Why Gen Z Is Abandoning College and Returning to Faith | Sage Steele Show | EP 85

Summary

The Sage Steele Show, EP 85: Why Gen Z Is Abandoning College and Returning to Faith

Date: December 10, 2025
Guest: Isabel Brown (author, podcaster, Gen Z commentator)
Host: Sage Steele

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Episode Overview

Main Theme:
Sage Steele welcomes Isabel Brown to discuss the shifting attitudes of Generation Z toward higher education, career paths, and organized religion. The episode explores why many Gen Zers are increasingly skeptical of traditional universities, re-imagining education through homeschooling and co-ops, and, most notably, experiencing a revival of faith as the foundation for their lives and work. Isabel shares powerful stories from her own life—including her pivot from elite college ambition to a state school, her activism as a conservative campus leader, her journey to motherhood, and the deep influence of faith and community. The conversation also honors the legacy of Charlie Kirk, his role in inspiring revival, and how Gen Z is redefining the American dream.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Value of College: Is It Broken for Gen Z?

• Rising Skepticism of Traditional College
  • Sage shares personal regret over expensive private college tuition for her kids:

    “And two of them went to schools that were $80,000 a year. So what the hell were we thinking?” (03:29)

  • Both discuss the growing appeal and long-term value of trade schools and entrepreneurial paths, referencing recent Wall Street Journal coverage:

    “The billionaires 10 years from now are going to be trade people... because they can't be replaced by AI.” – Isabel (04:00)

• Changing Cultural Narratives
  • Isabel notes societal pressure on high schoolers, where “where are you going to college?” is assumed, not “what are you doing next?” (07:21)
  • Growing movement inside Gen Z families to reclaim agency over their children’s education, with a surge in homeschooling, co-ops, and alternative models.

2. The “Rot” in the Education System & Calls for Reform

• Isabel recounts the historical context behind the ideological shift in universities, referencing the American Communist Party’s stated goals decades ago to infiltrate education and media (05:14).
• Critiques “brainwashing” and lack of intellectual diversity:

  “Now it’s not [liberal arts]. Now it’s just brainwashing.” – Isabel (04:44)

3. Experimenting with New Educational Models

• Isabel and Sage discuss innovative approaches—nature schools in Idaho, homeschool co-ops, hiring private teachers in small groups (12:00–14:00).
• Isabel’s family decision:

  “We are completely all bought into homeschooling for our kids, at least for the first several years.” (11:08)

4. COVID’s Impact on a Generation

• Discussion about the developmental and psychological fallout for young children, particularly regarding missed opportunities for emotional growth and social interaction:

  “Psychology experts and mental health experts are devastated by today’s four- and five-year-olds...” – Isabel (14:20)

5. Isabel’s Personal Education Journey

• Elite Aspirations & Disappointment
  • Isabel shares how she was told to chase elite universities, faced multiple rejections, and ultimately, a moment of discernment on a Colorado mountaintop (16:47–19:18).
  • Ultimately chose Colorado State University, graduated debt-free, and later wrote a book about being a conservative on hostile college campuses.
• The Power of Faith and Family in her Education Choices
  • Her parents’ sacrifices, her own experience at public/private schools, and later, higher education at Georgetown.
  • Isabel credits her faith for guiding college decisions:

    “I also think it was God in many ways. I think it was the discernment of the Holy Spirit...” (20:37)

6. The Role of Activism & Facing Persecution

• Recounts organizing a major conservative speaker event at CSU, facing threats, protests, and the deployment of the National Guard (26:37).
• Shares the impact of continued activism and the costs of speaking truth:

  “To constantly, every day have to answer the question, am I willing to die for this? I think is a whole new realm…” (43:45)

7. Loss, Grief, and the Revival After Charlie Kirk’s Death

• Sage and Isabel reflect on the enormous impact and global revival sparked by Charlie Kirk’s death.
• Isabel describes the rush of vigils, renewed faith among young people, and Charlie’s own evolving emphasis on faith:

  “I think he probably would have said... he was willing to give his own life up for people's souls to be saved..." (41:06–42:16)

• The importance of carrying the baton and continuing the work of spiritual revival.

8. Motherhood, Marriage, and the Beauty (and Challenge) of Family

• Isabel describes falling in love with motherhood, balancing an ambitious career, and the support of her husband (58:16).

  “As much as she loves making content, she loves being a Mother even more. I'm so lucky to be her husband." – Brock (58:16)

• Pushback against fear-mongering and anti-family sentiment online:

  “I hate that this has become the norm, that young girls are terrified of pregnancy…” (51:41)

• Story of faith’s power in childbirth—using prayer as comfort during labor (54:14).

9. Church, Faith, and Controversies in Catholicism

• Both discuss struggles with Catholic leadership, especially public stances on controversial political issues (70:00).
• Isabel stresses distinguishing between institutional Church teaching and statements by select bishops:

  “The leadership bishops who are in these leadership positions are going to influence… But ultimately, my heart has been so softened... that can't be more important to me than church teaching ultimately as it's existed for 2000 years.” (70:42)

• Argues that Gen Z is flocking to liturgical, high-tradition churches—not despite but because of rules and structure (84:42–87:04):

  “There is a shocking number of millions upon millions of young people today all over the world, at record numbers, becoming Catholic specifically... What they love about the Mass and what they love about the structure of church hierarchy is that it's not about them. Yes, it is entirely about God…” (84:43)

10. The Influence and Responsibility of Public Voices

• Isabel describes lessons learned from Charlie Kirk—every person can influence their cultural circles, not just public figures (87:57–90:13).
• Her evolving mission: Less about telling people what to think, more about creating venues that revive curiosity, faith, and family.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On College and Opportunity

• “We just need to stop valuing something that no longer has value or the same amount of value anyway.” – Isabel (04:44)
• “What we thought was normal… I love that the normal is being kind of cracked in half and blown up a little bit…” – Sage (14:09)

On the Deep Roots of Education’s Issues

• “They specifically wanted to push socialism through the American education system, mostly through the universities, and to foment student protests…” – Isabel (05:14)

On Faith in the Face of Grief

• “Charlie is still alive. He's just alive with a different zip code and a different address.” – Isabel (38:27)
• “God still does work all things together for good...” (37:12)

On Parenting and Reviving the Family

• “Motherhood has given me… such a passion to do what I do. Because it's not for me, it's for my daughter and her generation and the next generation.” – Isabel (49:19)

On the Church’s Strength and Resilience

• “Jesus Christ himself promised when he established the church that the gates of hell will never prevail against this church.” – Isabel (74:42)
• “Of all things, actually, my faith shouldn’t be about me. My faith is about God.” – Isabel (84:43)

On Gen Z’s Uniqueness

• “God is raising up an amazing generation with Gen Z… be willing to lay our lives down, literally and figuratively, for freedom in a way that we've never seen.” – Isabel (63:19)

Powerful Epiphany

• “Wisdom is not necessarily correlated with age or with a particular background. Wisdom is a gift from God and if you constantly pray for it, … God will immediately give it to you.” – Isabel (94:40)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Trade Schools & College Skepticism: 02:57–05:08
• Communist Goals in Education: 05:14–06:24
• Reshaping the College Question: 07:21–08:36
• Nature School and Homeschooling: 11:08–13:55
• COVID Impact & Emotional Fallout: 14:20–15:09
• Isabel’s College Journey & Decision: 16:47–19:19
• College Activism and Persecution: 26:37–30:35
• Revival After Charlie Kirk’s Death: 38:30–42:16
• Family, Parenthood & Embracing Motherhood: 49:19–58:16
• Contemporary Catholic Church Conversations: 70:00–74:42
• Gen Z’s Return to Faith and Structure: 84:42–87:04
• Isabel on Cultural Influence & Mission: 87:57–92:47
• Conservative Voices at CNN: 92:55–95:37

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Conclusion

This episode is a thoughtful, personal, and often moving examination of why Gen Z is rethinking the traditional paths society has set—from education to faith and family. Isabel Brown’s blend of personal testimony, cultural critique, and spiritual passion exemplifies a generational shift—one that looks past prestige and instant gratification toward fulfillment rooted in tradition, faith, and meaning. Throughout, Sage creates space for both seriousness and joy, modeling the very kind of open, courageous, and curious conversation Gen Z is now making its own.

Transcript

[Sage]

Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree. Zoe, this thing weighs a ton.

[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you britches. I'm not.

[Sage]

Of course he did.

[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

Monthly bill credits for well qualified customers, plus tax and $35 vice connection charge. Credit sentinel balance due to payout earlier. Cancel Finance Agreement. 256 gates, $830. Eligible Ford in a new line, $100 plus a month plan with auto. Check out 15 minutes or less per line. Visit t mobile.com she is one of the strongest, most educated, authentic, brilliant voices in American culture. And she's a gen zer. Isabel Brown. She's a young wife and a new mom who's hosting her own show. She's speaking to literally millions of people on her social media accounts every day. She's writing books while getting a second master's degree. And again, she's a new mom. She's a new baby girl. Isabel is led by her faith in God, and she is determined to help uplift and empower people to speak the truth simply by speaking the truth herself. She affected me in so many ways today and taught me so much Isabel Brown on this episode of the Sage Deal Show.

So I knew I could depend on Isabel to do. To wear the socks, of course. And I brought you. And you saw me that they're. You saw me taking the tag off, right?

[Isabel Brown]

It is proof they are new socks.

[Sage]

All my guests are like, really? You're giving me used socks? So you choose first. It's getting cold here in Nashville this week, right? So what the heck?

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, my gosh. No. I got off the plane and I thought it felt so warm because it's getting really cold in D.C. now. You're right.

[Sage]

You're right. You know, I used to live there 100 years ago.

[Isabel Brown]

Did you really?

[Sage]

All three of my kids were born there.

[Isabel Brown]

Really? I didn't know that either.

[Sage]

Yep. I don't think they even know that we've moved so much since. It's like, oh, where are we going?

[Isabel Brown]

This is so fun.

[Sage]

No, thank you.

Do you know that like, however many. When was this? This is probably, this is probably 15 years ago. And my kids are now 19, 21, 23. So probably 15 years ago. If this looks like I have plants growing out of my hair, it's fine. I'm gonna move it back. My husband at the time, and I don't yell at me, I'm just gonna pretend like that didn't happen.

Probably 15 years ago, my husband and I were talking ex husband. About the kids and college education. And at that time, even there was, I think it was the first time I recall publicly, people saying, huh, are these four year universities that are costing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth it? Because the job market, even at that time, it's like, okay, fine, certainly it fluctuates, but for the cost. And as we were trying to save up to have three kids in college at the same time until last year, my oldest graduated from college. I had three in college last year at the same time.

