[laughs]

And then, uh, like just the, the interacting with like fundamentalist LDS, uh, like, uh, culture.

It, it's not really indicative of anything real, but, uh, very, very funny.

Andrew Dice Clay plays a fantastic mob boss.

It's, uh, it's a good one.

Highly recommend.

Okay

...

Yeah, the mosquitoes.

Jerry Grover has a really interesting thing on this where rather than the confounding of the Tower of Babel, people tend to think of it as though God is like, okay, we're going to play duck, duck, goose here, and it's going to go like this.

It's going to be... hebrew hebrew chinese yeah hebrew hebrew russian right and just like starts assigning people and then they run around yeah exactly and like that's funny what he thinks is uh maybe man if i get this right that'd be cool but i don't think i will his supposition is there's floods in this place where it might be babylon in a time that makes it so there would be a lot of stagnant water, which would actually increase the mosquito population a ton.

And if those mosquitoes were biting people a lot, there is a specific kind of disease that they would give them.

Is it hydroencephalitis? What was the one? Dude, it was something like that.

It's a

there?

Like, is this how long was that gap between what happened and where we get to like the Jaredites near the end here? So that's my like random two cents on like.

[laughs]

... thought other, other explanations for it.

But, uh, um, so th- they start sealing people together going back, and they call it the law of adoption, right? Um, some of you will b- be aware of this, as we seal people that aren't in a family so we can create that link.

So we're sealing them all to Joseph.

Um, Brigham, in February 16th, has this group of people that have been adopted as his sons and the Twelve Apostles, and they meet, and they all express, like, their thoughts on adoption, this new idea.

Some of them are excited about it.

Some of them are really worried they're not figuring it out right.

Could you shed some light on this?

i guess what you're telling me so i

don't want to give uh i don't want to take us off the rail the scientist here but i'm going to say there was these these guys 600 years before jesus showed up and a sort of what appears to be like a clockwork instrument the liahona just shows up in front of their tent So we're not against the idea of weird transportation.

What are your thoughts? What do you think?

I think this sounds really fascinating.

I think we don't understand that much about what occurred there.

I do believe this seer stone is one of the holy objects of the early restoration.

And so I'm I would never you know, I wouldn't entertain like that.

That object wasn't it.

I'll see if I can pull that up here as well.

So Phelps is actually the scribe on this document that you're talking about.

Oh, he's the scribe here.

This insight about...

About is this where Joseph, already we have Moroni.

Joseph calls Moroni an angel, right? Already we have man of holiness is my name in the book of Moses.

So Joseph's doing this.

Yes.

people describe, right? Wow.

really scary i've had it once i don't know if you've ever had it it's if you've read the first vision it sounds a lot like this some people call it the old hag and it's a real experience people experience now i'm a believer in the supernatural and so do i think it's possible people are having supernatural assault you know being scared sure Do I think most of these are that? I don't know.

I also think it's possible we just scare ourselves.

It's just a physical fluke.

Yeah.

I think either of those are possible.

And I'm not going to tell people how to interpret their experience.

It's

What do you think? All

right, Cardinal.

I'm going to be straight with you.

I'm going to be straight with you.

And I'm going to say that I worked for the church.

for several years, and we had an album of dozens of photographs that people had brought over in time, hoping to usually sell to the church, that alleged to be Joseph Smith.

And I personally was present for several very upset would-be sellers of photographs photographs of Joseph Smith that had no good provenance, and look nothing like I think Joseph Smith looks.

And that's what kind of got me going.

That's that was where my question came from.

Okay.

I think that's so cool.

You know, I joined the church when I was 13, and I stayed active and was doing great.

I only remember my family.

When I was almost 18, I stood up for a date, and then I had this incredible party that recovered this date.

And it was the first time since I was 13 that I drank and...

tenured at BYU yet? I'm okay with

What's in that kava, brother?

What's in that kava you're drinking? I want to try a little bit of that.

We orbit, and then I come down, and she's like shooting power at me, and I come down, and I start telling people there, like, God is within you.

And as I do, they go into kind of like an ecstatic state.

And so for me, this is kind of a Jungian thing, right? The idea of, you know, as a, Jung's really big into like the merger between masculine and feminine energies and stuff.

Brigham Jung.

But I love this.

Do you need to...

What's going

on here? So here I am.

We're at the office.

We're getting ready for something.

And this woman walks in and she's looking for missionaries.

And she goes, we say, all right, well, obviously we should give her over to the sisters.

That night, the sisters come over to our house, and they have spent the afternoon with a woman who believes she's possessed.

Who knows?

[laughs]

But yeah, I can remember...

You know, I just heard this week a guy named Joe Steve Swick had passed away in the past.

He's actually, uh, Cheryl Bruno's husband, if you know who Cheryl Bruno is.

And he was on there all the way back, and he was an interesting guy.

He was a Latter-day Saint Freemason.

He was really into tarot and things.

Yeah, yeah.

Holy.

So Adam, nine years before this happened, the bombing, uh, nine years before, we have, uh, a guy named John Singer.

John Singer is a fundamentalist from Germany, comes to America.

He's an independent fundamentalist.

Um, so they're not part of a group necessarily.

He has, uh, he might have two wives, he might just have one, and s- many children.

And then he wants to homeschool those kids.

Oh.

that's right yeah and so it's it's totally an ancient idea uh which plays into this idea like where's joseph kate all of these ancient ideas

This figure of Michael, I remember early on as a kid, I think I must have seen one of these classic images of Michael beating the devil up, right? We have all these with a sword in the devil's throat and the devil's in the ground, beautiful images.

Um, my dad was an English teacher and so he had taught Paradise Lost and gave me a copy.

And, um, I, I, you know, must've told me stories about Michael.

I thought this is so cool.

Right.

Um, Joseph loved the figure of Michael the Archangel.

Actually?

Mm-hmm.

I felt like I was part of a culture.

You know, I grew up in a military family, so there was a lot of talk of Russia.

But born in '81.

Um, but, uh, it's very different than the way we should view Latter-day Saints who are fleeing their countries- Hmm ... because they're being persecuted.

Yeah.

'Cause they literally leave...

Yeah.