You're Wrong About - Corn Mazes with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Can you find your way out of the maize? The corn maze has become an enduring attraction of the American autumnal experience, seen at touristy family farms next to pumpkin patches and haunted houses. But what are the historical roots of this iconic living puzzle? Sarah guides the eternally-lost Chelsey Weber-Smith through the twists and turns of the corn’s corridors and reveals the hidden architects that walk behind the rows.More Chelsey Weber-Smith:www.americanhysteriapodcast.comMr. Jeff's Labyrinth Typology Hand Out:https://www.labyrinthos.net/Labyrinth%20Typology.pdfThe Labyrinthos Labyrinth and Maze Resource Photo Library and Archive:https://www.labyrinthos.net/index.htmlMagpie Cinema Club:linktr.ee/magpiecinemaclubSupport You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchSarah's other show, You Are GoodSupport the show

You see no cornucopias in adult life. And elementary school prepared us for so many cornucopias. Welcome to your wrong about, the podcast where sometimes we get lost in the maze. I'm Sarah Marshall and with me this week is our dear friend Chelsea Weber Smith, the host of American Hysteria and a maze enthusiast. I am not a maze enthusiast, but I am a corn enthusiast. And between our two worlds, we have brought you this episode on the history of the corn maze. What are they? Where did they come from? And why? And also, why are they so dang much fun? I love doing this episode with Chelsea. You can find their work over at American Astoria. We also have done a bunch of

episodes together over here. I've gone on that show to talk about chicken soup for the soul and babysitters and urban legends and so many more wonderful and sometimes scary things. And over in our bonus episodes on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions, you can find a new bonus that I had such a good time doing as well, talking about Bigfoot, the man, or is he, The Myth, the Legend, with the Woman, the Myth, the Legend, Lulu Miller. And we had such a good time. I hope you listen. And if you don't, just enjoy the forest.

You never know who you're going to run into when you get lost. And that's it for me. Enjoy this episode. Enjoy the maze. Thank you so much for being here. Hello, Sarah. Chelsea Weber Smith of American hysteria. How do you feel about corn?

Well, I want to start with something you might remember. Okay. It goes like this. Every corn is a glamorous woman. Okay, I had a different idea of melodically how that went. I know. You were good. No, no, no. It's a... Everything's going to be all right. Rock a bite.

That's what that makes me think about. But your version is better. That's literally what inspired it was that rockabai song from the 90s. But what happened was Miranda and I were going through this corn maze last Halloween. And we noticed that every stock of corn has that. And maybe you can add the scientific term that like hair that flows out from the top. What is that? I don't know the scientific term, but the farmer term is silk, the corn silk. The corn silk. The corn silk. If you look, if you examine each corn, you will notice they all have different hairdos that look very glamorous. And so when you walk through a corn maze, I encourage each of you to choose different corns and make up a backstory for each glamorous women. All right. And sing the song. I love that. You know, sing the song for yourself when Halloween comes around. Yes. So you're pro corn. You're a fan of corn. Oh my God. I'm so pro corks. You would say. Yeah. Which is complicated because in America a lot of our corn that we hear about anyway goes into ethanol and corn syrup, which is added to all of our cereal bars and such, you know, to hold our economy together, I suppose. And so corn is this interesting thing where it feels like a very factory farmed, very kind of symptomatic of modern capitalism thing.

But also, corn, what a delight. I'm sitting somewhere in America right now, and I'm looking out the window at a beautiful field of corn. You are not. That's so... I am, too. Wow, what kismet. Winking in the sunlight. Beautiful.

Chelsea, as you know, I grew my own corn last year in my front yard. I grew like eight stocks of corn. It takes up a lot of room. It's the most charming thing about you last year. Oh, now I have to find a new charming thing for this year. That's a lot to ask. I mean, you can double up and just get more corn. Let's be like, hey, well, it's a bit late.

Well, no, we'll see. Portland's growing season seems to have extended as far as Thanksgiving because of climate change. So who the heck knows about corn frontiers? Who the heck knows? All that's to say, like even growing up in the world, there are so many details of it that you don't know about until you happen to look it up one day. And so I learned when I was growing corn. What I did know is that if you grow a small amount, you have to fertilize it yourself or not fertilize it. You have to pollinate it yourself. Fertilizing is another job. And you take the tassels, which, you know, look like, I don't know, a tassel on a slip cover.

Sarah, it looks like the women. It looks like the hair of a glamorous woman. It looks like the hair. Thank you. The high ponytail of a glamorous woman. You take the tassel from the very top of your corn stalk and then you pollinate the silks of each ear of corn with the pollen on it because each silk goes to a kernel of corn. And if you don't pollinate each silk, you're going to have missing teeth on your corn. So that's why that happens. Yeah. Wow. And then that's why you can't plant popcorn next to sweet corn because you'll get them cross-pollinated. You'll end up with a half sweet corn, half popcorn, and then you're going to have a bad time. Wow. That's kind of, I feel like that's kind of like a rare thing in nature where you can kind of cross-pollinate and then the thing becomes both things.

Both things at once. Is that rare? That feels rare. I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know. That's the thing. We don't know.

Isn't that great? Yeah, I love not knowing. There's so much to know and not know. And so... And still find things to not know about. And still... So this episode is about corn mazes. Where are they from and why?

And this was inspired by me learning a fact that kind of blew my mind about corn mazes because my mind is capable of being blown re-corn mazes and wanting to dig deeper into it. And I'm not saying that this is like the Pentagon Papers or anything, but I had a really good time. I know nothing about this and I find that to be such a blind spot in my personal canon considering my love of hot. That is a blind spot. You're a complete person aside from this. That's it.

That's my only. And we're going to fill you out. Oh, I'm so excited. And you'll know all about the corn maze. Okay. So you've been in a corn maze. What is a corn maze for the uninitiated to start? Okay.

All right. Well, my personal experience with corn mazes has been pretty much relevant. delegated to the Halloween season, and usually adjacent to a haunt that I have traveled far and mine to visit. And you love a haunt. You've done some great episodes about haunts and haunters, I guess, are the terms. Yes, yep, haunts and haunters. Professional haunters.

