Introducing Cara Santa Maria

Host [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It is April 13, 2022 and I am so, so excited. For today's episode on Mormon Stories podcast, we are going to be interviewing someone whose name will be known to many of you and whose name also might not be known to many of you. We are going to be interviewing an amazing woman named Kara Santa Maria. Reading her bio that I stole directly from her webpage, Care Santa Maria is a Los Angeles area Emmy and Knight Foundation Award winning journalist, science communicator, television personality, author and podcaster. She is the science correspondent on National Geographic's popular television series Brain Games, as well as the creator and host of the weekly science podcast Talk Nerdy with Care Santa Maria. And the way that I got to know of Cara Santa Maria is that she also co hosts the long standing Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and she co authored the Skeptics Guide to the Universe book. But the reason why she's relevant to you, my dear audience, is that she was raised Mormon and up until I believe the age 15, she was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and courageously left the church at age 15 with at the time at least one, if not two devout parents. And we're going to get into that as soon as we bring her on. But you know, I've watched a few of her interviews on YouTube and they always touch briefly on her Mormon story, but I'm not aware of anyone really trying to kind of understand the richness and the depth of her Mormon story. And I'm not even sure she's prepared to even answer those types of questions. And I'll just say one more thing. I, I owe a debt of gratitude to my dear friend Jerry Johnson, who has been telling me about Care Santa Maria for many, many years. Jerry is an orthodontist in Bremerton, Washington. He and his dear wife Julie are two of my closest friends, Margi and I's closest friends. We visit them every year in their home in Bremerton. They've been super gracious to us, them along with Julie's sister Lori and her husband Doug Checketts, they did a Mormon Stories podcast episode as the first dual couples doing an epic like seven or eight hour Mormon Stories podcast interview. We did that many years ago. So, Jerry, you're coming back to Mormon Stories Podcast. Thank you so much for making this happen, Jerry.

Guest [00:02:29] It's great to be here.

Host [00:02:31] Yeah, it's great to have you. And Cara Santa Maria, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories.

Guest [00:02:36] Absolutely.

Guest 2 [00:02:37] Thanks for having me. So, Jerry, you're in Washington, so you're on the west coast as well. John, where are you located?

Host [00:02:45] So I'm. I'm in the heart of the belly of the beast. I am in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Guest [00:02:50] Ah.

Guest 2 [00:02:51] My sister. My sister did her mission there.

Host [00:02:53] Oh, really? Like on Temple Square, actually.

Guest 2 [00:02:56] Now I'm realizing I am wrong. She did her mission at the second most populous Mormon city in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Guest [00:03:02] Oh, there you go.

Guest 2 [00:03:03] She was in Las Vegas. Yeah.

Host [00:03:04] That's like Salt Lake City south, basically.

Guest 2 [00:03:06] Yeah, exactly.

Host [00:03:07] A little bit of sin mixed in. But, Carrie, you should know that I grew up in Katy, Texas, so I am a Texan, and I know where Denton is and I know where University of North Texas is. So reading a little bit about your background. I'm cheering you on.

Guest 2 [00:03:23] Yeah, born and raised. Left when I was 23, 24, left Texas and have probably only visited two or three times since then. I should probably pay my parents a visit. It's been a while since I've journeyed to the COVID south, you know.

Host [00:03:39] Yeah. How did you. How did you purge your. Your diction of the y' all and the twang?

Guest 2 [00:03:45] So I still say y'.

Guest [00:03:46] All.

Guest 2 [00:03:46] I'm very fond of the word y'.

Guest [00:03:48] All.

Guest 2 [00:03:48] Other languages have a plural, you know, second person. I don't know why we don't. And so, yeah, y' all is the thing that gives me away. I. I never had a twang. That's the funny thing. If you hear my family members talk and then you listen to me talk, you're like, how? But it's not like I lost it. I just never developed one. I would say I. Most people tell me I give it away when I say a couple of words, mainly insurance, because apparently people who aren't from the south say insurance, which is hard for me to say, but I say insurance and umbrella. Those are my dead umbrellas, for sure.

Host [00:04:27] Tell. Yeah, umbrella.

Guest 2 [00:04:28] Yeah.

Guest [00:04:28] Well, there's something else, too. When they do their introduction, she always says howdy.

Guest 2 [00:04:32] I do say howdy at the top of the show.

Guest [00:04:34] That's her thing.

Guest 2 [00:04:35] And, you know, it's funny because I came later to Skeptics Guide. They've been around for, gosh, 15, 16 years now. It's amazing. And I probably been with them now for like six or seven. So I came later to the show. And the show starts the same way every time. Skeptics of the Universe and the host, Stephen Novella. This is the day. Blah, blah. Joining Me this week are. And then he lists everybody who's on the show. And usually it's the five of us. Sometimes somebody's on vacation. And so I slotted in after. It was like, jay Novella, hey everybody. Or hi guys. Everybody had their little sign on and I was like, what the hell am I supposed to say? Howdy. I don't know why, but after the first time it was cemented. So howdy.

Host [00:05:12] I love it. I love it. Well, this is so fun. And I've listened to several interviews that people have done of you on YouTube specifically, and I've learned a little bit and I'm just excited to get into this. I don't expect you to even know what Mormon Stories is, so I'll just tell you, Kara, that Mormon Stories has been around. Okay, get this. I heard you talking about like a long standing podcast. Mormon Stories podcast started in 2005.

Guest 2 [00:05:39] Yeah. I think same year at the Skeptics Guide for some of one of the oldest podcasts.

Host [00:05:43] We are 17 years old, believe it or not. We have like well over 1600 hours of episodes. But the thing that I've always done, I was raised Mormon in Katy, faithful, served a mission, married in the temple, all that stuff. I was working at Microsoft in Seattle in, in my late 20s, early 30s when I lost my faith in Mormonism and realized how hard it was for people to go through a faith crisis. And so I left Microsoft, moved to Utah and started this podcast in 2005. And my, my bread and butter is long form interviews. And believe it or not, when I say long form, I mean long form. So your interview, if it's two hours, will be one of the shortest interviews I've ever done.

Guest 2 [00:06:25] So that's. Yeah, that's what Noelle, when she first came, came to me. So I have this amazing assistant that I've been working with for years and years. She's actually the sister of my best friend. She, she has been kind of coordinating and everything. She was like, okay, so they want to do like long. And I was like, okay, I can probably do like two hours. But that's. That's it. That's.

Host [00:06:43] We're super, we're super grateful. We're super grateful. No, don't worry about that. I was just letting you know that's what we do.

Guest 2 [00:06:48] So it was the same. And I hate to even evoke his name because it's a different picture and a different animal now, but back when I used to go on Rogan's podcast, it was always the same way. He was like, how Long. Can we. And I was like, two. Like, I'm doing two. I'm not doing more than two. So, yes, at some point, I have to pee. And he's like, okay, fine.

Host [00:07:04] No, we're honored. Really quickly, I gave you a generic intro. How would you introduce yourself? Or what would you add to what I said so that people can get a even better sense of who you are? Because, you know, you. I mean, I even saw that you dated Bill Maher. Like, you've. You've rubbed shoulders with and. Or been a TV star, YouTube star. You're a big deal.

Guest 2 [00:07:23] So, yeah, I mean, I. To me, here's the thing. I've worked in television since I've been an adult. I would say I was an academic first. So I did my undergrad in psych. I did my master's in neurobiology. So in 2007, after I finished my master's, I was like, what am I gonna do? I think I'll start a PhD. I moved to New York. I started a PhD in clinical neuropsychology, but very quickly realized I was like a baby. Still. I started too young. I graduated college when I was, like, 20. I started at 16. And we'll get to all of this. But I just sort of, like, dove into it and needed some growth and needed some time. And so I left my PhD program. I came out to LA, and that's when I started doing public science communication. So since about 2009, I would say I've been a public science communicator across most media platforms. I actually don't have a YouTube channel. I mean, I'm sure I have a YouTube channel, but I don't do anything with it. So I go on other people's YouTube shows all the time. But my kind of first gig and first love was television, and I could tell the story because we'll have the time, and I'll do it in a bit if you want. But I started my podcast kind of out of a TV show that was quite toxic and not good for me. And I was encouraged to start a podcast because it's something that I could produce myself and that I could manage and sort of be the arbiter of what I say and what I do, which is not the case when you're on air and in traditional television. So, you know, since I started in TV in, like, 2009, I've worked across media platforms doing public science communication, and that's sort of been my bread and butter. That's been my main gig. But the big Difference now is that in about 2017, I decided I wanted to go back to school, finish what I started. And I did a. I did a PhD. I started my PhD in clinical psychology. And so that's what I'm doing with most of my time right now. I still podcast because I can make that work with my schedule. But I am a full time PhD student. I am a fifth year, about to start my sixth year and all but dissertation and internship now. So I currently work at a large hospital here in Los Angeles as a psychotherapist in the cancer center. I'm very interested in life, limiting illness, end of life, and gerontology. And I study what we call existential psychotherapy, which again, we can get into that if you're interested. But that's sort of what my future direction looks like. I'll probably always work in TV because that's where the money is. And I think I'll always podcast because it's, it's a real love of mine. But hopefully once I finish with all of these requirements, get my doctorate and, and then go through the requirements that are required to get licensure, I'll also be practicing as, as a clinical psychologist.

Host [00:10:16] I love it. And, and you might not believe this similarity, but I started the podcast in 2005. In 2009, I started my clinical and counseling PhD in psychology, and, and I finished that in 2015. So I. Oh, so you did it

Guest 2 [00:10:30] later in life too?

Host [00:10:31] I started at age 40 and I finished at age 46. Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:10:34] Yeah. And my goal was to graduate by 40 and I think I'm just going to make the cutoff.

Host [00:10:39] That's awesome. Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:10:40] I turned 40 in October of 2023, and if all things go correctly, I will graduate August 31st.

Host [00:10:48] That's amazing. Yeah, I did the internship, I did all my clinical hours. I didn't take the EPPP because I run a nonprofit and I don't, I don't want to practice psychotherapy, but I'm fully like you. I'm a full psychology. I, like you, will be. I'm a full psychology PhD.

Guest 2 [00:11:03] So where'd you do your internship?

Host [00:11:04] I did it at Utah State University because my specialty is in the nexus of religion and mental health. My dissertation was on the LGBTQ Mormon experience. And so my, my, I wanted to focus my internship on Mormons in faith crisis, LGBTQ Mormons, mixed faith marriages, that sort of thing.

Guest 2 [00:11:25] Oh, very cool. I actually just matched at Nova Southeastern University, which is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So it's gonna be a big change for the next year moving to Florida.

Host [00:11:36] That matching process is so stressful, or at least it was for me.

Guest 2 [00:11:39] MG is horrible. And I'm gonna be 100% honest. I didn't match in round one because I shot myself in the foot. Sorry, there's like, beeping outside. I don't know what that is, but I shot myself in the foot and only applied to LA sites. But because I live in la, I own my home here. My life is here. But LA sites are probably the most competitive. And also they weren't good matches. They weren't good fits for my existential end of life.

Host [00:12:02] Florida will be great. Oh, my gosh, Florida will be amazing.

Guest 2 [00:12:06] Yeah, no, it's cool. I matched in a counseling center for older adults. So I get to do. I get to work in an outpatient gerontology practice. My supervisor's existential. I'm really, really excited about it, but it's going to be a massive, massive change.

Host [00:12:19] Yeah. Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:12:20] And then if anyone's interested, my dissertation that I'm actively working on is qualitative. So that's a big change for me because I came from neuroscience, so I didn't even know qualitative research existed. But I'm doing a qualitative phenomenological investigation of the experience of people who are choosing to die using medical aid and dying and sort of what that choice has been like for them, what the experience has been like so far and, you know, the meaning that they're finding in it. And yeah, it's an area that I think is really important, but most of the literature around medical aid and dying is interviews with family members or providers, but not with the actual individual participants themselves.

Beginning of Cara's Mormon Story

Host [00:13:03] Yeah, that's amazing. Well, brilliant. That's so fun to have to share so many things with you. So. Yeah. So. Including leaving Mormonism. So let's begin, as we always do, on Mormon Stories podcast. Thanks for that intro. And, you know, Jerry and I will just. We'll just kind of pepper you with questions here and there. But, but let's just. Let's just say, where does your Mormon story begin?

Guest 2 [00:13:29] I mean, I guess it. Conception. I don't know.

Host [00:13:32] Yeah, yeah, tell us about that. Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:13:36] From what I understand, my parents were both Catholic, because I know I've attended. I attended the funerals of both my father's father and my father's mother over the course of my life. My father's father when I was in college, my father's mother somewhat more recently within the past 10 years. And they were both very, very traditional Catholic funerals. My father's side of the family is Italian, so my dad's like a third generation from an immigrant Italian family. My grandfather was a farmer and very, very Catholic.

