Megan Phelps-Roper on Radicalization and Redemption

On today’s episode of the podcast, Ryan talks to former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper about her experiences growing up in the church, the problem of radicalization in society and modern institutions, considering the individual perspectives of the people who we disagree with, and more. Megan Phelps-Roper is an American political activist who was formerly a member of, and spokesperson for, the Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps-Roper left the church in 2012 after she was unable to reconcile her doubts with her beliefs. She travels around the world to speak about her experience in the church and advocates dialogue between groups with conflicting views. In 2019, she released a memoir, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope. LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked. KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Megan Phelps-Roper: Homepage, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, before I started the Daily Stoic, I had another life. Before I wrote really any of my books, I had another life. I was in marketing and I worked for a number of controversial companies and businesses and people, from American Apparel to Tucker Maxx. And if you read Trust Me, I'm Lying, which is my first book, then you contrast it with what we talk about here, what I talk about in Stillness is the Key, what I talk about in The Obstacle is the Way or He Goes to the Enemy. It can feel very different. And it was different.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, I say in Trust Me, I'm Lying, there's this word disintegrated, which we think means falling apart, coming in pieces. But if you think about it more as disintegrated, what it means is not integrated. And so my journey to Stoicism begins very early on. I think maybe 18, 19 years old, before I had this marketing career, before I had worked on any of these controversial campaigns and did the stuff that I talk about in that book. And so how do I reconcile those two things? Well, the truth is, for a long time, I didn't reconcile them because I kept them separate. They were not integrated. The philosophy that I was learning about and studying on, fascinated by...

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  Was very different than my actual professional life. As I left my media career, partly in publishing that book, I was able to, with time, integrate them. And it's still a past that I reckon with and struggle with and have trouble explaining, but it also gives me a certain amount of empathy for people who had their own dark or confusing or seemingly contradictory chapters in their life. So it was actually through my speaking agency that I got connected with today's guest many years ago, because she had actually read The Obstacle is the Way. My guest is Megan Phelps Roper, whose family, her grandfather, was the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, and she was a member of this well

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  into her late twenties. And there's no way around the fact that this meant she participated in from like being a toddler on with the horrible and cruel campaigns of the Westboro Baptist Church, the protesting of military funerals, the homophobia, the basically media trolling, ironically, some of the stuff that I kind of talk about in Trust Me, I'm Lying. She was born into that tradition. That was her birthright, and it wasn't something that

• 3:32Ryan Holiday?

  she was able to question for many, many years. That's how she participated in it. And so it's not that I can relate, because my experiences are so radically different, but I get the disintegration. How do you have a smart, intelligent, kind person who could have been a party to and unquestioningly observant of this horrendous doctrine and behavior?

• 4:05Ryan Holiday?

  It seems like it doesn't make sense, but it actually does make sense. And so we got reconnected somewhat recently and she was someone I definitely wanted to talk to. And I think there's a lot we can learn from in this episode. It was a wonderful conversation. I hope no one rejects it out of hand because of the messenger. I do think this is a really good conversation. It was one I was very much looking forward to having. And I think it touches, and we touch on this in the interview, into a lot of common themes that we're in today. You know, most people are not in cults, but you can get wrapped up in antisocial destructive beliefs. You can get trapped in a bubble. You can be radicalized. Social media can radicalize you.

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  The irony for Megan is that she actually ends up being de-radicalized. It's on Twitter that she starts to discover and learn things that are very different than what she grew up with. And this helps her eventually sort of come to her senses. And it took no small amount of courage to leave that church, as she says, to go out into the world populated by all the people that she defended and hurt. And to sit with that, to sit with the shame, to sit with the fear, to sit with the loneliness. This is not an easy thing to do. And this is a great interview. Look, you can go to her website at meganphelpsroper.com.

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  You can watch her TED Talk, which is called, "I Grew Up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's Why I Left." It's got millions of views for a reason. It's a beautiful talk and it's both inspiring and terrifying at the same time. She has a book that came out a few years ago about these experiences that's very much worth reading called Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. Anyways, I won't say anything more. Listen to this episode and I think it gives me, it gives me hope, as I said in the interview. Gives me hope. A lot of people are in a dark place intellectually, spiritually.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  They've been radicalized, and not nearly to the degree that she was. And the fact that she was able to break free, get free, get her life back and then use her experiences for good. It should inspire us. It should sober us, but it should also inspire us. So here's my interview with Megan Phelps Roper. You can check out her book Unfollow, and maybe you should follow her on social media as well. Talk soon.

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  As I was preparing for this, I thought of a little poem by Philip Larkin that maybe you have heard, maybe you haven't. But I'm gonna read it to you. I know this is a little weird way to start a podcast, but I'm gonna read this to you. All right. "They fuck you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn by fools in old-style hats and coats, who half the time were stoppystern and half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out early as you can." And this is the one line that I don't agree with, but it concludes the poem. He says, "Get out as early as you can and don't have any kids yourself."

• 7:29Speaker 01

  It's really funny that you bring that up, because actually, my writing mentor and very good friend, Eric McHenry, who like, he gets like, a big, you know, piece of the acknowledgements of my book. He actually was the one who introduced me to that. And it's, it's very funny. And I think it's, I mean, it says something that's extremely obvious, but I think seems to be something that's missing so much from the public conversation. There's so much about, you know, cutting off the toxic people in your life, and specifically like, your parents. You're holding your parents to these, you know, incredibly high standards for... Anyways, like, I could go on and on about this, but it's the recognition of, you know, they also come from somewhere. And, you know, when I think about what my

• 8:14Speaker 01

  mom comes from, and, and how much worse it was. Like, people look at my upbringing and think, "Oh, that's super extreme." And in a lot of ways, it was. But compared to what she went through, she, she saved me and my siblings from the, some of the worst of that. And she tried. Like, the thing I can say about my mother more than anything, both my parents, they gave it their all. You know, I'm the third of 11 children. And I think it's remarkable that I never felt like I was neglected, or that I didn't get enough attention, or anything like that. Like, they spent so much time and energy and resources. Like, there's no question in my mind, they did their absolute best.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  And I am so, so incredibly grateful for them and for the people that they are.

• 9:01Ryan Holiday?

  So, so with that being said, how do you find yourself in the situation that you found yourself? So, let's, let's say people aren't super familiar. Walk us through the story then, because it sounds like you're describing an idyllic, normal childhood, but clearly, clearly that was not the case.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Right, yes, correct. So, my grandfather was a preacher. He founded the Westboro Baptist Church. He was the first pastor in the mid 1950s. And, and it's kind of the story of a person who becomes more extreme over time. Part of that, you know, ended up being really good. And by that, I'm referring to the fact that he became a civil rights pioneer in Kansas. He went to law school and, and, you know, he called Topeka, you know, Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka. He arrived, maybe I'm going back too far with this. But he arrived in Topeka the same day that the Brown versus Board case came down

• 10:02Speaker 01

  from the US Supreme Court, and he took that as a sign from God that he should go to law school and, you know, effectuate civil rights in this Jim Crow town, as he said. And so, that willingness to kind of stick his neck out and be, you know, super in your face and, you know, fighting this fight that requires the kind of moral courage and a kind of personality that's, that's, you know, willing to alienate yourself from essentially everyone. And that ended up being a really good thing.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Ultimately, though, he, he lost his license to practice law. He, he, he lost the, the license in state court and then gave up his federal court license later. And, and in the, and it wasn't until I was writing my book that I realized that it was just in the months after that. After he stopped practicing law, that this incident happened that sparked Westboro's protesting. And this, of course, is something that people will look at and see it as the, almost the exact opposite of the civil rights work, which was that, you know, we started protesting gay people, anybody,

• 11:17Speaker 01

  you know, so I, just for context,

• 11:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  I was five when the protest actually started. So my earliest memories are growing up on the picket line, you know, standing out there with signs that said these incredibly hostile, controversial attacking things, things like gays are worthy of death. And pretty quickly, the word gay became the word fag. And, and the message morphed so, so that right now, that what the most famous Westboro slogan is God hates fags. We became the God hates fags people. So all of my life, that was what we were known for. That was what we did. Our whole life, my whole life, sorry, was all of our lives were organized around

• 12:07Speaker 01

  preaching this message that we believed was essential for the world to hear. My gramps would say that the world needs this message more than they need air to breathe or water to drink or food to eat. And yeah, so, so.

