Today, we re-aired one of our favorite conversations.
Journalist and author Miles Harvey joined Stateside to discuss James Jesse Strang — the self-professed Mormon prophet and successor to Joseph Smith who, for a few years in the mid-1800s, ruled as the pirate king of a Mormon “utopia” on Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan.
Strang came to power in a time of widespread economic, political, and cultural turmoil, Harvey said, “when truth is just very malleable, and there aren’t a lot of firm things to hold onto.”
“He absolutely thrived in that era, like a lot of people like him — swindlers, before and after. He was able to take advantage of this very unstable time and make people feel that he had simple answers to complex questions.”
Also on today’s show: We learned about a recipe for a scone-based riff on strawberry shortcakes. And from our colleagues at WCMU, we heard about a school in the eastern Upper Peninsula that is holding off on an expansion project because of noise pollution from a nearby “bitcoin mining farm.”
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GUESTS ON TODAY’S SHOW:
- Miles Harvey, journalist and author of The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch.
- Abra Berens, cookbook author and culinary director at Granor Farm in Three Oaks.
- Teresa Homsi, WCMU environmental reporter.
