John Dehlin

Welcome and Introduction to the Episode

[00:00:00] Foreign and welcome to another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It is January 11, 2023, and I am super excited to carry on a tradition that we've been trying to perpetuate since our very beginning in 2005, but definitely in 2010 when we started the nonprofit.

[00:00:27] We believe in transparency here at the Open Stories foundation. And what we want to share with you Today is a 2022 year interview and Q and A, which is basically, I want to just give you guys all an update on what's been going on, how the year was, and then also answer as many questions as I can.

[00:00:53] We are, of course, live streaming and we're live streaming right now to both YouTube and Facebook. So the first thing I want to do is ask everyone, even if you're listening later on or viewing later on, to please hit the subscribe button on YouTube or Facebook or wherever you're watching. Because we are coming really, really close to hitting the hundred thousand YouTube subscriber level. And when we do that, it makes more people want to come on the show. It makes us more attractive to celebrity guests or, you know, important guests that, that are outside of the Mormon world and even within the Mormon world. It just makes us more compelling.

[00:01:30] And then of course, when you subscribe, it also updates you and lets you know about the most recent episodes so you can keep abreast and informed. So please do hit the subscribe button on YouTube and Facebook and let's try and exceed that hundred thousand mark on YouTube. We're @60,000 on Facebook, I believe, and then on Tick Tock, we're at about 210, 220,000. So subscribe in all the places we, we are having people joining the live stream today. I've got Maven who is monitoring the comments. And Maven, I'm gonna ask her, as always, to star the questions that she thinks are worthy to be reviewed. And I'll see them here in the Streamyard link.

[00:02:11] But welcome, and I'm just really honored to be able to connect with, with you, our viewers and listeners. We, I care about you all so much. We care about you. You're why we do this. And we've had an amazing year. So I'm really excited to discuss it. So please start posting your questions and comments now.

[00:02:32] If, if you don't mind. So let's go ahead and kick off. To begin, I guess I wanted to start by talking about some of the most exciting things about the year. And I don't think the year would be complete or I don't think we could even begin to discuss the year without discussing the amazing interviewees. And I don't think that I could, I don't think that I could emphasize this enough.

Mormon Stories Year in Review 2022

[00:03:02] Mormon Stories doesn't exist without the amazing people that we interview. We, we have done, I think, well over 100 interviews this year with probably over 100 interviewees. And they've just been an amazing group of people. It takes vulnerability, it takes courage, it takes creativity and intellect, and it takes all sorts of things to be able to do a Mormon Stories podcast interview. It's no trivial matter to tell your story in front of hundreds of thousands of people and then it's in many instances to experience the backlash of having told your story in terms of friends and family and community.

[00:03:45] So just, we have to begin with just a major thank you and shout out to everyone who's come on Mormon Stories podcast this year to do their stories or to be co hosts or to be panelists. And that's where it all begins. And I also just want to give a shout out to, to our co hosts.

[00:04:03] I am so grateful this year that we were able to bring on my wife Margi as my permanent co host. We've had amazing co hosts in the past, but Marky of course is probably my favorite co host of all time and now she joins me weekly to do the long form interviews. But Gerardo is an amazing friend and colleague and co host. He's going to continue co hosting with us and has co hosted many times this year. Of course, you're all familiar with Mike from LDS discussions and the amazing series that we've had.

[00:04:37] And of course Nemo has been a co host or a panelist many, many times this year and he's going to hopefully be participating more in 2023. We'll talk about that. And then of course we're, we're so grateful for John Larsen who's been doing an episode a month along with Kara Burrell or Nuance Ho on the Mormon Expression series.

[00:05:00] Many of you love, love, love John Larsen cannot get enough of John Larsen and Kara and Samantha Shelley joins us occasionally as a co host and we, we occasionally have other guest co hosts as well. But I, I have amazing co hosts and they bring diversity and they bring a lot of important perspectives. So I gotta, gotta give a shout out to them. If I had to report to you, probably the major story for Mormon stories in 2022, it's got to be YouTube and what I'm showing you here. For those who are viewing us on the YouTube channel is the. The Face is the homepage of our YouTube channel.

[00:05:42] And what you'll notice is that there's a new banner there. There's a introductory video that, that kind of says welcome to Mormon Stories. That's allowed, that allows new people, people who are new to the channel, to watch a little video that explains what Mormon Stories is all about. And then there are several other tabs on the YouTube channel that are really important. There's of course the Videos tab, but there's a shorts tab where we're now releasing YouTube shorts which are pretty much identical to TikTok shorts. That's a new initiative that we began this year that's been highly effective. We're going to talk more about that in a bit.

[00:06:19] Of course, live streams are included there. There are playlists, which there's very important ones. Perhaps the most important playlist of all right now is the LDS Discussions playlist. We want to make sure that's top of the list and prominent.

[00:06:34] And there's a community tab. And many of you don't know about the Community tab, but I would say that some of the most, probably the most active and interesting discussions right now happening anywhere alongside the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page and the Mormon Stories podcast podcast group is the Facebook is the YouTube community tab where thousands I, I put out polls, I put out comments, I put out previews, I announce upcoming things. That's probably where I communicate most with my audience. That's another reason to subscribe to the YouTube channel is this Community tab is a really fascinating place where we discuss everything, where I ask for questions, I ask for input, I poll our audience and people provide feedback and input.

[00:07:22] And it' really great. So please check out that community tab again by subscribing to the YouTube channel. But it's a great community and you know, we don't have any merch yet. That's something that we're going to look into doing in 2023. But we have not found a person yet to help us with merch in a way that we feel comfortable pursuing. But the whole point of me talking about all this is we've kind of been really investing and upping our YouTube game and it's really paid off. And if you look in the kind of middle left of the screen, you'll notice a really important number.

[00:07:57] It says we have 96,800 YouTube subscribers. And that's a very, very large number. It's such a large number that when you reach a hundred thousand YouTube subscribers, YouTube sends you a Plaque congratulating you on reaching that milestone. I think my, my YouTube consultant, Anthony, that I'll be talking about in a second, he said that once you hit the 100,000 SUBSCRIB, you're in the, you know, 98th percentile of top YouTubers in the world. And that's a huge accomplishment, especially for a niche podcast like Mormon Stories. I don't know any other Mormon themed podcast or YouTube channel that's exceeded 100,000. There probably are some other than the LDS Church itself and some of their channels, but we're really proud to be about to reach the hundred thousand mark.

[00:08:51] And again, if anyone within the sound or sound of my voice or viewing us can please subscribe to our YouTube channel and please encourage others to subscribe, that would be amazing. But, but we, we, we've had amazing growth with YouTube this year. We started out as an audio only podcast and I don't know, for the first 10 years we had a YouTube channel, but we really didn't invest in it. And then at some point I just said, hey, you know what, I'm recording these interviews through Skype or Zoom anyway, I may as well, you know, record the video. And I just started uploading them, but with really poor camera and audio lighting quality and camera quality.

[00:09:33] And then at some point it was actually Samantha Shelley from Zelf on the Shelf who just said, john, you really need to start investing in your YouTube channel and maybe even monetizing. And that, that was something that I could have done early on and I didn't. But fortunately a few years ago I started doing that and it really ramped up when Covid hit. And I was so grateful that Gerardo Sumano came to me and said, hey, John, I know a thing or two about cameras and lighting and I can help you. And we got set up with better lighting and cameras. Jonathan Streeter taught us about Streamyard, and before you know it, we're starting to create during COVID higher audio and video quality.

[00:10:15] And that combined with monetization and more time to do more quality interviews, really started exploding our YouTube presence. And for a long, long time it was almost all mostly audio that people listened to us. And then occasionally people would watch us. But it's now gotten to where it's kind of YouTube is exceeding our audio views. So for every, you know, for, you know, if a, if a podcast gets 20 or 30,000 listens, it gets probably more than double that in terms of total listening and views. And so when you look at our total numbers, that'll, it'll kind of blow you away, but YouTube's become probably the main way that people consume our content now.

[00:11:01] We're going to do our best to always provide high quality audio and to take care of our podcasting listening audience. And for those of you who listen only, we, we still love and celebrate you. And I hope you know that we do our best to always explain any visuals that we show on the podcast for the audio only listeners. So don't, please don't feel like we're ever gonna, we are ever going to forsake you, our listening audience. But YouTube is big and video is big and we're going to invest more and more in YouTube in the years months ahead. I just want to quickly give a shout out to Kim Durant who just sent us money through the Super Chat.

[00:11:39] She wrote, thank you John and all of your co hosts. You have helped me immensely in my journey. Yeah, Super Chat is a great way that people donate to support this program. So thank you, Kim. And if any of you are watching by YouTube, you can click on that dollar sign down in the chat button and you can donate and that makes a huge difference. It helps pay for all our expenses, which we'll be talking a bit about.

[00:12:03] Also, if you're watching the live stream on Facebook, Facebook, you can click the stars feature and that's equivalent to Super Chats. So we're always grateful for that. Anyway, I want to thank my, my colleague Anthony for his help with the YouTube channel.

[00:12:21] You know, when, when you look at kind of the homepage that we just described in the banner, of course Gerardo did that banner. Anthony, who we're going to give a shout out to and give you his Instagram contact in a bit. He did the video. He helped us just up our game. And just to tell you a tiny bit about Anthony, Anthony, you know, just recently started really studying this sort of stuff. I won't tell too much about him because it's his story to tell, but he, he ran YouTube channel, helped helped consult the church, the LDS Church on their YouTube channels. He's helped many YouTubers get to over a hundred thousand or even over a million viewers subscribers.

[00:12:58] And he reached out to me and did a free audit and he said, hey John, you know, I'll give you 50 free minutes of a review of your channel and I'd love to help you improve it. And, and so Anthony joined us, I think back in December and started consulting with our YouTube channel. And along with the work that Gerardo and Julia and others have done, Anthony's been a Big part of this. And I think Anthony's in the chat. So shout out to Anthony. Thanks so much for his work, particularly on that YouTube homepage. Now the next thing I want to Talk about is YouTube channel growth.

Channel Statistics and Growth Overview

[00:13:33] And I hope I'm boring you with statistics, but here's why statistics are important to me. I never want to be driven by statistics. I never want to be driven by the algorithms. I think that some of our worst societal ills come from social media. Driving, polarization, mean spiritedness, rancor, anger, you know, just, just scandal and, and extreme sort of behaviors. And I never want Mormon Stories to descend into all that mire. Now, having said that, I also, I think all of us want, you know, share the mission of the Oba Stories foundation, which is informed consent for everyone who's Mormon in the world right now.

[00:14:24] And then for everyone who wants to learn about the church or certainly people who are investigating the church, all everyone deserves informed consent about Mormonism. Even if you're never Mormon and you're never going to be Mormon, the Mormon Church, through its legislative efforts, its lobbying efforts, all sorts of ways the Mormon Church influences society and Congress and the Supreme Court and lobbying and business. The Mormon Church has a massive influence worldwide. So people deserve to know about the church and so they deserve informed consent about Mormonism. So that's one of the number one missions of Mormon Stories in the Oba Stories Foundation. It's to, it's to make sure people have informed consent as it relates to the church.

[00:15:08] And so that's one of the reasons why we care about social media growth is because it's a way to measure our impact and how we're reaching people. And then of course, the more people we reach, we can also help more people in their faith transition.