[Isabel Brown]

That's a lot.

[Sage]

And two of them went to schools that were $80,000 a year. So what the hell were we thinking? And so there was a discussion about trade schools and all the wonderful opportunities out there where you are guaranteed a job that's never going to go away. I mean, it will be much harder for those jobs to go away, I guess. I guess you could have robots coming in as plumbers, et cetera, but it's very different then from many other majors, et cetera. And then it's like, well, that's just weird. Never mind.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, it's like not good enough, basically.

[Sage]

Yeah.

[Isabel Brown]

Was it Wall Street Journal? I don't know. You might have seen it. Gloria. Somebody ran a huge newspaper article about this yesterday that the billionaires 10 years from now are going to be trade people. And it was really interesting that those will be the true billionaires by value in our society because they can't be replaced by AI. It was a great story, actually.

[Sage]

Makes a ton of sense.

[Isabel Brown]

It was Wall Street Journal. Nice. Good memory.

[Sage]

Thank Laura. It actually makes a ton of sense because if you do it and you start it off and maybe it's you and your buddy, your frat brother, you know what I mean? And then you build it into an empire.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, it's huge.

[Sage]

Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. And it's, relatively speaking, I think probably easy to do, you know, So I screwed up is what we're saying.

[Isabel Brown]

No, can't go back retroactively. Right. But I think we as a culture can say, you know, we just need to stop valuing something that no longer has value or the same amount of value anyway. Or even just reforming the university system to the point that it's not the liberal arts anymore. That used to be such a powerful renaissance education. Now it's not. Now it's just brainwashing.

[Sage]

When do you think was the turning point for that?

[Isabel Brown]

It's hard to tell. You know, I, I did a whole episode of our show about this right at the beginning when we launched. But it came to my attention about like two years ago that the American Communist Party, the legitimate Communist party, had read into the congressional record 60 years ago on the House floor what their goals were. To take over the United States of America. I don't have the exact list in front of me, but I'm paraphrasing literally to take over the education system, to take over the media, to undermine the church, to make it easier to get divorced, to. To use the psychiatric profession. We were just talking about social workers to divide society even further. But the educational piece was really fascinating, that they specifically wanted to push socialism through the American education system, mostly through the universities, and to foment student protests and all kinds of activism with students on campuses across the country. That was a goal 60 years ago.

[Sage]

No way.

[Isabel Brown]

So I don't know if that was the inception of all of this, if they were tapping into something that was already happening, I don't know. But I think it's easy for us to try to look for like a pinpoint moment on a map. And I don't think it's that simple. I think it was people very intentionally behind the scenes that we will never hear about who they were planting the seeds to make that happen later.

[Sage]

And it's like a true evolution almost to get to this point. I think sometimes I'm amazed by that concept though, that 60 years ago that this really was planned and the seeds were planted. Because I'm like, gosh, that takes a lot of patience for these people to have this decades long plan to take over America, frankly. But yeah, there are people who are willing to wait it out. I think to me the scary part is that there's some real evil in that and they're amongst us everywhere, so that can go full Circle to do we need these colleges and universities? Yeah, I think part of it is the difficult part is going. One of many difficult parts is going to be getting that mentality out of the heads of most Americans who are like, well, this is just what you do, you know, and it's not where it's not are you going to college after high school, it's where are you going?

[Isabel Brown]

Yep. That's the only question 18 year olds get. So I've really started. Charlie taught me how to do that, actually. Not asking seniors in high school, oh my gosh, where are you going to school? I always ask, oh my gosh, what are you doing next? And I try to get excited for them about that. It's just so interesting that we have framed the American experience around the university system because even 100 years ago, it wasn't a universal thing that we went through. Same thing with K through 12 education. The public school system as we know it right now really started about 100 years ago. Before that it was the homeschool co op, one room schoolhouse mentality or private education. And that's not long. In the grand scheme of human history, that is a blink of an eye. So look how bad it's gotten so very quickly. I think watching young families realize I need to take ownership of my kids education now when they are a baby, let alone waiting until they're 12, 13, 14, or going to college and saying, oops, I probably should have been more involved. That's really promising to me. But also just goes to show how deep the rot is in the education system that we don't as a generation even feel comfortable sending our kids to preschool anymore. Why would you, why would you farm out the most crucial development of your children to psychos who are literally installing litter boxes in elementary schools across the country to let your kid believe that they're a cat? I mean, that's crazy.

[Sage]

Do you know that my daughter's high school in Connecticut had. Yeah. And there are things I think she started to not tell me because she knew I'd mouth off and then embarrass her. And that's a real thing too. When parents try to start to speak up, sometimes their kids, they just want to be normal kids and they're willing to just push through it and ignore it. So what's that line for parents, you know, where we have to, I think, make a decision and say if we don't speak up about this at the school board meeting, or maybe it's just a private meeting with a teacher, you know, then it's going to. It's going to continue. You guys. You and your awesome husband Brock are Okay. How old is Isla now? Six months.

[Isabel Brown]

She'll be seven months at the end of the month. Yeah.

[Sage]

Oh, my gosh.

[Isabel Brown]

I went way too fast. I'm, like, losing my mind to Belly.

[Sage]

I know. You're like, she's seven months old. It's over. I know, but it's funny, because of what you do and what he does, you're probably already thinking about that. Who knows what it's going to look like 18 years from now.

[Isabel Brown]

Totally.

[Sage]

Yeah. But, like, if you had to decide today for your baby daughter, what kind of education would she get post high school?

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, well, I'll start pre high school because I think that's really important to lay the foundation for everything. I told this story at an engagement I was speaking at in California to college students last week. And I don't think I've ever told it publicly before, but we were married in the Catholic Church. And the process to get ready for your marriage, it's called pre Cana. It involves a whole retreat weekend and spending a lot of time answering the really big questions. And honestly, regardless of what denomination of Christianity you are, I think that should be required for all Christian families going into marriage because there are so many things you never think about to talk about money management and how we're going to educate our kids, and what are the household responsibilities of everyone. That seems like, oh, we'll just talk about it later. But to know what your plan is up front is so, so important in establishing that type of communic. One of the questions we were asked at our weekend retreat when they separated the husbands to be and the wives to be in our little workbook was, how do you plan on educating our kids? What's important to you in our children's education? And then we all came back together and we were reading through our answers. My husband handed me the little workbook and it said, government public schools are indoctrination camps, and they are a scam, and my children will never set foot in public school. And we started crying, cracking up, and everyone was staring at us for laughing hard. But I said, oh, yeah, that's my husband. To me, right there, we are completely on the same page. I was very fortunate. My parents grew up very much struggling through their whole life. They paid their own way through college and law school, working multiple jobs and dealing with debt and all of that. And their number one priority when I was growing up was to give their children private education. Because they never had access to that when they were growing up. They preferably some sort of religious element in that as well. So I never attended a public school until I went to public university in my home state in Colorado. And what's fascinating now is the stories we're hearing from families with more kids who are younger than us or our neighbors or whatever, all going to those same schools. Sometimes their horror stories are worse now than the public school system in America. The stories I hear from Catholic high schools and from religious environments all over the country about the LGBTQ stuff, about the pronouns, about Trump being a racist, about destroying MAGA and all of these things in the name of quality education and trying to break through, you know, just the indoctrination you'd get in the public school system. It is worse in many, many, many ways in the private school system now too. So I don't even know that they would make the same decision now, knowing what they know now that we dealt with as children. And I think that really tended to start right after my youngest sister graduated from high school in 2020. But now we are completely all bought into homeschooling for our kids, at least for the first several years of their education. Who's to say if that prevents them from going to a traditional high school? But I'm researching this so ferociously because I'm so excited about learning what people are doing to reinvent education for their kids. Just a few weeks ago, we did an episode on my show with some amazing people I've been following for a while in North Idaho. I grew up in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, for several years, my childhood, my mom's from there. They started a nature based play school basically for kids age 0 to 7. They only take less than 20 students every year on their farm just outside of Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. And every day they're learning about physics while they're sledding down the hill, or they're learning about math by counting out all the ingredients for for the farm to table lunch that they're gonna make in the greenhouse. School most dreamy thing you've ever seen in your life. But it's so indicative of where we're at as a country right now that people are really starting to ask the hard questions of what does real education actually mean? And what gift can I give to my child to set them up for success later on? Is it really chaining them to a desk for eight hours a day with basically no interaction with their peers anymore? Recess is being cut Every five minutes. Is it keeping them inside and in this hyper structured environment that doesn't really lead to learning or curiosity in any way, but just gross memorization so that you can pass the test and move on. Heck, most kids in America are struggling to even read today or past basic math standards. And so I'm loving that literally all of our friends are saying no to traditional education. They're homeschooling, they're starting co ops, they're hiring private teachers for five to 10, 10 families. And I think that type of creativity is what we'll tap into.

[Sage]

Oh my gosh. It's overwhelming to hear in some ways where I'm like, gosh, did I fail my kids? And no, I didn't. It's a different generation. And I think we, we did what we thought was right at the time.

[Isabel Brown]

Totally.

[Sage]

And what we thought was normal. And I love that the normal is being kind of cracked in half and blown up a little bit because look what normal. Look where that's gotten us. Oh my gosh.

[Isabel Brown]

Even just to think about COVID with so many of these really young kids. Psychology experts and mental health experts are devastated by today's four and five year olds because their entire early life they didn't even get to learn how to read facial cues because everyone was hiding behind a screen. So they have no emotional regulation of how to respond to people. Body language is completely off. We truly have in many ways, so set an entire generation up for failure. I don't think it's too late if we can tap into that now and try to bring some of that back. But just disrupting what was normal as a generation while we come into adulthood, I think is so, so important not just for educational outcomes or getting into the best colleges or getting a job when you graduate, but just to restore basic human sanity in society again.

[Sage]

So what was that transition like for you then? Going from, I guess a non traditional education outside of the public school system through high school and then you go to Colorado State University. Right.

