BYU Biology Professor William Bradshaw (Re-broadcast In Memoriam) | Ep. 2131
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 232 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following the passing of my dear friend and former BYU professor, Dr. William Bradshaw, we are honoring his life today by re-broadcasting my interview with him from 2010.
The original description for this episode is as follows:
"In this episode, John Dehlin interviews one of his former professors and mentors, Dr. William Bradshaw, on a wide variety of topics. Dr. Bradshaw has just recently retired from a rich and fulfilling career as a molecular biology professor at BYU in which he influenced thousands of students to continually be open to the best thinking of the sciences while still nurturing a robust, mature faith and spiritual life. Many report Dr. Bradshaw’s classes and their various interactions with him as pivotal to their finding a way to value the wisdom generated in both their heads and their hearts.
In this far-ranging discussion, Dr. Bradshaw takes us through the arc of his life, including his mission, experiences at Harvard, the circumstances of his career choice, and the surprise call he and his wife Marge received to serve as very young mission presidents in Hong Kong, during which service they had to wrestle with opening and closing missionary work in Vietnam. Dr. Bradshaw relates stories from his career at BYU, talks about science and religion issues, and reveals the way he faces challenges to his faith from Mormon history and scriptural studies.
Many Mormon Stories podcast listeners will already be familiar with one aspect of Dr. Bradshaw’s life from Episode 191, which featured a recording of the most recent lecture he gave at BYU on the biological origins of homosexuality–a lecture he has arranged and given every year for the past several years. Dr. Bradshaw first became prompted to study the research on this subject when his son Brett came out about his homosexuality. Since that time, the Bradshaws have been active members in various LDS groups for families working to support their LGBT children."
Dr. Bradshaw's funeral will be held at the Orem Stake Chapel (365 South 900 East, Orem, UT 84097) on April 3rd at 11:00 AM.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John DeLinn. It is Friday, March 27th, 2026. And today I'm giving an introduction to a rebroadcast of for sure one of my favorite Mormon stories episodes of all time. It's of Dr. William Bradshaw. It was an episode that I released in November of 2010. |
| 0:24.7 | At the time, it was a four or five part series, and it talked about the life of one of the most important influences in my life. |
| 0:34.1 | I absolutely believe there would be no Mormon stories podcast and no Dr. John DeLinn |
| 0:39.9 | without Dr. William Bradshaw. And I just want to make something clear and then give you a |
| 0:47.4 | little bit of intro. I don't do these rebroadcasts because I don't have enough content to share. |
| 0:52.7 | We've got content backlogged and I don't feel like |
| 0:57.1 | I'm a lazy person. I know I recently did the Carolyn Pearson rebroadcast to help let y'all know about |
| 1:03.8 | her new memoir that's coming up. But the reason why I'm doing this rebroadcast of Bill Bradshaw, |
| 1:10.2 | other than the fact that it's one of my |
| 1:12.7 | favorite episodes, I produced it. I guess now it looks like 16 years ago, and so many of you |
| 1:18.9 | haven't seen it. It's because this past week, Bill Bradshaw passed away. And so I felt like |
| 1:27.3 | in honor of him in his beautiful, wonderful life, and also to let you all know about it, and also to let you all know, his funeral will be April 3rd in the Orm State Chapel at 11 a.m. |
| 1:41.2 | I just felt like this week would be fitting to honor Bill Bradshaw in his life by |
| 1:47.9 | rebroadcasting his episode. My biggest motivation other than honor Bill is to introduce my |
| 1:55.2 | newer audience to for sure one of my favorite interviews of all time, but also probably a top three most |
| 2:04.1 | influential people in my life of all time. So let me just give you a little background before |
| 2:08.9 | we kick off this interview. So I attended Brigham Young University starting in the fall of |
| 2:16.2 | 1987. |
| 2:18.3 | And in my freshman year at B.Y.U. I took an honors by, I took a, sorry, in Biology 100, I believe, class with Barnes and Bradshaw. |
| 2:27.3 | And William Bradshaw was the professor at the time, one of the two professors. |
| 2:32.3 | And, you know, y'all will know that I was raised as very |
| 2:35.3 | orthodox Bruce Amiconki, like conservative Mormon. And I can't, I think it was my first semester, |
... |
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