The Mormon Church Is Suing a Podcaster Into Silence

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]A religious corporation sitting on roughly $300 billion dollars with an army of more than 200 attorneys on retainer just filed a federal lawsuit against a podcaster. All in an attempt to silence one of their critics. And no, we're not talking about the Church of Scientology. The LDS church is suing a man who has been on their internal enemies list since 2013. All because he ran a podcast called Mormon Stories, giving a voice to members and ex-members, sharing their often negative experiences with the church. The legal fees alone could run into the millions.

[00:00:35]The case could take years, and the rationale behind the lawsuit is just wild. My guest today is Dr. John Dyn, the host of Mormon Stories, and what's happening to him should concern every single person who cares about free inquiry, no matter what religion you grew up in.

[00:01:02]John Den, welcome to the show.

[00:01:03]>> Thanks for having me on, Thomas. It's a real honor to be on your show. So, thanks for uh helping bring a spotlight to what's going on.

[00:01:11]>> So, John, who exactly are you and why is such a powerful religious organization suing you right now? I've been doing the podcast for 21 years. So, you probably won't meet many people that started their podcast in 2005. I'm a sixth generation Mormon. My ancestors were pioneers that crossed the plains in the, you know, mid 1800s. I was born and raised in the church, married in the temple, all that stuff. And in my early 30s when I was working for Microsoft, I had a faith crisis and lost my orthodox faith in Mormonism, but still felt like maybe the church could expand to allow nonliteral belief. And so in 2004, I left Microsoft. 2005, I started the podcast. And I started it as a someone who was still attending church and hoping to remain faithful my whole life.

[00:02:01]The reason why I lost my faith to begin with was because in my early 30s, I started learning things about the church's history that the church had never taught me. Things like Joseph Smith was a polygamist, that he had over 30 wives, that he married 14y olds, that he married other men's wives, that the church's founding scriptures had serious historical and credibility problems. I just felt really betrayed. So when I started the podcast, it was with this idea that number one, Mormons deserve to know the truth about their past and their history and the rest of the world.

[00:02:35]And maybe through podcasting, the church could become comfortable with people talking openly about its history and its doctrine and its theology and its practices. So I did the podcast for about 10 years before the church excommunicated me. And in 2015, the church did excommunicate me. They wanted me to shut the podcast down at that time. They also were mad that I was supporting same-sex marriage publicly and that I was supporting female ordination publicly. All of that got me excommunicated in 2015. That was covered in the New York Times. I think they hoped that that would maybe silence me or shut me down. We just continued growing. This culminated in like November of last year. So, November of 2025.

[00:03:20]The church emailed me after using the name Mormon Stories for over 20 years, after never contesting our trademark or or our copyright usage or anything, they sent me a email basically saying, "We feel like you're violating our trademarks and we feel like you're violating our copyright and we want you to make some changes." So I, long story short, I made all the changes that I felt were reasonable immediately. I changed my They didn't like that I was using blue in my logo. I changed from blue to orange. They didn't like that I was using an image of Christ in my banner. I took that out. They didn't like that I was using rays in my branding even though we've been using rays for over a decade.

[00:04:07]>> Wait, so the Mormon church is saying that they have a trademark on kuscular rays on the color blue and now on the word Mormon as well? I'm not an expert in Mormonism, but didn't the LDS church officially denounce the word Mormonism and or the word Mormon and they they said that they want nothing to do with it and their prophet came out and said it was like a slanderous slur.

[00:04:30]>> Yeah.

[00:04:30]>> And this is this is after they spent how many millions of dollars on ad campaigns of everyone saying, "I'm a Mormon >> and I'm a Mormon >> and I'm a Mormon."

[00:04:40]>> Yeah. Russell and Nelson, the previous prophet, in the 201s, basically came out with the statement saying that to call the church the Mormon church or for Latter-day Saints to identify as Mormons is a major victory for Satan. Those are his words.

[00:04:55]>> And I'm >> And so, yeah, the church removed the word Mormon from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, one of the most iconic choirs of all time. They changed all their URLs, domain names, removing the word Mormon, and they basically purged Mormon from the whole church's SEO and its vocabulary, its identity. And at that point, I had already been using Mormon for 10 or more years. But I just figured, well, we're winning usage of the term Mormon anyway, so it's no big deal. But I think at some point when the old prophet, Russell M. Nelson, died and the new prophet took over, Don H. folks.

[00:05:35]I think maybe he regretted what his predecessor had done with the word Mormon. And I think that's part of what kicked them in to start becoming ligious over the term Mormon. And that might be one of the reasons why they sent me that cease and desist.

[00:05:49]>> Okay. So, just so that I understand this, the Mormon church made a catastrophically stupid move from the standpoint of marketing. And I I say this as someone who's been doing, you know, marketing and SEO and and video marketing now for well over a decade. If you are trying to get people to come to your church, you are identifying as Mormons. You're running an ad campaign saying that you're Mormons and you're spending millions of dollars trying to get the LDS church at the very top of the search results when people search for things like what is Mormonism. They put all of this effort into that and then all of a sudden they just yank that leaving ex Mormons and people who are critical of the church now to rise up the rankings in Google because the other listings for the word Mormon are no longer there by the the church. And now they're mad that all of this traffic is coming into you guys when people are searching for what is Mormonism, what do Mormons believe, things like that because they no longer are using that term which is the most used term for members of the LDS church even today after they've denounced it.

