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INTERVIEW NOTES ON BRIAN’S OWN WEBSITE
I WISH I had known about this clip to include in the episode. Listen to Shermer’s explanation of Joseph Smith’s polygamy from 6:10 – 8:00
(This is one of the most cited people in the book — so apparently who Brian is finding common cause with in his discussion of Joseph’s polygamy.)
Transcript
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy. I’m glad you’re here for this episode, where I will be responding in a more comprehensive way to the recent interviews that Brian Hales has been giving on YouTube. I’ve up till now responded to very specific sources that have been talked about, but now I want to talk about the overall engagement, and I’m really hoping that this. be a useful and worthwhile episode that will provide some very important information. I’m also really hoping that this information can be received in the spirit that I’m attempting to give it. And so I hope that we can all work together to improve the discourse surrounding this very important topic. So thank you so much for joining me as we take this deep dive into the workings of some Mormon historians. At the very beginning of this episode, before diving into the content, I want to take a second to explain why I think this is a worthwhile topic to address at all, why I’m focusing on Brian Hales. First, I am hoping that some historians will tune into this and some of the other recent episodes that I’ve done, and I want to try to help some of the historians understand. The divide that I see that I have experienced. I can’t speak for everybody in my community, but I think that I, I think I kind of can, you know, there might be others who see it differently, but I’ll just tell you my experience. When before I started to really get involved in the historical community and attended a conference and started to really dive in and understand the different voices, it looked to me, and so I believe it looks to most of us, like Mormon historians are a bit of a monolith. Like, there’s kind of a one. One main perspective, and Brian Hales has been set up to be the ultimate expert on that. When we want to understand church history as members of the church, we are told to go to saints, right? That’s what we are supposed to look at to understand our church history. That’s what Brian Hales presents. That’s what we’re told is um is the official church history, and we don’t know that all historians don’t just buy into that. So it’s pretty challenging because saints is when we start digging into it, see. Seems very problematic on several topics, particularly the topic of polygamy. So that’s a problem for us. Then we have the Joseph Smith papers for those of us who are diving in a little bit more. And while so much of it is wonderful, some of the narratives, some of the descriptions, some of the context it gives us is it tells the same story of saints to a large degree, and it also can seem quite problematic, and that’s all that we know that there is, right? When, when we’re coming to it. And Brian Hales is the person that is put on all of the church spots. Our podcasts and all of the other podcasts as well. He’s the one talking about it and sort of claiming to represent all historians. He sets himself up as the expert. He’s recently been called on a mission, I believe, to work on this historical project on Joseph Smith’s biography. So it seems that that’s being recognized by the church. So I’m just trying to explain that for many of us, the reason that we tend to maybe lose our trust in the expertise of historians is Because of Brian Hales, because we see Brian Hales telling his version of the narrative, which is very problematic to us in many ways, and we don’t hear other voices that we have access to saying that they disagree, right? It took me digging in to to really interact with historians, to hear historian after historian tell me, oh, no, Brian Hales is not credible. We don’t view him as credible. He’s an apologist, not a historian. Like, I now understand that that is how many historians view Brian Hill. But it took me a long time to get to get there to understand it. So I’m wanting to explain to historians why we see some problems with Brian Hailes and why I think it is doing it is a disservice to have Brian Hailes be the voice on this topic. So that’s one of the reasons I want to dig into it and also I just want to explain to the LDS community who is looking to Brian Hailes why they also might want to double like like think twice about this. I just think that. That that we need to do better. We need to expect better and we need to engage in better ways and we need to do better. So first of all, I, many of you know that Brian has been doing these recent interviews. He did a a bunch of them that have all come out recently and, and so I’m just responding to how he’s engaged in all of these, how he’s approached all of these, and what he is relying on. So the first thing I want to look at that I just find fascinating is the book that Brian Hailes is using that he’s basing his entire. Approach on on how he is approaching this topic, specifically the topic of monogamy affirmers, and I have already said that I’ve said repeatedly, I think monogamy affirmers is the term that people should use when referring to people in my community, those of us who do not believe that polygamy originated with Joseph Smith. We affirm his monogamy, and I will gladly refer to the others, to those of you who believe that polygamy did originate with Joseph Smith as polygamy affirmers. I think that those are Respectful terms that we can use that we can all agree with that no one is feeling demeaned. So I’m disappointed to see Brian Hill continue to use polygamy denier and polygamy denialists, but that’s OK. We’ll go ahead and dive into this, and I want to show you, um, Brian introducing his book. I’ll show clips from the different episodes that he’s gone on so you can hear the different ways that he approaches it. But it is interesting to see him basing so much on this one book. I’ll give you one hint. It’s not the Book of Mormon. So here we’ll hear from Brian.
[05:28] Brian Hales: In a book that talks about the uh methodologies of individuals who seem to be comfortable um Rejecting or denying uh conclusions that seem to be based upon a large amount of, of reliable scientific or historical evidence and we can call these, I don’t want to use a pejorative term, I want to be respectful, and we can call them denialists or, or we could call them, uh, you know, lumy deniers.
[05:59] Michelle: So that’s on one episode, we’ll look at him saying it on another interview.
[06:03] Brian Hales: You know, uh, there are a lot of people denying things that science and history seems to seem to document very, very solidly, and there have been studies that have been done showing that they use certain methodologies, and there’s, there’s 5 of them in a book called How to Talk to a Science Denier book I’ve been reading.
[06:25] Michelle: OK, so that one was useful because he gives us the name of his book. So that’s how I knew to look, which, which book to look up and which book to read. So, now let’s hear him talk about it in one more interview.
[06:36] Brian Hales: What I wanted to do is to um talk about the movement itself and how it compares to other denialist movements. And I, I’ve been reading this book about science denying, and it, it focuses on people who deny that the earth is round.
[06:54] Michelle: OK, so again, Brian has always been repeatedly referring to um monogamy affirmers. That’s what I’m going to say. It’s not the term he uses, but he’s been referring to us as flat earthers, which I think is extremely pejorative. It obviously is. Whether he says he’s trying to, it doesn’t matter what. Someone says they’re trying to do, it matters what they do, right? So that is an extremely pejorative way to, um, categorize us. And then, uh, because of that, he went on to use this book, How to Talk to Science Deniers. So I want to look into this book because I think it is very Be telling, I think people need to be aware of this before they listen to these explanations that Brian has given. So I did go ahead and read this book. And it’s interesting because Brian gave these interviews weeks apart, and in each of them, he said, I’ve been reading a book. So I wonder if he actually ever read it because interestingly, everything he talks about actually is talked about in the very introduction. I first want to read the two quotes included in the epigraph of this book, just to kind of demonstrate what I see as its futility, right? Because each side of Any disagreement could say these exact quotes to people on the other side, and it wouldn’t get us anywhere. So the first one is, this is the first quote, A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree, and he turns away. Show him facts or figures, and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic, and he fails to see your point. That’s Leon Fetziger when prophecy fails. I hope I’ll remember to come back and talk about that book in a few minutes when it’s applicable. The second quote I actually like a lot better. It’s, it’s be fun. This quote is, it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. That’s Mark Twain. And I love Mark Twain. That’s why I like this quote. I love his wisdom and his wit. But it’s really fun to know that he actually spent time in Utah. And I want to read another quote from Mark Twain from his, his, um, 1872 book Roughing It. He wrote, Polygamy is a recent feature of the Mormon religion and was by Brigham Young after Joseph Smith’s death. Before that, it was regarded as an abomination. He then actually quotes extensively from the Book of Mormon, specifically Jacob chapter 2. So that’s a fun way to start this book. Um, let me go ahead and give you a little bit more broad spectrum understanding of this book. Chapter 1 is all about flat earthers, which this writer, Leigh McIntyre, uses flat earthers to set the stage for all science deniers, just as Brian Hales uses flat earther’s to set the stage for all the monogamy affirmers, right? And so, um, that’s how he starts and he talks about a flat Earther conference that he went to, which he describes in detail to help us understand everybody that doesn’t agree with him on any of these topics, right? It might first be helpful to skip forward to the beginning of chapter 2. The chapter is called What Is Science Denial? And at the beginning of that, he provides a list of science deniers. Let me read his quote. He’s, he writes, Once you have engaged with Enough flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, intelligent designers, and climate change deniers, one begins to sense a pattern. Their strategies are all the same, although the content of their belief systems differ, all science denial seems grounded in the same few mistakes in human reasoning. OK, I really hope you caught that. According to this book that Brian is relying on, it is science denial to believe in intelligent design, or what they also call creationism. For the author and his community, Leigh McIntyre and his community of writers and thinkers, people who believe in God are science deniers. The author regular regularly alludes to having a Bible or talking about Jesus as evidence of anti-truth thinking. And that’s where that quote by Leon Festinger comes up. He was also a very, um, forward-thinking prominent. Atheist of his day, a social scientist who was trying to push atheism, that is what that book was about and what that quote was about, right? So from the very beginning, this is what is being established in this book. I, I, I want to go on and talk about it a little bit more. It, um, he goes on in that first chapter describing the people at the Flat Earth conference. And, um, this is, these are part of the descriptions he gives. He says, quote, Behind us sat a mother and her 6 or 7 year old son with a spiral notebook that said Bible research. The author also disapprovingly talked about a man who talked about the adversary, and Lee McIntyre, the author, oppressed him until he got him to call him the devil when he said, Who are you talking about? the adversary, right? And, and he added that this man said this all goes back to the Bible. And so, again, that is like, Lee is McIntyre is setting up this mode of saying, look, people who believe in Flat Earth are they are just like people who believe in religion, who read the Bible, who believe in God. That is exactly what Brian is doing, right? With these constant comparisons to flat earthers. It’s insane. And so he then goes on. To describe a conversation he had with a flat, one of the attendees of the Flat Earther conference, and he wrote, I just let him talk for a bit. He asked if I was spiritual. I said no. He then went on to explain the relationship between God and the devil and give me a mini seminar on Flat Earth 101. So again, the way he is demeaning the flat earthers is by pointing out how they all believe in God, right? And I mean, obviously I, I, I feel bad for flat earthers. I think that they, they get pounded on a lot. So I’m sorry to add to that, you know, if there’s anyone that’s a flat earther, I’m sure you have your reasons. It’s not something that I get into at all, but I do want to say that compare that using flat earthers to describe people who believe in religion is not accurate, just like using flat earthers to describe people who believe, who are monogamy affirmers is also not. Not accurate. Let’s let people deal with their own issues, right? Let’s stop with this guilt by association thing. Anyway, it really bothers me. And it seems to me that this is the reason Brian chose this book is because he wants something that looks at flat earthers, right? And that because that’s what he’s been doing this whole time. I think he made a mistake, though, by choosing this book. So, um, he, the, the writer goes on to say that he only met one person at the entire Flat Earth conference who didn’t believe in God. Or who didn’t believe that God created the world. But as their conversation went on, he reveals that this person didn’t believe that God created the world because she believed that she was God, right? And so we’re making this as crazy as it can be. And so his final statement when he was describing the keynote speaker who he was describing with a great deal of disdain, he, he wrote this, I left at the point where he said, each of us have to be humbled before the word of God. That is all in the very first chapter. Uh, the, the book mentions God a total of 10 times. 9 of them are derisively about people who believe in God or that one that claims to be God, and the other time is just taking the Lord’s name in vain. That’s, that’s the focus on God that’s in this book. Not that a book has to focus on God, but it would be better if it didn’t just always treat people who believed in God. Such derision and disdain and calling them science deniers, right? And, um, I did go ahead and look up religion in the index, and it was very interesting. There, it had listings for religion and creation, intelligent design. Um, it had, I guess, just one listing for that. It had 6 listings for evolution and religion. It had 9 listings for flat earthers and religion, and those are the only mentions of religion is looking at what other crazy things religion makes people believe, right? Um, he repeatedly, the, the writer repeatedly quotes several very well known atheists. In addition to the epigraph, he goes on to quote, um, multiple times quotes a podcast called The Friendly Atheist and someone he quotes. Very often is Michael Shermer. So this is Michael Shermer. He’s the founder of Skeptic magazine, and he has been one of the most dedicated atheist proselytizers for many years. Let me introduce him to you with a short video from the Atheist Alliance International. So this is Michael Shermer, one of the main sources for this book that Brian Hales is using.
