[SPEAKER_00]: Coming up on the Preacher Boys podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally I was in the shower.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom came knocking on the door frantically like Amy get out right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy get out right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: How my security is now in my living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no answers for these officers and I don't know what to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I literally told them I said I heard it wasn't really anything too severe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they said, man, it is more severe than I can let on right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember just when they asked me if I have seen anything that involved children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ain't nobody safe In the Bible always In the Bible always
[SPEAKER_07]: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Prejuice Podcast.
[SPEAKER_07]: My name is Eric Scorsinski.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm a former fundamentalist who now sheds light on the dark side of the church from the pulpits to the pews.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm really excited about today's episode for two reasons.
[SPEAKER_07]: One, I'm excited about the guest and the topic for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_07]: But I'm also really excited because you just listened to the brand new intro track for the show performed by my friend Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_07]: I've been listening to loose music nonstop early for the last year and the song Bible Belt every time that I played the song, I told my wife, this needs to be the theme song for the pre-choice podcast, and finally I reached out, I said, hey, what do I need to do to license this track?
[SPEAKER_07]: We, you know, start having some conversations.
[SPEAKER_07]: And now I am so pleased to announce that this is the new intro music for the show.
[SPEAKER_07]: I am so excited.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's such a cool intro.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it's something that honestly, you know, I listen to so many other podcasts and I go like, man, their music represents the show so well.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'm so glad I finally have a track that does that for mine.
[SPEAKER_07]: that has kind of a unique sense of character and I look forward to playing this every single week at the beginning of the show and at the end of the show and so shout out to Lou Ridley for working with me on making this happen.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm so excited about it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Drop a comment.
[SPEAKER_07]: If you're watching our YouTube, let me know your thoughts on the new intro.
[SPEAKER_07]: Give a shout out to Lou.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm sure she'd love to read some of your supportive comments.
[SPEAKER_07]: and yeah the other reason I'm excited like I mentioned is today I'm sitting down with Amy Dougher King she's the author of Holy Disruptor and of course you've seen her on things like shiny happy people 19 kids in counting counting on and she is
[SPEAKER_07]: Someone who has a unique perspective and insight on the dugher family, and also has a really fastening story of her own.
[SPEAKER_07]: When I picked up the book, I didn't know if this was going to be just a dugher tell-all.
[SPEAKER_07]: I didn't know if it was going to be a devotional, you know, kind of covertly wrapped in the name and the attention that her and her family get through the show.
[SPEAKER_07]: and ended up being a really fascinating blend of a lot of different things, including a great outline of her own story.
[SPEAKER_07]: Amy has been through so much and reading this book, my jaw was on the floor, time and time again, reading about
[SPEAKER_07]: the abuse set her grandfather carried out within her family, the abuse she experienced at the hands of her father, and then oscillating between this chaotic home life that she had with her immediate family, and then going off to the dugger compound and seeing what on paper looked like the perfect family, and of course we know from some of the recent headlines that it was anything but,
[SPEAKER_07]: and so to this episode is really just open a great conversation and we were scheduled for an hour long interview.
[SPEAKER_07]: We ended up talking for about an hour and 45 things to Amy being willing to chat a little bit longer and we talked about really anything you'd want to know about.
[SPEAKER_07]: We talked about
[SPEAKER_07]: her background we talked about her experience being on 19 kids in counting and showing up at the dug her home with cameras you know pointed her direction and of course we talk about things like the just dug her situation and what it was like having Homeland Security you know knock at her door asking questions about that case.
[SPEAKER_07]: And again, it was a really great conversation.
[SPEAKER_07]: I really hope that all of you enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Listen to the entire thing as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'd encourage you to grab a copy of Amy Dugger's book, Holy Disruptor, wherever books are sold.
[SPEAKER_07]: It should be out right around the time.
[SPEAKER_07]: This episode releases.
[SPEAKER_07]: But that's enough for me.
[SPEAKER_07]: Let's go ahead and get in my conversation with Amy Dugger King.
[SPEAKER_07]: All right, everybody, welcome back to the show.
[SPEAKER_07]: Amy, thank you so much for joining me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, really excited to talk, and I, you DM me, Estria on Instagram, and I just said, we have a lot to talk about.
[SPEAKER_07]: And there is a lot to talk about.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, we're here to talk about your new book, a Holy Disruptor.
[SPEAKER_07]: First and foremost, I always like to know, like, what prompted you actually go, like, let me sit down and write a book right now.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, what was the timing and the kind of impetus for that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I was actually asked to write a book about two years ago and it was during the time when like the Josh stuff is just really, really heavy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I told them I was like, you don't want me to write a book right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be bitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would come off very wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just not something that I need to do right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took some time, prayed about it, and really thought like,
[SPEAKER_00]: How can my story like impact someone's life, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: After all the things that I've been through, all the things I've seen, you know, through the truth, the lies, all of it, and that kind of middle spot of where God is in my life, you know, this could help someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just decided the time is now, and I actually had a, like I had several publications, big publishers reached out to me, and I just started really diving in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, this book is is my heart on on a page on pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of pages.
[SPEAKER_07]: I am curious because like,
[SPEAKER_07]: you're, you know, and I don't want to group all of you because you have unique stories, but in the last couple years, you know, Ginger released a book, Joe released a book, you've got a book coming out.
[SPEAKER_07]: So we're seeing like kind of this mosaic of different angles of this story, um,
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'm curious for you, like, you're almost on a tightrope, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like you've got ways that you could talk about these things that people would deem irresponsible or people would say.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, okay, is that your place to tell this part of it?
[SPEAKER_07]: And like, there's critics everywhere that are going to look at this stuff.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm curious for you in terms of intent with the book.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, Ginger's book felt very devotional to me.
[SPEAKER_07]: Jill's book was very much like a lot more of an expose,
[SPEAKER_07]: If you had to categorize your book, like, where would you say it fits?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, is it, yeah, what was the direction there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, the direction is I believe the viewers need to know the truth and there's always like there's always like the backstory that like no one knows about yeah and I do think that it ties it all in right I think it connects dots for a lot of the people that we're viewing the show that work bands at the show that wrote into us all the things and it's just like you know I've always been portrayed as someone who was like
[SPEAKER_00]: hungry and famous that I'm wanting to be that and wanting to have a spotlight and all of the stuff on me when it all reality like the whole book shows a totally different side and it just shows how I was painted and and the things that I've gone through and the things that I've healed from and how literally it can help someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this helps this book helps one person, it's worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a hundred percent worth it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's, that's honestly one of the pieces like going into it and reading the description where I was going, is this more devotional?
[SPEAKER_07]: Is this more, I'll say, perspective on IBLP.
[SPEAKER_07]: And honestly, I was refreshed by what the book was, which was very much your specific story.
[SPEAKER_07]: And in contrast to, I think you mentioned you were in 80 episodes of the hundred and nine episodes of
[SPEAKER_07]: you know, 19 kids in counting, which is no small amount of content that has shaped a perception of you.
[SPEAKER_07]: And there's a lot of your personal story that I just wasn't aware of going into the book.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I know we have played a talk about with the Doughert name.
[SPEAKER_07]: It certainly did getting into your personal story.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, with the explanation of IBLP, like I mentioned before, it recorded.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's the reason I didn't really watch the dugers when I was a teenager.
[SPEAKER_07]: I was like, I lived this.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't need to see it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't have a watch about this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, and so a lot of that, I was like, familiar familiar familiar, but when it gets into your personal story and the things you were experiencing, I was, I was surprised that I wasn't aware of it, um, but also that all that was happening simultaneously to a completely different situation that was happening, uh, with the Dougher family at large.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's, it's a lot.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, and so, uh, the heavy book,
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's heavy at times.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll say that it's very heavy at times, but I just told myself that if I was ever going to write a book, I wasn't going to leave anything out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, that's just what I did.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, I want to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_07]: I know this plenty, we could talk about about antique kids accounting and the dugers and all the things that people are going to talk about that,
[SPEAKER_07]: personal kind of upbringing and the world that you ran because you erupt onto the scene as like crazy because of an Amy and like just the fun like kind of almost comic relief encounter to this very rigid kind of lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_07]: But the picture at home seemed very different so take me back to like childhood Amy and what that really looked like for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I, oh gosh, I grew up with a lot of yelling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up just there's not a lot of security.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up just never knowing like when another bad moment was going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, um, my grandparents lived with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that's a whole, that's a whole story and it's still a few guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I, yeah, I just grew up like very kind of alone just in my tree or outside or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, my mom did come and like, you know, on the good days that she had, you know, we baked cookies, we went shopping.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there was, there was some really good moments, but for the
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my family of who I would go visit, you know, when I was a little girl and all the way up until high school was just somebody just just my just my family, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no cameras.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was kind of like a safe haven for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where I felt like everyone was just so happy and everyone got along, no one slammed doors, no one had moments of that, that they were scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was still none of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a really, two different worlds colliding, literally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt very alone at the same time, I did feel accepted at some point, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I mean, it was just a really interesting time in my life where I just, I did not know that it wasn't normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I experienced a lot of emotional abuse, experienced a lot of just, they were just so much torment and so much like fear that I, yeah, I did not know that that was not normal to feel like safe every day.
[SPEAKER_07]: What did you feel like visiting this essentially picturesque, like massive family?
[SPEAKER_07]: That's being the good Christian family, essentially.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like when you went, did you feel like and like you were envious of that?