[00:15:26] And we can help people who decide Mormonism is no longer for them. We can help them transition to a healthy, happy life afterwards. So that's kind of the mission of Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. I always like to make sure and mention that.

[00:15:40] And I will also say that one of the great discoveries from our community tab on our YouTube channel is that, is that over half of our listeners and viewers now in Mormon Stories podcast have never been Mormon. And that was a huge discovery that we found just this year through that community tab on YouTube and, and because we did a poll and we asked and we found that out and thousands of people responded. So we give a huge shout out to our never Mormon audience. They're a really important part of what we do. So we want, we want to make sure and meet their needs as well.

[00:16:13] Many of them are coming out of high demand religions and many of them just have a curiosity or fascination with Mormonism. Many of them are investigating Mormonism or just want to learn more about it. So for all those reasons, you know, we care about channel growth.

[00:16:31] I'm going to give a quick shout out, Radio Free Mormons in the house. And he says, John is the best. I would say no Radio Free Mormon, you're the best. Along with Bill Real and Maven and the amazing team, you know, marriage on a tightrope and carry shirts. And the amazing team at, at Radio Free Mormon, Bill real Mormon discussions. Discuss Mormonism. All that love the. Love that whole group. Okay, so let's talk about YouTube channel growth because this is one of the most stark and powerful discoveries.

[00:17:05] So this is a, this is two graphs side by side comparing YouTube channel statistics. 2021 last year versus 2022 this year. And it was Anthony that helped us with the his analysis. And we had a great year in 2021. We had a banner year. We had 5.6 million views on YouTube. We had 3 million hours of Mormon stories watched on YouTube, which would have been 6 million hours total if, you know, audio matched video.

[00:17:40] We gained 18,000 subscribers in 2021. And, and it says that our YouTube revenue is around 55,000. But what's, what's just stunning is in 2022, we blew the doors off of 2021. So we had 20 million YouTube views in 2022. And if you just think about that, there's only 4 or 5 million Mormons in the world.

[00:18:12] So you just think about how many Mormons we're reaching right now on our YouTube channel. And that's not to mention non Mormons. So 20 million YouTube YouTube views in 2022. 5.3 million YouTube hours viewed. And that's really what's important. I mean, it's great to have views, but people can click on a video, watch it for 20 seconds and bail. So what we really want to know is just how much time are people actually spending listening to or watching the podcast? And 5.3 million hours.

[00:18:45] That represents half of all the YouTube hours in the history of the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel. That's how profound that 5 million hours number is. And that means that it's, it's likely that 10 million hours of Mormon Stories podcast was either watched or listened to across all our platforms and channels.

[00:19:07] At least that's Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and Spotify and Apple podcasts. We're consistently ranked as one of the top 15 to 25 religious themed podcasts on Apple Podcasts. And I think that's specifically within the Christianity realm, which I'm sure is the largest of the realms. So imagine that this obscure Mormon themed podcast and many Christians don't even view Mormonism as Christian.

[00:19:36] We're, we're consistently a top 15 Christian themed podcast in the United States. And that's not counting YouTube. So we're, we're probably a top 10 Christian themed program in the United States right now. And that's, that's amazing. But stunningly, we had close to 50,000 subscribers join us on our YouTube channel this year.

[00:20:05] So we, we more, if I got that right, we more than doubled our total subscribers just in a single year. And usually you're not doubling, you know, in your 19th year of production, you're not doubling your listener base. And that, that almost suggests exponential growth.

[00:20:25] So I'm just stunned by that, that reality that we added 49, 000 subscribers. There are many channels that, you know, if they add 2,000, 3,000 subscribers, 5,000 in a year, they're ecstatic. We had a base of, I don't know, 40, 50,000 going into this year, and now we're about to hit a hundred thousand. So I'm just so profoundly grateful again for the interviewees, the co hosts, my staff, and all the, all the donors who made all this possible, along with our board of directors who helped keep the wheels on the wagon because all of that made this possible. And all the collaborators because we've collaborated with again, Mormonism Live, bill Real Maven, RFM with Nemo, the Mormon with 21st century saints, you know, Peter Bleakley and Priesthood Dispatches and Exmo, Lex and Hallie Everts and, you know, growing up in polygamy.

[00:21:28] There's so many channels that we collaborated with. And every time we do a collaboration on YouTube or elsewhere, you know, we share our audience with them, we help them grow, they share our audience with us and we grow. And so collaborations are just what it's all about. And so we love collaborations. We want to help every possible channel grow that we can.

[00:21:49] I recently started a text thread where I basically said to every YouTuber that I know, hey, you people need to do YouTube shorts. Because we gained tens of thousands of YouTube subscribers just in the past month or two just by doing YouTube shorts. And I want them all to grow. A rising tide. Within the Mormon podcasting and YouTube and social media community, a rising tide lifts all ships. So we can't Ever see each other as competitors. And I can't leave out, of course, Stephen Pineaker and, and the Mormon Book Review and Rebecca with the Mormon with Mormon Ish. And she's helping with the book club.

[00:22:30] Like there's so many people I'm leaving out. But. But all these amazing people collaborate, make all this possible. And my point is that a rising tide lifts all ships. Hey, my good friend Martin. I love you, Martin. Martin and I have been friends for over a decade, if my memory serves, or close to a decade, if not over a decade. She just donated 20 bucks through the super Chat feature and wrote Keep it up, John. Best wishes for 2023. Love Margi as your co host. Love the team. Thanks, Martin. Thanks for that donation. And also thanks to Cats Court Smith for that, a super chat donation.

[00:23:02] Love that financial support. It's super important. So going back to our statistics. Yeah. The final thing is it looks like YouTube revenue might be around 100,000 this year. I'm not sure about that total. It's an estimate, I believe.

[00:23:18] And interestingly, Facebook is, is potentially generating about as much revenue for us as YouTube is. So if we're lucky, we'll have $200,000 of revenue between YouTube and Facebook. And we've always been transparent in our finances. I'm not afraid to give those numbers out.

[00:23:36] We need that money because the podcast and YouTube spaces are very competitive. We're always losing donors. Every year, every single month, I have many people cancel their donations. Sometimes they cancel donations because they are hit on financial hard times. Sometimes they cancel donations because they just move on and are done with everything.

[00:23:56] Sometimes they lose interest. And then sometimes they, you know, they hear, you know, smears or lies made by, by people on the Internet and, and they, they believe them for whatever reason and they cancel their donations. And for whatever reason, we are constantly gaining subscribers and donors or we're constantly losing subscribers and donors. And that's super stressful because what it means is if all our revenue is purely tied to donations, you know, we can't, we, we can only do this because we have those donations. So we want and need you all to continue donating. And if you go to mormonstories.org right now and click on the donate button, become a monthly donor.

[00:24:38] That is the way that we can continue what we do and to make this big difference. So please become a monthly donor. If you're not, go to MormonStories.org to do that. You can do it on a mobile device or on the website.

[00:24:51] But. But if all of our revenue comes purely from donations, then if for some reason, you know, lies or criticisms or whatever, people losing interest, donations drop, then. Then, you know, we're at risk. And we've tried to never, you know, to never do product endorsement deals or commercials because we feel like that devalues our content by going commercial in that way. So what I'm saying is, is your, you know, YouTube and Facebook providing revenue provides us with an additional revenue stream to help us stay alive and help us make a difference. So we're grateful for that. Now, some of you are tired of the ads on YouTube, and I just want to explain something really important to all of you.

[00:25:42] If you don't use YouTube to listen to Mormon stories, even if you just listen, you should. And if you do watch Mormon stories on YouTube, you ought to consider getting a premium subscription to YouTube for two reasons. One is it. It takes out. It's like 10 bucks a month. It takes out all the com. The ads, so you don't ever have to listen to any ad. And I think that's worth it. And then the second thing is, is that it allows you to listen to the YouTube channel while the screen's turned off. So you can actually. And what? That's not just for Mormon stories, but that's for any YouTube content.

[00:26:19] And I'm watching. I'm wanting to listen to YouTube videos all the time, but I don't want to keep my screen running while I'm jogging or walking and kill the battery or worry about it going blank and then. And then the. The programming stopping. But if you have that premium YouTube subscription, you can listen to YouTube videos while the screen's locked and you don't have to deal with the ads. So please consider becoming a premium YouTube subscriber. It's worth it for me, and I think it would be worth it to you.

[00:26:53] I. I do want to give a quick shout out to Radio Free Mormon. He has become a dear friend of mine over the past couple years. He also just gave a donation. Keep up the great work, John. You are awesome. Thank you, rfm. I appreciate your friendship. Please donate to Bill Reels Mormonism Live and Radio Free Mormons podcast along with Marriage on the Tightrope and others, because we want all the programs to be supported. That includes Nemo the Mormon as well.

[00:27:21] So going back to these statistics, I hope you're not bored with it. Our growth was so big. This. This is really stunning. So if you look on the right graph, on the left graph, you'll see, you're seeing these numbers. You know, where the where the graph shows relatively high numbers in terms of views. And the, you know, the axis is around 37,000. So those are kind of daily views. And it's showing that at our peak last year, 2021, two years ago, I guess, you know, we were getting around in a day, maybe 40,000 views on our channel.

[00:27:54] We have had such an amazing, you know, December, November and December on the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel that our peak hit almost 750,000 views for a single day. And what that did is it pushed down our daily numbers for the rest of the year to where the graph looks super small for the rest of the year, but even then, that number actually represents a larger number than the year before. So we just had this monster.

[00:28:25] We just had this monster November and December that just has dwarfed everything. And I'm going to just talk a little bit more about that in a second. But, but basically comparing 2021 to 2022, we had a 248% increase in views. That is not a. That is not an error. 248% increase in views, 81% increase in watch time hours.

[00:28:55] So almost doubling the watch time hours. 168% increase in subscribers. Which means, if my math is correct, we more than doubled our subscribers in the year and an 84% increase in estimated revenue. So that's just a monster year. And I don't need you to be happy for me or my staff or the Open Stories foundation, but if you care about the mission of what we do, that we reach people, I hope you're thrilled with those numbers because. Because what that just means is our impact is massive. And if you've donated to us, you can feel like your money is well spent. And many of our videos are larger than videos put out by the LDS Church's YouTube channel itself.

[00:29:42] And a lot of the videos that they put out that exceed ours is because they add spend to increase the views where we don't right now ad spend to increase the views on our YouTube channel. So I hope you're as ecstatic about those growth numbers as I am. A quick shout out to R. Tapke for his Super Chat donation. He writes, I'm a better person for absorbing the content of Mormon stories this year. That's Rick T.

[00:30:09] Thank you, Rick, for that donation. Okay, so that's a. That's a sense for our growth. We're really proud of it, we're really happy about it, and we hope the trend continue. Honestly, I don't expect what happened in November December number to be Sustainable.

[00:30:26] You know, Anthony and others can tell me if, if it is, but it's probably going to drop back down. I wouldn't even be surprised if 2023 isn't as big as 2022. I don't know, maybe it will be, but you know, the numbers are just so significant. I don't know. But, you know, I, I do want to just tell everybody what, what made the difference between, you know, what made the difference in 2022 and especially in those last months. And the answer is shorts.

