Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 378: Mormonism Part I - When You’re Here You’re Family

Episode Date: August 17, 2019

On this, the first part of our gigantic series on Mormonism, we cover the early life of its founder, Joseph Smith, including his early career as a grave robber and his first revelations involving God, Jesus, and an angel named Moroni. 

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started I was watching this documentary series really today in preparation for today's episode and it was called Mormon girls with a Z I've seen this I've seen this documentary. It's a favorite hotel documentary of mine Is it filmed by Joe Francis from girls gone wild sadly not anymore? Those opportunities were gone from him due to his criminal past, but his art history I guess is still there. Yes, but this this this is a complicated story But it also shows me the power of story telling and how important it is

And if you want as many teen brides as you can throw a seed at you got to be really good at telling a joke Well, we also learned from Woody Allen. I guess so. Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing? This is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben and I'm with Marcus. Hi. Hello Marcus I've been and we have beautiful Henry Zabrowski. He's on the East Coast studio. He looks fresh. He looks clean It's great to have you with us. Yeah, I showered twice this morning because we're about to drive to Atlantic City Wanted to build like a cleanliness like barrier Oh, come on, man They're gonna spit they're gonna smell you out right away and just splash you with a whole bunch of stetson

I'm going in there full of stetson so they know I'm one of them This topic I'm gonna say is maybe one of the Deepest deeper deeper deeper deeper one of the deepest most gaping Topics we've ever done. It's the the getting to the cervix of this topic would take a 15 inch penis And the only person I know that it's possible that is even capable of getting to the very top of this cervix is Mr. Marcus himself Absolutely right with his brain All right today's topic and the topic for I guess the foreseeable future. This will be a bit of a lengthy series

This is now a Mormonism podcast Officially as we are getting in to Mormonism, let's begin now some you might be wondering exactly why we decided to tackle the history of what is now accepted as a Mainstream religion, but the thing about the church of Jesus Christ a Latter-day Saints aka Mormonism is that it's got a lot more in common with Scientology than it does with Christianity get a Marcus get up We do have a lot of Mormon listeners. Yes, people within the Salt Lake especially Salt Lake City in Utah We have a lot of listeners within them and what we're trying to do is examine this is from the the humanistic perspective Absolutely, so when you say it's like Scientology, are we gonna be talking corgis?

I mean this is a time period where dogs are used as labor and as food Yeah, like you can pet a dog, but you technically they would consider you weak With like a birch stick, okay, okay Well the reason why we say it's like Scientology is that Mormonism began as a cult of Personality with one man at the top performing his own unique brand of religious improv that somehow resulted in an established Concrete belief system the Mormonism is what you see be wishes could happen You wish they could get that much. I mean they are deeply entrenched But they really really believe that improv can take you all the way to the top and technically we have the same thing with our

President he showed the same thing which again improvers they run everything and it's very very scary It really is scary improv is maybe the most nefarious of all comedic art forms What do we say about a Jim Jones sidestep and bullshit sidestep and bullshit? I love that country song Oh Mormonism that man at the top was perhaps one of the most fascinating complex and Enigmatic men of the 19th century Joseph Smith This man who essentially started off as a grave robber with a natural talent for storytelling ended up creating a religion that now

boasts a worldwide membership of over 16 million Mormons Wow, which is a part of the there's a controversial thing to be said about calling Mormonism a cult We're now it's more established and have changed a lot of their rules But if you look at the essential nature of how it started it started in a nefarious place Which is another way some Mormonism is very similar to Scientology because we have a man Joseph Smith Even even people who have left Mormonism because of their various tenants have nothing bad really to say about Joseph Smith He's viewed as a pure heart. He's viewed as everybody else went and twisted his stuff

Which is I mean we're gonna get into it because most sources you're gonna read about Joseph Smith are from a pro Mormon angle They're paid for by Mormon sources a lot of it especially even that PBS documentary we watch yeah, which is great But it is it these the Mormon sources the pro Mormon sources kind of the view that they take on Joseph Smith is They sort of bring you close and go hey, let me tell you a little secret. I know this is a little ridiculous Right, but you know what? It's the truth. It's the same Where Joseph Smith He was a tap dance of fool

An F10 dance and took a straight to the top well Elron Hubbard was searching for the same shit But I think what we're gonna see is we track Joseph Smith's life is that Joseph Smith was just taken out before he got dangerous It's also Joseph Smith He has the same name as all the names on the credit card commercials that just have to be like generic white guy We're marketing to you and the numbers are all zero, but he happens to be named Joseph Smith I was also looking through the Epstein black book recently because they have the PDF of it out And I was looking through it and there's like 45 Joseph Smith interesting

Well, I mean another thing kind of a difference between Scientology Mormonism is that I actually found if you go on the X-Mormon subreddit they have a few choice words to say about Joseph Smith But we thought it was a very good place to start we're like, okay, so we're gonna cover all the crimes of Mormonism Let's start from the very top of the shaft and see where these balls were like at the very beginning of the bush here Let's get into it Well, somehow the Mormons went from being some of the most hated people in America the only religious group who's ever gotten an actual extermination order from a state government oh to openly running one of their own as president in just three Generations that's all it took. Okay. Super light. It's like Drake man. Yeah

So the big question here is how the fuck did this happen? How does one small cult started in Ohio by a grave robbing statutory rapist become one of the largest religions in the modern world practice? The question of how Mormonism has produced so much sexual abuse will become apparent as we go on But a harder question is how does Mormonism which is at its core a peaceful religion? How does Mormonism also inspire multiple instances of extreme violence and in one case a full-on Massacre hmm. It seems to happen with a lot of these little peaceful religions Catholicism at the very basis besides all the cannibalism is actually like, you know, it's got some good ideas in there Jesus was apparently very nice when he was apparently his multiple-ass wives, which is the cool reinvention of Jesus here

Is that all he did was fuck but actually he did do that But it was with all his buddies and that was because they were desert lonely Yeah I mean he had a lot of dudes following him around and again if you are Mormon We are not criticizing everyone who is Mormon No, this is just an overview and we could do this exact overview It's Henry just referenced in Catholicism or this is just a human creation and whenever humans create something There's a lot of room for error. Mm-hmm. And over the course of the next five episodes

We hope to answer all these questions and more and eventually we'll get into all the tiny messiahs and tiny prophets That have plagued Mormonism in modern times like bagel boss Don't you even talk about the bagel boss mafia is gonna come in and rub you out But in order to understand how Warren Jeffs and the Mountain Meadow Massacre could happen We've got to understand the first prophet Joseph Smith But before we even do that let's acknowledge our two main sources for at least the Joseph Smith portion of our series Because Joseph Smith is gonna take up the bulk of the next three episodes The first book is no man knows my history by fawn Brody written in 1945

It is still the only reputable book out there that takes a completely Unvarnished view of Joseph Smith, although it can be guilty at times of heavy speculation Yeah, fawn had some ideas fawn had some ideas and it but it is still a fucking great book Yes, it's beautifully written and it's got a great history in and of itself like fawn Brody was 30 years old when this book was published She wrote it when she was 28 and she wrote it with two kids and her husband moved a lot for work Like they were moving all over the country She had two kids and she still wrote a book that today is still respected as a solid work of scholarship And doing something that no one else had done before and no one else is really top-sense. This would make an incredible secret commercial

But even though this book isn't perfect no man knows my history is the more human Conman focused view of Joseph Smith and like I said, it's still respected to this day our other source by contrast is the one that views Joseph Smith as a genuine yet somewhat flawed profit that book it's rough stone rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman Yes, indeed Written in 2005 rough stone was supposed to be a kind of light touch rebuttal to no man knows my history because no man knows My history was supposed to be like she did a lot of research It was a cobbled together a big specially Joseph Smith's early years were incredibly difficult to piece together But what rough stone rolling then did he said like I can do work, too

Oh my god, fawn versus dick, what am I doing ringing a bell ding ding ding ding ding ding it's time for a book fight That's the saddest two people silently in a room reading across one star on Goodreads Well rough stone rolling presents itself as a kind of warts and all type of biography But it tends to completely ignore Joseph Smith's actual motivation It prefers instead to depend heavily on the concept of divine revelation Hmm, where he's every one of Joseph Smith's revelations that we'll get into in episode two and episode three Rough stone rolling attributes that to God told him to do this while no man knows my history says This is the shit that was going on in Joseph's life that caused him to have this revelation interesting

Now that means that much of the broader story in both books is identical It's just that rough stone rolling either glosses over or completely omits Extremely important parts of Joseph Smith's history even though it's still 300 pages longer than the other one But add a lot of pictures I want to say there's at least 50 pages of just songs And to give you an idea of the difference in content while both authors started writing as Mormons Fawn Brody was ex-communicated the year after her book was published while Richard Bushman won the Mormon History Association's Best Book Award the year after his was published. There it is and probably a lot of kids in Mormon school got those pizzas

With the Book and Club. Oh, yeah, it's why we always remember to say we love Joe Rogan Yeah, and we just want to make sure that no one ever thinks opposite, you know Tells her like it is See Fawn Brody was named an apostate or is it a post it or a post state? I've heard apostate apostate. Yes. That's when your apostate is really getting to Jesus. That's a funny That's a funny thing kissle If you think about it with the verbiage there I looked at a whole series of different pornos this week

Well an apostate is the first of many words in the Mormon vernacular that we're gonna learn over the course of this series Basically, the apostate in the Mormon sense is anyone who questions the absolutely insane story of Joseph Smith Or questions any sort of church belief policy ritual or tradition. It is in Scientology terms You'd be called an SP. Yes It is the exact same thing which is a part of the reason why Mormonism starts to swing towards cult and away from religion a Suppressive person. Mm-hmm. See Mormons are expected to live in what they call Perfect obedience. Yeah, Mormon girls has a lot of that. Oh, yeah, that's that's gonna work out That's gonna work out great. Mm-hmm

And anyone who breaks the rules or ask questions can be and often will be Excommunicated and just like with Scientology ex-communication in the Mormon church means losing your community and oftentimes losing your entire Family, which is why leaving the Mormon church is so difficult. You mean to tell me I don't have to be screened that screamed up at both of my parents and then have to like share all my food with my brothers I think this ex-communication idea sounds wonderful Well, all the Mormon families I'm in are very sweet and that's a part of the reason why what you know again the deeper and deeper We can do for me. I can't stop it. I can't stop. It's the only way I think of the word deeper But it's why it's hard to leave and why it's hard to question even the the problems within the church is that they build these little very

isolated communities that on their own are Are are well taken care of the families are very loving. It's a very loving community Yes, but the problem is is that the it's it's more of the They don't want to hear the evidence. They do not want to be a party to it They wanted they don't want to know that anybody who is a human being who is saying that I am the prophet and literally I'm the only person who can talk to God for you and I'm the only person It's legit and that you have to listen to this person with perfect obedience, which is a lot of times I mean, I'm not gonna say anything about the gangly horny

Twisted old men with the hairy knuckles and the big rings that run Mormonism and what they do and how they're their hands like Spiders that move from your knee up to your hips Even if you're even any close to the age of 12 years old that you don't wonder why they ignore all that Because the rest of it's so nice all the other packaging all the good stuff. It's like being in the Republican Party I hear a lot of those mixers are fun They always have good parties there and that's nice Henry is in law is not in Los Angeles He's here in the East Coast studio So when he does his act outs he can really touch me and Henry just did a spider crawl with his hand up my leg

And I don't know how to feel about it I really don't and I also just want to say, you know, it's important to it's difficult to do it But you got to separate sometimes people from their religion and their political ideology and just see them as people because again These are loving communities in many ways and there are some loving people involved Yes, they are loving communities and these are loving families just so long as you stay in line Yep The moment you step out of line the moment you question the moment you want to the moment you start living life the way you want to live Life, they are no longer loving communities. I understand. No, they become the FLDS becomes like

Scientology especially as we get later on in these episodes when we start covering that specific Off-shoot of Mormonism and you're certain like they are not they become very not friendly Yeah, a bunch of people who look like the the canister from out the quicker oats man But they're women and they are mad at you. No, that's not good Well, despite Mormonism's many gigantic and fatal flaws or perhaps because of them Mormonism is a specifically American religion and that it could not have been created anywhere else in the world at any other time in history Whoo, see when Mormonism was founded. That's not really a whoo-hoo

It's a mix back Yeah, see when Mormonism was founded the idea that the government had no say whatsoever in religion And in fact backed off as hard as they could from religion that was totally new It was a totally new idea that had never been a concept in world government before But the interesting dichotomy of America is that while the founding fathers were free-wheeling intellectuals who pretty much Came up with the idea for America in a series of bars as a fun thought exercise The actual people who lived here were by and large religious loons

religious Well, I do love the concept of it because you were reading a book called fantasy land fantasy land is fantastic But it's so fucking good. It's about the beginning of America literally was drunk dudes in a bar Just like it just smart guys who figured this shit out and man. Oh, man. What a fun experiment. It has been Yes, indeed. I do that all the time. We figured out a lot of stuff with that pig farmer. I spoke to in St. Paul I figured out quite a few things in bars. Oh, yeah. Yeah, buddy Well, the difference though is that the founding fathers actually pulled it off like the drunk ideas that they had We're living in it right now. Wow. I love it

Yeah, but they also had to get all of the actual people who lived in America to come along with that idea Yeah, it's like it's a fun to talk about with your buddies about how you should run a fucking Elevated corn dog restaurant and about 3 30 in the morning. It sounds better and better and better, you know, I mean But the promise you need corn dog manufacturers. You need corn dog taste testers You need the guy with sticks. Yeah, cut to Benjamin Franklin and a 2-2 sucking on a corn dog very seducibly Just just all seductive and things. Just be like, that's another thing Well, the whole thing about like taxation without representation the thing about that is that we should have been paying taxes to England They were fighting war wars for us. Like we actually

Taxation without representation was a scam This is why they don't But they had to get all these people to come along Somehow because it was a hot these are were high-falutin ideas and I'm not saying that every person in America in 1776 was an idiot or even Overly religious, but it's not like we were just overflowing with Ben Franklans. No, I mean he was overflowing That's what I'm trying to do, but I'm on the inside Yeah I mean after all, you know, many of the first settlers came here because their religious beliefs were a bit much for Europe and

Americans have always loved the idea of being able to not only live whatever life they wanted to live But to also believe whatever the fuck it is They want to believe no matter how insane or fact-defying that belief might be it's called making it work, baby Do two wrongs they could make a right if the two wrongs or you're you're you are correct to yourself Absolutely. Yeah belief has always been more important to Americans than fact. That's just the way it is. What is a fact Marcus? A thing that is true. Oh, what is true though? We can do this all day. No, you two are great Americans Well Mormonism is a prime example of this and Mormonism took it even further by geographically rooting Christianity in America see for those of you who don't know much about Mormonism Mormonism is to Christianity what Christianity is to Judaism

Obviously, this is an oversimplification. We're trying to figure out exactly how to explain it, but I do love your angle on this Yeah, that's understandable Well, it took the already existing Judeo-Christian stories and just added a new book and a dindam with all new rules and all new stories That doesn't fully discount anything that was written before but it still acknowledges that all of it did in fact happen Yeah, we're in the fanfiction worlds of Christianity Oh, I've heard many a Jewish person refer to the New Testament as Jewish fanfiction Sure, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, but what the Book of Mormon says is that everything that has been taught to Christians between Christ's death and Say about

1830 was completely and totally wrong because they were missing a full third of the story and That missing third just so happened to occur in America. Hell, yeah Problem to do four movies because it doesn't really make as much sense as just three Well, for example, if you've ever wondered where Jesus Christ went during those three days between his crucifixion and his resurrection Where'd he go? America. Yes How do you got on a little we got out of his pumper? It came out here. I think he took the Concord And when straight to New York and it was him and Arnold Swartz the nacre-ass Hercules Great movie. Yeah

Yeah, and the Garden of Eden Ben. I know you've wondered where that that where that was I already went to the Garden of Eden It's a chain restaurant Well, no, I'm talking about the biblical Garden of Eden. I know what that has been it's in Narnia. It's in Jackson County, Missouri Where would you not put the Garden of Paradise? Of course in the middle of beautiful, Missouri If it was in the middle of Jackson, Missouri, it would be full of Panera breads and Crystal math and math Jackson County, Missouri. That's where Independence, Missouri is now. Oh, okay. Yeah Well, in other words Joseph Smith who was a Fantastically talented storyteller by the standards of the time Joseph Smith created a mythology for America using a story

That was already familiar to the majority of Americans He'd just retrofitted an old school like Native American story Which will also necessarily wasn't true and he he did what was it because it wasn't twilight Wasn't something oh wasn't 50 shades of gray twilight fanfiction. I don't believe that that's how it started Then it was twilight fanfiction. It's just that thing where they just took a story and he went And he twisted it. We're just lucky that Walt Disney just wanted to make money Just wanted to make money and so he created his stories where it's like and even now Ron Hubbard even now I almost view him with a level of purity because he just wanted money. Yeah

Where joseph smith used this storytelling ability to control human beings Okay, but there is an important distinction to make with joseph smith joseph smith did not consider himself a messiah Like say david koresh did he did not think that he was the second coming of jesus christ. No, he would never deign He would never deign to say he's the messiah, but is he the only one that can speak for the messiah? See that's a good move though smart move He makes him look humble and then despite but then that's how you get in the back door. Yep, and then people put you in the front Yep, that's right. I mean joseph smith was a prophet joseph smith was like he's the american mohammed the american moses Okay, but what's convenient about that at least from the perspective of the modern mormon establishment

Is that joseph smith can now be rejiggered as just a man or a product of his time? Oh, yeah, it's it's like going, uh, you know, because then you're gonna be like, hey guys I'm just a guy. At any point if someone's being like joseph Uh, you just told me to sleep with my own daughter and you're like, hey, come on. I'm just a guy I just put a little seed in there and you took it to having sex with your own daughter your pervert Because I already had her Oh my joseph smith never made his followers have sex with their own daughters. Come on. Hey take a round with her Come on, buddy

Well today many Mormons choose to look at the big picture of joseph's life You don't look at the details. You don't look at the small things Sure, because they fold joseph smith's life into a larger faith in god Which sweeps away any details such as child brides that might make mormons uncomfortable Okay, and if you really start asking questions from the outside at least all mormons have to say is Don't take our word for it millions of people already believe. Oh, it's like chamois Yeah, absolutely chamois is great if millions of people believe it But the next thing you know the daily show has another emmy, you know, it's all that's all it's about

That line by the way is from an lds website that desperately titled it's true It's true I also want to preface this I am gonna I do feel like I I just said it again. I just technically spoke Like pro lrh words And I don't mean to it's just that Marcus and I talked about this about how like I'm an lrh guy I'm not gonna say just because you physically are him. I mean, I he's an enroll model I know he's a roll physically body roll model

But marcus is kind of a joseph smith guy, you know, why why because I like fantasy and Henry like sci-fi That's what that is one one hundredth of both of their personalities. No, but it's a big part It's a huge part. It's their storytelling style because joseph smith told an old school fantasy story Like with warring tribes and you know in different races It all got like he had like orcs versus elves the ultimate irony of this entire podcast is both of you are going to become cult members That is what you're going to become a Mormon. You're going to become a Scientologist and I'm just going to be like I guess I'm going to go enroll at farwell university then no marcus and I don't like bosses That's why we were bad at regular jobs

