LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories

Turning Testimony to Music in the Age of Technology: Jake Jacobsen's Story - Latter-Day Lights

• Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley

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What opportunities are possible like when faith, creativity, and technology collide later in life?

In this week’s episode of Latter-day Lights, Scott and Emily sit down once again with former Bering Sea Captain and guest, Jake Jacobsen, to explore a life-changing chapter of his journey—using AI and modern technology to bring decades-old lyrics, spiritual reflections, and life stories to life through music and video.

After spending nearly three decades navigating some of the most dangerous waters on Earth, Jake shares how long hours alone in the sea became a sacred space for songwriting, prayer, and reflection. Now, years later, those words are finding new expression through AI-assisted music, allowing him to share his testimony of Jesus Christ, the Atonement, and the covenant path with audiences around the world.

Jake opens up about the creative process behind his songs, the spiritual intentions guiding his use of artificial intelligence, why he sees this work as part of his personal mission, and his desire to preserve faith-filled stories for future generations.

This thoughtful conversation dives into big questions about creative authenticity, inspiration, and discernment in an age of rapidly advancing technology—and how tools like AI can be used intentionally to spread light, hope, and faith in Christ.

*** Please SHARE Jake's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/j-BIAdsuMBA

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To WATCH Jake’s music and talks for LDS Leaders, “The Wheelhouse of Hope,” visit: https://www.youtube.com/@WheelhouseofHope

To WATCH Jake’s music and stories for Christian audiences, “Jake’s Wheelhouse,” visit: https://www.youtube.com/@CaptainJakesSongsandStories

To LISTEN to Jake’s song, “The Master’s Music,” visit: https://youtu.be/wnmtbM1vtP8?si=_7yKwCuwrGDLfL_4

To WATCH Jake’s first Latter-Day Lights episode, visit: https://youtu.be/k5MMS8tEB_A

To READ Jake’s book, “Chronicles of Being a Sea Captain,” visit: https://a.co/hYb6gZ5

To READ Scott’s new book “Faith to Stay” for free, visit: https://www.faithtostay.com/

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Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latterdaylights

Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

Scott Brandley:

Hey there. As a Latter Day Lights listener, I want to give you a very special gift today. My brand new book, Faith to Today. This book is filled with inspiring stories, powerful discoveries, and even fresh insights to help strengthen your faith during the storms of life. So if you're looking to be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually recharged, just visit faith2day.com. Now, let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Emily Hemmert:

And I'm Emily Hemmert. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley:

On today's episode, we're going to hear from an old bearing sea captain who's sharing his love for music and how he uses technology to bring his stories to life. Welcome to Latter Day Life. We have our friend from the Bering Sea, Captain Jake Jacobsen back on the show. Welcome, Jake. How are you doing?

Jake Jacobsen:

I'm doing great. Thank you.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, we're excited to have you back. So the kind of some backstory on this episode. Um, after we had Jake on the last episode, I get this email one day and it's from Jake. And he's like, hey, check out my music that I wrote. And I'm like, what? So I go online and he's written all this music and using AI and different technologies that we're going to talk about today. And I was just blown away at some of the things you put together. And so we started talking back and forth. And then I asked Jake to come back on and tell us kind of some of the things he's doing. Because I didn't think these things were possible with the technology that we have today, but it's there's some pretty cool stuff. So yeah, I'm really excited to have you on and to be able to talk about some of that.

Emily Hemmert:

Yeah, they did a study, and 97% of people can't tell the difference between AI music and non-AI music. And so the reality is like it's been kind of in the news lately, but it's probably been more part of our music than we realized. And a lot of songs that we like have probably been using AI in one form or another in their creation. I mean, even going back before it was kind of more in mainstream.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I think the tools that are available for composers and arrangers are just extremely advanced these days. And AI is, I'm sure AI is involved in production of every musical and TV work, every every song. It's it's ubiquitous throughout the industry, I I believe, and and I don't think you can tell the difference between AI and and um music the way it used to be made. It except there are some clues that give it away because AI makes mistakes once in a while, and and sometimes you can pick those up. And and um a good friend was listening to a song uh the other day, and she commented, where are they gonna breathe?

Scott Brandley:

That's funny because um, so I wrote I recently wrote a a business book, um and I had um AI read it, like do the audio version for me, right? Because I thought it was gonna save me time, but it ended up taking me like three times longer, but that's in a whole nother story. But one of the things is it added in breath and and but it was the same breath all the time. So it's it sounded so weird. Like adding in these breaths, but they were the same, and it like drove me nuts. So I ended up ended up scrapping the whole thing, and then I just recorded it anyway, just without why.

Jake Jacobsen:

But anyway. That's great. One of the most embarrassing things is in one of my songs, an AI mispronounced a word. Well, the word was hard, it was ad libd, and it goes ad lib libd. And uh it's really irritating. Every time I listen to that, I want to go in and edit it. But if I don't want to take this song down, because then I'll lose uh you know around over 2,000 views. I can't lose my views.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah. Well, before we kind of get into the the whole music side, which is really cool, because I think I think this could interest a lot of people and how you do this. But tell us for people that didn't watch the first episode, give us a little bit of feet of um information about you and and kind of your previous life as a Bering Sea Captain, because that's pretty cool.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I started fishing from a young age and and I worked um uh on various fishing boats since I was seven, uh, sailing with my father on his boats and and other boats as well. And uh my dad's boat sank when I was uh 17, so I went up to the Bering Sea, he got me a job on another boat, but I I stayed in that industry. I went to school, I got an education, I got a master's degree at at BYU and uh neurophysiology, and and I was uh uh just hoping to go to um graduate school for a PhD at uh St. Louis University. I had a full ride fellowship there, and and uh then the crab stocks were depleted and the money was tight and I uh had to keep fishing. I never made it back to school. So I ended up working on fishing boats for the rest of my life um uh in some form or another, and I was a Bering Sea captain for uh 28 years, and uh at least working in the Bering Sea for 28 years, and and um so I spent long hours in the wheelhouse alone um driving the boat, and uh I would write song lyrics, and I had uh quite a few song lyrics built up, plus I'd written a few on my mission. I was um trying to write poetry. I tried to write poetry since high school and varying levels of success, I guess. But I tried to make some songs when I was on my mission, and then hours and hours and hours in the wheelhouse alone on the boat. So I came up with some lyrics and I would get home from the boat and I'd try to m put music to them, and and I bought a lot of software and uh keyboards and things like that, and I played several instruments. I wasn't uh new to music by any means, and uh but it still took a lot of time, and it would have been a lot more efficient if I'd had somebody who knew what they were doing to write music for me. My the songs that I wrote and sent out to uh record companies were not successful, nobody wanted my songs. Uh well that's fine. I wasn't a good music, uh wasn't a good composer. Uh it it was really bad. So just recently, like uh a month and a half ago or so, I um I found a chat GPT, and I'd never used uh uh AI before and intentionally. And uh so I started this is really cool, and then I noted on one of the sidebars it had some music uh GPTs, and so I asked it to give me a list of songs that could write music for me, or a AI apps that could write music for me, and and so it did, and I pursued some of those and and uh I was just amazed at at the uh uh way that my songs were being brought to life. AI was writing, was composing my songs, my music for me, and singing it. And it was beautiful, and I was just wow, this is amazing. So I thought, well, you know, I I I'm not the kind of guy that gets a lot of callings in church because I'm traveling all over. I still go up to Alaska a lot. I got home yesterday from Alaska, spent the week in in Alaska, and uh so I'm uh not able to attend my little branch very often. And um I I'm the building cleaning coordinator, that's my calling. So I worked at Fair LDS for 13 uh years or more, and and um that's an organization that uh helps people out if they have problems with uh questions about the church, about um information that's presented in a way that's critical to the church. And uh so I really enjoyed doing that for a long time, but then I just felt like I needed to uh work on my own writings, and so I started working on something that I called, and I've written two books, and we talked about uh one, I think, uh before uh the other podcast, but um I started an endeavor that I called Grandpa's Guide to Earth Life uh for my uh grandkids, and I wanted to l let them know all of my stories uh at sea and at home and and really how the saviors really blessed my life. All all my life. I I've just had an amazing experience. I've lived so long in extremity, uh, on the edge of death, and so uh I've been saved so many times through uh the grace of the savior, and and uh I I just wanted my future generations to know how I was so blessed and and what it meant to me just to live close to the savior and and to live the gospel and to be a member of the church and uh just what it really means. So um then when I saw this uh AI stuff on YouTube uh or for making videos and music and songs and bringing to life, I thought, well, I'm just gonna post my stories on the internet, and then everybody can benefit from my stories. Uh I kind of first put myself out there on this Latter-day Lights podcast, thanks to um Alicia and and um Scott and and now Emily. And so I got pretty personal, and it was really hard for me to tell those stories. If you watch that podcast, you'll see how much I suffered for my PTSD and and and just my gratitude for being in those situations.

Scott Brandley:

And and uh there were some incredible stories on that episode. So if you haven't seen it, go check out his first episode because it's pretty cool. We'll we'll put a link to it in the in the notes. Okay, great. Yeah.

Jake Jacobsen:

And so what I'm doing now is part of I consider it my uh senior mission or church calling or whatever my work, but but this is what I'm doing now to uh spread the gospel and help people to come to Christ. And I'm I'm doing it through two ways. I have two channels. One is a specific channel for LDS viewers, and I just started that a week ago, and I've I've got one song about the restoration up there, and and then I've got a talk that I gave a few years ago, and I'm gonna be posting a lot more talks and stories and spiritual things on that channel, but that's specifically for LDS leaders, and that's called the Wheelhouse of Hope. My other channel is more oriented towards a general Christian audience, and that's been going for a little over a month now, and I've got um over a dozen songs and some stories set to music and things like that on that channel, and that's called Jake's Wheelhouse. There's some other Captain Jakes around there that spent time in the Bering Sea, and and I don't want anybody confusing my uh YouTube channels with any of those videos. So that's funny.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah. So you you started playing around with some of these tools. How did like how did that happen? What what did you do? Like you went to a you found a tool that that that would you could plug your lyrics into that you wrote when you were on the C, and then it added music and it added um vocals to the to the lyrics? How does how does it work?

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I use a couple of different programs. Um do you want me to go like through the whole process of how I how I do it?

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, I mean I'm I would I'm interested to know the the steps. Like I think that'd be helpful, at least from a high level, because if somebody else has lyrics that they want to turn into music, they would want to know how to do it.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, and I'm not worried about competition. I'm happy to share any information, uh, you know, and you're welcome to send me questions. Uh if you have I'm I want the gospel to be spread all over the world, and uh, we're doing uh kind of a mediocre job at it right now, I think, because when I do a search, I I get a lot of information that's about some kind of housewives and all kinds of stuff that I just don't think represents the church very well. So um hopefully my songs and my stories will do a little better job than Mormon housewives of Salt Lake or whatever that stuff is.

Scott Brandley:

You just gotta have like a you gotta have a sexy pose, Jake. You just gotta like turn a little bit, you know.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah.

Scott Brandley:

Just go bucker up your lips. So flick your hair a little.

