On today's episode, I'm joined by the New York Times' best-selling author of Neuro Drives.

He goes into detail about the under-reported history of autism, decodes common misconceptions

in the fields of mental health, and discusses the potential future of neurodiversity.

So without further ado, here is my conversation with author Steve Silberman and this is Uncovering

the Truth.

Steve, I want to start out with a broad question.

What were some of the experiences and readings that you had to do in order to write neurotribes?

Because that's a pretty unique subject to take on.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, here's the thing.

I was raised in a liberal is probably two-week-a-word household by anti-racist, anti-anti-semitic,

pro-labor family.

So my father was the president of his teachers union, et cetera.

And then in probably junior high school, I discovered the poetry of Alan Ginsberg.

And Alan Ginsberg was a member of the so-called beach generation of American writers that

also included Jack Harrowack and Gary Snyder.

And Alan's best poem is this book length poem called Catish, which is the name of the Hebrew

Prayer for the Dead.

And he wrote it about his mother who had schizophrenia and who died in an asylum after a botched

lobotomy.

So that book made a very deep impression on me when I was young.

As did actually even before that, before junior high school, I read a book called Flowers

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