Yeah, we don't think that now we're at this point where it's like I would have to be in charge of a cult But what are we discovering as bosses of our own little company? I don't know how to tell them what to do You can also see why joseph smith you say you have all these people like what do you want it to do joe? What do you want to do and eventually it's like I guess you guys can start blowing me No, the only job I've ever had with bosses was when I was a dog nanny and those were dog bosses They were not real bosses Oh get you the chihuahua She was a boss

Well baked into Mormonism's DNA is the ability to change course whenever they want through what they call revelation meaning that at any time god can calm down and give the Mormons a new commandment And everyone has to be cool with it and revelation is why mainstream Mormons no longer practice polygamy Despite the fact that it was at one point a central tenet of their belief system one of the biggest revelations But we'll get in a polygamy on episode two. Yeah, because I've seen a show I've seen sister wives and that is their Mormon, aren't they? But the mainstream Mormon staff like the big the the quorum of 12 or whoever the fuck they are the people in salt lake city The people up top they all come out against Mormon. They all come out against polygamy. They say polygamy is wrong

We should not do polygamy. They supposedly did away with polygamy Uh before the 20th century so came about but the remember the revelation isn't like a group email Sent to everyone the revelation is given to uh the prophet whoever is the president of the church at the time He then interprets and then tells everybody what god told him to do So yeah, so that's kind of their david miscavige type person then But david miscovige the same thing kind of has like so he does have a panel that he has to go run shit by right But the general movement is that whatever the prophet says is the word of god I will say probably the next 10 to 20 years the head of the LDS is going to have a revelation saying gay people are fine

Yeah, because they want to stay in power. They want to stay in power. They want to stay relevant And that's the because that's the big that's the big sticking point with Mormonism right now They could probably get on that sooner than 10 or 15 years It's gonna take a while, but they're gonna get on it. I guarantee you salt lake city's changed quite a bit because they've become A more open city, especially the lgbt community. You're gonna and it's about that It's they are standing the test of time Joe the original energy that came forward from joseph joseph smith It could have been done

It could have been squashed then but brigham young helped take the whole thing to the next level which will end up coming Yeah, we'll get into him and I mean judging by the amount of alcohol that was consumed when we were in salt lake city I'm assuming they sort of relaxed the rules on booze a little bit as well Well, let's put it this way a polygamy was when The american government came to utah and said we will only make you a state If you get rid of polygamy

Pretty soon after that. Yeah, the prophet went Interesting The god was dressed like a And a member of the fbi Very intriguing But really when you get down to it the Mormon belief system is really no crazier than the christian belief system The hindu belief system the islamic belief system or the jewish belief system The difference here though is that we don't have testimony from jesus's next door neighbor

Nor do we have accounts of luke or mark fucking over people on treasure hunting expeditions or marrying young teenagers when they were in their late 30s Admittedly, you know, the old testament does have the whole noah like naked and drunk and having sex with his own daughters thing It's a parable It's a parable But the point is though is what we have with jesus smith is a wealth of actual information about his actual life Not just what the mormon establishment wants us to know So this is the most recent big religion right less than 200 years ago So this is i guess Scientology would be the most recent

Yes, this is really interesting to actually be right there And this is probably most likely what the prophets of the bible were truly like and kind of yeah Makes you think about the entire thing like It's all some gigantic extended fraud, but I don't want to say that But then again, but I do end up saying it does roll off the tongue though, doesn't it? So without further ado, let's get into the story of jesus smith and the birth of the church of jesus christ to latter-day saints Aka the mormons. Can we have some of that native american flute like they have in the humus documentary where it's like Like jesus smith was born in a small town in vermont and then

Like natural history museum music. Yeah, I love that so he birthed the religion A jesus smith's capacity for questioning mainstream religion was actually somewhat of a family tradition With his mother writing that she couldn't choose a church because every church said that every other church was wrong She called it the church. She said the witnesses the churches witnessed against one another So it is impossible to choose the correct one because a part of it is that when we When we change when we took when we separated church and state when america went independent in 1776 It kind of threw the whole thing into disarray because a bunch of secular dudes were trying to like they were still obviously religious people But that threw a rift in the middle of this country. So people kind of went insane

For a little bit trying to figure out what the fuck are we supposed to believe and who is the main church here? We're used to having a main one. It's almost as if people are extremely tribal And can only handle a certain amount of people inside said tribe and in order to have said tribe They have to have an enemy which is most likely just another tribe. What? Yeah Yeah, remember this is like 20 30 years after the american revolution. This is not that long afterwards. No, not at all We're still a baby. Yeah, we are America's a baby Well jesus smith also had storytelling in his ancestry as well his grandfather Solomon Mack composed an autobiography called a narrative of the life of

Solomon Mack That's a kick-ass name. I have to say Solomon. Solomon Mack is like double badass. Yeah Yeah, he sounds like the best bass player from 1976 Why are my pants all wet? I know why it's yourself. Oh, that's not pee my friend Well, this book writing an actual book that set Solomon Mack apart from other americans at at the time Because writing was not common in any way whatsoever On the other hand once Solomon grew into old age

He fell into what fawn brody called a kind of senile mysticism with lights and voices haunting his sick bed day and night We're gonna see that the beginnings of especially america were incredibly mystic There was a lot of occult leanings. Yeah, and that's a part of what I'm very excited about talking about jesus smith and his Basically incorporation of entire world of right hand-path magic into Mormonism and joseph smith had other Religious dissenters on that side of his family as well jason mack joseph smith's uncle set up a quasi communistic society of 30 families in new brunswick and oversaw both their economic and spiritual welfare And they jump right over this and other they don't like to bring him up quite a bit in in Mormon circles because it's straight up shows His uncle ran a cult. Yeah, and he got this all of this was downloaded

Into joseph smith's brain even as a little kid. It's just the family business. It sounds like yep As far as the other side of joseph smith's family went smith's ancestry ran back to pre-revolutionary war days with his first ancestor robert smith coming to massachusetts in 1638. I love how goth he was I love it The same robert smith man, that would have been a weird ride on the funkin. What was it the nita and the penta? Yeah, the nita and the penta and the santa maria. No, what was the other one the one that went? It's not casserly rock. Oh, you're talking about plemeth rock. You're talking about the mayflower. Yes robert smith and his button-up shirt and his khakis and

I love the scarer running down his face and like his weird pink lipstick on him I have always said that bill hicks wanted his rock stars dead. I want my rock stars fat. I love it I want to see fat maryland manson and rob zombie. I mean rob is still rail thin. Oh, yeah, he looks good Yeah, maryland's got a little bit. Uh, he's got some rider gut. I love it But the one thing the smiths could never figure out was how to make money Before smith was even born his father invested all his family's savings in a shipment of ginseng Although new englanders at the time they preferred sasperilla Pluricy root and something called skunk cabbage. We're ahead of hamster carrots hamster carrots. Oh, yeah, they're great

You've ever had those no red. Um, um, you've never had a sock cucumber. Sorry. What is this? You've never had a gronk Hey, you've never had bursh bursh. I can't tell if you're naming real foods because you eat the weirdest stuff Well, that didn't really matter that new englanders didn't like ginseng all that much because smith wasn't trying to sell ginseng to the new englanders He was trying to export it to china where it was said that a ginseng root shaped like a man could be sold for as much as $400 it looked like a man and the reason why it did was because if you did sell a ginseng root It looked like a man. It does help With your wiener apparently i believe that i believe that and you also referenced one of the only good characters from mad tv Yes, yeah, predictably though the transportation agent that sold the ginseng to china fucked off to canada with the money

So the smiths were forced to sell their farm and use lucy's dowry to pay off their debts And this was going to be a mark on them for forever because for a second they had money Yeah, they were ready to go because one of the family members of the past And figured out how to make that cash and from then on it's going to be like How do we make some fucking easy dollars? Because we are bad at every single thing that we touch So it really is just someone making a bad investment and not understanding the market So it's like everyone in the remember the late 90s tech bust

With everything blue and everyone's like but i have all this stock in mad.com The 15 gallons of beanie babies we have in my family's fucking garage Well because of these bad business decisions when joseph smith jr. Was born in 1805 in sharon vermont His family was pretty much transient and smith lived in seven different places by the time he was five years old But when smith was just eight he went through an ordeal that i'm actually surprised scholars don't talk about more Or at least they don't talk about it in the right light In 1812 typhoid fever took hold in the northeast and killed 6400 people in just five months

And if you don't know typhoid is one of those developing country illnesses that's usually caused by shitting in your own water supply I mean, I like shitting in the sink, especially when I can't get to the toilet And why am I gonna fucking clean all that out when I can kind of just middle my hands Especially if i'm like straining a bunch of spaghetti and it actually falls out of the colander I think that's how they made cincinati chili Well people either drink the tainted water or eat food Grown from the tainted water supply and then they get infected with salmonella And those people then become contagious and they can spread typhoid fever to others through just simple human contact

Okay, as far symptoms go typhoid causes fevers as high as 104 painful sores and potentially fatal diarrhea Oh man, I'm to be honest It'd be kind of fun to go like that because you get to have all that private time with your phone Yeah, you get all the private time with your phone Or back in the day when you actually had to read the back of shampoo bottles like we had to when we were growing You weren't getting actually upset. I just brought a book in there. Yeah, you just bring a book I Don't care about bringing a book into my home

I always read a book in my own bathroom But then I brought a book into the airplane bathroom once and when came out people looked at me like a big piece of shit Well, it is a little strange. How long were you planning on being in there? I mean I take my time Oh my goodness on 1812 when joseph smith was just eight years old He contracted typhoid now. He only had a disease for about two weeks But during that time he developed a sore in his armpit that lasted another two weeks before that sore got lanced Which produced about a quart of pus Yikes, that's like one of those youtube videos that or uh, dr. Pimple popper, which I see every now and again

