good guys. that's what pisss me off -- pisses me off. >> to see a schedule of upcoming festivals, visit our web site, booktv.org, and click on the fairs and festivals tab. .. just today in the third that of the wisconsin book festival so thank you so much. i see many of you all day. [applause] i couldn't be more pleased toeie introducing megan phelps-roper for book "unfollow." we were talking in the back, her discussion of life in the religious community, doubt, i decide to leave or stay at how you defend yourself in this context is oneen of those conversations that we need to be having so much more as a

culture. i think it opens up so many door for people. megan is itself a writer and an activist. she left the westboro baptist church november 2012 and as an educator of topics related to extremism and communication across ideological lines. at the age of five she began protesting homosexuality and of the alleged vices alongside fellow members of the westboro baptist church in topeka, kansas. the church was found by her grandfather and consisted almost entirely of her extended family. a tiny group gained notoriety for pickets military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy. as the church twitter spokesman, megan with one of the few that interact with the outside world, and twitter actually did something that maybe we can applaud it for. caused her to begin doubting the strict church leaders and the message of humans are simple of the lock of the church itself be so confident about itself, question should left with.

after a digital joust with critics she started when it sometimes they had a w point and then should begin exchanging messages with an intuitive for change her life and then here to welcome her. megan phelps-roper, everyone. [applause] >> good evening, everyone and thank you so much of a new tonight. my name is megan phelps-roper, and i grew up in a very tightknit family in topeka, kansas. i am the third of 11 children, three girls and eight boys, i would live on a street with dozens of relatives in surrounding houses. just across our backyard was a church we tended every sunday when my grandfather had been the only pastor since its inception in the the 1950s. my mom stamina was vocally talented and the hymns that rang out often gave me chills, or passionate praises to god for his mercy and grace echoing off of the low ceilings and into my welcoming ears.

i grew up out of my family. my grandfather had been a well-known civil rights activist, a lawyer from the 1960s-1980s and it won awards from civil rights groups like the naacp in my family had suffered for that work not just the constant vandalism but the physical attacks on my grandfathers elementary school aged children but that never stopped him from the commitment to racial justice. when i was five a new era of my families legacy began and i will be job obit about that now. i didn't understand what was going on, not at first. the sign simply. one day and never left like some undeniable force of nature. i just expense their arrival that way as well. my mother's family had been a well-known and pull the rising city for decades but in my memory it started at gage park. it didn't look like a park to me. there were no swings or slides or jungle gyms. just an open field the severed the place will be part from the

busy intersection of tenth st. and gage boulevard. as pastor of the tiny westboro baptist church my grandfather would drive the big red pickup filled with signed to meet and the rest of the church consisting almost entirely of my aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings would follow any caravan of vehicles. i couldn't read the messages since i still a few months shy of kindergarten but when i saw photos of the teenager i was surprised by how small and restrain someone compared to what came later. watch your kids, gays in restrooms. gage park my grandfather looking for the popular meeting place for gay men. in hindsight protests of proteo elicit an intensely negative reaction the special because our message what far beyond calls for the cleanup of gage park. gramps was an old-school baptist and was determined to represent the scriptural position on homosexuality. he left into attacks on the gay committee blaming them for the aids epidemic and for claiming they deserved the death penalty.

topeka capital journal published many westborough letters including one signed by one of my aunts comparing the united states to sodom and gomorrah, city destroyed by god because of their sin regarding homosexuality. she declared aids to be a disease for which the homosexual must take the sole blame, and insisted the blood of straight aids victims should be avenged upon those guilty of introducing and gleefully spreading the deadly disease, homosexual. even during an t era which disapprove of lgbt people were more common as socially social took only for short sentences for my aunt to make claim scandal stuff to outrage most readers at our sites managed to do the same with even greater economy. militant gays spread aids, gays are worthy of death. soon enough what would become our most infinite as -- infamous message, god hates. the community respond with mystified me for years thanks to a good born overview education

