Mormon News Podcast

Nemo [00:00:02] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Mormon News podcast. This is not the voice you're used to hearing, but it is my voice and it is British. It is the 24th of July, 2026. Happy Pioneer Day. Or Pioneer Day, depending on your position on the whole matter. But it's a day to celebrate no matter how you view it. We are back with another weekly roundup of all things Mormonism. And I am one of your hosts, Nemo the Mormon. I'm joined as always by the wonderful Meggan from Generally Unquotable. Let's bring her on screen now if this works. Hey, Meggan, how are you?

Guest [00:00:37] Hey.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:37] I'm doing wonderful. Happy Friday. Happy pie and beer day.

Nemo [00:00:41] Yeah, happy pie and beer day, everyone. Meggan, tell me the news because the news has been exciting. We've got some cool stuff going on.

Big Story Today: Reese Riggin and His Ward Support

Meggan Hayes [00:00:51] It's always exciting. This is one of our big stories today. This will will be talking about Reese Riggin, a I believe twice convicted predator from who is also a member of the church who is on his third round here and he's getting letters of support from his ward.

Nemo [00:01:12] Oh.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:12] So yeah, that's our big story today.

Nemo [00:01:15] All right, so we'll be diving into that. But we've got the top news stories. We have seven LDS church trends. I do love to be trendy, as we know we have the. I assume this is to be temples over built and under staffed. Yeah. And then Reese Riggin defended. We have Burke Powers doing some deep fakes and then someone being used as a miracle. I'm excited. I think the audience should be excited. So let's dive into it, shall we?

7 LDS Church Trends to Watch

Meggan Hayes [00:01:48] Absolutely.

Nemo [00:01:49] Let's get trendy with Bednar.

Guest 2 [00:01:51] That's.

Nemo [00:01:51] That sounds like a place to start. Okay, walk me through it.

Latter-Day Church Trends According to Data

Meggan Hayes [00:01:57] All right, so this article came out by Jana Reese. I love her work. Amazing. More about Jesus, less about coffee. 7 LDS Church Trends According to data.

Nemo [00:02:10] They love that. And I'm already preempting. Sorry, go on.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:14] Oh, no. Oh, I was just going to say it's. They focus on the profit time presidency of Russell M. Nelson. So that's what the trends are looking at versus the previous prophets.

Nemo [00:02:27] We're analyzing the impact of President Nelson's presidency on the church.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:32] Yes. Through trends of what was spoken about in general conference.

Nemo [00:02:36] Now I have a feeling I'm going to have some pushback here on the more Jesus thing based on my own count. But I count it differently and I find it all always very interesting in the same way as when we were talking about missionary numbers last week. We were we were talking about missionary numbers, and we were talking about how if you can't meaningfully analyze the data, then the record means nothing. Similarly, I think it's very important what we're talking about when we're talking about, like, more Jesus. Is it just Jesus being mentioned? Is it Jesus being quoted? Is it, you know, Jesus's specific teachings being taught and advocated for. What does it mean? I'm sure we'll get into all that. So you've. We've got some graphs. Oh, no, before we have the graphs, we have Christian N.K. anderson. What's he got to do with things?

Meggan Hayes [00:03:25] Yeah, so this is where the information comes from. The Mormon Social Science association, this report. And I started reading through the report. I think it's about 60 pages, incredibly fascinating. So if anybody likes to do that kind of nerdy stuff, they can look into this report. But this is where the data comes from.

Nemo [00:03:41] Well, they didn't reach out to me. I think they. I would have been happy to help, but. Okay, we have some graphs. We have some graphs with whiskers, which. Some error bars, I think is the name for those. Right. Those range bars at the end. Any data on this in the comments, let us know.

Meggan Hayes [00:04:04] Yeah, so this one's trending up Jesus as Savior. So it has Heavenly Father, and then there's a graph there. And then the. The letters at the bottom stand for the different prophets. So Kimball, Benson, Hunter, and so on. And then the next one is Savior, and the next one is Glory, divine, or infinite. So I don't know how that matches up with how you counted, but.

Nemo [00:04:26] Well, so the first thing to note is that when I started reading Kibe Huhi Monet, I just thought that was something out of the Book of Abraham. And I'm genuinely not being glib. I thought I've been doing too much Book of Abraham with LDS discussions, but that just looks to me like the name of a star or something. But then I realized that it's Kimball, Benson, Hunter, Hinckley, Monson, Nelson. So I. I think it's important to know what is being measured here. Is this. Mentions. Is this. I think so. That's the words Heavenly Father, how often they were said. Is that what that is?

Meggan Hayes [00:05:04] I believe so. So, yeah, they took the transcripts from the general conferences and used them to see how many times the words were spoken, from what I understand.

Mormons: Russell M. Nelson's legacy

Nemo [00:05:15] Okay. All right. So we have Savior being said. More under Nelson. We have.

Meggan Hayes [00:05:27] Yeah, Glory, divine and infinite. Yeah, yeah, being said quite a bit more.

Nemo [00:05:32] And Heavenly Father decreasing a little bit.

Meggan Hayes [00:05:36] Is that. Do you think that's because now they're saying God. I just have realized, like when I was growing up, we always said Heavenly Father. It was like the more sacred, more polite, courteous way to say Heavenly Father. And now and then I would hear my friends who were non Mormon, who were Christians and say God. And it was kind of off putting to me because I didn't really hear it at church. And now maybe they're saying God a little bit more. As that trend toward mainstream Christianity.

Nemo [00:06:06] I think it's, it's very Mormon coded to say, to say Heavenly Father. It feels very Mormon. And I think what we are seeing is in that attempt to become more mainstream. Yeah, that's being dropped a little bit. But also what's I think interesting is that Heavenly Father creates a distinction within Mormonism. In the non trinitarian view of the Godhead. That's how it's looked at is, you know, there's Heavenly Father, there's Jesus Christ, there's the Holy Spirit, whereas God is a bit more amorphous, a little bit more. Who are you talking about? But I think that has been trending up. What I would say in response to what I've seen in my own analysis of conference is that the word Savior may have been said more. Jesus may be talked about more, but his teachings are taught less. His words are taught less, I should say, or are spoken less than Russell M. Nelson's. That has been the case on several occasions. Russell M. Nelson is quoted more than Jesus. And I think that's more important than anyone can say Jesus's name. Anyone can talk about Jesus, but if you want to directly give the words of Jesus some weight and power by quoting them in conference, that was done less than Russell M. Nelson's words being quoted in on many a time.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:31] Yes. And spoiler alert, there's going to be a graph that highlights that.

Nemo [00:07:37] Okay. What's been trending down under Nelson, bear in mind, because I have a feeling this will change, but go on.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:44] Yes. Right. Yeah. So trending down during Nelson's presidency, home, family and parenting, which I think also falls into that, trying to be more likable, trying to be less, come across as less patriarchal.

Nemo [00:08:05] Which again is interesting because this is the man Nelson is, the man who he gave a talk about donuts. Do you remember this at the priesthood?

Guest [00:08:17] Yes.

Nemo [00:08:18] Where he said, and where are their mothers? In the kitchen making donuts for us. And when we get home, we will feast on those donuts and they will listen eagerly to what we have to share. And it Just felt so.

Guest [00:08:34] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:34] Condescending.

Nemo [00:08:36] Yeah. So.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:38] Well, so I had to hear that after. Right. Because I wasn't invited to that meeting.

Nemo [00:08:42] Of course you heard that secondhand.

Guest 2 [00:08:44] Yeah.

Nemo [00:08:45] So I don't know if it's necessarily a reflection of Nelson's personal view more than it is, like you said, attending. Trying to appear more sort of mainstream and less divisive. And I find it interesting also that under Hunter the bar is so small always. Because he was just such a short lived president.

Guest [00:09:07] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:07] Was it nine months?

Nemo [00:09:09] Yeah, it was, it was very short. And he did a great job during those nine months. I have to say he is by far and away my favorite president of the church.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:18] He just seemed like a loving sort of grandpa to me. I mean I was, I mean you were quite young probably when he was

Nemo [00:09:25] prophet, but I wasn't alive when he was the prophet.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:27] Oh, so very young. You were very young.

Nemo [00:09:31] Yeah, yeah. I hope it wasn't even alive. So. Right, next, graphs. What do we have trending up?

Temples and the Covenant Path

Meggan Hayes [00:09:38] This is going to be no surprise. Temples and the Covenant Path. The Covenant Path was. I thought that was a phrase that Nelson kind of coined. I mean it looks like it had been said previously, but.

Nemo [00:09:52] Yeah, yeah, I always thought that was something he, he coined. I, I find it interesting that Monson talked about temples as much as under. It was talked about as much as under Hinckley. Hinckley was known as the temple building prophet, but they were both talking about it and then all of a sudden Nelson comes out absolutely swinging, talking about as many temples as, as could you can shake a stick at. Really. What do you get from these graphs here with particularly with covenants, You've got Covenant Path as a separate phrase. But what do you think the increase in the discussion of covenants means?