[15:22] Michael Shermer: Hi, everyone. My name is Michael Shermer, and I’m a proud member of the Atheist Alliance International’s Advisory Board. I am, as you can see behind me, the author of, uh, a number of these books, uh, that deal with humanism, atheism, skepticism, books like The Moral Ark and Giving the Devil His Due and why people believe weird Things. But my main job, my day job is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, and our mission is, uh, the promotion of science, reason, rationality. And skepticism and critical thinking on all issues on anything that people are interested in and care about. In conjunction with the Atheist Alliance International’s mission of spreading reason and rationality in science worldwide, which is why I support them. Anyway, give your, uh, give your support to this great organization and I’m proud to be a part of it.
[16:17] Michelle: OK, so that was Michael Shermer, again, one of the experts relied on in in Brian’s book. And so I’ll share a few of um his recent articles. His most recent article is called Why I Am Not a Christian. This was just in November of 23, this was just a year ago. He was responding critically to Ain Ayan Hy Aldi’s somewhat recent disavowal of her formerly embraced atheism. Sorry, I struggled to say her name, although I actually really like her. Um, and then I looked into his archive to look at, you know, like some of his past articles, and I randomly chose the year 2017. You could look up any here. Here are just a few of his articles from that year. He’s actually quite prolific in his writing. So he wrote an article called Scientific Naturalism, A Manifesto for Enlightenment, Humanism. And this is what his abstract says. Scientific naturalism is what he calls it, and he said that it led to the widespread adoption of what he calls enlightenment humanism, a cosmopolitan worldview that places supreme value on science and reason, eschews the supernatural entirely, that’s any idea of God, right, and relies exclusively on nature and nature’s laws, including human nature. So that was one article. Here’s another one. This is called How How Scientists Might Thi. Think about the resurrection where he gives 6 scientific reasons that critically thinking people should reject the possibility of the resurrection. He has an article called If There Is No God Is Murder Wrong, and in that one, he gives 4 reasons we don’t need religion. I’ll read a couple of them. One is divine command theory is fallible, and then he has either what he calls the either or fallacy where he argues in favor of provisional morality rather than divine morality. And then And the third one is the religious source for morality is unreliable, and the fourth one is absolute morality corrupts absolutely. So, um, he another article is called Do Anomalies prove the existence of God? And he seems to define anomalies as what some other people would describe as spiritual experiences. And then he explains why they are not evidence of God, and he has many, many more. So they go all the way back to, well, before this, but I’ll just show you one of his more famous articles. From, um, 2005 called Why I Am an Atheist, and I think that’s where he actually came out as an atheist. He’s been much more, he’s owned that and even pushed that much more since then. So I’m actually not trying to vilify Michael Shermer or Lee McIntyre or anybody else. So there, there are a lot of things I respect about a lot of the voices in this book, although I disagree with them on something very, very fundamental, and it’s a really important disagreement. But I do find myself wondering If Brian even read the book that he is using sort of as his Bible in this discussion. And I, in any case, I, I don’t think he looked up the author or did much research on it to see if this was a sound book to be using as his operating manual. And those who are having him on your podcast, do you agree with the things in this book? Is this something that that you want to espouse as well? So chapter 3 goes on to quote Michael Shermer extensively, and I’m just I have to remind everybody throughout this that Michael Shermer’s proselytizing efforts are primarily focused on trying to convince people that there is no God, that believing in God is anti-scientific thinking, and so is being a science denier. So I’m going to go ahead and quote some more of the book. This is, well, quoting the book, quoting Shermer. People seem to double down on their beliefs and the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them, and he goes on to explain that when people feel their worldview is under threat, it causes cognitive. Dissonance. When subjects are sufficiently motivated and their and their ego or identity is threatened, they will resist all efforts to get them to concede that they are wrong. Remember, this is talking about their belief in God. And he goes on to say, oh, the, the writer Mike McIntyre goes on to say, Since Shermer is a professional skeptic with decades of experience who encounters science deniers in the wild as a matter of course, we would be wise to heed his advice. Remember, the science deniers. He is meeting in the wild are people who believe in God. So now let’s go ahead and look at someone else he quotes and also something else with Michael Shermer. This is Peter Bergozian, who was also quoted multiple times in this book, and Michael Shermer actually wrote the foreword in his book, A Manual for Creating Atheists. And so this, I just, I have to say, this actually hits a little bit close to home for me, because in, I think it was in 2014. If I recall, they actually, um, Pete Prigozian and Michael Shermer and their organizations held a conference in Salt Lake City that was the American Atheist Conference. And at that 0.1 of my sisters actually flew in for the conference. She didn’t tell family she was here. She has been frustrated by some of the family’s religious beliefs. So she threw in, she flew in to go to the conference to get trained on these strategies. And then she started employing them with my teenager. Which I found somewhat frustrating frustrating. Luckily, I had engaged with these sources, so I knew about the conference and I was easily able to see what she was doing to to see her employing her newly learned tactics and how to talk to my kids. And so we just kind of had a laugh and didn’t worry about it. But I, I, I just, again, I’m really surprised that this is the book. I, I cannot wrap my head around. Brian Hailes and Greg Madsen and Jacob Hansen and others centering discussions around this book, it is very, very surprising to me. And so I’ll go on now that we’ve looked at an overview of the book. I want to give just some of the specifics. So this is the definition of science denial that the book gives, quote, the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate when in actuality there is none. And so the author has to. this to everybody who isn’t fully on board with all the modern claims of science. And so this for him, he explicitly includes evolution, vaccines, climate change, creationism, right? But we can’t logically exclude the other movements of modern science that things, for example, that insist that humans can be born into the wrong body and that biological sex has nothing to do with gender and that gender is merely a social construct that is assigned at birth and So many other things, but I again need to say this is the anti-scientific thinking that they are talking about. It applies to everybody who believes in God. So I only, I just have to wonder how the author of this book, Lee McIntyre and all of the contributors and sources that he utilizes, I have to wonder how they would look at an entire community of people who may happen to actually believe in such things as go. And plates, or angels or ear stones, or multiple ancient civilizations discovered, not through archaeological evidence, but through inspired translations of ancient records that nobody else could see, and on and on, right? I’m not, I, I mean, I’m just trying to point out that this book is not the appropriate tool to apply to anything having to do with our faith. It’s the wrong lens. It doesn’t have anything to even perceive our belief structure or our worldview. And so it, it has very little chance of offering us any worthwhile guidance or inspiration on the topic of Joseph Smith’s polygamy or much of anything else for people with our worldview, right? But I, I’ll just play this clip of Brian applying the lessons from this book to monogamy affirmers.
