Informed Saints

The podcast where you can learn about everything from polygamy to gold plates. Hosted by Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, and Jasmin Rappleye.

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S1 · E53
Yesterday · 1 hr 6 min
General Conference October 2026 Recap and Analysis
We're diving into the top highlights and reveals of the October 2026 General Conference, including a surprising address from President Christofferson on the spiritual dangers of gambling. ===Informed Saints Credits=== Produced by: The Ancient America Foundation Producer: Spencer Clark Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye https://ancientamerica.org/ ===Discover=== If any of our thoughts resonated with you, consider learning more about the single most influential book in our live
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S1 · E52
September 27 · 55 min
How a Dead Sea Scrolls Translator Reads Isaiah
Jesus told us to search Isaiah diligently—so why does it so often feel like a closed book? What if the passages that confuse us most are actually some of the most carefully crafted poetry in all of scripture? Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Dr. Donald W. Parry—professor of Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls at BYU, a member of the international team of Dead Sea Scrolls translators since 1994, and one of the few scholars with his depth of expertise on the Great
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S1 · E51
September 20 · 49 min
Where Is the Hill Cumorah? (The Truth About Book of Mormon Geography)
Everyone knows where the Hill Cumorah is… right? Joseph Smith received the gold plates from a hill in upstate New York. But is that the same hill where Mormon hid the Nephite records and the Nephites made their last stand in Mormon 6? It's one of the most debated questions in Book of Mormon geography, and the history behind it may surprise you. In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot walk through what the Book of Mormon itself says about Cumorah, tr
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S1 · E50
September 13 · 1 hr 8 min
Most LDS Faith Crises Start in the Wrong Place. Here's Where to Begin.
Most people having a faith crisis are fighting on the branches — polygamy, DNA, the Book of Abraham, race and the priesthood — when the actual problem is buried somewhere underneath. What happens if you go all the way down to the roots and ask why anything exists at all? Use discount code INFORMED15 for 15% off Walker Wrights Book! https://fairlatterdaysaints.org/store/product/nourishing-the-roots/ Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Walker Wright, author of Nourish
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S1 · E49
September 9 · 58 min
What Church Looked Like Before the 3-Hour Block
The first sacrament meeting of the Restoration was held on a Tuesday. Latter-day Saints once drank homemade currant wine from a shared cup, sang hymns one line at a time because half the congregation couldn't read, and listened to music playing during the administration of the sacrament. Almost everything we picture when we say the word "church" is younger than we think. Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot trace nearly two centuries of change in Latter-day Saint Sabbath worship —
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S1 · E48
August 23 · 36 min
What 'Utterly Destroy' Really Means in the Book of Joshua
When Israel entered Canaan, the Bible says they were commanded to leave "nothing alive that breathes." Did God really command that — and did it actually happen? The Hebrew word behind the command, herem, tells a far more complicated story than you've heard. Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot dig into David Calabro's chapter on herem from From Wilderness to Monarchy (Religious Studies Center) — exploring what the word really means, what the archaeology of Jericho, Ai, and Hazor ac
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S1 · E47
August 16 · 20 min
Mi'kmaq vs. the Gold Plates: Does the Comparison Hold Up?
A widely shared chart in an edition of an annotated Book of Mormon claims the characters Joseph Smith copied from the gold plates match an old Native American hieroglyphic script. But when one researcher traced every glyph back to its source, the trail led somewhere no one expected — to the most infamous forger in Latter-day Saint history. In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Jerry Grover: an independent Book of Mormon researcher, geologist, and autho
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S1 · E46
August 9 · 26 min
Song of Solomon: Can Uninspired Writing Be Scripture?
There's a book in your scriptures that Joseph Smith flagged as "not inspired," that Elder Bruce R. McConkie once called "biblical trash," and that the Come Follow Me manual skipped over entirely. It's also quoted three times in the Doctrine and Covenants — including in the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer. So what exactly is the Song of Solomon doing in our canon? Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot work through Dana Pike's chapter on the Song of Solomon in From Wilderness to Mon
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S1 · E45
August 2 · 43 min
The Hebrew Grammar Joseph Smith Tried to Delete from the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon will not stop telling you where the record is. Who's holding it. Who handed it off. What they did with it and why. A retired trial attorney read that and recognized something from thirty years in courtrooms: a chain of custody. Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Stephen Lundwall: retired IP and business attorney and former BYU religion faculty, to talk about Authentic: The Book of Mormon, Evidences of a Miracle, written with his wife Rebecca Lundw
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S1 · E44
July 26 · 1 hr
Did Brigham Young Order the Mountain Meadows Massacre?