One of my most, one of, I like to have like a top ten favorite things and haunted houses are one of my, in my top ten, just general favorite things. And the corn maze is, you. usually either a separate thing or sometimes it's a haunted corn maze, which is so fucking sick. Yeah, you just enter one end of the corn maze and it twists and turns and it goes in different directions. And sometimes you reach a stopping point. You got to turn back around and you just got to find your way out like any other maze, but this one's made out of tall corn. And it's only getting taller. How tall? How tall?

is it? Why as high as an elephant's eye by the 4th of July? Yeah. Although that's actually, that's a bit early for it to be that tall, I would say, at least around here. It's for the rhyme. Yeah, it's true. You can't rhyme with August. No. No. We are going to stop in Broadway, by the way. So this is all going to come together. But okay, so you've experienced a haunted corn maze. Have you found them to be difficult mazes to solve anecdotally? Are you good with mazes? How do you feel about mazes? Let's talk about that for a second. We talk about corn. What about mazes?

I do not like being in a maze. I have a very bad sense of direction. I have gotten lost in my own museum. I like to know where I am. I will be on the outside of the maze waiting for you. Okay. Okay. So I, too, have a sense of direction that is so bad that it is shocking and frustrates many people in my life.

Same is true within the corn. But I enjoy it. I like being lost. I like not knowing where I am. And I just, I do. I love a maze. I did a lot of mazes on cereal boxes as a child, not to brag. I would just start in the middle and work my way back like Peter Christmas.

Wow. That's, that's really special. Yeah, it's, yeah, one of your charming qualities. I like depriving myself of a challenge. But, no, I mean, I enjoy. I do. I enjoy a corn maze. I'm run into it when I get the chance.

And I also like entering the corn. I do it carefully and respectfully, but it is really fun to, like, run ahead of your friends and kind of, like, enter into the corn and then say something from within the corn or pop out. Yes, I see what you mean. And scare people from the corn. So I do like that. Is this a good time to point out that we've walked children of the corn together? Yes. it's not integral, but we have a Stephen King connection. Why not? What's Children of the Corn

while we're doing corn topics? Well, Children of the Corn is a story of a strange Christian-adjacent child cult that lives near the corn among the corn sometimes surrounded by corn. Surrounded by corn. This like a small town in Nebraska that mysteriously has no adults in it. And they worship the Or they, it's not that they worship the corn, but the corn is a tool of their worship. And he who walks behind the rose is their kind of God slash devil figure. I don't know. It's kind of a confusing. Yeah, God Monster.

Actually, perhaps, to go with our theme, a bit of a minotaur type figure, because sacrifices must be made to he who walks behind the rose. And of course, into this entry, a swabbling couple. So you know how that's going to go. Yeah. They mad at each other. They're real mad. But it's a good, really Stephen King's story. It's a fun movie.

It's got like a lot of corn imagery because it is like, it's like a Christian corn cult, basically. Yes. And on some level, I think Stephen King has always been good at writing for people on such a big scale because of kind of understanding on a very molecular level, like what are people truly scared by? And this idea that there's something sinister about corn, especially in the 80s, I want to come back to that later, actually. Ooh, okay. Okay. Yeah. And it's like making me think that something unique about corn as a crop is that it grows taller than a person, which feels not common. So it's like it is one of the only things that you can be like fully obscured by, which feels somehow important. Yes, I think so. And also that like, I mean, I was struck by this just doing my like yard corn, but where like you plant like a little kernel of something, literally a kernel. And it gets like 10 feet high. It's incredible. And like it feels strange to create something that big that isn't a menace in some way. That's true. It's like the job. It just gets get bigger and bigger. But that means you get more corn. And you do have to water it a lot. And then and actually I left my corn up just to. see when it would sort of disintegrate. And it stuck around. That's so nice. You've got like this harvest party decoration because like do you remember in elementary school when they suddenly were

like, we're not really doing Halloween parties anymore because maybe our Jehovah's Witness students or something. And so we started having. We didn't do that because interestingly I went to private schools who were like, we're private, we're Christian, we're doing Halloween. And that's great. I love that. But we had like harvest parties for a while. So it was like very like cornucopia coded. You see no cornucopias in adult life. And elementary school prepared us for so many cornucopias. I thought I would have to deal with so many more cornucopias than I have.

Exactly. To paraphrase John Malady on quicksand. Exactly. Exactly. But have you ever felt any sense of like, oh crap, I'm lost in a corn maze? Have you felt like anxiety in a corn maze? I like to allow myself plenty of time when I go to a haunt, so I don't usually feel the pressure. You're often surrounded by children, which makes the whole thing feel less sinister.

Yeah, that's true. Although also, don't you feel that sense of like, oh, my God, a beautiful bright summers day, it would be the last thing that anyone could imagine that I would get swallowed up by this corn maze. You know, I don't think that when I'm in a maze. I feel like I am home. I am supposed to be here. That's so nice. And I will be lost for as long as it takes.

I might catastrophize a little bit. Because at the end of the day, you can always just plow right through the corn and get out. That's what I say. I guess that's true. I guess that's true. But what about what will he who walks behind the roads think then? The other horror movie that I watched recently, like after I knew we were doing this corn maze episode, was Signs. Have you seen signs?

Yes. I imagine you must have. Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah, because it's crop circles, which I hadn't even thought about. But crop circles, let's just say that there are two phenomena in this story we're talking about today. And one of the questions is, how much can one random guy in England accomplish in creating a global meme? And it's like quite a lot, actually, is the answer here.

Because the story behind crop circles basically is just like it started off with some guys in England. faffing about as they do over there. And then everyone was like, my God, no two human beings could have knocked over corn this way. And then it just became a way to signify that aliens had stopped by, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the story I know. Got some buzz going. I've, yeah, let's get some buzz going. I've really, yeah, I've wanted to do a crop circle episode. I know it'll happen one day. Yeah, you got it. But it's a very impressive prank hoax really took some skill. I mean, those are some pretty amazing mathematical designs. Like, I don't know how you would do that. That seems so hard to me. So I do kind of understand why people couldn't wrap their mind around it.