[00:30:58] So in November. So basically, just to give you a little bit of background and I, I really want any YouTuber or anyone who wants to do any podcaster, especially Mormon or ex Mormon themed podcasters or YouTubers within my voice, I really want you to listen to this. Okay?

[00:31:16] The number one social media app in the world last year was TikTok. And it's because shorts are it right now. Shorts are the thing. And so TikTok is what people spend the most time on. And it's because you can watch something in a minute or five minutes and ten minutes, and then the algorithm feeds you the stuff you want to watch. And you know, Facebook knows that videos are big and Facebook wants to compete with YouTube, and then Facebook knows that shorts are big. So Facebook wants to compete with TikTok. So Facebook is promoting shorts through Instagram, reels and shorts on Facebook. And then YouTube is wanting to compete with TikTok, and so YouTube is implementing shorts on YouTube.

[00:32:04] And so they're starting to monetize that and they're starting to provide that to their customers. And so, so the model for podcasters these days that I think is the success model is to do long form in video, as high quality as you can, record weekly, some type of episode and then get someone, whether it's crowdsourcing through your audience or paying someone to chop up your long form episodes into short form video and then release those short form videos on TikTok to feed audiences to your YouTube channel and elsewhere. And then on Facebook, long form and short form video, and then on YouTube, long form and short form video.

[00:32:49] And that's the way you're going to grow, and that's the way we grew our channel. So that explosive, monstrous growth that you see in December is when we really invested in shorts. Now I want to just give a quick acknowledgment and shout out.

[00:33:05] Cara Burrell Nuance Hoe helped us start our shorts game when we brought her on to do TikTok in 2021 and she got our TikTok channel to over 100,000 subscribers in a very short amount of time. And then for a brief amount of time, she started doing YouTube video shorts. Up until the point where her life got so stressful, she got so overwhelmed for lots of reasons that she needed to leave Mormon Stories in the Yoba Stories Foundation. So that, you know, we, our short game took a hit when Kara had to leave and I was super sad about that.

[00:33:43] And you know, Kara rubs at my face all the time, but she was great. So we went months and months and months unable to revitalize our shorts game. We tried, we, we, you know, set goals. They weren't achieved.

[00:34:00] The shorts game floundered until I kind of pulled Gerardo aside and said, gerardo, dude, I really need your help with the short stuff. So we brought on Julia, who I think she does a TikTok channel called analyzing Mormonism.

[00:34:16] You guys can correct me in the chat if I've got that wrong or maven, you can private chat me. But anyway, we brought on Julia, brought on Gerardo to help with the chat game and in November, December, we started releasing a daily short on TikTok and on Facebook and on YouTube and that's what exploded our channel. And so if you look at that explosive growth in November and December, it's because primarily, whether it's in subscribers or views or revenue or whatever likes, it's, it's the shorts that primarily did it. And so I just can't thank Gerardo and Julia and all the other staff members who are involved that helped make that happen because it's been, it's been nothing short of, of amazing.

[00:35:07] And yeah, I am being told that Analyzing Mormonism is Julia's channel. So thanks to everyone who made that possible. Shorts have been the answer. And again, I can't stress enough. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and also know that we've got a channel tab highlighting other ex Mormon or Mormon themed YouTube channels. Subscribe to them as well. So nemo, the Mormon, 21st century saints, priesthood dispatches, Mormonism live, you know, analysing more, you know, growing up in polygamy Xmolex. Like subscribe to all the ex Mormon and progressive Mormon YouTubers because it matters. It really helps.

[00:35:49] And so this just shows you the button that you can click on and if you could just like go do it now, it would mean the world to me. So thank you very much for that. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

[00:36:01] Another huge initiative that has really been a game changer. I'm never going to say it's been a game changer, like, you know, something like the CES letter or whatever. But what I can say is that many people compare the, you know, many people have compared the impact of our LDS discussion series with Mike from LDSDiscussions.com with the impact of the CES letter. And basically what we have is over 30 episodes diving deep into Mormon Church truth claims. And we try to do it in a neutral way.

[00:36:34] We try to do it as dispassionately as possible, though that's really hard. We usually have panelists come on. We had Alicia Lee come on. She was amazing. Nemo comes on Gerardo's Come on. But that channel has gone gangbusters.

[00:36:48] Just the YouTube playlist of analyzing Mormonism says that it has over 42,000 views. But. But each of those videos is getting 20 to 50,000 views. So if you multiply that by 30, do the math. We're talking about probably millions of views and listens that have come out of the LDS discussions YouTube series. So a huge thanks to Mike and all the co hosts for that and everyone who supported us. You've all made that possible. Thank you, Shannon. Shannon says I left years ago when there was no support. Your podcast has been amazing source for me, so thank you. Thanks for that super chat.

[00:37:28] And yeah, so, so I'm super proud with the LDS discussion series. I hope you've, you've loved it. And, and yeah, that, that's been fantastic. It's also available on, on Spotify in audio and video form if you just want to point people to the playlist or to the podcast to separate out all the Mormon stories content so they can binge watch and listen. They can do that on Spotify, they can do that on Apple Podcasts under the LDS discussions brand or again, the playlist on our Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. But you can see also the additional growth there. You know, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of views.

[00:38:11] So big thanks to everyone who's made that possible. Our TikTok channel has also gone gangbusters. You'll see that now we're at 216,000 followers on TikTok. So we've got double the audience on. On TikTok that we have on. On you YouTube, which is amazing. And then some of those, some of Those videos on TikTok have reached up to 6 million views. So that's one of the really important reasons why YouTubers and podcasters should get onto TikTok is you can make one short that can hit millions of views with one one minute video. And so TikTok won't pay you squat. We don't really. We don't even opt into the monetization of TikTok right now because the money they paid us was so paltry.

[00:38:58] But. But it is a good way to spread the word. Sometimes I'm more recognized as a TikToker than I am as a podcaster or YouTuber. And that's just, that's not trying to flex or say anything other than like, it's weird that I've been podcasting for 19 years and then I go to a Starbucks or whatever and I'm recognized as a TikToker. But that's the power of TikTok. So.

[00:39:22] So, so we're super grateful for our TikTok channel. And again, our Facebook channel now has over 60,000 followers, which is a lot for Facebook. And I just want to thank, again, the YouTube team and the shorts team that made all this possible. And that's, you know, that's. That's Julia, that's Gerardo, and then Anthony Hombres, and you can contact Anthony at Anthony Ombres on Instagram. That's the way he wants to be contacted. And I'm. I'm very happy to promote Anthony's expertise. You should pay him. We pay him.

[00:40:01] We paid him 5,000 bucks a month for two months to support us on our YouTube channel. And it's been worth every penny. But, but, you know, if you consult him, make sure you. You pay him, and he'll have different rates for different people, I'm sure. But again, thank you. Thank you, Gerardo. Thank you, Julia. Thank you, Mormon Stories interviewees, Brooklyn and everybody. So I'm also, in addition to, in addition to giving a shout out to the YouTube team, I just want to give a shout out to the Mormon Stories staff. Like, we are always going to have turnover on our staff and on our board.

Staff, Board Turnover, and Financial Transparency

[00:40:38] I'll just address something really directly. You know, I think. I think we've had times of real stability on staff and on the Open Source foundation board, and we've had times of volatility or times of turnover. And I don't care what board you're talking about, whether it's in Circle or Sunstone or Dialogue or Mormon History association or Red Cross. I don't care. Nonprofits have turnover on board and on staff. And there's something about this Mormon ex Mormon world where everybody wants to create drama if there's board turnover and if their staff turnover. And sometimes it's not drama, sometimes it's just board Members get tired and want to move on.

[00:41:24] Sometimes they meet their tenure, sometimes staff get. Like with Kara, in Kara's case, she got burned out and needed to. Wanted to do her own thing and wanted to be independent. But there's so much drama over the Kara thing. Was there some sort of impropriety going on?

[00:41:39] You know, what did John do? And. And all I can say is, is just because there's turnover in staff or on the board, it doesn't mean there's scandal or some type of problem. I'm incredibly proud of the consistency we've had on our board and on our staff over the years. Brooklyn has been. Brooklyn. Brooklyn's been doing video editing for us for years. Most people don't know her name for years. Gerardo's been with me now for years. Natasha has been collaborating with me for years. We've had our current board. For years, the current board. We've literally never had a fight. Like, that's how good our current board gets along.

[00:42:18] And we've been board members now for multiple years as a coherent board. Huge shout out to Kilroy daydream for your $20 super chat donation. Thank you so much. Also to LK L Croc for your Super Chat as well. But anyway, we have an incredible supportive board that has kept us alive and thriving this year. Clint Martin and Kerry Whitbeck have been.

[00:42:43] Been the board members. Huge shout out to them. We literally could not do it without them. We have an amazing accountant, Justin Shaw, who's been with us for years now. That's more continuity. And, and yeah, we've got co hosts that have worked with us for years.

[00:42:59] So, you know, people really like to create this impression that the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories just have. Has infinite turnover. And all I'm going to say is we've had a lot of stability. A lot of. A lot of our turnover has been just natural. Natural or just a consequence of this being a really tough space or people having personal issues or moving on. And then sometimes there's turnover because either it's a bad fit in the organization or we don't get along or, you know, things happen. But we don't talk publicly about, you know, you know, when there's. When there's people that leave staff or people are fired or terminated, we don't talk about that.

[00:43:41] And again, there's no company in the world. Microsoft, Intel. Like, I've worked, you know, I've worked for some of the top companies in the world. Arthur Anderson, Bain, Microsoft, mit. You will not find a company in the world where a regular rank and file employee is either let go or they choose to leave. And what the company is like going to go on a podcast and talk about why they were terminated or why they chose to leave or what happened like that. That's not what happens.

[00:44:10] In fact, it's illegal. Most companies have a policy where they just don't discuss ex employees. So I'm just going to say those of you who, like, want to create scandal when somebody is no longer an employee or a board member and then want us to talk about it publicly, it's just, it's uncool, it's unproductive, it's unrealistic.

[00:44:32] And I just, I wish you people would stop because it's inappropriate if those people, you know, want to talk about their experiences or if they agree to have us, you know, do a farewell or talk about, you know, their departure. You know, we're always open to that, depending on the situation. But the point I'm trying to make in this slide is to say we have amazing staff. Gerardo does his co host, he does graphic design and thumbnails. He helps with strategy. He produces episodes. Brooklyn does video editing. Maven's been helping a lot this year. We're grateful to Maven. She's been helping with timecode, show notes.

[00:45:11] She does copy editing. She helps with the production process. She's moderating chats right now. Julie's been helping with editing. We've got so many cool co hosts. I've already talked about them, our board, and I'm going to say it also this year, for the first time, we've had legal expenses that have exceeded, let's just say, you know, that have gone into the five figures. And it's been in some sense, a real bummer to have to spend donor money on legal expenses. But to some degree, once you're successful, you just become more and more of a target. And literally there are people out there that will, will try and sue you because they know you have an income where maybe if they see you, they can find a way to get more money.

[00:45:55] And it's, you know, and then, and then just you become a target. And so we have had to pay for attorneys this year for what I would say are unfounded, unnecessary, inappropriate, and I would say baseless legal issues.

