 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 afternoon, Forty Autie listeners! Welcome back to another episode of the Forty Autie podcast and, I have to say, the final one of the season. Crazy, isn't it? For any of you active listeners out there, you may have noticed that there has been a considerable gap between the last two episodes of the podcast. The reason for this was that I have been waiting on releasing a certain episode and I've been waiting for confirmation by this, this other person, so that I could release it before Steve's episode and I haven't heard anything since then. So I think that it would be a good idea to get this episode out. If I do happen to get confirmation from this other person, then I may possibly add it post-season. Exciting! So, alas, we've had a lot of episodes going through the works and, you know, we've been up and running for about a year or so. So happy that the way that the podcast is going and today I've got something very, very, very, very special for you to round up the season. We're going to be talking about Neurotribes by Steve Silberman. We're going to be looking a little bit into the history of autism and also what may be in store for the future of autistic people. Steve was once a writer for Wired and he's done numerous articles on aspergers and autism. Most notably so, the Geek Syndrome. Neurotribes is perhaps one of the most standout books that I've ever read. I guess with our modern times we very much focus on the present, focus on what's happening around us, focusing on action now, but rarely do we have time to reflect on the past. And for me, Neurotribes has been something really special for me because I didn't really have a good framework for how autism was in the past and the sorts of figures that really made quite a big impact on society. Steve's work on Neurotribes has been highlighted in many, many UK and US newspapers and media sites including The Guardian, Forbes, The New York Times, all of those really high profile media organisations. Although not autistic himself, he has poured his heart and soul into the creation of Neurotribes and yeah, I'm utterly dumbfounded that he's decided to come onto the podcast. Anyway, how are you doing today Steve? Great, I'm very, very glad to be here with you. Thank you so much. It's actually a beautiful day in San Francisco, which is nice. Where are you geographically? I'm in the UK. So the weather at the moment, it's very temperamental, it's very up and down. Sunny, then it's rainy, then it's cloudy. Makes it very difficult to organise those outside social events. Oh yes, exactly. Yep, absolutely. Well, yeah, we, you know, I can't wait to get back to the UK. I love it there. I have many friends there. I have even have many autistic friends there by now. And there are various groups that I've met with there. I went to a great autistic run autism conference. It was run by a group called Autistic UK in Manchester a couple years ago. And it was probably the best autism conference I ever went to. You know what? One of my friends, Vicky, is an autism advocate. And she always raves about these conferences in Manchester. And I should really go to one considering how close it is to where I live. And the fact that I do actually know quite a few people in Manchester. Yeah, if I ever get invited back, we should have tea or a pub or something. That would be really cool. If one can do that. Maybe outside in the drizzly UK. Exactly. Yes. Well, there's been a few updates since we last spoke. And I think what one thing that you mentioned to me during our pre chat was that someone that you knew sort of developed this book called a cure for darkness, which I believe was kind of going into the history of mental health. And I was really excited to read it. But I usually listen to a lot of my books. For some reason, I just find it really difficult reading books. I like to do other things while I'm while I'm listening to a book. I find it quite difficult to sit down and flip the pages and get into a rhythm. And so I looked up to see if the book was anywhere else. And it's unholdable now. Oh, good. So I was very happy about that. I'm definitely going to be reading that at some point. Yeah, that's Alex Riley's book. And it focuses specifically on the history of depression and its treatment. And Alex came to San Francisco several years ago, after my book Neuron tribes came out, and said that he had really enjoyed Neurotribes, and that he was thinking about writing a book about depression, which Alex personally struggles with, kind of based on the model of Neurotribes. And I must say, I thought it was a great idea, but also an incredibly ambitious project. And here was this completely charming, energetic, you know, but depressed, you know, young man telling me that he wanted to do this. And I thought, wow, good luck. And then I got the manuscript like three years later. And it was just so good. And I've done a I did an online event with Alex at my local bookstore called the Booksmith. Yeah. And it's a really, really, it's a very good book. And I have a member of my family who struggles with depression. And I was able to give her Alex's book. And I think it really helped her contextualize her own experience. So yeah, it's I definitely recommend that book, A Cure for Darkness by Alex Riley. I am definitely looking forward to getting my ears into that. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I noticed whilst looking through a little bit of the news, you have been short listed for a prize. The believe that the Samuel Johnson Prize. Yeah, it was not just shortlisted. I actually won the prize. Brilliant. I'm so glad it was the yeah, it was the very first science book in history to win the Samuel Johnson Prize, which is now called the Bailey Gifford Prize. Yeah. And it was a complete surprise to me, I must say, I went there, I went to England for the ceremony. And I assumed I would lose. And I took specifically chose my date, who was a wonderful woman because she's snarky. And I thought, if I lose, you know, she'll have the most biting comments to console me with. And instead, I won. And it shocked both of us. And there's an ironic footnote to that event, which is that I won the prize just before the Brexit vote, then the Brexit vote happened, and we all know what happened there. And because of the Brexit vote, my prize was worth a lot less money by the time I got back to the States. Oh, the exchange rate, exchange rate. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. The pound has absolutely plummeted in comparison to the dollar. It is not doing well. Good. So yes, I mean, and I also thought, I mean, we're getting away from, you know, the subject of autism or my book or whatever. But I also it was also sad for me because I thought, Oh, my God, the Brits are making the same mistake that people did here with Trump, you know, and just believing this nonsense. So the world has been going through a lot. The hardest years of my life. Yeah, like, I mean, I can't even, you know, my husband and I were talking the other day, my husband is Ward Q normal on Twitter. My husband and I were talking the other day that it was like, things have gotten so much worse in the world in the last few years, that it's even hard to describe the difference to younger people who weren't there. Yeah. Like life has become much more tense and anxiety producing and depressing and uncomfortable and scary and dangerous. And, you know, it's it's daunting. You know, it's just been it's been an absolute nightmare. You know, bad acid trip en masse, you know, for for years. It's definitely been a tumultuous, tumultuous time. Yes. Yes. I mean, it's just little things that that I hear from people in different workplaces in education within psychiatric groups and such. There seems to be an overarching, low mood and anxiety among any any place that I look at, even with friends, family, I think all of this has affected us more than we think. And we can see it. But I think it's also for people who feel like they like they've conceptualized it. They know what's happening. It still does affect you a little bit. And subconsciously, I would say. Yes. I'm curious. I mean, I know that anxiety is a huge problem for people on the spectrum in general, even without, you know, global fascism. Do you feel like the autistic people that you know, have been particularly affected by this historical period? I'd say that outwardly, probably not. But I have definitely noticed a trend. It seems to be that the creators and influencers in the autistic community, they're kind of they're still putting things out. But there doesn't seem to be as much active discussion between people, you know, people, they have very low contact, you know, when compared to pre COVID. And I'm I feel like everyone's bearing the head in the sand. And yeah, I've always been really into my gym, or fitness or sports. It really helps me with my anxiety. So I'm just kind of taking pleasure in it for as long as possible. Just in case you close again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you vaccinated? I'm not not at the moment now. I was thinking of trying to get myself vaccinated. Because I know that autistic people are sort of higher in priority than other people in the UK. But I didn't really feel it was necessary. So I've, you know, I, although on paper, I am a priority group. I don't know. I just I just feel like, you know, it will come to me if if if and when I need it. I want to make sure that other people who really need it before me get to have it. Do you have an official diagnosis? Yes. What do you think about the issue about self diagnosis? Like I, I, you know, having written a history of autism, I understand the barriers to diagnosis, particularly for women, particularly for people of color, even if you're a white cis male, it can be really expensive and elaborate. So I understand that the need to respect self diagnoses. Do you have any thoughts on that subject? I think there's a bit of, you know, because we live in a very socially progressive time. And there's lots of backlash and lots of drama online about categorization and such. And I think people lump autism into that. You know, autistic people self diagnosing into that too much. I think we have a long way to go in terms of diagnostic procedures and understanding more about the more about autism. And we don't really have a specialized diagnostic criteria for women, for example, as you said, which is something that actually my friend Vicky from actually Aspling, she's a psychologist and she's been researching into this area and working on a more specialized diagnostic pathway for women, which is really great, of course. But it's very different in the UK, of course, in terms of finances. So I can empathize more with self diagnosed people in America and the US. Same thing. Yeah, we don't have an NHS. Just because it's not so widely and easily available as in the UK. But do you mind if we move on to the first question? Would that be all right? I am very much enjoying our little chat. But I also know that you're a very busy man and time is precious. Sure. Could you tell us a little bit about the journey that you went on? Sure. Writing neuro tribes. When did you start? What sort of notable experiences did you have? Why? Why did you do it? Why did you decide to write a book about autism? Tell me. Well, I was a science writer for Wired Magazine for 15 years. And in the course of that, in back in, I think it was 1999, I went on a cruise ship that was had been chartered by a tech entrepreneur who wanted to have tech conferences on cruise ships rather than like the holiday in in Pittsburgh. So he got a cruise ship to sail up the Alaskan Panhandle. And there were more than 100 computer programmers on the boat, including a guy named Larry Wall, who invented a programming language called Pearl, which was an open source language, and became very important, particularly once the web launched, because it was the underlying programming in many, many things like Amazon and Craigslist and the internet movie database. And it even got incorporated into Microsoft software. So he I noticed when I talked to him at dinner every night, that he was brilliant and hilarious and wonderful, and also quite eccentric. And I noticed that actually quite a few of the computer programmers on the ship, you know, were either, you know, socially awkward or, you know, eccentric in some way, and certainly had very passionate interests. They I wouldn't say that they were narrow interests, which is the traditional autism stereotype, which is false in my view. But they were very intense and very passionate. And it was as if they had been, you know, kind of teenage fanboys of various things, but then had figured out how to turn them into valuable careers. Yeah. Yeah. So as I was coming back into port on the boat, I asked Larry if I could interview him at home in Silicon Valley. And he said, Yeah, sure. But I should tell you, we have a profoundly autistic daughter. And what everyone forgets, because it was so recent, but the world has changed so much, is that back in 1999, autism was considered very, very rare. Estimates of its prevalence were something like one in 10,000. So even clinicians who'd worked with autism for decades thought that autism was rare. So when he told me that he had an autistic daughter, it didn't really register. And then when I interviewed him, his daughter was not there. But I noticed some sensory modifications in his house, like he had swapped the buzzer on his clothes dryer out for a little light bulb. Yeah, that would light up silently. If the cycle finished. So I didn't know enough about autism to relate those sensory accommodations to his daughter's autism yet. But then about six months later, I was writing another article for wired about a woman in a family whose father had built the first computer in the Middle East back in the 1940s. So another technologically very adept family. Wow. And I said, I asked her if I could interview her sister. And her sister said, Yeah, we should tell you, we have a profoundly autistic daughter. And I thought, God, that's funny. And so I was sitting in a cafe in San Francisco. And I told that exact story to a friend of mine. And a woman at the next table said, Oh, my God, do you realize what's going on? And I said, What's going on? And she said, there's an epidemic of autism in Silicon Valley. Something terrible is happening to our children. So I like, you know, I like heard like the chords of doom on the soundtrack, you know. And because I was a science writer, I thought, Well, I, you know, that sounds scary. But I wonder if it's actually really true, you know, so I went on to do an investigative piece called the geek syndrome, which got published and wired in 2001. Right after I turned it in 911 happened. So I figured no one would ever read it really, no one would care. Of course. You know, and what I focused on was not what everyone in Silicon Valley was telling me about vaccines or Wi Fi or Silicon from the computer ships getting into the water supply. You know, everybody has these BS theories, you know, really. They've been, you know, consulting Dr. Google or whatever, and or Dr. Alta Vista maybe at the time. But anyway, so I focused on genetics. And I noticed, as many people have noticed, most notably Simon Baron Cohen, that autism seemed to come along not only with a bunch of challenges, but in some cases, a bunch of gifts or aptitudes or enhancements or strengths. And they were almost never discussed. The aptitudes and strengths of autistic people were almost never discussed, except as a sort of curiosity about, you know, a particularly small group of autistic people who were called savants. And they would, you know, be praised for truly amazing feats, I must say, like remembering what the weather was, you know, on a particular afternoon 30 years ago, like, like Rain Man would be typical savants, right? Exactly. Right. And although what people as I, as I examine in my book, what people forget about Rain Man, I mean, it's like everybody now is like, Oh, Rain Man, oh my God, that was a horrible, you know, movie that launched this autistic stereotype. Yes, it did. But it was also the very first time that an autistic adult was depicted on screen. I completely agree with you. Most people even in the field of autism didn't know that autistic adults existed really. So in that sense, it was a very groundbreaking film. And Dustin Hoffman's performance was based on the lives and behavior of really, you know, real life autistic people. Exactly. One of whom I met, Mark Rimbland. But in any case, so my article came out and it was not ignored actually. And the amazing thing about it was that for 10 years, almost every week, I got email from people who had read it saying, Oh, I really recognize my own grandfather who used to talk about World War Two all the time, or I really recognize my brother, or I really recognize myself genetics. But also, they were talking about problems in accessing basic services, like healthcare, you know, before Obamacare, the American, whatever it's called, ACA, before Obamacare, you know, it was very difficult to get healthcare in America. So I realized that while the world was talking about, Oh, my God, there's an autism epidemic, which by the way, there wasn't and there never was. And Oh, my God, it's vaccines. Oh, my God, it's Wi-Fi. That's that was all bollocks. And what I figured out was that the reason why people thought there was an autism epidemic was because of a chain of events and autism history. That is the plot of Neurotribes, basically. Yeah. So the more that time went on, I kept seeing articles like even in kind of major newspapers like The New York Times, what, you know, the increase in estimates of autism prevalence, or a puzzle, a baffling enigma, we do not know why. And I, you know, after a while, I was like, why don't we know why? We have scientists. Why can't we do studies on this? You know, and then if you, you know, some people did the studies, you know, and it was like, Well, no, actually, vaccines don't cause autism. And well, no, actually, there isn't an autism epidemic. There's what I like to call an epidemic of recognition, like undiagnosed autistic people are being seen for the first time. And so I thought, Well, somebody has to try to fix this, because it's causing not just a tremendous amount of misconceptions and, you know, great unhappiness and shame, you know, I read anti vaccine parents posting about how the day they ruined their child's lives was the day they brought them for a measles vaccine, you know, and, and, and now, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and now, by the way, it's okay, you know, with, with COVID, we can have the level of autism. Right. Power up. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, right, I was just going to say, I mean, now with COVID, we see really the, the hellscape that anti vaccine people are, I mean, they're literally murdering people by, by trashing vaccines. So in any case, so I wrote the book, it took much longer than I thought it would. It was difficult financially. You know, I was no longer writing for wired. My husband supported me in San Francisco on a teacher's salary, which is not easy. You know, I sold a bunch of grateful death CDs, you know, to my cat food, that literally happened. So you poured your entire being I did into this project. This and I did become obsessed, like they say. And, you know, and then it came out and I the whole time I was writing it, I thought everyone would hate it. I thought the anti vaccine people would hate it because I was not just saying that they were wrong. I was showing why they were wrong. I fear that autistic people would hate it because I'm not autistic. And so it was like, you know, history of feminism written by a man, you know, or something. I do understand. Yep. I think it's a an issue, I guess with anything that is sort of based on group dynamics and about certain groups or categories of people. Yeah, especially in these times, we tend to be very cagey about letting people in and letting others voices be heard. Right. And I understand that completely. I'm gay. If someone had written a homosexual, you know, a history of homosexuality or something and had been straight, I would have been like, really? Okay. You know, I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I would have read it before trashing it. I, you know, I didn't always get the courtesy of, but I completely understand. And if anything, my book is testimony to why autistic people are skeptical of neurotypical views. It goes into great depth about that actually. And neurotypical people have done, you know, I mean, my book is practically the history of mistreatment of autistic people, really. And so one change that happened inside me while writing Neurotribes, was that when I set out to write it, I was kind of thought I was writing a science book. And by the end of it, I felt like I had written a journey towards liberation of a group of people, of a minority of people who were finally able to see one another and talk to one another and organize. Yeah. So I went through that change too. And I was very, very happy when I showed the completed manuscript to some of my autistic friends like Ari Neumann of the Autism Self Advocacy Network here in the United States, and got the thumbs up. And eventually, ASAN, Ari's organization gave me Ally of the Year Award, which was a big relief. Yay. So that was good. You're in the club, you're in the group. Yeah, sort of. I mean, I've got a honorary autism diagnosis. Thank you so much. But yeah, no, it's funny. You know, something that I mentioned sometimes is that when I tell people that I've written a history of autism, the first question that I usually get is, Oh, do you have an autistic child? And I think that's a funny comment because it's as if no one would ever write, you know, I'm a science writer, you know, it's like, yeah, I don't need to have an autistic child to be interested in autism, you know, people get obsessed with it. It's on the surface level. It appears very simple and plain. And, you know, it's a disorder. But as soon as you get a little bit below the surface, a little bit behind it, I've seen it, particularly with a man called John Offord, who's started off his his own podcast. And I think you've actually been on that that in the past. And he initially was going to do his podcasts around sort of mental health and mental disorders. But after interviewing me, he started to invite over autistic people and people who are sort of big names and researchers in the world of autism. So I think after a while, the shine of it really does come through as soon as they take that leap into understanding and getting interested in that topic of autism. Right. And one thing I've tried to do very, very deliberately is to foreground autistic voices in the social conversation about autism. Brilliant. And I've done that by like, okay, so a few years ago, I got a couple years ago, even really, I got a manuscript in the mail from the mother of a 15 year old in Wales, who told me that her son had written a book. And I thought, oh, how's her autistic son? You know, so I thought, oh, how sweet, you know, I'll read this book. And I started reading the book. And after about halfway down the first page, I thought, Oh, my God, you know, this kid is like the it's like the best literary debut I've read in years. This kid is like a young Oliver Sacks. And it's Darren McEnulty. And the book was Diary of a Young Naturalist. And when I read it, yeah, yeah. And when I read it, you know, it was like getting a, you know, it was like getting it was like hearing the Beatles, you know, in a club in Hamburg, Germany or something and saying like, these guys are going to change the world, you know. And so I literally like wrote back like your son is genius. That's what we like to hear. Now kind of like the whole world knows that Darren McEnulty is a genius. He basically swept the British Book Awards. He got many more awards than I did really. And he deserves it. And he is just an awesome young man. And I hope to interview him actually again, about his book because it's coming out in the States. But if you have not read, Darren McEnulty's Diary of a Young Naturalist. Yeah, list of audiobooks. It's awesome. And also, you know, I make an effort to I mean, it's not like I'm, you know, a big effort. It's I mean, I just do it a lot is retweeting autistic perspectives on current events like when the lawyer of the, well, a guy I don't like, who's in QAnon, who dresses up in shaman costumes when he's breaking into the US Capitol to overturn a national election. You know, yesterday, you know, his lawyers, oh, he's autistic. These people are all short bus people, the lawyers said. And I won't even use the R word to. And so, you know, I had things to say about that. But I also definitely tweeted autistic statements on that. So we could get, you know, own voices, as they say, into the media mix. That is incredibly important. It's very invaluable to include. It's almost like a sort of media type co-production. You're involving people in the social narrative of things, which is, I think, so severely lacking in men's. And I've tried to do, sorry, you know, I mean, neuro tribes did pretty well. And it, you know, so I got a lot of like, media requests in the year after it was published. But I've definitely tried to make myself available to autistic people with podcasts, which is what I'm doing now. You know, and so I think it's really important to mainstream the idea. And because I'm in the journalism mainstream, sort of, I mean, I'm considered a weirdo with bizarre interests. But who, you know, that's interesting. It's very important to spread the notion that the most trustworthy source often for autistic experience is autistic people. So it's time for a quick mention from our sponsors, Timo. If you love visual support in your scheduling, Timo is for you. The app was designed for people with ADHD and autism and helps empower users to schedule visual routines that work. Users say that Timo can help reduce stress