[00:06:55]>> No, it's true. But there's actually there were reasons why they did it. So if we go back 10 or 15 years, first of all, liberal Mormons, questioning Mormons and ex- Mormons dominated blogging and podcasting and YouTube channels and Tik Tok and Instagram before the church ever was able to catch up. The church is run by octoenarians and nonogenarians. Literally the top 15 leaders of the church average something like 85 to 90 years old. So they were really slow to the internet. So, by the time they started their I'm a Mormon campaign, Mormon stories and other podcasts that were more critical or open-minded or questioning of the church were already dominating SEO. A second reason was the LDS church just has a famously bad reputation. By the time the Book of Mormon musical comes out, they're doing customer research surveys and finding that Mormons rank at the bottom of all religious groups. sort of around Scientology, around Muslims, even around atheists. And so, because they lost the SEO battle before they ever really got into it and because their reputation was so terrible, this prophet Russell L. Nelson thought, well, let's do this. Let's do a rebrand. Let's just jettison the term Mormon and let's focus on Jesus Christ because most traditional Christians and evangelical Christians don't even consider Mormons to be Christian. But if we jettison the term Mormon and focus on the name Jesus Christ, which is actually in our formal name, maybe evangelical Christians will start accepting us as actual Christians.

[00:08:36]So these were the reasons why and I can kind of see why they wanted to rebrand away from their damaged past as a cult as polygamist as Joseph Smith worshiping and towards being just a mainstream Protestant Christian church. That was the thinking behind it and I think there was probably some good reason for it.

[00:08:59]It's just that SEO and marketing wasn't one of them.

[00:09:03]So now then, what leg do they have to stand on coming after you for using the word Mormon if they have outright publicly abandoned this term and said that they want nothing to do with it?

[00:09:16]Walk me through the the lawsuit, the demands that they made cuz you guys went to mediation. You you met with them and listened to their demands that they laid out for you. What specifically were they asking? Was it just that you stopped using the word Mormon or was there more to this?

[00:09:31]>> Prior to kind of 2017 2018 when the church did its rebrand, we used the color blue on some of our themes. We have logos that use the color blue long before the church ever did their church of Jesus Christ rebrand to blue. But at some point, let's just say 2017, 2018, the church did a full rebrand that in that incorporated blue as their main color and a focus on Jesus Christ. Wait, so your your usage of this color, it wasn't in order to it's not like you saw their blue and were like, "Okay, we're talking about Mormonism. We're going to use the same blue." You predated them in using that color.

[00:10:14]>> Absolutely. We've also changed our branding over time, but you can definitely go back to 2005, 2006, and we used the color blue. You can definitely find logos that we used 2010, 2012 that incorporated blue. So, we definitely used blue in our branding before they did, but they did do that blue rebrand around 2018. And then for whatever reason, I had a graphic designer around 2022, 2023 when we were really getting into YouTube and really starting to grow in YouTube where one of my graphic designers came to me and said, "Hey, John, we need a new YouTube banner and we need to do a web redesign." And I'm like, "Whatever, do whatever you want. I don't really understand graphic design."

[00:11:00]And he chose blue, at least in part because we we had used blue in the past.

[00:11:06]But in our YouTube banner, we used blue.

[00:11:08]In our Facebook banner, we used blue. In our logo redesign, we used blue. So the church basically dec, you know, in my opinion, what they did is in in 2025, late 2025, they thought we need to silence, this is my opinion, they thought we need to silence Mormon Stories podcast. Our church is literally now shrinking in the United States.

[00:11:33]Mormon stories has been going 21 years.

[00:11:35]We're losing members in droves. Our missionary program in the United States is flailing. My opinion is is what they most likely did is they said, "How do we defame, bankrupt, and silence Mormon Stories podcast?" I know. Let's use our hundreds of billions of dollars and start a lawsuit where we claim trademark and copyright infringement. But really, it's just going to be a lawsuit that's going to cost them somewhere between two and $3 million to defend. And we'll just claim it's blue. We'll claim it's their usage of a cristus and of our copyright materials. and whether we win or lose, it doesn't matter because we'll bankrupt them having to spend two or three million dollars just to defend it. Now, again, I can't prove that that was their motivation. I'm speculating, but that's my best understanding of what they decided to do based on my experiences with them in mediation. So, thank you for letting me explain the details, but basically in mediation, they said, "Change your logo from blue to something else." So, we changed it to orange. They said, "Take the Christristus out of your banner." Even though the Christrist is not a Mormon statue. If you look at the Christrist statue that the Mormons use, it was created by some other Christian denomination in Sweden a couple hundred years ago. Doesn't matter. We took the Christrist out. Even though we used rays as early as 2010 or 2012, as far as my memory goes, we took the rays out. They wanted us to incorporate a disclaimer into all our descriptions on all our assets. I incorporated the disclaimer.

[00:13:16]We basically did everything we possibly could. And then they were concerned that we were using some of their copyrighted images in our YouTube thumbnails. So like a photo of Joseph Smith or a painting of Joseph Smith or a painting of you know the angel Moroni or whatever. So I had my graphic designer go three years back which was our understanding the statute of limitations and even though we felt like we were using their copyrighted images in fair use on our YouTube thumbnails we just said we don't want to fight this battle we want to show good faith. So even though we felt like we were in the right I had my graphic designer change every single YouTube thumbnail that they could find that we even thought might violate their copyright. We made all those uh changes and more and they still wanted more and more changes. I could tell you what extra things they they wanted on top of all those accommodations that we made, but during the two full days of mediation, that's a good sense for the types of things we were willing to change to avoid a lawsuit. They're specifically going after you, but why do you think that they're targeting you and seeing you as such a big threat compared to the Book of Mormon or South Park made a episode on Mormonism that arguably got a lot more negative attention shined on the church than what you're doing with your average episode?

