Episode 50. Remembering Steve Silberman: A conversation with Shannon Rosa

Me and Steve

In this, the final episode of Noncompliant, I spoke with Shannon Rosa, editor of Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. She shared her memories of her good friend Steve Silberman, author of the groundbreaking history of autism & the neurodiversity movement, Neurotribes, which featured Shannon and her family. We talked about Steve and his legacy for our community.

This episode features clips from the first episode of Noncompliant, where Steve talks about autism and his work, and  includes a closing note of thanks to Noncompliant listeners as the podcast ends.

Listen by pressing play below, or find it on streaming sites like  Spotify,   ApplePodcasts,  Pandora, etc.

Transcripts below audio file.


Transcript: Transcript- Noncompliant Podcast-Remembering Steve Silberman A conversation with Shannon Rosa (1).mp3(2)

Bio
Shannon Rosa is senior editor of Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, an autism information and advocacy nexus. Her writing can be found in The Washington Post and the anthology Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement, among other places. She lives near San Francisco, California, with her husband and adult autistic son.

Episode 47. Challenging the ABA industry: Julie Roberts of Therapist Neurodiversity Collective

In this episode we spoke with Julie Roberts, the founder of the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective. We discussed her new book, The Gold Standard Fallacy, a critique of the ABA industry, as well as new and better approaches to autism services.

Listen to the podcast by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like  Spotify,   ApplePodcasts,  Pandora, etc

Read
 the transcript, below the audio.


Transcript by Julie-Ann Lee: JRoberts_Transcript_NoncompliantPodcast_

Bio
Julie Roberts, M.S., CCC-SLP, Julie Roberts, M.S., CCC-SLP, founded the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective in 2018. She is  the author of The Gold Standard Fallacy of ABA: A Reference Guide for Therapists, Educators, & Parents. She is a formally late-identified Autistic Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) specializing in neurodiversity-paradigm-aligned approaches to therapy and education, particularly in autistic social communication.

Sources
The Shifting Landscape of Autism Services, 2023 interview with Julie Roberts on this podcast
Therapist Neurodiversity Collective
The Gold Standard Fallacy of ABA
Autism in Adulthood
Neurodiversity (Sage Journals)

 

Episode 46. Dr. Jackie Ryan on inclusive research & service models for intellectually disabled Canadians

I was so excited to speak with Dr. Ryan, a trailblazer in Canadian autism research! Her work was the first participatory autism research in Canada and it has inspired more. We talk about inclusion, autonomy, research methods, our collaborative work and how to improve services for intellectually disabled people in Canada’s west and throughout the world.

Listen to the audio below or on streaming services like Spotify ApplePodcasts & Pandora.
Read the transcript below the audio file.

Transcript coming soon!

Bio
Jackie Ryan is an autistic autism researcher with a PhD in Rehabilitation Science from the University of Alberta. Her recent doctoral research was about understanding self-determination and autonomy from the perspective of autistic adults with intellectual disabilities, using a community-based participatory research approach. Included in her research was the preparation of the Research 101 open-access training to build capacity for autistic people to collaborate more in autism research.

Sources
Being able to be myself: Understanding autonomy and autonomy-support from the perspectives of autistic adults with intellectual disabilities. Ryan, et al. Autism. 2024.

 

 

Episode 45. Willowbrook, whistleblowers & human rights: Carl Elliott on his new book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice

Professor Carl Elliott’s new book The Occasional Human Sacrifice, is about whistleblowers in medicine. In this episode, we discuss the whistleblowers at Willowbrook, a residential institution for autistic and developmentally disabled people that was exposed for human rights abuses in 1972. We also talk about the experience of being a whistleblower and its impact on mental health, as well as strategies for reporters and whistleblowers.

Listen to the podcast by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like SpotifyApplePodcasts, Pandora, etc 

Read the transcript, below the audio.

 

Cw for institution survivors: Abuses in residential institutions discussed at 5:30-11:05 and 32:45-37:03

Transcript: Transcript_Carl Elliott_Noncompliant Podcast

Bio
Carl Elliott is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He’s a native of Clover, South Carolina, where his father was a family doctor and his mother was a librarian. Before moving to Minnesota, he taught at McGill University in Montreal. Among the awards he has received for his work are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award, and the Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the US Library of Congress.

Resources
The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No, by Carl Elliott (W W Norton)

Former residents of Willowbrook recall its horrors as fight for disability rights continues. Times Union. March 27, 2023.

Willowbrook State School. Wikipedia.

Stop the Shock at Judge Rotenberg Center: Action Alerts. Autistic Self Advocacy Network (US).

