Speaker 1: Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Speaker 2: Hey, how you doing. Welcome to Destiny. This is Cliff,
Speaker 2: your host of the podcast, and I hope you're doing
Speaker 2: well today. Sad news. Eric van Dankin has passed away
Speaker 2: at ninety. I didn't realize that he was ninety. I
Speaker 2: thought it was in his late eighties. But if you
Speaker 2: don't know who he is, he wrote a number of
Speaker 2: books on aliens influencing ancient Earth, and the most notable
Speaker 2: book was Charants of the God, which was written in
Speaker 2: nineteen published in nineteen sixty eight, and I got to
Speaker 2: say it was a big influence on me. Not so
Speaker 2: much for the alien part of it, but he actually,
Speaker 2: out of his own pocket and resources, would fly to
Speaker 2: different parts of the world and look at ruins, and
Speaker 2: because the archaeological community was in his infancy back then
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen sixties and beyond, he would actually
Speaker 2: go to Peru, to various Mayan sights and Aztec sites
Speaker 2: in Mexico and Central America and actually go and travel
Speaker 2: through the jungle. He would take an interpreter with him
Speaker 2: and a small team and he was taking and you
Speaker 2: can see these in some of his early books. He
Speaker 2: was taking photographs of temples and pyramids back when it
Speaker 2: was not even really vogue to do that, and you know,
Speaker 2: and I was just fascinated as a kid to see
Speaker 2: these photographs and all these images that he was impressed with.
Speaker 2: Now it was late that he interpreted this data as
Speaker 2: alien cities and pyramids, and later would kind of go
Speaker 2: off the deep end and even consider the Great Giza Pyramids, Cufu, Caffrey,
Speaker 2: and so on as works of alien technology. And this
Speaker 2: is where I kind of separate myself from his work.
Speaker 2: His early research, his early explorations are fascinating and really
Speaker 2: impressed me because he is kind of going against the
Speaker 2: grain and asking the reader to look inward a little
Speaker 2: deeper rather than taking the explanations by the archaeological community
Speaker 2: as the final word. And I think that was more
Speaker 2: of an impression on me than the alien builders the
Speaker 2: alien technology, which is ancient aliens all over the place,
Speaker 2: and you know how I feel about it. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just gone too far. That's not simply explained, is
Speaker 2: automatically relegated to the technology of the ancients, the ancient aliens.
Speaker 2: So but it's a loss. He led a very full
Speaker 2: and active life right up to the end. And after
Speaker 2: years of interviews with him, I'm going to pull together
Speaker 2: a best of Eric van Downkin before the end of
Speaker 2: the month, and that'll be a special edition where we
Speaker 2: can hear not only his philosophy, but also what got
Speaker 2: him excited, where he got the idea that these are
Speaker 2: aliens rather than advanced humans, because that's that's where I'm
Speaker 2: all about. These are many of these cities are from
Speaker 2: a lost civilization that developed their own technology and not
Speaker 2: only built the pyramids, but built many of the temples
Speaker 2: and other buildings that are considered anomalists and almost because
Speaker 2: we can't build them today, we don't know the technology
Speaker 2: that was used in building them. And as you will
Speaker 2: hear from this interview with him, it's not easy to
Speaker 2: understand exactly what was in place when these places, when
Speaker 2: these temples, pyramids and buildings were built. So look for
Speaker 2: that the best of Eric von Donkin before the end
Speaker 2: of January twenty twenty six. And I think over the years,
Speaker 2: I think I have seven. I mean it was rated.
Speaker 2: He was putting out books about five to seven years ago,
Speaker 2: almost one a year. And what they these books were
Speaker 2: were not simply writing they were mostly translations of lectures
Speaker 2: and they're not really that great. But you don't throw
Speaker 2: it all out because there's a lot of really good research.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of good travel material that he andes
Speaker 2: in this material in these books that he put out,
Speaker 2: So look forward to that. Today's program is on autism
Speaker 2: and a term that I just discovered called neuro divergence.
Speaker 2: And this is people who process data, who think differently
Speaker 2: and express themselves in a different fashion. This is the
Speaker 2: various autistic types, the spectrum you might call them. And
Speaker 2: my guest, Soul Smith, has been working as a counselor
Speaker 2: to people with autism, and as we'll hear today, this
Speaker 2: is not just autism, it's also ADHD, dyslexia, tourettes. It's
Speaker 2: basically people who are working with this. And what we'll
Speaker 2: hear from Soul today is an understanding that this is
Speaker 2: not a simple These people are processing data differently, and
Speaker 2: we're talking millions and millions of people how they are
Speaker 2: leading successful and active lives. So today's program is the
Speaker 2: Autistics Guide to Self Discovery and my guest is Saul Smith. Hey,
Speaker 2: the seventh annual Grand Egyptian Tour is coming up. We
Speaker 2: have Mohammad and Nohah by him with us. We're going
Speaker 2: to be visiting Tennis, Egypt, which is very very old.
Speaker 2: We don't know what happened there. It looks like a
Speaker 2: catastrophic event happened. It has megalithic structures, statues, and some
Speaker 2: large pieces strewed around. Mohammad, What do we know about Tannis?
Speaker 2: What makes it so unique?
Speaker 1: What we know about Tennis? Unfortunately so little, but it
Speaker 1: is so little inconvenient with the importance and the greatness
Speaker 1: of Tennis. But for us it is very high level
Speaker 1: of information. Number One, what we know that Tennis was
Speaker 1: a great center of knowledge in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 3: It was the big.
Speaker 1: City receiving all the travelers and immigrants and visitors to
Speaker 1: Egypt from the northeast part of they come across Sinai.
Speaker 1: The second thing about Tennis that there was a massive
Speaker 1: size timble or I can call it big town. We
Speaker 1: call it temble dedicated to Amonra. This temble or this
Speaker 1: village if I can call it this way was completely
Speaker 1: built out of rose granite. Fromus one, you know what
Speaker 1: people don't know that there was more than twelve obelisks
Speaker 1: in Tennis, maybe more but the remains some of them
Speaker 1: still in good condition, but all of them are laying
Speaker 1: on the ground. The one they took it to the
Speaker 1: Grand Museum, the one in front of the main gate
Speaker 1: of the Grand Museum is from Tennis, and the one
Speaker 1: in Tarry Square now is from Tennis. So there are
Speaker 1: about ten obelisks or eight obelisks still there at Tennis.
Speaker 1: So the story is very strange because we expected, even
Speaker 1: if the temple was in bad condition, we expected more
Speaker 1: ruins to see more cat ORed blocks, but we found
Speaker 1: only few. But we found the biggest. By the way,
Speaker 1: there are remains of blocks weighing more than two hundred
Speaker 1: ton and three hundred ton we found the foot of
Speaker 1: a statue. According to the dimension of the foot, the
Speaker 1: statue would be more than fifteen hundred ton. The foot
Speaker 1: is like a car size. Wow. Okay, so we don't
Speaker 1: know what happened exactly. It must be something very strong
Speaker 1: hit Tennis and hit that temble and it causes it
Speaker 1: caused great damage, like great exublusion happened inside the temple
Speaker 1: and caused that all the pieces are scattered on a
Speaker 1: distance maybe like three or four kilometers wide.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: So when people go to tennis. They're going to feel
Speaker 1: the magic and they feel the dips of the history
Speaker 1: of tennis.
Speaker 2: Come on and join us. It's gonna be April twenty
Speaker 2: eight through May tenth. For all the details and the itinerary,
Speaker 2: go to earthacients dot com Forward slash Tours got a
Speaker 2: new word for you. It's called neuro divergent adult. If
Speaker 2: you haven't heard what that is before, we're gonna learn
Speaker 2: all about it today. I, as a kid was considered dyslexic.