After that smith got another infection in his left shin and his ankle when that sore lasted for another three weeks And that infection got into the bone so literal barbersurgence Bored holes into his leg bone and chipped away the infected pieces Well, they wanted to get rid of the whole leg and they kept negotiating With the barber surgeon who's just like I take the whole leg and they're like we know you're excited to take the whole leg But we think maybe we can save it. He's just like I take half the leg Like well, you know, we'd love to just get a little chunk out of there

And then they didn't want to give him booze because you know, that was the the the Anesthetic at the time the anesthetic at the time right and they didn't want to give it to him And so they said the the the first character building thing of joseph smith's life was Him screaming in the night and like covered in sweat as the fucking barber surgeon went Yeah an operation saved his life maybe, I don't know maybe it did maybe it didn't And did he at least get a haircut after? And 14 more pieces of bone had to work their way to the surface while he healed

And what this meant was that joseph smith was bedridden for three months And even after that joseph wasn't able to walk on his own for another three years How many scholars does hindi said point to this time in joseph smith's life as a toughening up experience? You know like an ordeal that gave Smith a sense of perseverance, but think about it this way I think that what this time really meant was that young Joseph Smith had nothing to do all day long But sit stare at a wall and live in his own imagination spilled in stories Yeah came a little Lewis Carroll, and I don't know what it is about spending that time alone with your imagination Sometimes it makes you want to have sex with a child

I well it shouldn't but I mean we used to all do this as children not the part that you mentioned with a child But we were imagine a imaginative kids I had all my little Imaginary friends because I didn't have those things called tangible human friends for a very long time We grew up very isolated in strange places, so it's it's good to build imagination Yeah, but but you remember he is laying in a bed staring at a wall now didn't you have a cat poster up there? It's like hanging there. No nothing, dude. I mean probably had some hit the Bible Maybe he had a couple of books maybe but most of the time to see this is back when kids had to use their imagination

And that's back when the kids were stronger, and they would expect to get participation trophies Yeah, I always think it's really good that we let these eight-year-olds know you don't just win eight-year-olds This is the time I'm taking a stand during this drawing competition There are plenty of authors and artists who suffered from childhood illnesses, and they use that time to build a Fantastic imagination and a talent for storytelling you tell stories to yourself to keep yourself and go fucking nuts You know because like I said, it's not like Smith could just sit and watch TV all day long But none of those authors use their imaginations and the way that Joseph Smith would eventually use his that's what made Joseph Smith a true Successful American I do wish that Stephen King just started a cult although judging by some of those excerpts from it

A child sex may have happened as well, but just the fun world where a clown is truly the devil and stuff like that Man, I'm I'm in I'm totally it would be fun dream catcher is a great movie Technically the girl chose to have sex with the boys in that scene. No, I know I not I mean it's obviously controversial We don't need to get into the I don't want to talk about the child sex scene in it Okay, sure. Okay, cut it from the movie I'm Marcus is the one who doesn't want to do research. That's fine Well, that's the end of the podcast Marcus has killed Henry so So after Joseph's long illness the family moved to Palmyra in upstate New York

23 miles west of Rochester Now many of Smith's biographers like to paint upstate as a full-on frontier at this time and really large parts of upstate New York We're a frontier. I mean, I think even Brooklyn and Queens back then was still mostly farms That's even my dad my dad growing up in Staten Island. It was all farmland Mm-hmm That's why they used to play weird tricks on each other and like they used to prank the bus Like he used to tell you used to get a rubber ball and he tie a fake raccoon tail to the bottom of it You go, there's some kind of rat in here

And he throw the ball in the bus and all the people would run out of the bus screaming They have a cat toy that does that now remember that well that was not the case in Palmyra Palmyra had a population of 4,000 had five schools 76 shops and three Libraries, yeah, so it was all the stories. Oh, but yeah, it wasn't the frontier No, so he got far because that was a whole thing as essentially they were fucking broke as fuck and and father Just left he left. He's like, I gotta go find a way for us to make money and he's like, right? I found it. It's the edge of existence and then they went to Rochester Yes, I think I'm going to invest in this thing. It's called the XFL

Well, it was just another bad decision in the life of the Smith family because Palmyra was in a boom it was in a speculation bubble and Joseph Smith senior bought land in Palmyra at the height of speculation and what he bought was essentially a Worthless rock farm most of the land around Palmyra was fucking awful as far as farming went and you know The Smith family they did try their best to make a living Joseph Smith's mother Lucy. She had a small shop that sold gingerbread root beer and boiled eggs Oh, yeah, I love shitting on my way to work I can't make it off the subway

To a bathroom. So I just go in my khakis gingerbread is very good I mean, honestly, all they had to do was get those little sticky google eyes Pop those on some of those rocks. You got a business The pet rock was one of the most successful products of all time in one of the old the many weird ways You're sometimes accidentally correct. I'm on purposely correct when it comes to pet rocks But sometime that is also one of the things she sold Lucy Smith sold little decorative men these little like puppets these kind of like dolls made of rocks of the children not out of rocks, but

Then I'm not even accidentally right because if you would have said she sold pet rocks Then I would have been accidentally right. No, she glued googly eyes to things. She didn't have good They didn't have Michaels since 1830. No, there's a guy named Michael with a bunch of fake googly eyes But the smiths were still crushed under a mountain of debt because they bought worthless land at a high point Speculation because when it came to business the smiths just they just weren't good at it They just were not bright like contrast though America in general was going through a period of unbridled Optimism where anything and everything seemed possible. They just built the fucking eerie canal Like they had complete they had re-rooted nature

So Americans were on a pretty big high horse that way and again, let's clarify some Americans Because there were large subsets of American people that were not doing so well. They were just dying Yes, but also manifest destiny was a vaguely racist, but and also religiously back idea really that was a thing that was Was fueling that optimism as well said we can go anywhere or needed if there's a bunch of people there. That's our home Yeah, I mean I agree with everything from your sentence But I will put on my editor cap and just remove the word vaguely Because I'm fairly certain manifest destiny was racist

Extremely racist idea, yes And with those seemingly endless economic and exploratory possibilities came a parade of new ways to think about Religion just so long as that religion was rooted in Christianity Yes Now during this time when joseph smith was coming of age So many different religious movements and revivals blaze their way through upstate new york that the region came to be nicknamed The burnt over district and the people that were getting all the attention were not the highfalutin founding father types The baptists for example boasted that only three of their preachers had college degrees

They don't need to read to teach you how to do your life But it's true They reviewed the upper class that ben franklin and all those guys were like they were like sissy boys with pants up to their knees, which is true, right? They had the little socks on they had their funny boots and they like Right it wigs on and they love to fuck all the drink With these baptists they weren't doing any of the shit and all these kind of little splinter groups Being ignorant was cool. Yeah anti intellectualism is not new in this country. God. No, it is

It was there from the very beginning. You know, it's like those highfalutin types those people up there at boston Philadelphia, that's not the real america, right the real america is in upstate new york And when I think of they were uh completely correct Yeah, when I think of highfalutin and just totally intellectual I think boston because every time you're there. They're so smart. They can't even contain it in their head They have to scream at you on the streets. Absolutely. And whenever I wear Shorts above my knee and I get called the f word and it happens in boston pretty much every single time I go I remember ah, this is where our country was started. Oh, harvard the place that is

The home of all the intellectuals in no way to the just by let's talk about college campus Well as fawn brody wrote the sober preacher trained in the dialectics of the seminary was rare west of the appellations In other words, people were just making shit up and others were buying it just so long as that shit was passing familiar I mean, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just sitting here drinking mountain dew because I don't know I just want to do the dew. I just feel like this is actually really good for me. And I just like it So one guy named isaac bullard and woodstock vermont. He preached free love and communism But he also believed that washing was a sin And he only wore a bare skin girdle which he claimed to have kept unwashed for seven years

Just flip it and make it something you brag about. Yeah, exactly. I smell it's fun. No, he's the gg allen of vermont Then there was an lee who sect was known as the shakers And lee claimed to be christ reincarnated and it was falsely rumored that the shakers danced naked Castrated their men still fucked constantly somehow and sacrificed their children. Thank you people Oh, we why does this always happen? And it does happen meaning of Mormonism both fairly and unfairly and anything Because I want a group of people form and they make a little group and they seem to be having a good time Everybody gets really mad at them and says stuff like how they eat their kids And they they they fuck all the babies and they're they're all doing all this bad shit

Well, a lot of times they're just kind of isolated. Mm-hmm. Well, there are a lot of people who don't do anything with their lives They stay isolated and then over time they become very bitter and they see people having fun and they have to assume That those people are doing something nefarious Otherwise they've made every bad decision in their life to be so unbelievably miserable I think it's also boredom and storytelling, you know, especially in those times you're bored You see this group of people that are isolated. They're weird You only see little things from the outside because of course they only let the insiders See what's really going on and you're bored as fuck. What the fuck are you gonna do all day long?

