Great And Spacious Podcast

GASP
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Comedy
  • Updated Weekly

Four apostate millennials sit down and take a long hard look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:Follow these friends raised in varying degrees of Mormonism as they attempt to make sense of what the Mormon Church actually teaches, and how that measures up to actual history and fact.Oh, also we’re super drunk!

  1. 4d ago

    Episode 157 - We Love Woman!

    Send us Fan Mail The final CES Letter episode begins with Utah’s apparently prayer-induced rain, tornado warnings, fire-nados, and the Anti-Intellectini: raspberry lemonade vodka, cranberry-apple-raspberry juice, and lemon, served with a rim of crushed Smarties—because intellectuals must be pulverized before they become dangerous. Abigail eats the leftover Smarties dust directly from the bowl before dumping it into her drink, creating a chunky sacramental slurry that perfectly embodies the episode’s theme. The hosts also investigate Alexander Skarsgård’s potential as a fuckable wicker basket, celebrate humanity’s ancient commitment to dildos, dissect the House of the Dragon finale, and establish that the Pokémon theme followed by Phil Collins’s Tarzan soundtrack is powerful enough to make a pregnant Abish cry about Robert Irwin. As usual, the road from Mormon history to sentient wicker penis is remarkably short. History: [00:32:04] Abigail presents “We Love Women,” an examination of how Mormonism reveres the abstract ideal of capital-W Woman while denying actual women autonomy. From wives appearing alongside houses, servants, oxen, and donkeys in the biblical inventory of male property to Doctrine and Covenants 132 declaring that plural wives “belong” to their husband, the institution praises women as daughters of God, mothers in Zion, and nurturers—provided they remain pure, maternal, heterosexual, beautiful without vanity, exhausted without resentment, ambitious only on behalf of their families, and authoritative without ever challenging male authority. Mormon women receive influence rather than power, then are encouraged to enforce the system through modesty lessons, marital advice, motherhood policing, and “benevolent sexism” disguised as loving concern. The internet takes that existing machinery and industrializes it. Church leaders encouraged women to carry Mormon domestic perfection onto blogs, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where family life became missionary material, measurable content, and eventually a marketable product. Abigail traces that path from the bloggernacle and Eight Passengers to MomTok, Taylor Frankie Paul, and Ballerina Farm: Ruby Franke turned control and humiliation into parenting content; Taylor’s public unraveling became more profitable than perfection; and Hannah Neeleman’s elite ballet training disappeared beneath sourdough, raw milk, eight children, and an egg-collecting apron she received instead of the trip to Greece she wanted. Whether the woman is an immaculate tradwife or a televised train wreck, the machine sells tickets to both—and everyone watching, criticizing, hate-following, or recapping still feeds it. FHE: [02:10:44] The hosts finish the CES Letter’s “Other” section with the Church’s changing name, institutional anti-intellectualism, warnings against unauthorized internet research, and the wonderfully Orwellian claim that some truths are simply “not very useful.” Boyd K. Packer, Dallin H. Oaks, Quentin L. Cook, and Neil L. Andersen collectively argue that inconvenient history should be withheld, uncomfortable information is probably false, and anyone damaged by discovering documented facts can always repent and put the blinders back on. Meanwhile, the Church quietly publishes Gospel Topics Essays acknowledging many of the same claims it once dismissed as anti-Mormon lies. They also revisit “when the prophet speaks, the debate is over”—a doctrine rendered slightly inconvenient by the priesthood ban, the Church’s abandoned “I’m a Mormon” campaign, and Russell M. Nelson later declaring the word Mormon a victory for Satan. The central problem is not one questionable claim that can be patched with apologetics; it is hundreds of contradictions, reversals, omissions, and falsehoods accumulating until the shelf ceases to exist. The hosts close four years and 157 episodes with reflections on the anger of realizing they and their families were systematically lied to, Abish’s upcoming maternity hiatus, and one final prayer offered in the sacred name of Fanny Stenhouse and her stolen f*****g bonnets. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 157 - We Love Woman!

