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1-800-1823: On the origin of an American religion · 1-800-1800

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  ring ring hello is this 1823 uh yeah it is oh my god that's so
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  nice to meet you
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  it's so nice to meet you I have a divine directive to give you
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  I'm not surprised
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  you always do wait what's your real name um I'm Madeline
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  Porcella and I'm Mabel
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  SPEAKER_02: Taylor and this is 1-800-1800 hello you've reached 1-800-1800
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  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I have a question, Madeline Porcella.
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  SPEAKER_01: See, what did you learn this week?
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  This week,
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  I was watching the most recent Adam Curtis documentary,
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  which is called Shifty.
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  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
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  and there was a pat like in the first episode he's kind of like
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  making this
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  argument about like thatcherism being the end of something that
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  began in the 19th
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  century and there's a scene of a bbc documentary with eric
• 1:13
  hobbsbaum who we've who
• 1:16
  we've discussed before we've mispronounced on this podcast
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  before countless times
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  SPEAKER_01: um
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  who was saying all of these words that were invented in the
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  19th century.
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  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to hear some of them?
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  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_02: Industrial.
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  SPEAKER_02: Industrialist.
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  SPEAKER_02: What if you're like industrialism?
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  SPEAKER_02: Industrialism was also one.
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  SPEAKER_02: No, it was like crazy.
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  SPEAKER_02: Like all of these words that we just like think of as the frame,
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  SPEAKER_02: like capitalism,
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  like these things that are the framework for the way we see the
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  world and feel so
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  SPEAKER_02: like inescapable because they're sort of like the water in which we swim.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  to be david foster wallace about it like our words that were
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  only invented in the
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  last 200 years yeah i mean i think isn't that the thesis of our
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  entire project
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  which is called it was just so explicit and like so stated i
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  would like to find the
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  original eric cobb's bomb bbc thing and watch it actually that
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  sounds awesome we
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  were just talking about bbc on youtube huge this week huge this
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  week bbc's having a
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  SPEAKER_01: moment
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand it.
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  Well,
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  there was controversy this week because the BBC,
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  did you hear about this?
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  SPEAKER_01: No.
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  SPEAKER_01: During the BAFTA's live stream.
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  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I was, I saw something today.
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  There was like a Tourette's episode of a racial slur that was
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  not edited out in real time.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was Tourette's?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: That was what I first read.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's still true.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's weird.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  But it's interesting that you bring up an etymology thing
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  because I have an etymology thing too.
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  SPEAKER_01: Do share.
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  SPEAKER_01: Without further ado.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I mentioned this book the last time I was on this podcast,
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  SPEAKER_01: which was the last time there was an episode because this is...
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  SPEAKER_01: I was on this podcast.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is my podcast.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is your podcast.
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  Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: The last time we were here,
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  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned this book that I've read 22 pages of,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I didn't keep reading,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I clearly have been thinking about it every day,
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  SPEAKER_01: so I need to keep reading it.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's called The Zorg.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned this before.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's by this guy named Siddharth Kara,
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  and it's about the slave ship tragedy that kind of inspired
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  abolitionism and
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  SPEAKER_01: ultimately the ending of the transatlantic slave trade.
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  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
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  And this book answers one of my other longstanding questions
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  about the 19th century.
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  SPEAKER_01: Not my famous one that I mention all the time on this podcast,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is how did people hear people?
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  SPEAKER_01: But the question,
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  SPEAKER_01: which I actually,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's so fundamental to my way of being that I hadn't even asked it,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is how did people get anywhere?
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  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
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  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
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  And so there is a long and fascinating part of this book about
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  how people navigated
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  SPEAKER_01: ships to go pick up slaves in Africa,
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  SPEAKER_01: how they got there.
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  SPEAKER_01: It actually comes up in my episode as well.
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  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that makes sense.
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  SPEAKER_02: So we'll discuss.
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  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not that.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's tangential, but.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, so this is about how people would measure latitude and longitude.
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  And apparently latitude was like pretty easy to measure because
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  you would like look
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  SPEAKER_01: at the North Star.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: To talk about this,
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  I had to dig and then to read about it required like digging
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  into my mind to places
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  I had all but left behind in elementary school about like what
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  the world is.
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  But anyway,
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  so to measure longitude,
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  I'm going to read a passage from this book.
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  SPEAKER_01: Great.
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  SPEAKER_01: To measure longitude by dead reckoning,
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  SPEAKER_01: a captain started with a fixed point,
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  SPEAKER_01: typically the point of embarkation.
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  SPEAKER_02: It must be embarkation.
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  SPEAKER_01: Embarkation.
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  Every six hours,
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  the captain threw a small log into the ocean with a rope
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  fastened to it.
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  The rope had knots tied at regular intervals,
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  usually eight fathoms apart.
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  using a sand glass he counted the number of knots that passed
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  through his hand in
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  30 seconds this gave him a speed in knots or nautical speed
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  which he plotted
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  against direction using a compass taken together direction time
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  and speed gave him
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  a distance traveled east or west which allowed him to plot his
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  longitude each
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  reading was entered into the captain's log book so named
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  because of the log used in
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  dead reckoning did you know this i think like in the recesses
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  of my like out or
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  SPEAKER_02: like
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  i feel like when i was a kid i loved like pirate books and
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  stuff so i like did like
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  you're saying this and i'm like oh yeah i'm not like whoa
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  that's new but like this
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  is like the kind of thing that kids know that adults like
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  exactly it's like what
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  kids know about ancient egypt and the wonder that we lose i'm
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  like that's really
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  SPEAKER_02: the project yeah wonder is bringing the wonder back
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  well now every time i quote log into anything or log something
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  in my period
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  tracking app i'm like what the hell i'm throwing a log into the
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  ocean and counting
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  how many knots run through my hands in the 30 seconds of my
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  what is it called my
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  little thing with sand in it sand dial hourglass hourglass yeah
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  so that's what i
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  learned this week and i can't stop thinking about it wow okay
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  thank you for
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  SPEAKER_02: bringing me back there you're welcome thank you for knowing about it
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  I have to now tell you about some other things that will be
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  vaguely familiar to you.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yay.
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  SPEAKER_02: So the year is 1823.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_02: And in 1823, the angel Maroney first appears to Joseph Smith.
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  SPEAKER_02: Hey.
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  And it's still going to be a few years before he retrieves the
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  golden plates and
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  SPEAKER_02: starts transcribing them.
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  But 1823 is like a really significant moment in that he sees
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  them for the first time.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I'll get into the whole story.
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  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you in great detail, I'll tell you.
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  But I just want to say before we get into it that I think it is
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  significant that
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  1823 is this moment because I want to suggest that Mormonism is
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  born out of
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  SPEAKER_02: American exceptionalism.
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  SPEAKER_02: I really can't say that.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure I can't either.
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  SPEAKER_02: A burgeoning print culture.
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  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
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  a rising culture of market speculation millenarian anxiety and
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  settler expansion
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  all of which are coming to a head in the exact moment 1823 in
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  which the angel
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  maroney descends upon palmyra new york wow okay mic drop mic
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  drop but i can't drop
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  it because i you already almost broke it earlier we can't risk
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  it um so for my 1823
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  SPEAKER_02: spiel the the major event of 1823 was the monroe doctrine
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  SPEAKER_02: You know it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's like, we're not getting involved in anybody.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_02: Actually that's, that is what I thought it was too.
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  SPEAKER_02: That's the way that it's like commonly talked about now,
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  SPEAKER_02: but what it actually was,
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  was that it was president James Monroe during his seventh
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  annual state of the union
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  SPEAKER_02: address.
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  SPEAKER_02: Seventh, seventh.
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  SPEAKER_02: Was it his second term?
