Jonathan Mooney || Normal Sucks

we have Jonathan Mooney on the podcast. Jonathan is a dyslexic writer and speaker who did not learn to read until twelve years old. He faced a number of little expectations growing up. Was told he would foot burgers, be a high school dropout, and end up in jail. Needless to say, these prophecies didn't come to pass. Today, he speaks across the nation about neurological and physical diversity, inspiring

those who live with differences, and advocating for change. Mooney's work has been featured in outlets such The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, HBO, MPR, and ABC News, and his books include The Short Bus, Learning Outside the Lions, and most recently, Normal Sucks, How to Live, Learn, and Thrive Outside the Lions. So great to finally have you on the Psychology Podcast, Jonathan. Oh, hey man, I'm a big fan of the podcast and your work and really

honored to be a part of your program today. Oh, thank you so much. I'm glad we could have this chat, especially around the release of this new book of yours, which is just a really terrific book and really questions a lot of things a lot of people take for granted as assumptions. Yeah, and it also has a very subtle title that's right. Yeah, you know, no need to pull punches, let's just kind of get right to the point,

for sure. But you know, as I'm reading the book, I'm thinking, you know, you do such a good job unpacking the idea that there really is no such thing as normality, and then you say that normal sucks, and just wanted to just like straight up ask you, like,

how do you reconcile those two things? Yeah, I mean you're right to note that the project, you know, the book, and I say project because it transcends the book, but it kind of came to a distillation in the book is about coming to the conclusion that there is no such thing as normal, but The problem is that we still have a notion of normal that is very dominant in our culture and becomes institutionalized in our systems, school work,

and beyond. So while the reality is that the only normal people are people you don't know very well, that it is a myth, it's still a powerful construct that wooms over people's lives, and that construct is real in people's lives and needed to be challenged and rejected and ultimately deconstructed so we can make something new. Yes, you're

trying to h to make something new. So in your ideal world, what would the sort of reconceptualization be from the like, if we eradicated the whole notion of normal, would that also mean we'd have to eradicate the notion

of Neurodiversity's interesting logically that we would. Yeah, I mean it's an interesting question because what you're what you're positing and for for your listeners, who I think are well versed in this, and you're referencing, which is movement of people who have contested the pathologizing of their brains UH and they've reframed their UH brain neurological experience not as a deficit or disorder, but as a form of human diversity.

The power pathologizing of certain brains comes from the notion that there is a normal brain that one can differ from. So I look at this in an arc of sort of resistance. Right. So, while we can fast forward and those of us who spend a lot of time with the research, listening to wonderful podcasts like this and others, we know that the notion of a normal and subsequently an abnormal, a typical and a different are artificial constructs. We have to meet those constructs where we are now.

So I see in the short term a desperate need still for the neurodiversity framework, because there is still a framework of normal, not normal, abnormal that is embedded in our textbooks, embedded in our language, embedded in our system. So it is an act of courage and resistance and an act of healing and empowerment to claim states of being that have historically been considered abnormal as forms of differences.

But you are right. If we can look ahead to the medium horizon, or maybe the long term horizon, if we can look ahead to a world where the notion of normal has been abandoned, we can see that difference

is the human condition. You know, there's a part of the book in which I write about a set of brain scans that have been happening at the NIH National Institute of Health, and the brain scans set out to find the normal brain as a way to intervene around mental behavior health challenges, and the head of that study is quoted as saying, as a result of the scans, you could not find a normal brain. So again, down

the road, that's where we got to get. But in the short term, you know, I'm a proud advocate soldier for the notion of neurodiversity, and we all need to fight for that construct while it's useful now, but ultimately, imagine the world where there is no bifurcation polarization between the normal and the not. Yeah, it's a good world to imagine. I also am a proponent for neurodiversity, and I'd hate to have to delete the hashtag from my

Twitter at bio pound neurodiversity. Okay, cool. So I want to just like go back a second, no, not go back and go back a long time to your childhood. And you know, both me and you there's some overlap in the story, so obviously I resonate a lot with your story, and my heart goes out a lot to

your early childhood experiences. And I also recognize how hard it could be to just tell this story like like, I think I've probably told my story over a thousand times in the last three years, and maybe you have told your own personal story even more than that. But do you I'm talking a little bit about it again with you right now for a new audience. Everything I do around my advocacy work comes directly from my personal experience.

You know, As you mentioned in your introduction, I was the you know, the peg that didn't fit the whole of school, and as a result of that, you know, suffered tremendously. I spent a lot of the time because I couldn't sit still chewing out with the janitor in the hallway. I spent a lot of time on a first name basis with surely the receptionist in the principal's office. And I spent a lot of the day hiding in the bathroom to escape reading out loud with tears streaming

down my face. Those struggles made me feel that I wasn't different but deficient. Those struggles, uh, and that marginalization, and I think we should call it what it is. It is a form of marginalization, for a manifestation of human difference, when people with a typical brains are made to feel not different but deficient. You said. By the end of the third grade, I was promoted from being one of those kids to the resource room special ed kid.

I was diagnosed with multiple language based learning disabilities and attention death to disorder. I was in the resource room too. I thought that was interesting that that's what they called it where you were as well. It wasn't called special ed in my where I was, it was called the resource room. Was that similar with you as well? Yeah? I found I had. I found myself in a variety of different and if we were in person, you'd see

my air quotes alternative education settings. Yeah, the resource room being one of those spent more directly named special education specific programs at different parts of my journey were another part of my experience. But all of those, to go back to the air quotes, all of those those spaces where stigmatizing. You know, the number of times I was called you know, retard, or the number of times I was called stupid because of being placed in that sort

of space. And I think it's interesting. I think a lot about the kind of structural role of special education, and I have a lot of cognitive dissonance around that. You know, on one hand, it was an act of tremendous change and empowerment in nineteen seventy three when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was passed. You know, before that folks with different brains and bodies had no right to an education. They could be excluded and were excluded

at stat gering numbers. So the creation of the resource room, the special room, all those things was an act of inclusion at first. But like anything else, there are unintended consequences. And one of those unintended consequences is when we sort of walled off a group of people with atypical brains and bodies when we saw them through the lens of pathology opposed to diversity. Because most of those folks have

labels and diagnosies that get them into that space. We've essentially gave a message to all the other kids about individuality. You know, to be different is to be deficient. And we let the system off the hook. We said, okay, personalized, differentiated instruction happens over there for those kids. But everybody else, Hey, you better be normal or else. You know, it's a

really excellent point. I've been trying to think, you know, thinking about my own childhood and then my own pre Like people keep asking me like what was your like why did you fight the system? Like and a lo other people in Special D kind of resigned to their fate in some ways. And I keep trying to think, like what is the personality trait? Like what what is that about? And I actually I don't like it when

people ask me that question. But I'm sure you get asked that question too when you were young, you know. I read these things like you're reading this report and like and you would you you like, were cursing them out after every one of these things, like Jonathan displays poor executive, My god, all kill them function, you know, And and I was reading this and I was like, well, I wanted to ask you, like, why did it bother

you so much that people said you were deficient? I really was to have to try to unpack that, uh for for a long time because it bothered me too, But it didn't bother everyone. And I just I have my own I bought the season before I tell you, I wanted. I wanted to get your own thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, look, my my, my journey of agency and

efficacy and empowerment, it was. It was a journey. And I say that to mean that I struggled with were in helplessness around those labels and believing that they were right about me, and then subsequently had support in resisting it. You know, when I was first diagnosed at the end of third grade, you know, we walked, me and my mom went into the school psychologist's office, and it was obvious that everyone in the room thought we were getting

like the worst news in the world. You know, Like there was like soft music playing in the background, and there was like a box of tissues on the table, you know, and all of the language they used in front of me, you know, was Jonathan has deficit, this disorder, this Jonathan can't do that. And so I remember walking out of that room and learning to my mom. And

my mom's quite a character, you know. She's like four to nine on a good day and high heels on her tippy toes, and she has a very squeaky, high pitched voice, like mini mouse, and she curses like a truck driver. And if you were a teacher doing wrong by her son. You did not want cursing mini mouse in your office, you know. But but that's where my mom was. She was that person who believed in me. So I walked out of the shrink's office and said to me, Hey, said to my mom, Hey, Mom, am