Emily Hemmert:

So I saw somebody that does AI music, and you know, I mean, I think people have this idea that it's really easy, like you just make it and it comes out perfectly. But he said that every song he makes, he makes like a hundred edits to it or something. So some of the higher-end software you can do like a lot of fine-tuning and editing and changing things and stuff like that. Whereas like I have an app that just makes a song, and whether you like it or not, you're kind of just stuck with it, right? Like there's no saying, well, you pronounced this word wrong or you I don't like this little part or whatever, right? And so I'm curious to see these this higher-end production that allow you to be really involved in the actual production of all the music. It's cool.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, yeah, right. So I'm gonna use one of my songs as kind of an example, I think. And it's it's called In a Garden. And it's uh a song I wrote about the sacrament. For example, when when I'm starting a song, like we did this uh podcast, I always start with prayer because I pray all the time. I as I've gotten older, I these days I I just I pray all day. I'm just uh you know, there I don't know why, but I pray a lot. And so I'll pray before I work on it. Uh and I have a really short attention span. And so I can't pray for very long, but I pray a lot, so hopefully that makes up for. And then I'll uh I'll find a lyric and or I'll get an idea or song idea. Um I have all these songs that I've started on my mission and in the wheelhouse on the boat. I've got a pile of songs that I haven't done yet. Each of these envelopes is a is a song that I haven't even worked on yet. I've got the ideas and stuff, but I haven't put them to music. Okay. And various forms of formation. So I'll find a um uh an idea for a song. What's my story? Um, and I'll pray for stories, I'll pray for hooks, and I got I get I got one today. Um, and uh but this song is a um a song about the savior's atonement and uh the way we uh appreciate the savior's atonement through the ordinance of the sacrament. So I get uh my idea and then I'll wireframe the lyric. So um in this particular song starts off the world is dark, the flowers are hiding their beauty, the shadow is covering the light, but it's not completely dark, but the there's shadows coming, and then Jesus is in the garden, and then there's a chorus where Jesus dies, and then we take the bread, and then we take the water, now with trembling hand, the cup I take. And then Jesus is back in the garden again, but this time he's resurrected, and the flowers are opening their petals and they're blossoming, and then a chorus where Jesus lives, and so that's my wireframe, that's the idea of the song. And but how can I say that with power and poetry? I'm I'm not talking necessarily about rhyming, although rhyming structure is important. So, but uh I can say, well, um, Jesus went to Gethsemane and he started bleeding, and that would be what I would put as my wireframe or my my thought about how the verse should go. But then when I try to make it poetic, I come up with kneeling by an ancient olive tree, moistening the ground with crimson pain. And that's a lot more poetic than just saying, yeah, he was bleeding, drops of blood. And so uh I have a secular song called Nights Are Long. I I'm I was talking about uh I really miss you a whole bunch. Um, but that's not good poetry. So after considering several ways I could express how I miss somebody, I ended up with empty hands, reach for you in fantasy. And that was the lyric I went with. I I have a song called In His Wisdom about Losing a Child, which is probably my favorite song um that I've done. And and uh and you could say, Yeah, I really miss my child, and that's how I would wireframe it, but then I would but what I ended up with uh was uh but here we stand, our empty hands wipe the tears that testify our love. That's poetry, uh in my opinion, anyway. So the rhyming is certainly a part of the process and finding the right rhyming scheme. Um I have songs that uh I'm kind of embarrassed about because my rhyming structure isn't great. Other songs I have mixed metaphors. I've I had a lot of mistakes, and I I've already set them to music, and I can't really go back now as much as I'd like to and redo some of those, but I'm getting better. Um and then I take it to the AIs, and so uh I input a prompt and I ask, I okay, so here's where I fudge a little bit. Um I'm not good at writing prompts, they're long and I don't have patience. And a prompt is something that you tell the AI, this is what I want my song to sound like. And so there's programs use prompts in various different ways, but most of them use prompts. And so I'll have Chat GPT write my prompt for me. I'll upload my lyrics to ChatGPT, and I write my own lyrics. I know there's lyric writers out there, and uh I've tried some just for fun, and I haven't liked the result at all. And I'm I don't intend to use them, but you know, who knows in the future what I might do. But right now I don't use prompt uh I don't use AI to write my lyrics. I I write my own lyrics. I gotta have some something of myself in the song, right?

Scott Brandley:

Right, some authenticity, right?

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah. I mean this is coming from my heart. It's fine to have fake music and a fake voice sing it, and not really fake, but AI generated. Fake is probably the wrong word, but um but it's close to fake, and and so it the lyrics are my own, and that's my heart, and that's my feeling, and that's my testimony, and in the songs of a spiritual nature. So um I get the prompt and then I put it in the program, and uh and then it's massaging the prompt to get the AI to uh do what you want to do. I've done editing after the fact, it's it's kind of laborious, and I don't have a lot of patience, and I don't have a lot of time. And so I'll uh I'll try to get the prompt right and I'll work on that really hard, get the prompt. Right, get it to start generating songs that I think are good enough, and uh then try to get them better. And uh in the interest of time, I use two different programs and I go back and forth generating the same song, the same generating a song from the same lyrics, and I'll make maybe 40 or 50 different iterations of the music through AI, and then I'll pick the one. Um when I'm happy that I have enough that I'm happy with, I'll pick the one that I want to use, and uh and then I'll go and make the video with the captions and any uh kind of video I want to use, and I use AI for making the videos and producing the captions and all that kind of stuff. Um then I'll edit the video and I'll uh put it together. I use uh regular editing tools like CapCut and things like that, the most YouTube people use, and and uh and I use some Adobe products as well. I've got, you know, I didn't know what I was doing when I started, so I spent way too much money on subscriptions for different apps. I'd I'd find one, I'd use it, and oh, this is great, and then I find one that was better, so I'd have to sign up for that one as well. So I got a bit of money in subscriptions, which I won't be renewing because I've kind of narrowed it down to the kinds of programs and apps that I like to use and uh GPTs that I think are are good to use. So um it's uh uh and then when I'm all done and I get the song up, I express my gratitude for Heavenly Father for all his help because uh the results that I've been able to create through AI with my lyrics, I I think they're as good a as uh any AI out there and and better than a lot. And I'm very grateful, and I tell Heavenly Father every time, a lot of times, that uh is so happy to be able to hear my music. It's kind of like I've I've done all I can. I've I have put in all I have to put in. I don't have talent writing music. And AI finishes it for me. And maybe it's not a great analogy for the atonement, but it's kind of like that. Uh, you know, we do what we can do, we try to do our best, we use our best intentions and do the best we can, and the savior finishes it for us and and makes it beautiful. And um, that's what I feel with these songs. I I've written the lyrics and AI makes them beautiful for me. And uh so I'm just delighted to be able to put these things up, and I've got a lot of stories that I want to put up. Some of the stories I set to music, and uh sometimes I'll make a song. There's one song I had, I I showed you these envelopes I have with all my songs on them. And so there's there's a lot of songs in there, and one day I just had three scraps of paper on my desk, and I was looking at them, and I said these kind of fit. So I put them all together and made a song, and it's one of my favorite songs now. That's awesome. Yeah, I wrote all the words as three different songs, but they kind of go together. So that's awesome. That's that's how I I do it, and and I suppose there's better ways, but uh wow, if somebody has lyrics and and they want to see their lyrics come to life and come to beauty and and uh make a difference, I AI is just so great in doing that.