Meggan Hayes [00:10:31] Well, it's tied to the temple. So if you're building more temples, then you're going to put an emphasis on people needing to be in there. Not just making the covenants for themselves, but also doing those covenants vicariously for people who have died. It's a way to keep people in the temple, keep them busy doing work for people who are dead.

Nemo [00:10:51] It places a real emphasis on the works element of Mormonism, this idea that you need to be doing the right things as well as believing the right things. You need to be keeping your side of the bargain. That's kind of what covenants are about. And I feel like a sort of transactionality permeated Nelson's presidency in that sense. It's kind of a. If there was a Lot of like, if this. Then that gates for members of the church to be like, okay, well, if you do this, then you'll get that. And it was very sort of transactional.

Meggan Hayes [00:11:22] Yeah, well. And he's the one who gave the talk about divine love, how God's love is divine. And he used like four or five words, but he said it's. Yeah, it's not. He said it is conditional. The word unconditional is not in the scriptures.

Nemo [00:11:39] It cannot correctly be characterized as unconditional. I think is. Is how he phrased that from memory. And so, yeah, of course, then he would have a big focus on this covenant path, on the covenants. These are the conditions for God's love. God loves some of us more than others. He loves the faithful more than the unfaithful.

Meggan Hayes [00:11:58] Yeah. Like a higher love. They'd use the term higher love.

Nemo [00:12:01] Yes. I didn't realize God's love came in tears. And some of these are paid membership tiers, it would seem, because he loves those who pay tithing more than those who don't, those who keep that covenant more than those who don't.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:14] Yeah. Well, and something else about his temple building. I watched an interview with a guy who was in the temple department. I don't remember his name, but he talked about how when Nelson first came in, he actually wanted to do 600 more temples. That was the goal. And then they, you know, had to put it down just a little bit

Nemo [00:12:32] and be realistic, and he got 200 instead. So they, you know, they. They go down to a third of what he originally wanted. That is crazy.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:40] Yeah.

Nemo [00:12:41] And the church has the money to do 600, but there's processes involved. There's land to buy, there's permission to get. There's. There's towns in Texas to lie to.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:53] Right.

Guest [00:12:53] Well.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:54] And when your staff all have to be temple recommend holders to a certain point like that limits the amount of people you can get involved.

Nemo [00:13:03] And just for clarity, when I say towns in Texas to lie to, I'm of course referring to the fact that the church or its representatives in the town of Fairview, Texas, made the claim that the height of the steeple is part of our religious worship. And I would view that to be dishonest and not true, because as far as I understand it, there are quotes from Nelson himself making the opposite claim, that temple architecture is not as important as the ordinances that happened inside. And I don't know about you, Meggan, but I've never been aware of temple ornaments or steeple height being part of the Religious worship of the church?

Guest [00:13:32] Nope.

Meggan Hayes [00:13:32] No. And he was backed up by Bednar, who said some similar things. So the mouth of two or three witnesses.

Nemo [00:13:38] Exactly. So, right, next slide.

Discussion of pornography, sex and alcohol in the Church

Meggan Hayes [00:13:41] Next graph trending down. Yep, that's the right one. So this one has a whole bunch. Pornography. Let me bring it up on my computer so I can see it. They were quite small because they lumped this one all together. Pornography, adultery, sex, word of wisdom. Alcohol, beer, wine, coffee, caffeine, smoking and cigarettes. Those are all trending down. They weren't as big of a deal as they were in the 80s and 90s.

Nemo [00:14:10] Yeah, pornography is really not talked about much anymore. Hinckley was really big on. On talking about that. Kimball was really big on talking about adultery and sex. All of these men are dead now. So I don't think it is libelous to. To suggest. I would wonder whether their proclivity to talk about these issues, whether it correlates with the presence of those issues within their own life or within the lives of those around them, I. E. A little projection. Yeah, a little. Or, you know, family members or such. You know, was there an incident of adultery in or around Kimball's life that he then feels strongly need to preach against it? For example, the word of wisdom. Nelson didn't struggle with a little cup of coffee. Maybe Kimball did. I don't think that's what's going on here. I think there's probably more to be said for it. Responding to the sort of the sensibilities of the world around them and realizing that these things just kind of make them seem a bit odd and weird. What would be your thoughts on that?

Meggan Hayes [00:15:17] Well, when did the dedicated priesthood session go away?

Nemo [00:15:22] The dedicated priesthood session went away maybe two years ago now. 2024.

Meggan Hayes [00:15:26] Okay, well, because. Yeah, because they had the priesthood session and the Relief Society session separate and then they put them as just an extra session and, you know, all of that. But I. I wondered if some of it was stuff like pornography was talked about in the priesthood session quite heavily. So once that session went away, maybe a little bit of the mentions that aren't anymore came from the going away of the priesthood session. They couldn't just stand up and chastise the men alone and they didn't want to talk about it in front of the women.

Nemo [00:15:58] Yeah, that's fair. I also wonder whether there is a correlation to the reduction in discussion of these topics and the increase in engaging with it amongst members of the church. So members of the church. I would say more members of the church, active members of the church. Today are consuming coffee and caffeine than at any other time in the history of the church. I don't think that's sort of like, controversial to say. And similarly, under the last prophet, it was meant coffee and caffeine were mentioned the least. So is this really. I've talked about this before. It feels like Mormons are often. Members of the church are often wanting to do things, and they're just waiting for it to not be taught against anymore. So, for example, when tattoos were no longer explicitly banned, we saw exactly who had been wanting to get them for ages and then jumped in and got them. Right. Because all of a sudden it doesn't say no. And similarly, all of a sudden, while they're not teaching against coffee, it's not really a big deal anymore. And the people who want to be involved with it will then just get involved with it and start partaking. Maybe. Maybe that's something to do with it. There is. And. And that doesn't explain why they're talking about it less, but perhaps that explains some of the behavior we're seeing.

Guest [00:17:21] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:17:21] Well, in the Strength of Youth pamphlet before the Strength of Youth pamphlet changed because it used to explicitly state certain things you should and should not do. And then it. Yeah, it went to the higher and holier law of saying just be a really good person. And that's. Yeah. When people got double piercings and decided tattoos were okay.

Nemo [00:17:39] And so what we've got here is, I guess a decrease in some sense is a decrease in sort of authoritarian rhetoric. If you're looking at the bite model for a moment, like you've almost got a decrease here in the sort of behavior control. There's a lot less rhetoric around what you should or shouldn't do in these instances. I think it's interesting. I wonder whether that's again, the church trying to mainstream, whether they feel that they've just lost these battles and they're stopping talking about it, whether they think other things are more important.

Guest [00:18:07] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:18:07] Is this the. The slow roll into quietly letting people.

Nemo [00:18:12] Is this quiet abandoned.

Meggan Hayes [00:18:14] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:18:16] Of the. Of the position, which on pornography would be an interesting one and on adultery and sex would be an interesting one because those are, you know, next to murder in severity. So it'd be interesting that they're not constantly warning us about that. But I get the other stuff. I get the. I can see the word of wisdom being kind of a slow burn abandonment by the church. You know, they've already abandoned half of it. You know, the stuff about what's in season and meats and things like that.

Meggan Hayes [00:18:42] Yeah. I think that's been abandoned for a long time. I don't remember that ever being brought up in church to any length.

Nemo [00:18:50] So let's. Let's have the next slide.

Responsibility and Transaction

Meggan Hayes [00:18:55] All right. Trending up. Rewards for faithfulness. And I thought this one was interesting because. So identity and purpose transform. And what is that? Sorry, that's hard for me. Oh, ultimate. Yes. Because our group, that's. I don't know, maybe your age, my age, we are learning a lot more about therapeutic models. And so instead of saying, don't do this.

Guest [00:19:28] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:19:28] Like, when I've learned about parenting a lot, I've learned, like, instead of telling my kids no, I tell them what they can do. And I. This, to me, feels like a similar shift. It's like they're not saying no to coffee, no to these word of wisdom things. They're not blasting pornography from the pulpit anymore. They're saying, look at the fruits. You know, here are some things you can do. And look at all these wonderful rewards you're getting. I think they're kind of playing into that. Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:19:58] And I think that's where some of that transactionality feeling comes from. It's like, if you do this, here's what you get. You know, here are the rewards. Here are the fruits of the gospel. Here's the wonderful things that you get if you just do what we say.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:13] Yeah. It's so simple.

Nemo [00:20:15] It's so simple. Right, next one.

Obedience in the Church

Guest [00:20:18] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:19] Trending down. Obedience and authority titles, Priesthood and obedience.

Nemo [00:20:25] Interesting.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:27] Right. Like, they're really leaning on that. The fruits, like, here are all the things you're going to get, but they're not saying exact obedience as much anymore. That was one that really sent me into a spiral as a teen.

Nemo [00:20:41] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:41] You know, they're steering away from those things.

Nemo [00:20:43] Well, you get big scrupulosity issues. Lots of people, you know, really developing this form of, like, religious OCD where they are trying to be perfect constantly. I find it interesting that I assume this is explicit mentions of the word. Obedience is going down, I feel like, as a theme. Obedience to the church and its leaders is still as relevant as ever and still as pushed as ever. But perhaps they're just not using the word as much.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:13] Yeah. Because they're saying Covenant Path. I mean, really, what's the difference?

Nemo [00:21:17] Exactly. So they're. They're talking about it in different ways, but it all still equates to do what we say.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:23] Yeah.

Nemo [00:21:23] And follow the prophet. And again, I think it would be interesting to see this Updated through Dallin H. Oaks.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:32] Yes. Yeah. Because I think he's turned back a little bit.

Nemo [00:21:36] He has, definitely. He's turned back for sure. Oh, my favorite phrase. Tell me about it, Meggan.

The Love Letter to President Nelson

Meggan Hayes [00:21:44] Trending up our beloved prophet. Oh. So what is it? I was just trying to look at some of the smaller print. But. Yes. So just. And this is what you talked about at the beginning. They might be talking about Jesus more, but this one jumped way up. And I knew I was hearing this when conference would come around. And it wasn't just conference. It was everything, like women's conference and devotionals at byu. Everyone could not put President Nelson on their lips enough.

Nemo [00:22:17] Yeah. And they couldn't talk about him without calling him our beloved prophet. What is interesting as well is that what we have here. So the small print is the star is the first session as prophet, which you would expect. Right. With the first session as prophet, you'd expect for there to be a little bit more reverence, a little bit more adoration. Everyone's celebrating the new prophet coming in. That's fine. And so this shows that then it tends to calm down quite a bit. And then they've just showed their average when they're not the profit.

Speaker E [00:22:51] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:22:52] That dot way down there at the bottom is the average and not the profit. No one cared about Nelson until he was the prophet. And then for sure they did after that.

Nemo [00:23:00] What's interesting to me is you see the spike with the star when their first session profit, and then it calms down. With Nelson, it went up to the spike, and it barely calms down. It just carries on. It shows that, like, the intensity did not drop with this need to really kiss the ring when it came to President Nelson. And I don't think we'll ever know whether it's something that he demanded or it's a culture that sort of just organically arose and people felt the need to do it themselves. And then it kind of became this sort of memetic thing where it sort of spread through church leadership. And it was the sort of thing that you did. It was like a trend. Because Nelson didn't quash it. He allowed it. I don't know.

Meggan Hayes [00:23:45] Yeah. And we'll have to see how. How it continues through Oaks. Like you said. I think it'd be.

Nemo [00:23:52] I think it has reduced under oaks. I saw it initially when his first session was profit. It was high. I think his second session is profit. It's slightly lower. Okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:02] Yeah. But Nelson just loved it. He loved it.

Mormon temple proposal in Florida

Nemo [00:24:05] And something else that Nelson loved because we're good at Segways on this show are temples. Nelson loved temples, but you are asking the question, Meggan. Are they overbuilt and understaffed?

Meggan Hayes [00:24:16] Yes. And this is specifically in Florida. And then we have a video from Rebecca Biblioteca and she'll tell us a little about it.

Guest 2 [00:24:23] All right.

Nemo [00:24:23] We love Rebecca.

Speaker E [00:24:25] One of the things that the LDS church tells all these towns, all the city councils and planning commissions where they're going to be build temples is that they need to have the temple because the membership is booming. They cannot even accommodate everybody that wants to go. They're bursting at the seams at the temple. Then you get things like this. This email was sent to somebody in the Jacksonville, Florida south stake. It says, brothers and sisters, the Tallahassee temple is now open to discussing the possibility of having members outside of the temple district to become temple workers. In order to prepare for us to report our availability and willingness to serve, please click on the link of the surve. Jacksonville is being asked by Tallahassee temple district.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:08] We need some help.

Speaker E [00:25:09] That temple district has 8 stakes. If 8 stakes can't support a temple and they have to look outside, do they really need to build the Jacksonville?

Nemo [00:25:18] It's a great question.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:20] Yes. And I, I, I was waiting for this to happen, honestly, because. So here's the numbers that the church claims in Florida.

Nemo [00:25:30] Just tell us what your thoughts on that email first before we jump into the numbers.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:33] Yeah, I, I have been waiting for this to happen because how are they going to staff temples where their, you know, claimed membership is 50,000, but the actual people who are showing up and attending and are deemed worthy to go in a temple is much smaller. Like, I just don't, I don't see how they're going to do that, especially across the United States where the numbers are going down.

Nemo [00:25:58] Yeah. So let's have a look at those numbers. Here we go.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:03] Yeah. So this is in Florida, and I love to do what I just call Mormon math. So they claim 178,456 members in Florida in 287 congregations, 60 of which are branches. And I don't know how many of you have ever been in a branch, but I was, and if we were lucky, we got 35 people a week and eight of those were my family.

Nemo [00:26:26] So a Branch is typically 30 to 50 people, right?

Meggan Hayes [00:26:31] Yeah, yeah. But if you take 178,456 and divide it by 287, you get roughly 622 people. If you even them out over those congregations, which Cannot. It just cannot be accurate. Because even if all of those were wards, there's not 622 people showing up at church every week.

Nemo [00:26:51] No. And this is what baffles me about how simple this maths is to do. You're just like, okay, how many people are they claiming and how many congregations they have? And not all congregations are equal. But in order for you to account for say, your little ward that's struggling to get 100 people, you're then just gonna. You're then suggesting that there is another ward somewhere else because you just have to bump the problem off somewhere else. You're suggesting there's another ward with 700 people in it that are turning up.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:20] Yeah.

Nemo [00:27:21] And at some point, when enough people start to report, when enough of these 287 start to report, oh, we only get 200 people. Oh, we only get 150. Oh, we only get 250 max or whatever it is, at some point it gets the end of the line where, okay, well, we don't have any congregations around that have 2, 000 people in them. So I guess some of these people aren't coming to church anymore would seem the obvious conclusion. But it's the conclusion that people are so reluctant to see for some reason.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:50] Right? Yeah. They'll be like, oh, they just have moved somewhere else or. That's what I hear all the time

Nemo [00:27:55] is why didn't they take their records with them?

Meggan Hayes [00:27:58] Right, right. They're all just moving to that one state that where all the Mormons live. Only it's not Utah.

Nemo [00:28:04] Yes, only it's not Utah. So what do we have next? Yeah, we've got.

Guest [00:28:10] All right.

Nemo [00:28:10] Oh, okay.

Meggan Hayes [00:28:11] Yep. Now we're gonna.

Nemo [00:28:12] I don't think there's anything more to say, really, to be honest, about the, about the temple numbers. Just before we go on to this guy, is there anything final you want to say on. On the decline generally?

Questions about the state of the temple staff

Meggan Hayes [00:28:23] No, I think it was just expected for there to be temples built that are going to be really difficult to staff. I think my question would be what are they going to do when they can't find enough people to staff the temples? I mean, I know they're part of a service mission now for the. Even the young service missionaries is working in the temple every week on the, you know, a couple of days. But at some point they're going to exhaust that as well. So what do they do? Just open the temple one day a

Nemo [00:28:48] week or often they will reduce operating hours. I imagine a lot of these new temples are going to Be open on a limited schedule. I have a quick question before we move on to our unfortunate weekly segment of which Mormons in the news for doing bad stuff. I have the question, which is this. Does it matter to the church if these buildings sit empty? Do we think it actually matters to the church if temples sit empty?

Does It Matter to the Church if Their Temples Sit Empty?

Meggan Hayes [00:29:17] I don't think so. I don't. Because why? What problem would that present for them? It's still there. It's still a beacon in whatever. Yeah. In whatever community it's in. People can still come on the grounds.

Nemo [00:29:31] Do you think they would ever worry about people going, why is no one ever going to that building? Well, the people who open a building, but no one ever goes in.

Meggan Hayes [00:29:40] No, I mean, that's. Scientology has a similar issue with buildings that just sit empty and people know about it. And. But the people who are paying attention aren't the people who are trying to go in there. A lot of times, you know, the ones who are noticing it, they're just like, oh, I signed up for the very last shift that was available. They don't know it was the only shift available.

Guest [00:30:02] Yeah.

Nemo [00:30:02] Because I guess the church doesn't want to advertise that fact. No. All right, let's get to. To Reese, a topic I never enjoy talking about but is definitely worth reporting on.

Russell Reagan Should Be Sent back to Prison

Meggan Hayes [00:30:17] So, Meggan, talk me through Russell Reagan. And as I love to do, there's a little timeline. August 6, 1997, three complaints filed against Reagan in Idaho. He was a chiropractor. And a month later, his chiropractic license was revoked because those complaints from patients.

Nemo [00:30:35] Can we give people an idea of how long ago that was? I was six months old.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:41] I was a teenager. Yeah. I was 16.

Nemo [00:30:46] So that was my lifetime ago that this started for. For context. Meggan, carry on with the timeline, please.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:53] And In April of 1999, when I was brought to graduate from high school, he had a conviction in Idaho. Pleaded guilty to amended charges of sexual exploitation by a medical care provider. Sentenced to two years probation, including 90 days of jail time, 80 of which were suspended. And then in August of 2016. So this is over 10 years now, Montana conviction. Sentenced to 20 years in the Department of Corrections. 15 years suspended for felony sexual intercourse without consent.

Nemo [00:31:22] So he. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail the first time. The second time, he was sentenced effectively to five years in jail, which, if I'm understanding correctly, he then comes out, and if he does anything wrong, then he goes back and serves the remainder of his sentence. Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:31:42] From what I understand.

Nemo [00:31:43] Yeah, it's like a Damoclean sword over his head, trying to stop him misbehaving. All right, cool.

Meggan Hayes [00:31:50] So then there's a video that will. Yeah, this is a video that will show us what's happening currently. One of my girlfriends had leaned over to me and like, told me, like, that's that guy.

Speaker F [00:32:00] Shannon McNamara was researching Flippin Family Fun, a trampoline park she planned on taking her children to. That's when she discovered that the owner's husband, Reese Riggan, was convicted in 2016 of felony sexual intercourse without consent. According to the Montana sex offender Registry, Reagan is a registered Tier 2 sex offender in Montana, meaning the state of Montana has assessed him as posing a moderate risk of a repeat sexual offense.

Meggan Hayes [00:32:20] So we're definitely not going to have any involvement with the trampoline park.

Speaker F [00:32:24] Court records show Reagan's original sentencing conditions restricted him from being around non family females at his business. But three months later, according to those records, a judge amended those conditions at Reagan's request, allowing him to interact with patrons.

Meggan Hayes [00:32:36] I had always assumed, like, he was not supposed to be, like, operating these businesses or interacting with these businesses.

Speaker F [00:32:42] A trend that others claimed to notice. At Meadowlark elementary, according to court documents, two girls reported being touched inappropriately by Reagan while he assisted them with safety harnesses. Great Falls Public Schools issued a letter on the incident. In the letter, executive director Jackie Mainwaring wrote, quote, we are exceptionally saddened for the families involved and unequivocally condem any behavior that compromises the safety or trust of the children entrusted to our care. Reagan was arrested on June 25th in Spokane after a judge issued a warrant the casket county attorney's office is now asking the court to revoke his suspended sentence, which could send him back to prison for the remainder of his original 20 year term.

Nemo [00:33:16] Okay. All right. So he did do something wrong, it would seem, in that time. And so we end up in this situation. Meggan, your thoughts?

Meggan Hayes [00:33:26] Well, he was accused of. So he. His. Through his business, he was at an elementary school with. I mean, the Flippin family. Fun is like bounce house and stuff like that. And so he was there and he was accused of. When he was putting harnesses on elementary school kids, of touching them inappropriately. Yeah.

Nemo [00:33:45] So that's which, according to the terms of his order, it seems he shouldn't have been able to go near non family females.

Meggan Hayes [00:33:51] Well, and then that was rescinded, which is interesting.

Nemo [00:33:56] Strange.

Meggan Hayes [00:33:58] Yeah. I don't understand why those sorts of things happen, but now the people in the community are rallying around him.

Nemo [00:34:04] Okay, what happens to A man like this, when his community finds out, you said they rally around him. How do they do that?

Meggan Hayes [00:34:14] Well, you saw the girl in the video. She wasn't rallying around anyone. She found out and she was like, we're not going to that business anymore. I wouldn't take my kids there. I mean, I think that's a normal response to finding something out like this.

Nemo [00:34:26] So what sort of members of the community are rallying around him?

Meggan Hayes [00:34:30] The members from his. Yeah, his ward and his stake. The Mormon members are coming to his defense.

Reese Riggins's Letter to the Court

Nemo [00:34:36] Okay, let's see it.

Meggan Hayes [00:34:38] So this is a letter from his bishop, Bishop Rodney Blake, that was written to the court to talk about his character. It. I. I'm not sure. What's that?

Nemo [00:34:50] Do you want to leave it on screen or do you want to read it out?

Meggan Hayes [00:34:53] I think this one we could read, and then the other ones I just took little blurbs from them.

Nemo [00:34:58] Cool. I can give that a go.

Meggan Hayes [00:35:00] Yeah.

Nemo [00:35:01] To whom it may Concern the purpose of this letter is to provide information regarding Reese Riggins character based on my personal interactions and observations over the past several years. My name is Rodney Blake, and I currently serve as the Bishop of the Big Bend Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I have served in this volunteer ecclesiastical position for the past two years. As bishop, I am responsible for the spiritual guidance of our congregation of members with about 160 who attend our weekly worship services. I have known Rhys for approximately six years. During that time, I have worked with him in various church assignments, and I've interacted with him in numerous social and community settings. Throughout my association with him, I have found him to be dependable, compassionate, and sincerely committed to serving others. Rhys currently serves as an adult Sunday school teacher in our congregation. Because of his own past experiences, he has also volunteered to minister to inmates at the Shelby Prison, where he shares his faith with individuals who are seeking hope and a better path in life. He performs this unpaid service on his own initiative and has consistently demonstrated dedication to helping others strengthen their faith and make positive changes. I've also worked alongside Rhys as he has served members of our congregation and community in many practical ways. I have personally observed him plow snow for others, help families move, reach out to individuals who are struggling, and perform numerous other acts of kindness and charity without seeking recognition. From my personal experience, Rhys has demonstrated a genuine desire to be a responsible citizen and a faithful servant of God. One example that stands out occurred just a few weeks before his confinement when he was contacting me out of concern for a family member in our congregation who was facing significant challenges. He wanted to ensure I was aware of their situation so that we could provide assistance. And he personally offered much needed emotional support to that family. I recognize that I am not in a position to comment on the facts or merits of the legal matters currently before the court. My purpose in writing is simply to share my first hand observations of Rees character and the many instances in which I have witnessed him sincerely strive to serve others, strengthen his faith, and make a positive difference in the lives of those around him. Respectfully, Rodney Blake Richard, Bishop of Big Bend Ward. Right. Your thoughts, Meggan? I have thoughts, but you first.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:23] That's a lot. I. If people who were going to harm children wore shirts that said, I am going to harm your children, then it would be really easy to spot them. But as it is in reality, people who harm children are most often the people who are the most liked by everyone, and that's how they get access. So I, I don't see a correlation between plowing someone's snow and not being dangerous in other areas.

Nemo [00:37:57] Yeah, I agree. I, I was, I was talking to someone about this. There seems to be an element of denial amongst members of the church more broadly that someone could in their community be this way inclined. Right. That someone. Not, not someone in our faith, not someone in our community. I think sometimes what would be most helpful in protecting children, beyond background checks, beyond safeguarding policies, beyond all those things, is just to sit the members of WAR down in a room and say, right now, out of everyone in this room, there is someone in this room right now who may have the desire to abuse children. That is, that is a possibility right now. That is just something that is possible. And rather than try and deny that it's possible, we should all then just take a bit more care about who we give access, you know, who we give access to, our children, who we allow to care for our children, those sorts of things. Right. I'm reading in this letter a lot of, you know, he's a good guy, he's one of us, he works hard to help out in our community. None of that has any bearing on the way that he interacts with minors. None of that has any bearing on the way that he interacts with children and the way that he abuses whatever power dynamics he ends up in, whether it's working, you know, allegedly, whether it's working at a business where he's in a position of authority and is able to touch people inappropriately or, you know, whatever else it might be at church, if anything was happening There. So that, that's kind of my take on this letter is it's almost irrelevant in some ways, his character, he can be a good guy, a nice guy, but if he's dangerous to children, he's dangerous to children. None of this changes that fact to me.

Meggan Hayes [00:39:43] Yes. Someone in the comments said a grown man would have a different experience with him than, you know, say a 17 year old girl or a 12 year old girl.

Nemo [00:39:54] There's that comment. Let me find it. But yeah, no, I think that's a very good point. Is that, yeah, his interactions are going to be very different to. There you go. An adult male will have a drastically different interaction with Rigs than a preteen girl.

Meggan Hayes [00:40:13] Yep.

Nemo [00:40:14] Yeah, yeah, that's a very good.

Meggan Hayes [00:40:16] And that, yeah, that is a really good point. And

Guest [00:40:22] I just.

Meggan Hayes [00:40:22] The amount of overlooking, I mean, if, if this bishop, if it was his daughter who had come to him and said, I was, you know, at this activity at school today and this happened, would he still be writing this letter?

Nemo [00:40:37] I don't think so. And I think this may be John in the chat, but abusers of children are very often loved and trusted family members. See where Christofferson. Yeah, it's very rarely strangers. It's most often someone trusted by a child because that's how they get into the situations in the first place. So, yeah, we have more letters of support, though. It wasn't just the bishop, was it?

Meggan Hayes [00:41:00] No, these are all board members.

Nemo [00:41:04] So we have this one, the quote from which is.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:08] I have also.

Nemo [00:41:09] Oh, God.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:10] Yeah. I have also seen the burden this situation has placed on his wife and children, who have often felt the weight of public judgment as well. And I highlighted this one because this is a comment I have heard so many times when I am supporting someone who's been abused. And if Rhys didn't want his wife and his children to have this burden, then he should have thought of that before he did what he did. And it's. It is not the victim's responsibility to care for Reese's wife and children.

Nemo [00:41:40] No, I feel bad for his wife and children.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:43] Absolutely, I do.

Nemo [00:41:44] But I think that has no bearing on the way that Rhys needs to be treated in order to keep children safe. Because if you, this is the strange thing, if you have sympathy for his wife and particularly if you have sympathy for his children, if you're able to feel sympathy and empathy towards children to the point of going, oh, I feel bad that this is having an impact on his children, take that just the tiniest of steps further to the children that he is accused of abusing and think, well, I feel bad for them, too. So maybe I don't want this guy around more children so that can happen more. It's this. Is this weird double standard. Like, well, have sympathy for his children, but not for the children that he is accused of abusing or that he was convicted of abusing years ago.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:28] Yeah. And I think, like, so if we.

Guest 2 [00:42:31] If.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:31] Yeah, if we look at the shooting in Michigan, when that happened, church members rallied together to support the family members of the shooter. If you remember, they set up a GoFundMe, and it was. It was this wonderful altruistic thing. If they would do that, if they would take it a step further, they could do the same for his wife and his children. So if he went off to prison, then they could make sure that his wife and children are supported in his absence.

An Ordinary Mormon's Character Statement

Nemo [00:42:57] Yeah. There's no problem with them rallying around and going, I'm so sorry that your husband has put you in this situation, because that's what he's put them in that situation. Let us support you. Yeah. You know, if that's what's going on there, we got. We've got more. Yeah, let's see it. Okay. You want to read this one? Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:43:20] I've only observed Reese to be kind and friendly, even to those who are unkind and judgmental. In recent years, he's been teaching adult Sunday school in our congregation regularly, and the discussions he leads have been honest, kind, and engaging. He asks good questions and treats everyone fairly and with respect.

Nemo [00:43:38] Well, he categorically does. I mean, he doesn't treat everyone fairly with respect. Maybe in the situation of Sunday school, but outside of that, he absolutely doesn't. He's admitted to it, like, 20 years ago that he doesn't do that. And again, these sorts of character statements, just, of course, he's kind and friendly. Like we've said, that's how he gets in the door. That's how he gets access to people. That's. That's how this works. Your thoughts?

Meggan Hayes [00:44:10] Yeah. I mean, if he. If he showed up at church and was shouting at everyone and, you know, throwing things or sitting in the back brooding, just not being. Not engaging with people, he wouldn't, first of all, probably get that calling. And then second of all, yeah, he wouldn't get the access that he needs to people.

Guest [00:44:29] Yeah.

Nemo [00:44:30] But we have one more of these, and then. And we'll talk about how this is the way church members act often, even outside these cases. This one, the quote is, Reese serves us by showing Sincere care for our adult down syndrome daughter. Okay. She loves football. Whenever he sees her, he engages in conversations with her about her favorite team and the other teams that she likes. Always remembering and commenting on her favorite teams. At Christmas, he has on several occasions dressed in a Santa costume and stood on a porch with his family to wish her a Merry Christmas. Now, do you want to point out the obvious thing that people are talking. He's engaging with someone who's vulnerable and being very charming about it, and maybe that's not going to help his case. Or. Or shall I?

Meggan Hayes [00:45:15] I know. I was like, that is textbook grooming.

Nemo [00:45:20] Yeah. Like, oh. So you take someone who's vulnerable and he's found their topic of special interest and he's really good at talking to them about it. Huh.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:27] Interesting.

Nemo [00:45:28] Put those skills to use before.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:31] Yeah, that one was just.

Nemo [00:45:33] That's.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:35] Yes. The. How do the people writing it not see that? That's what I. I mean, I know how they don't, but it's just hard for me to understand someone who can look. I mean, maybe they haven't look at his criminal history and think, this is a good idea. This is a really good idea for him to be in contact with our

Nemo [00:45:52] vulnerable child because they're an adult, but they're an adult. That's incredibly vulnerable, you know, And I think it's this. It's this strange, strange thing that Mormons do. And I saw it. We've talked a lot about Fairview Temple time for some reason, but I saw this around Fairview, around a completely different type of issue. What we had on the side, by and large of the townspeople who were trying to oppose this temple being so tall, they were bringing kind of facts. And they're saying, we don't want this temple lit up at night because it can affect migratory birds. We don't want it to ruin our view of the Milky Way. We don't want it to be so tall because we're trying to keep our town small. And all our ordinances are very small. They come with the facts. They come with this sort of stuff. Members were just getting up there. One guy was testifying about how the temple needs to be lit up because it guided him home once and had such a sacred, special experience. They were bearing their testimonies to the town council, and this is the same sort of thing. They're essentially kind of just bearing their testimony by letter form of how nice this guy is and hoping that that will have some sort of impact. I don't think they're seeing that actually this, if anything, kind of. They're just. They're putting on exhibition a pattern of behavior that has probably led to some of the prison time that he served.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:07] Yeah, they're highlighting the Mormon way of feelings are facts. So I feel really wonderful when I'm around this person and his Sunday school lessons are just. I look forward to them every week. So.

Nemo [00:47:21] Yeah, and he's really nice.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:23] Yeah. That is his entire reality.

Man Accused of Creating Deepfakes Through AI Is Using an

Nemo [00:47:28] So speaking of reality and what may be reality and what may be not reality, I have too much fun with these segues. We are now getting on to some AI stuff, which is everyone's favorite topic at the moment. It is the. The Prince of the Zeitgeist is AI. So Meggan, what is this story?

Meggan Hayes [00:47:48] So the headline is AI Chief Technology Officer accused of creating Deepfakes of Friends and children.

Nemo [00:47:55] Oh, okay, so it's more dodgy nonsense. All right.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:59] Yes, accused of.

Nemo [00:48:01] That's okay. And I thought we were moving away onto, you know, brighter area topics, but no, people in the news are still doing horrific things, right?

Meggan Hayes [00:48:10] Yes. And he was an adjunct. Adjunct professor at BYU. That's from his LinkedIn and I did confirm that in a second article.

Nemo [00:48:17] Burke Powers is his. His name, right?

Meggan Hayes [00:48:19] Yes, yes. And then he also volunteered in the Boy Scouts, which is a very Mormon thing to do. So that was just setting up his background a little bit.

Nemo [00:48:29] And is that a real image of him that we're looking at? Because it looks a little.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:34] That part of that was from his LinkedIn. It was hard to. That was the only image I could find of him.

Nemo [00:48:40] It doesn't look real. There's something off about it. It's a little too smooth. The perspective of the railing and then the other railings behind him just aren't quite right. There's just some things about it that are a little off. People in the comments, please, Opine. Is the man accused of creating Deep fakes through AI also using an AI profile image for his LinkedIn? Please, opine, we don't know, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that. Let's go to the next slide. So what's going on here?

Utah AI Co-Founder Arrested for Sexual Exploitation

Meggan Hayes [00:49:11] Okay, so this is from the news article. The co founder of a Salt Lake county artificial intelligence company has been arrested and accused of creating deep fakes using pictures of friends from high school and of children. Burke Clark Powers, 48, of Sandy was arrested Wednesday for investigation of 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. The investigation began when Power's ex wife came across AI generated child sexual abuse material and pornography on Power's Computer and. And Google Drive. A police booking affidavit states the woman stated that it appears that Burke has been scanning yearbook photos into the program that he was using. So that's the gist of it. And I actually read part of the affidavit of probable cause, and it was quite horrific. His ex wife discovered it and, yeah, he was using, like, elementary school yearbooks.

Guest [00:50:08] So.

Nemo [00:50:08] So to explain to people. To explain to people what deep fakes are for a moment, what we're talking about here is essentially taking the image of a real person, then using AI to create an image or a video in which they're doing things that they haven't done in real life. It's a fake video, but that can be used then to essentially take a real person and create a fake image or video of them engaging in explicit activities for someone's sick pleasure. And I think I. I don't know how to quite find the Mormon link here. I. I don't know. Other than the fact that he is Mormon, this is what he's done. Meggan, what's the sort of. How do we so.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:53] Well, I mean, Clark Gilbert just went through this whole cleanup at byu, Right. If. If you're not Mormon enough, you don't need to be working at byu. You don't need to be a professor there. If you are even slightly LGBTQ friendly, you're not welcome. You know, those. The process.

