Matt (00:00.886)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. I'm so glad you're with us this week. I'm your host, Matt, and with me as always is Sean. And we have with us David. David is back with us again. Hasn't it been like first time in 2026, right David? All right, all right. Welcome back. We might see you again in 2027 or something like that. First.

David Brown (00:12.098)
Good to be here.

David Brown (00:15.925)
Yeah, making the rounds.

Shawn (00:18.119)
You

David Brown (00:22.744)
now.

Matt (00:25.738)
David is my strongest BYU sports fan I know. And so just have to check in David. How you feeling? Like, feels like they were better with Jimmer than with AJ.

David Brown (00:37.004)
Well, yeah, yeah, no, a little tough note at the end, but still fun stuff. Stuff you've never seen before at BYU. Let's keep it going.

Matt (00:45.522)
Okay, what about the football season? Was that a disappointment for you?

David Brown (00:49.855)
It depends on your point of reference. Back to back 12 in seasons, you don't argue with that. So if you're shooting higher, then it's a disappointment. And yeah, there's room to grow. I can't be unhappy with that.

Matt (00:51.532)
Well, I'm asking you.

Matt (00:55.884)
Matt (01:01.226)
All right. Okay. I'm wearing my Top Gun shirt today because I just finished flying an airplane for the first time in my life. That was so good. Yeah, it was great. We did this thing called zero gravity where like you go up and then you go down real fast and then he made my cell phone like float in the air. That kind of did a number on my stomach. But.

Shawn (01:09.534)
for your birthday. How was it?

David Brown (01:23.104)
The vomit comet, think is what they call it. That's how they film movies with zero gravity stuff.

Shawn (01:23.412)
You

Matt (01:30.902)
really? That was a little bit rough on the stomach, but other than that it was great. I got to like take control of the plane. If you need somebody to taxi a plane around the runway, I'm really good at that now. I can drive with my feet and move the plane around. So yeah, it was good. You guys, have you done it before David or Sean? all right. You should. We have some great photos of our house and of our tiny little city of Rexburg and.

David Brown (01:48.48)
No.

Shawn (01:49.352)
No thanks, not interested. Sounds like a nightmare a bit to me.

Matt (02:00.159)
Anyhow.

Shawn (02:00.712)
My wife did it one year for her birthday and I was mad. I was angry. I was like, why take the risk? Remember last week we talked about this, Matt? I gave you a list of like 30 celebrities who have died in those little airplanes.

Matt (02:05.196)
What?

Matt (02:14.964)
Yeah, but death is not the worst thing that happens in this life. Death is like, death is why I'm here. I don't care if I die.

Shawn (02:21.14)
thought death was the final enemy. It is the final enemy that Christ will crush under his foot.

David Brown (02:21.774)
Kind of the last thing that happens in this life.

Matt (02:24.268)
It's the most

Matt (02:30.22)
He has overcome death. I feel good about my standing with my savior. like I've got nothing, nothing holding me here except for the people I love and the things I love to do. like if it's my time. Right. I don't know if I told you this is a really personal experience, but I guess I'll just share it with everybody. But after my grandma died, she died about two months ago, I had a really powerful spiritual experience.

Shawn (02:40.862)
They need you, Matt!

David Brown (02:41.282)
What a good message going into Easter. The power of resurrection. Go fly airplanes.

Shawn (02:43.987)
haha

Matt (02:59.424)
in the temple with her. And it was just clear to me, because she was 94 when she died, it was clear to me that she was like, look, life was hard, life wasn't always fun. And now I'm with my husband for eternity and I'm as happy as can be. And who cares about whatever you guys do in that life? I don't care about you guys anymore. I'm like living my, this is what I lived life for. And so ever since then, I'm sort of like, what am I so attached to this life? I'm not suicidal, but it's like,

This is, I'm here to prepare for something way better than this. And so I don't care about holding onto this.

Shawn (03:35.188)
That's a wonderful, faithful, I've always loved your faith and that is part of your faith. But guess what? You've got people here who need you.

Matt (03:42.472)
Yeah, well, if they need me, I'll still be here and I won't die because I crashed a plane or something like that. I'll be here for them as a quadriplegic or something like that. Like, just strongly believe we don't go before it's our time to go unless we're doing something stupid and flying a plane is not as stupid. That doesn't fit. All right. Well, we had a listener write in on our podcast on our YouTube channel. And so, you know, just as a shout out to the I think there's like 15

Shawn (03:55.272)
Yeah. Like flying a plane. okay.

Matt (04:12.298)
YouTube viewers, but you know if you go to YouTube you get to see our faces and so just as a shout out to that one person this is what they said, don't think the church has learned the lesson of using its money to help the poor. So I forgot to put the person's handle but I don't think they're a faithful member of the church but I'm gonna just politely disagree with this listener. I do think the church has learned the lesson of using its money to help the poor. The church does a lot to help the poor.

Shawn (04:24.756)
You

Shawn (04:38.46)
I think most people's

David Brown (04:38.668)
I think it's a valid question, but I don't think it's a valid accusation.

Shawn (04:42.932)
I think most people's complaint is as a percentage of what the church owns, they don't help the poor. I think that's mostly the complaint that I hear. But it's like, well, that's a relative viewpoint, right?

Matt (04:43.209)
There you go

Matt (04:57.834)
Yeah, right. mean, they're building temples and churches and paying for people to serve missions and I don't know.

David Brown (05:06.316)
I get lost in the big numbers sometimes. Like the difference between a million and a billion is one consonant, but you know how long it takes to count to a million? Like if you just counted out loud from zero to a million.

Matt (05:21.46)
Mr. Beast probably has done it before,

David Brown (05:23.694)
So it statistically if you could do one at every second not eat or sleep or anything it'd take you 12 days to reach 1 million And a couple like 20 years ago somebody set the record of counting out loud He spent his whole you know 16 hours a day his waking moments And it took him about three months to count to 1 million Out loud

Matt (05:29.706)
Good luck.

Shawn (05:39.412)
Wow.

Matt (05:44.695)
You

Shawn (05:44.829)
Wow!

David Brown (05:46.861)
you know, and so when when you consider that there's numbers that are multiple millions, multiple billions, you can

Matt (05:47.819)
Wow.

Matt (05:53.974)
Yeah.

David Brown (05:56.111)
You know how you got like your home checking account where paychecks come in and bills go out and then sometimes you got a reserve account. Maybe it's a brokerage or maybe it's the savings account or something. So the church's savings account is the N-Sign Peak folks. That's not the operating account. That's the reserve fund. We put the excess stuff that's not being used into N-Sign Peak and they have filings every quarter with the SEC. You go to sec.gov. did that this week. $56 billion.

Matt (06:10.38)
Mm.

Matt (06:23.06)
Wow. Whoa.

David Brown (06:26.064)
got tucked away not in operation just as a reserve fund but if you divide that across whatever 10 ish 15 17 however you want to quantify church membership that's somewhere between four and six thousand per person and that number doesn't seem quite as crazy to me that you know that that seems like

Shawn (06:30.29)
Wow.

Matt (06:32.138)
Well...

Shawn (06:45.342)
Huh. Huh.

Matt (06:45.356)
That's not so much.

