Hello there. Guess who i am. [laughing] so i am khoi le. This is Tara Westover, and if i have to give you an introduction about Tara Westover, you need to just get out of hope youve been living in for a while. Because the book has to celebrate i think the 100th week, consecutive week on the New York Times best seller list, its at number one. [applause] ahead of michelle malcolm, down there so thats pretty cool. And im assuming a lot of people are familiar with the narrative that, the 40 so interested and youre still here on the last lecture on the second day, but i thought we would still go through some of her story because its so gripping. It starts in idaho and actually to me its like such a beautiful setting. There must be a lot of beautiful memories you must have that. Yeah, i mean, it was Beautiful Mountain that i grew up on. I still have really fond memories of being on that mountain and i love playing on that mound. I think its an incredible, you know, for the kids to get to put on a playground, we had this entire farm and this huge space and just a lot of wonderful things that could happen on a mountain like that. I guess you would say we were the original free range kids, you know, kind of hardcore. So there was a lot of really wonderful things about it. Then of course there was some difficult things but the setting, the scenery, living in the nature walks. You are just there all the time. You dont want to it. Its a constantly. One of the things when id come back from college and id be driving to town with my sister and i would just be rapturous about how wonderful everything was. She was used to it. She is like whats up with you . If the field. There will another field right there. We have to take a picture of this. She would just roll her eyes. Club time outdoors. Her mother was an herbalist. And the midwife and so we grew a lot of food that we ate and we had animals that we raised. We had a pretty come with a herbalism and every were pretty involved with the lead. A lot of different animals . Mostly normal ones, you know. I guess we had goats, pigs. This is rancho mirage. Like a poodle . [laughing] we never had a poodle, no. That never happened. Normal farm animals i guess, horses, cows, takes, chickens. We had a lot of goats. We were goat people. What i think of as normal animals. And you were the youngest of seven, so theres a lot of people around. Yeah. I mean, we didnt go to school so my parents had kind of a different philosophy of a lot of things so they were opposed to a lot of things will see you take for granted. Doctors and hospitals, they would not have liked you. The first school though my dad got a little more radical as he got older. My first three siblings went to school. More in hospitals. Board and hospitals. As my dad get old he got more radical and he pulled up the kids out of school. My older brothers and after that starting with my third front i think is when it started everyone was born at home and my fourth brother after that come note birth certificates or anything like that. So no medical records or nothing . No. I got my birth certificate when i was nine. You are lucky you didnt look like me. Probably wouldve been hard. Of documentation, thats a problem. [laughing] like you for many recent that you dont look like in the. [laughing] we will need that one for now. Then, but you are still reading. I think there was like one reference to going to the Carnegie Library. There was a library and ten, a Carnegie Library and would go occasionally. Reading was important to my parents so we all learned how to read. I was taught how to read by an older brother. Im pretty sure it was to went out to limit brothers how fast i could read. One of my brothers thought i was dumb and thought i could not learn how to read. This was at age four. I think i was four. I learned how to repeat those important q could read so you could read the bible, book of mormon is, very religious. Reading was important and in the rest of education was a little bit more piecemeal. A bit more haphazard. Some years my mother would say were going to get very serious about schooling and that would last a couple weeks and that would tend to give way to the demands of her herbal business or the farm or my parents were very devoted to food supply. It was very anxious that he needed to have a ten year supply of food to prepare for whatever catastrophe was going to come at the end of time. Since you with all the people of food yet to be able to protect the food. Then you have to protect different from of the people who dont have food so it gets to be kind of evolved that kind of planning. Ten ten years the food is a t of food. For nine people. You mentioned your father kind of evolved in his way of thinking, he went more towards was it during an event the change the way he was viewing de world or was it just a progression . Its hard to say. There were definitely events that seem to play into it and intensify. I write about the effect of ruby ridge which is what i remember and that hit my family and a pretty specific way. I think my dad for many years before that was already pretty frightened of the federal government. It was already developing pretty radical ideas around government and school and doctors and things like that. I think ruby ridge for him really solidified that because thats the story of the federal government surrounding the family and essentially laying siege with them and killing several members of the family. And not so far from you. They were in idaho and they were homeschoolers like my family. I think for my dad that really solidified in his mind a lot of the fears, things that he was worried about. I think that had a pretty intense that. I dont think anybody ever went after the ruby ridge incident where as a lot of my siblings did go to a couple of use school here or there. Tyler, i guess hes the third oldest in the family. He felt the need to break free of that environment. He was really unusual. He was about, he went to one year of high school and ruby ridge happen and he didnt go back. He was just kind of a freak, you know . In a good way. But he went to a year of high school. He liked it. He liked math. He taught himself trigonometry and then he taught himself algebra, then he decided he would teach himself calculus but he didnt have books so they went to the high school and said when giving a