Embracing Neurodiversity w/ Robin Ince

0:00Big monthly car insurance bills are hard on your budget, but not with Hugo. Hugo breaks up your insurance bill into tiny pieces so you can pay a little bit at a time. Get a quote today and start driving insured with just seven days of coverage. After that, pay at your own pace, like every week or even a day at a time. Hugo is car insurance that fits your budget, stress-free. Get your car insured today at withhugo.com. That's withhugo.com. I would not like to live in a world without ADHD minds and autistic minds and all of these. What I want to live in is in a world because the problem is not those people. The problem is the limitations of the society around them.

0:31Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In each episode, we talk with inspiring scientists, thinkers, and other self-actualizing individuals who will give you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in. We even hope to give you a greater glimpse into human possibility. Today, we feature English comedian, actor, and writer Robin Ince. Robin is known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox, as well as his stand-up comedy career. Today's conversation focuses on his new book called Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, Adventures of Neurodiversity.

1:04We discuss the importance of appreciating neurodiversity and the happiness that can happen when people embrace who they truly are. He argues that there are normal ways we are expected to behave and think, and many people are terrified of breaking those social norms. However, he argues that living in a world that expects us to obey such a rigid set of rules ultimately deprives us of a far more interesting place to live, of innovation and creativity, of love and friendships. Of innovation and creativity, of love and friendships.

1:34This conversation was very near and dear to my heart. So, with great pride, I bring you this conversation with Robin Ince. Robin Ince, it is so good to have you on the Psychology Podcast. Oh, it's an absolute joy to be here. And, of course, for those who are listening at home, they won't know that it's been an absolute nightmare for you because I have done the full ADHD traditional thing of getting an email from my publisher and me going, what? I'm on a train now, though.

2:04And so I've dragged you through the mire of attempted organization. I'm really sorry to hear that. So that's the first time you heard that this interview was happening, was when you were on the train? No, I think I knew but weeks ago. And, of course, as you know, you only have to literally see the movement of a blackbird or the scuttling of a beetle. And an ADHD mind entirely just revises all information. Well, all well as it ends well. And I'm really glad to be chatting with you today.

2:35You're a really interesting character. And I'm very interested in neurodiversity. I've been a big advocate of neurodiversity my whole life. And you wrote this book called Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal. My Adventures in Neurodiversity. Why did you write this one? Well, this one was I kind of it started almost I wrote a book called I'm a Joke and So Are You about seven or eight years ago. And in it, I interviewed a lot of therapists. And at the end of every interview, the therapist would say, I presume you're in therapy, Robin.

3:07And I would say, no, and they would say, oh. And so that kind of led to me going into therapy just for a little bit. And and that was kind of the start of it. I suddenly realized that a huge number of different things were anxiety. You know, a like so many disparate things that I thought was separate, both physical and psychological. And then I was very lucky because I would not have gone looking for a diagnosis. But an autistic stranger called Jamie and Lion. Jamie is a young autistic man.

3:39Lion is the squishy that goes everywhere with him. Got in contact with me via social media and said, I'd really like to talk to you about the neurodivergent model. And that's how I found out about ADHD. I see. So you're a late, late diagnosis. You weren't diagnosed when you were a kid. But yeah, that's happening a lot these days. I feel like I feel like there's even like a trend for like lots of adults to suddenly view themselves as neurodivergent. How do you feel about that trend? Is that a good thing?

4:11Oh, yeah. I mean, the point is I've done in the last month, I've probably done 40 to 50 gigs around the UK. And I meet people every single night who are late diagnosed, autistic, dyspraxic, dyslexic, ADHD. I also meet kids who have just started that journey who are eight or nine years old sometimes. And to have the knowledge of why your mind works in the way it does is enormous. It is, you know, in the UK, there's a lot of people who go on about why do you want

4:42a label? And I always explain it's not a label. It's a user's guide. It's a roadmap. It is. And it's interesting because, however, like, you know, for years I've had people coming up to me after gigs saying, hey, I'm ADHD too. And I've gone, oh, I don't think I am. I just think it's the way that I perform. And it required this particular outside voice to make everything so apparent. Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective. I've been wrestling with something because of this increased trend for especially a lot

5:13of young people to on TikTok to call themselves neurodivergent. You know, well, first of all, what does it mean to be normal? Does that word even have a meaning? Second of all, a kind of a message of your book is that we're all weird. I feel like that's a very common thread. So then third of all, if you can keep all these things in your head. Robin, sorry to do this to you. As long as a blackbird doesn't go past or I see a beetle scuttling, we are fine. We are fine. Okay. Okay. Stay with me, Robin.

5:47Stay with me. You know, you say that like, you know, we're all weird. Third of all, do you think like the word neurodivergent still has meaning if everyone is neurodivergent? Well, I think it's going to change over time. All of the labels are quite lumpy. We look at the history of 20th century psychology. It's filled with all manner of kind of errors and misunderstandings and people believing that everyone's mind is like their mind. And what I think first of all is what to me is neurodivergent is where the way that society is

6:19framed is working directly against you and that you are feeling you need to conceal yourself. So one of the things I think is very important is the disparity between who you present yourself as and who you actually are. The greater the gap between those two, the greater your amount of unhappiness. And what we have in a lot of our kind of social worlds is a terrible level of concealment. So no one knew about my anxiety. No one would have known about my suicidal ideation. I was able to mask all of those things while at the same time appearing to function fine.

