Episode 16 // Lessons from Nehor and Korihor: Combating Misinformation in Modern Society with Julie Rose

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In this episode of the Proclaim Peace Podcast, Jennifer and Patrick are joined by journalist Julie Rose to discuss Nehor and Korihor from the Book of Mormon. They explore the themes of misinformation and disinformation that these figures represent, and the relevance of these concepts to our pursuit of peace and Zion. Tune in to gain insights on how to combat falsehoods and promote peace in a world filled with discord.

Timestamps

[00:01:11] Lessons from Nehor and Korihor.

[00:04:23] Undermining trust and truth.

[00:07:39] The essence of peace.

[00:13:25] Misinformation in the media.

[00:16:24] Misinformation vs. Objectivity.

[00:21:01] Misinformation vs. disinformation.

[00:23:22] Misinformation in Cold War era.

[00:26:45] Antichrists in the Book of Mormon.

[00:30:33] Psychological manipulation techniques.

[00:33:15] Misinformation and disinformation tactics.

[00:37:08] Impact of misinformation in communities.

[00:41:32] Misinformation in faith communities.

[00:44:19] Faith communities and insularity.

[00:48:51] Trusted sources in discussions.

[00:51:00] Misinformation in faith communities.

[00:54:37] Trustworthy sources in information consumption.

[00:57:32] Wikipedia as a credible starting point.

[01:03:07] Media literacy and peacemaking.

[01:06:01] Finding peace with young women.

[01:07:49] Restored gospel discussions.

Transcript

(00:03-00:06) Jennifer Thomas: Welcome to the Proclaim Peace Podcast. I'm Jennifer Thomas.
(00:06-00:15) Patrick Mason: And I'm Patrick Mason. And this is the podcast where we apply principles of the gospel and read the Book of Mormon to become better peacemakers.

(00:15-00:19) Jennifer Thomas: We're coming off a long, hot summer. How are things for you today, Patrick?

(00:20-00:29) Patrick Mason: It's good. It's still a little hot, but school has started. And so, yeah, summer is officially done, regardless of what the temperature is.

(00:29-00:48) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah. Patrick and I will say we both had summers that taught us a lot about the importance of peace. Patrick did some travel in zones of the world that have suffered a lot from a lack of peace. And it's been a crazy summer politically. Yes. So we're all scrambling to get some peace.

(00:48-01:46) Patrick Mason: Korihor.

(01:47-02:43) Jennifer Thomas: So Nehor and Korihor weren't acting accidentally, and the way they were behaving wasn't random. They were trying to exploit features of people, human nature, and their society, and particularly they were exploiting good faith. They were manipulating truth, always offering just enough of it to keep people guessing or to discount people who were telling them the truth. Their messages and methods manipulated some of the best parts of Nephite society, the fact that there was freedom of speech and that there was a commitment to pluralism in religion. And the biggest impact that that had was on the people who were trying to live their faith and live the gospel of Jesus Christ. it fractured peace both within their faith communities and ultimately within the Nephite society as a whole. So these antichrists and the way they messed with truth really represented a dire challenge for the Nephite people in their attempt to build Zion communities.

(02:43-03:39) Patrick Mason: Yeah, and that's exactly why we felt like it was so relevant to talk about these two figures, Nehor and Korihor in applying to our situation today. A lot of people have said that we find ourselves in a post-truth society. And that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as truth anymore, but it means that oftentimes people act like there's no such thing as truth. It's actually a phrase that's used by social scientists and journalists and others to talk about just the situation that we find ourselves in, in the 2020s, where objective facts seem less influential in shaping public opinion. And even people can't even agree on what those objective facts are. And so there aren't the kind of consistent, stable, shared sources of authority that kind of everybody believes in and trusts and then disagrees about what they mean. Today, we can't even agree on what the facts are.

(03:40-04:55) Jennifer Thomas: And that stability is really, really important to peace. And we want to point out that this change marks a really big shift for a lot of us. Those of us who are a little bit older, certainly Patrick and I, and certainly our parents and our grandparents, we grew up and were formed in a very, very different society, one in which there were very high levels of trust, trust in religious texts, in religious leaders, trust in exports. We had a high value placed on common sense and trust in community. That list of things is what lies at the foundation of a peaceful society. And if you want to destroy societal and individual peace, undermining trust and truth is exactly where to start. So there is a very specific reason, and we'll talk about it more later in this podcast, why foreign enemies are currently flooding our zone with disinformation and misinformation. When we no longer have trust in the institutions, experts, and leaders that our society is based on, we sort of default to trusting our own gut. And we know that our gut is notoriously faulty. And at the very least, it can't provide a common point of connection. My gut might be really different than Patrick's, and it's going to be hard to agree to move forward if that's what we're privileging.

(04:56-06:11) Patrick Mason: And that's what you need in a peaceful society, right? Some set of values or beliefs. Institutions. Institutions, experiences that we can all at least basically come around and agree upon. So I think as we think about the experiences in these two chapters, specifically Alma chapter 1 and Alma chapter 30, these are narratives of individuals who started movements, who gained momentum and stature and influence by warping truth. And there were real consequences. They created fissures in the Nephite society, and those fissures turned into cracks, which, of course, eventually, in both of these cases, helped contribute to armed conflict. They're not the only things, right? It's not just a straight line. But these are certainly things, this kind of fractured society that can't come around a shared set of values and institutions and facts. that this is partly what led to armed conflict and ultimately the demise of the Nephite civilization. And so we feel like this is another clear example of the Book of Mormon being written for our day with lessons for us to apply in our situation, even though, of course, the book itself comes from a very different time.

(06:12-07:18) Jennifer Thomas: today.  Welcome,  Julie. 

(07:18-07:26) Julie Rose:

(07:26-07:36) Jennifer Thomas: Well, you are a true professional, so we will take that compliment with great appreciation. We want to start today with the same question that we ask all of our guests, which is simply, how do you personally define peace?

(07:39-08:27) Julie Rose: Peace, I think in its perfect form, is Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. in his perfect love for all of us, his perfect grace, his perfect ability to see in all of us our divinity, our truest potential. And we know that when we are in that position of being able to embody that same perfect love for others, or as close as we imperfect humans can get, we know that that leads to a lack of contention and disputations are the words, you know, that we get in 4th Nephi after Jesus Christ comes to the Americas. And that there is also a lack of war and a lack of rumors of war, right? So I guess for me it's the love of Jesus Christ and a state of peace is when all of us have that in our hearts.

