The Charlie Kirk Show, November 28th, 2025

The Charlie Kirk Show, November 28th, 2025

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Every day there's a battle for your mind, raging information
coming from every angle.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
With the will to the sieve fear not, you.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Found the place for truth, the voice of a generation
that still has the will to believe in the greatest
country in the history of the world. This is the
Charlie Kirk Show.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Fuck a lot, here we go.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
All right, everybody, welcome to this special long form interview
with Kelly Shackelford, who's the president and CEO of First
Liberty Institute. That's Firstliberty dot Org. Kelly, you were a
really close friend to Charlie's. You've been on this show
many times, and it's an honor to have you in
the studio because oftentimes we'd have you and it would

(00:56):
be breaking news about something that was going on with
the Supreme Court or some case that you were working
that you know, our audience needed to know about. You're
here on campus at Turning Point, USA, you're visiting, and
you're you're you're supporting the mission that the organization that
Charlie built and this legacy that we're all trying to
move forward, and I just want to say welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
It's an honor to have.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
You, and we're we're grateful for you continuing this mission
with us.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Well, it's a it's a privilege to be a part.
I've been so proud of what you guys have done
since the tragedy, the assassination, and uh, you know, I
look back at Charlie and I probably text or talk
maybe once a month or so, and I just was
looking back at some of them and like there was
one that was like, you did it, you won, And
I was like, what was this and it was a

(01:44):
big Supreme Court case, and uh, just nobody there will
never be anybody like Charlie Kirk. He's once in a
generation and maybe once and more than that, and an
incredible loss. And I'm I still get sad as I
think things, but I know he would be so proud
of what is happening and what you guys are doing

(02:04):
and what the Lord is doing with this horrible tragedy.
And so kudos to you guys for carrying on the
mission in an incredible way.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Well, I mean, thank you for saying that. And you
are in a very small group of people that Charlie
would look to for legal advice and especially understanding the
Supreme Court religious liberty, and you know, you have a
long history with this show. We haven't had you on
for a while, and I was like, Kelly, we gotta,
we gotta, we gotta do this. And so I'm glad

(02:35):
we have the time in the schedule and you're you're
h and by the way, thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
For those things, those kind words.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
I mean, uh, we're doing our best here, you know,
And but we have a sacred duty we really do
to continue on. I never wanted to be a public figure.
I never had any desire to be. This was sort
of thrust on all of us, and for Mikey and Blake,
I mean, all of us are just kind of trying
our best to keep the flame of liberty burn. And
I mean that's what you're doing though, And so you know,

(03:03):
sometimes our mission in life and our calling in life
is thrust upon us, and sometimes we just have to say, yes,
Lord here I am, send me. And so I think
that's kind of what we're all doing because we love
this country and we love what the Lord is doing
right now. We love the outpouring of this revival that's happening.
Bible sales spiking, two POSA, faith is growing, our campus
programming is growing like leaps and bounds. So there's a

(03:24):
lot of good things happening.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
And you said something when we were meeting before this
that it.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Really took you know, it took me by surprise and
caught my attention. And that is that you make the
statement that there is more religious liberty in this country
than at any other time in our nation's history.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Explain what you mean by that.

Speaker 5 (03:44):
Yeah, everybody alive right now has more religious freedom than
they've ever had in their life, and that's because of
the recent decisions. And let me give a little feel
for how unusual this is. Typically there's about seven thousand
requests of the Supreme Court to take your case. They
took fifty six last year. So if three or four
years ago our goal had been for them to take

(04:05):
one of our cases, that would be a pretty heady goal. Right. Well,
they didn't take one, they didn't take three. Two, they
didn't take three. They we won four religious liberty cases
in thirteen months, and three of these were I would
call landmark, like shifting fifty years of case law. And
so the Carson case, which was Idle Maine, where they

(04:26):
said and Charlie, we talked about these, by the way
at the time, but you just don't put all this together.
For one hundred and thirty years, they've said parents, you
get to pick whatever school you want, public or private,
because most of the school districts don't have public schools.
Just take your voucher money and go right. And then
they decided to make one change, but you can't pick
your religious schools. And Supreme Court said six to three

(04:49):
unconsciouscighted that original the legislature. They got advice, Yeah, they
got advice from their attorney. It's like twenty something years
ago that oh, this is violate separation church and state.
If you treat the Christian people the same, you should
do everybody well.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
And that was a huge landmark because now you could
take voucher, you can take that to any Christian Catholic school.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
Yes, every What this means is every school choice program
in the country now and everyone in the future. So
think about since then, Texas has now just passed a
school choice program. From now on, you can never tell
a parent that they can't pick the religious the Christian school.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
That's huge.

Speaker 5 (05:27):
That's going to really impact a lot of kids, a
lot of education. I mean, eighty five percent of the
private schools or religious schools. Yeah, of course, so this
is huge. So that was victory number one. Victory number
two was a case on religious freedom in the workplace,
and there what happened is we had a client who
was he came off the mission field and wanted to

(05:48):
work somewhere we didn't have to work on the Sabbath,
strong beliefs on that. So he went to work for
the US Postal Service and that worked fine for two
years until Amazon started delivering on Sunday and all of
a sudden, you know, they said, look, we were going
to have to force you to work on Sunday. And
he said, I'll work double ships. I do whatelse, But
I can't do that. You need to accommodate my schedule. Well,
there's a strong law protecting religious freedom in the workplace.

(06:10):
But forty seven years ago, in a very dishonest case,
the Supreme Court reinterpreted all the words to make it meaningless,
and so the Postal Service knew they could just cut
him loose. So we went to the Supreme Court. We
did something a little different than we would normally do there.
We said to the court, this decision from forty seven
years ago was a lie then and it's a lie.

(06:31):
Now you know that this is not what these words mean.
The court ruled nine zero in our favor and restored
that standard of religious freeas.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
I mean, you have other cases here that I want
to get to because you have been you. I mean,
you are the pre eminent group working on religious liberty,
and beyond that, you're just a legal scholar and an
expert on this stuff, and we will continue to consult
you as these cases come up. But I want to
dive in a little deeper because you mentioned this separation
of church and state. Yes, and this is of course

(07:01):
taken from an eighteen oh two letter Danberry Baptist Association
from Thomas Jefferson, where he said a wall of separation
between church and state to express his beliefs that government
should not interfere with religious freedom. Now, let's go back
to what he was probably really saying in eighteen oh two,
America was one hundred percent Christian, essentially right for all
intents and purposes, Catholic Christian work.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
So our founders were often concerned.

Speaker 4 (07:26):
With we don't want you know, the Presbyterians or the
Anglicans or whatever taking control of becoming the state religion.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yes, right, and so that's that.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
But this is not the Constitution, this is not in
the Declaration of Independence, and yet we have turned it
into this almost mythology of America that there is a
separation of church and state. Now, in practice, obviously we
know that that's impractical.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
It's not possible because.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
All legislation, all policy, is an extension a morality. It's
a codification of a moral precept which comes, of course
oftentimes sometimes it comes from academia, but oftentimes and historically
it comes from our faith, our Christian beliefs in this country.
So maybe just explain why this has become so insidious,

(08:19):
this idea of separation to church and state, and what
is true and what is not?

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Legally?

