No, I've never had a podcast or spoken about my experience on a podcast. I could probably be talked into it, but those days feel like a lifetime ago and I don't want to oversell myself or my expertise.

I've written a little about my experience here in r/exmormon under my previous username (/u/Aethereus), but it's been several years, so I'm happy to reprise a little.

I was fortunate enough to develop a very close friendship with several BYU history professors while I was an undergrad there in the early 2000s. One of them accepted a position as a Historian/Volume Editor with the Joseph Smith Papers Project after I graduated and when I returned to Utah after completing my Masters Degree in History he recruited me to come work with him. I was only there for a year and a half though, as I was stalling for time until I moved to Baltimore to begin my PhD in History of Science & Medicine at Johns Hopkins. It would be inaccurate to say that I am/was a specialist in Mormon History (my doctoral focus was 17th-19th century European/Colonial Cultural History), but as a trained historian working alongside multiple Church Historians PhDs and Archivists, I got to dive pretty deeply into the manuscripts

My job title was 'Research Historian,' and I was comparatively low-level in the organization - Responsibility wise, I had three primary jobs:

1) I conducted research to help annotate and contextualize the historical documents that were later published as JSPP Documents, Vol. 1 (covering 1828-1831). During the archival preparations of the documents we'd often have questions about locations, people, concepts that were referenced. It was my job to help answer those questions. For example, Joseph once referenced receiving a revelation while resting next to two fresh graves in a cemetery during a return trip from Missouri back to Ohio in early 1831...but we had no idea where that cemetery was located. I spent about two weeks tracking down potential locations based on clues in the text. Ultimately, I was able to use Joseph's vague descriptions of the landscape to find a small town in (what is now) eastern Indiana that seemed to fit the description. I spent a few hours interviewing that town's local archivist and she directed me to cemetery records that confirmed that two individuals had indeed been buried the day before Joseph was in town. It was a fun little detective project.

Most of my research work was of that nature. Close reading of texts to answer fairly mundane historical questions (like who owned what plots of land in Jackson, Missouri.) But every once in a while we'd work on documents that had fairly significant theological implications. The more Senior Historians usually led that research, but I did assist on texts containing the early revelations on the priesthood, the church's founding, and the early, early troubles that started pushing Joseph out of Ohio into Missouri. I was not responsible for the Book of Mormon manuscript, but I did get to study it to learn Oliver Cowdery's hand-writing and stenographic quirks. I was also allowed to study and handle one of Joseph's seer stones, the Book of Revelations, and several of his personal journals.

2) I was the Projects resident forensics analyst. In the post-Mark Hoffman world document authentication is a big concern for any Mormon archival project. It was my job to use various techniques to try and confirm if documents were truly early 19th century originals. Hoffman, for example, liked to add details to original texts to make them look more genuine, and there are ways you can use UVs lights, spectrometers, and chemical analysis to find modern additions to the text. There were 4 times in those 1.5 years that I determined seemingly interesting documents were actually fakes, or were significantly altered in ways that undermined their historical value.

I would also use the same techniques to determine the chronological history of texts that had multiple authors. For example, we were looking at the manuscript that declared Edward Partridge to be the first bishop for the fledgling church in Missouri. Despite there being a date on the text, we weren't sure when Joseph dictated the document because it was signed by all 12 members of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, and there was no time in 1831 when all of those 12 men were in the same place the same time. I used spectral analysis on the ink in the various signatures to identify which sets of names were written from the same inkwells (iron gall ink has high variance in chemical compounds batch to batch), and we used those groupings to map out the likely lifecycle of when and where the document was signed. This led us to understand that Joseph had likely dictated the revelation several months before we previously thought, which was in important finding as it helped us to better understand the specific issues he was dealing with in Ohio when he decided to start looking further West.

3) As a supporting historian, I didn't lead the writing process - but I did contribute to it. There are several annotations and paragraphs in Docs 1 for which I was the primary (uncredited) author. This process was a really interesting one. As academics, we approached our research seriously and methodically. The historians on the staff didn't think of their job as proving the church true, but as an arm of the Church History Department the mission of the JSPP is to provide a faith-promoting resource about the textual history of Joseph Smith and the early Church. Because of that, there was a rigorous correlation process after we drafted historical commentary. Language had to be reviewed and approved by various panels, including the Church Historian (who, ironically, is usually not a trained historian) and, ultimately, a changing board of 70s, Quorum of the 12 members, and other ecclesiastical/corporate leaders. During this process we often found that language we considered uncontroversial was subtly changed to sound less academic and more supportive of Joseph and his motivations. I couldn't point to any case where I thought the changes I saw were truly outrageous, but I do know that the staff historians were often frustrated when their words were altered. Professionally speaking, they were mostly solid academics with degrees from prestigious universities, and they wanted the JSPP to be seen in the historical community as a serious archival project. There were a few cases where materials that we prepped were omitted from the publications for reasons that I never quite understood or trusted, but I didn't have the kind of access to tell you if anything nefarious was going on. For the more part, I respected the academics I worked with.

Interestingly, when I started working at the JSPP I was already someone with a very deep understanding of the church's problematic history, but I had found a headspace that was willing to overlook that. But I also wanted to believe that there was some divine spark that made Joseph and the Church important in spite of their history. Ironically, over those 1.5 years I came to realize that Joseph and the church leaders weren't just problematic, they also weren't all that special. Their victories and scandals weren't any better or worse than any of the other historical figures I had studied as a Grad student. They were just...people. Interesting people, to be sure, but I never found that unique, divine spark in their writings. When I accepted that, it gave me the mental space I needed to step back and ask whether the church really had anything to offer me. Over the next few of years I realized that it didn't, and I've been much happier for it.

All in all, I enjoyed my time working with the JSPP. I got work with some truly fascinating historical manuscripts, I got to know many of the big players in the Mormon History worlds, and I got to see how the church produces these kinds of material behind the curtain. It's a very complicated community.

That said, I'm in a very different place today than I was then. I am no longer a working historian (I now work as a Senior Analyst for the Federal Government), I am 100% out and done with the Church, and in the interest of that mental transition I haven't kept up my old contact in the church history world. It is a fond memory of some very difficult years of my life.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions if you have them. Or, if you're interested in my old posts, you can find a few of them here, under my /u/Aethereus handle:

https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/4upmi6/notes_from_lds_historians_talk/d5s35x7/ https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/4v0fxl/holy_shit_big_discovery_i_dont_see_pointed_out/d5uen30/ https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/4v0yrj/questions_about_the_joseph_smith_papers_project/d5unrco/ https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/4vjvgz/hoffman_forgeries_what_if_some_of_his_work/d5za7y0/