Guest [00:14:11] Right.

Guest 2 [00:14:11] Santa Maria, like, very Catholic. And then on my mom's side, she's Puerto Rican. She's a first generation immigra. But her family clearly was also Catholic. And from what I understand, the two of them converted together or very quickly after each other, before myself and my older sister were born. So I was born into an active Mormon, but. But a convert Mormon family. They were living in California when they met and when they dated, and I think when they converted, if my timeline is clear, and then they moved to Texas, which is actually where my father was from. My mom's from Puerto Rico and New York. She's like a classic New Yorkan. And then she went to college and kind of grew up in the. In the Cleveland area. But for whatever reason, both of them had found their way out to California, met there, converted, got married, came to Texas, had my older sister first in 79 and then had me in 83. So we were born into it. So it's all I knew. That's where my Mormon story starts. Just, it was normalized for me.

Host [00:15:15] Have they ever. Have they ever told you what. What it was about the church that was appealing to them that made them convert? Have you even had that conversation?

Guest 2 [00:15:22] Yeah, I mean, I think it wasn't like, one thing, but the thing that seems to have resonated for me when I think back to those conversations that I did have, was the explanatory value that Mormonism offers a lot of people. So especially those who are in Catholic religions or other kind of Christian sects where they believe in, like, the Trinity. And there's a little bit of complicated. God works in mysterious ways. How God be the Father, but also the Son, but also the Holy Spirit. That's all very confusing. And Mormons go, hey, we got an answer for that. And what ends up happening is they got an answer for everything to the extent that it gets pretty crazy. But some people really resonate with that because they want those concrete answers and the LDS Church offers them.

Host [00:16:06] Absolutely. We know it all. We got it all figured out.

Guest 2 [00:16:09] Yeah. Especially the men. Because I think you will find in this conversation that there will be a lot of things where I'm like, I was not privy to that information. I was just a. I was just a quain girl. They didn't teach me those things. Like, very different perspective, being a woman in the church.

Host [00:16:23] Yeah. Okay, so. So do you remember like your, your childhood years. Did you attend primary? Did you learn primary songs? Like did your family have family meeting?

Devout Mormon Childhood and Family Life

Guest 2 [00:16:35] The Apricot Tree. I definitely grew up in it. You know, my parents were not fair weather. They were devout. And so it was every Sunday I was going to primary school or whatever that was. Primary, Primary, Primary. Yeah, Y. Yeah. So it was kind of the regular services and then. And then primary. And then we also had on Wednesdays, once I was old enough was like youth, youth group.

Host [00:17:02] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:17:03] We had the missionaries over for dinner like every Monday. I guess Monday was family home evening.

Guest [00:17:07] You guys did that, right?

Host [00:17:08] Yeah, yeah.

Guest 2 [00:17:09] And sometimes we'd have the missionaries over. But the interesting thing is it's kind of a blur for me because my parents got divorced when I was like six.

Host [00:17:17] Six. Oh.

Guest 2 [00:17:18] And so I don't remember much about. And most people don't really form memories until they're around four or five years old anyway, or at least not salient ones. So I don't remember much about the pre divorce years. I know my parents both went. I know that it was, you know, structured. When my parents got divorced, my mom sort of fell off. But my dad maintained his, his faith and his vigilance. And then he ultimately remarried when I was about eight to a woman who had two daughters, two adopted daughters. So I kind of gained these stepsisters who are a little bit younger than I was. But part of the divorce agreement was that my dad was sort of like. He got. He got religion in the divorce. And so we continued that structure even after, after my parents were divorced, it was just with like a new lady and her new family and at a different house and with some changes. But for the most part my religious upbringing and experience stayed the same. I mean, I even went to seminary. Seminary.

Host [00:18:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

Guest 2 [00:18:27] We're going. When I was what, like a kid or not a kid?

Host [00:18:32] High school years.

Guest 2 [00:18:32] High school, Yeah. I was a young high school. Like I said, I graduated high school when I was like six. So I was really like weirdly young. And I remember going like in my cheerleading uniform to seminary before school, like 6 o' clock in the morning. The one good thing I'll say about seminary is that's how I learned how to drive. I had a learner's permit and my dad would actually let me drive the car there because there was like no one on the road that early.

Host [00:18:55] That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I had to leave my house at like 5:45 every morning to go to seminary.

Guest [00:19:00] Yeah, yeah, me too.

Guest 2 [00:19:01] Terrible.

Guest [00:19:02] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:19:02] It was Terrible. I slept through a lot. I think most kids did. They were just, like, half asleep. Nobody really pays attention. Except for the ones that are like, you know, those weird kids that aren't. They're not like flds. Like, we don't have that. But they kind of have that vibe going for them. Like, they're sort of wearing the puffy sleeves and they're a little, like, socially awkward. Like, those kids were always, like, away. I think it's because they were homeschooled. Like, this was the only social interaction they had. But most of the kids that were, like, normal and went to public school were like, I don't want to be here.

Host [00:19:32] Right.

Guest [00:19:32] They were all asleep.

Guest 2 [00:19:34] Yeah, Just dead asleep.

Parents' Divorce and Temple Sealing

Host [00:19:36] So as you were going into your teen years. Well, first of all, do you even remember? Because obviously, like, in Catholicism and Mormonism, marriages are a really big deal. Divorces are heavily discouraged. But in Mormonism, you've got this extra baggage, you could say, or blessing of Mormon marriages supposedly being eternal. So it's, you know, my parents also. My Mormon parents also got divorced. And so I relate to that as well. Do you remember trying to reconcile your parents, divorce, the sealing the eternal family with the Mormon theology and the beliefs? Or were you just too young?

Guest 2 [00:20:15] The narrative is strong and it goes deep. And even though I think as a kid I was a little confused about the difference between, like, the celestial and the terrestrial and the terrestrial kingdom. And I didn't really know all the ins and outs. And granted, to this day I still don't because I'm not a boy. And they don't really teach the girls. They're like, you don't need to know the complicated stuff. You just need to know how to bake cookies. And so that part, even though I was a little confused about the logistics of it, one thing I knew is that the lore, the rhetoric was my mom and dad got divorced, so they became unsealed. Then my dad got sealed to this new lady. So in heaven, she's going to be part of my eternal family. We're going to be all hanging out in the celestial kingdom. My mom's going to be somewhere else, like terrestrial telestral. I don't know, somewhere else. So I can visit her anytime I want, but she can't come see me and bask in the glory of, like, Jesus and his warmth. So there was something really gross about the rhetoric of how, like, this new lady, who I don't even know simply because she married my dad. And of course, it's a very patriarchal religion. Simply because she married my dad. They became sort of my real eternal family. And my mother, who raised me, who I'm the closest to, who I loved very deeply, who had the bulk of my custody, you know, I saw my dad Sundays every other weekend and like to like a month in the summer. My mom is the one who, you know, got me to school. My mom is the one who like took me back to school shopping, who, like, we talked about sex and drugs and boys and all the things. This woman, because she sort of stopped going and was no longer, you know, she definitely wasn't gonna get remarried in the temple. I don't even think she considered herself Mormon at that point. She's gonna be in some other level of heaven and, you know, screw her. Like, that was gross. But I think it's also the thing where it wasn't that hard for me to reconcile. And really, because I was like, that's gross, don't like it. Not sure this is for me. I think that was sort of my process. Not like I really got to figure out how to believe anyway. People often ask me, what was that thing that made you realize? And I'm like, I don't think I ever believed in it. If I look back, there was no big aha moment. I think the whole time I was trying really hard to please my parents, but in the back of my mind I was like, this is kind of bullshit, right? And eventually I got to be old enough and smart enough and self aware enough to go, yeah, this is definitely bullshit. And I think that was my Mormon story.

Host [00:22:30] Okay, so really quickly, I want to talk a little bit more about that, but before we do, you were saying that the temple sealing and the resealing kind of narrative was gross. It may have been a little bit grosser than you even knew.

Guest 2 [00:22:47] Yes, please inform me, inform me.

Host [00:22:50] The way it works in Mormonism is if first wife doesn't end up getting sealed to a new husband, the original sealing that happened remains in effect in heaven. So your dad, your dad is actually sealed to two women.

Guest 2 [00:23:11] Yeah. So this is some big love stuff over here.

Host [00:23:13] No, no, literally, if.

Guest 2 [00:23:16] Well, literally, that's what they believe.

Host [00:23:18] Yeah. No, on the records of the church, other records of the church, your mom is still sealed to dad and your dad is sealed to two women in heaven. And there's actually a rule in Mormonism where if a husband wants to get sealed to multiple spouses, he's just allowed to do that. If a woman wants to get sealed to a second husband, she has to file a request. Give all her reasons for why she wants the sealing canceled to the first husband, justify it, wait for approval, and then if it gets approved, then the ceiling is canceled and she's allowed to be sealed to a new husband. But. But in Mormonism, it to this day, in 2022, the husband does not have to do that same filing to. To take on a second wife.

Guest 2 [00:24:17] Yeah, this in. In no way surprises me.

Host [00:24:21] I.

Guest 2 [00:24:22] There's. There's a bunch of things that come up out of that for me. So the first one is the whole, like, thing, which is hilarious to me, like, eternal paperwork. So I'm still probably technically on the rolls because I haven't done that thing where you have to, like, file a petition and, like, fill out letter that is like, take me off. Because I'm like, that's not my responsibility. I didn't choose this. Like, that burden should not be on me. And I don't think I am technically excommunicated, although I easily could be. If they wanted to, like, hold some sort of hearing, I'm sure there's plenty of evidence to do so.

Host [00:24:54] But they.

Guest 2 [00:24:54] I don't think anybody has. Which means. And because I think my dad still, like, tells them where I'm at when I move and stuff, I still periodically get texts. I periodically get, you know, cookies on my door. Actually, let me see if I can find. I might have deleted it. But even here in Los Angeles, I'm gonna search for the word elder and see if that shows up.

Host [00:25:19] If, like, the missionaries have reached out to you and emailed you or something.

Guest 2 [00:25:22] Oh, yeah, texted me and said, oh, here it is. April 8, 2021. This is not that long ago. Hello, Is this Kara? Yes. Who is this? Hello, Kara. This is Elder Smith and Elder Hinsberger. We are the missionaries in your area, exclamation point. How are you doing? Emoticon, smiley face, backward. Oh, my gosh. And then I said, please don't contact me. And they said, oh, we are so sorry. Is it all right if we ask why? And I said, because I am an atheist and I do not want to talk to you. And then they said, okay, no worries. We are always here if you need anything. We hope you have a great night. So I gave them a thumbs up because I thought that was pretty cool. Like, I was like, pro. This is a pro move. Missionaries. Like, you're cool.

Host [00:26:06] And if you need help loading your U haul to go to Florida, those missionaries will show up and help you load your U haul.

Guest [00:26:13] Totally.

Guest 2 [00:26:14] I would not do that. But they would. And that's the thing. I am not that type of person. You sometimes hear about people who are like, oh, when the missionaries come, I love to argue with them and I'm like, bro, Those are like 18 year old boys. Like, they're just as indoctrinated as all of us were. They don't know they're young, they're naive, they're, they're the victims of this whole thing. Like, sure, argue with a bishop all you want, but these poor missionaries, like, yes, there is that sort of. When does the victim become the perpetrator problem? But they're still little babies. They're little babies. They don't know any better yet.

Host [00:26:47] Well, Jerry and I both serve missions, so.

Guest [00:26:49] Yep.

Guest 2 [00:26:49] We were, we were babies when you did it.

Host [00:26:52] That's true.

Guest [00:26:53] Yeah, I, I wanted to sing. Hello, my name is Elder.

Guest 2 [00:26:57] I know, right? Oh, I remember my ex boyfriend took me to that at Pantages here in la and he said I was laughing. He was like, you know when it's like the real Mormons in the audience or the ex Mormons, because they laugh at things that other people don't get in the Book of Mormon, like there's so many inside kind of. You just had to, you had to be there, you know?

Host [00:27:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let me just jump back for a second before we talk about leaving the church. Do you remember any. You know, did you ever read the Book of Mormon? Do you, you know, there's this moronized promise where you're challenged as a Mormon youth to read the Book of Mormon cover to cover and then pray about it to see if you get an answer. There's ways that they have you bear your testimony or bring out speakers or have youth events where everybody's bearing their testimony to try and get you to feel kind of spiritual experiences. Do you ever remember thinking about the doctrine, reading the scriptures, bearing your testimony, or trying to gain a traditional testimony? Do you remember any of that?

