Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] A quick note to listeners, this episode does contain some swearing. Consequently, listener discretion is advised. Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. This podcast is also available in high definition video@YouTube.com, mormonStories.

John Larsen [00:00:33] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy when you're away.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We're coming to you today live. Can I hear applause, please? That's a good crow. That's a good crowd. We're coming to you live. It's March 10th, I believe I only remember that because I had to send a letter earlier today, but it's March 10th, and we're here at the South Valley Unitarian Church around Salt Lake City.

John Larsen [00:01:23] We're in Cottonwood Heights.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] Cottonwood Heights area. And we're here very excited to interview John Larsen, the John Larsen, former host and occasional co host of Mormon Expression Podcast, also founder of the Whitefields Educational foundation and all around smart and provocative guy. John hosted Mormon Expression Podcast for many years, and it's been an inspiration to thousands and tens of thousands of people, including myself. So John kind of hung up his podcasting cleats, at least full time, back in December of 2014. And so we've been trying to figure out a time to be able to do this interview, and I'm just excited to have him here today. So, John Larsen, let's give John Larsen a hand, everybody. And John John Larsen, welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast.

John Larsen [00:02:28] Thank you so much. This isn't my first.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] Yeah, yeah. Well, that was interesting because.

John Larsen [00:02:36] Wait. First of all, John, you poor dear. How are you doing?

John Dehlin [00:02:44] I'm doing all right.

John Larsen [00:02:44] You doing all right, sweetie? I mean, we've all been worried about you.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] I'm hanging in there.

John Larsen [00:02:50] Oh, good. Half the audience just got up and left because that's what they were concerned about if you're the heart throb of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:03:00] No, not true, but thank you. Thank you very much.

John Larsen [00:03:04] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] No, but I think the first time I wanted to interview you, but somehow you ended up interviewing me a little more than I interviewed you. And in fact, that interview with you is one of the most cited excerpts from my stake President's Disciplinary Council.

John Larsen [00:03:24] Did you know that this warms my heart? Because when I go to the apologetic sites that are attacking you, I'm in the footnotes and it always just makes me so happy. And of course, me and the lovely Larsen. It says Larsen and Larsen. And like, I'm glad I can be helpful.

John Dehlin [00:03:42] Anyway, I'm really glad that today the focus will be on you, not me, if you allow that to happen.

John Larsen [00:03:49] I've heard that I don't like having the focus on me and that I like to have other people talk. So that's my normal.

John Dehlin [00:03:55] All right, well, this will be unique, but you'll need to talk for most of this podcast.

John Larsen [00:04:01] I think I got it.

John Dehlin [00:04:02] Okay. All right. So I've listened to a lot of Mormon expression, and I'm sure that many are in the audience have, too, and a lot of our listenership, but my guess is there's quite a bit of my listenership that hasn't as well. And so even though we're going to be repeating a lot of the stories that you've told on Mormon expression, I think it'd be neat to just spend two hours going over your story. And the focus that I think we both feel is the right focus is about sort of your journey and your experience. But we want to emphasize sort of healing and growth. Not just, not just your story of healing and growth, but also what you've learned about assisting others in their healing and growth. But before we get there, I think I just want to begin by having you tell us a bit about what the church meant to you growing up. Were you a believer? Were you really into it? Was it important to you? Talk a bit about what the church meant to you as a kid and as a young adult?

John Larsen's Early Mormon Upbringing

John Larsen [00:05:08] Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, I was a believer. For me, it was just part of my DNA. We were just Mormons, and that's what we were. My father was from the central Utah Sanpete Danish Mormon stock, which are all cursing coffee drinking. They go to the temple once, but they're full believing Mormons. And my mom's family all came from Weber county, and we were just Mormons. And, you know, to the point, like a lot of the Mormon stuff, like Saturday's Warrior and stuff, you know, we just ignored all that.

John Dehlin [00:05:49] To Mormon for Saturday's Warrior.

John Larsen [00:05:51] Yeah, yeah, that was city Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] And were you raised in Utah?

John Larsen [00:05:57] I was. I was born in Alabama, but I was raised in Roy, Utah, for. Until I went on my mission and went to byu. So, yeah, I remember having struggles. I remember when I was about nine, sitting there in Sunday school and they were talking about, I don't know, like Noah or something. I'm like, this just doesn't Sound like real people. And then, of course, when I went to high school and started learning about biological evolution and stuff, I knew it didn't fit, but it was until my 30s that it actually came apart.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] So what were some of the things you loved or remember fondly about your early church experiences?

John Larsen [00:06:32] Oh, well, I mean, I was born in 1973, so I came of age in the 70s and 80s, and it's an entirely different church than it is now. I mean, we had the buildings, had stages for reasons. We had plays and bazaars and roadshows and community. And of course, the community wasn't as transitory. I mean, that's just an element of population. So, you know, one of the things I really, really terribly miss and miss from my children is I was interacting with people of all different generations. A fellow that I home taught when I was 12, he was a bomber in World War II, and he would tell us stories about that. And it just. We today, we surround ourselves with the Internet, with people just like ourselves, and I really miss that community that was there for sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] What a. As far as beliefs go, did you have experiences that at the time you would have attributed to kind of divine intervention?

Struggling With Spiritual Witness and Doubt

John Larsen [00:07:27] Well, that's a problem. I always felt like a bad Mormon because that stuff never worked for me. You know, I didn't want to give a blessing because I never felt anything, anything coming down. I could work myself up into a spiritual experience, but I more internalize Mormonism as guilt and shame than as a element of sort of divine intervention. But that was a thing I blamed on myself. I believed it was there. I believed other people were genuine until I didn't. And then I realized, man, these guys are all either deceiving themselves or they're charlatans. So that was useful that it hadn't come about that way for me.

John Dehlin [00:08:09] So your affections for the church weren't because of spiritual manifestations. They were more community based.

John Larsen [00:08:15] I had no affection for Salt Lake City or the other. I mean, they just. They were just those guys out there. I'd watch General Conference and they were.

John Dehlin [00:08:23] You mean church headquarters when you say Salt Lake City.

John Larsen [00:08:25] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:08:26] Yeah, okay, keep going.

John Larsen [00:08:27] Yeah, the Kabbalah, you know, the Illuminati, the guys down on Wednesday afternoons in the Star Chamber. Yeah, those guys. But, you know, to me, Mormonism was this community. And, you know, people talk about their bishops, you know, who've asked inappropriate questions. Can we talk about masturbation on the Mormon Stories podcast? It's kind of a staple of Mormon expression.

John Dehlin [00:08:54] Only your own Masturbation, not other people's.

John Larsen [00:08:56] Oh, okay. Okay. But my point. I was never asked about it, that all my leaders until I got to BYU were all very good people. And so I know there's lots of instances of ecclesiastical abuse. I have run into it, as you have, but I didn't experience that myself.

John Dehlin [00:09:13] Okay, so it was a cultural, kind of a familial thing for you, not a spiritual thing.

John Larsen [00:09:18] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:09:19] Okay, so do you remember, like. And you remember, like, asking, like, Moroni's promise, trying to actually get the Witness?

John Larsen [00:09:28] Yeah, I worked myself up one time when I was a senior in high school. I realized I was about to graduate, I was about to move on, and this mission was looming down on me. So I started really studying the Book of Mormon and fasting and fasting multiple days in a row and reading for, like, nine hours. And I did get this sort of overwhelming spiritual sensation in the Book of Alma when the war starts, because then the book certainly made sense. Like, there was suddenly a story going on here. And that's when I had this sort of. Oh, but it didn't last. And I spent the. Isn't that how it goes for you guys? But I never could get that back. I was chasing the dragon the rest of my Mormon career.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] You wanted something like that again?

John Larsen [00:10:14] Sure, yeah. Yeah. Ye. Yeah. But, you know, I clearly just worked myself up into a frenzy. I wanted it so bad.

John Dehlin [00:10:20] But at the time, you probably attributed that to a Witness, right?

John Larsen [00:10:27] Yeah, Yeah, I suppose it was confusing to me, even at the time.

John Dehlin [00:10:32] Okay, so it was ambiguous.

John Larsen [00:10:34] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:35] Okay.

John Larsen [00:10:35] That's the closest I ever came.

Serving a Mission and Early Disillusionment

John Dehlin [00:10:37] So was a mission a hard decision for you?

John Larsen [00:10:41] No, mission was just what you did that goes to that DNA, Mormonism. It never crossed my mind that I had a choice. And there's an excitement about it. You know, you grew up in Roy, Utah. You know, the most exotic place you've ever seen is Morgan. So, yeah, going on a mission was great. You know, and learning a foreign language and learning a new culture was really exciting to me.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] Spanish.

John Larsen [00:11:05] I learned Laotian in San Diego.

John Dehlin [00:11:07] That's right. Okay. And good mission.

John Larsen [00:11:11] It was tough. And missions are hard because they're so damn boring. There's nothing to do. We literally. We got good at. We would get the reverse phone books and find everybody who had a Laotian name in the city, you know, of several million people. And we got good at sniffing doors. We could tell because refugees come from. It sounds worse than it is. These guys are terrible. The refugees would come from all over the world. Right. And you didn't want to waste your time knocking on, like, a Somalian's door.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] Right.

John Larsen [00:11:45] You didn't have a door approach loaded up in Somalia. And then what if they say, what if they invite you in? Then what do you do? So we could tell by all sorts of things which culture they were from, which country we were from, which part of the country they were from that was kind of fun.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] And any big kind of experiences at the time, either good or bad, that touched on your beliefs or commitment.

