The Joe Rogan Experience - #974 - Megan Phelps-Roper

Episode Date: June 8, 2017

Megan Phelps-Roper is a social media activist, lobbying to overcome divisions and hatred between religious and political divides. Formerly a prominent member of the Westboro Baptist Church, she left the church with her sister Grace in November 2012.

3, 2, 1, yes. Are we live? Not yet. Pause. Hold. YouTube. Some sort of a struggle. Yeah, we're live. Okay. How are you? You're a Wheeler Walker Jr. fan, I see? Um, maybe I will be. You never heard of Wheeler Walker Jr. fan, I see. Maybe I will be. You never heard of him before? I hadn't, I confess. That's okay. So first of all, thank you. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. What is it like? I mean, I guess this is the best way to get this started. What is it like being a person that grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church?

person that grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church, for a person on the outside, for me, when I think of that, I think of like this crazy, hateful, angry environment filled with like really mean people that say horrible things about gay people and all sorts of other folks. But I meet you and you're super nice. You seem so normal. That is the conundrum. So, I mean, a lot of the things, the words that you just used to describe the church, that's definitely not how I experienced it growing up for the most part. I mean, my family, outside of when they're not on the picket line, they're, I mean, incredibly kind and gentle and compassionate. And I think the biggest misconception about the church is that they're motivated by hatred.

And in their eyes, it's the definition of loving. We thought what we were doing was loving our neighbor. So the first time that phrase appears in the Bible, it's in the context of when you see your neighbor sinning, you have to rebuke him, not just like watch him wander off on this way to hell. So that was how we saw it. We thought we were warning people and giving them the only hopeful message that could save them from eternity and hell.

Was there ever any dissent amongst the people that were in the church about like how the message is being distributed? Like if you're holding up a sign that says God hates fags and a gay guy was being buried at a funeral. And you guys were there protesting with those signs. Like, was there ever anyone inside the organization that was like, hey, this is not the way to do it. These people are suffering and mourning. Not really. I mean, once my grandfather, he was the one who kind of developed that strategy. He thought, so, you know, the examples of funerals, if somebody, if they're burying somebody, so a soldier, say, or a gay person, it's an example of the curses of God. So God says, if you obey me, I'll bless you. And if you disobey me, I'll curse you. So why soldiers? So several times in

the scriptures, uh, it's this connection between the sins of the nation and, uh, the, the punishments. So for instance, in the book of judges, it says they chose new gods, then was war in their gates. Uh, and then, um, in the books of the Kings, it says they, um, says, there fell down many slain because the war was of God. Then in the book of Hosea it says, they have deeply corrupted themselves. Therefore, I will remember their iniquity and I will visit their sins. Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them. There shall not be a man left.

So it's these threatenings, these warnings from God that if you disobey me, I'm going to curse you. So we would go to these soldiers' funerals to warn the living, to say that if if you don't want to be likewise punished, you have to repent. You have to change your ways and obey God. that also follow the word of God very closely, but still would see like what you guys were doing at these funerals, holding up these signs, protesting where a soldier who supposedly gave his life for our freedom, supposedly they're over there fighting so that we could be safe here. And then you guys are out there with these signs.

Like there had to be a lot of people that have like-minded views in Christianity, but still were furious at you people. Yeah, absolutely. And from our perspective, we thought that they were substituting their righteousness for the righteousness of God. So they were upset that we were out there giving this message that was 100% biblical from our point of view. And God calls that compassion when he sends his servants with his message. So we thought, even though they call themselves Christians, they're ignoring these vast swaths of the Bible that support what we were saying and how we were saying it.

So, I mean, there was definitely a lot of pushback from people on all sides, and especially from other Christians. But we just thought they're not really Christian because they're not following this like we understand it. So you guys were pretty much solidified in your opinion. It was a consensus. It was like everybody thought you were doing the right thing. Right. So I mean, so that when the soldiers' funerals, when those protesting, it was in June of 2005 that we started protesting soldiers' funerals. How was it brought up?

So my grandfather had been, so it was 2005, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, you see these things on the news, and he was, I mean, the funerals, like what was going on at the funerals. And he said, these aren't funerals. These are patriotic pep rallies, and they're saying all these things about God bless America. Well, God isn't blessing America. God is cursing America. So we have to go and, and give a different message. Um, so that's how it came up initially. Um, but so I went to my first soldier's funeral protest and then the following month in July of 2005. And before I went, so, you know, every time we would go to these, I was protesting from the time I was five years old.

So when you go out on the, you know, to these protests, a lot of times there would be media there, you know, people asking questions. And I wasn't sure how I would answer that. If somebody asked me, why are you at this funeral? I didn't, I wasn't sure how I would answer it. So, like, I felt very, when I found out I was going, I thought, I thought I need to, I need to understand this. So I went to my mother and she brings forth those verses that I just quoted to you and several others. We sat down as a family as we did every night, you know, to read the Bible and to talk about world events and, you know, the church's interpretation of

these events in light of their understanding of the scriptures. So, you know, she goes through and explains this, you know, very carefully. And because her answers came from the Bible, I was, that was my foundation was that the Bible is the infallible word of God and that it's true no matter what any human thinks and that we have a duty to obey it 100% no matter what I think or feel otherwise. I have to bring my thoughts and opinions in line with this. So even though I had a lot of trepidation at the beginning about going to those funerals, I very quickly acclimated to it, you know, as you do when in an environment like that where everything depends on you falling into line. Now, what was it like when you first did it?

Like, what was the reaction to other people or, you know, other people's reaction to you? So that very first one, it was in Omaha, Nebraska, and it was incredibly tense. So there was a bunch of cops. We always, every time we would go to protest somewhere, we would contact the police to make sure that there would be a police presence. Uh, because people were tempted to, and did, you know, would come after us physically and try to assault us. And, and again, this, it happened with some regularity. So from the very earliest days of the protesting, we, uh, you know, my mom and her generation had made this decision to who I should say many of them are lawyers. So they would write letters from, you know, as attorneys saying, we're going to be coming.

We're going to be protesting in your city. This is what we do. You know, we hold signs on public sidewalks. We are not violent. So explaining what our protests looked like. what our protests looked like. And then, and then saying, if you want to avoid, you know, these kinds of like violence that often happens, uh, be there. So this first one, how old were you in 2005?

I was 19. So you were a kid, you know, but a grown kid and, you know, you're with your parents and this is the first time you're protesting a veteran. What was that experience like? So I'm standing across the street from the church. Like I said, it was very solemn, very quiet, which was not normal, really, for protests. A lot of times we would be out there singing and chanting and making it was a big public display. But this was, like I said, incredibly tense.

Nobody was really talking. Nobody was really talking. Nobody was really moving. Um, uh, and you know, the family was, you know, pulled up in a, and I think it was in a limousine across the street and the family got out and, and looked around, uh, and saw us. And did they know you guys were going to be there beforehand? Because we always would publicize that we would send out news releases. So they were aware that we were going to be there. Um, and there were a bunch of, I think they were Marines, uh, like in dress blues standing there and they, they looked incredibly angry and, and upset. But like I said, it was, it was like, it felt like at any moment, if something happened, like that the whole situation could explode. But again, so the cops, having the cops standing there. So it was really tense.

What kind of things were they saying to you guys? They weren't saying anything. What I was trying to say, it's really unusual for protests like that. A lot of times we would be exchanging. We, of course, would be yellinganging you know we would we of course would be yelling about bible verses and the hatred of god and you know they would be talking about love and tolerance and how we're wrong and not christian and but at this one it was it was very quiet it wasn't always like this so pretty quickly you know once again once we became acclimated to to those protests um

and also there have you heard of the patriot riders? It was a group of motorcyclists who decided to and they formed like in across the country. So in every state there was a group of these motorcyclists who when they found out we were going to be protesting somewhere, they would go and, you know, rev their engines so that our words and songs and such wouldn't be heard by the family. And and they would, you know, the family uh and and they would you know hold american flags and try to block you know it's always it's putting a buffer between us and the family and uh so when when that started to happen it became almost like a game sometimes and you know in hindsight i this makes me cringe and and but but it became like this game of trying to show that we were going to get our message across no matter what any human being wanted, because we knew we were so sure that this was what God wanted. Wow.

What made you leave? A lot of things. It started my very first sort of conscious doubts came from conversations on Twitter. Wow. Yeah. Something good got done through Twitter? Yeah, lots of good things. I also met my husband there.

Oh, there you go. While I was still at the church. Oh. It's kind of nuts. Is he an atheist? I don't know that he would use that word to describe himself. Actually, I was just talking to Sam about this, and I was like, when people, the problem with the word, when you say atheist, people think jerk.

Really? Well, so many people do. So many people think that, like, oh, you're absolutely certain that there is no God. And so it's a word that I hesitate to use to describe myself, too. But I'm not a believer. I don't even like to say I'm not a believer, because I love people.

I believe in people, and that there is so much hope and for people and that we can, I don't know. Anyway. So, so conversations that you had on Twitter did what do you like, what, what doors did they open in your mind? Right. So I got on Twitter and it was like an extension of the picket line. Right. So we go out there with these picket signs and, you know, people would come up to us and ask us questions. And so it was a constant conversation. And so I got on Twitter to take that, you know, to the Internet, to reach more people. And so one of the first things I did when I got on Twitter was to attack this Jewish man named David Abbott Ball, who ran a blog called Jewlicious. He was listed as the second most influential Jew on Twitter on this. Who's number one?

I actually can't remember. Not memorable, not part of my story, I guess. You can check it. It's the JTA's list if you want to. Okay. But anyway, so he was listed as number two. And so he responded initially with, you know, sarcasm and hostility. But pretty quickly, he sort of changed tactics and started instead of like mocking me, although he still did do that some too. and I started asking him questions about Jewish theology because I wanted to better know how to counter it from the scriptures because I was sure that they were wrong.

Jews killed Jesus and they reject him as the Messiah and so all of these things. So we're having this back and forth and this goes on for about a year and during that year I actually met him twice. I protested him twice once so you went to his functions or was he giving speeches like where was he so in long beach actually at the julicious festival they had this this jewish cultural festival what a great name yeah it's great he's great um so he right so he was going to be there uh and you know

i went and i was protesting him uh and he came out to the picket line and it was it was one of those like very rowdy pickets. There was a bunch of counter protesters like and they were it was, I don't know, guys dressed as like the Easter Bunny and Jesus. And, you know, it was actually got pretty violent. So I was actually super violent. It got violent. themselves just just uh so i was actually really glad when david came out because he became like a buffer between me and the rest of the counter protesters because everybody could tell that he was he was wearing his judicious shirt and whatever anyway so so the conversation continued there and then also at another protest uh six or seven months later um and then uh it's not long after that second protest, we're talking again, and he was asking about one of our signs that said death penalty for fags. And, you know, of course, I'm reiterating why the church believes that, because in the book of Leviticus, God calls for the death penalty for gays.

And then in Romans 1 in the New Testament, it's reiterated, says they that commit such things are worthy of death. So I'm telling David these things, and he says, it's like, yeah, but didn't Jesus say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone? And I said, well, we always said to that, which was, we're not casting stones, we're preaching words. And he said, yeah, but you're advocating that the government cast stones.

And I remember, you know, this is all through Twitter. So I see this message and I kind of gasped and I was like, I had never connected that Jesus there, of course he was talking about the death penalty, specifically about the death penalty, and we were advocating it. And so I wasn't sure how to respond, but he, David kept, kept going. He said, and, and what about this member of your church who had a child out of wedlock? And I said, what, what about it? Like that's, this is another point, you know, people, it was, it was, you know, common knowledge. People knew about this and would throw this in our face. And we would say the standard of God isn't sinlessness, it's repentance. So she doesn't deserve that punishment because she repented. She stopped, you know, she wasn't having premarital sex anymore. And she knows that it's wrong. And she changed her mind and she changed her conduct, which is what repentance is. instituted the death penalty for that sin. And it was the first time again that I connected that if you kill somebody, as soon as they sin, they, you lose the opportunity to repent and be forgiven.

And so again, so I'm just sort of staring at my phone and, you know, in Topeka, Kansas, he's in Jerusalem. And I really quickly ended the conversation. I don't even remember quite how, but it was just sort of this, like, I didn't know how to handle this because, like I said, the church is full of lawyers. They're very intelligent and their arguments and their theology, for the most part, is very well constructed and super consistent. And so for there to be this, you know, this hypocrisy, this contradiction, I didn't, my, like my brain was, it felt like I was exploding. So I went to a couple of people in the church, including my mother. Um, and the response was, feel free to stop me at any time, by the way, I feel like I'm filibustering here. Um, so she, she's reiterated the same verses that I had told David that, that supported our

position, but she didn't address the contradiction. And when I seemed unsatisfied with it, she said I was getting wrapped around an axle and just sort of, you know, push it aside. And the response was so, just to shut me down and then to move on to the next thing, which is a very human thing, right? When somebody puts something in your face that is this contradiction

that you're not ready to deal with or that you can't, you know what I mean? You compartmentalize, you kind of sort of push it aside and try not to. So the way that I dealt with it was to stop holding the sign because I knew that if somebody asked me about it, I couldn't defend it because I didn't believe it. But there was nothing else I could do at that point. I didn't believe it. But there was nothing else I could do at that point. But the importance of that conversation, this is obviously just one small contradiction, one small inconsistency and a vast, you know, we still, I still believed that everybody outside the church was basically completely wrong and evil and or delusional.

And that the church was basically right, except this one point. Did anybody ever feel that it was bad to use slurs? Like to use some sort of insulting term for gay people instead of saying God hates gay people? So at the very beginning, they did use the word gays. Why did they change it? Well, so my grandfather would say that gay is a misnomer. These people aren't happy. They're committing suicide, and they're evil and abominable and they have no peace. God has taken their peace. They're not happy. So gay is a misnomer. And so the word fag, they say like Amos, in the book of Amos, it's translated firebrand there. So my grandfather would say, the word fag is an elegant metaphor. And it's

gays, you know, fags are a bundle of sticks, right? Used for kindling. So gays are, they burn in their lust one toward another, and they fuel the fires of hell and the fires of God's wrath. So it's an elegant metaphor, Gramps wouldamps would say, um, do you know the original metaphor was really supposed to be, you mean from the Bible? No, the word faggot. Oh no, actually faggot means a bundle of woods, a bundle of a wood. And they would use that expression to describe a woman because a bundle of wood is burdensome. Like carrying around a bundle of wood is very burdensome. So when they would call a woman a faggot, they were saying that she was burdensome. So when they would call a man

a faggot, they would say that he is burdensome like a woman, like a bundle of wood, like a non manly man that can't get work done, you know, along those lines. Right. And then it became used by people erroneously saying that it was about burning them and that they would burn gay people because they would burn faggots of wood. That's not really the case. Just sounds cool. Yeah. I actually had never heard that before. Yeah. Yeah.

If you see if you can find that, Jamie, Google that. Yeah. Yeah. If you see if you can find that, Jamie, Google that. The original term faggot meant burden, but bundle of wood and burdensome like a bundle of wood. Because I mean, think about like carrying a bundle of wood, especially if you didn't have a truck. It's a huge pain in the ass. That's kind of what the source of it was. Wow. You know, I had no idea. Yeah. People use it wrong. And the real problem is the people that use it wrong are like gay activists. And they try to say how horrible that word is because it was used to represent how gay people were burnt. But there's never been like a time in history where like there's a whole series of gay people that were like burnt.

You know, it's just like they drowned witches and things were done like real specifically. But it's never been like a thing. What do we got here? and things were done like real specifically, but it's never been like a thing. What do we got here? The word faggot has been used in English since the late 16th century as an abusive term for women, particularly old women. A reference to homosexual sexuality may derive from this.

Why does it have to be so weird? The way you got it. Oh, okay. Yeah, I can read it like that. Blah, blah, blah blah so there it is an alternative possibility is that the word connected with the practice of uh fagging in british private schools in which younger boys performed potentially sexual duties for older boys although the word faggot was never used in this context. Hmm. But the big one means the bundle of wood.

The bundle of sticks. What's that, Jamie? What do you got? Something awkward to be carried is right. Yes, exactly. Burdensome. So that's where it comes from. It really didn't have anything to do with burning people.

But like they'll repeat it like to to make a big point like a big dramatic point but it's you know it's melodramatic you would think i would know this given our respective histories but i literally have never heard this in my life yeah it's an important distinction for why people use that term because it's really just that they're annoying i mean it's really just you know they just think of some non-manly man who can't get things done and he's probably crying all the time and he's burdensome. My experience of gay people since we left, which is obviously much more maybe reflective of reality, has not been that at all.

What has it been like? Impossibly wonderful. Don't overcompensate because you're getting out of this bad environment. I'll take you down to Santa Monica Boulevard to some of the gayest spots on earth. You'll see dudes with cut-off shorts and you'll change your tune. You'll be like, what are they doing?

Well, I mean, I'm not trying to paint everybody with one brush now either. They've been amazing. As soon as they start being attracted to men, something happens. They become different than every other person. That's not what I mean. They're just people, right? now either but been amazing as soon as they start being attracted to men something happens no become different than every other person like they're just people right like it's just other people so i mean right after we left like uh at first i thought we have to hide from the past forever my sister and i should say left together um how old were you guys so i was 26 i was almost 27

did you have a long conversation before you did it many it was about four months between when I first talked to her about leaving. So what was the first initial conversation and how did you gather up the courage to even sort of breach the subject? It was really terrifying and awful because, I mean, I remember from the time I was very young, there's this passage in Deuteronomy that my mom would quote. And it's about, you know, if somebody, uh, if, if your, you know, friend, somebody close to you, your, your relatives, somebody comes up to you and says, uh, let us go and serve other gods. Like somebody secretly says to you those things, uh, you have to stone them and you, the one that they came to, you're supposed to be the first one to, and my family's not stoning people. Um, what would do, though, if it said it in the Bible and someone said, hey, we have to serve this golden cow? So we also have, in the New Testament, it talks about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God's the things that are God's. So we also have to obey the law of man.

We have to obey the law of, so we're not supposed to be just. But the law of man supersedes the law of God. We're supposed to be obedient to the laws of men. But also, I mean, there's kind of a complicated, a little bit, theology where it sort of undid a lot of the Mosaic Code that we didn't actually have to follow those things. But honestly, I don't know. I think it's the whole, I think it's like the death penalty for fags thing. So like, if they still believe that that punishment is, is applicable, then, then we should be trying to convince the government, lobbying the government to like with those signs. So, um, so that I was, you know, my sister, if I went to her and said

these things to her, she could easily have turned around and, and told my parents not as a, to her she could easily have turned around and and told my parents not as a it's a culture of tattletales not out of bad intention but because they believe that they're trying to help you right they don't want you to go down a bad path so so you know when i it was it was the i first thought of leaving on it was july 4th and I was with my sister at the time. And when it first occurred to me that I might have to leave the church, or that the church might be wrong, I thought I had to leave that second, because if it even occurred to me that meant I didn't belong there, and that God was going to punish me, and that I just felt immediately so much guilt, and I was a betrayer. But was all your social life connected still to the church?

Yeah. And was this where you had, you already known your husband by then? I had, yeah. So he corrupted you. He was definitely part of it. So,

but like it wasn't like that. It's like the beginning, like, so, so he was just another person on Twitter at first. Um, and it was, it was,

it was like friendly conversation. And this went over the, you know, for the course of several months. Um, I don't know it was, it was like friendly conversation. And this went over the, you know, for the course of several months, um, I don't know, eight, eight or eight months or so, seven or eight months. Uh, and then, and it was never, and there was never anything, you know, about feelings or, you know, relationships or all that stuff is totally forbidden. No, nothing like that. Like not even like, not even even anything like nothing. Like it's just that my mind didn't work that way. And that there is there can be no relationship like that with outsiders. But outsiders, outsiders. because most of the people in the church, about 80% or so of the people in the church, there's only 80 people or so anyway, were my immediate and extended family. Oh, no. So I thought, there's no way that I'm just not going to get married.

So you just accepted that? It wasn't like an easy thing at first, but it was just the facts on the ground. So the facts on the ground were you had to date someone inside the church. There was only 80 people in the church. They all your family you can't date your family fuck yeah wow i mean i should say there were a couple of people my age like and they can't they had just joined the church like you know that but i had no like i had no interest in any of them and no slim pickings and not wow and uh but yeah uh, but yeah, it's, it's, it was kind of strange, but I, so I actually had a dream about meeting. And I should say also my husband at the time,

I didn't know he was totally anonymous on Twitter. Like it's just his words. I didn't know what he looked like. I didn't know, you know, his name or where he lived or anything about him, uh, except, except these words. Um, and he was, uh, he was just curious and kind and, and that sort of, and he loved people. And so he would sort of always be pushing, pushing the conversation back to, it's like, I'm giving it, which like I've told you all those verses about protesting funerals and why we have to go and do this and the importance of it and why we have to thank God for these tragedies because God is sovereign and he's in control. So I'm, I'm talking about the, I'm scripturally like the justifying all these things. And he kept pushing it back to,

cause he's not super well-versed in the Bible. Um, so he didn't know how to, he's like, I see that the Bible says these things, but what about the family? Like, I just cannot imagine going and doing these things to people. And so this is all happening like on, as I'm, so I'm also still having conversations on Twitter with so many other people. So it's like Twitter became this like empathy machine for me. Like, so it's not just like on a picket line where people are butting heads and, you know, arguing and debating and yelling. And it's, I'm, yes, having these can be kind of aggressive conversations, but I'm also seeing like photos of their cats and them, you know, exchanging, you know, joking with their friends. And so I'm seeing a side of people and sort of being immersed in this community in a way that I had never been before. And so it was really, it's like, I'm trying to say, like, when you say, why did you leave? Like there's, it took, it was so much sort of happening, you know, around this time. So when, by the time this like pile up of things, you know, and I'm processing it as I'm going through this,

I'm also talking to my sister and other people in the church. But she was the only person, if I ever had a doubt or a question or if I thought we're doing something wrong here, she was the only person who would say, yeah, you're right. That doesn't make sense that I should say my sister is, um, creative and artistic and had a, like a little bit of reputation for being kind of rebellious, not as like submissive as me and our other sister. Um, so it was this, this dynamic of, uh, you know, between the two of us where she was the only person I could fully articulate my thoughts and feelings to. Um, and so when I first thought of leaving and I turned around and I thought I literally, it was, we were painting at a friend's house, painting the walls.

And I, I turned around to set my paintbrush down. I thought I had to go and leave that second. And I turned around and saw my sister and, uh, I thought I can't go and leave that second. And I turned around and saw my sister. And I thought I can't leave without talking to her. So the next day, she came home from work over the lunch hour. And we would always go up to my room and we were talking about all these doubts we were having. And I was crying and I put my head in her lap. And I couldn't even start. Like articulating the idea of leaving was too much like it's it's terrifying um and it just seemed like impossible and I said um

what if we weren't here and she said what do you mean and I said what if we were somewhere else and so that starts this conversation where you know I cannot let go of all the things that I thought that the church was doing wrong, where our theology was wrong, where we were applying it wrong. I mean, in a way that was destructive and unscriptural. And she kept pushing the conversation back to, we're never going to see our family again. We're going to lose everyone and everything that's ever been important to us there is no hope outside this church all the things that we had learned about outsiders that you know that they were evil and they they could never truly love each other or care about care about one another they're really just enabling one another on the path to hell so and so this this back and forth you know goes on for about four months before we

finally actually left and uh it was as as bad or worse as and i could have imagined but to get back to the well let's get to that bad or worse you could have ever imagined so i should So you left, how did you leave? Uh, we were talking to my parents and, you know, and it was another, another issue had come up and I, I couldn't, we couldn't, it was a battle that we weren't going to fight again. We, we, we, I should say in those four months, I kept trying to, to articulate these doubts in a way that the church would accept, like trying to convince them, not being as open, but as time went on, I became more and more open about, about these questions and doubts. Um, and I just, I couldn't, we couldn't fight it anymore. I just looked at Grace and I said,

we have to go. And cause we, and I should say also, we had already been packing. Like we had, we had started packing our things about a little over a month before that. And we had started like taking boxes to our friend's house. Um, and with the understanding, he's actually our, he was our high school English teacher, um, that we had kept up with on Twitter. And he, you know, I basically told him, you know, if something changes, if the church changes and these things get better, then we'll take all our stuff back and just pretend like none of this ever happened. And he was just understanding and compassionate and really supportive. So we had done all this stuff already, but we actually had to go and pack the rest of our things. So we walked out of our parents parents bedroom and went and started packing and you know people

started coming my brother and some of the elders and my aunt my cousin you know people I we were very close like our whole my whole life revolves around the church and so to look these people in the face and say that, you know, the us-them mentality, the bonds that are created in environments like that are incredibly strong, at least they were in our church. And again, most of these people are also my family. So it was awful. And I'm crying and packing and trying to explain to them why, why we're leaving.

And I can hardly talk, you know, be just, just, I was so overwhelmed, but, um, I actually had to go back the next day with a U-Haul to get the rest of our stuff. Our parents helped us pack. It's not, it's not one of those, uh, like there are some groups like that where they don't want you to leave. They'll, they'll try to stop you from leaving. Like I heard the Scientology, the Miscavige. Yeah. I can't remember his first Ron.

Yeah. He was talking about like, like actual obstacles to you leaving, like physically, like they're not going to, you can't get out of the gate, like nothing like that. You know,

my, they always would say, this is a volunteer army. And if you don't want to be here, then you don't belong here. So it's just the uh it's the threat of losing everything and every one yeah being ostracized by and just sort of expelled into this world that you believe and have always believed is is evil and without hope and doomed so how did you do it how did like you're you got all your stuff packed people are

coming in they're saying yeah i mean like they're they're they're trying to convince us but once they understand that we're not being convinced that that you know they they walked away so i mean that night our dad dropped us off at a hotel and then jesus christ yeah like it's it's so immediate that you become this you become other you become an outsider like in the next morning when we went back i rang the doorbell i rang the doorbell to your own house and i lived in that house from the day i was born whoa so you felt like you had to ring the doorbell like this is not my world anymore yeah wow grace was like why don't you ring the doorbell and it was like there's there's no other there's there is nothing else like it's this

is not our home this is not so we go and you know we're packing all of our things it was just it was awful just i had been in those four months i had been so terrified of because i know knowing what was coming like just imagine you're going to lose everyone in your life that they're just you're just going to like you're not going to like how your life. You're just going to, like, you're not going to, like, how your parents met and fell in love or, like, your grandparents and family recipes and photos and memories and what did the house look like? I'm, like, taking photos and voice recordings and just all the time, like, in every, it was just, it's overwhelming.

Wow. But did, was there also like a feeling of relief? Was there also a feeling of like, we actually did it. I'm actually doing it. It's actually happening. I'm going to get away from this. I know this isn't real. I know this isn't right.

Did you understand that it was a cult? So I was really against, and I still don't intend not to use that word. I mean, it's, it's, it's a fine shorthand, I guess, for some. There are aspects of the church that are not cultish for sure. Like, like what I just was saying, like, there's no, they're not trying to use that word. I mean, it's a fine shorthand, I guess, for some. There are aspects of the church that are not cultish, for sure. Like what I just was saying. Like, there's no, they're not trying to get your money. They're not trying to, like, not some charismatic leader trying to have sex with everybody's wives and children or whatever. It's nothing like that.

But there are definitely aspects that are cultish. The fact that you can't, there is no such thing as agreeing to disagree. And the penalty for disagreeing is so high. So there are things like that that are definitely cult-like. But I was definitely, I was not, in that moment, I was not okay with using that term for sure. It was definitely, it took a lot of time. Well, it's a derogatory term, but what it represents is an ideology that a group subscribes to. It doesn't necessarily have to have all the negative ramifications of an ideology for it to fit into the category of a cult. Right. Yeah. And I totally understand that now, which is why if somebody says it, I sometimes will say there are things that aren't cult-like and explain what I think is not, but I'm also, I don't do it every single time. Like I understand that it's, that it's, uh.

So you get all your stuff after you ring the doorbell, you're gone. And then how do you like enter into the world? Did you have a job back then? Or did you have a job with the church? It was a job with the church working for the law firm. So it's home, job, family, life, just everything all at once. And then also, of course, you're going into a world that I had just spent my entire life, you know, protesting and just,

it's so crazy when I look back now at videos, which I couldn't do for a long time, but there's tons of videos and interviews and documentaries that, you know, where I'm, I'm answering all these questions and I,

I, it's, it's crazy to me. Were you there when Louis Theroux came out to do the documentary? Yeah. Did you talk to him while he was there? Yeah. Both times.

He was, the first time it was, he was really super nice. Um, you know, he came and we were like making egg rolls together and like going bowling and jumping on the trampoline and and yeah he would come to pickets and and it was really funny because like so he came for three weeks like but three weeks like a month like one month he came for a week

and the next month he came for another week and then came again so the first time like i didn't know anything about him or who he was really i mean I mean, I knew he was from the BBC, obviously, but I hadn't seen any of his stuff. And then before he came the next time, I was supposed to be studying for a test or something. I was in college and I was procrastinating. So I look on YouTube and find this documentary that he did. Do you know the one, the white supremacy, the Nazis, Louis and the Nazis. So I watched that entire documentary. And I was like, ah, I know what his angle is. It's the, oh, these poor kids, they were raised in this, and they don't know any better. And at the time, I was kind of indignant, because I was like, I'm a thinking person. All my life growing up, it was never just,

like I explained about the soldiers' funerals, I just just went along with something like i wanted to understand why i needed to understand that it was scriptural and from the bible and so if you could show me that then but like i'm like i'm a curious person so but i just had never obviously questioned like the the most foundational premises of our belief system which is the bible is the infallible word of God. And Westboro Baptist Church are the only ones who have, who can understand it correctly. I just, I just never, I never really got, got past that because if it was in the Bible and it made sense to me,

then it was fine. So anyway, so I was kind of indignant when I saw what Louie was trying to do. Like we're just poor children. And, and, um, so, and I went and told my family.

And so then everybody, you know, everybody knew about it. Um, this, you know what he was doing. And I remember telling him something about how he was, it was insidious what he was doing because he was not being honest.

He was being really friendly, but not being honest about what he really thought about us. Uh, anyway. What did he say to that? Well, he said, He was being really friendly, but not being honest about what he really thought about us. Anyway. And what did he say to that? Well, he said, actually, he actually addressed it specifically in the second documentary. He said, you've been saying this, but I've never pretended to agree with you. I've never, I've been pretty, pretty honest about it.

And I'm an atheist. I don't believe that what you're doing is right. I don't believe the Bible is the word of God. Um, and so I, of course, and he's right. He was exactly right. Um, but I definitely couldn't see it at the time. Um, well, you leave, you get out and then what do you do? Do you get a job?

So I thought immediately, so I, my degree is in finance. So I went through business school, all these people saying, you know, start saving for retirement immediately. So, you know, we believe that the doom of the world was imminent. So I never really did that. So end of days type stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So you were thinking that because of all the sin, one day there's going to be a reckoning

and all the Christians are going to vanish. Yeah. Destruction is imminent was one of our signs. Did you guys ever watch that movie? Was those terrible, two terrible movies with Kirk Cameron about the apocalypse? God damn it. Left Behind? No.

Oh, they're so good. You should watch them. You said they were terrible. I will watch them. They are terrible. But they're so good they're so bad that they become like

oh my god what the fuck is this did you ever meet Kirk Cameron no I want to meet that dude no I it's really funny

you listen to Sam Harris' podcast yes so his episode with Lawrence Wright he said something like Lawrence Wright said something like author of Going Clear the book on Scient Lawrence Wright, he said something like, Lawrence Wright said something like.

Author of Going Clear, the book on Scientology. Yes, yes. He said, he talks about Freud, the narcissism of small differences. And I was like, oh my God, yes. Like we, other Christians, like we're some of our biggest targets. And it would be like the smallest things. Like for instance, there was like one church that we had some kind of like very little affiliation with in the early days of the picketing. And then their women started to cut their hair.

Those bitches. Women are not allowed to cut their hair. You're not allowed to cut your hair at all? We weren't allowed to cut our hair at all. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Because of a Bible verse. What does the Bible verse say?

It's 1 Corinthians 11, 14, I think, actually. It says a woman's hair is her glory. It says, don't you know, doesn't nature itself teach you that it's a shame for a man to have long hair, but a woman's hair is her glory and it's given to her for a covering. So it says long hair. Right. So my grandfather interpreted that to mean uncut, which again, like I, I did not, we didn't believe in interpretation at the church. So like the fact that he was adding something

into the Bible that wasn't there before, because obviously you can have long hair without, and still cut it. Yeah. But, but it's like, if long hair is good, then uncut's better. So, end of story. Oh, he had his rules.

Oh, what about clothes? Like, how do you reconcile the fact that you're not supposed to wear two different types of cloth? So that, so the church sees this as the distinction between the ceremonial law of Moses and the moral law. So the ceremonial law is like mixed fabrics

and keeping kosher. Isn't it like penalty by death of mixed fabrics? I actually can't remember, but we just didn't. Something preposterous like that. We didn't worry about it though, because we thought these passages in the New Testament said you don't have to follow those ceremonial laws. So we didn't worry about it. But did you guys spend any time researching the actual history of the New Testament? Like how it was constructed? not i mean some yes but not really because in our minds uh god is sovereign right so the church believes in predestination so god controls everything and

everyone so god controlled the construction of the new testament as well exactly right even though it was done by men it was god's will to have it be so it was all god's word yep exactly how convenient mm-hmm that's a nice little loophole and that's like you just don't have to you don't have to ask those questions

but what about the fact that it was like Constantine wasn't even a Christian until his deathbed is that because God didn't want it to be that way

it's just it doesn't it's irrelevant that's a nice sweet loophole if you could just say that it's God's will God knew the entire time don't worry about it but it's a bunch of men wrote it yeah but they did it that it's God's will. God knew the entire time. Don't worry about it.

But it's a bunch of men wrote it. Yeah, but they did it because God let them do it. But then the question is, which version? Right. Which is another question. Like, I sort of instinctively avoided it. It's like atheists would ask this question, like, why the King James Version? Yeah.

And, you know, you can't really answer because Gramps said so. Like, that's not. Did we actually say that my grandfather was the pastor, first pastor, the only pastor for the, you know, founded the West Robson's church. I don't think we did, but I think everybody kind of knows. Okay, good. So when I say, yeah, I just, grandpa, grandpa was Fred Phelps, right? Yes, exactly.

Um, anyway, I just wanted to close that loop. Um, so it's just, but like, what was the, what was the thought process behind like just accepting that kind of stuff? Like, did your grandfather ever bring up the even older versions of the Bible that they were finding? Like, who was his thoughts on like the Dead Sea Scrolls and things along those lines? Just didn't address it because it just didn't matter because again, it's all God's word. Anyway, it's God's will.

It's God's word. Right. Again, just. It's all God's word anyway. It's God's will. It's God's word. It's so fascinating when someone's so rigid with their belief system. It's like, this is it. And this is.

And as long as you believe that it's all God's will. It's like, oh, it's God's will. Seriously. But the New Testament was written by Constantine, a bunch of bishops and God's will. And God let him do it. Right. Oh, OK. And not just let him do it, but caused him.

Caused him. Forced it. Made it happen. Yep. He knows what he's doing. Yep, absolutely. Every word of our conversation, the church would think that this is all. Well, how does God allow all the sodomy and all the crazy shit going on?

Why does God allow that? So this is why I'm not a Christian anymore. Oh, you're confused. And you're like, what the? Well, so there's this passage in Romans 9. Well, it's not the only reason, I should say. But I have real trouble with this. And I think it's still hard for me to say, I think this is evil. But I think this is evil. There's this passage in Romans 9 that talks about, it gives this analogy of God as potter and humans as clay in his hands. It gives this analogy of God as potter and humans as clay in his hands.

And it uses the example of Jacob and Esau, who in the Bible, Jacob and Esau were twins. And it says, while they were yet in the womb, before either of them had done good or evil, God loved Jacob and hated Esau. And so it paints this picture of God, you know, it says, what if God, willing to show his wrath and make his power known, endured with much long suffering, the vessels of wrath made for destruction. So it says God created some people as vessels of mercy, people that he loves, and others as vessels of wrath made for destruction. So made for the express purpose of destroying them, of torturing them in hell for eternity. So, and then, so he, it's Paul who's writing, he paints this picture, God making you do all of the things that you do and then blessing some and cursing others. And he says, well, you're going to ask me then, why does God yet find fault for who has resisted his will?

Right? So if God's making you do it, why is he punishing you for it? Right. If God's making you do a horrible thing and youed his will. Right? So if God's making you do it, why is he punishing you for it? Right. If God's making you do a horrible thing and you resist his will. You can't resist his will. Right.

So he makes you do it and then he punishes you for it. And the answer is, you don't get to ask that question. Oh. It says, Nay, but O man, who art thou that replies against God?

Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? You just don't get to ask that question. And to me, so this is, I've asked, I spent a long time talking to Christians and people of, well, mostly Christians because obviously it's the New Testament, but also talking to Jewish people about the Old Testament

and found so many of the interpretations, so many of our beliefs are not, they're not fully supported by the Bible and that there are so many different ways of interpreting. So many of our, the more destructive of our beliefs. But that one, I have not found any explanation for that passage that's anything, that makes any kind of sense, that's anything that makes any kind of sense that's consistent with the text and and not evil and i just i didn't i thought i couldn't ask that question for so long when i was at the church right i thought i just have to accept this this is the truth and nothing that i feel or think matters against it um but now i i can't not think. Of course. I cannot ask the questions.

Yeah. That's got to be so strange. It's also strange when you read the passages in the Bible and they're thou and thy and you go, wow, like what a weird, like you're reading something in a style of communicating and thinking that we don't even use anymore. Like how strange is that? Like how strange, like if you had a conversation with a rational person and they've, they started talking and thou and thy, you'd be like, what are you, why are you using those words? Like what's going on here? Are you okay?

Like, are you a crazy person? But as long as you're quoting some ancient stuff, you're allowed to do it. Like, and it just, it sort of highlights how bizarre scripture really is and how bizarre these ideological imperatives, these ideological like pathways that are just completely rigid and carved and so you have to follow them. But then you're listening, you're like, you don't even, nobody even talks like this anymore. Like this is such a strange and they didn't even talk like that then when they wrote it because you're dealing with something that was in ancient Hebrew and then it was translated to Latin as translated to

Greek and by the time it gets to English like boy what a terrible game of telephone you know that the grapevine right so it's just these are questions that I never thought I could ask or that again that it didn't matter because if because if God, you know, foreordained all of it, then it wasn't relevant. But there's also, I mean, like there is so, and this, I was talking to Sam Harris about this this morning. He, like, there are so many things in the Bible that I find so much good there also. And like the language is something that like, yeah, I know it sounds so weird to people, but to a lot of people, but like the King James, like I grew up, like, again, I, my mother was reading this to us every, every night. And so these words, there's actually a passage that says,

I found that like talking to God, I found thy words and I did eat them and they were unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart right so it was this thing where i i loved it i i loved i loved these ideas i i thought i thought it was the truth and i thought it was like the definition of goodness because god did it and god said it and but even now like there's this one passage that i i really love it says um by long forbearing as a prince persuaded and a soft tongue breaketh the bone. That last like that's that's it's a soft tongue breaketh the bone that that phrase. I love the imagery. I love the like because, you know, I did this TED talk a few months ago. And and, you know, it was kind of about this like modern political discourse, this tribalism.

This is becoming these calcified positions and failures of empathy. And people think that because they're so sure that they're right, that their position is the right position, they're willing to talk to the other side in ways that they're just, it's just, it's terrible. It's the way that I did at the church. It's the way that it's, you know, that dismissive condescending, you know, just hostile, aggressive, angry. Right, they're the enemy.

Yeah. And that's like, it's not. It's also cult-like. And people don't respond to it. Like they respond, it's this whole complimentary behavior, right? It's like somebody approaches you a certain way. You tend to respond in kind. So if somebody comes to you in kindness and compassion, you tend to respond, you know, in that way also.

And when you are angry and aggressive and hostile, like it just elicits the same reaction. People get defensive. Right. And but that that verse, I love that verse. It's a beautiful verse. Well, there's obviously some wisdom from what those people were writing down and trying to translate what that wisdom was. And there's some really fascinating passages. To me, it's always been most fascinating as a time capsule like when I read it I'm like well regardless of who translated this regard this is still a thousand year old

book at the very least in terms of you know or two thousand years old like that alone is really amazing when you're reading the thoughts and the ideas of how someone was perceiving the world 2,000 years ago, or roughly. You know, there's something to it where you're, it also solidifies in my mind how briefly human beings have been conscious of their time here on Earth. 2,000 years ago is not very long. I mean, it seems like an incredibly long time for a person who only lives to be 100.

But in terms of the age of the human race itself, which I think they just backdated again, they found a new discovery where they pushed back the oldest known human being by over 100,000 years yesterday. Some new discovery, some new bones. Wow. So now they know modern human beings have been around for at least 300 000 years it's probably going to go back even further than that they don't even know but um but that's so cool like i was going to say i actually think um

rob wolf oldest homo sapien species discovered in morocco yeah what does it say time okay yeah add a hundred thousand years to the history of modern human fossils these bones are from early anatomically modern humans our own species homo sapiens with a mixture of modern and primitive traits an international team of anthropologists paleontologists, and evolutionary scientists report a pair of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Evolutionary. What was evolution talk like back at home? We didn't believe it.

What about dinosaurs? Young earth creationism. One of the elders said something like, God brought baby dinos on the ark really yeah i i they didn't make it yeah they drown i don't know we we just it's not a we just anytime there was any conflict or apparent conflict between the bible and uh evidence you know physical evidence we just believe the bible like because of course yeah, yeah, it's the Bible. Wow. Um, but what you're saying about like ancient wisdom, like there was this, uh, so my husband, um, he got super into paleo a few years ago and, uh, he read, um, John Durant's book, uh, the paleo manifesto and he made me read one chapter of it

and it was called moses the microbiologist and rob wolf i was gonna say rob wolf mentioned it on your podcast or whatever that was a few weeks ago or whatever um and it's so fascinating to like when you read leviticus like without the context uh you know the time and and the time they were living in um like it a lot of it just seemed like i remember whenever we'd be reading this at home, you know, as a family, like there was just so much of it that just seemed like incredibly tedious and like, what are we supposed to be getting out of this? Like, I don't even understand. So I read this chapter and it was so like incredible talking about like Jewish, the,

the rules about washing your hands, which is like, of course the simplest and most effective form of, you know, hygiene and prevent, of course, the simplest and most effective form of, you know, hygiene and prevent, you know, preventing pathogens and infectious disease. Anyway, it's like super fascinating, like how many of those laws make sense, like what you were allowed to eat and what you weren't allowed to eat because of. Not eating pigs. There's all sorts of parasites they carry. Right. And then not eating like cats because cats eat like rodents also carry anyway But it's like it's super there's so much detail in there and it was it's incredibly fascinating

So like there's when you think about like just the history of humanity and how this book has shaped people's lives for so long It's it's it's really It's really it's really fascinating. Well, it is an amazing piece of historical literature. You know what I mean? And it's amazing that so many people have, not to use the term, but use it as gospel. I mean, it's the right term, right? And it's just, I always feel strange whenever I read it. Whenever I read it, I feel strange. They're thinking about all the momentum and all the history that has been altered by these words and by the application of these words and your own history. I mean, your own life was essentially guided by the application of the interpretation of these words that were thousands of years old.

I mean, that is bizarre. But then what's even more bizarre to me is that Twitter is what snaps you out of it. Is that interacting with people through online was this open forum exchange of ideas. And especially in Twitter where it's this 140 character limit. Yeah, that's it. It really bugs me that Twitter gets such a bad rap. Because it has saved your life. You should have a T-shirt that says Twitter saved my life.

I think I might actually do that. I went to Twitter actually a year ago and I'm going next week too. I joined their trust and safety council. Oh, really? Yeah. That always sounds so Orwellian to me. And I found out some of the people that are on it and they're full of shit. There's a lot of BS social justice warrior nonsense going on in that council.

I'm definitely not on the censorship or, you know, trying to like stop people. Shadow banning people. I think so. I don't, I just don't know enough about all of that stuff. That's a problem. I'm, but obviously like I'm definitely on the side of, of, I mean, I want people to be able to control their experiences on Twitter of course. So, I mean, you should be able to

like... You should definitely be able to block people and mute people and all that stuff. That's all well and good. Right. That's what I mean. So you should control your experience, but like trying to stop people from... Because like, obviously, if somebody's... When it's criminal, when people are threatening, and it's violence and threats of violence, I think that

of course should be illegal. It's illegal. It it's violence and threats of violence. I think that, of course, should be illegal. It's illegal. Sure. Shouldn't be allowed on the platform. But I agree. And harassment, if you're harassing people or trying to get people to harass people, like soliciting harassment to others, like, hey, let's go go after Megan. She doesn't believe in God's word anymore. Let's go get her.

Right. Like those kind of using the platform for any sort of a fucked up way like that. Yeah. Right. Like those kind of using the platform for any sort of a fucked up way like that. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm obviously much more on the side of like the importance of the marketplace of ideas and being able to. It's everything. Absolutely. Because people, so many people, we come to these, we come to bad ideas in so many different ways.

Sometimes we argue ourselves there. Sometimes we're influenced by other people. But the way out of it isn't to pretend or to push it out of the public sphere. It's to engage it, to shed light on it and to publicly argue against it so that other people who might be tempted or starting to go down that path will understand. In other words, we need to have people who can articulate and defend good principles and to argue against bad ones so that the good ones will rise to the top. bad ones so that the good ones will rise to the top. Absolutely. I mean, that's everything.

That's human discourse in general. And that's one of the main problems with really rigid ideologies is there's no room for that. And then you just like, it's God's word and this is it. And you just have to trust it. And there's baby dinosaurs on the ark and you just kind of go, okay. And because of that, that, that, like, I have a friend who was Mormon and she was Mormon for a long time. And then she, they just sort of, like, drifted away. They decided it was kind of silly, and then they read into the church, and they started, like, how did this get started?

And they just decided maybe we should spend some time away. And so they eventually left. And one of the things that she said that was really fascinating, she said, So they eventually left. And one of the things that she said that was really fascinating, she said, um, I'm really susceptible to like, like someone who's a bullshit artist. It's like, she's like, I'm easily influenced, like too much. So she's like growing up in this fundamental environment, this fundamentalist, you know, where you don't question anything and just go along with the word.

She goes, it leaves me really vulnerable to like being influenced and i was like wow that is fascinating she's like i'm really gullible i'm like wow yeah it's like her her structure of how she her questioning muscles were like wobbly and weak and atrophy they just didn't have any pep to them that's exactly the word i use also about the decision making because if somebody else was always making the decisions you never have to like the answer is already there for you you don't have to figure it out for yourself so on both of those fronts like when after my sister and i left it was this sort of like more or less constant you know processing and asking these questions so like i would have these so for instance uh like back to gay people after we left right so uh i got this guy

wrote an open letter like he'd been somebody that i had sparred with on twitter quite a bit um and threatened to picket but never actually did he wrote an open letter after uh my sister and i published this statement essentially just this short explanation that you know we had left and that we regretted hurting people and that uh we were trying to find a better way to live, basically, just because we'd been so public at the church. It seemed like we had to. It seemed like, and also, it's complicated, but anyway, so we did this. He writes this open letter in response and invited us to church

over at Hollywood United Methodist Church. And he was gay. He is gay um he's a gay churchgoer yes yeah and how does he recognize reconcile all the anti-gay stuff i was gonna say so you you said um you know earlier like just the accepting like whatever you find in the bible so you therefore you have to accept it and just go along with it no matter you know what evidence or whatever uh seems to contradict it or whatever i was going to say like i encountered people for the first time including uh um actually i'm actually not sure how he reconciles i think it has to do with the love of jesus and and you know grace and you know just that's the old testament and whatever i'm not

exactly doesn't the new testament represent it does does. It does. Homosexuality, right? Yeah. So I honestly don't really know. You're just like, la, la, la, not listening. Well, so that's what I was going to say.

Like, I remember encountering for the first time Christians who were willing to say like, yeah, I know the Bible says that, but I think that applied at a different time or I just don't believe that.

Well, I know a dude, I know more than one that has an Old Testament Bible quote tattoo. Like, hey, you got to read the whole book, man. It says don't get tattooed. You can't just go, God, I'm really into what you're saying. No, you're not. You're not even listening.

But like that, like, I think that's, it's honest, right? Like to be able to say like, yes, I think this's, it's, it's honest, right? Like to be able to, to say like, yes, I, I, I think this is good. And to, but to have the wherewithal to say like, yeah, this, this is good. And this is wrong. There's a Bible verse actually that says, hate the evil and love the good. And I love that. I mean, I don't want to say hate, like I'm talking about, I'm not never, it's never about, for me, it's about people. It's about ideas. Like I think there are a lot of bad ideas. Uh, and so I try to, well, anyways, there are a lot of bad ideas and there's a lot of people that get defined by bad ideas. And I think in that, in that way, the Bible is a lot like people in that you could take a really good person who does

something stupid, does something wrong, does something bad. And it doesn't mean they're a bad person. You can't say like, you are this time you ran this red light and hit that car, or you are this time where you, whatever, whatever you did that you shouldn't have done that you may have done impulsively or what, for whatever reason, like that doesn't necessarily define you. It's a moment in your life, but we love to find moments like that and say that's you Tiger Woods. That is you you are bad I don't like you now I hate you like no matter what you do in the future you will be defined by this moment that you Got drunk and drove a car or whatever the fuck is it's it's so frustrating and you know now like

We we the tendency now on did you read John Ronson's book? Yes, you did. I hear. Yeah. So you've been publicly shamed. Yes. Like that. That tendency that we love it.

And my family like this, this it's it's it was incredibly judgmental, like even within the church and became even more so towards the end of, you know, before my sister and I left where like everything. This is the way that my sister and I started talking about it after we left. It was like, it's like everything that looks bad is bad. And everything that looks good is also bad. Like once you, if you can, if you identify a person as some kind of troublemaker or, you know, you can just read into the worst intentions and motives when it's, it's just as likely that it it's it isn't that like to generalize the worst sorry it's getting under your jaw and so we're losing some of the sound sorry sorry that's okay i kind of talk a little bit soft too sometimes um but and you just don't want to generalize the worst about people and and and make it make that their entire identity right and there's a tendency

to do that with people that are also, they're terrified of scrutiny coming their way. So what they do is they cast it all out on others instead of looking internally, instead of looking at their own actions and they like to find a fault in a person and then that is their main focus. And you see people doing that. That is why tabloid journalism is so fascinating. You go to the supermarket and you know, you know, Matt Lauer's doing cocaine. Oh, people doing that. That is why tabloid journalism is so fascinating. You go to the supermarket and, you know, Matt Lauer's doing cocaine.

Oh, look at that. You know, it's like right there in front of you. Whether or not it's real, who knows? But it's like, I want to see how he got caught. What did he do wrong? What did this person do? He's doing drugs or whatever anybody's doing. She's leaving him for her.

She's a lesbian. And all this stuff that we love when someone did something bad then everybody's watching it we love it because we all know that there's some creepy shit that we've done that if somebody found it and then everybody started talking about it you'd be horrified so when you see someone

getting caught publicly shamed and then this giant pile on it's very attractive to us in some weird way and almost cathartic and almost a relief that it's not us, you know? But it's so dangerous, right? Because when, when you make it, when the penalty for speaking up and possibly misstepping in these very, and I don't, the whole idea of like microaggressions, like I like fundamentally, like it's this, like, and I understand, like, I'm not saying like, I think it's really important. Like I've said this

so many times, like how we talk to people, like it matters how you talk to people. But if we're always looking for, for offense, we're going to find it. Right. And so, but so the problem is like when, you know, people people say something maybe not quite in exactly the right way or they like the way that we punish people like when we make the penalty so high you know for so just to go back to john's john ronson's book the justine sacco you know she tasteless joke on twitter to her 170 followers or whatever and then it blows up and her entire life is over yeah people don't know the story what do you remember the joke uh yeah i'm going to south africa hope i don't get

aids uh just kidding i'm white yeah exactly and that turned her life inside out right and i don't mean to say like i'm not saying like i'm just saying that there has to be more to get biblical grace like there's yes there's this uh there's this writer that i love actually uh and she says that uh the language of public discourse has lost uh the how she put it it's public discourse has lost the language of generosity like and that i think that's really it's really terrible but like so when you make the cost of misspeaking or or or of maybe not saying things in exactly the right way, like when you make that cost so high, what it does is it pushes out moderates. And what you end up with people on both two ends of these extremes and they're the only ones talking. And then it just it just, again, reinforces this this, you know, calcification and us them and, you know, tribalism and it's,

it's, it's dangerous. I think you're 100% right. I also think there's something that's going on where when you see someone do something really stupid, like Kathy Griffin holding up ahead of Donald Trump, I think we realize that in our worst day with our worst thought process, worst circumstances, that could easily be us And the worst, if you grew up in a fucked up way, or you have some imbalance in your personal life, or maybe you have some chemical imbalance, or you're depressed, and then you make a poor judgment call, or you get reinforced by other people around you that are fools as well, the next thing you know, you're doing something dumb. And that's why we like watching people balance and do handstands on the top of buildings.

Because we know that we've taken risks. We know we've done something stupid. You can identify those aspects of human behavior in other folks. And when they're doing something particularly terrible, there's a certain amount of relief that it's not you. And there's a certain amount of fascination of how will this play out. And a certain amount of how is this person going to recover from this all that stuff is very very intoxicating to us as these tribal animals that live together and understand how valuable it is to have the love and support of your peers and then that hate is so dangerous the ostracacizing of a person from the group, the alienation of them from the social community,

the knowledge that they have that people are talking about them all the time in an evil way. Kathy Griffin, she's un-American. She needs to go burn in hell and all this. That is going to be just eating away at her. And we know it. And it's one of the reasons why we like to concentrate on it there's a certain amount of weird sort of voyeurism that's involved in any any sort of a public misstep that people have and then the pile on by and a lot of people are just very very unhappy with their lives and so when someone else does something screwed up that they can take away some of the focus of their own missteps and focus it on this person and, and throw rocks.

And there's also just the sense of, of, I mean, righteousness, right? The self-righteousness, the, the, um, and this is why there's, um, did you see Sarah Silverman's new Netflix special? No, I haven't seen it yet. Uh, So she gets to a point and she's talking about going out to a picket, a Westboro picket. Oh, wow. And I actually had seen, she talked about this on Bill Maher a few years ago, too, and I just remember I knew her as

this, like, I didn't really, of course, know her anything specific except her comedy, she seemed kind of just kind of loud and a little I don't know, she would say things that would always make me cringe, like just very, like, like very blunt. So you listened to her comedy while you were in the church? A little, like not a lot. Did you have to sneak it?

No, like they're, they're really like, they're constantly, they call themselves the watchers, right? So they are looking around the landscape and seeing like how the word of God applies to all these people. They have to, in order to, to comment on what's going on, they have to know what's going on. So what people are saying and, and the trends and, and, and things. Um, so, so yeah, so I, when I saw her on Bill Moore, I expected her to be, I don't know, like hostile and, and whatever about the church when she started talking about them. But what she said, uh, what she said was at least on the, on the special, the way she put it was talking about them. But what she said was, at least on the special, the way she put it was, I am them. Like she went out and was talking to members of my family.

And, you know, she said, we have to see them as human. And she was like kind to them on the picket line. And she said, I told a duty joke or whatever. And the picketer, I guess one of my cousins or something, like snickered, you know, when she makes this joke, we have to see them as human. And then maybe they'll start to see us as human. And the way she put it on the on the Netflix special was I am them like I am the product of my experiences. And so are they.

And, you know, the only way you can change those things is to add to those experiences, like to introduce like David did on Twitter with me and my husband, things is to add to those experiences, like to introduce, like David did on Twitter with me and my husband, like introduce these ideas in ways that people can actually hear them and be moved by them. Yeah. We love to categorize people into these rigid boxes that are unchangeable and that you are this person. You always be this person. You are my enemy and you think this and you think that, and you're a dirty liberal and you're a disgusting Republican. And we have these weird ideological boxes that we love to shove people into. That's a perfect example of that. I mean, if they were little kids and they grew up in that church and they're seven years old, do we really believe that they would have the wherewithal and the understanding of the full spectrum of human behavior to say that this is wrong and that we shouldn't be protesting at this gay person's funeral and we shouldn't be holding up these signs and say, God hates fags.

Does God hate fags or not? Like, are you right, grandpa? Like who would have the mind? What's incredibly brave is that you deep into your twenties have this revelation and then have the courage to escape. And so I want to get back to that. Like, what was your job? Like what did, what was the first job you got?

Uh, so I didn't get a job immediately. I thought I had to, I thought I have to be responsible. Like, of course I'm with my sister. Like we had some money saved, just,

we lived at home. We didn't have a lot of expenses. Like we, we used our money to travel across the country picketing, but we still, we still had some money. That's hilarious. Yeah. We got to get out there and piss people off.

Well, we, and it was, it was, I thought it was the greatest. Like I thought like it was always exciting. Like, Oh, are you going on this picket trip? Yeah. I'm going to Los Angeles. Oh my God. So it was just like a part of life. Yeah.

You guys used to picket Scientology? A little. That's hilarious. And we're doing it in Clearwater once, too. It was super boring. Like, there was nobody out there. You got to rank the pickets by, like, I don't know, George W. Bush's second inauguration was, like, insane.

Oh, was it? And there's, like, Scientology. Oh, yeah. That was, like, post-9-11. It must have been really rough to hold up those signs. Yeah, especially. We had a sign that said, thank God for 9-11. It must have been really rough to hold up those signs. Yeah, especially we had a sign that said, thank God for 9-11.

Oh God damn it. And it was like, we were stationed like at the intersection of these three streets and they were blocked off for the parade. So like he finishes his inauguration speech and this like huge crowd of people, like hundreds of that,

whatever, how many? Oh my God. Thousands of people like flood down this thing and then they're stuck in this intersection waiting to go right past us on this sidewalk and so there was like this uh you know they're seeing this like thank god for 9-11 and it was right after the tsunami too uh so my mom had a son was holding the thank god for the tsunamis or whatever and um like so people are just enraged by the time they actually got to us so like we're standing like right at the edge of these barricades like

so on the other side is the parade route. And so like, you know, people were like jumping, like some guy jumped on my back, like one another, like stealing signs and like... Jumped on your back? Yeah. So I was like leaning over the barricade so he couldn't steal my signs.

Sorry, I'm not getting away from the mic. And so like one of my cousins actually like gave his signs to another church member and then was like standing on top of a trash can, like going come on, you guys, like, just just don't worry about them. They're not worth it. They're not worth it. Like my cousin who was, you know, just because it was so it got so physical, like, you know, people and like the cops. So he was saying you guys aren't worth it. He was trying to. Yeah. Pretending he was one of them. Yeah, exactly. Oh, wow. Yeah. Subterfuge. That one got pretty, yeah, got pretty dicey. Did it get violent? Like the guy who jumped on your back, like what did he do?

So I'm holding my signs and I'm like, I've tucked myself into this barricade. So like there's nothing else he can do. So he, and there was like, I should also say there were cops just on the other side of the barricade. Just like every five feet there was a cop. I think there was like maybe 14,000 cops in DC that day. Cause I was the first inauguration after nine 11. So anyway, but so, I mean, and the cops were mostly just standing there. Like I look over, the guy gets off and, um, I look at my, my brother is standing next to me. Who's seven or eight years. He would have been like early twenties. And, uh, um, this,

I see. And then when he jumped over the barricade, cause the way people were coming after us and this cop like pulls out a, uh, you know, club to, and making us get back over the barricade, like jump back over on the other side, like with these people who were, and not really doing anything, but it, it, but did you expect the cops to risk their lives even though you're obviously provoking people? I mean, you're obviously putting yourself in a situation where you're saying something incredibly insulting and just devastating to all these people that lost friends or loved ones on 9-11 or in the tsunami or have family members that are gay. I mean, did you guys really expect the cops are going to take the beating for you or the cops are going to get involved? For sure.

I mean, we thought that it was like it's their job, right? But if they didn't, you would never do what you did then, right? Like, what if someone passed some sort of a law saying, listen, you guys know what you're in for. We have no desire to help you. There will be no police presence. Would you still protest? Well, we did that. Some cops did respond that way.

Did they say there will be no police presence whatsoever? Yeah. Where was that at? Can't remember. But it happened respond that way. Did they say there will be no police presence whatsoever? Yeah. Where was that at? Can't remember. But it happened more than once? More than once, yeah, for sure. And sometimes the cops would say, we're going to come to protest something. And they would say, you can come, but you can't hold that sign.

Or you can't step on the flag or whatever. Sometimes they would tell us in advance. Sometimes they would wait until we got there. You guys would step on the flag? Yeah. Desecrating the flag was a big... We saw as an idol and you know the american flag is an idol actually my mom got arrested i had a we were in nebraska and um my little brother that we were protesting a soldier's funeral and we were like far away from the church um but there was a group of people on the other side of the street and they

were all holding american flags all the way from from from the road all the way up this, you know, the long entry to the, to the church. We were quite far away. And, uh, my brother was nine years old at the time and he did what he always did, which was, uh, you know, put down, lay the American flag on the ground and stand on top of it and hold a picket sign. to picket sign. And within like a couple of minutes, uh, like nine cops showed up, uh, and started talking about arresting my mother, uh, for flag mutilation and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And, uh, so before they do the arrest, you know, again, my mom and my uncle were both there and they are both lawyers. And my uncle was like, uh, you know, Johnson versus Texas, the Supreme court said in that case that you can mutilate. Not only can you mutilate a flag, you can even burn it.

And that's perfectly lawful. And one of the cops was like, we're not in Texas. We're in Nebraska. So, like, this is obviously a Supreme Court case. And he said the Supreme Court has jurisdiction all over the country. So, in other words, I guess what I'm saying is like the the way that sometimes the they did, sometimes they were really good cops who did their job more super professional and didn't let their beliefs about our religious beliefs or their what they thought about our

message get in the way of them doing their job. But sometimes they did. Sometimes they would threaten to arrest, you know, my our parents our parents if they brought children they would take their children away from them you know things like that but but we absolutely expected them to to do their jobs like that that was and this is the supreme court yeah i mean i know you're not justifying it but it's from the point of view of something like me, someone like me, I would say don't bring any cops there. No, if you start that kind of shit at a funeral or for a soldier and a bunch of people come by and beat your ass, well, then don't do that again. Because you're pissing people off and you're hurting their feelings and you're dealing with someone who's already emotionally scarred. and you're hurting their feelings and you're dealing with someone who's already emotionally scarred, those cops need to be out there stopping robberies and, you know, breaking and enterings

into people's houses and carjackings. And that's what they're supposed to be doing. They're not supposed to be like helping out people who are intentionally provoking and emotionally disturbing people. Right. But I mean, so obviously from the church's perspective, it's like this it's these are sincerely held religious beliefs and the first amendment like what good is the first amendment like this obviously this uh but it's not a first amendment issue like the but because the it's no one in an official position is saying you cannot speak well so compare that to like the campus what's going on on these campuses right where right so you think that the cops shouldn't be there to protect those people?

They're provoking people and making them angry? Well, it's a different sort of a scenario. I think the cops should definitely be there to prevent violence on campus for several reasons. One reason, because I think you're dealing with very young, very impressionable people who make very poor choices and feel justified because they're around a bunch of people that also have like-minded ideas, a lot of peer pressure, a lot of diffusion of responsibility that comes from these mass groups of people that are acting and the mob mentality that comes along with that. I think it's very, very important to protect them from themselves. And it's a hot button issue. I think protesting at a soldier's funeral is just gross. I agree with you. Yeah. I mean, I know you do. I know you do. I mean, but I'm just saying, like, I don't think the cops have

a responsibility to save you from being gross. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I mean, obviously this was a Supreme court case. It became a, did you know that? That there was a case where we were sued by the church. Yeah, I do remember that. And how did that play out? It went on. First, they won a $10.9 million verdict against us at the trial court. And then it was reversed at the appeals court. And the Supreme Court said eight to one. It's the constitutional right for them to do this. This is their religious beliefs. They have a right. They were especially because I mean, sometimes I will say like I described to you that very first picket soldiers funeral picket that I went to like that was very close quarters, you know, and we were way far, far away. Like in that, in the instance that went to the Supreme Court, they were more than a thousand

feet away. There was like a hill. The family didn't see church members, you know, things like that. There was, so, I mean, they have a right to do it. Who has a right? Well, the church. Right. Okay.

They have a right to decide. They have a right to do it. To say horrible things about someone who just died or someone who lost a son or a daughter in war. Yeah, I think obviously I don't I think it's terrible that they do do it. And that was actually one of the things, you know, before my sister and I left. That was one of the I wasn't going to hold a sign that I didn't believe was true. And I wasn't going to go to any more funeral protests. Right. But do you think that the police should I I mean, they're, they're operating on tax dollars

and it's a limited amount of resources. I mean, we're taxpayers, right? I mean. Sure you are. But do you think that the resources should go to the, the we think, right? I know. I know. I'm, I, but do you think that really that the cops, that's the, an, an intelligent and

adequate and fair use of resources to go and protect a bunch of troublemakers? So it depends on how do you feel about the First Amendment? Like it's the principle of the thing rather than the applications. Like this is just one application. So who's to decide whether or not it's right? That's the whole idea. So we have not entrusted our government to decide what opinions are acceptable

and what aren't. So they don't, they don't get to have, like, so. Right, but it seems like you're organizing this. So if you're organizing this sort of

antagonistic display where you know you're going to hurt someone's feelings in a very dangerous time. Right. Don't you think you should hire

your own security? Like, why should the police have to be there to secure you? Because, because this, it's why should the police have to be there to secure you? Because it's the law. Like, they are supposed to, you know, protect. Again, what good are... So First Amendment rights, right?

To be able to say... It doesn't protect popular speech, right? Because popular speech doesn't need protection. Unpopular speech needs protection. So it's just... Again, it's the... But the police are really there to enforce laws well the law is you don't get to punch somebody right but they're just

assuming that something is going to go bad okay so for instance like go just back to the campus thing for a second right you have these people who have announced we're going to go protest this person we're not going to let them speak even though they've been granted permission by the you know everybody like they're going they should be able to speak right we're not going to let them speak because we don't like their message so if the cops know that that's going to happen like so so what happens like i'm just trying to they don't do anything about it they let them shut it down um but i'm saying i i think that's wrong i think they they should be able they should go and like so this is what you think the cops should be able to... that based on like, if it's just, this is religious opinion and we weren't saying we want you to hurt

us. We're not trying to provoke you to hurt us. We're trying to deliver this message that we think is the truth of God. Right. So it wasn't, there's a difference between like deliberately provoking and inciting violence, like deliberately inciting violence. And what we were doing, which was, you know, trying to proclaim this message that we thought was the truth. Our goal wasn't violence. Like we didn't want violence. That's why we contacted the cops. Right.

We weren't going to attack them and, and we didn't want to be attacked. We just wanted to be able to exercise our rights without fear of, without fear of violence. That's, that's the principles of, of our democracy. Right. Um, so I see what you're saying. And I think that it's, it's, it gets a little weird when we're talking about people giving speeches on campus and then having other people shut down those speeches, because I think that the people who are protesting have as much right, especially if it's in their school, they have as much right

to voice their concern for this message as the person does to distribute that message. And if the police come along and say, we're going to shut down the distribution of this message, most of the time they do it when things are out of hand. So an excellent tool for someone who's trying to silence people is to make sure that things get out of hand. Which is why having the cops present

and letting both sides have their voices without the ability to resort to violence. So this is the whole idea. Like we would in these letters that would go out to the cops was that the idea of having a buffer zone like a yes, we're going we want to proclaim our message. We want you to be out there, too. Like we loved and honestly, we loved it when counter protesters were there because it just brought more attention to our message. Yeah, I understand that. But I just think that you shouldn't obviously it's not you anymore but i just do not think that anybody especially from an offensive group like that should be able

to allocate resources that are public use like police well so we obviously we didn't make the decision obviously like we didn't make the decision to for them to like they decide like okay well is this likely going to like so they can either be proactive and set the buffer zone or be reactive. Like we're calling the cops because we're getting punched or whatever. And cause like, they're going to go out no matter what. It was a, we, we, when, even when they would say, we're not going to protect you where we would go. Right. I mean, there were obviously, there were rare situations where, uh, so for instance, like, uh, when Gabby Giffords was shot in arizona uh we had a

couple of um an fbi agent actually and a guy from the local police department come and say like you shouldn't go and because there was a nine-year-old girl who had been killed yeah and the church said they were going to protest her funeral oh jesus and uh so they said i don't think we can protect you like this it's's too volatile. It's too. And so in that case, we actually didn't go. That's kind of a chicken shit response. Actually, I was going to say, so the thing is, so I was there during this conversation. And I heard my mom was explaining that we weren't going to go.

It actually had more to do with logistics. Like, we couldn't get there, like plane tickets and whatever. Like, we just couldn't get there. So it was like, okay, like, that's fine. Like, I hear you. You're so reasonable. It's so fascinating to talk to you because you're such an intelligent, reasonable person. It's almost impossible for me to imagine until I see like the little bit of resistance to the idea of this being a first amendment issue and the police there, then you kind of go back to the church. I could see it boil up inside of you. Well, it's just like, we were talking about this a little bit ago. I mean, just the whole, the importance of discourse in the marketplace of ideas. This is one,

like, like again, I, I, I just think it's so important and I think it's important, you know, because obviously my own personal experience makes me such a believer in. You've gone on a journey through free speech that most people never experience. Free speech that you don't even agree with anymore. Right. Yeah. Which is even more crazy. So let's go back to your first job.

What was it? What was the first job? I worked at a very briefly. let's go back to your first job. What was it? What was the first job? Um, I worked at a, um, very briefly. Like, so I should say my sister and I,

we were in, it was a couple of months before I actually got a job. Um, we spent the first month with, um, a cousin of mine who had left the church a few years earlier. She lived really close. She had left as well.

Yeah. So you guys knew some people had made it out. Right. But like, the thing is it, there's, there's so many, my sister calls them mind fucks. Right. So like the thing about people who leave is that they are demonized more than anybody else, even more than gays or Jews or any other outsider. It's ex-members who get the worst. You hear the worst things about them because they knew the truth and they rejected it. Right. they knew the truth and they rejected it right so i was when it when i thought of leaving like the last thing on my mind was that i could go to an ex-member i thought you can't trust them they're evil like so it's it's just this whole um there's intensely negative instinctive reactions to those things but obviously i overcame it and i reached out to her a few weeks before we left and she was amazing like within i hadn't talked to her a few weeks before we left. And she was amazing. Like within,

I hadn't talked to her in three and a half years and had said all kinds of terrible things, you know, about her, um, after she left, but, um, but she was wonderful. Uh, and she said like within like 30 seconds of like when I, when she understood that I was planning to leave, uh, I want you to come live with me. And was it was amazing and uh so kind and so i lived there for about a month um my sister was still in school so she was we were traveling back to can to topeka sorry it's like so it's a half an hour from my cousin's house you know four days a week while she was still in school and so we were constantly running into our family and driving by the pickets because they pick it every day in Topeka several times a day.

And like at the grocery store and on campus. And so it was just we needed to get away. So we ended up going to Deadwood, South Dakota. My brother had been a fan of the TV show and it just seemed like a nice, quiet place. So how many people went with you? It was you, your sister and your brother? No, it was just me and my sister yeah did anybody else join you after a while i have a brother who left about a year and a half after my sister and i did and i have another brother who left about eight years before i did wow so now there's seven there's 11 kids so seven

are still at home and four of us are out. Do you talk to them? Yeah. The people who are out. Yeah. What about the people that are in? No, they won't have anything to do with us. Wow. They're just like, I'm.

You talk to your mom? No. No. Uh, they, I, but the thing is like, so back to Twitter, like that's how I know what they are, what they're up to. Like I see photos, like, so back to Twitter, like, that's how I know what they're up to. Like, I see photos, like, they post photos. Like, I've been watching my little brothers grow up on their photos on Twitter and, you know, see what my parents, what my mom is doing. How hard is that? It's awful.

I mean, it's, I'm glad, I'm so glad to be living now and not, you know, before social media where I can actually see these things and know what they're up to and a little bit about how they want to reach out I do you do yeah I mean I do on on Twitter you know this is great about Twitter sometimes like I have they blocked me on my main account block not all of them but a lot of them to mom block you she actually created she gotaked off of Twitter at one point, so she had to create a new account. So she didn't block me on her new account yet. But she blocked you on her old account? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. That's deep. Yeah. When your mom blocks you on Twitter, that's tense. It's a big thing, right? It's really terrible. When you look and you see that you're blocked what is that what does that lump in your throat like just what you'd imagine like i can't believe like it's

so hard to think back to like i was incredibly close with my mom and i i love her and i miss her like i'm i used to make coffee for her every morning and like we'd go on walks together and we spoke to her um well actually i i saw her at a picket a little over a year ago she didn't she didn't say anything to me she didn't even talk to you no she she couldn't like a baby that came from her body loved you and raised you she can't like it's there it's it's so like when i think about like when i was at the church and this is one of the hardest things to articulate i mean to that the feeling of like when somebody leaves like there is no interaction so some people would ask like well what if you saw her at such a place you know wherever at the grocery store whatever like what what would you say they

would ask me this while i was still at the church and And it's so, it's like, uh, I, the only thing I can compare it to is like, it's like dividing by zero. Like the situation does not exist. Like there's nothing there. The idea of trying to talk to her, it is impossible. Right. And, and so crazy. That's the cult. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's the like in Jehovah's Witnesses, they call it a disfellowshipping, right? Yeah. They all have it. Scientology has it.

They all have it. It's one of the ways they control people. The fear of alienation is incredibly strong. And the fear of becoming like them. Yeah, exactly. So they'll talk to gay people. They'll talk to people with rainbow shirts on. They'll talk to ex-soldiers. They'll talk to those people. They won't talk to you. Right'll talk to people with rainbow shirts on they'll talk to ex-soldiers

they'll talk to those people they won't talk to you right that's insane but this is one of your mononucleic acid when i dose her um one of the like great things about twitter and and i just the internet in general is that it's a thing where so like they obviously like my little brothers for instance like they are you know hearing all this bad stuff about, you know, my sister and me, anybody who leaves, they'll, they'll hear bad things about us. But the good thing about the internet is that they can go on, they can go to my Twitter account and see what I'm actually saying. So I'm still, I go through these phases where like, I, I, I will tweet and then I get like, I can't, I just like the, the fear of judgment,

I guess, from my family. And I just, I just choose to focus on other things and not post things on Twitter. But like, I still, I follow them on this other account that I created that's not blocked. Right. And it's just WBC accounts. So like, and I see like things that they say and like doctrines that I now believe are unscriptural. And so like, I will tweet them, you know so I will tweet them versus what this contradicts you.

And try to basically doing what I was doing for them now against them. Just in these instances. And so there is some engagement a little bit with my family on Twitter. Especially because of anything that I do publicly. So maybe something about this, I don't know. But like when my TED talk came out, there was a couple of articles and like people were tweeting it a lot. And so my uncle and my aunt both were tweeting,

tweeting me and tweeting about me. And so I was, you know, we're having this repartee, I guess, like just, you know, going back and forth about these, these Bible verses and and and debating and so all of that stuff is it's it's i hope well at some point hopefully we'll have we'll have some effect and in some ways it already has so like the day that i left there was a we're gonna get to that job sometime soon don't worry about it the day that you left the day that i left my one of my of my cousins came into my bedroom while I was crying and packing. And I was asking just very calmly.

This is my best friend. She was a year older than me. Is a year older than me. And she's asking me why we're leaving. And I'm describing a lot of things. And I described specifically two signs. One of them was the death penalty for fags. And another one was fags can't repent.

And she sent me a message the next morning. And I was describing verses that I thought, you know, contradicted those two signs. And the following morning, she sent me a message, a text message super early in the morning, just like, just chewing me out, basically. Like that I know that leviticus and romans won like the death penalty like there's no there's you have no argument like so so what's you really your problem and um so and then for a while after i left like those signs were like everywhere like she's holding my cousin changes her profile picture on twitter to her holding

those two signs like screaming into the camera. And like one of the elders, like making a snow angel with those two signs. And it's like, so they're just like doubling down on this. Right. And so this goes on. It's like during this time, like I'm talking about it and like giving a few interviews, like talking about it there, like on Twitter a little bit, like reiterating the verses that contradict them. And then like after more than two years, like I wake up one morning and I check,

you know, I'm checking their Twitters and there was a blog post and they said about that fags can't repent sign. And I was like, Oh my God. It's like, like open the blog post. And it's for the first time ever,

they had publicly disavowed a sign and using the same Bible verses that I had been. And I know that's like a very small point in the grand scheme of things. Right. But that's, that's reason that's critical reasoning. But, but like,

so this is, this is the goal, right? So like to knowing this is like, do you, do you know the story behind it? I don't, I don't.

It was after my, my brother left. So I don't really know, you know, nobody, nobody who's left since then I also I have two two actually of my cousins have left since then also um but none of them have any understanding of like of of what happened so I don't know I and I'm not I'm not trying to take credit I should also say like well it doesn't matter it doesn't matter like it just matters is that it that this idea is possible. Yeah.

This idea gets into their head that what they're doing, it's, this is not in any way the teachings of Christ. Right. I mean, like the thing is like some, some of it is some of it, some of it is.