Speaker 5 (08:23):
Yeah, well, number one, it's not the Constitution, right, I mean,
what does the Constitution say? The Constitution this is the
first Amendment. The first two clauses said, the Congress will
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof. The founders did not want us
to establish a national church. They experienced that in England.
They didn't want that here. But what happened fifty years

(08:47):
ago in a case called Lemon It's Lemon be Kertzman
is they reinterpreted the establishment clause and they said, well,
we don't think it means just not establishing a national
church or denomination. We think it goes further than that.
And what it really means is anywhere that government is
religion can't be. I mean, that's kind of a separation

(09:07):
of church and state. They use words like the separation
of church and state. And normally you can't bring a
lawsuit sue if you're offended, that's not a basis, but
they start allowing lawsuits if you're offended by religion. So
if you wonder why Nativity scenes were taken down across
the country and Manora is at Hanukkah and ten Commandments
rolled into the closet, and it's not because any of

(09:28):
that is in the constitution. The founders would be appalled.
It's because of this Lemon case. And it was cited
over seven thousand times in the last fifty years to
put down religious expression in public. So like Nativity, Nativity scenes,
ten Commandments. You know, if some sort of religious activity
occurs at school, even by a student, everybody's in a panic.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
The hardest working radio show in the business that Charlie Kirkshaw.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
We've been trying to get rid of it because we
knew it really created a government that's hostile to religion,
which is not what the founders wanted. They don't want
the government to put their thumb on the scale in
favor of one religion over another, and never coercion by government.
But the idea that the government can't be pro religion
in general is ridiculous. I mean, it would strike down

(10:27):
the free exercise clause that's pro religion. And so we
finally got to the Coach Kennedy case, which was the
third of those cases. I was just mentioning. And of
course coach is a guy who was told he got
out of Marines after twenty years. He went coaching. He
made a promise to God that after every game, the
first thing he would do. Everybody's in center field, they're
making reservations for dinner. After the game, the first thing

(10:49):
he would do is go to a knee and for
fifteen seconds, thank God for the privilege of coaching those
young men. And he did it for seven years until
the school came to him and said, if you do
that again, we're going to fire you. And you know,
He's like, what did I fight for if I'm not
going to stand up? And what kind of example am
out of these boys if I run as soon as
somebody shoots at me. And so he went to a

(11:12):
knee and they fired him. And unfortunately for him and
for us, he lives outside at Seattle, so not exactly
sympathetic courts. And for seven and a half years he lost.
But we finally made it to the Supreme Court and
they ruled in our favor. This is the first time,
by the way Andrew, that there had ever been a
case at the Supreme Court on the rights of teachers

(11:34):
or coaches with regard to their faith. Huge victory. Free speech,
free exercise. Coaches and teachers do now give up their
First Amendment rights. And that's what most people know. What
they don't know was within that decision they overturned the
Lemon case. Wow, seven thousand psychedla year. This was yeah,

(11:54):
like three years ago, three years ago.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
And as of three years ago, because of this success,
you guys had at first liberty institute. What is now
the precedent that has been said.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
The precedent the new test is if there's a religious
activity and it's occurring with around or in government. If
it's a part of our history, it's consistent with our
history and our traditions as a country, it's presumptively constitution.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
I want to.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
So I want to dive into this because this is
something you and I were talking about before, and I
think it's really important.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (12:42):
So Charlie in the last months of his life, was
raising the alarm bell about Islam.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
He was worried.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
He was seeing epic city in Texas, dearborn Michigan. You see,
uh so on Mom, Donnie, and you know, you saw
that that debate clip between him and Cuoma where he
essentially guilted him and shamed him, saying that you know,
you don't know the mosques that you've visited, you know.
And so it shocked the nation outside, at the least

(13:12):
New York City, because it's like, oh, all of a sudden,
in order to be a mayoral candidate at a big
city in America, now I have to go service this
new population. Historically, there is no doubt, there is no
argument that historically America has been a Christian nation, whether
that be Baptists or Quakers, or Anglicans or Catholics or

(13:32):
and you could make the case for the there's been
a Jewish presence in the country for a historical president.
So at what point, because the pushback would be like, okay,
so we have more religious freedom now than we've ever had.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
That's good.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Obviously as a Christian, I want to be able to
express my religious freedom. But what is good for the
goose is then good for the gander. And now we
have a rising population of Islam, of Muslims in this country,
and know what rights do they now have if it
now has to fit within this other president of a
historical consistency.

Speaker 5 (14:07):
Well, you know, first you all, you know, people will
ask a lot of times because we have synagogue cases
across the country, uh, just wanting to be synagogues and
they're being persecuted. It's ridiculous that this is happening in
the United States. And they'll say, well, what about religious
freedom for Muslims and and they say, I'm worried about that.
And I always say religious freedom to do what you know,

(14:27):
that's what you got to look at to do.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
What to pray? Sure, you know, to.

Speaker 5 (14:32):
Uh you know, uh put Sharia law in no you know.
And so take the Texas Uh they built that they
were trying to build that community out in Texas. It
was easily taken care of by law in Texas. In fact,
what they were doing and excluding others and doing that
type of an effort probably violates securities laws. And the

(14:53):
Attorney General is now beginning to do with securities lawsuit
against them for what they were trying to do. So
so I you know, I say, you know, and it
reminds me a little bit. Gosh, I don't know how
many maybe thirty years ago, twenty five years ago, when
Bible clubs and schools became a thing and people tried
to stop it went all the way to the Supreme courts,

(15:13):
I guess in the nineteen eighties, and there was a
great victory for religious freedom and that yeah, you can't
allow clubs at school and then include the Christian club
or the Bible club. And people would come to me
and they would say, if we allow these Bible clubs,
they're going to allow Satan clubs. They have to allow
them to and you know, because of religious freedom. And
I would say, you know, our kids say they'd love

(15:35):
to know who they are. Let it happen and let's
see who wins. And you know, ten years later there
were thirty three thousand Bible clubs in public schools and
there really weren't much of the others. Now, I know
the Muslim community is more organized, but I really think
the truth always wins over the darkness. So if somebody's

(15:56):
trying to do something and change our country, I mean,
there's not a Muslim country in the world that you
can find that really has religious freedom. The reason we
have religious freedom in this country, even for people who
disagree with Christians, is because of the Jao Christian belief
that a relationship between you and God is between you
and God and the government has no right to come

(16:16):
in between that. And I think that will win out.
I think, yeah, the sunlight.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Listen, I love the glass at full interpretation of that.
But you know it is it's an immigration, it's a
function of immigration. The more that we import people that
happen to be Muslim, the more that they're going to
exercise politically their political rights and they're going to try
and leverage that. You saw that with Zorah Mamdani and
Andrew Cuomo. The more that they're going to try and

(16:42):
form communities where they get to express a cultural norm
that we would not consider traditionally American. So that's kind
of the basis of my question. So you're saying that
it has to be consistent with a historic norm, right, Yes,
So at what point does something become considered historic? Because

(17:02):
if I'm their lawyers and I find myself in a case,
so I'll be like, well, we've had Muslims in New
York since you know this date, of course it's historic.
Well not in any it's the practice, it's predominant way.

Speaker 5 (17:12):
It's what they're asking to do.

Speaker 4 (17:14):
Well, so we have this Muslim call to prayer, right,
and there was actually a clip of this. I think
I actually have this, So we've got bear with me
for one second here, Kelly. I want to make sure
I get these clips right because these are these are striking.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
And here we go. So this is this is.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
The dearborn police Chief Shaheen on the Islamic calls to prayer,
blasting five times starting at sunrise daily, cut play, cut
to ten.

Speaker 6 (17:45):
Oftentimes when we take readings, Council President, it's the ambient noise.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
It's even louder than.

Speaker 6 (17:49):
The call to prayer. To be ask you the truck
will go by, hit a pothole, and it's much louder
than the.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Call to prayer.

Speaker 6 (17:53):
The two or three valiations that we've have had in
the last couple of years have been met with compliance
as soon as we've talked to the religious institution. It's
no different than church bells that you might hear on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
News Flash Democrats America as a republic, not a democracy
fact check true.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
And then you've got this guy, Mehdi Hassan who actually
comes by way of the UK. He was obviously he
was an MSNBC anchor and now he's just basically a
troublemaker and a provocateur play cut two twelve. I think
that if you can play church bells can pray, the
cult to prayer, we are as American as anyone else
and don't take any bs from any Okay. So this
is going to be their argument now as the population

(19:08):
of Muslims increases in the country, while we continue to
issue one point two million green cards every year and
a lot of those are coming from Muslim countries, and
now even increasingly if we get people immigrating from Europe,
they might be Muslims. So the point is they're going
to assert their religious freedoms because this is a country
historically that has exercised broad a broad view of what

(19:31):
religious freedom is. But you're saying there's a historical precedent,
So I'm just again, I'm playing Devil's advocate a little
bit here, which is a terrible expression, by the way,
to use in a.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Religious freedom discussion.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
But so if they come in and they start saying, well,
you know, it's no different than church bells, and you
come in you say, well, it has to be consistent
with the historic precedent. Is there is there a sense
of you would look at it and say, well, because
this nation is historically Christian or Catholic, that that would
you would have broader freedoms in those respects to exercise

(20:04):
certain religious freedoms. Then you would if they want to
start doing sharil are, if they want to start doing
genital mutilation, if they want to start doing just Muslim called.