John Larsen [00:12:08] It did introduce me to Theravada Buddhism, which about halfway through my mission, I realized that we were not speaking the same language, like, religiously. Religiously on all fronts. So I was studying the language, and because we were in the United States, I couldn't go down to the grocery store and just talk to the clerk. So we would do intense study. So I would study for three or four hours a day the language. And that's what really fostered my love for language. And as I dug deep, you know, I started reaching the Bali and the old, you know, Indian roots of the language. So Laotian and Thai have been influenced by Bali the same way English has been influenced by Latin. And I remember reading the Theravada, the od. Theravada terms for faith. And so I went to some really stalwart members. They'd been branch presidents. They'd been to the temple 10 years ago. And I sat down with them and I said, let's talk about faith. And they said, okay, Elder. And I said, faith means this, right? And I gave them the Buddhist definition. And they lit up and they said, you're the first one who's ever gotten it. All the other guys didn't understand, you understand? And what I was just regurgitating to them was Buddhist theology. And what I realized is, after all this time, we hadn't cracked. And to this day, I feel guilt because we were practicing cultural terrorism. Really. We would not allow them to go to their Buddhist festivals. And when you have a country that's had a single religion for 2000 years, every holiday. So we would cut these people off from all their connection. So, yeah, it was a fascinating experience about culture and cultural interaction and language and starting my thought process on Buddhist philosophy. But I learned in the long run, they had a better deal than we did.

John Dehlin [00:14:03] And did you mention that as something that started to put cracks in your testimony?

John Larsen [00:14:07] It did. I came back, like a lot of missionaries, shell shocked. But I just sort of doubled down, went to school, went back to byu and Just concentrated on school and then got married. And then the beauty of the church is just put you on a path and you don't have to think about it very much. You go from this calling to this calling to this calling to this calling. And I was on that train until my early 30s.

John Dehlin [00:14:31] So real quick, was that a mission where you would have a lot of baptisms or not a lot?

John Larsen [00:14:36] Oh, no. There was one guy who was baptized when I was there, and he shouldn't have been. He dropped his revolver on the floor when we were teaching him one time.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] You're saying you had one baptism?

John Larsen [00:14:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:44] On your whole mission? That would be.

John Larsen [00:14:46] Well. So these were refugees coming over from the war. I was there from 92 to 94. The war ended the Vietnam War. The refugees started coming over in 75. So by this time, the pool was worked over. They used to call us Churchcout, which is short for church couch, because we gave out couches. So when you joined the church, we gave them slips. They go down the di and pick up a couch.

John Dehlin [00:15:14] I asked. I just had a memory. When I interviewed John and Brooke Maclay, I asked John Maclay to bear his testimony as he would have when he was a seminary teacher. And I'm just. I was going to ask you to bear your testimony in Laotian, and I just had that flashback of like, wow,

John Larsen [00:15:32] I didn't do it then. And I never really bore my testimony.

John Dehlin [00:15:34] You didn't bury your testimony? No. Okay.

John Larsen [00:15:36] I never.

John Dehlin [00:15:37] You wouldn't be able to give us

John Larsen [00:15:38] a sample of what I never was able to say. I know the church is true. I never could do it.

John Dehlin [00:15:42] Never.

John Larsen [00:15:43] Never.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] Okay.

John Larsen [00:15:44] I mean, I'm sure, like, some pretty girl forced me to do it sometime or the other, but, I mean, sincerely, I never. I never did it.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] So would. Just for fun, would you remember how to say something in Laotian related to your whatever testimony you were comfortable saying? It'd be fun to hear you say it if you could.

John Larsen [00:16:00] It's gone.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] Okay. Yeah, it's gone. That's not a language where you.

John Larsen [00:16:03] It's a tonal language. And I've completely lost my accent, so I'd just be embarrassed.

John Dehlin [00:16:08] How do you say the church in Loet, the church's name. Do you remember that?

John Larsen [00:16:12] Satsunatjakkong. It's really. I was gonna swear it's really long and it makes no sense. And it's the church of the something, something, something. And, you know, the latter days, and it's like, what the hell are you talking about? These big tags and they Would just stare at them. What are you guys doing?

John Dehlin [00:16:31] It's hard to remember those types of languages if you don't use them. All right, well, cool. Okay. So one baptism on your mission. That's tough.

John Larsen [00:16:40] Well, I didn't actually baptize him. The bishop snooped in and Bishop. Because we didn't want to baptize him, because he didn't know anything.

John Dehlin [00:16:47] But that's a tough mission. To go two years and barely have a baptism.

John Larsen [00:16:50] It was actually quite soothing to me because I didn't want to baptize anybody in the church at the time.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] So you had a lot of ambivalence on your mission. Okay, so were you starting to question things on your mission?

John Larsen [00:17:01] Yeah, I was. The full fundamentals of it, a lot of it, just, even from the time I was young, didn't make sense. But I practiced faith. And that only gets you so far. I wanted it to be true. I needed it to be true. It was me. I was Mormon. I wasn't anything else. There couldn't be any other way. And when intrusive thoughts would come, I'd block them out and just double down. And I didn't. I never wanted this.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] This. Meaning what?

John Larsen [00:17:33] All the awesomeness that I have in my life right now. Notice I use past tense because.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] Oh, it is awesome, isn't it? It's great.

John Larsen [00:17:46] Welcome to the club. By the way, John, congratulations.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] So you go to byu. And don't throw me in the briar patch. I'll take it. I'll take it. So, okay, so you go to BYU and you met Zilpha at byu.

Marriage, Faith Transition, and Leaving the Church

John Larsen [00:18:18] I did.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] Tell us about meeting Zilpha.

John Larsen [00:18:21] I remember watching her walk across the parking lot. Man, she had a nice ass. She's supposed to be here tonight. Is she here yet? She's got the kids. Yeah, no, no. We met and we did the whirlwind thing. We dated for three weeks and got engaged and got married. Four months. It's hard to resist, you know.

John Dehlin [00:18:45] How far off your mission?

John Larsen [00:18:47] I was two years off my mission. Okay, So I was pretty horny.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] And. And you were married in four months?

John Larsen [00:18:56] Yeah, it was about five months.

John Dehlin [00:18:58] That's pretty fast. All right. Okay. And you studied what at byu?

John Larsen [00:19:02] I studied linguistics in undergraduate, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:05] Okay. And so got married, graduated from byu. And then what?

John Larsen [00:19:12] Started my career. We went up to Logan. We lived up there for a few years doing computer stuff.

John Dehlin [00:19:18] Right?

John Larsen [00:19:18] Yeah, Yeah. I started out. I was actually. We were in Logan. I was working on a master's degree in computer science. And I work as A project manager, but I've worked technology. When's the good part? No, I'm just kidding, John. Fascinating. But we were up in Logan and that's where we adopted our two wonderful children. So our experience in the church was tainted by the fact that we didn't have kids, which means we would move into a ward, they'd immediately brush us off into the nursery or the primary, and we would never meet anybody. And then we adopted our children. And about the time, did you guys

John Dehlin [00:19:56] struggle with infertility for a while? Like, did you do the well defined

John Larsen [00:19:59] struggle, in vitro struggle? We struggled the best we could with it, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:07] How long did you try to have kids?

John Larsen [00:20:08] It was six years after we got married, before we adopted Katie.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] Was it brutal?

John Larsen [00:20:16] It's tough. I'm really glad, actually it helped. We went through and we adopt our children through lds. We were still faithful, believing members at the time, trying our darnedest. And they actually make you go through therapy when you do it. And one of the things that they talk about is that you have to mourn the children that you'll never have. You have to go through the grieving process that you'll never biologically have children. And that became important for me as I started engaging in the ex Mormon communities about 2007, a few years later, because I realized one of the things that people were doing is they had to mourn this life, this eternal life, this promise that they would never get. And that process resonated with me because I'd done it once with my children. It was between the time that Katie and Quinn were born that I made the ill fated mistake, which is I have an ancestor named Vincent Knight. He was Joseph Smith's bodyguard. He famously threw somebody out the window of the Kirtland temple. And he smuggled Joseph out of Kirtland when he was doing all the shenanigans with the bank. And then he became the first bishop in Nauvoo. Well, I got this history of him that was written by his granddaughter. So I was going to compile a history of him. And we knew, the family knew that he had died in 42, he had the malaria. And then Joseph Smith had married his widow. And then I found out, wait a minute, the sequence of that was not exactly right, that Joseph Smith had married his widow before he died. And I said, oh God, I got to get to the bottom of this. And I said, I will not read anything but source material. But polygamy has been bugging me my whole life. I have to figure this out.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] And what year was this about?

John Larsen [00:22:08] This would have been about 2003. Okay, 2002. And I dove into that pool and man, I didn't come up for four years. And Mormon history is the craziest, whacked out, funky stuff. It's like taking mushrooms, man, and you just feed on it and feed on it and you find crazier and crazier and crazier things. And Zilph and I, at the time, we were both reading in parallel. And you know, I hear couples say that they didn't dare, but to us, like, you gotta check out this. This is nuts. And it just consumed me.

John Dehlin [00:22:47] So you were just reading source materials?

John Larsen [00:22:48] Not in the first, the first year or so. I only read source material.

John Dehlin [00:22:53] And you're trying to find out what exactly happened. So it started with polygamy and it

John Larsen [00:22:58] started with polygamy and I just started unraveling from there.

John Dehlin [00:23:01] Do you remember some of the, like, major sources you were reading from?

John Larsen [00:23:06] Well, I think one of the first ones I read was Joseph Smith's journal. You can read about him getting fist fight, Joseph Smith getting in fistfights in the priesthood meetings. And William Clayton's journal was a big one. And you know, that's where, you know, Clayton's got his pregnant 15 year old on these wagons, you know, going through town like, you know, high fiving all the guys when he goes through. And. And you just learn that the actual history. I mean, these guys were frontiers people, right? They were wild and they were salty and they were much more interesting because I went to church the last time, 2005. So I kept going for a couple years. I tried to make it work. I would say I lost my faith in God not long after or around the time Quinn was born, around 2003. But I stayed a Mormon for another two years.

