Four of the seven children dont have birth certificates with no medical records because we were born at home and never seen a doctor or nurse no School Records because of never set foot in a classroom. When i am nine i am issued a delayed certificate of birth but at this moment according to the state of idaho i do not exist. Of course i did i had grown up preparing for the days of abomination waiting for the sky to darken in my summers following and winters which rotating supplies we waited carry on an affected. That is quite an opening lets talk about idaho where this take place you touch on some but a day in the life of a ten yearold version of yourself . We had a farm that belonged to my grandfather it was beautiful wheat fields it wasnt a particularly big mountain that it was beautifully made and came up out of the earth and formed into a perfect spire ive always been told the beautiful story about the mountains there would be an image of a womans body and my dad had a story that the nomadic indians would look for her coming as a sign that winter was over and time for spring to come back it was a very beautiful place we had a junkyard we would play in that as an exotic playground i think it took me a long time to realize it wasnt completely normal it seemed very normal but now that im older i can see there are elements that it was unusual. My dad was opposed to a lot of the institutions most people take for granted anything to do with the government and that meant i was never allowed to go to school or the doctor and didnt have a birth certificate until i was nine. It is the idyllic existence in this environment that seems very foreign as a city kid but it seems like a magical place ive heard you talk about it but then there was the other side very much two sides to your childhood experience. The mountain was beautiful everything that had one side had another my mother was herbalist and a midwife so she would walk around gathering rosehips all these beautiful things but there was another side the junkyard was the exotic playground that we got hurt quite a bit there were injuries we made the decision to treat at home because he didnt believe in doctors or hospitals even the herbalism that was a wonderful thing if you are dealing with the real injury. Speak about your fathers philosophy attribute that more to your father than your mother but you did share is that fair to say . It is complicated sometimes i think it was a spiritual doctrine he had a theory polities institutions that government, public and education was infiltrated whether its the illuminati or the new world order because he believed they were trying to do was harm. He really believed it. If you cant pinpoint what was he afraid of really from these sources . It depends on which institution you are talking about putting keywords concerned medical establishment wasnt actually doing good. He believed that the people think like drugs or pharmaceuticals what damage your body and last for years. And also damage you spiritually and herbs he would call them gods pharmacy. Publication was worried it was paid one brainwashed. Hes a complicated person i think everybody is complicated that that theory of the fear of someone coming in to change the path set for his children is that part of the fear . He had specific ideas and was worried we might go to a doctor or compromise our health or spirituality the path was narrowed to stay in the beginning with god so that was the fear this idea of the world and a lot of people have that idea its a strong idea in a lot of religions. You were warm and almost all mormons support education or believe then homeschool and definitely believe then doctors. So you wanted to make that point. The political environment is so polarized with their own preconceptions and i think my dad had irregular ideas im not a medical professional that i felt he had a mental irregularity so in my mind the religious extremism so whatever was happening in his mind i dont think it was the other way around and to say all religious people are like this with these that are different from us and then to make them into a caricature. That is not the take away at all. This is a foreign land to me. You can be rest assured. What is interesting people taking from Popular Culture to apply to the worldview your memory that is not a memory. Talk about that role to shape the beliefs that your father espoused. He did have these ideas about the government around the time of their the reagent distant incident we were different from the Weaver Family we didnt go to school that there was a period where my dad was worried it could happen to anyone but i was about five when it happened we had this. We were canning a lot and we had these bags to run and hide in the mountain i have a journal entry from a few years later to document the contents of pages like a heater for emergency food and water purifier and emergency nets so that event know how long it lasted that it lived in my mind is a very frightening thing that the government could come at any moment and never told us the end of the story. The beavers were a family that lived in idaho and the way that it began i believe it has to do with the conflict over a rifle randy weaver had sold as an atf agent and missed the court date than the fbi and federal marshals came in somehow there is a conflict one was shot in and that agent was shot and it got out of hand very quickly and then randy weaver was shot visiting his sons body that ultimately his wife was shot while holding their baby and was killed by a sniper. So thats the version i was told look what could happen to us i remember having dreams crawling on the floor because there were snipers outside but he didnt tell me the end of the story so at 17 i was at university and there was a Massive Public outcry in every major newspaper had covered the story as a child it was how the government would come for us and it not only we knew about it but then i realized it was a terrible thing that happened but thats how democracy works it was very much public outcry. So especially in that situation so you feel you are not alone and that knowledge would have been comforting to you . If i just had an understanding that the government wasnt wholly evil but that was an incident with a callous disregard for human life that was the congressional report and what it said. That is a very different idea of government there are checks and balances. I went to university it wasnt just ruby ridge but how the