The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a "Lost White Race" by Jason ColavitoSay you found that a few dozen people, operating at the highest levels of society, conspired to create a false ancient history of the American continent to promote a religious, white-supremacist agenda in the service of supposedly patriotic ideals. Would you call it fake news? In nineteenth-century America, this was in fact a powerful truth that shaped Manifest Destiny. The Mound Builder Myth is the first book to chronicle the attempt to recast the Native American burial mounds as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans.This The Good Book Club meeting was held on October 12, 2025.
Laurie Lee Hall grew up knowing something about herself didn’t match how others saw her. Though born male, she deeply felt she was a girl. With no way to express this, she chose to live as a man and built a respected life in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—as a temple architect and church leader.In a faith where gender is seen as eternal and unchanging, her true identity remained hidden for years. But eventually, Laurie had a powerful spiritual experience that confirmed what she had always known: she was transgender. Choosing to live openly as herself meant risking her role, her faith community, and the life she had built.Her story is a powerful reminder of the strength it takes to live authentically—and the peace that comes with self-acceptance.This Q&A was originally a The Good Book Club meeting held on Sunday, September 14, 2025.
We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson is a fun, accessible exploration of the biggest mysteries in modern physics. Blending humor with clear explanations, the book dives into what scientists don’t know about the universe—from dark matter and dark energy to the nature of space, time, and fundamental particles. Rather than offering definitive answers, the authors celebrate curiosity and the vast unknowns that drive scientific discovery. Through engaging illustrations and witty commentary, We Have No Idea encourages readers to embrace the excitement of not knowing and to see science as an ongoing adventure of exploration.This The Good Book Club Meeting was originally held on Sunday, August 10th, 2025.***How to DONATE to The Good Book Club Podcast: If you would like to help financially support our podcast, you can DONATE here through Mormonish Podcast/Bibliotech Media, Inc. We are a 501(c) (3) so your donation is tax deductible. https://donorbox.org/mormonish-podcast
Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily DickinsonDoubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht is a sweeping intellectual history that explores the role of religious doubt, atheism, and skepticism throughout human civilization. Spanning from ancient times to the modern era, Hecht examines how doubt has been a crucial and persistent force in shaping philosophy, science, religion, and culture. The book highlights key figures and movements—from early Greek philosophers and Eastern thinkers to Enlightenment skeptics and contemporary secularists—demonstrating that questioning religious and spiritual beliefs has been an essential part of human thought. Rather than presenting doubt as purely negative or destructive, Hecht argues that it has played a vital role in progress, freedom, and intellectual development.This The Good Book Club Meeting was held on July 13th, 2025***How to DONATE to The Good Book Club Podcast: If you would like to help financially support our podcast, you can DONATE here through Mormonish Podcast/Bibliotech Media, Inc. We are a 501(c) (3) so your donation is tax deductible. https://donorbox.org/mormonish-podcast
In our meeting this month we discussed the book, "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Atul Gawande. In this very important book, the author, a surgeon, explores modern mortality, aging, and end-of-life care, examining how medical advances have changed our relationship with death and what makes life meaningful until the end. This was a very powerful discussion and a very important one. This book changed all of us. This Good Book Club meeting was originally held on Sunday, June 22nd, 2025.***How to DONATE to The Good Book Club Podcast: If you would like to help financially support our podcast, you can DONATE here through Mormonish Podcast/Bibliotech Media, Inc. We are a 501(c) (3) so your donation is tax deductible. https://donorbox.org/mormonish-podcast
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. In our May bookclub meeting we discussed the book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow.This book offers a dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution―from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality―and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike. The authors show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century and are far from the truth of our neolithic ancestors.We found this discussion incredibly interesting and we know you will too. This The Good Book Club meeting was originally held on Sunday, May 18th, 2025.***How to DONATE to The Good Book Club Podcast: If you would like to help financially support our podcast, you can DONATE here through Mormonish Podcast/Bibliotech Media, Inc. We are a 501(c) (3) so your donation is tax deductible. https://donorbox.org/mormonish-podcast
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast where we make all our book club meetings available for you to enjoy. This month we discussed the book "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" by Yuval Noah Harari.Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? This The Good Book Club Meeting was orginally held on Sunday, April 13th, 2025.
