[applause] hello there guess who i young? [laughter] this is tara westover. just get out of the hole you are living if you have not heard of her.

her book is the 100th consecutive week on the new york times bestseller list number one. [applause] >> michelle malcolm or something down there she's down there. and i assume a lot of people are familiar with the narrative and that's why you are still here on the last lecture on the second day. but to still go through some of her story because it is so gripping. it starts in idaho and actually to be it is such a beautiful setting. >> it was a beautiful mountain that i grew up on i have fond memories to be on the mountain into play on the mountain.

so they get to play on the playground and there are a lot of things that could happen. i guess you would say we were the free range kids. hard-core. but the setting and the scenery. >> but you are there all the time you don't want to wait but one of the things i would come back from college i would just be ruptured over how beautiful everything was. she was used to it. like it's a field there will be other ones. >> your mother was an herbalist.

and to have mountains that we raise so we were pretty involve involved. we had goats, pigs. >> normal animals is a poodle. [laughter] but normal stock like horses and cows and pigs and chickens. >> so we have a different philosophy so doctors and

hospitals do not apply to you. >> so the first three siblings were born and hospitals and that is my dad got older he got more radical and then after that i think third grade everyone was born at home and then. >> no medical records or nothing. >> no. i got my birth certificate when i was nine. >> you're lucky you didn't look like me. no documentation is a problem. [laughter]

>> but you are still reading there is one reference going to the carnegie library. >> there was a library in town. we all learned how to read about how fast we can learn how to read. >> we occurred all read it was important for the book of mormon to be very religious and then the rest was more piecemeal and haphazard in some years they would say we go to's homeschool that will last a couple weeks and that would give way to herbalism or the farm they were very

devoted to food supply to have a ten year food supply for the end of time. >> then you have to protect the food from the people who don't have food so it gets involved with that kind of planning. ten years of food is a lot of food not just a little bit of food. >> for nine people. you mentioned your father evolved in his way of thinking? is that change the way he was viewing the world or was that just of progression? >> it's hard to say those events that play into it and intensify it i talk about ruby ridge when that hit the family

in a specific way and my dad many years before that was already frightened of the federal government and was developing pretty radical ideas and ruby ridge for him solidify that. and surrounding a family. i'm from idaho and homeschoolers. so for my dad that solidified in his mind a lot of the fears he was worried about. that had the intense effect. nobody went to school after the ruby ridge incident may be a couple years before that but after that nobody went 20 school.

>> and felt that need. >> he went to one year of high school and was a freak in a good way but he went to high school. and taught himself trigonometry and algebra and then to teach himself calculus and then said will you give me a calculus book and the teacher just laughed and said you can't teach yourself calculus he said give me a book. and then one day he got almost a perfect score on the sat and now going to college. i even know what that was i

was probably eight and as far as i knew college was an evil a terrible thing and he just left. >> the book is actually dedicated to tyler and you credit him introducing you to music that is the main inspiration for you to leave home to see something greater outside of your world. >> i was happy going up on the mountain but when you are a kid you are told things that they make sense to you. so i ascribed to my dad's way of looking at the world and had never any intention to leave the mountain. but then tyler played some opera for me and i was

arrested by a and thought i don't know what this is but nobody is no like born how to sing like this you have to go somewhere so i said where'd you go to learn this? he said you go to college and i said fine i will do that perfect so how do i get to college and you have to teach yourself math. [laughter] and so i tried it i did not teach myself calculus i barely managed to teach myself algebra i started to wake up early and learn algebra but it is still true that i more or less tell myself because i like to sing.

and i'm not sure what lesson the reason that. and you just don't know where that passion will take them because i like to sing and i went to college i discovered philosophy and history and all these wonderful things. and then to come into this place here. you just don't know where they will take you. >> and that chapter called apache women.

>> see make this decision at 15 or 16. and those that got you into byu and to what you haven't read recently but your father comes into your room at night and says i prayed to the lord about your decision and he is called me to testify and he is displeased that you are casting away is blessings to hoard after man's knowledge of the wrath will come upon you. so when your father says that it is pretty chilling so then you decide not to go to college. >> i very much ascribed to my dad's worldview.

mostly i just subscribe to it for all kinds of reasons but i still believe we shouldn't go but that my dad very much had the doctrine we were peculiar people and then to participate in those things down public school was a part of that. and there was a huge breach of that that it felt like personal failing with the faith or conviction so i didn't feel like the right life for me so as a kid at 17

to have that loyalty to the believe i felt like i owe them that i also felt like i owed something to myself. and we could not reconcile those two obligations. >> and to encourage you she said you are the one that i thought would get out of here. you need to go and not stay. and then other time she pulls back. >> my mother is very complicated when i think of her i think there are two versions of her. there is my mother and then my father's wife. they are not the same person. my mother is a really

different person when she asked in his behalf or he is out of their. when i was younger i fell i was warmer towards my mother and as i got older felt like that person was less and less the nature of mothers. >> so you go to college and find out all these things that your knowledge is different than that of your classmates. so that is one obstacle with a social obstacle and then in retrospect byu is a transmission one - - a transition it seems like a shockingly wild party school.

[laughter] but i recognize now that says a lot more about me than byu. because it is a mormon convent more or less. [laughter] men and women live in different buildings curfew was 12:00 o'clock at night if you visit a guys apartment you could only be in the living room. you can't even go to the bathroom. we have to go to the bathroom across the street that women own. it is serious but i thought it was the most lascivious terrifying and they were drinking mountain dew. and i thought i was surrounded by gentiles and that is the word that i used. >> there is a focus on the academic obstacles you have to overcome that this is not the way you were taught. but also a financial obstacle.

>> luckily byu is not expensive so you could skate on - - scrape through tuition was $1600 which is unbelievable and my rent i will never forget was $110 a month. you could do that. you could work a couple jobs but they be constantly and endlessly preoccupied at 3:00 o'clock in the morning and would you shake me away, twenties in your bank account i could've told you to the penny $26.57 at any hour of the day how much money i had and who i owed what and when rent was due. and that takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth for lack of a better term. reading i was focusing on was

money. that the best thing that happened to me is i needed a root canal. because i couldn't afford it i didn't have the money it was $1400. so i talked to the bishop he tried to give me the church is money but i was raised with this insane idea of independence he tried to give me money from his own bank account which i would not take after weeks and weeks he convinced me to apply for the pell grant which is a whole other complicated thing through the government but eventually i got a check for thousand dollars for spring and fall. i only needed 1400. >> actually called them and said i don't need all of this can you take some of the

back. she thought i was praying calling her. she's used to people not getting enough. so i cashed it and paid for that about my books and paid my rent for this semester and i had $1000 left over. this is the first time i had anything like that. i guess it is the first time what is the most powerful thing about money to think about things that aren't money. if you have money and think about all the time you're doing it wrong. >> and to take classes to find

out how much money i have or how many classes i could work to make my rent payment i could stop thinking about all that. and one of the classes i took was psych one oh one which i did not need i met the requirements i thought that would be interesting. so literally that was every parent's nightmare. [laughter] and then to psychoanalyze them. but to me that class was incredibly important to me. have no concept of mental illness until i took the class. >> you felt that you are recognized. >> the professor was lecturing on grandiosity and cycle grandeur and depression and

paranoia and delusions of grandeur and schizophrenia and bipolar and i just wrote in my notes this is my dad. he is describing dad. and that's when they started to talk about ruby ridge and this version that was slightly different than the one i had grown up with. just a little. [laughter] i don't know if my dad is bipolar. we will never know i want to believe one of the symptoms is that paranoia.