Speaker 1: Pushkin. I was never a socially skilled kid. I never
Speaker 1: knew what to say. Someone would come up to me
Speaker 1: and they would say, look at my new doll, and
Speaker 1: I would say, I like elephants, and they would just
Speaker 1: like look at me. And I never understood what I
Speaker 1: did wrong. I was always saying and doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: That's John Elder Robeson. He's always had a gift for
Speaker 1: understanding machines versus a sound engineer, then as a car mechanic.
Speaker 1: But the one thing he always felt was lacking was
Speaker 1: his ability to connect with people emotionally. He says he
Speaker 1: often felt depressed and anxious about his interactions, and over
Speaker 1: the years he'd done a number of things to try
Speaker 1: and foster a deeper connection with others. Then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, John came across a unique opportunity. He
Speaker 1: was given the chance to participate in an experimental brain
Speaker 1: study that he hoped would quote increase his emotional sensitivity.
Speaker 1: I so much wanted to do that because when I
Speaker 1: had learned that there were these facial expressions, and there
Speaker 1: were these whole like unspoken conversations that happened between so
Speaker 1: called normal people, and I couldn't yet them. It was
Speaker 1: like there were two whole conversations going on, and I
Speaker 1: could only hear one of them. And I thought, if
Speaker 1: only I could hear the other one, if only I
Speaker 1: could understand it, I would be happy. And that was
Speaker 1: this like fantasy I built up in my mind that
Speaker 1: if I could see these things and other people, my
Speaker 1: life would be beautiful. On today's episode, when you discover
Speaker 1: that the thing you most wanted to change about yourself
Speaker 1: didn't actually need changing. I'm maya Shunker and this is
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans, a show about who we
Speaker 1: are and who we become in the face of a
Speaker 1: big change. The core of John's story takes place in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties and nineties, when he was working as
Speaker 1: a car mechanic in Springfield, Massachusetts. But as you'll hear,
Speaker 1: John's had many careers over the years, and we started
Speaker 1: at our conversation by talking about his time in the
Speaker 1: music business. He has a rare ear for technical detail,
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen seventies he worked as a sound
Speaker 1: engineer for the likes of Kiss and Diana Ross. I
Speaker 1: think that people felt that I could see into the amplifiers,
Speaker 1: and I could see into the electronic systems, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I could see it. You know, I could
Speaker 1: stand out at the mixing desk at a concert, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, running my equipment, and you know, I could
Speaker 1: push It's like pushing the throttles on a powerful boat.
Speaker 1: You know, I could push it up and I could
Speaker 1: feel that this is just how far you can push
Speaker 1: it before you blow it up. And I think that
Speaker 1: that was a gift that was relatively uncommon. And that
Speaker 1: was the thing I loved about it. I loved I
Speaker 1: loved making the equipment thing for all those people. Oh,
Speaker 1: I love that. It's a very beautiful portrayal of what
Speaker 1: it means to work in sound. You ended up becoming
Speaker 1: interested in cars, right, which is what you do right now?
Speaker 1: Why is it that you decided to eventually leave your
Speaker 1: musical career behind when it got to dealing with people?
Speaker 1: Because music was my first job. The musicians appreciated what
Speaker 1: I could create, but other people thought that I was
Speaker 1: strange or bizarre or you know whatever. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what could I do? And I always had had this
Speaker 1: love of machinery and cars, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be a mechanic. And I turned out
Speaker 1: to have a gift for understanding automotive machines, just the
Speaker 1: way I had understood musical machines and other kinds of electronics.
Speaker 1: I left, and I kind of never looked back. I'm wondering, John,
Speaker 1: can you bring me back to the day in your
Speaker 1: car shop when your client surprised you with a book.
Speaker 1: I had always been kind of a social failure, but
Speaker 1: at my car business I had to learn enough social skills.
Speaker 1: I guessed that people would come back a second time,
Speaker 1: and I spent a fair amount of time talking to
Speaker 1: the customers that would sit in the waiting room and
Speaker 1: wait for their cars, and I got to know him.
