Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on. I'm Meya Friedman and
Speaker 2: the team at Mama and Mea are bringing you over
Speaker 2: one hundred hours of the very best of the podcasts
Speaker 2: that we've made from across our podcast network. Do you
Speaker 2: know that we have something like fifty six different podcasts
Speaker 2: here at Mamma Mia And if you follow this one,
Speaker 2: we have selected some others that you might like to
Speaker 2: listen to as well. And we've also brought back some
Speaker 2: of our most popular and most riveting stories from No Filter,
Speaker 2: which is what you're going to hear today. If you've
Speaker 2: been listening to No Filter for a while, you'll know
Speaker 2: that I'm particularly interested in cults. But sometimes when you
Speaker 2: say that word, people imagine like a cult leader and
Speaker 2: a sect, and maybe it is a religious cult, and
Speaker 2: religion can often play a part. But sometimes these cults
Speaker 2: happen within families. Sometimes people are manipulated by their loved
Speaker 2: ones or people who purport to love them, and Tara
Speaker 2: Westover's story is exactly that.
Speaker 1: Have a listen.
Speaker 2: Just a warning, this episode deals with some adult content.
Speaker 2: So if you have little years around, you might want
Speaker 2: to save it for later or populary buds in from
Speaker 2: the Mom and mea podcast network, I'm mea Friedman and
Speaker 2: this is no filter, real stories. You won't be able
Speaker 2: to stop listening to. It's every kid's dream not to
Speaker 2: have to go to school, and Tara Westover lived that
Speaker 2: dream for the first sixteen years of her life, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Actually her choice.
Speaker 2: Tara was raised by fundamentalist Mormon parents who had some
Speaker 2: pretty radical beliefs. They were survivalists, actively planning for the
Speaker 2: end of the world, stop piling guns and food, making
Speaker 2: their own medicine, and cutting themselves off from every aspect
Speaker 2: of everyday life, including schools and even doctors who they
Speaker 2: believed were evil and corrupt. Tara and her six brothers
Speaker 2: and sisters grew up on a farm in rural Idaho,
Speaker 2: where her dad had a junkyard full of scrap metal,
Speaker 2: and all the children were forced to work there doing
Speaker 2: wildly dangerous things each day instead of going to school.
Speaker 2: It's not like they were homeschooled, they just weren't schooled.
Speaker 2: For her entire childhood, Tara had no friends, had never
Speaker 2: been to anyone else's house and knew virtually nobody outside
Speaker 2: her immediate family. She didn't step foot into a classroom
Speaker 2: until she was sixteen years old. She'd never heard of
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson or the Holocaust. Today she's a doctor of
Speaker 2: history at Cambridge University and how she got from there
Speaker 2: to here is a cracking story that she's written in
Speaker 2: a best selling memoir called Educated. She came into Mamma
Speaker 2: Mia when she was in Australia recently and we sat
Speaker 2: down to talk.
Speaker 1: Here's Tara Westover.
Speaker 2: I wanted to take you back to nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 2: New Year's Eve. Some people listening to this will not
Speaker 2: be aware of the significance of that date and what
Speaker 2: everyone thought might befall the world on that day. Where
Speaker 2: were you and how how did your family spend New
Speaker 2: Year's Eve in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: You know, my dad was he was a big survivalist.
Speaker 3: He was always preparing for the end of the world.
Speaker 2: And you mean that literally. He was like, oh, the
Speaker 2: world's going to hell now.
Speaker 3: He was like, the world is ending, and he wanted
Speaker 3: he wanted a ten year supply of food because he
Speaker 3: thought that part of the kind of second coming in
Speaker 3: the apocalypse would be this sort of ten years of devastation,
Speaker 3: and if you were left standing at the end of
Speaker 3: that ten years, you were one of the chosen. You
Speaker 3: were prepared, and then you would be one of the righteous.
Speaker 3: And so that was the idea. So it was always coming.
Speaker 3: And Y two K was a theory that a lot
Speaker 3: of people worried about Y two K, that all the
Speaker 3: computer systems would when it turned over to the year
Speaker 3: two thousand and the computers that had been programmed with
Speaker 3: a two digit year date wouldn't know how to function.
Speaker 3: Of course, they'd taken care of that, you know, they
Speaker 3: saw that coming and they fixed it. But my dad
Speaker 3: was convinced I was gonna be the end, and you know,
Speaker 3: that's what I read about in the book is y tuk.
Speaker 3: But I mean it was kind of every couple of
Speaker 3: years my dad found a date and thought that the
Speaker 3: world was gonna end for my whole childhood.
Speaker 1: Really but that night scary, Ah, you'd think so.
Speaker 3: In a way, No, in a lot of ways, no,
Speaker 3: because we were so prepared, you know, I mean we
Speaker 3: had a lot of food, we had everything that we needed,
Speaker 3: we had water, we had fuel. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: you know, my family lived in this tiny town, and
Speaker 3: we were we were radical, we were extreme. I'd never
Speaker 3: had any friends who went to school, you know, mainstream friends.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any the kids that I saw at
Speaker 3: church on Sunday, I'd never been to their houses and
Speaker 3: they'd never been to mine. So we lived in this
Speaker 3: very you know, we were that kind of weird family,
Speaker 3: that weird homeschool family, and this was gonna be reversal
Speaker 3: of that. You know, when the world ended, we were
Speaker 3: gonna suddenly be the people who people looked up to
Speaker 3: because we would have food, we would have everything we needed.
Speaker 3: So there was a kind of way in which I
Speaker 3: anticipated it almost with eagerness, I think for most of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 2: Was there also an aspect of sort of excitement and
Speaker 2: adventure about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely. I Mean we had this beautiful mountain that
Speaker 3: we lived on, and I remember just thinking a lot
Speaker 3: as a child when the end came, if we had
Speaker 3: to hide from the Feds or something, Yeah, we'd had
Speaker 3: on the mountain and we could survive on it forever
Speaker 3: because we knew it so well and they didn't. And
Speaker 3: so you know, we knewhere all these caves were, We
Speaker 3: knew where the streams were we we knew, we knew
Speaker 3: where the wild onions were. We'd be fine and they wouldn't.
Speaker 3: That was a really pleasant thought to me as a child.
Speaker 2: That sense of when you just talked about hiding from
Speaker 2: the Feds. There's throughout your book and throughout your childhood
Speaker 2: this real sense of an external threat. And sometimes it's
Speaker 2: sort of bit existential, like the world's going to end,
Speaker 2: and other times it's actually of sort of the infrastructure
Speaker 2: of society, like doctors and law enforcement offices and even teachers.
Speaker 2: How did your dad sort of explain that to you?
Speaker 2: And was was your mom joined with him in this
Speaker 2: idea or was it really just him.
Speaker 3: I think he would usually start out with just him.
Speaker 3: He would get an idea about something, and my mother
Speaker 3: would often have a different idea. The thing about my
Speaker 3: mother is she's a really complicated person. I've always felt
Speaker 3: like there's two versions of my mother. There's the version
Speaker 3: that she is when she's with you, and then there's
Speaker 3: the version that she is when she's with my father,
Speaker 3: and they're not the same person. And so I remember
Speaker 3: I was about nine and we were visiting my grandparents
Speaker 3: in Arizona. My father's parents when my dad kind of
Speaker 3: first started saying these things about doctors and saying that
Speaker 3: they're part of the Illuminati, and that if you took
Speaker 3: a pharmaceutical that it would damage your standing.
Speaker 1: With God, and what is all the Illuminati for people?
Speaker 3: He do? For my dad, he had this idea that
Speaker 3: all of these institutions had been infiltrated by some kind
Speaker 3: of nefarious kind of Satanic not Satanic in the sense
Speaker 3: of ritualistically worshiping Satan, but you know, almost on unaware
Speaker 3: agents of Satan. You know that they were corrupt, and
Speaker 3: they were money seeking, and the devil was in their
Speaker 3: hearts making them do these things. And so they were,
Speaker 3: you know, they were in the schools trying to trying
Speaker 3: to lead children away from God, and they were They'd
Speaker 3: even infiltrated the church, my dad believed. And so anytime
Speaker 3: the church would have a doctrine that he didn't think
Speaker 3: was right, he would think that, you know, the Illuminati
Speaker 3: had infiltrated the church. And the church had a lot
Speaker 3: of doctrines my dad didn't like, like vaccinations, and the
Speaker 3: church is pretty pro doctor and schools even and so
Speaker 3: there were all these things. But yeah, so he had
Speaker 3: this deep paranoia of any institution that he didn't himself
Speaker 3: have control over, and so you know, yeah, he kind
Speaker 3: of wanted to keep us away from those things. And
Speaker 3: I think it's because he really did worry. There was
Speaker 3: a great fearfulness in him. I think of ideas that
Speaker 3: weren't his ideas and not an I think for people
Speaker 3: that sounds almost like I'm trying to say he was controlling,
Speaker 3: and he was, but he wasn't controlling. I don't think
Speaker 3: for control's sake. I think he was controlling because he
Speaker 3: believed the world was dangerous. He thought that we needed
Speaker 3: to be protected from it.