[00:46:17] And I'm very happy with how those things have been going. We've been able to find good legal representation and some good attorneys. And so I'm mentioning them as part of the staff because these attorneys, these accountants are people that help us with financial transparency, with keeping our books clean, we with making sure that there's no financial impropriety going on, that we release our annuals every year. We release our 990 every year. We do that as part of being a 501c3 nonprofit. But we're committed to financial transparency. We always have been. And as soon as the irs, that's another thing I just want to address very publicly.

[00:46:55] There's people that want to say that we're not financially transparent. We have released our finances every single year since the beginning of the Open Stories Foundation. We, what we do is at the end of the year, when our accountants are able to finish, they complete the 990 form, we send it to the IRS, and then when the IRS is done with it, they scrub it. They do whatever they do, and then they publish the 990s for all to see. So people want to act like, I try and hide my compensation. I get accused of hiding my compensation. I get accused of not being financially transparent.

[00:47:32] You go up to the Open Storage foundation website, click on finances, and you can see every 990 that the IRS has ever published for us. And going back to the beginning, and that includes my compensation and, you know, and basic expense categories.

[00:47:49] So, you know, those who want to claim we're not financially transparent are just, you know, being either intentionally disingenuous or they're misinformed. And so, yeah, we're really proud of our financial transparency and we're proud. I'm super grateful, heartfelt thankful for our co hosts and our staff that make all of this possible.

[00:48:13] Just really quickly, for our plans for 2023 and beyond. We still have a lot of episodes to complete on the LDS discussion series with Mike. We're trying to do one a week. We've got probably 20 more to go.

[00:48:31] So look forward to us finishing that series with probably 50 plus episodes total for now. As long as. As long as it's sustainable and John wants to. We're going to continue the Mormon Expressions series with John Larsen and with Kara Burrell and Nuance Ho. We love that partnership. I love that Kara remains a dear friend.

[00:48:51] Just yesterday, someone canceled their donation to Mormon Stories and said, I cancel my donation. I can't believe you fired Kara Burrell. And I'm like, I never fired Kara Burrell. She left. We're on good terms. We still collaborate. She still comes on the podcast monthly. And I'm grateful for her friendship and. And please support Nuance. So by the way, at her YouTube channel along with stuff on the shelf. Those are amazing YouTube channels that deserve your support.

[00:49:17] Nemo just announced recently. Bill Real and Nemo both announced recently that they're going full time with their YouTube channels. And I am ecstatic about this. So not only are we going to get more goodness from Bill Real and Mormonism Live and that, that whole network and family of podcasts because Bill Real's network does way more than just the three or four YouTube channels or podcasts that you guys have heard of. Check out Discuss Mormonism. I think Maven can put the link in the comments, but check out the network of what Bill Real does. It's, it's way more extensive than the things you've heard about a lot of stuff.

[00:49:55] We're going to get more Bill Real, more rfm. We want to, we want to get RFM to six figures compensation wise as well. So please donate to Radio Free Mormon to get him up there because we would, can you imagine the world of Mormonism and ex Mormonism if RFM was able to give full time to his podcast and to his YouTube channel.

[00:50:15] So let's donate to Bill Real and RFM just for that alone. But also Nemo recently announced that he, that he's going full time. So let's support Nemo. But what's exciting about that is we're going to be paying Nemo to maybe provide more content on the Mormon Stories podcast channel because we want, because he's available and because we want to support him. So hopefully look for more Nemo content in the year ahead. I, I have partnered with Rebecca and the Good Book Club.

[00:50:48] She goes by Rebecca Biblioteca, I think on Facebook and on YouTube and elsewhere. But we are going to start having a book club every month. And let me just talk about that really quickly. What I want to do is periodically, let's say once a month or once every two months, announce a book or two that we want to read as a group.

[00:51:11] And I want all of you who are interested to number one, form a book club. Form a local book club because we want to help you find community. So form a local book club of people who live around you.

[00:51:27] Go on to the Thrive communities or the Mormon spectrum communities or Facebook or the Reddit local communities or all the Facebook communities. However you want to find local community. Find a local community. Find a small group to do a local book club book club with weekly or every other monthly or every other month if you want to buy the book that we mentioned. And then we're gonna, you know, do an episode covering the book. And that way we, we encourage good writing about Mormonism and we encourage literacy and education and, and we find community and friends. And I'm just say Margi and I formed a book club a couple years ago, you know, when we moved to Salt Lake City.

[00:52:15] And these, you know, these five couples, including me and Margi, have become dear lifelong friends where we, we meet regularly, we meet individually as couples, we even sometimes do, you know, vacations together. And it's been life changing. So I want to encourage everyone within the sound of my voice to start a book club and we will do our best to provide you with good books. And I would even be willing to find a way to support book clubs directly, whether it's by appearing on book clubs or visiting book clubs or having events where book club attendees show up at the events to celebrate and reward people for starting them.

[00:52:59] If you have ideas on how to start book clubs, please do it. We want to do this in conjunction with the Thrive Beyond Religion organization that I'm no longer a board member of, but I'm close friends with the people who lead it.

[00:53:14] ThriveBeyondReligion.com is a great way to set up a local community and to find people to be in your book club. But the two books that we are going to be featuring this month we're doing Noah Rochetta's no Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners and okay, Allison Cleaver has a super chat. $20. Thanks so much for the educational content. Thank you Allison, for that super chat. I really appreciate it.

Community Comments and Listener Feedback

[00:53:44] So the first book, book that I want you all to go out and consider buying. Maven, please post this right now. A link to it from Amazon and in the comments and keep it for the show notes. It's no Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners by Noah Rashetta. We're going to have Noah Rashetta on at the end of the month and he's going to talk about how to apply secular Buddhism to a Mormon faith crisis and exiting Mormonism. I'm super excited for that. So that's going to be the first book and the second book that we're going to cover that I'm super excited about is right here.

[00:54:15] It's called when the Moon Turns to Blood. The Lori Vallow Chad Daybell. It's Lori Valo Chad Daybell and a story of murder, Wild Faith and End times. Leah Satail. I don't know how to pronounce it. She is the, she's the author and please everyone go out and I, I've read this book cover to cover it's amazing. It's got Denver snuffer, it's got Rod Meldrum, it's got preppers, it's got so much cool Mormonism. JULIE Rowe it's got so much cool Mormonism on here. Leah Sotl is just a journalist from Oregon who's never been Mormon. So it's an outsider journalistic view of extreme, radical, conservative Mormonism. And we're going to be covering this on the book club.

[00:55:05] Margi's going to be involved. Rebecca and her good book club is going to be involved and we're really excited about it. So grab those two books now, please buy them. Maven's putting those links right now in the show notes and also in the chat.

[00:55:22] And the more people buy books that we nominate, the more we can get high profile authors to come on more stories like people like Leah Remini or Mike Rinder, whoever, which then promotes the podcast. So anyway, the book club is something we're doing. Please support us.

[00:55:42] Something that I've wanted to do for a long time is shorter, either scripted or non scripted YouTube videos that cover like topics and current events. Maybe in a monologue format, highly edited, that can deal with current events or special topics like 10 reasons why the Book of Mormon has challenges to his truth claims or 10 problems with the book of Abraham or 10 reasons why people leave the Mormon church or, or 10 tips when you're having a Mormon faith crisis. Imagine 10 to 20 minute videos that would be produced that are tight, that are educational, that are thoughtful. I think that would help a lot of people and I think it would also help grow the channel.

[00:56:22] So, you know, we hope to do some of those in the coming year. We did those previously at the Understanding Mormonism YouTube channel. But it turns out it's dumb to split your channels. It's. It's unwise oftentimes to split your, your YouTube channels. So we want to consolidate that effort going forward into the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. I just had a meeting with Barbara Brown and Devi Anderson of Signature Books. They're interested in some collaborations. We really are hopeful that that will come to pass.

[00:56:54] We just covered their amazing book Lighthouse with Sandra Tanner and it was an amazing. And they told us we helped them sell a ton of books. So anyway, we want to collaborate with them and Andrew tells me we need to do a newsletter.

[00:57:07] Anthony tells me we need to do a newsletter and an email list. That's a lot of work and I'm a little bit intimidated by that. But we are considering it so really quickly because we believe in financial transparency. I'll just do a quick revenue review now. I'll just be clear.

[00:57:25] Our accountant doesn't close our books for fiscal year 2022 until January. And that's just when he closes the books. He doesn't actually fill out the 990s until sometimes he doesn't get to it till August or September because he spends the spring doing individual tax returns. And then he's able to give us a discount if we delay our filing until the fall filing date. So if anyone wants to know why our 990s sometimes aren't like immediately, it's not because we're trying hide anything. It's just because our accountants tell us that they're more available in the fall and they can give us slower rates if we wait till the fall to publish the 990s.

[00:58:06] And the IRS is fine with that. But anyway, I'm not going to be giving final revenue or cost numbers here because we don't have them for 2022. But I did, I can give kind of estimates. It's looking like our revenue is somewhere around 750,000 for 2022, which is either, you know, it's within 5 percentage. I think it's within 5% of, of the previous year, give or take something that's just an estimate. I don't even know. But, but let's just say we're making around 750k.

[00:58:38] We are expenses. I'm estimating to be somewhere between 650 and 700,000. Those, you know, the main, the bulk of those expenses are staff. So my, my salary and compensation, you know, Gerardo, Brooklyn Maven, you know Nemo, Kara, John Larsen, you know, Samantha, when she comes on Margi. All these people are paid. All these people cost money. We try and pay competitive, generous wages.

[00:59:12] And so the largest, I think for sure, the largest expense is staff. And for so much so long, people, you know, complain that we didn't pay people well or whatever. I think we've always been generous in how we've compensated people and, and I want to keep doing that. So. Oh yeah, we pay for Julia as well. Brooklyn. So anyway, that money goes to staff again. We've increased our investments in YouTube and marketing and, you know, shorts and, and the like. We pay for our accountant, we pay for our legal. And then we've got, you know, our facilities expenses, equipment, software.

[00:59:52] Just all those expenses are really, really big. And then we really, we pay Nemo too. And then sometimes we pay airfare for guests to fly in. Sometimes we pay for their lodging, sometimes we host events. And all I would argue is in addition to feeling like we're delivering tremendous value, I also want you to understand that the degree to which you support Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation, we work really hard to support other creators. And so I think you'll find that people like Nemo, Self on the Shelf, Nuance, Ho, Mormonism, Live, xmlx, whoever, they will tell you that when they come on Mormon Stories, they get a big bump in donations and in support to their channels.

[01:00:39] And so we're doing our best to make sure that this rising tide lifts all ships. So even if Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation does well, which we've been fortunate to do well, we're doing our best to promote, you know, even Steven Pinecker and everyone. We want to support everyone doing good things. And so anyway, that's just my general sense for our finances. You can go to openstoriesfoundation.org and see our 990s since the very inception.

[01:01:08] And again, if they're delayed, it's a combination of our accountant publishing our 990s, sending our 990s to the RS in the fall, and then the IRS being behind on its publishing of 990s largely because of COVID And again, if you want to donate to the Mormon Stories or the Open Stories foundation, please go to MormonStories.org and click on the donate button. Okay, so that's some of the comments and questions that we've had so far. Let me just share some of the some of the comments and questions from people who are viewing us right now. Ricky Johnson writes, Looking forward to this. Wow, you're closing in on 100,000 subs.