Speaker 1: Some of them came in over a period of years.
Speaker 1: One fellow was a therapist and comes in one day
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, John, I've heard you tell
Speaker 1: me how alone you feel many times. And I've heard
Speaker 1: you tell me like you feel like you're standing in
Speaker 1: the rain outside looking in the windows at all the
Speaker 1: people standing by a fire, and you don't know how
Speaker 1: to get in and be with them. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a thing that we're talking about in
Speaker 1: the mental health community that kind of explains that is
Speaker 1: called asperger syndrome. It's a kind of autism. And I
Speaker 1: just looked at him and I thought autism. Then he
Speaker 1: pulls out this book. It was called Asperger Syndrome. It
Speaker 1: was by a doctor Tony At and he says, look,
Speaker 1: he says, it's people like you and can't read facial expressions,
Speaker 1: can't tell when somebody's angry or somebody said say inappropriate things,
Speaker 1: and get people upset, to have difficulty looking other people
Speaker 1: in the eye, and other folks think that they're being
Speaker 1: tricky or evasive, and like everything he's saying to me
Speaker 1: is me. And I'm listening to that. And first I
Speaker 1: was like stunned at him telling me that I had
Speaker 1: this kind of autism. And then as he kept saying
Speaker 1: this is it, and this and this and this and
Speaker 1: every one of those things with me, and it was
Speaker 1: just it was just shocking. It's just like totally came
Speaker 1: out of the blue. It's not like I was sitting
Speaker 1: in a therapist's office saying, doctor, tell me what's wrong
Speaker 1: with me. It's like I was sitting behind the desk
Speaker 1: at my car repair place and this is just thrust
Speaker 1: in front of me, and it was shocking, you're having
Speaker 1: this this life changing moment, and I'm wondering what did
Speaker 1: it feel like to have this kind of clarity for
Speaker 1: the first time. Well, my first thought was, Okay, if
Speaker 1: I have this Asberger thing, how do I get cured?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, it's not a disease. It's just
Speaker 1: how you are. People with autism that's how they are,
Speaker 1: and people with Asperger's that's how you are. He says,
Speaker 1: it's like being short or tall or you know whatever,
Speaker 1: it's just it's how you are. But then after it
Speaker 1: sinks in there's no cure. Well, now I know I
Speaker 1: have all this trouble and it's never going to end.
Speaker 1: And I was really sad, but I couldn't help reading
Speaker 1: the book he had left me. And at first I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: people told me I was mental and stupid and sociopathic
Speaker 1: and stuff. All my life I heard these kinds of things,
Speaker 1: and now here he is telling me I've not any
Speaker 1: of those things. I'm a person with this Asperger's and
Speaker 1: that explains why I've had all this trouble in my life.
Speaker 1: But gradually I realized I can take the knowledge from
Speaker 1: that book and I can teach myself to act differently.
Speaker 1: I can teach myself that even if it makes me
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to look in your eyes when you're talking to me,
Speaker 1: I can look at your cheeks, I can look at
Speaker 1: your mouth. And when I did that, it was kind
Speaker 1: of amazing because people responded better to me, even though
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell about people's body language and expressions. After
Speaker 1: reading Atwood's book, I understood that I would get too
Speaker 1: close to people and I would make them feel threatened.
Speaker 1: So I could just make a rule. If I held
Speaker 1: my arm out in front of me, I could say,
Speaker 1: I won't get any closer to you than two arms
Speaker 1: lengths when we're talking in the waiting room. And I
Speaker 1: began to see that I could change how I behaved
Speaker 1: and it really changed my life for the better. And
Speaker 1: that's when I started to go from feeling, oh boy,
Speaker 1: you know, I understand why I had all this trouble,
Speaker 1: but it's hopeless to thinking, you know, I can change
Speaker 1: my life completely with this knowledge. And that was a really,
Speaker 1: really big deal for me. Did it lead you to
Speaker 1: reinterpret your past? You'd had experiences with depression? Did it
Speaker 1: help you understand aspects of that differently? Now? The thing
Speaker 1: I had always wanted was to feel like I was
Speaker 1: a normal person, and so when I learned about autism,
Speaker 1: I had an explanation for why things had gone wrong
Speaker 1: with me and for why I was a second rate person.
Speaker 1: And I have to say that today we have this,
Speaker 1: you know, really different autism awareness. And to say that
Speaker 1: I was a second rate person, that's like a bad
Speaker 1: thing to say now, but you know, that's how I felt.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was second rate and and I
Speaker 1: wanted so much to be normal, and so I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I should write my own story about growing
Speaker 1: up and learning about this asperger autism thing. And that
Speaker 1: was what gave me the courage to write what became
Speaker 1: Look Me in the Eye. And the book came out
Speaker 1: and all these people started reading it, and you know,
Speaker 1: one of the people who read it was this postdoctoral
Speaker 1: researcher at Harvard Medical School, and she showed up at
Speaker 1: a talk I was doing in a bookstore, and she said,
Speaker 1: we're doing a study that's aimed at possibly helping autistic
Speaker 1: people see emotional cues and read expressions in other people.
Speaker 1: And we're hoping that your talks are attracting autistic people
Speaker 1: in the audience, and maybe you could hand out flyers
Speaker 1: for our study, and you could attract some volunteers for us.
Speaker 1: And I was like thinking, now i'll tell people, Oh,
Speaker 1: but I want to do it. I just I so
Speaker 1: much wanted to do that because when I had learned
Speaker 1: in that Atwood book that there were these facial expressions
Speaker 1: and there were these whole like unspoken conversations that he
Speaker 1: described that happened between so called normal people, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't get them. It was like there were two whole
Speaker 1: conversations going on, and I could only hear one of them.
Speaker 1: And I thought, if only I could hear the other one,
Speaker 1: if only I could understand it. I thought, the reason
Speaker 1: I've always been anxious and depressed is because all I
Speaker 1: can ever understand is bad things. People don't like me,
Speaker 1: people think I'm whatever. They're going to fire me, they're
Speaker 1: going to throw me out. But maybe there's this whole
Speaker 1: other set of messages where people really love me and
Speaker 1: they like me and they want it, and there's good messages.
Speaker 1: Maybe all I can get of the bad ones, and
Speaker 1: if I could fix that, and I would be happy.
Speaker 1: And that was this like fantasy I built up in
Speaker 1: my mind. And so when she came along and she said,
Speaker 1: we're doing the study. Hoping to do that. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it would work, Maybe that would happen for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you've written that autism gave you, quote a
Speaker 1: mixture of disabilities and gifts. Can you share more about
Speaker 1: this and how it affected your decision to enroll in
Speaker 1: this study. So the way the way autism had kind
Speaker 1: of played out for me by that time in my life.
Speaker 1: The average person couldn't see into machinery the way I could,
Speaker 1: and the average person couldn't they couldn't focus on details
Speaker 1: of things the way I could. I still, even without
Speaker 1: understanding that I had gifts, I thought that my gifts
Speaker 1: were in the category of something in a freak show.
Speaker 1: You know. Sure they were gifts, but they weren't gifts
Speaker 1: that most people cared about, and the things most people
Speaker 1: do care about I couldn't do. So I felt that
Speaker 1: the more I could understand emotional cues, the more I
Speaker 1: might be able to be like other people. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to do that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it reveals so much to me about where you're at
Speaker 1: psychologically with respect your self image and self perception that
Speaker 1: you would want to jump at this opportunity, right, and
Speaker 1: you know, just to let listeners in on the specifics
Speaker 1: of this study that you were signing up for. It
Speaker 1: was not without risk, right. It used TMS transcranial magnetic
Speaker 1: stimulation to activate specific areas of your brain using high
Speaker 1: power and magnetic fields. I mean it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: not having a little bit of trepidation, right, some fear
Speaker 1: associated with getting enrolled in this kind of study? Is
Speaker 1: that right? You know, you might have thought of it
Speaker 1: that way as a person who was educated in neuroscience.
