Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. If you're watching online, you can see that I have guests in my studio today, so I'm not flying solo like normal.
By the way, Walker Wildmon is usually with you on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'm with you Tuesdays and Thursdays. This week, though, it's not just me. Seated here in the studio, I have three of our Patriot Institute graduates who are going to tell you a little bit about their experience and, I believe, give you hope for the future, because trust me, help is on the way.
We're raising up a new generation of patriots who understand what biblical citizenship is all about. They're finding their purpose, going into all kinds of areas of the culture, learning how to get closer to God, and becoming good patriots.
We have Bella, Hannah, and Zach with me. Hannah, you're the most seasoned graduate because you graduated from the Institute more than a year ago.
Hannah: You can't hear it, but he's playing cheering, so we're applauding for you.
Rick Green: Bella and Zach just graduated in May and are now working full time for Patriot Academy at the campus. It was convenient for them to be in the studio today. In fact, I just grabbed them away from, I don't know what you were doing.
Zach: We were painting in the Patriot cottages today.
Bella: We're painting today.
Rick Green: Okay, so there you go. We're getting ready for a whole new class of Institute students who will be here in October. But Hannah, first of all, how was your Institute experience? How did you find the Institute? What did you learn from it? All those big questions answered in 30 seconds.
Hannah: Thirty seconds?
Rick Green: No, you have all the time you want. Eat that microphone.
Hannah: I'm bringing it closer.
Rick Green: I'm going to hold it because that's really far forward.
Hannah: My oldest brother, Joshua, attended the Leadership Congress in 2008, and I was four years old. Whenever he attended, that kind of started my family's interaction with Patriot Academy, and then it just became something that we did all the time.
My parents wanted to raise kids who understood biblical citizenship. They wanted to raise kids who knew what patriotism looked like. Leadership Congress was somewhere they took us as soon as we were old enough, every summer, to not just learn about apologetics and politics, but really to learn how to articulate ourselves really well and how to combat a culture that truly does want to bring death to my generation.
That may not mean physical death, though one-third of Gen Z is not alive because of the culture, but also spiritual death. Going to Leadership Congress was something we did every summer, or something I looked forward to doing when I was too young to go. As soon as I was 16, it was something I was so excited to do.
Rick Green: You may be the only non-Green who started coming to Patriot Academy at four years old.
Hannah: Yes.
Rick Green: That's crazy. I had forgotten about that.
Hannah: You let me on the House floor for the first time when I was 11 years old. You said I could get on the House floor as long as I would give you, Nathan Macias, and Miss Cara a high five. That was my payment.
Of course, little 11-year-old Hannah was like, "Yes, this is exactly what I want to do." I ran around and gave high fives. Then I went and tried to debate a bill that was going to legalize poker in Texas. I was like, "You can't do this." I don't know why I decided that, but I was very adamant.
Rick Green: You were working the floor.
Hannah: Oh, I was. I was 11. I was working the floor.
Rick Green: Did you win? Did you get enough votes to kill it?
Hannah: No.
Rick Green: No?
Hannah: No. I did lose, but I came back. I got back in the fight.
Rick Green: When did you get to come as an actual student the first time?
Hannah: My first time? Around 15 or so.
Rick Green: No, actually, you didn't want to come early. You waited until you were 16.
Hannah: Because we came and volunteered every summer, I really enjoyed the volunteer process. I came and got to babysit a couple of the speakers' kids for about two years, and then I wanted to come at 16.
Rick Green: You served food, though, right?
Hannah: I did. I served food, helped with the little ones, and had so much fun with that. I think that was probably something that really prepared me well to be in the Patriot Institute. A servant's heart started really young.
Rick Green: Because, for the listeners, we plug her into everything. She does public speaking, she works in the coffee shop, and she now helps run the Institute. She's basically the assistant to the directors. She organizes the schedule and all the good stuff.
You do have a servant's heart. Whatever you're asked to do, you jump in there and do it. I had forgotten about that. If you can serve green beans, you can get up and speak in front of a thousand people.
Hannah: That's where it started, because you have all these kids coming through. As a 12- or 13-year-old, you're watching these young adults come in. They're five to ten years older than you, walking through this line, and you're getting to see them truly see the value of biblical education. You're getting to see them see the value and want to spend their time.
I would say the first few times I went, I was not excited to be there because I wanted to be off with my cousins.
Rick Green: No, I'm kidding. You were 10 or 12, right?
Hannah: Yes. I loved the teaching, but there was also a part of me that thought, "Man, I could have been home playing around." But then I'm seeing these kids whose clock in life is going.
Rick Green: Just so the audience can picture it, when she says "seeing these kids," these are 16- to 25-year-olds, and they're all dressed up. There were suits and dresses in there.
Hannah: Yes.
Rick Green: They're serving as legislators. When you were coming back then, we would have been at the Texas Capitol, down in the extension there, launching and seeing them after they were coming off the House floor.
Hannah: Yes, and you're getting to hear their heart and their passion. That's what really made me want to come.
When I was 13, I was so frustrated because they would not give me and my little brother a golf ball. They said, "It's because you're 13 and 10. You're going to drop it." So we went with our allowance money and bought Texas-colored golf balls from the Texas gift shop. That was our character for the next few years, until I was old enough to go. I was about 16.
Rick Green: Okay, wait. This is a good chance to bring Zach and Bella into the conversation. What in the world does a golf ball have to do with your character? That's your first question. Which one of y'all wants to take it? Zach, why is there a golf ball? What does it have to do with your character?
Zach: The golf ball is probably one of my favorite parts of going through a Leadership Congress. It starts off with usually the cabinet coming out and saying, "Here's your golf ball. Don't drop it. It's your character."
What it represents is something that is small and easy to hold, but once you lose it, it's very difficult to get back because everyone else is trying to snatch it from you. That's essential to representation.
Rick Green: So it's a metaphor for real character.
Zach: Yes.
Rick Green: The fact that you can lose your real character anywhere when you compromise your principles.
Zach: And to get your character back and make it a little easier, you have to memorize a character quote. If you lose it three times, then you have to sing, "Oh, where's my golf ball?" For those of you who know VeggieTales, it's "Oh, Where's My Hairbrush?" But this is "Where's My Golf Ball?"
It's always one of my favorite things just to watch the freshmen receive it. They're completely confused about what it's about, trying silly things. They're trying to tape it to themselves and things like that.
Rick Green: I was like, "No, we're not going to have students hold golf balls while they're typing on their computers or whatever." But anyway, did you think the same thing the first time you came?