I normal? And my mom said, Jonathan normal sucks. And that's actually the or wow, your mom said that to you. That's actually the origin of the title. Now. I didn't believe my mom at the time, you know, I was like, whatever, Mom, normal is better than what I am. But she planted

that seed. See and that scene that you were alluded to when we were reading the different reading the report, which happened a little bit later after the diagnosis at a cafe in Manhattan Beach where I grew up, my mom was reading that out loud, and she was the one actually freaking out, uh and saying all of these profanities and and I see mom's work. That was my mom. Oh,

I'm sorry for misunderstanding that. No, no, but but but but but but but You are right that my mom was the person who was the voice of resistance and defiance well before I could be that voice and then, of course I had others along that journey, my mom being one. I had many gifted educators, and it's important for me to celebrate them who not only tended to my learning needs but also enforced that notion and supported

that notion that nothing was wrong with me. Uh, that it was wrong, uh the way I was being treated, and that ultimately I should fight back. Mm hmm, yeah, I mean just reading that I was just like fastated by the perils they That was around the time I was diagnosed. And then I repeated third grade as a result. Did they ask you to repeat third grade? I wasn't

asked to repeat third grade. I left school for a time in sixth grade after being accused of plagiarizing something that I had not And then because you know, of course, you know, if you're a dyslexic, you can't also be a good writer. That was that was the work that people had and I had written a dictated and I and I stumble over the distinct between writing and dictating, because I have really come to believe that there is

no distinction. That talking something is as valid as writing something. Uh. And in our age of speech to text, I think the false dichotomy between sort of writing and dictating will will hopefully start to crumble. But I dictated this story to my mom and and was accused of plagiarizing it because they only knew me through the lens of the bad spelling and the bad handwriting and the monosyllabic sentences when I was forced to write in a traditional way.

So I contemplated repeating sixth grade, and then again we contemplated and came close to repeating ninth grade. But I sort of stayed on the on the timetable, mostly with

the goal of kind of getting out. Yeah, no, no, I feel you, brother, Like I think it's it's so important what you're doing, and you touched on this notion of like, oh well, obviously, like you can't be a gifted writer and have trouble spelling, right, But like, you know, this emerging movement of two E twice exceptional, which is where my heart lies the most these days, I'm really glad to kind of see that movement. But it's still a minority movement. I mean, I don't think most educators

have heard of twice exceptional children. Yeah, Evan, you know, I gave my first talk for for sube bomb and legend. Legend by the way, let's let's let's celebrate Sue as loud as we can. And I gave my talk on her behalf. She invited me after my first Bookcording Outside the Lines, came out in two thousand and I had no idea what the hell this two e thing was, you know, but I was so invigorated by it at

first for very personal reasons. You know, I actually have never shared this story before, so this is the first time I'm doing so. Not for any you know, reason I haven't you know, I don't know why, but this is the first time I've shared it out loud. So when I was a kid at the same time that I was struggling in school in sixth grade, fifth and sixth grade, you know, was really seen through a narrow lens, uh. You know. The smart kid could read fast, the smart

kid could write, et cetera. There was something in California called the Gate Program, which was the gifted and Talented program. And I remember the day like it was yesterday where the five kids from my class got pulled out to the Gate Program and I it was and it was such a stark juxposition between the SPED room that I was going in going to a resource room, and then the gate program, meaning the sped room was all about trying to make the square peg fit the round hole. Right.

