 Good day and welcome back to the Vaudiology podcast with your host Mr. Thomas Henley of course and today it's going to be a bit of a strange podcast because we are actually doing this live. I was thinking to myself that I wouldn't be funny for me to have two episodes in season three and then just switch and do season four just because we're doing like a different format but maybe not. I think we'll keep this as part of season three and if you do want to and if you do listen to this podcast on other streaming services or you watch the recording replay please do make sure to go and check out my channel beforehand so that you can get updated when we do do this live because we will be taking some comments some pieces of the chat and using that as a sort of talking point so if you want to stay engaged then that would be really cool. Today we're going to be addressing a different well obviously a different topic because it'd be a bit strange if we didn't have a different topic every time but we're going to be talking about autism and pets and I was searching through looking through the internet scouring the web to try and find the right person to do this of course and of course probably the best person to ask about this is my very very good friend Mike from Autistic AF. How are you doing today Mike? I am doing great thank you very much for having me Thomas and also yeah if you are listening to Thomas on the other platforms give him a good rating as well it's quite helpful to drop a rating on those things. Yes it's very true I completely forget about the intricacies of like asking for likes and subscribes and ratings and stuff I'm still trying to get it into my vocabulary of being online do you know I mean I understand I do I really do I feel like I don't know I mean in my brain's only just sort of crossing that threshold of oh my youtuber now is that like so you know this new vocabulary I'm only just getting to grips with the whole neurodiversity vocabulary you know and there's still some like elements of that I find difficult we can talk about like I'm stimming it just feels a little bit to me. I'm not saying stimming is not good for those who can't see the other camera but like yeah it's like a whole load of new vocabulary and YouTube as well same thing. Very strange world well it'll be I suppose it'd be nice for anybody who doesn't know of you and your work Mike for you to give it a little bit of a background maybe into your channel possibly about where sort of the autistic hats come into the picture I'm sure we'd be very very happy to hear about that that'll be good to hear. Yeah so I started my YouTube channel in October 2023 and originally I just wanted something quiet and simple I just thought autistic after 40 was available so I just took that as the main name and put a couple of videos on it unlisted them and they were just me talking to my phone with the intention of sharing it with a couple of friends because the people that I sort of suggested hey look I'm on a waiting list I think I might be autistic they were like no you're not autistic or you can't be autistic or why do you think you're autistic or you don't you're not autistic you have autism it's something that can be treated right and it's like all this stuff and I thought I can't be dealing with having this conversation with people or I'm not saying a massive friend group but you feel like onion circles I've got family and Nina's been very supportive but at first she was like you know you think you're not entirely sure do you know me and so so I kind of wanted to just sort of put something down that was edited but I like video as a medium rather than sort of writing it and so I'll make some videos and then I can just send them and go that this explains me better and the thing that really came to mind for me was while I was doing that I made a video about monotropism yes that was one of your first ones wasn't it I thought I wanted something that was like autism that wasn't that kind of explained how I felt or at least some of my struggles or at least something explained what I'm sort of good at you know this kind of tunnel vision that we often have you know generally a lot of autistic people relate quite strongly to autism it's a fantastic study by the way if you want to read it as any few pages long with three autistic authors fantastic fantastic piece of writing yeah for anybody who doesn't know about much about monotropism it's basically at its at its basic level it is like the style of focus that people have so like I think I think you're right there was maybe two or three sort of autistic researchers like actually autistic people who sort of came up with the idea and there's like monotropism and then there's polytropism monotropism is more characterised as like an autistic thing whereby like you find one thing to sort of pull you in quite a bit you know your phrases like autistic inertia what was the the other one that we use in terms of hyper-focusing of course that's another one that they get thrown about quite a bit and it's quite an interesting theory because I think one of the I think one of one of the the shining positives of that kind of study and that kind of work is that it very much sort of takes away sort of the pathology of it so like within the sort of medical school system you know autism is kind of seen as this like through this very deficit type lens and it's kind of our behaviors around sort of being focused and struggling to transition are sort of highlighted as being like challenging behaviors or something that we need to fix whereas this kind of concept of monotropism sort of brought in that this is kind of like a inherent like autistic trait which I think kind of brings a bit more sort of power into the into the hands of the autistic people I think it looks at it not sort of like from an other perspective but from a just saying how it is you know it's a different neurotype it's a different way of being it's neither good nor bad it has good and bad aspects to it of course but it just it just is and then as far as I just went from there and thought I'll make another one and then another one and by this point I was now showing them to people and getting in real life that is and it was sort of helping people to understand and I just carried on and I'm also doing live streams as well which were kind of great fun yeah you I think when I tuned in last time you were playing a game like as a cat or something hey oh fantastic stray is is a wonderful wonderful game I actually pre-ordered that I actually had some email chats with developers years ago when it was in a prototype because I just thought this is a wonderful idea you know you can be a cat and run around you know it's a three-dimensional platform as a cat in the most apocalyptic world it's a little bit dark it's not kind of the game that I would make but you get to be a cat and goodness you get a scratch furniture and everything's brilliant is there a like I suppose like I suppose going a bit kind of deep do you have like a sort of an overarching goal or like what you something that you'd want you want to achieve by sort of being online or is it kind of just something that you because for me when I started off it was probably about seven years ago I have been on in the online world for quite a while but it's it's not really been something I've been very consistent with but when I started it was I think I was probably about 1920 and I just the reason why I started is because I wanted to kind of like a platform to talk about my experiences and perhaps like just kind of get it out of my brain and sort of onto onto a video what is your kind of I fully understand it's like it's cathartic so I'll be lying if I said hey I'm doing this for other people to educate or it wasn't actually really that it was almost like I'm making some early explainer videos you can see it early on my channel actually especially now I'm saying explicitly and those early videos I'm almost explaining it to myself it's almost a cathartic thing I almost therapeutic does that make sense yeah yeah you know and and it was a fantastic way of a not way of disclosure I mean I think disclosure is a whole other topic just jump on the internet and tell loads of people but no it kind of sort of makes sense and I actually thought that by going on the internet and telling loads of people that it wouldn't it wouldn't be like it wouldn't be close to me turns out I'm completely wrong and I met a neighbor who watches my channel yeah I completely I completely I think it's I don't know about you but I mean it's something that I've been wrestling with for a while but I think because my my experience is so sort of atypical to those particularly who are who are not typical sort of around me in my life even if I really really care about them it's it's it's quite a hard thing for people to relate to like with anxiety disorder people can sort of relate to the feeling of being anxious in terms of perhaps obviously it's not like all ADHD is kind of aspects but in terms of sort of the the focusing aspect of ADHD like some people might be able to sort of relate a little bit to that but autism there's like introverted that's what that is yeah just as I