The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a "Lost White Race" by Jason Colavito

Say 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.

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Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson

Doubt: 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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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