Week 2 Autopsy: Building the case file

Week 2 — collecting primary evidence about your specimen before you're allowed to have a theory about why it closed.

3 August 2026

Before the session#

Pull everything you can find on your specimen without stopping to interpret any of it: the last dozen reviews in date order, a health inspection record if the jurisdiction publishes them, an archive.org capture of the restaurant’s own site or delivery-app page, any news coverage of the opening or the closing. Desmond’s rule: collect first, theorise never, at least this week.

In the session#

You build a shared timeline format everyone in the course will use for their own specimen, and swap case files with a partner who checks whether each item is actually dated and actually sourced — not whether the theory implied by the file sounds right, because there isn’t meant to be one yet.

Afterwards#

A dated, sourced case file, still theory-free, that next week’s location audit and every later week can pull evidence from without re-searching from scratch.