Welcome to the Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast. I’m your host Laura Harris Hales. I created this podcast over four and a half years ago. As I prepare to shutter the production, I am going to follow the example of fellow podcaster Nick Galieti and post an introductory episode explaining how this podcast got started, what I hoped to accomplish, and what you can expect as you listen. The story of this podcast began in June 2016. After co-authoring the book, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding and the website josephsmithspolygamy.org, my husband and I were asked to speak a ..read more

R. Eric Smith Matthew C. Godfrey The Interview In this episode of Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast, Laura Harris Hales interviews R. Eric Smith and Matthew C. Godfrey about Know Brother Joseph: New Perspectives on Joseph Smith’s Life and Character, the new book that they coedited with Matthew J. Grow. The Joseph Smith Papers Project has published thousands of pages of transcripts, introductions, footnotes, and supplemental materials in recent years. The project’s print volumes have sold more than 200,000 copies, and last year alone, the project’s website, josephsmithpapers.org, had more ..read more

About the Interview: Celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the Restoration has proven to be one of the few highlights of 2020 for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In commemoration, the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles issued a Bicentennial Proclamation that boldly affirmed beliefs in a restored church, restored priesthood authority (including priesthood keys), restored revelation through living prophets, and a restored fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This declaration affirmed church leaders’ consistent message regarding the importance of past revelations and t ..read more

The Interview: In this episode of the Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast, Laura Harris Hales interviews Mark Ashurst-McGee, co-author of a new in-depth study of the Kinderhook plates saga. It is well-known that Joseph Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon by “the gift and power of God” from a set of golden plates that he found in a stone box buried in a hill near his home. Lesser known is his later translation from a collection of brass plates disinterred from an Indian burial mound near Kinderhook, Illinois, located about seventy miles downstream from Nauvoo. The History of t ..read more

About the Interview: Many relationships may be improved simply by practicing good communication skills. In this interview, Emil Harker discusses a program for improving our ability to communicate well in crucial conversations. Over the past 20 years, he has counseled thousands of couples on how to improve their marriages by applying 7 critical skills: Assuming Good Intent Defining and Accepting Reality Communicating with the Desired Outcome in Mind Clear, Direct, and Sensitive Communication Killing Criticisms Fencing Conflict Disarming Landmines Listen as Emil Harker discusses how we can imp ..read more

About the Interview: The mayhem of 2020 has brought the Apocalypse to the forefront of many people’s minds, but for Latter-day Saints, this kind of thinking is nothing new. Christopher J. Blythe describes in his new book, Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints and the American Apocalypse, how apocalypticism has presented itself throughout the church’s history. Blythe notes, “Latter-day Saints of the nineteenth century belonged to an apocalyptic tradition. Their very identity was entangled with the belief that society was headed toward cataclysmic events that would uproot the current social ord ..read more

The Interview: In this episode of the LDS Perspectives Podcast, Laura Harris Hales interviews Mark Ashurst-McGee, a co-editor of a new book, Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity. The Book of Mormon is well known, but there were several subsequent texts that Joseph Smith translated after the Book of Mormon. This collaborative volume is the first to provide in-depth analysis of each and every one of Joseph Smith’s translation projects. The compiled chapters explore Smith’s translation projects in focused detail and in broad co ..read more

This is Laura Harris Hales, and I am pleased to introduce a special series for the Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast’s fourth season. We will be highlighting chapters from the much-anticipated volume, Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid. In anticipation for our fourth-year launch on September 16, 2020, this is the second interview with a chapter author we will be highlighting. This week’s feature first aired as Episode 51. In this episode, Dr. Ma ..read more

For the Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast’s fourth season, we will be highlighting chapters from the much-anticipated volume, Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid. In anticipation for our fourth-year launch on September 16, 2020, we will be rereleasing interviews with chapter authors. This week’s feature first aired as Episode 55. In our discussion, Dr. Thomas A. Wayment covers his research for his chapter “A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Cl ..read more

About the Interview: Daniel O. McClellan won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2nd Annual Book of Mormon Studies Association conference for his paper on the linguistic and rhetorical contexts of 2 Nephi 25:23. In his work as a translation coordinator for the Church, he noticed that there were inconsistencies in the translation of this verse that led to misunderstandings. This finding led him to get to the roots of the phrase by studying the historical context of the reading. His research provides persuasive arguments to an interpretation of grace that clears up common misunderstandings o ..read more