Sunstone Podcast

Roadshows, Boy Scouts, MIA, basketball leagues, potlucks—the LDS Church was once buzzing with community activities. But most of that has disappeared. How did it happen? In this episode, Mithryn (a.k.a. Kenneth Lines)...

What if apostles were given emeritus status at 70 years of age? This was the question apostle Hugh B. Brown proposed to the Quorum of the Twelve as President David O. McKay descended into senility. Would the Quorum go...

What do Latter-day Saints mean when they say temples are sacred? Intrepid reporter Stephen Carter braves three tours of the Lindon Temple to find out. (Hint: It’s definitely not the symbolism.) &nbsp...

Polygamists, Danites, and guns! The Italian cowboy hero Tex has met with them all over the course of more than 75 years of comic book stories. But the portrayal of Mormons in the series has changed significantly, as...

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat thinks that believing in the divine and joining a religion is not only a rational thing to do, it’s the best way to interact with reality. But what happens when you come out the...

As a non-Mormon scholar, John G. Turner spent years researching Joseph Smith’s life as he wrote a biography of Smith. He found out that nothing about Joseph Smith’s life was boring; for better or for worse...

Is it blasphemous to publish a cartoon about Angel Moroni? How about Jesus? How about God? Sunstone has been exploring the limits of what LDS culture is willing to laugh at for decades. Using many hilarious (and...

Is your life a sermon? Do you imagine your every action being narrated by a general authority? In this episode, Stephen Carter dives into perfectionism, showing how it manifests in people’s lives, and proposing a...

Jesus, Mormon, and David Lynch walk into Stephen Carter’s head. Together, they manage to revise everything Stephen thought he knew about the Book of Mormon, the Atonement, and Eraserhead...

A faith crisis is one of the most destabilizing things that can happen to an LDS marriage. Both partners feel betrayed. Feelings either erupt or are suppressed. In this episode, therapists Adam Fisher and Mary Fisher...

He was the Church’s most unlikely general authority. A coffee habit, an oft-shot-off mouth, and–according to this great-grandnephew–a deep spirituality. This episode includes some of J. Golden...

In September 1993, six scholars—called the September Six—were disciplined by the LDS Church. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was the first. For the next ten years, she went on an extraordinary spiritual journey. Sadly, she...

Being a single, 25-year-old Mormon female is a tough life. But Dorothy Black makes it into a stand-up comedy routine in this episode of the Sunstone Podcast. &nbsp...

For Heather Sundahl, Relief Society was the “monster child that sucked up my mom.” What was it like to be the daughter of the most powerful woman in the stake—who couldn’t find time to read to her...

In 1954, California LDS bishop Devere Baker set out to prove that Lehi could have sailed from the Persian Gulf to Guatemala—by sailing his own raft, which he called the Lehi. Samuel Taylor tells about Baker’s...