Millstones Along the Way: The Interpreter Foundation's Birthday

[Tom]

Let me be the very first person in the world to wish happy birthday to the Interpreter Foundation. It’s hard to believe that the Foundation press began churning out weekly online posts a mere thirteen years ago.

For those of you unworthy souls who did not receive the invitation, I am delighted to report that the Foundation is having a birthday party tonight. (I am not making this up.) Southeast Orem’s Arby’s (“We Have the Meats”) will be doing the catering this year, and guests will feast on their choice of sandwich (Triple Beef ‘N Fry Sauce, Smokehouse Brisket, or Three Pound Roast Beef), side (Curly Fries, Crinkle Fries, or Mozzarella Loaves), drink (Fresca, Hi-C Flashin’ Fruit Punch, Unsweet Herbal Tea, or Glass Grape Juice), and dessert (green jello with shredded sego lily, Postum Shake, or Virgin Root Beer Float).

I expect that Professor Peterson will preside over the postprandial fireside, which should include, at a minimum, somewhat of an annual report, several clips from the Foundation’s Bowdlerizing Brigham series of short video documentaries, a preview of the Foundation’s entirely revised website, exciting details on the Foundation’s 2026 tour of Warsaw, Illinois, to tramp through the wreckage of the town where Tom Sharp and his henchmen hatched their devious plot against the Mormons, and a special taping of the Foundation’s “awful” and “embarrassing” (Dr. Peterson’s words) podcast featuring Martin Tanner as host and guest. (Judging by recent podcast episodes, I expect that tonight’s podcast episode will feature a delightful and humorous variety of disastrous technical problems.) A very special guest, Dr. Paul Smith, PhD, will close out the evening with a discounted workshop on employing remote viewing to locate those Latter-day Saints who—to use Dr. Midgley’s charitable language—have “gone missing.” (Note: party guests can pay for the $250 remote-viewing workshop at any of the four chapel doors.)

I am pleased to report that the Foundation will be picking up the cost of Uber rides for guests who happen to drink a little too much Glass Grape Juice at the party and need to rise early for bishopric meeting tomorrow morning.

I will do my best to take notes during the party (using Pitman shorthand). In any event, I trust that a great time will be had by all.

Pitman shorthand is so last century.

For an exciting twist, Tom, why not go a bit further back and take notes using Book of Mormon "caractors"?

I would do that, Malkie, but my reformed Egyptian shorthand is rusty right now.

[I Have Questions]

A wonderful and generous summary, Tom. I’d like to join you in wishing a “Happy Birthday” to the Interpreter blog. But I am also wondering something. I noticed the Proprietor the other day announcing another of the “chapter reprints,” and it led me to wonder: How much of Interpreter’s output over the years has been “original”? A lot of the content seems to be recycled material, and then there is stuff like K. Rasmussen’s frankly parasitic pieces. So, on today—the anniversary day—is it fair to ask what they are celebrating? Whether it’s the hard work of producing new material, or the hard work of re-posting other people’s work?

There is perhaps a simpler question to get the ball rolling. What original work has the Interpreter Foundation produced that has moved the needle in terms of apologetic arguments, historical veracity, or other scholarship on behalf of the Church?

[Rivendale]

A wonderful and generous summary, Tom. I’d like to join you in wishing a “Happy Birthday” to the Interpreter blog. But I am also wondering something. I noticed the Proprietor the other day announcing another of the “chapter reprints,” and it led me to wonder: How much of Interpreter’s output over the years has been “original”? A lot of the content seems to be recycled material, and then there is stuff like K. Rasmussen’s frankly parasitic pieces. So, on today—the anniversary day—is it fair to ask what they are celebrating? Whether it’s the hard work of producing new material, or the hard work of re-posting other people’s work?

There is perhaps a simpler question to get the ball rolling. What original work has the Interpreter Foundation produced that has moved the needle in terms of apologetic arguments, historical veracity, or other scholarship on behalf of the Church?

Joseph Smith: The World's Greatest Guesser was suppose to bury the needle. It was legitimate because Dr Coe only read the Book of Mormon once, over 45 years ago? Our initial sensitivity calculations didn't matter the Book of Mormon is an authentic document? Why does the Book of Mormon compare so well with the Maya? Followed by Horentheos/Shears dismantling the methodology and rendering Coe's one reading irrelevant. Ultimately the Bayesian analysis had no way to keep track of the misses instead of the culled hits.

[Tom]

Let me be the very first person in the world to wish happy birthday to the Interpreter Foundation. It’s hard to believe that the Foundation press began churning out weekly online posts a mere thirteen years ago.