[00:14:39]>> Joseph Smith was called a prophet.

[00:14:43]>> Why do you think that they're not going after them? The main focus of Mormon Stories podcast is long for narratives of people telling their Mormon stories.

[00:14:52]And while we have people all across the faith spectrum, we have believing Mormons, liberal Mormons who are no longer literal believers and and lots of people who have lost their faith or left the church because they excommunicated me. The predominant stories that get told on Mormon stories and we release one long form every week. Sometimes they're five, six hours long. It's someone's life experience where they were born in the church, raised in the church, went on a mission, got married in the temple, and then at some point lost their faith, and then at some point left the church. Let's just say that's the most common narrative of the stories. And just to be clear, we have over 10,000 hours of people's stories on Mormon stories and over 2100 episodes.

[00:15:34]And so for 21 years, there's 2100 stories largely composed of people growing up in the church and then discovering their problems with the church and then losing their faith in the church and leaving their church, that can start to have its impact on the membership. And once members learn about Mormon stories and start seeing that other people are questioning and losing their faith, they start realizing that they're not broken and they're not alone. I think the church realized at some point that too many people were learning about Mormon stories, discovering it, and that it was maybe impacting too many people's faith in their opinion. And I think they just wanted to shut it down because it was having too much of an impact. Now, again, I'm speculating. I can't guess their motives. When we're in a legal battle, you don't want to get sued for defamation. And so that's why I have to keep using these disclaimers of I'm not sure and I'm speculating because I don't want them to be able to sue me for defamation. So anyway, there's only one other YouTube channel that's really Mormon themed that's more successful than Mormon stories and that's Alyssa Grenfell and she's fantastic. She's got like twice the subscribers that I do, but she doesn't have near 10,000 hours worth of content. And I think while Alyssa is grabbing more views and eyeballs in 2026, we've impacted many, many, many more people over the 21 years we've been broadcasting. So, I think they just got tired of our impact and and wanted to shut us down. Honestly, that's my opinion.

[00:17:10]>> What were they asking for in mediation?

[00:17:12]What were some of the less reasonable requests that you weren't willing to accommodate?

[00:17:16]>> So, some of the more ridiculous ones.

[00:17:18]So, imagine a YouTube banner.

[00:17:22]They wanted us to not just incorporate a disclaimer into the text of the description of our YouTube channel. They wanted us to have a legible disclaimer included in our YouTube banner. So imagine a YouTube banner that's like Mormon stories and it's got my photo and a bunch of other people and then legibly in bold letters. This YouTube channel is not produced by, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They asked me to visibly include that disclaimer on our banner. They asked us to change the name of our podcast so our our logo was nice and clean. Mormon stories in mediation.

[00:18:05]They said, "We need you to change your logo to say ex Mormon stories with Dr. John Dyn." They even specified all those words have to be in your logo and none of the text can have smaller font than other words in the logo. So all those words, so they wanted us to change the name of our podcast and they wanted us to corrupt our our logo to have like 10 or 12 words in it. And they were even specifying what font sizes we weren't and were allowed to use. And of course, this would have destroyed the the elegance. They first of all changes the name of our podcast. They were contending that they didn't like that we were using the word Mormon in our URL.

[00:18:48]They didn't like that we were using the word Mormon in our social media handles.

[00:18:52]In effect, I feel like they wanted to destroy our SEO and destroy our logos and our branding so that people wouldn't either be able to find us or when they found us, it would have been so ugly, so unprofessional looking that people would have been less interested in even watching or listening. But that's not even the worst part. in mediation or my memory is they asked us to have an audible disclaimer at the beginning of every episode for the rest of our existence. So imagine Hey everyone, welcome to Mormon Stories. I'm Dr. John Delin. This podcast is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[00:19:33]>> We interrupt this program to inform you that this podcast is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not only did they demand that that audible disclaimer be included at the beginning of every episode, I believe in mediation, they asked that it be repeated every 15 to 20 minutes throughout every episode until the end of the episode. Just imagine what that would be like. And then it's worse. They asked us to renounce any trademark rights to the Mormon Story's name. They asked us to promise never to file any trademarks in the Mormon Story's name.

[00:20:11]They asked us to never challenge any of their trademarks, which we feel like we would have had a and still do have a good case to challenge. And then the most ridiculous thing of all, in my opinion, is they asked me to sign an agreement that I would never create a project again on the internet that uses the word Mormon.

[00:20:32]And then they did all that and then a public press release said, "Oh, we're not concerned about usage of the term Mormon. It's that he's violating our trademark and our copyright." So, it's my opinion that they weren't honest and sincere in what they were asking us to do in mediation versus what they said they asked us to do in those negotiations. I feel like they were actually highly deceptive to the general public.

[00:20:58]>> As a a fellow content creator and YouTuber, a lot of those requests they know would absolutely kill your channel reach. You know, YouTube looks at audience retention, and you have to hook the audience in the first few seconds of the video. You have to tell the audience what they're going to be seeing and and make it interesting and captivate their curiosity. And if instead you're starting with, "Welcome to the ex Mormon Stories podcast with Dr. John Dand.