calculus book . The calculus teacher just laughed and said you cant teach yourself tyke u. S. Pirg he said give me a book, i think i can. She gave him a a book and he taught himself calculus. One day just took the act, i think he got almost a perfect score. And then Just Announced he was going to college. I didnt even know what that was. I think i was probably eight, and at first i knew college was an evil terrible thing because thats what my dad said. Any kind of left. The book is dedicated to tyler. Your credit him with also introducing you to music, which you i think had said was one of the main source of inspiration for you to leave home and see something greater outside of your world. I was pretty happy with the mound, growing up on a mountain is kind of a wonderful thing. I dont think, i very much subscribed to my father worlds of you. When youre a kid you get told things, they make sense to you. Sorry, something is clicking back here. I very much subscribed to my dads we looking at the world and at the intention of ever leaving the mountain. That would work fine for me. Tither played for me some opera and some mormon tabernacle choir and i was just really arrested by and thought i dont know what this is one thing that is clear to me is no one is born knowing how to sing like this. You have to go somewhere and then that the teacher to do this. I said to tyler, whered you go to learn this . He said to go to college. I sort of said fine, ill do that. I ended up saying how to get to college . You teach yourself math. [laughing] its not that hard, dont worry. And so i tried it because he is like acting as if it was a very normal thing to do, and i did that teach myself calculus. I barely managed to teach myself enough algebra to just scraped through that exam. I started waking up early and trying to learn algebra. Its a strange thing to try to explain to people but it is still true that i more or less thomas of algebra because i like to sing. That was the motivation for me. I dont know for sure what kind of lesson there is in that accept that i think maybe we should be a little thoughtful before he crushed any kind of passion that a child has because you just dont really know where that will take them. It was because i like to think that it went to college, when i got to college i discovered at byu i discovered philosophy and history and all these wonderful things and above that, with to cambridge and cambridge i discovered writing books and wrote a book and and i came tos place here. You just dont necessarily know where these things will take you but i think if you dont, you dont know where the path will take you but you know having no passion what they can or. You have that chapter called apache women. I havent read in a while. Okay. Its really good. [laughing] i recommend it. You made this decision. You are 15 or 16 and i think you are being modest but you taught yourself and you got a score on the act a venture that got you into byu. You are preset and theres just one thing i read that you have read recently, but what your father comes into your room at night and he says, care, i pray about your decision to the road and just called to testify and he is displeased that you are casting away his blessings to or after mans knowledge and that his wrath will come upon you. In the book you spend the night think about this and your father consensus to its pretty chilling and wake up the next day and you have decided not to go to college. Yeah, i mean, i very much subscribed to my dads worldview. Mostly i just subscribed to it and then i did and thats going to college for all kinds of reasons, but even once i did go i think i still have to believe that i shouldnt go, that the something wicked about the fact i was going. My dad very much had a doctrine that we were taught that we were a peculiar people, my family specifically kind of took that from the old testament, because we didnt participate in all these things that other people did, thats doctors and Public School was big part of that. So for me to go to college was a huge breach of that. I was of jew might for a long time. It felt like a sampling, a personal failing that it didnt have enough faith or conviction to just stick out with this life that ive been told was a right life. The thing is it didnt feel like the right life for me. I think when youre a kid, i mean, kid, i guess im 17, but i did not reconcile those things. I owed something to my parents. I owned a loyalty to him and the red their beliefs, and i really felt like i owed them that. I felt like i also owed something to myself. I should explore this come about to sing, i want to see what enabled to do and it really want to do this. I could not reconcile those two obligations. There wasnt really a way to do. Your mothers role is interesting because at times she encourages you and she says tara, youre the one i thought would get out of here so you need to go and not stay. Other times it seems like she is holding back a bit. My mother is complicated. Whenever i think about my mom i always think about there are two versions of her. So theres my mother why think of as my mother, then theres my fathers wife. They are just not the same person. My mother is really different person when my dad is either there or shes kind of acting on his behalf. She is a very different person. When i was younger i feel like there was more of her as my mother, and then as i got older i felt like that person was less and less present. It was a little bit unpredictable which mother a little bit unpredictable. Nature of mothers, nothing definite can be said. I dont quite think thats the quote but i but i can see u are reaching for. You go to college and you are finding out that all these things, that your knowledge is different than that from your classmates. So thats like what obstacle and then you have social obstacle. Even though in retrospect to say im at byu, that must be a little transition period its not like going to berkeley or Something Like that. It seemed to me like a shockingly worldly party school, but i recognize now [laughing] that says a lot more about me than it does about byu. Because its more or less a mormon convent, like [laughing] more or less. Like men and women live in different buildings, and theres a curfew that is at 12 00 at night and if you visit i guys apart but you can only be in the