- Every show I'll have one interview and the common thread is
that everyone I talk to will be someone who
has experienced change. Our guest tonight grew up
in Westboro Baptist Church, which her grandfather
Fred Phelps founded. You know them, they protest soldier's
funerals with signs like this. That is actually her in the photo. It was all she knew and
everything she loved. But when she was put in
charge of social media for the church she
found herself changed. Welcome my friend Hello, friend. - How are you? - How about that picture? I love it, jewskilledjesus.com. Wow, I'm so glad you guys
got that domain name. I would (laughing) be absolutely broken
if you had to be jewskilledjesus1.net. (laughing) So okay, the
Westboro Baptist Church is considered a hate group. Why is that? - Well because we did a lot of things that seem hateful to most people. We believed that it was loving. We thought that loving
our neighbor was going to warn them the
consequences of their sins. But we did things like,
we celebrated 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, and
every sort of human tragedy, we protested funerals. Like I said, we did it
because we believed that was the definition of love. We thought we were loving our
neighbor with those signs. So God hates f*** was a
way loving our neighbor. Does that make sense? (murmuring) (laughing) - So tell me about your
moment of change. - So I got on Twitter in
2009 and that's where my first doubts really came from. Twitter was a lot like pickets at first. It was really hostile. I was saying incredibly
provocative things and people were responding in kind. And then after a while there
was this group of people, just individuals, who, because we were
able to finally have sort of extended
ongoing conversation, you could have that on Twitter
in a way that you couldn't have on the picket line. People got to know me
and I got to know them, and we got to see that neither of us, neither side was the monstrous image we had had in our heads. - Okay, so you've said that
you married your troll, which you did, you married your Twitter troll. And how did he...
How did... he -- How was he able to
get through to you? - So first I should say that
he would probably object to being called a troll.
(laughing) But he was arguing
from a position of yeah, I'm hearing what you're
saying and I understand. I see these things in the
Bible , but for instance, picketing funerals, like
what about the family? We literally had a sign that
said God hates your feelings. So... I had learned from
a very young age to just dismiss people and
their thoughts and feelings and how we impacted them. And my now husband, who at the
time was totally anonymous, and I didn't know, anyways,
he's an incredible human being. - It's practically like JDate. (laughing) - But it's amazing that
he and people like him took the time and had the patience to really effectively challenge me. I mean I think it's
incredibly important and a super effective tactic when you're
dealing with extremists. - You know talking about extremism, I think that your presence
in this conversation is so powerful because you literally understand you know,
Charlottesville. This is something that you can
genuinely kind of understand. - Yeah, and I think one
thing that's really important for people to understand
is that I think extremists generally are not psychopaths. They're psychologically
normal people who have been persuaded by bad ideas. We can't expect to like
isolate these people and hope that those ideas
will just fade into oblivion. Like we really have to
actually engage those ideas and find ways of one, understanding the
mindsets of the people that we're dealing with. And then effectively
constructing arguments and evidence and
presenting those things. It's not just for the
sake of these extremists, 'cause they impact
the rest of society. Like young people
especially I think are more susceptible and
vulnerable to them. So we present the arguments not just for the people who are in it, who are doing things that
we find reprehensible, like what happened in Charlottesville, we actually have to address it. - It is interesting
'cause my first instinct, my first impulse go,
well these extremists, they're not psychopaths,
they're just normal people, and in my mind I went, oh
I don't know about that. Then I look at who I'm talking to and you're the perfect
example of that. Tell me what happened
when you left the church. - When someone leaves
the church they are immediately cut off from
everyone in the church. - And that's your entire family. - Yeah, it's been, next month will be five
years since I left. - Wow, that's such a short
amount of time, really. - Oh, man. It seems like forever. I can't believe it's been
that long since I've seen my, oh okay, I'm not gonna cry. I've spent a lot of
time the past five years with these communities that I
used to target at the church and really trying to find
a way to sort of repair some of the damage that
I did while I was there. So I've been working with schools, middle schools and high schools
on anti-bullying campaigns, and with law enforcement
on like hate crimes and counter-terrorism
and extremism. Just really trying to find a way to use these experiences to do good. For instance, like I was staying
with Rabbi Yonah Bookstein here in Los Angeles who I had
picketed three years earlier with a sign that said
your rabbi is a whore. So like spending time
now with this rabbi. - That rabbi's a whore, you
should meet my sister the rabbi. (laughing) - I tried. (laughing) - You are one of the most
positive people I've ever met. What gives you hope? - Well I think a big part of it is that at Westboro we had a sign
and a matching website, literally theworldisdoomed.com. This is like this incredibly depressing view of other people. We basically saw everybody
outside the church as inherently evil and
deliberately doing what they knew was wrong
and going to hell. When I left and I was
meeting all these people and realizing they're not monsters, they're just people
trying to live their lives in the best way that they know how. And I find so much hope in that. - Megan, thank you so
much for coming. - Megan, I have a question. I understand you took
a vacation recently and things got a little wacky. - Mather, it's not that kind of show! Go get the bed ready. (laughing) Megan, I'm so happy you came. Let's hug heart to heart 'cause that's what my
therapist tells me too. I love you to pieces. - I love you too. (audience cheering and applauding)