think it's like like autism hasn't had its OCD moment in my opinion that moment of people where they go oh I'm a little bit OCD I forgot my car key you know I've left the cooker ring on or I need everything completely clean because I'm a bit OCD they don't mean it like just like some people where they say oh everyone's a bit autistic particularly with techies I've spoken to a couple of techie friends that I think they're almost certainly on the spectrum but they're like oh you know we don't think too much about it we're all a bit on the spectrum especially in this industry and it's like well no but just you know it's quite complicated because people don't really understand what that means like ADHD particularly the inattentive and hyperactive side of those things people can kind of almost understand what that means or relate to it and go okay I think I've got an idea what that is yeah but you know like if you're thinking about sort of TV and media where are the autistic examples where are the autistic role models but and of course there's a spectrum so there's no like that's kind of part of the problem really it's kind of like you can't really sort of put all the traits on character and go here's your example use your Sheldon Cooper for example it's not like that you know but then people go oh you're not like that or you're not like my and it's true everyone's got a five-year-old flippin nephew who's autistic with high support needs where are they all where are all these kids they've been everywhere you're not like that you're not autistic so it's really it's quite odd yeah and I think that's kind of the problem I don't know if we're ever going to as like autism advocate community I don't know they're ever gonna get there because it's such a wide spectrum you can't say this is what autism is this you know for everyone these are this is a set of challenges that everyone has and they're exactly the same that is one of the difficulties isn't there it's like you know you give any characterization of autism and it's it's not gonna sink in or apply to or relate to some demographic of autistic people and like so it's it's always a task but I do I do think that we do have like you're saying about like little little OCD like I have heard a lot of phrases going about at the moment like a touch of Tism or the touch of Tism people say or I'm I'm a bit I heard that one I must it's it's a good thing to have a touch of I don't know it's by the devil sort of worry out with this I don't know because obviously it really depends on the person who's saying it like some people I think they just say it because they do think they're a bit autistic but they don't want to say like openly I'm autistic or you know so it could be using that way some people might use it to describe themselves as being a bit quirky or unique or like you know so there's I think there's with a lot of stuff like that I mean you have autistic people themselves like autistic influences using that type of phraseology but then you also have people who are outside using it as in the sort of a derogatory way as well so it's it's quite complex but um let's not let's not um dwell too much on the aspect of things because today we are going to be talking specifically about your experience with pets and where we go do you want to know I do want to sort of preface this by saying that although I have throughout my life um pretty much grown up around dogs like I think at every single point in my life I've had some kind of dog loosely attached to the family whether it's um my mom's partner's dog or my dog or my brother's dog or there's always been some some dog in the family and it's it's very much sort of something that I would want but one of the difficulties that I have in life tends to come in the form of executive dysfunction and that's one of the reasons why I'm a bit tentative around getting a pet because I sometimes struggle to look after myself you know with those executive function difficulties plus mental health it's kind of a bit too much in it I want to be able to like sort of satisfactory or take care of an animal sort of and I don't I don't want to feel like I'm not meeting my needs you know so I think it would be a really interesting episode to to touch on but I guess one fit one thing that I want to ask you first is how many and what type of pets do you have all right let's get into this right we'll dive into it you've touched on a really big topic that I have a series of videos planned about it's the number one thing I get asked actually on the executive dysfunction and side things and husbandry it's called it so we've got 13 cats which is down from 21 mostly because old rescue animals some of them in their early 20s three dogs there's a number of fish now by the way that's as a result of live stream we've built an aquarium on a live stream so we have some fish we have some fish and we've got three ducks which are musketeer ducks type with the type of goose but actually a duck we have some critically endangered shetland ducks on the way so we'll we'll show you the progress of those we have chickens and we have peacocks two peacocks you have you have an absolute farm going on you have two peacocks yeah a couple of peacocks are they male or female are they both male it's actually the girls that travel the girls have the typical kind of male gender role right you know they're kind of like I'm going to go adventuring and I'm going to go have babies I'm going to go be there and everywhere it's actually the females the p hens that travel so it's an occasion to get a p hen coming by but the p hens go I'll find a boy then they leave them and then they go lay eggs or whatever and then you know is that so is that because of the peacocks they have like their feathers are too weighty that just do they struggle to fly or is that no they can fly right so I think the original kind of so they're kind of a far eastern bird and the hunt snakes right they're kind of an interesting bird but I think that the kind of dragon metaphors come from peacocks because peacocks can actually fly down from trees and their wingspan is nearly as wide as this room you know and like the tail so like they actually look like dragons and they're coming down they're quite intimidating so yeah it's quite a few animals um but my background anyway um with regard to animals was when I was growing up um I grew up uh my parents were in the army so I was born in Germany and we used to move around a lot so we've never had pets as such what would happen is that military families would have pets because you moved every six months if uh people kind of adopted pets so the pets kind of like moved from household to household to household as people moved around it's quite complex as a result I really had we had animals around us you know I'd have guinea pigs for a few months and then have a dog for a few months and then that dog would go to someone else and it was all kind of confusing but in my early 20s uh I got involved with cats protection in the UK um I kind of culminated in me actually serving on the board of a few animal charities for quite a few years um but I'd often find time to kind of go down and pet the cats you know what I mean feed them and that sort of stuff and then eventually helping them with fundraising helping them with organization and then governance and HR and finance and that sort of stuff um as a consequence of that I'd end up with like hey we've got a three-legged cat if you go to Mike I'm going to take this cat and I'd end up just like accumulating animals that were either uh death or injured or missing bits or whatever that's so sweet like that that's a regular joke would come up about me eating them because like there's bits of limbs missing off different onto them you know what I mean like it's not true I promise you vegan of course someone someone in the chat said is it an emotional support peacock um I don't promote my videos but if you go back a couple of videos you'll actually see me start a video with Mr Emotional Support Peacock well yeah absolutely uh I think it's quite a nice hook yeah they're great um but like I ended up studying a feline studies diploma and my background is in science but I just kind of have a history of following my interests and um we're a bit where you know we're financially in time available right yeah but now it's like autism but like you know gotta feel as though I'm a I think um when I when I did my biomedical sciences during Manchester I I did a um a few modules so like one of the areas of specialty that I had was in parasitology and I learned a lot about like there's basically this sort of amoeba sort of like creature called toxoplasmosis which I'm sure you'll know you'll know about um but it's so it's such an interesting like it's probably one of the more the more interesting parasites out there because it has like genuine um like impacts on someone's like emotion both humans cats and rats emotional states and like one of the the interesting things about it was that it actually because there's like a life cycle of it wanting to go through felines and um from rats and stuff um it actually changes the the biochemistry of the rat's brain to enjoy and be attracted