For centuries we have searched the ocean floor for a lost utopian civilization, but we misunderstood the assignment. The creator of the Atlantis story never meant it as a map. He meant it as a mirror.

This episode traces how a minor philosophical allegory about greed and hubris escaped its author and morphed into the ultimate geographical wild goose chase, fueling utopian literature, racist pseudo-history, occultism, and even Nazi ideology. It is less a story about a sunken city and more about how the human brain craves a mother culture even when science says otherwise.

• How Plato's Timaeus and Critias are the sole source, using a frame narrative to give fiction the appearance of truth
• The original meaning: Atlantis as the hubristic naval empire defeated by a virtuous, idealized Athens
• How the discovery of the Amer ...