Latter Day Bridge Builders

Tess Frame, faithful LDS creator and co-owner of Happy Sacrament, joins Ashton and Juliet to talk about staying in the church when it gets uncomfortable. Tess shares the time a stake presidency member asked if she could sustain her leaders, and she realized mid-interview she couldn't say yes, all because of a business fallout with fellow members. We get into what sustaining actually means, why it's not blind obedience, how trust has to go both ways between leaders and members, and why talking to the person beats rallying everyone to your side.Find Tess on Instagram and TikTok at @tesiahframeTess on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tesiahframeHappy Sacrament: https://www.happysacrament.com/🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store: https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Richard Ostler, known to a lot of people as Papa Ostler, joins Juliet and Ashton. He's a former YSA bishop, a believing Latter-day Saint, and host of Listen, Learn and Love, which has over 900 episodes, mostly LGBTQ people telling their own stories. He talks about the drive home that made him wipe the slate clean on everything he thought he knew about queer people. He explains non-agenda love and why he tells parents to focus on having no empty chairs at the table in this life. He also gets into why really good people are leaving the church, what a mom of a trans son taught him with a carsick analogy, and why he thinks curiosity is a Christlike trait.🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store: https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Ben Schilaty is a gay, active Latter-day Saint, a social work professor at UVU, a therapist, and the author of A Walk in My Shoes. Jules and Ashton sit down with him to talk about coming out while staying in the church, why "the rules are the same" for gay and straight single members misses the point, what church leaders actually need to know, and why the most helpful thing you can say to someone who's struggling is "tell me more." Plus social safety, coming home early from a mission, and what it looks like to hold up the welcome home sign for the people you love.Ben's Gather conference for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and those who love them is November 13-14 in Provo. Details at liftandlove.orgBuy Ben's Book "A Walk in My Shoes" here: https://www.deseretbook.com/product/P5246287.html?srsltid=AYCX9vK12TcNcVw5NZguxC4SBLbC6gX-JhjRlE_o1xXwYzwTkd_Fllzlhttps://a.co/d/04gblYEi🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store: https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

St. George radio host and comedian Mikey (Mikey and the Mrs on Planet 105.1) joins us to talk about how humor can get active and former Latter-day Saints laughing at the same thing. He explains why he never tells his audience whose side he's on, where he draws the line between poking at the culture and mocking what's sacred, and why he won't punch down at ex-Mormons going through the angry phase. We also get into his mission, why every member is really a PR rep, coffee vs. heroin, knee-length jean shorts, and why we're all a bunch of phonies whether we're at church or Costco.🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store: https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Batchlor Johnson IV started posting about his faith back when hardly anyone was sharing testimony online. He went to the temple every week for two years, posted about it, and his following took off. Now he says the pushback he gets doesn’t come from ex-Mormons. It comes from other members.Juliet and Ashton sit down with Batchlor (former college football player, musician, U of U econ grad, BYU mass comm master’s) to talk about what it’s like to be openly LDS online. We get into why the algorithm rewards division, how control usually comes from fear, the difference between culture and doctrine, and why he tells people with questions to work through them instead of staying or leaving blindly.We also cover holy envy, letting each other worship “how, where, or what they may” inside the church, and his advice for anyone who wants to share their faith online but is nervous about the backlash.Find Batchlor: @batchloriv🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store: https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Content note: this episode discusses death in detail, including infant and perinatal loss and a reference to suicide. Listener discretion advised.In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders, Mitch, Juliet, and Ashton sit down for one of their most personal conversations yet: death. What did they each believe happened after we die, back when they were fully believing? How has that changed, and did losing that belief change how they grieve?Juliet shares the experience of caring for her mother through six weeks of home hospice, and her work in high-risk obstetrics, where she cares for grieving families after perinatal loss. Mitch talks about his years working in healthcare, seeing death up close for the first time, and his own daughter processing her grandfather's death. Ashton, still active in the church, brings the believer's perspective on grief, hope, and the framing that a good, long life is "graduating" rather than something to mourn.We dig into questions like:- Is it possible to stay connected to someone who died without believing they're literally still somewhere? - Does something have to last forever to matter? - If there's no afterlife, what actually remains?🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Ashton returns for a deep, personal follow-up to our episode on his unique mission call to the Family and Church History Headquarters mission in Salt Lake, a mission staffed almost entirely by young elders with anxiety, autism, bipolar disorder, and other conditions.He opens up about the good: lifelong friendships, a moving story about scripture memorization, and discovering a long-lost aunt through Ancestry DNA. He also gets into the complicated, including the church's $60 million data deal with Ancestry.com and questions about who really benefits from missionary labor.Ashton shares two regrets he still carries: moments where his authority as a leader shut down a companion's doubts instead of making room for them. Juliet pushes back with sharp questions throughout.The conversation lands on a reflection from Elder Bednar: don't be a specialist, be a generalist, and what that means for building bridges across belief.🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Andy Newman, a licensed therapist, ex-Mormon, and creator behind @andynewmanlpc joins us to role-play through real scenarios we hear constantly in the ex-Mormon and nuanced-member space: coming out to a believing spouse, dressing/behaving differently while still going to church, family members who won't stop sending conference talks, and parents scared their kid is leaving the faith.We also get into the difference between a faith crisis, a faith transition, a faith expansion, and religious trauma — and why those aren't the same thing, even though they often get lumped together.Work with Andy as a therapist: https://www.collectivecounselors.com/andy-newman-lpcFollow Andy on TikTok and Instagram: https://www.tiktok.com/@deconstruction_therapy https://www.instagram.com/andynewmanlpc/🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