[Isabel Brown]

I never in a million years planned on going to a big public school. In fact, I said adamantly, repeatedly, I am not doing that. And I don't know if it was because of how I was raised and the education I had growing up, or it was my guidance counselors in my ear constantly telling me, you have a 4.5 GPA, you're almost going to be valedictorian, you're the captain of the speech and debate team, you play sports like you do all the things you have to go to an Elite school. You have to go to an Ivy League school or something comparable. And so that's all I planned for, really. And constantly, everyone was affirming that in my life that that was the only way I was going to be set up for success, because I needed to be surrounded by people at the same caliber as me, and that was going to push me to a successful career in the future. I was pre med, going into college and actually finished college pre med as well. I love science and I always have, and I really wanted to use that as a mechanism to help help people. But I've also had a huge affinity for politics and the like, as well as a personal passion of mine. Loved doing that through speech and debate in high school. My parents are both Catholic lawyers, so we talked a lot of politics and religion at our house. But ultimately I knew I wanted my career to be based in science. So I applied to all of the Ivies, almost every single one of them. I applied to all of the most prestigious schools on either coast. My absolute dream was to go to the University of Notre Dame. And I was shattered when I was waitlisted from early decision. They deferred me to the regular decision pool, and then I ended up getting waitlisted and didn't get off the waitlist.

[Sage]

That's shocking.

[Isabel Brown]

It was. It was really sad. Although I went to a Catholic high school, so, like, everyone was applying to Notre Dame, and I think they only gave one spot to our school that year, which was very unusual. Usually they gave four or five, but it was a weird application cycle year, we were told. And I will never, ever forget, after getting rejection letters from Harvard, from Duke, from Boston College, from Notre Dame, from Stanford, from all of the schools, everyone told me, you have to go to these schools because that's the type of applicant you are. My guidance counselor in 2015 looked at me and said, well, if you were black, you probably would have gotten in to all of those schools. And I just remember thinking, why would you even say that out loud? First of all, that's insane. I don't even necessarily believe that's true. Now, of course I did. But 10 years ago, it was a complete, completely different tapestry of American culture. And I found myself totally out of options. But I still felt the need to go to the most prestigious school that I got into, which at that time was Santa Clara University, a small Jesuit school in the Bay Area about an hour south of Stanford. And tons of people from my Catholic high school were going. I had a roommate built in. I had a class schedule Ready to go. But I kept hearing this little voice that was probably my mom and dad all summer saying, do I really want to go $200,000 into debt before I even go to medical school because I need the prestigious diploma. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And so that kept eating away at me. And I was a summer camp counselor the first summer after high school at the camp I grew up going to. It was my absolute dream to work there. And I was leading a backpacking trip for teenagers from all over the country through the mountains of Colorado, where I grew up. No cell service, no nothing for two weeks. And all of these kids are sitting around a campfire saying, you really love Colorado. Are you sure you want to move to California? Are you positive? I realized I had made a horrible mistake. So at the top of a mountain in Keystone, Colorado, the first time I had cell service in two weeks, I called my mom as I summited a huge peek and said, I think I made a huge mistake. Can you help me? Please? Please help me. This was two weeks before freshman year was supposed to start.

[Sage]

No way.

[Isabel Brown]

And Colorado State University had given me a very, very generous scholarship, had admitted me to their honors program, really went out of their way to roll out the red carpet. And previously, I had thrown my acceptance package in the trash away from them because I said, I will never go to a school like this. I can't go to a school that has a 70% acceptance rate. That's so not prestigious. That's terrible. They reinstated all of my scholarships. They got me into the best dorm on campus. They put me in the honors program two weeks before school started, and I graduated debt free at the end of all of that.

[Sage]

Oh, my gosh.

[Isabel Brown]

Which was completely the right decision to make. That said, I did not have the normal college experience of everything being fantastic in an amazing community. I literally wrote a book, book, actually, about how insane college is these days for conservative students. And I really was on the front lines of that early on as a turning point USA student activist, right as Antifa was coming onto the scene. All kinds of death threats and failed grades and, you know, the whole. The whole enchilada that college students have to deal with today. But had I gone back and made any other decision, I wouldn't have the career that I have today. I wouldn't have had the same opportunities that I have today. All because I went to my state school an hour and a half up the road where I could graduate debt free after eight. Everyone said that's so embarrassing. Why would you do that?

[Sage]

The fact that you realize that at that age, at 18, basically, it's pretty impressive. Have you ever thought about that where, I mean, that obviously completely changed the trajectory of your life. Most people I feel like, don't realize, you know, I'm going for the wrong reason. I'm going to Santa Clara for the wrong reason until many years later or maybe after you get there. What was it about that moment? And I'm picturing you. I've been to Keystone, Colorado, at the top of this peak. Was it hiking and being around friends who just made you look at things differently in this beautiful state that you'd grown up in?

[Isabel Brown]

Partially. I think my love of my home was really drawing me to realize I don't need to go somewhere thousands of miles away to find my happy place. This is my happy place. But ironically, I also think it was God in many ways. I think it was the discernment of. Of the Holy Spirit and gifting me wisdom to realize, you know, that's not where you're supposed to be right now. I'm calling you somewhere else instead. Which feels ironic to me, largely because my faith was so important to me as a teenager, and going to a Catholic university was also very important to me. Notre Dame was my ultimate dream school because it's like the Mecca of Catholic universities in our country. And ironically, I kept hearing years later from my friends who did end up going to Santa Clara. Almost all of them transferred out after the first year. Just how horrifying the indoctrination really was. Because it's the Jesuit education model, which we call Cath lish more often in the Catholic world than truly based in faith. But, for example, my friend was volunteering with the Students for Life group there, the pro life organization on campus. And the administration told them they couldn't make announcements at Mass about when their organization was meeting because it might offend people to do talk about abortion on a college campus, a Catholic college campus, mind you. And I thank God every day I wasn't in that environment because, you know, I was very strong willed. I always have been very strong willed in my opinions. I knew what my values were going into college. But to know how many of my friends went to college with a very strong foundation of faith, had very strong conservative values, were raised by very conservative people, and within six months were completely different people because they had been brainwashed by that type of a system. My university was very bad, but I also was surrounded by enough people that shared my values that I Was able to push through some of that and find the courage to stay to my convictions. I don't know that I would have had that same resolution had I been in California.

[Sage]

Oh, my goodness. And then I did see you right after Charlie died.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah.

[Sage]

To go back and. Was it a planned event?

[Isabel Brown]

It was. Yeah. For sure. This is gonna be hard to talk about. Every time I think I'm done crying about all of this, it comes back. So forgive me.

[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

That was the next stop on Charlie's tour to go speak at Colorado State. He had first come to CSU in February of 2018 when I was the chapter president there and we had become pretty good friends over the previous few months that I had been going to Turning Point conferences and being involved on campus. Back then it was like 500 kids that went to all of these conferences. So Charlie had everybody's cell phone number and he was regularly checked in on everybody and asked how he could help with all of the campus events and everything. And college tours were very new concept at that time. It really was only Ben Shapiro and a handful of other people that were speaking to these huge auditoriums full of people. And a few weeks before I had gotten this phone call. If you recall, UC Berkeley's campus was like lit on fire because of a conservative speaker with Antifa being a brand new organization. So Charlie picked up the phone and he called me and late 2017, early 2018, and said, I think I want to come speak on some campuses this semester. Can I come to Fort Collins, Colorado? Enthusiastically, Obviously, I said, yes, we would love that. Please come. This is so important to me. My school had hosted Bernie Sanders twice in the past year, paid for by our tuition dollars, mind you. And Angela Davis was scheduled to speak later that semester. If you're not familiar with her, she's literally a Communist party activist, very notorious on the left, and nobody remotely conservative was ever allowed a stage at my university. But I fought really hard for it and it was approved, the event was approved. And for about three, four months, I ended up having to take an incomplete on the semester in all of my classes because I could barely be on campus because I was getting constant death threats, people threatening to rape me. My address to my apartment was doxed online to my one bedroom apartment just off campus, because I was that Turning Point girl, that Hitler Youth Barbie, the Nazi captain of campus, for inviting someone to speak about free speech on a federally funded college campus. And that was terrifying at the time, obviously, but also very invigorating because I could see just how important it was that real academic freedom and diversity of thought come back to a college campus, which ironically, is the job of the administration. But instead it took one student being willing to do that and really pales in comparison with what so many students are dealing with now, unfortunately, several years later. But lo and behold, he came to campus. Everything went off without a hitch. Insane protests were raging on outside. The Colorado National Guard had to be deployed to our college campus with snipers on top of all the buildings. They were terrified of Antifa because this was a new organization who all over the Internet for weeks and weeks was threatening to bus people in from various states all over the west to descend upon our college campus and terrify people from going to this conversation about free speech and from disagreeing with people. But about 1,000 people ended up coming. It was huge. It was very, very successful. And Charlie really got the itch from campus events after that one. That really was the most controversial thing he had ever done. And they had him back to campus the year after I graduated when we. My sister was the president of our Turning Point chapter. So fun. And that's really what spurred the entire idea of all of his campus tours. So I knew on this biggest and best tour they've ever done, he wanted to come back to Colorado State University to bring the question full circle. And that was the second stop scheduled after uvu. So I got a phone call about three days after he died, and the field program very graciously asked if I would be willing to go and headline the prayer vigil in his honor that the university very graciously opened up the football stadium for, because they were expecting so many people there. And 10,000 people from all over Colorado came. It was so touching, very powerful moment. But it just was that first, oh, my gosh, this is really real, like, he's actually not coming back moment. And I think that's been still hard to wrap my head around now. Ten weeks, ten weeks later, I saw.

[Sage]

A picture of you, I think, standing on the football field. Maybe it was right after. And I don't know if it was with your husband, but I stared at it. Yeah, I just was trying to put myself in your shoes, which is absolutely impossible of what that must have felt like after really going out there praying with 10,000 people and so full circle in so many ways, and wondering at that moment what Charlie was thinking, because I know he was watching. Of course I know he was watching what you were doing. What do you think he would have said to you after that? Oof.

[Isabel Brown]

Almost exactly a week before he died. So that event happened almost exactly a week after, but almost exactly a week before week. And one day, I saw Charlie for the first time in nine months. Really. And lo and behold, we had both been independently booked to be the only speakers at this pro life fundraiser in Visalia, California, which is just outside of Fresno, at a big, beautiful church for an interdenominational audience of about 3,000 people. And I was so excited to see him. I hadn't seen him in months and months and months, not since we had told him about our baby at Mar a Lago last December. And then I saw him at Students for Life's conference related to the March for Life. A few weeks after that, I had a big old baby belly, and he was so excited for Brock and I. So was Erica. And then life happens. You know, those of us who do what we do, we're constantly on airplanes. I ran into you in the airport just the other day, Sage. With the stroller. So we all live out of suitcases, and it's just constant, constant, constant go, go, go. And so every time I've seen Charlie in the last two, three years, with the exception of Mar A Lago, where we spent about an hour together last year, I usually see him for, like, 15 minutes, and it's, hey, I saw that TikTok. Great post. Oh, my gosh, your hit with CNN was insane. Great job. Hey, did you tell the president? So and so.

