Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Nostalgia: What Happened to Asperger Syndrome?

Transcript

Nostalgia: What Happened to Asperger Syndrome? · Why We Do What We Do

0:00
Hey everyone. Abraham here. I am so proud to announce that we are
0:03
officially an award nominated podcast. Thank you so much to everyone who went to
0:08
Podcast Awards dot com and voted for us. If you're one of the lucky
0:12
few who has been able to go for a second round voting, please head
0:15
back to Podcast Awards dot com. We are in the Skeptics Guide Science and
0:20
Medicine category. Voting continues through September ninth, twenty twenty three. Please go
0:25
vote for us. Thank you for your vote. You're listening to Why we
0:32
Do what we Do. Welcome to Why We Do what we Do. I
0:44
am your diagnostically agnostic host, Abraham, and I'm your anti eugenics host Shane.
0:50
Hey. Where a psychology podcast. We talk about all the things that
0:53
people do, what animals do, other things do, and why they do
0:57
them importantly, and that's why we call ourselves why we do what we do.
1:00
And sometimes what we do as a podcast is we will replay an old
1:04
episode for you because we feel like it's time to dig it out of the
1:08
out of the memory books and revisit it. And then when we do that,
1:12
we'll usually play that entire discussion in its entirety as well as come back
1:18
for some commentary afterward. And today I have chosen our episode on what Happened
1:23
to Asperger Syndrome. Yeah, I'm excited about this because I was not on
1:26
the original episode. So that's part of my favorite part of the nostalgia episodes.
1:30
As I get to I get to join on join on the episodes I
1:34
wasn't here for. Yes, Appenn Shane's voice to this, which makes it
1:38
better, No more fomo for me. And because this is a rerelease of
1:45
this, that means it has a new release date. And the release date
1:48
is August sixteenth. Yes, So today is National roller Coaster Day. I
1:53
love roller coasters so much so we should do them more. Yes, And
1:57
it is also National telejoke Day. Insert joke here. What do you call
2:01
fish with no eyes? He? No eyefish? Uh? Oh that's right,
2:07
I forgot the punchline of the joke. All right. It's National Authenticity
2:10
Day. Yes, that was an authentic joke with you? H Yeah?
2:15
Yeah. So I've been at DAD for seventeen years, so you got There's
2:19
plenty of those lined up, so don't worry. It's a National backflow Prevention
2:23
Day, so I definitely want to avoid that. Indeed, it is National
2:27
Independent Worker Day, which is this the same as a gig contractor, like
2:30
a gig worker maybe maybe just someone who happens to work independently. Maybe who's
2:35
somebody somebody who doesn't rely on a lot of resources. I don't know.
2:38
There you go, or can get them themselves. Maybe all of those things
2:39
at once. Yeah. Sure. It's also a National Airborne Day, so
2:43
that's a historical kind of remembrance of airborne troops and kind of the history of
2:49
that. Yeah, particularly paratroopers, I believe. Yes, National rum Day,
2:53
so good get your ruman key. West is celebrating that literally every single
2:57
day. It's beating Pets of the Homeless week. Hey that's nice, so
3:00
nice. Yeah, and it's National Smile Week, which you can do while
3:05
you feed the pets of the homeless, perhaps while also drinking rum. All
3:08
those things together it sounds great. Indeed, prevent the backflow though, you
3:12
know, yeah, still of the rum causity backflow. Yeah, yeah,
3:15
none of that, none of that. Although we were talking so much about
3:19
all these different holidays, as I said, we're actually here to rerun an
3:22
old episode for you, and we'll jump right into that fairly quickly. This
3:25
episode was originally episode twenty four, which published October twenty fifth, twenty seventeen,
3:31
So it's been it's been a minute, but over three hundred episodes ago,
3:35
that is true. So if you're if you're joining us for the first
3:38
time, welcome, you get to sort of here our humble beginnings if you
3:44
will all the way back from twenty seventeen, which is which is great.
3:46
And if you're joining us for the first time, thank you so much for
3:50
being here. If you like what you're here today, would like to support
3:52
the show, definitely, subscribes you can catch the fresh, brand new episodes
3:55
that come out, and I mean we're still adding new content to this so
3:59
it's not like you're getting nothing for you here. You'll get fresh new episodes
4:02
every Wednesday. Also, you won't miss any and that'll be really good because
4:06
we never miss any, so you never miss any. So it's a win
4:09
win situation there. That's the goal. We try. We try so hard.
4:14
We work so hard not to miss any weeks for y'all, Like we
4:16
do so much to keep up so that you'all can get fresh content every week.
4:20
So we hope that you appreciate it. We do. It's a hard
4:24
working team over here. We're happy to do it because we enjoy the work
4:27
and it is a lot of the work. Yes, so we appreciate having
4:30
you here. You can also leave us a rating and review that helps get
4:32
the word out to people. You can tell a friend. You can also
4:35
maybe invented diagnosis and then later retract that diagnosis and call it why Yeah,
4:43
why would do what we disorder? Yep. I'll talk more about how you
4:46
can support us at the end of this discussion. Oh and then I did
4:47
I should mention maybe most importantly you can join us a Patreon and if you
4:50
do that, you get all these Parkton benefits and that sort of thing.
4:54
But all of that existed, at least some of that existed at the time
4:57
that we recorded this. Who knows, but I think you get to die.
5:00
Then hear what Ryan, my original co host on this, had to
5:02
say. And then we'll come back and add a little bit of an update
5:06
to some things that have actually happened since this one historical events took place.
5:17
All right, welcome to Why We do what We do. I'll be your
5:19
host Abraham and your co host Ryan. Oh, we are going to be
5:24
talking about. This is kind of our first journey into this. We're going
5:28
to tackle a specific diagnosis right now, but maybe in a way that you
5:31
are as a little bit different from just describing what it is so specifically.
5:35
We're going to start by assuming that most of you who are listening to this
5:39
have heard of Asperger's syndrome or Asperger syndrome and autism spectrum disorders. Okay,
5:46
let's actually start real quick with just talking. Have you worked with individuals that
5:49
haven't Asperger's diagnosis, Ryan, Yeah, not as much as people who are
5:54
more like profoundly impacted by autism spectrum disorders. Okay, but I have worked
5:58
with a few, and it's been it's been a few years, man,
6:00
I've been working out of that. I've been kind of sliding into more of
6:03
a design rule for other populations for last like three or four years. So,
6:09
okay, I'm gonna be a little light on my examples, I think
6:12
as a result just so uncomfortable, you know, sure, and so I
6:15
might provide some examples myself as well. I have worked with a few individuals
6:18
had an Asperger's diagnosis, and I, similar to you, also worked with
6:23
a lot more individuals that had an autism diagnosis. But what we're really talking
6:28
about today is just understanding what happens to this Asperger's diagnosis, because, in
6:32
case you haven't heard, in twenty thirteen, the Asperger's diagnosis was actually eliminated
6:39
from the overall system of diagnoses that exist. It no longer exists in that
6:45
realm, at least in the United States. I'll get to that. So
6:47
a lot of diagnoses have a really slow kind of process of being kind of
6:53
like described talked about before they're kind of like turned into an official diagnosis.