David Brown (06:51.758)
reasonable amount to have tucked away to do whatever needs to be done as church evolves and I don't know It's just so easy to get lost in big numbers that are not part of my usual Calculus as I go through life

Shawn (07:07.124)
You know, you preface that whole thing by saying the numbers get elusive to you, you handled them pretty well. You gave it some clarity. That's good.

Matt (07:13.324)
Yeah, that was good. David helped us understand those numbers. So how long to count to a billion? That'd be a thousand times three months.

David Brown (07:20.622)
250 years is how long it takes to count to 1 billion out loud Yeah, you'll have time on your hands if you keep flying

Shawn (07:24.862)
That's insane.

Matt (07:26.528)
I'm gonna try that after I'm dead, when I have more free time on my hands.

Shawn (07:32.478)
Matt, if you just decided to count during the hours that you're watching Court TV, that might, you might get through it pretty quick.

David Brown (07:38.03)
Yeah.

Matt (07:40.024)
You know, I actually saw a video of Mr. Beast explaining, because one of his first videos that went viral was him counting to 100,000. And he literally said he was trying to figure out a way to make money while he was watching, I think it was Game of Thrones, some TV show. Yeah, and so all he did is put his camera up on his television, and while he's watching Game of Thrones, he was just counting to 100,000, and that became the video that went viral for him and made him really popular.

Shawn (07:53.554)
No way. Are you serious?

Shawn (08:05.116)
Now I understand why that guy's the hero of so many. Now I get it. Now that you've explained that. Thank you.

Matt (08:09.759)
Yeah.

David Brown (08:11.052)
You'll go places the rest of us don't go. So here's some church school scuttlebutt for Matt, right, because that's your world. So Ernest Wilkinson is the president of BYU for like 20 years. And they're transformative years. Campus is growing, blah, blah.

Matt (08:13.42)
You

All right.

David Brown (08:27.5)
But I think it's at a time when the church still was like barely keeping its head above water financially You're doing spaghetti dinner fundraisers and pancake sales to build the chapel yourself. Lots of people talk about those days And so he's going back and forth to Salt Lake having to keep asking for more money If we grow this it'll turn into something special. I think there was tension around that and so about 15 years in he's at a meeting with the Board of Trustees and They asked him to step out for a minute

because they have something they need to discuss without him and he's kind of concerned. Then when he steps back in, President McKay actually gives him the very nice news that they've decided to name the Student Union Building that's just been finished after him. But that's what's in the water is he's on some thin ice because of the need to play tug-of-war with finances.

Matt (09:11.628)
Aww.

David Brown (09:19.562)
And his successor was Dallin Oaks. Like that is the world that our current leadership has lived through as they figure out how to make sure things don't get that tight, that tense. And it doesn't surprise me if we're erring on the side of caution, maybe more than we should, but that's who we've got and why. And it's not that surprising.

Matt (09:32.246)
Yeah.

Shawn (09:39.656)
Hmm.

Matt (09:41.536)
During that period of time, the church offered to sell Ricks College to Idaho, the state of Idaho, for one dollar. And the state of Idaho said, no, we don't want it. And that's why BYU-Idaho is where it is today, because the Idaho state didn't want it. Yeah, because Weber State used to be a church school. Other schools used to be church schools, and the other states purchased them. So otherwise, there could have been a BYU-Ogden. Sean, imagine, BYU-Ogden.

David Brown (09:49.599)
No deal.

David Brown (10:07.288)
I think there's plenty of stuff that we don't publicize too. Like not every service project has the yellow vests and photographers and you know, not let don't let your right hand know what your left hand's doing. I think I think we actually do plenty of spending and service that just doesn't get in the world report that you see on TV.

Matt (10:10.827)
Yeah.

Matt (10:15.339)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (10:26.356)
Yeah, I think that's right. All right, so first up on the Thought Provoker, this is a David special. He wrote this question for us, and I love it. Mosiah 29 teaches, your business by the voice of the people. We claim that agency and self-determinism played a large role in the war in heaven and the plan of salvation. The young women theme include choice and accountability as among their stated values. So the question is, does gerrymandering get in the way of good government by the voice of the people?

Shawn (10:32.788)
Yeah!

Matt (10:54.09)
Or is it a feature of things being run by – run well at the state level? It seems like the very prominent redistricting efforts across the country have been much more about serving a party than reflecting the voice of the people. If it's a problem, how do we avoid the fox guarding the hen house if we leave it up to elected officials?" I can go first on this one. Well, so the reality is I don't want to get too much into, like, economic theory, but

Shawn (11:13.406)
Yeah, let's hear it.

Matt (11:23.104)
There are a number of ways to rig a majority vote. And elected officials and politicians and government leaders have from the dawn of time created electoral systems that rig the majority in their favor. And the United States is no exception to that. Sure, Sean, why do we have the Electoral College? What role does the Electoral College have?

Shawn (11:38.932)
From beginning they've done that? From... from... Really?

Shawn (11:45.844)
Don't get mad at me, Matt. I'm asking my political science professor.

Matt (11:50.022)
Well, did I? Yeah.

David Brown (11:50.937)
So we'll come back to Matt in a second, but this week, in fact, is the birthday of the term gerrymandering. Because in March of 1812, Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was Massachusetts governor at the time, would later become vice president for a couple of weeks before he died.

He was putting his thumb on the scales of the local elections up in Massachusetts and the political cartoon said, wow, you made such a weird shape on this map. It looks like a lizard. Look like a salamander. It's a gerrymander. That's how we got the name because this is going back to the founding fathers. And ever since then, no matter which side you're on, people put their thumb on the scales. back to Matt. But happy birthday to the term gerrymandering. We should say gerrymandering, but it was

Shawn (12:27.974)
No way!

Shawn (12:36.052)
Wow, that's a cool story! David!

Matt (12:36.278)
Right.

Shawn (12:40.606)
The salamander. Gary the salamander. That's cool.

David Brown (12:42.928)
That's how I got his name.

Matt (12:44.332)
Well, but I'll just say like going back to Moses 29, if we say do your business by the voice of the people, in reality there's no such thing as the voice of the people. Because how you interpret that, how I interpret that, how we decide to measure that already puts some bias into the voice of the people. And so I agree, like I think it's an aspirational wonderful idea. We should all try to govern ourselves by the voice of the people.

But in reality, somebody has to make the laws, somebody has to decide how the votes are gonna be counted, somebody decides who gets to vote and when they get to vote, and all of those decisions could be made in an objective, unbiased manner, but it's unrealistic to think that they ever will be.

Shawn (13:29.236)
So Matt, you're saying that the logistics of getting the actual accurate voice, majority voice of the people is so subjective. It's so difficult or there's not a really clean, plain way to do it that you personally would look at, for example, gerrymandering and go, it's not that bad because it's just one way to collect the majority or the voice of the people. Is that what you're saying?

Matt (13:51.326)
It's the system that we decided right under our Constitution. So just as a really, really simple example, there are in the state of Idaho four people that go to the House of Representatives. So you could choose those four people that Utah is going to send to the House of Representatives. We could choose to divide up districts and say whoever wins each of those four districts gets to go to the House of Representatives. You could also do something called proportional representation and people could say I'm with a party.

and the Democrats in Utah choose their top four people and the Republicans choose their top four people and the Libertarians choose their top four people. And the people when they go to vote, they just choose which party they like best. And those four get decided based on the proportion of the vote that they get. So in Utah, probably the Republicans would get 65%, maybe 60%. Democrats would get maybe 40%. But let's say it changed and there was some independent party that went like.