Guest 2 [00:28:00] I'd like to bear my testimony. I know the church is true. I love my mom and dad. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Which is what every small child would say when they would get up and do it. And I did that too, you know, from when I try to put my head. It's really hard to empathize with a past self and especially a child, a past child self where your frontal lobe wasn't developed and you really didn't have a lot of insight yet. So when you sort of empathize with your historical biographical narrative, one of the things that Comes up, is this. This real want to, like I said, please your parents and to do everything the right way. And so there becomes this sort of dogmatic roboticism in young children in the Mormon faith who are just following the leader and they're sort of reciting the words that they're supposed to recite and they're reading the scriptures, but the scriptures are written in the most like, un understandable way. And of course, Mormons are like staunch fundamentalists, so they don't believe in those like, cool youth Bibles, you know, that all my friends had when they were going to the Methodist church that were like, yo, dog, this is what God says. You know, like, we didn't get any of that. So we're reading like, and half the begat the inward. Like, I don't know what any of this means. And so, yes, I tried, but I think by the time I was probably old enough for it, any of it to have really resonated, I was already so suspicious and skeptical that that sort of interplay of I really want to try and have a testimony like that was an eye roll to me by then. That was like a joke.

Developing Critical Thinking and Leaving Faith

Host [00:29:35] So let's div to. You know, what Jerry loves about you and your work is just the application of critical thinking and skepticism to every aspect of our earthly existence. So can you go slow and talk about kind of the red flags that elicited your skepticism, you know, in Mormon doctrine, Mormon theology, Mormon practice, Mormon culture, and take as long as you want, because this is fun for us.

Guest 2 [00:30:03] Well, and for me, it's not a. It's not a positive thing, it's a negative thing. So it's not like, oh, yeah, how do I. How do I word it? It's not, it's not that, oh, I could make a laundry list for you of all the things that set off my alarm bells. It's that everything was ridiculous and there were only a handful of things that made sense. And so it's sort of like I mentioned before, it's a bit easy for me to empathize with my parents quest for answers to complicated religious questions because they were dedicated religious Catholics and they were, I guess, unfulfilled by the answers that they were given in their own upbringing. But in the Mormon faith, there are answers to every question and everything is ridiculous, literally everything. And I don't believe in God. That's the thing. It's not like I'm a religious person who left Mormonism because it wasn't quite right for me. I'm a person for whom literally every aspect of the dogma doesn't compute and is directly contradictory to my own personal kind of existential philosophies. I very much resonate with classic atheistic existentialism. And so when I, Even by high school, I was, like, deeply into Camus, and I was deeply into Satya and deeply into Nietzsche, and I was reading and Kierkegaard. And Kierkegaard sure is, like, religious, but kind of not. I mean, yes, but no. And I was reading a lot of this philosophy that was directly contradicting and questioning most of the. The dogmatic claims of Mormonism. So it's not really like Mormonism was something I had to say that doesn't compute. It's like religion. Theism was something that didn't compute for me.

Becoming an Atheist in Her Twenties

Host [00:31:45] So how does a girl. How does a young teenage girl in Denton, Texas, become a Mormon girl, become an atheist? Like, can you talk us through your. Your atheist awakening? Reading Kierkegaard in middle school. What? Like, that's amazing.

Guest [00:32:02] Yeah, I, I was going to ask two questions, and that is. One is, why did you. It was supposed to make sense because, you know, a lot of. A lot of people, they get through religion because, you know, it's not supposed to make sense. In fact, the less it makes sense, the more it's godly. Right?

Guest 2 [00:32:18] Oh, yeah. That's the rhetoric. Right, right.

Guest [00:32:20] And then the other one is. Yeah. Where did you. I was going to say the same thing. Where did you come across these writings? How was it introduced to you? Why? Why? Because I. I wasn't at that age.

Host [00:32:31] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:32:31] I think that there's a sort of. There's a misconception or maybe it's. Maybe it's not fair for me to say it's a misconception because this probably is the experience of a lot of people. But that just because Mormonism has, like, a fundamental vibe to it. Right. Just because it's an evangelical faith that's all about converting the masses, that somehow Mormons also don't respect mainstream public education. And yes, there are sticking points like, I don't know, evolution and climate change. But, like, my father's wife was a biology teacher. My father is an engineer. My mother is a Spanish teacher. My family really valued education and promoted education. And I was clearly a child who took to. I was very precocious when I was young, and I read just, I was feverishly read books, and I really enjoyed learning. I was in a lot of, like, gift and talented programs, and they put me in odyssey of the mind and future Problem. Solvers and all of these sort of math Olympiads and mock trial and all these really amazing. One great thing about growing up in Plano, Texas, is that I grew up, even though I grew up in a very bigoted and very not. Well, there was a lot of diversity, but only on one side of town, and that happened to be the side of town I lived in, but kind of a not welcoming community for diverse voices. Was that on the flip side of that, I grew up in an incredible public education system. And so I think that I was exposed to critical thinking, to freedom of thought early on, and a lot of Mormons managed to square that circle. But I'm not sure my parents realized how dangerous that was for somebody like me so early on because it became just readily apparent that all of the skit logical skills that I was developing and critical thinking skills that I was developing when I applied them to this one weird sort of isolated aspect of my life, it just didn't compute. It was like, wait, there's an error. Like I'm getting a 404. Like an error message when I start thinking about God. Like, this doesn't fit with all the other things that make sense to me.

Host [00:34:48] I mean, I'm trying to. So like, I, again, I grew up in Katy, Texas, a Baptist town, but a very good education. I feel very happy with my education growing up in Texas. And I remember having doubts as a Mormon high school teen and, you know, just like doing the math where I would divide the number of Mormons in the world by the number of people in the world, and I'd get like less than 1/2 of 1%. And in my mind, I'd be like, wow, we really are lucky, you know, and wondering whether that's just some sort of confirmation bias. But.

Guest 2 [00:35:21] But also, don't worry, because they just couldn't. They just would, you know, baptize everybody after they die. No, I know there's a lot more than you're calculating.

Guest [00:35:27] No, of course Bill Maher is going to go, go unbaptize them.

Host [00:35:30] That's true.

Guest 2 [00:35:32] A, how Mormons have the authority to do it, or B, how Bill has the authority to undo it.

Guest [00:35:37] He had a wizard hat on.

Host [00:35:39] But what I'm saying is that, like, even though I had doubts, a good education in Texas and doubts, none of my friends were atheists, none of my friends were, or at least I didn't know that they were, if they were, I would have been afraid to even really seriously entertain the position or the identity of atheist. And I'm trying to Wonder why you felt comfortable doing that. I'm gonna suspect that part of it was that your parents were converts. And I guess by the time you're a young teen, your mom had left the church. And so that's.

Guest 2 [00:36:13] Yeah, but she didn't ever talk about religion. I think she and my dad had an agreement that he was allowed to kind of be that force in my life. So there wasn't questioning. I mean, my mom was very accepting of whatever I said or whatever I did. She really promoted and loved me. But my mom also was struggling at the time with quite a bit of mental illness and instability, and so she wasn't really very present. And that really was my father's role in my life. You know, I think part of it is constitutional. I think part of it is a personality thing. You know, it's sometimes hard to say exactly. You know, know it's nature and nurture. We are our parents, children, but we are also our own people. And I think for me, you know, I do sometimes compare it a little bit to coming out as a member of the LGBTQ community. For some people, they're never out among their family or among their co workers. For some people, like some of my trans friends and colleagues or some of my non binary friends and colleagues, colleagues, they can't help but have outed themselves because there's their aspects of their personality, their aspects of their. The way that they present themselves in the world that become quite obvious to everybody. It's just so central to who they are. And I think for me, that's what atheism was. I didn't. I couldn't not be an atheist. Like, it was just part of who I was. And to lie about it to the entire world felt psychologically damaging to me.

Coming Out as Queer and Telling Family

Host [00:37:42] Do you remember having the conversation with your dad or with schoolmates? What was that coming out process like for you and what age was it?

Guest 2 [00:37:50] Horrible. So I came out when I was

Host [00:37:52] 15 as an atheist. While you left the church.

Guest 2 [00:37:56] Both right, Left the church, atheist, all that good stuff. I had been questioning very likely. It's hard to put my finger on it, but I had very likely been that difficult black sheep daughter who was constantly asking questions and who was difficult and is like, shh, quiet. We'll deal with that later. You know, getting in arguments during my, like, temple, not my temple recommend. What's it? Is it a temple recommend even when you're just going to baptize for the dead?

Host [00:38:21] Temple recommend. Yeah, yeah.

Guest 2 [00:38:22] So. And I did that a couple of times.

Host [00:38:24] You did baptisms for the dead.

Guest 2 [00:38:25] Oh, yeah. I flew under the radar there. Like, I got in. I just lied, you know, because I didn't. I didn't buy any of it anyway, so I definitely did that. And I remember being grossed out by the meetings with the bishop and him being like, do you engage in heavy petting? And I was like, what year is it? Heavy petting? It's gross. And, like, just. You're an old man, and you're asking me these really, like, disgusting questions. I'm a young child who is a girl. Like, everything about this is wrong. But I. You know, I do remember the conversation I had with my dad. There were multiple conversations leading up to it. It didn't happen overnight where I'd ask him questions or I would say, this doesn't sit well with me. I really need you to hear me.

Guest [00:39:05] I'm trying.

Guest 2 [00:39:06] I'm your daughter. I'm hurting. I'm struggling. I need you to hear me. But when push finally came to shove, there was that conversation where I said, I don't believe in this. I don't even think I believe in any of it. And this is. I'm living a lie. It's dangerous. It's detrimental. I don't feel good about myself most days. I'm incredibly depressed. You see me struggling with mental illness. And I think a big part of this, you know, a lot of it was. Is still neurobiological, but a lot of it was this, you know, trying to live a lie. And I was like, I need you to hear me. And, you know, his response was, until the age of 18, as long as you live under my roof, I have a moral obligation to God to force you to go to church.

Guest [00:39:54] Wow.

Guest 2 [00:39:55] So I was 15. I was very well spoken. I was precocious. Like I said, I ended up actually leaving high school at 16 and starting college. So only a year later. And I said, you know, I'm pretty sure if we actually want to spend the money, which none of us do, because none of us are in a financial position to do it, I could go petition before the judge in a custody hearing and make my case, and he would grant mom full and total custody. And it's really sad that I felt like my dad put me in that position because even though I was, you know, I fancied myself mature, I wasn't. And even though I was. I was intelligent, I didn't have any wisdom or life experience. And really, I feel like he had me shoulder the burden of a parental decision that he should have taken on. So when I said to him, maybe I won't be under your roof anymore. He basically said, okay. And I didn't talk to my father for many years. He actually cut off child support as well.

Host [00:40:51] Can you do that?

Guest [00:40:52] Wow.

Guest 2 [00:40:53] Yeah. So he didn't cut it off when I told him I was Mormon. He continued to pay, make his child support payments since when I was 15. But when I was 16 and I started college, I decided to rent a room from a friend of mine in. I went to the local. So long story short, and this is, like, not that important, but I tried to drop out of high school. And they were like, you can't do that. You're like a star student. And I was like, I hate it here. I'm leaving. And they were like, we'll make you a deal. You have two credits left to graduate. You have a math. No, no, I was done with my math. You have a science and an English. If you go to the local community college and both semesters you take, take at least one science course and one English course, plus two other courses so that you're taking a full load, we will grant you your high school diploma after a year, but you'll have already gone to college for a year. And I was like, deal. So I went to the community college. Collin County Community College is what it was called. I don't know if it still is, but I was like, I don't want. My mom had just remarried to, like, a new dude. I was like, I don't need a new, like, weird dad figure in my life. Like, everything about this is weird. I'm going to move out. And she was like, okay, I had a job, I was making money. So I went and I rented a shitty room in a shitty house with a friend of mine. And she happened to live with her lifelong childhood friend. Turns out he was like a meth dealer. So it actually wasn't a very good environment. But at the time, we didn't know this, but because he was male, because there was a guy living in the house, my dad said that that was like, morally bankrupt and he cut off child support. He was like, you're clearly an adult and can take care of yourself, so you don't need this support.

Guest [00:42:17] And I was like, no, you were how old?

Guest 2 [00:42:19] 16. Like, I wasn't an adult, but I was, you know, I was paying my

Host [00:42:24] own rent, so I'm so sorry.

Guest 2 [00:42:27] Yeah. But, you know, this is a thing that I think a lot of kids, whether it's coming out as, as atheist, coming out as trans, coming out as gay, Coming out as, you know, queer. They have to grow up really fast and face kind of the mean streets because very often their parents, parents face them with this decision that is, it shouldn't be the decision that a child makes, which is, well, I personally as an adult am not mature and responsible enough to be able to handle how to parent you. So you're now on your own. And the sad thing is all that does is, I mean, in some ways it breeds resilience, sure, but it also breeds trauma, it breeds resentment and it breeds danger because it's actually quite unsafe for a lot of kids when they leave home that early. I'm very lucky that I didn't deal with abuse or trafficking or any of the things that could have befallen me. And I'm very lucky that I was already 16 and you know, starting my college education and you know, I have a lot of the privileges that were afforded me from growing up in a middle class family. Most kids in this country aren't that lucky.