6:55So there might be a point, you know, we do have people who are more typical than others. I think everyone, you know, to be human in itself is a weird thing. To have this mind where we have two tracks, we present ourselves and we have an inner monologue. That is a peculiar thing. And the problems arise, like, you know, the further we go down with neurodivergence, you know, for instance, so many things that are so simple to make the lives of autistic people easier. To be aware of whether it's sensitivity to certain kind of tactile things, fabrics, whether it's a certain sensitivity to

7:31light or background noise. We wouldn't have a lot of the issues we have if it wasn't just decided. There is one way of working this office. There is one way of this particular place being. There is one way of behaving as a human being. And, of course, it's a great threat. I think we see people like, you know, someone like Donald Trump, I think, thinks he's both normal and an alpha male, which is, you know, just merely from his cheating at golf and everything else. You know, it's kind of ridiculous. But there are people, I think, who not only believe that

8:07they are normal, but also insist that everyone else must obey the laws and the rules that they have placed upon society. Yeah. You say, quote, I am. No, you say, you say, quote, however normal you think you are, you are weird. Yeah. The problem would be. I'm going to read more of your quote. I was going to continue quoting you. The problem with being human is that we judge everyone else from their exterior and ourselves from the interior. And that's also a very, that's a very interesting social psychology bias of what

8:39we do. And I think just like combining those two things, I think it's just so interesting. Like your, your argument, I mean, what would you say is the central argument of your book if you had to tell me what the central argument is? I'm not sure whether it's an, well, I would say if there is a central argument, it's that the corridors of normality need to be far wider than they are. That the society that we have is not fit for purpose for an enormous number of minds and minds that

9:11are, can be quite brilliant. You know, this is, I mean, I found it fascinating when recently, when I say fascinating, I mean horrible, disturbing and grotesque. When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talked about the fact that autistic people would never write poetry or pay taxes. And obviously pay taxes was the main interest, I imagine, for him. But this idea that in our, in our society, we still don't realize there are plenty of autistic people writing poetry. The book is, amongst other things, the book is dedicated to a shop on the south coast of England,

9:47which is this incredible kind of thrift store, which is predominantly run by autistic people. And the window is always filled with their poetry. And the shop is always filled with their art. And until we try and realize also that what we currently define as disorder is very often difference. It is not disorder. It is a difference, a different way that our mind might be as it filters the world and moves through it. So, autism is one form of neurodiversity, but it's, what else, you consider ADHD another

10:20part of it, right? I would say the general kind of definitions would be neurodivergences, dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD, and autism. And then we have in a separate section, which is kind of mental health, whereas neurodivergence would be things like bipolar. Now, of course, the problem with that is that the labeling of our mind is, it makes it just a little bit, it's like that bit's autism, that bit's ADHD, that bit's dyspraxia. But of course, it's a far more tangled web than that.

10:51There are many people who have suffered depression, who are given antidepressants, and then eventually some of them are finding out their ADHD. Now, that doesn't stop the depressive thoughts, but it means that the reasoning can be seen as a little bit different. There is a lot of behavior of autistic people, which is very similar to ADHD people. You know, we have a lot of crossover there. You know, dyspraxia. I was banned from using an ink pen when I was at school.

11:21I was always tangled in my own laces. My socks never stayed up. My hair was never flat. I am chaos. I have a natural force of entropy, it seems, that explodes out of me. And so there's a lot of crossovers. And I think one of the difficulties can be when we, if we make it too specific, is I know from talking to therapists that some people, when they're diagnosed, will say, I'm trying to work out, was that the genuine me?

11:52Is that the me behind the mask? Or is that the masked me? Or is that ADHD me? Now, there is ultimately one me. The me-ness of me and the you-ness of you is the truth that lies in our mind and is how we genuinely experience the world. Not the affectation. No, the affectation is part of what we construct. So it comes from us. I mean, it sounds like you'd be a big fan of Carl Rogers' notion of congruence, the humanistic psychologist. Yeah, I think, you know, like everything, that's a while ago and things get, you know,

12:28picked up and moved on. But I think, you know, some of the seeds that are in those kind of works can be very useful. But as long as we're always looking at seeds as we continue to get. You know, I think one of the big bits of understanding that comes with autism, ADHD, etc., is that understanding that it's not something on the outside. It's not something like it's not just your trauma. And once you get over your trauma, it's all gone.

12:59It's also the fact that the trauma will have affected your neural pruning, will have affected the way that, you know, in particular, as we see that kind of, you know, the executive function of the brain. And all of that bit that is meant to be managing emotions and managing the order of the things that we're meant to be doing on a day-to-day basis, all of those things, they have now been properly affected by that trauma. And it's not just a case of, oh, I've got rid of the trauma and it's gone.

13:31It's much like, you know, this is a very lumpy description, but I'm sure you know those many stories of children that have sometimes just been kept in a cellar without any kind of real language or wild, you know, the wild boys and the wild girls that were found in woods, that after a certain period of time, it is impossible for them to ever learn the grammatical rules of speech. Because that bit of pruning has occurred now. This is no longer accessible. And in the same way, I think, you know, some of the ways that we react to the world, it

14:05really is a great way. It can improve enormously with understanding, but we should not berate ourselves when we still might occasionally have a meltdown or we might forget a meeting or things are a little bit more in disarray than they should be. Yes, you think trauma can be a contributor to a neurodivergent mind? Yeah, I think we're at quite an early stage. I know there's a big debate about this, especially with ADHD, you know, autism is seen as being genetic. But of course, trauma will play a part because by being autistic,

14:36you then very often experience more trauma in childhood because of the way that you are treated, the way that you kind of received and perceived. And then with ADHD, from my own perspective, so merely anecdotally, I see the trauma I experienced just before I was three years old when I was in a major car crash that led to many changes in my mum and a car crash that I thought I was responsible for. Because, of course, when you're three, you think you control the world, don't you? You know, in terms of the bad things that happen.