Two were for Republicans and one was for a Democrat and one was for this third party. You could do it that way. That's the way a lot of countries do it. The reason we don't do it that way is because the people that are in power, when you explain to them what would happen if we switched our election system, they fight, fight, fight and say, no, we're not gonna change our election system. When Idaho had on the ballot two years ago this opportunity to change it to like rank choice voting, you know who the strongest opposition to that was?

the Republican Party in the state of Idaho, because the people who are in office right now are winning. They know how to win under the current system, and so they have no incentive to change the rules, because at best, it kicks them out of office, or I guess at best they have less firm of a majority or less certainty, and then at worst, it kicks them out of office. So the people making the laws are the ones who are winning in the current election rules, and it's very hard to get them to change.

Shawn (15:41.95)
So, okay, so Matt, so what you've taught me is that we live in a complex society and if the goal is to give the people the voice, there are, and there are various ways of doing that. You're suggesting, it's okay that sometimes it's a bit strategic and can influence one or the other or give more power to one or the other. Question though, shouldn't the thing that drives

the multiple choices of how we give the majority of our voice. Shouldn't it be God's agency? Like agency is such an abundant doctrine throughout scripture. like if there's a system that predetermines an outcome, doesn't that erode true agency? And shouldn't our system be driven about you need, agency requires meaningful options. And it's not really a meaningful option, me living in California when I'm voting for the presidential election, because I don't, literally my voice doesn't matter if I'm not a Democrat.

I don't have agency here.

Matt (16:37.418)
Well, I think what our system rewards is strength of opinion and willingness to put action behind that opinion. So we can ask the three of us, who do you prefer to have for president of the United States? Some of us might feel stronger about that than others of us. And so the system as it is now rewards people who care so much that they're willing to give their money or they're willing to give their time or they're willing to go do something about it. And if all you want to do is sit at home on election day and just go vote,

then your voice has less weight than the voice of other people and maybe that's the way it ought to be.

David Brown (17:15.246)
That's a distorted voice. Right? We want the voice of the people and the people have a wide range of life experience and opportunity to participate, but they are still the people.

Matt (17:15.478)
What do think, David?

Matt (17:29.142)
But we don't really want the voice of the people because we don't want, in many states, felons to be able to vote. We don't want non-citizens to be able to vote. We don't want children to be able to vote. So we don't really want the voice of the people because we make decisions about which people we actually want to hear from.

David Brown (17:47.983)
So here's the reason I, I mean, this question is in the air. Texas doing stuff, California's doing stuff, Utah's trying to do stuff. I don't know if it'll happen or not, but we were in DC a couple of years ago. We did the thing where you go to the Capitol building and meet your representative and you stand in some lines, but that's kind of fun and pretty quick visit, maybe 10, 15 minutes.

and I don't recall anything very notably great or bad about my representative. I thought the opportunity was terrific.

Matt (18:20.404)
Is it Kennedy, Kennedy's your representative or Celeste Malloy?

David Brown (18:23.262)
So at the time, so I'm in St. George, I'm way down in the corner. I'm like 10 miles from Arizona, 10 miles from Nevada. My rep was from Farmington, which is north of Salt Lake, it's north of Lagoon. And in my voting district, somehow as they divided Utah into four separate chunks of population, somebody decided that north of Lagoon and down in St. George should be represented in the same way.

Matt (18:37.238)
Yeah.

Matt (18:51.372)
Uh-huh.

David Brown (18:51.726)
Now we have statewide office to do statewide representation, like senators and governors, but for my local district representation, that's how it had been drawn up. And I think that's distorting the local effect that it should have in pursuit of serving a party by divvying up the minority vote. It takes the voice of the people and then it funhouse like mirrors it and makes it too squatty or too long. And it's not absolutely wrong, but it's distorted. And so I'm saying, what can we do?

to not be distorted. That seems like a fair question.

Shawn (19:23.294)
David, Matt, you get the points for explaining actually a fascinating point I never thought of and I understand and I thank you for educating. David gets the points because you're right in the pursuit, if we have choices of how we're gonna decide how the majority voice gets represented, then maybe we need to lean towards systems that give us more agency, not less and give us more choices.

Matt (19:25.077)
Well...

Matt (19:50.796)
Well, let me try and get your points, Sean, because we believe in the Definely Inspired Constitution, and the system we have is set up under the Divinely Inspired Constitution. the fact that people

Shawn (20:00.604)
Is it, what part does it specifically say? Like what part is constitutional?

Matt (20:07.872)
Well, the Constitution says that there will be a House of Representatives made up with a proportion of the states, and it gives states the rights to choose how they're gonna select their electors for Congress. so then states make their laws about how they wanna do it. Not everyone does it this way. I think it's Nebraska, maybe it's Maine. Well, that's for the Electoral College, but states have a lot of variety in how they choose people to be in the House of Representatives. It's not...

Shawn (20:18.3)
It does say that? Yeah.

Shawn (20:33.96)
And is it common that those ways that each state chooses gets challenged and goes to court? Is that common or not common?

Matt (20:40.754)
only if they violate provisions of the Constitution, right? Like they used to racially gerrymander to make it so that African Americans couldn't be represented as well. And now they've – yeah, I said you can't do that. Yeah. So I'm – what?

Shawn (20:48.338)
And the 13th amendment of the constitution would protect against that. But the last couple of years of gerrymandering in Texas and gerrymandering in California, there's no challenges of that legally because it's just fine.

Matt (21:05.333)
Well, it'll go to state constitutions, right? Some states are violating their own constitutions, but the federal government, for the most part, says this isn't a federal question. This is, as long as you're not making it so people can't vote, which is gonna be our next question, then you're fine. You can decide how you want to decide. By the way, it wasn't until the 1820s that you even had elections for, like, the President of the United States.

Senators weren't elected until like the early 1900s. So I don't know. I say, whatever. Let people do how they want to do it. Let's stay, I just believe in the divinely inspired constitution. And so that feels to me like the latter day lens.

Shawn (21:44.244)
Okay, mate. man. Bang, you guys, you're making me like you're pulling me both ways. David, this is a great question. So Matt, guess that would be then in federalism, that would be more agency, right? If the states and the people of those states have the opportunity to decide their own way of electing officials, whether that's gerrymandering or that's some other way, maybe that is more agency.

Matt (22:06.986)
Well, and so most of, yeah.

David Brown (22:07.414)
My question to Matt is, okay, so we either have to leave it up to the elected officials and basically we're letting officials pick the voters instead of voters pick the officials in this case, which I don't like.

Matt (22:19.082)
Yes. Yes.

David Brown (22:21.128)
Or we have to have some sort of, you call it neutral party, you call it independent board, some other process by which the rules of the game are determined other than the people who just won the last inning. Right? So do any of those look good? I don't know. It feels like the elected officials are not making it a fair game. So is there a different referee that then call your own fouls?

