Welcome and Purpose of This Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. This is John. It is January 12th, and we are doing something kind of very different today, this afternoon, something we have never really done before. This is Kara Barilla, and I. Hey, Kara.

Kara Barilla [00:00:19] Oh, hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] Thanks for being here.

Kara Barilla [00:00:21] Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:23] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [00:00:23] I'm sitting in this chair.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] You're sitting in the interviewee chair again?

Kara Barilla [00:00:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:27] How long has it been?

Kara Barilla [00:00:28] Um, February 25th is when I recorded my interview.

John Dehlin [00:00:32] So almost 11 months, right? Yeah, yeah. And we're doing something different. So usually Kara's in the producer seat, I'm in the host seat, and we're interviewing somebody. But today we're taking a break from kind of the normal way that we do things, and we're doing an episode in response to a lot of the hate and the criticism and the smears and all the attacks that we've been receiving, you know, over the past few days, weeks, months, and for me, over the past 16 years. But we're basically doing an episode on what we love about this job and what we hate about this job. And when I say this job, I mean the Mormon podcasting space. And I think we both felt it was really important to begin by talking about our intentions. Right. Because we're not here to say, woe is us. We're not here to, you know, on the one hand, choose to be in the public eye and then to, like, moan and complain about being in the public eye. You know, we're not here to be narcissistic and to, like, draw the attention back to us. But on the other hand, we believe in transparency. We've been attacked and smeared quite a bit lately, and that's just part of the job. And we. We like the idea for those who care about us, who care about Mormon Stories, who care about the Open Stories foundation, or who just care about the space of trying to make a difference in the Mormon world, giving them some transparency and some visibility into what we're doing, not just so they can understand what we're going through, but also so that other people who want to get in the space can kind of know what it's about and maybe learn from some of the things that we've been experiencing. Plus, it's a tiny bit cathartic now I've been monologuing. What are your intentions, Kara, in wanting to do this episode?

Kara Barilla [00:02:29] Yeah, I don't want to ever come across like we're being self indulgent here, but I feel like if I was a Mormon Stories listener, I want transparency and to help feel like the people who are producing the content that I listen to want to also be, be feeling seen and heard from both sides of the angle. What about this job is fun and exciting and what pushes them to keep doing it? What are the benefits of. For donors that keep Kara and John to keep showing up and doing this podcast? But also as a listener, I hope people can take away what makes this job really hard. And never in like a what was me kind of way, but just in the name of like transparency and having just a more well rounded picture of, of what it's like to be just a regular human trying to do a really impossible task, taking on a lot of challenging, you know, bullets flying at us a lot.

John Dehlin [00:03:20] Yeah, yeah. And what's really hard, and we'll get into this, but what's hard about like just the recent round of smears and attacks is on the one hand, when certain things are said or when we react in a certain way, it always elicits questions from our listeners. And we're always stuck between wanting to be transparent and vulnerable, but also not wanting to reward bad actors, not wanting to, not wanting to make things worse, not wanting to add drama. And so it's always a finesse to find a way to, to be dignified, to be kind, to be compassionate, but also to be informative and to respond to questions and concerns, but also not to dignify things that don't deserve being dignified. It's always hard.

Kara Barilla [00:04:12] Yeah, yeah. And we're gonna get into this. But like a certain more Mormon podcast that takes place or somewhere in the wee hours of the middle of the night, let's just say kind of, you know, accused me and you of this idea that somebody might go shoot up BYU one day and it's going to be because of us. Like, that's a weird thing to say. That's a hurtful thing to say. That's kind of a gross thing to say. And never in a million years do I actually want to respond and dignify that with a response. But that's what this episode is going to be. A little bit of just explaining. That's one of probably a thousand things since I started working here last May and John has tens of thousands since he started this podcast of just things that are unfortunate and icky that we have to do just to be able to continue this podcast. And if we can, I guess in my own words, just like kind of letting Mormon Stories listeners in on the goods, the bads, the ups and downs. Just what this space is really truly like.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna ask for those who are, you know, we're live streaming this, which is an extra layer of risk. And I'm gonna ask those who are watching and commenting not to reference any of the specific instances of drama or smearing or attacks because we really do want to be above the fray. We're going to talk more about this later, but we believe that even our worst enemies, I think, believe in some sense that. That they're doing what is right. And even more importantly, we believe that kind of hurt people. Hurt people. And so even though we're not super happy with the people that constantly smear us and attack us, we also want to even hold them compassionately. And we don't want to sort of make things worse either. So that's why we're just saying, please, in the comments, don't mention any specific names or any specific smears. We'll get to the ways. The ways that people try and smear us, and we'll answer, you know, allegations in general form. But I'm just going to ask people not to be calling out even. Even in support of us, calling out anyone's name specifically or mentioning specific smears. And if you keep doing it, we'll probably ban you just because we're trying to honestly be constructive but also be above the fray. So I'm just going to ask that at the outset. You know, anything you want to add to that?

Kara Barilla [00:06:50] Yeah. Sorry for giving a specific already. We are. I go. I know what you mean, though.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] I don't mind talking about smears and generalities.

Kara Barilla [00:06:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] Just not spec people making specific speakers. I'm just going to avoid that.

Kara Barilla [00:07:02] Right. I think that's smart.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Yeah. Okay. All right. So we'll do our best to moderate these comments. We do welcome comments and feedback. I also want to say one more thing. We're not doing this so that people will tell us how great we are. I get so much positive feedback I don't need.

Kara Barilla [00:07:17] We'll get to that. Yeah, like, that's the main part of the good parts of our job. Like, we know that people really appreciate a lot of the stuff that we're doing, and we love the support, but it's not necessarily the reason we're doing it.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] Yeah. We're not doing this so that you all will tell us how amazing we are and. And that that's not what this is about. Okay. Should we dive in, Cara?

Kara Barilla [00:07:34] Let's just highlight a few comments. People telling us how much they love us. Thank you, everyone. In the comments. I don't even have time to highlight everything. But thank you everyone who's being so nice and supportive already. So let's get into it.

What We Love About Podcasting

John Dehlin [00:07:46] Okay. All right. So the first thing we want to do and we're going to spend a lot less time talking about the positives than what the negatives are. Just because like we could talk forever about the positives, but we don't want to come. You know, we don't want to be only negative. So what we're going to do is just quickly talk about the ways that we love our job and wouldn't trade it for anything. Because to be honest, it goes without saying, if we didn't get more positive from this job from Mormon podcasting than negative, we wouldn't be doing it. But it's for me, it's a, in spite of all the pain and suffering we're going to be talking about, it's absolutely more positive than negative. And so let's just start, Cara, by talking about the amazing positives. And the first one I wanted to talk about was the power of the platforms. And I, I Do you want to go first on this one or do you want me to.

Kara Barilla [00:08:40] I'll go first a little bit. Just cuz we, when we had Clinton here the other day and Natasha and we all just had a really good, a good chat about that was the one responding to the Salt Lake Tribune and talking about how the thing that people should be paying attention to if you want to write an article is how intense that is. That this little dinky office in a basement building in Holiday, Utah, with a budget that's not that big and you know, donors and people who believe and support this cause is able to take on, I guess you'd call it a trillion dollar organization or church. I mean that's pretty much what the church is with all of their finances and everything that they're able to do that we're able to utilize YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and that people are supporting us and like caring enough about our cause that we're able to take on the Mormon Church. Like, we know the Mormon Church could do a lot with the platforms they have. They can't get a foothold on TikTok. I don't know if they have a foothold anywhere else, but that's super invigorating to me to know that we get to do that. So what do you have to say on that one?

John Dehlin [00:09:42] Yeah, totally. Like I love the David and Goliath vibe. Like I was raised on David and Goliath Stories of Like Ammon fighting all the Lamanites, you know, that kind of thing. And I just love the idea of the fact that, let's just say our budget's half a million dollars a year. That's kind of what the OSF Foundation's budget has been for a few years now. And, or you take the Salt Lake Tribune or Sunstone or Dialogue or the Mormon History association, whatever, take any long standing institution in this space, including the Mormon Church itself, with just a few years and a half a million dollar budget annually, we're literally able to make significant waves in it. Like you said, a trillion dollar organization. And that has its downside. And we'll talk about that and the things we hate. Yeah, because, you know, if you live by the sword, in some sense, you die by the sword. But it's so amazing, every day I pinch myself and say, you know, an episode we do can lead to immediate change in a corporation that spent almost two centuries ignoring any feedback and squelching and silencing and punishing anyone who dared speak out. The Internet's the game changer. And now, literally, whether it's Sam Young doing what he did, or Kate Kelly doing Kate Kelly doing what she did, or Mormon stories or Jeremy Runnels like some dude or some woman, some housewife in their basement can make a difference that has ripple effects for millions of people. And if you look at the impact of the Mormon Church on the world, with all its power and money, some of the things we do influences millions of people. And it's, it's, it's, it's beautiful and it's rewarding and I'm really grateful for it.

Kara Barilla [00:11:27] Yeah. And to that same point, it, it's weird and hard for people to understand. Maybe the wider structure of the way that churches change and function over time, it's through agitation, it's through outside pressure from the bottom up and the outside in. And the church has a lot of dogma that it doesn't want called out. And the best way for systems to improve and for the church to serve the people of the Mormon Church, to serve people that I love, is by calling out some of the unhealthy structures and dogma to make Mormonism a healthier place to belong to and, and the fact that I could be doing a lot of things with my time and the fact that we do get to see ripple effects from the change. Especially you, John, being in the space for so long, knowing that if you stick around long enough, you'll be able to see lives improve and dogma Reform. That's incredible. There's nothing like that. So.

John Dehlin [00:12:22] Amen. So that's, number one, the power of the platform. You want to go with the second?

The Joy of Interviewing Fascinating People

Kara Barilla [00:12:28] Oh, just the fact that we get to talk to the coolest, interesting people. We have interviewees that come sit in this chair. That's amazing. I feel like I get to.

John Dehlin [00:12:37] Interviewees, right?

Kara Barilla [00:12:38] Yeah, the interviewees. The people who get to sit in this chair and tell their stories. And it feels like I get to download someone's lifetime of good lessons and thoughts and perspectives, and I get to do that for a living. I mean, who could ask for anything better? So we have some amazing, amazing interviewees that sometimes become like my new best friends. Like, so it just. It becomes like a new family. Every interviewee that comes in, that we keep in contact with and catch up with, see how they're doing down the road, and that's. I don't know. What do you think about the interviewees?

John Dehlin [00:13:11] Yeah, yeah. For me, when I think about across the years, whether it's the historians Richard Bushman and Grant Palmer and Michael Quinn, I've got to interview all of them. Whether it's the activists like Sam Young or Bill Real or RFM or K. Kelly or Lindsay Hansen park, you know, did I say Sam Young? Like, all the activists and then just all the families, like, just you and I, the Lang family or the Young family, or, you know, just all the amazing, inspiring families that we get to meet. It's. It's not just a platitude. Like, it's a who's who of game changers in our space of influencers and not influencers in kind of the cheap. Oh, social media influencers, like someone like Shannon Caldwell Montez, just a housewife who did a master's thesis in history, who did an obscure thesis that no one had heard about. We get to be. I. To kind of mix the David and Goliath metaphor. I think of Mormon stories as the sling that, you know, and the Rock are these people's stories.

Kara Barilla [00:14:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:18] And we get to be the platform or just. Or Matt. Matt. Maddie, The. You know, the. The Elder Holland.

Kara Barilla [00:14:24] Matt Easton.

John Dehlin [00:14:25] Matt Easton. Like, we get to be the sling that launches the rock at. At Goliath. And when I say Goliath, it's not the Mormon Church per se. It's not the corporation of the president. It's injustice. It's lack of informed consent. It's pain, it's suffering. It's bigotry. Like, I don't look at us as attacking the Mormon Church. I don't look at us as trying to take the Mormon Church down. I look at us being for social justice, for kindness, for compassion, for truth, for evidence, for informed consent, for families, for mental health. And when we talk about us being the slingshot that launches the stories which are the rocks against David Goliath, that's kind of what I mean. And it's these people that we get to interview and their stories that are just like having a devastating impact on evil, as I see it.

Kara Barilla [00:15:19] Yeah. I mean, Matt Eason is a good example of that, of somebody who wanted to come out during, you know, commencement addresses, valedictorian and byu. And to have, you know, somebody who has such incredible power, like Elder Holland, call him out so directly for saying that he was gay and as a valedictorian and an approved speech. And where's. Where does. Is Matt Easton able to speak up against that kind of. I'm going to call it like a bully, you know, that, that Elder Holland could say that. And so it's not necessarily. I like that you said that. It's not necessarily even the Mormon Church. It's against somebody who has such power and prominence and is able to say something that is so demeaning to an entire community that is so offensive that if somebody were to say that they're gay, just. That has such negative consequences. So how can we undo that bad ripple effect to give Matt Easton or whoever else a platform to say it's okay, it's actually quite fine to be gay and give people in any kind of marginalized community some type of platform. And yeah, going back to the other point about, like, the power of this platform that we could do that. We have built something here that people are drawn in by the stories, whether it's Matt or anyone else who was, you know, wronged in any kind of way, it doesn't really matter. But some giving somebody a microphone that they're able to. Yeah. Speak out against the injustice for not just themselves, but other people in their. Their community, whatever it may be.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] Yeah, yeah. And just to kind of close this point, I. When we talk about the interviewees, I think about some of these historic interviewees like Tom Phillips or Hans and Burgitta Matson or Michael Coe or Robert Rittner or, you know, Christine Jepson Clark or Sandra Tanner, just these people's stories, or again, Grant Palmer or others. These people's stories are going to go down in history as transforming lives. And it's been the honor of my life to be able to help amplify these People's stories. We'll stop.

Long-Format Interviews and Faith Deconstruction

Kara Barilla [00:17:23] And I don't want to miss this super important point to ask you this though, is Mormon Stories is known for these long format interviews. It's not typical of other podcasts. What do you think is so important about keeping Mormon stories in this long format interview style? What is it about stories that you think helps people the most through faith deconstruction or faith crisis?

John Dehlin [00:17:46] Yeah, we've, we talk a lot about. People don't convert to religion, usually intellectually. It's not a rational. It's, it's, it's, it's definitionally an irrational enterprise. They, they, it's a social and an emotional conversion. Almost always, whether you're raised in it or you convert to it, it's because you felt things and because a bunch of people around you helped you feel like it was a good decision to get into it. And so you, if people are gonna find a way to see Mormonism more clearly, to see it for what it is, then, you know, it starts with disentangling all those social and emotional binding influences. You know, there's a saying, you don't, you don't talk someone out of a position logically or with reason that they arrived at emotionally. And so our goal isn't to talk people out of their position, but if people are in pain or if, if Mormonism isn't serving them, then we do want them to disentangle, to be able to figure out what's them to versus what the church is. And so coming at coming, take bringing heat to Mormons with like bombast and rhetoric and monologuing and even facts and evidence is more often than not just going to create a reaction, a negative reaction of the backfire effect of resistance. Stories are so pernicious, beautifully, elegantly, powerfully subversive because number one, they're interesting and number two, they, they, they pull people's emotion. And if you really get hooked on an interesting story and then someone's able to get you to feel the pain, it leads to empathy. And empathy is the most. In my opinion, empathy is probably the most dangerous threat to orthodox religion because once you feel sorry for a woman whose life was wrecked by the church, by someone who was abused by the church, by a person of color that experienced racism, by an LGBTQ person that wanted to die, by a truth teller that got excommunicated for telling the truth, if you're able to feel empathy for those people, well then all of a sudden you're willing to consider all the foundational premises, premises of your beliefs. And that's when you're willing to kind of let everything fall to the floor and then rebuild. So stories are the most powerful way of moving hearts that then allows you to move minds. And that is the strategy that's been the strategy of Mormon stories from the very beginning. It's not about me. It's not about John. It's not about my monologues or my opinions. It's just hopefully when I. When I'm at my best. When we're at our best. When you're at your best, Kara.

Kara Barilla [00:20:33] Right.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] We're shining lights on people's stories. We letting them be vulnerable and real and authentic. And then hearts and minds, Hearts get changed, which then change, changes minds.

Kara Barilla [00:20:46] And it sounds like what you're saying is their empathy creates a certain level of cognitive dissonance in, like, whatever it may be, Mormon person's heart, where they

John Dehlin [00:20:55] know that empathy and then empathy.

Kara Barilla [00:20:57] Empathy is the creating the space of cognitive dissonance where they have to wrestle with if somebody was harmed at the hands of somebody, that maybe the spirit of discernment wasn't what I thought it was. It has to nuance the edges of what you thought the church was and how it actually functions. The more stories somebody is exposed to.

John Dehlin [00:21:15] Yeah, yeah. Because once you really feel for it, for a transgender person or a gay or lesbian person, once you really feel for someone who lost their faith, once you really feel for Sarah Newcomb, who, you know, wanted to bleach her skin as a young Native American Mormon, once you feel that empathy, how can you sit and listen to orthodox Mormon church messages or even read orthodox Mormon scriptures and just be insensitive to and oblivious to the pain and suffering all around? It's not to say that the church only causes harm, but too many orthodox Mormons and definitely the Mormon church leadership appears to be callous to the suffering of marginalized groups, to the pain and suffering, the real pain and suffering of marginalized groups. And it's empathy that leads rank and file Mormons to then say, I can't just stay silent and just sit while these things are being said and taught, while there's so much pain going all around. And so it's the empathy that leads to cognitive dissonance, which then leads to either a change of beliefs or a change of behavior. One of the two.

Kara Barilla [00:22:21] Yeah. And going back to the point we were talking about earlier, there is something that can be done about it, because I was the type of Mormon that I started off with the presupposition that the church is true. And anybody who's hurt within the church is just hurt by a bad apple. That's just like somebody who did something malicious. But that doesn't reflect the actual teachings of Jesus Christ that I know our church is founded on. And this is still a good system. But I think it takes enough stories realizing that there's a certain rottenness to the system, and it only changes through people, like you mentioned, exposing their stories, exposing how they were harmed, and that the system will only improve the more and more we share these stories.

John Dehlin [00:23:00] Yeah, I, I studied Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X and JFK and LBJ quite extensively in the five to ten years prior to starting Mormon stories. And what I learned from Martin Luther King Jr. Specifically is that power never relinquishes itself voluntarily. The government would have never just given women the vote. They would have never just said, you know, it's time to give women the vote, or it's time to give people. It's time to get rid of the Jim Crow laws in the South. Never would have happened. Like, the reason that any significant change has been made in civilization is when people rose up and protested and caused pain and adversity to the people in power.

Kara Barilla [00:23:48] Yeah, agitators. Agitators get stuff done.

John Dehlin [00:23:51] Yeah. And for a long time, when, when I was first in the space, there was this narrative among Mormon scholars, well, don't, don't go at the church directly. The church will double down, and the church, you know, will, will put up the walls if you go at them directly. So be kind, be gentle, be loving, don't be confrontational, don't get the media involved. Work behind the scenes, and you can affect change. And so there are a lot of, like, these progressive Mormon historians and scholars that were always saying, no, no, no, we got to be kind and we got to work behind the scenes. And I, I read history for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. I looked at what happened to Eugene England, Lowell Bennion, T. Edgar Lyon, Juanita Brooks, Fawn Brody, the September Six. Like I realized from my reading of history is the Mormon Church was never going to change by trying to work silently and lovingly from within. That's not how power works. And so getting stories, public, talking openly, getting the media involved, and getting the grassroots to become outraged and then to speak up, I knew that was going to move the needle, just, and, and lawsuits, frankly, if there's two things the church responds to, it's, it's legal or financial pressure or bad public relations or, or really massive grassroots efforts that leads to a decline in. In participation. And so that's been, again, a big part of the strategy for the past 16 years. I had a lot of naysayers in the progressive and scholarly Mormon communities tell me that was the wrong way to go. But I think the proof's in the pudding, right?