Zach: One hundred percent. I thought it was the craziest thing. But then, as the week progresses, you really start to care and start to notice it.
Probably my favorite thing after a Patriot Academy Leadership Congress is that, in the group chat weeks or months later, you'll see someone post a picture where they still have their golf ball, whether they're hiking on top of mountains or just at daily work. They still have it. They hold it up, saying, "I'm still not my character."
Rick Green: Yes, sir. I love that.
By the way, Bobby hasn't said this yet in my ear, but I know what he's thinking. He's thinking, "Why does Rick not have the radio voice of Zach?" You've got this amazing voice, and I'm over here going, "I've got this high-pitched, annoying voice." Bobby's probably thinking, "I wish Rick had Zach's voice so I didn't have to listen to Rick's voice every day."
Okay, so now let's ask Bella. What do you remember about the golf ball and character?
Bella: Mr. Rick, I don't know if you know this, but I've actually never been to a Leadership Congress.
Rick Green: You didn't do Leadership Congress or the Institute?
Bella: No.
Rick Green: Okay, never mind. You don't get that question. Actually, it's a perfect time to tell the difference. What's the difference between a Leadership Congress and going to the actual Patriot Institute?
Bella: I've helped run a few Patriot experiences that have come here on the campus, but I've never actually done a Leadership Congress. The difference is that you're here for a longer period of time. You get poured into. If anyone's ever attended one, you're actually living here on Patriot Academy's campus for the Patriot Institute for a period of nine months.
You get to experience different speakers who come in, just like you do at Leadership Congress. You get different speakers who come in, and they pour into you and talk to you. You also get to hang out with this guy. He gets to pour into you and talk to you.
You learn how to live life. I came here when I was 18, learning the first steps out of the home, how to live, how to go about daily communication with other people, and how to hold down a job while working here on campus for Patriot Academy.
Rick Green: Those are some of the practical differences. You get a lot more interaction with the other students, too. You're literally doing life together.
Bella: Yes, that's correct. You definitely get to build a culture here in and of itself, because you get to set that standard and that culture. You can have different opinions, standards, and ideas, but we all get to work through them and work them out. We definitely build each other up, because you can be the one who either sits back and says, "I'm going to let that slide," or you can say, "No, we're going to be better than that here. We're going to raise you up."
Rick Green: We're really sharpening each other.
Bella: Yes, definitely. It's iron sharpening iron.
Rick Green: Okay, so Zach and Hannah, y'all went through Leadership Congress first, so you got a few days together. I guess the first time you came was three days in Colorado, right? Did you do that one first? Did you come to Nationals first?
Zach: I did Colorado first, but I did the one that was longer.
Rick Green: Yes, the one with the whitewater rafting, Western Server Summit, and baseball game.
Zach: Yes.
Rick Green: So you got a few days together with other patriots, but then you came for the whole year. What was that like? It's a big commitment to be here for nine months. As Bella was saying, you're doing life together. You have roommates. You're having to learn how to live with people and eat with people who may have different personalities. You have conflicts, and you learn how to work that out.
You're also diving into class four hours a day. You get to do some cool servant-oriented things, like helping flood victims. You're doing all kinds of things throughout the year.
What were some of the takeaways after nine months? How did it change you? What did you learn about yourself and what you wanted to do with life? What were some of the big takeaways after a year of being on campus? Any of y'all can jump into that one.
Rick Green: Let me tell the audience that I gave these three a lot of warning about the interview today and the questions. That's a lie. I didn't do that. I gave them maybe 30 minutes' notice, maybe an hour's notice, and didn't tell them anything about what the questions were going to be. I'm loving the fact that they're having to do all this on the spot.
Hannah: I got no such hour's notice.
Rick Green: I walked into the office where Zach was sitting and said, "Wait a minute, I thought you were gone today." He was here, so I said, "Hey, come on." He was right in the middle of making a reel for the Patriot Academy Instagram page. Check it out. Zach does media for us now.
Zach: Big takeaways from the Institute? I would say two massive takeaways for me. One comes from the content, and one comes from the community.
Rick Green: From the content, meaning the classroom content and the curriculum you had to go through?
Zach: Yes. Coming from a very homeschooled Christian background, you're taught a lot of the right things. There's a major difference between simply having the right assumptions and truly understanding something for yourself.
You can assume or believe the right thing, but there is a massive amount of depth and weight added to it when you understand why it's true and how it impacts you. The worldview classes and all the training with Mr. Dunham were massively impactful for that.
Rick Green: Was it that you had never been exposed to any of those things? Like you said, you're from a Christian home, so you had a lot of head knowledge, but this really made you go deeper, to understand what was behind the principle.
You might have been taught that something was right or wrong, but through the classroom time, diving into the curriculum, and conversations sitting in a coffee shop, you were really getting the why behind what was right or wrong. You were really diving into it.
Zach: That's one hundred percent what it is. That's the content part.
Rick Green: And you said you had a big one on the community, but we've got to hold the community one because I have to take a break. This is the world of radio, y'all. Welcome.
I don't have a choice. Bobby's in my ear. Not really, but I hear the music out there, so we're going to get ready for a break.
If you're listening or even watching online, this is a little bit different from what I normally do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I've got three of our Patriot Institute graduates with me, and we're talking about what it's like to be here on the campus at Patriot Academy in Constitution City for a full nine-month academic year and how it has changed their lives.
Part of the reason I wanted them to be in here is that I've got some scholarships to give away. I have multiple scholarships available, and we're two weeks away from the start date. If you know somebody in your life who could benefit from the things these students are talking about, they should apply. We'll be right back talking more about it in a moment.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. I'm bouncing my head to the music while these Patriot Institute graduates are not, because they can't hear the music. I have the headphones.
We have great bumper music here at At the Core, just so you know. It's really good.
If you just tuned in, this is an unusual program. I'm usually pontificating on whatever has happened in the news and giving you the good, the bad, and the ugly. But today I have three special guests in the studio with me. They are all Patriot Institute graduates, which means they spent a full academic year here on the campus, nine months learning all kinds of worldview and apologetics, including master's-level training in those things.
They did debates, learned communication skills, and did all kinds of life skills. They did life together and learned how to interact. It was awesome.
Hannah came to us in our very first class. She was one of my lab rats, as I call them, my guinea pigs. Twelve of them came through in the first year, and we practiced on them and learned how to do the Patriot Institute.