(08:28-09:11) Patrick Mason: I love that. That's a great answer. That's a perfect answer. Well, let's transition for a bit from Jesus to journalism. So Jen introduced you a little bit, gave us just a snippet of some of your background, but can you tell us a little bit more about your experiences as a journalist, your observations, especially Where do you think we are right now? And maybe you can even chart changes that you've seen over the course of your career. Where are we in terms of our ability to identify good information, trustworthy information from disinformation or misinformation and sometimes just outright conspiracies?

(09:11-13:23) Julie Rose: Yeah. Thank you for this chance. This is something that I think about so much, and I love the chance to be able to kind of flesh this out with two very smart people who are thoughtful and curious. So I've been a radio journalist for 20 years, and I did not go to journalism school. So I studied communications and public relations. I didn't take a lot of the basic journalism school courses, right? So I came into journalism and realized that it was my calling, but I also came in with this sort of general concept a lot of us have that this notion that the goal of journalism is to be completely objective at all times. And one of the first things that I realized is that objectivity, complete and total objectivity, is a myth. And that every story is told through a lens. And sometimes that is shaped by the reporter's own bias, because we're people who've lived a certain life experience and have certain values. And that can shape the choices we make about the stories that we want to cover, about the about what we think is most important in the story, about who we think is most important to speak to in the story. And the best journalists and most journalists that I know, all the journalists I've ever met personally, work really, really hard to be aware of our own individual bias and to counterbalance that in the choices that we make. But so many other things also affect the way a story is told from the rush to meet a deadline. You may not have time to talk to every single possible viewpoint that there is to Sometimes sources call you back, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes there's an angle you really wanted to cover, and you just couldn't get someone who would talk about that. And then, of course, you also have many other humans who are involved in shaping that story. Your editors, and even publishers, owners. There are other influences as well. And all of that humanness means that you can read two different reports of the same event, the same political whatever. rally, say. Two different stories. No two stories are going to be identical if they're written by different people and if they come from different outlets. And that does not mean that one of them is right and one of them is wrong, necessarily. Sometimes some outlets, for sure, make no secret of their political bias. Others try really, really hard to not espouse one bias or the other. consistently. But like I said, bias exists across the board. There are great resources out there to figure out where places lean. One of them is called allsides.com, which we might talk about a little bit more in a minute. But as news consumers, this notion that we have that there's one purely objective way to report a story gives us this impression that if we could somehow find that source, and I have people ask me this at the time, where can I get objective news? And I'm like, well, bad news for you. There's no such thing as one truly, purely, completely objective source or reporter or outlet that will give you the absolute truth from which all other things come when it comes to, and I should clarify this, all right? I think if you're talking about spiritual truth, that's probably in a different category, but if we're talking about what's going on in the world, complex issues in the world, political disagreements, different ways of prioritizing what matters in our world, And even if we're talking about what happened at the car crash on the corner, there are going to be different ways that you can tell that story and different sorts of information that will end up in the end result of the story. So we have this notion, because of this misunderstanding, that there is such a thing as one sort of objective truth and that because there are differences, that somehow suggests that None of those things are actually the objective truth. What's happened is that that misunderstanding I think I've watched over the last 20 years and especially in the last decade about how the news works has been weaponized. And in some cases, it's the news media themselves that are in attempt to get more viewers or more readers.

(13:23-13:25) Patrick Mason: Because they're criticizing other journalists.

(13:25-13:42) Julie Rose: Yeah, they're telling us we're the ones you can believe. You can't believe them, right? So sometimes it's the news outlets themselves. But it's also powerful people, powerful organizations, sometimes individuals who just get kicks out of sowing chaos online have been incredible.

(13:42-13:43) Jennifer Thomas: Other nations.

(13:44-15:04) Julie Rose: Sure, have been incredibly successful. Other nations who want to see us tearing ourselves apart have been incredibly successful at convincing us that there is no media source that can be trusted, that they're all biased. which is true, but then you start seeing these things like, and these are the stories, the headlines that especially get worrisome to me. I'll see these social media posts that start like, the media won't tell you that X, Y, Z, or the media isn't reporting that X, Y, Z. 99 times out of 10, that story is actually being reported by the media, but you're being led to believe that somehow there's some magical source of truth, and oftentimes when it's someone who really has malicious intent, they will tell you that the only source you can trust is them. Can't trust anybody else. I mean, Hannah Arendt, the well-respected historian and political theorist, talked about in her analysis of totalitarian authoritarian governments, she was looking at Stalin and the Nazis, talked about how totalitarian authorities want you to believe that everything could be true and nothing is true, that there's this just complete … And what that does is it primes us to be manipulated. It leads us to feel fearful and powerless, and we behave poorly when we feel that way.

(15:04-15:37) Patrick Mason: So that's so useful. Thanks for that background, just giving us that perspective. So help us with a couple of terms. So I sometimes hear in conversations like this about disinformation and misinformation. And I'll admit, even I sometimes like, which is which? Are they the same thing? Are they different? And how are they different, either of those terms, different from what you were just talking about, the subjectivity of every human being, including journalists? So, how do we, where are the definitional lines between these categories?

(15:37-15:49) Julie Rose: Okay, so one thing I want to say is that when I talk about objectivity, I think that that has to do with the lens through which you tell a story, okay? There is such a thing as objectively true facts, okay?

(15:49-15:53) Patrick Mason: Yes. The Declaration of Independence really was signed on July 4th, 1777.

(15:53-17:54) Julie Rose: Exactly, and it really does say all these things, and we can read it, and we can see it. We know exactly, you know, there's a lot of things that are scientifically true and factual in our world as well. And there is also truth in what people say. You know, you can go, we're in a beautiful world of information where you can go straight to the source, you can watch the C-SPAN video of the rally and see for yourself exactly what was said by that politician or in that specific interview, right? So there is objective truth. Misinformation, and what's a little challenging here is that especially in the last, I would say, maybe eight years, it feels like, well, it doesn't feel like These definitions have been kind of shifting and refining a little bit because for a fair amount of time they were kind of interchangeable. But now there is what I think is a pretty helpful distinction to think about because it's very applicable to our world and also actually to some of what we're going to talk about in the scriptures today. So misinformation is commonly today at least considered information that is incorrect. And I think about miss as in a mistake. A politician misspeaks. A news article gets something wrong, gets a number wrong, gets an affiliation wrong, misquotes even because of the way things got edited or the way the reporter misheard what was said. People make mistakes all the time. The best sources of information, whether it's a politician or a news outlet, will acknowledge their mistakes. They'll own up to them publicly. They'll correct them as quickly as they can. They'll correct them loudly and often and not be ashamed to acknowledge the fact that they did make a mistake. Now, we often, because of this whole nobody can be trusted, we have this idea that if somebody makes a mistake, they therefore can never be trusted. anything that they ever say from here on out, right? Which is another problem that we've sort of been led to believe. But one of the other big challenges is that in this world where information can spread so quickly and so fast, I mean, you could almost call it an honest mistake, right? Somebody misspeaks or an article gets it wrong or a headline gets it wrong, but the article is actually right.

