 Good day, my lovely listeners! You are listening to the Forty Autie podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalising tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Good day and welcome back to another episode of the Forty Autie podcast with your host of course, Mr Thomas Henley. Today we're going to be talking about something that I haven't really touched on before. We're going to be talking about ableism, and more specifically ableism in the workplace. Now what it looks like, the sort of difficulties that you can have in different workplace settings, some of the good things, some of the bad things, as well as how we can band together to try and reduce the amount of ableism that's out there. So today I've been joined by my very lovely guest, Lydia from the account Journal Lydia. Hi, thank you for having me. How are you doing today? All good. Thank you for having me on. I will say this is not what I usually sound like. Everyone I know seems to have this hideous cold that's going round, so I'm very sorry about that. It happens. Lydia, do you want to tell us a little bit about what you do in the world of work and what you do on Instagram? What do I do on Instagram? Many mess around, it seems to me. By trade, I'm a freelance journalist, and that means that I write for national and kind of like regional publications. So my work has appeared in places like the Metro, Refinery29, Possibility Magazine. Did I say the independent? Places like that. This generally revolves around kind of like disability and social justice issues, so in the early stages of the pandemic, for example, I was looking a lot at people who were shielding, particularly those who were, it was very strange to me the fact that the way in which people who were shielding were covered in that, that it was always just assumed that they were like, you know, over the age of 65, 70, when it was all ages, and yet that was just basically no coverage of that at the time. Am I right in thinking that shielding is like, it's when you try and protect a certain group from getting infected, or is that right? Yeah, but the thing about that is it always sort of, it was always kind of always put in a way where it was like, oh, this person is elderly and this group is always just, it's the old age pensioner kind of thing, which is beyond inaccurate and also quite harmful. So there were people that I knew at the time who were shielding, who people would come up to them and say things like, oh, you're too young to be getting the COVID vaccine, you can't be a shielder, even if they had quite serious conditions and that kind of thing. It's, I also produced the Conscious Being podcast. Conscious Being is a magazine that I write for, I've been what you might call a staff writer for a while, with enough, with enough sense of the inception of the magazine, I think, something like that. It's, and I also seem to write books possibly, plural to be decided. Wow, so you love words. Yeah, it's, I've always sort of wondered whether I'm not diagnosed as hyperlexic, but I think I had hyperlexic tendencies as a child, to be honest. I found that. I never really followed it up. I think at one point I was, I applied for the BBC journalism apprenticeship thingy. And I got free to the final stage, but due to the pandemic, they cancelled it. So I got free to write. I applied as well. And it was really, did you get the email where it was like, we would tell you in three days time, whether you've got through it. And then it was like six months later, and it was like, oh, sorry, we forgot about you. And by the way, this is time to say, why we're not doing anything with this. That was really fast writing. Yeah, it was, it wasn't very helpful, to be honest, because it was kind of like, you know, when, when you sort of, you're trying to make some of something of yourself long term, you think very far into the future. And you're like, you set yourself on an objective, and then you go for it. And then, you know, something happens that's completely out of your control. So I kind of feel that we've had to learn that with the pandemic, to be honest. I'm saying this as an autistic person, I find it quite difficult to deal with change, for example. That being said, I find it quite strange with the kind of like the opening up of the pandemic in sort of people like, Oh, we can make future plans. And my brain is in that mode still sort of like, hmm, we're still in the pandemic, could there be something that could change drastically soon? Why are we planning ahead this wild type thing? It's always very strange because I hear about people talking about things like executive functioning and planning and things of that nature. But because we're sort of in this big neurodiverse community, and there's so much crossover between autism and ADHD, for example, it can be sometimes quite hard to give advice around planning. Because they may have a diagnosis of autism, but male should be ADHD, and they kind of need a happy medium between the two. You know, what you're saying earlier about hyperlexia? Like, I definitely found that when I was younger, like I could read very, very, very young age. When I started school, my academic performance and my reading and writing and maths and stuff went down until I picked up a game called Yu-Gi-Oh. It's based on like an anime series, but it's basically a card game where you have like monsters that have attack and defense, and you have to try and hit people's life points. And one of the great things about Yu-Gi-Oh is that it had the mathematical reading, writing and sort of logical comprehension stuff built into it. But a lot of my academic work was done playing Yu-Gi-Oh. Oh, if it works for you. I mean, it's just, I kind of feel like if we just adapted a bit more, if it works for you, then that's okay. Surely, you'll still learn it. I find the whole concept of ableism quite interesting because on the surface, ableism is just, as the definition would lead you into, it's the discrimination of a set of disabled people in favor of able-bodied people. Am I right? But