Kara Barilla [00:25:35] And I. We were probably. John, you're probably ready to move on, but this is one of the most important things to me is combating dogma. And the church has an authoritarian structure. It's, It's. We try to be nuanced in a way of saying that it can help people, but we can't deny that there's an authoritarian structure to the way that the church is. And dogma can only thrive with secrecy and people not talking about it when the dogma needs to change. And so a lot of the things that Mormon stories over the years has done, in my opinion, is talking about the changes, the changes to the temple, talking about what changes need to happen, what small needle movement there has been like with the temple changes. They get that the church benefits from people thinking things are too sacred to talk about, from confronting problems with church leaders, that they are above reproach. The church needed to change a lot of things in the temple in the 90s. And with the recent changes with women and sexism in the temple, the church benefits from calling things sacred, from calling things secret, from saying, don't talk to each other about these things. Podcasts like this, they need to get things out in the open so that not only do we know that by talking about it, it will change, but that people can feel validated to not feel craz, that if you're feeling an instinct that something's not right within you, but your church, which has, like I said, an authoritarian structure to tell you what is right, that you can feel validated by somebody else's story or me and John or whoever else is on the podcast, that you're not crazy.

Speaking Truth and Breaking Silence

John Dehlin [00:27:00] Yeah, yeah. And just to drive home this last point is, silence is the killer. Silence is the enabler. And for literally almost two centuries, the Mormon Church was able to silence and. And punish and marginalize anyone who spoke out against it. From Joseph, from William Law, you know, to Oliver Cowdery getting excommunicated for calling Joseph Smith on his adultery, to William Law publishing the Navu Expositor, to, you know, the Godbyites with Brigham Young, to the September six, to, you know, BH Roberts. Like, the church has always been able to intimidate and silence its critics, and that changed in 2005. And it's, it's, you know, we're never going back. And so, so speaking up is. Is power now. And the tables have turned and it's a, It's a beautiful day. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And. And it's just so. It's so rewarding to be able to be kind of that. That microphone that lets people lift their voices. And literally we could have done nothing without the courage of our interviewees because they're the ones that have to get vulnerable and tell their stories and face the possibility of divorce from their parents, disowning them from excommunication. You know, I think of like, Lee and Cody Young and so many others that all they did was like, make a couple comments on Facebook, be interviewed and tell their story, and they find themselves excommunicated and cut off from their religion. So much courage in lifting your voice. Nobody will understand the sacrifices of lifting your voice in a high demand religious community. And. But that's. That's made all the difference. So

Kara Barilla [00:28:49] we're only a couple points in. I'm already feeling like, yeah, good.

Creativity and Channeling Pain Into Purpose

John Dehlin [00:28:55] All right, the next point's create. The next point's creativity. I like, I consider myself an artist. Why don't you go and then I'll

Kara Barilla [00:29:01] go like, oh, an artiste.

John Dehlin [00:29:03] I mean, a little bit, A little

Kara Barilla [00:29:05] bit outside of just being able to interview amazing people. Yeah. Like, me and John get to show up and we kind of get to decide whatever we want to do that we think will make the best impact. So if we had a. A job that didn't challenge us and was monotonous or was the same task every day, it'd be really hard to push ourselves to keep going. But we have so much creativity to. What we feel like is important to talk about what donors care about, what the listeners care about, what's in the news right now. We get to think and write. And I can make jokes sometimes, I occasionally do. And just being with somebody that you like, working with, John, me, hopefully you feel the same way that there's a certain level of just like, yeah. Fun. A creative process, start to finish that I have never, have never found in any other workplace. So.

John Dehlin [00:29:55] Yeah. Yeah. Like, like there's different types of art, and I think painting is a type of art and, you know, music is a type of art and acting is a type of art. I think facilitating interviewing people is. Is for me an artistic endeavor. Deciding who'd interview who's a good interview, what are the topics that are going to. Keeping it fresh, what Are the topics that are going to be relevant? What are the topics that are going to be impactful? How to conduct an interview that's engaging. It's just all, it's all. And then how to move the needle. How to move the needle with the microphone and a camera and some lighting and a really low budget. How to, how to like, change a culture. It's a, it's a. For me, there's an artistic component to it that just never, you know, people often say, why do Caddy keep doing this? Aren't you bored? Don't you get bored of the subject matter? You know, don't you want to quit after 16 years? And the answer to all that is yes. And it's, it's never endingly fascinating for me, at least in part because of the creative element. It. There's always room to make things better. If you just look at what we've done in the past year with Gerardo and the cinematography and the better mics and the cameras and then trying to make this all sustainable. Like the, the. The challenge is, is massive. And so it's, it's fun from a creative sense. It's so just challenging in and of itself.

Kara Barilla [00:31:24] I never thought of interviewing as a creative pursuit. That's interesting that you put that wording on it. I think I've loved editing video ever since I was in middle school. So editing TikToks is very creative. And finding a way to make that biggest impact on Tick Tock and making sure that I'm able to tell someone's story really kind of fluidly with the best punch to it. Taking a 10 minute clip and putting it under three minutes sometimes. So there's, there's a lot of creativity in whether we're writing a TikTok that you and I perform together. There's a lot that goes into just doing this job that is the opposite of boring. So I love it.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just have to admit, you've also made this really fun having a creative partner. Like for so long. I did this alone in my basement. And whether it's your, your support, Gerardo's support, Margi's support, it's been so fun to take this from being just a solo effort to kind of like a

Kara Barilla [00:32:17] team effort where it's like, yeah, yeah, then we should do this and then we should write this and just like, yeah. When people ask, what does Marvin Stories have, like for 2022, we have a lot because me and John have more creative pursuits than we probably even have time for.

John Dehlin [00:32:32] Yeah. Yep. All right. You want to read the next one?

Kara Barilla [00:32:37] Oh, just channeling the pain into productivity. I wrote something down, and I'm going to kind of like, half read it because I. John asked me to think of the best and worst parts of this job. And obviously, to me, somebody who just went through a faith crisis maybe two years ago in 2019. And I know that there were people that were there for me that felt like they were my good friends. And to me, that was like Bill Real's podcasts, and knowing that I was going through something really difficult. And Bill was somebody who started a podcast and probably didn't make any money from it, but just did it because he knows what it's like to go through a faith crisis, and he wants to help people in this community. And so it just feels really, really good to know that even in my darkest times, during my faith crisis, that were other people paying it forward, and that I get to do that now is super, super rewarding.

John Dehlin [00:33:35] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Shout out to Bill Real to rfm. And when we talk about paying it forward, for me, it was Sunstone. It was Dan Witherspoon, it was, you know, Michael Quinn, Simon Southern, you know, Richard Bushman, Philip Barlo, like L. Ben in Eugene, England. Like, there's so many people that made even. Even my. Some of my BYU professors, like Ted Lyon and. And Clayton White and Lynn England and Lamontolis and others. Like, there's, you know, there's so many things that led to me being able to do Mormon Stories podcast. All the historians, just the historians, you know, Fawn Brody. There would be no Mormon stories without Fawn Brody. There would be no Mormon stories without Michael Quinn, Simon Southerton, etc, so. And. And again, Sunstone and dialogue, like, all the dialogue articles, like, we really do stand on the shoulders of giants, right? And they helped us through. And so it's. It's so. It's so empowering and meaningful to be able to pay it forward. I'm also just going to say that I was depressed for many, many years during and after my faith crisis. And for me, it was essential. Other people are going to feel differently. Some people just want to drop Mormonism and walk away and leave it forever. For me, I found meaning and purpose in channeling my pain and suffering and my depression into a new purpose in life. And so for me, that's how I got out of my depression. That's how I got out of my funk. That's how I got my sense of meaning and purpose and identity and even spirituality and community. I lost so much when I left the church that, you know, you lose spirituality, morality, identity, meaning, purpose, community, you know, concerns about the afterlife. You lose so much by finding more stories, by finding the podcast, by finding the community, the thrive community. All the friends and family I've developed over the years that's taken this huge lemon of a faith crisis and turned it into infinite lemonade. And it's, it's changed my life in a gazillion positive ways. I, you know, I don't want to like, have a death wish, but like, I often say that if I died today and then if, if I existed afterwards and someone were to interview me up in heaven, like, oh man, you died at age 52. Like, bummer. I would say, oh my gosh, I had the most amazing life ever because I got to do, you know, because I had an amazing wife, amazing kids, and I got to do Mormon stories podcast. Yeah, that's, that's how it is for me.

Kara Barilla [00:36:31] Yeah. Well said. I have, literally the only thing I have to add is I love your lemon lemons into lemonade analogy. It's invigorating to know that, like, I came from someplace really dark not too long ago and have been able to make something productive out of it that helps other people. It's like, well, who could ask for anything better? Like, I get to wake up every day and do this. We should just be constantly high fiving how cool that is.

John Dehlin [00:36:54] And it's. And, and I don't mean to gloat. Like, there's a lot of people that don't have the family situation or the economic situation or the social situation or even the personality to want to do what we do. So I don't mean to gloat. I don't mean to say that this is the only way that the only way to find joy and healing or meaning and purpose is to start a Mormon themed podcast. But it's worked for me.

Kara Barilla [00:37:18] Yeah, I remember sitting in this chair last year and talking about ex Mormon Tick Tock and about how that has kind of changed the landscape of ex Mormon community. Finding people, people becoming content creators kind of overnight and sharing their stories. And I remember feeling like, please, if you want to get into the space and you have the time, energy, resources, and you feel like you could be one extra voice of many going on Tick Tock x Mormon Tick Tock. And I, I feel like experiment Tick Tock has gotten even bigger since then that there, this community, people just left a high demand religion that was their entire life in their community. So Any place that we can just give back, give more people opportunities to share their experiences, feel seen and heard and validated and find new friends and stuff. Mormon stories is one part of that that we're super lucky to be part of. But, yeah, there's. There's plenty of other really great places where people can do that as well.

John Dehlin [00:38:11] Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, the next one is related to what we just said, but I'm going to drill into it just a bit. It's kind of like the cause. And, you know, we get a. We get accused of all sorts of terrible motives. Like, you know, we, you know, just. Just the stuff about, like, we destroy. You know, the most common one I get is that I'm. I exist to tear down people's faith that I like. I must. You know, once I was called a spiritual Jack Kevorkian that I like. I'm like Dracula trying to suck the blood of people's faith, you know, or. Or that, you know, some of the worst stuff just in the past year that we like. We're trying to make money. We're grifters trying to make money off of people's pain and suffering, you know, that we create a faith crisis so that we can then get rich off of, like, trying to, you know, provide the solution to a faith crisis. And it's fine. We're going to have detractors. We're going to spend a whole section talking about that. But let me just be clear for the record about why I do and don't do this. I don't do this to destroy the Mormon Church. I don't do this to take away people's faith. I don't do this for the money. I. I don't do this for the fame. I don't do this for the attention. I do this because I went through a faith crisis in a high demand religion and. Or cult. And it was devastating to me and my marriage and my kids and my family. And I saw that not only was this happening to thousands and thousands of people around me, but that the Mormon Church literally had nothing to help people like us. And so I said, I'm going to. It's just like the guy walking along the shore seeing the starfish in the sand on the side of the beach, and I'm like, hey, I can help that starfish. Oh, wow. I can help that starfish. Ooh. If I use the Internet, I can help 12 starfish at once. And it was all about informed consent so that people could be in Mormonism or join Mormonism with Full knowledge of what they were being a part of because so many of us were, were deceived or misled, either being raised in it or joining it. So it's all about informed consent. It's about alleviating the suffering of those who are in a faith crisis. And then just to see the collateral damage of people leave it, not having any idea how to rebuild. I love this thrive kind of like idea. And all it is is an idea that you can actually heal and grow and thrive after leaving a high demand religion. Because honestly, I wasn't so sure when I left it. I wasn't so sure I'd be able to have a happy, healthy marriage, be a faithful husband, be a good dad, do good in the, you know, become a healthy, moral, happy person.

Kara Barilla [00:40:50] You didn't see the roadmap.

John Dehlin [00:40:52] No, there weren't role models for that. There was just like people who disappeared or who ended up in the gutter, or so it seemed. So those are my motives. You make every, any accusation you want. I'm going to go on the public record and state what my motives are. It's been to alleviate suffering of people like us and to promote healing and growth. And I don't do this for the money, but I need money to do this or I just can't do it. So those are my motives. And it's the most amazing cause I've ever been a part of because I think we make a huge difference. I know we make a huge difference in the lives now of hundreds of thousands of people. Mormon stories now has literally impacted hundreds of thousands of lives. That's directly. And then there's the ripple effect of all the lives that have been helped because of the people we directly helped, which literally gets into the millions. Like, that's amazing. And I'm super grateful for it and I love it. And I think we have one of the best causes ever. And by the way, you may care about LGBT people, you know, you may say, well, I don't care about the religious stuff, but I care about politics, I care about economics, I care about LGBT people or social justice. Well, guess what? When you change members of a conservative, orthodox, high demand religious group, when you help transform them out of unhealthy orthodoxy, you end up making a political difference. You end up making a difference when it comes to LGBT people or women's rights or, or racial rights. Because by and large, the people that leave a high demand, fundamentalist, conservative, religious, traditional move in, in healthy directions, I believe, for the overall good of society. So there's kind of a secondary gain that I'm super proud of. This is the way I make a political difference without wanting to get political, without even stating my political positions, which are actually quite nuanced and bipartisan and, you know, non partisan. I love the way that we make a bigger difference in the world just by taking people out of a fundamentalist religious mindset.

Kara Barilla [00:43:04] Yeah, I agree. I have little to nothing to add to that because you stole everything I wanted to say. The only thing I want to add to that is people. You said that, you know, people change when you take them out of, you know, a very like authoritarian, dogmatic religious structure like that. I would just add to that that you were trained to be like a clinical counseling psychologist and that you're doing a lot more work to the tens of thousands than you could just one on one sitting in an office with somebody. But doing the same type of work where you're showing people what a healthy boundary looks like and what it doesn't look like and how many Mormon Stories listeners have all these epiphanies when they're listening, where they're like, I didn't realize that that was inappropriate to be treated like that. I'm going to put up a boundary to not let myself be with that person or whatever it is that people are recognizing. The more and more that they're coming into contact with what healthy boundaries look like, what informed consent looks like, they're advocating for their self themselves a lot more. Wouldn't you say? Like by becoming a Mormon Stories listener, you're recognizing negative patterns that have affected you negatively and asking yourself, okay, how do I make sure I'm not in that situation ever again to be put under that kind of, under that kind of abuse. So I've grown healthier as an ex Mormon because I recognize the flaws in Mormonism that led to some enclosed like bigoted thinking. And I recognized where I had lacking, I, where I was lacking in critical thinking skills. So Mormonism leaving Mormonism helped me deconstruct what I wasn't given as an adolescent growing up in this church. And now we have guests, we have you, me, Mormon Stories listeners and audiences able to help one another, just like your Luna Lindsay Corbin series, recognize tools of undue influence that we never want to repeat again. And that, that could have nothing to do with religion potentially. It could just be how to thrive and be healthier.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] Totally. If you're paying attention, a faith crisis is going to do much more than get you out of a, an orthodox mindset or a high demand religion. It's going to help you develop the critical thinking skills to help you avoid getting in any other culture, being abused by businesses, by. Right, by yoga, yoga instructors, by, by MLMs or something. There are other therapists, MLMs, like all that stuff. Like, yeah, the, the benefits are huge. Also, I, I, there's a comment from a viewer that I, I haven't clicked on because I can't find it, but people like to say that we start faith crises, right? That somehow we're the ones creating the problem of the Mormon faith crisis. And I'm just going to say I'm not going to take responsibility for that. I think this started with Joseph Smith and his followers in Brigham Young. Like it starts there. We didn't write the Book of Mormon. We didn't claim that Joseph Smith talked to God. We didn't tell Joseph to marry 40 women and other men's wives and 14 year olds. We didn't claim to have the one true church. We didn't claim that the Book of Mormon was, was a historical record of Native Americans. We didn't claim that the Book of Abraham was a translation of Egyptian records. That's what we inherited. And that's the reality of, of the Mormon history and of Mormon truth claims. All we're doing is we learned that, that all those assertions were not true or they were damaging or harmful. We didn't create LGBTQ suicides. We didn't create the misogyny within Mormonism. We didn't create the racism. We didn't say the things that Brigham Young said about people of color. We didn't create a discrimination policy that, that excluded people of color for over 150 years. We didn't create any of that mess. All we did was awaken to the mess and then speak publicly about it. But that's not on us. Speaking the truth isn't on us. The faith crises. It's not on us. Even if people learn about it through us, which I think they rarely do, I think most people learn it from the gospel topics essays these days, a poll once, or from CES letter or, or just from like the Internet. We don't start the faith crisis, but we, but we help be there for people once they get into it. But I will never accept the claim or the accusation that we start the faith crisis that's on Joseph, that's on Brigham, and that's on all the prophets, seers and revelators from then until now. Who knew that the history that we were being taught wasn't factual. Who knew that there were problems with the, the scriptural foundations and with the truth claims and who decided to punt the football down the road and, and continue the misleadings and the, the deception.

Listener Impact and Saving Lives

Kara Barilla [00:48:00] Right on.

John Dehlin [00:48:01] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [00:48:02] And I make that into a TikTok for you.

John Dehlin [00:48:03] Okay.

Kara Barilla [00:48:04] And all I wanted to add to that is that reminds me of the response video that we did to Jacob Hess where we were being accused that it's these podcasters in their basements that have been lying to you and thrusting you into this faith crisis. And you had this great response back then that you kind of just echoed now that it's like the church had these, you know, the secret Mormon meetings of 1922. 1922. They were put on record knowing that these truth claims were, were bunk, you know, and they've hidden so many things from church publications, and it's only now through enough pressure, enough the Internet rising, that we're able to actually let people know what their religion stands for has taught what these supposed prophets who are not supposed to be challenged, the conflicting statements, the recognizing how things have changed over time, like when they're confronted with civil rights movements or tax exemption status. It's just so important to show the public what Mormonism is. Is that fair to say? What it always has been that the Church would rather us not talk about. And it's super unfortunate if that thrusts somebody into a horrible faith crisis, which I will never minimize. That's why we do this. It's a horrible thing to be thrust into, but it's because of the Church's lack of transparency and our push for transparency. So it's really a mismatch of where the blame is when, when people get into that space. It's really weird to me.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] And it reminds me of like shooting the messenger, like the king shot the messenger that had bad news for the King. It reminds me of the way companies punish whistle whistleblowers for, for, for saying the king, you know, the king has no clothes. Right?

Kara Barilla [00:49:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:53] And it reminds me of blaming victims of sexual assault. Like, well, you were wearing the wrong clothes and so you got sexually assaulted. Or, or, you know, you said something suggestive or you looked the wrong way. Like you don't blame victims. And I believe the church leaders are sincere. I believe they've been trying to do their best. I don't think they're evil people. I don't see them all as lying, conniving people. But there is zero doubt that over the past 120 years they knew better and, and they chose to punish truth tellers and hide the factual Truth, there's no question about that. So we're just speaking the truth now? We're not causing the problem. The problem was called caused long before us. We're trying to clean up the problem. We're trying to fix the problem. We're not creating the problem.

Kara Barilla [00:50:40] Right on. Yeah. And back to the point. I just want to make sure I have two other thoughts on my brain. I want. This is going to be a long podcast. Sorry, John, you're not used to such long podcasts.

John Dehlin [00:50:49] I told Margi seven o', clock, so we've got some time.

Kara Barilla [00:50:51] Okay, good. It just also reminded me that the church doesn't. Don't they have a quote about how like the enemy of the church is like the intellectuals, the feminists and the.

John Dehlin [00:51:01] Yeah, yeah. Boyd K. Packer once said, the three great threats to the church are gays. The three great enemies of the church are gays, feminists and intellectuals.

Kara Barilla [00:51:11] And as a Mormon, if I was a faithful Mormon, I would be terrified that my church is afraid of like, knowledge of, afraid of like women's rights and afraid of like differing sexual orientations threatening the nature of like this predestined family from the past earth life and stuff that would awaken a lot of people. And I thought that there was something in there about them not being interested in any kind of psychological aspects. The church being very like anti psychology for a long time.

John Dehlin [00:51:38] Oh yeah.

Kara Barilla [00:51:39] Which is kind of like, like, which is almost like a competitor to religion but with some healthier aspects that are based on like science and reason and that like improve over time. And like one at one point. Right. Like the best practice for psychology was to say that being homosexual was in the. What's it called? The dsmr.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] Dsm.