On September 11, 1857, Latter-day Saints, assisted by a group of Paiutes, killed between 100 and 140 men, women, and children of an Arkansas wagon train at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. There is no way to soften that. So this episode asks the harder questions head-on: how did a people who had been driven from their own homes commit the worst atrocity in their history; and did Brigham Young order it? Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Dr. Casey Griffiths — assis
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S1 · E43
July 19 · 34 min
What Most Latter-day Saints Miss About Facsimile 2
The facsimiles are the only pictures in Latter-day Saint scripture — and Facsimile 2 is the strangest of them. Critics say Egyptologists translated it long ago and "disproved" the Book of Abraham. Some Saints treat it as secret temple code waiting to be cracked. So what can we actually know about this mysterious circle? Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Egyptologist Dr. John Gee (MA, Berkeley; PhD, Yale) — one of the few scholars published on hypocephali in mainstr
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S1 · E42
July 12 · 44 min
What Most Readers Miss About the Sword of Laban
Critics once called the Book of Mormon's weapons a fatal flaw — steel swords in 600 BC? Scimitars a thousand years before Muhammad? Bows and arrows in ancient America? Then archaeology started coming into play. In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot dig into Matthew Roper's Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence for the Book of Mormon, published through the Interpreter Foundation — an exhaustive documentation of weapons critics once claimed couldn't have existed. ===Info
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S1 · E41
July 7 · 51 min
The Data About Latter-day Saint Women the Media Won't Tell You
People online will tell you Latter-day Saints are leaving the Church in droves — especially women. But when social scientists actually run the numbers, a very different story emerges. In this episode,the Informed Saints crew sit down with Dr. Jenet Erickson — professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, Wheatley Institute fellow, and Deseret News columnist — alongside co-hosts Neal Rappleye and Stephen Smoot to unpack the new BYU Studies report, Latter-day Saint Trends
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S1 · E40
June 28 · 39 min
Was Joseph Smith's Presidential Run a Power Grab? The Real Story
Joseph Smith was the first U.S. presidential candidate ever assassinated while campaigning — but almost no one knows why the Prophet decided to run in the first place. After Missouri's extermination order, a president who shrugged, and five candidates who refused to lift a finger, running for president became the last option left to secure the rights of the Latter-day Saints — and every other persecuted minority in America. In this episode, hosts Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoo
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S1 · E39
June 21 · 40 min
Joseph Smith was NOT a criminal killed in a gunfight
What if the weapon that killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage Jail wasn't really a gun — but the legal system itself? Most Latter-day Saints have only a vague sense of why Joseph was even in that jail on June 27, 1844. The real story goes back years, and it looks a lot like a conspiracy. Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot trace "the road to Carthage" — drawing on Carthage Conspiracy by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill (University of Illinois Press) and Joseph I. Bentley's "R
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S1 · E38
June 14 · 35 min
Did Joseph Smith Fall for the Kinderhook Plates?
Did Joseph Smith try to translate a known hoax? In 1843, forged brass plates dug from a burial mound near Kinderhook, Illinois were rushed to Nauvoo, and critics have used the story ever since as proof that Joseph Smith was a fraud. But the documented history tells a very different story — one most members (and most critics) have never heard. In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot break down what really happened when the Kinderhook Plates came to town: who forged the
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S1 · E37
June 7 · 28 min
Joseph Smith's 1843 Vision Most Latter-day Saints Have Never Heard
In April 1843, Joseph Smith stood on the Nauvoo temple grounds and described a vision he had received: he had seen the resurrected dead take each other by the hand and embrace one another, reuniting families across the veil. Most Latter-day Saints know that handclasps carry sacred significance in temple worship — but very few know that this exact motif runs through the entire ancient world, from the Hebrew Bible to early Christianity to Byzantine art to Egyptian temple ritual. In this episode,
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S1 · E36
May 24 · 1 hr 14 min
Mesoamerica vs. The Heartland: The Book of Mormon Geography Debate
Where did the Book of Mormon actually take place? It's one of the most divisive internal debates among Latter-day Saints — and one of the most misunderstood. In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Brant Gardner — author of the six-volume Second Witness commentary on the Book of Mormon and one of the most widely published Book of Mormon scholars working today — to lay out the methodological, archaeological, anthropological, and textual case for Mesoameri
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S1 · E35
May 17 · 23 min
Abinadi Was Right | Stunning Evidence From Two Ancient Worlds
What is the "east wind" in the Book of Mormon? Why would it have struck terror into King Noah's people? On the surface, Abinadi's warning that the people would "reap the east wind which bringeth immediate destruction" (Mosiah 7:31) sounds almost forgettable. But this detail turns out to be one of the most quietly powerful pieces of evidence for the Book of Mormon's ancient origins. In this episode, Jasmin, Neal, and Stephen unpack a fascinating paper by BYU professor Kerry Hull titled "An East
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S1 · E34
May 10 · 35 min
The Brazen Serpent: The Weirdest Symbol in the Bible — EXPLAINED
Why on earth would looking at a bronze snake on a pole heal someone bitten by a serpent? It's one of the strangest stories in the Old Testament and most readers move past it without a second thought. But ancient Near Eastern artifacts, Israelite seals, and details preserved in the Book of Mormon reveal that the Brazen Serpent (the Nehushtan of Numbers 21) was anything but arbitrary. It was the perfect symbol and Nephi knew exactly why. ===Informed Saints Credits=== Produced by The Ancient Amer
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