the issue that I find that is really hard for me to conceptualize exactly what are the downstream ableist-like behaviors because it seems to be something that is very individual. It makes sense, especially with autism, you have different traits. Obviously, it's going to be a bit more individual. I guess, how would you describe ableism towards autistic people in a practical setting? How would you like to bubble it? For this, I can only talk from my own personal experience. I just want to caveat this in case of people listening and they come back and they say, that's not my experience at all. In terms of my workplace, it's so interesting that you use the word behavior, so I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I sometimes think that ableism can present in terms of work other isms, if that makes sense. I'm trying to think of a way to describe this without identifying this person too much because this would get me in a lot of trouble if they did. Recently, there was somebody that I used to work with and they were fully aware that I was on the spectrum. I would describe the working relationship as having this weaponised against me in the sense of, oh, she's so vulnerable. I'm only vulnerable when you start to question my ability to do my job or you start to say, it's the stereotype of kind of like, oh, she's female. Therefore, the big scary man must walk alongside her type thing to walk her home type thing. What I understand is, even though I haven't spoken to this person over a year, they really do not matter. I don't work with them anymore. They were still going on and on and on about me working for them. I would describe it as being quite sort of misogynistic, really. That I think can interplay with ableism in the sense that if I had been a guy and if I had not been on the spectrum, that would have not happened at all. It defined the behaviour of the way that they were acting in a way. I don't know. Does that answer the question? I'm not sure. Well, it's kind of leading into the first official question from the question list that I sent you, which is, what experiences of ableism have you found in the workplace? Several. I kind of feel it's sort of like every possible presumption that people have. I'm very aware of the fact that I can walk and I can talk and I have what you could call privilege in that sense. I'm just very aware that there are other autistic people who can't walk and they can't talk and they can't do X, Y, Z. The thing about this is people have a very sort of quite specific idea kind of in like Rain Man terms, or sort of like what autism may or may not be. Rain Man is not actually based on an autistic person. The person it's actually based on was actually misdiagnosed. It's just sort of become sort of this cultural sort of motif almost. I don't know what you would call this. So whenever I've gone into the workplace and because of the fact that I legally have to say hi, I'm autistic, I need reasonable adjustments such as an interview or that sort of thing, generally speaking, no one believes me. Even in the, I have a wonderful co-writer I'm working with on a project currently. I've been a massive fan of this person, another journalist from Times Newspapers ever since I was about probably 14, I'm 23 now. They initially, I don't think they actually believed me when I had to say I'm on the spectrum and I currently don't understand you and frankly your eye contact is weirding me out. Can you like book away sort of thing? So this is kind of like, I can't remember the exact word for it, but you're sort of overwriting someone's experiences. Invalidating based on what you think about someone that you just met. I also think it's, there's indirect and directly in terms of the application of discrimination. So in some places that I've worked, again, not naming names, the wonderful, this seems to keep recurring. I don't know why. People keep saying things like just communicate better. I can tell from your face. It's just completely bonkers, isn't it? Just to sort of say, oh, just communicate better. I don't know. Why don't I just wave my magic wand and I'll just stop being autistic just for a moment. I would say, I was told after the last time that happened that's actually microaggression. Yeah, the thing about this is newsrooms are also not a nice place. I know that we should, I should be saying, come and be a reporter, come and work in my industry. I would be a hypocrite if I was saying that. I don't work for freelance. I work from home for this particular reason. Newsrooms are not nice places. I've always been pigeonholed. I've had to deal with abuse. I've had to deal with editors doing the whole sort of, oh, she's autistic. Why don't we just hire her for brownie points? Yeah, it's, I've only ever had maybe two job interviews where the reasonable adjustments have actually been in place. Really? Yep. You know, it kind of brings me to something that I think is a really big issue in the world of work at the moment is we have a lot of push for diversity in the workplace. For getting autistic people into the workplace, but they don't actually put any of the time and the effort and the things in place in order to get the best out of the individual. Especially in places like the media, inherently, we are at disadvantage in the working world because a large part of getting places is about being socially intelligent and about being assertive and about, I think the best way to put it is, you know, you can get lots of places by just being good at socializing and having a big ego. That is loving the big ego. That is so, that is so the way that I ever described my profession. It's based on merit or anything. Some people, some people, they just go in and they're just a talking head and they just talk to a talk and then somehow they just make their way up the ladder, find themselves in positions of power and just having absolutely no clue about what to do with it. Exactly. I love the fact that you've used the phrase big ego. Prior to logging on to record this podcast, I was talking to, I really hope