Matt (22:36.64)
Well, so California, no, California has.

Shawn (22:44.148)
There's self-interest there,

Matt (22:48.288)
Well, so in California, they have a law that says that like those districts are supposed to be drawn up by a board who's nonpartisan. And they passed a voter referendum ignoring that for the next two years or for the next election, right? In Utah, they passed a law saying that it had to be drawn up in a certain way. And the state legislature said, no, we're going to ignore that. And the courts right now in Utah are kind of forcing them to go with the law that was passed on the books with the referendum. So.

Shawn (23:02.644)
hahahaha

Matt (23:16.724)
I don't know that it's better to trust voters. In the case of California, when you say, let's leave it up to the elected officials, then the elected officials say to the voters, wouldn't it be better if we did this in a partisan way? And the voters say, yeah, let's do it in a partisan way. So I don't know that saying that the voters should decide is actually a better thing. Like voters, I don't know, they're fickle. They change their minds a lot.

Shawn (23:38.804)
Amazing topic David like a guy like me who's kind of neutral kind of normal humans not like you smart nerds It's such a polar like I can see both sides of what this this debate is about it is a fascinating one

Matt (23:47.276)
You

Matt (23:53.566)
I will say this, the value of the electoral system we have is that most of the fights happen within the political parties. If you had a proportional representation system like I described earlier, where Utah would have say two Republicans, a Democrat, and then some third party, those people get to Washington DC and they tend to fight with each other and they can't get the, if we think there's gridlock now between those two parties, it's even worse when you have multiple parties in a legislative body.

In some ways, I totally understand what you're saying, David, but again, on these things, I say, if you don't like it, get involved in the Republican Party. You could totally win office as a Republican legislator for your district in St. George, and you could do something different.

Shawn (24:37.364)
Do it, David. Do it. Please do it. Please do it.

Matt (24:39.634)
You're every bit as talented as Spencer Cox. You're every bit as wise as Spencer Cox. He just put his hat in the ring and did it. And so I feel like our system rewards people that are doing that. And so we should just kind of, if we don't like it, we should just contend against them and say, I don't like you. So this is like the dirty little secret that most people don't know. Most people who are in the House of Representatives and state government,

David Brown (24:56.086)
You just have 20 years to burn to get there.

Matt (25:09.75)
didn't actually run for office their first time getting there. They were active in a political party and then the person who was holding that seat either resigned or took a different job in the middle of their term. so the, well, sometimes it's just promotion. I'll tell you in a second about what happened in Montana. But so sometimes it's strategic, but oftentimes like somebody's like, let's say you're representing St. George and you get this opportunity to go do something else.

Shawn (25:21.652)
strategically.

Shawn (25:25.693)
okay.

Please.

Matt (25:37.098)
So you leave your position there and now it's open and guess who gets to choose who takes that open spot? The local Republican party. They just choose somebody. Yeah.

Shawn (25:44.84)
wow. Wow.

David Brown (25:45.41)
because it's a safe seat, because they're non-competitive and they never change hands.

Matt (25:50.43)
And most people in politics today got their start in the local political party. Somebody resigned, they got appointed to that seat, and then they just had to win re-election from then on. this is happening in Montana right now. There's a Senator in Montana. He's the Republican Senator of Montana. He announced that he was going to run for re-election, so nobody's running against him because who can beat his name? Steve Daines. Who can beat Steve Daines in Montana? Well, then it turns out that his

Shawn (26:00.948)
That's amazing, dude!

Matt (26:18.508)
Chief of Staff, somebody close to him, decides to run for that seat 15 minutes before the filing deadline. And then Senator Dane says, I've decided I'm not going to run for re-election. And so now she's going to be the Republican nominee for the state of Montana for that Senate seat because nobody was even knew that he was going to retire and not run for re-election and she's the only one that filed to run. So it's hers. I mean, unless, unless

people in Montana decide to not vote for a Republican, then it's hers. So, I don't know, I feel like we should be rewarding the people who are putting the time and effort into taking that, to putting that work in.

Shawn (26:55.41)
Wow. David, what do you think of that?

David Brown (26:59.578)
I Again, I I recognize how difficult it is to determine what is fair Mike is the fair thing that the majority always wins or is the fair thing to represent some voice of who didn't win right that there's all these layers of government, but I I just don't like that what we what it's left us with is Okay, we've got 435 seats coming up in six months

Shawn (27:02.163)
Wow.

David Brown (27:28.102)
and obviously we need a functional congress and 90 % of them are predetermined because they've all been rigged and tailored to just fit one type of voter and and so what i don't like is that they feel like they've all got us pegged

Shawn (27:33.342)
Yeah.

Matt (27:33.536)
Yeah, yeah.

David Brown (27:44.751)
Like you're the red people, you're the blue people. If you're this age and this background and you live in this geography, we already, it's like we've already accounted for you. We don't have to take you into consideration. You're safe. And only like eight or 10 % of the country even matters for making decisions. That feels like it distorts the voice of the people.

Matt (27:53.717)
Yeah.

Matt (28:01.964)
Well that leads right into the next question with the Save America Act that the Republicans and Trump are trying to pass which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and would restrict mail-in voting. They claim that mail-in voting is subject to fraud which is ironic since Trump regularly votes by mail. Campaign operatives argue that this bill would actually harm Republicans in elections because having to register or re-register to vote in person would present a severe disadvantage.

to disabled people and millions of rural Americans who are mostly Republicans. Voting laws in the United States have always been about giving advantage to certain groups of people. But as David pointed out, God wants leaders to listen to the voice of the people. So the question is, does this mean that any laws that restrict the right to vote are immoral? Because I'll tell you this.

Shawn (28:50.792)
And you're saying that to require proof of citizenship is a restriction to voting. Is that what you're suggesting?

Matt (28:58.164)
Of course it is. How do you prove citizenship? You prove citizenship with a passport or a birth certificate. A passport costs $180 right now to get a passport. A birth certificate is the same thing. So in the past when they passed laws like this because it's unconstitutional to require a poll tax in order to vote. So in the past, the Supreme Court has said if you're going to require ID, if you're going to require proof of citizenship, you have to offer those things for free so that people don't have to pay money in order to vote. But they're not doing that in the SAVE Act.

So yeah, requiring proof of citizenship is just, so back to the thing with, yeah.

Shawn (29:31.592)
We're saying, hang on, hang on, you're saying because it costs money to get proof of citizenship and does it like in every state to get any,

Matt (29:39.212)
Yeah, a passport is issued by the federal government. It's at least $180 to get a passport.

Shawn (29:44.828)
What about a drivers license or some other... It doesn't? I know. How much does the birth certificate cost?

Matt (29:46.688)
Driver's license doesn't prove citizenship. You have to have a birth certificate or a passport. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you got to figure out where you were born, right? What county you were born in. And then each of those counties has different fees in order to order your birth certificate.

David Brown (29:49.972)
Nope. Not according to this act.

David Brown (30:02.006)
And if your name changed, if you got married and your driver's license has different name than your birth certificate, then you also need your marriage certificate. So you bring three papers in to register to vote and hopefully you had them all.

Shawn (30:02.078)
So the fact that.

Shawn (30:15.152)
Matt, hang on, if your issue is with the cost, would you be okay with the SAVE Act if it was free to get your birth certificate?