i'm sitting at home. i waswa five years old when that they couldn't begin didn't understand what anyone would reject our message. let alone what our protest withdraw counter protesters. counters. they came and we can begin at scared at first. young punks and disease probably get aids gramps would say. the bible for bad girls to cut our hair but b some of the wind came up with cropped mates mains colored bright red and blue and purple, kool-aid here. and with metal in their faces. there were boys with moltke and others with half their heads shaved and the other half covered by long black hair that hung g in greasy strands across ugly faces. some look like my dad, tall and skinny and the awfully short running shorts in style at the time. some work that in bearded, combat boots on the feet and flannel shirts tied around her waist. they would, inun angry mobs 50, 100 or more endless. and try to set a group of about 30 starting fistfights with the westborough dad to midshipmen

vary between us and them. sometimes there were cops and sometimes the were handcuffs and sometimes we were in them which wasn't there i thought because we just try to protect ourselves from those ruffians. i held my breath when i walked by them so i wouldn't catch whatever was the was making them such awful people. they urge drivers to honk and yell they threw eggs in beer and pepsi bottles filled with urine. sometimes they would abandon my cousins and i would scuttle away behind mom or aunt would stand behind us or them from behind my sign and watch them approach to bellow and spit our bodies and our hair. are parents kept a safe how dare they? that's my mom.

what made them think they could do this to us? but my grandfather had a different perspective it was proof that god was with us. from the age of five into my early twenties i join protests across the country almost daily they quickly expanded beyond the gay community to include everyone that literally was not part of our church the only true church on the landscape that we were so confident in our own understanding not only are right but our duty to judge others we protested funerals assisting the deceased were in hell celebrating their death even though the mourners were only a short distance away i was told this is what god instructed us to warn the fellow man so we saw the

preaching as of compassion this was the only hope for a doomed world. in 2009 i took that message to twitter to reach more people but what i found is those people had reached me instead so a group of individuals began to ask questions and pour over our beliefs they had internal inconsistencies they gently and respectfully challenged me. i was baffled when i saw the contradiction. how could this be this unquestionable word of god? the fact we could be wrong that was the beginning of the end of that doctrine. so then i made the agonizing

decision to leave the church i be cut off from the only community had ever belong to i will lose my lifelong home on that street along with everyone and every one important in my life and left with the role they spent my entire life demonizing and antagonizing. so now i just made the decision to leave and discussed it with my younger sister grace who also felt the need to leave so we were trying to figure out what to do next. >> making the decision to leave was yet another impossible question. and? grace nor i had an answer we couldn't leave before mom's birthday and what about their anniversary? it would ruin everything right at this moment and those are things we cannot bear to leave without.

that we would forever lose access to once we left. family recipes? movies and old photos? maybe we just wait a little while longer. was partly a stalling tactic thinking that a change would occur but at the first prospect of losing everyone we were painfully aware there was so much we didn't know about her parents lives in her grandmother what did we know before westborough? we had begun interviewing her almost immediately we went across the backyard to the we would find them upstairs in the church library at 86 she was so quiet and gentle because of the deep curve in her spine she would buy on her bed and grace would lie next to her on the foot of the bed and me at the head we would

take turns asking questions and i would try not to show the site of losing her this tsunami of guilt progress started to record everything. the sounds of our monthly birthday parties, bible study, my mother story about my siblings and me when we were young. inside the van on picket trips and my little brothers. even if they eventually left. all their little boy voices would be gone. an endless stream of photos of a family kickball game. getting ready to walk to school in the morning. my parents holding hands. my family visit to kansas

city. milkshake parties and walks to the parks of my nieces and nephews. and a trip for snow cones. in those months every joyful experience that left grace and me in tears gasping for breath. trying to remember what it was like before all of this what it was like to be happy with the inescapable offense of that excruciating death of everyone we loved i began obsessively taking notes to chronicle every moment and terrified of losing a single one as if clinging to these memories might alleviate the agony as recording at all could keep it from my grasp. nice things said during hugs. how she could always count on me to smell good. on how my curls in his face made it difficult to breathe.