(17:54-17:57) Patrick Mason: because oftentimes the headlines aren't written by the authors of the article, right?

(17:57-20:50) Julie Rose: Precisely, yes. Journalism 101, I have no control over what that headline's going to be if I'm writing in a newspaper. And that can get shared very, very quickly. And the correction, so all those people who saw that original mistake, very few of them are actually going to see the correction. And it's very difficult. News outlets are constantly trying to figure out how do we make sure that that our correction gets seen as widely, that we're able to make sure that we maintain our credibility. That's a big challenge in this digital world we live in. Now, disinformation is where intent comes in. So the definition that I find most helpful and that seems to be most common right now is that you have individuals or organizations who are sharing misinformation, untrue or misrepresented information with the intent to deceive or mislead. And this is where you get to a situation like you were referring to, Jen, where I mean, governments do this routinely as part of spy operations. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were spreading untruths about one another during the Cold War routinely. Russia's doing it still with its own people with regard to what's happening in the war with Ukraine. Famously, in the United States, the Pentagon Papers revealed that the Department of Defense was actively and intentionally trying to mislead the American public and elected political officials, members of Congress, about how poorly things were going in the Vietnam War. So this does happen. It's always happened. Propaganda is a form of this, can be a form of this, especially if it's mistruth. And in this digital age, anyone, you don't have to be a government, with the ability to control the media outlets or lots of resources. You can just have a lot of followers online or somehow have something that really hits with the algorithm on social media and you can spread untrue information very easily. But again, it's the intent. It's, you know, you know this is untrue. You're doing this, and in particular, most often you're doing it to sow chaos, to make people further distrustful so that they behave poorly. so that they are afraid of other people or that they're somehow disempowered and decide they're not going to vote because, well, the elections, you know, what I already found out is that election day is on Thursday instead of on Tuesday or whatever, right? They're trying to get you to do something that will not be good for the greater good. Or it's because they're, you know, they're power hungry or they're government seeking, seeking some sort of you know, to, I don't know, gain global control. Or, I mean, heck, the CIA has been involved in this before in overthrowing regimes in other countries.

(20:50-21:18) Patrick Mason: I appreciate that you show that it's not just those guys. It's not just like the quote unquote bad guys. Like every country has done this. Like, especially in terms of power brokers, there aren't very many people we could point to that have completely clean hands. But I like the distinction here, and it's gonna be useful to me. So like misinformation, M is mistake, right? Disinformation, D, it's the deceitful or deception, right? So that distinction is really helpful.

(21:18-23:21) Julie Rose: And I do think something that's challenging is, again, in this world where we're being, there are forces that would like us to not trust anything. One of the weapons, one of the tools is to assign malicious intent. to an honest mistake, to misinformation, to mislabel it in a way that will further erode trust in what is actually a credible source or something that you could take in with a certain amount of respect and credibility. And so we see this a lot, too. I'm of the opinion that political spin, so the notion that a politician is going to tell you, well, here's what the number means. I'm not going to tell you all the other numbers about what the economy looked like. I'm going to pick this one number about the economy under my, you know, my reign, my term, and I'm going to tell you all these things. But you could also tell the exact opposite story if you just looked at the other number, right? That kind of like cherry picking in order to promote yourself or denigrate your opponent, I consider that It's intentional, and I consider that much closer on the spectrum toward disinformation because it's intentionally trying to get you to do something. Now, is it trying to get you to do something that's bad for you? Well, the politician may think that it's good for you to vote for them, right? So, you know, it may not be that they're trying to ruin your life, but they're clearly and intentionally trying to shape the way you see the world. by not being fully truthful about the whole perspective, which is always more complicated. On the other hand, there are times when honest mistakes, and this is the thing that I feel for all of my journalistic friends, when we make a human mistake and we correct it, and then readers and viewers are told that, well, see, there you go. She's terrible. She's too biased. She can't be trusted. Don't read anything or believe anything she ever says from here on out. That's not productive. And it's also, again, weaponizing this whole notion of you can't trust anything against sources that we need to be able to trust something, somewhere.

(23:22-26:45) Jennifer Thomas: So I think one of the real challenges, and I'm hoping that this can transition us really well into the Book of Mormon, is the fact that not only, say, you talked about this happening during the time of the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, when we had these two battling superpowers. One of the things that happened pretty consistently in that time was one group of people, all the people in the Soviet Union were getting the same misinformation about the United States. And in the United States, we were all getting the same misinformation about the Soviet Union. Right now, part of the problem that we face is that we're all getting misinformation that is directed at our own particular biases. And I'll give you a specific example of this. Earlier in the summer, I was attending a conference and one of the subjects was the effect of misinformation on democracy. And there was a fantastic group that tracks misinformation and particularly disinformation by state actors. So this was, you know, countries that are pushing disinformation. And there were two massive disinformation campaigns going on at that moment. But one was directed at the left. And because of people's, you know, the way they who they follow and the algorithms, one group of people were getting one disinformation campaign from one, like state actor, one other country. And that was the left was getting disinformation campaign about Gaza. On the right, there was a massive disinformation campaign being pushed by a different state actor, being pushed toward the right, which was a disinformation campaign about events at the border. So in this same moment, all of these people in the same country were getting two disinformation campaigns pushed at them by two different state actors, and we were watching it really unfold in real time amongst my friends who were picking up pieces. And the reason I picked that up, and how I hope that that can help us transition to talking about the Book of Mormon, is that mis- and disinformation is often calculated to divide and to fracture societies and to fracture groups of people. And what this has to do with peace, you're probably all wondering this, for Patrick and I, as we were talking about this episode, if our objective truly is building Zion, we have to be able to operate from a common sense of truth and a common sense of what is right and wrong in our society so that we can tackle it. I think this is where the Book of Mormon has some really remarkable insights for us. We have these two Antichrists that emerge in the Book of Alma, Nehor and Korihor. We've got a little bit more information about Korhor. Really interested to hear from you, Julie, about if you saw any patterns emerging in terms of them promoting myths and disinformation and how they did it skillfully and how they utilized the strengths of the society they were in, some of the things that were the best parts of that society, and weaponized that against the Nephites. So for example, in our own society, we have a free press. We don't live in China. We don't live in Russia. And what that means is that extra state actors can weaponize our own free press and our own, you know, freedom of speech against us. And we see this happen in the Nephites. And I just with the Nephites, and I would love to hear kind of insights that you gleaned as you read those scriptures that we as people of faith could take away from those stories.

