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The gang is back from hiatus, a little crusty but ready to dive into The Pearl of Great Price. Moroni kicks things off with the Son of God Sour, a divine little mix of bourbon, amaretto, lemon juice, and honey (or simple syrup, if you fear God less). The drink is meant to “know its divine worth,” which it does—bold, sweet, and just a little tart, much like the hosts themselves. The crew then recaps their cursed break: Abish’s nightmare Disney trip, Abigail’s and aaaAAAaaa’s southern misadventures at a vow renewal and pole-dancing class, and Moroni’s Ohio rollercoaster’s both literal and emotional. It’s a fittingly unhinged welcome back to the scriptures.

Scriptures: [00:54:19]

Abish breaks down Moses 1 and the cosmic fever dream that is Joseph Smith’s “translation” of Genesis. Set in 1830, Joseph’s new baby church is barely two months old when he decides to write a prequel to the Bible—because, apparently, God needed a director’s cut. The revelation introduces a God who creates “worlds without number,” tells Moses “you are my son,” and lets him see all creation in a dramatic lightshow. Moses promptly faints like a Victorian lady, wakes up to find Satan asking for worship, and tells him to piss off. Abish walks us through how this text flips Calvinist theology on its head: instead of depraved worms begging for grace, humanity is divine—“ants with potential,” as she puts it. The crew jokes about Moses as God’s exhausted intern, Satan as an emo theater kid, and Joseph Smith’s flair for turning blasphemy into branding.

Church Teachings: [01:13:20]

aaaAAAaaa digs into what the church officially says about Moses 1 and the Pearl of Great Price, pulling from an online church lesson manual. The emphasis is on “divine identity”—that all people are literal children of God—which the church manages to make simultaneously comforting and hierarchical. They discuss how this concept feeds into Mormon exceptionalism (“you’re divine, but only our kind of divine”) and the endless pressure to be godlike by next Tuesday. The conversation spirals into musings about eternal potential, weird church art depicting pre-mortal Moses, and whether “divine identity” still counts if you’re late on tithing.

History: [01:43:57]

Abigail takes us on a wild, bird-filled tangent before diving into the history of the Pearl of Great Price . Between discussions of ravens, ducks, and horrifying bird anatomy, she explains how this grab-bag scripture came to be. Originally compiled in 1851 by Apostle Franklin D. Richards in Liverpool, the Pearl was a scrapbook of Joseph’s “miscellaneous bullshit”—snippets of the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, a few hymns, and leftover revelations stapled together for British converts. Orson Pratt later padded it with fragments from the RLDS archives, and by 1880 it was canonized—essentially turning Joseph’s napkin doodles into holy writ. Abigail calls it “the bottom of the Mormon purse,” full of gum wrappers, half-translations, and divine side quests. She caps it off by gleefully pointing out all the things left out of the canon—Joseph’s most chaotic edits, contradictions, and hallucinations that even 19th-century Mormons thought were too weird.

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In today's episode Abigail, aaaAAAaaa, and special guest Lem discuss Denver Snuffer, and Lem tells all about their experience in that offshoot of the church. Also, they are all super baked. So, there are definitely tangents about things ranging from Mark Hofmann to probably less mormon adjacent things.

Enjoy, and we will be back with The Pearl of Great Price and the beginning of season 3 next Sunday!

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To commemorate finally escaping the swamp of the Doctrine & Covenants, Abish mixed up The Pearl of Great Peach (or Peach of Great Peach, depending on which name makes you laugh harder). It’s a fizzy peach-and-raspberry concoction topped with champagne and Chambord, garnished with peach slices, and best enjoyed while shouting “never again” at the bound copy of the D&C on your shelf . The crew also celebrated with a rowdy D&C trivia drinking game, where every wrong answer meant drinks—and every answer that was “Joseph Smith” meant everyone had to drink.

Scriptures: [00:39:23]

aaaAAAaaa tackled Section 138, Joseph F. Smith’s vision of the spirit world, and turned it into a fever-dream monologue. Instead of reverent scripture, listeners got a full-blown parody of Spirit Prison as a seminary classroom with eternal fluorescent lights, folding chairs multiplying like locusts, and missionary lessons that never end. Jesus shows up with a clipboard, Adam holds his scriptures upside down, Isaiah mutters hashtags, and the vending machines only dispense Bit-O-Honey and warm Sprite. The moral? Missionary work is eternal, naps are holy, and warm milk is cursed.

Church Teachings: [00:55:15]

Moroni dove into the many changes made to the D&C over the years. From Joseph’s 1833 Book of Commandments (cut short by mob violence), to Orson Pratt’s 1876 overhaul that added plural marriage (and dropped the monogamy section, wink wink), to the 2013 edition’s grammar clean-up, Moroni laid out how “continuing revelation” basically means “God changed his mind again.” Along the way, the hosts riffed on how the church votes on canon like it’s a bad HOA meeting, joked about Joseph’s endless pseudonyms, and noted how “doctrinal confusion” magically disappears when the PR department says so.