6:57
Right, Yeah, so you actually captured some of this history I want to
7:00
cover real quick, and that was It was named after a pediatrician, Hans
7:04
Asberger in nineteen forty four who was describing children he'd worked with as lacking social
7:11
referencing skills, delayed language, as well as some clumsiness. Yeah, so
7:15
we sort of described him as being not very well coordinated. So this was
7:19
quite a ways back in nineteen forty four. He didn't actually call it Asperger
7:24
syndrome at the time. That term was later coined in nineteen eighty one.
7:29
More was officially described in nineteen eighty one. It's credited to doctor Lorna Wing,
7:34
and so she was really the first one to say to describe this set
7:39
of characteristics as Asperger syndrome. So that was pretty late, like that's you
7:43
know, almost that's thirty seven years later that she did that where it was
7:46
officially published, and you know, presumably people had that description leading up to
7:50
that publication, but that's where it's first credited to. Yeah, and it
7:54
wasn't even officially added to the American Diagnostic and Statistic Manualmental Disorders, or the
7:59
DSM for short, until the fourth edition of the DSM, which was released
8:03
nineteen ninety four. And most of these editions come with like a revision at
8:09
some point, but we're not going to get into that. But yeah,
8:11
so it wasn't until nineteen eighty four. So now we're talking about it's been
8:13
fifty years since this was described by Hans Asberger and thirteen years since it was
8:20
officially described by doctor Laurna Wing, and it does finally show up in this
8:24
the American version of this DSM, and there are a lot of other countries
8:28
and nations have their own version of a diagnostic manual that lists what they consider
8:35
to be mental health disorders, and the DSM is really the American one.
8:39
So that's the one that I'm going to be referencing the most because this is
8:41
the one. This is where the controversy occurred. So I'm just describing the
8:45
events that sort of led up to this. Yeah, and so like many
8:48
disorders, autism spectrum disorder included as well as Asperger's syndrome was it's classified by
8:52
a pattern of behaviors. Right, so there's not a single behavior. Yeah,
8:56
that's the case for all all diagnoses, is that it's never just a
8:58
single thing. It's really more of a pattern. And especially for these types
9:03
of disorders, the autism, Aspergers there was a pervasive developmental disorder and some
9:07
other ones. These have a really broad spectrum of things that they could look
9:13
like. And that's why it's referred to as a spectrum of disorders, is
9:16
because the way that it's characterized is just very different across a lot of different
9:20
individuals, and there's never just one thing that happens where you can point to
9:24
one behavior and say that this is going to be autism. And now I
9:26
say that every one of them have patterns of multiple behaviors, Well that's true.
9:31
It is worth pointing out that some diagnoses are relatively districted to a small
9:35
number of behaviors that fit inside of a pattern. Yeah, so can you
9:39
describe some of those? Yeah, so, I'll just go over the actual
9:41
diagnostic criteria four Asperger Syndrome as it existed in the original the DSM that was
9:48
published in nineteen ninety four, the fourth edition. Okay, so the diagnostic
9:52
criteria where that there was an impairment in social interactions and that this was manifested
9:56
by failing to show emotional social reciprocity, so they weren't really demonstrating that appropriate
10:03
reactions to social situations. They also failed to develop relationships that were meaningful with
10:09
other people, and then really failure to develop the sort of nonverbal communication in
10:13
terms of gestures and body language that we sort of adopt in our common culture.
10:20
And that in addition to all of those things, that the level of
10:24
impairment must be significant enough that it is clinically significant based on the fact that
10:30
it affects how well they can function in sort of a normal society. The
10:33
next one, so yeah, that was only one, was this impairment in
10:37
their social interactions. The next one is that they had stereotyped behaviors, and
10:41
so this is a kind of weird one that sounds weird because we're used to
10:43
the word stereotype as meaning how we sort of generalize people into a single category,
10:50
but this actually means something different. In this particular disorder. Stereotyped behaviors
10:54
refers to these repetitive, restrictive actions. And so what this can like is
11:01
hand flapping, which is actually kind of hard to do. I've learned how
11:03
to do it just because I wanted to see how to, but it's a
11:05
little bit difficult. There's a lot of self stimulatory behaviors, so things like
11:09
kids will dangle shiny things next to their eyes as a common one, or
11:13
they'll cover their ears because it creates an echo. I worked with a kid
11:16
that would press his eyes in certain ways with these apples and the other another
11:20
student would tap his forehead and just to kind of paint the picture, tapped
11:24
his forehead to the extent that it kind of created this like thick, like
11:28
leather like patch over his forehead four by four inch square. Yeah. Yeah,
11:33
wow, that's really intense. I actually did meet a kid that I
11:37
worked with who was only about five years old at the time, and he
11:41
had a stereotyped behavior pattern of rocking back and forth so much that he had
11:46
just these like chiseled six pack abs at like five years old, because it
11:52
was essentially doing like twenty thousand crunches a day on sort of a minor level.
11:56
But yeah, he just had this crazy well developed from this pattern.
12:01
So yeah, most of these behavior patterns, they're pretty intense, and they're
12:07
often sort of an extreme level of something. And so sometimes it's something that
12:11
looks weird, like these gestures and stuff men. Sometimes it's something that looks
12:15
common but done to an extreme degree. And another one is being stuck on
12:18
or it's also called persevering or perseverating on single topics. So I worked with
12:24
a kid at a center that I was at who hadn't at the time and
12:28
Asperger syndrome diagnosis, and he would always want to talk about the American presidents.
12:35
He knew everything about them, and knew where they were born, the
12:37
date they were born, when they were elected, just new tons and tons
12:41
of information. But he was really really stuck on this one topic. He
12:43
didn't want to talk about anything else. He didn't want to ever change the
12:46
topic. He didn't want to be focused on other school things. He just
12:50
always wanted to talk about the American presidents. Another one that you can see
12:52
is kids will get really stuck on not necessarily topics, but on physical objects.
