73: Disappearing Evidence and ChatGPT | 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

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What does ChatGPT reveal about the polygamy narrative? I won’t give it away, but it is AMAZING! Stay tuned until the end (or skip forward to the end) so you don’t miss it.
In the meantime, what is happening to the evidence that helped solidify the polygamy narrative and the assumption that Joseph MUST have been the author of polygamy? These stories are amazing! It is definitely time to reassess our certainty.

Links

ChatGPT
William Clayton’s Journal (worth reading!)
Orange Wight Autobiography
Helen Mar Kimball story of Flora (pgs 407-408)
Brian Hales version of Flora
Josephine Lyons statement
Ugo Perego article
Sylvia Lyon Brian Hales page
Eliza and the Prophet’s Gold Watch by Jenny Reeder
Eliza and Brigham’s relationship
For info on ChatGPT, hallucinations and bias search any of those terms and you will find dozens of articles.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. I have failed to say in the last several episodes which what which I always say, please engage with this podcast from the beginning. The really important topics are in those first us and we really work hard to establish a framework to help everyone understand where we are now and the discussions we’re having. Of course, I think all of the topics are worthwhile and feel free to jump around. But if you really want to understand what I’m about and the purpose of this podcast, you really need to get caught up from the beginning. So also I want to again, thank those who donate to support this podcast. It means so much to me and I appreciate it. And I would like to invite and request anybody else who feels inclined to please also contribute. And how, how about that would be great. This is episode 73 which is going to take a surprising look at some of the evidence of polygamy. Um some of the vanishing evidence of polygamy and how that has or has not affected the standard narrative and our certainty in that standard narrative. And I think Chat GP T has some very interesting things to teach us along these lines. So I’m so glad you’re joining us. Thank you for being here as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. So this has been another interesting week. This actually was not the planned topic for this week’s episode. Um I had my interview scheduled with Jeremy Hoop to come and do his presentation on William Clayton and the other things he’s been studying and that was what we were supposed to release this week. But I have to tell you, he has been researching so much and learning so much. And as as happens in these topics, the more you learn, the more you realize there is you have to look for. So he called and postponed that you, which on the one hand, I’m so disappointed because I really want that information. But on the other hand, I’m so excited, I would, we, we’re probably going to extend it into more than one episode just on William Clayton because there is so much very important information there that all of us need to understand. So, so Jeremy is not here today, but he will be here soon. And I also have talked about the what, what I’ve been working on is he’s been doing that. I’ve been working on my um research on the origin of the temple. And I’m doing that episode that I’m very excited about. But sadly, when he, um, when he canceled, I didn’t have time to get the temple stuff ready for this week. It was supposed to be the week after. So instead I thought I would just share this kind of lighthearted topic that I’d been studying. I’ve been experimenting with Chat G BT and I’ll get into that and I learned some things I was like, oh, I’ll talk about that. But of course, as I started to prepare and research that that grew and grew and grew, so it’s turned into actually a pretty legit episode that I hope you appreciate. It’s funny that I wasn’t even going to talk about most of these things necessarily. I, you know, I mean, I’m sure they’d come up at some point, but it’s become so par for the course that I didn’t even think of doing an episode on these things as I’ve been learning them and studying them. So we are going to dig into this now. I am. So for those who don’t understand what Chat G BT is, I’ll explain it a little bit more later on. I’ve, I’ve kind of prepared to be able to, my mom who’s almost 90 listens to this podcast. She’s wonderful. And, um, and I’m like, how can I explain it in a way that she can understand? So, for now, I’ll just say it’s a, I artificial intelligence. Right. And I was, I’ve been so swamped with research. I was telling some of my friends, I need other researchers. We need three of ourselves so I can be steady. Everything. I’m really jealous of other people in this field who are able to hire researchers and I’m not able to do that. So I just am always swamped with all of the things I need to study and learn and find and sources I need to get. And, um, anyway, so I have been listening a lot to talk about A I, right. It’s on podcasts that I listen to and it’s all around. And, um, someone said, what was the quote that I really, like they said, it’s not a, I that’s going to take your job. It’s somebody using A I that’s going to take your job. And I was like, ok, ok, that’s true. And, and also as I’ve been struggling, wishing I had research assistant, um, I thought, ok, could chat G BT be my solution? Could I use chat GP T to multiply myself and to give me a artificial in artificially intelligent research assistant. So that’s what I started experimenting with. I, um, um, you know, embarrassingly, non techie. So I was like, ok, if I can do this, anybody can. So I went for it and gave it a try. And what I learned has been really, really interesting. So I’m going to be, that was what I was going to talk about is what is my experience with Chat G BT. And what I learned I discovered, but I decided instead I’m gonna set, step back a few steps and set the stage for some of the reasons I started

[00:04:55] using Chat G BT and some of the information that I think is useful and interesting. So, um I’m always, I always have, I mean, it’s embarrassing. At this point. I have like hundreds of tabs open on my computer with different screens and different files. It just gets out of control. But I was looking up something, I, I was, you know, you’ve studied one thing, at least for another, at least for another. And there are 50 things you’re studying at a time. But I was in William Clayton’s journals, not, not the new ones, just um the journals you can access online. I will put a link below of the archive of um a compilation of William Clayton’s journals and other other writings that I, that I like to. Anyway, I was reading in his journals and my eyes were drawn to the entry about Flora Ann Woodworth. And so Flora and Woodworth is a rather important wife. She’s included in every list of wives that I’ve ever seen. She was 16 at the time of the mar of her marriage to Joseph Smith. Understand I’m saying her hypothetical marriage. I don’t believe Joseph was a polygamist anymore after my research, which some of which I’m going to share with you, but I’m just going to tell it from the perspective of the narratives that, that we are supposed to accept. So, um anyway, and we learned quite a bit about from, we learned quite a bit about Joseph’s supposed polygamy from her story. So where her story comes from, there are several later reminiscences that talk about her. Well, there are a couple of different sources. I I’ll first talk about some of the later reminiscences because I found them interesting and these are some of the tabs I’ve had open, right? So orange white, white spelled wight. He’s the son of Lyman White. He wrote a testimony and affidavit what, uh, you know, in 1903, by request of church historians, the church historians were just seeking everywhere trying to get people to talk about Joseph’s polygamy. They were really working hard to prove this and to, um, catalog it, right? And so Andrew Jensen was one that did a lot. I believe I’m getting his name right. But, um, there were, there were several of them. So most of these later reminiscences are in response to people actively seeking them and hunting people down, you know, chasing them down trying to get them to make make claims. So orange white, I believe was living in Nevada at the time of this. But he wrote a long autobiography and I’m going to read part of it. I, of course, this will be linked below as well he says, and he’s 8080 years old at the time. I now come to that part of my story that you will most likely be interested in which regards the doctrine taught by the prophet Joseph Smith, in regard to the plural marriage system. At first, the doctrine was taught in private. The first I knew about it was in John Higby family. He lived close to us and being well acquainted with him and his family. I discovered he had two wives. Keep that in mind the Higby, right? There’s, we’ll, we’ll go into that at another time. Not right now. But um then I’ll go on the next I noticed when in company with the young folks, the girls were calling one another spirituals. Ok? So the girls were referring to each other as spirituals. She’s a spiritual. Keep that in mind as well. Now, the reason why the folks was in advance of me, why, why they knew about plural marriage before he did my work was in the machine shop 22 miles above Navoo where I spent nearly all my time. But when at NAVOO in the winter of 41 and 42 I became fully initiated. Ok. He would have been barely 17 at the time. So a couple of things that that’s when he came, became fully initiated into polygamy, which he claims Joseph Smith taught, although he learned about it first in secret and in private and from hearing people refer to each other as spirituals. He’s 17. Now, a couple of things to recognize, to remember. Polygamy was so secret that people couldn’t. Well, other than William Clayton, bizarrely, people couldn’t even write about it in their private journals or their private family Bibles or like these sources that nobody would ever look at because nobody was looking for information on it. Right. They couldn’t write anything about it. And yet this 17 year old kid knows about it because people are talking about it openly and it’s being spread to him by his neighbors who are living openly with two wives. Um So this man, um John Hancock, I mean, John Higby had two wives before Joseph Smith even did. So anyway, we’ll, we’ll continue. Um oh, also I, I do also want to point out that he was 17 and apparently Joseph Smith was teaching him about it. Although Joseph Smith’s 11 year old son, you know, his son was 11 when he died, didn’t know anything about it. Joseph apparently didn’t care to pass on these extremely um sacred highest necessary doctrines to his own son who was by all, by all accounts, everyone expected to be his successor. He didn’t bother to tell him, but he told the 17 year old orange white. So OK, we’ll continue on. Um Let’s see. Oh, the last thing, sorry, I did have a couple of notes and remember that we have a huge difference between the spiritual wifey, John Higby and others were doing and Joseph Smith’s celestial plural marriage. So