[24:06] Brian Hales: But they identified 5 methodologies that that I could just briefly mention. Um, one is cherry picking of evidence, 2 is conspiracy theories. 3 is relying on what we consider fake experts or experts who really haven’t studied the topic in detail. They commit errors of logic and, and lastly they set up a impossibly high standard for the contradictory evidence, even though that’s not the standard they they maintain. So it becomes actually set an identity to identify with those who say the earth is flat or there was no Holocaust or men didn’t land on the moon, and I see some parallels here. I really do. Um, with people that are denying what I, I believe is, is, is very strongly supported with historical evidence, and that is that Joseph introduced and practiced marriage.
[24:59] Michelle: OK, so this is why I object to this. People who are studying this are learning that actually that’s not supported by very strong historical evidence. There’s definitely a debate to be had. But what’s more, for people, I just have to keep coming back to the atheist question, right? With that description, if someone used that to describe your belief in God, would that convince you that you were wrong about your belief in God, right? And wouldn’t you hope that people wouldn’t talk that way about you in order to convince other People, how wrong you were. I find this to be extremely unfortunate, but I will go ahead and explain a little bit more. If you dig into the book, it does rely quite heavily on this study, which it relies on quite heavily. Um, effective strategies for rebutting science denialism in public discussion, right? And this, this, um, paper talks about two different strategies, which are first content rebuttal when an expert presents deniers with facts of science. And also technique rebuttal, which it describes as a lesser known second strategy, which relies on the idea that there are 5 common reasoning errors made by all science deniers. Those are what Brian, um, just cited. I’ll go ahead and quickly repeat them because I think it’s good to apply them. So first, checking cherry-picking evidence, and then second is belief in conspiracy theories. This drives me crazy because again, both perspectives rely on a theory, right? The only question is whether Joseph was one of the conspirators or whether the conspiracy was trying to hide it from Joseph as well. In any case, there was absolutely a conspiracy. And then third, reliance on fake experts and denigration of real experts. That’s what it actually says, reliance on the fake experts, denigration of real experts. We’ll get into it. That he’s trying to stretch that claim at points. But I, again, want to point people to the Episode on Brigham’s cipher for just one example, and there are many more things we’ll go into on that topic of reliance on experts. And then fourth is committing logical errors, and there are too many things to go into there, but we could just use, for example, how about was and so whether it’s sealed or sealed and wetted, right? like the logical fallacy of believing that everything must be evidence of polygamy, whether it logically can stand up to scrutiny or not. And then number 5 is setting impossible expectations for what science can achieve. That’s what it actually says and my goodness, that is very applicable because for the polygamy affirmers they seem to take any they they can just say, oh they were lying or they were they were dishonest or I don’t know how to explain that or you know they have all kinds of passes they give themselves where for us we are forced to explain every single possible thing and so I actually see that as reversal. I, I think that that is happening in reverse, and it’s OK. We have the greater burden of proof because we are the new, um, perspective that we’re trying to bring to the table. So that’s OK, we accept that. But boy, I, I think it’s a mistake to, to switch the tables like that and claim that we are doing exactly what they are doing. But the thing that I really want to bring out is that according to this study, you can engage with science deniers in two possible ways. You can either engage with the evidence, or you can just Accuse them of using these tactics. It goes on to say, quote, Both strategies are equally effective, which means that anyone can fight back against science deniers. You don’t have to be a scientist to do it. You don’t need to know any facts or have any actual evidence. It’s saying the book is saying this all excitedly. Once you have studied the mistakes that are common to their arguments, you have the secret decoder ring that will fight back against all forms of science denial. That’s what this book provides you with. It is so interesting to me that it seems from what I’m hearing in these episodes that Brian actually chooses to prioritize this second strategy, the one that requires no expertise, because it has the secret decoder ring. So I believe it would be far more effective to focus fully on the first strategy, engaging with the evidence and the well reasoned. Arguments. So I, I really appreciate that Brian did do that in parts of this episode, because that’s given me, you know, the fuel to, to be able to actually get into the evidence and have a conversation. I think that is very valuable. But I’m really confused why he didn’t just choose to start with that, with that way of engaging, right? Talking about the evidence. Why go to this decoder ring. Strategy where you don’t need to have any expertise. I don’t understand that. And again, reminder, if you believe in God, you were under operating under the same common errors of all science deniers. And I sincerely have to ask, like, like Brian or anyone else, how effective this magic decoder ring would be to remedy your belief in God, or anything else, right? I really recommend not relying so heavily on this book. I’ve read a, um, review. Of this wasn’t, this was actually from, um, Leigh McIntyre’s next book, and it kind of reviews both of them together, and I really appreciated this book. I mean, I really appreciated this review. I think it did a very good job of explaining the problem. This was actually written by Robert Crea, who is a like-minded academic. He agrees with, um, McIntyre’s perspective on the world, and he shares his community. But admirably, he can see and critique some important flaws, even when They’re on his own side. That’s a characteristic I really admire. So this really was good for me to read because it is exactly what I have been learning over the past several months. So Chris calls McIntyre’s McIntyre’s genre of writing rant literature. And so he calls it rant lit for short. So when I say rant lit, I’m talking about rant literature. He, he says, quote, Rantlit assumes that it can bring people to their senses by exposing the vapidity of Intellectual corruption vehemently enough. It’s fun to read if you don’t take it too seriously. Rantlet is full of dirty laundry, horrifying anecdotes, and recognizable villains. Rantlet is feel good writing for allies. That is such a good description. But as he goes on to explain, it does nothing to help its readers understand the other side because it misjudges and vilifies and ultimately alienates them. And I will add, it is almost guaranteed to never convince. Anybody who doesn’t already agree. So let me quote some more. McIntyre’s book is littered with witty putdowns such as Epistemic homicide, Truth Killers, Fire hose of Lies, and Zombie Foot Soldiers. The book has its villains, in this case, a certain candidate and everyone who voted for him. Truth, it says, is under attack by a coordinated campaign of individuals and organizations who cherry-pick evidence and experts and promote conspiracy theory. and illogical thinking. So this was one of my favorite quotes. The spiritual tone is evangelical. It’s a truth teller’s Bible full of religious certitude and morally charged language. If you took an evangelical tract and replaced morality with knowledge, God with truth, and Satan with fact deniers, you pretty much have this book. It tells us that dark days are ahead, and the world is full of cutthroats who know exactly what they are doing, and their minions. Don’t. Saving reality is the burden of us knowledgeable ones, collectively and individually. Sorea explains how the text is, quote, peppered with flaws and contradictions, and also that the prose conceals undefined terms and unquestioned assumptions. What, after all, is truth? This reminded me a lot of the recent conversation I had with Jim Bennett about facts. And it, it did. It made me feel like, oh, I bet he read this book I really liked it. Rattlet is doing. Its job, right? And he, um, that reviewer had many more scathing words for McIntyre’s book. I was, I was tempted to read the whole review, but I’ll just link in the comments. He concluded his article talking about how well he loved reading the book because it fed his worldview after reading it and being so fed so full of how wrong all the zombies on the other side were, he decided to actually walk down the hall to the office of the one professor on campus that he knew who voted the other way than he didn’t talk to him. They had a reasonable conversation and he saw that sometimes reasonable people simply have different information, different priorities and see things differently and engaging in actual conversation is definitely the way to go. That’s the point of the review. And actually that’s what Michael Shermer says too. And McIntyre said that’s at a few points in his book that it was giving some contradictory message, but, but it, um, it made that point that we just need to talk to people, right? And I think that that is the way to go. So I have to say this now. As soon as I read the term rant lit, rant lit, rant literature, I know exactly what it meant. It describes McIntyre’s book perfectly, and I have to admit that it also perfectly describes some of my episodes on this podcast, some of my past episodes. I’ve had people who disagree with me tell me that they really hate some of my episodes, especially when I get together with a group where we just kind of go off on how bad The historians are, that kind of thing. And I, as I realized this, I realized that’s totally the same thing. That’s really rant lit, right? It was, it’s been somewhat hard for me to accept this because I keep having that same feeling. Like, if I expose this, if I show the problems, then people will jump on board and see, but I have had to acknowledge, even though it’s been hard to accept, I have had to realize and acknowledge that it’s, it’s rant, right? It feels really good to people who already agree with me, but it is not ever going to convince people. Who disagree with me. It’s not going to like wake people up and show them this perspective is something worth considering. And so I know that that much of my audience loves those episodes, but they are a huge turn off to people who don’t already agree. So I’m thankful that I have had mentors who have taken the time, mentors who disagree with me, who’ve taken the time to help me see some of, some of this through their eyes. I have been trying very hard to engage differently. It’s very easy to fall into to Rat lit, and to genuinely think it’s going to be effective when it just isn’t. And it’s really easy to identify ratlit on the other side, right? Like, while reading this book, I just go, Oh, my gosh. But it’s a lot harder to see it on our own side. So I am thankful that I’ve been able to see it on my side and so that I can, I can understand how things land for people who disagree, and I can try to engage differently. And so, I can’t promise that I’m never going to Engage in ratlit again. I can promise I am going to try. I hope, I hope this episode does not at all come across as rat lit, because that is, I’m trying very hard to not do that. And it’s really been a challenge to decide whether or not to, to, you know, even have this conversation because I, I, I want to reach across, um, perspectives and be able to start conversations and not alienate people. So I’m trying very hard. I hope people can hear it in that way. One thing I realized. As I was getting this ready that made me laugh as I realized section 132, the polygamous portions of it are actually rat lit, right? Like, as if being repeatedly threatened with destruction was ever going to change Emma’s mind about polygamy and make her say, Oh, OK. OK, right? And that’s a good thing to keep in mind when thinking about Brant. Am I going to, um, reach the people I want to reach? And so I, I am freely acknowledging that I have engaged in. outlet. And I hope that none of my detractors will use this admission to further judge me or throw me under the bus, because I will point out that Lee McIntyre is a top tier academic, right? He is a PhD academic with titles and honors and awards coming out of his ears. He’s been at Harvard. He has important positions, and he has made an entire career engaging in ratlit, which he has yet to to acknowledge. or try to change. And Brian Hailes has taken McIntyre’s rant lit text as his guide in these conversations. And so, and he’s clearly not the only one engaging this way. I think this is something for all of us to try to recognize. So I’m hoping that people who have been critical of me can hopefully cut me some slack and maybe recognize that, first of all, I’m not the only one who has done this. And at least I have seen it and acknowledged it, and I have worked very hard. To try to avoid it and try to engage differently. And so it can be, I, I will say it can be a huge challenge to try to predict what might offend or trigger or alienate people with a different perspective. Um, I, I have stepped in it several times, even when I’m trying really hard not to. So it is a huge challenge, but I want people to know I am seriously trying, which in and of itself can be a challenge. It can be a challenge to even want to try when so many of the voices coming after me. Seem so willing to offend, alienate, denigrate me personally, and the people who disagree with me. And they’re so willing to just like outright lie about me. It’s happening all the time. So I, I hope that I can be given some credit for the fact that I am trying really hard, and I hope we will all try to do this a little bit better. But as I thought about the five rather condescending and judgmental and utterly ineffective guides laid out in this book, the cherry-picking. You know, just the accusations. I thought it might be useful to try to come up with some of my own, some better guides. So if you really want to learn to talk to people who disagree with you on this topic or any topic, I’m going to suggest following these 5 points instead. And maybe some others would like to give me their list because I want to try to think about and employ the best methods in talking to people. So first, stop demeaning people as deniers and comparing them to flat earthers and Holocaust deniers, right? Second, stop accusing them of using the exact tactics that they see you using. Third, start being at least somewhat humble, open, and curious. 