Imagine standing in a muddy field in Portugal in 1917 with 70,000 other people expecting a miracle. Suddenly the rain stops, the clouds part, and the sun appears to detach from the sky, spinning and careening toward Earth. It is one of the most astonishing mass-witnessed events in modern history.

This episode sifts through eyewitness testimony, historical investigations, and modern science to unpack the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, laying out both the supernatural claims and the skeptical counter-theories without taking sides. We explore the political powder keg that set the stage, the wildly inconsistent accounts, and the meteorological, optical, and psychological explanations. It matters because it raises unsettling questions about the limits of human perception and shared reality.

• Three shepherd children reported visions of t ...