Levi (00:00.248)
good at this now.

Matt (00:01.396)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. I'm your host Matt and with me as always is Sean and Levi fresh off the streets of Portland rebelling against our nation, taking on the National Guard. Levi took some time out of his protest to join us. I'm glad I see no scars on your face. I don't see any violence. I'm glad you survived. Like I was a little afraid when you told me you were going to protest today in Portland, it sounded scary.

Levi (00:08.876)
Hey!

You

Levi (00:27.769)
I just changed out of my frog costume, so I didn't really wear a frog costume.

Matt (00:32.083)
okay.

You'll have to tell me, were there National Guard people there?

Levi (00:41.27)
No, I didn't see any National Guard there. Portland police was out. They were very friendly.

Matt (00:43.476)
We're there. We're there and.

Shawn (00:45.701)
Yeah, you said it was a pretty peaceful, fun rally. You said it was more of like a, what'd call it? A pep rally, really.

Levi (00:53.102)
Yeah, pep rally. was just like bands played and city councilman gave a speech and we marched a little bit and showed off our signs.

Matt (01:01.394)
That's pretty much how every rally protest thing happens. That's pretty much how they all are. Like peaceful, yeah. What would be a church equivalent of this? Testimony meeting? A vibrant testimony meeting where people get all, people take their turn to go up and shout at the crowd and the crowd kind of like cheers for them. But it's mostly like the crowds are sort of eating cotton candy and popcorn and stuff and just mingling with each other. Is that, I don't know.

Shawn (01:14.009)
What? What do mean?

Levi (01:29.422)
Yeah. I know. Is it like EFY? Maybe it's like, we call it FSY now, right? Because it's outdoors and we're all very excited and I don't know.

Matt (01:31.85)
Yeah, I don't-

Shawn (01:35.525)
Yeah?

Matt (01:35.807)
Yeah.

Matt (01:40.412)
It's like the rock and roll concerts that Sean goes to are much more raucous than any kind of protest event I've ever seen. Because you guys are like dancing, you put your elbows up and sort of like hit each other with your elbows as you move around. I have no idea.

Shawn (01:53.669)
Don't pretend like you know what it's like to go to a nice concert, Matt. Don't pretend to know.

Matt (02:01.16)
I guess Sean's of an age where a concert for him is like you get your blanket out, you set it on the grass, you lay down with a pillow and then.

Shawn (02:06.181)
No, I admit I'm a little more timid to just make my way through the crowd and be up there in the front, but no, we're still doing that. We're still doing that. We're still doing it.

Matt (02:16.445)
Dance, you're dancing?

Levi (02:16.507)
Sean, you're not too old for the mosh pit yet. You're still... Okay, alright.

Shawn (02:19.237)
I don't think so dude. Never. Never!

Matt (02:22.262)
huh, well, well, well then your rock concerts are much more violent than any protest event I've ever seen.

Shawn (02:28.894)
Yeah.

Matt (02:30.716)
Yeah. We need to start calling in the national guard for Fugazi. Hey, I heard Fugazi is coming down. Send in the national guard, have them shoot artillery across the freeway. Fugazi is coming. Hey, well, I'm not going to open. I have nothing in the mailbag this week that I want to talk about. Although listeners did write and I thank you listeners for writing. We're just not going to talk about what you wrote in because I have so many other things I want to talk about instead. So first up.

Levi (02:40.856)
tear gas that crowd.

Shawn (02:43.087)
hahahaha

Matt (02:59.038)
Dallin H. Oaks was sustained as the new president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the time of his call to the Quorum of the Twelve in 1984, he was on the short list of people who might have been nominated to be on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Griffith, he's a member of our church. He was on the D.C. Court of Appeals. So he was a very high-ranking federal judge when he retired a couple of years ago. He says that the work that Dallin H. Oaks can do

Shawn (03:02.607)
Yeah. Wow, yes.

Levi (03:04.141)
Who?

Matt (03:26.878)
to bridge the political divide in the United States right now is more important than anything he might have done on the US Supreme Court. Many church members right now think that President Oaks was called at this time to help build political divides in the United States. This is the question I have. Is that a myopic viewpoint? I see this all over social media, right? Like you get a medical doctor called before the COVID pandemic and you get this constitutional legal scholar called as president of the church at such a divisive political time.

Surely that's what the Lord has in mind. And I saying, isn't that maybe myopic?

Shawn (03:59.203)
Myopic, yes, myopic, yes. I think it is. Yeah, because what does preaching temple worship and covenant lifestyle and doing missionary work and clarifying doctrine really have to do with the political divide? Nothing, right? The people that are, the prophet's role is to lead souls to Christ, not save our political environment or cause people to go one side or the other.

Matt (04:03.636)
Tell me why, Sean.

Shawn (04:26.373)
Like they're going to have their message that they've always had, is we take no stance and we encourage every member to get involved politically, whatever side, whatever you feel like is the right way to go. That's not going to be any different. Right? Levi, you think?

Matt (04:42.002)
I don't know what you say Levi.

Levi (04:43.81)
Well, that's interesting. I mean, I know this is the assumption that we always make that the church will always be politically neutral. I suppose worldwide church probably always will be. But sometimes I wonder whether that's, you know, is there a point where the church would or should step out and say, no, we're not we're not in favor of that. I don't know. Seems like there ought to be that place where we'd say,

Shawn (05:08.901)
Like of individual things, you mean? Not like take a stance and take a side, but just of certain things that maybe are important to society. Is that what saying?

Levi (05:19.978)
Yeah, yeah. And we've seen it. I mean, we've seen the church take some sort of conservative stands. And then we've also seen a lot of really nice rhetoric around refugees and immigrants. And I really liked those. those are, you know, those feel a little bit political, but

Shawn (05:23.417)
Yeah.

Matt (05:39.882)
But it's also a little, in my opinion, myopic to think that the president of a church that let's say all of the members of the church in the United States is maybe what, like 3 % of the US population, maybe 6 % of the US population. Like the idea that president Oaks can have some kind of legitimate meaningful influence on political divisions in the United States, that seems a little bit too hopeful. And then in our church, I think it's only like 45 % of church members speak English.

So there's like 55 % of church members speak a language other than English. So the idea that the president of the church is gonna be called because he can do something politically at this moment, it just seems like a very US centered perspective of President Oaks as president of the church.

Shawn (06:22.703)
Yeah.

Shawn (06:26.361)
Yeah, and it has nothing to do with the mission of the church. Go ahead Levi.

Levi (06:26.914)
What do you think that might mean for, like, what are some things that President Oaks might do to bridge or heal a political divide in the United States? there things that he could do, or maybe his hands are just tied? Maybe there's nothing he even could do. I guess that's what Matt's saying, right?

Matt (06:47.068)
Yeah, I don't think he could do anything, right? I mean, it's not that he can't do anything, but let's say that he was the opposite. Let's say that President Oaks was like really wanted to like stoke the anger in the United States and make things worse. There's not a lot he can do as president of our church to change that a whole lot in the United States.

Shawn (07:02.191)
You're just saying that the influence and reach just isn't big enough to have any of that kind of influence is what you're saying.

Matt (07:08.264)
Yeah, I'd say like generally speaking, Utah is a kind of place politically that doesn't look like the rest of the United States, right? There's not the same kind of anger and vitriolic sort of fighting in Utah politics that there is in other parts of the United States. And even then only 40 % of Utahns are members of the church. I think that's the number I said, maybe it's higher than that. But it's just like, I don't know what the church is gonna do.

Politically, this can have a big effect on politics in the United States.