4th, engage on evidence and stop resorting to the fallacies like ad hominem, like calling people deniers and appeals to authority, saying, all, all of us agree. I’m the expert, right? 5, spend less time talking about people, deniers, or Whatever other group you want to talk about, and more time talking to them. Again, it is so bizarre that people are going around explaining us as if we’re some long extinct breed that needs experts to speak on behalf of us. We’re right here. We are perfectly capable of speaking for ourselves. One suggestion that the book makes, as I mentioned before, that I very much do agree with is it says, quote, The best way of convincing someone to change their belief is through direct personal. Engagement. I again invite Brian Hales to engage directly and personally any time. I hope everybody involved will think long and hard about whether these are really the sources and writers and arguments they want to be relying on and making or hosting and validating. That’s a sincere question. I, I think that this has been unfortunate. OK, so that’s all I’m going to say about the book. And now I want to talk really quickly about another topic that again, it’s so hard to decide what To address and what to just let go because I don’t want it to seem like this personality struggle or this, um, you know, just sour grapes. That’s not what it all is at all, but it’s also sometimes important to set the record straight, right? And to give a different perspective. So this is why I’ve decided to talk about this part of it. I, I have to respond to Jacob Hanson and the way that he has been engaging. I am honestly deeply disappointed with what has been happening. So I’ll give a really quick History. Some of you will remember that I, there was a debate, right? There’s, there’s actually quite a bit of history, but I’m gonna do it as quickly as I can. So a debate was scheduled. I had already agreed that I would debate Jacob Hansen, but instead they went ahead and did it with Jacob Isbell, who is he did a great job in his way, but hasn’t spent the time in the documents and the sources. And so, um, so I felt a little bit like, oh, I don’t know if that’s the best choice, that, you know, why are they not debating me? But anyway, that happened. And I asked a question at least. And then when I talked to Jacob after, he agreed to engage with me on this topic. I told him I would do it anytime that he, he agreed to come on my show and engage and have some discussions about it. But he kept postponing and pushing it back and pushing it back, making excuses until it finally got to where he said, I’ll do it in September, we can engage in September. And so when it got to be September and he was supposed to come on, instead of being willing to set up a time, he instead came out with this. Video, which I just found to be despicable. I could not believe this happened. It was an awful hip piece, which intentionally, it intentionally took clips from several of my videos way out of context, badly misrepresenting me and trying to paint me as being in direct rebellious opposition to President Nelson, as you can see just from the thumbnail, and telling people that despite what they actually hear me say, that this is what they are getting with me, right? It’s just this Tired, worn out wolf in sheep’s clothing trope that the polygamists and the polygamy lovers who oppose me have been using for so long. And now Jacob Hansen has jumped on board and has been spreading it. So it was, I, this was very deeply disappointing to me. I did, you know, I’ve had my issues with Jacob Hansen, but this is where I started to believe that he is not an honest actor. The fact that he did this instead of engaging with me was extremely disappointing. So perhaps you can imagine my complete astonishment when after I had recorded this episode, somebody sent me this video that Jacob Hansen released, where he actually said this.
[43:36] Jacob Hansen: Now, I’ve always found it funny when people talk about other people online instead of talking to them. And just so you know, I almost always reach out to the people I talk about on my channel first to see if they’re willing to talk directly with me.
[43:54] Michelle: I could not believe that Jacob Hansen actually said this with a straight face. The irony is hard to even contemplate. I guess he did give himself a little bit of an out by saying that he almost always talks to people before he talks about them. Maybe I’m the exception to the rule, but my goodness, this was strange to see. And again, I am. Invite Jacob to actually follow through on his principles and practice what he preaches. And it clearly was a lot of work to go through so many of my videos to pull out those clips. So I find myself honestly wondering if it was the trolls who have been doing this for so long, sending this information out, if it was them who sent the work to Jacob Hanson and did it for him. Or if Jacob Hansen actually did the work himself. And if he did it himself, I have to say his time would have been far better spent actually studying and trying to get ready to actually talk to me. But, um, to make things even worse after releasing this awful video, he went on other podcasts, sharing this video and talking about me. And then, uh, A little while after that, somebody, either in my steak or who knows about my steak, put out word that I had a new state president, that I had just gotten a new state president. And these same just wonderful people saw it as their golden opportunity, which I think is beyond despicable. My poor brand new steak president during his first week in this completely The overwhelming calling, had to deal with being inundated by these people with emails and messages and sending him this hit piece video along with just a stack of other communications. And so, oh, I just, I do not have words for how appalling I believe that this is. I cannot believe that this is how so many of these, of the people in this. In this space are engaging. And I have to say that when I did, um, go in to meet with my state president, uh, this amazing man, his first week in his new calling, he spent 10 hours. He has a family, he has a job. He has a new huge calling, and he spent 10 hours watching videos of me to try to understand what the truth was. Because there were so many people sending him things that he wanted to know that he was getting the truth that he took, he took the stewardship very seriously. And so when I met with him, I actually didn’t even need to explain to him how badly these people are misrepresenting me because he had actually watched the quotes in context, and he had read things in context. So he was able to tell me how badly they were misrepresenting me and taking me out of context. He told me specifically about an email he had gotten that had 15 quotes of me, and he read through them and said, Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad. And luckily, they included, um, links and time stamps. So that’s, that’s part of what his viewing was. He went and actually watched the videos and saw what I had actually said versus how they took it out of context. One example he shared with me, I’ll share it because I think it’s quite funny. He said that a woman had sent him a message. That said, I how I understood it, it, it, you know, said it. The scriptures say if all men were like unto Maroni, the very gates of hell would shake. And Michelle says that Maro I wouldn’t qualify for a temple recommend and what isn’t worthy to wear garments. And I immediately knew it was about the joke I made in one of my episodes about Angel Vona having bare shoulders, and I laughed about that that’s kind of funny and just like the only, the only man allowed. To have a beard on BYU campus is the statue of Brigham Young. It was a joke, but that’s how they presented it. Like, that’s how ridiculous this has gotten. And so, I just want to tell the people doing this, you are exposing yourselves. Everyone who is doing this, like, people can see through you. My previous state president who was just released near the very end of his term, he received yet another message from one of the more persistent. Regulars contacting him again, claiming to tell him another story of people he claimed I had let out of the church. This time it was a couple. My state president asked me if I would be willing to talk to the couple that he had said left, and I eagerly said that I would love to. I’ve always said, if someone is claiming that I’ve led them out of the church, or if, if people are claiming that I’ve led some of their family out of the church, have them contact me. I will be happy to talk to anyone who is deciding. To leave the church because of the information I have presented. So my state president passed that on and offered to set up a meeting, and because of how that went, the rest of the interaction after that, my state president ended up telling this particular man to not contact him again. And so I am so thankful for leaders who are willing to to do the hard work to be able to accurately discern. And I have to say to everybody engaging this way. You need to stop. It’s just gross. It should not be part of our religion. It should not be part of our community. Let’s have conversations. Bring your objections. Let’s talk about it. I just, again, was told about some of the allegations that people are making about me, the things that they claim. It’s like, anything that anybody ever has said is coming directly from me. It is insane, and I hope that people will stop. Stop harassing my leaders. It is not your place. It’s not your steward. This needs to stop. And so, in case it wasn’t already obvious, multiple people have heard Jacob Hansen express his frustration with me and with his and others’ inability to get my leaders to do their bidding, and his inability to engage directly with me, because people have heard him say that he’s worried that I know the topic better than he does. So he doesn’t want to engage directly. So he has admitted that this is his intentional strategy. Instead of engaging with me directly, he just chose to do this. I, I, again, this is deeply, deeply disappointing. It is difficult to see how people engaging in this way can even claim to be interested in the truth. So I hope that it will stop. I hope that people will stop engaging this way. Jacob, I will say I will still be happy to engage in genuine conversation or debate, if you would, if you prefer that. You are welcome to On my podcast, and we can, I’ve been trying to think of ways to make this a little bit easier and a little bit less overwhelming. So I thought, with, with Jacob or anybody else who’s interested, maybe we could choose one or two documents and limit the conversation to those. And then people can feel fully prepared and not like I’m, you know, not, not like, not be overwhelmed and feel like they’re not up to the challenge. I think that might be an interesting way to do it, and people might, might be interested in seeing that. So that is a still stands. And again, as I have have so often done as I already just did, I will say to Brian Hailes, as always, you have an open invitation to come on and engage face to face any time. I would love to discuss your recent conversations, these episodes I’m responding to, or Mark Tensemeyer’s paper that you are pulling your sources from, or any of the specific sources. Um, you can even bring whatever slideshow you would want, and I will be happy. to engage in that way and in the conversation of your choosing the only caveat, the only conversation I’m not interested in having is a conversation on why you believe I need to be silent or be excommunicated that I’m not interested in talking about. But any other topic? Yes, let’s talk about it. And in any case whether it’s on my podcast or elsewhere, I want to request that Brian and Jacob and others please stop talking about. me and please stop talking about monogamy affirmers and instead just talk to me and or to the rest of us. That would be a far better way to engage. OK, the next thing I want to respond to in these episodes is Brian has now fully jumped into the fray and joined the chorus of people speaking on our behalf, on behalf of our entire community of monogamy affirmers claiming to explain why we exist.
