PODCAST · religion
Informed Saints
by Informed Saints
The podcast where you can learn about everything from polygamy to gold plates. Hosted by Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, and Jasmin Rappleye.
Episodes
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Were the Nephites the Maya? A BYU Mesoamericanist Answers
Was Quetzalcoatl really Jesus Christ? Is the famous "Lehi Stone" actually a carving of Lehi's tree of life? And if the Book of Mormon is true, why hasn't DNA found the Nephites? A Mesoamerican historian who believes the Book of Mormon takes on the myths that never seem to die. In this episode,...
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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:...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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…
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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.…
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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…
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Linguist Finds 1,650 Hebrew Words Hidden in Ancient American Languages
What if the strongest evidence for the Book of Mormon isn't archaeological but linguistic? In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Brian Stubbs, a respected Uto-Aztecan linguist whose foundational comparative dictionary of the language...
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Egyptologists Got Facsimile 3 WRONG (New Research Reveals Why)
Is Facsimile 3 of the Book of Abraham really just a standard Egyptian funerary scene, as critics often claim? New research suggests the answer is far more complicated and far more interesting. In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with...
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Is the Evidence for Gold Plates STRONGER Than the Resurrection?
What if the historical evidence for the gold plates is as strong as the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot sit down with Josh Gailey, an ordained evangelist in the Church of Jesus Christ…
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Scholar DEBUNKS the Biggest Lies About Brigham Young
Brigham Young has one of the most misunderstood reputations in all of Latter-day Saint history. Was he really a tyrannical dictator? A womanizing polygamist? Did he order the Mountain Meadows Massacre or even orchestrate the murder of Joseph Smith? In this episode of Informed Saints, we sit down...
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This General Conference Was RECORD BREAKING | April 2026 Recap and Analysis
We're diving into the top highlights and reveals of the April 2026 General Conference. We'll also be covering the Latter-day Saint celebration of Easter this year. ===Informed Saints Credits=== Produced by: The Ancient America Foundation Producer: Spencer Clark Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal…
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Archaeologist Reveals the REAL Gethsemane (It’s Not What You Think)
Archaeologist Matthew Gray reveals that the Garden of Gethsemane was likely a cave — not an open garden of olive trees. What does that mean for how we understand Jesus’s final night? The archaeology changes everything. Most people picture Jesus kneeling beside a rock in a peaceful grove of olive...
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Could Nephi’s Brass Plates Have Contained the Torah? What Scholars Are Missing...
Did Nephi really have the five books of Moses on the brass plates? Critics say it’s impossible—that the Torah didn’t exist in its current form by 600 BC. But is that the full story? In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot break down the documentary...
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Book of Mormon Names Have Ancient Meanings Nobody Talks About
Are the names in the Book of Mormon ancient or invented? Names like Alma, Nephi, Abish, and Paanchi have been dismissed by critics as fictional — but what does the scholarship actually say? In this episode of Informed Saints, we sit down with Professor Matthew L. Bowen at BYU–Hawaii to explore…
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Book of Mormon vs. View of the Hebrews: Debunking the Plagiarism Claim
Did Joseph Smith copy the Book of Mormon from View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith? In this episode, we examine one of the most common critical claims about the Book of Mormon’s origins and ask whether the evidence really holds up. We break down what View of the Hebrews actually is, why critics...
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Egyptologist Debunks TikTok’s Book of Abraham Claim (They Missed the Whole Story)
The “dark secret” narrative about the Book of Abraham often gets reduced to a 30-second claim: the Church found papyri fragments in 1967, Egyptologists translated them, and they don’t match the Book of Abraham—case closed. In this conversation, we slow down and add the missing context: what the...
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Did Joseph Smith Fake the Gold Plates? Evidence, Witnesses, and the Math
Could Joseph Smith have fabricated the Book of Mormon gold plates in a garage? In this episode, we take a serious look at that claim by comparing it with the actual historical record, eyewitness descriptions, and the physical requirements the witnesses described. We break down the dimensions,...
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The Surprising REAL Reason People Are Leaving The Church
In the 1980s, around 80% of people raised Latter-day Saint still identified with the Church as adults—today it’s closer to 50%. Online, that gets framed as “the Church is uniquely hemorrhaging members.” But when you zoom out and compare to broader U.S. religious trends, the story looks more...
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Abraham’s Story Is the Temple Endowment in Disguise (Jeff Bradshaw Explains)
The restored gospel didn’t “start” in 1830, it’s ancient, and Abraham’s story is one of the clearest windows into the covenant pathway and temple worship. In this conversation with Jeff Bradshaw (senior research scientist and leading Latter-day Saint temple scholar), we explore how the Abraham...
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The Biggest Mistake People Make About DNA and the Book of Mormon
If the Book of Mormon were historical, wouldn’t we see clear “Israelite DNA” in the Americas? That’s the viral claim online—and it’s built on a misunderstanding of how population genetics works. In this episode, we walk through key misconceptions highlighted by geneticists John M. Butler…
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Why the Old Testament Is the Most Misunderstood Scripture | Dr. Joshua Sears
Latter-day Saints have relied on the King James Version for generations—but the Church recently updated the handbook to clarify that other Bible translations may be helpful for personal study. So what does that mean for your Old Testament, Come, Follow Me year? In this episode, BYU professor…
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Abraham’s Lost Astronomy: The Forgotten Star Lore Behind Kolob
Was Abraham really known as an astronomer in the ancient world—and does that help us understand why the Book of Abraham is so packed with stars, hierarchy, and cosmic teaching? In this episode we dig into a surprising (and wide-ranging) tradition found in Second Temple and later Jewish sources:...
