In this compelling whodunnit, Elaine Dewar reads the science, follows the money, and connects the geopolitical interests to the spin. When the first TV newscast described a SARS-like flu affecting a distant Chinese metropolis, investigative journalist Elaine Dewar started asking questions: Was SARS-CoV-2 something that came from nature, as leading scientists insisted, or did it come from a lab, and what role might controversial experiments have played in its development? Why was Wuhan the pandemic's ground zero-and why, on the other side of the Atlantic, had two researchers been marched out of a lab in Winnipeg by the RCMP? Why were governments so slow to respond to the emerging pandemic, and why, now, is the government of China refusing to cooperate with the World Health Organization? And who, or what, is DRASTIC? Locked down in Toronto with the world at a standstill, Dewar pored over newspapers and magazines, preprints and peer-reviewed journals, email chains and blacked-out responses to access to information requests; she conducted Zoom interviews and called telephone numbers until someone answered as she hunted down the truth of the virus's origin. In this compelling whodunnit, she reads the science, follows the money, connects the geopolitical interests to the spin-and shows how leading science journals got it wrong, leaving it to interested citizens and junior scientists to pull out the truth.

Strategic Conspiracy Narratives proposes an innovative semiotic perspective for analysing how contemporary conspiracy theories are used for shaping interpretation paths and identities of a targeted audience. Conspiracy theories play a significant role in the viral spread of misinformation that has an impact on the formation of public opinion about certain topics. They allow the connecting of different events that have taken place in various times and places and involve several actors that seem incompatible to bystanders. This book focuses on strategic-function conspiracy narratives in the context of (social) media and information conflict. It explicates the strategic devices in how conspiracy theories can be used to evoke a hermeneutics of suspicion - a permanent scepticism and questioning of so-called mainstream media channels and dominant public authorities, delegitimisation of political opponents, and the ongoing search for hidden clues and coverups. The success of strategic dissemination of conspiracy narratives depends on the cultural context, specifics of the targeted audience and the semiotic construction of the message. This book proposes an innovative semiotic perspective for analysing contemporary strategic communication. The authors develop a theoretical framework that is based on semiotics of culture, the notions of strategic narrative and transmedia storytelling. This book is targeted to specialists and graduate students working on social theory, semiotics, journalism, strategic communication, social media and contemporary social problems in general.

What constitutes historical truth is often subject to change. Joe Nickell demonstrates the techniques used in solving some of the world's most perplexing mysteries, such as the authenticity of Abraham Lincoln's celebrated Bixby letter, the 1913 disappearance of writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce, and the apparent real-life model for a mysterious character in a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nickell also uses newly uncovered evidence to further investigate the identity of the Nazi war criminal known as ""Ivan the Terrible.""

The second edition of this popular text, updated throughout and now including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, Uscinski and Enders address the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing. They rigorously analyze the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.

The second edition of this popular text, updated throughout and now including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, Uscinski and Enders address the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing. They rigorously analyze the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.

When the utility of masks or vaccinations became politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic and lost its mooring in scientific evidence, an already-developing crisis of expertise was exacerbated. Those who believe in consensus science wondered: "How can 'those people' not see the truth?" This book shows that it is not a 'scientific' controversy, but an ideological dispute with 'believers' on both sides. If the advocates for consensus science acknowledge the uncertainties involved, rather than insisting on cold, hard facts, it is possible to open a pathway towards interaction and communication, even persuasion, between world views. As the crisis of expertise continues to be a global issue, this will be an invaluable resource for readers concerned about polarized societies and the distrust of consensus science.

Storytelling is both an art form and a means of passing on significant elements of a culture--the history, the traditions, the humor, the pathos. It is a way of entertaining and being entertained. With this compilation of Texas--and Texanized--favorite myths and legends, award-winning tale teller Donna Ingham applies her own unmistakable voice to traverse her home state through such stories as:>"The Coming of the Bluebonnet"--an oft-collected Commanche myth about love and sacrifice and the origin of the Texas state flower>"The Story Behind the Story"--about two early cattlemen and the basis for an episode in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove">"The Life and Times of Pecos Bill"--a selection of tales about this legendary folk hero>"Diamond Bill"--about an east Texas rattlesnake who fought in the Civil War>"Cupid Was a Mama's Boy"--a Texanized classic Greek myth >And much more!

"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.

In this ground-breaking book, Egyptologist Robert Bauval and astrophysicist Thomas Brophy uncover the mystery of Imhotep, and ancient Egyptian superstar, pharaonic Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, and Newton all rolled into one. Based on their research at the Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara, Bauval and Brophy delve into observational astronomy to 'decode' the alignments and other design features of the Step Pyramid Complex, to uncover the true origins and genius of Imhotep. Like a whodunit detective story they follow the clues that take them on an exhilarating magical mystery tour starting at Saqqara, leading them to temples in Upper Egypt and to the stones of Nabta Playa and the black African stargazers who placed them there.