Kara Barilla [00:51:58] Dsm, yeah. Okay. What's dsmr? That's probably some reference I should delete from my computer. Anyway. I'm just kidding. That was. Anyway, so like that at some point religion and science conflicts. And it is frightening to me how many people are still comfortable going with like this authoritarian religious structure when we are trying to improve. And at any point that science and intellectuals and people are getting things wrong on that aspect, we still want to course correct. We want to take that out. We don't want to practice conversion therapy anymore. We want to see where the harm is done and then minimize it. Whereas the Mormon Church doesn't have a real vested interest in doing that. They have a vested interest in keeping it quiet. And we want to stay on that side of the intellectuals, the gays and the feminists.

John Dehlin [00:52:47] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [00:52:48] Of like, scientists and the scientists.

John Dehlin [00:52:50] Right. Yeah.

Kara Barilla [00:52:51] I was calling scientists intellectuals.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] Oh, it's both.

Kara Barilla [00:52:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that.

John Dehlin [00:52:55] People of color and people of color. Marginalized groups.

Kara Barilla [00:52:58] Yeah. That the church is. If they said that, that's almost like they've. That's a weird thing for them to ever have said to. To put that line in the sand of we're going to be on this side and they're going to be on that side. I think that should wake up a lot of people as well. And then the last thing, when you were talking about just people being able to tell their stories and recognize what's healthier for them in setting boundaries and understanding what healthy consent looks like, having these discussions, one of the most passionate things that I. That the church raised me in is they sharpened the sword to be super passionate about raising healthy kids. Everything about the church is so family oriented. And when you recognize the church is a place that can tear apart families, if you are not able to fit within a certain box of a sexual orientation and. And gender identity or you're not able to fit within a certain mold that the church wants for you, that you're going to be separated from your families. I was raised as a Mormon to really care about families. And that instinct that's almost like. That's like a. That they. They placed in me. It's like a seed that grew as a Mormon, but that's still alive and well within me, that I want to see families flourishing. And one of the best ways to do that is to not tell people that if they can't live within the Mormon mold, that they're going to be cast out of their family, they're going to be rejected. To just really question that system, if that's even. Is it true and is it healthy? It's neither of those things in my mind.

John Dehlin [00:54:25] Right.

Kara Barilla [00:54:25] So calling that out as much as possible. But you know what I mean, John? Like that. That instinct is an instinct that the Church sharpened as a sword, and they can't control how I use it now. You know what I mean? Like, I care so much about families. I care so much about keeping families together and healthy and parents raising healthy kids who understand consent, who understand how to be a good ally, who understand a million things that the Church never taught us. And that's what I think is the beauty of people telling their stories on Mormon Stories podcast and then discussing whether or not these things are true or whether they're not. They're productive for a healthy society and a healthy family.

John Dehlin [00:55:01] Yeah. Yeah. And you Remind me kind of what my initial impetus was to start this, because I looked around and I said, oh, my gosh, people are literally dying. Like, we're talking about back in my Microsoft days, 2001, when Stuart Mattis went to the steps of his local Mormon church building in California and shot himself with a note on his chest that said do not resuscitate. When I saw some of my friends at Microsoft literally getting divorced, having their marriages and being alienated from their children simply because they told the truth and lost their faith, I realized we are, we. People are dying. People are dying and families are being destroyed. Marriages are being destroyed. Families are being torn apart. And so when people like, say, hey, well, John and Carrie, you can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone. You know, it's like all we are are just these pathetic, you know, people that just, like, want to troll the church. That's not what's at our core. We are literally in our minds. Maybe we're mistaken, but in our minds we're. We're saving lives and, and strengthening and saving families. And it. I don't think it's just in our minds because people literally. I get five to 10 emails or direct messages a day where people and I have been for, for 16 years, 10 messages a day saying, you saved my life or you saved my family. That's why we do this. It's not to troll the church. It's to save lives and save families. Now, if you think we're not doing that, or if you think we could do a better, that or a more effective job, I want to hear that. But if you want to dismiss us as just kind of like trolling the Mormon Church because we're so pathetic, because we have nothing better to do, I think you don't understand what's, what motivates us.

Kara Barilla [00:56:55] They haven't awoken to the empathy yet. They haven't watched a Mormon Stories episode maybe yet. They're not aware of the harm that it's done. And I give people, I get, I have empathy for those people too. They are also victims of a system that has closed off their ears and told them not to listen to people outside of the tribe. Um, we are tribal creatures. And that's really helped me understand leaving Mormonism, why it is so difficult for people to empathize with people outside of their in group. And it's really, really, it's really unfortunate that people can be so dismissive, but they just need to awaken that this is still, we're still in the Same tribe, you guys. We're not only part of, like, the same human race, but I still have a lot of love for Mormons and Mormonism and the culture that I come from, and I want to see it thrive and be a healthier place to belong to.

John Dehlin [00:57:41] Amen. Okay, the next one we have is the listeners, and that's the final positive we have the final thing that we love. Do you want to start. Start with that one? Kara?

Gratitude for Community Support

Kara Barilla [00:57:54] I just am looking, I'm looking at the Streamyard thing right now. I just want to like, run like a marathon runner and just be like to everyone in the comments right now and just like give them all high fives. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [00:58:04] Like that.

Kara Barilla [00:58:04] Oh, no. All I want to say is that listeners and donors and people who listen regularly, especially just people who really enjoy this content and give us positive feedback that it's helped them, that it's improved their lives, that means the world that we're. We, we hope that we're making a change. But when people tell us and are giving us, you know, positive feedback that we done a good job that day, listeners are incredible. So we can't do this without just a huge amount of supporters. So thanks, guys.

John Dehlin [00:58:35] Yeah, yeah. And I'll just add what I mean by that is like, I think about what it takes to leave a high demand religion. It takes courage, it takes strength, it takes vulnerability, it takes integrity, it takes a certain level of intellect. And when I think about the average ex Mormon that I interact with, I mean, I'm sure there's ex Mormons that just leave the church. I'm sure there are some ex Mormons that just leave the church. Not to fulfill the stereotype, but there's probably some people who stop going to the church because they want to drink beer or they want to goof around or they don't want to work hard. Like, I'm sure in theory there's a few people out there that leave the church for those types of reasons. What I experience is that the average person that comes to me is intelligent, strong, courageous, honest, and is. Is heroic. Because I really think something that I think each of you who have left a high demand religion should do is literally pat yourselves on the back for doing something heroic. Extremely difficult. Because there's so many people right now who either have the gut feeling that it's not true or, or that it's harming people, or they literally know that it's not true and it's harming people. But for whatever reason, whether it's their personal interests, their motivations, the lack of privilege or just a very difficult situation they don't want to, they're uncomfortable with, or they literally can't leave it. So if you have crossed that threshold into being the type of person that, that has the strength and the courage and the conviction to leave, you've already passed this threshold of quality, of person that demands my respect. And that's just not theoretical. So many ex Mormons that I've met are just amazing human beings. They're not, they're not weak, they're not feeble, they're not quote, sinners, they're strong, smart, courageous, capable, generous, kind, loving people. There's a reason that Marlon Jensen admitted that the Mormon Church is losing its best in its brightest. That's who most of the people are that I interact with. There are some exceptions, we're going to get to that. But for the most part I, I have the most amazing community and I have to be careful because the sign of a cult is any group that sort of says that it's exceptional and better than everybody else. So I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that ex Mormons are better than orthodox believing Mormons or the rest of the world. And I'm going to say it's a special thing to do what many of you have done. And so that's what makes me love. And maybe it's just that you're like me, but I don't think so. I think we're an amazing group of people without being cultish and exceptionalistic. What do you think?

Kara Barilla [01:01:35] Yeah. Can I say something super bluntly?

John Dehlin [01:01:38] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [01:01:38] I said it on a tick tock live stream earlier today. I'm going to say it again that it's not only did you. Is it all of those things that Mormonism is really difficult to leave and it has a lot of things that bind a person in but it takes a certain type of person who recognizes that Mormonism, it's anti intellectual right now in the new year we've started the Sunday school lessons. We're talking about Adam and Eve, we're talking about a young earth. There is so much, so many people who are sitting in church knowing full well that they are smarter than this, that what they're being taught at church is, it's bunk. It's not true that Joseph Smith doubled down on ideas about Adam and Eve and all of these younger things. And there are so many people who are seeing that like I did. I went to three hours of church and I thought I could be reading a book right now instead of three hours. And there's something that I am too good for this. This atmosphere, this. This confine that I've been put in. And it takes so much courage to say, I actually am better. I've been told by my whole community, this is where truth is. This is where I'll get to be with my family again. Whatever instinct I have that feels uncomfortable, whether it's being a woman or any other type of marginalized person that sits in church and says something feels off, it is so difficult to say, I am better than this place. Come hell or high water, I have to leave. Come whatever may, whatever happens, I have to be authentic, that I'm better than this. And that's what I feel like. A lot of Mormon Stories listeners are that they're deconstructing a lot of stuff, things that they were told growing up. Lies about themselves, lies about marginalized communities, lies about people who are not in the church. Deconstructing lies in all of those arenas that takes so much mental effort. And Mormon Stories listeners are the ones who say, sign me up. I want to listen to nine hours of a podcast every single day. Like, Mormon Stories listeners are hardcore. They care. They're smart. They know that they were sold a lie and that they're better than it. So that's the most unnuanced take you'll get out of me for, like, a month. But I love you guys.

Transitioning to the Hard Parts of the Job

John Dehlin [01:03:44] All right, well, we're an hour in, and we covered six bullets of what we love about the job.

Kara Barilla [01:03:50] I feel so pumped. I just want to end it here and be like, the job's great. No downside. That's not why we're doing this, though.

John Dehlin [01:03:56] Well, I think it's important that we covered that so that people don't think that we're just whining and complaining because we really do have a good gig. But this gig is also brutal. And that's the main impetus for this episode, is now we're going to say all that, and now we're going to switch to the things we hate about this job, the things that are brutal and painful and sad and horrible about this job. And as we do this, we are going to be addressing many of the attacks and the smears and the criticisms that we're experiencing this week, last week, over the past month, over the past year, and for me, over the past 16 years, because we believe in transparency, but we want to do it in a way where we're not rewarding the bad actors or causing more drama. And I Think we're going to be able to do this without causing more drama? Are we the drama, Cara? Are we the drama?

Kara Barilla [01:04:51] Am I the drama? Apparently my nose is the drama. My nose is the drama. That's a reference to a tik tok that I had this week. You guys go look it up. It's good anyway. It is. No, I don't think we're the drama. Yeah, I. I want to suck drama out of this space. We came from Enough drama in Mormonism. I want to make this a fun place to belong to now that we. But we have some hard stuff to address, too. This. This space has a lot of traumatized people in it, to be honest. And people don't always necessarily unpack that before stepping into this arena.

Navigating Ex-Mormon Community Criticism

John Dehlin [01:05:24] So you're jumping into point. Our first kind of point.

Kara Barilla [01:05:27] I thought we were going number 13.

John Dehlin [01:05:28] We are. We are.

Kara Barilla [01:05:28] Yes. Yeah. Jumping in.

John Dehlin [01:05:30] Yeah. So, like, so you. Do you want to tell the story of Lindsay, when Lindsay Hansen park, the advice she gave you? Yeah, you know, I don't. You don't have to if you don't want.

Kara Barilla [01:05:37] No, I was planning on it.

John Dehlin [01:05:38] Okay, go ahead.

Kara Barilla [01:05:39] That I love Lindsay, and I finally got to meet her at Sunstone during the summer, and Lindsay Hansen park of polygamy Sunstone fame. And she kind of pulled me aside and asked me how I was doing because it's the first time that we met, and it's like, woman to woman, sister to sister in this space. Like, Kara, how you really doing? And I was like, I'm actually doing really well. I was like, I.

John Dehlin [01:06:03] What's the problem? All.

Kara Barilla [01:06:04] All things considered. I was like, all things considered as a woman in this space, I'm actually doing okay. She's like, okay, because we never need to talk to somebody. Just like, let me know. And she said one of the truest, best advice that I've gotten since I started doing anything in this space is she's said that ex Mormons are more difficult sometimes. Maybe her words were like, just more difficult generally because of the trauma that they bring into this space. And you have to not take things personally because there are a lot of hurt people on this. Of Mormonism. And where I work, I work with ex Mormons mostly. I'm interacting. I'm dming. I'm. Mormons don't usually interact with a lot of the stuff that I have to say. And if they do, it's pretty obvious who they are. But an ex Mormon who can feel like a. A friend and an ally sometimes can catch you off guard. By saying things, hurtful things, things that are a them problem and not a me problem. And Lindsay giving me a heads up very early on, this is maybe in July that, that, that was good advice back then that there's still a lot of trauma in this space and to be really cautious. Cautious.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll, I'll add that sometimes I joke that we kind of operate in the land of the broken toys because, because really it's, it's almost like definitionally traumatic to be raised in a high demand religion. Even me that looks back on my time as a Mormon very fondly with a lot of gratitude.

Kara Barilla [01:07:33] Yeah, me too.

John Dehlin [01:07:33] I was abused. I was spiritually abused for sure on several occasions. What were you going to say?

Kara Barilla [01:07:41] I was just going to say anything where you. Two main problems where somebody speaks for God and then also tells you that it's not you receiving that revelation for God, it's somebody else most of the time. And if you don't follow that authoritarian revelation that is outside of yourself, you might be separated from your family. Full stop. That spiritual abuse in my book. And that's, that's the foundation I was raised on, no matter how many healthy, positive experiences. I had such a good time in Mormonism, I really did on a 90 of the fronts. But it takes a lot of reflection to look back and say this entire structure was a problem. But yeah, go on with what you're gonna say.

John Dehlin [01:08:19] And then you add to that like I was one of the lucky ones because I was never like really harassed by a bishop. I never experienced physical or sexual abuse in the church. I had supportive and kind parents and siblings. I didn't lose my livelihood. I didn't lose really the most important family relationships. And I was a white, straight cisgender male in the church. Like the church was literally made for me. So if you look at, if you look at the fact that pretty much every single ex Mormon was abused, at least spiritually, but oftentimes physically and sexually and emotionally and psychologically and familially and that people have, have lost so much to make that journey out. It's like Frodo. I don't know if you remember the Lord of the Rings at the very end when it's like Frodo and like Gandalf and you know, several of the other people that were ring bearers. I don't know if you remember the, the end of, of that trilogy care if you even saw it. But like they end up like, like the scars are where they bury. They carried the ring and they end up like really acknowledging as they kind of sail off into the sunset that they're always going to be broken on some level and that they're never going to quite be the same. And that's the, that is literally the pool that we're swimming in.

Kara Barilla [01:09:42] Right on. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:43] And so hurt people. Hurt people. And so we live in this community where we, we've, we don't want to ever be abused again. People of an institution that we really trusted and loved violated our trust. We've lost so much. We don't ever want to be a part of another cult. And so that just makes this community of like distrust of anger, of trauma, of backbiting, of viciousness, of, you know, a scarcity mentality. That's just a brutal community to swim in. You're just always waiting for someone to be venting their spleen on a comment you make on a post you make on a podcast you record. And it's not to say that people aren't amazing. It's just to say that so, so many hurt and traumatized people make it a very, very difficult community to exist in. And that's, that's the first thing that I don't love about this space is that everybody is a, Everybody could warrant multiple PTSD diagnoses and, and we're all re traumatizing each other as we just try and, and pick up the pieces and, and move forward.

Kara Barilla [01:10:54] Unfortunately, yes, I wish it was different, but there's a fallout from. This guy in upstate New York started this religion back in the 1800s and now my parents don't like me very much. So we have to. There's a whole wild world that we're swimming in and it's. I, somebody just send, said in the comments, I just want to address this real quick. Somebody said, you guys are acting like you think that you're better than Mormons. And I think that's, that's way too narrow and small minded of the way that I would ever phrase it. I never would say I'm better than anyone because we're all products of our genetics and conditioning and I don't even, personally, I don't even believe in free will. So I feel like everyone just does the best with the level of consciousness that they're at. I don't know how would you respond to that accusation?

John Dehlin [01:11:40] That, and it's just an example of what we have to deal with because like instead of people, the default isn't necessarily listening with a full heart, developing empathy because none of us learn to develop those muscles as Mormons.

Kara Barilla [01:11:54] Right.

John Dehlin [01:11:54] So it's just like people are always throwing. And it's not just ex Mormonism, it's like the Internet in general. Like, this people's default isn't to really listen and try and understand and be kind and compassionate. It's just to, like, level, you know, accusations and, and try and take people down. So I don't know. I'm, you know, that's enough for me. It's just a traumatized, traumatic community to begin with, with amazing people. I've already said how amazing the people can be. But it's also just we're all super broken and it's, it's oftentimes I feel like the lobsters in a pot and the pots boiling. And instead of like us cheering people who escape the pot, in this ex Mormon community, too often the impulse is to pull people right back down in the boiling water instead of celebrating their successes.

Kara Barilla [01:12:43] Yeah. And to that point, I want to address something really head on, is that, you know, like when you hear interviews with child actors and they say one of the most difficult parts is that people were watching them grow up through all their ugly stages, through everything that they had a camera on them from the time they're a child growing up. And nobody likes that. And we, we understand and we empathize with child actors when they say that. There's a certain level of scrutiny that all of us ex Mormons, whether we're posting something that could be termed quote, unquote, like, problematic, and it's because we came from a very conservative religion. And like I said, I think that we all can recognize that we need to have more empathy for one another as we're learning and growing. John and I are like, yes, in the public eye, but whether you go to ex Mormon Reddit or any community page, there's a lot of holdover of problematic ideas. I actually really hate that word. I want to think of a better word of ideas that are not fruitful and useful that people still hold onto. And I pray to the Jesus that I don't believe in, but I pray that people can see that and be nuanced and empathetic as people are in this space, whether they're one week out or five years out, to have empathy and space for people who are growing out of some ideas that they had instilled in them and had indoctrinated into them. Indoctrination is a hell of a drug, you guys. So we as nice Mormons need to be super patient with each other as we unlearn and deconstruct some things.

John Dehlin [01:14:07] Yeah. And you also, you just made me remember that like it's not just that we've been traumatized by a high demand religion, but like the culture of Mormonism. There's so much passive aggressiveness in Mormonism. There's so much unwillingness to talk candidly about difficult subjects. So much discomfort with direct, respectful conversation because it's all about obey the patriarchy and, and sort of like conform or get kicked out that we, we come up by it honestly. This passive aggressiveness and vindictiveness that we kind of learned in Mormonism, we just bring to post Mormonism. We haven't learned healthy boundaries, we haven't learned healthy communication. We haven't learned constructive communication skills. And so like, how would we even know to like talk to people directly, have healthy conversations, you know, have, have the best intentions and, and assume the best intentions, good faith assumptions about people. Where would we have learned that? It certainly wasn't in the Mormon Church. Right.

Kara Barilla [01:15:08] You know, let's take a quick word from Deborah. Can you read that? It's actually too small on my screen.

John Dehlin [01:15:14] Yeah, it says yes. You guys are hitting the nail on the head right now.

Kara Barilla [01:15:19] Just wanted to check in. Feeling good.

John Dehlin [01:15:21] Deborah.

Kara Barilla [01:15:22] I could do this kind of just like John and Cara chit chat about the things that are on their mind.

John Dehlin [01:15:27] I want 2022 to have more of that. Kara, if you'll sign up for it, I'm in.

Kara Barilla [01:15:31] All right. We, we literally decided to do this live last minute. So far a good choice. Yeah. And then the other thing is you guys hurt people. Hurt people. John and I just described. We are hurt people and we didn't mean to hurt Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real. I just recognize that it's Wednesday night.

John Dehlin [01:15:51] I have an idea. What we're gonna do is at 6:15.

Kara Barilla [01:15:53] Shut up.

John Dehlin [01:15:53] Literally gonna tell everybody to switch and go watch that.

Kara Barilla [01:15:56] I think somebody just said that they were watching just now. I think it starts to suggest. I think they just said that they were watching with Lindsay right now. You guys tell me if it's on.

John Dehlin [01:16:04] And what we're going to do is tell everyone to go watch Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real. They deserve. What if we're too enticing?

Kara Barilla [01:16:09] What if we're too good?

John Dehlin [01:16:11] No, no, go watch Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real as soon as they go live and then come back to us later because we did not do this intentionally. This is literally just like. This was literally when we were able to do it. True, Cara.

Kara Barilla [01:16:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was Making a joke that hurt people. Hurt people. We did not mean to have this in the same night. We love Mormonism live.

