Laurie Lee Hall was a promising college student studying architecture, and she was known to the world as a man. When she encountered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she saw a well-defined path that fit the gender she was assigned at birth. So she buried her past to become the perfect Mormon man.

Wearing her male disguise, she married, had children, and rose to the position of chief architect for the LDS Church, overseeing its most sacred building projects. But her past refused to stay buried. Could she become who she really was without risking her family, her career, and her church membership? Her whole world?

Laurie Lee Hall is author of Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman. She was raised in New England and trained in architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her career included managing design and construction programs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as its chief architect. She simultaneously served in several ecclesiastical leadership positions until her church excommunicated her following her gender transition. Since then she has served on the executive committee of Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends. In 2023, she became the first transgender recipient of Affirmation’s Paul Mortensen Award, for leadership within the LGBTQ/Mormon-­adjacent community. She and her partner, Nancy Beaman, live in Kentucky and have nine children and twenty-­four grandchildren.

Trump's 2018 zero tolerance policy which separated immigrant children from their parents at the border with no plan for reuniting them shocked the conscience of many Americans. And even though Trump claimed to cease the practice within weeks, zero tolerance is rooted in American law that dates back 100 years and remains on the books today. It can easily happen again.

Efrén Olivares was on the front lines defending immigrant families, and the work was personal. Efrén himself is an immigrant, and he joins us to talk about his incredible book, My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration From the Front Lines.

Efrén Olivares is the deputy legal Director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was the lead lawyer in a successful landmark petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of families separated under the zero-tolerance policy. He previously directed the racial and economic justice program at the Texas Civil Rights Project. His writings on immigration policy have been published by the New York Times, USA Today, and Newsweek. He has testified before Congress and at briefings on Capitol Hill about immigration and border policies. He was the first member of his family to attend college. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law School. He is author of My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration From the Front Lines.

"We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it's just a basic fact, if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it."

—J.D. Vance, Republican Senator and Vice Presidential candidate

In this mini episode, historian Peggy O'Donnell Heffington returns to talk about how women without children became a focal point of the 2024 presidential election. Check out her full interview here.

Plus:

• Listener Voicemail
• Bonus preview of the terrific podcast, "Refamulating."