He played Lucifer in the LDS temple endowment film for a decade. Then, after 43 years as a member, Corbin Allred left the LDS Church — and he hasn't necessarily been quiet about it.In this episode, actor and ER medical provider Corbin Allred joins Mitch in St. George, UT to talk about what it's like to be recognized as "the guy who played Satan," why he refuses to "leave it alone" after leaving the church, and the strange paradox of feeling spiritual confirmation to walk away from something he'd believed his whole life.We get into:- Being recognized (and sometimes feared) by patients who saw him in the temple film- Responding to criticism that he "baits" people online- What he regrets about how he left, and who he's really talking to when he posts- Agnostic atheism vs. atheism, and why "I know" is a loaded phrase- The paradox of feeling the same spiritual confirmation point two different directions- Nihilism, death, and finding peace without certaintyLinks and other show notes:Follow Corbin: https://www.instagram.com/thecorbinallredCorbin's IMDB page: https://tinyurl.com/2nu9knumDavid Eagleman: A New Look at Religion (Possibilianism): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LENqnjZGX0AThe Egg -- A Short Story by Andy Weir | Kurzgesagthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaIThis is Your Brain on God | Michael Fergusonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocuqguH1OIw🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Historian, author of The Fourth Wife, and grad student Linda Hamilton joins Juliet for a deep dive into Mormon polygamy: how it actually worked, who it actually harmed, and why it's still baked into LDS theology today.They cover the poverty most plural wives lived in, the myth that polygamy was created to protect widows, the chaos of Nauvoo and Winter Quarters (including Joseph Smith's sealings to already-married women), the rise of Joseph Smith polygamy-denialism online, and why Linda can't get through the Doctrine and Covenants in Sunday School anymore.Linda's debut novel, The Fourth Wife, is out now. Her next book, The Glass Looker, about seer woman Sally Chase, releases for pre-order soon.Purchase The Fourth Wife here: https://a.co/d/01B5gEE5Find Linda: https://www.instagram.com/lindahamiltonwriterExponent II blog: https://exponentii.org/blog-home/#Substack: https://lindahamiltonwriter.substack.com/🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com