Speaker 2: I had a reading problem, and my folks, this is god,
Speaker 2: I can't so long ago. They didn't know what to
Speaker 2: do with me, so they did the best they could.
Speaker 2: And I was an excellent artist. I just didn't process
Speaker 2: mathematics and anything else very well. And I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of us out there. And the book I'm
Speaker 2: highlighting today addresses this in a very very good way.
Speaker 2: It's called The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery. And my
Speaker 2: guest today is Saul Smith. He is a liberal arts professor,
Speaker 2: life coach, writer, speaker, social media personality, and I gotta
Speaker 2: tell you he has done a remarkable job in this
Speaker 2: new book in describing how neurodivergent people see the world
Speaker 2: and how to get around and be the best you can. So, hey, Soul,
Speaker 2: welcome to Destiny. Great to see you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2: And the first thing I want to ask you is
Speaker 2: why did you write this book? I mean, you're a coach,
Speaker 2: but was it the work we're working with others that
Speaker 2: you thought I got to write the book because I
Speaker 2: see this every single day. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: What is What was the motivation?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I would say that, you know, it's from working
Speaker 3: with folks and kind of thinking that there should be
Speaker 3: some sort of a starting point for people. There's you know,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of autism books out there that
Speaker 3: are finally being written by autistic people in the last
Speaker 3: few years, which is great, but a lot of them.
Speaker 3: I just I felt like we had to kind of
Speaker 3: get something there to just sort of serve as like
Speaker 3: a little bit of a roadmap for people to better
Speaker 3: understand themselves through this lens, and just there wasn't really
Speaker 3: anything out there in place for it. So the book
Speaker 3: seemed like a really natural thing for me to branch
Speaker 3: off into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you describe your own journey as an autistic person.
Speaker 2: You were diagnosed as an adult. Talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about that, because I think a lot of people and
Speaker 2: by the way, you suggest people go online and there's
Speaker 2: a ton of various tests and processes that you can
Speaker 2: take to discover if you're on the spectrum. And we'll
Speaker 2: talk about the spectrum in a minute, but talk about
Speaker 2: your own discovery because it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, I mean I always knew that I was
Speaker 3: a little different. I think that it was sort of
Speaker 3: packaged to me by my parents as like a good
Speaker 3: thing that I was different. I clearly sort of processed
Speaker 3: things differently and was a little bit out of sync
Speaker 3: with my peers, and there was always you know, i'd
Speaker 3: get into a quandary and be upset about having trouble
Speaker 3: making friendships and stuff. Parents would be, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 3: as you get older, people will, well, they'll catch up.
Speaker 3: And I just kind of had this idea that that like,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe I was just extra mature or something,
Speaker 3: and you know, I got along with my teachers better
Speaker 3: than my peers and that kind of thing, and so
Speaker 3: as a did get older, you know, it just kind
Speaker 3: of kept being like each next level wasn't wasn't it?
Speaker 3: You know, I was expecting something different out of college
Speaker 3: than I was expecting something different out of working and
Speaker 3: it was it was frustrating to see, you know, in
Speaker 3: the workplace, how you can do your job really well
Speaker 3: but still feel like your your head's always on the
Speaker 3: chopping block, you know. They it was not really doing
Speaker 3: your job so much as fitting in and everything. And
Speaker 3: I just never really fit in very well. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I just kind of always knew this. And and my
Speaker 3: my whole family was pretty pretty, you know different. My
Speaker 3: dad was was was brilliant and just super kind of empathetic.
Speaker 3: And when he died in twenty seventeen, my brother and
Speaker 3: my uncle and a couple other people and I were
Speaker 3: standing around just sort of swapping stories about him, and
Speaker 3: of course most of these were stories I had heard
Speaker 3: but never really come of all in one place. And
Speaker 3: my brother said, Wow, it's like he was autistic or something.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, my gosh, and it kind
Speaker 3: of hit me, you know that, like that makes sense
Speaker 3: because I've been studying psychology. I had been reading about
Speaker 3: autism a lot, and I was like, oh no, oh no,
Speaker 3: And then really like did a deep dive into it,
Speaker 3: and I just kept seeing myself there, and it was
Speaker 3: just really it's that I never saw my experience reflected
Speaker 3: in the DSM. You know, I never saw my experience
Speaker 3: like things like take things literally, and I thought they
Speaker 3: meant like, you can't deal with metaphors or something, and
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a literature professor, and of course I
Speaker 3: can deal with metaphors. But what I didn't understand is
Speaker 3: that they meant that, like, you know, communicating literally means
Speaker 3: we see discussion and as a transfer of information from
Speaker 3: one person to another, we use words for their intended meaning,
Speaker 3: and that this sort of normal cultural way is to
Speaker 3: have a sort of meaning woven between your words that
Speaker 3: the other person is supposed to extract. There's this sort
Speaker 3: of code of politeness, like you know. A good example
Speaker 3: of where this can get you off track is if
Speaker 3: a boss is giving you sort of marching orders and
Speaker 3: you don't track that that's what's happening because they don't
Speaker 3: want to order you. They're being polite because you're being friendly,
Speaker 3: and you know, so they'll say, well, that's not how
Speaker 3: I would do it, and I would go like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not how I would do it either, And my
Speaker 3: boss is like, okay, well can you go tell her
Speaker 3: to or no. She wouldn't say that. The normal thing
Speaker 3: for me would be if we were talking, you know,
Speaker 3: talking about another teacher, and she goes, okay, well why
Speaker 3: don't you go tell her to do it a different way?
Speaker 3: But my boss wouldn't say that. She would just say
Speaker 3: I don't like how she's doing that, and I would say, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not how I would do it either. And a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks pass by and the boss is like, what,
Speaker 3: why is she still teaching it the course that way?
Speaker 3: And I go, oh, I just thought we both agreed
Speaker 3: this isn't how we would do it, you know. But
Speaker 3: it was really that was a sort of implicit command
Speaker 3: to go and ask somebody to change the way they
Speaker 3: were approaching something. And you know, to me, I not
Speaker 3: being paid to extract implicit commands from people. I just
Speaker 3: you know, wait till somebody tells me what to do,
Speaker 3: you know. So yeah, so that's I just never saw
Speaker 3: myself in it. And I finally like went in for
Speaker 3: the assessment, which I do stress to people that as
Speaker 3: an adult, nobody has to go through the assessment. Nobody
Speaker 3: has to be diagnosed. You can self identify by really
Speaker 3: studying and really understanding yourself just as well. And even
Speaker 3: studies have shown this, especially if it's a problem of access,
Speaker 3: like how expensive it can be in that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, when it finally came, there was a bit
Speaker 3: of a you know, identity crisis of like, wow, all
Speaker 3: these things I you know, kind of thought of myself
Speaker 3: as special. There's you know, a label here now And
Speaker 3: it took me a while to really come to grips
Speaker 3: with all of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the issue is, especially in the United
Speaker 2: States with Kennedy in office now, is that if you
Speaker 2: are diagnosed with autism, you're are as a disease, right,
Speaker 2: You're you're you're not able to function like a regular
Speaker 2: normal human being, so forth and so on. And this
Speaker 2: is why I like the term neurodivergent, and that definition
Speaker 2: is someone who learns and processes info differently. H And
Speaker 2: I want to ask you, and this is funny that
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this. Is it an evolution? Do
Speaker 2: you think as you look at people and talk to people,
Speaker 2: is it a different kind of homo sapient sapien that
Speaker 2: we are perhaps not looking at correctly And we can say, hey,
Speaker 2: this is just a person who sees the world differently,
Speaker 2: who processes differently and who is just functioning a little
Speaker 2: different rather than a disease process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we definitely it's a little different. And
Speaker 3: I'm not you know, I've heard people say, you know,
Speaker 3: is this an evolutionary step. But my theory, and of
Speaker 3: course I'm not an anthropologist or anything, My theory is
Speaker 3: that it's just always been part of the group. It's
Speaker 3: been a minority part of human existence, but that the
Speaker 3: way that roles and jobs used to be there, it
Speaker 3: wouldn't stand out quite so much as it does now
Speaker 3: that in our current like economic structure, most jobs, we
Speaker 3: see ourselves as sort of like replaceable parts of a
Speaker 3: machine that are you know, you put somebody in this
Speaker 3: position and they should work the same way as the
Speaker 3: last person. They just need the training. And it makes
Speaker 3: us really sort of stand out because it's not really
Speaker 3: how we work as somebody who's diverged from the norm.
