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There’s the Mormon history you do know … and the Mormon history you don’t. Join Lindsay Hansen Park (Year of Polygamy) and historian Bryan Buchanan as they gossip about their ancestors and dig into all aspects of Mormonism’s astonishing 200-year past—uncovering the little-known stories that chronicle how a six-person church grew into a multi-billion-dollar religion. Episodes for this podcast are released every other week.

This podcast is heavily researched. For information on sources, and for additional reading for each episode's topic, click here.

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or stream episodes right here on Sunstone.org.

Episode 154: Mountain Meadows Massacre, Pt. 2

September 3, 2025

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 …

Episode 153: Mountain Meadows Massacre, Pt. 1

August 20, 2025

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 …

Episode 152: FIELD TRIP: Coffin Canes

August 6, 2025

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 …

Episode 151: The 1886 Revelation Validated

July 22, 2025

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 …

Episode 150: The Steptoe Expedition

July 9, 2025

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 …

Episode 149: The Handcart Disaster

June 25, 2025

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 …

Episode 148: The Gathering

May 21, 2025

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 …

Episode 147: The Tragic Tale of Eleanor McLean

April 30, 2025

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 …

Episode 146: Runaway Judges with John Dinger

April 15, 2025

In this episode, legal historian John Dinger joins us to uncover the little-known world of rogue probate judges in frontier Utah. These weren’t your average courtroom clerks. Mormons wielded sweeping …

Episode 145: Runaway Officials

April 1, 2025

In this episode, Lindsay and Bryan dive into one of the most violent and outrageous chapters of early Mormon history: the “Runaway Officials” scandal. When federal appointees tried to enforce …

About Our Hosts

Lindsay Hansen Park is host of the Year of Polygamy podcast and executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation. A single-mom of three kids by day, and nerd researcher by night, Lindsay lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where she interacts with hundreds of different restoration branches, Latter-day Saints and Mormon fundamentalists. Her adventures have led her to some of the most isolated fundamentalist compounds in the America West where she interacts with modern day outlaws, inlaws and everything in between. Her goal is to widen the conversation about common and shared heritages within the larger Mormon diaspora.

Lindsay
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Bryan Buchanan works at Benchmark Books, surrounded by Mormon history. At night, he herds small children and works on umpteen book projects, some of which might even be published.