Why do Flat Earthers Need Yachts?

"Look, look!" There he comes with another branch!" Frans pointed excitedly at the little creature swimming in the distance—a lapwing—who was currently in the process of building its nest on the back of the neighboring boat. Three hours ago, Sara and I had stepped off the dock—while firmly gripping the roof because, with our sense of balance, you could never be sure—and boarded the Falcon, a cozy yacht bobbing in the harbor of the island of Maurik. Now, our legs were folded through the railing as we sat on the ship’s deck, dangling our feet above the blue water. It was one of those April days that tricks you into thinking the bad times are over: the sky was blue and free of clouds, the wind refreshing instead of freezing-your-fingers-off cold, and the sun stroked my skin with warmth. The three of us watched in a trance as the little lapwing passed us by—branch in beak and all— offering this latest addition to his mate guarding the nest before returning to the waters, continuing his quest. While the boat gently rocked on the waves beneath us, the scene felt so peaceful that I had to keep reminding myself that the man eating his sandwich and drinking his coconut-flavored Mogu Mogu next to me was the founder of the Flat Earth Society in the Netherlands—a well-known scholar on UFOs, extraterrestrial creatures, government-altered vaccines (and all type of schemes for that sake). "You sure you girls don’t want me to make you a sandwich?" In the background, the sounds of Frans rummaging through his tiny kitchen drifted toward us—pots clinking, a cupboard slamming shut, and the rustle of paper as he searched for some Flat Earth maps we could take home. Without looking away, Sara murmured under her breath, “This is almost better than watching television.”

Especially from the back of a flat-earthers yacht.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a thing—this tiny obsession—for conspiracy theories, for the strange and the mystic, for the big glowing “what if?”. When I was a kid, my brother and I would spend all our TV time hijacking the remote and switching to Discovery Channel (unless Phineas and Ferb was on,  priorities), watching–much to my mother's despair–hours of documentaries about the Mayan calendar and the enigma of Stonehenge. Not to mention our daily concern about what we were going to do about the haunting mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. I mean, someone had to worry about it—it might as well be us. But how did I end up on a flat-earthers yacht, of all places?

To answer that, we have to rewind a few years. When I was about sixteen, I met Sara–the girl who would trade her TV for a lapwing, and to this day, one of my closest friends–someone who seemed to share my passion for turning dumb shower thoughts into socratic debates and the mission to annoy everyone around us with the irritating ¨but why is the sky blue¨ mindset of a 5-year-old. When the time for our graduation project arrived—2019, pre-Corona & peak flat Earth meme era—it felt like there were no questions left to ask. Now was the time to turn our love for side questing into a real academic endeavor: we were going to make a documentary about the Flat Earth Society in the Netherlands. Picture this: two slightly anxious teenage girls in that denched, hideous blue car I used to drive in high school, parked somewhere deep in the Dutch Bible Belt. It turned out the Netherlands wasn’t just active in the Flat Earth scene—no, the founder and main speaker of the European Flat Earth Conference and the annual Dutch "Earth and Beyond", was one of our own. And guess what? Somehow, we’d landed an interview with this conspiracy-demigod, Frans Heslinga (who had recently appeared on RTL Late Night, by the way). We were totally out of our depth—awkward, excited, and over-caffeinated.The plan? A documentary about conspiracy theorists. The goal? Honestly, I just wanted to see what would happen. When we met Frans that afternoon, he greeted us warmly, as if we were old friends rather than two teenagers with borrowed equipment and zero credentials. We spent hours talking about everything from the shape of the Earth to government cover-ups, and at the end of the interview, as we were packing up, he looked at us and said something I’ll never forget: “I know you girls don’t believe everything I’ve said. But today I’ve planted a seed of curiosity in your hearts.”

And Lord, was he right. That afternoon stuck with us. Sara still brings it up whenever we go on one of our weird little tangents. And me? Those stories have been looping in the back of my brain for years, like background music in a dream I can’t quite leave behind. Flash forward five years later. I’m sitting in the office of Slim Radio, brainstorming themes for our upcoming magazine. Someone throws out Freak! as a concept. Without a question, I knew this was the perfect opportunity. Time to see Frans. So here I am, five years later, no longer in that hideous blue car from high school, but on a train gliding past trees instead of Love Jesus slogans (however, still accompanied by a yapping Sara beside me). 

As you would say in Dutch, the journey towards our flat earther was quite a birth. The morning was akin to a puddle of chaos, laying face down in unforeseen waters. We probably should’ve guessed there wouldn’t be Ubers in the middle of nowhere, but hope dies last, right? However, the moment we stepped out of the car near the harbor, something shifted. The chaos evaporated. It felt like we had entered a parallel universe—a bubble peacefully floating through space and time like one of those soap bubbles kids are obsessed with. Frans was waiting for us at the gates, looking absurdly calm, as if he’d just stepped out of a Scandinavian wellness retreat instead of a conspiratorial echo chamber. We hugged him immediately. The familiarity was unsettling. We hadn’t seen this man in half a decade, and yet we were chatting like old friends, not vague acquaintances who had once shared a few coffees and exactly zero follow-up messages.

