Lovett or Leave It Presents: Bravo, America! (with Olivia Plath)

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I bought my first gun when I was 17 years old.

I wasn't legally old enough to buy a gun.

I gave my brother some cash and he bought it under the table.

And it's because my parents were telling us that if Hillary won the election, she was going to turn the military on American people.

And we've got to stand up for ourselves.

And we don't know that they were wrong.

And were they wrong?

We never got to know.

Oh, we never told you.

We never found out.

Hey, everybody, I'm John Lovitt, and this is Love It or Leave It Presents.

Bravo America.

I'm sitting down with icons of reality TV because I love reality TV and also because I don't believe you can understand politics in this moment if you don't get the dynamics of reality television, the way in which performance and authenticity are intertwined, the way in which drama is used to gain attention, and the way in which the only thing worse than being a villain is being boring.

Trump gets this.

Do Democrats?

I don't think so.

Congresswoman Sarah McBride put it perfectly when we interviewed her on Pod Save America earlier this year.

Some of my colleagues are treating me the way they are treating me for a couple of reasons.

One, it's because they want attention, right?

They want to employ the strategies of a Bravo TV show.

to get attention in a body of 435 people.

And the way to do that is to pick a fight with someone and throw wine in their face.

But this isn't just about politics.

This is about the way in which reality TV has changed the culture in which we live.

And we are having incredible, revealing, such interesting conversations with reality's biggest stars, with people that have grown up on these shows, raised kids on these shows, had divorces on these shows.

I've loved every single one of these interviews, and this one was no exception.

I'm talking to Olivia Plath from Welcome to Plathville on TLC.

I was not a watcher of Plathville, but I found her story fascinating.

Welcome to Plathville is about a Christian fundamentalist family and these two parents raising nine kids.

As those kids grow up and start to become exposed to more and more of a world they were really never exposed to because they were homeschooled and kept away from television and the internet and the dangers of our secular world.

And it follows what happens as those kids grow up and, by the way, grow up famous and all the consequences of it, including Olivia, who ends up in a marriage at a very young age on this show that gets her a lot of fame.

And as she grows up on camera and becomes exposed to more and more of the world, her worldview changes and that creates a lot of conflict.

And you watch someone over seven years come to discover, because they are thoughtful and empathetic, that they want something different.

out of their life.

So that's why I was really excited to talk to Olivia and it was an incredible conversation.

This was her first interview since her last appearance on the show.

She has just now seen her final conversation with Ethan, this

person that she married in the opening episode and whose relationship comes apart in front of the cameras.

And it's just really interesting what she learned from that experience, not just about reality television or herself, but what she learned about what it's like to leave a really kind of black and white worldview and also some of the ways in which it's made her feel like she's grateful for having been on the show despite a lot of sadness and complicated feelings she has about it.

We also talked about why she posted videos she recorded of some of the abusive moments she had with her ex and why she felt it was important to put that in the world, even as she has empathy for anybody that grew up the way that she and the other people on the show grew up, not just in front of the cameras, but in front of the cameras without having had any exposure to reality television or pop culture before they were stars themselves.

She also talks in a really interesting way about what it's like to leave a bubble in which everything is certain for a world in which you don't have all the answers and the lessons there, not just for what it's like to grow up in this very specific religious context, but also in politics when a lot of people are acting out of fear and take comfort in a worldview that's very black and white.

I really love this conversation, this incredibly kind and thoughtful person who's been through so much and came out the other end

with a really like optimistic and beautiful way of looking at the world.

So please enjoy my conversation with Olivia Plath.

Olivia, thank you so much for being here.

So this is, if I'm not mistaken, your first time

doing an interview since the finale of the season aired, is that right?

That's correct, yeah.

So what was your reaction to that final episode?

First, it's the only episode of the season I watched in its entirety.

I heard that I was name-dropped a lot, and so I was like, I should just be aware, I guess, of what people are saying.

And I was also

morbidly curious, having filmed that scene, just wondering what the end result was, because I was such a ball of nerves in the moment that I don't really remember what I said or how everything worked out.

And I wanted to see how the story was kind of portrayed.

I don't really, honestly, I don't really know what my thoughts are.

Like, I watched it and I was like, okay.

I think

exiting reality TV, I have tried,

mostly through therapy, really worked to find the nuance in things.

I think it's really easy to look at things as black and white, especially in reality TV.

And my black and white knee-jerk reaction is like, wow, that person was a jerk and this person did this and this person did that.

And then the nuance of it is there's so many people collaborating on a project and whose bias comes forward and whose voice is heard when there's so many things being said.

Yeah, I look at it.

I'm kind of glad I've wrapped that chapter up.

And do you feel like that final conversation was mostly reflective of the reality, kind of reflective of the reality?

What do you think?

It's hard to say because

this is actually something that I literally was working on in therapy this past week.

And I was talking to my therapist about how I really struggle to say things concisely.

I'm so used to things being taken as a sound bite or being told, hey, can we get that 15 seconds shorter?

Like, we're not going to put a minute and a half of you talking this interview.

We just need this thought.

And I was always panicked of like, no, I can't do that for you.

You're going to take it out of context.

And I have to tell you everything.

And I have to give you the bird's eye view.

And you got to like know why I made this decision.

And you can't do that in reality TV,

unfortunately.

And

so I look back at that conversation.

I'm like, wow, there's a lot of things I wanted to expound on and a lot of things I wanted to say.

And what are you going to fit into five minutes, you know?