[00:21:30]We're not officially affiliated." By the time you get through that whole disclaimer, your audience, you already 20% of them have bounced.

[00:21:39]>> Yeah.

[00:21:40]>> And it just comes off as this is not a professional production. We don't care about your time. We're blasting you with long disclaimers. And then on top of that, having crisp, clear graphics that look like they were professionally made, it also converts. People come to your channel, they see, oh, he's got a really professionally done banner, professionally done logo, his videos are great, they're high quality, it's it's well produced, this isn't just AI slop or some, you know, guy in a basement somewhere. They see that and they're more likely to click on the channel to watch the channel. And YouTube takes all of that into account when promoting one channel over another. So these requests, it's not just some pedantic little thing of tweak this little text or put this little thing here. It seems to me extremely deliberate in what they're doing. They know what they're doing and it's not about you're using our logo and we're concerned that cuz they're not concerned that people are going to mistake you for the church, right? Like it's has that have you ever had people come to your channel and say, "Oh, I thought that this was the Mormon church's official show." If you think about it, they publicly excommunicated me in 2015 and they issued a press release using my name talking about me as an apostate and excommunicating me.

[00:22:59]When you combine the fact that they had publicly excommunicated me and that that was a global story that the New York Times tweeted and then you add to that that we used the word Mormon in our title before and after the prophet has denounced its usage as a major victory for Satan. It was never in my mind that ever a Mormon or a never Mormon would confuse my podcast as being officially run or sponsored by the church. It's kind of ridiculous. So, even if we ended up using Blue after they did a rebrand of Blue, even though we used Blue before they used Blue, it still never crossed my mind that anyone would ever confuse Mormon Stories podcast with an LDS church sponsored show. And if you just scroll through the titles of our episodes, it's like, was Joseph Smith a pedophile? Was it polygamy or was it was he a sexual predator? Was Joseph Smith a sex trafficker? Is the Book of Mormon a fraud? Like, you just have to scroll through five or 10 or 15 of our episodes to know that there's no planet where this podcast would be officially sponsored by the LDS church. But see, that's again where the deception lies in my opinion because that's what they told the public. They told the public that their concern was that members and non-members would stumble on Mormon stories and somehow be lured into believing that it was an LDS church run affiliated and sponsored podcast. And I don't think that that was ever a problem. I don't think it's a problem now. And I don't believe that that's a sincere concern, but that's what they told the public. In my opinion, they did mediation for two reasons. One was to see if they could get from us more than a judge would ever grant them at trial.

[00:24:50]Because why even bother with mediation when they had the money to take us the distance? It just seems clear that they thought, huh, well, let's just start with mediation. see if we can scare them into settling so that we never have to take it to court and we could get more than a judge would ever grant us. We didn't cave. And then the second reason why I believe they did mediation was so that they could say that they tried to mediate with us but that we were unreasonable. And that's why I refused to sign a confidentiality clause in mediation because I sense that they weren't mediating in good faith. And it's my opinion that their mediation was a poison pill where they either they would they would get us to cave under the threats of a lawsuit or they would be able to you know make such demands that we would refuse and then they could say well see they refused which is exactly what they did. Unfortunately, in their press release, I believe that they lied in what I believe is a defamatory way because the two things that they said in their press release when they told the world that they were suing us, one was that all they asked was us to incorporate a disclaimer. Well, that's not all they asked, and I've already told you a sampling of all the things that they asked for in mediation. So, in my opinion, they lied about that first part in their >> Well, and you you did include the disclaimer. Like if people go right now to your your channel, your Facebook, everywhere.

[00:26:15]>> That's the second part that I believe they lied about because they said I didn't incorporate a disclaimer when I did incorporate a disclaimer. And the Wayback Machine and Archive.org clearly shows that we did during mediation incorporate the disclaimer. So yeah, I think they were publicly deceitful and we have receipts and I look forward in in this lawsuit to be able to show members and the general public how dishonest and deceitful I believe uh that they were.

[00:26:47]>> Yeah.

[00:26:48]>> Which is weird when it's a church that claims to be run by Jesus.

[00:26:51]>> Yeah. It's interesting, too, because the word Mormon is not a trademarked word.

[00:26:56]It's been in public use since Joseph Smith in the 1800s. It's not like you can come along and have a trademark on the word Christian.

[00:27:05]>> The truth is the the LDS church has obtained a few trademarks using the word Mormon. So, one example is Book of Mormon stories and then I believe they were able to get a trademark with the word Mormon um in affiliation with educational purposes. My understanding is that if those trademarks were challenged, they likely wouldn't hold up. But who wants to sue the church and challenge its trademarks when when you know that the church has sort of endless pockets of money? may be that those trademarks are challenged at some point, but the truth is if you have enough money, you can do almost anything in the legal system, including sue people when you don't have real reasonable grounds to sue them or obtain trademarks unopposed even when maybe you shouldn't be able to obtain those trademarks. So, we'll see if the trademarks that they have obtained stand the test of time.

[00:28:05]But but you're right, the term Mormon has been used for a couple hundred years. There's many offshoots of the LDS church that use the term Mormon. There's the Mormon History Association. There's the, you know, Mormonism Research Ministry. There's the Mormon studies programs at various universities. The usage of the term Mormon is so ubiquitous that it's it's unreasonable for the LDS church to really trademark it and enforce that, especially when they've abandoned it and when they've allowed someone like me to go 21 years without ever opposing its usage. It it I don't know how they feel like they're going to emerge victorious, but if you have enough money and power and influence, sometimes you can win when you shouldn't. So, we'll, you know, we'll have to see.