[01:01:48] Awesome. Thank you so much Ricky for that. Jenny21 writes, Mormon stories has exceeded all expectations. We hope so. Every year I think I can't do better than the previous year and pretty much every year we've done better than the previous year by the metrics. Important to me, but I. I do not promise a more successful year than 2022. It may, it may go down as 2022 being our more successful year ever. I want to beat it, but I. I doubt we will, but I'll try. We'll try. Ben D Writes, I knew about Mormon Stories for years but didn't get around to watching listening until you establish your YouTube presence.

[01:02:26] Thanks for doing so. Thanks Ben D. Molly writes Never Mormon here. Love this podcast to help me understand my sister who is an evangelical. That is super cool, Molly that Mormon Stories helps evangelicals or ex Evangelicals or family of people in high demand religions understand their family members better. Zach Barnes writes, I've never seen a channel take constructive feedback in such a tactful way. You're able to maintain what makes the channel special with what viewers want. Thanks, Zach, for that. We try. People sometimes criticize us for not listening to feedback or not being able to accept criticism. We do block trolls. We will always block trolls, haters, people that don't wish us well, people don't want to hurt us.

[01:03:11] Yeah, we're going to block those people. But I love constructive criticism and I always will and I live on it. That's how we've become so successful by our standards is just by listening to feedback and improving. So anyway, keep the constructive criticism and feedback going.

[01:03:31] Heidi Christensen writes. John, your channel helped me when I began my free fall that last weekend in June 2021. I'm trying to listen but will working but while working we'll keep it on for your algorithm but we'll re watch it later. Okay, thanks Heidi for joining us. We appreciate your comments over the years and months, I guess I should say J. Cruz writes, do you hear from many other returned missionaries that served in other countries in Latin America the same as you did seem to be real competition between submission presidents in the late 80s. Yeah, Jay Cruz.

Notable 2022 Episodes and Church Controversies

[01:04:06] The baseball and soccer baptisms, the fraudulent baptisms in Latin America and the Philippines and now in Africa over the years are legendary. And the church just won't stop them, refuses to stop these fraudulent, scandalous baptisms. So yes, I do hear from people about those all the time. It's way more common than not that missions have had these baptism scandals that make it so at least half of the people the church claim within their 17 million membership are just fraudulent or you know, baptisms that never had any conversion whatsoever, that the missionaries baptized them, they'd never been to church or they fell inactive within a week or two.

[01:04:48] That's probably more common than actual converts. So I hear about those things all the time. And we love, we love covering, you know, problems in missions because number one, so many missionaries go on missions without informed consent, without being taught the true history or they're pressured into it with undue influence. So we're not trying to keep people from going on missions, but we absolutely don't want A Mormons going on missions without informed consent, B, Mormons being pressured on missions when they don't want to go and see. We don't want missionaries becoming people who don't want to be in missions becoming super anxious or depressed or even attempting suicide.

[01:05:32] So we're going to hit missions hard. So whenever you've got a a great mission story, you know we're interested in in learning about that. Ricky Johnson writes, your podcast really helped me after I left the fundy religion I grew up in Lace the dnism. I don't even know how to pronounce that. You've inspired me to be an advocate for X lace stadiums. I'm going to launch a YouTube channel this year.

[01:05:58] Thank you Ricky. I'm going to stop reading those comments because we we have solicited several comments and requests offline and I want to be able to cover some of those. And of course we want to end before Mormonism Live begins.

[01:06:13] So let me now go to some of the comments and questions that we've gathered. So there's several questions about like how do I either how do I get on Mormon Stories podcast? Or you know, John, can you do a certain type of interview? And I'm going to right now tell you all the keys to get on how to get up Mormon stories podcast in 2023. So listen up, spread the word. And first I'm going to share several comments that feed into this question.

[01:06:44] So so let let me see. Greg J. Writes not a question, but just wanted to thank all of you who make Mormon Stories possible. I've genuinely enjoyed every single episode. I've listened to the amazing co host, excellent guests and thorough discussions. The Church was such a huge part of my life for most of my current existence and it was incredibly hard to deconstruct. I felt alone and depressed, but found comfort in knowing I wasn't unique in this journey. Your work and the way you all do it is so inspiring and beneficial. Beneficial to so many people. Cheers to you and many more episodes to come.

[01:07:19] Greg J. Your comment encapsulates the main the Heart of Mormon stories and why we do it. We do this podcast mostly for people who are questioning the church, learning about the church and in faith crisis. So it means the world to us that we're able to be a small part of people's journeys. So thank you Grant J. And everyone who sent in comments or questions like that. Now I'm going to go to types of interviews Teresa writes, I'm from Canada and I'd love it if you could do more about the Mormon Church in other countries like Canada and European countries.

[01:07:56] We don't have the same big Mormon cultural effects, but in some ways that makes it harder to leave. Also, we have had a recent expose here about the use of Canadian tithing. Another comment from Melissa Henley Brown is I would love to hear a follow up interview with Cammie and Colby Reddish to see how things have been going over the past year. Their interview is so impactful. I will definitely try and get Colby and Cammie on. Colby's part of our behind the scenes team. He's been great and so we'd love to get them back on.

[01:08:28] Here are some questions. How do you decide who to bring on the show? Would you consider a series where you interview non Mormon individuals coming from different high demand religions? Only recently I found your podcast and all the stories I've seen so far have been authors, actors or people with their own media presence. Do you do interviews with ordinary people, public people? Would you ever have a panel of a never Mormon sharing their views and reasons for being here? And then Bennett writes, would you guys consider or be able to do a podcast about the similarities and differences between the way polygamy was practiced between Warren Jess and Joseph Smith?

[01:09:06] I'll say Bennett, we've already done that episode. We did it with the growing up in polygamy people, Melissa and Sam and I'll have Maven find that link and share it here in the comments in the show notes because we've done that episode. Rocky writes, would you consider doing a podcast dedicated solely to the good the LDS Church does for it in the lives of its members? Zero criticism. Just good. And I would say yes to all these comments. So now I'm going to share a slide on ways to get on Mormon Stories podcast.

How to Get on Mormon Stories Podcast

[01:09:37] You know, I get one thing that people need to understand is that I probably get 10 to 20 requests to be on Mormon Stories podcasts a day. If you look at my phone, if you look at my phone right now, you'll see that I've got 44.9 thousand unread emails, 44,973 unread emails, and I've got 919 unread texts. That's the life I live. And So I get 2010-20 requests a day to do a Mormon Stories podcast interview. So forgive me if I can't respond to everyone who reaches out. I try to read every inquiry. I think I read almost every inquiry, but I don't have time to respond to them all.

[01:10:30] And certainly there's no way I could interview 10 people a day. And that doesn't even include the people that I want to interview that aren't reaching out to me. So that's the world I swim in. So I ask everybody to just kind of understand that and try and be patient with me. Know that I'm just doing the best that I can. But now I want to share with you what I hope is one of the most important slides, ways to get on Mormon Stories Podcast. And maybe Maven and Brooklyn and Julia and Gerardo. We need to make this a short because I would love this to be shared on TikTok and on Instagram, on Facebook and even on YouTube as its own episode so that we can point people to it and help them know how to get on it.

[01:11:18] And I want to explain some of the questions here. So the number one way to get on Mormon Stories podcast is to have a compelling, original and thoughtful story. Compelling means you're a good storyteller, that you're smart and interesting and emotional and you can tell a good story. It's also got to be original because if we've already covered it, I'm less likely to want to cover it again unless it's really amazing or really in the news or really important and then thoughtful. I really like to interview smart, thoughtful people. That doesn't mean you have to have a PhD or even have a degree, but just people who are articulate or charismatic or interesting in telling the story.

[01:12:00] And so if you meet that criteria, you send me an email@mormonstoriesmail.com and I'll share the show. Now, a lot of people get upset that I sometimes pick people with social media presences. I, I sometimes grab, you know, interviewees off of Tick Tock or Instagram or YouTube or whatever. And I'm just going to say this. No, it's not that like, I'm just trying. I only care about influencers or you know, I, I just, I'm looking for people that are, have a presence. But if you have a presence, it does allow me if I can watch you telling your story, if I can see your charisma or your intellect or I can see that you're a good storyteller, it helps me say, wow, that that's a compelling story.

[01:12:46] So that's why. So the best thing you can do is like go on to TikTok, create an account, tell your story on TikTok and tag, you know, pound my Mormon story and, and, or, or, or, or tag at Mormon stories podcast on TikTok or, or email or message us or get a lot of people viewing your, your videos on TikTok or on Instagram or on Facebook. Because whenever somebody, or even on, on Reddit, whenever somebody shares a really compelling story and it gets a ton of views and people reach out to me and say, john, you should interview this person. And I'm just going to tell you all, I am much more interested in interviewing people that a ton of other people tell me I should interview, especially people that I value and trust, than interviewing people that say, john, interview me, interview me, interview me.

[01:13:44] I'll do both. But if everybody's telling me I need to interview somebody, I'm a lot more willing and likely to interview them than if they're then, then if I just, I pick them or if they volunteer themselves. So, you know, yes, I'm going to always interview people that don't have a social media presence. And if you want to guarantee, if you want to maximize your likelihood of coming on, share your story on Reddit or on social media in some way to where everyone's bugging me to, to help you tell your story. So that's, that's the main way to get a Mormon Stories podcast. I am going to say yes, we were always going to continue interviewing just regular people without social media presences.

[01:14:28] I consider that our bread and butter. We did that in 2022 and we will continue to do that. For those who are concerned, thank you for Gene's comment. Everyone hit the like button. Everyone subscribe to Facebook or YouTube and we'll hit our 10,000 milestone.

[01:14:49] Okay, other ways to get our Mormon Stories podcast. We are always interested in people who are currently in faith crisis or deconstruction or who are recently out of the church because you know, somebody, you know, if we're covering the topic of people leaving the church, it's if that's of interest, why people are leaving the church today. And that's what we're all interested in. Many of us are really interested in is the church growing? Is it shrinking? Is it hemorrhaging? You know, is it going to survive? That's on the minds of all of us. That's one of the top two questions I always get asked. Do the Mormon apostles and prophets believe it's true or are they knowingly perpetrating a fraud?

[01:15:29] That's question number one. I get asked number two is, is the church in decline or not? Probably the third is can I come on mormonsource podcast. But. But that's why we're always going to be interested in people who are recently out of the church are currently in faith crisis. One of the top episodes I participated in in 2022 was on. On Kara Burrell Nuance Host Channel, where she had a friend, Eve, who recently lost her faith and in that episode and I'll ask Maven to put a link to that in the show notes and in the comments. Right now, in the, in the, in the Nuance episode, we just teach Eve the, the newly deconstructing Mormon things about Joseph Smith she had never heard before and get her reaction about whether she had heard these things before.

[01:16:19] You know, where we get the information, what she thought, you know, based on what the church had always taught her and then how she, we get her live reactions to learning these shocking things. And it's got over 75, 000 views on face on YouTube and people loved has helped and reached a lot of people. So I would love to do a series where we're interviewing someone who's brand new, learning about the church's truth claims and having a faith crisis and who's willing to come on and have a discussion. I would definitely do a series about that. But that's always going to be interesting to me.