12:58
Kids that will line up block in a very particular pattern of or they'll
13:01
you know, they'll stack them in a way. I work with a kid
13:05
right now who he really really just like stack in markers. Yeah, and
13:07
until they fall over and then just giggles it when they fall. But I'll
13:11
just do this over and over and over again. I don't know if the
13:13
now is the right time. But it's interesting how like were categorize these things
13:16
because we can stack legos all day and that's okay, right, Yeah,
13:18
that's a great point. Yeah, Or carpenter is stacking bricks and they're building
13:22
a house. It's if you just look at the activity of doing the same
13:26
thing over and over and over again. It in some cases is functional in
13:31
that case, you know, it's their job. In some cases is totally
13:33
not. Yeah, And I think that highlights just like the needs impact the
13:37
quality of your life is kind of the idea, right yeah, absolutely,
13:39
And that that is where it comes to the idea of it's clinically significant is
13:43
that it is at some point interfering with having access to a guess, a
13:48
richer sort of life experience. Because let's say, for example, you spend
13:52
all your time fixated on this one thing that you're doing, and then you
13:54
fail to acquire other academic skills, then it's going to be really tough for
13:58
you to be successful in school and go on to other education and maybe get
14:01
a job that allows you to be more independent. And you know, that
14:05
might be fine for some people. I can't. I'm not necessarily going to
14:07
judge their life as being not meaningful. But the whole point is that you're
14:11
not reducing their opportunity. So moving on. So that was only two of
14:16
the diagnostic criteria talked about. I'm just gonna go through the last two and
14:18
then describe them in more detail. So different from Hans's first description of the
14:24
official US diagnostic criteria for Asperger syndrome is that it must not be accompanied by
14:30
delays in language or cognitive abilities. Originally when he described it, that wasn't
14:33
part of it, but that was added later that in order for it to
14:37
be described as Aspergers, it should not have a delay in language and then
14:41
finally then this is just standard among most mental health disorders. It qualifies for
14:46
an Asperger's diagnosis if it's not more readily described by another diagnosis. And so
14:52
just going back to this one about language, this is a very common thing
14:56
inside of a lot of autism spectrum disorders is a delay in language development.
15:00
And even in some of the kids with Asperger syndrome that I worked with,
15:03
it wasn't that there was a delay necessarily, but they often had improper grammar
15:07
or sort of like speech impediments or articulation problems that were accompanied with them,
15:11
but they still they were developing a language otherwise at a normal rate. They
15:15
were having a lot of words, they were able to communicate effectively with people,
15:18
but there were things that you could still notice in some of the way
15:20
that they were speaking and using the language. All right, So that's our
15:24
definition. Yeah, well, and that's going through like how it's diagnosed and
15:28
how it's described by the DSM. At least it was at the time.
15:31
And I have actually brought with me, not that anyone can see, but
15:33
I have the older DSM where there isn't Asperger's diagnosis in it, and then
15:37
the more recent DSM where it's been removed. Okay, so we've described or
15:41
what it is, and everyone always wants to know what's the cause. It's
15:46
definitely unknown. Yeah, Unfortunately, nobody knows. There is believed to be
15:50
at least partially some sort of genetic component though right it seems to be rooted
15:52
at least in some way with respect to their neurology and how the neurology developed,
15:56
which means that there's some genetic components. Nobody really knows what that is.
16:00
There have been a few genetic patterns that have been associated with some of
16:04
those patterns of behaviors as well, but it's just it's not very concrete and
16:07
no one has any solid ideas. You can't like, look at an infant
16:12
that's in the womb, I guess a baby that's in the womb and sequence
16:17
its genome ends then be able to really discovered like this kid definitely has aspergers
16:22
or an autism diagnosis that just doesn't exist yet, and it may not ever
16:26
exist because we don't fully understand this disorder all the way. And it might
16:32
be that things that we call autism or Aspergers or something else are actually just
16:37
very distinct events. But they look similar. Do we have to listen to
16:41
ads? Yeah, I guess we do. Let's get back to it.
16:51
Okay, so question for you. There are some popular culture things that have
16:57
maybe suggest this is close to you savantism or includes these like savant like characteristics,
17:04
But you didn't describe any of that sort of stuff in the diagnostic criteria.
17:08
Yeah, that's a great point. So savantism refers to this idea of
17:14
someone who has an extremely high skill or competency in some particular area. So
17:19
they might get extremely good at math or painting, or reading or puzzles or
17:27
describing the parts of a train, or knowing all the facts about the president,
17:32
and so they reach a level of competency in a particular area that's far
17:37
beyond that that you would expect from your sort of average Joe, and even
17:40
sometimes beyond what might be even considered an expert level, like they just kind
17:44
of know everything. And so that's the idea of this savantism. And I
17:48
guess the similar ideas around like child prodigies as well. But there are some
17:52
people that were diagnosed with Asperger syndrome that display these the savantism. It's worth
17:57
looking at what are the actual rates of that. And so one article that
18:00
I was reading estimated that ten percent of people with ASD would be described as
18:06
savants, and which is to say that ninety percent of the people who would
18:10
be diagnosed with ASD are not savants. One percent of the general population of
18:17
people is are described as savants or maybe those prodigies. That's just in general,
18:22
yea, the population. Yeah, so it's basically saying ten percent of
18:25
the autism spectrum disorders and then one percent of the general population. Yeah.
18:29
And so what that sort of speaks to is because it's only ten percent,
18:32
which is not a whole lot, I mean, it's it's higher than the
18:34
general population, is that savantism itself isn't necessarily attributable to that diagnosis. For
18:41
example, it could be the case that a savant individual is so focused on
18:44
developing the skill that they're really interested in that they actually failed to develop those
18:48
other skills, and so they might merit that diagnosis by virtue of like,
18:52
if they don't interact with other people, then may lack some of those social
18:56
skills that would normally be developed under sort of typical circumstance. It's also possible
19:00
that savantism is its own kind of behavior pattern, and it happens to share
19:04
some of the similarities with autism and Asperger syndrome. It could be the case
19:08
that many Asperger syndrome individuals could demonstrate the savantism, but they never really find
19:14
that activity that piques their interest, so it would capture that And so we
19:18
just really can't say. But if savantism was inherent to the diagnosis of Aspergers,
19:22
you would really expect those numbers to be practically flipped, like it should
19:25
be ninety percent of those people or just a significant proportion of those people have
19:30
it. But ten percent so small it's hard to say what's the actual relation
19:33
there. So in thirteen, the DSM five came out with a lot of
19:40
controversy. Every time another issue comes out, there's a lot of people who
19:44
have some disagreements about what changed. This is just the main event that we've
19:47
been leading up this whole time, is what happened to Asperger syndrome. And
19:51
so, as you mentioned in twenty thirteen, they specifically removed the Asperger syndrome
19:56
diagnosis and every other subtype of autism diagnosis that existed at the time. And
20:00
what they did is they collapsed them all into a single category that they decided
20:04
to just call autism spectrum disorders. And so, as you pointed out,
20:08
this got a lot of people riled up. Essentially that a change that occurred
20:12
in twenty thirteen was that diagnostic criteria for Aspergers an autism spectrum disorder, removed
20:18
the language and cognitive impairment part of the diagnosis and said just generally there was
20:26
a deficit in skills related to things like social reciprocity and some the other skills
20:30
that were mentioned. The stereotype behavior pattern is another common one, and instead
20:34
recommend in the diagnosis when a child receives a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder that
20:41
includes a specification about whether or not some other impairment was present in that individual,
20:47
such as a language delay or a cognitive delay. So I was looking
20:49
into some different resources out there for like parents, clinicians trying to understand why
20:56
these changes occurred, And at one point the DSUM five revision website listed a
21:03
couple of reasons as to why this umbrella term of autism spectrum disorders it was
21:10
kind of being used instead, And the first one was that the old way
21:15
wasn't precise enough and they cite or suggest that there was a lot of different
21:18
clinicians or doctors that are diagnosing the same person with different disorders, and even
21:23
if you had those same symptoms, you can come in and receive different disorders
21:27
from like year to year. Really interesting, right, Yeah, that makes
21:30
sense. And then the other one was that autism. It was claimed that
21:33
autism is defined by a common set of behaviors and it should be characterized by
21:37
a single name according to severity, which is what they ended up revising on,
21:41
right, Yeah, to specify those like what I guess deficis were present.