Speaker 3: You know, if you picture a normal standard distribution and
Speaker 3: most people followed and within one, you know, one standard
Speaker 3: deviation of of what we would consider average. Just by definition,
Speaker 3: autistics are our way out in the margins. So so
Speaker 3: we really stick out in this type of world where
Speaker 3: we're expected to be very similar to each other. And
Speaker 3: I think that it's just kind of always existed, and
Speaker 3: I mean, you look back and read it's very fun
Speaker 3: to read about different historical figures and and try to
Speaker 3: spot the autism there. Yeah, but but in some cases
Speaker 3: it's really like pretty clear, like like you know, Mozart
Speaker 3: is pretty clear, and Socrates is pretty clear if Socrates existed,
Speaker 3: but it's there's yeah, so it's we really I think
Speaker 3: it's just always kind of been there but not really
Speaker 3: been identified. And as we you know, go into the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, many autistics were put in institutions and ignored,
Speaker 3: and so we didn't see the way that people on
Speaker 3: on the more needs heavy side of the spectrum relate
Speaker 3: to people on the high masking side of the spectrum.
Speaker 3: And now that we've sort of mainstream things a little
Speaker 3: bit more, we can see these similarities. But yeah, it's
Speaker 3: definitely not it's it's definitely genetic. And yes, our environment
Speaker 3: does help decide how it manifests, like how much it
Speaker 3: shows up, and I think, you know, how well we
Speaker 3: adapt to that genetic difference. But but you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's just so many factors and we're finding out more
Speaker 3: all the time, and we are not finding it out
Speaker 3: from from the yeah, from our esteemed mister Kennedy at all.
Speaker 2: No, he's he's making a problem. I mean, one in
Speaker 2: three children in the USA are are autistic, one in
Speaker 2: five adults are. And the studies suggests that it's genetic factors,
Speaker 2: which I find is interesting and and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's the mother in vitro, the environment that she was in,
Speaker 2: or the father or something.
Speaker 3: We just don't know right right, Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 3: we'll find out more as there's more money put towards it,
Speaker 3: of course, towards the actual research for it. But it's
Speaker 3: difficult because it's such a minority of the population that
Speaker 3: people don't see it sometimes as an efficient use of money.
Speaker 3: And I mean, you know, we've gone through the whole
Speaker 3: thing of how much of science research doesn't even factor
Speaker 3: in women. So there's a lot of catching up to
Speaker 3: do with research.
Speaker 2: You know, once it's identified, do we need to consider
Speaker 2: education as a different form for young people who are autistic?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that might have been my problem
Speaker 2: as a younger person. I just didn't get and prosys
Speaker 2: the same way as my classmates. And you had This
Speaker 2: is years ago, obviously decades ago. You were just forced
Speaker 2: to do whatever, you know, and I actually was was
Speaker 2: forced to retake a grade class, which was really devastating
Speaker 2: to me, and I'll never forget it. But yeah, you
Speaker 2: would think that the educators would see that it's still
Speaker 2: a functioning person. You just need to tweak the educational
Speaker 2: system a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and I, you know, have extensive background education.
Speaker 3: I have a you know, doctorate level degree in education.
Speaker 3: And it is one of the things that you sort
Speaker 3: of like realize when you really look into it, is
Speaker 3: that a lot of our education system isn't so much
Speaker 3: about teaching as it is about trying to make learning
Speaker 3: transparent and measurable. And learning isn't very transparent into or
Speaker 3: very measurable. A lot of the time. It happens at
Speaker 3: different you know, it's not efficient. It happens at different
Speaker 3: times with different people, but even more so, Yeah, with
Speaker 3: neurodivergent folk. And I do think that there would be
Speaker 3: a lot of benefit and letting them approach things differently.
Speaker 3: My own kids, all of whom are on the spectrum.
Speaker 3: We did do, you know, thanks to the pandemic, we
Speaker 3: did do a lot of stuff homeschooled, And what I
Speaker 3: found is that my kids really thrived that way because
Speaker 3: they're very autodidactic and they were able to sort of
Speaker 3: we let them approach all of their subjects through things
Speaker 3: they were really interested in. So they were very motivated
Speaker 3: that way. They're very motivated to dig into things and learn,
Speaker 3: and you know, they might spend all day on one subject.
Speaker 3: You know, they might spend all day looking at something
Speaker 3: with chemistry, or all day looking at something of the math,
Speaker 3: and you know, school system you have to make these
Speaker 3: transitions all the time, and transitions are hard for autistics.
Speaker 3: They're hard for adhd yars. You know, it's difficult. And
Speaker 3: it also sort of implies that we should be the
Speaker 3: same good at everything. And for the most part, autistics
Speaker 3: have this sort of what we call a Spikey profile
Speaker 3: where some things they really excel in they'll be way
Speaker 3: above grade level, and some things they just will have
Speaker 3: a lot of difficulty grasping or demonstrating, depending on the context.
Speaker 3: So it would be very beneficial, I think, for us
Speaker 3: to approach education differently and more individualistically, and we have
Speaker 3: a lot of lip service to that. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of talk about differentiation and education and how different people
Speaker 3: learn different ways. But it's really done on a very
Speaker 3: micro scale, like well, we'll do some stuff as group
Speaker 3: work and some stuff as lecture, and that doesn't quite
Speaker 3: get to it. You know, I feel like the whole
Speaker 3: structure doesn't. You know, if the structure is made for
Speaker 3: this sort of common denominator, it's made for the average.
Speaker 3: It doesn't serve autistics. And we see autistics very often
Speaker 3: be pushed either into you know, remedial education or pushed
Speaker 3: into gifted education. And either one of those is a
Speaker 3: sort of marginalization. Yeah, you know, either either one of
Speaker 3: those is a sort of way to kind of get
Speaker 3: it out of the way of the rest of the
Speaker 3: class and makes makes there be a difference, and it's uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: so it can be hard on either side of that.
Speaker 3: And and yeah, a lot of autistics might be held
Speaker 3: back in a class, not because they're not smart enough,
Speaker 3: but because they're either you know, one subject in particular,
Speaker 3: they're having trouble grasping, or maybe even just socially they're
Speaker 3: not thriving. And teachers will say, yeah, they could use
Speaker 3: another year here because they're really not right. But if
Speaker 3: you when you think about it's kind of weird to really,
Speaker 3: I mean, as an adult, we never hang out with
Speaker 3: just people born or year, you know, like like of
Speaker 3: a certain vintage like we you know, like we're able
Speaker 3: to spread out and talk to lots of different age groups,
Speaker 3: and I feel like that would really benefit us socially
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you describe generally what are the characteristics of autism?
