Ep 1282 ｜ Autism Isn’t a Superpower — or a Death Sentence： A Story of Tough Love ｜ Leland Vittert
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Summary
In an age when having a diagnosis is almost a badge of honor, Leland Vittert is telling a different story from his perspective. As someone who is diagnosed with autism, he says that the adversity that he went through growing up helped him become the successful journalist and reporter that he is today. Because his parents, while they loved him, refused to coddle him. The lessons that he learned, especially from his dad, about hard work and about overcoming difficulty are so incredibly important for us today.
Transcript
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In an age when having a diagnosis is almost a badge of honor, Leland Vittert is telling a different story from his perspective.
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As someone who is diagnosed with autism, he says that the adversity that he went through growing up helped him become the successful journalist and reporter that he is today.
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Because his parents, while they loved him, refused to coddle him. The lessons that he learned, especially from his dad, about hard work, about overcoming difficulty are so incredibly important for us today.
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You are going to be so moved by this gut-wrenching story and also encouraged as a parent, as a friend, to ensure that we are helping people reach their highest potential in everything they do.
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You are going to love this conversation with our new friend, Leland Vittert.
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Leland, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.
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It has been a long time. Okay, I want to talk about your story.
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You're a newscaster. You've been in the news business for a long time.
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But a lot of people don't know that when you were little, you got diagnosed with autism.
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It's a big part of the story. It's one I never told until I was about 43 years old.
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And that was a big part of my parents' philosophy growing up, which was, we're not going to let you be defined by a diagnosis.
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We're not going to let you define yourself by a diagnosis.
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And my dad, from when I was 8 years old, decided to try and adapt me to the world rather than the world to me.
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And the reason I'm willing to talk about it now at 43 years old, going to therapy on national television, is not exactly a bucket of fun.
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It's sort of like sitting in a bathtub full of scissors.
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Is if I, by sharing the darkest, deepest, most awful parts of my life, which are in Born Lucky, if that can help other kids, if that can help other families to know they're not alone, then it's worth it.
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And it doesn't matter if it's ADHD or anxiety or bullying or whatever the difficulties that kids are going through growing up, Born Lucky is real hope of what parents can do.
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And the reception, you know, people have asked me, how's the book doing?
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And I've gotten hundreds of letters from families of kids dealing with autism, peanut allergies, anxiety, physical disabilities, all saying how this has changed their perspective on their kid.
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So I was given the nickname Lucky when I was born.
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And when she went to her last appointment, they could see that I was breech.
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Before sophisticated ultrasounds, the doctor said, I've got a bad feeling.
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And this is when natural birth was very in vogue.
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There was all this research that doctors were prescribing C-sections because it was more convenient, all the things.
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She said, if I'm not going to take my doctor's advice, I should get a new doctor, not take his advice.
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Less than later saved me, saved my life a couple times in the Middle East.
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But it goes in for the C-section, and there's the curtain, and I'm being born on this side of the curtain.
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And my dad and my mom are on this side of the curtain, and my mom is holding my dad's hand.
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And my mom about broke my dad's hand, clenching down on it.
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And they said, this is the luckiest baby we've ever seen.
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And the umbilical cord was tied in a knot and around my neck.
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So had I been born naturally, I would have been dead.
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And the next day, up in the little, like, nursery area or my mom's hospital room, wherever it is,
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there's this little whiteboard outside the hospital room that says, you know, Leland Vittert,
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how much I weigh, last time I pooped, what I ate, whatever it is.
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And the doctor came up and crossed out Leland and said, call him Lucky.
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So up until when I was 18 years old, I introduced myself to everyone as Lucky Vittert.
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And I thought it was a fitting title of being born lucky.
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So many people would think about autism as this great challenge and how terrible and affliction
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And I want to make it clear how lucky I felt to have the parents I had, to have the dad
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who had dedicated himself in the way I did, to have the family I did that came around
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And at what point did your parents say, okay, like, I think that there might be something
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going on with him and we might need to see a doctor?
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I didn't talk until I was well past three, took me to a speech pathologist.
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And this is way before the diagnosis culture that we have right now.
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There was a lot of, well, you know, just let them go along.
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At about eight, I was told, they were told I needed to be evaluated.
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So as a mother, you would know what that would mean and the difficulty there.
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So they brought me to one of those medical testing buildings, all been there, linoleum
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And the woman comes back and says, this kid's got real, real bad problems.