Yeah. I don't know. And I just don't know a lot about it. Yeah. Well, okay, so here's my big question to you. Okay. How old do you think corn mazes are? Hmm. I would think like pretty fucking old, like some hundreds of years. Give me like a guess for a year. Oh my gosh. Um, Okay, let's see. It's feeling, it's giving medieval for me. So let's go 1,500. I love it. Okay. I think that's a very reasonable guess. And now let me read you something that I read in the New Yorker in 2021. This is from an article called How the World's Foremost Maize Maker leads people astray by Nicola Twilly. Okay. And it's about a maze designer named Adrian Fisher, who comes off as fairly unpleasant. And it dumps this little fact, sort of, randomly that made me go, what? Oh my God. Okay. So let me read to you from this New York article. Yet today, maze observers agree that there are more mazes than ever before and more

being built each year. Mases, under Fisher's watch, have become part of the British Heritage business. They recur at stately homes where, along with tea rooms and gift shops, they can raise money to pay for otherwise crippling repair and tax bills. They have also diversified. Fischer helped invent the corn mazes that pop up alongside pumpkin patches on farms across America each fall and reintroduced mirror mazes to Pierce theme parks and walls worldwide. Okay, who cares? So this guy helped invent corn mazes and I thought, what? And then I looked it up. What? And according to everyone speaking with authority on the subject, the corn maze was invented by Don France and Adrian Fisher, but mainly Don France, in 1990.

What? In Pennsylvania. I'm older than the corn base. Isn't that terrible? Wow. I mean, it's like kind of like terrible, but also kind of I love it. Like that corn mazes were an invention of the 90s. Wow. That's shocking. That's so shocking to me. Tell me why it's shocking to you. I don't know. It just feels like, you know, I'm like I'm relating them in my mind to hedge mazes. Yes. Right? Which are probably fucking old, but like, right? I hope. They have to be. They have to be. Yes. Well, I mean, let me tell you about Adrian Fisher for a second. 1991 in England was the year of the maze because Adrian Fisher declared that it was and everyone was like, okay. And Adrian Fisher declared it that year, according to him, because 1991 was the 300th anniversary of the Hampton Court

hedge maze being completed, which is kind of the best known hedge maze probably in England because it's at Hampton Court, which I've been to because it's a big, you know, cheesy tourist attraction castle and it has a big hedgemaids and also guys pretending to joust. I was telling my mom about this and she was like, oh, do they hit each other? And I was like, no, they're just like trained to, I think, hit each other's little plywood shields and then take it a little tumble sometimes maybe. That's nice. I like that. But they only die by accident. I promise. Wow. Okay. All right. wrapped but tell me of your of your hedge maze have you been in a hedge maze i feel like i've been

in a hedge maze i don't have like a memory that's becoming available to me at this moment but you know i mean i've my family is english we've been back to the the home country a number of times and i imagine you've got hedge mazes in your DNA we've got yes yes we've got hedges um but i've also done like what are those now never mind No, tell me. Well, I was thinking about those, like, meditative... Yeah, labyrinths. Mases that you walk on, but there's not, like, walls.

Yeah. Well, those appear to be older because Shakespeare writes about a cut-turf labyrinth and a midsummer night's dream. Okay. And those, of course, there's, like, an interesting kind of class thing at work, I think, potentially, where a hedge maze, like, often they're grown out of you, which I think in itself is kind of a status symbol. They're grown out of U-Trees, not you Chelsea.

Okay. So I'm confused, got it. And Y-E-W. And that's kind of a status symbol, I think, because they take so long to mature that you have to have them as an expression of like, I have all this room to turn into a hedge maze. I have to have someone design it. I have to maintain it. It's going to be expensive, obviously. But also, I have to be rich in time to allow these fucking ewes to get tall enough.

It's a real long game. So it's like a kind of a wild status symbol when you think about it to be like, I'm going to build a hedge maze. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so at least some of these places that are creating these haggamazes around the time of Hampton Court or kind of into the 18th century, I think we're doing it with the understanding that, again, as you talked about in this Halloween episode, that like, if you're rich, you offer things to poor people because you don't want them to come after you. And so, and those are just my read. Yes, no, that's it. But if you have a hedge maze that just the people who live in your village can like maybe come use on festival days and you like give them a little wine and some music and some hedge mazes, then like, you know, maybe they'll let you keep your hedge maze. Yeah, it's like bread and circuses.

Yeah, bread and hedge maces. Yeah. Does sound fun. And. Oh, no, I've been tricked. And getting into the Stephen King of it all, I didn't plan it this way. It just happened. But, like, in The Shining, the book, there are these toopiaries that seem to come to life when you're not looking.

And obviously, there's really no way to depict it out in a movie you make in 1980 without it looking like Jason and the Argonauts. And so for that reason and probably more reasons in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, we get a hedge maze. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I was just thinking that maybe this is a good time for you as a poet and also as a regular person to talk about the most famous labyrinth that didn't have day. David Bowie in it, which is the one with Theseus and the minotaur in it. Oh, okay. Oh, God.

Okay. Let's see. Sorry to mythology you. No, I'm not so good at mythology here. But, okay, we've got... I can help you out. All right, let me do my best here. We've got a maze.

We've got a minotar. Yep. See, all chained up in the center of the maze. I don't know if he's chained. I'm not sure about the restraints. I mean, that's the thing about mythology. There's a lot of different versions. Yeah, he's all chained up.

Okay, sure. And then, I guess, he's got to gag in, too. He's got, yeah, exactly. And he's got to get in there and he's got to stab the minotaur and kill him for a reason I don't remember. That's about all I can say about the minotar. That's really good. It's embarrassing. Well, is there perhaps a ball of thread?

Maybe. Oh, okay, okay. So it's like a bit of a Hansel and Gretel scenario where he ties the thread at the end and then unravels it to get his way back. Yeah. Thesius does because basically he's going to be sacrificed to the Minotaur who I was, I guess learned today. The Minotaur was conceived when a queen, I think a queen, got bored while her husband was away and saw a bull and was like, oh, I want to have sex with that bull and then got inside a big cow statue thing, like Ace Ventura. And that's how the Minotaur was born, which it's, I mean, And not to accuse anyone of a double standard, but I guess it's fine when Zeus does it. Yeah, I guess it's completely fine when he does it. Yeah. Some things never change.

