The Michael Knowles Show - November 26, 2025


Father REFUSES to Let Autism Define His Son – Emotional Interview with Leland Vittert


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

190.41922

Word count

3,502

Sentence count

251

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Leland Vittert is the host of On Balance with LelandVittert and the Chief Washington Anchor for News Nation. He is also the author of Born Lucky: A Dedicated Father, a Grateful Son and My Journey with Autism: How I Learned to Live With Autism and How I Overcame It.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:52.400 He would take me to lunch with his friends and I'd interrupt and all of a sudden start
00:01:56.660 asking if we were out with you, Michael.
00:01:58.120 I'd start asking Mr. Knowles, you know, hey, how do you book your guests?
00:02:01.800 And how do you know when to switch subjects during your monologue?
00:02:04.380 And what do you pick?
00:02:05.540 How do you pick what's there sitting on your desk right now?
00:02:08.180 And my dad would tap his watch.
00:02:09.840 And that was my signal to A, stop talking, but to B, bookmark that moment.
00:02:15.040 And then we'd go back, almost like watching a game film.
00:02:18.640 Michael was talking about his kids.
00:02:21.760 Why'd you interrupt him to talk about his sponsors?
00:02:24.980 I don't know, dad.
00:02:26.020 I'm very excited to talk to my friend Leland Vitter.
00:02:28.880 I'm trying to think if, you know, I've been on Leland's show a number of times.
00:02:32.180 And his shows a number of times.
00:02:33.900 I'm trying to think this might be Leland's debut.
00:02:36.880 Because Leland, you know, he's like a serious news guy.
00:02:39.040 So he's like, he's not just one of these, you know, like fluffy commentator, influencer type.
00:02:42.940 He's like a serious news guy.
00:02:43.780 So I don't know that we've had him on the show, actually.
00:02:45.800 He is the host of On Balance with Leland Vittert.
00:02:48.980 He is the chief Washington anchor for News Nation.
00:02:51.440 But the thing that I really want to talk to him about right now
00:02:53.380 is that he is the author of Born Lucky, A Dedicated Father, a Grateful Son,
00:02:57.760 and My Journey with Autism.
00:02:59.960 Because I've known Leland at this point a pretty long time.
00:03:04.740 And I never knew that Leland was diagnosed with autism.
00:03:09.860 And now autism is in the news.
00:03:11.080 Frankly, everyone wants to claim to be autistic.
00:03:13.700 That's like the new hip thing. 0.92
00:03:15.460 So, Leland, thank you for coming on.
00:03:19.200 Michael, good to see you.
00:03:20.120 Yeah, I was autistic before it was cool.
00:03:23.400 It's amazing.
00:03:24.440 Because I have so many friends who now, they just,
00:03:27.860 anytime they do anything weird or like a little awkward,
00:03:30.500 they say, hey, bro, it's my autism.
00:03:32.420 Like, it's hip.
00:03:33.420 Like, it's cool.
00:03:33.840 And I, and I also have had friends who legitimately are on the autism spectrum
00:03:38.720 at different, different spots along the way.
00:03:41.500 Some a little more severe than others.
00:03:43.140 And I did not, how did you hide your autism for decades?
00:03:48.100 Well, that's the born lucky story, right?
00:03:51.640 So, when I was about five or six years old,
00:03:54.600 my parents were told they needed to have me evaluated.
00:03:58.240 They took me to one of those little medical testing centers.
00:04:00.700 We've all been there.
00:04:01.380 You're a father, Michael.
00:04:02.260 You know how scary those words are to hear that about your child.
00:04:06.540 So, they sit there for a couple of hours with the old magazines
00:04:10.540 and the stale coffee.
00:04:11.420 The woman comes back and says, this kid's got a lot of problems.
00:04:15.540 Behavioral issues, you know, there was no chance I could go to a birthday party
00:04:18.220 or play with other kids.
00:04:19.300 If a kid would touch me at school, I'd turn around and slug them.
00:04:22.220 Big sensory issues, you know, if socks were something I didn't like
00:04:25.840 or a jacket felt weird, whatever it was, I would melt down.
00:04:28.700 And then they gave me an IQ test, which is two halves of an IQ test equals your IQ.
00:04:35.680 It's an average.
00:04:37.020 A 20-point spread is a learning disability.
00:04:39.880 I had a 70-point spread between the two halves of my IQ test.
00:04:44.820 And the woman said to my parents, it is very hard to understand
00:04:48.240 what is going on inside his head, meaning my head.
00:04:53.840 And with that, my dad goes, what do I do?
00:04:57.420 And the woman said, there's not much you can do.