So yeah, then it's the conversation of, well, do you actually say those things or not?

Do you go on your your social media and expound further, or do you just allow things to be misunderstood?

Or just say, hey, people interpret things differently and move on.

Like, what's the move here?

I don't know.

Yeah, well,

just for people that maybe didn't see it or aren't familiar, this was your final moments on the show.

And it was a conversation with your ex,

not yet divorced ex officially, Ethan.

And it is sort of full circle from where the show began because the show begins with you as a very young woman,

girl,

marrying Ethan

in an episode of television that you later revealed you didn't really know was going to be on television until right before, right?

Yeah, I found out two weeks before our wedding that my ex-mother-in-law had invited a film crew to come shoot it as a promo for a show.

And the reality is I had...

The reality, I love that I'm using that word.

I had no idea what that even meant.

I'd never watched a reality show before in my life.

And when I'm told, like, oh, we want to pitch a promo for a reality show, I'm like, okay.

Like, I don't want that to happen on my wedding day.

I really have no idea what this involved.

And the same thing happened even going into season one of shooting the show.

I really had no idea what reality TV was comprised of, what it took to make a show.

Like, I just didn't know anything.

I was really young and really sheltered.

And I actually, this past week with the final episode, seven years worth that I was on the show with the airing, I went back and I watched some of the first scenes from season one and season two.

And I don't think that was me.

Oh, it was.

I think they hired a stand-in.

I think they got a stand-in.

Seven years is a long time.

Seven years is enough space to see someone, a younger version of yourself as a different person.

I know in my own small way, I remember things that when I was starting out in my career, that I felt like, oh, I let this person down or I did a bad job.

And now I look back and I think like, you were just a young person.

You just didn't know what the fuck you were doing.

Yeah.

And I wonder, like, do you have more empathy for yourself in that moment now?

Do you have more empathy for Ethan now, for other members of the family?

Like, how do you feel looking back on those early moments?

There's a lot of things I feel.

One, in talking about a viewership for a reality show, I just can't believe that that many people watched and were supportive because I look back and I'm like, oh, I look really brainwashed and silly.

And I had no idea who I was.

And the fact that so many people watched me discover who I was and were there for every step of the way and supportive of it, I find that so fascinating on this side of things.

I think it is this really hard balance of what do you expect of people given their background and what tools they have or don't have and what things they've, you know, endured in their life or not.

And

I know that I made a lot of poor choices over the years of growing up on reality TV that were out there for everyone to see and comment on.

And

there were definitely people who gave me a lot of grace and were like, oh, she's really young.

And she was really shelled.

Her daughters didn't know better.

And then there were other people that's like, she's 22.

Like, that's old enough to start getting your shit together.

Do you mean online?

Or do you mean online?

Online.

No, online.

And I agree with both of them, honestly.

Yeah.

Something I've thought about walking me from reality TV is that it was so helpful for me in some ways because it gave me a mirror that I didn't have.

I would see people comment on my behavior and I'd be like,

did I do that?

Was that my motive?

And sometimes it's bad and it really messed with my mental health for a while, but it was also good because it allowed me to to grow and kind of reflect and see things that I couldn't see on my own.

Yeah, you know, you've talked about this: that

being on a show where the premise is, look at all these kids, they're so cut off from the world, creates a special need on the part of producers to take care of those kids.

And

it seems like you don't feel like that was there.

I think talking about about the production side of reality TV,

you can get in the weeds really quickly.

I look at producers that I've worked with throughout the years and I see that they consistently have not had the resources they needed to make a reality show that's exploitive of other people, to be honest.

If you're making a show on kids that have no life experience and you're filming them going out in the world for the first time, discovering all these things, it's going to be really, really hard for them.

and as a producer you're not trained to be a therapist um you're not trained to kind of walk people through these really hard times in life you're there to make a story and do the interview and then go back to your hotel at the end of the day

and i think about this crew that I worked with years in and years out who could be on the road for three months away from their family and on day 69 of these three months I'm well it's more than three months but I'm over here having like a panic attack and they're not qualified to really walk me through that help me through that and I think that that so much is expected of producers that they're not really supportive.

And I think that that comes from the higher up, that comes from the network.

And I think it's also very indicative of society today, right?

Like, if you follow the money,

who is being blamed for a job versus who has actually has the resources, who's being supported, who's not.

And if you follow the money, like at the end of the day, it's always the big dog up top.

Right.

But then when I was watching you on the show, like, first of all, it just, it's a sad experience for me to watch the show.

And

part of it is, I assume that the producers are human beings trying to do their best in this situation.

But then you think, is like, you know,

can Plathfil be safe at any speed, right?

Like, is it possible to ethically make a show about children?

who have no access to television and are in this cloistered environment?

I don't know the answer.

I don't know what you think.

Yeah.

I don't know either.

I mean,

on the one hand, I think it's good to see people who live different than us and to see,

I think that's part of what reality TV does, right?

It normalizes the extreme, the outliers, the people who are different.

It kind of shows it to us.

And I think it's really important to see people who believe different than us and live differently than us so that we have understanding and empathy and all these things.

But then what line does it cross where this is not something that people are learning from relating to, but simply being a spectator of.

Like,

what's the ethical line there?

And it's something I've disagreed with, with several of the producers on the show now walking away from this journey of like,

are you okay working on a show that,

one, covers up these things or highlights these other things?

And

I think a lot, the answer I've gotten a lot at the end of the day is it's a hard industry out there and we're trying to feed our own family.

I'm like, I understand that.

