Postmormon Postmortem
Postmormon Postmortem is hosted by Hannah and Jess, two women who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They explore what comes after Mormonism, covering history, doctrine, culture, true crime, institutional harm, and religious trauma. The show also addresses the messy work of rebuilding a life outside the church. It is meant for anyone freshly out, years removed, or trying to understand a loved one's experience.
Episodes
The Mormon Photographer Who Sold Erotica
Brigham Young’s son-in-law built a career photographing church leaders, prominent Mormon families, and the Salt Lake Temple. Alongside that work, he sold erotic stereo views to customers across the country. Charles Ellis Johnson photographed Mormon prophets… and sold erotic photographs by mail from his Salt Lake City studio. His church portraits and “spicy pictures of girls” carried the same busin
Mormon Monday: The 25-Minute Gospel (Or, The Church's New 25-Minute Sunday School
On September 6, the Mormon Church rolled out a new worldwide Sunday schedule: 60-minute sacrament meeting, then just 25 minutes each for Sunday School and Relief Society, elders quorum, Young Women, or Aaronic Priesthood. Sunday School and quorum meetings now happen every week instead of alternating.In this Mormon Monday, we look at what the Church says the change accomplishes, and what it might c
"You Won't Be Needing Those": The Mormon Secret Council of Fifty
In 1922, Mormon Church president Heber J. Grant pointed to a box of records and told his new secretary, “You won’t be needing those.” Inside: the Council of Fifty.The Council of Fifty was Joseph Smith’s secret 1844 political body in Nauvoo, Illinois, and its members voted to accept him as “Prophet, Priest & King.” Jess and Hannah go through the minutes: the secrecy vow, the April 25 revelation
The Murder of Janet Abaroa: The Raven Abaroa Case
In April 2005, Raven Abaroa called 911 from his Durham, North Carolina home and told the operator his wife had been shot. Janet Abaroa, 25 and pregnant, had been stabbed three times while their six-month-old son slept in the next room. Hannah and Jess follow the case from a temple marriage in Washington, D.C., through embezzlement charges, a $500,000 life insurance policy, an exhumation that recov
What Do You Know Wednesday: How Mormonism Became McDonald's
Jess explains Church Correlation to Hannah, and the closest comparison she could find is McDonald's.Before 1960, Relief Society, Primary, and Sunday School ran their own curriculum, magazines, conferences, and administrative structures. Missions published their own magazines. One Mexican mission spent around 360 missionary hours every month producing one of them. Lessons written in Utah landed str
Mormon Church Tells Members to Oppose Idaho and Nevada Abortion Ballot Measures
On September 16, the Mormon Church sent a letter to all 1,300 congregations in Idaho telling members to oppose the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, an abortion ballot measure. Five days later, 339 congregations in Nevada got a letter with the same instruction and the same wording about voicing opposition "in a respectful manner." Missouri and Virginia also have abortion measur
Adam-God: When Mormon Revelation Becomes False Doctrine
Brigham Young said God revealed that Adam is our Father and God. In 1976, Mormon president Spencer W. Kimball denounced the Adam-God theory as false doctrine. How do you know which prophet to trust?In April 1852, Brigham Young told General Conference that Adam is "our Father and our God." Wilford Woodruff and Hosea Stout both recorded it in their diaries, and Heber C. Kimball and apostle
Mormon MTC Sex Abuse Scandal: Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt?
Former Mormon MTC president Joseph Bishop became the subject of a sex scandal after a former sister missionary, McKenna Denson, secretly recorded him in 2017. Denson has accused Bishop of raping her at the Provo Missionary Training Center in 1984. We follow her reports to Mormon leaders, the recording, the police investigation, and the lawsuit that ended without a trial.This episode includes discu
Jen Shah: Mormon Upbringing, Real Housewives and Fraud
Jen Shah showed viewers a huge house, designer clothes, expensive parties, and the Shah Squad. Then came the fraud charges. Hannah introduces Jess to the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star, her Mormon upbringing, and the scam behind her business.We’re dropping What Do You Know Wednesday on Thursday this week because life can be surprising, and so can we! Follow or subscribe to not miss any epi
Arizona Supreme Court Rules Mormon Bishops Didn't Have to Report Confessed Child Abuse
Around 2011, a bishop in Bisbee, Arizona heard a man confess to sexually abusing his daughter. He didn't call the police or child protective services. He called a helpline the Mormon Church set up for bishops, and the person who answered worked for a law firm.On July 30, 2026, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the bishops in the Paul Adams case had no duty to report what they learne
The Bundy Standoffs: Mormon Beliefs Behind the Fight Over Federal Land
Cliven Bundy refused to pay federal grazing fees. Armed supporters faced federal agents at his Nevada ranch, and his son Ammon later led the occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. We look at the Mormon beliefs the Bundys used to explain their actions, the history of Native land in both places, and what happened after the standoffs.The main source for this episode is Betsy Gaines
M. Russell Ballard's SEC Case: The Keystone Securities Fraud Before He Was an Apostle
This week on Mormon True Crime, Hannah and Jess dig into the Keystone Securities case: a mining stock offering, allegedly false and misleading statements, and a broker-dealer registration that got revoked. Ballard was personally named as a cause of that revocation. He was never criminally convicted, and Mormon apologetics site FAIR has a list of defenses — but the SEC's findings stood.Then they co
What Did Missouri’s Mormon Extermination Order Mean?
In October 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs signed an executive order declaring that the Mormons "must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary." That order still anchors Mormon claims of persecution, including in a recent interview where a Mormon reached for Missouri when asked whether Mormons were more oppressed than Black Americans.Jess set out to confirm one number:
Name One Mormon Slave
Asked to name one Mormon slave, a former Nevada Senate candidate said he couldn't. Green Flake was baptized Mormon while enslaved and entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, before Brigham Young.Josh Stacy ran for Nevada State Senate in 2024 and lost his primary. A clip of him telling Dr. Will James that Mormons were oppressed more than Black Americans then showed up in Instagram reels. What he left
Mormon Temple Recommend: Who Decides You're Worthy?
In 1856, believing in plural marriage helped you qualify for the Mormon temple. Later, advocating it could keep you out. Nearly 200 years of recommend questions show who decides what "worthy" means.From Joseph Smith's 1842 Nauvoo endowment to a 2026 seminary lesson, this is the history of how the Mormon temple recommend went from a leader's judgment call to a standardized worthin
Cody Judy: When God Says You're the Prophet
In 1993, Cody Judy walked onto the stage at BYU’s Marriott Center, claimed he had a bomb, and demanded that Howard W. Hunter read a letter naming Judy the new president of the Mormon Church.Judy said Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and ancient apostles had told him what to do. But Mormon history already had a long record of people claiming revelation that challenged the authority of church leaders.In
Mormon Roadshows: The Weird History of Mormon Musical Theater
Ward roadshows were once a major part of Mormon social life. Starting in Utah in the 1920s, wards wrote and performed short original musicals, competed against each other, and in the original version literally took the shows from chapel to chapel.In this What Do You Know? Wednesday, we look at where roadshows came from, how they became part of the MIA program, and why Mormons developed such a stro
Women Can Lead Sunday School Now; Why are Young Women Leaving the Church?
In March 2026, the Mormon Church announced that women could now serve as Ward Sunday School presidents. A month later, buried in a routine statistical report, U.S. membership dropped for the first time in the church's history — and the group leaving fastest was young women.Jess and Hannah walk through both stories month by month, in the order they actually happened, to see how they collide. They c
What Growing Up Mormon Taught Us About Love, Fear, & Worth
Hannah springs something new on Jess this week: a psychology framework called Schema Therapy, and 18 patterns psychologist Jeffrey Young calls "early maladaptive schemas." Jess hasn't read any of it going in — Hannah talks her through the theory, then they go through all 18 schemas together, asking the same question each time: did being raised Mormon teach us this, or reinforce it?Wh
Elizabeth Smart Part 2: Brian David Mitchell & Wanda Barzee: The Making of Immanuel & Hephzibah
In part 2 of Elizabeth Smart, we offer a prequel, going back through the lives of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee before June 2002: their childhoods, marriages, Mormon lives, family relationships, and the religious system they built before they kidnapped fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart.We trace Mitchell’s history of violence, sexual abuse allegations and controlling behavior; his return to
How a Mormon Senator Got 200 Missionary Visas With One Call
In 2009, a former U.S. senator told the Mormon Church's Quorum of the Twelve how he got 200 missionary visas approved with one phone call to a foreign ambassador. No one ever asked if it was legal.Jess and Hannah trace what happened after that 2009 briefing: Gordon Smith's Senate staff called "church broke," the R-1 and EB-4 visa backlogs that leave ordinary missionaries waiting up to five years,
What the Mormon Temple Recommend Questions Don't Ask
Sixteen questions stand between a Mormon and a wallet-sized card that gets them through the temple doors — but not one of them asks how you treat other people. Jess and Hannah break down every question in the 2026 Mormon temple recommend interview, tracing its history back to 1922 and the 1976 addition of the honesty question (added only after Utah was branded "the fraud capital of the nation"). T
How Mormon Apologists Dismiss Research About Why People Leave
What happens when research produces findings Mormon apologists don’t want to hear?In 2011, Church Historian Marlin Jensen admitted that Mormonism was going through a period of massive apostasy, unlike anything since Kirtland. More than a decade later, faithful Mormon researcher Jeff Strong gathered thousands of responses about why people left the church—and found that the real reasons were church
Why Are Mormons Leaving the Church? What the Data Actually Reveals
Why are Mormons leaving the church, and what does Jeff Strong’s research reveal about the culture they’re leaving behind? In Torn, faithful Mormon researcher Jeff Strong examines why current and former members disengage from the church. His research identifies church history and truth claims as the largest reason people give for leaving, followed by social issues, church experience, and pressures
75% of Mormons Say They Attend Church Weekly. 15% Actually Do
Ask American Mormons how often they go to church and roughly three quarters say they attend every week. Track where people actually go on Sundays, and the number drops to about 15%.In 2024, University of Chicago economist Devin Pope used cell-phone location data from 2.1 million Americans to measure religious attendance based on behavior rather than self-report. Among Mormons, only about one in se
The Mormon Skyjacker: Richard McCoy and DB Cooper
A BYU student and decorated Vietnam pilot may have been D.B. Cooper — and his own family hid the parachute logbooks that prove it for decades.Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. was a Green Beret, Purple Heart recipient, devout Mormon, and BYU law enforcement student who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 in April 1972 — five months after D.B. Cooper's original 1971 hijacking. We trace his Mormon upbringing
Mormons on the Titanic: The True Story of Irene Corbett and Six Missionaries
What do you know about Mormons on the Titanic?Irene Corbett was a Mormon woman from Utah who traveled to London for advanced midwifery training, despite opposition from her husband and counsel from Church president Joseph F. Smith to stay home with her family. In April 1912, she boarded the Titanic at Southampton as a second-class passenger. She died when the ship sank, leaving three young childre
What BYU's Honor Code Really Enforces
BYU didn't suspend its quarterback for the rape and strangulation allegations against him. It suspended him under the Mormon Church's honor code for one word he used in his own defense: consensual.Jess and Hannah trace three decades of BYU honor code cases — Omarr Morgan (1997), Tico Pringle (2006), Harvey Unga and Keilani Moeaki (2010), and the January 2004 party case — alongside two current case
How the Mormon Church Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune
The Mormon Church helped slash a rival paper's revenue nearly in half, in a deal negotiated in secret. Jess and Hannah trace a 180-year fight over who controls the news in Mormon Utah: Joseph Smith ordering the Nauvoo Expositor's press destroyed, the founding of the church-owned Deseret News, the Mountain Meadows Massacre and John D. Lee's execution, the Salt Lake Tribune's Pulitzer-winning BYU Ho
Jean Baptiste: The Mormon Graverobber of Salt Lake
When Salt Lake City discovered that its gravedigger had been returning to graves after burials, stripping bodies of their clothing, and taking the clothes home to just… look it? Well, it raised more than a few questions.Jean de Baptiste had been a Mormon convert, a gold miner in Australia, and eventually the gravedigger at the Salt Lake City Cemetery. His crimes came to light after Moroni Clawson
The Leak That Predicted Itself: Gong, WikiLeaks, and the LDS Cover-Up
In January 2011, Gerrit Gong stood before the Quorum of the Twelve with a warning: could WikiLeaks — the group behind the Chelsea Manning leaks — embarrass or damage the Mormon Church? Instead of security protocol, the room's attention turned to Dallin Oaks' comments about "the homosexual agenda." Five years later, that exact briefing surfaced in the Mormon Leaks archive — becoming the most-viewed
The Mormon Church Has a New Way to Recruit Your Neighbors
The LDS Church is encouraging wards to advertise their events directly to people outside the church through a program called “activity sharing.”Hannah and Jess look at the church’s instructions for making ward activities more appealing to a community audience, including replacing Mormon terminology with phrases like “women’s group,” “children’s group,” and “Sunday worship service.” They also query
Is Mormonism a Cult?