Speaker 5 (20:11):
To prayer, Yeah, I think it wouldn't be based upon
the religion. It would be based on the practice, what
kind of practices were allowed. So in other words, if
if if a Christian can pray, you know, somebody could say, well,
the history was most of the prayers are Christians, So
the Jews can't pray. Well no, No, the whole idea

(20:32):
was they were praying, right, and I think the noise
that the situation here with, you know, calls to prayer.
That's a noise issue, right. I mean, if the idea
was that, well, we don't want them to be able
to send an email to their friends and tell them
to come to prayer. Uh, well, we'll allow the Christians
to do it, but not the Muslims. We wouldn't say that, right,

(20:54):
This is a noise issue, and if the noise is
really violating and disturbing people, they need to control it
with noise. Now, the things that people are really concerned about,
like creating Sharia law and things like this, those would
never be allowed or consistent with our constitution in this country.
So those things would take away freedoms and those things.

(21:16):
So you always have to ask yourself what is the
religious practice that they're asking for, and is it consistent
with our history and tradition if the government is involved,
if not, is it just something that is you know,
we would want to protect for all faiths, because that's
really what the religious freedoms is about.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, I mean, in this Muslim call to prayer.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
When they start congregating in certain municipalities like they have
in Deerborn, that's going to be an increasing issue because
that's something that they demand with they demand these five
times a day prayers. They all have to point towards
Mecca and they get on their prayer mats and it's
you know, and I think at some level for a
lot of us, you know, it's just simply it's offensive because.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
We believe that.

Speaker 4 (22:01):
You know, and you don't have to chime in here,
this can be me. But it's offensive because you know,
we love our culture.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
We love the.

Speaker 4 (22:09):
American Christian heritage that we have that we inherited from
England and from you know, the Magna Carta and you know,
all the way back to Black Road regimen, the revivals
that gave birth to American liberty, and we hold these
things dear, and so we don't want to hear.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Muslim calls to prayer in our neighborhoods.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
I don't want my kids to have to go to
school and be taught to how to be respectful to
this other culture that I didn't have to grow up with.
But all of a sudden they decided to move here,
and when you also think about the fact that they
have fifty Muslim majority fifty plus Muslim majority nations on
planet Earth that they could move to. Why are you
insisting on moving to the West?

Speaker 3 (22:47):
That is Christian?

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Even if we're not, you know, everybody's you know, going
to church on Sunday. This is in our turns of phrases,
our rules, our norms, our customs, the holidays that we celebrate.
This is a Christian nation. It still is, and we're
seeing this great revival. We do not want to have
to listen to the call of prayer what I and
I understand you have a different challenge as a lawyer

(23:09):
to sort of interpret the laws and the statutes on
the books. But what are the statutes on the books
or what what is lacking that would help protect and
insulate our culture from I would say an increasingly hostile
force that wants to assert cultural dominance on Americans and
the West.

Speaker 5 (23:27):
Yeah, I think the idea of what you can do
about different religions that would come in and really aren't religions,
they're more government and culture. They they don't assimilate. That's
problem number one. Any any religion that comes into the
United States that doesn't want to assimilate. That's the whole
purpose of the United States is assimilation. It's the melting pot,

(23:51):
not creating, you know, a new government from some other source.
And so so I think the issue there is not
the religious freedom side, is the immigration and who we're
allowing in and making sure that we are the United States,
that we we have a certain history and tradition and approach,
and we love diversity if they're coming here for the

(24:11):
ideals of America freedom.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
But I was saying, we don't have We don't have
a problem with ethnic diversity necessarily, we have a problem
with cultural diversity right now. It's not to say that
I don't love my Italian grandmother's you know, Canoli's, It's
not what I'm saying, like, obviously there's certain things. But
if you expect to come here into this country and
you expect to then matriculate your son or daughter into
my kid's school and now we have to make a

(24:37):
carve out for Muslim prayer five times a day, that
impacts my child's learning experience or they have to now
be educated on how to be you know, incorporated into
that experience. Much like we've seen candidly with the secular
cult of LGBTQ plus whatever the you know it's Charlie
always called the alphabet mafia. I mean that is that

(24:58):
was That was a coercive still is in many schools,
and you've you've had experience. Actually, I want to play
one of these cuts from years I want to talk
about that case. But this is a this is an
insidious cultural coercive force that you know, we have to Yes,
the immigration is key, and I totally agree with that.
We've been hitting that hard for a long time on

(25:20):
the show. You know, we're doing one point two million
Green cards a year and we don't vet for American values,
we don't vet for anything like that because we're a
bunch of suckers and we get taken advantage of. And
my argument is like, can we, at least as a
first step, go back to pre nineteen ninety Immigration Act
with George H. W. Bush, which took it from five
hundred thousand Green cards a year to one point two million.
We do not need the state of Montana every year

(25:42):
in this country, or the state of Arkansas every three
years in this country with legal immigrants, especially as Ai
is coming. I mean, we're already seeing Amazon has just
announced they're going to probably cut about six hundred thousand
jobs and replace them with robots over the next couple
of years.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
I mean, so this is coming. We do not need
this level.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
Of immigration, but the cultural implications are are unavoidable, right,
and so I totally agree, Yes, let's deal with the
immigration thing first, but we already have a problem that's
here and or at least a potential conflicts of interests
that are here, and you see that with the medi
Hassan clip. So I'm just trying to drill down on

(26:18):
this piece of do we have more because we have
more precedent historically, Do we have more freedoms?

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Do we have more rights to this than.

Speaker 5 (26:26):
Yeah, there's going to be more practices that are more
consistent with the Judeo Christian heritage or the founding that
are going to be laid in that are not going
to that would wouldn't be part of history, tradition from
other religions. They're not going to be so they're not
going to be automatically presumptively. Now again, what we're talking
about here, though, is not practices of individuals. Is when

(26:48):
you involve the government. That's what the whole issue with
the Coach Kennedy's case and this idea of you know
of of you're not doing the limit approach where oh
there's your own government grounds. Well you know, gosh, can't
do any of this religious stuff. They said, no, no,
as long as it's part of our tradition. Now I

(27:09):
say all this, We're about to argue a case at
the Supreme Court in less than two months over whether
you have a right to share your faith in a
public park. So you begin to wonder. Sometimes we begin
to lose who we are as a country. But I
feel good and I'm very hopeful we'll win that case.
But so that's different. But let's go to religious freedom itself,

(27:30):
not not with on the government lawn or whatever else is.
I really believe that religious freedom wins out. It's kind
of like free speech. If somebody's saying something you don't
agree with, the answer is not for the government to
stop the other's let's let's speak the truth, right, And

(27:51):
it's the same way with religious freedom, especially as a
as a Christian. I believe, man, you allow her to
be freedom. I think that I have the truth and
the Holy Spirit on my side, and you got no
chance on the other side, right, So that's what I want.
So that's one of the beautiful things about the Coach
Kennedy case is all these things that we haven't been
allowed to do. That's created almost a naked public square.

(28:14):
Right we should be. I mean, I love the fact
that we can have a Nativity scene at Christmas on
the on the government lawn, we can have a minora
for Hanukkah, and we begin to remember those moral and
religious roots of our country. And it's not this sort
of naked public square like we're moving into Marxism or something.
It's we actually have a different mindset that actually thinks

(28:38):
there is truth that is not about you know, the
oppressed versus the oppressor. It's very different. It's every person
is valuable in the eyes of God. You know, all
those principles start to flood back into our country. But
when we remove those from the public arena, we began
to lose those. When you push the Ten Commandments in

(28:58):
the closet and you do all these which is why
I love. If you've seen a number of states are
now passing laws, they're putting up Ten Commandments posters in
their schools, and they're teaching about these things as part
of our history and traditions and the beginning of our
laws and our thoughts in our country. That will really
change us, I think long term, and I would much

(29:18):
rather have that approach that allows for more freedom. Even
if there's you know, some things that maybe people don't like,
as long as they're not infringing other people's freedoms, you know,
they're welcome to go if you what.

