Two teenage girls accidentally launched a global religious movement using a piece of string, an apple, and some very double-jointed toes. The real mystery isn't how they fooled millions, it's why their followers ignored them when they publicly confessed it was all a scam.

This episode traces the anatomy of a lie, from a bored childhood prank in an 1848 Hydesville farmhouse to the birth of modern spiritualism. It's a profound psychological puzzle about how a harmless deception mutates into a worldwide belief system, and why undeniable proof of fraud so often fails to change a single believer's mind.

• How Maggie and Kate learned to subluxate their toe and knuckle joints to produce loud raps, blamed on a murdered peddler's ghost
• The way older sister Leah acted as a 19th-century manager, turning the act into the first paying p ...