Speaker 1: I would not like to live in a world without
Speaker 1: ADHD minds and autistic minds and all of these what
Speaker 1: I want to live in a world because the problem
Speaker 1: is not those people. The problem is the limitations of
Speaker 1: the society around.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In each episode
Speaker 2: we talk with inspiring scientists, thinkers, and other self actualizing
Speaker 2: individuals who will give you a greater understanding of yourself, others,
Speaker 2: and the world we live in. We even hope to
Speaker 2: give you a greater glimpse into human possibility. Today we
Speaker 2: feature English comedian, actor and writer Robin Intce. Robin is
Speaker 2: known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey
Speaker 2: Cage with physicist Brian Cox, as well as his stand
Speaker 2: up comedy career. Today's conversation focuses on his new book
Speaker 2: called Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal Adventures of Neurodiversity. We
Speaker 2: discuss the importance of appreciating neurodiversity and the happiness that
Speaker 2: can happen when people embrace who they truly are. He
Speaker 2: argues that there are normal ways we are expected to
Speaker 2: behave and think, and many people are terrified of breaking
Speaker 2: those social norms. However, he argues that living in a
Speaker 2: world that expects us to abase such a rigid set
Speaker 2: of rules ultimately deprives us of a far more interesting
Speaker 2: place to live, of innovation and creativity, of love and friendships.
Speaker 2: Of innovation and creativity, of love and friendships. This conversation
Speaker 2: was very near and dear to my heart. So with
Speaker 2: great pride I bring you this conversation with Robin Ince.
Speaker 2: Robin Ince, it is so good to have you on
Speaker 2: the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's an absolute joy to be here. And of
Speaker 1: course for those who are listening at home, they won't
Speaker 1: know that it's been an absolute nightmare for you because
Speaker 1: I have done the full ADHD traditional thing of getting
Speaker 1: an email from my publisher and me going what I'm
Speaker 1: on a train now though, and so I've dragged you
Speaker 1: through the maya of attempted organization.
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry to hear that. So that's the first
Speaker 2: time you heard that this interview was happening was when
Speaker 2: we were on the train.
Speaker 1: No, I think I knew but weeks ago. And of course,
Speaker 1: as you know, you only have to literally see the
Speaker 1: movement of a blackbird or the scuttling of a beatle,
Speaker 1: and an ADHD mind entirely just revises all information.
Speaker 2: Well, all wells it ends well, And I'm really glad
Speaker 2: I've be chatting with today. You're a really interesting character,
Speaker 2: and I'm very interested in neurodiversity. I'm I've been a
Speaker 2: big advocate of nerdiversity in my whole life. And you
Speaker 2: wrote this book called Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, My
Speaker 2: Adventures in Neurodiversity. Why do you write this one?
Speaker 1: Well, this one was I kind of it started almost
Speaker 1: I wrote a book when I'm a Joke and so you,
Speaker 1: about seven or eight years ago, and in it, I
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot of therapists and at the end of
Speaker 1: every interview, the therapist would say, I presume you're in therapy, Robin,
Speaker 1: and I would say no, and they would say oh.
Speaker 1: And so that kind of led to me going into
Speaker 1: therapy just for a little bit, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of the start of it. I suddenly realized that a
Speaker 1: huge number of different things were anxiety. Yeah, like so
Speaker 1: many disparate things that I thought were separate, both physical
Speaker 1: and psychological. And then I was very lucky because I
Speaker 1: would not have gone looking for a diagnosis, but an
Speaker 1: autistic stranger called Jamie and Lyon Jamie is a young
Speaker 1: autistic man. Lion is the squishy that goes everywhere with
Speaker 1: him got in contact with me via social media and said,
Speaker 1: I'd really like to talk to you about the neurodivergent model.
Speaker 1: And that's how I found out about ADHD.
Speaker 2: I see, so you're a elite diagnosis. You weren't diagnosed
Speaker 2: when you're a kid. But yeah, that's happening a lot
Speaker 2: these days. I feel like I thought, there's even like
Speaker 2: a trend for like lots of adults to suddenly view
Speaker 2: themselves as a neural divergent. How do you feel about
Speaker 2: that trend? Is that a good thing?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah? I mean the point is I've done in
Speaker 1: the last month, I'd probably done forty to fifty gigs
Speaker 1: around the UK, and I meet people every single night
Speaker 1: who are late diagnosed autistic, dyspraxic dyslexic ADHD. I also
Speaker 1: meet kids who have just started that journey, who are
Speaker 1: eight or nine years old sometimes, and to have the
Speaker 1: knowledge of why your mind works in the way it
Speaker 1: does is enormous.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: You know, in the UK, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who go on about why do you want a label?
Speaker 1: And I always explain. It's not a label. It's a
Speaker 1: user's guide, it's a roadmap. It is. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because however, like you know, for years, I've had people
Speaker 1: coming up to me after gigs saying, hey, I'm Adhd too,
Speaker 1: and I've gone, oh, I don't think I am. I
Speaker 1: just think it's the way that I perform. And it
Speaker 1: required this particular outside voice to make everything so apparent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective. I've been wrestling with
Speaker 2: something because of this increased trend for especially a lot
Speaker 2: of young people too on TikTok, to call themselves neurodivergent.
Speaker 2: You know what, well, first of all, what is what
Speaker 2: does it mean to be normal? Does that word even
Speaker 2: have a meaning? Second of all, kind of a message
Speaker 2: of your book is that we're all weird. I feel
Speaker 2: like that's a very common thread. So then, third of all,
Speaker 2: if you can keep all these things, yeah.
Speaker 1: As long as the blackbird doesn't go past or I
Speaker 1: see a beat all scuttling, we are fine. We are fine.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, stay with me, Rabin, stay with me. And
Speaker 2: you know you say that, like you know, we're all weird.
Speaker 2: Third of all, do you think like the word nerdivergent
Speaker 2: still has meaning. If everyone is neurodivergent.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's going to change over time. All
Speaker 1: of the labels are quite lumpy. We look at the
Speaker 1: history of twentieth century psychology. It's filled with all manner
Speaker 1: of kind of errors and misunderstandings and people believing that
Speaker 1: everyone's mind is like their mind. And what I think
Speaker 1: first of all is what to me is neurodivergent is
Speaker 1: where the way that society is framed is working directly
Speaker 1: against you, and that you are feeling you need to
Speaker 1: conceal yourself. So one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: is very important is the disparity between who you present
Speaker 1: yourself as and who you actually are. The greater the
Speaker 1: gap between those two, the greater your amount of unhappiness.
Speaker 1: And what we have in a lot of our kind
Speaker 1: of social worlds is a terrible level of concealment. So
Speaker 1: no one knew about my anxiety, no one would have
Speaker 1: known about my suicidal ideation. I was able to mask
Speaker 1: all of those things while at the same time appearing
Speaker 1: to function fine. So there might be a point. You know,
Speaker 1: we do have people who are more typical than others.
Speaker 1: I think everyone you know, to be human in itself
Speaker 1: is a weird thing to have this mind where we
Speaker 1: have two tracks. We present ourselves and we have an
Speaker 1: inner monologue that is a peculiar thing, and the problems arise,
Speaker 1: like you know, the further we go down with neurodivergence.