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So it had been years since I'd been invited to a play date or a birthday party or anything
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Typical school, but with lots and lots and lots of problems in typical school.
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If a kid touched me or looked at me the wrong way or whatever, I'd turn around and slug them.
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If I had socks on I didn't like or a jacket on I didn't like or whatever, I would just melt
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And then the test showed these big learning disabilities or what we now call learning
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So IQ test is two halves of a test averaged together.
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My spread between the two tests was a 70 point spread.
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So basically in the parlance of the day from genius to mentally retarded.
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And the woman says to my dad and my mom, it is very difficult to understand what's going
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Now, my wife would tell you it's still very difficult to understand what's going on inside
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But when they looked at this, she said, it's the biggest point spread we've ever seen.
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You basically have to meet your son where he's at.
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And sorry to interject, but was there a pattern in which areas you were scoring so high in genius
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level and which areas you were really struggling then?
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They have it in the test in terms of like, I think it's called knowledge and performance.
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There were certain areas of math that I was quite good at.
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There were certain areas of language that I was terrible at.
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So they I had great vocabulary, but I couldn't spell like these kinds of issues.
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So the woman says the biggest point spread we've ever had kind of just need to meet your
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There's not much you can do, which to my dad was unacceptable, if for no other reason
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And at that point, he said, is there anything we can do?
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So he said, I'm going to try my best to adapt my son to the world because the world's not
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And, you know, they wanted to make all these accommodations and therapies and on and on
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And my dad said, that's not the way real life is going to be.
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You know, they never told a school administrator, a teacher, any of their friends, you know,
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Maybe they're trying to work with you more because obviously they want you to do well.
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So, yeah, that that I think is the part that's kind of taking people's breath away.
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You know, a few sort of moments in Born Lucky that kind of explain, I think, a lot of what
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Fifth grade, this was my third school, I think.
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My dad comes over one day to the school to see me and check on how I'm doing.
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Here's I'm at P.E., goes up to the P.E. fields.
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It's a little small school and they've got a bunch of fields sort of tiered down.
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And the P.E. coach was a guy my dad knew from another school and said, hey, where's Lucky?
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And the guy said, oh, I think he's doing better these days and on and on.
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And the guy goes, I don't think that's a good idea.
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He says, well, he said, I had to put him with the girls for the past month.
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So imagine as a father of a fifth grade boy here and the only sort of place his son can
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That was about the same time that as my sister and I would walk home every day from that school.
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And I asked my sister when we were working on Born Lucky, what's the earliest memory you
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Fifth grade, fall of fifth grade year, I was in kindergarten, meaning Liberty.
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And I would come to her classroom, pick her up, and we would walk home actually through
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all those athletic fields that I was playing with the girls at.
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And we'd get to the woods on our way home and I would start crying every day.
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And she says, my first memory as a kindergartner is holding my older brother's hand as we walked
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So got pulled out of that school, middle of fifth grade.
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You know, sort of just the relentless social torture.
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And then seventh grade, new school, my parents get called in in the second week.
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So they're hopeful things are going well in this new school.
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And the teacher or the principal says to my parents, right when they sit down in the principal's
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office, everybody at this school thinks Lucky is very weird.
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So now anything that happens at the school is my fault, right?
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And I think the thing that's been sort of stunning to a lot of people is how the teachers treated
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You know, teachers are supposed to be the ones to protect you.
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And in eighth grade at this school, I was in art class.
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But the art teacher didn't like something I had done or said or painted or whatever.
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And he says in front of the entire class, you know, Vittert, if my dog was as ugly as
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you, I would shave its ass and make it walk backwards.
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To an eighth grader in front of the entire class.
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So if the teachers feel like they can do that, you know what the kids can do, right?
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So you and I were talking about this before we got started.
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I went home that night, as I did every night, and sort of unloaded emotionally on my dad.
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He would sit there for hours and kind of let me unload emotionally, take out the physical,
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But the next day, he made me go back to school.
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And I think that was really the story of my adolescence of that adversity is your friend.
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And my dad's philosophy was, if you embrace adversity, embrace it honestly.
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And boy, was it so much harder for him to hold my hand through it, right?
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It would have been very easy for him to say, oh, he's got this diagnosis.
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Much easier for him and for my mother and for my sister.
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But it would not have taught me the ability to get through things later on in life.
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00:12:43.760
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00:12:46.340
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00:12:55.500
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I want to hear you talk more about that because this is certainly a novel approach.