Online Mormon Community and Starting Mormon Expression

John Dehlin [00:23:59] So I know that prior to doing Mormon expression, you were pretty involved kind of in the online Internet community.

John Larsen [00:24:08] I started, you know, in the old days, we were all in secret. There were some groups that had been formed, but it was a lot harder. And everybody had like pseudonyms and you go to a thing like this. I didn't even see one of them. They'd all have like their monikers, you

John Dehlin [00:24:21] know, they're fake names.

John Larsen [00:24:23] Yeah, Joseph's wife, 69 or something. They always had. Everybody would have a moniker and then he'd be like, oh, that's you. And then now everybody like Facebook ruined that.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] Do you talk about what your name was back then or did you have one?

John Larsen [00:24:36] This is part of the mythos of John Larsen. I couldn't come up with a name. I tried, and then I realized that, no, I want to take this on. So I just named myself John Larsen. That was 2004, and I started by engaging the apologists. I spent the first two or three years of my online career trying to not be banned from the Apologist site, but trying to engage them.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] The Fair boards.

John Larsen [00:25:10] I was on the Fair boards and the MAD boards and a lot of those.

John Dehlin [00:25:15] Were you part of zlmb?

John Larsen [00:25:17] Yeah, I was just coming online when that was there, but I really liked the MAD boards the best. It was Hamblin and Daniel Peterson's stomping grounds, and I managed to only get banned from it about seven times.

John Dehlin [00:25:30] So you would take them on. You would.

John Larsen [00:25:32] Right. And I wasn't bombastic. I was trying to be very, very straight with them. But, yeah. So that period was an online engagement. It was about 2006 or 2007, after we moved down to Layton, when two other friends and I started Calm Community after leaving Mormonism. And then we started one of Jeffrey's franchise post Mormon. And so I started a community there in Davis County. So we would meet at the library once a month and talk about Mormony issues.

John Dehlin [00:26:08] Okay, so tell us what led to you starting the podcast.

John Larsen [00:26:13] Well, I spent those years, really, I was just fascinated by Mormonism, and it was just this interesting thing. And I'd read so much of it. I mean, I have literally, I think, a few thousand volumes on Mormonism, and I've read probably four or five hundred of them. So it was just this endlessly fascinating thing for me. I finished grad school in 2008 and ZILF and I moved out to the coast in what? I got my mba.

John Dehlin [00:26:37] Okay.

John Larsen [00:26:39] I was studying computer science, but then my company moved, and I said, I don't really want to be a programmer. So I switched over to an mba. So we moved out to the coast. I sort of lost my community.

John Dehlin [00:26:48] And that's when you moved to North Carolina?

John Larsen [00:26:51] That's when we moved to North Carolina. And at the time, there were two podcasts. You had your podcast and Mike Norton had His Church Is Not True podcast, and you both kind of took a hiatus. And I liked to listen to podcasts at the time. Now it's sort of like a baker eating bread. Like, they don't like to do it. So I assume. But now that I'm thinking about it, bakers tend to be big. Maybe that's a bad analogy. So you had stopped, and I thought this might be just something interesting. To do. So we started Mormon Expression really as just an outlet for me to socially sort of engage the community.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] Let me back up. Did those podcasts affect you at all? Were they important? Were they annoying? Were they. Not really, you know.

John Larsen [00:27:39] Oh, but your podcast and Norton's podcast were inspirational to me. They were great. I loved your podcast. Like, for a whole year, you got on, like, the gay issue. And I thought, after a while, I said, I got it, John. Wasn't there a year? It was 2007. Yeah, yeah. See, right around Prop 8. No, no. I listened to your early podcast probably three or four times each.

John Dehlin [00:28:04] Oh, the episodes.

John Larsen [00:28:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were hugely inspiring to me. And so I just thought this would be a fun thing to try to do. I was done with grad school. I had time on my hands. It just seemed like it might be. I love the sound of my own voice. I thought it would be fun.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] And so.

John Larsen [00:28:25] Okay, so I had no agenda, which is not true. As the podcast progressed, in the beginning, it was just talking about Mormonism, and that changed.

Goals, Structure, and Growth of the Podcast

John Dehlin [00:28:36] Okay, so talk about that. Your thoughts about what you wanted to do with the podcast, what your goals were, and how you decided to structure it.

John Larsen [00:28:44] Well, I sort of reached out in the online world and found some people who were interested in doing it. And it just so happened when we started, there were five of us, and two were sort of still going to church, and two were out of church. So what I did is I sort of positioned myself in the middle in the early podcast just to try to foster dialogue, and I really didn't know which way it would go. I didn't know if we would do interviews. I didn't know if we would do panel discussions. I didn't know. I had no idea. That didn't last very long. Partly because I really. I like the genuineness of it. I like the rawness of being sort of brutally honest. And so in the early days, I sort of positioned myself more sort of Edward Morrow sort of trying to be middle journalist. Yeah. And then that didn't last.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] Yeah. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk about the dynamics and stuff. Just talk about, like, how that was for you to try and manage the different personalities and to try and figure out, I can just. I'll just editorialize a bit. Glenn approached me before. I think before he approached you and said, let me. Let me do some interviews or let me share some stuff with you. And I would listen to his stuff, and I was just like, oh, it just doesn't. It just doesn't feel like Mormon stories to me. And I think I kind of blew him off. And now I love Infants on Thrones. I think it's really cool. But what I sympathized with was this sense of ownership, of quality control, and of just a vision. And I'm wondering if that's something you struggled with as you were trying to figure out what Mormon expression was about.

John Larsen [00:30:31] It is, and it's a lot of work. For about three years, Mormon expression took up about 30 hours of my life a week, which is about the equivalent of having two full time jobs. Right. And oftentimes a lot of people come in. It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of dedication to keep doing it. And just, just like in any job or in anything, there gets to be creative differences. And Glen's a brilliant kid. He's older than me. I think he's almost as sexy as me. He's a great guy. Infants on Thrones. I've listened to a few. They're clever. And I think the last conversations I had with Glen, we just sort of said, you know, he wanted to go the route of entering the radio lab. And to me it was just too much work. So it is a lot of work. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:28] I don't edit my stuff at all, like, in terms of like cutting stuff. I mean, you know that because they're five hours. Right.

John Larsen [00:31:33] I just edit it for curse words and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:31:35] You add extra ones, is that what you mean?

John Larsen [00:31:40] So, no, I still count all those guys as friends.

John Dehlin [00:31:43] Oh, sure, sure, sure. So I remember in one of your final episodes, you talked about how every, you know, whenever you would host a podcast at Whitefields, you'd always see kind of a person in the back who comes in quietly and leaves quietly. And I almost remember you getting kind of teary about how much of a need there is. Talk about what it was like for you once you started the podcast to tap into the emotions and the need out there.

John Larsen [00:32:14] Well, so I started the podcast to talk about Mormonism and it just grew. I remember in an early meeting, we said, oh, what does success look like? Because we were not doing it for any other purpose than just sort of a self gratification of voyeurism on the Internet like everybody else does. Exhibitionism, I guess. And I remember we said, if we ever get a thousand listeners, and I think it was episode three where we plowed through a thousand, and it just grew and just took off. And I had no idea what was in store. I never thought it'd just be me. Talking into a can in my living room. And what I learned. About a year in, we came to Salt Lake City and we did a live show. And because we started getting more and more mail. And I know, John, you and I have had conversations about it. John and I actually talk quite often, not every couple months. And we have all the way along. And you start getting these emails of. Oftentimes they're long, like five, six pages long, and they don't ask you any question. And you read through them and you realize there's this whole world reaching out. And for you and for me, were this voice out in the darkness that somehow they could identify with. I had no idea that was there. And what I realized is that we were sitting on a giant pile of pain. And unfortunately, I was not able to emotionally, or fortunately, I was not able to emotionally separate it. Like, if you talk to a therapist, therapists will they have all this methodology for keeping themselves separate from it. And I did not have that barrier. And I was not angry about Mormonism when I started the podcast. I processed through my Coudler Raw stages, and I was good. The anger that you hear on the podcast is always about this world of shit that we live in. And so many people feeling the necessity to insist that everything is okay. The church did this amazing psychological thing. What it did is it convinced the members, or at least some of the members, that if they left, their life would fall apart. They would be alone, they would be needy, they would get involved in substances, they'd drink coffee and do other terrible things. And. And then when people leave, they make sure that they leave them alone and isolated. So, so many people leave the church and they're insisting to the world, insisting to themselves that everything is okay because they know that there's people waiting in the wings. I've had family members say it, that I don't want to identify it, but there was a family member one time said, after you left the church, we didn't want to give you any help, like help you move or help you do anything, because we didn't want to promote your lifestyle. And so there's so many people who get just lost, they get drowned in that. But they don't want people to think that they're suffering, because to suffer would be to affirm what the church is saying, that they're wrong. And so they're lying to themselves. They're lying to everybody, saying, I am okay, Everything's falling apart, but I am okay. And.

John Dehlin [00:35:53] And what's really happening, they're not okay. Meaning What?

John Larsen [00:35:57] They've lost their support structure, They've lost their, their community. They lost their family. They've lost their sense of purpose, their sense of being. What is going to happen to them? And, and, and, and it comes out in all sorts of ways, some of them funner than others.

John Dehlin [00:36:16] So you tapped into this pain. How did it affect you personally? The exposure to all the pain?

John Larsen [00:36:22] It pissed me off. There's this system here that was taking my people, my kin, and chewing them up. And you know what really got me angry? There was no one to blame. No one. It's a system and there's all these systems around. And the Boyd, Packer and Oakes are just as much victims of this thing. That doesn't mean they're not assholes, but they're just as much victims of this thing. Sorry, you guys can edit that. They're just as much victims of this stuff as the rest of us. Right? They're just being, I mean, they're being groomed. Right from the time that the church literally watches these guys career as they advance and puts them in place when they need them, they select for the right thing. And we have these big systems of belief that we were just thrashing against that they trade in some good things. We talked about those at the beginning of the podcast and community and whatnot. But if you don't conform, God help you.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] So I made you angry?