she listens to this because I can just imagine her laughing. There's a BBC journalist who she is my best friend and she would describe me as being that she has the nickname auntie but there is a particular person that we both know who she would describe as being exactly that, the big ego. Prior to logging on, we were complaining over WhatsApp going, why are there so many egos in this industry? Why do we have to deal with them? There's no merit to it. It's always like a phrase peacock fight, where this is sort of pushing the chest out. Yeah, he's jumping the feather. It is really true. I mean, I think considering that it kind of makes the whole working landscape quite difficult or just as you would say, indirectly discriminatory against people. I suppose an idea, sort of a concept that really springs to mind when I think about indirect discrimination is the way that we pay people for work. It's very, very hours-based and from my experience, autistic people, we work very fast and we work very specific and good in the high quality. We do a lot more in those hours that we have but the other hours that we have, we find it very difficult and it eats into a lot of our energy, sort of ability to perform mental energy and then we have burnouts. If organizations, I guess, would have more of an approach of workload for pay, then it would remove a lot of that but it's not like that. For example, myself, I would love to work full-time. I work basically full-time about four days a week but even then, all of my pay is dictated by how often I'm working. That's not something specific to my organization. It's specific to a lot of workplaces. What do you think about that? It's so interesting that you've mentioned this. I've noticed that the, I forget where this is. It's somewhere in the UK but there are a lot of people who are doing a particular style of working week in that to see if that actually works. Time after time, it's shown in terms of productivity. Productivity improves if you have the workload rather than the hourly pay type thing. I also feel that this would, in terms of commercial issues related to newspapers, this could potentially solve a lot. I feel my industry gets a lot of criticism if we get stuff wrong. The thing is, we are underfunded. Newsrooms are dying. Everyone knows that print is on its way out. Mistakes are made. We are human. Robots don't write the news yet, thankfully. I suppose that's the issue because you're an outward-facing profession. You're not inward-facing. I'm sure there'll be some aspects to it but most of the stuff that you publish and put out is for the world to see or for anybody who comes across the website or the blog or things like that. True. I feel it's a little bit more complex only because in terms of scandals and related things. In terms of the working for pay thing, I feel that if people just worked for their workload versus the actual hours, in terms of commercial costs and making a profit for newspapers, it would solve so much rather than every year. It's something like the circulation bureau or something. I can't remember what. Everyone's always like, oh, look, such and such of newspapers lost this many copies this year and lost this amount of profit. Therefore, they must cut numbers. Well, if you worked a bit smarter rather than working around the clock type thing and actually adapting to how news evolves rather than expecting the pay per hour thing, I feel it would be quite innovative. I'm glad to hear that you think it's a good idea as well. It's more inclusive. If you want to diverse media, you need inclusion practices. Yeah. I think another thing that I think could really do with a lot of work is positive reasonable adjustments. I was talking to someone else on a previous episode about reasonable adjustments in the workplace. I think the issue at the moment is that it's a very deficit-based model, so it's meant to pull up your deficits. These reasonable adjustments, the support that you get is for the things that you can't do. Whereas if you wanted to get the best out of the individual, you would craft a role for a person, take out the bits that the rubbish out, give them to some people, and then keep all the stuff that they're really good at and get them to just work at that. It's a bit hard nowadays because you have job titles and you have specific roles which are laid down on paper. You could be exceptionally good at 90% of it, but the other 10% is stuff that you just can't for the life of you just get your head around. It's like me with biology. I just never could get in my head about doing statistical tests and things like that. I much prefer to actually learn about how things work, but that 10% is quite large because you need it to churn out and push out publications and things like that. Yeah. I don't feel I really have anything to contribute to that. I agree. Do you have any of the sort of indirect discrimination examples? It's job interviews. Basically, I've never really had a successful job interview. It's pretty much whenever it's, again, it's that feeling, not that feeling, I'm going to refresh. It's that knowledge that when I've gone into an interview previously, I feel that this is really quite terrible practice when you play people off against each other. That happens to interviewees. Or more in a group. Really? Yeah, I've been in several interviews. Sounds like hell. But it's that thing that's just sort of like I've been in interviews where I've realised that there's another autistic person and that's that thing of I know people see me as a normal person, therefore I know already that I've not got the role because people still see functioning labels. I'm trying to think of other examples that should have written notes before I came into this. It's also the thing about in terms of stories and things that I write very often that people try to pigeonhole. What's pigeonholing again? I've heard it a lot. I just can't remember exactly. In the sense of here's an autistic person, therefore they must write everything about autism and nothing else. If you're a