Welcome and Pre-Show Corrections

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories) podcast. I am one of your co hosts for this evening. I believe it's June 22nd. Carah, what's the date today? I need your help.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:00:13] It's the 21st.

John Dehlin [00:00:14] 21st. Oh, okay. Well, with that amazing intro, welcome to Mormons first podcast. I'm so excited to have back in studios once a month. The Nuance Okara Burrell. Hey, Carah.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:00:27] Hey, John De Lynn.

John Dehlin [00:00:27] You been having fun?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:00:28] I've been having the best summer ever.

John Dehlin [00:00:30] Give us an update.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:00:31] Oh, my sister's living with us in town, so I got my kids taken care of and I'm free to just make more YouTube videos and more tik toks and my patreon and doing some traveling this summer. And I'm going to go see John Larsen this summer as well. So truly living the best life. And miss you guys though. Miss you guys.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Couldn't happen to a nicer galaxy. And if you can hear in the background, we are joined once a month by the the man, the myth, the legend, former host of Mormon Expression Podcast, the John Larsen. Hey, John Larsen. How you been?

John Larsen [00:01:10] I'm good. What up, everybody?

John Dehlin [00:01:12] How's sunny Portland?

John Larsen [00:01:14] Portland is. Is nice. I was just there this last weekend.

John Dehlin [00:01:19] I mean, how different are the weather and weather patterns between Portland and where you live?

John Larsen [00:01:24] I'm. I'm not too much different. I'm about an hour and a half south or so of Portland.

John Dehlin [00:01:30] Okay.

John Larsen [00:01:31] So we, we tend to have the same weather. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:33] So the weather's similar.

John Larsen [00:01:35] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:36] All right, well, it's good to see up and up and about.

John Larsen [00:01:40] Yeah, it's good to be up and about.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] Well, of course, we are here as part of the Mormon Expression continuing legacy. As many of you know, John Larsen hosted a couple hundred hours, a few hundred hours of amazing Mormon themed podcasts back in the day. Through your generous support, we were able to get those all back on Spotify. And you can check out John Larsen's amazing library of ex Mormon and Mormon content there. People love it. It's a really successful podcast even though it's been mothballed. But we are excited to have John Larsen here once a month on Mormon Stories). Several of you have stepped up to support this initiative. You've gone to mormonstories.org mormonexpression and become a monthly donor to be able to pay John Larsen and Carah Burrell to bring them on. And today is that day. So, John, you get to pick your topics and you picked a special topic for today. But do you have any news before we Jump in. Any news for us?

John Larsen [00:02:42] Let's see. I was going to give my pre show addressing of points or mistakes I made in previous podcasts. In the previous podcast, I made kind of a joke about there's only four types of people who read the Bible and I named them. Of course, I'm being a little facetious there to make a point. There are a lot of smart people who read the Bible. And in fact, you know, when you do research into conspiracy theories or religions or, you know, nationalistic movements, oftentimes it's the most intelligent people who can form all sorts of strange ways to think around things. So yes, it's true, there's a lot of brilliant people out there who read and believe the Bible, but I would say it's because of their brilliance that they're able to dodge the dodgy parts, as it were. So I didn't mean to insult everybody. You're all great and Jesus loves you.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] Did you just insult everyone with your apology, though?

John Larsen [00:03:38] Well, you'll find out at the next episode.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:03:42] I mean, one of the most famous, like TikTok clips that I made of when I was working here of John Larsen was him just kind of ripping into Mormon apologists, that they use their education and their platform and their intelligence and their credentials for a cause that is hurting people. So I think it's a very nuanced subject matter. Nuance. I was here to tell you, but you know. Yeah, I get what you're, I get what you're putting down. John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:04:02] Thanks. Thanks. The other point I wanted to kind of address is I, I get accused of being a bully quite often. But, you know, the question is, who am I bullying, which is the church. And I, I, I think it's fair to point out that this comes up in the, the, the media these days as we're kind of riding out after a couple years past me too movement and things like that. A good intellectual or, or whatever does not punch down. So bullies punch down. What that means is they attack populations or people or races, ethnicities, religions that have less social status, less power, less money, less influence than they do. That would be the definition of bullying. So when people like Ricky Gervais, who I really admire, starts making jokes about transgender people, that's punching down because the transgender population is constantly being ridiculed, bullied, murdered, excluded, and all that stuff. They have less power than Ricky Gervais does. So he's an asshole for attacking them. So those of us who attack this multi, hundreds of billions of dollars organization that has Congress People and senators and governors and buildings and everything. Lawyers and armed security and whatever else that they have. I just simply can't bully this organization. I'm just one guy. That's why I was saying here I'm nobody. So. So if I was attacking people who had less a power than. Than. Than I would. I would be a dick. But when I'm pushing back on the powers that be, you can call me something, but I'm. I'm not a bully, and what I'm doing here is not bullying. Now, I. I'm not perfect at all, and. And I miscommunicate things all the time. And please, please call me out when I. When I say things the. That are incredibly stupid. But, no, it's. It's the church. The church is the bully here. The church is the one who excommunicates people like John de Lin. You know, they're. They're the. They're the bad guys in this.

John Dehlin [00:06:23] That's a. That's a good clarification. I'm also going to say Dave Chappelle needs to lay off transgender people.

John Larsen [00:06:28] Yeah, it's not funny. You know, it's not funny to attack. Just that that's a way that you can gauge yourself. If you spend time making jokes at people's expense who are lower than you. And how do you determine if they're lower than you? You decide. If you think you're. You're above somebody, then leave them alone. That's. That's the root and heart of bullying people. Pay attention. We're in this big hierarchy of the world. You know, there's a billion people right now who are food insecure, who don't know if they're going to eat, you know, like. Like, you're way up. If you're listening to this, that means you have the Internet and all that kind of stuff. You're way up on the pyramid, so be careful about who you attack. But the guys up top, they need their asses kicked constantly. So punch up, by all means.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] I love it. Carah, let's punch up.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:07:18] My wrist doesn't reach that far to your chair.

John Dehlin [00:07:20] Oh, my gosh. Carah's punching me now.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:07:23] I love that point, John Larsen. And I just would also like to add to it in my own way, because I was so conservative just a few years ago. And I also always saw that the LGBTQ community was, like, it's taking over. Like, look at the month of June. Like, there's pride, everything all over. And you kind of get to a realization that, like, that's Kind of like a corporate pride. Just because there's pride flags all over doesn't mean equality has been reached now. It means that, like, we need to show visibility to people on the margins in this community. And, you know, this. This is a dangerous topic that you're talking about. And so when you're figuring how to punch up or down, it's kind of life or death.

John Larsen [00:07:58] So when there. There's a significant political movement in the United States, not just the United States, it's all over. All over the west. Of. Of this group of. Of people who formerly were. Were ostensibly as a. As a. As a race or religion had more bully authority. They could just call the shots. And, And. And the. The. The. The group of people has lost some of that ability to just define, like, what comes on the tv, who can be. If there's going to be women, or, you know, all that kind of stuff that there used to be cultural power over. Well, a lot of these individuals are feeding themselves on grievance. Right. They believe that there's all this stuff being taken away from them. And when I get into arguments with these folks, you know, I always ask, well, what have you lost? What has the transgender population taken away from you? And, you know, I've never heard anybody give me an answer other than, you know, like, well, I have to see them. Well, I have to see you, asshole. So we're even, you know, nice coming in hot.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:08:59] The very idea that it. At some point, in some hypothetical problem I might have in the future, my rights might be infringed upon is usually the talking point that we go with.

Super Chats and Political Discussion

John Larsen [00:09:09] Right, right. It's all slippery slope, you know. Well, if you. If we let gay people marry soon, they'll be marrying their lunch boxes or something like that.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:09:18] I had a Pocahontas, one I could really go to bed with.

John Dehlin [00:09:21] Mine was a Walt Disney Robin Hood. That's how old I am. My. My lunchbox was a Robin Hood cartoon from Walt Disney.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:09:30] Say less, John de Lin.

John Larsen [00:09:33] I always ate school lunch, so I was never cool enough to brown bag it.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:09:38] Well, we really set up the hierarchy here of coolness, didn't we?

John Dehlin [00:09:41] So Carah always wins.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:09:43] Yeah. I will be punching down on.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Let's punch up on Carah. You just set yourself up there, Carah.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:09:53] I'm untouchable.

John Larsen [00:09:54] All right. Those are my preambles. Thank you.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:09:56] Beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:09:58] Well, we're so grateful for that, and we're grateful for all our viewers. We've got at least 250 people joining us on Facebook and on YouTube. We're looking forward to integrating your comments. We appreciate your super chats. For those of you who want to support John Larsen and Mormon Expression and Carah on Mormon Stories) and feel free to throw us a super chat through the little donate dollar sign on the chat window. We will also share your comments with those super chats. And if you're on Facebook, there's a stars feature that you can use as well to throw us your support. All right, John, so we picked a topic today. Let me just start with the, with the traditional disclaimer. Normally on Mormon stories we try and keep it PG or PG 13, which means that we try and keep it relatively safe feeling for, you know, questioning, but still in the church Mormons. And that's because we don't want to be an echo chamber and because we have kind of a service mission for those people in particular. But occasionally we bring on Carah Burrell the nuance and John Larsen and you two tend to have potty mouths a little bit. And occasionally I do too.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:11:12] Yeah, occasionally I show my shoulders, occasionally I don't. You'll never know what you get, but prepare for the worst.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] So, yeah, if there's a if, if potty, if, if, if party words bother you and that keeps you from wanting to bathe in the wisdom of John and Carah, then just be warned and either turn this off or turn it down low so the people who are listening won't be offended. Also, yeah, Mormon Stories) has no direct political affiliation. We, we are nonpartisan and we see both parties as being problematic in their own ways, although we definitely individually have strong opinions. But we want people of all parties to feel comfortable here and of no parties and of non US Citizenship. We want you all to feel loved. Having said that, we live in a world where politics matter and, and in this case, sometimes high demand religions or even cults can dramatically infect. In fact, is it in fact or effect. John Larsen? Which one? Sometimes religious organizations can affect the political processes in ways that are significant. And that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. So disclaimer. We're going to be talking about some politics stuff, but hopefully not in a way where it's just like, you know, Democrats good, Republicans bad, or Republicans good, Democrats bad. Hopefully we can be sophisticated and keep it as nonpartisan as possible. That's my commitment. John, what do you think?

John Larsen [00:12:46] I think, I think it's good. I think politics is about power. I don't affiliate or feel any affinity to either or any of the American political parties. And I think that they by their nature have exploited elements of corruption that are available in their governmental form. So I think politics is generally, when you're discussing politics, you're generally down a wrong path. But that being said, there's policy. It's interesting that you feel you have to give that disclaimer. This goes to the safety net the Mormons have to put around themselves. They believe they have this superior way of life and they send out 50,000 missionaries. But here we are, episode what, 14, 344 of Mormon stories. You know, we're well, we're well into. No, that's a compliment, John. We're well into this. And you still feel like you have to prepare, prepare them because they feel like they should be able to decide how I speak the English language. And if I'm not going to speak the English language, how they decide, even though they've never written it down, we have to just infer then I've somehow offended them. And they also get to decide what elements of policy or whatever are kosher, what ones are not. And the fact that you feel like you have to apologize shows the, the level of rock among the people that we're, we're dealing with oftentimes.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] Well, I, the point taken, I will say it's not so much apology as it is kind of just a ratings so people can kind of self censor. And part of that is just because, you know, as, you know, John, there's a pipeline. There's people who are long time in the struggle, who have been longtime listeners, and there's people that are brand new. So it's kind of for people just newly emerging from the bubble. We want, we want to kind of give them informed consent, right, Carol?

John Larsen [00:14:44] I'm busting your ass, John. And. Sorry, Carah, I just walked over you go ahead.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:14:47] Oh, you're in the middle of busting John Dylan's ass and you think I'm upset. Proceed.

John Larsen [00:14:54] Well, you know, it's, it's one. What I find fascinating both in American culture, broad, you can show people being all sorts of violence, people being eviscerated, you know, literally disemboweled on film that is rated pg. So it's parental guidance. It's ostensibly deemed as worthy for children to write. We could give a whole treatise on all the PG13 movies that show despicable, horrific, violent, gory things. But if you show a nipple like America. And it's, it's, it's this, it's this same thing. What we're about to talk to about right now, we're not talking about Carah saying poo poo kaka. We're talking about the topics, the, the facts that we're gonna, we're gonna bust out tonight. Run. That's scary stuff. That's R rated stuff. And you know, it surprises me how many times we can be on this show talking about like murder and, and, and rape and just all sorts of terrible things and people get upset because somebody refers to excretory functions, right?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:16:03] And I think in real world terms, like just this past weekend, I have a, I have a, you know, seven year old daughter and yeah, she's a little disrespectful when it's Father's Day and we're all standing around about to say the prayer over the food and she's being disrespectful. And my Mormon parents don't like that. And I understand. And they take me aside later and tell me how much that was offensive and upsetting to them, that they, my kids want to cover their ears during the prayers and I have to do with everything within myself to not tell them. Like the very religion that you're a part of has done more harm and is more offensive to the overall scope of what I don't want to teach my child to live up to. Like the things that you believe in, the, the way that you treat the LGBT community is offensive to me. But if it's in like a, you know, something that is just right in front of their faces, whoops, I totally ruined my light over here. They can pinpoint things that are offensive because they have an emotional reaction to where we're trying to talk about like big picture ideas about the way that these beliefs actually influence, again, the policies, the way that people will even have clean air, clean water and being able to live their best lives. Things that have a real, real humongous world consequences instead of just like feelings hurt. So Mormons, if you are watching, my dad told me to start, he said, caro, next time you're on Mormon stories, call it Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stories. It would really be respectful to me and I'm not making that up.

John Larsen [00:17:22] The problem with that is there is more than one Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and you have to differentiate them by big Ds and little Ds and hyphens. So verbally we can't do that.

Mormon Church Power and Institutional Critiques

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:17:32] The stuff that's true.

John Larsen [00:17:33] What if there was a term that just referred to all of them, no matter what church you, a Mormon church you were in. What if we had a word for that Oh, I know it's Mormon.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:17:43] No, because then Warren Jeffs comes to mind, and we don't want any of that.

John Larsen [00:17:46] He's. He's part of this, right? When we talk about conservatism. All those. All those. All those. Yeah. The Warren Jeffs of the world are included. You don't get to divorce yourself Mormons from the other Mormons.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:18:00] Yeah, it's that saying that, like, is Warren Jeffs not a natural out growth in the modern age of what Joseph Smith was and what his church would look like? It just. If you are being honest to what he taught and what his life was, it's really hard to divorce the two.