[52:11] Brian Hales: I believe in the 1940s church leaders created a policy that inside the church they weren’t going to talk about polygamy, and Hebrew J. Grant and subsequent presidents are saying we’re just not going to talk about it. We are a monogamous church and this, this policy of not discussing plural marriage. In the church goes on and on and new church leaders aren’t going to change past tradition and so it goes on until the 2000s when the internet shows up and it’s like, whoa, not everything on the internet is false, and that tradition being carried forward, I think kind of set us up for this polygamy denying movement.
[52:48] Michelle: OK, you’ll say it on another.
[52:50] Brian Hales: You know, I think that the church bears some, some responsibility when we go to the 2000s and the internet shows up. Not everything the anti-Mormons are saying about Joseph Smith and polygamy is false. Really, the church up until the 2000s is just, we’re a monogamous church and you wouldn’t even know from the curriculum really that this history was there, but for several reasons, whatever they were, it was avoided. And so we, we find a lot of people saying, hey, you know, Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. I’ve never heard this and I don’t like polygamy. Joseph was a good guy and so they, they reason in their mind that, oh, Joseph couldn’t have been a polygamist. So I think we’ve kind of set the stage for this movement to, to come forward and if maybe if the church curriculum had included references to Joseph Smith’s involvement all along the decades, maybe this not, would not have happened.
[53:42] Michelle: OK, so I want to address this because I do find it to be frustrating. I first, while it is interesting to hear Brian being so critical of church leaders, really kind of blaming Heber J. Grant and all leaders since who he says caused this problem by a policy to cover up polygamy. I, I, that does seem like quite a double standard. He’s allowing for himself to be able to criticize church leaders while saying nobody else better say they ever did anything, got anything wrong, right? But this also completely validates everyone who has ever expressed that they have felt like the church lied to them, right? That’s, that’s like he’s basically saying the church lied about this, the church lied to everyone about polygamy. So this is how people are handling it. That is quite a statement. That Brian is making. And it really does validate that, OK, people that have felt lied to by the church. Yeah, Brian agrees. You have a point. But I, I, I personally find this frustrating for a completely different reason. I will say, yet again, for the 10,000th time, I always knew Joseph Smith was a polygamist. My grandmother grew up in polygamy. My older siblings, they knew and they Remember their polygamist great grandmother, right? I grew up in Utah. I’m the daughter, the granddaughter of polygamists. I read section 132. Most of my friends knew that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. Brian is not only criticizing church leaders, he is doing so for no reason, because he is wrong about why this monogamy affirming movement exists and is growing. Most people who Don’t know who didn’t know about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, learned about it through critical voices before the church essays came out. Most of them, many people who learned about this, either had a broader faith crisis and ended up, you know, deconstructing and leaving the church. The stories of Joseph’s polygamy did that to many, many, many people. Many people’s testimonies began to be unraveled by the polygamy narrative that Brian is now Saying we have to believe or be silent or face church discipline, right? So they either deconstructed like that, or they worked through that and integrated integrated it and continued in the church. Most people that, that’s been most people knew about Joseph Smith’s polygamy or learned about it and went one of those two different directions. So, please, please hear this and understand this. I keep saying it and I’m wanting people to actually listen. The majority of monogamy firmers knew about and fully accepted Joseph’s polygamy well before encountering the evidence that convinced them that they had been wrong about him, right? That is what happened to me. I was certain that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. There was no question to be asked about it. I knew about it because of my entire family history and growing up, and it’s in the scriptures. And then I knew about it more once it started to be talking, talked about because the historians all said it’s a matter. A matter of absolute fact, right? I, I knew Joseph Smith was a polygamist. I had to be convinced by the evidence that I had been wrong. And so that is what most of the monogamy affirmers will tell you if you actually ask them. We have to stop spreading these, these falsehoods, right? We have to stop telling people’s stories for them and doing it in a false way. If we have learned anything as a society by this point, we should have learned. To stop speaking for and about people when we could easily just speak to people. So I do, I want to put this out as a notice to all platforms, reporters, interviewers, anybody else. If you want to understand the monogamy a firmers, just talk to us. Stop asking other people, particularly those who dislike us so much they are trying to get us excommunicated. Stop asking other people to come on and explain. As to you. I have spoken to this before, but John Dehlin wrote an entire paper talking about the, the disservice we do to people who leave the church when we when we talk about when we explain their decision to leave in false ways, right? When people say, oh, they just wanted to sin, or, oh, they never had a testimony to begin with, or, oh, they just got offended and they, you’re right, we, we make up stories about people who leave the church and that that destroys. Our ability to understand them, to talk to them, to understand that they might have valuable information for us. And John Dehlin was exactly right on that, that we have to stop doing that. I do know many people who have left the church, and that those are almost never the reasons that that I have seen. There are so many people like Jim Bennett said, most people, when they encounter difficult information, like in the CES letter, their first question is, how can I stay? They want to stay, and they’re looking. For ways to stay, right? People that many, many of the people who left the church because of these issues, that was their reason. And the same is exactly true for monogamy affirmers. When people keep going around saying, oh, they just couldn’t handle their cognitive dissonance. Oh, it’s just motivated reasoning. They couldn’t handle learning about Joseph Smith’s polygamy. You are doing exactly to us what people were doing to people who leave the church. You need to stop it. It’s not actually. It ruins your ability to talk to us, to understand us, to learn that maybe we have valuable information to provide for you, right? So, Brian, just like all others who have been making this claim, is wrong. That is not our story. That is not how we came to this topic or came to this perspective. We did not just desperately need to have Joseph Smith on a pedestal. I know that for me, I have my views about Joseph Smith and my feelings about a lot of the stuff that he did. I. Was willing to, you know, to just kind of go on and, and think about it in different ways. But it has been researching this topic as I have done and allowing myself to start believing what I believed. It wasn’t hard for me to, you know, I, I, as I said, I came to it through Emma, and it, and it wasn’t hard for me to love Emma. But once I started understanding more about Emma, I started to see that the stories about Joseph had to be false because they were thoughts about Emma. And as I started, Studying Joseph through that lens and reading what he said and looking more at his life without this sort of tainted view of him that I had been given through this polygamy narrative, right? As I started to actually study him, I did grow to love and respect him more than I ever had before. Well, I, I, I can say more than I ever had since I had started to learn more about these topics, right? As, as a girl, I loved Joseph Smith. I didn’t, I didn’t know anything that was troubling. And so that has been my story and my trajectory. It’s not that I needed to have Joseph Smith on a pedestal, and so I have come to these conclusions. It has been very slowly coming to these conclusions that has given me an immense amount of respect and love and admiration for both Joseph. And Emma Smith and Hyrum Smith and their family. And so I want to ask people to please stop making this claim and please stop having people on your platform to make this claim, to speak for us. Again, we are here. We can tell our own stories. I am always willing to answer questions, and I’m eager to have conversations. I’m willing to write articles, and I’m always willing to go on any platform, so you don’t need to invite other people on to. Ask them about me or about the community that I am part of. And I’m going to make a rather bold stand here. I’m going to say that people who continue to do this, who continue to invite people on to talk about us, and people who continue to talk about us in this way while disregarding what we are clearly saying about ourselves, if you continue to to do this, you are not being an honest actor in this regard. People who continue to do this are intentionally misrepresented. Consenting us in order to avoid dealing with our increasingly strong arguments and evidence, and I, I’m just calling that out and saying that is how it appears to me and I’m requesting that people please stop doing that. OK, so now the final topic that I will cover in this episode, um, I’m going to talk about experts and transparencyists. So first I will play the clip where Brian yet again claims that I ignore the experts.
[1:02:10] Brian Hales: The third, uh, characteristic or methodology of the denialist approach is how they deal with experts. And the, according to the book, they, they rely on, on less qualified, if you will, experts, and they criticize or ignore or mock the real experts.
[1:02:33] Michelle: So, I want to point out the book actually says nothing about mocking experts. Brian just added that so that he can make the point that he wants to make and claim he’s basing it on the book.