to the smell of cat pee yeah yeah it actually it's a really interesting organism it essentially makes for example things like cats and things fearless it makes the rats fearless too uh so like so like the rats are almost like they will go find a cat and they'll they'll not fight for their lives you know what I mean they're like eat me yes yeah really interesting um cordyceps in amps less of a pet kind of thing like that also does something really similar and there's quite a few other things in this in the oceans be passionate marine there's quite a few things in the marine environment that do really similar things and it's like neurological hijacking it's kind of really quite interesting seeing the the the sort of the gender the um gender-changing crab parasite do you know of that one I can't know but gender change is quite common I think there's mission in it there's like a a parasite that can only live in like the eggs of crabs so it like whenever it infects a crab it like basically hijack hijacks its genetic code to make it more likely to have more female crabs or something yeah okay it's really this is loads of cool I mean cordyceps is like one of the best ones out there like it's cordyceps that's cordyceps other than that southern hemisphere not not where we are but like I love to see it uh Joe I love Border Collies the most we have a Border Collie called Maisie um I love that I I saw it on the video about one the video that I reacted to oh such a sweet dog it's making me want a Border Collie Mike's Collie is in the room uh and so I zoned out and then heard cat pee cat pee is like Boston straight from straight from the devil you know can be dealt with like I mean I don't want to sort of turn my channel into the Jackson Galaxy of autistic cat content he's a creator on YouTube that talks about cats if you have questions about cats I'd probably recommend checking out his channel um but like uh yeah there are there are sort of substances you can use enzymes and things to break that down interesting yeah interesting yeah anyway managing managing cats I can I can take conversations off but in terms of like executive functioning we um I have some videos to to to kind of put this together it is like a really high question I get asked a lot how to join a Minecraft service probably number one question but like the second one is how do you manage the animals um because I don't manage them on my own number one is a big one and number two is we have systems for everything yes like systems we have a database of all of the animals whenever anything happens with one of them it goes into the database this means that anyone else can care for them but then simple things like feeders are automatic like there's one behind you there which is tuned in to like super chats by the way on my live streams it sets off the feeder so this particular feeder has got like high value treats in yeah um the other ones uh do that um I've just got it normal food so we've got like the electronic feeders I think so when the when the when the super chart goes off to like the cats just hear it and just like run at it to like try and get the treat yeah so so before there was actually a bell behind me on the shelf this bell here I'll be I'll be a bit careful because I know you're recording so I've got to be really quiet um this is the cat mageddon bell so if I ring this bell so because the animals can ring free we need a way to like bring them back in yes yeah so like if ring this bell they're all bell trained and it's like a big brass school bell I'm just holding the the bell inside because if this goes off they're all gonna come running but they are also now starting to train themselves to the super chat noise it's their software feeder um so that's kind of just like my side of things here like like I just really enjoyed the API I had to buy like a button presser that has an API and you can kind of code for that well I do have some I do have some some particular sort of questions to ask you about um like the challenges but before we talk about those sort of more in detail I'd like to perhaps understand what what you think the benefits of having pets are to like specifically autistic people like oh you could maybe not just specifically but if there are some specific ones baby mention them but obviously like I can imagine the sort of yeah drop some big ones for you yeah so I've actually been reading uh in research in preparation for an upcoming video I'm sorry to keep tempting this but this is absolutely super fascinating to me and it's like a number two question so and it's about um how autistic people gravitate towards non-human animals so we're all animals get out of the way but like if you've got like cats dogs for example companion animals how much extra value people who are on the spectrum gain out of that compared to neurotypicals that's the first thing there's a certain unfortunately reading a lot of these studies there's a lot of it's called like human replacement or people replacement and it's a bizarre kind of concept this is othering language of oh look at Micah over there he prefers cats to people and it's like well yes but I'm not replacing people with cats it's not like I want an army of people around me I'm just going to replace them all with cats that's not it's not where we're going with it's just that we um we uh get a lot of what we could gain out of social relationships with other humans from companion animals as well and that's just not mammals but you know that can be fair shit can be your bearded dragons and reptiles and things as well but we get an awful lot out of that there's an awful lot of benefits that autistic people can gain from it being a fulfillment of a ritual so it's really kind of hard to explain but the the act of caring for them well like you've got like a routine in the morning so for example we have a routine for feeding the birds involves just chucking them out a load of corn it's a really simple routine it's a very kind of medieval you get a bucket you get the corn you pick it up and just flick it on there and you're done right that's them done and it's like there is something kind of like really peaceful about that and really kind of like you know it's like a life goal just a bucket of corn and chickens and you just chuck corn out for birds it's just like it's very peaceful and it's really rewarding so it's like on one hand it can be hard to actually get yourself into into an actual routine but on the other hand once you are in it and you have that routine a part of your day it's kind of like a nice thing I also think that it's kind of almost a grounding thing so another example is I will forget to feed myself but the cats won't let me forget to feed them so if the machines are not there for the cats to feed them or they're empty or whatever they will not let you sleep they won't let you rest they will bother you really badly to feed them and once you're in that zone of like feeding the cats it's then like maybe I should make myself a sandwich or like cereal as well so it reminds you to kick start over parts of your routine yeah exactly thomas thank you so much that's exactly what I'm trying to say so like the routine that goes along with the animal husbandry does kind of connect in with the routines that you need to follow through as it's a human as well that makes sense that's really cool we also get really good sort of like stimmy value from them as well so one of the ones to come in I've got I've got Emma here and Emma's kind of like she's pretty neuro spicy but they're great you know they they feel good they're purring away you know if you're lying down on a bed with like 10 cats on you it's it's a fantastic experience it's like a weighted blanket a heated blanket and like a stim toys all in one this you know so there's kind of that element of it as well so there's kind of like the physical sensory kind of element but then there is a flip side as well um things like litter trays and whatnot and we've got some unique ways to think of managing that like um how are we doing in the chat by the way yeah we're doing good maybe maybe we'll read out a couple of couple of things um renae says my cat's generally just steel covers or the best part of the pillow um isabella says to my favorite people doing a podcast oh thank you isabella uh autistic i'll answer that one uh where is Mike everyone did he say Malaysia no my mother's uh Malaysian i'm on a place called the isle of man uh the isle of man is a little island in the irish sea um it's not just not just men though is it it's not like a no no no i'm afraid i can see a cat there yes so this is this is emma and she's at her she's at her bowl but we're on we're on the wrong stream emma this is not this is not the super chat stream you see i i actually um oh i left it sorry thomas it's so good i actually um okay i for a long time i think it was probably because of my my grandma because she has like a really crippling phobia of cats um she has she has this story of like how one sort of summer day um sort of a group of cats sort of climbed in through like a small window in in one of her apartments and um like they like stole it like an entire sort of easter egg or something and