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  SPEAKER_02: Must've been the last year of his second term.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for doing the, running the numbers on that.
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  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah,
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  basically what it actually said is that the new world as in the
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  Americas like not
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  broadly like South America North America and Canada and the old
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  world were to
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  remain distinctly separate spheres and that any effort by
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  European powers to
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  control or influence sovereign states in the region would be
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  viewed as a threat to
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  SPEAKER_02: US security and would be a cause for us to start a war with them
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  SPEAKER_01: Wasn't the Spanish-American War not for another 80 years?
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  SPEAKER_01: Well,
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  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
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  SPEAKER_02: so it wasn't like completely effective,
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  SPEAKER_02: but which like I will say,
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  SPEAKER_02: because also in the 1860s,
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  SPEAKER_02: like the French had their sort of misadventures in Mexico as well.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_01: As depicted in Twilight.
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  SPEAKER_02: As people may or may not know.
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  SPEAKER_02: And in turn, the U.S.
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  would like stay to the Western Hemisphere and not interfere
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  with European colonies.
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  SPEAKER_01: Is that why it took us so long to get involved in World War I?
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  SPEAKER_02: I guess.
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  I don't know because that's so much later that it's like I
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  think that the Monroe
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  SPEAKER_02: Doctrine like morphed over time.
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  But what it was at its inception was basically preventing
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  Europe from trying to
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  SPEAKER_02: re-grab any of the colonies they had lost.
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  Like because the Spanish-American colonies at that point had
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  basically all become independent.
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  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like stopping them from trying to come back.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's saying like actually the U.S.
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  SPEAKER_02: is the imperial influence on this side of the world.
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  SPEAKER_02: Like you stay where you belong over there.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's like to want to be the imperial power is such a crazy impulse.
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  SPEAKER_02: I'm like thinking about Venezuela.
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  It's like we're that this doctrine like we've misunderstood it
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  like you and I from
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  our elementary school education for so long that it's like not
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  actually clear that
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  SPEAKER_02: this was like
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  the plan all along yeah well it's like a cold war concept too
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  yeah speaking of
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  thatcherism being born in the 19th century yeah talk about it
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  talk about it okay so
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  SPEAKER_01: it's the year of the monroe doctrine what else is going on in 1823
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  um there is in the u.s this kind of like the beginning of like
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  the real emergence
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  of markets like writ large like capitalism is sort of taking
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  over so one of the
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  reasons that the british for example are willing to uphold the
• 10:20
  monroe doctrine
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  is because they don't need colonies anymore because now there's
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  this free market
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  SPEAKER_02: trade between the U.S.
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  and England and so they're like they're benefiting from these
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  global markets so
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  they don't need to be an imperial power in the same way because
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  the point of that
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  was to like shepherd goods and so if the free market is doing
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  that for them then
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  they don't need to like so like America can only be born if
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  capitalism is working
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  basically yeah got it and so like in line with that in america
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  there is like all
• 10:51
  this canal construction including the erie canal being like the
• 10:54
  major one there is
• 10:56
  you know in sort of synchronicity with that like it relies on
• 11:01
  that there are these
• 11:02
  new transportation networks emerging there's westward expansion
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  there's the
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  beginning of like the real banking system like that was kind of
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  something that was
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  SPEAKER_02: being solidified in this period
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  And what all of this does is destabilizes the traditional
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  hierarchies of rural
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  SPEAKER_02: communities,
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  SPEAKER_02: particularly in America.
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  SPEAKER_02: And that leads to a religious response that sweeps through the nation,
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  SPEAKER_02: which is commonly known as the Second Great Awakening.
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  SPEAKER_02: And there is this massive revivalism in these rural communities
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  communities where they're like looking for new ways of making
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  meaning in this
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  different world and also wrestling with the financial
• 11:47
  instability that a lot of
• 11:48
  this speculation is causing and this revivalism in the in
• 11:53
  upstate in western new
• 11:54
  york is known as the burn or like that region becomes known as
• 11:58
  the burned over
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: district because so many revivals
• 12:01
  burn through the area like wildfires and it is there that
• 12:08
  Joseph Smith is living
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: when he starts Mormonism so cool so it's like related to this whole thing
• 12:19
  completely it's so crazy and i'll say just a quick plug for our
• 12:23
  own books yeah plug
• 12:24
  our books second great awakening is depicted in elizabeth
• 12:28
  stoddard's the morgesons
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  there is a part of the book where someone sweeps into town do
• 12:33
  you remember this a
• 12:34
  preacher sweeps into town and like everybody gets awakened oh
• 12:38
  yeah and but then
• 12:38
  there's kind of like a fallout around it the next month where
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  everybody's sort of
• 12:42
  like washed up and weird because they fall back asleep yeah
• 12:45
  they were like reborn
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: and then they died
• 12:48
  yeah it's so wild i'm gonna tell this is kind of i have like
• 12:51
  you're basically
• 12:52
  listening to me this episode no worries and then we'll sort of
• 12:55
  like chat at the end
• 12:56
  you can pipe it at any point if you have something to say or
• 13:00
  need clarification but
• 13:01
  it's just kind of like i'm gonna tell you the story of joseph
• 13:04
  smith and it's kind
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: of like it's just a tale the man had a life you kind of had to be there
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be there.
• 13:09
  So Smith was born in Vermont in 1805 and his family moved a lot
• 13:13
  when he was young
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  SPEAKER_02: around New England primarily.
• 13:17
  And the like sort of story that gets told over and over again
• 13:22
  is that his dad made
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: a really bad bet on ginseng.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: The tea?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like the root.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: he had bought a huge amount of ginseng and decided to ship it to China,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: which sort of feels like shipping tea to China,
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: so to speak.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And...
• 13:44
  hoping that and there i've like i've read about this before
• 13:47
  there were all these
• 13:47
  like ways that in the 18th and 19th century trade with china
• 13:50
  worked through
• 13:51
  brokerages like so you could send a broker to like get the you
• 13:55
  know whatever
• 13:56
  porcelain you want and they would bring it back and so he did
• 14:00
  it through a broker
• 14:00
  and depending on the story you read like either he made a
• 14:04
  really bad investment or
• 14:06
  the broker totally ripped him off but he lost all his money in
• 14:09
  this ginseng that
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: sucks and he had to run he had to leave town
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: So he's, the family's just like sort of going through stuff like this.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: The dad's kind of like a shy sea, like hustler guy.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And which makes perfect sense.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually they're sort of blowing around with the wind.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: They settle in Palmyra,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: New York in 1817,
• 14:30
  which is significant because the reason they had to leave
• 14:34
  wherever they were before
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: that I didn't write down is because of the year with no summer in 1816,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: which is also heard about Frankenstein to be written.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like,
• 14:44
  i'm sorry am i paranoid or is like the world one thing and it's
• 14:48
  also depicted no
• 14:49
  it's not depicted in the testament of anlie a different dark
• 14:52
  day is depicted in the
• 14:53
  testament of anlie that's a different dark day earlier yeah so
• 14:56
  it's like so
• 14:57
  basically the crops failed in america because of this volcano
• 15:00
  that also caused like
• 15:01
  year was no summer in europe and his family sort of was like in
• 15:07
  this itinerant
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: moment and just kept moving and eventually landed in palmyra in 1817 and
• 15:13
  what would you say is worse having a dark summer where you have
• 15:17
  no choice but to
• 15:18
  write a horror story or all the crops dying i mean which one is
• 15:23
  more likely to
• 15:24
  happen to me the former so i would say i don't like that one
• 15:30
  but yeah obviously his
• 15:31
  family was like they weren't like destitute but they did not
• 15:35
  they were like they
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: were hand to mouth like you know
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what was his religion before all this?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you asked.
