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.

Welcome back, everybody.

We are returning to our historical timeline after the last two episodes with historian Chris Smith on the topic of Native American and Mormon relations.

There's always a challenge with this show, a balance that I work to strike every week.

You see, this is a serial Mormon history podcast.

I try to deal with issues

chronologically, but maybe some of you have noticed this. For quite a bit of our Navu episodes,

I've had to deal with issues topically as they arise, which requires kind of bouncing around

the timeline a little bit. No other topic in Navu history requires a topical treatment as opposed to chronological than

Mormon politics and polygamy, which is what we're going to be discussing today.

You see, politics of the 1840s were interesting, right?

If we consider our political sphere complex today, always keep in mind that it's always been

perceived as just complex and chaotic to people who are living at the time.

You know, politics is up in our faces today with the 24-hour news cycle and social media and Twitter.

But even in the absence of those tools, politics has always been the dog-eat-dog kind of world that we see today, just operating further out of the view of the public eye.

Now, there may be a case to be made that by percentage, more people are aware of and engaged in

politics today than at any other time in American history, but that's largely been a result of

...