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Like as a mom, certainly our instinct is to shield our kids from all of that pain.
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Also to march up to the school and to like, I mean, I want to bully that teacher.
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However, many years later, that's just such an awful story.
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They chose to allow you to endure that adversity.
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Obviously, there is a point at which parents have to protect their kids.
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But your parents kind of chose a hands-off approach.
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Every night my dad would sit with me for hours.
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And I found out actually as we were writing Born Lucky, not even from my dad, but from my mom,
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that there were a lot of nights that my dad would go downstairs in the living room by himself
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after dark when my mom was asleep and just start sitting there crying himself.
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But dad's idea was to hold my hand through the adversity.
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And I think what he realized was that I was going to face that adversity later in life,
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And if I didn't know how to get through it, and also if I wasn't forced to adapt.
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I mean, in many ways, you know, socially, I was an extraordinarily awkward, weird kid.
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I had to learn how to adapt and how to interact with the world as the way the world interacted,
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I couldn't figure out how to relate to people emotionally the way they were emotionally.
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I couldn't figure out how to, you know, read a room, when to stop talking, all of these
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And if you're put in bubble wrap, you're never, and told how wonderful you are all the time,
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So, you know, from the very beginning for my dad, it was, how do we teach this kid self-esteem?
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So when I was five or six years old, I was doing 200 push-ups a night.
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And you'd get, you know, after a couple months of doing that, you get some kind of reward.
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But my dad wanted to teach me self-esteem is earned, not given, which is a very different
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Tell me what else your parents did in helping you.
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Because as you mentioned, it was a hands-on approach at home, hands-off approach when it
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came to shielding you from the difficulty at school.
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So what else did that look like in giving you that extra help that you needed to adapt socially?
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So my dad figured out early on, I'm not going to have self-esteem from having friends at
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school, because I wasn't going to have friends.
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I wasn't going to have it from doing well in school because of the learning disabilities.
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And I wasn't going to have it from being good at athletics, because I wasn't going to
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So his idea was, how do we find things for him to have self-esteem at, at a young age?
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The second thing was how to teach this eight-year-old how the world works socially, the social and
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emotional fabric that so many people understand naturally.
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And he couldn't do it with kids, because no kid would be around me.
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Some people attract people like magnets, but if you put the two poles of a magnet together,
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So my dad started spending hundreds of hours with me, thousands of hours, still as my best
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And I've already talked to him, I think, three times today.
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So he would then take me out to lunch, and we'd go out to lunch with any of his friends.
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And because I spent so much time with him, I could sort of talk about business and politics
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But as soon as we'd sit down at some diner for cheeseburgers and milkshakes, as soon as
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his friend sat down, I would either start blasting him with questions or blasting him with stories
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And that was my dad's way of saying, okay, be quiet.
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And the idea was, later on, as we were driving home, it was like, okay, when Mr. So-and-so
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was talking about his weekend, and you interrupted it to talk about your push-ups, why did you
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And then we would role play what you could have asked Mr. So-and-so about himself.
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It was this very minute-by-minute teaching of the emotional and human dynamic.
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Were there any teachers or any individuals that were classmates that you can think of
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in your upbringing that stand out as actually being kind or helping you?
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And you'll notice when you read the book that we didn't use the names of anybody who
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And it's not because I don't remember their names.
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Or the principal who called me weird or anything else.
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And we used their names because we wanted to really highlight what a difference a teacher
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Sufficing to say, there were few and far between.
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And I thought, when I was writing the book, I thought it was going to be harder to remember
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And really, I got the most emotional thinking about sort of the people who were the kindest.
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You know, I got most emotional in reading the audio book.
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But reading the audio book and telling the story of, like, when our dog died because
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Can you tell us, from your experience, what makes a good teacher when you're a kid who
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And actually, of 171 interviews I've done, that's the first person who's asked me about
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I really believe that there are some wonderful teachers and people who really want to bring
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I think, at least in my experience, most of the teachers who were so evil and cruel to me,
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Um, I think that there is an enormous amount of cowardice in education because of lots of
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I guess the obvious thing is the teacher's job should be to champion the most vulnerable
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Not to champion the kids who are doing the best.
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I guess the reason why I thought of it is because although you and I don't have the
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exact same experience growing up, anyone who's, like, a little bit different, maybe
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particularly at, like, a private school where being uniform, like, there's just a lot of
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value on that, anyone who's even a little bit different could have a hard time and, you
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know, I just didn't stop talking, which is exactly why I do what I do.