[1:02:44] Brian Hales: And, uh, you know, I can show you there, this book is, is written by uh Larry Foster, who, who looked at it. He’s not a Latter-day Saint, he’s a well-respected historian who’s president of the Mormon History Association, president of the John Whitmer Historical Association. Um, he’s ignored in their literature. I haven’t seen anybody who cares about talking about him.
[1:03:05] Michelle: OK, I’ll point out I have actually cited Larry Foster multiple times, so I haven’t found a way to reach out to him, to have him on the podcast if he’d be willing to come, I would be thrilled. But no, he is not ignored. Brian doesn’t know about our work. He doesn’t follow it. He doesn’t watch it. He doesn’t know who. We include and who we don’t.
[1:03:27] Brian Hales: Todd Compton’s book and Sacred Loneliness, Todd’s a friend of mine. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but he’s a very fine historian. Again, these are experts that really receive no no attention from this group, and yet these are people that, that they ought to, I think, be paying attention to.
[1:03:45] Michelle: So I will also again point out. I constantly refer to Todd’s book. I rely on it heavily. I use it very often, and I was very happy to have Todd on my channel. This is the thumbnail from the episode that I did with Todd, right? He, he is welcome to come on my book any time. I just used that last slide that I showed in my last episode that I did on Brigham Cypher when I referred to Todd’s work. And then also, I will point out, I have had Don Bradley. On my channel multiple times. I, I would love Don to keep coming on. I, I consider Don a really good friend, and I am still hoping that at some point he will come on and actually discuss the documents. That’s what I’m really wanting to get to. I include incite and respond to Brian Hales’s perhaps more than anybody else. You may have noticed. This entire set of episodes I’m doing are in response to his recent podcast interviews. I also, since he seems to Have forgotten have had Brian on my channel. This is the thumbnail from that interview. I asked him to come on to discuss both script scriptures and documents and invited him to make his case to my audience for why polygamy was of God and that it was instituted of Joseph Smith, and he agreed to that, but instead, he showed up with a slideshow that he insisted on playing before we had a discussion, which focused on only one point, that people who vocally dis Agreed with his narrative need to face church discipline. So, you know, I did give Brian a full chance. Again, how many times have I invited him to come on? And I cite him constantly. It is insane to claim that I ignore experts. I have had many, many historians on, practically, whichever ones, which, well, come on. Um, Patrick Mason, John Hayacek, Barbara Jones Brown. I’ve had Mark Tensmeyer on, who’s who Brian Haless is currently using. And um you know he’s saying that Mark has the best work in this field. I had Mark on my podcast and of course I’ve had Cheryl Bruno on multiple times. That is just to name a few and I am reaching out to more and more historians all the time. I have also cited and had experts on from a variety of other fields. I have had multiple mental health experts and counselors on. I have had experts in biology, law, even statistics. I read, talk to, and cite. Historians and experts constantly. Bushman, Bruguera, Ehad, Marquardt, Parks, um, George D. Smith, Linda Kano, and Valen Avery, and so many more, including RLDS historians like the Prices and many others who are usually ignored. And as a reminder, again, I was literally the first person to reach out to experts regarding Brigham Young’s Masonic cipher. I engage with experts and historians all the time. That was literally An insane accusation to make. But I will say that while I massively appreciate collaborating with experts, what I find truly invaluable is the ability to engage with the sources myself. I spend hours and hours looking at documents, both online and at archives. Brian has a skewed view, claiming he can define who, quote, the experts are, but he completely ignores the fact that I have put out nearly 200 videos, including my short. And my non-numbered episodes, many of them, my full length episodes are at least as involved as writing an academic paper plus the additional massive amount of work of creating the slides and filming and recording and all of that, the editing, all of that that needs to be done. I have spent well over full time on this for going on 3 years now after already having studied it for well over a decade, and I am far from the only one. We have Whitney. Horning, who was the first one in the Mormon community that I’m aware of, to write a book on Joseph Smith’s polygamy. She just took it upon herself, dove in, and she had already spent decades in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. She was very familiar with so much information before she even got in and wrote her book. Whitney Horning is an expert who should not be ignored and dismissed. Then we have Rob Fotheringham. His videos have brought this information to so many people. He was working. At the church, right, he had access to so many documents. He has done incredible work. We also have Jeremy Hoop who’s been working on this for a long time and also is so expert on the documents and has so much information and has done incredible work. And in addition to those people, we have so many others Mark Curtis, Peter Brown, Gwendolyn White, so many others that I’m not even naming who, who are delving in and becoming experts more and more all the time. And so I wanna ask, when we talk about if we disregard the experts, how does Brian treat me and the rest of us? Does he recognize any of us, any of our expertise? Does he treat us with respect or engage with our work? I will ask, like, he, he really is relying on Mark Tensmeyer. Why is Mark Tensmeyer more respected than I am, or any of us, right? Just because Brian agrees with him, that’s the only reason. So, no, he does not respect. as experts, he instead threatens us and works to get us excommunicated. And so that’s, that’s something that I have a big problem with. So let me play him making the same point in another interview.
[1:09:11] Brian Hales: Rely on fake experts. There are people up there who will say that they’re experts, but when you look at their credentials, they really haven’t performed the studies, the scholarship, the research to get into the primary documents or primary science to understand it.
[1:09:25] Michelle: OK, I just have to give a quick reminder. Brian Hales did not do his own research. He hired Don Bradley to do his research for him. That’s something we need to be aware of and keep in mind. I, I, I would never bother to say that until he is saying stuff like this, right? And in his most recent tour of podcasts and interviews, he’s relying again on Mark Tensmeyer’s work, yet still promoting himself as the go to expert on this. So I don’t know that Brian has spent the same. Amount of hours digging into the documents that so many of us on our side have, Whitney and me and Jeremy and the rest of the monogamy affirmers, we do massive amounts of research with primary documents. Our entire paradigm is built around the primary documents that in our view, the experts have tended to ignore. The next part of this clip is the specific reason that I needed to respond to this. So I’ll go ahead and, and play what he goes on to say.
[1:10:25] Brian Hales: And then the real experts they make fun of, and, and recently there was a video, eight-minute video that was entitled World’s Worst Transparency is Briany Hailes. It was to mock me.
[1:10:37] Michelle: OK, I have to make an important clarification here. It was not at all to mock Brian. It was trying to expose something that I find very concerning. We’ll go on to talk about it more. And
[1:10:49] Brian Hales: it was actually really clever, you know, it’s been taken down probably because negative feedback, but
[1:10:55] Michelle: No, that is Brian saying that it was not taken down because of negative feedback as opposed to the interview that Brian Hailes did with Stephen Pinnaker, which was taken down because of the extreme amount of negative feedback Brian received spread over thousands of scathing comments.
[1:11:12] Brian Hales: But, uh, it was very clever, you know, on, on this, but, but trying to destroy the messenger of the contradictory message is, is an ad hominem approach that, that is employed sometimes.
[1:11:24] Michelle: Again, it was not at all intended to destroy the messenger or as an ad hominem attack. It was done for one and only one reason to try to draw attention to what seems to be a very big problem in the current polygamy discussion documents and sources being hidden and misrepresented by the person telling us that we must either stay silent or agree with him if we don’t want to face excommunication.
[1:11:51] Brian Hales: And maybe you would consider me an expert, and I, I sent you a link to a, uh, a video that was made about me, and I, it’s quite entertaining, and that’s why I thought maybe we, you, you, you’d want to play it. It’s only 50 seconds long. We’ll just play the intro and then I’ll explain the context, but, but it just kind of shows you there that, uh, I, I, I don’t think that I’m being respected, at least, uh, I don’t know, we let them decide.
[1:12:17] Michelle: Brian then goes on to play only the opening segment of my world’s worst transparencies video, and then just enough of the video to show that it is me, but he doesn’t play enough of it to show what it is about or to let people understand the content and the context. So I want to just take a, take a minute and explain my thought process for doing that transparencyist video. I wanted to come up with a lighthearted fun, attention grabbing intro in order to I might and draw attention to an egregious misrepresentation of documents. And when I did the video, I will say I did run it past many people, including several historians who said they thought it was fun and well done and should be just fine since I brought all the receipts. It wasn’t mocking Brian at all. That it wasn’t mocking Brian. It was having fun with the idea of someone calling themselves a transparencyist while being exactly the opposite. But let me explain some more of the background of this. After Brian’s behind the scenes efforts to get me removed from JWHA, some historians who were assisting me suggested that if I removed the video he was using to have people complain about me, that might help. So I took it down in the hope that it would make it easier. For JWHA to add me back to the program. It was very frustrating that despite taking it down, and although they wanted to add me back, they still didn’t find a spot. It was again, hard to decide what to do at that point because I had taken it down, so they would hopefully add me back. They didn’t add me back. So what should I do? Huh. Um, since, however, I had been wanting to avoid rant lit, although I didn’t know that term. I, I had been wanting to not, um, alienate people and, and, you know, worried that maybe that would, I made the difficult decision to leave it down. I felt really bad because of how much work my friend had put into it, how much he had contributed to it, and I think that he’s just brilliant at what he does. But I decided I would try to present the information another way as soon as I had a chance. So I’m taking that chance now. So one might think, however, that if Brian truly found this, um, video so offensive, he might appreciate it being taken down. But apparently the opposite is true, because despite me taking it down, Brian himself made sure to bring it up in every single one of these interviews that he has done recently. And he also made sure to publish. It again, but without accurately representing it. So I have struggled again, to know what to do. Leaving the video down doesn’t give people the opportunity to see what it is really about, and it allows him to misrepresent it. But posting it again feels like potentially a step backward when I’m trying to engage in a different way. So for now, uh, I’ve settled, I, I, I don’t know what the right decision is, but I’ve settled on the middle ground of making it partially available, so people who’ve already seen it. We’ll be able to see it again if they want to uh if somebody has a better suggestion I am all ears because I want to know the best way to engage in all of this so this is the information that I felt was so important that I wanted to come up with a way to bring it out to the public so I’m going to go ahead and present it here and hope that people will be able to hear it and pay attention to it as historians it is extremely important that we accurately portray and represent documents. And sources so that we are in fact being transparent in the work that we are doing. That’s why I think it is important to pay attention to what appears to me to be a rather egregious case of misrepresenting documents. It is about Emma Smith’s final testimony recorded by her son Joseph Smith the 3rd. I will play video clips to outline the progression of Brian Hale’s statements that I find problematic and that I am responding to. Here is the first one.