• 12:23Ryan Holiday?

  How does a person get radicalized like that? How do you go from a civil rights pioneer to God hates fags? Like, is it, is it

• 12:33Ryan Holiday?

  a transformative moment? Is it a long slide? Is it mental illness? Is it projection? Like, how does someone go from one extreme to the other?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  So what's so funny is that I don't think, you know, Gramps definitely didn't see it as one extreme to another, because for him, both of those positions came directly from the Bible. And so the, it's really, you know, fascinating. In the months before I left Westboro, I was.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  You know, I was thinking about all of the things that I would lose, you know, because as soon as you leave, you you are completely cut off from the church, other church members.

• 13:15Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  And it's almost entirely my extended family. It's like 70 people. My mom is one of 13 kids. It's almost my aunts, uncles, cousins. You know, so by blood or marriage, I'm related to almost everybody in the church. And so I was copying our, my dad kept many, many home movies. And I started copying them and they started when I was two years old. And one of the very earliest videos is this almost sermon that Gramps gave at, it was at a black church and it was a, but it was at a like public event, you know, where, you know, many of like state and local officials were speaking on, you know, against apartheid in South Africa.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  And, you know, he was, the fire and brimstone in his voice, you know, speaking against racism was absolutely the same fire and brimstone that I later, you know, heard him preach against, against gay people and against basically everybody, ultimately, everyone outside of our church was a target. Everyone outside was not preaching, you know, the truth of God as he understood it. And so, so, I mean, and if you want specifics, like where, where from the Bible this comes from. So, you know, when he would talk about, you know, against race, speak against racism, you know, it's God has made of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the earth.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And so we all says, one law shall be to him that is home born and to the stranger that's, sorry, one law shall be to him that is home born and to the stranger that sojourns among you. So equality under the law was, was a principle absolutely that he got from the Bible. And the same God that said that, you know, that there should be equality under the law, said, thou shalt not lie with mankind, it's with womankind, it is abomination. And so that, that was the standard. And the way that I was raised, it was to understand everything written in the Bible as this unquestionable, undeniable standard that we had to live by, no matter what, you know, any modern human would say.

• 15:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that must be, that must be strange to watch someone that you love and care about, that you know to be capable of loving and caring things, do something profoundly not loving and caring and being... cognitive dissonance is a very powerful force, I guess is what I'm saying. And it's very hard for us to... Our mind, our mind works against us as far as seeing contradictions in that sense. So it must have been very disorienting, especially to be essentially born into it, to have seen what was happening.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really funny though, because, you know, since I was so young, the cognitive dissonance didn't come until later, I guess is what I'm saying. Like, you know, having been born into it, this was the norm. Like, I basically understood that the only people that I could trust was, were the people in the church. And, you know, even though people are sometimes surprised to find out that we went to public school, that we had access to books and read widely. I was reading Stephen King books in like first grade.

• 16:32Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  And, and listening to popular music and watching movies and television. And so it wasn't that we were ever, you know, cut off from the rest of the world. It was just that from a very young age, being, you know, essentially indoctrinated, right? It's you are taught with what lens to view everything. So before you ever have a question or a doubt yourself, you're taught like, okay, well, this is what people are going to say. This is what they're going to argue. Here's the chapter and verse from the Bible that shows why they're wrong. Memorize it. And so it's just, has the effect of inoculating you against these ideas before you've even encountered them yourself. And, and honestly, the fact that they were able to, and I should also note that it wasn't just my grandfather who was a lawyer.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  He required his children and their spouses to also go to law school. So both of my parents are also attorneys. They're extremely smart, extremely well-educated and extremely analytical. And so to have all of this information, kind of to be marinating in it essentially from the time we were very young and, you know, reading the Bible every day and going over these arguments and then standing on a picket line where we are constantly... You know, being put in a position to defend them. When they tell you this is what people are going to say. And then people say those exact things. And here you have this answer. And it makes perfectly logical sense. You know, it has the effect of, you know, it really does feel like this

• 17:58Speaker 01

  larger than life, like this clearly must be the truth of God because it it all just follows. And like I said, it wasn't until I was was much older that I realized that all of our beliefs, you know, they're all valid arguments, you know, from the like a traditional logic perspective. But they stem from two premises that I never allowed myself to question. And those two premises were that the Bible is the literal infallible word of God. And number two was that Westboro had the only legitimate interpretation of it, the only one that that was consistent in all of its doctrines. And yeah, so.

• 18:39Ryan Holiday?

  Although maybe a third one is, and this is always an interesting part to me about religion, that like what other people do is any of your fucking business. You know, like, like, like, there is this weird element of all sort of belief systems where it's sort of not sufficient. And I mean, all belief systems, I don't even just mean religion, but it's sort of like what you believe in a thing is not enough. And I guess this is where some cognitive dissonance comes in. It's you believing it is not enough. Other people also have to do it because almost to allow them to exist as they want to exist challenges the legitimacy of your beliefs.

• 19:24Ryan Holiday?

  And I feel like so much of our societal conflict, certainly our you know, sort of religious conflict and then religious sort of secular conflict is this idea that like the thing you're supposed to enforce your beliefs on other people.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Westboro would, you know, they would quote the Bible verses that say that they absolutely should, that, you know, God says that it's your duty to judge, to judge righteous judgments. And, but it is kind of funny, though, because-

• 19:55Ryan Holiday?

  But also, let he who is without sin, you know what I mean?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Cast the first stone. Yes, exactly. That actually ended up being, as you may know, incredibly instrumental in my, you know, ultimate decision to leave the church. But also, just one, you know, random thought that I had when you were talking about religion in general, this was one of the things that I found, you know, honestly shocking when I was learning about Judaism, like, that they don't evangelize, like, they don't try to persuade people to join. And in fact, you know-

• 20:24Ryan Holiday?

  It's really hard.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. But, but I mean, even like, the people that, you know, I was staying with this Orthodox Jewish family in Los Angeles, Rabbi Yona Bookstein and his family, and, you know, I'm asking them a ton of questions, you know, in the, in the months shortly after I left Westboro. And they were saying like, yeah, in fact, like, if you say you want to join, like, they have to tell you no, like, you have to ask three times before you can even start down this path. And I was just like, this is so contrary. There's so much of Judaism that is so contrary to, to my understanding of what it meant to be a good person, but that really resonated with me. Anyway.

• 21:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, it's like, you shouldn't want to be in a club that wants you as a member. Judaism is, it doesn't actually want, want you. So, you know what I think is interesting about your story that I think has some relevance here is, I know you don't refer to the Westboro Baptist Church as a cult, and, and I think you have an interesting argument for it. But let's say that it's not. Let's say that it's sort of more of a sort of circular, self-contained sort of universe that strikes me as, as being a problem we are struggling with as a society today, on, on both sides of the spectrum. But then, you know, there's some certain, certain issues that are sort of popping up where-

• 21:44Ryan Holiday?

