I read a cartoon a couple of weeks ago that went something like this: two guys are staring up at the moon. One guy says to the other, “I can’t believe that people think we put men up there on that moon.” The other guy looks back at him, surprised, and says: “You actually believe in the moon?!”

I love it when people are sceptical about the things we take for granted. Yes, it can cause problems (climate change sceptics, I’m looking at you), but disbelief is an indispensable quality in science and, of course, journalism. 

April Fool’s Day – the ultimate day for scepticism – passed by fairly unnoticed this year. I guess no one felt like playing a massive prank where they tricked the world into believing that a global pandemic was upon us, we’re no longer allowed to touch our faces, and

To make up for it, we’ve pulled together some of the best stories of hoaxes, cons, or simply people following their scepticism to find a truth that challenged something the world took for granted.

A person with actual knowledge busts one of football’s most expensive myths You’ll hear this during every transfer window in football: club X will recoup their expensive purchase of star player Y simply by selling Z number of shirts with the new player’s name. Sports lawyer Jake Cohen explains in a couple of lucid paragraphs why this – and other transfer rumour myths – is rubbish. 1. Clubs usually get a set fee from shirt manufacturers, so extra shirt sales hardly matter. 2. If shirt sales really do skyrocket, the club only gets a modest percentage 3. However, this almost never happens. A star player barely leads to extra shirt sales; they lead to alternative shirt sales. Rather than buying the shirt of an existing player, the average fan will switch to the new player. (Michiel de Hoog, Sports correspondent at De Correspondent) The Independent: ‘Cristiano Ronaldo and why shirt sales don’t even come close to paying for a transfer’ (reading time: four minutes)
The lady vanishes Barack Obama’s election was a great thing for race relations in the US, right? Turns out it’s not as simple as that. In this episode of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell mentions a poll showing that white US Americans who self-identified as Obama supporters were more likely to express racially problematic opinions. Why? They didn’t consider themselves racist because they’d voted for a black person. That’s a perfect example of moral licensing – when people act immorally without threatening their own self-image as a moral person. Gladwell digs deeper into this theory with the story of Elizabeth Thompson, a 19th-century painter. Thompson was the first woman to have a painting hung in a prestigious spot in the Royal Academy. It was a sensation. But the result? The Royal Academy didn’t admit a female member until 1936. Moral licensing in action. (Sabrina, editorial assistant) Revisionist History: ‘The lady vanishes’ (listening time: 33 minutes)
The Cryptoqueen who founded a fake digital empire – then vanished Ruja Ignatova was the self-styled “Cryptoqueen”. Back in 2016, the Bitcoin online gold rush was in full swing. Around the same time, Ignatova appeared on stage to a packed arena to tell devotees that OneCoin, her cryptocurrency, was the “Bitcoin killer”. And it worked – people all over the world invested €4bn. The only small, tiny issue? OneCoin didn’t have a blockchain. It didn’t exist. Jamie Bartlett does a great job guiding us through the twists and turns of deceit, lies, and group psychology. If you’re quarantining and feeling some cabin fever, take some time out of arguing with your partner/child/houseplant to catch up on a mystery story that never fails to show endless empathy to the victims. It’s easy to minimise the pain of people who fall for scams like this, but it’s only human to be vulnerable. (Shaun, copy editor) BBC: ‘This missing Cryptoqueen’ (listening time: 23 minutes)

The best of The Correspondent

Two cups, one yellow with an cartoon of Trump giving the finger with the text ‘because fuck this shit’, one pink one with ‘Vote Hillary, like Obama with a vagina’ Democrat or Republican, on the big polarising issues, you actually agree The evidence is clear: once US Americans drop their labels, they are more aligned on what they actually believe their government should do – yes, even on healthcare.
 Read Zaid Jilani’s article here Photo of a man in a blue shirt in front of a green field, arms crossed and with trees and a mountain on the background Mental toughness is overrated: a World Cup-winning coach debunks sport’s most sacred trait Paddy Upton made it to the top of the ‘gentleman’s game’. As many others struggle with the sport’s gruelling schedule and the pressures of fame, the South African coach shares invaluable lessons for mental health in sports and life. Read Tanmoy Goswami’s article here Photo-montage of an American football field, heavily crowded. Why hard work and specialising early is not a recipe for success Which is better: a generalist or a specialist? Conventional wisdom says the earlier you specialise, the greater your chances of success. But people who take their time and broaden their horizons make smarter career choices. In fact, they tend to be better at their work than specialists. Read Michiel de Hoog’s article here Picture of a large group of birds flying together against a white background More divided than ever? The truth is we agree much more than we think we do Polarisation is the buzzword of our time. Watch TV or scroll through Twitter, and you would think disagreements were tearing the world apart. But nothing could be further from the truth. Read Rob Wijnberg’s article here