living room. You cant go even to the bathroom project to go to the bathroom in an apartment across the street that women on. Its serious, serious. I thought of the most terrifying people were wearing tank tops and drinking mountain dew. [laughing] i couldnt deal with it. No, i thought i was surrounded by gentiles. That was the language, the word i used. Aside from a focus on the academic obstacles that you have to overcome learning about all these things, the way youd been taught, and the social, but theres also financial obstacles. Obstacles. It sounds like you were really broke a lot the first year. Likely byu was not expensive because the church subsidize a lot of it. You could actually scraped through. Tuition at the time i went was i think 1600 or something, which is unbelievable for the kind of education that it is. My read of never forget was when hundred ten dollars a month. And so you could do that. You could work a a couple jobsd work in the summer and you could do that. The only problem with doing it that way is you be constantly and initially preoccupied with money. You could have woken me up at 3 00 in the morning and just shook me awake and how its when is your bank account . I couldve told you to the penny, like 26. 57. I knew at any hour of the day houseman i had come always comd who wife on what. I knew all that. That takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth, for lack of a better term. Activity are think about a focusing on everyday was money. The best thing happened to me that the public could happen to me is i need a root canal. Its not obvious why that such good thing but it was a good thing and mike is because i couldnt afford the root canal. I didnt have the money. It was like 1400. I didnt have it. I ended up going into talking to a bishop who is the moment equaled a pastor and you try to give me the Churches Church ist i been raised with this insane idea of independence. He tried to give me money from his own bank account which it wouldnt take and any after weeks and weeks and weeks and its me to apply for a pell grant, which is a whole other complicated thing for me to do, government and i thought it was the illuminati but eventually i got this check for four grand and there was 4000 because account in the spring and it gave me for the fall and i just stared at it. All you need was 1400. I called the woman, i called the number and said i dont need all of this. Can you take some of it back . She thought that i lost i think she thought i was prank calling her. Shes used to people not getting enough money saying i was supposed to get more and i would say i was supposed to get less. She is like i dont have time for whatever this is. So she just said its your problem. I cashed it and i paid for the tooth to get fixed and about my books and i paid all my rent for the semester and i had a thousand dollars left over. It was the first time i had anything like that. I guess its the first time i experienced what i now think of to be the most powerful think about money, the most powerful event you get with my is you can think about that are not many. If you have a lot of money and youre still thing about my all time you are probably doing it wrong. That you describe as freeing you to finally be a student to learn. I could actually take classes. I could focus on things besides the fact that much money i had come out i could work or could i so plasma to make my rent payment. I could stop thinking about all that stuff, and so i could actually take classes that i did need to take. One of the classes i took was psych 101 what you did need. I had i have master orbits but i thought ill take a psychology class whatever that is. I enrolled literally in psych 101 which i think is probably every parents nightmare. That the kid will take psych 101 and then come home and psychoanalyze them, which is exactly what happened. But to me that class was incredibly important to me. I had no concept of Mental Illness until i took the class, and it was you felt like there was something to recognize. The professor started lecturing us on paranoia and schizophrenia, paranoia and the whole and is explained at all and hes got a powerpoint and his movie and i just wrote in my nose, like this is my dad. Like, hes describing dad. Thats when you Start Talking about would be rich, and a diversion of the stories that were slightly different from the one i grew up with, just a little bit. It just, i dont know if my that is why polar. We will never know because ironically one of the symptoms if he has is that kind of paranoia means he will never see a doctor for it. I do is just a whole new lands to which i could look at my childhood and understand what had happened. Other explanations for why we were not allowed to go to school or why we had so many injuries, was never something that was clear to me or why when we are injured we did go to the doctor and a lot of questions that i had that i just didnt have an attitude answer to or the answers i had were kind of tough. At that explanation was really helpful for me. Youre in the state of my now where you had the money and the freedom to learn more. You had been woken to the fact a lot of things you were taught were not true. In some ways is almost an advantage that you assumed you know nothing in the way a lot of high school students, common pleas and believe they were taught and its hard to know what to let go of. You describe like letting go of everything assuming that everything was different. Its like a clean slate. Does that create a hunger or thirst for more knowledge . Possibly. Maybe theres a slight hunger that came out of it or maybe you could describe hunger is a flattered way to describe it. Sometimes what i tell people he got a phd but i dont have a high school diploma. A little overcompensating. Took it a little far. You can call it hunger. That sounds nicer. And insatiable hunger. Insatiable thirst. I dont know. There were a lot of things i didnt know but had ideas about things, just a lot of them were wrong. I thought i knew think. I wasnt aware of my own ignorance until i became aware of my own ignorance when he learned about Civil Rights Movement, and that was the first time that i thought oh crap, i dont know anything. Specific stuff that i knew was wrong. The movement in general . I had grown up hearing about slavery but i but i heard a wed versi