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 yourselves about your debts, for I will give you power to pay them. Concern not yourselves about your property, for there are more treasures than one for you in this city.” The treasure wasn’t what Joseph expected — not coins in the ground, but the richness of people, conversions, and unseen futures.

In this episode of The Soloists, Diana and Mallory talk with Emily Snyder — an educator, speaker, and former collaborator with business thinker Clayton Christensen — about what it means to live by that same principle: that even when life withholds the thing you longed for, there are always other treasures to enjoy. Emily shares how she has built a life full of discovery and learning, from setting annual goals that helped her feel joy on her birthdays instead of dread, and adopting an expansive understanding of her role in the world.

Most recently, one such detour led to marriage long past the time of life when Emily felt that she needed marriage to be happy. While speaking at the BYU Women’s Conference, she received a text asking if she was open to set ups. She agreed — and today she shares her life with a man who, in his spare time, teaches others how to firewalk. Emily sees her life as full of treasure — unlooked-for, sometimes illogical, but always worth appreciating.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

“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 sometimes hard to distinguish between what we say about community and what we actually do. If we say we want tight-knit community but don’t show up to build it, where’s the evidence that we really want it?

In today’s episode, Diana speaks with writer Michael Perrone about why we avoid the very thing we claim to need. On his Substack Build the Village, Michael explores the architecture of human community and human flourishing, with a special focus on men. In a recent post, he argues that community requires something closer to religious conversion than verbal commitment — we need to submit to a regimen that reshapes our hearts to want it. Without that effort, we drift back into the default individualism of modern American culture, where progress looks like “an ever-expanding personal dashboard with customizable settings.”

So what would it take to actually choose community, and to shape our desires around it? Michael shares five points for consideration. Listen and let us know what you think!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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, competing in absurd, often sexually charged challenges for the chance to score a date and maybe hook up. Everyone’s scrambling for a “connection,” or they risk getting sent home. Are You My First? looks a lot like that, except all the contestants lack sexual experience for very different reasons. Some have religious commitments to chastity (we get into the Mormon contestants in particular), some face health or psychological challenges that affect intimacy, and some just haven’t found the right person or the right time.

And here’s the twist: on a show that normalizes inexperience, these contestants often come across as surprisingly raw and genuine. They don’t have the same forced, hyper-confident performance you see on other shows. As Mallory put it, “They’re all underdogs”—and who doesn’t want to cheer for the underdog? But that doesn’t mean they’re all innocent. Some bounce from crush to crush without noticing their own contradictions. Others wrestle with self-trust and vulnerability. A few seem almost incapable of attaching at all.

In countless ways, the dynamics felt familiar—eerily like an LDS singles ward. Sometimes it was subtle, like how people pursued the contestants who looked like they “fit” the future they imagined, rather than the ones they actually felt at ease with.

We had a lot of fun with this one. What did you think? We’d love to hear.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.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 their wives about shepherding young adults through seasons of loneliness, doubt, and repentance.

We go straight for the elephant in the room — the Church’s sexual standards for single adults — where authority and empathy potentially compete. Our guests today are Cami and Matt Vail and Jeff and Jana Parkin, who all married young, in a different cultural moment, and they readily admit that the world of dating and relationships for today’s single adults feels foreign. On paper, this looks like authority at its most mismatched: leaders who never lived this stage of life are asked to uphold sexual standards for those still in it. In practice, they witness and hold single people’s most intimate stories — the struggles, desires, and despair — and are powerful conduits of God’s love. Could they serve as conduits without deep commitment to the Church and its standards?

In this conversation, we press into that paradox. Should older singles be allowed to adapt standards in a way that suits their age and stage of life? Or are the leaders right, that the boundaries are firm and its consistency that matters most? Who’s right? How are we missing each other? Though Mallory and Diana have had countless singles ward bishops over the years, it’s rare to sit down with them outside of ecclesiastical authority and ask them, openly, about how they approach these difficulties and how serving single young adults has changed them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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 puberty, they jiggle and shift and refuse to stay put. They are a lot like life itself: unpredictable, uncontrollable, constantly in flux. The way we treat or feel about our bodies often speaks to how we are navigating the bigger questions of life — including whether we deem ourselves fundamentally good and worthy of love. There’s a heartbreaking pattern that sets in when we don’t: we punish our bodies, the one thing that seems within our control.This pattern may be especially common in cultures that connect beauty with worth or deprivation with devotion. We dig into why Utah has the highest number of plastic surgeons per capita and growing up with the religious expectation that attracting and securing a spouse was part of fulfilling God’s plan. Annie traces a fascinating historical line from Renaissance beauty ideals celebrating fuller bodies to Protestant "fasting girls" who believed starvation brought them closer to God. That legacy, she argues, still haunts religious communities today, including the Latter-day Saints.