Zach and Bella came last year in our second year, with 27 students in that class. We were still kind of practicing on them, so we learned a lot, and they did a great job helping us improve it.
Now we've got students showing up here in two weeks for the 2026 to 2027 Institute class, and we have some spots left. That's part of why I wanted these three amazing young people to talk about their experience, because there are people listening right now who might want to come to the Institute, or who know someone in their life who is 17 to 24. We might even make an exception for 25.
It's $20,000 to come for the whole year. I have multiple scholarships of $15,000 each that I can give out if someone decides they want to apply soon.
What do you think, Hannah? They probably need to have their application in within the next four or five days.
Hannah: We don't have the official deadline yet, but our last ask was about September 28. That's the last day we can get an application and make it work. If you come in on the 28th, we can make it work, but after that it will be really, really tight.
Rick Green: So what she said is that it has to be in by the 28th. You have a little bit of time to talk it over.
Let's talk about what that means. You come here, live in a cottage, go to class four hours every day, and do a service day where we go out and serve other people. You also work on campus. What else do you do in your spare time at the Patriot Institute when you're here full time? What did you do with your days other than go to class?
Hannah: Right after class, we would either get lunch, or we could go to lunch with Mr. Chris sometimes. He would pour into us outside of class time. We would also have times after class where we would meet together in the evening.
After all of our work, some people worked off campus, and some people worked here on campus.
Rick Green: What did you do?
Hannah: I got to work in the coffee shop a lot. I helped with our new roasting system, because we're actually roasting our own beans here at Patriot Academy.
Rick Green: Go ahead and pick up again. We'll get a shameless plug for Patriot Brewery right now.
Hannah: You should definitely go to Patriot Brewery and check it out, because we have all different kinds of roasts that we're perfecting day by day. It's really good.
If you don't get to come on campus, you can order it online.
Rick Green: Tell us about chapel, because we also do chapel once a week around the fire. What about those kinds of things outside of class?
Hannah: We also had family dinners. Besides chapel and after-work and after-class activities, we would have chapel and listen to Reagan. We were able to intentionally spend time in worship and in the Word with each other.
We also had family dinners, which Hannah hosted at the apartment girls' home. They invited all of us in, and we got to have another Bible study time, but also just family community.
There aren't a lot of places you go that invite people into your home, where you share a meal, cook the meal together, and clean it up together. There's so much value in just being with each other, learning from each other, and seeking to pour into each other.
Rick Green: Zach, what did you do in your spare time when you weren't in class? Did you do media during the Institute? I can't remember. It sounded like you did.
Zach: I was originally hired for media, but then we needed a lot more help in the print shop with making the shirts and all that.
Rick Green: You did a lot of designing of our swag.
Zach: Yes, sir.
Rick Green: I forgot about that. We got our Patriot Brew swag, hats, and shirts. I think Hannah and I primarily did most of the design work on that.
Hannah: Yes.
Rick Green: We also got a lot of cool patriotic shirts for the 250th anniversary. Some of our Institute students work in the print shop, some work in the shipping department, and some work in landscaping.
What about when you guys helped with groups that came in and did Leadership Congresses, where you got to coach them on how the legislative process works? Tell me a little bit about that.
Zach: That was always very fun. I especially loved doing committee leadership, whether it was chair or vice chair, and helping walk everyone through the process.
Rick Green: For those in the audience, committee leadership means we do an actual legislative simulation. They're either on the floor debating a bill or first going to committee. We have six really cool committee rooms, and they break into committees. They have to work those committees the same way a real legislature does.
You're serving as a chairman or vice chairman and leading that committee for people who have never done that before. You're having to train them on how to testify, how to lay out their bill, and that sort of thing.
Zach: It's really fun helping walk people through the process, especially when they're uncertain or nervous the first time. It's great when you have someone who just needs a little bit of knowledge and encouragement, and then they go through and do it and blow it out of the water.
Rick Green: I know why that's rewarding to you and all of you, because you remember what it felt like the first time. You were nervous and weren't sure how it all worked. Being able to turn around and make someone else comfortable, help them learn it, and then see the victory and thrill when they actually did it is very rewarding.
Bella: I actually want to add to that. My first Leadership Congress, I went up to my chair, who was the legendary Elijah O'Neill.
Rick Green: By legendary, we mean probably the best public speaker we've ever had come to Patriot Academy. He runs Glenn Beck's American Journey Experience now. He's an amazing public speaker, but he was also well known for tearing apart bills if they weren't good enough.
Bella: I was terrified. I was probably on bill number six, and we had only passed one because he had killed all of them. I went up to him and said, "I can't." I was already so terrified.
He said, "I'm not going to go easy on you. Just because you're scared doesn't mean the enemy is going to be any less frightful."
Rick Green: He was saying, "I can't sharpen iron against a marshmallow."
Bella: Exactly. "You better be iron."
I presented my bill. It passed. I got questioned, and I cried the entire time. I did not stop crying the entire time I presented my bill. I warned everyone, "Listen, when we start asking questions, I'm going to start crying. It's okay."
Rick Green: You warned them?
Bella: I warned them. I said, "I will be crying, but it's fine. Don't worry about it."
I cried the entire bill presentation, but I did it.
A couple of years later, it was our Patriot experience. We can cry if we want.
Rick Green: Exactly.
Bella: It was not my committee, but I did cry, even though I didn't want to. I ended up being committee leadership at one of our community Patriot experiences.
I was probably the youngest person in the committee by 35 to 50 years. Getting to see these people who, in the sense of what the world would expect, should be done learning because they're in their 60s or 70s, you come in with the expectation that they're going to think they know everything because there's a 20-year-old, fresh kid sitting at the front of the room telling them what to do.
Rick Green: Just in case the audience needs a picture of this, we have groups that come to the campus and do a legislative simulation. These aren't young students. These are people of all ages, literally in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, who are coming to learn how to be good citizens.
They're learning how to testify in committees back home, before their school board or wherever, and they're being taught by these three young people. They have 19-, 20-, 21-, and 22-year-olds teaching them the process.
Bella: I know that a lot of the hope of this nation, people say, always lies in the hearts and minds of our young people. But I think that a lot of the hope in this nation for young people lies in the intensity of the desire to know more that is in the generations before us.
Getting to be the 20-year-old I didn't want to be, being there that weekend, and seeing them learn the process, seeing these people come in on their free time, with full-time jobs or in retirement, with grandkids, spending their time learning what I had just learned, showed me that the desire to know never dies. That encouraged me and called me to a higher standard.
