Speak Your Piece: a podcast about Utah's history

The past is never truly “in the past.” It’s all around us, it informs us. It speaks to our shared and to our separate identities. “Speak Your Piece” is a podcast where contributors share their insights and discoveries about Utah's 12,000 year (plus) human story. Hosted by Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian (Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement), and co produced by Chelsey Zamir, a new episode is released every other week, sometimes more, sometimes less. SYP explores the key arguments with new and worthwhile older publications, articles or websites; or delves into a notable museum, archival collection, archaeological report; or allows a respected writer, curator or historian to speak freely, sometimes about difficult history. SYP seeks to tell a history of Utah in a way you might not heard it before., told by the people who know it best: historians, writers, curators, archaeologists, rare book dealers, archivists, librarians and more. Speak Your Piece is recorded and engineered at the Utah State Library in Salt Lake City. Jason Powers is the sound and post-production engineer. The SYP logo is a photograph entitled "Canyonlands," taken by Utah outdoor photographer Al W. Morton, circa 1955, within the Canyonlands National Park (NPS). The lone man in the image is Kent Frost, looking over a series of needle rock formations located in San Juan County, Utah. The image and rights are owned by the Utah State Historical Society.

All Episodes

Speak Your Piece: a podcast about Utah's history

Utah & the Mormons First Fifty Years Together: A Conversation with LDS Church Historians Matt Grow and Scott Hales (Season 4, Ep. 3)

July 12, 2022 • Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian, Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement • Season 4 • Episode 3

January 24, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 3; 75 minutes). Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement's versions of this episode. Are you interested in other episodes of SYP? Click here.

Just in time for Utah’s July 24th Pioneer Day celebrations, this episode of Speak Your Piece (SYP) offers new research and new approaches, regarding the first forty-seven years (1846-1893) of a 175 year relationship between Utah and the Mormons. Before you celebrate Utah's 24th of July, load-up on some new history, offered by historians Matthew J. Grow and Scott Hales, via a discussion with SYP host Brad Westwood.

The book discussed in this episode: Saints, Vol. 2: No Unhallowed Hand, 1846-1893, The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Day, produced by the Church History Department, and published by Deseret Book in 2020. The volume covers from 1846, when the largest branch of the Mormon church made it way, in earnest and en masse, to settle outside of the United States in upper Mexico; and ends in 1893, when the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated, some forty years after its groundbreaking ceremony, in a series of ticket-only ceremonies held between April 6 and April 24, 1893.

Topics discussed in this candid open interview with two of the LDS Church's top historians includes (among numerous other subjects): the purpose of history within the church, the authors' use of extended links to deeper organizational web sources, the internal process used to produced history by the Church History Department, more national and regional history is described (broader contexts), the use of spiritual experiences in the historical narrative, and the church's phenomenal expansion in the second half of the19th century. The book also offers a concerted effort at telling more women’s history--mostly personal stories that have been woven throughout the volume.

Next, there is a good helping of “difficult history,” including the church’s interactions with issues of race, minorities and non-Mormons, its relationships with Native American communities, the conflicts related to forty-seven years of federal appointees governing Utah as a territory, and the complex and unending story of polygamy (some demographers think conservatively 1% of Utah's current population is engaged, in one way or another, with polygamy). All together this new LDS Church history series is a commendable effort (from the largest and most well funded private history organization in the Intermountain West), as many topics and themes discussed--including historians judiciously describing historical mistakes made--would in previous official histories, not even be considered let alone treated.

The new four volume church history series ostensibly updates (maybe replaces) the First Presidency approvedThe Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints authored by B. H. Roberts.

Bios: Dr. Matthew J. Grow, is Managing Director of the LDS Church History Department. In that capacity, he leads a team of history professionals who collect documents and artifacts, preserve them, and promote understanding of the LDS Church’s past through a publishing program, a research library, a museum, and many historic sites. Dr. Scott Hales is a writer and historian for the LDS Church History Department since 2015. He serves as a general editor and lead writer for Saints, the aforementioned four-volume history of the Mormon Church.