It's very unprecedented times, but that's a very interesting question.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I do think here, too,

there is nuance, like you were saying, because

there are some people that say, oh, you know, look at this show.

It glorifies

this type of fundamentalist kind of closed-off world.

But I've watched the show and you're on the show.

And I feel as though...

people watching it came away having a lot of really serious questions about this environment and even whether or not it's on television, like the amount of control that goes in there.

So, on the one hand, I do think there are ways in which it is

like at least tilting towards some kind of honesty about the world.

But then you also say that there are really serious things that happened that they didn't put on television.

Yeah.

I mean, wait, you might know more about this than I do.

I know that there have been studies done to show that statistically, people who watch and consume reality TV have higher IQs.

That checks out with this group.

Bunch of freaking geniuses in here.

I think like that's the push for these kinds of shows in its conception is that we want to relate to people and we want to learn from people and we want to watch and analyze and either say, oh, I understand why this person made this choice or, oh, I would never make that choice because of my life experience and bias.

So I understand the premise of reality shows.

Where's the ethical line?

Who I don't know.

I don't have the answer for that.

Having been on a reality show four years and having like I I can watch my deconstruction from fundamental religion in real time.

I can look at seven years of my life.

And if I ever want to remember how I've grown, all I have to do is pull the old show up and watch it.

And I also think that there is an ethical line where people get exploited on these shows.

Like two things can be true at the same time.

And it's a really hard thing to wrap my mind around.

Yeah, well, because.

Exploitation, what that means, it's part of like, part of it is what is filmed and how it is filmed.

But then part of it seems to be about how people receive it, which really has nothing to do with the actual experience of making it.

And

so like,

I guess like the question for you is like, do you think that being on Plathfill was ultimately good for you?

Yes.

I think that

I might have gotten where I am now.

without the show, but the show really just like picked me up and set me down in the middle of mainstream society that I knew nothing about and mirrored my own reactions and behavior back to me in such a way that I was able to learn from my own you know choices.

And part of that is because I have a really hard time tuning out the internet.

It's been an issue like from the very beginning of the show.

I've just, I'm always curious what other people think.

And especially if it's my behavior out there, I'm like, well, I know why I made this choice.

Why do they think I made this choice?

And it felt like I was learning so much about myself in the process.

It also tanked my mental health.

So again, there's nuance there of like, how much do you listen, how much do you take in.

But looking back, I think it was a really good experience for me.

I think I learned a lot.

I was exposed to a lot of different things that I was forced to kind of sit and reckon with.

I was forced to look at my own bias on things.

And

I look back now and I'm like, wow, I said a lot of things I no longer believe.

So there's a clear, a clear chart of growth.

We're going to hold there for a second.

We'll be right back.

Hey, don't go anywhere.

There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

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Okay, we're back.

What do you think was different about you?

Or, like, you know, you and Ethan, completely different paths politically, kind of in your emotional relationship to

the world you were in.

Like, what, what do you think allowed you to

like, why did this show do for you what it did when for others it didn't?

That

could probably be

a very long conversation because people are so complex.

The thing off the top of my head that I've thought a lot about recently of why I stand where I stand or why I believe what I believe is the absence of fear.

And there's these studies done that show that when we're afraid of something, we actually end up kind of speaking into existence.

We manifest it.

And I think that's highlighted in the political sphere today of America

of constantly looking for someone else to like point the finger at and be afraid of and building these monsters up in our minds.

And I know that throughout the course of the show, as I started to kind of deconstruct and change, Ethan was always like, well, what's making you change?

It's the producers that are atheists or think different than you.

Like, it's because you're around them all the time that you're changing.

Or it's because you're going on all these trips or it's because you're doing this and you're doing that.

trying to find the reason why I was changing and being afraid of it versus I was just kind of like, I'll take it all in.

Sure.

I'm not really scared of if someone thinks different than me.

Either I will have to defend my point and know why I believe what I believe, or I'll have to be forced to say, oh, I don't know that.

I should learn that.

And then kind of change my mind.

I think I haven't been afraid of a lot of things throughout my life,

which I think has opened a lot of doors.

I mean, it started when I was like two years old climbing trees.

My mom was like, how are you getting up in the tree?

You should not be doing that.

But I just wasn't afraid.

It was a new horizon to be explored.

Speaking of not being afraid, like there's something about

the way in which you seem to, on camera, be willing to talk about things that clearly makes other people in the family uncomfortable.

That you're raising things that, like, hey, that's not what we're doing right now.

We're in perfect family mode.

We're having a, this is a day, we're not, we're not addressing that issue.

And

in watching you in that, in those moments, it's like, are you just less able to fake it?

Or is there some part of you that saw the show itself as kind of protection and space to talk about things?

I think both.

I hate elephants in the room so much.

Like, if something's wrong, I would just rather talk about it.

I wouldn't, I don't pursue conflict, but if it arrives in my doorstep, I will absolutely entertain it just to get it over with, like, have the conversation, get it out.

So I think that's one of the things is that their family just always swept things under the rug, and I just, I couldn't

and then the other thing was I know reality TV gets a rep for not being real and I was like I will not be a part of a project like that I like in good faith cannot spend a whole day filming something that had no substance for me If this is going to be a portrayal of my life, then it's going to have to also show the hard conversations and the questions asked.

And I mean, I really struggle with small talk anyways.

I can kind of relate to anyone.

I can make a conversation with anyone, even albeit awkwardly, but I really do not like small talk more than I have to.

I would rather just get something of substance.

