Morris Thurston

Morris Thurston hosts the Dialogue podcasts. He is a graduate of BYU and Harvard Law School and is a retired partner of the global law firm Latham & Watkins, where he specialized in trademark and copyright litigation. He is an avid personal and family historian and frequently lectures on those subjects. He has published two family histories and authored, with his wife, Dawn, Breathe Life into Your Life Story: How to Write a Story People Will Want to Read (Signature Books 2007). He has served as a contributor to the Joseph Smith Papers (Legal Series) and has been an adjunct assistant professor at the BYU Law School. His article in BYU Studies titled “The Boggs Assault and Attempted Extradition: Joseph Smith’s Most Famous Case,” received an award of excellence from the Mormon History Association. He contributed a chapter to Why I Stay: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons(2011) and the foreword to The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes by John Dinger (2012). He has written and participated in conferences at UVU and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on same-sex marriage legal issues. He and Dawn live in Villa Park, California and are parents of six children, two of whom are deceased, and grandparents of five.