John Dehlin [01:16:30] Yeah, love to RFM and Bill. Real support them first and then support us second. Okay. All right. Should we go to the next one?

Kara Barilla [01:16:38] Right on. Yeah. What else?

The Overwhelming Workload and Concentration of Effort

John Dehlin [01:16:39] Okay, so the next one is. And this is something that people might be able to imagine, but I don't think you really get this until you are living in it. And that's the, the relentlessness of being, being in the post Mormon social media space and being a Mormon podcaster and tiktoker and content creator. So Kara, I think you really feel for this one, so I'm going to have you take this one first. Like does this job ever sleep?

Kara Barilla [01:17:13] This job never sleeps. This. We could talk. Oh my gosh, talk about it. Go to the show. I don't want to make this so long.

John Dehlin [01:17:19] But voice Aaron's concerns.

Kara Barilla [01:17:21] I mean, I am a mom. I have three young kids that are very taxing and difficult and, and I have a seven year old, a five year old and a one year old. And I have a husband that also probably needs attention too. So the type of job that John and I do, it's not just podcasting. It's also, you know, so much of the community, it's reading dms, it's, it's emotionally modern comments, it's, it's an emotional labor that will never be seen in any either of our bank accounts. And also it's not something you can open your front door and just leave here at our studio. It carries with me. It's on my mind. It's in my heart, you could say too. And it's an all 247 kind of consuming job. And at any point in the last few months. I started working here in April or May and at any point where I was like, hey John, just like, actually just like don't text me after hours, that's never worked because there are things that need to be done and there's fires that need to be put out and it's, it is such an all consuming job. And then just the actual sitting here interviewing sometimes like the lang interview is 11 hours start to finish in one day with like a few snack breaks and a few pee breaks here and there. It's like a physically exhausting job. And then I've told my husband on days where we're actually interviewing on the podcast, I can't be a mom that night. Like I physically am gonna have to come home and go straight to bed. Cause my Brain is fried. I can't hold a conversation. I can't put words together. Sometimes at the end of the day, it is that physically, mentally exhausting. Have I said enough? I could keep going.

John Dehlin [01:18:55] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [01:18:56] What else you got, John?

John Dehlin [01:18:57] No.

Kara Barilla [01:18:57] Your turn.

John Dehlin [01:18:58] Like. Like for the longest time, I would come home. This isn't a job where you just clock out, where you clock in and clock out. This is a job where when you go home, whether it's the pain of the people that you just got through talking to, who you're trying to save their marriage, or you know, somebody's. So you got some email where someone's potentially going to die by suicide or like, there are friends of yours that need help or everything's going to unravel, or there's the smear where you've just got called on YouTube as being a pedophile or a rapist or a sexual predator, or, you know, you know, friends. People that you thought were your friends are now trying to destroy you on several platforms simultaneously. You don't just go home to dinner and, like, shut all that off and then just like, hey, honey, how was your day? Hey, kids. Like, you have to constantly fight the ruminations and the reflections and the constant pressures of this job. And I, I don't think that's unique to being a Mormon themed podcaster. I'm sure there are lots of jobs where it's hard to shut the work off. I think anyone who's an entrepreneur, you know, knows that you don't own your business, your business owns you. But we are entrepreneurs. We're social entrepreneurs. This is a small business and we live and die by the support of our donors. And with any social media attack that comes up, all of a sudden, your business could be at risk. And so you just don't shut this off. And it's really easy to be distracted for your spouse. It's really easy. For so many years, I was so busy trying to save the Mormon ex Mormon world that Margi was like, what about me? Do you care about me? What about my needs? And it took so, so long for me to realize I had to really take care of my, my spouse and children that that had to be good. And even then, I still fail. And so this is just a sleeplessness and. Or exhaustion are with us 24 by 7. It's a 24 by 7 job that you really can never put down. Have we said enough?

Kara Barilla [01:21:06] Yeah. This is why when John asked me to do this episode, I was like, I don't want to get in, like, this well, with me thing, that's why we started up front with all the things we really like. And I don't ever want to complain because we do have such a great job, but it's a weird feeling to, to leave Mormonism. Like we said, we're giving back. We're in a healthy place where John and I are able to, to have the mental ability to do this. We have the spoons and the bandwidth most days to do it, but we're human beings too, that sometimes the bandwidth wears out and you need a little bit of a mental breakdown here and there. And yeah, sometimes it feels like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders and if you read our inboxes, you would understand why.

John Dehlin [01:21:44] Yeah, yeah. We have a comment from one listener. The Kindle Diaries writes, teachers also can't really clock out. And yeah, I want to just reiterate, in no way are we saying that we're the only ones that have a job where you can't really mentally or, or psychologically clock out. But I also want to say I've had one of the most demanding. You know, for six years I was a therapist, you know, a clinical and counseling psychologist. And that type of job is, is notorious for burnout because you're always carrying people's, listening to people's pain and difficulties and carrying their pain and difficulties. And what I can say is that is exhausting and is taxing as a full time therapist is being a therapist and a psychologist has nothing on being a Mormon themed podcaster in terms of exhaustion. So maybe we've beat a dead horse, but it's. I, I know it's one of the biggest issues that, that you and Aaron face.

Kara Barilla [01:22:40] Yeah, yeah. How many, how much sleep do you get on average a night, John?

John Dehlin [01:22:43] I mean, it's broken up four to five hours, honestly.

Kara Barilla [01:22:47] Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't do that.

John Dehlin [01:22:49] And that's a combination of how hard I'm always working and how hard it is to sleep with, with everything we're carrying. And we're not bragging like, I don't want it to be this way. That's just the reality. I've been doing this 16 years and that's my life. And you've been doing it almost a year. This was yours as well, right? Yeah.

Kara Barilla [01:23:11] Yeah. Remember when John was talking about earlier about how, like, we would, we don't want to make money, get rich off of thrusting people into a faith crisis. It would be the happiest day of our lives if no one had to go through a faith crisis. Anymore. Oh my gosh. We never had to care about this.

John Dehlin [01:23:27] Oh my gosh.

Kara Barilla [01:23:28] But it's unfortunately a problem the church created that we are here to pick up the pieces of, and we do it willingly. But sometimes it's hard.

John Dehlin [01:23:35] I mean, I love this job, but there's so many other things that would be super fun and way more lucrative if, if there weren't some of these positives, the, the brutality of this job would. Would not be sustainable anyway. All right, the next one is really significant. We put it down the list of importance because in theory, these are in reverse order of difficulty. But I needed to put this one where I'm putting it because so many other things build on it. But I'm just going to say it. It's the difficulty of achieving financial sustainability in this space and care. If it's okay, I'm going to give a little bit of history. Is that all right? Okay. So. So we begin with the fact that the Mormon Church has done this. And John Larsen, I'll credit him with this idea. The Mormon Church has done this brilliant job of literally demanding 10% income of all its members for their entire lives and at the same time shaming and demeaning anyone who dares to make money in this space that isn't the church.

Accusations of Priestcraft and Financial Criticism

Kara Barilla [01:24:39] Priestcraft.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] Yeah, they call it priestcraft. And, and we have that instinct in us. So the church is literally a hundred, hundreds of billions if not a trillion dollar organization, and nobody else is allowed to make any money in this space or they should be shamed.

Kara Barilla [01:24:53] And so ironic, don't you think?

John Dehlin [01:24:55] Yeah. Yes, Alanis Morsett. It's ironic. And so. So you start with everybody losing their mind. If you literally just make a living in this space, just an honest living, a modest living, people will lose their mind. Like, one of the reasons. I'm just going to talk about Kate Kelly for the second. One of the many reasons she turned to hate me was that there was a point where she was like, doing all this volunteer effort for ordained women, making all these sacrifices, and she simply just went on Reddit and asked for a laptop. She's like, hey, can I just fundraise a go fund gofundme or whatever. I just need a couple grand because the laptop I'm working with is a piece of crap. And I could be so much more effective if, like, I could have a computer that actually functioned. Do you remember? That was probably before you were paying attention.

Kara Barilla [01:25:46] I was probably still raging against her as an angry conservative on Twitter when that happened.

John Dehlin [01:25:50] Yeah, yeah.

Kara Barilla [01:25:51] How times have Changed. Anyway, what happened next?

John Dehlin [01:25:53] Mormon Reddit, who you would think would be like Kate Kelly's biggest fan. They lost their mind and shamed and mocked her into oblivion.

Kara Barilla [01:26:01] Reddit did that?

John Dehlin [01:26:02] Yeah, it was. I mean, I'm not trying to throw shade on ex Mormon Reddit. It's for sure one of the most important and valuable communities out there. So I'll just say a few people, a few people on ex Mormon should

Kara Barilla [01:26:12] have been downloaded, but they were not.

John Dehlin [01:26:14] Yeah. And they shamed her mercilessly for it. It. And that's just one example. Like when I started, when I, when I just sort of like said, hey everyone, listen, I'll make a deal with you. I'll start a non profit, I will take your donations and if you donate voluntarily, I didn't charge anyone for what I do. I didn't put my content beyond a paywall. All I said is, hey, I'll do this if you guys will step up and donate. There was a lot of people that loved it, but then there's a lot of people that just from the start they're like, John's all about the money. John just wants to get rich. John's a grifter. John just wants to make money off of people's pain. John's all about the profit. And it's just like even after, even though I had gone five years never making a penny, and even though I, you know, gave up literally millions of dollars working for Microsoft, and even though I went probably 12 years in this job, either getting paid nothing or getting severely underpaid with no health insurance for my family for many years, no pension, underpaid for a PhD and two master's degrees and my, all my experience in the high tech industry, people were, some people, a minority of people were merciless about shaming. You know, me, I know Lindsay's gotten that. I know that other people have gotten that. When anybody tries to just make a living, Natasha, they just get shamed mercilessly by a small group of people that just don't understand that don't understand the value. No one shames lawyers for getting paid, usually doctors, you know, healers, physicians. We're doing work that's as important as any of that. Pick any job. Marital therapy, psychology, social work, accountants, architects, lawyers, doctors, take your pick. They all earn a living and we earn a living in this space providing a valuable service. But for some reason there's this subculture and again, it's the minority, but there's a subculture of shaming anyone for making a living and that that is the basis for making this hard and then care if you'll just forgive me for extending that, then just like trying to make a living in ex, the ex Mormon world. Just think about it. John Larsen, brilliant podcaster, right, had a really successful, thriving podcast. He wasn't able to do it. Lindsay hasn't been able to make a living off of Europe. Polygamy Infants on Thrones wasn't able to make a living off of Infants on Thrones. Like trying to like, you know, until recently, Bill Real and rfm, you know, still haven't been able to make a full time living off of the podcast. It's brutal. In this space, the only organizations that have survived that I'm aware of, okay, are the Smith Pettit foundation, which is the sponsor of Dialogue Books, you know. No, sorry, the Smith Pettit foundation, which is the sponsor of Signature Books, right. And then Dialogue and Sunstone. And the only way those organizations have been able to thrive is by multi, multi millionaires giving long term endowments. So whether it's George Smith funding, funding Signature Books and the Smith Pettit foundation or George Smith funding Sunstone or other philanthropists like that, like Greg Prince or others supporting Dialogue, without multimillionaires giving multi decade endowments, those organizations would have never even existed. All that work that Simon Southerts and Michael Quinn, you know, all those amazing Signature books books. Dan Vogel, we would have none of that without super wealthy donors, right? Subsidizing those efforts. We just, you know, shout out to Jeff Green, who has been a friend of mine for years, he's this 5 billionaire now that stepped up and said he's gonna throw some support behind Equality Utah and Sunstone. Right? I was cheering that like, because like, that's part of the only way we exist. But short of billionaires or multi millionaires voluntarily donating in this space, how are you going to make a living? And with Mormon stories, we gave it away. We still, 16 years in, we give our product away for free. Who in the world makes a living off of giving their product away for free? People like to trash us on the podcast for like, you know, for like being like the church. And I'm just saying, no, we're not like the church. We're not holding your ability to attend your daughter or son's wedding. We're not holding that hostage at asking you to give us 10%. We're not telling you, you know, your livelihood. We're not telling you that your livelihood or your celestial, eternal existence is reliant

Kara Barilla [01:31:02] on paying Us Money, not analogous.

John Dehlin [01:31:04] We're not telling you that. We are God's prophets, seers and revelators speaking for God. So give us all your money. We're literally saying we'll do this for free. We'll give it all away and we'll sacrifice our careers, our livelihood, our potential reputations. We'll put all that on the line in hopes that you'll return that with enough donations just to make a living. And I can just say, as much as I'm making now, and I'm very grateful for my income right now and my benefits, the Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation will never be able to repay me for what I and my family financially sacrificed for this job.

Kara Barilla [01:31:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:45] Ever. It's not been worth it financially. I could have made so much more money in other ways.

Kara Barilla [01:31:51] If you wanted to make money, if that was your driving motive, if that's what he's being accused of, John knows how he could have made money.

John Dehlin [01:31:57] I could have just stayed at Microsoft. I had stock options. I would be a 10 millionaire now just with the stock options I gave up at Microsoft. Not to mention all I could have made working for other startups, going to Silicon Valley. And I'm not saying this so that people are sad for me or like, feel sorry for me. I'm just saying it's been excruciating to. To get the Open Stories foundation to the point where we're making half a. Half a million dollars a year in donations off of voluntary donations with relatively no fundraising has been one of the biggest achievements of my life that nobody cares about. But look. Look at any other podcast, any other nonprofit in the post Mormon space. It's almost unheard of, and it's been excruciating and brutal, and I don't wish it on anybody. But. But I'm not saying play your violin for me. I'm just saying no one will ever understand how difficult it is to become financially sustainable in this space. And if I've been aggressive, if I've been. If I've ended up, you know, if the boards ended up paying me well, which they do right now, I get paid relatively well. It's because they realize that it's not worth it otherwise. And, And Kara, I'm not asking you to kind of talk about your compensation, but I will say we've done our best to pay you well, in part because you've done an amazing job, but in part because would you do this for minimum wage? Like, could you even survive?

Kara Barilla [01:33:22] No, it's everything that we just Mentioned being so emotionally taxing. It's a weird industry to be in. You're a personality or somebody, like I said earlier, that's kind of growing up on camera. You're showing your vulnerability, your opinions. You're bringing a knowledge base that is. Can't really have a financial number to it. So you kind of try to. It's hard to pay a person for what they do here for this job. You know what I mean, guys? Like, it's. It's a weird space that John and I are in. And furthermore, talking about the exhaustion and the ramifications it has on our personal lives and our family that we. We have made a calculated decision. John has with his family and I have with my husband. And my kids will hopefully not have to attend too much therapy later. They didn't get a choice too much but, like, to have a working mom, but to have a calculated decision that this is what's at stake. The stakes are so high with people needing help and recognizing it's never gonna be about the money. So it's gotta be about something stronger, better, about a different level of fulfillment that you can't get monetarily. So I know that we come from a very greedy culture that looks at anyone getting paid. I think somebody in the comments was mentioning that that's a big problem in a lot of nonprofits when you have volunteers and people getting paid. Yeah, I think that's. That's a great point. People are suspicious, and there's reasons to be suspicious. And that's why we try to be as transparent as possible to quell those.

John Dehlin [01:34:47] Yeah, yeah. And I'll just end by saying if there is a Mormon podcaster or a Mormon YouTuber or Mormon TikToker or a Mormon nonprofit or post Mormon, any of those things that is, like, still surviving and you're finding value from it. Support them. Support Sunstone. Support Dialogue. Support the. Support Signature books in the Smith Pettit Foundation. Support the Mormon History Association. Support Bill Real. Support Radio Free Mormon. Support Year of Polygamy. Support XML X. Support Self on the Shelf. Self on the Shelf. Support Nuance.

Kara Barilla [01:35:29] Like, yeah, support John and I.

John Dehlin [01:35:31] Absolutely.

Kara Barilla [01:35:32] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:35:33] Yeah. Support these organizations. Because we all are walking on a tightrope and it all could blow up at any moment. And you just think, you know, a lot of these sort of angry ex Mormons that are kind of broken just want to torpedo and just destroy some of these people and some of these organizations, and I just don't think they understand how precious these things are if they're still in existence. I don't think, I don't think they would be so destructive if they understood how difficult it was. Or maybe they're angry and sad that they weren't able to sustain their podcast or their initiative or their social media platform. And so they're coming at us in a very vindictive way saying we couldn't make it work like those crabs or lobsters in the bucket. And so that if we couldn't make our platform sustainable, then we're going to take every mother fetcher down who's, who's surviving. And that's some of the darkest, worst part of this job. But we're going to get to that. But I do think there's a lot of envy and jealousy at people that lost attention or weren't able to make it work and they have this destructive. I'm going to take everyone down with me. If, if I can't succeed, I'm going to take everyone down with me. And for me, that's one of the most awful parts of this job, is when people do that. And I've had many, many former friends do that. And it's awful and destructive.

Kara Barilla [01:36:57] Isn't that sick? That's goes back to the hurt people, hurt people model. But yeah, even to a further degree that people do that and not because I'm looking for job security. I'm gonna compliment John a lot for a second. John has a very, in, in wildly interesting and intense set of skills that are super unique. Having the clinically, clinical and counseling psychology background that he does that. I think you know him as an, as a, a really good interviewer, at least in my opinion. I think he's a great interviewer that asks good questions, that help people make the best content and tell the story in the best possible way. But even more than that, if you notice the way that John's able to just be a Wikipedia article is what I like to call him because he can just list off name after name after name and then he like almost has a hyperlink in his head that goes to another article and another article that John, you're like a frigging library that can't be replicated. That you're like one in a million. So John has been in the space for so long because I think he's so incredibly good at what he does. As not just somebody who creates content and creates the podcast, but then as a business owner. I've been in here since May and I think I'm a pretty smart person. And I think literally at any point where me and John are, like, thinking of an idea or a strategy or something, and I have an idea where I was like, I definitely think that's the right way. And John's like, I don't know about that. And then we go with John's idea. I am always like, you were right. Is it because you've been doing this forever and you're really smart? So John has been able to stick around so long because he's smart, he's strategic, he's thoughtful, and he cares. Bottom line. So there's so much to why John gets paid what he does. I was. I scoffed at it before I worked here, and now I understand it. And I applaud John for everything that he's done and will continue to do, whether he. Whether people have, you know, something to say about it or not. Like, I am. I am in this space with you, John. I know how hard you work and, like, you're appreciated.

John Dehlin [01:38:58] Thanks, Kara. And honestly, right back at you. Like, you know, we. We looked at how we were doing financially when you joined, Kara. We were doing well and when we were growing, but we've done even better since you joined. And it's a lot of. It's due to your talent, your passion, your commitment, your smarts, your. Your humor.

Kara Barilla [01:39:18] We were having a good up. This is not a. This is not a compliment showdown.

John Dehlin [01:39:22] Gosh, right back at you. And I'm gonna say this. A Sandra and Gerald Tanner only come along once in. In a generation. A Jeremy Runnels. A Zelf on the shelf. A Lindsay Hansen Park. A John Larsen, A Jonathan Streeter, A Bill Real, a Radio Free Mormon. A Simon Southerton, A Michael Quinn, Juanita Brooks, a Fon Brody. These people are not easily replaceable. And so, like any ex Mormon that wants to take one of these people out is not. Is not a friend of the ex Mormon community. You may say you love. You know, you. You don't like the harm the church does. You may say that you care about people who leave the church or the plight of the church. But if you spend your life trying to take out one of these precious people with lies and with smears and. And with unkind, uncharitable attacks, you don't care about. You don't care about the post Mormon community. Yeah, you care about yourself. You care about your ego. You're broken. You need to get therapy. You need to get help. But just don't pretend ever that you really care about our people, because you don't.

Kara Barilla [01:40:34] Right on. And it reminds me something. I think You've said at a retreat once that no structure is worse than, you know, an unhealthy structure. That kind of something you believe in? That sounds familiar to me.

John Dehlin [01:40:46] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [01:40:47] And there are some people who. They become worse after they. They leave Mormonism. And it's evident, and it's unfortunate because the structure that they chose is one that is centered in their ego. And what I like about John and a lot of my best friends are people who've read Eckhart Tolle and have, you know, been into different secular Buddhist philosophies and have recognized that to do a good job for the people that they want to help, an ego death is required. And by saying that you've had an ego death sounds egotestical. But I can, I can say honestly

John Dehlin [01:41:19] that egotestical or egotistical.