John Larsen [00:18:15] I overheard just a couple hours ago a conversation at work, and it was by two individuals who don't know anything about my Mormon history. And the one was explaining Mormonism to the other.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:18:29] Ooh, juicy.

John Larsen [00:18:31] Yeah, yeah. Magic underwear came up and stuff like that. You're already. You're already kind of. Your reputation's already shot. It's not from people like me.

John Dehlin [00:18:45] Absolutely. And if you haven't checked out, Keep Sweet Pray and Obey on Netflix. It's an amazing documentary. I've finished three of four parts. It's all about Warren Jeffs in the FLDS church, and it's powerful. Also, huge thanks to Eric and Wendy both for your super chats. We really appreciate your support. All right, John, so we have. We're like 20. We're 20 minutes in, and we still don't know the topic for today.

John Larsen [00:19:11] All this gold that we've been laying down, we haven't even started, right? You're welcome.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] Lay it down, Brother John. Lay it down for us.

John Larsen [00:19:18] All right. In my lifetime, there's been two major anxiety drivers for me. One is the Mormon Church, and the other is climate change. And I thought, you know what? It's time that these two horrific nightmares come together into one sweet recipe of deliciousness. And that's for tonight.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] Okay, so I have to just start John Larsen and say, we've got a lot of people that basically refer to anything that smells progressive as kind of wokeism. And they'll say things like, John Larsen's woke or cares woke or Mormon stories has gone woke. And they'll just shut it off and say, oh, this is a talking point that's normally associated with the left. So shut it off, tune out. Cancel your donations. What would be. If you were trying to actually appeal to them in a way that wasn't insulting or degrading, but, like, was actually saying, hey, you want to. You want to actually Reconsider giving, giving a topic like this a chance. Could you make an appeal like that? That wouldn't be off putting?

John Larsen [00:20:20] No, no, because things like woke up are. There are always words that have no meaning, that have no definition. If I were in a debate with somebody like that, I would just keep asking them to define their terms. And they, they throw around terms all the time that they don't understand, they can't define, they don't know what it is. You know how you spot a fascist?

John Dehlin [00:20:46] Tell us.

John Larsen [00:20:47] A fascist simultaneously always believes the enemy is super strong and super weak simultaneously, because it has to be. They always have to believe that they're much stronger and more intelligent and more beautiful and can conquer their enemy at every time, at any time. But they also have to believe their enemy is always out there ready to get them. And, and fascists and people have fascist mindset. Let me, let me, let me define terms because I was just saying people don't define these terms. If I were going to boil down fascism, it's sort of the idea that me and my people are morally right and the world out there is, doesn't have the right morals, but they need to have them enforced upon them. They need to be told what to do. So what fascism does is it, it gets rid of all of the sort of, you know, when you're in a fascist organization, you don't like free and fair elections. You don't like everybody in the, in society to have an equal voice. You don't like to have things that equalize things because you believe that there is an elite minority that morally knows better than everyone else. And not to call Mormonism fascist, but that's the definition of Mormonism, right? They believe they're a moral elite that should rule and govern everybody else because they know better. So the problem is, you're asking me, when somebody takes on this fascism sort of view, how do you break into that? You can't. The last 40,000 or the known history of the world, let's say the last 6,000 years, 5,000 years of history, shows us that we have been locked in the same damn cycle where we have psychopaths who rise up through the, the ranks. Basically every world leader is one, right? They're greedy, they're, they're, whatever they, they, they're, they're about their own power and their own money. And people ask, well, how do you defeat them? We don't know. We've never done it. We've never, we've Never overruled the 5% of us who Rules us because they're morally, they're morally bent and they also believe in controlling everybody else. So how do you get to these people? I think let's table that question until we get through this, because I think that's going to be a driving topic at the last quarter of this discussion and then come back to that, that question. How do you reach the people who don't believe you?

John Dehlin [00:23:15] Okay, so climate change plus religion is the topic for the day. Right.

John Larsen [00:23:22] Well, in particular, you know what we're going to talk about one instance.

John Dehlin [00:23:26] Okay.

Introducing the Great Salt Lake Crisis

John Larsen [00:23:26] All right, so let's, let's jump in. Let's talk about the lake.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] Let's do it. The lake.

John Larsen [00:23:30] So the Great Salt Lake was named by Brigham Young. When he arrived in the valley, he actually said the Great Salt Lake City. And the Great Salt Lake stuck from there. When he named Salt Lake City, nobody says the Great Salt Lake City anymore, but that's what he named it in the beginning. And it is an inland sea that has no outlet to the ocean. It was formed. The lake has been around for a long time. I think 22,000. I didn't study this, but 22,000 years or so ago, there was a great big Lake Bonneville that covered all the intermountain west. And then it had a catastrophic failure and drained out to the ocean and left this inland sea that is Salt lake. In the 80s, the Great Salt Lake was 3,300 square miles. So if you can imagine, it's. It's just enormous. It's this enormous plain and it's fed by all the. All the rain and water that falls into the Wasatch Mountains. So it is this giant lake. And because it doesn't have any outlet to the ocean, it just collects everything that comes into the rainwater. It is currently. I said in the 80s, that was at its height. If you remember, in the 80s, that's when we had flooding like in Salt Lake City, and we built. Norm Banger, built the big pumps that are out in the, in the desert. If you get a chance, you go out and see them. They're crazy. And because it was flooding, but it's been in decline since, I think 1984. It's been in continual decline now. It goes through natural ebb and flow cycles. We just broke the record of the last low point, which I think was in like 1962. So it has shrunk and risen through, through throughout the years. It is a lake that sits between 9% and 12% salinity. We're going to come back to that. Point. Just as a matter of reference, the Dead Sea In Palestine is 33% salinity, and the ocean is about 3.5% salinity. Okay? And it's fed by three major rivers. On the north side is the Bear river, and then on the south side, you have the Jordan river, which brings water to the Great Salt Lake from Utah Lake, which is a toxic lake right now from blue green algae blooms, and then the Weber river are the. Are the major tributaries. But all the water that falls on this side of the Wasatch Mountains basically runs down into the Great Salt Lake. There's no. There's no other outlet. It is the largest inland sea in the Western Hemisphere, and It is the 8th largest inland sea in the world. It is an extensive ecosystem that is home to over 10 million migratory birds that come through oftentimes going from Canada down to Mexico on their migratory paths every year, like geese and ducks. There are pelicans, and there's just all sorts. All sorts of birds that live in the wetlands from the Great Salt Lake. So it's this naturally interesting thing. I grew up just on. Probably two miles east of it. And because the edges of it are kind of deadish, I'll say they're not really dead. There's altogether teeming with life. But for our agricultural and recreational desires, the Great Salt Lake kind of gets ignored. If you go out to Antelope island, where the beaches used to be, they're high and dry now. I don't know where you go. If you want to swim in the Great Salt, you probably go out Antelope island and walk for two miles to get to the water or something. But there's not that many people who actually visit it. There are sailboats that were on it, but they're all basically grounded right now. There's the. The. The docks are all high and dry, and so there is. There is some recreation, but. But mostly it's used for industry. And of course, it has its own natural. Natural uses. Okay, that's the Great Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] Okay, so that's. Thanks for the. Thanks for that introduction. And I've still never. I've still never been to it. Have you, Carah, ever, like, gone to the Great Salt Lake to, like, float in it? I mean, you. You grew up here?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:27:48] Yeah, I grew up here. I never had any interest. I just remember in fourth grade, you have Utah studies and you learn about how the pioneers are, like, oh, we hit the Pacific Ocean, and then they. There's like, an old frontier guy, and he takes, like, a sip of Water. And he's like, patui. And it's so salty. What is this place? And never go in it because you'll die. That's pretty much. It was just propaganda, probably, but that's what I learned about it.

John Dehlin [00:28:10] And then for me, I think I learned. I think, you know, they. They set land speed records on the Great Salt Flats. So I remember growing up reading about the fastest cars ever on the planet, and many of them would go to the Great Salt Lake to drive super fast. So that's one thing.

John Larsen [00:28:30] Yeah. So just west of the lake, because the lake bed used to be enormous, the Bonneville Lake. So. So the area is pretty flat. And as a matter of fact, it, you know, like right now, I don't know how many. A couple hundred acres of land get exposed every day from evaporation because it's really shallow. I think it's like, only like 40ft deep at its deepest point. If you go swimming in it, for. You can walk and walk and walk and walk. And the salt flats were out to the west, and they're just a big, long, flat area. So you have the Bonneville Speed Race, where they do all sorts of speed trials in the United States. If you want to try to get a car going as fast as you possibly can, it's just got a long, flat, safe Runway to run things really fast. So. So that's. That's the Bonneville. Bonneville Speedway out there.

History and Cultural Landmarks of the Lake

John Dehlin [00:29:20] The only other thing I know about what. Wasn't there some big place where you could go and watch, like, concerts and do big dances back in the day? Do you know what I'm talking about?

John Larsen [00:29:30] Well, salt air. Salt Air. This long history of being a resort on the shore. And there was a time, like, I think in the Edwardian era where, you know, everyone would go down their bloomers, and it was really this beautiful resort. But the problem is it keeps. And there's an old horror movie from the 50s that they filmed in the ruins of Salt Air, which is great if you can find it, but it keep getting high and dry. So. So because the lake is always fluctuating, these recreational. Sorry, these recreational opportunities kind of would dry up with the fortune of the water.

John Dehlin [00:30:05] Yeah, it looks just. It looked like glamorous times to see those photos.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:30:09] John Larsen, since you're like the salt lake expert at this point, I've always wanted to know this. If you know the answer, what is the redeeming quality about the Great Salt Lake? Like, why, if Brigham Young's people were, you know, looking for a place to Call the chosen like New Zion. Why was he like, this is the place of all places? Because I feel like California really wasn't that far. It was really a shelf item for being the church. I was like, California existed and they called this, this, this, this is it. Your thoughts?

John Dehlin [00:30:38] Fair question.

John Larsen [00:30:39] We'll come back to this, but let's go, let's go ahead and answer that. They knew where they were going. You know, the, the, the Mormons had had tussles with the US Government and, and Brigham Young had said over and over again he wanted to leave the United States. So number one, this area was, was Mexico when the Saints came in. And it was kind of disputed territory. So it wasn't really. There wasn't any kind of government ship there. So Brigham Young was trying to get away. He knew that California was already being populated. There's already all the settlers going out to the Oregon Trail. So he was trying to establish an inland kingdom. The Mormons like to say, or like to speak about the valley as if they got here. And as a desert wasteland, it's not true at all. There was a permanent white settlement in Ogden, Fort Buenaventura that was a trading post. And travelers crisscrossing the area stayed there all the time. And the Ute Indians had a permanent city village in Utah County. So the area was already populated. And scouts knew that the land was not because the lake had receded. The soil in Salt Lake's not actually that terrible. You can, you can grow there. The problem is water. So, so they, they had some pretty good idea of, of, of where they wanted to be and, and, and what they wanted to do. So I think that's why they end up staying there. It was really because they wanted to be isolationist. You know, one of the first things Brigham Young did is he sent parties to go and set up forts on every single watering hole all the way down to San Bernardino and up into Canada. And so he was trying to position the area so other settlers couldn't come in and they could establish their, their kingdom.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:32:25] Missionary work. Beautiful.

John Larsen [00:32:28] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:32:29] Handing out pass along cards at every watering hole. I see what you're doing there, Brigham.

John Larsen [00:32:34] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] And then there's, and then two more things. There's Antelope island, which is a fun little place to visit, and brine shrimp. I know, I don't want to steal your thunder. We going to talk about brine shrimp?

John Larsen [00:32:42] We're going to get, we're gonna get to the brine ship.

John Dehlin [00:32:44] Okay. In a minute here.

How the Great Salt Lake Has Shrunk

John Larsen [00:32:46] So, but let's jump In. So let's talk about the problem. What's the problem? So great Salt Lake, you already just told me that it was at this level in 62. So I could argue that it just comes and goes. And that's part of nature. Sometimes it rains, sometimes we have drought, sometimes we have floods. This is just absolutely normal. And there's a lot of people who believe that, okay, the growth of the Salt Lake Valley has shifted water usage from all this water that would drain into the lake to being used by agriculture, housing and industry. Right now the Salt Lake City is projected to grow by 30% by 2060. So right now, the area, Utah has 2.3 million people. So, you know, we're talking about another 500 to 700,000 people that we are planning on coming into Salt Lake. And when I say planning on coming to Salt Lake, Salt Lake's economy is based on growth as, as, as most capitalistic places are. But, but Salt Lake in particular is a growth based economy. So a lot of construction and it has the agricultural roots that have been, that have been there for a long time that because of the arid nature of, of the area, use a lot of the water. Okay? So as we have higher and higher temperatures, what's happening is there is less snowpack up in the mountains, so there is less water to be had than there was like say in 62. So, so we, we already have used a lot of the water for agriculture and industry and all that kind of stuff. But also climate change has already modified the snowpacks. And those are, those are measurable. I mean, people who deny it. Scientists can go and take measurements of how big the glaciers are, where the ice is or where all that is. And they can see that that has been shrinking. And a lot of places it's shrinking in play in ways that we haven't seen in 40, 50,000 years. So, so ice that has been around for a long time is, is, is disappearing.

John Dehlin [00:34:57] Hey, John, can I add one quick thing?

John Larsen [00:34:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] I think it's worth mentioning that one of the drivers, just to add a little quick Mormon element to it, one of the drivers of the rapidly increasing Utah population is the fact that the church is in decline almost everywhere else in the United States, specifically in California, Washington and Oregon. And you've got all these parents who were legacy Mormons in Orange county or in, you know, Redmond or Seattle or Portland, and they're realizing their kids are realizing, man, if we try and raise our kids here, they're going to get eaten up by the gentiles. They're not going to be able to be a part of strong wards, strong youth programs. They'll fall away from the church. And so Utah, you know, is deceptively growing in its Mormon population. Only in Utah county basically as, as the rest of the United States is hemorrhaging in its Mormon populations. And even Salt Lake City is, is, is now over half non Mormon Salt Lake City itself. But it is, it is so many Mormons leaving other states that's, that's helping to drive the population up along with silicon slopes.