[SPEAKER_07]: Did it feel like it was just like a place where you could breathe?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like how did that work in terms of your perspective there?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought the Dagger family was like the epitome of perfection.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was something that I always dreamed of having.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't really invious of it, but I just remember thinking like, man, like, y'all don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I've gone through and and I couldn't really talk to him about it because they were just so sweet and so in it then and so like Just just so just so sweet literally and I did not know they couldn't connect with my world.
[SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't connect with the things that I was struggling with and the things that
[SPEAKER_00]: really broke my heart on a daily basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, I kind of, like I said, I felt like it was kind of like a safe haven.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could just be a different person over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did have a shiny happy mask on when I was with them because I didn't want them to see my pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want them to see me cry.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I didn't want to come across a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I just became, like you said,
[SPEAKER_07]: So your grandfather was very abusive to your mother and, you know, his, it was interesting reading through that and one of my friends texted me who's also came to do interviews in and was like, it's really interesting because in that scenario.
[SPEAKER_07]: your uncle, Jim Bob, was very protective.
[SPEAKER_07]: And he was the one that was like making sure that your mom was safe and like all these different things.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, but I'm curious, like, how do you think that like multi-generational kind of abuse impacted how your mom handled her specific relationship?
[SPEAKER_07]: How Jim Bob handled future situations?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you think having all of that past trauma really impacted your your your mom and and also like your uncle and the surrounding family or sure notes a great question I feel like it's a ripple effect right so if you never heal from trauma that's happened to you more than likely you'll get passed down in some kind of way some kind of direction either can there's control by naturally you know there's so many different ways on how they can like once such the perfect life
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting to me looking back at all that I've written and I see the dynamic of like why he wants something so perfect, why he wanted this like, you know, this beautiful picture, a great family and they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're they're very kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just just something happened along the way, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of took a little at little sideways turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, my mom,
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like she got the healing she needed and because of that, she protected me from everything that got was going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't say any, I don't know the answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of answers that I don't have about my family and about what's happened and about maybe where the abuse started.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have, I don't have those answers, but
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a dot dot dot right I don't I just don't I don't have that answer Um, and I can't go back in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I can say is that I will not repeat it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like once you have healing and and all of that, it's a ripple effect.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't get the healing, you don't get therapy, which they don't believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: what's to say what's going to happen, you know?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, you're just basically holding everything together by sheer willpower, which doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually it funnels out and, you know, hurt people hurt people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really sad that it's hidden, you know, in such a religion and all the things that
[SPEAKER_07]: what did you want like growing up like it when you sat there and and this could really mean like what do you want to be when you grow up but it can also mean like what what did you want life to look like you have things that were obviously very hard that you were dealing with but what did you want things to be what what did you want to develop into who did you want to become like what was in your mind to go like it's not this but maybe this like what did you look like
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, it almost brings tears to my eyes because I honestly, even I was like a little girl, I would just like, I would literally crawl out of my window because it was crazy in my house and I would just look at the stars and I was like one day, like it won't be like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just imagined myself on a trampoline with like my kids someday and just like loving life and it's peaceful.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I've ever wanted is peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's something that I have attained now in my 30s, but it took a very long time to find and a long time to absorb, and it's such a beautiful thing now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't really have a plan on like what I wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really loved meteorology at one point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really wanted to do something with like wild weather because I was attracted to crazy, you know, in all kinds of ways, I was like, ooh, a tornado.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds good, because that's what my life is, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a healing tool, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it connects your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just, it makes you so strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really had some, you know, something like that, but I really, all I ever wanted was just a family that was gonna respect and love each other day in and day out, no matter what, do the hard times through everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, it's a dream come true now that I have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it took a very long time to, to get it.
[SPEAKER_07]: How old are you when you first arrived at the house and this camera's there and you're now popping into the show as a regular I think I was like 20 or 21.
[SPEAKER_07]: Gotcha.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, so I just I'm curious about like the pre cameras and post cameras because I think this is the part reading like reading Jill's book or Ginger's book or reading your book.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's like this haze over pre-fame Jim Bob where it's like and it's a question with all the stories that I cover on my show all the time, which is like
[SPEAKER_07]: Does power corrupt or do corrupt people find power?
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, it's like the eights of the question.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, was there a clear line between like, this is how he was before cameras were rolling.
[SPEAKER_07]: And this is how he was post-fame quote unquote.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's a very complicated question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I would say,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's always loved control.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's always he's been always drawn to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a very smart business man.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of good qualities about my uncle.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was gipping.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no like line, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no like very buzz before cameras.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here he is after like that's not really yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just very like,
[SPEAKER_00]: You I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he has a lot of charisma.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a lot of charisma.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows what to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: When to say it very professional, very kind of like and just very I thought he was full of wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I really did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I I thought he
[SPEAKER_00]: was like yeah I've been a lookup cake let's be honest like very you know very good good man very good righteous godly man and I didn't necessarily want you know a complete final lookup cake in my life for marriage but at the same time there wasn't ever like a contrast like day and night it was no switch off it was just kind of gradually
[SPEAKER_00]: just evolved as as more happened, you start acting more into the world, yeah, I think there was just more to more to protect and more to hold onto.
[SPEAKER_07]: Because you mentioned the book when Jim Bobba and Michelle were first married that they had people over to burn their Disney merchandise, you know, and and meanwhile, you're living here in the separate family like dressing up as a Disney princess and
[SPEAKER_07]: But it's a contrast there, but I wasn't sure if it was like, so obviously some of that was there from the beginning, but I wasn't sure if it was something where it was like, okay, now we're getting like the brand version of this, which feels very unfamiliar, but doesn't sound like that was the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just kind of... It really wasn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing, all of the rules, all of the laws, the IBLP books, all of that was everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so it never really like started, maybe it did when I was a little girl I just didn't know, you know, but um, but I had to be very young because I mean, I was around them all the time, but the Everything just started happening when they started going to these meetings and it became more and more apparent and more more strict and more and more more more more more more right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is kind of took took over.
[SPEAKER_07]: Did your mom ever like like so you guys are getting together?
[SPEAKER_07]: Did your mom ever leave with you in the back See the passenger seeing go like and we really should be more like this or was there ever that feeling?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, never it was very much like well, that's just who they are okay and we love them, but you know
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to follow that it was very but but she liked the idea of me getting that Christian You know kind of schedule the kind of feeling of just like I feel he had everything together It looked so polished it looked so
[SPEAKER_00]: So healthy for a child and for a family, and so her life was a mix of emotions and heartache and all kinds of stuff and so of course I think she wanted that for my life as far as like to find a good man have kids you know that the whole streamline of the fruit the fruit of the system look the fruit of the yes the fruit of the system
[SPEAKER_07]: As things are starting to pick up, the other thing I want to ask just before and after, and I won't keep just drawing us between pre and post, but there's so many things that I've just from the outside have instigged about, but I'm curious if it's accurate, like, one of the pieces for me and Jill talks about this in her book as well, like going to a shopping spree for the first time with TLC network money, one of my biggest beefs with like,
[SPEAKER_07]: the dugger brand and I would say even like the bringing up baits brand and like all these mega families that TLC propagated for a long time is it encouraged families who did not have TLC budgets to have more kids than they could afford to and I knew so many kids.
[SPEAKER_07]: where the parents had the quiver full mentality, and they could barely foreclose or food or schooling or anything.
[SPEAKER_07]: So did you see a very distinct difference in like the lifestyle of like
[SPEAKER_07]: like very difficult struggle trying to make things work to like okay now we've got what you see on TV which is like we budget really well and we do investments and we could afford to take care of this which never felt like the whole story um what was the contrast there between pre and post
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so before the show started, yeah, they ate raw manoodles a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of Uncle Trimov made like his barbecue, which was barbecue in tuna.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd mix it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was, that's what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they were frugal.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were very frugal.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've always thrifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've always, you know, have done that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that has never really changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've always been frugal, but it was like the past like the past before cameras and all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, if they'd play outside, they would, they would, it was very much stay homes, stay homes, stay home, and they had a lot of kids even back then, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't, I honestly don't know how they did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had, he was very smart and real estate, all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they were frugal with their money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, given now with the show, they were traveling, uh, there was,
[SPEAKER_00]: computers lined the countertops.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was cars outside of look at a car lot, literally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, you know, he was very strategic on buying a lot of properties, a lot of stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, there are definitely a stark difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: Night and day when it came to money and what they were available to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the things and the experiences that the kids got to have.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is really sad that so many in the peripheral moment in the peripheral movement, I should say, fell for that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Be fruitful and multiply and multiply and multiply and multiply.
[SPEAKER_00]: Multiply even if you can't afford it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like hold on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I have a very problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a very big problem with that as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: The God will provide, but also you're neglecting the fact that like,
[SPEAKER_07]: God's not going to provide everyone with a reality show and bestselling books and conference appearances.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That and also just the fact of like your quality time with each child.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I can't imagine trying to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know they spend a lot of time one-on-one with their parents on their birthdays.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and that was kind of like a very special day and moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should be a very special day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have one child.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I live it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: We, I mean, not spoiled rotten.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the very blessed and I, I just can't imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine being as a mom like, you know, you got 19.
