Hello my friend.
Well hello.
It's good to see you.
You too.
All right, so I was lucky enough--
Dan sent me an advanced copy of this when he finished it.
And I just, and I--
I hope-- you saw some of it today, right?
Everybody-- we showed them as much as we could today.
It's so good and so important and I'm so proud of you.
I love you and I'm a fan anyway of your music and you.
But I think this is really cool.
So explain where you grew up and a little bit about who you are
and how this happened.
Cool.
Yeah, I grew up in Las Vegas, raised Mormon, family of nine--
so eight boys, one girl.
And yeah, Mormonism is--
anybody who's raised Mormon knows that it's very--
it's not like a religion where you just go
on the holidays or something.
It's like your whole life is based around it.
I was a little rebellious growing up.
Not anything crazy, but always a little bit of the black sheep
of the family.
And then ended up getting kicked out
of BYU, which is like the Mormon college that you go to.
And I got kicked out for having sex
with my girlfriend of four years.
And that was a really devastating moment for me.
A lot of kind of like needless shame and guilt.
And it was the first time that I really
felt conflicted, where my heart and my mind didn't align.
I felt like why is this thing that feels right also something
that gets me kicked out of college
and shames me in my community and made
me feel all this guilt.
And I don't know, that's kind of where my first, like--
I felt like something needed to change, I guess.
You know, I grew up and I had a lot of friends
who were gay and Mormon.
They couldn't come out to their parents.
They couldn't even come out to me because we just
wouldn't talk about it.
But it was kind of known, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And watching their struggle for me was awful.
And then feeling a bit of shame in my life over something
I shouldn't have been shamed about help
me to kind of identify to some degree
with what our LGBTQ youth face all
the time with an orthodox religion, which is feeling
guilt and shame about something that's
beautiful and perfect and normal.
Right.
And--
Yeah.
[CLAPPING]
So you're feeling all that and--
but what made you, because it's one thing to feel all that
and to talk about it kind of low key.
Because you have a career, you're doing very well.
What made you decide to be so vocal about it?
You know, I have an incredible therapist,
which I'm trying to de-stigmatize that word as much
as possible because I think it's really powerful to have
a therapist, who told me I needed to live my truth.
And it was something I've known for a long time,
but I hate to hurt people's feelings.
And I love my family.
I never want to disrespect my family or Mormonism or anybody.
You know, because I just believe that you can't ever understand
someone else's story.
You can't speak for them, you shouldn't judge them.
But on the same note, you know, he
told me basically you need to offend people sometimes.
You have to speak your truth.
And if you don't, you're just kind of suffocating.
Like you're not even living.
And I realized I hadn't been.
And so for me one of my big truths that I needed to speak,
that I felt a weight about was guilt. And I'd lived with it.
Like every Imagine Dragons song--
I know most people think like they're
about like radioactive like zombies or something,
but they're really not.
It's all about, really, a lot of guilt
that I've dealt with since I was very young.
And depression and things that stemmed
from unnecessary judgment.
Yeah.
And so, yeah.
So you're helping so many people by doing this.
I just have to say the Utah youth
suicide, the leading cause of death for Utah kids ages
11 to 17 is suicide.
Suicide in Utah has increased 141% because of the shame
they feel from the Mormon church.
Nationally, the rate increased an average of 6%.
LGBT youth are at eight times higher risk
of suicide because of this shame that society puts on them.
So and it comes from every angle, you know.
I mean, speaking as someone who grew up
knowing that every magazine is a man and a woman,
and every billboard is a man--
You know, it's just, even if it's not spoken,
it's just you know that you're not part
of what you're supposed to be.
So for you to speak out and to do something like this
is going to help so many people.
You're going to save so many lives.
So I thank you.
And there are going to be so many kids that
are going to be alive because of you, because
of what your doing.
[CLAPPING]
And not to disrespect any religion at all,
but sometimes I think when you are raised in a certain--
it gets, they get inside your head.
And it's just repetition from generation to generation
to generation, as you see in this documentary
that you put out, that people don't even
think for themselves anymore.
They're just doing what they think they're supposed
to do because of this religion.
Tell everyone-- last week you asked
your mother this question.
And tell them what you asked and what she said.
Yeah, I think this is an important question
because it really sheds a light on what
it's like to be conflicted about your faith,
but also what you feel in your heart.
So me and my mom has had a lot of dialogue about this.
My whole family is super active Mormon still.
I still, I qualify myself as a Mormon, but a unique Mormon.
And so I was sitting down with my mom.
And I asked her, you know, mom--
and this is probably a terrible question to ask of your mom.
But we were arguing about things, not arguing,
but-- yeah we were arguing a little bit.
And I said, you know, there are two train tracks
and I was tied on one.
And the other was like, I think I
said like Jesus or God or Joseph Smith, something
that symbolized a lot of weight to my mom spiritually.
And I said, you know, both these trains were coming, which--
who are you going to save, you know?
And my mom was just kind of silent,
and I think she just said, I can't answer that question.
I don't know.
And for me, I have three daughters, I'm like,
come on, this is like such a no brainer.
Like, you know, I would save [INAUDIBLE]..
And the thing is, I know my mom said that.
I know 100% my mom would be running over,
untying me, and be like, you know,
getting me off the train track.
There's no question.
But for her to see how conflicted
she was even with that question, and me being far enough removed
from-- like taking a step back from religion
and spirituality even to deal with like my own things.
I don't know, it was like, I know my mom,
I know what she would do.
But that really reflected to me how when it's in, you know,
it's your everything.
Mormonism is like everything.
Judaism is your everything.
It's your culture.
It's like, you know, when you're raised in these really orthodox
religions, it's, you know, you can't
separate between who you are and what
this was that was taught to you every day.
And if you don't, that can be really dangerous
if you're taught things that are incorrect.
Yeah, yeah, just and, you know, not
that anyone is teaching hate.
But any kind of intolerance is basically, it's
a different form of judgment and not accepting.
And, you know, it's really hard to tell not, for me,
to not understand that we should love our uniqueness.
We should love how individual we all are.
And how, and that's what makes us special,
is how different we all are.
Hi, I'm Andy.
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so you can see more awesome videos, like videos
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