Speaker 4 (29:30):
If you could make the argument that, you know, the
Muslim called a prayer five times a day is infringing
on my freedom not to have to hear it, although
they would say the same thing about church bells, which
is objectively a beautiful thing to hear. I mean, you know,
I mean, I would argue that even Muslims would think,
you know, oh that's a nice sounding tone, or maybe
they don't.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
Maybe that's if not to have neutral on that, I
think they'll have to have a neutral law. Whatever it is, right,
if it's if it's a noise level, if it's the
number of times a day something. I mean, people, there
is a right somewhat. I mean, you would want to
make that a right in your community to not be
disrupted by sounds all day, right. I mean, it would
be miserable if you're right next to one of these
places and you couldn't do your business. No, of course,

(30:12):
but those laws would have to be objective. It couldn't
be well, this religion can't do it, reg And.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
I don't think that's going to be a very satisfying
answer for somebody.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
I understand.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
I understand that you are bound by the laws and
you have to work within a legal construct. So I'm
not this is not pointed at you. I understand you're
kind of helping me navigate through what's possible what's not.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
But I think you're right.

Speaker 4 (30:32):
I mean, ultimately, this is a cultural issue that starts
with immigration, absolutely, and that's we're gonna.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Have to to get to. Now.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
I'm want to pivot somewhat to this. So the President's
commit has has formed a commission Religious Liberty Commission. Yes,
tell us about that, because you are directly involved in that.

Speaker 5 (30:50):
It's uh, it's the first time it's ever been done
in the United States. Commissions generally report to like an
agency or department or something, and I think they send
send a report and peers in the back of some room.
This one's really different. The charter of the Commission is
specifically to report directly and only to the President of

(31:11):
the United States, and we have to do this by
July fourth of our two fiftieth, which is the two
fiftieth celebration of religious freedom and the freedom of our country.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
One percent American maids aren't proud of it. The Charlie
Cirk Show.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
And it's all our job is to give him direct
recommendations on what he can do to secure religious freedom
for the future of our country. And so we're holding
hearings and we're hearing testimony. I think most people are
shocked when they hear what's going on around the country.
And we're coming up with some recommendations. And I have

(32:01):
no doubt with this president that our recommendations will not
be executed.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
You told me some crazy stories. Let's start with the
woman that got She's a teacher that got fired for
having across at her desk.

Speaker 5 (32:16):
Yeah, she's this is still going on. It's in Connecticut,
Marisol Castro. She's a wonderful woman, thirty three years teaching.
And if you could see the pictures, you know, if
you see it online, they've got a desk and they've
got a little wall behind them. That's their personal wall.
They put what their stuff on there, and you know
it's up in Connecticut. There's Yankees banners, there's you know, Yoda's,

(32:40):
there's all kinds of stuff. I mean, you could put
a gay Pride flag if you wanted. But there's one
thing that's not allowed. She has a little cross. It's
not that big, it's a little cross in the midst
of all those personal things. So principal, vice principal, everybody
comes flooding into a room saying you take that down.
And she's very intimidated by this. You know, she's scared.

(33:02):
And they say, I'll tell you what. We'll let you
put it under your desk, and they what had her
mount it under her.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
Literally a verse for this, like don't put it under
a bushel, like you know.

Speaker 5 (33:12):
It's like, no, you're right, you're exactly. Because she goes home.

Speaker 4 (33:15):
We have these images, so the studio is gonna put
them up in just a second. But she looks like
such a sweetheart. I'm just looking at this show a
picture of this woman.

Speaker 5 (33:23):
Her name is what Marissa, Marissa Marisol Castro, maris Marissa Castro.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
And then here go to go to two sixty four.
This is the picture of the cross in question. You
can see it. It's just like so where she would sit,
it's almost just down to her right side.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
And that was a violation.

Speaker 5 (33:41):
But they put it under her desk, like on the
side inside under her desk.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
There is a picture. Yeah, there's a picture of that too.

Speaker 5 (33:49):
And uh, and she, you know, she was intimidated. All

(34:11):
these bosses come in and and so she goes home
and just starts weeping. And as she says, as she
always prays to Papa God, she said, Papa God, I
failed you. And when I go back tomorrow, I'm I'm
going to do it right. I'm putting the cross back up.

(34:32):
And she went back and you can see that cross
under the desk. She pulled it off the desk, she
put it back up on her board, and then she
wants to spend it. They walked her out of the
school like with all of her stuff in a box,
like a criminal. And uh, they're still refusing to back down.
Uh and again think of oh separation of church and state.
It's like we look at the coach Kennedy opinion. Okay,

(34:55):
the whole argument they were making there was, well, the
kids might see him pray. It's like, and the Supreme
Court said, so, yeah, you know, I mean, he could
wear a dress, but you can't watch him pray. Of
course he could pray. And so there's nothing wrong with
a teacher being a person of faith having a cross
around their neck whatever. That's that's part of life. And

(35:17):
it's like they have an even they can't even read
the Supreme Court decision they have We've sent it to them.
This is the hostility that goes on to teachers, to kids,
to parents around the country that we have to fight
every day all over the country.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
Yeah, I mean, and then there's this. I mean, she's
just such a sweetheart.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
I hope.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
I mean, it sounds like you guys already should have
dealt with this, with the Lemon case where you got
that reversus Kennedy, all.

Speaker 5 (35:41):
Of this should should take care of it. But we're
we're fighting. We have one of the biggest law firms
in the world joined us against this school district, but
they're refusing to back down, and so we're we're still
in court. And you know, if people, I will say this,
they could go to the Religious Liberty Commission and watch
any of the past hearings. They're really fascinating. Encourage people
to do that. And her testimony, which is about forty

(36:04):
five minutes long, it was spellby. I mean it had
the whole place hundreds hundreds of people with their mouth open,
just floored. In fact, I didn't see a woman in
the room who didn't have a tissue. It was really powerful.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
She was.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
She spoke from her heart.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
Talking about you know, I failed you, Papa. Gut I mean,
well that's gut wrenching to just hear you even say that,
because you know that her faith was so sincere that
she knew not to hide her faith or let them
persecute her, and so she felt guilty. But I'm so
proud of her as a as a brother in Christ,
God bless her.

Speaker 5 (36:37):
And you know what, like that's not the type of
teachers we want for her.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Of course, I mean the people these are the people
that you do want leading our children, not the ones
that are doing hand signs to their neck. And Nathan
Hale Elementary Lucy Martinez that still hasn't been fired as
of this recording at least, and so we're hoping that
that happens. And by the way, you know, some people
are like, oh, well, you know they're upset that we're saying, hey,

(37:01):
if you celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder, that you should not
be employed to teach our school at our schools, whether
that be K through eight or it be a university
like Illinois State, where there was a teacher's assistant who
tried to flip over one of the tables of our
kids that were tabling out in the square, and that
that teaching is a teaching assistant has been fired by
Illinois State University.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
God bless them.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
And you know, here's another Illinois example, and this Lucy Martinez,
should be fired because you failed a fundamental decency test.
I call it Life's pop quiz.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
You know you got. It's like, how do you find
out the.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
Quality of the water and a glass well and it
gets gets bumped, it spills out, and you find out
what's inside?

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Is it gonna poison you? Is it clean? Is it
is whatever?

Speaker 4 (37:42):
Well, she got bumped and what spilled out was vile garbage,
and I'm sorry, but that reveals character. You're not fit
to be around students. And so some people are like, well,
you can't call on for these people to get fired.
And I'm like, well, listen, just because you're upset that
somebody's gonna lose their job or something, well, guess what,
Charlie lost his life for it, So don't give me that.
Sometimes there are consequences for your actions, and this should

(38:03):
be one of those examps.

Speaker 5 (38:04):
Celebrating anybody's death is unacceptable, totally.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
There's got to be a line.

Speaker 5 (38:08):
Doesn't matter who you are, it's unacceptable in any job
in this country.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Thousand percent.

Speaker 5 (38:13):
I mean, we you know that that should be automatic.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
Especially somebody as good and wonderful and as decent. And
I understand people have different algorithms and they get fed
all of this stuff, which is why we've made it
a point on the show to just debunk these out
of context clips or the divorce from the argument that
preceded it. For fifteen minutes, and they take one little
snippet and these people go around saying Charlie was a bigot,
a misogynist or something.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
It's infuriating.