woman, you have to talk about women's things and you can't talk about in general. And it happens across basically anything that ticks other. I remember being so ashamed at the time of when George Floyd, when that sort of erupted and basic newsrooms are very white places and they basically said, oh, we want to commission writers of an ethnic minority background to write about ethnic minority issues because we want to diverse media. Why don't you just commission them in the first place rather than going right about this super dramatic event? It's just sort of... Just throwing them in there. Hello, here's your interview. Right, write about this horrible thing to do with your race. Yeah, it's just sort of like it's things like that but just so utterly shameful. It's sort of like really you could have just done better if you just thought about this just a little bit, just a teeny tiny bit. But that is examples of pigeon holding where you just go, oh, this person, this person is different, therefore they must write about this difference. That's so weird to the rest of us. No, I get that. And I mean, in general, for me as an independent creator, it's much easier for me to talk about things that I have direct experience with as opposed to... It's preferred, but I think it's also preferred by a lot of autistic people. A lot of them don't really want neurotypicals coming in and telling them what to do and how to do it and telling them about the experience of autism. It could be quite difficult in that sense. It's not necessarily that it's a prerequisite for making stuff about autism, but it's definitely highly favourable to a lot of people. So I can sort of see the furp side of that, but then it brings me to autism in the media in general. Why does it be that every time an autistic person's on the screen is because of autism or we're talking about autism? Why can't it just be a series or a film or there are a few? There's just an autistic person there. Why not do it if I say properly? So it's all very well to say, write about this super traumatic thing, but in the first place you should be hybring ethnic minority writers. You cannot as an editor or someone in a place hybring. You cannot say we want a diverse media and then just say, oh, out of the blue for one month and one month only, we want these people to write for us. You should just have them anyway and they shouldn't have to be writing about the same subject. They should be allowed to choose. It's the whole organisation versus the individual. I'm sure we'd get a lot more interesting, a lot more interesting, emotional, impactful journal articles if it wasn't so heavily dictated by the higher-ups. The way in which we tell stories is changing, but some newspapers have yet to catch up. How am I going to put this? In terms of the formats that we tell stories, for example, if you look at the Bristol cable, for example, they incorporate voice notes, for example, so they have people reading out the story like you do on Substack. They have interactive photos and all that kind of thing. That's the thing in terms of news is 24-7, so there needs to be a balance. Some newspapers are better at it than others, I think. To some extent, it's not really something that I've had a lot of either professional or personal experience for. It's good to have your insight on that because I've just checked out the Bristol cable thing. Stuff like that, it's really awesome. It's not the type of content that I like to... I like videos, I like people voices, and I like to hear people's opinions. I kind of feel that where traditional media is dying, this is going to be controversial, traditional media is dying, and yet we have other organisations that are sort of taking over and survive the Bristol cable. The Bristol cable is not a newspaper, but it's, if I say, different in that sense. It's like a news site. The place that I usually go for news, it's usually... I usually just follow some news sites on Instagram and then I just let their posts come through and they usually do quite nifty, short videos or write-ups. One one that I like a lot is Vice, which I'm not too sure about the company itself, but I always find the articles very interesting. Not all of them, but I guess just to kind of finish off there, talking about specific examples, what would be direct examples of discrimination? I guess that it's a little bit less grey, it's a lot more black and white. I can't really answer that because it would identify... Not specific personal examples, just in a general sense. So direct ableism would be things like passing over for promotions, things like not hiring in the first place, or things like... You know when it's like when you get a job slip and it's like, we really admire your skills, but... And then they say, it's like, oh, you can work in this unpaid position even though you are totally qualified for this. I would argue that job the application process is inherently ableist to autistic people. With the interviews, or the long lengthy emails and text. Yeah, also the expectation that it's on us to bend to all requirements. So prior to the pandemic, I actually had some employment support, but it was always like, oh, you need to do this really quite degrading... What do you call it? They would say things like, I needed to practice like a role play exercise and job interviews. Rather than the person interviewing me is legally obliged to make reasonable adjustments. It's not for me to sort of go, I'm going to pretend to be neurotypical for the day and sort of like, you know, hey, how are you type thing? That is inherently ableist. Yeah, it's the whole interview process. It's never been... I've never had any difficulties with that, which may be surprising, but I'm very good at interviews. I feel over the years I've sort of built my social skills, the ability to socialize with neurotypicals quite highly. Not in terms of masking, just in terms of understanding what they're trying to say and how to put it in words that they understand. And it's kind of like a reverse understanding autism. It's a bit