Speaker 2: But when you say he had a fear of any
Speaker 2: ideas or thoughts that weren't his, that's kind of megalomaniac,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 3: But I think again, if you have the paranoia, I
Speaker 3: think he really felt like these you know, ideologies were
Speaker 3: coming from Satan, you know. And so when I say
Speaker 3: that weren't his ideas, I don't mean that in a
Speaker 3: megalomania where he had to have the good ideas. I
Speaker 3: mean it in the way of if he didn't agree
Speaker 3: with it, you know, like he wasn't annoyed about evolution
Speaker 3: because he didn't think of it. He was annoyed about
Speaker 3: evolution because he was afraid of it. Yeah, like he
Speaker 3: wasn't like he wasn't against science because it wasn't his idea.
Speaker 3: That's narcissism, right, he was. He was afraid of science
Speaker 3: because it didn't comport with the beliefs that he had,
Speaker 3: and he was afraid that it would threaten faith.
Speaker 2: You say early in the book that with hindsight, you
Speaker 2: think he is bipolar.
Speaker 3: That's my suspicion. I'm not a doctor, but I just
Speaker 3: mise it's the only thing. I It's a way that
Speaker 3: I make sense of my childhood.
Speaker 1: And what leads you to believe that just what.
Speaker 3: I've read about kind of mood disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia. I
Speaker 3: think when I was a child, I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about mental illness. I thought you could either
Speaker 3: be sane or insane, and the idea that you could
Speaker 3: be functional and something could still be a bit wrong
Speaker 3: just didn't occur to me. It wasn't until I was
Speaker 3: out of university taking you know, it's like one oh
Speaker 3: one that this was explained to me, And for me
Speaker 3: it was just a revelation I understanding what paranoia is
Speaker 3: and how it comes about for me. Suddenly I was
Speaker 3: able to make sense of my life in a way
Speaker 3: that I hadn't I hadn't before, And how he could
Speaker 3: believe so strongly and so fearfully in things that to
Speaker 3: me were increasingly just looking really harmless.
Speaker 2: So back in nineteen ninety nine it was one of
Speaker 2: the times that he'd predicted that the world was going
Speaker 2: to come to an end.
Speaker 1: How did that night play out?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I guess we just thought that midnight
Speaker 3: would come and the world would end. And I remember
Speaker 3: we had this TV, which my whole childhood we hadn't
Speaker 3: had and recently had my dad allowed a TV. And
Speaker 3: then because he's the kind of person who is really extreme,
Speaker 3: you know, you can't have anything, and then when he
Speaker 3: does get it, he goes all the way. So he
Speaker 3: went from having no TV or radio or anything. There
Speaker 3: was even a time we didn't have a phone, and
Speaker 3: when he did get a TV, he was like cable,
Speaker 3: you know, all the way. Yeah. So I remember it
Speaker 3: was like they were doing a marathon at the Honeymooners.
Speaker 3: I think that night and Night Love the Honeymooners, and
Speaker 3: so he was just we were just watching TV and
Speaker 3: we just thought the world's gonna end, and we waited
Speaker 3: and it just didn't.
Speaker 2: And midnight was their RELIEFE was their disappointment.
Speaker 3: I think for me there was a bit of disappointment,
Speaker 3: but then there was also, you know, just seeing my
Speaker 3: dad's disappointment, and I remember feeling a little bit sad
Speaker 3: and not angry with God, because I don't think I
Speaker 3: was capable of that at that time, but sad and
Speaker 3: frustrated that why why would God deny him this? Like
Speaker 3: he'd been so faithful in preparing and it just seemed cruel, which.
Speaker 2: Is a funny way to kind of grate the fact
Speaker 2: that the world didn't it.
Speaker 1: It's like buma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was when you describe the scene in the book,
Speaker 2: that's the sense you get that. It was just like
Speaker 2: your dad was really bummed, and you kind of stayed
Speaker 2: up with him because you felt sorry for him.
Speaker 3: I was kind of confused, you know. That was the
Speaker 3: time in my life I had been I was I
Speaker 3: was singing. My dad really liked to hear me sing,
Speaker 3: and he liked I was allowed to do things that
Speaker 3: my siblings would never been allowed to do. I was
Speaker 3: allowed to go over to town and be in plays,
Speaker 3: just because he loved hearing me sing. And so I
Speaker 3: had been allowed to go over to town and be
Speaker 3: in this play. And I had, for the first time
Speaker 3: in my life. You know, I had a conversation with
Speaker 3: a kid who went to school, This this boy I
Speaker 3: knew his name was Charles and he so I had
Speaker 3: I'd kind of almost in my mind anyway, made a
Speaker 3: friend who was mainstream and uh, and this is a
Speaker 3: person that I mean, I remember what I remember about
Speaker 3: the world as I was worried because we were going
Speaker 3: to have all the food. And my dad had always
Speaker 3: said that when we had all the food, people would
Speaker 3: try to take the food from us because they'd be starving,
Speaker 3: which seemed reasonable to me that they would want to
Speaker 3: do that, and that we know we might need to
Speaker 3: fight them off. We need to protect our food, which
Speaker 3: is reasonable. This is a zombie apocalypse, people will probably
Speaker 3: come try to eat your food or a normal apocalypse,
Speaker 3: and an apocalypse people are gonna watch your people. So
Speaker 3: you know, we had, you know, in true American fashion,
Speaker 3: we had all of our guns. We were ready for
Speaker 3: that and uh, and we'd bought some new guns, some
Speaker 3: big ones, and I remember, I just remember that that
Speaker 3: all had made sense to me, and I was really
Speaker 3: comfortable with that as a scenario until I until I
Speaker 3: had met this one person. And that was the first
Speaker 3: time that in my imagination of having people come to
Speaker 3: our house trying to take our food, that there was
Speaker 3: a face on that person. And I suddenly it was
Speaker 3: hard to imagine how that would really play out. And
Speaker 3: I was just I was really I just didn't. I
Speaker 3: still had a huge part of me that wanted the
Speaker 3: apocalypse to happen, and because we were so prepared and
Speaker 3: Dad wanted it and we had everything we needed and
Speaker 3: that sense of adventure and all that childish all those
Speaker 3: childhood kind of fantasies about it, and then and then
Speaker 3: I had also this other part of me that was
Speaker 3: starting to engage with the mainstream in this incredibly small way.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I thought we were friends. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure he was, like I talked to that girl
Speaker 3: one time, but you know, I thought we were friends.
Speaker 3: And so for me, it was it was complicated, and
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't know what I wanted to happen.
Speaker 2: You were brought up within what you described as an
Speaker 2: extreme form of Mormonism. Can you explain what the basic
Speaker 2: principle of being mormony is and then how extreme your
Speaker 2: version was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I tend to really deemphasize the Mormon Everyone likes
Speaker 3: to talk about the Mormonism. I think to me, it's
Speaker 3: the least relevant factor. I call my dad a survivalist,
Speaker 3: I call him a radical survivalist. I call him all
Speaker 3: kinds of things like that, because I think he, you know,
Speaker 3: he just had radical beliefs, but I don't think that
Speaker 3: they were particularly Mormon beliefs. He had been raised mainstream Mormon,
Speaker 3: but wasn't really I mean, Mormonism was a huge part
Speaker 3: of my childhood, but not really the typical kind of Mormonism.
Speaker 3: And everyone in my town was Mormon. But they all
Speaker 3: went to school, they all went to the doctor, they
Speaker 3: all had birth certificates, they were they lived in mainstream life.
Speaker 3: They were just Mormon. Whereas my dad, again, I think
Speaker 3: the mental illness just comes into it. And it's long
Speaker 3: been my view that the whatever was going on with
Speaker 3: him mentally, you know, whatever mood disorder he had, and
Speaker 3: that you know, my speculation about that. I think that
Speaker 3: the mood disorder probably caused the religious extremism and not
Speaker 3: the other way around. I think the extremism was just
Speaker 3: a vehicle. My dad was fanatical about everything in his life.
Speaker 3: You know. It wasn't just religion. I think that was
Speaker 3: just one. It was just a It became a vehicle
Speaker 3: for all the other forms of extremism that he had.
Speaker 3: He would justify it in religious terms, but there was
Speaker 3: nothing the church that wasn't coming from the church. It
Speaker 3: was coming from his brain.
Speaker 2: How did it impact upon you as a girl and
Speaker 2: then I young woman in terms of his views and
Speaker 2: the rules that he mandated the women and girls in
Speaker 2: his house follow, well.
Speaker 3: I think I grew up in a very gendered household.
Speaker 3: Mormonism itself is quite gendered, but my dad, by which
Speaker 3: I mean they have quite strong ideas about gender and
Speaker 3: about the differences between men and women and the rules
Speaker 3: that they're supposed to play. My dad definitely took that further.
Speaker 3: You know. He was obsessed with modesty, and he did
Speaker 3: not think women should work outside the home. And he
Speaker 3: had a hard time when my brother made a decision
Speaker 3: to go to college, but it was nothing compared to
Speaker 3: how hard it was for him when I decided to go.
Speaker 3: So I think there were there were definitely some serious
Speaker 3: gender implications and really strong ideas about gender in my family.