The best part was them coming in and saying, "I can't present my bill," and me getting to pull an Elijah O'Neill and saying, "Well, you're going to have to." They were people 50 years older than me, and I was coaching them.
At the end of our committee session on the very last day, we always do thorns and roses. One of the first people to answer said, "I thought this process was too difficult for me to understand, but now I'm going to be at my Capitol next week."
Rick Green: They make this seem like something you can't possibly understand. They make it seem like something you can't do back home.
Bella: Yes. They try to intimidate people from being involved in the process because they don't want people to come. They say it's impossible or too scary to go testify.
We're putting people through a process where they're not only having to go testify, but they're having to present and defend their own bill in front of a committee of peers, people who want to call them to a higher standard and sharpen them like iron.
They're asking hard questions and stumping them at the microphone. They're having to think, reason, and get better. Seeing these men and women of courage who are seeking knowledge and saying, "I'm not going to let my age decide that I'm done learning," is powerful.
That's true on both sides. Whether you're at a Leadership Congress or a Patriot experience, there's an idea at either end of the spectrum that you're either too young to know anything or too old to learn anything new.
Rick Green: The best thing about Patriot Academy is that we're in an atmosphere that says, first of all, you're never too young. You're never too young to learn this. You're never too young to go out there and change the world. You're never too young to be at the foot of the charge. You're never too young to hold this torch of freedom.
Second of all, you're never too old to learn. You're never too old to grab hold of the torch. If you haven't been holding this torch of freedom well, the weariness of your hands does not define your capability.
These hands are coming in, and we're all just grabbing this torch. Here on campus, weathered hands, fresh hands, young hands, and calloused hands are all coming together to grasp this torch of freedom, because the value of freedom doesn't diminish with age.
Whether you're with young people, encouraging them and saying, "You're not too young. Get up and do it," or whether you're terrified at 16 or 17, that's okay. Be terrified, and go forth and do this thing.
Bella: The encouragement is not the absence of fear. It's overcoming fear and doing it.
Rick Green: Speaking of not being too young to learn, I love the fact that this older person spoke up at the end of the process and said, "I thought I was too old, or I thought I wasn't going to be good at this." You helped them get through it, and they went back home and actually used it.
I want to switch topics back to the Institute and talk about purpose. How do young people at 17, 18, and 19 years old find meaning, and how does the Institute help them find that? What is it about this environment that helps foster not only what's in the classroom, but also the iron sharpening that y'all were talking about earlier in the coffee shop or around the fire?
How does this atmosphere and environment help you find purpose?
Bella: I think there is a constant push in our culture right now for apathy. You see that in the fact that everything being invented right now is designed to make your life easier and more comfortable. It's all about making life coast.
Whether it is artificial intelligence, new devices, or new cars, everything is there to make your life simpler and easier, so we have to put less thought and less action into everything we're doing.
Apathy is being pushed so effectively that you don't even realize you're being apathetic. Your car drives for you because it's easier. Young people, especially my generation, are being raised in a world where everything is eventually going to be done for them. If you have to do something, you think, "Why can't I just find the easy version?"
Eating well and cooking real food take time and effort. Coming into this Institute year, you really see what an agent of death apathy is. When you live an apathetic life, you're shorting your ability to be someone who is remembered.
Legacy starts with planting seeds, because seeds are what will grow someday into your legacy. Everyone has a root desire deep in their heart to have a legacy, so that in 50, 60, or 70 years, you can look back and say, "I did something with my life. When I was 20 years old, I planted something, and now I'm seeing other people reap the fruit from the tree that I planted."
But there's this idea that apathy is better. What is apathy except sitting at the edge of the field, hoping the seeds will plant themselves? There is no fruit from that.
In 60 years, you're going to look back at that comfortable season when you were relaxing, leaning back in the chair of life, not realizing that the seeds you should be planting are slowly rotting and withering because your mind is doing the same. You're setting yourself up for extreme failure.
You come into this Institute year, and there's no way to be apathetic. It is genuinely one of the most beautiful and difficult things to ever exist, because you have to be intentional with your time. You get as much out of this Institute year as you're willing to put in.
If you're active and passionate, if you're passionate in class and out of class, and if you're seeking deep conversations, then it will plant seeds not just in your heart, but in other individuals as well.
One of the most beautiful examples wasn't actually from my year of the Institute. It was the next year. During class, the question of what chivalry is came up. Instead of just moving on, they spent the entire four hours of class talking about it. Then they said, "Let's get together in the coffee shop tomorrow night and have a discussion about what chivalry is. What does it mean to be biblically chivalrous for men, and what does it mean to be biblically chivalrous for women?"
That quick conversation ended up lasting about six hours.
Rick Green: It was incredibly deep.
Bella: I can look back at my heart posture and my understanding and ask, "How can I, as a woman, respect my brothers and be chivalrous to them and for their hearts? What does their chivalry mean to me?"
It does not mean they think I'm too weak to have doors opened for me. It means they see me as respectable enough to open the doors for me.
Even in ordinary conversations, we're seeing this passion. I think all of us in that year had an extra passion for the biblical family to be rebuilt in America.
For these guys coming in at 17 to 21, they're getting this realization: "Wait, I need to be a father." Not just someone who has a child, but someone who fathers his children, raises his children, and treats his wife in a way that his sons will want to treat their wives someday.
Purpose and passion are built through interaction with other young people, because you see them living life, and you're calling each other to a higher standard. Through planting and fostering, it becomes a greenhouse season where you get to see, "That's the kind of tree I want to plant. Those are the kinds of seeds I want to plant."
It's more than just you individually.
Rick Green: I heard a lot of culture in there.
Bella: Yes. It's more than just what you are going to do individually. It's what you guys are going to do for your whole generation.
Rick Green: I know Zach and Bella probably had some really awesome answers about purpose, but we're out of time. There's the music right there, so that means you'll have to come back. We've got to do this again.
Maybe we'll do it again one day next week. We'll see.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Zach, Hannah, and Bella for joining me today. I appreciate y'all being a part of Patriot Academy and the Institute. Get your application in now. Don't wait until the deadline. Do it right now. Thanks so much for listening.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. If you're watching online, you can see that I have guests in my studio today, so I'm not flying solo like normal.
By the way, Walker Wildmon is usually with you on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'm with you Tuesdays and Thursdays. This week, though, it's not just me. Seated here in the studio, I have three of our Patriot Institute graduates who are going to tell you a little bit about their experience and, I believe, give you hope for the future, because trust me, help is on the way.
We're raising up a new generation of patriots who understand what biblical citizenship is all about. They're finding their purpose, going into all kinds of areas of the culture, learning how to get closer to God, and becoming good patriots.
We have Bella, Hannah, and Zach with me. Hannah, you're the most seasoned graduate because you graduated from the Institute more than a year ago.
Hannah: You can't hear it, but he's playing cheering, so we're applauding for you.
Rick Green: Bella and Zach just graduated in May and are now working full time for Patriot Academy at the campus. It was convenient for them to be in the studio today. In fact, I just grabbed them away from, I don't know what you were doing.
Zach: We were painting in the Patriot cottages today.
Bella: We're painting today.
Rick Green: Okay, so there you go. We're getting ready for a whole new class of Institute students who will be here in October. But Hannah, first of all, how was your Institute experience? How did you find the Institute? What did you learn from it? All those big questions answered in 30 seconds.
Hannah: Thirty seconds?
Rick Green: No, you have all the time you want. Eat that microphone.
Hannah: I'm bringing it closer.
Rick Green: I'm going to hold it because that's really far forward.
Hannah: My oldest brother, Joshua, attended the Leadership Congress in 2008, and I was four years old. Whenever he attended, that kind of started my family's interaction with Patriot Academy, and then it just became something that we did all the time.
My parents wanted to raise kids who understood biblical citizenship. They wanted to raise kids who knew what patriotism looked like. Leadership Congress was somewhere they took us as soon as we were old enough, every summer, to not just learn about apologetics and politics, but really to learn how to articulate ourselves really well and how to combat a culture that truly does want to bring death to my generation.
That may not mean physical death, though one-third of Gen Z is not alive because of the culture, but also spiritual death. Going to Leadership Congress was something we did every summer, or something I looked forward to doing when I was too young to go. As soon as I was 16, it was something I was so excited to do.
Rick Green: You may be the only non-Green who started coming to Patriot Academy at four years old.
Hannah: Yes.
Rick Green: That's crazy. I had forgotten about that.
Hannah: You let me on the House floor for the first time when I was 11 years old. You said I could get on the House floor as long as I would give you, Nathan Macias, and Miss Cara a high five. That was my payment.
Of course, little 11-year-old Hannah was like, "Yes, this is exactly what I want to do." I ran around and gave high fives. Then I went and tried to debate a bill that was going to legalize poker in Texas. I was like, "You can't do this." I don't know why I decided that, but I was very adamant.
Rick Green: You were working the floor.
Hannah: Oh, I was. I was 11. I was working the floor.
Rick Green: Did you win? Did you get enough votes to kill it?
Hannah: No.
Rick Green: No?
Hannah: No. I did lose, but I came back. I got back in the fight.
Rick Green: When did you get to come as an actual student the first time?
Hannah: My first time? Around 15 or so.
Rick Green: No, actually, you didn't want to come early. You waited until you were 16.
Hannah: Because we came and volunteered every summer, I really enjoyed the volunteer process. I came and got to babysit a couple of the speakers' kids for about two years, and then I wanted to come at 16.
Rick Green: You served food, though, right?
Hannah: I did. I served food, helped with the little ones, and had so much fun with that. I think that was probably something that really prepared me well to be in the Patriot Institute. A servant's heart started really young.
Rick Green: Because, for the listeners, we plug her into everything. She does public speaking, she works in the coffee shop, and she now helps run the Institute. She's basically the assistant to the directors. She organizes the schedule and all the good stuff.
You do have a servant's heart. Whatever you're asked to do, you jump in there and do it. I had forgotten about that. If you can serve green beans, you can get up and speak in front of a thousand people.
Hannah: That's where it started, because you have all these kids coming through. As a 12- or 13-year-old, you're watching these young adults come in. They're five to ten years older than you, walking through this line, and you're getting to see them truly see the value of biblical education. You're getting to see them see the value and want to spend their time.
I would say the first few times I went, I was not excited to be there because I wanted to be off with my cousins.
Rick Green: No, I'm kidding. You were 10 or 12, right?
Hannah: Yes. I loved the teaching, but there was also a part of me that thought, "Man, I could have been home playing around." But then I'm seeing these kids whose clock in life is going.
Rick Green: Just so the audience can picture it, when she says "seeing these kids," these are 16- to 25-year-olds, and they're all dressed up. There were suits and dresses in there.
Hannah: Yes.
Rick Green: They're serving as legislators. When you were coming back then, we would have been at the Texas Capitol, down in the extension there, launching and seeing them after they were coming off the House floor.
Hannah: Yes, and you're getting to hear their heart and their passion. That's what really made me want to come.
When I was 13, I was so frustrated because they would not give me and my little brother a golf ball. They said, "It's because you're 13 and 10. You're going to drop it." So we went with our allowance money and bought Texas-colored golf balls from the Texas gift shop. That was our character for the next few years, until I was old enough to go. I was about 16.
Rick Green: Okay, wait. This is a good chance to bring Zach and Bella into the conversation. What in the world does a golf ball have to do with your character? That's your first question. Which one of y'all wants to take it? Zach, why is there a golf ball? What does it have to do with your character?
Zach: The golf ball is probably one of my favorite parts of going through a Leadership Congress. It starts off with usually the cabinet coming out and saying, "Here's your golf ball. Don't drop it. It's your character."
What it represents is something that is small and easy to hold, but once you lose it, it's very difficult to get back because everyone else is trying to snatch it from you. That's essential to representation.
Rick Green: So it's a metaphor for real character.
Zach: Yes.
Rick Green: The fact that you can lose your real character anywhere when you compromise your principles.
Zach: And to get your character back and make it a little easier, you have to memorize a character quote. If you lose it three times, then you have to sing, "Oh, where's my golf ball?" For those of you who know VeggieTales, it's "Oh, Where's My Hairbrush?" But this is "Where's My Golf Ball?"
It's always one of my favorite things just to watch the freshmen receive it. They're completely confused about what it's about, trying silly things. They're trying to tape it to themselves and things like that.
Rick Green: I was like, "No, we're not going to have students hold golf balls while they're typing on their computers or whatever." But anyway, did you think the same thing the first time you came?
Zach: One hundred percent. I thought it was the craziest thing. But then, as the week progresses, you really start to care and start to notice it.
