All right, most of us go through a period in our lives where we ask ourselves the big questions about life, right?

Like, what am I here for? What's next? Is this all there is? Etc. But there was a time in America when all sorts of new religions began popping up to answer those questions.

Because, hey, it was a new land, partly founded on religious freedom.

Looking back, there was a lot of mysticism involved in these new movements, although

honestly, that's true in pretty much every religion, even today. But the founding of the

Mormon church in America sounds almost like a science fiction novel and a little bit of a murder mystery.

I'm Patty Steele.

Joseph Smith's life of spirituality with a dose of murder, mayhem, and sex.

That's next on the backstory.

This is an I-Heart podcast.

Okay. This is an I-Heart podcast. The backstory is back.

When Europeans first arrived in America, they were mainly looking for religious freedom,

which obviously wasn't really a thing in most European countries at the time.

And that worked for a couple of centuries,

but even those folks eventually had very little religious tolerance

for new ways of finding spiritual fulfillment.

Problem is, as the world rapidly changed with new inventions,

new ways to travel outside of your own community, new questions

arose about life, who we are, and what we're doing here. Now, the thing is, the old beliefs

weren't answering all those new questions. That's where Joseph Smith found himself as a poor,

hardworking teenager asking a whole lot of questions.

It's the 1820s in upstate New York. New religious movements were constantly popping up.

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