[SPEAKER_00]: kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got to spend every time with, you know, all the time with them and instruct for them and mold them and teach them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my aunt was very sweet, you know, I never heard her yell once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I love that love the fact that my book is not about just them.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: I, like I said, I definitely appreciated that as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: And one of the pieces that, you know, like I said, I told you before you record, but like I was not, I was not a huge avid viewer.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like I would watch here and there, usually if I was with my, you know, then girlfriend like watching it, which is like,
[SPEAKER_07]: That's amazing or they're doing the wedding episode or whatever, whatever those topics were.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so I'm so foreign to like, some of the things people have said like online, like you had a section on Famie Dugger.
[SPEAKER_07]: I never heard that book.
[SPEAKER_07]: I booked the interview and then I was like, Famie Dugger, like, what is this?
[SPEAKER_07]: I started going down the rabbit trail.
[SPEAKER_07]: So one of the things you do mention the book is like, you never really want to be on camera in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, and then later on, that you never really considered yourself famous, but that you had a famous family.
[SPEAKER_07]: So like, take me back to your mentality because like, my personality would have been at that age.
[SPEAKER_07]: I've been like, I want TV.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is amazing.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, why did you have a reticence of like putting yourself into the spotlight like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I knew that there was a lot of eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of critics, not everybody is going to like everything they see on TV and especially a family that has just so many rules and so many restrictions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew that when they called me crazy cousin Amy, it was it was going to stick.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it was going to be something that like I wasn't necessarily happy about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, someone I'm probably on Reddit literally came up with Famie and it's I mean, I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get why they think that I get, you know, how I was portrayed, um, because it was like, I wasn't trying to steal the camera, but they would be like, hey, hey, and you do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hurry, hurry, hurry, do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do this, do this, and they kind of directed and kind of, in situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just didn't think about like how I was being portrayed at all.
[SPEAKER_07]: I, this is my take on the progression a lot of these shows, like we're watching right now.
[SPEAKER_07]: Welcome to Plathville and I've seen this progression happening again where the shows tend to start in this vein as like almost like a freak show where it's like two and in to see this bizarre thing like they have 19 kids or 17 kids at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: They know how to hook ya with that right like whoa.
[SPEAKER_07]: They were these long dresses, they all dressed the same like, and people tune in to go like, this is weird.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then you start developing that kind of parasocial relationship where it's like,
[SPEAKER_07]: we like the values and it seems like they're really great in it and what's fascinating to me is that even though the majority of culture would not agree with the lifestyle of the dugers and they or or the plaster whoever it is like they because they love them on the show they start villainizing the people who don't follow those standards on the show whether that's an Olivia Plath whether that's a popping in as the
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, it is crazy to think that way, but it is so true because you fall in love with characters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you, you're the, you know, you figure out the family and you're like, oh, what a sweet family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though they don't align with what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a sweet family.
[SPEAKER_00]: On this show, I like this character.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you pick out your favorite characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: So from mine, you either loved me or you hated me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and there was a, there's a lot of both.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, you mentioned the book and I literally thought checked it because I was like, well, everybody would say a rating spike after I jumped on, you know, so I was like, checking.
[SPEAKER_07]: I was like, it really did.
[SPEAKER_07]: It was like, do you drew in viewership?
[SPEAKER_07]: Would you say the majority of that was people that were like?
[SPEAKER_07]: get a load of this person, we don't like her.
[SPEAKER_07]: Let's see how the duckers deal with this.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, are do you think those people who were like, it's refreshing to see some semblance of normalcy in contrast, like, what do you think the reason was that people came into to watch?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I think I was the relatable character.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm the one pulling my iPad out or my iPod back in the day that I've had during like doing like road trips and I was like can't handle this, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was the one that was just gonna be me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like in a way I was painted as the like the black sheet, but I mean, we live on man, we do and just the fact that like I was considered that actually is really comical because at the same time that I was considered this really like crazy girl I went to church I wasn't I didn't go party I don't have a rest record I don't have no police record I've never done anything like that
[SPEAKER_00]: but it just shows you the power of cameras and the power of what they can just like mold together to make it look a certain way.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, and just the power of contrast, you know, like I used to think my, my, again, my wife now, but I used to think she was like way more liberal than me, but it's like I went to a fundamentalist Baptist church.
[SPEAKER_07]: She went to Southern Baptist church, you know, she listed a casting crowns that I didn't listen to Christmas rock, you know, it's like, by contrast, very different, but very, very different, not that intense of change.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean the kids loved me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I loved them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We hugged.
[SPEAKER_00]: We it was very like surface level right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We like I was around them all the time all the time even with cameras not there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was I was always at their house and so I mean they were just a really really big part of my life.
[SPEAKER_07]: How much do you think the fame impacted them?
[SPEAKER_07]: Because like, I'm trying to think about this in terms of like, you're in your early 20s, you're participating.
[SPEAKER_07]: You have some semblance of idea, at least more than like a 10 year old wood that like, I'm on television and there are people watching this and you can go on social media in its early stages and see what people are saying.
[SPEAKER_07]: did you have any similar idea of like how that attention or concern even as a cousin being like this is a lot of attention for this really little kid who's growing up on the national stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly really didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that time it was like it just it came across as like just our family hanging out and cameras were just there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it really was very like um
[SPEAKER_00]: just real.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really was.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would do funny things and they would catch us making baby booties and laughing and me and Anna with laugh and you know it was just very like it was very real and very positive.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I honestly did not realize how many millions of viewers the family had.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't watch it on TV because I was on it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, unless my family came over, my family would come over to my house to watch the show with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: at times.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they had a very ministry mindset.
[SPEAKER_00]: So from the very beginning, my uncle Jim I've told them, like, hey, this is a ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're doing this to help people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're doing this to show the lever Jesus to all these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is what we're going to do as a family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody was very much on board.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody, you know, did their part.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody had a part to play.
[SPEAKER_07]: So it was almost more later on when you see how things are edited that you can go like, oh, like there's some things to think about in terms of like what's happening here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, reality TV isn't real.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so people, yeah, I know shocker everyone shocker for reality TV is not real.
[SPEAKER_00]: of, but it's so true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they can, you know, splice and put together and put different sentences together and edit however they would like to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just, I couldn't fight it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just couldn't fight it back in the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was too much going on in my own world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, where I, I was just like whatever at this point.
[SPEAKER_07]: Was there ever, can you remember like a first time where you felt like something was portrayed
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, that's not what happened or where people like were upset about something where you're like, oh, that is a weird perception to have based on how this five minutes was edited.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like do you remember having a moment like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there was just several things like, let's say a baby is crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to go get the baby and hold the baby and they would edit to where like,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's weird, you know, so they made it look like I didn't want to be a mother really not really more of like I'm a spunky little cousin that is off the wall and I have no direction in life and I don't know like whatever like they may be very like bubbly which I am bubbly, but they make me very like just very carefree and like I don't know where my soul is and like you know that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_07]: When you're doing this, like you've obviously got camera scrolling, so like, it affects, no matter how natural we are, like the on camera effects, how we interact.
[SPEAKER_07]: Do you think that, did it help your relationship with your family where it's like, okay, we've got this thing we're doing together and it feels like it's tightening a bond between us or did it feel like this thing where it's like, I really wanna talk to my cousin about this, but it might end up on TV, you know, like how much did it
[SPEAKER_00]: First off, you have the best questions.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You really do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no, it felt like a bonding experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, you have to remember I came from a very broken home, a lot of yelling, a lot of turmoil, a lot of like just a lot of shaking is going on inside myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the fact that like I could come over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: film, put on a microphone, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like put on a different mask and I became what what they needed need to be right the funny one the one that doesn't have any problems the one that is just going to just love my family no matter what and so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, there were times where I feel like all the girls wanted to talk at certain things that we couldn't, you know, we had to walk with door 50 times like there was the same door, you know, over and over and over, um, there was there was a lot of editing, but there was also like a lot of good moments and that's what I like take from it is just there was a lot of good, happy, funny moments that I'll always remember, but it was just a chapter in my life because it sounds like it was almost a delight to get to be that
[SPEAKER_07]: problem free, worry free person for a while because at home, you know, you detail on your book, there's a lot of worry and a lot of fears and a lot of things happening from everybody from your dad to like the circumstance of living with grandparents and this stuff being accumulated in your home and it being a very frustrating kind of life in many ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: was there also ever fear that as you got more into the show like what if they brought the camera crew to my house or like what if they were to they did they did they did they did they did did bring the cameras to my house and I was scared out of my mind for that moment because I will just say I I have experienced a lot of abuse growing up and so
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the people that are very narcissistic in our in our world in life in general They know how to turn it on and when to turn it off They know when like how to look really charming and really like welcoming and very kind and and that's and that's what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank goodness
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because, you know, a narcissist doesn't want to show their ugly side.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to show.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do that when no one is around so that you have no, no one to help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one to verify what you, what has happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, and so yeah, he was very much on his best behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was scared out of my mind because I just never know what's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, imagine literally waking up every day and hearing glass break and shattering and just
[SPEAKER_00]: always for I mean for years feeling that way for decades feeling that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was it was really really a crazy time.
[SPEAKER_07]: So the relationship with your dad during that period did he hold resentment towards you for the like because I I've noticed a lot of times in relationships like this there's this like kind of caged I want to keep you in my orbit.
[SPEAKER_07]: recognizability, fame, whatever word you want to put there.
[SPEAKER_07]: Did he resent that?