Probably my favorite thing after a Patriot Academy Leadership Congress is that, in the group chat weeks or months later, you'll see someone post a picture where they still have their golf ball, whether they're hiking on top of mountains or just at daily work. They still have it. They hold it up, saying, "I'm still not my character."
Rick Green: Yes, sir. I love that.
By the way, Bobby hasn't said this yet in my ear, but I know what he's thinking. He's thinking, "Why does Rick not have the radio voice of Zach?" You've got this amazing voice, and I'm over here going, "I've got this high-pitched, annoying voice." Bobby's probably thinking, "I wish Rick had Zach's voice so I didn't have to listen to Rick's voice every day."
Okay, so now let's ask Bella. What do you remember about the golf ball and character?
Bella: Mr. Rick, I don't know if you know this, but I've actually never been to a Leadership Congress.
Rick Green: You didn't do Leadership Congress or the Institute?
Bella: No.
Rick Green: Okay, never mind. You don't get that question. Actually, it's a perfect time to tell the difference. What's the difference between a Leadership Congress and going to the actual Patriot Institute?
Bella: I've helped run a few Patriot experiences that have come here on the campus, but I've never actually done a Leadership Congress. The difference is that you're here for a longer period of time. You get poured into. If anyone's ever attended one, you're actually living here on Patriot Academy's campus for the Patriot Institute for a period of nine months.
You get to experience different speakers who come in, just like you do at Leadership Congress. You get different speakers who come in, and they pour into you and talk to you. You also get to hang out with this guy. He gets to pour into you and talk to you.
You learn how to live life. I came here when I was 18, learning the first steps out of the home, how to live, how to go about daily communication with other people, and how to hold down a job while working here on campus for Patriot Academy.
Rick Green: Those are some of the practical differences. You get a lot more interaction with the other students, too. You're literally doing life together.
Bella: Yes, that's correct. You definitely get to build a culture here in and of itself, because you get to set that standard and that culture. You can have different opinions, standards, and ideas, but we all get to work through them and work them out. We definitely build each other up, because you can be the one who either sits back and says, "I'm going to let that slide," or you can say, "No, we're going to be better than that here. We're going to raise you up."
Rick Green: We're really sharpening each other.
Bella: Yes, definitely. It's iron sharpening iron.
Rick Green: Okay, so Zach and Hannah, y'all went through Leadership Congress first, so you got a few days together. I guess the first time you came was three days in Colorado, right? Did you do that one first? Did you come to Nationals first?
Zach: I did Colorado first, but I did the one that was longer.
Rick Green: Yes, the one with the whitewater rafting, Western Server Summit, and baseball game.
Zach: Yes.
Rick Green: So you got a few days together with other patriots, but then you came for the whole year. What was that like? It's a big commitment to be here for nine months. As Bella was saying, you're doing life together. You have roommates. You're having to learn how to live with people and eat with people who may have different personalities. You have conflicts, and you learn how to work that out.
You're also diving into class four hours a day. You get to do some cool servant-oriented things, like helping flood victims. You're doing all kinds of things throughout the year.
What were some of the takeaways after nine months? How did it change you? What did you learn about yourself and what you wanted to do with life? What were some of the big takeaways after a year of being on campus? Any of y'all can jump into that one.
Rick Green: Let me tell the audience that I gave these three a lot of warning about the interview today and the questions. That's a lie. I didn't do that. I gave them maybe 30 minutes' notice, maybe an hour's notice, and didn't tell them anything about what the questions were going to be. I'm loving the fact that they're having to do all this on the spot.
Hannah: I got no such hour's notice.
Rick Green: I walked into the office where Zach was sitting and said, "Wait a minute, I thought you were gone today." He was here, so I said, "Hey, come on." He was right in the middle of making a reel for the Patriot Academy Instagram page. Check it out. Zach does media for us now.
Zach: Big takeaways from the Institute? I would say two massive takeaways for me. One comes from the content, and one comes from the community.
Rick Green: From the content, meaning the classroom content and the curriculum you had to go through?
Zach: Yes. Coming from a very homeschooled Christian background, you're taught a lot of the right things. There's a major difference between simply having the right assumptions and truly understanding something for yourself.
You can assume or believe the right thing, but there is a massive amount of depth and weight added to it when you understand why it's true and how it impacts you. The worldview classes and all the training with Mr. Dunham were massively impactful for that.
Rick Green: Was it that you had never been exposed to any of those things? Like you said, you're from a Christian home, so you had a lot of head knowledge, but this really made you go deeper, to understand what was behind the principle.
You might have been taught that something was right or wrong, but through the classroom time, diving into the curriculum, and conversations sitting in a coffee shop, you were really getting the why behind what was right or wrong. You were really diving into it.
Zach: That's one hundred percent what it is. That's the content part.
Rick Green: And you said you had a big one on the community, but we've got to hold the community one because I have to take a break. This is the world of radio, y'all. Welcome.
I don't have a choice. Bobby's in my ear. Not really, but I hear the music out there, so we're going to get ready for a break.
If you're listening or even watching online, this is a little bit different from what I normally do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I've got three of our Patriot Institute graduates with me, and we're talking about what it's like to be here on the campus at Patriot Academy in Constitution City for a full nine-month academic year and how it has changed their lives.
Part of the reason I wanted them to be in here is that I've got some scholarships to give away. I have multiple scholarships available, and we're two weeks away from the start date. If you know somebody in your life who could benefit from the things these students are talking about, they should apply. We'll be right back talking more about it in a moment.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. I'm bouncing my head to the music while these Patriot Institute graduates are not, because they can't hear the music. I have the headphones.
We have great bumper music here at At the Core, just so you know. It's really good.
If you just tuned in, this is an unusual program. I'm usually pontificating on whatever has happened in the news and giving you the good, the bad, and the ugly. But today I have three special guests in the studio with me. They are all Patriot Institute graduates, which means they spent a full academic year here on the campus, nine months learning all kinds of worldview and apologetics, including master's-level training in those things.
They did debates, learned communication skills, and did all kinds of life skills. They did life together and learned how to interact. It was awesome.
Hannah came to us in our very first class. She was one of my lab rats, as I call them, my guinea pigs. Twelve of them came through in the first year, and we practiced on them and learned how to do the Patriot Institute.
Zach and Bella came last year in our second year, with 27 students in that class. We were still kind of practicing on them, so we learned a lot, and they did a great job helping us improve it.
Now we've got students showing up here in two weeks for the 2026 to 2027 Institute class, and we have some spots left. That's part of why I wanted these three amazing young people to talk about their experience, because there are people listening right now who might want to come to the Institute, or who know someone in their life who is 17 to 24. We might even make an exception for 25.
