#29 Typically Different

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[clip] No matter where you are on this spectrum of ASD to NT, maybe there are some things, like

(00:22):
some people can work hard to get all the way to appearing NT, neurotypical behaviors.
They can be that.
Some people maybe start farther on the autism side and for all of their efforts that they
do in their life, maybe they can only make it halfway.
Like that's just how far they can go.

(00:43):
They can't get all the way to the other side.
And only because they only have 80 years to do it in.
If they only had 120 years, they would make it all the way.
[introduction] Welcome to our podcast where my daughter and I discuss very important topics that affect

(01:05):
our lives and perhaps yours as well.
And so we welcome you to join us in this.
We're just going to try to critically think through a concept that is affecting us.
And as we do this, hopefully you'll find some value and enjoyment as we do.
Thank you for joining us.
[main conversation] My question for you is, do you have a minute to talk?

(01:27):
Yep.
Yep, I do.
All right.
What I'd like to approach today is an initials NT.
Do you know what that stands for?
NT.
I think I know a couple of different things for this.
What's the one that I'm thinking of?
What else could you come up with?

(01:47):
It has something to do with energy work, I think.
It's not coming to me.
No, no.
I think I heard it at the chiropractor's office.
Yeah.
A capital NT stands for neurotypical.
If you're a neurotypical and then you've got the opposite of that is neurodiverse.
So I'm the spectrum of personality or personality, maybe it's not personality, it's societal

(02:13):
functioning.
You're either neurotypical or you're neurodiverse in some way.
Do they say ND for neurodiverse?
No, they use the other term for that.
ASD, which is autism spectrum disorder.
You're either autism spectrum disorder or you're neurotypical.
Do they really do that?
That's a neurodiverse.

(02:33):
Yeah, that's a neurodiverse relationship, someone on the ASD spectrum and someone on
the neurotypical spectrum.
So maybe the way the psychologists talk about it.
It's NT and ASD.
Those are the two relationships that give you a neurodiverse relationship.
Okay.
The autism spectrum is a spectrum.
Neurodiverse, neurotypical may be a spectrum as well.

(02:56):
They never talk about that spectrum though.
They only talk about the autism spectrum.
So that's what we want to talk about today.
Is there one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Are there clinical professionals that say NT and ASD or are these common outside?

(03:17):
Could someone just go up and say, you're so NT.
I can't believe you said that.
That's just so NT of you.
Right.
In order to use that as a joke, you'd have to understand what NT is, I guess.
It is being talked about more.
As I look through that, I think the word first came about in 2003, neurotypical.

(03:37):
Oh, really?
So it's a fairly new description of the way people operate.
Of normal is what they say, right?
Of normal, yeah.
Okay.
We've talked about the...
Oh, who is it?
John Gray, men are from Mars, women from Venus in the 80s, where he brought that out.
They just defined it further and it was 2003, I think, when neurotypical came out.

(04:02):
I don't have the reference for that.
And autism spectrum disorder, they've been a lot more focused on this.
Let's start with the word itself, neurotypical.
We have a general idea of what typical means.
What would typical mean and how is it important?
Typical means something that you'd find most commonly, like the typical use of a stove

(04:26):
is for cooking food, but maybe you could use it for making crafts or starting a fire or...
For warming your house.
Yeah.
So typical is most common, really.
Yeah.
So there are other ancillary uses.
There's other things on the spectrum of that item.
Yeah.

(04:47):
There are typical uses and there are disparate uses, other things you can do.
Atypical uses?
Atypical.
See, and that's why they came up with autism spectrum disorder.
That may have been what had changed in 2003.
I remember that because it used to be called atypical syndrome.
Okay.
But that had a more negative connotation to it.

(05:08):
So they turned the word autism spectrum instead of atypical.
Huh.
Neurotypical and atypical.
So that made more sense.
That made sense as they were starting to define the things.
But then they said, no, it's not atypical people because there's clearly a bad connotation
to that.
Okay.
Yeah.

(05:28):
Autism isn't as negatively connoted.
So the professionals decided atypical wouldn't be a good word to use.
But atypical uses, that's really what you have.
So that's still the typical neurotypical spectrum has the common things that people do and then
maybe the less common things, atypical, less common things people do.
Yeah.

(05:49):
And they've divided that spectrum.
Yeah.
Atypical does feel like wrong.
Yeah.
There's the right and the wrong.
Yeah.
You're not using this tool the right way if you're using it in an atypical manner or something
like that.
Yeah.
Or thinking out of the box.
You're using it thinking out of the box.

(06:10):
You're either using it as a genius as no one's ever thought of doing this before and it makes
sense and I'm going to do it anyway.
Yeah.
But from that standpoint of genius, it's atypical.
People don't normally do it.
And I relate that to everything that's happening in the government with the way Trump has taken
the presidency and doing all these atypical things.

(06:33):
He's using tariffs as a bargaining tool and not as a trade war.
Those atypical things, they're out of the box thinking and that's the way it's been
described that was what he's doing, how he's describing it to his press secretary.
So atypical isn't necessarily bad unless your society says it is.

(06:53):
Unless someone tells you that you've got to think that way about it.
Right.
There's still 40% of the country or all those people that are thinking that Trump is still
a fascist that believe it's the wrong way to go, wrong thing.
No matter what you do, it's not what we're doing.
And so you've got that status in neurotypical is where do you start?

(07:19):
What's your perspective?
Depending on your perspective, everything is atypical.
Right.
Yeah.
Your paradigm, how you're looking at it.
That's typical.
Typical, it's a subjective idea then.
Can typical be objective?
Can we get an objective, typical item or something?

(07:41):
I don't think that we can.
Okay, what about objective items?
Scientifically observed typical behavior of something, could a second scientist see it
and not see the same typical behavior?

(08:01):
Could they be like, this is like the moon orbiting around the earth.
We know it's typical behavior.
Anything other than what it usually does is atypical behavior.
Could another scientist look at that and not see that typical behavior?
Right.

(08:22):
And I have looked at things in regard to the moon.
So if we use that as the object, all of us, typically people on the earth will see the
moon orbiting the earth and see that the same face faces the earth.
It doesn't rotate.
So the same face faces the earth the whole time.
If you look at that, so I listened to or watched a statement of the fact that the moon does

(08:44):
not circle the earth.
So if you look at it from the perspective of the sun, the moon is in a sine wave.
It's in a wave around the sun.
It orbits the sun.
It doesn't orbit the earth.
And it orbits the sun and it spins in that orbit around the sun.
So it does have a rotation around the sun, but it doesn't have a rotation around the

(09:07):
earth.
Interesting.
Because it's circling the earth every 30 days.
It depends on your perspective as to whether it's typical or atypical.
You can say typically the moon orbits the earth and typically the moon doesn't rotate.
But if you change your perspective, definitely the moon does not orbit the earth from that

(09:29):
perspective and it does rotate.
Okay.
So if it did actually begin to orbit the earth and not rotate, then that would be atypical
behavior for the moon.
For the moon.
Yeah.
From our perspective, it's doing that.
So that is typical.
So both are true.

(09:49):
Both things are true.
Okay.
Yeah.
It doesn't rotate and it doesn't...
Yeah.
It rotates and does not orbit the earth and it orbits the earth and does not rotate at
the same time.
Interesting.
From these two different vantage points.
Right.
So that's astrophysics, that astronomical factors that exist.
Okay.
So typical depends on where you're from.

(10:11):
I was thinking about breathing.
So something just simple that typically if you're alive, you are breathing.
Right.
Or if you're breathing, you are alive.
Yes.
Or something in relation to that.
Generally, your breath stops, your chest stops breathing in and out.
They have to have...
What are those machines called that keep your lungs going?

(10:33):
A ventilator.
You have to have that going and your brain dies last.
So maybe brain activity.
And that gets us to the next question here.
So is there a typical way to breathe or a typical breathing that humans do or animals
do?
Yes.
You just breathe wrong.
And so you can breathe wrong.

(10:53):
Yeah.
And that's where you go away from the negative thing of atypical.
I mean, some people's pulses are just a lot slower than other people's.
Some people have like their regular blood pressure is just different than everyone else's.
Some people have organs like their heart is on the opposite side of their body than everyone

(11:17):
else.
And that's atypical, but it's not wrong.
Yeah.
Because it works.
It's just a difference.
Right.
Is... mouth breathers.
I mean, that's a slight, that's a jab you can tell.
Yeah.
And that's obviously wrong.
Yeah.
Anybody who breathes with their mouth is actually, actually wrong.

(11:38):
And what else do you know about them?
You know that they're stupid, they're dumb, they can't do anything.
They have decreased brain power because they're not getting enough oxygen to their brain.
It's a derogatory term.
It's a label for someone.
But I mean, I think I'm in a position from my perspective that I'm certain that anyone

(12:01):
who begins mouth breathing as a child is going to have issues when they're older.
That's what I believe.
Issues, personality or health issues?
Health issues.
And maybe personality is a result of the health issues.
I mean, everything affects everything.

(12:23):
Right.
From my perspective, I don't think it matters one bit.
No.
Whether you breathe through your mouth or your nose, we all breathe through our mouth
all the time.
I mean, talking, talking, I mean, obviously you can't make sound unless you use your lips
and your tongue.
Yeah.
And your breath has to go out your mouth.
And most of the time it comes back in your mouth because when you're in the middle of

(12:44):
the conversation, you can't get enough wind through your nose to say the next sentence.
Yeah.
I mean, that is true.
You are accurate with that.
But what about when you're not talking?
And what about when you're sleeping?
Like the posture of your mouth where you hold your tongue, everything affects how your mouth,

(13:05):
your jaw develops, how your airway is open or closed or I mean, all of that is affected
by what they say is mouth breathing, but really it's just poor mouth posture.
Yeah.
It's a, yeah, I mean, it's something that I'm in the middle of learning a bit about,

(13:28):
but just-
You're thinking about that.
I'm thinking about that.
Yeah.
Because my kids have that issue.
You know, snoring.
Yeah.
It does cause snoring, having bad mouth posture.
There's a device that you use, I don't know, I've got a couple of them that, a mouthpiece
that you put in that puts your jaw, your lower jaw forward.

(13:50):
Yeah.
And I use that for a while to stop snoring, to try to curb the snoring because anytime
I lay on my back, I snore.
It's just, your mouth drops into that place.
And have you found a way or do you believe that you can fix that without some kind of
device?
I think so.
I think if you train your tongue to go in the right spot during the day, then it will

(14:15):
naturally be there during the night and then you won't have the jaw issues.
It's muscle memory then.
You're working on muscle memory consciously through the day, getting the muscles of your
tongue and your jaw to sit a certain way.
I think so, yeah.
And if you can get that muscle memory to work, it's going to work while you're asleep too.

(14:35):
Yeah.
That's a good thesis.
Maybe it works.
You'll see.
Yeah.
Good test.
We'll see how my kids' faces look.
Are they going to look more like their dads or like their moms?
That's the thing.
With a chin, protruding chin.
Because that's what I think you have to do to get your tongue out of the way is your

(14:55):
chin has to come forward.
Uh-huh.
But do your teeth match up?
So that was the problem I had with using that device.
It put my chin out and I didn't snore while my chin was forward, but my teeth didn't match
up.
Yeah.
When you wake up, your teeth are in the wrong spot.
Yeah.
My muscle memory of my jaw from being there all night put my teeth not to match and I

(15:17):
had to push it really hard to get my teeth to match.
I'd have to push my chin back and I felt it under my ears and my mandibular joint.
Oh, yeah.
It was just hard to get my mouth working again the next day.
That's how the orthodontic rubber bands work.
Like when they have you band your braces at night and then you wake up and you're like,
well, I can't put my jaw back to where it was before.

(15:39):
Yeah, right.
Because they're trying to pull something a different way.
That's typical.
So now we get to the, I want to move to the neuro side of it, neurotypical.
What would be typical in brain activity?
How do you even find that?
How do you think people have found it?
Is it just based on observation what those observing have written down to be most common

(16:09):
behaviors in people?
Okay, so behaviors.
In your observation, you have to observe the behavior of that brain, of the body around
that brain and what that body does, right?
Yeah.
You're saying generally your thinking shows up in your behaviors and your actions.
So what you do is a product of how you think.

(16:31):
So if your thinking is typical of most other people, and again, we're going to relate this
to the perspective, in the perspective of what you're working with.
If you happen to be in a religious society, if you happen to be in a cult, let's say,
and they have a special way of thinking about this comet that's coming, you're typical in
that society if you have actions that revere the comet or whatever it is that they're after.

(16:58):
Yeah.
That would be atypical behavior for anyone outside of the cult.
Yeah.
And everyone outside that's looking at them, it's atypical, you know, but inside that cult,
atypical would be someone who says, I don't think you guys know what you're talking about,
you know.
Or, I believe in God, not the Hale-Bopp comet.

(17:19):
Huh.
I'm just remembering that there was a cult there in California a while ago.
Oh, yeah.
Maybe 30 years ago.
I don't know.
It might be interesting, it might not.
But the neurology, the way the brain functioned with people in a society, typical is identified
based on the way that society is operating.

(17:42):
Maybe there's a difference in the neurotypical status of a Canadian as opposed to an American.
Could there be?
Cultures.
Cultures have different typical behaviors.
Yeah, because you can take your culture, culture to another country, but that's typical for
that.
And I don't know if it's common, you know, the traffic laws are obeyed pedestrians.

(18:06):
As what I've noticed in my family, I guess, is those of a Mexican culture will walk across
the street anywhere.
And those of American culture will go to the corner and the crosswalk.
Have you noticed that at all?
I haven't noticed the demographics of the people that do it.

(18:26):
It really depends on the street too, like I think.
I don't place them in demographic categories.
I place them in stupid or smart categories.
That other side of the neurotypical thing.
So it's not cultural, but it is still neurotypical and atypical.
Yeah, so like on the 50 mile per hour boulevard, anyone that tries to cross in the middle there

(18:54):
is stupid.
But on my street where there's like the highest traffic you get is only at when everyone's
getting out of school, then I mean, definitely cross the street in the middle.
You don't need to go to the crosswalk.
Anywhere.
Yeah, okay.
It's situational, but yeah, so...
Yes, you're looking at the 50 mile an hour street you're talking about is actually a

(19:17):
40 mile an hour speed limit that everyone drives 50.
Everyone drives 50 anyway.
And I know somebody, one of my music teacher in high school, her son got hit and died on
that street crossing in the middle anyway.
And so maybe that might have caused me to think stupid, always go to the crosswalk on

(19:39):
that street.
Because he was not Hispanic.
He was not Hispanic, no.
Right.
But he was a teenager and possibly, I don't know what the circumstances are, but yeah.
I didn't even know that.
Yeah, it happened when I was in after, it was after I had left the high school.

(20:01):
But it was soon after, I think.
Wow.
Okay.
So the neuro side, nature and nurture idea of neurology, neurology just how the brain
works in regard to typical, neurotypical.
It can be trained then.
Do we believe it can be trained or is it nurture only and cannot be trained?

(20:25):
So the way the brain works, the neuro part of this neurotypical, is that changeable or
is that rigid?
If it's part of nurture, that means it's you are who you are, you're ASD.
Or if it's changeable, then you're on the typical side and you can adjust.
Can we change our brains?
Brains, the elasticity of brains, maybe the...

(20:49):
Elasticity, plasticity of our brain structure.
Yeah.
Our brains are a muscle, maybe.
I mean, you exercise it by thinking.
Well, you do exercise it by thinking.
It's not the same way as you would your constricting muscles.
Right.
But it does work that way.
Yeah.
I am inclined to think that nothing is nature.

(21:14):
Nothing is just how it is no matter what.
Okay.
I mean, you can't grow another toe once one is...
I mean, even if you were born, if you were born without all 10 toes, if you only had
nine, you can't think your foot into growing another one.
So that's nature, but that's not genetics.

(21:36):
That's just something that happened.
So where we're talking about neurotypical and ASD.
Yeah.
I'm wondering if there is a definite person doesn't have a toe in his brain.
You don't have that part.
So you have to be termed ASD and there's no way you're ever going to get that brain
capacity to be typical.

(21:58):
Okay.
Typical is 10 toes, a nine-toed brain.
Is that what they're saying in this description of neurotypical and ASD?
Is ASD a nine-toed brain?
When we're talking about that, I think, yes, there is times when someone is autistic and

(22:19):
you can be trained to act a little bit more normal, but you're not going to be more typical.
So we had that discussion about, I want to do something that I know I'm not going to
do it.
You're not going to be.
And we rolled down to the end that that was a values-based statement.
Yeah.

(22:40):
I don't think autism is in someone's control to have or not have.
Interesting.
I think...
Okay.
So if you have a nine-toed brain, yeah, that's what you're saying.
If your brain is only nine toes, you're missing one, you're not going to have a 10-toed brain.
You can't change that.
But can you change your behavior?
Is there enough plasticity or elasticity in the rest of your brain to function if you

(23:03):
value that functioning enough?
Yeah.
Like you could have a prosthetic for that 10th toe.
Yeah, a toe put on.
And it wear it under your sock, no one would know.
And no one would know.
And like if it was your big toe, it would affect your gait.
But if you had a prosthetic big toe, then you could walk normal again, but you still
don't have that toe.

(23:24):
Yeah.
Well, and I don't know, maybe you could do a prosthetic toe that would connect it to
the bone structure.
I don't know that you can do that.
If your big toe is gone, you're going to be missing function.
Yeah.
The functionality of that toe to push off, if it's just a...
We're not medical doctors.
We have no idea.
But I imagine that it is possible.