strange, but... You could make that into an app. So we could put it on our phones. That would be so... The neurotypical translator. Yes. I was having to say, too, with my wonderful co-writer recently, they are very obviously a neurotypical person. Neurotypical syndrome. Yeah, and sort of like... Oh, I love that. I'm so borrowing that for whenever I need to say something. I know they're intense focus on social interactions and social standing and things like that. We could make a list of... I think I did a video on that very far back on my YouTube video. It was like a doctor from a world of Aspergers where 1% of the population is neurotypical. I got to be a wonderful writer for the first time recently, and it was just so wonderful being able to talk to her and sort of saying, why is it that we are considered to be the weird ones? The incessant focus and kind of always being socially acceptable and conforming on all that sort of thing. Is that not a bit weird? Yeah. It's also disadvantageous, because having a unique personality is quite a drawing is quite captivating for a lot of people. I'd reckon that a lot of interesting people in the celebrities and things like that, I reckon that there's quite a lot of them that were on the spectrum or quite a lot of characters in a movie or a series, even not explicitly came out and said it, but it... they do give me sort of neurodiversity vibes. It's an aware of a few reporters who are in fact on the autistic spectrum. Now, I wouldn't identify them, obviously, but it's sort of like... I like the fact that you say about characters because that is how I think of them. They are the sort of the larger than life type people. Do you mind if we move on to... No, go ahead. The next question. I think as we were describing ableism in direct and direct, we kind of went over why it's difficult to work as an autistic person in the working world. It's not easy and you have to communicate with people who have a different brain, communication style, perception, sense of feeling than yourself and just being able to understand yourself and autism is kind of a big step already, but actually understanding how to incorporate yourself into a working world, it's very difficult. So I guess what traits would make... or what traits of being autistic do you find has helped you in the world of journalism? Oh, my. Good question. I'm not sure if it has to be honest. That's unofficial. You don't need a diagnosis. It's just so funny you say this. So when I was diagnosed back in... when was this? In January 2015, when I finally received my diagnosis for Aspergust and Drone, I remember sitting down at the time and sort of thinking, okay, I know that I'm different and I know that there will be people who will penalize me for this because that is just how the world works. But I remember sort of thinking, okay, I know that I can do... I know that I can be obsessional because that is the one thing my family would say about me, just be warned she can be obsessive and she told you about her special interest, but how was an end type thing? I'd say that that sort of intense focus and passion, that's quite a big positive for me. You found something that you're passionate about and you can also make money from. This is sort of like a reverse psychology, I guess. I find it very difficult to read to people. Sure. So I can't do faces or blank discs to me, I can't really... unless it's like really obvious like happy or sad type thing, I can't really do anything in between. What body language is frankly confusing? Just like the difficulties with cognitive empathy. Yeah, not empathy, but sort of like the physical... what's the phrase? I actually went for testing recently and it turns out I am face blind. So literally, I can't tell what your face is saying to me. Well, I just want to clarify a little bit. When I say talk about cognitive empathy, I'm talking about the definition of it, which is being able to notice and categorize emotions from other people, which is not based on straightforward words. Indirect communication. Yeah, I can't really do, but the thing about that is... so I do remember thinking, okay, I don't know what faces are saying, however, when it comes to interviews, I can get away with asking the sort of the questions that it's socially unacceptable to ask. So I remember, for example, I asked the former editor of The Guardian, Adam Rasperger, would he consider himself to be a feminist? Which was really interesting. I had heard this interview where it was really interesting to me because he said that he was a member of the... is it the Garrett or the Garrick club, which didn't allow women? Yeah. Oh, a gentleman's club. It was some infamous club in London. I don't know, I've never been, obviously, I'm female. The Garrett club founded in 1831 as a private member's club, situated in the heart of London's West End and Fertiland. The club provides excellent dining facilities, accommodation, exclusive member events. I'm not going to give them a readout on this. I just found it super interesting that he had done this interview for the BBC with, I think it was Robert Peston, maybe, where he'd said he may have had a membership at one point, which is why I asked the question, would he consider himself to be a feminist? Because media clubs at the time were kind of controversial. Not a lot of other reporters, I know, think like that, in that they asked these slightly unorthodox, but slightly unacceptable questions. Yeah, quite good parallel, what would you call it? Parallel thinking? I don't know. Lateral thinking, scales. Connecting dots and stuff like that, yeah. I have this name. Like that. I'm going to remember that, but it was the sort of like... it was always that thing about, so when I was at school, for example, people hated the fact that I would just ask questions. It's also being quite erect. Yeah, and it was one of those things, I'm very aware that I have no filter. So it's now, people always tell me that I need to like loosen up and tell us exactly what you're thinking. And I'm always trying to tell them, this is because I have no filter. And it always gets me in trouble. It's not that I'm saying it deliberately, it's because it's sort of like it just doesn't occur to me sometimes. Well, it's hard, isn't it? Because when people say, I want you to be honest with me, they don't mean be completely honest with me. I just want the bits that I deem to be acceptable levels of honesty. Yeah, it's about a month and a half ago, I actually went to a sort of work meeting that was in a pub, and there was another journalist there. And because of the fact they were trying, they basically said, be honest. And I, the oldest trick in the book, don't ever be fully honest, because it's going to get you penalized in this neurotypical society. I wouldn't say whatever, thinking they actually turned around and they said something along, they said something along the lines of go fuck that off, because I wouldn't answer the question. Yeah, so it's sort of like, I'm very worried that I don't, I very rarely say exactly what I'm thinking now, just because it gets me in trouble. Sure, sure. Yeah, I think it's always good to have some kind of, it's always good to try and have some kind of filter, because I used to be very, very, very aggressively straightforward. And as you could say, and I don't know, I'm pretty much the opposite now, because I'm just like, I just kind of sit by and just let people talk and chip in now and again. I also think that listening is a really underrated quality, societally speaking. It's, I kind of think that a lot of autistic people are just very good at listening by proxy of having realized in terms of we need to be like aware of this filter, therefore we will listen a lot more type thing. We also need that input from words, because words are like, or direct communication, whether it be signs, words, etc. It's a lot more comfortable for us than the combination of words with context and emotion and facial expressions and body language and tonality, all combined into one neat little package. I find it really difficult. And I also, I get myself into terrible situations with nasty people, because I take their words for their words and I tend to underplay their behaviors. So it's like they can tell me one thing, maybe do something that doesn't align with that. And I'm kind of left in this confused state. It's like, you told me that that was the case. So you said this to me or, you know, and it could be quite harsh sometimes, definitely. Just moving things on a little bit. How do you think we can fight ableism in the workplace or in encourage others? We're talking about the things that we've identified. How do you think people can help? First of all, actually listen and take action rather than just being performative. There are so many editors who I've seen, I've seen them at diversity conferences. And I've seen this across other industries where leaders are like, oh, yes, we will do better. And they don't follow through. Politicians. Yeah, pretty much. It's just sort of like, why would you even bother just because you want some brownie points basically, but really, do you feel better about yourself? It's just sort of, come on. I also kind of feel like strengthening the Equality Act would do so much good. It's sort of, you know, when you ask for reasonable adjustments, there isn't like, there isn't any sort of an organization can just say no, and there's no sort of like fallback. I would argue the legislation is flawed for this reason. There needs to be some sort of redress, rather than sort of like, there are so many organizations that just wait to be basically sued and to give them the access arrangements. I think it's weird that, isn't it? Because it's like, you know, they're trying, that most people within the workforce sort of view autism as a ticket for representation for diversity, saying we are a diverse organization, we take everybody's views and we produce views and things related to that. And we're so great and so lovely and so wholesome. But really, we just want them because we'll get the backhand if we don't offer brownie points. But it's really not the case. And there's just, there's research that proves that having different brains in the workplace is massively important. Like, I was just talking to, you know, on my first episode of the season, I was talking to Temple and she was talking about, you know, different different ways of processing, like visually or like language-based or like, you know, things like that. And to put someone who's really good at mathematics into actually like building a machine is just so much, so much worse. We'll get someone who's good at building machines to design complex machinery is, you know, they're different skills. And having that difference of opinion and perceiving and understanding things can often offer a lot of, you know, benefit to workplaces. I also think that intersectional approach needs to be taken. There have been many occasions where I've been hired as the autistic person, just to tick a box to say, oh, we've hired an autistic person. I'm very aware that I'm white. I'm very aware that I have a certain amount of privilege. Why is it that it just sort of, that if you want to talk about diversity and inclusion, it's not just a one characteristic fits one person type thing. And it's just sort of, it just frankly blows my mind where I see so many organizations where they go, oh, we're so diverse. We've hired such and such a disabled person and we've hired the LGBT QIA person. And then there's like no ethnic minority whatsoever. It's just fully white people again, very often all male. If you really want inclusion, you need to be intersectional. Otherwise, it's not inclusive. I mean, when we talk, because we're talking a lot about the actual workplaces and what they should do. And you and I, both now, it's in everybody's best interests to include people from different areas of diversity, just for breadth of opinion and for perspectives and things of that nature. But how do we help other people fight albillism in their workplace? Why other people do you mean