21:47
Yeah. Yeah, so that was the suggestion on the DSM five revision
21:51
website at one point, and I haven't checked to see if it's still there,
21:53
but there's a lot of controversy here on this. Yeah. So we'll
21:57
start with those people who recomm and making the change to removing the Asperger syndrome
22:03
diagnosis from the DSM and what the rationale is, and then I'll talk about
22:07
the people who argue for it to stay the same, and that way we
22:08
just sort to do an overall coverage of what the two sides are really saying.
22:12
Yeah, so we kind of hit the first one on this disagreement in
22:15
the diagnostic criteria, right, and the fact that people are diagnosing differently off
22:22
of this definition. Yeah, totally that a lot of different people who were
22:26
experts in this field couldn't necessarily agree on how to categorize it and how to
22:30
set up evaluations to determine whether or not it met a particular set of characteristics
22:36
to reach that diagnosis. Another one was there was this disagreement regarding whether or
22:41
not there was really a clinical difference and making this distinction between Asperger's and autism
22:47
and pervasive developmental disorders, because regardless of the type of diagnosis that you give
22:52
it, the type of treatment doesn't necessarily change because it doesn't necessarily tell you
22:57
what things need to be worked on for the end of visual because everybody is
23:00
unique and they show up in their own specific way. Another reason you might
23:06
change to this new criteria was that tests for this were notoriously difficult to conduct
23:11
and often result in an invalid inconsistent diagnoses. So really trying to attempt and
23:18
make distinction could take a really long time, sometimes years, and actually be
23:22
pretty traumatic for a family. Right. Yeah, So you know, families
23:25
are waiting to get services and it's so difficult to determine whether or not it
23:29
was an autism or aspergers of something else that they would try and do all
23:33
these different tests and parse that out, and in that time before they could
23:37
receive a diagnosis, they wouldn't qualify for any treatment or at least no funding
23:41
through their insurance companies to get treatment for their child. And so that's a
23:45
long time to have to wait for nothing, you know, where you don't
23:48
only know what's going to happen and what you're going to get, and maybe
23:51
you will get a diagnosis, that means that you will won't be able to
23:52
receive any kind of services for your child. Yeah, and those are such
23:56
prime years, and that's actually been showing the research right this beginning years are
24:00
so important. Yeah, that's why those the model really stresses the importance of
24:06
catch it as early as possible and intervene right away. As the longer this
24:11
goes, the more difficult it is to sort of remediate the effects of this
24:14
with therapy and so on. So another reason that people suggest that it's important
24:19
to just sort of collapse these down is that there's this idea that if it's
24:22
misdiagnosed, it could lead to interventions to actually make the behavior worse, such
24:26
as incorrect prescriptions and incorrect sort of therapies that don't necessarily work for the individual.
24:33
But I think that's kind of a weird one, just because I'm not
24:34
sure how if you collapse, it don't make it any less likely if an
24:37
individual is showing up in one particular way, you just say autism spectrum disorders,
24:41
where that would have been different from just saying it was Asperger's or autism
24:44
before. I don't know, it just seems like that one's maybe not the
24:47
strongest one. Yeah, And many professionals also have viewed this as like a
24:49
quote mild or quote less severe form of autism and emphasizing the quotes there for
24:56
anyone that's listening it's been impacted or had a little one impacted by this.
25:00
But the idea is that it shares many similarities with autism, right, Yeah,
25:03
So some of the things we described, like the stereotypical behavior totally totally
25:07
correlates some of the social awkwardness or like, how do I describe that?
25:14
A lack of awareness around cultural and social norms of behavior and sensitivity to people,
25:19
where things like emotional events so there might be at a funeral or something
25:26
that might just not get it at all that looks very insensitive to what's going
25:32
on in the broader social context. And that's all things that also exist for
25:36
autism. That's very very common inside of autistic disorders. And the last one
25:40
that they describe that I found, and there are probably some others as well.
25:44
But it's the fact that diagnostic labels and culture they change over time.
25:48
They evolve and they shift, and they're kind of fluid and they're not necessarily
25:51
all that static. And so how we interpret these behavior patterns and how we
25:56
interpret these symptoms and how they manifest that interpretation can change with more experience and
26:02
with more information and with more exposure, and all these things influence how people
26:07
sort of regard those things. And on top of that, technology and the
26:10
culture changes, which means that how those things manifest will also be a little
26:14
bit different. So, for example, you know, fifteen years ago,
26:18
there weren't iPads, but now that's like the favorite toy of every child on
26:23
the planet. That holds true as well for individuals who have one of these
26:26
diagnoses, and so they might now have new types of that stereotype behavior where
26:33
they become incredibly fixated on one thing, that's a video game that's on the
26:37
iPad. Well, that wouldn't have been available twenty years ago. So there
26:40
was no way that twenty years ago people could have looked at that and said
26:44
that this is a part of that diagnosis. It would have shown up in
26:45
a very different way for the individual. So those kind of things just they
26:49
make it so that the way that this appears to people changes over time,
26:53
and that can be really complicated for both the families and the individuals. All
26:57
right, So we covered that angle, right, Yeah, so why should
27:00
this stay the same? Like why should we not drop this or change this?
27:04
All right? So one of the reasons that families or individuals really argue
27:08
that the Asperger syndrome diagnosis should stay the same is that there's some concern that
27:14
those children who are kind of mildly affected by some of these syndromes, or
27:17
at least not nearly as severe as some of the other children are, they
27:19
might not receive a diagnosis at all because they're quote not autistic enough end quote,
27:26
and so they actually maybe miss an opportunity for the appropriate treatment or intervention
27:30
that is really necessary. And I think you know, that's empirical question.
27:33
We can see are there kids who are now getting missed by this diagnosis because
27:38
the spectrum seems like it should only target people who are more severely impacted,
27:42
And so there's kids who like aren't getting diagnosis when they should get it.
27:47
I'm actually not sure, but that is, you know, one argument that
27:48
the side makes. So another angle is perhaps one person has both of these
27:53
disorders, right, autism spectrum disorders and aspergers. An argument is like a
27:57
treatment of package wouldn't be partially effective because they only treat part of the problem.
28:03
Right, So if you're looking at this and you say this is autism
28:06
spectrum disorders and ignore maybe some other elements of the disorder that you then put
28:11
in this treatment, but it doesn't work all the way because you're missing some
28:15
critical part of it, and so that they need to be distincted, that
28:18
you can make sure you're hitting all the relevant components. And for me that
28:21
would make sense, Like that makes sense. But if it was collapsed correctly,
28:25
then perhaps that wouldn't be an issue, right, yeah, especially if
28:27
it goes after targeting. You know, not necessarily this is the labels the
28:32
important thing, but as it says in the new diagnosis, specifying what are
28:37
the deficits for the individual. I'm not sure whether or not that would still
28:40
continue to be a part of that problem, but I mean, I can
28:42
still I can still see this argument, as you know, being a legitimate
28:45
concern about this. Another one, and this isn't necessarily an argument for why
28:48
it should stay the same, but they argue that it should stay the same,
28:52
and that to do so they just need to refine that diagnostic criteria so
28:57
that it really is not so difficult to diagnose. Is one of the major
29:02
problems it was having before is it was you know, inconsistent diagnosis. So
29:04
they were saying like, okay, well that's fine, but this is still
29:07
its own separate disorder. Let's just try and zoom in a little bit and
29:12
really find those critical features of this. We can keep the same diagnosis and
29:17
just refine the criteria for it, and then those things can maintain their distinction
29:22
and we can you know, still continue to help that community. So another
29:26
one that comes up is that there's and this happens after you know, the
29:30
nineteen years or whatever it was in place. Yeah, officially, not even
29:33
before it was being talked about before then, is that there's a large and
29:36
vocal community of families of people with Asperger syndrome. I mean, people like
29:40
identify themselves off of this, right like Temple granted. Yeah, and if
29:45
you've heard the term, some parents like to call their kids aspies if they
29:49
have the Asperger syndrome. And so yeah, this became a sort of a
29:55
source of identity. And so in a way, it really felt like this
29:59
was impact acting those who identified strongly with that diagnosis, and by taking that
30:03
diagnosis away, it was just saying, like, your identity is illegitimate,
30:07
it doesn't really belong You're just a part of this other group over here.
30:11
And that was difficult for families and individuals that are impacted by this to hear
30:15
that and just say like what are you doing? Like you're not you have
30:18
no say in my life. I disagree, you know, but they don't
30:22
really have a voice in that. So I guess I can also understand that
30:25
perspective of just feeling like once you have established this identity like okay, this
30:30
is who I am, or your family has had that identity, and then
30:32
that just sort of gets changed and everyone's like, well we were wrong.
30:34
Sorry, it's gone. Now that that can be difficult to sort of to
30:37
hear and also then to want to support say like no, like I'm not
30:42
on board of this, this is just not how it is. So some
30:45
have actually suggested that there are really dozens of different types of Asperger syndrome,
30:49
and so that really begs the question, if there are these other types,
30:52
then does there need to be like a subtype of Aspergers and then dozens of
30:56
subtypes underneath theirs, Because what would end up happening is eventually you get to
31:00
this end where every single person that could possibly have this diagnosis just has their
31:06
own classification because everybody's unique in their own way. And that's not to take
31:11
away from the arguments that have been made so far, and actually, you
31:14
know, I think that they're very legitimate, but this idea of like we
31:18
just need to you know, you could break it down further and further and
31:21
further. And so although some people do feel that removing the Asperger syndrome diagnosis
31:25
would sort of eliminate the identity of those people who really didn't feel like they
31:29
met the criteria for autism spectrum disorders but did meet that criteria for Asperger's,
31:33
there actually have been specific people who have that diagnosis of Asperger syndrome who have
31:37
come out and said, hey, my identity is linked with this autism spectrum
31:41
disorders autism in general, and so I don't care if I have it.
31:48
It was just getting good and now adds and now the riveting conclusion. So
32:00
that's another thing that's a little bit difficult about this is that some people really
32:02
feel strongly about this one way, and then other people who were part of
32:06
the exact same community feel very strongly about this in the other way, and
32:10
for almost the same reason, but in opposite directions. So I don't know,
32:15
it's it's I think, a really tricky thing. So that was essentially
32:17
the event as it took place, and you know what the both sides of
32:21
it were. And so the next question I ask is sort of what happened?
32:24
So in twenty thirteen this just happened, there was the official system,
32:29
and I think it's worth asking, you know, what happened to those people
32:31
who already had an autism spectrum disorder once this diagnosis was changed. And what
32:37
actually came out of this from the American Psychological Association is that those that had
32:42
that Asperger syndrome diagnosis were supposed to be rediagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and
32:47
that was according to this new DSM. Also, in addition to that,
32:51
no new patients after twenty thirteen after the publication of that diagnostic manual will receive
32:55
an Asperger syndrome diagnosis. Of course, there are probably going to be some
33:00
people who choose to retain that label. Even doctors may choose to continue to
33:05
record Asperger syndrome as the diagnosis, but that is complicated by the fact that
33:09
health insurance companies may not accept billing for services for children with that disorder because
33:15
it's not recognized by the American Psychological Association. So the overall response from the
33:21
majority of the community has been just accepting this change. And you know,
33:25
I don't really have a personal stake in this. I don't know, do
33:28
you feel strongly about this either way? I don't outside of like, anytime
33:32
it disrupts services that are needed, like my heart kind of breaks. Yeah.
33:37
So that's where I know there's disruption and a change like this, sure,
33:42
So that's where I do care on like the micro level, yea,
33:45
the macro level, it's a whole different story with diagnoses. They're tricky in
33:51
general, you know, to really get right, like do you see these
33:52
things happen? Like you see changes all the time, and it impacts like
33:55
we need to solve the macro level someday. But I don't think it's conversation
34:00
for here in nor do I have an answer that's fair. No. I
34:02
agree. I think that that makes that makes perfect sense, is that you
34:05
know, this will end up being a thing that happened in history and eventually,
34:07
you know, we'll kind of move on with it and we'll look back
34:09
on it and have whatever thoughts that were the fallout of this. It's only
34:14
been four years, which isn't really that long a period of time in terms
34:16
of the movement of research, and especially the DSM because they don't come out
34:21
all that often. I also think you don't have a lot of I mean,
34:23
you can petition these sort of things. Large organizations can help, but
34:27
there's also not a lot you can do an individual level. Sometimes in totally
34:31
stuff you can, but it's kind of I mean like you kind of have
34:36
to accept it when it's kind of rolling out right, Yeah, I mean,
34:38
it kind of is what it is, and I'm not you know,
34:40
saying that people shouldn't if they are really concerned about this. I'm not saying
34:44
that they shouldn't try and do something about it, and just saying that that's
34:45
that's been sort of what has happened so far. So okay, so some
34:51
take homes. Yeah, yeah, okay. So first one, I have
34:53
a diagnoses in general aren't prescribed reliably, and it's a much larger issue than
35:00
just in Asperger syndrome or autism spectrum disorders, right, and it's something I'd
35:06
love to be able to kind of tackle a little bit more sometime. Just
35:08
diving into what the DSM is and sort of its history I think would be
35:13
a pretty useful Show'd be pretty historically oriented. But it's a blatant issue that,
35:16
like prescribing reliably has been an issue. It's difficult, not just with
35:20
this. Yeah, yeah, that's very true, and I get that it's
35:22
a tough problem to solve, as much as I see the need for having
35:24
the label. Everyone is their own person, as I was saying, like,
35:28
everyone's an individual, and everyone has their own unique history and their own
35:32
unique learning experiences and their own unique circumstances, and so these systems are meant
35:37
to be categories and trying to group things that are individuals into these categories is
35:44
always going to cause some issues. Yeah, this is where I kind of
35:46
jump into like piggyback off. Yea. Yeah. Most times when people are
35:50
kind of asking me about autism, spectrum disorders, Asperger syndrome is like my
35:53
history of working with that population is like yeah, they're asking, like what's
35:58
it Like, I'm like, well, like that's always different, like those
36:00
things that you just described of different individual histories and whatnot, Like that's how
36:05
you need to approach someone. Sure, And at the end of the day,
36:07
it's really no different now. I mean it's different in the sense of
36:08
how you're going to help somebody and treat them, but initial like meet and
36:13
greet and how you're going to say hi to someone, you know what I
36:15
mean. Like, it's all the same things, right, You're treating them
36:16
as an individual like you would anybody else. So that is like you can
36:21
look at somebody for what they can do, can't do, what they want
36:23
to do, what they don't want to do, what they aspire to be,
36:25
et cetera, all those different things just like we would anybody else,
36:30
and we try and help them in that way, regardless of what kind of
36:32
label they have. Yes, yes, exactly, thank you for finishing that.