Kara Barilla [01:41:21] I'm kidding, interrupting. My really great point was egotistical of you. Um, I have, like, a Valley Girl thing that I slip into. I am from Provo. Everyone forgive me on that.

John Dehlin [01:41:32] No, no, no, you're good.

Kara Barilla [01:41:33] But no, I think it's true. I think that for John to be able to have the longevity that he has in this job, to do it as well as it is, I'm here to attest that John has had the ego taken out of this. That makes him a really, not only a healthy podcaster, a healthy leader in this space, and also a healthy boss. And thus ends Kara's and all. Now go back to ribbing you now.

John Dehlin [01:42:01] All the love right back at you. And at the end of, thanks to everyone. There's so many people that get this. There are occasionally people that write, I don't care if you made a million dollars a year. What you do is worth it. And I, you know, I'm never going to make that much, and I don't want to make that much. Even if we made a million dollars a year or more, I wouldn't want to get paid that much. But I appreciate people who understand the value and the difficulty of what we do. So just cherish your content creators and historians and activists and contributors. And frankly, I wish K. Kelly had been paid more. I wish ordained women had been paid more. I wish John Larsen would have been paid more. You know, I wish Michael Quinn hadn't have died in poverty and alone. And. And, you know, I hope that Bill Real and a Radio Free Mormon get paid so much that they can do this full time. Like, I hope that they can quit their jobs and do this full time. And I hope that's true for Zelf on the Shelf and Nemo, the Mormon and 21st century saints. All those amazing. Yeah, all those amazing British. I want you all to thrive. This is no longer a scarcity community. I want this to be an abundance community where a rising tide lifts all ships. And so that, that just means listeners and viewers donate and support 10 bucks a month. If enough of you do that for any of these content contributors, you can make a huge difference and we can really move the needle. All right, so the next thing is. Well, we kind of talked about this, the fragility of building a business in this space. So this is a little bit different. But let me just sort of all try and characterize it and then care. I want you to. I want you to add to it. Like, I. I didn't want to be a for profit because, you know, I. I felt like running this as a nonprofit. It would be mission driven, it would be charity driven. It would be about helping make the world a better place. And in my mind, I'm like, yeah, capitalistic and greedy and like, not that there's anything wrong with corporations or businesses. I just felt like non profit. I just felt like non profit was the right vibe. Right. But there's something really difficult about running a nonprofit. Like, you know, you. You have to beg and plead for your support. You live and die by the support of your donors.

Funding the Work: Donors Versus Businesses

Kara Barilla [01:44:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] Which means you live and die by your reputation. And what's difficult about that is on the Internet. And we'll get to this about, like, you know, living by the sword and dying by the sword. Yes, the Internet's powerful because David can fight Goliath. But. But haters can just, like, start a smear campaign. And if they're successful at convincing your donors, your supporters, even without any credible evidence at all, if someone just wants to say, well, he's a child abuser, he's a rapist, he's an abuser, he's sketchy with money, he harms employees or whatever it is they want to say. All you have to. You know, this. This business can be so fragile because you're. You're only as good as your reputation, and you're only as good as the support of your donors. That it. It feels like you're always one smear campaign away from being destroyed. And that's. That's a super. It's difficult enough to get people to want to support. And then you just. Every day, you feel like you're one whisper smear campaign, one disaffected employee away. You know, one friend who turns enemy away from having Your reputation smeared and thus everything you sacrifice for, everything you've built up, all your donors, all your support disappearing in an instance. And that hasn't proven to be true. But for 13, 14 years, every day I went to bed and woke up fearing that that was what the outcome was going to be. Because not only do you have hater, ex Mormon former friends trying to destroy you, but, but we've, we've learned about this concept of being, being fair gamed. You've got a trillion dollar organization literally funding shadow non profits that are trying to smear and destroy you through millions and millions of dollars of like, you know, actors, hired actors, shadow nonprofits creating websites to smear you and to take you down. So it's, it's literally like walking on a tightrope carrying 500 pounds with each hand while Lear jets are, are spraying bullets at you as you try and walk by. It just feels incredibly fragile, incredibly tenuous, and it feels like at any moment, everything you fought and struggled for can be taken away in a heartbeat. And so I don't wish this on anybody. It's so incredibly excruciating. Which is again, why I think we need to support and not try and destroy the few creators that have been able to scratch out a living.

Kara Barilla [01:47:03] Yeah, and we all know that like, stress pretty much takes what, years off of your life, basically. It takes so much bandwidth to be able to do this job. It takes away from other things you could be doing, relationships you could be building, because you have to spend so much time working your way through this mental anguish that people often just unnecessarily smear you with John. And it's, it's a weird space, like I like to say, to be in. And how do you put a price on that? Of what, John's compensation. Sorry to like, bring it back to money again. And a business. Why would anyone want to do this? Like, I'm in this business, John's in this business. Is there some level of fame that I'm missing out on? There's some level of prestige or something that would make all of this mental anguish worth it. Is there some price point that somebody else would want to put up with what John just said? I don't think so. So it's difficult.

John Dehlin [01:47:56] Yeah, yeah, there's a, there's a really interesting Reddit post right now that basically is saying, it's basically another John de Lynn thread on ex Mormon Reddit that basically is saying, aren't you all disturbed at how, like, supportive John's listeners and fans can be? It's almost like John's the new cult leader, John's the new prophet and his followers have now just accepted the new blind, you know, following of John Dehlin is the cool.

Kara Barilla [01:48:27] It's like my biggest pet peeve by the way, when people say that why

John Dehlin [01:48:32] is it, why is it a pet peeve?

Kara Barilla [01:48:33] I'll let you go first, then I'll say why.

John Dehlin [01:48:34] Well, I'm just saying like I get it. Like, like and I'll be that. Like I teach critical thinking skills and like anti cult critical thinking intentionally because I don't want to be anyone's prophet. I don't have a dogma, I don't have a doctrine, I don't have a theology. I'm not telling people what happens in the afterlife. I'm not taking people's wives and, and, and, and sexually, you know, abusing their children or their spouses. Like I'm, I've got none of the trappings of a prophet in terms of like dogma theology. You know, heavy behavioral controls, heavy control of information, trying to manipulate people, like you know, trying to control their thoughts, abusing in all the different ways you can abuse. I'm just a dude who has got a microphone and a camera, who runs a non profit where people voluntarily contribute and I'm creating some content. So there's, there's kind of a egregiously gross false equivalence of like in any way saying you're just like the Mormon Church for one. What do you have a. I mean, yeah, that's one.

Kara Barilla [01:49:37] It's all of those things. I mean I'll hear every once in a while on my tick tock of like anyone who likes people have to pick sides or something in ex Mormonism of like if you listen to John Delaner, you don't listen to Johnnalyn or you follow Kara's Tickets Tok or you don't. That means you're in the John de Lynn cult or you're not like well

John Dehlin [01:49:54] the nuanceo cult or whatever.

Kara Barilla [01:49:55] That's a great cult. I'm fine with that. Let me know how that financially works out if anyone wants to start that with me. No, but it like, like people they come from like I just said earlier, there's a certain authoritarian structure that people are used to and I think they have a false equivalency and a bad faith interpretation and they see maybe like one or two similarities of a central figure is about all you've got. Who interestingly enough is consistently interviewing other people and passing the mic to them, doing the Exact opposite of a cult leader. So it's, it's this weird cherry picking bad faith interpretation because for whatever, maybe people are angry at the patriarchy, angry at the straight white male making a living doing this and want him to do nothing but pass the mic. And they're just trying to say that he's a cult leader. Don't listen to anything they say. I think it's a weird cherry picking thing people do and it doesn't make ex Mormonism any healthier. If you're not constructive on what could John do better? And kind of just hurling a label like another cult leader. Cult leader. It sounds like somebody hasn't developed their critical thinking skills yet when they say that.

John Dehlin [01:51:05] Yeah, yeah. And so, but I get it, because people, people join. People leave Mormonism and join cults all the time. And there are predators. And there are predators in this business. When I was in the first few years of this job, I found a guy that I just thought was amazing and I started promoting him and he turned out to be a predator. Like, I get it. And that's partly why people are cautious. And so I'm always torn, like, and we'll get to this. Like, I hate the fact that I'm a straight white male and that I represent the patriarchy in many ways, but then again, should I not try and make it better? Should I not try and move the needle with my privilege? And so it's always fraud. But I'll just say the second thing is, is that do people really think I don't get eviscerated daily? Do they not think I'm not constantly inundated with criticism? Like, people sometimes go, John, you're so thin skinned and you can't take criticism? Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? Like, I am obliterated with criticism non stop. Do you want to talk about the criticism in this job?

Dealing With Constant Public Criticism

Kara Barilla [01:52:14] Oh, I mean, from not being able to please everyone, that's just like bare minimum. You already know that. But yeah, constant criticism that my. If I could say one thing on this entire long podcast, it would be the criticism John and I get for sharing a personal opinion or somebody just on the podcast sharing an opinion or an expression experience of theirs that's true to their lived experience. But somebody listening to the podcast, not being able to separate and differentiate that person sharing an opinion from themselves and needing to can, like combat it and prove them wrong in the comment section because they don't have that same lived experience. Instead of getting curious. And the opposite of judgmental to me is getting curious why somebody would say that, they would feel that. And yeah, to John's point about the criticisms, it's just people wanting to, to knock somebody down without wanting to investigate why they have said things, why they. What, what, what's the truth to this accusation? It's a bad faith interpretation of it when it's. Could be so much more. What's the word I'm looking for? Constructive. Yeah, yeah. It's the weirdest thing to me.

John Dehlin [01:53:24] Yeah, yeah.

Kara Barilla [01:53:25] There's so many. I mean, I, I don't know. We, we promised at the beginning that we weren't going to go into like specific criticisms, but let's just say we

John Dehlin [01:53:31] get no, like talk about some of the smears and insults. I know we saved that for later, but like, what are just an example.

Kara Barilla [01:53:37] Tell me to read it.

John Dehlin [01:53:38] Yeah, yeah, I mean we save this for later, but let's just hit it now. Like all while you're looking it up. I'm just gonna say, like, podcasts are too long. Podcasts are too short. John, you interject yourself too much in the podcast. John, you don't interject yourself enough. John, your weight. John, your appearance. John, your looks. John, you color your hair. John, shut up. John, you're a narcissist. John, you're egotistical. John, you're, you're getting rich off of people. John, you're too angry. John, you're too kind. Like, this job is endless criticism and I, I welcome it. Like, I want feedback and I read every email, camera's on email and I try and get, I try and be open to feedback and I welcome it. But at the same time, like anybody who thinks that, that like we're just thin skinned people that can't take criticism or feedback, I mean, I don't fault you for just having no idea what you're talking about, but you have no idea what you're talking about. This, to be in this job is to be barraged and flooded daily with endless criticism.

Kara Barilla [01:54:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:43] And you wouldn't be successful if you just blew it all off and ignored it. A lot of that feedback. Even with you, Carol, when people are mean or unkind to you, sometimes I'm like, hey, there's maybe something we can learn from this. And I know it hurts, but I'm always looking to improve. And so like, it's just, just the insults and the criticisms are endless. So the, the claims that we are thin skinned and can't take criticism or that we're a cult leader that like silences people all the time is just ridiculous. I, when I'm being smeared and called a rapist and a pedophile and a child abuser and a thief and a grifter, I shut that down.

Kara Barilla [01:55:22] Especially if it's on a platform that you built.

John Dehlin [01:55:24] Yeah, I'm not going to let haters come on this platform and advertise smears that are like life or career ending. So, yeah, I ban and block haters that smear with lies. But to sort of say, well, John can't stand it when someone calls him a rapist with no evidence or credibility and so he's thin skinned and can't take criticism. It's just the dumbest, most ridiculous accusation I've ever heard and I'm sick of it. So I just, I now just ban and block people and I'm proud of that. And I'm, I'm in a, I'm going to put up boundaries for people that try and use my platform to smear and lie. And I'm fine with people calling me thin skinned if that's what they mean by thin skinned. But I don't think neither you or I could survive in this business if we were thin skinned. Now you take it away.

Kara Barilla [01:56:11] I am not thin skinned. I'm the youngest of five and all of my older siblings are smart asses and I was raised in like, forged in a fire, you could say. And I, then I went into stand up comedy and all of the things that have gotten me to where I am today mean, I couldn't do this if I was whatsoever thin skinned. But John and I have different approaches. He might block people that have smears. Thankfully, I mean, not thankfully, I'd rather have a real accusation. But the number one thing people want to complain about is my nose. And that's. I had a great TikTok this earlier this week where there was a man on TikTok who, like a middle aged older gentleman who posted like six comments in a row. When you, when you, when you open a social media app and somebody goes, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Insult, insult. It's all, it's like, oh, you were busy today, weren't you? And I screenshotted it and I did a reply to comment feature on TikTok and that man's life is over now. I'm sorry, I did not want that to happen. But I did a response to this guy in a comedic way and I basically had my nose talk for me and I said, okay, you had your moment to talk, dude. I showed all of his messages of what he had been saying about my nose online. And I found a comedic way to get people to pay attention of what it's like to be in this business. It's a, it's a way through comedy, through a tick tock to show what it's like to be a woman who puts your face out there for the world to, to see online, who has a larger than average nose. Right. And a lot of people were obviously complimentary saying you look beautiful, you're fine. It's more that I just want to call out that if people are going to be like that on my comment section, I'm going to have some fun with it. Unfortunately, this man was had his name there and I think my followers might have doxed him. I removed all of the ones that showed his address and stuff, but he messaged me and said, please, I'll never do it again. I'm so, so sorry. So there's a lot of bad behavior online that happens. John will block it. He doesn't want that to continue. I like to root out behavior that is unkind and rude and has nothing constructive to it. If somebody wants to like tell me that I said something that was inaccurate and actually, like I said, get curious and not like judgmental about where I'm coming from. I have that dialogue all day, every day. I like ask to be bullied even, like, I want to have hard conversations. I'm not afraid of them. But if it's just people hurling things for the sake of just being rude and being gross and stuff, I have a different tactic of the way that I handle that. And now somebody's has maybe, I don't know, I might have caused. Not that I caused it, but this man's conversation is fine.

John Dehlin [01:58:47] Were you going to read? We're going to read.

Online Harassment and Bad-Faith Attacks

Kara Barilla [01:58:49] Yeah, here's one. So there's actually a YouTube channel that shall not be named that completely exists to just make fun of like ex morton Podcasters, Lindsay, R.F.M. me, John. I get called Pinocchio. Super creative. Thanks. That was cool. So here's on one of those videos this comment section said, did you mean John de Lynn's latest mistress, Kara Pinocchio Burrell? They've been having an affair for almost two years. Kara's only viewers and likes on her tick tock are paid views and likes. She never got over trying years to be a comedian and failing. So she started buying likes and views for herself. Those are her only audience. She wanted to be famous. But with that crazy with the crazy and the schnoz, no chance. Three upvotes. So there's a lot of weird accusations and things said in that comment section. I don't spend one second crying about it. That's not why I wanted to read that. But that's an example of a really weird accusations and smears that are based in no truth. Not even one thing that was said there is true. But that's the power of free speech. That people can say whatever they want to say. And that can kick off into other people talking about, like, my personal life, like accusations that there's something going on between me and John that now that has to take up any kind of free rent in my head. It's a whole added layer to this job that is stupid, it's unnecessary, but unfortunately part of it.

John Dehlin [02:00:19] Yeah, I'm just gonna say really quickly. It is almost 6:20. We love Raider Free Mormon and Bill Real. And so just as a public service announcement, we. We did not intentionally plan this to step on their scheduled program. So anyone who loves Bill Real or Radio Free Mormon, switch off of this now. Go watch Mormonism Live on the live stream and then come back to this later. Remember where we are. We're about two hours in, two hours and one minute in, and you can come right back, either audio or video form and watch the rest of it. But we love Bill Real. We love rfm. We did not intentionally schedule this to conflict. So we're doing a public service announcement to say, go support them. Come back and watch us. Okay, now, Kara, back to what you were saying. Like, I don't want to minimize this. And, And I've asked that we be careful about, like, not naming names or not rewarding the bad actors. But I'm just gonna say it just in the past few weeks, and this is the main reason this was the main impetus for this episode. There. There's. There's a. There's someone out there who I think you and I both would have in the past claim to be a friend. It's someone that by many would be considered to be a beloved or at least known or prominent member of the community who's literally saying that your face is deformed. He's calling you a. He's calling you a slut. He's. He's claiming that you, you know, you and I are having an affair. He's saying some of the most demeaning, rude, insulting, unkind, discourteous, crude things you could possibly say. And I just want to ask you if you're willing to be a little bit vulnerable, because I know you. You. You say that. That bullying is your Love language. I know that you're the youngest child of five. I know that you're tough, but are you comfortable being vulnerable to talk about what that's like, to be smeared and insulted by someone who, who has reputation and standing in the community? What's that like?

Kara Barilla [02:02:21] It's actually, I. I'm gonna be completely 100 truthful. It's just like that same old tactic of when a bully shows their colors is what I see. It's. It feels like anybody who can use such degrading language against somebody, it shows what kind of person they are. And you kind of. I don't want to, you know, say, pick a side or anything, but if somebody can hear somebody go off that this girl is deformed, she's having an affair, I'm going to create a hate account. I'm going to take things that she said and twist them into untruths. If anyone in the X women community sees that and is like, oh, tell me more like, like, I want to get the dirt on something that if you have critical thinking skills, you should know, not only is it false, but it's also not something you would ever want to be associated with. You wouldn't trust as a friend. You wouldn't want to hang out with somebody that can, you know, say such demeaning, degrading things. It's just not the type of person I would ever associate with. And so if for any reason, I lost, you know, a thousand followers or I lost. Not that it would affect my paycheck or something, but like, we lost money over somebody saying degrading, false things about us. To be honest, if there are Mormon stories listeners who don't have the integrity or the empathy or the way to decipher facts from fiction or just. Just general upstanding nature to see, like, kind of garbage when it's presented to them. I don't want to have anything to do with those types of ex Mormons. I don't want to do any. Have any. I want to be in that circle. I will lose as many followers as it takes if somebody sees a smear campaign that's obvious and not truthful and is like, sign me up without asking any other questions or actually looking for what's true or what's genuine. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [02:04:21] Sure. Sure. And, you know, I think that's literally the only reason why, why you've been able to survive this job for the seven or eight months you've been in it is because you have a very resilient sort of tough attitude. But if, but if it hasn't been hard for you, which I disagree. I think it has been hard for you.

Kara Barilla [02:04:38] Have I tried a single tear? No, I don't think I have.

John Dehlin [02:04:41] Absolutely. It's been. I mean, you're very professional, but I think it's been emotionally draining. I think it's taken energy and time out of, you know, at least in your personal life. But I. You can speak for you. Are you willing to speak for what it's like for Aaron, your husband, to have his wife demeaned publicly?

Kara Barilla [02:05:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:01] And to all these accusations of infidelity and calling you a. And a slut in public, can you say what that's been like for your husband?

Kara Barilla [02:05:10] Yeah, I mean, I. Nobody. What I'm about to say. Don't you dare cancel me or my husband. I swear to gosh over what I'm about to say. My husband is still. He's my best friend. I love him to death. He still has a very, very protective, you could call it patriarchal nature to him. He's still people who say those things. He still gets very upset and, you know, like the nerve comes in his head and he's a lot more angry and protective. And I'm more like, unless somebody's going to come to my door, which nobody has yet, and come threaten me, they can't really do anything. So it's not going to affect my livelihood. My husband is a lot more protective. He has that real, like the opposite of a mama bear, you know, a grizzly bear protective instinct. So it's made my husband really, really upset, you could say, especially because my husband, not only does he know none of those things are true, and he thinks that I'm beautiful and all of those things and he, he hates that I have to do this unfortunately necessary part of the job, which is just be on the receiving end of all that kind of crap show. So he, he's protective over it.

John Dehlin [02:06:15] And has it made him at times want to take you out of the job because he didn't like to see you facing what you're facing?

Kara Barilla [02:06:21] Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's not only are like the emotional hurdles of, you know, being exhausted and not having enough time for my husband as well. There's different reasons that my husband wants me to do this job because he was harmed by Mormonism and he wants, wants me to be in this space and he's dedicated. But then he's also, half the other time he's questioning, is it worth it?

