This page collects my recorded presentations, screencasts, podcasts, interviews, etc. Newest media now appear at the top!

Last updated 07-17-2024

June 2024 FAIR International talk (Salzburg, Goteborg, Paris) on the history of science, religion, and scripture.


January 2024 Mormonism with the Murph x2, talking about a variety of subjects

January 2024 Another appearance on Saints Unscripted, talking about  the four ways Latter-day Saints have approached things like dinosaurs, fossils, and cavemen. (This was a popularization of my presentation at the Mormon History Association.)

November 2023 This is a fireside I gave in Phoenix, similar to one I’ve done in Scotland and elsewhere.

August 2023  I appeared on the Spanish-language podcast La Hoja del Olivo, but as my Spanish is conversational, I am subtitled

Aqui, doblada en español! (Para mas en español, ver mis artículos aquí.)

April 2023, I appeared on Saints Unscripted twice, talking about the nature of revelation, prophets and scripture, and then implicit contexts in the scriptures (see here and here for written posts.) The first one was quite popular.

 

March 2023. As the Mormon Studies Fellow of the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, I made a public presentation on part of my dissertation research. I decided to talk about some of the intellectual machinery “under the hood” of twentieth-century creationism. See my post here for background and references.

 

I gave a second lecture at the University of Utah, sponsored by Mormon Studies, on Henry Eyring Sr. and Melvin Cook. These two men were very similar— devoted Latter-day Saints and internationally recognized physical chemists— but one became a committed creationist and the other preached an old earth and evolution. What made the difference, and what does their story illustrate about the broader debate?

August 2022, I appeared on the official Saints podcast to expand on chapter 21 of Saints vol 3. The topic was Latter-day Saints in the 1920s and 30s and science/religion conflict, especially biological evolution.

 

 

August 2022, FAIR Conference. “First Things, Faith, and Reading Scripture Literally: Why it Matters.” This covers a number of principles of revelation: Accommodation, Adaptation, etc.

After the Church published its Organic Evolution Church History topic, FAIR released my 2021 Conference talk, “Through a Glass, Less Darkly: The 20th Century History of Genesis and Evolution.” Please note, since I prefer to speak over my slides extemporaneously, I consider the print version with footnotes (and minor corrections and updates) to be the “authoritative” version.

January 30, 2022 I appeared on the Interpreter Foundation radio show (broadcast on KTALK AM 1640) and podcast, here. The topic was scripture study and the early chapters of Genesis.

I recorded three videos with Saints Unscripted, below. The first one is more about the history of biological evolution among Latter-day Saints than the broader history of Christianity.

And creation.

And the flood. (Very long flood post here.)

?? This is video from a Stake class I taught for a while, pre-pandemic, “Reading and Teaching the Bible as Latter-day Saints.”

Sometime in 2022(?), I did a thing for Seminary seniors who didn’t get Old Testament at all in seminary, because of the schedule realignment. It’s basically an introduction to reading the Old Testament, a good intro. (Link to supporting post with citations)

Summer 2021, I spoke at the FAIR conference on the history of LDS and evolution in the 20th century.

March 2021, Conversation with UVU biology professor Heath Ogden, about LDS history, scripture, interpretation, and evolution

August 2020, interview with Greg at Cwic Media about Genesis and interpretation

March 2020, Zoom Q&A for Uplift. (This was supposed to be a conference in Provo, but a pandemic got in the way.)

February 2020, I did two firesides in Washington DC.  The first is on LDS interpretive history. How and why did we end up preferring to read scripture in certain ways and not others?

Second, “Reconciling the Temple with Science, Creation and Evolution: A Faithful Approach” Here I talk more about how to make sense of conflicting LDS creation narratives- Genesis, Moses, Abraham, and the Temple.

Summer 2019 FAIR Conference, I spoke on the nature of revelation, and making sense of the parallels (and differences!) between Genesis, Moses, Abraham, and the Temple.  Revelation is not purely divine, but will always have a strong human component to it. Transcript with extensive notes. Audio .

Nov 2019, Interview about the history of LDS manuals, Seminary, preparing students for missions, etc.

Feb 2019, I did a long 8-part interview on LDS history, scripture, and Evolution with Mormon Tangents. Note that the videos are listed in reverse order (#8 comes first instead of #1), and you can buy a transcript from Amazon.

June 2018, LDS MissionCast- “Prooftexting and Understanding the Bible as a Missionary Tool.” Latter-day Saints read the Bible within a very different framework of authority than Protestants, but this is something we (and they!) often forget.

February 2018 USU conference paper, “The Scientific Deformation and Reformation of Genesis: How Science Messed it Up, but Also Fixes It.”

I talk  about how and why the creation chapters of Genesis came to be seen as scientific in nature, and also how we came to know that that interpretive assumption about its nature actually distorts Genesis.

Video link (no slides or subtitles).  If that video link doesn’t work, go here, scroll down to the bottom, and click on my name to launch the video. My post with a link to the slides and references.

December 2017 LDS Perspectives podcast on Genesis chapter 1 in which I discuss some of the content from my book manuscript, on where Genesis 1 came from and what it means.

Oct 2017, a screencast of my Sperry Symposium paper on Reading the Old Testament in Context

August 2017, FAIR Conference “Truth, Scripture, and Interpretation: Some Precursors to Reading Genesis.” This was very well received.  Audio/podcast, transcript with footnotes, follow-up post.

 

July 2017 marked my first appearance on LDS Perspectives, talking about genres in scripture and how that helps us make sense of things. This got some rave reviews. Some references and such here.

Summer 2015, “Christian Accommodation at Corinth” BYU New Testament Conference.  The first time talking about the principle of Accommodation, and how it applied in Corinthians.

January 2014 “The Rediscovery of the World of the Old Testament” screencast

I did this as a fireside in Paris, in French… but failed to record it, and redid it in English. The massive archaeological and textual discoveries of the last 150 years have radically changed our understanding of the Bible.  Links here to some of the details and sources.