Faith Matters
274 episodes - English - Latest episode: 30 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.3K ratingsFaith Matters offers an expansive view of the Restored Gospel, thoughtful exploration of big and sometimes thorny questions, and a platform that encourages deeper engagement with our faith and our world. We focus on the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) tradition, but believe we have much to learn from other traditions and fully embrace those of other beliefs.
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Episodes
209. What's So Good About Good Friday? — A Conversation with Eric Huntsman
March 27, 2024 22:00 - 1 hour - 42.5 MBAs Latter-day Saints, we often say that we focus more on Jesus’ resurrection than on His death, and we consider the atonement in Gethsemane as the most sacred event in Jesus’ life. In this episode, we consider a question we don’t think about too often, stemming from this: why have we not cultivated more robust ways to celebrate Holy Week, and all the events leading up to Easter Sunday? Especially when we compare it to all that we do leading up to Christmas? We sat down to talk with Eric Hu...
209. What's so good about Good Friday? — Eric Huntsman
March 27, 2024 22:00 - 1 hour - 42.5 MBAs Latter-day Saints, we often say that we focus more on Jesus’ resurrection than on His death, and we consider the atonement in Gethsemane as the most sacred event in Jesus’ life. In this episode, we consider a question we don’t think about too often, stemming from this: why have we not cultivated more robust ways to celebrate Holy Week, and all the events leading up to Easter Sunday? Especially when we compare it to all that we do leading up to Christmas? We sat down to talk with Eric Hu...
208. Curious Mind, Open Heart — A Conversation with Bill Turnbull and Kathy Clayton
March 23, 2024 17:00 - 1 hour - 50.7 MBThis week we sat down with Kathy Kipp Clayton and Bill Turnbull to talk about the fascinating chapters they contributed to a new book entitled No Division among You: Creating Unity in a Diverse Church. Bill, and his wife Susan, are two of Faith Matters’ co-founders. Kathy and her husband Whitney have served around the world on Church assignments for the past two decades. Whitney served in the presidency of the Seventy until his release in 2020. They now help supervise and often travel the wo...
207. Feeling Separated? So did Jesus. — A Conversation with Kerry Muhlestein
March 16, 2024 15:00 - 51 minutes - 35.6 MBAs Holy Week and Easter Sunday approach, we thought it would be helpful to visit with someone who could help us reflect on these sacred events in a new way. Our guest today, Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, recently wrote The Easter Connection, which dives into the biblical account of Holy Week and illuminates the theme of eternal unification. In this short book—you could read it in just one sitting—Kerry explores the various ways Jesus’s final week teaches us about disconnection, and the idea that thr...
206. Tragedy in the Holy Land: What Can We Do? — A Conversation with Chad Ford
March 10, 2024 13:00 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBEver since October 7th, we’ve been wanting to better understand the conflict in Israel and Gaza and how we as Latter-day Saints can be good neighbors and friends to everyone impacted by it. We know there are no easy answers. Our guest this week, BYU Hawaii professor Chad Ford, has been working on peacemaking initiatives in the region for several decades and acknowledges the very real fear people involved in this conflict feel: that peace isn’t going to happen in their lifetime. In the conv...
205. Tough Love from the Book of Mormon — A Conversation with Grant Hardy
March 03, 2024 14:00 - 1 hour - 44.2 MBBook of Mormon scholar Grant Hardy knows that there are lots of different views about what The Book of Mormon is—how it came to be, how credible its origin story and originator are, and what its value is to Latter-day Saints, and to the world. Though he himself falls firmly on the side of belief, he believes the approach of the Book as sacred text asks its reader to consider that “every word or phrase may hold existentially significant meaning” — regardless of exactly how one views the Book...
204. Advice from "The World's Worst Mom" — A Conversation with Lenore Skenazy
February 24, 2024 16:00 - 52 minutes - 36.3 MBWhen Lenore Skenazy’s son was nine, he asked her repeatedly if she would let him have a solo adventure in their hometown of New York City. Her son had a specific plan for this adventure: he wanted her to take him somewhere new in the city and then let him find his own way home. Lenore took the leap of faith, and when her son burst into their apartment later, he was practically “levitating with pride and joy” at what he had accomplished. Lenore then wrote an article in the New York Sun calle...