"Imhotep the African" describes how Imhotep was the ancient link to the birth of modern civilization, restoring him to his proper place at the center of the birthing of Egyptian, and world, civilization.

In 1916, Berenger Sauniere, the enigmatic priest of the French village of Rennes-le-Chateau, created his ultimate clue: he went to great expense to create a model of a region said to be the Calvary Mount, indicating the 'Tomb of Jesus'. But the region on the model does not resemble the actual lay-out of Jerusalem. Did Sauniere leave a clue as to the true location of his treasure? And what is that treasure? After years of research, Andre Douzet discovered this model, never collected from the model maker by Sauniere, who had died just before the model's completion. Backed by evidence showing correspondence between Sauniere and the model maker, Douzet also reveals much new evidence, including the revelation that Sauniere spent large amounts of time and money in the city of Lyons, often on exotic and high tech photographic instruments. And for the first time, it is shown Sauniere met some very interesting people from esoteric, in particular Martinist, circles in Lyons. This body of evidence for the first time demonstrates there is indeed a true mystery surrounding this village priest -- a theory widely speculated on so far by others authors, but seldom if ever backed by evidence. The model is the only real clue Sauniere left behind as to the nature and location of his treasure -- and is unveiled in this book, which includes pictures and detailed drawings of the model, among many other things. It also reveals the location of the region where Sauniere had located his treasure...and where Douzet himself has so far recovered large quantities of precious and semi-precious materials. Above all, Douzet demonstrates that grounds of Perillos not so much hold a 'treasure' (though present), but rather a 'secret', and that this secret was the true importance of Sauniere's mystery; a secret that is said to be of vital importance -- and terrifying force.

Are conspiracy theories everywhere and is everyone a conspiracy theorist? This ground-breaking study challenges some of the widely shared assessments in the scholarship about a perceived mainstreaming of conspiracy theory. It claims that conspiracy theory underwent a significant shift in status in the mid-20th century and has since then become highly visible as an object of concern in public debates. Providing an in-depth analysis of academic and media discourses, Katharina Thalmann is the first scholar to systematically trace the history and process of the delegitimization of conspiracy theory. By reading a wide range of conspiracist accounts about three central events in American history from the 1950s to 1970s - the Great Red Scare, the Kennedy assassination, and the Watergate scandal - Thalmann shows that a veritable conspiracist subculture emerged in the 1970s as conspiracy theories were pushed out of the legitimate marketplace of ideas and conspiracy theory became a commodity not unlike pornography: alluring in its illegitimacy, commonsensical, and highly profitable. This will be of interest to scholars and researchers interested in American history, culture and subcultures, as well, of course, to those fascinated by conspiracies.

Traditionally gnawa musicians in Morocco played for all-night ceremonies where communities gathered to invite spirits to heal mental, physical, and social ills untreatable by other means. Now gnawa music can be heard on the streets of Marrakech, at festivals in Essaouira, in Fez's cafes, in Casablanca's nightclubs, and in the bars of Rabat. As it moves further and further from its origins as ritual music and listeners seek new opportunities to hear performances, musicians are challenged to adapt to new tastes while competing for potential clients and performance engagements. Christopher Witulski explores how gnawa musicians straddle popular and ritual boundaries to assert, negotiate, and perform their authenticity in this rich ethnography of Moroccan music. Witulski introduces readers to gnawa performers, their friends, the places where they play, and the people they play for. He emphasizes the specific strategies performers use to define themselves and their multiple identities as Muslims, Moroccans, and traditional musicians. The Gnawa Lions reveals a shifting terrain of music, ritual, and belief that follows the negotiation of musical authenticity, popular demand, and economic opportunity.

The figure of the imposter can stir complicated emotions, from intrigue to suspicion and fear. But what insights can these troublesome figures provide into the social relations and cultural forms from which they emerge? Edited by leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the question through a diverse range of empirical cases, including magicians, spirit possession, fake Instagram followers, fake art and fraudulent scientists. Proposing 'thinking with imposters' as a valuable new tool of analysis in the social sciences and humanities, this revolutionary book shows how the figure of the imposter can help upend social theory.

In June 2021, U.S. National Intelligence publicly admitted that UFOs are real physical objects and that they have been penetrating restricted military airspace since at least 2004. Despite this bombshell and further recent admissions by the Pentagon, the identity of these mysterious craft remains unknown. This book brings the full scientific method to bear on this enigmatic issue. Written by Daniel Coumbe, a former research scientist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen with a PhD in theoretical particle physics, this book defines one of the first scientifically credible studies of UFOs in the modern era. Anomaly reveals new results derived from radar, optical sensors, and scientific instruments, rather than speculating on unreliable eyewitness testimony. This scientific approach provides the reader with clear and reliable answers, something that is desperately needed in the murky field of UFOs.

