Welcome to the Brandt and Sherry Oddcast, sponsored by America's Christian Credit Union.

To order Brand's latest book, Life is Hard, God is Good, let's dance, or to find out more about the show, go to brantanthanson.com.

Greetings podcast, people. This is a special podcast. Brandt had a chance to talk to Dallas Jenkins.

He is the creator of the series The Chosen. So many of you have emailed us and sent us

Facebook messages and tweeted us telling us we needed to see this series. I have not watched it yet,

but Brant didn't. He loved it, so he wanted to talk to Dallas,

about the depiction of Jesus, about how the show started. And of particular interest is the disciple Matthew and how he is depicted. He is depicted as having Asperger syndrome, which is very

interesting. And so that's where we'll pick up this interview. Seeing the depiction of Matthew,

that prompted a ton of questions starting with, like, why?

Where did that come from?

Where in your life were you like, I need to write this into this thing?

Well, my first exposure with the special needs world was my mom's side of the family, if you ever went

to one of our reunions, you know, you being on the spectrum would probably fit right in, but we

have everything.

I mean, clearly there's a genetic disposition towards some sort of special needs issue because

in almost every single family on my mom's side, there's at least one person who's either

autistic or full on mentally handicapped in some way.

And so that's, I grew up with that a little bit in my extended family.

My younger brother is clearly on the spectrum.

A while ago, it wasn't really diagnosed much. You know, back in the 80s and stuff, people

just struggled, and that was just what it was. Then my daughter, when I was, when my daughter

was about a year and a half old, she wasn't talking yet. I mean, she was barely

...