Shawn (07:40.005)
I don't think there's a will to do it. There's no will in the church to do that type of thing, right? The mission of the church has been very clear. Every general conference we hear from our leaders, there's not even a touch of it, not even a hint that it would be there. There's no will to do that. They are very crystal clear on the gospel of Jesus Christ, on the building of the kingdom, covenant path, celestial kingdom, Restoration, like all of that. That's 99.9 % of what they talk about. There's no...

Matt (07:53.14)
Yeah.

Matt (08:03.786)
Yeah.

Shawn (08:07.853)
evidence of any will to do that so I don't see how it would apply.

Matt (08:12.116)
So we were just, go ahead Levi.

Levi (08:12.376)
Have you guys heard of this? Sorry, have you guys heard of this 3.5 % rule? There's this this idea I'm trying to figure trying to find a link.

Matt (08:21.13)
Does it rhyme with Pareto somehow?

Levi (08:27.862)
Let's see, shoot, it's this idea that once you have 3.5 % of the population participating in meaningful ways in a revolution, then that's sort of a threshold where revolution happens. It's a 5 % rule, so I'm rating 3.5. Okay, all right.

Matt (08:37.392)
five percent, it's the five percent rule. Well, five percent is you never have more than five percent immobilized in a revolution. So yeah, even if you go to the US Revolution, Revolutionary War, you never have more than five percent of the population that's actually involved in fighting in any kind of revolution. The only exception is a civil war.

Shawn (08:50.031)
Really?

Levi (08:50.155)
okay, yeah.

Levi (08:59.619)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (08:59.653)
Is that what you meant Levi? You didn't mean the actual participants in the revolution Levi, you meant the cause of, the initiation of. Is that what you meant?

Levi (09:08.522)
Yeah, and I should have should have read more should have read up on this more. I'll put a link up. But yeah, she was talking she's talking about nonviolent resistance here and says, this is Erica Chenoweth at Harvard Kennedy School. Yeah, and was talking about how

Matt (09:20.902)
Yeah, yeah. They have a book out in 2011, right? Civil unrest and the power of mobilization and the power of social movements.

Levi (09:28.992)
maybe, And so I think that.

Shawn (09:29.353)
I like this Levi, you're saying that perhaps we in the church are right there in the cost. We're the number that could cause a revolution. Yes, we could, we could.

Matt (09:38.898)
No, because I don't know why Levi brought this up.

Levi (09:42.4)
You know, I well I'm just saying three three percent is is significant, but you do have to mobilize that three percent, right and

Matt (09:45.858)
that's right. You're saying if President Oaks could not only unify the entire church that's active and less active in the United States, but also mobilize them, could he? I mean, I mean, I don't have you seen like the ministering numbers in your board lately, Sean? I like the mobilization of members of our, it's just the reality, right? I remember I was

Levi (09:51.896)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Shawn (09:58.873)
Matt, the skepticism in your voice, the doubt, my goodness.

Shawn (10:06.746)
man, why so negative? My goodness.

Levi (10:12.674)
That's a good point, right?

Matt (10:14.248)
I was an elders quorum president. We were going to have this social. was so excited. was like, okay, raise your hand if you're coming to the social. And so I was like, my goodness, we're going to have hundred people at this social. I buy like all these hot dogs and then three people.

Shawn (10:25.679)
Matt, what the crap does a social have to do with a religious movement and unification in Christ? What does a social have to do with it? Hot dogs? Hot dogs?

Matt (10:33.096)
That's right, Sean. That's right. That's right. A socialist is so much harder to get people to than a revolution. Sean's like...

Levi (10:40.428)
Yeah, I can't get him to come eat hot dogs. I'm supposed to get him over to the government. Yeah, never.

Shawn (10:45.061)
Darkseid, the way.

Matt (10:45.258)
They're definitely gonna risk their lives. They're definitely gonna like take up arms when they wouldn't come get free hot dogs to my little social.

Levi (10:52.654)
Well, and something that is only tangentially political, but was, I mean, this is actually kind of a serious thing for me. It was kind of a hurtful thing for me for a while, right? So when President Nelson came out and said, everybody should wear masks to church. And so, you know, here we came wearing masks to church and there were a good number of members of my ward that were like, no, I'm not going to do that. And I was like, you know, for me, I thought, wait a minute.

Now I've been in the church for a long time. The church is a very conservative church, you know, politically, there are very few groups that are quite so conservative as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I've been in here a long time as a liberal and signing on to a lot of things that maybe I wouldn't otherwise have done. And so now here was the prophet coming out unequivocally saying, wear a mask. And I was really disappointed in my ward members that were like, no, my politics is more important.

understand that it's the same thing Matt's talking about, that like, okay, I can't even get you to do your ministering assignment. I'm not gonna, you're not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna get you to follow me in a political movement, but I do think the prophet just doesn't have that much influence over even the membership of the church.

Matt (12:05.428)
Same with vaccination rates. We have a paper where we look at vaccination rates by county before and after President Nelson told people to get vaccinated. Members of the church did not get vaccinated at higher rates after President Nelson told them to get vaccinated. Now that's not saying that nobody did, but as a group, as a church, had like no effect.

Shawn (12:05.785)
Huh.

Levi (12:14.318)
Mm-hmm.

Levi (12:22.62)
Mm.

Shawn (12:24.805)
But I'll take the opposite stance and suggest that that has less to do with people being faithful to the prophet and has more to do with people kind of understanding the lane that the prophet's in. Most people don't go, yes, my prophet is going to tell me what politics to follow or what health regimen to follow. I'm going to follow him to read my scriptures, go to the temple, serve other people. I'm going to suggest that he could rally a spiritual religious movement.

Levi (12:25.624)
Mmm.

Shawn (12:54.585)
But yeah, maybe not these other things. Like maybe that's not the lane that we view prophets in. Like we don't see it in scripture that prophets are political leaders as much, right? Where? Different.

Matt (13:03.476)
Sure we do. Moses was a political leader. Joseph Smith was a Brigham Young was a political leader.

Shawn (13:09.125)
Mmmmm

Levi (13:10.592)
Bring it on certainly, yeah.

Matt (13:10.654)
Joseph Smith, certainly.

Shawn (13:12.293)
I mean, he was a governor, right? were... Adam? No, he wasn't.

Matt (13:14.575)
Adam was a political leader.

Sure. Abraham organized a nation, Abraham, Isaac, and...

Shawn (13:22.501)
That's not a f- No.

Matt (13:26.026)
I mean, okay, all right. Alma?

Levi (13:29.646)
No, but it is true. mean, like compelling an entire people to migrate, that's a pretty big, I mean, it's a pretty political idea.

Matt (13:37.226)
Yeah, Alma was a prophet and a political leader. I mean,

Shawn (13:40.793)
Yeah, but the compelling threat there was, or you'll die, or you'll be taken captive, or you'll get your land taken away from you. So I'm not sure that was like a political movement, that was a survival movement, no?

Matt (13:52.638)
Yeah, I don't know.

Levi (13:53.09)
Yeah, some people died of COVID too, but.

Matt (13:56.522)
Well, there you go. That was life and death. Let me ask you guys this. We were just children when President Kimball died and Ezra Taft Benson became president of the church. But Ezra Taft Benson had a history of being a very political person. But once he became president of the church, he kind of left all the politics behind him. I never even grew up thinking of him as a political figure at all. Do you think that President Oaks will be like that more in that way? Or do think he'll

Levi (14:00.674)
Yeah.

Shawn (14:20.771)
Yeah, there you go.

Matt (14:26.036)
kind of stick on some things that are semi-political.