It's $20,000 to come for the whole year. I have multiple scholarships of $15,000 each that I can give out if someone decides they want to apply soon.
What do you think, Hannah? They probably need to have their application in within the next four or five days.
Hannah: We don't have the official deadline yet, but our last ask was about September 28. That's the last day we can get an application and make it work. If you come in on the 28th, we can make it work, but after that it will be really, really tight.
Rick Green: So what she said is that it has to be in by the 28th. You have a little bit of time to talk it over.
Let's talk about what that means. You come here, live in a cottage, go to class four hours every day, and do a service day where we go out and serve other people. You also work on campus. What else do you do in your spare time at the Patriot Institute when you're here full time? What did you do with your days other than go to class?
Hannah: Right after class, we would either get lunch, or we could go to lunch with Mr. Chris sometimes. He would pour into us outside of class time. We would also have times after class where we would meet together in the evening.
After all of our work, some people worked off campus, and some people worked here on campus.
Rick Green: What did you do?
Hannah: I got to work in the coffee shop a lot. I helped with our new roasting system, because we're actually roasting our own beans here at Patriot Academy.
Rick Green: Go ahead and pick up again. We'll get a shameless plug for Patriot Brewery right now.
Hannah: You should definitely go to Patriot Brewery and check it out, because we have all different kinds of roasts that we're perfecting day by day. It's really good.
If you don't get to come on campus, you can order it online.
Rick Green: Tell us about chapel, because we also do chapel once a week around the fire. What about those kinds of things outside of class?
Hannah: We also had family dinners. Besides chapel and after-work and after-class activities, we would have chapel and listen to Reagan. We were able to intentionally spend time in worship and in the Word with each other.
We also had family dinners, which Hannah hosted at the apartment girls' home. They invited all of us in, and we got to have another Bible study time, but also just family community.
There aren't a lot of places you go that invite people into your home, where you share a meal, cook the meal together, and clean it up together. There's so much value in just being with each other, learning from each other, and seeking to pour into each other.
Rick Green: Zach, what did you do in your spare time when you weren't in class? Did you do media during the Institute? I can't remember. It sounded like you did.
Zach: I was originally hired for media, but then we needed a lot more help in the print shop with making the shirts and all that.
Rick Green: You did a lot of designing of our swag.
Zach: Yes, sir.
Rick Green: I forgot about that. We got our Patriot Brew swag, hats, and shirts. I think Hannah and I primarily did most of the design work on that.
Hannah: Yes.
Rick Green: We also got a lot of cool patriotic shirts for the 250th anniversary. Some of our Institute students work in the print shop, some work in the shipping department, and some work in landscaping.
What about when you guys helped with groups that came in and did Leadership Congresses, where you got to coach them on how the legislative process works? Tell me a little bit about that.
Zach: That was always very fun. I especially loved doing committee leadership, whether it was chair or vice chair, and helping walk everyone through the process.
Rick Green: For those in the audience, committee leadership means we do an actual legislative simulation. They're either on the floor debating a bill or first going to committee. We have six really cool committee rooms, and they break into committees. They have to work those committees the same way a real legislature does.
You're serving as a chairman or vice chairman and leading that committee for people who have never done that before. You're having to train them on how to testify, how to lay out their bill, and that sort of thing.
Zach: It's really fun helping walk people through the process, especially when they're uncertain or nervous the first time. It's great when you have someone who just needs a little bit of knowledge and encouragement, and then they go through and do it and blow it out of the water.
Rick Green: I know why that's rewarding to you and all of you, because you remember what it felt like the first time. You were nervous and weren't sure how it all worked. Being able to turn around and make someone else comfortable, help them learn it, and then see the victory and thrill when they actually did it is very rewarding.
Bella: I actually want to add to that. My first Leadership Congress, I went up to my chair, who was the legendary Elijah O'Neill.
Rick Green: By legendary, we mean probably the best public speaker we've ever had come to Patriot Academy. He runs Glenn Beck's American Journey Experience now. He's an amazing public speaker, but he was also well known for tearing apart bills if they weren't good enough.
Bella: I was terrified. I was probably on bill number six, and we had only passed one because he had killed all of them. I went up to him and said, "I can't." I was already so terrified.
He said, "I'm not going to go easy on you. Just because you're scared doesn't mean the enemy is going to be any less frightful."
Rick Green: He was saying, "I can't sharpen iron against a marshmallow."
Bella: Exactly. "You better be iron."
I presented my bill. It passed. I got questioned, and I cried the entire time. I did not stop crying the entire time I presented my bill. I warned everyone, "Listen, when we start asking questions, I'm going to start crying. It's okay."
Rick Green: You warned them?
Bella: I warned them. I said, "I will be crying, but it's fine. Don't worry about it."
I cried the entire bill presentation, but I did it.
A couple of years later, it was our Patriot experience. We can cry if we want.
Rick Green: Exactly.
Bella: It was not my committee, but I did cry, even though I didn't want to. I ended up being committee leadership at one of our community Patriot experiences.
I was probably the youngest person in the committee by 35 to 50 years. Getting to see these people who, in the sense of what the world would expect, should be done learning because they're in their 60s or 70s, you come in with the expectation that they're going to think they know everything because there's a 20-year-old, fresh kid sitting at the front of the room telling them what to do.
Rick Green: Just in case the audience needs a picture of this, we have groups that come to the campus and do a legislative simulation. These aren't young students. These are people of all ages, literally in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, who are coming to learn how to be good citizens.
They're learning how to testify in committees back home, before their school board or wherever, and they're being taught by these three young people. They have 19-, 20-, 21-, and 22-year-olds teaching them the process.
Bella: I know that a lot of the hope of this nation, people say, always lies in the hearts and minds of our young people. But I think that a lot of the hope in this nation for young people lies in the intensity of the desire to know more that is in the generations before us.
Getting to be the 20-year-old I didn't want to be, being there that weekend, and seeing them learn the process, seeing these people come in on their free time, with full-time jobs or in retirement, with grandkids, spending their time learning what I had just learned, showed me that the desire to know never dies. That encouraged me and called me to a higher standard.
The best part was them coming in and saying, "I can't present my bill," and me getting to pull an Elijah O'Neill and saying, "Well, you're going to have to." They were people 50 years older than me, and I was coaching them.