For those of you unworthy souls who did not receive the invitation, I am delighted to report that the Foundation is having a birthday party tonight. (I am not making this up.) Southeast Orem’s Arby’s (“We Have the Meats”) will be doing the catering this year, and guests will feast on their choice of sandwich (Triple Beef ‘N Fry Sauce, Smokehouse Brisket, or Three Pound Roast Beef), side (Curly Fries, Crinkle Fries, or Mozzarella Loaves), drink (Fresca, Hi-C Flashin’ Fruit Punch, Unsweet Herbal Tea, or Glass Grape Juice), and dessert (green jello with shredded sego lily, Postum Shake, or Virgin Root Beer Float).

I expect that Professor Peterson will preside over the postprandial fireside, which should include, at a minimum, somewhat of an annual report, several clips from the Foundation’s Bowdlerizing Brigham series of short video documentaries, a preview of the Foundation’s entirely revised website, exciting details on the Foundation’s 2026 tour of Warsaw, Illinois, to tramp through the wreckage of the town where Tom Sharp and his henchmen hatched their devious plot against the Mormons, and a special taping of the Foundation’s “awful” and “embarrassing” (Dr. Peterson’s words) podcast featuring Martin Tanner as host and guest. (Judging by recent podcast episodes, I expect that tonight’s podcast episode will feature a delightful and humorous variety of disastrous technical problems.) A very special guest, Dr. Paul Smith, PhD, will close out the evening with a discounted workshop on employing remote viewing to locate those Latter-day Saints who—to use Dr. Midgley’s charitable language—have “gone missing.” (Note: party guests can pay for the $250 remote-viewing workshop at any of the four chapel doors.)

I am pleased to report that the Foundation will be picking up the cost of Uber rides for guests who happen to drink a little too much Glass Grape Juice at the party and need to rise early for bishopric meeting tomorrow morning.

I will do my best to take notes during the party (using Pitman shorthand). In any event, I trust that a great time will be had by all.

For what it’s worth, I share “Daniel”’s report on last night’s birthday party in Orem:

The Interpreter Foundation held its annual birthday party last night, for the invited volunteers, authors, and donors who were able to attend. My best estimate is that about 105 people were in attendance. This is our very modest yearly thank-you, to the extent that we can thank those who make Interpreter work.

We began with a dinner centered on beef brisket and pulled pork that had been generously donated and expertly smoked by Bruce Webster, one of our long-time radio and podcast hosts. Bruce’s delicious contribution — I supply details of our cuisine here for the entertainment and indignation of the good folks at the Peterson Obsession Board — was backed up by fruit kebabs, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and, I’m told, salad and a really good dessert of peach cobbler and ice cream. (At home afterwards, I was able to enjoy a plate of food that my wife had saved for me, but — alas! — the salad and the peach cobbler and ice cream were gone and she was unable to save anything for me from those.)

After a few announcements and other matters in the cultural hall of the Latter-day Saint meetinghouse where the birthday party occurred, we withdrew into the building’s chapel. Steve Densley, the Interpreter Foundation’s Executive Vice President, conducted this portion of the program.

In the chapel, John Donovan Wilson and his wife, Twyla Wilson — respectively, Brigham Young and Mary Ann Angell Young from Six Days in August — sang a duet for the audience, accompanied by Joan Lunt on the violin and Amy Bastian on piano. That was followed, among other things, by a summary report from Allen Wyatt, our Vice President of Operations, on what the Interpreter Foundation has accomplished since the 2024 birthday dinner. Even though nothing in Allen’s list was new to me, it was still pretty impressive when seen altogether. After Allen, Jeff Bradshaw, Interpreter’s vice president of Special Projects, used both still photographs and video to give the audience an update regarding the dual-language Not by Bread Alone effort that he’s leading. It’s a bid to preserve at least some of the stories of Latter-day Saint pioneers in Africa. Last of all, Mark Goodman introduced a ten-minute sampler from the forthcoming Becoming Brigham series of short video documentaries, and I offered a few closing remarks.

My intelligence about the party was quite good, I must say.

Life is good.

Posted from Frisco, Utah

[malkie]

We began with a dinner centered on beef brisket and pulled pork that had been generously donated and expertly smoked by Bruce Webster, one of our long-time radio and podcast hosts. Bruce’s delicious contribution — I supply details of our cuisine here for the entertainment and indignation of the good folks at the Peterson Obsession Board — was backed up by fruit kebabs, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and, I’m told, salad and a really good dessert of peach cobbler and ice cream. (At home afterwards, I was able to enjoy a plate of food that my wife had saved for me, but — alas! — the salad and the peach cobbler and ice cream were gone and she was unable to save anything for me from those.)