how mom didn't mind being smothered by them. dad and how he loves it when he finishes sentences. the name that my brother had given me as a tall there when he cannot pronounce mine. we are very fortunate to have you as a daughter but i wrote it down before he could regret that and take it back. and take down the photos of me that hung on the walls or repurpose my bedroom or spend the rest of his life he racing me from his memory as much as possible. we began packing her things in boxes we had labels like shoes or books i numbered mine meticulously cataloging every single one i took each piece of jewelry i owned into a tiny white envelope with the date and occasion that i received it if i forgot a detail i copied 63 dvds which of home movies watching scene overseen

it all the while i knew what would happen when we left i do the heartbreak they would feel and betrayal i felt it when my brother josh left eight years earlier a poorest loan - - a postmortem that went on for years we racked our brains looking for every sign of duplicity and we had trans for one transformer horror into rage know we were disgusted how could he? what monster would pretend to be one of us knowing all the while he was going to abandon us forever? it did not think of us to occur to his devastation we cannot see his terror or despair or desperation it was so much easier to cast him as a villain that he was a selfish jerk who only wanted to pursue his own lust he could not imagine the 19 -year-old boy could have a legitimate reason to leave the only church today or consider

anything truly was wrong with us. that we would all look back just as i had. they would see me interviewing graham in cleaning out my bedroom and all the text messages and e-mails i had sent because they would remember my tears and refusal to tweet how i could ever have looked them in the eye. they will understand they wanted to tell them everything and i tried so hard to keep them. that i was begging for change but i wanted to stay. >> shortly after that grace and i left the church and were separated from our family just as we knew we would be paragraph or so that i had to run away and hide forever but i thought everything i had done that was the only way i could survive.

but almost immediately i connected with people who help me to see things differently who invited me to work for change to help dismantle the arguments i spent my life defending and repair some of the damage i did when i was part of the church. in the nearly seven years i left i have made amends with the communities they used to target. i have been shown incredible grace by those communities and i'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to turn a largely destructive life into meaningful healing for so many people. people who raise me from birth to condemn others and those that were trapped in those to have meaningful conversations against ideological divide and most importantly to experience

that hateful message of westborough first hamper after a book came out i received a message from the man who when westborough was at its peak was terrified and struggling with the sexuality he said he concerned consumed might churches content almost as a way of self-harm and will be reading your book and here you eloquently dismantle the arguments felt like closure. messages like this remind me as extra nearly painful as it has been the things that i did to others who were vulnerable in the most devastating moments of my life but there is real value in owning our mistakes and finding ways to turn them into forces for good. thank you for being here tonight i'm happy to answer questions. [applause]

>> you still consider yourself christian and how do you worship? there so much clear that there is so much love in your family but i wonder with those social struggles there are so many division between society and the conservative church is there any place you feel that your church has something to say to the culture? >> the first part of your question i don't consider myself a christian any more. i am not religious although it's funny to me how much or how many religious ideals are that i learned from religion i still carry with me. i gave a talk that details

what those people on twitter did for me how they turned this acrimonious conversation taking place on twitter and turned that around into meaningful dialogue and as i'm writing up a very close attention to everything i wrote in that talk i wanted to say exactly what i meant and nothing more and nothing less so i finally finished after weeks of working on it i close my laptop and realize the last of my argument was that jesus said love your enemies. there are a lot of things in the bible i have not been able to find a good explanation for. some of the things that i believe that we spent so much time memorizing bible verses. i found much better ways to say those but there are still too many. i shouldn't say ever but i

think coming from a place where i felt so certain about everything i am very skeptical of ever coming to a place where i say now this is the answer. and then the second question, i'm not sure. i don't think there is a monolith or a church or set of beliefs. everybody potentially has valuable things to contribute to a conversation so i don't think we should exclude anybody from that. it seems a little broad. sorry. does that answer your question? [laughter] >> thank you so much for your courage to leave and to write this book. thank you for that.