(26:45-29:17) Julie Rose: Absolutely. And Jen, I think that's a great starting place because I think one of the things we know is that Nehor and Korihor, that these Antichrists were actually very successful. They apparently convinced quite a few people, quite a few probably stalwart believers, maybe people who had never sort of, you know, doubted before. And it's fascinating to me to see that, in fact, this is a society that did value freedom of speech, freedom of expression. We get very explicitly in there that you couldn't be prosecuted because of your beliefs. or even for expressing your beliefs. And I love the line, too, we learn in Alma 1, verse 1, that these laws were acknowledged by the people. Interesting little kind of throwaway line, but I wonder if that means the people were behind this. Like, this is what they had chosen for themselves, committed to free speech. Feels very much like America, right? Like, this is my free speech right. I can say whatever I want, right? So I felt, in that way, I felt like this really does relate to a society like ours and makes these lessons especially applicable. So part of what I think is what I really gravitated to, understanding that this is a good model for what we experience in our own lives here in the United States of America and in faith communities in the United States, was noticing the way in which these two deceivers offered messages that appealed to the things that make us most susceptible as individuals to be deceived. And there is so much psychological evidence that talks about what these things are. We're more likely to believe it if it's frequently repeated, if we hear it a lot. We're more likely to believe it if it comes from someone within our own group. We're more likely to believe it if it makes us feel big emotions, especially big, overwhelming anger, fear, shame emotions. We're more likely to believe it if we want to believe it. And we're also more likely to believe it if it reinforces in some way our sense of identity, a group identity, whether it makes us feel like, yeah, we really are the best ones around, or, hey, we're really under threat, you know, I believe this, right? So let me just give a few examples, if I could, of what I pulled out about, in particular, Korihor's use of these strategies, if that's okay. Okay, so we see on the repetition one, we see Korihor coming back to the same one argument over and over again. How do you know for sure that there is a God? How can you know if you can't see it? How could there really be a Christ if no one's ever seen him, right? It's the same- I was laughing.

(29:17-29:27) Jennifer Thomas: I'm like, he had good media training. He was not responding to the question he was asked. He was always responding. He was saying the thing he wanted, that he felt it was most important for him to lie about, right?

(29:27-29:42) Julie Rose: Exactly. And you know, politicians do this too. They know that if they repeat it enough, it's going to start to sort of, in the back of our minds, germinate and make it, well, maybe, I mean, I feel like I've heard that a lot, and this is true even also on social media.

(29:42-29:42) Patrick Mason: So it must be true.

(29:42-30:33) Julie Rose: Yeah. It just makes us a little bit more like, well, I've heard it a lot. I feel like I've heard that a lot. Even if it's just coming from the same source but looks like it a lot of different ways, we're more susceptible to it. Makes us feel big emotions. So, and I mentioned fear, anger, shame. I think shame is especially where Koraher goes when he says, he starts talking about, if you believe that a Christ is going to come and offer you remission for your sins, this is the effect of a frenzied mind. This is the derangement of your minds. You're crazy. This is a crazy idea. You're not thinking straight. You're smarter than this, right? If you are, you know, like that, that can like taps into this like, well, geez, I'm here. I hope I'm not crazy." So I think he's leaning into this sense of uncertainty and also shame. Like, come on, you aren't going to fall for this. And also a sense of superiority, right?

(30:33-30:47) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah. I think these techniques often make people feel small and then offer them a way out. It's like, hey, you're smaller than you think you are, but look, here's the way for you to actually transcend that.

(30:47-31:43) Julie Rose: Exactly. By demeaning or denigrating or getting up on your rameumptom or whatever it is, right? And that actually ties to this next one about reinforcing or threatening an important identity. So I mean, that's the whole part where he's saying, hey, you're prospering. But it's not because you're righteous, it's because you're smart and you're worthy. And every man prospers according to his genius and conquers because of his strength. You've got what you've got because you guys are the good guys, right? We're the ones that are the smartest and the best, and we're succeeding because of our own intellect. And also the consequence of that is that so it's like, tapping into this sense of like, yeah, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and I am better than my poor neighbor who's not doing as well because they're, whatever, they're silly and they've been led away, right?

(31:43-31:49) Jennifer Thomas: Or if he's suffering, he's suffering of his own, it's his own fault. He did it to himself. I'm not here because I earned it. It's because he's not smart enough, yeah, yeah.

(31:49-33:13) Julie Rose: I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and I deserve everything I have. And that gives us the, and so he's very savvily playing into this sense of ego that we like to have stroked. And, of course, when it makes us feel superior, in particular, or when it makes us feel like we're under threat, sometimes we'll also see, you could see, I could imagine him also coming in and instead of using the superiority tack, using the Well, and he uses a little bit of this, like the prophets, the prophets are out to get you. They've, you know, they are under, they're taking advantage. Well, actually, he kind of does this. So he's like, you know, they're holding you down. Yeah, they've held you down. You know, you're in bondage. And also they're like living off the fat of your hard work. Right. They're taking advantage of you. And so, again, And you know what, a lot of, so again, the we want to believe it, right? So if it's something that really aligns with our worldview, or really it was like, gosh, it really would be nice if that was true, you know? I mean, this is the like, wouldn't it be nice if it didn't matter what we did? We could live for today. We don't have to worry about all of these rules, or being accountable to others. And we can just be comfortable in the life that we've created for ourselves through our own hard work and good value, right? So that's another one that I think we definitely see Korihor using. to draw people away. And I try to think about, all right, well, we don't hear from any of these people who were convinced by him.

(33:13-33:15) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, we don't have their narrative, right?

(33:15-33:43) Julie Rose: But it would be really interesting. I think, gosh, what would I have been? Like, where would I fall? And I think that's one of the things that's so important about misinformation and disinformation is that we can't sit here and just be so frustrated at all the people who are trying to mislead us. We have to take control of our own consumption. And we actually see people in, we see the leaders at least, in the way that they deal with Korihor. We see Alma doing that to some extent, which we can talk about in a second.

(33:44-34:09) Patrick Mason: And maybe that's why we don't really need their narrative or their voices, because we already know it, right? I mean, we are the narrative. Exactly. It's so familiar to us. If I'm honest with myself, I can think about the ways that I'm susceptible to those kinds of arguments, right? And so maybe Mormon doesn't need to spend a lot of time doing that kind of psychology, because we should be able to do that.

(34:09-36:04) Julie Rose: Of course, as a journalist, I'd like to hear that side. I'd like to be like, so what were you thinking when you started hearing this from Korihor? And did you try to check that source? And what sources do you trust? But then, those are the very same questions that I encourage people and that I ask myself every single time I see something. I'm one of these people where if I see it on social media, I do not automatically believe it's true. I follow the approach of trust but verify. And which is what my editors have always drummed into me. It's like we have to we have to believe that people are being honest and true, but we can also we also need to take some time to verify. So before I share or believe anything or allow it to affect me, I always ask myself, Well, I always do some extra work to try to clarify. I go to the source. I try to see how that story is being covered in other outlets as well. And I consider, who is this person? What might their bias be? Do I have a sense that they have an agenda? And then I also have to turn in on myself and ask, is this making me feel big emotions? Does this align? Does it feel like it makes sense to me? Do I feel like I've heard this a lot? And is it coming from a source that I'm sort of predisposed to believe is true? Because they're speaking the speak, right? I wonder if with Korahor, he clearly knew the teachings very well. He clearly knew the scriptures very well. All of these Antichrists seem to be great, knowledgeable scriptorians of the beliefs. you know, maybe he was an out, it seems like they're outsiders in this case, but at some point he was probably an insider, part of a community. And when it feels like they're speaking to speak to us, it becomes a lot more, we feel like they're one of us. And then it's easier, we're more likely to believe them. So I try to ask myself all of those questions first before I share or like or comment or let it start driving my perceptions of the world.

(36:05-37:08) Patrick Mason: So tell us more about that in terms of like the community, the audience, and their role in this. Because, you know, if Korahor or Nehor got up and said all this stuff and nobody went along, then they probably wouldn't be in the scriptures, right? I mean, it would just be, you know, one guy. So tell us, what do we know about which kinds of communities are particularly vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation, even to conspiracies, and maybe why? And also, what kinds of communities or individuals seem more resilient and resistant to these kinds of things? So here, I mean, Korihor and NEHOR are operating within the context of faith communities. right? And political communities. I mean, in the Book of Mormon, like Nephites, it's both political and religious. They're kind of combined, right? So if we can get some lessons out of the Book of Mormon and maybe translate it to what we know about how this works today, what can you tell us about the audience side of things?

(37:08-37:40) Jennifer Thomas: And before you answer that, I just want to add what, Patrick, I think there's a really important insight that I think will be valuable to think about in terms of your answer is that this is, it starts in a faith community. So if you think, oh, this Korihor Nehor isn't political, it's just faith, starts as a faith community problem, it ultimately ends in war, right? It ends in a lot of real political dysfunction and contention. So I think as members of a faith community, we have to really be aware of how these things impact us because then we,

(37:42-39:12) Julie Rose: push out, right? Exactly. Well, and like I was saying earlier, it leads us when we are in a state of confusion and distrust and or if we've fallen for a message that has the intent of making us feel superior and better than others or feel afraid or whatever it is, whether it's making us feel great or making us feel terrible, we are not behaving as our best selves. And it does often, and this is what we've seen certainly with the level of disinformation that we've seen spreading often targeted around our presidential elections, like the intent is to make people feel powerless. to make them feel so or to make them feel afraid so that we're mistreating our neighbors. We're mistreating people who are different from us. We're retreating into our little safety bubbles. And that's where things get really scary because once you're living in a in a world in which everyone is sort of saying the same things and thinking the same things and you sort of create your own experts within that circle and there's a lot of interconnectedness. things can get out of hand because then you lose your broader vision. And so any, especially an insular community or a very insular echo chamber, can prime us to really be misled in some dangerous ways and lead us to do things that You know, if we were thinking clearly and hadn't been so, you know, susceptible, we wouldn't do, like harm one another.

(39:12-39:37) Patrick Mason: Can I follow up on that? I think that's exactly right, but I'm sitting here wrestling with the idea that Zion, which we're striving for as disciples of Christ, part of its definition is that the people are of one heart and one mind. And you're saying, wait a minute, if we're all on the same page, that makes us more susceptible to this. So I'm trying to make sense of how do I think through this?

(39:37-39:43) Julie Rose: So do you think it's one heart and one mind in everything? Or is it one heart and one mind?

(39:43-39:45) Patrick Mason: I think there's still a lot of difference.

(39:45-43:56) Julie Rose: Right. So I think that's where it gets to be tricky. It was President Nelson's peacemaking speech, which was a seminal, important speech for us, a general conference talk, right? 2023, I think. This is the one I think where he's talking about, I have great disagreement. There are lots of differences of opinion within the first presidency. So I think that one heart and one mind does not mean that we all believe exactly the same things in exactly the same way or that there aren't differences of opinion but that there is a unity in our goal. We're striving to embody the love of Jesus Christ and allow that peace to live within our community and we understand how to productively engage with our differences. I think it becomes very dangerous in any kind of insular or unified community when any expression of difference is considered a threat, and you start to try to want to shut that down or push that person out or label that person And it's tricky in a religious environment and in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because sometimes those differences of opinion also feel like they kind of go to some of our core doctrines or core beliefs, and that is what we're grappling with as a church in this modern day. I think it's why it feels so challenging to us, because we believe in this unity. We want to adhere to that, but we also We also want to find a way to live in Christ-like ways with our differences and engage with those in a way that always remembers the humanity and the dignity of one another. And it's just really hard. But when it comes to misinformation and disinformation, one thing that's really risky in faith communities, and we see scams frequently, they'll spread like wildfire through communities where there's a lot of interconnectedness and high trust, and also sometimes where there are kind of hierarchical, so we see this in our own wards. You can check all the FBI statistics. that if someone who's a bishop or a person of authority within a ward or a congregation is telling you this is a great investment, you're sort of primed again because of our susceptibilities. You're primed to be like, well, he's the bishop. He wouldn't tell me otherwise. I trust this guy. So it can make it so that we have to, as individuals, I think, grapple with the with that cognitive dissonance of, I love and respect. This trust and this unity brings me a lot of advantages, but I also need to verify when it comes, when I recognize that this is information that you know, that needs to be verified. Like, we're encouraged to get personal revelation, and we're also encouraged to study it out and to seek out the best information. I mean, and I'll just say one other thing. So a couple—I guess it was 2023, the letter from the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that frequently circulates around, like, primary election time in Utah, but also I think goes to other parts of the United States. That letter explicitly said—let me see if I can find the clip here. merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on tradition without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards." Which, for me, that wasn't a statement on party politics. It was a statement on using our own ability taking control of our decisions and not doing what maybe a lot of us have, not using those shortcuts that are rooted in tradition is the word that they use. And it's interesting because in the scriptures, tradition can sometimes have a double-edged sword, right? Like the false traditions of your fathers, right? Or it can be the positive traditions of your fathers. And so we're told in this complicated modern world we live in that we need to be careful to study it out for ourselves and to seek reliable sources.

