The Soloists

Bad Bunny’s halftime show was the most popular of all time, amassing 128 million views the day of the Super Bowl, with millions viewing afterwards through clips online. We felt a vibrant energy, his palpable love for Puerto Rico, and enjoyed the wedding at the center, and the inclusion of children and the elderly. But according to our guest in today’s episode, Rosalynde Welch, the vivid snapshots...

In The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (2025), Leah Libresco Sargeant —our guest for today — envisions a world where caring for loved ones is not seen as an interruption of a real, normal, satisfying life, but constitutive of one. In fact, one measure love might be our “interruptibility.” The myth that we are independent is an “anthropological falsehood” promoting the lie that we can s...

Today we share another interreligious dialgoue on the relationship between sex and the spiritual, which — contrary to pretty much all public messaging on the topic since the day I was born — is not inherently antagonistic. Not when you look deeper into the texts and teachings. And certainly not among the Dharmic faiths, which are known for being anthropologically astute on matters of desire, love,...

We’re coming up on Giving Tuesday, which is a good time to reflect on what we’re giving our time and money to. Today’s guests, Abe Collier and Melissa Robel, discuss their own wrestles with this question as they heeded unexpected calls to found their own humanitarian organizations. I was eager to talk to Abe and Melissa because their organizations are both young and small — right at that point whe...

David Boice has done one of the most interesting public experiments on the internet — 52 Churches in 52 Weeks . What began as a personal search for a spiritual home has become a rare document of the Christian architecture of America: not just what churches teach, but how Churches treat people as they walk inside for the first time. Over dozens of Sundays, David has become a quiet expert in the sub...

Today’s conversation is about detours, the awkwardness of not meeting cultural milestones, and the discovery that there are multiple paths towards fulfillment. When Joseph Smith traveled to Salem in 1836, he hoped to find opportunities that could ease the Church’s debts. He never found the money. But the revelation recorded in Doctrine & Covenants 111 reframed the apparent failure: “Concern not yo...

“Community” is the buzzword of our era. It’s hailed as the antidote to loneliness, polarization, and rootlessness — the magic cure that’s supposed to ground us in the here and now, and provide us deep belonging. But because every organization from Trader Joe’s to the Catholic Church calls their audience a “community”, the word itself is stretched so thin it’s almost meaningless. Relatedly, it’s so...

This week, we teamed up with Rebbie Brassfield from Mormons in Media to talk about Hulu’s new reality dating show, Are You My First? The premise gave us the perfect chance to explore what dating dynamics look like when singles don’t have—and have never had—sex. To set the stage, think of your typical raunchy reality dating show—say Love Island —where a couple dozen singles are thrown together, com...

It’s been about a year since The Soloists launched with an episode on the history of singles wards — Latter-day Saint congregations organized specifically for unmarried members of the Church. At the center of each ward is a bishop, whose role is to offer pastoral care but also to navigate members through the repentance process. Today we’re sharing a conversation with singles wards bishops and thei...

Today, we're joined by Annie Kate Peterson, a graphic designer and author of the children's book " What She Sees: A Story Investigating Body Image ." She shares about developing anorexia at age 10 during a perfect storm of family stress when her desire to be seen and loved felt like "asking for too much." Bodies are inherently chaotic—they change without our permission, they age, they go through p...

As an urban planner, Mike Christensen seeks to improve the invisible infrastructure of public transit that connects diverse people to jobs, resources, and each other — or doesn’t. Mike is on the Salt Lake City planning commission and serves as executive director of the Utah Rail Passengers Association. He has spent years advocating for people whose transportation needs are invisible to those desig...

As a therapist, Kylee Shields knows that most cultural models for grief fall short when it comes to the full spectrum of loss we experience in life. She likes the term "ambiguous loss," which was coined by psychologist Pauline Boss in the 1970s to describe losses without clear beginnings or endings—someone physically present but psychologically absent (dementia), or physically absent but psycholog...

The promise of technology is that it can extend human capacity and even help us transcend biological limitations. But when it comes to human relationships, does it actually strengthen our capacity to love, commit, and build families, or does it quietly erode our capacity to be together? This is a live question, as digital and medical technologies increasingly shape how we meet, fall in love, marry...

