good chance
10:16
Speaker 1: it could continue growing or try to grow back upright
10:19
Speaker 1: or something. But yeah, I'm sure there's tons of broken
10:22
Speaker 1: grain in a crop circle. Yeah, I mean, I guess
10:24
Speaker 1: we should talk about the design. Say, most of the
10:27
Speaker 1: times are circular, but not always. They're all sorts of
10:29
Speaker 1: different shapes now, but they started out as circular UM
10:33
Speaker 1: either singles or doubles or triples or quadruples, and sometimes
10:37
Speaker 1: they're connected, sometimes they're not um. They are usually bent
10:41
Speaker 1: in one way for a while, so either laying down
10:45
Speaker 1: clockwise or counterclockwise, or if they get super crafty, they
10:49
Speaker 1: can be clockwise for ten feet and then counterclockwise. And
10:55
Speaker 1: from the sky you see these different kind of swirly patterns,
10:58
Speaker 1: like a layered swirly pa. It's very impressive. Yeah, and
11:01
Speaker 1: and again this started really kind of to take off
11:04
Speaker 1: in the eighties and throughout the nineties. Um and as
11:08
Speaker 1: they became more and more popular and more and more
11:12
Speaker 1: widespread in the media and um among people who watched
11:15
Speaker 1: the X Files, and again that the nineties were a
11:19
Speaker 1: deeply paranoid decade because of the impending millennial millennium. Um So,
11:27
Speaker 1: I think that kind of really helped the popularity of
11:30
Speaker 1: crop circles explode because there are a lot of people
11:33
Speaker 1: are like, these are signs from aliens. Are either alien landing,
11:37
Speaker 1: like alien spacecraft landing and leaving these impressions right, or
11:41
Speaker 1: else they're leaving They're leaving science for us. There's even
11:44
Speaker 1: a movie called Science, a terrible, terrible movie, um starring
11:48
Speaker 1: Mel Gibson about this very thing. Um So, there is
11:52
Speaker 1: a lot of people who bought into it like that,
11:54
Speaker 1: and as as the awareness of crop circles grew, so
11:58
Speaker 1: did the complexity of them to where you did have
12:00
Speaker 1: people who were sitting down and coming up with like
12:03
Speaker 1: really incredible math and then going out and doing it
12:07
Speaker 1: in a crop circle form. Yeah, and some people uh
12:11
Speaker 1: use that like it's it's this one is exactly four
12:15
Speaker 1: times larger than the one below it and as evidence
12:19
Speaker 1: that it's something extraordinary and not just people who are
12:22
Speaker 1: good at figuring out design and geometry and math. There's
12:26
Speaker 1: there's specifically a man who kind of um uh I
12:30
Speaker 1: guess provided a stumbling block to the debunking of um
12:35
Speaker 1: crop circles. His name is Gerald S. Hawkins, and he
12:39
Speaker 1: is a retired astronomer who became a crop circle enthusiast,
12:44
Speaker 1: and he used his math skills to analyze crop circles
12:49
Speaker 1: and basically said, I've discovered a new kind of Euclidean
12:54
Speaker 1: geometry in crop circles, which implies that there was some
13:02
Speaker 1: non human agency creating crop circles, something advanced beyond the
13:05
Speaker 1: scope of human understanding. Because if this incredibly brilliant mathematician
13:10
Speaker 1: could learn something from the something new, and that implied
13:14
Speaker 1: that something extraterrestrial was behind him. While his findings have
13:17
Speaker 1: been um challenge time and time again. So he believed
13:22
Speaker 1: that he believed it was I thought he said he
13:24
Speaker 1: was debunking. No, no, he he confounded debunking. He created this,
13:30
Speaker 1: he did bunk um. And the thing is the language
13:33
Speaker 1: he's using, the math he's using is real math. So
13:37
Speaker 1: the average person can't come in and look at this
13:39
Speaker 1: and be like this is wrong for this and this
13:40
Speaker 1: reason and this reason, um and then his I think
13:44
Speaker 1: the real giveaway, though, is his work is not discussed
13:47
Speaker 1: at all in what appears to be normal um academic
13:52
Speaker 1: math forums. It's just it doesn't exist. It doesn't like,
13:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't get any recognition. Even though he published his
13:59
Speaker 1: initial findings in a respected math journal, it hasn't. If
14:02
Speaker 1: this guy had discovered a new kind of Euclidean geometry,
14:06
Speaker 1: it would be in textbook revolutionary. Yeah, and it's just
14:10
Speaker 1: not discussed. So I think that in and of itself
14:12
Speaker 1: is a pretty good example of how seriologists butt up
14:17
Speaker 1: against skeptics, and and the whole thing is continued. Somebody
14:20
Speaker 1: will present a body of evidence and then nobody is
14:24
Speaker 1: either capable or willing to just go to the trouble
14:27
Speaker 1: of debunking it. Yeah, and these things like this article
14:30
Speaker 1: is I don't know if I can recommend people read
14:32
Speaker 1: this one. It's it seems like it was written by
14:34
Speaker 1: a believer. Yeah, it was pretty bad. Um. But one
14:36
Speaker 1: thing has struck me as odd in this article at least,
14:39
Speaker 1: is um. These things are usually like they're big, you know,
14:44
Speaker 1: there're several hundred feet right, maybe a hundred feet it says,
14:47
Speaker 1: sometimes they range from several inches. Yeah, I don't understand that.
14:51
Speaker 1: That's that's called like stepping on a piece of wheat, Like,
14:54
Speaker 1: how can a crop stork will be several inches across?
14:57
Speaker 1: There was some stuff in here that I couldn't find
14:59
Speaker 1: any support for or anywhere else. Like, here's a sentence
15:03
Speaker 1: for you under the title who makes crop circles? The
15:08
Speaker 1: first sentence is the answer of who or what is
15:11
Speaker 1: creating these crop formations is not an easy one to answer?
15:14
Speaker 1: Is Actually, it's absolutely easy to answer. There's another sentence
15:19
Speaker 1: to Um. Even with crop circle makers claiming responsibility for
15:23
Speaker 1: hundreds of designs, hoaxes can't account for all the thousands
15:26
Speaker 1: of crop circles created. Yeah again, hoaxes can account for
15:30
Speaker 1: every single one of the crop circles ever created. Yeah,
15:35
Speaker 1: I was really disappointed with this. I put in for
15:37
Speaker 1: an article update. Oh yeah, good. All right, so we'll
15:40
Speaker 1: talk about a little more about where these are located
15:43
Speaker 1: and what kind of fields are used after this break.
15:59
Speaker 1: All right, So you mentioned in a couple of counties
16:00
Speaker 1: in England, Hampshire and Wiltshire or where most of these are,
16:05
Speaker 1: which kind of makes sense if people are saying he
16:08
Speaker 1: may to built some crop circles. Oh yeah, how do
16:10
Speaker 1: you do that? Right? Here's how you do it. Oh cool,
16:13
Speaker 1: I'll go do one right. You know, it's localized for
16:16
Speaker 1: the most part. And the reason it's localized there is
16:18
Speaker 1: that's where Dave and Doug lived exactly. That's where they live.
16:22
Speaker 1: That's where the crop circles started. So yes, they were, Um,
16:27
Speaker 1: they were concentrated there. The other thing, though, unfortunately, is
16:32
Speaker 1: that's where stonehenges. Yeah. So a lot of people are like, sure,
16:37
Speaker 1: Dave and Doug lived there, Who cares? They were put
16:40
Speaker 1: up to it, saying that they did it by m
16:42
Speaker 1: I five. The real story is that Stonehenge is right there. Yeah.
16:47
Speaker 1: All kinds of fields can be used, um for this art,
16:51
Speaker 1: corn oat, barley, tobacco, weeds. Um. I like the corn ones.
16:57
Speaker 1: I think that that makes a nice canvas. I don't
16:59
Speaker 1: know that I've seen a corn one. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
17:01
Speaker 1: I like the corn ones. Well I think they were
17:02
Speaker 1: corn and not signs, right right, surrounded by corn. I
17:07
Speaker 1: tried to make myself go to sleep. I wouldn't allow
17:10
Speaker 1: my hip for campus to form memories of that movie.
17:13
Speaker 1: Uh so, I guess we should cover some of the
17:16
Speaker 1: theories because we covered like a big foot and other
17:17
Speaker 1: things that aren't real to um so, so here's what
17:22
Speaker 1: seriologists believe. Um we mentioned that it's an alien calling card.
17:27
Speaker 1: Perhaps a lot of eyewitness reports supposedly say, oh I
17:31
Speaker 1: saw some I heard some strange noises, I saw some
17:34
Speaker 1: weird lights. There's a fair famous video called the Oliver's
17:38
Speaker 1: Castle video where you see these strange lights above the
17:42
Speaker 1: field and you actually see the crop circle on video form,
17:47
Speaker 1: it's a field and then it just depresses into a
17:49
Speaker 1: crop circle. You've seen this, Oh yeah, it's on YouTube.
17:53
Speaker 1: But that guy who made that video came out and said,
17:56
Speaker 1: here's how I did that. It's uh, these computer program
18:00
Speaker 1: ms and it's paint and um it's all fake. But
18:04
Speaker 1: some people say no, no, no, no no. That guy
18:07
Speaker 1: was paid off to say that, or m I five
18:09
Speaker 1: kidnapped his family and made him say it. But it's
18:12
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very cool looking. But that is the
18:15
Speaker 1: you know. One of the points that UM rational people
18:18
Speaker 1: point to is like, if these things are being made,
18:20
Speaker 1: why isn't there a single image anywhere of it happening? Right,
18:26
Speaker 1: Because cameras are ubiquitous video cameras, people look for this stuff.
18:29
Speaker 1: They camp out in fields trying to get those images. Well, yeah,
18:32
Speaker 1: there was a very famous um operation by a group
18:35
Speaker 1: of seriologists who camped out at a field um for
18:39
Speaker 1: several like a week or two I believe, back in
18:42
Speaker 1: the eighties or nineties, and apparently not only did no
18:48
Speaker 1: crop circles form during the time they were camped out
18:53
Speaker 1: in that area, none didn't all of England during that
18:56
Speaker 1: time that they were. They publicized that they were camping out,
18:59
Speaker 1: and then right in the operation ended, a crop circle
19:02
Speaker 1: popped up, like I think a couple of football fields
19:04
Speaker 1: away from where they've been campused. Because Doug in what
19:07
Speaker 1: was his name, Dave Dave were like, all right, they're
19:09
Speaker 1: gone exactly, let's go mess with him. Another one is
19:12
Speaker 1: that UM, a lot of people say that, uh, there's
19:15
Speaker 1: this um, this plasma that can form ionized wind basically, yeah,
19:21
Speaker 1: the plasma vortex theory, and and that it forms a cyclone.
19:25
Speaker 1: It's cyclonic, which means that it moves clockwise, I believe,
19:30
Speaker 1: or counterclockwise, one of the two their cyclonic and anti cyclonic.
19:34
Speaker 1: Whichever way that they said the the cyclone rotates the
19:39
Speaker 1: the dog and Dave started doing crop circles that rotated
19:42
Speaker 1: the other way. Then when they were like, yeah, there's
19:44
Speaker 1: anti cyclones, people started making square ones. So every time,
19:49
Speaker 1: like there's been a real um tug of war playfulness
19:53
Speaker 1: between people popping up in the media experts on crop
19:57
Speaker 1: circles saying something and the people making the crop circles
20:01
Speaker 1: um doing the opposite of what those people just said
20:05
Speaker 1: to prove them wrong with their crop circles. Right after that, Yeah,
20:08
Speaker 1: I think the English have a like with banks, you know.
20:11
Speaker 1: I think there's a undercurrent in England of like cheeky
20:16
Speaker 1: mess with the establishment sort of. Yeah, subverse of art
20:20
Speaker 1: and hoaxes and pranks, and it seems like I admire anything.
20:24
Speaker 1: It's kind of neat. Another theory is that down draft
20:27
Speaker 1: from like a helicopter and airplane, a small airplane might
20:30
Speaker 1: push it down into these perfectly shaped geometric patterns. But
20:35
Speaker 1: they've tried to recreate that, and of course that's not possible. No,
20:38
Speaker 1: it's not possible, but that is a theory. Again, there's
20:40
Speaker 1: the the cyclone theory. Um. This was another thing in
20:44
Speaker 1: this article that got me. Probably the most scientific theory
20:47
Speaker 1: says that crop circles are created by small currents of swirling,
20:50
Speaker 1: ring wind called vortices. That's not the most scientific theory.