[00:09:54] I guess someone forgot to tell all the girls that were calling themselves spirituals, apparently and forgot to tell orange white that there was a difference. Again, I’m still waiting for anyone to show me where Joseph Smith ever differentiated or ever used the term Biles plural marriage. But um, also I believe it was an Emily Partridge who said we were called, it was called spiritual at the time and she had a spiritual child, they were all so, you know, we’ll ok, we’ll continue. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what this orange white, what to do with this um testimony of his, whether it’s evidence of what I happen to believe it could very well be evidence of that. There was indeed this false spiritual wife, plural wife doctrine being passed around without Joseph’s approval, um being attributed to him by people like the higgy and others, right? If that, if it’s evidence of that, or if it’s evidence for just flat out lying, which I think also happened, or if it is truly evidence that Joseph Smith was teaching this thing to a 17 year old kid in 41 and 42 and that it was just in the mi milieu and everybody do it. Those are, those are our choices, right? We each have to make our own decision. So let’s continue with the finally, with the testimony at this time, I was ordained in Eldred talks about going on a mission in the spring of 43. I went back to NAVOO. I was on this mission 13 months now. Although in my 20th year, so he’s 19. Now, after his mission, I would not be 20 until the 29th of November. 1843. I concluded to look about and try to pick up one or more young one or more of the young ladies before they were all gone. So now he’s a 19 year old and also he was initiated into this before he’d even been a missionary as a 17 year old kid, right? And now he’s going to go get his wife’s. So I commenced keeping company with Flora Woodworth, daughter of Lucian Woodworth, the pagan prophet Lucian Lucian. I don’t know how people say that I was walking along the street with flora near the prophet’s residence. When he Joseph drove up in his carriage, stopped and spoke to I and Flora and asked us to get in his carriage and write up with him. So they’re basically courting at this point, right? Orange and flora. And they’re walking down the street, the prophet picks them up. He opened the door for us. And when we were seated opposite to him, he told the driver to drive on, we went to the Navoo temple lot and many other places during the afternoon. And then he drove to the Woodworth house and we got out and went in after we had got in the house. Sister Woodworth took me in another room and told me that Flora was one of Joe wives I was aware. So this is one of the evidences that Flora is married to Joseph Smith. Is that orange white in 1903. As an 80 year old man claims that he was dating Flora, but Flora’s mom had to inform him that she was already taken because she was a secret wife of the prophet. So um he continues, I was aware or believed that that Eliza R Snow and the two Partridge girls were his wives. So again, pretty common knowledge if that’s true, right? But not informed about flora. I I mean, you have to realize how human brains work by 1903. He knew all of this, right? So it’s very easy to project back and either think he knew it then or claim he knew it then or just not. It’s like anachronisms, right? You can’t, you can’t um it’s to get back to the mindset. You were in back at that time period and tell a good story to be accurate. So he continues, but now sister Woodworth gave me all the information necessary. So I knew Joseph believed in practice polygamy. So he knew Joseph believed in practice. He already claimed that Joseph was teaching it. But now he and he already knew that Joseph was married to Eliza and the Partridge sisters, but it was sister Woodworth telling him about flora that made him. No. Now, I like that’s how I learned that Joseph was doing this. It just, it just gets more and more fun. And so um he continues now as a matter of course, I at once after giving Flora a mild lecture, a mild lecture left her and looked for a companion in other places where I could be more. Sure. So he had to give Flora a piece of his mind for being unfaithful to the prophet and leading him on. And then he shares his exploits in courting three girls at the same time and managing to marry two of them and the third later and he, it, it’s, it implies that he married them during Joseph’s life because he says that’s part of his evidence as well. He claims that he was taught this by the apostles. Oh, but also Joseph Smith. And um if you look up on his marriage dates that we have, he married one of his wives in 44 and the other ones after the prophet’s death, so you can make of it what you will. That’s one of our evidences for um for Joe Joe

[00:14:32] polygamy in general and his marriage to Flora Woodworth. So again, I recommend reading through this affidavit and seeing what you think of it. What sense do you get from it and seeing what you point out that are inaccuracies or problems. So, ok, another one is Helen Mar Kimball. She was another teenage wife of the prophet, right? Helen Marr was 14 when they got married and Flora Woodworth was 16. So they were two of his youngest wives. And um she was asked repeatedly as well to write her history and she was asked repeatedly about um Flora Woodworth by, yeah, it was by Andrew Jensen. And so um I again will put one of her reports below. So this is what she says on the evening of September 1st brother Woodworth and family arrived all sick. I believe she’s talking about in winter quarters or far west. I something like that. I want to say it’s 1846. I looked up the year this would have been happening. So it was 1846. So they encamped outside of the square, they encamped outside of the square a little distant from our tent. We had a temporary beds, bedstead prepared and took their daughter. Flora Gove into our tent, gov Gove, Gove, family search and her wedding certificate lists her as Flora Grove or so it’s confusing but Gove so I’ll say Gove and hope that’s what it is um into our tent where I nursed her until she recovered her strength. Her husband was also sick with fever. She lain helpless for many days and and the her heavy Raven locks were so matted together that it took me hours to comb them out. We had lived neighbors in Nauvoo and we’re old schoolmates. She was older than myself and was sealed to the prophet as his wife. So there’s another evidence. Um, this happened before I was aware of the principle. So that’s funny because we don’t have an exact agreed upon date for Florida’s ceiling to Joseph Smith. Some say it was May 1st of 43. Some say it was March 4th of 43. The official sources just say the spring of 43. It’s funny because um Helen Marr’s ceiling date to the prophet was May 3rd of 43. So I don’t know how she’s claiming that Flora was sealed to her before she knew anything about it. Because if you read Helen’s account of the time it took to teach her about this, she would have been very well aware of it by the spring of 43 which is the same time she was apparently married to Joseph. So we’ll continue a young man boarding at her father’s house after the death of Joseph. Not a member of the church had sought her hand and in time won her heart and in a reckless moment, she was induced to accept his offer and they eloped to Carthage. Ok. So that is Carlos Gove that she’s talking about right there, Flora’s husband and in her testimony, Flora was married to Joseph before she knew anything about it. But after Joseph died, she was induced, she fell in love with and foolishly married a non-member. Um, so let’s see, they eloped to Carthage, accompanied by a young lady friend and they were married by a Justice of the Peace Flora was never happy with him as he hated the Mormons. Then I haven’t found any other report that he hated the Mormons and he went with them. Right. He, if he hated the Mormons, why would he go on their journeys with them? Go stay with them. And she felt condemned for the rash steps. She had taken, she made this confession to me while I was nursing her. And she and said she desired to cling to Joseph there after they settled on the point and they paid and she paid me a visit the following winter. So, oh, they settled at the point which must be a location. She still expressed herself as strong in the faith of the gospel. Also her great desire to cleave to the prophet. I never saw her again as she died in that place, leaving two or three Children. So the only another source I found find a grave that’s I believe probably more reliable says that she only has one child, Charles Gove, but I don’t know which it is. Um um Helen continues, I have given this little incident in the life of Flora truthfully and it ought to teach a and to those who read it for no latter day saint can find happiness in marriage with an unbeliever. As soon as the, as soon as the illusion which bewilders them wears off, they find no true companionship and remorse will come though, alas too late to retrace their steps. So there’s her little moral tale at the sake of Flora who, who after Joseph’s death, she foolishly married a non member, but pined for Joseph the rest of her days and ended up basically dying with a broken heart because she was married to a non-member. Right? That’s, that’s um Helen’s reminiscence about Flora Woodworth married marriage to Joseph. Again, both of those were sought, were desired. Were it sounds like some of the people were kind of hounded into making reports. That’s the impression I get. Of course, that’s my assumption from reading through these. So we’ll go Todd Compton also, of course, includes flora. He says that flora must have been one of Joseph’s favorites. Who and who that Joseph must have been very attached to her because no other wife has given the kind of prominence and attention

[00:19:23] in Clayton’s journal that flora is given. So that’s when we come to. Oh, and he also tells that in late 1844 a young non-member Charl Carlos Gove began to spend time with her and he goes on from there. So he, he has a lot of things to say about flora based on this narrative we’re given right in large part from Helen Mark Kempel and Clayton’s journal. So now we now we’ll get back to where I started. This is William Clayton’s journal, so not Joseph’s journal. William Clayton’s journal, which is one of the very problematic sources. I think that when we do our episodes on Clayton that when I do this with Jeremy, hope we will talk a lot about these journals for anyone who doesn’t understand them and explain what they are, why they matter so much and what the strange complicated history of them is. But, um, to be really brief, the church, there have been some sort of leaked portions of them. I believe I’ve read, we have 20 to 30% based on some people’s, uh, um, who have seen them. That’s how much we have access to, that was sort of leaked out. But we don’t know for sure. They have not been released in 2017, the Joseph Smith Papers project and, well, the church announced that they would be released through the Joseph Smith Papers project. They still have not been released five full years later. And recently meeting was held that they said they don’t expect to release them anytime in the next several years. They wouldn’t give a date and I’ve heard through other channels. Nothing I can verify. But I’ve heard that they’ve been like kind of shut down like we shouldn’t expect them to come forward. So who knows? That’s all we know is that they were promised in 2017. The official word is they’re not happening for the next several years. No idea when, but basically don’t hold your breath. So that’s the situation. So all we have are these leaked portions that we can read through and um we’ll, we’ll get into more explanation about that. So I will, as I said, link below an archive.org introduction, um an account where you can read his journals and many of the other things and keep in mind it’s so illogical because William Clayton was an official assistant to Joseph Smith. So if anyone’s writings would be suspect or like called into court to verify something, they would be his and he was writing like crazy about polygamy, but no one else wrote anything about it because it was so dangerous. These are some of the problems I find in this narrative. And so um OK, this is his entry for May 1st 1843 AM at the temple at 10 Mary Joseph to Lucy Walker PM at President Joseph’s. He has gone out with Woodworth. So he got married that morning to one girl and went on basically a date that evening with another girl, right with Flora Woodworth. And then um this is from his, I had to track this down because it’s kind of hard, but I was able to find it was printed in the Desert News May 20th, 1886 under the title Celestial Marriage. It was also included. This is a testimony that William Clayton gave. It was also included in a book written by Kate B Carter. She was the, um, I, I could not figure out who this was or what this book was. She was the president of the daughters of the daughters of the Mormon Pioneers. Is that, I think that’s what it’s called. She was the president of that for decades and she wrote, wrote a 12 volume compilation of poly polygamous marriages and she called it heart throbs of the West. OK. That’s what threw me for a loop heart throbs of the West. I mean, it’s clever but kind of so gross. Anyway, so she recorded it in that as well. So it’s one of those sources that’s been used. Um This is what he said on the first day of May of May 1843 I officiated in the office of an elder, marrying of an, of an elder, marrying Lucy Walker to the prophet Joseph Smith at his own residence. During this period, the prophet took several other wives amongst them. Number. I will tell, I, I well remember Eliza Partridge, Emily Partridge, Sarah and Whitney, Helen Kimball and Flora Woodworth. These all he acknowledged to me were his lawful wedded wives according to the celestial order. His wife, Emma was cognizant of the fact of some if not all of these being his wives and she generally treated them very kindly. So that’s his report given in 1886 right? Again, way after the fact and just lumping all of these wives in together. That’s why some people say that it was May 1st and they apparently in his journal is Woodworth written um and then scratched out. So it’s barely legible on March 4th. I can’t see that in the copy I have because I don’t have access to the actual pictures of the journal. But that’s why some people say May March 4th is the wedding date. This is the kind of information that we are going on too to make these claims. Right? Then May 2nd talked with Jane Charnock. She loves me and would sooner unite to me than are I I have to tell you reading through this, his exploits, his talking incessantly about plural marriage and the women. He’s trying to get in the like going to bed together with two women at a time and who’s angry and who loves him and who’s, it’s, I mean, it’s insane, like read his journal. It’s insane. So what what we have of it so far. So um anyway, so he, he combines his love exploits with Joseph. He after that, he says Joseph wrote out today with Flora W