Speaker 3: I think when I was growing up, it just would
Speaker 3: never have occurred to me that I wouldn't live the
Speaker 3: same life as every other woman I knew as the
Speaker 3: life that my dad, you know, it was just assumed
Speaker 3: I would get married when I was eighteen nineteen, kind
Speaker 3: of at the outer edge, and I would get a
Speaker 3: house on the fire somewhere, and I would just have kids,
Speaker 3: and I would probably have them at home. I've definitely
Speaker 3: have them at home, definitely not in a hospital. My
Speaker 3: mother would deliver them because she'd become a midwife, and
Speaker 3: not a midwife in the sense that she went and
Speaker 3: got a medical degree, of course, because we don't believe
Speaker 3: in doctors. So she just kind of started doing it.
Speaker 2: And your dad didn't believe in women working outside the
Speaker 2: home until she started to earn money.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think he would have. He wouldn't have
Speaker 3: considered it working outside the home. This is where people have,
Speaker 3: you know. He wanted he thought that the medical establishment
Speaker 3: was a part of this conspiracy, so he needed he
Speaker 3: needed us to be independent of that. And so in
Speaker 3: order for us to be independent of that, we you know,
Speaker 3: we owned a junk yard, and it was a really
Speaker 3: dangerous place. We got injured all the time. There had
Speaker 3: to be a way for us to get to treat
Speaker 3: those injuries somehow. So he wanted he needed my mother
Speaker 3: to become a midwife so that when we had children
Speaker 3: and he had grandchildren, that they wouldn't have to go
Speaker 3: to the hospital because the hospital is evil. And then
Speaker 3: when we were injured, we needed to have a way
Speaker 3: to treat that. So I think I don't think he
Speaker 3: thought of it as her working outside the home, but
Speaker 3: it did become that because once she became a midwife
Speaker 3: and once she started, you know, selling herbs, and then
Speaker 3: she was pretty much working. She's working inside the home,
Speaker 3: but she was working.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about
Speaker 2: that idea of the gendered household. Did you have to
Speaker 2: dress a certain way?
Speaker 3: Mormonism has kind of basic standards of modesty. You have
Speaker 3: to cover the shoulders, you should be covered above the knee.
Speaker 3: It's kind of the normal Mormon standard. My dad is
Speaker 3: the usual. Uh took it further than that, And so
Speaker 3: I remember him telling me he never he thought ankles
Speaker 3: were Yeah, did not necessarily want to be seeing a
Speaker 3: lot of ankle and there was a big fashion in
Speaker 3: the nineties. Close capri pants were a big thing in
Speaker 3: the nineties, and he wouldn't allow me to wear those. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was really against those, and so he had and
Speaker 3: it was just it was it was just a lot
Speaker 3: of I think the idea. I just remember when I
Speaker 3: was fifteen, sixteen years old, feeling like I didn't understand
Speaker 3: how it could be done, because it seemed like if
Speaker 3: I remember hearing him lecture once we came home from
Speaker 3: church and he was complaining about something a woman had
Speaker 3: been wearing at church because it had been this really
Speaker 3: fitting blouse and she leaned forward to pick up a
Speaker 3: hymn book and he had gotten a view down her
Speaker 3: shirt and and he was just he just wasn't gonna
Speaker 3: let us go, and he was talking about it and
Speaker 3: how terrible it was she was wearing and modest, and
Speaker 3: I remember thinking, well, it's really loose. We're not allowed
Speaker 3: to wear tight clothing because it's tight, it's form fitting,
Speaker 3: and that's that's that's suggestive, So we can't wear that.
Speaker 3: But if it's loose, And I just remember thinking, like,
Speaker 3: what is the right amount of tightness and looseness, and
Speaker 3: how do you move and do things and exist in
Speaker 3: the world, and and never and never have it be
Speaker 3: revealed that you have a shape and how do you
Speaker 3: do that? But then you're also supposed to look nice,
Speaker 3: so if you came out looking frumpy, then that would
Speaker 3: also be commented upon. And I just remember feeling like
Speaker 3: there just was not a way to kind of exist
Speaker 3: or move through the world modestly. I just didn't know
Speaker 3: how to do that.
Speaker 1: So there were all these rules for you. How many
Speaker 1: sisters did you?
Speaker 3: Just brothers? One sister, so.
Speaker 2: There were two girls and five boys in the family
Speaker 2: and your mom. So in some ways he had different
Speaker 2: rules and expectations for his daughters and his wife versus
Speaker 2: his sons. But in other ways, in terms of the work,
Speaker 2: you were expected to do this in the junkyard where
Speaker 2: he how would you even describe what he did?
Speaker 3: Well, he sold scrap medal, he was on a junk yard,
Speaker 3: he sold scrap.
Speaker 2: You were expected to really muck in there. There was
Speaker 2: no sense of old tar as a girl, she can't
Speaker 2: do this. Like the things that he had you do.
Speaker 2: My jaw was on the floor as I was reading
Speaker 2: your book, like things that were just so not dangerous
Speaker 2: for anyone, whether they are a man or a woman
Speaker 2: or a child, as you and your brothers were.
Speaker 1: Extraordinarily dangerous things.
Speaker 2: Did that make you sort of feel invincible or did
Speaker 2: it make you feel scared?
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny you say it, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's kind of strange that my sister and I were
Speaker 3: kind of allowed to work in the scrapyard. Thin it's
Speaker 3: kind of weird, I know what that was. I think
Speaker 3: some of that is just rural frontierness. I think I
Speaker 3: think the West, the Mountain West, the frontier of the
Speaker 3: United States had long ago, I think dispensed with this
Speaker 3: nonsense that women are physically fragile, you know, not being
Speaker 3: as strong as a man does. It's not the same
Speaker 3: thing as fragility, you know, it's just not You can
Speaker 3: do a lot of stuff even if you don't have
Speaker 3: the exact up arm strength as a man. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, I just I think women in that living
Speaker 3: in that life and living in that place and living
Speaker 3: on farms since they got there in the eighteen thirties
Speaker 3: and forties and fifties have been doing that kind of labor.
Speaker 3: And I just don't, no matter how gendered your ideas are,
Speaker 3: I don't know that that weird idea of like, well,
Speaker 3: women shouldn't do physically demanding things is you know, thankfully
Speaker 3: just not been a part of that culture. So I think,
Speaker 3: you know, for my dad, he had a scrap yard.
Speaker 3: He when it was time to scrap, and scrapping is
Speaker 3: one of those things where you kind of seasons that
Speaker 3: you do at the price of model goes up and
Speaker 3: then you sell everything that you have, and so you know,
Speaker 3: there'd be seasons of it and you need and there's
Speaker 3: a lot to do, and like any kind of farm work, right,
Speaker 3: this is harvest time. Everyone works, and that's that's just
Speaker 3: how it is.
Speaker 2: You call the book educated, but in fact, you weren't educated.
Speaker 2: Like it's not like that you were homeschooled.
Speaker 1: You weren't really schooled.
Speaker 2: So did you call it educated in terms of the
Speaker 2: education you laid out for yourself?
Speaker 3: I called it educated. Well, I called it it that's
Speaker 3: something about a second. I called it educated because I
Speaker 3: wanted to tell a story that would make people ask
Speaker 3: that question, which is to say, you know, I think
Speaker 3: a lot of times are ideas about what an education
Speaker 3: is a very institutional and we think sometimes I think
Speaker 3: we've confused what an education is with what a school is,
Speaker 3: and I think an education in a school of very
Speaker 3: different things. Education is the individuals pursuit of understanding. That's
Speaker 3: all it is. It's very simple. Schools the means by
Speaker 3: which we try to achieve that, and has all the
Speaker 3: problems of any human institution. So I think, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't receive an education in the sense that I
Speaker 3: never would an essay, when ever took an exam. I
Speaker 3: never had any of these formal trappings of an education.
Speaker 3: And then eventually I did get all those things. Eventually
Speaker 3: I had this extreme experience of education. I had a
Speaker 3: lot of ignorance, the extreme absence of education and the
Speaker 3: traditional institutional sense. But then later in my life, you know,
Speaker 3: I got to go to Harvard, I got to go
Speaker 3: to Cambridge, I got a PhD. I had extreme institutional education.
Speaker 3: And then I had a period in my life where
Speaker 3: maybe I wasn't reading a lot of history. I was
Speaker 3: kept at home. I was reading, you know, the Bible
Speaker 3: in nineteenth century Mormon sermons because that was what was there,
Speaker 3: and that was a kind of education, and in a way,
Speaker 3: and then I had my parents kind of they had
Speaker 3: their own interpretation of what an education was. And one
Speaker 3: of the things they would say to us is you
Speaker 3: can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach you.
Speaker 1: And I believe that's just not true.
Speaker 3: I think it can be. I think, and this is
Speaker 3: the thing I think John Dewey right, it's a great thinker
Speaker 3: about education. He always said, he used to say education
Speaker 3: is two. It has two components. There's the individual component,
Speaker 3: or what an individual brings to their education, and then
Speaker 3: there's the social component, what society brings. And you really
Speaker 3: need both of those things. You have to have the
Speaker 3: social element because you don't want to be inventing the
Speaker 3: physics every time every person that comes into the world.