[applause] >> thank you. >> i was also wondering do you think your parents might ever read this book? >> i do believe they will if they have not already. westborough ml with x members is to pretend we don't exist or acknowledge the things we say or do publicly. the exception to that is when something gets attention forgot to mention that ted talk i gave a couple years ago they were tweeting about it in leading up to the publication of the book there were tweets saying things like i was an antichrist. i do believe they will read it. i wrote the book for so many reasons and one of them i gave breadcrumbs for my family and those still in the church to

detail exactly why i stopped believing and how i came to see the destructiveness. i have written in a way hopefully they in their current position that it can be a bridge from where they are to where i am now. and even if it doesn't cause them to read it, i do hope it causes them to reconsider some things and then i write at the end how the church has moderated its positions in some important ways but there is still a long way to go for i hope i help in that progress. >> i have two alone - - i

brothers that not with my sister anymore people react differently so in the church you think x members as a monolith. that they are all on the same page so people have different experiences in the church a different families. so there is a lot of support it's not nearly the club that the church envisions. >> in those responses that you attracted on twitter the importance of the reason of their arguments but you also talked about the strong sense of community in the pull to your family. as you work with those who

work on late monday - - leaving who work on extremism can you talk about the interplay of reason and community? >> i really glad you brought up the community aspect because i come from a family of lawyers. they are very intelligent and analytical and it seems like a very closed system because as long as you accept the basic premise that the bible is the literal word of god and the only true interpretation than everything else seems to follow for the most part. so it was very important for me to experience on twitter and have conversations with people to find those internal inconsistencies and

contradictions. i don't think i could have left without that. but that emotional aspect is the community aspect. was talking to an anthropologist last year who defined shame as the feeling when we violated the norms of our community. for a long time from mother teresa and princess diana died my church celebrated. anyone they identified was sinful it was a joyous occasion if they passed away. [laughter] well mother teresa was catholic. [laughter] and princess diana was an adulterous. i knew nothing about them other than those facts so they were condemned to hell forever. so this is how i was trained to respond to that i was just

modeling the behavior around me so when 9/11 rolled around my little reaction was to say out loud awesome. i never felt ashamed of that because that was my community but i got on twitter in 2009 it was to - - shocking these people i was interacting with the vast majority were very hostile the fact that there was a group that i was trying to come to know over time there were things that made it unique in my experience. so the fact it was very limited at 140 characters that made me feel safe my interactions with outsiders were always at arms length because it was so limited i was never aware of feelings

being in danger if i was in a physical space. it stopped me from using casual insults. my family would throw them around all the time. there was a space for it on twitter and when i did include those the conversation devolved into you don't you will - - no me so i stopped using them because it did not communicate our core message. so all these things happening on twitter to know people over time and developing a rapport , it affected me in ways i did not anticipate and i missed it until now i'm on twitter this is a few months after i had gotten on and i saw how people responded and sharing memories of her passing away.

at a birthday party actually was one of the monthly birthday parties at the church surrounded by people i was sad well and murphy died and the celebration started but then it got worse. remember a famine in somalia. i felt i was becoming part of this community and started to feel ashamed i couldn't feel ashamed until i was part of another community. i just want to reason that it was essential but so was this other piece so the tendency of humans is to see people that they are irredeemably evil if you isolate them because they thank you are evil so we don't

want that kind of hatefulness and you don't want to convince other people to join them so have that language as much as we can for whatever individual has for the patients to feel safe enough to engage with people like that more likely we are to change hearts and minds. people say that this is unique somehow. may be in particular with the specific things they do but i don't think my reaction was anything other than completely human and there are many other examples of other nationalist like david duke was his godfather who left the movement after engaging with jewish people.

and darrell davis is a black jazz musician who convinced 200 members of the kkk to abandon the movement. there is a lot of examples of the strategies being powerful with that community aspect. the person that you demonized shows you is not who you thought they were and it has his cognitive dissidents that actually does cause people to change their views. >> see you cap people at distance on twitter when you first got on their and responding to all these different things, did you have guidelines or free will with what you are allowed to do was there some way looking over

your shoulder when you were discussing what was being said? what was the interaction within your family and the guidelines that they had that you were given free will? >> i was 23 at the time i was still at home my desk was 5 feet away from my mother's so i guide on twitter after i read an article on cnn. i was the only one on twitter for a year or year and a half. i would always read my post in front of my mother initially but then i saw that as a way of communicating with people that did not require

distortion. so i try to explain but that is not what i said. [laughter] so yes so i would reach out to people directly so it's something that i would do i be cooking and dinner and my iphone the one hand or standing in the picket line constantly answering questions from people even from the picket line and as a family of lawyers who taught me these arguments that i had been taught from the time i was tiny and i had the answer if i didn't have an answer i go the older people they would give me the answer.