Proclaim Peace: A New Podcast by Faith Matters and Mormon Women for Ethical Government
February 18, 2024 14:00 - 56 minutes - 39.1 MBToday we’re sharing with you an episode from a brand new podcast that Faith Matters is co-sponsoring in collaboration with Mormon Women for Ethical Government, called Proclaim Peace. This podcast is hosted by Jennifer Thomas, Co-Executive Director of MWEG, and Patrick Mason, Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, and longtime friend and advisor of Faith Matters. In this first season, these two will be exploring with guests a “peaceful reading of the...
203. Love is a Law, not a Reward — Adam Miller at Restore
February 10, 2024 21:00 - 23 minutes - 16 MBWe’re back sharing a favorite session from last year’s Restore Conference. In this session, Adam Miller retells the parable of the prodigal son and a highlight from the Children’s book series, 'Frog and Toad", to re-examine our relationship to love. It is our nature to think we have to work hard to earn love, and we constantly tell ourselves stories about what we have to do to earn it. But if God’s love is constant, then these stories are elaborate distractions. We feel guilt and shame whene...
202. The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God — A Conversation with Justin Brierley
February 03, 2024 16:00 - 1 hour - 42.1 MBA little less than two decades ago, you might walk past a bookstore and see The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins featured among the bestsellers. The mid to late 2000’s were the heyday for the New Atheists, a small cohort of scientists and philosophers who were convinced religion was both untrue and a bad influence in the world. At the time, it was easy to see the rise of the New Atheists as the latest peak of secularism, a sign that public belief in religion was long gone, and there was no go...
201. The Counter-Culture of Commitment — A Conversation with Pete Davis
January 27, 2024 21:00 - 57 minutes - 39.6 MBIn 2018, Pete Davis was graduating from Harvard Law School and was chosen to give a commencement address that ended up going unexpectedly viral, having now been viewed over 30 million times. The thesis of Pete’s speech was that our culture has entered what he calls “infinite browsing mode”—with so many options to choose from, and devices that present those options to us literally endlessly—we can become paralyzed by choice and inadvertently live out our lives without ever dedicating ourselv...
200. The Awakened Brain — Lisa Miller at Restore
January 20, 2024 23:00 - 32 minutes - 22.3 MBToday we’re sharing another fantastic session from our Restore Conference last October, this time from Lisa Miller. Lisa is a clinical psychologist and professor at Columbia University who specializes in the science of spirituality. She’s also the author of the popular 2021 book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. We often think of science and spirituality as separate ways of knowing that don’t really speak to each other, where science foc...
199. Integrity and Institutions — A Conversation with George Handley on Lowell Bennion
January 13, 2024 15:00 - 59 minutes - 41 MBWe’re excited to share with you this interview with George Handley, a professor of humanities at BYU. George recently published a fascinating and moving intellectual biography of Lowell Bennion. As we’ve learned more about Bennion, he’s begun to loom large for us as a truly inspiring figure who models some of the best of what our faith tradition has to offer. He was an educator, humanitarian, and practical philosopher who had an outsized impact on the Church in the 20th century, even if few ...
198. Seven Gospels — A Conversation with Adam Miller and Rosalynde Welch
January 06, 2024 22:00 - 1 hour - 47.6 MBTo kick off the new year, we recently had the privilege to speak to academic duo and long-time friends, Adam Miller and Rosalynde Welch about the new book they co-authored together, titled Seven Gospels: The Many Lives of Christ in the Book of Mormon. Their book examines the many ways that Christ shows up in the lives of individuals in the Book of Mormon, including Nephi, Abinadi, Abish, and others. Like the New Testament gospels, these distinct witnesses both affirm and challenge each oth...
197. The Divinity and Humanity of the Book of Mormon — A Conversation with Jared Halverson
December 31, 2023 03:00 - 53 minutes - 36.8 MBToday we’re sharing a conversation that we had a lot of fun with, along with an exciting announcement about the work we’re doing at Faith Matters. Our guest was our friend Jared Halverson. Few people we know exude as much enthusiasm for scripture—the Latter-day Saint canon in particular—as Jared does. He’s someone who clearly loves and cherishes these holy texts, and has taken the best they have to offer to heart. He’s as genuine, loving, and big-hearted as they come. So we felt Jared woul...
196. Peaceable Things: Three Names of Christ — Terryl Givens at Restore
December 23, 2023 23:00 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MBThis week, we’re sharing another session from our Restore conference, this time featuring a scholar most of you will be familiar with: our long time friend and advisor Terryl Givens. Terryl’s heartfelt session explores what he finds to be the “peaceable things” of Christ, referred to in scripture. An unsettling experience at the age of sixteen led Terryl to confront the inherent risk and uncertainty of our choices in life. And while life may not always be “peaceful,” Terryl says, we can alw...