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Does God Live on Kolob? Egyptologists Reveal the Book of Abraham’s Secrets
Does God live on a planet called Kolob—or is Kolob a symbol? In this episode, we dive into Abraham 3 with an Egyptologist to unpack why the Lord shows Abraham the heavens before Egypt, and how the “astronomy chapter” becomes a powerful teaching tool about the plan of salvation. You’ll learn why...
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Egyptologist Uncovers Evidence for Book of Abraham Facsimile 1
The Book of Abraham gets more criticism than almost any other LDS scripture—partly because we still have fragments of the papyri and people assume that “settles” everything. In this episode of Informed Saints, we sit down with Egyptologist Kerry Muhlestein to talk through what the evidence…
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Scholar Discovers Lost Biblical Woman...Hiding In Plain Sight
Breaking news in biblical studies: the “elect lady” in 2 John may not be a metaphor for the Church after all—she may be a real woman with a real name: Eclecte. In this episode, New Testament papyrologist Lincoln Blumell (with research assistant Spencer Kraus) explains the textual and grammatical...
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O Little Town of... Jerusalem? Evidence the Book of Mormon was Right all along!
Critics have mocked Alma 7:10 for nearly 200 years: the Book of Mormon says Christ would be born “at Jerusalem,” even though the New Testament says Bethlehem. But once you dig into ancient geography, manuscripts, and archaeology, the criticism gets a lot less confident—and the evidence gets...
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Did Charles Anthon Prove the Book of Mormon? Rethinking the “Anthon Transcript”
In 1828, Martin Harris carried copied characters from the gold plates to Professor Charles Anthon in New York City—and walked away more convinced than ever that the Book of Mormon was real. Anthon, however, later claimed the whole thing was nonsense. So who do we believe, and what actually…
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Apostle Bruce R. McConkie Almost Rewrote Scripture | History of Pearl of Great Price
The Pearl of Great Price is the most unstable book in the Latter-day Saint canon. It started as an 1851 pamphlet in Liverpool, was reshaped by Orson Pratt in the 1870s, canonized in 1880, streamlined by James E. Talmage in 1902, expanded in 1976, and reworked again in 1979–81. And in the 1970s,...
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Do Anachronisms Disprove the Book of Mormon? | Intro & Explanation
Are “anachronisms” proof that the Book of Mormon is a modern forgery—or are critics leaning on outdated data? In this intro episode, we break down what anachronisms actually are and walk through a massive new study that tracks 226 critical claims from 1830 to today. The result? About 77% of those...
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Has the Church Changed Its Story? Why ‘Revelation’ Still Means Translation
Did the Church change its story on the Book of Mormon translation—or are critics missing something important? In this episode of Informed Saints, Jasmin Rappleye sits down with Neal Rappleye and Stephen Smoot to unpack recent online controversy over the Church’s new “Translation of the Book of...
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“We’re Closer Than You Think”: Expert Theologian on Mormonism And Christianity
Can Latter-day Saints and other Christians actually be closer in theology than most people think? In fact are “Mormons” Trinitarians? In this episode we sit down with BYU historian and theologian Grant Underwood, author of Latter-day Saint Theology Among Christian Theologies, to talk about where...
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The Tragic Childhood That Forged A Prophet | Interview With Dallin H. Oaks Biographer
Who Is President Dallin H. Oaks? Biographer Rick Turley on the Life of the LDS Church’s New Prophet In this Informed Saints exclusive, church historian and biographer Richard E. “Rick” Turley Jr. (author of In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks) helps us answer the big question…
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Do Mormons Celebrate Halloween? LDS Halloween History Explained!
Today we are tackling the age old question of, "Do 'Mormons' celebrate Halloween?" While the short answer is, yes. There is a lot of fun nuance to this topic and also it gave us an excuse to dress up and have some more fun with one of these episodes! Thanks for sharing and watching! ===Informed...
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Polygamy Denial Debunked: A Look At The Primary Sources
What do the actual documents say about Nauvoo-era plural marriage? In this episode, we walk through the primary sources behind the claims—reading what was written, when, and by whom—so you can see the evidence for yourself without the noise. In this video you’ll learn: • What D&C 132 (July 12,...
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Were Latter-day Saints Nazis? Secret Files Revealed | Informed Saints
Did the Church “support” the Nazi regime—or were members just trying to survive? In this episode, Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot unpack Nazi secret police files, surveillance reports, banned books, arrests, and a high-level memo stating that Latter-day Saint doctrine is...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The podcast where you can learn about everything from polygamy to gold plates. Hosted by Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, and Jasmin Rappleye.
HOSTED BY
Informed Saints
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Informed Saints currently has 54 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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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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Informed Saints has 54 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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