John Larsen [00:36:13] Right, I have heard that. But in the interest of fairness, I have not seen any empirical evidence other than anecdotal to suggest that immigration into Utah is being driven by Mormons. As a matter of fact, population dilution would mean the, the, the percentage of people who identify as Mormon compared to the rest of the population has been steadily declining, which would be a counter indicator of that. But I mean, definitely on a micro scale, there are people who come to Utah to be around other Mormons and be in, in the culture. But a lot of the growth just follows the same growth patterns that we're seeing in Phoenix, in Miami, in Houston, in Austin. So you know, you have, you have all these, these cities that are in climate danger zones that are, that are growing very quickly because most of the population still does not see climate change as a threat.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:37:06] Yeah, I mean, to the anecdote portion of it. Yeah. My family moved from Mesa to Provo because Mesa wasn't Mormon enough for them.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] Whoa.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:37:16] So as we know, we're using absolutely no logic right now. My anecdote is empirical evidence.

John Larsen [00:37:25] Okay. So warming planet less ice pack less, less water. And what's happening all across growing population. But our soils all through the west are drying out. So if you, if you could imagine that soil will hold a certain amount of water, has a carrying capacity before it lets the extra water go and it goes down into the groundwater and into the, the water table. One of the problems right now is that the land is so thirsty that it drinks that stuff up. And because oftentimes without water, you lose vegetative like anchoring of the soil. You'll start seeing more like flash flooding, the kind of stuff we've witnessed in Yellowstone the last two weeks. So the water deluges come quick and strong because the water, you know, used to, it used to be that there was that you couldn't go up to Mount Tippanogos until August because there would always be ice up there on the trail. And of course the climbing season for Mount Tikpinongos grows longer and longer and longer every year because there's less and less ice and snow up there. So there's one more effect, which is the lake effect, part of the weather pattern of Salt Lake. And what gives it that powder, that powdery snow that is so popular with the ski resorts comes from the lake effect, which is that weather patterns will move from the west to the east and they will cross the lake. And then it will cause. It will. It will churn more of that water that's in the lake up into the storm systems. And from what I read from BYU is they estimate that 10% of all snowfall along the Wasatch front comes from the lake. So if you take the stat I gave you in the Beginning, in the 80s, there was 3,300 square feet of surface area to feed the snow, and now we're down to less than a thousand to feed the snow. So we're, we're, we're already. I want to make clear, and we'll make this clear, we're not talking about something that might happen. We're. We're already in Act 1. This is already happening right now. The, the effects are already being felt. So, so, so we don't get as much. We don't get as much snow. We don't get as much water. Less water goes to lake, less water goes to the mountains. And then we're, we're on a declining cycle, and that's, that's where we are right now. Okay. I mentioned salinity, and I did because it's important. The lake generally fluctuates between 9 and 12%. There are researchers saying that this year we are going to hit 17% salinity. And at 17% salinity, bad things start happening. And the first thing is the lake is full of brine shrimp. And the brine shrimp feed off of algae that lives in the lake. The algae cannot survive in a salinity above 17%. And by the way, if you don't believe me, you can read everything I'm telling you in the Deseret News and at ksl, at the Tribune, in the New York Times, you pick your news source and you can read about everything I'm talking to you about. So at 17%, the algae will die off. When the algae dies off, the brine shrimp die off. When the brine shrimp die off, the brine flies die off. And I heard somebody say there's. It's full of mosquitoes out there. It's not actually mosquitoes, they're brine Shrimp, they're brine flies, and that's what the birds feed on. So there's 10 million birds that migrate through Salt Lake that basically feed on this ecosystem that has at its basis the algae. And the algae requires a particular salinity to survive. And if we get above that salinity, which again, some are predicting we're going to hit later this summer, the whole system starts to collapse. How fast it collapses, I don't know. It could be. It could be fast, it could be slow. You know, we're. We're in new territory of things we oftentimes haven't observed before, but we have parallels, and we're going to talk about them in a few minutes. Nice.

Salinity, Toxins, and Environmental Hazards

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:41:43] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:41:44] All right. Okay, so really quick shout out to Thomas Moore for his super chat. We appreciate it, Thomas. Thanks for the support. All right, John, take it. Take it away.

John Larsen [00:41:53] All right, so what is in the lake? Utah has been a mining center for. Since the beginning, since the mid-1819th century. So there have been these mining operations all through the mountains, as well as the Kennecott copper pit, which is one of the. The largest open. I think it's like the second largest open open pit in the. In the world. Just for reference, there is a. And you can look this up, it'll scare the bejesus out of you. There was another open copper pit outside of Butte, Montana that went bankrupt about. I think it's about 20 years ago now. And they spend a lot of effort keeping birds from trying to land in the lake, because when the birds land in the lake, which is a copper pit that had been filled up, they never take off again. It's just a big death death lake. So if Kennecott ever goes belly up, that thing's going to fill up with water and it will be as toxic as you can even imagine. But so right on the south side of. Of the lake is. Is. Is the Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto is, who owns Kennecott these days, their smelter. And there is a smokestack there. I was told a long time ago, the taller the smokestack, the more toxic whatever it is they're burning. And you can see that smokestack for about 25 miles. And it is enormous. And it is right there on the edge of the valley at the north end of the Ochre mountains, pumping, whatever it's pumping up into the lake, up into the air, which, of course, rain falls and it captures those particulates that are. That are in the air, brings them down into the watershed, and they run down, down the lakes. So in Utah we've been using pesticides because conservatives and all of us 30 years ago or 40 years ago didn't really understand when we use all these different pesticides and chemical fertilizers and all this stuff, all that stuff has been accumulating in the waterways, floating down to the lakes and then heading out to the Great Salt Lake where it just sits and it settles down to the, to the bottom of the lake. So I'm going to tell you about some of the things that are in there. First of all, we have hydrogen sulfide, which is, which is a very toxic chemical. We have cadmium, copper and selenium. These are all toxic and can cause organ failure if ingested. It has lead methylmercury, you know, which everybody worries about with fish. The Great Salt Lakes concentration of Mercury is 25 times as high as the Everglades. So it's just full of, full of mercury. That lake, it has all the chemicals and pesticides that Kennecott Energy Solutions put out in the air. And need I remind you that that Utah was downwind from the open nuclear testing. The last open air nuclear bomb was set off in the Nevada desert in 1962. And we have seen the plumes, radioactive dust went as far north as Canada and basically blanketed the whole region in, in, in this radioactive sludge which hasn't gone anywhere. It's still everywhere around. And Utah has higher rates of like thyroid cancers and elements like that. Stromium is in there. Let's see, what else do we have there? Copper, zirconium and other dangerous heavy metals from, from mining and other operations as well as all these pesticides again. But the biggest worry is the arsenic. The lake is full of arsenic. Now the water keeps it tamped down. The arsenic is in the water. And since nothing but the, the, the, the local ecosystem is drinking, it's. That doesn't impact the brine shrimp, but it will because one of the other things is the, the bulrushes. So if you go to the side of the lake, it is full of these, these bulrushes. Now the bulrushes act as a, a sink for these chemicals that are in the lake. They absorb them and then they hold them in their root system so they keep them from distributing further from other animals drinking them or whatever. But once the salinity goes up and the lake continues to go down, the bow rushes are all going to die off. As they die off, all the chemical pollutants that are in their root system right now. Are going to be released back into the environment, back into the, back into the ground. And then we also have an increasing amount of dust. A BYU study in 2015 showed that 40% of all the particulate pollution in dust storms in Ogden and in Logan were sourced from the Great Salt Lake. All the rest, they figured was from the severe dry lake, which is, which is further into the, into the desert. Most of all, the dust that you get in Salt Lake City when you're dusting your house, the grand majority of that comes from dry lake beds. So just so you can understand the effect of this, once these, these dry out, the, the wind and whatever else starts picking up the dust. Now, the Great Salt Lake actually has a crust that's on it. And if you go, walk out there, you can feel it crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch under your feet. And if you hear that noise, run, because you're breaking that crust. And once that crust gets broken, then all of that dust that's, that's down there can be aerosol into the air, at which time it will be breathable.

John Dehlin [00:47:56] This is, this is not sounding fun. John Larsen. I'm not liking where this is going. I own a house here, but I don't want to interrupt. I don't want to interrupt your soliloquy, okay?

Water Supply Challenges and Policy Responses

John Larsen [00:48:06] Laura Briefer, BR I F E R is the director of Salt Lake City's Public Utilities Department. She says the city can increase its water supply in three ways. Divert more water from rivers and streams. Oh, because the city is thirsty. I told you. There's, there's, there's a lot of growth. So counter to all this right now is our economic engine in Salt Lake is still based on construction and growth and bringing more people in. And so she says, diverting more water from rivers and streams, recycling more wastewater, or drawing more groundwater from wells. Each of these strategies reduces the amount of water that reaches the lake. But without those steps, demand for water in Salt Lake City would exceed supply in 2040. So we have 18 years until the hydrologists are expecting that our growth curve in Salt Lake City with our utilization will match out. Now, I did some research in this a while ago. There are not a lot of studies on the groundwater. The conservative government tends to not like them, and they squash them or they don't fund them. So we actually are guessing. We do not know when the groundwater in Utah is going to dry up. As a matter of fact, there were three cities last year that used up all their groundwater from their wells. They couldn't get anymore. They had to ship it in from neighboring cities. So we're already on the point where there's areas of the valley that have lost their groundwater. My point being Salt Lake City proper. John de Lynn, your house is thirsty. And no matter what you hear tonight, you're going to go take a shower tomorrow. And I think most people who are listening to this will not change their behavior one iota based on anything I'm saying.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] I take baths. John Larsen. That's probably worse.

John Larsen [00:49:58] Sponge or like in a big tub.

John Dehlin [00:50:01] I'm not want to know. I'm afraid to tell you. Hey, by the way, Carrie, you have a house here.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:50:06] I have a house here. I am actually zero escaping this summer so that you know I'm better than you.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] You're flexing now. We can punch up punching up.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [00:50:15] Yeah, it's true.

John Larsen [00:50:16] Okay, so I kind of laid out the problems every understand what the problem is that this lake is going to disappear. The winds are going to come and pick up all the arsenic and every other heavy metal and pesticide residue that's in there and it's just going to blow it right across the city. In fact, it's already happening. And Salt Lake City is one of the top five places in the United States for non smoking related lung cancer. Really lung cancer here is big and it is impacting people who have never smoked a cigarette ever. So what happens in Salt Lake, because we're in a bowl is heat inversions where the warm water is up above the mountains and the cold air gets trapped and things can't move up. So in both the summertime now and the winter, the valley gets full of ozone, which is of itself a carcinogenic. It'll cause cancer to cause all sorts of problems. Respiratory problems, copd, asthma, all these are related to ozone. So there's really two ozone seasons. Once it gets above about 90, 85, 90 degrees and then in the cold it just gets trapped in. It's coming from the automobiles. Then you have fire season. So the fires come out of California and Oregon and Washington and New Mexico, well, Arizona. And all those prevailing winds move move easterly and that smoke gets trapped in. The last five years I was in Salt Lake, it was just hazy all summer from wildfires everywhere, you know, and you can taste it in the air. So. And then, then of course there's all the cars in Salt Lake. Salt Lake has a serious air problem. And I. It was a major reason. Oh, sorry. Is a major reason for me to leave the city, to be honest with you. My father has copd. I have some breathing Problems. And my, you know, my family, when we moved out, everybody to a person said, I can breathe easy. And we have people come visit here from Salt Lake. They're like, oh, I can breathe the air there is really quite terrible and it's going to get worse. Sorry. Okay. Joel Ferry is right now a Republican state senator in the Utah, in the Utah Senate. And he said this. We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that's going to go off if we don't take some pretty dramatic action. That's a Republican. They understand. At least some of them do understand the scope of the problems. The algae dies, brine shrimp die, the birds die. There becomes the enormous dry dead zone covered in this crust. It starts to break up over time and the dust comes up and the dust storms will rise within however many years. I don't, I don't know. You'll be wearing masks in Salt Lake during certain times of the year. Whenever you go outside, you're probably wearing goggles too. The ski industry is only years away from collapsing until everyone figures out that when this dust, when the snow picks up the dust, those particles will bind to the snow and so the ski resorts will be toxic. The snow itself will be full of carcinogenic elements. And once that gets generally known, then it will impact the ski industry. The ski industry is going to collapse. This is if we do, if we do nothing right, brine shrimp stops. And I'm told, I don't understand why, but magnesium production, which is one of the major industries, as a matter of fact, the magnesium corporation or whatever it is that mines the magnesium out of the lake, apparently it needs to be wet for it to work. When the lake dries up, the magnesium somehow gets impacted. But that company is the number one polluter in Utah. If you look at the companies that pollute inside Utah, they are legion and terrible. Okay, let's move forward. I'm sorry, this is not, this is sad stuff, right? I don't, I don't take any, any pleasure in, in any of this, you know. Okay, let's, let's talk about some of the other lakes from around the world who have been through similar things. Let's talk about Owens Lake. Owens Lake was in California. It is only 100 square miles. So remember I told you the, the pre drought lake from the 80s was 3,300 miles. Owens Lake, what I'm about to describe to you comes from a 100 square mile area. And then water was devoted from, diverted from the owens river in 1913 to feed Los Angeles. The diversion caused a Large portion of the lake bed to dry out. And today the lake has shrunk down to one third of Terry. So it's still there, but, but 2 thirds are, are exposed before dust controls were implemented. Now if you go out there, what they have is they have trucks going around all day every day just spraying it down with water to keep the dust from coming, from coming down the. So, so, so which is not a solution for Salt Lake because you have 3,300 miles and we're already short of water. Right, but, but they, they, so they, they expose it. The exposed lake bed produced large amounts of dust on high winds resulting in the highest concentrations anywhere in the US of airborne PM10 or particulate matter with a diameter of 10 micrometers or less. Those that and if you're in Salt Lake, you'll know at the weather report. They report on the PM 10 counts every day. Owens Lake, it dried up. It was the worst source of dust pollution in the United States According to a 2020 study by National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and, and Medicine. That's dust for the entire United States. Right. This one lake in, in California. Let's talk about the Aral Sea. So the Aral Sea, it was this big sea in, in. I can't find it in my notes here in Ubekistan, I think. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's somewhere back. Oh, there it is. I found it. Thank you. Once it was the fourth largest lake in the world. The Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Ubekistan is now a toxic desert littered with rusting ships and plagued with lung choking dust storms. The area's once thriving fish industry has been decimated. And the exposed lake bed contains high concentration of crop killing salts as well as pesticides, industrial chemicals, fertilizer runoff. These irritants swell, swirl in the air industriums causing tuberculosis, cancer, lung disease for the 10,000 people who live nearby. So, so when we look and see what other lakes that were in similar situations and both of these lakes actually had it better than the Great Salt Lake has it now. Things did not turn out so well for those, those areas. Okay. And then the last, last fact I'll drop on you here is the. Of the U.S. of major U.S. cities, Salt Lake has the lowest per gallon water rates, meaning what they charge per gallon according to a 2017 federal report. It also consumes more water for residential use than any other desert city. 96 gallons per person per day compared to a 78 in Tucson and 77 in Los Angeles. So we are Very thirsty. In Salt Lake City, we like our water. Our water is part of our culture, even though we live in a very arid desert. Okay, so that's where I teed up the. The problem that we're facing. Any. Any questions on the problem?