Speaker 4 (38:39):
There's another story, however, that I wanted to get to
because you had told me about it. I actually still
haven't seen the clip, but apparently it went viral. So
you guys are having this Commission, and it's a hearing
to hearing. Maybe paint the scene because this young man
ended up wowing everybody.

Speaker 5 (38:54):
Yeah, it's we that one was the day. That day
was on the rights of students at public schools and
the rights of parents. So we heard some gut wrenching stories.
I mean, a mom who had her daughter transitioned behind
her back and they were keeping her in the dark,
and it's just horrible stuff you're hearing. But the President

(39:15):
shows up and out of all the people that are
going to testify, he picks one person and the person
he picked is when he was He was twelve at
this hearing, but he was eleven when this happened. This
is in Incinitas, California. They forced into school all the

(39:35):
fifth graders to read a book called My Shadow.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Is Pink to their kindergarten buddies.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. I'm Andrew Colvett,
executive producer of this show. We have a special episode
for you guys, and it's all about autism. This is
a conversation that has become very much front and center
in the national dialogue, of course, with the Maha movement.
RFK studies and this discussion about tile and all and

(40:40):
potential treatments for it, and so we wanted to make
sure that we address this issue head on, so you
guys have all the information that you need in order
to make wise decisions for yourself, for your family, for
your kids, and to help me make sense of this
is going to be a very special guest, Doctor Richard Frye.
You are a medical doctor, a PhD. You're a pediatric
urologists studying treatments for kids with autism. You're also the

(41:04):
director of research at the Rosignawn Medical Center, and you
were the president of the Autism Discovering Treatment Foundation. It's
very very amazing resume that you got there. And we
also have Riley Marty who's actually on our team as well.
And Riley is a passionate, passionate advocate for I think
it'd be safe to say for doing this the right way,

(41:25):
the right studies. You and your husband Ryan both have
some sort of medical background and studies in school and
that sort of thing, and so you're kind of our
resident expert. So I wanted Riley to be here with
me as we go through this very important topic. But
doctor Richard fry welcome to the Charlie Kirshaw.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Well, thank you so much, really, thanks for having me. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Absolutely, and so as I understand it, you have been
way out front on this issue in a way that
it was you know, you almost have to use that expression,
you know, they're not crazy, they're just early.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
That was kind of you, right.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
You were studying autism and ways to treat autism before
or it became part of our zeit guys, part of
our national dialogue. Tell me what made you start in
this way? What did when did you start noticing that
autism rates were increasing and why did you decide to
get so involved in this area of study.

Speaker 7 (42:13):
Yeah, no, I appreciate the question, and it's I'd like
to say autism found me, you know. So I was,
you know, very interested in neuroscience. I was talking to
Riley before, and you know, very interested in how the
brain works and the wiring of the brain. But being
a doctor, you know, you think of things beyond just
kind of academics of you know, the the interesting science

(42:36):
of it, of how to make kiddos better. So I
was actually very interested in learning disabilities when I was
in residency and I did a fellowship in learning disabilities
and behavioral neurology. But what was happening is, you know,
I was interested in dyslexia, but you know, as also
a doctor, and as a doctor, you know, and I'd
see patients. There was a lot of kids with dyslexia

(42:58):
and learning disabilities that would come to me. What was happening.
This was the early two thousands, and I was a fellow,
you know, and all these autism was being recognized more
and more. So parents were bringing their children to the
neurologists to say, my child has autism. You know, what
can I do about it? And of course nobody really
knew all that much about it, how to treat it

(43:19):
or anything. And when they come to the department, what
do you do if you know, nobody really knows, You
give the patient to the fellow, right see what they
can figure out. And so parents would come to me
and they would say, well, my child just got diagnosed
with autism. They say they don't know what causes it,
and they don't really know what to do about it,
but probably has something to do with the brain, so

(43:40):
maybe you can figure it out. And I kind of
took it as a challenge because you know, I wanted
to make these kiddos better. And I was doing my residency,
you know, in neurology, so we knew how to do
EEGs to look at seizure activity, and we know that
some kiddos with autism have strange type of seizure type
of phenomena, so I.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Knew I could do an EEG.

Speaker 7 (44:02):
Then and then a friend of mine had a child
with autism who had a mitochondrial disorder. And I had
been very actually interested in mitochondrial disorders when I was
in pediatrics, so I said, well, I know how to
test for that. Well, I can do that, so I
can do an EEG. I could do, you know, I
could look for mitochondrial disorder. And then I went on
to get a job and so in academia. I was

(44:26):
in academia for about twenty years, and I'd go to
the department of course, and my colleagues would say, you
know something about autism, because I have a whole clinic
full of them, and I have no idea what to
do with these kiddos. So they gave me all their
kids with autism. And finally I had to make my
own clinic that where I was seeing pretty much only
kids with autism, and as I saw more and more kids,

(44:48):
I started to figure out other things to do. And
as you know as neurologists, one of the things we
do when we can't figure things out was we do
what we call lumbar puncture to look at the cam
mystry in the brain to see if there's something wrong
with the chemistry. And I was at a very big
center and so we were very good at doing these things.

(45:09):
So I send kids for these lumber punctures, and I
noticed that the biochemical findings were abnormal, and I found
a couple of kids that had low fol eate in
their in their a nervous system, and I looked at
it about the same time, really, a cerebral fol eight
efficiency was really described in about two thousand and five,
so this is just a little bit about the same time.

(45:31):
I said this brand new research. I said, oh, maybe
I can treat it with this drug luc of orrin,
And I did, and the kiddos had some amazing results.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Well, and I want to poduate there because I actually
have a personal experience with this, not me, not my family,
but it was you know, Riley's been helping get this
interview set up and kind of telling me some of
the backstory, and I finally I was like, I'm literally
texting with a dear friend whose son is nonverbal, four
or five years old, and all of a sudden is

(46:00):
taking this drug and is adding words, additional words to
his vocabulary. He literally didn't talk, and now all of
a sudden, he's using multiple, multiple new words every week.
And the parents are ecstatic, as you might imagine. But
let's before we get to the to the Luke of
Orn conversation. I want to kind of take a step
back because Charlie had somebody on this show named Kramu.

(46:23):
He's he's got a Twitter account, x account, and he's
kind of like a statistician almost. He looks at big,
broad themes. And they discussed this wasn't that long ago.
They discussed whether.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Or not.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
This what we're calling this rise in autism is is
it more statistic? Is it more because we broaden the
definition of what autism is? Or is it really really
truly you know, what are they saying? What are the
rates in California one in twenty two kids or something
like that. In California, it's one in thirty across the nation,
something approximately like that, do you do you? I mean,

(46:59):
is it maybe a bit of both that we've we've
opened the aperture and now we're considering more kids with
learning disabilities or what have you, autistic and we just
simply didn't classify them that way. So it's it's misrepresenting
the numbers. Or is it also that there just simply
are more kids that are autistic.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
I think it's a little bit of both.

Speaker 7 (47:16):
Yeah, I know when we went from the different definition,
so we use something called the Diagnostic Statistical Manual and
Mental disorders to diagnose in the DSM, and we went
from the d s M four to five. We actually
thought it was going to be more strict and that
we'd lose, but instead we went the opposite way, you know.
And so they have studies that.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Show who determines the definitions.

Speaker 7 (47:39):
So that's that's a group, a group of experts that
look at these different symptoms and they decide how you
can best define these and and and that's one thing
that we have to understand. Yeah, and it's a limitation
of our diagnostic methods. So the DSM looks at behavior.

(48:01):
So all we look at is behavior, and when these
behaviors come together we say it's a certain disorder, and
we don't always look at the underlying biology. And that's
something that's really lagged behind, right, And it's many times thought,
you know, for a long time, thought maybe there wasn't.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Any biology to it.

Speaker 7 (48:18):
But we learn more and more that there is biology,
and the more we look into it, we find out
that there's actually medical causes that are causing the brain
and these behaviors to actually occur. So right now we're
still left at that point where we're using this behavioral
definition without having any blood tests or scans or anything.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
So it's the American Psychiatric Association which determines the DSM
guidelines exactly right, So you're saying that they are looking
at behavioral outcomes and not looking at the underlying biology
or in this case blood work or hormones whatever that you're.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Noticing that is deficient.