and support executive function, which are both two things that I struggle with myself. Learn more at www.tmoapp.com or just type in T-double-I-M-O into your search bar. Anyway, let's get back into the show. So Neurotribes explores the importance of autistic figures in history and the way that autistic communities have grown in the near present and, of course, the possibilities for the future place for autistic people. I guess the issues that I've personally researched and focused around is the scientific literature, the here and now, the present, the issues in education and social care. One thing that really struck me about Neurotribes is that it gave me a really great understanding of the history around it and that really helps me frame autism. You know, have a good rounding frame for autism around the ages, especially with Hans Asperger. I think in the present day, we've made substantial steps towards a more integrated world for autistic people in science and, you know, in media, public understanding, although not quite there. So I guess I hope that our conversation today can integrate the past of autism into the present and suggest things that could lie in the future. So starting at the beginning, in Neurotribes, you look at how the history of autism came to be, the history of how autism came to be. So could you take us through the key players in forming that first conceptual idea of what autism is? Well, Grunia Sukareva was a Russian psychiatrist, I believe. She might have been a psychologist, but she wrote the most in-depth first description of people with what would later be called Asperger syndrome. We use a hard G in America, in Asperger's name. And it was a fascinating paper and the sort of the wit and playful spirit and the challenges and the character, the autistic character of the kids that she was writing about were very memorable. But there was a problem. She identified the kids she was writing about as having schizotypal behavior, so somehow related to schizophrenia. And so that paper sort of ended up getting forgotten, really. I wrote about it at some length in Neurotribes, but the world had really not talked much about her before that. So then kind of the next time that autism was glimpsed, you could say, in the published literature, was writing from Hans Asperger's clinic at the University of Vienna in the 1930s. And there, Hans Asperger and I want to crucially mention his two colleagues, Anni Weiss and George Frankel, who were Jewish, started to look at autistic people in a much more holistic way. And the clinic was up to a point, a very humane place. There was, they would do, you know, play, they would write plays, they would walk in the garden, they had art on the walls. It was designed not to be some kind of brutal institution, but to be a place where people could learn to be comfortable with themselves and could get the kinds of support they needed. The high old pedagogic. Sorry. I can never say that right. Right. Right. Right. Right. High old pedagogic, I think. Or I might be wrong, but in any case, in any case, and, you know, one of the things that they talked about was that autistic, you know, quote, unquote special interests that would later become very stigmatized, Asperger knew that if a child had, say, a passionate interest in geometry, then if that was supported and encouraged rather than being discouraged as obsessive or something, that they could then go on to even possibly a future career that would become a stepping stone to an adult identity that could become a member of society. And so that was all good. But then 1938, the Germans marched over the mountains from Austria or into Austria from Berlin and took over the country. And Austria became a Nazi country. And there were already a bunch of Nazi sympathizers at Asperger's hospital. His boss was a very fervent Nazi, as I talk about in Neurotribes. And his German, Asperger's Jewish assistants, who had very much helped him conceptualize what we now call the spectrum model of autism, were forced to leave the country. What no one knew until I wrote Neurotribes was that they came to America and started working with a guy named Leo Connor. It looks like canner, but it's pronounced Connor. And he was working at Johns Hopkins in America. And in fact, when Leo Connor saw his first autistic patient, he did not know what to make of him. So he sent him to George Frankel for an examination. And George Frankel immediately recognized him as autistic. So it was considered, it was mistakenly considered for decades, a mere coincidence or some kind of synchronicity that Connor and Asperger both wrote descriptions of autism in the early 1940s. It was not a coincidence or accident or synchronicity at all. Connor was working with two of Asperger's closest colleagues who had been working with autistic people for years at every point on the spectrum. So but there was a problem there too, which is that Leo Connor decided eventually, being a very ambitious man, that if he said that autism was genetic, that there would be no role for child psychiatrists. And Leo Connor was one of the first child psychiatrists in America. So he then, even though in his very first paper on autism, he says, you know, it's probably genetic. He then took a different approach in later papers and started blaming parents for being what he called emotional refrigerators. Refrigerate some of us. Yes, exactly. Right. And not not knowing, you know, how to show love or affection for their kids. And that theory, particularly when popularized by a best selling fraud named Bruno Bettelheim in a best selling fraudulent book called the Empty Fortress, Bruno Bettelheim popularized the notion of refrigerator mothers, which added to the shame and secrecy around having an autistic child. So Connor's shift from genetics to psychology was disastrous for autistic people. Also, because Connor was trying to propose a new diagnosis, autism, a new diagnostic entity. He was careful to try to define it very narrowly. And he ended up defining it way too narrowly. He ended up claiming that autism was particularly endemic to wealthy upper middle class white families. Well, what was particularly endemic to, you know, wealthy middle class white families was having access to Leigh O'Connor's diagnosis, you know, people of color, people of color know, even though I discovered most of the patients at Johns Hopkins were people of color. Leigh O'Connor was not seeing them. They didn't have access to him. So for decades, autism was misconceived as a primarily white diagnosis. I