Season 4

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 …

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, throu...

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 freem...

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, pi...

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 t...

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 …

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 …

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 …

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'...

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 brotherhoo...

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 e...

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …