Sunstone Podcast

When you lose your religion, you lose your life story. You have to reconstruct what life means. Stephen Carter presents an approach to telling your life story after the pre- and post-mortal lives have been removed from your worldview. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/SLP-144.mp3

Artificial Intelligence could possibly destroy humanity. How do we reduce that risk? R. W. Richey shows how Abraham 3 offers a practical solution. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SLP-143.mp3  

Why are Mormons a bewildering mix of peculiar and normal? Some of it has to do with . . . testosterone? Stephen Carter explores the Mormon implications of Joseph Henrich’s book “The Weirdest People in the World.” https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SLP-142.mp3

“Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith” was a turning point in the telling of Mormon history. And it has a fascinating history of its own. Linda King Newell recounts how she and Valeen Avery Tippetts wrote this groundbreaking book. This episode was recorded at the 2009 Salt Lake Symposium. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/SLP-141.mp3

How much of a role might hallucinogens have played in some of the visions of early Mormon history? Bryce Blakenagel, host of the Naked Mormonism podcast, explores the possibilities. This episode was recorded at the 2022 Salt Lake Summer Symposium. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/SLP-140.mp3

If the LDS Church has light, it also has a shadow. But what should it do with that shadow? Valerie Hamaker, host of the Latter Day Struggles podcast, shows how the Jungian shadow can either save or destroy a person—or a religion. This episode was recorded at the 2022 Sunstone Summer Symposium.   https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/SLP-139.mp3

LDS Church member Beatrice Sparks published two wildly popular diaries of teen drug abuse and Satanism: “Go Ask Alice” and “Jay’s Journal.” But the diaries, and Beatrice herself, were much more complicated than they appeared. Using Rick Emerson’s book “Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries,” Stephen Carter delves into just how Mormon the Beatrice Sparks phenomenon was. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/SLP-138.mp3

Utah has often been called the ‘fraud capital of the world.” In this episode, Ryan McKnight takes us on a tour of Utah’s worst fraudsters—all of them LDS. Recorded at the 2018 Sunstone Summer Symposium. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SLP-137.mp3

They’re embedded in a patriarchal church, so shouldn’t Mormon men be the very definition of toxic masculinity? In this episode, Stephen Carter explores the surprising ways Mormon masculinity has shifted over the past few years. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SLP-136.mp3

In the Book of Abraham, the gods create intelligences and put them into human bodies. Humans are now creating intelligences. But the intelligences we create could have the capacity to destroy us. Ross Richey shows how this could change the way we think about the Plan of Salvation. This episode was recorded at the 2018 Sunstone Summer Symposium. https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SLP-135.mp3