Every running gag, segment and inside joke, so you can finally understand the comments section. Tap any moment to hear it.
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Every missionary who writes in seems to be serving in the Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission, which makes it the only true mission. Not being called there has been described as the biggest faith crisis going. The Missionary Madness bracket ranks missions by podcast requests; the prize is nothing. Gerrit served in Wisconsin, where he met Jesus more than once, twice in a Packers sweatshirt.
Richard’s favorite example of economics and opportunity cost. He once threatened a three-parter on the 780 percent rice tariff to change the subject, and he has taught 35 merit badges using it. Listeners bring it up at live events.
Richard looks things up on air or between episodes and reports back: when microwaves arrived, the P90X release date, and the weather records behind the First Vision date at the Layton live event. The staff now has its own desk on Litner: ask it anything.
Listener email to questions@standardoftruthpodcast.com, read on air by Richard. It is named for Phebe Draper (also Phebe Palmer and Phebe Brown), born October 9, 1797, in Rome, New York, and died February 28, 1879, in Salt Lake City.
A listener segment Gerrit insists he never wanted to do again. The two-minute segment runs about 25. Its real purpose: helping you sound smart in Gospel Doctrine.
An Idaho police officer and Litner who sometimes has the podcast playing when he makes an arrest, so the arrested hear Standard of Truth in handcuffs in the back of his patrol car. Listeners have been known to clarify that they were not, in fact, in Officer R’s patrol car.
What Standard of Truth listeners are called. In Season 1, a slip of the tongue over “listeners” produced “litiners,” which may be the first Litner on record.
The plan to make millions after the PhD. It is now in year 24, and Richard admits he is a little behind.
Where today’s members rank the New Jerusalem: somewhere after ham radios, but before food storage. Ham radios also lead the official ranking of what’s essential to your salvation in “Can Satan Repent?”
The hosts check on listeners who may have dozed off: text once for yes, twice for no. Some episodes are, by their own count, the most boring yet; one is a sleep aid because Ambien isn’t working. The Season 1 bonus exists so the main episodes don’t interrupt your sleep pattern too much.
Gerrit’s name for explanations of Joseph Smith that exist mainly to help critics sleep better at night.
For a while the hosts assumed the whole audience was Gerrit’s mom and Rachel’s mom. Rachel’s mom reliably downloads every episode. Gerrit’s mom, an English teacher, clicks each one four or five times and may be yelling at her iPod about his grammar.
Richard can steer anything back to presidential elections, and Gerrit’s deadpan does the rest. It’s hard to believe a politician would ever act just for votes. Nobody believes something they know is wrong, unless they’re a politician.
Richard knows failed campaign slogans better than successful ones. He can’t finish “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” but he knows “Rumpsey Dumpsey,” and he has made extensive studies of failed vice-presidential slogans. Also running: Richard for Sanitation Commissioner.
Gerrit became a historian because you already know what’s going to happen. Hindsight is 20/20, the best part of the job. And when all else fails, all he can offer is context, to things you clearly don’t care about.
The 37-part plural marriage series (penciled in for 2037, and by later counts 95 or 97 parts), the perpetually postponed Mormon War episode, more townships, and the question about Hindus and Buddhists they will never get to.
The tangent the hosts rank as the worst ever, worse than the Civil War one, because it isn’t funny at all. More townships have been promised anyway.
No producer, donated microphones, and a bishop friend who paid for the intro and hosting. Nothing gets cut. The show is held together with spit and gum, “and mostly spit.”
A dark chapter of Gerrit’s past: a murdered ferret, a free-range Christmas Eve, and “the business of ferrets,” told in the bonus about Gerrit, “to my everlasting shame.”
Today it means your uncle who drinks. In the 19th century it meant a friendly non-member, like Daniel H. Wells.
BYU always wins, at least in the perfect world God supposedly wanted. Gerrit imagines alternate-history campuses: BYU San Antonio, BYU Corpus Christi, BYU San Francisco. And of course no two Latter-day Saints would ever feel negatively about each other over a rivalry.
Early Church history unhelpfully features two prominent women named Lucy: Lucy Harris and Lucy Mack Smith, the main source for the period. Lucy Harris’s daughter makes three. The problem somehow led to Elon Musk buying Elon University.
Gerrit really doesn’t like John C. Bennett. Listeners have learned that a false question about Bennett is the fastest way to raise Gerrit’s dander.
It started when a transcript turned Richard’s “Yahoo Search” into “You Who.” Then listeners sent two cases. Forty-eight hours in the fridge and still 80 degrees; its freezing point is somewhere on the Kelvin scale.
Richard gives the missionaries an hour on Catholics and the Second Lateran Council, makes elders hand over their emails, and plays Ebenezer Scrooge until his wife shames him. Then he buys them dinner.
questions@standardoftruthpodcast.com. Gerrit jokes it was made long on purpose so only easy questions get through. Writing it out is like crossing the plains.
Gerrit apologizes for being from Idaho. Ada County looks down on Canyon County and doesn’t think about Bingham County at all. Directions are given by a tree at a 45-degree angle, until a windstorm. Richard wants a 19-part episode on the Idaho Constitution debates.
Food over a fire tastes like dirt and ash, though bacon survives anything. When the Church ended scouting, it sounded inspired to him. He is a failed scouter.
Iceland (hello, Reykjavik), Maine (Sabbathday Lake), and Eugene, Oregon.
“Well, welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast.” Six clips planned, out of time after one. Can we talk about the revelation? No, we can’t.
Gerrit’s PhD-versus-MD joke about what his wife married, a listener’s MD making things “real,” and “Doctor Richard Doctor LeDuc Doctor… Senior… Esquire.”
Gerrit plans to end the podcast on a cliffhanger and never come back. Meanwhile, D&C 3 got one, and so did the Bill of Rights.
The intro ends on “miracles,” and the echo comes right back before the welcome.
A two-parter that became five parts, then addenda. Part 1 spends the episode on wheat prices before Moroni can appear. Part 4 was promised as the end; Part 5 followed. Moroni Addendum Part One never gets to Moroni. A listener family wants the addenda to outnumber the parts, and Gerrit has invited everyone back for Moroni Addendum Part 10.
Which presidents did Brigham Young say were dead and in hell? The answer took a whole series of Season 5, by way of the Constitution, Missouri and William Smith’s remonstrance. Gerrit kept raising the part count (11, 35, 75, 700), Richard wanted more parts just to beat Moroni, and S5E50 broke for Alvin Smith, “dead and not in hell.” The line finally arrives in Part 9, and the Christmas finale got a new title: “Merry Christmas Dead and in Hell.”
Emails sent from active labor get read on air, eventually. It started when Rebecca wrote in from labor on Moroni Day, and a follow-up reported the baby arrived at 11:58 p.m., a few pushes later. The mailbag form has a checkbox for it.