constitution works and what is the role of the free press. So i want to go back so assuming the book and thats what you call it educated that the education that you learned with your family and its not traditional but tell me the values are what you learned as a child that most people happened. When my older brothers were younger i think my mother did a pretty decent job and homeschooling she was on midwife and in herbalist there was not a lot of homeschool going on and never took an exam no lectures or anything like that. It was limited but one thing that i valued just the way that they raised us but they had a philosophy that they would say you can teach yourself anything better than anyone can teach it. Thats the principle i really agree with talk about education in this country and i was in england but there should be the individual component not just a social component it is propaganda and people need to feel actively engaged hate the word disempower but i do worry a lot of people seem to have taken the idea to learn something you have to have a degree and a whole institution in place to give it to you im grateful i was not raised to think that and decided i wanted to go to college and 16 it felt like something i could do because i need to learn algebra i will buy a book and learned. I barely got into university but i kept going with that. My parents took it too far i arrived underprepared i raised my hand in class asking the holocaust. People thought i was antisemitic. I wouldnt say this is the ideal education but they had something about people feeling ownership of what they learned people talk about it but its about making a person. Everyone should have that opportunity to make up their own mind and the more evolved. How did the way you are raised help you write this book . The actual act of creating a book is not easy. I literally had not written a word of narrative i had phd and then setting foot in a classroom ten years later i graduated from cambridge i didnt know how to write pros and it was different but the same principle that i sat down and thought this is a skill that i want and how i can learn. The biggest difference the podcast you have great writers come on and read stories of other great writers and explain how they work. Its an amazing curriculum but it worked for me i didnt have to spend a lot of time pursuing curriculum because everybody is different. Are there any books that were helpful to you . Sick when i started writing i never read a short story i didnt know what they were i found oh so helpful i read a lot of Toni Morrison because shes genius and then attend of short stories. I could go on but there are so many great writers you take the ones that speak to you and then amazing that i enjoy reading but those that dont give me ideas and then some that do and thats the beauty of having control over how you learn. What we reading then . Read a lot of religious books read the book of mormon in the bible and 19th centuries peaches by the founding mormon prophets thats what i was at home and pretty quickly so we went to school for the first time with that stilted archaic style. Because that is what i was reading a lot of my professors were bewildered i found 19th century it took a while to get that voice out. But its so different than the talking voice and you have to work on speaking that way isnt it interesting . Where they feel certain selfconsciousness and then you become more formal i did this with a lot of writing not just my own but use words that you would never use because they feel more intellectual or something how long does it take you for that exercise . The first draft i wrote in one year everything i wrote was terrible. We being hard on yourself . [laughter] know it was really bad i took it to a writing group and i was lucky because i didnt think of myself as a writer i literally tried to learn to write to write this one book when they said is terrible a set of course it is. Tell me how to make it better. Theres no reason i should know how to do this but i will try to learn. So you journals for a good portion a couple of journal entries at apricot serious at ten and then was very faithful and then i have a whole stack. They are all different they tend to have a picture of jesus on them i think up to the age of 16 and then they become black. [laughter] i journal as well but its that i dont understand something until i write it down why were you doing it . I think it was a bit of loneliness sometimes iad tact i didnt have any friends and other family lived in my town that was like my family so occasionally i would see them but i never went to their houses and i was pretty isolated. I had siblings but i wanted friends. There was that prospecting element but i dont know why. You are grateful for them now. So what is interesting going back and with physical pain but to skin your knee and hurt yourself that you are in a junkyard and you have an accident. Talk about that. For whatever reason my dad didnt have a bone in his head to tell him this is dangerous. And even after someone was hurt he didnt always understand how serious it was. I think he thought everything that happened, happened for the best and be protected didnt believe it and Safety Equipment wouldnt wear safety hats i dont think its because he didnt care about her safety. I think he did but didnt understand how dangerous it was in one example of that i was around 14 i was filling up the then a scrap metal the idea was to be picked up by a forklift with the extendable boom and to be dumped into the semi trailer. So i said lets dump the then. He wanted someone to go into the trailer after he dumped it but decided it would be faster if i rode up in the den and then set i will hold that level you climb out and then get out of the way and everything is great. I was terrified i was not in the habit of defying my dad but when he turned and then to crawl out of trying to shoot down to him that it was staff but it he started to raise it up and then its going through a meat grinder. When the scrap started to fall it came out of my leg so i myself over the side i had the trailer was injured but i was okay. And at first letting it happen but and then i felt ashamed at seem like a simple thing. I knew my dad would never hurt me on purpose i didnt have that information and that explanation because i knew he would never hurt me but it is so easy to internalize that guilt and then to be much older to look back on that event and not feel ashamed and