[00:28:52]>> We interrupt this program to inform you that this podcast is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[00:29:02]>> I believe another step in the the process of having a trademark case be winnable is you have to show that you have been consistently defending your trademark. And so if for 21 years they've been aware of your presence, they excommunicated you in 2015.

[00:29:19]They never sent a cease and desist as far as I know about using the word Mormon or Mormon stories. They allowed you to continue and then all of a sudden now in 2026 after 21 years they're trying to silence you this way. I don't know if there is a statute of limitations of, you know, if they're made aware that you're using this word that they claim they have a trademark over and they don't defend their trademark, after a while that acts against them. I'm I'm not a lawyer, but >> my understanding is if you go five or six years and you don't enforce your trademark knowingly, you lose the right to enforce it. And again, we went 21 years without hearing from them. What I think they decided to do is they decided to mark the time and place of our rebrand three or four years ago and to say from that point forward because we used blue and because we used rays that in conjunction with the usage of the term Mormon that was too far. And so their trademark and copyright claims are tied specifically to the rebrand that we did three or four years ago. and somehow they think that that might allow them to maybe skirt around the let's just say the 18 years where they didn't ask me to change. I honestly don't even understand how they would or think that they have a case. But again, my impression is it's not about them actually feeling like they have a case because if we go the distance, this is a $3 million lawsuit and I can tell you we don't have $3 million in the bank. So they win even if they lose, if they bankrupt us in the process. And that's why it starts to feel more like Scientology that they're basically taking a a page out of David Mscabich or Eron Elron Hubard that just by becoming ligious and suing the little guy, they can just run people out of business.

[00:31:20]>> Which is actually why I'm putting a link to your legal defense fund in the pinned comment and in the description of this video. So if if anyone who wants to support John and wants to help him to fight this case, wants to get involved, there is a link down there you can go and and support his work. All of the money in that fundraiser is going towards his legal defense. And you were saying that even if you have lawyers representing you pro bono, it's likely going to go into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars just to defend yourself, even if you win.

[00:31:52]>> Yeah. So >> yeah. Yep. That that's true. So the way it's shaking out is, you know, we have a great firm representing us and it's not looking like it's going to be pro bono all the way through and so it looks like we are going to be paying both legal fees and expenses.

[00:32:11]Having said that, the the law firm is being very generous and very supportive, but we are going to have to um you know that the firm is going to end up getting compensated and so the legal defense fund is going to go towards our legal expenses and it very well could be in the multi-million dollar range. So yes, mormanstories.org/legal /legal is the link. And uh I have no desire to fund raise for anything beyond our legal expenses in this context. And I would never use a genuine lawsuit as a pretext to just fund raise generally. We we were we were sustainable before the lawsuit.

[00:32:51]So this this fundraising is dedicated to allowing us to survive legally against a3 to500 billion dollar organization that's suing us.

[00:33:04]>> I feel like in the states the legal system is broken in this sense where you have these massive organizations.

[00:33:10]Sometimes it's, you know, a religious organization. Other times, like in my case, I actually had Craft Foods send me a cease and desist a while back for using the word Kool-Aid in my branding.

[00:33:22]And and and in defense of them, like I, you know, I I sent a response and I I basically, you know, was cordial and I said, "In no way am I getting this from Craft Foods. This is a reference to the colloquial slogan, don't drink the Kool-Aid, which, you know, is a reference to Jonestown." And I make it very clear, you know, I don't use the Kool-Aid Man or their fonts or anything like that. I I stay very far away from that and try to distance myself. And I I have no animosity towards Craft Foods. I even told them, I said, "If if you want, I'm very happy to work with you guys and do a sponsorship and do a plug of of Craft Foods." And uh finally, they were they were just like, "Well, if you could just change your name to Kool-Aid with a C." And even that request, it may sound like it's not a massive request or an unreasonable request, but when you've spent years barely scraping by and building a brand and SEOing a brand and trying to get your website ranking in Google and people recognize it and people search for it and there's all these back links everywhere, the logistical nightmare of changing every single video title, re-uploading my videos, redoing my logo, hiring a graphic designer to do it, you know, redoing my website, working for years and years and years to rebuild that organic traffic around something that you know if I say holy Kool-Aid with a C, it also it just doesn't it doesn't ring. No one says don't drink the Kool-Aid with a C. That's just this one change. And yet I I told Craft Foods I said I'm willing to make those changes for compensation. And I you know I'm not going to say the exact dollar amount, but it was sufficiently high to cover all of those those costs. I don't remember off the top of my head, but it was it was a seven figure number. and Craft Foods didn't respond after that point. And it's not that they don't have the money if if it was if they genuinely thought that this was something where people were confusing my channel with their brand. But I think from a legal standpoint, Kool-Aid has to send the cease and desist to show defensive trademark in order to maintain their trademark. And so I don't think that it was necessarily that they were trying to silence me or saw me as a threat to their brand. But in this case, the church clearly does see you as a threat to to the church, to the LDS church. And part of that is their own doing because the stories that you share, they're not you coming out with a bone to pick with the church, a chip on your shoulder, just actively trying to deconvert as many people as you can. You're simply giving people a microphone. And from what I'm aware, not everyone on your channel is ex Mormons. Some are still Mormons, some are never Mormons. You cover a wide variety of topics. So, would it even be accurate for you to call your show Ex Mormon Stories?