At the end of our committee session on the very last day, we always do thorns and roses. One of the first people to answer said, "I thought this process was too difficult for me to understand, but now I'm going to be at my Capitol next week."
Rick Green: They make this seem like something you can't possibly understand. They make it seem like something you can't do back home.
Bella: Yes. They try to intimidate people from being involved in the process because they don't want people to come. They say it's impossible or too scary to go testify.
We're putting people through a process where they're not only having to go testify, but they're having to present and defend their own bill in front of a committee of peers, people who want to call them to a higher standard and sharpen them like iron.
They're asking hard questions and stumping them at the microphone. They're having to think, reason, and get better. Seeing these men and women of courage who are seeking knowledge and saying, "I'm not going to let my age decide that I'm done learning," is powerful.
That's true on both sides. Whether you're at a Leadership Congress or a Patriot experience, there's an idea at either end of the spectrum that you're either too young to know anything or too old to learn anything new.
Rick Green: The best thing about Patriot Academy is that we're in an atmosphere that says, first of all, you're never too young. You're never too young to learn this. You're never too young to go out there and change the world. You're never too young to be at the foot of the charge. You're never too young to hold this torch of freedom.
Second of all, you're never too old to learn. You're never too old to grab hold of the torch. If you haven't been holding this torch of freedom well, the weariness of your hands does not define your capability.
These hands are coming in, and we're all just grabbing this torch. Here on campus, weathered hands, fresh hands, young hands, and calloused hands are all coming together to grasp this torch of freedom, because the value of freedom doesn't diminish with age.
Whether you're with young people, encouraging them and saying, "You're not too young. Get up and do it," or whether you're terrified at 16 or 17, that's okay. Be terrified, and go forth and do this thing.
Bella: The encouragement is not the absence of fear. It's overcoming fear and doing it.
Rick Green: Speaking of not being too young to learn, I love the fact that this older person spoke up at the end of the process and said, "I thought I was too old, or I thought I wasn't going to be good at this." You helped them get through it, and they went back home and actually used it.
I want to switch topics back to the Institute and talk about purpose. How do young people at 17, 18, and 19 years old find meaning, and how does the Institute help them find that? What is it about this environment that helps foster not only what's in the classroom, but also the iron sharpening that y'all were talking about earlier in the coffee shop or around the fire?
How does this atmosphere and environment help you find purpose?
Bella: I think there is a constant push in our culture right now for apathy. You see that in the fact that everything being invented right now is designed to make your life easier and more comfortable. It's all about making life coast.
Whether it is artificial intelligence, new devices, or new cars, everything is there to make your life simpler and easier, so we have to put less thought and less action into everything we're doing.
Apathy is being pushed so effectively that you don't even realize you're being apathetic. Your car drives for you because it's easier. Young people, especially my generation, are being raised in a world where everything is eventually going to be done for them. If you have to do something, you think, "Why can't I just find the easy version?"
Eating well and cooking real food take time and effort. Coming into this Institute year, you really see what an agent of death apathy is. When you live an apathetic life, you're shorting your ability to be someone who is remembered.
Legacy starts with planting seeds, because seeds are what will grow someday into your legacy. Everyone has a root desire deep in their heart to have a legacy, so that in 50, 60, or 70 years, you can look back and say, "I did something with my life. When I was 20 years old, I planted something, and now I'm seeing other people reap the fruit from the tree that I planted."
But there's this idea that apathy is better. What is apathy except sitting at the edge of the field, hoping the seeds will plant themselves? There is no fruit from that.
In 60 years, you're going to look back at that comfortable season when you were relaxing, leaning back in the chair of life, not realizing that the seeds you should be planting are slowly rotting and withering because your mind is doing the same. You're setting yourself up for extreme failure.
You come into this Institute year, and there's no way to be apathetic. It is genuinely one of the most beautiful and difficult things to ever exist, because you have to be intentional with your time. You get as much out of this Institute year as you're willing to put in.
If you're active and passionate, if you're passionate in class and out of class, and if you're seeking deep conversations, then it will plant seeds not just in your heart, but in other individuals as well.
One of the most beautiful examples wasn't actually from my year of the Institute. It was the next year. During class, the question of what chivalry is came up. Instead of just moving on, they spent the entire four hours of class talking about it. Then they said, "Let's get together in the coffee shop tomorrow night and have a discussion about what chivalry is. What does it mean to be biblically chivalrous for men, and what does it mean to be biblically chivalrous for women?"
That quick conversation ended up lasting about six hours.
Rick Green: It was incredibly deep.
Bella: I can look back at my heart posture and my understanding and ask, "How can I, as a woman, respect my brothers and be chivalrous to them and for their hearts? What does their chivalry mean to me?"
It does not mean they think I'm too weak to have doors opened for me. It means they see me as respectable enough to open the doors for me.
Even in ordinary conversations, we're seeing this passion. I think all of us in that year had an extra passion for the biblical family to be rebuilt in America.
For these guys coming in at 17 to 21, they're getting this realization: "Wait, I need to be a father." Not just someone who has a child, but someone who fathers his children, raises his children, and treats his wife in a way that his sons will want to treat their wives someday.
Purpose and passion are built through interaction with other young people, because you see them living life, and you're calling each other to a higher standard. Through planting and fostering, it becomes a greenhouse season where you get to see, "That's the kind of tree I want to plant. Those are the kinds of seeds I want to plant."
It's more than just you individually.
Rick Green: I heard a lot of culture in there.
Bella: Yes. It's more than just what you are going to do individually. It's what you guys are going to do for your whole generation.
Rick Green: I know Zach and Bella probably had some really awesome answers about purpose, but we're out of time. There's the music right there, so that means you'll have to come back. We've got to do this again.
Maybe we'll do it again one day next week. We'll see.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Zach, Hannah, and Bella for joining me today. I appreciate y'all being a part of Patriot Academy and the Institute. Get your application in now. Don't wait until the deadline. Do it right now. Thanks so much for listening.
Rick Green speaks with Patriot Institute graduates Hannah, Zach, and Bella about the nine-month experience that shaped their faith, worldview, character, and calling. They discuss biblical citizenship, legislative simulations, service, community, and why young people are never too young to learn, lead, or serve.
The graduates also explain how the Institute helped them find purpose and overcome apathy. Bella shares how obedience led her to become a firearms instructor, while Zach discusses media work and Hannah describes serving across the Patriot Academy campus.
Together, they offer a firsthand look at training designed to prepare Christians for faithful cultural and civic engagement.
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