John Dehlin [00:58:16] Well, I mean, honestly, John Larsen, for a while now, whenever I've kind of talked to you, either on camera or off, especially when you had your hair in a little ponytail, I don't know if you still have a ponytail. I. I thought this must. Talking to John Larsen must be like, what. It's. What it was like talking to an Old Testament prophet. Because there's this person, Jen's laughing in the background. What's that, John?

John Larsen [00:58:45] Because we're all lunatics.

John Dehlin [00:58:47] Yeah, because you, like, think of these, like, old, crusty, curmudgeonly dudes who are, like, standing on the corner half dressed, and they're, like, saying all this stuff that's depressing and calamitous, and you want to blow them off and even laugh at them or spit at them, and then, like, the. The metaphorical bear comes and. And tears you apart. Right. In other words, turns out they were kind of right, you know what I'm saying? And so that's the only problem with the prophet is they actually were right. Now, nowadays, you know, I don't know if we can say the same thing about the modern equivalent of the prophet, seers and revelators, but I, you know, I used to kind of just ignore you and kind of blow you off sometimes. Nowadays, I'm paying a little more attention.

John Larsen [00:59:33] Well, you don't have to because, like, even.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] Even Doug Fabrizio covered this. Has covered this on Radio west several episodes, and that was after I heard you talking about it quite a bit ago. So, I mean, somehow you're tapped into stuff before a lot of other people are really paying attention or caring. And I don't. Is it a crystal ball? Is it the priesthood? And is it, you know, is it Kimmy? Is it Brent? You know, what is it?

John Larsen [00:59:59] I read a great quote. Maybe I'll see if I can find it in my. In my notes. So I'm stealing this from somebody else. They said prognosticators aren't really good at seeing the future. They're good at seeing what's happening right now. This thing we're talking about with the lake is not happening in the future. It's happening right now. Just as human beings, we tend to delay accepting news. You know, it's like that person who has a spouse that's cheating on Them that everybody sees, everybody knows, except that person. So, so when I'm prognosticating, I'm just telling you what the experts say and I'm telling you what they're reporting in. You know, when I research, I research ksl, I research Deseret News. I look at the, the research coming out of byu there, the, there's, there's a lot of Mormons in the physical sciences who are very deathly concerned about what's happening at this lake. And there's a lot of people outside. If you read the New York Times article from like a week and a half ago, you know, they're saying, how long will Salt Lake sit on this? So this is now being considered a bellwether to say here's a place that is about to get absolutely run over by climate change. Like, like in a way that it is not. It is. It is. If you, if you, if you plotted out the possible outcomes, you know, worst case scenario is that within X amount of time, 25 years, Salt Lake is completely uninhabitable. It will be vacated. That's worst case. The problem is, if you look at a lot of the predictions over the last 30 years for climate change, we are usually matching or beating, meaning the worst, our worst case scenarios. So, so this is happening now. It's not. I'm not a prophet, I'm not, I don't have any crystal ball. Look in the future. This is just what's going on. Because there's so many threads like this happening right now. We are all getting overwhelmed and, and you can't deal with it. None of us can. We can't deal with it emotionally, we can't deal with it physically. Like, so what, what the fuck are you supposed to do? Because we haven't even got to the second half of this, but I'm sure there's people listening right now and saying, what are you doing? I left. I looked at it and I, I looked at every possible scenario and, and, and I moved because I knew I had a window when I could move and I took it.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] You left us all.

John Larsen [01:02:26] You should move.

John Dehlin [01:02:26] You left it. You left us all here to die, John Larsen. That's what you did.

John Larsen [01:02:31] I asked you all to come along and you all said no.

John Dehlin [01:02:34] No, you went to prepare a way. Yeah, you're John the Baptist. John the Larsen went to prepare away. Why are you laughing, Carah?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:02:42] Because I didn't. I'm gonna go see his, his digs in a month.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] Are you thinking about joining the commune? You know how that way you Know how that ends?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:02:50] I mean. Yeah, that sounds pretty intense.

John Dehlin [01:02:52] He's got a ponytail. You know how that is.

John Larsen [01:02:55] I cut off my ponytail.

John Dehlin [01:02:57] Did you?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:02:58] Oh, well, screw that. You're coming.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] How are you going to be a cult leader without a ponytail, John Larsen?

John Larsen [01:03:03] I'm not a leader of anybody or anything. If there's a lot of things you guys want to worry about me, so starting a cult is not. I don't like. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not management material. Yeah, all right.

Mormon Theology and Environmental Apathy

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:03:17] Likes to decentralize power. That's what I like about you, John.

John Larsen [01:03:20] Okay, I'm not either.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] I care. Will tell you. I'm not management material either.

John Larsen [01:03:23] Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Karen

John Larsen [01:03:26] sent this topic to John de Lynn and. And we have another. We are going to do the Pullman talk and we still will. But I, I thought this one was really important and there's. It's been getting a lot of press emotion and I thought, I thought it'd be a great time to jump on this and talk that. But the question John asked me was, what does this have to do with the church?

John Dehlin [01:03:44] Yeah. I'm like, oh, we're going to talk politics. People are going to hate it. And does it have anything to do with Mormonism? Let me. Can I just throw in a little segue?

John Larsen [01:03:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:52] Like I'm making the joke that you're kind of an actual prophet. And I think that's to contrast the idea that we were all sold on, which was that we were members of a church that was led by prophet seers and revelators. The problem is, and I'm sure you're going to get to this, is, you know, we all know what. Who was it? Was it Marx who referred to religion as the opiate of the masses? Because you would think that religion would be the world leader in, you know, organized religion would be the world leading organization to make people aware of what's going on, sensitive to what's going on, prepared for what's going on and able to fix what's going on before things get bad. Because why else have prophets? Why else have God? Why else have Jesus? Why else have commandments if it's not to like make the world a better place? And let's just face it, even now the world is way more religious than it's, than it is non religious still, especially in the United States. So you think we'd be ahead of this ball game and already solving the problem. But the problem is I'm not so sure religion is waking us all up to see this ahead of Time and fix the problem. Maybe it might even be numbing us and blinding us to, to your point, John Larsen, blinding us to what is actually happening. It's not that you're a prophet, you're just paying attention. And maybe some of us that are super religious maybe aren't paying attention for some reasons we're probably about to get into.

John Larsen [01:05:26] And you know, and I, I think I like your quote there. I'm not a big apologist for Marx, but my belief is. What he meant by that was that like opium, it dulls your senses. It, it makes you not want change because you're just, you're just dull. You're just, you know, the rewards for religion, and I think one of the reasons Christianity has been so successful is the rewards come after this life. Whatever turmoil you have in this life, just, you know, have faith, go to church, pay your tithing to the leaders, do what you're told, be a good citizen, pay your taxes, and then you'll get everything when you die, everything will be given to you. And if you don't do it, then the worst possible things that anybody's ever come up to you will, will, will happen to you. And for most people, I think they're like, well, you know, hell looks pretty terrible and there's a lot of nice people at church, so why not? I think, I think that was Marxist point and I think, I think he's right. I, I on this one. I think he's wrong on other things. But I, I think that we just look at history. Do religions, let's, let's just narrow down Christianity. Christianity has a 2000 year history. Is it on the forefront like, like when the, when the Reformation, when the Protestant Reformation came, when people pointed out some of the abuses of the church that the church later acknowledged itself. What did they do to those people? Did they kill them? Did they torture them? Did they put, you know, stretch them on the rack and yes, they did all those things. Like religion's response to anything that challenges its authority is never good. And there's some more reasons that we'll talk about in a second. So let's jump in and start talking about white church. Carrie, did you have something else you want to say?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:07:10] No, but I think that you're right on and talking about this as just an overall wider problem in America. I just don't think that we have such problems with what the scientific community is telling us where we almost look like it, like John was saying, like it's prophesying. But you know, there's that Saying of like in every movie where the world is ending, there's like a crazy scientist who's like, I told you so, you should have listened to me. And they're like screaming with papers in their hands. But we, we do it in media, but we don't actually in real life. America doesn't, in my opinion, have as strong of a healthy culture that looks up to scientists as maybe, you know, other portions of the world. So you mix this, you know, fundamentalist nature into upholding these ideas about Christianity and the end of the world and what really is the whole point. And then you, you throw in a profit onto that into the state of Utah. With so many of our legislators being of a certain faith, it just feels like it's just all of the problems of America kind of, you know, condensed down into literal tiny particles that we breathe into our lungs and die of cancer.

John Larsen [01:08:13] Like, I, I agree. I think this is not an LDS problem in particular, but this, this one. But, but, but the, the, the ways that LDS people, Mormons approach their religion is very similar to the way that fundamentalist Baptists and fundamentalist Catholics and evangelicals and you know, we go on and on. They, they, they all have a very similar approach. And the world is a big, wide, complicated place. It is hard to navigate so many things going on that you can't understand, that you don't understand, that you don't have time to understand. And what religion does, it creates a nice little box that you can live in and there's nice people who will help you and you generally, you gain from it. So it's win, win. The community benefits from you, you benefit from the community. And on a microscale it works great for individuals, but it tends to not be adaptable to change and it tends to be very violent in pursuing what it considers to be its enemies.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:09:13] Yeah, and it feels like it all so many religions, whether it's, you know, Jehovah's Witnesses or anything where it says like the earth will end at a certain point. And so you have any kind of mentality coupled with a fundamentalism I just think is overall dangerous for the longevity of, of the people in the community if they're kind of like, this is the date in which we need to get to this point. So just throw everything, throw all your consumerism at it, throw all of like your unhealthy ideals about how we're going to get to this new Zion right now, because there's going to be an end date. And so whether it's, you know, an evangelicalism and our Mormonism or like a Jehovah's Witness. It just feels like Mormonism does have kind of a doomsday mentality to it, does it not? Like that doesn't give Mormons a huge like, let's make the world better for the next 1,000 years, you know.

John Larsen [01:09:58] Well, it's, you're exactly right. And I think that's perfect transition. So that's, that's our point one on the church. The church is an apocalyptic religion. It's in the name of the church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days. The fundamental core belief of the church is we are in the end times. And during those end times there'll be turmoil and tumult, there'll be pestilence and famine, there'll be death and all that stuff. So these events that are negatively impacting us fit into their narrative. So it reinforces a worldview that they have. And that worldview is, since it's apocalyptic, it is coming and there's nothing we can do about it. It's baked into the entire system. So there's a fundamental belief that, that the world is going to be destroyed and then Jesus or God will renew it. And I have been told this over and over again in church. This is a common anti environmentalist teaching in the church. It has been there for as long as I was in the church. It's still there. That environmentalism, I actually heard from the pulpit more than once people condemning environmentalism as not trusting in God because if you did anything to save the environment, well, you didn't believe that God would actually renew or that God was actually in charge of his, of his planet. So this is the Latter Days. That's point one. And Mormons are not the only ones who believe in that apocalyptic vision.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:11:33] That's like on level with like Christ scientists, you know, like if you're, if you're bleeding out and you don't need to see a doctor, you need to pray over it like that There are companies that can do, you know, dump toxic sludge in our water and that we get cancer from that. The idea that you wouldn't try to stop our environment from polluting our very, our lungs, our bloodstreams, making this world able to facilitate more life. That seems so. Like, that seems the most fundamentalist thing I've literally ever heard.

John Larsen [01:12:04] There were, there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people in the last two years who died from an mostly avoidable disease because they spent their time praying. And I mean, you can, you can see there you go to like the Herman Cain Awards on Reddit where they memorialize these people who are out attacking this and talking about their prayer warriors who chose prayer over science and died. Like that's not something of the past. There's over, there's over a million people who died of this of COVID in the United States and by all accounts we're under counting those numbers.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:12:39] Sure.

John Larsen [01:12:39] Who chose not to get a scientifically established remedy.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:12:45] Yeah, that is a really interesting point that I wasn't anticipating when we went into this. This, that so much of the Mormon belief is quite anti environmentalism in the same, in that same genre of other overlapping things that we see. Whether it's. Yeah, but praying your way through Covid or the way that Christ scientists or even you know, Jehovah's Witnesses, not wanting to have blood transfusion or something, that, that is just, you know, antithetical to what we know about what is healthy for us.

John Dehlin [01:13:14] It's really interesting and putting, putting like partisanship aside, but also just describing the topography of American politics. It's, it's almost like Ezra Top Benson and maybe you're going to get to this, John. Ezra Top Benson brings more, establishes Mormonism as kind of the official Mormon religion, especially in Utah. And it just so happens that the way the Republican Party of the United States has progressed or regressed or digressed, depending your position, is to be kind of making fun of global warming or to kind of deny global warming. That's going to also then influence Utah's, you know, approach or non approach to climate change. Right?

John Larsen [01:13:59] Well, I've heard it. Yeah, you're right. And I've heard it applied in sacramenting to things as simple as being a vegetarian. There are, there are a lot of fundamentalist Christians out there who believe that vegetarianism is a, as a segment of Satanism. And the, the justification is, is when God granted mankind dominion over the animals. Well then if you're not like using animals for your own benefit, you're not eating them and wearing their fur and all that kind of stuff. Well, you're disobeying God. I've heard that argument more than once made. So the idea that we're supposed to just use up the planet is a commonly held one among conservative folks.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:14:42] Use up the planet because God gave it to us.

John Larsen [01:14:45] Yeah, that was its point to, to

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:14:47] our detriment is what's fascinating. Like I could understand that if there were not as many people or like factory farming didn't exist or something.

John Larsen [01:14:54] But, but, but Carah, at this point, to whose Detriment, definitely.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:14:58] Everyone's.

John Larsen [01:14:59] The people, the capital in, in this, the, the, the capital that's being generated from ignoring environmental things. They're making money hand over fist right now. If you are an anti environmentalist, you're getting rich. Right. So I mean, that's one of the fundamental problems. Climate denial and political climate denial is a way to gain power and wealth still.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] You're talking about coal mine owners, oil companies that might drill.

John Larsen [01:15:33] Oxman Chemical. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] Or Rio Tinto.

John Larsen [01:15:38] Yeah. These companies around that are full of Mormons that, that are, that are, that are just. I, I have the, the list here.