Is the Mormon Church a cult? We ran mainstream Mormonism through the actual clinical frameworks researchers use for cultic control — not the insult, the real definitions.Using Steven Hassan's BITE model (behavior, information, thought, and emotional control) and Janja Lalich's concept of bounded choice from Bounded Choice, we test Mormon teachings on tithing, garments, temple worthiness, missionar
The Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping: Brian David Mitchell, Wanda Barzee, & the Role of Mormonism
Mormon True Crime episodes will drop on Saturday from now on... not usually this late. Think of this week as a two-fer Sunday.Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old when Brian David Mitchell entered her Salt Lake City home, held a knife to her throat, and kidnapped her from the bedroom she shared with her younger sister.For the next nine months, Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Elizabeth
The Mormon Glow: Can You Identify A Mormon By Their Face?
Can people really identify Mormons just by looking at their faces? In 2010, psychologists Nicholas Rule, James Garrett and Nalini Ambady found that both Mormons and non-Mormons could classify Mormon faces at rates slightly better than chance…. which left them with a new question: what exactly were people seeing?Hannah walks Jess through the experiments, including the follow-up tests that removed d
The Jared Bridegan Murder Case: The Mormon Connections
The murder of Jared Bridegan involves his ex-wife Shanna Gardner, her then-husband Mario Fernandez Saldana, and Mario’s former tenant Henry Tenon. And Mormonism runs all the way through the case.Shanna grew up in the wealthy Mormon family behind Stampin’ Up!, served a mission, and married Jared in the Salt Lake City Temple. During their marriage and bitter divorce, religion became intertwined with
Joseph Smith’s Childhood: Trauma, Treasure Hunting, and the Making of a Prophet
At seven, surgeons cut into Joseph Smith's leg without anesthesia. At seventeen, an angel told him where to dig. A psychiatrist, a historian, and a surgeon trace the line between the two.Hosts Jess and Hannah open a two-part series on Joseph Smith's childhood, drawing on three psychobiographical studies: Robert Anderson's psychoanalytic reading, Dan Vogel's "pious fraud" framework, and William Mor
Family Annihilators: Power, Control, and the Haight Family Murders
If you grew up Mormon, you already know what a “good family” is supposed to look like: temple marriage, church service, a successful provider, children in the pew, and problems kept inside the home. The Haight family murders in Enoch, Utah force a harder question: what happens when a man treats his family as part of his identity, status, and control?On January 4, 2023, Michael Haight killed his wi
Ward Cookbooks: Funeral Potatoes and Mormon Women's Recipe Networks
Every ward had one — spiral-bound, typed on a typewriter, funeral potatoes on page whatever. But the story behind the ward cookbook goes back further than the 1970s nostalgia object it's remembered as. From pioneer-trail survival recipes to a 1907 cookbook from a New Zealand mission, to the "Relief Society network" that spread identical Jell-O salads and potato casseroles between wards with zero c
Remembering Carol Lynn Pearson: Mormonism, Feminism, and LGBTQ Advocacy
Carol Lynn Pearson spent sixty years writing the truth about Mormon patriarchy, Heavenly Mother, and loving a gay husband through AIDS — without ever fully leaving the church that caused her pain.Carol Lynn Pearson died July 29, 2026, at eighty-six, after nearly sixty years as one of the most widely read Mormon writers alive — a poet, playwright, and LGBTQ advocate whose debut collection "Beginnin
LGBTQ Members and the Mormon Church: The Conditional Welcome
Gay and Mormon isn't a contradiction — the church says so. But the welcome runs out fast: celibacy for life, a mixed-orientation marriage, or you lose the temple recommend, the calling, the family.Jess and Hannah trace the architecture behind the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' "conditional belonging" for LGBTQ members: the same-sex-attraction-vs-gay language rules, North Star and Enc
The Mormon Mother Who Killed Her Sons To Send Them To Heaven: Tanya Adams
In 1979, Tanya Adams threw her two young sons from Washington’s Cable Bridge into the Columbia River. A devout Mormon experiencing psychosis, Tanya believed that killing Ryan and Christopher before they reached the age of accountability would guarantee them a place in the celestial kingdom.She confessed hours later and never denied what she had done. The legal question was whether she could be con
The Mormon Reformation: Blood Atonement, Polygamy and Home Interrogations
The Mormon Reformation of 1856–1857 brought mass rebaptism, home interrogation, pressure to enter plural marriage, and blood atonement sermons to Mormon Utah.In this episode of What Do You Know Wednesday, Hannah quizzes Jess on the seven-month campaign led by Brigham Young and Jedediah M. Grant. They trace how crop failures, food shortages, grasshopper infestations, and fear of divine punishment b
Dallin Oaks Wants Mormons Marrying Younger. BYU Is Building the Housing
In January, Dallin Oaks said he wanted Latter-day Saints marrying younger. Six months later, BYU broke ground on 240 married-student apartments. Jess and Hannah just put the dates next to each other. BYU is tearing down nine 1962-era buildings at Wymount Terrace to build 240 new married-student units, while BYU–Hawaii pours $117 million into its own married-housing expansion on a campus that isn't
The Psychologist Keeping Mormons Mormon
Jordan Peterson has never said a word about Mormonism. But the demythologizing argument he's known for is letting believing Mormons stay despite doubting the church's own history.We trace the demythologizing move from Rudolf Bultmann's 1940s theology through Paul Tillich and Joseph Campbell to Jordan Peterson, whose audience is 91% male by his own count. We cover the Sam Harris/Peterso
The Mormon Family Problem: Five Stress Points in LDS Culture
In 1972, faithful Mormon sociologist Harold T. Christensen published a warning about the pressures built into LDS family culture. Using decades of research on marriage, sexuality, fertility, and family life, he identified five major stress points: sexual repression, young marriage, guilt surrounding premarital sex, pressure to have large families, and patriarchal authority in the home.Christensen
Mormon Leaders Knew About Wade Christofferson. None of Them Told.
Wade Christofferson, brother of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apostle D. Todd Christofferson, pleaded guilty to child abuse. Six church leaders knew first. None called police.This episode traces the Wade Christofferson case chronologically: the earliest documented abuse allegations in a Crystal Lake, Illinois ward in 1985, two bishops who heard direct disclosures four years apart, th
The Surprisingly Messy History of the Mormon CTR Ring
Two men went to their graves arguing over who invented the LDS CTR ring — and neither of them designed it alone. Jess traces the real, messy origin story on this WDYKW.Every Mormon kid got a CTR ring, and almost none of them know it came from three separate committees fighting over credit for decades — the "Choose the Right" hymn from 1909, Gordon B. Hinckley's 1970 primary announcement, and jewel
Why the Mormon Church Wants to Own Martin’s Cove
A new nonprofit wants to give the LDS Church outright ownership of Martin's Cove — brokered by a man who sold the ranch bordering it during the same window he pitched the deal.Jess and Hannah trace the 1856 Willie and Martin handcart disaster, Franklin D. Richards' decision to call a vote instead of halting departure, and Brigham Young's public rebuke that followed. Then they dig into the current
The Book of Mormon DNA Problem: Why the Church Changed One Word
