Vince and Vanessa talk fleetingly about contradictory research on autistic neural connectomes and swiftly cover 2 papers on strengths-based approaches to identifying and working with Autistic people.

Vince and Vanessa zoom through a chat about stimming followed by a speedy discussion of the Farahar & Foster Three Dimensional Autistic Space Framework. There may be a passing mention of the connection between mushrooms and ancient calendar systems.

Vince and Vanessa rapidly review 2 papers about autistic identity and connect them to the concept of neuroqueer, then sprint through Vince’s project of inviting people to consider their neurotype.

The episode opens with a great story from Sarah Willard. After which Vince and Vanessa have a speedy exchange about monotropism and the concept of neuroqueer. Citations and resources can be found in a pdf that you can download using the link labelled “playsheet” somewhere above this description.

Vince and Vanessa glance at Rachel Cullen’s Autistic Pragmatic Language Hypothesis, and demonstrate some autistic joy by discussing their love of plants.

Vince and Vanessa have a quick chat about masking, identity-first language, and institutionalized prejudice and bigotry against Autistic people within research that is not led by us. Things get dark. And then they get even darker. But at the very end you hear us laughing a lot while we semi-chaotically attempt to end the episode.

In their first episode, Vince and Vanessa briefly talk about the Double Empathy Problem, the Social Model of Disability, Autistic representation and Autistic spaces. They discuss the importance of Autistic researchers, and talk through some examples of what accommodation can look like, while sharing stories of their personal experiences within these topics. Warning: Somewhere in the middle, with hardly any apology, Vanessa does try to explain a joke.