Host [00:43:37] So I'm sure you've seen like cult documentaries like Going Clear or the Vow or Wild Wild Country. But the reason Mormon Stories podcasts exists is because for so many people that leave high demand religions, even people raised at affluent homes with high education levels and with intact families or non divorced parents, however you want to phrase, can still drive people to suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety and you know, major, major problems losing your faith. Having been raised in a high demand religion, I almost am wondering whether it was easier for you in only one way, that you hadn't been fully indoctrinated. You didn't serve a mission, you didn't get married in the temple, you didn't go to BYU, one of the BYUs, and you never, it sounds like you never fully internalized Mormon doctrine in theology and that in some sense that was actually beneficial.

Guest 2 [00:44:44] Yeah, I mean it's, it's so hard to know, right? Because I don't know if there is an alternate universe in which I would have. Because even if I had done all that, I don't know what if the buy in would have been there or if I would have been going through the motions, which is not really my way. You know, it's like I only have so much energy and so much stamina and I think because I'm somebody who's struggled with, with mental illness, like I've struggled with major depressive disorder actually now I think it persistent depress depressive disorder as a better descriptor, which used to be called dysthymia, you know, I'm in therapy. Like it comes and go. I've been in therapy for so long and I myself am a therapist. So now I only see a therapist like once a month for check ins because it's just, I don't, you know, I, and I get a lot of support and supervision when I see my patients. Anyway, I digress. You know, as a kid and I was pretty untreated, you know, I wasn't taking meds and I was, I never attempted suicide and I never cried for help with any sort of suicidality, but I was a cutter, you know, I was, I was really engaged in destructive behavior. I did a lot of drugs. I, you know, I was still high achieving and high performing and I always sort of did well in school and maintained that aspect of my identity. But I definitely was not making the best decisions. And so I do think there was some dire and detrimental consequences. But it's hard to tease out all the variables and know how much of that was the being trapped and then leaving and how much of that was sort of the realization that it was all a big ruse. And you know, the ambivalence that you have when you realize that your parents not only are fallible, but are very likely wrong and entrenched in their wrongness, that's not an easy thing for a young kid to take either. So I think it's just different, different kind of difficulty that kids who leave early face. Because my dad was still in it, my sister was still in it, my stepmother, and I should say my dad is still in it, my sister is still in it, my stepmother is still in it. And both of my stepsisters, one of them is very Mormon with a Mormon husband and Mormon children. The other one also left the church a little bit later. And then my dad and his wife decided to adopt three boys. I say somewhat more recently, but they're all grown now, so it was still a while back, but they were older when they adopted them. So I don't think they pushed the narrative as hard with them. It's not easy to do. And so now the family is a little bit more mixed. And I have a brother who's gay. So that's a whole other fun, interesting dynamic.

Guest [00:47:24] Okay, so I have a question. So, you know, I'm listening to your story. First of all, from, I think from John and my point of view, we have, have the deepest respect for people who figure this out as a teenager because the two of us, we went, you know, I, in the same way, I feel like I was well educated My parents were really big into education, but I was able to compartmentalize, you know, and just, this is religion, this is the other stuff that I'm learning. And so it's very impressive to see, you know, a young 15 year old have the guts to go to their parents and, and tell them something like that, because I can't imagine doing at that age. My sister, my younger sister did that. And at the time, I thought she was just being rebellious, but I have the deepest respect for her now because of what she was able to do. But I'm curious, in the moment that you were talking to your dad, if you can remember, what were you expecting? Were you hoping to get some sympathy from him? Were you hoping that maybe he would ease off because he knew that, you know, you were thinking for yourself? Or did you expect him to act the way that he did?

Guest 2 [00:48:39] I think it was, you know, six and one, half a dozen. Like, I think there was a part of me that was like, you know, this guy's entrenched, and I'm really nervous that he's gonna stand firm, which is ultimately what happened. But I think there was a part of me that was like, you're a reasonable, intelligent person who raised me to think for myself, and I know you respect me. And I still have those kinds of conversations with him to this, this day. There was a long period where we didn't communicate. There was definitely. Our relationship was fraught. I do think we rebuilt it. I think there's a fair amount of mutual respect that we have now. But my dad is still Mormon and he is, you know, he voted for Trump. Like, he definitely has personal views that are so discordant from my own. And sometimes we engage and we engage mutually respectfully, but there are these massive chasms of understanding that are so frustrating because I'm like, you're a smart guy and you're empathic and you're loving, and how can you think so differently about such an obvious problem? And one of the things that we struggle with is there will be times where I have to say, dad, this is what I study for a living. This is what I do. I'm educated in this area, and I know you respect that about me. And he'll have to take a breath and go, you're right. Like, I do respect your point of view because you worked really hard to have it it. And I. It doesn't come lightly. Like, he doesn't think I'm stupid. You know, he just thinks I'm wrong. And then it's on the Flip side, it's the same way. I don't think he's stupid. I just think he's wrong. And that becomes a really interesting dynamic.

Guest [00:50:17] Yeah, I. You know, like I said, we. I. I left the church later in life, and one of the things that crossed my mind when I had decided it was not true was it would be really nice to have a parent right now, you know, someone to talk to, someone to, you know, get some support from. And I. I had that feeling of I could call my parents, and I thought, that's not going to work very well. You know, that's. But just to have somebody at 15 have the guts to do that, that's. To me, that's just amazing.

Host [00:50:48] Yeah, it is.

Guest 2 [00:50:48] Well. And, you know, I think part of it is a personality type which is enjoys being alone and enjoys a lot of kind of like, personal, intellectual pursuit. I'm very often alone, but I'm very rarely lonely, and that's part of my personality type. But I think it's also the advice and the narrative that we often have for our LGBTQI plus colleagues and friends, which is that we can't choose our born family, but we can choose our chosen family. And so there are always going to be people who will accept you and love you for who you are, and those are the people we should be surrounding ourselves with and celebrating our existence with. But that is harder to realize when you're young, for sure.

Guest [00:51:36] And did you have experiences when you were younger with LGBTQ friends or.

Guest 2 [00:51:42] I mean, I had that classic, you know, again, I was born in 1983, so I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s. I graduated high school in 01. So I'm just kind of saying all that to give an idea of, like, when my formative years were. So I grew up in an era where, and I'm not gonna lie, I was fully a culprit. Like, I was culpable of this, where gay was a slur. Like, it'd be like, that's so gay. Don't be so gay. Everything's so gay. And I did that because that was the norm. And I look back, and I'm horrified. You know, I wasn't throwing around the N word. And my best friend through all of elementary, middle, and part of high school was black. I mean, and I think I understood race relations better than I understood kind of LGBTQI affirming friendships. But I did develop friendships with a handful of lesbians in high school. That helped me start to kind of explore my own views about relationships and I hold some kind of non normative views about relationships and, and there was, you know, there was a period where I had to learn what that means and learn what tolerance is and what intolerance is and that just because everybody else is doing it and just because it sounds normal doesn't mean it's nice or it's fair. And I think I'm lucky that I learned some of those lessons earlier, but still not early enough. Like I don't think I was being nice in elementary school and middle school when I was saying that's so gay. Especially not knowing if the person sitting next to me hearing that was like struggling with their own identity.

Host [00:53:21] Sure, sure. Kara, let me ask you. You know, there's so many things that a religion provides. It provides identity, meaning, purpose. It can provide identity, meaning, purpose, spirituality, community, you know, resolutions about death in the afterlife, life. It can be a family, support, friends. So you're 16, 17 years old, you've been raised in a high demand religion, but now you're freaking living on your own at age 16, 17 and trying to build a life without religion. And I'm telling you, I know 40 and 50 year olds who have graduate level degrees, six figure salaries, and they're having a hard time figuring out, out how to find meaning and purpose and joy and identity and spirituality now that they've left a high demand religion. You had to put that all together almost, I use a metaphor of like homeschooling. Almost on your own. Right. Can you, can you talk about. And later I want to talk about, you know, community and secular communities and

Guest 2 [00:54:28] you know, I'm not the best person.

Host [00:54:30] No, that's fine.

Guest 2 [00:54:30] You know, we can engage in that, but I'm definitely not that person who's like, I go to Sunday assembly or whatever it's called.

Host [00:54:36] Okay, forget that. But how did you talk us through how you built a new life out of the, out of the rubble of, of leaving Mormonism and disappointing your dad and then becoming ostracized from your dad and being cut off financially from your dad. How did you build a happy, healthy life without religion?

Building a Meaningful Life Without Religion

Guest 2 [00:54:56] Take us through that healthy early on, I'll say that, but.

Host [00:54:59] Oh, that's okay. Tell, tell us about that.

Guest 2 [00:55:01] Yeah, I mean, I, like I said, I struggled with depression, but I struggled with depression when I was a child. And I think back to examples of going to therapy when I was a child. And of course one of the most detrimental, I think, and pernicious problems was that my parents early on sent me to Mormon therapists, which I find Disgusting. Like, I have distinct memories of going to therapists who actively tried to indoctrinate me, which is a massive conflict of interest. It's, it's very harmful to vulnerable children who are opening up about their mental health issues. So, I mean, that's an aside, but no, I don't think it was happy and healthy. What I will say is I, I found myself enamored with philosophy. I found myself, and I do think philosophy and religion occupy, depending on the type of philosophy you're studying, and politics to some extent, occupy similar shelves in people's minds. It's sort of. There's a reason that, you know, there is a staunch Christian conservative right movement within the Republican Party. There's a reason that, yes, Democrats are by and large also Christian, but that you tend to see secularism more on the left is because they, they do kind of go hand in hand. And I think philosophy and even to some extent literature follow in those footsteps. So one of the things that, that brought me meaning was doing the kind of work that religious scholars do, but from a secular perspective. And I really value and admire and respect chaplains and, you know, people who have PhDs in religious scholarship, because I think they do that kind of work. They study the teachings and the meaning and they view it from multiple positions and they think about it from both a secular and a sacred position. And they say, you know, how does this impact one's daily experience, one's place of meaning and purpose in the, in the grander context, how does it impact their, their community engagement? And like, these big questions, like you said, about what happens when we die, what is the purpose of life? Religion. Yes, that is the attempt is to answer some of the questions also it's an attempt for like, social control. But I think philosophy is the more secular and intellectual pursuit of very similar questions. So in a way, maybe that was a guiding principle for me. I think also my atheist early on was like, pretty firebrand. And I was like, just pissed, you know, but that softened so much over the years and, and the way that I define my atheism now. I saw some chat, I'm noticing in the chats, some conversations about what atheism is. And I think it's important to realize these are all constructs that are human described. And so, you know, sometimes we have to make sure we're working the same operational definition. And for me, atheism is simply atheism. It's not theism, it's not knowing that there is no God. It's just not believing in God. And I know early on you asked a question actually which was like, how, how does one become? Or how did you find, or how did you. I don't remember how you worded it, but like becoming an atheist when you're so young. And I'm like, pretty sure I was born an atheist. Pretty sure everyone's born an atheist and then they're indoctrinated into religion. And that's really how I view it. Atheism is just the lack of belief. It's not an active belief in non religion, it's just a lack of belief. And so if you really want to hash into it, I follow there. There's a book called Atheism the Case Against God by Smith. And the argument there is everybody's agnostic. Nobody actually knows because these are things that we can't have scientific evidence for because by definition scientific evidence is physical, right? It, it's, it's the investigation and interrogation of physical phenomena. And when we talk about religion we're dealing with the metaphysical, which by definition is not priv. Like our scientific tools are not privy to if it even exists, which I don't believe it does, but some people do. But regardless, that's not the point. The point is, is nobody knows. So even staunch fundamentalist religious people are just theistic agnostics. I tend to be an atheistic agnostic. I operate as if there is no God, but I don't know any better than anybody does. And I think agnostic is, is a redundant label because everybody is agnostic. And so I drop it and I say I'm an atheist because I think that's the most descriptive. But that's not, I wasn't. And early on I was a little bit firebrand about it. Religion is child abuse, you know, And I was reading Dawkins and I was angry and now I'm like, Dawkins is a dick and that's horrible. And, and you know, I work with people who are dying and the people that I work with come from all walks of life and all religions and I fully respect them. And I, I have a constructivist view when I work in psychotherapy, which is that who we are, what we believe, is determined by our experience. We all have a lens and that lens is something to be respected and applauded. So when I work with a patient who is an end of life patient, I meet them where they are, I ask them the questions that need to be asked so that I can at least attempt. I'm never going to fully understand their perspective. I don't know what it feels like to die of cancer. I'm never going to know, even with the most beautiful descriptions. But I'm going to try my best to empathize with who they are, where they are, what they believe, what they think, and then operate within that frame in our psychotherapy treatment. And that's. That's my view, you know, and I. I believe that's how we should operate as human beings in the world. We're all different. We should respect that.

