In today’s episode, we welcome special guest Matt Moloney, an old co-worker and friend of Doug’s from years past. Matt talks to us about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Asperger’s Syndrome. Matt’s son Nathan was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, and what Matt has learned is that raising a child who is socially challenged has made him a better person. He is an advocate for awareness and pushes for the acceptance of these children into “normal” society rather than being marginalized by a system that doesn’t understand them.

We also learn that people who fall within the autism spectrum do not consider themselves broken in any way. A term now being used is “neurodiverse”, which means that they simply lie on a part of humanity’s full spectrum where they are as not as well-equipped to handle social or emotional interactions. The majority of the world’s people would be classified as “neurotypical” by contrast. Just as one person may not have an affinity for, say, drawing, a neurodiverse person may not be good in social situations, but they usually do show very high intelligence and may hyperfocus on one or two talents and excel at them.

It’s a topic we have not yet covered, and we thank Matt for joining us to explain what it’s all about. Very interesting and eye-opening!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:59 — 185.4MB)

NOTE: We had some technical/network issues with Skype during the show, so the sound quality is not as good as usual. We apologize for that and did our best to clean up the audio during editing.

Matt and his son Nathan