36:36
A couple other things kind of take home is that there's real changes that
36:39
do happen when these changes occur in the diagnostic manual, like services are lost,
36:45
identities could be confused, right, and then savantism really is an exclusive
36:50
gask Burgers. There is a little bit of an increase in the prevalence that
36:52
we see, right, But that's also I think a misconception. Sometimes said,
36:57
I'd like to slightly debunk, at least outside of that ten times difference
37:00
for the general population. Yeah. I had an uncle once who when I
37:05
told him what I did for a living, working with children with autism disorders
37:08
and other intellectual disabilities, and he then proceeded to tell me, which keep
37:14
in mind, he's not a psychologist, he's never worked in the fields,
37:16
and he doesn't have any contact at all with the scientific literature that, oh,
37:20
they're just people who are really intelligent and misunderstood. Like, Okay,
37:23
well, you're describing a savant and that makes up a relatively small proportion of
37:28
the population. But I don't know, it's just it's kind of funny.
37:30
I think how people are about that sometimes. Yeah, all right, So
37:35
with that, all right, I hope that we have answered the question you
37:38
have had about what happened to ask Burger syndrome. Awesome, So that was
37:43
Abraham and this is Ryano. We are out signing off piece, all right.
37:52
So that was our discussion on what happened to ask Burger syndrome. So
37:57
now you have a bit more of the historical contact. Maybe you didn't even
38:00
know that that was a thing, and if so, sorry to spoil spoil
38:04
that for you. Maybe that's definitely some people who would like that general description
38:07
of it to fade away in time. And we'll explain why right now,
38:09
because as you sort of would, I guess get from listening to this episode,
38:15
what has changed since they removed the Asperger diagnosis from the DSM. Not
38:21
a lot. No, that was like a thing that happened. It went
38:23
into the DSM, it came out of the DSM. But there was a
38:27
couple things that did happen. One thing that we didn't mention in the original
38:30
discussion is the ICD at all. I think this We hadn't even mentioned it
38:34
yet. We did talk about that when we started talking about how to diagnose
38:37
Mental health disorders, and I think talked about the DSM there. It may
38:42
have been another discussion that we had, but I think that was where that
38:45
came up. The ICD, though, actually added Asperger syndrome sometimes it's called
38:49
Aspergers before the DSM did, so I saw two conflicting dates. One was
38:53
ninety one and the other was nineteen ninety two, so it was the d
38:58
ten when that addition came out. That was when Asperger syndrome was added,
39:02
and then the DSM it didn't come out until nineteen ninety four, so it
39:06
was two or three years later, depending on when that first date happened,
39:08
which that was kind of interesting. When the original episode aired in twenty seventeen.
39:13
At the time, that meant that the Asperger syndrome diagnosis was still listed
39:16
as a diagnosis in the ICD In twenty nineteen, though, the ID eleven
39:22
eventually collapsed the Asperger syndrome diagnosis into awesome spectrum disorder for all of the same
39:28
reasons that the SM five gave. So when we recorded this originally, the
39:31
ICED still had it as a diagnosis, right it didn't. It took another
39:36
two years before it was collapsed into the full full spectrum diagnosis that is ASD
39:39
which I think sort of shows you the different timelines of updates that happened to
39:44
those different statistical manuals, or I guess the ID is not technically statistical manual.
39:49
But obviously the DSM was getting rewritten at a higher rate interval than the
39:55
i CD was because the iced version ten and eleven and spanned and a time
40:00
that exceeded by at least four or five years the entire DSM four in there.
40:07
So you see what I mean, like it was encompassed in that.
40:09
Yeah. Absolutely, Now I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this and
40:13
my experience. Ever since this change took place, the term Asperger and Asperger
40:17
syndrome or Aspergers seems to have all but disappeared from the common lexicon among professionals
40:23
and parents. Instead, what I've seen is, if they're not just outright
40:28
described as having an autism diagnosis, I hear the phrase they're on the spectrum
40:34
as a way of sort of alluding to a version or that that diagnosis as
40:37
they may pertain to their kid, and a wide variety of descriptions of any
40:42
autistic like behaviors as being on the spectrum, which may be an official diagnosis
40:47
as being an autism spectrum disorder, or simply a description of someone's behavior that
40:52
they feel like looks like that diagnosis criteria. Have you had that experience too,
40:58
Yeah, I mean I did have that experience. But the last few
41:00
years, Florida has reverted back to the eighteen hundreds, So I'm hearing all
41:04
kinds of really terrible things that are not even autism at this point in time,
41:07
because you know, Florida eighteen hundreds, real bad, that's the education
41:12
level we're I here, gotcha. I've seen some a few pockets of folks
41:15
that still want to hold onto the Asperger syndrome, that diagnosis, having that
41:19
title, it's fairly rare. I mostly see it in like certain social media
41:22
circles where people want to hold onto that. But for the most part,
41:25
I don't really hear people using even kind of like the terms of endearment that
41:31
you used to hear, like aspy and like that. You don't really hear
41:35
that as much here on the spectrum. Far more often, Yeah, or
41:37
just straight up like with the last few years, You've you're kind of like
41:40
the movement towards just saying specifically autistic. Right, Yeah, I was gonna
41:44
say that too. That's been as far as keeping my finger on the pulse,
41:46
that's kind of what I've noticed more than anything. Yeah, similar here,
41:50
But yeah, I think that mostly that term has gone away. There's
41:52
maybe a reason for that. But yeah. So, as we said,
41:55
this came out in twenty seventeen, about a year after the original episode published,
42:00
there was this explosion of controversy surrounding Hans Asperger, after whom, of
42:06
course, this was named. We stated in the original discussion that Asperger's original
42:10
publication was in nineteen forty four. Well, what else was going in nineteen
42:15
forty four, Just a little something called the Second World War was coming to
42:20
an end. Yeah, that's all. You may have also pieced together the
42:22
fact that Hans sounds like a pretty common German name, so be prepared.