[00:24:40] 23rd of August 1843 Wednesday, navoo. Um Wednesday. Oh, let’s see. Sorry. I’m getting a little bit confused. So. Oh yeah, I think we’re skipping from May up until August. So this is Wednesday, August 23rd of 1843. President Jay told me that he had difficulty with e yesterday. That’s Emma. She wrote up to Woodworth with him and called while he came to the temple. When he returned, she was demanding the gold watch of Flora. He reproved her for her evil treatment. So remember that this is I’m going to talk a lot about gold about watches, right? So the story is according to Clayton, this is the only source for this that Emma stopped at the, at the Woodworth and is yelling at Flora and demanding she give back the gold watch that Joseph had given her as a wedding present, something like that. That’s what, that’s what it’s supposed to be. Um When he returned, she was demanding the Gold Watch of Flora, he reproved her for her evil treatment on their return home. She abused him much and also when they got home, he had to use harsh, harsh measures to put a stop to her abuse, but finally succeeded. So again, it’s always also surprising was William Clayton there, right? How is he supporting this? I mean, how is he reporting this? There’s Joseph didn’t say anything about this. What we are being told here is, it’s another story of Emma being just completely out of control screaming hysterically at Joseph. So he basically had to abuse her to get her to stop. That’s the story we get from this entry in William Clayton’s, right. I I mean, it’s open to interpretation. That’s how it sounds to me. He had to use harsh measures but, um to stop her abuse but finally succeeded. Uh, you guys can all determine what that means. It doesn’t sound good to me. It doesn’t sound like any of the reports we get about Joseph and Emma, especially from the Children living in their home who would know about their relationship. Right. This evening, I had some more. Oh, then he continues. So that was the part about Flora and Emma and Joseph and watches. Then he continues this evening. I had some more conversation with Margaret and find she is stubborn and disposed to abuse me. You’ve got II I won’t. Uh it just, he goes on about Margaret on and on and on. It’s so awful reading what he is recording. I, I, yeah, you guys have to see if you think that it comes across as like valid. I guess the problem is who I think William Clayton is, is who other people assume Joseph Smith is based on William Clayton’s claims. So I guess that’s the mindset they’re in. That is not how it reads to me because William Clayton is very different from Joseph Smith. The words we get from them. And anyway, so back to the journal, we then have Saturday, August 26th Hyrum. And I wrote up to my house and Jay Joseph met, met Mrs Woodworth and F Flora and conversed for some time. President Jay and I walked from my house to sister Durphy and then to his house. Then Monday 28th President Jay met MS Woodworth at my house on the 29th AM at the temple. President Jay met with, met at my house with Miss Woodsworth. So Woodworth, so we have the 26th, he’s meeting with Flora and her mother for at least part of the time, the 28th and the 29th, Joseph is at um Clayton’s house alone with Flora, right? So this is the narrative that we have. They’re married in August and I mean, they’re married in May Spring and then in August, they have all of these interactions that are recorded in this journal, right? Starting with, with Emma screaming at Flora, screaming at Joseph. And then these secret encounters later on or private encounters. So it’s interesting because there is sharp disagreement about what these mean. Keep in mind this is the only evidence we have of anything to do with flora, right? Is William Page’s journal. Then these later reminiscences that’s, that’s what we’re building this on. And so William Clayton’s journal is really the linchpin for it. And um Demichael Quinn argues very sharply that these are sexual encounters, Joseph is alone with flora in someone else’s house. So he and I’m sure he has other evidence for that as well. Brian Hales argues very strongly, these, these are not sexual encounters and we’ll get into why that is. But um so there’s a lot of disagreement. So this has been the narrative about Flora, right? She married Joseph in the spring of 43. Has she was super special to him because there are so many recordings of her in the journal like Todd Compton points out, no one else has recorded as much as she is and this is how much she’s recorded. And the I do every part, every entry that talks about Flora or her family and well, I guess her dad is, is talked about. But I mean, as a plural wife, anything to do with that. And um, so she was beloved by Joseph Smith. Joseph died and she was, you know, the, the next several months later, foolishly married a non-member.

[00:29:21] So that’s been the story we have about her. So that’s what we did have until in 2015, something happened. The marriage certificate for Flora Woodworth and Charles Carlos Gove, Carlos Charles Gove, it says Grove on the marriage certificate, they made a lot of mistakes in one place. It says Flora Woodruff instead of Woodworth and Charles Grove. But it’s recorded both on the marriage certificate and in the county records. So we can verify that it is indeed the marriage certificate for this very flora Woodworth and this very Charles Grove. And you will notice the date it is August 23rd, 1843 not 1844 which would be only a few months after Joseph’s death, which is interesting because of the letter where Joseph said that no, they do not believe that a man should have more than one wife, um, unless his wife has died. But even then they disapprove of the practice of getting married a few weeks or even a few months later, that they should wait for a longer time than that. But nevertheless, this story that we had of Flora marrying Carlos a few months after Joseph’s death got blown to smithereens by finding a piece of actual historical evidence, right? And so this is really interesting, it should really make us stop and think and question the credibility. In my opinion, we should really question the credibility of Clayton and of Helen Mark Kimball and of orange white as if, I mean, do we really need more help to question more like in more clues that we should question their credibility? But this should be a big one, right? Also, this is the, this is where we get that narrative of the Crazy Emma, right? Like all of these things should be called into question because the fact is all of these dates that William Clayton is talking about in his journal with Joseph and Emma. He doesn’t, I’m Joseph and Flora. He does bother to include the rather important fact that Flora got married to another man, got legally married. So, um it’s interesting because when you read, um I mean, in Fairness, Todd Compton and other writers wrote their books before the marriage certificate was discovered. So we can’t hold them accountable to that. But I am curious that nobody has considered removing flora from the list of wives that doesn’t seem to be happening at all. We’re just told that her story needs to be told a little differently or reimagined, right? And Brian Hall to the rescue, he’s able to take this new data and unflinchingly, no one seems to flinch on the narrative. They just need to kind of massage and work the new data into the current narrative without ever questioning the narrative. So this is what we get now now that we know that that Flora married Carlos while Joseph Smith was very much alive and while all of these entries were happening, entries were taking place. So the story that we have now according to Brian Hales is so Emma abused Flora on 22nd. She was so upset that the very next day she ran out and got married, you know, to that groom she just had in her back pocket in case of such a marriage emergency, I guess. But you know, we already know from Orange’s Orange’s testimony that she got around. She’s a little bit slutty. So we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s in her character, right? So this is this is the new story. So then right after she got married on the 26th, 28th and 29th, when Joseph was meeting with her and her mother or with her alone, it became, let’s see, I’ll, I’ll read to you. I, I pulled some of the quote out. Um oh, those visits that used to be absolute evidence of sexuality in this marriage, right? This is when they changed and they now quote were undoubtedly held to deal with the future of Flora’s ceiling to the prophet as well as to consider the theological consequences of her rash decision to marry Gove. So that’s undoubtedly, that’s what they were about. They were just trying to figure out what this means for Flora. She should technically be on her honeymoon. Who knows where Carlos Gove is while Joseph is meeting secretly one on one with Flora at Clayton’s house. Um Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe it still was sexual, maybe this uh the, the whole thing but, but undoubtedly this is what it means. So that’s what I find so fascinating, this polygamy narrative. It’s like a black hole and it just any new massive thing that is discovered, it, it just absorbs it and just doesn’t change at all. Right. It just takes that new information, sucks it in and it keeps going on, keeps going on. So I find that to be really interesting. Right. It, it’s, it’s not a stretch at all. We have these very reliable sources that nobody seems to look at critically. Um

[00:34:27] The fact that Eliza, I mean, that Helen said that it was the next year that they got married, that it was after Joseph’s death or that orange White is talking about spirituals and that he was taught the doctrine by Joseph Smith while he was 17 and all of the internal contradictions there or that Clayton is making all of these records doesn’t bother to include the fact that Flora got married. So no, there’s no problem to any of this. We know what we know. Joseph was a polygamist. Joseph married Flora. And all we have to do is reimagine the scenario to fit in the new evidence. Never question the narrative, right? So, OK, that’s, that’s what, that’s what I see. It just keeps happening again and again, that things dissolve things that you look like evidence all of a sudden are really strange, really ridiculous. And it seems to me that this kind of thing keeps happening. So our certainty of Joseph’s polygamy seems to me to outstrip the available evidence to prove that. So let’s do another example. This I planned to do an entire episode on this at some point on Joseph’s Children, his polygamous Children. But we’re just going to talk about this one example here because it’s the best one. So there, there were several claims of Joseph’s Children, but the strongest claim by far, at least from everything I’ve seen. What of Joseph’s political was um Julia Julia. Um Well, S Sylvia Sessions Lion, right? And then Josephine, sorry, my brain, Josephine Lyon, she was the strongest case for Joseph’s polygamy that, well, I I shouldn’t overstate it. I heard her use many times as sort of like the smoking gun. Like, of course, Joseph was a polygamist, there’s Josephine Lyon and many researchers just knew that she was Joseph child. Um stories that was according to what I have seen pretty much the standard narrative. And um it was interesting because throughout most of the 20th century, the 19 hundreds, the church didn’t talk about Joseph’s polygamy, right? It was kind of under wraps till it started coming out later with um Demichael Quinn and others. It started to be talked about by researchers and the researchers at that point from what I have seen, pretty much generally accepted that Josephine Lyons was Joseph’s child, so someone can correct me if I’m wrong. So let’s get into this story. It’s again, really interesting. There are some interesting similarities between the story of Phoebe Woodward. I mean, Flora Woodworth. Phoebe is her mother and um Sylvia Lion. So that’s Josephine’s mother. So, first of all, they are two of the mother, daughter pairs of wives. Well, Patty Sessions and um Sylvia Sessions Lion are mother and daughter who both claim to have been sealed to Joseph. I’ll link to the, the claims that we make about them. And um interestingly, Phoebe Woodworth was sealed to Joseph Smith. Um and so they are considered by some people, another mother daughter pair. They, Phoebe was sealed to Joseph Smith after Joseph’s death. And it um it’s kind of interesting as well because her husband was still alive, very active at the church, but she was sealed to him for time to Joseph Smith for eternity, whatever that means. So, anyway, we have these two mother daughter pairs and another, a couple of other things that are really interesting is they all were married. Right. Flora got married. Supposedly. What, like Mary Joseph first before she got married, the other three were already married as far as I can see to husbands who were members and active in the church. So that’s another interesting thing. These all were polyandrous marriages and with mothers and daughters. So very fascinating. Um There are multiple records, statements of record. There are multiple records of statements made by early church members talking about Josephine as Joseph’s child. There’s a woman living in Bountiful, the name Josephine, she’s Joseph’s daughter. And so it was, you know, that that was the belief at the time. And so again, the researchers, the church historians um got Josephine to make a statement. And so, um I and I think that those other claims of problem stem from the same place we’ll see. So this was written by um Josephine R Fisher. So Josephine Lion Fisher is her name in Bountiful, Utah, February 24th, 1914. This is her statement just prior to my mother’s death. In 1882 she called me to the bedside and told me that her days on earth were, were about numbered and before she passed away from mortality. She’s desired to tell me something which she had kept as an entire seat from me and from others, but which she now desired to communicate to me. She then told me that I was the daughter of the prophet Joseph Smith. She having been sealed to the prophet at the time that her husband, Mr Lyon was out of fellowship with the church. She also told me that she was sealed to the prophet about the