John Dehlin [02:06:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sorry for the. You Know, I feel bad that I kind of like, hey, Kara, come work for Mormon stories. You can make a difference in the world. And then I see how people who we thought were friends can just turn in a moment without any good reason and want to destroy you. And it's one thing for me to have to face that, and I'm gonna talk about that in a second. Yeah, but I'm really sorry that you've had to face it, and I'm sorry for the unhealthy people that have. That have treated you that way.

Kara Barilla [02:07:11] You know, it is what it is. And I got a lot on my mind, is the short answer. I got so much on my mind that somebody spinning their wheels, like, making up lies about me and like, making up a hate account. I have a hate tick tock account now. You guys check it out. So somebody who spends their life like that makes me sad. I spend more time thinking about how sad that makes me that somebody's dealing with stuff. It's more of an. It's a them problem, not a me problem. And it makes me sad that there are people who take that, that them problem and try to make it a me problem. And so that's how people spend their time. Not like we were saying, not for the betterment of the X Mormon community, just from like an ego problem place.

John Dehlin [02:07:58] Really quickly, you may not want to talk about this, but in response to these constant. You know, it's weird that, you know, as Mormons we were raised that a man and a woman can't work together or they must be having sex and, you know, you can't ever be alone with a woman. And there's probably wisdom in, in healthy boundaries in the workplace, but I think, I think that sort of Mormonism's weirdness around gender and sexuality, honestly, I think it causes more problems than it solves. Yeah, but we're all trained to think that if. If you. A woman is working with me, a man, well, clearly there's an affair. And, and so as soon as we started showing up on camera together, we started getting comments that would make those sorts of allegations. And so you've been dealing with that since we started. And then, you know, when this recent hater started really going at us, you know, there was a way you decided to deal with it with a. With a video. Do you want to talk about, like, how. How it is that you deal with the. Why it is that you felt like you wanted to make a response, how it is that you used humor to deal with that response and just kind of Expand. And we ended up taking it down, if you want to talk about that.

Kara Barilla [02:09:10] Oh, I didn't know I was allowed to talk about this.

John Dehlin [02:09:12] Oh, yeah.

Kara Barilla [02:09:12] Oh, yeah. I'll definitely talk about this, of course.

John Dehlin [02:09:14] Without naming names or without like making things worse or agitating things.

Kara Barilla [02:09:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:19] So I want to give you a chance to kind of tell the story.

Kara Barilla [02:09:21] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:09:21] Why you did it and, and why we. Why we chose to take it down.

Kara Barilla [02:09:25] Yeah. So every once in a while, John will show up in one of my Tick Tock videos and we'll make something small on my nuanced Tick Tock channel together. And anytime John appears in One of my TikTok videos, the comment section usually has at least a handful of Mormons and maybe sometimes ex Mormons saying they make such a cute couple. Did you know they're having an affair? Did you know that they're blanking each other? Can you believe this? And not only is it like, like so much to say on that of course note a thousand times no. I. For months and months I've been trying to figure out how I want to address what I feel like to people is like an elephant in the room. Do you need to address if you're an affair or not? I don't even want to address something that's a. That's stupid. But I figured the best way in my voice to do it is I, I make points through satire, through comedy, through kind of playing a character. And so one night there was a comment on a video on my Tick Tock that said, like, aren't they such a cute couple? Their apostasy brought them together or something like that. And so I just improv off the top of my head and I wanted to. To be really forceful and be an over the top version of myself basically. And so I did the reply to comment feature on TikTok and I said to this Mormon hater troll, his name is like Tacoma something or other. If you're on TikTok, maybe you'll recognize them. But this person has mentioned many times that John and Dylan and I are in an affair. So I wanted to be a really like a satirical, over the top version of responding to this obnoxious comment. And so I looked in the camera and I said, has it ever occurred to you that at no point has any 32 year old position, 32 year old woman in my position, happily married, the three kids left the Mormon Church, looked around at all of their options and say, hey, I think I want to f. John to Lynn. Cut. All right. And then I Showed it to John. It was just saved in my drafts. I didn't know what to do with it. And I was trying to figure out what I should do because I want to say that to people. But that's. It's. It's an over the top version of it. You know, it's. It's. It's forceful, it's sharp elbowed, it's cunning, you know, and so I thought, what's another. What's another, like, satire that I want to play up in Mormonism or in. In this ex Mormon space? And it's that John's a cult leader and that he's like an abusive boss or like any other, you know, dumb rumor that's floating out there that, like, John De Lynn can't work with women or any other smear that he's had through the years that is not representative and true at all. So how can I play up that and satirize that idea? And so I sat in this chair, I turned off the lights for this tick tock. And John was like. I told John my idea, but he was like, this could go a couple of different ways. And I was like, let's see how it goes. I like to live life on the edge. So I had a piece of paper and then I cut that last scene. I just told you. And then I went directly into me crying, putting water around my face. Fake crying. Pretty believably. I think so. And just saying, like, I, Cara Burrell, would like to read the following statement. Out of my own free will and without duress and like, looking off camera, pretending that, like, somebody is, like, threatening me, AKA John, and just playing up this dynamic and being like, I. That my boss, John De Lynn, is very loving and has many fine qualities, including, but not limited to, and I just named off a bunch of qualities. And then, like, his kind nature and is not by me, but by some found to be physically. What did I say physically? Something enticing by virtue of his physical beauty or something. Yeah. Aesthetically pleasing by virtue of his physical appearance, I think is what I said. And then I was like, crying and turning it off. So in my own comedic way, trying to show. Trying to tell people, addressing the stupid elephant in the room of never is it gonna happen. As hard line as I could. And then also being, like, playing up a satire of if I ever actually said that in public, if. Can you believe John would. He'd have me back on a leash immediately. So that was my own personal way of playing up that satire. John thought it was funny. I think Marty thought it was funny. Your kids thought it was funny.

John Dehlin [02:13:54] But also risky.

Kara Barilla [02:13:55] It was risky for sure.

John Dehlin [02:13:56] You know, my take was. I'm not gonna. It was. It wasn't on Mormon stories. It was on your own nuanced channel. So I didn't feel like it was appropriate for me to tell you, you can't do it, but I was not gonna.

Kara Barilla [02:14:06] John doesn't ever want to play dad. And that's what I love about him, is I take risks. Remember how I said earlier in this podcast that usually, John. Not even usually. 99% of the time when it comes down to making a decision, John is usually right. So he. He probably wouldn't have wanted me to post it, but he also doesn't want to, like, play dad and put boundaries around what I'm allowed to do. Isn't he a great boss? But so I posted it. It was risky. The top comment was your daughter Clara saying, in all capital letters, I am screaming. And like, we had a good laugh about it. And I was forgotten. And it was. It was risky, but it just was like, I named. I named the title of the tick tock, like, clearing, like, setting the record about John de Lynn or something of, like, if you want to know Kara's statement, it's this, like, dumb satirical tick tock about it. But it was risky. It was edgy. And so I actually took it down last night.

John Dehlin [02:14:57] Yeah, well, I mean, and just to say that, like, I think most people loved it and got the joke and thought it was really funny. I thought it was a brilliant video. I think a lot of people thought it was brilliant. And there was a small group of people, either there were haters and just wanted to use that as a way to club up, club us over the head. People that already didn't like you for whatever reason, that wanted to find an excuse to destroy you. And there's just some people, including, you know, some of the people maybe that we even collaborate with or work with, who just felt like it was going too far, that it was, you know, talking about sexual themes in a workplace. And that was at point a appropriate. And is it too coarse? Is it constructive, you know, blah, blah, blah, and reasonable. I think there's reasonable views on all sides.

Kara Barilla [02:15:39] Yeah. I don't disagree with that at all.

John Dehlin [02:15:41] You don't?

Kara Barilla [02:15:42] Yeah, that there's. Yeah, that, that's. That's a legitimate position to take.

John Dehlin [02:15:45] Yeah.

Kara Barilla [02:15:46] But like, did you or your family spend one minute crying about it? No, not that I know. So, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:54] And so. And so, like, it was a risk and you took it and I didn't prevent it. And in, in many ways it was hilarious and then in some ways it backfired and. Yeah. And then, you know, so we ended up, you know, me, you, just the people in this organization had a talk and we decided that, you know, we could see the points of view of why it was problematic. Do you want, you know, and so you, you were, you were good natured enough to just sort of say, hey,

Kara Barilla [02:16:24] you know, I come from a comedy background and I am for taking risks and I'm for also those risks not working out. Like, do you know what it's like to get up on stage when you're like 16 years old to play a comedic song that you wrote in your bedroom and like hopefully the entire school likes it, which they did. Or like, do you know what it's like to get up at 19 years old in a comedy club that's all men at an open mic and be like, I hope you find me funny. Like, I've already kind of paid my dues of like falling on my face. So it's nothing new to me that some people liked it, some people didn't like it. But I would never want to hurt somebody. I wouldn't want to like be accused of like sexual harassment or something in the workplace. So I can see that it teetered on an edge there. And so I'm fine with taking it down. And also, and I make a lot of tiktoks so it's like shooting one darling of many as they. You have to do it in any kind of creating creative field. Right. So no harm, no foul at the end of the day.

John Dehlin [02:17:23] Yeah. And I think, you know, I think, I mean we have a published sexual harassment policy and I, I'm not even sure you had totally how much you had even read it before, but as we read through it again or for me again for you maybe even the first time, we just realized, yeah, that probably was too far.

Kara Barilla [02:17:40] You know, you're not allowed to talk about somebody's sexual prowess at Open Stories Foundation. That's. I was very specific in my language. If you notice that he is by some have found to have physical beauty. I think is the wording I had. I work things around. I'm creative after all.

John Dehlin [02:17:56] Anyway, we listened to feedback. We took you, you were kind enough and gracious enough to take the video down. We're going to try and not let that happen again. And I'm proud of us modeling. We're talking about this publicly. We're Modeling transparency and, you know, you're going to have some hits and misses in this business. And so, you know, now you guys know how we handled it. And I, I just think it's fun we told that story and I'm grateful for the members of our board and some close friends that helped us navigate that in a way to where we

Kara Barilla [02:18:27] learned, you know, yeah, you take a tick tocker off of tick tock, but you can't always take the tick tock out of the tick tocker. So into the, into this space in this field. But to John's credit, let me also just compliment John whenever I get a chance. Is I, I almost, I end almost every podcast looking at him and with this look of like, I said something stupid or inappropriate that should be edited out. And it's usually me overthinking things. And he's normally quite gracious and kind and wants me to be able to speak my mind as much as possible. So to John's credit, he's great in that regard.

John Dehlin [02:19:04] Well, thanks. So thanks for telling that story. Thanks for being a good sport. Thanks for all the feedback.

Kara Barilla [02:19:09] Thanks for you being a good sport. You guys heard the joke that I made about him. Like, he is tough as nails.

Addressing Personal Allegations and Hard Truths

John Dehlin [02:19:16] Yeah, well, I try to be and I, and, and now I'm going to talk about something hard on my end and I'll just be really brief. I've tried to address this before, but I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and address it again. In my world, it's not being accused is, you know, sometimes they criticize my appearance. I'm often, you know, criticized for talking too much in my interviews. I try and control that, but it's hard because people also give me the feedback that they like. My input. I'm criticized for how long the podcasts are, but then again, I have people saying that's what they love about the podcasts. Like, I'm criticized a lot. I want your feedback. I want, you know, to speak directly to that Reddit thread where they're like, john, you're just another cult leader. I'm just going to say right now, I want constructive feedback. Criticize me. Send me your critical feedback. Every single Mormon Stories episode, we end by saying, send us your feedback@mormonstoriesgmail.com. let us know what you like and you don't like. Keep the feedback coming. I am not a prophet. Never follow me. Never obey me. Never blindly follow me. I don't want your wife. I don't want your kids. You know, this is not a cult. Never follow me. And I'm going to say that, that for me, bar none, the hardest part of this job has been the smear campaigns. That is most often led by former friends who are ex Mormons, but it's also sometimes supported and led by Mormon apologists that are on the payroll of the church and sometimes by shadow nonprofits that the church supports. But I've been called a rapist. Publicly, I've been called a child molester. Publicly, I have been called, you know, I've been. It's been said that I abuse women and children, that I've harassed or abused women and children. I've been accused of financial improprieties. I've been accused of having multiple million dollar homes, of getting rich off of what I do, of not paying people for their efforts. I have been publicly smeared on Facebook and on Tick tock for a host of offenses for which there's literally zero credible evidence. Zero. Now, I'm not saying I haven't made mistakes. I haven't. I'm not saying that I've been perfect. I've, I've, I've, I've made mistakes. I've sometimes even hurt my wife, Margi or my family. I've done things that I shouldn't have done, for sure. And I've done my best to talk about that in ways that, you know, don't harm the people involved and that are, you know, tactful and reasonable, given all the people that are involved. Having said that, one of the hardest things I've had to face is public accusations of harassing, abusing, raping, whatever, women and children. And there's zero truth to any of that. Not one time ever have I done any of those things. And not only is it hard to be publicly accused of those things, oftentimes by former friends, but there's also the whisper campaigns that go on by people that don't accuse me of that publicly, but they follow me around and everyone that I interact with, every guest that I interview, potential other platforms that may want to have me on these people, they'll call employers, try and get me fired and try. And if they're not saying it publicly, instigate a whisper campaign to spread these smears and accusations so that, that, you know, I can be canceled. And I just, I just want to say that's for me, by far the hardest part of this job. There's a few others we're going to be talking about, but I'm just going to address it now and forever say there's zero credibility to any accusation that I've harassed, abused, assaulted, or raped a single person ever. Ever. I had to say it, and I'll say it again. And what's super additionally hard about this job is, is that once people start making those smears or claims, you're kind of in a catch 22 because you want to immediately respond and deny or shoot down those accusations. But when you do that, you are. You are literally advertising your opponents weapons against you. It's like you're taking their bullets, sticking them in your own gun, and shooting yourself. And so you can't always publicly address the smears or you're literally, through the Streisand effect, rewarding your accusers. But then by staying silent, many people then accuse you that there must be. It must be true, because you're not responding and you're not answering the accusations. And so that is part of what makes this job near impossible. And, and so you're. And then there's the whisper campaigns. And you never know. You never know. When you ask someone to come on the podcast and they say no, in your mind, it's like, well, do they believe the lies that are being told? Do they believe the smears? Is that why so and so won't speak in an event? Or is that why so and so won't come on the podcast? And then you're constantly in your head wondering, what do they think about me? What do they think about me? Do they believe the lies? Do they believe the smears? And it's. It's an excruciating. And I know that Lindsay Anson park has had people make accusations about her. I know that Bill Real has had it happened to him. I know RFM has had it. I know that you've had it. And I know that that just comes with the business. So I'm not trying to, like, say woe is me, but I am just calling that out. I'm addressing the accusations. And then I'm. I'm also saying how difficult it is to deal with them because there's really no way to. To adequately deal with them. And then there's the whole issue of just the people that say, well, I don't want that drama. And maybe I don't totally believe all those smears against John, but maybe they're somewhat true because where there's smoke, there's fire, and then. And then there's the people that may not believe any of it, but they're just like, well, I don't want the risk of being associated with someone who has those types of accusations levied against them. And fortunately, I've been able to still have a significant impact in spite of all the lies and the smears. But I think it's just by the skin of my teeth. And frankly, it's a credit to my supporters and my listeners and my friends and my fans and my donors who either have not heard these things or they have enough critical thinking skills to require evidence before they believe these terrible sorts of accusations. And I, I love the, the saying that I learned dealing with a religion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And I just hope anyone who hears any of these claims against me will just ask for evidence. And I'm not saying there aren't mistakes I've made. There's stuff that I've been willing to put out there to address many of the accusations against me. Go read everything. Go to the Mormonism Live episode the Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon did where they addressed smears and allegations against me. We can even put that in the show notes. I'm happy for people to go do that. Read the stuff that I put out there to address the smears. But please don't believe the smears without evidence. And if I tell you this all the time, Kara, if I steal money, if I abuse or assault you, I want you to tell people, yeah, take me down. Take me down. If I assault or rape or, or steal or abuse or not laugh at

Kara Barilla [02:27:26] one of my jokes or if I

John Dehlin [02:27:28] don't laugh at one of your jokes, take me down. And I mean that. Take me down. I don't deserve to be in this platform if I'm assaulting, abusing, raping and stealing and, and I haven't. And that's why I've been able to survive this job. I hope that that's kind of a rant.

Kara Barilla [02:27:45] It's a worthwhile rant. And I will just add to that. The first day that I worked here, John told me up front because I just want to echo that. I, I've worked for John since April or May. John and I are like best friends, partners, co workers in this space. And we bicker and we fight. But the, at the end of the day, me and John are. Our hearts are just so. For this cause and making things improve. And so that doesn't go. So I just want to say that in the context of, like, I don't think John's perfect. I wouldn't, I don't think that he thinks I'm perfect. But with that being said, John has been extremely upfront and kind and forthcoming Making sure that since the moment I worked here, I felt comfortable and that I wasn't ever defending him and saying publicly something that wasn't true because John has made mistakes in the past, you know. And so I sat in this chair on my very first day, obviously, no cameras on or anything. And John giving me a rundown of these are the typical smears that you'll hear against me. Here's why people think that. Here's the evidence. And I spent probably two weeks. John, there was. There's a long conversation that day, but then I spent a lot of time having to go through documents, through a lot of things to understand both sides of the argument in the story. And to be honest, not everyone is entitled to somebody's personal life the way that John was so forthcoming with that information. But he wanted to make me feel comfortable and somebody as a boss who does that, right off the bat, it did make me feel comfortable, and it made me understand the type of character that John Dean has. And so for people in my. My TikTok live streams every day, my comment sections every day, John, did he do this? Did he not do this? He just addressed where you can find in the rfm Bill real episode. He just addressed what you can find. And if somebody is actually curious and investigating the truth, that's where it's at. And if somebody wants to just, like, harass me in my comment section for being so disgusting, for working for a monster like John Dehlin, that person's not really worth my time. That's not. There's no truth to John being any kind of monster that somebody might portray him as. There's nothing to that.

John Dehlin [02:29:52] Well, thanks. And, you know, it's difficult. I will. I will say one more thing. You know, I have several close family members that have been sexually assaulted or. Or raped. And it. I had to learn, because I come out of Mormonism, I had to learn about rape and assault. I believe in the idea of that false accusations are extremely rare. So I believe in, by default, believing victims. By default, starting by believing. Because very few victims, actual, genuine victims have anything to gain by making false accusations. And the overwhelming number of rapes and assaults never get reported. I'm sensitive to all that. So, yes, I believe in believing women. And yes, I believe in believing victims. I condemn Harvey Weinstein, you know, Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, like all those sexual predators out there, I condemn them. And I. I think we should support and believe victims. And I'm also going to say that if you consider yourself an advocate for victims levying egregious false accusations against people with no evidence does not help your cause. It doesn't help victims to levy egregiously false and defamatory unsubstantiated accusations against people. Because what it does is once your accusations have been shown to be specious and ill founded and fraudulent, it just makes a lot of people less interested later in believing actual, credible victims. So don't pretend to be on the side of victims if you're going to levy irresponsible, fraudulent accusations and falsely accuse people for being predators when they're not.