Speaker 2: Give us a sense of what that means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's a processing difference, and mainly the way
Speaker 3: that I look at it is bottom up processing versus
Speaker 3: top down. It's much more cognitively draining to be a
Speaker 3: bottom up processor. So what that means is that we
Speaker 3: tend to sort of construct our idea of reality through
Speaker 3: the details that lots of details will put together into
Speaker 3: an overall picture. And the sort of typical way to
Speaker 3: do this, and of course be thinking of this and
Speaker 3: lots of different variations, The typical way to do this
Speaker 3: is to see things as a sort of umbrella concept
Speaker 3: and through that to sort of like be able to
Speaker 3: assume some details. And this makes it where it's a
Speaker 3: lot easier to understand certain settings in certain situations because
Speaker 3: you're looking at things as it's sort of interrelated, and
Speaker 3: you're using past experience to advise your current experience, and
Speaker 3: autistics tend to see things much more individually than that.
Speaker 3: So a good example that I always try to pull
Speaker 3: out because already this feels very nebulous, but a good
Speaker 3: example is sort of pull out. Is I used to
Speaker 3: teach this course on media literacy, and we would talk
Speaker 3: about advertising, and I would want students to sort of
Speaker 3: analyze these print ads. And I found that they weren't
Speaker 3: instinctively very good at this, you know, because advertising is
Speaker 3: meant to be more not noticed than anything else, meant
Speaker 3: to sort of get a message to you pre cognitively.
Speaker 3: So I wanted them to sort of strip down how
Speaker 3: this is happening. And I'd say, okay, we're going to
Speaker 3: for every ad, we're going to look at three levels.
Speaker 3: Level one is what do you literally see in the advertisement?
Speaker 3: You know, what is there? And then level two is
Speaker 3: what's the intended meaning? You know, the advertiser wants you
Speaker 3: to come, have some sort of meaning to walk away with.
Speaker 3: Most people can understand this because it's made to be understood,
Speaker 3: and I go, but level three is what kind of stereotypes,
Speaker 3: what kind of social norms are we you using to
Speaker 3: make that intended meaning come across. And I thought this
Speaker 3: was a brilliant way to do it. So we look
Speaker 3: at the first ad. I would show this add up
Speaker 3: on the board, up on the screen and I'd say, okay,
Speaker 3: so level one, what do we see here? And a
Speaker 3: lot of students would go, coke is delicious and refreshing,
Speaker 3: and I go, no, no, I go that's the message, right.
Speaker 3: I go, okay, so what do we see? And they
Speaker 3: go happy people like coke? And I go no, and
Speaker 3: they go, coke makes you happy? And I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: what do you see here? And I finally would have
Speaker 3: to say, we see a woman in a swimsuit, smiling
Speaker 3: holding a can of coke, and they'd go oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's just kind of like the top down processing
Speaker 3: jumps to what does this mean? They don't they? Looking
Speaker 3: at all those details is cognitively draining. And that's really
Speaker 3: the thing is that most of our brains aren't really
Speaker 3: concerned with bringing in stimuli. It's concerned with filtering out
Speaker 3: unnecessary stimuli. So our brains want to focus us like
Speaker 3: a laser, on what, you know, evolutionarily speaking, what can
Speaker 3: keep us alive what's going to keep us functional, So
Speaker 3: it's filtering out a lot of stuff that it decides
Speaker 3: isn't important. And this's why you know, you're walking in
Speaker 3: the woods and the bushes rustle that's going to grab
Speaker 3: your attention, but all of those leaves along the way
Speaker 3: aren't going to grab your attention if they're just blowing
Speaker 3: in the wind. And an autistic person our filter is off.
Speaker 3: Our filter has not really tuned into that same like
Speaker 3: razors point of awareness, and instead lots of things are
Speaker 3: coming in that you don't want to. And that's why
Speaker 3: you know, autistics can have like the tag on their
Speaker 3: shirt bothers them, or the feeling of this fabric bothers them,
Speaker 3: because you're getting this sensory input that your brain would
Speaker 3: normally filter out for most people. So instead we have
Speaker 3: taking in an excess of information and trying to siphon
Speaker 3: it down as much as we can. And I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, you can think of this filter as like
Speaker 3: a way to sort of tune in, like on a
Speaker 3: on a radio dial. And a lot of autistics are
Speaker 3: getting so much static that they're going to have a
Speaker 3: difficult time really discerning the importance of language, the importance
Speaker 3: of words, because other things will feel that same level
Speaker 3: of volume, that same level of importance. And it I
Speaker 3: mean like I've heard, for example, that in many studies
Speaker 3: autistics have shown to have different ear structures than neurotypicals
Speaker 3: because over time they have not tuned into the same
Speaker 3: way of hearing that neurotypicals do. So, like a lot
Speaker 3: of us have audio processing disorder. You go into a
Speaker 3: restaurant that's noisy, and it's not that you can't hear
Speaker 3: the person next to you, it's that their voice is
Speaker 3: swimming in all the other sounds. And the normal way
Speaker 3: to do it is, as you know, neurotypicals have like
Speaker 3: a mixing board in there somewhere where a guy is
Speaker 3: like tuning you in too exactly what somebody's saying. And
Speaker 3: that seems like a dream. I thought of that the
Speaker 3: other day. I was thinking, like I was watching a
Speaker 3: movie and noticing how in this restaurant scene you could
Speaker 3: hear the voices so well, and I was like, man,
Speaker 3: that must be fantastic.
Speaker 2: You know, we're going to take a short commercial break
Speaker 2: to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will
Speaker 2: return shortly with my guest today, Saul Smith, discussing his
Speaker 2: new release. His newest book, The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery,
Speaker 2: will be right back. My guest today is Saul Smith.
Speaker 2: He is a professor of liberal Arts. He's also a
Speaker 2: writer and a counselor, and he's written a new book
Speaker 2: called The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery. This is a
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Speaker 2: NI dot com Forward slash Earth Ancients. Yeah, you bring
Speaker 2: up you bring up the entire idea of a spectrum,
Speaker 2: which you really don't like. But what is the autistic spectrum?
Speaker 2: And I think it's you just give us a hint
Speaker 2: of it. High functioning, less functioning, and so on. And
Speaker 2: because of this excess sensitivity, that becomes the issue with
Speaker 2: it on the high functioning spectrum. But talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about the spectrum itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the spectrum is it's a useful term in sort
Speaker 3: of understanding that it's going to present in different ways
Speaker 3: in different people. Yeah. Where I don't like it is
Speaker 3: when it's sort of been sort of assumed in a
Speaker 3: popular way of like this spectrum means we're all on
Speaker 3: it somewhere. And I can see how people get that
Speaker 3: message because we've been trying to sort of push this
Speaker 3: message of autistic people are different but just as valuable,
Speaker 3: and so it kind of bleeds into this notion of like,
Speaker 3: you know, all of us have different traits, and we
Speaker 3: do all have different traits, but the spectrum is is
Speaker 3: basically saying that, like, if somebody says that they're autistic
Speaker 3: and they don't seem as you know that the same
Speaker 3: as your nephew or your cousin or somebody else who
Speaker 3: you know who's autistic, it doesn't mean that they're wrong.
Speaker 3: You know. We tend to see that as trying to
Speaker 3: people trying to sort of like weed out people who
Speaker 3: aren't autistic, Like, wait, wait a minute, you know my
Speaker 3: nephew is autistic and he has trouble with with with
Speaker 3: you know, potty training. You can't be autistic you're doing
Speaker 3: complex math. But those are two very different parts of
Speaker 3: the spectrum. And that's where it becomes really handy, is
Speaker 3: just kind of like understanding that this is going to
Speaker 3: be lots and lots of different ways. And what we
Speaker 3: found is that any two autistic people, if you look
Speaker 3: at their their brain structures on a fMRI, any two
Speaker 3: autistic people will be more different from each other than
Speaker 3: they are from a typical brain. So very often we
Speaker 3: don't have as much in common with each other even
Speaker 3: as we do with somebody who's neurotypical. But where we
Speaker 3: do have our commonalities is just in being different. The
Speaker 3: fact that we are recognizably different from a neurotypical makes
Speaker 3: it really makes us sort of a club. It makes
Speaker 3: us sort of be able to relate to each other
Speaker 3: in very interesting ways just because we're basically coming from
Speaker 3: outside of the culture, you know. And yes, so the
Speaker 3: spectrum is really broad. You have some people who present
Speaker 3: in ways that, especially if they highlight a lot of
Speaker 3: their really good skills, you would think that they were
Speaker 3: just somebody who's you know, just brilliant and doesn't necessarily
Speaker 3: have a differently structured brain. But then they again, you know,
Speaker 3: this spikey profile. They'll have other things usually that they're
Speaker 3: not as good at, that they don't grasp as well.