[SPEAKER_07]: Was he did he want to leverage that?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, what was his relationship to you in light of this thing that nobody could have predicted?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were times where I would get love bombs, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of poems.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm so proud of you and I love you and I'm just, you know, you're everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've ever won it as a daughter and then I'd have other moments where it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was very like date and night, uh, kind of behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and it was hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really, really hard because I felt like a nobody, but I also felt like people knew me, but I was just completely misunderstood in every direction of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't like take it back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't make it happen again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so honestly, in my first chapter of my book, I apologize.
[SPEAKER_00]: I
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a, I have an apology that I've written and it's just like here I am like I never thought I was perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never, I never claimed to be, but I was also judged like I like I was or that I wanted to pretend to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now I'm just coming out as just like this is me and it's okay if you like me and it's okay if you don't and I'm, I'm a lot better and I'm healed and it's just, yeah,
[SPEAKER_07]: it's got to be a weird feeling like to be kind of famed.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, and it's also, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's like, great defense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not, I'm not saying it's not famous.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's, it's a weird thing to be like, quasi-famous, where it's like, I'm, I'm on a knit, because like,
[SPEAKER_07]: It's a huge show or was a huge show, but also it's a huge reality.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like it's not like you were on the bachelor as like the final, you know, it's a weird thing like to be to be like this niche liberty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm first off that's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a celebrity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am like, I'm like the cousin that people kind of know.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's not, I don't have the, the status.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I don't, it doesn't go to my brain.
[SPEAKER_07]: You're not getting first seeded the restaurant.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like we saw you in this episode, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just like, hey, there's that family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, the dugers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh, remember the cousin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, it's like one of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like, oh yeah, yeah, she was a part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, whatever that is, whatever, but I don't really care about being famous clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have that in my book, I have a whole story of why I don't care about being famous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really glad I didn't take that turn.
[SPEAKER_07]: I know you mentioned a book like there was a, it was like, you do have to keep the ego in check.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that's where I was kind of leading is like, it's a weird thing at any level.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like once you have people outside your immediate sphere of people that you know, once you're getting the DMs from people who live in a different state who you've never met who are like, I have an opinion about you because I saw you online.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like whatever level that is,
[SPEAKER_07]: it's a weird thing because it's easy to absorb what people are saying about you and make that your identity and it's very easy to go like, I have to imagine there were times it was like, am I crazy, doesn't Amy?
[SPEAKER_07]: Am I a rudderless?
[SPEAKER_07]: Am I just this?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, how hard was it to one keep the keep the ego in check to go like, look.
[SPEAKER_07]: Let's be real about who I am in my life, but also to keep your identity in check, to go like, okay, what do I want?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, not what am I seeing on TV or not what a people perceive of me or not, what is my narcissistic abusive dad saying I am?
[SPEAKER_07]: How did you keep that in check?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, what was the source of like, this is Amy?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, how do you how do you stay in touch with that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a really good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think for me, so it didn't it didn't always go check.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had people that were like, hey, here's handbags.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's that and I just got flooded with all kinds of front row tickets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, when the show was really, really going well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It did.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was like a level, like a tiny level of celebrityism.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to call it that, and it was just like, oh my gosh, like everybody wants everything from me and they want to pay any $5,000 to post sunglasses.
[SPEAKER_00]: What the heck is going on, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it all came.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so there was like, oh, like, that's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I can just get that for free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, that kind of attitude at first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I really had a good group of friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really did that were like, no, like, you got to calm it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to, and I was like, oh, and like, I realized also when I was in Nashville and I had that whole like Nashville special and all of that, these people, these musicians that have worked so hard to get where they are at.
[SPEAKER_00]: are struggling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they'd gone through, you know, open mic, open mic, singing at restaurants, singing on corners, all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here I am being pranced into, you know, a big tower full of execs and like, I, but I didn't earn that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't earn it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was something that was handed directly to me just because of of just the notoriety that I did absorb and have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was like, whoa, like there was just so many offers and so many requests of people that I, I did not know how to handle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the, I mean, it was all nude.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all nude to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: All nude to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have a manager.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have anyone in my team that could like, PR team, I had no PR.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had no idea how to talk to media.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea like what to say and what not to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, it just, it was just a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot all at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you take that all in?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you learn from it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it sounds like, you know, your story going in Nashville, it's like the people who are your representatives or people who stand a benefit from you making the choice that, you know, that they would you to make.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so you don't have, like, it didn't sound like you have a lot of people who, like, were what's your best interest in mind?
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, your mom really seemed to be that.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom, grandma, for sure, were my, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, my heroes, my saigers, if you want to call it that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, like they were everything to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's a lot of my mom and I are still very very close because of everything that we've been through
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, I want to get into that and and and this is I think obviously some of the heaviest sections of your book, but I think first and foremost, I mentioned the financial aspects of all of this and just to reiterate, you were on 80 of 100 in nine episodes of the series.
[SPEAKER_07]: I went and double checked in Jill's book from the 300 shows that they did.
[SPEAKER_07]: She estimates that
[SPEAKER_07]: her dad's company, Jim Bob's company, brought in over $8 million.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that's just from TLC.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's not books.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's not conferences.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's not all the different things that come into that.
[SPEAKER_07]: And you were offered $30,000 for all of your time on the show.
[SPEAKER_07]: Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he offered me 10 at first.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I leveraged it a little bit, a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got enough a little bit.
[SPEAKER_07]: Good negotiation, Ted, that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I was so emotionally exhausted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not like I just wanted it to be over.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean kind of thing, but I did not realize why he was offering me that.
[SPEAKER_07]: This piece in particular is like, and you mentioned this at the beginning, you said he was always very generous, always very giving.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's not the picture that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, you know, and again, I'm from, I'm an outsider reading accounts from this, but it seems like money was like a massive.
[SPEAKER_07]: thing that motivated him in what he did.
[SPEAKER_07]: Again, I, Jill spends a large, a jaw drop moment was reading all the contracts and things that she talks about, that he had a her signing and all the money that was just scooped into his pockets while the kids got very little and then in your book, it was the same thing.
[SPEAKER_07]: I was like, man, there's a real theme here.
[SPEAKER_07]: When did the grades first start becoming noticeable?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, was it just around this time or what, like, when did you first pick that up?
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I think it was when I just signed the show and it when I signed the contract to begin with.
[SPEAKER_07]: To start doing the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: To start doing the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when it, that's when it really was like, what did I just do?
[SPEAKER_07]: Hmm, and what, what prompted that feeling?
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, just the fact that I signed a contract that said, I will not, like, like, I didn't read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You, I mean, clearly, I didn't read it when I was, I couldn't, I didn't understand it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all in law, your, you know, talk and all the big words.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I asked my uncle to read it and to look over it and advise.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted him to be my advisor because I looked up to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was someone that had all the answers and he was full of wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was just someone that I could trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he was like, oh, yeah, I mean, I read all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should sign it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, yeah, like any time, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had no idea that I signed a contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: That said, you will have no compensation whatsoever for your time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will have to perform, but you'll have to be there, you know, at any back and call that we have through every life big stage any kind of big moment in the burning funerals, baby, giving, you know, birth, it has to be on camera, marriage, all these things and I was like, oh my gosh, I, oh my gosh, I, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh
[SPEAKER_00]: was beyond shocked that I was prompt and told to sign it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't think in that moment that he had my best interest at heart and it just continued to grow over time.
[SPEAKER_07]: The wildest version of this is when you're a grandmother passes and that was my my biggest job job moment in the book was probably that which was your mom was the caretaker for her for like three years living in her home taking care of her and she passes and she gets four
[SPEAKER_07]: your mom obviously grew up with him.
[SPEAKER_07]: She knows him closely.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_07]: Was that a moment for her where it's just sheer shock that he would do something like this?
[SPEAKER_07]: Was it something where she was like, I knew he was kind of greedy, but this is another level.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like what was her reaction to a moment like that that really kind of pushes over the top?
[SPEAKER_00]: So my mom found my grandma lifeless in her pool and four days after asked my mom to move out and that he needed the property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, she was absolutely devastated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Devastated.
[SPEAKER_00]: She couldn't think correctly.
[SPEAKER_00]: She just went through all that trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: my mom and my grandma were like so close, so closely bonded and it's because she didn't have a good relationship with grandpa and so you know it's just a generational thing right like they were close and now my mom and I are super close like it's just one of those things and so my mom was absolutely dumbfounded and devastated and called me bawling her eyes out and it's
[SPEAKER_00]: no one else knows the ins and outs of why I don't why we don't are not in contact.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the reason why because you don't treat your sister that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's there's a lot to it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah I mean that's that that's piece for me is like just the financial side because like
[SPEAKER_07]: But setting aside all strange beliefs and lifestyle and all of that, this show could have been such an opportunity for everybody to be risen, you know, like it could have easily been like, hey, if we all took a little bit of this, you know, it.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's enough money to go around and have like a really fun time and film our lives.
[SPEAKER_07]: And if you're going to be in the family influencer space, this is like a best case version of that in many ways.
[SPEAKER_07]: But it kind of just turned into the Jim Bob Empire throughout the course of of these shows.