apparently that that's scarred her for for life she just liked her um but that kind of that kind of rubbed off on me a little bit for a while so i i've always been like a very much like a dog person but when i went to thailand um basically like i think probably probably about for three or four nights a week i'd go to this taekwondo center it was this um sort of Thai team Chiang Mai was the place kind of the north Thailand and after every session i would sort of sit on the mats and do some stretches and stuff and there was always this one cat that would just come up to me and just like sit like sit between my legs while i was like stretching and um i got i got chosen by the cat and i was i was like i'm trying very very hard not to like you but it's getting more difficult and i kind of kind of got a little bit of a bond with them and i was like hmm maybe i should change my perspective yeah maybe maybe Thomas i mean you're not a million miles from me you should perhaps you should perhaps visit and we'll see if we can sort of win you over with the cats but we have dogs as well i like them now i like them now the dogs and you can kind of stay for the cats so we've got a few cats this is Saber another one yeah there's there's quite a few in here at the minute let me know if the audio is a problem guys Daniel Daniel says um cats get confused around gingers cats steal steal souls but gingers have no souls it's conundrum well that ginger cat's their one brain i cannot i cannot confirm or deny if this is true probably true i can i can well i don't know it's it's quite hard to sort of determine if someone has a soul by looking at them but i'd assume that the the follicles on someone's head does not determine the the encapsulation the encapsulation what am i trying to say the the the containment of a soul i would say probably that's a little bit ghostbusters well um i would definitely like say say for me when it comes to like the benefits of sort of pets like as i said i've only really had a dog and it wasn't really looked after by me but my first dog he was from the kennel um he was called bob we were quite often called him bobby dog of course um and he was like um he had like a midnight coats midnight eyes we got him from my parents got him from the kennel like about a year before i was born as a puppy and um he was basically my big brother and i think he lived until about the age of about 14 15 so is it it was a large part of my life for a long time and i do remember sort of coming home from from days at school and sort of like cuddling with him at the top of the staircase and yeah i don't know it's um it kind of i don't yeah it's it's kind of like it like an unspeakable bond i don't really know how to describe it very much but it was a it was a big part of of my life for a long time um still haven't really got over and to be honest like like i don't think you do and it is it is actually the worst thing and sometimes i find myself getting into thought spirals where i'll be like you know cuddling under the cats presumably and and i'll be like imagining like when they're going to die or something and stressing myself out about it and this sounds kind of ridiculous and i know it's a human thing but i do get pretty sad and then i'll find myself getting quite sort of anxious and upset about it um and and it's like you know like mourning them before they're gone or even afterwards it's like to a degree it's healthy but and the next time it's not like an equal sum game of like the amount of joy you get is all got to be repaid with some sadness as well and it is hard i i completely understand that um in a weird sort of way i said i had 21 cats and you know the average mean age of that was about 18 so you know um a long period i mean i think i was 35 before i lost my first cat um my first pet so it was kind of like quite a hard thing to to kind of go through and then i think quite a few order i think it definitely does like highlight sort of the fidu fidulity of of life like that was kind of like my first experience with like having it having a death you know in in an around me rather um which was really hard of course i mean my parents said that it just kind of run off somewhere but you know that's just like what parents say but um it's but it really i don't know it kind of i suppose prepared me for like the nature of the nature of what like life is like and you know the the sort of subtleties of um like the value that each day has with somebody or or a pet or um i remember it hit me quite hard even though i was quite young no it was especially because you were quite young i think um and i think it's like it's quite it's i mean i mean life is difficult and you don't know when and i don't mean it's not not in a morbid way but you don't know when the last time you'll speak to someone will be or when the last time you'll see someone so kind of it is a reminder it's a very cognizant reminder of kind of taking each day on its own you know um but yeah i mean it's well understood anyway that pets help with with anxiety um i know folks from the army that have PTSD service dogs and it's i worry about them not having the dog anymore you know it's kind of like critical need for one we need to like succession plan these dogs and like encourage them to get another one because their service dogs getting a bit old you know because it's because it gives them so much hope and it gives them so much hope is the wrong term actually uh relief might be better one comes might be because it's hard to pick the right word um but you know it's like even when they can't care for themselves they can for their service animal you know yes yeah um because that is i guess another thing that that's talked about a lot when it comes to like autism pets because you can get autism sort of support dogs and things that are like i had interviewed on the podcast i think probably sometime within season two we're talking about their service dog Coco how they help live like meltdowns and stuff like that i thought that was really interesting and also to kind of position themselves between you and other people to kind of give you just that just that space that you might not be aware of yourself there's so much a bubble yeah and dogs are great at that um that almost comes naturally to them perhaps even more than perhaps a blind person service dog will be but i don't um short of the other content creators i don't know anyone with an autism service animal but i do know a lot of autistic people with companion animals yes yeah in fact in fact i can see from even in this chat there's quite a few people with like their pets as profile pictures and i notice that quite a lot on my live streams um people have also emailed me pictures of their pets i've got an email inbox full of photographs of people's pets i encourage you to send pictures of their pets i really enjoy uh you know people sending me pictures of their cats and their dogs and their fish and all sorts of stuff rabbits and reptiles and lizards and um i think it's fantastic it's a great way to bond with other people um the friends that i have uh in real life as well i rl i mean thomas you're a friend of your life but you know what i mean like if i rl you know like irate geographically nearby yeah um i've all come broadly speaking from either my work with marine and environment stuff or pets so it's kind of like like even having pets kind of brings you closer to other people in a good way like if you walk a dog if i walk mazy uh in fact she doesn't get walked as much as she should because people want to talk to me all the time they go oh such a cute dog how old is she what's her name you know it's like okay okay at least it's a script but it's like please i just want to walk my dog yeah i think i think purple l was talking about that too like as it being like uh it's kind of nice because you get a past toward people but also like sometimes you just don't want to you can't be asked for that like i think there was someone in the the chat called there's someone in the chat called uh qc alcoholic which was talking about the benefit of they said that i have fish tanks to help me regulate and like i actually for a long time i wanted to get one of those like not fluorescent but like the color changing jellyfish i really wanted to get like a color changing jellyfish a moon jellyfish or something for a while until i until i realized how difficult it is to actually have a jellyfish like yeah really really cool but it can be done by the way um i've got a like we've got a fish tank on my stream i'm just looking at it now so it's out of frame it's just over there um and i understand what alcoholic is saying because you kind of just looking even the ripples of the water watching the fish move watching the plants move bit it's it's very relaxing there's a kind of visual stim and uh i mean i do a lot of scuba diving which is another topic i sort of broke down on the channel quite a bit and there's an autistic kind of element to it as well because it's a different type of scuba diving to your tropical thing you might have in mind our diving is dark cold green and there's a lot more equipment but i really enjoy it i love being in the ocean ideally on my own in