John Dehlin [01:15:49] They're not incentivized. They're not incentivized to care about the short term or even the long term. Maybe effects of, of what's happening in the Great Salt Lake because they're profiting today. And that's more important. They'll be dead in 40, 50 years.

John Larsen [01:16:09] Look at Salt Lake. Okay, and my next point is this is the place. Right. But, but let me skip ahead and come back. Salt Lake City is bordered on the north by two oil refineries. Right next to those oil refineries on Ensign Peak, there is a gravel. You know, so when you approach Salt Lake, you're passing a big gravel pit that's like literally like two and a half miles from the capital, buttressed by two oil refineries that they, they run at night. If you want to see them, go see them at night because the, the, you know, the, the gas burn offs go 18, 20, 25ft in the air. When I was a young man, I, I was a 911 dispatcher at, at, at Bo in Bountiful City. And we would routinely get calls when they were really flaming that up, you know, because people thought like something was on fire. You could, you could smell it for eight miles around. And so right on the other side of those two oil refineries is a medical incinerator. Like this is in Salt Lake City where millions of people live. Right. So you have this gravel pit next to oil refineries, next to the medical waste recycler. Right down the road from there is that big Rio Tinto smokestack I was talking about. About 10 miles south of that still in the Salt Lake Valley is the Kennecott Copper Mine. The big open pit. Copper Mine Energy Solutions burns nerve gas. Right. So you've got all these trucks and trains coming through Salt Lake that are carrying the nastiest nasty elements that the military industrial complex creates. And Utah allows them to be burned. What happens when you burn nerve gas into the atmosphere, nobody knows. Right, but we're just, we're just, we're just doing it. Right. So you have energy solutions. You have the bombing range just on the other side of, of of the Ochre Mountains that is full of unexploded ordinance of God knows what. I already mentioned that we did the last open air nuclear bombs. I mean with. Once it went up into the stratosphere 10 miles up in 1963, in 1962, I'm sorry, the treaty ended that in 63. But the last nuclear bomb that was exploded in Nevada happened in 1992. Like all of this stuff. And why is all this happening in Salt Lake? Because it is a political environment that is friendly to any sort of. They do not believe in environmentalism to such an extent that they will go 180 degrees backwards. And now all the that's come from all those companies is settling into that lake bed. All right, so we talked about the apocalyptic religions. Now let's talk about the promised land. This is the place Mormons believe that the Utah Valley was selected and set apart from for them to establish the last big stake in Zion before God comes back to Jackson County, Missouri and sets up the central. Remember the metaphor is a stake from a tent. You have a pole and it comes down with a rope and then there's a stake. So Salt Lake is the first and main stake that is holding up the central pole of Jackson County, Missouri where God is to return to. To where the Garden of Eden. For those of you who aren't Mormons, I'm not making any of this up. They believe that just outside of Kansas City is the central place of the universe where not only was the Garden of Eden, but God will return to build the 24 temples that Joseph Smith drew up and rule the world in a theocracy. Which leads me to my third point. So first one, Salt Lake City is a set aside anointed place that God chose to incubate his church believing. Mormons will not accept the idea that Salt Lake is under threat because of that, because it undermines, it undermines, it undermines the whole thing. Okay.

All Is Well in Zion: Denial and Doomsday Thinking

John Dehlin [01:20:27] They basically saying kind of all is well in Zion and you can't believe there's something wrong because then your leaders aren't doing their job. And you can't believe their leaders aren't doing their job.

John Larsen [01:20:37] It's more fundamental than that. It's baked into the whole plan of salvation. The very like Salt Lake City was anointed as the gathering, the last gathering place in Zion where the church would not fall into apostasy and would thrive and usher in the kingdom of God. Which is my third point.

John Dehlin [01:20:54] So it can't be. It can't be a toxic dung heap if it's.

John Larsen [01:20:58] It can't be. It can't be.

John Dehlin [01:20:59] Right?

John Larsen [01:21:00] And anybody who's telling you that is lying because we, we have the Scriptures. Right?

John Dehlin [01:21:04] And the prophets would never let that happen.

John Larsen [01:21:06] The prophets would. God would never let that happen. God chose this place.

John Dehlin [01:21:09] Right, Right. Right.

John Larsen [01:21:10] So the third one. Both Brigham Young and Joseph Smith believed that Mormons were literally establishing the Kingdom of God and both had themselves anointed as king of the world. So did John Taylor. But Brigham Young and, and Joseph Smith believed themselves to be the high king and, and ruler over the entire world. And what they believed, especially Brigham Young, because Joseph Smith was taken out when he was 39. Brigham Young believed that the government that he was setting up in Utah would grow to become the new one world government under the leadership of the priesthood. And that belief is still common, but it's one of the things we don't say out loud. It's that. It's that the meat that always comes after the milk that they're talking about, but that we are establishing the literal kingdom of God and we will be the ones who show the world the way, that all the world will look to us to see how to do it. They will look to us to see how to, how to rule the world. So those three things in my mind bundled together to have a pretty good bulwark against taking any action against environmental damage or climate change, because it all doesn't matter. God's establishing his kingdom. He's going to renew the earth. He is going to reset everything with fire. And, and that's. That's the way it is. Okay, so let's go over church history a little bit. You hinted this before 1890. Finally, the, the, the, the prophets have been on the run. They have been locked up. George Buchanan fallen into prison. Ruger Clausen thrown into prison. John Taylor in hiding, Wilford Woodruff in hiding, moving around, sort of this, this, you know, underground railroad to try to stay away from the authorities. They're seizing church land, they're seizing church property. The church is not, not doing very well. So they, they form out a compromise in 1890, where Lo and behold, a revelation comes and we're going to end polygamy. Wink, wink, wink. Because we don't really end polygamy then, but 1896, six years later, the US recognizes the actions, believes there's enough reform going on. And then. And then they grant statehood to Utah. 1896. Reed Smoot is elected to the Senate in 1902, I believe maybe a little bit earlier, but because he was an active polygamist, you know, the Reed Smoot hearings were kicked off, which is fascinating. We'll come to those in a future.

John Dehlin [01:24:02] Yeah, we gotta cover that. The Reed smooth hearings in a morning stories.

John Larsen [01:24:06] But the church gets blown wide open. And Joseph F. Smith admits that he's not receiving any revelation. And he's not ghosts or whatever, ascended masters visiting him. But the church is then kind of lost for a little while. The old guard politicians, who almost all were polygamous, could no longer serve either in Utah or in the federal government because there were too many people watching to say, you Mormons are really still practicing polygamy. So they had to get a new breed of politicians, people who hadn't engaged in polygamy. And by. And by 1914, World War I hits. Utah was mostly exempt from that because there's an agrarian state. There weren't a lot of people who fought followed by the Spanish flu in 1917, 1918. And so the Mormons were looking for kind of this identity. They were. They were kind of lost. They were no longer polygamous. They had to walk back most of the stuff that Brigham Young taught. They were out there in the desert, poor, kind of figuring out who they wanted to be. And with World War II and preceding that, and then of course the Depression hit really hard. The church was kind of lost in the days they. They leaned into basically adopting uber patriotism. And because the foundation was already sort of there in the Scriptures. Although you can see from Mormon history is interpreted both ways as being anti US Government, being pro US Government, which is why we're still in that conundrum today. Mormons go both ways. And Mormons became the Reader's digest version of the American dream. And the golden age of Mormonism erupts in the 50s and 60s. But because they were adopting Americana, they kind of overcorrected into the conservative camp. And you have a bunch of conservatives who rise up in the 50s and 60s. The two that are oftentimes most prominent are David O. McKay and Ezra T. Benson. Ezra Taft Benson. Ezra Taft Benson had served in the 50s in the Eisenhower administration as Secretary of Agriculture. And so he had connections into Washington and he bought into the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society was. This was the predecessor to all the stuff that we have going on right now. They were Very conspiratorial. They believed there were communists everywhere. They believed that there was great big conspiracies. One of them that they believed, and Ezra Taft Benson preached from the pulpit was that the civil rights movement was a communist plot and that people like Dr. Martin Luther King were just agents of the devil and agents of communism. So the church veers extremely far to the right. But there's, at the time in the 60s and 70s, there was still a force that kind of balanced them out, and they were still really concerned with marketing. So you have really kind of two divisions among the apostles. Those who are embracing American exceptionalism and that nationalism that is inherent, Mormonism and wanting to run with that further. And those who say, no, we're a global church and we need to do more marketing that appeals. So in that period, you've got Benson getting up and saying all sorts of crazy cuckoo banana stuff, and then you've got the church really hiring New York Madison Avenue advertising firms and buying ads in Life magazine or in Reader's Digest try to appeal and say, see, we're just fundamentally American. That's when the church starts really adopting things like the Boy Scouts and patriotism and fireworks displays. They want to say, we too, we're just Americans too. And that kind of set the stage for where we've, where we've entered now, where in 1992, Bill Clinton won the election and conservatives kind of lost their minds. And we had in 1994, two years later, the Contract With America for Newt Gingrich and the Republican revolution. And forgive me if I get any of these dates wrong, I'm pulling these from memory. So 1994 was the last time, by the way, that United States had a budget, a balance, a budget at all. We haven't had a budget since 1994 because Congress has become, you know, just absolutely locked up. So because of that conservatism, there has always been an anti environmentalist streak in the church because environmentalism was seen as a liberal cause and not something that conservatives need to need to worry themselves over. And you see it in the valley. I looked it up right now in the three counties, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah county, there are over 1, 200 chapels. And every chapel is surrounded by what, lots of deep green grass. And there are temples, there are parks, there are historical sites. There are the seminaries that are next to every single high school and every single junior high school. And these are all, to this day, lush and green and well watered and not following any patterns that have been recommended for the last 30 or 40 years in terms of conservation. The church itself has given lip service to conservation every once in a while, but appears to do nothing at all to actually make that happen. All right, so that's kind of a quick overview of the history, the political history of the church, and we'll talk more about present times. Did I, did I go over anything too fast? Anything you guys want to add?

Utah Water Use, BYU, and Conservative Politics

John Dehlin [01:29:46] That was great. I think BYU uses half of Utah's water for its grounds on BYU campus. Carah, as a Provo person, can you attest it's beautiful?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:29:56] So any shelf items you have, when you're like touring the campus, thinking of going there, they all just float away because you're like, the flowers are so gorgeous. It's a testimony builder. They know what they're doing, stealing all the water.

John Larsen [01:30:09] Right. And they've really embraced that, like the idea that temple grounds are so beautiful and the buildings are so beautiful and they're lit up. There is this materialism that has crept into the church that is a cancer because it was condemned in previous generations. But now the idea that people will want to join the church because we have lots of posies around the temple and it's a beautiful building and we light it up like Christmas tree every night.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:30:38] Right?

John Larsen [01:30:38] Okay, so present day 2016. Well, well, first of all, you see, you see the, in. In 2010, the, the, the rise of. Oh, my mind just slipped. The. The movement that Trump built on top of was heavily populated by, by.

John Dehlin [01:30:57] By Mormons, like the patriots, the militia kind of people.

John Larsen [01:31:00] Yeah, well, there's, there's always the, the patriots and, and the militias and those sort of things. They have a, you know, you have like the Bund standoff at the Wild Refuge in Oregon, the standoff in Nevada. Those are all, those are all Mormon led incursions. And as far I've looked, I've looked, I've looked there. I have not seen one instance, one instance of any of these insurrectionists ever being disciplined by the church. The church just lets it go. And what do they do to therapists in Salt Lake City that talk about masturbation, Excommunicate them? What do they do to Mormons who point machine guns at federal agents,

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:31:40] give them like a wink and a nod and a wagging of a finger while like a pat on the back? I actually don't know.

John Larsen [01:31:46] I have. I'm gonna scrub this. I know of somebody and I honestly know of this person who died in the last eight months of COVID Although they made sure, the family made sure that, that this individual was in Idaho. The family made sure that the, the, none of the official things said Covid and I think they even went, got the birth, the death certificate changed, but they buried this guy with his temple clothes and with a machine gun. Like, like the, the movement that is, that is around in Mormonism right now is super scary. So we, we look at Mormons in Trump's inner circle, which was very anti environmentalist. You have Rob Porter, who is the White House staff secretary. There's a great article in the Desert News. I read it this afternoon. It was right before he, it was found out that he's beating up his wife and cheating on her. If you remember that, that was in the early days of the Trump administration. Oh, just, just gushing about this LDS guy and in the, in the halls of power and how wonderful Mormons are and all their stuff, they have put a disclaimer up at the top saying we didn't know this guy. Mo Brooks is, is a Mormon. Paul Gosner is a Mormon. I mean, these guys are nuts, right? Mike Lee, part of, part of Trump's inner circle. Burgess Owens is a more Mormon. And, and if you take Mormons who were middle of the road like Jeff Lake and Bob Bennett and those guys were systematically drummed out of, of office, the church has been moving further and further and further, right? And I pointed out the Desert Book got rid of all their political stuff. But eight years ago, if you would have walked into a Deseret book, you would have seen prominently displayed the books by Sean Hannity. And of course, Glenn Beck is a Mormon, so his stuff. But you would see nothing representing any views outside of conservative politics. And I don't want to make it sound like there's this side and this side because that's, that's not true. The truth. There's this conservative Kabbalah that's getting crazier and crazier and crazier. Dan Crenshaw was assaulted by other Republicans at the, at the Republican state convention in Texas. Texas holds 38 political votes. Right. The Republican Party this weekend not only condemned homosexuality as being aberrant, but they put in the platform of the Texas Republican Party that, that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. I think for most of human history, those were fighting words that would have gotten you invaded. And, and it just, just the, the amount of, the amount of corruption that, that's, that's gone so far is, is just mind blowing.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:34:39] All right, so just to clarify, there's just something about all of these things, whether it's like needing to show your patriotism that you're proud to be an American and America's number one. This is God's chosen land and the, the Mormon Church is, is God's one true church on the earth. All of those things. It just sounds like you're trying, you're making the point that like compound more and more harmful ideas and the church is kind of for it. The church is like okay with doubling down on all of these, like whether it's very conservative or very, very like fundamentalist type of Christian offshoot beliefs. Is that, where am I understanding correctly?