spoke to a psychiatrist who started doing autism diagnoses in the 1940s. So shortly after Leigh O'Connor wrote his paper, and she told me that up through the 1990s, by the time she gave a child the diagnosis, most of the families had been through 10 therapists before they got to her. So how many families do you think could afford to doctor shop their way through 10 therapists? You know, that was many right. And so any surprise that when Lorna Wing in the in the late 1970s and 1980s started asking, well, how many of these cases of Connor autism, because Connor's definition was so close to, you know, sort of the standard that people even called it Connor autism, or classical autism that's called sometimes, you know, Lorna started saying like, well, how many of these people are there because she was asked by someone who was an official who was with the NHS to try to estimate the number of autistic kids in Camberwell, a suburb of London. And so she started looking for autistic kids. And what she found was, well, yeah, they're you know, not that many cases of Connor autism. And in fact, her daughter had Connor autism. So she had reason to believe in the diagnosis. But she started seeing all these people who had what she described to me as bits and pieces of Connor syndrome. And these were the people who we would now recognize as people like you, people who are on the spectrum as don't have classical. Yes. Right. Maybe not aspes anymore. Not aspes autistic people, autistic people. She started, she saw the spectrum. And what's interesting is that Asperger had definitely seen this as Asperger and his Jewish colleagues had definitely seen the spectrum too. And in fact, in internal communications between themselves, they called it the continuum. So the continuum or spectrum was something that was known about autism as early as the 1930s. But that information got lost. Why? Because no one wanted to read articles in German journals right after World War Two. And Leo Connor was Jewish. And he especially, you know, like there are people who say, well, maybe Connor didn't read. Yeah, German was his native language, by the way, or one of his native languages. So yes, he was definitely reading that particular journal. But he did not mention Asperger until very late in his career. And I suspect it's because he suspected that Asperger had Nazi ties. That's that's crazy. It's a really cool connection. Yes, it makes a lot of sense. Yes, it makes a lot of sense. Did you figure out that yourself? Like did for your research and such? Yes, I figured all that out myself. Wow. And something I want to point out is that it's become, you know, quite popular to reject, you know, the label of Asperger's or to reject Asperger as a Nazi collaborator. I'm not even going to address that directly, although there are things that are not widely known by the world that someday will be known. But here's one thing that is absolutely inarguable. Asperger's Jewish colleagues were not Nazis, and needless to say they were forced to leave the country because of the Nazis. And they were key in developing Asperger's concept of the spectrum. Or you could really say the concept of the spectrum was developed by not just Asperger, but also George Frankel, Ani Weiss and other people. And there was a memoir written by a boy named Hansi Bustin, who was a Jewish boy who was hidden in the apartment of Joseph Felner, another of Asperger's closest colleagues, through the war. So you can imagine the danger that Joseph Felner was putting himself in by having that boy hidden in his apartment and not just hidden. They would occasionally go to the opera, in fact. And after the war, Hansi Bustin wrote a memoir in which he described the anti-Nazi resistance within Asperger's clinic, which obviously included Joseph Felner. That has all been washed away. You know, I understand, you know, very much because I mapped out the horrible action T4 that the Nazis committed against disabled children as a practice run for the Holocaust against the Jews. So I'm not, you know, dismissing that at all. It's horrible. It's one of the great crimes of world history against humanity. But if we're throwing away the insights of Asperger's Jewish colleagues to get rid of Asperger, I think that's premature. Certainly if we're throwing away the concept of the spectrum as somehow a Nazi idea, I think that's terrible. And, you know, I one of the books that is I really do. If that's the history behind it, then yeah, I encourage anybody who's listening. You know, this is one of the reasons why I wanted wanted you to come on the podcast and talk to me because thank you. I see a lot of a lot of posts and a lot of people writing to me saying, you know, why do you have? Why are you so attached to your YouTube name Asperger's Grove? But you know, it was very enlightened and lightning for me to read about the real history behind Asperger and his colleagues and how they really formulated the autism diagnosis. So let's jump to the last question. And as I know, you're a very busy man. And I don't want to keep you too long. So we're currently in an era of social progression, putting more and more emphasis on diversity and inclusion each and every day. What do you believe lies in the future of autistic people and of autistic people and neurodiversity? Do you think there's many challenges that we need to overcome? Yes, there are many challenges. And you know, one example of things that are, okay, I have a basically optimistic view. At the same time, I very much recognize that I don't think that the time that we're living through is an undeniable story of progress, because there are also terrible things happening. And, you know, for instance, the treatment of not just autistic, but other disabled people in the COVID-19 pandemic, like, you know, who's going to get the vaccines? Who gets the care? Who gets the do not resuscitate orders? You know, when the person becomes sick, you know, I must say, you know, it's awful, you know, having just written a book about eugenics, you know, five years ago, in part, I must say, it was quite shocking to me how quickly even sort of, you know, reasonable, you know, moderate people immediately embraced eugenics. You know, it's like, well, we have to save the healthy people, you know, these people have pre-existing conditions. It is incredibly depressing. You know, very demoralizing. Right. So, so that's terrible. But what's good? What's good is that companies are really starting to understand that they need to make accommodations and create support systems