It often starts innocently enough: a sleepless night, a strange bump on your arm, or a nagging cough that just won’t quit. You reach for your phone, type a few words into a search bar, and within seconds you are watching a cheerful stranger in a sunny kitchen explain how a spoonful of vinegar will melt belly fat, or how an obscure herbal capsule can fix your hormones. The video has millions of likes, hundreds of thousands of comments from people who swear by it, and a trigger that says “this sound is trending.” It feels personal. It feels free.…

There was a moment in the Auckland courtroom when the air seemed to change, not because of any new evidence or raised voices, but because of the quiet, deliberate force of one man’s denial. Philip Polkinghorne, an experienced eye surgeon whose name has become intimately tied, in the public imagination, to the death of his wife, Pauline Hanna, was answering a direct question that has hovered over this case since the beginning. Had he caused the death of his wife? The answer, he insisted, was unequivocal. “False, patently wrong.” The words were simple, but they carried the weight of years…