195. Who is the Church for? — A Conversation with Patrick Mason
December 16, 2023 16:00 - 54 minutes - 37.6 MBNearly everything we do in the Church — from missionary work and ministering efforts to baptisms and temple work — hinges on an underlying question: who is the Church for? Is the project of the Restoration to find and shepherd the elect of God to exaltation in the next life, or is it to create a Zion community here that strives to include those on the margins, the way Jesus ministered? Should it be one or the other? It’s seemed to us that there’s an implicit discourse around this question p...
194. Sacred Struggle — A Conversation with Melissa Inouye
December 09, 2023 16:00 - 38 minutes - 26.5 MBBuy Melissa’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Struggle-Seeking-Christ-Resistance/dp/1639931872/ As we’ve gotten to know her over the past few years, we’ve noticed that Melissa Inouye, in any group, has a remarkable way of reorienting a conversation. She tends to be the one with the eyes to see “the least of these.” She has a profound and sincere empathy for those who are in deep struggle, those on the edges, the marginalized, the looked-over, the passed-by. When these people and th...
193. How to Celebrate Advent — A Conversation with Eric Huntsman
December 02, 2023 19:00 - 38 minutes - 26.2 MBProfessor Eric Huntsman has an infectious enthusiasm when he talks about Christmas. He’s up for the fun, the decorating, the shopping, the lights, and the gift-giving. He also has a deep intellectual curiosity and many years’ academic research into the historical development of this holy day. And of course, most importantly, he has a profound devotional attachment to the holiday’s namesake, Jesus Christ. So it’s only natural that he would spend years developing ways to help his family, stu...
192. How Church? — Tom Christofferson at Restore
November 25, 2023 23:00 - 18 minutes - 12.4 MBA few weeks ago, Faith Matters released a video we called “Why Church?” It features several of our favorite people, who gave really thoughtful answers to that question that is present for so many. Today, we’re sharing Tom Christofferson’s Restore talk, which addresses the next question: “How Church?” Tom describes in poignant and sometimes hilarious detail his experiences joining a new ward where so many people are so unlike him, and, in the end, found that that was kind of the point. Fo...
191. At-One-Ment — A Conversation with Thomas McConkie
November 18, 2023 20:00 - 58 minutes - 39.9 MBOur guest today is a long-time friend and collaborator, and an incredibly unique voice in the Latter-day Saint tradition: Thomas McConkie. Thomas is an author, developmental researcher and meditation teacher who has been practicing under masters in the traditions of Sufism, Buddhism and Christian contemplation, among others for over 25 years. Thomas is the founder of Lower Lights School of Wisdom, and is is currently researching and writing on transformative spiritual practice at Harvard Div...
190. Romney: A Reckoning — A Conversation with McKay Coppins
November 11, 2023 19:00 - 58 minutes - 40.1 MBWe’re very excited about this week's episode. In early 2021, in the wake of January 6th, McKay Coppins contacted Mitt Romney with a bold request: he wanted to write a biography about him. But McKay had stipulations: not only would he have full access to the Senator — he’d also retain full editorial control. To his surprise, Romney agreed, and shortly had given him stacks of journal entries, emails, and texts. They met over 45 times over the coming years for lengthy interviews, and McKay als...
189. The Future of Spirituality — A Conversation with Casper ter Kuile
November 05, 2023 18:00 - 45 minutes - 31.4 MBOrganized religious communities have seen steep declines in participation in recent decades and the rise of the “nones,” those who have no particular religious affiliation, is a well-rehearsed story. But that story isn’t just about loss and lack. New forms of spiritual life and meaning-making are emerging that seek to fill the universal longings of the human heart: belonging, transformation, and love. Casper ter Kuile has studied this horizon of spiritual frontier for many years. 10 years ag...
188. Disagree Better: Governor Spencer Cox with Judge Thomas Griffith at Restore
October 28, 2023 21:00 - 37 minutes - 25.7 MBThis week, we’re sharing with you one of sessions we had to kick off our Restore conference, which featured Utah Governor Spencer Cox along with Judge Thomas Griffith. Before we get going, we’re very excited to announce that we’ve decided to give free digital access to all of our Restore recordings! Although we were joined by 3500 of our closest friends, we know there were so many who wanted to join us but couldn’t for a variety of reasons, so we decided to make all of the sessions availabl...
