Welcome to another episode of Mormon Discussion Podcast.

I'm your host Bill Real, and I've got a special guest with me today.

Steve, would you mind introducing yourself to folks?

Yes, thank you, Bill.

My name is Stephen Pynaker of Mormon Book Reviews, a YouTube podcast that I started a couple of years ago.

And I'm an evangelical Christian who's never been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ

for Latter-day Saints or any restoration branch, but I've always been very fascinated in the

restoration.

So that was the impetus of me starting the channel, was to review the books in my bookcase.

But it would later, it actually very quickly would become one of the top destinations for some

of the top scholars and Mormon influencers in Mormonism, including in Christianity as well as atheism, all branches.

And so it's one of those just great little stories of this outsider who lives in Florida, originally from Chicago, who just always had a lifetime fascination with Mormonism.

And just really like, I like innovative people.

I like people with original thinking and ideas. And so one of the things I try to do with my channel

is there's all these self-appointed gatekeepers that basically are there to say, no, you're not

acceptable. You're verboten. And so we're not going to allow, give you a platform or we're going to

make sure you don't get a platform. And so one of the goals of my channel has always been to do an end round around the self-appointed gatekeepers and give people who don't have the voice or the platform, give them a platform to speak. So that's why I have many, many people from some of the smaller branches of the restoration to come on to tell their story.

And I hear back from LDS folk all the time.

They're fascinated by hearing about all these other groups.

But then I also find like maybe scholars who are maybe Mavericks, maybe have original ideas.

And I get them on.

And one example of that would be, of course, would be Jonathan Neville, who I just kind of found some of his theses, hypotheses,

...