15:08And I think that played a major part both for me and also for my elder sisters. I'm really sorry to hear about this. So did someone die in that accident? No, what happened was my mother would have died, actually, if my dad hadn't been three cars behind. There was a car on the wrong side of the road, small country lane. It was speeding. It smashed into us. And my mum was then in a coma for quite a while. And she suffered a certain amount of kind of physical damage, lost a sense of smell, paralysis on the side

15:41of her face and various other things. But also then it really affected. In fact, last week I was doing an event and someone came to the event who I had not seen since I was six years old. They were the Baptist minister in the local village, very kind person. And I said to him, I've not seen you since I was six. But I want to tell you now that I know how important your help was to my dad when there were a lot of struggles with my mum's mental health.

16:11And I said, I know she was changed. And he suddenly had the saddest, most mournful look. And he said, yes, she was changed. And I think, you know, now I look back and I realise I never knew the person that my mother was before the accident. There's a beautiful line in a series called Mystery in Between. Yeah, it's very. So I think that's sad. But now I can have that all open and out. You know, now I understand and I can sit with my sisters. And of course, my sisters had a separate experience because they were older and they saw a woman coming out

16:46of the hospital who was very different to the woman who had climbed into the car that night. Wow. Tell me about your change in happiness about being alive over the course of your life, because there was a big transformation for you. Yeah, it really was. It was it was basically the moment that because I used to have pretty much perpetual anxiety, occasionally lost in a flow state of doing a comedy gig before the little heckler would appear in my head again. And a lot of kind of I had a lot of rejection, sensitivity

17:18dysphoria. So it would just take the tiniest turn of a phrase and it would make me crash. And so all of those things were very dominant. And I never you know, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I've walked off stage happy with a gig. I might have a standing ovation. I might get an encore. But within three minutes, I would be dismantling it. If someone comes up to you afterwards and they say, hey, I really enjoyed that gig. It would always be, oh, sorry, it wasn't so good tonight, actually.

17:49And and then you slowly dismantle it. And so someone comes up, say, thank you. I enjoyed it. You say, no, no, no. You stay there. Let me explain how I've given you the worst night of your life. You know, that was and then the combination of a diagnosis out of nowhere from Jamie and Lyon and then also taking anti-anxiety medication, the combination of those two things has given me. I mean, I've always been very energetic in terms of the number of things that I've done. But I think that was an energy that also came from anxiety.

18:21Whereas now I have all the energy that I had. You know, as you know, anxiety requires an enormous amount of energy. You are hyper vigilant. You're looking at the world all of the time. You're looking for threats. And then once that goes, you are still able. I mean, I had someone in a gig the other day and she asked me after after my talk, she said, do you ever miss your anxiety? I said, no. And I said, but you're obviously asking me for a reason. Can you tell me why we're in the audience? Do you want to tell me later?

18:54She went, I can tell you now. She said, I've had anxiety my whole life. And I really worry that if I got rid of my anxiety, would I know who I was? And I realized that can be a threat. And I said, from my not only my personal position, but from the position of the hundreds of people I interviewed for this book, the loss, you are not your anxiety. You have this separate, you know, you have this thing that is above and beyond all that. And when you lose that looming shadow, when you lose that terrible thick fog, you will find freedom and you

19:28will find the self that you can be. And I think a lot of people worry, you know, my depression, whatever it might be, has been so much part of my life. What am I without it? And I would like to say to everyone listening now, you know, I can't say for sure. All I can say is every night I meet people who, especially like late diagnosed, women who've been diagnosed with autism and they're like 73 or 74 years old. And they walk up to me and as they walk up to me, I know they're walking in a different

20:00skin to the skin they were walking in four years before. They have, they're higher, they're mightier. They are smiling in this, you know, this beamish way that says things are different now. Wow, Rob, and that's really powerful. So you, so what I'm hearing here is you're saying that by embracing the neurodiversity, the neurodivergent label and identifying your ADHD, it kind of unleashed an authentic version of you that quelled your anxieties. Is that right? Yeah. And I think also what happens very often is the things that are actually your incredible strengths, you bat away and consider to be a frippery.

20:32The things that are the negative side. So for instance, when I was writing this book, I had one afternoon, it was 5.15pm. I wanted to check what time I was doing a gig the next day. I suddenly realized I got it wrong. It was that night. It was in 75 minutes time. I was interviewing an author 80 miles from where I lived. I don't drive a car. I had a kind of big meltdown of my stupidity, my bad timekeeping. And I managed to get there one minute after the show was meant to start.

21:03And I sat down with someone who had only just started reading her books. I always read it immediately before events. And we spoke fluently and fluidly for 90 minutes. And people came up to me and said, Oh my God, I didn't know you were friends with Sarah. How long have you known her? And I said, 93 minutes. Now, before, I would have only seen my mistake. I would have thought you screwed up, but you got away with it. Whereas now I go, I screwed up. But then I have this very special ability.

21:34That means you throw me into something. And I will find a way to build an event out of it. I will find a way to connect with people. And realizing that it's not just like kind of, Oh, I'm lucky I can do that. And that's part of the same brain that leads to the meltdown and led to the fact that I got totally the wrong day. Hi, all. I want to take a moment to make a few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you all know, I'm committed to helping people self-actualize.