Matt (30:25.278)
I'm okay with the SAVE Act if the government is going to give, make sure that everybody has proof of citizenship. So if line one of the SAVE Act is everybody gets proof of citizenship for free sent to them electronically or whatever in some way that is valid, I would be more okay with the SAVE Act.

Shawn (30:41.47)
So for you, it's not an issue with you requiring to prove that you're a citizen. The issue with you is you're charging me to prove that I'm a citizen.

Matt (30:51.616)
Well, broadly my issue is that I think that any law that restricts the right to vote is immoral. You can't do something by the voice of the people if you restrict people from exercising their voice. in my view, if we're supposed to do business by the voice of the people, we'll just take church as an example, right? We get a new bishop called and it says, all in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed by the same sign. If somebody raises their hand and says, opposed, there's no authority that comes in and says,

Wait, you're not allowed to express opposition. You are of this class. You're too young or you're...

Shawn (31:26.068)
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Actually there is, if I raise my hand, I'm instructed to go to the authority to have that discussion and maybe the authority will consider my point of view. Now, if I'm not a member of the church, it's not going to be considered whatsoever. So I have to probably look at my records and prove that I'm a member of the church in order to have that opposition even considered.

Matt (31:49.376)
Are you serious? You have to be a member to oppose?

Shawn (31:52.296)
Of course, what are you talking about?

David Brown (31:53.322)
Nobody's ever seen it happen. Nobody knows.

Shawn (31:56.052)
Why would it?

Matt (31:56.124)
Yeah, I don't think that's true. But again, like let's say it's not a church position, right? It's just we're all in the council in heaven and we're trying to decide. We go, Jesus' plan or Satan's plan? And somebody says, I vote for Satan's plan. Nobody comes in and like, hey, let me see your proof of citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. No, because if you do it by the voice of the people, everybody who's there is a person and you count their vote. You count their voice.

Shawn (32:21.85)
No, hang on. The church example was the better one because when you're dealing with a group of people that belong to a certain organization or a I guess, yeah, organization, then you have to consider that, right? So we're talking about citizenships of a country. That's potentially a board. That's potentially, you got to consider that at least. I'm not saying that's the way you should do.

Matt (32:37.932)
Okay, so let's... No! No, Sean, come on.

Sean, when somebody's elected the mayor of El Centro, California, do they say, you're the mayor of the citizens of El Centro, California? Or do they say you're the mayor of the city of El Centro, California?

Shawn (32:55.816)
I'm sh-

Shawn (33:01.012)
I don't understand the distinction.

Matt (33:03.242)
Well, I'll tell you the distinction. If I live in El Centro, California, I'm a resident of that city, that mayor is supposed to represent me. Whether I'm a citizen or whether I'm not a citizen, I live there, I pay my taxes there, I'm a part of the community.

Shawn (33:07.336)
Yeah. Yes.

Yes.

Shawn (33:18.324)
You have a unit? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Matt (33:21.962)
So if I live in El Centro and that person is my mayor and they get to make laws that affect my life and they get to decide what my taxes are and they get to decide whether the police protect my house or they get to make all those decisions for me, I should have a voice in deciding whether that person gets to stay on as mayor or not. And it shouldn't matter whether I'm a citizen, it's just a resident.

Shawn (33:40.372)
I'm just playing devil's advocate here. If you're saying because I physically occupy a space, have claim upon, for example, the mayor of that space, they're accountable to me, what if me occupying that space, what if I don't have a legal right to that space that I'm occupying?

Matt (34:02.678)
Well, how could you not have a legal right to the space you're on? Who's living in El Santo? Who's a resident of El Centro, California illegally? They're living in an apartment they stole from somebody?

Shawn (34:11.398)
No, they potentially have come into the country illegally. Isn't that a consideration?

Matt (34:15.048)
Okay, if I come into the country illegally or without proper documentation and I sign an agreement with a landlord, I have a legal right to live in the place that I'm renting.

Shawn (34:27.208)
But you also, there's also a legal right to remove that person from the country because they didn't enter through a port of entry. They didn't file this right paperwork. They didn't get in line to get approved. So they're here, right?

Matt (34:34.46)
Okay, same thing if I'm living in that place and I speed on the way to work and they give me a traffic ticket. There's a legal right to give me a traffic ticket. That has no bearing on whether or not the mayor of El Centro represents me as a resident of El Centro.

Shawn (34:44.916)
That's right.

Shawn (34:51.602)
I don't know why you would assume that.

Matt (34:53.896)
I live there. I signed a lease.

Shawn (34:56.118)
But if you don't have a right to live there by law...

Matt (34:58.348)
I do have a right, I do, I signed a lease, I'm paying rent, that's my home.

Shawn (35:02.216)
Just because you signed a lease doesn't mean, again, if you didn't enter the country through a port of entry, through a legal process, and I'm not a citizen, why would I have claim upon that? Like, that doesn't, just because I signed a lease doesn't, like if ICE finds me, I can't claim, well, I've got a lease here, you have to let me stay in America. That's not gonna fly, that's not legal. No, it's not. It's not either.

Matt (35:25.706)
Of course that's legal. But regardless of that, regardless, you're making it about immigration. I'm not making it about immigration. I'm saying that if a person, if the mayor of El Centro has the authority to make laws that affect my life and I live there, then I should have the authority to remove that person through my voice. What is the voice of the people? So you're already creating restrictions, Sean, around the voice of the people saying that, the voice of the people means only people who came in on

in proper ways or people who can do certain things.

Shawn (35:55.892)
I'm just, look, I only took this in this direction because the first example you gave was within our church. When we raise our hand to support our leaders, it is as a Latter-day Saint that is raising our hand to support our leaders. It is as a confirmed and baptized member of the church. And we do have, there is no say if I'm not a confirmed member of the church.

Matt (36:03.008)
Yeah.

Matt (36:08.009)
Okay.

Matt (36:17.992)
Even if you are, there's no say, Even if you are, come on.

Shawn (36:20.712)
Sure there is. No, no, no, I've had plenty of situations that I've known of in the church where someone says, look, I've got some information. I'm going to go talk to the stake president about this bishop or about this person in the calling. And they do consider it. Of course they consider it.

Matt (36:34.272)
and then they get released. Have you ever heard of them getting released after they were sustained?

Shawn (36:37.588)
I've of it once, yeah, I have.

Matt (36:40.724)
Wow, well that's pretty good. But that's you gotta have information. What if you raise your hand and say I'm opposed and I'm like what do know and you're like I just know I don't like that guy. You have no voice in that situation.

Shawn (36:50.398)
That's right, you don't, because you are part of a minority and the majority rules. And that's okay. Like that's unfortunately the system that we probably live in. But if I am not a member of the ward, it doesn't matter if I have an opinion.

Matt (36:58.688)
So what I'm saying is...

Okay, but I can be a member of a community by the fact that I live there, not by citizenship, by living there.

Shawn (37:07.988)
I could, so then I could have a say in ward leadership if I'm not a member of the church just by sitting in the pew? I don't think so.

Matt (37:16.438)
Alright, what do you say David?