Did you ever have a topic or a disagreement or something you knew you wanted to bring up, but you waited until it was time to shoot because you felt it would be better to have the, like, you know, these cameras behind you to catch it?

I think,

I think that's a little bit of a trick question.

And not that you did that to me on purpose.

I didn't.

No, I know you didn't.

But like, as someone who's been on reality TV, the only reason why I think, I would say yes, but then I would say the reason why is because you learn so quickly in reality TV to not have important conversations when cameras are not around because they'll make you do it all over again anyways.

Interesting.

So you learn that like, okay, if I bring this up in my own time to somebody,

it's not going to be their authentic reaction when I do that the second time.

And also, also,

especially for me and Ethan, just kind of like talking to a wall about where I was coming from, what I was thinking.

I was like, I'm not going to talk to a wall twice.

This is a really hard process if we're doing it at one time.

I really feel for you in those conversations.

And just, especially, like, I was like kind of

looking at the early seasons and seeing what was happening later and kind of going back and forth a little bit.

And

just looking at it over seven years, there's a lot of it that feels kind of stuck.

And like,

especially as you get to where you're seven and it's like, hey, you were too fucking young.

This was stupid.

Everyone get out.

Like, like, what are we doing here?

Like, is there a part of you that's like, like,

why were we fighting so hard?

We were kids when we got married.

We clearly this was a mistake.

Like, why, what's the, what's keeping us together?

Yeah, I think what I always went back to is it doesn't have to be a mistake.

Right.

Like, the percentage of people who get married to the first person they were ever with and then that lasts the rest of their life, life that does happen but it's not all that common but it does happen and especially in fundamental Christian circles where divorce is frowned upon like I remember year one of being married and said like saying to my dad I think I might want to get divorced because I just felt so overwhelmed with all the family problems and like his inability to set boundaries with his family and I remember my dad told me if you get divorced that's gonna break God's heart and that will break my heart and I was like well I mean I don't really have a support system in Georgia so like I at least need the parental support support that I might be getting from my parents at the time.

And so I was like, well, I'm not going to do that then.

I guess I have to figure it out.

And I look back now and I'm like, I really could have just cut out four years worth of

circular conversations that just got us nowhere.

But I just didn't want to give up.

And part of that was public perception.

I knew being a woman that if I chose to walk away,

One, his family would say all the things about me that they've spent this whole season saying, but now they're all great and happy because I left.

And I just didn't want that selfishly.

I also thought I would be blamed for getting divorced.

And I didn't know how to defend that choice that I felt like I would have to defend.

So I just kept thinking, I guess I can make it work.

Like I'll just try a little more.

Like it doesn't have to be this way.

It could change.

And you can't make that choice for somebody else.

Do you think the good news is a lot of people have not needed intense Christianity to stay in relationships for too long?

If that makes you feel any better.

Thank you.

That raises, I think, something that I was feeling when I was watching the show, which is,

and I think part of why, like, it's so interesting because there's this sort of light, like, bouncy music.

I'm like, I'm sad.

I don't understand what's happening.

Like, I'm there's like a lot of bouncing happened, but this is a sad situation.

And

part of it, I was, I was, I wanted to talk to you about it because, as you said, you got kind of plopped into the middle of the secular kind of modern world from this very kind of closed, um, traditional culture.

And

inside of the show and inside of that world, it's pretty clear that

like a life led according to a set of values, which are good values, right, gets inextricably connected to a specific kind of set of traditional gender norms, to a kind of control, to a kind of alienation from like the more cosmopolitan secular world.

And I'm wondering if you have felt anything missing as you've left behind the kind of more right-wing, kind of closed version of traditional values that you feel like you wish you could have without the other parts of it.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think one of the first things I noticed in leaving fundamental religion was I didn't know how to have community outside of it.

Because when I was growing up, the way that you made friends was you went to church.

And there was just always this built-in system to find everything you needed.

And if you could go to one place and find everything you need versus having to source everything you need from different places that you are not sure if you should trust anyways, it just, it was a very overwhelming process of being like, okay, so how do I make friends?

Where are people even going to make friends?

Down to the smallest conversations of like, have you seen this movie?

No, you should add it to your list.

Why bother?

The list is so long.

The list must be so long.

It's so long.

Music, movies, books, like all these things.

It just felt really overwhelming

And there was part of me that really craved that structure that I had before that kind of told me this is exactly how to do things and The way I described it to my therapist is that

Before especially like in these current political times everything had a structure right if I wanted to know how to change the world there was a formula for it written for me I went out and did XYZ and I tried to convert people in this way and then I said okay I've done my part I've tried to change the world for good now I'm sitting sitting here going, how do you change the world for good?

How do you, how do you make a difference?

I have no clue where to start.

And

sometimes I feel a bit homesick for that structure of how everything was.

And then the next moment, I'm like, no, I don't want to be in a box.

I don't want anyone to put me in a box.

I don't want that.

But yeah, even so two years ago, my younger brother died.

And even going back home for his funeral and watching how my parents and siblings coped with his death and the grieving process of it was,

we know where he's going.

We know he's in a better place.

This is what was supposed to happen.

God ordained this X, Y, Z.

And me and my sister that I'm close to are sitting there going, yeah, I have no clue, man.

I don't really know what happens when you die.

Like, are you still energy?

Are you not?

And I remember one of my other sisters saying to me, like, this is the beauty of religion, is that we know.

I'm like, right.

So would I rather know or not know?

I think I'd rather not know.

Kind of.

