My first big autism talk

Thanks to my hosts at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge

I just spent a great month in Cambridge riding my bike on the left hand side of the road, interacting with my Science colleagues in our office there, and taking lunches and coffee at Trinity College thanks to the hospitality of Simon Baron-Cohen who runs the Autism Research Centre there. Simon asked me to give a talk on my autism journey. I was thinking it was possible people could ask me to give such a talk, but this was a little intimidating at first because it’s like opening a play on Broadway (or sorry, the West End) without trying it out of town first. But they were gracious hosts and I enjoyed it very much.

Here’s me with Simon and the crew there:

I talked for about 40 min, which included a sizzle reel for Carl the Collector, which is a show coming to PBS Kids in the fall that will be the first PBS Kids show where the main character is autistic. I identify with Carl a lot - he and I have a very similar profile of symptoms and an equally supportive group of friends that we grew up with. Of course, he is a raccoon, so I kind of don’t have a lot in common with him there. The folks in Cambridge were very excited about this (as am I).

I mostly just told the story of my life and the parts of it that clearly were affected by autism - both positively and negatively. And then what I do now that I know. If you’re still interested in everything that happened at UNC, there’s some of that there, but more about my PTSD over it, which it turns out is more likely if you’re autistic. There were some parents at the talk who had an adult autistic child with PTSD, and they were really great afterwards and we had a lot to talk about.

Here’s the video. Unfortunately, the camera is not on while I’m talking so it’s just the slides and my voice, but afterwards, there’s a Q&A with me and Simon that is on camera.