  It's not so much that it's a cult, but it is operating under its own sort of destructive kind of antisocial logic that makes it impervious to facts or peaceful coexistence and maybe is actively self-destructive. Now, someone might argue that that is a definition of a cult, but I'm just thinking, like, I know a number of people, for very different reasons, who are sort of militantly anti-vax. And it comes from this sort of community that they're in, where this has become kind of

• 22:26Ryan Holiday?

  an issue of identity that makes it impossible to see, for them to see, not only what is in their sort of obvious self-interest, then what is obviously in line with the actual teachings of what they purport to believe, and their sort of basic obligations to, you know, their fellow human beings. I just, it's, I think we should be, I guess what I'm saying is, we should be careful, sort of going like, oh, cults are these things that other people get into, and we should think about where we get sucked into things, because it's very, it's much easier than people think.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think, you know, sometimes people think that intelligence is something that can save you from those kind of thought patterns. And in fact, you know, I've read several, you know, articles, there's one that I remember from The New Yorker, that was basically saying that, like, intelligence is actually something, intelligent people are more likely to join cults, because of that very reason. Like, they think that they're too smart to be taken in by these cognitive flaws that basically all humans are subject to. And, and so, like, they know they're smart, and so they think they can't be taken in. And, you know, of course, my entire family is a, you know, to my mind, a huge argument, you know, against, or a bunch of evidence against that, against that idea.

• 23:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, I've found, on at least two occasions in my life, I sort of got very...

• 24:00Ryan Holiday?

  Absorbed in what you might call a cult of personality, where it's sort of, like you said, where here's this person, they're very charismatic, they're very, they have a somewhat antagonistic relationship to the rest of society, or they're transgressive or disruptive in some way, they engender a lot of criticism. And that can be very seductive and attractive. And then the feedback loop that you're talking about, which is like, so let's say you have some natural affinity or some connection that draws you to this person. You hear their universe, their explanation of the universe of the world. You're, I don't want to say complicit, but you're engaged in it in some way.

• 24:41Ryan Holiday?

  And then it's precisely because you are attacked by it for it or forced to defend it, this is where you get really sucked in because...

• 24:51Speaker 01

  You're constantly looking at the evidence that supports your position. It's confrontation bias, right?

• 24:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  And motivated reasoning, and especially when you have tied your identity to it, like when you've gone far enough down the path that your identity is tied to the beliefs themselves, these specific beliefs, that it makes it even harder to back away from because then you've, you know, the motivated reasoning, right? That you're trying to defend the ideas because they feel like an extension of yourself.

• 25:20Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's even more than that. Let's say like sort of COVID deniers and then anti-vax people. Now that, now that it's starting to really get serious again, to suddenly admit like, oh, the vaccines are not bad. Or, oh, COVID is real. Oh, you know, it is dangerous. Like, let's say you lost someone, or let's say you look at the evidence and you're like, oh, crap. You have to admit that you were a shitty person, right? You have like the...

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:46Ryan Holiday?

  To change your, I think, we wonder why people can't change their mind. It's hard to change your mind when changing your mind is an implicit condemnation of yourself. So I got to imagine, for instance, you start to come to terms, wrestle with the fallibility of the teaching you grow up with. The real hurdle is not like, you know, is the evidence 5149? You know, where does the evidence come down that it's right or wrong? It's you have to look in the mirror and go like, wait, I was, I was holding up a God hates fags sign, you know? And that, that's like to wrestle with the...

• 26:27Ryan Holiday?

  Awfulness, not just of like the wrongness, the incorrectness of it, but the consequences that that had on other people. Like the pain that was caused, I think that's why it's so hard for people to change.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I've talked about this a lot, this this moment where I was, it's kind of the epiphany moment, you know, painting in a friend's basement with my sister and we're, I know our backs are to each other, we're painting opposite walls and I'm kind of going through all of these, you know, all of this evidence essentially in my mind, all of the arguments that had been made. And they were, it was one thing after another that I had come to recognize as wrong. And they start out as relatively, you know, small points of doctrine and they grow and grow and grow until there's so many of them that finally, it it wasn't, it literally wasn't until that moment that it finally occurred to me that we might be fundamentally wrong.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  And of course, it's this massive, massive paradigm shift that happens so quickly. You know, it's kind of funny, like I randomly thought of this Weird Al song where like, everything you know is wrong, black is white, up is down and short is long. And everything you thought was just so important doesn't matter. And so, of course, like these kind of dominos are falling in my mind as to like what this means. And the magnitude of it is just so enormous, like it felt like I was choking, like I had no, you know, and of course, I'm just immediately like breaking down, you know, my, I'm like,

• 28:06Speaker 01

  like weeping uncontrollably, trying to be as quiet as possible as this music's playing so that my sister doesn't notice. Like that the whole world has just absolutely fallen apart. And part of that, of course, is like, I've spent my entire life here among these people believing that what we were doing was the most important thing in the world, that it was not just, you know, acceptable, but it was good and righteous and the only hope for other people. You know, we we really believed, as crazy as this is, I think, for a lot of people to believe, but we really believed that what we were doing was the definition of loving our neighbor, right? That we were warning them of the consequences of their sins, like this is the only way they'll ever know that they have to change their ways

• 28:50Speaker 01

  and and come to God or else face this eternal torment in hell. And, you know, coming to this realization that like,

• 28:58Speaker 01

  I had spent all of this time, I had essentially wasted my life. And I had spent it doing these things that had hurt and tormented so many other people. And I had done it with a kind of zeal that if it had been in the service of something, you know, something like what my grandfather had done, the civil rights work. Um, that would be one thing, but to realize that I had gone so far in the wrong direction. And it just felt like there was no hope, you know? Like, how is, so now we're wrong. And the consequences of this are I'm gonna have to walk away from these people and lose everyone that I love and everything that's ever meant anything to me.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna have to go out into a world that I've spent my entire life antagonizing. And, you know, be among people who, who have no reason at all to give me a second chance. And it just felt like, you know, everything was lost.

• 29:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, it sounds terrifying. How, how do you, did you feel like sort of guilt? Like, how, how do you deal with just sort of looking in the mirror at that point?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, at that, in that moment, I think guilt isn't, I don't know if that's quite the right word. Shame, intense shame, intense shame. Um, regret, I think is a, is a really good word. Like, I, I, how, like, and I kept searching. I was looking for something like, where along the way could I have seen this earlier? How, how could I have come to a better place than the one that I'm, I've arrived at now? What should I have done differently? And, you know, I, I kind of read about this in my book too. This, and this, this became a question for me for a while in the months after I left. Like,

• 30:53Speaker 01

  You know, at what point, you know, at what point did this become my responsibility? Right? So I'm a child and my parents are taking me out on the picket line and they're teaching me all of these things. And so I'm five. Is it my fault then? I'm 12. Is it my fault then? I'm 18. And I had, you know, after I left, I had some conversation with with people on Twitter about this. Like, you know, somebody was like, as soon as you turned 18, it was your fault. And I'm like, I mean, I get the argument, but also like, it's not like you turn 18 and you suddenly forget everything that you've learned in your life. And and then I ultimately came to, it's not that I was looking for a way

• 31:32Speaker 01

  out of the responsibility. And I just was trying to understand what had happened. And, you know, that poem that you quoted at the beginning, the answer I kind of came to, I guess, was like, there's all kinds of things that lead people in bad directions. And I think it's much less about assigning blame to people, or it should be much less about signing blame, and more about how and what can we do to help people, push people, prod people, nudge people in a better direction. And so that's kind of what like, I'm happy

• 32:13Speaker 01

  to, and I do, and I never, I was gonna say, take the blame. Like, I'm, I never argue that I'm, that I'm not responsible. But I also, when I talk to people, my family, for instance, I still reach out to them and still try to make arguments that I, you know, considering their perspectives and their view on the world, I think even, you know, believing what they believe, I still think there are many arguments to be made, you know, from the Bible that that what they're doing is wrong. But I'm appealing to values that they already have. It's less about blaming them or being angry at them, you know, for instance, for

• 32:51Speaker 01

  for cutting me off in the, you know, intense pain that comes from what they're doing, with respect to the world and with respect to me. But it's, I just don't think of it in those terms. I don't think that, I don't think it helps. I don't, and I guess in this, you know, your work has actually been, you know, really helpful.