David Brown (37:17.55)
I think you're speaking to a broader example of principle, Matt, but I want to focus on the immigration thing only because that's what's mostly in the air as this act is being discussed. But I'm not sure that's correct. So here's the thing. In my mind, I'm like, we struggled to get voter turnout among legal US citizens.

Shawn (37:29.222)
Yeah, that's what it's about, Matt.

Matt (37:31.466)
Not to me.

Shawn (37:43.752)
Good point.

David Brown (37:43.843)
What are the odds there's a whole bunch of illegal folks showing up and casting ballots? This seems unlikely to me, but it gets a lot of blame. Like when elections don't go your way, that's who you assume, you know, mess things up. there's a couple of states who have been auditing their process and their roles, seeing who's, you want to know how big a problem this is. Idaho checked their voter registration rules and found 36.

Shawn (37:50.238)
Good point.

David Brown (38:11.968)
non-citizens who were on the rolls. Utah came out with a report in January that they went back through two million plus records, all the voters, and they found one who was a non-citizen who was registered to vote. He had not voted, but he was registered to vote. Michigan, bigger population. Remember how long it takes to count to a million? So Michigan's got six million people on their rolls.

Shawn (38:13.972)
36.

Shawn (38:24.124)
Wow, are you serious?

Shawn (38:28.99)
They've actually audited it and it's zero. It's pretty much zero people.

David Brown (38:40.718)
So that would take you a year and a half to count them all one second a piece and they found 15. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Done. That's it's a microscopic problem compared to the larger issue nationwide. OK, Heritage Foundation, they're the conservative leaning think tank. They went back and found people who did actually vote illegally. And what's the the the year range 99 through 2023?

Shawn (38:42.142)
Yeah. Yeah.

my gosh! Well done, David! Well done.

Matt (38:59.178)
served.

David Brown (39:10.614)
total of 77 non-citizen voters in those 25 years. So about three per year is what we're fighting over, which makes me think that's not actually what's going on behind the scenes. That's the smoke screen. And I think to Matt's credit, there are probably motivations. We're sort of camouflaging this as a fight against illegal non-citizens, but it may have more to do with making sure that the people who are alive

Shawn (39:14.644)
ARE YOU KIDDING ME DUDE?!

I can't believe it.

Shawn (39:23.154)
Wow. Well done.

David Brown (39:40.561)
more like me are the ones that are better able to vote and show up and be counted. And in the gospel lens, we are looking out more for the little guy than for the big guy. Not the people with flexible housing and second cars and passports, but the more, you know, the widows and the fatherless and the...

Shawn (39:46.142)
OR

That would be wrong.

Shawn (39:53.79)
Or, David.

Shawn (39:59.316)
David, or is it possible that they're just feet, like the propaganda that is convinced, like even just now, you've just schooled me and go, okay, now I'm gonna change my, that's a complete paradigm shift. the .000 citizens, no, how would I know that? David just gave me all the statistics, I didn't know that. Which I didn't think it was a huge problem, but the propaganda that gets pushed is definitely the reason why they're,

Matt (40:12.559)
you didn't know that, Sean?

there's no problem yeah right

I thought everybody knew that.

Shawn (40:29.086)
they're pushing these things. So is it maybe that the propaganda that is pushed, which seems to be completely just propaganda, maybe the administration goes, well, that's what the people think, so we've got to get them on our side and pass laws that pass an act that does that.

Matt (40:30.752)
Matt (40:42.796)
No, this is 100 % motivated by Trump. Trump wants to do this because they know who the active people in politics are. They know who the people with passports are. They know who the people that already have their birth certificates are. And they want more of those people voting and fewer of the people who don't have that stuff voting. But Trump is also very short-sighted. He doesn't understand how it will hurt Republicans, probably more than it will hurt Democrats if he does it because again,

Trump is in this information bubble. He doesn't always hear all of the opposing sides and he doesn't realize like in rural America, it's easier for me to mobilize. Like if I wanted to get Democrats to take over the state of Idaho, the SAVE Act actually helps me in Idaho because a lot of rural Idahoans are not gonna go get their passports just to vote because they won't realize how much it matters because it hasn't been competitive here. But I could as a nonprofit say,

Let's get all of these people who haven't participated in the past, let's pay for their passports, let's pay for their birth certificates, and let's mobilize them.

Shawn (41:41.268)
Okay, I'm gonna go with, I'm gonna shift my paradigm completely, 100 % give both of you the points and go with your believing if you just say one thing, please. Will you agree to say this thing, please? Say it? No, please agree first. Please tell me that those guys and those people in Idaho, they're not gonna get their passports and therefore, you know, have proof of citizenship.

Matt (41:54.376)
I don't know.

David Brown (41:55.118)
We need to know the thing.

Shawn (42:07.57)
just because it's like there's no point. It's not because they're stupid and they can't afford it. If you say that, then I'm on board. But if your reasoning is, you have to, I'm against people proving citizenship because they're not smart enough or can't afford to get them, then that's a problem. I get that making it a requirement, you know, that it costs money, you can't get it for free, that's a problem. But I want to hear Matt, you say, I don't think that people are so stupid that they can't get their own ID to prove citizenship.

Matt (42:37.75)
No, I wasn't saying it's stupidity. I'm saying it's the cost. There's a cost. So anything you do to increase the cost of voting reduces voter turnout. As it is, it makes no sense that anybody ever votes. So if you're gonna make me pay $150 just to get a passport to then register to vote, and then I've got to pay attention, like, they're just increasing the cost so much that people won't participate.

Shawn (42:37.918)
Thank you.

Shawn (42:55.604)
Okay, good, thank you. Okay, I'm good with that, okay. Wow, I'm learning a lot from you two today, holy cow.

David Brown (42:58.766)
you

David Brown (43:02.158)
I think the gospel lens says, because I think our goal should be to exclude every non-illegal, non-eligible voter and maximize participation for everyone, every last person who is in the eligible pool. That would be ideal policy. And that includes people who don't have it, it's easy. Well, I think Matt's pretty close there.

Shawn (43:26.064)
Not according to Matt. Not according to Matt.

Matt (43:28.98)
In my view, I say we need to expand eligibility. I have friends who have lived in the United States for more than a decade who live here and cannot vote because they're not US citizens, because they don't need to be US citizens to live here and work here. And so the idea that people who live here, pay taxes here, contribute to the community, should have no say in who their mayor is just because they don't want to go get citizenship, the whole citizenship process, I've said this before.

whole citizenship process has been from the very beginning a racist process and it continues to be that way. And so to say you have to be a citizen to vote perpetuates racism.

Shawn (44:04.276)
Yeah, Matt Hang on hang on but Matt you also wonder when I challenged you on this before one day you said If you're visiting France for the weekend and it happens to be on an election day You said that you should have the right to be able to vote in that election I'm like wait a minute. Come on, dude. Is it about racism or is it about this this laissez-faire? Freedom for everyone to vote anywhere where they put their feet. Which one is it?

Matt (44:31.884)
All right, I'll just tell you my data point and then we'll move on. 1790, this is the first census, We first starting to make laws, the constitution was ratified in 1787. The first law about citizenship in 1790. If you are white from a foreign country, you can become a US citizen. Black people can become US citizens. And then later on we say, if you're a Native American, you can't be a US citizen. Like everything about citizenship has always been a racist process.