(23:45):
You know, the most common prosthetic, if someone had breast cancer, and to look normal, for
everyone else out there, it looks normal.
There's no problem.
Right.
Yeah, it doesn't do what they used to do.
Right.
And to anyone else, it's typical.

(24:06):
That person has made an adjustment that allows them to be in the typical stance rather than
being atypical.
Yeah.
So, from the mindset...
I had a conversation yesterday.
I happened to be talking with someone whose wife is a registered nurse in the psychological

(24:27):
field.
Oh, really?
They have nurses for that?
Yeah.
Huh.
And I know a couple of them.
But this one, I asked him, because they've been married for, what, 40 years now, and
he's been along with her.
I wasn't talking to her, but I asked him, I said, what's your take on this neurotypical
and ASD thing?

(24:48):
Because they've only come up recently.
You do have to learn new things in the psychological field.
She's going to be worth...
We were talking about her...
What do you call that?
When you contract out for the services you know, you're using your knowledge into retirement,
she can continue to help people and contract her knowledge and training and things.

(25:08):
But you have to keep up on what's changing in the world, like this neurotypical thing.
And I said, what do you know about that?
Because I knew we were going to talk about this subject today.
So yesterday he said...
So you asked about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He said, I don't really know much, but apparently it doesn't mean...
This is the antidote he came up with.

(25:29):
Doesn't mean anything as far as money, because Elon Musk is doing very well.
Huh, yes.
He brought up the fact that everyone knows that Elon Musk is not typical.
Right.
Is that right?
So you know that he's got some autism spectrum, some disorder that allows him to, you know,

(25:53):
one of the main things, walk on the stage with President Trump in a very posh setting
and jump up and down and show his midriff .as his t-shirt goes up over his belly.
I mean, who would do that?
Yeah.
I think that it's not super obvious though.

(26:13):
I think, I mean, it's super obvious to people who are looking for it.
Well, no, and even if you're not looking for it, if you see some guy walk on the stage
that the president of the United States invited to come up, you know, and those are all high
decorum events.
Right.
You're going to be at your best behavior.
And he comes up and does that.

(26:33):
So that's one thing.
Just what I know, I've never met Elon Musk, probably never will, but everyone knows him,
knows who he is and his characteristics.
The first time I heard him speak, I said, there's no way that that's Elon Musk.
He can't even talk.
And he does talk.
He says everything he needs to say, but it is an atypical speech pattern.

(26:57):
Not like Christopher Walken, not something that's really cool or not some British accent.
Everything he says makes total sense, but it's not connected together the same way that
you would do it if you're a Jordan Peterson.
If someone didn't know the label autism, if they didn't know neurodivergent and neurotypical,

(27:20):
they might see Elon Musk and think that guy is really comfortable in his skin and he doesn't
care what anybody thinks.
And then they start placing like negative things on that, like negative judgments.
They start condemning him for how he is, or they start applauding how he is like, wow,
I wish I was like that.

(27:41):
I wish I could feel that comfortable in big crowds in front of a lot of people.
After Elon did his throwing his heart out thing and everybody was saying it was a Nazi
salute.
I was having a conversation with a group of people in a chat room kind of thing in a group.

(28:05):
And one person is very concerned about that happening.
And someone said, well, he's autistic.
So that's just something that's just going to happen is he's just kind of eccentric like
that.
He's obviously autistic.
And the person that was concerned was like, what, he is?

(28:29):
I had no clue.
So it's not that everyone can see this.
This adult didn't have any clue that Elon was autistic.
She just thought he was deranged or evil and automatically doing things that were harmful
to society.
Yes.

(28:49):
Yeah.
And maybe you only know about that because you start thinking about it.
Probably people in the 80s don't know right now.
And in the 80s didn't know about men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
I mean, that's been part of my life since he wrote it, since John Gray wrote it.
I've been thinking about those concepts all along.
Anyone who wasn't on that bandwagon, who doesn't know that, who that's not their society, this

(29:14):
is all atypical.
Yeah.
It's talking psychological people, how they act.
That's weird.
That's not typical to me.
We're neurotypical, you're atypical because you're thinking about psychological garbage.
Nobody needs that.
The other thing, Elon Musk, when he took his son with him to Congress, to his visit of

(29:37):
the Capitol and his business meetings, you're going to high level business meetings.
It's not in the decorum to bring a three or four year old, I don't know how old his son
is.
Yeah.
But you're walking him through with all the senators and congressmen and everybody and
sitting in meetings with him and actually operating business.

(29:59):
You don't take your kids to business.
No.
To work.
No, you don't.
That's either you say that's a bad thing that he did that, or it's admirable.
He doesn't care.
He cares more about his son than he does about the work that he's doing or that someone is
going to worry that his boy is there at work with him.

(30:22):
He cares more about his son than he cares about people's opinion of what he's doing
with his son.
Right.
I've never heard him describe why he took his boy there or why it was.
Maybe he's just not rich enough to have a babysitter stay home with him.
That's the thing.
He could not get any childcare.
Right.
Most people say, I got to bring my kid because I can't afford childcare.

(30:46):
Where are we going to do with him?
I say, you got to have a daycare at your work because people can't afford childcare.
Why would this billionaire not be able to afford childcare?
Right.
But it's got to be another reason than that.
It has to be that he cares more for his son and he cares for the value of the people that
he's meeting with.
I've got my son with me.
It's just what I'm going to do.

(31:06):
Thank you.
He's not going to be a bother.
I'll take care of him.
He's raising his boy the right way so he can be in those high decorum settings without
creating a ruckus.
Unlike me when we tried to go to a movie and you were young and your sister was young and
we got kicked out because you guys would not sit in your seat.

(31:31):
Did we?
You were up and down the aisles and they finally said, you're going to have to either not be
here or take your children out.
The theater did receive complaints about that and said, you're not bothering everyone else
in the theater.
So you need to leave.
So we left.
Of course, it was entirely my fault.

(31:51):
Yes.
You should never have brought young children to the theater.
Right.
For a movie that they weren't going to be totally enthralled in.
I have no idea what the movie was.
I don't remember this experience.
I always thought the first movie that I ever have gone to was Lion King.

(32:12):
Lion King.
That was the pivotal movie.
You and I went and saw together.
Yeah.
I always thought that was the first one I've ever seen in a movie theater.
But now I know my whole life is a lie.
I've been to a movie before then.
You don't even remember what it is.
So I can't write this down.
My first movie was...

(32:34):
Was...
What?
Yeah, I have no idea what it was because we didn't get to see the whole thing.
You didn't even get to see the whole thing.
And it wasn't probably important.
We just were going to go to a movie, so we went to a movie.
Any movie between when I was two...
Okay, so...[sister]
I was walking, right?
We were both up and down the aisles.

(32:55):
Yeah, you were both walking.
Yeah.
But it was before [brother] was born.
It was possibly before that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I've got a narrow data timeframe that I can...
I think I can figure it out, which was my actual first movie.
Yeah.

(33:15):
And so your mother was probably pregnant.
And so she wasn't going to run after you or try to control you.
It was my job to control you.
And I didn't do it at all.
That's right.
And you weren't...
We hadn't had enough experience.
Like Jordan Peterson talks about when you take your kids to dinner, they should be controlled.
That's the other thing that is typical of cultures, Hispanics.

(33:41):
The complaint that your mother has quite often about that is that they don't control their
kids in the store.
They're always running here and there all over the place.
So if a mother's...
You don't have control of those.
The Hispanic kids are just running.
And I don't know that that's typical.
It seems to be.
Yeah.
It seems to be.
Yep.

(34:02):
And before neurotypical or ASD, clearly, Elon Musk was on the other side of it, but you've
indicated that.
And that's what I'm trying to roll to or what I'm more moving towards in my thinking on
it is that it doesn't matter if you're on the spectrum.
You can still have success, whatever your success, whatever the definition of your success

(34:25):
is, you can still be a productive person.
I have seen on YouTube, there's this workplace that does accommodations for an autistic employee,
makes it so that they can still work and earn money.

(34:46):
What they're doing is sorting products to be placed on the shelf at the store or shipped
or something like that.
So the accommodation that they have is they have a paper on the table with pictures of
the item or the stickers or the pens or whatever.

(35:07):
And then this autistic employee pulls the products out and matches it to the picture.
And then once they have all of the pictures covered, then they can package it up and put
it like they've completed a set of product.
And that's something that they can do, that's something the employer can make accommodations
for so that they can pay this person to do this.

(35:28):
It might be slower work than a neurotypical person, but it's...
And that is an example, I would believe that that autistic individual...it depends on how
retarded their brain is.
Yeah.
I guess if it's slow enough that they can't remember what that picture was three seconds

(35:51):
afterwards, 10-second Hal, or something, they just don't know and they have to have that
picture continuously in front of them, then that's one way to do it.
But if they're typical autism, one of the traits of autistic that's a good trait is
the ability to focus for a long period of time.
On what they're interested in though, that's the thing is they have to be really interested

(36:12):
in the thing to be able to focus for a long time.
You can't get them to focus on something that they have no interest in focusing on.
Right.
And that may be Elon's issue as well.
He can focus on things that he's interested in, but he's not gonna worry about combing
his hair.
I don't know.
Einstein.
Where was I going with the pictures?

