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This podcast series features a FairMormon Conference presentation each month. Please join us for the 2018 FairMormon Conference coming up August 1-3. You can attend in person or purchase the video streaming. You can watch older conference presentation videos on our YouTube channel and FairMormon TV for Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Transcripts for past presentations are available here.
Ugo Perego, What does the Church believe about evolution?
Ugo A. Perego received a BS and a MS in Health Sciences from Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) and a PhD in Genetics and Biomolecular Sciences from the University of Pavia (Pavia, Italy) under the mentorship of Professor Antonio Torroni. He is the Director of the Rome Institute Campus, the S&I Coordinator for Central Italy and Malta, and a Visiting Scientist at the University of Pavia. During the past fifteen years, Ugo has given nearly 200 international lectures on DNA topics related to population migrations, ancestry, forensics, and history (including LDS history). Ugo has also authored and co-authored a number of publications, including: “Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity” (in PNAS USA, 2017); “Finding Lehi in America through DNA Analysis” (in Laura Hales’ A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History, 2016); “The first peopling of South America: new evidences from the Y-chromosome haplogroup Q” (in Plos One, 2013); “Reconciling migration models to the Americas with the variation of North American native mitogenomes” (in PNAS USA, 2013); “The Mountain Meadows Massacre and ‘Poisoned Springs’: Scientific Testing of the More Recent, Anthrax Theory” (in International Journal of Legal Medicine, 2012); and “Joseph Smith Jr., the Question of Polygamous Offspring and DNA Analysis” (in Craig Foster and Newell Bringhurst’s The Persistence of Polygamy Vol. 1, 2010). A complete list of his publications is available at www.JosephSmithDNA.com.
Ugo is married to Jenna and they are the parents of four boys and a girl. They currently live in Rome, Italy.
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Ben Spackman received a BA from BYU in Near Eastern Studies and a MA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he did several years of further work towards a PhD. He then studied general science at City College of New York. Currently a PhD student in History of Christianity at Claremont Graduate University, Ben’s general focus is the intertwined history of science, religion, and interpretation of scripture. In particular, he studies how shifting worldviews drove changing interpretations and understandings of Genesis, from its ancient Israelite/Babylonian origins through the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, eventually generating today’s conflict between Young Earth Creationism and well-established evolutionary science. Ben taught volunteer Institute and Seminary for a dozen years in the Midwest, New York, and California, has also taught Biblical Hebrew, Book of Mormon, and New Testament at BYU, and recently TA’d a course on God, Darwin, and Design. Ben has published with BYU Studies, Religious Educator, the Maxwell Institute, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, and Religion&Politics, and blogs occasionally at 
