The Church Historian’s Press announces the release of The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast. This six-part miniseries from the Joseph Smith Papers Project explores the history and legacy of Joseph Smith’s first vision. The podcast is available now. Series host Spencer W. McBride, PhD, interviews historians in a documentary-style podcast about this pivotal event in Latter-day Saint history. Released in the bicentennial year of Joseph Smith’s first vision, the podcast recreates for listeners the world in which Joseph Smith was seeking answers to the pressing questions of his soul and helps them understand the vision from the perspective of historians.

“Listeners will hear a story that is simultaneously familiar and new,” McBride said of the podcast. “I think listeners will hear details of the story of Joseph Smith’s first vision that are new to them, details that will illuminate the event and its relevance.”

In spring 1820, Joseph Smith later recorded, he had a vision in the woods near his family’s home in western New York in which God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him. That vision was a formative moment for Smith and a pivotal event in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This new podcast explores all of the original accounts of the First Vision and demonstrates how the different records, when examined together, reveal a more complete portrait of the event than any single account by itself. The podcast also examines how the story of the 1820 vision continues to resonate with women, men, and children around the world.

Scholars featured in the podcast include Matthew C. Godfrey, Steven Harper, Rachel Cope, Christopher Jones, Robin Jensen, Jenny Lund, Brent Rogers, and Mark Staker. Also featured is Elder LeGrand R. Curtis Jr., a General Authority Seventy and the Church Historian and Recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

All six episodes of The First Vision: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast have been released at once and are available on the Latter-day Saints Channel and on other podcast platforms such as iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher.