Hello, my name is David Runseman and this is Talking Politics. Today's extra episode comes

in two parts. We caught up with Tara West over this week to find out where she is and

what she's thinking. And we're also going to replay you the interview we recorded with

her a couple of years ago about her book, Educated. Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership

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lrb.me slash talk. They'll even send you a free copy of Sino-mania writing about China from the

London Review of Books. Just go to lrb.me slash talk. For people who don't know her, Tara Westover is

the author of Educated the Publishing Sensation of 2018 and indeed still today. Her story is that she

didn't go to school. She grew up in very unusual circumstances in Idaho in a Mormon survivalist

family and she ended up with a PhD from Cambridge. I spoke to her earlier this week on Tuesday. She's

currently in upstate New York. This conversation refers to a few things in the book and there's a

much fuller conversation to follow it. But I started by asking her as I've been asking many of our guests,

where is she and what has she been doing? So I am staying at a friend's house in Germantown

upstate New York. Upstate New York. Yeah, upstate New York. I came here about two weeks ago and

haven't gone out for a week. I just went to the grocery store but otherwise I haven't really gone out

except to walk my dog in the woods. Do you have a sense of how regulated things are if you

were more out and about would people be stopping you? Is there a police presence? Well, I didn't go

the first week much at all and then I started to run low on the things that you need, you know,

food and I was I was short of toilet paper which I'd been ignoring the run on toilet paper because

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