Speaker 3: You want to start where the last person left off.
Speaker 3: You don't want to start from the beginning. But equally,
Speaker 3: you have to have buy in, for lack of a
Speaker 3: better phrase, there's something that an individual brings in deciding
Speaker 3: what they want to learn and how they want to
Speaker 3: learn it, and you cannot have a real education without
Speaker 3: those things. You know, my parents were fully devoted to
Speaker 3: the individual side. They took it too far, but they
Speaker 3: were really devoted to it. And then I think I
Speaker 3: talked to some of my friends who had a more
Speaker 3: traditional education, or I myself have now had some years
Speaker 3: of traditional education, and I feel like the social is
Speaker 3: is if my parents were too far the one way.
Speaker 3: I think maybe the mainstream is too far the other,
Speaker 3: because I don't think that I've never talked to anyone
Speaker 3: who felt like they had any control over their education
Speaker 3: or what they learned or how they learned it. I
Speaker 3: don't know that I've ever heard anyone explain to me
Speaker 3: their education in a way that made me think there
Speaker 3: was any individual component at all. And it's an odd
Speaker 3: thing if we think in education is the individual's pursuit
Speaker 3: of understanding. Pursuit is an active verb, and there's nothing
Speaker 3: that we do in schools that seems very active to me.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when you say education to people, I think the
Speaker 3: words that come to mind, or exam, worksheet, lecture, these
Speaker 3: are all incredibly passive things. And so gah, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: necessarily say, oh, my parents got it right, let's all
Speaker 3: do that. But you know, I think that there was
Speaker 3: something in terms of that that that thing they taught me,
Speaker 3: you can teach yourself anything better than someone else can
Speaker 3: teach it to you. I really do believe that. But
Speaker 3: I believe it in the sense that if you want
Speaker 3: to learn it, you will find the people that you
Speaker 3: need to teach it to you, and you will be
Speaker 3: a lot more receptive and you will learn a lot
Speaker 3: faster than if you are waiting for someone to teach
Speaker 3: it to you. Writing is one of those things everyone
Speaker 3: says you can't you can't teach writing, and they're probably right.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure you can teach writing. I'm convinced you
Speaker 3: can learn it, but I'm not sure you can teach it.
Speaker 2: You talk about knowing that your father loves you, but
Speaker 2: when you're a child, he put you and your siblings
Speaker 2: and your mom in the most incredible danger. Many times
Speaker 2: you had a couple of horrific car crashes where pretty
Speaker 2: much all of you were horrifically injured, and then he
Speaker 2: wouldn't let you go to hospital to have those injuries treated.
Speaker 2: And then every day when you had to go out
Speaker 2: and work in the junkyard, you were also at risk
Speaker 2: of horrible injury, and you and your siblings got injured frequently.
Speaker 2: How do you reconcile those two things, because surely as parents,
Speaker 2: we have two jobs knowing that, you know, making our
Speaker 2: children feel loved and making them feel safe. What happens
Speaker 2: when those two things go against each other.
Speaker 3: This is a difficult question, I think. I think there's
Speaker 3: two answers to it, and they're separated by a lot
Speaker 3: of years. I think as a child, you know, my
Speaker 3: dad would ask me to do things in the junkyard,
Speaker 3: and my siblings too that we would just think we're
Speaker 3: not probably gonna get through this. Like his method of
Speaker 3: doing this, I mean, because it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Can you paint a little bit of a picture for
Speaker 2: people think that you were just like you know, rummaging
Speaker 2: through rubbish and picking out little bits of tin.
Speaker 3: There was a bit of that, but that was the
Speaker 3: nice part. Yeah, No, I mean it was full of jagged,
Speaker 3: heavy scrap, you know. I mean when I was about ten,
Speaker 3: I filled a bin full of scrap iron. I was
Speaker 3: about one town, about two thousand pounds. And what has
Speaker 3: to happened then is the bin needs to be picked
Speaker 3: up and needs by JCB an extendable boom and it's
Speaker 3: raised in the air.
Speaker 1: I don't know what any of Floyds woulds made.
Speaker 3: Just a forklift. I got a forklift with an extendable boom,
Speaker 3: and it'll pick it up, it'll go drop it into
Speaker 3: a big semi trailer, you know, really big fifty foot
Speaker 3: trailer with walls, you know, fifteen twenty feet high. So
Speaker 3: this scrap had to be dumped, and then what the
Speaker 3: ideally you climb in after and you kind of settle
Speaker 3: the scrap so that more will fit in. And my
Speaker 3: dad he didn't want to run the bin up twice.
Speaker 3: He didn't want to pick the bin up and raise
Speaker 3: it up and dump it and then have to you know,
Speaker 3: go down and then run me back up again to
Speaker 3: get into the trailer to settle a scrap. So he
Speaker 3: had this great idea that what he would do is
Speaker 3: have me ride the scrap up and then he would
Speaker 3: just pause the bin by the trailer and I would
Speaker 3: climb out and kind of run over and climb onto
Speaker 3: the cab, and then he would dump the bin and
Speaker 3: I would just climb back in and settle it. This
Speaker 3: was his idea. Well, that wasn't such a great idea
Speaker 3: because what happened when he picked up the bin and
Speaker 3: whipped it around is a giant spear of some kind
Speaker 3: of scrap just like went straight into my leg and
Speaker 3: just pinned me there. And I couldn't move, and then
Speaker 3: he had raised the he'd raise the bin and I
Speaker 3: was shouting at him, but it's a loud diesel engine.
Speaker 3: He couldn't hear me. And then he raised the bin
Speaker 3: and he dumped it, which if I'd gone forward with
Speaker 3: all the scrap, it would have just been like going
Speaker 3: through a meat grinder. I mean, you wouldn't Yeah, it
Speaker 3: would be bad. Luckily, the kind of the spike came
Speaker 3: out of my leg and I was I was able
Speaker 3: to kind of throw myself over the side of the bin,
Speaker 3: so I felt I fell really far and I smashed
Speaker 3: into the side of the trailer wall, and I was
Speaker 3: definitely hurt, but I was I was okay, I was alive.
Speaker 3: The way that I experienced that at the time, it
Speaker 3: was kind of two ways. I think there was the
Speaker 3: first feeling I had, which was kind of a bit
Speaker 3: of shame. When my dad came over and asked me
Speaker 3: what happened. I just felt like, Yeah, why couldn't I
Speaker 3: do that? It was a simple thing. I shouldn't be
Speaker 3: able to do it because I knew. I knew my
Speaker 3: dad loved me. I knew that, so I thought the
Speaker 3: failing had to be mine and then the other way
Speaker 3: that you experience it is wondering, well, maybe he doesn't
Speaker 3: love me, which is not a great alternative. And those
Speaker 3: are the two ways. It's the only way that you
Speaker 3: can if you fast forward a few years. I think
Speaker 3: there's information that I needed that I did not have
Speaker 3: to understand that to just shy what was happening to
Speaker 3: me and for me. The missing piece of that, I
Speaker 3: think is the mental disorder, is that bipolar, dischizophrenia, whatever
Speaker 3: it is, that makes him so completely unable to evaluate risk,
Speaker 3: to understand that the bad things can happen. And I
Speaker 3: don't think my dad does understand that he has such
Speaker 3: extreme beliefs. He thinks that kind of God is there
Speaker 3: making sure everything is okay, and that if something happens,
Speaker 3: it happens for a reason, especially injuries, and he doesn't
Speaker 3: tend to learn from bad things to happen. And then
Speaker 3: just the extremity of the way he would respond to
Speaker 3: the situation. So you mentioned that he wouldn't give us
Speaker 3: medical care, but it's not that he would give himself
Speaker 3: medical care. I mean, the worst injury that happened in
Speaker 3: my father's junk yard had happened to my father. He
Speaker 3: did not remove the fuel from a car from a
Speaker 3: fuel tank before he led a cutting torch and tried
Speaker 3: to remove the tank, and what happened is the car
Speaker 3: exploded because fuel is flammable. You know, it's an incredibly
Speaker 3: predictable event. But he just wasn't able to evaluate that risk.
Speaker 3: So it's not as though he put us in danger
Speaker 3: and then kept himself perfectly safe. This was a flaw
Speaker 3: in the way his mind worked. He wasn't able. And
Speaker 3: it's not like he took himself to the hospital. He
Speaker 3: was burned terribly, but they treated that at home. They
Speaker 3: had no IV, they had no morphine, and he nearly
Speaker 3: died and he never recovered. His hands are just kind
Speaker 3: of almost claw like his right hand, and his face
Speaker 3: is waxy. He doesn't have fingerprints, and it was terrible burn.
Speaker 3: So I guess what I'm saying or trying to say,
Speaker 3: is I didn't have the information that I have now,
Speaker 3: which is I just didn't know that it was possible
Speaker 3: that my father could love me and still be flawed
Speaker 3: in that way. I didn't know that it was possible
Speaker 3: that he could value my safety and be so completely
Speaker 3: unable to keep me safe. And I do know that now,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know it then.