Shawn (14:28.357)
I mean, I guess it depends on what you view as political, right? He's very vocal about the proclamation of the family, but he doesn't see that as a political thing. He sees that as a religious doctrine thing. But some of us may look at that and go, look at him pushing his politics, right? Gender identity or family. That's not political though.

Matt (14:42.59)
Well, he gave a talk on the, he talked about the constitution, right? And he talked about getting involved in our communities and his talk on the constitution, the divinely inspired constitution and our obligations as citizens.

Shawn (14:52.293)
But fortunately or unfortunately, that's fair game in the religion because it's in our canonized scripture. The constitution of the United States is explicitly.

Matt (15:00.51)
But I'm just saying, what I'm saying is President Benson moved away from that and it moved towards pride and flood the earth with the Book of Mormon. And that's why I just wondered, do think President Oaks will do the same thing or do think he'll stay with those same topics?

Shawn (15:08.399)
Well...

Levi (15:11.086)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (15:11.425)
yeah.

Shawn (15:16.815)
He'll stay religious, I think, for sure.

Matt (15:19.828)
Okay.

Levi (15:20.184)
You think he'll stay apolitical as well. And one thing I do want to point out is who determines what is considered quote political is a lot of power, right? So Sean says, well, this is political and that's not political. anyway, as a liberal in the church, this is something that gets under my skin a little bit, Members of my ward will talk about things that I regard as political all day long. And then I say something and they're like, why you got to make it political?

Shawn (15:23.384)
A political.

Shawn (15:43.141)
Good, that was my goal within...

I like it. My goal was before the 16th point mark to get under Levi's skin somehow. what is it? Explain it though. What is it that you want people to define thing and treat certain things as political? Like for example, the proclamation of the family. You feel like I should be defining that as something political as opposed to just viewing it as, no, this is just a document that clarifies or repeats the doctrine that is already in scripture.

Matt (15:55.636)
Hey, hey.

Levi (16:07.822)
Yeah.

Levi (16:17.102)
Yeah, I mean, depends on how it's used, right? So I was in a Sunday school lesson one time, and it was a lovely discussion about the proclamation of the world and about supporting families. like, there's whatever, four minutes left of Sunday school and the guy from the back pipes up and he says, I think we ought to talk about this sentence here that says we call upon political leaders to blah, blah, blah, blah, and sort of goes on this, you know, he's

tiptoeing around it, but what he means is, can't we please throw a little more shade on the gay people, right? And on and on he goes, and this comment is extending beyond a minute and 90 seconds, and I raised my hand and I said, well, I think there's more to supporting families than maybe just stigmatizing our gay friends and neighbors. And that was, know, and a guy came up to me later and said, why do you have to make everything so political? And I thought, wait.

that his comment was explicitly political. Like he was explicitly saying, we need to be involved in politics. But it was as soon as I disagreed that everyone was like, Levi, he's so political. Why does he make that so political? But the power to declare something political or not political, I mean, is itself a power, right? That's a significant decision and a political act too.

Shawn (17:25.194)
great point. I love that point.

Shawn (17:39.663)
Wow, I'd love to learn more from you on that Levi because yeah, mean, my gut feeling says that's for me to decide, right? If I view this as a religious item or a political item, that's for me to decide. But it sounds like you feel like there's more universality in it. There's more like, no, that's not a subjective thing. They're objective political issues. Like the family is a political issue subjectively.

Matt (18:02.314)
No, what he's saying is, and this is, goes back to Schacht Schneider in 1960 said this. He says that when you're in a fight, any kind of a fight, it's not the two people having the fight that determined the victor. It's the crowd. And one thing you can do to get the crowd on your side is you can say that thing that they said is out of bounds. You shouldn't talk about that. You shouldn't bring up politics at church. And so saying that's just politics that doesn't apply here is a way to manipulate the crowd.

in a way to like focus people's attention in different ways. And so it's just a tactic. Levi is saying is that's a tactic. He used the word power, but it's a tactic of power.

Shawn (18:43.153)
interesting. Yeah. I'd love to, I'm open minded to learn more about that for sure. Can we, can we point out that, that when Sam was on the podcast, he was constantly name dropping. Like this, I know this guy and I met with this guy and Matt Miles has now taken the name drop stance cause he knows Shad Jones from Shad Schneider. Big name drop right there, Matt. I know Shad Schneider.

Matt (18:47.464)
Okay, I'll give you guys both the points.

Matt (19:00.532)
Shatchnider 1960 is 19 I know I just I I don't know him he wrote his book before I was born I just don't want to like take credit for an idea that's not my idea that's all Elmer Elmer Ernest Shatchnider has a Wikipedia page and I don't want people like going on his Wikipedia page saying look Matt stealing content from him

Levi (19:01.656)
Schneider.

Shawn (19:16.54)
sorry. I thought your name dropping. Okay.

Levi (19:16.75)
Well, as my good friend Shad Schneider said.

Shawn (19:22.789)
I just think, no, I...

I know as a political scientist, you've got this list of your favorite political authors and professors and you're always just like, I love these guys. Yeah, okay, well, all right.

Matt (19:33.158)
I do. I do.

Some of them I do love.

Levi (19:36.866)
Well, this is something that my wife has criticized about me as she said, okay, Levi, you go on this podcast and you are, you know, you're repeating all these ideas that you've learned from other people. Like, you know, it was a black woman that told you about all these ideas and you're not even citing them. And, you know, I'm like,

Shawn (19:48.367)
Shawn (19:51.685)
Where's the credit? Where's the credit? Or I thought she was going to say, Levi, come original, man. Come up with your own thoughts instead of quoting everyone else. No, she's saying just give credit to him.

Matt (19:54.194)
Well, well, citing the black woman

Levi (20:04.024)
Yeah.

Matt (20:05.096)
I was quoting a white man, Liberty. don't know if that's better, but Elmer Ernest Hatchnatter was a white man. I a really good idea.

Shawn (20:08.389)
You

Levi, want to say that everything that comes...

Levi (20:13.378)
His name was Elmer? Yeah.

Matt (20:15.08)
Elmer Ernest, yeah EE.

Shawn (20:17.231)
Levi, I want to say that everything that comes out of your mouth, I know that there's a love for whomever the sources came from that taught you. I know you revere them and I see that coming through you. really do, honestly. Liberty, get off Levi's back a little bit.

Matt (20:29.82)
Even if you don't know their names or-

Okay. So we're going to go back to a topic that was, we talked about a couple of weeks ago, a listener wrote in and pointed me to this podcast. They were talking about prediction markets. So the podcast is called on point and the host is Meghna Chakrabarti. I don't, I don't think I said that right, but in this, in this podcast episode, they brought up that the biggest concern with these betting markets is that people can make money by making bad things happen.

Shawn (20:52.035)
NPR.

Matt (21:01.918)
Someone might spread lies about candidates to change betting odds, or in extreme cases, they might bet on assassinations or terrorist attacks that they could just go and do themselves. These markets reward spreading fake news. Traders buy bets, spread false rumors to change prices and then sell for profits. This can damage trust in elections. When people bet on disasters or someone's health, society learns to see tragedies as money-making opportunities. These markets are essentially gambling dressed as investing.

They lack casino protections like spending limits. Young people think they're making smart investments when they're really just betting. Many lose money chasing their losses. So since these platforms avoid gambling laws, users have no protection when things go wrong. So the question is, given the harms these platforms cause, should governments create more laws to regulate their behavior? Please say yes, Sean. Please say yes. You're not going to regulate any, wait, before you answer this.

Shawn (21:53.027)
No, absolutely not. Absolutely they should not.