Speaker 3: And they'll have other people who, yeah, they they're filtering
Speaker 3: out so such little like inputs or or their focus
Speaker 3: is so different that that they struggle with taking care
Speaker 3: of themselves. And then you know, parents have to find
Speaker 3: ways to sort of like ways into that sort of communication,
Speaker 3: and there's lots of different ways to sort of to
Speaker 3: find that, but it is it is obviously like challenging,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know a lot of parents of high
Speaker 3: needs autistics will will sometimes take issue with autistics like
Speaker 3: me who and say, you know that's not You're not challenged.
Speaker 3: I'm not challenged in taking care of myself. That's true.
Speaker 3: But my whole demographic of people who didn't know we
Speaker 3: were autistic till later, we are the most underemployed class,
Speaker 3: disabled disability class. We're the most over educated disability class,
Speaker 3: and we are also the disability class with the highest
Speaker 3: rate of suicide. So it's obviously very hard to be
Speaker 3: this way too. It's just presents very differently than that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why is the suicide rate so high? Is it
Speaker 2: self depreciation or self hate that comes up because you're
Speaker 2: different and the society says you need to be this way,
Speaker 2: but you're not, so you're screwed or what?
Speaker 3: Pretty much? Yeah, Like, you know, when we miss out
Speaker 3: on social cues like that reading between the lines, we
Speaker 3: miss places where we may be not fitting in, where
Speaker 3: people may be making fun of us, for example, But
Speaker 3: we also miss places where we may be included, where
Speaker 3: we may be invited to do things, and we tend
Speaker 3: to become very rejection sensitive, where since we do don't
Speaker 3: fit in with everybody, over time, autistics experience something like
Speaker 3: eight times more rejection than a neurotypical And then it
Speaker 3: makes everything kind of feel like rejection. Even if the
Speaker 3: rejection isn't there, you can feel it, like, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're invited to a part that's not a rejection,
Speaker 3: but we can very easily go, well, they just feel
Speaker 3: sorry for me because they saw I wasn't invited to
Speaker 3: the other eight parties, and you know, so you're instantly
Speaker 3: you're feeling rejection from that. And then we also just
Speaker 3: have trouble in jobs, you know, because again because of
Speaker 3: that communication difference, we can be out of sync and
Speaker 3: be working really hard in your job, but always get
Speaker 3: on somebody's bad side and be a little bit off.
Speaker 3: We tend to have trouble walking the line of between
Speaker 3: the parasocial relationship of coworkers and the very you know,
Speaker 3: rigid relationship of coworkers and how you're supposed to relate,
Speaker 3: and so these things kind of make us somewhat of
Speaker 3: an outcast. I've read statistics that say that eighty percent
Speaker 3: of autistics with a college degree have chronic trouble with employment.
Speaker 3: And that's massive, you know. And that's a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of people with a college degree. And
Speaker 3: I mean I did that. I have four degrees, and
Speaker 3: I kept thinking, how many degrees is it before I
Speaker 3: don't have trouble you know, getting a job and keeping
Speaker 3: a job. Yeah, but since we're just a little off,
Speaker 3: there's this sort of suspicion, this sort of like Uncanny
Speaker 3: Valley effect of hmm, there's something about him, and that's
Speaker 3: usually enough, you know. And this is why just for example,
Speaker 3: like my kids, they're always friends with the exchange students,
Speaker 3: they're friends with first generation Americans, they're friends with minority races,
Speaker 3: because their differences can be attributed to that. You know,
Speaker 3: they can go, you know, if something's a little weird
Speaker 3: or a little off, or they miss something and they go, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, a white girl, you know what, Like it
Speaker 3: can be put off to that. And I mean to
Speaker 3: the point where even most autistics I know who are
Speaker 3: guys will say I got along more with the women,
Speaker 3: and most women I know will say I got along
Speaker 3: more with the guys growing up because even then you're
Speaker 3: in a little bit different culture, and those differences can
Speaker 3: be attributed to you know, oh what a boys know
Speaker 3: and it's you know, all fun and games on that
Speaker 3: level when compared to just kind of being like, wow,
Speaker 3: you're you know, a middle aged white guy like me.
Speaker 3: But there's something different about your experiences making you act
Speaker 3: this way. Maybe there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The book that you've written is a guide for people
Speaker 2: with autistic functioning, and you're describing how to look at
Speaker 2: life with some support. But I'm really curious you write this.
Speaker 2: You write, I'm autistic, I don't have autism.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very very curious. Yeah, I think you're looking
Speaker 2: at the diagnosis there and the negativity and the stigma
Speaker 2: behind it, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, And I think that a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: there's this controversy about identity first versus person first is
Speaker 3: what they call it. So lots of people like to say,
Speaker 3: you know, my son has autism rather than my autistic son.
Speaker 3: And the reason that, you know, the reason that there's
Speaker 3: that difference is is this idea that like some people
Speaker 3: feel like it undervalues the person to describe them as autistic.
Speaker 3: But to me, and to most people I think who
Speaker 3: are sort of engaged with modern autistic culture, we like
Speaker 3: to say autistic person because it doesn't suggest that this
Speaker 3: is something needing curing. You know, when you say you
Speaker 3: know my friend who has cancer. You know, we don't
Speaker 3: say my cancerous friend cancer needs to be cured, cancer
Speaker 3: needs to be removed. We don't like that. But but
Speaker 3: you know, I am a bald man. I'm not a
Speaker 3: man with baldness because I want to. I want to
Speaker 3: suggest that I don't need my baldness cured, that I
Speaker 3: that's part of my identity. I'm bald. So we really
Speaker 3: like to sort of we find it more affirming to
Speaker 3: say that we are autistic rather than like we have autism,
Speaker 3: as if it's a disease, as if it's a passenger.
Speaker 3: But it does go back and forth, and I generally
Speaker 3: will refer to somebody however they want to be referred to.
Speaker 3: But I do think that it's important to see it
Speaker 3: as like this isn't something that we want to get
Speaker 3: rid of, that we want to cure. It's something we
Speaker 3: want to be able to adapt our surroundings to, rather
Speaker 3: than having to have us adapt who we are to
Speaker 3: our surroundings all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about and write about the fear of
Speaker 2: coming out as autistic. Why is that important? I mean
Speaker 2: you're giving us a sense of it right now. But
Speaker 2: I mean I see just off the top of my
Speaker 2: head as a you know, declaration that I, if I'm autistic,
Speaker 2: have this disease. I keep using the word disease because
Speaker 2: as right, how is framed right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it changing? Are you seeing it change society society
Speaker 2: wise as less of a hindrance and more of just
Speaker 2: a functioning human.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I think we're seeing it, seeing
Speaker 3: it treated differently that way. I think we're we're starting
Speaker 3: to recognize that, you know, we have different strengths and
Speaker 3: different challenges than are typically anticipated, and that we're just
Speaker 3: you know, very unique, very individual. Which is part of
Speaker 3: the challenge is that you know, if you have like
Speaker 3: an autistic classroom, say, my challenge is going to be
Speaker 3: different than the next person's challenges. So it may not
Speaker 3: fit both of us. Uh, And that's it's hard to
Speaker 3: tailor things to the individual, like going into a job
Speaker 3: or something. But we are sort of starting to see
Speaker 3: that it's being treated more like a different experience. I
Speaker 3: have a friend who has a son who's autistic, and
Speaker 3: she just and he's very young, and she describes him
Speaker 3: to other kids who're going to meet him. He moves
Speaker 3: through the world differently, And I like that sort of
Speaker 3: take on it, that he moves through the world differently.