Welcome to The Good Book Club podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. Our book this month was “Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism”by linguist Amanda Montell Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere. We found this book fascinating and we know you will too. This The Good Book Club Meeting was originally held on March 9th, 2025
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast, where we make all our book club meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. In this book club meeting we discussed the book, "The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think" by Robert Pantano. In this book, the author attempts to provide the value of motivation and personal development through unwavering philosophical honesty. Studying and pulling from ideas in Stoicism, Existentialism, Nihilism, Absurdism, Buddhism, Taoism, and more, he combines his own thoughts with concepts from philosophy to create accessible, thought-provoking, and beautiful takeaways that will change the way you think about yourself, existence, and how to appreciate the absurdity of it all. This The Good Book Club meeting was originally held on Sunday, February 9th, 2025.
A panel discussion with author Matt HarrisThe Good Book Club meeting with author Matt Harris to discuss his groundbreaking book, “Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality.” This was recorded as a Mormonish episode.Members of the book club have the chance to ask Matt anything and everything they’ve ever wanted to know about the lifting of the Priesthood ban, Matt’s research, and more!This is such an important discussion and Matt is just fantastic! you won’t want to miss this episode!The Good Book ClubIf you would like more info on The Good Book Club you can email us at thegoodbookclub@mail.com or find us on facebook herehttps://www.facebook.com/share/g/PK74wD9DpTpYHgp6/?mibextid=K35XfP
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. This month we read and discussed the book, "Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots" by Deborah Feldman. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman who eventually reclaimed her life outside of her faith tradition and forged a new path for herself and her son. This The Good Book Club Meeting was orginally held on Sunday, December 8th, 2024.
In this Bookclub meeting, we discussed the book. “No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required” by Brittney Hartley. Britt was able to join us for most of the meeting and answer questions our Bookclub members had about the book. I know you’ll find this discussion absolutely fascinating and enlightening. This book club meeting was originally held on Sunday, December 10, 2024.
Welcome to The Good Book Club podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. This month the book club discussed “Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End” by Bart Ehrman. You’ll find nearly everything the Bible says about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But no matter what you think Revelation reveals—whether you read it as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture—you’re almost certainly wrong. This The Good Book Club Meeting was originally held on October 13th 2024.
The book discussed at this meeting is “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life” by Mark Manson. In this entertaining and hard hitting self-help guide, the author cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. In other words, there are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter. We found this book to be really eye opening and we think you will too! This The Good Book Club Meeting was originally held on September 8th, 2024.
Welcome to The Good Book Club podcast where we make all our book club meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. Today's episode features our discussion of the book, "Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia" by Michael Shermer. In this very interesting discussion, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans’ belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality along with utopian attempts to create heaven on earth. The author Michael Shermer joins us for the second half of the presentation. This The Good Book Club Meeting was originally held on August 11th 2024.
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings available for viewers and listeners to enjoy. Our bookclub discussion this month was centered on the book, "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by Sam Harris. In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In his view, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at an increasing cost to humanity.We found this book and the concepts presented, absolutely fascinating and we think you will too, This bookclub meeting was originally held on Sunday, July 14th.
Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, HOW MINDS CHANGE explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing. The book ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy?We really learned a lot from this book and we know you'll find this discussion fascinating. This bookclub meeting was originally held on June 9th, 2024
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings and bonus events available for listeners to enjoy. In this episode we discuss the ground breaking book, "The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World " by Max Fisher We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping and galling inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social network preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. We found this book to be equally interesting and terrifying and we are definitely rethinking our social media use. This book club meeting was originally recorded on Sunday, May 19th, 2024
Welcome to The Good Book Club podcast where we make all our book club meetings and bonus events available for listeners to enjoy. This episode features our bookclub discussion of "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond. In this groundbreaking book, the author convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. You won't look at the world in the same way after reading this book. Our bookclub meeting was originally held on Sunday, April 14th, 2024.
Welcome to The Good Book Club Podcast where we make all our bookclub meetings and bonus events availble for listeners and viewers to enjoy. On today's epiosde we discuss the book "Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy" by David Roberts. The book recounts the tragedy of the Willey and Martin handcart companies. In 1856, 220 Mormon pioneers traveling west to Utah, pushing and pulling their belongings in handcarts, died of malnutrition and hypothermia. Roberts draws on contemporary letters and diaries to re-create the drama and suffering, as well as delving into the church's LDS church's role in the events.This was very heartbreaking to read, but also very important to understand in it's scope within a broader context of the LDS church. This bookclub meeting was orginally held on Sunday, March 10th, 2024