One year ago today, Charlie Kirk was killed.
He was doing what he loved best. Talking to young people. Taking questions. Standing in front of a crowd at a university, answering whatever anybody wanted to ask him.
Whatever you made of his politics—and people made all kinds of things of them—Charlie was murdered for talking. For showing up on a campus, taking the microphone, and saying "prove me wrong."
A man was killed for the crime of encouraging public discourse. After his death (and even still today) people mocked him. That tells you something true and awful about where a piece of this culture has drifted.
One should not have to have agreed with Charlie Kirk about anything to understand that a country where people get murdered for debating, and then mocked for having been murdered, is a country in serious trouble.
Here's what struck me most about Charlie as I watched and interacted with him over the years:
He willingly (even joyfully!) walked into crowds that hated him over and over again. He'd set up a table in the middle of a college campus, put up a sign challenging people to come argue with him, and then just… sit there and take it.
Kids would line up to yell at him, and he'd stay calm and let them talk. He'd answer them patiently and respectfully. He never shut down, he never melted down, and he never ran.
Whatever else you want to say, that takes a kind of steadiness that is hard to find today.
And the thing that made Charlie so great was that his calm-under-pressure wasn’t even the point. That steadiness was just a tool he used to be good at his job. His job was saving the next generation. His entire life's work was aimed at young people—at the belief that if he could just get kids to think, to question, to engage instead of retreat, he would have given them something no one could take away.
He bet everything on the idea that the rising generation was worth fighting for. He was doing exactly that when he was killed.
I share that mission. It's the whole reason the Tuttle Twins exist. And it's why, on a day like today, I keep coming back to a hard truth Charlie exemplified so perfectly: the steadiness he had—the ability to stand in a storm and not come apart—is not something kids are born with. It has to be built.
Almost nobody is building that into kids anymore.
Think about the kids you know. When something hard hits—a bad grade, a brutal loss, a project that falls apart—do they steady themselves and figure out the next move, or do they come undone? Most kids today do not handle disappointment, failure, pressure, or loss very well, but it's not really because something's wrong with them. It's because no one ever taught them the types of skills they need to cope and thrive when things get hard. Schools spend twelve years teaching kids facts and almost no time teaching them how to govern themselves when things don’t go their way.
We built a tool to help fill that gap.
We've added a new Mindset category to the Tuttle Twins Academy. Its four courses, taught by experts in the field, teach the exact skills kids today are missing. Things like how to grow through failure instead of folding under it, how to build habits that actually stick, how to stay clear and calm under pressure, and how to take ownership of what happens next instead of waiting to be rescued.
This is the quiet but vital side of building free people. Because a kid who learns to lead and manage themselves grows into an adult who can stand in a storm (at a debate table, at a dinner table, anywhere) and not come apart.
As a dad of teens, I know that sometimes a teenager will take this kind of teaching from a mentor when they aren’t quite ready to hear it from a parent. And that’s ok. That's what these courses are for.
If you want to take a look, the Academy's here, and we've included some pretty great introductory pricing to celebrate this launch.
But here’s the one thing I hope you’ll do today: Tell your kids who Charlie Kirk was.
Tell them about how a man spent his life believing young people were worth talking to, worth arguing with, and worth taking seriously. Tell them that he was killed for it. You can even tell them that some people cheered, because darkness and depravity have always hated ideas discussed and debated in the light.
Talk with them about how they can be the kind of people who defend truth anyway—who stay steady even when they’re outnumbered or scared. The kind of people who don't let the ugliness of the world make them quiet or afraid or despondent.
That's the best way any of us can honor a man like Charlie.
By doing a grand job raising the generation he was trying so hard to save.
Rest easy, Charlie. You did a good job.
— Connor