dark and it's great but i will spend like i could spend an hour just looking at an area the size of this table um just and it's a visual stim for me i just really thoroughly enjoy it i never really thought of that as an autistic thing but my dive buddies get you know annoyed with me because they want to go swim around and i just want to like look at something and take pictures of it or just count the enemy my um my dad is very very very much into scuba diving he's he's been to like the karma where i was like egypt or something he's like he he did his like paddy and my brother even got into it at one point as well um i definitely do like like i think i i i visualized myself like getting a house at some point i having like a really big aquarium because i just there is something just very serene about like aquatic animals and like interesting even when it comes to like things like shrimp or like like crabs or lobsters they just they're just like they're so like colorful and man it's like anything it's in the oceans now or in streams or rivers doesn't have gravity to contend with so it can evolve in a way where they don't need like a skeleton they don't have a skeleton they can evolve in weird ways so i mean like you know i like diving because it's all it's all interesting and different and i do a lot of citizen science with that so um no i yeah i mean i saw a wild pets i don't need to care for i saw a turtle a turtle once in um um in turkey went and what is that is that a seal seal he looks like an angry seal nice yeah he looks like an i yeah i i never really looking angry but it's sort of it's sort of does maybe that's just maybe that's just his face it's almost i saw i saw a turtle in the wild once it's like one of the animals that i just really wanted to see like i've i've been i've in person i think probably um the most terrifying animal i've ever seen is a squid squids oh yeah they do something just um primal effect on me it's just like i think it's because they have like human looking eyes and the light these eyes are better than ours they're from a cephalopod family and their eyes are actually kind of wired if you will from the back rather than from the front so we have blind sorry i'm let's stop let's change the subject because this is going to be a two hour long monologue probably no but i i went to turkey i i saw a turtle in the wild which was really really cool i think i went to yeah i don't know i quite like to just see things that see things in like real life that wouldn't be able to and like i'd really love to see like a arctic fox or like uh you know like yeah but people people spend their lives chasing them i see the videos of them jumping and i'm gonna just edit it to music yeah yeah yeah music of your life but you know i mean well let's see then i so i suppose now now that we've talked a little bit about sort of the benefits of having pets and i think you know i i know you you touched on about sort of um sort of the companionship and i do think that um specifically for i think i think for people who have mental health conditions like depression they can be quite beneficial and also anxiety which just tend to happen to occur for a lot for autistic people but also i think when it comes to like loneliness and isolation sometimes that can be a real big issue for us so i think pets definitely fill that hole in a sense or play a role in our lives in that way but i think talking about the actual act of having a pet and some of like the challenges there's trials and tribulations of a varying a pet i mean obviously it's going to be dependent on the pet but um i'd really like to hear like some of the the pet's more difficult side of of having a pet um so i mean obviously losing them is pretty difficult taking some vets uh is is pretty challenging and i mean i'm in a i've kind of like one of the things uh this is just adjacent uh and it's about my autism diagnosis and my psychology is really really i'm really sorry Nina's just arrived so the dogs are kicking off it's okay can we just live what can i say guys this is live yeah we'll just we'll just pause it stay on the line this will take two minutes so one of the problems is you know if i'm working for example and then the dogs kick off when we're traffic focused it can be a big problem because it means like for example um on friday i was working on a video script that was due out today i would have had that video on my channel today it's not out my channel today i'm not blaming anyone or anything but it's like the dog's barking and then the cat's knock something over and it's just like i go from one thing to another thing to another thing and then the litter train you're emptying so i go and do that and it's like shit and now i literally and this sounds ridiculous it sounds like i'm making excuses which perhaps i am but the reason for it is i've just sort of now used up the remainder of my energy that i had to do something yeah so i go sit down and i get back to focus and i just can't again so managing things like distractions uh as my dog mazy is barking in the background um is exactly kind of what i'm talking about with the guardian challenges but i have tried i consider my psychologist i've tried to kind of like manage my environment as best as i can to suit my needs without realizing i was making autistic accommodations for myself sure sure and in that respect making accommodations animals too if you don't have a pet i'm really not recommending anyone goes out and looks at 13 cats but if you are looking to do uh to get a pet there are ones that you just feed like once every six months for example there are certain sort of things and it can be helpful there are also kind of fake pets we have you know i'm surrounded by my plushies here i've got my manta ray over here sorry you're all a manta ray when i'm filming i'm looking at my manta ray so we've got our manta rays which meet some similar needs um i'm thinking when you when you were saying fake dog uh fake pets i was talking i was thinking about nintendo dogs you know like the first sort of nintendo ds game nintendo i remember that one i remember that one the dogs think she's about to arrive which means that they then start getting on and then they'll start barking so what i do is i kind of like work my schedule around when things like the dogs are going to be barking so for example the postman arrives between one and two p.m every day i black that out i'm kind of i don't like start some deep work around that time um when i made my um um my video about uh my last video which was originally going to be called don't be an autistic a a-hole yeah um um i realized on your channel so i'm trying to i'm trying to i'm being i'm being so polite me and i was like oh you totally need to get in there like when you're interrupted you just become an a-hole you just become you're like you're like you're just doing like that switch like so like so like managing that is part and parcel of you know and that's just like an example of like managing myself and managing my work and managing my life and trying to reduce the things that cause me difficulties and so with pets it's the same so with pets for example um with the cats like i say their their feeding is automated everything goes onto a database i get reminders for things like like fleeing treatments worm treatments just the basic husbandry that is literally automated in notion so i have a notion it's kind of like app service which i use to put all my video scripts in i put all of my stuff in there sometimes they're a bit different to dogs though because that you don't have to like entertain them really do you because they're just yeah well pretty it's more a case of like like if there's a fight breaking it up but like mazy does that for us as well so like like birds are like way easy keeping chickens is like the easiest thing they're not difficult at all to keep um so like a farm so like a chicken farm chat but like chickens chickens are great i love that title and what i guess i didn't know if youtube would like it i changed it but like um it's it's not meant like in any way to be disparaging about us in our community it's more a case of um you have to watch a video i won't tell this you know but like yeah so like things like like feeding is kind of automated we've got animals on special diets and we've got for example um things like this this this is a special diet machine so it's kind of got special parameters on but it's microchipped so because all the animals are microchips and animals can have their special diet food from dispensers like these um scattered around scattered around the house what do you do special special diet so emma for example is on a special diet um and so it's really really attractive it's a special kind of wet food and the other animals really really want to eat it now this machine will only open up for her special machine if you put a edge in here it's got a scanner and it will only open up it'll only open up for her so we've got like in that way we can feed the different animals differently and so we just manage as best as we can like there's just a couple of examples i could i could talk about this all night but like trying to find ways that work for you