(43:56-45:50) Jennifer Thomas: So one of the things that strikes me as really interesting is that we've got these threats to faith communities where faith communities are maybe more particularly susceptible, either insularity, uniformity, and high levels of trust, but that we We also have the solutions to that built right into the community itself. And it seems like to me, when we falter, it's because we haven't gone far enough into the faith. It's not that we are too far in that makes us weak. It's that we haven't gone all the way. The insularity, I don't think, is what God has called us to do. He's called us to love in the lump. He's called us to light the world. He's called us to be in the world but not of it. So if we truly are outward facing and using the gospel to engage broadly with the world, that will protect us from the insularity. In terms of the trust, I love what you just talked about, the fact that we are counseled repeatedly by our own leaders, by the Book of Mormon itself, to seek to find answers for ourselves and not just to rely on others, but to truly wrestle with things in our own mind and our own heart. And then finally, I just love the way the gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly as preached by him in the New Testament, repeatedly reminds us that the way we see the world is not sufficient, but that we are all parts of the body of Christ and that we need to welcome indifference and welcome in different people who add diverse things to our community and allow us to be as strong as we can be if we work together. So I just think if we can push past getting stuck halfway there, we actually are in a position to really to be some of the most people with the most capacity to act against mis and disinformation instead of some of the people that are most susceptible to it.

(45:50-47:43) Julie Rose: And I think we, I love that, Jen, and I think that we actually see Alma modeling that for us in the way he handles Korihor. So I was noticing how, so Korihor kind of like shows up in a bunch of different places and the first couple of times people are like, ah, this doesn't sound right. And they send him over to Ammon, the chief judge, and he's like, yeah we're not we're not buying what you're selling please leave so then he goes on over to Gideon and the land of Gideon and then the Gidona whatever he's like one of the high priests and he listens to it he's like ah this isn't quite like lining up for me I'm not gonna like put you in jail because we have these laws you know but I'm gonna send you on up the line like I want to hear what Alma has to think about this so he finally ends up at the chief judge right and Alma What I find really interesting is, so clearly for me, what that says is that this is a community that has some trusted sources and believes, you know, and has a certain sense of like, you know, there are people we can trust. We believe that there is wisdom and knowledge within our community. And we're going to check with those sources rather than just believe out of hand. So you've got them sort of saying, like, let's check with a higher authority, let's check with a higher authority. So ultimately, he gets to Alma. And Alma then is, what's interesting to me is that he's not immediately, well, first of all, he fact checks the things that can be sort of factually set clear, right? So he starts with this kind of smaller one, it feels like, because Korihor's big claim is there is no God. But he's got this other claim that's like, you know, your priests and your teachers are like living off of the fat of your hard work, right? They're glutting themselves off your labors. And Alma's like, all right. Well, let's start with that one. You can check the records. I have not taken a single Sinai or whatever it is. The way he describes it makes me feel like it must be pretty easy to fact check that, that you can check on OpenSecrets.org in Zarahemla and sort of see where the money's coming from.

(47:43-47:46) Patrick Mason: They know that Alma doesn't live in a big pyramid on top of the hill.

(47:46-52:22) Julie Rose: Right, that you can like, I can use my eyes, that doesn't jive with the real truth that I can see right before me and that I can fact check. And then he says, okay, so as for this other thing about there is no God and you can't prove it, true. But also, can you prove that there is no God? He's like, I mean, two can play this game. So there's that one thing, right? There's just as much reason to trust as to distrust in this particular case. But furthermore, let me show you the resources. Let's look to the resources that we have long considered trustworthy, OK? Let's look to some of the legacy media that we have. Let's look to some of the things that over time may have sometimes been uneven, but have overall told a consistent story. We have the testimony of the prophets. We have that recorded in the scriptures. We have this magnificent and complex world that we live in, okay? So are we just going to throw all of that out? And then he says, and look at the good, the joy that believing in a God has brought to our people. So, you know, he's not going to try to claim I have the truth and you don't. He's not going to try to play this like one-upmanship. It feels to me like it's a very humble approach that he's saying okay, but I can also say all of these things, and these things have some great fruits to show for it. So I don't, you know, why, you're not winning this argument, and I feel like I have a little more, you know, to bring to the table, right? So he's, but he's leaning into trusted sources, which I think, trusted and well-established sources, which I think is true, I mean, I think is an important insight. And the one other thing that I think is really interesting is that he approaches Korihor He approaches Korohor. He does not assume that Korohor is sowing disinformation. There's a certain amount of grace and curiosity, which I also think is kind of important. It's an interesting lesson to think about, okay? So he asks on a number of occasions, well, do you really believe that there is no God? And Korohor's like, yeah, I believe it. And I was like, I mean, if Korohor believes, if he's misspeaking and he believes it, That's not disinformation. That's misinformation. He's misinformed. OK? And he's sharing this information, for all we know, out of the goodness of his heart, because he wants to help people. OK? Because he wants to set them free. All right. So Alma is willing to sort of, he tries to get at that. Like, is this misinformation? Is there malicious intent here? Instead of very quickly jumping to, like, this doesn't jive. We're kicking you out. This can't be. You're a terrible person. I'm going to damn you to hell or whatever, like, and do all these terrible things. Instead, he's like, uh, uh. But then Korihor keeps pushing. Alma gives him a couple of chances. Korihor keeps pushing. And then, because he is insisting upon a sign, I wonder what would have happened if he hadn't asked for a sign, just kept demanding it. Alma might have just said, you know what, we're going to put out a press release that says Korihor can't be believed. He might be like, we're going to spread. We're going to spread, because that's the other thing we know about faith communities. And this is ironic, because while misinformation can often spread, or at least scams can spread easily within high-trust communities. Also, one of the best ways to counteract misinformation is for sources of authority within high-trust communities, like church congregations, set the record straight and tell everybody. I don't want to get too political, but I think we saw an example of this when President Nelson said The vaccines are safe and people should get vaccinated, right? Like that is, we do know that it's not a guarantee, but it is one of the things that works. to counter misinformation. And so I do think that we see, it's not until actually Alma says, all right, you want a sign, I'm going to strike you dumb. I think it's interesting that he doesn't just strike him dead, right? Or like send him up to the hill for an ignominious death like Nehor got. So, because he murdered, right? Not because he spoke inappropriately, but he says, so he strikes him dumb. So he can't spread anymore because we're going to, we're going to cut this off at the source. And then that's when Korohor says, all right, all right, all right. I did always know. He outs himself as a disinformer in that moment. He says, I did actually know. But then he very quickly shifts the blame. And he's like, but I'm the victim here because the devil made me do it. Right. Which is another thing that Hannah Arendt talks about that you see in these totalitarian regimes where they're like, you can't believe anything. None of this is true. They want you to feel distrustful. And then the minute that they are caught out in a lie, they're very quickly able to shift it to either show that they were really smart and they knew it all along and it was good for you or that it wasn't their fault.