20:54
Speaker 1: The most scientific theories that humans are making the crops circles.
20:58
Speaker 1: Like what is going on with this article. It's just
21:01
Speaker 1: whacky to me, But that is a theory. That's a
21:04
Speaker 1: theory that some people put out. They say, um, when
21:06
Speaker 1: the when that um crop circle in the sixties in
21:09
Speaker 1: Australia was created, a lot of people said, oh, it's
21:13
Speaker 1: a cyclone. They call it a willy nilly. That was
21:17
Speaker 1: my Australian accent to know, they call it a willie willie. Yeah. Um,
21:23
Speaker 1: And that was something that they said that it was possible.
21:26
Speaker 1: It was that. They also said it could be a
21:28
Speaker 1: lot of things. Probably wasn't a UFO, but that win
21:31
Speaker 1: theory has been around for a very long time. Uh.
21:34
Speaker 1: And a guy named Dr Terence Meaden, who's from the
21:37
Speaker 1: Tornado and Storm Research Organization in England. Yeah, he says that, Um,
21:44
Speaker 1: there's this thing called the plasma vortex theory. He says
21:47
Speaker 1: that dust particles get caught in charged air that's spinning
21:52
Speaker 1: and not only can they make crop circles these, this
21:55
Speaker 1: dust can glow and that accounts for the lights. There's
22:00
Speaker 1: the UFO. So he's using pseudoscience to debunk even further pseudoscience. Yeah,
22:09
Speaker 1: I'm surprised it doesn't say Doctor Terrence Meeting, formerly of
22:12
Speaker 1: the Tornado and Storm Research right. Electromagnetic radiation is another theory. Um.
22:19
Speaker 1: Supposedly there have been strong magnetic fields measured inside crop
22:24
Speaker 1: circles and people that go to visit them report feeling
22:27
Speaker 1: tingling sensations all over their body. Um. I think this
22:32
Speaker 1: is explained as easy as if you get someone that
22:35
Speaker 1: believes in a electromagnetic radiation of a crop circle and
22:38
Speaker 1: stick them in the middle of one, they're gonna feel
22:41
Speaker 1: a tinkling sensation. That was another thing that I ran into.
22:44
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any um evidence to back that statement up, Like,
22:49
Speaker 1: who's finding electromagnetic radiation in these these fields and is
22:55
Speaker 1: it being are they are they reproducible? The findings um.
22:59
Speaker 1: They was another crop circle called the Julius set It's
23:02
Speaker 1: a fractal. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's amazing from what
23:06
Speaker 1: I could find. It's the largest ever. It was like,
23:08
Speaker 1: um three hundred meters nine hundred feet in diameter. That's enormous,
23:13
Speaker 1: and it's four hundred and nine circles. Um. Just basically
23:17
Speaker 1: look up the Julius set Um. It's very awesome. But
23:21
Speaker 1: it was right next to Stonehenge. Like, there's plenty of
23:24
Speaker 1: images of this crop circle with Stonehenge in the background,
23:28
Speaker 1: and apparently a lot of women who went to visit
23:32
Speaker 1: it um found that their menstrual cycles sync up, and
23:36
Speaker 1: then some women who had already been through menopaud started
23:39
Speaker 1: menstruating again. Both are things that can happen, can they
23:43
Speaker 1: without you know, aliens taking part? Did that happen? Though? Like?
23:48
Speaker 1: Who who documented this? This is the thing Like people
23:51
Speaker 1: are just saying stuff and there's you can say whatever
23:53
Speaker 1: you want and it doesn't it doesn't count necessarily, at
23:57
Speaker 1: least not if you're trying to explain something thing. Yeah,
24:00
Speaker 1: I think both of those things can happen. Like I'm
24:02
Speaker 1: a forty and you know, like I think there are
24:04
Speaker 1: limits to science, and there's stuff that exists beyond sciences
24:07
Speaker 1: capabilities to explain things right now that there are things
24:11
Speaker 1: that will understand more clearly that appear to be superstitious. Now,
24:15
Speaker 1: trop circles to me, are not one of them. They
24:18
Speaker 1: they they're just not that's because it's art. Uh. In
24:22
Speaker 1: the there was a biophysicist named Dr William Levin Good
24:25
Speaker 1: who um discovered that crop circles were damaged, uh and
24:30
Speaker 1: as if they had been heated by a microwave oven. Um.