00:04:59.320 So, Born Lucky is the story of how my father adapted me to the world
00:05:04.640 rather than the world to me.
00:05:07.920 And it is hope for every parent of a kid, not just with autism, but every kid
00:05:13.580 having a hard time.
00:05:15.440 That is an amazing story.
00:05:18.900 And it's amazing because it is the exact opposite approach that everyone is taking now.
00:05:23.540 I mean, first of all, the fact that people who are not in any way autistic,
00:05:27.860 but who, you know, I don't know, have all the human foibles and deficiencies that everyone has,
00:05:33.780 they'll try to excuse it and, in fact, make the world bend to their eccentricities
00:05:38.580 by saying, well, hey, I'm autistic, when they're not. 0.80
00:05:41.920 The fact that you actually had a pretty severe diagnosis and your father just said,
00:05:47.400 well, all right, kid's going to have to make it in the world.
00:05:49.740 You know, the world ain't slowing down, so we're going to have to adapt him to the world.
00:05:56.080 One, it's common sense that we haven't heard in a very long time.
00:05:59.920 But two, I'm curious, how did he do it?
00:06:03.640 How did you do it?
00:06:05.800 Well, look, dad realized from the very beginning I wasn't going to have any friends.
00:06:09.900 So he said, in his words, maybe I can be your friend.
00:06:13.920 He never told me about my diagnosis, never told teachers, never told therapists.
00:06:18.280 There was never any accommodations or extra time on tests or anything like that.
00:06:22.500 This was, if you're going to make it in the real world,
00:06:26.280 you've got to start making it in the real world right now.
00:06:28.360 And it was hard for a very long period of time for me to have my dad teach me at a very granular level
00:06:37.180 the emotional and social fabric of the world and how people interacted.
00:06:44.420 I hate to use the word normally, but dad would basically say, you know,
00:06:48.580 if you want to interact in the world, you've got to interact the way the world does and learn that.
00:06:54.840 You can't try to expect the world to adapt to you.
00:06:58.800 So, you know, one of the things that's in Born Lucky is he would take me to lunch with his friends
00:07:03.260 and I'd interrupt and all of a sudden start asking.
00:07:06.000 If we were out with you, Michael, I'd start asking Mr. Knowles, who's always Mr. and Mrs.
00:07:10.180 I'd start asking Mr. Knowles, you know, hey, how do you book your guests?
00:07:14.080 And how do you know when to switch subjects during your monologue?
00:07:16.660 And what do you pick?
00:07:17.820 How do you pick what's there sitting on your desk right now?
00:07:20.420 And my dad would tap his watch. And that was my signal to, A, stop talking, but to, B, bookmark that moment.
00:07:28.420 And then we'd go back, almost like watching game film, and go and replay those moments.
00:07:36.060 All right, so when Michael was talking about his kids, why'd you interrupt him to talk about his sponsors?
00:07:43.680 I don't know, dad.
00:07:44.300 Okay, well, how could you have asked Mr. Knowles something that he would have been interested in?
00:07:49.160 And then we would role play that conversation.
00:07:52.820 So, dad's idea here, as you pointed out, was sort of the opposite of the coddling of a child.
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00:09:05.560 Unbelievable. It's unbelievable because it's so simple, but it's how we get good at anything.
00:09:12.400 You know, you say it's like rolling tape after a game or something.
00:09:14.920 And so if you want to get good at football, you got to watch the tape and you got to figure out
00:09:18.340 what went wrong. You got to figure out if you're a broadcaster, certainly that's the case.
00:09:22.740 You watch the tape. You say, shouldn't use that word. I should have sped up here. That was a kind
00:09:29.260 of a weak story. And over time, with any job, anything, you get a little better and better and
00:09:36.060 better. And yet the one area that we're told you can't do that in is in our, you know, I don't know,
00:09:42.580 our identity, our authentic selves, our, you know, our personality, I guess. There we're told,
00:09:49.780 let your freak flag fly and expect the world to bend to you. And so, wow. So this would have been,
00:09:56.300 I guess it was the 90s, right, is when all of this is going down.
00:09:59.420 Yeah, late 80s, early 90s.
00:10:01.640 Yeah. So, so, you know, I guess this is before the real wave of personal identity politics,
00:10:09.700 like totally took over the world. Now, autism in particular is a really hot issue. And you're,
00:10:16.620 you're hearing Bobby Kennedy talking about it. You're, you're, you know, people aren't taking