[01:16:54] Recently returned missionaries who have had difficult experiences we cannot get enough of mission early return missionary stories. The Brinley episode that we did this year was our top performing episode by far. I believe it's Brinley Jensen and I may get that wrong. Maven, if you'll include that in the comments and in the show notes as well, that would be fantastic.

[01:17:18] But number one, we can't get enough, you know, recent returned missionary stories. People want those. People need those and prospective missionaries or current missionaries need them. I'm telling you right now because we release our episodes on Facebook and missionaries are blocked from all the other social media apps, but they're not blocked on Facebook.

[01:17:41] Missionaries can watch Mormon Stories episodes through Facebook and they can learn about missionary issues and learn that they're not, that they're not the only ones, they're not alone and, and get fellowship. So early or recent missionary return stories are always powerful.

[01:18:02] Current or former church employees, insider stuff that always does well. So if you or somebody, you know, does work in the church or has worked in the church and can share insider stuff, we want that. Obviously, if we've got former area or general authorities, former state presidents, former, you know, Stake Relief Society presidents, former bishops, former Relief Society presidents, fam, you know, family of general authorities, anyone who's connected to church leadership, we like those things to get insider information since the Mormon Church isn't transparent, but also to just kind of get behind the scenes good, bad and ugly because the church will never tell us its problems because it's not transparent.

[01:18:46] So we always love that kind of stuff. We're always interested in historians and authors and truth claims. We're never going to stop doing that kind of stuff. You know, anytime we share a new episode from a country. So if there's a country where there's never been a Mormon Stories episode from that country, you are a candidate to be on Mormon Stories. Reach out to me and say, John. So like right now I desperately need to interview a Filipino who, who has left the church. I've had people reach out to me recently. I need to do it. I've, I've dropped the ball. But you know, people in different African countries, people in the Philippines, people in Asia, people in Europe, people in South America, we want every country at some point a faith crisis or a faith journey narrative from every country in the world.

[01:19:36] We want it on Mormon Stories. That always has big impact. So please, that's a way to get our Mormon stories. And then yes, you know, having Patrick Mason on Mormon stories this year, having other believers like Steven Pinecre who's a Christian, or Sandra Tanner who's a Christian, or Randy Bell who's a Christian, or Rick Bennett who's a Christian, you know, who's still Mormon, we love that. So I, yes, I will. I want to interview believing scholars, believing historians, believing apologists, and just believers in how they stayed in the church. But they need to be able to come on Mormon Stories and face the hard questions.

[01:20:16] So that's, that's a way to get on Mormon Stories and we want to do more of that. And then yes, I want to do a series starting this year on never Mormons, either people just fascinated with Mormonism or people who are, you know, who are recovering from other high demand religions. So if you meet any of those criteria, email us@mormonstoriesmail.com Tell us in a compelling paragraph or two how you meet the criteria, why you think that you should be on the program. Please include links to your social media presence so I can verify that you're a real person and so I can get a sense of who you are.

[01:20:59] So your Facebook profile, your Instagram profile, if you include that on your, on your inquiry and email, that helps expedite the process because we have fake people and fraudulent people reaching out to us all the time. Yeah. And then if you want to do a social media presence to help and tag us at my Mormon story on Tick Tock or just tag our channels either on YouTube at Mormon Stories podcast or I think it's ad Mormon Stories is our YouTube tag or on Facebook or Instagram tag us is a great way to have us notice your social media presence. That's the way to get our Mormon stories.

[01:21:38] So there. Now you have it. Now, in addition, we've got some people who asked about Looking back, Laura G. Asked, what was the most shocking thing that you personally learned about church history during an episode or interview this year that you didn't previously know? And I would say, yeah, the, the Mormon, the Mormon discussion, the the LDS discussion series on Mormon Stories podcast this year has been a game changer, not just for, you know, the audience, but also for me. So right now I'm looking at the playlist on the Mormon Discussions playlist on our YouTube channel and it is just stunning how much I learned there.

Most Impactful Episodes and LDS History Insights

[01:22:29] So, you know, I could just go through these episodes and talk about ones that were really transformative to me. One insight that Mike shared, I'll just riff on a couple. One insight that Mike shared that was really mind blowing with the golden plates and, and the Martin Harris lost 116 pages episode was the realization that Joseph Smith could get revelation whenever he could control the environment.

[01:22:55] But whenever he lost control of the environment, all of a sudden his ability to have revelation ceased. And so the Lucy, you know, Lucy Harris lost 116 pages was a perfect example of his ability to be a seer, stopping because obviously Once he lost 116 pages and knew that he couldn't reproduce them, of course he lost his translation power because he had to go back and figure out how he was going to rewrite the Book of Mormon to fix it. And he needed time to rewrite the Book of Mormon. So this cover of the Lord taking away his translation powers for a season and this whole large plates and small plates and all the different plates is clearly him needing a cover for having to do damage control for having lost his 116 pages.

[01:23:54] And that's one of the just the type of thing that Mike brings out in the LDS discussion series that someone like me who's been studying this stuff for 30 years doesn't really realize until Mike brings it to light there. I'll just share, you know, a couple others that, that come to mind.

[01:24:15] You know, his episode on the Tower of Babel, you know, this is something that I thought of before and something that I think Anthony Miller and others have kind of highlighted. But the Tower of Babel is fatal. It's a fatal anachronism, or it's a fatal anachronist, sort of like fraud that taints the Book of Mormon. We think that horses or steel swords or DNA or geography or literary stuff Tanks the Book of Mormon. You know what tanks the Book of Mormon? It's the Tower of Babel because the Tower of Babel never happened, number one, because Adam and Eve never happened and the 6,000 year Earth never happened.

[01:24:59] But the Tower of Babel and the scattering of languages, that never happens. But the story in the Book of Mormon about the predecessors to the Nephites who came from the Tower of Babel and somebody in the comments, please remind me. I'm spacing. It's not the Zoramites, is it? Who is it that came generations before that came from the Tower of Babel?

[01:25:25] That's the early beginnings of the Book of Mormon. And basically what that means is, and I need commenters to bail me out here on who it is that represents the people that came to the Book of Mormon. Is it the Zoramites? Anyway, if the Tower of Babel never happened, Jaredites, thank you, thank you, Maven, and thank you everybody else. If the Tower of Babel never happened, then the Jaredites could not have come from the Tower of Babel to America to, you know, present the Jaredite portion of the Book of Mormon. So if the Jaredites never happened, then the Book of Mormon's a fraud, and it's that simple.

[01:26:08] Now people, apologists are going to make other justifications and that's fine. Believers can believe. We don't even care if you believe. But that was a huge revelation for me that I thought of, about, thought of before, but Mike really, really drove that home. Tower of Blood is the same Tower of Babel. You know, the Global Flood is the same type of thing. And then, you know, I'll say the priesthood restoration episode and the changes to the Book of Book, to the Doctrine and Covenants, those episodes were mind blowing to see, and this is basically based on the Tanner's work, Gerald, Sandra Tanner, but to see how the, how the Tanners helped uncover Joseph Smith just literally blatantly changing his Commandments between the 1833 Book of Commandments and the, you know, the Doctrine and Covenants that came later, you know, deleting revelations, changing revelations, rewriting revelations, completely reversing the meanings of revelations in new additions to the Doctrine and Covenants, removing the polygamy revelation, you know, way after they should have DNC101, after the church condemned polygamy, then it's supporting polygamy.

[01:27:27] Like that's the type of stuff you get in the LDS discussion series that's just mind blowing. But also Mike's able to show us how the changes in Revelations and in the Doctrine and Covenants, they change according to who Joseph meets and Joseph Smith's own evolving theology, which is the same as the changes in the First Vision accounts and the same in the changes of the Book of Mormon. So all of these changes are happening over time.

[01:27:57] They, they basically, they basically present serious problems to the veracity of, of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and, and in the First Vision and Joseph's miscredibility. And they also, you know, they're also super important to know. So those are just some of the, the amazing things that I've learned this year through the LDS discussion series.

[01:28:23] I, I could not recommend that enough. So also, the Flat Earth apologist asked. It would be interesting to hear top five revelations gleaned from the numerous guests this year. And the truth is, you know, I just wanted to highlight some of the biggest episodes this year. The Brad Wilcox thing, which, which was a story that we broke on Mormon Stories Podcast through someone leaking, you know, a video of a local fireside in Alpine Highland. They leaked it to us. We were able to share it. We broke the story and we, our YouTube and podcast blew up that month. We did several episodes on Brad Wilcox and just, you know, there's this idea of the quiet part out loud.

[01:29:10] For so many decades, CES teachers and prophets and apostles would say, you know, even a Mormon apologist like Terrell and Fiona Gibbons, they would say the quiet things in private firesides and in private one on ones, but they would never say publicly the most racist, sexist and homophobic things. So whenever you want to get on Mormon stories or you want to have an influence on Mormon stories, record disturbing one on one conversations where it's legal, record, you know, meetings with general authorities or church leaders where it's legal, and then share those with us on Mormon stories and allow us to share with the world things like the Brad Wilcox episode.

[01:29:55] Not because we're trying to be savage to Brad Wilcox or other leaders or general authorities or embarrass them, but because transparency is important and accountability is important. And I can promise you Brad Wilcox isn't given the same racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti Christian talks now that he was giving before. Or maybe he is. But either way, with transparency, we can fix that. So the Brad Wilcox episode was a game changer.

Is the Mormon Church in Decline?

[01:30:28] Is the Mormon Church in Decline episode with Kara was a game changer. Basically a currently serving member of a stake high council shared with us data from his stake and from his region that showed us that like a third or more of all Mormon missionaries are returning early.

[01:30:48] Only a third, like two thirds of Mormon missionaries apparently are now men. And sorry, a third are only men. Two thirds are women because young Mormon men are more and more declining to serve missions. And, and at some point we're gonna have more women missionaries than men, which is mind blowing. And then all the temple stuff and, and how Russell M. Nelson has been just announcing temples as sort of a legacy flex without the infrastructure and the due diligence within the Mormon Church temple department being able to actually plan for and build and keep up with his announcements of temples. All of that sort of revelations were due to some insider sharing with us the statistics from his stake and from his area.

[01:31:40] So that was a game changing episode that you all should check out. Of course, the Rod Meldrum story was probably one of the most disturbing episodes. It was one of the things that kind of made Kara want to retire from Mormon Stories podcast. But just having Rodney Meldrum, who in some ways is a really nice guy, again, say the quiet parts out loud. That the earth is 7,000 years old, that the core of the earth is ice and not magma. That he believes the Book of Mormon happened in the heartland.

[01:32:13] That there's a war between, you know, Dan Peterson and Lou Midgley and, and the, the, you know, the heartland theory, you know, followers and that, that Rodney Meldrum's following is bigger than Mormon stories. That's just, and a lot of those people are preppers and, and you know, Julie Ro types and, and, and you know, that's, that was a disturbing episode. But, but it was an important one.

[01:32:41] You know, the Brinley Jensen episode was the most listened to episode of the year. If I have my statistics right. That was a super important episode where she talks about sexism and racism and misogyny on her mission. Wanting to die by suicide. I can't believe how many return missionaries on Mormon stories this year talked about wanting to die by suicide. Way too many. Way more than I can remember. And we're going to keep doing early return missionaries and recently returned missionari. We are going to keep doing those till the cows come home. Until the Mormon Church fixes its depression and anxiety and mental and physical health problem on its missions, along with its lack of informed consent.