24:35
Speaker 1: So he says, I think they're being heated from the
24:37
Speaker 1: inside by some kind of microwave energy. And uh, there's
24:41
Speaker 1: a god named Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon,
24:45
Speaker 1: a professor of physics, who said, Yeah, you can build
24:50
Speaker 1: something called a magnetron using uh stuff from like a
24:53
Speaker 1: household cooker and its well VOT battery, and you can
24:56
Speaker 1: essentially use this to create crop circles and shoot microwaves. So, yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: that might be possible that they have been heated by microwaves,
25:03
Speaker 1: because that is another way that you can make a
25:06
Speaker 1: crop circle. Um. He says that these crops usually have
25:10
Speaker 1: joints in the stocks like a corn stalk does, and
25:13
Speaker 1: if you heat it up it expands. Yeah, and it's
25:16
Speaker 1: gonna fall over. Um, that would be funny if there's
25:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of platform and it popped. But um, he says,
25:23
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is how they do it. But
25:25
Speaker 1: using GPS coordinates and a computer and a design program,
25:30
Speaker 1: you can actually use one of these magnetrons to do this,
25:34
Speaker 1: and that is something that possibly could happen. Again, the
25:39
Speaker 1: clearest theory is that humans are doing it. And we'll
25:43
Speaker 1: talk more about evidence that seriologists point to and evidence
25:48
Speaker 1: that skeptics point to, and then how you make an
25:51
Speaker 1: actual crop circle. Right after this m hm, so Chuck,
26:09
Speaker 1: there's a couple of pieces of evidence that seiologist point to.
26:12
Speaker 1: They're very rarely, if ever footprints found around a crop
26:17
Speaker 1: circle explain that they're walking between the planted crops. Yeah.
26:23
Speaker 1: If you look at any picture of a crop circle,
26:25
Speaker 1: any picture of any crop circle ever made, you're going
26:28
Speaker 1: to see, um, little lines that go all along the field.
26:34
Speaker 1: Those are left by the tractor, their tractor tracks. Yeah,
26:36
Speaker 1: And crops are planted in rows exactly, so you can
26:39
Speaker 1: just move in and about them, and you know why
26:41
Speaker 1: they're planted in rows so you can move in and
26:44
Speaker 1: about them without stepping on the crops exactly. Um And
26:48
Speaker 1: like we mentioned earlier, Dave Chorley and Doug Bauer came
26:52
Speaker 1: out in and said, hey, we did this BBC. Come along,
26:58
Speaker 1: let's film a little documentary and I'm gonna show you
27:01
Speaker 1: how to do a rope and plank uh crop circle.
27:06
Speaker 1: And apparently one of the guys had racked up a
27:10
Speaker 1: bunch of mileage on his car. I don't know if
27:13
Speaker 1: it's true or not, but it makes for a good story.
27:15
Speaker 1: And his wife was got onto him and it's like, hey,
27:18
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Are you cheating on me? And
27:19
Speaker 1: that's why he came out and said, now, I haven't
27:22
Speaker 1: been cheating on you. This is why there's all this
27:24
Speaker 1: extra mileage, and I'm gonna go public with it. So well,
27:27
Speaker 1: they were the only three people in the world who
27:30
Speaker 1: knew about that for a while. Apparently they went public
27:34
Speaker 1: because the government like people had bought into this lock
27:38
Speaker 1: stock and barrel like there was it was just UFOs
27:41
Speaker 1: possibly that we're doing this like right, like smart people
27:43
Speaker 1: were talking about this. The media was covering it like
27:46
Speaker 1: are these UFOs and these guys are just sitting back laughing.
27:50
Speaker 1: And apparently the Queen had a book on our summer
27:53
Speaker 1: reading list that was released by her press people that
27:56
Speaker 1: um included like some crop circle X where it's like
28:00
Speaker 1: UFO analysis of the crop circles around the world. What
28:04
Speaker 1: was going on? So the Queen was even mean this
28:06
Speaker 1: and these two guys and the guy's wife are just
28:09
Speaker 1: sitting back laughing, having the time of their lives. Uh.