00:10:20.520 Tylenol anymore. Apparently Tylenol causes autism. I don't know all of these. So do you have any
00:10:25.120 thoughts on the issue itself? One, you know, it's a great question. Yeah. Do you have any insight on
00:10:30.820 where it comes from, how to, how to treat it? Fair question. And I have absolutely no insight
00:10:35.260 because I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I have the chemistry grades to prove it, right?
00:10:39.480 Born Lucky is not a prescription. It's not a cure. It's not an autism book. It's a father-son love story
00:10:44.520 to give parents the hope that my parents did not have. That said, you think about what's happened
00:10:52.060 with autism diagnoses from one in 1,500 kids when I was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism
00:10:59.240 and now to one in 31, three times higher for boys, even higher still in poor and minority communities.
00:11:05.420 There's a reason for that. We don't know what it is. And boy, I think it should be the scientific
00:11:09.800 question of our time. You know, Born Lucky is the darkest, most awful parts of my life. You know,
00:11:16.800 the teacher in eighth grade who said in front of the entire art class,
00:11:20.720 if my dog was as ugly as you, I would shave its ass and make it walk backwards. 0.94
00:11:25.860 If the teachers are doing that, yeah, yeah, think about that, Michael. If the teachers are doing
00:11:31.280 that, you know what the kids are doing. So this was as bad as it got, but my dad's quest was to try
00:11:39.860 and work through this, right? And, you know, starting with teaching me how to have self-esteem,
00:11:44.760 200 push-ups a day, five days a week, starting when I was six or seven years old because I wasn't going
00:11:49.380 to be good at anything else. So all of those moments, if somehow we can prevent future generations
00:11:56.360 from going through the hell that I did, then absolutely. Why wouldn't we want to find the
00:12:01.660 answer to those questions? And I think it's sort of personally offensive in some ways that there are
00:12:06.080 people who'd rather score political points than find the answers to these questions because they
00:12:11.520 sort of hate Trump more than they love whatever the future generations could hold.
00:12:16.420 Yes. Now, okay, last question before I let you go. You said you had this really brutal diagnosis and
00:12:23.200 all this tougher upbringing that happily really paid off, but it meant that in some ways you
00:12:28.860 endured an even harder time than other people who were diagnosed with autism do because you didn't
00:12:33.560 get any excuses, you didn't get any accommodations, and helped you in the long run but hurt you in
00:12:37.620 the short run. What would possess you if you have this kind of distinguishing feature of your
00:12:44.660 childhood, which is an autism diagnosis? What would possess you to choose to go into
00:12:50.180 communications, the single most difficult field for someone with autism?
00:12:56.920 Glutton of punishment, I guess. I think two things, Michael. One, you know, my dad never told me about my
00:13:03.020 autism diagnosis, right? So this was never like, oh, by the way, here you are, and still will never
00:13:08.860 allow me to use it as an excuse. But the second part of that was it was one of the few professions
00:13:14.640 that just yielded to hard work, right? I wasn't going to be a scientist or a doctor because I wasn't
00:13:18.680 good at chemistry or biology. I wasn't going to be a lawyer because I wasn't good at writing
00:13:22.480 and had other learning disabilities. So hard work really paid off, especially early on.
00:13:30.160 In journalism, what I thought you were going to ask is why, after not telling anybody,
00:13:34.260 would you decide to go to, you know, therapy on national television at 43 years old?
00:13:38.400 That's my follow-up question.
00:13:40.580 Oh, that's your follow-up? Well, I'll answer it for you, which is really, this has been about helping
00:13:45.100 people. And, you know, the book's been out for about a month. It's very easy, as you know, from being
00:13:49.240 a very accomplished author yourself, to talk about sales. What I view as the success here is the
00:13:55.320 hundreds of emails I have gotten from parents who say, thank you for writing this. We know we're
00:14:00.860 not alone. And you've given us hope. Not hope that our kid's going to become a news anchor, whatever
00:14:05.340 the kid's dealing with, from nut allergies to ADHD to anxiety, whatever it is. But born lucky is hope
00:14:10.920 and proof of the power of great parenting. And nobody's talking about that right now. Nobody is