 

Episode 44. Filmmakers Tony Spiridakis & Alex Plank on the new film “Ezra”, autism and representation

Tony Spiridakis, Bobby Cannavale & Alex Plank

I was thrilled to talk with Tony Spiridakis and Alex Plank about the new film Ezra, which Tony wrote and produced alongside director Tony Goldwyn, and which Alex associate produced, acted and consulted on. (Read my review of Ezra here.) We take a look behind the scenes at how the film was developed and produced on set, and how the film is aspirational for new films with autistic characters.

Listen to the podcast by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like SpotifyApplePodcasts, Pandora, etc 

Read the transcript, below the audio.


Transcript:
Transcript_NCPodcast_Tony Spiridakis & Alex Plank

Bios

Tony Spiridakis is an award-winning screenwriter, director, producer, and actor with nearly four decades in the film and television industry. He is a father of two and a strong advocate for autism awareness. He supports a variety of autism-related schools and organizations, including The Help Group, The Center School, Birch Family Services, Exceptional Minds, and We’ve Got Friends.

Alex Plank is a producer and actor, known for Ezra, The Good Doctor, The Bridge and other works. He is also well known in our community as the founder of Wrong Planet, an online community for autistic people and a place where a lot of autistic people found each other and found out more about themselves. Alex is an associate producer of Ezra and consulted on the film from a neurodiversity perspective.

 

Episode 43. “If it feels like too much for you, then it’s probably too much for your kid” Talking about parenting with Stephane Hartl

I had such a great conversation with artist and teacher Stephane Hartl about parenting autistic children in a world that wasn’t built for them. How do parents manage a new diagnosis, advocate at school and navigate the transition to adulthood? What needs to shift in our society—and how can we help to shift it?

Listen by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like Spotify, Stitcher or ApplePodcasts.

Read the transcript, below the audio.

Transcript coming soon!

Episode 42. “How do we break down the barriers?” Anne Borden King, interviewed by Sean Pickard on Voices for Abilities

While the podcast is on a brief hiatus as I finish my book (yay!), I’m sharing this interview that Shawn Pickard hosted with me for Voices for Abilities radio. We discussed how Canadian autism policy needs to move from a charity perspective to a rights perspective and how the inclusion and neurodiversity movements are working for the changes that autistic people & families need.

Listen to the podcast by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like Spotify, Stitcher or ApplePodcasts.

 

Bio
Anne Borden King is a Toronto-based podcaster, writer and human rights advocate. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Healthy Debate, FactKeepers and Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, among other publications. She is the host of Noncompliant, a popular podcast about neurodiversity. A co-founder of Autistics for Autistics, the Canadian autistic self-advocacy organization, she has presented before the United Nations and the Canadian Senate among others, on autism policy.

Her upcoming book, The Children Do Not Consent: The search for autism’s “cure”—and the kids who pay the cost will be published in 2023.

 

 

 

 

Episode 41. The impact of pandemic-related school closures: A conversation with Molly Colvin & Tannahill Glen

 I spoke with Dr. Molly Colvin and Dr. Tannahill Glen about their new book, Altered Trajectories: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted Children’s Education, Mental Health and Neurodevelopment, co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Linton Reesman. We discussed the educational impact of school closures, as well as the mental health impact on kids. A crucial topic as we look for solutions today, both within and outside education.

Listen to the podcast by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like Spotify, Stitcher or ApplePodcasts.


Bios

Dr. Molly Colvin is director of the Learning and Emotional Assessment Program (LEAP) at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She is also Co-Director of the Child Psychology Internship program at MGH.

Dr. Tannahill Glen is a clinical neuropsychologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. She specializes in diagnosis and treatment planning for neurologic conditions with impact on thinking, mood and behavior.  Most recently her publications have centered on the neuropsychological consequences of prolonged pandemic related educational disruption.

Resources

My interview with Jennifer Reesman: Middle-school minds in teenage bodies: The post-pandemic crisis in our high schools. Healthy Debate. November 2023.

 

 

Episode 39. “What outcomes are we looking at?” Talking with Dr. Andrew Whitehouse about the shifting course of autism research & services

Portrait photo of a man, light-skinned with short brown hair and rectangular black eyeglasses, in a white dress shirt, smiling, standing in front of bright green bushes dotted with flowers of pink and muted orange. I spoke with Dr. Andrew Whitehouse from the University of Western Australia about autistic life, gut hype, same-foods, the problem of pseudoscience and the shifting nature of autism research.

Listen to the podcast by playing the audio file below, or on streaming sites like Spotify, Stitcher or ApplePodcasts.


Transcript:
NoncompliantPodcast_trscrt_Whitehouse

Bio
Dr. Whitehouse is the Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research and the Director of Clini-Kids at the Telethon Kids Institute. He is Professor of Autism Research at the University of Western Australia and Research Strategy Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC). He has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles and is an advisor to State and Commonwealth Governments on policies relating to autistic children. He was awarded a Eureka Prize for his research and in 2023, he was a Western Australian of the Year award winner.

Links
Will Mozart Make My Baby Smart?