John Larsen [00:37:27] Yeah, I did.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] And so how did you respond? I mean, you can just keep recording podcasts, but it sounds like that wasn't good enough.

John Larsen [00:37:36] No. From the very first time, when we did that first live show and just saw the hunger and the need and it connected into the community building stuff I've been doing before, I never really dropped that thread. So it was trying to help people connect because what would happen, you would see this somebody come out the first time and they were so timid and so shy because they'd been fed lines of lies about what ex Mormons are like. And they would see that these people were just normal and this overwhelming sense of relief that they would realize that they weren't alone, that they weren't crazy. And so what happened is Mormon expressions message from me changed from being isn't Mormonism weird and funny? To it's not you, it's this. This is screwed up, this is demonstrably ridiculous. And you're not the one to blame because the church had been putting the blame on you. And that's the underlying tone for the next three or four years of Mormon expression. The deconstruction was about helping people regain their own sense of identity. At least that was my hope.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] And so what are the types of things you did in addition to the podcast?

John Larsen [00:38:56] Well, we would try to do events. We'd have weenie roasts and family sledding parties and Zilpha and I opened our home to anybody. People would come and unload on us, or we would have parties where people could socialize. We eventually. And the inspiration, a lot of the credit goes to my good friend Brent Fisher, who's here in the audience tonight. We got together and we talked about, you know, we missed some of the structure really, around our kids and what they're missing. And so we. A bunch of us got together and started what we call the Living Community. We met for a year in this very building. We rented it from them. It was here? Yeah, it was right here.

John Dehlin [00:39:42] Living Community was here.

John Larsen [00:39:44] Yeah. And it was successful.

John Dehlin [00:39:47] What was the Living Community?

John Larsen [00:39:48] The Living Community was an attempt to pull the good parts of the structure of religion without any metaphysical belief, without any spiritualism that we just acknowledged. And we worked for a year on hammering out the beliefs. They're still up there. If you go to livingcommunity.org, i think they're well written. They were written by 10 or 12 really brilliant people, and they defined the community values. And so we basically had a church with no belief that was really centered around the kids. And there's people who say it failed. It never failed it. Actually, the problem was.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] Before you talk about the failure. So what did you do? What were the events or activities? What was it?

John Larsen [00:40:30] I think we did like an egg drop in here one time we got up on the ladder.

John Dehlin [00:40:34] But did you have Sunday services?

John Larsen [00:40:35] We did once a month because we liked our Sundays too much to me more often than that.

John Dehlin [00:40:39] And during the Sunday services, what would you do?

John Larsen [00:40:42] We didn't actually have Sunday services. The adults would come and get in a circle who weren't working with the kids. The kids were downstairs, and they would oftentimes have some sort of bigger activity. And the adults would sit around and talk about what everyone talked about that time.

John Dehlin [00:40:55] No singing? No.

John Larsen [00:40:56] So it was kind of like a casual, like, group therapy, like an AA meeting. Except they all like to drink.

John Dehlin [00:41:04] Yeah. And I'm. I don't. I. I'll just say this, I guess

John Larsen [00:41:10] aa, they all like to drink, too. I don't know what I'm talking about.

John Dehlin [00:41:15] Around what year was the Living Community?

John Larsen [00:41:17] Stuff that would have been around 2011 to maybe 2012.

John Dehlin [00:41:22] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:41:23] We ran it for about A year.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] Yeah. I'll just admit that, you know, I kind of put Mormon stories down, partly to apply to grad school and partly for other reasons. But I have to admit that your podcast just made me miss podcasting. I mean, I liked what you were doing so much, I felt like I had to get back and do it.

John Larsen [00:41:40] Yeah, I'm glad you did.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] Once I thank you. Once I got back into it.

John Larsen [00:41:44] No, you know, you moved the needle, John De Litt. I mean, there's a lot of us who try to make an impact in this world, but you did. And, you know, you need to be proud of it more than you.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Well, thank you.

John Larsen [00:42:01] You have to know that I bust John's ass all the time. I do not lay it on soft with you, do I?

John Dehlin [00:42:10] No, but. No, I won't go there. But I actually mentioned that because I just want to acknowledge that you were a very important influence on me wanting to come back. And I had forgotten that I'd only recorded, like, 110 episodes when I had stopped. And since you convinced me to come back through your excellent work, I've recorded like, 400 more. Like most of the good stuff.

John Larsen [00:42:36] Fantastic. But you've never taken my advice to edit them down, John Delynn. They're so long.

John Dehlin [00:42:43] So long.

John Larsen [00:42:45] I try. Can only make it through the first

John Dehlin [00:42:49] 90 minutes of that, but

John Larsen [00:42:54] it was a condition of this that it doesn't go longer than two hours. Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:56] That was the first thing I doing on time. No, that's okay. I don't want to know. Okay, so. But why I brought all that up is because once you were doing the living community stuff, that's exactly the stuff I wanted to do. But I felt like I couldn't do it because I was in grad school and because I was up in Logan, and so I was just, like, biting on my hand, just, like, curious, wanting you to succeed, but also feeling super envious that you were doing such a cool thing. So I was, like, excited and super jealous and scared as you were doing that. And so talk about what you learned, good and bad, about that experience, because now, in a way, that was kind of visionary, because now we've got organizations all over the world that are trying to start these sorts of things, like the Sunday assembly Alain de Bouton's talked about Atheism 2.0. And so now it's going to be a huge global trend for there to be secular communities that attempt to replace what religion no longer offers to many people. So talk about the good and the bad of what you learned from that experience, if you don't mind.

Unitarianism, Divorce, and Life After Mormonism

John Larsen [00:44:01] Well, we have to go back a little bit. I skipped the fact that Zilph and I became Unitarians for about six years. And during the first year, we kept going to the Unitarian congregation until we moved back to Utah, which is 2010. So we learned a lot of things. And one of the things that we learned is that, is that religions deal in absolutes, like Sith, right? And the absolute promise of heaven and the absolute reward of hell is a big financial motivator, and it's a big motivator for time. The reason we eventually folded the living community, which was 100% success in my mind. Matter of fact, we still have money in the bank. We're talking about how we want to spend it still. We were sitting around drinking at my house a couple weeks ago and talking about how we want to spend the money. But what we realized is that of the people that came and we would fill up half this room, about 10% were willing to do work. And so those of us who were willing to do work got to be really great friends. And then we said, what are we doing for the rest of these assholes for. So the living Communities went underground. And the people who are doing work still get together and do things all the time.

John Dehlin [00:45:23] Okay,

John Larsen [00:45:26] they weren't assholes. They were nice people.

John Dehlin [00:45:29] They're great friends.

John Larsen [00:45:30] And I'm sure a lot of them are here tonight. No, but it was an experiment, and we realized that it takes a lot of work to put something like that together. And I think it was a good experience for us. And most of us were just like, yeah, well, we'll do it again when we want to.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] So if religion is a social, human creation, as many suggest, then the secret sauce motivator is a belief in heaven and hell and some type of afterlife. And without that, it sounds like it's really hard to sustain something comparable to it.

John Larsen [00:46:07] Well, I don't think it's totally a human construction. I think it's in our DNA. I think it goes to ways that we evolve to communicate. It's not by mistake that religions use chanting and music and drums and those sort of things. Those things have been with us for tens of thousands of years, and we're tapping into our own social ethos and our own social connection. The problem is, as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it's easier to manipulate, manipulate the individuals, and the individuals get lost in the organization, and the organization takes on a mind of its own and will start chewing people up. So the problem is keeping the organization small and have some motivator to get involved. And the motivator for religion is oftentimes disenfranchisement. It's feeling. I mean, the populations that proselyting religions go after, you know, like college students and things, there's a reason they do. So if you form a religion of people who are relatively well balanced and well educated and, you know, sort of know how the world works, they're not real motivated by fear. So it kind of makes the organization sort of, you know, yuppie and wine drinky and not real. You know, you're not going to be tearing down any mosques with an organization like that.

John Dehlin [00:47:18] But what about the motivator of like having your kids have other friends, of having like minded adults, of the fun you could have together? Well, is that not motivator enough from what you've experienced to do something substantive as a group?

John Larsen [00:47:31] It is, but I've been around these communities for a long time now, so it's been, you know, 10, 12 years for me. And I see the great communities being built and the great communities like Steve. But I'm also looking back in time. I know that's not the first generation that it comes. And what happens is there's sort of a natural number of people that we like to associate with, probably somewhere between 30 and 50. And so what happens is these, this is good. But these communities come and they have a shared crisis of faith and they find each other and they develop real relationships and the crisis of faith gets over and then they move on with their friends in these small sort of cliques or pods. And I don't mean that in any sort of negative. So what I've seen over the years is this happen over and over and over again as people in a healthy way move on. What the trouble is is the structure has to keep getting rebuilt on this edge of Mormonism, which is the edge of chaos, both in people's lives and in people's beliefs and in where they are in life. And these communities have to live in this chaotic space that you well know. John de Lynn.

John Dehlin [00:48:41] Yeah, and so that makes it hard to build a sustainable community over time. Right, okay, well, so you talked about how just the podcast alone was 30 hours a week.

John Larsen [00:48:54] Well, that email and stuff like that email and.

John Dehlin [00:48:58] But now at this point in time in your timeline, you're adding almost like a quasi church to it. And I guess this kind of leads to kind of. What was that like for you in Zilpha, for your family? And you know, you guys have been really awesome in public about your divorce and talk about to what extent, whatever you're comfortable about how all the pressures and complexities, you know, affected your marriage and your family.