187. All Things New — A Conversation with Fiona and Terryl Givens
October 07, 2023 22:00 - 1 hour - 41.6 MBFor this week’s episode, we’re sharing a conversation we had originally released almost three years ago — before many of you had started listening to the podcast! It’s the discussion we had with Fiona and Terryl Givens about the ground-shifting book they published in 2020 through Faith Matters Publishing, called All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between. When this book was first published, we knew it had the potential to truly change lives, and change how Latter-d...
186. Both Things Are True — Rosalynde Welch on the Writings of Kate Holbrook
September 30, 2023 16:00 - 1 hour - 49.1 MBIn July of 2022, Rosalynde Welch had a distinct impression while cleaning her house — that she should reach out to Kate Holbrook and ask how she could help share more of Kate’s own writing and thinking with the world. As many of you know, Kate was a historian, scholar, and a light in so many lives. Kate had been previously diagnosed with a rare eye cancer, which had just entered a terminal phase. As she cleaned, it struck Rosalynde that Kate had spent so much time promoting others’ voices, ...
185. Your Faith Isn't Broken — Brian McLaren at Restore
September 24, 2023 00:00 - 45 minutes - 31.4 MBFor this week’s episode, we’re sharing one more talk with you from our Restore gathering in 2022. This was one of our absolute favorite sessions, and it was the final presentation, right at the end on Saturday afternoon. We were privileged to hear from Brian McLaren, who shared his simple and incredibly resonant framework for faith development. It’s one that we’ve referenced before on this podcast, and we think you’ll love hearing Brian teach it. Brian does a beautiful job emphasizing that t...
184. Your Brain on Awe — A Conversation with Dacher Keltner
September 16, 2023 20:00 - 51 minutes - 35.1 MBDacher Keltner is a scientist who has been studying happiness and well-being for decades. He writes that he’s taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world and that twenty years into teaching happiness, he’s actually found an answer to how to live the good life: find awe. To that end, he’s written a new book called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life. The book was not only moving, fascinating and thoroughly researched, it also r...
183. Sex Educated — A Conversation with Bonnie Young
September 09, 2023 21:00 - 33 minutes - 22.8 MBWhen therapist Bonnie Young was a teen, the subject of sexuality was for her, “drenched in fear.” And many of us can probably relate. For many Latter-day Saints growing up in a sexually conservative culture and with a strict law of chastity — for all of the goods those things can bring — feelings of anxiety, fear, and shame around sexuality may be more the rule rather than the exception. Bonnie’s on a mission to change that, and we think she’s done really important work to do so with her ne...
182. Missionaries Ministering Through Service — Jeff Strong at Restore
September 03, 2023 10:00 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBThis week, we’re excited to share with you another gem from our Restore gathering last year. This is a presentation by Jeff Strong. Now his name may sound familiar to you because Jeff also came on for an incredible episode called “Getting Real About Missionary Work” last year- episode #124, which we highly recommend. That episode is one of Faith Matters’ most listened to of all time. But in today’s episode, you’re going to hear about Jeff’s experience as a mission president of the Bentonvi...
181. Creative Stewardship — A Conversation with Stake President Ben Behunin
August 27, 2023 12:00 - 53 minutes - 36.8 MBToday we talked with Ben Behunin, and we think when you hear him, you’ll feel immediately what we felt: this is someone who is absolutely full of pure, good energy who has been able to fully align his own gifts to serve in the world. Ben is a full-time artist, potter, and writer who makes his living through creativity. He’s also a stake president in downtown Salt Lake City. In our conversation with Ben, he talked about his mission experience and conversion to the Church — his story is in...
180. Renewing Our Religious Language — Terryl Givens at Restore
August 20, 2023 19:00 - 43 minutes - 29.7 MBThis week we’re sharing something really special — it’s Terryl Givens’ talk that opened last year’s Restore gathering. In it, Terryl gets more personal than we’ve ever heard him, telling a dramatic story about nearly drowning off the West coast of Africa and how the experience has helped him frame key aspects of his faith. Terryl also shares some other really meaningful moments from his life and career. In one of our favorite moments, he says "I have come to know the love of God as it is m...
179. The Path of a Seeker — A Conversation with Charles Stang
August 12, 2023 15:00 - 40 minutes - 27.6 MBReligion in America is undergoing a revolution. In 1972, 90% of Americans were self-professed Christians. Now, that number is about 64%. There are now large and growing populations of non-Christians, as well as many who have no particular religious beliefs. Such a time of change has made it an exciting time to be a scholar of religion, charged with making sense of the shifting landscape of American religious experience. For today’s conversation, Zach Davis sat down with one of those schola...