then theres a. I was angry at myself, how could you have been those father . And now i have the pieces to put it together. However for whatever reason and couldnt understand the risk of the way he was doing things. And the fact that you are not angry with those transgressions but you seem not to hold any anger. There is a mechanism the brain uses for people that will harm us but if it takes over too much of your life it can be consuming and i am estranged from my parents. Spoiler alert. So long time after that happene happened, i was full of rage. Every beautiful memory of my childhood turned to rot. I was a person with no beautiful memories. My whole life was rage. So i just thank you need anger to get you out of a situation but then once you are out in safe im not sure you do need i it. You can get rid of it and live a better life without it. It my family was still in my life i would need my anger every day but i dont feel that i do now. Now. I think therapy is really helpful because it never feels like it is that if you think it is because you set aside time to think about how you feel and do you want to feel that way. Ive spent time in therapy thinking about how angry i feel and realizing i dont want to feel that way but i also dont want to go back so what is the middle ground, is it catharsis or does it bring things back. Guest it was i think part two right about which was more dramatic. I think before i started writing i am reconciled with the bad things in my life, the danger of the scrapyard, i feel like i kind of reconciled with that. What i havent reconciled worth of beautiful things, the way my mother would laugh when she was canning peaches and the good things about my older brother. I think those were things i loved about my childhood the most. That ended up being the hardest thing to write about it a good thing because it lets me reclaim a bit of that in a strange way. Host was there one purpose but thats particularly hard to write that surprised you . Guest there were a couple of moments about my dad that were hard to write about and my brother saved my life recently we were breaking in horses and i was on a horse that went completely berserk. My horse got my foot caught in the saddle and it was on a hillside with the regime everywhere and it was a matter of time before i fell off and was dragged and then it is game over. What i want and manipulative and controlling who would at other times twist my wrist behind my back but he had a wonderful site and i think we took me a long time its always something to say he is kind and can be sensitive and wonderful, and i still think that but i dont want to use those things to dismiss the fact he could be manipulative of ireland. Host it is a psychological torture. Some people focus and i tried not to focus on this too much because it wasnt the important part. No matter what kind of abuse is it as an assault because if you are going to abuse someone i think you have to invade their reality and convince them of two things, what you are doing isnt that bad if it is just a normal life to justify it rationally and everything to convince them is that they deserve it. The second thing that is easy to convince people of because they tend to put the first thing is hard. Something happened two minutes before. One example of that when i was 17 i brought a gentle man home, his name was charlie and i think that he wanted the need to demonstrate control over me so before, he called me down the hallway and shoved my head in the toilet and later when it was over he told me that it had just been a game. I took that perspective on board so much so and he knew what he had seen but he also knew that reality had no bearing on me. He could see how far under my brothers power and he tried to reason with me. But then there was another incident a couple of months later at the university i think going to the university helped me learn my own ideas and opinion. A few months later it happened again if my brother attacked me and then that evening he came into my room and said im really sorry. We were just having a good time. Next time we are having fun make sure you speak up if you are in any pain. After he left, i was writing my journal and i wrote i didnt know what version to believe. I had been terrified, i wrote that i had been in pain. I wrote it in that moment if i havhad been able i would have tn him apart. I didnt know if he had experienced a thin if i knew thi hadnt experienced it as a game. It was the first time i think that i didnt immediately see it to someone elses. My brother attempted to accommodate me and at the end of the process there were still two minds present, not one having gained control over another. Its almost what a testament like you are putting this on the experience and there were times before that you put in the buck you are still engaging in what you call reality bending. He was so much nicer to me before the accident and something to the effect he was my best friend before and so wonderful and now these mean. Then you go back and realiz rev, he was violent and abusive before the accident and its almost as if they were playing this game. Guest he had a serious head injury and i have revised when the accident took place because they were expecting he might be violent after that accident that i had somehow in my mind told myself that it happened when i was very young and that happened to explain everything. I got my own journal and i talked my brothers who also kept journals. How is this possible. Even that might i have emails i wrote to him that night saying he would never hurt me. I had a broken toe and i was saying he would never do this thing that hed obviously done. Its hard to underestimate how reality distorting that is. Everyone living in proximity to these kind of relationships and to some degree subject to the reality bending that goes on to justify it. Host leading into these questions about memory and putting the book together it seems like it involves interviewing a lot of people and putting together a lot of different sources and try to kind of figured out the truth of what really happened and what are your thoughts on that and on the reliability of your own memory now having done all this . Guest it is a difficult thing because you dont want to over read by that you dont want to be vulnerable to the people coming in. There was a lot of the term gaslighting and i think that we were all so deeply affected by it but it has become really difficult to sort out. Lucki