Speaker 1: I didn't see it that way. The idea of TMS was,
Speaker 1: or is that they take a coil of wire, which
Speaker 1: is the basis for an electromagnet, and they fire a
Speaker 1: bunch of electricity into it and it induces a powerful
Speaker 1: magnetic field in that wire. They would put that on
Speaker 1: your head, and so they would fire a pulse of
Speaker 1: magnetic energy into your head when they put electricity into
Speaker 1: the wire. Well, I had worked with really really powerful
Speaker 1: coils of wire and magnets in making sound systems. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because so many people in retrospect they said,
Speaker 1: weren't you scared of that? And no, because of my
Speaker 1: background and making high power electronic systems, I was scared
Speaker 1: at all. I thought, bring it on. Wow, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I want to push you a little more here though, right,
Speaker 1: Because it's one thing to be building electronic equipment, it's
Speaker 1: another thing to have specific parts of your brain activated
Speaker 1: by technology. I just I really thought there was I
Speaker 1: thought there was just like so much more that I
Speaker 1: was missing, and if I could possibly see it, it
Speaker 1: would be it would be huge revelation for me. It
Speaker 1: would be such a huge positive thing. Was your family
Speaker 1: as enthusiastic about this as you were? Oh? My family
Speaker 1: wanted enthusiastic at all. And my wife, she said, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to getting involved in experiments to change myself,
Speaker 1: she said, you're good just the way you are. Why
Speaker 1: do you want to change yourself? And I said, I
Speaker 1: want to. I want to feel like other people. I
Speaker 1: want to have people want to be my friend and stuff.
Speaker 1: And she said, people do want to be your friend,
Speaker 1: people like you you have friends, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I just feel like there's something more. You know, So
Speaker 1: you decide to enroll in the TMS studies, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you can set the scene for me, you know,
Speaker 1: to do the study. They said to me, well, we're
Speaker 1: going to stimulate these different areas of your brain, and
Speaker 1: the way we're going to tell if anything happens is
Speaker 1: we're going to show you on a computer monitor, people
Speaker 1: making faces, people doing things, and we're going to ask
Speaker 1: is it jealous, is it anxious? Is it eager? You know,
Speaker 1: they'll have these different emotions, and you'll push buttons for
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. And they said, we don't care if
Speaker 1: you don't get it right, then we're going to do
Speaker 1: this stimulation on you and we're going to put you
Speaker 1: right back in front of the machine, will show you
Speaker 1: another set of faces, and we'll see if your responses
Speaker 1: are more or less accurate or the same. That's that's
Speaker 1: how we'll tell. So they put the images in front
Speaker 1: of me before the stimulation, and I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: have a single idea what I was seeing. So then
Speaker 1: they sit me down and they start firing these pulses.
Speaker 1: It's one pulse a second, and the thing goes click, click, click,
Speaker 1: and every time it would fire, it would make a
Speaker 1: pop and I would feel this like twitch on the
Speaker 1: top of my scalp, which they told me was the
Speaker 1: energy from the magnetic field triggering muscles. In my scalp,
Speaker 1: and so I was sitting there and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: she lifts the thing off away from my head and
Speaker 1: she said, come on quick, we got to test you.
Speaker 1: And I realized half an hour had passed, and so
Speaker 1: I go over. You know, it's just like ten feet
Speaker 1: and I move across the room and I sit down
Speaker 1: and the faces fly in front of me, and I
Speaker 1: pushed the buttons and I still don't have any idea,
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, kind of fool was I? You know,
Speaker 1: I imagined that I'm going to look at those faces
Speaker 1: again and I'm going to know every single one of them.
Speaker 1: Well I didn't. I didn't know anything. So she says, okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. And I said, well how did I do?