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But I remember also those teachers who instead of just constantly beating the kid down who
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cannot remember to, you know, keep up with his homework or whatever it is, positive reinforcement,
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And I just remember, you know, I remember my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Ross, so well just
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because, like, she was that different teacher for me.
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And what a difference maker those people can be in the life of a kid who feels different.
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Yeah, and what a difference it can be when someone's really awful and cruel.
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And I think you point out rightly, for people who had a hard time growing up, me, you, the
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number of people who were nice is far smaller than the number of people who were mean.
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And it changes your perspective as a person, too, when you're dealing with people who are
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I think college was the first time I started realizing that I needed to change, right?
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Because my dad spent, you know, all those nights that I was so upset saying, look, when you
00:22:38.420
get older, the same qualities that are making you ostracized and bullied and having all these
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issues are the qualities that's going to make you successful later in life.
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He did not tell me in eighth grade that an eighth grade middle school classroom is great
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training for a Washington newsroom, which would later turn out to be very true, still
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But the college experience, my dad used to always tell me this story about when he was a freshman
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in college, Ripon College in Wisconsin, he had been blackballed from all the fraternities.
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He never got a bid at any one of the fraternities that was on campus.
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And it was a way of sort of explaining to me, right, that he understood the isolation.
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I called my dad on a January night at Northwestern.
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I had gone to all the fraternities I wanted to rush.
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I called my dad that night, 930, 10 o'clock at night.
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And then I said to dad, I said, I need to understand that it may not just be everybody
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To me, going to college wasn't really about learning economics, which I majored in, or journalism,
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But it was about learning as a person and trying to put all of those lessons that my dad taught
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And so tell me the rest of your college career, graduating, going into the industry that you're
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Graduated college, started working in small market television stations, was in Denver,
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Colorado when Fox called and said they needed a foreign correspondent.
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How did you know this is what you would want to do?
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Because again, a little bit of a strange dream to have as someone who has struggled socially
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But the one thing about journalism, and you know this as well, if we sort of look at this
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really broadly, is it is an industry that really bends to hard work.
00:25:03.160
You know, if you want to be a great doctor, you pretty much have to be great at chemistry
00:25:09.280
You want to be a great lawyer, most have to be able to be very good writers and on and
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There's some industries that just yield to hard work.
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So I got an internship when I was a kid at a radio station.
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And I figured out early on that if you just work hard and outwork everybody, that is of
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And when I was 20, I was 19 or 20 at a local TV station in St. Louis for my internship after
00:25:43.180
And some reporter said to me, hey, kid, you're pretty good on TV.
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And he says, you may be able to make it to the network one day.
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Now, that doesn't mean you're younger than me, but in 2000, the network was still a big
00:26:00.740
You had Matt Lauer flying around the world on the GE Jet.
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And so I Googled, what's the youngest anyone's ever made it to the network?
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So I said, that's my goal, to make it to the network, to be a network correspondent by the
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And started working in small market television stations.
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That's not really the way people come up anymore, but it's way back then you did.
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And it's a funny story in Born Lucky because just to show how out of my depth I was when
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I got this job, I went over for an interview with the bureau chief, the Fox bureau chief
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in Jerusalem, and I didn't know the difference of the West Bank and Gaza.
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So I drew a crib sheet on my hand of the geography of like the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and
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And I get to Israel and I'm, you know, in the meeting with him and it's so hot and I
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am sweating so much, my whole hand just runs with ink.
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And still got the job, show up on my first night with my mom to go look for an apartment
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Hillary's going to negotiate the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
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And I show up and we're at the American Colony Hotel, which is this beautiful compound in
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East Jerusalem, old world, neutral territory of the spooks, the diplomats, the journalists,
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And hotel and then a big garden where they serve drinks in East Jerusalem, Arab service
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run by a Swiss company, neutral in every sense of the word.
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And all of a sudden, just after sunset, there's the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons
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So I throw my mom to the ground and I think, oh my God, the hotel's under attack and I
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And all of a sudden, one of the waiters walks by and he looks down at me on the ground.
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And he goes, oh, he goes, oh, and he sort of mimes shooting a gun in the air.
00:28:15.020
And he goes, no, no, celebration, wedding, wedding, happy.
00:28:22.680
And that was my welcome to the Middle East of clearly I was not in Kansas anymore or Missouri.
