The Real History Behind the Illuminati

Dan Snow and historian Michael Taylor, author of 'Illuminati', uncover the true story behind the world's most famous conspiracy theory. The real Illuminati was a secret society that existed for less than a decade in 18th‑century Bavaria. Within years of its suppression, conservative writers began blaming it for the chaos of the French Revolution, transforming a minor group into a mythical puppet‑master cabal. The episode traces how this narrative survived centuries, morphed into the New World Order theory, and why hidden‑actor explanations for complex events remain so seductive.