178. Modesty from the Inside Out — A Conversation with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
August 06, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour - 43.7 MBBefore we get started, we just wanted to give you a quick note that this episode does contain frank discussion about sexuality, so you can determine if it’s appropriate for anyone listening in. For this conversation, we were really happy to bring on our good friend and one of our favorite people, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, and we know many of you are fans of her of her work, too. For a long time, we’ve wanted to have a discussion with Jennifer about the concept of modesty—something that anyo...
177. Tackling the Teen Mental Health Crisis — A Conversation with Gov. Spencer J. Cox
July 29, 2023 18:00 - 30 minutes - 20.6 MBIn recent months, Governor Spencer J. Cox of Utah has been in the news for the passage of two new state laws: one that puts strict limits on access to social media for teens, and another that would prohibit social media companies from using designs that are addictive to teens. Governor Cox believes that social media and smartphones really are the culprit behind a teen mental health crisis that has manifested, for example, in a skyrocketing rate of depression among teen girls. That rate ha...
176. The Cherished Doctrine of Heavenly Mother — A Conversation with McArthur Krishna and Michal Thomas
July 22, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour - 43.5 MBThe Gospel Topics essay titled “Mother in Heaven,” on churchofjesuschrist.org states “The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints.” It’s with this in mind that three Latter-day Saint women — McArthur Krishna, Ashli Carnicelli, and Trina Caudle, have curated a new collection of writing, poetry, and art called Cherish: The Joy of Our Mother in Heaven. We were lucky enough to bring McArthur on, along with another one of the book’s contributo...
175. The Story of You — A Conversation with Ian Morgan Cron
July 15, 2023 18:00 - 56 minutes - 39 MBThis week we are covering the Enneagram, a fascinating topic and a tool that we’ve found to be very helpful and deeply meaningful over the past few years. For this conversation, we were lucky enough to bring on one of the world’s foremost proponents and teachers of the Enneagram — Ian Morgan Cron. Ian is a bestselling author, psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, Episcopal priest, and the host of the podcast "Typology," which has over 20 million downloads. His books include the Enneagram pri...
174. Faith Journey 101 — A Conversation with Jana Spangler
July 09, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 61.3 MBOver the years, much of the work that we’ve done at Faith Matters has tried to take into account much of the wisdom and research that’s been done in the field of faith and adult development. It’s also been important to us to share and discuss some of the existing models, including Brian McLaren’s four-stage framework, and the “creation, fall, atonement” framework that our amazing friend Jared Halverson has spoken about at Restore and on this podcast. All that said, we’ve never done a deep d...
173. The $100 Billion Question — A Conversation with Aaron Miller
July 02, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 45.6 MBIn May of this year, the news program 60 Minutes aired a segment exploring the finances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. David Nielsen, a former portfolio manager at Ensign Peak, the investment arm of the Church, alleged that the Church had been operating improperly as a tax-exempt organization and called for that tax-exempt status to be revoked. 60 Minutes also interviewed W. Christopher Waddell, first counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, who denied Nielsen’s claims. Nea...
172. Exploring Atonement — A Conversation with Terryl Givens
June 25, 2023 02:00 - 1 hour - 48.9 MBA few weeks ago, we released a conversation with Terryl Givens about the life of Eugene England. England’s work on atonement theology had felt like it necessitated another conversation, but it was too big to fit into the first one. So this week, we brought Terryl back to talk not just about England’s views, but about atonement generally. The conversation starts with the fascinating premise that our faith doesn’t actually have an official theology of Atonement. What is clear, doctrinally, is...
171. My Lord, He Calls Me — A Conversation with Alice Faulkner Burch
June 17, 2023 16:00 - 29 minutes - 20 MBFor this week’s episode, we were honored to bring on Alice Faulkner Burch, General Editor of Deseret Book’s new collection of essays by Black American Latter-day Saints: My Lord, He Calls Me. The title of the book comes from an early Black American spiritual called “Steal Away to Jesus.” The book shares contemporary experiences of Black Americans in the Church, and stories from every era of the Restoration. The essays found in the book are extremely personal — the type of stories you’d only...
