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Episode 151 - “Working” With the “Rod”
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This week opens with Moroni en route from Arkansas, the hosts detouring through the linguistic crime scene of Mantua/“Man Away,” and Abish unveiling the episode cocktail: the “Spiritual Eyes-d Tea”, a peachy Long Island–adjacent blackout-adjacent beverage made with peach iced tea, peach rum, white rum, tequila, peach sparkling water, lemon “eyes,” and a cinnamon-stick “rod” in honor of Oliver Cowdery’s magical little treasure-finding situation. It is thematically perfect: fruity, boozy, spiritually questionable, and ready to help everyone see things that are absolutely not there.
The intro then becomes a full brunch-table catastrophe buffet: Utah wildfires, Abish’s Vegas babymoon, Korean BBQ creating a digestive hostage crisis in a Nephi Maverik, Barnabas forgetting to book the lazy-river hotel, and the criminal offense of taking a catastrophic bathroom shit during someone else’s bubble bath. From there, the gang wanders through House of the Dragon despair, Voicemails for Isabelle, Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die, Widows Bay, The Muppets, SuperKitties as psychological torture, JoJo Siwa’s identity pinball machine, and buccal fat removal turning everyone into future Yzma.
History: [00:37:26]
Abigail’s history segment follows Francis Gladden Bishop, yet another post-Joseph Mormon splinter prophet candidate from the burned-over district’s apparently bottomless tote bag of self-appointed holy men. Born in 1809 to a mother who had already decided he was destined to “gladden” the hearts of the people, Bishop began as a Free Will Baptist preacher, joined the early LDS church in 1832, became a missionary, and then almost immediately started doing the one thing early Mormonism could never resist producing: declaring himself God’s newer, shinier special boy. Joseph Smith excommunicated him repeatedly, but Bishop kept coming back like a theological rash with pamphlets.
After Joseph’s death, Bishop claimed he had been ordained by Jesus and one of the Three Nephites, possessed sacred Mormon relics including the gold plates, breastplate, Liahona, Sword of Laban, crowns representing priesthood authority, and somehow even the lost 116 pages. Martin Harris briefly glommed onto the movement, because of course he did. Bishop’s followers tried preaching in Salt Lake City, where Brigham Young responded from the pulpit with full knife-swinging frontier despot energy before later insisting everyone had misunderstood him, a classic “I only metaphorically threatened apostates with a Bowie knife” moment. The Gladdenites fizzled through Kirtland, Voree, Iowa, Nebraska orgy rumors, Colorado, and finally Salt Lake, where Bishop arrived to confront Brigham Young, got dodged for months, caught scarlet fever, died, and was reportedly buried in the wrong grave. A perfect ending for Mormonism’s Tobias Fünke of succession-crisis prophets.
FHE: [01:32:55]
The FHE segment digs into the CES Letter’s Book of Mormon witnesses section, with Moroni landing on the episode’s thesis like a glitter brick through a seminary window: the witnesses don’t really matter if Joseph Smith didn’t actually use the plates to translate the Book of Mormon. From there, the discussion unpacks the folk-magic soup everyone was swimming in: treasure digging, second sight, dowsing rods, divining rods, spiritual eyes, and Oliver Cowdery’s “gift of working with the rod,” later sanitized into the “gift of Aaron” because apparently the Lord’s branding department finally saw the problem.
The hosts roast the credibility of the witnesses, especially Martin Harris, who emerges less as a rock-solid skeptical observer and more as a 19th-century magical worldview piñata. He reportedly saw Jesus as a deer, thought Christ was extremely handsome, described the devil as a sleek-haired donkey-headed fellow, interpreted candle sputtering as Satanic activity, and joined or endorsed multiple religious movements after Mormonism, including the Shakers and Gladden Bishop’s crew. David Whitmer gets dragged for angelic sightings that somehow had no shape, no appearance, and all the evidentiary density of a scented candle. Oliver Cowdery gets folded into the rod-based treasure-hunting lore, and the whole segment circles back to the obvious problem: if the plates were physically real and physically witnessed, why does everyone keep retreating into “spiritual eyes,” “visions,” “faith,” and extremely sweaty yes-but-no answers.
Follow us on Insta @gr8_and_spacious, Twitter @gr8andspacious, Discord (https://discord.gg/pdeXSQdga) and Reddit u/gr8_and_spacious for behind-the-scenes shenanigans, hilarious memes, and maybe even a sneak peek at our next episode..
If you've got a burning question, a hilarious anecdote, or just want to say hi, shoot us an epistle at [email protected].