In 2006 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints quietly rewrote a sentence in its own scripture about DNA and Native American ancestry — years before anyone was told why.Jess and Hannah trace the 1981 introduction naming Lamanites as the "principal ancestors" of Native Americans, the DNA research pointing to East Asian origin via the Bering Land Bridge, and the 2014 Gospel Topics essay exp
Clyde Felt: The 14-Year-Old Mormon Boy Who Killed A Man
In March 1902, fourteen-year-old Clyde Felt admitted cutting Samuel Collins’s throat inside a cave above Salt Lake City. Collins had spent years cultivating relationships with neighborhood boys, giving them gifts, paying them, inviting them to spend the night, and asking them to perform sexual acts and violent “operations.”Clyde said Collins repeatedly begged him to kill him and “could make me do
Mormon Prepper Culture: The “Call Out,” Tent Cities, and the End Times
Some Mormons believe a bishop will one day announce it's time to gather at secret tent cities. Jess and Hannah break down the real cost — and history — behind LDS prepper culture.On this "What Do You Know Wednesday," Hannah quizzes Jess on modern LDS prepper culture — a world beyond basement food storage. They dig into "the call out" belief, the rumored gathering points in Rexburg, Idaho and Cards
The Salt Lake Temple's $2 Billion Earthquake "Miracle"
The Salt Lake Temple just finished a $2 billion seismic retrofit. Russell Nelson says it'll be the safest place in Salt Lake Valley during an earthquake. The engineers might disagree about who deserves the credit. day Saints' newly completed Salt Lake Temple renovation — 98 base isolators, 263 miles of cable, and two decades of planning — and how the institution is already framing a predictable en
The Mormon Crimes the Church Doesn't Talk About
Ted Bundy was baptized LDS in 1975, already having killed five women — and his ward defended him at trial. We trace how, and launch our series on the Mormon crimes those lists that include crimes like Bundy's leave out.On Postmormon Postmortem, Jess and Hannah trace Ted Bundy's brief membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the baptism, the temple recommend, and jour
Lying for the Lord: When Mormon Leaders Bend the Truth
A church president was asked a direct question about core Mormon doctrine — and answered like it didn't exist. There's a name for that pattern, and it goes back to Joseph Smith himself.Jess and Hannah trace "Lying for the Lord" from Joseph Smith's 1835 denial of polygamy to Gordon B. Hinckley's 1997 TIME interview dodging a direct doctrinal question — with the King Follett Discourse, the Lorenzo S
Mormon Stories Sued While Latter-day Saints for Trump Uses Church Imagery
The Church sued a podcast over a logo. A group called "Latter-day Saints for Trump" used the actual Salt Lake Temple in a campaign ad and got a press release.Twice. Two election cycles. The actual First Presidency's photos on a campaign website. The actual Family Proclamation as a mission statement. No cease-and-desist, no trademark claim, no lawsuit. Meanwhile Mormon Stories — run by an excommuni
The Strengthening Church Members Committee: How the Mormon Church Tracked Its Own Members
The LDS Church denied this committee existed for years. Then it admitted the committee tracks members' speech, feeds files to bishops, and — the church says — never judges or punishes anyone itself.Jess and Hannah trace the Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMC) from its 1985 founding to 2023: the 1992 First Presidency statement confirming it, Doctrine and Covenants 123 as its scriptural ci
Inside the Salt Lake Temple: The 1911 Photo Scandal
In 1911, Gisbert Bossard secretly photographed the inside of the Salt Lake Temple, and Max Florence tried to sell the images back to the LDS Church.Joseph F. Smith refused to pay. Then the photos hit the front pages.This week on What Do You Know Wednesday, Hannah tells Jess the story of the Salt Lake Temple photo scandal: unauthorized temple images, attempted blackmail, a gardener with access, new
Why Are Young Mormons Leaning Liberal?