Yeah, you make up stories and they have stories about the people around you And they have like the spacey wide-eyed smile of a group of people They look like they all just got freshly fucked or they're on drugs, but it's actually just enjoying community You know what speaking of that. How are you christmas? They're usually here in the summertime and I haven't seen them at all I think the hard christians are on the I think they're on the the downward slope Okay, yeah, I haven't seen one dancing because normally they used to be in union square all the time They used to make you dance and yes, I get through to the queue train Oh, it was very annoying. Well another one of these guys out there preaching in upstate new york

You had a joseph dilks actually joseph dilks. He was in nearby, ohio Uh, dilks wore a bright yellow beaver hat and called himself the leatherwood god Honestly, all of these guys sound like libertarian presidential candidates Like remember uh, burton supreme. This is it. Yeah, it's all vermin supreme. Who's from vermont? Oh, all right vermin is you know vermin is liberal arkansas Oh, this guy the leatherwood god joseph dilks. He preached through a series of shouts and horse impersonations Hey, bitch. Hey. Hey. God loves you. God loves me. Doesn't he, huh? Hey guys, it's illegal to wear shoes on wednesday. Hey

What do you do? He's like jesus christ is lord That's fun sounds like queen fun sounds like queen carlotta from desperate living Then you had jemima wilkinson She also claimed to be christ after she said she died from a fever and came back reincarnated as christ She called herself the universal friend and proclaimed herself to be genderless. She also said that she could not die Yeah, she did she did die. Yeah Yeah, her gimmick was that she was supposed to have been able to recite the entire bible despite not knowing how to read All right, you know all these people they had followers

Although some had a higher quality of followers than others jemima wilkinson had a follower named prophet elisha Who would bind his lower belly with a girdle and when his upper belly started to swell from the pressure Prophet elisha would be struck with prophetic visions. See how i'm sitting right now and how like the top My top belly is getting swollen by how my tiny shorts, right? Very tiny shorts. All right. Okay. I'm filling it up Okay, let me roll my eyes back. Let me oh, we're about to get some really primo info here. Okay. I'm getting I'm getting a vision Okay, the smithfield switchbacks are gonna win the super bowl We're gonna have to become a team first. Oh, no, it's a it's a minor league triple a baseball team

It's gonna become a football team. You'll see It's gonna be an ESPN nine Well as it happened jemima and prophet elisha later had a falling out And elisha became a justice of the peace for the sole purpose of charging jemima with blasphemy But then he was uh very disappointed to learn that blasphemy was not illegal in america Oh, that's so funny. Yeah But see this 180 when it came to jemima and elisha. This was fairly typical in these sorts of communities See when people are converted by upstart revivals and gimmicks it tends not to stick

It's like how wendy's did that italian burger. Oh, I remember that. Yeah Yeah, sure people will be stricken by the jerks Which was when the heads and the limbs would snap and contort or they'd be stricken by the barks Where they would crawl on all fours and act like a dog Uh-huh, but for a lot of americans. This was like a fun afternoon. You ever get a you ever get a um You ever get a case of the cunts? Or you just give a bunch of businesses one star on yelp for no reason I don't know. I've you know what? I've never rated anything other than five stars. Yeah, why would you?

I don't know. I just you'd be a broken person to go to the internet to give it one star Just if it's putting your rage into a it's you're screaming at a wall Yeah, yeah, well one preacher lamented that most of the churches founded on revivals. They barely lasted three months Like he'd come through it's like, yep, there's be a revival The church would be full everyone would be full of the energy of jesus christ come back three months later Fucking nobody no one no one at all and even I mean the leatherwood god He was eventually arrested for fraud But then he was released because in the words of the judge quote it was not a crime to be a god

Hey, okay. That's very cool. Cool judge. Yeah, absolutely. That is true What can you do because he's just looking at this man covered in grime with a pot on his head And he's like, well, you know if you somehow got people out to your farm To just to hang out with you. Well, what good work, buddy quick aside What had happened with the leatherwood god is that he would bring his followers out to the river And it would appear as if the leatherwood god was walking on water But what it happens the leatherwood god had gone out the night before and put a bunch of big rocks in the river Honestly just under the surface

That's how you do it And then he appeared as if he was walking on water But then a couple of teenagers went out and looked actually looked in the river. I was like, wait a minute. Wait a second. Yes. Wait a second And then walking rocks. Those are what the parlor the parlor tricks that led to every religion are just they're so obvious Yeah, and that was the things that the leatherwood god was not asking for money or anything like that. He was in show business, bro He was putting on an act and people were buying it for a little while, but he's very stinky Well, everyone's always like, oh, you can walk on water, but can you swim in sand? That's the question. I would be much more impressed if someone could like a like a tremor

If they can go through water, but it was like Scrooge McDuck. You're talking about Yes, like bun bun bun you can swim through sand. That is more difficult than walking on water. Hmm interesting perspective Thank you Sometimes the simple man he comes up with with an allegorical story that we all can learn from technically That's all these people are but in the middle of all this shit was a young Joseph Smith who is at the very least absorbing everything going on around him If not actively taking mental notes on what worked on his fellow man and what didn't Joseph Smith I would put him somewhere between Paul Dano from there will be blood

And uh, Steve Martin right from the comedian because Steve Martin as a guy Well, yes, and a comedian what he talks about if you read his book born standing up He talks about how he intellectually looked at the field of stand-up right and he saw a gap Where he was like there's a lot of political comedy and all this stuff going it's like someone needs to be silly I'm gonna place myself right in the avenue where I need to be I'm gonna learn how to do this style of comedy and I'm going to be very very successful Joseph Smith was a really good fucking quarterback for religion and he looked at the field And he saw where where he needed to go and he saw where some dudes fucked up

And some guys were like the ones that actually made it for like the guys that were making money around him And he put himself right in it as a little boy. He understood that is why I've always said I am the Steve Martin of this podcast When have you said it? I just said it now. Okay Found it found a gap and I filled it Take it easy Well, that's the thing about cult leaders and yes, Joseph Smith is a cult leader If you'll remember from our jones town series, Jim Jones began studying the differences between christian sex in his hometown of Lynn, indiana when he was about five years old

Remember jim jones would go from church to church to church looking and asking questions looking how what were all the differences in it How do people react to all this shit so much potential to be good Yeah, and these men they have some sort of inborn fascination with an understanding of both religion and belief They meditate upon how people react to these things and they later use that understanding to manipulate those who are apt to listen Now we're not saying that men like jim jones joseph smith or elron hubbard wanted to specifically be cult leaders when they grew up But it does seem like It was the job each of them was born to have yeah man elron hubbard He was the he had the body of a god and he had the mind of a just oh what a sweet little chestnut

He was Fucking big old teeth and he was built for it. He was he was built to be a prophet I but joseph smith there's again. There's just there's something about that concept. It's somewhere between priest stand-up politician where they have this In this built-in ability and need because joseph smith was also born with a chip on his shoulder Because the family always talked about how they used to have money and they used to and like we are better than this And we're better than this struggling farm life one of us and they used to talk to the whole family One of us is met because there were 11 of them. He had 10 siblings

I'm gonna add another profession that starts with a p priest Stand up to start with a p A poor politician professional wrestlers. I was watching an interview with stone cold steve austin He was on hot wings or hot ones, which is a great show about chicken wings and questions Um, and he was saying if you're not a you're not a good professional wrestler unless you're just gauging the crowd You just got to react to the crowd. You got to you you have to listen to the crowd Physically very Here's the thing about joseph smith

Although the Mormons like to paint smith's teenage years is being full of ruminations about the problems with the christian church Joseph smith was more just a likeable lazy fuck who had the reputation of a liar He came out with the gift of gab. He dressed a little fancier than the other kids He kind of had this weird thing where he would put something he had like a swerve to him He was kind of he was super funny. Yeah, and he was kind of good-looking too But to be fair, I mean people would think you're a liar if you're like women should vote This guy is a liar like if you even brought up certain scientific fact No, he would think that you're a liar. No, he was a straight-up liar as in he told false hoods

Like saying that he knew certain things or did certain things when he didn't know those things or didn't do those things Well, he's not around to ask him is he In zebrowski fashion sometimes it's more fun And a funny way and actually a more effective way of telling a story by adding little exaggerations and fabrications to the story And then sometimes yeah in that fiction. Is there not more truth? No, like not because that means I have to correct you. Yes. It reminds me of that author What was it a thousand little pieces? Yes, where he went on opera and then she's like very mad at him after he turns out that it was all a lie

Well, the reason why the Mormon church has the view of joseph smith as you know A kid who was thinking about religion ruminating about religion Is that they believe that joseph smith had his first prophetic vision at the age of 14 Or at the age of 16 depending on which draft of joseph's story you go with okay That said a Mormon mythology that in early 1820 joseph smith decided to pray for the first time But since the log cabin in which he lived was occupied by his 10 siblings and his parents the woods He decided were a better place for prayer. They were a better place for fucking everything. Yeah. Yeah makes sense And as joseph smith was praying

He said that a pillar of light came down from the sky and through that light walked both god And jesus. Yeah, dude. Number one and number two. Wow And god told joseph that all the creeds of men were in abomination in god's sight I do love the way they run down the the vision because they said it's just the pillar of light showed up And one turned into jesus and then god was kind of this hazy thing He turned into a man with a long beard and then he just Just pointed at jesus and like jesus just starts talking and he's just like him nodding and shit It's fucking jesus is talking like yeah, son

Like yeah, no like when steven tyler lets his bassist sing Yeah, bro, he's doing it let him fucking lay down some fucking lit so you're fucking little ass, dude If you don't follow steven tyler on instagram You all must follow old rockers on instagram if you want the good part of the internet But well jesus smith asked god which church was the right one to join and god said not a single one of them got it Right, what joseph was to join no church at all as far as i can tell after that god just kind of Fucked off back to heaven i gotta tell you what joe it's been fun, but i gotta go invent this thing called aids Oh my could you not do that god, please i kind of got it you gotta do it because challenge makes people hornier

I don't know i wish you would A joseph later claimed that he told people about this vision specifically the local methodist preacher He wasn't shy about telling people that he saw jesus christ and god because at that time Visions of jesus christ and god were fucking everywhere in upstate new york, but they were also reported Yeah, they were all reported in the local press and before we judge you know and say like oh wow that's really dumb What's gonna happen the next time someone sees the virgin mary in a fucking stain every local news station is gonna be out That shit's gonna be on cnn. We still do this shit. Oh, absolutely. Jesus in a dog's butthole. I think was the most recent reincarnation of christ