John Larsen [01:35:20] I think you're giving the church way too much credit. You get to say the church is for conservatism or, you know, modern American conservatism. I don't think that's true. I think the church is a spineless, money making, Ponzi scheme. I don't, I don't think they have any conviction politically. I think they'll, they'll do whatever preserves their power. So, so I think that's one of the problems. But, but let's, let's move to the, to the question that you're asking. Okay, so I've just kind of set the stage. What's the fix? So how do we get out of this mess? Right, well, the legislature this year allocated $40 million to study, to study the problem. Right. And it was just announced a week or two ago that they have employed the Nature Conservancy and the Auburn Auto. The Audubon Society, sorry, the Audubon Society to investigate what can be done. But let's be clear. What needs to change in Salt Lake City will require a very, very deep change in lifestyle by all three elements. By industry, by individuals, and by agriculture. So, so because agriculture and industry are the lifeblood, kind of a rhetorical position of the conservative movement, it's my belief that they will have a very difficult time reforming those. So, you know, how quickly can Americans adapt? Well, you and I can try to adapt overnight, but our water usage is insignificant compared. I looked it up. And of water usage in Salt Lake City, 42% is accounted for by individual homes. Well, that means that 58% is by agriculture and industry. So, so right there, the first and best bang for your buck is to get industry to step back. But this is a problem we run into with capitalism. I'm not, I'm going to point out a trade of capitalism. I'm not advocating against capitalism. I'm just saying this is the result. Capitalism is a system to take capital investment and grow it. Capitalism is not A system to shrink investment. It basically is a car with an accelerator and no brakes and no reverse. Capitalism has no mechanism for systematically reducing anything. It just, it's not like. Because capital is morally corrupt, it's just not there. Because if I, if I set up a company that, and my job of my company is to reduce the amount of whatever it's doing, there's no profit there. There's no way to grow my capital. So capitalism, which has been our go to and been the main political engine of conservatism, is completely unable to solve this problem. Because the only solution to this problem for Salt Lake is to have a very significant cutback of the amount of water that individuals are using to water their lawns. And there's still, you can read articles that people are still getting fined. There's people trying to zero escape in Salt Lake City and getting tickets for it. So, so they, they have to cut back significantly the water utilization by individuals. They have to cut back significantly, the water utilization is going to Kennecott Copper and Rio Tinto and Energy Solutions. And then they have to basically start reversing agriculture in the, in, in Utah. They have to go to farmers and say I'm sorry, you're done, you can't have any more water. They have to go into these cities and say, I'm sorry, you're done, you can't have any more water. I pointed out that Utah politics is really heavily influenced by conservative views. And they are still working in the reverse. They are still working to overturn environmental regulations. I, that, that, that in order for conservatives who control completely the entire government apparatus of Utah, they would not only have to reverse their religious conviction, which is that this is the holy place that has been set aside, but they would also have to reverse their political position. And they would also have to reverse and, and actually start taking apart and dismantling the, the economic engine of Utah, I. E. Growth. Because they have to say no more houses being built. So all of, all of the construction trade plummets. They have to pull agriculture. And our governor in Utah is a alfalfa farmer from San Pe County. So they have to cut that stuff out. And then they have to start telling people they can't have any water. I do not think personally that because of the religious influence and where we are right now there is anywhere near the political will to actually do what it's going to take. Now my wife is a better person than I am. So as we were talking about this, I have to give her credit, she said this, this is the perfect opportunity for the church. Right here we have a bellwether of climate change. That's going to happen right in in Zion. And the church has enormous influence. 91% of Utah legislature identifies as LDS even though the population of Utah is somewhere between 60 and 70 something. So they have an over influence that the church does ostensibly. And this is going to impact them and nobody else. They could come in and lead the way. And she said they have hundreds of billions of dollars. They could slide spend that money now to solve the problem. But here's where I, I love her beautiful heart but I'm much more cynical than she is. I don't think they can do it. I do not think that they can reverse their religious worldview, their political worldview and the power and money that is currently going to these big companies that use the water and these agricultural base. Because Utah has the same problem that the country does in general, which is the compromise between the slave states in the beginning gave us the House and the Senate. And so you have senators who are politically way overrepresented. And the same thing is true in Utah. There are an undue number of Utah senators who represent tiny populations and the Salt Lake City Maine population is way underrepresented. So it's in. It's not in their interest to cut off water to Sevier County. It's not in their interest to cut off water to St. Pete County. They're going to want to preserve their own profits, their own lifestyle, their own faith based way of life for as long as they possibly can.

Potential Solutions and Bleak Outlooks

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:42:38] As long as they possibly can until we are all in the hospital with lung cancer. Like, like play it through is kind of what I'm hearing you say right now is like at what point like these people are kind of going to die off and the church can only, you know, just try to live in Zion in this horrible environmental disaster. Like to what end are people going to. To wake up and realize that this is not a habitable place and these people are not doing the job that they should be doing.

John Larsen [01:43:05] Well, not yet. I can give you evidence of that. Robert Sprent Love, a Republican state representative this year introduced a bill to that would have blocked communities from requiring homeowners to maintain lawns. Just not letting communities make people have lawns. The bill was voted down in the Utah in the Utah legislature Salt Lake City is trying to conserve water. Last year it stopped issuing permits for businesses require significant water such data centers. So, so there is baby steps being taken. But lawmakers rejected proposals that would have had immediate impact, such as requiring water efficient sinks and showers in new homes. And you remember that was a rally cry for the MAGA crowd that Trump really didn't like the low flow toilets, he didn't like the low flow showerheads, and he reversed all the rulings that required those devices that save water in people's houses. Again, I'm going back to the point. The Republicans who are not the Republicans, the conservatives who have too much power here, they need to be going this way and they're going that way, or I'm looking at my screen, they're going the opposite direction they need to go. So when people are saying, can they address the problem? I'm saying they first have to stop where they are and turn around. So until they turn around, we know there's going to be nothing done. Anybody who thinks that Utah can deal with this problem as long as they have the same anti environmentalism religious worldview that believes they're superior and they just can't do it. And the final argument I'll make is the reason we are really fucked is capitalism, because there is no way to spend your way out of this problem. There's no amount of money that can create more water. So this was my counter argument to my lovely wife. The church may have hundreds of billions of dollars sitting around and what would they buy with it? The water? The water is not a fixed resource. It's a diminishing resource. They're proposing crazy things like building a pipeline from the, the Pacific Ocean to the Great Salt Lake, first of all. Well, is that even worth addressing? That? That's, it's, it's, that's, that's, that's. No.

Arsenic, Market Failures, and Church Capitalism

John Dehlin [01:45:25] John, I have a few questions. Is that all right?

John Larsen [01:45:28] Yes, sir.

John Dehlin [01:45:29] Okay, so, so the first question is, even if we cut off water to lawns and golf courses and businesses and farms, that doesn't solve the Great Salt Lake arsenic toxic problem. Is that correct? Or is there some way that cutting off water and limiting, limiting water usage statewide resolves the, the arsenic in the Great Salt Lake problem?

John Larsen [01:46:00] It was the only solution. How does it help?

John Dehlin [01:46:03] What's the connection? We all use less water, then what happens? Less is drained.

John Larsen [01:46:08] Got to put more water into the lake, then it's losing through evaporation.

John Dehlin [01:46:13] So it, so it's diverted. Right now it's being diverted from the sources into houses and businesses and farms. So it's not going into the Great Salt Lake so that it could be less, less dry? Is that what you're saying?

John Larsen [01:46:31] It goes in, it goes into the, the aquifer, it evaporates, it gets diverted. It's just, it's not. And maybe there was some time of belief that you know, hey, you could put as much water you had on your lawn because it just all runs down to the ocean anyway. But that's not. And that was a common belief 30 years ago. But, but we've learned that's not how it works.

John Dehlin [01:46:52] Okay, okay, next question there. I remember, you know, I studied political science in high school and I was at byu. So you would hear, you know, market based arguments, cap, capitalistic based arguments that tried to counter, you know, some of the more doomsday is fatalistic kind of progressive concerns that were raised. And there was this argument that capitalists actually benefit from the economy being taken care of, whether it's your rancher or a farmer or you know, pick your business. Even silicon slopes. And I would even add the church in here. Like what did the Mormon Church do when Salt Lake City was in the crapper? The Mormon Church spent a couple billion dollars on a consumer shopping mall. And if you ask the church why they did the consumer shopping mall in Salt Lake City, it wasn't to make a bunch of money off the mall. It was to make downtown more beautiful so that the area surround and more desirable so that the area surrounding Temple Square wasn't a crap hole, but instead was this nice lovely place so that when people came to Salt Lake City to visit Temple Square they wouldn't be running into homeless and, and strip malls and rundown shopping centers. So the, the capitalist argument, and I'm just trying to have like a non echo chamber, thoughtful conversation, the argument is the capitalists and I think the Mormon Church is like the ultimate capitalist church and it's like the ultimate corporation in the United States. Richest U.S. based church, you know, one of the top four richest churches in the world by definition. Capitalist church. That's an example of a capitalist church improving. This is an argument. The City Creek Mall is an example of a capitalist corporate based church actually improving the surroundings to its own benefit. Yeah, so, so I mean you could argue that. But the, but the bigger point is if the Mormon Church starts to feel like the Salt Lake, the, the Great Salt Lake is going to seriously be pumping toxic dust into the state and destroying the economy, destroying the property values and making this state super undesirable. The argument would be that they just like with the City Creek Mall they would step up and fix the problem with their, but right now they're, let's just say they're a Half trillion dollar organization. By the time things get really serious with the Great Salt Lake, there'll be a trillion dollar organization. They will have, they, they will have more money than two gods. Not just one God, but two gods. They'll be able to just buy that pipeline. Literally buy the pipeline. How much does the pipeline cost from, from Utah to the Pacific Ocean? Well, here's the argument. The church will just freaking buy it. They'll do whatever they have to do to save Utah. They're just going to do it when they feel like they need to.

John Larsen [01:50:15] But, but.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:50:16] Let's go pipeline shopping.

John Larsen [01:50:17] Yeah, Carah, go ahead, please.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:50:19] That's all. That was my joke.

John Dehlin [01:50:20] That was a Thomas Monson.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:50:21] Let's go pipeline shopping.

John Dehlin [01:50:23] I love it. That was good.

John Larsen [01:50:24] Okay, so there's a lot there to attack, Mr. Delin. First of all, let me start at the. What you said if they wanted to build a pipeline, they should have done it 10 years ago. It's too late. It's too late. But you make an interesting argument. So the church improved Salt Lake City by building City Creek, Right? Because you mentioned specifically homeless and shopping. Right. So, so after they built Shitty Creek to get rid of the homeless, the homeless population in Salt Lake went down. Right. Because, because they use their capitalist money to address the problem of homelessness. That. That was your argument, right? You're laughing. That was. That was your argument.

John Dehlin [01:51:04] Well, I live here, so I know where this is going.

John Larsen [01:51:07] And, and so what, the, the, the what's his name? The, the governor of, of. Or the mayor of Salt Lake City before Dee Dee.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:51:19] Rocky Anderson.

John Larsen [01:51:20] Rocky Anderson. So Rocky Anderson and the church hated each other.

John Dehlin [01:51:24] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:51:25] So let's give the full history of City Creek, shall we? So the west side was derelict. It was the old rail yards and housing was, was, was, was down there was. That's where the homeless, that's where the drug populations were. That's where the problems were. So Salt Lake launched this great big revitalization to revitalize that district. And they built, they built, they built the open air mall over there. They invested and brought businesses in. They, they, they, they, they, they revitalized Salt Lake City, which moved people away. The, the, the dollars being sent in. Salt Lake moved from. The church owned malls that were down there. The church never bought a mall. They've always had the mall. They always were in the business. But people stopped going to the church properties to visit these other properties which were done to revitalize a down neighborhood. The church didn't like this, so they played dirty. The church did nothing to increase the overall economic situation of Salt Lake. They just wanted more of the pie for themselves. City Creek did not lower the homeless population. It just shifted it. They moved it to where they weren't. This is classic NIMBYism. And they spent $2 billion to bring people back around their little huddle. But did they give a fuck about Salt Lake? No, they didn't. Did they give a fuck about the homeless population? No, they didn't. They. They wanted the dollars going in their pocket. So the problem you're. You're proposing is that they did. They can do some solution. They are unable to do any solution that doesn't directly benefit them. They can't do it. They can't justify it. At least they never have. I can only call the church by what it's been doing. You know, so, so, you know, I see the local murderer or the local drunk who keeps getting drunk every Saturday night, and I say, he's gonna get drunk this Saturday night again because he gets drunk every Saturday night. And you guys are like, oh, woe is me, John Larsen. How dare you. He is a human being. How dare you say he's going to do the same thing he's been doing for 170 years, every time without fail, over and over and over and over again. How dare you point out the character flaws that the church distribute. Displays like. The church is not going to spend its money to reduce the influence of the church, which is what they would be doing. It would end up reducing their. The. The tax base. The population of Salt Lake. Salt Lake is already. This is a little bit outside the scope of. This has already exceeded, in my belief, the carrying capacity of the water that is available, both the groundwater and the mountain water. We have too many people in Salt Lake City. And, and we're. That. That's. That ship has already sailed. So when I hear people talk about the solution that may come, it's later than you all think. Like, it's on us. Like, people are getting sick and dying from this Salt Lake problem right now. The businesses are suffering right now. And I saw a comment go by that said. Okay, John, all your political stuff, but what I want to hear is how to disprove the church. Well, it's all right here. The church cannot deal with any real problem because they're so caught up in their. In their own finances. That is my personal belief that the churches. That Salt Lake City is going to suffer on this one enormously. Sorry, Carah, go ahead.

Why the Church Cannot Address Real Problems

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:55:02] I'm just. I mean, I just made a TikTok Today about like party trick John Larsen and Carah together. I bet we could, you know, deconstruct and disprove Mormonism being true or being led by God in like, you know, 10,000 different ways. And yeah, on this one, one issue alone, if this is supposed to be Zion and this is supposed to be the place, the gathering and stuff, and the own leadership of the church is just like putting their fingers in the ear, in their ears. And not even like you're saying, you know, doing something 10 years ago and not prophesying the way that we hope that they would. And then you have an entire population of Mormons and Utahns being affected by it, who will continue to uphold this person as a prophet and uphold this, you know, just this entire anti environmental kind of system in Utah. They'll uphold it that I guess this is the way God kind of wants it. Cough, cough, paying medical bills out there. But you know, like, it just, it is the system of what Utah is, is what I'm, what I'm kind of laughing at. It's just, it's so sick that that is, it's, it's just another, another way of 10,000 ways that I, that I see that the church is not what it claims to be.