28:12
Speaker 1: And then apparently the British government was about to conduct
28:16
Speaker 1: an investigation and these guys were like, we don't need
28:20
Speaker 1: to let taxpayers waste their money on this, so let's
28:23
Speaker 1: go forward. And they came forward in like September, and
28:28
Speaker 1: apparently within days they were on Good Morning America showing
28:31
Speaker 1: the world how to do this stuff. And a lot
28:34
Speaker 1: of people started doing it after that because they're like,
28:36
Speaker 1: this is kind of fun and I'm an artist as well. Uh.
28:39
Speaker 1: And here's how you do it. Well, there's some different
28:42
Speaker 1: ways you can get a magnatron apparently, but the most
28:47
Speaker 1: conventional way is, like I said, the rope and plank um.
28:51
Speaker 1: So you're gonna choose a spot, you're gonna choose a field,
28:54
Speaker 1: you're gonna create your little design This could be a circle.
28:56
Speaker 1: It could be the mental brought set or the Julia set. Yeah,
29:00
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you want to put it down on paper. Yeah,
29:03
Speaker 1: because you know it is math and you have to
29:05
Speaker 1: work it out and you have to have a pretty
29:06
Speaker 1: good eye for or brain for design. I guess two,
29:11
Speaker 1: draw something on a page and make it hundreds of
29:13
Speaker 1: feet across. It's like these are talented people. You're gonna
29:16
Speaker 1: get to your field and you basically, uh, you basically
29:20
Speaker 1: act as a human compass, not like a math compass
29:24
Speaker 1: that you used to draw a circle, not a compass
29:26
Speaker 1: to show you which way north is. And you're gonna
29:28
Speaker 1: put one person in the middle and that's gonna be
29:31
Speaker 1: he's essentially the little point. And then you use rope
29:35
Speaker 1: and you're gonna mark off your four uh opposite uh
29:40
Speaker 1: marks as the circle. And you're gonna give the guy
29:44
Speaker 1: in the center a rope, give someone on the outside
29:46
Speaker 1: a rope, and they're just gonna walk in a big
29:48
Speaker 1: circle as he holds that rope, and that's gonna make
29:51
Speaker 1: essentially a near perfect circle. In theory, it forms the
29:55
Speaker 1: diameter of the circle. Yeah, if you're taking your time,
29:57
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have a pretty good looking circle. Right,
30:00
Speaker 1: and then after that you start just moving inward from
30:03
Speaker 1: the outside in, just stomping the the uh, the grain down, yeah,
30:07
Speaker 1: with your big snowshoe like things, and there you have
30:11
Speaker 1: a crop circle. Yeah. And you can, like I said,
30:14
Speaker 1: you do one for three ft going this way, and hey,
30:16
Speaker 1: I'm gonna jump around and turn the other way and
30:18
Speaker 1: lay the corn or wheat down that way. It appears
30:21
Speaker 1: that Steiny the weirdos of the world. How does that happen? Yeah?
30:26
Speaker 1: And the whole key apparently is planning it out ahead
30:29
Speaker 1: of time and then just translating what's on paper into
30:33
Speaker 1: real life. You know. Basically all it takes is a
30:36
Speaker 1: little bit of multiplication, some ropes, poles, and a couple
30:39
Speaker 1: of boards and you can make a pretty awesome crop
30:42
Speaker 1: circle if you know what you're doing. Yeah. You could
30:44
Speaker 1: also use a gardener lawn roller, um or the traditional
30:47
Speaker 1: rope stop stalker, right, and there you have it. There's
30:52
Speaker 1: a group called circle Makers dot org and they were
30:56
Speaker 1: very much inspired by Doug and Dave. Think Dug and
31:00
Speaker 1: Dave kind of became honorary circle makers. But these guys, um,
31:06
Speaker 1: they their their websites still up. It's not nearly as
31:09
Speaker 1: active as it was like five ten years ago, but
31:12
Speaker 1: they were getting paid by companies around the world to
31:16
Speaker 1: make crop circles. Um Like they they made a Nike
31:20
Speaker 1: crop circle. They made um like a Swedish furniture stores
31:24
Speaker 1: crop circle. Not d they make the Swish They made
31:28
Speaker 1: a foot like a footprint, like a huge footprint. Um
31:32
Speaker 1: and uh. They just did tons of them and got
31:35
Speaker 1: paid apparently like hundreds of thousands of dollars for each
31:38
Speaker 1: one they did for them. So these guys spent their
31:40
Speaker 1: early two thousands making bank running around doing crop circles.