170. Reckoning with Mountain Meadows — Richard Turley and Barbara Jones Brown
June 10, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour - 46.9 MBIn September of 1857, one of the greatest atrocities in the history of Mormonism was carried out. Now known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a group of Latter-day Saints led a siege in Southern Utah against a wagon train of emigrants on their way from Arkansas to California. After the siege had dragged on for several days, and under the guise of a truce, leaders of the Mormon party lured the emigrants out of their protective circle of wagons and marched them a short distance across the vall...
169. Audacious Hope — A Conversation with Tim Shriver
June 03, 2023 18:00 - 56 minutes - 38.9 MBIt isn’t easy to be born into a famous family with big expectations. And there’s few families more famous or with bigger expectations than the Kennedys. Tim Shriver’s immediate family includes not only a former US president, a US Attorney General, and a US Senator, but his parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, founded global humanitarian organizations like the Special Olympics, The Peace Corp, and more. But Tim has risen to the challenge in every respect and is adding a new as...
168. Parenting with Grace — A Conversation with Brooke Romney
May 28, 2023 13:00 - 50 minutes - 35 MBFor this week's episode, we spoke with Brooke Romney, a guest that had been recommended to us over and over — and we were so happy we were able to connect with her. Brooke is a writer who began her career on Capitol Hill and whose work has appeared in many publications, including in the Washington Post. She now spends much of her time writing and speaking, particularly on the subject of parenting, but also on social media, connection, and faith. In 2021, she published 52 Modern Manners fo...
167. When Conscience and Authority Seem to Collide — The Life of Eugene England
May 21, 2023 13:00 - 55 minutes - 38.4 MBFor today’s episode, we were honored as always to bring back one of our favorite people and conversation partners, and likely one of yours: Terryl Givens. We spoke with Terryl about a book he released in 2021, a biography called Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism. Terryl’s work on this biography led to a fascinating portrait of a man many of us look up to, and someone we truly wish we could have met (England died in 2001 at the age of 68)....
166. Finding Beauty in the Mundane — A Conversation with Darlene Young
May 13, 2023 18:00 - 55 minutes - 37.9 MBThis week’s episode is with an incredible Latter-day Saint poet, Darlene Young. Darlene has just released a new book of poetry, called Here, and published by BCC Press. It’s an honest, vulnerable, relatable, and incredibly approachable book that we laughed and cried our way through. In our conversation with Darlene, she talked about the value of poetry itself — how it can be a “dance” to prose’s “walk,” and help us to see life as “more abundant,” and show the moments we might see as mundan...
165. Love in the Trenches — A Conversation with Dr. Jason Whiting
May 07, 2023 02:00 - 41 minutes - 28.5 MBFor this week’s episode, we’re bringing you a conversation with Jason Whiting, a Professor and Program Director in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Brigham Young University. Jason received his PhD from Michigan State University, and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. He’s also the author of Love Me True: Overcoming the Surprising Ways We Deceive in Relationships. Jason’s primary research centers around the love lives of couples, and it was fascinating, as a married coup...
164. The Call To Be in the World — A Conversation with Astrid Tuminez
April 29, 2023 17:00 - 58 minutes - 39.9 MBWe’ve been really excited to share this week's interview with you. Our guest was Astrid Tuminez, President of Utah Valley University. Astrid is an absolute delight to talk with and listen to. She’s full of stories, humor, and deep insights that made our time with her pass way too quickly. This interview actually came about because Astrid wrote an essay in Melissa Inouye and Kate Holbrook’s new book Every Needful Thing. We loved Astrid’s essay and knew we wanted to get to know her better. A...
163. Why We Can't Cherry-Pick the Bible — A Conversation with Dan McClellan
April 22, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBWe’re super excited to share this week’s episode with you. Our interview was with Dan McClellan, a Bible scholar who began sharing his insights and scholarship on TikTok in 2021, and immediately began racking up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers. One of the reasons people seem to resonate with Dan’s content is that he makes traditionally difficult and obscure topics extremely accessible — if you watch any of his videos, you’ll see what we mean, but even those who are ...
162. Rethinking Forgiveness — A Conversation with Matthew Potts
April 15, 2023 14:00 - 55 minutes - 38.3 MBIn June 2015, a white supremacist entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered 9 members of the church during a Bible study. During the first court hearing, a number of family members of victims said that they forgave the murderer, Dylann Roof. This act of forgiveness shocked many people. Some people were shocked by witnessing such an act of Christian charity. Others were shocked because they thought expressing forgiveness for such an act, especially so quickly, was wr...