Speaker 3: He's paying attention to different things, He's experiencing things in
Speaker 3: a different way. Some things that would like scare the
Speaker 3: be Jesus out of other kids, he finds thrilling because
Speaker 3: he loves sensory input. And then some things that are
Speaker 3: really benign and kids might like, like you know, a
Speaker 3: dog might scare him because it's unpredictable and it's it's
Speaker 3: feels feels very wild to him. And so yeah, just
Speaker 3: a sort of different way of being. And I think
Speaker 3: we're really starting to see that. We're starting to see
Speaker 3: more books written this way, more things saying like, you know,
Speaker 3: you have to find some individual tools to make it
Speaker 3: through this world, Like you know, maybe you need a
Speaker 3: roommate for your life so that you don't have to
Speaker 3: work full time. Maybe both of you can work part
Speaker 3: time and support each other and you can find a
Speaker 3: different way of again moving through the world. World. Because
Speaker 3: we're in this system that assumes a lot of normativity
Speaker 3: that a lot of us don't come with.
Speaker 2: Would you say the book is on coping or adapting.
Speaker 3: I think it's yeah. I think it's on adapting because
Speaker 3: I think, you know, we touch on coping a little bit,
Speaker 3: which of course is important, but a lot of us,
Speaker 3: a very profound amount of us. I think it's something
Speaker 3: like ninety percent of autistics will develop a coping mechanism
Speaker 3: that you really don't want, such as dependence on alcohol,
Speaker 3: chemical addiction, eating disorders. I think now that I'm talking about,
Speaker 3: I think it's eighty eight percent of autistics will have
Speaker 3: either an addiction, an eating disorder, or you know, gambling addition,
Speaker 3: sex addiction, something that they use to sort of like
Speaker 3: deal with the anxiety and deal with the challenge. And
Speaker 3: like I myself had an eating disorder, and I thought
Speaker 3: that it was my only problem in life. I thought, man,
Speaker 3: if I can just get rid of this eating disorder,
Speaker 3: everything would be fine. And it turns out that really
Speaker 3: wasn't the case. I got rid of the eating disorder
Speaker 3: and found myself like anxious and nervous, and I and
Speaker 3: it was like I uncovered all of these places where
Speaker 3: I like you know, I was piling all my problems
Speaker 3: in my head there. So yeah, so coping can be unhealthy,
Speaker 3: and of course healthy coping mechanisms like you know, I
Speaker 3: go for a run every day. That really helps with anxiety.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm gonna be anxious my whole life.
Speaker 3: Where if I'm no, I'm going to a situation where
Speaker 3: I'm very anxious, like an airport or something else that's
Speaker 3: that's loud and crowded. I'll wear a compression shirt and
Speaker 3: that sort of constricts your blood vessels in a way,
Speaker 3: so your heart isn't working as hard, which decreases the
Speaker 3: physical aspects of anxiety and basically tricks your body into
Speaker 3: thinking this isn't as Yeah, it goes, oh this, this
Speaker 3: isn't as anxious inducing as I thought, and it's it's
Speaker 3: a wild feeling and a lot of people don't like
Speaker 3: a compression shirt, but I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Talk about mirroring. This is something that you bring
Speaker 2: up in your book, and to my mind, and I
Speaker 2: didn't read the whole book, but I read enough of
Speaker 2: it and to get a sense of it. It's adapting
Speaker 2: to society's norms, mirroring this. Somebody who you acknowledge as
Speaker 2: a healthy or a normal person. But I want you
Speaker 2: to describe it because I think this is a huge
Speaker 2: problem that people have.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we will try to sort of adapt our behaviors
Speaker 3: and traits to those that we see around us, and
Speaker 3: that means being very hyper aware of the way other
Speaker 3: people are interacting. And autistics, I always say, will will
Speaker 3: see a lot that neurotypicals don't, but we'll also miss
Speaker 3: a lot that neurotypicals don't, So they're you know, social
Speaker 3: norms are acting on a sort of like a certain level,
Speaker 3: and we try to behave in seek with those social norms.
Speaker 3: But it's not instinctive. It's very cognitively trying to make
Speaker 3: yourself do this. And you think everybody else is working
Speaker 3: the same way, but for the most part they have
Speaker 3: synced in with their mirror neurons to the same ways
Speaker 3: that everybody else has and ours are underactive. So we are,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of making ourselves go through these motions,
Speaker 3: and that means having a lot of anxiety. You know.
Speaker 3: They did an experiment where they showed typical college students
Speaker 3: and autistics college students these videos of just normal everyday interactions,
Speaker 3: and they found that the mirror neurons and the typical
Speaker 3: students would light up seeing these two people talking or
Speaker 3: flirting or whatever, and as if they were sort of
Speaker 3: like experiencing the same dynamic as the people in the video.
Speaker 3: But the autistics had their mentalizing that work light up.
Speaker 3: So they're mentalizing that work is trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what's going on. So instead of feeling like they're part
Speaker 3: of the scene, they're like, wait a minute, are they flirting?
Speaker 3: Are they not flirting? Is their tension here and there?
Speaker 3: So they're analyzing it and this leads to again a
Speaker 3: lot of anxiety because they're mentally working so hard. And
Speaker 3: the number that always comes up is that on average,
Speaker 3: an autistic person's brain is working forty two percent more
Speaker 3: energy than a typical brain. And that's again, our brains
Speaker 3: are made to they understand that they use more more
Speaker 3: of our energy than other mammals do, so they really
Speaker 3: want to not think as much as possible, so, you know,
Speaker 3: jumping all the way back down to top down processing.
Speaker 3: If you're able to see things through their umbrella concepts
Speaker 3: without having to consider everything individually, then you're processing a
Speaker 3: lot less. Where if you take eleven pennies and put
Speaker 3: them in somebody's hand. One person might go, I have
Speaker 3: eleven cents and see each penny as you know the
Speaker 3: concept of a penny, where some autistics might go, I
Speaker 3: have eleven different coins that are all very simil alert,
Speaker 3: but they have many differences, and to be aware of
Speaker 3: all those differences takes a lot more energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fantastic We're gonna take a short commercial
Speaker 2: break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we
Speaker 2: will return shortly with my guests today, Saul Smith discussing
Speaker 2: his lettuce book, The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery, will
Speaker 2: be right back with you. My guest today is Saul Smith.
Speaker 2: He is a developmental coach and also the author of
Speaker 2: The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery. This is working with
Speaker 2: neurodivergent people who see, perceive, and have different cognition than
Speaker 2: many of us. You get into some science in this book,
Speaker 2: and you apologize that to the reader that we don't
Speaker 2: want to get too full of size, but we do
Speaker 2: want to bring some of this information in because it's important.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I want you to describe,
Speaker 2: because it's I think it's critical, is what you call
Speaker 2: synaptic pruning and This is kind of what you just
Speaker 2: described where the autistic brain might overwork on a certain
Speaker 2: topic or an involvement or an issue. And I want
Speaker 2: you to describe why this is an important concept.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the brain is born with kind of like
Speaker 3: a Swiss army knife. I always say, it has lots
Speaker 3: of different parts that you may or may not use.