Kind of.

But then there's moments I feel very nostalgic for the assured faith of knowing that this is what it is.

Do you find, like, now that you, because you're living in Washington, D.C.

now, uh, do you find trying to piece together the parts of that community that you liked without as a religious component?

Do you find yourself looking for a less domineering version of like a religious part of your life?

Yeah, I think in the very beginning, I didn't want to be friends with anyone who was religious.

It just,

for lack of a better buzzword, felt triggering.

And now I'm in a place where I'm like, no, I actually want that.

I want people in my life who believe all different kinds of things because I think that's really what,

at the end of the day, what reality TV is even all about, right?

It's to foster these conversations where people with different perspectives sit at the table and talk about it.

And unfortunately, the reality of...

reality TV is that it's fast-paced and it's all about the effects and the drama.

And I think that it dampens conversations

about why the way, you know, why people are the way that they are, specifically in America, Like, if you compare American reality TV to British reality TV, very different.

Yeah, British baking shows, very sweet.

And just very, like, mellow, right?

Like, you look at Gordon Ramsey now.

I was talking with my friend Alex about this.

You look at like Hell's Kitchen Gordon Ramsey shows now, and they're like, you have one day to turn this restaurant around before the whole thing goes down.

You're like, oh no, it's happening.

It's all these side effects, like sound effects.

But in the very beginning, it was like, so we're going to fix this.

There was way less cursing,

way less intense music.

It was more of a documentary form.

And I think that as people's attention spans have shortened and their need for escape from life has increased, reality TV has become what it is, which is much more like clickbaity.

So

I want to kind of get at this in both directions.

Now that you're kind of out, whatever that means to you,

what preconceptions did you have about life outside a traditional religious home?

Like did you have that have been changed by what it's been like to live in, say, DC?

Wow, that's a very

multifaceted question.

Like it really could be answered in so many different ways.

I think

if I'm thinking about myself six, seven years ago, trying to live a mainstream life, whatever that meant to me, I really did think that I was going to take this whole set of values and just like send it down the conveyor belt and take this one instead.

I really thought it was just going to be an exchange.

Like I'm not going to believe this anymore.

So I'm just going to take this suitcase and these will be my beliefs I'll take with me through life.

And the more that I've given these kind of rigid, structured beliefs up, the more I've realized that it's not really a trading in one for another.

It's giving up thinking in a black and white way and realizing there's so much nuance that how do you just take one suitcase?

It doesn't all fit.

There's so many different trains of thought there.

And that's been,

I think like I referenced earlier, one of the harder things of lacking that structure is I really just, I thought it would be an easy exchange.

And I explained it to my therapist as like, this was a nicely packaged box, knew exactly what it was.

And I gave it up.

And now I'm just staring at all these clouds in the sky.

And I'm like, I don't really know.

These are shapeless.

I don't really know what to make of this.

Like, if this is not the morality, what's the morality now?

And she'll always say, like, well, how are you defining that?

And I'm like, no, there has to be some societal line.

Like, this is the morality.

And in my aversion to being black and white, I've become so black and white in the way that I try to not be black and white.

I don't know how to solve that.

Hey, don't go anywhere.

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And we're back.

What were some preconceptions you had about like New Yorkers, people outside of your community, like liberals, the left?

Like, how much were you hearing about that as a group of people?

Clearly, if you're in a community that is really taking pride in kids not being exposed to anything, some part of that has to be letting people know why it's so dangerous, why it's so scary.

Well, yeah, it's very fear-based.

I mean, I know I've talked a little bit on social media about this, but I bought my first gun when I was 17 years old.

I wasn't legally old enough to to buy a gun.

I gave my brother some cash and he bought it under the table.

And it's because my parents were telling us that if Hillary won the election, she was going to turn the military on American people.

And we've got to stand up for ourselves.

And we don't know that they were wrong.

And were they wrong?

And we never got to know.

No, we never told them.

We never found out.

But like that constant fear.

I guess I kind of assumed that everybody lived and operated under that fear just of the different sides.

Yeah.

I was never quite sure how much of it to buy into.

Obviously, enough to buy an unregistered handgun.

But the other part of it was like, well, but are they all that bad?

And I remember I started photographing weddings years ago before the show even started.

And the first time that I flew out of town to go shoot a wedding, I stayed with a girl who was in the same Christian ministry group as me.

And she was living with her boyfriend and they weren't married.

And I distinctly remember having this thought of,

but she's a really nice person.

like she's so kind and they seem to have a healthy relationship which i thought wasn't possible if you didn't do things this way

um

i think it's hard to tie up that thought with a bow of like what did i realize i didn't know or had misconceptions about because it was everything yeah i just kind of assumed that anyone who didn't live the way that i grew up was in the wrong um

And

yeah, I was reading one of my old journals the other day, and I was a very judgmental person.

I think that's true, by the way.

Again, you do not need Christian fundamentalism to be a judgmental teen in your journal.

Now let's do it from the other side.

Now

you've made friends

in this new life, this non-black and white life.

I'm sure they have questions.

I'm sure they have preconceptions.

Like, what do you think

the kind of the libs or the kind of people that maybe gawk at Welcome to Plathville?

What do they get wrong about the people you grew up with, your own family?

You know, I think it's often black and white from a different perspective, which I've been guilty of.

But if you take Welcome to Platville, for example, and you see this family that sheltered their kids, in their own words, almost too good.

And you look at that and you look at the byproduct of that is all these kids who are unable to navigate the world, unable to function in the world, right?