31:44
Speaker 1: At the same time they're they're teaching people how to
31:47
Speaker 1: do it, and simultaneously, seriologists are still investigating this and
31:53
Speaker 1: so they they they seriologists came up with they're also
31:57
Speaker 1: called croppies, we should say crop ease, came up with
32:00
Speaker 1: some steps you need to take when you're investigating a
32:03
Speaker 1: crop circle. Are we gonna go over these? Sure? Uh.
32:08
Speaker 1: They talked to eyewitnesses and say, did you see her
32:11
Speaker 1: hear anything weird because there's a crop circle? And they'll say, yeah, actually,
32:15
Speaker 1: come to think of it, I did hear something weird?
32:18
Speaker 1: Am I going to be on the news? Right? Um,
32:21
Speaker 1: they check out the weather patterns UM in the area
32:25
Speaker 1: of the previous night, because that's it always happens overnight,
32:29
Speaker 1: which UM enthusiasts will say, you know this is they're
32:34
Speaker 1: doing it under under nightfall too not be caught as aliens,
32:40
Speaker 1: and they're sending secret messages, and rational thinking people say, no,
32:44
Speaker 1: they're artists. Are doing it under nightfall to not get caught.
32:48
Speaker 1: Same we can keep the hoax going. Uh, what else
32:52
Speaker 1: do you do? Uh? Supposedly they will bring out machines
32:57
Speaker 1: to actually measure soil and use like X ray diffraction
33:02
Speaker 1: analysis and electromatic electromagnetic energy readings. They're analyzing all of
33:08
Speaker 1: this information and I don't I don't know what they
33:12
Speaker 1: come up with. I like, clearly they've been forced to say, yes,
33:16
Speaker 1: some of these are hoaxes, like the alien smoking pot right,
33:20
Speaker 1: cannot be explained by seriologists. Um. There was a very
33:25
Speaker 1: there was a famous one that said, UM, we are
33:27
Speaker 1: not alone spelled out all in one word basically but
33:31
Speaker 1: in all caps, we are not alone. And a lot
33:34
Speaker 1: of skeptics say, shouldn't it be you were not alone?
33:37
Speaker 1: If these are messages from aliens? And do they just
33:40
Speaker 1: happen to speak English. Yeah. So, um, there's a lot
33:45
Speaker 1: of a lot of points that skeptics point do the
33:49
Speaker 1: ones that do go to the trouble of debunking these um.
33:52
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named Joe Nicol and Uh
33:55
Speaker 1: he writes for UM, the Committee for Scientific and Instigation
34:00
Speaker 1: si C s I UM and they he basically came
34:05
Speaker 1: up with four good points that debunk crop circles. One
34:09
Speaker 1: is that there was an escalation in frequency as they
34:12
Speaker 1: became more and more popular, which is kind of a
34:15
Speaker 1: weird thing. Uh. They the geographic distribution of him was
34:20
Speaker 1: again concentrated primarily in this region of England, even though
34:24
Speaker 1: you'd find him elsewhere, Brazil, Japan, all over. Uh. You
34:28
Speaker 1: can also explain that by the fact that people were
34:31
Speaker 1: inspired by other crop circles. Um, there is an increasing complexity,
34:36
Speaker 1: which means that they're getting better at it exactly. Um.
34:39
Speaker 1: And then there was the like they called the Shynus factor,
34:43
Speaker 1: which was they were only done at night, knowing had
34:45
Speaker 1: ever seen a crop circle formed. That one guy's YouTube
34:49
Speaker 1: thing UM not outstanding well, which was faked exactly unless
34:54
Speaker 1: he was paid off to say it was faked exactly.