Speaker 1: And she says, well, I don't know how you did,
Speaker 1: but even if I did, I couldn't tell you because
Speaker 1: it's a study. So I go out down to garage
Speaker 1: and I get in my car. So I'm like two
Speaker 1: hours from home. And so when I drive out, I
Speaker 1: always would play old music and I had a lot
Speaker 1: of an old concerts, old bootleg recordings I could listen to,
Speaker 1: and I put on recording and this um, this show
Speaker 1: of a band called a Tavaris, And so I put
Speaker 1: on this show and I start playing, and it was
Speaker 1: like I stepped into a musical hallucination. It's like I
Speaker 1: was back there at the show and I could I
Speaker 1: could like almost smell it, and I could feel it,
Speaker 1: and it was it was just an overpowering thing listening
Speaker 1: to it, and it drove along and it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was so overwhelming that it made me cry. I
Speaker 1: pulled over and I was just crying. And all the
Speaker 1: years I had worked in music, I didn't feel the
Speaker 1: emotion of the music. I felt was it technically correct,
Speaker 1: but I didn't feel was it happy? Was it sad?
Speaker 1: Was it longing? Was it wistful? I didn't feel those things,
Speaker 1: and of course that's what made me a good engineer.
Speaker 1: But now I was feeling the emotion of it, and
Speaker 1: it was just overwhelming. And I thought to myself, this
Speaker 1: must be what all those people in the audience were
Speaker 1: feeling when they listened to those shows. Ought back and
Speaker 1: all those concerts I had been at and people were
Speaker 1: crying and they were singing and they were smiling, and
Speaker 1: I would see like tears, you know, from people, and
Speaker 1: I'd just be I'd just be standing there looking out
Speaker 1: thinking it's working. The system, it's doing what we wanted
Speaker 1: it to do. The musicians are up there playing and
Speaker 1: our sound equipment is working. But I never felt the
Speaker 1: feelings of the audience. And I went home and it
Speaker 1: was really late by then, and I sent an email
Speaker 1: to the doctor and I said, this is like some
Speaker 1: really powerful stuff. This has happened. And I sat awake
Speaker 1: all night and I just listened to old music, just
Speaker 1: sitting listening to it, and it was like dawn, and
Speaker 1: it finally the brilliance kind of faded away, and I
Speaker 1: I went to sleep and it was was just an
Speaker 1: amazing night. Will be back in a moment with a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans. So John Elder Robeson volunteered to
Speaker 1: participate in a pioneering study run by a teaching hospital
Speaker 1: out of Harvard Medical School. The study used transcranial magnetic stimulation,
Speaker 1: or TMS, which uses electromagnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells.
Speaker 1: The impact of TMS on things like migraines, obsessive compulsive disorder,
Speaker 1: and major depressive disorder are relatively well understood, but less
Speaker 1: so the impact of TMS on people on the autism spectrum,
Speaker 1: and the two thousand and eight study that John participated
Speaker 1: in was entirely exploratory. It was a research study that
Speaker 1: recruited those with Asperger's, a diagnostic category still used at
Speaker 1: that time, and it's worth noting that among the participants
Speaker 1: in the study, John's response was singular and highly unusual
Speaker 1: in its expression, and it had a complex impact on
Speaker 1: John's life. It changed his understanding of himself in a
Speaker 1: profound way and affected the relationships in his life, including
Speaker 1: with his wife and the folks in the car shop.
Speaker 1: I went to work and one of the guys was
Speaker 1: it was in the hall and looked at him and
Speaker 1: I thought, he has the most beautiful brown eyes. And
Speaker 1: then it'd like hit me. I thought, what's going on
Speaker 1: with me? I had never ever in my life had
Speaker 1: a thought he has beautiful brown eyes. But of course
Speaker 1: I had heard that. People had said all old blue eyes,
Speaker 1: and you're such pretty blue eyes and pretty, you know.
Speaker 1: I heard it, but I had never ever had that thought.
Speaker 1: And then I went into the waiting room and there
Speaker 1: were people out there, and I looked at people and
Speaker 1: I thought, she's really anxious, really scared. And I never
Speaker 1: had a feeling like that before. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: go in the waiting room and my logical brain would
Speaker 1: tell me they're waiting to know what's wrong with their car.
Speaker 1: But never ever did I look at someone and think
Speaker 1: she's really scared. And I actually I said to the
Speaker 1: person in the waiting room, I said, don't worry, it'll
Speaker 1: be okay. She kind of smiled at me, and I thought,
Speaker 1: this is like magic. This has never happened to me.
Speaker 1: And lest you think that my life was all like
Speaker 1: beauty and sweetness and light from that moment on, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that way. Because I went and I went, you know,
Speaker 1: as a big shopping center where I live, and I'm
Speaker 1: walking through the mall and I'm just like looking around
Speaker 1: at the people, and it was not beauty and sweetness
Speaker 1: and light. It was like fear and anxiety and worry
Speaker 1: and jealousy and all these things that they're all coming
Speaker 1: at me from a million different directions, and it's just
Speaker 1: like this wave of emotion. And I thought, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I thought, what kind of fool was I now? And
Speaker 1: you know, as I went through life, that faded away, luckily,
Speaker 1: but that meaning my ability to see those emotions and
Speaker 1: people dissipated over the next few weeks, but while it lasted,
Speaker 1: it was overwhelming. It was like devastating to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I so appreciate the complexity you describe and from what
Speaker 1: I understand, while the very acute results of the TMS
Speaker 1: have dissipated over time, there is this element of you
Speaker 1: can't unsee what you've seen, right, and you are you're
Speaker 1: altered permanently from this experience in terms of your perspective
Speaker 1: of the world. And I also felt like my dream
Speaker 1: was kind of shattered, this idea that if I could
Speaker 1: see these things in other people, my life would be beautiful.
Speaker 1: And so now we are thirteen years since that first
Speaker 1: TMS experience, and I guess, I guess I never imagined
Speaker 1: that just a brief experience like that could change your
Speaker 1: life forever. The way I guess I could explain it,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's an explanation, is if you're a color
Speaker 1: blind person and you grow up and you imagine people
Speaker 1: are talking about the beautiful blue sky, pretty red shirt,
Speaker 1: nice green grass, and of course to you, it's all
Speaker 1: shades of gray, and you start thinking it's just bullshit,
Speaker 1: and it just makes you angry. It's blue yellow, green talk.
Speaker 1: It's all the same. You know it. You know the
Speaker 1: evidence of your eyes. And you go into some doctor's
Speaker 1: office and they do something to you, and you walk out,
Speaker 1: you see color and you realize, holy shit, these people
Speaker 1: were telling the truth. It's really what it is. And
Speaker 1: then the ability fades away. Well, even if you go
Speaker 1: back to sea in a black and white world, you
Speaker 1: are never going to forget that all those other people
Speaker 1: are seeing yellows and blues and greens, and you're going
Speaker 1: to try your hardest to discern which shade of gray
Speaker 1: is yellow and what's green? And can I determine green
Speaker 1: by context? You know that's a lawn, so that must
Speaker 1: be green. And you're going to always be changed. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to say except that I'm changed all
Speaker 1: these years later. Yeah, and the insight I think has
Speaker 1: been empowering. But it was a really really rough ride. Yea.
Speaker 1: So it was a very mixed bag. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a very mixed thing. That leads me to another
Speaker 1: question I have for you, John, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about this experience in the mall where you're
Speaker 1: inundated with emotion, and what you're realizing is your experience
Speaker 1: being on the autism spectrum. Wasn't shielding you all the
Speaker 1: good parts. It was shielding me from those bad parts.