My intelligence about the party was quite good, I must say.

Life is good.

Posted from Frisco, Utah

[my bolding]

You're so vain, I bet you think this board is about you ...

[I Have Questions]

Whose insurance covered the attendees and the building (A Chapel presumably that they got access to for free) during this annual festival of self congratulation?

[I Have Questions]

For what it’s worth, I share “Daniel”’s report on last night’s birthday party in Orem:

The Interpreter Foundation held its annual birthday party last night, for the invited volunteers, authors, and donors who were able to attend. My best estimate is that about 105 people were in attendance. This is our very modest yearly thank-you, to the extent that we can thank those who make Interpreter work.

We began with a dinner centered on beef brisket and pulled pork that had been generously donated and expertly smoked by Bruce Webster, one of our long-time radio and podcast hosts. Bruce’s delicious contribution — I supply details of our cuisine here for the entertainment and indignation of the good folks at the Peterson Obsession Board — was backed up by fruit kebabs, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and, I’m told, salad and a really good dessert of peach cobbler and ice cream. (At home afterwards, I was able to enjoy a plate of food that my wife had saved for me, but — alas! — the salad and the peach cobbler and ice cream were gone and she was unable to save anything for me from those.)

After a few announcements and other matters in the cultural hall of the Latter-day Saint meetinghouse where the birthday party occurred, we withdrew into the building’s chapel. Steve Densley, the Interpreter Foundation’s Executive Vice President, conducted this portion of the program.

In the chapel, John Donovan Wilson and his wife, Twyla Wilson — respectively, Brigham Young and Mary Ann Angell Young from Six Days in August — sang a duet for the audience, accompanied by Joan Lunt on the violin and Amy Bastian on piano. That was followed, among other things, by a summary report from Allen Wyatt, our Vice President of Operations, on what the Interpreter Foundation has accomplished since the 2024 birthday dinner. Even though nothing in Allen’s list was new to me, it was still pretty impressive when seen altogether. After Allen, Jeff Bradshaw, Interpreter’s vice president of Special Projects, used both still photographs and video to give the audience an update regarding the dual-language Not by Bread Alone effort that he’s leading. It’s a bid to preserve at least some of the stories of Latter-day Saint pioneers in Africa. Last of all, Mark Goodman introduced a ten-minute sampler from the forthcoming Becoming Brigham series of short video documentaries, and I offered a few closing remarks.

My intelligence about the party was quite good, I must say.

Life is good.

Posted from Frisco, Utah

So all the presenters were men? (At least all the ones Peterson mentions, are men). One assumes there were at least some Relief Society sisters there to serve the food to the men, and to tidy up afterwards.

[Tom]

Doctor Scratch has kindly shared a link to (censored) video of the Interpreter Foundation's birthday program in August 2025.

Here is a trivia question:

Daniel Peterson mentioned something during the birthday program that "infuriates" him. (I am not making this up.) Without watching the video, can you guess what it is?

A. He has not had a second opportunity to dump a plate of Hungarian goulash on Bill Maher's head.
B. More and more faithful SeN readers have privately begged him to put the excruciating Christopher Hitchens Memorial "How Religion Poisons Everything" File™ series out of its misery.
C. Traffic to SeN has plummeted since he "shadow-banned" Gemli, but he can't figure out how to reverse the ban.
D. Reliable sources have informed him that Six Days in August has been available online for free since October 2024, but he can't find anyone who will share the URL.
E. He didn't win FAIR's Lifetime Achievement Award, Defender of the Faith, for the third time, in August 2025.
F. More and more faithful members believe Brigham Young was a racist who supported chattel slavery, but "comparatively few" people have read This Abominable Slavery.
G. He recently wasted $15,000 on a phony "remote-viewing" training seminar.
H. More and more faithful members are fully convinced that the Interpreter Foundation website died many years ago.
I. More and more faithful members are saying that Brigham Young invented plural marriage and was a liar and a fraud, but the Lord can work through evil men.
J. The Interpreter Foundation has been in existence for 682 weeks, but Brother Wyatt slacked on the job the first week, so the journal has been published for only 681 consecutive weeks.
K. He doesn't know the precise GPS coordinates of the Jaredite city of Lib.
L. The Relief Society Sister in Parowan doesn't return his calls.
M. Church services and Sunday school classes aren't academic seminars or systematic theology.
N. He wasn't the topic of all ten of Doctor Scratch's The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2024.
O. He still can’t locate his copy of the Second Watson Letter.
P. Deseret Book has failed to express interest in publishing his seven-volume The Reasonable Leap into Light.
Q. After he completed the temple ordinance work for William Buckley a few years back, he received an impression that Buckley didn’t accept it.
R. He has failed to convince a single Latter-day Saint over age 45 that he “doubted [the Salamander Letter] from the start.”
S. His ward elders quorum voted to see Heretic instead of Six Days in August for the quorum’s quarterly social outing, in November 2024.
T. He let it slip one time that a lot of official Latter-day Saint illustrative art over the years has reminded him bit uncomfortably of Soviet “socialist realism,” and his critics haven’t let him forget it.
U. Orson Whitney prophesied in 1888 that “[w]e will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own, but LDS writers have “basically sucked” for 195 years.
V. It has taken him 50 years to realize that the old adage that “you’re never gonna wish you spent more time arguing with strangers online” is false, and that he, in fact, often wishes he had spent more time.
W. The church has not called him to serve a full-time proselytizing mission for the Strengthening Church Members Committee.
X. He didn’t get even a morsel of the delectable peach cobbler and ice cream served at the Interpreter Foundation’s thirteenth birthday dinner.
Y. The Interpreter Foundation “leaks like a sieve.”
Z. He never received his “usual fee as editor of the issue of the Mormon Studies Review that [was] killed.”