Nemo [00:51:12] He was encouraging bishops to dob in people that they had concerns about. Right. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:17] And I don't know what the process is for an adjunct professor, but I would assume they go through similar avenues to teach at byu. And so if he went through all of that, but was doing this on the side, then, you know, they. They missed a step. The discernment was off that day.

Nemo [00:51:34] So. Yeah. Meanwhile, someone who's just supportive of someone's, you know, sexual identity, the fact that someone's gay or whatever, they. They're at risk of losing their job, they're at risk of being fired because they're not conforming.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:48] Right. Wear a little rainbow pin and.

Nemo [00:51:50] Yeah. So if you're too theologically liberal.

Speaker E [00:51:54] Problem.

Nemo [00:51:55] If you've got what I assume was probably a lot of abuse material, because it's always a lot. It's never just a little bit. It's always terabytes of the stuff.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:03] Yep.

Nemo [00:52:04] More. More times than not. So he. You know, I'm sure his ex wife found all this stuff and the fact that she. Yeah, she was the first one to find it. But then we know. Or we. We know from Other cases that even if he had confessed, it may not have ended his professorship. You know, that that is the concern is that, you know, it may not have been reported. The police. He may have been encouraged to repent. He may have then said, right, well, I'll stop. And that could have been seen as enough by someone. Someone with a misunderstanding of this. I. I can see the. The world in which a bishop who doesn't really understand this thinks, well, they're not real images. So is. Is it even that big of a deal? You just need to stop. He treats it like a regular old pornography thing. You know, like, you just need to try and deal with this issue and then he gets some slack and no one calls the police and whatever. Like, you can see that world. I'm not saying that happened, but you can see that occur.

Meggan Hayes [00:53:00] Yeah. Or the bishop knows him, like those letters of support as a really good guy. He, you know, shoveled his professor. Yeah, he shoveled his walk earlier that year when there was snow. And he seems very sincere. Any of those things could happen.

Nemo [00:53:16] So it sounds like, oh, no, I can't do that segue. I was gonna say it sounds like he needed to talk to someone about it sooner. And speaking of which. So maybe that's wrong with that segue. We have. We need to talk, which is something that I know nothing about. So, Meggan, you are absolutely running point on this one. What is going on in this, which I think is our final story.

Brielle Adams Wheatley on We Need to Talk

Meggan Hayes [00:53:41] Yeah. And then there's just two little fun ones at the end. But this is a podcast, and Brielle Adams Wheatley is the woman on the right hand side there in the picture. She was broadcast on this. On this podcast, and interviewed about growing up in the church, growing up as a Mormon, and being sort of a poster child for Mormonism for many years. So this was just to introduce the podcast. The podcast is called we need to Talk, and she was on it recently, and her interview. I listened to the whole thing. It was very good. We'll just have a few clips that we'll play.

Nemo [00:54:19] Okay, that's. We've got a little bio about her here.

Meggan Hayes [00:54:23] Yeah. So Brielle was born in Brazil. Are you. Go ahead and read it.

Nemo [00:54:27] Yeah, sure. Brielle was born in Brazil with a rare condition that left her without fully developed arms and legs. She was adopted by a large LDS family in Utah, where she says she was raised with a lot of love, but also a lot of pressure to be independent and to be an example. She describes growing up feeling different, being bullied and Struggling privately with her identity while also being taught that she was an inspirational story. Years later, she began to feel that she wasn't just sharing her story, but that her story was being used in ways that she wasn't comfortable with.

Meggan Hayes [00:54:58] Yeah, yeah, and we'll listen to her talk about that.

Nemo [00:55:03] Okay, let's have a listen.

Guest [00:55:05] And there was a family in Utah that was adopting another girl from Brazil. But we were both coming on the same plane with the same adoption lady, hoping that they would find a family for me. My adoptive mom was like, oh, my gosh. I would take that little boy in a second. And then she went home and she just couldn't get me out of her head. And then she brought it up to my adopted dad, and my dad was like, no, are you crazy? Like, sit down. You're nine months pregnant with your 11th child on a seminary teacher's income. There's no way that we can afford to adopt a child, let alone one with a physical disability. Like, what are we supposed to do for that little boy? And she's like, I don't know. I just feel like you need to pray about it also. And he's like, okay, so he went to the Mormon Church, went to the Mormon Temple, and he had a vision of me and the baby that my mom was. My adopted mom was pregnant with and us growing up, being best friends. So then he came home, he's like, okay, let's get this little boy. Wow.

Nemo [00:55:59] Okay, what do we. What do we make of that?

Meggan Hayes [00:56:02] That's just such a typical Mormon story. You know, I. I have. There are 14 kids in my family, all from the same parents. And whenever my. My dad wasn't particularly fond of children before he got married to my mom and didn't really want that many, but every time he would think, this is. This is enough, you know, then my mom would say, I went to the temple, or I was inspired. And I know there's more. And so it's just a very common Mormon thing to say is, but I was inspired. And I. I really feel like there's more children meant for and is that

Nemo [00:56:36] it's that way that they will just sort of throw to one side very real, genuine considerations that ought to be made about how responsibly you can engage in this process. So how responsibly can they adopt a child with these kinds of needs on a semi teacher's salary while having 11 children already? That's a very real concern, and I don't think it should necessarily be hand waved away by, well, I went to the temple and had a vision and so let's just do it. But I also understand how that can be a sort of faith promoting story for people or how that can be. You know, if you sincerely believe that, how you then would act on that, if, if you have a sincere belief that God would provide for you, then you're gonna make that leap.

Meggan Hayes [00:57:23] Yeah, well, my parents did over and over and over again. And monetarily it was a struggle, obviously. 14 kids. My mom didn't work a lot. My dad was pretty much the sole breadwinner. But the bigger concern for me, having come out of a situation like that is the amount of attention that each of us needed and didn't really get. Because two people, especially if, you know, my dad was gone quite a bit of the time, can't really manage that many children. I mean, it's hard. It's hard. I have six, and that is a lot.

Nemo [00:58:00] We get to the point where children start to raise children. I know that by the time I was born, my oldest sister did some of the parenting.

Guest 2 [00:58:08] Yeah.

Nemo [00:58:10] Because that ends up sort of happening in these big families when there's too many kids to manage.

Meggan Hayes [00:58:16] And I'm. There are parts of that growing up that I really love. You know, actually some of the best memories I have are with my siblings. But it, you know, has led to me not having the best relationship with my parents because I didn't really get to know them. They weren't a huge part of my life. And so the consideration in a big family is not always just monetary. It's whether, whether we can really be there emotionally for all of these children.

Nemo [00:58:42] This is a, this is a child who's going to need some very specific emotional support and, and, and backing and, and all those sorts of things. And can you really give that some when you've already got 11 to consider? Yeah. Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:58:57] It's a big responsibility.

Mormons talk about the pressure of the religion

Nemo [00:58:58] Let's have the next clip.

Guest [00:59:01] I think just because of the way that I grew up within the religion and the pressure of my parents to. It wasn't just the pressure of the independence from my parents either. It was the pressure to be great anywhere and everywhere that I was, because I was a prime example of what an inspirational story should be. And so my parents always wanted me, whenever I left the home, to make sure that I was a prime example of being happy and putting on a front, of being a child of God and being a good example for the church and my younger siblings. Okay.

Nemo [00:59:33] So there's a lot of pressure there for her to be something special for the church. And to be this kind of poster child of getting through adversity and that sort of stuff which makes, she. Makes her like a, like a sort of billboard for testimony. This like sort of.

Meggan Hayes [00:59:53] Right. And what if she's having a bad day? Like, is she even allowed to show up at junior high and just not feel great that day? Not feel sociable or like she wants to greet people just like anyone else.

Nemo [01:00:08] But. But they don't get to have a bad day because they have to show up in a certain way to show that they're overcoming adversity, that they're, you know, reaping the promised rewards of heavenly Father for dealing with this challenge that theologically speaking, they probably chose in the pre existence. And so, you know, there's also this idea of those with physical disabilities. There was teachings in the church for a while that they chose that challenge, they selected that challenge. They opted in, they said, yeah, I'll take on that extra challenge. And so there's kind of like a lack of sympathy that no one feels like life dealt them a rough hand. It's like, well, you know, you chose this and now you need to kind of show up and, and get through it.