[SPEAKER_07]: And yeah, it's that's a piece of for me that I just I keep circling as like how much was a shock,
[SPEAKER_07]: with your mom specifically, it's like, I can't imagine growing up or someone and having some trust there, the same way you go in like here, Uncle Jim Bob, like read this contract, like it's got to be fine, and then realize, and like, oh, there was all this long game being played in the background that was a really long position, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a huge long game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was things that we never paid attention to because we didn't know we had to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just someone that thought we could trust
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, we default to that with everybody, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like for better for worse, we default to everybody would do the things that I would do and they wouldn't cross those like I wouldn't cross.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like my heart isn't a good place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your heart's in a good place and it's like, Oh, my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like night, it's just like, it's a wake up call to be like, Hey, that is not the case and you can't just trust blindly.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, speed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Adam and it's a family member.
[SPEAKER_07]: right for sure.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, speaking of the long game, one of the other pieces that came up in your book was the use of NDAs, like a very liberal use of NDAs in relationship to the family.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it almost
[SPEAKER_07]: You can almost get into like a tinfoil hat realm where you go like how much did he know was going on with say a Josh that preemptively led to him making you sign these like just walk me through the first time an NDA was ever set in front of you and what you thought it was and now looking back in retrospect like Why were NDA such a prevalent like tool in Jim Bob's arsenal
[SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, and I know there's a lot of layers to this too.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of layers to what you're asking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so the NDA was placed in front of me, and yes, I had a lot of interviews that I would do from a lot of people, and I enjoyed doing those, but I was honest with people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that he is his my own opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe that he likes people being that honest.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so, just to back up what time frame was that first NDA?
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, that was when I was in my like late monies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I don't know probably I want late probably 25 26 something like that so I don't know yeah, I don't even know you don't have Yeah, it's too early.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, but yeah, definitely in my 20 25 26 something like that
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was told that I had to sign this because if I was not going to be a part of the show or any more well first in first off it was the fact that it's sorry there's like there was several indias so the first one was the fact that he didn't want me speaking of my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And any kind of public thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he didn't want me to say names.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't want me to talk about anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, uh, uh, like, I love you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being like, but I love you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why, why, why, why, why, and he'd be like, this is just what's beneficial for all of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that needs to take place because, like, I, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would be like, okay, and I didn't really understand, and now looking back, I realize why a hundred percent, and it's because I do believe that he knew that there were some dark shadows lingering in the closet and there were things being unchecked.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you know, I went to my uncle, and I told him what I saw, and all the things about Johnson, I was completely just like, just dismissed, hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, let's talk about what you saw because for some of us seeing who goes, I don't know what that is.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: So your dad had bought a computer from Josh.
[SPEAKER_07]: So this was, and Josh was always, this is well known at this point, but it always into tech and always buying new computers and always building computers and always teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he was always teaching me something about computers, always and I was like, I don't know what the heck you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he was a brainy act when it came to technology.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[SPEAKER_07]: So you're dead by this computer, you're just trying to figure it out and you stumble across a folder.
[SPEAKER_07]: Talk to me about that experience and basically how it played out in terms of like trying to get someone to like take a second glance at this and see if there's something off here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, they're, you know, the most perfect sweet little family.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I never thought anything could ever really be off or anything could be wrong in our family at all or anything dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I mean, they don't even say gosh, you know, so like the fact of like porn is completely just off limits, not even considered, that's a total sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, yeah, I went on my dad's computer and I just started to like learn it because it was a Mac and it was really big and cool and I was like, oh my gosh, and so I was going through with the files and stuff and I found a file called Josh's file.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was named Josh's file and I clicked on it and when I did, I was met with
[SPEAKER_00]: the most disgusting images I've ever seen in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was honestly the first time that I'd ever seen porn.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not something that I view, that is not something that I allow in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was like grossed out completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I was like, what do I do with this information, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because
[SPEAKER_00]: he lived the most innocent life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was like, okay, and the fact that I could see, I didn't see a ton.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grabbed a block, construction paper, and put it in front of the computer and started just getting rid of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: As fast as I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I didn't want my dad to see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want my mom to see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want anyone to see it, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I realized, wait a second, this is proof, this is evidence that what I've seen,
[SPEAKER_00]: is a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably a problem at this point, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I call my uncle, and I just said, hey, I got my mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I showed my mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like, we've got a couple of older mothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to call them now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, so I talked to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just said, I have found some things on this computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I need you to take this very seriously, and he was like, oh, Amy, you know, Josh got that from a pawn shop, there's no telling what's on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no telling it's fine, it's not whatever blew it off completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, if that's the case, then why does it, why is it named Josh's files?
[SPEAKER_00]: and he stumbled through words just a, a, a, a, a, trying to, you know, trying to come up with something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he was like, you're just wrong and just hung up.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's interesting to use the word, the word's proof.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, because I think it implies, at least when I was reading the book, it, I inferred that there was like an inkling of something being off for a long time.
[SPEAKER_07]: like, did you have an inkling about Josh specifically prior to that that you're like, okay, here's a thing, or was it just like, here's proof that it's not as perfect as it's portraying itself to be like, what is that?
[SPEAKER_07]: What does that mean to you when you say that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the reason why I chose the word proof in my book is because I've always been the crazy cousin, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The one that's just not really taken seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one that's gonna kind of blow things up and do things and stir things up just for fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
[SPEAKER_00]: proof is actual truth, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That something is definitely going on behind the scenes that no one knows about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never had any inkling that Josh had a problem, or that Josh was dealing things at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew that I probably was going to be like, just, eh, like everything's fine, Amy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, thank you, might have, you know, maybe you're dad down, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: and they could whist it anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I found, I just, I put the word proof in there because it's like, for once, I'm standing up for what is real and what needs to, you know, obviously, he needs help, he needs help.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt like I was screaming on top of a roof and no one hurt me.
[SPEAKER_07]: the other interesting thing you say in the book that I thought was kind of funny was you you're like on the one hand the the levels of the material he was viewing was concerning to you like they're like just from the glimpses of what you saw um but also you said there was part of you that was relieved because he was somewhat normal because he was actually like he didn't seem like a robot I think is the wording that he
[SPEAKER_07]: Jack's position of like a motion of like he's a human being but also why this yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, right, like I have never seen him struggle in any kind of way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could just I wish you were there Eric.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you like it was just so like everything was so polished and he helped Elderly and he loved kids and he his hair was perfect and he would laugh on cue and he was just this Such loving person He really was I mean he would laugh he would he would just so fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was so funny
[SPEAKER_00]: And so just to know that like, and plus he's never shown to be interested in women, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he was a teenager.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, he was like, I think like older teenager, you know, going into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he never showed any ounce of disrespect or disobedience ever in his life ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the fact that I had this information and these pictures to prove it, I was just like, oh, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew he was just so happy all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: People that are happy all the time and they never have a bad day, watch out for those people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like a total double standard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I've learned.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you can't trust happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You really can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody has bad days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody struggles with something, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless if it's healthy or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like for me, I love ice cream and shopping, you know, shoot me, you know?
[SPEAKER_07]: I've noticed from your story, I love shopping.
[SPEAKER_07]: I keep many restaurants over.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told my grandma before she passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'm going to thrift in honor of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, please, like, continue, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I'm all about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm all about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was proof.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was proof that I had the real Josh.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: One of the things that also comes up a lot is like when we look at these situations, we don't need to play by play obviously through his whole like everything that came out in order, but I think one of the conversations that came up and you hint at in the book is
[SPEAKER_07]: in the rigid systems of IBLP, where you are so repressed, and you aren't allowed to exposing anything that's not perfect and shiny and happy, and not to just quote the title of Amazon documentary.
[SPEAKER_07]: But when you are pushing all those things, and you can't be human, it can sometimes
[SPEAKER_07]: push you to things that normal people would just have a conversation about and it could alleviate some of these.
[SPEAKER_07]: Or when you're taught certain things about women in some of these environments, they can push you to be certain ways.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I think one of the things people again wrestle with is like, is it the system that makes someone an abuser or does the system help protect an abuser?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because like, they both, I think the answer to that is yes to both.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I think it's both, but like I always, I always kind of push back when people go like, oh, it's just the system because there would be, you know, there's 19 kids, like one out of 19 is in print, you know, and that's not to say there's never going to be anything else that comes out, but I look at it and go every single one would be a Josh, you know, and so like I guess when you're looking at that and trying to identify the origins of this,
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, how much blame do you put on the system that shape Josh versus like Josh abusing a system and learning to play within those.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, where do you draw those lines?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think Josh is very smart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that he could get away with whatever he wanted to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also blame it on the system because they don't protect children.
[SPEAKER_00]: They literally, I've seen them walk around in acres of a field and just, like, aimlessly roam.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I'm not a helicopter mom by any means.
[SPEAKER_00]: Valma to watch my child across the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I know where he's at.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what he's doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with them, they just believe that, like, oh, God's going to protect us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, I mean, God's going to protect us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like the parents are very, like, very, like...
[SPEAKER_00]: just not present all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not how you have to parent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't I don't agree with that kind of style of parenting at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And especially such a young age, you have to mold, you have to teach, you have to educate, you have to freaking educate, and they don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't talk about sex until it's time to be married and until they're like heading to their like honeymoon.
[SPEAKER_07]: which is too, to be, it's too late, it's way too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to have that way earlier, way earlier, before they even like girls, that way they know how to respect them, know how to treat them, and they know like the boundaries that they have to have, and also they have to be able to, sorry, get really heated on this part, but they have to learn how to have self-control.
[SPEAKER_00]: How are they got to learn self-control if they are never put to that test?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole thing is so corrupt and so messed up.
[SPEAKER_07]: How much of it on the part of the pants?
[SPEAKER_07]: Cause like, how much, like when you look at Jim Bubba Michelle, for example, like, do you think the majority of what happened with him came from a place of blissful ignorance, where it's, you know, we're just not gonna acknowledge that this could even be happening?
[SPEAKER_07]: Or do you think it was orchestrated cover upwards?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, we know this is happening and this hurts the quote unquote brand.
[SPEAKER_07]: I have to think in the early stages of some of these things, it's blissful regrets.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, like the idea that you have a teenage boy and he has an encountered porn is blissful regrets.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's statistically just not the case.
[SPEAKER_07]: You can choose whether or not to have conversations about that, but that's that's a reality.
[SPEAKER_07]: When it comes to there's been actual physical abuse,
[SPEAKER_07]: Then we can't be ignorant, like there's some cover up there, like how much of that do you think they just defer to is like not their responsibility not our job to think about it versus like we're going to actively make sure like we're doing PR the opposite direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, there's my own opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that my uncle Janabab knew things were going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that he also knew that a television program would make the money that he probably always dreamed of having.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that because of that reason, he kind of stuffed it in a closet and just said, I'll, you know, with it later.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll try to get the rest in hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or we're like, I'll handle it in house with the IBLP members and, and you know, we'll handle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to handle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I think it was just a mixture of all the things combined that just blew up, it just blew up.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: So obviously there was many layers of things that happened and each one seemed to make the last one seem like nothing compared to the next thing.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like it was just a scandal for a couple years.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I don't want to dive too deep into, you know, that initial in-touch story that dropped that revealed abuse by Josh to his sisters and to another victim outside the family, but I do want to talk about your specific role in it in confronting Josh, because it's one thing, it's one thing in,
[SPEAKER_07]: the book that I think stands out and so story that I think you've shared before confronting him and talking to him.
[SPEAKER_07]: What was your feeling in that moment?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like were you going in going like like just heartbroken because you're not the person I thought you were was it just rage like what was your emotion going in to that conversation?
[SPEAKER_00]: I just felt extremely betrayed, and at the same time, I felt like he was a stranger, and I didn't know him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a really weird feeling because I grew up with him, and we were like so close, so close, and we would text each other, even when he was married, we would syntax messages and memes and all kinds of stuff together, and even two weeks before he was arrested for
[SPEAKER_00]: he was texting me two weeks before he was arrested.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I just, I act, I just didn't know him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like this, this weird feeling of like, I'm walking in here, I'm going to get into their answers, who the, who the blank have I been spending time with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was very much like, and also very protective of the sisters, very protective.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt like someone has to protect them, and by all means it's going to be me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, it was kind of like a mama bear, but I just wanted to hug them and hold them, because they were so innocent and they're so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those girls are gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just, and they have such kind hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just,
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was seeing red.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, that day, that could have been a movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, this, oh, that was, that was a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot, but I, yeah, I just faced him like a stranger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a, like a, like an abuser.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just like, oh, really?
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to go there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I, I was not back and down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not back and down.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, in that conversation, when you confronted him,
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, his response was very much just passive, like it was very much just almost indifferent to the fact that this is happening, at least from the way you describe it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Anna was also there supporting him during that time.
[SPEAKER_07]: What was her reaction?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, did you even clock a reaction from her or was it just purely focused on Josh?
[SPEAKER_07]: Cause like, I think that's the other piece that everyone just goes like, what's going on with this?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, how do you stay with someone
[SPEAKER_07]: who's doing these things like what was her take on or or posture during that conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is my opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to put that out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your opinion, allegedly, legal reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have learned that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so she was very much loving, holding hands, looking at Josh, smiling, trying to offer, you know, hold his, like, like, touches a little shoulder, just very much like, I'm here for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and like we're gonna get through this together.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't say that out loud, but that was her mannerisms and the way that she just embraced him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That I was just like, oh, like, like, no, like, I'm not having that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's get to the real point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always been a truth, like, seeker.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just know there was, I knew there was more to that story, clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if no one was gonna give me answers, I was darn well gonna go and find myself.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is one of the criticisms that I think I just don't understand is because like there's some things like I just don't know like anywhere even having conversation now and it's like who knows like I don't know you you don't know me like so when you read certain things about like.
[SPEAKER_07]: people's intent, it's like, well, who knows?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, that's just conjecture.
[SPEAKER_07]: The one that doesn't make sense to me is I know that there were some that were like, when they hear that story of you confronting Josh, the reaction was like, this isn't about you, you know?
[SPEAKER_07]: And I thought that was a weird read on it because I relate to confronting somebody about something that didn't happen to me.
[SPEAKER_07]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: you know, happen in an orbit I knew.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so that feeling of going to like, why did I wish you were to try something with me?
[SPEAKER_07]: I would have stopped you.
[SPEAKER_07]: I would have done this.
[SPEAKER_07]: And all those things like that feels very relatable and true to something that would happen.
[SPEAKER_07]: The piece I want to ask on that, though, is
[SPEAKER_07]: When it comes to being feeling protective of these girls, their stories, when it came time to share these stories, or when it came time to explain that scenario or to write in a book, like, how did you
[SPEAKER_07]: do that tight road between like honoring their story and also like this is your cousin you know like how do you how do you know that without also re-traumatizing them re-airing their story in a way that like you know could potentially cause damage to them like how did you make those decisions
[SPEAKER_00]: I think throughout the book, I knew that I didn't really want to say names.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, there's a lot of things that's happened finding one of my cousins in the closet crying, you know, that I didn't want to say names because that's not what it's about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the fact that it all leads to what happens at the end, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, I wanted to protect them more than ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to protect my cousins are still, even though I don't see them, even though I don't talk to a lot of them, many, many, many of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I Jill and I are the closest.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I imagine you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then yeah, then it's just it's something that's ingrained in me, you know, I was the oldest cousin out of everyone and I still love them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I might not be in their lives as a right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do still love them and I will always protect them and I just I wanted to share the truth, but I also wanted to protect their identity and I wanted to protect their trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I try to do it in a way that would honor them, but also share the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the truth, honestly, even though it's cliche, it sets you free.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, all these things about me, like, oh, it's not about, it's not about youth confronting Josh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Geez, Amy, you're just like, you know, trying to get as much camera time as you can, or the media will just soak this up, or, you know, riding the couple tells of the younger family, I have heard it all, I have heard it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you really think about it,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not, I'm not leading up to my own horn, nothing like that, but, but who, who did have the bravery to do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who was going to do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, God made me that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like Martha from the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to stand up for what is right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to be smart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sad about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to back down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to be scared of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the darkness that has to be advocated.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to talk about things you have to confront evil because it lets people know that it doesn't have to be this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't just continue to let them lurk in the darkness and to do things and hurt people and hurt children and all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it can't, it's got to stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so by talking about it, I think it just becomes even more real and it becomes more parent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me in that moment, I didn't think about like, oh, this is gonna look really good for the media.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's gonna be a fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's gonna be a fun little look.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I just got in my car and I was like, that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am done with this crap.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am done with the family that doesn't speak first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm done with those that I don't like liars, you know, I can't handle anyone that's not going to be honest and in my book, all I am is honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that it's and it's everything everyone doesn't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many things in my book that people do not know until they read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just I like I said, I just hope it helps one person.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my that's my prayer.
[SPEAKER_07]: Literally.
[SPEAKER_07]: Obviously, this causes a rift for understatement of the whole conversation.
[SPEAKER_07]: This causes a rift between you and the family and particularly Jim Bob, which is interesting because you mentioned like he was one of those people in your life as an authority figure that always pushed for the truth to be told.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like he was always like war that as a badge of honor of like being truthful.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, but yet many conversations and many NDAs would follow that would lead to, you know, essentially this what you talked about, the story that broke National National headlines, which was him being busted with child sexual abuse material.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, children as young as 18 months old, like this is a,
[SPEAKER_07]: a horrific story that a lot of people became very invested even people who I think up to that point had never paid attention were paying attention now like because this is a horrific crime not just by contrast to what they presented but just in general um it's the lowest of the low yeah uh
[SPEAKER_07]: Talk to me about when that news broke because this is a period where like you've already have a separation, but this is something we're like obviously everybody connected to it is going to be getting a phone call from each other.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like so talking about just that time period and what that looked like for you, for your mom, kind of being brought back into that orbit because of this story, like what did that look like and what was going on during that time?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I definitely had already distance myself cool wide a bit, I hadn't seen them in years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I joy in and I were neighbors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pre-re-nevers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would see her from time to time and wave, we didn't really speak personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't go into anything, but during that time, my family would go over to her house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would see them, you know, like a hundred feet away and be like, oh my gosh, like this is just crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when all of that was happening, you know, I said to her, I said, is, I mean, I'm hearing rumors.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like everybody is, what's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, oh, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just like walked inside.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is, and then I would say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Joyana.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, Joyana, gotcha.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she was my, she was my neighbor for like five years and it was just like okay and it was just like I don't know and it like very much like I'm not going to tell you anything you know like very I mean very much do you think she truly didn't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I know I truly believe that my uncle was very good about having meetings with the family and the people that he wants to know things and he he teaches this he teaches like you know not everybody is for us not everybody is is going to understand and we just got to be together as a family and so at that point I don't think I was considered a family member so in your in your opinion on that like
[SPEAKER_07]: In those family meetings, you think there was transparency about what the situation was.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like it was almost like, here's what's going on and here's what needs to be said to anybody outside this room.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's your kind of... Correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
[UNKNOWN]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were times that he would have meetings with me and me and there sometimes when we were filming.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he'd be like, now this doesn't leave this room.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would have meetings like that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Gotcha.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_07]: So so the response you were getting was just we don't know what's going on.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then no one would talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one would speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one would say anything.