[00:36:01]>> It'd be totally inaccurate. Every It seems like every month we interview at least one or more believing Mormons, but certainly multiple faithful Mormons every year, many liberal or progressive unorthodox Mormons every year. So, yeah, it would be totally inaccurate. And what you say is really interesting. And the irony is, if we're going to talk about deception and fraud, what caused me to have my faith crisis back in 2001 when I worked for Microsoft was that the Mormon church had a two centuries long history of deceiving its own members and the world about its own history. I was never taught growing up in the Mormon church that our founding prophet had over 30 wives, 14-year-old wives, over 12 women who were married other men at the time Joseph married them. I wasn't taught that Joseph Smith was a treasure digger, that he used a peep stone in a hat to find buried treasure, that the Book of Mormon was a product of his treasure digging times, that the Book of Mormon was actually not a historical document, but that it was basically Bible fanfiction created in the 19th century, that the Book of Abraham, another set of scripture produced by Joseph Smith, was translated by Egyptologists and determined to have no bearing to the original papyrie that Joseph Smith claimed. to translate it from and on and on. Even the Mormon church just in the past 10 years has been found to commit fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. So, the Mormon church had dozens and dozens, as I understand it, of these shell companies hiding billions of dollars from the membership. And they set up these shell companies, according to the documentation, as I understand it, intentionally to hide its billions and billions of dollars of wealth from the membership. So, that the Mormon church has two centuries of fraud, in my opinion, that caused me to lose my faith. And then they have the gall to accuse me of trying to deceive the world by simply trying to tell the truth about the church's history and to allow the members to tell their stories. And they call me a fra, you know, as being deceptive. It's it's really ironic and in some ways it's just um it's projecting because I think the church knows it's been deceiving people for a couple centuries and so it's kind of like the pot calling the kettle black so to speak.

[00:38:31]>> One of my favorite episodes that I saw on your channel was actually an interview with an Egyptologists uh named Robert Rittner and and I love ancient history. I have entire breakdowns of ancient archaeology and like biblical era, you know, southern Levant, Iron Age, late Bronze Age, and you went through with this Egyptologist and he took this this papyrus that Joseph Smith was saying. It was like Abraham on an altar and there's an Egyptian priest about to kill him and there's he had this whole interpretation of it. And this is before the Rosetta Stone allowed Egyptologists to be able to read and decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

[00:39:12]And now we can. And now we know exactly what's on this papyrus and exactly who these figures are. And we have very very very similar inscriptions all over ancient temples and ancient papyri throughout Egypt. And it's like these were ancient Egyptianerary texts. It's stuff from like the book of the dead.

[00:39:30]and it has no connection whatsoever to Abraham or any biblical figures. So I like I loved that and I I think the fact that you go through and you you take experts and you have them on your your goal with that interview. It wasn't we're going to tell you that you have to leave the Mormon church. It was just are these claims true? What is the academic perspective on it? So I love that that you do that.

[00:39:52]>> You've done your homework, Thomas. And yeah, that Robert Rittner episode is, you know, the late Robert Rittner, may he rest in peace, it's one of my favorite episodes of all time. But you're actually absolutely right. Like on the one hand, do Mormons deserve from a standpoint of informed consent, do Mormons deserve to learn that some of Joseph Smith's key canonized scripture I is actually a fraudulent mistransation from from the first word to the last word. The LDS church in 2026 admits in an essay that's obscure and kind of hidden on its website that the word Abraham doesn't appear anywhere in the papyrie that was the source papyrie from which Joseph translated. Nowadays, because of our podcast and others, the church will admit that in a tiny essay hidden away in its website. But do members deserve to know that they do.

[00:40:48]But on the other hand, am I trying to get people to leave the church? I'm not.

[00:40:54]If the church provides meaning or purpose or community or a way to raise your kids as long as people have the information, I don't care if somebody believes in Santa Claus. I don't care if somebody believes in God or Jesus. I don't care if they believe in Joseph Smith. But if they want to have their beliefs rooted in truth, rooted in evidence, rooted in reality, Mormon stories is there for them to have all the information to then make informed decisions. But I actually have never had it in my goal, my intent, my motivation to take people out of the church, to deconvert people. And sometimes my followers and viewers are angry about that. But I just think it's it's very easy to feel lost in the world. It's very easy to feel lonely. And if a church or religion helps provide that for somebody, especially during a certain time in their life, who am I to decide for them that that's not a positive influence in their lives? I've just never felt that desire to steal people's faith, but I do feel the desire for less people to be deceived when they want to know the truth.

[00:42:05]>> When did you leave the Mormon faith? I know that they they excommunicated you, you said in 2015, but did you already consider yourself an ex- Mormon by that point, or were you still identifying as a Mormon even when you started making the podcast?

[00:42:19]>> I still identify as a Mormon today.

[00:42:21]>> Oh.

