For Episode 4, the HBS hosts look into the stories we tell, whether or not they are true, and what happens when those stories fall apart. Specifically, they discuss the various ways that origins are grounded in myths, documents, and self-narratives. By way of access into these problems, they take on the new Netflix series, Murder Among the Mormons, which centers around the story of Mark Hoffman, a master forger and murderer. What does it mean to have a physical document versus an oral tradition? How much of any given origin is truth or fiction and how do we know? How does authority function in the anchoring of any given origin story and its propagation? 

Today’s episode focuses on the topic of origins. Leigh, Ammon, and Shannon look into the stories we tell, whether or not they are true, and what happens when those stories fall apart. Specifically, they discuss the various ways that origins are grounded in myths, documents, and self-narratives. By way of access into these problems, they take on the new Netflix series, Murder Among the Mormons, which centers around the story ofMark Hoffman, a master forger and murderer. The documents that Hoffman fabricated and sold ranged from letters to literature. Some of the forged documents, most notably “The White Salamander Letter,” caused waves in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because it offered a counter-narrative to the religion’s official origin. This story serves as a point of entry into questions about what grounds the origin of institutions and individuals. What does it mean to have a physical document versus an oral tradition? How much of any given origin is truth or fiction and how do we know? How does authority function in the anchoring of any given origin story and its propagation?  

For further reading, check out the links below: 

• The documentary series, Murder Among the Mormons, can be viewed on Netflix. 

• What is the “White Salamander Letter” and what is all the fuss about? 
• Salamander, by Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts, reconstructs the story of Hoffman’s forgeries in detail. 
• More on the origins of the Latter Day Saints from their perspective can be found here. 
• Brady Williams, co-star of, My Five Wives,and once an authority in the Apostolic United Brethren, writes about “progressive polygamy,” which he and his family came to embrace after their origin story collapsed. 
• Sarah Weber Gallo is an experimental choreographer living in Hoboken New Jersey. 
• To learn more about William Wilkerson’s take on the origins of sexual identity see: “Is It a Choice? Sexual Orientation as Interpretation” 

• The origin of the canonical text, Vergil’s Aeneid was commissioned by Augustus and as such differs from the oral tradition that produced Homer’s Iliad. 
• Philosophical texts mentioned in this episode are: G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics, Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals.