Nowadays, ghosts are for the history network, hypnotism is for quitting smoking, and Justin Bieber passes for a member of the Illuminati. The ways of the occult sure have fallen in our estimation.

And yet, not too long ago, seances and hypnotism were part of a countercultural revolution. Stealing from a long history of esoteric secret societies, and experimenting with the new science of the Enlightenment, masonic orders and theosophical societies sought to control the evolution of human perfection.

This week, Dr. Kyle Fraser joins host John Last to pick up from where he left off in the history of the esoteric, examining how a fad for the occult transformed European science, medicine, and politics.