Kara Barilla [02:31:49] Yeah, it's a hard pill to swallow, but it's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diversity, Staffing, and Organizational Challenges

John Dehlin [02:31:55] Okay. Well, we, we covered maybe a lot more of the stuff that we wanted to cover later, but let's just go ahead and cover just a few more things really quickly. One, one of the things that I just, I'll touch on really briefly. I've already talked about this. I hate the fact that, that I represent the problem. Like one of the biggest problems is patriarchy, right? Is white, straight, privileged, cisgender males who also can be sometimes charismatic influences in the community. Like dominating. That's what, like my face, my life, my body represents all that. So I realize I'm coming out of more Mormonism, harmed by the patriarchy, just, you know, disrespectful of the patriarchy, wanting to tear the patriarchy down. And I represent it. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm privileged, and I'm a man. And I hate, I hate that irony because there is this idea of pass the mic, create space for the people of color, the women, the sexual minorities, all the disenfranchised, vulnerable minorities. Yes, pass the mic. But like, but I don't know. Have I been able to help move the needle? Have I been able to advocate for LGBT people? Imperfectly. Have I tried to advocate for feminism and women? I've tried, I've done my best. Have I tried to speak out against racism, use my privilege to help educate and, and bring people to becoming more sensitive and supportive of marginalized groups? I've really tried. And so I hate the fact that I represent all the problems and that, and that by creating a non profit where I'm the head of it, in some ways I've recreated a patriarchy. And so I've tried to atone for that or compensate for that by having tons of people of color on the podcast, tons of sexual minorities, tons of women, and to even empower people like Gina Colvin and Natasha Alfer Parker and lots of other people to start their own podcasts in our network so that we can pass the mic. But I'm just always struck by how difficult it is to sort of, like, empower and advocate for marginalized communities and then to be everything that. That was the problem that got us into this mess. And I don't know how to elegantly navigate that sometimes. And it sometimes makes me hate who I am and makes me want to just disappear and go silent. But I don't know. Would. Would Mormonism. Would post Mormonism be better off if I just disappeared and went away because I'm a white, straight male? I don't know.

Kara Barilla [02:34:45] I don't like any of that. No. We come from a religion, like you said, that has a lot of patriarchal structure to it, that has a lot of. Of white supremacy in its history all the way up till today. And I understand what you're saying, but I think with all of that being said, John, you've done the best job possible to pass the mic. And anyone who is feeling like, I don't know, maybe like a PTSD reaction of seeing you mimic all of these characteristics of the church that they just came from. I have. I have empathy and I have space for them. But it should never discount the good work of everything that we just said that you've put your livelihood and your life on the line to do, and you've done. I think you've done everything that you can do. Well, thank you.

John Dehlin [02:35:31] Let me be clear. But I'm not. I'm not asking for. I'm not fishing for compliments.

Kara Barilla [02:35:36] I am giving you anyway.

John Dehlin [02:35:37] It can't be like, oh, poor, straight, white privileged male.

Kara Barilla [02:35:41] Now is like saying, people have feelings too. People in privilege have feelings to. Everything in context makes. Makes sense.

John Dehlin [02:35:47] So all I'm saying is I'm not fishing for compliments. I'm just saying it's. It's complicated to be the right type of ally. And I'm sure I've made a gazillion mistakes trying to be a good ally, but it's. I'm just saying, like, I want to keep learning. So, like, just today, like, you know, I tried to advocate for somebody and they reached out to me and said the way you advocated for me wasn't helpful. Like, if you don't come at me, calling me a rapist and a pedophile, and you just come at me directly, if you're a marginalized group who doesn't feel like I've been a good ally, if you can stop short of. Of calling me a sexual predator or a rapist and just discreetly come at me behind the scenes and say, john, I know you're trying to help. What you're doing isn't totally helping. Here's a few pieces of feedback. I know it's not your job to educate me, but I'm doing my best. I would just ask people to kind of try and respectfully give me pointers and I'll try and learn fast and be a better advocate. And it, you know, I don't know other than that. I just don't know that me disappearing is gonna make things better.

Kara Barilla [02:36:57] And to be honest, there's people like me.

John Dehlin [02:36:59] Not just me, but people like me.

Kara Barilla [02:37:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:02] Shouldn't people in privilege do their best to advocate? I don't know.

Kara Barilla [02:37:07] Yeah. And to be as intentional with the time that you have to listen to feedback, which I think you do. So I, I like Ethan's comment. I just want to read real quick. That said, I can. Oh, can you read it?

John Dehlin [02:37:24] I can understand where you're coming from, John. I don't think it's stupid. It's a valid concern and it shows your pure intent.

Kara Barilla [02:37:31] And again, I'm not, I'm, I'm, I highlighted it, not you. I'm allowed to compliment you. And you know what? You're the straight white male and you're gonna sit back and shut up and just listen to my compliments so I can understand where you're coming from. And it, I do think it shows like a pure intent. But also we come from, there's, there's, there's a double edged sword, John. You know, I'm talking about in the sense of, like a lot of people want you to use your privilege to pass the mic as, as much as possible. But then also guess what happens sometimes we do an episode that is consistent with, with John's values from the very beginning to highlight people of color and LGBT stories. And sometimes people who are just leaving a very conservative religion are not ready to hear those types of stories. I wasn't, I was, I was a little bit too conservative to be able to see different sexual orientations or gender identities as completely valid. Two years ago, I wasn't interested in that type of Mormon experience. You know what I mean? So there's, there's certain times where all people want to hear is a certain lane, a certain type of John talking about something. And John does different types of episodes and different types of content, because that's the type of guy he is. He wants to give that platform to as many people with Differing experiences in Mormonism, whether it be from, like, them being marginalized because of their skin color, sexual orientation, their gender identity, whatever it is. So I've seen that side of John, and I'm just here to attest that his heart is in the right place. And furthermore, Mormon stories, listeners, please listen to as many of those episodes as possible, because sometimes those are our least popular episodes, because like I said, we come from a very conservative space where people are not ready to listen to those. So challenge yourself on ableism. Challenge yourself on topics that make you uncomfortable. Don't seek to. To judge somebody else's lived experiences. Ask questions and be curious about why their experiences are the way they are. What structural problems are there within the church that made them have the problems that they're now living with and have trauma from. So we try to highlight as many different things. And I thought, I think, John, you. You done good, kid. Like I am. I'm a woman over here with. It's got plenty of her own privileges as possible. But I'm here to say that, John, I think you've done a really good job.

John Dehlin [02:39:42] Well, thanks. I'm not vision for compliments here.

Kara Barilla [02:39:44] I said shut up. I mean, allies take it.

John Dehlin [02:39:48] Allies don't need awards. You know, they, they. And they shouldn't be saying how hard. Like, this is one of the things I've learned from people close to me. If you're a good ally, you're not talking about how hard it is to be an ally. And so.

Kara Barilla [02:40:00] Yeah, yeah, I understand that.

John Dehlin [02:40:01] So it's complicated. I will. I do want to say one more thing. This isn't just. This doesn't just apply to, like, the people that I interview on Mormon Stories Podcast. It also applies to people that I hire. And this is something that's really complicated because maybe I want to have a bunch of women or people of color start podcasts so that we have a network of podcasts sharing points of view. Or maybe I want to bring someone on as a co host that represents other groups like you. Or maybe I want to hire other employees that represent other groups. Not just to tokenize them. Not just to, like, fill slots with quotas.

Kara Barilla [02:40:38] No, no.

John Dehlin [02:40:39] But because I'm better. Gerardo. Yes, he's a Latino and yes, he's gay, but, like, he has dramatically improved the quality of the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories. You're a woman, but you're also brilliant and funny and witty. So, like, I'm not just. When I, When I hire staff, I'm not just trying to, like, tokenize people and fill quotas. I'm hiring people because I know having a diverse staff, having diversity, having a diverse podcasting crew is going to make a better product overall.

Kara Barilla [02:41:10] Right?

John Dehlin [02:41:10] But what's complicated about that is it's risky. It's risky. Are you kidding me? Me hiring a woman In 2021, after the MeToo movement, after all these smears, I was terrified to hire you, Cara Burrell. I was terrified.

Kara Barilla [02:41:26] I mean, I'm gentle as a kitten over here.

John Dehlin [02:41:28] No, I know, but like, just think about what that conversation with Margi is like. It's like, oh, Margi, I want to hire a 32 year old woman that I can work alone with in my office for long periods of time. Like, that was not an easy conversation. And even in just my mind, I'm just like, I'm terrified because if I say the wrong thing to you or do the wrong thing, or even if something's taken, even if I, you know, don't mean something, but you just interpret it in the wrong way. Like, how risky is it? Because just one person now that leaves the Open Storage foundation and has like, mean or critical things to say, after all the smears and the lies that have been told previously, like, it can be devastating. And all I can say is the. Oh, I do it for two reasons. One is because it makes the program better. You care have made the program better. You, Gerardo Simano, have made the program better.

Kara Barilla [02:42:20] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:42:20] That's the first reason I did it, because I'll. I'll have better. It's it. But secondly, it's part of my values. It's what I want to stand for. But there's just incredible risk in this small organization where, where some of our biggest fights are. Like, me terrified that I'm going to do something wrong that's going to make you hate me, that then is going to make you go and talk bad about me. That then is going to make all my donors cancel. Like, it is so stressful. And I want to apologize to you for like, all the trauma. And by the way, I've had past staff, like, okay, I'm going to address this now. So, like a couple years ago, I brought on, I had a board and I had some staff that we were doing great things together. And then a lot of these smears and attacks started coming. And I'm not trying to make excuses to say that I don't make mistakes as a manager or that like, I didn't mishandle things like non profits are hard. There's board turnover in every non profit I've ever known. Anytime you hire anyone, there's going to be boss and staff conflicts. But I'm just going to say the constant barrage of like life and career ending smears that was coming in at us a few years ago, there's always sort of like, well, John, you had staff that left and you had board members that left. I just want to address that now. If I had to, if I had to explain what the number one reason why we had staff turnover and board turnover a couple years ago, it's because of how terrifying it was to be the recipient as not just an individual, but as an organization to life and career ending false smears and accusations of super serious nature that caused me to be super stressed and on edge. That led to super intense stress between me and staff members that were doing the best they could and that led to intense, fierce battles between me and other board members about how to handle these life and career ending smears. And, and it led to board tension and it led to staff tension and ultimately it led to us all just saying this isn't working. And board members left and staff left. And there were all sorts of reasons why, but it's because it's like constantly juggling hand grenades. That's what this job is like.

Kara Barilla [02:44:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:35] And so I'm addressing that now for anyone who wants to ask, why was their board turnover three years ago or five years ago, why was their staff turnover? There were lots of reasons that I would be willing to take ownership of, you know, if we could have an open, fair conversation with those people. But I don't want to be talking about people in any way without a chance for there to be fair reciprocation. So I'm not going to get into that. But I will say it's because of how stressful it is to run an organization with the constant smears and stresses in this space. And, and that, that's me saying and answering that question of why there was board and staff turnover a few years ago. And it's happened a couple times. And then, and then that's also me apologizing to you, Kara, because I think it's probably been hard to work with me sometimes with the trauma that I carry from all those past experiences. And I apologize for that. And I also just want to give you a chance to. Well, I just want to thank you for how you've been able to endure what's. What's probably been really hard at times.

Kara Barilla [02:45:47] Thanks, John. That means a lot. Yeah. For anyone who cares to know, like I Don't think that. I mean, I'm not going to pat myself on the back too much, but I don't think anyone could do the job that we're. That me and John have to do with everything that we just mentioned. And then also just be able to not take some things personally and recognize, hey, John, I think you have some, some trauma from some other people who might have smeared you and ditched you in the past. Could you possibly be projecting things onto me that are not actually truthful and, and not taking things too personally and giving John and I a chance to work through things instead of just, I don't know, falling into an instinct of just ditching when things get hard or tough or difficult or anything. So John and I have had lots of good heart to hearts that. It reminds me of that Taylor Swift song where she says that, you know, when the rain and run out. And it's the bridge of that song that I can't sing right now. But you know those lyrics where she's like, brace myself for the goodbye. And then you took me by surprise and said, I'll never leave you alone, John. I'm never leaving you alone. So you were bracelet. John braces himself for the goodbye that like, oh, dang, like, staff turnover is just inevitable. But I'm like, nope, you got me for life. Sorry. So everything's a Taylor Swift song at the end of the day. So that's, that's all I have to say on that.

The Personal Toll of This Work

John Dehlin [02:47:10] Well, you, you've. You've. This job is this job. Part of the reason why we wanted to do this episode is because people have no idea how hard this job is. And people have all sorts of criticisms. They take all sorts of potshots and they have no idea. And so I just want us to. I want us to be able to go on the record and talk about that. I also want to give a shout out to Margi, my wife, to my kids.

Kara Barilla [02:47:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:47:30] Andy, Aaron, your husband and your kids, even though they're too young to really know the sacrifices that they're making unknowingly, because this is all really hard on them.

Kara Barilla [02:47:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:40] And they have. Margi and my kids have been through so much. I listed this as the number one thing I hate about this job. It's how, how excruciating, you know, pick on me, smear me, try and destroy me and attack me. I had no idea how hard and difficult this would be on Margi, my wife, and on my kids. And in some ways, my kids are still healing from the scars of Having their dad be in this public space, not just from the smears and the attacks, but from the neglect and from the distractions and from distractions, all the people demanding of our time and. And the interruptions in public space spaces. Like, yeah, it's. It's. I'm not trying to say, oh, it's so hard to kind of be known in the world. Like, it's been really. It's a. It's really hard on our spouses and children, and nobody will ever understand that until they're sitting in that chair.

Kara Barilla [02:48:31] Yeah. Yeah. John told me that, you know, when I was starting here, and I believed him then, and now I have a strong taste of it. It's the taste that's always in my mouth of everything John just said. Knowing that that's kind of like the calculated decision that we've had to live with, that. That there's pros and cons to this job and hopefully my kids therapy won't cost too much. Just kidding. But no, to John's point, like, you want to be an intentional parent. You want to leave Mormonism, and you want to be a healthier parent. And I think John and I are very conscientious people about our parenting and trying to do the best by our kids. And if at any point this job hurts our kids, which John can admit that this job has, that kills them inside. And he's given me the lessons to not let that happen and to. To be, you know, looking at the outset of what could possibly harm them. Because as a parent, you want to be intentional. You want to be present with your kids. Like we said, this job is all consuming, and it has lots of interruptions where you can't always be present with your kids. That's calculated choice that we've made. And I do the best that I can.

John Dehlin [02:49:38] Yeah. So, okay, I think the. The. I think we've covered the main stuff. We've just got a couple quick ones we're gonna end with. So one is not becoming the monster you ran from. So, like, yes, we're all angry at the church. Yes, we've all been betrayed by the church. And so on the one hand, anger is healthy, but when you're in a constantly critical space of. Of shining a spotlight on the church and speaking truth to power, it's really hard not to become the monster you ran from. It's really hard not to let the anger and the negativity consume you. And so that's a really hard part of this job, is staying positive, staying upbeat, staying constructive, not Being negative all the time and trying to do, trying to do this job in a healthy, constructive way that doesn't just eat your soul inside and make you become callous, sad, callous, pathetic person. How about for you? Have you experienced any of that or not so much yet? Like, you're relatively new.

Kara Barilla [02:50:35] Yeah, I'm relatively new. I mean, the main thing that I have to say to that is, like, John comes from this clinical counseling psychology background. And I've asked him before, like, how do you keep doing this job? And I think John can answer that again when I finish talking. But a lot of it has to do with his background already. Counseling people and understanding, you know, the boundaries of work and helping people in one situation. I'm, I'm, I don't. I'm not a doctor who can, like, run into the ER and see, like a mangled body and get to work. I'm still scared of blood. Like, I'm still fresh in this field. So that means that I, I carry a lot of those people's emotions with me. Reading, I have a really hard time getting through all of my DMs on, on Instagram. I could never do the job that John does. Reading the enormous amount of emails that Mormon stories gets because people are hurt and they're traumatized and they see somebody, whether it's John or it's me, and they say, this person will listen and I will listen. And I do want to have a thought, real full response to what this person's going to say. And. But it's hard, it's super hard to hear how somebody has been damaged by the church and to jump from one to the other. At least in this long format interview. I'm hearing one person's story and that's it for the day. If you're reading messages, you're going from one and then directly jumping into another one and then sometimes another. It's, it's this weird, overwhelming thing that my brain has a hard time handling. So I forgot your original question.

John Dehlin [02:52:16] Oh, no. Yeah, so it's, it's hard to be in a position of a, of a critic or of a, of an activist without letting that consume you into negativity. And then you brought up the next point, which is like the volume of communication we get emails, direct messages, lunches, people coming up to us, stories that we hear. We just carry a lot of pain and we carry a lot of stories. And the volume. I, I know personally, I am certain I've communicated with over a hundred thousand people at this point in the past 16 years, 17 years. It's just endless. And so. So just. I was joking with you. I could spend all day responding to 30 emails. Like, I've got like 50,000 unread emails or 30,000 unread texts.

Kara Barilla [02:53:06] You know, John's inbox gives me anxiety. I'm one of those people that needs to clear things. So even the fact that my. My Instagram inbox has 43 on it right now. I know, because it, it haunts me that, like, I want to validate people's experiences and respond to them. And also. Sorry, I didn't want to interject something else. Also, it's really a slap in the face when anyone says that the Mormon Church has never hurt anybody. We get that all the time as a criticism of, like, stop talking about this and stuff. Because John and I have an inbox full of people who have been hurt by the really unfortunate systemic abuses within the church. And that if there's one thing I wish Mormons would cut out is me and John. We are. We are there, like on the front lines, reading these, responding to people. It's pathetic that people just ignore it. That. That's a problem. Sorry, John, but go on. You have an inbox full that there's an avalanche. It's like. It's like going up into the mountains, setting off one purposeful avalanche. Not purposeful. Anyway, the point is there's just an avalanche that's coming downhill and you try to solve one and there's another one, and there's a. Another one. It's an avalanche of people that have been harmed by Mormonism. There's just. It's the starfish analogy again, like this. It's so much to keep up with. There's so much volume.

John Dehlin [02:54:17] Yeah, it's.

Kara Barilla [02:54:18] It's heart wrenching.

John Dehlin [02:54:19] In any given year, there's at least 40,000 people in faith crisis, I estimate within Mormonism alone. And we process thousands and thousands of emails and comments and texts and inquiries every year, probably tens of thousands. And so not only is it easy to get angry and bitter and negative and to let that consume you, but it's just so much pain and sadness to carry around. And I know Lindsay feels it. I know Bill and RFM feel it. I know that Lexi feels it. And Mindy and just Streeter and just Sam Young and all of the people that have waited into the space know how terrible. Natasha. Oh, my gosh, Natasha. All the therapists and coaches in this space, the pain and the. And the suffering is endless.

Kara Barilla [02:55:12] And that's hard to carry it's super hard to carry. I also just want to do this as a public service announcement. John, forgive me if I get in trouble for later saying he's giving me a look. What are you going to say, Kara? It's just, yes, we. We carry a lot of that in the public space. And it just kind of. When you were saying that, it reminded me of when I'm walking through, like, the hallway at Thrive and I almost have to run because I want to talk to people. I am an extrovert. I want to talk to people. But a lot of times when John and I are in public in a space, we have an intention with where we're walking or what we're doing. And I want to talk to people I like, want to make an appointment. I want to invite you over to my house to come hang out with me. Like, I genuinely like people and I, I don't want to do, like, short shrift. Is that the word I'm looking for to somebody's story. But we are recognized now in public quite a bit, especially John way more than me. And it's really hard to be pulled out of what you're doing and get into listening to somebody's traumatic story, because that deserves attention that I physically can't give. In the situation we're in right now, whether we're at a party and there's music blaring and somebody maybe is a little bit drunk and they, they want to, like, shout in our ear the story. And it's like, I want, I'm like

John Dehlin [02:56:18] 30 minutes or an hour, I want to tell you their story.

Kara Barilla [02:56:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:56:21] And you don't want to be insensitive to it or make fun of it or every story matters. But like, when you, you know, when you're at a social event, you just want to have fun, or you're just at a restaurant with your family, on the one hand, you're really grateful. It's really heart warming, for sure.

Kara Barilla [02:56:37] When people come up, it's all these good things at the same time.

John Dehlin [02:56:40] It's heartwarming. And then, and then sometimes you, you just feel like, man, can I just clock out during karaoke? You know, when I'm at the jazz game, can I just be with my kids? Because I've asked my kids, are you annoyed when people stop and thank or talk to us? And I want them to say, oh, no, Dad, I love, I love it. And I'm. I'm so proud of you. And I love that you help people. And I love it. To stop and talk to the people. But my kids invariably. And Margi hate it. And they say, I wish we could just go to dinner or go to the jazz game or go to the grocery store and not have people come up and want to talk to you. And again, it's not like I feel like. Like a rock star. That's like, oh, it's so hard. All my Rolls Royce. Such a burden. Like, it's not like that. But is that what you're.