• 33:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, how did you end up finding that? I'm curious.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  I was at an event and I met this guy, he was sitting at my table, named Brian Levinson. And he was just super passionate about it. He had brought me a copy of your book, The Obstacle is the Way. And I brought it home and I actually ended up listening to the audiobook. And then I listened to Ego is the Enemy not long after that. So I think it was like five or six years ago, I think. Yeah, and I just have really loved a lot of what I see from you. I mean, it's really funny because like I obviously knew you had a podcast because you asked me to be on it. But I mostly have not heard you here.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I mostly Instagram and your Daily Stoic email and your books. And yeah, like it's just, there's so much in it that resonates with me. And that has made, I think, my life easier, more kind of full of grace, if that makes sense. Like the acceptance of the way that things are, like not resisting and fighting. And all of your things about anger, which I had these experiences, like, I don't know, I think probably 10 years ago when I was still at the church, where I realized that every time I got really angry, I hurt myself accidentally. Like I'd go on a run and like I fell in this giant hole that was covered with, I was running

• 34:42Speaker 01

  on the beach and this, I don't know, wave came up and made a giant hole right in front of me and I fell into it. And anyway, just like stupid things like that. And I kind of started to like resist or trying to like reform how I thought about, you know, things instead of getting so angry. And between you and Sam Harris, I feel like I'm much, much better about that now.

• 35:03Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's funny, because we have a mutual connection in David Abidol.

• 35:08Ryan Holiday?

  And I remember reaching out and meeting him when I was at American Apparel, which is sort of one of the things I was alluding to earlier, where you think you're working for this company or working on this thing that is good. It's a positive force for the world. And you realize that it's complicated. You realize like, hey, this is part of my job, you know, whatever. And then sort of he and I connected because he was friends with Deb Charney, who was the CEO of the company, who was a man who made all sorts of, you know, sort of ethically forward-thinking decisions as he built this company, but also, you know, had this sort of Harvey Weinstein side to him that sort of came to light over time. But I say that, you know, it came to light over time.

• 35:52Ryan Holiday?

  Like lots of people didn't tell me that at the time, right? That it wasn't sort of very public. But you find yourself, for a lot of different reasons, sort of caught up in something. And it's like, I wrote Ego is the Enemy as American Apparel was imploding. But I was also wrestling with, you know, sort of what, why the fuck was I even here? Like, involved in it imploding? How did I get there? It was a sort of a surreal, strange experience where you sort of, you think you're part of something good, as you were saying.

• 36:37Ryan Holiday?

  And then you step away from it. And you're like, not only was it not good, it was the opposite of good. And I'm, at best, you know, didn't do anything to stop it. And at worst, complicit. And at what point, you know, like, same thing. It's like, started there when I was 21 years old. Was I, you know, was I complicit for not stopping a person two times my age, you know, out of his power? And was hiding things? And at what point, like, I think I saw someone who, they were talking about Harvey Weinstein. And they were like, I didn't know everything, but I knew enough, right? And what is that point where you become culpable?

• 37:23Ryan Holiday?

  Or tied up in it. And that is a very difficult thing to wrestle with as it's happening. And then it becomes weirdly even harder as distance passes because you're, it almost feels like it was a different person, like you were a different person.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I actually don't think that's a, you know, it's like a ship of Theseus thing, right? Like, your cells regenerate every seven years. Like, how long until you are completely different? But absolutely, you're right. This is, and this is why it does, when I look back, like, it is such a strange, it's such a strange feeling because, you know, I gave so many interviews. There are so many videos of me protesting and like making these arguments. And it's such a strange feeling because I can, I can try when I think back, like, remember being that person and when those things made perfect sense. And at the same time, I know all the reasons why I don't believe those things now. And it's almost like, like, watching myself be forced, you know,

• 38:26Speaker 01

  to say things that I don't believe. And it feels, it's a very strange feeling. I think this is just generally like, you know, living on the internet for everybody. In some sense, everybody's in this position now where it's the same Twitter feed. Like, you're going back 10 years, but it's the same Twitter feed. Like, clearly, you're the same person. You've been running it this whole time, but it's not obvious. I was just talking to a friend about this. Like, it's not obvious, you know, these changes that take place over time. And, you know, and this is why it seems like, it's such a, it's such a, like, I understand, you know, there's, again, there's this, there's this kind of, always this talk about culture of accountability, like, holding people accountable.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  And I, I understand that, but it seems like so much of the time these days, it's less about accountability and more about this, this kind of will to punish. Like, in other words, you're not holding people accountable because you're trying to help them change. Like, if it's somebody who's already changed, right? It's, but it's like, we still need to find a way to punish people somehow. And there's also not an obvious way for people to, you know, to be forgiven or to have some kind of reconciliation. So much of the, or rather, so many of the sins that people seem to be getting in trouble for. Are are things that like they're not criminal. And if it were criminal, there's clearly a system like this is what you do.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  You go through the system and and if you, you know, you pay the fine or you go to jail for a certain period of time and then you come through and you've paid your debt to society. And now, right now, we we are really struggling with the fact that that that system is kind of gone. And I like, I can't tell you how often I have thought just how lucky. I mean, that I had that realization when I did. Because I I feel like, you know, I left at the end of toward the end of 2012. I think if I had left even a year and a half or two years later, that the culture changed so fast. You know, at the end of 2012, Twitter was still more like old Twitter. You know, John Ronson talks about like old Twitter was like very confessional and like people,

• 40:40Speaker 01

  you know, talking about these things that they struggle with and does anybody else feel the same way? And, you know, people are so it's this very like kind of affirming, understanding place. And then it became this this other thing that we see now.

• 40:55Ryan Holiday?

  There's that expression hurt people hurt people. And I I sort of think when I look back at American Apparel, again, it's sort of not not quite at the level we're talking about with Westboro Baptist or some other stuff. But I I sort of also see it as like, OK, so there's this sort of toxic force, this person who was clearly broken in some profound way, who sort of whose energy and dysfunction sort of sucks, you know, or attracts people, right? And and so you get in it. And then there's also this element of like, everyone comes to their sort of awakening at different points, right? And then it's like what can often happen is the ship starts sinking, right? Sort of like the Titanic where, you know, there's people were getting off, getting on the light boats,

• 41:37Ryan Holiday?

  getting free and but then as the ship's going under, it can also suck people down with it. And and so I same thing, I feel gratitude for, you know, getting free because I see other people. And I think we're we're also seeing this with Trump, right? Where we're seeing that sort of people, you know, January 6 was this kind of like wake up call, right? We're like, holy shit, we're not, we're we're playing with with real stuff here, right? Like this, this isn't just things happening on the Internet. This is more than just owning the libs or whatever, right? So you had this, you can even see it in some of the the people's comments where there was this flash of. Truth and awareness and awakening.

• 42:19Ryan Holiday?