In her forthcoming book, sex therapist and new author Jennifer Finlayson-Fife will be making the case that sexual and spiritual wholeness are inseparably connected. Jennifer has helped thousands of couples to reach deeper levels of intimacy and joy by illuminating this connection in her teaching and coaching. But what does this mean for people who don’t find themselves in straightforward romantic...

Most of life’s major decisions come with centuries of accumulated wisdom. Think of any coming of age decision — picking a marriage partner, selecting a vocation, or making religious commitments— and you’ll never find the bottom of literary, philosophical, and spiritual discussion on it. Becoming a single parent by choice is not one of those decisions. The assisted reproductive technologies (ART) t...

In a world that tends to lionize romantic partnerships as life's ultimate destination, what if we've been quietly undervaluing one of our most sustaining relationships? This week, we talked with Adam Staveski and Jordan Hunter —two humans who have cracked the code on being genuinely excellent friends. Adam brings his delightfully systematic approach to friendship (yes, there's a spreadsheet involv...

Today we’re sharing a conversation with Christine Emba, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation . Her book takes a hard look at the messiness of modern sexual culture—especially the way we’ve come to rely on this “hands off” ethic that says as long as something’s consensual, it’s fine. But what happens when consent isn’t enough for people to...

Lindsey Stirling is famous for doing something no one has seen before — blending classical violin with high-octane choreography, viral-era savvy, and a fiercely original sense of style. She’s not just a performer, but a disciplined creative and strategic thinker who built a global career on her own terms. In this episode of The Soloists , Lindsey talks candidly about painful parts of her life that...

Over the next couple of months, Mallory and Diana will be hosting conversations to explore shifting norms around dating and marriage in LDS culture, and this is a first dip into the question. This conversation is a bit bigger picture and less LDS-specific, though we start by talking about a change in the Church’s summer youth program, For the Strength of Youth (formerly called Especially For Youth...

No friendship is free from unfunny jokes and no romance is spared from chewing noises. Buddhist Jonathan Makransky joins Mallory and Diana to discuss why irritation arises in intimate relationships and what to do about it. We cover insights from Seinfeld, What about Bob , angsty Reddit confessions, and a book Jonathan recommended: Awakening Dignity , by Phakchok Rinpoche. You’ll also hear a theory...

What do I really want? It’s a question that sounds simple—until you try to answer it with your whole life. Diana and Mallory spoke with writer Michaelann Gardner, author of the new book Sovereign , about the quiet, sometimes heartbreaking work of discerning our most sacred desires and being true to them. Once we can fully see what we want, it gets easier to build a life of alignment. And if life w...

What do you do when the life you imagined—the one your faith or culture led you to believe was inevitable, even promised—no longer feels possible? In this conversation, Diana and Mallory sit down with two beloved guests and friends, Stacey Harkey and Ben Schilaty , for a candid, thoughtful dialogue about faith, identity, purpose, and the courage it takes to walk a different path. Stacey and Ben bo...

What does it mean to receive beauty for ashes? The phrase comes from Isaiah 61:3, where God promises to bring joy where there was mourning, praise where there was despair, and new life from devastation. In this conversation, we spoke with chaplain and writer Jenna Carson about her journey through two divorces and the hard-won path to healing and renewal. For Jenna, the process wasn’t just about wo...

“Why is boredom painful? Shouldn’t it just be boring ?” Adam S. Miller asks in his book The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom & Addiction in an age of Distraction. In this conversation, Mallory and Diana spoke with Adam about boredom has to teach us, including in our relationships with other people. How does boredom impact the way we read and respond to others? How does our dread o...

Like an itch that won’t be scratched, many of us walk around fearing that love is scarce in our lives, that there’s not enough of it to go around. For that itch, the Wayfare essay ”Overflowing with Family” by Dr. Amy Harris offers triumphant relief. Amy is a genealogist and professor of family history at Brigham Young University. In this conversation, we spoke with Amy about her essay and about th...