We were going to my spelling, we were going to remediate my reading. It was fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it. And then I watched these other kids walk down into this room that looked like a straight up like Maker's lab, you know what I mean. And this is like nineteen eighty four, you know, no one had ever done this before. And I was so pissed off man and and and it was such a visceral moment of a sense of inequity, uh and a sense of

why do you know? Me? And this group of kids get fixed all day long, and that small group gets amplified, accelerated, they get to do passion and uh and interest driven projects. And so when I went to the te world, UH, I was really resentful, maybe one word more skeptical of the whole notion of giftedness and how we define it.

And what I found in the two E world was a radical definition of what we think of as giftedness as human flourishing, uh, challenging a very narrow definition of giftedness that conflates gifted with school performance, because the reality is some of the most gifted people are people who don't perform in school. We know more than ever that you know, true giftedness comes hand in hand with a complicated brew of strengths and weaknesses, of assets and challenges.

And I'm such a believer in the power of the two E movement to recognize the talent that is going unrecognized, of course, but ultimately to lead a movement that has a broader definition of human flourishing that empowers more and more types of human beings to find what's right with them and build a life around it. Absolutely very well said, well, it's good to have you as as a champion of the two E movement. Could have someone as such as your position having an advocate. I wonder how we can

get more prominent advocates of it. First of all, we just had to get the word out more about it. We have to get the word out more about it. And then and then, you know, we we have to we have to stop faking normal, all of us, you know, like like because you know we let me give you an example of that. You know, I went to Brown University. And I'm sure you and I know you, and I'm sure most of your listeners know that that's, you know,

some ivy weak school. And when I transferred to Brown, and so I went to a university before Brown on soccer scholarship. Uh, and that's really all I thought I could be. I thought all I could be as an athlete. I was a stupid, crazy, lazy kid. And that was my sort of island of competency survival mechanism through adolescence and then through a very sort of dramatic set of changes in my life, I got involved in my education, advocated for myself, got the services that I deserved, and

decided to transfer to Brown. And so when I got to Brown, I really felt like I had no place, you know, here, I was the resource room kid. I kind of faked my way through as a soccer player. I felt like a fraud there. Yes, And I remember when we first got on campus, me and my mom. There was a transfer orientation and there was an icebreaker, and the icebreaker was share where you transferred from and

what you did the summer before. And so the moment the first kid went, it was like bragfest time, you know, it was like, oh, I transferred from you know, Yale, and I worked at the National Institute of Health, and I transferred from Harvard and I'm on a shortlist for a Nobel Prize. You know. It was just ragfest, and you know, I was like, I'm out of here, you know, I got no place here. I felt not normal there. And then a guy raised his sand. I'll never forget this.

He had purple hair, and he had bicycle chains around his wrists like they were bracelets, and he said, my name is David Cole. And I transferred from Landmark College, which is a two year of college for people with learning and attentional differences, and I worked construction last summer. I'm like, that's my boy right there, you know. And I went right up to him and he was the first person that I had ever seen stop trying to fake normal. And it changed my life, you know. Fast forward.

Dave Cole co authored Learning Outside the Lines, Dave Cole co founded Eye to Eye, and Dave Cole is now a renowned conceptual artist, sculptor doing amazing work. All your listeners should go check him out online and an advocate for the narrative verse. But my point is I would have left that school. I would have felt alone if he had had the courage to share his different you know.

And so I think a part of like being an advocate and building awareness for this is obviously for us to advocate in the traditional sense of asking systems to recognize to E. But it's also about us recognizing the two e inside of ourselves and having the courage to share that out with the world, to colleagues, to people.