Speaker 1: You know, for instance, so many things that are so
Speaker 1: simple to make the lives of autistic people easier to
Speaker 1: be aware of, whether it's sensitivity to certain kind of
Speaker 1: tactile things, fabrics, whether it's a certain sensitivity to light
Speaker 1: or background noise. We wouldn't have a lot of the
Speaker 1: issues we have if it wasn't just decided there is
Speaker 1: one way of working this office, there is one way
Speaker 1: of this particular place being. There is one way of
Speaker 1: behaving as a human being, and of course it's a
Speaker 1: great threat. I think you see people like, you know,
Speaker 1: someone like Donald Trump, I think thinks he's both normal
Speaker 1: and an alpha male, which is, you know, just merely
Speaker 1: from his cheating at golf and everything else. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of ridiculous. But there are people, I think
Speaker 1: who not believe that they are normal, but also insist
Speaker 1: that everyone else must obey the laws and the rules
Speaker 1: that they have placed upon society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you say, quote I am Now you say you say, quote,
Speaker 2: however normal you think you are, you are weird. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the probing would be certainly read more of your quote.
Speaker 2: I was going to quote continue calling you. The problem
Speaker 2: with being human is that we judge everyone else from
Speaker 2: their exterior and ourselves from the interior. And that's also
Speaker 2: a very that's a very interesting social psychology bias of
Speaker 2: what we do. And I think just like combining those
Speaker 2: two things, I think it's just so interesting. Like your
Speaker 2: your argument, I mean, what would you say is the
Speaker 2: central argument of your book? If you had to tell
Speaker 2: me what the central argument.
Speaker 1: Is, I'm not sure whether it's an well I would say,
Speaker 1: if there is a central argument, it's that the courages
Speaker 1: of normality need to be far wider than they are.
Speaker 1: That the society that we have is not fit for
Speaker 1: purpose for an enormous number of minds, and minds that
Speaker 1: are can be quite brilliant. You know this is I mean,
Speaker 1: I found it fascinating when recently, when I say fascinating,
Speaker 1: I mean horrible, disturbing, and grotesque. When Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Speaker 1: Talked about the fact that autistic people would never write
Speaker 1: poetry or pay taxes, and obviously pay taxes was the
Speaker 1: main interest I imagine for him. But this idea that
Speaker 1: in our society we still don't realize there are plenty
Speaker 1: of autistic people writing poetry. The book the book is,
Speaker 1: amongst other things, the book is dedicated to a shop
Speaker 1: on the south coast of England which is this incredible
Speaker 1: kind of thrift store which is predominantly run by autistic people,
Speaker 1: and the window is always filled with their poetry, and
Speaker 1: the shop is always filled with their art. And until
Speaker 1: we try and realize also that what we currently define
Speaker 1: as disorder is very often different, it is not disorder.
Speaker 1: It is a difference, a different way that our mind
Speaker 1: might be as it filters the world and moves through it.
Speaker 2: So autism is one form of neurodiversity, but it's what
Speaker 2: else you consider ADHD another part of it?
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I would say the general kind of definitions
Speaker 1: would be neurodivergencies, dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD, and autism. And then
Speaker 1: we have in separate section which is kind of mental
Speaker 1: health rather than neurodivergence, would be things like bipolar. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the problem with that is that the labeling
Speaker 1: of our mind is it makes it just a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's like that bits autism, that bits ADHD, that bits dyspractical.
Speaker 1: But of course it's a far more tangled web than that.
Speaker 1: There are many people who have suffered depression who are
Speaker 1: given antidepressants and then eventually some of them are finding
Speaker 1: out their ADHD. Now that doesn't stop the depressive thoughts,
Speaker 1: but it means that the reasoning can be seen as
Speaker 1: a little bit different. There is a lot of behavior
Speaker 1: of autistic people which is very similar to ADHD people.
Speaker 1: You know, we have a lot of crossover there. You know, dyspraxia.
Speaker 1: I was banned from using an ink pen when I
Speaker 1: was at school. I was always tangled in my own laces.
Speaker 1: My socks never stayed up, my hair was never flat.
Speaker 1: I am chaos. I have a natural force of entropy.
Speaker 1: It seems that explodes out of me. And so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of crossovers. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: difficulties can be when if we make it too specific
Speaker 1: is I know from talking to therapists that some people
Speaker 1: when they're diagnosed, will say, I'm trying to work out
Speaker 1: was that the genuine me is that the me behind
Speaker 1: the mask or is that the masked me? Or is
Speaker 1: that adhd me? Now there is ultimately one me. The
Speaker 1: meanness of me and the unice of you is the
Speaker 1: truth that lies in our mind and is how we
Speaker 1: genuinely experience the world, not the affectation. The affectation is
Speaker 1: part of what we construct, so it comes from us.
Speaker 2: Mm. I mean, it sounds like you'd be a big
Speaker 2: fan of Carl Rogers's notion of congruence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, you know, like everything that's a while
Speaker 1: ago and things get you know, picked up and moved on.
Speaker 1: And but I think, you know, some of the seeds
Speaker 1: that are in those kind of works can be very useful.
Speaker 1: But as long as we're always looking at its seeds
Speaker 1: as we continue to get you know, I think one
Speaker 1: of the big bits of understanding that comes with autism
Speaker 1: ADHD et cetera is that understanding that it's not something
Speaker 1: on the outside. It's not something like it's not just
Speaker 1: your trauma and once you get over your trauma, it's
Speaker 1: all gone. It's also the fact that the trauma will
Speaker 1: have affected your neural pruning, will have affected the way
Speaker 1: that you know. In particular, as we see that kind
Speaker 1: of you know, the executive function of the brain, all
Speaker 1: of that bit that is meant to be managing emotions
Speaker 1: and managing the order of the things that we're meant
Speaker 1: to be doing on a day to day basis, All
Speaker 1: of those things they have now been properly affected by
Speaker 1: that trauma. And it's not just a case of oh,
Speaker 1: I've got rid of the trauma and it's gone now.
Speaker 1: It's much like you know, this is a very lumpy description,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure you know those many stories of children
Speaker 1: that have sometimes just been kept in a cellar without
Speaker 1: any kind of real language or wild you know, the
Speaker 1: wild boys and the wild girls that were found in
Speaker 1: woods that after a certain period of time, it is
Speaker 1: impossible for them to ever learn the grammatical rules of
Speaker 1: speech because that bit of pruning has occurred. Now this
Speaker 1: is no longer accessible. And in the same way, I
Speaker 1: think you know some of the ways that we react
Speaker 1: to the world. It really is a great way. It
Speaker 1: can improve enormously with understanding. But we should not berate
Speaker 1: ourselves when we still might occasionally have a meltdown, or
Speaker 1: we might forget a meeting, or things are a little
Speaker 1: bit more in disarrayed than they should be.
Speaker 2: M Yes, you think trauma can be a contributor to
Speaker 2: neurodivergent nerdivergent mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we're at quite an early stage. I
Speaker 1: know there's a big debate about this, especially with ADHD.
