Enter en masse crossword tv#

We’d been in various stages of lockdown for about four months by then. But July 2020, I think it was particularly unnerving. Heath: I think it would have been strange any year, to have started receiving these packages. ( The unnerving music dissipates, replaced by low and slow drones.)

Longoria: I had no memory of this news story, but apparently these seeds turned up all over the country last summer-tens of thousands of unsolicited seed packages. Interviewee 1: I guess it’s something that’s been going around the area. As far as they were concerned, they had no idea why they were being sent them.

Heath: There’s nothing on the package that seemed to explain what the seeds were, but they were addressed to the people who received them. Viel: The USDA has now put out a warning saying not to open these packages or even plant the seeds. (Fades under.)īay News 9 host: (Fades back up.) Some are being called “mystery seeds” and they have appeared in mailboxes in more than two dozen states. Heath: People all over America had started receiving these completely baffling packages that appeared to have Chinese writing on.īay News 9 host: The packages, some of them seen here from the Tampa Bay Times, are usually marked with Chinese characters.

Williams: People have been receiving mysterious packages that they did not order. Interviewee 1: No idea where it came from. ( Another melody, high but similarly bumbling, adds a layer of strangeness to the background.)ĬBSN host Jasmine Viel: People across the country are getting unsolicited packages. Williams : What’s behind this rather odd phenomenon?

Enter en masse crossword tv#

Heath: You know, it was in most people’s newspapers, and it was on TV all over the place. ( A low, intense, bumbling melody plays, like a much darker “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”)ĪBC6 host Rick Williams: It has been happening all across the nation, including right here in our area. Longoria: In the summer of 2020, writer Chris Heath noticed a strange national news story. Um, where should we start?Ĭhris Heath: Last summer-people might be aware-there was a story that bubbled in the media for a couple of weeks. Julia Longoria: Just start from the very, very beginning. This week on The Experiment, the host Julia Longoria speaks with the writer Chris Heath about his investigation of mystery seeds for The Atlantic, the byzantine world of international e-commerce, and the dangers of both panic and reason.įurther reading: “ The Truth Behind the Amazon Mystery Seeds.” This article is part of “ Shadowland,” a project about conspiracy thinking in America.Ī transcript of this episode is presented below: Despite large-scale USDA testing of the packages, the mystery remained: Who sent the seeds and why? Recipients reported the packages to local police, news stations, and agriculture departments searched message boards for explanations and theorized about conspiracies including election interference and biowarfare. Last summer, an unexplained phenomenon gripped nightly newscasts and Facebook groups across America: Unsolicited deliveries of obscurely labeled seed packages, seemingly from China, were being sent to Americans’ homes.