• 15:43
  So his mother,
• 15:44
  Lucy Mack Smith,
• 15:46
  was kind of into this like revivalist Christianity.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: She had like a really personal relationship with God,
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: which was like something that was sort of like mystical Protestantism,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: basically,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: that came out of these revivals,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: like people having this one on one relationship.
• 16:01
  And her I think it was her brother also like started his own
• 16:04
  sect,
• 16:05
  like religious sect.
• 16:06
  So Smith grew up in a house where it was like kind of normal to
• 16:09
  be like talking to God.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:12
  And something I'd like to track through your episode here is
• 16:15
  the relationship with
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: the book and the relationship with the text and how that all fits in.
• 16:20
  A question I have is like,
• 16:20
  how does the Bible relate to the Book of Mormon?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't actually like in everything I read,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: there's an amazing biography of Smith by Fawn Brody,
• 16:29
  which was written in the 40s and is still kind of like the best
• 16:32
  text about him.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't say exactly that his mom like read the Bible.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: It says she has a personal relationship with God.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm kind of like, I wonder also how literacy factors into that.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, printing will be huge throughout this.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: We'll talk about it.
• 16:47
  over and over again like the importance of print and text but i
• 16:51
  don't know that he
• 16:52
  like grew up in a reading house so few people do so few people
• 16:56
  do so sad um but so
• 17:00
  he's living in palmyra which is in the burned over district
• 17:04
  brody has this great
• 17:05
  line where she says that smith is as much a product of american
• 17:08
  religion as
• 17:08
  jonathan edwards is oh my god you know i love jonathan i know
• 17:11
  you do i love
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: jonathan edward to edwards too
• 17:14
  He was also so compelling and charismatic that he could,
• 17:18
  quote,
• 17:18
  sell a muzzle to a dog.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Jeez, that's like really sexy.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, you liked Wuthering Heights.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's like too grim for me.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And he also grew up,
• 17:32
  so his mother has this kind of mystical Christianity and his
• 17:35
  dad was into black
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: magic,
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: which should not surprise you at all,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: knowing he was a failed ginseng merchant.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: What did being into black magic mean?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like making soup out of puppies?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was like folk magic, but also weird necromancy stuff.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so Smith's earliest career was something called money digging,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: which he would basically look at a rock.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's scrying.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's like an old medieval tradition or whatever.
• 18:03
  But he would stare at a rock until it gave him the location of
• 18:07
  buried treasure,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: at which point he would go dig it up.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Did that work?
• 18:12
  The thing about this is that upstate New York was filled with
• 18:16
  Native American burial mounds.
• 18:18
  So it did work in the sense that people were pulling gold and
• 18:23
  precious stones out
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: of the ground by desecrating these graves.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: But...
• 18:30
  it didn't work no you wouldn't think that there'd be that much
• 18:34
  precious metal in
• 18:36
  upstate new york indigenous burial mounds to be honest well i
• 18:40
  don't really know but
• 18:42
  so his his encounter with that is the movie holes also it is
• 18:48
  holes i was like what
• 18:49
  am i thinking of where someone just digs a bunch of holes and
• 18:52
  tries to find
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: something it is true
• 18:54
  yeah it's like it's so he the angel maroney appears to him for
• 18:58
  the first time in
• 18:59
  1823 and just like as context for that he is in the middle at
• 19:02
  that point of his
• 19:03
  sort of short career as a money digger and professional scryer
• 19:08
  so he was actively
• 19:10
  working he was hired by a man named joseph stowell for 14 a
• 19:14
  month which was more
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: money than the people digging the erie canal were paid
• 19:18
  to use his peepstone to seek out a hidden cache of silver
• 19:21
  allegedly lost by Spanish
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: conquistadors in upstate New York,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: which is like an unlikely story.
• 19:28
  But Stowell hired Smith in 1825 because he was such like a
• 19:33
  well-known treasure seeker.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: And in 1826 sued him for being a disorderly person and an imposter,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: revealing that in his entire career as a scryer,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: he had never uncovered any treasure at all.
• 19:46
  well i don't think that's that bad for a scryer i mean yeah for
• 19:51
  a for a 19 year old
• 19:53
  scryer he's like he just started he has his whole life ahead of
• 19:58
  him um but he was
• 19:59
  convicted so he has this kind of that's bad yeah it's bad so in
• 20:05
  so here's the story
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: of the golden plates now
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Ready.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: In 1823,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: when Joseph was 17,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: an angel who identified himself as Moroni appeared at Joseph's bedside.
• 20:17
  He told that he was sent by God and directed Joseph towards a
• 20:20
  set of solid gold
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: plates inscribed with a text that had been buried 1400 years prior.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: In the year 400 AD.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Where did the angel get the name Moroni?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Are there Italians around?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is that an angel that was already in existence?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of crazy names coming.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like buckle up.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like... I mean, it sounds like moron.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Which is like... Moroni.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Moroni.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: So in this first appearance...
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Moroni offers Joseph a vision of the place that these plates are buried,
• 21:05
  but warns him that he cannot tell anyone they exist or try to
• 21:08
  remove them.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: The next day,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Joseph wakes up,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: goes to the place Moroni has showed him,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: and unearths a large stone box that contains gold plates.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Whoa.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: But he,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: in his hubris,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: ignores the angel's warning and attempts to remove them,
• 21:24
  causing them to disappear completely and himself to be struck
• 21:27
  down and hurled to
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: the earth.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:29
  the story's got holes it's like there's a part of me that was
• 21:33
  like okay the first
• 21:34
  part maybe he really did find something and then the idea that
• 21:37
  they would disappear
• 21:38
  in thin air and that he would be struck down he didn't he was
• 21:41
  chastised by god this
• 21:43
  happened to me before yeah you got stung by a jellyfish for
• 21:47
  gossiping for gossiping
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: in the ocean um smite
• 21:52
  smite me almighty smiter smite these girls okay so maroney
• 21:59
  however had a change of
• 22:00
  heart and generously instructed smith to return to this spot i
• 22:04
  know it's so
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: ridiculous i really try to take things seriously but this story is crazy
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Angels don't change their minds.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: I know angels like famously are vengeful and don't change their mind.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Have you even met an angel Joseph Smith?
• 22:18
  Maroney instructed Smith to return to this spot where the
• 22:22
  plates had been buried
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: every year on September 22nd.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's Sam's birthday.
• 22:28
  sam um telling him that the plates would appear like when the
• 22:32
  time was right
• 22:33
  basically wow and so he went every year for for four years and
• 22:39
  in 1826 he goes he
• 22:42
  has his annual rendezvous with moroni and after four years of
• 22:46
  fruitless visits
• 22:47
  moroni reveals that if joseph does the will of god as revealed
• 22:51
  to him the following
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: year he would be allowed to collect the plates 1827 okay
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now,
• 22:57
  what God wanted Joseph Smith to do was marry this girl he had a
• 23:01
  crush on and bring
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: her with him.
• 23:06
  But the girl,
• 23:07
  Emma,
• 23:08
  her dad didn't want her to marry this scryer,
• 23:11
  shuckster criminal.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: So he, like, he...
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Runs away with her and elopes to like, I don't know where.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then the following year on September 22nd,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: they arrive at the site dressed in all black,
• 23:31
  riding in a black carriage pulled by a black horse because
• 23:34
  they're doing black
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: magic.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit on the nose.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: And on this fifth annual visit in 1827,
• 23:41
  the angel finally allowed Joseph Smith to collect the plates
• 23:44
  and take them home
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: with him.
• 23:45
  wow wow great that's a huge accomplishment i mean it's like
• 23:51
  five years yeah long
• 23:52
  time i've never worked on anything for five years that's not
• 23:54
  true manual it's only
• 23:56
  three that's true yeah that is true um i'll see you in two
• 24:01
  years two years bitches
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: uh no bear with us please
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so Joseph takes the gold plates home.