  2. Aug 9

    Episode 156 - As Ye Have Done Unto the EBITDA, My Brethren

    Send us Fan Mail The CES Letter has finally reached the magnificently specific category of “Other,” so naturally aaaAAAaaa commemorates the occasion with the Seed of Cain, a drink conceived as two ounces of black rum, half an ounce of lime juice, and Pitch Black Mountain Dew. Unfortunately, the gas station declined to participate in the bit, forcing a substitution of electric-blue Voltage and transforming the intended abyssal cocktail into something grayish, ominous, and apparently tasting like “rum and Mountain Dew.” From there, the intro becomes a pop-culture yard sale: The X-Files briefly forgetting whether Scully believes in science, the enduring hotness of Gillian Anderson, Christopher Nolan’s enormous practical Cyclops, House of the Dragon dragon discourse and the defense of poor cave-dwelling Sheepstealer, the return of Ted Lasso, grown-up Avatar characters, Pokémon, pregnancy ultrasounds, appendicitis, and the disturbing realization that modern medicine is doing things that would have looked like sorcery approximately five minutes ago. History: [00:36:01] Abigail heads all the way back to the ancient historical epoch of September 1993 for the story of the September Six, six unrelated Mormon writers, scholars, feminists, and intellectuals who were disciplined by the church within twelve days of one another. Against the backdrop of Boyd K. Packer identifying feminists, homosexuals, and intellectuals as major threats, the Strengthening Church Members Committee collecting information on members, and independent Mormon scholarship becoming increasingly difficult to contain, Abigail walks through Lynn Whitesides, Avraham Gileadi, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks, Lavina Fielding Anderson, and D. Michael Quinn and the dangerously radical ideas that got them into trouble, including feminism, Heavenly Mother, historical documentation, criticism of ecclesiastical abuse, and the unforgivable act of looking at Mormon history with your eyes open. The segment digs into the church’s convenient insistence that these were unrelated local disciplinary decisions despite the spectacular coincidence of timing, overlapping intellectual networks, prior monitoring, and leadership rhetoric aimed at precisely these kinds of members. The fallout extended far beyond six membership records, encouraging an entire generation of Mormon scholars and feminists to self-censor when the possible costs included ordinances, careers, marriages, and community. The bleakest coda belongs to Lavina Anderson, whose attempts to return were rejected while she was alive, only for her temple blessings to be restored after her death. As Abigail puts it, the institution eventually got to keep much of the scholarship while losing the scholars, then quietly acknowledge many of the same historical realities without ever apologizing to the people punished for discussing them first. FHE: [01:51:57] The gang opens the CES Letter’s miscellaneous junk drawer with Richard Bushman’s observation that Mormonism’s dominant historical narrative “is not true” and proceeds directly into the church’s long record of historical whitewashing. First up is the priesthood and temple ban on Black members: the modern church says its records provide no clear explanation for the ban, while earlier First Presidency statements explicitly described it as doctrine and connected racial restrictions to premortal behavior and the supposed curse of Cain. The discussion turns to the racist “fence-sitter” theology members were still being taught within living memory, followed by Zina D. H. Young’s polyandrous marriages, Joseph Smith’s angel-with-a-sword coercion story, Brigham Young’s conveniently absent wives in correlated manuals, and the church’s habit of making yesterday’s emphatic doctrine into today’s mysterious administrative shrug. Then capitalism enters the temple. The hosts dig into financial secrecy, Gordon B. Hinckley’s claim that church finances belonged to contributing members despite those members being unable to inspect them, teachings commanding members to pay tithing before rent, utilities, or food, and the CES Letter’s comparison between humanitarian spending and the enormous cost of City Creek Center. Lorenzo Snow’s famous tithing plea also gets the red-pen treatment when the crucial qualifier “who has means” disappears from later church quotations. By the end, the conversation has widened into Mormon anti-intellectualism itself: an institution teaching people to distrust inconvenient information, doubt their own conclusions, and treat obedience as safer than curiosity. Naturally, the episode closes by invoking the September Six like newly canonized patron saints of asking too many f*****g questions. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 156 - As Ye Have Done Unto the EBITDA, My Brethren