22:06In the service of that, I just had a new book come out called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself, and realize your full potential. In this book, I offer a science-backed toolkit to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and take control of your life. Are you tired of feeling helpless? This book will offer you hope, not by identifying with the worst things that have happened to you, but by empowering you to tap into the best that is within you. Rise Above is available wherever you get your books. Are you a personal coach looking to take your coaching to

22:41the next level? I'm also excited to tell you that our Foundations of Self-Actualization Coaching, three-day immersive experience for coaches, is backed by popular demand. Foundations of Self-Actualization Coaching is a course offered to enhance your coaching practice by offering you evidence-based tools and insights to equip you to more effectively help your clients unlock their unique creative potential. You can learn more about the course and register by going to centerforhumanpotential.com slash S-A-C. That's centerforhumanpotential.com slash S-A-C. Okay, now back to the show. Yeah. There's a theme running throughout your book, which by the way, I loved your book.

23:14I should have said that first. I should have said that hitting the, getting out of the gate. I should have said that. Really loved your book and huge congratulations on this publication. It's a very important book. There was one thread that really resonated with me throughout, which is this idea of loneliness among people who are neurodivergent, kind of finding your people. But at the same time, you know, you also talk about, I mean, there are a lot of paradoxes in your book. Have you noticed that? Yeah. You know, like, I mean, one big paradox I already touched on, which

23:48is, you know, neurodivergent tends to be autism and dyslexia, ADHD. However, we're all weird. So that's one paradox. But then another one that I picked up on in reading your book is this idea that, well, a lot of people who are neurodivergent are actually quite content being alone, you know, in a lot of situations, you talk about how, you know, you're, you're like, I think you talked about being in the movie theater alone or something. And you're like, I'm totally fine with that. So how do you see that paradox being resolved? Well, I think what it is, is the difference between being

24:24content with your own company and being alone and feeling the threat of the world around you. So it doesn't mean that you want to, you need to be gregarious or surrounded by friends. And that's the fault of, you know, your neurodivergence is hindering that. It's the fact that when you are in the world, before you really necessarily understand yourself and when you sometimes see that there is a normal world that can be so relentlessly normal that anyone who is other will be, you know, so many people that I spoke to had horrible bullying at school and things because there was a

24:59little bit about them. This was their weakness, their otherness. Once you're able to realize your otherness is your strength. Like I think I mentioned the book, I can't remember, but one of the things that I love now is if I'm forced to go to a party, because I'm not a party person, there's too much noise. I want to hit every conversation. I know, I know you would think that I was there. No, I am. I am actually genuinely shocked because I feel like, let me tell you why. I think I feel like unwittingly and like you don't really want it, but you're probably the wife of every

25:33party. Like, I bet like even without you trying, you know, I bet other people probably get a lot more out of you being at the party than you get out of being at the party. Yeah. Well, what I try and do if I go to a party is I try and make sure that everything's moving and everyone's, you know, they've reached that point where everything's kind of working. And then I'll go and stand in the garden and look at the stars and things like that. And it's like, and it's that bit where, but yeah, I think so.

26:04So the lonely, it's like one of my favorite things to find out about in the book was finding out about the friendship degradation curve. And it's certainly true. So for myself and my neurodivergent friends, we don't necessarily communicate all the time. We don't go out all the time. We actually may have long periods of time where we don't see each other. But the moment we see each other, the fireworks go off and we are straight into either the middle of the conversation that was the last conversation we had before we last saw it, when we last saw each other,

26:35or about some new crazy idea that we'd find out about. There's no kind of preamble. And I think that's an interesting part of neurodivergence for a lot of people, which is your love for your friends does not dim by a failure to see them every Tuesday or whatever. And I think that plays its part as well. The confidence that comes of saying, I'm happy to spend a lot of time alone in the world because I don't also feel like I'm in a glass case where people are looking at the freak or the weirder. Yeah, I really love that.

27:05I really do love that. I'd love to hear more about how your unique mind works. What are some of the main characteristics of ADHD that plays out that's like a common part of your own inner drama? Well, I suppose that the common thing is just the speed of thoughts. It is, there's so many thoughts. You know, if you ever saw me live, you would just see the like tangent after tangent after tangent after tangent, and I start telling one story, and then that reminds me of something else. So I just go off on that tangent, which leads to another tangent.

27:36And then very often, I often have people coming back night after night if I'm in the same town, because they'll say, last night, you didn't tell that story that you said you're going to say about Apollo 8, or Apollo 9, or about universal horror movies. And so could you try and do that tonight? And I'll go, okay, I'll make a little note on the back of my hand. So I think that's the, and I think before with the racing thoughts, because we're kind of evolved to really note the negative, when you're having 100 thoughts in a very short amount of time, some of them will be

28:09the negative ones. So they are the ones that burn most brightly in the most unpleasant way. And they, so, you know, that moment, that possible thought of that person who's looking at you from across the train or whatever, the negative thought, that's the one that sticks. Whereas now, the thoughts are nearly all, if not benevolent, the ones that aren't, I can back them away very quickly. I mean, I used to have, if I had a gig that I wasn't happy with, and that's most of the gigs, but if I have one that really was in my guts, and I just felt that was

28:41a bad gig, and I'm not happy with that, and I don't feel that I connected, that would then just stay with me. And a few months after the diagnosis and the anti-anxiety, I did a gig that I was not at all happy with. And I was really unhappy, you know, like, so, and the friend of mine who had driven me to the gig, I said, let's just leave, let's just get straight out of here. And for half an hour, I still felt sick in the pit of my stomach. But within 45 minutes, that had gone. Whereas before, so I haven't lost my critical faculty, I can still look

29:15at a gig and go, oh, that wasn't good enough for me. But I don't relentlessly seek, go, what is the imperfection here? What is the failure here? And, you know, and so that also makes me far more honest, both as I think as a human being and a friend, and also as, as a performer, I allow myself to take risks the whole time. I've always been a bit of a risk taker, but now I'm just like, and my friend, Joanna Neary, who I talked to in the book, she's similar. She's always been one of the most wonderful, creative human beings.