00:28:33.100
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00:29:31.460
Okay, I want to hear more about your time in the Middle East because I want to go back
00:29:43.460
I bookmarked it in my head when you said that your mom said, if I'm not going to take this
00:29:49.600
doctor's advice, then I need to get a different doctor, not not take his advice.
00:29:53.400
And you said that came in handy when I was in the Middle East.
00:30:17.300
So I went in and started running with the rebels in Libya in March of 2011.
00:30:25.460
One town back from the front lines of the rebels.
00:30:30.760
We're filming and talking to rebels and about to go to the front lines.
00:30:35.760
And all of a sudden, our security guy, who was a Kiwi SAS guy, Maori guy, so just this
00:30:41.640
huge 6'4", 240-pound former rugby player, looks around.
00:30:55.160
And he grabs me and my photographer by the pull straps on the back of our flak jackets
00:31:00.300
and starts pushing us and running us to the truck.
00:31:05.120
And I could have protested, but I sort of at that point made the decision.
00:31:07.780
If our security guys are saying, get out of here, we need to get out of here.
00:31:12.260
We drove about 100 yards back from the checkpoint.
00:31:14.760
And a Libyan jet flew over, Qaddafi's jet, and bombed the checkpoint.
00:31:19.040
So had we stayed, we would have been among the casualties there.
00:31:27.200
So I did Egypt, Libya, a couple of Gaza wars, a little bit of Syria, and then ended in Ukraine
00:31:36.640
in 2014 for the first Russian invasion of the East.
00:31:40.980
Remarkably, these storylines just keep coming back around.
00:31:47.540
Is there anything about your personality that maybe growing up was seen as a weakness that
00:31:53.540
you actually think was a strength when you were over there in the Middle East?
00:31:57.020
You know, Alibeth, it's a great question, right?
00:31:59.720
Because there's this whole idea now that being on the spectrum is a superpower, right?
00:32:05.220
That somehow being autistic, kids are told, no, no, this is your superpower.
00:32:12.520
I wish I felt that or knew that, but I kind of don't know anything else, right?
00:32:17.060
People have asked, what was it like dating as somebody on the spectrum?
00:32:26.800
I can say, you know, the things my dad taught me of sort of that hard work yields results,
00:32:32.880
Character is destiny, which was a big part of my upbringing of that there's two things you
00:32:39.460
I think this is true for any kid having a hard time, really three.
00:32:44.620
You can control your work ethic and control your character.
00:32:47.780
And that was really drilled into me by my dad of you take pride in those things.
00:32:51.340
And the rest will sort of take care of itself because you can't control it.
00:32:56.500
So those things were extraordinarily important.
00:32:59.400
You know, I think it's so interesting, the perspective that you're bringing, that you're
00:33:02.960
talking about how you were able to overcome adversity.
00:33:07.040
It was difficult, but you were still able to do these things.
00:33:09.980
But you're not making the argument, as so many are, that, oh, that's, it's actually because
00:33:16.200
It's because it was the superpower, which I think is a very nuanced perspective on things,
00:33:21.900
because you could either say, just like, ignore it altogether, pretend like it doesn't
00:33:26.440
exist, just say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
00:33:28.840
Or you could say, it's this wonderful thing that we need to endlessly accommodate.
00:33:36.580
I think being in the Middle East teaches you life is not a thousand shades of gray.
00:33:43.180
One, in the current conversation about autism, right, I'm always struck by how sort of angry
00:33:52.440
and dismissive the left is of RFK's search for a cause of autism.
00:33:56.980
There was Chris Hayes on a podcast saying, you know, RFK Jr. is obsessed, obsessed with
00:34:02.600
finding the cause of autism and really ridiculing that.
00:34:08.220
You know, if we could find a way for kids to not go through what I went through, hallelujah.
00:34:14.500
I've only been married for six months, but if my wife was pregnant and you gave me a
00:34:17.520
piece of paper and said, you know, your child will be autistic or not, I would check no.
00:34:29.620
Number two, and I think I've acknowledged this a lot, but people have asked me after
00:34:35.060
reading Born Lucky and in interviews, you know, what's your advice?
00:34:40.940
The only advice in the book really is the last four pages written by my father, which is a
00:34:45.960
couple of the principles that he used to sort of guide him in this moment.