[SPEAKER_07]: Gotcha.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then not long after this is when Homeland Security came to your house to meet you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, literally I was in the shower.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom came knocking on the door frantically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Amy get out right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amy get out right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, what the heck is going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember going in like mixed match pajamas and like my hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like soaking wet and it was in a towel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I remember literally it was it was crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like another little mini movie moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: but like my hair was dripping from my hair down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as they were talking, it was like going down my back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like, oh my gosh, like this is this is a moment that is like frozen in time in my in my brain because of all the things that
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know it was going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone told me there was nothing to it, nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing to it, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the fact that how my security is now in my living room, and I have no answers for these gentlemen and these officers, and I don't know what to say, and I was completely broken-hearted, broken-hearted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never felt, I don't, I, I, I was completely speechless clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even talk about it now because that's how deeply impacted impacted me so deeply.
[SPEAKER_07]: Did you have any doubt in your mind at that stage that he had done what they were asking about?
[SPEAKER_07]: Or was there some piece of you that was going, that can't be right?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like even with everything I know so far, this is just like you said, the lowest of the low, like, what was mentally happening for you during that conversation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I asked the Homeland Security, I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard it, I literally told them, I said, I heard it wasn't really anything to severe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they said, ma'am, we can't go into details, but I will tell you, it is more severe than I can let on right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, like a knife to the heart, like a knife to the heart, Eric.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember just when they asked me if I have seen anything that involved children,
[SPEAKER_00]: it just dropped and I did not understand the weight of what they were sent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just it was it was so it was so much, it was so much and that was not okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I fell apart after they left, cried and cried and cried and cried and said to my mom,
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, you mentioned, I think it was 10 lies that Jim Bob had shared in relation to the story with you, I think I bookmarked it, but do you remember some of those, the way you brush off and explain this story?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I, I remember them clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I don't know them like, you know, all skin, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me check.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'll tell you if you're not just kidding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, another one is that, um, Josh just had a friend that worked for Homeland Security and there was coming to visit, uh, oh gosh, there's so many.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was so many.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, one that the media doesn't like Christian families.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they just wanted to portray us in a bad light.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, okay, there's a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there's more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh Trump that Trump was president and that's why he was what is it that he was that Biden Biden was president yes Biden was president is Biden was president and that's why he was getting you know I don't look that or whatever being investigated
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the X-Con, my mom is up there, and she goes, oh, God, I was like, oh, yeah, X-Con.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mom, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that the X-Con that was working at Josh's car a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the person that is responsible for what they were, you know, time to look at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: How am I doing?
[SPEAKER_07]: You're doing pretty good.
[SPEAKER_07]: I haven't kept full track, but the... Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: the media secular reporters don't know Jesus there for the attack Christians.
[SPEAKER_07]: The media was lying and just randomly picked our family for a cheap story.
[SPEAKER_07]: Local government leaders didn't agree with the Dr. Lifestyle we're upset and attacking our family.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think those are the ones that you messed with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: But yeah, a lot of media I've always been told that always fascinating is is the x-hons story almost sounded like the most possible situation.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's a company computer and then like it takes about two minutes of research into it to realize that story doesn't hold any weight.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like on any level, but then when you hear.
[SPEAKER_07]: the like the body cam audio when they arrive on the lot and Josh literally just goes way what's going on with someone downloading um child pornography
[SPEAKER_07]: like what like that was his initial response that was when I immediately like I already had no doubt in my mind just it I'm just not surprised by anything anymore with the stories I cover but right when I heard that I was like well that seals well there it is that's yeah they'll on the coffin yep 100%.
[SPEAKER_07]: I know that you're very close with Jill now, like she's the one that you felt like a close relationship with.
[SPEAKER_07]: During that time, did you have, like, was there any factions of this where like some in the family were like, oh my god, this is really bad, or was it kind of just tight knit?
[SPEAKER_07]: We don't talk about it, and then it's you and your mom going, what the heck, like.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% tight knit, no one would speak to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We only call Jim but we were already like distance ourselves right because of everything that's happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were just like like this is not family is family is how you treat people right family is so at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like I'm going to choose my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to choose who I'm allowing my inner circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: and for me, trust is huge and so when you break it and when you choose not to be honest with small things or big things, I'm going to analyze that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take that in and be like, who's who's really someone that's healthy and that I need in my life, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, I was totally tight knit.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one would speak to us, no one would say anything.
[SPEAKER_07]: You're just calling Jim Bob to try to get something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would talk and yeah, we just ran and we had to do something.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were just like, I mean, at first I was like, there's no way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I thought about it and I was like, actually like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate this, but I mean, the truth is there, you know, if you don't ever get help for the things that you have problems with in the first place, well, that's going to fester, that's going to grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, it's the most despicable act.
[SPEAKER_07]: So yeah, yeah, it's, what do you think is keeping, it seems to me, and again, this is my opinion, so I
[SPEAKER_07]: it appears to me that Jill has done the most work in terms of really understanding the lies.
[SPEAKER_07]: And again, we all have our own
[SPEAKER_07]: we go, here's where I'm at, so everyone should be here, but like reading Jill's book to me, I was blown away by the amount of introspection that she has done and that it wasn't, it didn't feel puffy.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like there's some things that like, like anybody where you're like, yeah, I would disagree with this take or this reasoning or it, but she's clearly done some internal surgery to
[SPEAKER_07]: why do you think that like she seems to have taken a couple more steps than some others in the family do you think for others it's just fear do you think it's just because they've signed things that they don't know legally whether they'll get in trouble talking about do you think that everybody's drinking the cool aid like like why do you think there is such a tech because it feels like if it's not this what is going to shake you out of this
[SPEAKER_07]: basically family cult.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think because it's their family is so close their parents and all the things that they know and that's what they've known their whole life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it is scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it's confusing, but I think they are very they've been taught.
[SPEAKER_00]: in my opinion and groomed in my opinion to not think for themselves freely and so yeah when you're taught a certain thing you're whole life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to believe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to believe the best in people and you, you know, it becomes ingrained in you of just like how you've been taught.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think they have the willpower power honestly to to question it and to ask the hard questions and to really look at it for what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's really it's just something that I've noticed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like, you know, one day one day if they reach out I will answer that phone call.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm waiting on that day.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm curious to see what it will take like what it and and again, I come from a background of.
[SPEAKER_07]: I lost a lot of relationships leaving my kind of fundamentalist church background and I always am like, if not this, what, like, what's it going to be like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I don't know what it's going to be, but I will say that even though I can't speak for Jill, I am very proud of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has done a lot of work, a lot of inside work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had a lot of discussions that are, you know, just completely private between her and I.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I respect her so much, and she's just someone who I truly just admire.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, honestly, same from everything I've read.
[SPEAKER_07]: And she's, she's like someone that I've always wanted to chat with.
[SPEAKER_07]: Because I just, I, and I, I understand why that conversation probably hasn't happened.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I understand, too, like, it's.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's a lot of people with a lot of opinions and I have to admit and I always go back to like, even with this conversation when I reached out with publishers, I was like, I don't know if this is going to get immediately like a no because I've ever covered the daggers in like a negative way, but like there's just so many T YouTubers and there's so many people that are like just going for like, let me drag you through the,
[SPEAKER_07]: like to the group last a little bit and try to get something and it's like I'd love to just have a conversation just go like what really what are you thinking about this and where's where's this uh uh yeah I appreciate the candidness of it and I do feel like it's just a conversation between like two two friends you know just talking yeah um it is very serious
[SPEAKER_00]: topics that we're discussing, but at the same time, I truly appreciate you reaching out because it has to be talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really does and my book even though Ginger's book and Jill's book are totally different than my book because I just I kind of lay it all out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just one story that I just like go up and talk about this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about everything from my childhood all the way up till now and and I didn't have a ghost writer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's all, it literally is all me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, my editor was like, hey, try to say this in a different way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing, but for the most part, I, like, it is all me.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the words in there are, are me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that took seven months.
[SPEAKER_07]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is what, is what you, is what you read or what you'll hear?
[SPEAKER_07]: And I know we're getting you at the end here, but I'm curious to, to get your take on this, or your thoughts on it.
[SPEAKER_07]: But one of the biggest,
[SPEAKER_07]: worries for me picking up your book for the first time.
[SPEAKER_07]: And again, I'm not, this isn't just your book.
[SPEAKER_07]: Every book I pick up, I have such a cynical like, is this going to be when I think it's going to be?
[SPEAKER_07]: And I, you mentioned your faith in it, and part of me was like, is this going to be a puff devotional strap to like the Dougher name?
[SPEAKER_07]: Or it's like, okay, here's this thing, but it's really not, it's just because there was IBLP, and now here's my devotional for like what you should be.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I was reticent that it would be that I didn't know what it was going to be.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's not that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Your faith is a part of who you are, so it comes into the book.
[SPEAKER_07]: But the book is definitely not just puffy and then goes into that.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I am curious though for you.
[SPEAKER_07]: did you wrestle with how much to put Christianies into the book?