Emily Hemmert:

Yeah, I recently was able to have a make a song because I just had a thought of like kind of like a main line for a song, but I'm not very good at writing either. And the the line that I kept having was like, is heaven's like coming home? Just because when I go home, it's like this feeling where you're just really like accepted for who you are, and you know, it's just this really great feeling, like when you're able to like finally go home for Thanksgiving or whatever, right? Like that's how I kind of imagine like heaven's gonna be like is we're gonna just go and all the people that we love are gonna be there and we're gonna just be like surrounded by like unconditional love and acceptance and this beautiful thing, right? So I just was able to put in like write a song based on like heaven's like coming home because that's as much of it as I could come up with. And it made like a really great song, you know. So it's cool that you can do this. And I and I don't think that you know, like maybe people have I saw an influencer, a Christian influencer, and he was saying like how he was upset that the number one Christian song was from AI. And he was like, AI doesn't have the Holy Ghost, and you know it's full list or whatever. And it's like if you really look at how this music is created, it's coming from a place, like you said, like you're praying about it and you have these thoughts coming to your mind, and it's very inspired, and so it's not really the tallest thing that maybe people make it out to be because you're still, you know, having inspiration and and putting that all in in a way that's like very involved. You know, God is like involved in the details of all that, especially like if if the purpose is to bring people closer to Christ. So like my thought with that's just an influencer thing, like, you know, we've got to reject this music. It's like, you know, if people are listening to like a banger about Jesus and it's drawing them closer to Christ, like that's great. Like we should be celebrating if it's if it's something positive and it's bringing people closer to God. Like that to me then like that's great, like something to be celebrated. I don't know.

Jake Jacobsen:

Absolutely. For every profane song out there, there's there's maybe you know, thousands and thousands to one song that leads someone to the savior.

Emily Hemmert:

Right.

Jake Jacobsen:

And if I can get my heart out there on the internet, if I get my testimony out there on the internet through song, I want to do that. And uh yeah, I try to appeal to my one channel, uh Jake's Wheelhouse. I try to appeal to a general Christian audience, uh, because everybody needs to know the savior, and and there's some uh LDS influence, of course, because I can't help it, and I don't want to help it. Um and uh, you know, maybe it'll people will find my other channel and uh and hear those things over there. But yeah, uh and then another thing I I'm doing, as I mentioned, was putting up talks and and stories, and I'll put music behind those. Um and uh not all of those are turned out really great, but uh I'm happy with some of them. Some of them have got a few views. I I'm really surprised at at uh that people uh listen to them. But yeah, that's it's great. I uh really appreciate the the fact that people are are actually listening to my music and and I'm getting a couple of subscribers and and views and and uh it's uh been encouraging, I guess I could say.

Emily Hemmert:

I think it's cool that you're doing this too for your posterity, because I think that's a good way to do family history. Like sometimes when we think about family history, we think it's just like researching stories in the past, but it's also creating the stories and making them in a way that future generations can enjoy them, right? Like they'll have these videos and these stories and all these things, and that's gonna be so valuable for them. So that's cool.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah. I um I wanted to talk about if if it's okay, I wanted to talk about just kind of some background of one of the things that I did. Um I I put up a uh a story about um it's just called The Master's Music. And um it's a story the song is tangentially tangentially, what's the word tangent tangentially uh associated with how I met my wife. And so it's a very meaningful song to me, and uh and I've shared it with a musical background, and and um I've heard from people that uh non-Latter-day Saints that say they agree with every word that I said. Uh, hope people listen to all my songs and stories, but that one's I think is really worth listening to. Uh, but could is it okay? We have time to if I share that story where that came from. So when I served my mission in South Africa, and uh I just had a such a wonderful blessed mission. I had so many spiritual experiences, and I've had quite a few visions and revelations, things like that in my life. I don't know why I get visions, but I do. Before I left on my mission, I had a vision of my wife to be, and I saw a silhouette of a young lady sitting sideways to me, so yeah, a silhouette sideways, and um and I was told that this would be my wife, and so I went on my mission, I came home. I started off, I was in a a BYU ward that was a singles ward, and it included a lot of return missionaries, men, trying to find a spouse, people wanting to get married, and almost all the females in the ward, the women were freshmen girls, they were young and they just wanted to play, and they didn't want to get married. So I was commiserating with a friend um who was married and went to a ward that had both married couples and singles, and their singles were a lot of um sisters that wanted a husband. So he invited me to his ward, and and maybe I could find somebody there that I would want to date and get married to. So I'm gonna call him Brent because that's his name. And his wife is named Cheryl, and they know who they are, and I love them so much. They took they said, Well, we'd like you to come and be in our ward. And and so they told me to go to Family Home Evening the Monday night. That was a Sunday. They told me uh Monday uh they thought it'd be a good idea if I showed up at this family home evening group. So I went and I knocked on the door, and a girl answered the door. She didn't say anything, she just opened the door and I said, Is this where Family Home Evening is? And and she still didn't say anything. She just uh indicated that I should come in and sit down. So I did. And I was one of the first ones there. Everybody else came in the family home evening group. Um nobody spoke a word to me. Uh I think the girl that invited me in said yes, and I said, This is is this where Family Home Evening is? And that was the only time anybody spoke to me that whole evening. And you know, they didn't even want to know what my name was, what I was doing there. So I uh felt pretty um rejected, and and uh I I wasn't gonna go to that ward, it was pretty unfriendly. And uh so I told Brant, sorry, I'm not gonna go to your ward. Well, he uh talked to me further and he said, Oh, you know, I'm so sorry that this happened, but you know give it a try, come to church on Sunday. And he talked me into it. So um at the time I owned a pet store in Provo. And uh while I was going to school, and I uh I was working in my store on Saturday, the Saturday before the Sunday, when I was gonna try that ward and actually go to church for the first time in that ward, uh, despite my unfortunate family home evening experience. So Saturday I was working in my pet store and I got the impression that I was should start working on a talk. Why should I work on a talk? I'm not even going to my own ward tomorrow. But I did, and I worked on a talk as I was told to, and I I worked all through that day on the talk. I worked that night through on a talk. I put it down and I say, This is stupid. Why am I doing this? But I kind of liked how the talk was going, and so I started kept working on it anyway, and went to church the next morning at Brent's uh Brent and Cheryl's ward. They had priesthood meeting first, and then they had Sunday school, and then sacrament meeting was last. That's the way they had it back then. And at BYU went to priesthood meeting and went to Sunday school. I was pulling out my talk. Instead of listening to the lessons, I was working on my talk, right? That's what you do when you're ready to speak. So I was still working on my talk and in Sunday school, and uh a guy came to the door and poked his head in. Is there a Jake in here? And I said, Yeah, I'm Jake. And he said, Uh, could I visit with you for a minute? He said, our speaker just called in sick. Said, could you give a talk? So I pulled it out of my pocket and I said, Here it is. So I gave a talk, and this um thing I posted, the master's music, is an excerpt of that talk I gave. I wrote that when I was like 24 years old. Um after I gave the talk, I saw a wave of young ladies approaching the after church, approaching me, and I fled because I was afraid. And uh later that night there was a fire uh fireside, and so I went to the fireside and I couldn't get out in time, and I was surrounded by young ladies handing me slips of paper with their phone numbers on it, and um so I uh was suddenly uh someone that people were interested in. And uh as I went to Brent's house, I kept going to that ward, and I'd go to Brent and Cheryl's house every Sunday after church. I'd go there and they'd feed me dinner, and they were very gracious, and we'd visit, and then I'd leave. Well, Brent had a sister named Helen, and Helen came to visit him, and because I was still going to that ward, and I was still going to Brent's house for dinner, I met Helen. And Helen became kind of my personal dating secretary, and she would line up dates for me. I went on three dates a week, uh, Wednesday nights, Friday nights, and Saturday nights. And uh she would arrange the dates, make suggestions, because I'm socially inept. I I had a lot of problems just calling girls and asking them for a date. That's me, I'm sorry. Um, and so Helen did it for me, and she was great. And uh so uh we met one Sunday and we planned out the dating schedule and got everything arranged, and then she said, Hey, I'm you want to go to a fireside tonight? And I said, Sure, yeah, that'd be great. And she said, Well, I've got a friend, and she just moved up from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she was going to school at Oral Roberts University, and she joined the church and she's transferred to BYU, and she doesn't know anybody, it's okay if we take her along. I said, Oh, yeah, fine. So we took this other girl along. She was really pretty. Sunday we were trying to arrange dates, and I had one more opening, and Helen suggested this girl, PJ. Her name was PJ, and uh so I said, Yeah, she was kind of pretty and nice, and yeah, I'll try a date with PJ. Last date I ever went on with anybody else. Because PJ was sorry, now I'm gonna get all emotional again. I'm so sorry. PJ was sitting on a piano bench, and I saw her and I saw my vision. And it was a match. I got married to PJ, PJ is in pajamas, and uh it was all of this was okay with the bishop. Bishop Broadbent was the bishop of that ward, he was a medical doctor, he was such a wise man, he was a healer of both body and spirit, and uh and he welcomed me into the ward and had my records transferred and took care of it. So I got to go to Prince Ward and and yeah, it was just a month or two months, or I don't know how long it was before I met PJ, but uh we met and and uh got married and and the rest is history. So that talk that I wrote uh kept me in that ward and uh allowed me to meet my wife. So that's the story behind the master's music. If you ever have an opportunity to listen to that one.

Emily Hemmert:

Awesome. Okay.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, well, um, I know that you sent us some quotes from Elder Gong about AI. What are some of your thoughts there?