We work with the family members to not hide the things that make us different, but to celebrate those and when we do that, we build a more inclusive world, and we are true advocates for diversity in the broadest sense. You said, you have this quote, you said, Don't get me wrong. Normal is a force of repression for sure, but as also a source of creation. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, for me, normal was pressing down upon me, you know, and as it does

us with a set of restrictions. Do this, don't do this, be this way, don't be that way, learn this way, don't learn that way. And it's an all encompassing sort of imperative to be normal or as one of the titles of one of the chapters is act normal, right? But what's interesting to me, and it gets to the quote that you reference, which comes from that chapter act normal. I don't think we realize what hypocrisy it is to tell people to act normal, because to act is to

fundamentally play a role something you are not right. And when you play that role, not only are you engaged in the sort of repression side of normal, but you're also creating something, a role, a persona, a self that may or may not be you. And that was said within a particular part of my journey making helping me understand my journey, where I was told to act normal relentlessly all the time, sits still, don't talk so fast, don't talk so loud, rite better. And so I decided

to act normal in the highest sense. You know, it took on this persona of being the athlete person I mean,

you all can imagine that in your mind. Took on the kind of persona of hiding all of my differences, doing the opposite of what Dave Cole did, you know ten years later in my life, and ultimately took on the role of enforcing normal see on others and telling other people how they should be or shouldn't it be demeaning other people with a continuum of differences around sexuality, sexual orientation, race, class, gender, And ultimately it was a

force of repression but creation, and it created a self that was built on a very fragile foundation, and eventually that foundation broke. So some of that instance, it doesn't sound like you are trying to be normal. It sounds like you're overcompensating, like you were trying to be great, like super extra great. It feels a little different to me than trying to be normal. It felt like an overcompensation.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I go back and forth between ah h, between between how we use the word normal because you know, because you're right, in its most clear linguistical sense, normal is the middle of the bell curve, the average, and in its sort of social history, that's where the concept became wide we understood within culture. You know, it emerged within

the discipline of the statistics. The whole notion of the average man that emerged with a Belgian assistant satistician in the sort of eighteen forties, eighteen fifties, and the average became held up as the optimal. But what's interesting, and if you look at the work of a man that I really admire, he's a mentor of mine, Nam Leonard Davis. He wrote a book called Enforcing Normalcy in around the

eighteen eighties. The average got conflated with the ideal, which is something that's kind of impossible, right, And that's where this normal as both average but also the impossible ideal kind of looms all over us. So I think, to go to your question, I was not trying to be typical in the sense of the middle of the Bell curve. I was trying to overcompensate, you know, be exceptional in some way. But that was, in its own right, a capitulation to the complicated mess of normalcy in our world.

Let me give you a good example of that complicated mess, you know. In the nineteen forties, a movement, and frankly they were your genesis, that did this, but a movement of pseudoscientists, etc. Took a group of body measurements that happened in many different areas, measurements of bodies. They were non representational measurements. They were mostly white people, mostly in our middle class, et cetera. And then they created a sculptures of these people called Norma and Norman. Literally, this

is not a joke. Everyone can look this up. They created the sculptures of Norman and Norma, and these sculptures were supposedly of the normal human beings, but then when you looked at them, they were like the statue of David. And in Cleveland, they held a competition to find women who looked like Norma, and those women submitted their body measurements, and of course, surprise, surprise, nobody met the body measurements

of this so called normal representation. So normal is an impossible idea ideal, but it's an impossible ideal that we're told to be and to keep chasing into the horizon. Yeah, that's a great example of that when it comes to intelligence. Intelligence as a boy, that's what a tricky topic that is. And I've tried to I started off studying it in my career, being like, oh, IQ is like evil to like studying it and realizing, well, there are real individual

differences in IQ, and it's a real thing. Like there's some people that are really high on that bell curve and are able to learn really quickly in a school kind of environment. And so when we talk about other of these kind of psychological constructs, they certainly can scientifically be captured, right, Yeah, you know. And it's interesting you mentioned that your journey with IQ, because I think I've probably gone on a comparable journey, but but not from

a scholarly perspective, but from an active perspective. And you know, you're right to note that we we we have we have to value different you know what I mean, like, yeah, yeah, wave it away, you know what I mean. And we can't say it exists and doesn't exist at the same time exactly right now, Uh, to the question that started our amazing dialogue around the notion of you know, saying