Frans had always given off this... vibe. Calming, yet strange. I remembered five years ago, standing outside the restaurant too early, nervously scanning faces. For some reason, I had this deeply misguided confidence that we’d recognize him instantly. It’s as if being a flat earther would be physically obvious—like he’d have a compass tattooed on his forehead or be wearing a T-shirt that screamed “NASA IS LYING” in Comic Sans. But no. When he walked in, he looked like a misplaced sociology professor on sabbatical. No mohawk. No piercings. No tinfoil hat. He is just a guy in his fifties who could’ve been cast as the gardening neighbor in Modern Family. Friendly. Safe. Deceptively beige.  And yet, there was something else. You couldn’t quite pin it down. It wasn’t his words or tone—it was something beneath all that. An aura, maybe. The kind of energy that makes you think, I would follow this man into the forest and give up all my belongings if he asked nicely enough. Later, when I tried to explain him to my friends, I just said: “He has cult leader vibes.” And they got it immediately. That glow. That strange ability to make utter nonsense feels like an unshakable truth. One moment, you’re driving around in that hideous blue car, crying from laughter at the Flat Earth anthem playing on a busted stereo in, and the next, you’re solemnly nodding as a near-stranger explains—for three hours straight—how the Earth is just like that cheesecake in the bakery window: flat and sealed by a transparent dome. Five years later, you find yourself walking across a creaky wooden dock. When Frans gestures vaguely at some water stains and mutters something about "the rising tides, the signs are everywhere¨, you, ever the voice of reason, try to mention something about global warming. He laughs in your face. Not kindly. More like you just suggested that Milka bars are manufactured by actual purple cows. And even though you're, hopefully, not that naive teenage girl anymore, you somehow feel embarrassed? You catch yourself thinking, “Why did I say something so obviously stupid?” And that, my friend, is the power of Frans.

After Sara and I had carefully ducked down and stepped on board the Falcon, we instantly found ourselves in a different dimension—part cozy living room, part conspiracy command center. While Frans busied himself in the kitchen, putting on water for tea, Sara and I took in the scene. The air was thick with the scent of incense and the strange, swirling tones of psychedelic music—the kind you’d expect in a desert ayahuasca ceremony or maybe a B-movie about one. Around us: a cluttered constellation of curiosities. There were ancient-looking compasses, old radios, stones in suspicious patterns, and one massive, yellowed map that looked like Earth’s weirder cousin. I squinted at the paper. It looked like a flattened Earth—familiar, but something drawn in the Middle Ages. When Frans reappeared, handing us mugs of tea, I pointed to the map. “What is this?¨ “That’s Gleason’s New Standard Map of the World,” he said proudly, ¨The model followed by most flat earthers.” He explained it like a bedtime story. “Imagine slicing through a tree: you’d see rings, right?” Earth, according to Frans, works the same way. In the center is our Earth—our known continents clustered like one big, flattened Pangea encircled by oceans. Beyond that: the great Ice Wall, a 96,000-kilometer-long frozen barrier that keeps the water in and the rest of the world out.“In principle,” Frans said, “the Earth is a closed system. The ice wall keeps everything in place. The sun circles around the center, never hitting the poles directly. It’s all contained in a giant magnetic dome.” We nodded slowly, trying to absorb its logic. Sara pointed at a dot beyond the ice wall. “And… what’s that one?” “That’s Horus,” he replied. “One of the outer islands—like Texel, but in the next ring.”According to Frans, there are 177 “Earths and Orders” beyond the Ice Wall, separated by oceans and energy fields. You can travel to the next ring by passing through one of four gates hidden in the ice wall, including the infamous Devil’s Gate and the Hawaiian Gate. And yes, even in this alternate planetary layout, the Netherlands still has colonies. Five, in fact. One of them is “New Orange”—the alleged royal family escape hatch, should things on this Earth spiral too far out of control.

From there, things escalated into a fever dream of cosmic proportions. Frans explained that Earth doesn’t spin (“It is fixed; it shall not be moved”) and that the sun and moon are not giant celestial bodies in space but rather projectors orbiting within the dome, casting light in carefully managed sweeps. He spoke passionately about Tartaria, a forgotten civilization of giants who thrived before us. They were smarter, stronger, taller—not because of better diets, but because the ether (the life energy of the Earth) was once more fully charged. With more ether came more oxygen. With more oxygen, bigger beings—humans, animals, trees.“Dinosaurs?” he scoffed. “Those were just the same animals we have now—only bigger. We shrunk because we polluted the ether. The government invented dinosaurs to get people into museums.” Naturally. And why aren’t we giants anymore? “Because the ether has been deliberately weakened,” he said. “Chemtrails make the clouds heavier, block the sunlight, lower the sky, and ruin the ecosystem. It’s not just climate change. It’s sabotage.” And we’re not going to make it, he told us plainly. “There was a meeting—of other beings—and one said, ‘They don’t respect themselves. They don’t respect each other. They don’t respect their planet. What’s their value?’” He sipped his tea. “Maybe we’ve outlived our purpose.” 