Kara Barilla [02:57:30] Yeah, that's what I was saying, is that John and I genuinely care about people's stories, obviously, or else we wouldn't be doing this. And we try to respond as many messages as possible and that if you do catch us in public, we want to hear your stories, but you're gonna have to, like, take note of the situation and see if, like, my kids are tugging on my arm and it's like 10 degrees outside and they are crying. Like, that's not the best time to talk to me. But I love you and respect you, and I will make an appointment. I. I try my best to. To literally give of my. As much of my time and attention to people who are either just appreciative of the work we're doing or are hurting or in a space where they are looking for a friend. I would. I want friends. So as much as I can, I feel like the healthiest medium between what we just mentioned, between, like, not responding to a DM because we have too many, or talking to people endlessly in public, is I try to respond through, like, a voice message on my Instagram as much as I can. So I feel like I'm still having a conversation back and forth with somebody. So. John, I don't know what you want to suggest for a healthier medium other than maybe just like a. A handshake in public and a. A salute, like, thanks for doing a good job. But if you do see my kids with me in public, take. Take a note of how they're doing, because sometimes they hate me for talking too long to people in public.

John Dehlin [02:58:45] Yeah. And I. I honestly, it's some of the most rewarding. I mean, I love what I do, and it's because it helps people. So, like, I love it when people are kind and thankful and tell me I've really helped them or their families. So it's just. I don't know. There's one right answer, but it's complicated anyway. It's complicated, but I adore every. I. I live for learning that I've helped you and your families. I live for it. Literally. So please never think that I don't really appreciate it when you let me

Kara Barilla [02:59:20] know, you know, I. And yeah, just to drive this point home, we started off by talking about the best parts of this job and that when I went through my faith crisis two years ago, that Bill Real was that. That person, that podcaster for me, that I would have hugged and cried if I got to meet Bill Real back then. I did meet him at Thrive in November, and I wasn't as emotional as I would have been two years ago. But anyway, the point is, I understand. Like, I. I am overwhelmed with appreciation that I am in a position where I'm able to do that in this space that means something to somebody. That's so incredible that the way that I felt about Bill two years ago, that anyone feels that remotely for me, I am, like, so grateful that I get to be doing that and helping people, because I know how much Bill helped me and how much I would have just died to be able to, like, tell him that in person and stuff. So I'm trying to be, like, as diplomatic with this as possible. But also, John and I also have to have some boundaries a little bit. Like, we're advocating for our own boundaries a little bit in this section of the podcast.

John Dehlin [03:00:22] Yeah, we got to figure out that. And we just love and are grateful for everyone who shows appreciation because we. We live for it. So it's complicated.

Kara Barilla [03:00:29] I will say, oh, sorry. Somebody said wear a big surgical mask, and they're right. So we're wearing masks more and more anyway, so no one will recognize me.

John Dehlin [03:00:38] And I'll just say this, that we're working really hard to get Cara. I feel like we've tried hard to compensate her generously for what she does, but, you know, in my perfect world, we would be able to just keep increasing and increasing that. So if you're really grateful for Kara, the best way you can show it is to donate to the Open Stories foundation and even say, this is for Kara. And if you do that, we're going to make sure, you know, we get her to a place where her family isn't, you know, struggling as much to kind of make ends meet. My. My commitment to Kara is to get her to a point where her family feels happy and healthy and well compensated. And I think we've made good progress, but we've got some ways to go and you can make the difference. So donate in Kara's name, and we'll make sure Kara stays with us. If you value her and like her contributions, we'll do Our best to make sure she stays here for a good, long time.

Kara Barilla [03:01:40] Thanks, John. Thanks, listeners. Thanks, donors.

Wrapping Up and Final Reflections

John Dehlin [03:01:43] All right, well, we pretty much covered it all. I think everything else that we had left we covered in sub bullets. So I guess that brings us back to where we started. Is there any final things you want to say before we just end with gratitude? Kara? Any. Any other final thoughts? Well, go ahead. Go ahead.

Kara Barilla [03:02:02] Yeah, the only other final thoughts are just around how the stakes are so incredibly high. And John and I recognize that. It's. It's people's. It's their faith, which is their community. It's their life. This whole thing we're talking about is super unique. Podcasting and talking about Mormonism's truth claims and ways people have been harmed and helping people navigate a faith crisis, the stakes really couldn't be any higher in my estimation. Right. And because of that, the smears couldn't be any higher sometimes, too, because the stakes are so high. So it's like this, really. It's like Fast and the Furious if it was Mormon podcasting. You know what I mean? Like, we. We make content. We. We make content really quickly. We pump it out really quickly. We are. We're doing things in such a chaotic space, it feels like sometimes. And then we're also in a space that just has smears being hurdled at us. Which leads me to my last point, that sometimes we, you know, get death threats. And I got a little bit of1, like 2 weeks ago on one of our. Our Mormon stories, clips of somebody saying, like, if you bug religion enough, I'm gonna bug you with the. It's not a crossbow. I learned it was a compound bow in their profile picture who labeled themselves as a Danite in their Facebook. And, you know, we've had to be a lot more cautious about where we podcast from and getting security systems and getting tight, Tightening up security and tightening up our passwords and just living under this constant threat that we're dealing with a really high stakes. I don't know, what do you want to call it? Not industry, but, like, this field that we're in is. It's people's lives. And because of that, our lives are kind of up in this chaos. So that's kind of how I want to wrap up this episode is like the whole reason we did it is to kind of give transparency of how strange and chaotic and the unfortunate things that we have to do, but also that we. We love and we have the privilege of doing because we know how meaningful it is.

John Dehlin [03:04:06] Yeah. Yeah. And I'LL just echo that. I've received death threats. I've been doxxed. I've had people take photos of my house and my address and put it on the Internet. I've had people come to our office and take pictures of our door, post them on the Internet and make public threats. You know, my car's been vandalized before. Like, it. You know, that's hard. And then when you know, your kids are driving cars that aren't even safe because you don't have the money to. To necessarily buy them, you know, decent cars, or you go years without health insurance, like, it's just like, man, why are we doing this?

Kara Barilla [03:04:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:42] You know, because that's all very real, even though we try not to talk about it. And that leads me there's. There's a commenter who made the comment, Thriving 2015 said, hey, John, I know what we can do about Sarah's salary. You could portion some of your salary to Kara as well.

Kara Barilla [03:04:59] Sarah doesn't work here. I don't know who Sarah is.

John Dehlin [03:05:01] Okay. Kara, did I see Sarah? Yeah, I meant care. They wrote care.

Kara Barilla [03:05:08] You hired out a new person named Sarah and you didn't even tell me?

John Dehlin [03:05:12] I just want to address the compensation thing really quick. Even though we were wrapping up, I'm just going to address it really directly. I've already said that I went six years without any compensation and probably 13 years being paid far under what my market value was for my education and experience. So many years without health insurance. So many years without any retirement. The Mormon stories. The Overstorage foundation will never be able to make up that money, not to mention the debt we had to go into to do this job. But let me just explain how my compensation works. Number one, my salary has always been a matter of public record since the very first day. And I've done that intentionally. So you can, you can go to the Open Stories foundation website right now and find documents that describe my salary all the way back to the very first day. So we have been fully financially transparent, more than we needed to be. And let me just explain how my compensation works. Three or four different times, our board hired independent professional salary researcher or attorney to go and figure out what the right compensation for me should be. Given my experience, given my track record, given my success with the organization, giving my PhD and two master's degrees and all my tech experience at MIT and Microsoft, etc. And the board independently. I recuse myself as a board member and a compensation committee independently sets my compensation. That is how my compensation works. I don't just pay myself whatever I want. That's how it works. And I trust the board that now they are compensating me at a level that is commensurate with my, my skills, education, experience and performance. And that's all a matter of public record. And so many people have said, john, stop apologizing for your salary and for your compensation. And so I'm going to stop apologizing for my salary and my compensation. And I will just say this. If I didn't make what I made that make now, I wouldn't do it. I would stop doing it. It's not worth the death threats and the smears and the life and career ending smears and all of the stress and all of the pain. I wouldn't do it for 50k. I just, I wouldn't even do it for 100k. I just wouldn't. And I'm just being honest. And you know, the day that I'm not able to make what I feel like I need to make to be able to like, pay for all the therapy bills for all our family, pay for all the insurance, pay for all the medical bills, pay off all the debt for all the debt that we incurred, try and catch up on pensions and retirement and all those sorts of things, it's just not worth it. So I make what I make and I'm not apologizing for it anymore. But it's independently set by a board and it's been vetted through multiple organizations. So that's how my compensation works. Now, one thing I have asked the board to do is not to give me raises. So for the past several years, I have not received any raises. And all I've done is whatever extra money comes in beyond my compensation, I put in the bank account and I save it up. And I save it up. I save it up. And then I look at how can I add staff or add services that can help advance the mission further. And the hiring of Gerardo Simano, the hiring of Brooklyn to do our audio and video editing, the hiring of Gerardo to do our cinematography and co producing, the hiring of Jennifer to do our time codes and our show notes. And yes, the hiring of you, Kara, is all a function of me capping my salary, growing the organization, and then trying to use that extra cash on extra services for the mission of the foundation. So in a sense, I have sacrificed my compensation to Kara. And Kara is now being compensated with money that I probably could have argued I was worth, but I've kept it. And now we're going to try and grow additional services and the extent to which you as donors are generous with your contributions and the extent to which we grow. And we had our best year ever in 2021. Literally our best year ever. I may commit to you to just do more. So Whether that's the TikTok channel that care, you grew to over 110,000 subscribers in less than eight months. That's your investment now, reaching a whole new generation of people. Or the Instagram channel that you've been managing. Kara. Right.

Kara Barilla [03:10:00] We just hit 15,000.

John Dehlin [03:10:02] Just hit 15,000 on Instagram, which is

Kara Barilla [03:10:04] at least 5,000 more than a couple months ago.

John Dehlin [03:10:06] Or the YouTube channel that now is almost a thousand subscribers in YouTube because of Gerardo's great work and Brooklyn's work and Jennifer's work. Like, we are growing our impact. We have had over 15 million downloads and views of our content in 2021. And that's us reinvesting your donations into expanding our offerings and our services. Hiring John Larsen and bringing John Larsen on right to come on monthly, that's an investment that we make, you know, and we try and be generous in lots of other ways and even support other platforms, but that's how this works financially. And all I, all I can say is, is we want to be fair and generous. We're financially transparent and, and we're going to keep expanding our influence and our impact for as long as you continue supporting us. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, but all I

Kara Barilla [03:11:03] can say is John knows how I feel about, like greedy people and capitalism and, and you don't have to take my word for it. You don't have to take John's word for it. You can investigate, all of the finances are transparent. But if you want to take my word for it, John's all a okay with me on all of those fronts. John's compensation, my compensation, everything is thumbs up. It's good.

John Dehlin [03:11:27] So, and I'm going to say it publicly, I want to get you to six figures as fast as we can because I think that's how hard this job is. I think that's how important this job is. And that's what I think. You either you're worth that now or you're going to be worth it very soon. And as long as you guys step up to keep supporting us like you have, I think we can get there.

Kara Barilla [03:11:48] Yeah, I'm not looking to live luxuriously or anything. I literally just had to hire a nanny this week. A couple days a Week and also hiring my sister to watch my kids too and help pay for child care, health care.

John Dehlin [03:12:01] And Aaron, Aaron working from Aaron, being a stay at home dad and not drawing an income has been a way, the only way that you've been able to do this so far. So you've taken in theory, your family's taking a pretty big financial hit.

Kara Barilla [03:12:15] Yeah. If you want to talk about like the real hard heart, we're talking about the hard parts of this job. The hard down to the nitty gritty difficult is it's not the mom guilt necessarily. I know a lot of women struggle with that. I don't have mom guilt for being a working mom. At least maybe I did in the beginning. Now I don't at all. It's having a husband who is just. He was raised in a patriarchal church, but his, his dad was a stay at home dad as well. My husband's dad and his mom worked. But there's just a lot of household tasks and childcare things that my husband has had to work on that he's not naturally skilled at. Because I was a nanny before we got married and before we had kids. And some things come naturally to me about just a functional household that I have to do this job and then I also have to do at home as I'm trying to like get my husband used to this new role that he's fulfilling and he does his best and I love him very much. So there's still a lot of like, let's just say when I go home tonight, Aaron gave me the night off. Actually he told me to go out, which never happens. But let's just say on a normal Mormon Stories night, I have this job and then I have a whole other job of going home to clean my house, take care of laundry, take care of all of the other, you know, normal mom tasks. Masks. Because my husband's mental health is not totally superb. And being with kids, you guys get it. If you're with kids all day every day, it's super duper draining. So the hardest part of this job for me is worrying about my husband and worrying about my kids and making sure that everything is still functioning and at home, frankly. Yeah. Because I could just, Aaron could go out, he could find a full time job as a computer scientist doing, you know, programming, which is what he did up until last May when I started working here. Because we don't necessarily want our kids to be with nannies all the time. That might have to push come to shove. That might have to happen. But it's really, really difficult to go from being a mom who has, you know, you're like, large and in charge, like you run your household, to going to. If you and Margi switched places. And Margi was a full time working mom when you had three little kids at home, and you were the one now in charge of grocery shopping and all of the things that make the house function. I'm not saying there aren't wonderful men that do it, but it's, it's a real brain shift for a lot of people. So my husband and I having to adjust to that, it's been hard.

John Dehlin [03:14:36] Amen. All right, so I'm an end. And then I'm gonna have you end. I'm gonna end by saying, thank you, Kara. It's been an amazing year, and you've been an important part of that amazing year. I'm going to say thank you, Aaron and the Burrell kids, for all the sacrifices you guys have made. I'm going to say thank you, Gerardo, Jennifer, Brooklyn, Clint and Carrie, all of our donors, all of our listeners and viewers, and thank you, Margi, and all of my kids and all of my family and just everyone who makes this amazing stuff possible. I feel incredibly grateful at the end of the day. And I also just want to say for our enemies, for the few people, the five to six, seven people that used to be friends that now have, have made it a life's goal to just to smear and destroy this work we're trying to do. I just want to say, I want to grant you grace. And I want to say I hope. I'm sorry. I hope you find healing. I wish you well. I wish you would find healthier, constructive ways to deal with what you're dealing with. And I understand that you probably were hurt in ways that cause you to be the way that you are. And so I hope that I can always be dignified and constructive in how I respond to your hate and smears. And if, if any of you ever want to reconcile, I will be willing to forgive in an instant and just move on. I know I'm not perfect, but I, I, I've tried really hard to do my best. I feel bad and I apologize for all the mistakes I've made, but I'm just another imperfect person just trying to do good. And so if any of you feel hurt or offended, let's talk it out. If you're, if you engage me in goodwill without an attempt to smear and destroy all forgiven an instant. And we can build bridges and get right back to where we were. That's how. And thanks to all the donors that make all this possible. Kara, how do you want to end?

Kara Barilla [03:16:50] I want to end by saying that I. Yeah, I echo everything that John just said and think you ended that beautifully. And going back to the idea about how high the stakes are, I hope people that are either former colleagues, friends, associates in this space, in this field, ex Mormons just generally see that the stakes are so high and there are private communications and ways to reach out to reconcile with John, me, anyone. There's private ways of handling things and the stakes are too high to make this ex Mormon community look toxic. Look like have. Have given Mormon any one more reason to not investigate the truth claims of the church. Because look at how effed up all of the ex Mormons look. I, I want to make this, this community thriving and healthy. And it worries me that people are not committed to the growth and health of Mormons investigating the truth claims or people growing post Mormon because all they're interested is like in their own ego, their own self aggrandizement, their own slipping into obscurity and grasping at straws of people who are still relevant. That really worries me that there are people that are, that are that unhealthy. And I, I don't want that atmosphere for ex Mormons. And you can go on, on any community could probably go on Extrahova's witness. I'm assuming you could probably go in any space. Yeah. There's.

John Dehlin [03:18:19] I've talked to them all the same.

Kara Barilla [03:18:20] Yeah. Yeah. I know that this excitement just exists everywhere and I, we, we put out this podcast to try to just be transparent and advocate for all of us to do better.

John Dehlin [03:18:29] Yeah. Yeah. If I had to summarize what, what I loved most about what you just said. It's, it's when, when ex Mormons fight, the church celebrates.

Kara Barilla [03:18:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:39] So like if you, if you want to really do a favor to the church, smear and try and destroy fellow ex Mormon activists and creators like I have. That's why I'm not naming names like I've. No. Even though people are being awful, I have no desire to return that and fight back. Because the church wins when ex Mormons.

Kara Barilla [03:18:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:00] And attack each other. The church celebrates. That's exactly what they want. And I think it's dumb to give that to them. So let's constructively help each other do better, but let's stop smearing and trying to destroy each other.

Kara Barilla [03:19:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:11] By being petty or jealous or egotistical. You know. Yeah.

Kara Barilla [03:19:17] We all have Stuff we need to work on. And social media allows people to think that, oh, I left the Mormon Church, I'm good now I'm on the right side. Like I not doesn't mean everyone has developed empathy or critical thinking skills or actually thinking what's advantageous for this community. So yeah, like you said, John, the church celebrates when people don't unpack their trauma and actually work through their issues. So please, everyone, work through your issues so that it's a, it doesn't become a problem for the X money X Mormon community at large, let's say.

John Dehlin [03:19:51] Yeah, and, and I guess I'm gonna end by saying support everything. Support RFM and Bill Real. Support Sunstone. Support Tick Tock, all the ex Mormon Tick Tockers out there. Support all the amazing YouTubers out there. Zelf on the shelf, Jonathan Streeter, thoughts on things and stuff. You know, your polygamy dialogue, Smith Pettit, you know, Journal of Mormon History, Mormon History Association. I mean there's a million, a gazillion things I'm not mentioning. Thrive, the Thrive Foundation, Support it all. We need all these organizations and they should be cherished and supported, not destroyed. Support Symmetry Solutions and Natasha Helfer and all the therapists and coaches, all the healers out there, the Mormon Mental Health association, support it all.

Kara Barilla [03:20:45] And also I want to recognize that Chelsea Homer has like freaking faith Journey meetups.

John Dehlin [03:20:52] What's her new non profit called? It's called Support Chelsea Homer and the Lost and Found Club.

Kara Barilla [03:20:58] Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that, that she gets a proper shout out. And the board and everything that they're doing there to build community.

John Dehlin [03:21:04] Marriage on a tightrope, right?

Kara Barilla [03:21:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marriage on a tightrope. There's so many people, lesbians who are doing everything that John and I just discussed the highs and the lows. It's not, it's not just us. I bet they would have a lot of similarities. People who are just trying to advocate for people's mental health, Post Mormonism, advocate for communities, advocate for all of these things John and I care about. We're just one voice of many that are just trying to say it's rough out there sometimes, guys. So then words of Adele, go easy on me.

John Dehlin [03:21:37] Love it.

Kara Barilla [03:21:37] Which we have. Have a confirmation that she established that it was. That I was correct. Her husband, that it was for her child, her husband.

John Dehlin [03:21:45] So it was completely for her husband.

Kara Barilla [03:21:47] She did an interview, Adele did. If you guys watched the Benzi episode, me and John, we. Me and John, we just had an all out brawl over who Adele wrote go easy on me for. And now John admits that it was the son and I was correct. I get one didn't. I was so nice earlier. I said that you're always right on so many things, except for the. So just take it, John. Just take it that you were wrong. She said in an interview. So I win.

John Dehlin [03:22:15] Also, support Sandra Tanner and Utah Lighthouse Ministry. She's a legend, right? She deserves signature books, all that stuff. All right, we're done. Kara, thanks for coming. Love you all, you guys. Thanks everyone who made amazing comments and suggestions. Please Support us at MormonStories gmail.com Become a monthly donor, donate a ton of money to Kara, and we'll make her life super happy and comfortable and give Aaron lots of Christmas presents. Kara, you're amazing. Thank you.

Closing Thoughts and Farewell

Kara Barilla [03:22:45] You're amazing, John. Another successful podcast. We didn't know how this one would go live, but feel good. Yeah, I'm happy we were able to do this live and I just wanted. I wasn't able to read everyone's comments and stuff, but everyone's been super, super kind and complimentary to you and to me in the comments. And so I just wanted to let everyone know that I've. I read your comments while we were talking, and I feel very loved. And thank you all very much for participating in this live stream.

John Dehlin [03:23:09] All right, thanks everybody and be kind to each other, Love each other, and we'll see you all guys again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks, everybody.

Kara Barilla [03:23:21] Bye.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.