Speaker 4 (48:55):
So there's underlying But in an even deeper sense, is
there's something that's causing the underlying abnormal situation, whether it's
you were talking about full lates, is it like is
it our diet?

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (49:11):
Is it toxins in the environment, is it plastics? Do
we know more about what these underlying causes are.

Speaker 7 (49:16):
I think what we know is that it's complex, you know,
but definitely there are predispositions, sometimes genetic predispositions, and there is.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
Also a change between nineteen fifty.

Speaker 7 (49:31):
And well, this is the very interesting thing. Yeah, So
this is the interesting thing. And what I've started to
talk about a lot is this fact that you know,
a lot of people for a long time. For the
last twenty years, we've assumed that autism is genetic because it's.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Very heritable, relentless than spirit. You're listening to the Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 7 (50:06):
Show, Okay, and I think that most of what's heritable
is genetic, and that's not completely true, and that things
that are genetic are untreatable. Both of those things are
not true. So, first of all, what we're learning is
those genetic mutations are what we call de novo, so
they're non inherited, they're new mutations.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
So it's a.

Speaker 7 (50:29):
Kind of interesting way to try to think about it,
because yes, autism is genetic, but it's also environmental because
you have to get those mutations somewhere.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Okay, And that's an interesting question. When you're talking about mutations,
is that something that will happen in the parents' life.
So they're having kids, let's say at thirty, but something
happened between twenty and twenty five and a genetic mutation happened,
and then they pass that on or is it happening
in conception?

Speaker 7 (50:55):
So all of the above, And it's different for men
and women. Okay, because for for females, their eggs are
actually made when they're developing in their mother's room, so
you can go back to their mother the grandmother. And men,
we're making sperm all the time. So actually we can
have mutations throughout our life.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
What do we know what causes mutations?

Speaker 7 (51:19):
Well, there's all types of environmental toxins, so I think
we can look at one. You know, there's certain types
of toxins in the environment that we're exposed to that
cause problems. And but there's also the other aspect, of
the nutritional aspect of it, and that's kind of where
the foll A comes into it too, is because you
know that we know that foll aid abnormalities will cause

(51:41):
problems with replicating DNA. So so we know that there's
two sides of it. One not having enough of good
stuff and having too much of bad stuff. So so
these are very complex. So that's why you can't really
say it's this or it's that. It's really this complex
tup of things that have changed in our society, both

(52:04):
probably poor nutrition and also may be more toxins too.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Could you give me a couple of examples of real
lived experiences that would actually change somebody's genetics, because, because
you're right, we sort of think of genetics as being
the set you know, formula, this is you've got, this
is your sequence of DNA, it's set for life. You're
saying those genetic mutations can happen in a human ing

(53:00):
lived experience. Would it be the cleaners that you use
inside your home? Is it smoking? Is it drinking too much?
Is it a traumatic experience? Is it stress? Like what
can make somebody's.

Speaker 7 (53:11):
Yeah, all of the above, right, I mean, you know
that's where we think of it, and not on the
autism of cancer. Right, many times we have cancer because
something has happened to the genetics of some of the cells.
And it's more of the cells that are replicating. So
some of our cells don't replicate, you've made them there there,
But there's also cells that renew themselves, and many of
those are the ones that are more likely to have

(53:33):
those changes because they're making new DNA all the time,
and what are those for mends that that's making the
reproductive cells the sperm, We're making them all the time,
so those are going to be more susceptible to having
those mutations.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I'm along the.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Way understood now, that's super helpful to know.

Speaker 4 (53:49):
So it's basically like a very complex situation just got
way more complicated, right, because exactly it's now more difficult
because of our evolving understanding of the way the human
genome works and the way cell replication replication works and
DNA replication works, that you could identify multiple nodes along
the life cycle of reproduction and development where you could

(54:14):
isolate a potential mutation which could then lead to autism
or other abnormalities.

Speaker 7 (54:20):
Right, And then we find that's just one piece of
It's it's the gen ICs. Sometimes there's pure genetic syndromes.
We know where it can be the genes that are
very but then more likely it's a genetic predisposition, and
then there's some type of environmental agent that interacts with
that to predispose to change the way our bodies work.
And we know that one of those major you know,

(54:42):
the most probably the most influential.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Environment you have is those nine months in your.

Speaker 7 (54:46):
Mother's belly, you know, so we know that that influences
the way that the baby develops. And you know, there's
been many links to certain types of both of course
low folate, but also and types of environmental agents that
can change the way that those cells develop and can

(55:07):
change the physiology. And so that's and that's one of
the mysteries we think of, you know, how do we
have this heritability right with without having necessary those genetic mutations,
you know, is because much of what we think is
happening is that that mother, the environment in the mother

(55:27):
is changing the way the baby develops. So you're actually
inherit inheriting changes that are due to the environment you
had in your mother's womb. And so let's say if
the mother has a problem with having processing folates, let's
say that's going to be transmitted to the baby.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
So the baby is.

Speaker 7 (55:50):
Going to develop that way with with abnormal folate metabolamy,
and that baby is going to to change its development.
Same thing with other types of outabolic disorders which we
find that run in families that uh that environment in
the mother's womb is going to be different. The fuels
that the baby gets, the different types of metabolites that

(56:13):
may be off because the mother isn't you know, metabolizing
things as well.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
That changes the way the baby develops. For example.

Speaker 7 (56:24):
And one of the studies that we did, and this
is associated with another study, it was a really good
study by the the Mount Seini School of Medicine, some
of my colleagues there. They did some really amazing research
where they actually can take baby teeth and baby teeth
start to develop at the end of the first trimester started.

(56:46):
So what you can do is you can go back
and look at what's deposited in that teeth and tell what,
tell what toxins, but also what nutrients the baby was
exposed to. Interesting and so one of the things rings
on exactly, exactly exactly. And so one of the first
studies they did a very very nice study that was
published in you know, Nature, one of the best journals,

(57:07):
where they showed out of twins that the twin that
developed autism that they were deficient in zinc and manganese
in I think about the second or third trimester. So
for some reason that nutrient wasn't getting to that baby,
and there was changes in the physiology that baby. We

(57:30):
actually showed when we you know, were very interested in
mitochondrial function, we showed that the function of the mitochondria
as a child was actually correlated with those levels of
maganeses and zinc that they had prenatally. So this is
a change that happened prenatally that then probably programmed the

(57:51):
physiology how the body works long term.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
So what was the difference could they tell between the
two twins?

Speaker 2 (57:58):
So yeah, so so that was divided mitochondria.

Speaker 7 (58:02):
So so we found that, well, they found that there
was the zinc and manganese, and we found that those
nutrients correlated with mitochondrial function later on in life.

Speaker 4 (58:11):
And know was that a genetic I guess predisposition of
the of the autistic.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Right, So we don't. And so that's still an open question.

Speaker 7 (58:19):
Why did that twin, you know, get more of those
nutrients or less?

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Letting everyone out socialism sucks the Charlie Kirk Show.

Speaker 7 (58:45):
All we know is that they tended to get more
or less of those nutrients for some reason. And so
then you have to go back and ask why why
was one delivered to one child and not the other.

Speaker 8 (58:56):
So in regards to mitochondria diseases, if you are pre
if a mom is predisposed to a mitochondrial exce link disease,
what would you suggest or is there anything that that
mom can do if she's planning on having a baby,
if she's currently pregnant, to help minimize those risks of
the baby inheriting that disease.

Speaker 7 (59:17):
Yeah, well, well, first of all, if it's a genetic disease,
you know, yeah, you know. So we divide these into
what we call mitochondrial disease and mitochondrial dysfunction. So what
we find is that some type of mitochondrial disease is
due to actually problems with the genes, you know, and
the genes that run the mitochondria. What we're finding is
that there's many other diseases, including autism, where the mitochondria

(59:41):
isn't working well because other parts of the body aren't
working well. So it's trying to compensate for other factors
that are not working correctly in the cell, so it
might be working harder. So we actually find that some
kids with autism, their mitochondria actually works twice as hard
as it should be. And it puts it in actually

(01:00:02):
in a more vulnerable state. Is that we found some
have this more mitochondria that work not very well, and
that's more of the mitochondrial disease standpoint. So yeah, there's
so there's two aspects of it. If if a mother
has mitochondrial disease, if they have the child has that gene,
you know, then you know they're going to be more

(01:00:23):
predisposed for their child's body not to work well. But
if they don't have that gene, we have to make
sure that the abnormalities and metabolism and the mother is
not interfering with the baby the way the baby grows.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
So is this like the the new front line the
forefront of the research that's going on with autism is
how to identify these abnormalities prenatally and treat them.