Speaker 3: There's lots of different synaptic connections, and it's sort of
Speaker 3: an over abundance. And a good example is there are
Speaker 3: sounds in languages that some languages don't use and some
Speaker 3: languages do. Everyone is born with the ability to like
Speaker 3: roll ours or to do you know, different sounds that
Speaker 3: happen in Mandarin that don't happen in English. But by
Speaker 3: the age of five, if you haven't been exposed to
Speaker 3: that sound, if you haven't been exposed to other people
Speaker 3: making that sound, you have taken that synapse out of
Speaker 3: your head. Your brain has removed it to use it,
Speaker 3: to use that those same neurons for something else. So
Speaker 3: it cuts away different parts of different connections that don't
Speaker 3: need to be used. So yeah, yeah, so this is.
Speaker 2: Not something that you willingly do. It's the brain automatic
Speaker 2: prunes the synapse with this memory and does it store
Speaker 2: it or does it just yeah, it just removes it entirely,
Speaker 2: and it'll use it for something else, you know.
Speaker 3: So like, for example, if you learn piano when you're
Speaker 3: seven and you stop practicing when you're eleven, eventually your
Speaker 3: brain will go up, let's take the piano parts out.
Speaker 3: We're not doing that, and uh but for many autistics
Speaker 3: even that won't go away. They'll they'll remember how to
Speaker 3: do that still. So yeah, so we prune away things
Speaker 3: that we essentially feel like we don't need based on
Speaker 3: the world we're seeing around us, and a lot of
Speaker 3: that is guided by those mirror neurons, which is the
Speaker 3: same sort of function like if you see somebody get
Speaker 3: punched in the stomach on television and you kind of
Speaker 3: feel it, or you, you know, pick a print, prick
Speaker 3: a palm with a pin and you feel it in
Speaker 3: your hand. Those are your mirror neurons acting up, and
Speaker 3: you're feeling what somebody else is feeling. You're going through
Speaker 3: what they're going through, and so, gosh, I'm sorry. This
Speaker 3: interesting fact that if you show again that let's take
Speaker 3: a pin and you prick somebody's palm with it, most
Speaker 3: people will feel that if you do it to an
Speaker 3: epe on television, most people will feel that. If you
Speaker 3: do it to a lizard, people don't feel it. We
Speaker 3: have no camaraderie with reptiles. It's weird anyway. So that's
Speaker 3: so this is how like intricate and weird brains are.
Speaker 3: So we're exercising different connections and if you don't exercise them,
Speaker 3: they'll usually go away. But autistics, since we have underactive
Speaker 3: mirror neurons, we're behaving in different ways and we have
Speaker 3: this abundance of connections that we may or may not use,
Speaker 3: but they are not trimmed away in the same in
Speaker 3: the same measures. So by the time you're an adult,
Speaker 3: there's different times where the trimming really happens. When you're three,
Speaker 3: when you're seven, when you're twelve or fourteen. By the
Speaker 3: time you're an adult, a autistic person will have something
Speaker 3: like thirty three percent more synaptic connections than a non
Speaker 3: autistic because the brain is still going like, well, we
Speaker 3: might have to use this, we may have to do
Speaker 3: this stuff because you're overthinking and overworking different functions in
Speaker 3: order to try to fit in instead of being very efficient.
Speaker 3: And so that's really what masking is is behaving trying
Speaker 3: to behave within the realm of the synaptic connections of
Speaker 3: people around you, but you still have these other ones
Speaker 3: happening that either you know, or out of sync or
Speaker 3: out of line or or whatever. So yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: I was just going to bring up masking. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: saying that the masking is not divulging that you have
Speaker 2: this memory still.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of It's like the way that I
Speaker 3: sort of put it is there's this notion of like
Speaker 3: how much of me is allowed in this room. You know,
Speaker 3: if you come into a room with people and you
Speaker 3: have to behave a certain way, like we all know
Speaker 3: for example, like we have a customer service voice, or
Speaker 3: if you're in a job interview, you behave a certain way, right,
Speaker 3: But most people, if they go to their friend's house
Speaker 3: or they go to a party or the hanging out
Speaker 3: with their family, they can behave however they want to
Speaker 3: and it's acceptable and it's cool. An autistic person is
Speaker 3: still doing that code coding. They're still trying to behave
Speaker 3: a certain way because themselves it's a much sort of
Speaker 3: a bigger experience of who they feel like they are,
Speaker 3: and they basically try to match the expectations of people
Speaker 3: around them, where the typical way to form a personality
Speaker 3: is that your personality sort of gets finalized in your
Speaker 3: early teens and you have trimmed away things and you've
Speaker 3: exercised certain connections and then that's kind of who you are.
Speaker 3: And you know, personality scientists they have a lot of
Speaker 3: fun with theories about what a personality is, but essentially,
Speaker 3: a personality helps us to connect with other people and
Speaker 3: work with other people, and the autistics have to do
Speaker 3: this very manually, you know. It Really it feels a
Speaker 3: lot like you're trying to fit into another culture. So
Speaker 3: if you were going into a party with a lot
Speaker 3: of Australians and you were trying to convince them that
Speaker 3: you're from Australia too, that's what it would be like,
Speaker 3: you know, and like you might be good at it,
Speaker 3: you might not. You might try to pick a really
Speaker 3: remote region of Australia where you're from, so nobody's going
Speaker 3: to relate to it. But it's definitely, you know, trying
Speaker 3: to fit in rather than just fitting in, and that's
Speaker 3: sort of difficult just because people are very narrow in
Speaker 3: general with what they see as fitting in and there's
Speaker 3: a you know, we usually hang out with people a
Speaker 3: lot like us, and there are very few autistic spaces
Speaker 3: that I've been to where there are a lot of
Speaker 3: autistics together at once. And a good example is for me,
Speaker 3: as a Rubik's cube competition my daughter. My daughter competes
Speaker 3: Rubik's cube and she's very very good. She can solve
Speaker 3: a Rubk's cube in six seconds and I know, right,
Speaker 3: and she still hasn't, you know, even taken third place
Speaker 3: in any of these things. But you you come into
Speaker 3: this space with all of these autistics of different ages,
Speaker 3: and their behavior in how they interact with each other
Speaker 3: is really various. Like there's just a lot of different
Speaker 3: things happening in that room, and yet everybody's really getting
Speaker 3: along because they have this one thing that we're all
Speaker 3: talking about and that we're all relating to and that
Speaker 3: we're all comparing things with, and they're all you know,
Speaker 3: working on different kinds of cubes at different times, and
Speaker 3: it's really it's really nice and exciting. And it's the
Speaker 3: one place where I've seen, you know, my daughter, for example,
Speaker 3: just be able to relax and be herself and make
Speaker 3: lots of friends, and she feels like in control there
Speaker 3: because she's not editing herself, she's not trying to fit
Speaker 3: it into any sort of box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating. Your book deals with a lot of your
Speaker 2: life coaching, and this is also something that you do.
Speaker 2: How do you work with somebody who has social issues,
Speaker 2: who is having trouble integrating And it could be a
Speaker 2: variety of topics. Could be a student who's trying to
Speaker 2: integrate into a new school. It could be as you
Speaker 2: say that, this is a situation where someone's got a
Speaker 2: new job. They and they want to you know, integrate
Speaker 2: and work with the new companions, the work partners and
Speaker 2: so forth and so on. What are your suggestions? How
Speaker 2: do you go about do you evaluate the individual? Are
Speaker 2: there are there some tried and true programs that you
Speaker 2: integrate into your teaching.