Jake Jacobsen:

The friend that I mentioned that um gave me the comment that where are the breaths in the song? Um she was under the impression that the church did not condone artificial intelligence images of the savior. And in some of my videos, I show the savior. Uh a lot of my videos I show AI-generated pictures depicting the savior. I don't know what Jesus looks like. Maybe I do, I don't remember. Um so I don't know. I use a you know, like music, you have prompts when you do AI images. I mean you can. There depends on what program you use, but I use a program that that involves prompts. So you put a a video or an image that you want to kind of make yours look like as a prompt, and then you can write written prompts as well and show you tell how you want it to change the image. So I just use an image from uh one of them I use the Christmas statue that's in the visitor center at the uh one of the temples in Arizona. Uh and I made it come to life and and through AI. Anyway, it she was of the opinion that that wasn't really something that I should be doing. So I read Elder Gong's talks and writings and what was on the church website. And they didn't say that you couldn't put up an image of the savior, they just said that the church wouldn't be using AI-generated images of the savior. So I wanted to know what the rest of you know the church's concerns I had. And Elder Gong said that uh, you know, he he said we can understand and use AI and other technological innovations in the context of faith. And that's what I'm trying to do. And he said we can consciously choose and intentionally use AI as a tool for good. Exponentially compounding AI technologies promise new ideas and new possibilities. And that's what I'm trying to explore with my mission here as a YouTube content creator now, along with my uh six other jobs. And he did raise a warning about some uh aspects of AI. There's a lot of bad things that can come out of AI. There's deep fakes that you know somebody could have elder uh President Oaks saying something horrible, and you wouldn't know that it isn't President Oaks because you can put these some of my songs I use avatars. I have a rap song. Um just a song that just fits so well into the rap genre, and it's about being God's hands. Uh, but there's a rapper that's singing the words, and he's matched precisely with the words. They are coming out of his mouth, or so it would seem. And so uh, you know, it's some of the things you can do with AI can be used for horrible things, and of course. There's the whole pornography industry and horrible things that can be created with AI, but it's what comes from your heart and that you can also use it to create things of beauty and faith and inspiration. And that's what I'm trying to do with my work.

Emily Hemmert:

I've noticed like an uptick in things that AI pictures and articles and stuff about church things that you can kind of pick up are like fake. And I don't know who's making them and like what the purpose is in making them, like if they're somehow like monetizing that by getting like lots of shares or something. I don't know, but it's a good reminder to just be like mindful when we're scrolling that like you could see something and think that it's like this really great church thing that happened, or whatever, and that could even be fake, right? So I think we all need to just be like using the power of discernment and the spirit to when we're using social media and act interacting with things to have make sure that we're correctly discerning if something is true or not.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, absolutely good thoughts, yeah. Uh Elder Gong said that people should not infer that he asked people not to infer that AI is inherently bad or should be avoided. He said the fact that a technology can be misused does not mean that it should never be used. AI has much to contribute to human flourishing and the common good. In fact, every department at church headquarters is exploring ways AI can help to work to support the 32,000 congregations we have in 195 countries. Um but he said that Latter-day Saints should be intentional about how they use AI. And I, you know, when when uh VR, Virtual Reality came out, there were the church started making uh virtual reality uh apps and and uh content. And uh and so now we have AI and and they're doing the same thing. Virtual reality certainly had a lot of potential. Well, it it has a lot of evil things that happen uh uh in virtual reality from uh pornography. I mean you can put on a headset, nobody can see what you're looking at, and uh it's you can see some pretty horrible things if you look for it. Um you can also see some wonderful things and uh some great content and and uh very spiritually uplifting things. And AI is, I think, is the same way. It it's what's in your heart. It's not the technology that's bad, it's it's uh how we use it.

Emily Hemmert:

Yeah, I was able to make like a chat bot for our missionaries to give to investigators that has parameters that basically it can only pull information from the church website to answer questions. And then it like redirects people to like if they're questioning or bringing up things, it's like redirects them to consider it prayerfully, to ponder, to study the scriptures, to talk to the missionaries, you know, but that everything that it responds is doctrinally like that's the only website that it can pull any of its information from. So they could ask and it can give them prompts, like if they were to interact with it, like they could open it and it would say, you know, like, you know, ask, give a kind of an idea of something that they could talk about and it would pull the scripture, like it would pull from the scriptures and from the church website. And so and it can't pull anything else from anywhere else. And so it's kind of cool because that you can put things in place like that where it's you know really like using it for good, right? Rather than using it for I mean, there's a lot of good that you can do with it, I guess, is the point in sharing that.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, absolutely. You can create parameters that that protect it. Yeah. Yeah, it can be used for good. Um, I mean, I use it, I used AI on the cover of my book.

Jake Jacobsen:

Oh yeah, right.

Scott Brandley:

Um and I love that picture. Like to me, that was inspiration how that came about. And it's the same thing with your book. I mean, with your music, right? Like it's it's you can use it and add to a gift to enhance the gift to it, right? So it's just like you said, it's how you use it. If you use it for good, we can help promote our faith, we can help promote and share light and truth with the world in a in a positive way. There is a lot of negative things that are out on on the internet, out in the world. And if whatever we can do to offset that or to fight against it, I think Heavenly Father is on board, you know?

Emily Hemmert:

The only thing that my only complaint about AI um images of Jesus is that something he talks about in the scriptures, and I feel like um Jeffrey Rahald has talked about this, like that Jesus probably wasn't that attractive. Like talks about him being kind of comely, right? Or anyway, and it's just funny because we have so many pictures of him being like this pretty attractive person where we're like easily drawn in, and in reality, you know, like he might not have been that attractive, but nobody wants to like print an unattractive picture of Jesus and hang that on their wall. So I mean it makes sense, right, that we kind of have this like idealized version of what he looked like. But in my mind, anyway, in my reality is that he maybe wasn't that attractive, but that's my two cents.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I I suppose that most of the artists and actors uh create images that are not representative of a man that lived in uh the Palestine area 2,000 years ago. Uh it's probably a lot shorter than he's represented, uh probably a lot darker and curly hair, and and uh probably not like mine. And uh, but I am trying to be like Jesus.

