I'm your host Brent Metcalfe. Let's talk Mormon studies.

If you don't know now, then you will do.

Folks, I am absolutely thrilled today to be kicking off a new podcast series called Mormon Studies.

And with me today as a first guest, I am absolutely thrilled to have Jan Ships.

She would be considered, I think, a scholar-scholar. I consider the matron saint of Mormon studies,

and she is just a brilliant gifted researcher.

She was a professor of American history at Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis.

And she is an author of a number of books, some of the most important being Mormonism,

the story of a new religious tradition, as well as sojourner in the Promised Land,

40 years among the Mormons. And Jan holds a distinctive position of being a prolific writer on Mormon history,

while she herself is not LDS. But I think that she is considered a friend among many and an insisive and insightful interpreter of Mormonism.

And I welcome you, Jan. Thank you for being here.

I'm happy to be here, and it's very...

It always makes me realize that I've been here a long time in Mormon studies when you move from calling me the den mother of Mormon studies to the matron Mormon studies.

Well, you know something, Jan, I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this podcast.

And, you know, I think I remember first meeting you in the early 1980s.

And if I remember correctly, it was at a Sunstone Symposium at one of the after event gatherings.

And you were just such a gracious host. You invited so many of the young students and scholars up to your hotel room where we could all gather for a huge chat fest.

And what a wonderful opportunity it was to share ideas and thoughts.

And now I look back on the group who was in attendance and you know how many have gone on to become such remarkable scholars and contributors to Mormon studies.

And very fond memories of those events.

Those events, Stan Kimball, who is no longer with us, but Stan Kimball, who wrote the biography of Heaver Kimball,

...