John Larsen [00:49:28] I don't think the podcast and those complexities ever affected our marriage for any sort of negative thing. The question is asked if we'd stay in the church, we'd still be married. My answer is, of course, there's no other option. If we were still in the church, I don't think we would have split up. Zilpha and I had an amicable divorce. It was really hard, and it was the most difficult thing I've ever done. As a matter of fact, we talk about pain. I only kind of half got the pain that was going on until I went through the divorce. And then I felt real personal pain. And then it snapped into focus. Then I really. I don't know if it's me projecting or if it's me recognizing, like Harry Potter, where they can see the dead horses or whatever those called one of you nerds tell me what the. My camera. When they've seen death, then they can see these horses that are invisible to everybody else. And after I went through that real pain of my divorce, then I could touch it. And the Mormon expression goes through. If you listen in order for good or for bad, you're listening to John Larsen's personal journey over six years, and it changes at least twice considerably. And the second time it changes in a big way is after the divorce. And of course, we disappeared the podcast sort of. We stepped back from it a little bit about the time we were going through divorce. And then I came back to the podcast in part to reclaim my own identity. And then it was sort of a year of me deciding what to do. And then I came in and said, I'm gonna give it one more good, solid kick in the ass year. And that's when we opened the studio. And people, the critics have said it goes downhill after that when I went back into the studio and went full bore. Then in six months, I doubled the listenership from 50,000amonth to my system broke in July. So I have no statistics after July, but July we had 120,000 downloads. And that was on me being really preachy. I got really preachy in the end.

John Dehlin [00:51:48] Yeah. So what changed in terms of format or focus or intent?

The Craft and Challenges of Podcasting

John Larsen [00:51:53] Well, when I talk about 30 hours, Mormon expression was a panel. Panels are really, really hard to do because what you have to do is you have to have a pre meeting with everybody A couple days before, and then you have another meeting before the podcast, and then you have another meeting after the podcast. And what people say. John got to a point where he was talking over the panel. What happened is the seats were open so that anybody could come sit in the seat, but I would tell them beforehand I wasn't going to prepare them, because I didn't. That was the way I controlled my own life. So Mormon expression wouldn't take over my life. So preparing myself for a podcast and preparing me and three other people are a different order of work. So the podcast became me mostly because I was limiting the amount of time drastically. So it didn't take over my life.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] You're trying to just.

John Larsen [00:52:53] And I'm an asshole.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] No, but I mean, the more moving parts, the more complexity it is.

John Larsen [00:52:59] So at the height of when Mormon expression and, you know, you would find somebody, and it's not easy, you know, my good friend Adam Archer, God bless his heart, he's taken over. He's doing a fantastic job. He's here tonight. Adam, where are you? Maybe he left. He got bored. Oh, there he is. I love it because about every other week he sends me an email, says, man, this is really hard. And it is. It takes us. It takes a lot of work to find your voice, to find all that stuff. And you would find panelists and you would need to train them, as, you know, it doesn't just come naturally to everybody. And then I was just done with that because it's just a lot of time. Not that I regret any of those relationships, or a lot of them have gone off to start their own projects, which I feel proud that I was able to be involved at some extent, that some of those folks I mentored, I showed them how to do things, and the fact they're out there doing that just makes me really happy.

John Dehlin [00:54:00] Yeah. But it's an incredible. I've so resonated with that message that you get these volunteers and they really mean well, and they're really excited at first, and you spend a lot of time getting to know them, getting to trust them, and then training them. And they may have something in their life that happens, or they may just lose interest, or there may be tension, and then it can just all blow up in your face and make your life harder. And so it's just so hard to run an organization with volunteers.

John Larsen [00:54:27] And, you know, as I've tried to do different things with Whitefields and we've been successful, you know, I sort of plugged into the volunteer community the last couple Years I've gotten more information from outside these Mormon circles than inside. And it's a common problem with volunteers, you know, both on the podcast and nonprofits and in post Mormon communities. Is a volunteer values. Every minute they give to an organization, you say, well, duh. So if you need a volunteer to do a 10 hour task and they do three hours of it, well, to them, they've given you a valuable service. What they don't realize it took you seven hours to get the three hours and you didn't get the thing that you needed for 10 hours. And after doing that for years, it gets exhausting. I don't know how you keep it up, John.

John Dehlin [00:55:09] Well, it's Richard. It's Richard.

John Larsen [00:55:17] Richard is fantastic. He's been, he's been the muscle behind Mormon stories for a long time. And everything we've done, we did our live shows.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] Give me Mormon expression.

John Larsen [00:55:25] No Mormon stories. You. But he's done videos for us and he's always volunteered. Great equipment. He's just a. He's just a sweet guy. We make out after

John Dehlin [00:55:39] we get a little slow jam in the end post. So what are some of the hardest things about being a podcast host in Mormonism, people?

John Larsen [00:55:53] John Larsen has become a ghost. I joke sometimes that I have all the downside of celebrity with none of the upside. And people are interacting with this voice that they have an intimate relationship with. And you'll know exactly what I'm talking about that they formed literally over thousands of hours of listening to you. And that attachment that they've developed is to an image in their head which may or may not be real. And, you know, it became apparent, you know, when Zilpha and I announced the divorce and we got hate mail because we got messages saying, how can you. You are my idealization of a couple. How can you possibly get divorced? How can you destroy my image of what a marriage is? How dare you. No, they really did.

John Dehlin [00:56:53] That's a lot to carry, right?

John Larsen [00:56:54] It's a lot to carry.

John Dehlin [00:56:56] It's like, oh, you're fulfilling the stereotype of the ex Mormon. Thank you very much.

John Larsen [00:57:00] Right.

John Dehlin [00:57:00] Isn't that the sentiment?

John Larsen [00:57:01] Yeah, yeah. They developed that. There's very few people who really know who I am because, as you probably know, you start to sort of withdraw. I see the way celebrities withdraw and become these introverted extroverts because they're extroverts by nature. And then they start encountering this sort of weird. It's really hard to describe. And then you kind of retreat away from it. So there's sometimes me struggling with my identity, with who I am, against this ghost of who John Larsen is. And it's a product of my own doing. You're obviously performing a little bit on stage, so there's a lot of me in there, but there's a lot of bravado or play acting or pushing things a little bit further for the microphones, and, yeah, it's not as great as it sounds.

Criticism, Rewards, and Favorite Episodes

John Dehlin [00:57:59] What about the criticism? Is that hard for you?

John Larsen [00:58:02] The criticism has never been hard because I always enjoyed debate. If they're criticizing what I'm saying, I never take that personally. But sometimes the criticism is personal. Sometimes they go after you, and they go after you a lot worse than they ever have for me. They're brutal. And it just overwhelms you sometimes. I mean, it just feels like you're just getting kicked in the ribs. And we live in this Internet society today where all celebrity, we love them and we want to tear them down. And even minor league folks like you and me, like, if we show any sign of weakness, and I have time. I have never shied from my own vulnerability in the podcast, and there's people who hate me for it. And it was one of the first questions I asked Adam, you know, after he kind of got through the first. I said, have you ever had anybody hate you? He said, oh, no. I said, no, I mean, really hate you. Just hate you, because it's gonna happen. And I never. When I started recording in the basement, that never crossed my mind. I'm not saying I don't deserve it. I'm just saying it's hard to deal with, you know,

John Dehlin [00:59:22] how about the sense of, like, responsibility that you're trying to make a difference, you're trying to impact an organization, you're trying to bless people's lives. And do you ever feel kind of overwhelmed by kind of the burden of all that responsibility?

John Larsen [00:59:36] It's like we're pushing a rock that's not moving. You know that sometimes you want to make things change and you're changing things and you're impacting people, but oftentimes in a quiet way. And of course, we're tuned into negative feedback. You can get 20 positive emails and one bad one, then you'll ruminate over that for a week. And that's why a lot of people, including myself, stop reading the email, because you're sometimes in an emotionally raw state from what you just recorded. You read an email and it just feels like you just got slugged in the gut. So I think sometimes it just feels like we're fighting this monster. There was a time, I think was around 2010, you might recall, and at the time in itunes, if you typed in the word Mormon, the top three podcasts were the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, you and me. And one night, the church released 17 podcasts. And to knock us off that, you know, just the kind of money the church. I smile that the church has spent millions and millions of dollars to try to counteract our voices. And that kind of makes me happy.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] What are. What have been the good things for you? What have been the things you've loved or really enjoyed?

John Larsen [01:00:57] Oh, it's.

John Dehlin [01:00:58] And do you feel like it's been worth the pain?

John Larsen [01:01:01] Oh, for sure, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:01:02] Even with the divorce?

John Larsen [01:01:03] I don't mean to wallow. Well, the divorce was sort of incidental. Like I said, the podcast didn't influence the divorce.

John Dehlin [01:01:11] It's hard to imagine, like, I believe you, but as I think about how interwoven things were and how intense things were, it's hard for me to imagine that there wasn't an association.

John Larsen [01:01:23] It made it difficult because I had to divorce. We had to divorce in public, which is something I wouldn't wish on anybody. And there were rumors and lies and false things spread around and people who just who I thought were my friends who suddenly defriended us. And it's just like, I remember one time Zilph and I were talking late one night and I'm like, you must have got all the friends, because no one invites me to anything anymore. And she said, I thought you got all the friends. No one invites me to anything anymore either. And we do have a stigma of divorce, right? And when it was John and Zilpha, suddenly people just didn't know what to do with us because for so long it was just one word. It was John and Zilpha. Right? And that's who we were. And it negatively impacted a lot of people. And so we went into hiding. Zilpha is still as brilliant as she ever was, but she does not like to interact with the public at all.

John Dehlin [01:02:27] Because she's smart.