  And then if you don't manage to get free in time or you stall, it's like Lot's Wife in the Bible. If you stop and you look back, you can get drawn, you know? And so I think it's been interesting to watch people like I feel like, so I got out in like 2014. This is right when the obstacles, the way it was coming, I got out. Basically, I was, and it was a complicated thing. I actually talk about it a little bit in the new book, but I get out and a couple, like other people I knew stayed for like a few more months. And those people remain sort of sucked into the universe to that, to this day.

• 43:00Ryan Holiday?

  Because by not getting out, they have this sort of flash of recognition. You, you get, you have an epiphany like you did. But if you don't act on it, if you don't move quickly, if you hesitate, then all of a sudden, all those, all those cognitive forces we're talking about, you know, sort of suck you in, it's, it's almost impossible to get out a second time. Do you know what I mean?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:26Ryan Holiday?

  Like you waver and then, ah, no, it's, you're not going to break.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, you know, it's so strange though, when you think about like the, the specific, you know, because I think about the fact that, you know, so many of the people in Westboro, like again, they're, they're all like, you know, very intelligent. And, you know, when people, you know, act like I'm special somehow. And I just think like, just the set of circumstances, you know, that fell out the way that they did to me. Like the only thing that separates me from the current members of Westboro are, is luck essentially. Like I was so lucky to have these experiences on Twitter, of all places, that, that, you know, exposed me to different ways of thinking in a way that I could actually hear them.

• 44:13Ryan Holiday?

  You're one of the only people I know that was de-radicalized.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, but I mean, that's, I think that's the power of, of real conversation. And it's this, it was possible on Twitter in a way that is, I think, much less likely now. And that's so sad to me. I think that like, a lot is lost in the current discourse, the way that we talk about each other. And it's so funny because you were making that comparison earlier to, you know, between essentially our kind of political tribes now, you know, to

• 44:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  cults like, you know, people like Westboro members. And like, I made that, you know, exact comparison in my TED Talk in, in 2017. And it was, you know, it was right out, I was writing it right after the 2016 election and I gave it right after, you know, Trump took office. And I remember feeling like, oh, my God, like, I don't, I don't know if people are going to let me make this comparison, you know, this kind of very black and white us versus them thinking, you know, the inability to, to acknowledge when your side gets something wrong, or when the other side gets something right. Like, the most important thing is, is defending and advocating for, you know, your team. And, you know, I, I was really kind of anxious about doing that. But I, for some

• 45:31Speaker 01

  reason, at, at that point, I think people were still willing, you know, to, to hear that. And I, I have heard from so many people, including, you know, incredibly, people who were, you know, massive targets of Westboro. And I mean that in like, real, deep, personal ways. And that was really shocking to me that, that people were, were willing to hear that. And, you know, right before we started recording, you mentioned the Amy Cooper piece that I just published today. And like, I am, I, I feel better now. It's actually really, really easy talking to you. But like, before we got on, like, all morning, kind of, I've just been feeling sick about, you know, because, again, in this piece, it's essentially identifying all the ways

• 46:16Speaker 01

  that, you know, what's happening in public discourse, it feels very Westboroian. And, and it brings me back, and that, that will to punish, you know, that's, that's absolutely part of it. There, there are so many different aspects to it. And, you know, I It's really painful to think about and not just because of, you know, kind of the the triggering, you know, taking me back to these like very emotional, like, you know, traumatic moments, but, but also just the fact of like, you know, I could leave Westboro, right? I could walk away from this, you know, relatively small group of people, you know, and of course it will, those experiences will affect me and frame my thinking and inform my perspective for the rest of my life. But I could walk away from that and

• 47:00Speaker 01

  try to rebuild. But this problem, like, it's not just like a fringe group. It's, it feels like so much of society and so many of our institutions. And yeah, it's, it's a really, it's a scary place to be.

• 47:16Ryan Holiday?

  So talk to me about that because it's something I actually, right before we got on, someone from the social media team for Daily Stoic, published this piece I wrote in the Daily News last week about sort of, about vaccines. I was, there's this wonderful quote from Marcus Aurelius where he talks about, which he said during the Antonine Plague. He said, there's sort of two types of plagues. He's like, there's the one that destroys your character and there's the one that destroys your body. And he was basically talking about what we've seen over COVID where, you know, this sort of thing that should be unifying and should get everyone on the same page, has sort of motivated a certain percentage of the population to become sort of completely unhinged

• 47:58Ryan Holiday?

  and let's just say monstrous, monstrously indifferent, right? And, and what's fascinating to me, or what I struggle with, the same, I'm sure you're seeing the response on the post. You wrote this article, people can agree or disagree with it, you know, but it clearly came from a place of sort of understanding and it was heartfelt, your, your piece. But then you get this sort of vehemence, right? This, this intense wave of like irrational anger and probably not unlike what people felt being on the other

• 48:39Ryan Holiday?

  side of Westboro Baptist protests. But I really struggle with maintaining an equilibrium in the face of, it's not so much the onslaught of it, because it's not like getting to me. I'm pretty protected. But it's like, knowing that

• 48:58Ryan Holiday?

  Knowing that those people exist and that they are intensely more motivated than good people is something that's hard, it weighs on me. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? Or am I just rambling?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  I mean, a bit. Can you just say a little bit more? But I'm just, I'm trying to-

• 49:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So, so, so, uh, so this, this piece, this piece goes up about how, uh, we have this obligation to each other, that vaccines are not just about your own health, but about the idea of public health, um, vulnerable. And like, it's not like, hey, I disagree, right? Because that can't be, it can't be that. It has to be, not only are, uh, not only a defense of what someone is doing, which is almost medically indefensible, but like aggressively nasty and cruel and vicious. You know, it's not like, hey, uh, I don't, I don't support gay marriage. It's like God hates facts, right? Like the difference between those two.

• 50:04Ryan Holiday?

  I, I have trouble even just sitting with the fact that like, oh, like 10, 20, 15%? I don't know what the odd, the percentage of the audience is that has been broken in the brain or infected at this level. It, it's hard for me to deal with that.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I think, I think my, I think my Westboro experience makes me feel like it's, it's much, or maybe it's just much easier for me to see, like, I basically, again, knowing where I come from, like, I basically, it's very hard for me not to like intuitively, like, want to understand where people are coming from.

• 50:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  And considering their environment and their life experiences, like, why they would come to the position that they've come to. And so, like, even though I intensely disagree with people sometimes and think that what they're doing is incredibly wrong and destructive to other people and to themselves, um, like- It's very difficult for me to be angry or upset about it. Like, I'm basically always trying to, like, think about, this is kind of what my TED Talk was about, too, right? It's, it's, and it's just because that was what worked with me, like, on me, I should say, like, by these people. Like, when I, it still feels like a miracle that I am not still, you know, a member of

• 51:30Speaker 01

  West Rudolph's Church, standing on, you know, a picket line somewhere in Kansas. And, like, that's, or somewhere across the country. Like, it's, it blows my mind when I think about who I was in that moment. And it just seems like this, you know, kind of vast canyon between.

• 51:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think what makes me sad about it, it's not that it exists, it's that it doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? That it exists.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:56Ryan Holiday?

  With real consequences. The vaccines, again, being a great, such a vivid example of this, where, you know, it's like, it, it's very hard to take, you know, just sort of an abstract political belief and tie it to sort of actual, real-world consequences in the way that something like vaccine denial or misinformation.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:20Ryan Holiday?

  Doesn't just affect you. Not, first off, your individual choice, obviously, had, but then to infect, to not just be, like, let's say, hesitant, but to be vehemently infecting other people.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Right. But it's because they really believe it's dangerous.