John Larsen [01:56:09] Well, I see it right here in the comments as to why, why the church can't change. There's a, there's a comment by Ex Mo Marine that says, and John Larsen, you won't spend your money to fix this problem either. All right, tell me where I spend my money, Mr. Xmo. Tell me what I do with my time. Tell me what I'm doing in Oregon. I spend almost all of my free time and money working on this problem because we are fucked to a degree that most people can't wrap their head around. And I spend almost all of my free time and energy working on the climate change problem. And I'm working on a micro scale trying to find cultivar. You know, the number of pathogens that have been introduced into every growing climate in the last 10 years is off the scale. Insects are dying, birds are dying, pollinators are going. Plants can no longer take this thing. There is work that is being done on the ground level. There are, there are less fortunate populations that I spend money and time with. I do everything I possibly can. And I'm not saying that to say I'm better than you, but what I'm saying is that you fucking conservatives tell yourself stories. You know nothing about how I spend money. You know nothing about how I spend my time. Yet you're willing to come on the Internet and post this comment about what I do, come out here, you spend the evening with me and see what I do. Because this world is crashing right now. And, and I don't want to be the one to say this, but climate change, we are in act fucking one. Did you see all the cattle that died in Kansas City? Do you see the low temperatures of what, 95 degrees? And what was it, Houston, like every fucking day, people are dying from climate change right now. And the only fascinating question is how long will humanity let themselves be burned alive before they actually do something? And my guess is it's going to take some kind of event where between 50,000 and 100,000 people, white people, let's be clear, 50 to 100,000 white people all die in an event before people will take change. It is here. It is here now. It's not future. There's no question if it's here, we are in it and we are all causing it. And we all have to drive our cars less. We all have to consume less. We have to use less water, every one of us, not to put water in the Great Salt Lake because you got to learn to live on less water, because there is going to be less water. And the problem, the frustration is the church, who has been telling us that they are our leaders, that they are. That they are entitled to revelation, that they know what's going on, that we should look to them, are doing nothing. They're not addressing this problem. They're cashing checks. Right? So don't tell me that I'm not doing anything when you don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. Find the people who are doing things and, and, and work with them. Go down to the homeless shelters. Don't think everybody is the same, hypocritical, nonsensical, I'll settle down.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [01:59:31] Don't.

John Larsen [01:59:32] This is real and it's important. This planet is dying. And, and one of the things that I do, I'll say this, is I volunteer with, to deal with things like insect populations and plant populations and native species and all that kind of stuff. I spend my time every week working on this. And you cannot comprehend the scope and scale of the problem that we're facing. It is enormous and it is impacting every element of our lives. We have shortages of fucking baby formula right now. We know that a shortage is coming down the line. We are not looking at future disaster. Disaster is here. And it's just that you all who don't agree with Me have the fucking privilege to live in a place where you can push that down. I was reading some notes 12 years ago, I wrote that there were five cities in the United States who are currently under evacuation for climate change. They're sinking Miami. It floods on clear days in Miami right now, it will be, we will be way, way, way, way far down the line before we start, we start taking real action. So the only action to be taken in my mind, because it has to be done by these organizations like the church, like the people pulling the strings of capitalism to completely change and dismantle their own systems. But what you can work on is building your own community resilience, finding other people, finding local sources for food. Grow your own food, Use less clothing, use less gasoline, use less everything, because we are in for it. And, and people my age will be inconvenience. We'll be hot, we'll be whatever. Our kids and our, our grandkids, they are. And, and, and if you just want to sit around and drink wine and whatever, go do it. I don't give a. But stay out of my feed. Because the. It's got to be dealt with. It's got to be. We got to do something. And, and, and I, I'm devoting as much of my life as I can to this problem because it is enormous, it is scary and it is shitty. And they're sitting on so many billions of dollars and unable to do anything. I apologize. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [02:02:00] Thank you, John.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:02:01] That was awesome.

John Dehlin [02:02:03] I mean, I, I was just watching the devastation at Yellowstone just like last week. Like billions of dollars. I mean, entire roads being washed away. This is going to sound dumb, but, but you know it. You go to Jimmy John's and try and order, and there's no sandwiches where turkey's available. And I'm not saying, poor me, I can't order a Jimmy John's. My point is, turkeys are no longer available right now. Like the, the. There's something going on with supply lines, with food, you know, with, with, with natural disaster. Like, like, I can just tell you, like, I had a season pass at Brighton every single year for many, many years, and the snowfall just is nothing. Just, just in the past few years, the snowfall seems to have evaporated significantly and the rags on the wall. And I'm also going to say that my kids, all of my kids feel like, feel like there's no future. And I think that's a really common sentiment, whether or not it's true. It's. It's what our kids feel. And either they're dumb or foolish or naive or they're seeing stuff we don't. Kind of like you were making the point, John, that a prophet just sees things now maybe our kids are seeing things now that we're not paying attention.

John Larsen [02:03:25] They live it right? They, there's the, the prospects for them. I mean, you can go through the, the statistics I want to, and the, the name's gone by. Somebody called me out and said, you know, why, why are you attacking conservatives? You have a good point. I tend to attack conservatives because the conservative mindset that is alive in the United States today, in the United States government, things like Brexit is a cancer through the church. But Joe Biden ain't doing anything either. I'm not a big fan of any of the establishment right now. They are all bought off by big oil and all that kind of stuff. And when I say bought off, I mean, you can look it their campaign donations. None of these guys are making real effort. So, yes, I will take that point. I'm beating up on the conservatives because they've made it kind of a point of faith that climate change isn't real, but none of them are doing anything about it. So that's why we have to say, just work with your neighbor, work with your community, work as you can to overcome these problems. But it's a good call out. I'm leaning a little bit too heavily on conservatives right now because the problem is baked into our economic systems. It's baked into our systems of government. It's baked into the UN And I think as you read more philosophers and scientists saying this thing, the sad part is there is, and this is the argument I was making for capitalism, is there is no mechanism to fix this problem. I lost my faith in that we could fix climate change when Russia rolled its tanks into Ukraine because I thought if we are here right now, there is no way we're going to be able to deal with that.

John Dehlin [02:05:11] So, so I mean, that's, that's a little bit fatalistic, John. You're basically a little bit, why rant? Why even do the. Okay, so I'll, I'll say two things. Number one is, you know, when, when you told me, you know, you wanted to talk about the Great Salt Lake, obviously I'm like, huh, Are you. How much of a Mormon angle is there going to be? Because I'm always, you know, you don't have a successful show if you don't give your listeners what they're interested in or what they need and what they perceive they need. So there's always a balance of like, doing stuff that's values based, but also providing content that your viewers, you know, generally find value in or enjoy. So, you know, my immediate reaction was, huh, that'll. It sounds like the Great Salt Lake thing is going to get political. A lot of my listeners don't like the political stuff and I don't know how Mormon it will be. And I think there are some people that either would see the thumbnail or tune in for a bit and be turned off. And you saw it in the comments of some ex Mormons saying, come on, John, I want you to punch Russell Nelson in the nuts. I don't want to hear about, you know, the Great Salt Lake. But my answer to ex Mormons is, and we've talked about this before, if, if the purpose of your life is just to be ex Mormon and to do nut punches to the church and it, it takes no care for the greater world that's around you and, and the, the suffering or the well being of, of all the living creatures and sentient creatures on the earth, then I think your ex Mormonism is pretty stilted and kind of twisted and stunted. Like, we have to be able to turn from the, the damage the church did, the ways that we were betrayed, the harm that the Church is doing. We have to be able to like, leave ex Mormon Reddit, leave Mormon Stories) podcast, wake up from our ex Mormon slumber, turn our eyes to the great big beautiful world out there or suffering struggling world out there and see if there are ways we can put our shoulders to the wheel collectively. Or like, what's the point literally? Is it just to like rage at Joseph Smith until you're 92? What's the point? So, so, so John Larsen, I also just really appreciate and care. I think you're good at this too. I really appreciate that you guys are helping us expand our horizons and realize that there's more to life than Fanny Alger and Peep Stones and the Kinderhook plates and the, and the Black Priesthood Band. You know, there's more to life than that. Ex Mormonism needs to care about more than that.

Environmental Racism and Ex-Mormon Values

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:08:03] The very instinct that makes you an ex Mormon is usually rooted in unjust injustice. Right? And so John Larsen brought up, like, environmental racism is just one aspect of many. Or like, do people in, you know, certain locations deserve to get lung cancer more than anyone? Like, no, we all deserve certain rights and ability to breathe clean air and have the best situation in which to raise our family. I think that's just something that comes from like this justice core that, you know, sometimes will lead people out of the church because of what we heard that Joseph Smith did. It's calling on that same value. I think that, I think all ex Mormons, if you leave, if you left the church because you care about X, that X that thing is still very, very applicable to what John Larsen talks about.

John Larsen [02:08:46] Well, and I also think that this does relate to the church. I know. And the fact that people want to bifurcate. It's the problem of our political discourse that we're unable to see the truths because we have this dichotomy of conservative versus liberal. And everybody is like saying, these guys are conservatives, these guys are liberals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The world is much more complicated than that. And it doesn't, whenever anybody's selling you a dichotomy, run away. It's not true, it's not real. But you know, if we were talking about a story where there was a natural disaster that was about to take out the Vatican, I don't think there was a Catholic alive who would say, what does this have to do with Catholicism? That's just the Vatican. Utah is the seat of Mormonism. And it's where incubated and Utah. You know, when they used to say at the beginning of conference coming out, you. I can't remember from the hill.

John Dehlin [02:09:40] Crossroads, Crossroads of the West.

John Larsen [02:09:43] The crossroad. The. The. The. Yeah. So the, the. The. This place that we live as, as Mormons in, in Utah, in the intermountain west is as baked into Mormonism as. As anything. And I think it is a fascinating tell here because Mormonism does not live in a vacuum. It is connected to the world, is connected to liberal politics and conservative politics and capitalism and socialistic ideas. It's just like the rest of us lives in the same world that we do. But here you have this test case of one of the worst environmental disasters that is going to hit the United States in the next few years that is going to impact Mormonism in a place the Mormonism might be seriously, seriously damaged from it. I think it's an important tale. And the fact that as we're going along this way, to me, Mormonism is baked into the whole thing. The people can listen to part of this and say, oh, that's John being political. He's no longer talking about the church. Shows the extent of the rot that is caused by this us and them thinking in the United States today. I do not agree with the things that the MAGA crowd and the conservative crowd believe that are false. But actually, if, if you and I, MAGA guy, met in a bar and we're sitting there throwing back beers, we would probably get along swimmingly. I told you, I kind of work now in a sort of a semi agricultural environment. I'm dealing with MAGA people all the time. We get along fine if we're talking about sheep, right? And, and, and the sheep are more important, you know, so we have been fed this line that we're in these two different tribes such that even people who are like, oh, I like what John's saying, oh, now, now, he's not. Now, now, over here, now over here. And you can disagree with everything I say, that's, that's fine. But our minds, all of us, our minds are twisted by, by what we're currently consuming, what we're currently seeing. And it's time. We all have to shake ourselves and wake up. And I'm not, this is not any kind of blue pill, red pill bullshit that everybody's talking about. I'm saying, just look at the state of the world today. We're in trouble. We're in trouble right now. When there were shortages of baby formula, everybody should have lost their shit.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:12:05] Right?

John Larsen [02:12:06] And, and does that relate to Mormonism? Absolutely, because Mormonism relates to being human. And I know there's people who don't want to get challenged on these things, and I know I'm extending my bully pulpit a little bit, but I sometimes feel bad that, you know, I'm constantly breaking down people's worldviews and not giving them anything positive. So I want to take three more minutes or five more minutes and say something positive. I personally have an article of faith that I believe that human beings can live in harmony with this planet. We can't do it yet. We haven't learned how to do it, but I think we can. And I think that there are many of us and many of you who are seeking that solution that are looking around and saying, you know, our social environment, our economic environment, the jobs we work, the way we treat the environment, the way we consume, something is off, something is wrong. And I get frustrated with things like the church because they're more likely to lean into the current power structure if it gets them more power, rather than saying, why can't we go back to some of the beautiful things when we had community over church, you know, and that's going to be our next podcast, because Mormons are my people. This hits me hard, even though I don't live in Utah, because I'M five generations in Salt Lake area. Utah is my home. Mormons are my people. And the fact that we are taken up with this false notion frustrates me. It doesn't make me mad at you. It doesn't even make me mad at Russell Nelson or those guys. It's this perverse system that we have to break down. And I don't know how to do it. John Dehlin doesn't know how to do it. But I do know the more I rant and the more I yell, the more people listen to me. So I guess that's what I have to do because that's how I break through the noise.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:14:02] You do it well.

John Larsen [02:14:04] Thanks. So I, I, I, I believe there's hope. And, and we lived for a long time before there were cars. New York City was founded before cars. Rome was founded before Carl. Salt Lake City was founded before cars. We can move. We can live. We can live in ways that are not as harmful to this planet. But they're gonna, it's gonna be a stretch to get there. It's gonna be hard, and it's gonna require us all to work on it. And many of us are not going to survive. But that's okay. We're working on time frames that are longer than our own. It doesn't matter how much we have in our bank account. It matters. Can we preserve the planet and can humanity move beyond? And this goes to Mormonism. Mormonism is a corrupt, vile system, but we can move beyond it. It's not just like. And the point you were making is a good one, John. It's not just leaving the church and then keeping punching, punching, punching at the church. It's finding better ways to live, better ways to be, better ways to form community, better ways to give. And that's the, that's the hope I have that we can achieve. If I didn't think we could do it, I'd quit doing this now. It's just, just punching at the church. It's, it's not that fun.

John Dehlin [02:15:21] Well, I mean, it's a, It's a little fun. Say it's a little.

John Larsen [02:15:25] Well, it's because there's sex, drugs, and rock and roll and all that stuff.

John Dehlin [02:15:27] Well, maybe for you guys.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:15:31] Sorry, John. All for us. No, I think John Larsen has a great point that. Yeah. That all of this needs to, I mean, both of you guys, this whole thing is to. Hopefully people, you know, they start off with. Let's just call it an untrue thing in the clearest terms. Mormonism made up by Joseph Smith. Smith. It's not a true thing. It gave us some ideas, it gave us some structure. But for the people who say, hey, this, these ideals and these structures aren't going to work for us anymore, there's only so much that we can talk about those things. And so when you're moving on from a space where, you know, you've deconstructed and like John Larsen was saying, there's more to it now, like, there is a certain advocacy that you need to have for the other fellow human beings who you have to share this planet with. It's not just, you know, you know, the city that's going to be taken up by God. What city was that again? Enoch. Like, as much as I think the Mormonism I was raised on is like, where the chosen people, God will never lead this church astray, there is, like John Larsen was saying, there's so much evidence that the very place that the Zion is established is not going in the direction that will be habitable anymore. And once you've deconstructed that this, this place isn't led by a true prophet of God, we're left in this sludge. What are we going to do about it? What do we, what's going to motivate us to actually make a better place for people to live in anyway? If anyone's landscaping wants to reach out, I'm doing some zero scaping right now. So you want to give me a deal?