It's easy to look at it and be like, that was all terrible.

And I have my own thoughts about like their parenting and things like that.

But sometimes I have to remind myself and take a step back and say, hey, but it's not a bad thing that their kids had access to the outdoors and didn't have as much screen time.

And it's not a bad thing that their kids had, you know, music, that they all learned how to play instruments.

Those aren't bad things in of themselves.

And I think it again

kind of highlights the need for nuance, that it's not all good and not all bad, that you can have a way of life that doesn't prepare people for the real world, but they might have still learned useful skills in that way of life.

Do you feel okay now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

I mean, some days no, decidedly, very much no.

But

that helps me know that I am okay.

Because I can look at my behavior and be like, wow, okay.

I don't feel right and this world doesn't feel right.

And trying to make sense of it all is really overwhelming, but at least I am aware of that and not living in a bubble anymore.

Yeah.

Because I do think, like,

I think one, I think everybody does this, but one thing we do when we look back on ourselves a few years earlier and say, boy, we were so young then, is part of it is trying to convince ourselves that we've figured it all out now.

Yeah.

But you'll probably, you'll look back on this moment at the end of the show and think, wow, I was still in some ways in it in ways I didn't totally understand.

And I'm wondering if you like feel that.

I am less sure of anything now than I was at 20 years old.

Yeah.

Do you feel like you have

like, you know, I don't know when you posted it, but you posted this audio

of the way Ethan in one of your fights was talking about what would happen if you had a gay kid and what would happen if you had a trans kid.

And it's in a horrible moment, horrible moment for him.

And he's expressing things that like are scary, I think, especially if you're in a relationship with someone, thinking about what it would be like to have a family with that person, both in how he's talking to you and also how he's talking about how he would treat a kid.

He's also, there's, you know, you pointed out in this conversation where he says like i i'm gonna get their word it's something in the vein of like pussy ass bitch i can't remember exactly what it is about what would happen if he had a guy that was a boy son who was um uh you know effeminate in some way like that's the gist of it i'm not totally capturing it and on the one hand man that's a terrible thing to say on the other hand

He's clearly struggling with losing you, with feeling out of control.

And you're posting someone in like a terrible moment.

And I see the value of it.

I see why you feel like that's important to see in the world.

But at the same time, also, it is

posting a private moment of someone at their worst, who I feel like you, as a kind of empathetic person, also have empathy for.

And I'm wondering, like, how you think about that?

Honestly, that was a really,

I mean, I sat on some of the things I've posted recently for two plus years, going on three years now, for that reason.

I think I didn't post things for a long time because

I questioned the ethics of it.

I wondered if I should really share it.

And at the end of the day, I did decide to share and post that.

Part of that was because there are a lot of specifically women who follow me and have reached out to me privately and just said like, you know, thank you for being so honest about your experience in marriage and in leading fundamental Christianity.

And

I felt like there was a missing piece of the story on reality TV

that was very much network driven of what are we not going to talk about?

Politics.

We're not going to talk about politics.

It's unfortunate to me that that topic is a political topic instead of a human rights topic, but nevertheless.

And I just felt like because there was so much context missing in the show, and it does put bouncy light music to this family that is living in fear

and

treating outsiders quite poorly because of that fear of losing their core family unit and the need to kind of put this facade out.

And I said, well,

I know the facade they're trying to sell to everybody, but I know what actually is happening behind closed doors.

And part of my deconstruction journey was leaving a marriage that I never thought I would leave.

I never thought I would get divorced.

And a large part of the reason why was because of politics at the end of the day.

And

it took me kind of two years to look back at my experience and say, yes, this is a horrible moment for him, right?

Like this is not him at his best at all.

But it wasn't a one-off that happened every day behind closed doors.

And I stayed.

And it was coming to like reckoning with myself of why did I stay?

Why did I let myself be talked to this way?

Why did I, why did I entertain this kind of marriage?

Why was I clearly saying in these videos like, we can just agree to disagree?

Like we can just meet in the middle.

When that's a belief system I would never entertain.

I would never want to be with someone who says, yeah, I'm going to disown my kid if they're not straight like me.

But I still said, can we just meet in the middle?

Like, can we just compromise on this?

Because I was so desperate to not lose marriage.

And

I learned so much from it.

And other women have told me that they've learned so much from me sharing about my story that at the end of the day, a few years down the road, I did decide to post it.

I've still oscillated between like, did I do the right thing?

Did I do the wrong thing?

I don't really know.

It sparked a lot of conversations in my life, even clients of mine who have come to me and said, I've lost a sister.

or a family member to domestic abuse or violence.

And I have never felt strong enough to say anything.

And I felt really seen when you shared this and helped people see that they know someone doesn't have to hit you to be abusive to you.

yeah i don't really know if it was the right thing or not i know it's facilitated a lot of conversation yeah no i've not no it felt healing in some way but there's moments i've been like should i have done that i shouldn't have done that right well that's well i'm

i totally respect it i'm not i i i'm more actually i'm assuming that you have that that doubt and i and that doesn't make posting it wrong but i think it does highlight a feeling you have of seeing ethan not just as someone who's clearly being at the very least very verbally abusive and acting in a way that's like, is not healthy for any relationship, to put it mildly, but also is in some ways, like as you said at the beginning of this, people are kind of victims of their own circumstance and how they were raised.

And like that, that's the tension that I feel in how you talk about this, that like, that in some ways you see somebody kind of trying to find the control that they were raised under.

Yeah.