[Sage]

Awesome.

[Isabel Brown]

Great work. See you in six months kind of a thing. And totally randomly, we had, like, two hours to kill at this event between a VIP dinner with some of their more senior fundraisers and the actual open event, open to the public. And they had given us separate green rooms. But I didn't end up bringing my baby. It was just me. And so naturally, Mikey swings the door open, and Charlie says, get in here, Isabel. We need to catch up and have so much fun. And we spent about two hours together with Charlie out of one eye, watching the Cubs game, and then out of the other side of his mouth, just trying to talk about all deep manners of theology and the church. And really all he wanted to talk about was heaven, which I found so fascinating. We had a very, very beautiful conversation about theology.

This was a week and one day before he died. This was Tuesday. He died the following Wednesday. And if you know Charlie at all or you ever spent any time with him, he would really debate himself every time he talked to his friends. He wanted you to play devil's advocate and go back and forth, forth. But that's how he discerned different things and how he tested out different arguments and how he developed critical thinking is he would ask you the really tough questions, expect you to give him kind of a devil's advocate answer, and then say, okay, but what about. And we did that for about two hours about church history and theology and Mary and heaven specifically, is what we really focused on there at the end. Interrupted, of course, by a FaceTime call with his daughter for the end of the Cubs game to sing the winning song, which is their. Their tradition together as a family. And she kept asking, daddy, when are you coming home? When are you coming home? And that will always rattle around in my head. But then he went out on stage, and I kept thinking to myself, charlie is always in such a hurry. He always talks really fast. He moves really fast. He answers questions really fast. He always acted like he was running out of time with his life. But for whatever reason, he felt really slow and soft and methodical when we were hanging out in the green room. And when he went out on stage, there was just a different tone that he was portraying in this speech than I was used to. Not that it was bad, it was just different. And I remember standing just offstage, I had given my speech and then I came off and he spoke, and then we did a Q and A together. While he was finishing up his speech, I looked at the event organizer and I said, surely in another life, Charlie Kirk was a pastor because the way that he captivated this church audience, talking about heaven and the role of the church in trying to transform this world to be more like the next one, there was just this sense of wisdom just radiating from him, from the Holy Spirit. And she laughed and she said, maybe someday he still will be. And he wrapped up his whole speech by saying, we're about to do some Q and A, and I'll welcome Isabel back on stage for that. But before we get into that. I know, I know, I know. I always get this at church audiences. One of you is going to ask me, Charlie, I got it all figured out. Jesus is going to come back next Thursday. We're all going to be in heaven next Thursday. So I can use eschatology, end time theology as an excuse not to act in the world. And we can't do that because it doesn't matter if Jesus is coming back tomorrow or next Thursday. And he kept saying that we have an opportunity and an obligation to act in the world. That's what we're called to as Christians. We can't just be in the world. We have to be constantly engaging with it and trying to transform form it every day. And that didn't phase me when I heard it at the time. But a week later, when the organizers reached out and sent me the clip of his speech when I asked for it, I heard that. And Charlie died the following Wednesday. So for him, it was true that Jesus did come back next Thursday. And I don't know if that was some sort of premonition that he had or just total happenstance wisdom from God that that came out of his mouth, but it was so prophetic. And that's exactly what I was thinking about when I was standing on that football field a week later, just knowing, I hope I'm doing what I'm supposed to do here. I hope I'm picking up the baton and trying to act in the world, even when it is terrifying to go do an outdoor event on a college campus a week after all this has happened. When Daily Wire is Screaming at me, do not go do an outdoor event, please. We cannot protect you yet. We haven't figured that that out yet, but I had.

[Sage]

Why did you do it?

[Isabel Brown]

I had a sense of calm about the whole thing and knowing that people.

Saw what happened in such a surreal circumstance, I'm incredibly blessed because I never have seen the video. And I pray to this day I will never see the video for the rest of my life. Because that's not how I want to remember Charlie. I want to remember the hug I gave him off stage when he jumped in the car a week beforehand. But it felt so. This can't possibly be happening. As people were hearing about it and certainly as they were watching this video, especially in the era of AI Generated everything, it's just so hard to discern what is real and what's not. I still struggle to this day. Is Charlie really gone? I'm gonna see him in six months. I always wait and see him every six or nine or 12 months.

And so I think just giving people the venue to come together and to realize the severity and the reality of this, but also to see people pray and have hope and say over and over again, God still does work all things together for good. That was really important to me to be able to host that venue for people. And Turning Point was going to do it anyway, obviously. But to have the opportunity to come back to my alma mater and share that with people in my community was really special.

[Sage]

Do you think he was watching you?

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, of course. You know, I firmly believe kind of Charlie. Yeah. Charlie's more alive now than he was here. Right. And that's hard for us to remind ourselves of because there's such a vacuum and such an emptiness. Someone said the other day that we keep watching all these clips of Charlie as if he's on a campus right now. And there's all these video clips coming up always, and they're re going viral every five minutes. It still feels so surreal. Of course he's still here. That video could have been made yesterday in just a few weeks, months, years. Our technology is going to be so different. That format of video is going to feel so outdated, and it'll be nostalgic before we can even blink and think about it. So in many ways, I think Charlie will feel frozen in time for so many people that way. But Charlie is still alive. He's just alive with a different zip code and a different address.

[Sage]

These days.

I've been blown away at, you know, the word revival has been used so much since his death. Like Almost immediately afterwards, and I can't think of a better word, and the depths of. To which it is going, where people from all over the world have said, okay, I want to open my Bible, I want to step back into church for the first time in a decade. Curiosity, feeling the need for comfort, questions, et cetera. I have family members as well who are changed by it. Many older who had never seen any of his clips. And now that's all they watch. What are you seeing really globally since the death of our friend?

[Isabel Brown]

The revival aspect, I don't think Charlie ever could have foreseen for himself. I think he probably would have been hopeful about it. Certainly you watched an evolution in his priorities, in what he talked about, in the things he was most passionate about throughout the last several years of his life. When I joined Turning Point USA in 2017, the objectives of the organization were like three tiny bullet points. It was free markets, limited government, and free speech. And that was pretty much it. That's all we ever talked about. And actually, we were encouraged not to waver from those things. We just wanted to keep the baseline of this is what we can all come together on. And we need to build the big tent of the conservative movement again, which worked gangbusters. And a few years after that, you really started to see Charlie move away from. He called himself a conservatarian, like, I'm very conservative, but just do whatever you want to be way more bold on offense about what it really means to be a conservative, which he believed was completely rooted in an identity in God. And it's our country's rooted identity in one nation under God, who we were founded to be. And he just fell in love with this zeal and passion, with his faith that I don't think we had really seen publicly before that, and wanted to share that with as many people as possible. So as he was sharing that and the organization started sharing that, that started to become blended in in a very natural, organic, beautiful way with the conservative movement. And I know he was very, very proud of that. Certainly was fighting for that every single day in his show and the speeches he was given. But I don't know that he saw it bleed out into the rest of culture beyond the conservative movement. We didn't certainly until he died and you watched thousands of college students and teenagers in city streets in London and South Africa and Korea and South America. The videos and footage I was getting from people all over the world of prayer vigils happening everywhere was so astonishing because it just showed that that really was his greatest legacy. It was leading people to so much bigger, important priorities than saving the country. That is important, and we should be fighting for that. But my husband asked me the other day, do you think if Charlie was asked during his lifetime, would you give up America to save souls around the world? He would have said yes. And I said, yeah, I think he probably would have said that. And ironically, in many ways, I think that's what he did. He was willing to give his own life up for people's souls to be saved and to bring as many people to heaven with him as possible. That has given all of us just a fire under our butts at an easy time where it would be easy for us to say, yeah, I'm done. Peace out. I'm moving to Wyoming, to the woods. I'm never speaking to any of you ever again. See you never. We have the courage to keep going because ultimately this life is not permanent. It's temporary. And what we're fighting for has to be so much bigger than the downloads of our podcast or who we're electing to the Oval Office or what color is occupying the majority of Congress. Those things are important and we need to keep fighting for them. But if we're not trying to actively transform the souls of people, then what are we honestly even doing here? You know, guys, thanks for helping me.

[Sage]

Carry my Christmas tree. Zoe.

[Isabel Brown]

This thing weighs a ton. Drewy, lift with your legs, man.

[Sage]

Santa.

[Isabel Brown]

Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not.

[Sage]

Of course he did.

[Isabel Brown]

Right, Santa, you know my elf, Drew here, he handles the nice list. And elf, I'm 63. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies, right? Mrs. Clark Claus.

[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

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Oh.

[Isabel Brown]

I honestly, I struggle to answer this because I really do feel like a different person in the last 10 weeks. Like, 10 weeks is nothing, but it feels like it's been a lifetime, honestly. And I think there is a level of who I am that's always been the eternal optimist and in many ways, kind of naive about people's good intentions. And let's all link arms together and sing Kumbaya. That's gonna feel great all the time. Not that I think every person is like that. I've been working in the conservative movement for almost a decade, so I get it that there are very bad people out there. But I think this was so beyond any of our realms of realistic expectation for the cost that it takes to speak up and more importantly, to lead people to God. We know throughout 2000 years of history that when you tell people the truth, and truth has a name, that name is Jesus Christ, you're probably going to be very, extremely persecuted for that. But we attach martyrdom to the Coliseum and people getting eaten by Lions or St Peter being crucified at what is now the Vatican but 2,000 years ago. Or we think about martyrdom as. As mass villages being slaughtered on the other side of the world at the hands of an Islamic extremist regime, which is happening today. And that's horrifying. It doesn't get any media coverage. I don't think we ever saw somebody sitting on a college campus answering a question about the gospel and five seconds later being shot in the neck and instantly killed in America, in Utah, of all places. I mean, this was so beyond our wildest expectations for how dangerous it was to speak the truth. But it's been an escalation for the last several years. Our bank accounts have been locked down. Not me, but just generally people in the movement, we struggle to go out without security, and we have to really think about all of these things. On college campuses. A lot of people have to fly private because they can't fly commercial anymore. Our kids have to be homeschooled. I mean, these are real things that we've had to deal with for a long time. But to constantly, every day have to answer the question, am I willing to die for this? I think is a whole new realm of motivation for what you're talking about every day. And for me, in my content, I really strategically made a switch about two, three years ago to stop just talking about conservative politics. I love conservative politics. I could talk about it for 10 hours a day. But I saw a shift in our country, particularly with our generation, that political conversations had expanded so far beyond traditionally what we call politics. And to go influence people's day to day life, we have to talk about what freedom food they're eating every day and their relationship status and do they want to get married, are they having children? Where do they go to church on Sunday, what are they talking about in school, what's their favorite TV show coming out of Hollywood? And what values is that instilling in their life? And so we really created my show several years ago when I was doing it independently, to be the top of the funnel for the conservative movement, that I could go out and talk to people about what's trending on TikTok or a silly movie or your favorite food company. And that would bring people into those more pointed conservative conversations, like a Charlie was hosting on his radio show that really has dipped more into theology than I ever imagined that it would in my content. Not because I don't like to talk about it. I'm actually studying theology for my master's program right now at Notre Dame. So life comes very full circle crazy. But I've just had to look at myself in the mirror every day and say, are you doing this episode for clicks? Are you doing this episode for more subscribers? Are you doing this episode to feel good about yourself or to say something outrageous or to poke the bear? Or are you genuinely trying to tell people the truth and to lead them towards ultimate truth, which is God. That has to be the foundation for every single thing you're doing. And the importance of that in the wake of Charlie's death just feels like an elephant sitting on your chest level. Important every day. And it's hard. It's hard to walk through that every day because it's a responsibility given you this platform and you this platform stage, because you're supposed to do something with it. And it's not based on personal motivation or ego, which happens a lot in the influencer world, in the podcasting world. But I really think he's blessing people in very powerful ways these last few years who are living in the light and trying to transform our society for the better. So on the content side, I think my motivations are just so profoundly different. I'm very passionate about electing the right people and pressuring Congress to pass the right bill and making America more affordable and reviving the American dream. But far more important than that, if I'm not transforming people's souls to go to heaven with me once we all die, then there's literally no point to what I do every day. And so that has to be the foundation for everything. And of course, we'll still have fun. We'll still do the silly reaction videos and all of those things too, because that's who I am. It's my personality. But I just think the gravity feels a lot bigger. And on the personal side, Charlie's number one question he asked anyone ever was, when are you having kids? When are you getting married and having kids? And he had the biggest smile on his face when we surprised him with the news. We were pregnant at Mar a Lago last December. I had a very tiny bump then, but it was so fun. And he dropped everything. We were at a fundraiser, I think it was for Prageru, and a bunch of older individuals were dying to take pictures with Charlie and were lined up around the pool to take pictures for an hour and a half with Charlie at Mar a Lago. And he sent all of them away. He said, I'm going to talk to my friends for a minute. You guys all go away. And he and Erica spent an hour and a half just like, infusing all of their parenting advice about everything. How to sleep through the night, the childhood vaccine schedule. You have to buy this product like this is everything we've learned. We're so excited for you. We're so excited for you.

[Sage]

Oh, my gosh.

[Isabel Brown]

And to know that he just had that level of zeal and passion, not just for his own family, which of course he had, but to revive the American family was invigorating. I mean, truly, it was so life giving and energetic. I want that for everyone. Now that I have experienced the life changing journey of having my daughter, I am truly a different person as a mom now than I ever could have been. I view the world completely differently. I leap out of bed every morning even though I haven't slept in eight months because I have such a passion to do what I do. Because it's not for me, it's for my daughter and her generation and the next generation. And just the sense of purpose and fulfillment motherhood has given me. And I see it in my husband's life, too. I want that for everyone. So I plan on having a whole lot more kids. That's number one at home. But I want to share that with all of our friends and family and everyone in our community as well.

[Sage]

It's amazing. And you always hear it, you know, before you have kids and during that first pregnancy, like, okay, it's going to change you forever. And it's. And then you give birth and you hold her for the first time and it's indescribable.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, it is.

[Sage]

Right? And as tough as pregnancy and delivery can be for some, I mean, I admit I had three really easy experiences with all three kids. I'm so blessed for that. But it does go away the second, regardless of how. The second you hold her and then it's like, oh, my gosh. How would you describe that moment for you and then for Brock as Isla was born?

[Isabel Brown]

Well, it's indescribable. So I will come to that part. But I actually wanna touch on something you just said about having easy pregnancies and deliveries. I too, was extremely blessed with a very, very easy pregnancy and very easy delivery, relatively speaking. It was easily the best day of my life. And I would do it a million times over.

[Sage]

Yeah.

[Isabel Brown]

And I say that out loud not to, like, not normalize the difficult experiences that people go through, because I totally understand. Some people have very, very harrowing experiences through delivery. But for the two weeks leading up to birth, I was just incessantly scrolling through TikTok and every single video I saw was a horror story. You are going to almost die. It was the scariest thing I ever did. I could not imagine ever doing this again. I have the Girl with the List videos all over my algorithm of a list of thousands of reasons to never have kids. And most of them are about delivery and labor because I think people are so scared.

[Sage]

Does this woman have children?

[Isabel Brown]

No. Of course. Naturally. But it's a whole trend now where several people have been making lists of all the reasons not to have kids. They're all pathetic, hyper rational, hypersensitive. Yeah, all of it. It's really bad. But I hate that that has become the norm now, because women of an entire generation have now told ourselves because of also propaganda from the abortion industry, it's actually safer for me to have an abortion than it is to give birth. I hear this all the time from, like, medical experts and doctors. It's safer for you to have an abortion where you could literally die and you are killing your child, than it is for you to go through childbirth, which is what your body is Naturally built to do it is meant to do. And I was talking about this with Riley Gaines just a few weeks ago because she had a beautiful delivery experience as well. And we hate that this has become the norm, that young girls are terrified of pregnancy and even more terrified of labor and delivery because they think I'm going to get to die, and I have no control over this experience. I'm not going to be able to surrender to it and enjoy it at all. Sure, maybe I'll get to the point where they put my baby on my chest and I have amnesia and I forget about all of it, but it's going to be horrible until then. No, it's not. Actually. Prayer through that process was so powerful and gave me so much ownership over the situation. When I was going through really extreme contractions and thinking, oh, my gosh, I don't think my body can deal with this anymore. Just constantly praying, like the Hail Mary over and over and over again, praying the rosary, connecting with God. I felt like the veil between this world and the next world was so thin in that moment. And you just feel this powerful sense of connection with God. They say throughout history that suffering is the easiest way for you to have an intimate experience and connection with Jesus Christ. And we think about the greatest saints throughout history, people who very, very much struggled. I mean, they were brutally murdered. They dealt with lifelong illness and affliction. They were tortured. And yet these people were the happiest people throughout all of human history. And they are in heaven now in total joy with God. So I look at labor now on the other side of it like that. I mean, it is a difficult experience. Don't get me wrong. It's going to hurt. I'm going to be honest with you. It's going to hurt. But through that pain, you feel such a sense of connection with God in a way that I've never felt in my life. I would do it a million times over again. I did end up getting an epidural because I was in prodromal labor, which I'd never heard about before, for two weeks, which is when you are having actual contractions. Not Braxton Hicks, but your cervix is just not doing anything. So you're having real contractions for, like, days or weeks on end, but you're not progressing anything. And it could be a few hours, it could be a few days, it could be a few weeks. So just hang tight.

[Sage]

Oh, my gosh.

[Isabel Brown]

Very frustrating. I got sent home from labor and delivery three times after going in. When they told me me to come in. And by the end of the third time I said, that's it. I'm not going back to the hospital until I like literally cannot stand up on my own. Which was the next night, thank goodness. I was very emotionally done at that point. But we showed up at like 3:30 in the morning. She was born at 11:23am it was such a powerful experience knowing that it went so quickly, I didn't have time to freak out about it. God totally blessed us through that situation. And because we're so rushed and we didn't really have time to think about anything, I think it was a trial by fire moment a little bit for my husband and I because we didn't get to talk about like, okay, what do we want to say to our baby the first time? Is there anything we really want to do right when she comes out? Dah dah, dah. It was just like, okay, go time, let's go. And we sat there with our daughter on my chest, just looking at each other for 10, 15 minutes while they're working on you and cleaning you up. Mom. And then everybody left the room for an hour voluntarily. We didn't have to tell anybody that. And we just got to experience this life changing moment that is truly indescribable. That when you look at your baby in her eyes and you're seeing this wonder and excitement and looking at the world through a new lens I don't think is ever possible to understand before you do it, but transforms who you are from the inside out.

[Sage]

I'm so glad that you said it this way, where it's almost like we've been shamed to talk about our good experiences. And I remember several years ago, you know, and my kids are much older now, but several years ago it's like you just kind of stopped saying how beautiful and wonderful it was because of those women who haven't had it as easy. And certainly people who are having trouble getting pregnant or staying pregnant, like that's devastating. I cannot imagine. So we're not discounting what their realities are, but this is reality too. And I think fortunately the majority of women, I mean that's why there's 8 billion people on this planet currently, much less the ones who are no longer with it.

[Isabel Brown]

Chances are you're not going to die through.

[Sage]

It's just so. And I remember being so excited to tell people and then being silenced. But like my second and I had, when my third was born, my first was still three, so it was like I don't remember much we didn't have the cell phones like we do now.

[Isabel Brown]

Brain amnesia?

[Sage]

Yes, 100%. With work and everything else, it's crazy, but I remember my water broke with my son, my number two at 2pm we got to the hospital at three and he was born at 4:47.

[Isabel Brown]

Oh my gosh. Holy moly.

[Sage]

Insane. We got there so late that the doctor was like, you're not getting an epidural.

[Isabel Brown]

Sorry, I'm still with it.

[Sage]

And I got in her face and threatened her. I was. And she was tiny. She's probably about your height. And I stood up barely, because I wasn't. And I was like, listen, give me.

[Isabel Brown]

The drugs to me right now.

[Sage]

And she kind of went like that. And I'm not proud of that moment, but I remember like, I can't do this. And by the way, when you get the epidural, it's not like everything just goes away. No. If they do it the right way.

[Isabel Brown]

Surprised me actually, about the whole experience. It's still uncomfortable, numb. And you're like, oh, I'm not gonna even be able to move. You can move your legs. I mean, it's magic. Truly, how this works if they do it correctly.

[Sage]

Want to feel it?

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, I do.

[Sage]

You want to feel it? I felt a ton of very uncomfortable pressure in places I didn't understand, you know, And I'm like, and what a blessing to be able to feel your body doing that. Like, to me, I know it's happened all these billions of times. It's still a miracle.

[Isabel Brown]

Of course it is.

[Sage]

And to not talk about it. So I've never heard someone put it that way. Thank you.

[Isabel Brown]

It's important, I think, honestly, for us to tell the good stories too, because if we're serious about wanting more people to have families and reviving the American, so much of it, I think, has to start curbing this fear mongering that is everywhere.

[Sage]

So you talked about how it changed you. And I have a little note from your husband.

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, that's really sweet.

[Sage]

I asked him his thoughts on you as a mom.

[Isabel Brown]

I'm gonna cry.

[Sage]

And here's. I might cry too, actually. Okay, here's what he said. And I might need reading classes because you know how I am. I'm okay. Isabel is living out her God given vocation as a voice for young people, all while being the most amazing mother to our daughter. Watching her balance her crazy lifestyle is so inspiring. And she handles everything with grace and joy. That makes me a better father. As much as she loves making content, she loves being a Mother even more. I'm so lucky to be her husband. And watching her grow into this new role has been spectacular. From Brock. Like, how cool is that, like.

For someone to support you, which it's no surprise that's why you married him. One of many reasons why you married him. But I do think because we are the ones that physically give birth and are going through so much and balancing the career, et cetera, like, you don't have time to slow down to think about what you are doing right now. And I hope you can do that, because before you know it, it's gone. I know, number one. But number two, to see the most important person in your life besides your daugh see you in that way and how you're helping him grow, you know.

[Isabel Brown]

That'S been one of the most beautiful parts of this journey, I think is for women. We have so much time to get ready for the baby mentally, right? You feel your baby in your body for almost 10 months of your life. Readying yourself, preparing yourself, preparing your body, preparing your mind. You nest around your house. You prepare your house for men. It's such a foreign concept to hold your baby until they literally put the baby in your hands. And then it's like, oh, my gosh, my whole world just changed all in one second. It wasn't a gradual experience. And so I think it can take more time for men to adjust. You know, they're not the one having to get up and breastfeed the baby three, four times a night for months and months and months as the baby is little. So they usually get a full night of sleep. And you're pissed off so badly when you look over and see him snoring while you're up for the fourth time that night. They usually go to work right away. You know, the general paternity leave process in America is still not very progressive. So they'll go to work right away and they'll be in their normal routine. And you're like, what the heck? My body is completely different. I haven't slept. I have no idea what is going on in my life. And to watch that journey of the first day we brought our daughter home and the several times I drugged him to the hospital when we were sent home preemptively. And now seven months later has been amazing. I mean, men not dishing to men, but men do take a little bit longer, I think, than women to emotionally mature in that way. But especially dads of daughters.

[Sage]

Oh, yeah.

[Isabel Brown]

Watching their hearts soften, watching them become this gentle, soft place to land My dad is a girl dad of three girls. And that was all I ever knew growing up. But my husband grew up with all brothers. It was not a very feminine household. And to see his entire worldview on life change in many ways. His personality change in really beautiful ways. And how he lights up when he walks through the door after a long, long day of work for the government. And our daughter lights up seeing daddy. It is earth shatteringly cool.

[Sage]

So cool. How many planes has she been on?

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, my gosh. I can't even count probably. She's a good traveler, I'll give her that. We. We put her on a plane for the first time. I have no idea. Maybe eight, nine weeks old. Maybe pretty early on. Later than Riley. So I'm going to give her the credit where credit is due. Holy. That baby is gonna be very well traveled. But she is such an easy baby. We've been so blessed. She loves going out to restaurants. She loves being out and about. When she was two months old. Exactly. My husband works at the White House and one of my best friends is in the First Lady's office. And so she texted me saying, you've got to get out of the house. It's been too long. She has a baby about six months older than ours. Get out of the house. I'm gonna wave you in for the Marine One takeoff and landing today, which the public every once in a while is invited to. And if worse comes to worse and she gets fussy, you can just hang out in my office. It's no big deal. So we went over to the east wing side. I brought baby, and then dad walked over from the west wing side to meet us. And she was dead asleep. And so I'm thinking, all right, well, I forgot your headphones. It's gonna be really loud. Watching a helicopter land and take off 10ft in front of you. Slept the whole time. No idea how that is remotely possible. Didn't even get to wave at the President because she was sleeping the whole time. But we've just been so blessed in that regard. Honestly, I think God was smiling upon us because we have the craziest lifestyle of all time. So having a baby that can adapt really well to everything is great.

[Sage]

Insane. I also am grateful for you, your timing because she's not going to remember any of this. But you are doing a great job documenting everything so she can look back. And I picture her in 20 years less than that. But really, when they're old enough to fully appreciate. Because my kids are just now appreciating things, you know, and I'm like, you're welcome for your cool life, you know, but like, for them to. For her and your, you know, future kids to be able to look back and be like, look at what my mom was doing and my dad was doing at the same time while I was a newborn baby, like, it's insane. What do you hope that she takes from this time in your life when she's able to look back?

[Isabel Brown]

I don't even just think about her. I think about so many other kids in our immediate orbit right now. God is raising up an amazing generation with Gen Z. I mean, I'm literally the apologist of this. I wrote the book on it. I love encouraging people to be hopeful about Gen Z because of our servant attitude, our ability to have this cultural revolution right now, and really be willing to lay our lives down, literally and figuratively for freedom in a way that we've never seen in my lifetime. I'm seeing so much of that on the media side, certainly in my own career with so many other incredible podcasters and content creators and people in activism. But I'm also seeing that a whole lot in the servant leadership of government as well. I was an intern in 2018 in the Trump White House, and some of my very dearest friends in my whole life were interns with me that summer. Many of them ended up working full time for the admin during Trump 45. I had to go back to college, but we stayed dear friends for a very long time and almost all of those people are now back. Caroline Levitt was in my intern class actually in 2018, and she's just one example of dozens who all came back now for the start to this administration. And it feels kind of like a reunion of your favorite sitcom where it's like 10 years later and everybody grew up and got married and have babies. But the whole mentality has shifted so much inside the admin of everyone has babies. So at five o', clock, everyone says, go home and be with your baby, please. That's way more important than anything you're gonna do for an extra hour or two here. But there's babies everywhere. There's nursing mom rooms all over the White House. Most people don't know that babies are constantly running around the Eisenhower Building. I see babies in the West Wing on people's Instagram all the time. I have the cutest picture of my daughter standing on top of Caroline's podium in the press briefing room, in our dining room, and she's can't even stand up, obviously she's tiny, but she's making a funny face like it looks like she's answering a question from a reporter. And just to know how many kids are growing up at the feet of this generation with Gen Z, knowing what our priorities have to be with God and family and country is going to be astounding to behold in 20, 30 years when they're adults and we get to pass the baton on to them.

[Sage]

You're right. They're witnessing something that we've never been able to see before.

You know, you mentioned Gen Z, and there's a lot of crap that this generation takes. And of course it's the lazy generation and taking handouts and expecting everything to just be given to them. And it's like what you're doing. Exactly. And you and your group, I mean, millions of kids, really, I think we talk down to so many when there's probably more good than bad, just like anything. And in the meantime, how you're living your life right now, not just with your own show and airplanes all over the world and speeches, et cetera, but you've gone back to school. So you got your undergraduate degree in.

[Isabel Brown]

Biomedical sciences, and then I got a master's degree in biomedical sciences right after that from Georgetown. From Georgetown, indeed. Yep. And then.

[Sage]

So you got that Ivy League with.

[Isabel Brown]

Your first master's adjacent.

[Sage]

Yeah.

[Isabel Brown]

These days it may not be worth as much anymore either. Georgetown's going through quite the changes, let me tell you, which was great. And I loved it. I thought for sure I wanted to work in healthcare policy or law in some capacity, and life went in a totally different direction, obviously. But then I really wanted to do this program now in my master's, basically out of pure passion, of a personal love for this. My husband converted to the Catholic Church in the spring, spring of 2024, so last year. But it starts about nine months before that, obviously. Totally on his own recognizance. Just desperately wanted to. To take that leap of faith in his life. I was born and raised Catholic, so I've always kind of been in this world. But he asked me to be his sponsor coming into the church, which is so fun, by the way. Didn't know much about the history of this, but the reason we do sponsors coming into the Catholic Church dates back to the earliest, earliest, earliest years of the church in the Roman Empire, before Christianity was legal. You had to have someone vouch for you because they would execute you if they found out that you were Christian. So you were literally saying to the person you were sponsoring, I'M willing to die for the fact that you can come into the church. I'm willing to lay my life down to vouch for this person, that they're not trying to undermine us or kill everybody. They're like, genuinely believing this really cool history.

[Sage]

I told my dad that because he's sponsoring my cousin's wife right now.

[Isabel Brown]

It's a big responsibility. Right?

[Sage]

Realize what you have signed up.

[Isabel Brown]

Literally, that's what it is. And they don't tell you that. But I think we should tell people that. But I went to classes with him every week because it was fun. And I hadn't done religious education since I was a kid, really, or high school classes. And I just loved it. They taught people what we believe in such a different way as adults coming into this experience, some of whom have literally never opened a Bible before. So to hear the questions that they had and what they were wrestling with and how we've come to this answer 2000 years later in history and just gave me the itch a little bit. And I ordered like $500 worth of Catholic books on Amazon and I read all of them. But then I realized, okay, I think I want some more pointed academic study from people who are way smarter than me on all of this. And I found this online program at Notre Dame. We all are non theologians. So the whole point is that you have a career, not in the church. You're out working as a teacher or a lawyer or a firefighter or whatever, and you're trying to bring the faith with you out in to the world.

[Sage]

Oh, my gosh.

[Isabel Brown]

I am by far one of the youngest people in the program. And they love that. Everybody loves the token gen zer in the program, but it's been amazing. I love it.

[Sage]

You're insane.

[Isabel Brown]

I know. I'm a glutton for punishment. I've realized I have homework due, like, almost every night while I'm writing the show, while we're on airplanes, while I'm breastfeeding my kids. Still, it's a lot going on, but I love it, honestly, because I am always at my best when I have 8 million things crammed into my schedule. When I have too much sit down downtime, I lose focus and vision for what I'm doing. But God just has hardwired me a long time ago to always need tons of plates spinning in the air.

[Sage]

That's amazing. And here's me, who hasn't been able to read a real book in a decade. I can listen, but reading the books, I'm like. And then you order $500 worth of books and getting a master's in theology.

[Isabel Brown]

My husband's the same way, by the way. He hates reading. He jokes I can't read. I make him read our daughter's storybooks every single night. And low key, he struggles with some of these. I gotta be honest, not to throw him under the bus. Needs some more reading comprehension classes.

[Sage]

This is eyesight. I'm gonna stick up for Brock here. That's amazing. I also grew up Catholic and have been super proud of it, et cetera. And I will tell you that I'm struggling right now with a lot of things in the Catholic Church. I mean, I didn't even comprehend what happened just a week or two ago where you have the Catholic Church coming out and criticizing Trump's policies on immigration and the border.