Shawn (44:50.292)
Yeah. Awful.

Shawn (44:56.456)
This awful evil.

Matt (45:00.8)
You will never find for me an example in the history.

Shawn (45:01.556)
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait hang on. I agree with you that what you just explained is absolutely evil and wrong, but why would you jump to the conclusion that now in 2026, anything that talks about citizenship is literally racist? You lost me. You had me and then you lost me completely.

Matt (45:19.5)
Well, if you build a whole system on racist laws and then say, we're going to use those laws to determine who gets to vote and who doesn't get to vote, how is that not inherently racist? If you can tell me, one law where they made it harder for white people to get citizenship and easier for non-white people to get citizenship, then I'll believe you that it's not racist. But every law about citizenship is always about making it easier for white people to become citizens and harder for racial minorities to become citizens. Today, every...

Pick any of them, pick any citizenship law you want to. At any time in the history of the United States, you'll not find one that ever restricted citizenship for white people.

Shawn (46:00.564)
I there's lots, there are many citizens today that are not white, people who have become citizens that are not white. So is the racist, so you're saying the racist system, they overcame the racist system.

Matt (46:01.237)
So that's why I say...

Matt (46:06.164)
Okay, they have to, they overcome a higher barrier.

Matt (46:12.852)
Right, that's right. Alright, let's move on to the next question. This one we can go faster because I think we'll all agree on this one.

The partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security has left TSA officers without full pay for over a month. Third Nephi 24-5 condemns those that oppress the hireling in their wages. Is it morally wrong to force TSA workers to do their jobs without pay? All in favor? Anyone want to say no?

Shawn (46:37.94)
Yes. No, I say yes. David.

David Brown (46:42.902)
This, I'm afraid, is probably a hazard of work for the government. And that's not to be unfeeling. But you're, I suspect that anybody who'd been in that boat for five, 10 years plus has been through this before. And to be clear, I don't think they're going without pay. They're gonna get paid for every hour they've worked.

Matt (46:47.276)
Matt (47:04.032)
Yes, they are.

David Brown (47:07.914)
It's frozen and it will be paid back. So they're going to get a bumper crop whenever this but but in my at my office, I don't know how I'm to make payroll yet in July.

Matt (47:08.313)
historically that had

Shawn (47:10.685)
David Brown (47:19.722)
I have to earn the money as we go and we get there and thankfully it'll happen, it'll go there. if you work for the government, it has to be appropriated. I don't know how far along in advance, two, three years at a time. And a hazard of that, mostly secure job, is that sometimes when the big guys are having a tug of war about finances, you get stuck in the middle.

And this is not welcome, but this is, and it's not moral to force, but to be clear, they are going to get every dollar they're owed. It is cumbersome the way it's being frozen temporarily. I wish it wasn't happening for them, but this is a side effect of government operation more than it is the morality of employment.

Matt (47:43.164)
man, this is...

Shawn (47:54.63)
Matt, it's new!

Hang on, Matt, it's nuanced, but he did just agree with us that it is immoral to force anyone to work. So we're all on the same answer.

Matt (48:06.568)
Yeah, but I'll just say this. Historically, it's not for certain that they will get paid. It has always happened in the past, but unless somebody writes that into a bill to say we're going to give them back pay, then they don't get the back pay. That's point number one. Point number two, if you look at the amount of days and hours the federal government has been shut down in the history of the United States, that is 40 times greater.

in the Trump administration, when Trump is president of the United States, than it is when anybody else is president of the United States. So I don't think it's fair to say that when people go to work for the federal government, they should know that there's a high probability that they're gonna be forced to work without pay, because that's just something Trump has done. That's primarily a Trump thing, a Trump feature. And so I don't think that it's fair to say to them, look, when you sign on to be a TSA agent in the year 2000,

David Brown (48:56.652)
Do you think they regret the day they were assigned to that job? Or the day they chose that job?

Matt (49:01.194)
I I think that, I think that there's, depending on who's president, people get treated differently in the federal government. And I think that what is morally wrong is to, based on your political views, pick and choose how you're gonna treat federal workers. So to say ICE agents get to be paid in full, because that matters a lot to me, and TSA agents, you're essential workers. We need you. You can't call off.

Therefore you have to work without pay. That's immoral. If they're essential, you pay for them. And if we, as a country, said if they're essential, they have to be paid or nobody gets to do anything, then I think we would be being morally correct. I think it's completely wrong to ever ask anybody to pay without work.

David Brown (49:51.161)
Here in just a second, Matt is going to tell us why San Francisco is such a happy place. And one of the reasons is they have a functional airport. When you look at the list of waiting times because of the TSA shutdown at every airport and it's hours long, even though San Francisco International is almost a top 10 by volume, they don't show up there. They privatized their security a few years ago. They're not part of this mess.

Matt (49:51.404)
Alright.

Matt (49:56.334)
Alright, I'm so excited about this.

Matt (50:17.216)
beautiful San Francisco. Sean, if only everyone could live in California, the land of wonder. So the 2026 happiness index is out. Salt Lake City is no longer on the list of the 250 happiest cities in the world. In fact, Kiev, Ukraine is above them at 251 because the group that made the list wanted to give them an honorable mention for their bravery in fighting the Russians. The only U.S. city to make the top 50 on the list is San Francisco.

According to the measure, the US is the 23rd happiest country in the world. This group uses 64 measures that cluster into a few kind of meta-dimensions of urban happiness. the first is human and social life, like citizenship, health, and that sort of stuff. There's institutions and systems of government, like how the governments function and the economic system they choose to employ. And then there's the physical environment, like do they keep the streets clean and are there...

like accessibility options for people who are disabled. So this is my question. First, I don't think Sean believes that San Francisco is the happiest city in the US, but is there something wrong with this measure? Is this the right way to measure happiness or is there a better way we should measure how cities make people feel?

Shawn (51:32.828)
Okay, so first of all, would say this is definitely, it's a joke. What a joke, right? This, okay, but if you're gonna study really their criteria, this is not a happiness. It's not measuring happiness. It's maybe quality of life infrastructure. Not even quality, it's not even measuring quality of life. But someone is saying, like it's such a biased viewpoint. Like if the infrastructure exists that could potentially,

Matt (51:49.407)
Yeah?

Shawn (52:00.58)
make quality of life better than people would are happier so no you're quite the question is no absolutely not this there's way better ways to measure happiness things like meaning and purpose things like moral and spiritual alignment things like you know things like that so no this is a dumb really stupid

Matt (52:17.91)
But Sean, if you don't have healthcare, you're gonna be sad. So healthcare is an important component of happiness. If you can't get on the bus and get to work, you're gonna be sad.

Shawn (52:28.606)
Yeah, so you're saying this is the way to measure happiness? You think this is correct?

Matt (52:32.018)
No, no, no.

David Brown (52:32.782)
Fact-checking, Matt, is why I keep coming back, right? It's exhausting, so I can only do it a couple times a year, but being able to do peer review on Professor Miles is really what energizes me in this whole process. And our listeners probably know this, but Matt presents like a big teddy bear, and he is a kind, thoughtful person, but he is an expert provocateur.

