Joe Questions

Karen Alexander has spent thirty-five years documenting crop circles. In this episode we talk about what they might be saying: the geometry, the mathematics, and what these formations do to the people who go and stand inside them.

We talk about the Chilbolton formation of 2001, which appeared beside a radio telescope in Hampshire laid out in the same 73 x 23 grid we used to send the Arecibo message into space in 1974, and why Karen thinks it has never been taken as seriously as it should be.

We also talk about The Call, her essay on why people feel drawn into this subject, and what happens to them once they answer it.

KAREN ALEXANDER AND TEMPORARY TEMPLES

Website and crop circle archive: https://temporarytemples.co.uk

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/temporarytemples

THE AUTUMN CROP CIRCLE LECTURES 2026

Karen hosts the Autumn Crop Circle Lectures, running 3 October to 1 November 2026. Five consecutive weekends, entirely online via Zoom, Saturday and Sunday evenings UK time. Speakers include Bert Janssen, Dan Vidler and Gary King. Free live access is included when you pre-order the 2027 Crop Circle Calendar from the Temporary Temples shop, and recordings are available afterwards.

Details and sign up: https://temporarytemples.co.uk/event/summer-lectures-crop-circle-conference-2025-6

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/EjdX9P86ggw

Crop circle photography by Steve and Karen Alexander, Temporary Temples.

Is society ready for disclosure? In this episode I sit down with writer, journalist, and academic Neil Nixon — a longtime Fortean Times contributor who's spent over 40 years investigating UFOs and the paranormal — to talk about where official disclosure actually stands, why he's skeptical of cases like Roswell, and his own theory that we're heading toward discovery, not disclosure.

We get into the economics of disclosure, how AI is changing the evidentiary bar for UFO claims, disinformation in the UFO community, crop circles, USOs, and the movie Disclosure Day. We also touch on ideas raised by Jesse Michels and Grant Cameron on American Alchemy around the origins of the modern disclosure movement.

Neil Nixon: www.neilnixon.com

Under a hill in West Java, geophysical scans show hollow spaces — chambers, twenty and fifty metres down. Nobody has ever been inside one. Before the end of the last ice age, Java, Sumatra and Borneo were joined into a single landmass. Geologists call it Sundaland. Then the ice melted, the sea rose more than a hundred metres, and most of it disappeared. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja is an Indonesian geologist who thinks something survived — and that a hill in West Java called Gunung Padang is hiding construction from the Ice Age beneath it. If he's right, it would be the oldest structure anyone has ever built. In this episode we talk about the excavation that restarted in 2025, the chambers under the hill that nobody has ever entered, a sunken harbour sixty metres below the Sunda Strait, megalithic statues in Sulawesi, a trident pulled from the Java Sea, and why he thinks Sundaland is a serious candidate for Atlantis.

MORE ON DANNY'S WORKSundalandia Discovery Society — https://www.sundalandia-discovery.org/Google Scholar — https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B4LeOOAAAAAJ REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEGeo-archaeological prospecting of Gunung Padang (2023) — https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/arp.1912Retraction notice (March 2024) — https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/arp.1932Betel nut use in Sulawesi 25,000 years ago, Griffith University — https://discover.swns.com/2026/09/humans-were-taking-mind-altering-drugs-25000-years-ago-study-suggests/ Watch the video version on YouTube — https://youtu.be/1ITua46noe8 Ask questions, share what you love, and love each other.

He spent nearly thirty years bringing instruments into a phenomenon that wouldn't hold still for science — magnetometers, thermal cameras, time-lapse rigs. Almost all of them came back with nothing.

Klaas van Egmond is an emeritus professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability at Utrecht University. He ran environmental research at the RIVM (the Dutch national institute for public health and the environment) from 1988, directed the government's Environmental and Nature Planning Bureau from 2004 to 2008, and has spent nearly three decades investigating crop circles in the fields of Wiltshire.