• 24:09
  No less than 19 witnesses testify to having seen and touched
• 24:13
  the plates themselves.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like totally crazy.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: They're described by all of these people.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: They have the same description, the appearance of gold.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: They're six inches wide and eight inches long.
• 24:25
  So they're book size and they're filled with engravings in
• 24:28
  Egyptian characters,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: which is,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what that means.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Could mean anything.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: Could mean anything and bound in rings.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And what?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 24:36
  oh oh they're like spelled like spiral bound together yeah
• 24:39
  there's it's spiral
• 24:39
  bound and they're about six inches tall all piled up okay okay
• 24:45
  so if you thought
• 24:47
  that the story was weird before i guess i'm like am i rehashing
• 24:51
  the whole history
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: of mormonism do people know this no okay so
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: So basically,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: in addition to giving him the plates,
• 25:01
  the angel Moroni also provided Joseph with a pair of special
• 25:06
  glasses that allowed
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: him to read the plates.
• 25:09
  That's like in Wuthering Heights when they're wearing those
• 25:11
  little red glasses.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's like that,
• 25:12
  except that those glasses revive the dead language of Reform
• 25:16
  Egyptian that the
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: plates were allegedly written in.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is some Athanasius Kircher stuff.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, I couldn't even come up with this.
• 25:24
  you're creative and i'm creative and basically so he gives him
• 25:31
  these glasses joseph
• 25:32
  transcribes the whole thing and then one of his followers is
• 25:34
  like can i please
• 25:35
  please take it to show my wife and so just like sure gives him
• 25:39
  the transcript in
• 25:40
  that time moroni takes the plates and the glasses away yeah of
• 25:43
  course this guy's
• 25:44
  wife gets so mad that he's bought into this cult that she
• 25:48
  destroys the transcript
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: oh my god and the whole thing is gone
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: So once again,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Joseph has to go back to Moroni and be like,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: please,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: please,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: please,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: please,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: please give me my plates back.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Which again, like angels are not forgiving.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And why should he be trusted at all?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's obviously not equipped to handle this.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: But Moroni once again takes pity on Joseph.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: And returns the plates.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: But this time he doesn't give him the glasses.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 26:19
  So Joseph has to put his special seeing rock in a hat and put
• 26:25
  his face in that.
• 26:27
  sorry i'm acting it out so i moved the mic he sticks his face
• 26:30
  in the hat and he
• 26:32
  dictates with his face in the hat to someone who's transcribing
• 26:37
  because the
• 26:37
  peepstone works on the gold plates they're just near him and
• 26:41
  he's like vibing with
• 26:43
  it got it so there's he's dictating now there's even less of a
• 26:46
  chance he's free
• 26:47
  form that like he's he's owning to the fact that he's the
• 26:52
  interpretive force of the
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: plates and
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the plates are coming through him.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's not even looking at them anymore.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: He's the medium and the message.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so here is the story that the plates revealed.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: Several hundred years before the birth of Christ,
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: the angel Moroni and his father,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Mormon,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: recorded the extraordinary history of the Nephite clan,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: which had migrated to the American continent from Jerusalem.
• 27:25
  and on their arrival the nephites had the nephites i should say
• 27:30
  were a fair-skinned
• 27:31
  people and they were righteous how do you spell nephite
• 27:36
  n-e-p-h-i-t-e-s okay like
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: neopet not like neopet neopet is spelled differently um and
• 27:48
  So there's like a family is sort of like a Cain and Abel type
• 27:51
  situation and there's
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: a split in the family.
• 27:53
  So the Nephites and the Lamanites are the two branches of this
• 27:57
  clan that appear
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: like on American soil from Jerusalem.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: How'd they get there?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Unclear.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the Lamanites were peevish and idle.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: So God cursed them with dark skin.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like you can see where this is going.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: So shortly after Christ's resurrection,
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: he stopped by North America on his way,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: presumably to heaven,
• 28:20
  where he goes after his resurrection to try to forge a peace
• 28:23
  between these two
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: tribes,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: the Nephites and the Lamanites.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: And they enjoy a kind of like Pax Christo for a few hundred years.
• 28:31
  But then the Lamanites can't fight their nature and they
• 28:33
  backslide into idolatry.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so in 400 AD,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: the Lamanites slaughtered all 230,000 Nephites,
• 28:42
  which explains why Columbus didn't meet any white people when
• 28:45
  he came to America in
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: 1492.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: That explains it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: That explains it.
• 28:52
  And it was such a brutal slaughter that the surviving children
• 28:55
  of the Nephites were
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: forced into cannibalism.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: But even still, they succumbed and there were no Nephites left.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's brutal.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: And the Lamanites became the ancestors of Native Americans.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just like so crazy.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like when you read about the original Wizard of Oz text.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:16
  And you're like,
• 29:17
  oh,
• 29:17
  so this was all just like anti Native American propaganda.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:21
  And yet this like maybe some would say that the Ariana Grande
• 29:26
  wicked is a wicked
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: curse that was like released upon the earth.
• 29:30
  But imagine it's an entire religion with millions and millions
• 29:35
  of members.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a huge religion.
• 29:36
  yeah god and this part okay so the native americans obviously
• 29:43
  forgot their judaic
• 29:44
  heritage and that is sort of like why they're cursed in many
• 29:48
  ways they forgot they
• 29:49
  forgot that they came from jerusalem originally i mean i'm just
• 29:55
  trying to like
• 29:56
  piece together like why though why anyone would do this like
• 30:00
  what's the point of
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: like yeah of this story
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 30:05
  I mean,
• 30:06
  I'm curious how much this story factors into being a Mormon
• 30:09
  today.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think not much.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: We'll get to it.
• 30:12
  Cause there's Mormonism is actually interesting for like a
• 30:14
  specific reason,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: which is that,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: and we'll talk about it more later.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: basically Joseph Smith,
• 30:22
  like the original text is less important because he sort of
• 30:26
  changed his mind
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: throughout the rest of his life.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so he allowed for revel, like up to date revelations to come through.
• 30:34
  And so the text of Mormonism is sort of constantly shifting as
• 30:38
  opposed to like the
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: old Testament of the Bible,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: which has just been the same.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Which I read in that recent New York Magazine article.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the revelation part is key to the culture.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's key to the culture and it's key to keeping it relevant.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Keeping it cool.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Keeping it cool.
• 30:53
  So Joseph writes down this amazing story and he wants to print
• 30:57
  5,000 copies of it,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: which is like...
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: larger than like our print runs.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like so crazy.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wait till DAP orders that many.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: But check out this plan.
• 31:06
  So he couldn't get them together the $3,000 that the publisher
• 31:09
  demanded to print
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: this many copies.
• 31:10
  That kind of like makes me feel better about how much it costs
• 31:12
  to print our books.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: I thought the same thing.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: This part, actually, I was like, I really...