normal sucks but then arguing that it's a construct. You know, we have to be tactical, tactical in our on our moments, right, you know what I mean? Uh, And we have to understand that to get to a north star place where you know, certain differences can be not pathologized, but sell we have to do X, Y and Z and our sort of social activism and intellectual activism. But to go to your question around intelligence, and you're and what you're

noting is exactly right. I don't take issue with the idea that given this psychometric UH assessment of intelligence, but we could apply it to others that there are deviations on a bell curve around that. That is true, that there's not a continuum of aptitudes, et cetera. What I take issue with is then the value judgment that's posed

on it from a cultural perspective. So to call, you know, one type of human to who excels because of a certain cognitive predisposition in a certain system the smart human is call all the other people who don't the dumb human. And so I think what we need to be min mindful of is valuing difference, not demeaning the manifestation of intelligence that is captured in IQ. That manifestation of intelligence has value, it does and it contributes to the world.

But at the same time, we can't mean the manifestations of intelligence that aren't captured in that tool. And we can have a broader definition like Sternberg does and others that starts to surface up the multiple manifestations of human flourishing. And then we have to have systems that don't just call one brain smart, but create room for all of those brains that have something right with them to be recognized and empowered as well. Yeah, that was that was

really very well put. That was the why I had the cheeky title of my book called Ungifted. I don't know if you ever had a chance to read that book. Ye, A big fan of it. Oh cool, I'm honored. But uh, you know, there's just a cheeky way of saying like, if we have the gifted, doesn't that mean that there exists a class of human being is called the ungifted? Yeah, and it's makes sense to me, and yeah, and and and and also to be to be core, I don't equate i Q with all there is to intelligence, and

I have this theory of personal intelligence. But this is not an interview about me, so I'm not going to get into this. But inspired by your by your work, man, and so this is a an opportunity to thank you for that work and to you know, recognize you and others that are a part of the small growing movement of academics slash activists, because I see you as both uh growing academic activist community that's trying to ask a different question about people. You know, the old school question

was how smart are you? Let's measure it under the i Q test. The new question is how are you smart? And let's build a set of metrics and tools that allow everyone to find that spark of genius inside of themselves. And you're a big part of that movement. Man, Well, thank you for saying that. I Uh, I got I got chills when I heard you, uh just describe the problem and and articulate it. So there's probably a reason

why I got chills. There's a there's a there's a commonality of a spirit uh that we both you know, sort of see a better world. So it's it's it's wonderful. So now you you did something really awesome. You took the short bus intentionally around the country and and you wanted to learn from people with all sorts of different ways, of all different kinds of minds. What I mean, that's

kind of that's quite brilliant. Yeah, so you know, to situate that journey, and it was a journey you know within you know, both my my personal arc of transformation. But but but what I think is also a conceptual arc of transformation and and uh a set of ideas about what leads to transformation. If you've been demeaned, you know, I went to Brown and I to reference a conversation.

We're having a moment. Ago. I wasn't just normal, but I was better than normal, right, Like I was better than those kids that got to go to the Gate program. I was better than those kids who told me I was stupid. I had proved them all wrong, right. And not only did I go to Brown and do that whole thing, but I had a pretty you know, exceptional journey at Brown. You know, I sold Running Outside the Lines to Simon and Chester, Dave Cole and I did

when we were undergraduates. We took a full semester off and wrote it as undergraduates. I also founded Eye to Eye, which went off to be a national mentoring and advocacy organization still in existence, been around for over twenty years. And I was a Hirius Truman Scholar for Public service, you know, forty in the country out of all the universities in the country. And so I graduated from Brown, and you know, on the surface, you know, it was like, oh, okay,

you know your journey's done. You know, like you you know, you made it man, and and and and and then why the hell do I feel like such shit? And I was in a place in my early greade twenties where I struggled still deeply with depression, I struggled with anxiety.