Atheism, Morality, and Personal Ethics

Host [01:00:47] I love it. I love it. Okay, so this is super fascinating. Several of our viewers and listeners are saying, I love this discussion. She's very intelligent. Yes. She's brilliant. That is true. So. So, Kara, when I'm contemplating your construction of who you've become and you learning to thrive as an adult without a religious community and without maybe some of the parental support that others of us get, I'm thinking about several dimensions that I want to ask you about. So, the first is morality. Of course, there's this trope, this dumb argument that atheists have no morality. I Remember calling a 1-800-Number-Bible Christian line once where the guy's like, why don't you cheat on your wife? And I'm like, well, because I don't want to. But he's like, well, because we don't

Guest 2 [01:01:37] believe in life after death. They're always like, why don't you just kill yourself? And you're like, wait, that's. That argument doesn't make. Why don't you just kill. You think you're going to heaven.

Guest [01:01:45] Exactly.

Guest 2 [01:01:46] I don't understand.

Host [01:01:47] Yeah, so tell us how you constructed your morality, and I'm gonna ask you about some other domains as well. But first, you know, you're a teen. You said you. You tried. You know, you tried drugs. You.

Guest 2 [01:01:58] You.

Host [01:01:58] You're. You're living with a potentially a meth dealer. Like, you could have gone a lot of different ways. I don't think you would have gotten to where you are by being. By mistreating people and abusing people. So. And you. You. You were awakening to LGBTQIA issues in your teen years, which shows a certain level of ethics and compassion. So how did you. Let's start by having you talk to us about how you constructed a sense of morality independent of a Bible or. Or any type of theology.

Guest 2 [01:02:27] Yeah, I don't think it was an active choice early on. I think that I eventually did start to grapple with those topics in a more meaningful way and in a more intellectual and kind of emotional way. But early on, I Think I was just like trying to get through. It was survival mode. How do I, you know, make it day to day? And I do think I cared about being kind and I think I cared about being equitable. But I don't think it was something that I was, you know, diagramming in my mind. By the time I think I started having that sort of what we call metacognition, right, Thinking about thinking kind of self awareness, introspection, reflection on those issues. I think a lot of it was guided by the, the works that I read. And don't get me wrong, they are also fraught. One of my most influential philosophical sources is Heidegger. And guess what? Heidegger was a fucking Nazi. And this is something that a lot of existentialists have to grapple with. He wrote and spoke in such beautiful and meaningful passages and then in his personal life he was a devout Nazi, which does not square with almost anything he wrote. And so you have to literally read everything within that context and take that, not just that grain of salt, but that real. You have to grapple with those issues. And so, you know, this stuff goes deep. But I think that when it comes to my personal morality, there are some, some relatively simple, I don't want to call them rules, but things that I think about. I think the golden rule is something that is, is meaningful to a lot of people. I think it works in religion and it works outside of religion that you treat other people the way you'd like to be treated. And I think the important part is even if you found yourself in those situations, I think that another thing that I use quite a lot in therapy with my patients, and this may or may not speak to morality, but it more speaks to kind of goal oriented behavior in life is the serenity prayer. Which is funny because that's super religious. And for my non religious patients, I always say just take the word prayer out of it. Let's call it the serenity poem. You know, lop off the God grant me at the beginning, because that part's not really relevant. But this idea of sort of, of sitting with grace when you have no control when things are happening to you. And this is very relevant obviously with the patients that I work with who have cancer, but also I think in a lot of life circumstances, really sitting and letting it wash over you and feeling that feeling of I don't have control and being able to cope with that, but also effecting change in places where we can affect change. And then of course, having the wisdom to know the difference. And that's really, really the hard part. And this takes me to a lot of existential psychology writings, especially. One of the most fundamental parts of this sort of world that I work in, which is called Logotherapy, was written Viktor Frankl.

Host [01:05:30] Right? Yeah.

Guest 2 [01:05:32] And so. And Man's Search for Meaning is an exceedingly religious book, and there are absolutely aspects of it that I don't agree with, but there's so much wisdom in his writing. And. And one of the things that's so meaningful to me, and I've mentioned this in a couple of other programs before, but I talk to my patients about it a lot. Very often we hear these big takeaways from Viktor Frankl, which are sort of like, even when all choice is taken away from us, we still have this one remaining choice, and that is to change our perspective. Like, even, like. Because he. If you haven't read Man's Search for Meaning, it's his experience as an already working psychiatrist when he was. Was captured and brought to Auschwitz, you know, he was. He was a Jewish psychiatrist during World War II. He survived and was able to develop Logotherapy and continue that journey. But he lost his entire family, all of his friends, and he witnessed so much death and destruction, and it was terrible. And he writes, the experience of how did these people who did live, what was in them that helped them? That's not to say that the other people. People have it. People are to die, right? Because they're murdered, because they're tortured, because they're starved to death. They're gonna die regardless of how much, you know, hope they have. Like, let's, let's not think that that's the argument, but the argument is those who did, who did live, what kept them going, why didn't they just roll over? And so for him, a lot of it was about perspective and about making these active choices to change your view. But everybody loves to quote those quotes about making meaning, even amongst the difficult background. And these are all really meaningful and empowering. But one of the things that's not often quoted, that I like to quote with my patients who are struggling, is the second half of a quote that's usually lopped off, which says something along the lines, and I'm paraphrasing of, but to suffer without, let's see, to suffer unduly. To suffer when one can affect change and when one has a solution to a problem that takes them out of the suffering is not heroic, it's masochistic. And that, to me, is really profound. It's one of the most profound pieces of wisdom that he offers in his book. Yet we very rarely talk about that component of his argument. So, you know, I think the cool thing is the work that I do now is very much a culmination of my experience being raised Mormon, my experience coming out as atheist, my experience grappling with philosophy, grappling with meaning and purpose. And now all of a sudden, I get to do that with my patients, but I get to really say, where are you at? What do you believe? And within that framework, how can we focus on making meaning and purpose in the limited time that you have left in your life? And what does that look like to you? And to me, that's just like, oh, I have the best job in the world. It's amazing. I love it.

Host [01:08:18] I love it.

Guest [01:08:19] Wow.

Guest 2 [01:08:20] Well, I don't know if I answered

Guest [01:08:21] that's great question at all.

Host [01:08:23] No, I read Viktor Frankl at byu. I loved it. And.

Guest 2 [01:08:26] Oh, I'm glad they taught that at byu.

Host [01:08:27] Absolutely.

Guest 2 [01:08:28] It's Jewish, so I'm glad. And by the way, for the person who is asking if this is live, it is live, and I'm going to show you why it's live. I'm really thirsty. I'm going to pour more water. Not going pee. That's why I'm doing this by the microphone.

Host [01:08:38] That's awesome. Thank you, Kara.

Guest 2 [01:08:39] Asmr okay, so.

Finding Meaning, Purpose, and Happiness

Host [01:08:42] So, Kara, I'm dying to ask this next question. So. So in addition to morality, two of the domains that religion, you know, tries to provide answers for deal with meaning and purpose. And, you know, one of the, you know, we already mentioned the trope that, like, people would say to an atheist, why. Why do you even want to live? Life's life sucks. Too bad if, if. If there isn't an afterlife, if there isn't a heaven, if there isn't a God, I don't even want to be here. So what religion does is it tells you who you are and it tells you what your purpose is and why you're here and what you need to do. If you are not religious, then you've got to figure that out for yourself. You add to that the complexity of chronic depression. I imagine that that wasn't a simple thing for you to sort of figure out. Why should I even get up? Why should I even make an effort? Talk us through how you came to terms with meaning and purpose in a life where I'm guessing you believe that when your life's over, that's it, and you become dust, as they say. How did you talk us through that? Process for how you, you, you, you came to find meaning and purpose for you?

Guest 2 [01:09:54] Well, I think I was forced to do it. You know, that's, that's. I, I think the kind of major unstated premise there is that when people are hook, line and sinker deep believers, their, their meaning and purpose is laid out for them and all they have to do is ascent. All they have to do is say, yes, okay, yes, believe, yes. And I'm going to tell you why I believe and I'm going to reinforce my belief and I'm going to bear my testimony and I'm going to tell you. All the things I experienced reinforced to me that, you know, what this set of ideals, this set of principles, this set of moral values and this set of narratives, stories about what happens, you know, in the afterlife that were given to me, I'm just going to assent to them. And I didn't have that privilege, right? So I had to go, ooh, gotta figure it out for myself. And against the backdrop of depression and of difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, and now I'm realizing, and just now in my late 30s, of some health issues that contribute to excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue. And I'm realizing that my iron is low and my B12 is low. And there are questions about, about some of my circadian issues. And so, like, against this background of these active neurobiological forces that are saying, like, don't get up in the morning. I had to make the decision to get up in the morning because what's the alternative? And I think basically what we're grappling with here is the same question that so many of the patients I work with who have cancer tell me. They're always like, it's so annoying because every friend of mine goes, I don't know how you do it. I couldn't do. I don't know how you do it. And they go, what is the alternative? Like, of course, what do you mean, how do what? Like, I'm just living because that's, that's the only thing there is to do. And when it's so funny when people go, well, you could just lay down and die. And I'm like, I don't think people realize that if you just lay down and go, I'm going to die now that you don't actually die. Like, that's not how life works. And so how do people do it? How do people get up in the morning and go and get the needle in their arm and get the toxic chemotherapy and how do they sit under the proton beam and get the radiation therapy, and how do they go and have this really scary operation? Because there's no alternative for them. They have to do it it. And so they find the strength to do it. And I think that's the case for anybody. Every single person struggles with their traumas. Every single person faces intense adversity in life, and they figure out how to get through it by breaking it down into manageable pieces and by, you know, for some of them, it's about compartmentalizing. For some of them, it's about saying, I'm just not going to think about this and I'm going to do it. But whatever the coping mechanism and strategy that worked for you do worked. That's how you did it. And I think that, you know, that's been the case for me, whether it's been in establishing my morality or living my life, you have to do it. So you figure out how.

Host [01:12:52] But, but, Kara, I'm sure, you know more, more than most of us, that there really is this increasing epidemic of death by suicide or, or attempts at suicide. And so for many people, they, they, they. They don't see having to make it work as their only option. And, and it seems like more and more people, and even, even disturbingly, in Utah, there's. We sort of. We have something like three times the national average of, of. Of suicide completion here in, in Utah, especially youth and especially LGBTQ youth. And so for, for many, they, they don't see it as. They have to figure it out. They just kind of say, I. I don't think I want. Want to bother. I'm sure.

Guest 2 [01:13:35] Yeah. And, you know, I have a complex view of suicide as a mental health provider. And I will say, you know, we're talking about a sensitive issue right now. So I want to give out not only a trigger warning, but also, as, you know, as somebody who feels very strongly about suicide prevention, if you are struggling with that right now, there is a hotline that you can call. It's 800-273-8255. This is a real issue, and it's. It is a disconcerting issue. And I feel strongly, I will say this right now, that individuals who are young, who are not yet neurologically developed and who don't have the capacity to make decisions for themselves, individuals who are struggling with mental illness but have not yet received the appropriate treatment and would otherwise, with appropriate treatment, be able to live up to fulfilling and beautiful and meaningful life, just like I do because I'm in active treatment that, you know, in, in cases where individuals like that die by suicide. Well, any suicide is absolutely tragic. But of course those cases are highly preventable. There are sadly situations in which suicide is very likely not preventable. There are people for whom mental illness is a terminal disease similar to certain physical illnesses. There are people who have intractable and treatment resistant mental illnesses, who are of sound mind and who have capacity who ultimately make that decision for themselves. I'm not saying that I think it's the right decision. I'm not saying I think it's a good decision. But I do honor and respect that it was their decision. And I do think that that that part of the conversation is not often had enough. That you know, consenting adults who have done everything and tried everything and still ultimately made came to a decision for themselves that, that there should be more of a conversation about respecting those decisions. And this obviously comes on the tails of me being somebody who advocates for medical aid and dying. So in certain states. 11. Or is it 18. Oh gosh, I need to look back at my. More than 10, my dissertation.

Host [01:15:41] More than 10.

Guest 2 [01:15:42] I think it's 10 states in one jurisdiction. So 11 because D.C. also has legalized it in America. Individuals can choose medical aid in dying if they are certified. The certifications are pretty similar to hospice. So they're certified to have an illness that will ultimately lead to their death and they've ch. And they have less than six months to live. And so they can, you know, work with a, with a physician to get a prescription for a medication that once they ingest will end their life. They have to self administer it. And it is a legal and supported choice. I think it's also a very moral choice. And I think it is disgusting that there are places in this country where people don't have access to that option. And so my views on end of life are colored by that. And so, you know, I don't think I'm always in the min. In the majority in, even among mental health circles who sort of have a view of like prevention at all costs. And I agree until we're taking rights away from somebody, you know, know. So it's, it's complicated.