Speaker 2: Your mother is perhaps the most complex character in this
Speaker 2: book and in your life, in that you don't believe
Speaker 2: that she's mentally unwell, and you talk about her being
Speaker 2: a different person when she's with your father as she
Speaker 2: is with everyone else. She saw what was happening to
Speaker 2: you and what was happening to your siblings, but she
Speaker 2: didn't protect you, or she wasn't able to protect you.
Speaker 2: How are you able to how do you see that now?
Speaker 3: I've always felt like my mother was two people that
Speaker 3: she is. There's the person she is when she's with you,
Speaker 3: and then there's the person that she is when she's
Speaker 3: with my dad, And I don't know which is the
Speaker 3: real her. You know, when my dad first started developing
Speaker 3: his kind of radical ideas about doctors, that's when we
Speaker 3: had this really difficult car accident. You know, we drove
Speaker 3: all night, which my mother didn't want to do, but
Speaker 3: she didn't say anything to my dad, and he'd been
Speaker 3: giving this lectures for weeks about how doctors are part
Speaker 3: of the illuminati and they were terrible, and she would
Speaker 3: privately disagree with him. She said to me that she
Speaker 3: didn't agree, but she never said it to him, and
Speaker 3: she never said to him, that's fine that you believe that, dear,
Speaker 3: But should anything happen to me, I want to go
Speaker 3: to the hospital. And then we got into this horrible
Speaker 3: car accident. We drove all night and my brother was seventeen,
Speaker 3: and he fell asleep at the wheel, and we crashed,
Speaker 3: you know, bad crash, and her head hit the windshields
Speaker 3: so hard there was a crack that ran the whole
Speaker 3: length of it. And she was disoriented, and she had
Speaker 3: raccoon eyes that are a sign of traumatic brain injury,
Speaker 3: and she wasn't she was incapacitated, and my dad, because
Speaker 3: of the beliefs he had, you know, we didn't take
Speaker 3: her to the hospital. We didn't take her to get
Speaker 3: a katska, and we didn't do anything like that. And
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I don't blame her for
Speaker 3: that accident, obviously, but for me, the question is always
Speaker 3: I guess I really do believe that if she had
Speaker 3: said to my dad, if should something happen to me,
Speaker 3: this is how I want it handled, I think he
Speaker 3: would have taken her. But she hadn't said that. I
Speaker 3: think he assumed. I mean, I know that he assumed
Speaker 3: she agreed, and over the years she came into more
Speaker 3: and more agreement with him, so that now she has
Speaker 3: his exact same views about doctors. But the beginning she didn't.
Speaker 3: But she didn't say. And I've always wondered about that
Speaker 3: car accident. If it had been one of us that
Speaker 3: was injured really badly and not her, what would she
Speaker 3: have done. Would she have insisted that we go to
Speaker 3: the hospital, or would she have continued to be passive
Speaker 3: and just let him decide not to not to treat it.
Speaker 1: Do you think she was abused by your father?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I guess it depends on
Speaker 3: I'm very sure that she wasn't physically abused, and I
Speaker 3: never saw my father berate her in any way, or.
Speaker 1: Was she scared of him.
Speaker 3: She would never have been afraid of him physically. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine that she would have been, because he wasn't
Speaker 3: that kind of person. But I think she was someone
Speaker 3: who was intimidated by him, and that's a different I guess.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people would look at their
Speaker 3: relationship and say that it was emotionally abusive, And the
Speaker 3: only reason I'm uncomfortable with that is I think when
Speaker 3: you say relationship is abusive, I think people have a
Speaker 3: stereotype in their mind of what that is. And I
Speaker 3: don't think it was that. I don't think it was healthy,
Speaker 3: But I don't think it was that.
Speaker 2: I ask because you know, you talk about her beliefs
Speaker 2: and hospital and stuff. But she watched you, and in fact,
Speaker 2: she tended to your wounds when you would come back
Speaker 2: from the junkyard and you would have a hole in
Speaker 2: your leg and let yet she let you keep going
Speaker 2: out there with him. And she never said, you know what, no,
Speaker 2: my kids are going to go to school.
Speaker 3: You can get used to anything. And I think I
Speaker 3: think the thing about a crisis is it's a crisis.
Speaker 3: And when someone comes in, you know they're missing a
Speaker 3: finger or something. The last thing you think is I
Speaker 3: wonder if we should reconsider our general policy on you. Yeah, like,
Speaker 3: you deal with that thing, and then after it's over,
Speaker 3: the crisis has passed and everything's okay and they're healing
Speaker 3: and it's fine, and then you can harry on us
Speaker 3: before and you do that a few times, and then
Speaker 3: pretty soon the injuries are really normalized. Like I never
Speaker 3: I didn't think about the injuries in the scrapyard. I
Speaker 3: was writing the book, and I was writing all these things,
Speaker 3: and it was only when my friends were reading it saying,
Speaker 3: you cannot be serious. Yeah, these things happened, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: scrap yards are just dangerous. This is just what they're like.
Speaker 3: And other people I know, and then like other people
Speaker 3: must have had scrap yards in there in there, you know,
Speaker 3: did everyone have all of these injuries? Like, well, you
Speaker 3: do hear about people getting a car accident, sure, but
Speaker 3: not as many as we did. Do you hear about
Speaker 3: people getting burned, but not the way we did? And
Speaker 3: you hear about but yeah, there was a strange concentration
Speaker 3: of bad, bad things happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, except it wasn't strange. It was kind of as
Speaker 2: a consequence of.
Speaker 3: You, of decisions that were made.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was really bad choices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you don't, like I said, I think when
Speaker 3: the crisis happens is the exact moment. You don't have
Speaker 3: the reflection that would enable you to see those things.
Speaker 2: And you also talk about how isolated your upbringing was
Speaker 2: and your family was. It's not like you went to
Speaker 2: other people's houses or they came to yours, or there.
Speaker 3: Was a lot of perspective on it. For all, everyone's
Speaker 3: junk yard.
Speaker 1: Was like someone else in your family.
Speaker 2: Probably the character that shines most brightly or should I
Speaker 2: say most darkly in this book is your older brother Sean.
Speaker 2: You have five brothers, but he is the one with
Speaker 2: whom you have the most intense relationship. And it's the
Speaker 2: first time I've ever read a really detailed description of
Speaker 2: an abusive relationship between siblings. He was so physically and
Speaker 2: emotionally and mentally abusive towards you. Can you describe Sean
Speaker 2: a little bit and what your relationship was like? How
Speaker 2: much older than you was he he's ten years I
Speaker 2: don't have a lot of memories of him. When I
Speaker 2: was younger, he wasn't around a lot, and then he
Speaker 2: ran away from home he was seventeen, and I didn't
Speaker 2: really know him. My memories of him again when I
Speaker 2: was about fourteen or fifteen and he moved home, and
Speaker 2: you know, he was this incredibly kind, sensitive, attentive person.
Speaker 2: He was aware of me in a way that nobody
Speaker 2: in my life had been aware of me. He was
Speaker 2: protective of me in a way that my life had
Speaker 2: been protective of me. And like my father, he had
Speaker 2: a grip on safety and if he was in the
Speaker 2: scrap yard, a lot of the things that my dad
Speaker 2: would suggest, these just crazy plans. He would just be.
Speaker 2: He would just step forward and say we're not doing
Speaker 2: it that way and uh, and then they would fight.
Speaker 2: And so he took on this, He took on this
Speaker 2: role for me as someone who looked after me, and
Speaker 2: in a lot.
Speaker 3: Of ways he really did, you know. I mean, he
Speaker 3: saved my life. And we were breaking horses once and
Speaker 3: I got in a really bad situation on a horse.
Speaker 3: I lost control of the reins and the horse went
Speaker 3: berserk and my foot was caught in the stirrup. And
Speaker 3: if you know anything about horse riding, you know that's
Speaker 3: a pretty bad situation. So you fall off, you fall
Speaker 3: clean off, You're probably gonna be fine, but if your
Speaker 3: foot's caught, you'll get dragged and your head will hit
Speaker 3: a rock and that's it. You're done. And I thought
Speaker 3: I was I thought I was a goner because the
Speaker 3: only person that was around that could help me at
Speaker 3: all was my brother Shawan, and he was on a
Speaker 3: horse it's about twenty feet behind me, that had never
Speaker 3: had a rider on its back ever. This was its
Speaker 3: first time in fact, it hadn't even had a saddle.
Speaker 3: We put the saddle on, and we thought, right, we'll
Speaker 3: just put the saddle on and take it off because
Speaker 3: but she was tolerating it pretty well, so we thought, right,
Speaker 3: we'll just hop on her and see what happens. And
Speaker 3: then this is when I got in this situation. And
Speaker 3: so he's sitting on this twelve hundred pounds thorough bread.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, yeah, there's no way that he is gonna
Speaker 3: whip the horse into a frenzy that he would need
Speaker 3: to to catch the horse I'm on, which is going
Speaker 3: completely crazy. You know, show me he's gonna risk that,
Speaker 3: because he'll never be able to calm it down again
Speaker 3: and then we'll both be dead. But that's exactly what
Speaker 3: he did. And so he was capable of tremendous sacrifice
Speaker 3: self sacrifice. But he also I think had more self
Speaker 3: loathing than probably any person I've ever met, and that
Speaker 3: would come out in ways that were yeah, degrading, violent, manipulative,
Speaker 3: just all kinds of really unhealthy behaviors.
