Faith, Journalism, and Grief with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins

When journalist and BYU alum McKay Coppins received news of the tragic attack on a Latter-day Saint chapel in Grand Blanc, Michigan, he’d already been planning an article for The Atlantic  in memory of President Russell M. Nelson, who had died the day before. Now Coppins wondered, “How would [President Nelson] have responded to the horrific violence in Michigan if he’d lived one more day?”

In this episode of the Y Magazine podcast, host Whitney Singley Archibald (BA ’01) talks with Coppins about the interplay between his faith and his journalism career—and how that relationship was shaped in part by advice from President Nelson himself.

The episode is based on a feature article in the upcoming Fall 2025 issue of Y Magazine. Check out Coppins’s articles discussed in the episode: “A Prophet’s Diagnosis” (2025) and “The Most American Religion” (2020).

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like “Write It Down: Advice from the New Deseret News Editor on Recording Your Life,” a conversation with Deseret News editor Sarah Jane Weaver (BA ’94). You can learn more about talking politics peacefully by listening to “Disagree Without Disaster: How to Talk Politics with Family.”

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