[00:39:24] same time that Zina D Huntington and Eliza R snow were thus sealed. In conclusion, mother told me not to make her statement to me too public as it might cause trouble and arouse pleasant curiosity. I have followed her advice and I am relating the facts today. Practically the first time responding to the request or desire of one of the assistant church historians so signed in the presence of among others, Andrew Jensen, um by Josephine R Fisher. OK. That is the reason that Josephine is Joseph’s child. Interesting. Right. Now, if you think about this, it really is at best, third hand, we have to decide was Josephine telling the truth about what her mother told her on her deathbed? That is a valid question we need to ask, right? Was her mother, if, if Josephine is telling the truth, was her mother telling the truth on her deathbed? Is it remembered accurately by both of them? Right? There’s, there’s a lot of this is very much third hand, this is a third hand, very late source, but we, we really believed, I mean, she’s named Josephine, she’s named after her father, right? And so, so from what I have seen, this was pretty much the generally accepted narrative that Josephine was Joseph child and therefore Joseph was a polygamist because she really was the ultimate proof. What, what can you do if there’s a child from a polygamous marriage? So that, that’s what we had and there was really not very much room to doubt. I think this is part of why nobody took the prices seriously. They were trying to write their books. Joseph Smith fought polygamy but she, Joseph Smith had a child. So enter Dr Hugo Perego, Perego, a highly trained genetic and molecular biologist and a DNA researcher and he did the genetic testing. So Josephine, as I said, wasn’t the only claimed child. There were also seven sons that were claimed to be Joseph Smith, but they were easier to do genetic testing on because they’re males and they were testing the male line. I’ll explain it a little bit. So they had already been ruled out or were ruled out at this point. That was a little bit more straightforward. But um because Josephine was female, things were more complicated. This is what Dr Perego said in his 2016 report about this DNA DNA testing used in the past and based solely on um used in the past and based solely on the male inherited Y chromosome, could not be employed to address the question of Josephine’s biological paternity Perego went on to explain that the on that only recently had the necessary technology become available that was needed to determine Josephine’s parentage. But now they had it and they did the testing. And after explaining his procedure and the results, he concluded this information strongly supports that Joseph Smith was not the biological father of Josephine Lyon, but that she was the daughter of Windsor Lyon. So that again that an article about that will be linked below. So we officially, right, a lot of people know about this and have heard about it. I remember it was really kind of a shock wave. I remember it being talked about a lot that Josephine Lyon was not Joseph’s child. And we know that now, so again, it didn’t matter, it had no effect, right? The certainty that we had about the polygamy narrative when we thought Joseph had Children didn’t lessen at all when we found out that not only did Joseph have Children, but that this whole um reporting from Sylvia and or Josephine needed to be questioned and re-evaluated, right? But again, the, the, the narrative marches on without a hiccup, it just absorbs this twisted in and says that is absolutely certain of what it means. So, um the more so um let’s see, oh, the, the church narrative, the Brian Hales narrative he determined that Sylvia meant he, he determined that Sylvia just meant that Joseph was Josephine’s spiritual or covenant father. So it’s not spiritual wifey, but Joseph is Josephine’s spiritual father or father in the covenant. And that not her literal physical father. And that now we can use um Sylvia’s testimony to understand that there was no sex in any polyandrous marriage. So that’s how, that’s how Brian Hall Hales absorbed this. The more common um sort of the, well, the more common interpretation that really took hold and remains in full force was that this only meant that Sylvia didn’t know who the father was because she was having sex with both men. Like, and I, I do not think that is the interpretation. Either Sylvia or Josephine would want anyone to take from what Josephine reported that Sylvia said, she said that her husband was out of favor with the church at the time.

[00:44:15] But um now we are claiming that she was having sex with both men, which does not fit in with any scriptural explanations of polygamy, right? That is universally considered to be adultery. Um according to all of even all of the polygamists agree with that. But um yeah, that’s what we say, I think. Uh well, it’s really interesting read a recent back and forth I had with a really, a very, very prominent historian who wrote award winning an award winning biography of Joseph Smith and has written many other books and I’m on the one hand, I’m kind of honored that he commented on my channel. On the other hand, it was an interesting interaction, but I really appreciate that. There is at least discussion. I’m hoping something good can come from that. So he said on my, on one of my episodes, you use the no Children argument including Josephine Lyons, which you missed the whole point of Sylvia thought Josephine was Joseph Smith’s daughter because she was having sex with both men. That’s the only reason for her mistake case closed. So I found that interesting, right? Like I, I responded, explaining my perspective and expressing surprise at his certainty because that is an interpretation of evidence, that’s not evidence, right? And I asked if he had evidence that could support his claim that the case was closed, that his interpretation was absolutely the final word on it. And then um among much other discussion that was happening, people just voiced their, they were shocked and appalled that I would ask this expert historian for um for evidence. They were like, are you asking so and so for to provide evidence, who do you think you are basically and to be fair? This um historian didn’t say that himself, but it was definitely the the feeling that was coming across. So I responded and said, claiming that Sylvia was sleeping with both men is an assumption, not a fact and not evidence. It is nothing but an interpretation of very limited facts. And in my opinion, not the best or most likely interpretation, saying case case closed about an assumption with no additional evidence is concerning, especially coming from a respected in the field. There are many more precedents and much more evidence for the phenomenon of lying for the Lord as well as overstating connections to Joseph to elevate status and well being in the cast, cast system of caste system of polygamous society. He did have a very valid objection to that. So I would like to discuss these things more with him. I’m hoping that we’ll have a chance to um I think there’s, but I do think there’s more evidence of the lying for the Lord and trying to claim connection to Joseph than there is evidence of, of, of married women committing adultery with Joseph, which cannot be included as anything but adultery under any definition or explanation of polygamy. In addition, Sylvia’s own statement does not support the interpretation that she was committing adultery by sleeping with both men. She did not say Joseph might be Josephine’s father as a woman uncertain of, of paternity due to having multiple partners would necessarily have to admit. She said Joseph was Josephine’s father, which we know to be untrue. It was not an admission of having multiple sexual partners even if we choose to call them husbands. It was, and it was a motivated untruth either a lie for the Lord, which they were taught was righteous and would bring blessings or a final gift to her daughter to raise her importance and well being in the community or a combi combination of both. I there it was whatever we want to claim, there was absolutely status in being associated with Joseph Smith, the um and there was being pressure being put on right to make these statements. The far more likely interpretation, both based on the actual evidence In my opinion is that Sylvia was not being factual in her statement. If someone, no matter how well established they are claims and insists on an interpretation of facts that is not supported by evidence and contradicts the available evidence. Then yes, they are under the obligation to provide, provide evidence to support their assumptions. I hope this historian will do just that. And so I invited him to come on the podcast and discuss it. But, um, you know, he made it pretty clear there, there were a lot of people who thought that was a good idea, but he made it clear that he would not condescend to that level. He said when I choose to respond, it will be on my channel, which I can respect that. And he did say that he prefers doing things slowly and thoughtfully rather than in a live discussion, totally respect that. And so, and in fairness, again, this historian wrote his award winning biography of Joseph Smith, 12 years before the DNA testing was done. So I understand it can be extremely difficult to step back when you have that much invested, right, that much writing on it. It just, it’s just that, that seems to be the case everywhere, right?