History: [01:11:48]

Instead of history, Abigail read a “Dear Abby” letter from listener, and former guest host, Eliza who wrote about feeling abandoned by God, suffocated by church teachings, and unsure what to do with mounting doubts. Abigail responded with compassion, validation, and a good dose of practical advice: you don’t have to cling to institutions that harm you, you’re not broken for asking hard questions, and joy is worth chasing outside the church. It was the perfect way to end the D&C slog—closing not with Joseph Smith’s nonsense, but with real human honesty from the community.

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Hey everyone,

This week Abigail and aaaAAAaaa had to make a last minute trip to Denver. So, they took the recording equipment and convinced their niece and her friend to be Mile High On The Mountain Top.

Enjoy this rousing conversation about so many different things, and some of them were related to Mormons.

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Moroni brings us Alvin’s Afterlife Amaretto Amalgamation, a cocktail built on two shots of Amaretto, Porter's Peach whiskey, lemon juice, orange bitters, simple syrup, and topped with soda water. It’s sweet, a little cough-syrupy if you don’t stir it right, and surprisingly tasty once balanced out. The name comes from D&C 137, where Joseph Smith has a vision of his brother Alvin in the celestial kingdom.

Scriptures: [00:24:31]
Abish covers D&C 136 and 137. Section 136 comes from Brigham Young in 1847 at Winter Quarters, when the Saints were freezing, starving, and watching their neighbors drop dead in droves. God (conveniently through Brigham) commands the Saints to organize into neat little companies with captains, share provisions, repent fast, and stop swearing about their oxen dying. Zion, the revelation insists, isn’t just a destination but the “friends we made along the way”—with a side of martyrdom PR for Joseph and Hyrum. Section 137 rewinds to an 1836 vision Joseph had in the Kirtland Temple, where he saw Alvin chilling in the celestial kingdom despite never being baptized. This cracked open the doctrine of proxy ordinances and baptisms for the dead. Abish points out how much of this section was retroactively cobbled together from Joseph’s diary and later scribes, making it less a prophecy and more a posthumous PR edit.

Church Teachings: [00:44:17]
aaaAAAaaa decides to “take it easy” on the team by running a text-based RPG called Choose Your Salvation: A Zion Text Adventure. Spoiler: no one actually had fun. Set at Winter Quarters, the game required everyone to make “righteous” choices—obeying captains, singing “Come, Come Ye Saints,” testifying to doubters, reaffirming the Twelve, redistributing flour, and bearing witness that Zion will be redeemed. Wrong answers resulted in losing toes, getting crushed under Relief Society bonnets, or dying of poor planning. Eventually, the party “dies,” only to be resurrected into a Spirit World expansion pack, where Alvin waves from a celestial loveseat and a glowing receptionist angel chirps through onboarding. The whole thing is chaotic, hilarious, and a pitch-perfect parody of Mormon gamified obedience.

History: [01:05:05]
Abigail introduces us to one of the strangest fundamentalist spin-offs yet: The Righteous Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Founded by Gerald Peterson Sr. after the assassination of Rulon Allred in 1977, Peterson claimed Allred’s ghost (fresh off the murder scene) laid hands on his head, healed his back pain, and ordained him “the one mighty and strong.” Soon after, he doubled down with appearances from Adam-God, Joseph Smith, Jesus, and basically the whole celestial Avengers lineup. With divine backing secured, he launched his own sect in literal nowhere—Modena, Utah (population ~15). Abigail details their tiny temples (trailers with baptismal fonts), leadership mirroring Salt Lake’s structure, and bizarre relocation to a Nevada outpost near the world-famous Clown Motel. She spices it up with tangents on ghost chiropractors, spiritual Coachella, Mormon Hydra schisms, and the surreal spectacle of this ghost town church trying to play dress-up as Zion.

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Abish introduces the cocktail The Fallen Prophet, a doomed experiment built around the cursed A&W Ice Cream Sundae Root Beer. On its own, the soda tastes like carbonated HoHos, so she tried to redeem it by mixing in regular root beer, then dropping in two shots—Bailey’s and a coffee liqueur. The result? A curdled monstrosity she dubbed root beer cheese. It’s appropriately revolting for an episode marking Joseph Smith’s death, and a fitting tribute to a man whose own concoctions often turned rancid.

Scriptures: [00:30:59]

aaaAAAaaa braves the word salad of D&C 134 and 135. Section 134, a declaration on government, is the church’s attempt to look respectable in 1835 by affirming loyalty to laws—while quietly ignoring all the times the Saints ignored laws, flouted government, or ran from the cops. It’s a mix of lofty ideals about liberty and conscience, undercut by real-life hypocrisy (like Utah’s modern theocracy-lite politics). Then section 135 recounts Joseph Smith’s martyrdom at Carthage. The official version paints him as second only to Jesus, conveniently omitting the polygamy, fraud, and violence that got him there. aaaAAAaaa delivers it all with exasperated snark, pointing out how quickly the text slides into hagiography.