And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast!
Support the show
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This week opens with Moroni en route from Arkansas, the hosts detouring through the linguistic crime scene of Mantua/“Man Away,” and Abish unveiling the episode cocktail: the “Spiritual Eyes-d Tea”, a peachy Long Island–adjacent blackout-adjacent beverage made with peach iced tea, peach rum, white rum, tequila, peach sparkling water, lemon “eyes,” and a cinnamon-stick “rod” in honor of Oliver Cowdery’s magical little treasure-finding situation. It is thematically perfect: fruity, boozy, spiritually questionable, and ready to help everyone see things that are absolutely not there.
The intro then becomes a full brunch-table catastrophe buffet: Utah wildfires, Abish’s Vegas babymoon, Korean BBQ creating a digestive hostage crisis in a Nephi Maverik, Barnabas forgetting to book the lazy-river hotel, and the criminal offense of taking a catastrophic bathroom shit during someone else’s bubble bath. From there, the gang wanders through House of the Dragon despair, Voicemails for Isabelle, Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die, Widows Bay, The Muppets, SuperKitties as psychological torture, JoJo Siwa’s identity pinball machine, and buccal fat removal turning everyone into future Yzma.
History: [00:37:26]
Abigail’s history segment follows Francis Gladden Bishop, yet another post-Joseph Mormon splinter prophet candidate from the burned-over district’s apparently bottomless tote bag of self-appointed holy men. Born in 1809 to a mother who had already decided he was destined to “gladden” the hearts of the people, Bishop began as a Free Will Baptist preacher, joined the early LDS church in 1832, became a missionary, and then almost immediately started doing the one thing early Mormonism could never resist producing: declaring himself God’s newer, shinier special boy. Joseph Smith excommunicated him repeatedly, but Bishop kept coming back like a theological rash with pamphlets.
After Joseph’s death, Bishop claimed he had been ordained by Jesus and one of the Three Nephites, possessed sacred Mormon relics including the gold plates, breastplate, Liahona, Sword of Laban, crowns representing priesthood authority, and somehow even the lost 116 pages. Martin Harris briefly glommed onto the movement, because of course he did. Bishop’s followers tried preaching in Salt Lake City, where Brigham Young responded from the pulpit with full knife-swinging frontier despot energy before later insisting everyone had misunderstood him, a classic “I only metaphorically threatened apostates with a Bowie knife” moment. The Gladdenites fizzled through Kirtland, Voree, Iowa, Nebraska orgy rumors, Colorado, and finally Salt Lake, where Bishop arrived to confront Brigham Young, got dodged for months, caught scarlet fever, died, and was reportedly buried in the wrong grave. A perfect ending for Mormonism’s Tobias Fünke of succession-crisis prophets.
FHE: [01:32:55]
The FHE segment digs into the CES Letter’s Book of Mormon witnesses section, with Moroni landing on the episode’s thesis like a glitter brick through a seminary window: the witnesses don’t really matter if Joseph Smith didn’t actually use the plates to translate the Book of Mormon. From there, the discussion unpacks the folk-magic soup everyone was swimming in: treasure digging, second sight, dowsing rods, divining rods, spiritual eyes, and Oliver Cowdery’s “gift of working with the rod,” later sanitized into the “gift of Aaron” because apparently the Lord’s branding department finally saw the problem.
The hosts roast the credibility of the witnesses, especially Martin Harris, who emerges less as a rock-solid skeptical observer and more as a 19th-century magical worldview piñata. He reportedly saw Jesus as a deer, thought Christ was extremely handsome, described the devil as a sleek-haired donkey-headed fellow, interpreted candle sputtering as Satanic activity, and joined or endorsed multiple religious movements after Mormonism, including the Shakers and Gladden Bishop’s crew. David Whitmer gets dragged for angelic sightings that somehow had no shape, no appearance, and all the evidentiary density of a scented candle. Oliver Cowdery gets folded into the rod-based treasure-hunting lore, and the whole segment circles back to the obvious problem: if the plates were physically real and physically witnessed, why does everyone keep retreating into “spiritual eyes,” “visions,” “faith,” and extremely sweaty yes-but-no answers.
Follow us on Insta @gr8_and_spacious, Twitter @gr8andspacious, Discord (https://discord.gg/pdeXSQdga) and Reddit u/gr8_and_spacious for behind-the-scenes shenanigans, hilarious memes, and maybe even a sneak peek at our next episode..
If you've got a burning question, a hilarious anecdote, or just want to say hi, shoot us an epistle at [email protected].
And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast!
Support the show