It's especially a hard thing when it's somebody you loved.

If I had that conversation with someone on the street, right?

Wrong or right, I don't know, but with a degree of personal relationship and empathy removed, I might be like, that was a really fucked up conversation.

And can't believe that.

There's tons of conversations like that on the internet of owning people and having these debates, whatever it is.

When it's somebody that you loved and were married to and you just can't really fathom how it became that, it was almost like waking up one day and realizing too.

I don't think I knew why I was taking those videos in the moment.

Yeah.

It was almost like.

Am I actually living this?

I'm going to take this so I can look back later and know if it was as bad as I think it was or not.

And maybe I'll decide it wasn't.

And years down the road, learning what actually is abuse in a relationship and realizing that you don't have to be physically hit to be abused in a relationship made me go, oh, wait a minute.

Yeah, there's a reason why I took these videos.

I took them as a witness to my own experiences that nobody else was there for.

I took them so I would understand what I was going through at a later time if I didn't understand why I was taking it then.

We're gonna take a quick break.

We'll be right back.

Hey, don't go anywhere.

There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

911, what is your emergency?

Get off the clear!

911 has faced nearly every emergency on Earth.

ABC Thursdays, they will go where no first responders have gone before.

Five everyday heroes were launched into space.

All contact with the spacecraft was lost due to a sudden geomagnetic storm.

Mission control, do you copy?

911, all new Thursdays in 7th Central on ABC and Stream on Hulu.

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And we're back.

There are moments, and there are in the show, filmed for the show, where

it's clear

you no longer believe a story,

and your partner is desperate to believe the story.

And,

you know,

we're in a moment where

there are a lot of people that are kind of drawn into a kind of fear-based version of politics.

The story is really enamoring a part because it does give you a bit of certainty.

It does give you control, completely outside even of a religious context.

And I'm wondering what kind of you learned about

like what that first step is to letting go of that.

And then you've talked about like the difficulty of it, right?

Like the uncertainty and like the nice, the bow, the values wrapped up in a bow.

But I'm like wondering what you feel like is a good first step or a good kind of way to reach out to somebody, people maybe in their own lives that they feel like they've lost touch with because of politics or people that feel like they can't be as close to anymore because they've gone gone down a very right-wing role, like kind of online, red-pilled thing.

That's a hard one.

Because right off the bat, I would say, well,

I think what's missing in

politics today or a fear-driven society is conversation,

is like finding the humanness in each other, right?

That's like the thing I would say first because it sounds the best.

And then I would have this other nature reaction of like, oh no, you're free to cut those people out.

You don't have to talk to them at all.

Like, why would you entertain delusion?

But it's somewhere in the middle of that, right?

Of like having boundaries for yourself.

Sure.

There's, there's a reason why I chose to get divorced.

I could have tried to like find empathy and have these human conversations all day long.

But at the end of the day, it was just a really unhealthy dynamic.

Don't need to entertain that in my life anymore.

Doesn't mean I have to be that way about everyone, right?

Like, again, it's that nuance that's so freaking hard for me coming from such a black and white world.

And that's honestly kind of the scary thing about looking at even politics today is it so closely mirrors the way that I grew up.

It's so black and white.

And there's so little room for discussion and people to be different and have conversation.

I look at like ancient Greece and I'm like, wow, man, that's why the world was thriving then, right?

Like, that's why that was such a vibrant society is because they put so much emphasis on debate and discussion and not in a way of owning people, but in a way of like, let's all bring our conversation, let's all bring our ideas to this table and let's sit and discuss it all day.

See what conclusion we come to of what's the best thing for everybody.

And I think

plus the feta.

Yeah, I mean, that too.

That would get me in a great headspace every day.

Yeah.

But I think conversation is the thing that's missing, even in reality TV.

Everything has to be condensed and has to be efficient at what cost?

First of all, thank you.

This has been really great conversation.

So I really appreciate it.

And before we let you go,

we do want to just check on your pop culture knowledge a little bit.

I know, I'm sorry, but we're just going to have to do it anyway.

You know what?

I'll own it.

If I don't know it, I'll own it.

If you don't know it, you don't know it.

I'm going to leave here a smarter person.

I doubt that.

But so

because you weren't raised with TV or the internet, we realized there's probably topics that you missed out entirely, which is why we're going to make sure you know about some of our favorite pop culture moments in a segment we're calling, do you know about this?

Okay.

First up, do you know about Alf?

Elf?

Can we show a picture of Alf?

No.

You don't know about Alf?

Okay, this looks like a Sesame Street character, but it's actually, it's absolutely not.

So that's Alf.

He's an alien from another planet, and he lived with a family hidden because the government was trying to get Alf.

This was a very, very popular show in the 1980s.

It was in the 1980s.

I watched it as it aired.

Now, the thing about Alf is, and I may have this wrong, somebody check this in the comments.

Alf, in the very last episode,

was grabbed by the government, but then the show was canceled.

No resolution for ALF.

He was a wise crack, and he was like funny E.T.

Do you know about E.T.?

You don't know about E.T.?

No, and I'm sorry for that reaction.

Oh, you've never seen E.T.?

That's okay.

You can be shocked.

I'm shocked at what I don't know.

E.T., oh, so, you know what's so cool?

That's so cool to have not seen.

See, that's awesome.

You get to see E.T.

Wait, have you seen Indiana Jones?

Okay.

I've seen one.

Which one?

I don't know.

Was

it.

So it was the Tomb Raiders one.

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

The one,

in a sense, they all are that.

