E74: UTBOH Fact, Fiction and Episodes Six and Seven

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:24)
I really hope all of you have been paying your tithing and keeping the commandments, because we are in the end times. Not like, you know, the end times, the end times.
This is our last episode breakdown. We're gonna talk about episodes six and seven tonight. And we start talking about episode six with Ron's journey of truth. And what are our sources on what happens during this journey?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:48)
The journey of truth. Well, we know that Ron tried to set out and visit other fundamentalist compounds. We talked about this. And of course, in this episode, episode six, he visits John Bryant. In real life, he visited several compounds, but John Bryant's compound seems to really capture the imagination of the Lafferty brothers. They liked it there. And so let's talk about them because you don't often hear about them. They were a hippie movement that broke off of the AUB.
And it's during the 1970s and 80s, like free love. Lots of these ideas are in the air and in the music and in the culture. And it seeps into this sort of interesting concoction of Mormonism. I always say that Mormonism is a microcosm of America. And this is a perfect example. You see how this sort of like hippie free love stuff seeps into Mormon doctrine and you've got John Bryan's compound. And when I researched this, Ben Schaeffer, shout out to you, fundamentalist who, I think he's one of the few people that I've talked to that actually had been there. It is very much like this. At the time, John Bryan was still very Mormon. My understanding is he's a lot more Gnostic now and esoteric and things like that. But at the time he was very, he was Mormon, but it was like free love. Yes, they did have hot tubs. I'm sorry for, if you have kids in the room, I'll let you pause this and take them out because the hot tub scene that we see, the baptism is true. And the kiss, do we know that Ron kissed him? No, not necessarily. But we do know that to consecrate the waters, it said that you had to have sex in the hot tub before the baptism. That's what made the water consecrated. There was a lot of free love. Dan and Ron both loved it up there.
Even though they didn't necessarily agree with the authority, they spent a lot of time up there.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:30)
And the wine, from what we understand, that was true to life too.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:35)
I'm glad they showed that because that was actually shocking to me as a mainstream LDS person, interacting with Mormon fundamentalists, going down to Centennial Park and seeing their liquor store that had BYU, Steve Young football pictures all over the wine store. I was like, what? Because different interpretations of Mormonism mean different interpretations of our health code, the word of wisdom.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:57)
And also that was interesting to kiss between Ron and John Bryant because whereas generally speaking, I would say most fundamentalist groups are less rigid on the word of wisdom than the LDS churches, the homophobia tends to be ramped up more. But like you said, from different things are emphasized differently.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:19)
And in Bryan's group, there was homosexual unions. There was a lot of, when I say free love, that's, I mean, people loved who they loved. That's kind of how they connected.
And so that was kind of put in there to show that people were like, what, did that ever happen? Yeah, it was actually a lot more wild than what Disney would allow FX to show in the series.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:40)
Hot Tub was a, it was a G rated.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:43)
I mean, it really was compared to stories that we've heard about the compound. And now I will say that Bryan's group, which still exists, they're no longer in the Salem area. I believe they're like in the East somewhere, Missouri, is that what I heard? They're, it's kind of different. It's moved away from Mormon stuff, but yeah.
I would really love, if they're, if you're a John Bryan follower, I would love to hear what you think about the representation on the show.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:09)
Especially at that time.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:10)
Especially at that time.
And though they- Was John Bryan as hot as that actor?

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:16)
Who doesn't want to kiss him in the hot tub, let's be honest here. And that's an interesting trajectory, because that's before we were recording here, we were talking about Steve Shields, newly revised and updated Divergent Pasts of the Restoration, where he goes through all these different kinds of groups. And you see this happen with a lot of them. They start very Mormon, but over time become just kind of general Christian, or agnostic, or more kind of more nebulous, new age-ish. So that's a very common thing.