John Larsen [01:02:29] She's smart. But no, it was. I think the positive things is because it was public, it probably forced us to be more amicable than we might have been. And that is a small investment with a huge payoff for anybody who's going through divorce. By the way, plug it. Zilph and I will be teaching a class on how to divorce with kids at the Whitefields community center on April 19th. It's a three hour class. You should all come out if you've decided to divorce, I'm serious. April 19, put it on your calendar.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Other benefits of podcasting for you personally?

John Larsen [01:03:07] Oh, I've been able to meet fantastic people. I mean, I've been able to explore my mind. I've been able to develop the talents that I have. It's been this wonderful, fascinating world of the most interesting. People in Mormonism are on the edge, just like in all things. And, oh, no, I wouldn't trade the experience and the people. And it's hard because I've met so many thousands of people that I usually remember the faces but their names. And you just feel this instant connection with them. They're still my people. Even though I sometimes hide from them, they're still my people.

John Dehlin [01:03:49] So was it. Was it hard to let it go, the podcast?

John Larsen [01:03:55] No, I was ready. Yeah. I just, I couldn't get. I couldn't get it up for Mormonism anymore. I just didn't care.

John Dehlin [01:04:08] He's speaking metaphorically,

John Larsen [01:04:12] sometimes literally.

John Dehlin [01:04:17] What kind of porn are you looking at?

John Larsen [01:04:20] Like, in the end, you can tell, you know, it's just like, I'm just like, ugh. There's a point when you just say, don't you get it already? Like, I just, I felt like I was kicking a puppy. And what's interesting is I retired from the engagement, but there's an element that's still interesting. Like, I'm participating more with like Sunstone, and I just, I'm not boxing myself in. It's sort of where things go, but, like the day to day things, like, people will say, did you hear about what the church said? And I don't. Why would I care about that? But it's just like listening to podcasts or getting involved in the communities, reading the boards. It just does nothing for me emotionally. And I think that that lack of emotional connection made it as not as good of a performance as it needed to be.

John Dehlin [01:05:17] And the bizarre thing is that's a sign of health, I think, for many people when they're able to move on. Do you ever feel like the podcast has kept you in longer than might have been healthy, kind of engaged in this discourse?

John Larsen [01:05:31] Possibly, but I also learned how to engage it and I really got to deconstruct the hell out of Mormonism. So I joke with my friends that I am truly a non Mormon and I'll challenge them that way because I don't emotionally react on Mormon paths at all anymore because I got to do all of this processing. You all were my therapist for six years and I got it all out of my system.

John Dehlin [01:05:57] Any favorite episodes that come to mind? I know that's an impossible question to

John Larsen [01:06:00] ask, but I usually say the one we did naked. We interviewed Mormon nudists. And if you listen, you can hear the timbre of my voice, like, welcome to the. Luckily, there's a table in front of me. What's funny is there is, and I can't remember.

John Dehlin [01:06:22] Lucky for them, there was a table.

John Larsen [01:06:23] I can't remember their pseudonyms, so I'm not gonna. I know their names in real life, but I don't remember the pseudonyms they to used. But the female nudist showed up late, and we were all sitting there in our robes, Zilpha, me, and the other guy. And we were waiting for her to show up, and she says, all right, let's get started. She just starts ripping her clothes, and we're all, like, going to the corner and opening our robe. I don't know why we did that one naked, but it was.

John Dehlin [01:06:56] And there's one you and Zilpha did in the bathtub, right?

John Larsen [01:06:58] There's one we did in the tub. Yeah. Got cold in there. It wasn't that big of a tub either. Not nearly as sexy as it sounds.

John Dehlin [01:07:05] It sounds really good recording equipment.

John Larsen [01:07:07] I'm sure you're like, yeah, what did we talk. What was tub talk about? Anyway?

John Dehlin [01:07:12] I can't remember other favorite episodes substantively,

John Larsen [01:07:17] you know, I think. And one of the top ones that I hear all the time is. Which was really. Where Mormon expression kind of stuck it to the man, was The Mormon Expositor 1. And people say to me, why don't you do more of those? Because I studied for like, 90 fucking hours to get ready for that podcast. That's why I don't do those all the time. It took a long time and. But we pulled that thing apart. And in some of those. Those middle episodes I would do. And the other panels would do, like DNC 132 are. Yeah, there are some of them we really deconstruct. They're fabulous episodes, but they were expensive from my perspective.

John Dehlin [01:07:56] See, part of why maybe I've been able to. I don't know, but I don't have to do that level of preparation that you do. And that's. I can't imagine that. Plus coordinating the panels is amazing.

John Larsen [01:08:08] Coordinating the panels, you know, we joke and people criticize me all the time. That's why the panels went away, because they're just a lot of work anyway.

John Dehlin [01:08:18] That's amazing. You've been able to do that level of Preparation. Because your podcasts are just so fascinating.

John Larsen [01:08:24] They're interesting, and I read a lot. There's still a lot of stuff I can pull out of my head. That's some of it true, some of it not. Every once in a while, I'll come up with something that I don't know if it's true or not, but I can't be bothered to look it up.

John Dehlin [01:08:36] All right, so. Navo Expositor, DNC132 what else? Any others?

John Larsen [01:08:41] I, you know, maybe because they're. I think there's some that are meaningful to me. The top 10 ways John Larsen Disagrees with John Larsen was an important one for me. The early one we did. Mistakes were Made where we talk about. I tried in the podcast to make. To say, look, this is hard. You're vulnerable. Leaving the church is not easy. You're going to make mistakes. And I made mistakes. Like, I don't drink that much, actually. And I think in the podcast, because I joked about it, I made it seem like it was not as serious as it is, because drinking is serious fun. And, you know, you only have so much time. There's been times when I've been really super judgy. I regret anytime I attacked anybody personally, which I think I did more in the beginning, but I spun off. If you listen to me, I'm really going after institutions, hardcore. But I seldom drop names because I think, like I said in the beginning, they're all victims.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] Excellent. Okay, so do you have. This is a really hard question to answer. Do you feel like you, you know, we've got the church, you had your goals, you wanted to alleviate suffering. Do you have a sense that you've made a difference? And if so, what difference do you think Mormon expression has made?

Impact on Individuals and Mormon Culture

John Larsen [01:10:13] Yeah, I've had enough people tell me that it has, you know, to the point, you know, I've shared the experience before. You know, I got an email one time, the guy had driven his truck to the edge of the cliff, and then he turned on the podcast and he couldn't stop laughing, and so he didn't kill himself. And there's been many, many people who've said, you don't understand how lonely and how isolated I felt and how terrible. It's just awful. And then you made me laugh about. He made me realize it was ridiculous. And so there's been. I've probably received a thousand emails like that, and I'm sure that only represents a small portion. And so I know that I've been able to make impact in people's lives and help them realize it's not them. It's this crazy, messed up system that we were all part of, we all participated in. And it's not you. And you can move on and do great things like have sex with strangers and drink whiskey.

John Dehlin [01:11:33] How about. I haven't tried those yet, by the way.

John Larsen [01:11:39] I have.

John Dehlin [01:11:43] How about institutionally and culturally change? You know, you just talked about impact you've made on an individual basis. What impact do you think Mormon expression's had institutionally?

John Larsen [01:11:55] I don't think very much because. And I think Mormon expression always ran under the radar. I mean, I said to you years ago, they'll never excommunicate me, but they'll go after you. And because the Mormons and it's a weak spot because the ex Mormons are the other and we ignore them. And you know, I. It's funny, I would watch the church sue people for doing something I'd been doing in spades for years. Now, I know that my podcast gets downloaded to church owned IP addresses, so somebody there is listening, but sometimes it's the employees, sometimes it's the employees.

John Dehlin [01:12:34] Yeah. Honestly, because I've heard people say that they were walking down the corridors and hearing podcasts from people's offices.

John Larsen [01:12:41] Right, right. Yeah. The whole everybody in that great and spacious building downtown. The most disillusioned, embittered people you'll ever meet. Poor things. Yeah. So there's no doubt that they're attracted to my podcast. I really don't think that. I think what Mormon expression did and I actually do not want, and I never have, and I've said this over the years, I do not want active Mormons listening to it. That's one of the two. There's two main reasons that I curse like a sailor, and that's one of the reasons, is to keep them out. I didn't want them in because they had to choose themselves to come get this information. I was not going to give it to them because the process of leaving the church is so painful and I'm so patronizing that I'm going to talk to Anton like that. It's painful and it's hard and I don't want any part of that. But once they start the slip down the muddy slope, then I want to be there. But I have no interest in pulling people out of the church.

John Dehlin [01:13:52] But institutionally you don't feel like, oh,

John Larsen [01:13:54] I want to burn the motherfucker down. If not this generation, when?

John Dehlin [01:14:12] Now?

John Larsen [01:14:13] John remembers fondly that one of our conflicts came from an essay. I Wrote a few years ago, called Here I Stand, where I basically said, look, all you liberal Mormons, you're propping the church up and you all need to walk away and it'll fall down. And I hope for that to happen, I hope it is happening. I hope the age of it. But mentally, emotionally, myself, I've gone beyond Mormonism. Because what I realize now is that if Mormonism falls, something else will just come along. And this problem of secular replacement for religion is an enormous one. One, and it's way bigger than Mormonism. And it is a tough problem. And that one is more interesting to me now.

John Dehlin [01:15:06] And I'm going to come back to this one more time. But if you look at the church's essays, if you look at the various ways that the church trying to be more open, trying to be more tolerant, God bless him, do you not feel like Mormon expression has been a part of the past five years of what many would say is lightning speed change for this organization?

