How do you write a history if you're not quite sure which—if any—of your sources is telling the truth? All historians have to deal with sources who exaggerate, or mislead, or just come from differing perspectives. But my guest in this episode had to wrestle with this question on a whole different level for his newest book. Were his subjects performing miracles, or conning people with magic tricks? And in the end, does it really matter?

This is Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. I'm Kate Carpenter, and in today's episode I'm joined by Dr. Raphael Cormack. Raph is an editor, writer, and translator, as well as an assistant professor of modern languages and cultures at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He is the author of two books. The first, Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult in 2021 and is now available in paperback. And his newest book, out earlier this year, is Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s. In it, he follows two charismatic and mysterious faith leaders who emerged in the uncertain interwar period in both Europe and the Middle East. We talked about how he dealt with those deeply unreliable sources, why the narrative structure that came so easily to one book didn't work for the second one, and, well, his mother. You'll see what I mean.

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Episode 71: Raphael Cormack Makes Meaning from Unreliable Sources