Speaker 1: You know, autism is seen as being genetic, but of
Speaker 1: course trauma will play a part because by being autistic
Speaker 1: you've then very often experienced more trauma in childhood because
Speaker 1: of the way that you are treated, the way that
Speaker 1: you can received and perceived. And then with ADHD from
Speaker 1: my own perspective, so merely anecdotally, I see the trauma
Speaker 1: I experienced just before I was three years old, when
Speaker 1: I was in a major car crash that led to
Speaker 1: many changes in my mum and a car crash that
Speaker 1: I thought I was responsible for, because of course, when
Speaker 1: you're three, you think you control the world, don't you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the bad things that happen. And I
Speaker 1: think that played a major part, both for me and
Speaker 1: also for my elder sisters.
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry to hear about this. Touch So did
Speaker 2: someone die in that accent?
Speaker 1: No, what happened was my mother would have died actually
Speaker 1: if my dad hadn't been three cars behind. There was
Speaker 1: a car on the wrong side of the road, small
Speaker 1: country lane. It was speeding. It smashed into us, and
Speaker 1: my mum was then in a coma for quite a while,
Speaker 1: and she suffered a certain amount of kind of physical damage,
Speaker 1: lost the sense of smell, paralysis on the side of
Speaker 1: her face, and various other things. But also then it
Speaker 1: really affected. In fact, last week I was doing an
Speaker 1: event and someone came to the event who had not
Speaker 1: I had not seen since I was six years old.
Speaker 1: They were the Baptist minister in the local village, very
Speaker 1: kind person, and I said to him, I've not seen
Speaker 1: you since I was six, but I want to tell
Speaker 1: you now that I know how important your help was
Speaker 1: to my dad when there were a lot of struggles
Speaker 1: with my mum's mental health. And I said, I know
Speaker 1: she was changed. And he suddenly had the saddest moment
Speaker 1: mournful look, and he said, yes, she was changed. And
Speaker 1: I think you know now I look back and I
Speaker 1: realize I never knew the person that my mother was
Speaker 1: before the accident. There's a there's a beautiful line in
Speaker 1: a series called Mystery in Between. Yeah, it's very so
Speaker 1: I think that's had. But now I can have that
Speaker 1: all open and out. You know, now I understand, and
Speaker 1: I can sit with my sisters. And of course my
Speaker 1: sisters had a separate experience because they were older and
Speaker 1: they saw a woman coming out of the hospital who
Speaker 1: was very different to the woman who had climbed into
Speaker 1: the car that night.
Speaker 2: Wow, tell me about your change and happiness about being
Speaker 2: alive over the course of your life, because there was
Speaker 2: a big transformation for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really was.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was basically the moment that because I used to
Speaker 1: have pretty much perpetual anxiety, occasionally lost in a flow
Speaker 1: state of doing a comedy gig for the Little Heckler
Speaker 1: would appear in my head again, and a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of I had a lot of rejection sensitivity this
Speaker 1: for it. So it would just take the tiniest turn
Speaker 1: of a phrase and they would make me crash. And
Speaker 1: so all of those things were very dominant, and I
Speaker 1: never you know, I could count on the fingers of
Speaker 1: one hand the number of times that I've walked off
Speaker 1: stage happy with a gig. I might have a standing ovation,
Speaker 1: I might get an encore, but within three minutes I
Speaker 1: would be dismantling it. You know, if someone comes up
Speaker 1: to you afterwards and they say, hey, I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: that gig. It would always be oh sorry, it wasn't
Speaker 1: so good tonight actually, and then you slowly dismantle it.
Speaker 1: And so someone comes up to say thank you, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, and you say no, no, no, you stay there.
Speaker 1: Let me explain how I've given you the worst night
Speaker 1: of your life, you know that was. And then the
Speaker 1: combination of a diagnosis out of nowhere from Jamie and Lyon,
Speaker 1: and then also taking anti anxiety medication, the combination of
Speaker 1: those two things has given me. I mean, I've always
Speaker 1: been very energetic into terms of the number of things
Speaker 1: that I've done, but I think that was an energy
Speaker 1: that also came from anxiety, whereas now I have all
Speaker 1: the energy that I had. You know, as you know,
Speaker 1: anxiety requires an enormous amount of energy. You are hyper vigilant,
Speaker 1: looking at the world all of the time, You're looking
Speaker 1: for threat, and then once that goes you are still able.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had someone in a gig the other
Speaker 1: day and she asked, after my talk, she said, do
Speaker 1: you ever miss your anxiety? I said no, And I said,
Speaker 1: but you obviously asking me for a reason. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me while we're in the audience. Do tell me later.
Speaker 1: I can tell you now. She said, I've had anxiety
Speaker 1: my whole life, and I really worry that if I
Speaker 1: got rid of my anxiety, would I know who I was?
Speaker 1: And I realized that can be a threat. And I said,
Speaker 1: from my not only my personal position, but from the
Speaker 1: position of the hundreds of people I interviewed for this book,
Speaker 1: the loss, you are not your anxiety. You have this
Speaker 1: separate you know, you have this thing that is above
Speaker 1: and beyond all that. And when you lose that looming shadow,
Speaker 1: when you lose that that terrible thick fog, you will
Speaker 1: find freedom and you will find the self that you
Speaker 1: can be. And I don't And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people worry. You know, my depression, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: has been so much part of my life. What am
Speaker 1: I without it? And I would like to say to
Speaker 1: everyone listening now, Yeah, I can't say for sure. All
Speaker 1: I can say is every night I meet people who,
Speaker 1: especially like late diagnose women who've been diagnosed with autism
Speaker 1: when they're like seventy three or seventy four years old,
Speaker 1: and they walk up to me, and as they walk
Speaker 1: up to me, I know they're walking in a different
Speaker 1: skin to the skin they were walking in four years
Speaker 1: before they have. They're higher, they're mightier, they are smiling
Speaker 1: in this you know, this beamish way that says things
Speaker 1: are different now.
Speaker 2: Wow ah, and that's really powerful. So you So what
Speaker 2: I'm hearing here is you're saying that by embracing the nerds,
Speaker 2: the neudiversent label and identifying your ADHD, it kind of
Speaker 2: unleashed an authentic version of you that quelled your anxieties.
Speaker 1: That's yeah. And I think also what happens very often
Speaker 1: is the things that are actually your incredible strengths you
Speaker 1: batter way and considered to be a frippery the things
Speaker 1: that are the negative side. So, for instance, when I
Speaker 1: was writing this book, I had one afternoon it was
Speaker 1: five point fifteen PM. I wanted to check what time
Speaker 1: I was doing a gig the next day. I suddenly
Speaker 1: realized I got it wrong. It was that night. It
Speaker 1: was in seventy five minutes time. I was interviewing an
Speaker 1: author eighty miles from where I lived. I don't drive
Speaker 1: a car. I had a kind of big meltdown of
Speaker 1: my stupidity, my bad timekeeping, and I managed to get
Speaker 1: there one minute after the show was meant to start,
Speaker 1: and I sat down with someone who had only just
Speaker 1: started reading her books. I always read it immediately before events.
Speaker 1: And we spoke fluently and fluidly for ninety minutes, and
Speaker 1: people came up to me and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I didn't know you were friends with Sarah. How long
Speaker 1: have you known her? And I said ninety three minutes. Now,
Speaker 1: before I would have only seen my mistake. I would
Speaker 1: have thought you screwed up, but you got away with it,
Speaker 1: Whereas now I go, I screwed up, But then I
Speaker 1: have this very special ability that means you throw me
Speaker 1: into something and I will find a way to build
Speaker 1: an event out of it. I will find a way
Speaker 1: to connect with people. And realizing that it's not just
Speaker 1: like kind of oh I'm lucky I can do that.