(52:23-54:04) Jennifer Thomas: One of the things I love also about Alma is he has a big gun in his arsenal. He could pull out and be like, I've had one of the most spectacular spiritual experiences and conversions in the history of spiritual conversions. And that's not what he goes to. It's really interesting to me that when he's trying to convince people or he's offering them things that are very accessible to them. He says, you know, a version of, all things witness to me that this is true and all things witness to you that this is true. Like he's giving people access to push back on what Korihor is telling them that are accessible to them just as common believers. And I think that one of the things that this teaches me about misinformation is that It's often people saying big, explosive things, and I have the capacity to lean back and say, wait, does everything in my experience tell me this is true? Or does everything in my experience collectively, little by little, tell me that this might not be true? And I think we discount that, but I think Alma is offering us a pathway towards truth, both spiritually and temporally. He's saying you can look for the big thing, but we've seen people experience big things like Laman and Lemuel, and it doesn't stick. But what Alma is saying, really, truly, where you're going to find your witness of truth is in the cumulative addition of the small witnesses. And I love that that's one of the ways he tries to witness to the Nephites.

(54:04-55:15) Patrick Mason: Yeah, that's great. This is such a good reading of those texts. Thanks, Julie. I've read these stories a lot of times, but I think this helps see it with fresh eyes and also just the absolute relevance of these texts for today. So if we were, you know, as we start to move towards the end of our conversation, we want to kind of bring it back to today and just get your advice on where we're at today in our contemporary society. So how do we know, how do I know when I'm in the presence of deceivers or subject to disinformation. And I guess the corollary to that, maybe the more positive corollary is, can I trust anybody? Where can I go for news, for information? I do want to be informed about the world. I do want to And I don't want to live a kind of cynical, skeptical life where I disbelieve everything and everyone because I know that they're not 100%, you know, because they're human.

(55:15-55:22) Julie Rose: But that's exactly what the totalitarians in the world want us. That's exactly what the people who do not have our best interests or freedom in mind would like for us to believe.

(55:22-55:34) Patrick Mason: So yeah, so how can I be a savvy and smart consumer of information, avoid deception, and find trustworthy sources and be a responsible consumer of information?

(55:34-59:42) Julie Rose: Yeah, we've covered kind of a lot of the sort of key pieces, so I'll just summarize a lot of this here, but one thing I do want to distinguish between is that we've also, we've been talking about, so Korahor and Alma, that's a story about spiritual truth, right? And I do think that there is, we have a really powerful tool in the witness of our, you know, in revealed truth and the witness of the Holy Ghost and our own ability to tap into personal revelation and the enabling power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I think that when it comes to worldly truth, which is what troubles so many of us in this very complicated world we live in, where we want to be making the world a better place, we want to be engaged citizens and kinder neighbors and better able to advocate for what matters to us, we also have to be able to to differentiate, I guess I'll just call it worldly truth for lack of a better word, okay? And in that case, I think it's a little dangerous to use the same strategies because where I might pray about is the Book of Mormon, the Word of God. I think praying about whether or not this candidate is the right candidate to vote for Maybe it will work for you, but also there's a lot of work. Or if you're going to be like, is this particular news source the one that I need? To me, that starts to feel a little bit like we're going with our gut and we're looking for an easy way out. It felt right to me. That starts to be us slipping into those areas of susceptibility. So the very first thing I think that is incumbent upon us, and the bad news here is that it requires some effort. Right, that's the only way we get around this. As we've already established, there is not one single source of complete and total objective reportage, reporting of a story. But when you're looking for, so I'll take it in two directions. If you're looking for, I don't know where to start, I don't know what to believe about this specific issue, a really great place to start to get a good overview and start to look for credible sources is Wikipedia. Don't choke. I'm telling you Wikipedia is 20 years old. It has come a long ways since I first started in this job where I couldn't trust anything it said. There are lots of guardrails in place and most controversial issues and individuals and topics are locked. They have a little lock. Check this out. Go do some media literacy on Wikipedia. That is a great starting place for a big topic, whether it's Israel and Gaza, or if you're trying to understand a political topic, or if you're trying to understand the economy, and whatever it is. They are great, well-sourced, and you don't read it as the gospel truth about that topic. But it's a great place to get an overview, start to get a sense for a lot of people in a very unbiased way have provided sources for every single aspect of that article. And for me, that's a great place to separate from the sort of like, I don't know what to believe. It feels like there's two different worlds that everyone's kind of. First, I read that as a reset. I look through and then I go all the way down to the sources and I see what they've listed because every claim must be sourced or it doesn't. It's not allowed to stay on Wikipedia. So That's a great place to start when you're looking for context. Now, and then from there, I often will go to some of those sources and read the full article that they used to get that particular, you know, that particular claim. Or at that point, then you can say, all right, I'm going to go, you know, I really trust this particular news outlet, so I'm going to go see how they report this and what they're talking about that they think is interesting with regard to immigration or the economy or whatever, this claim that matters to me. Now I'm going to intentionally also go and look at the opposite political perspective. So I'm going to look at how Fox News is talking about it. I'm going to look at how MSNBC is talking it or the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post or the New York Times, whatever. And I'm going to kind of I know their biases. I'm going to notice what they have in common. I'm going to notice where the differences are. And I'm going to start to be able to kind of assemble a set of facts that I can then use to guide my own decisions.

