Sunstone Magazine

When family secrets meet frontier justice: A murder that shattered a Mormon community Join Lindsay Hansen Park and journalist Daniel H. Neal for a conversation about his new book No Forgiveness—a true crime story that’s part family reckoning, part historical excavation. On a summer morning in 1911, two polygamous Mormon neighbors stood in an Idaho …

The story shifts from tension to bloodshed. September 1857, Mountain Meadows, southern Utah where a wagon train of emigrant families was betrayed under a flag of truce and massacred by Mormon settlers and their allies. In this episode, we unravel the deception, the chain of command, and the sacred language that cloaked an atrocity in …

Is it blasphemous to publish a cartoon about Angel Moroni? How about Jesus? How about God? Sunstone has been exploring the limits of what LDS culture is willing to laugh at for decades. Using many hilarious (and possibly blasphemous) examples, Stephen Carter talks about the times when Sunstone ran afoul of sacred sensibilities, and also …

In September 1857, southern Utah became the stage for one of the darkest tragedies in American frontier history, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. This was no spontaneous clash but a calculated act of religious extremism and territorial paranoia that left 120 emigrants from the Baker-Fancher party dead, while Mormon leaders shifted blame onto Southern Paiute tribes. …

Just when we thought we’d talked enough about disappointing Mormon men, George A. Smith pulls us back in. In this unflinching episode, we unpack how the so-called “Father of Southern Utah” helped lay the groundwork for one of the darkest moments in LDS history, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. With a wig in one hand and …

Is your life a sermon? Do you imagine your every action being narrated by a general authority? In this episode, Stephen Carter dives into perfectionism, showing how it manifests in people’s lives, and proposing a few odd ways to escape it. (Hint: Not through fasting and prayer.)

In Part Two of “The Summer of Conspiracy,” we follow Apostle George A. Smith on his fateful southern tour, an incendiary road trip of sermons, war councils, and covert diplomacy that would ignite the powder keg of Mountain Meadows. As Smith carries Brigham Young’s orders through the frontier, we trace how military drills, apocalyptic sermons, …

In our most incendiary episode yet, “The Summer of Conspiracy” rips open the shocking truth of how Mormon leaders, consumed by apocalyptic terror and drunk on prophetic power, weaponized an entire territory in the blood-soaked summer of 1857. When the federal government came knocking, Brigham Young and his zealot lieutenants didn’t just declare war, they …

Jesus, Mormon, and David Lynch walk into Stephen Carter’s head. Together, they manage to revise everything Stephen thought he knew about the Book of Mormon, the Atonement, and Eraserhead.

In September 1993, six scholars—called the September Six—were disciplined by the LDS Church. Lynne Kanavel Whitesides was the first. For the next ten years, she went on an extraordinary spiritual journey. Sadly, she passed away July 7, 2025. In her memory, this episode features a recording of the speech she gave about her spiritual journey …

What do you get when you combine martyrdom, relic worship, secret reburials, and a healing cane made from a coffin? Mormon history at its weirdest and most fascinating. In this special on-site episode of the Sunstone Mormon History Podcast, Lindsay and Bryan take you on a field trip into the curious afterlife of Joseph Smith’s …

In a surprising turn, the LDS Church has quietly validated the long-disputed 1886 Revelation given to John Taylor, a document that fundamentalists have clung to for over a century as divine proof that plural marriage was never meant to end. In this episode, Lindsay and Bryan dig into the origins of the revelation, the secret …

In this episode, Lindsay and Bryan unravel the Steptoe Expedition, a moment of uneasy calm before the storm of the Utah War and Mountain Meadows Massacre. What began as a military survey spiraled into scandal, seduction, and cultural collision, as Lieutenant Sylvester Mowry set his sights on Mary Ann Ayers Young (Brigham’s daughter-in-law!) and ignited …

A faith crisis is one of the most destabilizing things that can happen to an LDS marriage. Both partners feel betrayed. Feelings either erupt or are suppressed. In this episode, therapists Adam Fisher and Mary Fisher talk about the three most important things a couple can do to help each other.

What happens when spiritual ambition meets logistical failure? In this episode, we dig into the catastrophic 1856 Mormon handcart disaster, when Brigham Young’s promise of a faster, cheaper, holier way to Zion led to starvation, frostbite, and mass death. Stripping away pioneer kitsch and faith-promoting folklore, Lindsay and Bryan uncover the real story of financial …

He was the Church’s most unlikely general authority. A coffee habit, an oft-shot-off mouth, and–according to this great-grandnephew–a deep spirituality. This episode includes some of J. Golden Kimball’s funniest stories and reflections by James N. Kimball on the man behind the myth.

Mormonism has always dreamed big and in this episode, we dive into one of its boldest and most disastrous dreams: the great gathering of Zion. Lindsay and Bryan pull apart the myth and the machinery behind Brigham Young’s plan to build a literal Kingdom of God in the American West, fueled by prophecies, poverty, and, …

Being a single, 25-year-old Mormon female is a tough life. But Dorothy Black makes it into a stand-up comedy routine in this episode of the Sunstone Podcast.  

Before Mountain Meadows, there was blood in Arkansas. This is the wild, tragic, and shockingly true story of the Mormon apostle murdered over a love triangle, the woman caught in the crossfire, and the ripple effect that helped ignite one of the darkest moments in American frontier history. SHOWNOTES: Eleanor McLean and the Murder of …

For Heather Sundahl, Relief Society was the “monster child that sucked up my mom.” What was it like to be the daughter of the most powerful woman in the stake—who couldn’t find time to read to her?