Speaker 1: That's part of the same brain that leads to the
Speaker 1: meltdown and led to the fact that I got totally
Speaker 1: the wrong day.
Speaker 2: Heill. I want to take a moment to make a
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Speaker 2: Potential dot com slash SAC. Okay, now back to the show. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a theme running throughout your book, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: I loved your book. I should have said that first.
Speaker 2: I should have said that hitting the getting out of
Speaker 2: the Gate, I should have said that, really loved your book,
Speaker 2: and huge congratulations on these publication is a very important book.
Speaker 2: There was one thread that really resonated with me throughout,
Speaker 2: which is this idea of loneliness among people who are
Speaker 2: no NERD aversion kind of finding your people. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, you know, you also talk about, I mean,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of paradoxes in your book. Have you
Speaker 2: noticed that, Yeah, you know, Like, I mean, one big
Speaker 2: paradox I already touched on, which is NERD I've not
Speaker 2: work you know, uh nerdi virgin tends to be autism
Speaker 2: and dyslexi ADHD. However, we're all weird. So that's one paradox.
Speaker 2: But then another one that I picked up on in
Speaker 2: reading your book is this idea that well, a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are not nerdive vision are actually quite
Speaker 2: content being a little you know, in a lot of
Speaker 2: situations you talk about how you know you're You're like,
Speaker 2: I think you're talking about being in the movie theater
Speaker 2: or alone or something, and you're like, I'm totally fine
Speaker 2: with that. So how do you see that paradox being resolved.
Speaker 1: Well, I think what it is is the difference between
Speaker 1: being content with your own company and being alone and
Speaker 1: feeling the threat of the world around you. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you want to you need to be
Speaker 1: gregarious or surrounded by friends. And that's the fault of
Speaker 1: you know, your neurodivergence is hindering that. It's the fact
Speaker 1: that when you are in the world before you really
Speaker 1: necessarily understand yourself, and when you sometimes see that there
Speaker 1: is a normal world that can be so relentlessly normal
Speaker 1: that anyone who is other will be You know that
Speaker 1: so many people that I spoke to had had horrible
Speaker 1: bullying at school and things because there was a little
Speaker 1: bit about them. This was their weakness, their otherness. Once
Speaker 1: you're able to realize your otherness is your strength.
Speaker 2: Like I think I.
Speaker 1: Mentioned the book, I can't remember, but one of the
Speaker 1: things that I loved is if I'm forced to go
Speaker 1: to a party because I'm not a party person, there's
Speaker 1: too much noise. I want to hear the conversation. I know,
Speaker 1: I know you would think that I was there no
Speaker 1: and I am.
Speaker 2: I am actually genuinely sharp because I feel like, let
Speaker 2: me tell you why, I think. I feel like unwillingly
Speaker 2: and unh and you don't really want it, but you're
Speaker 2: probably the life a very party. Like I bet like
Speaker 2: even without you trying, you know, I bet other people
Speaker 2: probably get a lot more out of you being at
Speaker 2: the party then you get out of being at the party.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what I try and do if I go
Speaker 1: to a party is I try and make sure that
Speaker 1: everything's moving and everyone's you know, they've reached that point
Speaker 1: where everything's kind of working. And then I go and
Speaker 1: stand in the garden and look at the stars and
Speaker 1: things like that, and it's like and it's that bit
Speaker 1: where but yeah, I think so so the lonely It's like,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things to find out about in
Speaker 1: the book was finding out about the friendship degradation curve.
Speaker 1: That and it's certainly true. So for myself and my
Speaker 1: new are divergent friends. We don't necessarily communicate all the time,
Speaker 1: we don't go out all the time. We actually may
Speaker 1: have long periods of time where we don't see each other,
Speaker 1: but the moment we see each other, the fireworks go
Speaker 1: off and we are straight into either the middle of
Speaker 1: the conversation that was the last conversation we had before
Speaker 1: we last saw it, Yeah, when we last saw each other,
Speaker 1: or about some new crazy idea that we'd find out about.
Speaker 1: There's no kind of preamble. And I think that's an
Speaker 1: interesting part of neurodivergence for a lot of people, which
Speaker 1: is your love for your friends does not dim by
Speaker 1: a failure to see them every Tuesday or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I think that plays its part as well, the confidence
Speaker 1: that comes of saying I'm happy to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time alone in the world because I don't also
Speaker 1: feel like I'm in a glass case where people are
Speaker 1: looking at the freak or the weirder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really love that. I really do love that.
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear more about how your unique mind works.
Speaker 2: What are some of the main characteristics of that plays
Speaker 2: out that's like a common part of your own inner drama.
Speaker 1: Well, I suppose that the commeding is just the speed
Speaker 1: of thoughts. It is. There's there's so many thoughts. You know,
Speaker 1: if you ever saw me live, you would just see
Speaker 1: the like tangent up to tangent, up to tangent up
Speaker 1: to tangent and I start telling one story, and then
Speaker 1: that reminds me of something else, so I just go
Speaker 1: off on that tangent, which leads to another tangent, and
Speaker 1: then very often I often have people coming back night
Speaker 1: after night if I'm in the same town, because they'll say,
Speaker 1: last night, you didn't tell that story that you said
Speaker 1: you were going to say about Apollo eight or Apollo nine,
Speaker 1: or about universal horror movies, and so could you try
Speaker 1: and do that tonight? And I'll go, okay, I'll make
Speaker 1: a little note on the back of my hand. So
Speaker 1: I think that's the And I think before with the
Speaker 1: racing thoughts, because we're kind of evolved to really note
Speaker 1: the negative. When you're having one hundred thoughts in a
Speaker 1: very short amount of time, some of them will be
Speaker 1: the negative ones. So they are the ones that burn
Speaker 1: most brightly in the most unpleasant way, and they so
Speaker 1: you know, that moment, that possible thought of that person
Speaker 1: who's looking at you from across the train or whatever,
Speaker 1: the negative thought, that's the one that sticks. Whereas now
Speaker 1: the thoughts are nearly all, if not but benevolent. The
Speaker 1: ones that aren't, I can back them away very quickly.
Speaker 1: I mean I used to have if I had a
Speaker 1: gig that I wasn't happy with, and that's most of
Speaker 1: the gigs, but if I had one that really was
Speaker 1: in my guts and I just felt that was a
Speaker 1: bad gig and I'm not happy with that, and I
Speaker 1: don't feel that I connected, that would then just stay
Speaker 1: with me. And a few months after the diagnosis and
Speaker 1: the anti anxiety, I did a gig that I was
Speaker 1: not at all happy with and I was really unhappy
Speaker 1: like so, and the friend of mine who had driven
Speaker 1: me to the gig, I said, let's just leave, Let's
Speaker 1: just get straight out here. And for half an hour
Speaker 1: I still felt sick in the pit of my stomach,
Speaker 1: but within forty five minutes that had gone. Where as before,
Speaker 1: so I haven't lost my critical faculty. I can still
Speaker 1: look at a gig and go that wasn't good enough
Speaker 1: for me, but I don't relentlessly seek go what is
Speaker 1: the imperfection here? What is the failure here? And you know,
Speaker 1: And so that also makes me far more honest, both
Speaker 1: as I think as a human being and a friend,
Speaker 1: and also as a performer. I allow myself to take
Speaker 1: risks the whole time. I've always been a bit of
Speaker 1: a risk taker. But now I'm just like And my
Speaker 1: friend Joanna Neary, who I talked to in the book,
Speaker 1: she's similar. She's always been one of the most wonderful,
Speaker 1: creative human beings and now but she would always at
Speaker 1: the end of a gig just feel, oh dear. That
Speaker 1: was her letdown for everyone. And now she walks out
Speaker 1: there and she does these wonderful, strange things and she
Speaker 1: walks off and she goes, yeah, I tried. I gave
Speaker 1: that a go, and I think they liked it. I
Speaker 1: think they did. I think some of the people didn't
Speaker 1: like it, but I think overall and to have that positivity.