00:34:50.780
And I'm fully aware there's so many families who have things that are so much more difficult
00:34:56.500
than what my parents were dealing with at home, whether it's physical disabilities, more
00:35:01.280
severe cases of autism, the list goes on, right?
00:35:03.800
But the one thing that has stood out is Born Lucky isn't a how to cure autism book.
00:35:11.840
It's a love story of what great parenting can do and how every parent can help their kid
00:35:19.320
I heard from a father whose son, 22 years old, living in a group home, severe, profoundly
00:35:25.740
autistic, and would never be able to live on his own.
00:35:30.260
And the kid had some real, had understandably a lot of behavior issues, really angry, very
00:35:35.480
physically sort of upset and unhappy all the time.
00:35:39.820
And his father saw in the reports from the group home that he loved being in the pool.
00:35:47.100
Three times a week, they would take him to a pool and he was the happiest in the pool,
00:35:54.640
And the expert said, you can't teach a 22-year-old autistic kid to swim and he can drown and he's
00:35:59.460
going to be upset when he gets worried and we can't do this.
00:36:07.740
The kid now swims an hour and a half, swims a mile and a half every morning.
00:36:12.800
And he's totally different physically and he's up every morning and dressed in his swim clothes
00:36:17.040
and ready to go and physically is totally changed, mentally is totally changed, much
00:36:22.780
happier aren't, all because a father said, no, no, I can help my kid be more.
00:36:27.860
I can hold his hand and help him be more rather than just sit there and meet him where he's
00:36:34.040
As you pointed out, just take all the adversity away and make things as easy as possible.
00:36:41.080
It's just like we're hardwired in a way to want to remove all obstacles from our children's
00:36:47.980
It takes actually a lot of discipline and self-control on the parents' part to step back.
00:36:54.500
It's actually much easier to control everything, all variables, than it is to step back and
00:37:01.880
let them maybe stumble a bit because of the lessons learned.
00:37:06.220
But when I look back at my life and I remember the times of rejection or exclusion or difficulty
00:37:12.040
or not making this or getting this or things being unfair, I remember very much the pain.
00:37:17.920
But I also know that is where I grew a lot as a person, not only just like character-wise,
00:37:26.620
You develop a really better overall personality when you are made to go through things that
00:37:37.340
And I think when parents teach their kids the resilience, and to your point, right, that
00:37:44.260
you learn you can do hard things and get through hard things.
00:37:48.780
And I think about when this sort of all came full circle, end of 2020, I got invited to
00:37:55.400
I was the only Fox News anchor who publicly questioned Trump's claims.
00:38:09.900
And then I almost died of COVID, all within about one month.
00:38:14.720
Yeah, I was in the hospital for a week with COVID.
00:38:19.600
So, but all of these three, you know, everything is sort of people, you know, your primary
00:38:24.840
relationship, your job, where you live, and your health, all the big four in one month
00:38:30.320
So I have my little backpack, and I get out of the hospital.
00:38:33.440
I spend a couple days trying to get a little bit of strength back.
00:38:36.220
I could only walk about a tenth of a mile in a half an hour.
00:38:39.320
And I go down to Florida to my parents' guest room.
00:38:45.940
And I'm feeling really low, just like I did back in eighth grade, right?
00:38:49.640
And I've just, just really beat up, just beat up mentally.
00:38:54.560
And I'm lamenting to my father how terrible everything is.
00:38:57.720
He says, you're pretty good at feeling sorry for yourself.
00:39:01.240
He says, well, he said, in eighth grade, every day you went back to school.
00:39:07.280
You know, you can start over again and keep fighting.
00:39:10.460
And I don't think had I gotten through what I had gone through in school, I would have
00:39:18.880
I would have been, I would have had the fortitude to get back up and to start fighting again.
00:39:27.040
And think about how hard it was on my parents through all that.
00:39:31.340
You know, the, I think one thing that I've learned in writing the book, but also in the
00:39:36.100
reception of the book, is how families of kids who are having a hard time, doesn't
00:39:40.840
matter, autism, physical, whatever it is, ADHD, bullying, anything, how much the siblings
00:39:50.160
You know, there was, my sister went to the same high school I did.
00:39:55.940
One teacher said to her, I hope you don't turn out like your brother.
00:39:59.760
Kids told her to her face, you're the retarded kid's sister.
00:40:07.540
And I think what my parents did was make this a all of family effort, right?
00:40:15.320
And, and that part really still sits around today.
