Neal Tricarico

We should stop shaming autism and embracing those superpowers.

But then also, as we've understood from these other kids, they don't want to see their autistic friends die, but they also want to see their friend's body shamed or shamed because of their...

you know, orientation or differences or their upbringing.

And so, yeah, man, I think that's what this is really grounded about is helping these teens who know what to do to transcend from shaming to not only acceptance, but appreciation, acknowledgement of those gifts and superpowers.

For sure.

And I agree.

I mean, just generally speaking and not trying to be flippant, I'm a firm believer in all of us have our journeys to arrive where we have.

And when I think about your story and your impact on such a wide scale at such a young age, absolutely.

And you had to overcome some adversity or struggle to transformation to make that happen.

And I think that there there are opportunities for these kids with this diagnosis to to grow and thrive in a way that's not separate in shaming, dropping that disorder, integrating them because.

yeah they're they're they're beloved anthony's friends are beside themselves like if this could happen to anthony it could happen to anyone they're shocked did his friends have it too or what was the friend group so yeah great question i mean most of anthony's friend group did not um it was i mean like i said early on when he was a baby um that initial friend group did and one of the things that's really fascinating

about Anthony's story is how hard he worked to learn the skills to fit in into an emotional world when he was an unemotional person.

So I would say the majority of his friend group were not diagnosed, or excuse me, did not have the diagnosis.

And most of them didn't even know he did.

Wow.

That's how- He hit it well.

He hit it well.

He hit it really, really well.

And for us, that's what was most confusing because here you have this kid with a 4.6 grade point average, 4.6, multiple AP classes, thrived in martial arts, was a black belt, took on challenges.

He was in a...