We get into the day in 1997 that pulled him into this research: a fractal crop formation that appeared in a Wiltshire field within three hours of him sitting in it. We talk about what actually happened when he brought real instruments back year after year — and why almost everything he measured came up empty, except once, when his magnetometer inexplicably dropped to zero. He describes watching five glowing, metallic spheres float low over the wheat near Adam's Grave, and the night in 2001 a light came down over Milk Hill two weeks before the largest crop formation ever recorded appeared on that exact spot. And we get into his real argument: not that crop circles are proven, but that the phenomenon seems to resist being studied at all — cameras fail, instruments read nothing, and the moment you go looking for it with real scientific rigor, it disappears. Along the way: squaring the circle, Jung's collective unconscious, and why Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man keeps turning up in fields in Wiltshire.

Guest: Prof. Klaas van Egmond - https://www.klaasvanegmond.nl/

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What if our ancient ancestors experienced the world through sound as much as sight? In this episode I'm joined by Greg Moffitt - writer, broadcaster and host of the long-running Legalise Freedom podcast - to talk about archaeoacoustics: the study of how ancient sites were built to sound, not just to look.

We get into why stone circles like Stonehenge and Avebury may have been deliberately shaped to reflect and focus sound, the "stone tape theory" and its roots in 1970s British TV, why cathedrals function almost like instruments, and the bicameral mind theory of consciousness. From there we go further out - sound as a weapon, the pyramids as a possible power source, and a run through the competing theories on where (and whether) Atlantis actually existed, including catastrophism and the idea that human history may include a forgotten global reset.

Greg has spent over a decade interviewing researchers on the edges of mainstream thought through Legalise Freedom, and this conversation ranges from hard acoustics to speculative history.

Find Greg: legalise-freedom.com

Drone warfare isn't a niche part of modern conflict anymore — it's becoming the main way wars are fought. And Britain's chosen my hometown, Swindon, as one of the places to build for it.

In this episode I sit down with Will Stone, Labour MP for Swindon North, to talk about how a town with no defence industry two years ago now has five drone companies setting up, a Ministry of Defence testing centre going up on the old Honda site that's being called the largest of its kind in Europe, and the Prime Minister visiting twice.

We get into what this actually means for jobs and apprenticeships in Swindon, how warfare itself is changing, and — because "drones built in Swindon" isn't as simple as it sounds — who these companies actually are: German, Portuguese, Norwegian and American firms alongside one genuinely British one, backed by everyone from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund to the CIA's own venture arm. We ask where the money really comes from, who these weapons are ultimately for, and whether the UK carries any responsibility for how they're used.

We also cover the wider picture: Britain's new PM Andy Burnham, the defence spending row that helped bring him to power, the war in Iran, the Chinese-components scandal that hit Royal Navy hardware, and the new Gulf defence pact being read as a hedge against relying on America. And yes — since Will's a jiu-jitsu black belt — I had to ask him who in Parliament he reckons he could take in a fight.

Guest: Will Stone MP, Labour MP for Swindon North

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What really happened when an Indian-Muslim princess became a British spy in WWII — and paid for it with her life?In this episode, Joe Chambers interviews Shrabani Basu, an award-winning journalist, author and historian who has spent decades uncovering overlooked Indian stories at the heart of British history.Her books include 'Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan', 'Victoria & Abdul', and 'For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front'.Find her work here: http://shrabanibasu.co.uk/The conversation covers Noor Inayat Khan, the Indian-Muslim princess turned British special agent who was captured and executed at Dachau; the real story behind Victoria and Abdul, Queen Victoria's close relationship with her Indian teacher Abdul Karim; and the contribution — and long erasure — of over a million Indian soldiers who fought for Britain in the First and Second World Wars.Takeaways- Noor Inayat Khan and the Special Operations Executive- Victoria and Abdul Karim's relationship- Indian soldiers in the World Wars- Uncovering hidden Indian history within Britain#BritishHistory #IndianHistory #NoorInayatKhan #VictoriaAndAbdul #BritishEmpire

2026 has been an extraordinary year for crop circles. More formations, more complexity, and more people asking questions that do not have easy answers.

