141. Tara Westover (writer, historian) – Nothing Final Can Be Known

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

What does your education mean to you? What would you be willing to sacrifice for it?

For me and my sister, growing up, it was a given that you’d get “well-educated.” You’d get good grades, go to a good college, and most likely graduate, medical, law, or business school. School was just what you did…ritualized and rote the way religion is in other families.

For my guest today, Tara Westover, the framework was completely different. In her mountain home in Idaho, school was seen as a threat. It was a government tool for brainwashing people out of faith in God’s teachings and into worldly decadence. She went on to become very well-educated by anybody’s standards–—studying history at Cambridge University in England and at Harvard. But it came at very high price. Her first book, EDUCATED, is a powerful and beautifully written memoir about family, loyalty to oneself, and the difficult, even impossible choices we sometimes have to make.

Surprise conversation-starter clips in this episode:

Chris Hadfield on an astronaut’s global perspective

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