29:47And now, but she would always, at the end of a gig, just feel, oh dear, that was a letdown for everyone. And now she walks out there and she does these wonderful, strange things. And she walks off and she goes, yeah, I tried. I gave that a go. And I think they liked it. I think they did. I think some of the people didn't like it, but I think overall, and to have that positivity. And then also it is that thing, which is once you reveal what may lie behind the masks, I'm sure, you know, suddenly you find out that nearly all of your closest friends are neurodivergent because that's why

30:23you made that bond in the first place. Oh, definitely. It's really, and it's once one person's diagnosed in a kind of little gathering of friends. And it means that I think you can also express yourself in a totally, like my friend, Joe Turbitt, who I met first watching a tap dance and it was fantastic. And I look back now and both of us have been through a lot of changes over 20 years. And now we still look the same from the outside in the pub. If we own the bar, we're laughing and we're throwing out ideas at speed.

30:55What we don't have is inside where we're heckling ourselves. And she's thinking, I don't, Robbie must be really bored by this story I'm giving about choreography. And I'm thinking, she must think this guy's so old and stupid. You know what I mean? All that stuff, that's not there now. So now, again, we can, you know, just glow and thrive. And that's another reason that I wrote this book, basically, because when I wrote I'm a Joke and So Are You, in particular, I think it gave people a sense of permission to approach me and tell me the battles

31:26they had, which I love. I love the fact people will share those stories after a gig and they trust me. But I found out how many people were living lives where they had created a fantastic smoke screen, but deep down, well, not even deep down, every day, they would leave their apartment, they'd leave their house, and they would be going, right, here we go, then I've got to put my armor on, I've got to try and survive another day. And it's not good enough. You know, it's that idea that you go, well, if you're not,

31:57you know, damaging society, and if you're able to still move through it, then just keep quiet. And that's a lot of people's kind of opinion is, well, why are you bothering to find out? It's like there was a woman I mentioned in the book who, when she was, she went to a doctor to ask, she said, I think I'm autistic. And the doctor said, why do you want to know? It's not as if there's a cure. And again, that level of ignorance, I would not like to live in a world without ADHD minds and autistic minds and all of these, what I want to live in is in

32:31a world, because the problem is not those people. The problem is the limitations of the society around. Yeah, that's really well said. And yeah, Robin, I, I, I share multiple interests with you. I don't know if you know who I am at all. Do you know who I am? I don't, I want to know more. I love your surname because your surname immediately reminds me of a series of films from the 1980s. So that's one thing. Beautiful, beautiful. Well, I mean, I'm a cognitive scientist, psychologist, psychology professor, have been hosting this podcast for 11 years now at this point trying to help people.

33:05I know that stuff, yeah. Oh, good. Okay, cool. But okay, so here's the thing. I'm also really into comedy. So like, in fact, tonight I'm performing at the Comedy Cellar here in New York City. Oh, I love that on McDougal Street. Yes, on McDougal Street. Yeah, what a great, I used to, the moment I got to New York, I would always, Thursday nights, used to have every single, like, act that was going to play New York that weekend all coming down there and doing like kind of 10 minutes. And you would get to see so many people.

33:35And yeah, I love that. It's a great venue. Wonderful venue. I love, yes. It's a wonderful venue. And I love comedy. And in fact, I'm going to be talking about my new book tonight at the Comedy Cellar with Nick Gillespie. But this is not about me. This is not about me. Basically, I just want to emphasize that we have a mutual love of comedy. That's all I wanted to say. And my own neurodivergency, I think, unintentionally has made me funny my whole life. And only recently have I embraced that so that, and more intentionally done. And because I do also do like open mic nights and some, but Robin, I wanted to discuss this with

34:10you, you know, like, to what extent do you think, you know, you really can harness this eight? Because I, I, I, I don't, I don't know. I still, I'm still trying to figure out exactly my label, you know, but whatever, whatever Meshugganah is going on in my own head, you know, people have found it funny throughout my whole life. And I'm like, wait, why do you find that funny? I'm just saying what I'm thinking, you know? Yeah. And I was wondering, has that happened to you too, Robin? And, oh yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's that thing where, you know, Brian Cox, who's a scientist that I

34:43do a lot of work with, uh, he will often say he's a particle physicist and he'll say to me, what are you talking about? No one understands you. And I always think that's kind of in that's that not being understood is the very oddity that allows us to, you know, because I think one of the things that often comes with neurodivergence is you don't really take anything. If someone says something to you, you don't immediately just accept it. Your brain goes, why, why, why, why, why am I thinking that? You know, it's, it's a lot of what we see in gender and stuff like that, which is going when

35:16someone says, oh, you know, there's just men and women, it's all binary. And I, I see a lot of similarities there with neurodivergence because a spectrum world has far more rainbows, uh, than a binary world as far as I'm concerned. But I see that bit, which means you look at everything going, why is that like that? So there is that, you know, what, what we often call the child's voice, but I think is actually the best kind of voice to have, which is going, why is that like that? Why are we doing this? Why are the flowers growing in that way?

35:47Why is the person on the subway moving in that way? And you see, you're always, cause you're, you've got a perpetually questioning mind. You're always creating, like we had, uh, I don't know if you know the producer and musician, Brian Eno, who produced David Bowie and U2 and used to be in Roxy Music. Is he neurodivergent? Well, no, the thing I want to say about his curiosity and about questions that, so we had him on a show and I started to ask a question where I could see the more neurotypical elements on the panel were like, this is a weird question to ask because he's an amazing producer.