(59:42-01:00:26) Jennifer Thomas: And Julie, I'll just add, you suggested all sides, but those people like all sides, groups like all sides, have two usually pieces of information they share with you. They share bias, which we've talked about a lot on this call. but they also share factuality. It's okay to read from a group that has bias as long as it's highly factual because that actually allows you to hear the perspective from someone who might be different than you are. But you want to make sure that it's based in fact. So if it's bias and not factual, avoid, avoid, avoid. But you don't have to avoid something that's biased as long as it's based, you know, highly rated as factual. That actually gives you a great perspective in how other people are filtering the world around them.

(01:00:26-01:01:00) Julie Rose: I'm always telling people, just because it's got a political bias doesn't mean you can't get good information from it. You just have to understand that it's being presented from a specific world view. And when you can find those common facts, and there actually are a lot of really great newsletters. I'm a big fan of Tangle is one newsletter. The Flipside is another. 1440 is another. There are these newsletters out there that work to try to assemble, like, here are the facts as we know them. And these are things that are indisputable, the facts. And then here is how it's being interpreted, because often the facts are not that useful. I mean, sometimes we, well, I mean, they're useful, but they're, it's overwhelming. It's like, well, what am I gonna make of it?

(01:01:00-01:01:02) Patrick Mason: But they never interpret themselves.

(01:01:02-01:02:35) Julie Rose: No, and facts are, facts can be, you know, they can be contradictory as well, right? And so then you have to, and so it's helpful to be able to see, well, here's how people interpret what's important from those facts, and here's how this side is interpreting, and here, and then you start to make up your own decision. for yourself. And so I think that I think I think it's I think it's starting with those those questions when you're when you're when you're in a moment if you're if you encounter. So that's when there's like a big question or a big issue and you're just like I don't know what to believe but this matter matters to me. That's a great strategy to follow what we just outlined. But if you ever, in the instance where something comes along, I think the majority of Americans, like 50 percent of Americans, report that they see something that they believe is false or untrue on a daily basis on the Internet. So when you're encountering one of those things, if your family member has just shared something with you and they're like, you know, and you're thinking, oh, that feels really scary or that doesn't seem right, whatever, you know, you get that kind of a thing and you're like, is this a conspiracy or not? The very first thing before you go down your fact-checking road is to ask yourself those questions. How am I feeling about this right now? What does it feel like this is trying to get me to do? Is it pushing those big emotions for me? Have I heard it a lot and is that kind of predisposing me to believe it? Do I hope it's true? Do I want it to be true? And is it connecting with certain parts of my identity? Ask yourself those questions very first because that's going to help you know, all right, I need to have my radar really up on this and sort of set you off on a, I believe, to be able to see things more clearly and be able to more effectively use the power of discernment.

(01:02:36-01:03:19) Patrick Mason: Okay, so I mean, all of this advice is so useful, Julie, thank you for all of this, especially from a professional, somebody who lives in this world and thinks about it all the time, and really is a trusted voice and a trusted source. So thank you for all the wisdom that you bring to this. I just, I guess, have one last question maybe that our listeners are thinking about too. Okay, so this is all great about media literacy and sort of wending our way through information and so forth, but help connect the dots to peace and peacemaking. How will better media literacy, being a more discerning consumer of information, how will that help make me a better peacemaker?

(01:03:20-01:05:13) Julie Rose: Yeah, so I think about the promise that Jesus gave to his disciples when he was talking about, you're going to have the Holy Ghost and I'm going to leave with you my peace, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. And I think about how I define peace, which is having the love of Jesus Christ, being able to see one another as purely, as through the loving eyes that he would see them, extending that grace and also seeing ourselves and having this lack of fear, okay? So if that's how I'm defining peace, when we are in a state where we don't know if we can trust anyone, we feel like all we can trust is we've been misled or we are susceptible to it, we are in that place where we begin to feel Fear leads us mostly to fear other people and to treat them poorly, which leads to strife and conflict and drives us further. When you feel like there's nothing you can trust, then you're more and more likely to kind of retreat into your own little safe corner. And that makes us more likely to less likely to encounter people who see differently from us, more likely to assign broad labels and assumptions to those other people, which is antithetical to peace because we are unable in those moments to see them as fellow brothers and sisters of heavenly parents. We're unable to see their dignity and therefore we make choices that don't honor their dignity, whether that is in the way that we want our governments to behave toward people, whether that is in the way that we want policies or resources to be distributed. So I think being able to carefully engage with complicated information allows us to see the complexity in other people and always keep the love of Jesus Christ at the forefront of our lens. as we look out on the world.

(01:05:13-01:05:40) Jennifer Thomas: Okay, Julie, we have one final question for you. And that is just simply, you've talked about kind of the source of peace and this, what responsibility we have to be peacemakers. But in all of this crazy turmoil, especially the fact that you are connected to lots of mis and disinformation and are trying to wind your way through this, what do you actively do to find peace? Where is a place that you can go to access it in the moments when it's more difficult to find?

(01:05:42-01:05:46) Julie Rose: It's not related to the news at all.

(01:05:46-01:05:50) Patrick Mason: It's not Twitter, that's not where you go to find things.

(01:05:50-01:06:57) Julie Rose: It is actually once or twice a week when I am with the teenage girls in my congregation. I am a young women's president, and if you had asked me three years ago if this would have been a calling that would bring me peace, I would have looked at you as if you were sowing disinformation and intentionally trying to ruin my life. because that did not. But if I think about peace as those moments when I feel like I am able to see myself and see others through the most Christ-like loving lens, being with the young people in my neighborhood, these young women, seeing the way that they care and love one another and the way they're working so hard to be the very best that they can be, and I am just overwhelmed every time I encounter them with this sense of, like, seeing them as these celestial daughters. And that is the place where if peace is being able to really feel and see the world and myself through the love of Jesus Christ, it's in those moments.

(01:06:57-01:07:19) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you, Julie. It has been such a delight having you with us today. This was just such a wealth of information that we hope all of our listeners take. I know that we all have such a significant responsibility as peacemakers. to be sharers of truth. And if we can't discern it ourselves, then then we can't share it. So this has just been invaluable. And we really, really appreciate you sharing your time with us.

(01:07:19-01:07:21) Julie Rose: Thank you for having me. And thanks for the work you're doing. I appreciate it.

(01:07:24-01:07:43) Patrick Mason: Thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate it. We just want to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and also to rate and review it. We love hearing feedback from listeners, so please email us at podcast at mweg.org. We also want to invite you to think about ways that you can make peace in your life this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

(01:07:49-01:08:04) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you for listening to Proclaim Peace, a proud member of the Faith Matters Podcast Network. Faith Matters holds expansive conversations about the restored gospel to accompany individuals on their journey of faith. You can learn more about Faith Matters and check out our other shows at faithmatters.org.