But it was a big deal because they said the difference is that because he talked to god Like it wasn't just some angels like he talked to the main man because joseph's best whole thing What came from his parents was being like i could learn more about life from taking a bible and being alone in the woods for an Hour than i can from any one of these worldly books and so he would go out there and he was immediately a fucking john mccain Maverick the thing is that fawn brody poured through the local newspapers at that time because fawn brody was like an Old school researcher. I mean us like you know people say like oh your research We just google shit and we read books. So she was looking at micro fish. This was before micro fish Oh, I don't think there was a world before micro fish fawn brody was looking through

Boxes archives of newspapers like she she was doing like old school on the ground research But fawn brody couldn't find a whiff of joseph's vision Despite finding all kinds of reports of visions around that time and Mormon leaders say That's because his vision had an anti establishment message. You can fucking punk dude. Okay, very cool There were plenty of other dudes at that same time in that same place who had the exact same type of vision One of these guys was named asa wild and asa claimed that god said pretty much the same thing to him Asa also said that god actually told him a lot of other stuff

But god had also forbade him from telling people about it for free. Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, that's smart And if you want to know about it asa would soon publish a pamphlet relating all of god's new revelations In due time and guess what? I'm gonna sell it to you cheap, bro So you go yeah, so that's a what's up? It's my wildings to make sure you like and subscribe because next week I got that fucking publishing that pamphlet history from jesus christ He's gonna tell you how to play basketball. Oh cool. I want that one But during that period it seems like joseph smith was a lot less interested in what the church was doing It was actually much more interested in treasure hunting

Which was at that time called money digging which we would now call grave robbing well, I'm I mean that seems man when you say like grave robbing that sounds bad like very well But honestly that's where people were getting buried with all of their cash with all their treasure So you got to get it. What do you mean? You got to get this is very funny way to use life You got to legitimately think that dead people in their caskets with their heirlooms are like little banks That you can go and withdraw from it ain't doing any good next to a corpse That's all i'm saying you think that I could go to greenwood cemetery not anymore right now

You could I could go right not legally fine. If I dug up a corpse somebody's nana if you got permission by their granddaughter Yes, I think everything's fine as long as you don't get caught Mmm, not everything despite if you don't get caught because it doesn't exist The crime doesn't happen if they can't catch it, but money digging was both that was like 75 percent of it then also it was like at the time there were a lot of like Indigenous people artifacts left behind all that kind of shit where they would just go dig and a lot of them We've been like you would get paid To go and search for treasures that you might just be making up that they exist

But you will get you will get haunted. I'm not saying you won't get haunted, but uh Well joseph smith was none too keen on becoming a farmer and seeing how and you know And like he would sit there and watched how hard his dad had to work on their fucking rock farm Just to get a tiny bit of profit So joseph decided he'd get in on the new treasure hunting fad that was getting more and more popular Oh, it's very interesting how you became a podcaster mr. Marcus parks. Uh, as your father I have been in broadcasting for almost 20 years, sir. I know we're so old We got a very sweet letter from a from a listener the other day. Yeah, very sweet letter from a listener out in college station

Thank you very much for writing a letter. It was very sweet. Thank you. She said she said. Oh, I'm like a 21 year old college student No, she's an 18 year old. Yeah, and she was like, I just can't believe I get my entertainment from three middle-aged men and it was like Yeah I don't know when it starts. I'm 38. You're supposed to die in 76. I think I'm middle age 45 That's an old story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, or I'll be 39 and holding for a while if you know what I mean Well at that time in western new york What they called money digging was actually a pretty lucrative business

Which owed mostly to the fact that western new york was covered with the burial mounds of the indigenous peoples of america horrible And although one might argue that this isn't all that different from certain branches of archaeology You know at least the archaeologists make some pretensions toward a quest for knowledge the quest for history and they have little Paintbrushes. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what makes it different. Yeah, absolutely Remember also at the time the indigenous people were viewed as little above animals So they did not hold any of their lands to be sacred so they thought that that shit was just theirs for the taking And I actually had a chance to interview Barbara Bassette. She's a native american congresswoman out of montana on this week's abling It's top at and we get into indigenous people and the struggles that they still go through so get that a listen nice

Well in the case of joseph smith and his ilk It was nothing more than digging up mass graves and sifting through dozens of corpses to find stone and copper artifacts And in some cases a little bit of silver all for the purposes of profit And it just so happened that within 12 miles of the smith farm There were no less than eight of these burial mounds Wow and in those burial mounds joseph smith saw a way out of rock farming And of course joseph smith was not the only one a whole cottage industry sprung up around treasure hunting at the time With the best treasure hunters including a certain air of magic and mysticism

Now it started as I think that it starts both as just straight up traditional folk magic Which has been a part of our society since the beginning of the beginning of our culture We have been into some level of either uh, it's it's ritual mixed with uh Improved rituals eventually like realizing like I can add like twists to this sometimes this magic does work Sometimes it does not sometimes it is just for show sometimes it's just for sale But it's been around forever and what eventually these are the types of things that would coalesce and to would eventually become known as Right in left hand path magic

These guys are doing the very beginnings of it Which is very similar to the way that anton levée also did magic where it's straight up halfway Showmanship salesmanship and actual belief systems that they use that they say this will help us find money in the ground And I think that was the philosophy rodney dangerfield used when he was still selling vacuums door to door Showmanship it's all about that, but what a depressing time in many ways for our country We forget how fortunate in many ways we are to be born in this era because a step up from his profession from the profession of of Rock farming is grave digging. Yeah, so he was like I'm moving on up

I'm going to the graves But if they had made the proper they'd made the proper decisions about where to move They actually went to the frontier There was money to be made if maybe joseph smith has like went to school He could have found another trade he could have done all these things I think grave wrapping was a choice because it was easy and joseph smith was a natural born conman And it's you had to be a con man in order to be good at the job Yeah, sure, you know one of the best treasure hunters at the time in palmyra new york was a vagabond fortune teller whom we only know as

walters Two left shoes and walters styled himself as an actual wizard Roaming around upstate new york with the sole purpose of finding buried treasure cool Now oftentimes a farmer would pay walters three dollars a day to find treasure on the farmer's land And this guy showed up. He had all the merch. He had crystals. He had mineral rods He had stuffed toads and all these things were coutrements to help him find buried treasure All right, now Let us see what the sacred stuff toad says about where the gold is now jumpy jumpy. Are you there?

Yes Ah jumpy i'm so glad to see you back from the afterlife. It's gold in the afterlife. Shut up jumpy We need to get to work. Where's the gold at jumpy? Where's the gold? It's outside Excellent Walters even had what he claimed was an ancient indian record that described the locations of hidden treasures in a strange tongue That only walters could read and walters would read this aloud to followers. He had all this shit written out Uh and these guys they ood and they odds. Oh how exotic. I've never heard anything like it

But then a newspaper editor heard walters reading and the reporter quickly figured out walters He was just reading latin. It was an old version of cicero's orations. Yep Honestly, if you want to demystify anyone just think of them with with a case of the runs like jeff daniels and dumb and Dumber just remember they all have at some point grabbed their stomach and be like, oh I definitely always think about that when I see the sports illustrated shoots with the super marvel So no, yeah, no that they're all like super sexy out there, but I know that most of the time They're just getting fucking crazy diarrhea from my life But when walters left palmyra the mantle of local treasure hunter was taken up by none other than joseph smith

And he just like walters had a sense of ceremony and theater when it came to treasure hunting because he had to sell it I wish I could have been a flying the wall in this scenario because there were so many fucking characters And joseph smith watched an old school con man do his job and he was like with just amount of pluck I can go out there and do the same thing he does but better because i'm young and I got these new pantaloons There's like 18 years old around this time Okay Now smith told one neighbor that a chest of golden watches was hidden somewhere on his land and in order to find it They had to stick a bunch of stakes into the ground and march around those stakes with a sword drawn to quote

Guard any assault which his satanic majesty might be disposed to make it's straight up magic Yeah, it's straight of a magic ritual ritual you just brought me into a really dark memory of when I was at GNFC good news fellowship church school in third grade They were building a new school So we all made wooden swords put scripture on it and then for one hour a day we would walk around chanting like we were I think the I forget the name the fallacious Whatever the hell the name of this weird tribe they would do it in the bible and it's like it was the exact same thing And that was 1991

Yeah, dude, that's right hand path magic. Yeah, it's disgusting Now, of course, it's not the way that they I should have been learning is what i'm saying like science would have helped Now, of course they found no watches But that didn't stop smith from telling another neighbor that he had some money buried somewhere on his farm And the location could only be revealed through ritual In this case smith claimed that they could find the treasure Only if they cut the throat of a black sheet and let it around in a circle while it bled to death Which would appease the evil spirit guarding the treasure. Oh, yeah, that won't lead to just an immense amount of curse

No, dude, you get all the blood out of it and then you have mutton Oh, well as it turned out the farmer had enough sheep where he could just kind of let one go to satisfy his curiosity because the farmer was like Yeah, all right. Yeah, let's you know what let's just see you do it. Let's see you try it out This is all boredom. They weren't just like, all right fine. It's all boredom. Yeah, let's see. Yeah, I could see it bleed This is the one ship. I don't like it keeps trying to nip my dick when I'm out there I know it's trying to do it I don't know if it's trying to make me gaven with the sultry form or whatever it is But I'll tell you what you get this the hell out of here because I'm sick of being tempted by the beef lotion

Well Smith told this farmer that some mistake had been made during the bleeding and the location of the treasure remained unclear and the farmers just like Yeah, okay, honestly, I just think about the beaches of florida with everyone with their metal detectors But just going with sheep that are bleeding all I'm just grabbing them by the by their back legs and just walking the bleeding sheep No, nothing today Well, really joseph's money digging career really got off the ground when he started using what is known as a Sear stone because there were really only so many graves to rob and the business had to expand somehow Now honestly, I'm still somewhat hazy on how sear stones work

Not first I imagined that it was a stone with a hole in the middle and when you look through the hole You see whatever it is that you're supposed to see well There's many types of sear stones a lot of times It's like you can use what they end up saying that joseph did use was a solid rock It's a shiny rock That's what a sear stone is a shiny rock It's a shiny rock or it's a piece of quartz and a lot of people use in the bible a lot of times They talk about how many people used a glass of water or a glass of wine a clear glass so they could see through it

But the sear stone is I'm not going to say a fraud, but I am going to say you're supposed to it's something You choose your adventure with how you use it the sear stone tells you how to use it marcus So it's a kaleidoscope. It's a crystal ball Essentially, it's like you stare and you stare and you stare at eventually the reflections reveal whatever it is that you're looking for And as Henry said like everyone has their own method They have their own way for using a sear stone and joseph's way of using the seeing stone And by the way, this is official this next part. This is official

Mormon history because joseph did eventually use the seeing stones for other purposes His method was to drop the stone in a white stove pipe hat and then shove his face in the hat hole To block out all the light and then he'd see what needed to be seen in the darkness It's like one of those old when they would show like scanty clad scantily clad ladies that would that would show their neckers off Yeah, yeah, like those there's a great in san francisco. One of the cool things is the old school arcade Yeah, you can go jam your face into and just realize that that used to be a porno boot There were just big guys like really getting into it. Oh, yeah, it's also Lincoln used to do this He called it stove piping

And he'd have a woman stick her face into one of his hats right and bend forward and then when he made love to her He could pretend that she was a man. Oh interesting Although later joseph would use this technique to quote unquote translate the book of Mormon Which we'll cover in episode two back then smith was using seeing stones to see ghosts Infernal spirits and mountains of gold and silver Cool And not everyone in palmyra saw the smiths and a positive light for their money digging endeavors It was not the most respectable job in the world

In 1824 joseph's brother alvin died of an overdose of calamel Which was a purgative made of chlorine and mercury. Oh my yes This is just drink anything. Oh, yeah Now by this time joseph's father had also gone all in on the money digging game Because even his father had been convinced that joseph smith had these magical powers and the smith said reputations as grave robbers And frauds So after alvin died the townsfolk decided to play a little prank starting a rumor that someone had exhumed Alvin's body

Oh, yeah, see how you feel when someone digs up your family and goes looks for looks for treasure in your fucking son's body Yeah jokes on them. We just buried him next to a bunch of a duke The rumor picked up so much steam that the smiths actually started believing it they couldn't get it out of their head So eventually they dug up alvin's grave to make sure his body was still there and alvin was just like Thank god you guys came i've been alive this entire time it turns out the chlorine really worked You know what's in there? It's stuffy in there. It's stuffy and sure enough the body was there No one had dug up alvin's grave and the reason why we know about this whole episode Is because after they did that joseph smith's father actually spent money

To buy an ad in the local newspaper ran it for a full week just to tell the whole town what a bunch of ha ha assholes They were I love this this nerdy form of fighting. Yeah, this pre-internet. Yeah trolling is so great He posted it to his facebook wall. Yes, you guys think you're so big with your rumors and all I had to pay a man to dig up my own son. Yeah this weekend and I tell you what they're just some things They cross a line But if you are the townsfolk you're like, yeah, dude, they just fucking dug up their own son It was around this time that joseph smith supposedly had another vision

Mormon's claim that on september 21st 1823 joseph smith was visited for the very first time by an angel named moroni Moroni moroni. I'm not sure moroni. It's it's malian for idiots. Yeah, it's not moroni Hey, I'm moroni. I'm the angel. What do you want spaghetti or ravioli? I don't know. I don't know what you ever got to do. You got to carve it for america or you're just being fit My name is moroni. I'm the angel of pasta for the world Oh, I love that angel moroni. I love you

They are this is obviously this is now the core of morman belief Yes, okay Now what would do we do know that none of this shit was talked about until joseph smith wrote his autobiography in 1938 None of this was actually set. None of these dates were set so recent man So recent yeah the story goes The joseph was praying after the rest of his family had gone to sleep when suddenly the room grew as bright as daylight And a person appeared before him floating in the air I don't know what it is, but in here I feel like family

Hey, it's funny. It's like a garden filled with like pickled little things. Yeah, like olives It's like an olive garden Oh, when joseph retold this story years later He took a full paragraph going on and on about how the angel wore only a robe and was fully naked Underneath noting that the robe quote was open so that I could see into his bosom. Okay. It's your my eyes appear Look at him like you little full dates says a man. It's just a chest Are you you like this? Are you an angel or a hollywood producer? What's uh? Uh, well, let's see what uh seat you sit and you're I'm saying I don't you know what I'm saying

It's like my lap could be a seat Oh, he yikes the being identified himself as the angel moroni And moroni had been sent by god with a task for joseph Moroni spoke of a book buried in the woods that was written on golden plates And these golden plates gave an account of the former inhabitants of america And those plates would tell the source from which these people sprang furthermore moroni claimed that this book contained the everlasting gospel as delivered by jesus christ to the ancient inhabitants of america lost these last 1800 years

But moroni told joseph not to worry because with these plates were two seer stones called urim and thumbam Which joseph could use to translate the book which would eventually come to be known as the book of mormon My dearest moroni, I I don't mean to question your authority in any way she had performed But maybe they could have been written in english So that I could read them I know no, but you don't get to do a phone like translation thing Which is like a whole thing because then you're gonna hide it whatever it says for everybody

That's incredibly smart Good scam moroni good scam And another thing that moroni told joseph was that joseph was to never ever Ever under any circumstances show the plates to anyone Oh ever ever interesting as long as he shall live Because if he did it would negate that whole blind faith thing that god is so big on well Well, some sources do say and joseph went on to say is that if a person that was not allowed to look upon the plates

Looked upon them there. They would die by like essentially they would explode The way he described them is that you are that episode of the antiques road show Had it would explode And so we'll see later on is that when he has the whatever these are Wrapped in a sheet everywhere and his wife keeps trying to like look at him look at him and like you sure And are you sure you want your brain to explode interesting and that went on to become the movie scanners And after moroni made this pro proclamation. He ascended to the heavens, but as joseph laid But as joseph laid there contemplating what had just happened moroni appeared again

And repeated everything he just said and then he left again. Bye. Bye. And then he came back and did it a third time Hey, joey. What's going on? He really does sound like an italian waiter in olive garden. So you good you good good I could have more breadsticks and soup. Please. I heard they're unlimited and I am not fully limited yet Hey, you don't want this against policy necessarily bring multiple servings at a time But look at you. You're a big guy. You're a good guy You're always an angel to me But moroni also added a warning that satan would try to tempt joseph to sell the plates for a hefty sum

But joseph had no other place in this tale but to glorify god. You are not to sell these golden plates And the next night moroni came again and told joseph. Hey, you should probably tell your dad What's going on here? Okay, let your dad in on all this and when joseph told his father his father Encouraged joseph to go out to the wilderness and take a look see at these plates also in in the uh in biblical terms And in magical terms that the uh, there are the covenant is not made unless something is done thrice Yes, so he has to come three times and that's how he knew that's how joseph knew for a fact This man this this entity was sent by god and the news was for real

So joseph went to the spot where he was told the plates would be and joseph started digging He soon hit upon a stone box Inside that box with the plates the urim and thumbum And the breastplate of an ancient american now What's fun is that like rough stone rolling uh, and they talk a little bit about in no man's history But no one really talks about the fact that before the all of this story was created He asked a dude to make a box for him And he asked people how do people go about?

Digging through these mounts because he knew people were finding shit in the mounts, right? And they were doing so and he would find their things every once in a while because mostly his game was to con people He paid money and his job was to essentially his job was just to search for treasure And sometimes find treasure. So he's just a producer of storage horse. Yes. He just he planted everything I mean technically, you know joseph smith. That was kind of entertainment at the time. Yeah Yeah, you're bored of shit and so you pay a fucking treasure hunter three dollars a day to come Tell you a bunch of stories take you around your land because your land is worthless because that's the other thing too Is that the people he's also fucking over? He's fucking people

Out of money people who don't have money because these are poor farmers who bought this worthless land at these high prices And they're like, fuck. Maybe there's treasure. This is like a last-ditch thing. Maybe there's treasure on this land So joseph smith is also taking advantage of people playing on desperate desperate people in desperate times Now the story goes that the angel forbade joseph from taking the plates for a period of about four years Because joseph had to go through a purification process before he could overcome his natural greedy impulse To just sell the damn things But he was like going out and checking them out like going out to the woods checking them out coming home going out Checking the woods going home. It's time to be pure. All right. Just remember this joey. We got four used to this

All right. Just drink as much coffee as we can. All right. Let me just do a couple sexy dances Got to really purify this system. I'll take some of this cod liver oil. Make sure every shit I take counts Oh the cod oil. My parents had a they had a love for cod fish oil. I don't know why but Well, joseph smith's autobiography joseph doesn't really talk about the years 1823 to 1827 Most likely the reason why joseph didn't write about those years was because he spent those four years Fucking gullible farmers out of money under the guise of treasure hunting. That was when he was biggest in treasure hunting That's when he started going regional. So he's just sitting there writing. He's like You