Speaker 1: And then also it is that thing which is once
Speaker 1: you reveal and what may lie behind the mask, because
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know suddenly you find out that nearly
Speaker 1: all of your closest friends are neurodivergent, because that's why
Speaker 1: you made that bond in the first place. Oh definitely,
Speaker 1: it's really and it's once one person's diagnosed in a
Speaker 1: kind of you little gathering of friends, and it means
Speaker 1: that I think you can also express yourself in a
Speaker 1: totally Like my friend Joe Turbert, who I met first
Speaker 1: watching her tap dance and it was fantastic. And I
Speaker 1: look back now and both of us have been through
Speaker 1: a lot of changes over twenty years, and now we
Speaker 1: still look the same from the outside. In the pub,
Speaker 1: if we own the bar, we're laughing and we're throwing
Speaker 1: out ideas at speed. What we don't have is inside,
Speaker 1: where we're heckling ourselves. And She's thinking, Robbie must be
Speaker 1: really bored by this story I'm given about choreography, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, she must think this guy's so old and stupid,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, all that stuff that's not
Speaker 1: there now. So now again we can, you know, just
Speaker 1: glow and thrive. And that's another reason that I wrote
Speaker 1: this book, basically, because when I wrote I'm a joke
Speaker 1: and so are you, in particular, I think he gave
Speaker 1: people a sense of permission to approach me and tell
Speaker 1: me the battles they had, which I love. I love
Speaker 1: the fact people will share those stories after a gig
Speaker 1: and they trust me. But I found out how many
Speaker 1: people were living lives where they had created a fantastic
Speaker 1: smoke screen. But deep down, we're not even deep down.
Speaker 1: Every day they would leave their apartment, they leave their house,
Speaker 1: and they would be going right here we go, then
Speaker 1: I've got to put my armor on. I've got to
Speaker 1: try and survive another day. And it's not good enough,
Speaker 1: you know. It's that that idea that you go, well,
Speaker 1: if you're not, you know, damaging society, and if you're
Speaker 1: able to still move through it, then just keep quiet.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of people's kind of opinion is well,
Speaker 1: why are you bothering to find out? It's like there's
Speaker 1: a woman I mentioned in the book who when she
Speaker 1: was she went to a doctor to ask she said,
Speaker 1: I think I'm more stick and the doctor said, why
Speaker 1: do you want to know? It's not as if there's
Speaker 1: a cure. And again that level of ignorance. I would
Speaker 1: not like to live in a world without ADHD minds
Speaker 1: and autistic minds and all of these what I want
Speaker 1: to live in a world because the problem is not
Speaker 1: those people. The problem is the limitations of the society around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really well said, And yeah, Robin, I share
Speaker 2: multiple interests with you. I don't know if you know
Speaker 2: who I am at all? Do you know who I am?
Speaker 1: I don't. I want to know more. I love your
Speaker 1: surname because your surname immediately reminds me of a series
Speaker 1: of films from the nineteen eighties. So that's one thing.
Speaker 2: Beautiful beautiful. Well, I mean, I'm a cognitive scientist, psychologist,
Speaker 2: psychology professor, have been hosting this podcast for eleven years
Speaker 2: now at this point, trying to.
Speaker 1: I know that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh good, okay, cool, But okay, So here's the thing.
Speaker 2: I'm also really into carming. So right in fact, tonight
Speaker 2: I'm performing at the Comedy Cellar here in New York City.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that on McDougall Street.
Speaker 2: Yes, on McDougall Street.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, what a great I used to the moment
Speaker 1: I got to New York. I would always Thursday nights
Speaker 1: used to have every single act that was going to
Speaker 1: play New York that weekend all coming down there doing
Speaker 1: like kind of ten minutes, and you would get to
Speaker 1: see so many people, and yeah, I love that. It's
Speaker 1: a great venue, wonderful venue.
Speaker 2: I well, yes, it's a wonderful venue. And I love comedy.
Speaker 2: And in fact, I'm going to be talking about my
Speaker 2: new book tonight at the Comedy Stour with nicoll Espie.
Speaker 2: But but this is not about me. It's not about me. Basically,
Speaker 2: I just want to emphasize that we have a mutual
Speaker 2: love of comedy. That's that's all I wanted to say.
Speaker 2: And and and my own neurodivergency, I think unintentionally has
Speaker 2: made me funny my whole life, and recently I embraced that,
Speaker 2: so that and more intentionally done because I do also
Speaker 2: do like open mic nights and some but Rabin, I
Speaker 2: wanted to discuss this with you, you know, like, to
Speaker 2: what extent do you think, you know, you really can
Speaker 2: harness this because I don't. I don't know. I still
Speaker 2: I'm still trying to fare out exactly my label.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But whatever, whatever my sugna is going on in my
Speaker 2: own head. You know, people have found it funny throughout
Speaker 2: my whole life, and I'm like, wait, why do you
Speaker 2: find that funny? I'm just saying what I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: And I was wondering, has that happened to you too? Rabin?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I mean it's it's it's that thing where
Speaker 1: you know Brian Cox, who's a scientist that I do
Speaker 1: a lot of work with, he will often say he's
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and he'll say to me, what you're
Speaker 1: talking about? No one understands you and I always think
Speaker 1: that's kind of in that's that not being understood is
Speaker 1: the very oddity that allows us to you know, because
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that often comes with
Speaker 1: neurodivergence is you don't really take anything. If someone says
Speaker 1: something to you, you don't immediately just accept it. Your
Speaker 1: brain goes, why why? Why? Why? Why am I thinking that?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a lot of what we see in
Speaker 1: gender and stuff like that, which is going when someone says, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just men and women, it's all binary.
Speaker 1: And I see a lot of similarities there with neurodivergence,
Speaker 1: because a spectrum world has far more rainbows than a
Speaker 1: binary world as far as I'm concerned. But I see
Speaker 1: that bit which means you look at everything going why
Speaker 1: is that like that? So there is that, you know,
Speaker 1: what we often call the child's voice, but I think
Speaker 1: is actually the best kind of voice to have, which
Speaker 1: is going, why is that like that? Why are we
Speaker 1: doing this? Why are the flowers growing in that way?
Speaker 1: Why is the person on the subway moving in that way?
