What if the most famous secret society in history was never actually that secret, and barely lasted a decade?

The episode traces the real origin of the Bavarian Illuminati, founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776, through its actual collapse by 1785, and into the sprawling conspiracy mythology it inspired across the French Revolution, Cold War paranoia, and modern internet culture. It covers how real secret society symbolism, Freemason overlap, and pop culture kept the legend alive long after the organization itself was gone.

The truth about the Illuminati is less sinister than the myth, and somehow that makes the myth even harder to kill.

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