Cancel Zeus. But so, and of course, a minotaur who has the body, I guess a tort, well, what's a minotaur, Chelsea? Is it like hot guy's body, big old bullhead? Yeah, I think it's just kind of a bull body of a man. I feel so embarrassed for not having confirmed this. Hold on. We really need to go back to Minotaur School. Minotar School. I say Minotaur, but it does seem to be Minotaur. I can go either way. Yeah. I think I'm partially saying it in homage to Julie Kearns, who's my favorite interview subject in Room 237, which is a documentary about fan theories about The Shining. And one of the things she talks about is that it feels like the movie becomes an homage to the labyrinth and the minotaur at a certain point.

That's cool. And of course, we have Jack Nicholson, who looks like that anyway, but at the end of it, like ending up looking very much like a bull charging around, you know, inside of a hedge maze, aka a labyrinth. Yeah, very cool. Yes, head and tail of a bull and the body of a man. That's fun. We've got to have a nice silhouette for your coins. Definitely. Yeah, got to have the tail. Great quads in the Amicjohn Wikipedia.

Yeah, real beefcake, that's for sure. So anyway, but the idea is that you have to take a ball of thread into this labyrinth, which is designed by Daedalus, by the way. Dettalus of Icarus and Daedalus fame. Oh. That was the mid-cool. I know that guy. And you have to unravel it, as you said, very Hansel and Greta-like,

as you got to the center of the labyrinth where the minotaur is, who you then must slay. And then you can follow the thread back out to reunite with your lady fair. Yeah. Although I think something else bad happened in that one. But I always really found this to be a resonant image and have always liked the idea of a labyrinth. And the thing is so has basically everybody for thousands of years. And that was one of the things I found interesting researching this. Because I think one of the reasons it feels weird to us that corn mazes are.

allegedly, such a new concept, is that mazes feel, if not eternal, then like, extremely perennial and extremely sort of deeply felt and maybe even deeply craved for human beings. Yeah, I could totally see that. I don't know what, I'm like, what's the underlying biological mechanism that's happening there? I don't know. Like, why? I don't know. Maybe it's like something, something in us that like, you know, like the hunter in us that is twisting through the world looking for prey I don't know that's the best I got right now but maybe we'll come to it maybe we'll come to it at the end I think we will yeah we'll get somewhere because okay so here's another question for you this I think this is my only other big question for you it's I'm trying to

not make it a big pop quiz but what is the difference between a maze and a labyrinth oh okay I think I know I think a labyrinth is totally enclosed except for one entrance and a maze has one entrance and one exit. Oh, that's very interesting. No? Well, I think you are close. Okay. At least, okay.

So, let me bring my hand out. So this is a PDF that's from a labyrinth enthusiast website, and this is by Jeff Sawward, whose name I might be mispronouncing, S-A-W-A-R-D from the book, Labyrinth and Mazes, the definitive guide to ancient and modern traditions. Here's my handout for this class. Oh, I love a handout. Mazes or elaborates. What's the difference and what types are they?

Okay, let me read this to you. In the English-speaking world, it is often considered that to qualify as a maze, a design must have choices in the pathway. Clearly, this multi-cursal category will include many of the modern installations in entertainment parks and tourist attractions, which exists solely for the purpose of perplexing visitors, as well as the traditional hedge mazes and public parks and private gardens around the world. Popular consensus also indicates that labyrinths have one pathway that leads inexorably from the entrance to the goal,

albeit often by the most complex and winding of roots. These unicursal designs have been known as labyrinths for thousands of years, and to qualify as a labyrinth, a design should have but one path. Okay. Isn't that interesting? That's really interesting. Okay. Yeah.

So a labyrinth isn't actually meant to make you lost. Yeah. Huh. All right. In a nutshell, yeah, completely. And I'm going to send you an image here. Okay. From our lovely handout by Jeff.

Mr. Jeff. I had a teacher in school called Mr. Man. Isn't that hard. Yeah. So I just sent you an image from the first page of this PDF, we'll have a link to this in the description. but a maze, which looks similar to the Hampton Court maze, and to the right kind of a classic labyrinth.

Okay, okay, interesting. Yeah, it's exactly what you described it as. The maze has different places that, like, end in a dead end, and then you'd have to go back around, and, you know, you have to find the right way through, and you got to make, yeah. Or you have to make choices. You have to go left or right or whatever. And so what I find interesting to kind of theorize about this mythological labyrinth is that you bring, perhaps, the thread in, not because it's difficult to find your way in, which seems to be not too hard to do or else maybe the minotaur would get hungry, but perhaps it's finding your way out that is where the difficulty comes in.

But why? I don't know. Okay. They're not following traditional labyrinth rules, but it's okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. then we get into, and again, I'm going off of our handout by Jeff, we have classical

labyrinths, which we can find, or that archaeologists have found, going back to about 2000 BCE. Whoa. Right? And then we also have Roman labyrinths dating from about the same period, and these are, we apparently encounter largely in the form of mosaics, if not entirely so. Okay. You know, so it's like what we think of now, where if you go to like, you know, like a Unitarian church or something, they're like, here's, I remember as an adolescent, obviously one who was like Jim Henson labyrinth filled, being very disappointed when there would be a church that was like, come see our labyrinth.

And it was just like some swirls on the ground that you were supposed to like walk down very slowly while thinking about your life. And I was like, I would really more like to be rocked like a hurricane by Tiffany Bowie right about now with like real walls and owls and everything. Yeah, I need a little terror if I have to contemplate my life, all right. Right. So like, yeah, when you say a corn maze is perhaps a more religious experience for you. Oh, yes, certainly. And, you know, I respect the labyrinth of the Unitarian Church, but it's not a, and I've done it before and I've tried to, you know, do some mindfulness. practice and everything. But no, for me, beauty is terror. Don a tart. Beautiful.

Secret history. There you go. But yeah, I got to have the corn. Yeah. Well, and so what I found interesting about this research is that we can see the labyrinth and what you picture when you picture, you know, like a Unitarian Church labyrinth where there's one entrance. It kind of, you go to what feels like the center and then you go all the way back around. and then you're at the center and you go all the way back around and you kind of meditatively walk around it until you got to the middle and then inexorably leave the way you came by only one path.

Don't know what Theseus really needed that string for except maybe as a precaution. Sure, sure. It's a pageantry, yeah. But it's interesting to me that like the contemporary idea of the labyrinth is a maze. Yeah, because I mean I'm thinking of like, again, we'll call it the Unitarian Labyrinth

is like more of like a well no because I was going to say it was like the cereal box because it's flat but then it's not because the cereal box is the maze and that's kind of the whole point whereas the labyrinth only has one way to go so you wouldn't put that on a cereal box except for little babies like you yeah exactly I can't do the maze I can do it I just don't want to do it it's faster to not do it okay sure sure sure sure okay But it's also interesting to me that this seems to be recurring and perhaps spreading a little bit like a meme, you know, which is any kind of like, to my understanding, any kind of replicable, kind of idea, like an image or a fashion or a phrase that can be copied and spread across people and across culture, basically. Okay.

Because this idea of this kind of like swirling labyrinth that looks almost to me like the warls on your fingerprints spreads across Europe. in the Middle Ages. We, you know, there's a, apparently a beautiful medieval labyrinth at Chart Cathedral in Paris. Oh, okay. And the labyrinth is kind of, it feels like it endures as a symbol that feels intuitively meaningful to people in a way that we don't necessarily understand, but want to keep reproducing, or I don't understand it. Maybe somebody did.

Yeah. The swirls on the fingertips is really pretty. Thank you. As an image, because that also makes me think of, like, God, did you ever read the book, Ishmael? No. Okay, but you know what it is. I know, it's like about a gorilla who talks.

Yeah, it's like the gorilla is the guru of the story kind of and like, you know, delivers knowledge. It was a very high school book for me. You know, I liked it when Michael Kane did it in charge of the jungle, so there you go. Yeah, that's just as good. But they talk about in that book, you know, how like, or maybe it wasn't that book, fuck if I know, story of B. There's like several, but, you know, it's like how like the veins in your arm mimic the way

that the streams look and the way that the patterns and the leaf look, you know, and whatever. And it's like... The fractals of nature, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's it. Fractals. Could be that.

That's an easy way to say what I'm trying to say. Fractals. Oh, yeah, I see. So, like, the labyrinth is a fractal of the fingerprint in a way. Something like that. That's what I was going for. And then also, according to Jeff, there's a Snoopy Labyrinth at the Chowell-Sholtz Museum in Santa Rosa.

I don't know if it's still there. I sure hope it is. Me too. But also, crucially, in a labyrinth, there aren't walls around you. You know, there might be some amount of turf, but like you always know exactly where you are and also where you are in relation to other people. Okay, so wait, I have a question. So a labyrinth kind of by definition has low walls. I think today they do, you know. And then in terms of history, maybe we aren't all being as tidy as Jeff is and people are referring to historic labyrints like an ancient. in Egypt that probably did have dead ends or something.

Sure, sure. But I think generally, right, if you're talking about, again, like, kind of, if Shakespeare refers to like a cut turf labyrinth that we know existed at the time, although they aren't really preserved typically because it's just, you know, too ephemeral. Sure, sure. A lot of the time, it's just like some grass or some vegetation and pathways cut through it and not the sort of like grand. sort of heritigy maintained thing like a hedge maze would be. The mazes that then begin to be built for people who can afford to actually build something semi-permanent, there begins to be innovation, interestingly. Because for a long time, there's, and again, I'm using Jeff's handouts terminology,

there's simply connected mazes where everything is the same wall of hedge. So you could theoretically just keep your hand on the hedge as you enter and stay with it and eventually find the centricus based on that. Yeah. I remember that like theory or whatever from being a kid where that was the way to solve it. I do remember that. Yeah. And then I think late 18th, early 19th century, we solved the hand-on wall maze problem. And people start commissioning mazes that have different areas of hage where you can get turned around.

You can get lost without their be. a dead end, but where you think you're making progress and you're not, they sort of evolve as, I assume, as more people get hired to do them and have more time to problem solve them and innovate and then share that information. And again, we're talking about the time of the printing press and of ideas, you know, kind of the birth of the bestseller as we know it in the 18th century. And ideas spreading faster and faster than ever before. So it's like, because rich people are paying to have them built, it's a time of Mays innovation. And I wonder if, like, it being kind of like the age of reason time would be like,

it just feels sort of like a mathematical more like. Yeah, it was a great sanctuary for dorks. Yeah, big dork time. And maze enthusiasts. I'm surprised Ben Franklin didn't commission a maze. He probably did. He could have. Yeah.

A maze full of women around every corner. He's an amazing man. Yeah, he's a real special. guy, our favorite. So, but I guess what, I don't know, I just want to read again because I found this oddly poetic, this distinction on the first page, to qualify as a maze, a design must have choices in the pathway. To qualify as a labyrinth, a design should have only one path. Yeah. It's like different concepts of fate. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ooh, I like that for sure. And what I'll also say is that the corn mazes I've been in, which I really enjoyed, have not been hard because I'm not good at mazes. And

usually there's like a couple of little baby dead ends, but then you're like, oh, we have to go this way. And I would like to hazard that, of course, there's all types of corn mazes, but that a lot of corn mazes exist more as corn labyrinths, where the point is simply to be drawn inexorably into the corn, and then gradually back out again. So, and you think that that's like, say that, okay, say that one more time for me. I want to make sure I'm getting it, right? Well, I think that so many corn mazes are just like so easy that like they're technically mazes, but what if they function more as labyrinths? Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it's like a hybrid. To draw us into the corn. Yeah, just to draw us into the corn. And into nature in a sense, or at least into this, you know,

well, we'll get to it, but like into the scene that you're trying to be a part of by doing the sort of seasonal like pastoral farm visit, you know, pumpkin getting activities that people do. Yeah, yeah. A little bit ritualistically. Not in a bad way. We need our rituals. oh, we need our rituals so bad. We're drowning without our rituals. That makes sense. I've never been in a corn maze that I ever got stressed out about, right? Where I'm like, not even like scared, but just like, I'm ready to get out of this corn maze. It's usually like I'm in there for the right amount of time. It's like, you know, a nice half hour to an hour of just meandering in the corn. Yeah. Yeah. And I never pay attention. I never know what the, what the hell I'm doing.