Host [01:16:46] It is, it is. Thank you for that, for that education of an issue that is we have a lot to learn and we have a lot of progress to make socially. So thank you for talking about it so thoughtfully and so sensitively. If you don't mind, tell us what conclusions you made about what, what gives life meaning and purpose for you?

Guest 2 [01:17:09] For me personally, yeah. I think It's a moving target. It's. We often talk. So I utilize some interventions. I'm like, pointing to my bookshelf because I have a couple books by, like, by Breitbart and by different researchers who do some meeting centered therapy that's more manualized, which I use to some extent. But most of what I do is not. Not as manualized. And the. The sort of. There are a lot of different conversations and different. Different formulas for how to approach this. But one of the things that resonates for me is this idea of there's the small. There's like, purpose or meaning with like, a lowercase m or p. And then purpose or meaning with like a capital M or P. And the capital M or P1 is sort of like. It's often described as. As on the horizon. Like, you're never actually going to get there. You're always just moving towards it. Like, the horizon just keeps being farther away the closer you get to it. And I think meaning and purpose works same way. It's a lifelong process, and it doesn't really become apparent until you have hindsight. And it's just sort of like that. It is very humanistic, right? Very existential. This is what it means to be alive. That said, I also think that there's the lowercase purpose or meaning which comes in our engagement. So whether it's, you know, with play, whether it's with love, whether it's with work, whether it's with education, whether it's with our pets, food, dance, song, you know, all of the different things that resonate for individual people. Life is the aggregate of those meaningful and purposeful experiences. And, you know, the small stuff is the stuff that collectively becomes what most people, when we're doing life review therapy, are reflecting on those trips that they took, that time when they felt, you know, an overwhelming feeling of love, that those experiences that they had, that poem that resonates for them, you know, as simple and small as they might feel. I think for me, meaning and purpose comes from that very Buddhist view of finding yourself not catastrophizing about the future and not ruminating about the past, but being very present and experiencing the here and now. And ultimately your life is a collection of those moments, and those moments are powerful and meaningful.

Guest [01:19:41] I was just going to say, you might remember back when you were in Primary or whatever, they probably talked a little bit about the difference between being happy or having joy in your life. Do you remember them distinguishing that kind of thing?

Guest 2 [01:19:55] No, but I'm sure that. Let me guess. Because I don't really remember. Happiness was worldly and it was better.

Guest [01:20:01] Yeah.

Guest 2 [01:20:02] Like eating chocolate or about buying a new dress. And joy was about connecting with Jesus or basking in his light or something.

Guest [01:20:08] Yes. And if you don't have. So, you know, that's why you can look at a neighbor who doesn't have the same belief as you. They look happy, but it's not joy.

Guest 2 [01:20:17] See, that's so gross.

Guest [01:20:20] But here's the interesting thing though. I think that comes from that idea that there's a difference between the two, you know, and it's. And somehow like you were saying, saying this long, long game, I guess you can say goals that you have in life or something that you look forward to, you never actually achieve that that somehow brings you joy. Whereas you eat chocolate and it makes you happy for a moment. Right. Whereas it seems like in reality happy is happy and happy is always temporary. Right. There's always.

Guest 2 [01:20:53] And these are just words. Words, right, exactly. These are just labels that we invented. So, yeah, we can make a distinction between happy and joy if we want, or we can say they're literally the same thing, or we can say one's a shortened version of the other one.

Guest [01:21:06] By the time it gets to your brain, is it different? Right.

Guest 2 [01:21:10] I mean, ultimately we are a collection. And that's like, I think the part that's really hard for a lot of people. We are a collection of individual experiences. And you know, there's only so many neurotransmitters and there's only so many things we can feel. We have these dopamine rushes, we have the serotonin effect, we have a norepinephrine effect. And so this is the kind of stuff that's not fleetingly neurological. This is the fundamentally human stuff that we're talking about. Poetry, art, language, music, meaning, purpose, philosophy, these aren't fleeting neural experiences. We can't map meaning in the brain. We can't map profundity in the brain. We can induce a sort of sense of awe. Like there are some kind of neurological correlates that we can point to. But ultimately that stuff is meta to a neurological experience. This is greater than ourselves. It's greater than the moment to moment. It is the. The culmination of a life well lived. And you know, there's a lot of, I think, profound writings from individuals who have grappled with these topics quite a lot. One of them that is very meaningful to me is Irvin Yalam. If. No, if you haven't read any Irvin

Host [01:22:29] Yalam, he's the best. He's the best.

Guest 2 [01:22:31] Yeah, he's the guy. And he recently wrote a book. His wife recently died utilizing medical aid and dying and they co wrote a book together before she died. He's also on the brink, like he's not a young man and his, his mind is starting to go, especially his memory. But he wrote something along the lines of fear of death is directly proportionate to regrets in life. And so his view, and I think there's some truth to this, but it's never the whole story, is that that if we don't act, if we aren't in the moment, if we don't have those experiences and we spend our whole life afraid and resistant and in denial and refusing to experience whether we call it happiness or joy, that those are the people who very often on their deathbed are so resistant to death and so afraid to go because they have this kind of unrealized love life. I have seen people who died very young of debilitating disease who were incredibly fulfilled when they died. I've seen people who died in active denial that it was happening and their lives were not fully, not very fulfilling for them. I don't think it's the whole story, but I think it is part of the story and I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.

Host [01:23:55] Beautiful.

Guest [01:23:56] So what, what I'm getting from you there is that it's kind of the smaller experiences that you have. Is that, that what people are talking about when they're at the end of life?

Guest 2 [01:24:06] I think it's, it's the experiences whether they were, you know, the birth of their child, which is, I think most people would say, is pretty big, or whether it was that one time when you were sitting and looking at the sunset and you had this moment of profundity. Heidegger often talks about two different modes of being. He talks about the kind of ontological mode or the more existential mode and then the normal mode of being. And so in the normal mode, we're sort of in our day to lives. We're caught up, we're watching the news, we're going shopping, we're like gossiping. We're experiencing a lot of these more kind of like worldly things. And in the ontological mode, we are in this depth of thought. We're thinking very philosophically. We're grappling with death, with meaning, with purpose, with kind of the four givens of existence that Yalam lays out are fear of death, meaninglessness, loneliness, and freedom and responsibility. That these are sort of the, like, great existential things that we grapple with as human beings. And what Heidegger says is that we can't stay in the ontological mode very often because it's overwhelming to us. So these big, intense experiences that happen when we get diagnosed with cancer, when we lose a loved one, when we have a big promotion, when we have a serious car wreck wreck, when we lose our pets, you know, these things that really kind of catapult us into this ontological or existential mode. We can only handle it for so long before we slip back into the normal mode. Because the ontological mode is incredibly intense and it can be beautiful and meaningful, but it's also full of sorrow and it's, it's, it's too much. And so I don't, you know, I think it has to be an aggregate of the small things because we can only withstand, understand so much of the big stuff. We can only be in it for so long.

Guest [01:25:57] So here's what's interesting about that. I would, I would say that if you talk to somebody who left Mormonism, for instance, later in life, I think they find themselves in that mode, the ontological. Is that what you said?

Guest 2 [01:26:11] Yeah. So we call it, we call it a boundary experience. So leaving Mormonism is a boundary experience for you that forces all of these thoughts and feelings. Yeah.

Guest [01:26:19] And you do find that it is too much to handle.

Guest 2 [01:26:23] It is, it's overwhelming. You need relief.

Guest [01:26:25] Yeah. You stay in that too long and you can drive yourself, you know, it's just not a good thing. So you find that people, you know, they, they wear out either, you know, John will see this. People say, okay, see ya. I'm out of here. I've been a Mormon Stories follower forever, and I have to move on.

Guest 2 [01:26:47] Right. Like, I don't, I don't need to dedicate as much time to this anymore. Ye.

Guest [01:26:51] Because it, it can, you know, it's, it is deep. You know, when you, when you question a belief system that you've had your entire life and then your whole world gets turned upside down, it's deep. And John will tell you, everybody becomes a therapist and a philosopher when they leave. Yeah, because they're forced to, like, question, why did I believe this? How does the mind work? Why, why, why are we humans doing this? And they, they tend to, you know, study it a little bit or listen to podcasts, you know, that, that, that talk about those kind of things. And, and it is, it is deep. And sometimes you do think about it too much. Yeah.

Guest 2 [01:27:34] And I think one of the Sort of unstated premises in psychotherapy. And just like clinical psychology as a whole is that if we grapple with these things on a more regular basis in a manageable way, we soften their impact and their effect on a larger scale. And so when I talk about fear of death, especially for individuals who like, aren't actively dying, like people who don't have a life limiting illness, but they just have a crippling fear of death and it's, you know, it's affecting their, their ability to function because they're so anxious about it. There's this paradoxical thing that actually talking about death, thinking about death, sort of the, the Carl Sagan and ask. Shining a light on dark corners, right? Science being a candle in the dark, like trying to understand something that is this monolithic scary boogeyman that's hiding in the shadows, the minute that we cast light on becomes less scary to us and we're able to grapple with it more. And it's the same thing. Almost every psychologist through the years has talked about that. Whether they're talking about anger, whether they're talking about abuse, whether they're talking about trauma. It's like the more we grapple with these issues in a meaningful, safe and almost like manageable way, the less they have this intense impact on us in this dark corner of our mind that we can't access. And so it is somewhat paradoxical that going towards the fire might actually help us not get burned. But that does seem to be the case. I'm sorry, I was looking behind me before because I'm trying to find this one passage in this one book that before, before we end all of this, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about. So keep talking. Cause I can do it.

Host [01:29:09] No, I was just gonna add, Kara, that that was the main message from the movie Inside Out. You lean into depression if you wanna get out of depression. If you want a chance at escaping depression, you're probably not gonna escape it by avoiding it or suppressing it or running away from it. But many of our emotions, including anger, including grief, you lean into it as a way to process it to get out of it.

Guest 2 [01:29:34] Grief is such a great example. Bereavement, you have to grieve. Somebody in the chat just said, I mean, exposure therapy is a way to treat phobia.

Host [01:29:40] That's right.

Guest 2 [01:29:40] It is the way have these managed and meaningful interactions with the thing that scared you to prove to yourself that it is actually safe and that you can actually overcome it. And that's Sort of what a lot of psychotherapy is about. So I. I read a really beautiful book. Not that recently ago, but I reread it from time to time. Time called Existentialism is a Humanism. I guess you can't really see that. By Sartre. It's actually a Sartre. That's so American of me. Sartre. It's actually a lecture that he gave. And there's a lot of good context around the lecture, like the arrow when he gave it. But he describes atheistic existentialism in a really beautiful way. So I was hoping I could at least read a passage to help illuminate something that informed my point.

Host [01:30:32] Please. And then I do want to change topics just quickly and follow one more different strain, if that's okay, Jerry and Kara. But yes, please do read. Kara, please.

Guest 2 [01:30:41] Hold your thought. Did you write it down?

Host [01:30:43] I got it. I'm sorry. I got it.

Guest 2 [01:30:44] Okay. You got it.

Guest [01:30:46] All right.

Guest 2 [01:30:48] So he's talking a little bit about religious existentialism for a while. He's talking about these different historical views of God, historical views of God that philosophers grappled with, even sort of like Voltaire and even Kant's views of God and of course the Christians and sort of these. These Christian philosophers. And then he took to kind of say, this is where I stand. He says, atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more consistent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence. This is a really fundamental phrase in. In existentialism, existence precedes essence. A being who exists. Sorry, a being whose existence comes before its essence. A being who exists before he can be defined by any concept of it. That being is man, or as Heidegger put it, the human reality. What do we mean here by existence precedes essence? We mean that man first exists. He materializes in the world. He encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself. If man as existentialists conceive of him, if man as existentialists conceive of him, cannot be defined, it is because, to begin with, he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive of it. Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be. And since he conceives of himself only after he exists, exists just as he wills himself to. To be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism. So this idea, you know, the, the Christian view is that essence precedes existence. We're developed in God's image and therefore we are kind of stuck. And whether we're talking about original sin or whether we're talking about expectations of morality or whatever, we're kind of made to follow this conservative view, this like, let's not change, let's do things the way they were because that's what, how God made us. And of course the existentialists, the, the atheistic existentialist came out and they go, no, no, we were thrown. And they actually call that concept thrown ness. I did not consult with anybody before I was born. This happened with no choice of my own and I had to wake up to it and go, holy shit, what is this? I didn't agree to this. Okay, I, I guess this is where I am now and I have to make it work for me. And that's really what they mean by existence precedes essence and all of the philosophical concepts that follow that. That has been sort of a guiding force in my life even since I was a teenager. And so, you know, you can make meaning of that if you like.