for people on the spectrum, not to be nice, not for charity, but so that their businesses will do better and make more money. And, you know, so their stock prices will go up because people who are neurodivergent have valuable insights and see problems from angles that nobody else can see. And so if you have neurodivergent people on your team, it will be a more effective team. And this is not just some liberal fantasy. This has like been shown over and over again. And so, you know, and these are very concrete things that can be done and that are not, you know, will not require changing the entire world to make them happen. I was recently asked to give a lecture to a company about what kinds of accommodations would make it easier for autistic people to feel comfortable in employment there. Yeah. And so I asked a bunch of autistic people for their suggestions. And they're very, you know, they're kind of very basic common sense things. Let me, I'll just read a couple. The standard interview process is basically a list of things that many autistic people find stressful or struggle to do well. Look the interviewer in the eye, strong handshake, sell yourself, be a real team player. We think interview. All those social things. We think interview and onboarding processes to get beyond the notion that you hire people like us. Like that's what I hear all the time in Silicon. Well, we want to hire people like us. And, you know, they're usually like, you know, young white guys. You know what? I would love the interview process to be to just write a short essay on why you should hire me. Yeah, that's awesome. Like that would be so much better. For me, I guess I've done a lot of work on social presentation and communicating with the neurotypical people. Yeah. Yes. So, you know, it's it's not something that I struggle with personally, but I know that many, many autistic people do struggle. Yes. In that environment, even neurotypical people struggle. And even with that, there is actually a lady who is who I'm going to be talking to called Marcel CMP. Oh, I love her, actually. I I've I've read her upcoming book. Yeah, well, yeah, she's awesome. She was talking about how I think it was Marcel. Yeah, yeah. Someone that I know of, Marcel probably someone that's an activist for autism. Yeah. An advocate. Well, they identified a specific problem with the way that people are in companies are integrating autistic people into the workplace. Some companies are doing a lot of work in diversity, getting autistic people into the workplace. But the problem is, is that they're not training the managers. They're not training the team. They're not making them aware and making them or helping them understand autism. And so when they get into the team, they have all these really, really strong difficulties that quite often lead to a very low job satisfaction and possibly exacerbating a lot of the mental health issues. Yes. Oh, absolutely. There must be communication. And in fact, I was very encouraged when I talked to a company yesterday, a big financial company that is having me give a talk to their employees next week, actually. And they said, you know, one thing that we really want to stress is that it's not just about getting the people into the building that once they work here, that they have peer mentoring from other autistic people on the spectrum, including managers and that they're open lines of communication for feedback. Actually, I'll read two more because they're super good suggestions for making workplaces neurodiversity friendly. So-called open plan offices are often overwhelming for folks with sensory sensitivities, create private spaces within offices or expand options for working remotely, you know. And now because of covid, we've all discovered, well, actually, you know, those office teamwork exercises are not so important, you know, I've already indulged in this within my new job. Right, right. And, you know, in a sense, I'm working remotely right now, you know. You are. So. So, you know, one thing I like to say, it's like sometimes I hear people say that, oh, my God, there's so much change, you know, and and how can we possibly think about this? It's, you know, it's just so hopeless. This is what I point to. I have a wedding ring on my finger. When I was in high school, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. It was in the it was in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If I had been found kissing my boyfriend, not that anyone would kiss me, you know, at the time, because I was living in homophobia. Don't be so hard on yourself. But, you know, if I had been caught kissing my boyfriend, I could have been thrown in a mental asylum and given a lobotomy or put in jail. Because homosexuality was also a crime. I am now very happily married to Ward Q. Normal on Twitter, who is a gorgeous, brilliant, loving, wonderful, sweet man. And that happened in my life. Oh, yeah, that happened in my lifetime. So social change is possible. You just have to keep working for it. I really admire the autistic struggle for autonomy and self determination. And I try to support it as an ally in whatever ways I can. Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you. I'd like to end by firstly, well, thanking you for coming on. I know that I'm a very small and independent podcast. I've actually tried quite a few times to get in contact with big or public figures in the world of autism. And I really have received such a small amount of responses. And a lot of those responses don't tend to go anywhere. So I'm I'm so grateful that you've taken the time out of your day to talk to me and to talk to my audience and to to share some of your experience and knowledge. Oh, thank you. I hope you I hope you grow I hope you grow your audience and you seem like a delightful person. And I hope to someday meet you. Would you like to give out any links to your work or your social media website? Oh, sure. Just just look for the book Neurotribes, the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity. You can find it at independent booksellers as well as, you know, Amazon and Waterstones or whatever. I don't really care where you buy it, although Amazon is probably evil. But, you know, support your I love local bookstores. So hopefully I'll be speaking to Dara Mackinalti, the autistic, wonderful author from Wales for my local bookstores soon. And I really appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. Take care, Steve. See you later. Take care. See you. Bye bye. So that rounds up another episode of the Forty Autie podcast. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in and listening. I know I say this every time and it's a little bit of a podcast, a YouTube stereotype to thank you. But honestly, I never expected this thing to take off as much as it has done. I've received numerous emails and messages on social media talking about my podcast. And but I have to say the most important thing for me for this podcast is that I am making a difference. As you probably know, and I have detailed quite a few times, my mental health is is not always the best. In fact, I would probably say it's quite severe at times and that has led to a lot of inconsistencies in my release schedule, in my contacts, on social media and my updates. And so I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for showing showing your support for me during these times. I'm trying not to get all teary because it's the last episode. Last episode of the season. But we've had a lot of improvements. We've had a lot of really impactful, inspiring stories and people on this podcast. Surprisingly, some of the some of my favorite episodes were just with with people who have had experiences with the world that I could never imagine. You know, despite all the mental health, I you know, I've been been handed to me a lot of luxuries and a lot of good things, jobs, education. I mean, a socio-economic advantage. And throughout this podcast, I've had the opportunity to develop my own ideas and develop my own opinions and breadth of knowledge and knowledge of experience in particular. And so I also want to take the opportunity to thank my supporters on Patreon, especially Patrick Vitti, who has recently gone through some quite harsh consequences of life. He's been a big mover in terms of me upgrading my equipment and my software and keeping me going with this podcasting journey during my very severe low that I had during the end of last year. I also want to thank my family and my girlfriend for supporting me through this journey. It's been something that I've taken on independently. I've spent hours and days of hours even recording, editing, promoting, talking to people. And I can say that that honestly, you know, it's although it feels sometimes like a soul effort, it couldn't be possible without the people who are willing to come and talk to me about these issues, talk to me about their lives. There's so many people who have contributed to this, removing all of all of all of the editing and such. And it's it's really made this podcasting journey for me very special. If you have stuck through all of the episodes or popped in now and again to listen to something that that piqued your interest. Thank you so much. I never envisaged myself to be in a place where people would tune in to listen to me talk. We've had ups and downs. We've had good things. We've had bad things. We've had glaring amazing things like having Steve on the podcast and a bunch of really high profile autism advocates. And we had our lows as well, you know, difficulties with the awards and the quality of podcasts. All I can say is that certainly being a journey and I'm very grateful to to have you along with me to to go on this journey. So thank you. Thank you so much. In the first episode of season two, which may be coming out a little bit sooner, I'm going to be talking to one of you. One of you listeners, lovely girl could live from Live Label 3. Just a lot of work with autistic people and a lot of work around eating disorders. And we're going to take a good good old look at the 40 or two podcast, look at our favorite moments, you know, the interesting conversations, the the funny moments, the entertaining moments. We're all going to we're going to reflect on what this entity is, this this podcast is and try and do it in a fun way. So look forward to that. I will learn this here. I'm not going to do the old stick of go follow me on my podcast and all that. But I do. You know, if by chance you found this podcast helpful and you do want to get in contact, please never feel like you can't email is usually the best place to do it. If you just want to to share your thoughts or to if you if you want to be on the podcast and you want to share experiences, I'm always willing to to hear people out and I'm always willing to to help spread those stories so other people can learn from them. In terms of the second series, you can look forward to another one, possibly in a bit bit of time, maybe the end of this year, maybe the start of next year, I'll be doing a lot more work on social media and on different platforms and getting into doing some public speaking and I'm hoping to promote the podcast to make it a bit more accessible to the world. The ignition for doing all of this is to try and make a difference and I feel like giving myself that space to to do other things and to take a bit of time away from that that grueling editing process. It's going to be good for me and it's going to be good for the podcast and I'm never gone and still here and if you want to get in contact, I'm always available. And yeah, as always, stay strong, keep learning, keep carrying on, keep trying to make a difference, keep living. We all have our own individual challenges and we all have the difficulty and trauma and problems with this life. And it's it's something that, you know, a problem shared is a problem half. Reach out to people, reach reach out to me, reach out to other autistic people and learn from them and learn about different opinions. Keep in mind that everybody's experience of life is different and I'm sure many of you struggle with the mental health sides and struggle with many aspects to being autistic and just know that that's OK and just know that if you follow your strengths and you make something out of your strengths, you will progress and things will get easier over time. Things will get better. We can all make a contribution to society, but we first need to make a contribution to our own lives and set out to improve it. I hope the information that I've given you and the experiences that I've provided along with, of course, my podcast guests has been useful and I would encourage all of you to to reflect on these conversations and these points and these opinions and reflect on your own life in doing so to try and improve things further. We all have improvements to make on our life journey and I'm incredibly grateful that I've been able to be a part of yours. So thank you. Anyway, I'm going to start rambling. Have a good day and I will see you very soon.