Speaker 3: God, that's a good question. I would say that for
Speaker 3: the most part, it is very much very individual, which
Speaker 3: is makes it very difficult, right because we're all kind
Speaker 3: of experiencing different things in different places and we have
Speaker 3: to try and see how that individual like. Basically, you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes you do have to ask. Sometimes your job might
Speaker 3: be in danger if you don't. And in order to
Speaker 3: get to the next step, you know, we would love
Speaker 3: to be able to say, hey, I'm autistic, so let's
Speaker 3: be accepting of that. There's nothing saying that that that'll work, right,
Speaker 3: So sometimes we do have to sort of like try
Speaker 3: and read the room differently, but with the understanding that
Speaker 3: if you're going to do this, you know, maybe be
Speaker 3: looking for another job, or find lots and lots of
Speaker 3: ways that you can keep doing things for yourself outside
Speaker 3: of your work so that you're able to use that
Speaker 3: bandwidth and function at home, because a lot of us
Speaker 3: get to a point where we get home from work
Speaker 3: and we're just so exhausted. We don't have any hobbies
Speaker 3: or interests or social life because we're just exhausted from
Speaker 3: trying to act like everybody else. So there's lots of
Speaker 3: different ways to sort of try and balance things out
Speaker 3: and change your environment. But in general, you know, as
Speaker 3: far as like common tools of how to deal with
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, yeah, it's I think that the
Speaker 3: first thing that a lot of us have to do
Speaker 3: is really reconcile our identity, really take a look back
Speaker 3: at the way that autism has influenced our development, our growth,
Speaker 3: our history, and hopefully get rid of a lot of
Speaker 3: shame that may have come with that, a lot of
Speaker 3: shame of our you know, job history, social histories, and
Speaker 3: be able to feel more comfortable as who we are.
Speaker 3: But that's it's a it's a long road.
Speaker 2: Mm. Do you think AI can help autism?
Speaker 3: And maybe a lot of people are working on that.
Speaker 2: I'm curious to know what your feelings are on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what what? Well, what I've seen with that? And
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I'm not a huge fan of AI
Speaker 3: in general, and I know that we but but it's
Speaker 3: not a general thing, right, Like it's used for very
Speaker 3: individual things, but we do see it as a in
Speaker 3: general like I you know, student rights are essay and AI.
Speaker 3: It's it's gross to me because why go to school?
Speaker 3: But you know, but on the other hand, if you
Speaker 3: have a lot to say to your boss, and you
Speaker 3: know that after so much time, they're going to feel
Speaker 3: like you're just ranting, they're gonna like you have a
Speaker 3: lot of details, a lot of things to say. You
Speaker 3: could write it out and ask AI. You know, I'm autistic,
Speaker 3: this is what I want to this is what I
Speaker 3: want to communicate to my boss. How can I make
Speaker 3: it work for a neurotypical person? Who's higher in the
Speaker 3: hierarchy than I am, and it might be able to
Speaker 3: give you some good tips or trim it down or something.
Speaker 3: And it may feel to the autistic person like, wow,
Speaker 3: what this is saying doesn't really capture what I mean.
Speaker 3: But sometimes it does, it just doesn't really to us.
Speaker 3: So there is that possibility for sure to be able
Speaker 3: to sort of use it as a translator. And I've
Speaker 3: tried to build some but it's just it's been very
Speaker 3: mixed because again it's very individual. So it's possible that
Speaker 3: you know, there there could be sometime in the future
Speaker 3: a way to sort of solve some aspects of this
Speaker 3: communication problem by having the AI be very closely trained
Speaker 3: to the individual and understand them and then try to
Speaker 3: make that understood to somebody else. But yeah, in the meantime,
Speaker 3: there's you know, people like me who try to do that.
Speaker 2: Excellent. The books call The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery.
Speaker 2: My guess has been Saul Smith. As we conclude, don't
Speaker 2: you think it would be helpful if someone who suspects
Speaker 2: their autistic does have some form of diagnostics, does have
Speaker 2: a either a test or some form of professional evaluation,
Speaker 2: so that they have a ground to work with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think it's a good idea for people
Speaker 3: to have some sort of an outside measure, and like,
Speaker 3: there are lots of different online you know, quizzes and
Speaker 3: things that can help you sort of self assessed. One
Speaker 3: of the best ones I've seen for late Die knows autistics.
Speaker 3: It's called the cat Q c at dash Q and
Speaker 3: it's called the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire, and I think
Speaker 3: it's it's on a website called Rethinking Autism, and it's
Speaker 3: it's very good. It's very good at sort of like
Speaker 3: where like the normal DSM feels very clinical and it's
Speaker 3: from the outside. The CATQ really tries to get at
Speaker 3: things that you may be experiencing, more like how you
Speaker 3: experience social situations and things. And it's very it's very very.
Speaker 2: Good, fantastic. Give us your website. It's professorsol dot com.
Speaker 2: So o L dot com.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, professorsoul dot com. It's like home base.
Speaker 3: I've got, you know, from there, one on one coaching,
Speaker 3: and I also have a coaching community where people can
Speaker 3: come to support groups. We have like twenty two different
Speaker 3: support groups every week. Now. I have a lot of
Speaker 3: different leaders who come in and I lead four or
Speaker 3: five of them every week and it's it's been a
Speaker 3: really great thing to sort of like relate to each
Speaker 3: other as well. And then yeah, one on one coaching
Speaker 3: is that professor soul as well, and that of course
Speaker 3: gives you the sort of individual attention you may feel
Speaker 3: like you need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Also, I want our listeners to know that you
Speaker 2: have a great YouTube channel where you have these I
Speaker 2: want to call them short vignettes of statements, but I mean,
Speaker 2: is that how you designed it? Because I couldn't find
Speaker 2: anything more than like a couple of minute long I
Speaker 2: call them because they're little themes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there'll be a little like you know, maybe one
Speaker 3: to three minute things. Sometimes they'll go a little over
Speaker 3: that on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram to sort of try to
Speaker 3: try to cover yeah, one sort of concept at a time.
Speaker 3: And then I do have like much more long long
Speaker 3: form content, like like an online course that really discusses
Speaker 3: some of this stuff in more depth. And that's again
Speaker 3: on my website and in the community. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a free resource for Comuity members as well. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's in general, you know, I try to try to
Speaker 3: make things for the the adhd TikTok attention span of
Speaker 3: around three minutes. It's a challenge because I'm very verbose,
Speaker 3: I'm not very efficient with what I want to say.
Speaker 2: I love it. What do you see the future, Assaul?
Speaker 2: What do you What do you feel with AI in
Speaker 2: getting involved with more awareness? What? What does the future hold?
Speaker 3: I hope that the future holds more understanding for everybody
Speaker 3: as an individual, for everybody's individual talents and challenges, and
Speaker 3: for all of us to be able to find a
Speaker 3: way to you know, contribute and feel included in in
Speaker 3: whatever our culture is. But basically an expansion, an expansion
Speaker 3: of what is considered normal and to have autistic folks feel,
Speaker 3: you know, grow up feeling normal, grow up feeling like,
Speaker 3: you know, I have a certain toolkit that other people
Speaker 3: don't have, and I don't have to hide to the
Speaker 3: things that are different about me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic. Hey much success on this, Thank you book
Speaker 2: and thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: I forgot to mention that this book, The Autistics Guide
Speaker 2: to Self Discovery, just came out. You can get it
Speaker 2: on Amazon. It's also audible wherever you get your books locally.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you can find it. It's a New World Library,
Speaker 2: which is a California publisher, but they're distributed by major companies. Hey,
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Speaker 2: All right, that's it for this program. And when I
Speaker 2: think my guest today's Soul Smith in his new book,
Speaker 2: The Autistics Guide to Self Discovery, as always a team
Speaker 2: of guiltour Mark Foster and Feya Bavar. You guys rock
Speaker 2: all right, take care of you will and we will
Speaker 2: talk to you next time,