(36:33):
Einstein said that he had the ability to focus on things a longer period of time.
So chances are Einstein was autistic, but in the 40s or 30s, wherever he lived, I don't
even really remember.
He wasn't termed as anything atypical or autistic or a problem.
He was a scientist.
He was just a different person.
It was just something different about him, and he was able to do this and then created

(36:56):
all this stuff.
So that statement that then we've put these labels on it.
So I think the difference in our society today is we've labeled as many things as we can.
We're trying to be inclusive of labeling everything.
And so now we have autism instead of just a straight difference.
How many diagnosed autistic people do you know?

(37:20):
Diagnosed zero.
I don't know how to get an autistic diagnosis.
I don't know who diagnoses that.
Like narcissism or psychopathy.
We talked about psychopaths.
I don't know any diagnosed psychopath or any diagnosed narcissist or any diagnosed autistic
disorder.
Okay.
How many suspected autistic people?

(37:43):
There are people like Temple Grandin.
Temple Grandin is autistic and she's, do you know her?
I know of her, yes.
Of her from, and that was probably eighties, nineties.
In nineties, she was talking a lot that she's genius in the way in her animal sciences.
And she talked about how she had to deal with her autism to keep herself in control and

(38:05):
then focus her mind ability towards the things she's interested in.
And she could see things that other people couldn't see thinking out of the box, just
identifying what's necessary, what's useful and using things in ways that you wouldn't
expect to use them.
So I do know, I guess I know a lot of people that are diagnosed autistic because that is

(38:28):
a fairly good, fairly common diagnosis.
So yeah, my statement was wrong.
It's not zero.
Okay.
But in our family, there's at least one that is classic autism.
Not our immediate family, but what?
The extended family.

(38:48):
Tier two.
I have a, yeah, the tier two extended family.
I have a nephew that is autistic.
He's doing great.
But from early childhood, that was identified clearly psychologically, action-wise autism.
And he's living a great life.
Yeah.
Has three kids with other issues and problems, not necessarily autism, but maybe.

(39:13):
Yeah.
I don't know them that well right now.
I think that's only one.
Do you know of any others?
Oh, what about my brother?
Nonverbal until he was two and a half, three.
Oh, that's right.
And I guess I think on that, we never took him to get assessed.
We just self-assessed that this is what's happening at age six, at age six, who couldn't

(39:38):
stop crying.
It was an interesting time frame.
Yeah.
And he does have hyper-focused interests sometimes.
It's interesting what he gets hyper-focused on.
Entirely independent and is fully functioning, but has clearly a characteristic difference

(40:01):
from a typical person.
Could you tell in a room that he's, would you call him atypical in a room of people?
If I was a stranger, not knowing who he was, I could probably not.
I bet he has a lot of friends.
I think now you couldn't tell.
He's got a lot of people that love him in our county even.

(40:27):
He knows a lot of people and everybody loves him.
It's so funny.
In the city, in the county.
I think you said that right.
It's a broader thing than just-
It's everywhere.
His local community.
He's got people in two counties over that know him very well and he hangs out with all
the time.
Right.
And even they wouldn't identify him as autistic.
No.

(40:48):
He's very good at what they say masking.
He's interesting.
He's good at masking the negative aspects of being autistic.
Okay.
And so that's the plasticity of the brain that I wanted to point out.
He's got nine toes in his brain, but he's operating as though he has 10 or 12.
Yeah.
12, right.
He's got extra toes in there.

(41:09):
Right.
Right.
And that's the way I like Elon Musk.
He's got nine toes or eight toes the way he acts.
And if someone just judges his vision, what you see on him, about him, you could have
eight toes, but he's got 32 toes if you look at what he's produced and what he's operating
with.
The genius that he can operate in.
Right.

(41:30):
We've put this classification of neurotypical and ASD out there and the world's talking
about it.
And it's harming people that shouldn't feel harmed by it, by labeling you.
It's bad to take a label and have it restrict you.

(41:52):
Have that label damn you to do certain things from doing certain things.
Yeah, that's like using it as an excuse instead of an explanation.
My excuse that I am not successful and I am not productive in any of this is because I'm
autistic, but rather that's the explanation and how do I overcome that?

(42:12):
How do I accommodate myself to become successful and productive despite my limitations that
I have?
There are stories of the one who says with the CEO or the very successful businessman
and then the derelict on the street, the drunk alcoholic, who both were raised by an abusive

(42:36):
father.
And so the drunk alcoholic says, with a father like mine, how could I do anything different
than what I'm doing?
Yeah.
And then the CEO, very successful businessman says, with a father like mine, how could I
do anything different than what I'm doing?
I just started listening to the book Embrace the Suck, and I don't know off the top of
my head who the author is, but easily searchable.

(42:59):
It's a popular book because I think I've had it in my library hold list for months.
So everybody's listening to it.
Finally I get to listen to it.
That's an interesting title that does indicate exactly what it talks about, right?
Yeah.
Embrace the bad things that happen to you.
Right.
And then all about grit and resilience is what is...that's the focus of the book is

(43:24):
resilient people.
A resilient person coming from an abusive childhood is going to embrace that and find
out how they can use that to be better, more successful.
What else could I do but be better than my dad was?
And then the other person says, what else could I do but be worse than my dad was?
Right.
It's your choice completely, though.

(43:45):
Yeah, it's your choice.
The resilience, what was the other word?
Grit.
The resilience and the grit, the ability to stick to something to make up your mind,
choose a path and follow that path with grit and resilience.
Yeah.
The author is a Navy SEAL and he's using that experience of training to become a Navy SEAL

(44:07):
as his example in the early chapters at least is where I'm at.
And yeah, because they try to make you quit.
That's the whole purpose of the Navy SEAL program.
Right.
They want people that are super resilient and super grit-full.
Right.
You know?
Who know that every challenge is going to be thrown at them and lack of sleep and lack

(44:28):
of nutrition and still do the job perfectly.
Yeah.
So, Elon has that status that it doesn't matter.
He was raised in an abusive home.
And there's the story about that.
I mean, that's all I know.
I don't know how his brother turned out or that that dichotomy exists there.
It causes him to be a better father because of choice.

(44:52):
I came up with a question.
So are our brains rigid?
As we've talked about it and we've used these examples, we can make a choice.
We can choose to ignore that we have eight toes and act like we have 30 toes.
We can make the choice to be resilient.
What if you only have four toes though?

(45:12):
What if you are even further?
What if you're an adult and you're still out of control of everything?
See, there's a difference.
Well, like Temple Grandin.
Temple Grandin was completely dysfunctional before she learned how to control.
And she had to do it herself, the control mechanism that she put in place.
And her and your story would be interesting if you haven't heard that, go back through

(45:36):
it.
Okay.
But how she controlled that it was in college, it wasn't until she got to college that she
figured out how to control her erratic behaviors.
You know, the out of control, the inability to be in crowds, the inability to do anything
and things that would shut her down.
So she controlled that, she could fix it.
And she with her brain, she figured out how to do it herself and built a machine to help

(45:59):
her do it for herself.
That all came from her.
And then that kind of told the community, told the world there's these things you can
do, so you should try some of these things.
She learned it, I think, Elon's learned how to operate with his thing.
But it's the choice that you make and the ability you have to stick to it.

(46:19):
So I think that every label that you can put on somebody, you said that maybe there's someone
that is, and I'm going to use the word because it's okay to use that, we're retarded in their
brain capacity enough that they can't function, that they have to have the pictures because
they're never going to remember tomorrow or the next minute what that wrench looks like
or that comb that needs to be in this packet.

(46:42):
You've got to put all that together, then you can package it up.
If that's someone on that level, then it does take that scale to keep them operating in
society.
And I would imagine that that type of person can't live alone as an independent individual,
that they'd need assistance in everything crossing the street.
You've got the assistance that blind people have.

(47:04):
Blindness is a limitation.
But blindness doesn't mean you, I guess someone who's blind, there's one, some people who's
blind can be just panhandlers on the street and say, I'm blind, I can't do anything.
And other people who are blind can be bestselling books, writers, and like Jim Stovall, and

(47:24):
write stuff every day or have dictate it and have other people type it up that his brain
is still fully there.
Or people like Stephen Hawking, who is totally disabled, but his brain still worked and he
used it entirely.
So it's all still a choice.
It doesn't matter how disabled you are.
Your choice is to let that disability define you or step above it.