• 31:17
  but what's crazy is it okay so three thousand dollars to print
• 31:20
  five thousand copies
• 31:22
  in 1827 yeah and i'm trying to convert that into current
• 31:27
  dollars i'm just like in
• 31:29
  some ways the currency is so much weaker now and the technology
• 31:33
  is so much more
• 31:34
  advanced that like it really should cost like twelve dollars to
• 31:38
  print five thousand
• 31:39
  copies now but i guess that's why some people wouldn't print we
• 31:42
  also use like
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: antiquated technology yeah you're right the book is the bad idea yeah
• 31:47
  um go on go on so he couldn't get the money together so God
• 31:53
  like this would be an
• 31:53
  example of a time that the updated revelations came in handy
• 31:56
  God conveniently
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: decreed that his follower Martin Harris the one who had lost the original
• 32:01
  transcript should sell his farm to pay for printing the first
• 32:05
  run of Book of Mormon
• 32:06
  thank you Joseph and Harris obeyed and thus was born the Book
• 32:11
  of Mormon wow amazing
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: story right
• 32:14
  sold his farm that's some get a dog to buy its muzzle stuff
• 32:19
  totally and i'm like i
• 32:21
  feel for harris's wife who destroyed like i wish that it had
• 32:24
  worked when she just
• 32:25
  destroyed the first book because i'm sure her life was like
• 32:26
  hell after that i bet
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: she gets married again to joseph smith
• 32:32
  i actually don't know that she's i bet she buys it eventually
• 32:35
  yeah um so people
• 32:38
  have been critical of the book of mormon since its inception in
• 32:42
  part because
• 32:42
  there's no archaeological evidence to support any of the things
• 32:45
  that happen in the
• 32:46
  story in part because it's riddled with these anachronisms like
• 32:50
  for example there
• 32:51
  are horses which came to the americas with columbus so there
• 32:54
  weren't horses before
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: um
• 32:56
  that um there he also talks about steel and the seven day week
• 33:01
  both of which are
• 33:02
  steel like steel like the metal yeah but i think steel is later
• 33:06
  than 1827 no well
• 33:10
  it's in the book of i mean it's definitely later than 400 a.d
• 33:13
  no you're thinking of
• 33:15
  iron no i think iron's the og steel's later iron says steel in
• 33:21
  the thing i read
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Should I Google it?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, I can't Google anything.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Steel invention.
• 33:29
  No,
• 33:33
  it was invented in the seven...
• 33:35
  Wait,
• 33:35
  steel was accidentally discovered in 1300 BC.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so confused.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, but in Asia, in Asia only.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's not.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's steel is invented in 1740 and isn't mass produced until 1855.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, what year?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: 1740 and then 1855.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I guess he might have known about it.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:07
  And Mark Twain famously called the Book of Mormon chloroform in
• 34:10
  print because it was so boring.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: Which I love.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like we publish chloroform.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like that is the genre we publish.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's so sad.
• 34:20
  And observed that it uses the phrase,
• 34:24
  quote,
• 34:24
  and it came to pass and quote over 2000 times.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: How long is it?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I give a very abbreviated version.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: That like story that I told is like a 400 year history.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're right.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like they come before Christ's plates.
• 34:41
  yeah but you don't understand what a condensed language reform
• 34:45
  egyptian is how much
• 34:48
  can be communicated with each hieroglyph yeah each hieroglyph
• 34:53
  is you know is a
• 34:55
  world unto itself are you going to talk about desiree no so i
• 34:59
  my story stops when
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: they go to nauvu
• 35:03
  how do you say that i don't know i don't know because i figured
• 35:10
  it's just like so
• 35:11
  much happens and i just it's so much already and i was like
• 35:14
  we're gonna have to do
• 35:15
  other episodes anyway so this is part one of maybe this is part
• 35:18
  one so this is kind
• 35:19
  of the origin story and then when they go to now i'm like
• 35:23
  that's like sort of the
• 35:24
  this that's utah right no that's illinois oh okay where he dies
• 35:29
  right that's where
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: he dies
• 35:31
  yeah and it's like the first like city they found themselves
• 35:34
  and it's kind of like
• 35:34
  a new era of mormonism so i'm just like that can be its own
• 35:39
  thing and i'll tell the
• 35:40
  lead up to that go on so i'll go on and it came to pass and it
• 35:44
  came to pass so um
• 35:49
  the never like despite the fact that it was so boring and
• 35:52
  repetitive um it becomes
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: popular because he printed 5 000 copies
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's this quote from a person named R.
• 36:06
  Lawrence Moore in a book called Religious Outsiders and the
• 36:09
  Making of Americans.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he says,
• 36:11
  Joseph Smith instinctively knew what all other founders of new
• 36:15
  American religions
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: in the 19th century instinctively knew.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: Many Americans of that period,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: in part because of popular enthusiasm for science,
• 36:22
  were ready to listen to any claim that appealed to something
• 36:24
  that could be
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: interpreted as empirical evidence.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's this fact that he's like, I have this physical thing.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: I have this story like it's proof.
• 36:33
  You think in that atmosphere of revivalism and awakening him
• 36:38
  having like a material
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: component of the religion made it more convincing to people?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 36:43
  And I think having like the testimony of the witnesses who saw
• 36:46
  the plates ends up
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: in the Book of Mormon.
• 36:49
  it's like john it's like what john oh yeah it's like john i
• 36:55
  thought you said dawn i
• 36:56
  was like it's not it's maybe it's the dawn of a new age yeah
• 36:59
  it's the dawn no i
• 37:00
  think that he's like he in the book of mormon has testimonials
• 37:04
  of people like i
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: watched him do this like i've seen this this is real
• 37:08
  It's also what's interesting to me about this is like I'm
• 37:11
  reading Wilkie Collins,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: The Woman in White.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And at various points in the book,
• 37:16
  because it's like a mystery and there's all these like mistaken
• 37:18
  identities and like
• 37:20
  different people claiming different things to prove that
• 37:23
  something was true in the
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: 19th century,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: you pretty much just had to produce a letter.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that happens multiple times in Wilkie Collins' book.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's like someone's claiming to be someone else and she's like,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: look,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have it written down here.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, what is that?
• 37:37
  But before the advent of like photography or other types of
• 37:40
  technology or before
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: they became popular,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: accessible,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: it's like a letter is all you have.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: I know it is interesting because so Fawn Brody says this of Joseph Smith.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Joseph Smith dared to found a new religion in the age of printing.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: When he said,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: thus saith the Lord,
• 37:58
  the words were copied down by secretaries and congealed forever
• 38:01
  into print.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: And there are few men,
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: however,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: who have written so much and told so little about themselves,
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: which I think is just an amazing quote.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: But also like...
• 38:11
  it's sort of like on the one hand yes it's like validated by
• 38:16
  kind of these
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: witnesses and being put into print in this period where print is like the
• 38:19
  authoritative technology but on the other hand it's like it's
• 38:23
  so absurd and he's
• 38:25
  like pursued by these stories of his like charlatanism and like
• 38:29
  the newspaper comes
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: up over and over again in this as like you know a problem
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually,
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: spoiler,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 38:37
  it's the destruction of an opposition printing press that leads
• 38:41
  to his lynching.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: this story is bookended by,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: both the authority of the press and also,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: the failure of the press to sort of validate these kinds of,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: crazy experiences.
• 38:53
  And ultimately,
• 38:54
  like,
• 38:54
  the religion survival has to do with people's,
• 38:56
  like,
• 38:56
  blind faith in it.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Which is stronger than anything that can be written down.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: And yet he's, like, given this, like, print the burden of proof.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a strange time.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Keep going.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to hear what happens next.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put my quote over here.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: So in 1830, he officially founds the Church of Latter-day Saints.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he's calling it that from day one.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's like the start of LDS.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: So the transcription stuff is all happening in the 20s.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: 1830,
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: he officially starts the religion,
• 39:30
  at which point he receives another missive from God that it is
• 39:33
  time to move west,
• 39:35
  which happens to coincide with some hostilities being printed
• 39:38
  in the local
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Rochester newspaper.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um,
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: which basically are calling Smith,
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: uh,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: a charlatan and a fraud because of his legal trials,
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: which we'll remember were only two or three years prior to this.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: So he's still a young man.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's still a young man.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: He was born.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: So he's 25 in 1830.