Speaker 1: And you see, you're always because you've got a perpetually
Speaker 1: questioning mind, you're always creating. Like we had I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know the producer and musician Brian Eno,
Speaker 1: who produced David Bowie and you two, Well, the thing
Speaker 1: I want to say about his curiosity and about questions
Speaker 1: that So we had him on a show and I
Speaker 1: started to ask a question where I could see the
Speaker 1: more neurotypical elements the panel. We're like, this is a
Speaker 1: weird question to ask, because he's an amazing producer. I said,
Speaker 1: do you ever walk past like trash can and look
Speaker 1: in it and think, oh, I'm going to get that
Speaker 1: out of the trash can because I wonder what noise
Speaker 1: it makes if you bang it? And he said all
Speaker 1: the time. So it's having this thing, which is so
Speaker 1: everyone else was like, why is he asking Brian Ino,
Speaker 1: this one of the greatest producers of the you know,
Speaker 1: of modern music, this stupid question about trash cans. And
Speaker 1: then they go oh. Brian Eno is replying by saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always wondering. I look in something and I think
Speaker 1: that's a weird bottle, that's god nod shape. I wonder
Speaker 1: what that would sound like if you bang it. And
Speaker 1: I think that's part very often of the kind of
Speaker 1: the process within a neurodivergent mind, which is you do
Speaker 1: things which are not specifically designed to go. If I
Speaker 1: do this, I will make money. If I do this,
Speaker 1: I will be rich and I will be successful. You
Speaker 1: do it because you must, because you're intrigued, and you
Speaker 1: are fascinated, and you're curious, and of course what I
Speaker 1: generally find, you know, it's a very loose rule. A
Speaker 1: lot of ADHD people, you become incredibly hyper focused for
Speaker 1: a very limited amount of time, and it's always best
Speaker 1: to if you can work with one of your friends
Speaker 1: who's also autistic, because they will sometimes manage to keep
Speaker 1: the focus going for some time longer than you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. You know you talked about in your
Speaker 2: book about there's a lot of cool morbidity between autism
Speaker 2: and ADHD. Do you have a dash of autism as well?
Speaker 1: Or always wonder that, because I definitely see a lot.
Speaker 1: But the other day I was doing a thing with
Speaker 1: a wonderful autistic poet and writer called Kate Fox, and
Speaker 1: I was not late that I was nearly late, and
Speaker 1: I just went straight into this bookshop, straight into the
Speaker 1: back room. And I've never met Kate before. We've done
Speaker 1: some zoom stuff, and I just immediately I went, oh, hey, Kate,
Speaker 1: we've never actually met. Oh man, I loved it assume interview.
Speaker 1: Oh if you read that book up there, that is
Speaker 1: such an incredible and strange book and is it possibly
Speaker 1: had a coffee and I was just like, And she
Speaker 1: said to me afterwards, she went, I'd always wondered whether
Speaker 1: you were also, you know, autistic to some extent. But
Speaker 1: I've never seen such an adhd entrance to a room before.
Speaker 1: But I love the fact that you know, the moment
Speaker 1: when you're all together. It's one of the things that
Speaker 1: I do. You call it banter as well, that kind
Speaker 1: of bit where people are Yeah. And you might notice,
Speaker 1: by the way, during this I've been translating every now
Speaker 1: and again. I suddenly went, I can't say bin bin
Speaker 1: means nothing to the majority of people here, so that's
Speaker 1: why I said trash can I couldn't say charity shop.
Speaker 1: I suddenly went, it's thrift store. So this is like
Speaker 1: a duo lingo episode as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you, But we do have a pretty orange UK audience.
Speaker 1: I just thought, I'm gonna so UK US audience, this
Speaker 1: is duo lingo that we're going for. Here can thrill
Speaker 1: to charity shop if you have a bunch of new
Speaker 1: and divergent people together. They you don't have that normal
Speaker 1: thing which often happens when like a group of guys
Speaker 1: hang out in a bar and they're all kind of
Speaker 1: everyone's trying to win the conversation. Everyone's trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: pull the other person down so they win. And I
Speaker 1: find one of the things that's very healthy in a
Speaker 1: lot of neurodivergent meetings and gatherings and just hanging out
Speaker 1: together is everyone thrives on being excited to be in
Speaker 1: the world, and me excited to be in the company
Speaker 1: of people, and no one wants to win. They want
Speaker 1: to have a great time with everyone. So I find
Speaker 1: it very interesting where again, in a lot of the
Speaker 1: gigs that I've been doing on this tour, there's a
Speaker 1: room where, like I said, you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: nine year old who's autistic, you've got a seventy two
Speaker 1: year old who's ADHD, you've got dyspraxia and dyslecture in
Speaker 1: that room. And what you have is also no great
Speaker 1: age gaps. If you've got a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are vibrating at different speeds of curiosity, but filled with curiosity,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go how do I get the
Speaker 1: old person? How do I keep them in the show?
Speaker 1: And how do I keep the ten year old? You
Speaker 1: can kind of It's something that I find very beautiful,
Speaker 1: whereas I think very often in a more neurotypical environment,
Speaker 1: you kind of go. You'll watch certain comics and you go,
Speaker 1: this is a comic who is specifically playing to thirty
Speaker 1: to forty year olds. A lot of their references are those,
Speaker 1: you know. I was doing a show at the Edinard
Speaker 1: Fringe Festival a couple of years ago which opened with
Speaker 1: me punching a melon, then singing Mustang Sally, and then
Speaker 1: it became chaotic after that very traditional theatrical opening, and
Speaker 1: I had a beautiful thing where a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: trans man came up to me with his dad and
Speaker 1: just said, I've never felt more seen than I did
Speaker 1: tonight in this kind of show that appeared to be
Speaker 1: crazy and chaotic and a lot of references to stuff
Speaker 1: that he won't have understood, but what he was seeing
Speaker 1: was It's like sometimes when I have nights where people
Speaker 1: will come up to me and they'll say, I've never
Speaker 1: heard my head on stage, and you realize how much
Speaker 1: people are hiding themselves and you just go, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's and that's a real joy. That sense of camaraderie,
Speaker 1: that sense of kind of you know, marching together is great.
Speaker 2: That's that's a real big theme of your book. Here's
Speaker 2: another call I have lots of I pulled out some
Speaker 2: of my favorite colts from your book. Living in a
Speaker 2: world that expects us to obey such a rigid set
Speaker 2: of rules ultimately deprives us of a far more interesting
Speaker 2: place to live, of innovation and creativity, of love and friendships.
Speaker 2: So it's like, I feel like there's another call in
Speaker 2: your book is not just to embrace and appreciate the
Speaker 2: weirdos amongst us, but also there's like a there's like
Speaker 2: a system kind of call as well, you know, to uh,
Speaker 2: maybe allow allow a little role bending in a in
Speaker 2: a in a legal legal way, but in a way
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's conduci creativity, you know, allow people
Speaker 2: take a lot more cargnate risks.
Speaker 1: Is that Oh, definitely, definitely, Because I think that it's
Speaker 1: so many different spaces from places and education and workplaces
Speaker 1: and even socializing and dating, there's this very rigid set
Speaker 1: of expectations of how we are meant to be, and
Speaker 1: I think that will always limit you know, Jamie in
Speaker 1: the book talks about the way that his mind works
Speaker 1: needs a tremendously creative person who's able to do a
Speaker 1: lot of things that no one else will be able
Speaker 1: to do in the room, but he needs to do
Speaker 1: it in what he calls kind of flowy attention patterns. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not that kind of had someone come up
Speaker 1: to me at an event and they said, we've got
Speaker 1: this guy who works for our company. He's ADHD. He's
Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant what he does, but he's not very good
Speaker 1: at making the nine o'clock meeting. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do about it. And I said, what's so important
Speaker 1: about the nine o'clock meeting? He said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: is when we all kind of get together and it's
Speaker 1: just the start of the day. I said, it sounds
Speaker 1: like something that's just not important. And if he's bringing
Speaker 1: something that is rare to this space and you are
Speaker 1: allowing him to go, right, this is the way I'm
Speaker 1: going to work, then that's much better than you go.
