Hello and welcome to the Scriptures or Real podcast.

I'm your host, Carrie Mulestein, and this is the podcast where we talk about things in the scriptures that have become more real to us and that have made the scriptures real to us because we believe there's a power in the scriptures and we draw on that better when they become real to us and we need that power. I'm excited for our guest today, a good friend in mine, George Pierce,

who teaches in the same department that I do, who has his degree, actually from the same

school that I do from UCLA. His was in biblical archaeology. I don't know if that's exactly

the right title. He'll correct me when I'm wrong. I first met George. This will tell you a little bit

about him when he, his wife, Crystal, who I hope to have on the program as well, she got her

degree from UCLA in Egyptian archaeology, so a very similar degree to mine, but I first met the two

of them. Well, I'd met Crystal before. I first met George when he was on his honeymoon at an excavation.

If that tells you anything about George, then there you go.

So welcome, George.

All right.

Thanks for having me.

Appreciate that.

Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

I graduated.

Okay.

I am originally from Florida. I grew up, born and raised in central Florida.

In fact, my undergraduate work was at a college in Florida in history with a minor in biblical studies.

And then I had no intentions of going into archaeology or anything like that.

I had one class of biblical archaeology as an undergrad.

And then through various twists and turns after graduating from college,

I realized that I wanted to go back to grad school.

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