Four young Latter-day Saints say their liberal politics came from their faith, not despite it — and it exposes the gap between Church neutrality and ward culture.A Salt Lake Tribune piece profiles Riley Cooper, Eric Biggart, Laine McPherson, and Jayden Weekes — four young, liberal members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — on how missions, ward welfare service, and Relief Society
Joseph Smith and Freemasonry: How Masonic Ritual Entered the Mormon Temple
The apron Lucifer wears in the LDS temple ceremony isn't in Genesis — it's Masonic. Joseph Smith became a Master Mason in 1842, and seven weeks later, the endowment appeared using the same signs.Jess and Hannah trace Joseph Smith's rushed 1842 Masonic initiation under Grand Master Abraham Jonas, the pre-1990 temple penalties and their exact Masonic parallels, the Five Points of Fellows
The Bear River Massacre and the Mormon Settlement of Shoshone Land
The Bear River Massacre is the deadliest massacre of Indigenous people by the United States military in American history, and most of us were never taught about it.This week on What Do You Know Wednesday, Jess walks Hannah through the history behind the LDS Church’s new digital resource, Native Saints: The Washakie Ward, and the much older history underneath it.On January 29, 1863, Colonel Patrick
Why 42% of Mormons Leave Over Church History... And the Church Keeps Blaming Your Character
The story the LDS Church tells about people who leave is that they lacked the faith and character to stay. A BYU faculty member and former bishop just spent years disproving that with 15,000 respondents.Jeff Strong's study Torn found that 42% of people who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cited church history as their primary reason. Social issues: 33%. Church experience: 18%.
Temple Recommends, Shunning, and Love Bombing: How Mormon Exclusion Works
The LDS Church doesn't need anyone to be cruel. The recommend interview, the ministering grid, and the love bombing cycle do the work — and they were built to.Jess and Hannah break down three structural practices built into LDS institutional life: temple recommend gatekeeping (and what the tithing declaration actually does inside that interview), passive shunning through record removal and ministe
The Woman Who Wilford Woodruff May Have Secretly Married
In 1897, a theatrical Holy Land lecturer named Lydia von Finkelstein Mountford arrived in Salt Lake City — and then appeared 67 times in Wilford Woodruff's diary. No person appeared more often. He corresponded with her using only the initial "M." He traveled to the Pacific Coast under an assumed name while she was there. D. Michael Quinn argued Woodruff probably married her as a post
Mormon Political Power in Utah: How Neutral Is the Church?
Why does Utah's most Democratic city sit at the heart of the LDS Church? This week on Postmormon Postmortem, we examine Salt Lake City's political evolution, Utah's controversial redistricting battles, and the Church's claims of political neutrality. From gerrymandering and court fights to the Pentagon's rapid reversal on LDS religious classification, we explore what influence looks like when fait
Joseph Smith’s First Vision: The Account Mormons Weren’t Taught
There's an earlier First Vision account — written in Joseph's own hand, kept in a church official's personal safe for decades. It describes a different age, a different reason, and one being, not two.Joseph Smith wrote the earliest account of the First Vision in 1832 — in his own hand, without a scribe. In it, he's in his sixteenth year, not his fourteenth. He doesn't go to pray because he's confu
Why Are MLMs So Popular in Utah? The Mormon Connection
Utah has more MLMs per capita than any state in the country, and the three biggest — Young Living, Doterra, and Nu Skin — were all founded by members of the LDS Church. This week, Jess explains to Hannah why that isn’t an accident: ward lists that double as sales databases, missionary training that doubles as sales training, testimony culture that treats anecdote as proof, and a prosperity-gospel
Reckless Ben vs. Bricks & Minifigs: The Mormon Mafia Claim
A missing Lego Star Wars collection somehow became one of the strangest Mormon-adjacent internet stories of the year so far.Bryan Mansell says his family’s valuable Lego collection was taken after a Bricks & Minifigs consignment deal went bad. Reckless Ben turned the dispute into a viral investigation. Then American Fork police got involved. There were searches, arrests, charges, a lawsuit, a
Mormon Church Historian Kyle McKay Apologizes for Racist Remarks
This week on Mormon Monday, we’re talking about Elder Kyle S. McKay, a General Authority Seventy and Church Historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who apologized after making racially offensive remarks at the Yukon Oklahoma Stake conference.McKay opened his remarks by talking about “This Little Light of Mine,” a hymn recently added to the church’s new hymnbook. From there,
You Didn't Get a Comment. You Got a Node. The LDS Influence Machine Explained.