Yeah. But like, there's like huge, God hates fag stuff. Well, like, so it's so crazy because like, this is something that I didn't realize until

after we left also. But like, we thought, remember I told you about love thy neighbor? Like they have a sign, love thy neighbor equals rebuke, right? Because that's in Leviticus 19. That's how it describes, you know, love. Warning your neighbor when you see them sinning so they don't go to, you know, they have an opportunity to repent. But the one time, like, so in the New uh jesus is talking with this guy and the guy says

like how do i inherit eternal life and he says well jesus says what is what does the scripture say and he says to love god and to love your neighbor and he says you're right he says and who is my neighbor and jesus tells the story of the good samaritan. So it's like this, do you know this story? How does it go? It's, so this man, it says this man falls among thieves and they beat him and leave him half dead. They beat him until he's half dead or whatever and steal his clothes and leave him there.

And then it says a priest goes and sees the man and he crosses the street and walks by on the other side. And then a Levite, who's also like dealing with the things of God, right? He does the exact same thing, crosses and goes on his way, doesn't help him. And then the Samaritan stops and binds up his wounds and puts him on his own, says he puts him on his own beast and takes him to an inn and gives the innkeeper money to take care of him and says, anything that you spend more than this, I'm going to, I'll pay you back when I, when I come again. So he's like actually practically taking care of him. So Jesus says, and who do you think, which, which of these was neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?

And he said, he who has mercy on him. So in other words, what I'm saying is like, we reduced loving our neighbor to preaching, to picketing, to putting words on signs and going out and publishing them. That's what we thought loving our neighbor was. But the one time,

the example that Jesus gives is not preaching. Like they, they didn't go like the Samaritan didn't go and say like this happened to you because you're a sinner repent he went and helped him right and so like where was that on our picket signs where was that in your practice yeah like why didn't exactly exactly like why why didn't we why didn't we make that an issue for ourselves, like a primary part of our theology? And why didn't we encourage others to do it too? Anyway, so again, this is something that I didn't realize until

after I was talking to a couple of Christian friends of mine who pointed that out. And I was like, I cannot believe I missed that, like all those years. And what's crazy is like in the story, the priest and the Levite are the people who are like dealing with the things of God. Right. So they're presumably preaching. It's not enough. Like that's not. Action.

That's not the fulfillment of that. Yeah. So anyway, there's like so many of these things that I just couldn't see when I was at the church. Because again, you're in this. It's kind of an echo chamber. Like clearly we had access to the outside world and we're having these discussions. But the problem with that discussion is that in a lot of cases, people just didn't understand what our theology actually was, how we actually thought. Which is why, you know, David Abbott, while making this, you know, Julicious, like the fact that this was an ongoing conversation, that he really got into the nuances of our theology and could really understand where I was coming from to be able to make the point in a way that I could understand.

And that's, I mean, I'm kind of in a position to do that with my family now. Anybody, any of us who leaves and who understands, you know, can, can try to push back in a way that's a lot more effective than people who just don't understand where they're, where they're coming from. So you get this job. Yeah. So I got a dead one. My sister and I go to Deadwood and, uh, we were only going to be there for a month and, and then we're going to go back and Grace was going to go to school and then I was going to get a job. Um, and then I was in Deadwood for a couple of weeks and I was like, I could, I, the idea of going back to Kansas and like being back in the shadow of the church and

like seeing our family all the time and like seeing them and not like it's, it's constantly being face to face with rejection and the people that we love the most. And like the idea of going back to that environment, like I, my cousin was wonderful and I, I love her dearly. Like I just couldn't go back there. So like the day before we're supposed to leave Deadwood, uh, just couldn't go back there. So like the day before we're supposed to leave Deadwood, uh, Grace decided to try out for a play there and, uh, and agreed to stay with me. So we changed like all of her classes to be online. And anyway, so we're, and we're staying with Jehovah's

Witnesses, which we didn't know that when we booked it, it was an Airbnb. My first, our first Airbnb is a beautiful old house in the black Hills. And, um, um, so yeah, like we, they, they thought at first when they realized like what was happening, like who we were, we start having these conversations and then we find out they're Jehovah's Witnesses. And they thought at first that we might be disfellowshipped witnesses before they realized that we were at the church. Anyways, it was just like this insane conversations about, you know, doctrine and theology and interpretation. And it was just so mind-blowing to see that there were other ways of understanding these texts that are consistent with the text, but totally different than we understood. Anyway, the husband, Dustin, co-owns a marketing company in Deadwood. So I took a job there part-time.

So what is your process or what's the journey from leaving the church, going to Deadwood, and then becoming sort of a self-proclaimed atheist? How do you completely remove yourself from the shackles of ideology? Or did you? No, so it's definitely a—I didn't want to do—I don't think it's possible. It's not like a switch flips and you're just, everything that you knew is gone. But you're obviously very rational. Yeah.

So it was like each, each time we'd be presented with a situation that, that, uh, so like gay people or Jewish people or these like Jehovah's witnesses, it was, obviously I had the instinctive responses to their ideas um and so but each time i would feel you know feel something it would i would just like ask myself these questions

you know what am i feeling why am i feeling it is this just instinctive what is the evidence like does what makes sense like it's sort of like having to, to, to, to try to reconstruct, like, like, actually look at the evidence again, like starting from scratch, basically, in a lot of ways. So, so each time we're presented with these situations, like, you know, it's, because obviously, there's all these, like, so for instance, gay people, like, that actually didn't take that long to change. Like, because I, I had met a lot of gay people, like, while I was at the church. And they, after we left and, you know, we're talking to them and I'm like, you know, I thought I was doing the right thing.

And I'm sorry. Like, I didn't intend to hurt you or to say hurtful things about you. Like, I thought it was the truth. And now I don't know what the truth is. I don't say hurtful things about you like I thought I thought it was the truth and now I don't know what the truth is I don't know I don't know what I believe I don't know I don't know what I'm doing um and like people I mean they responded to that I mean like they were really understanding um and and empathetic in a way that I never imagined people would be like given how I don't know if you've seen, like, uh, it's, it's really hard for me still to, to go back and watch some of those videos because it's so it's, I know exactly where I was coming from at the time, but it's so like

the arrogance and the condescension and the certainty that we were right. And now of course, knowing like all the reasons why I don't believe those things, it's a very strange, strange dynamic. But anyway, it's like the fact that people were understanding in spite of that long history of all those things that I had said and done at the church was overwhelming and wonderful. But anyway, so like being, I was basically, my sister and I were basically putting ourselves over and over. anyway so like being I was basically my sister and I were basically putting ourselves over and over um we hadn't been in Deadwood for very long when I got a message from David it was on my on my birthday and I I told him that we had left and uh you know he he saw I had stopped tweeting that's he knew something was up because I had stopped tweeting several months earlier and uh so he invited us to

come to the Julicious Festival, which was a few weeks later. It's like end of February or something, beginning of March. And I had protested the Julicious Festival like three years earlier, and all these like negative associations and feelings about Jewish people, but realizing I don't know anything about Jewish people. Like we've been protesting the synagogue in Topeka, I don't know anything about Jewish people. Like we've been protesting the synagogue in Topeka like all my life. But I haven't I don't really know what like other than, you know, just generally Jews kill Jesus and reject him as the savior. So therefore they're like without hope. But I didn't know really much about Jewish theology.

I didn't know anything about Jewish people like I'd never really spent time with them. So so I wanted to go to the festival. My sister and I did because we wanted to we wanted to meet Jewish people and like do this whole, it's this examining process. Like what do we believe and why? And we got so much like light and sort of wisdom from other people, like learning what they believed and why, you know? So, and then David said, yeah, but you have to, you have to speak at the festival. And I was like, no, no, this is not happening. Like I can't, I cannot imagine facing these people that I have spent so many years. Like I thought I just, it just seemed impossible and it terrified

me to be coming face to face with people. And, and I hadn't even been out of the church for three months yet. So it was, it was really scary. Um, but my sister was like, we're going like, she, she knew that, um, we needed to have this experience of, of like, of learning about Jewish people. And if the cost was, we have to talk about it. Fine. And she also said later, she knew I would do most of the talking. So I was like fine but so we we went and and we we spoke there and then i thought okay that's great now we're gonna like we need to figure out like grace and i kept saying we want to do good like that that had been the motivating principle of our life was to do good and now we realized we did so much damage and and so anyway, so we were trying to

find a way, like, we didn't know what to do. Like, how do you move forward from there? And so we just, we didn't know. So we were kind of drifting that whole first year, we basically, I think a month was the longest we spent anywhere. We were, you know, we went to visit ex members of the church, you know, who were across the country. My dad's family, who we never knew growing up because they were never part of the church. So, I mean, like we had seen them, like they would come visit for a few hours sometimes or maybe a couple. They were allowed to visit even though they weren't? For a while.

But then several years before we left, they cut off all contact with his family there also. It had been very limited already. So you haven't spoken to your dad either? Mm-mm. So you spoke to his family? Yeah, his parents and his brother. And how do they feel about all this? My grandmother, I called her about a month,

a little over a month after we left, one of my first nights in Deadwood. And I told her we had left, and she just immediately started crying. And she said, I've been waiting for this for 30 years. Like she had my older brother had one of my older brothers had left since since my dad had joined the church is what she was saying. You know, she my dad's parents are so they're they're amazing people. Like his dad is it was career Air Force. He retired from the from the Air Force.

Like his dad is, it was career Air Force. He retired from the, from the Air Force. Um, and they're, they're wonderful people. And all we could see of them was, well, they're divorced and remarried. They're, they're going to hell. They're a bad influence. And like, it, what's, it's, it's insane to me now to think like my grandmother has been without her son, like her son for decades and how painful that, that must be. Like I've only been, it's been four and a half years since I left. And what am I going to be doing in 30 years? Like how am I, what is, what is the, and I don't know. It's a crazy journey that you've been on for just four and a half years. It's really insane. Really? Like when did it solidify in your head that you were going to like identify or like speak out as a non-believer? This morning. Really? I mean, like, so I was, I was actually talking to Sam about this a few months ago. Like, because like there's, there's, there's part of me that like i mean when i said

when a lot of a lot of people hear jerk when they hear atheist right and uh i don't use that word for myself atheist i don't either and and and it's because like it entails like it seems to bring in like this idea that you're so certain you're certain there's no god you mock people who are religious you don't like them and all this. And I don't feel that. And I also feel like I am open to evidence. I haven't decided there is no God. It's like, I just don't see the evidence. And so I don't believe. And if there is evidence, I want to know. And again, I talk to religious people all the time and I think about theology a lot. I just, I can't not like. It also becomes, there's a, there's a group mentality involved in atheism.

And there's, uh, I, one of the reasons why I was reluctant to identify as an atheist is that so many people were asking me to identify as an atheist. I'm like, what do you give a shit? Why do you want me to come out? I told you I'm not religious. Right. me to come out. I told you I'm not religious. Like, but especially, especially the idea that there cannot be a God, like, or there cannot be any sort of a higher power and that after you die, it just ends. How do you know? Right. Exactly. And that's exactly where I am. It's not a knowing for certain that there is no God. It's a, I just don't believe.

There's so little we know about human life. Forget about the idea of possibility of afterlife or the possibility of what consciousness is, the possibility of what this concept that we call soul is. What is that? Or forget about psychedelic experiences and what do they represent? And what do they represent when they're coming from what essentially is human neurochemistry? There's the most potent ones or chemicals that exist in the brain. They're endogenous to the human body. And what are those experiences? And why are they so akin to religious experiences? now, especially these scholars in Jerusalem have connected the burning bush of Moses with the acacia bush, which is a bush that's rich in psychedelic chemicals. And they think that it's entirely possible that Moses had a psychedelic experience in which he came back with all the laws that human beings are supposed to be living as proclaimed by the great spirit of the universe or whatever the hell he encountered.

Like who, who knows? Who knows? But this idea that people love to say, you know, God is dead, there is no God. Like, that's just as silly as saying there is one. Right. And this is why, like, the whole process since we left, like, it wasn't, like, I mean, first of all, like, the idea of choosing another belief system. Like, I would, like, learn all this stuff about Jehovah's Witnesses. And I'm like, okay, yeah, that mean, first of all, like the idea of choosing another belief system, like I would like learn all this stuff about Jehovah's witnesses and I'm like,

like, okay, yeah, that's mostly internally consistent. Like, I think there's a lot of, I, I never was like tempted to join them or whatever.

And I should say that actually they're not, they're not witnesses anymore. Like they've since, yeah, they left a little over a couple of years ago. Oh, they left too. Huh?

Yeah. Wow. Do you think that you guys leaving and having these intimate conversations with them in their home might have had something to do with that i i'm still really good friends with them like they're some of my best friends um i don't i don't think that it was that direct of a thing but it was a part of the whole journey yeah i mean i think so like we we would have these long conversations and actually i was the craziest thing when i found out like that that they had left like it was it was dustin and laura are their names laura it was her birthday and uh they don't jobs when this is don't celebrate birthdays like i was i was talking

on the phone and i didn't even know it was her birthday it's like i was we were talking on the phone for like over an hour and i was like telling her about all this all these things that i'd been thinking about and like and then at the end of the conversation, she's like, she's like, well, it's my birthday today. And I'm celebrating it. And I just like, was shocked. I didn't say anything for a couple seconds. Like I, I, cause I obviously like knowing what that, and it was different. It wasn't as like as much for them, you know, like it wasn't the same level of same level but like i know the disorientation and the loss and like all that it's complicated it's like you don't want to just be like oh my gosh i'm so glad you're out of this because i think they believe some things that are really kind of nuts

but but so i was just like very cautiously like like i don't know what happened but just know that i i mean i i'd always like loved and cared about them and and you know like but i was so eager to have these conversations, like, to understand what had happened with them. And it's kind of just following the, like, how much internal inconsistency, like when you were saying earlier about the whole idea about the Bible being the infallible word of God,

and like, oh, that's a neat trick. There's no way you can argue around that. This is why, like, it's, I think, internal inconsistency, like, in the doctrines themselves. Like, that seems to be a really important way to get in, to get through that. Like, to argue. Plant the seed of doubt. Yeah.

Because that's, you have, it's finding the inconsistency in these two beliefs that allows you to maybe question the bigger things, the bigger principles. And anyway, I think it's important to ask the questions. No matter what you believe, it's important to question and to always be looking and examining for new evidence. Because like, you know, you talk about this a lot, but like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, like these things that keep us locked into these belief systems and impervious to change. Or not even impervious, but like, like resistant to it. Yeah. We want to be like open. And, and so this is, I mean, I still try to do this and this is why like.

But do you, do you ever want to like grab your mom and go, you got to listen to me for an hour. Just let's talk. I would, if she, I would love to talk to her if she would listen to me, but she. She just won't even look at you. No. Like if you knocked on the door or rang your doorbell. That's happened a couple times.

Not me, my sister. And like they close the curtain, the window, and turn off the lights inside. That happened once. Wow. But yeah, they won't. And this is why... Do you think it's possible she might hear this? Yeah.

She would listen to this? I think it's possible. I mean, I think. She would listen to this. I think it's, I think it's possible. I mean, I think, I think somebody at the church will listen to it for sure. I mean, so this is the thing,

like when people leave, like everything that we say, any of us who leave that we say and do publicly, the church pays very close attention to it. Like when I was at the church, I did the same thing. And partly it's a, like needing to know like what they're saying so that you can have a good

explanation like you can counter it effectively it's a game yeah you're scoring poor points and uh but so this is why another reason why it became evident that i couldn't hide forever like if i hiding following the rules you know pretending like none of this happened like not causing any waves for the church like that doesn't change anything. Like the only thing that helps is, is talking about it. Like, and, and, and because here's the other thing, like, even if I like privately in, in letters, like there's things that I sent to my parents or other church members, like they're not going to, I mean, they're probably not going to share those with my siblings. And if they do, it's going to be with a whole bunch of, you know, words against me at the same time.

