Content note: this episode discusses death in detail, including infant and perinatal loss and a reference to suicide. Listener discretion advised.

In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders, Mitch, Juliet, and Ashton sit down for one of their most personal conversations yet: death. What did they each believe happened after we die, back when they were fully believing? How has that changed, and did losing that belief change how they grieve?

Juliet shares the experience of caring for her mother through six weeks of home hospice, and her work in high-risk obstetrics, where she cares for grieving families after perinatal loss.

Mitch talks about his years working in healthcare, seeing death up close for the first time, and his own daughter processing her grandfather's death.

Ashton, still active in the church, brings the believer's perspective on grief, hope, and the framing that a good, long life is "graduating" rather than something to mourn.

We dig into questions like:

- Is it possible to stay connected to someone who died without believing they're literally still somewhere?

- Does something have to last forever to matter?

- If there's no afterlife, what actually remains?

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Ashton returns for a deep, personal follow-up to our episode on his unique mission call to the Family and Church History Headquarters mission in Salt Lake, a mission staffed almost entirely by young elders with anxiety, autism, bipolar disorder, and other conditions.

He opens up about the good: lifelong friendships, a moving story about scripture memorization, and discovering a long-lost aunt through Ancestry DNA. He also gets into the complicated, including the church's $60 million data deal with Ancestry.com and questions about who really benefits from missionary labor.

Ashton shares two regrets he still carries: moments where his authority as a leader shut down a companion's doubts instead of making room for them. Juliet pushes back with sharp questions throughout.

The conversation lands on a reflection from Elder Bednar: don't be a specialist, be a generalist, and what that means for building bridges across belief.

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Andy Newman, a licensed therapist, ex-Mormon, and creator behind @andynewmanlpc joins us to role-play through real scenarios we hear constantly in the ex-Mormon and nuanced-member space: coming out to a believing spouse, dressing/behaving differently while still going to church, family members who won't stop sending conference talks, and parents scared their kid is leaving the faith.

We also get into the difference between a faith crisis, a faith transition, a faith expansion, and religious trauma — and why those aren't the same thing, even though they often get lumped together.

Work with Andy as a therapist: https://www.collectivecounselors.com/andy-newman-lpc

Follow Andy on TikTok and Instagram: https://www.tiktok.com/@deconstruction_therapy https://www.instagram.com/andynewmanlpc/

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders

👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

He played Lucifer in the LDS temple endowment film for a decade. Then, after 43 years as a member, Corbin Allred left the LDS Church — and he hasn't necessarily been quiet about it.

In this episode, actor and ER medical provider Corbin Allred joins Mitch in St. George, UT to talk about what it's like to be recognized as "the guy who played Satan," why he refuses to "leave it alone" after leaving the church, and the strange paradox of feeling spiritual confirmation to walk away from something he'd believed his whole life.

We get into:

- Being recognized (and sometimes feared) by patients who saw him in the temple film

- Responding to criticism that he "baits" people online

- What he regrets about how he left, and who he's really talking to when he posts

- Agnostic atheism vs. atheism, and why "I know" is a loaded phrase

- The paradox of feeling the same spiritual confirmation point two different directions

- Nihilism, death, and finding peace without certainty

Links and other show notes:

Follow Corbin: https://www.instagram.com/thecorbinallred

Corbin's IMDB page: https://tinyurl.com/2nu9knumDavid Eagleman: A New Look at Religion (Possibilianism): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LENqnjZGX0A

The Egg -- A Short Story by Andy Weir | Kurzgesagt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

This is Your Brain on God | Michael Ferguson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocuqguH1OIw

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders

👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Historian, author of The Fourth Wife, and grad student Linda Hamilton joins Juliet for a deep dive into Mormon polygamy: how it actually worked, who it actually harmed, and why it's still baked into LDS theology today.

They cover the poverty most plural wives lived in, the myth that polygamy was created to protect widows, the chaos of Nauvoo and Winter Quarters (including Joseph Smith's sealings to already-married women), the rise of Joseph Smith polygamy-denialism online, and why Linda can't get through the Doctrine and Covenants in Sunday School anymore.

Linda's debut novel, The Fourth Wife, is out now. Her next book, The Glass Looker, about seer woman Sally Chase, releases for pre-order soon.

Purchase The Fourth Wife here: https://a.co/d/01B5gEE5Find Linda: https://www.instagram.com/lindahamiltonwriter

Exponent II blog: https://exponentii.org/blog-home/#

Substack: https://lindahamiltonwriter.substack.com/

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Two Converts, Two Paths: Temple Experiences, Polygamy, and Finding Your Place as an Outsider

Mitch and Ashton are out this week, so Stevie takes the host chair alongside guest Juliet for a rare two-convert conversation.

Both joined the Church as teenagers (Stevie at 19, Juliet at 16), and both have since gone through a faith crisis, landing in very different places: Stevie is still active and reconstructing her faith, Juliet has stepped away and now identifies as deconstructing/disaffiliated.

They dig into audience-submitted questions covering:

• Why they joined despite real concerns about prophets, Joseph Smith, and family pushback
• Their first time inside a temple: the culture shock, the "unremarkable" vs. "overwhelming" range of first impressions, and Juliet's "sandbox on a beach" metaphor for how her spiritual experiences have been recontextualized rather than erased
• Serving as temple workers, including baptistry and sealing-room escort duties, and the practical advice they both got to space out receiving an endowment from getting sealed
• Polygamy: how each of them made sense of it as converts, and why treating polygamist women (past and present) as simply brainwashed misses their own agency and reasoning
• Whether converts ever feel like they've "made it," and how never quite fitting the mold shaped both of their trajectories

A candid, generous conversation between two women who joined the same church from very different directions and still found a lot of common ground.

Stevie's first interview on LDBB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWRFkwwQw7U&t=274s

Stevie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/s.t.e.v.i.e_j/

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

Abi Finny (@abi.finny) joins Juliet, Ashton, and Mitch to talk about the viral "temple to Taco Bell" video that got her labeled too crass by some and celebrated by others; and why a married Latter-day Saint talking openly about sex still makes people uncomfortable. As a nurse, Abi breaks down why comprehensive sex ed and body literacy matter regardless of your relationship status, and gets into purity culture, the pressure to be pretty but not know it, self-love vs. conceit, and the "check-mark" version of faithfulness (mission, temple marriage, etc.) that can leave you feeling disconnected from God anyway. She also talks about her "car conversations" series interviewing people across the belief spectrum, and why she'd rather build mutual respect than "flirt to convert."

Follow Abi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abi.finny🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com

What do Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals actually have in common and where do things go sideways?

In this episode, Mitch and Ashton sit down with Steven Pynakker of Mormon Book Reviews, an evangelical who has spent five years deeply immersed in the world of the Latter-day Saint Restoration. Steven shares why he considers himself pro-atheist, what he thinks drives people from Mormonism straight to atheism, and why he believes an unchallenged faith is a weak one. Ashton shares a meaningful personal experience with evangelical students at Biola University that reframed how he sees interfaith connection. And the three of them dig into the surprisingly wide and messy world of Restoration sects, from the Bickertonites to the Fundamentalists, and what it means to build bridges not just between faiths, but within the Restoration itself.

Steven's email: mormonbookreviews@gmail.com

🌐 More episodes & links: https://linktr.ee/latterdaybridgebuilders📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latterdaybridgebuilders 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@latterdaybridgebuilders☕ Support the podcast: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LDSBridgebuilders

👕 Merch Store:https://ldbb-shop.fourthwall.com