John Larsen [01:15:36] I think it's part of it. I was riding the same wave. I didn't cause it. I was just part of this trend. Yeah. The problem with the essays, and I know folks like you, John, agitate for the church, but be more open. But come on, like the church is not true. Like, the more open they are, the more it's going to expose the problems. Right? And they're in a tough place. You know, I sometimes say to myself and to other critics, what would you do? What essay would you write? Like, if you were suddenly in charge of the church pr, what essay on the Book of Abraham would you write? I don't know. You can't. There's so much of Mormon theology baked into that essay, into the Book of Abraham and to the pearl, great price. The church is really in a tight spot. And you know the church, you ask, does the church pay attention to me? The church is and always has been more concerned about the conservatives than the liberals. The liberals never get anything done. The conservatives, now those guys arm themselves, right? They go join compounds and marry multiple wives and do things like that. And the church is always more threatened by those folks. And the church worries that if there's a liberal, if there's a liberal counter reaction, the church will swing conservative. And that's why they have such dilemmas around guys like you, because they love and hate you at the same time, because you're a counterbalance to the conservatives who are nuts. But they also don't like how you keep poking them. They don't care about people on gang

John Dehlin [01:17:15] that's not what I'm doing.

John Larsen [01:17:16] I'm not putting. I never asked you what did you think about it when I called you the single greatest anti Mormon that ever lived? Did it hurt a little. It was a compliment.

John Dehlin [01:17:35] Well, that's an. I'll give you that answer the time you interview me.

John Larsen [01:17:40] Stay for the after party.

John Dehlin [01:17:41] That's when it gets good. What about, and I'm going to ask this last time, what about all the people that probably have left as a result of Mormon expression? Do you not feel that's made a difference?

John Larsen [01:17:54] Oh, I think it's made a difference. You mean institutionally? I'm sure I had a small part but I don't have any delusion that I, as I said to you, move the needle. And I think, I hope that with a lot of people, like a lot of the people in this room who I could name off, what they've done have helped build these communities, help build the support networks and I was just a small part of that. But I fully think if it hadn't been me it would have been somebody else. And I'm glad that I was able to have a role. But it's this fantastic community of people who really are willing to reach out and help others that has been, you know, you asked the best part about it. That community of ex Mormons, God, they're fucked up and screwy and they do things they shouldn't but they're a lot of fun on a Saturday night.

Current Projects and Advice for Those Transitioning

John Dehlin [01:18:48] So what's Whitefield's doing now? Talk a bit about if you're still kind of in this game, what you're trying to do, you know, what's, to what extent are you still involved in the Mormon question?

John Larsen [01:19:03] Whitefields is really, it's a part time organization and we're really interested in moving people on to the better resources. Whitefields is a regular non profit. We have a quarterly board meeting where we do soul searching and navel gazing and try to figure out what is it we want to do, what do we have the time to do. And it's this element that I think might have pushed you into counseling of there's so much pain and what are we going to do with it. So the one thing that Whitefields has done and continues to do is we just refer people on to therapists. So we go out and kind of vet therapists a little bit. There's dismally very poor resources in the therapist community on dealing with faith transformation and some therapists get it because they've been through it or been through you know, like, like the first therapists we used were really used to dealing with issues of people coming out of the closet, which has a lot of scare.

John Dehlin [01:19:58] Lesbian, right?

John Larsen [01:19:58] Yeah, yeah. And so we want to move on. We've tried to do classes, we try to work to overcome the stigma of therapy. I think the single worst thing that the Mormon legacy is this, and I was talking about it earlier, this idea that I'm okay and I don't need help because life is so much better now that I'm out and saying, no, you really should talk to somebody. It really will help. It's not that you're not good, but you can be gooder. And overcoming that Mormon stigma against therapy is something that we try to work towards. And we're not a provider. We don't provide anything. We just try to point them in the right direction.

John Dehlin [01:20:38] So you point people to therapists. Podcast still going strong.

John Larsen [01:20:42] We host the podcast, still host voices, which is. Which is just people telling their story. That's all it is. And it's really useful for people who are in that transformative place. And it has no other agenda than people just tell their story. There's been lots of fantastic stories told in there. We're oftentimes snooping around for whatever else we can do, but it's sort of a part time gig for us.

John Dehlin [01:21:08] What about for you personally? Are you planning some new ventures separate from Mormonism?

John Larsen [01:21:15] Other than the debauchery, the hedonism that I'm normally pursuing? Wow, that fills a lot of my time. Yeah, I have my own podcast that I do, which I enjoy, except it's not funny. I put that in the complaint box. So, John Larsen podcast, where I often talk about some of these bigger issues. I did a podcast this last week where I talked about my white male privilege, because here we are, you and I, two white male, privileged white males sitting on this stage telling everybody how to live their life. And it's something I'm sort of. We fight against this culture and yet we cash in on it, you and I. And there's a bigger world out there and bigger problems to solve and bigger problems to go at. But I've never checked the downloads on my podcast. I don't know if anybody listens to it. So it's sort of maybe just my therapy. I don't know. I try to write. I've actually started writing a book about my experiences on the edge of fundamentalism. And I have to do a lot of scrubbing to make sure that everybody's de identified. But watch for that in about nine years, whenever I finish it. So I'm still engaging. I'm doing a presentation at Sunstone this summer on hyper vigilance is a sign of PTSD as a marker of post Mormon communities. The communities themselves become hyper vigilant. So I want to talk about that. So I'm still doing research and looking

John Dehlin [01:22:58] around and, you know, so you did this as one of your closing episodes. So I want to refer people to a more expanded version of that. There's a lot of Mormons right now who are in pain, trying to heal and trying to move towards growth. Do you have any sort of distilled words of wisdom for those who are listening, who are just in the middle of it, trying to figure out what to do?

John Larsen [01:23:27] The number one thing I tell people is there's no hurry. It feels like you just need to resolve this. And my good friend and part time therapist Lindsay told me something. We were talking about my personal life and she told me, john, you need to learn to lean into ambiguity. And I think on a personal level, that's good advice now. So that seems sort of counter to everything I'm saying. But what I want everybody to realize is the minute they decide the church is not true the way the church says it is, then you pull all the power back. You have all the power. You can decide everything. You can decide to go to the temple or not go to the temple, you can decide to go to church or not go to church. And if you realize that you don't have to solve this big problem right away, that sometimes that extra beat of, you know, not engaging the family when they ask you to do this stupid thing, or not getting upset when they pray over the meal or whatever, that you can do it at your speed and you can wait till 2015 to get excommunicated if you really want.

John Dehlin [01:24:37] You do have that choice. So. So

John Larsen [01:24:46] what are you laughing at? We really just need to do it like the millennials, like they just don't care. Right? The church is bleeding, but not because the ex Mormon community, the community that I'm used to dealing with is a 30 to 50 year old demographic with kids, married. I mean, that describes 80, 90%. We are a blip to the church. It's this 18 to 25, they're just walking out and like they don't care. And God bless them for it. You know, maybe we paved the way a little bit for them. I don't, I don't, I don't know. But.

John Dehlin [01:25:23] So you're saying go slowly, go Slowly. Anything else?

John Larsen [01:25:26] Any other big seize back your power. You're in charge.

John Dehlin [01:25:29] Take your power.

John Larsen [01:25:30] No one else is. Okay? And I mean literally, when the bishop asks you if you touch your willie, just tell him to fuck off. I mean, just refuse to answer the question. Just tell it. Just, you have all the power. They only have as much power as you imbue them with. They don't have any more power than that. And you can go to the temple and stand at the doors and say, sister, I wish I could come in. I'm here. They won't let me go any further. And you're there. You can take back. Because they have for so long had a narrative that you're either there in the sealing room or you're at home because you're a sinner. But you can do. I'm not saying go in. I'm not for protesting the church. That's not my gig. But you're in charge. And I think if enough people realize that, then we make an advancement.

Predictions for the Future of the Mormon Church

John Dehlin [01:26:35] So would it even be worth your brain cycles to try and venture a prediction about how the next 50 to 100 years for the church unfolds?

John Larsen [01:26:46] Usually predicting the church is pretty easy. The church is usually 30 years behind society. So you take whatever society is doing and project it 30 years. The church, I think, has met the hill that it's going to die on. And we need to put an asterisk by die. I have said over and over again I stand by it that the church cannot give on the homosexual issue. They have nowhere to go on that one. So what will happen is the church will follow the route of many of the same churches that were born in the 19th century. It will become increasingly small, increasingly rich per capita, and increasingly conservative. So we'll see this church shrink in size and in a way become more powerful. As far as money goes, has the last Quaker died yet? She's like the richest woman on the planet because they concentrated all the resources. No, I don't think the church will go away. Not until it's replaced by some other weird religion. And if you don't believe me, listen to Lindsay, Lindsay's fabulous Year of Polygamy series and know that how pervasive polygamy is. Do you all know that the average ward has three polygamists in it on average LDS ward. LDS ward in Utah. We think we left that behind. And it is pervasive and it's everywhere. And it shows how. How hard it is to change things. We talk about this progressive pope. Do you know it's against the Catholic religion to get divorced. Like people talk about social pressure. Do you think there's been social pressure on the Catholic Church to change divorce? Like there are people in the church hoarding food and ammunition right now, living right next door to you who just would love to see all the liberals walk out of the church. We talk about that as if it's some kind of crisis for the church. 60% of the membership is just waiting for the day. They want to see you gone.

John Dehlin [01:28:54] So the church will get smaller, more wealthy, more influential.

John Larsen [01:28:58] Well, influential with themselves because the church is overly influential. Like in the legislature in Utah, they're over represented. And the legislature, the House and Senate, they're over represented. So the church has undue influence right now. That will go away to some extent. So I think they'll become more powerful as a force for controlling their own membership, but not for influencing the communities around them.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] What about kind of the great liberal hopes, you know, Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, the new age kind of apologists like Adam Miller and the like. Like, are they gonna, you know, you know, the narrative is that Boyd K. Packard dies, that half of the apostles will turn over in the next 10 years and that once the right key apostles die, that we'll see this flowering of a more compassionate and progressive church. What do you think?