they would give me chapter and verse to explain a position. so again this is why i felt very safe because we have all the answers. this is the truth of god and it is unquestionable and i had never ever had the feeling of being bested so when i came to this point and had these conversations came from a jewish man named david he was asking me questions for a year i started off attacking him he responded very negative at first then he started to ask questions i started to ask in response my purpose was to better counter his arguments but in the midst of that extreme nuances he finds this internal inconsistency i was

flabbergasted literally. i had 20 years of an answer so i started to approach the question at my mother and in hindsight you can see on their faces they would reiterate the verse that justified the position but not the contradiction. it was mind blowing. so occasionally i would have people would say that she pulls up her phone in the tweets and say there's something wrong with that i basically said that's one reason - - one response in the

twitter handle as long as there wasn't that many spaces left but for the most part after a while i was trusted and i felt safe doing it. since i left i've heard that things are a little more tightened up in that way. >> hearing about your grandfather antiracism work was very fascinating. can you tell me anymore about him quick. >> i go into a lot of detail in the book he went and moved the same day as brown v board of education and took that as a sign from god he should go to law school so for him some

people look at that work that he did against lgbtq people and their rights and there was no tension because he saw those positions to be from stricture as quality under the law those to the stranger because god has made the one blood on the earth that god never said it was an abomination to be black or female but these protected classes with antidiscrimination laws but he would say that being gay homosexuality is defined by conduct but abominable conduct. ungodly conduct.

so for him this is what the bible says so this is what we find in the bible so it is unquestionable. >> but that's the reason he went to law school. >> even before that he went to a school at university and left because they excluded black people. which is amazing because he grew up in the deep south and did not go along with it. >> i glanced at your wikipedia bio before i came here i think it said you went to university

was that before or after twitter quick so how could you avoid the students in the academic life prior to that? unless it was online. >> washburn was before twitter and it was definitely is not you will look for or find intellectual freedom because it's a mile and a half from my house and we protested there every week at least it was one of the earlier targets. we spent as little time there as possible. and we went to public school also before that.

so people wonder how could you be exposed? we read secular books and listened to secular music there were very few restrictions on what we could consume. people would say how did those things not influence you? the best analogy i have come up with is before you are ever exposed to any ungodly ideas or portrayal, you understand , you are taught in detail why they are wrong. it's like being inoculated against those ideas before you are ever exposed so you memorize those chapters and verses why they are wrong and take you to hell so when you see them as not see something to emulate but you shrug it off like or. criminal. adulterer.

whore. we didn't believe in evolution but if it came up we would just parrot the answers had besought that way. we can do that. that is fine. but we don't have to believe it. >> i heard you speak on the radio yesterday. you got on the subject of how the country is very polarized politically and i think we all probably have relatives or friends that are on the other side of the gulf and we cannot communicate. i thank you went over four or five steps that it's possible to get over the gulf. >> that is the ted talk that i

mentioned it's what those people did for me on twitter and those steps have a lot of power to bridge the divide so literally stealing the best ideas from the people on twitter but those four points do not assume bad intent because if you assume they are evil or delusional that you stop listening to them or hear where they come from and if you don't know what they believe it's difficult for you to find a way to reach them. and the second was to ask questions and asking questions is a way to signal they are being heard so that makes people more heard and it's

like you give them permission of exactly how i experience that with those people on twitter. the third point is to stay calm with these intense ideas that you both feel strongly about it can feel like an attack people have a deeply held value so it can be very difficult but this is one of the ways that online communication can be powerful because you have a moment and could take time and step back where you feel you have to respond immediately. you can stop and consider what words you will choose to communicate your ideas and decide not to respond and then

the fourth stop that may seem obvious but if you believe something strongly the reason behind it should be obvious to any well-intentioned person. and then to defend it so those i mentioned in the talk and now the fifth to be patient because people don't change in an instant eventually it is an instant but it takes time and it is a deeply held belief to hear that first contradiction