Autism-related dietary preferences mediate autism-gut microbiome associations

Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC)

Episode 35. What happened to social psychiatry? A conversation with Professor Matthew Smith

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In this episode, I spoke with health historian Matthew Smith from the University of Strathclyde. We discussed his new book, The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States, as well as neurodiversity, the promise of Universal Basic Income and more.

 

Listen to the podcast on the audio link below or on streaming sites like Spotify, Stitcher or iTunes.

Read the transcript below the audio link.

 

Transcript by Julie-Ann Lee: Transcript_NoncompliantPodcast_Matthew Smith_2023

Bio
Matthew Smith is a professor at the University of Strathclyde and the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH) in Scotland. He is the author of The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States (Columbia UP, 2023). He has also authored many articles and several other books and monographs including: Hyperactive, The Controversial History of ADHD; Another Person’s Poison, A History of Food Allergy; An Alternative History of Hyperactivity; and Pathologies and Politics, Dietary Innovation and Disease from the Nineteenth Century (co-edited by David Gentilcore).

Episode 33. The shifting landscape of autism services: Therapist Neurodiversity Collective’s Julie Roberts

A woman with long blond hair, smiling, against a white backdrop Today I spoke with Julie Roberts, founder of Therapist Neurodiversity Collective (TNDC). We talked about the ABA industry’s troubling attempts to dominate autism services and funding, as well as the culture shift needed to increase support for neurodiversity-affirming autism supports and services.

Listen to the podcast on the audio link below. Also available on Spotify, Stitcher or iTunes.

Read the transcript below the audio link.

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Transcript by Julie-Ann Lee: Transcript_NoncompliantPodcast_JulieRoberts

Bio
Julie Roberts, a formally late-identified Autistic woman, is a Speech-Language Pathologist, neurodiversity educator and activist who founded Therapist Neurodiversity Collective in 2018 and Public School Neurodiversity Collective in 2022. Her professional experiences include private practice ownership for 7 years, and being a multi-state Clinical Director, and National Field Director of Corporate Compliance for one of the largest post-acute rehab companies in the U.S. She currently works in her favorite setting: the U.S. public school system. Julie’s articles and educational resources have reached over three-quarters of a million people.

Episode 31. Talking with professor Alan Levinovitz about pseudoscience and the myth of “natural”

Today I spoke with Professor Alan Levinovitz, author of Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science. We talked about the myth of the natural, pseudoscience, neurodiversity and post-pandemic life.

Listen to the podcast on the audio link below. Also available on Spotify, Stitcher or iTunes.

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Bio

Alan Levinovitz is associate professor of religious studies at James Madison University. He specializes in classical Chinese thought, as well as the intersection between religion and science. His most recent book, Natural, explores how the mistake of worshipping nature can lead to pseudoscience and injustice. We’re going to talk about the book today, in the context of neurodiversity, and also about the ideas of “natural immunity” and “natural medicine” that arose in response to the pandemic.  

Link
Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science.

Episode 28. Is there an Autism Industrial Complex? Interview with Professor Alicia Broderick

front cover of a book. Dark blue cover with words "THE AUTISM INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: HOW BRANDING, MARKETING & CAPITAL INVESTMENT TURNED AUTISM INTO BIG BUSINESS My guest this episode is Alicia Broderick, author of the new book The Autism Industrial Complex:  How Branding, Marketing, and Capital Investment Turned Autism Into Big Business. Her book traces the cultural, political, and economic history of autism. We talk about the history of autism services, how industry greed often gets in the way of useful approaches that can help families and some advice for families of newly diagnosed kids on how to find the best approaches and sift through all the hype.

Listen to the podcast by pressing Play on the audio file below. Also available on Spotify, Stitcher or iTunes.
Read the transcript at the link below the audio file
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Transcript by Julie-Ann Lee: Podcast_Transcript_0722_Broderick_Borden

Bio
Alicia Broderick is a Professor of Education at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Links mentioned in the podcast

The Autism Industrial Complex:  How Branding, Marketing, and Capital Investment Turned Autism Into Big Business, by Alicia Broderick

Screams, Slaps and Love (Lovaas interviewed in Life Magazine).

Affirming resources for families

Start Here: A Guide for Parents of Autistic Kids, by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (book & e-book)

Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (website)

Uniquely Human, by Barry Prizant (book)

Neurotribes, by Steve Silberman (book

“The things we don’t talk about”: A Cross-Interview with CripChat UK!


I had the great pleasure and honour of talking with Shabaaz and Pete from CripChat UK, on their podcast. We discussed autism pseudoscience, the Sia film controversy and much more.

Listen to the podcast right here by clicking the audio link below or on Stitcher here or on iTunes here .

Transcript: Transcript_CripChatUK_1
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Listen to CripChat UK on Podbean here. Great guests and discussions every week!