Speaker 2: He would do things like force your head into the toilet,
Speaker 2: twist your arm until it I think it broke. At
Speaker 2: one stage, I think my wrist had either. I think
Speaker 2: the bone cracked and it wasn't a cleaner.
Speaker 1: Who knows you weren't allowed to go to the doctor.
Speaker 3: That's true. Yeah, I think I think the bone probably cracked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt aware. Were your parents of what he
Speaker 2: was doing to you?
Speaker 3: That is a good question. I don't know. I know
Speaker 3: when my sister wrote me and said she wanted to
Speaker 3: confront my parents for one thing, I had no idea
Speaker 3: that she had lived my life before I did. That
Speaker 3: was an unwelcome revelation for me. But then I also
Speaker 3: felt an incredible reluctance to do what she was asking
Speaker 3: me to do, which is to confront my parents. And
Speaker 3: I suppose that I was afraid maybe they wouldn't believe me.
Speaker 3: But I think the bigger fear I had wasn't so
Speaker 3: much that they that they wouldn't believe me, but that
Speaker 3: I would just discover that they already knew and had
Speaker 3: already decided that it didn't matter.
Speaker 2: There was similar to so many abuses he did. He
Speaker 2: gasled you in the sense that he kept telling you
Speaker 2: that it was just a joke, that you were just
Speaker 2: mucking around, and that worked quite well. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I have a theory about that. I think all abuse,
Speaker 3: no matter what kind of abuse it is, I think
Speaker 3: it's an assault on the mind. And I think if
Speaker 3: you're going to abuse someone, you have to re invade
Speaker 3: the reality and you have to distort it, and you
Speaker 3: have to simultaneously convince them a couple of things. You
Speaker 3: have to convince them that what you're doing isn't that bad,
Speaker 3: which is you have to rationalize it or normalize it.
Speaker 3: And the other thing you have to convince mother is
Speaker 3: that they somehow deserve what's happening. And my brother was
Speaker 3: really good. I think the second thing happens naturally because
Speaker 3: people tend to take on blame when they're hurting. I
Speaker 3: think the first thing was something my brother was just
Speaker 3: really good at. So, you know, he could he could
Speaker 3: attack me. And there was one incident that happened where he, yeah,
Speaker 3: he grabbed me by my hair and hauled me down
Speaker 3: the hallway and shoved my head in a toilet, and
Speaker 3: then we ended up. I was trying to get away
Speaker 3: and he grabbed me again and I ended up we
Speaker 3: both ended up falling into the bathtub and I broke
Speaker 3: my toes he fell in it, and I had a
Speaker 3: friend that was there I was seventeen and I had,
Speaker 3: you know, this Charles person. I actually did become friends
Speaker 3: with this person, and he was there, and you know,
Speaker 3: after it was all over, I remember my brother Sean,
Speaker 3: he comes into my room and he just explains to
Speaker 3: me that it was a game and we were having
Speaker 3: a really good time. And you know, next time things
Speaker 3: are getting out of hand or I'm not having fun,
Speaker 3: I need to make sure I say something. And I
Speaker 3: took that perspective on one hundred percent, so much so
Speaker 3: that I went to Charles and said, oh, it's just
Speaker 3: a game. And he didn't buy it. He knew what
Speaker 3: he'd seen. But I think, you know, he didn't really
Speaker 3: try to reason with me either. I think he could
Speaker 3: see how deeply under my brother's power I was, you know,
Speaker 3: but eventually that would begin to shift. And you know,
Speaker 3: it was only really a few weeks later that something
Speaker 3: happened again with my brother. He attacked me in a
Speaker 3: parking lot and when it.
Speaker 1: Was all over, at the time, he laughed, didn't you At.
Speaker 3: The time people started, you know, I was screaming and
Speaker 3: and people started to look and I immediately started to.
Speaker 1: Laugh, Why did you do that?
Speaker 3: I think it was so much more pleasant to believe
Speaker 3: it was a game. I definitely wanted other people to
Speaker 3: believe it was a game. I didn't want other people
Speaker 3: to know he was attacking me. It was humiliating, and
Speaker 3: then the and then I think I wanted to believe
Speaker 3: it myself a little bit. And uh, when it was
Speaker 3: all over, I wrote this journal entry about it, which
Speaker 3: is probably the first time in my life that I'd
Speaker 3: written other journal entries where I'd been vague. I said
Speaker 3: I was afraid of my brother had said something had happened,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't say what. But this was the first
Speaker 3: entry that I just wrote what happened, and I wrote.
Speaker 3: I wrote that I'd been terrified. I wrote that I'd
Speaker 3: been afraid. I wrote that I would have torn him
Speaker 3: apart if I could have in that moment, for what
Speaker 3: he was doing to me.
Speaker 1: And when and I.
Speaker 3: Was wild I was writing it. He uh, he knocks
Speaker 3: on my door and he comes into my room and
Speaker 3: he says to me, Oh, whatever that thing earlier, that
Speaker 3: was just a game and we were having fun. And
Speaker 3: you know, next time things get out of hand, or
Speaker 3: you're or something's hurting you, you really need to speak
Speaker 3: up and say something.
Speaker 1: Oh, was your fault.
Speaker 3: And then he left, and I did not know what
Speaker 3: to think. I didn't I didn't know whose experience was right.
Speaker 3: For all, I knew it had been a game for him,
Speaker 3: but I knew what my experience had been, and I
Speaker 3: knew that I had not been having fun. And so
Speaker 3: I wrote this slightly strange entry where I wrote both versions. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's what he says happened, but this is what happened
Speaker 3: to me. And I think it's probably the first time
Speaker 3: that that happened, and that my brother had attempted to
Speaker 3: dominate me in that way. And at the end of
Speaker 3: that process, there were still two minds present, two distinct minds,
Speaker 3: not one mind having gained control over the other.
Speaker 2: You took it upon yourself to educate yourself, and you
Speaker 2: had one brother that had gone to university and encouraged
Speaker 2: you to go, and you went to BYU. Brigham Young University,
Speaker 2: which is a Mormon orange college. I can't even imagine
Speaker 2: the shock you must have had so many firsts living
Speaker 2: the life that you did, and then moving because you
Speaker 2: went to live on campus. You were sixteen years old
Speaker 2: and yet you were at university. What were some of
Speaker 2: the firsts you encountered and how did you interpret them.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of learning about things I didn't know,
Speaker 3: like the Holocaust, or I thought Europe was a country
Speaker 3: it wasn't. Uh. And then there's a lot of social awkwardness.
Speaker 3: I had never had friends my age. I'd never had
Speaker 3: you had friends. You don't talk a lot about friends.
Speaker 1: Even there was a.
Speaker 3: Family a mile away that was like my family, and
Speaker 3: they didn't go to school or believe in doctors. And
Speaker 3: I mean it's funny, you know, she was my age
Speaker 3: and I definitely saw her, but friends, not in the
Speaker 3: traditional sense. You know, she was the oldest of I
Speaker 3: think ten, and you know she grew up fast and no,
Speaker 3: so not in the traditional sense. You know, she was
Speaker 3: kind of a mother. She was kind of Yeah, she
Speaker 3: was my age where she had ten kids and basically
Speaker 3: she was the one raising one. And so no, not really, No,
Speaker 3: I didn't have friends, not until I went to college.
Speaker 3: And I was bad at it. Frankly, I just didn't
Speaker 3: know how to do it. I didn't know how to
Speaker 3: be around people my own age. I had terrible hygiene
Speaker 3: and I just the whole you know, yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: I was a weird person. You would would have seen
Speaker 3: me in a crowd and thought, what is going on there?
Speaker 1: Why what do you look like? I did dress in a.
Speaker 3: Side I dressed. I wore a lot of my brother's clothes.
Speaker 3: And when I already tried to dress and what I
Speaker 3: thought was a female way, it was like way over
Speaker 3: the top, you know, I just didn't know how to
Speaker 3: do it. And then probably the bigger issue was just
Speaker 3: I could not talk to people. I didn't know how.
Speaker 3: I remember listening. I remember in classes, you know, I'd
Speaker 3: have my notebook for notes, and then before the lectures
Speaker 3: would start, sometimes I would just listen to people kind
Speaker 3: of greeting each other, and I remember writing out some
Speaker 3: of these conversations, Hi, Hi, how are you? What have
Speaker 3: you been doing this weekend? Like I would just write
Speaker 3: out what people were saying because I was just trying
Speaker 3: to work out how does this like. I'd never had
Speaker 3: to have a conversation like that. I'd talk to my
Speaker 3: family and that's it.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, you don't have a lot of small talk
Speaker 2: with your family, do you.
Speaker 3: Know it's not the same or yeah, we would meet
Speaker 3: other families like I said that, we're like my family,
Speaker 3: but they were very different conversations and the adults talk,
Speaker 3: and as kids you just have a very different interaction.