00:40:21.500
And you think about kids who face challenges, 80% of parents of kids who have some real significant
00:40:32.600
It can either tear a family apart, or it can bring it together.
00:40:38.560
And so after Fox, did you go right to News Nation after that?
00:40:46.480
And then in that transition period, Fox had basically said, you have a contract, but you
00:40:54.040
And in that time, I started News Nation, which was the opportunity to sort of do journalism
00:40:59.440
the way I always envisioned it, which was to view the world as right and wrong, not left
00:41:04.340
And, and we've, we've done well in that pursuit.
00:41:10.900
I met Rachel and it's, it's funny how the world works, right?
00:41:14.460
Um, from the lows, lows to the highs, highs, I landed in Chicago to start my new job at
00:41:21.820
I'm sitting on the plane, still moving to Chicago.
00:41:24.960
And I get a text from a young woman I went to college with, not young anymore, I guess.
00:41:31.320
And she says, Hey, I hear you moved to Chicago and I hear you're single.
00:41:43.700
I'm going to have a great time this summer, live downtown.
00:41:49.580
And the next day she sent me a picture of Rachel and she wrote, I found you your wife.
00:41:58.900
You know, and look, again, if the adversity had not happened, not embraced it, not accepted
00:42:04.720
it, then meeting Rachel would have never happened.
00:42:11.920
Well, we're finishing up in the next few minutes, but I'm so curious, what is your thought about
00:42:18.300
You just said, you know, you like to view the world between right and wrong, not left and
00:42:23.800
You know, there's probably a lot of journalists that agree with you, but a lot who don't.
00:42:36.820
What I can say is, is that I think we have gotten to a place where no one has to hear
00:42:46.260
Between the social media algorithms, the YouTube algorithms, enough cable networks, on and on.
00:42:54.220
People can live in these silos where they're only affirmed, and therefore opinions become
00:43:10.220
I don't know if that is what leads to sort of what brought out the best in America, which
00:43:19.580
Because if you live in silos, you think the other silos evil and wrong and un-American.
00:43:27.440
What we've found at NewsNation, and particularly for my show, is we've found people who come
00:43:34.960
to us and watch us because we give both sides hard times.
00:43:38.200
They want that middle ground of a fair arbiter.
00:43:47.480
And that we view the world as right and wrong, not left and right.
00:43:50.860
And I think that's a very different thing than is being done, and we're being rewarded for it.
00:43:54.960
It's why NewsNation is the fastest growing network.
00:43:59.300
And we would always love to have you on, but you're always busy.
00:44:03.660
Because your show is right in the middle of bedtime.
00:44:10.680
My assistant knows that we always like want to get on.
00:44:14.020
And so we'll just have to like find a night, make it happen.
00:44:23.320
And when you become outnumbered, the three against two is tough.
00:44:29.200
You go from man to man, man to man coverage to team coverage?
00:44:32.580
We definitely do bedtime together, but also we have six, four and two year old and mommy
00:44:42.080
So it can be a little bit difficult during bedtime, but we'll make it happen.
00:44:45.980
Being in demand is better than the alternative.
00:44:49.640
It's a blessing, 100%, but we'll definitely make it happen.
00:44:54.500
I was so moved by your story and encouraged as well.
00:44:57.960
Can you tell everyone where they can get your book, Born Lucky?
00:45:01.140
Amazingly enough, Amazon has it or any bookstore near you.
00:45:06.300
And I've been, I've been so humbled by how many people have come on the journey and I'll
00:45:11.620
This story was about not to be told and because my dad never wanted to talk about it, never
00:45:20.600
Someone had heard about it, Don Yeager, who your father knows as well, heard about the
00:45:29.720
He called me, he said, I really want to write this book.
00:45:33.360
I'm not talking about this publicly, not doing it.
00:45:38.140
He says, well, he says, I have an autistic child.
00:45:41.700
And if I had heard this story, I would have felt so differently and I would have had hope.
00:45:54.320
And at every story he goes, I don't know if we can tell this.
00:46:02.480
Now, as someone who's had book contracts, you've got to turn something in.
00:46:09.060
And I give the manuscript to my dad and he reads it and he says, on Thursday, I can't do this.
00:46:20.440
And I said to dad, I said, let's turn this around.
00:46:24.280
I said, do you remember that woman who diagnosed me and who basically told you there was nothing
00:46:44.060
So I said, I think we kind of owe it to folks to put it out there and let the world sort