other, not autistic people, but other disabled people? I think in the context of the podcast, probably about autism, but you're welcome to touch on other things if you feel it's worth touching on. Just thinking because I'm only autistic, I don't feel I can comment on other situations. I kind of think that autistic people are not the problem. It's the employment. It's, I love the fact that there's so much investment in trying to help us into the workplace. And yet we are still the least employed disability group. Surely. That's why I thought it really lies. I was always made to feel that I was the problem. Wasn't trying to be difficult as I was often characterised. It was the workplace and the workplace not following through legal obligations. It's also the fact that this sort of like, what's the phrase? There is an inherent bias, for example, in hiring practices. There's all sorts. I don't think we're the problem. I think it's industries. I think, you know, one thing that I could say on, you know, if you're an individual person, well, you're going to be an individual person. But if you're listening to our podcast, I would really stress getting in some autistic people who are considered to be experts by experience into the workplace, talk about autism in the work, talk about the positives, talk about some of the negatives and how to overcome them. I think that's usually quite a really, you know, really impactful thing from, you know, the training that I've done. It's, you know, most people, most organisations, they'll get in autism experts who have a background in whatever area related to autism, but they don't actually have the personal experience of it. And so getting in someone who has that can really add to sort of the organisation's view of autistic people and how to work with them best. I've never understood that personally. And I mean, even as a journalist, I still don't get it. Why, why do we have this sort of culture of going to like the parent or carer rather than the person at the heart of it? Like it just sort of blows my mind really. And it's sort of, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be doing this for any other context. So why is it apparently acceptable under the title of disability to do exactly that? It's the whole thing about, you know, other people speaking for the group, you know, it can be quite a dangerous thing sometimes. It can be quite useful for like to listen to a parent sometimes if you're a parent yourself and to get their experiences as a parent, but you need to pair that with experiences of an autistic adult and actually their life and what they found good and bad and, you know, in that sort of whole view of it, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Well, is there anything else that you want to touch on before we move on to the last question? Or is that good? Cool, cool. We may have to make it a bit snappy, because I've only got until seven because I have this work, peer support that I'm doing. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, because you've recently published a book on cooking and eating. And, you know, it really perked my ears up because I, why are you laughing? I love that the perked the ears up that there's something to do with food. I like that. But, you know, I can actually do it. I can, I can fly my nostrils and put my ears up. Do a little bunny. Yeah, I don't know. I'm being weird, right? My weirdness is coming out is you can tell it's the end of the day. So it perked my ears up, what are you saying about cooking and eating? Because it's definitely something that I struggle with. I pretty much never cook. I get all my meals pre-made and sent. And I can get all my protein in for the gym and actually eat something other than sweets and chocolate and crisps. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your book? So the Autism Friendly Cookbook is out on November 21st this year. And it basically, in the nicest way possible, it was the ultimate revenge against the DWP in terms of having to go to a personal independence payment tribunal, basically. They had the, anyone who will have applied will just know the absolute dread of this. So I put in a claim during the first lockdown. It took, I want to say, maybe 15 and a half months to actually get to the end of this. And they came back and they basically said that my autism was a lifestyle choice. Yeah, he just sort of, it's a bit... Jesus Christ, really? A lifestyle choice. That was the summary in the sense of words to the effect of. All right, okay, yeah, yeah. Right, so the bit that made me laugh most of all was on one of the forms they had. There are no communication issues. So my, I got slightly told off of this, but I had written in the margin to say, this is literally the definition of autism spectrum disorder if you look it up. They were saying that I could just learn how to cook, for example. I can't just learn autistic. And this is, so this is despite the fact that I wasn't actually speaking. It was actually my mum who was talking on the phone because I find phone calls inherently stressful. I script, I mask, and I actually, it's after the initial assessment had been done, I actually went to sleep for most of the day because I was that stressed. Oh my God. So, but the thing is, so when I read the thing about, oh, she can just learn how to cook, which I can't just do. I have a spiky profile and all that sort of thing. I was talking to lots of different other autistic people, and there was sort of like, it was really interesting how the sort of like there was a universal kind of thing, but they everyone had the same issues and they didn't know what to do and they didn't know how to adapt and they didn't know how to learn. It was even things like adaptive things for how to cook, so like a jar opener. No one knew about that. No one knew about weighty cutlery or a plate separator. So over the course of about four days, I was sort of talking and I was listening and I was making notes and it was one of those things where I was like, oh okay, this should be a book. But I never intended to actually write this. I basically pitched this to Jessica Kingsley Publishers, who I'd worked with a lot previously and they basically published like virtually every book about autism that's any good. So I pitched this. I didn't think it would actually happen, but in Christmas 2020 they said, okay, let's do it. Which was sort of like, oh okay. So there is 100 recipes set in breakfast, lunch, dinner and desserts because me being me, it wouldn't be me without a dessert chapter. 