The Latter Day Lens

Send us Fan Mail Jason Aldean made headlines when his music video to “Try That in a Small Town” was pulled from CMT . In a recent concert he said , “What I am is a proud American," he continued. "I'm proud to be from here. I love our country, I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls--- started happening to us. I love our country, I love my family, and I wi...

Send us Fan Mail It seems like Shawn and Sam have been exposed to a lot of anti-union propaganda.  Sam mentioned some better non-union ways that worker interests should be represented. I’m curious to hear more about these  Do you think most people you all taught as missionaries changed their actual beliefs and opinions, or did they just find the church that matched their existing core beliefs? I&a...

Send us Fan Mail Cocaine was recently discovered in the White House. This never happened in the Trump Administration. Is this a big deal? Senator Lindsay Graham has taken quite a beating recently. First he was as anti-Trump as any Republican, then he was Trump’s most loyal defender . After January 6, Graham was again anti-Trump, but later was the first to endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy. Most pundi...

Send us Fan Mail Another listener pointed us to James Jones comments on ATC. He argues that Paul publicly corrected Peter for his behavior toward Gentiles ( Galatians 2:11-14 ). He also notes that President Uchtdorf acknowledged that mistakes have been made in the past. Ultimately, we have an obligation to engage in activism toward the church if leaders are not following the commandments.  The New...

Send us Fan Mail Parents rights activists have been concerned about some of the materials available to children in public school libraries. Last year, they lobbied for a new law that would allow parents to challenge materials available in libraries and request that items be removed if they are not appropriate for children. Last month, parents in Davis County, Utah, successfully challenged to get t...

Send us Fan Mail A study was recently published that looked at 30 years of data from 1989 to 2019 from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. They examined how couples divide work, focusing on three different wealthy groups, the Super rich, the just plain rich, and the upper middle class. They found that in 2019, 53% of super rich heterosexual couples had arrangements in which the woman...

Send us Fan Mail There have been a string of gun incidents lately. A Florida woman shot her neighbor through her closed exterior door, an 84 year old man in Kansas killed a black teenager who mistakenly went to the wrong house, and there were at least 20 mass shootings that occurred over Memorial Day weekend. There are many different causes, but one cause is the ubiquity of guns in the US. Califor...

Send us Fan Mail Liz Cheney was recently invited to speak at the graduation of her Alma Mater Colorado College . About half of the graduates turned their chairs away from her as she spoke and some booed her.  We believe that people have an obligation to oppose immoral laws. President Oaks taught in April 2021 , “Being subject to presidents or rulers of course poses no obstacle to our opposing indi...

Send us Fan Mail One listener writes, “So, remembering Sam’s counsel to never complain without offering a solution, I’d love to hear you each come prepared to answer this question: What is the present day cost to living Black people of past slavery and past and present discrimination? Can you estimate a dollar figure? Be sure to consider all the ways generations are connected—inheritance, gifts, e...

Send us Fan Mail A security guard at Walgreens shot and killed a shoplifter last month. The security guard claimed it was self-defense, but security footage seems to suggest otherwise. The DA has declined to press charges because their investigation concluded that Anthony acted in lawful self-defense. Others argue that "stealing a bag of candy does not warrant death." I sense a tension b...

Send us Fan Mail Sticking with education news, The state of Florida has just released its list of banned textbooks for the upcoming school year. On the department of education website , they list some of the objectionable materials that they are excluding from curriculum. As someone with expertise in these areas, I  have a real problem with material they’ve excluded. For example, they made a textb...

Send us Fan Mail Remember that Republican donor? Well, it turns out that he was also paying for one of Justice Thomas’s dependents to attend private school. Some Republicans say that this is no big deal, that this is all a part of an agenda to de-legitimize the courts. Rather than arguing that we should ignore this because Democrat Justices also do it, isn’t it better to demand that everyone on th...