You know, I'm not like, okay, I'm not like mind mapping the maze. I know a lot of people can do that. There is no chance for me to mind-map anything, let alone a corn maze. So I just kind of wander around until I get out. And I get out. And I'm like, all right, that was fun. I liked that. I saw so many corns that were glamorous women. So they really were. And keep your hair out of the sun. Yeah. Come on, girls. So, where were we? Labyrinths are thousands of years old, but corn mazes are from 1993. Ooh, that's wild. What do you think about this tyranny so far here at the center, perhaps, of the corn maze,

but we still have to find our way out. Ooh, ooh, okay. I didn't know that labyrinths and mazes were different, so that was fun to learn about. And I think, I mean, I'm still just so surprised that it took so long to do it with corn. It just feels like a very obvious thing to do. And so this started in England, though, not because it feels so American to me if we're like... This started in Pennsylvania.

Oh, it did. It is American. Yeah, it's ours. Hands off. So let me read to you the website American maze.com, which is the website for The Amazing M-A-I-Z-E. Clever. M-A-Z-E. The original and stole the basket, getting people lost since 1993, about the

American Maze Company, led by Don France, pioneered bringing the art of the maze to America and to the cornfield. In 1993, we created and produced the first ever cornfield maze for private and public entertainment at Lebanon Valley College in Anvil, Pennsylvania. Until 1993, the maze was seen as a mostly passive art form. The largest maze was constructed in order to fit in the back lawn of an English manner. In the new American interpretation, the Amazing Maze Maze has been recognized and imitated throughout the world as a new and unique family entertainment alternative for the summer and harvest seasons. Wow. We did it, Joe. We offended the maze. Well, okay, but here's what I did next. Okay. And let me give you a hint. It involved newspapers.com.

Newspapers.com, where is our merch? We're waiting for our merch. For us, our merch. And I searched corn maze because I wanted to know if there were any corn mazes predating. Don France and the American Maze Company. Okay, and that's where you got to go. Mm-hmm. All right. And I'm sending you some links. Oh, shit.

Well, yeah, open up your email, and when you get it scroll down to where it says articles, and then you can click on any of those links. Okay. I'm doing a random click. Okay. Okay, and read what comes up. Ooh. Come to Walvedel.

Come to Waldvigels for a haunted. good time. Visit pumpkin land. Hayrides to the pumpkin patch, huge pumpkin selection. Carmel apples, apples. Bring your camera. Visit the petting zoo. Tour the haunted granary. Find your way through the corn maze. You in 1991. This is freaking, this is a bombshell. That's how I felt, to be honest. Yeah. No, this is huge. Because you had said that the, they said the first corn maze was in 92. 93. 93. Yeah. Wow. Liars. I mean, it's not looking good, babe. No, it's not looking good, babe. And so this is from the Daily Gleaner of New Brunswick. Okay. Corn maze. Folks stopping by David Anderson's farm may be amazed by his corn fusion. This is from 1991. A 45-year-old farm

has cut a maze in a hundred meter square field of elephant's eye-high grain corn. Even I got lost in it, Anderson says, of the place he calls corn fusion. Anderson has put signs along the roadside to bring attention to the maze and lure people to his farm in Walsingham, Ontario, a hamlet near the north shore of Lake Erie. It's attracted quite a few folks, Anderson says. At various points in the maze, signs offer information about growing grain corn, a cash crop used in a range of products from livestock feed and junk food to spark plugs and disposable diapers. What we're trying to do is our little bit to educate people who come here in some aspects of farming, says Anderson.

Wow. So wait, did we steal the corn maze from Canada? Okay, so I went looking for references to corn mazes and the earliest one that I found on newspapers.com. So I have two from 1988. Whoa. I have one from September 8th, 1988 from Muscatine, Iowa. Okay. And the other... By the way, that's one month after I was born, so I am still older than the corn maze.

Thank God. Yeah. And the other is from October 7th, 1988, from the Times Advocate reporting on a pumpkin pack in Escondido, which means that according to newspapers.com, the first confirmed incidents of the corn maze in these United States, States was in Muscatine, Iowa in September 1988. Wow. You've blown up this narrative. And I will read you this ad. Fall on the farm. Many hayrack rides

through Mr. Corny's Mystic Meadow, Adults 150 children $3211. Includes many hayrack rides, Play Barn, Iowa Proud Barn, and 2 Acre Corn Maze. See how fast you can find your way out. Join us for Raise a Reckis, Saturday and Sunday evenings in the Country Barn Theater. Ticket price includes admission to all other activities on the farm. Open weekends 11 a.m. Dess or October. Wow. Wow. God. Okay. So it is American.

That's what I'm really counting on here is that we can claim it as our own. Okay. So I really feel like this is a call-out to the amazing maze. That was how I was feeling, too. But here's the thing. The last thing. The sense of this maze for me, if you will. Okay. Because all the sources I could find that are like the history of the corn maze were like Don France and Adrian Fisher invented the corn maze in 1993, but none of them say why. And from the New York article, you get the sense that Adrian Fisher was like good at PR and

knew how to create the sense of demand for what he was doing because like 1991 was the year of the haggs maze because he declared it that. And it really worked out for him. He's designed a lot of mazes that have done well and like you know you can charge admission to them so people can come to like your heritage home and like the article said help pay for the upkeep because those things are you know drafty absolutely yep but also he's kind of a great 20th century example I think of being like I really want to make mazes and so I'm going to sort of generate PR that creates the idea that people like mazes and then people will be like I guess I do like mazes Yeah, because that's what PR is.

That's what PR is, yeah. You could call it corn propaganda. It's creating a sense of demand kind of out of nowhere. Yeah. So I was like, who is this man gone France? And did he get involved in a highly cynical marketing maneuver with this English maze guy? What is the story here? Yeah.