[00:42:22]>> Because I viewed that term now like a secular atheist Jew would call themselves Jewish. Right. I know that there's a difference between a three millennial old people or tradition and a 200y old people or tradition, but I'm a sixth generation Mormon. My ancestors go back to the founding of the church. My my, you know, my my grandmother was was in a polygamous family. Like I you cut me, I bleed Mormon. So I still identify today as Mormon. But when I lost my faith in 2001, let's just say I was 32 years old, I learned about liberal or progressive Judaism, and I thought, "Oh, there's plenty of Catholics and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Jews who don't literally believe that everything their church teaches is true, but it's a nice way to, you know, live and raise your family." So at that point, I decided I don't need to leave the church just because I don't believe it traditionally anymore, but I do feel like I want to speak openly so that other people can can learn the truth if they want to. So I stayed in the church after I lost my faith. And for the next 13 years, from 2001 to 2014, for the better part of those for 134 years, my family and I stayed active and faithful in the church. And it wasn't until in 2014 when the church sent me that letter that was covered in the New York Times threatening with me with excommunication where I started to pull back. And of course when they excommunicated me I haven't attended as an observer. I sometimes attend for a family member or for a social thing but yeah it wasn't until I was excommunicated in 2015. 14 years after I lost my faith that I stopped attending uh regularly.

[00:44:18]>> Wow. So it sounds like even if you were to change the name of Mormon stories to ex Mormon stories that wouldn't be accurate about the host.

[00:44:27]>> No. No, >> about the host who's sharing his story, >> but also all the all the ex Mormons that we've interviewed, the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ex Mormons, they say, "Listen, I I'll I'll do a fivehour story and maybe in the last hour I'll talk about losing my faith and leaving the church, but the first four hours are about my Mormon experience."

[00:44:48]So even when someone leaves the LDS church, if they're going to tell their entire life story, it's still going to be a Mormon story, even if they lose their faith and leave it. So there's no world where calling it post Mormon stories or ex Mormon stories would would be appropriate even for those who have left the church. it. Again, I believe it's just the church trying to damage our SEO, damage our brand, mischaracterize our podcast, and make it unpalatable or uninteresting. But more importantly, I believe that the church's biggest concern is that faithful Mormons will watch or listen to Mormon stories and lose their faith. Or that never Mormons will learn about Mormonism for the first time from my podcast and maybe they won't join when they otherwise would have. But even if that's true, that's different. what the point of view of the podcast is is very different from whether or not which is what the church alleges whether or not the podcast is officially produced and sponsored by the church and every single podcast I start by saying I'm Dr. John Delin, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. And I end by saying this is a product of the Open Stories Foundation, which is the nonprofit that runs my podcast. So it doesn't even matter what the point of view of the podcast is. The what matters from the legal standpoint is are we deceiving people about whether or not it's a churchowned andrun podcast? And I don't think there's any universe where it can be alleged that we're doing that.

[00:46:28]And I think that's what's most important.

[00:46:30]>> And even if your goal was outright, even if you were publicly stating, I I hate everything about the Mormon church and my goal is to burn it to the ground.

[00:46:38]That would not be illegal. One of my friends, uh, Telltale, he has a he's an ex- Jehovah's Witness, and he talks about the Jehovah's Witness Church, and he actively has made it his life mission to prevent people from joining the church, and to save people from the church, and to basically burn the organization to the ground. not literally but figuratively. And he's very vocal about that. That is part of your First Amendment rights to criticize an organization. You know, as as long as it's not inaccurate information, if what you're telling is the truth and you're like, "This organization has done these horrific, horrible things." And I have personal beef with them, you're well within your rights to do that. We interrupt this program to inform you that this podcast is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[00:47:28]>> I've noticed that over the last few years that there have been a lot of Mormon social media influencers. You see these trades and these channels that are promoting Mormon lifestyles and stuff.

[00:47:41]How have they reacted to this story, if at all? the Secret Lies of Mormon Wives cast. They're playing at such a high public exposure level that, you know, I I haven't really heard from any of them.

[00:47:52]I I only know one person in that entire cast, and it's one of the ex-husbands of one of the members of the cast. I will say that Heather Gay, who's one of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, she's been on the podcast multiple times.

[00:48:07]She's reached out. She's had her own challenge with the church because she came out with a book called Bad Mormon.

[00:48:13]And while the church didn't challenge the title of the book Bad Mormon, when she tried to trademark the term Bad Mormon to sell merchandise, my understanding is the church contested that attempt at trademarking and and my understanding is the church scuttled her ability to sell merch under that brand.

[00:48:33]But Heather Gay has wished us well. And a lot of the trades like Hannah Neilman, Ballerina Farm, or Elizabeth Smart, they're not plugged into to Mormon stories on a day-to-day or weekly basis, and I'm below their pay grade.

[00:48:47]>> Well, I'm talking more about like the you see these large Tik Tok and Instagram influencers, YouTubers who are pro- Mormon church, or pro LDS.

[00:48:55]>> Yeah.

[00:48:56]>> Have have they sided with the church?

[00:48:58]Have they mentioned this? Is there buzz on the other side of the aisle? Well, interestingly, I my wife and I were in California on a little getaway on the Friday afternoon or midday that the LDS church chose to file their lawsuit. As I understand it, my attorney didn't receive a courtesy copy of the filing when it was filed. I didn't receive a copy. What happened was, as I understand it, the church filed it. The church issued a press release. And in my opinion, in my experience, there was an army of faithful Mormon influencers that were already Instagramming and YouTubing about the lawsuit before I could even get a copy of the lawsuit. And it was particularly harmful because the message that seemed to be both in the church's press release and in what I believe was likely a coordinated smear campaign by the church's apologists was that John Delin wouldn't accept the simple request of adding a disclaimer and that's why we had to sue him. And of course, in my opinion, that was defamatory because we did incorporate the disclaimer and that's not all they asked for. But before I could even get a copy of the actual lawsuit, I felt like there was an army of influencers that were already releasing uh Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube videos smearing me with what I think are defamatory allegations. You know, they say a lie can make it around the world before the truth, you know, gets its pants on. That's kind of I think what happened here. And so I literally had to screen grab the case number from a faithful apologist to then go to the federal registry to type in the case number to then get a copy of the actual lawsuit.