  3. Aug 2

    Episode 155 - Cooking the Water Lets the Sin In

    Send us Fan Mail The hosts celebrate Pie and Beer Day with pizza pie, tiny strawberry-rhubarb pies, actual beer, a root beer float, and green tea for anyone whose digestive tract has already filed a formal grievance. The festivities immediately dissolve into Utah’s apocalyptic summer weather, Hercules-era Thebes comparisons, sundial penis cosplay, the creative scholarship of r/cospenis, and an extensive catalogue of porn-title wordplay that absolutely nobody requested and everyone desperately needed. The pop-culture side quests continue through Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Elliott Page’s casting, Claudia’s honeymoon pilgrimage through Carmel, the Madonna Inn, Disneyland, San Francisco, and Carrot Top’s ancient Las Vegas residency. The group also investigates Abigail’s cursed purple dress, the Costa Concordia disaster and its deeply punchable captain, and a mysterious rain of bluegill fish, which was either caused by a confused pelican, Utah’s developing Sharknado infrastructure, or God finally attempting a miracle with whatever aquatic scraps were left in the celestial freezer. OOPS ALL SCIENCE! The hosts return to the CES Letter’s brief science section, where Mormonism insists that “true science” and “true religion” cannot conflict before immediately driving Adam and Eve directly into the fossil record. The discussion covers the claim that death entered the world only after Adam’s fall around 4,000 BCE, despite billions of years of extinction, ancient hominids, mass extinction events, and an entire geological archive refusing to participate in Sunday School. They also revisit anachronistic Book of Mormon animals, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, the global flood, Neanderthal DNA, and the apologetic tradition of discovering that every inconvenient animal was apparently a taper wearing a little historical disguise. The scientific potluck expands into whether hundreds of thin, ring-bound gold plates could physically survive engraving, transport, bean-barrel storage, and Joseph Smith sprinting through the forest without becoming an expensive metallic accordion. The hosts also explore food-safety regulation and produce-borne “butthole COVID,” AI models escaping sandboxes and claiming fictional childhood memories, and the human body as compelling evidence that intelligent design was delegated to an unsupervised intern. From whale fingies, endogenous retroviruses, stratigraphy, and ancient earthquake records to toxoplasmosis, explosive seed pods, self-burying plants, and the Word of Wisdom discouraging beverages that required people to boil their disease-riddled water, the natural world proves far stranger, messier, and more magnificent than anything correlation could fit onto a laminated Primary handout. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 155 - Cooking the Water Lets the Sin In