Church Teachings: [00:51:15]

Moroni takes D&C 134 and runs it against the church’s actual record, exposing contradiction after contradiction. Supposedly governments are ordained of God to protect life and liberty, but Utah legislators with temple recommends keep meddling in laws—weakening protections for sex crimes, pushing anti-marriage equality measures, rewriting medical marijuana bills, and literally enforcing “Zion curtains” in restaurants. The section’s ideal that religion should never infringe on others’ rights is shown to be laughable, given the church’s ongoing interference in civil law and politics. It’s less “follow the laws of man” and more “follow the laws, unless they’re inconvenient for us.”

History: [01:31:32]

Abigail takes us into the mountain—literally—with the story of the Granite Mountain Records Vault. Built in the 1960s, the vault is the church’s apocalyptic filing cabinet, blasting a hole into solid granite in Little Cottonwood Canyon to preserve genealogical microfilms. Excavated with fertilizer bombs and diesel, the vault was constructed to withstand earthquakes, nuclear blasts, and possibly Jesus himself demanding everyone’s family tree at the Second Coming. Abigail mixes in geology nerdery, Utah construction gossip, and tangents about bell-ringing to befriend doves, quack-dish slang, and raccoon food experiments . It’s half Cold War paranoia, half Mormon control-freak energy, and all delightfully weird.

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aaaAAAaaa mixes up the Spiritual Babylon—a chaotic purple concoction of red wine, blue Gatorade, sparkling water, and lime juice. It’s as irreverent as its name, embodying the apocalyptic party vibe of Joseph’s “flee Babylon” rants. The crew spirals into tangents about cursed sodas, root beer theology, and which modern beverage most deserves divine wrath.

Scriptures: [00:20:12]
Moroni takes on D&C 133, the appendix that overstayed its welcome. This revelation is essentially Joseph Smith running a second lap around the apocalypse track: Saints must leave Babylon, continents are prophesied to squish back into Pangea, and Christ arrives drenched in grape blood, stomping the nations like a cosmic vintner. The lost tribes get teased again (hidden in the north? hollow earth? still waiting). Moroni notes how this reads less like scripture and more like a Michael Bay script—complete with fire, earthquakes, and zombie ancestors showing up for one last sealing session.

Church Teachings: [00:39:36]
Abish dives into how the church spins D&C 133 into missionary zeal, pulling on its “preach to all the world” threads. From the mission call “inspiration” lottery, to the infamous white handbook (aka the white Bible), to the lived realities of missionary danger—injuries, accidents, violence, and the bizarre “manacled Mormon” scandal—the segment unpacks the culty control mechanisms in missions. She also covers modern shifts like online-only missions, turning proselytizing into a call-center hustle. It’s equal parts tragic, absurd, and all-too-real.

History: [01:18:06]
Abigail dives deep into the Lafferty family, the Provo clan made infamous in Under the Banner of Heaven. Outwardly picture-perfect—strict patriarch, many kids, Eagle Scouts, mission service—but inside: abuse, control, and eventual radicalization. Ron and Dan Lafferty declared themselves prophets, set up a School of the Prophets, and produced a so-called “removal revelation” that ordered the deaths of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter. Abigail walks through how toxic patriarchy, fundamentalism, and fragile masculinity fused into a murderous ideology. It’s a harrowing look at how Mormon theology, when pushed to extremes, bleeds into violence.

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Moroni starts things off with "Sealed for Eternibubbly", a light and deceptively charming cocktail made with vodka, elderflower liqueur, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and sparkling rosé. It’s crisp, celebratory, and just fancy enough to distract from the fact that D&C 132 is basically the celestial prenup you didn’t sign. The segment serves as a bubbly prelude to one of the most infamous revelations in LDS history.

Scriptures: [00:24:25]
Claudia takes us through D&C 132, the church’s original and still-most-awkward revelation on plural marriage. Presented as a divine manifesto, the section is part theology, part legal contract, and part Joseph Smith desperately seeking God’s stamp of approval for his extramarital hobbies. Eternal marriage is framed as the key to godhood, but there’s a catch—women are property, adultery is redefined to benefit men, and “destroyed” is God’s favorite threat. Claudia navigates the tangled verses, pointing out the conditional promises, blatant double standards, and the overall vibe of a man trying way too hard to make “God told me to” sound respectable.

Church Teachings: [00:59:12]
aaaAAAaaa breaks down how the church currently frames D&C 132 and plural marriage, from “it was a commandment then but not now” to “we still believe in it eternally, just not in this life… unless you’re a widower.” He threads in the ways official statements dance around the section’s original intent, how leaders talk about “restoration” while quietly scrubbing the messier parts from manuals, and how modern apologetics work to make Joseph’s behavior sound palatable. For some reason, he slides into an accidental British accent, which somehow makes the whole discussion feel even more absurd—Downton Abbey, but with more sealing rooms.

History: [01:26:37]
Abigail zooms out to explore the broader history of polygyny, tracing it from its biblical roots through the LDS introduction and eventual institutional abandonment (at least publicly). She covers how polygyny has functioned as a tool of control in various cultures, the theological gymnastics used to justify it, and its ongoing presence in Mormon fundamentalist movements. The segment makes clear that while the church officially left plural marriage behind in 1890, its doctrinal ghost still haunts Latter-day Saint theology and culture.

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