[00:50:54]>> So you weren't even you weren't even served?

[00:50:58]>> No, I was not served. You found out that they were suing you through their Tik Tok army.

[00:51:04]>> I mean, through a press release and then through Instagram apologist army that seemed to be releasing videos as part of a coordinated campaign in my opinion to smear me and my reputation and to misinform the public about why I was being sued and what my behavior was leading up to the lawsuit.

[00:51:27]>> Could you counter sue for damages? Uh, I believe we definitely could. Yeah. And so, uh, I I don't want to speak about what our legal strategy might or might not be, but the next step is to file a response to the church's lawsuit, and that's what uh, you know, that's what we're working on now.

[00:51:46]>> Well, more power to you. It sounds like it's a massive uphill battle, and this is going to be ongoing for years to come. But you've got my support. I'm sure there's there's other content creators watching who also find this extremely distasteful that a massive multi-billion dollar organization, this this church is is coming after someone simply for pointing out the problems that of the church's actions and and sharing the truth of the history of the church. So, if if anyone wants to go and support John, there's a link to the fundraiser below. And also hopefully this will have a massive strand effect where you know the Mormon church is trying to silence you and it just gets it more attention. It gets more negative publicity. These are the kind of actions like you said that the the Scientology church is known for where they see them them trying to silence and send this chilling effect through the media of we're going to sue anyone who criticizes us. And it's earned this Church of Scientology the reputation of a cult.

[00:52:46]And I think that if the Mormon church is trying to normalize itself as just this like, oh, happy golucky, loveydovey, you know, we're just friendly and everyone come welcome to the church, and then they're suing their critics left and right and being extremely vicious and latigious and dishonest and cultlike, then this is a great opportunity for other content creators to to talk about this, to shine a light on it and flip this around. One thing I will say is for anyone interested in making content that is ex Mormon or critical of the Mormon church, the Mormon church for a long time has been buying ads at a very very high ad rate on YouTube. And it's their way of indirectly supporting these Mormon content creators so that a lot of these um LDS uh channels on on Instagram and Tik Tok and YouTube can go full-time very early because the Mormon church is paying ad rates that are four times higher than than normal or from what I've heard. I don't know the exact numbers, but I recently put out a video that was just looking into some of the crazy beliefs held by Mormons. That's one of my top performing videos of it's number one out of the last 10 that I've released and the ad rates are high. And so if anyone else wants to jump on this bandwagon, you'll have some ads on your channel from the Mormon church, you'll squeeze them dry a little bit and you'll be able to shine light on stories like this. So everyone, welcome to the party.

[00:54:12]>> I hope you get a boatload of ad revenue from the Mormon church for this episode.

[00:54:16]And and let me just say thank you so much for the coverage. I do, you know, I don't see a lot of silver linings on this dark cloud of what I think is uh abusive latigiousness. That's my opinion. But the strian effect might be one that some people learn about the podcast who might otherwise not have learned about it. I do hope we're able to emerge victorious because if we are, then we secure the right to use the term Mormon. And I think there'll be a network effect where there there's so many other podcasts and YouTube channels that also use the term Mormon. And I think once we're able to emerge victorious, if you support this, you're not just supporting Mormon Stories podcast, you're supporting dozens and dozens of other creators that also use the Mormon terms name. But even more broadly, I you know, the framing of Scientology versus Jehovah's Witnesses versus Mormonism, you know, cult cult latigiousness. What you're supporting is the right for there to be free speech in the United States and for multi-billion dollar tax-free high demand religions or cults not to be able to sue their critics into oblivion and silence them using the billions and billions of dollars that they acrewed tax-free because of religious protections. So, I see this very much as a First Amendment issue first and foremost. And so, for that reason alone, I think this is a bigger fight than just my podcast or even just the Mormon ecosystem. So, >> and you're standing in the gap because if you don't fight this, then you're the first domino and when you fall, they absolutely will go after other people.

[00:55:56]So, this is an important battle. This is a crucial crucial court case that we absolutely have to win this one. So guys, go donate to his his legal fund.

[00:56:05]And for everyone watching, go support John. Is there any last words or anything else that you want to say? just that if there are any, you know, legal experts in trademark or copyright or first amendment rights, the law firm that that's helping us is willing to bring on additional members of the legal coalition if and when their participation could help strengthen the lawsuit. So, uh, the Electronic Freedom Found Foundation has shown interest in this case. And if you are an attorney or a firm with trademark or copyright or or first amendment expertise, please email me at [email protected].

[00:56:44]I can put you in touch with our legal team and maybe you can sign on to this case to help us make it successful. So that's another way you can help us out besides donating by joining our legal team.

[00:56:55]>> John, thank you so much for coming on and everyone who's watching, thank you guys so much. Go subscribe to John. And as always, dare to be curious, but don't drink the Kool-Aid.

[00:57:04]>> Thanks, Thomas.

[00:57:05]>> Now, go check out this video on crazy Mormon teachings quick before the video ends.