But then I read this article. Actually, I'm going to send this to you to read. Okay. But this is from Broadway direction. Okay. This is called The Amazing Maze Maze. The Amazing Maze maze is the brainchild of Don France, who has done most everything in show business. He's been a dancer in a Saco commercial and the first marvelous magical Burger King in test ads. Wow. In a producing capacity, he's worked on the Super Bowl, World Expo, and Liberty Weekend. France has also been a general manager of such

Broadway shows as a class act and will soon co-produce a new off-Broadway musical called Disenchanted. And while no parent is supposed to have a favorite child, France seems to speak most proudly of the amazing maze maze. However, France is quick to proclaim the Walt Disney Company, for which he was a creative director in the early 1990s as the maze's godfather. Goose bumps. Okay, should I go on? Yeah, go on and go on. Okay, this is crazy. Okay.

In June 1991, France, who'd been producing and directing such Disney World attractions as the Spectro Magic Light Parade, saw some culture entertainment TV clips that Disney had been sent. One of them was a tourism promotion for European mazes. France had never encountered a maze, but the idea of maneuvering through one appealed to him. France's preference for a window seat while flying helped the idea, too. He would gaze outside and see field after field after field, all of which ostensibly seem to have nothing happening in them. Quote, I was also reminded of field of dreams, he says, before quoting its most famous passage,

quote, if you build it, they will come. But could Don France build a multi-acre maze? what are your thoughts so far i mean i just feel like how is disney like lurking in the background of everything is disney he who walks behind the rose actually is my question all right okay or mickey mouse i don't trust that guy no i fucking hate mickey mouse and i'll say it forever i think he's a bad person yeah and minnie mouse is okay minnie's okay yeah making i would believe that yeah i do think she enables yeah that's probably true but she's not bad we're more goofy people, I would say. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was always a Donald Duck person because he puts it all

out there. It's like he's a dick, but he's a dick to your face. That's true. Yeah, he is truthful. And he's got a little sailor suit on. Yeah, he's funny. Can't complain about that. He does a funny, funny voice. So, yeah, I just think, I was just shocked to see that that Disney is involved in in this, potentially. Right. You wouldn't think that Disney would be involved in corn mazes, but in sense. I would think that they would become involved and then make it like a hyper reality corn maze, right? Where it was like fake corn, but they're like way bigger. Yes. And they replaced the corn with screens. Yeah. And then the corn sings. Yeah. But no, I didn't expect it to be at such a ground floor level. Would you like to read us some more? Sure. Absolutely. While he was looking for

solutions to build that multi-acre maze. Disney was trying to solve the problem of making Beauty and the Beast into a Broadway musical, which I saw when it was on the road in the early 90s, by the way. See, we love a spectacle. Americans understand spectacle. Absolutely. Okay. Quote, so many people said it couldn't be done, says France, that the idea was knocked down six times. But the resolve of Michael Eisner. Wow. Legendary asshole. Then the company, yeah, just the worst. Really saying something for Hollywood. Yeah, really. Then the company CEO inspired France to continue his impossible dream, even as, to paraphrase an old Ira Gershwin lyric, quote, they all laughed at Donnie and his notion when he planned an outdoor maze. What lyric is that

paraphrasing? I have to ask. I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, I like the reference. article continues. France's 20th class reunion at Lebanon Valley College in Anvil, Pennsylvania, proved vitally important, quote, when I mentioned to the school's president what I had in mind, France says he was soon taking me to farms. Yet even there, France was met with resistance. Quote, the first farmer says, I spend a lot of time keeping kids out of there. That's not a Pennsylvania accent. I don't. can't do that. He says, chuckling with understanding of the man's plight, the way the second said, I plant corn, I grow it, I harvest it, made me see nothing would happen there too. If we're not careful, this is going to be made into a Matthew McConaughey movie. Yeah, I could see that. I would also see it. Or actually, Roger Bart. Yeah. That's who I go with. So I guess what's happening here is farmers are like, this is my corn. Why would I? cut my corn into a maze. I hate children and they come in here. Why would I do something so silly?

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Third time was the charm. A farmer who had three acres to spare told France that he'd been clearing $200 an acre in a year when the sun, rain, and insects had all cooperated. That was enough to start France negotiating. Quote, I told him I'd even give half the corn back to him. He adds with a grin. And the article says, indeed, you can't have a maze without. getting rid of some of the corn. That's so true. It's so true. It's so true. France is calling his company The Amazing Maze Maze had its roots in Disney too, albeit

in a roundabout way. It started when France was asked to guide the Broadway-producing, directing legend Hal Prince, of Phantom of the Opera Fame, and his family around Disney World. Prince was so impressed with France's three-day excursion that he

recommended it to his most famous collaborator, Stephen Sondheim. What? Of Into the Woods fame. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. So France gave Sondheim the deluxe tour as well. This, I cannot believe this, all sarcast. Right?

This is crazy. Wow, okay. They kept in touch, and at dinner one night, Sonheim asked about France's immediate plans, quote. And when I told him, says France, with wonder still in his voice, Steve immediately said without missing a beat. Steve, of course. It's like, so funny. Steve immediately said without missing a beat, the amazing maze, maze, fuck, no way. Wow. Yes, no less than Steven Sondheim gave me the name and that convinced me that this was destiny. Isn't that beautiful? Wow. And then he brings on Adrian Fisher to design it, yada, yada, yada. That is incredible. And that leads me to the fact. that in many parts of America, certainly around Portland, and certainly I'm sure still in Muscatine, Iowa and lots of other places, areas where there used to be family farms that grew

and sold crops now have farm attractions. And one of the biggest farm attractions, I think, that has spread across North America, I would say at this point, is the corn maze. Yeah. And what's interesting is that I'm sure that the amazing maze maze, if you look it up, like, it was on Good Morning America. You've got Adrian Fisher, who's good at PR for his mazes. You've got Don France, who is working at Disney. And like, I love him. Okay?