So like it's, it's only by talking publicly. Can you, you know, that's how they can actually see who you really are and what you really think and what you've really gone through without the filter of look at what these whores are doing. Right. Things like that. Like it's, it's, uh, do you think your kids or your, your brothers and sisters are going to hear this? I think some of them definitely might,

definitely might. Do you have hope that they'll eventually bolt? I do. I hope that they not, not because of any, I hope they can hear the reasoning and see the consequences of what they're doing for other people. And a lot of it, I mean, is unscriptural.

And so even by their own understanding, like there are things that contradict them. I hope that they change their minds. At the very least, I hope that the church continues to moderate, to not be so, a lot of their new signs are things like uh another one of the big things for me was imprecatory prayer right which is this idea of this word imprecatory imprecatory so it's like praying for curses for your enemies right oh? Oh God. Right. So we did this. You prayed a curse against your enemies? Um, often. Yeah. Wow. That seems incredibly non-Christian. Right. But there's a, like David, King David. Oh yeah. It's Old Testament though, right? It is. It's true. Well,

see, this is the thing. So like, you know, we, we took that as an example for us. So he prayed for his enemies, for their children to be fatherless and for their wives to be widows. And so he's praying for God to do all these bad things to them. Is that the Romans? He was praying against the Romans? No, it was David, Philistines. Okay. Yeah.

And Saul, I guess. So we took that as an example. So his example of him praying against his enemies. So after we left, I sent, I contacted my dad and talked about this problem. So like David also had a lot of wives, but we don't take his example as that men should have many wives. Yeah, what about that? And why? Well, it's because it contradicts what Jesus and the Apostle Paul said about marriage marriage being one man one woman for life right so that's the new way right so and jesus and paul both also said they talked about loving your enemies bless them that curse you and pray for

them that despitefully use you and persecute you so you're supposed to be praying for the good of your enemies. Right. And so it's, it's a contradiction. Right. And so anyway, it's another like a long time. Like there's been like a bunch of sermons. Like, so now my grandfather passed away three years ago.

And so now there's eight elders and they're the eight pastors. And my, my dad is one of them. So there's been a series of sermons on imprecatory prayer since then. And they're like, it seems like it seems so confused because like on the one hand, they're still kind of justifying it, but also it just seems like you're trying to reconcile things that aren't reconcilable. So, so, but a lot of the, the, so they stopped, I should say, there used to be a flyer that went out every, like, Friday. And it used to say, like, thank God for 15 dead soldiers.

We pray for 15,000 more. And so it would list all the soldiers who had died that week. And within, like, after, like, eight months, you know, my dad gave a sermon about imprecatory prayer. know, my dad gave a sermon about imprecatory prayer. Like at the time when I first, you know, said that, you know, there was, uh, he put out a video news, uh, explaining like why imprecatory prayer is the thing. And it's supported by the Bible. Eight months pass. He gives a sermon about loving your enemies. Within a couple of weeks that flyer was changed and now it doesn't say that we pray for 15,000 more. Um, I haven't seen the, what's the first part is the first part still thank God. So they, they say, because God is sovereign, you have to thank,000 more. I haven't seen the... What's the first part? Is the first part still... Thank God.

So they say, because God is sovereign, you have to thank him for everything. So the fact that these... So still thank God for 15 dead soldiers. Yeah. So the second part, what I'm just trying to say is like,

there has been some moderation. And a lot of the new signs are things like, be reconciled to God and Christ our hope. Things like that, like that are not God hates fags. Like those are, I think that's, I think that's improvement at the very least, even though there are still obviously these, these harsh things as well.

Yeah. So there's some adjustment and some consideration. Um, so you don't talk to your dad anymore either, right? No one. No. Um, is, wow. So you don't talk to your dad anymore either, right? No one? No. Wow. Is there anything that you think that you can do other than continuing to speak and continuing to do what you're doing that's going to reach them?

So, I mean, I'm almost finished writing a book. I'm nearing the... Is it a book to them? It is both for them and also for other people. There's part of the... So that's kind of what I was getting at. Yeah. It's like you writing a book, like letters to my mom and dad. So it's not written quite that way. Not as a...

I actually did consider doing it that way, but I eventually ended up like right now it's based on um each chapter is based on a relationship that sort of brings us like the starts with my mother and then my grandfather and sort of like coming into this ideology and then the process of all the like the mental machinations of of leaving and like how my mind changed over time and then what's happened since we left like and I hope that by, you know, for my family, I hope that by articulating these things in, in a way, it's like, obviously we're sitting here and even if we talk for like, however many hours, like there's only so much that it's not the same as having it written

in a way that's hopefully very clear and, and, and, and just honest to the experience, like in as much detail and clarity with as much detail and clarity as possible. Like, I think that that's, I hope that that will, will be effective in at least showing them that there's a different way. There are other ways of, of understanding these things. And so I do hope that, um, I guess I also hope like in my Ted talk, I, I, I have, I have, I feel really, um, like hesitant about like trying to teach anybody anything at this point. You know what I mean? Like, because I spent my whole life telling other people how to live and now to be like, well, you guys know, I got this, like now I got this, like, you know, like it just, the idea of like, uh, insinuating even in any way that I have something to tell people about anything.

Like I, I'm, I really don't like that idea at all. And the only reason I did the John Ronson actually as the one who reached out to me about, about it, because he it was a thing that he was curating an event that he was curating, curating. And so I wrote the first draft of the talk and and the curators, you know, came back afterwards, like, well, it's like, this is how can we avoid the mistakes that you made? And so like, I went back and like, took examples from David and my husband and the way that people on Twitter engage me that actually helped, helped change things. But so, so it's not explicit in that way in the book. But I hope that just by talking about this and telling the stories like, I, when I read accounts of people who have gone through similar situations,

read accounts of people who have gone through similar situations, it, it's so helpful to me, like to realize like my family, like, yes, they manage their, their activities are kind of, they're extreme and like they manifest themselves in very strange ways to most people, but they're very common, very human flaws. And if, if anything that, if I talk about this in a way that helps other people see it in their own lives or that will resonate with people who have gone through similar things, I want to do that. I want to do as much good with these experiences as I can just because that's how my parents raised me, honestly. me, honestly. Right. But their argument, of course, would be, you know, you were so right and so convinced when you were with the church. Now you're so right and so convinced now that you're outside of the church. How do you know you're right now? So the latter, it's not the same. It's not the same at all. Like I'm not, I do not walk through the world with the sense of,

with that sense of certainty and, and in my position and righteousness of my position i i'm asking questions and i'm i'm trying to explain what why i believe differently now than i did i'm still asking the questions that like i never stop like you know what i mean it's it's it's such a fundamentally different way of of the world. I do know what you mean. But if I was on their side and I was trying to pick holes in your statement, which is what they seem to do, right? If they're listening to the things you say, they're listening to the things you say so they can counter them with some sort of a Bible quote or some sort of a more articulate opinion. If I was listening, I would say you were so convinced when you were with us. Now you're so convinced.

But now you don't even have God. So how could you be right? So the thing is. You're deluded. The Satan's serpent scales are covering your eyes. Don't they say shit like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is another one of the paradoxes that I realized before I left.

So there's this verse. And again, this is one that my mom would quote all the time growing up. And with such urgency, like she needed us to understand this. And the verse is, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And who can know it? Right. So. I thought the heart was good.

Home is what the heart is. No. I thought heart is like people being sweet. And so the human heart is inherently, and according to the church, is inherently deceitful. Right? Wow. Okay. But the problem is they also talk about the heart as being like, that's how we know that the Bible is true.

It's because God puts an unction on our hearts. Your deceitful little heart. Yes, exactly. So you're at the end of the day it's always our own hearts like it's our hearts that say okay well i'm going to follow the bible no matter no matter what or in other words at the end of the day each one of us is always making a decision it's just that for them they they think that outsourcing it and saying that oh no it's the bible it's like well you're the it's your i tried to articulate that on on when i did sam's sam harris's the Bible. It's like, well, it's your... I tried to articulate this when I did Sam Harris' show a couple of years ago.

But it's that. I read it actually in his book. That's what helps me. It's your own moral impulses that are authenticating the truth of the Bible. Right? So at the end of the day, it's still you. It's still your judgment. The judgment of your own deceitful heart. So again, from their

perspective. So I guess what I'm saying now is like, I'm not, when I, when I talk to my family, when I'm addressing them, like it's, it's with these questions, like, I know how you understand these verses, but what about these things that contradict them? I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying, I can't see how you're right because of these verses. Like, how do you do this? How do you understand this? And what about verses that contradict other verses in the Bible? The church doesn't believe in that, that those contradictions exist. So when you talk about those contradictions, which are pretty clear, what, what do they say? Well, so the Lord works mysterious ways good night kids right

right there's there's always that like if if you think there's like for instance like back to the like free will or sorry the predestination thing that god designing people to go to hell and then holding them responsible right so there's this this is a contradiction right this the idea that you are responsible right you're man's responsibility and god's sovereignty they don't go together right such an awesome quote can you say that quote again man's uh sorry there was man's responsibility and god's sovereignty they do not go together right but the quote in the bible oh i'm sorry the way it's phrased um oh which the neighbor oh man who art thou that replies against God?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Shall the thing form say to him that formed it? Why hast thou made me thus? Yeah. So, yeah. So it's that those ideas are inherently, they're inconsistent, right?

They're contradictions. And so Gramps, I remember one day in church, he was. That's what you call him? Gramps. Gramps. Yeah. Sounds like such a cute name. He's great. Such an evil old dude. contradictions and so gramps i remember one day in in church he was you call him gramps gramps yeah sounds like such a cute name he's great such an evil old dude no i'm sure he's not he could be so he is your grandpa funny and and like it's so funny because like he could be funny oh hilarious really yeah was he a sweet guy just like his family he would sing the song from the 40s and call us my great big beautiful doll like that's 40s and call us My Great Big Beautiful Doll.

That's what he would call us. And Love Bug. So you miss him. Yeah. When you sat, you didn't get to see him before he died. Because you left. I can't talk about that. You can't?

Not now. I can't. Not unless you want me to start crying. I won't do it. Sorry. That's okay. But yeah, he's... I thought there was like a legal reason.

No, no, no. He was... That's just that deep. For all the stuff you talked about. Yeah. Like you can't talk to your dad. You can't talk to your mom. But something about your grandpa.

Yeah. He's special. Yeah? I'll tell you later. Okay. Okay. But in the eyes of most people, he was the booming voice of hate. For sure.

And I totally understand it. Isn't that so fascinating, though, that you could see someone in an intimate way? You love them, their family. You get to see all the positive aspects of them. And yet you get to see this venom that he spews out to all the world. And that also represents you guys and your family and your ideology. And you're behind this powerful leader. He's the founder of all this, right?

So essentially he's the man who created the very bars that imprison your family right now. I know. And this is one of the things, after I left, thinking about how did we get here? How did we end up in this place? It's an understanding of psychology or a lack of the problem with any sort of ideology, rigid ideologies that are backed up by a deity is that there can be no questioning. And as soon as there can be no questioning, you're, you're talking about human language. You're talking about something that came obviously from the words of human beings. They wrote those words down, they put them somewhere, and now you're reinforcing this ideology. Anyone with even a basic understanding of how easily influenced people are and about our alpha male chimpanzee history or lower primate history, we know that we're incredibly susceptible to influence and incredibly susceptible

to the whims of the group mindset and that this was imperative for survival these tribal instincts that we have imperative for survival and the reason why we made it to 2017 and that these play against us in the in forms of ideology and these very rigidly reinforced behavior patterns. I mean, that is what, that's what the, and when the problem becomes atheism versus people who are deists or people who are Christian or Muslim or whatever the fuck it is, it has nothing to do with that. Honestly, it's just about mind and about humans and about our, our, our inherent tendency to give into these, these predetermined patterns

of behavior to give us comfort in these patterns. Yeah. There is so much comfort in certainty. Yeah. I mean, it's, it could be really frustrating. All these, sometimes all the rules and the, like, like you said, very rigid, but, but after when I left, the uncertainty was just this enormous weight. Like I had no idea. Like what enormous weight on you? Yeah. Right. All of a sudden. Yeah. Cause like, again, well, one, first of all, like one of the things that makes doing things like this hard or like speaking publicly at all now that it's not like me, like with God on my side or whatever is the idea. Like now I'm standing on my own two feet. Like it's, it's my own ideas and like, who the hell am I? You know, just that the sense of like self doubt and uncertainty and, and like, it's, it's just, it's, it's, it can be crippling sometimes. But, but you just, you have to keep going and keep asking the question. Like, this is one of the things, like you said, I mean, the whole, another reason I don't like to call myself an atheist or to call myself anything.

Actually, Sam, sorry, I cannot stop talking about Sam Harris. But he had this, this video where he was saying, we shouldn't call ourselves atheists or secularists or humanists. We shouldn't call ourselves anything. We should just be good, decent people living in world and and challenging bad ideas wherever we find them like that's it's not about the i mean we want an identity like people crave identity and and belonging in this like the the in-group like when you're talking about grams like how how much goodness i got to see in him that like people on the outside never saw it's because of that you know the in-group out-group mentality, like the, the bond, like

I said earlier, the bonds that are forged there. It's so, it's so enticing, but, but it comes at a, at a huge cost and I didn't see that cost for a long time. And so now this is another reason I don't, I just don't like those labels. It's not about the identity. It's just about trying to find the best way we can to live in the world and do as much good as we can. I think there are bumps in the road in the evolution of culture. I think that's what they are. I just think we haven't figured out how

dangerous they are and that we fall prey to them. But they're also the reason why we got here in the first place, because we did figure out these ways to bond together. We did figure out these ways to identify with each other in this very extreme and very personal way. And if it wasn't for those things, who knows if we would have ever made it this far. Who knows? But they've also been able to, people have been able to rationalize horrific acts through the use of this us versus them, you know, our group versus the other. It's a very strange aspect of what I believe is the adolescent nature of human social and cultural evolution, which is where we're at right now. We've come so far, we think, but really we haven't. We haven't really been

around that long. I mean, they're talking about this, this modern human being they found 300,000 years ago. God, that's a blip blip so it's a blink of an eye in terms of the history of the world never mind the history of the universe and i think that it's it's very dangerous when someone tells you they know it's very dangerous because you don't know and so you're like well if they know i'll just listen to them and that's what we've been doing forever it's and i think people are recognizing more and more now that that is that's not safe it's dangerous and it's an impediment to progress personal progress uh progress as a community we have just this insane instinct to join teams to the point where people they identify with certain

patches of dirt I'm a Texan like oh you're a Texan so this is all okay you know. I'm a Texan. Like, oh, you're a Texan. So this is all okay. You know, hey, I'm from New York. Oh, you're from New York. Well, I get you now. I understand you. You're in this nice little category. You get to operate on these predetermined patterns now. You don't even have to have your own beliefs. You just adopt a conglomeration of beliefs that fit whatever category you fall into, whether you're a left wing progressive or a right wing conservative. So it's where it's, we're really weird. We're a really weird monkey. It's just, we're so strange. And we're also aware how weird we are. That's, I was going to say like, that is the, that's where I feel so much and why I feel so much hope. Right. Because like the more awareness we have, like the better

we can go about trying to sort of shore those things up, like see the pitfalls and then try to find ways around them. But it takes people like you that are incredibly courageous that break out of the pattern and, and, and just paddle out into the waters of discomfort because that's what people have a really hard time doing. People have a really hard time changing. They have a really hard time taking chances. They have a really hard time doing new things. And you did all of it at once in one big burst.