Over the past half century, opinion has been divided as to the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John F Kennedy. The rumours began to spread almost immediately that the accused assassin may have been working for or was being manipulated by individuals involved with the United States Intelligence apparatus. The most tantalising piece of evidence came from none other than Congressman Gerald R Ford, who had served as a Warren Commission member in 1964. Ford revealed in his (co-written) 1965 book "Oswald: Portrait of the Assassin" that the FBI had an 'undercover agent' in Dallas at the time of the assassination and that that agent was none other than Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy. The two most asked questions in the whole JFK assassination story remain unanswered: Who was Lee Harvey Oswald and what was his role on 22 November 1963? In this book Glenn B Fleming looks at these claims and presents a compelling case that all is not as we have been told about accussed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

People disappear without a trace. Captain Briggs, his crew, and his family vanished from the Canadian built Mary Celeste. Ben Bathurst walked around the horses harnessed to his coach - and was never seen again. People appear without explanation Kaspar Hauser arrived in Nuremberg as inexplicably as if he'd materialised from some unknown dimension. Researchers of the paranormal have investigated cases where thought-forms seem to have acquired quasi-physical properties. Madame Blavatsky claimed to have done it. There were times when Nikola Tesla, the brilliant electrical experimenter, seems to have lived in an alternative reality where mental images of his machines became solid to him. Tesla expert, Oliver Nichelson, put forward a theory connecting Tesla's awesomely strange apparatus at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, with the Tunguska explosion of 1908. Were similar strange forces responsible for moving the Barbados coffins around in their sealed vault?

Where do poltergeists, like the one that haunted Esther Cox in Amherst, Nova Scotia, get their inexplicable energy? When scores of reliable witnesses continue to report their sightings of UFOs, ghosts, crop circles, lake monsters, enormous cat-like beasts, Yeti, and Sasquatch, how can their observations be explained?

We live in an immeasurably strange universe, miraculously suspended in space and time: a universe that has room for the mysteries of the ancient British King Arthur, Merlin, and the Holy Grail; the Oak Island Money Pit in Canada; the undeciphered Glozel Alphabet, and the Priest's Treasure at Rennes-le-Chateau in France; Mermaids and Sea Monsters; the Kingdom of Prester John; the Riddle of the Pictish Stones at Meigle in Scotland; the Vampire of Croglin Grange; Zombies and Wer-beasts; the Devil's Footprints in Devonshire; the Green Children of Woolpit; Lost Cities and Sunken Islands; Pyramids and Stone Circles; Telepathy, Telekinesis, Teleportation, and Prophecy. The list is endless. The investigations fascinating.

The World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries invites the reader to accompany Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe on their many intriguing investigations in Canada and worldwide and their years of research into the unexplained.

Concise introduction to the development of conspiracy theories during the pandemic. Takes a balanced approach drawing on empirical data and social science research rather than sensationalism. Seeks to understand rather than just condemn or mock conspiracy theorists.

After more than four decades and scores of books, documentaries, and films on the subject, what more can be said about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? A great deal, according to the author. This provocative, rigorously researched book presents evidence and compelling arguments that will make you rethink the entire sequence of terrible events on that traumatic day in Dallas. Drawing on his fifteen years of experience as an experimental physicist for the US Navy, the author demonstrates that the commonly accepted view of the assassination is fundamentally flawed from a scientific perspective. The physics behind lone-gunmen theories is not only wrong, says Chambers, but frankly impossible.
This is the first book to: identify the second murder weapon, prove the locations of the assassins, and demonstrate multiple shooters with scientific certainty. It concludes with a persuasive chapter on why this horrible event, now almost half a century old, should still matter to us today. Originally published as a hardcover in 2010, this paperback edition contains a new preface and postscript in which the author addresses some interesting developments since the book was first published as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination.
For anyone seeking a fresh understanding of the JFK assassination, this is an indispensable book.

This academic text features articles regarding paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims. It logically examines the claims of astrology; psychic ability; alternative medicine and health claims; after-death communication; cryptozoology; and faith healing, all from a skeptical perspective. Paranormal Claims is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening articles about pseudoscience and extraordinary claims that often reveal logical, scientific explanations, or an outright scam. These articles, steeped in skepticism, teach critical thinking when approaching courses in psychology, sociology, philosophy, education, or science.

The Poconos in the hills of picturesque Pennsylvania is home to beautiful resorts, lively casinos, and stunning waterfalls. Yet, stand in any one spot long enough and chills will run up your spine. Journey with paranormal investigator L'Aura Hladik Hoffman to twenty haunted locations within this tourist mecca. Dine at Tannersville Inn with the ghost of Mabel or stay the night at The Shawnee Inn with a Lady in White. Discover the Pennsylvania Dutch beast Siwweyaeger or the phantom of the Poconos Cinema and Cultural Center as it "strikes again." The Hotel of Horror theater will challenge you to discern between actor and specter at every turn. Examine local legends, haunted artifacts and attractions, ghost photography, and more. Included is a directory of local paranormal organizations, researchers, and tours to plan your own investigations. It won't take long for you to discover that the ghosts of the Poconos are ever present, so join the hunt!