[00:48:57] We, we have the certainty still based on this past evidence while the evidence is sort of evaporating or at least needing to be reimagined, right? But it doesn’t affect the certainty of the narrative. I ia a quote that I have used several times this past couple of weeks as Upton Sinclair’s brilliant quote, it is difficult to get to a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. And I would include like credibility and um you know, eminent status and I or just even investment into a narrative. I think that a lot of people are, are trying to be honest. But when you’re so invested into a narrative, it can be really hard to see that you are explaining everything to prove your narrative through the lens of already having proved your narrative. And it just doesn’t work. I don’t think it works. I think that we need to reinvestigate a lot of this with our, the the additional information that we now have that has not been fairly dealt with. Like if we had all of information that we have now and came back to this study fresh, would we potentially form different conclusions or less or at least be less certain in our conclusions, I think that we would. So this leads me to what was going to be the main point of this episode before I went on all of these other sidetracks. So, um, since I added these other things, it’s just going to be a final, final point. But actually I’m going to go one more place first because, um, it’s another thing. It’s what, it’s what I started to talk to chat G BT about and it’s the topic of watches, right? You’ll remember that Flora’s Journal is where Clayton talks about the gold watch that Emma was demanding from Flora. And that’s where I believe we get the idea of Joseph giving watches to some of his wives. I’ve heard that several, like from several different places they talk about watches being part of Joseph’s polygamy. And so I was like, ok, I need to get to the bottom of this because all I know about is, um, this journal entry and it doesn’t seem like enough to make this claim. So, what else is there? So, I thought I should track it down. And so, um, that’s what I, I only knew vaguely about Clayton’s journal with Flora and then Eliza Snow’s watch. That’s all I know. So I thought that I should be able to find more. So, um, here’s what we know about the watches, right? We have Creighton’s journal and then in 1912, Brigham Young’s nephew, this is Brigham Young’s nephew, Seymour Young who was a general authority. He gave us more information about Flora’s watch. The name of the prophet’s plural wife and wives included Flora whom, um, Flora Woodward, he says Woodward, to whom he is said to have a gold locket or watch, which was stamped underfoot by Emma. So I’ve also heard that, that she stamped it and destroyed it. And, um, this was the only source I could find for that. It was Brigham Young’s nephew who was not born at the time in 1912. And we know how, you know these stories about what Emma did we know how valid those are coming across the pulpit from Brigham Young or his nephew apparently. So I decided that we can kind of throw that one out. Sadly, uh, this, this is like a quote of a quote and it has ellipses, it has pieces missing. I’m not able to get access to it because this record is restricted. So I can only quote it from Brian Hales who quoted it from D Michael Quinn. I always like to find the original source. And so that was disappointing, but that, that’s what we have. I don’t know why it’s restricted. So, um, I’m so, let’s see, I’m going to, like I said, check the Emma destroying the watch off my list. I don’t think that’s valid. We can still decide about the Emma demanding the watch from Flora story that is relying only on Clayton the day before Flora got married. You can decide whether to check that off or whether to keep it. Um You also need to include in that the, the, also the narrative of Emma being a crazy person, Joseph abusing her. And just so, you know, I’m not doing this necessarily for the sake of I have a testimony of Joseph and I need to believe he was a good man and prove he was good. Then that’s not what I’m where I’m coming at this from, I’m coming at it from all of the reports we have of all of their neighbors, everyone who ever dealt with Emma Smith in particular, um Joseph as well. I’ve never heard of him abusing his wife other than and from Brigham Young and so and apparently Seymour Young, right? And that’s why I think there’s just not enough evidence. I mean, if someone wants to show me things I’m missing, but what I have read about Emma Smith does not paint the picture of this crazy woman. It only comes through these polygamy, this polygamy narrative through these very limited sources. The first of which was William Clayton. So um let’s see, OK, then the other thing that ties Joseph to watches with wives is Eliza Snow. It’s really the only other thing. And so there are many reports of Eliza Snow showing gold watches to people implying that it was a gift from her husband, from a husband to wife. Like that’s the picture that I, that we always get.

[00:53:56] And so I was trying to track down these claims and I came across this fantastic art article written by Jenny Breeder when she was a graduate student. She’s the one that wrote the book on Emma Smith, published by Desert book. That was one of the sources I utilized in doing that episode. And so, um I’m going to quote a bit from this. I and I also will link it below. I think it’s great. It’s called Eliza Snow and the prophet’s gold watch timekeeper as relic. So to open, she quotes from an 1885 account of a visitor to Utah, an English woman that said sister wrote. Sister Smith took from her neck. Sister Smith note took from her neck, a chain to which was attached to large, large ornamented gold watch, a relic. She told us, told us most precious to her. It having been the property of the murdered prophet whose wife she had been. So and she meant relic in the religious sense, it can be defined as a physical object accorded spiritual significance because of its association with a holy person. So like the Catholics have relics, right? This was a Mormon relic. And so um and a relic was not merely a symbol of the saint, but also denoted the saint’s continual physical presence in the world that’s from um from Jenny Reader’s article. And so this was Eliza’s Gold watch. I’ll read a little bit more. The watch was transformed into a venerated like as snow exhibited it throughout her travels, allowing Children to hold and kiss the time piece as a ves vestige or metonym of Smith’s years as of Smith years after his martyrdom. So mem it means kind of the same thing as well. Like it’s an actual, it’s not just representative of Joseph. It kind of is Joseph his himself, right? It, it contains Joseph’s spirit somehow with it. And um let’s see, um Smith, both in Eliza constantly used the watch to create a corporeal connection between her and Joseph Smith, both in their leaderships roles and in the plural marriage, the possession and display of the watch communicated these important relationships and became imbued with reverence, emotion and attachment. The watch became a public symbol of her personal role as one of the prophet’s wives and as a proponent of the institution of plural marriage. So, are you getting how Eliza used this watch? Really? It really was her literal badge of honor. It was her identity. She wore it and it carried all of this importance. It was kind of like wearing the badge of approval from Joseph Smith. You know, it was like having Joseph Smith on her shoulder in a way, approving of everything she said and taught and did. And so, um but get this. So that’s, that’s the portion I’ve read to you so far. Um Well, I I’ll read this first she wore it as a badge of identity. This is what I was saying, a crucial element in her authoritative organizational role and president presidents of all the women’s organizations and universally recognized female leader of Mormon women. But this is what II I missed that quote. This is what I really want, want us to know because I found it so interesting. She never said anything about how she got it or when he gave it to her. There are a couple of fascinating things. This is the first one. The only explanation we have at least that I’m aware of. If someone or that Jenny Breeder is aware of the only explanation that we have of how Eliza the watch came from Martha mcbride Knight. And it was a recollection of the organization of the Relief Society. She said Joseph Smith had to leave before the meeting was dismissed. So he took the watch out of his pocket and laid it on the table by Eliza R Snow, the secretary of the meeting and said, begin your meetings on time and end them on time. He left the watch on the table and Eliza R Snow kept it in her possession until her death. So, OK, so that’s the only explanation we have of how Joseph gave the watch to Eliza, right? That, that like basically he was lending it potentially to the secretary because he had to leave the meeting early and she just kept it. So everyone again is free to interpret it their own way because that’s the only information that we have so do with that what you will. But it’s pretty funny to know that that’s the story of how Eliza got it. And Eliza never said anything differently. She never said how she got the watch. Right. So there’s no contradiction we can look to and there’s no reason we know of that we should throw out Martha Knight’s um Martha Knight’s explanation of how she got the watch. So um nonetheless, but despite this, Zina Yang and Eliza Snow both repeatedly showed the watch, especially to Children establishing reverence in their minds, letting them hold touch, kiss it as a literal sacred relic. Um young, young Zina, young at at least one time, if not more times claimed it was one of the,

[00:58:52] it was the one the prophet was wearing when he was killed, which was absolutely not true. No, I think that was a different watch. She did that with, I don’t know she would go around with watches as well and claim it was the one he was wearing. That’s not true because that the watch Joseph was wearing at the time of his death was kept by his family. Um but useful stories grew and grew as they tend to, to do, right? Just like it reminds me of John Taylor’s story of the, of his pocket watch blocking the bullet, right? Which is now readily accepted as not true. But um these useful stories have a way of growing and embedding themselves, especially when there are these venerated adults talking about the sacred prophet and the sacred relic, talking to Children who are then brought up knowing that and passed on to their Children. Right. That’s how these things happen. I think so. Um Now this is the really important thing we need to know about Eliza R Snow. This fascinated me. She never spoke or wrote even in her journal, anything about being married to Joseph Smith, the she never, she never claimed she her entire. So she’s married to Brigham Young for decades, right? But she is still referred to as Eliza R Snow. Even when Brigham would introduce her or speak to her, he would call her either Miss Eliza R Snow or Miss Snow. So Miss implies single, right? Not married and she kept her own name. She was a Miss Snow, Miss Eliza R Snow her entire life until Emma died. So two days after Eliza got the news of Emma’s death is the first time that she talked about the watch as being evidence of her marriage to Joseph. And I think that that is fascinating. I never found her to actually declare it like, like, like she, you know, like the quote from the visitor to England, it’s always who was her husband. You know, she never actually like, I think that there were in my interpretation, I think maybe some careful trying, like Brian Hall talks about carefully worded denials that Joseph did. I disagree with that. But I do think that Eliza used, it, used carefully worded um implications to try to get across us a message without directly see it. And so I think it’s fascinating that she waited until Emma died before she talked about the watch as a symbol of her marriage. That’s important. Right. I mean, again, it seems to me a potential pattern just like section 132 wasn’t released until um Mary Fielding Smith was on her deathbed. Maybe there’s nothing to that. I don’t know. But here it is happening again two days after Emma, two days after Eliza got word of Emma’s death, Eliza had a speaking engagement and that’s the first time she talked about the watch as being belonging to her husband. Also after Emma’s death is when Eliza R Snow changed her name to Eliza R Snow Smith Smith and became sister Smith. You’ll notice also in that recollection she was referred to as sister Smith. Eliza R Snow who was the many decades long wife of Brigham Young at this point became sister Smith. Now again, patterns, you know, I get accused but, but we have the Melissa Lot Bible where Melissa Lot Bernheisel is after the fact listed as Melissa Smith as evidence of her marriage to Joseph. It doesn’t make any sense. Nobody ever called her Mrs um Melissa Smith. That was never her name. No one ever called Eliza Snow. Eliza Smith or Sister Smith. Ever. It was never her name. They didn’t even call her sister. Young Zina Young at least took Brigham’s Brigham’s name and did have at least I believe one child with Brigham. Eliza didn’t take Brigham’s name. But while she was married to him after Emma’s death, she took Joseph Smith’s name. I find that all kinds of fascinating. Right. So, again, everyone has to decide what to do with that. What does it mean? I to me, it doesn’t speak of credibility of telling the truth. It speaks of the credibility of trying to push a narrative that she felt, felt compelled to push. So I think that’s worth considering. These are very important things. So, um yeah, and it was throughout the rest of this time after Emma’s death that she and Zina Huntington, Young, Zina Young, she was called sister, young sister Smith and sister Young went all through the territory, speaking to the prime, the women and the primary Children. I do see it. I’m so torn because I love that they did this, that they went and spoke to the Children. I hate that we have all of Brigham Young’s words recorded and we don’t have Zina Young’s and Eliza Snow’s words, Eliza Snow Smith’s words recorded because they were speaking to Children and women. But I love that they were active in that sphere. I have so much respect for that.