  4. Jul 26

    Episode 154 - Not in God’s White Heaven

    Send us Fan Mail With fellow desert people Abby and Sam joining the table, Abish blinds everyone with the Science of the Lambs, a radioactive-green experiment combining Midori, blue curaçao, vodka, and some suspiciously persistent flat Sprite. A skewer of rainbow gummy frogs provides the educational garnish because dissecting amphibians is science, and because gummy fetal pig hearts remain tragically unavailable. The drink is considerably more successful than the infamous hot-dog-water cocktail, whose surviving cocktail wienies were recently discovered fossilized in the refrigerator. The intro proceeds with all the discipline of an unsupervised particle accelerator, bouncing through chicken-heart meat gum, the new Little House on the Prairie, Netflix’s live-action Avatar, From, The X-Files, The Odyssey, World Cup corruption, and an urgent philosophical debate over whether Dani Rojas is too precious to f**k. He is not. Science has spoken. History: [00:30:51] Abigail begins with the Tower of Babel and discovers that the entire biblical story is only nine verses long, despite centuries of Christians attaching an expanded cinematic universe to it. Genesis never says the builders wanted to storm heaven, overthrow God, survive another flood, or construct the tower under the supervision of Nimrod. It simply describes humanity building a city and a tower, followed by God scrambling their language and scattering them. The familiar Sunday School version is less biblical history than theological fan fiction with a surprisingly generous special-effects budget. The likely inspiration was Babylon itself, particularly the enormous ziggurat Etemenanki, whose construction required fired bricks, naturally occurring bitumen, cedar beams, centralized government, and a staggering amount of human labor. Babylon’s monumental architecture advertised the power of its kings and patron god Marduk, while the Hebrew writers had excellent reasons to hate the empire that conquered Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and deported much of the population. The story therefore functions less as a warning against tall buildings and more as a Hebrew roast of imperial power, centralized authority, and Babylon’s enormous bricked-up civic penis. Abigail then launches into a speedrun through historical linguistics, explaining that languages do not suddenly appear, remain perfectly preserved, or decay from one original divine tongue. They drift through pronunciation, grammar, syntax, borrowed vocabulary, migration, conquest, trade, technology, jokes, and children imperfectly recreating the noises made by adults around them. Linguists can trace related words backward toward reconstructed language families such as Proto-Indo-European, but spoken sounds leave no fossils and there was never a single morning when everyone woke up speaking something new. That creates a particular problem for Mormonism, because the Book of Ether turns the confounding of languages into a literal historical event witnessed by Jared, the brother of Jared, their families, and the future passengers of several bitumen-sealed ocean barges. While other Christians can treat Babel as an etiological myth explaining linguistic diversity, Mormon scripture parks a wooden submarine directly in the middle of that escape route. The result is a doctrine chained to an ancient legend, a brief detour through Mahonri Moriancumr and the children of Aronek, and the devastating revelation that even humanity’s supposedly perfect original civilization still named one of its children Jared. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 154 - Not in God’s White Heaven

  5. Jul 19

    Episode 153 - Goofus Soup