Speaker 3: And I just never I never that whole small talk
Speaker 3: conversation here's how you talk to people. I was just
Speaker 3: really bad at it. And I remember just just riding
Speaker 3: them out, and then of course you try to memorize them,
Speaker 3: and it ends up just going really badly because someone,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe you know someone at church and they're
Speaker 3: trying to be nice to you, and so they say, hi,
Speaker 3: how are you know? They come over and they're like
Speaker 3: and they're like hi, and then you say fine. You know,
Speaker 3: you just kind of like you just skip a step
Speaker 3: because they do something a little bit unexpected and you
Speaker 3: can't deal with it. And so I had a lot
Speaker 3: of conversations like that where they would say hey, nice day,
Speaker 3: and I'd be like, fine, it's fine. I mean, I'm fine. No,
Speaker 3: it's a fine it's a fine day. And uh and
Speaker 3: at that point, you know, they're just sort of like okay, right.
Speaker 3: So No, I wasn't. It wasn't not a smooth transit.
Speaker 3: Plus I thought everyone was, you know, I thought they
Speaker 3: were all gentiles and not not not good Mormons, because
Speaker 3: I thought our version of Mormonism was the right one,
Speaker 3: and theirs was the let's give you a slightly evil one,
Speaker 3: which didn't help of self isolating a lot of.
Speaker 2: The time, did it see you talk about looking around
Speaker 2: and feeling like everyone was going to go to hell
Speaker 2: because there were girls that were wearing short skirts.
Speaker 1: Or what else shocked you by the outside world?
Speaker 3: Oh? Everything, and the movies they watched, the clothes they wore,
Speaker 3: the fact that they went to the doctor shocked me.
Speaker 3: And I thought they were going to be punished for that.
Speaker 3: I thought they were going to be punished for going
Speaker 3: to school. You know, Yeah, there was there. There was
Speaker 3: a lot of just me choosing to be isolated. In
Speaker 3: addition to the fact that even on the rare occasions
Speaker 3: when I thought I wanted to be friends with someone,
Speaker 3: I had no idea how to do that.
Speaker 2: Did it take a long time to learn how to
Speaker 2: be a young woman?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Does anyone know how to do that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: What that mean?
Speaker 1: If you find out, can you let me know.
Speaker 3: I think it takes a long time to learn that
Speaker 3: the ideas of what people think you should be as
Speaker 3: a young woman are wholly made up, and that really
Speaker 3: you're just trying to learn how to be yourself. It's
Speaker 3: hard enough work. I'd have never thought what you really
Speaker 3: need to do is learn what other people think you should.
Speaker 3: There was that wonderful quote the other day I read
Speaker 3: and I wish I could remember the name of the writer.
Speaker 3: She's so great. But it was something like, the problem
Speaker 3: with gender expectations is that they tell you how you
Speaker 3: should be and not how you are. And I think
Speaker 3: that's exactly it. Maybe, yes, we think in general women
Speaker 3: are more like this, in general men are more like this,
Speaker 3: But it completely neglects the fact that individuals are not
Speaker 3: like anything.
Speaker 2: What about romantic relationships before marriage?
Speaker 3: What do you mean? You have to be more specific?
Speaker 1: Did you have sex in college?
Speaker 3: Now? Of course not, I was did like?
Speaker 2: What was the dismantling of your religious beliefs to the
Speaker 2: point where you were able to and I don't want
Speaker 2: to make any assumptions, but to the point where you
Speaker 2: were able to not feel that every decision you took
Speaker 2: would mean that you would go to hell?
Speaker 3: You know. I mean there's things that you that you
Speaker 3: internalized because you're told them explicitly, and then there are
Speaker 3: things that you internalize even though you're not told them explicitly.
Speaker 3: And I Yeah, the first boyfriend I got I was seventeen,
Speaker 3: and it was a completely unphysical relationship for a really
Speaker 3: long time, pretty much the whole duration of it, almost
Speaker 3: because I just could not do it. And you know,
Speaker 3: my older brother, Sean, he'd had this word for me
Speaker 3: that he'd been calling me since I was fifteen, and
Speaker 3: the word was whore. And again, I was a teenage girl.
Speaker 3: That really entered into my self conception in a pretty
Speaker 3: extreme way, In such an extreme way that when I
Speaker 3: was sixteen, I wrote this journal entry about my brother
Speaker 3: and it included the line, It's strange how you give
Speaker 3: the people you love so much power over you. But
Speaker 3: you know, in calling me that for so long, I
Speaker 3: think he had he had a lot more power over
Speaker 3: me than I ever could have understood, because what he
Speaker 3: had done is he had defined me to myself. And
Speaker 3: I'm really not sure there's a greater power than that.
Speaker 3: And so I was, you know, seventeen eighteen. That word
Speaker 3: was so strong and who I thought I was, that
Speaker 3: any attempt I made to have any kind of physical
Speaker 3: relationship just filled me with revulsion at my own self.
Speaker 3: And so, to be honest, though there were many years
Speaker 3: where it just was not something I was able to do.
Speaker 2: Did you need to be deprogrammed? Like, did you go
Speaker 2: to a counsel a lot? How did you dismantle this
Speaker 2: essentially brainwashing, A lifetime of brainwashing until you sort of
Speaker 2: got to college and started seeing the world through your
Speaker 2: own lens.
Speaker 3: Deprogramming de brainwashing. I don't know if there were words.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel like that at the time. I think
Speaker 3: I remember being in college and and I had these
Speaker 3: wonderful housemates, roommates my second and third year, and I
Speaker 3: remember really watching them and just becoming aware that there
Speaker 3: were huge differences between them and me. And I remember
Speaker 3: the first time I realized I had a real revelation
Speaker 3: of what the difference. One of those differences was is
Speaker 3: one of my housemates, she went on a bad date
Speaker 3: or something and he ended up calling her a name.
Speaker 3: I don't really I don't even remember the story, but
Speaker 3: I remember she came home crying. He said something mean
Speaker 3: to her. She was so upset about it, and I realized,
Speaker 3: I just knew if that had happened to me, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have any feelings about it. That was a big
Speaker 3: difference between her and me. That was the biggest difference
Speaker 3: she was capable of being hurt by hurtful things and
Speaker 3: I was not. And you know, I could have been
Speaker 3: out with someone I've been called a whore or a
Speaker 3: slut or any other thing, and I would not have
Speaker 3: even I wouldn't even have felt it. And I thought
Speaker 3: that was a good thing. Since I was sixteen, I'd
Speaker 3: been telling myself that was a good thing. It was
Speaker 3: because I was really strong, because I was I was touchable,
Speaker 3: I was invincible. It was a sign of the fact
Speaker 3: that I could take anything and nothing would affect me.
Speaker 3: Nothing affected me, nothing could affect me. I said that
Speaker 3: to myself all the time, and it wasn't until that
Speaker 3: moment that I realized that it's not affecting me. That
Speaker 3: was its effect, That was the effect it was having.
Speaker 3: It was hauling me out. It was making me disconnected
Speaker 3: from myself. It was making me not able to connect
Speaker 3: with other people because I couldn't. I couldn't risk it.
Speaker 3: So I think it took me a long time to
Speaker 3: realize that her vulnerability. You know, she was gonna cry
Speaker 3: that night, but then later she was going to be
Speaker 3: a full, complete human being and I was not. So
Speaker 3: did you have therapy to help not then No, I
Speaker 3: think I went quite far without therapy. I didn't have
Speaker 3: therapy until I had a mental breakdown because my parents
Speaker 3: were telling people I was possessed. And then I had
Speaker 3: a mental breakdown, and at that point I got lots
Speaker 3: of therapy. And I'm a big fan of therapy now.
Speaker 3: But you know, i'd got over before that happened. You know,
Speaker 3: a lot of the issues i'd had, you know, with
Speaker 3: physical intimacy or or without vulnerability thing, these were things
Speaker 3: I'd noodled out myself, and I think I would have
Speaker 3: probably done it faster with a therapist. It seems like
Speaker 3: a great waste of time to just sit by yourself
Speaker 3: and do it. You can be helped with this, you know,
Speaker 3: But I had you know, I think I had kind
Speaker 3: of worked that out most of it.
Speaker 2: As you progressed further and further to the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: heights in terms of education, I mean, you certainly overcompensated
Speaker 2: for a lifetime not setting foot in a classroom or
Speaker 2: having any formal education.
Speaker 3: You started a university, did I think is the word
Speaker 3: you're looking for?
Speaker 2: But yeah, did I say undercompensated, No, No, you just
Speaker 2: a compensation overcompensated very much overcompensated ridiculously for your lack
Speaker 2: of formal education. You went from university to Cambridge and
Speaker 2: then Oxford.
Speaker 3: Oxford and went to Cambridge, and I had a year
Speaker 3: at Harvard, but I got my PhD at Cambridge, So
Speaker 3: that was a bit I think of an over compensation. Once,
Speaker 3: once I did make it to a school, I start,
Speaker 3: that's it, flag planted. I'm never leaving.
Speaker 2: I'm going to learn all the things now you're a
Speaker 2: doctor technically, yeah, in history, yes, all the things that
Speaker 2: you didn't learn before. And you moved to the UK
Speaker 2: and you got scholarships and you did extraordinarily well. Because
Speaker 2: obviously there was no family support for your pursuit of education.