[01:04:02] So, you know, I, I, on the one hand love it. But on the other hand, it looks to me like I can see what they’re doing, which was similar to what Brigham Young was doing, which was taking this sacred relic around as evidence. They were introduced everywhere as two of Joseph Smith’s wives. That’s how they introduced themselves. And so let’s see, I wanted to read just a few quotes of where it was talked about. I’ll see if I can find those. But it is interesting to know that there is zero evidence of Eliza and Brigham having any marital relations whatsoever. I think it was generally accepted that they did not, he, she did never take his name. Right. So she’s married to Brigham Young, whatever that meant. I think it just meant. So she had, well, and we also know I’ve, I’ve read other books where she just kind of kept to herself. She didn’t really mingle much with most of the wives. She was kind of above everybody, you know, living her own life, doing her own thing and, um, living in Brigham’s home and that’s his large home, his dormitory, I guess you could say. So. It’s, it’s really interesting and yet she took Joseph’s wife Joseph’s name after Emma’s death and started presenting the watch as evidence of plural marriage. So I just, I think I went to that. Not that it’s necessarily dissolving evidence. Although we can see now we have like Jenny’s paper should tell us more about Eliza Snow and we can see how much validity there is to these watch stories. We have William Clayton’s journal. Seymour Young’s claim that Emma stomped on the watch wherever he would have gotten that from. And then we have Eliza R Snow’s sacred relic that according to the only account we have, she just kind of kept, she didn’t return to Joseph Smith when he lent it to her or however you want to read that. But however else you read it is just interpretation. So these are three of the pieces of evidence that we have used to build up this narration, this narrative of Joseph’s polygamy, right? And so again, based on especially the first two, the certainty seems to vastly outstrip the evidence. So that finally brings us to chat GP T, which was going to be the only point in this, in this episode. So I wanted to, as I mentioned before, I wanted to chat ex try to explain chat, chat GP T in a way that my 90 year old mother could understand it. So I was working on that. I kind of came up with, it’s an artificial intelligence language program which basically means it’s a robot that doesn’t have a body that can have a conversation with you on your computer, you can type messages back and forth. That was my best way of explaining it. But I decided to ask for chat G BT S help. So I said chat G BT. Can you explain what you are? So a 90 year old grandmother can understand. And this was the response mom, this is for you. My sweet mom listens to my podcast chat. G BT said of course, I am an A I language model created by open A I. First of all, a 90 year old couldn’t understand. That is artificial intelligence. Think of me as a computer program designed to understand and generate humanlike text based on the question and prompts. I received, I receive, I don’t have a physical form, but I’m here to provide information, answer questions and have conversations with people. People use me for a wide range of purposes from seeking information and help with various topics to just having a friendly chat. Does that make sense? Grandma? So that was chap GP ts answer to my prompt and mom, I’m doing all of this for you. So I hope you’re not drinking anything because you’ll spit when you laugh, when, when I read these next parts. So um just out for those of you who have watched my episode, I think with, with my mom, you might appreciate this. I asked who is Janine Brady? And Chat G BT said Jeanine Brady is an American singer, singer, songwriter and performer. She is known for her work in the field of children’s music and has released several and has released numerous albums aimed at teaching positive values and life skills to Children. Janine Brady gained popularity in the 19 eighties with songs like I Love America and Follow Your Dream. It should have said there are several mistakes in here. I I’m gonna swap out Follow Your Dream for, I’m a VIP. Her music, she didn’t write a song called Follow Your Dreams. Um Her music often carries uplifting messages and encourages Children to be confident, kind and resilient. Janine Brady continues to be active in the music industry and is recognized for her contributions to children’s music. So you can see how there’s a lot of true information there, but there’s also some, some not true information. My mom would object to no end to be called, to be calling a singer and performer, right? And she always hated when she had to get up on stage and sing some of her songs and you know, there and, and she’s, while she is an incredibly active, almost 90 year old, she’s not still active in the music industry and you know, there are more things, but the rest of it was, right? So this was my favorite part. I said, I forgive me for taking time on this sidetrack. I hope some of you find it entertaining. I laughed and laughed. I said,

[01:08:52] chat G BT. Can you write a song about yourself in the style of Jeanine Brady? So when I got the results, let me just say, I’ve heard some writers and composers express concern about A II I, I’m not worried about that yet. I mean, I know things are progressing quickly but no one needs to be w no, no at all decent writer or composer needs to be worried about being put out of a job. And so it at least did include some complicated music, things like a bridge and an outro and some different things that would be fitting. My mom wrote very um refined and advanced music for Children, but I’m just gonna read a little bit of it. This is the chorus that came up. It came up with Chat G BT. That’s my name. Spreading, spreading wisdom. It’s my claim to fame with language skills that are also smart. I’ll assist you with answers from the heart. This is one of the verses, I’m like a friend. Always by your side in the digital world. I’ll be your guide. Ask me anything. There’s no need to fret. I’ll provide you information. You won’t forget. This is the outro. So let’s embark on this knowledge quest with Chat G BT and Janine Brady. We’re truly blessed in harmony. Will sing. Our voices will soar with curiosity and learning for evermore, with curiosity and learning for everyone. So I hope that you guys appreciate that. That’s kind of what Chat G BT does. You can ask it to come up with something in the style of Shakespeare, in the style of Dr Seuss or apparently in the style of Jeanine Brady. It just, it’s not very good. Um I didn’t really like that one. So I asked again and this was the chorus of the second of the second attempt. Chat G BT. That’s me spreading wisdom and positivity with Jeanine Brady’s style and with Janine Brady’s style and Grace, I’ll assist you in this virtual space. So join me now, as we embark on a journey of knowledge, like a shining arc with Chat GP T and Janine Brady’s zest will make learning and adventure our very best. So anyway, maybe I spent too much time on that. It’s really funny. You can have fun with Chat GP T and so you can just Google Search it, find it and there you go, mom, it wrote a song for you, wrote two songs for you. So OK, I know that um A I getting into this topic is Harry. There are so many concerns with his brand new front. Here we are, you know, we’re not quite sure what we’re dealing with yet. And so um so I don’t want to talk about all of the problems of A I, I just am going to talk about two of the problems specifically with Chat G BT. This one A I platform. Um two of them that are known about one you just heard is called hallucinations. That’s the one I already knew about before I started playing with it. I spent hours and hours with JG BT working on polygamy trying to see if they could help me. And it, it, it didn’t help me very much. But, but what I’m going to tell you, I think was worthwhile, but I did spend a lot of time on it and I saw a lot of hallucinations. So, hallucinations are the word for the things. It just gets completely wrong, like, like those factual errors about my mom. Right. And um they have, well, let’s see when I wanted to talk about this, um that’s one of the things they know, it seems that the hunch I have and what seems to be borne out from my experimentation with it is that the more broadly a topic is known, the more broadly it’s discussed, the more accurate chat, chat GP T will be on it because the more data points it has coming in, right? It sort of has like up until September 21st when it was launched. So it doesn’t have any information after that. But before that, it kind of just took in all of the information on the internet and then it uses that information to come up with answers, that kind of conglomerates it and has its own way of thinking and responding. Right? And so um so when it gets something completely wrong, that’s a hallucination, they don’t know exactly why they happen, but we’ll get into it a little bit more. So I think that that’s probably the case. Like, I think it will hallucinate more about Jeanine Brady who is not as broadly known as then like one of the most popular shows on Netflix, right? I think, I think that’s one of the, one of the things that causes hallucination. There are more things that we’ll talk about later and there’s a second problem with Chat G BT that I’m going to come up with that. I’m going to talk about in a little while. So first, um I want to give you, I just tried to pare down some of the pages of hours long um discussions I had with Chat G BT, right? So I asked what evidence is there that Joseph Smith gave gold watches to his wives. That’s why I went into the whole thing about gold watches because I had to look that up after I found that Chat G BT was not helpful. It said there is no verifiable evidence to support the claim that Joseph Smith, the founder of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints gave gold watches to his wives. The historical record surrounding Joseph Smith’s personal life and his relationships with his wives is complex and often contentious, often contentious. And it’s important to approach any claims with critical and evidence based mindset.

[01:13:36] If you use chat GP T for long, you will get so many it’s important or it’s important to remember or it’s crucial to like, like it really has to give you a lot of lectures along with the answers. So then he goes on, it goes on, Joseph Smith practiced polygamy and had multiple wives. But the specific allegations of, of him giving gold watches is not supported by reliable historical documentation or accounts from contemporaries. It is worth noting that primary sources from the time period are of are limited and often biased which further complicates the task of varying filing such claims. Then another lecture when examining historical events or figures that it is crucial to rely on rep reputable sources, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So um ok, so I kept trying with no like to get it to at least give me William Clayton’s journal or some of these accounts from Eliza Snow, right? And um it just kept giving me the claim that Joseph Smith gave gold watches to his wives is not based on credible historical sources or scholarly research. I at least that was, that was good because a lot of people do claim that Joseph gave watches to some of his wives, right? And so um let’s see. Oh yeah, it tells me that it’s possible that it could be from it, it it can be from oral tradition or un reliable or unverified sources. So we can’t substantiate the claims. And then I fed at the information about William Clayton’s journal and the other things and it says, yes, I’m familiar with those and yes, those are sources that give us important insight into Joseph’s life. However, it is important to note that Clayton’s journal is not considered a primary source for this particular event. As Clayton himself did not witness it firsthand. It also tells me some of the problems with Clayton’s journals. They were recorded based on conversations he had with Joseph Smith and other individuals. And he often wrote about events that he did not act personally witness. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the accuracy and reliability of Clayton’s entries have been a subject of scholarly debate as they were rich in retrospectively and have been influenced by personal biases and later perspectives. So I was, I was happy to hear it, say that, right? And so um it go on, it went on, there’s a lot more, I’m just trying to get through some of it. Um It often just kept telling me that the consensus is that Joseph was a polygamist, right? And so I said, when I would ask more general questions, like, how do we know Joseph was a polygamist? What is the best evidence of Joseph’s polygamy or? Um you know, like, like, well anyway, I asked a lot of general questions like that. I can’t think of the specific ones, but I would just get general messages. Like the historical evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that Joseph did. Joseph Smith did in fact practice polygamy, the denial of polygamy by Joseph Smith and other church leaders during their lifetimes was a strategic and public stance taken to avoid legal and social consequences. And so it would go on and just tell me the narrative, right? It was very good at telling me the narrative. But when I would dig down for specific sources, that’s where things really got interesting and kind of went off the rails. So let me, let me give you a couple of examples. I was trying to see if it could help me do sort of a um I have, I have another researcher who has been working on a statistical probability based on various factors of Joseph Smith not having Children with his, any of his plural wives. And I thought that was really interesting. So I was like, I wonder if chat G BT could do something like that. So I asked very various questions to try to see if it could give me any statistical probabilities of Joseph Smith not having Children. And um it, it’s, it didn’t, couldn’t help me with that at all. But what some of the statements it made are um lack the lack of Children could be due to various factors, including contraception practices, fertility issues or other personal circumstances. So that’s interesting because uh first of all, we’re only looking at the people who don’t have fertility issues, right? And the contraceptive practices is something that I have heard, talked about more and more lately, like some really strong claims that these people were not idiots, they knew how to use contraceptives. Which is really interesting considering the contraception debates that have been going on. Right. And like they knew how to do abortions. Well, then why are we having such debates over abortions if it was always that, you know, it’s really interesting. So I, I wanted to dig down into that. So I asked again, I’m only giving you little tiny snippets of page long pages long conversations.