• 39:58
  he accomplished so much he accomplished so much and like so the
• 40:01
  whole period of the
• 40:02
  1820s where he's like building this following and doing this
• 40:04
  transcription whatever
• 40:05
  is also at the time that he's like a treasure seeker and being
• 40:09
  sued and all of
• 40:10
  these other things like he's got a lot of irons in the fire
• 40:13
  yeah you never know a
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: lot of steels in the fire
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: He's got a lot of steels in the crucible.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think in 1830, he's kind of like, oh, I know which goose is cooked.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the Church of LDS.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so they begin a further exodus towards Eden,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: which he believes to be located in the Missouri frontier.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:41
  me too yeah um and is branson in missouri have you ever been
• 40:46
  there no i did a
• 40:48
  really cool mini golf shot there there was a high school in my
• 40:52
  county called
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: branson of any relation no idea um in the ozarks
• 40:59
  mormonism's numbers grew as people flocked to this new
• 41:03
  jerusalem settlement in
• 41:04
  missouri but they it wasn't like their settlement there was an
• 41:08
  existing community
• 41:10
  there of non-mormons and so they're entering this community of
• 41:14
  people who didn't
• 41:15
  like them because they would only really do business dealings
• 41:20
  with each other they
• 41:21
  were like really loyal to one another which i think is still
• 41:23
  true of mormons
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: And they would also vote in a block and do whatever Joseph Smith said.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: So he basically like dominated local politics.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: And in 1833,
• 41:34
  an armed mob of 500 Missourians tarred and feathered two LDS
• 41:39
  church members and
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: destroyed the printing office of an LDS newspaper.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: Mm hmm.
• 41:45
  And for the next five years,
• 41:47
  the groups suffered like savage beatings by mobs.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Their houses were burned down.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was a constant sort of tension with the existing community.
• 41:55
  And Smith always Smith was against violence and always forbade
• 42:00
  retaliation until in
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: 1838 things kind of reached this boiling point.
• 42:05
  um so in 1838 they had purchased 250 000 acres of land in
• 42:10
  caldwell county missouri
• 42:12
  from the u.s government um but their numbers were rapidly
• 42:15
  expanding there were now
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: 10 000 members living in missouri which is huge and
• 42:20
  And so that they're sort of they're spilling out of their own
• 42:24
  settlement and back
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: into the greater population.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's sort of giving settlers of Catan.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, like Israel.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: And as the numbers grew,
• 42:38
  Mormons spilled over from their settlements into the original
• 42:42
  communities that had
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: been there.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's causing, like, major tension.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: And during a local election in one of the neighboring counties,
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: the Whig candidate makes some remarks calling the Mormons,
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: quote,
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: horse thieves,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: liars,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: counterfeiters,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: and dupes,
• 42:58
  at which point another person in the crowd uses a really bad
• 43:02
  slur and says,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: they're worse than N-word.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: They shouldn't be allowed to vote.
• 43:07
  And then a violent,
• 43:10
  drunken member of the crowd attacks a Mormon cobbler who's like
• 43:15
  also there.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: And from there, things go absolutely bonkers bananas.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: There's a massive brawl because the other Mormons in the crowd,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: there's like a few of them,
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: but they're way outnumbered,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: come to the defense of this cobbler.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: And they kick everyone's ass, even though they're outnumbered.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then the locals hate them even more because they rock so hard.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: And...
• 43:40
  this starts like basically a war and the locals act with like
• 43:43
  genocidal rage and go
• 43:46
  to this i forget it was like a blacksmith shop and slaughter 18
• 43:51
  people including a
• 43:52
  10 year old boy who they shot in the head and when like the
• 43:57
  boy's brother was a
• 43:58
  witness he had been shot in the hip but survived and he said
• 44:02
  that he heard them say
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: like one of them pleaded like not to shoot the kid because he was
• 44:08
  child and the leader of the mob said nits make lice which is
• 44:13
  like famously what
• 44:14
  Jackson said about Native Americans when he was justifying
• 44:17
  slaughtering them it's
• 44:18
  like horrific and they burned down these houses it was just
• 44:23
  like an absolute mess
• 44:25
  and so in order to forge a truce and try to like save people
• 44:29
  and get them out Smith
• 44:31
  and five other Mormon leaders agreed to be like delivered to
• 44:34
  this mob basically and
• 44:36
  And the mob court-martials them and convicts them of treason,
• 44:39
  which is capital offense.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: And luckily, the general of Missouri refused to carry out the execution.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: He took sympathy on them,
• 44:47
  and he called it murder and threatened to hold anyone who
• 44:50
  participated in the
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: execution of these five LDS leaders,
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: like to convict them and hold them responsible for murder,
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: basically.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: At which point, they just put them in jail.
• 45:01
  And then so the most of the Mormons flee across the border and
• 45:07
  their lives are
• 45:08
  spared but they're like possessions are plundered and they are
• 45:12
  given a few months
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: to get out of town and then they're like we're going to kill you all.
• 45:16
  smith and his friends are in jail in that time until they bribe
• 45:21
  the sheriff to
• 45:22
  pretend to get drunk they pay him 800 which again i'm kind of
• 45:26
  like feels like
• 45:26
  contemporary currency yeah that's a lot yeah like it's it's not
• 45:31
  nothing i mean i
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: cost a thousand dollars to do that kind of service a bribe yeah
• 45:37
  mabel has a price to pretend to get drunk and fall asleep easy
• 45:42
  doing it right now
• 45:42
  um they uh so they pretend to get drunk he the sheriff pretends
• 45:49
  to get drunk and
• 45:50
  falls asleep and the like five members in smith escape and they
• 45:55
  flee to illinois
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: and found now and this is where my story ends for today
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have a question.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:03
  How much of a role is the American right to religious freedom
• 46:10
  invoked in these conversations?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like when the general refuses to carry out the order.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually like not really tough.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I read Fawn Brody's book.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then I also read Under the Banner of Heaven.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then I read some articles and stuff.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of confusing.
• 46:29
  Like Fawn Brody is actually interesting because she is the
• 46:33
  first person who really
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: like researched this intensely.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so she was like,
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: talks about having all these sources in the preface,
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: like the local newspapers and things.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: But they're not really covering that.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of the documentation is actually like LDS documentation,
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: which is like very heavily biased.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's hard to know.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that plays a role in it?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's also, is it a distinctly American phenomenon?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: What we see here with the birth of all these religions?
• 47:02
  No,
• 47:02
  but the birth of all of these religions and the like belief
• 47:05
  that you can found a religion is
• 47:08
  yeah and that you have a right to do that i don't know just
• 47:11
  like martin luther yeah
• 47:13
  but that's old news kind of i mean i think i think mormonism is
• 47:17
  comparable to
• 47:18
  lutheranism in the sense that like it is it seemed insane at
• 47:22
  first and then it's
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: like become so big that we don't even really think about it anymore
• 47:28
  but I think people do still think about,
• 47:30
  I guess maybe just cause it's more recent.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we just have to wait this one out.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: there's,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: it's just like,
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: so I wanted to talk about this in part because it is like,
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think still very germane.
• 47:42
  And so we both read the Bridget Reed magazine article in New
• 47:47
  York magazine.
• 47:48
  I don't know why I said it like that,
• 47:51
  but you know what I'm saying about Mormon influencers.
• 47:54
  and in the beginning of that article she points out that in
• 47:58
  2011 which is maybe
• 47:59
  before your memory starts but i was in high school thank you um
• 48:06
  is like mitt romney
• 48:07
  ran for president and his mormonism is kind of like a punch
• 48:10
  line and also book of
• 48:11
  mormon comes out on broadway in 2011 and there was like a whole
• 48:14
  like south park
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: thing i thought that was so interesting i forgot about that time
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was like really a grown up already at that point.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I like do remember this, but I kind of thought it was longer ago.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like I thought it was like 2006.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just remember being utterly baffled by Mitt Romney.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I never heard of any of that stuff.
