Episode 122 - Webspionage

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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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