• 52:35Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  And so it's like, so, it's so funny, because, again, like, I can't get, I gotta stop saying, like, it's so funny.

• 52:41Ryan Holiday?

  Right, because that's the hard part, is that it's not funny at all.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, yes. But what I mean is, like, like, strange or interesting.

• 52:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Like, when I, like, hear those things, you know, they, they really believe this. So, my, again, coming from where I come from, which was, you know, the tendency to judge and condemn, like, that's what I meant, you know, in that piece, like, I come from this culture of, you know, public judgment and condemnation. Like, that was, that was our, that was what we did, right? That was, like, our whole purpose. Like, we weren't actually trying to convince people, we were just telling them they were wrong. And after that, it was up to them, you know, or more specifically, it was up to God, whether he was going to change their minds, or, or keep them in these sins, or, you know, bad thinking, or whatever. And so, so now.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  I resist, like, again, it's almost like I'm constitutionally incapable. You know, there's, I love, by the way, how, how ready you are to quote things all the time, like a just vast number of like writers and books and things. It's really amazing. But like one of, the epigraph of my book is this line from The Great Gatsby. And I remember reading it at West Row and actually kind of having this like faint sense of like, this feels transgressive to be loving this quote and identifying so strongly with this quote. And the quote was, "Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope." And like, that just immediately rang, rang true to me. Like, it's the idea, it's the willingness to see other people as being on a journey, right?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  And like, they're, they won't, they don't have to be forever who they are in this moment. And like, what can I do to like, help this person, you know, be more willing to go down this one path versus, you know, another that I, that I believe is wrong?

• 54:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, but I think about, I think about The Great Gatsby and he, you know, he talks about how they're, they're careless people and they smash things up and then retreat back into whatever, you know, sort of fantasy world they live in. I think that's what I struggle with on this stuff where it's like, this isn't a game, right? And I think that, that's-

• 54:48Speaker 01

  But did you see, by the way, I, I, so I was, we were actually just looking at this the other day. So, like, these tweets from earlier on, so earlier last year in the pandemic, and then also like, there was one last July from, you know, Joy, Joy Reid, basically saying like, "Oh, like, they're rushing the vaccines and we can't trust these things." And so it was liberals kind of, you know, under-

• 55:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  And, and so it's, it's, what I'm saying is like, it's, it's not a problem of, and you've said this too, it's not a problem of one side or the other, it's, it's just a very human problem. And, and like, I, after spending so long on the judgment condemnation side, like, this is what I mean, I feel like- I can't help but like, I'm just basically always thinking of what is the answer? Like, what is the solution? What do we do from this? And it's so hard as an individual in this country, right? Like, we don't have, you know, you and I don't have like institutional power. We have, you know, our platforms, which, you know, yours is obviously vastly larger than mine.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  But it's, it's like, all we have is our voice and trying to, um, trying to, you know, and, and it's, it sucks. It's really hard sometimes to, to not feel, not succumb to the kind of hopelessness that seems to pervade, you know, our, our, our discourse now.

• 56:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think, I think that's one thing that is hopeful about your story. And, you know, Marc Maron talks about how basically like, just a certain percentage of the population has just been brain fucked, right? And it's, it's largely older people, but like, it definitely skews across the spectrum, politically, socially, but there, there's just people who've been sort of radicalized. Like, are there people on, on, on all sides that have been radicalized in one way or another? Yes, sure, definitely. Right, of course.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Some worse than others, for sure.

• 56:43Ryan Holiday?

  One, one attempted to overthrow the, a democratic election and hang the vice president, you know, one, although again, both sides of it as far as the vaccines, but, you know, one side is sort of keeping.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Currently, yes, absolutely.

• 56:58Ryan Holiday?

  One, one, one, one group of people, and again, there can be overlaps or not overlaps, but then there's, it's probably more like the horseshoe theory of like extremes on both ends. There's a percentage of the population that's holding the entire world hostage as far as keeping us mired in this pandemic.

• 57:15Ryan Holiday?

  It, it's, it's, uh, it's really tough to.

• 57:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's just, it's just

• 57:22Speaker 01

  It's just a tough situation. Yeah.

• 57:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And I think what's hopeful about your story is that like, it is possible to get unfucked in the brain.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:30Ryan Holiday?

  Apparently, perhaps not at scale, but at least there's some hope for individuals. And I, I, I read about this in my next book too, where there's this scene where one of the people who beat John Lewis on the Freedom Ride, so he like assaulted him for trying to sit in this waiting room in Memphis, I forget where it was, maybe Alabama, but like, not just assaulted him, but like, beat him nearly to death, you know, 30, 40 years later, you know, like, reaches out and tries to apologize. And, and they meet each other. And it's this mag, you know, majestic moment of, of both vulnerability and

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Reconciliation.

• 58:12Ryan Holiday?

  regret, but then also, yeah, forgiveness and self-control and hope, you know, like, it can happen on the individual level. I think the, the scary thing, what social media has done is, you know, how many people are in the Westboro Baptist Church versus how many people have been radicalized politically through social media on all sorts of extremist movements, whether it's the white nationalist extreme movement, or, you know, some of these sort of far left wing groups, like, there's definitely a lot. But how do you de-radicalize millions of people who have been radicalized for different reasons in different ways?

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, I want to talk about, I mean, several things come to mind. So first, do you know the story of Derek Black?

• 59:00Ryan Holiday?

  No, I might. It sounds familiar.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he's the son of Don Black, who started this, you know, essentially a home for white nationalists on the internet, Stormfront.

• 59:10Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. I read this. Yes. There was a big Washington Post piece about

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. The White Flight of Derek Black. It was an amazing story. And so much of it, like, paralleled my story, like, in really eerie ways, actually. But, so he and I are friends now. We talk about this all the time. And, and so I guess part of the point here, and I'm, I'll keep, I'll keep making it, but part of, part of this point is that I, my story is not unique, right? Like, Derek is an example. Have you heard of Daryl Davis?

• 59:43Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  He is a black musician. There's a, there's a

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Documentary on Netflix about this, what I'm about to tell you. It's this insane thing where he has personally convinced some like 200 members of the KKK.

• 59:59Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, yes. Okay. I know this one too. Yes.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So like, you know, I think people think that stories like these are like just some kind of magic, like they just, you know, happen, you know, under some, you know, mysterious set of circumstances. And I don't think that's true. And I'm going to reference my TED Talk again, sorry.

• 1:00:20Ryan Holiday?

  No, go for it.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  The whole point, like, you know, the whole reason I gave that talk was to talk about the second half, essentially. It's how to talk to people we disagree with. And then in this case, you know, it's one of those places where the natural human instincts tend to lead us to sucky places. So it's the judging and condemning. It's the attempts to shame people into, you know, being on what we believe is the right side. There's this, I didn't, I heard about this after I left. I became intensely interested in like psychology and how all of this works. And like kind of the forces that kept me there versus the ones that eventually allowed me to leave.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  And one of these forces is this tendency toward complimentary behavior, which is that like we, our tendency to mirror one another, right? So when we see, believe that people are attacking us and they're, they're doing wrong, you know, our tendency is to, you know, be defensive. And it works the other way. When people are kind to us, we want, we tend to want to be, you know, kind in return. But non complimentary behavior, like it's incredibly difficult, but it's also really powerful because it means that one side has, can have enormous influence on the other, right? So when somebody is being horrible to you. Being kind back to them is not easy. It requires a kind of intentionality and a presence of mind. And it's exactly the kind of stuff that you,

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  all the things that you talk about, the self-control, the, you know, not reacting, but intentionally responding and being aware of how you're being perceived. It's a willingness to set aside your own ego and not have it be about how this person is offending you and making you feel, but really about accomplishing this thing that you want to happen, which is you don't want this person to be horrible. So instead of trying to shame people, especially, you know, across ideological divides. Sorry, I'm going to do a small tangent here.