(47:49):
We're going to have a discussion on that book at some point, The Seven Habits.
Use your habit of proactivity to do something valuable with your life or reactively just
say, this is happening to me and I.
Poor me.
I have nothing to do with it.
There's no control.
I have no control.
And so I'm just going to be how I am because of my environment.
Yeah.

(48:10):
And I'm not going to try to change my brain because I'm autistic.
I've got these problems.
I'm this much in the challenge.
So I'm not going to, I'm not going to try.
There's no use trying.
No matter where you are on this spectrum of ASD to NT, maybe there are some things, like

(48:32):
some people can work hard to get all the way to appearing NT, neurotypical behaviors.
They can be that.
Some people maybe start farther on the autism side and all of, for all of their efforts
that they do in their life, maybe they can only make it halfway.
Like that's just how far they can go.

(48:54):
They can't get all the way to the other side.
And only because they only have 80 years to do it in.
If they only had 120 years, they would make it all the way.
Yeah.
You know, we're going to win.
The time just ran out on the game.
We were winning even though we lost the game because the time ran out.
The famous football coach said, we were winning, but time ran out and they were ahead at that

(49:17):
time.
Yeah.
So if you have longer time and you continue, if you're resilient and with grit, you can
continue to work on it.
You could probably get it done.
And so that's, you know, we had that discussion in the past about a millennium, a thousand
year timeframe.
If you knew you had a lot of time, you could accomplish it.
So the supposition, that's what that's for.

(49:38):
But I don't know for sure that that's what that's for, but that's my take on it.
While you'd have a thousand year period, our brains are, have plasticity.
We can change things.
We can, so the neurology, neurotypical, let's see if I can close that out.
Neurotypical is something that actually exists, but it's not bad or it's not good.

(50:03):
Nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.
Right.
It's just a difference.
And, all right, how I wrote it here, we should see differences as typical rather than traits
of a disorder.
So differences should be the typical thing that we see.
Neurotypical is that there's differences all over the place.

(50:24):
That's typical.
It would be strange if everyone were the same thing.
We wouldn't exist.
In changing that, I mean, we've evolved into this discussion of neurotypical and ASD, and
these are good and bad.
That's not necessarily the case.
And you know, Mars and Venus, they started out that it's not good or bad, it's just
differences.

(50:45):
And then they're saying, here, we can term you as the bad side of society and we're the
good side because we're typical.
That may not be what they're trying to say, but that's been the effect that I've seen
in the world.
Have you noticed that effect?
Yeah.
So psychology, my challenge for psychology is to develop to the next thing to show perhaps
that typical is the differences.

(51:08):
And they tried to do that.
I think they tried to do that with DEI, but they used some wrong tactics.
I see.
You know, let's favor these unfavored categories.
You don't need to favor it.
You need to favor...
Well, and what we're moving to now is a merit-based meritocracy.

(51:29):
That's a better thing than the DEI idea.
If you focus enough and you work on something and you get to be an expert at it, a Temple
Brandon, you can be the best expert animal scientist in the world, revered by everybody.
Or you can be the best rocket scientist in the world, like Elon Musk, revered by everybody

(51:51):
for that thing that they do.
And it's just diverse.
It's typical that it's diverse.
That's the typical.
Yeah.
Right.
It's like blind auditions for an orchestra.
You don't want the auditioner, the conductor to...
To see you?
... to base his decisions on your gender or your race.

(52:14):
So he has a curtain between you and him.
And when you audition, you come in, you play the piece, you leave.
He knows that your number is 12, and he writes down 12, this is what I liked about their
playing, but I have no idea if it's a girl or a guy.
I have no idea if they're Asian or American or any of that.

(52:36):
Like they're merit-based.
It's how well can you play?
And so the conductor there is using a curtain to a boundary because he's afraid it's going
to affect his judgment if he sees.
So you've gone through an audition like that?
I auditioned for a symphonic orchestra, chamber orchestra, something like that.

(53:01):
I don't remember.
I only auditioned for a music group once and it was supposed to be a blind audition, but
the instructor was facing a wall of windows, like an exterior wall of the building.
And so I came in and I could see his face.
I'm like, well, there you are.
So he should have just been turned around.

(53:22):
It didn't make any sense.
It almost didn't.
I'm sure he was trying to not look in the windows to see the reflection, but yeah.
That's a false thing anyway.
I mean, anyone who's objectively living their life would be able to say, I'm going to judge
you on your merit.
It's how well you do.

(53:43):
But can they actually do that though?
Like you have those biases.
You already have those.
You can try your hardest to be done with your biases.
You can try your hardest to say, I'm going to think about this completely objectively
and I'm not going to let any of my history with your demographic affect my decision.

(54:08):
But I mean, that's why we have judges in our legislative system.
Some people like certain judges and some people think that other judges are corrupt because
everyone has their biases anyway.
Let me try to frame this idea.

(54:30):
Do you get your haircut by anybody or do you do your own?
Neither.
No, when I do get my haircut, when I do get my haircut, it's by someone else.
I don't do it myself.
Do you go to the same person every time or have you gone to different people?
When I get my haircut, I usually choose to go back to the same person because they cut

(54:53):
it before and I know that they know.
I don't have to explain how I want my haircut over and over and over again.
So in your mind, do you care that they're Hispanic or Asian?
No.
No, not at all.
It's the way they cut your hair.
If they all of a sudden come out and start dressing different, are you going to necessarily

(55:14):
stop visiting them because they wear a dress now instead of pantsuits?
No, because it's the haircut.
Whether it's a girl or a boy, if they decide to be the other gender.
Yeah, the way that they cut my hair isn't going to change.
If somehow the way that they're presenting themselves does change how they cut my hair,
if it affects that, if they decide that they're going to wear four inch fingernails.

(55:39):
Really long nails.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
And maybe I'd be like, I'm not sure this is actually going to be really good.
I mean, I'll let them cut my hair.
I won't be like, nevermind.
I won't do that.
I'll just not go back.
Based on merit, they've proven they can do it.
She's proven she can cut her hair in so she's got four inch long fingernails now.

(56:01):
And she says, I can work these things, these scissors just as well on the clippers.
So don't worry about that.
And you say, okay, based on merit, I'm going to trust that you know what you're doing with
your career and you're going to allow her to do it still.
But if I see that it didn't work out, then I wouldn't go back.
Okay.
And I used haircuts because I haven't gone to haircut people forever, but it doesn't

(56:23):
matter to me one bit if it's a man or a woman or a Hispanic or black, white.
I'm going to go to a place because it's convenient, I guess.
And I don't know who's cut my hair.
I've got it cut by professionals only four times in the last two years.

(56:43):
And the last time I went in and I was disappointed because I told her to cut it off a little
bit because I only want to cut my hair every six months.
So she took that and she did appropriately based on my description.
And she made it really short so it didn't have any lay on it.
It was just sticking up a quarter inch or something.

(57:05):
But I was dissatisfied at the time.
She says, should we put this down as your regular haircut?
And I says, no, don't do that.
Just keep it.
Because that was the second time I went to that shop.
So they had a record of me and they said, no, don't change it.
But I didn't tell her I was dissatisfied at the time.
But at the time, I wouldn't probably go back.
But then when it lasted six months, it's been six months and my hair needs to be cut again.

(57:28):
But that may be the cut that I want.
Maybe I want it to go that short.
For the first two months, I didn't even have to worry about combing it.
It was just there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The time that it saved you was amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mike Lee, he's a Utah senator.
Donald Trump yesterday, he was signed an executive order for the Title IX thing.

(57:53):
But he identified Mike Lee and says, I love your haircut.
He says, real convenient, isn't it?
Convenient.
Because Mike Lee went with the bald look now.
Oh, I love it.
He said that.
That's funny.
So he said, he said good.
He made some comment like, you're enjoying the time.
You don't have to spend on your hair, right?

(58:15):
That's because Donald Trump has to spend so much time on his hair probably.
Yeah, because he spends all kinds of time on his hair.
And I don't think, you know, in era, does it take bravery to shave your hair off or
to change your hairdo, your hairstyle?
I don't think Donald will ever do that.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Don't know.

(58:36):
It's typical for him to have hair like it is.
It'd be atypical if he changed it.
It was probably atypical for Mike Lee to change it, too.
That's why it was mentioned.
But that's just fine.
It needs to be just fine.
So the reason for bringing up neurotypical
is I think people are putting too much, society is putting
too much emphasis on it, and ASD.

(58:59):
It doesn't need to be categorized as strictly as it is.
I think that it would be good if we all treated each other
as valuable humans, regardless of how we all are different,
regardless of our differences.

(59:19):
Just knowing that the differences are there
and make accommodations based on those,
but not make changes to how we treat each other.
Like make allowances or I mean, I can't control anyone else.
And so if I know that someone is having a difficult time
because either they have a headache

(59:41):
or they had an abusive childhood or they have autism
or they have trouble paying attention,
like if we just know that there's all of those things
out there going on, then we can respond appropriately

(01:00:02):
to things that happen instead of just reacting
like this famous guy on stage throughout the Nazi salute.
And I'm going to react to that.
Whether it was a Nazi salute or a genuine love statement,
statement of love.