Speaker 7 (01:00:47):
Yeah, in the womb right exactly right, preconception, you know,
So if we can figure out you know, right, So
we're finding is that many of these metabolic disorders and
inflammatory disorders run in fair families, you know, and they
may be influencing the baby when and when the baby
is growing, you know, uh, you know, prenatally. But if

(01:01:10):
you can go back and identify those things before time,
you know, and control them, then you have a much
better chance of the child. It could be supplements. Yeah,
so so there's there's really.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
What are the treatments?

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yes, so I would say.

Speaker 7 (01:01:25):
For really very simple things, okay in this and you know,
and we've written some blogs on this that it's not
even that difficult because we know things that that predisposed
to autism and intellectual disability. You know, folate, you know,
iron iron deficiency, you know, thyroid abnormalities, you know, and
cornantine cornantines.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Really that's a really important.

Speaker 7 (01:01:49):
Vitamin that helps with what we call fatty acid metabolism,
but it's also important for clearing a lot of toxic
molecules from your body.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
So it's really important.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
So I have like a thousand questions. Yeah, I'm sorry,
I was just like my brain is spinning. So say
you're twenty eight year old couple and you're thinking we're
about ready to start a family, maybe you're twenty five.
Could they go to a doctor like you and be like, hey,
run some tests, see what I'm predisposed to. And you
would do some blood work and you would test their

(01:02:22):
levels and you'd be like Okay, you're good, good, good.
There's a little bit of lightness here. You're not in
a fol aid or there maybe some indications there's a
mitochondrial situation or this vitamin I can't even remember.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
The carnity, Yeah, cantin.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
So here's some supplements here, try and switch your diet
like this. I mean is that essentially you know you've
got a diyroid situation, so we want to deal with
it right, And you would do this pre trying to
conceive a child.

Speaker 7 (01:02:45):
And yeah, so that's the idea, is that preconception. You
actually look at how the body is working, to optimize
the way the body works, and then you do things
that are smart. There's another foundation I work with called
the Neurologic Health Foundation. We have something called the Healthy
Child Guide, and so we what we did is really
review the literature to see what evidence there is, you know,

(01:03:07):
even vitamin D. So there's really simple things.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
Talking about vitamin D all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
Yeah, and it's not waslie about COVID but yeah, it
was a big believer in it.

Speaker 7 (01:03:17):
Yeah, but these are simple things you know that you
don't have to do any fancy tests or anything. They're
very simple things that if you watch, you know, and
you make sure you get ahead of the game, you
know that you can increase the chances of your child
being healthy without chronic disease. We find a lot of
these things not only really to autism, but other types
of chronic disease, especially inflammatory disease like asthma and eczema

(01:03:41):
and all these.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
Other So are there genetic markers that you could also
screen for? Like when me and my wife we you know,
had our first child, our daughter, we you know r
obgyn did a genetic screen to see if we had
any inheritable diseases. We didn't, thank god, But could you
do a test like that? That is a new iteration

(01:04:02):
of it that would test for you know, is that
does that test exist when it comes to autism to
see how likely you might be in certain risk factors
or whatever.

Speaker 7 (01:04:12):
Well, so there's a so there's a difference between two things.
There's mutations. So when they do those genetic tests, they
look for things called mutations, and and those are changes
in the genome that will absolutely cause some type of disease.

Speaker 4 (01:04:25):
Both parents usually share the share the same market exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:04:29):
But there's now we're looking at things called polymorphisms. So
polymorphisms are small changes in the gene that are very
common and make your body work better or worse.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Okay, and you can.

Speaker 7 (01:04:43):
What we try and do is look at these changes
to see how maybe some of you know, if you
have a pathway that has a number of weak spots
week links, maybe you need to be supplemented in one
way or the other. You know, And this is and
it's very complex. So we combine this with not only

(01:05:03):
looking at the genetic changes, because one of the problems
with looking at combinations of genetic changes, right is you
have twenty three thousand genes in your body. So you know,
it's hard enough to look at all those twenty three
thousand genes. Think if you're going to start to look
at all those combinations, you know, So this is what's
what's really kind of limited us in a lot of ways.
So you have to be smart and how you look

(01:05:25):
at those things. And then you really have to look
at the biochemistry, that is, what do those changes do
to the function of the cell.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
So it takes a lot of science.

Speaker 7 (01:05:34):
To come up with with really very definite recommendations. So
now we know some of these polymorphisms, how things work
a little bit worse or better, but still the science
of what that solution is develop is still developed.

Speaker 4 (01:05:52):
But that's what you are doing. Yeah, we're looking at
that is the purpose almost of your professional career, right
right right, looking how to take the science and then
apply useful.

Speaker 7 (01:06:04):
Treatments exactly and and then if we can do things. Yeah,
and that's that's the thing, is that these things may
be preventable, and that's the only way we're going to
reverse you know, the trends right now.

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
Well, it's it's just one other question on the trends.
Do you notice a difference in boys versus girls as
far as autism rates? It seems to be a my
impression at least is more boys are getting it in well.

Speaker 7 (01:06:25):
Definitely more boys have autism or diagnosed with autism and girls.
And there's different theories of why that, you know, maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):
Which prescribe to most. Are you open mind?

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
I'm open minded? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
What are some of the theories?

Speaker 7 (01:06:39):
Well, I mean some people think that it has to
do with changes in the endocrine systems, so certain types
of toxins can be endogrine modulators that change things. It
may be that girls are more resilient. You know because
X y right, they have two X chromosomes, so that
they're they're more resilt.

Speaker 4 (01:06:59):
Levels up the redundancy, they have more redundancy victim.

Speaker 7 (01:07:03):
They think that, and some people just think that women
are more their brains are more socially wired, so it's
harder for their brains to change, so they have less
you know, social abilities.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
They kind of are compensated already.

Speaker 4 (01:07:17):
Interesting, So and this is why why don't you come
in here, Riley and explain for our audience, because I
know it enough to be I would say fifty percent
right here. But essentially, there was a big press conference
that came out earlier in the year RFK. It must
have been a cabinet meeting basically said we're gonna we're

(01:07:38):
doing a moonshot we've got We're going to find out
what the cause of autism is. And this is going
to take our conversation into this foll a taile and
all this drug that we talked about. I always forget
the name Luku Luca Luca of Orn, which is apparently
amazing for a subset of autistic.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
Conditions. So give us, give us.

Speaker 4 (01:07:59):
The the update of doctor of the FDA, Doctor Marty
McCarey came out and gave some presentation recently, and I
think it sparked as much confusion as it did hope
in clarification, So walk us through what he announced.

Speaker 8 (01:08:14):
Towards the end of September, RFK as well as FDA
Commissioner doctor McCarey McCarry had announced this approval FDA approval
for Luke of Warren to treat kids with autism. I
think a lot of people thought at the time it

(01:08:35):
wasn't very clarified as to if this is for all
autism cases or if this is just for a subset,
if you could go into detail on how this isn't
necessarily a cure all for autism, but it is a
step in the right direction for where we are right now.

Speaker 7 (01:08:55):
Sure, So yeah, to clarify the announcement, the FDA is
not approving it for autom so they are approving it
for genetically confirmed cerebral full eight efficiency. And so that's
kind of the model as we think many kids with
autism have cerebral full eight deficiency, what we call insufficiency,
not enough FOLL eight. So it's it's very different that

(01:09:16):
genetically confirmed cerebral full eight efficiency there's about forty seven
cases actually described, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
And so you know, so kids are now approved to
take luc right.

