The Latter Day Lens

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,...

Send us Fan Mail Who are we? Why would you want to listen to us? This episode introduces your hosts and the reason for the podcast. You've never heard talk about Ukraine or Russia like this before. We may not be foreign policy wonks, but we have information and perspectives you won't hear from the talking heads on prominent news outlets.  Join us this week as we discuss:  How we felt whe...

Send us Fan Mail An exciting new podcast is coming soon. Your home for unscripted, faith-promoting, entertaining discussion of current political events. We tackle the tough topics that most people avoid. New episodes each Wednesday.