Speaker 2: They must have been incredibly threatened by you leaving the
Speaker 2: family and striking out in this particular direction.
Speaker 3: No, if I would say they were threatened, I think
Speaker 3: it made it hard. It was hard on them. They
Speaker 3: had to negotiate. They had to watch me making decisions
Speaker 3: they didn't like. They had to watch me getting beliefs
Speaker 3: they didn't like. They had to a lot of parents
Speaker 3: have to do that, and my parents did, and they
Speaker 3: I thought they they handled it fairly well.
Speaker 1: Actually I don't know. I started saying you were possessed
Speaker 1: by the devil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that wasn't about politics, and it wasn't about history,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't about the fact that I went to school,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't about any of that. I think what
Speaker 3: that was about it was about it, but not directly.
Speaker 3: I think it was only about those things because those
Speaker 3: things had changed me and I'd become a different person,
Speaker 3: and because I was different, that was hard for them.
Speaker 3: Me being a different person was hard for them. I
Speaker 3: think the negotiation of the actual differences, I think that
Speaker 3: they were really doing their best with that. I think
Speaker 3: we all were trying to just, you know, find you
Speaker 3: can half kill yourself and not go to the doctor,
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna pretend like that's all right, and you're
Speaker 3: going to pretend like it's all right that I'm going
Speaker 3: to this school in this country that you think is socialist,
Speaker 3: and we're all just gonna act like it's fine. And
Speaker 3: we were doing that, and I think, you know, what
Speaker 3: broke my family apart wasn't was an education in a
Speaker 3: direct way. What broke my family apart was me confronting
Speaker 3: them about my brother's violence and saying it was time
Speaker 3: to put an end to that and them saying that
Speaker 3: I was my father, especially saying that I was lying
Speaker 3: and that I was possessed.
Speaker 1: What might you decide to confront them about Chilen.
Speaker 3: I got a letter from my sister and saying things
Speaker 3: had happened with her, and she thought that it was
Speaker 3: time that we confront them, and I did not want
Speaker 3: to do that, and I asked her to give me
Speaker 3: some time to think about it. But I think she
Speaker 3: had been trying to convince my mother for some time
Speaker 3: to take it seriously. And I think when she got
Speaker 3: an email back from me basically saying, you're right, these
Speaker 3: things have happened. But let's think I think she. I
Speaker 3: think she felt this overwhelming need to just show it
Speaker 3: to my mother and say, look, I'm not I'm not crazy,
Speaker 3: And so she did.
Speaker 2: Sean was married by this time, and at one point
Speaker 2: you go home and you staying with your parents, and
Speaker 2: his wife comes over in enormous distress. How did that
Speaker 2: play out in the end?
Speaker 3: You know, it was a strange time. His wife was
Speaker 3: my age, she might even be a little younger than me,
Speaker 3: and it was difficult for me not to identify with her.
Speaker 3: And I was at Cambridge I was studying feminism. I
Speaker 3: was learning all these great things about gender roles and
Speaker 3: all this stuff. And then I went home and witnessed
Speaker 3: this scene of violence between my brother and his wife,
Speaker 3: where he had thrown her out of the house in
Speaker 3: the middle of winter without shoes or a coat, because
Speaker 3: I think she'd bought the wrong kind of food at
Speaker 3: the store that day and he'd locked her out of
Speaker 3: the house and she'd had to, you know, in December
Speaker 3: in Idaho, which is a really cold place with ice,
Speaker 3: and yeah, she'd had to run up the hill without shoes,
Speaker 3: got a coat and yeah, And I did nothing. I
Speaker 3: think I just deferred to my dad. I did the
Speaker 3: exact same thing I'd been trained to do my whole life,
Speaker 3: which is I I deferred to a source of authority,
Speaker 3: even kind of knowing that I thought the authority was
Speaker 3: probably wrong.
Speaker 1: She's still with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's your life like now, Tara mine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right now, there's a lot of travel, a lot
Speaker 3: of promoting the book. But talking about the book, you've
Speaker 3: stayed in the UK. Yeah, I've stayed in the UK.
Speaker 3: I've got a dog, I you know, I have a
Speaker 3: little house. I write. It's very different than the life
Speaker 3: that I had growing up, obviously, and I'm very different,
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, it's one of the things
Speaker 3: about the book. I think people a lot of people
Speaker 3: want to read this book, and they want to read
Speaker 3: it as a sociological kind of study of why some
Speaker 3: kids embraced education and others don't, or why some kids
Speaker 3: are resilient and others aren't, or they want it. That's
Speaker 3: what they want. And for me, I guess I think
Speaker 3: the questions that the book asks are less sociological and
Speaker 3: more psychological, because I don't feel qualified to write about
Speaker 3: any of that other stuff. But for me, are these
Speaker 3: psychological questions that are the heart of it. And I
Speaker 3: think that what it really, what the story asks, at
Speaker 3: least the way I see it is, is just about change.
Speaker 3: And it's about all the different versions of a person
Speaker 3: that can exist in the space of a life. And
Speaker 3: it's about whether your first self is your only true self,
Speaker 3: or whether you're allowed to change, and about what happens
Speaker 3: when the people who are close to you who won't
Speaker 3: allow you to change, or maybe just can't accept any
Speaker 3: other version of you. So that's you know, the fact
Speaker 3: that my life is so different now. I think that's
Speaker 3: the narrative. That's what it's about. It's about change, and
Speaker 3: it's about identity and how much can you change and
Speaker 3: still feel like yourself? And who gets to decide how
Speaker 3: much change is too much? And then, of course the
Speaker 3: argument's over the past, and who gets to control the
Speaker 3: narratives of the past, because all of these things are
Speaker 3: bound up together.
Speaker 2: What's your relationship black now with your family? And have
Speaker 2: they read the book? I don't know who else read
Speaker 2: the book. There's half my family. I'm really close to.
Speaker 3: Three of my brothers, and then there is a significant
Speaker 3: portion of the family from whom I mischranged.
Speaker 1: Is that your decision?
Speaker 3: It wasn't to begin with, you know. Initially, when my
Speaker 3: parents said I was lying, they told my brother what
Speaker 3: I'd said about him, and he disowned me, and they
Speaker 3: apported that decision. So there was a good year of
Speaker 3: the of the disownment. That was very much their choice,
Speaker 3: not mine. I call it phase phase one. Phase one
Speaker 3: was not my choice, and that lasted about ten months,
Speaker 3: and then I was offered a way back into the family.
Speaker 3: And the way that was offered to me was that
Speaker 3: my father, very bizarrely just came to Harvard which is
Speaker 3: not There's two things my dad hates, it's uh travel
Speaker 3: and liberals. So for him to come to Harvard was
Speaker 3: pretty extreme. So he uh he did, though. He came
Speaker 3: and and he offered me this blessing, which I think
Speaker 3: would have been tanto out to an exorcism where I
Speaker 3: could have accepted the blessing and then he would cast
Speaker 3: out this devil and I could sort of say, well,
Speaker 3: everything that I'd said about my brother had really been
Speaker 3: this evil spirit, and I could just deny it all
Speaker 3: and I could just have my family. And there was
Speaker 3: a period of several days where we were walking around,
Speaker 3: you know, sight seeing in Boston is the weirdest thing,
Speaker 3: and I was just wrestling with that decision, and there
Speaker 3: was a period where I thought maybe that was a
Speaker 3: deal I could make, and I was kind of trying
Speaker 3: to convince myself that there might be some dignity and
Speaker 3: what I planned to do, which is to surrender my
Speaker 3: own ideas about right and wrong, my own perceptions about
Speaker 3: what had happened. That I could deny things and say
Speaker 3: things didn't happen that I knew did, and that somehow
Speaker 3: that this was a defensible choice to make, that I
Speaker 3: could do that, you know, to win the love of
Speaker 3: my parents. And ultimately it was a decision I couldn't make,
Speaker 3: and I had to kind of come to terms with
Speaker 3: the fact when my dad did offer it the last
Speaker 3: night before they left, that the daughter that my dad
Speaker 3: had come to reclaim just no longer existed anymore. You know.
Speaker 3: She had she'd grown up, and she'd read a bunch
Speaker 3: of books, and she'd developed her own ideas about things
Speaker 3: and her own perspective on things. And you know, I
Speaker 3: was no longer in a position where someone could come
Speaker 3: along and say to me, oh, no, it had been
Speaker 3: a game. You were having fun, and next time, next time,
Speaker 3: make sure you speak out. I knew that that wasn't
Speaker 3: going to work, and I knew what was happening to me,
Speaker 3: and I had just become a person who had no
Speaker 3: tolerance for violence and couldn't really give way to it,
Speaker 3: and there really wasn't another decision to make. Really as
Speaker 3: heartbreaking it as it is, I'm so glad for you
Speaker 3: that you are able to stay with that other person
Speaker 3: and tell your story.
Speaker 2: You should be super proud. It's a wonderful, wonderful book
Speaker 2: and an extraordinary story. Thank you, Thanks so Much Tara.
Speaker 1: You can buy Tara's book at Apple dot co.
Speaker 2: Forward Slash Mama Maya Lots and Lots of People Have
Speaker 2: No Filter is produced by Eliza Ratliffe and if you
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