Wait.

Last Crusade, Temple of Doom?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Temple of Doom, where they kind of go in the, there's mine carts.

Yeah.

Chased with mine carts.

I'm Num Shiva.

I'm Num Shiva.

Does that sound familiar?

Yes.

Okay.

You got a Last Crusade.

That's so cool.

Wait, have you seen Jurassic Park?

I saw the first 20 minutes, and then I saw someone hurt by a dinosaur, and I said, I'm out.

Oh, wow.

You've made the right call because that keeps happening.

Do you know about Madonna and Britney Spears kissing at the 2003 Video Music Awards?

No, but I'm going to look this up later.

Well, I got it right here for you.

Perfect.

That was like a very controversial thing.

I feel like I've seen this photo maybe, but I have no context for it.

Yeah, except at this point, I don't either.

Do you know about Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch?

No.

Wow.

God, that's so cool.

That's it.

He jumped on.

He's very excited.

It was because he was in love with Katie Holmes.

They have also since divorced.

There are actually some very interesting similar contours.

Isn't that like a track record for him?

I don't really know his.

I think, I'm not sure what we would say his.

I feel like he's in and out of relationships a lot.

How about, do you know about Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction in 2004?

No.

Oh, this was so crazy.

And it happened live.

And so Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed at the Super Bowl.

And you know about the Super Bowl.

Yes.

Cool.

So

Justin Timberlake, at the very end of their performance, reaches up and like rips off a piece of fabric from Janet Jackson's clothes and reveals her boob

with a kind of piece of jewelry on it, I believe, which was I saw live and never again, but seared into my memory.

Was this planned or unplanned?

So that's the thing.

Ostensibly, I believe the story is that it was something was supposed to rip off, but he wasn't, it wasn't supposed to be both layers of fabric.

The boob was supposed to remain protected by fabric.

And here's what's crazy.

Guess who got in trouble?

Janet Jackson.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not shocked.

I'm not shocked.

The fact that women can't breastfeed in public, but you can buy porn at any stand tells you everything you need to know about like why women's bodies are policed.

Do, uh, uh,

I don't know if I, does porn ever come up in the Plathfield universe of what happens when people find out about internet porn?

Yes.

It must be pretty shocking.

I mean, when Ethan wanted to start courting me, his mom made him confess to me.

And this has been talked about on the show for sure, that he was no longer 100% pure

because when they would go to the library growing up, he would sneak off to the swimsuit aisle and find magazines of women in swimsuits and look at them because he thought they were hot.

And his mom was like, that is porn.

And he had to confess that to me.

And he literally told me, he's like, I don't know if you're going to want to still marry me when you know this.

And I was like, that doesn't bother me.

I mean, how's that different than going to the beach?

Which he also didn't do.

Right, right.

You wore clothes at the beach.

Yeah.

Do you know about Richard Hatch from Survivor?

No.

Oh, he was the first winner of the season one of Survivor.

Well, it's a spoiler for season one of Survivor.

I just ruined that for you.

But he was a gay guy, kind of a mastermind strategist and a nudist.

And so this show, one of the first big, big American reality shows, was won by a nude, gay mastermind.

This is actually shocking.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

And then, and then I don't think Platville happens without Richard Hatch.

Like,

I don't think a world without Richard Hatch is a world where Welcome to Plathville ultimately happens, right?

Don't you think that in a sense, I think one has to happen for the others to happen.

They're both a sort of survival.

In a sense, in a sense.

Olivia Plath.

Are you going to keep the name Plath?

I am, yeah.

Huh.

Much to the chagrin of the internet.

Oh, really?

They want you to not keep the name?

God, people just loved.

Isn't it interesting that so much of the internet in watching a show that's about telling people how to live a certain way

also get so angry at that show because they want to tell you how to live a certain way.

Yeah.

I know this is a deep-cut reference, like niche reference.

I don't know if you'll get it, but me being harassed for her in the last name plaf kind of feels like Janet Jackson being punished for her boob showing.

I agree with that.

I agree with that.

A lot to think about, audience of internet people.

Olivia, thank you so much.

Really good to talk to you.

Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

If you're already scrolling endlessly, which we know you are, don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and all the other ones for original content, community events, and more.

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Wherever you are, you can find us.

Love it or Leave It is a crooked media production.

It is written and produced by me, John Lovett and Lee Eisenberg.

Kendra James is our executive producer.

Bill McGrath and Caroline Rustin are our producers.

And Kennedy Hill is our associate producer.

Howie Kiefer is our head writer.

Sarah Lazarus.

Jocelyn Coffin, Peter Miller, Alan Pierre, and Suba Arguall are our writers.

Jordan Cantor is our editor.

Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support.

Stephen Cologne is our audio engineer.

Our theme song is written and performed by SureSure.

Thanks to our designer, Sammy Koderna Reeves, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast, and to our digital producers, David Toles, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, Delan Villanueva, and Rachel Gaietski for filming and editing video each week so you can.

Our head of production is Matt DeGroat, and our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

It's love it or leave it.

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This Supreme Court term kicks off with no shortage of chaos on the docket.

In October alone, the justices will weigh whether cops can break into your home without a warrant, whether bans on conversion therapy for LGBTQ kids count as censorship, and whether states can gerrymander or must gerrymander majority black districts.

It's a term packed with questions that cut to the heart of free speech, voting rights, and the power of the police.

And on strict scrutiny, we're here to cut through the noise with a carefully honed balance of legal expertise and plenty of Smack Talk.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.