Meggan Hayes [01:00:52] And for a lot of people in the church, if you're feeling sad or having bouts of depression or something, then it's seen or felt as a lack of faithfulness. So to feel that as a child in an extended way because they're being set up as, you know, put on this pedestal, that's too much. I mean, that's just not really being allowed to be human and have all a full range of emotions. Everywhere they go, you know, they have

Nemo [01:01:22] to shut them down. You imagine the psychological difficulty of being in this situation anyway, of feeling this different, then adds into the pressure of not being able to express any of that or not having a release mechanism for the. Those negative emotions. Mormons struggle at the best of times with not having a good release mechanism for their negative emotions and kind of just pressing them down and, and whatnot. So this is like, this is a real disaster waiting to happen.

Meggan Hayes [01:01:51] Yeah, I read this quote the other day that basically said, can we just please stop saying that everything's a gift, everything is not a gift. Some things are just really terrible and we can really accept and feel the things that are a gift when we can also really accept and acknowledge that some things are just really terrible. Yeah, because life is about that dichotomy. Yes.

Nemo [01:02:12] Yeah, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:02:13] We can't really appreciate joy if we don't acknowledge that There is an opposite, and it's strange to me because the Book of Mormon teaches opposition in all things, but when it comes to feelings and life experiences, they really just want you to be happy all the time.

Nemo [01:02:29] Yeah. And. And I think some of it is almost trying to protect God from the implication that it's his fault if it's bad. So things can't be bad, because if nothing's bad, then God didn't do anything bad. Or we don't have to wrestle with the idea that we live in a world created by a God who allows bad things to happen. So you just don't have to engage with the problem of evil if evil doesn't exist, because it's always just a gift. Let's have the next. The next video. All right.

When You Can't Talk About Gay Stuff In Mormonism

Guest [01:02:56] All my siblings knew that I was gay or that I was trans. They would always call me a girl. They would always call me gay. They would always talk about my relationships that I had had undercover and. And everything. It was mainly my parents that just. They knew, but they didn't want to know, and they didn't want me acting on it, especially if I was going to be living in their home.

Nemo [01:03:23] Okay, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [01:03:24] Yeah. Also just a very Mormon response, and I think it kind of relates to what we were already talking about, this idea that there's just one way in Mormonism, and you can have other thoughts. You can be gay, you can have, you know, feelings for someone of the same sex, but you just don't tell anyone. Just keep that in. Just hide it and put on this show when you go out. I mean, she admits that she felt very loved by her family and that she knew there were things that they just weren't going to talk about. Like, all of my siblings knew I was gay, and my parents knew, but we didn't discuss it.

Nemo [01:04:07] Yeah, there's a lot of that. I mean, there's a couple of things here. First, just to throw Janice Turner's comment on the board, to say it reminds me of the song if you chance to meet frown, do not let it stay. Yeah. It's kind of drilled into primary children that we are not. Not to. Not to let sad things stick around too long. But the other thing is, as a Brit, I feel like I relate to this idea if we just don't talk about it. And I wonder if there's a cultural difference, because Americans often love to talk about it, whatever it may be, in a way that Brits don't. And so is it more weird? I guess, Is it more culturally different for Mormon Families to be so stiff upper lip about this sort of stuff and to not talk about it and to be kind of. Yeah. And to be setting back. Would it be a more normal thing to talk about it otherwise?

Meggan Hayes [01:05:00] I just, I mean, I didn't even in my family, we could talk about anything gospel related. Right. We could talk about the scriptures and we could talk about blessings and all of those things. The things that we didn't talk about were. Well, anything difficult. Right. Like I had a really hard day at school because someone was mean to me. We didn't really talk about that. We didn't talk about our bodies at all. I didn't learn about sex. I didn't know I was going to have a period. And we certainly did not talk about who we were attracted to because we weren't really even just supposed to have. Those feelings are just turned off and then you just turn them on when you get married and it's all very heterosexual. So I don't know if that's my. My growing up was so Mormon. I mean, we moved to Utah when I was 10, so I didn't have a lot of experience outside of that.

Speaker F [01:05:49] And then

Nemo [01:05:51] friends you could look to and be like, well, hang on, they talk to their parents about all sorts of stuff or whatever it might be.

Meggan Hayes [01:05:56] Right, right. I mean, but most of my friends who were Mormon knew they were gonna have periods when they became teenagers. The girls. Right. I mean, they knew that that was something I didn't know. So mine might have been particularly closed off.

Nemo [01:06:08] Gotcha. All right, well, let's have. I think this is our final clip. I think so. Let's hear it.

Mormon Woman on Being Put On a Pedal

Guest [01:06:16] Yeah. I feel like for the longest time I was being set up to be the face for the Mormon Church. They'd have me go to all the youth camps, all the firesides, all the young men, young women's things. Release society and be a speaker and share my story of how inspiring and the miracles. But as a kid, it's a lot to put that pressure on. But then I have to go back to school and still be bullied for just being different and by my own siblings in the same home that also are like, you're not that special, you're just like everybody else. But as a kid, it's a lot of pressure to be put on a stage, on a pedestal, publicly.

Guest 2 [01:06:57] But did you feel used?

Guest [01:07:00] Yeah. And I don't want to be disrespectful to the Mormon Church or to my parents because honestly, they're a big reason of who I am today. But I feel like they did a lot of damage too, behind the scenes that a lot of people don't see or understand. There's nothing inspiring about me. This is just my life.

In the Elevator With Paula Jones

Guest 2 [01:07:19] You said, I don't even consider myself motivational. So you were giving these motivational talks, but you didn't believe that you yourself were motivational.

Guest [01:07:31] I would black out the second the curtains would open or I'd have to go out on stage and I would just do what I was trained to do. And then I would get off the stage and I would start hyperventilating. But then I'd have to turn it right back on to do the meet and greets. I just was doing what I was told and what I was trained to do.

Guest 2 [01:07:47] What you were trained to do? Who. Who was it that had trained you? It was. What between. Was it your parents in the church? Okay. What were you saying on stage? What was your spiel?

Guest [01:07:59] I would tell my beginning story and I would come out on stage. In the very beginning, I'd come out and I'd fall over on stage and the audience would be like, oh, my gosh. And then I would say, sometimes in life we fall down, but we have to decide to get back up. And then I would stand up and then the audience would, oh my gosh. And then I'd go into my story of how my mom got me. And then I would talk about the bullying in life. It's hard, but we gotta figure out who we are. But my talk was written for me by somebody else too.

Guest 2 [01:08:34] And you gave the same talk over and over and over. How many times you think you gave that talk?

Guest [01:08:40] Dozen million times.

Guest 2 [01:08:43] Did your father write that for you?

Guest [01:08:44] My dad wrote it with another person. Really, really thought that I was going to be doing it till the day I died. Pretty much. I'd watch 65 year old men get up on stage and do their spiel and I would see them two months before and it was the same speech.

Nemo [01:09:01] And that's quite telling, isn't it? There is, there is previous for that. We think about the Brad Wilcox incident where he said some things that he had to apologize for, for only for us to discover that actually he'd been giving the same talk for years. And it's only once you kind of got caught. And similarly, like these sorts of firesides, these sorts of events, they do just rotate and rotate.

Meggan Hayes [01:09:26] Yeah, I wanted. I was super curious about. She kept saying, my dad and someone else wrote this for me. I don't know that I. That is the person who I want to know who that was. Was it someone specifically from the church who represented the church, who sat down with her dad and said, your child is going to be an inspiration and we're going to bring her to EFY and, you know, take her around to Relief Society gatherings?

Guest 2 [01:09:55] Who.

Meggan Hayes [01:09:55] Who was that? Who was that? Who set all of this up? And I mean, what type of compensation was offered?

Nemo [01:10:04] Yeah, that's a good question.

Meggan Hayes [01:10:07] Yeah, just some interesting things that she does not address in there.

Guest [01:10:10] Yeah.

Nemo [01:10:11] And did she see any of it?

Meggan Hayes [01:10:13] Right.

Nemo [01:10:15] You know.

Meggan Hayes [01:10:15] Right. Who knows? Yeah, she's very successful now with her own social media and she talks about how before I felt like I was being used because I was told what I needed to say and I, I felt like I was just becoming the person. Like she said, like, I was trained to do exactly what they told me to do. And I just got up there and I did it. And now she's like, I just turn on my camera and say whatever I want to say. And people seem to like it. I'm like, that's amazing. It's just such a big difference between. This is, yeah, this is, this is what's going to build a testimony. So walk out on stage and fall down and then get back up and you know, here's, here's the line that you want to deliver and then wait for the, the laughter.

Nemo [01:10:56] Deliver it. Yeah, yeah. Just being coached through, like, here's how we're going to take your situation and turn it into a faith promoting experience. And I do sometimes wonder about, you know, speaking of talks that are kind of wrote general conference talks and the stories in them, we often will say things like, I'll take, I'll take things that never happened for 500. Right. There's often the, the idea that a lot of these things are made up, but I wonder whether they come from a kernel of truth and if they come from a kernel of truth. I wonder how the people who initially submit these stories or the people who are the subject of these stories feel about their often pretty gruesome stories, stories of death, stories of like, I'll never forget conference. Talking about someone running over their child. Right. Just in conference. Like, how do they feel about that story being used to try and convert people to increased activity in the church or to, you know, try and invoke certain experiences. I wonder how they feel.