John Larsen [01:29:49] 30 years behind. It'll be 30 years behind society. I don't see any. I look at the young guys in the quorum and they're just as douchey as the old ones. There's the silver fox. I mean, he's kind of got the German thing going on. I mean, that's kind of sexy. Have you ever met him in real life?

John Dehlin [01:30:11] Uchtdorf?

John Larsen [01:30:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:12] No.

John Larsen [01:30:13] Oh. I was wondering if he's as dreamy in person as he is on the photos. You know, I might have a thing for older men. I don't know. The church will modernize, but it's a new era. Joseph Smith had the unfortunate adaptation to try to form a church after the invention of the printing press, which he fought against. Literally.

John Dehlin [01:30:36] Right.

John Larsen [01:30:40] And it's hard. The Internet would be changing everything. But I think Mormonism is a footnote to what we're going to see. You see rising instability based on privilege, class and concentration of resources. If you don't believe that things like ISIS have a lot to do with poverty and class consumption of resource, you're kidding yourself. And so we have increased secularization, going with increased militarization, and these same cycles have been happening for thousands of years. Right. So I think Mormonism is part of this greater narrative that the next hundred years are going to be crazy. Who knows what's going to happen? There might be a new religious movement. I don't think it is coincidence that Pentecostalism, which is by many accounts the fastest growing religion in the world, especially in the so called third world, was born in 1919 in San Francisco following the big flu epidemic, the World War I and then the earthquake. And then these guys came in and people were hungry for something. And we're only one epidemic away from people going back to the roots of fundamentalist religion.

John Dehlin [01:31:59] So are you.

John Larsen [01:32:00] That's a bummer. Let's talk about sex and masturbation again.

John Dehlin [01:32:04] So overall, are you kind of, are you bullish for humanity that we're. That these secular communities are going to possibly flourish and that we will see a critical mass of, of sort of better organizations, better communities or not? Do you see the global trend towards secularization?

John Larsen [01:32:25] I hope I haven't given up hope. I face the temptation in my life and see it in many of my friends, of retreating from the fight and just building yourself a nice life, a nice middle class white life that we have the privilege of building because we don't have to confront the fact that we don't have dirty water. We don't have to confront the fact that there might be militants dropping bombs in it. And I mean, I hate to take it to this global thing, but it's really, these things are bigger than all of us. And it's so easy when we live in the lap of luxury here, just to go to Harmons and eat cheese and drink wine and stuff, which are all fantastic things. But it's so easy just to tune it out. And I think that's sort of what's happening with me and the church and what's easy to do with me and, and issues of race and culture and poverty. It's easy just to just like say I'm gonna plant heirloom tomatoes, you know. So bullish or not bullish, I think I see this progress of humankind. We're definitely making progress. I think I read a while ago the last public lynching sponsored by quasi government was in 1954. And I mean, that's progress, right? We're getting better. We're not as violent in many ways, but you look at the increasing audacity and overall damage, devastation of some of the things that have happened in the last hundred years and it's like there's these two parallel paths of us getting worse and worse. And better and better. And the only thing I can do is try to. To put as much energy as I can afford into making us better. And at the risk of sometimes being pointed at and saying, you're out of your place. You have no right to talk. But it's still. We have to battle against it, right? And that's all we can do. We have been given a great gift. The gift that we have all been given, which very few people have been given, is to be very, very wrong about something and realize it, because most humans don't ever get that opportunity. And what it does is it changes the way you perceive the world. Because, you know, whenever I'm talking about Mormonism, that podcast, and I have a wry grin on my face, it's because I can remember that I believed all this stuff. When I'm criticizing Mormons, I'm criticizing John Larsen's circa 50 years ago. That was me. And I've been able to have this opportunity to see that I can be very, very wrong about something and that I'm not set in my path that way, that I'm open to learning new things. And I think that's a fabulous gift.

John Dehlin [01:35:21] So I'm going to interpret that as bullish,

John Larsen [01:35:25] with ambivalence, leaning into ambiguity, lean into doing things better. One of the ways I recharge my batteries these days is I go out into the desert. I go out where people aren't. And I'll tell you, sometimes I fantasize about the day when humankind is just gone. You go down there and you see the uranium tailings and the cows that are killing all the sheep and the horses that are basically like big rats down there just tearing up the countryside. But we can make a difference. There's still some amazing things that have been done, and humankind has the potential. I think once we realize that we're both good and evil, not humans, you and me. And I've done terrible things, and I've done great things, and I've said terrible things, and I've hurt people in really serious ways, and I've hurt myself in serious ways, but I've also done some amazing things, and that describes the human condition. And I think when we can realize that about ourselves, that we're both good and evil, then we have the humility to move forward.

John Dehlin [01:36:42] Excellent.

John Larsen [01:36:44] Because if there's anything I am, it's humble.

John Dehlin [01:36:46] Absolutely. So before. Before I end with the question I ask all my guests, which is to kind of share.

Final Reflections and Closing Thoughts

John Larsen [01:36:53] Do you ask it at the end? Because I've probably Never heard this, because I've never.

John Dehlin [01:37:03] It's not the first hour you've ever heard it. I honestly just want to take a second to thank you personally for your work. Podcasting can be incredibly difficult and lonely at times, and it can also just really get you down. And I just want you to know that you've been a huge inspiration to me. You've helped me want to be better as a podcaster. You've helped me want to make a bigger difference. You've helped me to kind of try and keep a sharper edge. But your transparency in your ups and your downs has been really inspirational to me. Your courage and your quality of work, your insight has been incredibly inspirational to me. And there have been times where I've been down, and there have been times where. Where I've been really discouraged, and you've been really classy about not only supporting me publicly in some significant ways during some hard times, but also privately behind the scenes. You've been sometimes very encouraging and supportive, and I see you as someone who's done some incredibly, I would say, heroic and valuable things for our people. And I just want to personally thank you for your work.

John Larsen [01:38:37] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [01:38:49] And we're not here to celebrate you by your own request, but how do you guys feel about John Larsen? You guys feel.

John Larsen [01:39:08] So.

John Dehlin [01:39:08] Thank you. All right, well, just so you know, the way that I usually end my podcast.

John Larsen [01:39:14] Okay, great, they have an end.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] Is by asking my interviewees to kind of bear their version of whatever a testimony might be, whatever truths or wisdom that they've kind of distilled. And you've shared a lot with us tonight, so at the risk of having you sound repetitive, if there are any kind of final pieces of wisdom that you want to share with the listeners, if you had a John Larsen secular version of your testimony, what would it be?

John Larsen [01:39:47] Well, being alive is fantastic. It's full of anxiety. It's full of regret. It's full of fear. But, man, you can feel the wind on your face sometimes and just taste what it means to be human. And sometimes it's down and dirty and sweaty and delicious, and sometimes it's noble and uplifting. And we have this beautiful gift. Billions of years and billions of planets and this amazing universe. Here we are. Life has a price. It's death, right? But to know death is to know life. That it has to be. It has to be just. You got to live the fuck out of it and do it for everybody around you. And that's what it's all about. We're Social animal. We're naked mole rats, right? We exist in the relationships we have and in those moments of beauty that come at the cost of the pain. And when you can just embrace that, oh, man, it's delicious.

John Dehlin [01:41:07] Beautiful. And you guys want to join me in a round of applause for Joan Larsen?

John Larsen [01:41:23] What's next, John?

John Dehlin [01:41:24] What's next for me? Yeah, this is podcast over.

John Larsen [01:41:26] I don't know. Yeah, I think so. Everybody sat down again?

John Dehlin [01:41:29] No, it's funny, because I think I did have visions of what you've been trying to do with Whitefields in my head before you started it. But I'm kind of following you in many ways. I want to be about healing and growth for Mormons in transition and maybe beyond.

John Larsen [01:41:50] So do it.

John Dehlin [01:41:51] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:41:52] And John and I were talking a little while ago, and I gave him burly advice, and it was go and do it, but make sure to respect those who have come before. And I think to your credit, John, you've always been somebody who's introspective and able to adjust. And that raw humanity that comes out in that is what attracts me to you more than anything, that you are able to do it. You took my advice, and I didn't give it in a fun and fun way, did I? I said, don't go fuck things up down at Salt Lake. Isn't that what I told you?

John Dehlin [01:42:29] You sure did. And with that, I just want to, on the podcast, acknowledge a couple organizations. I want to thank Steve and Chris Holbrook for they're the leaders of the Utah Valley Post Mormon community. They kind of sponsored this event. And I want listeners to know if you're anywhere near Utah Valley, find a way to get a hold of this community. And Steve and Chris, they're doing amazing things. Melissa, I want to thank you for your help again with this. Lindsay Hanson park is doing amazing things with Sunstone. I've called her the. What is it?

John Larsen [01:43:08] The one Noble, one mighty and strong.

John Dehlin [01:43:10] Mighty and strong. Support Sunstone. It's a worthy institution that deserves support. So check out Sunstone Register for the symposium, subscribe to the magazine and support Lindsay. And I want to thank again, Richard Holdman and Chad Brown for doing the video production and all of you for coming. It's just so beautiful to have to have people come and still care about this kind of stuff. So thanks to you, thanks to everyone, thanks to the listeners, and check us out on MormonStories.org this will be on video. We're kind of at the end now, but I should have said that at the beginning Richard will add that in. Yeah, check out the video if you haven't already. But John Larsen, thanks for coming on Mormon Stories. You're awesome.

John Larsen [01:43:55] Thanks. So are you.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. To discuss this podcast with others, please check us out@mormonstories.org to join one of our 80 plus support communities across the globe. Click on the Support communities tab@mormonstories.org to keep this podcast alive. Please consider a tax deductible donation today by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org audio and video for this podcast were provided by Richard Holdman. A big thanks to the Saber Rattlers for providing the music for today's episode. The Mormont Stories logo was generously donated by studiocase.com come, come ye saints, no

John Larsen [01:44:42] toil nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way.

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.