Matt (21:58.9)
Should we release the Epstein file, Sean? I just need to know where you're at. I just want to know if any bad behavior is off limits for you. Should we, release the Epstein? Okay, go ahead. I'm just playing with you. individual liberty. It doesn't matter anymore.

Shawn (22:01.017)
What does that have to do with anything?

Levi (22:04.128)
You

Shawn (22:08.789)
You're ridiculous. Of course you should release the upscene files dude, release them you fool.

Levi (22:13.272)
You

Shawn (22:20.971)
Listen, federalism is the answer here. Federalism is working somewhat for the big picture of gambling, right? Let states decide and some states are going to go, this is bad for society, we're not going to allow it. And other states decide this is totally fine, let's let gambling happen. And others are like, with a lot of regulation, maybe we'll protect our people or whatever. That's the answer.

Matt (22:43.828)
So some governments could regulate it and you'd be okay with it as long as it's a state that decides and not the federal government.

Shawn (22:50.399)
Only in the concept of federalism because that is a great system that allows for agency choice, options, choices. No, I'm not for any government deciding. I don't think a federal centralized government should decide this thing.

Matt (23:05.214)
Okay. But what about El Cajon? Could El Cajon, the city, just create their own thing? Okay. You just, yeah, but you just don't want

Shawn (23:08.003)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think so. That's federalism, right?

Levi (23:12.332)
and state of California could.

Shawn (23:14.373)
That's federalism. Let them choose. And if I don't like it, if I don't like it, I've got 49 other states I could go to. What about Canada?

Matt (23:15.722)
Okay.

Levi (23:15.756)
But the United States could not.

Levi (23:19.928)
Canada, Mexico. Well, if the United States passed the law, you can just move to Canada.

Matt (23:23.338)
Those are countries, Levi.

That's true.

Levi (23:28.076)
And if Mexico and Canada and the United States all pass a law, you just move to... you just move to Uganda.

Shawn (23:30.533)
Well, they don't have, I don't, does Canada, Uganda or Mexico have federalism? Because I think federalism is a great principle. I don't think they have federalism.

Matt (23:39.402)
Yeah, Sean's gonna hate, Sean wants to be a US citizen.

Levi (23:40.366)
Well, I was just wanting to know what's the size of a government that's okay for you. So a state government, that's an acceptable size, but the United States, that's too big.

Shawn (23:52.205)
No, no, I'm not saying that. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the nature that a state government is one of 50 is allowing for me to have choices in a government, a single government with all power.

Levi (24:02.83)
But the United States is one of 193 countries. Does it not apply there?

Shawn (24:06.777)
Yeah, but if, okay, sure. If all those countries stuck to our scripturally revealed constitution, then sure, I'd be open to that. Absolutely.

Matt (24:15.528)
Right. That's the thing Levi is Dallin H. Oaks in his talk, the Divinely Inspired Constitution listed principles that were divinely inspired. And one of them he chose in that talk was specifically federalism. And so Sean hangs his hat on like,

Shawn (24:29.861)
And Matt is really upset about it. Listen to his voice. Listen to the tone in Matt's voice. How annoyed Matt is.

Matt (24:33.189)
federal I am not a fan of federalism but it's divinely inspired in our constitution so I uphold the principle of federalism though I don't like it as a political scientist I don't think it's great but

Levi (24:33.59)
Okay.

Levi (24:45.966)
But it doesn't apply internationally, is that what we're saying? Is that federalism is states.

Matt (24:49.268)
Right.

Shawn (24:50.509)
It cannot, no, no it cannot because if like you said a million times in the past, take all the countries that do not have human rights standards. They're disqualified from me saying, that's a good choice and option. That government doesn't qualify. So I need a minimum set of standards, which I think the US government holds.

Levi (25:05.198)
Okay, so you need 50 countries that that protect human rights. And if we can name them, then the United States can pass gambling laws. Is that what we're saying? Is that if, if there are 50 countries that are acceptable, New Zealand, Australia,

Matt (25:08.938)
What is Levi a physicist or something?

Shawn (25:18.413)
No, no, because you still have, no Levi, missing my point. If there's a singular centralized government that's making the decision for everybody, that's what I have a problem with. I like that I have no less power in the centralized government. I like that I have options in the smaller governments to, I can leave California if I don't like it. That's cool, I can leave and go to another state, which is under the US constitution, divinely inspired, and I'm good.

Levi (25:29.406)
huh. Okay.

Matt (25:47.886)
or, or California is smaller than the federal government. So if you don't like something in California, you can fight in California to get rid of those policies and you have more of a voice in your. Yeah. Yeah.

Levi (25:48.344)
But I, okay.

Levi (25:56.056)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (25:57.721)
I do have more in El Cajon. Yeah, I've got way more of a voice. I can get involved and I can actually make a difference. And if El Cajon fails me, I'll move to Carlsbad.

Levi (26:02.765)
Yeah.

Well, so another thing that...

Matt (26:09.066)
No, you won't. We talked about Carlsbad before.

Levi (26:09.902)
Another thing that was so, I hear this argument.

Shawn (26:13.561)
Go ahead Levi.

Levi (26:14.786)
I hear this argument sometimes and one of the things that always... So I used to live in the city and a big, we're not gonna name drop here, but my good friend, Shebet Schneider was mentioning this. So I used to live in this city and there was a big company that had a big plant in the city and they did kind of whatever they wanted.

Matt (26:30.986)
You

Levi (26:41.974)
because they were a really big international company. And our little city council.

Shawn (26:46.405)
Were you living in 1928 or 1952?

Matt (26:48.522)
You

Levi (26:50.99)
Yeah, it was a company town. It was a mine. no, no, but, but I think, I think one, one problem that I have is if you are going to limit the scope of government and not limit the scope of business, then business will run everything. And that's a, that's a danger. Right? So, so this big international company has a lot of money and they're going to steamroll the little city council in my little city.

Matt (26:52.906)
You

Shawn (26:55.973)
Okay, sorry, go ahead.

Shawn (27:10.693)
But you know my obvious...

Levi (27:20.588)
and they're going to do whatever they want and they're going to threaten to leave and take their whatever tax revenue with them if they go. And so they end up kind of running everything.

Shawn (27:20.632)
Right, but y-

Shawn (27:27.269)
But you know the obvious Adam Smith answer to that is the free market will handle that. If said company buy free exchange and offering a better product and people love it and they're willing to pay their money, if they get to a point where they are abusing the people or tricking the people or being dishonest with the people, the people will stop buying their products and services. Someone else will come in and it happens all the time. A better company comes in and now there's balance. So I think

Sure, there's lots of damage that free market and capitalism causes, but it also self-corrects.

Matt (28:01.322)
Have you seen the show Parks and Rec Sean? In Parks and Rec there's a big candy company in the town nearby and the candy company does everything and nobody stops buying the candy company. There you go. And, Sweetums gets whatever they want because everybody loves Sweetums and nobody puts, did Sweetums go out of business in that show?

Shawn (28:03.481)
Yeah.

Shawn (28:06.905)
That's right. That's Sweetums. Sweetums.

Levi (28:12.43)
Queerums.

Shawn (28:17.721)
Until they didn't.

Shawn (28:22.221)
Not out of business, that's not the answer, but they don't have monopoly and they don't have complete control. They didn't get the government contracts. What are we talking about, Sweden's for fictional show?

Matt (28:29.028)
Well, because Levi wanted to talk about something like Sweetums, but he didn't want to say the name of Sweetums in his town and where he used to live.

Levi (28:37.932)
Yes, the sweetest, yeah, that's this.

Shawn (28:38.543)
I mean, I'm with you Levi, think monopoly, think we should have laws against monopolies. I'm okay with that. think that's, yeah, I'm okay with that.