we've been through every robotic litter tray you could imagine um and like it's just a case like finding a method that works we just have like massive boxes with woodchip that we can sort of dump the hedgerow appreciate you can't do that in a town we live in the middle of nowhere um well i suppose like i suppose like that's touching a lot on like the executive function side which i think is one of the reasons why i'm being a bit careful about considering getting a pet but um i suppose another potential aspects of having pets is because i know you're talking about the benefits of it sensory wise but they're also not so nice benefits not just not so nice sensory elements to having pets like how do you manage that okay so breaking that down a bit more if we're talking things like p and poo right so um yeah that's fairly that's fairly straightforward that's fairly straightforward to manage but it is one of the more difficult things um actually the culmination of the difficult sensory stuff either comes from things like injuries uh which we're pretty good at here for managing um i i want to be careful how much i say because you know i don't know like set people off on your channel um but going to the vet can be quite difficult because vets have got this horrible sort of smell to them yes i'm not going to try to describe it hospital it's worse than a hospital smell but it's got that kind of like chemical cleaning agent smell yeah mixed with which mixed with wet dog and the everything else that you can imagine that's pretty horrible and how do you manage that um for us we don't have that but we are quite clinical in the way we sort of manage things like cleaning and things so you might expect uh we've got like robot mops that run pretty much constantly um you know and they're filled up with like a special kind of like cleaning fluid that works really really well um like like we're quite we're pretty clean here but then then when things get out of hand like say for example mopping robot breaks down we can end up running into trouble quite quickly and then that can be overwhelming but that's not really a sensory kind of thing that's more of a functioning kind of thing but if you were here and you were house sitting and you didn't you didn't you won't have to do anything for like four or five days everything is automated to that length of time wow so try and keep on top of it with that buffer well what about like um like stuff related to like hair because that that that's probably like the thing that like um would irritate me the most i think like absolutely i completely completely agree we've got throws on safers uh which we just sort of just went in the rough we actually have a routine i mean i'm talking to mostly autistic and neurodivergent people here so you kind of you're not going to judge me too hard on this but it's kind of like we have a routine so we just have like throw which we got from vintage um really pretty pretty throws but they're cheap and we can just basically like take them off the sofa chuck them in the wash wash them dry and they're back on again you know within a couple of hours and we just sort of rotate through a pile of throws to just sort of move through those and do the same with beds and bedding and things as well um and that includes things like pet beds as well as our own um so yeah we manage we manage hair really really well but things like shedding um for cats happens twice a year so they have a shared kind of of their winter coat around now so like like i said like if like the mopping robots and things break now it's a problem uh it's no it's a genuine problem i'm kind of like amping this up i'll show you on a video and it will make sense to everyone when you see quite how much hair there is uh once it's sort of removed uh if we if we lose control we can lose control pretty quick so yeah that's that's but then otherwise the rest of the year's fine the rest is fine and the animals can kind of come and go as well so animals can come and go freely from the house not the birds well we have a very mixed reaction to the concept of cat hair in the chat i suppose guys like um any of you in the chat do you have any questions around sort of the challenges of pets that you'd want to ask mike so i think that there would probably be a good time for us to have a bit have a bit of a sort of chat interaction bit do it just have some interaction i'm sorry if i was like waffling too much sometimes i need like i need to be kind of like managed so if i'm having like like if i'm me if i'm doing like a meeting and it's completely separate i'll tell people like i'm kind of have a slightly different communication style and you know if i've gone on too long or i say was actually i make sense every few minutes i um i get told off a lot within my podcast for like interrupting people like there's been many many people who have commented saying oh i like this but stop interrupting people bad taste and then i'm asthmatic as well so that's particularly difficult for me so yeah so that can be managed with things like this um here is a big air purifier that sits you know this is like literally right next to my desk and it's got massive massive filters in it and you know other brands are available but you can get the filters on amazon on subscribe and save so the filters literally just arrive and then i just chuck them in like once every nine months or whatever and that's pretty good that that works and we have filters around the house as well um with carbon carbon filtration i know i'm kind of like leaning on tech quite a lot here but it kind of is my back do i get kaha or any food no never not really uh it depends right like it has happened where like if you're eating something on the kitchen table uh where i did up the live collagen uh it's possible that a cat because they like to live high up on the shelf will like jump down and if that happens it's really infuriating like like poly our deaf white cat is really fluffy and when she jumps down to the table she'll shed fur so if you're eating there that's kind of like a risk but otherwise no i had a really good question from brie asking okay does anyone feel guilty at during a shutdown for not being able to play with your animal because i kind of i kind of get that too sometimes like sometimes like it's not i don't know if it's something related to like social battery but i i definitely have it for pets as well and like i can get a little bit agitated if like pets won't leave me alone when i need to like be my myself but yeah brie i can i can answer brie's question like absolutely uh so we have a churrower and a chinese crested as well the churrower is called Trudy and she's black in tan and Karen is the chinese crested um and uh then mazy obviously the collie and Karen is like like i was um i had three sort of like small burnout episodes followed by a long meltdown shut down i used the term happy meltdown by the way thomas i got that from you just as a way to like just a way to describe like yes like last year i just had like so many amazing like and it all came at once like all out of nowhere yeah all at once these opportunities i got like copper hospitality to go and do and see amazing things and i met all kinds of people including like some famous people and i got it was amazing but like alonged and then like lack of sleep and then that happy anxiety and the kind of like i shot that met and mess up sleep for three hours running on low sleep but you're like super happy and excited and it's like all of the amazing things think about like any of your special interests and like the key people in those and you get to meet them and hang out with them and then you get to do and like prolong that and you think it'll be amazing and it is and bang anyway so i'm in my i'm in my shut down period and Karen is just she can tell there's something like wrong with me if that makes sense i'm using the term wrong in the dog's perspective and she goes and gets me a bagel she finds a bagel i don't know where the bagel came from it might one of us must have given it to her like days ago this is like a three-day old bagel it might have been older than that maybe it's from the hedge i don't know where she got the bagel from it was our bagel at some point it was she brought with this bagel and she's a she's a food guard is Karen she absolutely guards food it's weird because she's a tiny dog and she'll guard it she'll growl at the cat she'll growl at the big dog says she'll growl at everyone like but i'm eating but she like literally donated this bagel to me and i'm sitting outside and i'm like i don't want this thing and i just threw it away and she really got it and brought it back to me but she's like yes yes yeah this is what i'm talking about like yours and put it next to me and she goes on that when i'm just like so unimpressed and i'm just i'm feeling absolutely gross i've got a book uh a book about autism on the lap and i'm just utterly exhausted i can't deal with it nina comes home and i'm like oh nina like you got this no Karen she's got it she's just and so what's she doing and she's watching this dog picking up this bagel bringing it to me and nudging it towards me she's never done it before