I'm How did I not see this coming?

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Year of Cool

Gingney podcast.

I'm your host, Lindsay, and I'm bringing you back an old friend, not a relative. Our names

would make you think that we're relatives, but we're not. We're just good old friends. Professor

Ben, Ben, Park, can you say hello? Glad to be here, Lindsay. Ben, have things changed since we've

last talked? Are we brother and sister yet? Like everyone thinks of that? Not as far as I know,

but with my extended family, I can never be too sure. I'm sure we're related somewhere down the

Mormon line, but thanks again for coming on. You have written a new, fantastic book that it's

actually making the rounds. I've heard a lot of people, like people have come to me and say,

have you heard of this book?

Yeah, I've heard of this book.

You've written about Navu.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about you and then this book and how they got started?

And then we'll get into, you've got a lot of goodu was a book I always wanted to write but never thought that I'd be able to do it so soon. I'm a historian of early America and my first book deals with early American politics and national identity and whatnot, but I always maintain an interest in Mormonism because that's what I was raised in. But it wasn't until the LDS Church released in 2016, the Council of 50 records.

These documents had had long been sequestered and had legendary status in the LDS tradition

of being scandalous and salacious and treasonous.

And they were finally released in 2016, much to everyone, excitement.

And when I read those documents, I was just struck by what a potent archival artifact they were

and that they told a much larger story. And so I decided now was my chance to bring my expertise

of early American religion and politics and talk about the Mormon story. And so I wrote

about Kingdom of Navu, which in some ways is kind of the cultural or the historical lead-up and

...