42:29
Yeah, so hold on to your butts, as Seemulil Jackson says, yeah,
42:32
Hans Asperger's originally given a whitewashed history of condemning the Nazi Party, was
42:38
actually an active participant in the Nazi Party, although not a direct member.
42:43
He was involved with them, but he wasn't a direct member, so he
42:45
couldn't call himself a Nazi per se, but he was complicit. So in
42:49
twenty eighteen, a culmination of years of investigation revealed extensive evidence that showed that
42:54
he not only cooperated extensively with the Nazis as an apparent eugenist, he was
43:00
responsible for referring dozens of children with disabilities to a Nazi controlled clinic in Vienna
43:04
called am spiegel Grund, where these children were experimented upon and euthanized. And
43:08
there's no evidence that he saved any children there. So bad dude. Yeah,
43:15
yeah, he's directly responsible for the murder of children who had disabilities or
43:22
not. It's also I mean, he is responsible, but they may have
43:25
not all had disability. Is not that that makes it better or worse in
43:29
any way. Just the fact that he's having you kids euthanized as gross.
43:34
But the reason I say that is because it's also possible he just didn't like
43:37
some of the kids he's sent there, rather than them having a specific diagnosis
43:40
that that sort of met his eugenicis point of view of things or disability or
43:45
disease. The Spectrum News reported a story of a boy that Asperger had referred
43:50
to this clinic and the boy's name was Leo. Asperger described Leo as a
43:53
quote very difficult, psychopathic boy of a kind which is not frequent among small
43:59
children end quote. However, the same boy the doctors that am Spiegelgrund said
44:05
about Leo that he was quote very well developed in every respect end quote.
44:09
So it seems like Hans here had just sort of a chip on his shoulder
44:15
and was just sending a bunch of these, like dozens of these kids to
44:19
this clinic where they, again, we were experimented upon, I think at
44:22
a level that would quite easily be called tortured, and many of them euthanized,
44:27
and that's just horrific. Yeah, I mean, we don't need to
44:30
get into the I mean I feel like if you want details on kind of
44:37
what was going on in some of these clinics and the experimentation, like,
44:38
there's plenty of stuff out there. I don't think that there's ever going to
44:44
be a time where we're going to cover that in any sort of detail.
44:46
Yeah. One, it's against the value of like you know, just talking
44:50
about gore and horribleness that goes on with with that kind of stuff. But
44:53
also too, it's just not within our scope. I don't think so.
44:55
But it's a terrible, terrible situation that I think that you want to know
45:00
more about, please go read about it, because it was really horrific.
45:02
And the fact that Hans Asperger was involved directly involved in this type of thing
45:07
speaks volumes of the kind of person that he really was. Yeah. Now,
45:10
given the atrocities that were now associated with Asperger's name, many have suggested
45:15
that we simply let it die and give it no more air moving forward,
45:17
and I agree with that. I think it's similar to what you'll find when
45:22
cities in the South start tearing down Confederate statues and stuff like that. It's
45:27
very similar, like stop bolstering up and putting these people up on pedestals when
45:30
they did really really atrocious things throughout history. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
45:34
Yeah, it's like, we just don't need to waste any more time on
45:37
these people. They were not they were not people were celebrating, Like,
45:39
let's just right, that's that simple. Yeah, it's really that simple.
45:43
Right. So, for those of you wondering, we had mentioned in the
45:45
original episode and that the term Asperger given. The term Asperger was originally described
45:53
by doctor Lorna Wing. And so for those of you who may have been
45:58
wondering, did she know, is that why she specifically went out of her
46:01
way to call this Asperger syndrome. As far as I can tell and what
46:06
research I was able to do, there's no evidence that doctor Lorna Wing had
46:09
any idea of Asperger was a eugenicist Nazi collaborator when she decided to specifically use
46:16
his name Asperger for Asperger syndrome to describe that diagnosis, right, And it
46:22
makes sense because I mean, we were just kind of this was really just
46:24
coming to light in the last few years, as we said, like twenty
46:30
eighteen is when a lot of the story broke, and they'd been doing research
46:32
on this. But from what I could tell, most of the research into
46:36
this started in two thousand and five and she came up with us in nineteen
46:39
eighty one. So there's really no evidence to suggest she had any idea.
46:44
And as we said earlier, also at that time, a lot of people
46:47
had sort of Asperger himself, included done a lot of work to try and
46:52
paint him as not being a Nazi collaborator, to try and sort of paint
46:55
him as this guy who sort of unwillingly was there when they were there,
47:00
but was even trying to save people. That was not the case, right.
47:04
The evidence that they've dug up has shown that he was very actively supporting
47:07
their cause as a eugenist himself. The fact that he was just sending kids
47:12
to this clinic that he didn't like is just so shitty, Like it's so
47:15
bad. It is, Like it'd be different if he was under coercion and
47:19
and like there'd be a different conversation and a little bit more nuance there.
47:22
I think, like there are plenty of people that lived under the regime in
47:25
Nazi Germany that were so afraid for their lives, and I'm sure they did
47:29
some atrocious things, and that's not excusing the atrocious things they did, but
47:31
that is something to consider at least, and that's not the case for Asberger.
47:35
He was like, Nope, don't like this kid onward and like send
47:37
him off in Like it's so so bad. The more I think about it,
47:43
just the more infuriating it is. It's awful. Yeah, And not
47:45
to add insult to injury, but here are some ads and we are back.
47:59
So that's what we have to say about new stuff. Pertaining to Asperger
48:02
syndrome and what happens to it. A lot of stuff happens to it,
48:06
but it has gone now. Yeah, as a quick summary, obviously you
48:08
just listened to that discussion. Basically, they decided it lasted one iteration of
48:15
the ic D and one iteration of the DSM where it came in in the
48:19
nineties, and both of them it left into two thousand teens or both of
48:22
them. It did not exist prior to or after that, nor will it
48:24
ever again, or at least it's very unlikely that it will ever again.
48:29
Right, And there's a lot that was going on around that, But there
48:31
was initially, initially this push, a lot of people at the fallout of
48:35
having that change sort of said we're just going to keep calling ourselves Asperger people.
48:39
And I think that that's largely shifted. I think that what has happened
48:42
is that it is simply autism spectrum disorder, which is fine. I think
48:46
I think it's perfectly reasonable to just collapse them down in that for all the
48:50
reasons that they that they gave, right, but that's that's where we find
48:52
it. So I think that's good. I think that's fine. So I
48:54
hope that you enjoyed this, this nostalgic look at our previous episode on what
48:59
Happened to Asperger Syndrome. I would like to thank everyone who is here listening
49:01
to this. Thank you for joining me, thank you for recording with me.
49:05
Today's Shane of course generally just to you know, giving credit where credit
49:08
is due. The people who make this show happen. Writing in, fact
49:12
checking from Shane and myself, production and editing from Justin, and our social
49:16
media coordinator is Emma Wilson. Thank you all so much to my team.