Speaker 1: This person is fully obedient of the timetabling that we've made.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's like with school, where so
Speaker 1: many of those things. Don't fidget look me in the
Speaker 1: eyes when I'm talking to you. All of those things, God,
Speaker 1: they're so unimportant. Like if I look I think I
Speaker 1: mentioned it in the book. You know, if I look
Speaker 1: in someone's eyes when I'm talking to something, I often do,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I'm concentrating so much i'm looking their eyes,
Speaker 1: I'm not hearing a word they say. And actually, quite often,
Speaker 1: if I'm talking to someone and I'm also writing at
Speaker 1: the same time, and someone go, can you pay attention,
Speaker 1: I go, oh, I'm paying full attention. In fact, if
Speaker 1: I was only paying attention to you, I'd be hearing
Speaker 1: far less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: for a lot of people on the spectrum, they say
Speaker 2: that looking in the eyes they can do it, but
Speaker 2: it's just very distracting because there's so much information that
Speaker 2: the eyes convey is that they can't ignore. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting if ADHD it's a similar sort of issue. You
Speaker 2: can't you get so distracted by all that information being
Speaker 2: presented in the eyes. I mean, it's a lot of information,
Speaker 2: far more than we're really aware of. You know, the
Speaker 2: eyes evolved in a very complex way, it's oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the possibility of seeing something within that eye, which
Speaker 1: then entirely you turns what you're you're hearing. And again,
Speaker 1: I think that's why why these lumpy terms that we've
Speaker 1: got aren't fit enough. It's not merely the fact that
Speaker 1: disorder should be different, but it's also the fact that
Speaker 1: attention deficit and you go, oh, it's quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's attention overload. You know, for most people, it's the
Speaker 1: fact that you are paying attention to so many different
Speaker 1: things and excited by so many things, but you're not
Speaker 1: able to have that. What's actually required is the linear
Speaker 1: route of attention.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm really glad you said that. I've I've
Speaker 2: written articles about ADHD as a creative gift, and I've
Speaker 2: argued that ADHD is really more of an issue of
Speaker 2: an overactive imagination m M and because of this default
Speaker 2: brain network that tends to be overactive among people ADHD
Speaker 2: I call the imagination brain network. And then and then
Speaker 2: you you pair that with executive dysfunction, and uh, and
Speaker 2: then it's hard to like keep your inner stream of
Speaker 2: consciousness out of the out of it, out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's different than attention death. I mean it's a
Speaker 2: different framing, different framing right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, again, it's a framing that sees the advantages within
Speaker 1: it and sees what is brought with it, as opposed
Speaker 1: to going, why are you letting down society because you're
Speaker 1: not doing this? And if you look at it the
Speaker 1: other way and you go, hang on, what are you
Speaker 1: bringing to society? Oh, you're bringing a set of skills
Speaker 1: that other people in the room don't have. But you're
Speaker 1: very often hiding those skills because you've been so framed
Speaker 1: around going this is this is a problem. This is
Speaker 1: an issue, and I think society is very good at
Speaker 1: making people pariahs. It is at only focusing on what
Speaker 1: you break and not what you build.
Speaker 2: It's beautifully said, and I think that's a big, a
Speaker 2: big spirit of the neudiversity movement for sure, you know,
Speaker 2: seeing the gifts as well as the challenges. I struggle
Speaker 2: with this notion that we're all we're all weird.
Speaker 1: Well we're not. You know what we're not? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to I'm going to clear this up. What
Speaker 1: we are is we're all weird by dint of being human,
Speaker 1: which is a weird thing to be in the way
Speaker 1: that you look at that that in itself. You know,
Speaker 1: we are a creature that doesn't live within our environment.
Speaker 1: It builds around our environment. You it disturbs the environment.
Speaker 1: We have this, you know, I think chimpanzees and some
Speaker 1: of the great apes and other creatures may well have
Speaker 1: some sense of an inner monologue of something, even though
Speaker 1: it won't be necessarily the language that we understand it.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, we're very rare in that way,
Speaker 1: We're very rare. You know, we've talked about comedy. What
Speaker 1: a rare thing is to have a creature that requires
Speaker 1: jokes to survive and needs jokes and like shows. So
Speaker 1: in that way, that's why I say we're all weird.
Speaker 1: But I do not think that weirdness is the same
Speaker 1: as what is then seen as the neurodivergent difficulty aguating
Speaker 1: the world. So I think the first thing is I
Speaker 1: just I wanted to start the book by basically saying,
Speaker 1: just say, you know, we are a very odd species.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I think Kurt Vonnegut would probably
Speaker 1: have has probably written far better books than me about
Speaker 1: the oddness of what it needs to be human. But
Speaker 1: so just you know, don't ever think I think the
Speaker 1: to go. Don't ever think you're normal. That's impletant, because
Speaker 1: once you start going, hang on, how normal am I?
Speaker 1: Maybe that will allow you to start to just empathize
Speaker 1: a little bit more with those who are more abnormal
Speaker 1: than you are. You know, it's the double empathy problem
Speaker 1: of autism, which was you know, where people just went, oh,
Speaker 1: autistic people can't really empathize, and actually what they were
Speaker 1: failing to do those people was empathized with the way
Speaker 1: the autistic mind may well work. And so it was
Speaker 1: actually and again it's always looking at as you have
Speaker 1: a fault because you don't think like me as opposed
Speaker 1: to we both have different minds. And my it's what
Speaker 1: I love about Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees, which is,
Speaker 1: you know when Jane Goodall she wrote a wonderful book
Speaker 1: called Through a Window, which is about how we must
Speaker 1: know and remember that we look through the human window.
Speaker 1: We we and the other other species see through other windows.
Speaker 1: And then that bit where you go, even that we
Speaker 1: don't have a single window. When we are gathered together
Speaker 1: in a room, we are also all looking through different windows.
Speaker 1: And once we start to acknowledge that there is not this,
Speaker 1: you know, objective truth in our perceptions that there is
Speaker 1: you know, to always It's something I think I said
Speaker 1: in the previous book, which is to always hold on
Speaker 1: to your beliefs with a loose grip, to always be
Speaker 1: ready and open. This is why you get all those
Speaker 1: people who bang on about you know, the woke or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you go, what's really happening there is? You are
Speaker 1: not in any where allowing yourself just to go, hang
Speaker 1: on a minute, what does it mean? What does it
Speaker 1: mean to understand people differently based on culture, on ethnicity,
Speaker 1: on sex, on gender, on all of those things? Stop
Speaker 1: thinking you are the correct model and see yourself merely
Speaker 1: as one of the ways we walk through the world.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, garntlet dropped Robin. Just as an aside, I'd
Speaker 2: love to send you an article I just wrote from
Speaker 2: my subject called aren't we all a nerd of vision?
