Over the next couple of months, Mallory and Diana will be hosting conversations to explore shifting norms around dating and marriage in LDS culture, and this is a first dip into the question.

This conversation is a bit bigger picture and less LDS-specific, though we start by talking about a change in the Church’s summer youth program, For the Strength of Youth (formerly called Especially For Youth) that brings it close to home: the young men and young women aren’t required to link arms anymore when they walk between classes!

This change might not seem like a big deal, but the uncomfortable social ritual of linking arms may have had some overlooked benefits. It was the kind of gentle, safe, chaperoned push out of one’s social comfort zone that some researchers say young people are increasingly missing in their lives, leading to increased loneliness, mental health concerns, and suspicion of others.

In this episode, researchers Daniel Cox and Kelsey Eyre Hammond joined Diana (Mallory was out of town) for a conversation about changes in young adults’ beliefs, behaviors, and relationships with one another. They discuss the phenomenon that some are calling “gender polarization,” which refers to young men and young women growing apart politically, religiously, and generally in what they want out of life. This is already leading many to give up on dating and hopes of partnership.

After listening, we’d love to hear in the comments: do you think this change in the FSY/EFY program was a good thing?

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No friendship is free from unfunny jokes and no romance is spared from chewing noises. Buddhist Jonathan Makransky joins Mallory and Diana to discuss why irritation arises in intimate relationships and what to do about it. We cover insights from Seinfeld, What about Bob, angsty Reddit confessions, and a book Jonathan recommended: Awakening Dignity, by Phakchok Rinpoche. You’ll also hear a theory for why the “ick” has come to rule across the dating landscape.

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What do I really want? It’s a question that sounds simple—until you try to answer it with your whole life. Diana and Mallory spoke with writer Michaelann Gardner, author of the new book Sovereign, about the quiet, sometimes heartbreaking work of discerning our most sacred desires and being true to them. Once we can fully see what we want, it gets easier to build a life of alignment. And if life won’t allow that to happen, we are better prepared to grieve and let go.

In this conversation, Michaelann shares her decision to pursue motherhood on her own, without a partner, after so long of waiting for the typical family set up to arrive. "I had to ask myself, what if the life I thought I was supposed to have just… doesn’t come? What if this is it?” Her story becomes a gateway into a deeper exploration of what it means to live the real life in front of us, rather than living for a life not here.

Together, they discuss how growing up in a religious context can train us to ignore or outsource desire, and what it takes to unlearn that habit without losing our faith. They reflect on the cost of honesty, the subtle difference between surrender and avoidance, and the strange holiness of longing that doesn’t resolve. This is an episode for anyone standing at a crossroads—wondering if it’s time to wait longer, grieve deeper, or finally choose. And it’s a conversation that gently insists: your real life is worth wanting.

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What do you do when the life you imagined—the one your faith or culture led you to believe was inevitable, even promised—no longer feels possible? In this conversation, Diana and Mallory sit down with two beloved guests and friends, Stacey Harkey and Ben Schilaty, for a candid, thoughtful dialogue about faith, identity, purpose, and the courage it takes to walk a different path.

Stacey and Ben both come from Latter-day Saint backgrounds and identify as gay, yet their life paths, spiritual views, and experiences diverge in beautiful and complex ways. Together, they explore what it means to live a faithful life when the “trail” you were told to follow disappears—and how that absence can lead to an even deeper presence with God, self, and others.

In This Episode:

* The loneliness of being "off script" in faith communities

* Reimagining God—not as a referee, but as a guide and companion

* The power of desire as a teacher, not a temptation

* Learning to “paint the white room” and embrace spiritual messiness

* Living single with intention and purpose

* What LGBTQ+ experiences can teach all of us about spiritual maturity

* Ben’s reflections on grief, trust, and the quiet miracles of caregiving

* Why the things we never planned might become the greatest gifts

✨ Stacey Harkey is an actor, writer, inclusion trainer, fitness instructor, and founding member of Studio C and JK Studios. Follow him on Instagram at @staceyharkey.✨ Ben Schilaty is a therapist, author of A Walk in My Shoes, co-host of Questions from the Closet podcast, and a professor at UVU. Follow him at @benschilaty.

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What does it mean to receive beauty for ashes? The phrase comes from Isaiah 61:3, where God promises to bring joy where there was mourning, praise where there was despair, and new life from devastation. In this conversation, we spoke with chaplain and writer Jenna Carson about her journey through two divorces and the hard-won path to healing and renewal. For Jenna, the process wasn’t just about working harder or pushing through pain—it was about surrendering to what she couldn’t control. “I was so held by God,” she shared. “He gives us beauty for ashes.”

Life often demands that we rebuild after devastations we never imagined. When the terms we’ve built our worth upon fall apart, we have to find new reasons to go on. For Jenna, that journey has not only been about finding her own path forward but also about expanding her emotional capacity to hold space for others. Jenna also shares with us how, as a chaplain, her experiences of heartbreak and healing have strengthened her ability to minister to those who feel lost, broken, or unworthy of love. As she puts it, “Divorce is not a failure.”Along the way, you’ll hear about Jenna’s winding path to becoming a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force. Jenna also previously served as a hospital and prison chaplain. She co-hosts the spiritual podcast "Guiding Light." She earned a BA from Brigham Young University, a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, and is a Kripalu-certified Yoga Therapist. Her forthcoming memoir narrates her experience as a female chaplain in a men's penitentiary.

