Episodes

Masons, Illuminati, Wrapup, and Bonus Material

Rosicrucians through a lot of the Masons

Cathars through most of Rosicrucians

Eleusynian Mysteries through Cathars

You're not gonna believe this--but this is actually the final episode of the secret societies series. I know. Which means that next week, as promised, and almost a year to the day from when we started this thing, we will be putting out the full episode in as few segments as we can, one per day, starting Monday of next week. What we think is that it's gonna be about four sections of three hours each. So...clear your calendars. In the meantime, we go deep on conspiracy theorists' whacked out ideas...

Off-schedule, but on-topic, we bring you the first of two Illuminati episodes to wrap up this epic series. This one's the story of the actual, real-life 18th-century group whose brief but influential existence led them, through a bizarre series of twists and turns, to become the "big bad" of all conspiracy thinking. The final boss, if you will. The Kaiser Soze hiding behind the Masons' Verbal Kint (spoilers, we guess). We have a new interviewee, Terry Melanson, the man who wrote the most compreh...

We've reached the end of the Masons section, which means we're covering the sad story of the masons versus the various fascisms that dominated the pre WWII period. The tale is super-interesting, but isn't quite what the freemasons of today might want you to believe it is. We've still got the Illuminati to cover, but they won't be the next episode, nor the one after that. We're not spoiling the surprise, but the next episode, which you should be hearing in the first week of next year, is the most...

Here we have perhaps our favorite of this Masons series, covering everything from the supposed coverup of the masonic murder of Mozart (alliteration!) to a Catholic-sponsored expose of Masonic evil that includes a ghostly, piano-playing crocodile. Oh, and we also cover Jack the Ripper. It goes places. Special appearance by Lady Jesuit made possible by special arrangement with her long-suffering patience with her husband's obscure enthusiasms. See you in a couple of weeks to wrap up the Masons. ...

Here's where the Masons story runs smack into 'MURICA! From the founding fathers' relationship to the Craft, to the very strange interplay between Mormonism (the most American religion of faiths) and Freemasons, and finally to the sad, yet inspiring story of how Black Freemasons carved their own unique version of the brotherhood out in the face of implacable white opposition, it's amazing the degree to which the nation and the secret society have impacted each other. Just...you know, not the way...

As you can probably tell by our episode art, this here is the episode where we find out why the Freemasons caused the French Revolution. Or rather, we find out why, just after the revolution, a whole lot of people began to think that. It's the first big, implausible conspiracy that was attached to the masons, and upon which a broader, still more ridiculous conspiracy scaffold would eventually be built. We're going to go ahead and assume all of you already bought a copy of Professor Dickie's boo...

In this second part of our dive into the world's most successful secret society, we go deep into the early history of the Freemasons, as well as the pageantry behind their initiation ceremonies. Plus, we BLOW THE LID off of all the most super-secret secrets this secret society protects. Which turns out to be "not much". But that's an interesting story, too. Hope you enjoy it--see you in a couple of weeks. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

So we've finally reached a secret society that surely every listener to this show has already heard of, the Freemasons. To be totally honest here, we approached this topic more out of a sense of duty than out of genuine excitement. It seemed, when we were planning this series out, that the Masons were going to be one of those groups that, yes, has been around for a long time, and yes is nebulously worked into the fever dreams of many conspiracists, but that weren't all that interesting once you ...

We're fourteen goddamned episodes into this seemingly never-ending cavalcade of secret society information, and there are, at minimum, seven or eight episodes to go. We'd apologize for how long this series is getting, but we're not going to, because it continues to be just a goldmine of interesting information, and we won't rest until we've shared it all with you. Today, we wrap up the Rosicrucians, and take the opportunity to spoil the plot of perhaps the greatest conspiracy novel ever written....

More stories of the best darned secret society that didn't technically exist,! We return to the weird and wonderful world of the Rosicrucians this time, with stories of those who tried in vain to join the ephemeral brotherhood, and a number of folks who had to insist to their contemporaries that they weren't part of this group that nobody had ever seen in the first place. And a conspiracy theory involving the Rosies and the Bard. Oh, and we see the return of an old friend. A quick impactful visi...

If you, like Mike Schmidt, believed that our final statement at the end of last episode meant we were done with Secret Societies...well, I guess you had understandable reasons for thinking that. But it's not true. That just ended our weird tale of the sources of Dan Brown's madness. Now, we're back to a more orthodox secret society tale, albeit one that once again embraces a group that isn't quite what it seems. This is the first of three-and-change episodes about these guys. We started out aimi...

And here we are--about to hear the final revelations of the misleading nonsense, con jobs, and pranks that eventually led to the edifice of bullshit that is The Da Vinci Code. We pick up with the story of Pierre Plantard (that's his gallic profile...

Another fortnight, another episode about silly men and their silly book. Once again, we're discussing the work of Messrs. Lincoln, Baigent,and Leigh, who apparently never met a historical counterfactual they didn't immediately embrace. This t...

Episode 9 of the Secret Societies series, but also the second episode in our sub-series about the strange origins of the conspiracy theories that ended up powering Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Now, though, we actually move past that book to turn our...

YAY! We've reached Jesuit's favorite part of this series--a sort of 4-part sub-series of inter-connected conspiracy theories that build on each other to trace a tale that we think is honestly one of the most interesting subjects we've ev...

I know that most of you woke up this morning and had that same thought you do every time you open your eyes. "How am I going to face the day without a podcast about a medieval French heresy, its violent persecution by the Church, and its eventual ...

Yes, many of you, including notably the 40 Year Old Boy, Mike Schmidt, noticed that I made a typo in the numbering of the show last time. Regardless, we're back on track now, delivering the properly numbered 6th episode of our Secret Societies ser...

And so we...nearly(?) come to the end of our coverage of the Knights Templar. I mean, there's a little bit that carries over to the next episode, but hardly any. And by the way, we know this one ends at kind of a weird point, at the end of a news ...

And so we move on to the fourth installment of our Secret Societies series, where we get to the heart of the historical story of the rise and fall of the Knights Templar. Thrill to tales of papal interrogation! Hiss at the dastardly Prince Philip IV, a...

Day late, but definitely no dollars short, we bring you the beginning of our in-depth analyses of historical secret societies with one of the most interesting and legendary of them all--the Knights Templar. Before we fill you in on these guys, though, ...