[01:17:47] I asked what contraceptive method, what women in Illinois from 1840 to 1844 have used have access to. And um during the answer was during the time period, you specified from 1840 to 1844. Supposedly, like that’s a broad range of Joseph’s supposed polygamy. Contraceptive methods were limited and often rudimentary compared to modern contraceptive options. Some of the contraceptive methods available do during the 1918 forties may have included withdrawal method. It explains that barrier methods and then it goes on to say women may have used various barrier methods such as the use of a diaphragm or a cervical cap to physically block sperm from entering the u the uterus herbal remedies. Women might have relied on traditional herbal remedies such as the use of certain plants or substances which were believed to have con perceptive properties. However, the effectiveness of these methods would have varied and their use may have been based on folk beliefs rather than scientific evidence. And then the other one I mentioned is condoms condoms were available during this time, but they were often expensive and not widely accessible. It went on and talked about um gave more information about each of those. But I thought this was really interesting. So barrier methods and condoms really got my attention also herbal remedies. I know how effective those are not as the mother of 13 Children. Yeah. So, um anyway, how widely, so I asked how widely available were diaphragms or Condron condoms in Illinois during the 18 forties? And it said during the 18 forties in Illinois. Diaphragms and Chond runs were not widely available or commonly used contraceptive meth meth methods. Access to these specific types of contraception would have been limited at the point. I know I’m reading a lot. What I’m trying to get you to see is the claims it makes to support the, um the statements it makes or what would I say, the evidence that it’s creating to support the overall claims it makes, right. That’s we’re getting down into the evidence, the evidence to support the claims that it said. And so, um, so again, goes on to tell me that what diaphragms are and how they were used and they were different and that, and, but it goes on to say they were usually a luxury item but that they were white, they would have been available at the time. So, um it, it goes a long answer about that. I’ll go into it a little bit more. But I ask who invented the diaphragm? And when, and it says the invention of the diaphragm is a contraceptive device is attributed to Doctor Wilhelm Mensinger, a German physician who developed it in the late 19th century. And um it was in 1882 it goes on to say so I said, why did you say it was possible that diaphragms could have been used in eight in Illinois in the 18 forties. If it, if, if they weren’t invented until 1882 in Germany, I apologize for the confusion. There are a lot of, I apologize, I apologize for the confusion caused by my previous response. You were correct and I apologize for the incorrect information. The invention of the rubber diaphragm as a contraceptive device did indeed occur in 1882. It goes on given this correction, it is not possible for diaphragms to be to have been used in Illinois during the 18 forties. Um So thank you for pointing out the error. It talks, it talks quite a bit. That’s me saying about chic. I talk quite a bit and I think it talks quite a bit. Ok. So then I asked who invented the condom? And when it goes in talking about ancient civilizations, um I looked up information on this because I found it fascinating and I did find, yes, there were ancient, there’s evidence of ancient use of condoms in ancient civilizations. Then in London, we have some information that, um, they were used to, um, they were made out of animal intestines usually and they were used to prevent syphilis. Um, only for the very elite. Right. They were in, they were for royalty or like very high class brothels. Can you say high class brothels, expensive brothels? Right. And so, um, here’s a quote from one of the articles I read King Charles. The second became troubled by the number of illegitimate Children, belonging, belonging or associated with him to stop these illegitimate conceptions. His doctor Colonel Condom prescribed a sheath made of lamb intestine. So I thought that was great that there’s apparently argument of whether that’s where we get the name condom. But I just think that Colonel Condom is wonderful. And I think of course, that’s where we got the name condom because it was given to King Charles. But at the same time period, I could not find any evidence of condom use in America. There’s,

[01:22:09] there’s nothing about it, which kind of makes sense. They have the royal class in um Europe. And they also had like America was a much more um what do you call it? Protestant, there wasn’t the same kind of upper upper class brothels for the royalty right here. So, um but in terms of modern culture, the credit for its widespread adoption and popularization is often this is back to chat G BT often given to Charles Goodyear, an American inventor who discovered the process of vulcanization patented in 1844. And so it goes on to talk about that. So then I asked, and it was after vulcanization that condoms could start be being manufactured. They were still expensive. They also were individually measured and meant to be reusable. So they were made to order um based on your measurements. I it’s just interesting to consider this different world that there was at this time. So I asked if V conization didn’t occur until 1844 why did you say condoms could have been available for use in Illinois from 1840 to 1844? Again, I apologize for the confusion and inconsistency of my response. You are correct and I apologize for the incorrect information. It goes on it just repeatedly, anytime I would dig down to try to get to specifics, it would apologize for the misinformation. So it would make the broad statement. But as I would try to have it verify, um, parts part like the, the parts that added up to that statement, it would go off the rails. It, um I asked about several women specifically trying to get, um, I was looking for re for confirmation of any of the reports I’d seen of people seeing Eliza Snow’s watch. So I was asking those women’s names and it repeatedly called them Joseph Smith’s wives, which was bizarre. So, um for example, one of the women I asked about it said, um, I got a lot of mixed answers. One of them had told me that this was one of Joseph Smith’s wives who wrote a book called Wife number 19. And so I, I said you are incorrect. Wife number 19 was written by an Ann Eliza Young, a wife of Brigham young, not Joseph Smith. You are correct. I apologize. Right. And then, um I asked what evidence is there that Flora Smith was married to Joseph Smith and that Flora Woodworth was married to Joseph Smith. And again, I’ve got to go through a little bit more of this, but it um it started giving me all of these faults like it said, nuo records are contemporary. I I started to, I’m gonna jump ahead but I, I started to get more and more down to try to narrow down what the information was that it was giving to me like it kept saying that um we had a lot of discussion about contemporaneous records. Let me jump to that. And so I can’t tell you how many times. So the hallucination rate, let me jump ahead to this. The hallucination rate for chat GP T is not firmly established, but the developers say it’s somewhere between 15 and 20% overall. So like what would that be? 80 to 85% of what it says is correct, but 15 to 20% is incorrect. And I really do think that as you get on to a more varied subject it’s gonna make more mistakes. But here when I was digging down into the evidence, trying to get it to verify things, the, um, the error rate was through the roof. Well, over 50% in this discussion in these discussions that we were having, which I found to be fascinating and it’s not just because Joseph’s polygamy isn’t as well known of a topic, I don’t think because it was getting it right in the more general question, right? It was when I would look for support and, and sources that it would just make stuff up constantly. And so when I asked for contemporary, well, when I asked for evidence of Flora Woodworth marriage, it said Joseph F Smith’s journal entry dated December 19th, 1818 69 quoted Flora Woodworth saying I was sealed to the prophet Joseph Smith for eternity. My life is devoted to that one principle. It quoted that source and I said, you said this, does it say that I apologize for the confusion? And it says no, um or it said I don’t have access to Joseph F Smith’s journal. So then I said, well, then how can you quote from it if you don’t have access to it? And it said you’re correct. I can’t quote from it. So I said, can you verify this? And it said, no, I can’t verify it because I don’t have access to it. But it kept kicking out that response to me. So I had to do a ton of like chat GP t way harder because I had to check everything online and go on these wild goose hunts looking for wild goose chases, looking for sources that didn’t exist. Like that source does not exist, right? And, um, but I had to keep getting it. It kept telling me. And so I asked at one point, how old was Joseph F Smith in 1843? Because it was quoting Joseph F Smith, it says Joseph F Smith was born this year. Therefore, he would have been around four or five years old. So I asked if it’s reasonable to think that he would have had