Shocking to me. And why. Why go there? Shut up. We have more important issues to worry about. Which, by the way, those policies, I think most of us in this room feel are the right thing and have meaning. So to stand up for that when they've been silent on so much else, on so much else, including back and forth with abortion and the prior pope, et cetera. So what would you tell people like me, who. And of course, I'm not this wishy washy person who's gonna be like, okay, I'm out. I'm done.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, totally.

[Sage]

But I feel like so often over the last couple of decades, Catholic leadership has not led properly. And there's a lot of people, millions of people, who are quite disappointed in the Catholic Church.

[Isabel Brown]

Maybe a billion people. There's a billion and a half Catholics on the planet. So I think you are right to have that frustration. I too, share that frustration. I think every good Catholic in my life shares that frustration. But it is an important caveat to note that the church as an institution did not say that message. They didn't endorse that message. That was coming from the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops, which has a very small group of bishops who oversee different diocese, different organizational areas of the church here in America. And even of that, a tiny group of them that they self elected into their leadership. So it really is more of a political body than it is representative of the church, and certainly has no impact on church doctrine or teaching related to any of these things. And I think a lot of the headlines we've seen over the past few years, initially, I find myself getting really enraged and in many ways, rage baited by the media about all of this stuff, because you're reading this headline, Pope Francis is going to marry gay people in the church. And you're like, what? That's insane. That's not what we believe in. That goes to so flagrantly against the tenets of Christian teaching. And it has for 2,000 years. And then you read the actual document that the Vatican put out and it says the exact opposite of everything that the media is telling you. They may have twisted like two or three words to tell you that in a very salacious headline. Just as we try not to get worked up when they say something insane about Donald Trump, I try to give myself a pause now and say, okay, what are they actually covering here? Have I read the document? Have I watched the video? And 99 times out of 100, I'm very satisfied with what I actually dive into. Research in. It may not be perfectly in line with my American conservative Republican political principles, but ultimately my heart has been so softened the last few years on this that that can't be more important to me than church teaching ultimately as it's existed for 2000 years. So great example. A lot of people were really upset that individuals who would self identify as gay or trans or whatever are eligible to receive blessings in the church. The media twisted that as being, oh my gosh, the church is endorsing same sex marriages, which is not what the church ever said. To the contrary, they said repeatedly, marriage has always been and will always be between one man and one woman. And we will always believe that as an institution. We are not apologizing for that. But if you are watching someone struggling with the weight of sin. Yes, and they are desperately struggling with the weight of sin and they're trying to come home to where they need to be. The church is ultimately our home far more than our place of residence is. Of course, you should be blessing anyone and everyone who walks through the door so that they can repent of sin and be on the path of sainthood rather than constantly being drugged back in by Satan to the temptation of sin. Now everybody has to make their individual decisions on repenting, and that's a long process and a long journey. But I have found myself slower to jump to the judgment of trans people are going to church, even if someone has gone through trans surgery. Of course I would want them to be coming to church ultimately. And that's a very difficult road that they're going to have to walk for the last several decades of their life. But there is no better place to be transformed than to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. So I found myself just trying to give deference to 2000 years of standing church teaching and to ultimately center myself on this. Who the Pope is, who the bishop of your diocese is, what the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops puts out in a desperate political attempt to be relevant doesn't ultimately change the foundation of the Church. Jesus Christ himself promised when he established the church that the gates of hell will never prevail against this church. And here, Peter, I am handing you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. You steward this on earth, and I will promise you the gates of hell will never prevail against my church. The sacraments that join us together as the living body of Christ, being eligible to take the Eucharist, having the forgiveness of our sins available to us through reconciliation, the universal lower c. Catholic, Catholic body of people, a billion and a half of us all over the world engaging in Mass together every day. These things are what we can draw a straight line back 2000 years, through history, directly back to Christ and the apostles. And despite all of the crazy things you see in the headlines, that has never and will never change. And that's what I keep faith in.

[Sage]

So I'm so grateful I brought it up then because, yes, headlines, and especially if you don't read.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, true.

[Sage]

I'm kidding. I do read. I'm kidding. No, but at the end of the day, headlines sometimes are true, sometimes are not. But with this, the leadership factions of the leadership bishops who are in these leadership positions are going to influence with statements like that. Oh, totally. And unfortunately, most people aren't like you. Not most. That's not even fair. Right. But who are going to do the beautiful, the correct thing, which is like, okay, big picture is this. We're still the same at our core. But if these are the bishops that are overseeing our diocese across the country, and then the priests aren't going to maybe have the courage to go against that. And then the trickle down effect. One of my dearest friends is my former priest from my church in Connecticut, and I've been gone for over a year. He was the only person, only reason why I was sad to leave the state of Connecticut is because of my priest. And he still sends me texts and if he sees me on Fox or something, it's really, really awesome. But the hate that he used to get in the church, like during Mass, people would storm and walk out. If he stayed firm on the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, for instance. Or, you know, same thing with trans lgbtq. Like, we welcome and it is still a sin, it is still nuts. And he stood firm despite what the people in the diocese and the architect are all doing and saying, which is so inconsistent. So I feel like we hurt ourselves by having this inconsistency. And is there anyone we know, there's people at the top who could say, hold them accountable and say, wait a minute. Why are you using your own opinions here to influence potentially thousands of people in that diocese when that is not what the Church believes?

[Isabel Brown]

You know, it's a great question, and I want to challenge the premise of it a little bit. I don't think we as great Catholics need to rely on the institution, institutional structure of Vatican leadership to hold people accountable. There are numerous, numerous examples throughout church history of some of the most revered celebrated saints in all of history who were uneducated children, more often than not, holding the Pope accountable when he said very difficult things to swallow during the political conversations of their time over the past 2,000 years. I mean, like teenage girls who were completely uneducated and later became amazing saints. We're writing letters to the Vatican to tell the Pope that's not true. We have to be rooted in truth. We have to be rooted in Scripture. We have to be rooted in tradition. I urge you to correct what you just said and make it clear, provide that clarity to the church around the world. You can absolutely be a layperson in the church, meaning not an ordained member of the clergy, and make a difference that way, sometimes in a much more powerful way than even the ordained clergy do, because we forget the Church is an institution of God and always will be. But it's also an institution run by humans, and even the Pope is a sinner in need of a savior. So, of course there's going to be things said that don't always reflect the best character of Christ and the nuances of the very specific teachings of important Catholic social teaching. Or there's just going to be bad priests and bad bishops that want to push their own agenda, like any pastor at any church. Ultimately, where we have to constantly be vigilant is to constantly be asking ourselves, what does big letter C, the Church, say about this? Not Father so and so, who wants his five minutes of fame on CNN or wants to in a very nefarious way, influence the next election or try to get his congregation to vote a certain way when it's leading away from Catholic social teaching? What do we, as Catholics, capital C under the Church, capital C, believe? And when the time is appropriate, kindly correct your leaders on that. That is absolutely appropriate. Has always been. And honestly, we need a lot more of that today. Yeah.

[Sage]

For sure. And I've had several conversations with him and pushed him on this and that. And I'll share this. I don't share it publicly often.

Got divorced after being married in the Catholic Church, not the plan. Devastating in every way.

And got even closer to my priest during and after that time. And then I met my husband now, and we're both raised Catholic and were excited to get married in the Catholic Church until we were reminded that we could not unless we got our marriages annulled. Yeah, I have a real problem with that, too, because I don't have the exact definition of annulment, but basically it's pretending like the marriage never happened and it didn't exist. And what message does that send to my children, our five combined children, you know, that this didn't exist. I don't know how you're here. You're just magically here, apparently, you know, and I was so hurt. And as much as, you know, divorce difficult.

I didn't want to erase it, that it had, you know, from the record books, from history, that it hadn't happened, because it did. And it was. I'm grateful for every moment, even the tough times. And without that, that union, that sacrament, I wouldn't have had these three awesome babies. You know what I mean? So I think all of us, none of us are going to agree with every single thing or be comfortable with every single thing, just regardless of your religion, you know, maybe some are, but there's going to be some things, especially in this time and day, like the time that we are, I think, in the world, that hurt. And so I didn't get my marriage annulled, and neither did Dave, my first marriage. And we created our own ceremony and made sure there was a prayerful element of it with my father.

Yeah, I just like, that stuff hurts. And those are the things that could potentially push many people away and just say, you know what? I'm out. I'm not totally out. We are still balancing it and figuring it out, but having some tough conversations with our kids as well, because we made a decision to go against the church in that way. And I believe God is the reason why I met Dave. Well, I know that. And why we are together today and leading with our faith. So, you know what I mean? It's like, did I sin? Did I do this wrong? I'm not asking you per se, but in general it is. It's a balance that we all have to strike with whatever issue comes up while trying to stay true to who you are and the church that you believe in, but saying it's not okay.

[Isabel Brown]

Yeah, you know, I have a couple of thoughts on that. First being this is why I'm just so abundantly grateful that the grace of God far supersedes anything we could ever imagine. Right. Grace that is so supernatural, it doesn't even allow for an explanation in our human lives here on earth. Ultimately, just deference to God and the full mercy that he offers us through the church, through our faith, through prayer is the greatest gift humanity has ever had. And that's what we have to cling to in every single moment where we struggle with these teachings or we have different life, circumstances change. It doesn't matter who you are. Ultimately, my prayer is that everyone ultimately is in heaven. And I know a loving God would probably feel that way too. He gives us the choice, certainly. But, you know, people throw out really salacious, crazy examples of, like, the worst people throughout history that did the worst things ever. Truthfully, nothing would make me happier than if Joseph Stalin or Mao or Adolf Hitler were in heaven someday. And I had the chance to see that they received that full mercy and that full grace because they just submitted to God and said, I am nothing without you, ultimately. And that's what I really try to cling to in all of these moments, but certainly is a great example of a real human experience where we have to navigate these things in real time. You said something interesting there about this could be like a turn off for young people or a way that young people say, I don't know, it's a pretty strict situation to be in the Catholic Church.

[Sage]

I'm not saying, because if you say, we better not do this or else you can't do that. I'm just saying I understand when people get a little bit.