John Larsen [02:16:58] Well, and, and, and the, the, the, the positive news in all this is we always assume current attitudes. Even though there's change, change will foster change. So as, as, as climate change becomes more apparent and more impactful, more and more people will, will, will change. And, and I think, I think the church, it probably, I, I, if, if we go back to my dear sweet wife, I think she has more faith that the church won't let this happen and will throw more of their muscle behind it. My only worry is it'll be too late to make, to make real change. But some of these changes need to be made. You know, should we really be growing crops in Salt Lake City? Is that, is that really smart?

John Dehlin [02:17:44] So you're saying have the faith of Kimmy, basically, instead of the faith of a mustard seed. Have the faith of Kimmy.

John Larsen [02:17:51] Have, yeah, have the faith of, have the faith of, of Kimmy. But Kimmy is a person of action, right? Hers is not an idle faith. You know, she, she is a woman that, that, that will reach out to anybody, you know, anybody's welcome in her fault and, and you know, and it's. I aspire to be more like her. She's the better of the two of us. And.

Mormonism's Better Instincts and Closing Thoughts

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:18:16] Would you mind if I. I brought this around to the best parts of, of Mormonism. There are so many things, whether it's in the word of wisdom, you know, about like having, like eating meat sparingly or stewardship over the land. I feel like the, the, the Mormonism that I lived, I could cherry pick just like the best of us. I could proof text just like the best of us. The aspects that I just wanted the church to emphasize that you can feel like an environmentalist within the church. Can you not? Like, can you. You can, you can look into the past of what's been said in the church and be like, this church has all of the makings of a good environmentalist church. If we just maybe get a different profit in leadership and then maybe after Russell M. Nelson dies, we can emphasize those things. You know what I'm saying?

John Larsen [02:18:59] Yes. Yes. And this is something I've been accused of not leaving any quarter for people who need to stay in the church. And I recognize there's a lot of people who need to stay in the church for family reasons, for financial reasons, for. There are many good reasons to stay in the church.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:19:13] Yeah. Sometimes leaving the church is just a place of privilege.

John Larsen [02:19:17] Sometimes it is. And I look back, I did not have a bad experience growing up in the church in the 70s and 80s. I grew up in Weber County. The stakes were close. People knew each other at the time. And some of this is a function of just changing of the times. People move more often and all that kind of stuff. But I was always told that the ward boundaries were our stewardship. And I spent lots of hours as a kid doing service projects for people who never came to church at all. I saw generosity, I saw community, I saw people who cared. I am so fortunate that I grew up around people who were a lot older than me and people that were a lot younger than me. So here's what I would offer to the church. It's not all rotten, but the best parts are the parts that you do not that Salt Lake does.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:20:07] Right.

John Larsen [02:20:07] The best parts. So this has already happened in other. This, this is the revolutionary idea I want you guys to start thinking about in other churches. As the leadership of the combined church and the congregations began to separate, the congregations returned unwillingly by the leadership to their own views. The church structure is completely imaginary. You guys in any ward can go find each other and you can do whatever the fuck you want, like take all the best parts of Mormonism and get rid of all the division, get rid of all the pay to play, get rid of all the. We're going to sell you your ordinances and you have to do this, get into heaven and just take the best parts and live those parts. The church has a lot of great things, but they come from Mormons who are great people who care. Who. If there's anything that can solve this problem, it's the, it's that Mormons and the people live around them will take care of one another. Yeah, but, but we have to abandon our capitalistic desire to just acquire everything and be better than everybody else. We have to abandon these ideas that, that we have to stick it to the libtards or that the conservatives are all morons or what, whatever. We have to recognize that we're all stupid and we're all humans and we're and, and, and really start taking care of each other. We have to bring back Christianity.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:21:38] Whoa.

John Larsen [02:21:40] Like the churches have gone beyond it. And that's the point I tried to make in the Book of Mark. Jesus taught a fairly simple thing, and I'm not a Christian, but there's a lot of great things in there that Jesus taught. Let's just go back to Matthew 5, 6 and 7 and let's just do that part. And then when we master Matthew 5, 6 and 7, then we can go on to the other stuff. But let's just stay focused on those three chapters until we have it down. That's the Beatitudes.

John Dehlin [02:22:11] Love it.

John Larsen [02:22:13] And we can reform the church now, but it has to have people who will reach out and take the risk. There were the people who came before me who were kicked out of the church and were darkened, who wrote books and they wrote blogs. And then there were people, my generation, who came out and said, no, me, I'm leaving. I'm out. What we need is the next generation that will say, I'm staying, but fuck all your bullshit. We're done with temples, we're done with ordinances. We are going to live the gospel as, as, as defined by Jesus Christ. If they do that, that will move this movement to the next level. I can't do that. John de Lynn can't do that. Carah can't do it. And it's going to be hard. It was hard when I left the church in 2005. We took arrows. And those people who stand up in church and say, you're my people, you're my ward, I don't believe any of this, But I love you guys and I'm not going anywhere. Here I am. I threatened Kimmy this weekend that I go do that at church, and she told me not to.

John Dehlin [02:23:26] Well, John Larsen, I love it that you. You brought a can of. Of, I'll say whoop ass, but now you're bringing the can of love and you're. You're ending by saying, a little bit of hope, a little bit of love. Let's figure out a way to make things a little bit better. And what a great way to end so we aren't all in despair and depressed and feeling hopeless.

John Larsen [02:23:50] There's hope. There's hope, but we need everybody. We need everybody.

John Dehlin [02:23:54] All right.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:23:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:56] Beautiful. Should we care. Should we snap. Snaps. Snaps for John Larsen.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:24:00] Yeah. I wouldn't do this ex Mormon work I do if I didn't love Mormons, like, to my core and feel like I am still Mormon. Like, culturally, there's something in my core. I care about this state. I care about Mormons themselves, and I believe that they have all of those good instincts to look out for one another. But, yeah, it does take everybody. So I think that was wonderfully said. That really hits at the root of my instinct of why I do everything in the first place.

John Dehlin [02:24:22] Shout out to Jerusalem.

John Larsen [02:24:23] I do have to clarify. I'm not saying Christianity. I'm saying the fundamental teachings of Christ, of Jesus.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:24:30] I picked it up, my phone died. Did the comment section not pick that up?

John Dehlin [02:24:34] Well, you know, there's always somebody. Shout out to Jerusha Woodward, who just gave us $20 in the super chat. She writes, you are all wonderful and your voices are so appreciated. Thank you. We had a good audience. We had. We had over 500, sometimes 550 people following us today. So, John, you brought the heat. You brought. You. You brought your paddle, your verbal paddle. But. But people responded and we're just really grateful not only for the people who gave super chats or who are giving super chats now to support what we pay you each month. And you, Carah, we're grateful for those super chats. We're also grateful for everyone who's a monthly donor to the Mormon Expression Fund. If you go to mormonstories.org Mormon expression, you can become a monthly donor. And we'll keep John and Carah around as long as there's money to support you guys because we believe in paying people for the good work. So thanks to everyone who supports and most importantly, Carah, it's so good to have you here at least once a month.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:25:37] Yeah, it's so good to be here.

John Dehlin [02:25:39] Yeah. Thanks for coming.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:25:41] Thanks for having me. I'm always happy to have these really important discussions that I feel are like every John Larsen episode is just like. Like a chapter in time. You know what I mean? It's just like that John Larsen episode. I feel like I'm making history just being here, so it's an honor, trust me.

John Dehlin [02:25:55] Yeah. John, thanks so much.

John Larsen [02:25:57] You.

John Dehlin [02:25:57] You. You're special. We're lucky to have you. And I count. I count my lucky stars every month we get to keep having John Larsen on.

John Larsen [02:26:07] Well, it's. I really appreciate you guys and. And thank. Thanks. Thanks for the help. I'm. I'm a flawed person. I really am. But. Yeah, thank. Thank you for the. The platform, John, again, I've said it many times. I know you get beat up all the time. All the time. The amount of hate mail John gets would. Would just floor most of you. And I. I think 95 of people out there would get crushed underneath the kind of blowback you get. I've seen just pieces of it. And the amount that John puts on his shoulders is incredible. So thank you, John. And. And there are literally hundreds of others doing everything they can. And. And I. We. We need everyone. We can't do it alone.

John Dehlin [02:26:55] Love it. Thanks, John. John, should we have a wood. Ex Mormon Woodstock at your. At your kind of retreat? What do you call your place? A ranch house? Should we do it? Should we do an ex Mormon pilgrimage to John Larsen's property and, like, have musicians and, like, hippies and, you know, interesting food and whatever? What am I forgetting, Carah?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:22] If we're getting drugs, do we get

John Larsen [02:27:25] a dance naked around the fire?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:27] I mean, they would love that. Salt Lake would just be on that with their cameras. They'd be sending that in. They would love that.

John Dehlin [02:27:33] Karen. John, your job is to plan ex Mormon Woodstock.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:37] In Oregon. Deal?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:38] Deal.

John Dehlin [02:27:39] Yeah.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:39] Yeah.

Patron Thanks and Sign-Off

John Dehlin [02:27:40] All right. And Carah?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:43] Huh?

John Dehlin [02:27:43] How's Patreon doing?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:27:45] It's. Honestly, it's doing good. I'm. One of the reasons that I had to leave Mormon stories, among many, is just I. I am a mom of three little kids, and it's so hard to find time. So I just hired a new nanny this week, and I should be making a lot more content. So I've been talking about things I'm really passionate about, which is usually, like, taking down the BS arguments of Mormon apologists are really fun. So look for that. And hopefully I'll have an episode about Mormonism and American exceptionalism in the next week before the 4th of July. So A lot of the topics that we talk about today, I think they all intertwine in some really deep, seedy ways into Mormonism. And I just. I like talking about the stuff I'm passionate about, and people have been supporting it, so it's pretty cool.

John Dehlin [02:28:28] Yeah. So support nuance. So if you're into what she does, because she's smart and funny and she does good work.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:28:36] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:28:37] Yeah, for sure. And, you know, Jen. Jen's off screen, but we also want to shout. Shout out to Jen. Jen does really important work here at the Open Source foundation, so thanks, Jen.

John Larsen [02:28:48] Absolutely. Yeah. Jen is often as my contact, and she helps me. And I want to point out there is always a gaggle of people behind that. People who help, who participate, who get the electronics set up, who do a lot of the unseen work, and there's a place for everybody, even if you don't like being on screen, which I. I don't. I don't particularly like being on screen.

John Dehlin [02:29:13] You're made for screen, John Larsen.

John Larsen [02:29:15] Oh, I have a face for radio.

John Dehlin [02:29:19] All right. Hey, what's next, John Larsen? What's the next topic?

John Larsen [02:29:22] Oh, we're. We're gonna. We're gonna do the 1984 Pullman talk. That's what I. I threatened last time, but I really thought this one was apropos and time to talk about it. And. And I've got some new intelligence on the talk. It's. And it's. It's. It's. It's one of my favorite. It's one of my favorite conference talks ever.

John Dehlin [02:29:38] Was there a Mormon expression treatment of this talk? Did you ever cover it on Mormon Express?

John Larsen [02:29:44] I don't. I don't think I ever did.

John Dehlin [02:29:45] Okay, cool. Well, we haven't either. Hey, will you put in your list the. The Smooth hearings? Because I think that would be a fun one to cover too.

John Larsen [02:29:53] Yeah, I gotta find my. My. My book. I don't know if I've unpacked that one. Yeah, that'd be a great one to do.

John Dehlin [02:29:58] That's gonna be great. All right, John Larsen, we love you. Stay alive, stay healthy, and love to Kimmy. And we'll see you next month. Thanks.

John Larsen [02:30:07] Thanks, everybody.

John Dehlin [02:30:07] Carah. Yeah, we love you, too.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:30:10] I love you guys.

John Dehlin [02:30:11] Love to your family, love to Nuance. Ho. And thanks for being a part of our. Our scene.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:30:17] Yeah, I'm so grateful to be here. Make sure you guys are subscribed to my YouTube channel, and I'll be on these episodes once a month, so it was an honor to be here. Thanks for having Me. Thanks, John Larsen. Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [02:30:27] All right. And thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories). We love you guys. Be kind to each other. Love, love each other. We did like 10 hours of live podcasting today. It's kind of insane.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:30:38] It's days like this where I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad I don't work here. I love you guys so much, but I would die.

John Dehlin [02:30:45] Like, also thanks to Rob. Rob just threw us a super chat as well. Love the super chats. Thanks, everybody. Be kind to each other. Love each other. Thanks for your support. We've got some great, amazing stuff coming up on Mormon Stories). We've got a huge backlog that we need to find a way to release. We're going to be covering the Keep Sweet, Pray, Pain, Pray and Obey, whatever it is documentary on Netflix. We we just interviewed growing up in Polygamy, the the couple that does the very successful YouTube channel. And we're also gonna be having a panel comparing Joseph Smith, the Warren Jeffs, and comparing the Mormon Church to the FLDS church and so much more. Carah, you're raising your hand.

John Larsen [02:31:29] Ooh, ooh, ooh.

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:31:31] And so doesn't it feel like this is like another Mormon moment, but like not in the best way. There's like under the Banner of Heaven, there's the Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey and then the Hulu docu series with Lena and Sal, who were our guests on Mormon Stories) a few months ago. Their four part docu series is dropping on Hulu. ABC followed them around for a year, filming them their transition out of the church, their wedding, everything. I'm in it a little bit. Matt Easton, who you know from being a guest of Mormon stories in the 2019 BYU valedictorian that's dropping on Hulu. And I just want to spread the word that you guys should go watch it and give Lena and Sal all your love and your follows and a really intimate look at what it's like leaving, you know, heterosexual Mormon marriage to go fall in love and be married and blend families with your best friend. It's a crazy cool story that again is just like up there, you on the spotlight. So I encourage everyone to go watch it. It drops on the 24th.

John Dehlin [02:32:25] What's it called again?

Carah Burrell (Mormon Stories) [02:32:26] Mormon no More.

John Dehlin [02:32:27] Okay. All right. Thanks, Carah. Thanks everyone. Be kind to each other. Thanks for your donations. If you value this content, you can also go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button, Become a monthly donor and we'll keep doing this programming for as long as you support us. Take care. Thanks, Carah. Thanks, John Larsen. We'll see you guys all again very soon. Bye. Bye.

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