Mesopotamia, the Bible, Greece, India, China, the Americas, Australia: in a great many traditions the gods send the waters to wipe out humanity. Is it proof of a single global catastrophe, the memory of many local ones, or something else? I analyse the sources as I would a series of testimonies: who depends on whom, what is independent, what geology and archaeology say.
Read the case fileEverything we know about Atlantis comes from two dialogues by Plato. I reread them in the original Greek, with my own translation, and analyse them as I would any testimony: who is telling the story, who they heard it from, what can be verified. Then the proposed locations, from Santorini to Helike, the sceptics' arguments and those of the open-minded, among whom I count myself.
Read the case fileAccording to a story told for centuries, a woman disguised as a man became pope in the mid-ninth century, only to be exposed when she gave birth during a procession. Chroniclers, preachers and even the builders of Siena Cathedral believed it. An investigation into the sources: when the story appears, why it lasted so long, and what a porphyry chair, a Milanese heretic and the second card of the tarot have to do with it.
Read the case fileBefore Dracula there were official Habsburg army reports: exhumed corpses, fresh blood, stakes through the heart. An investigative analysis of the vampire: the sources, the science of decomposition, the archaeology of anti-vampire burials, the medical hypotheses and the collectors' fakes.
Read the case fileFew witnesses, a charred body, a filmed look-alike, a Soviet autopsy full of contradictions and a jawbone kept in Moscow. I treated Hitler's death the way I would treat any case file: evidence, witnesses, chain of custody and inconsistencies. No verdict decided in advance.
Read the case fileFrom 26 September 1986 to today: how Tiziano Sclavi created the Nightmare Investigator, the issues that made history, which numbers are really worth something and how to protect yourself from fake copies of issue 1.
Read the case fileSome famous unsolved mysteries gave rise to techniques we still use today.
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