[1:16:20] David Snell: Had mentioned That Emma Smith never actually denied that her husband Joseph had practiced polygamy, and I feel like that is a big sticking point for for uh polygamy deniers because we have this interview, this, this record of Joseph Smith the 3rd, Emma’s son interviewing his mother Emma and asking her straight out, you know. Did, did Joseph have multiple wives, and she says, no, that’s of course a summary, uh a paraphrasing of the interview, but uh I’m curious what uh what you’ve uncovered regarding Emma.
[1:16:58] Michelle: So first, we have it right there. Brian claimed that Emma never denied Joseph’s polygamy, which is easily shown not to be the case. Later, he admitted that Emma had denied polygamy, but he said he didn’t know how to explain it.
[1:17:15] Brian Hales: And to be quite honest with you, there are at least 2 other denials that clearly were not senility, we’re clearly not specially phrased questions where Emma just comes right out and they’re fairly well documented, said Joseph did not practice polygamy. And how do I deal with that? I don’t know. I do not have a good explanation.
[1:17:37] Michelle: However, in a video he made after that, he seems to have come up with an explanation.
[1:17:44] Brian Hales: Emma is quoted in 1879. In her last testimony, but the words are actually from Joseph Smith the Third, who is known to have highly embellished editorial accounts, and he waited until after her death to publish the interview. There are no notes available from which he reconstructed Emma’s words after her death.
[1:18:09] Michelle: So his explanation is that Joseph Smith the 3rd dishonestly put words in his mother’s mouth after her death. I find that to be an extraordinary accusation, especially regarding the wife and son of our founding prophet. And please note, in this video, he claimed very clearly that there are no notes available for Joseph Smith the 3rd’s interview with Emma. But in yet another interview, he went on to expand his claim about Joseph Smith the 3rd and his mother, Emma.
[1:18:42] Brian Hales: But
[1:18:42] Michelle: what did Emma ever say on the subject afterwards?
[1:18:45] Brian Hales: We don’t have a lot of material from her.
[1:18:50] Michelle: That is actually not accurate. The truth is we have at least 7 official published interviews from Emma herself, where she consistently denied in no uncertain terms that Joseph ever taught or practiced polygamy, plus many other statements from people who knew her and from other family members.
[1:19:10] Brian Hales: We have a couple of denials that are recorded. One of them comes through Joseph Smith the 3rd, who waited until she was dead and to publish it. And interestingly, if you go to the notes that he wrote during his interview on that occasion, it doesn’t have anything in there on polygamy. It talks. about the Book of Mormon and her statement on the Book of Mormon being beyond Joseph’s ability in 1829. But when you get to all the polygamy stuff, there’s no notes there. He’s reconstructing this from notes that we don’t have or from his own memory, and I’m just not sure he’s representing her words very accurately there.
[1:19:47] Michelle: Please notice that now in this video, Brian is saying that there are notes, but that they don’t say anything about polygamy. That is already a very different claim from his previous video. But the charge that Joseph Smith III was dishonest and made up this portion of Emma’s final deathbed testimony is the same.
[1:20:09] Brian Hales: Um, regarding her so-called denials, I.
[1:20:13] Michelle: Please note that now they are so-called denials, even though in the clip I played earlier, he admitted that we have several denials from Emma.
[1:20:21] Brian Hales: I don’t believe Joseph Smith the 3rd. Um, that whole interview, uh, was, was written down at published well after Emma had died.
[1:20:31] Michelle: Let me point out the reason it was published after Emma’s death. It was because she was nearly on her deathbed when she gave the interview, as Joseph Smith III very clearly explained in his article where he published her testimony. You don’t even need to go to the original notes to understand this, Joseph wrote, in view of the death of Sister Emma, having occurred so soon after she made them, thus giving them the character of a last testimony.
[1:21:00] Brian Hales: Emma wasn’t there to respond to it, and I’ve seen his Joseph Smith the 3rd’s notes for those those interviews, and we think there were more than one.
[1:21:11] Michelle: Please note that he explicitly claims in this one that he has seen Joseph Smith the 3rd’s notes.
[1:21:17] Brian Hales: And there’s nothing written down, there’s, there’s a number of things written down about Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon, which I really like what she said, or allegedly said about the Book of Mormon. There’s no notes about, at least that we have currently, and there may have been and they’ve been lost, but nothing about what she actually said regarding polygamy.
[1:21:37] Michelle: Again, now he very clearly says that he has seen the notes and he confidently explained that the notes do include the parts of the interview that he liked, but that they don’t say anything about polygamy, the parts that he didn’t like. I think it is interesting that he also. Seems to be sort of hedging claiming for some reason that there might be either a second set of notes or a 2nd interview when there is no evidence for that, but I need to really draw attention to this part of what Brian said, so let me play just this part again.
[1:22:09] Brian Hales: And I’ve seen his Joseph Smith the 3rd’s notes for those those interviews, and there’s nothing written down, nothing about what she actually said regarding polygamy.
[1:22:22] Michelle: So now that we have clearly heard Brian’s fully developed story about Emma’s denials, based on the notes, he first claimed didn’t exist, but then repeatedly claimed he had seen, let’s look at the notes for ourselves. There are 9 pages of notes. Here you can see them, and I’ll just point out that it was common practice to cross out notes as they were being prepared for publication. So that’s what the cross crossouts mean. On the first two pages, you can see that Joseph Smith the 3rd wrote his list of questions in pen. With two additional questions plus the numbers for each question being added in pencil. I’ll zoom in so you can see that a little bit more easily. It appears to be the same pencil that he used to write Emma’s answers. So it appears that he numbered these questions and added these last two either just before the interview or during the interview. I’m not quite sure, but what we can say for sure is that the questions coincide perfectly with What he published in the newspaper. Let me show this question right here that’s highlighted, and I will show it next to the newspaper publication so you can read both and see that it is a perfect match. What about the revelation on polygamy? Did Joseph Smith have anything like it? What of spiritual wifery? Then if we go to pages 3 and 4 of the answers, he’d recorded in his original notes. We can easily read exactly what he wrote during the interview, which again, perfectly matches what he wrote what he printed in the newspaper quote, There was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. No such thing as polygamy or spiritual wifery was taught publicly or privately before my husband’s death that I have now or ever have had any knowledge of. Go on to the next page. Joseph assured her that there was no such doctrine and never should be with his knowledge or consent. I know that he had no other wife or wives than myself in any sense, either spiritual or otherwise. It really could not be more plain that Joseph Smith the Third’s original notes from his interview with his mother perfectly match what he published in the newspaper after her death. It is also abundantly clear that there is not a second set of notes. These are original notes of the interview which were used directly for the newspaper publication, even being crossed off as they were prepared for publication. It is very hard to find any way to explain this other. Than willful misrepresentation of documents. And that is why I made the video. And this is what Brian omitted when he only played the opening of the video. But he then went on to give his explanation of what the video was about. Again, not until after shaming me for taking it down.
[1:25:17] Brian Hales: I, I think she’s taken this down. I think she received some negative feedback. Um, and in her defense, uh, what it’s about is that, that in an interview on Saints Unscripted, I misremembered a data point. I, I, I claimed that there were no notes for Joseph Smith the Third’s final interview of Emma talking about the polygamy topic.
[1:25:41] Michelle: A couple of corrections are needed. Brian didn’t claim there were no notes on Saints Unscripted. He claimed that on a much earlier video. But then after that, he went on both Saints Unscripted and Doctrine and Covenant Central and very clearly said that he had seen the notes and knew for himself that they didn’t say anything about polygamy. Again, I see no good explanation for this. I don’t see how it could be a simple case of misremembering.
[1:26:10] Brian Hales: And apparently there are, and Michelle found them, good for her, cause I had collabor uh I had, I talked to the archivist at Community of Christ to try to find them. They couldn’t find them for me. I’m still wondering if the uh actual first draft of, of the notes from the interview was really Typeset ready. I, I worry that there’s still another draft in there we don’t have, but, um, but there are indications that this could be it. And so I was wrong. I made a mistake, and that’s why I am the world’s worst transparency.
