1 2 3 testing 1 2 3 this is Radio Free Mormon on the air broadcasting behind enemy

lines tonight's episode part two of magic and Mormonism.

This is the second part in a series of podcasts I am doing looking at how a knowledge of

certain rudimentary aspects of stage magic can help inform our understanding of events

in early church history.

I've already mentioned a number of examples of this in part one of this series.

I want to elaborate right now on something I did say in part one of this series it had

to do with my theory that Joseph Smith may have intentionally placed focus on his

seer stone so that his audience would place their attention on the stone and not think

about the hat in which Joseph Smith placed the stone in order to dictate the text of

the book of Mormon I suggested that perhaps the gimmick involved had nothing to do with

the rock and everything to do with the hat.

I further suggested that Joseph Smith by some means or contrivance placed notes written

on pieces of paper prepared beforehand in the bottom of the hat and this is what he

was going off of during the process of dictation.

I am not suggesting that this was the entire text of the book of Mormon but this was merely

an outline of main points that Joseph Smith wanted to cover.

In fact it's very similar to the way that Bill real prepares for his podcasts.

I'm the kind of person who typically makes a lot of notes pages and pages of notes in

order to prepare for a podcast and I was stunned to find out early on that Bill real does

his podcasts in a very different way.

All that Bill real does is he takes a piece of scrap paper sometimes, jots down a few ideas

...