Someone showed up in our comments with three arguments, one after another — missing scrolls, Chicago Fire, syncretism. Behind that comment is a funded nonprofit, studio space, and SEO training. Here's the machine.We traced a comment section exchange back to the Ancient America Foundation — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose stated mission pillars include "Missionary Productivity" and "Gospel Advocacy," a
Joseph Smith’s Happiness Letter to Nancy Rigdon Was Worse Than We Thought
Joseph Smith’s “Happiness Letter” is famous for the line “Happiness is the object and design of our existence.” But the full letter was connected to Nancy Rigdon, the 19-year-old daughter of Sidney Rigdon, after she refused Joseph Smith’s proposal of plural marriage. We walk through the proposal, Nancy’s refusal, the full text of the letter, Joseph’s denial, Nancy’s confrontation, Sidney Rigdon’s
Are Mormons Christian? The Pentagon Just Made It Awkward
Utah senators are demanding the Pentagon fix its religious categories after the LDS Church wasn't listed under "Christian." We break down why that categorization reflects a 200-year-old theological dispute — covering the Nicene Creed, Joseph Smith's King Follett Discourse, the 2001 Vatican ruling on LDS baptisms, and how five major Christian denominations formally placed Mormonis
How Mormons Deliver Harm in the Language of Love
Someone said something loving. You left feeling searched. Six specific LDS practices deliver harm through care language — and make naming it feel like the problem.Jess and Hannah name six practices embedded in Mormon family and institutional life that wound through warmth: tone policing backed by James E. Faust's 1996 doctrine that contention drives away the Spirit regardless of fault; the non-apo
The Mormon Church Has Never Apologized for the Mountain Meadows Massacre
In this minisode, Hannah looks at the Mountain Meadows Massacre through one specific question: what would a real apology from the Mormon Church actually sound like?Using a ten-part framework for meaningful apologies, she builds the apology the Church should have given to the victims’ descendants, then compares it to the Church’s actual response: silence, blame-shifting, scapegoating, “profound reg
What Is a “Dry Mormon”? The Mormon Lifestyle Without the Religion
New York magazine says America is in a second Mormon moment, and this time the church didn't do a thing — the influencers did it for them. This week on What Do You Know Wednesday, Jess puts Hannah on the spot with a phrase neither of us grew up with: the dry Mormon.A dry Mormon lives the lifestyle without the theology. No alcohol, no coffee, clean eating, modest fashion, community-first values, an
Why Dallin Oaks Is Being Asked to Defend Utah’s Courts
David Bennett, a former Utah Supreme Court justice, wrote to Dallin Oaks in the Salt Lake Tribune on May 14. Oaks is also a former Utah Supreme Court justice and the current president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The ask: speak out for Utah's courts.The context is Proposition 4, the anti-gerrymandering law Utah voters passed in 2018. The legislature repealed it in 2020 a
Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: What the Mormon Church Now Admits
Joseph Smith married more than thirty women, including a fourteen-year-old, and the LDS Church's own Gospel Topics essay "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo" admits it. Then it stops right where the reckoning would start.Fanny Alger, the teenage domestic worker Joseph married first. Zina Huntington Jacobs, pregnant by her husband when she was sealed to Joseph. Helen Mar Kimball,
Mormon Influencers Showing Up In Ex-Mormon Comments
A video about a boy’s priesthood authority drew a sudden wave of comments from Mormon influencer accounts. We walk through their four recurring arguments, the question nobody answered, and the networks that organize pro-Mormon content.____________________________________________________________Ways to Support the Show (THANK YOU!)https://www.venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem☕ buymeacoffee.com/postmor
The Mormon Church’s Real Estate Buying Spree
The LDS Church's investment arm just dropped $240 million on a luxury apartment complex in Florida. We connect that purchase to a deep-dive investigation into the Mormon Church in New Zealand — billions in assets, members in low-income communities paying tithing first, volunteers giving nearly a full-time week in unpaid labor, and an institution that asks for personal sacrifice while keeping i
Race and the Priesthood: What the Mormon Church Now Admits
The LDS Church called the priesthood ban a "direct commandment from the Lord" for 126 years. In 2013, they published an essay. We read both — and the gap between them is the whole story.Jess and Hannah read the primary sources the 2013 Gospel Topics Essay on Race and the Priesthood was written to address — and then read the essay itself. Brigham Young's 1852 speeches. The 1949 First
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