The Knights Templar are a brotherhood from history that we've all heard mentioned countless times,

either as having secretly run the world from behind the scenes centuries ago, or perhaps

as even still being around secretly running things today.

And there's always some fantastic treasure mentioned alongside them.

Well, who were the Knights Templar and how does the truth compare with today's depictions

of them?

That's coming up next on Skeptoid.

And more of the podcasts that you love want to find out more with its Skeptoid.com slash

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For a fair summary of the degree to which made up Knights Templar mythology has permeated

pop culture, one need look no further than the history channel, the world's central warehouse

of sensationalized pseudo-history.

They've cast the Templars in some shadowy overlord capacity in just about every phase

of human history.

They've involved them in the Oak Island money pit, a sinkhole discovered in Nova Scotia

in 1795, inexplicably entangled them with various alleged pirate treasures, with ciphers

pretended to exist on the tomb of Jesus, with modern day free masons separated by four

centuries, and granted them fantastic treasures that they discovered buried beneath the temple

of Solomon and have kept secretly hidden ever since.

And variously described as either the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Shroud

...