[01:33:21] And it's faith missionaries having a faith crisis while on their mission problem, disguising it as anxiety and depression problem. So anyway, Brinley is an example of that along with many, many others. And that was a game changing episode. Another game changing episode was Patrick Mason coming on. I cannot thank Patrick Mason enough for his willingness to come on, receive the hard questions, stand strong in his faith, and then turn around and ask me and Margi hard questions. That's just good for the channel because Mormon Stories was never meant to be only ex Mormons. And sometimes people like to criticize Mormon Stories podcast as being only about ex Mormons or or being critical of the church of people who have left the church.

[01:34:06] But if credible believers and apologists won't come on the show, and if credible believing scholars won't come on the show, then that's believers pushing Mormon Stories into a more critical and negative stance. So I can't thank Patrick Mason enough for coming on along with other believing scholars and believers that have come on Mormon Stories. And that was a game changing episode. Patrick called me just the other day. We had a very productive conversation and we are hoping to announce an exciting new project in 2023. It may not happen. It I'm going to guess, you know, it likely won't happen, but there's a chance that it'll happen if it doesn't get ruined or botched.

[01:34:51] And if it does happen, you know, we'll make sure and announce it and tell you all about it. But there's nothing more than I'd love to do than to collaborate more with Patrick Mason. Of course, one of the most troubling episodes was when we read accounts of victims of abuse who were told not to report their abuse to their church leaders by the church hotline. And all the other is it Michael Resendez from the AP articles chronicling sexual and abuse within the church and the COVID ups with Curtin McConkie and the church's hotline. That of course was a game changing episode in 2022. And then I'll say one that got a ton of views was the episode I did with with Diana Hansen Ribera about growing up with cult leader Teal Swan.

[01:35:45] That was a really big game changing episode that got a ton of views. So you know, those are some examples of some of what I think are some of the most significant episodes as well. So I hope that was useful to many of you. And of course, please feel free to share in the comments here some of your most impactful episodes and I'll try and show those later. Maven Maven, I want to make sure everybody knows Mormonism live starts in 27 minutes. I want you all to watch Mormonism Live. Maven, I understand if you need to go whenever you need to go. Maven has been kind enough to be curating these comments right now and blocking the haters and.

[01:36:24] And highlighting important comments. I'll make sure and stop hopefully right before. Right before Mormonism Live starts. But either way, please support Mormonism Live and donate to Mormonism Live. Okay, so I. I'm gonna answer some more questions that people asked.

Wish List of Future Guests and Interviews

[01:36:44] Looking forward. One question is who are some people that I would personally love to have on the show for interviews in the coming year? And why? You know, another way of that question that was from Laura G. Grant J. Writes, who is someone alive today that you wish you could interview the most? And Siljan Cristiano says, who's the top three people alive you'd like to have in studio? If you could have anyone come back on and do a follow up, who would it be? I've got a. I've got a qu. You know, I. This, this wish list that I just put together, I did it in like three minutes right before we started.

[01:37:19] It's not in any way exhaustive, but it's a starting point. If any of you have the people you would want to see most, please post it right now as a comment. And I'm going to read some of those because I'm most interested in what you guys want. But I've got any Mormon apostle or general authority or actively serving stake president or bishop, of course, that's on the top of my wish list. Donnie and Marie Osmond is on the top of my wish list.

[01:37:48] Stephen Barb Young, any. Any big Mormon celebrity or former Mormon celebrity. And just to be clear, I do that because they usually have fascinating stories and because their episodes often have reach. So of course that means David Archuleta. We would love to have David Archuleta on Mormon Stories podcast. Gerardo is friends with David Archuleta. I don't know if David will come, but he's certainly welcome.

[01:38:15] A lot of you have read Jeanette McCurdy's biography. I think it's called I'm Glad My Mom Died or something like that. Maven. If you want to post a link to that in the show, notes or time codes. That's a great book. We would love to do a book club with Jeanette McCurdy.

[01:38:33] So that would be on my wish list. Stephanie Sorensen Larsen. She is the founder of Encircle. I love Stephanie Sorensen Larsen. I would love to interview her. Of course, Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons. We have interviewed Wayne Sermon, the lead guitarist of Imagine Dragons. But of course I'd want to interview Dan and then prominent ex cult survivors.

[01:38:56] But most importantly, what you want to hear so I'm going to just highlight some of the requests. Someone requests Tal Bachman. That's a possibility. I'm in touch with Tal. I'd love to make that happen. Johnny Harris, he's a YouTuber. I'll list that.

[01:39:13] Yeah. So Crispy Roses would love to see an update with Donna Showalter. We had that scheduled. Donna had to cancel that. We would love to have her back. Yes. I would include Chanel Achenbach, who is one of. I want to add Chanel Akerbox interview is one of the most powerful interviews of 20. Actually, that's 2023. No, that's 2022. Chanel is amazing. Chanel, I love you.

[01:39:38] And of course, Greg Schultz, who also I just interviewed. He was a big one. But anyway, love you, Chanel. Check out Chanel's Mormon stories. Yes. Gladys Knight would be amazing. There's another vote for the Osmonds. Some people are saying more Mike, from LDS discussions.

[01:39:58] I don't know a lot of these people who people. There's someone saying do actors of old church movies. Some people are saying people who were involved in the Indian placement program. I would love to do ex Polynesians, so count on it. I want to do one ex Mormon Samoan, one ex Mormon Tongan and one ex Mormon Filipino on Mormon Stories podcast this year and other Filipinos or. Or Polynesians.

[01:40:31] That would be interesting. We have a request to do Joanna Brooks and Mormonism and White supremacy. Maybe what I'm really interested in is interviewing. The guy I'm spacing on names right now. The guy who did Ezra to have Benson, the Mormon historian who did Ezra Benson and who did the Gospel topics essays. I just mentioned his name in A Lunch with Barbara Brown. If you guys can help me out with his name. I want to have him back because he's releasing soon his book on Mormon racism. Oh my gosh, yes.

[01:41:11] Ray Lawler writes Jacinda Ardern. She's the prime minister of. She's the ex Mormon prime minister of New Zealand. We, we do hope to have Heather Gay back of from Mormon Housewives of Salt Lake City to talk about who knew her new book. Absolutely. Brandon Flowers from the Killers. Thank you, Rachel Gwilliam.

[01:41:35] He would be amazing. Ben D says Tara Westover. I've got good news, Ben D. Tara Westover's has been on Mormon stories twice. We interviewed her and then we brought her to Salt Lake City and interviewed her. So Maven, please include the links to the Tara Westover interview in the show notes and in the time codes that would be amazing. Yes. Thank you Maven or whoever. It's Matthew Harris that I want to interview the historian to talk about his new book on the, the black, the, the priesthood ban on black people. And he's also got a book coming out as well, a biography that we'll talk about later.

[01:42:13] But we love Matt Harris. Yeah, Jewel would be fun. Any, any celebrity actor, ex Mormon that would bring lots of views to the channel. That would be amazing. So those are some on my, my wish list. Most importantly, I just want to do interviews that grow the channel and move the needle and that help people who need it it.

[01:42:34] All right. So some other things Grant J. Writes. Do, do I think that I'll ever be have more high profile apologists on? I, I'm just right now I'm going to put Richard and Claudia Bushman back on the wish list. Grant. I'm going to put Teryl and Fiona Givens on the wish list. More Patrick Mason. I'll put Spencer Fluman on the wish list. I'll put Ben Benjamin park on the wish list. He did, he did Nauvoo Polygamy and yeah, any credible, you know, anyone who's worked in the Robin Jensen I'll put on my wish list. Anyone who's worked in the Joseph Smith Papers project I'll put on the wish list.

[01:43:16] I'd love to get back another series I want to do is people we've interviewed on Mormon stories in the past. Get them back on. People like Brett Metcalfe. I would love to do Brett Metcalf again. I've, I've tried. I would love to get Tom Phillips back on again, Donna Showalter, people like that.

[01:43:35] And Dan Vogel is always welcome back. So yeah, I would love to do kind of a Where are they now series and bring them back. That would be big. And yeah, I hope to have Patrick mason back in 2023. I hope that is helpful. Oh yeah, Mitt Romney is absolutely on my, my wish list.

[01:43:58] And yeah, Colby Townsend would be fascinating if he'd do it. I, I think Colby's great. Okay. More comments and questions from our viewers. Thanks RFM for commenting. Oh, RFM asked in, in a comment what I love most about Maven, I'll just, I'll answer that now. Maven is just delightful. She's bright, she is positive attitude. She is committed, devoted and she's big hearted and she's wise and witty. So I love and she just does great work. So that's what I love about Maven. And that's your question. RFM And Maven, you're. You're moderating right now. And I just want to say, Maven, we appreciate you and we love you and thank you for all you do.

[01:44:48] So that's. That's a shout out to Maven. And then, Maven, I'll add you really quickly to the stream. Hey, Maven. Oh, hello. And thanks for all you do and all you've done for us in 2022 and now in this current year and. And for all you do for Mormonism Live as well. You're a real asset to our community, and we love you. Thank you. It's been my pleasure. This is.

[01:45:13] My life is great, and it's because of working on podcasts like this. I couldn't ask for anything more. All right, everybody. Thanks, Maven. We love you. All right, so I'll try and get to a couple more comments or questions.

[01:45:30] Maven's included a countdown of when Mormonism Live starts, so I'm going to try really hard to end on time. Oh, yeah, really quickly, I'm going to add. Yeah. All of those big Mormon authors like Stephanie Meyer from Twilight.

[01:45:45] Yeah. Sister Wives would be fantastic. Ryan Gosling would be great, I think. Yeah. Joe Geisner is brilliant. I'm loving these suggestions coming in. These are all more John Hamer. I'm hearing people say those are super good comments. Brandon Sanderson would be fascinating. And Maven, if you can write down a lot of these recommendations for me. Me, let's add them to the list. Send me a list later. That would be fantastic. So many people we'd love to interview. Diane writes, I would like to discuss the future of the church numbers and how to retain. Does the church get more dogmatic or progressive? Do women get the priesthood?

The Future Direction of the Mormon Church

[01:46:25] Does it revamp this mission program or go with the temple on every block? Yeah, I think the church is definitely going to keep building temples because they're certainly not going to keep building new chapels, except for in Africa.

[01:46:38] I think the church is going to grow in Africa, and it's going to shrink almost everywhere else. I think that within 10 to 20 years, the church is going to be literally declining in terms of raw numbers, but certainly in terms of activity outside of Africa. And it's going to use Africa to pad the numbers. But everywhere else, the church is going to be in decline or shrinking, and it already is in decline and shrinking in Western Europe, in developed Asia, and. And it's flatlining in the United States and in places like Latin America. In many ways, it's only surviving because of the growth rate.

[01:47:17] So the church's future is bleak in terms of membership growth. That's how the numbers seem today. If the church finds a way to turn things around, I'll be the first to to let people know. So 21st century saints says more women in academics, please. I would love to do that. Thanks. 21st Century Saints. Please donate and support 21st Century Saints as well as the other Brit vengers channels. That's why I just met with Barbara Brown of Signature Books. I would love to get more compelling female scholars on, but I think the church is in trouble. I think the church gets both more progressive slowly and dogmatic.