Matt (52:42.652)
You

Shawn (52:43.614)
HAHAHA

David Brown (53:01.942)
Right.

Matt (53:01.952)
Yes.

David Brown (53:02.862)
What Matt revels in is helping people be uncomfortable so that they think about things in a different way and probably move towards something better. That's genuinely, and you could say that's a very Christ-like attribute. He was a provocateur as well. He is excellent. So Matt coming on here and saying, look, why the heck is Salt Lake below Kiev, Ukraine and whatever in Uzbekistan? I'm not making up. There's some place in Uzbekistan that's higher than most everywhere in the United States. OK, but here's the stupid thing.

Shawn (53:15.316)
and he's a genius at it and that's why we love you Matt.

Matt (53:15.788)
Thank you.

Matt (53:28.416)
Salt Lake City.

David Brown (53:32.839)
the study conducted by a couple of french people has like they made a cutoff i went into the weeds on this i went through the whole stupid criteria because i knew what you were doing and now i you were you were waving the red cape you were waving the red cape and here i'm coming you you know this they

Matt (53:42.678)
Good.

Shawn (53:47.14)
E-MAT make David do that, that's unfair.

Shawn (53:53.8)
Hit him, Damon! Hit him!

David Brown (53:56.227)
They only measured the 30 biggest cities in any, like you didn't get evaluated if you weren't within the top 30 cities in your country. And they did not even evaluate Salt Lake in this run through. Maybe they did previously under different criteria, but you can't find them under the cities that got analyzed.

Matt (54:03.692)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (54:07.764)
OHHHH DUDE

David Brown (54:13.822)
And so what this is really showing, and for this narrowly defined purpose, it's a violent study. What big cities compare to European big cities? And who does that better? If you're forced to live in a city of 3.2 million or more.

How would that be best? How does your subway system? Look, I have a six minute commute to work, maybe five, depending on the two stoplights. If you try to give my city a grade on public transportation and how well the app works, it's stupid. You can't apply that. if you're, this is a bonkers metric and you know dang well what you're doing,

Shawn (54:50.686)
HAHAHAHA

David Brown (54:52.576)
And so here's the nugget of usefulness, because this study is very questionable as to its usefulness.

But there's a guy you might be familiar with him named Albert Brooks. He's over at Harvard, but he's kind of become like an honorary member sort of for being a daily attending Catholic. He's quite familiar with us. I think he's got an affiliate connection at the U and give commencement speech at BYU. He was doing something at UVU just a week or two after the Charlie Kirk thing last year. He's quite familiar with happiness research and psychology and he has credibility as researcher and

Matt (55:03.766)
Yeah.

David Brown (55:28.684)
I think he has gifts for communicating that to people. so go get you some Albert Brooks in your life if you want more tips. But I think it does boil down to things like relationships, to purpose, to your spiritual well-being. I watched Project Hail Mary last night. And not to spoil the show, but if you've got purpose and you can, if you have a warm relationship with a talking rock, you're going to be just fine.

Matt (55:45.964)
You fell asleep, right?

Matt (55:53.293)
That's what my wife said. That's what my wife said was the point of that movie. I missed that. The whole movie I was just like, what in the world? I was so bored in that movie. But okay.

David Brown (55:56.824)
Yeah.

Shawn (56:01.95)
Yeah, Matt has the worst taste in movies. I'm just going throw that out there. have the worst taste in movies. You don't like the movie Doubt. I can't believe it. So, but he did. He did mention Albert Brooks, who is the lead actor in the great movie Defending Your Life. And you like that movie.

Matt (56:08.428)
You

Matt (56:16.588)
So here's my take on this. Yes, David's right in everything he said. And also Sean's right in everything he said. But I do think that there's this part of the study that I have beef with, which is different than what David said. I have beef with this idea that government is supposed to solve our problems. Because I don't think that that's the latter day lens, right? So I feel like this study is saying, government's...

Shawn (56:38.515)
What?

David Brown (56:44.118)
I think my connection just shut down. There was a lightning strike. You're gonna have to repeat that.

Shawn (56:46.225)
What the heck did say? What did you just say? I mean, I'm thrilled! What the heck? It just came out of your mouth!

Matt (56:46.284)
you

Matt (56:53.268)
I'm saying that government can solve, government should solve problems to the extent that they can, but this metric is saying if you live in a country or a city where the government has a resource for every single problem you could ever face, you're going to be happier than if you live in a city where they don't have a government resource to solve every problem you could ever face. And I think that the role of government in solving problems should not be to have a resource that you can go to for every problem you face.

It should be the latter-day lens approach that if you are in trouble, we're going to help you through the trouble and we're going to help you get like, like, like Heavenly Father doesn't try to remove obstacles from our life. Heavenly Father tries to help us through the obstacles so we can learn and grow in life. And I think that too many people say, I want government to remove the obstacles in my life. And voters say,

What is the government gonna do to remove obstacles from my life? And I think that's the big problem with this approach in the study. And it's the problem like, I think a lot of the problems we have as a society today boil down to people who want the government to remove obstacles from their life rather than help them through obstacles.

Shawn (58:06.398)
Sometimes, Matt, you actually sound like the party you claim to be a member of. Sometimes.

David Brown (58:10.776)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (58:10.89)
I'm a conservative Republican. But,

Shawn (58:14.068)
It's a rare instance that you prove it.

Matt (58:17.056)
Well, so for example, like if I have a child with disabilities, the government should provide support to help me care for my child with disabilities. They shouldn't say, we're going to do whatever we can to make sure that you don't have any pain with that or you don't know that that never happens in the first place. There should be some support from my community for that situation. like this, these sorts of things where it's like every, it's not the government's job to make sure that I have a clean sidewalk.

It's not their job to make sure that the air that I breathe is clean. That's a solution that we should take on ourselves as a community and not say, this city is great because the government makes sure that nobody ever spits gum on the sidewalk or something like that. Like, they want a little too much government for my satisfaction. And I will say this, I love San Francisco. It's a great place to visit. They have wonderful infrastructure, but it's

Shawn (59:00.574)
Wow, that's shocking and I'm happy.

Shawn (59:08.114)
It used to be.

Matt (59:09.408)
But it's also true that there are drug needles all over the place in the parks in San Francisco, that everywhere I go I smell marijuana. And it's also true that when I look in the eyes of individual people in San Francisco, they're not happy. Because oftentimes people's solutions to their problems is like to take drugs or to self-medicate or something like that. And so saying, San Francisco is a great place because if you have a drug habit, they're gonna give you drugs or they're gonna, like, they're gonna, it's not illegal to do all of these like,

things that I think don't bring happiness. I don't think that that's actually the solution to happiness. The solution is the things David talked about. And so I think communities could do more to focus on the things that actually build happiness rather than saying, we're just going to solve all of your problems.

Shawn (59:52.562)
wow i'm floored i mean we have to end on that because because because we just got matt's preaching the truth of just wow

David Brown (59:54.094)
That's a month worth of points. That's a month worth of points.

Matt (01:00:01.512)
And you know when this episode is gonna land. We released this episode on April 1st. So, April Fools everybody! Hey everybody, thanks for joining us this week. Hope you have a great day. We'll talk to you again next week.

Shawn (01:00:18.26)
You