And you separated from your tribe. It was so important to you that you separated from your tribe. That's so hard. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But this is one of those things where like i mean i was talking to david after i left before the jelicious festival we were sitting uh in the home of uh this rabbi that i had protested earlier and and uh your rabbi is a whore was the sign my sister held and like oh nice now like living with this rabbi right like actually that's what i'm staying with here while i'm here you're staying with a rabbi yeah rabbi is a whore was the sign my sister held. Oh, nice. Now we're living with this rabbi, right?

Actually, that's who I'm staying with here while I'm here. You're staying with a rabbi? Yeah, rabbi and his wife and their four kids. How is a rabbi a whore? That you pay them and they make you feel good. Like they tell you what you want to hear because you pay them. Oh, God, that makes them a whore? In that case, is a comedian a whore too?

I must be a whore, right? Yeah, probably. Probably, yeah. For sure. It's whoredom. It's prostitution. What about people who give massages? Whores?

I wouldn't go there. But they're making you feel good and you pay them. Well, it's lying to you. It's lying to you, yeah. Oh, okay. So chiropractors would be whores. Is that how it would work? I guess.

But David was like, it's like you are your parents' children. I'm just sitting there bawling because I felt like such a betrayer. This was right after we left. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, they're the ones who taught you to stand up for what you believe in no matter what it costs you and so i i i love that idea like that there's still so much from home that i have held on to and that that still guides me uh it's just that i obviously had to it's just the the things that i now think are destructive and and hurtful and just not true, not consistent with reality. But that gave me a lot of, like, a lot of hope.

Right. Well, you definitely seek comfort in ancient wisdom and quotes. Who, me? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's hard. Like, here's the thing. Like, it's so, I remember I thing like it's so i remember i was uh

there's a new yorker article that came out at the end of 2015 and so i i was doing interviews with the writer adrian chin who's amazing and he's an amazing writer just just generally not that just that article but like and so we're having these conversations like like we i think we spent three days together in kansas talking about like maybe six hours at a time. And then on, on the phone, like three and four hour conversations regularly. Like it was so much like trying to really get across all of these, all of this time to really understand exactly how my mind changed and all the

details and the church, whatever. Like, and at one point, like, you know, we're talking and, and he asked me a question.

It was about the soldier's funeral, I think. And then I just immediately started like quoting all these verses and like, and just like, whoa, you just went into this mode. Like I can tell this is just like this, like switching into this, like, like, like it had been at the church. Like, it's just not possible. Like, even though I think that I don't believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, but like, I spent so much time like reading it and learning it and, and memorizing, you know,

chapters at a time with my family and all this stuff. So it's like, it's right there. It's always like, and there, like I said, there is so much good in it. So it's like,

I, I don't know. It's just, I know what you're saying. It's comforting. When you said it's, it sounds so foreign to hear the King James, but like to me it was just,

sorry. It's comforting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's familiar and it's, and it's, it was just sorry, it's comforting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And it's it's familiar and it's and it's it's a part it's a part of my my home and my upbringing that I that I can keep as

a person Outside of it looking at it when someone starts spouting out biblical phrases and terms and and using these parables and using these stories and passages in the Bible to justify things and then equating like certain aspects of modern thinking and behavior to those things. To me, it's almost like I'm looking at mathematics that I don't totally understand.

It's like, I see what you're doing. You're plugging this equation in to achieve a desired result. And this result is a peace of mind. Peace of mind is what you're looking to attain. And you're looking to attain justification for your lifestyle and actions. And you can do so with this quote, which is essentially like you're plugging in some sort of theoretical physics. I mean, it's a weird stretch of what I'm saying. What I'm saying is just like the feeling of it. The feeling of it is like, oh, I don't like this. Well, then you use this. Oh,

and then there's that. Okay. It makes this. So it's all these little tools in order to operate the mind on a more harmonious frequency for your own personal satisfaction and your feeling of happiness and peace. Like you can feel comfort in the fact that you have quoted the Bible verses that explain your behavior correctly. You've made the noises in the right order. Yeah. And whether or not those noises make sense at all. And then when in doubt, you throw in like some weird principle like that God has a plan for everything.

So fuck your doubts. We can just stick that right in there. Okay, good. So that's like dark matter. Well, where's all the mass? Dark matter. There you go. Okay.

You know what I'm saying? It's like it's an odd sort of a thing because the desire to just – It outsources the uncertainty and the lack of knowledge like you don't understand it's something i don't understand it's okay i don't have to understand it because somebody else understands it also you're using tools it's also like you're using these these phrases and these tools and these passages to achieve desired results internally as well as externally you're you're using them to comfort yourself but you're also using them to to prove your point against these others and that's a big part of what's going on

with this whole tribalism cult-like behavior it's justifying your own patterns of thinking by demonizing and marginalizing other patterns of thinking yes okay so this is something that i i missed this for a long time, too. But, like, so my grandfather, like, I think I said earlier maybe, that Christians were some of the biggest targets of the church. Yeah. We spent so much time. The minor differences.

Yes, exactly. But, I mean, even, like, major differences, like the hatred of God and, you know, people going to hell for eternity and why and all these things. Like, we spent so much time, Gramps, instead of saying, we are the only ones who have it right. Westboro Baptist Church is the only true church in the entire world. And I'm 100% certain of that. It was a different strategy. It was attacking every other version of Christianity, every other understanding of the Bible.

And so, and it's like, by default, it's it's like well you know exactly why all these people are wrong methodists and catholics and whatever like and you can articulate chapter and verse why they're all wrong and therefore the end like it becomes clear like we are right and we are the only ones who are right and everybody else is so it's just this it's it's so frustrating yeah so frustrating it's well i hate to use the word but it just it lacks enlightenment because it's dealing with conflict and it's dealing with finger pointing it's dealing with insults like just the the term fags, God hates fags, just using that, like that in itself, it's just like a giant red flag showing the errors of your thinking in order to even sit down and draw this poster.

Like, this is not God's approach. If there is a God of the Bible, I mean, if there is a God that's in charge of this whole thing and he's filled with love and he has a plan for us all. You get super emotional when you're talking about this stuff, don't you? Yeah. I see you're all worked up. Sorry. No, no, don't apologize.

It's important. Look, I mean, it's amazing how well you keep it together without contact with your mom and your dad and your brothers and sisters. And it's been four years. How long? Four and a half yeah yeah um wow i totally lost my train of thought there that's okay you said something well i was talking about just that the insults and this attack yeah so like the way like i always you know we would say people don't it's not the method that's the problem it's the message it

doesn't matter how we say the message people are still going to hate it like if you if you say you know god created most people to go to hell and we're we're among the only ones going to heaven and sorry suckers you know like people hate that message right um people hate the idea that you have to uh like follow this set of rules like you can't just live the way you have to, uh, like follow this set of rules. Like you can't just live the way you want to live. You have to obey these ideas as we understand them. Um, like people don't like that message. They don't want you telling them what to do. So that's, we would always make that argument. And then of course, and you know, after when I was thinking about leaving, it was like, of course it matters how you talk to people. Of course it does. And even the Bible talks about it.

So like, you know, in the new Testament, uh, And even the Bible talks about it. So like, you know, in the New Testament, Paul talks about, you know, to the Jews, I became as a Jew and to the Greeks as a Greek and, you know, to the weak, I became as weak. It's like, the idea is like, you understand your audience and who you're talking to, and you're actually trying to reach them. You're not just self-righteously, you know, proclaiming this thing and saying, them. You're not just self-righteously, you know, proclaiming this thing and saying, get on board, or you're doomed. Like it's, it's, there's, there was no, we had, and we sometimes could have those arguments one-on-one, but like, you know, when we go out to these protests, we're saying these things and it's so provocative and inflammatory and we knew it and we just did it anyway because we thought it was justified. As long as it was was true then it didn't matter how we said it or when we said it or to whom we said it well it was a grieving widow or

you know a child whose father had just died or parents whose children had just died it's just it's it's insane to me now i can't i have a hard time like so so much of my history of my past like i know why i believed what i believed but sometimes sometimes that when I see these, these contradictions, I think, what was I thinking when we were reading these verses? And I, I don't, and I can't think of what they could be thinking now, except that it's just that cognitive dissonance that just, just, just going past it and shucks. Oh yeah, that sounds good. But like not seeing, you know, there's another verse that talks about a deceived heart has turned him aside. So he can't even say, is there not a lie in my right hand? Like, that's, that's the feeling that I have. Sorry, back to the, you know, quoting ancient wisdom. Those are great. They're great. Yeah. But anyway, it's just, this is why I think.

I think you're uniquely qualified to sort of translate those. qualified to sort of translate those. And I, I, that's, and that's the thing. Like I, that's, that's why I keep, I mean, I want to keep asking the questions. It's not just about, you know, I think my family feels, they feel attacked. I'm sure when I talk about this and why I don't believe it. And, you know, when I send these messages on Twitter and I, I, I remember what that felt like, you know, hearing people, people that I had loved speak against these doctrines and values that I held so, so dear. But I it's not because I'm trying to hurt them or embarrass them or humiliate them. It's because I I want to help them see. Right. And if if I'm wrong about something, then like I want to know that, too.

So it's just it's always this like openness to to change and to into i don't know finding a better way one of the things you did that's incredibly brave is not just leave but when you change your thinking and change you have to admit that you fucked up big time you have to admit that your entire life has been essentially about propagating a lie. There was a, I honestly, you know Weird Al? Yankovic? Yeah. That is a song that I remember listening to as a kid. Which song?

It was Everything You Know Is Wrong, Up Is Down, Black Is White, and Short Is Long. And I remember like in this process of like, you know, before we left, like remembering that and being like, I can't believe I just thought of a Weird Al song. But yeah, that's totally what it just, just coming to terms with like, how,

how, how wrong and how, how could this have been for my entire life? And how can I possibly face this? Like in my own mind, let alone to all of these people? I did it in front of the like in front of the whole world. Yeah.

Anybody who'd seen like all the documentaries, all the times that I had so publicly defended all these ideas and now realizing like, how can I possibly face that? Right. And if you were ever running for office, that's the first thing. Look at Megan Phelps in 2003 and the horrible thing she was saying that's what they do right yeah yeah well i think your your ability to say that you you don't agree with what you used to do and you are a different person now is so important for people to hear it's one of the most important things i think you're saying because people feel so imprisoned by their past. It's a huge problem with human beings that you, we repeat sort of the same patterns of behavior because

even if they're wrong, there's comfort in, there's comfort in going back to those cigarettes. There's comfort in, in binge eating again. There's comfort in gambling. I know this, I know this crazy rush of trying to find crack. I'm going for it. I mean, there's a lot of weirdness in human behavior patterns. And what you've done is not just have real intellectual courage to just actually challenge your own personal thought processes and ideas and look deep into these scriptures that you've been following your whole life and find these contradictions, explore these contradictions and try to debate them. But also just to, just to come out and say like, I was making just big mistakes.

I think it's really hard to say, I mean, a lot of things, but, but two things just for people in general, like I messed up and I don't know. just for people in general like i messed up yeah and i don't know yeah and like we have to be able to i mean i think to be able to there's so and honestly like this is another thing like there's so much freedom in that in both of those ideas like i i said earlier like certainty there's so much comfort and certainty like you don't have to wonder you don't have to doubt you don't have to question you can just go on your way and know that what you're doing is exactly right. And like, there's so much comfort there. But, but in my experience, it's a false certainty. It's a false comfort because you're, you're, you're going along. If you're not, if you're not examining, if you're not like taking in new evidence, if you're not like saying, I don't know't know it's like i don't have to have all the answers right like i can just say like i'm doing my best this is where i'm at now like i'm sure i'm gonna like find something i'm gonna find something else that i'm that i've got wrong now

and i'm just gonna keep trying to get i'm gonna keep trying to get better like you don't want to become this static you know you want to be able to to grow and learn and understand and do better in as many ways as you can but you're be able to to grow and learn and understand and do better in as many ways as you can but you're wrestling constantly with a dangerous and volatile factor that's uncertainty yeah and that that is people try to avoid that sucker as much as they can like i don't want that right just like learning to be comfortable there like i exist here and i exist in this uncertain space because it's honest. Yes. I don't know.

I don't have to know. Right. I can keep trying to understand and, you know, so it's. That's why one of the most, the weakest things you can ever see in a person is a person talking about something in a way where like, like you ask them a question about something and they don't really know. And they try to pretend they do. Start to pontificate. Yeah. When you see it, instead of saying, God, I don't know.

Is that true? Or instead of being like open to the possibility of anything being outside of the realm of their understanding, they double down. They double down on their ignorance. Right. Or they avoid it at all costs. And you see, literally see like the little, the man in the machinery, the ego, just yanking on the gears frantically. You can see it. We all recognize it. It's one of the more fascinating things to me about religion in general is that there, we have

this incredible desire to become a part of a group. I mean, everybody does. We find comfort in these groups, but we also can see the gears spinning when someone does agree with something or someone does say something that resonates or when someone says something that's contradictory. We see the gears spinning. We recognize that this is all some sort of a weird cognitive dance that we're doing to try to make sense out of this temporary existence on a planet hurling through infinity. It's insane. Yeah. But it's human. And it's the human of today.

You know, it's the human where we find ourselves existing and communicating that clearly is on some sort of path, some sort of weird path of progress and of innovation and of understanding that we're in the middle of. We're in the middle of this storm of understanding. And it's happening like clearly in your own life. And you're living it out in front of the whole world. Yeah.

And on that note. Yeah. Maybe it's a good way to wrap it up we did already two hours and 45 minutes believe it or not yeah just flew by yeah um you're a brave person and i think you're it's really important what you're doing it's massive it really is it's super hard to do i'm sure thank you and uh the fact that twitter is what started all i love twitter so much i just i cannot like even what you were saying earlier about like oh there's only 140 characters like like don't diss twitter but here's the thing like it's so crazy like twitter like

the fact that it's only 140 characters like nothing taught me how to be more i'm very i'm verbose i talk a lot but like in writing and I do the same thing in writing but like on Twitter like it taught me to like distill my ideas and become concise and oh yeah and it stopped me from using that was one of the things one of the ways that I stopped like insulting people instinctively because like we we did it so much like we would write these elaborate insults like responding to emails and stuff it's like obviously on email you can write as much as you want but like on Twitter like so it's two things like one's only 140 characters if i like throw in a you idiot like there's it just there's no space for it but also

like when i did do that like there's this immediate feedback loop that you get so like you can watch the conversation derail in real time yeah and then you realize like okay no i just need to not like because instead of like addressing the arguments like then you're saying like you know you like you don't know me they risk you know they'll answer and like it just it it stops anyway it stops the conversation like you want it to be about the the points or whatever it's like i learned so much about communication from twitter and i just love it so much like it's just a tool like it depends on how we use it. I use it a lot. And I learn a lot of things on it.

I mean, I'm constantly being sent articles. And that's where I found out about the 300,000-year-old human. And, I mean, every day someone sends me something and I retweet it. And that's how we got connected. Yeah. There you go. So there you go. More Twitter.

Yes. Your book is coming out when? I don't know yet. You don't know yet? I'm finishing the last draft. I'm not even going to tell you the name right now because I really want a different name. Okay. Don't tell me. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you.

Sorry. What did you say, Jamie? I didn't want to slap her. Oh. Okay. If people want to see more of your stuff, I know you have a TED Talk that's out there. Right. My Twitter account

is just Megan Phelps. Yeah. That's it. Well, yeah, there's going to be the book, but... Well, when the book comes out, come back on again.

We'll do it again. All right. And we'll tweet out your book and let everybody know. Amazing. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Thank you for being so brave, too. Thank you. It was huge. What you've done is huge for a lot of people listening, too. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks. Thank you for being so brave, too. Thank you. It was huge. What you've done is huge. Thank you. For a lot of people listening, too. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, everybody.

See you tomorrow. Bye.