[01:47:58] It's going to try and keep its preppers and keep its trumpers and keep its maga conservatives and it's going to try and keep its hemorrhaging with its millennials and its gen zers and its progressives. So it's going to be kind of continually schizophrenic trying to do both thrashing between the two. I think at some point women will get the priesthood and LGBT people will be able to get temple marriage. That'll probably, I don't know. I don't know. But it might be, might be decades away. They're certainly going to keep building temples because what else are they going to do with their money? They're certainly not going to invest in the missionary program because that's dying and it's not bringing in revenue.

[01:48:38] And they're certainly not going to invest in building chapels and in current members because members are leaving and hemorrhaging in droves. So all they could do is build temples with their money and advertise and invest in the stock market, which just creates more money. So I predict we're going to become a trillion dollar church if we're not there already while we're shrinking and hemorrhaging. And that's going to be ironic.

[01:49:03] So, you know, those are some of the predictions I see. One question is what is the greatest appeal for converts to the LDS Church? Money, jobs, employment, welfare assistance. Community. Honestly, community is the biggest. The church can still do community well when it does community.

[01:49:22] And so I still don't feel like ex Mormonism is secular. People are able to create community as healthy in many ways as religious community and in terms of Mormon community. So it's still community, I'd say. But the church has got to fix its community or it's going to be broken. Joseph writes John, is there a published timeline with references to all the questionable historicity, problems of or truths that we were taught or can refer to or read. Yeah, I just want to reference everyone to a really important resource on Mormon Stories podcast. It's a, it's a link that shows a chronology of Mormon history and it is absolutely one of the most valuable things on Mormon Stories podcast and one of the underrated, underappreciated things.

[01:50:13] My friend Mike Brown is the one who put this together, but it just scrolls through and shows the timeline in excruciating detail. But with fascinating information, there could be an entire podcast done in the progressive post Mormon world that just talks about Mormon history chronologically. So I want to recommend this brilliant resource to everyone who can find it because yes, it exists and yes, it's on the Mormon Stories podcast channel. And you find it by going to podcast menu and then, and then, and then.

[01:50:58] No, you go to truth claims and then you go to chronology of Mormon History. That's where the link can be found. It's brilliant. Check it out. It's. It's very much underappreciated. Okay, we're going to try and finish up if you guys want to jump to Mormonism Live right now it's seven, six and a half minutes away, but I just want to make sure we never want to bleed or take from that audience.

[01:51:25] Let's see a couple more questions. You know, do post Mormons ever develop an interest in, you know, pre Mormon Christianity or attend other religions after leaving Mormonism? What churches do people attend? I would say a lot of people join, just become generic evangelical Christians like, like Steven Pineaker, my friend Randy, who we've had our Mormon stories. I think some investigate community of Christ. I think some join Unitarian Universalists.

Where Do Former Mormons Go After Leaving?

[01:52:01] Some just become spiritual but not religious. I would say those are some of the most common ones. You guys can comment other common religions that people join after leaving Mormonism, some become Evangelical Christians like Sandra Tanner. But why do so many become atheists or agnostics? I think it's because they become so hurt and disillusioned and disenchanted and they feel so lied to by the Mormon Church and its leaders that that taints not just the Book of Mormon, but it taints the Bible along with, with God and Jesus.

[01:52:35] And you know, the Bible has probably less problems as than the Book of Mormon in terms of science and historicity, but it also has problems. And for those reasons, you know, sometimes the Christianity domino and the God and Jesus domino falls after leaving Mormonism. But that's my quick insight into why that happens.

[01:52:59] What does the number one people leave the church? I would Say these days it's because the church is no longer relevant or interesting to them and they no longer uplifted or inspired by it. Now that may be because they have a faith crisis and become shocked that they've been lied to and betrayed. That may be because they're LGBT or have an LGBTQ loved. That may be because when they go to church they're abused or harassed or they have a terrible mission or maybe they have a family member leave the church, which then shocks them into studying problems with the church, which then shocks them into leaving.

[01:53:40] But all of that comes down to the church stops working for them or starts feeling less compelling or interesting to them or starts feeling less idyllic and more problematic. That's why, that's, that's why. Let's see. Sorry, really quickly. That's why I think people leave the church. Okay, let's see. I'm kind of running out of time and so I'll, I'll, I'll go to, let's say, maybe one final thing. Trevor writes, I remember something from one episode about a million dollar buy in for new general authorities or for new apostles. What was that source? That's Grant Palmer's final book, Maven, if you have time to put, or if viewers or listeners want to put that link.

[01:54:33] Grant Palmer published a book right before he died that talked about the emeritus general authority Enzio Boucher, who told him that Mormon apostles receive a signing bonus upwards of a million dollars or debt forgiveness upwards of a million dollars that connects, that binds them to the church. It's Grant Palmer and Enzio Busha. Who is that, that source?

[01:54:58] I don't know about church's next doctrinal moves other than what we already know, which is the church is going to be claiming the Book of Mormon is more of a revelation and it's going to be just watering everything down and becoming more focused on Jesus, less Joseph Smith, more mainstream Christianity, less doctrinal distinctive Mormonism.

[01:55:22] You know, have the church's efforts to deal with its history helping or hurting it. Gospel topics essays. Absolutely. I think it's, it's the gospel topics essays are hurting the church, but they're more ethical. There are a couple personal questions that people have asked. What's one thing that I've changed my mind about?

Closing Reflections and Listener Appreciation

[01:55:43] Brittany Hartley writes. Brittany Hartley does good things with Bill Real. Check her out. She's great. Anthony Miller has a new YouTube channel and a podcast. Check him out. He's great. One thing I've changed my mind about is community. I really have tried hard to build secular community. And I'm not giving up. And thrive is going to continue, but it's way harder to form secular community than I thought. That's why we're encouraging book clubs.

[01:56:09] But I tend to view the Mormon Church more favorably because I know how deadly loneliness is, how unhealthy loneliness is, and how important community is. So my affection for the Mormon Church has increased as of late just because I've learned how difficult it is to create secular community. So that answers Britt Hartley's question.

[01:56:36] Do you feel that Mormon Stories will become more or less sympathetic towards the church and its believing members? This is Chuck. I would hope that I've become more empathetic and sympathetic. But, you know, but. But people have to listen to you. I hope I always remain sympathetic and empathetic to believers on Mormon Stories podcast and even to church leaders, because I believe everyone's doing their best.

[01:57:02] Someone asks. Chuck also asks what changes I would make. There's an upcoming episode. There's a. There's an episode I did on Cults to Consciousness, which is another YouTube channel you should subscribe to, where she asks me, if I were Mormon Prophet, what changes would I make? We're going to be releasing that on the Mormon Stories podcast. And there check out that episode where I talk about changes I would make to the church.

[01:57:28] Charisse asks, do I still believe in a creator? I believe that there's a creative force that or nature that's guiding everything. So in that sense, whether it's personified or not, I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows. But I still believe in something magical and powerful that's pushing existence in the universe and nature forward. Call that God, call that nature. It doesn't matter.

[01:57:56] Yeah, I still believe in something. I still believe in serendipity. We're almost out of time. We're like three seconds away. The instigator writes, when our book. When is our book coming out? We have made one big investment at Mormon Stories Podcast, and that's in a new book on how to navigate a faith crisis. We've just hired an editor to help Natasha, Margi and I write this book, and so we're going to base it on the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast, which you should also check out if you are in a faith crisis. There's 70 hours of free coaching on Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast@mormonfaithcrisis.com but we're turning the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis into a book.

[01:58:39] We've invested a significant amount in kicking off that book. So we hope that within a year or so that book is released. I have other books that I want to consider and I think that's kind of all that I really have that I'm going to be able to cover from the slideshow. For now, there's more questions that I was not able to answer in the comments.

[01:59:06] The way I want to end is the way I think that I began. I want to thank everyone who makes Mormon stories possible. First and foremost, please hit the subscribe button on YouTube and please follow and subscribe to us on Facebook.

[01:59:21] We want to hit a hundred thousand so that we can even have a bigger impact. I want to thank donors who make this possible. We pay everyone who is willing to have us pay us to make all this happen within our staff and our co hosts. So a thank you for the donors who make this possible and B if you value this content, give us super chats here or donate@mormithstories.org Become a monthly donor because we couldn't do this without our donors. We couldn't do this without our staff. So thank you staff and co hosts. We couldn't do this without our board and we couldn't do this without our amazing interviewees.

[02:00:00] So I want to end thanking all of them and then I want to end by thanking you, our viewers. We could not do any of this without viewers and listeners who just by liking, liking our content, sharing our content, making comments, emailing us, giving us feedback and giving us the views and the clicks that is is is your, you're the reason why we do this and and and you make all this possible. And of course a special shout out to the Never Mormons that are half our channel now. So I hope this Q and A and year interview has been helpful. There's so much we didn't have time to do.

[02:00:40] I wish I could have had staff members and co hosts come on. But we just, you know, basically Anthony told me today you need to do a year end review today and do a Q and A. So I threw it up quickly.

[02:00:53] So we did it. But thanks to Maven for making this possible. Thanks to all of you for making this possible. Thanks to the donors and the super chats. Thanks to Drew Whitney who just threw out up a super chat right now and and please check out Mormonism Live right now on YouTube. And again, a final plea for you to subscribe to all subscribe to and donate to all the creators, whether it's new on Nuance Ho Zelf on the shelf Mormonism Live Radio Free Mormon.

[02:01:29] Whether it's you know, you know, Ex Molex growing up in Polygamy Channel, you know, Nemo, the Mormon 21st century saints, priesthood Dispatches, Peter Bleakley and Mormon Civil War, all the Tick Tock creators. Please support Mormon creators not just with your subscriptions and your likes, but with your money.

[02:01:56] Think about how much tithing you paid, think about how much tithing you paid and then think about the fact that all it takes is a certain five figure or six figure sum to get someone like a bill reel or a Radio Free Mormon or Lindsay Hansen park or whomever Nemo to be able to do this full time. Or Samantha Shelley or Zelf on the Shelf or Cara Burrell. If we can get, imagine what we can do if we can get 10 and 20 of our top creators being able to do it full time. It will blow the doors off of informed consent within Mormonism and people leaving high demand religions and helping them transition.

[02:02:39] Thank you Peter Callister for the hundred hundred dollar donation. We super appreciate that. Couldn't do it without you. But if you will become donors to all of these projects that you can afford, it's going to change the game. And in the future, if I had to say one final thing that we wish for the future, it's to turn our focus to be able to help more and more other high demand religions and people exiting other high demand religions. So look for us doing anything we can to have a Mormon stories for Jehovah's Witnesses that does if it doesn't exist or Scientologists or ex or Evangelical Christians or Catholics or ex Muslims.

[02:03:20] That's something that in the long term we would love to support as well. So anyway, thanks for joining us today. I hope you found this valuable. We love you guys, you're the best. Please become a donor if you're not. Thanks to everyone who has donated. But most importantly, be good to each other, be kind to each other, support us in the coming year if you can. And we hope to see you all again on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everyone.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.