I am Ryan McKnight. I'm Kara Santa Maria. I am Christopher Smith. Hi, I'm Andrew Torres. This is

Naked Mormonism. The Serial Mormon History podcast. It's been busy over here at Ground

Gnome's Mobile Studios, so I'm warning you at the onset that this episode might be a little bit shorter than most of the historical timeline episodes.

So the last episode you heard was a presentation for a local post-Mormon meetup group in St. George.

Now, some of you may also have seen the recent Mormon Stories interview on the Spalding Theory that just aired on the Mormon Stories Facebook group page earlier this week, soon to be on the actual podcast feed for the Mormon stories and on their website.

And finally, when this episode airs, I'm going to be on my way to Sunstone in Short Creek where I'll be conducting interviews of attendees, which will comprise next week's episode before we return to the regular

swing of things. So what's on the docket today? Well, here's a little peek behind the curtain here.

De Michael Quinn is the keynote speaker for this year's Sunstone in Short Creek, and I'd really

like to interview him while there. I've had no confirmation whatsoever that I'll be able to do so, but Lindsay Park

has set me up in a room near the actual symposium room in order to conduct interviews, and she's

given me first choice of what to air on this feed, and then I'm going to give the rest of those

interviews to Sunstone to do with what they please. That means I'll hopefully be able to interview Dr. Quinn, but there's no guarantee.

But what I can't guarantee is that whoever we have on for next week's show is sure to be an

elect interview with a supremely called individual. As for today, I thought we'd tackle an

interesting subject in early Mormonism. Now, I've been brushing up on early Mormonism in the

Magic World View, which is one of Quinn's most well-known books, you know, on the history of the

early church. It's something that seems like it's been done and done so many times, right?

This whole sphere of post and secular Mormon podcasts, we've really broached the subject of magic

and early Mormonism and the occultism and scrying and everything.

You know, it seems like it's been done over and over again. And we've even done it a few times on this show, as the subject matter is called for it.

But the thing is, the magic worldview of the 19th century is truly a bottomless well of information that is so crucial to understanding the cultural frame

of reference into which Mormonism was born. So what do I mean by that? Well, we can study

...