36:21I said, do you ever walk past like a trash can and look in it and think, oh, I'm going to get that out of the trash can because I wonder what noise it makes if you bang it. And he said all the time. So it's having this thing, which is, so everyone else was like, why is he asking Brian Eno, this one of the greatest producers of the, you know, of, of, of modern music, this stupid question about trash cans. And then they go, oh, Brian Eno is replying by saying, yeah, I'm always wondering, I look in, in something and I think that's a weird bottle that's got an odd shape.

36:55I wonder what that would sound like if you bang it. And I think that's part very often of the kind of the, the, the process, um, within a neurodivergent mind, which is you do things which are not specifically designed to go, if I do this, I will make money. If I do this, I will be rich and I will be successful. You do it because you must, because you're intrigued and you are fascinated and you're curious. And of course, what I generally find, you know, it's a very loose rule, but a lot of ADHD people, you become incredibly hyper-focused for a very limited amount of time.

37:28And it's always best to, if you can work with one of your friends who's also autistic because they will sometimes manage to keep the focus going for some time longer than you can. Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, you talk about in your book about there's a lot of comorbidity, um, between autism and ADHD. Do you have a dash of autism as well? Or like, how do you see yourself in that? Well, I always wondered that because I definitely see a lot. But the other day I was doing a thing with a, a, a, a wonderful, uh, autistic poet and writer

38:00called Kate Fox. And I was not late, but I was nearly late. And I just went straight into this bookshop, straight into the back room. And I'd never met Kate before. We'd done some zoom stuff. And I just immediately, I went, Oh, Hey Kate, we've never actually met. Oh man. I loved doing that zoom interview. Oh, have you read that book up there? That is such an incredible and strange book. And is it possible you had a coffee? And I was just like, and she said to me afterwards, she went, I'd always wondered whether you were also,

38:32you know, autistic to some extent, but I've never seen such an ADHD entrance to a room before. So, but I love the fact that it, you know, the moment when, when you're all together, it's one of the things that I, uh, um, do you call it banter as well? That kind of bit where people are. Yeah. Um, and, uh, you might notice by the way, during this, I've been translating every now and again, I suddenly went, I can't say bin bin means nothing to the majority of people. So that's why I said trash can. I couldn't say charity shop.

39:03I suddenly went it's thrift store. So this is like a duo lingo episode as well. Thank you. But we do have a pretty large UK, um, uh, audience. I just thought I'm going to, um, so UK, US audience, this is duo lingo that we're going for here. Okay. Well, thank you. Bin, trash can, thrift store, charity shop. If you have a bunch of neurodivergent people together, they, you don't have that normal thing, which often happens with like a group of guys hang out in a bar and they're all kind of, everyone's trying to win the

39:34conversation. Everyone's trying to, you know, pull the other person down. So they win. And I find one of the things that's very healthy in a lot of neurodivergent meetings and gatherings and just hanging out together is everyone thrives on being excited to be in the world and being excited to be in the company of people and no one wants to win. They want to have a great time with everyone. So I find it very interesting where again, in, in a lot of the gigs that I've been doing on this tour, there's a room where, like I said, you know,

40:06you've got a nine-year-old who's autistic. You've got a 72-year-old who's ADHD. You've got dyspraxia and dyslexia in that room. And what you have is also no great age gaps. If you've got a bunch of people who are vibrating at different speeds of curiosity, but filled with curiosity, you don't have to go, how do I get the old person? How do I keep them in the show? And how do I keep the 10-year-old? You can kind of, it's something that I find very beautiful. Whereas I think very often in a more neurotypical environment, you kind of go, you'll watch certain comics and you

40:39go, this is a comic who is specifically playing to 30 to 40-year-olds. A lot of their references are those. You know, I had a, I was doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a couple of years ago, which opened with me punching a melon, then singing Mustang Sally. And then it became chaotic after that very traditional theatrical opening. And I had a beautiful thing where a 17-year-old trans man came up to me with his dad and just said, I've never felt more seen than I did tonight. In this kind of show that appeared to be crazy and chaotic and a lot of references to stuff that

41:13he won't have understood. But what he was seeing was, it's like sometimes when I have nights where people will come up to me and they'll say, I've never heard my head on stage. And you realize how much people are hiding themselves and you just go. Yeah. And that's, and that's a real joy that, that sense of camaraderie, that sense of kind of, you know, marching together is great. That's, that, that's a real big theme of your book. Here's another quote. I have lots of, I pulled out some of my favorite quotes from your book.

41:44Living in a world that expects us to obey such a rigid set of rules ultimately deprives us of a far more interesting place to live, of innovation and creativity, of love and friendships. So it's like, I feel like there's another call in your book is not just to embrace and appreciate the weirdos amongst us, but also there's like a, there's like a system kind of call as well, you know, to maybe allow, allow a little role bending in a, in a, in a legal, a legal way, but in a way that's, you know, that's conducive to creativity, you know, allow people to take a little more, uh, cognitive risks.

42:19Is that, is that fair? Oh, definitely. Definitely. Because I think that so many different spaces and places and education and workplaces, um, and, and even socializing and dating, there's this very rigid set of expectations of how we are meant to be. And I think that will always limit, you know, Jamie in the book talks about the way that his mind works and he's a tremendously creative person who's able to do a lot of things that no one else would be able to do in the room, but he needs to do it in what he calls

42:49kind of flowy attention patterns, right? So it's not that kind of, but I had someone come up to me at an event and they said, uh, we've got this guy who works for our company. He's ADHD. He's absolutely brilliant at what he does, but he's not very good at making the nine o'clock meeting. I don't know what to do about it. And I said, what's so important about the nine o'clock meeting? He said, well, you know, it's when we all kind of get together and it's just the start of the day, I said, it sounds like something that's just not important.

