Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John DeLin.

It is July 13th,

2023, and we are here to discuss a really really important story. I believe one that in some senses literally sweeping the nation and

kind of the political

landscape and discourse and certainly the socio-political

landscape and at its core, it's a truly Mormon story. We are here today to talk about the new film that has been released called Sound of Freedom,

featuring or at least loosely based on the life of

allegedly on the life of Tim Ballard, founder of the nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad. It's a super important story and

right off the bat, I want to just mention breaking news that in a

is it Merlin? Is that Iey Penaus Arana? Yeah, Tim and I broke this together this morning though. Yeah, and I'll just go ahead and share

the actual article they broke the story today that

Tim Ballard has stepped away from Operation Underground Railroad, which is a really really important news and that

follows a really important story that they shared earlier in the week, which is called Anti-Trafking Group with Long History of False Claims,

gets its Hollywood

moment. And if I had to give just a really brief intro, Tim Ballard, an Operation Underground Railroad,

he is Mormon and he has been claiming for many many years that he and his organization are on the front lines,

rescuing children and young women,

primarily from being sex trafficked, both foreign and domestic, and he's raised tens and millions of dollars in the process,

and he's also been under federal investigation. There have been many board members and employees that have come out to me and to others

saying that there are problems with the organization, but at the same time there are others who say

there's no one in the world who's done more to promote sex trafficking or at least concern around

sex trafficking. And then this movie apparently sound of freedom did better than the Indiana Jones movie in the

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