Amelia Tait

The episode examines how Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear, first conceived in 1956 as an immigrant from Peru, became an iconic British cultural figure. It explores Paddington’s appeal across political divides, his association with British manners and royalty, and his evolution into one of the world’s most commercially successful characters.

A supposed early-1990s film called Shazaam, allegedly starring Sinbad as a genie, became the focus of intense online discussion despite there being no evidence that it existed. Amelia Tait investigates the memories of its believers and explores the Mandela effect—the phenomenon in which groups share vivid but false memories—through the lens of internet communities, cultural memory and the boundary between fact and fiction.