[1:26:43] Michelle: Again, it is extremely clear that this is the original and only draft, that there’s not another set of notes somewhere. That’s a very strange claim. I will respond to some of the other things that Brian said there, but as to his claim that he couldn’t find the notes, I think it will useful to look at a document on Brian’s own website. You can see that this is volume one of early Mormon documents edited by Dan Vogel, and it only includes in this excerpt chapter 3, which is Emma Smith by an interview with Joseph Smith the 3rd. And you can see the two first, the first two things are what we are going to look at. First, Joseph Smith the 3rd’s notes of interview with Emma Smith Bitman, and you can see right here it lists that they are located at the RLDS Church Library archive in Independence, Missouri. So it’s going to give us a full transcript of the actual notes along with telling us the location. And right after that, it has the transcript of the last testimony of. Emma Smith published in the Saints Herald. That’s what we were comparing just now, the original notes with the publication. If we scroll down into the editorial notes, you can see that it quotes from Mormon E Enigma. What the writers in Mormon Enigma on page 301 said about Joseph Smith III’s original notes, which they had seen. It says, quote, The original notes of the interview are still extant. They include two pages of questions written. In ink in Joseph’s hand, Joseph Smith III’s hand, and were most likely the questions prepared earlier at the Herald office. Two questions at the end are in pencil suggested they were added during the interview. The notes also include 8 pages of answers written again in Joseph’s hand, but in pencil. They show signs of being written in haste as Emma spoke and have additions between the lines, some words abbreviated and others crossed out. Basically, the version, which was eventually printed after Emma’s death is true to the handwritten notes. So this is actually quite amazing. On Brian Hill’s own website, he has a document that tells us that the notes are still extant, where they can be found, and gives us a full transcript of both the notes and the newspaper articles, so anyone could very Easily compare them and it also quotes the writers of Mormon Enigma talking about the notes, which they had seen and which they also tell us are located in the RLDS archive. So, again, I find this to be very challenging. I, um, I understand that people can miss sources, but this is quite an extreme case. I want to read a quick excerpt from one of the messages that Brian sent to me last year. He wrote, It You have not grasped the bigger picture, meaning I don’t agree with him on Joseph Smith’s polygamy. And then he goes on to say, which could come from studying my three volumes and all the transcripts from participants that I reproduced therein, and consulting the 3,000+ documents at Mormon polygamy.org, where this document just was. Anyone putting themselves up as an expert on Joseph Smith and plural marriage must pay the price first in years of study. So maybe people can see why I find this to be somewhat frustrating. I am paying the price in years of study, and I am being honest with the documents. That’s something that’s really difficult to explain. I want to finally respond to the claim that the extremely competent. Community of Christ archivists couldn’t find the notes. When I emailed to ask her about them, she responded in one day. There was absolutely no mystery about what these notes said, where they were, or how to access them for anybody willing to do a little bit of research. Even just on Brian Hale’s own website. So the reason this needs to be dealt with is that this was not just a benign little unimportant mistake that can be easily explained away by misremembering. This claim was solving a big problem what to do about Emma’s denials. The first attempt was to deny that they exist, but then to acknowledge, but continually minimize them, and then add the accusation that Joseph III was unreliable. Liable or dishonest, and then to try to create evidence for that, by claiming this about his notes. This was said and done in an effort to further erase Emma, the elect lady, the chosen wife of Joseph Smith, and to defame their son named for his father. It was and, again, another misrepresentation of documents in order to push a narrative. I have to wonder how Joseph Smith would feel. About all of this. We ignore all of his words or write them off saying he was being duplicitous or trying not to lie. We say terrible things about his widow for 160 years. And now we claim that his orphan son and namesake was not only a liar, but lied about his mother’s deathbed testimony, but only the part we don’t like. That’s the only part he lied about. The rest he told the truth about. And in order to say all of these things, we say things about documents that are Simply not true. I do find this to be deeply offensive. I hope that the historians will oppose this kind of behavior. I hope that integrity about sources matter to historians. Let’s go back to Brian’s own words.
[1:32:32] Brian Hales: Really, we need to be transparent, and that’s, that’s a word that I’ve been made fun of because I call myself a transparencyist, but when it comes to the data on Joseph Smith and plural marriage, let’s just be transparent. Let’s get it all out there.
[1:32:45] Michelle: I think it is valid for anyone to take issue with someone calling themselves a transparencyist while being the opposite of transparent, literally omitting huge portions of data from his narrative, and then claiming we must all agree with him or be silent and threatening and Trying to silence and excommunicate people who publicly disagree and saying things about documents that are simply not true in order to disregard what the documents actually do say and yet again claiming people were lying and often people that many of us care deeply about. I do still find myself wondering why anybody would choose to label themselves a transparencyist rather than just being transparent, which every good historian is already obligated to be. My sincere recommendation for anyone interested in my recommendations would be to not label yourself a transparentist but just be transparent. Since the appeal to experts is so prevalent in these podcasts I’m responding to, I think it might be worthwhile to discuss the role of experts in society. I, I just have been thinking about this. Let me ask this question, is the purpose of experts to serve and elevate society or to control and keep others down? Is our responsibility regarding experts to want and allow them to do the thinking for them for us or to want and allow them to come up with theories and explain them to us, showing us the evidence so that we can understand them for ourselves and how much sway should experts have especially in the information. When gatekeeping has largely fallen away and information has become democratized, we also have the question of how do we define experts who gets to decide who the experts are right? Of course there are different domains. I recently listened to a physics podcast that was explaining among other things, let me see what it was called. Neutrinoless double beta decay. That is some theory that requires neutrinos to be their own antiparticle and apparently it could explain the existence of matter in the universe. So that was very complicated and I wrote down a quote from them. They said, You’re going to have to take our word for it because the science and math are intense. Yes, I agree. I understand that. Unless I have a burning desire to understand it for myself and thus learn the requisite. That science and math, I’m content to take their word for it. I don’t feel the need, nor the ability to form an opinion on that topic. I think we can all agree that there are areas where expertise is crucial. Surgery comes to mind. Medicine, right? However, even in the medical field, things have changed dramatically over the past few decades. Good doctors, the experts now have learned not to just make our decisions for us. They present us with the information. And we need to know the possible outcomes, the probabilities, the risks and benefits, the potential side effects, etc. and they allow us to make our own decisions. So even when expertise is absolutely essential, like for a heart surgery or for an engineer or architect or a lawyer, the recognition is that experts are there to inform us and serve us, not to control us. And the domains of history and religion are very different from theoretical physics or Surgery. It is essential to study and understand the documents, which I do, and it is essential to employ good methodology and sound critical thinking, which I also do, but there is all sorts of room for discussion and interpretation. When people claim to be experts, but use that status to con to claim that nobody should critique them, or that they should be able to ignore important information and worse, actually misrepresent information. And still be respected as the expert and listened to, that is a problem. Any time an expert claims to do the thinking for us and basically tells us to get in line or shut up and sit down, we have a big problem. That is not an expert, that is a tyrant, and their reliance on force exposes the fact that they don’t feel confident enough in their expertise. and their ability to defend their conclusions, so they have to force them upon us. This is an extremely important topic in our current reality in many areas we we can apply this in so many places are the mainstream media reporters and the politicians, the experts, and all the, you know, all those just talking heads out there on the internet, they just need. To be censored, right? There are efforts in place to do that is how do we define expertise there and who we should listen to. We could also ask whether the people in appointed government positions like, say, Anthony Fauci and other medical politicians, we can ask, are those the experts and all the yahoo’s writing and signing things like the Great Barrington Declaration. In addition to so many other leaders in various fields of medicine and science, they just need to be fired and silenced because they’re not getting in line with what the political experts are saying, who are the real experts, right? In fairness, we should extend this to the religious realm during much of the 20th century, saying out loud that Joseph Smith was a polygamist with over 30 wives and that he married young teenage girls and already married women and often pregnant women, that could very possibly get you excommunicated. But now, according to Brian, saying out loud that Joseph Smith didn’t do those things but was entirely faithful to his one covenant wife who he loved. Should be grounds for excommunication. Also, according to Brian saying that God didn’t command these things that God didn’t command polygamy and that polygamy isn’t of God is also grounds for excommunication. I do not think that saying church leaders do the thinking for us and we just need to get in line is a good approach. And the truth is seeking to enforce that with threats of excommunication is unrighteous dominion. I think we can and should absolutely sustain our leaders, which I do. I recognize and sustain their positions and authority in the church, but sustaining them should not mean we need to turn off our brains and numb our spirits in order to force ourselves to believe things that we know and feel are not true. God does not want us to become completely reliant on others. That is not what the scriptures teach, and it actually contradicts many statements from church leaders. I Still need to do my episode on that topic to show what the church leaders have said about that. People have talked about the crisis of trust, explaining that people no longer trust experts, and there is a lot of truth to that. People in all areas of society are tired of feeling lied to. So what is the solution? I’ve heard some people propose that we just need to start trusting and believing the experts again. I don’t think that is the solution. It is un. Wise to simply believe someone who has already given you ample reason to not view them as trustworthy. I’ll, I’ll just, without going political, I’m trying to sort of get both sides, but people who strongly oppose Trump and who consider him to be the biggest liar ever, could we just tell them, tell them that they need to start believing him because he’s in a position of authority? And then for people, maybe with a different perspective, could people who strongly oppose Anthony Fauci just be told To start believing him, right? Because he’s in that position, there could be so many more examples. The solution is not for people to just be told to start trusting the experts and authorities. The solution is for people who have not told the truth to no longer be held up as experts and authorities, unless they make serious recompense and show themselves to be honest actors. We do have a situation where many people have felt like the church has lied to them for a long time. Brian just validated that in one of the clips I played. I think that we need to think very seriously about the best solution to this and the best way to remedy it. And what we can do going forward to try to increase trust. I think the best way to do that is to make sure that very honest voices are being set up as experts and being heard. I hope to be able to see that happen more and more. So I again hope that this episode was worthwhile. I’m excited to get more into the sources that I’m looking at and keep going on with this work, and I’m very hopeful that people engaged. In this work can do so without fear, without threats, without accusations, and without their leaders being harassed. That is what I am trying to accomplish with this episode and hoping that we can all work toward accomplishing. If people want to oppose me, please do. Let’s have the conversations. Let’s dig into the evidence. Let’s stop trying to silence and punish and excommunicate people. All right, thank you so much. I will see you next time.