• 1:02:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Because this is another one of those concepts that was absolutely mind-blowing to me. So I was talking to this anthropologist a few years ago, and she was distinguishing guilt and shame for me, like in whatever her official understanding. And shame, she defined as when we know that we have violated the norms of our community. And so it goes back to also what you were saying earlier about, you know, when people, when people are, you know, coming after you for something that you believe you're doing right, it tends to push you even deeper into this, right? Because, okay, I'm gonna, I might be getting a little bit lost here. When somebody from the other side comes after you, you know, you already believe that they're wrong. So the fact that they think that you're wrong,

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  and I experienced this intensely at Westboro. Like, my gramps would say, this is a badge of honor that these people are coming after us. They're evil. Of course they're coming after us because we're good. And so that attempt to shame people across the aisle, it has the opposite effect, or it tends to have the opposite effect. Unless, unless you are kind of attaching something, and another, another scientist was telling me this the other day. She called it moral reframing, right? So it's trying to, instead of, instead of trying to change their minds about something, you are appealing to values that they already, you're not trying to change their values. You're appealing to values they already have and using that to try to persuade people and change their minds.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  So backing up again to shame not being effective. It's, it is what people did with me, right? It's this kind of very intentional recognizing that I am a human being with a lifetime of experiences that led me to this moment. And And their willingness, like David, you know, you mentioned David Abitbal. Like, he was the one who presented that very first argument that it was the first direct contradiction in Westboro's, internal contradiction in Westboro's doctrines. And I honestly don't know I would ever or could ever have left without that, without that understanding.

• 1:04:31Ryan Holiday?

  The irony is that there's also a biblical basis for that as well. Romans 1220 is like, if your enemy is hungry, feed him thirsty, give him something to drink. And for this, you, you will dump burning coals of shame on his head. So it's a different kind of shame, right?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:04:48Ryan Holiday?

  But, but it's, it's by mirroring the exact opposite of the behavior. And it is extraordinarily hard to do, especially when, and I'm saying this as a person who's guilty of it all the time, when the person is doing something monstrous, or insensitive, or immature, irresponsible. And I think that's where we really struggle, where it's like,

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:05:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, you know, your kid does something wrong and you want to, you realize that by reacting, you're actually reinforcing the exact behavior that you're trying to stop.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And you, I mean, you, you talk a lot about, you know, humility, right, in, in your work, right? How, you know, smart people are humble. And, and part of that, and there's a lot of reasons for that, but it's, it's partly the recognition, I think, or, or, or maybe I'm wrong about this, maybe it's not exactly, it's epistemological humility, right? This, this became a thing, you know, huge, huge, huge, huge in, in reframing how I think about myself and other people. But, but it's, it's, for me, it's the recognition that if I were that person, I would be doing this thing. If I was this person, if I had their DNA, if I had had their exact life experiences,

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  well, I would in fact be this person. You know, I would be that person. And so, and so it's, there's just a kind of grace, I think, that comes from that. That quote I mentioned from Gatsby earlier, like, reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope, that is, you know, this concept of grace, right? It's, it's.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  By not issuing the judgment and by instead like seeing this as

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  someone who can change and also someone that who's changed you can contribute to like again, this is where the like the hopelessness that we see right now is so dangerous because if it really is hopeless, well, then I can treat this person however I want, right? However, I feel like it's not about, you know, making things better. It's it's just about like, well, well, they're just wrong. It's again, it's a very Westboroian like view. It's these people are wrong. And so therefore, it's justified for us to go and protest their funerals because really, our message is more important than this human being standing in front of us. Like, for us to get this message across to them means far more in the end. You know, if they're going

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  to go to hell, well, a little pain now will save, you know, a lot of pain later. So there's so many ways that you can reframe. And this, this is, you know, how I felt watching what happened to Amy Cooper last year. Well, when you attribute the absolute worst motives to this person, well, then tearing her life apart is perfectly justified. Like, the fact that she is a essentially, I mean, if you listen to the, I don't know if you've had, you probably not had a chance to listen to the, um, the podcast, or maybe you're uninterested in hearing from Amy Cooper, like I think maybe a lot of people are, you know, she, it's really heartbreaking, um, listening to what happened to her. And whether you believe that she was right or wrong to have, you know, called the police in that moment, whether you believe that her fear was justified,

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  whether you think that, you know, her, you know, she says she was just essentially describing him, thinking about how she was going to describe him to the cops when she mentioned his race, and that she only repeated herself, you know, because, uh, because the, there was a bad cell connection. So the operator couldn't hear her. She wasn't trying to emphasize his race. She was just trying to get out of the situation. Whether you believe any of that or not, I think that the punishment that was meted out to her, this essentially, you know, ending her life as she knew it is, is a really sad and, and horrible thing, especially knowing that it was done.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Without all of like with so many of the facts buried and in some cases intentionally buried.

• 1:08:41Ryan Holiday?

  When I watch those videos, one of the things that I sort of try to remind myself even, you know, and from what I remember from the story, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say there's a pattern, but that I remember this wasn't a first offense, if I remember correctly, but, but, but what I, what I saw in that video was a disturbed person, right? So I didn't know exactly why she was disturbed, right? It could be for the reasons you're saying, it could be that she was having a mental break. I see this, you know, when you watch the so-called sort of Karen videos of people freaking out in a supermarket because, you know, they're asked to wear a mask.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:17Ryan Holiday?

  Or, or, you know, I got this crazy letter from someone who came into our bookstore that, uh, you know, was asked to wear a mask. It's, it's like, this person is, is, is really struggling. It has nothing to do with what's happening right now, right? This is the means by which this pain and trauma is being expressed and it's wildly inappropriate and incorrect and sort of socially destructive and all those things can be true. And this could also be a person who's under immense duress. So it doesn't undo it, but it mitigates it, right? And it forces you to see it with a little bit more perspective and empathy.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Humanity. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:09:57Ryan Holiday?

  It's not a computer game.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Ryan Holiday?

  Like this is a real person.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:10:01Ryan Holiday?

  And.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  So much of that is lost, like it's, and again, it's, it's, and I'm, I'm sorry. I, I honestly feel like, like, could this possibly be true? Like, I can't tell you how many times I felt like when I make these comparisons to Westbrook, like, is it really true or am I just like a, a one trick pony or something? You know what I mean?

• 1:10:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Like, is this, is, am I just framing everything this way? But, but again, that idea, it's like, you know, the end justifies the means, right? Like, we have to, we have this message and it's the most important thing. And therefore anything and everything that we do to preach it is justified. That was something that I came to disbelief and, you know, when I, when I pushed back against that, um, like the, the resistance, like the idea, like, how could I possibly? Who was I, this self-righteous person trying to, trying to call into, you know, into question the, the motives of the servants of God, da, da, da. Like it's, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:10:59Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, to me, the, the, the other reaction I have with, with like, let's say you watch an Amy Cooper video or any of these people, I try to go, whatever I think about what this person did, right? It's not my place or my job to punish them. This is what prosecutors are for. This is what their family is for. This is what their employer is for, the people who actually have a relationship with this person. Or, or perhaps this is also what the community most directly affected by this thing. This is their job, right? My job is to watch it and go, where am I like that person? Right? What have I said that was offensive or not representative when I was under stress or duress, right?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:41Ryan Holiday?