Like, as far as I know, we are cut from the same cloth where, like, you've got to a certain point in life. You've accomplished a certain amount artistically that you set out to. And one day you wake up and you think, corn. And people are like, what are you doing? doing? And you're like, what are you excited about lately? And you're like, well, porn. Corn. Yes. And, you know, that it was, um, the first amazing maze maze built in 1993 was in the shape of a dinosaur. Some of the proceeds went to flood relief, you know, and it was built as the article talks about on a farmer's fields where the economics of growing corn in that space meant that you

could get about $200. But if you charged admission for that amount of, you know, of corn, you could get more hundred dollars. Yeah, that makes, that makes perfect sense. And can I float to you two theories about corn mazes and heged mazes, one of which I feel more confident about? Yes. Are these your theories? Yes. Okay. Hit me. Okay. So in England, in a way that probably affects the spread of corn mazes in the early 90s, everyone is like newly excited about hedge mazes, partly because Adrian Fisher is good at creating work for himself, but also partly because there's something innate in people. I think we agree based on this conversation that wants to be in a maze and that wants to be in a scary situation that isn't too scary, or in your case,

not scary, but at least a vexing situation. Or just to be forced to be exposed to nature for about an hour in a way that you can't abandon in the middle. And I find it interesting that there is also enough hagged maize building to keep maze designers in business, at least to an extent. Yeah. And why are people building all these haged mazes at the time? And my theory is that it's because throughout the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and her pack help destroy labor rights and the working class. And as in the United States, where something similar is going on in the 80s, when the working

class and the concept of labor rights and union households are being. being crushed by the executive office, then what remains, or one of the demographics that remains, are people who, rather than identifying as pro-labor and as working class, now identify as aspiring middle class or aspiring upper-middle class as they continue up the ladder. And so, I wonder if in hedge maze England of the late 80s and early 90s, there's this people want to buy more hedge mazes because if more people are buying property and if there's a sense of glass mobility perhaps happening underneath you that makes you like what you have a little bit less. Maybe you need a giant status symbol like a hedge maze. Okay. Which says not only am I here,

but I'm going to be here for a really long time. And in fact, I've always been here and I'll always be here. Wow. And you are distemporary because you have no hagged maze. Wow. And I'll let you into my hedge maze so you could feel what it's like for an hour and then I'll cast you back out. It's the bread and circuses thing a little bit. And then I'll feed you to my bull baby. My hot beefcake bowl. No, I think that's very interesting. That's like your your sociology coming through there, right? I mean, it's like I think that makes sense. Like what you said, like what you said with the length of time it takes. It's like, it's exactly what you're saying is you're investing in idea. What status symbol like saying, I know exactly where I'm going to be in a decade and it's

right here? Yeah. Yeah. I like that. And I mean, and on a less theoretical level, I think probably more seems less theory and just more materially real level, the 1980s or the decade of America's farm crisis where basically an unbelievable number of farmers go out of business for various factors, partly that many of them were very overextended with loans, had been encouraged to take out loans or to mortgage, more land, or more expensive equipment because United States agriculture in the 1970s was being used to feed the world. And then circumstances change. Gas prices went up.

Interest rates went way up. Banks started freaking out and deciding that they needed to collect what farmers owed on a loan immediately, as opposed to over the course of many years, and there is just this chain reaction of, you know, really an entire livelihood collapsing in many places. Yeah. And families losing farms and people losing livelihoods and their homes and their relationship to the land, but also I think a huge milestone in the story of Americans troubled relationship with the land and being sort of forced off of it by banks in this case. Wow.

And let me float something else. Okay. So like everything you're saying is I think so right on. But then it's like you have to do what the rest of America has done in the last, you know, few decades is pivot toward entertainment as our expert, right? So it's like I wonder if the kind of farm as entertainment also is coming about at the same time. The farm as Disneyland. really. Yeah. Like the little teensky Disneyland's you can go to. Yeah. Yeah. Because it just,

it wasn't cutting it otherwise. Yeah. Because the way you endure is to evolve and become a little theme park. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, the farm crisis happened because so much of the time, the amount of money that it costs to run a farm, you got less money back at the end of a season. Yeah. So you have to make a corn maze to survive. So corn mazes are fun. But also, I think they proliferated in the early 90s, and we see our first newspapers.com incidents of a corn maze in Muscatine, Iowa, the epicenter of America's farm crisis. Yeah. They're a sign of the American farmer surviving. And also it makes total sense based on what you're saying that then the quote first, and like the language of that website is weird.

They're like, formally a passive form of entertainment. It's like, yeah, I guess it's fair to say that this is the first actively entertaining. corn maze because it's really, really big, and it looks like a dinosaur. Like, it's the first one, maybe we, I don't know, but also, according to newspapers.com, random American farms had corn mazes as early as 1988. And so I think we're looking at something where somebody didn't invent something, but they did help popularize it and spread it as a way for people to survive. But also, the American farmer and the American farmer's cute little kids thought of it first.

Yeah. Thank you and good night. Thank you and good night. Wow. Wow. Wow. What a journey. What a journey through the maze.

Let's go get a corn dog. Let's get a corn dog. And like, man, I just, I did not expect any of this. Yeah, I just, I loved doing this. And I will never go through a corn maze. the same way again. That's for damn sure. I love doing this with you too. And like you say, love the corn, respect the corn. If you want to add something delicious to your summer salad, go get in your sweet corn for probably 50 cents and just put some fresh corn in your salad. Oh my gosh, corn.

Great. It's kissed the best. Grill it up. Leave it in the friggin, it's friggin little jacket. It's a green little jacket. Husk. Husk. And I'll just say, Sarah, thank you. This was so much fun. Stay safe in the maze. There's corn to eat if you get lost. And I just want to reiterate one more thing, if that's okay. Yeah.

Every court is a glamorous woman. Every court is a glamorous woman. Every court is a glamorous woman. And that was our episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to the Eternal Explorer, Chelsea Weber-Smith, for bringing us to the places

that I certainly would be too scared to go to on my own. Thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing and producing. Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing. And of course, make sure to check out American Astaire. area, and all the episodes Chelsea and I have worked on together over the years. We've had so much fun. Thank you also to Miranda Zickler and Magpie Cinema Club for their rendition of every corn is a glamorous woman, which in my opinion is the song of the summer. Thank you for being in the corn with us. We'll see you next time.

Thank you.