Let's do a yada yada. Yeah, let's do a yada yada yada here. Well, so this time he's hanging out with moroni On the reading a lot of pasta and his daddy going out to the mounds having a good time He's building this legend as he goes slowly but surely adding to it Mentioning stuff showing more and more people his like ability to scry and see the future and so his con game Was just getting strong. He went to con college for four years. Yeah Yeah, and one of those money digging expeditions in particular involved an elderly farmer named Josiah Stowell and Josiah asked joseph to come south to look for a lost silver mine in the sesquihana valley Because I just had it. You just had it when I just had it and you turned around I lost the whole damn mine

You lost an entire silver mine. Yeah I would love for an old man named Josiah to come at like let's go look for the lost silver mine down in sesquihana valley If someone kicked down our door with an eye patch and told us that we would all we would stop recording immediately And just go do it boys. Our destiny is here. Let's go treasure hunting So they went down to harmony pennsylvania and boarded with a man named isaac hale who at first isaac hale was into it He helped finance the exposition But isaac hale pretty soon saw through joseph smith bullshit and got disillusioned with the whole thing But this chapter of joseph smith's life is really only important for the inclusion of isaac hale's daughter

emma hale Who would become joseph smith's wife? Or at least his first wife. Okay. Now first emma scorned joseph as a quote careless young man He's careless and I oh, I hate him. I hate his style. And she thought he was quote very saucy very saucy which means Cap slit it just means a man whose hat is slightly to the left like a little tilt Which means he likes to eat ass Ooh saucy

But encouraged by the old cute joseph kept courting emma and eventually Joseph won emma's heart dude because she couldn't stand all the dude She was around and joseph smith blew her mind It was the first time she met a person that was charming Yeah, and so he rolled in and he's a flim flam man at the height of his young powers Like before you would become the pious Because that's when now he's in more of his trickster phase Whereas he would slowly gradually truly turn into paul dano the quiet unassuming

Prophet that only knows who's burdened by his truths at that time. He meets she meets his young dude Who's fucking full of vinegar. Is paul dano your mcm your man crush monday? I know it just it's the example of that because that's what it is. It's this spainting paul dano from there. We'll be Of course. No, I know I don't so it's him like it's all about how like it's all a burden Decisions are a burden. Yeah. Yeah, and you know he was you know He was riding high at this point, but he took it a little bit too far down there And before he could get married to emma joseph was arrested for the first but certainly not the last time Uh for being a disorderly person and an imposter. Can I get arrested for that?

I'm really really afraid of that. Yeah, you become a treasure hunter and start telling people that you could find Treasure on their land. I don't know. They pay you for that. Then yes, you could Honestly, if henry moves out to the midwest he would because when we were on our midwest tour, which was amazing for some reason You aggravated everyone and it was oh people gotta people just not our fans No, not our fans. No, no, no, no just random people were just like looking at you like you're not from here And you saw me. You know, I was being good. I wasn't really good. You were being fine I mean it was just they just like had a reaction. No, it happens That's why I'm never going back to texas because that's the reaction people have me in texas

Well, we'll be going back to texas fairly soon. That's number why i'm never gonna live in texas We're definitely going to be going back and doing shows in texas, but that's why I don't live it That's why I left texas, but you can't get arrested just for having imposter syndrome. That's what i'm asking Well, rough stone rolling mentions none of this yet. You know, they don't talk about joseph's time getting arrested or anything like that They actually say that joseph met his wife while he was attending school in southern new york quote at school But either way the arrest and conviction was enough to scare joseph out of the money digging business He's like i'm done with it. I'm not doing it anymore because pretty soon after that

He renounced the practice and eloped with emma much to emma's father's dismay It was also part of the reason why he was allowed to elope to emma because he said like i'm out Well, no, he wasn't allowed because the the father did not know at all The father had no they just disappeared one night went back up to new york And when they returned to pick up some of emma's furniture and livestock eight months later isaac hale met them in tears Oh, and according to the driver that brought emma and joseph to pennsylvania isaac hale said quote You have stolen my daughter and married her. I had I had much rather have followed her to the grave You spent your time in digging for money pretend to see in a stone and thus tried to deceive people

Uh, so you approve of the marriage then you're happy with it Oh, I just wish you teach me how to wear a cap so don't tell me so people wouldn't like And according to the driver joseph responded by weeping and acknowledging that he could not now nor could he ever see with a seeing stone And that every pretension he had to seeing treasure or anything else was a total lie Was her father dr. Phil he just got he's straight up broke him, but i'll tell you what mr. Hale After what you just told me who i'm a changed man I'm a changed man. That's enough inflammatory for me. Oh, yeah, that's enough chicanery I heard for joseph smith. That's right. Oh from now on. I'll eat a clean clean pure life

Are just making sweet rock and love to your daughter Okay, could have done without that last part joe Well, he told joseph told isaac hale. It's like yes, I have renounced money digging. I am now going to be a farmer I'm legit. I'm legit. I'm legit I'm legit. I'm gonna come work. I'm gonna tell the land all right And he did indeed give up money digging after that sure What was he really gonna become a fucking farmer? Because that sort of life was never gonna work for joseph smith and I totally get it just because you're a farmer son

Doesn't mean you're cut out for farming. Oh, you never be a rancher. Henry could never be a cop You could never be a truck driver. I could be a truck driver. I take that back. Thank you. Thank you But the problem here is that it's hard to say exactly what joseph decided to become instead Some say that he decided to become a storyteller and eventually those stories just got out of hand How does a story just get out of hand like a slinky falling out? Oh, this one just got out of hand again. It does. No fault of my own. It's just out of hand No, it's it's kind of like dennis nilson. We're that like all of the killin the dudes just kind of It's just like one day. I was just like doing it all the time and not stop doing it

Not stop lying not suck on people and then the next thing you know I'm in charge of an entire religion. This is out of hand. This is out of hand Uh others claim that joseph smith decided to be an even bigger charlatan than he was before And he started weaving stories of increasing complexity in order to manipulate people into giving him their money their land And eventually their wives under the guise of religion But if you listen to the Mormons, it's at this point that the revelations that joseph smith had experienced years before Finally began to bear fruit for on september 21st 1827 Mormons believe that joseph smith was finally able to bring the golden plates

Oh, and the key is you can only bring one plate. So you just got to get all the biscuits at a bottom He puts him ham like on top of this And you want to get some softer food you get your mac and cheese on top of that Oh, yeah, why not? And then a little bit more softer food you get some kind of cheese and something and a little bit more softer food than that You get some fruit on top of that. That's a great mormon tower of food Yeah And it was from these golden plates that joseph smith was able to transcribe the book of mormon

And that's where we'll pick back up for mormonism part two man. We aren't even at the book of mormon. Yes This is great. That's where we're gonna start next week All right with the book of mormon the story of the two races that wore it against one another in america No, Jesus fits into it all all right the incredibly ornate belief system of mormonism Now if you look at that in between the rituals just literally the initiation rituals and all the various things that they talk about Where we're gonna see he he stole so much stuff from freemasonry and another occult world. It's ah, it's very very interesting Cobbled together through various other places and also just his own improv skills and his own storytelling skills Very interesting. Yeah

I mean even the story of like the warring races like he took that from it's all taken from somewhere He just improv. Yeah, and he adds on to it. You say take and I say inspired inspired by sure No, it really got there's plenty of authors that are inspired by real life events and inspired by folk tales and folk stories And that's what joseph smith did. Yes, absolutely the entire series of stranger things is basically inspired by spielberg um every spielberg movie inspired Yeah, I mean that's totally stolen influence. Uh influence. Yes. All right. There it is mormonism part one Super fascinating. Thank you all so much for listening and we are super excited to see you this weekend We are in atlantic city on friday night

Bethlehem, pennsylvania on saturday and portchester on sunday We have because this tour is as as henry calls it gallagher too Uh, we have some tickets available. We have tickets So, uh, remember portchester is 35 minutes outside of new york city if you hop on the metro and come up I understand. No, is it an exotic locale? Are we going to nap song? No, we're not. I understand Portchester doesn't have like the ring that maybe you'd want it to but Portchester is a city that you get out of what you put into it. Oh, what's that? Oh our agents have called

They said good job, henry. Good job. See yeah, so you live in northern brooklyn like we do It's about an hour 15 minutes door-to-door from your home To portchester new york where we're doing that day. It's the capital theater, right? Because you know if if if one of my favorite entertainers was performing in portchester I would be on that train without a doubt would I not say I live in new york already. Yeah, but no, I would be there So come on out and see this in portchester. It really will be a super fun show and as always it's exciting to see you guys Um, so we love our people. We love our people and honestly you guys were so sweet

The midwest tour could not have been better. Same ball Um demoyne and milwaukee and thanks for everyone who stayed around in milwaukee for the hail yourself premiere That really meant a lot to me. It's super sweet and the paps theater was a true dream come true It was really awesome and apparently it's extremely haunted but with nice ghosts Also for our uk and european tour. We still have some tickets left I believe in bristol and I believe we have some tickets left in minchester. Oh But everything else is pretty much sold out. Yeah, I think we might be releasing uh some tickets here soon They just like just a couple not very many. So yeah, go follow us on all the social bullshit

We'll announce on uh, we'll announce on either twitter or instagram or something when those tickets are released We also have some more later. You're on the left. That's where we are. Yes, and we have more uh Uh, we have more dates upcoming that are about to be released. Yes, I think that you guys are going to be very happy with them Because we're going some places that people have been asking us to go to for many years Many many years and of course we've wanted to go to those places But uh, we finally have the opportunity. Um, so thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for supporting all the shows here On the last podcast network and folks don't never forget hail yourselves. Hail satan. Hail gene. Magus dilation. Hail me Let's go eat a bunch of food off those golden plates

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