Host [01:33:36] But that's beautiful. Thank you, Kara. Okay, so, so let me, I'm going to ask you a pre question before I ask you the big question now that if you had to complete this sentence, I Cara Santa Maria, do Skeptics Guide to the Universe? And I'm a science educator and I'm getting a PhD in clinical psychology. Because how would you complete the sentence?

Guest 2 [01:33:58] Ooh, the answers to all of those are different.

Host [01:34:00] Okay, then give three answers. But then I've got a follow up question. That's the big question.

Guest 2 [01:34:05] Okay, I'll be quick. Why do a lot of these things precede earlier things? So why do I do science communication? Because I think it fundamentally matters to a thriving and functional democracy. We are a flawed democracy right now. And most of that is because of the steps that have been taken systematically by, by American leaders, whether they were executors or whether they were legislators and even to some extent judicial leaders, to sow distrust. To sow distrust in institutions, in media, in science, in knowledge and to undue regulation and monetary investment in education, critical thinking, news that's not tied to income generated. You know, there's a very capitalistic kind of thread that runs through a lot of the things that we do that I think are fundamentally immoral. So why do I do psychom? Because it's my way to Counteract those powers that be that I think are. Are immoral. And it's my way to act, be a moral actor in the world. Um, why do I do a podcast? Because I was working on a TV show with a horribly sexist executive producer and who like, gaslighted me. And I thought that I was terrible and I thought that I sucked at my job and that everybody hated me. And when I finally realized that no, I was just really being gaslighted, I was like, fuck this noise. I'm going to do my own show and nobody's going to tell me what to talk about. And if they don't want to listen, they just don't have to. And that's what talk nerdy is. I do skeptics guide because I believe in their mission. And they asked me to and they offered me money and I said sure. And then, since then, I become a part of the family, weirdly, sadly. Why do I do clinical psychology? I think there's a part of me that always wanted to finish what I started. There's a part of me that will never feel fulfilled unless I got the PhD, which is such a gross thing. But it's very common, I think, in academics. But also there's. From a purely practical perspective, I don't know how long I will be employable as a woman on television. And I hate to admit that, but that is the reality of our youth obsessed culture. And so I can't rely on such a feast and famine income. Like, and I saw it during COVID I was screwed during COVID I barely worked on that aspect. Luckily I was already doing my PhD. So for me, clinical psychology made the most sense because I knew that I wanted to have a source of income in the future. I knew I wanted to still be my own boss. I knew I wanted to be freelancer and do all the things that I love to do. And then luckily I chose correctly because I absolutely love the work that I do. It brings me so much joy and meaning. And now I'm like, I can't believe I waited this long to, to be trained in this area and to do this.

Host [01:36:51] As they told me, you can be a psychologist at 40 or not be a psychologist at age 40, but you're still going to be 40 either way. So you might.

Guest 2 [01:36:58] Exactly. And I think back and maybe you have this same experience just. John, I would have been horrible at,

Host [01:37:04] like, I would have if I was

Guest 2 [01:37:06] 22 years old and trying to do the work I do now. Like, I would have had no business talking to people who were dying about their. Are you kidding me? So I'm glad that I went back when I did, because I don't think I would have been an effective therapist otherwise.

Host [01:37:19] Yeah. Okay, well, here's the big question that I kind of want to end our discussions on. And, Jerry, I hope you're okay with this, too. So, you know, what I tease from much of what you've communicated is that you care about humanity. You care about human progress. There's a strong humanistic bent to your psychotherapeutic approach and just to your life's work and your life philosophy. So you care about the human experience, and you care about education. You believe that evidence matters, that the scientific method matters. You believe that inquiry matters, skepticism matters, matters. And you believe in searching for truth and improving humankind. And if you think about kind of your intellectual awakening, think about 9 11. Think about what started the New Atheists was sort of like, hey, religion has been dominating the world for way too many millennia. Maybe it's gotten us to where we are now, but certainly there are better ways. And so what you see is Dochin's, Hickory, Hitchens, Harrison and others starting to really go at religion and say, hey, we can do better. And, you know, I would have thought in my faith, crisis happened right around 911 as well. And I've been doing this podcasting stuff for almost 20 years now. I would have thought in 2022 we would be in a very different place in terms of humanity. Now I'm contradicting myself because if you look at the Pew foundation reports, we all know that the religion is on the decline in the Western world and that the nuns. The rise of the nuns. Yeah, the rise of the nuns. Now, having said that, I still would have thought that religion would, you know, that your dad, that my parents, that my sister, that so many people in Utah would have, like, really figured out in this case that Mormonism is not anywhere close to what it claims to be, and certainly not reasonable and certainly in many ways not ethical, and they would jettison it. But you've got a very resilient, you know, institution that is religion that is still so has such a grip on the United States in particular, but on humanity in general. And then very specifically in the United States, you almost have this retrenchment of religious power and of influence that so influences political discourse and social progress, et cetera. So you spend a lot of time dissecting bad thought, pseudoscience, et cetera. What is your analysis of why in 2022, Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins and others, why we haven't made more progress in helping people let go of unhealthy, unfounded dogmatic religious beliefs and start moving more towards scientific evidence based mindsets. Why is religion still having such a grip on humanity? Give us your analysis.

Why Religion Still Has a Grip on Humanity

Guest 2 [01:40:27] You asked in that context. You're like, why hasn't Hitchens and Dawkin and because they're assholes. Like, I'm gonna be honest, like they're assholes. These guys are important and you know, big fan of Hitch and I knew Hitch and like, you know, respecting the dead here. But like he was not nice and neither was Doc. Is Dawkins I've completely written off because he's a morally bankrupt human being. I used to actually really respect him before I understood who he really is as a person. And then Harris is, is a different animal altogether. He often gets lumped in with them, sadly. But I do disagree with some of his kind of political stances. But fine, whatever. That's more of an intellectual debate than a moral one. And I know that's a simple answer and that doesn't really answer your question, but the truth is it takes all types. So although I'm glad that people exist in a movement that have these very kind of firebrand and staunch views, they only serve a very particular purpose and they're only going to reach a very particular type of person. And sadly, I think from a social justice perspective, they're actually, actually bad for the movement because they are by definition resistant to a diversity and a plurality of voices and opinions and they're not terribly tolerant people. And for me, the goal isn't an atheist culture. The goal isn't an atheist society or community. It's a free thinking culture. I think religion is meaningful for a lot of people and it has its place. I think fundamentalism and institutionalized, structured social control is disgusting and horrible. Horrible. And when you mention Mormonism, I think it more often falls within that category. And so I, I do agree with your premise that there's something that we need to continue to do. But I, I disagree with your premise. When you say, you know, why in 2022 are we still here? It's like, well, I didn't expect us not to be like, I'm citing, you know, satyr. I'm talking about people from 50, 50 and then 100 and then 200. And sometimes some of these readings are from 300, 400 years ago. They're saying the same, like, this is not new. You know what I mean? And so if anything, I think we are making progress, as you just said. I think as, as MLK said that, and I always butcher this quote, the moral arc of history bends towards justice. And I think that we are seeing more free thought, more free thinking. But when that happens, the strong men, the dictators or the wannabe dictators, the individuals who have their death grip on the power structure that maintains sameness and views, literally believes that when black people, women, women, gay people, people who come from different backgrounds and have different voices start to be heard and start to have a vote and a voice that matters, that it somehow disenfranchises the white male CIS Protestant majority, those people have a vested interest in maintaining power. And so I was just talking to a climate reporter today for Talk Nerdy. It comes out in a couple weeks of, of weeks. And one of the things that I was saying that still gives me hope, even though it's all about perspective, because it could very readily make me despair, is that the moneyed interest, you know, let's say in the oil lobby is massive. It's huge. The machine is overwhelming. They're all about buying politicians, they're all about lobbying, they're all about spending hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain a very agenda driven narrative. But why do they have to do that? Because we still work in a representative democracy and that is their only way to maintain power. Because they know that if individual people become savvy and they vote their conscience, that they don't stand a chance. And that's the thing that gives me hope, is that as people are enlightened and empowered and have a voice, that we are so much stronger, stronger even than the interests and the power grabbers who have held on with their death grip for hundreds and thousands of years. And that's what revolution is. It's about maintaining that plurality of voices and elevating the different people and not becoming cult of personality and following one individual person. And so I have hope that we're going to get better, but that's always going to allow for a religion, religion that's always going to allow for culture and tradition. I'm not looking forward to an, a religious society. I'm looking forward to a plural society. That's, that's the, the future I want to live in.

Host [01:45:25] And I, and I love that. But I, I just want to just follow on and ask like I've got friends who, who think the, that Fauci is an evil man and that the v, these are educated, smart, kind, good people. They think Fauci is the most evil man on Earth and that the, the vaccine was a scam. They think that the election was stolen. They think I've got a friend in Russia, a listener to the podcast, who thinks that Putin is sending peacekeepers into Ukraine to give out care packages and blankets because Ukraine's killing their own citizens and that Ukraine is killing their own citizens. So I thought that as the rise of the nuns would happen and a secularism would start to advance, that people would move into more rational, healthy, you know, grounded worldviews. But what I'm seeing is kind of this QAnon sort of culture where people are embracing conspiracies, they're leaving religion, but they're embracing other weird and even more damaging conspiracy theories that have real tangible impact on public policy today. So, so I, you don't. And I like this because I want to be optimistic. So you are not feeling as much of the concern or even the pessimism that, that I've been feeling, you know, the past few weeks. I, I'm hearing you say, no, I, I, I do.

Leaving Religion and What Fills the Void

Guest 2 [01:46:47] But I think, I think for me, it's about understanding the parallel structure here. When you leave religion, what are you filling that with? You're not filling it with rationality. You're not filling it with logical positivism. That's not the equal and opposite to religious religion, even though that seems to be the argument that a lot of firebrand religion, firebrand atheists like to tout out. When you leave religion, you have for, for many people, a, a void of awe and a void of wonder and a void of meaning and a void of purpose. And you have to fill that with something that matters to you. It's not going to be filled with rationality. And the truth is rationality and logical positivism and scientific skepticism is not the arbiter of your moral conscience. And to expect it to have that power, I think, is a recipe for disaster. People have to also be emotional beings. They have to also find meaning and purpose. And whether they define that as spiritual or not, I could give a shit. What matters is that they don't confuse the lack of religion with logic, because there are plenty of people out there, there who are a religious, who are logical, but who are horrible human beings. And I don't want to be those people either. It takes all, all of these things to have a thriving society. It takes meaning, purpose, value, equity, egalitarianism, mutual respect, and, yes, logic and reason and evidence of based policy. But I would argue that the premise that people who believe in QAnon are actually utilizing Logic and reason too, because they're not, they're something. They may have left religion or maybe they're still religious, but that critical thinking component is, is not well developed for, for them. And I ultimately think that they, they sadly are victims. You know, the anti vaxxers during this new wave of the COVID vaccine, the QAnon conspiracy theorists, these are victims of intentional campaigns to, to sow distrust, to break up certain parties, to basically induce chaos during Democratic proceedings. That, you know, we know that we know that QAnon as a conspiracy theory really just caught on because it helped, you know, continue the narrative that they are evil and we are the good guys. And if when you look at the sort of Russian anti Democratic smear campaigns and the bots, and you know, you look at the evidence that actually came out of a lot of the formal reviews of this, they were doing it on all sides. It wasn't like they were saying the Democrats are horrible, the Republicans are awesome. They were also being like, the Republicans are horrible, the Democratic Democrats are. All it was was to make people hate each other and become more divided and become more entrenched and to become less rational, less reasonable and less emotional and less empathetic. And so for me, if, if I could magically wave a wand and give everybody on the planet something, it wouldn't be rationality or reason, it would be empathy. I think that would solve a lot of our problems much more than critical thinking. I would like to see that come next, but I don't think I would prioritize that.

Host [01:50:17] So why don't you do a podcast on empathy?

Guest 2 [01:50:20] I'd love to. And I try, I try to touch on it. I've often thought about what my future will be as a psychologist and whether I'll kind of do a secondary or move out of talk nerdy and into an existential, more thinky, kind of wonky podcast. But I don't know if I'd have an audience for it. So we'll see.

Host [01:50:38] So.

Guest [01:50:38] So Kara does tend to be the more empathetic of the rogues, I would say. I think they all are really great. But she does, she brings out that don't forget the little guy thing. Right. I mean, she's always there.

Guest 2 [01:50:51] I say that I think they're all beautifully empathetic in their way, but I think I'm much more of a social justice oriented. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's a big part of what I do. It's what I study in school. That's my concentration in my PhD and I don't think it's either or. I think it's both. And I.

