Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay, very short intro today.

Just two things. Reminding supporters of the show to subscribe to the private RSS feed. Please go to my website, log in, preferably on mobile, and go to the subscriber content page where you can push a button for your favorite podcasting app and get the private feed.

Then you should be seeing this show appear in your podcast with a red making sense icon, not a black one. And then you will not miss any content because a few things are changing and I don't want you to fall through the cracks. Sorry for the inconvenience.

And finally with regards to my previous podcast with Andrew McAfee, whose book is more from less. Many of you love that podcast and I just want to let you know that his book is now available this week publishing on Tuesday, the 8th of October.

And now for today's guest, who also has a book publishing this week. My guest today is Megan Phelps-Roper. Megan is an amazing woman. She's been on the podcast before. Her book is unfollow a memoir of loving and leaving the Westboro Baptist Church.

And Megan is a writer and formerly a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, which she left in 2012. And she's now an educator on topics related to extremism and communication across ideological lines.

As you'll hear, she's very well placed to do that. And really just an amazingly resilient and wise and together person given her background that is no small miracle.

So without further delay, I bring you Megan Phelps-Roper.

I am here with Megan Phelps-Roper. Megan, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

It's really good to be back.

So you have been really busy. The last time we spoke on the podcast, you just had a Twitter feed. I'm not mistaken. And now you have a daughter first, most important, but you also have a book.

And I think a movie that will be based on the book, you've been very busy.

Yeah, there's been a lot going on. It's kind of funny for a long time. I felt like everything I was doing was really reactive. Somebody was asking me to come speak somewhere or talk about Westboro and my life and everything.

And then when it came time to write this book, this was the first thing that I actually had to say I want to do this. And that was a little bit...

And I think we talked about that a little bit last time, just that feeling of not wanting to have, having spent my entire life telling people how to live to now say, okay, you guys, now I have it all figured out and let me tell you what the answers are now.

So obviously that's not the tone I take in the book and that's not the tone I take in real life, but it definitely is kind of a little bit of a mental hurdle to get over.

Yeah, yeah, well, it's certainly quite a task to decide to sit down and write a book as well. And you've written really a wonderful one to read.

And I think our conversation will not do the book justice deliberately. I just want people to read it. The book is unfollow and it's your memoir and your account of leaving the Westboro Baptist Church.

And on the last podcast we spoke a fair amount about your life and what it was like to be in the church. I think we should recapitulate a little bit of that just so people have a sense of what's going on here.

But then we'll move on to some other topics. And also I got questions solicited from Twitter, which I want to cover.

Sure. I guess what I think you have to tell people who don't know and that will be some significant percentage of people I think just what is the Westboro Baptist Church and how did it start?

The Westboro Baptist Church is a group of about 70 to 80 people and it's made up almost entirely of my extended family. And they have become really well known in the past. It's been almost 30 years now since they started this picketing ministry.

...