43:22And if he's bringing something that is rare to this space and you are allowing him to go, right, this is the way I'm going to work. Then that's much better than you go. This person is fully obedient of the timetabling that we've made. I mean, you know, it's like with school where so many of those things don't fidget, look me in the eyes when I'm talking to you, all of those things. God, they're so unimportant. Like if I look, I think I mentioned it in the book, you know, if I look in someone's eyes when I'm talking to them, and I often do, but sometimes I'm concentrating so much on

43:57looking their eyes, I'm not hearing a word they say. And actually quite often, if I'm talking to someone and I'm also writing at the same time, and someone will go, can you pay attention? I go, oh, I'm paying full attention. In fact, if I was only paying attention to you, I'd be hearing far less. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, look for a lot of people on the spectrum, they say that looking in the eyes, they can do it, but it's just very distracting because there's so much information that the eyes conveys that they can't ignore. And that's interesting if ADHD is a similar sort of issue.

44:33You can't, you get so distracted by all that information being presented in the eyes. I mean, it's a lot of information, far more than we're really aware of, you know, the eyes evolved in a very complex ways. Oh yeah. The possibility of seeing something within that eye, which then entirely U-turns what you're hearing. And again, I think that's why these lumpy terms that we've got aren't fit enough. It's not merely the fact that disorder should be different, but it's also the fact that attention deficit and you go, oh, it's quite the opposite. It's attention overload. For most people, it's the fact that you are paying attention

45:07to so many different things and excited by so many things, but you're not able to have that. What's actually required is the linear route of attention. So yeah, I'm really glad you said that. Um, I've, uh, I've written articles about ADHD as a creative gift and I've argued that ADHD is really more of a issue of an overactive imagination. Um, and, uh, because of the, uh, this default brain network that tends to be overactive among people with ADHD, I call it the imagination brain network. Um, and then, and then you, you pair that with executive dysfunction and, uh, and then it's hard to like

45:42keep your inner stream of consciousness out of the, out of it. It's hard to keep it out of it. Yeah. But, um, that's different than attention deaths. I mean, it's a different framing, different framing, right? Yeah. Again, it's a framing that sees the advantages within it and sees what is brought with it as opposed to going, why are you letting down society? Society because you're not doing this. And if you look at it the other way and you go, hang on, what are you bringing to society? Oh, you're bringing a set of skills that other people in the room don't have, but you're very often hiding

46:18those skills because you've been so framed around going, this is, this is a problem. This is an issue. And I think society is very good at making people pariahs. It is at only focusing on what you break and not what you build. That's beautifully said. And I think that's a big, a big spirit of the neurodiversity movement for sure. You know, seeing the gifts as well as the challenges. Um, uh, I, I struggle with this notion that we're all, we're all weird. Well, we're not, you know what? We're not right. Yeah.

46:49I'm going to, I'm going to clear this up. Uh, thank you. What we are is we're all weird by dint of being human, which is a weird thing to be in the way that you look at that, that in itself, you know, we are a creature that doesn't live within our environment. It builds around our environment. You know, it disturbs the environment. We have this, you know, I think chimpanzees and some of the great apes and other creatures may well have some sense of an inner monologue of something, even though it won't be necessarily the language that we understand it.

47:23But I think, you know, we're very rare in that way. We're very rare. You know, we talked about comedy. What a rare thing it is to have a creature that requires jokes to survive and needs jokes and likes jokes. So in that way, that's why I say we're all weird. But I do not think that weirdness is the same as what is then seen as the neurodivergent, uh, difficulty of navigating the world. So I think the first thing is I just, I wanted to start the book by basically saying, just so you know, we are a very odd species.

47:57You know, I think, I think Kurt Vonnegut would probably have, has probably written far better books than me about the oddness of what it is to be human. Um, but so just, you know, don't ever think, I think the main thing is to go, don't ever think you're normal. That's important because once you start going, well, hang on, how normal am I? Maybe that will allow you to start to just empathize a little bit more with those who are more abnormal than you are. You know, it's the double empathy problem of autism, which was, you know, where people just went,

48:31oh, autistic people can't really empathize. And actually what they were failing to do, those people was empathize with the way the autistic mind may well work. And so it was actually, and again, it's always looking at as you have a fault because you don't think like me, as opposed to we both have different minds. And my, it's what I love about Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees, which is, you know, when Jane Goodall, um, she wrote a wonderful book called Through a Window, which is about how we must know and remember that we

49:02look through the human window. We, we, and the other, you know, other species see through other windows. And then that bit where you go, even that we don't have a single window. When we are gathered together in a room, we are also all looking through different windows. And once we start to acknowledge that there is not this, you know, objective truth in our perceptions, that there is, you know, to always, it's something I think I said in a previous book, which is to, to always hold on to your beliefs with a loose grip, to always be ready and open.