Levi (28:46.882)
Whoa, that was awesome. Wait, hold on. Let's just pause right there. Like that's somebody interfering with somebody else's property rights to create as big a company as they want. And I love it, Sean. I always knew you had it in you. I love it. I do love it. And I think you are taking a very reasonable position on that. Yeah.

Matt (28:47.828)
But should we have laws?

Shawn (28:59.883)
Yeah, yeah

Matt (29:02.058)
But but

Matt (29:07.54)
But Levi, as someone who actively participates in these gambling markets, should we regulate your behavior?

Levi (29:11.886)
Okay, yeah, Matt outed me so so there was one election year where I got sort of hooked on this right and I would watch these gambling markets and and And I was like looking for these these arbitrage opportunities, right? So so you could like you could buy a no contract

Shawn (29:11.887)
There it is, there it is, there's the...

Levi (29:38.478)
And then sell a yes contract and you could make like a few pennies on on these, right? Just because the markets were small and inefficient and somebody get in there and get really excited and they buy a bunch of yes contracts and they'd be overpriced relative to the market. And so I kind of got like, this was kind of out checking on there like seriously, four or five times a day. I just be on the, okay, all right, let's see if we can find an arbitrage opportunity here. And oh, it looks like my, it looks like the market's corrected and now I can sell and make a few pennies.

And I probably made $12 that whole, that whole election cycle, because they're not like they're, the markets are so small that you can't really make any, make any money, which actually is my comment to Megan Chakravarty is I just don't know if those markets are big enough yet that it's worth anybody's time to try to affect them. Right. Or am I really going to, I don't know. I don't know if that's the

Shawn (30:36.709)
So I'm just on, I'm I'm on polymarket.com right now. one of the, see, will the feds change in October? Will they change the interest rates in October? Currently trading 92 million in volume.

Matt (30:37.098)
Well, if you COVID.

Levi (30:38.136)
profitable strategy.

Matt (30:51.946)
Right, 92 million Levi, that's not small.

Shawn (30:54.767)
And that's one of about 300 different bets that's going on.

Levi (30:55.458)
Right, so.

Levi (30:59.278)
But how much would it cost to influence that decision? What do you think?

Matt (31:03.892)
Well, if it's 92 million, I can sway it with like 50 million, right? Or you mean influence the fed's decision.

Levi (31:09.983)
you could move the market. I mean, how would you affect the fed's decision? Right? So if I'm a fed chair, certainly I could make millions on it.

Matt (31:14.004)
But there's other things you could bet on. Sure. Right. And, and if I'm president of the United States, I could make money on it and all the other things. That's just the political ones, right? Will a terrorist attack happen? Will this happen? Will that happen?

Levi (31:23.159)
Yes.

Shawn (31:27.749)
Matt, Matt, there's a million dollars on when will the government shut down end. You're saying that, I mean, I could, if I'm a good digital marketer, I could go on and buy ads and influence, you know, thousands of people's opinion about when that's going to end. could feed them fake news and is that what you're saying?

Matt (31:43.836)
Right. Yeah. then that's gonna

Levi (31:45.058)
How much money do you think that would cost, John, to influence that? Like if you're in a digital ad space, how many millions would you need to make a significant dent in that, to move that?

Shawn (31:55.993)
Yeah, it depends on the number. I mean, it depends on the number of people I feel could sway it. I'd have to have a pretty detailed strategy, yeah, with like pretty effective projected numbers, but.

Matt (31:59.251)
If some of

Levi (32:02.51)
Thank

Matt (32:05.652)
Well, you could just do a digital TikTok video that everybody thinks is going to happen anyways, and you just blast it, right? If it's already consistent with people who think it's going to happen, and you just say, hey, this is going to happen, then you can move that market with one really easy, simple video.

Shawn (32:24.483)
Yeah, I don't know, man. So it says that less, there's a less than 1 % chance that the shutdown will end between October 15th and 18th. You're saying let's make it, let's make a video and go viral and convince everyone that that's when it's going to happen.

Matt (32:36.584)
Well, well, the government shut down when it first started, you could bet on, it going to be October 2nd? Is it going to be October 3rd? Is it going to be October 5th? Right. And you could just put out, you could have put out a video early on that said they've got the votes. They're going to open it on October 2nd and you could have made people buy that. And then all those people are going to lose their money when that doesn't happen.

Shawn (32:57.797)
Look, think the man I've been quoting nonstop for the last two weeks is Elder Brown from General Conference. And I love one of the things he said. He said, we cannot make choices without being responsible for the consequences. Matt, no matter how much you think the government can come and save me from the consequences of my choices, you cannot. It is against principle. So let people, let Levi put his heart and money.

Levi (32:59.598)
Mm.

Shawn (33:25.381)
But get betting about Donald Trump becoming president and lose his $12 and let him suffer those consequences.

Matt (33:28.298)
hahahahah

I don't want to stop people from doing it. I think that there's time and place to do these kinds of things, but I think that regulation is helpful. I remember when they first talked about putting ratings on video games, I was like, that's the stupidest thing ever. But then as a consumer, I'm grateful that they have ratings on video games or when they started rating television shows, it's helpful to me as a consumer to be like, Hey, there's stuff in here you might not want to watch, or maybe there's stuff you do want to watch.

Shawn (33:56.965)
Do you consider that committee in the central government who has saved you, Matt, who has helped your soul and you saved your kids, you consider them equal to like a prophet or like, I don't know, the savior maybe.

Matt (34:08.286)
I don't think they saved me. They just gave me some helpful information. I appreciate that on, then they will actually put out that information and I can find out what TVMA means.

Shawn (34:11.461)
What if they were wrong? What if their values didn't align with yours? What if they're wrong or what if they change it in 10 years?

Shawn (34:21.743)
So now that you've done all that, by the time you've done all that research to find out what TVMA means and who the people, you could have just done a little Google search on that video game and gone, this is not, all the parents have collectively said this is not good for my kids.

Matt (34:34.346)
You're telling me that Google is like an unbiased great information source.

Shawn (34:38.233)
There are more parent guides out there on the internet for movies, for video games, than government officials trying to save you.

Levi (34:38.478)
you

Levi (34:45.474)
Matt, there's not false information on the internet, Matt. What are you talking, false information on the internet?

Matt (34:49.534)
You

Shawn (34:49.955)
Be discernible. You guys are smart guys. You guys are smart guys. You can be discernible.

Matt (34:53.354)
I'll tell you my biggest challenges. PG in the 1980s meant something very different than what PG... I've learned. No. I watched this movie called Room with a View and it was in the 1980s and I was like, oh, this is a fun little movie about somebody going to Europe. Suddenly there's like full on male nudity as they like throw their clothes off and go swimming in a nearby lake. I was like, PG! Yeah.

Shawn (35:00.089)
There you go, bro. Go watch Airplane with your kids. Go watch the movie, the PG movie, Airplane with your kids. There he goes.

Shawn (35:16.293)
Yeah, PG. There you go. You're making my point for me, Matt.

Matt (35:23.026)
If you're, if the 1980s PG meant something different than what it does now, but I learned that right. now I can, I can like say, okay, what year was this rated PG? Cause that matters a lot.

Shawn (35:33.797)
But Matt, the collective society would have told you in three seconds, hey, there's some nudity in that movie. It doesn't matter what the government rated it. Yes.

Matt (35:40.306)
No, really? Sean, did you know there was nudity in room with a view?

Shawn (35:44.437)
Every movie, every single movie that I ever watch, I do a parent guide search, Matt. Yes.