Good luck!

[Tom]

Doctor Scratch has kindly shared a link to (censored) video of the Interpreter Foundation's birthday program in August 2025.

Here is a trivia question:

Daniel Peterson mentioned something during the birthday program that "infuriates" him. (I am not making this up.) Without watching the video, can you guess what it is?

A. He has not had a second opportunity to dump a plate of Hungarian goulash on Bill Maher's head.
B. More and more faithful SeN readers have privately begged him to put the excruciating Christopher Hitchens Memorial "How Religion Poisons Everything" File™ series out of its misery.
C. Traffic to SeN has plummeted since he "shadow-banned" Gemli, but he can't figure out how to reverse the ban.
D. Reliable sources have informed him that Six Days in August has been available online for free since October 2024, but he can't find anyone who will share the URL.
E. He didn't win FAIR's Lifetime Achievement Award, Defender of the Faith, for the third time, in August 2025.
F. More and more faithful members believe Brigham Young was a racist who supported chattel slavery, but "comparatively few" people have read This Abominable Slavery.
G. He recently wasted $15,000 on a phony "remote-viewing" training seminar.
H. More and more faithful members are fully convinced that the Interpreter Foundation website died many years ago.
I. More and more faithful members are saying that Brigham Young invented plural marriage and was a liar and a fraud, but the Lord can work through evil men.
J. The Interpreter Foundation has been in existence for 682 weeks, but Brother Wyatt slacked on the job the first week, so the journal has been published for only 681 consecutive weeks.
K. He doesn't know the precise GPS coordinates of the Jaredite city of Lib.
L. The Relief Society Sister in Parowan doesn't return his calls.
M. Church services and Sunday school classes aren't academic seminars or systematic theology.
N. He wasn't the topic of all ten of Doctor Scratch's The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2024.
O. He still can’t locate his copy of the Second Watson Letter.
P. Deseret Book has failed to express interest in publishing his seven-volume The Reasonable Leap into Light.
Q. After he completed the temple ordinance work for William Buckley a few years back, he received an impression that Buckley didn’t accept it.
R. He has failed to convince a single Latter-day Saint over age 45 that he “doubted [the Salamander Letter] from the start.”
S. His ward elders quorum voted to see Heretic instead of Six Days in August for the quorum’s quarterly social outing, in November 2024.
T. He let it slip one time that a lot of official Latter-day Saint illustrative art over the years has reminded him bit uncomfortably of Soviet “socialist realism,” and his critics haven’t let him forget it.
U. Orson Whitney prophesied in 1888 that “[w]e will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own, but LDS writers have “basically sucked” for 195 years.
V. It has taken him 50 years to realize that the old adage that “you’re never gonna wish you spent more time arguing with strangers online” is false, and that he, in fact, often wishes he had spent more time.
W. The church has not called him to serve a full-time proselytizing mission for the Strengthening Church Members Committee.
X. He didn’t get even a morsel of the delectable peach cobbler and ice cream served at the Interpreter Foundation’s thirteenth birthday dinner.
Y. The Interpreter Foundation “leaks like a sieve.”
Z. He never received his “usual fee as editor of the issue of the Mormon Studies Review that [was] killed.”

Good luck!

Thus far, I’ve received several dozen guesses via PM. Posters are also welcome, of course, to provide guesses in this thread.

Posted from Koosharem, Utah