I called it the black hole days, where you know, I'd be just walking down the street, man, I'd fall into a hole, you know, and feeling, I know, that feeling not come out for for for two weeks, you know, and then yeah, man, well and it goes out to

anyone listening everyone. Yeah, everyone has that feeling. Everyone has those, especially if you've been called not normal, because there's a wound there and there's a x essential wound existential that, yeah, you know, and the wound is its origin is being cut from the herd, you know, like in in in in medieval time and biblical culture. In deep human DNA,

the worst punishment was excommunication from the community. And I think that what we who have been excommunicated from the community of normal are having to heal from is a deep wound. So for me, I thought that the success

traditionally would heal that wound. It did not. And not only did it not, but then I found myself as I started to speak and talk about my experiences, which started in the early two thousands, I sound I found my story being really contorted to almost like reinforce a sense of shame for people who couldn't succeed in the

way that I did. So I would give these talks at schools, and I literally was introduced on multiple occasions to kids in special education programs who were struggling and suffering. I was introduced by teachers' principles, etc. As somebody who used to be like them and somebody who had fixed himself and was now normal. That's almost a direct quote

from introductions that would happen in front of children. So here I am thinking, you know what, I'm a part of the problem now, and what's going to help me heal? And what is the wound at its core? And the wound at its core was feeling deficient because I was different and having to understand that. So I went on a journey to try to figure out how to heal myself, how to not be a part of the problem and be a part of the solution around how we treat difference.

And so I bought an old short school bus and I drove around the United States forty five thousand miles six months, and I listened to the stories of people with atypical brains and bodies, And not only did I listen, but I learned from them. And I came to the realization that people who find themselves outside of the Bell curve have knowledge about how to live a better life

that all of us need. That I needed from a very deeply personal perspective, but ultimately, I think they have knowledge about how to live with the reality of human embodiment, the reality of human difference, the reality of human valuability. There's a saying in the disability rights movement that we

are all temporarily abled bodies. I would add temporarily abled bodies and minds that we were all experience disability at some point in our life, and we need to learn how to live with that human reality because we've been in denial of that human reality for too long. So that's what I found on the shortbus man. I found a better way to look. That's wonderful, you know. It's it if I if I can just like reframe the uh not reframe it, but just trying to think about

it through through my own personal experience. I feel like I went through this the shift of like my twenties being like I'll prove them, you know, like with my own sort of like trying to get all the accolades I possibly could, the achievements, and I felt deeply empty

as well. And then the shift, the shift seems to be from that attitude to like, you know, like a more like a more selfless egoist sort of like, you know, I'm going to like help others who are in a similar position, and that just feels it feels better, and and it's it's you know, it's you, sir, so I it feels less narcissistic. First of all, it's le narcissistic. It's less capituating to the story of normal that to be valuable, you have to be that impossible ideal exactly

or can be, but keep trying. But it's ultimately how human beings heal. You know, when you were speaking, I came to mind and experience that I had with eye to eye. So I've alluded to eye to eye a few times. And it started as a tiny little mentoring program, a bunch of Brown University students with learning and intentional differences and some rizzity students who mentored younger students who

had similar experiences. And it started with the notion that you know me, David Cole others sharing their story with young kids would give those young children a sense of hope for their future right and it would heel them in some way. And it absolutely did that. But the first evaluation we had done at Eye to Eye when I to Eye started to go to scale in the

early two thousands by Harvard's Graduate School of Education. The evaluation done by Harvard showed that the impact was as much or more on the person doing the mentoring because it let them give back, but more importantly, it let them make meaning from their experience that created positive change in the world. Opposed to consuming the gold stars and reaching for those gold hoops and jumping through him. This was a way to change things for a young person.