• 48:37
  Well,
• 48:38
  I lived in Massachusetts a lot,
• 48:39
  so I actually understood Mitt Romney.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't get it still.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: He's like a conservative who wants people to have health care.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'd never heard of Mormonism.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't drink coffee.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I never heard of that.
• 48:52
  Yeah.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had a Mormon nanny at one point.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I like,
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: I like had these like vague inklings of what it was,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: but it was the same inside as Scientology in my mind.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's like really interesting.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: Cause I feel like those both in like 2010,
• 49:05
  2011 became these sort of like huge cultural interests where
• 49:09
  people are like,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: these are so freaky,
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: these things.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:11
  And Scientology became like a total punchline and like nobody
• 49:16
  takes it seriously
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: anymore except for the people in it.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: And like, there's not really a risk of it becoming this like,
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: And Mormonism has turned the corner and has become socially acceptable.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in my mind, there's a chart of Mormonism, Scientology, Mennonite.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's the other one?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: It starts with an A. Amish.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Amish.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: They go on Rumspringa.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: And in my head, all of those... Well, no.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: I thought Mormonism and...
• 49:51
  amishism and mennonites were like one category i thought crazy
• 49:56
  because amish people
• 49:57
  sell cheese and mormons like i know from hawaii but i'd never
• 50:01
  heard of any of you
• 50:02
  know what i mean i think it's the freaky underwear part yeah
• 50:06
  that gives it some
• 50:07
  sort of like sympathy in my mind i guess i knew mormons like in
• 50:11
  real life before i
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: knew about the underwear
• 50:13
  yeah i didn't know about that and then but scientology is like
• 50:16
  so fringe but then
• 50:18
  when you're like watching a documentary about scientology
• 50:20
  you're like this is
• 50:22
  coming for us all and like they do own the world already yeah
• 50:25
  but mormons really do
• 50:27
  yeah like when you compare it to mormonism it's nothing it's
• 50:30
  dropping the bucket um
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: also like in that same era like
• 50:35
  big love was on which i don't know if you've ever watched that
• 50:38
  it's really good we
• 50:39
  should re-watch it and and like sister wives came out on tlc
• 50:42
  like yeah so it's like
• 50:43
  becoming this like like people are interested and so sister
• 50:48
  wives and big love like
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: polygamy is not practiced in the mainstream mormon church anymore flds
• 50:54
  flds which is fundamentalist latter-day saints which is like a
• 50:57
  whole other thing
• 50:58
  that i'm not really gonna get into i guess it's flds that makes
• 51:01
  me made me think of
• 51:03
  the amish and they are like they dress like they have their
• 51:06
  hair and they have
• 51:07
  their hair and they like you know pedophiles and stuff it's a
• 51:13
  whole thing it's a
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: whole thing um
• 51:16
  but i wanted to talk about the bridget read i like made you
• 51:18
  relook at it today
• 51:19
  because i felt like if you didn't that's okay i will give you
• 51:23
  my it's fresh in my
• 51:24
  mind bullet points it wasn't that long ago i just think that
• 51:28
  like basically this
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: change in the last 15 years to the mainstreaming of mormonism is like
• 51:37
  actually not that weird when you think about Joseph Smith and
• 51:40
  the original tenets
• 51:41
  of the religion itself so we have like one this really unique
• 51:45
  relationship with the
• 51:46
  media that Mormonism has had since its inception and this like
• 51:50
  the transition from
• 51:52
  this reliance on print and newspapers to social media like is
• 51:56
  not that astounding
• 51:58
  it's like just shows that they're willing to adapt but this
• 52:02
  like has always been a
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: huge part of it and
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: And,
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: um,
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: uh,
• 52:08
  the Bridget Reed article I should say is like mostly focusing
• 52:11
  on how since 2020 and
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: like the rise of mom talk,
• 52:13
  like Mormonism has become more and more mainstream and
• 52:15
  acceptable to like a wider
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: public.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen Secret Lives of Mormon Lives?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, but I was during COVID like really into watching that drama unfold.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I like sort of know the characters.
• 52:27
  And will you be watching The Bachelorette with Frankie Paul,
• 52:30
  whatever her name is?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't watch The Bachelorette anymore.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like that's a season worth watching.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'll watch it.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like,
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: it got to the point where it was like,
• 52:38
  every episode is longer than the greatest love story ever told
• 52:41
  Casablanca.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like every episode is two hours.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is a really big commitment.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: Casablanca is 90 minutes.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: And there's like 24 episodes in a season.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just watch Casablanca 24 times.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, how much could there be to say?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's not much.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can just like follow along via vulture articles.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's what I like to do.
• 53:02
  um the other points that i wanted to like bring up is like the
• 53:07
  mlm of it all which
• 53:08
  is like a huge thing in these influencer communities and like i
• 53:12
  was thinking about
• 53:13
  whitney rose yeah also when i was reading this is like that
• 53:17
  sort of like hustle get
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: rich quick culture is also so fundamental to what smith it's so peepstone
• 53:23
  it's so peepstone like money digging yeah and smith like builds
• 53:28
  that into the
• 53:29
  religion it's not like it's not about like poverty or whatever
• 53:34
  christian values
• 53:36
  even like i was thinking about this when you explained smith's
• 53:39
  background but like
• 53:40
  the idea of like digging into the earth looking for money and
• 53:44
  then giving up on
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: that and digging into people's souls looking for money yeah
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of similarities in that.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think that like MLM, it's the same thing.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the hive mind power.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was going to say something else, but I don't remember.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they love like hierarchies also, which is like related.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then,
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: yeah,
• 54:06
  Reed writes about the Latter-day Saints believe in an ongoing
• 54:09
  revelation from God.
• 54:11
  As a result,
• 54:11
  they can be inflexibly doctrinaire and expansively open to
• 54:14
  change.
• 54:15
  And it makes it hard to tell nearly 200 years after Smith
• 54:18
  founded his insular
• 54:19
  church whether Mormons have assimilated or we've become more
• 54:22
  susceptible to the
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: pitch.
• 54:24
  yeah that was crazy that was crazy and the other thing that i
• 54:29
  was thinking about a
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: lot is like ballerina farms and this like homesteading aesthetic which is
• 54:34
  essentially like romanticizing the expansionism like american
• 54:38
  expansionism that is
• 54:40
  so fundamental to the mormons going west yeah i was thinking
• 54:44
  about it when i was
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: flying jet blue yesterday
• 54:46
  why oh because it's mormons and ballerina farm is married to
• 54:49
  the guy who's the heir
• 54:50
  to the jet blue fortune and i was watching the guy next to me
• 54:53
  on my flight drinking
• 54:54
  alcohol and i thought what a hypocrite it was like lisa barlow
• 54:58
  yeah and how do you
• 55:00
  reconcile that hypocrisy with the religion because it just like
• 55:03
  adapts because it's
• 55:05
  smith himself is like he like so i didn't get into it but he
• 55:10
  basically like
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: or I guess we'll talk about it more later,
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: but,
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: once the city is founded,
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: it becomes,
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: a haven for people who do forgeries and,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: particularly counterfeiting money.
• 55:24
  And it's because they don't give a fuck whether,
• 55:27
  like,
• 55:28
  people are breaking the law of the U.S.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: government if it's benefiting the church.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: And, like, same with, like, selling alcohol to people who aren't LDS.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, they don't care.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: As long as their people are not defiled.
• 55:39
  Their people aren't defiled and their people are actually
• 55:41
  benefiting from it.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: And their whole...
• 55:43
  Like the other thing that is really emphasized in the Brody is
• 55:49
  this,
• 55:49
  I think.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, here.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: Brody writes that Smith was purely a Yankee product.
• 55:59
  And a great deal of what was good in American folklore and
• 56:02
  thinking found its way
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: into his writings and into his church.