    Send us Fan Mail The episode opens with fetus-based parasitism, the dangers of keeping a child who returns from Cairo possessed by an evil mummy, and a brief pregnancy scare that ends with the baby being completely fine, folded into an anatomically disrespectful pretzel, and suddenly kicking nonstop. The group also detours through toddler hyperfixations, the ancient discovery that chickens are made of food, and the unsettling realization that Abigail’s coworkers have accidentally memorized his historical lectures. This week’s cocktail is The Bathilda Bagshot, a grandma-coded sparkling concoction made with Sprite, Aperol, grenadine, champagne, and violet syrup. The drink commemorates the hosts’ ongoing theory that Mitch McConnell and various Mormon patriarchs are not technically alive but merely skin sacks animated by one extremely determined evil snake. Pop culture then swallows the room whole, covering Jeff Arcuri’s crowd work, House of the Dragon, the aggressively horny new Wuthering Heights, Obsession, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, internet racism about historical casting, John Bernthal’s urgent need to tell everyone something, and Taylor Swift’s billionaire wedding extravaganza summoning the Guillotine Girls once again. History: [00:39:01] Abigail introduces the central thesis of Freemasonry with a truth as old as civilization: boys love leveling up. Beginning with the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff and Solomon’s Temple, she follows the mythology through the Knights Templar, whose actual history as crusading soldier-bankers was eventually alchemized into hidden treasure, secret knowledge, and medieval persecution fan fiction. From there, operative masonry, meaning men who were genuinely skilled at stacking rocks without killing anyone, evolves into speculative masonry, where the square becomes morality, the compass becomes self-restraint, and the rough stone becomes the imperfect man because apparently nothing can remain a normal tool once enough Enlightenment dudes gather in a tavern. The episode continues through the formation of England’s first Grand Lodge in 1717 and Adam Weishaupt’s short-lived Bavarian Illuminati, founded in 1776 after he essentially decided that Freemasonry was too expensive and started his own cooler secret club. Although the real Illuminati disappeared within about fifteen years, conspiracy culture inflated it into an immortal world government, aided by the same pattern-recognition slurry that later produced Wayfair child-trafficking theories and QAnon. Abigail ultimately frames fraternal orders as elaborate, ranked reconstructions of ordinary friendship and mutual aid: women bring soup when someone’s husband dies, while men appoint the Worshipful Junior Deputy Inner Sentinel of Extremely Normal Hats to authorize casserole distribution under Section 14. The conversation expands into male loneliness, emotional repression, AI companionship, and the radical possibility that men could simply hug their friends without first inventing 79 degrees of tit-touching secrecy. FHE: [01:46:39] Everyone now turns to the CES Letter’s section on the temple and Freemasonry, beginning with the conspicuous fact that Joseph Smith introduced the Nauvoo endowment only seven weeks after becoming a Mason. The group examines Heber C. Kimball’s claim that Mormonism possessed the “true masonry” supposedly preserved from Solomon’s Temple, then asks why God’s restored ancient ritual resembles the exact nineteenth-century Masonic ceremony Joseph had just experienced rather than any earlier form. The inventory of borrowed material includes the square and compass, garment and veil markings, names, tokens, signs, blood-oath penalties, and the intensely intimate Five Points of Fellowship, also known as therapy for touch-starved men but with substantially more knee contact. The hosts examine the church’s removal of the penalties and Five Points of Fellowship in 1990, along with the endowment’s continuing stream of “adjustments” that somehow never count as changes to an eternal and unalterable ordinance. This leads to the larger question of why an omniscient Heavenly Father would require his own children to present secret handshakes and memorized passwords before entering heaven. Personal temple memories provide the emotional underside: beige rooms, chlorine-soaked baptistries, borrowed white underwear, wet translucent jumpsuits, invasive nudity, polyester veils, and the disconnect between the transcendent spiritual experience everyone was promised and the deeply uncomfortable locker room they actually received. The episode is closed in the name of women, who managed to build communities of care without invented priesthood ranks, and with one final plea to humanity: men, just be gay. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 153 - Goofus Soup