so the first thing i said to the jewish in that moment you want me to say that activity is okay and i won't do it. and then to acknowledge we saw the contradiction. and then to see how immediately following that conversation things started to change for me and challenge things i was taught by the elders in the church in the ways i never had before. all because of that little bit of doubt and it takes time to unravel. be patient. >> i was raised roman catholic and lost faith because of the

contradictions so if you are willing to share specifically so what was the first night like when you left? >> yes. but the jewish guy cap asking for our picket sign calling for the death penalty for gay people. that is the punishment called for in the book of leviticus if it's good enough for god then it is good for us but we

said we are not casting stones we are preaching the word and he points out the obvious but your calling for the government to cast stones so what does that mean? and that set me back on my heels and then said and what about your mom? didn't she have a child out of wedlock and is a data sin that deserves the death penalty? anytime anybody brought up that we would say the standard of god is not sinlessness but it is repentance. she's okay and doesn't deserve these punishments because she repented and acknowledges it was wrong but if she had been killed that my family would not exist she would not have had the opportunity to repent or be forgiven so this is a

realization all my god. the arguments we had they seem to sound right but the inherent contradiction was there the whole time i miss that how did i miss that? like it does not compute. that was one of them one of them that really blew my mind that at westborough their protesting the embodiment of compassion the definition of what it means to love thy neighbor to forgive them when you see them sitting you're the only hope to offer to change to turn around to avoid the certain destruction. so we claim to love our neighbor but then on the other side there came a point in our ministry we were praying for people to die for god to curse people that was aust so scripture lead derived where

they prayed for the enemy's children to be fatherless in the wives to be widowed clearly calling for the death and to curse him on his enemies not realizing of course the direct contradiction of the new testament where jesus said love your enemies pray for them and then the apostle paul says bless them that persecute you. bless and curse not. you are specifically said not to curse. when i came to that realization i literally felt like i was deranged. how could i so strongly and passionately believed both of these things at the same time? in hindsight i have learned a little bit about psychology since i left. [laughter] its way our brains compartmentalize the

information. they're both from the bible so it was unreal. >> my sister and i stayed in the home of my wonderful friend who was both of our high school english teacher who was really wonderful they let us stay in their basement the first night he would hurt me if i told you not to follow him on twitter. [laughter] but he stayed up with us for a couple of hours per i thought he would leave us to our despair but he stayed up with us and that was so important to finally out loud more in our family what was happening

in just the whole fact that her whole lives had been to figure out. he was absolutely wonderful. >> thank you so much for your talk it has been interesting and inspiring. what are some things you have done to make amends with the community from the past? >> of course financially contributing to different group groups. that feels important. i have spent a long time volunteering in these communities. the 12th month after i left the church i spent follow volunteering at the jewish federation that was a huge target of the church trying to find ways of using

these experiences to help people who are working on issues like hate crimes and the radicalization and counterterrorism, and things like that. so basically any opportunity that b i have to help people tht we -- eventually i was talking to my husband about this. we want to start a nonprofit and he suggested we call it the westborough foundation. [laughing] i really love that idea because i want toth -- part of the priet i kept my name is to change the legacy i of that name and i woud love for people when they are westboro to not think of protesting funerals or celebrating tragedy that for people who are going to be there to help people when they suffer. i thought that was a wonderful planned on his part. >> where do you get your

strongest since the family nowadays? this like it is for advice that you can impart on us from your experience especially when engaging with people with whom we strongly disagree at a time when it feels like the politics stresses us up and we lose the energy reserve to engage in these important topics, what would you say to us in terms of self-care and engaging in a healthy i way? >> will you remind me what your first question was? >> where you get your strongest since the family nowadays. >> i can't member if i said this. i married one of the people i met from twitter. [laughing] that's a whole part of the story. we have a one-year-old daughter now. she just turned one a couple of weeks ago. actually she just took her first steps right back there. [applause] wonderful. but my husbands family is incredible. he has a brother and