(01:00:23):
Right.
And I mean, it shouldn't, it shouldn't, I mean, yeah.
Highlighting the differences features prominently
in everyone's relationships, it feels like.
If someone uses neurotypical, if someone brings up
that word in a conversation, does that tell you more

(01:00:43):
about them than it tells you about you?
Yeah.
Yeah, because it highlights that they
care about whether someone is neurotypical or neurodivergent.
And chances are the only reason anyone would bring it up,
would someone neurodivergent say,
you're just neurotypical.
They're not going to worry.
That's someone that's not caring enough about it.

(01:01:05):
If someone's going to say that or pay attention to the spectrum,
bring it up as a conversation piece.
It's because they're on the typical side.
The neurodivergent, the ASD person, the Elon Musk
is never going to complain about someone who's
just being too typical.
Why can't you be weird like me?
Yeah.
You are different than me, and I appreciate that.

(01:01:26):
They're different, so they appreciate
the difference in people.
And they probably don't even categorize it.
Yeah.
So an ASD person probably doesn't
categorize a neurotypical.
But a neurotypical feels like they have to categorize the ASD.
Yeah, do you think they feel like their own position
is in danger if they don't categorize it?

(01:01:50):
Or I don't know.
Why would someone feel like they need to categorize it?
I want to roll back to the victim status and the drama
triangle.
OK.
Where on that drama triangle is neurotypical discussions?
Where do they occur?
You've got the victim or the creator.
Will a creator even worry about the diversity

(01:02:13):
between the people he's working with or she's
working with?
Maybe they would, though.
Maybe it'll be, how can I help this person succeed?
And so I need to know what their limitations are.
Well, you're describing a coach there.
So that's where the creator moves
to a coach position on the virtuous triangle.

(01:02:34):
OK, yeah.
So you move into a coach.
I need to see what information they
might need to advance better.
Or you may look at the challenger,
saying this person has ADD, attention deficit.
And maybe we need to work on getting their attention
to something.
How can I challenge them so you put pictures in front of them

(01:02:54):
so they can have a way to work with what they're doing?
Give them a challenge that they can accomplish rather than
a challenge they can't do.
You need seven items in there.
But the seven items need to be these pictures specifically.
And in this order, they have to stack this way in order
for the box to close.
As a challenger, you're giving them,
and actually it's hard for them to do it the first five or 10

(01:03:17):
times even with the pictures.
But you're giving them a challenge to work on to advance.
And then maybe after a while, you start working on,
let's get rid of some of the pictures.
You can remember the first one.
So you're challenging them.
And maybe you're coaching them as well.
But that person isn't a victim.
You're viewing that person as a creator.
And so in that description of the pictures in the work

(01:03:37):
environment, there's no neurotypical ASD retarded
stigma involved.
Maybe it's just like if someone was working there
and they were short, they'd need a step stool.
Right.
Yeah.
That happens all the time.
That happens all the time.
All the time when people step up to podiums,
if it's not the right size for them, they need the stool.

(01:03:59):
Then you pull the box in.
And there's a box almost on every podium
that you can do that with.
Right.
And adjustable microphones, too.
Yeah, the microphones that move up and down.
Differences are typical.
That difference of height is typical.
And a speaking platform will pay attention
to that typical difference instead of saying,

(01:04:20):
everyone's 6'2", and that's what we
need to set our microphone to.
And if you're not 6'2", you can't talk in our place.
Right.
So I keep losing the track here.
Sorry.
We're going on so many tangents.
We're on the drama triangle, though.
OK, so the triangle, the people on the virtuous triangle,

(01:04:40):
I'm just calling it that.
I don't know if it's the drama triangle or something else.
They don't even worry about this distinction
or any stigma in that.
Does a victim, a perpetrator, what's the perpetrator called?
A villain.
The villain, yeah.
Or the rescuer.
OK.
So those three people.
Is neurotypical and ASD important in that triangle,

(01:05:02):
in staying on the collusion loop of victim, perpetrator?
Yeah, if you want to use it as an excuse for why
your behavior is so bad or whatever,
it's probably as an excuse to get away
with whatever you're doing and not make any changes.

(01:05:23):
It's important that you have that label.
What label?
Like if you're autistic.
You say, I'm autistic, so that's just the way I am.
You can't fault me for my behavior.
I'm not neurotypical.
I've got ASD syndrome, and I'm 80 degrees into that,
so there's no way I can change.
So I'm just going to do what I do.

(01:05:44):
I'm just a victim of this circumstance.
That's what you're saying?
Yeah.
So a victim has to use that spectrum.
And does a creator have to use that spectrum?
I mean, a creator can say, yeah, I've got autism.
I'm 80 degrees, but I've got tasks to do.
I've got things to create.
I've got work to get done.
I've got people to help.

(01:06:06):
I've got challenges to make.
I've got people that I need to help them do stuff.
So the creating cycle is a challenger
and a coach and a creator.
You're spending all your time on that.
You may recognize that there is ADHD in this individual,
but that doesn't say, no, I'm not going to work with them.
I'm not going to try to rescue them

(01:06:27):
on the drama side of the triangle.
If you say that ADHD means that there's a stigma there
and I have to pay attention to it, then you're a rescuer
or you're a villain.
And you're saying, he doesn't deserve to be in our company,
so I'm going to get rid of him.
Or you can say, that boss doesn't like me,
and so I have to leave.

(01:06:47):
I'm just a victim of this bad environment at this company.
I've got to find a new one.
I think that connection that I'm trying to, I believe it.
I believe it's true.
What do you think that the spectrum works for the villain
side, for the drama triangle?
The spectrum doesn't work and isn't even
considered in the merit triangle, merit-based triangle.

(01:07:07):
OK.
Well, it's considered.
It's not as important.
It's not as valued, let's say.
Right.
If you were hiring for a position at a company
and someone, an applicant would be perfect for the job,
if only they would stop swearing every other word.
If only they would just, they're just, it's F word.

(01:07:31):
Every other word is.
That was right for your industry.
I mean, I did work in a manufacturing job.
The F word was every other word in the whole factory.
In the whole factory.
That was weird.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was weird.
It was totally atypical, but it was totally
typical for that environment.
Right.
So if you're taking someone out of that environment
into an environment that doesn't use it,

(01:07:52):
I hired a quorum of language.
OK, so your question in regard to that.
So let's say that person is exactly the person you need.
You just can't have that sort of language
around all of your other people.
Would you consider ways that you could help them not
use that language around all your, like, I really, really

(01:08:13):
want you to work here.
And I understand it might be hard to break out
of this language habit.
To change your words?
What, as a potential employer of this person,
would you be willing to do?
Or you just say, it's up to you.
You change it.
I'm not going to make any accommodations for you.
I'm not going to put you in your own workroom
so you can swear all you want.

(01:08:35):
You have to work with all of these people
because everyone else does that.
We're not going to have you as a remote worker
because that's not what we do.
Everything you do can be done remotely,
but you still have to work in the office,
and you're going to have to change your language.

(01:08:55):
I mean, is it fair?
Would that be a fair reason to not hire someone
if their outward appearance even just
didn't fit the standards of your workplace?
If they had too many tattoos.
But they had all the skills.
Merit.
If their merit was appropriate, but you

(01:09:17):
decided against hiring them for a non-merit-based concept.
And it's not their race.
It's not their gender.
It's not their autism or not autism.
We don't want this look.
Their language.
In our house.
From the neurotypical standpoint,

(01:09:38):
typical behavior in our shop is this.
And your behavior based on language is not typical.
You're going to come in as an atypical person.
And we need to work as a cohesive group that
is going to create problems in our organization.
I was hired once.
I mean, I go by my middle name.

(01:09:58):
And I don't go by my first name.
But I was hired by a gentleman that had the same name
as my middle name.
And he said, we can't really have that here.
We need to start going by your first name.
So yeah, I did that.
And I didn't stay there very long.
And maybe that was because that's
just an uncomfortable situation to change

(01:10:19):
your name for an employer.
But that's kind of the same thing you're talking about.
I can't have two of us here.
There's got to be just one.
And I'm the boss.
So your name is going to change if you're going to work here.
We're talking about the drama triangle.
I think you think about that situation
with whether they're a victim or you're a victim
or you're going to be a rescuer or a villain and say,

(01:10:44):
no, you can't work here.
I'm going to have to fire you because you're not working out.
That's the victim side.
The coach side or the challenger side is maybe you
could try using two less words.
How about if I give you a bonus if you
don't use the word for a day?
I'll give you a $10 bonus every day.
Incentivize the change.