According to Frans, the Earth doesn’t just have places—it has frequencies. Dimensions layered on top of each other. We humans can only perceive a narrow band of reality—between 300 and 720 nanometers. Beyond that range are countless beings—creatures, aliens, cities—moving invisibly beside us. “There could be one sitting right next to us.¨ Frans mentioned upcoming “flyovers”—yes, actual UFO flyovers. “Next month in Eastbourne, UK,” he said, “there’s a flyover scheduled during the UFO Day. The organizers arranged it with their contacts.” “Contacts?” Sara asked. “Some people have implants,” Frans replied as if it was completely obvious. “At one of my past lectures, I asked who had them—four or five people raised their hands.” 

Frans told us the story of one of his friends, a man who had been operated on by aliens not too long ago. He had met him at one of the many conventions. "He’s a smart guy, an engineer," Frans said, "but he hadn’t told anyone about his experience—he was too afraid of what people might think," Frans explained that that is what makes these conventions so valuable: they create space to connect and share without judgment. When I asked him what brings these people together—this community clustered around conspiracies—he paused, then answered simply: "A heightened consciousness." "Listening, feeling. Not always understanding, but not judging either," he added. ¨Not everyone gets it. Many don’t want to.¨ But that didn’t seem to bother him. He seemed oddly at peace."My Flat Earth chapter is closed," he told us. "My role is to give information. I’ve done that. I’ve told my story. I say what I need to say, and I send it out into the world through my podcast. The ones who are meant to hear it will. And those who aren’t—that’s fine too."He rattled off his remaining schedule with casual finality: "There’s a Flat Earth convention in September, a chemtrail event in November, a UFO conference in Tiel, and a Dutch vaccination summit in the fall. After that, I think I’ll just float."  When Sara asked if there was anything left he still wanted to do, he smiled and shook his head. "I’ve said what I needed to say." 

About a month ago, I sent Frans an email asking if I could interview him for this very Freak! Edition of Slimmagazine. In the email, I told him I wasn’t here to mock the fringe. Quite the opposite. The word freak has been dragged through the mud—used like a slur, a sneer, a label people slap on anyone who makes them uncomfortable. The kind of person your small-town grandparents openly stare at on the street, mouths not quite agape but spiritually so. However, in its original sense, “freak” just means someone who doesn’t fit the mold. Or, better yet, someone who doesn’t want to. Not bad. Not dangerous. Just... different. I'm talking about not just piercings and punk slogans but also the ones that exist outside the dominant cultural algorithms. The subculture starters. The paradigm pokers. The ones who keep culture alive by refusing to keep it still. And who better to unpack all of that with than Frans—a Flat Earther with a brain full of cosmic rewrites and a heart full of counter questions? Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe the Earth is flat. I don’t think there’s a secret royal retreat called “New Orange” hidden just behind the ice wall. I’m skeptical about the claim that the sun and moon are actually government-issued projectors gliding across a dome-like lazy disco ball. And no, I don’t think aliens recently saved Frans’ friend by performing emergency surgery with cosmic precision.

But that’s not really the point.

Frans wasn’t just throwing conspiracy pasta at the wall to see what sticks—he was offering a worldview. A radical lens. He spoke of perception studies, of how reality isn’t something we see—it’s something we create. But we’re too distracted, too hypnotized by the daily drag of deadlines, emails, and rent payments. We’re too busy being good little citizens of the economy to ask the weird questions that might wake us up. Even if Flat Earth is pseudoscience (and, well, it is), it operates as a kind of philosophical protest. A thought experiment in extremis. And honestly? That’s why I’m drawn to conspiracy thinkers—not because I believe them, but because they dare to live in alternate paradigms. They remind me that everything is a story. A lens. A structure we’ve agreed to stand inside. And sometimes, what we call “normal” is just the dominant story, not the only one. So no, I don’t think the government is secretly suppressing us because they’re terrified we’ll figure out we can drop trees on people and shit (Frans’ phrasing, not mine—but poetic in its own right). But I do think he’s onto something when he says we’ve lost the plot. We lost some sight of what it entails to be human, be alive, and focus on following the right path instead of wandering through the maze. 

Before the interview, Sara and I had a quick pee break at the harbor. I remember stepping outside and spotting Frans waiting on a bench.The sun caught his face. The bouquet of flowers I brought him rested on his lap with boats bobbing behind him. He was calm. Certain. He said what he came to say. No crusade. No mission. Just a man who’d found peace in his own truth, which, to be fair, is more than most of us can claim. As I walked away that afternoon, I realized how much I needed this conversation, too. Not to change my beliefs, but to remember why I ask questions in the first place. Maybe that’s the true superpower of a freak—not to convert you, but to remind you that thought itself can be radical. That doubt is sacred. That there’s always another map to the world.