Emily Hemmert:

You're doing great. So you're well on your way.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I started growing my hair during COVID. I just I just kind of liked it. You know, if if the church wanted me to cut it, if the bishop asked me to cut it, or I would. I uh it's not it means nothing to me, but I just I like it while I've got it. I it's falling out so fast it's not gonna be there anymore. Yeah, hopefully nobody's put off by the fact that I'm a hippie.

Scott Brandley:

I think Jesus still loves hippies, so I think you're good. I know he loves hippies.

Emily Hemmert:

I've always wanted to have dreadlocks, but haven't done it. Maybe I should do it.

Jake Jacobsen:

One of the stories I'm gonna put up on my channel here, one of these We'll do it together. One of the stories that I'm gonna put up on uh on my channel one time uh in the future is called My Father Hated Hippies.

Emily Hemmert:

Oh.

Jake Jacobsen:

Okay. That's funny. And it's about well, so there is a family that lived north of Seattle and and I live in Washington, in the state of Washington, and grew up in Seattle. There is a uh kind of a hippie commune called the Love Family, and they bought a fishing boat and they they uh had no idea what they were doing. None of the fishermen would help them. And my dad didn't really like hippies, he he didn't like the you know the whole hippie movement. Um the kinds of things that hippies were exploring with drugs and sexuality and things. He he just, you know, like uh people like Latter-day Saints today probably don't think very much of those kinds of behaviors that were prominent during that time and still are. But uh so he didn't like hippies and he expressed his opinions often, so I got the idea that he didn't like hippies. He just hated them. Uh so there's some hippies that down on this boat and didn't know what to do, they didn't have food, they didn't have gear. Um, so my dad gave him a net and he said, you know, pay me when you can. And my dad gave them food. I carried boxes and boxes of food over to him when I was a kid and uh gave it to the hippies. My dad had them follow his boat out when he went out to fish. He showed them where to set their nets. His net, he gave them the net. He showed them where to put it, how to do it, how to catch fish, um, showed them everything. Because my dad loved hippies. And I know Heavenly Father loves hippies. Yeah.

Emily Hemmert:

Sounds sounds kind of like my dad. My dad, you know, he'd be almost 90 now, but he really didn't like hippies, but he was also just like a very giving person, and probably like if a hippie came along, he would have helped him out, you know.

Scott Brandley:

It's like yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, well, cool. Um, one thing I like about what you're doing, Jake. Um, I mean, to go from you know, like a bearing sea captain and having, like you said, living on the edge of life or death for so long, and then to go from that to exploring your talents, like using the the the lyrics that you'd come up with when you're on the ocean or on your mission, and decades later, now you're able to actually do something with that talent. And like you said, you know, maybe your first couple songs weren't like the best, but you're getting better and you're you're improving that skill. And I think that's something that makes Heavenly Father proud, right? When when we when we use our talents for good and we continue to improve them, though that's something that Heavenly Father wants us to do. And I think that you're an inspiration, even with stories, right? Writing your books, sharing some of your stories for posterity and for other people that want to hear them. Like it's just well, we all have that ability, and we all have stories and and and talents that we can use, and and the more we use them, I think the happier Heavenly Father is. So you're an inspiration, my friend. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.

Emily Hemmert:

I think music is really inspirational or like has a lot of power to inspire people too. So it's a good genre to sh as a way of to share your testimony because it's a powerful tool, I guess, in in inspiring people.

Jake Jacobsen:

Well, if we don't share it, nobody will know about it except for us, and we take it with us. So you know, I I want to leave. We have technology now that previous generations only dreamed of, didn't even dream of, but could conceive it. And and there's no reason why I can't leave the stories of my life uh on earth here when I leave. And uh and I think that even if I just help one or two people, that I spend a lot of time on this channel. If nobody listens to it but one little Welsh kid, they might grow up to be James E. Talmadge.

Emily Hemmert:

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go subscribe to your channel.

Jake Jacobsen:

Well, yeah, yeah.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, I hope a lot of people I listened to I listened to all of your songs, Jake. All of them. And I think you've got some real talent, and I think it's just gonna get better. So thanks. I I I wish you all the best with it.

Jake Jacobsen:

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I really appreciate you having me on the podcast again.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, any last thoughts, any that you'd like to share with the audience?

Jake Jacobsen:

When I was running uh a factory long liner in the Bering Sea fishing cod and turbot, I um I had some heart issues. I I had a boat, it was winter time, and and uh had a crew of about 25 and and uh we were fishing hard and and uh I had a I I got off my watch, my mate came up and took the wheel and I went down to my bunk and I started having heart issues. My heart was just coming out of my chest, and and I didn't know if I was gonna survive the night. I couldn't talk. I was just kind of paralyzed in my bunk, and and uh even if I could talk, the nearest medical facility was 200 miles away at St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea, and it and it was frozen in, the the uh Coast Guard couldn't fly their helicopter in that weather. And so I was either gonna live or die, and and uh so I told Heavenly Father that if I asked, if I live, what do I need to do? What should I do? Um and what he told me was I needed to share the stories of my life, and I needed to be kinder. So I've been working on those, and and uh this is part of what I feel I was told to do. I'm I need to share the stories of my life. So I leave you my testimony. I know that Jesus lives, I have no doubt. I know this had just so many experiences. The gospel is true, it is real. And people who listened to this, I I hope they're they feel the spirit, and I hope they're encouraged to um have a relationship with the savior and to be on the covenant path and to not go away from it. Um there's just so much light and love and pursuing the covenant path. At this point now in my life, I'm old and I I know I've seen it, I've I felt it, I've been there. I the church is true, the gospel is true, the savior is real. I testify in the name of Jesus Christ.

Scott Brandley:

Amen. Thanks, Jake.