(01:11:05):
Yeah.
You work out some way to challenge that creator.
Say, create the way you want to do this.
But we'd love to have you here.
You need to be here.
We need your work.
You're the best.
Build them up as much as you can,
even though there's 50 other guys that
can do the work you're doing.
Right.
As a victim, you could make them look like a victim

(01:11:26):
by saying, I could replace you tomorrow
if you don't stop that.
You're a victim.
I'm the villain.
This is your rule.
And I'm going to change that in you.
Or you could say, here's a bonus.
I don't mind using my lunch money for you to eat lunch.
I'll skip lunch every day.
I'll buy your lunch if you can work on changing this.

(01:11:47):
Just give me some positive moves.
Create your positive life here.
And then if you actually get it complete,
I'll guarantee you a $2 raise.
There's ways to do that as a coach or a challenger.
Right.
Running off of merit-based employment hiring,
is there any employer that would be justified in not hiring

(01:12:11):
someone based on how they look?
I think those lawsuits will still be there.
Someone will say, that's the reason
you said that judges exist.
They exist to judge between these discrepancies
that people feel, slights that they feel they've been handed.
Yeah.
You can't get rid of that, because we're humans.

(01:12:35):
You're going to feel put upon.
And especially if you're in the drama,
in the victim stance, is the ruling class
is battling me, because I'm this poor, lowly ASD,
this poor, lowly beat-upon class.
And now all the good people, all this means.
And in their minds, it's still that the neurotypicals
are going to rule the world now.

(01:12:55):
Merit-based, they're going to say who has merit.
It's their choice.
And they're all going to be white nationalists.
There's not going to be any of color globalist type people
working in this country anymore.
And that's why they're all trying to leave,
or say they have to leave.
That's not the case.
Those two categories exist.
You've got a white nationalist.

(01:13:16):
You've got black nationalists.
You've got people who believe nationalism is the way to go.
And you've got people who believe
globalism is the way to go.
And those are different.
There's a spectrum there.
And then there's a category of you're white, or you're Asian,
or you're can't Canadian.
You've got all these categories.
And the way that I wanted, that I'm
trying to present by talking about neurotypical

(01:13:38):
is none of that matters, globalist or nationalist.
If you have a merit task you're doing,
like an air traffic controller, I
don't care if you're a globalist or a nationalist, or black,
or white, or Mexican.
I care that you know the task you're doing
and that you can focus on it for the eight hours that we're
requiring you to sit there at those screens
and direct traffic.

(01:13:59):
If you've got merit, I'm agnostic to anything else
in your life.
And whether you think that America is not
the best country in the world, you're not a full nationalist,
you believe the French economy is the best one,
and that's why you speak French at night.
But right now, you're going to speak English
because all our pilots in your airspace are English speakers.

(01:14:22):
So don't start thinking you can speak French,
because you'd lose your merit status if you did that.
Right.
Merit has to ignore all that stuff
and be completely agnostic with it.
I don't care.
I don't know.
I don't care.
That used to be the military statement was,
don't ask, don't tell.
Before they came up with DEI of you've

(01:14:44):
got to accept these people as they are,
got to go back to the don't ask, don't tell.
If you're gay, I just don't want to know.
And that's merit based.
As long as you're doing your job as a Navy SEAL,
doesn't matter if you've hit on the wrong side of the field
or that side of the field with your whatever,
your sexual behaviors.
Right.
It's not part of us.
Not part of us at all.

(01:15:04):
We've got this task to do, and let's do the task.
Let's stay on business.
Yes.
Do you agree we should just be open in society?
Yeah, I think we should not hire because of race or gender
or neurotypical versus autism, where

(01:15:30):
you are on the spectrum.
I don't think that anybody should
be using that as a way to judge someone's ability
to do anything.
I think the reason why I don't know,
but I think one reason why DEI was put into place
was because people were feeling discriminated against.

(01:15:52):
It's like, I mean, that was the other side of the coin.
Yeah.
Either you're hiring based on merit,
but then it just happens to be that more Asian people are
getting hired because they work harder
in their culture at mathematics or something like that.

(01:16:13):
They're just smarter.
Yeah, they're just certain things
that they're a lot better at than because of their focus,
their values, their culture values.
I mean, we have a lot of Nigerian Olympic runners,
don't we?
Isn't there a lot?

(01:16:33):
Yes.
Most of the gold medalists are probably Nigerian, you'd think.
It's because Nigerian or like Usain Bolt, he came out.
No one could touch him when he was running the 100.
And he was what, Jamaican?
Yeah, those cultures on the south side of the equator,

(01:16:59):
the Olympic committee, all of those people,
getting those people up to the Olympics,
are they being discriminatory against North Americans?
Like, there's not enough North Americans in this race.
We need to fix that.
Yeah, I don't know.
Slow down the fast black guys or find some way

(01:17:21):
to speed up the white guys by giving them
extra enhancing drugs or something.
Yeah.
There's enough disparity in that.
Well, there's enough disparity anyway.
You don't need to worry about that category,
those categories.
That's the point.
Well, and there are short people in the NBA, right?

(01:17:42):
They're not discriminating against short people
by only drafting tall people.
Because short people can play good basketball too, right?
There's a lot less short people than there are tall people.
What I was talking to another guy, I don't know.
The short people in the NBA are six foot tall.
Six foot or six feet.
They're still tall.

(01:18:02):
Still.
Yeah, they're tall in regard to the typical.
They're still atypical.
But I think Spud Webb was 5'6".
I mean, he was the shortest guy.
He was 5'6".
But he could dunk the basketball.
He could do anything.
He was amazing.
He wasn't the superstar.
But he was amazing as a basketball player and he was pro.
But like John Stockton is 6'2", I think.

(01:18:23):
And me standing next to him, he's tall.
But he was standing next to.
Andrei Kirilenko or whatever, those guys.
They're seven foot.
Who did he play with?
Karl Malone.
Karl Malone and John Stockton.
John looks like a real short dude,
because Karl Malone's like, what, 6'10", or something.
Yeah.
So as they were playing, John's the short guy

(01:18:45):
playing with these tall dudes.
But he sticks to as he is 6' tall.
Yeah.
I only bring that up.
I talked to a guy last week.
John Stockton was here in a town next to me
watching his son play football.
A friend said, you know, guess who I saw at the football game?
Well, I would have no idea.
Said John Stockton was there with the opposing team

(01:19:05):
in the local stadium.
That was cool.
I guess they have to live too.
But he says, you know what, it was amazing.
I thought he was a short guy, but he's taller than me.
So that's where that came up.
So devil's advocate, why is it that someone would
want the DEI to stay in place?
Why did it come up in the first place?

(01:19:27):
To give the judges an easier task.
OK.
Yeah, to make it a law to treat everyone the same.
Yeah, a law to treat everyone the same.
It's like putting up the curtain, really,
in a blind audition.
The DEI is just a curtain.
Say, let's put this curtain up so we don't have to worry
about someone making a poor judgment based
on the way that you look.
They're going to have to look at.

(01:19:49):
So the curtain is, these are statistics.
They've got to be commensurate with it.
And of course, you talk about that all the time.
How many plumbers are there that are females?
Or how many ironworkers, welders, are actually female,
or females that want to go into the welding career
and be in that heat all day long?
That's not something they will choose if they had a choice.

(01:20:09):
They can choose the sea level, the sea suites,
the vice presidents and presidents and CEOs.
And they get there just as often as anyone else.
But you have to get there on merit.
The DEI says, let's put up a curtain.
And let's say we don't care about, though,
the curtain for the blind audition,

(01:20:29):
they're still listening to the music.
They're listening to the merit of it.
And so that person is a little step ahead by saying,
I'm not going to care about it.
I'm not going to care so much that I'm not
this much Asian or this much Hispanic people in our music.
I'm just going to listen to music.
If I like the music, we'll invite them in.

(01:20:51):
What if you have five slots in your orchestra open,
and you've got 10 applicants that all can do it?
Then you've got to make a decision based on something.
And so you're like, well, do we have enough women in here?
Does it look like this is a male orchestra?

(01:21:12):
We should probably make sure one of these five people
that we bring in is a woman.
If they're all equally merit-based,
you do have that.
So that's what you're talking about.
If it's easy, if it's an easy decision,
I was going to say the what if.
What if you had 20 applicants, you needed five people,
you selected your five people, and they happen to all

(01:21:34):
be black, three-foot-tall people, three and a half feet
tall, really short.
And it's going to make it hard for the conductor to even see
them over the stands in the orchestra.
But the perfect music was these five people
are the ones we selected.
Well, thankfully, music stands are adjustable.
You can move them up and down.

(01:21:54):
Right.
And you have a high chair.
You put those people on stools to play their bassoon,
on a stool, so that their head is the same level
as everyone else.
But they have a special chair.
You work around it that way.
So that's what you do.
And if you're totally agnostic to that,
it wouldn't matter then if you had seen them before.
You weren't going to use that criteria to judge them.