Levi (35:45.709)
I'm

Matt (35:50.42)
Well, Sean, that's a very informed way to consume things. But I'm telling you, most people aren't that way. Most people are not Googling everything before they put it in their body and be like, hold on, what is this quinoa?

Shawn (35:57.231)
There you go. you need, people are stupid. There you go, Matt. People are stupid. So we need a very strong central government to save our idiot choices, because we're a bunch of idiots. There you go. That's your stance.

Matt (36:10.25)
Okay, you get points for that, Sean, because I like what you said. That sounded really good to me.

Shawn (36:13.24)
Yeah

Levi (36:14.926)
Well, but I also want to give points to Sean because I also believe in the end actually prediction markets do tell us something about this in this sort of wisdom of crowds, right? That like if I have a whole bunch of little actors and especially when they're putting in their own money, these prediction markets tend to be actually kind of accurate because everybody's got their, know, and, it does, it does gravitate that way. And I know this is, you know, right. Playing right into Sean's hand, which is why I'm giving him points, but I do believe that when

everybody participates, we do get pretty good answers. So Google Room with a U before you go see it.

Matt (36:47.306)
Okay. Well, Sean, lots of points today, Try not to spend them all at the same place. All right. Last topic. accusations have surfaced that Tom Homan, who was set to be border czar, was given $50,000 in cash by undercover FBI agents in exchange for promises of government contracts if Donald Trump won the election. So Mr. Homan denies illegal actions.

Shawn (36:53.283)
He stopped it.

Matt (37:15.604)
The Trump administration reportedly shut down the FBI investigation. An ethics expert. I said that specifically, because Sean loves those people. An ethics expert sees three major issues that demand an independent inquiry. One, Homan and the White House gave inconsistent statements about the money. Two, he received a senior security clearance despite an active bribery probe. And three, he may have committed tax evasion by not reporting.

the alleged bribe is income. So the question is, should the Congress or the Justice Department open an investigation into the allegations? This is, you get these kinds of questions, Sean, when your defense of RFK Jr. is, he just wants to know the truth. He's just asking questions. He just wants to know what's going on. So that's why you get a question like this. Should we just figure out if he was taking a bribe?

Levi (38:02.806)
This is the most aggressive question I've ever heard. She was like, take that hard question.

Shawn (38:16.037)
mean, this is about ICE and this Holman dude. Levi is definitely passionate about these topics, I I thought you were poking at Levi more than you were poking at me.

Levi (38:23.585)
And bribery, yeah.

Matt (38:26.29)
I'm poking at everybody. That's actually mostly the listeners just poking at all of you. Any of you who ever agreed with Sean, shouldn't we just ask the question? Did the COVID vaccine work? Shouldn't we just be asking the questions? Although that's my question to all of our listeners. Shouldn't we just be investigating Tom Holman and find out about this bribe?

Shawn (38:41.625)
Yes, of course. Well, look, to me, Paul said it best, prove all things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from the appearance of evil, clearly any, like prove all things, be very skeptical of everything, especially people in government. Yeah, I'm definitely not gonna not say, I'm not gonna support with the way, did you hear what Trump did with George Santos? He just commuted, he let him out of jail, like disgusting.

Matt (39:05.546)
Yeah, let him out of jail.

You

Shawn (39:10.273)
Absolutely disgusting. So no, I have no faith that the Trump administration is gonna do the right thing when it comes to one of his allies in treating them with justice or with honesty. I have no faith in that. But I also know that your article came from, it was an opinion piece from New York Times, which is just as disgusting as Donald Trump when it comes to having an opinion about these types of things.

Levi (39:20.952)
Mm.

Matt (39:28.33)
Well, it's just because that's where I had.

Matt (39:33.866)
Sean, it came from an opinion piece by an ethics expert. Well, you're, you're not going to like my take on this Sean, but my answer is no, Congress and the justice department should not open an investigation into these allegations because I've lost all trust in the U S Congress to investigate. And I've lost all trust in the justice department to investigate. don't think that the Trump administration justice department is going to do an unfair, like an unbiased.

Levi (39:36.241)
man.

Shawn (39:48.067)
Whoa! Why?

Levi (39:57.705)
Ew.

Shawn (40:01.583)
Mmm.

Matt (40:03.402)
investigation into this where they're saying, hey, let's just find the truth. And I certainly don't think the House of Representatives right now is going to do some kind of an unbiased, let's just find the truth. We see what they're doing with the Epstein files, right? Where they're like, we're not going to release the files, we're going to call in everybody and have them come testify before Congress and we'll selectively release what we want to release. So no, I think that while the US Congress is controlled by Republicans and the Justice Department is controlled by the Trump administration, just hold off.

like the statute of limitations on this, we're going to be okay. We can investigate it when all of these crooks are out of Washington.

Shawn (40:36.499)
cool. You think I don't disagree with that dude. You said kind of what I said just more articulately much better. And then you had the result of give it four years and we'll bury this guy if he did something wrong. I love it. I love that dude.

Levi (40:37.486)
Mmm.

Matt (40:42.67)
okay.

Matt (40:48.82)
That's what I say.

Levi (40:50.542)
So, but now, so you guys heard about this Snyder versus US case before the Supreme Court where they said it was like some mayor that had taken a bribe, but they said it's okay because it wasn't, because it was like a gratuity. They called it a gratuity. said you can give somebody a gratuity. They gave your company a million dollar contract and then you gave him, you know, whatever, you gave him.

$50,000 just just because you like his work and stuff like that and the Supreme Court ruled that that's fine as long as you didn't say you don't get this $10,000 unless you give us the contract so I Yeah, anyway, I think that the I think the bribery has become a serious problem in this country Starting right at the top and we got a president overtly taking bribes We've got the Supreme Court that said bribery is fine. And now

I'm not surprised at all that Tom Homan takes a bribe and everybody says, oh, I don't know. I mean, is that really that bad? I do want to know, like, obviously he took $50,000 from undercover FBI agents, but what else did he take? Like, surely, surely this wasn't the first time this happened. So.

Matt (42:04.682)
But I don't trust our current FBI to investigate that.

Levi (42:06.518)
Yeah, no, I feel that too. Yeah, so leave it alone for now.

Matt (42:09.81)
Yeah. I, I'm okay with the Supreme court saying, you have to have a lot of solid evidence to prove bribery or corruption because if it's, I, I'm really uncomfortable with hearsay evidence being used to convict somebody of bribery because people are predisposed to assuming that a person had corrupt intent when they did something.

So I'm actually okay with that Supreme court case where it says it's hard to, you have to have this really high standard to prove bribery. At the same time, it looks like in this particular case, they have exactly, they could meet that standard. so what I don't like is if you tell the police officers, right, if you tell the FBI, look, in order to convict an elected official of bribery, you have to collect this kind of evidence. And then they go out and collect that evidence. And then we say, well, we're not going to prosecute it because there are

Levi (42:35.886)
Mm.

Levi (42:48.621)
Yeah.

Matt (43:04.882)
our pals, I think that's really wrong. But like you both said, that's what's happening right now in the United States. I don't write the idea that we're going to take undocumented immigrants. We're going to put them in what they call alligator Alcatraz, or we're going to, we're going to indict Jim Comey for lying to Congress. We're going to indict John Bolton for forwarding his work emails to a home email address. But like Sean said, we're going to let George Santos out of prison and we're not going to prosecute these other people.

That's a double standard that's dangerous for democracy in the United States.

Shawn (43:36.281)
Yeah, Trump's legacy will go down very, very poorly when it comes to this area, right? Really disgusting and bad.

Matt (43:41.554)
I think so.