Wonders of General Conference

Meggan Hayes [01:11:55] Well, and is that any different than, say, the Ruby Frankie debate about before she was with Jody and when she was braiding her children all over the Internet and making millions of dollars and the way they were being treated behind the scenes and the whether or not that's ethical for children to be used in that way.

Nemo [01:12:16] Yeah. You get into the sort of pageant mums debate. Right. And, and that sort of thing. You know, child stars and often it's the parents that are driving them. And sometimes kids don't see the money and all this sort of stuff. Right. So it's exploitative or it can be exploitative. That's what was being felt here.

Meggan Hayes [01:12:35] Yeah. And are, and are there current people who are still being used by the church in that way? I've actually seen recently this kid popping up on faithful social media. He looks like he's about 7 or 8, I don't know. And he's like, you should read the Book of Mormon. He's like saying all of the pro LDS apologists type things, but he's, he's very young, a kid.

Nemo [01:13:01] But if he's 8, he's old enough to make a eternally binding commitment to join a church that will require him to give 10 of his income for the rest of his life. So, you know.

Meggan Hayes [01:13:11] Right.

Nemo [01:13:11] Mormon ideas around consent aren't always everyone's ideas around consent.

Meggan Hayes [01:13:15] Yeah, good point.

Nemo [01:13:18] So should we get to our bonus stories?

Meggan Hayes [01:13:20] Yep, absolutely.

Scam Alert! Elderly Woman Uses Church Magazines to Hide

Nemo [01:13:22] Cool.

Meggan Hayes [01:13:24] Okay. Scam alert. This came from Madison county, which is in Idaho, where Rexburg is. Close call that could have ended very differently. This week. A son brought a package into our office that had been recovered just in time. His elderly mother had fallen victim to a scam. She, she was convinced to withdraw $25,000 in cash from her bank, hide the money inside magazines, seal everything inside a box to look like a birthday gift, and ship it to the scammers. They even instructed her to pay an additional $200 for expedited shipping to make sure it arrived quickly. Thankfully, her son became aware of what was happening and was able to work with the shipping company to recover the package before it reached the scammers. Now go to go to the pictures. This is not a funny situation, but it gets a little bit comical because the magazines that she used were church magazines and a Costco magazine. It really just doesn't get more Mormon coated than that.

Nemo [01:14:25] Poor woman.

Meggan Hayes [01:14:27] I know.

Nemo [01:14:28] Shame on scammers everywhere.

Meggan Hayes [01:14:30] Luckily, they caught it before the money was sent out. But I, I, this popped up on my Facebook feed and I zoomed in and I was like, that is not the Ensign. And that. It's not even called that anymore. So this has to be quite an old copy. Is that Benson on the front?

Speaker F [01:14:46] No,

Meggan Hayes [01:14:50] I don't know who that is.

Nemo [01:14:52] Oh, Ezra and Florin Benson. So, yeah, it could be his brother, maybe. Is that. Is that what that relation would be? Anyway? Yeah, it's a Benson on the COVID I would, I would, I would imagine.

Guest [01:15:09] Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:09] And then there's just a wad of cash there right next to the picture of Jesus.

Nemo [01:15:14] What manner of teachers ought we to be? Yeah, ones that teach critical thinking skills to old ladies so they don't get caught out by scams. Because it's not her fault, you know, particularly if she is like an older Mormon woman. The. The level of just trust me, bro, that she's gone along with in her life from those around her is probably incredibly high. And so she's probably got a. Sorry, Flora Benson. Yes. Not Florence. We've got Zenda Rawlings coming in correcting us. So. Yeah. Okay, so that is Benson then. Looking.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:50] Okay.

Nemo [01:15:51] I just. I don't think I've ever seen him looking borderline happy before.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:56] Right. Different photo.

Nemo [01:15:58] Cheeky, cheeky little smirk on his face when normally he's really angry because communism is taking over or something. So that's, that's just a new look for me. But yeah, I think to, to a serious point is that, you know, you can imagine an older LDS woman suffering from essentially a lack of ability to kind of discern when people are trying to take advantage of her because kind of been taken advantage of within her community probably for a number of years.

Meggan Hayes [01:16:28] Right. Well, in Rexburg is a very high percentage of Mormons. So if she's been there for a really long time, odds are she hasn't had a lot of interactions with people who aren't members. And she has this implicit trust. Just people are just good and I can just trust them. And.

Guest [01:16:44] Yeah.

Nemo [01:16:45] Yeah. And so now this is. Try and paint her as naive. I don't want anyone to come away with that sort of idea. It's. It's more the. The system that she exists within and the culture she exists within makes her vulnerable to these kinds of things. Yes, we have, we have the next slide, which I'm just looking at. Tell me what we've got going on here.

What Would You Get At McDonald's In Rexburg?

Meggan Hayes [01:17:12] You know, why don't you go ahead and read that, Nemo.

Nemo [01:17:14] Well, okay. That's right. Rexburg is a. This is by Plant Bra at Real Plant. Bricksburg is a college town of 42, 000 people. 23000 are on campus students. Okay. So more than half they're 95. Latter day saint. Weird. Rexburg culture is that the Sabbath ends at midnight, so at 1201, everyone goes to McDonald's.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:48] Yep. There's an accompanying video. Play the video real quick, and then we could. He has proof.

Nemo [01:17:52] Yes, he has evidence. He's got receipts. All right, let's see it. That sounds the same.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:12] It's allegedly at 1201.

Nemo [01:18:14] 1201. They're like, boom, maccas. Let's go.

Speaker E [01:18:17] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:18] The Sabbath is over.

Nemo [01:18:19] Sabbath is over. And so we shall feast. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you very much for all that, Meggan. You've given me a lot to think about. If I visit Rexburg, I would love to go and document this phenomenon.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:35] What would you get at 1201 at McDonald's? That's the real question.

Nemo [01:18:40] Let us know in the comments. What would you get at 1201 in McDonald's? I think I would be getting a box of. So this is the biggest box of nuggets you can get in the UK it's a box of 20. That is the limit to which we will give a single individual a box of nuggets. But the difference between the. The nuggets here in. The nuggets in the US Is the nuggets here are real chicken, of course, like, not even, like, mechanically reclaimed chicken, like, just actual chunks of chicken breast. So, yeah, it would be a box of. It'd be a box of nuggets.

Meggan Hayes [01:19:14] But if you were in Rexburg, they wouldn't be the same chicken. So is that still okay?

Nemo [01:19:18] So what would I get in Rexburg at 1201 is the real question. I think it would be. It would just be. Surprised.

Meggan Hayes [01:19:26] Yeah, I was gonna say there's one Right answer, because Rexburg, Idaho, is known for potatoes.

Speaker E [01:19:31] Yeah.

Nemo [01:19:31] So I'm gonna just have me some local skinny potatoes fried. Do they grow the specific type of McDonald's potato? I would imagine so, because I know it's a specific type of potato. They need to get the long fries. Right. Anyway, yeah, this has devolved into something. But thank you very much, Meggan, for sharing this news.

Guest [01:19:52] My.

This Week's News In The Mormon World

Nemo [01:19:52] What are your takeaways from this week's news before we. Before we wrap up?

Meggan Hayes [01:19:57] Mormonism just continues to be interesting and fascinating, from the trends to what they're doing behind the scenes, you know, because we see the outward stuff, but then to kind of pull back the curtain every once in a while and get to see what the inner workings look like. I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing that. I just. It's fascinating to me.

Nemo [01:20:18] Me neither. So everyone, you can find Meggan as generally unquotable, basically everywhere. Right. And so make sure, you go and do that. Go and check out her work. I'm gonna throw myself up on screen a little bit for a second. Make sure that you can check out my work if you want. It's basically everywhere. I'm Nemo the Mormon. I'm not on MySpace, nor am I on Tumblr, which I've been told maybe is a place I should start to make my presence known. So if you'd like me to get involved with some outdated forms of social media, do let me know in the comments. In the meantime, what you should absolutely be doing is liking this video if you did indeed like it, and subscribing or following or doing whatever you need to do on whatever platform you are listening to and or watching this on so that you don't miss more episodes of the Mormon News Podcast. It's great. It's your weekly wrap up of all things Mormonism. And if I could give you one takeaway, it would be this. It would be check in on your elderly Mormon relations and make sure they're not getting scammed because, you know, if they have this high level of implicit trust, we don't want that being taken advantage of. So in that vein, make sure that you are good to each other, kind to each other, and if you want to support this work, you can go to mormonstories.org donate thank you very much everyone. We will see you next week.