Joseph Smith & Fanny Alger: Barely Scraping By
Mormon Discussions Podcasts – Full Lineup
Bill Reel
4.3 • 618 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 241 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Was Joseph Smith’s relationship with Fanny Alger an early plural marriage, a sexless sealing, or a scandalous sexual affair? Long before Nauvoo polygamy, secret sealings, or theological justifications, there was Fanny Alger; a teenage girl living in Joseph and Emma Smith’s home in Kirtland, Ohio. When the relationship was discovered, it triggered scandal, apostasy, and… Read More »Joseph Smith & Fanny Alger: Barely Scraping By
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right. Welcome, everybody. Mormonism live, exciting episode tonight. We're going to do a deep dive into Fannie Elker, Joseph Smith, and whatever the hell the relationship was that the two of them had. How are you, RFM? |
| 0:14.0 | I'm fine. And by the way, we're not just doing this for Grins. I know we've talked about this before, but there's new stuff that Bill found out, and then he found out more stuff. |
| 0:22.2 | It's been really thrilling watching him get all excited about a subject and research it for actually days. |
| 0:28.9 | He's been researching this for days, Jonah. |
| 0:32.4 | Jonah Barnes, when Jonah Barnes said, you guys, for me to understand all the quotes from Brigham Young, |
| 0:39.3 | I'd have to spend days on it. |
| 0:42.0 | That would take days. |
| 0:43.4 | Days. |
| 0:44.0 | Well, folks, I've spent days because that's what you deserve. |
| 0:47.3 | You deserve the person and people as we go into this to know the stuff that they're talking about. |
| 0:52.0 | So tonight, I'll just say RFM, a couple little caveats. |
| 0:56.5 | A lot of people have covered this topic. I just recently, just yesterday, I already had most of my |
| 1:01.4 | stuff prepared, although I will thank John Turner for one thing that got added tonight. |
| 1:06.8 | But I listened to John DeLynn's conversation with John Turner about Fannie Alger. I've seen other podcast to it. |
| 1:12.2 | We've covered various parts of Fannie Alger and that story in the past before. |
| 1:16.7 | Tonight is going to be, I think, dynamically different. |
| 1:20.0 | I think it's going to add a bunch to this conversation. |
| 1:23.1 | And one of the coolest things that happened was that as you and I were reviewing all of the stuff for tonight's show, all the slides, we put the history into an order that I think will make the most sense to us and to the audience. |
| 1:38.3 | And there were connections that you and I were making in our conversation. I sure as hell hope they come out tonight. But we made connections during our conversation that I think we'll be enlightening to the |
| 1:50.0 | audience. And I think this is going to be a lot of fun for all of us. So folks, welcome to all of you. |
| 1:56.2 | Glad you're here. RFM. Any thoughts from you before we jump in? |
| 2:00.2 | I'm very excited about tonight. I know there's a lot of information to cover, so |
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