49:21
As I mentioned, if you join us on patroon, you'll get access to
49:23
uncut versions of these episodes or unedited versions or we cut it, we leave
49:27
in all the things that we had to fix and change, or that we
49:30
asked Justin to fix and change and posts, and he did a wonderful job.
49:32
And that's why you're able to listen to this. Yes, otherwise just
49:36
so messy. And in addition to that, you could get access to notes,
49:38
early releases of episodes, add free versions of episodes, all that stuff,
49:42
So go check that out. If we get too enough patrons, we'll
49:45
be doing a hang out with y'all on like Zoom or something like that.
49:47
Maybe Facebook groups or wherever wherever people go to hang out online these days,
49:52
we'll do something like that. And in addition, I was kind of thinking
49:54
when might kick around some other ideas for ways that we can sort of just
49:57
work. We can hang out, spend a little more time with our p
50:00
trends. I think I'm sure cool. Yeah, yeah, it'll be great
50:02
at the end of every episode. Now, we didn't do this back when
50:05
we originally recorded this episode, but now what we like to do is give
50:08
some recommendations. And so let me quickly also point out that the people who
50:15
do support us on Patron, they get a little extra love. And because
50:17
these are people who have they're here with us and they're amazing. And that
50:22
is Mike, m Meghan, Layla, Mike t, Justin, Kim,
50:24
Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, and Ashley. Thank you
50:29
all so much for joining us on Patron and for supporting the show. You
50:32
guys are wonderful, so great. But I was saying that we get to
50:36
recommendations, we tell you recommendations. Let's do a recommendations recommendation redations. I'm
50:49
gonna go first because I think yours will be more specifically directable where I live
50:54
at the time that I'm recording this, we just recently had a garlic festival,
50:59
which is what it sounds like. It is mostly local growers who come
51:04
around to share their garlic. They also will invite a bunch of food trucks
51:07
that can sort of bring their own garlic theme twists on some of their recipes
51:12
and they'll line up and it's just this cool event that celebrates garlic and so
51:15
and I've given to understand that a lot of cities have garlic festivals. So
51:20
my recommendation is to go check out your local garlic festival. They're they're a
51:23
blast. And who doesn't love garlic? By empires, I guess yeah,
51:27
vampires Dracula and not a big fantat no thanks, but other people do.
51:32
Other people like like garlic, and I I too like garlic, so which
51:36
is nice because that means I'm not a vampire. That is nice. And
51:40
for that reason, I can go out in the sun and I can eat
51:44
garlic, so like, so far, so good. This is what I
51:45
would say. You can kind of go out in the sun. Yeah it
51:49
hurts, It does hurt. Yeah, maybe I'm a familiar. I don't
51:52
know, so I don't know. I have no recollection. That's a good
51:55
recommendation. I like that. I'll have to see if my city has it.
51:59
It's I would think it would be really fun to have like a garlic
52:00
festival on the beach like that. Seems like ovie really nice. So,
52:04
speaking of food, I have recently discovered I don't want to say discovered.
52:07
I have known about the show, but I never gave it a chance to
52:09
watch it. And that is a show called The Bear. Have you watched
52:13
The Bear at all? No, I don't even think I've heard of this
52:15
one. It's so good. It's very gritty and realistic. So the story
52:19
is and I'm only three episodes in, so I'm sure I'm going to discover
52:22
more and stuff like that. So if you've seen it, I know,
52:24
don't spoil it for me. I'm watching it right now. But the show
52:28
goes that this guy he has taken over his brother's restaurant. His brother had
52:32
committed suicide, and so he's taken over his brother's restaurant and the story kind
52:37
of unfolds that the guy that's running it, and it's the main character is
52:40
a kid named Carmen, and he's played by Jeremy Allen White, who is
52:45
just basically like Jean Wilder. He looks exactly like Jean Wilder younger Jean Wilder,
52:50
and he's really good in it. Like he's like, you totally feel
52:52
for this kid because he's trying to fix his brother's restaurant that he in hearted
53:00
because his brother committed suicide, and so he's kind of come in as like
53:04
this like well trained culinary chef in this place that sells like beef and peppers
53:09
like these like it's like a Chicago style like really dive bar kind of restaurants,
53:15
like very like hole in the Wall. Yeah, the whole thing is
53:17
like all the tension between all the people and like how he runs the place
53:22
and how he's coping with everything and dealing with it. It's just really it
53:25
feels very human. And I feel like having worked in like really tough family
53:30
restaurants, they nail the feeling of like things going wrong, managers being apples,
53:35
people like treating each other with like love and respect, but also like
53:37
just breaking each other's balls and stuff like that. Like you know, I
53:40
think it's it's really a great, great show I am obsessed with it right
53:45
now. Wow, Okay, that sounds like fun. Yeah, it's so
53:50
good. Did you say what platform it's on? It is on Hulu.
53:52
It's an ex show, so it might also be on Disney. I don't
53:54
know, but I know for sure it's on Hulu. Okay, so awesome.
53:59
This sounds fun. How many seasons does it have now? So it
54:01
just came out with a second season. There are only eighteen episodes and every
54:05
episode is only thirty minutes long, okay, so it's a quick one,
54:07
easy to get through. So it's a super easy watch. And it's also
54:09
completely uncensored, so like it's very like like it's a lot of like people
54:14
going you know, you don't like doing that a lot in the kitchens.
54:17
That's great for those of you hearing this not the unedited version changes swore a
54:22
couple of times, so through my little bit of sleuthing I was able to
54:28
do. There is a garlic festival in Miami. It's North Miami, but
54:31
it's down in Miami, so it's not super close to you. It does
54:35
seem like it's a pretty long one. I couldn't find one in Daytona specifically.
54:39
Okay, but I would you know, I probably did not do a
54:43
very good job. So you should look around and see if you find anything
54:45
and report back so that the our other listener in Daytona will know. I'll
54:50
keep you posted for sure. Cool, but otherwise people can go check it
54:52
out. And also you might look garlic Fest and garlic Festival. I saw
54:57
it written a couple of different ways depending on where you were looking, So
55:00
okay, that's good to know. Yeah, I think I think mine's actually
55:02
garlic Fest and not festival. And I just said garlic festival, and I
55:05
think that's maybe a different thing. Okay, so that makes sense anyway.
55:08
All right, thank you so much for everyone listening. I think that is
55:10
all that I have to say. Anything that you would like to add before
55:15
we wrap up, No, I think that I think that covers it perfect.
55:17
All right. Well, if you have any thoughts or anything you'd like
55:20
to share with us, we like hearing from people, and it's shames at
55:22
info at WWDWWD podcast dot com, or reach out to us on the major
55:27
non crazy social media platforms, yes, including apparently X. We're not on
55:31
X yeah whatever that is. You can find us in the normal places though,
55:36
But I think that's all I have. So this is Abraham. We're
55:38
out. See yup, you've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
55:44
You can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast
55:49
dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day