Speaker 2: What the heck does nerdiversity mean anymore? If we're all
Speaker 2: nerdi vision? Can I I share my article with you?
Speaker 1: Please? Do? Please please share anything? I love you know.
Speaker 1: One again, one of the things that I love about
Speaker 1: touring around is I meet people who have had so
Speaker 1: many different things happen, and I so often end up
Speaker 1: in a bar afterwards and kind of you know, and
Speaker 1: I find out more, and then also I end up
Speaker 1: working with people. That's one of the things that I
Speaker 1: love is because I've always tried to be kind of
Speaker 1: receptive to people. There's people that I met just having
Speaker 1: a drink after a gig, and then we've gone off
Speaker 1: and written, you know, albums of poetry and music or
Speaker 1: you know. Some of the people who've illustrated my books
Speaker 1: are literally people that I just met at a gig
Speaker 1: and we got on and then ten years later, go,
Speaker 1: do you want to really strike my book? And I
Speaker 1: love that. That's another thing that I love, which I
Speaker 1: think can come with this kind of world, which is
Speaker 1: that receptive thing that says, I don't just want to
Speaker 1: be going, I don't want to be protective all the
Speaker 1: time of my own little world. I want the web
Speaker 1: to be as wide as possible. I love that way
Speaker 1: that we can all keep kind of fertilizing each other's
Speaker 1: minds and and and sharing ideas.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. I would just really truly love to see
Speaker 2: what you think of my perspective about this trend for
Speaker 2: everyone to be neurodivers divergent now. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: recent article that came out in the UK with the
Speaker 2: headline majority in UK now self identify as neurodivergent.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's absolutely great. Where was that that? That's just
Speaker 1: not true.
Speaker 2: You'll see the article it was. It was in the Times.
Speaker 1: Oh god, you know what our newspapers in it's pretty amazing. Really,
Speaker 1: our newspapers in the UK are so just terrible and
Speaker 1: and they've been It's like how bad they've been on
Speaker 1: things like, you know, the trans community, How negative they've been,
Speaker 1: how on every single one of them has failed to
Speaker 1: in any way really be received on anything that goes
Speaker 1: things might be a little bit different to you expected.
Speaker 1: It's like there's a book that came out which everyone loves.
Speaker 1: It was all about you know, oh, I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be I think this over diagnosis. And in
Speaker 1: the book this person says anecdotally, I worry that the
Speaker 1: majority of people diagnosed with ADHD see no palpable improvement
Speaker 1: in their life, and then follows it with the sentence
Speaker 1: though many of them say they're much happier. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know how you measure palpable improvement, but happiness is
Speaker 1: definitely very high. On that kind of list.
Speaker 2: Yeah that counts. Yeah, yeah, so there's a It just
Speaker 2: was an absurd in my view, it was an absurd headline.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you agree with me, so oh yes.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I just emailed the artic because I thank you,
Speaker 2: you know, But then I start, you know, the way
Speaker 2: my mind works, I started to think cheeky things like, well,
Speaker 2: can you be so normal that it actually makes you
Speaker 2: nerd divergent because you're so extreme in your normalness, you know,
Speaker 2: Like you know what I'm saying, Like, there's some people
Speaker 2: I meet who are like so not weird that it
Speaker 2: bothers me and they're sore. They're such like rule followers.
Speaker 2: They are such like everything they say, every word that
Speaker 2: comes out of their mouth is so perfectly not not weird,
Speaker 2: and it I'm like, that in itself is so extreme.
Speaker 2: You're so extremely normal, you know, Like, like is it
Speaker 2: could that be a form of neurodivergency? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think you know. Also, I mean I always think
Speaker 1: obedience is a very That's again why you find so
Speaker 1: many social activists are neurodivergent, because the point the worst
Speaker 1: thing to watch is is to see as we're seeing
Speaker 1: in many countries around the world. Is this relentless obedience
Speaker 1: to a regressive thoughts to you know, again to I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to keep going back to the US,
Speaker 1: you know, seeing some of the people who are having
Speaker 1: their history are raised, you know, because they've gone, oh well,
Speaker 1: this must have just been because of diversity. You don't
Speaker 1: become an astronaut and go into space merely by dint
Speaker 1: of your diversity. You've got to have a really great
Speaker 1: set of skills. And I think what we're seeing in
Speaker 1: some ways at the moment, and what worries me a
Speaker 1: great dealer in the UK, is this return to a
Speaker 1: kind of male white supremacy which in which all of
Speaker 1: the visions of the differences are turned into we are
Speaker 1: right and everything else is naborration. There's a book I
Speaker 1: must plug. I always love plugging this book. It's by
Speaker 1: Alexis Pauline Gunns, who is the most brilliant poet and writer,
Speaker 1: and it's called Undrowned Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals,
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what it is. It is the most
Speaker 1: wonderful book. And at one point she says in the book,
Speaker 1: who is this book for? This book is for you?
Speaker 1: Otherwise known as everyone who knows. A world where queer, black,
Speaker 1: feminine fo are living their fullest, most abundant and loving
Speaker 1: lives is a world where everyone is free. And that,
Speaker 1: to me is the beautiful vision. That is the vision
Speaker 1: of the true inclusivity that is possible if we are
Speaker 1: not perpetually afraid of those who are not like us.
Speaker 2: Beautifully said. I would actually like to leave with that sentiment,
Speaker 2: because I think it's so beautifully said, Robin, and thank you,
Speaker 2: And if I may actually and with that sentiment, and
Speaker 2: a quote of yours that further punctuates that sentiment. You say,
Speaker 2: your transformation can also transform other people. Just as they
Speaker 2: may see something new and new, you may see another
Speaker 2: side of them revealed. And it is not always a
Speaker 2: positive change. And it is not always a positive change.
Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait, is that good or bad?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Finish the sentence. I'm worried? Have you
Speaker 1: found the typo? Oh?
Speaker 2: Hell wait a minute, Oh, I.
Speaker 1: Think do you know what I think it is? It's
Speaker 1: not always the positive, I reckon whether.
Speaker 2: In the workplace or in a friendship.
Speaker 1: You say, yeah, by that, I mean that sometimes the
Speaker 1: change will feel like a negative change, because sometimes it
Speaker 1: will be a change in your friendships. Sometimes it will
Speaker 1: feel like a change in your relationships. It might change
Speaker 1: in your romantic.
Speaker 2: You had a beautiful moment here, let me redo it
Speaker 2: and end with of them revealed. I'm just gonna I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna.
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn to that and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to rewrite the book.
Speaker 2: Rob and then you'll rewrite the this is this is hilarious. Wait,
Speaker 2: I want to get back in the moment. We had
Speaker 2: a beautiful ending moment. Let me get back in there. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 2: here we go. Your transformation can always transform other people.
Speaker 2: Just as they may see something new, and just as
Speaker 2: they may see something new and new, you may see
Speaker 2: another side of them revealed. Robin is so great chatting
Speaker 2: with you today on a psychology podcast, and I just
Speaker 2: love your energy and wish you all the well with
Speaker 2: this book tour.
Speaker 1: Oh and you have a fantastic time down at the
Speaker 1: Comedy Seller as well. It is it's such a wonderful
Speaker 1: space to be in, and let us keep our communication going.