Levi (43:43.916)
Yeah, but points to Matt. I did like the point and I know this wasn't even the topic but about the Snyder versus US. I think it must be Schneider, right? It's called Snyder versus US. It's the Snyder episode. Anyway, I thought that was a good take.

Matt (43:53.194)
Schachtschneider. Everything this episode is Schachtschneider. Okay, Levi is a physicist. Thanks Levi. I've been saving this topic for when Levi was joining us again because he's a physicist and he knows more about this stuff than I do but when I read this in the Doctrine and Covenants recently, which it's probably going to be in Come Follow Me sometime soon so all you listeners out there get ready to bring this up in Sunday School when you're

When you're tempted to say something in Sunday school about politics, do physics instead and people will just think you're so smart. They'll just think you're so cool. Okay. So doctrine of covenant section 131 verses seven through eight says this, there's no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure and can only be discerned by pure eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.

Shawn (44:27.578)
Ha

Matt (44:50.484)
So I was thinking about like physicists talk about something called dark matter. Generally they agree that dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that makes up about 27 % of the universe's total mass energy content, significantly outweighing the ordinary visible matter, which is only about 5%. So the question I have is, is the doctrine of covenants like onto something here?

Is it telling us there's this matter out there that's invisible and we just can't see it? And if so, like, Sean would love this. It means like, wow, the scriptures are like true.

Shawn (45:29.221)
I don't need scientists to tell me the scriptures are true. Hey, listen, before we have our expert answer this, Levi is our expert. I love this. Yes, you are. I love this verse. And I've got this mission prep series that I teach. Oh, by the way, please listeners, go listen to the Mission Stories podcast. And at the beginning of each class, when I've got these 50 young kids engaged and ready to talk, I always kind of hook them with this one really serious question that involves, really, I'd like Levi's answer to this. It's like this. Okay, Matt or Levi.

Levi (45:36.55)
my.

Matt (45:46.45)
Yeah, it's great.

Shawn (45:58.805)
If I get my arm chopped off, does my spirit arm just dangle there or does it suck back up into my body?

Matt (46:08.202)
Sean's changing the question.

Shawn (46:09.741)
No, no, this is relevant to the question because...

Matt (46:12.808)
You know, in psychology, there's such thing as phantom limbs. So if you, if you, if you do have your arm chopped off, you can feel pain in your wrist.

Shawn (46:15.577)
Yes, right.

I love that you, I love that Matt just went serious and is answering the question. Matt is answering the question.

Matt (46:24.616)
No, this is a hundred percent true that you will feel pain in your hand. Even though you don't have a hand, your brain will, you'll feel like, like pain in your missing limbs. And there's tech. I don't think it does. I think it's there. Yeah.

Shawn (46:36.005)
So it doesn't suck up back into your body then, it's there. Matt, you just answered the question, I can't believe you answered.

Levi (46:42.638)
And you think that's your spiritual hand that got hurt.

Matt (46:48.168)
I'm just saying like that you, your, your body can sense it and, and there's robotic arms now that they can put AI chips in your head and you can use just like you control your other hands. It's just like the star Wars Luke Skywalker hand. They can create robotic arms and robotic hands that work just the same with your, with your brain as you're like other hand does. So yeah, I think that why that's a weird question anyways. I don't know what it means for your

Shawn (46:49.529)
Your spiritual hand is missing the flash.

Shawn (47:13.061)
Hey, I love that you answered it. That was the best part of this whole thing. So I bring that stupid anecdote up to lay down this scripture and ask the kids, so what do you think? Does your spirit actually, is it, yeah, is it physical? Is it tangible? And their always answer is no. And so it's fun to have this topic discussed.

Matt (47:34.804)
Wait, they say your spirit is not tangible? It just says it right there. All spirit is matter.

Shawn (47:38.635)
No, I know, before we, sorry, before we read that verse, I asked them the question, do you believe that your spirits are tangible? Is it material? I can knock on this table, that's material. Is your spirit material? And all of them 100 % say no, absolutely not. I'm like, so you guys think it's like a movie, like a ghost, like your spirit is like a ghost that you can't see or touch or whatever. And they're like, yeah, I guess so. So it's fun to introduce this topic and subject. That was a long way around getting Levi's opinion on all this. So sorry, Levi. Okay, thanks.

Matt (48:04.605)
I like it, Sean. That was good.

Levi (48:06.432)
Well, you're going to be disappointed. I know very little about dark matter, so I'm not a cosmologist.

Matt (48:13.236)
How dare you? How dare you? You have a PhD in physics.

Levi (48:19.872)
It's true, it's true. mean, what you said is all that's about what I know is that it's, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't produce any light that we can see. We see it by its gravitational effects.

Matt (48:27.41)
Levi has a PhD in physics and he spends his whole life studying the 5 % of observable matter and doesn't even care about all of the unobservable.

Levi (48:38.414)
week, right? I said, actually, my PhD was in anti matter, which is even smaller portion of the of the matter. So yeah.

Shawn (48:47.867)
wow.

Matt (48:48.003)
Well then, without beyond physics Levi, what do you say?

Levi (48:54.294)
Well, so I'm interested in this concept of where it says there's no such thing as immaterial matter. What does the word immaterial mean there? There's no such thing as it almost seems like an ontology. There's no such thing as matter that's not matter.

Matt (49:08.892)
Everything is matter,

But then the next sentence, the next sentence clarifies that all spirit is matter, right? So it's basically telling you there's no such thing as like this idea of a spirit that has no matter to it.

Shawn (49:19.237)
No, Levi says there's no such thing as immaterial substance.

Matt (49:26.76)
matter. Is this substance?

Shawn (49:29.189)
I think the verse says there's no such thing as immaterial substance. Isn't that what the verse says? Yeah, not immaterial matter. Yeah, because you're right. That's, that's,

Matt (49:33.598)
Okay.

Levi (49:37.288)
Okay, Matt's got it in here in the email wrong. Okay. All right. Well that makes more sense, right? There's no such thing as immaterial substance also so Everything that is is matter is what it's saying and all spirit is matter, but maybe more finer pure Well, I I'm interested in these purer eyes like are these

Matt (49:40.55)
Yeah, maybe I have that wrong.

Matt (49:54.364)
No, no, no, I'm reading it. There's no such thing as immaterial matter.

Shawn (49:59.909)
That's what says.

Matt (50:01.086)
Yeah, verse 7, no such thing as immaterial matter.

Shawn (50:04.485)
There's no such thing as a material matter, does it? I thought it said substance. Okay, well.

Matt (50:07.284)
Yeah. Well, they change it. You know, they update the doctrine and covenants when they did the Joseph Smith papers. They went through and there were a lot of things that like in older versions, they had the wrong words. Probably somebody looked at that and they're like, Hey, that doesn't make sense.

Levi (50:08.75)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (50:18.053)
But I think the essence, but you're right Levi, the substance of it is that this whole spirit world, this whole pre-mortal existence, this whole idea that there's two parts to each of us, right? There's what's inside of me that I can't see, but it is matter, it is material. Just because I can't see it or feel it or touch it with these mortal, know, temporary elements doesn't mean that it's not real and isn't matter. Yeah, is that, yeah.

Matt (50:46.834)
Yeah, well, and I think it's, like these sorts of moments because there are a lot, if you study the life of Joseph Smith a lot, you'll see things that he said that you're just like, that just sounds crazy. Like, it's easy to make Joseph Smith seem like a crazy person, but there's these things in scripture that he says that you're like, that's way ahead of his time. Like this here, right? Like what other religion out there, Christian religion even.

Shawn (51:13.657)
None. None.