sister-in-law and then his parents also live, we live in south dakota. his parents lived nearby and they are just, it amazes me that he met my husband on twitter and just, i feel like we fit so perfectly together and it's wonderful. also therf fact that i love his family so much and it just happens that both of his parents worked in mental health. that was just -- just this really wonderful gift. but they are incredibly supportive. having myre daughter is obviousy something that has made me, i think about my mom all the time. i thought about her all the time before but now even more intense. not having her around to talk to about everything, and share things, like having my husbands mom is a wonderfully supportive and such a warm and wonderful person, i'm super grateful for that. now i've forgotten your second question. yes, the strength to be able to

engage when you're tired. i would say, like not even i can do it every time. when you encounter some and sometimes you just, it's not injured of the argument or to be able to reach out. i still reach out to my family and i do it anytime i feel moved to, which is pretty regularly. there are moments where i feel like i want to and i just, i just can't. it's too painful. this is one of those things it's not like you just leave and things get better. this is a continual thing. the rejection is constant, it's active. sometimes it's just too painful and so not even i can do it all the time. it's just that being aware that it's an option i think it's important because i think it seems like there such a sense of hopelessness now, , like there's no point in even trying.

i think just even moving away from that in small ways, although that at a time. and again, those steps i i mentioned, those are absolutely skills. they are things that take time to develop and to implement in your own life. it takes time and it takes effort. in whatever ways you can, don't assume that in me, like the small things are not worth doing because again, it's not like those people on twitter, it was talking to all of them everyday. it was just little things along the way. the fact that were multiple, i think that helped, but ultimately it was just a few people over time willing to engage. so just be willing to see all these things, opportunities and not come don't feel like it's an obligation to do it every single time because you will very quickly get overwhelmed and just say i can't do this, i'm done.

>> a follow-up. [inaudible] neutral are you addressing specific argument or speakers when i'm addressing my family, sometimes it's just to tell them things that are happening in my life. more often it is making some kind of argument. it depends, right? for a while it was about that specific contradiction about praying for bad things happen to people. that's one of the things that is changed since i left. initially when i first made the argument and brought up this passage is from the new testament and said, i made one other analogy to say, like for instance, david had multiple wives if we don't take that as an example. why? because it contradicts what jesus and paul said about marriage. why would we take this example of him paying for his enemies to die when we have the other

specific commands from the new testament not to do that? initially, they just double down. i think it's about eight months after that my dad gave a sermon about that passage, love your enemy. i don't think i ever heard a sermon about that first in my entire life before then. shortly after that they stopped. every week there was a flat-out that would go out on fridays that will lift all of the soldier died that week. if it had been 15 of them it would say thank god god for 15d soldiers. we pray for 15,000 more. that line, the secular mind about praying for more disappeared from those news releases. i know they can be reached and i know that there are absolutely still arguments to be made even from the own perspective that would help them continue to moderate and you step back away from some of those more extreme

ideas. anytime i see that come in, acn opportunity, like i have an aunt who tweets, again, though they have stepped away from the praying for bad things s happeno people and they say they don't celebrate the bad things that happen to people, but then i have an auntt who will tweet, do a retweet with some bad thing that's happened and areof only,n the tweets as ha. you can see the old spirit and reminded. them, that's not righ, that's a biblical, that's not scripture. anyway, like i said, anytime i see like one of the 20 seats a special and see what things can i say to help them change for the better? >> i wonder if you've heard the the book escaping the rabbit hole? it's written by person who made a reasonable, a lot of money in

the internet business and decided he could retiree early and spend most of his time debunking things like kim trails and conspiracy theories, alien abductions and so on. the conclusion ofra his book whh very much parallels yours is be nice to people, escalation, be patient. have you you ever encountered that book q and i think he comes up a lot in, if you got together. >> i haven't but i'm going add that to my to read the list. so thank you for that. i had not known that but it makes me happy to hear anytime somebody takes those positions, like did not believe it's hopeless to commit community wh people like that, conspiracy thinking is also again, it can be really hard to get through the people with those ideas but like you said, communicating,, asking questions and taking the time to reach out to them. that can absolutely change things. so thank you for that. i will look into that. >> i think we're done. thank you. [applause]

.. [applause] you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> good evening everybody. i'm bradley graham the co-owner of politics and prose along with my wife ãon behalf of everybody here, thank you for