But ultimately the work that you're doing, the work that so many of us who care about this year to change the world, to make it a place where no one feels stupid, crazy, lazy, no one feels defective because they're different. Oh it's wonderful. Now, are you one of the founders of i'd Eye? Yeah, So I founded Eye to Eye at Brown as the mentoring program and then

co founded Eye to Eye with David Flink. Hired David Flank when he was still working at Brown University, right, yeah, David Flint, Yeah yeah, yeah, to come and uh and build Iya Eye out. So I was the co founder, the founding executive director and then president emeritus. Tell him to put you on their website as part of their origin story. What the heck? You know one of the why are you excluded from this website? One of the

things that is talking about exclusions. Jeez. Yeah, you know, you have to create space for other people to do the work man, and so uh, I'm I'm all good. I love that. Yes, I tested you, I tested the sea of your growth. Yeah, you passed. So do you do you know Gabrielle Friedman? I don't think I know gabri gabes are Gabe Friedman. No, I don't know Gabe. Okay, he works for I to Eye Now. I think he's pretty high up in the organization. But his sister, uh was in my class at Penn and she got me

in touch with him. And yes, anyway, I got a little bit of a window into I. I I didn't even know you were associated with it a little ble a co founder of it, and I just it struck me how amazing the organization was and how impactful it was for so many. So I think if it like if that's like if that was your only accomplishment in life, I think that like that's all, you know, like you've really done something really important? All right on? Man? Well and uh, and it is it is the It is

not the I, but the wei. Uh. It's the you know, multiple people, from David Flink, who was one of the first mentors at Brown, to David Cole, who is also not in the Origin story but was the co founder at Brown, and Marcus who both David and I hired,

who's now the president. And then even beyond those people, it's the mentors all around the country who I meet in my travels, who are out there, you know, sharing what makes them different, proudly with courage that helps take down this idea that there's a normal way to be. And it's those people who are really making impact every day. I love it. Oh boy, So okay, is there anything else you know? We could talk for hours and hours

and hours. Is there anything else you know you want to say, Like we didn't really talk about, you know, how society's, government's businesses can promote more neurodiverse people like sort of a practical suggestion. Do you want to kind of leave something along those lines. Yeah, I mean you're you're right, Scott, to name the next horizon of our work.

And again, it's our work, it's your work, it's my work, it's it's your listener's work, it's our work to demand that we have systems that embrace neurodiversity and unleash the talent and value that those humans bring to the world. We have a long way to go in school, but the conversation and systems are at least in place to do that work in school. We have a further way to go in the private sector and in the workforce.

And that matters because we know that a lot of what happens in K twelve education is reverse engineered by what is private sector demands and what helps people thrive in the private sector, which makes sense because people need to make a living and make their way, and if the private sector could take a stance on neurodiversity mattering, that would impact and ripple down and throughout our system. And so from a very practical perspective, this is something

that I'm advocating for in all of my travels. I hope many will join me. We have to include within private sector corporate diversity policies different brains and bodies as a part of the diversity initiatives. You know, I go to a lot of corporations, and the conversation around learning and attentional differences or disabilities, autism or aspergers is being

had through a compliance Ada lens. Right. But then you go over to the other side and the conversation around inclusion and access, around race, class, gender, sexual identity, and orientation. That's about diversity, right, So that's wrong. It's not wrong that we are having a conversation around diversity, but we need to include in that conversation around diversity and in the policy procedures and practices of those diversity initiatives. We

have to include the neurodiverse. And I'll go further. We have to include people with atypical brains and as a part of diversity as a part of what makes any business, any school, any community stronger, and as people who have something to give, not despite their differences, but they have something to give because of their differences. Jonathan, why do I feel like I'm in a church sermon right now? I just want to be like Amen, I got rawed

that that happened. I feel like every sentence you're saying, I'm like, amen, brother, hallelujahy John, thank you so much. The world the world is is very lucky and fortunate to have you in it and and to and to really make such important strides, and I feel very fortunate to be able to talk to you today. So thanks so much for being on the Psychology Podcast. Yeah, hey man, the world is a better place because of you the

work that you do. Thank you for having me, and let's all share are different and let's fight for a world where different isn't efficient together. Hallelujah. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology

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