[SPEAKER_07]: And because I have to imagine the readership is going to be people who are either largely critical of religion in general, or it's going to be people who are extremely religious, who want you to be kind of propagating like IBLP.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's not the theology, it's the person, like, how did you navigate how much to put in there?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't want to put it in a ton.
[SPEAKER_00]: I instead wanted to focus on narcissistic abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to focus on financial abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to talk about the hard topics.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to discuss the things that have never been written in a Dagger book at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not a Dagger book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm definitely Amy King, but I definitely wanted to stand out on its own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I truly think it does that because it's something.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's everything that people don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, saying that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, yeah, I am a Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always bleeding it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I've got so many, so many reasons why.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I didn't want to be preachy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to come across this annoying little mom and southern, you know, an Arkansas that's just telling you how to live right because no one wants that.
[SPEAKER_07]: no one wants that people in Arkansas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, let's talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want this book to touch people that are hurting that don't go to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people that that have had church trauma and religious trauma, I want this book to touch lives no matter what stage they are in in their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they've experienced narcissistic abuse in any kind of capacity, this this book is for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk a lot about it in a lot of healing and about a lot of peace, so even though God is my peace and it is something that is very profound in my life, peace can be found in all kinds of ways, in nature, in writing, in healing and therapy, and I like encourage the people like go to therapy, find someone to talk to, you know, you can get better, you can have a better life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and that's really what I wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to come across Pre-T at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm really glad that you found in the book that it's not at all.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And like I said, there was, there was like two or three potential angles and I thought it could have gone where, and where I think people.
[SPEAKER_07]: who were like, okay, is it gonna be this?
[SPEAKER_07]: And it wasn't any of those things where I was like, okay, I think this, I think you stayed in your lane in the way that was like appropriate in a way that, like, this is my story, like this is my take, which, again, you evaded the, let me talk about IBLP from an outside perspective, and instead of something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about everything that I can't stand about the IBLP and before the intro.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's like in pages or something and I'm like let's go through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go through things that I don't like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: But everything is from my opinion in my viewpoint and it's everything that people don't know that's going to connect the dots for the readers and listeners.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I am curious on this as someone who is a person of faith and is has seen IBLP's harm first hand with your family.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm curious what you think right now because like there's a lot of talk about like the culture in general and it's kind of like what I've mentioned earlier is like it starts with like the these are kind of the outliers and the weirdos you know like we're going to look at this and this is interesting to look at.
[SPEAKER_07]: but then it becomes like a more in the forefront and almost like normalized and you see it more and more.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right now there's a lot of talk about like Christian nationalism is like the big word they get used or the basically the IBLP ideology seems to be more and more mainstream.
[SPEAKER_07]: Do you have any thoughts on that?
[SPEAKER_07]: Like do you share, do you think that's an overhyped fear?
[SPEAKER_07]: Do you think there is like
[SPEAKER_07]: Like that type of worldview is growing and that's concern like what's your take on that because I have no clue where you're out with any of that or what you're talking about is there so I think it's a very like.
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly think it's like a very terrifying system just the fact on how they like do corporal punishment.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, I get like there's a lot of evil in my opinion that is with IVLV.
[SPEAKER_07]: Start the episode with in my opinion and in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the episode here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, it like traps you into believing certain things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like jeans are bad, music is bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything with an offbeat is bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like all these sin, sin, sin, everything is bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is no, everything is like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't believe that God is like that at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I believe he's like, I just, I just, he doesn't think that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't care about if I were jeans.
[SPEAKER_00]: He cares about where my heart is, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think, I don't, I honestly don't think it's a growing environment or a belief system.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people are waking up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people are like, yeah, these things, yeah, Christian nationalism is a broad topic, but I think people are like, listen, I'm not going to beat my kid with a stick or with a rod because they crawled off a blanket, like these
[SPEAKER_00]: in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and so I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just think I think Jesus is being raised up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I I want to glorify him honestly, but I'm going to live my life and I'm going to do it in a way that hopefully brings other people just to just to be like, okay, who do I have in my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it is it bringing me peace or is it totally destroying my inner, my inner self mental health
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's healthy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's not?
[SPEAKER_00]: What can I do to incorporate boundaries into my life?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a self-help slash here's all the crap I've been through kind of book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I just, I think people are waking up to IVLP and being like, listen, this is not it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the way to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the way to parent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is not the way that, you know, is going to do anything good for anybody.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's what I was curious because I did that, that ABLP world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a really long answer and I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_07]: I had someone I'll say that on a show that I was like, it's an interview.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I feel free to talk.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's all good.
[SPEAKER_07]: But yeah, I was just curious because like I know for me, in this could probably be a whole other conversation, but the growing up,
[SPEAKER_07]: as a guy in Fundamentals Christianity, like, now that we're seeing this kind of resurgence of, like, Gen Z men are attending church at a higher rate than Gen Z women, they're attending at a higher rate than their parents parents were at the same age, like, and we're seeing a lot of, like, the, I would say toxic messaging, not necessarily I'd be
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm I'm kind of in this like hold my breath mode of like what's the next 10 years look like and tell yeah well getting into because these guys are good at branding so it's like you're seeing the rip-type go out and I'm really curious to see what that next piece is but it does sound like
[SPEAKER_07]: There's a, there's a level of like taking care of your immediate circle, and if everybody can do that, there's probably a reason for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shiny having people is doing a really good job of showing the truth and shedding light on things that really need to be discussed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope they continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, when Amazon calls, I'll answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, yeah, I agree when you have men in power and men where they're like, oh, I'm headed the household and they kind of get that like that up superior feel.
[SPEAKER_07]: And you don't have any vote, guys, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and they don't have any accountability, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one is holding the accountable to what they're doing or what they're saying or how they're treating people in the home, that is a huge, huge problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, it's like a title wave that will come crashing down at some point if they
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, man, marriage is already difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need someone a boss over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I would die if I lived in an IBLP household.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think God knew that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think God was like, no, I'm not going to do that to Amy.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, I look, I appreciate you taking way more time than we slotted and I would be happy to chat much longer, but I am curious, like I love asking every author this question because I know there's like the general message of the book.
[SPEAKER_07]: But I also know as someone who has written a lot and and created a lot, sometimes you slip in this little thing that you hope everyone will notice and it seems like nobody does.
[SPEAKER_07]: So like, what's the one little hidden gem somewhere in the book or a theme or a thought that you're like, if somebody picks up the book, if they get nothing else, I want them to find this thing and I would make me so happy.
[SPEAKER_07]: What is that for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I haven't had to, it's written right here, but it says rest.
[SPEAKER_07]: Rest in shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh yeah, I'm a walking sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you, rest in the storm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my, like, I think it's my last chapter title.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had that name at that because it means the world to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it literally is when life is crazy and you don't understand what is going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: you can find peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is peace that you can have no matter what is going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is something that I have held on to from the beginning of my childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like hang on Amy, it's going to get better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hang on Amy, you're going through a storm, you know, and we all go through so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either rather it's like financial or
[SPEAKER_00]: just parenting is hard or marriage and relationships or whatever whatever it is our boss we can like you know there's some million things that we go through and storms are always going to take place in our lives but we can hang on to peace and I just encourage the readers and the listeners to find it in their life.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I really appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like I said, and everybody listening, you can grab a copy of Holy Disruptor.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's a link in the show notes of this episode as to go grab a copy.
[SPEAKER_07]: Is there an audio version as well?
[SPEAKER_07]: I'll cut it first.
[SPEAKER_00]: There it is, and I wasted.
[SPEAKER_07]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_07]: So there is an audio version.
[SPEAKER_07]: So you can go listen as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: It'll feel like an extended podcast.
[SPEAKER_07]: You get to just continue on and just keep listening through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I roll with all my emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll hear me crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll hear yelling all of it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm going to slip in a bonus question.
[SPEAKER_07]: I am curious the experience of reading the book.
[SPEAKER_07]: was there a section of the book that you didn't expect to hit you like because I feel like writing is one thing and that's an emotional journey on its own but was there a section when you're reading it out loud that hit you in a heavier way than you anticipated were like maybe thought like today we're reading chapter three and then it's like oh that was a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I read the entire book in my audio recording in two days and I rolled through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cried.
[SPEAKER_00]: I laughed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was sarcastic in some places.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just completely me and they asked me.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said, hey, do you want to you want to edit this and try again where you're not crying?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, no, because that's real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's time for me to be real with the people that are going to listen and hear this and and I'm okay with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm okay to be vulnerable in those moments because it was very, you know heartbreaking and a lot of scenes and a lot of things that's happened in my life and and so yeah, it was really crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cried in several places that I did not see coming that I did not see coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's real.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like I said, I'm just going to just be me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a new version of Amy and sometimes disruption can be holy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be really good for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it can be just it can strengthen your life and give you a new sense of normal scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: So boundaries are key people.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_07]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, thank you so much again for having this conversation.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm sure we'll cross past again in the future.
[SPEAKER_07]: But good luck with the book and with all your other interviews.
[SPEAKER_07]: And yeah, I'll just look a one wish me luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, Eric.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you so much for listening today's episode of The Prejoy's Podcast.
[SPEAKER_07]: Be sure to share this with someone you think would find it interesting and subscribe so you don't miss a future episode.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thanks for tuning in.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'll see you next week right here on The Prejoy's Podcast.
[SPEAKER_05]: To praise the only father, feel the glory of his name Anyone can worship here so long as you act straight Pay your ties and follow rules even the ones God didn't make