Jake Jacobsen:

Thank you.

Scott Brandley:

Really, really appreciate you, man. And and it's been it's been awesome to get to know you over these couple episodes. And who knows what talent you're gonna come up with next. We can have you on it for a third time.

Jake Jacobsen:

I dropped a country song on Saturday. Have you listened to that one? No, I got a country song. I I uh never thought I'd write a country song. I'm not a cowboy, I'm a fisherman, I wear boots, but they're rubber. So I wrote a country song. It just I wrote the lyric not intending it to be a country song, it just turned out to be a country song. So I set it to country music. I'm gonna read the music.

Scott Brandley:

You're full of surprises, that's for sure. I wrote a rap song.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I don't know if it's any good. I don't know rap. I maybe it's good, maybe it's not. It's called God's hands. And the idea is that we are God's hands. Um yeah, and uh yeah, it there's a lot of people. I mean, that song has gotten a few likes, and very few, but it's gotten a lot of views, and I've got a lot of subscribers from it.

Emily Hemmert:

So do you have like a Facebook or Instagram or anything like that, or is it just YouTube?

Jake Jacobsen:

Uh I don't have Instagram at all, and I don't have any TikToks. And I um I have a Facebook page, it's just my name, Jake Jacobs, on it. It's not for the business.

Emily Hemmert:

I okay. I um I'm not a big YouTuber, but I'll come find you.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, I'm not a big Facebook person. I uh I don't go there very often, but uh yeah, come to YouTube.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, well, like I said, we'll put a link to your previous episode because you have some really cool stories uh back when you were on the sea. Um and then we'll put a link to your book on there too, and then we have two books actually. We'll put them both on there.

Jake Jacobsen:

Yeah, one of them it won't be able to get because it's the storm and the song. I I I published it in book form, but I also put it up on a website, but I took it down. Okay. I I took it down and I wanted to revise it. I was told by someone I respect that um it had too too much pride. There was too much pride. I needed to be more humble. I I do have a problem with that. I yeah, so uh I took it down and I'm I'm revising it and I'm putting parts, I'll be putting parts of it up, and I have put parts of it up already.

Scott Brandley:

Um on uh on one of my channels on on the YouTube. Okay. Well, we'll definitely put a link to your music channel or channels so people can listen. There is some really good stuff on there. I was really impressed. So we'll put that in there too. And yeah, keep going, man. Keep keep surprising us.

Jake Jacobsen:

Thank you. I just went over 8,000 subscribers. I think uh uh I'm really close to it. I should go over 8,000 today. That's awesome. For some little fishermen, yeah, I've got three full-time jobs and a bunch of other things, uh businesses that I run on the side, and and so I don't have a lot of time for for YouTube, but I'm just feel pretty compelled to do it.

Scott Brandley:

You just never you never know until you do it. Yeah, I never thought I'd ever do a podcast, and we're going on almost 200 episodes now, and it's been like almost four years. Oh, yeah. So you just you never know. Yeah, it's good. And Emily, I mean, she started a nonprofit in Honduras. She I'm sure she never thought she was gonna do something like that. And I know like one of the reasons we love having Emily on, Jake, is because she's doing some incredible stuff to help families in in Markovia, and a lot of people are joining the church because of the amazing things they're doing there. And like, did you ever think that was gonna happen, Emily?

Emily Hemmert:

No, I uh I've been really like surprised even recently, like because it's December, so they were able to like get all their statistics for 2025, and they had like 240 kids get baptized in four branches, which is huge.

Jake Jacobsen:

Wow.

Emily Hemmert:

So yeah, it's exciting to see all the things happening.

Jake Jacobsen:

Oh, yeah. And all over the world, like I mentioned, I served in Africa. That was in 197 early 1970s, and you know, there was no temple, there was one stake for the whole subcontinent. There was uh President Kimball came out and said that we're gonna build a temple someday in South Africa. The members are so yeah, are you kidding? Yeah, during the millennium and not in my lifetime. Now there's temples all over Africa, it's just amazing.

Emily Hemmert:

That's cool.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, they just broke ground for one in Cape Town. Yeah. So so yeah.

Emily Hemmert:

The work is hastening.

Scott Brandley:

Work is hastening. Great times. Well, I'm I think I think the three of us are living proof that if you have a little bit of faith and a little bit of talent, and you just exercise that, you know, cool things can happen, right? So yeah, it's been fun. And that's it's cool to to it's been really cool to see both of your journeys. Um, because Emily, you kicked off your nonprofit when we started our podcast.

Emily Hemmert:

Yeah, so it's been yep, going on five years.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, so it's been it's been really fun to watch your your your journey and now Jake, just to get to know you and kind of see your journey progress. But if anything, if anybody's watching this and you have a desire to do something, there are so many opportunities out there. You just have to have the faith to take the first step. And it's rough at the beginning, but you figure it out, right? The three of us have we're still figuring it out, but like it gets easier, right? As you as you go. So you just have to have that desire. Take a step and see where it goes. Yeah, I did it, and I'm a fisherman. Yeah, so if Jake can do it, with a master's in neuro something.

Emily Hemmert:

What was it?

Jake Jacobsen:

Zoology and physiology, but my uh um thesis was in neurophysiology.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Alright, well, thanks again, Jake, for coming on, man. We we really appreciate it. And thanks, Emily, for being my co-host these last few weeks and throughout Christmas. I appreciate you too. And thanks for tuning in for another episode of Latterday Lights. Make sure you go hit that share button. Let's get Jake's story out there so that we can touch the lives of the people we love. And if you have any story that you'd like to share, go to latterdaylights.com and let's have you on the show. And till then, till next week, have a good one, and we'll talk to you then. Thank you. Bye bye.

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Scott Brandley

Host
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Alisha Coakley

Co-host