00:14:16.880 talking about the power and the agency that parents have to help their kids be more.
00:14:22.940 Yes, I know. It's one of the reasons I really wanted to bring you on to talk about this book
00:14:27.560 is, look, you look at the numbers and you say, okay, that means there are all these kids dealing
00:14:32.220 with these problems. That also means there are that number of parents who don't know what to do,
00:14:38.080 who are in some cases being given really bad advice, really bad information, who are seriously
00:14:44.400 suffering. You know, when your kid is suffering, it's a much worse pain than anything you personally
00:14:49.080 are going to go through. And so I think it's a wonderful, wonderful message, a great instruction
00:14:53.540 manual to give to them. But you mentioned, you never heard about your diagnosis growing up.
00:14:58.920 So when did you hear about it?
00:15:01.700 So when I was in my twenties, my parents sort of started talking to me about, hey, by the way,
00:15:07.020 you know, when you were a little boy, you were diagnosed with autism and if autism sort of came up or
00:15:10.680 there was news about it or whatever, it became something we talked about. You know, you talk about
00:15:15.480 what parents are going through, something I never knew until we interviewed my mom and dad for the
00:15:19.960 book. You know, there were nights that my dad would put me to bed and every night he would spend a
00:15:25.800 couple of hours with me sort of putting me back together after the bullying and the humiliation and
00:15:30.200 the difficulties that went on at school. And he would walk down from my bedroom almost every night
00:15:37.600 down to the living room, 10, 11 o'clock at night. I would either go to do homework or be crying myself
00:15:41.980 to sleep or whatever. And he would sit in the living room by himself and cry for hours. And my
00:15:49.660 mom would come out one, two o'clock in the morning and find him there. So, you know, you talked about
00:15:53.680 the hell that parents are going through because of this. And I think the other part of this with my
00:16:00.060 father is he never wanted me to see myself as differently. He never wanted me to be able to use
00:16:04.540 autism as an excuse. And, you know, you sort of pointed out at the beginning of this interview,
00:16:08.620 you never knew this. Well, I've spent 20 or 25 years, maybe, maybe longer learning and practicing
00:16:16.200 how to hide it. You know, 30, 30 plus years really in practice, but in the real world now,
00:16:23.140 now 20 years. And I, there's times I still slip up. You know, there was a time just a couple of
00:16:28.720 months ago that I was playing golf with my, my father-in-law and was very rude to somebody. I'll,
00:16:33.160 I'll save your listeners the story. But it, it was like back being an eighth group, you know,
00:16:38.280 an eight-year-old again, I couldn't look him in the eye. I couldn't stop doing what I was doing.
00:16:42.280 I was totally task focused on and on. And my email to him that I sent to say, I'm sorry,
00:16:48.360 I was so rude to you. Didn't say, oh, by the way, that's my autism. Because my dad said, you know,
00:16:53.860 my son's not going to be defined by a diagnosis, but he's not going to be able to use it as an excuse
00:16:58.480 either. Yeah, it's amazing. It's really, it's really inspiring. I mean, the fact that basically,
00:17:04.480 you know, you wouldn't have to tell a friend and a friend wouldn't know is like pretty crazy.
00:17:13.000 And then the fact that in your career, you've reached the heights of broadcast journalism,
00:17:18.900 been on TV. And so both in very personal interactions, but even millions of people
00:17:24.220 looking at you wouldn't know. I mean, that, that is, that is an amazing inspiration to people
00:17:30.160 who, who feel like this is the end, the end of their lives or the end of their children's lives
00:17:34.220 or something. You have to get the book is what I'm, all of that to say, you have to get the book
00:17:39.540 right now, Born Lucky, A Dedicated Father, A Grateful Son, and My Journey with Autism.
00:17:45.500 Leland, thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate it.
00:17:49.600 Thanks, Michael.
00:17:50.260 Good to see you, sir. Okay. And good to see all of you. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
00:17:53.140 Michael Knowles show. I will see you tomorrow.
00:18:06.880 On the Matt Wall show, we talk about the things that really matter, real issues that affect you,
00:18:10.740 your family, and our country. We don't just focus on politics, but also culture and current events.
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00:18:23.140 Bye.