Neurodiversity & The New Normal | Podcast

Episode 01 Full Transcript

David: Hello everyone, welcome to Neurodiversity & the New Normal, a new podcast series made in partnership with Viability Employment Services with support from the University of Toronto. Before we jump straight into the content, we wanted to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves and give everyone a sense of what you’ll be getting when you tune into this podcast. Eliana, why don’t you go first?

Eliana: Sure. Hi, I’m Eliana! My pronouns are she/her. I am a 3rd year student at the University of Toronto studying peace, conflict and justice, psychology and doing a linguistics minor. I know that’s a mouthful, but, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter for our purposes anyways. I am also the Chair and one of the co-founders of the non-profit Viability Employment Services. We’re a grassroots collective of neurodivergent and neurotypical youth working in partnership to support employment and leadership outcomes for neurodivergent youth. I myself identify as neurodivergent, and I know COVID-19 has definitely been a mixed bag of pros and cons for me so I am really excited to hear how other neurodivergent folk have been adjusting to this new normal, and share some of my own experiences with you guys as well, as we move through our episodes. 

David: I’m David, my pronouns are He/Him. I’m also a third year student at the University of Toronto studying psychology, and an executive member of Viability Employment Services. 

Eliana: So you already know there’s gonna be a podcast because you’re here and, well, you’re listening to us talk right now. I guess it’s our job now to tell you what you’ll be listening to for the rest of these episodes. In this series we’ll be exploring the intersection of neurodiversity, COVID-19, and the ways work has changed with this new normal. Our goal is to share insights from neurodivergent people, businesses and policy makers and figure out what’s changed, the impact of what’s changed, what still needs to change, and of course learn a lot along the way. Wow that’s a lot of change! Unlike what’s in my wallet right now. [Fake Laugh] thanks COVID. Guys, I promise guys our panelists will be a lot funnier than I ever will be. 

David: Which is a really low bar with jokes like that. But, moving on, we’re going to define a few terms that we’ll be using a lot, just in case we have any listeners who haven't heard them before.

Eliana: Okay, now for our first term: Neurodiversity. We’ve already mentioned this word a few times so I hope you’re not confused, but I’ll define it now. Neurodiversity refers to the entire human range of cognitive diversity. It is also the perspective that neurological conditions like ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, mental health related disabilities, and others are healthy normal variations of the human genome. A neurodivergent person or ND person would then be any individual that identifies as having one of these conditions. A neurotypical person or NT refers to somebody who has what we call the “majority” brain, or in other words who’s brain profile is within the most common range of human neurology.

David: The other term we’re going to define is “The New Normal”. Now, we know that you’ve probably already heard the term “the new normal”, but we just want to make sure that everyone is clear on what we mean. That’s just one way we’re doing our best to make our podcast accessible. 

Eliana: That’s right! Can you imagine if we weren’t? We’re a lot of things but hypocrites - that’s not our vibe. 

David: We also want to make sure that this podcast makes sense in case 2020 has more surprises in store for us and something else becomes “the new normal”. When we talk about the new normal, for the purposes of this podcast, we mean the ways in which COVID-19 has affected daily life, with a focus on how it has affected work. Offices, meetings, socializing with coworkers, and the job hunt have all seen pretty significant changes due to COVID. 

Eliana: It’s also just way too easy to spend the day watching Netflix from your “office” or should I say couch. These changes and other ways COVID’s made 2020 a memeworthy year to say the least, is what we’re going to be exploring with our guests on this podcast. So you may be wondering why listen, why care? Well it matters for a whole bunch of reasons on a societal level - diversity equity and inclusion are topics that are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the public conversation. Beyond that, the neurodiversity movement has made a lot of headway and both companies and politicians are engaging with neurodiversity more than ever before. But asides from all that, this probably also matters personally to you. Yes you.

David: This period has been pretty stressful for almost everyone - there’s been a ton of changes that have happened really quickly and a lot of uncertainty too. 

Eliana: While this is true, many autistic and neurodivergent folk have noted that they’ve been dealing with many aspects of this new normal for a good chunk of their lives. These include experiences with isolation, social communication barriers (as many of us are now experiencing with zoom calls, #zoomfatigue am I right?), and fixating on things like COVID-19 related information. Simply put, neurodivergent people have a TON of things to share that both other neurodivergent people and neurotypical people could benefit from. 

David: And I mean, it won’t just be informative, we also hope that the podcast is going to be enjoyable to listen to, right? 

Eliana: Yep, [Laughs] that's Right!

David: [Laughs]

Eliana: So [Continues to laugh] guys, just for full disclosure, I had to practice that SO much, I don’t know, sound awkward, [Laughing] I am SO sorry. But yes, this is going to be super funny and super enjoyable. No thanks to me, probably no thanks to David, but we have a lot of great guests coming on, so definitely look forward to that. But yeah, that’s the sales pitch. Follow our podcast, tune into future episodes, follow us on all our socials @viablecareers ‘cause we’ll be releasing some awesome articles which you won’t want to miss, and, go drink some water ‘cause you’re probably dehydrated. 

David: We’ll also have links to all our social media as well as a full transcript of this episode in our podcast notes. And that’s all for today for Neurodiversity and the New Normal - see ya next time.