Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Postmormon Postmortem
Religion & Spirituality

Postmormon Postmortem

Hannah and Jess

Mormonism gave you a complete universe, with charts, diagrams, and a plan for everything. Leaving can dismantle all of it at once. Postmormon Postmortem is hosted by Hannah and Jess, two women who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and wanted more honest conversations about what comes after. We cover Mormon history, doctrine, culture, true crime, institutional harm, religious trauma, and the messy work of rebuilding a life outside the church. Whether you're freshly out, years removed, or trying to understand someone you love, you're in the right place.

Play
Open in
  • 25 episodes
  • Avg 34 min
  • English

Episodes 25

NewestOldestLongest
All5Unplayed5In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • S1 · E81
    August 23 · 54 min

    Is the Mormon Church a Cult? Here's What the Research Says

    Is the Mormon Church a cult? We ran mainstream Mormonism through the actual clinical frameworks researchers use for cultic control — not the insult, the real definitions. Using Steven Hassan's BITE model (behavior, information, thought, and emotional control) and Janja Lalich's concept of bounded choice from Bounded Choice, we test Mormon teachings on tithing, garments, temple worthiness, missionary service, and apostasy discipline against the same standards used to evaluate the Unification Church, the Democratic Workers Party, and Heaven's Gate. We cover Hassan's own writing on Mormonism, what happens when former missionary Tom Hopkins investigates the Church's claims, and what leaving actually costs when you were born into the belief system rather than recruited into it as an adult. High-control religion isn't about how strange the beliefs sound from outside — it's about how much of your life the system reaches into. Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem Ad-free listening from $2/month: patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem TikTok & Instagram: @postmormonpostmortem postmormonpostmortem.com New episodes every Sunday at 9 AM — just in time for sacrament meeting.

  • S1 · E83
    August 23 · 1 hr 39 min

    The Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping: Brian David Mitchell, Wanda Barzee, & the Role of Mormonism

    Mormon True Crime episodes will drop on Saturday from now on... not usually this late. Think of this week as a two-fer Sunday. Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old when Brian David Mitchell entered her Salt Lake City home, held a knife to her throat, and kidnapped her from the bedroom she shared with her younger sister. For the next nine months, Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Elizabeth captive while Mitchell declared himself a prophet, claimed continuing revelation from God, “sealed” Elizabeth to himself as a plural wife, gave her priesthood blessings, renamed her, and repeatedly used Mormon doctrine and religious language to justify his control and abuse. Drawing from Elizabeth's account of her captivity and testimony from Brian David Mitchell’s federal trial, we follow the kidnapping from the Smart family home into the mountains above Salt Lake City, through the search for Elizabeth, Mitchell’s attempts to take additional girls, the move to California, and Elizabeth’s eventual return to Utah. The question that would eventually dominate Mitchell’s prosecution was how much did he understand about what he was doing? The answer we want to know: how much did he believe his own garbage?

  • S1 · E82
    August 19 · 21 min

    The Mormon Glow: Can You Identify A Mormon By Their Face?

    Can people really identify Mormons just by looking at their faces? In 2010, psychologists Nicholas Rule, James Garrett and Nalini Ambady found that both Mormons and non-Mormons could classify Mormon faces at rates slightly better than chance…. which left them with a new question: what exactly were people seeing? Hannah walks Jess through the experiments, including the follow-up tests that removed different parts of the face, and the researchers’ attempts to explain the so-called “Mormon glow.” We get into perceived health, skin information, spirituality, and the Mormon belief in a visible “brightness of countenance.” Then, of course, there’s the way LDS media is going to spin it. Full source list available on Patreon

  • S1 · E82
    August 17 · 19 min

    Jared Bridegan Murder: Shanna Gardner, Mario Fernandez Saldana & the Mormon Connection

    The murder of Jared Bridegan involves his ex-wife Shanna Gardner, her then-husband Mario Fernandez Saldana, and Mario’s former tenant Henry Tenon. And Mormonism runs all the way through the case. Shanna grew up in the wealthy Mormon family behind Stampin’ Up!, served a mission, and married Jared in the Salt Lake City Temple. During their marriage and bitter divorce, religion became intertwined with family money, custody, their children’s church involvement, and their increasingly hostile relationship. Then, on February 16, 2022, Jared was shot and killed after stopping to move a tire placed in the road in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. His two-year-old daughter was sitting in the back seat. In this Mormon Monday, Hannah and Jess get into the Gardner family money, Shanna’s departure from the church, Jared’s continuing Mormonism, the custody fight, Mario Fernandez Saldana, Henry Tenon, the $10,000 in checks, Bishop Scott Currie, Kim Jensen’s messy police interviews, the funeral potatoes texts, and the prosecution’s alleged murder-for-hire case. Mario Fernandez Saldana’s trial began today, August 17, 2026. Shanna Gardner’s trial is scheduled to follow, and we’ll be following the Mormon pieces as the cases unfold.

  • S1 · E78
    August 16 · 1 hr 26 min

    Joseph Smith's Childhood Trauma and the Making of a Prophet

    At seven, surgeons cut into Joseph Smith's leg without anesthesia. At seventeen, an angel told him where to dig. A psychiatrist, a historian, and a surgeon trace the line between the two. Hosts Jess and Hannah open a two-part series on Joseph Smith's childhood, drawing on three psychobiographical studies: Robert Anderson's psychoanalytic reading, Dan Vogel's "pious fraud" framework, and William Morain's trauma-and-dissociation reading. Covered: the 1813 leg surgery, the Smith family's repeated financial collapse, years of treasure-digging, the 1826 court hearing, Alvin's death, and the gaps between Joseph's own First Vision accounts. This isn't a takedown — it's a case study in how a traumatized child became a man other people needed to believe in. Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem Ad-free listening from $2/month: patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem TikTok & Instagram: @postmormonpostmortem postmormonpostmortem.com New episodes every Sunday at 9 AM.

Showing 21–25 of 25 episodes