  What, where have I instinctively reacted in a way that was totally ignorant of the sort of potential risk that this might expose other people to, so on and so forth, right?

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And it's that kind of humility.

• 1:11:56Ryan Holiday?

  Your own behavior.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. That, that kind of, and it's that kind of humility that also mitigates your desire to hurt other people, right? It's, that's what I mean. Say again.

• 1:12:07Ryan Holiday?

  You should be too busy looking in the mirror.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 1:12:11Ryan Holiday?

  I think there's a line from Confucius where, you know, they're criticized. He hears someone criticizing another philosopher, he says, ah, you must be more perfect than I am because I don't have time to do this, right? And, and I think that's sort of how I think about it. It's like, I, I don't need to, I don't need to go after this person. Last question for you, because I think this brings us back full circle. You have children of your own now, yes?

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  I have, yeah, one, one girl. She's a little girl. She's the best.

• 1:12:41Ryan Holiday?

  How, how old?

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  She is two and three quarters.

• 1:12:45Ryan Holiday?

  So, so somewhat approaching the age, when the indoctrination starts for you, how are you thinking, you know, I think, if we're thinking about that poem, what that poem is really about is intergender, intergenerational trauma and how we pass on the sins to our children and we perpetuate, you know, this stuff. So how are you thinking about both breaking the cycle and?

• 1:13:14Ryan Holiday?

  You know, now that you have a child, can you, how do you think about what you expose them to, how you teach them, how you, you know, let them sort of be their own person? I've got to imagine you have an immense sensitivity to that. And I even know like my own issues with my own parents having, like, my kids are now at an age where like, I remember being that age. Like, you don't remember being two, so you're not quite there. But like, four or five, you're like, oh, I, I know, I remember being alive, right? And so it gives you a new lens on your own childhood because you suddenly go like,

• 1:13:57Ryan Holiday?

  oh, that was a horrible thing to do to a four year old. Like, I would never, I would never do that, or whatever it is, right?

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Ryan Holiday?

  How, how are you, how are you trying to write a new chapter with your own family?

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Oh, man, this is a, this is a great question because, I mean, for years before I got pregnant, I was reading parenting books because I realized that, you know, it's not enough. It's not enough to just say, I'm not going to do what they did. You have to have an alternate paradigm, or else you're going to go right back to exactly what you know.

• 1:14:31Ryan Holiday?

  Like, because it's in your muscle memory.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, and it was actually shocking to me that much harder, like, I would say that it was quite easy for me to change my thinking about, to think differently about gay people, or about Jewish people, or any of these people, the people in these groups that we used to target. Like, I just, I started to see like, very quickly, like, oh, yeah, they're, they're just people. You know, they're just humans, like, with their own experiences, like, and it was very easy. And again, because I had thought I was, you know, going after them, quote unquote, like, for their own good. Like, it wasn't like I had a sense of like, personal hatred for them, or whatever. So that was easy. It was much, much harder, much harder to change my thinking about children.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Like, and, and maybe I'm actually not, you know, totally positive why this is. I would guess it's because You know, that's essentially who I was to my family. I didn't leave the church until I was almost 27, but I was still a child to them. Right. I was still a young person. I was still living at home with my mom directing my activities, you know, all day, every day, basically. So like, and like the sense of like powerlessness, right? That they have this authority over you. And, you know, my mom would literally say, like, you can sum up the Bible in three words. Obey, obey, obey. Like the emphasis on, you know, obedience without question or protest. And the reliance on force and control to make children do what you want.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  It was just so much a part of, of my understanding of what the parent child relationship meant. As loving as my parents were, that was always the, you know, like undergirding everything. And so I would listen to these parenting books about like how to, like, how to respond to a child when they're acting out or doing something that you think is, you know, bad or not the way that they should be acting. And like, they would be, they would be advocating this kind of connection, right? This gentle, like, you know, if they're throwing a fit or having a hard time, like, you know, like, I hear you. Like, I understand this is not an easy thing, you know, to, it's not, it's not easy to not have what you want the second that you wanted

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  or whatever, whatever, kind of like verbally affirming, like the feeling, not okaying the action, but affirming the feeling and like, yes, this is hard. Let me help you through it. Like, and I, I was absolutely shocked by like the feeling of this enormous resistance and like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm definitely not going to be like enabling. That's how, that's how my family would put it. I'm definitely not going to be enabling this kind of behavior, like all that kind of stuff. And I felt that and then I was like, oh my God, like I need to read way more books about this. I need to like retrain my brain and how I think about, I think about this because I can't, I can't do this. Like, my mom would always say things like, you know, these kids don't know how good they have it.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  And like, you know, the implication being like she, she, and like, as I mentioned at the very beginning, she did save us from the very worst of what she experienced as a child.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  And, and all her years growing up and. But it wasn't enough, right? It's not enough to just do better. Like, that's what I feel, I think, more than anything. Like, this huge sense of responsibility. Like, this, this child, like, you are their first introduction to the world. And like, what a good relationship looks like and how to live a good life. And I take that responsibility so seriously. And I, I would say, that's my, like, primary job in this world. Like, that, that's what it feels like, more important than, you know, I'm very, you know, grateful and glad to have, you know, been able to do and, and to still be doing, you know, work that I believe and hope is valuable to others.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  But the responsibility that I feel to her is enormous. And it has been, I, I don't think I've experienced, I mean, this is, I think, by far the greatest place of growth in my life since I left.

• 1:18:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, one, one book I'd, I'd recommend to people, and it's probably relevant to your experiences, a book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, which was very helpful to me and a lot of people I know. I think it's by Dr. Gibson. And anyways, the, the idea being that, like, you know, your parents were just like two random people that met, right? And, and had all sorts of issues. And you, when you grow up, as it sounds like you did, and a lot of people did, you, your, it was your parents' emotional immaturity that, that put them in the position they were in, right? That, that then you were in.

• 1:19:19Ryan Holiday?

  And you have, if you don't wrestle with that stuff, and we all have different issues, you know, some parents were alcoholics, some parents were fundamentalists, some parents were neglectful, whatever. But you have to deal with the shit from your childhood, or you will pass it on, exactly as Philip Larkin is saying. And it's not your parents' fault if that happens. It's your fault.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  I'm really sorry. You, you cut out there for like 10 seconds. No, no, no, you, you were saying some parents are neglectful, some parents are abusive.

• 1:19:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, some parents are neglectful, some are abusive, some are alcoholics, you know, every parent is a different issue. But if you don't deal with that, you will pass it on, as Philip Larkin is saying.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:00Ryan Holiday?

  And it's not your parents' fault. It's your fault.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  100%. Absolutely. And it's that, like, you know. When I, in the moments when it's really, really hard, right? Where I have to be the most intentional about everything that I'm like, when I'm the most triggered, you know?

• 1:20:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  You know, those moments, like I, I, I think about how incredibly difficult it is. And I think like, I don't want her experience of parenthood to be this, right? I want to give her the tools that like, and I think of course parenthood is always going to be, you know, difficult in some ways. But when the, you know, I have a sister in law who's really wonderful. She's married to my brother. So my brother was in the, obviously in the church with me and she, um, I, I, I see how she reacts to their children. And even though she can be, you know, just as frustrated and just as upset, it amazes

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  me like how she responds with such gentleness, even when she is like tired beyond belief, even when, and it's because like her understanding was built in like from the time, you know, she was a kid, like it's so much easier and more like second nature to her. I want it to be second nature for my daughter.

• 1:21:22Ryan Holiday?

  That's beautifully said. Let's, uh, let's call it there and I wish you all the best.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Ryan. It's really nice talking to you.

• 1:21:32Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The, the reviews make a difference. And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.