49:35This is why you get all those people who bang on about, you know, the woke or whatever. And you go, what's really happening there is you are not in any way allowing yourself just to, to go, hang on a minute. What does it mean? What does it mean to understand people differently based on, on culture, on ethnicity, on sex, on gender, on all of those things. Stop thinking you are the correct model and see yourself merely as one of the ways we walk through the world. Wow. Wow. Gauntlet. Gauntlet, gauntlet dropped. Robin, just as an aside, I'd love to send you an article I

50:10just wrote for my sub stack called, aren't we all neurodivergent? What the heck does neurodiversity mean anymore if we're all neurodivergent? Can I, may I, may I share my article with you? Please do, please, please share anything. I love, you know, one, again, one of the things that I love about touring around is I meet people who are, have had so many different things happen to them and I, and I so often end up in a bar afterwards and kind of, you know, and I find out more. And then also I end up working with people. That's one of the things that I love is because I've

50:45always tried to be kind of receptive to people. There's people that I met just having a drink after a gig and then we've gone off and written, you know, albums of poetry and music or, you know, some of the people who've illustrated my books are literally people that I just met at a gig and we got on and then 10 years later I go, do you want to illustrate my book? And I love that. That's another thing that I love, which I think can come with, with this kind of world, which is that receptive thing that says, I don't just want to be going, I don't want to be

51:20protective all the time of my own little world. I want the web to be as wide as possible. I love that way that we can all keep kind of fertilizing each other's minds and sharing ideas. That's beautiful. I would just really, truly love to see what you think of my perspective about this trend for everyone to be neurodivergent now. I mean, there's a recent article that came out in the UK with the headline, majority in UK now self-identify as neurodivergent. Oh, well, that's absolutely right. Where was that? That, that's just not true. You'll see the article.

51:52It was, uh, in, uh, it was in the times. Oh God. You know what? Our newspapers in the, it's pretty amazing. Really? Uh, our newspapers in the UK are so just terrible and, and they've been, it's like how bad they've been on, on things like, you know, the trans community, how negative they've been out on every single one of them has failed to in any way really be, on anything that goes, things might be a little bit different to expect it. It's like, there's, there's a book that came out, uh, which everyone loved.

52:22It was, it was all about, you know, oh, I think there's going to be, I think this over diagnosis. And in the book, this person says, um, anecdotally, I worry that the majority of people diagnosed with ADHD see no palpable improvement in their life. And then follows it with the sentence, though, many of them say they're much happier. Well, I don't know how you measure palpable improvement, but happiness is definitely very high on my kind of list. Yeah, that counts. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a, it just was an absurd, in my view, it was an

52:54absurd headline. It sounds like you agree with me. So, um, so anyway, I just, I just emailed the article to you cause I'd really love you. Um, you know, but then I start, you know, the way my mind works, I start to think cheeky things like, well, can you be so normal that it actually makes you neurodivergent because you're so extreme in your normalness? Yeah. You know, like, you know what I'm saying? Like there's some people I meet who are like, so not weird that it bothers me. Um, and they're so, they're, they're such like rule followers.

53:26They are such like everything they say, every word that comes out of their mouth is so perfectly not, not weird. And it, I'm like, that in itself is so extreme. You're so extremely normal, you know, like, like, is it, could that be a form of neurodivergency? Yeah. I think, you know, also, I mean, I always think obedience is a very, that's again, why you find so many social activists are neurodivergent because the worst thing to watch is to, is to see as, as we're seeing in many countries around the world is this relentless obedience to a regressive thoughts to, you know, again, to,

54:02I mean, I don't want to keep going back to the U S but, you know, seeing some of the people who are having their history erased, you know, because they've gone, Oh, well, this must've just been because of diversity. You don't become an astronaut and go into space merely by dint of your diversity. You've got to have a freely great set of skills. And I think what we're seeing in some ways at the moment, and what worries me a great deal in the UK is this return to a kind of male white supremacy, which in which all of the visions of

54:38the differences are turned into, we are right. And everything else is an aberration. There's a book I must plug. I always love plugging this book. It's by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who is the most brilliant poet and writer. And it's called undrowned black feminist lessons from marine mammals. And that's exactly what it is. It is the most wonderful book. And at one point she says in the book, uh, who is this book for? This book is for you, otherwise known as everyone who knows a world where queer black feminine folk are living

55:10their fullest, most abundant and loving lives is a world where everyone is free. And that to me is the beautiful vision. That is the vision of the true inclusivity that is possible if we are not perpetually afraid of those who are not like us. Oh, beautifully said. I would actually like to leave with that sentiment because I think it's so beautifully said, Robin. Oh, thank you. And if I may actually end with that sentiment and a quote of yours that further punctuates that sentiment. You say your transformation can also transform other people just as they may see something new in you.

55:45You may see another side of them revealed and it is not always a positive change and it is not always a positive change. Wait, wait, wait. Is that good or bad? That's not always a positive change. Hang on. What's going on? Finish the sentence. I'm worried. What's happened? What's happened? Have you found the typo? Oh, hell. Wait a minute. Oh, I think it is. Do you know what? I think it is. It's not always the positive. I'm reckoning. Whether in the workplace or in a friendship, you say.

56:16Yeah. By that, I mean that sometimes the change will feel like a negative change because sometimes it will be a change in your friendships. Sometimes it will feel like a change in your relationships. It might change in your romantic relationships. Okay, Robin. You might realize that. Robin, we had a beautiful moment here. Let me redo it and end with of them revealed. I'm just going to, I'm just going to, I'm going to. Let's do that. And then I'm going to rewrite the book. Rob, then you'll rewrite the book. This is hilarious. Wait, I want to get back in the moment.

56:51We had a beautiful ending moment. Let me get back in there. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Your transformation can always transform other people. Just as they may see something new and just as they may see something new in you, you may see another side of them revealed. Robin is so great chatting with you today on the psychology podcast. And I just love your energy and wish you all the well with this book tour. Oh, and you have a fantastic time down at the Comedy Cellar as well.

57:21It is, it's such a wonderful space to be in and let us keep our communication going. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.