Speaker 7 (01:09:27):
And so yeah, and and and I get from the
from the FDA, And you can understand, I mean, if
they were to say, oh, I'm just going to suddenly
approve this drug, you know, I mean, that would just
open up a you know, a Pandora's box of you know.
So they what they did is they looked at these
forty seven cases, you know that where and when you
have that you know, those few cases there what we

(01:09:48):
call case studies. So we have very dense clinical data
that shows, okay, you give this medication, this is exactly
what it does to the body. You know, so we
can definitely say, you know why this happened then, and
this actually was a therapeutic agent. So when you look
at large numbers like kids with autism, you don't have
that very granular data where you can see that. So

(01:10:11):
so the idea of lukavorin, So lukavorn is a type
of folate vitamin B nine. And it's really important for
everybody to understand that that lukavorin and and what we
call reduce folates are very different than folic acid, So
we think of folic acid, that's the folate that we take.

(01:10:34):
Folic acid is the synthetic form of the drug, and
and uh, there's certain caveats because of that. Because of that,
our body has to actually activate it for folic acid
to be useful in the body, and we have an
upper limit to how much we can activate and certain uh,

(01:10:58):
you know, estimates have put that about four hundred micrograms,
which is what's in kind of a high dose multi vitamin.
So if you need extra foliate in your body, if
you have some type of follid deficiency or your body
systems need extra folate, you can't do that with fullic acid.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Because you can only process so.

Speaker 7 (01:11:16):
Much exactly exactly, so you have to use special types
of foliate like lukavorin.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Some people use five hyperpetro hydrofoli. You know.

Speaker 7 (01:11:44):
Lucavorin is something that's been around for eighty years almost
so it's been used to treat to rescue the body
from the side effects of chemotherapy. Okay, so we've used
it for eighty years in oncology, we can if you've
injected it, and I.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
Was that because that treatment created a full.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Of Yes, exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:12:06):
Yeah, so so we know that cancer cell is one
of the ways that they grow quickly is that they
need a lot of folate. So one of the treatments
is to block folate. But then you don't want the
body to get sick, so you have to you know,
supplement full eight that so so, so lucavorn has been
around a long time. So that's one of the reasons
that it was started to be used because it's really

(01:12:27):
a known quantity. So that's great, you know, we're starting
out with something that we know. So what what was
found is that some kiddos with autism had what we
call cerebral full eight efficiency. And this was going back
to about two thousand and five or so. So yeah,
it's it's it's well, no, it's actually not the forty

(01:12:49):
seven cases because it's very interesting when this was first
discovered that that there was low folate. As I had mentioned,
you know, we do lumbar punctures, we find there's low folate.
And so a doctor by the name of doctor Rainmakers
in Europe discovered this and he noticed that these kids
that either weren't developing or actually had regressed, had lost

(01:13:10):
skills very early on. He did lumbar punction. He found
there was low folate and we know that the major
way that full aate gets into the brain because everything
that is the brain has to be carried there, there's
a big barrier is this thing called the foll eate
receptor alpha. And so he said, okay, that was his
first idea was there must be a genetic problem with it,

(01:13:32):
and so he sequenced a gene in these cases. He
didn't find any genetic mutations. So that's when he collaborated
with doctor Edward Quatros, who's at Sunny Downstate in Brooklyn,
who actually had been working on that same full a
transport mechanism but for women's health, and had discovered that
there's this antibody that the body makes. So you know,

(01:13:53):
antibodies usually you know, attack viruses and bacteria and such,
but this but sometimes you're he makes anybody's against yourself.
So you found that some people had this antibody that

(01:14:16):
attached to this mechanism, this pump that brings folid into
the brain.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
And so they tested those kids for.

Speaker 7 (01:14:23):
That antibody and they found that that yes, indeed, most
of those kids had this antibody. And that's the reason
why fullate wasn't getting into their brain?

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Interesting?

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
How So that's what so luc of worn.

Speaker 7 (01:14:36):
So, so what's interesting is so the levels of folid
in the brain are two to three times higher than
they are on the blood. So what's important about the
full receptor alpha is that it actually pulls follid into
the brain. So it has to pull it uphill right
because of the higher concentration. So if that's not working,

(01:14:57):
how do you get full aid into the brain. Well,
there's something called to reduce full a carrier, which is
a backup system, but it doesn't like fol aid as
much and it doesn't pump foliated into the brain. It's
kind of like a tube. So I say, like the
full eight receptor alpha is kind of like a fire
hose that puts full aid into the brain, and the
reduced folly carrier is like a straw. So now what

(01:15:20):
we have to do is we have to push full
aight through that straw and a special type of folid
it only transports reducee fol eight. So what we have
to do is increase in the blood levels of reduced
fold AD and essentially now push it into the brain. Okay,
to restore those levels and so that's what that's where
luc of worn comes in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
So is luca of oren just a special type this
what was the second type of.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Reduce reduced fol aid useful?

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
It is that what it is?

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
Yes, it's a special You're.

Speaker 4 (01:15:51):
Just flooding the system with essentially, yeah, which is making
it easier for this backup system to have enough to
sort of ex through the tube into the.

Speaker 7 (01:16:00):
Brain exactly to balance out the chemistry and the brain exactly.
And the great thing about B vitamins is there what
we call water soluble, so at the end of the
day you pee them out. Sure, so they have your
body has a safety mechanism where you can't they can't
build up in your body. So that makes them very safe, Okay,
and we say, like the worst you can do is
make expensive p.

Speaker 4 (01:16:21):
Right right exactly. So this is kind of full circle
to this. My friend's son who is nonverbal to four
or five years old, and it obviously was terribly stressful
for the parents. And you know, they were asking questions
because we got this vaccine, did we over you know
that those were where their heads went, did we overdo

(01:16:43):
the vaccines? And so luca of orn comes in within
the last I guess month, and all of a sudden,
verbal skills are developing with their son, and they are
over the moon ecstatic. I mean, it's every day a
new word or a couple of new words. And I've
seen some of these videos of them. Mo I'm just
so excited, you know, because she loves her little boy

(01:17:04):
so much, of course, and all of a sudden watching it,
and it's because of this drug. So you're saying that
probably it's or at least it's possible that this kid
and I have not asked follow up questions of you know,
the diagnosis, but what you're seeing a lot is that
there's actually an antibody that is working against the body's
ability to get fol eight through mechanism one, yes, the

(01:17:28):
normal mechanism into the brain, which which is helping with
verbal processing and social skills.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
Yes, yeah, okay, so.

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
That's probably the diagnosed you would you would probably guess, right.

Speaker 7 (01:17:37):
So what we find now there's other reasons too, So
that's kind of the most prevalent and straightforward reason.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
Now.

Speaker 7 (01:17:45):
Also, as I said that this full a receptor alpha
actually pulls FOLLY into the brain, so that takes energy.
So it ends up that if from the mitochondriasm working
that also that's another reason. And so and we found
that in individuals with mitocon disorders that have cognitive issues,
actually that that is the mechanism sometimes that they have
some cognitive issues, and there's another mechanism that we can

(01:18:08):
help those souls.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Describe what mitochondria is.

Speaker 4 (01:18:14):
Just for people who don't know, I mean, the mitochondria
is like a weird thing to be because it doesn't
have its own DNA and it's it's like it does
power center of the cell. And I mean there's like
crazy theories about where mitochondria came from, and we don't
need to go into that, but like, just explain what
mitochondria is.

Speaker 7 (01:18:31):
Yeah, So, so mitochondria we think of it as the
powerhouse of the cell. It makes the energy currency of
the cell called ATP ATP, so it takes it can
usually takes carbohydrates, but it takes fats also, it can
take amino acids and take all these things and it
can make energy. But and your cell has anywhere from

(01:18:52):
hundreds to tens of thousands of minochondra depending on cell,
each cell, each cell, so you have many of.

Speaker 4 (01:18:58):
Them, and it's different neetically from.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
So it has its own it has its own genome
to it.

Speaker 4 (01:19:04):
Which makes a complex situation incredibly much.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
It's much more complex.

Speaker 4 (01:19:08):
Because you not only have your DNA than you have mitochondria.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Which you inherit from your mother. And then it ends
up that not all of.

Speaker 7 (01:19:18):
Mitochondra that you have, if you have a hundred mitochondra,
not all of them may have the same DNA, Some
may have mutations on it, and we call that heteroplasmy
So that's that makes it even more complex to understand
how you know, mitochondrial DNA and MI Chondrial inheritance goes
on top of what we call medelion inheritance. So, and

(01:19:39):
the mitochondria DNA also is very sensitive. It's more sensitive
to environmental stressors.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Okay,