Guest [01:51:07] So I was just thinking, because sometimes I'll describe ex Mormons as being free, rational radicals. You know, like when you have a free radical in your body, it's just looking for something to react with. And they are just looking for something. It's like, I just lost my religion. I want to just give me something. And, and it's scary to me. In fact, the idea of having a friend or a family member lose their religion actually worries me quite a bit because I think, okay, what are you going to react with? What are you going to grab onto? And, and, you know, you mentioned, like, QAnon is not being logical. The problem is they are being logical, just not quite enough. Right. So it's like they are using logic, they're using creativity, they're using a lot of our brain that we do use to come up with really good ideas. They just aren't testing those ideas.

Guest 2 [01:51:56] Yeah. Maybe I should say they're not being scientific or skeptical.

Guest [01:51:59] Yeah, but. And you know, and I, I was. There was one thing that, on your, on the skeptics podcast, you guys were talking about that, and that is that a person who claims to believe in science tends to be more apt to be fooled by pseudoscience. And that's because, and I, and it's the same thing. Like, somebody leaves like a. The Mormon Church, for instance, and then like, what do you believe in? Well, I believe in science. When someone says that, I go, oh, that's, that might not be good either because now you've just, just, you know, does that mean everything that says that it's science?

Guest 2 [01:52:34] You're gonna. Yeah. And what does that even mean? Because science. Are they saying, I believe in the body of knowledge has produced, or are they saying I believe in the process? Yeah.

Guest [01:52:44] Yeah. So I, Yeah. So it's, you know, that's something that we, you know, certainly you notice is that, that people will, will jump into something else. And, and that in itself is, is. Can be scary too.

Guest 2 [01:53:01] And John, you know this. Who. Where do we, as therapists or even researchers, when we encounter a client, a patient, you know, whatever is the way that you define it in your practice, who is struggling with severe mental illness, you know, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, something like that. And we're thinking about outcome measures and we're thinking about prognosis. What gives us the best prognosis? It's not really the severity of the disease, although that is a part of it. It's. Do they have social support? Do they have resources available to them? Do they have, you know, resiliency in their life? And so by definition, leaving a group means entering into a void. And so the hope is that there is a community, there is social support. And I think now, now it's better than ever because there are chat rooms and there are support groups, and I mean, the Internet completely changed things for people that they can start on that path to finding what their new life looks like and what their new supportive group is. But I think it's also important to remember there are people in your life, even the most entrenched Salt Lake City lds, you know, people whose, like, most of their life revolves around their church. There are people at work who aren't Mormon. There are people, you know who aren't Mormon. And those people could be resour. There are people who you have been friends with in your life who, you may not believe this, but they don't believe in that. And so leaning on them during that period can be really empowering as well.

Host [01:54:34] I love it.

Guest 2 [01:54:35] Yeah.

Final Questions and Closing Reflections

Host [01:54:36] Well, I promised we'd keep you under two. So, Jerry, because you made this happen, I want to give you one last chance for a quick question, and then I want to give us a chance to wrap up. So, Jerry, did you have any other quick thing you wanted to ask? Because I don't want to.

Guest 2 [01:54:49] I don't want to keep going.

Guest [01:54:50] I noticed that there's some people who are sending little messages. I love Kara. I love Skeptics Guide and everything. So I do want you to just really quickly tell us how you got into that, because it's really interesting. But also, I just want to put a quick plug in for you.

Guest 2 [01:55:07] Sure.

Guest [01:55:09] And by the way, you're my favorite rogue now, just as of today, this interview.

Host [01:55:15] Oh, put it over the top. Yeah.

Guest [01:55:17] So you can tell the other guys. I mean, they're off. Awesome. But just complete. I'm just sitting here listening to you going, this is so awesome. So. But, you know, the Skeptics podcast was a big part of my leaving the church. Not it wasn't the cause of it, but it really helped me unravel a lot of things. And it was actually another podcaster that had mentioned it on their podcast and said, you know, I listened to this podcast. I'm like, oh, I gotta listen to it. So I completely devoured the last 10 years of that. And. And. Which was really fun to do because you guys forget all the things you talked about, but when you.

Guest 2 [01:56:00] I don't remember them. The very next week, we get emails and people are like, when you said. And I'm like, I said that.

Guest [01:56:05] Yeah, exactly.

Guest 2 [01:56:06] Okay.

Guest [01:56:07] And I'll listen to you guys forget something. I'm like, you guys just talked about that and then I'll think about. About it. No, that was two years ago. Yeah, for me it was last week.

Guest 2 [01:56:13] But yeah.

Guest [01:56:14] Anyway. But it is for those out there who are trying to unravel basically reality. You know, you have this religion that you're questioning or you're coming out of and you're asking yourself, what. What does it. How do I figure out truth? How do I figure out what is real out there? And so we were talking about QAnon and other things that. That are out there. There are people claiming to be using science all over the place. How do we know when it's real? And to me, listening to the skeptics guide has been a huge way to just kind of go, oh, okay, I get it. You know, it just. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of, of putting things through the test. Yeah. And it's not easy.

Guest 2 [01:56:59] It's not, you know, foolproof, and it's not overnight. But I would say that. And if you don't have the time to dedicate of a lot, like, hopefully you'll listen to sgu, but if you don't have the time to dedicate to, you know, our massive back catalog, the book actually distills a lot of that down. So in a really kind of manageable way, like, these are your cognitive biases, these are the errors that we make in thinking, the distortions. This is how you can counteract them. And yes, you know, not everybody's going to be a scientist, so how do we, how do we value or weigh good versus bad evidence? We're not all going to be perfect at it, but there are some shortcuts that we can use and we try to teach some of those things.

Guest [01:57:38] Absolutely. In fact, I just read the book this last year. Last year, actually. And for someone who's. Who's watched the podcast, the book is basically everything you've ever talked about in the last 20 years. It was. Yeah. But I thought about other people and think, oh, I want other people to read this. You need to read this book. You know, so it actually is a really good way. I. My. One of my little. I don't know if you call it a mantra is that if you don't. If you don't learn how the mind works, you're destined to be fooled by it.

Guest 2 [01:58:10] Oh, yeah. And that's that's what Steve often talks about when we, when we describe neuropsychological humility. Like unless we have that metacognition where we are thinking about thinking and realizing all the ways that our thinking can go awry, we'll never have the humility to know that we're wrong. And then it's that done and crude cougar, you know, problem that we all think you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest [01:58:34] No, I, but I, it's. I just, I just want to plug your guys's podcast to everybody out there really is. It's not, you know, and it's a, it's not a Mormon podcast. Right. It's not a religion.

Guest 2 [01:58:47] It's not. We never talk. We almost never talk about religion. I mean, we're all atheists on the show. I think I can say that. But we all have wildly different political views. And so the one thing that I would say about the difference between SGO and Talk Nerdy, I mean there are a lot things of different differences. Talk Nerdy is a long form interview show, kind of like this one. SGU is very formatted and segmented in its current new science news and Skepticism. But one of the big differences is that we have an editorial policy on SGU that we don't really talk about pure politics. Right. Because we also don't want to turn certain people off that have these views that are, that in no way relate to scientific skepticism. Now we do talk about things that are in the political realm when they actively, you know, climate, climate change. Of course we have a point of view on that because our point of view is informed by scientific skepticism. But very often people are surprised when they find out that we are all over the map politically. And I'm the most open about. I'm always like, I'm a hardcore lefty. I'm left of left. And everybody else is like, oh, I don't know about that. Like I'm not. And so on Talk Nerdy where I do these long form interviews, granted, they're all over the, you know, different topics. I just interviewed a woman about her book Miseducation. I interviewed a guy about the social lives of animals. I'm just looking at the pile of books on my desk right now and what I've talked about recently. Talk about black holes, talk about everything. But I go there in a philosophical and social justice and emotional way because to me the intersection of science and politics is fundamental to the conversation. And so that's a much bigger part of Talk Nerdy than it is of SGU also. It's so small Talk Nerdy. I think I get a tenth of the listenership of S to you. So if you wanna, if you wanna subscribe, it would be helpful. Yeah.

Host [02:00:32] Well, Carol, we will for sure include links to your book and your podcasts and your website in our show notes and we wanna encourage our listeners to support you.

Guest [02:00:43] I'll show you something though.

Guest 2 [02:00:44] Okay. Yes. Oh, are you wearing your sg? That's one of my favorite SGU shirts too. That's like one of the ones I rock on a regular basis.

Guest [02:00:51] And I almost got a Carra Santa Maria. I think it was a socks that had your little cartoon face on it.

Guest 2 [02:00:57] I have those. Those are available for sale in my store online on Talk Nerdy. So go to talknerdy.com love it, love it, love it.

Host [02:01:04] So Kara. Yeah. Tell people what, what URLs or, or domain names or social media handles. They are so many.

Guest 2 [02:01:12] So I mean, if you just google my name, I think I'm the only one. So that makes life a lot easier for me. And it's very lucky that my parents gave me a unique name.

Host [02:01:19] We have, we've had a Cara on the podcast whose name ends with an H, but it's C A R A without an H at the end, right?

Guest 2 [02:01:24] Yes, C A R A with no H. Santa Maria. And so I'm Karasanamaria.com but also talknerdy.com takes you to my website and yeah, like if you google me you'll find all the good stuff and even I don't. This is a whole other aside, but I noticed that a couple people in the chat so I'm going to give you a nod who listen to God awful movies. I sometimes help out my friend Eli Bosnik and Heath Enright and no Illusions on their show God Awful Movies where we watch watch a bad Christian movie and talk shit about it the whole hour or longer than an hour. And Eli has a tendency to buy URLs and redirect them to me whenever there's an inside joke. So there are also some. I think iloveskinbooks.com takes you to my website. Don't quote me on that, but definitely karasanamaria.com talknerdy.com the skepticsguide.org like these are the different places where you can find me and you know, just flex those Google skills because pretty easy. All my social media handles are really easy to find.

Host [02:02:23] Beautiful. Well, number one, Jerry, we can't thank you enough. You're a dear friend we can't thank you enough for making us aware of Kara Santa Maria and for your persistence in helping to make this show happen. Plus, you've been a dear friend. So, Jerry, thank you for that.

Guest [02:02:39] You're welcome.

Host [02:02:39] And Kara Santa Maria, thank you for shining your ex Mormon light so brightly, even though you don't really advertise all the time publicly that you're ex Mormon, we know about you and you inspire us. And your brilliance, your wit, your wisdom, your intelligence, your kindness and compassion and empathy is truly inspiring. I've had several of my listeners write in the comments that this is one of their favorite Mormon Stories episodes ever. So thank you for being willing to spend time with us and for who you are.

Guest 2 [02:03:15] Oh, absolutely. And thanks for the opportunity and thanks for everybody who is listening and chatting and engaging and making this possible. It's been a blast.

Host [02:03:24] All right. And if we could ever help you, I hope you won't hesitate to reach out.

Guest 2 [02:03:27] Absolutely.

Host [02:03:29] All right. Thanks, Kara Santa Maria. Thanks, Jerry.

Guest [02:03:31] Thank you, Kara. Thank you, John.

Host [02:03:33] Give our love to the family. All right. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. This is so great. Again, go to the Show Notes to be able to click on all the links to Sarah's wonderful programs and offerings. And again, we couldn't do this without your financial support. So for those of you who do support us financially, thank you. For those who don't, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. It means the world. You can also send us some super chats over YouTube. You can donate. Click the little dollar sign and you can donate to us through YouTube. You can also click on Facebook, you can click on the stars feature, send us some stars. All of that helps to finance our nonprofit. We're transparent in our finances. We spend all of the money on the mission of the nonprofit. And all we want to do is help provide informed consent to Mormons around the world and people investigating Mormonism and to provide healing and growth for people in a Mormon faith transition and to help people who leave Mormonism find happiness and joy outside of it. We are grateful for our never Mormon listeners as well, and we just want your feedback. So please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with your feedback. Please comment on YouTube, comment on Facebook like us, and subscribe to us on TikTok on Instagram, Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube and tell your friends and family and give us positive reviews on the the Apple podcast app. We've got haters who give us one star reviews just to be mean. They don't even listen to the podcast so we need you to help bring our review average up by giving us five star reviews. Also Mormon Stories podcast, Facebook page and on Spotify. We just appreciate good reviews anywhere any. Anyways, so grateful for your support. So many great things. We've got Sandra Tanner on Thursday talking about polygamy and Doctrine and Covenants section 132. We've got Maven coming up on Friday and we've got several weeks booked out of amazing interviews and programming. So please stay tuned on Mormon Stories. So many good things ahead. Thanks for your support. Be kind to each other, be good to each other. Follow truth and wisdom and science, but most importantly, importantly have empathy as Kara taught us today. You guys take care and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks everybody. See ya.

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