Matt (51:15.412)
takes a position on whether a spirit is matter and takes a position on the idea that all spirit is matter. Like that's a really bold thing to do if you're starting a religion like 200 years ago. And the fact that it's consistent with physics and everything we know about physics.

Shawn (51:27.073)
And that matter cannot be destroyed or created. That's in the DNC as well. That matter, even our spiritual matter has always existed. Can be reorganized, right? Can be ordered and chaotic, but like that's a concept that he introduced as well through scripture that no Christian looks at or no other religion looks at.

Levi (51:40.035)
Mmm.

Matt (51:49.642)
That's Einstein, right? In terms of physics, Einstein's the one that came up with that.

Levi (51:55.074)
Well, yeah, so that matter can be converted to energy and back would have been Einstein, yeah.

Matt (51:59.294)
Yeah, but the idea that you can't create, right? That there's this finite amount of matter that it's not created. Was that around before Einstein?

Levi (52:05.602)
Right, right.

Levi (52:09.986)
Well, mean, I think that before Einstein, everybody would have, I mean, I think Einstein was in one sense, a refutation of this idea that there's a finite amount of matter. And we had a lot of experiments that said, no, actually there's less matter here. And what happened to it, it became energy, right? So this sort of conversion between matter and energy, but that's not even Einstein, that even precedes Einstein.

Shawn (52:29.893)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (52:30.058)
Mmm.

Shawn (52:36.389)
Hmm. But Matt, you're.

Matt (52:37.162)
But that wasn't the physicist of Joseph Smith's time talking about that.

Levi (52:41.598)
No, I wouldn't guess so. No, I wouldn't think so, no.

Matt (52:43.722)
Yeah.

Shawn (52:43.941)
So Matt, you're saying you like when scripture reveals something that seems wacko and you like that later on science goes, well, that's actually true. You like that confirmation, is that what saying?

Matt (52:57.502)
Yeah, yeah, there are a number of things that as I read in scripture, in my own field in terms of political science, right? There's times that I read Joseph Smith and I say, wow, he sounds a lot like Karl Marx. And you say, well, you know, maybe that's the time that he's living in where Joseph Smith is gonna sound like Karl Marx, because that's like a Marxian time period. But then you can read where he's writing in other time periods and he sounds like very different political philosophers. And it's just like, yeah, sure, if you want.

Shawn (53:21.86)
Smith.

Matt (53:24.626)
right? Or the Kirtland people obviously sounded like they were capitalists because that's what they were at that time. But when you read about Kings and various things in the Book of Mormon and a lot of stuff in the Book of Moses, like there's just a lot of stuff that you're like, like in some ways he seems like just another person who's living at his particular period of time. And then there's other times that you're like, he's saying things that on the surface sound crazy. But when you look at religious history and you look at

political history, this case, physics, you're like, wow, like, he's saying stuff that's would be very bold to claim. And then it's amazing how it stands up to the test of time and, and, the progression of knowledge as it's progressed since his time.

Shawn (54:07.525)
I did not think that was the direction you were gonna take this. I would sometimes, like Matt, you're one of the more spiritual people that I know. And I know that's abstract term, but what I mean is I witnessed early on in the mission and throughout after you, you're good at feeling and discerning that I'm feeling God's voice. I'm feeling the Holy Ghost. And to me, that's sufficient, right? Faith is, what is it? It's the hope of things. What is it? It's the, the hope, yeah, the evidence of things not.

Matt (54:25.246)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (54:33.5)
Evidence of things not seen?

Shawn (54:37.285)
Yeah, we'll go with that. Thank you. That substance that you don't see that is more of a hope, I've always admired your ability to discern that as, this is God speaking to me. So I like that this topic is, spirit is real. It's a tangible substance. Our spirit, God's spirit, everything that's spiritual, it's not just an abstract or purely symbolic force. It simply operates at a level beyond our mortal perception.

Levi (54:38.542)
the substance that things hope for. Yeah, that's thing that's seen. Yeah.

Shawn (55:05.519)
those little pieces of us that are spiritual still can discern them. so I do think it's interesting. I don't think that science can discover the ways of God or the mysteries of God, but you're saying, it is kind of cool that it follows the revelations of God. And now we're kind of, the scientific world is kind of admitting, yeah, there is this invisible substance that makes up the majority of the world, the universe.

Matt (55:09.64)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (55:32.586)
The universe. Well, when I was... Go ahead Levi.

Levi (55:34.744)
Yeah, I do love these and go ahead. Well, and I always I do love, you know, my my colleagues who are scientists and physicists. I'm I've been surprised several times throughout my career to meet physicists who who have this faith in I mean, even physicists that aren't overtly religious, right? That'll that'll talk about, you know, connections between things that aren't physical and

And I've been really surprised to meet colleagues that do have a faith in unseen, sort of unobservable phenomenon. Yeah, I think life teaches you those lessons.

Shawn (56:13.605)
Is it common?

Levi (56:17.606)
I wouldn't say it's common because that's just not the topic we're discussing at the time. But when you get to be friends with people and then they come to you and say, I had this weird experience with a friend that a lot of people I think believe in, like in connections between people, for example, Like sort of unseen connections and things like that. I think there's a lot of that in a lot of our scientific communities.

Shawn (56:45.017)
That's interesting. So our unseen connections material, they're substantive. There's something physically there that's actually connecting us. man, that's crazy. That's amazing to think of.

Matt (56:52.564)
Well think about it Sean, if the observable visible matter is only about 5 % of the universe and this dark matter is 27 % of the universe's mass, that means there's much more out there that you can't observe visibly than there is that you can observe, right? It's five times more. So then that has to have some kind of an effect or some kind of an influence on the physical world, one would assume. But back in the day,

Shawn (57:09.583)
Yeah, amazing.

Shawn (57:18.309)
Absolutely.

Matt (57:19.774)
Back in the day, my sister gave me a book called All My Friends Are Dead. It's like a funny book and it would just make me laugh and laugh and laugh. And it's basically this person who's taking a shower and his friends like watching him take a shower as a spirit and something like that. It was, it was kind of like a crass sort of like a funny book, but I think there is some like truth to this idea that when people die, there's there and then there's in their spirit bodies, maybe they're still around us and we just can't see them. I think that's what this verse hints at.

Shawn (57:33.747)
wow.

Shawn (57:49.637)
That explains a lot Levi when we were companions, Matt and I, I would always bust him like watching me take a shower and just laughing and laughing and laughing. Now I understand why. What's so funny dude?

Levi (57:50.552)
Yeah.

Levi (57:58.968)
What are you laughing at? What's so funny over there? Well, and dark matter like these connections between us, like the way that we discover dark matter is we watch galaxies like move and we say, wait a minute, the math isn't adding up. And then we hypothesize that there's more matter in there that we're not seeing, right? And so without the dark matter,

Matt (58:03.304)
Me and the dead people are watching Shawnee take a shower.

Levi (58:25.494)
our galaxy would have flown off into pieces. And so it is, I mean, it's might be a little bit hokey, but it is kind of nice for me to think that, this invisible matter is the thing that binds us together, right? It's the thing that connects us and keeps us, you know, keeps us a community, keeps us a family really. Yeah, I like it.

Shawn (58:47.749)
That's cool, Levi. That's cool.

Matt (58:48.138)
I love it Levi. We're going to let that be the last word. Listeners, if you haven't picked up on this from Levi, he's a very caring, community oriented individual. I am not. And I like that about Levi. All right. Thanks everybody for joining us. We'll talk to you again next week.

Shawn (59:01.69)
Nice.

Shawn (59:06.379)
Ha ha.