(01:22:17):
But if they're all equal musical talent, 20 people,
equal musical talent, you only need five,
how do you break it down further from that?
What do you use for characteristic judgments?
Right.
We don't want to buy stools.
So necessarily, these three-foot-five people,
none of them are going to make it.
Because we don't want to expense our orchestra

(01:22:39):
to have to buy stools.
So then you get further information about them
without asking for more identification.
How committed are you to this?
Do you have family commitments?
Do you have a car that you can get to rehearsals with?
Are you going to be here?

(01:23:00):
Do you have any conflicts with all of our performances?
You further it down with that.
Maybe someone does have children.
Maybe they are a woman.
And you don't know that.
But they do have children.
And they have a conflict with one of the performances.
They're like, I can't do this because it's

(01:23:23):
the day of my child's dance recital or something like that.
And you're like, that's my only conflict.
Other than that, I'm a great player.
They don't know that they're a woman.
But they have to cut them out because of their woman
lifestyle, maybe.
Because moms do this.
And if you weren't a mom, you would

(01:23:43):
be doing this as far as soccer practice or something
or recitals.
Right.
I don't know.
If you were just a dad, you wouldn't care about that.
So we can only have men in this who
don't care about their kids.
Right.
If it was a man, if it was a male,
maybe on the application they would have put down,
yeah, my family is taken care of.

(01:24:05):
I don't have to worry about that.
This dance recital can be recorded.
So I have no conflicts for any of the performances.
And so maybe the man would have been chosen over the woman
just because of their answers on the application.
I was an employer once that had to hire a number of people
with that responsibility of choosing
a staff for your camp.

(01:24:27):
There was a lot of people that wanted to be there.
And then you had to come down to a choice.
Do you want that person or not?
And we never do it right, I don't believe.
I don't believe there's a right way.
There's not a fully objective way to do that.
It's subjective in a lot of respects.
And maybe somewhat, like the way I first heard Elon Musk talk,

(01:24:47):
I said, he doesn't talk well.
Maybe I discounted people who didn't speak well and said,
I can't have you trying to teach people on this staff
if you're not able to communicate, even with me.
It's feasible that I wouldn't have taken anyone
like Elon Musk on that employment, which would have
been the wrong move, apparently.

(01:25:10):
That ethically wrong move?
But where you were at, that was the move made.
Structurally wrong.
Structurally wrong.
He would have been a better person than the person
I actually took that could speak well but didn't have a brain.
But you can't judge the brain behind him.
You can only judge what you're talking about right there.
And you're trying to.

(01:25:31):
Or that they had, I don't know, we
had people that came in with their dog collars.
And they were just weird people.
There were some weird people who were hired because they
looked good on the start.
But they became weird.
And it was a challenge.
And I was a challenge.

(01:25:51):
I thought I was doing good, but I didn't do good
in that position, in that role, because I was atypical.
And in regard to neurotypical or ASD,
we're both not neurotypical.
Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
You and I.
Right.
You and I would not have done this, this thing we're doing.

(01:26:14):
This podcast idea isn't something
that neurotypical people do.
OK, why?
In first, well, it's difficult. It takes a long time.
It takes a lot of time.
In order to do it right, to try to get things presentable,
takes effort that neurotypical people don't have the time
to waste on that.
OK.

(01:26:34):
Especially since we're this far into it,
and really it's got no traction.
No one's paying us for this.
No one's doing it.
We're doing it because we enjoy it.
Typical people do not enjoy this deep conversation.
Only the neurodivergent can enjoy this kind of thing.
The divergent people, yeah.

(01:26:55):
The atypical.
And it's even hard for me.
I mean, at times, we're doing these hour and a half,
two hour conversations and putting them out there.
It's hard for me to listen to something
for longer than 10 minutes.
That's why we've started doing the shorts.
Look at the shorts.
You get a snippet of something, and you get an idea.
And maybe you can search where that is in the conversation.

(01:27:18):
But listen to a full three hour podcast.
If you're out doing something and it's just part of your work,
that's good.
But if you're going to dedicate time to study something,
it's hard to study a three hour podcast, or a two hour podcast
even.
You've got to have the ability to do it
while you're doing something else,
or have it play while you're doing something else.
So would you say then that listeners

(01:27:39):
of this type of podcast would also be atypical?
Yeah, they're different.
Plus, I ask a lot of people if they listen to podcasts.
Very few do.
And they say, oh, I've heard some.
But they don't subscribe.
They're not connoisseurs of podcasts.
You and I, we are.

(01:27:59):
We've listened to a lot of stuff.
And the people who do podcasts are connoisseurs of podcasts.
They listen to it.
But that's atypical.
The typical person goes to work and comes home and eats dinner
and watches football and goes to sleep.
They don't have a thought about even psychology.
That's the type of people that didn't know
who John Gray was in the 1980s, still don't know who he is,

(01:28:22):
has no idea what you mean when you say someone's from Venus.
And they don't know if that's a male or a female or a black
or a white.
Actually, if there's some from Venus, what are they?
Do you know that answer?
If there's a true Venus?
If they're from Venus, if a person is from Venus,
who are they?
A woman.
A woman.

(01:28:42):
They're a woman, clearly, from the title of the book.
But there's people, I mean, I bet 80% of the public
don't know that.
80% of the typical public don't know that.
It's the 20% that are atypical that
will listen to a podcast like this that will care
what John Gray wrote about women being from Venus.
Yes.
Well, the only reason I know anything about that

(01:29:06):
is because you guys had the book on tape.
And that was like kicking around the house most of my childhood.
Because I cared about it.
Yeah.
You saw it.
Yes.
I didn't ever listen to it.
I don't know all about what he says.
But I know the cover.
But he's promoting the general idea

(01:29:26):
that there's just differences.
And you deal with it.
You work with it.
You deal with the merit.
You accomplish life.
You don't have to ostracize this group of people
because they're from Venus.
They're just from Venus.
They're Venetians.
Let's just work with them.
That's like the five love languages and personality types
and like if you know all of the different ones,

(01:29:49):
all the different categories anyone could fit into,
then you can be more understanding
of where they're coming from.
And you don't have to discriminate against them
just because they're different than you.
Right?
Right.
Right, you don't have to discriminate.
You said it that way.
Yeah.
Because that's your only choice if you don't know anything.

(01:30:11):
There's no real different category.
You don't have to categorize them differently.
You don't have to label them differently.
There's just a difference.
And it's a typical difference.
So that's my whole status against neurotypical.
As the label.
You have a problem with the label.
Neurotypical is divergence.
So instead of saying we're on this side of the spectrum,

(01:30:33):
you're on that side of the spectrum,
we're both, we're on the spectrum.
It's kind of like we were talking about heaven
or the divergence of an immortal or eternal life.
There's no delineation when you get there.
There should be no delineation while we're here
of categorizing these are good, these are bad.
It's just these are divergent.
And this is how we get along in society.

(01:30:56):
We got people with tattoos.
We have people that use F words where they shouldn't.
Like in air quotes where they shouldn't, right?
Yeah, the F word being Ford, talking Ford models
where you should be, you're in a Chevy crowd now.
Ford, around us.
Yeah, yes.
Words, labels, labels should have no power

(01:31:16):
except for where it helps someone
treat someone else with dignity then.
Labels should have no power.
I think that's where it needs to end.
Okay, assuming that everyone is treating everyone else
with dignity already.
Dignity needs to be there.
That's that, that's the typical.
Typical needs to be dignity spread over

(01:31:38):
across all these differences, which really don't matter.
You don't have to categorize them.
They're differences and it's typical to have differences.
And we, what was the book you said, Embrace the Suck?
Yes.
If there's something that sucks about this person,
embrace that, that's a difference.
It's not a category.
You don't have to ostracize it.

(01:31:59):
You can embrace it.
Yeah, you know what?
I think I agree with all of that.
All right.
Yeah.
Well, cool.
Yeah.
And hopefully we were critical enough in our discussion
and our understanding of it to come to the points
and make it make sense to anyone else listening to this.
[outro] I think that's a good place to stop.
I'm gonna recommend everyone that's listening here,

(01:32:22):
all millions of you who are listening to this.
Crossing our fingers.
Reach out to us.
Reach out to us, if you will.
In the show notes has our places to contact us.
It will be easy to find our online presence.
We made it that way.
There's a phone number even.
Just call.
Let's see what happens when you call.
That'd be cool.

(01:32:43):
I wouldn't mind talking to you.
It'd be great.
So thank you for listening.
Thanks for joining us in this conversation.
We'll continue on the next week.
I believe you've got that.
Do you have the topic?
Yeah, next week I'm going to bring up,
finally we're gonna talk about what is true.
Truth and how that works.

(01:33:03):
Yeah.
It's gonna be a difficult one.
We've neurotypicaled all of our last conversations.
And now we're gonna truth our last conversations next week.
Thanks for listening.
And we will say adieu.
Adieu.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#29 Typically Different

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

#29 Typically Different

Stuff You Should Know