34:57
Speaker 1: And it's pretty tough to dis prove that. Yeah, I think,
35:01
Speaker 1: like I said, I think of people, Um, just look
35:04
Speaker 1: at this as really cool public displays of art, because
35:07
Speaker 1: they're amazing. It's really neat looking what people are able
35:10
Speaker 1: to accomplish with their hands and feet. They they somebody
35:15
Speaker 1: redid the Nasca hummingbird, you know, the Nasca lines. Um
35:20
Speaker 1: they did like kind of a more stylized version of that. Again,
35:24
Speaker 1: the pot smoking alien. Somebody else just did a straight
35:27
Speaker 1: up pot leaf of course. Um, someone did the moth Man,
35:31
Speaker 1: the West Virginia moth Man, the Shroud of Turin. Nice. Yeah, like,
35:35
Speaker 1: people got really good at this. Um and and like
35:40
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, if you look at it as art,
35:42
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty easy to appreciate it. I bet a
35:45
Speaker 1: fun conversation to over here at an English pub is
35:48
Speaker 1: a crop circle brainstorming session on what kind of uh,
35:54
Speaker 1: what kind of circle they can make next. I bet
35:56
Speaker 1: that's a lot of fun to listen to. And you know,
36:00
Speaker 1: a rural county in England in a pub, I'd love
36:03
Speaker 1: to be in on one of those. We'll go to Wiltshire,
36:06
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe I will. Ah, you got anything else? I
36:09
Speaker 1: got nothing else? So that's crop circles. The mystery continues.
36:13
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about crop circles, you
36:16
Speaker 1: can type that word into how stuff works in the
36:19
Speaker 1: search bar, or don't, and then it'll bring up this weird,
36:22
Speaker 1: weird article. Yeah. Uh, and since I said search bars,
36:25
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this uh
36:30
Speaker 1: Chilean camouflage. Hey, guys and Jerry, I was writing to
36:34
Speaker 1: make a comment on something Chuck said on the last
36:37
Speaker 1: listener mail animal camouflage. At one point, Chuck read that
36:40
Speaker 1: the listener suffered from mental illnesses that were practically ignored
36:45
Speaker 1: by her parents, who happened to be doctors, then commenting
36:48
Speaker 1: that that was quite a shocker. Oh, yeah, that's right,
36:51
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, this girl had had I believe,
36:55
Speaker 1: doctor in psych psychologist, psychologist parents who kind of just
36:59
Speaker 1: ignored her her mental issues, which I thought was weird.
37:02
Speaker 1: He said. I don't know if it's just the country
37:03
Speaker 1: where I live, Chile, but we have a saying for
37:06
Speaker 1: that in Casa day Herrero coucio depato. Jerry, do you
37:13
Speaker 1: know what that means? She says, no. That literally translates
37:17
Speaker 1: into in the black Smith's Home stick knives. It alludes
37:22
Speaker 1: to what happens when an expert on something tends to
37:24
Speaker 1: neglect his field of expertise once he gets home. Yeah,
37:27
Speaker 1: it's like here, we say, the cobbler's children have no shoes.
37:30
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Um yeah, interesting. I bet every country has
37:34
Speaker 1: their own. Say it makes more sense than the knives thing. Yeah,
37:38
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that means, but I'm not Chilean.
37:41
Speaker 1: The doctor thinks that a sick child is just fine.
37:42
Speaker 1: The electrician that has a mess of cables on appliances,
37:46
Speaker 1: an accountant that can't control her own expenses, a chef
37:50
Speaker 1: that orders fast food, etcetera. Maybe they're just tired of
37:54
Speaker 1: doing that same thing over and over again, they just
37:56
Speaker 1: want to stop and rest when they get home. Or
37:58
Speaker 1: maybe they're just jerks. Who knows, but apparently it happens
38:01
Speaker 1: often enough that the situation got its own saying around
38:04
Speaker 1: these parts more than one stay classy, best Witches. Matt,
38:08
Speaker 1: Thanks Matt, and Matt was super excited that this was
38:11
Speaker 1: gonna get on listener to mail because he's been a
38:12
Speaker 1: listener from the get go. He says, all right, Matt,
38:15
Speaker 1: way to hang in there. All I had to do
38:17
Speaker 1: is right in. Yeah, you're bad to get on. At
38:20
Speaker 1: some point and Cassa de Herrero Cucio de Polo. I'm
38:25
Speaker 1: gonna get that tattooed above my waistline in the Blacksmith's
38:29
Speaker 1: Home Stick Knives. I don't get that one, all right.
38:33
Speaker 1: Thank you for confounding us, Matt. That's good stuff. If
38:36
Speaker 1: you want to try to confound us, you can do
38:38
Speaker 1: so via Twitter at s y s K podcast. You
38:41
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you
38:43
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
38:46
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
38:49
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38:51
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