Dan Vidler has spent 23 years researching these formations at ground level, and he means that literally. While most of us are looking at drone footage, Dan is on his hands and knees studying the details almost everybody walks straight past. His book, Crop Circles: Layers of Mystery, has become the field guide to what is actually going on inside them.

The part I had not heard before is the alignments. Dan's argument is that formations line up with each other and with the landscape at a precision he does not think chance explains, including lining up on the centre of circles that are not there any more because they appeared two years earlier and were harvested long ago.

We also get into a formation that had a section added to it in broad daylight, beside two public roads, visible from both, with photographs taken before and after. Why Dan believes the stems are laid down gently rather than crushed, and why they recover afterwards and grow back towards the sun. The ley line question and why so much of this happens in one small part of England. And his thoughts on consciousness, including the idea that if human interest in the phenomenon fades, the formations may fade with it.

Dan Vidler: https://ukcropcircles.co.uk

Crop Circles: Layers of Mystery, Ground Level Press

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#CropCircles #DanVidler #Wiltshire #Avebury #ancientmysteries #unexplained #consciousness #JoeQuestions

In 2017 I went to the Durham Miners' Gala for the first time. Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, socialism felt like it was breathing again, and tens of thousands of people packed into Durham with something that looked a lot like hope. Seven years later, more people voted for Corbyn in defeat than voted for Keir Starmer in victory — and Britain feels more divided than at any point in living memory.On the eve of the 140th Durham Miners' Gala, I sat down with Alan Mardghum — General Secretary of the Durham Miners' Association, and probably the last person to hold that position who actually worked down a pit. He went underground at Wearmouth Colliery in 1977, lived through the great strike of 1984, and was made redundant when they closed it in 1993. He's spent the years since fighting for what's left: the communities, the Miners' Hall at Redhills, and the Gala itself.We talk about what it was like to go down the pit, what the strike did to people, and what the closures took that has never come back. We talk about Labour, Reform, Burnham, Brexit, and whether working-class politics has a future in this country. We talk about Sunderland — a city rebuilding on top of its own ruins, with a football stadium sitting on the site of his pit. And we ask the question that the Gala has been asking for 140 years: in an ever less united kingdom, how do we hold together?🎙️ Alan Mardghum | General Secretary, Durham Miners' Association📍 On the eve of the 140th Durham Miners' Gala — July 2026

Andy Thomas has spent 35 years reading the evidence on crop circles, and he still does not think all of them are man-made.

He is one of Britain's most prolific authors on unexplained phenomena: Vital Signs, the standard reference on crop circles, along with The Truth Agenda, The New Heretics, and most recently Strange: Paranormal Realities in the Everyday World. He has organised the Glastonbury Symposium since 1990 and lectured thousands of times across the UK, the United States and the rest of the world. His approach, in his own words, is unpolarised. He reads the evidence, presents both sides, and lets the audience decide.

In this conversation we get into what 35 years of lecture audience accounts have actually revealed about ghosts, UFOs, premonitions, out of body experiences and crop circles. We dig into the through line connecting his work: from the case for not all crop circles being man made, through The Truth Agenda's argument that unexplained phenomena and conspiracy questions form a connected picture, to The New Heretics, where he criticises both the mainstream gatekeepers and the conspiracy thinkers. We talk about the AI chapter of Strange and what it might surface that human researchers have missed. And we cover the new crop circle book he has in the pipeline.

Guest: Andy Thomas

Website: https://truthagenda.org

Crop Circle Research Archive: https://circleresearcharchive.com

Glastonbury Symposium 2026 (24 to 26 July, Glastonbury Town Hall): https://glastonburysymposium.co.uk

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#AndyThomas #CropCircles #Paranormal #TheTruthAgenda #Wiltshire #JoeQuestions