or since if you now call it the bagel of love this bagel of love we call it so like like Karen annoys me nina says remember the bagel of love you know she's a good dog wooly um but yeah i felt like really bad to be honest and for like not like i felt like i was kind of like not looking after the animals like i felt like so yes i do relate to that and there have been times when i've gone through really depressive moments in life and it's always haven't i haven't taken care of the animals like i should have done well i've i've looked after um people's animals before and there was one dog that i looked after who was pretty like one thing that i cannot stand myself is having an animal in the bed while i'm sleeping i just can't do it i know some people are okay with it and that's cool but i really can't do it and it just makes me feel not good um but wait i was looking after this dog and like i had this i had this experience where i was you know i was looking after the entire day i was playing with it and all that and then i was like okay i think i've had enough today and so like i put it out put it sort of outside my room and in the dog bed and stuff and sort of went to bed yeah and like for the for the night it was like scratching on the doors and like barking and then like wanting to come in and i let it in and i put the dog bed next to my bed and then the entire night it was just trying to get into my bed and i was like no i i don't want you in my bed and it was like because i had a wooden floor it was like tapping along the wooden floor just just trying to get on top of it it was just it's just way too much train the dogs not to like some folks would say you can have a dog and absolutely train them not to go on furniture for example yeah uh we do we let them we let them jump on sofas but then again with the caveat that they're not messy and whatever but occasionally mazy we'll be running around in the fields should be really muddy and she'll come in and the idea is we'll we'll shower her down we've got like a hot tap with this with a with a thing on we can even wash her with hot water outside again all of these things are like conscious ways of like how do we make this thing that's really annoying better how do we like resolve that and i take a very of autistic view i dare say and i mean that and not a pejorative way in very much a positive way i take an autistic view of like life and i go what what is the thing that's irritating me the most right now and how do i fix it and it's like muddy dog okay how do i solve muddy dog and it's like uh a tap to wash it with and it's like okay it can't be cold because that'd be horrible give me a hot hot tap and it's like cool hot tap with a thing it's always there you just blast her down she's a collie by the way so they're not they're not like fragile yeah anyway if she comes in muddy and jumps on the sofa it's like oh you just made me like half a day's worth of work so it does happen you try not but you can take dogs off beds and things but if your dog's sitting and that dog's used to being in bed with you yeah or being in bed with a human yeah i can see how that could be a problem well any problem for me yeah like a snoring dog like last night is a good example so Nina met a bed before me and i think i carried Trudy and one of them was snoring and i'm like oh my god let's try my nuts and i'm trying to like get them without waking her up so i can put them put them away but yeah snoring dogs are a problem for me but other than that it's all good i think well that was a very good suggestion hello woodshed hello albie welcome to the that we're doing a live podcast at the moment which is fun this was this one we didn't record it almost a movie who knows yeah yeah who knows no i want a bagel yeah i choose not to uh it's one of the reasons one of the reasons i don't like social media um is because you will inevitably get the the sad videos and someone will send me a sad video with it you know because it might be like a happy ending or something but i just hate it i hate i hate even seeing genuine cat pull out and just sew and clean the end but i just can't stand it and also by the way um some people fake it some of them yeah there's a lot of fake ones and some of the animal charities that i've worked with have even filmed themselves going out and rescuing animals and their content has been oh you're fake because there's just so much fake stuff out there i've seen nine out of ten of our videos hot take i don't have evidence but it's about that it's in that it's in that region it's the vast majority are fake um so i'm i'm very sorry about it but even if you're fake there's still suffering on there yeah i'm sorry i can't even it's a proper set off for me it's a proper proper thing that really upsets me um and it causes arguments like a mate will send me like oh this is a cool cat thing michael like it and it's like michael really doesn't like it why'd you send that to me yes there you go no i can understand that i can understand that that's it's definitely like one of the negatives of social media is that the most emotional content gets like usually the most views and clicks and comments and it doesn't really matter what motion it is and like when people see that they can sort of isolate that emotion and just like replicate it for like their own stuff it's not good it's not good yeah but they're like even the people who don't like it are the people who contribute to it getting popular that's the whole difficulty of it it's like swan posts like a really bad take online and you comment and say this is a bad take and horrible then it's like you're contributing to it getting more views and yeah like i don't know if you get it id sometimes okay let me get people going i really hate you and your community and your videos and really awful it's not it's not often it's like it's like it's like what bit about it didn't you like and then know what there's sometimes they'll watch it again and i'll be like no you need to watch the whole video and sometimes i'll just farm them just like says i'm i'm thinking of doing a series on on my channel of like responding to negative comments like at some point maybe i don't know i'll see what see what the the chat and you guys you guys think but might be something to do later on might be it might be a good way for me to like i don't know because i don't i because i respond to people's comments i like people's say it's usually from people outside of the community like like i'll make a video on hyper-focusing perhaps and then people someone will try to try them up and say um oh you why do you have to make this an autistic thing everybody focuses that's why we have scientists who focus on the research and i'm like dude's like i just i explain to them i explain to them and once i've explained to them they just delete the comment so i'm like i need to find some way to like somewhere i'm definitely going to do that i i i did talk through some of the more interesting i think they're funny i'll be honest i find them very some really amusing ones but they're quite negative and it was upsetting i did on a live stream and like okay cool this is a bad idea i'll leave that alone but what i will do is a response or maybe even tier ranking i was having a little chat with meg about this and she was like why don't you tier rank them well yeah that's the cool idea i'll do a tier ranking um but of ones that are kind of like misunderstandings of autism i think that would be a good one feel free to do it too thomas yeah yeah yeah that's what i was thinking it's like this is nice to explain because like even on my monotrophism people are like like you said this is this is not you're not autistic this isn't an autistic no no no this is like a human thing because because it's like cool that's actually a good talking point let's talk about it what you know yes it is a human thing but what you know because we're all human but like of course let's let's talk about it and i think there's some fantastic talking points from misunderstanding what you're saying as well i think exactly no no i'm not talking about us it's like people run like usually on youtube shorts when it gets when a video clip kind of gets highlighted it usually sort of has some outreach to other people outside of the community that usually i get those comments but yeah i mean anyway like it's when youtube goes youtube goes um and kind of like pushes the video it's like an onion thing it's like the autistic community is kind of on the inner side and then like if youtube if like the autistic community resonate with a video i find youtube then go i reckon other people might like this too and it pushes it out to the next layer which is full of trolls yeah and that's this like video does well that's when you get that's when you get the extra a bad thing that just means it's gone to me well tells you it's like don't worry about this if you count you know well i i suppose so that we don't deal too much and talk about youtube stuff um let us let us bring it back to the the pet stuff because i think um it would be really good to hear if there are any because i know you've brought up some kind of tips and things that you sort of recommend