  6. Jul 12

    Episode 152 - The Great Asleepening

    Send us Fan Mail The episode opens with the crew diving back into the second half of the CES Letter’s witnesses section, which means James Strang is back in the building wearing his tiny prophet tiara and demanding we respect his suspiciously better production design. Before the actual Strangery begins, aaaAAAaaa introduces the cocktail: the Raspberry Recanter, made with champagne, Château Monet raspberry liqueur, and “raspberries” that were spiritually witnessed as raspberries but, in mortality, were absolutely blackberries. The drink becomes its own mini-object lesson in Mormon testimony logic: if everyone signs a statement saying those berries were raspberries, who are we to question the sacred fruit affidavit? The intro then becomes a glorious pop culture pinball machine, bouncing from a smoothie shop encounter with a flat-earth-adjacent YouTube prophet, to the new Minions movie, to Tyra Banks’ cursed 2011 fantasy novel Modelland, featuring names so unhinged they should require ecclesiastical discipline. The crew also spirals through House of the Dragon, Netflix’s live-action Avatar, the “Take Me to Bangladesh” trend, and America’s looming 250th birthday, which no one is feeling especially patriotic about because, frankly, the vibes are rancid and the fireworks are banned. History: [00:35:45] Abigail uses James Strang as the entry point for a broader tour of 19th-century American religious weirdness, specifically the horny little prophet kingdoms that kept sprouting out of the Second Great Awakening like theological mushrooms after a cursed rainstorm. Rather than retelling Strang’s whole Beaver Island saga again, she frames him as part of a wider pattern: charismatic men claiming God had authorized them to redesign society, collect followers, control property, and stick their penises wherever revelation conveniently pointed. Christian perfectionism becomes the historical umbrella here: the idea that believers could become sanctified in this life, which, when mixed with restorationist logic and unchecked male ego, often produced cult startups with bonus sex spreadsheets. The segment covers Jacob Cochrane and the Cochraneites, whose spiritual wifery and proximity to early Mormon figures make Joseph Smith look less like an innovator and more like a guy shopping the regional prophet clearance rack. Then Abigail moves through Robert Matthews, later “Matthias,” a violent, unstable prophet figure whose orbit somehow included Sojourner Truth and a murder accusation involving Elijah Pearson and several plates of blackberries. The tour continues through the Battle Axes of Free Love Valley, Theophilus Ransom Gates’ nudist polyamorous Pennsylvania sect with an axe murder problem, John Humphrey Noyes’ Oneida Community with “complex marriage,” communal property, and extremely cursed sexual governance, and Thomas Lake Harris’ Brotherhood of the New Life, where celestial counterparts and divine heavy breathing somehow became a whole thing. The final takeaway: Strang did not invent the American prophet-king fantasy, but he did put rhinestones on the machinery. FHE: [01:24:52] aaaAAAaaabishoni brings the episode back to James Strang and the CES Letter’s critique of witness testimony, comparing Strang directly to Joseph Smith and concluding, with due disgust, that Strang may have been a bad guy but at least he put effort into the con. Strang claimed angelic visits, produced plates, gathered eleven witnesses, introduced scripture, and founded a church, basically doing the Joseph Smith checklist but with actual props. The Voree plates get special attention because unlike Joseph’s gold plates, Strang’s plates were physically handled, described in detail, allegedly unearthed from a clay box under established roots and a stone, and even displayed publicly before later vanishing into historical couch cushions. The crew walks through possible fraud mechanics, including the idea that Strang had months to prepare the site or may have bored in from an angle, accidentally benefiting from a conveniently dramatic buried stone like a prophet-themed escape room designer. The segment then turns the CES Letter’s witness argument back on Mormonism with a vengeance. If the church can dismiss Strang as a fraud even though most living Book of Mormon witnesses and much of Joseph Smith’s family accepted Strang’s prophetic claims, why does witness testimony suddenly become sacred-grade evidence only when it flatters Joseph? aaaAAAaaabishoni highlights the weakness of the Book of Mormon witness statements: no original document signed by all witnesses, no dates, no locations, family entanglements, excommunications, contradictory later statements, and Joseph’s proven talent for getting people to sign claims that were not true, including polygamy denials. The broader point lands hard: people have sincere, unretracted testimonies of Bigfoot, UFOs, aliens, and all manner of paranormal nonsense. Not recanting is not proof. And in the end, the whole witness issue is kneecapped by the rock-in-hat translation method anyway: ancient prophets allegedly engraved and preserved metal plates for centuries so Joseph could ignore them and dictate scripture from a hat like God’s dumbest magic trick. The episode closes in the name of Sojourner Truth, who did not do a murder, and with a final warning from the blackberry gospel: several plates is too many blackberries. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 152 - The Great Asleepening

  7. Jul 5

    Episode 151 - “Working” With the “Rod”

    Send us Fan Mail 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 151 - “Working” With the “Rod”