[01:26:55] knowledge of Flora Woodworth marriage to Joseph Smith. No, it wouldn’t have been reasonable. I, because I’d already asked, who was he quoting who, you know, and it couldn’t, it would make things up or tell me it couldn’t tell me because it didn’t have access to the source. We finally eliminated that source. I went on to many other questions. What is the evidence that Joseph Smith was the author of Doctrine and Covenant section 132. And it gives me a big long answer. It includes um among other things historical at attribution, contemporary accounts, um consistency with Joseph Smith’s teachings and acceptance by the LDS church. I didn’t have any problem with that last one, but a lot of the things that said in these other things were very problematic for example, um contemporary accounts, there are accounts from individuals who were close to Joseph Smith and claim to have witnessed him receiving the revelation. So they were witnesses, the individual, these individuals include Brigham Young who became the second president of the LDS Church and William Clayton. So I um then another thing that said, well, see I’ll get to, I don’t want to bore you too much, but it just would keep throwing out factually wrong things. Also, the consistency with Joseph Smith’s teaching. These are two of the many things that I dug down. And so I said, when did Brigham Young claim to witness Joseph Smith’s revel receiving the revelation? What quote are you referring to? I apologize. Brigham Young was not a witness and then, um you know, I would have to, it would keep telling me he was until I would really make it like, like prove to itself that it wasn’t. But interestingly, if I would come back to it later on, it would still, it would still make the same errors. So William Clayton claimed to be the only witness since Joseph and Hiram are um were both dead. Is that when he recorded his affidavit, is that correct? And it said, yes, thank you for correcting me, blah, blah, blah. Um Let’s see. Oh, you said that one section 132 is consistent with Joseph Smith’s teachings. How do you defend that claim? And then in light of the scriptures in the book of Mormon, the Doctrine and covenants that I told it, told it about a husband and wife cleaving to each other. And then out you are correct that the book of Mormon uh foundational text does not explicitly endorse or promote polygamy. It teaches the principle of Phil monogamy and emphasizes that importance. Um Same with doctrine and covenants. And then it just goes on to say that doctrine and covenants 132 supersedes all of the previous things taught by Joseph Smith is, is how, how we are supposed to understand that. So, um let’s see. Oh, I asked, they did well here, what are some of the main reasons? People do not believe Joseph Smith practiced polygamy and it gave me a reasonable list last lack of explicit and direct evidence that goes on to each of these contradictions and inconsistencies. Um Questioning of the credibility of the questioning, the credibility of the witnesses like William Clayton, really the only witness, right? Um emphasis on official denials and public teachings and alternative explanations for some of the evidence. So I thought that that was actually a pretty decent list. And um but then I asked, how would you respond to the five points listed above? Why are they wrong? Right. And um it was really interesting this again, here are some of the things that said as it tested by multiple contemporaneous accounts and witnesses from various sources. And then it would me while those things were wrong. So, multiple contemporaneous accounts and testimonies from various sources that repeated that several times. And so I said, you said multiple contemporaneous accounts exist that provide overwhelming evidence. Can you provide me a list of what those are? And it threw out a list of nonsense. It got William Clayton’s journal, Joseph Smith’s journal, Hiram Smith’s letter. It said uh letter written by Hyrum Hyrum Smith. Joseph Smith’s brother in 1842. He acknowledged the existence of plural marriage and its practice among a select few. This letter provides indirect evidence of Joseph Smith’s involvement in polygamy. Again. Dug down. Oh, I’m so sorry. No, no such letter exists. You’re right. No such letter exists. And Joseph Smith’s journals, I had to dig down. They don’t say anything about polygamy. They were recorded by Willard Richards mainly, right? So they’re problematic anyway, but they certainly don’t have direct evidence of polygamy. Um He, he mentioned several other things. It said that there were

[01:30:52] um contemporaneous records of marriages and ceilings, which is also not true, like like marriage certificates and records. So I had to dig down into each one of these to throw. So that’s what I’m saying. What I would ask for actual evidence. It would just throw out a bunch of stuff. I said to it, you made sense errors in the above response. Can you double check them and find them? You know? And so it revamped and took out some of the errors, but gave me some new ones, it kept just coming up with evidence that doesn’t exist to support Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I eventually asked, what is the definition of contemporaneous evidence? And it said contemporaneous evidence refers to evidence that is created or produced during the same time period as the events or circumstances it pertains to um it goes on to explain it more, but it’s basically, it has to be written right there at the same time. So we do know what contemporary evidence is. You look for um newspaper articles at the time or journal entries that you can validate were not written after the fact and it has to also be released. Um I said can a record that has not been released? William Clayton’s journal be considered contemporaneous as to previous time period? No, a record that has not been released or made available to a to the public cannot be considered contemporaneous evidence to a previous time period. It has to be uh what does it say? Um Contemporaneous evidence refers to records that were created or produced during the specific time period being studied for a record to be considered contemporaneous. It needs to have existed and been accessible during that time allowing for direct connect to the events or circumstances in question. If a record remains unreleased or inaccessible, it cannot be considered contemporaneous evidence as it has not been made available for examination or verification by researchers or historians Hello. William Clayton’s journals. Right. And so I asked have William Clinton’s journals been made publicly available because it continued to list those. No, they have not. So, can they be considered contemporaries? No, they, anyway, I’m sure I am boring you to death with this. It was really entertaining as it got me. Um, a as every time I would plow down and get it to acknowledge that some of its evidence was not valid, then it would shoot out new evidence and also not valid. I can’t tell you how many times I could apologize for the incorrect statement in my previous response. And um, I it it just goes on and on and on. So I, there was so I know there were other things I specifically wanted to address because they were so interesting. But um, oh yeah, it just kept creating new, like it created a speech from Orson Pratt in 1843 that he preached about me. It created that letter from Hiram. It created things from Eliza Snow and from, from just dozens and dozens of false claims of evidence that exists, that is not there. And then every time it asked for contemporaneous accounts, it would claim that later accounts were contemporaneous and it couldn’t stick to it. So anyway, I, I have pages and pages more than I was going to read, but obviously, it’s too much. I just want to come to the general point of like, like you guys go ahead and experiment with this and get it to give you the evidence and then plow down on each specific thing and make it really validate or verify that evidence, especially contemporaneous evidence. It’s very good at saying we have all of these sources, you know, but when you try to get it to say, why is that good proof or what about this or especially to get it to give you contemporaneous or firsthand sources. It gets really interesting what it throws out. And so it goes on and on and on and um the error rate shocked me. That’s why I looked it up to see what it was supposed to be because it was so much higher here, way, way above 20%. And so I came up with, as I was doing this, I kind of had a hunch. I was like, OK, I researchers don’t know how GP T works. They don’t know exactly what it’s doing, how it’s thinking, right. But what they do know is that it is taking in all of the information and using all of that information to generate responses through the means of human language. Right? And so that’s, that’s basically what we know. And so what I started to think was OK, the general consensus is that it is certain it is, the case is closed on Joseph’s polygamy, we know it for sure. Right. And so, so that’s the message it’s getting. So when I ask for specific bits of information. My my guess was what I thought was, it must assume that there, that there has to be evidence to validate the certainty of our claim. I hope that’s making sense. Like chat G BT knows very well that Joseph Smith absolutely was a polygamist as agreed on by

[01:35:26] almost all scholars and historians and researchers, right? And so therefore, there must be evidence to support that claim. So when I ask for the evidence, it just keeps shooting out the evidence that it’s predicting must be, be there. That that was like the best explanation I could have. And I was going, I wonder if this is possible. This is so interesting. So sure enough, I started reading, it was also based on when I asked chat G BT, why it was doing this? It said many things along the lines of my responses are generated based on pre existing knowledge and general information. It said things like that all the time. So pre-existing knowledge and general information we already know Joseph was a polygamist that’s well known and it’s, it’s already there, right? So it can’t come up with, it can’t do the difficult critical thought of, of um saying could a pre-existing belief be wrong, right. So I thought that was really interesting. So since this was my hunch, I started to do some investigation of if this is happening. Um if this is what was happening and what I found as astonished me. Um Here are some quotes. Chat G BT was trained on the collective writing of humans across the world, past and present. Unfortunately, this means that the same biases that exist in the real world can also appear in, appear in the model. So I wanted to define bias to mean the certainty of a conclusion that is not adequately supported by the quality of evidence to confirm the conclusion. So we like a bias is you believe you are prone to believe something without having the evidence to support it, right? And um in in other words, here’s another quote, the natural language processing model is inherently biased because it receives its information from human sources that are for the most part inherently biased. Isn’t that fascinating? So the answer is yes, Chat G BT is reflecting the bias in this body of knowledge in this, on this topic. In this body of research. We have so much bias that we know for certain that Joseph was a polygamist, but we don’t have the evidence to back it up. So Chat G BT is kicking out the evidence that it’s certain must exist, but it doesn’t have the evidence. So it just comes up with it because it should be there, but it’s not there. I find that to be amazing to me and I like, like I know people will disagree, you know, we can, I think this is a good thing to talk about I think that Chat G BT just provided us massive evidence. I won’t say proof but very near it. It just provided us really solid evidence of the bias that exists on this topic. And I find that to be a, I think that it’s going to um like for example, these changes in 2015 and 2016, the the found uh marriage certificate of Flora Woodworth and like I said, I wasn’t even going to do an episode on it because there are so many cases where stuff like this happens or the DNA evidence in 2016, those are huge things that have happened to alter the evidence we have for Joseph’s polygamy, but they haven’t made a dent in the certainty of the narrative. We have disappearing evidence that does not affect the certainty of the conclusions that were based in at least part. And if not in large part on that evidence that no longer exists or that has been proven to be wrong. Are you getting what I’m saying? So we have less and less evidence, but we don’t have the, the certainty of our conclusions is not reflecting the decreasing evidence, the certainty should be decreasing along with the evidence. And as far as I can see, people can point this out, but we’re not getting more solid evidence that Joseph was a polygamist. The more we learn like DNA didn’t find Children, marriage certificates that we find as we gain more access don’t show us, oh, Joseph was married to this woman, right? The opposite continually happens. That’s the direction it’s going. And so we’re getting all of this new evidence that should be making us re re evaluate our certainty and it’s not happening. And so I think that that’s why I wanted to do this episode because I find it fascinating that we can use chat G BT to, to demonstrate bias in this field. And I think that is worth considering. So I hope other people will start experimenting with this and see what you come up with. Obviously, this is a preliminary um examination of someone who is not technologically gifted, but I’m a good critical thinker and I can have conversations with chat GP T and keep track of the error rate and make a hypothesis of what might be happening and validate. I can validate that hypothesis with quotes and statements from the designers of Chat G BT. So I think that this provides very solid evidence, everything we’ve covered in this episode this long episode. I apologize. It was too long again.

[01:40:13] I think it provides very solid evidence of the fact that our certainty of Joseph Smith’s polygamy far outstretches, the quality of the evidence, we have to support that certainty. So that’s, that’s the episode today. Thank you for joining me and stick, stick around. Because next week, I hope if Jeremy is able to get it done, we’re going to have at least the first episode on Clayton. And also we have the upcoming episode on the Temple and a lot of other things in the work. So thank you so much for joining me and I will see you next time.