Speaker 1: It was shielding you from bad parts too. Being autistic
Speaker 1: definitely shielded me from that. It made me different, but
Speaker 1: it didn't make me worse. Because those people who have
Speaker 1: to live with that, you know, being a logical person,
Speaker 1: they can't be logical people because there's so much emotion
Speaker 1: around them. I don't have that around me. So I
Speaker 1: am logical, and you know, logic works, and a lot
Speaker 1: of you ought to be a programmer. Boy, there's nothing
Speaker 1: better than logic. Yeah. I'm wondering what impact the TMS
Speaker 1: had on your relationship with your wife. Well, ultimately, my
Speaker 1: wife was living with significant depression, and because I was
Speaker 1: largely blind to the emotional cues from others her included,
Speaker 1: she was just what she was, you know, and and
Speaker 1: she could say like I I can't get out of
Speaker 1: bed today, I'm too depressed, and I would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to work, and I was just and that worked,
Speaker 1: you know, worked for us. But when I saw those
Speaker 1: feelings after the TMS, I saw her sadness and misery,
Speaker 1: and I thought I must have done this to her.
Speaker 1: We're married, I must be the cause of her misery.
Speaker 1: That's just just horrible, and it really shattered my marriage.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I'm like killing her and her
Speaker 1: depressionis killing me, and we're horrible for each other. And
Speaker 1: I got to leave, and you know, and I guess
Speaker 1: I'm I'm very sad for that. Yeah. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a poignant illustration of the complexities that come along with
Speaker 1: picking up on human emotions. Knowing what you know now,
Speaker 1: if you could go back in time, would you still
Speaker 1: go through with the TMS experiments? If you put me
Speaker 1: in the shoes of the post TMS John Robison, where
Speaker 1: I had experienced what it would be like to see
Speaker 1: and feel emotion, and I saw and felt what it's
Speaker 1: like to read emotions. And yes, that's a powerful thing,
Speaker 1: and yes that could help me engage with people who
Speaker 1: don't know me. But it devastated my logical brain and
Speaker 1: it upended the world as I had known it. I
Speaker 1: am not a broken version of some someone else as normal.
Speaker 1: I am my normal. Autistic people may be different from
Speaker 1: non autistic people, but we are not broken. And that's
Speaker 1: what's been brought home to me. I think through this TMS.
Speaker 1: And now that I know that, do I need to
Speaker 1: learn it again? No, that's a lifelong lesson, and that's
Speaker 1: a gift. The TMS gave me that I truly understand
Speaker 1: that as an autistic person, I am my normal, and
Speaker 1: I'm a good normal, as much a complete, correct person
Speaker 1: as anyone else. Join me next week when I talk
Speaker 1: with psychologist Angela Duckworth about the science of grit and
Speaker 1: how natural talent inability will only take you so far.
Speaker 1: I really don't know anybody who has become world class
Speaker 1: of economics or at being a political leader, or anything else.
Speaker 1: You know, a classroom teacher, a nurse like without years
Speaker 1: and years of effort. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: created written an executive produce by Nie Maya Shunker. The
Speaker 1: Slight Change Family includes Tyler Greene, our senior producer, Jen Guera,
Speaker 1: our senior editor, Ben Taliday, our sound engineer, Emily Rostek
Speaker 1: our associate producer, and Neil Lavelle, our executive producer. Louise
Speaker 1: Scara wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange
Speaker 1: the vocals. A Slight Change of Plants the production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries so big. Thanks to everyone there. Including Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Lee Tall Mulat and Heather Fame and of
Speaker 1: course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can
Speaker 1: follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor
Speaker 1: Maya Shunker see you next week. And then the neurologist
Speaker 1: comes in to see me and he says, he says,
Speaker 1: what day is it? And what's your name? And who's
Speaker 1: the president? He asked me some questions. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer too. He says something like, well, who's our senator?
Speaker 1: S I don't know who our senator? I didn't know
Speaker 1: it before either. Yeah, I would totally avid you John.
Speaker 1: And he says, Okay, I get it. You haven't forgotten it.
Speaker 1: You never knew it.