[Isabel Brown]

Fascinatingly, though, young people are overwhelmingly drawn to the church right now, or old, by the way, People in general turned off. People in general are being drawn to the church right now because of the structure. And I think a lot of people are missing the mark on this right now. Certainly I am a revert. I explored a whole lot of denominations in college, my early 20s, and then I came home to the faith with a huge passion and love of Catholicism. But a big reason for that is because I didn't find the depth of the liturgy, the depth of tradition, the depth of history in any other denomination that I did find in the church. And there is a shocking number of millions upon millions upon millions of young people today all over the world, at record numbers, becoming Catholic specifically, not just becoming generally Christian. And I'VE been asking myself why over the past few years, and I think a lot of it has to. To do with tradition, with structure, with rules, with a blueprint for how you are supposed to live a structured Christian life, ultimately, because the church in America, generally speaking, has really gone out of its way during our lifetime to try to become more like the world and not the other way around. It's become. I'll use the word rainbow washed instead of whitewashed to try to appeal to the LGBTQ community or to fly BLM flags out front or to recite the song Sparkle Creed on Sunday, which is a real thing. Real thing. You should look it up instead of the Nicene Creed on Sunday mornings.

[Sage]

Where is that happening?

[Isabel Brown]

A female pastor? I think it was at a Lutheran church in Minnesota maybe a couple years ago, but other. Other churches are adopting this now all over the country. And even if it's something not as extreme as that, go to something that feels a lot more like a rock concert with free coffee in the lobby and a very shallow sermon that feels almost. My gosh. Of course it's applicable to me, because it was so intentionally vague that it could be literally applicable to anything. There is no depth of a radical transformation of your heart. And I'm listening. When I go on college campuses or I get messages from people who are interested in Catholicism or they're discerning the church, what they love about the Mass and what they love about the structure of church hierarchy is that it's not about them. Yes, it is entirely about God, which actually, incidentally, is why people are so interested in the traditional Latin Mass in TLM with young people, because the priest is literally not even facing you. Like, it's not about you. It is entirely about God. And that's hard for us to wrestle with, especially in American culture, where we are always the main character. Right. Everything is instant gratification. We have these online Personas about who we are, and we curate these things, and we have this public image of ourselves. Even if you're not a public figure, everything is about you all the time. Our education system is always about you. How does that make you feel? How do your feelings deal with all of that? That's how we deal with mental health problems. Everything is about you. What I'm watching is a generation entirely flip that script. And I think it's going to have incredible effects on American culture long term moving forward to say my life shouldn't be about me. And of all things, actually, my faith shouldn't be about me. My faith is about God. And that might involve some really hard wrestling with really difficult things sometimes. But ultimately, I'm not meant to understand everything all the time. Only God is omnipresent and omniscient. And if I can learn how to accept humility, which is a very hard thing for us to accept in American culture, something I struggle with every single day. And I try to be very transparent about that, but to not make myself the center of my own universe, to instead pray daily, God, make me less of me and make me more of you. That's what's ultimately going to transform the world. And I think that's why people are so attracted to something that's not about them, something that's existed for 2000 years and isn't catering to them, but is something we're invited into instead.

[Sage]

This is why we need her in our lives. Like, I'm so glad I went there with you on this, because it's, you know, I mean, so many people have struggles that are. I can't even imagine, you know, and that is at the point where many run the opposite direction. And that's exactly what the devil wants. Right? So these reminders from people like you, from Gen Z, from people who are just so fearless.

What you're continuing to do and not living in fear with going on the road and with a baby and on college campuses and going back to Colorado State that day, like you are changing lives with your voice. Do you. I know you realize that, or else you wouldn't continue to do it. And it's not a. I'm not trying to do that, but how beautiful that you are choosing to do this in endless ways daily.

[Isabel Brown]

I try. And that seems like such a silly answer ultimately, but, you know, it's hard sometimes doing what we do to see the actual daily impact in people's lives. Most of the time with people you're interacting with, you might get a comment from them on Instagram, or they'll type something in your live chat on your show, or you'll answer one question from them when you're speaking at one of these speaking engagements. And so I think it's hard to see the larger implication of, oh, my gosh, what am I doing every day? If it's not just to get 100,000 views on my podcast today. But that's. That's what's been so refreshing and recentering. I think about these last 10 weeks after Charlie is. Charlie never could have seen the people across the globe that he impacted every single day, people who he had no idea even existed who now owe their entire faith journey, their entire family, their entire career, to a few words that they heard one man say. And I think it's just been a really good reminder for all of us, not just those of us with public platforms, but the reality that we all have spheres of influence. And this is what I ultimately try to tell college students in particular when I'm on campus, is that even if you don't have a million followers on Instagram or a show with Fox News or a trending radio show, or get to go on tour with everybody or xyz, in many ways, you actually are way more impactful than people like us because we don't sit next to these people in class. We don't eat with them in the dining hall. We don't go to church. We don't with them on Sunday morning. We're not sitting there with your crazy uncle on Thanksgiving talking about all of these important things. And your cousins are listening to this and being influenced by it. You are sitting there. And so you have to be the one willing to have the hard conversations, to raise your hand in class and tell your professor when they're wrong, to constantly be inviting friends to come to church with you on Sunday morning to challenge what your crazy liberal parents are saying around the Thanksgiving dinner table so that your. Your siblings can hear a different perspective. I mean, these are the real culture war battles that are so far more important than what you see on Instagram or TikTok or a radio show. And the more I think we can continue to embrace that which truly was Charlie's whole mentality in life, that anyone can have an influence. If you just have the willingness to be bold and to be courageous and stand up and say something, that's how we save our country.

[Sage]

How do you hope the next 10 years? What do you hope that looks like for you with your show, with being a mom? Hopefully 10 more times in the next 10 years, that'd be a lot on your little body.

[Isabel Brown]

I says it all the time at this point. I'm like, I think you're writing checks my body can't cash, but we'll get there.

[Sage]

Exactly. Exactly. But when you look at the amount that you have been able to accomplish in the name of God and helping others, uplifting other kids, providing courage for them and for people that are three times your age, through your show, through your social media presence, which continues to just absolutely skyrocket, through getting a second master's degree, through probably writing more books, what do you Hope the next 10 years looks like?

[Isabel Brown]

It's so hard for me to answer that. And I know this is a cop out, but truly, I've been working full time since I graduated in 2019, but I've been working in the conservative movement in some capacity for about eight years. And so I look at the last eight years and my career and my impact has changed a million times over. I've had different shows at different times. I've worked with different companies at different times. Like the last year alone, my life has changed 20 times over. I had a baby, I moved to a different state. I started a new show with a new company I hadn't worked with before. My husband started a new job. Like, everything is different. And so it's hard for me to answer. But generally speaking, I think my biggest goal is to provide a venue not so that people can hear my voice constantly, constantly preaching at them. Frankly, I'm not interested in any of that. I think we have too many experts in our society constantly telling everyone what to do and what to think and how to approach things. What I hope is that I can revive curiosity more than tell people the blueprint of everything. But I want to create a venue that is the most culturally impactful conversation our generation is having. What does it mean to create the new American dream in the 2020s and beyond for this very important generation? How do we save the United States of America and by extension, Western civilization? And most importantly, how can we bring God into our world that is constantly telling you you need to reject him in the process, hopefully reviving the family for so many people, empowering women to stop listening to the lies of the radical feminist movement and instead to embrace exactly who we were created to be by God. These are the questions that I'm so passionate about. And whatever project I'm involved in, whether that's my show, whether that's 15 second TikTok videos, writing more books, speaking on campus. I have a lot of other ideas that we have yet to come to fruition. We're working very hard on all of them at Daily Wire and beyond. But.

I want culture to change from the inside out, led by young people for young people. And I hope that we can be the venue for that.

[Sage]

And by the way, I love that you are going right into the lion's den. Not many conservatives would walk into the front doors at CNN and sit on those desks.

[Isabel Brown]

Actually, it was really fun. Believe it or not, I was not expecting it to be such a lovely experience, but it was. I'll be back on next month, in.

[Sage]

Fact, really why was it fun?

[Isabel Brown]

I don't know if I was just going in like porcupine spines out, like ready for a huge fight with cnn because I haven't been on the network before and it was my debut there and everything you hear about CNN or what. But they seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. Honestly, the other panelists were really fascinated by the Gen Z conservative approach. They didn't love everything I had to say, obviously, but they loved it enough to invite me back into giving expressions too.

[Sage]

For some of the things you were saying.

[Isabel Brown]

It was surprising. It was really surprising. Great example. I said in our livestream on election night and even the conservatives in the room rolled their eyes and disagreed with me that the reason support for President Trump is falling among young people, especially young men, is because he's not being conservative enough. Actually, don't misread that as everybody's abandoning ships to go to the left and embrace the Zo run Mamdanis of the world. We want more. We want more offense. Be bolder, be more courageous, Give us more actual governance and all of this stuff. Everyone in the room rolled their eyes and lo and behold, look at what we're seeing on the Internet. The last several weeks of millions of young men saying, we want more, we want more, we want more. So I think it's just the disconnect of legacy politics and legacy media versus me being so chronically online. They're just really fascinated with what I have to say.

[Sage]

It was, it was beautiful to watch. And I do believe you've probably experienced this your whole life. People underestimate you. They underestimate you because you're young and blonde and beautiful and petite. And then you walk in there and they're like, oh my goodness, is that a fair statement?

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, that's totally fair. That was totally my strategy in high school spirit, speech and debate. I swear it's how it got me to nationals twice to represent Colorado. I would walk into a room and I was, you know, I stopped growing in sixth grade. I'm 5:1, okay? I was the 5:1. Elle woods looking okay, Bimbo blonde girl, clearly. So it's not going to be that hard of a round. And then all of a sudden I would come out knives of blazing, just ready to go. But I think it's just a good reminder that wisdom is not necessarily correlated with age or with a particular background. Wisdom is a gift from God and if you constantly pray for it, they talk about this regularly throughout the Old Testament. It's one of the only gifts that if you pray for it, God will immediately give it to you. And I try to do that every single day. God just let me be a vessel for what you want to say to the world. And it's not about me. Whatever you want to say, I'll say it. And I do kind of black out in media hits and debates and when I'm answering questions, I'll walk off stage and say, what did I even say for the last hour? It truly is an out of body experience.

[Sage]

Thank you so much for leading the way that you do.

[Isabel Brown]

Thank you.

[Sage]

And for inspiring me. I mean it. Like you, I always say that she is half my age and half my size and she is. You are guiding me through your. Not just your brilliance and your education and all the things that you have. I mean, you are teaching people, but the way you do it. Because I think that's so much, almost more important because there's a lot of smart people who are talking at you and spewing and you do the exact opposite. Thank you for choosing to do this for all of us and for your baby girl and the 10 more that you're gonna have in the next decade.

[Isabel Brown]

Oh, Sage, I don't know about that. I mean, let's be open to it. Thank you for having me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you too.

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[Sage]

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[Isabel Brown]

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[Sage]

Did I get your attention?

[Isabel Brown]

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