30 of these are from other autistic people. It's got things like so on the recipe, it will have a key for sensory needs. It has an energy rating. It has a duration. It's illustrated by Emily from 21 and Sensory. Oh, I love Emily. I'm so excited about this. Oh my God, it's like a co-labeled in heaven. Yeah, I was so excited to bring her on board. So she's illustrated it. So all the recipes which have the key, they will have a symbol. So if it's adaptable or if it's like got like crunch in it and things, it has her illustrations in the corner of the recipe. You know what Lydia, I really need to get my hands on this book when it comes out. It will help me so much. I'm very excited. I really appreciate you telling me about this. I feel kind of bad that I need to push things things along but we've got about five minutes. So it's my terrible timing. I get too into the conversations. But please, the links will be to the book and Lydia's work and stuff will be down in the description. We do actually have a Instagram question which has popped up. Maya Kearney who asks, would you recommend disclosing an autism diagnosis to your team or boss? It depends on the context. It's only because I've had some really terrible bosses and as soon as I've disclosed, they've got worse. It really depends on the person. I'm sorry if that's not a definitive answer. It's really frustrating when people can't give a yes or a no but it really depends on the person. I wouldn't say just be open and be like say to everyone just because some people do react quite badly. I think as well if you are quite confident in self-advocating for yourself and you have experience in the working world then maybe it could be something that you go for. I'd also say it very heavily depends on the industry that you're in. So maybe if you disclose to, if you're working in, I don't know, what do you call it? Car retail, stuff like that. Probably not the best idea. But if you're working in like a media place or a charity or like, you know, anywhere where there's a bit more sort of trait openness as you would say then it might be quite useful. But I'd recommend kind of going to some autism organizations or some, you know, looking up local places in your area and asking about support with this because it often could be really, really important. You know, not only disclosing, getting a reasonable adjustment but having like a work coach or a mentor or someone who can fight for your corner. That's really important as well. Yeah, it's hard, isn't it? Like you can't really give any direct instructions because like if you say it and then they go ahead and disclose then they've lost the job and it's your fault. Yeah, that's a must confess. That's why I don't like people. It's a very, you know, that thing where people go, oh, you're an autistic person. I want advice about autism because I'm also an autistic person. I find that quite difficult just because it's sort of I don't want to get you fired, but I want to be nice. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I get what you mean. That's our question. Thank you very much, Maya. Really appreciate it, getting on it so speedily. We have one last thing which is song of the day. Have you remembered your song? Yes. I would like to know if anyone listening to this does this. I'm told that I have them audio stings. Me too. Like, you know when you play a song on repeat just because it's so nice. Yeah, they're the same with this pirate that goes bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon. Yeah, it's the sound. It's the writer Laura James actually wrote. So they open down and it's like. Yeah, it's the writer Laura James had the word hat, for example saying hat hat hat hat all over and over um so I chose this um it's not entirely related um sort of I really like she I've been listening to a lot of kind of like early 2000 2001 music um recently I don't know why I really enjoyed um this is it's called objection the afro punk mix by Shakira that was on her 20th anniversary of laundry service just because this is an audio stim and I really like listening to this over and over. Lovely I really like that I will definitely take that aim to consider it um well I'll add it to this this Spotify playlist that I'm putting together of everyone's suggestions and I will definitely listen to it after once I finish this work meeting um so if you have enjoyed this episode and you want to um see it on anywhere else I am actually starting to do video interviews this one is a video interview as well and you can view it over on my youtube channel but I also have other stuff over on instagram I do quite frequent blog write-ups as well as sharing reels things of that nature and if you want to get in contact to be on the podcast um or you want to to share something with me or you want to get me in for some training or modeling or public speaking things of that nature uh go over to my website thomashenley.co.uk thank you very much to all my patreon supporters as well as my youtube members and anyone who follows my work always really appreciate always really helps me out and um yeah I think that's my spiel um as you would say have you enjoyed your experience Lydia? I have I'm just so sorry that um I'm sick this would have been it would have sounded much nicer for anyone listening to it. It was a it was a really great interview I really appreciate you coming on thank you for having me see you later folks do don't click off no don't click off I always do that I never I never prove one people but we need to leave it like a few seconds before it yeah okay