Send us Fan Mail The Federal Reserve has completed its investigation into the collapse of Silicone Valley Bank. They have concluded that failure to properly regulate mid-size banks played a large role in the bank’s failure. “In the case of SVB, supervisors delayed action to gather more evidence even as weaknesses were clear and growing. This meant that supervisors did not force SVB to fix its prob...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are joined by two of our good friends Brian and Alex to continue our discussion about Russia and Ukraine. Introductions. Brian and Alex, feel free to share whatever you want to share about yourselves. I may ask you some questions, but feel free to tell me to be quiet. Current state of affairs in Ukraine. This past winter, it seemed like Russia was going to try to starve t...

Send us Fan Mail The United States has a long political history of viewing ourselves as a “ City Upon a Hill ”. In this view, the US is the model of Christian Charity and points the way for the rest of the world, that the “eyes of all people are upon us.” This has motivated US foreign policy for nearly a century. The United States acts to promote our interests abroad, but also to protect democracy...

Send us Fan Mail NASA announced the crew that would be flying the Artemis II mission and landing on the moon. It’s kind of exciting to have ambitious space goals again, but at the same time, this stuff is expensive. Each Artemis launch costs around $4 billion. The Artemis program at NASA will cost $93 billion over the next four years. With all of the private companies developing better technologie...

Send us Fan Mail Shawn helps us understand the challenges of Utah culture. Our first mission president's wife recently passed away at 91 years old. We don't spend a lot of time talking about this calling in the church, and for her this represented three years of about a 70 year life dedicated to the Lord. Obviously the majority of her impact in her life is on her family and those she ser...

Send us Fan Mail 1. What is the Latter Day Lens 2. We agree that there are universal truths in religion? What about politics or government? 3. For us, religion influences our political views, but for some people politics influences religion. How can the Latter Day Lens help people navigate situations when religion and politics seem to collide? 4. How does this podcast help promote using a latter d...

Send us Fan Mail Elizabeth Warren argued recently that if Republicans had not loosened regulations on mid-major banks in 2018, SVB and Signature Bank would not have failed. The text of the bill is here . Title IV of the law specifically increased the asset threshold at which company-run stress tests are required, from $10 billion to $250 billion and allows them to invest a higher percentage of dep...

Send us Fan Mail On 60 minutes recently , the President of Microsoft (Brad Smith) suggested that it would be a good idea to have a government regulatory body—like the FAA for airlines or the FDA for drugs—created that would regulate big tech. Something like a digital regulatory commission. We have it for virtually every other segment of the US economy, is it time to create something to regulate te...

Send us Fan Mail The number of children being employed illegally has been steadily growing , with a 69% increase since 2018. Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor found that 835 companies were employing about 3,800 children in violation of labor laws. It’s in all 50 states. It’s in factories, agriculture, child, domestic, household, labor, construction, you name it. It’s there in your community....

Send us Fan Mail ·        School vouchers : Who benefits from them, are they a good idea? ·        Section 230 : Should social media companies be liable for content on their platforms, like other media companies are? ·        Utah just passed a ban on Gender affirmative care for minors. Here are the current church policies on transgender individuals. Should governments pass laws banning gender aff...

Send us Fan Mail Right now, the Utah legislature is discussing a bill that would strip Planned Parenthood of its medical license and make it more difficult for women to access abortions. What should be done about abortion? 89-year-old, five-term senator Dianne Feinstein announced that she will not seek re-election in two years. The constitution has a minimum age for serving in office (25 years old...

Send us Fan Mail Federal investigators have accused two people of targeting members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a $500 million Ponzi scheme. And Utah has more Ponzi schemes per capita than any other state. Are members of the church more naïve than the rest of the US? Rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again meeting with LDS missionaries after moving to Salt Lake City. Is this pr...

Send us Fan Mail The COVID Health emergency will officially end in May, and along with it a bunch of government benefits that were put into place for the pandemic. CNN has a list here . Personally, I am going to miss some of these benefits. Did the little experiment with free COVID related healthcare demonstrate that government is good at providing healthcare? Government funded the COVID vaccine,...