to autistic people who are wanting to sort of have a pet or manage a pet that they have um what i would like to know is can you give us three top tips it could it could be more could be less can you give us some top tips on managing pets as an autistic adult okay number one um literally explicitly identify the routine now it might be i feed my cat when i come home from work outdoors walk whatever that's what i do okay cool identify that and literally write it down and go this is what i do when this is what my pet needs this is what i do number one number two things like vet stuff um i've got some pretty advanced tips on that one which i'll go into in more detail at some point um but it's kind of like anything that you need or your pet needs for the next sort of six to eight weeks kind of get that in either like amazon subscriber save or something or just like just make sure you have it in like there's nothing worse than needing to be full of litter tray and not having anything to put in it do you know what i mean how to go and dig in the garden for some soil because yes you put something in for number two is like supplies basically don't think like a prepper but you know like get a bit of that take a take a leaf out of their book the first one is like identify your routines and write them down and the third one is kind of come back to those first two and just make sure that you've got everything in order oh emma wants out sorry number three okay cool right so oh gosh okay sorry i'm just tripping over them okay this is hydra everybody say hello to thomas says hello hydra you have a very beautiful coat this is your reminder to hydrate by the way um hydra eight hydrate number yeah um number three it's kind of like just to advise those two key key to my sanity is having my notion database which has got each of the pets and there's always a sad moment when i'm kind of like hide one of them because the past time or something it's not like it's not like a common thing but you know it is try not to dwell on that just just remember the happy times take lots of pictures share them with friends if you need someone to share your pet pictures to you can email me and mike or it's always great to see people's pet photos in amongst the other crap in my inbox but it's nice to see happy's um so yeah those two things those two things and number three is your is revising i'll give examples on a video later yeah if you can systematize i think it means it it just i can't believe i haven't for so long to my top tip to my past self systematize get it get it into your routine a like uh explicitly like like yeah explicitly um and some animals like cats are really good at it dogs and less good at it but a cat won't let you forget feeding them they'll wake you up at 3am you know and in fact if a cat is waking up at 3am if you're a cat person you've got a cat and it's waking up 3am probably because you could possibly train it to or you just haven't fed it right like do you know what i mean so you could be a bit hungry so kind of like actually explicitly putting that in something it might be that you think to yourself hey um this is a problem for me sometimes uh when i'm struggling with either mental health issue or something else i struggle to walk my dog say and you know that and you've written it down and you can revise that and go well what i need is a support network i need a friend perhaps to walk my dog once a week maybe uh but knowing that and writing it down when you're in a good frame of mind first is so important and that's for cats it might be i find it a real ball egg to kind of like feed them in the morning all the time okay so what other options do i have can i put like a bowl of cat food down for them with that make them fat would it work for my cats it might do it might not talk about a hopper and a feeder which goes off they can get quite cheap now there's loads of different ones things like that but you can anybody think about these things once you've written down your routine yes if i waffle too much does that make sense chat no that's brilliant thank you mike so if you have enjoyed this episode of the pod 4080 podcast please make sure to like rate us if you are on one of the streaming services and possibly take a look at my youtube channel um i do have memberships which the first tier gives you access to uncut streams such as this one in their entire tree entire tree we also have some badges some emojis custom emojis that we've made on stream which is pretty cool um and i'm recently um sort of setting up a kind of different sort of paid content kind of part of my channel where i'll be uploading um videos to my autism university playlist so if you do want to have access to those there's no memberships this stream is not sponsored but i am an affiliate of sneak which is my favorite energy drink alternative caffeine sauce whatever you want to call it the reason why i love it so much is because it has all sorts of like hydration formulas at the moment i'm drinking the cola version which basically tastes like melted jelly cola bottles that you just get when you're a kid so good um got some elfin in in there and um honestly like for me who struggles with anxiety quite a bit i do find that usually any drinks or coffee tend to give me a lot of caffeine jitters sort of make my anxiety worse but this stuff has just been really great so i'm happy to be an affiliate and if you do want to check that out i do have the links down in the description well that that is my little spiel of yeah i'm going to interject and just say by the way feeling and caffeine i find really helps me it's a subject for another day it's another another day some different video it's such another chat but yeah i mean i'm looking for it i mean usually yeah you're good in green tea um but i do supplement elfin sometimes particularly from feeling like it's going to be a difficult day or whatever totally i mean you don't really really need to get it's kind of going back on my affiliate pin but you don't really need to get it i mean you can get like um elfinine powder from think from bulk powders in uk that you can use it's it's a pretty good like it's naturally found in green tea and it's it's absolutely amazing if you do find yourself very very tired like many people with anxiety and depression do but also um struggle getting too much caffeine getting all like their anxiety provoking effects of it um elfinine supplementation is probably one of the best ones it's good we agree okay great play us out with the last single songs buzzing around but play us out with your your song it is the the outro song of my live streams which is golden things by kayu daily available on youtube and Spotify and other platforms awesome what what is it particularly about that song that that's sort of you like it's like it's literally a song about like it's it's the kind of campfire song about golden rays of sunshine just happiness and just it's just pure it's just just check it out it's the song i tend to play on my beer i back screen intro and exit awesome yeah well that that will be that song will be down and the Spotify playlist there is a mixed playlist from all of my previous guess all of the songs that they've suggested if you want to go check it out i highly recommend you it's a very eclectic playlist for sure like there are some um yes lots of mixed genres and stuff within their playlist now maybe maybe yeah so um brilliant um mike would you like to share some some links that you want people to know about um to if they want to follow up and find you on other platforms yeah if you want to find me at one place it's www.autisticafter4040.com um it's my website which will be launching in the next few days if you go there right now it'll just redirect you to the youtube page and also autistic af on instagram and i was going to say tiktok too i'm kind of like not really using tiktok i i created an account so that i could just wade through the sewer of neurodiverse content on there i say sewer neurodiverse content it's not really neurodiversity sort of content but you know what i mean yes it goes there sometimes it's it's not a place you want to hang out unless you're going to get frustrated and annoyed um it's after the chloe hayden thing that's when i signed up for tiktok um yeah i'm finding on youtube which is autistic af on youtube youtube i highly recommend going checking out the autistic a whole video um there's a little a little special little easter egg in there fear of franny special special little easter egg in there for the henley army yes the henley army the henley that was actually so that was so much fun to do thank you for being such a great well i really hope you have enjoyed this episode the 40 or two podcasts and if you did tune in live please make sure to let me know and comment down below definitely head over to the youtube channel if you are on a streaming platform as i said rates do all of that stuff really does help this podcast get out to more people and um yeah tell me what you think of the new formats and um really love to know i hope you're having a very very lovely day and a lovely evening now i see you later for another episode of the 40 orty podcast see you later guys bye