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“Why is boredom painful? Shouldn’t it just be boring?” Adam S. Miller asks in his book The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom & Addiction in an age of Distraction. In this conversation, Mallory and Diana spoke with Adam about boredom has to teach us, including in our relationships with other people. How does boredom impact the way we read and respond to others? How does our dread of being bored with someone shape our relationship decisions, especially around romantic relationships? What do we find on the other side of boredom, when we sit with it and avoid finding distractions?

The answer, according to Wallace, is that we learn to actually pay attention, and then the world opens up to us. Adam calls this a religious moment: its not the moment when “whoosh!—the magic happens and the world seems full of a pantheon of idols able to satisfy. It’s the moment when—fshzzt—the spell breaks, the credits roll, the lights come back up, and the world must be cared for, again, as just whatever it is.” When we can pay attention, we can finally just be with ourselves and others.

We hope you enjoy this episode! And please consider taking our community survey, as a chance to share how you’re repsonding to some of our conversations.

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Like an itch that won’t be scratched, many of us walk around fearing that love is scarce in our lives, that there’s not enough of it to go around. For that itch, the Wayfare essay ”Overflowing with Family” by Dr. Amy Harris offers triumphant relief. Amy is a genealogist and professor of family history at Brigham Young University. In this conversation, we spoke with Amy about her essay and about the family relationships—living and dead—that make us who we are and provide generous company through the life course, but that our culture leads us to undervalue and overlook. Our special focus today is sibling relationships.

Sibling dramas fuel some of our greatest cultural stories. The bible opens with the most iconic sibling rivalry of all time, the one between Cain and Abel, which ends in Cain asking God, “Am I my brother’s Keeper?” and running in shame from his failure as a brother. In modern media, the Stark family in Game of Thrones stands out for their dogged loyalty to each other. As Mallory puts it in this conversation, there’s a romance to sibling relationships (not that kind of romance—calm down). There’s a will-they-won’t-they- stick-together dynamic, as though sibling relationships are ultimate test of our capacity to love.

It’s easy to undervalue siblings because they’re always there. It can be hard to even see our siblings, because they’re always there. Sibling relationships train us to pay attention for no other reason than that “those living, breathing people… belong to me and I to them.” Simone Weil once wrote that our souls have a “violent repugnance for true attention,” but also that we “have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving [us] their attention.”

Whether you have many siblings or none, whether your siblings are chosen or the inherited kind, there are lessons from this conversation on the abundance of love that is always available to us if we learn how to look for it.

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Provo, Utah is widely known for its hyper-earnest dating culture. What happens when you bring that to reality TV? We talk to a 2nd season winner of Provo's Most Eligible, Scott Anderson, about his experience on the show and the questions he’s haunted by years down the road. What motivates people to go on reality shows? What is it like trying to grow close to someone on camera? Towards the end, we discuss how men and women tend to approach “singleness” differently. Why does it seem like women are so much more willing to talk about it? Why do some people treat it as an ailment to recover from, and others as a situation to learn to thrive in? Hats off to Scott for the unusual candor he brought to the conversation.

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Today, we’re sharing a conversation that we recorded with Dan Wotherspoon for his podcast, Latter-day Faith. Dan is a very talented interviewer and drew out perhaps the tenderest conversation we've had yet. He asked how our faith has transformed as romantic disappointments and the slow slipping away of time have made our lives look different than what we expected. We talk about courage — facing our own lives without flinching. We talk about perspective—appreciating the abundance of life and avoiding catastrophic thinking. We talk about worthiness — how we’ve grappled with fears that we’ve done something wrong. We talk letting go of “why” questions, and focusing on “how” questions — how do we live? .What is the next step to take? What is expedient for today? We talk about embarrassment — how embarrassing it is that relationship status features so highly in how we evaluate ourselves, how embarrassing it is to have others speculate about your life, and how embarrassing it is to belong to a religion that outsiders rarely see the magic of. We finish off talking directly about this— why we’ve both stayed in the Church, though it has a role to play in fueling dreams that haven’t come to pass, and sometimes struggles to walk with us in the life that remains. We can’t wait to hear what resonates with you!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Mallory and Diana will be doing a live event with Adam Miller on Thursday, February 6th, at 5pm MT/7pm ET. The event will be on zoom, and anyone is welcome to join! We’ll be discussing boredom in relationships, and how the fear of being bored impacts romantic decision-making. Tickets can be purchased 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

This isn’t just an episode on dating, though we spend substantial time there. What we’re really straining at is a glimpse of love — a word that can feel as flaccid and overused as a discarded tissue — as a particular, substantive force that we can cultivate in our relationships. Borrowing from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, our guests Venerable Tien Nguyen and Jonathan Makransky translate Buddhist principles to the many situations in modern dating where love and care seem persistently absent — rejection, hook-ups, ghosting, failed relationships, and the endless agony of waiting.

This likely isn’t your first time philosophizing about what love is and it certainly won’t be your last, but add this conversation to your queue for a wise, fresh, and rejuvenating answer to sociological observations of waning love attachments and modern pessimism about dating.

Jonathan Makransky and Venerable Tien Nguyen met as students at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) several years ago. Now, Jonathan works for HDS coordinating Multi-religious Ministry Initiatives, and Venerable splits his time between two Buddhist temples, one in Boston and one in Providence, RI.

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