The irony is that this attempt to feel worthy of love works against itself. Annie shares how her recovery transformed not just her relationship with her body, but with everyone she loves. One breakthrough moment came through a letter from her little sister, who said: "I tried looking in the mirror at myself the way that you did, and it was painful. So I stopped." Her sister’s wisdom to walk away from the demon that had consumed Annie's life helped Annie see a different way she could treat herself — with gentleness. The isolation of an eating disorder, Annie explains, isn't just about food—it's about deserting yourself so completely that you can't connect with anyone else. Annie has gathered resources for anyone struggling with body image issues or eating disorders. You can access them here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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 designing the system—much like singles navigating a church culture built around families. Today, he joins Diana and Mallory for a conversation about the unexpected parallels between transit planning and the single experience in the church.

"When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," Mike explains. "If you're used to driving all the time, then everything looks like a parking spot or the lack of a parking spot. If the whole frame of reference is all based on families, then those who don't have those blessings really feel awkward." The metaphor illuminates how easily we turn to the tools we know best—whether cars or nuclear families—when we can't imagine life working any other way. Mike describes a sobering example, where his mid-singles congregation was shuffled between three buildings in 18 months with little to no advance notice, sometimes in response to complaints from married church members. The experience reinforced a sense that singles were "a problem that the church was trying to solve awkwardly rather than really taking a look at us and understanding our needs."

The episode also captures both the isolation and unexpected freedom that can come from living differently than those around you, whether that's taking trains instead of driving cars, or building meaning outside traditional family structures. In his journey form small-town Idaho to studying in Germany to living carless in Salt Lake City, Mike has learned that there are many ways to get around in life, and many ways to thrive.

Learn more about Mike’s urban planing advocacy here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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 psychologically present (missing persons, deployment). There's no funeral, no casseroles, no public acknowledgment, no timeline for when you're supposed to "get over it"—which creates its own special loneliness.

Today, Kylee joins us to explore another type of ambiguous loss: grieving something you never had. As she puts it, "Nobody knows what to do with somebody who has lost the thing they never had." For singles, this might mean mourning the marriage that didn't happen, the children you didn't have, the family story you always pictured. Kylee shares how naming this grief has expanded her empathy and inspired her to create "belonging places" where people can talk about life's "unspeakable" aspects—including through her own podcast, The Belonging Place.

Our conversation ventures into unexpected territory, including what we're calling "ambiguous joy"—those gifts and freedoms that emerge from paths we never chose but rarely get acknowledged or celebrated. Turns out joy, like grief, can be surprisingly complicated to hold.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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, and have children (or don’t.) That’s not to mention the specter of AI-mediated romance.Today’s guest, Carl Youngblood, founded the Mormon Transhumanist Association in 2006 to host conversations between the seemingly disparate worlds of faith and technological advancement. Each year, the association convenes an annual conference and smaller gatherings where the aims of technological enhancement and spiritual development are explored side by side—sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes colliding head-on.

On today’s episode of The Soloists, Carl shares about on a recent conference he attended in Berkeley, California that focused on reproductive technologies and the future of human enhancement—topics that might sound like science fiction but are edging closer to scientific reality. While we hope to dig into the details in a future conversation, this one centers on more fundamental questions: Should we feel hopeful or despairing about humanity’s technological trajectory? Is the promise of transhumanism—that we can steer our own evolution—visionary or dangerously hubristic? Are we creating a better world, or new, unintended problems for future generations to untangle?You'll probably feel at the end of this conversation, like we did, that we've barely scratched the surface. We hope to have future conversations with Carl and others about how technology will shape the future of family and all our other relationships.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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 relationships? How should singles relate to sexuality, especially in a religious subculture that forbids many forms of sexual expression outside marriage? In this episode of The Soloists, Jennifer joins Diana and Mallory to discuss.

Ultimately, Jennifer argues, erotic intimacy requires integrity, no matter our situation. Integrity requires grappling with a complex moral landscape. She explains her three-stage model of moral development, from the obedience of childhood to the belonging-focused conformity of adolescence, to the conscience-driven integrity of mature adulthood. Naturally, these stages introduce conflicting moral impulses. Yet "We should never let obedience or loyalty interfere with our conscience," she says. "Our conscience is primary."

For singles grappling with the law of chastity, Jennifer reframes the conversation around what it means to be honest about life and at peace with your sexuality—whether you're having sex or not. She also challenges the idea that pleasure and indulgence are the same thing. "Are our pleasures opening up our souls or shutting them down?" she asks. "Do they make us feel truer to ourselves and to our core, or are they a betrayal of ourselves?" Even for couples, she reminds, "the quality of your relationships is directly proportional to your tolerance for not getting what you want.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com

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) that make this choice possible have only been widely available since the late 20th century. Like many new technologies, ART open up a way to build a family that have never before been available before, and the intimate decision to use them to start a family of one’s own is relatively unexplored.

This week on The Soloists, we sit down with Jennifer Anderson and Troy Smith—two Latter-day Saints who chose to become parents on their own. Jennifer is a strategic consultant with a five-year-old daughter. Troy is an economist and solo father to two boys. We talk about how they each approached this decision in the absence of clear cultural or spiritual scaffolding, what the process was like—physically, financially, and spiritually—and how life feels on the other side.

“The fact that those options exist in the world today is a miracle for me,” Troy told us. “I felt that my heart would never, ever heal again,” Jennifer shared, “But my daughter healed my heart.”

You can read more from Troy at singlefatherbychoice.substack.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoloists.substack.com