Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host,

John DeLin. It's November 24th, 2020. And I could not be more excited to have back with us on

Mormon Stories Podcast. Dr. Matt Harris. Matt Harris is a professor of history at Colorado State

University, Pueblo. We recently had a Matt or Dr. Harris on Mormon Stories Podcast for an epic

series on Ezra Tap Benson. I highly highly recommend you all check that out. But today we are going to be

featuring yet another book that Matt Harris co-edited along with the legendary Neil Nool Bringerst.

The book is called the LDS Gospel Topic Series, A Scholarly Engagement. And it is published by

none other than Signature Books, one of the most important publishers in the history of Mormonism,

if not the most important publishing houses in history of Mormonism. Right now, go buy this book.

Just one chapter alone, which we're going to be covering next. And the chapter is called

Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings. Biamat Harris himself is worth

the purchase of this book alone. We're covering that chapter along with many other chapters

in future Mormon Stories Podcast episodes, the one with Matt today. But today, we're going to be

talking about sort of a history of the Gospel Topics essays that is chronicle in the introduction

to this book. The introduction is called Why the Gospel Topics Essays. And it's basically

Matt Harris's attempt to put together a timeline of many of the events that led to the creation

of the Gospel Topic essays. And part of what's a little bit weird, and I'm going to ask everyone's

forgiveness on this, as an interviewer, one of the things I always like to try and do is get out

of the way and just let my interview ease talk. And sometimes I like to jump in and sometimes

that frustrates people. What's going to be a little bit complicating about this particular interview

with Matt is that I was probably a pretty important or big part to the events that led to

the release of the essays. And we're going to talk about all that today. But I just need you to

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