  8. Jun 28

    Episode 150 - Ina Coolbrith is a Cool Bitch

    Send us Fan Mail For the 150th episode, the gang celebrates their sesquicentennial, a word they unfortunately only know because Mormonism made everyone say it in a pioneer bonnet at some point. Claudia, Kish Kuhman, Moroni, Abish, and Abigail all rotate through the chaos chamber, with Kish Kuhman appearing like a surprise dad cryptid in Discord. The drink of the week is the High Priesthood, a blue, crossfaded sacrament of vodka, blue curaçao, Sprite, and a blue raspberry THC Ripple Stick, assembled via the sacred mixology method known as “pour and pray.” Kish Kuhman keeps it classy with bourbon on ice, while Claudia drinks from a chalice like a pregnant medieval duchess at girls’ night. The intro detours into Netflix’s Maternal Instincts, fetal abduction, fake ultrasound websites, Wade the Human Thumb, and the horrifying true crime spiral of Taylor Parker and Reagan Hancock. After staring directly into the murder abyss, the hosts recover with lighter pop-culture fare including The Burrows, Gina Davis’ Botox-adjacent facial mechanics, Zach Galifianakis’ gardening show, American food tourism TikToks, free refills as patriotism, and Abigail accidentally retelling the legendary story of catfishing a Mormon singles guy with a picture of Moroni in tiny running shorts. Happy Pride, apparently. FHE: [00:38:51] The FHE segment tackles the CES Letter’s Priesthood Restoration chapter, starting with Richard Bushman’s deliciously inconvenient observation that the late appearance of priesthood restoration accounts raises the possibility of later fabrication. The hosts walk through the basic problem: Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery supposedly received the priesthood in 1829, but the story does not show up in the church’s own record in the way modern Mormonism teaches it until years later. Even in 1832, the claims are vague, and the familiar John the Baptist / Peter, James, and John cinematic universe has not yet fully downloaded. The segment digs into the altered revelations between the 1833 Book of Commandments and the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, where later language adds Moroni, Peter, James, and John like Joseph Smith patching continuity errors after the fandom noticed. The hosts also highlight the awkward Lyman Wight problem: if Joseph already had the Melchizedek Priesthood from ancient apostles, why do contemporary records say the high priesthood was first given in June 1831, with Lyman Wight ordaining Joseph? This becomes a roast of Joseph’s retroactive storytelling, “you didn’t ask” theology, and the sheer audacity of inventing divine authority after the fact, then expecting everyone to clap because a ghost allegedly laid hands on someone behind the narrative shrubs. The conversation wanders, blessedly, into priesthood restoration LARPing, old ward reenactments, Martin Harris’ grave, the Manti Pageant, roadshows, “Praise to the Man” being set to “Scotland the Brave,” and the spiritual genre of men in flour pretending to be resurrected apostles. The hosts also detour through Mountain Meadows, the church’s modern branding-heavy memorial presence, John D. Lee, Mike Lee, and the emotional violence of turning a massacre site into another church-logo reputation-management project. By the end, the priesthood restoration is less a sacred origin story and more Joseph Smith’s Scooby-Doo ghost costume getting yanked off in the reeds. HISTORY: [01:10:38] Abigail swerves away from yet another priesthood restoration rehash and instead gives us a “herstory” segment on Ina Donna Coolbrith, born Josephine Donna Smith, daughter of Agnes Coolbrith and Don Carlos Smith. Ina’s childhood comes preloaded with the usual 1800s Mormon misery DLC: Smith-family proximity, dead relatives, rumors about Joseph Smith fathering her, westward migration, abusive marriage, divorce, infant loss, and enough generational trauma to qualify as a pioneer heirloom quilt. Eventually she legally changes her name, drops the Smith baggage like a cursed handcart axle, and rebuilds herself as Ina Coolbrith. From there, Ina becomes a major figure in early California literary culture. She publishes poetry, works in San Francisco literary circles, co-edits the Overland Monthly, befriends people like Mark Twain, mentors a young Jack London as a librarian, and eventually becomes California’s first poet laureate. Abigail frames Ina as the perfect counterweight to the priesthood chapter: a woman who built an actual legacy without imaginary authority chains, ghostly handshakes, or a single ecclesiastical penis. The segment lands on the point that real power looks less like “special witnesses” and more like getting into the driver’s seat of your own life, even if Mormonism keeps handing twelve-year-old boys the keys. 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 greatandspaciouspod@gmail.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast! Support the show

    Episode 150 - Ina Coolbrith is a Cool Bitch
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Four apostate millennials sit down and take a long hard look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:Follow these friends raised in varying degrees of Mormonism as they attempt to make sense of what the Mormon Church actually teaches, and how that measures up to actual history and fact.Oh, also we’re super drunk!

Information

  • Creator
    GASP
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    168
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Great And Spacious Podcast
  • Show Website
    Great And Spacious Podcast