• 56:05
  The cornerstone of his metaphysics was that virile concept
• 56:08
  which pervaded the whole
• 56:09
  American spirit and which was indeed the noblest ideal of Jesus
• 56:13
  and Buddha,
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: that man is capable of eternal progress towards perfection.
• 56:19
  i remember what i was going to say yes sorry about no say it
• 56:22
  the plundering of the
• 56:23
  earth the plundering of the soul but the also the thing that
• 56:26
  mormons do where
• 56:27
  they're trying to convert people who are already dead to add to
• 56:32
  like the reason why
• 56:33
  mormons like have all the genealogical information in the world
• 56:36
  is because they
• 56:37
  believe that you can still be converted after you're no longer
• 56:41
  alive literally
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: google
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, they're just like adding, that's what my understanding of it.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think Bridger Reed talks about it too,
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: but it's like basically like,
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: it's never too late for your truth to come to you.
• 56:52
  And so the more people you can get on the list,
• 56:55
  basically,
• 56:57
  the better for this.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know if it's, it's literally the plot of dead souls.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Never read it, but hilarious.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what I mean?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, there's nothing is too far.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's this like constant striving towards perfection.
• 57:15
  Like I actually think Brody wrote this book of the fifties and
• 57:17
  has like basically a
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_02: fundamental misunderstanding of what Buddhism is.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: But like,
• 57:22
  it is like such an American ideal that is going into Smith's
• 57:28
  work and thinking that
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: like,
• 57:29
  even once you're dead you can keep striving to be better well
• 57:33
  and that's the whole
• 57:33
  thing it's like they and like the real housewives of salt lake
• 57:36
  city the lapsed
• 57:37
  mormons they talk about this like the whole idea too is that
• 57:40
  you are living your
• 57:40
  perfect life so that you can live your perfect afterlife and
• 57:43
  you're bringing
• 57:44
  everything with you to heaven and so like your perfect husband
• 57:47
  and your perfect
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: children they're gonna be there too yeah so you better be perfect now
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: Which is also like why,
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: people talk about this a lot,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: like why Mormons are like so interested in like,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: well,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: like all vitamin companies are Mormon.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like I,
• 58:01
  I always look whenever I order any sort of like wellness
• 58:04
  product and it's always
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: from Salt Lake City.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's because you need to achieve that perfection on earth.
• 58:10
  Like your body is like your temple in a way in order to like
• 58:14
  bring it with you.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: Mm hmm.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: it's like there are good things to be said about that,
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_02: but it's also like a sort of devastating way to live.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think they're listening to our podcast right now?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: I hope they like it.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_02: I also have like a lot about that.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's an article that I read,
• 58:31
  which I feel like I've actually talked about on here before
• 58:33
  about like the
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: physicality of the plates.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: I have a lot about that, but I don't think we need to get into it.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:42
  yeah i mean it's sort of just like this idea that there could
• 58:45
  have been like you
• 58:47
  know smith was drawing on his lived experience like no shade
• 58:51
  but like maroney
• 58:52
  didn't come to him like whatever but like he's living in this
• 58:56
  world that is like
• 58:57
  materially different than the world had been 40 years ago and
• 59:00
  so he's taking all of
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: these opportunities that are given to him
• 59:04
  like maybe he can't find money in the ground but he's finding
• 59:06
  like he's looking to
• 59:08
  the world around him still he's looking outside of himself for
• 59:10
  these revelations
• 59:11
  even if it's like not literally digging treasure out of the
• 59:14
  earth it's like okay
• 59:16
  i'm gonna say i dug these plates out of the earth but they're
• 59:19
  things that he
• 59:19
  encountered because like print culture is coming to upstate new
• 59:22
  york because the
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: erie canal is coming to
• 59:25
  like the area because westward expansion is happening and we
• 59:28
  need to get goods from
• 59:28
  chicago to new york and like all of these different things that
• 59:33
  are and like that's
• 59:34
  destabilizing the economy which is causing revivalism which is
• 59:36
  making people
• 59:37
  believe things it's like smith is like mining the world around
• 59:41
  him for this new
• 59:43
  belief system that like people do connect with because they
• 59:47
  don't they feel lost
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Also,
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: like maybe you can't find treasure in the ground,
• 59:50
  but if you can convince someone to sell their farm to like fund
• 59:53
  your printing of
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: your special book.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: We need to do that.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then you can do anything.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is the same thing.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's actually so much not about what you do,
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: but about what you say you do,
• 1:00:05
  which also feels like very of the moment we're living in and
• 1:00:08
  also very much of the
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: 19th century.
• 1:00:10
  no it's true that like sort of mentality i mean and the old
• 1:00:13
  like not to defend
• 1:00:15
  joseph smith i think he was obvious oh the thing i was going to
• 1:00:17
  say at some oh
• 1:00:19
  about the hypocrisy is like for example he like obviously was a
• 1:00:22
  polygamist but like
• 1:00:23
  always denied it publicly and would anonymously write these
• 1:00:27
  pro-polygamy pamphlets
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: but like always would say he didn't write them
• 1:00:32
  Like there's this weird like inability to kind of just take
• 1:00:36
  ownership of something like that.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because it was so scandalous.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: But like and yet he was doing it.
• 1:00:46
  yeah which is i think also like what we see displayed on these
• 1:00:50
  mormon social media
• 1:00:51
  reality tv things where it's like i'm lisa barlow i get drunk
• 1:00:55
  with everybody else
• 1:00:56
  but i say i she kind of doesn't admit it yeah and therefore it
• 1:01:00
  doesn't count like
• 1:01:01
  yeah it seems like from my very very narrow window into mormon
• 1:01:05
  life now it's
• 1:01:06
  there's a lot of stock is put into what you say you do versus
• 1:01:09
  what you actually
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: remember when angie brings the wine to britney's house yeah yeah
• 1:01:15
  and britney's so insulted but she drinks with them all the time
• 1:01:20
  yeah yeah and it is
• 1:01:22
  like it is very 19th century and it is very today i i do think
• 1:01:25
  like something
• 1:01:26
  fundamentally different from today is like today people put
• 1:01:31
  perform these sort of
• 1:01:32
  things and then like you know whatever say they do stuff and
• 1:01:36
  then don't do shit
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: like joseph smith was like a real leader
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: Not to parallel anyone.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not that I'm thinking about anyone in particular.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: But he sacrifices himself for the survival of Mormonism at a point.
• 1:01:52
  He's willing to give himself over to be executed to save the
• 1:01:55
  10,000 members of the church.
• 1:01:58
  That's a level of sacrifice that leads me to believe he wasn't
• 1:02:02
  totally cynical in his...
• 1:02:04
  and you're saying like Lisa Barlow wouldn't do that no I'm
• 1:02:07
  saying like Donald Trump
• 1:02:08
  wouldn't do that but yeah he won't die for us he would never
• 1:02:11
  die for us no I mean
• 1:02:13
  they tried to kill him he lived they grazed him yeah okay on
• 1:02:18
  that note thank you
• 1:02:20
  for this I leave just as baffled and mystified as ever about
• 1:02:24
  Mormonism but I think
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting closer
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to do part two.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: What year will it be?
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: I guess we should.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: We'll talk about it.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we should do like a Brigham Young associated year.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: Would love.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have a Desiree year.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Desiree.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Kisses.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Subscribe.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: Please subscribe.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: And rate us.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_02: Please like it.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: And like send it to a friend.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: But please give it five stars and comment.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: Also, we respond to every comment we've ever gotten.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I think.
• 1:02:54
  basically yeah if you want to talk to us it's like a really
• 1:02:57
  easy way to get oh my
• 1:02:58
  god open door policy guys yeah love you love you thank you bye
• 1:03:06
  hello you've reached
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: 1 800 1800 1 800 1800 i have a burning question 1 800
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.