The AutSide Podcast

Today’s episode explores themes of autistic adulthood, sensory experience, and intimacy. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, uses personal recollections, particularly of early experiences in San Francisco, to describe developing a “language for embodiment” and understanding consent as an “atmosphere” rather than a set of rules. Dr. Hoerricks contrasts the “narrow” view of autist...

Today’s episode argues that Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs) and other neurodivergent students require a different temporal framework for learning, referred to as “gestalt time” or “temporal justice.” The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, contrasts the “colonial meter” of institutional education, which prioritises speed and efficiency, with the holistic, elastic rhythm by which...

Today’s episode argues for a radical re-evaluation of sounds and behaviours often dismissed as “noise” or symptoms of pathology, particularly within the context of autistic and gestalt ways of knowing. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, contends that the “hum,” repetition, and scripting frequently labelled as nonfunctional or disruptive are actually forms of coherence, communic...

Today’s episode advocates for speech therapists to redefine research as an ethical and relational act of knowledge-making centered on lived experience rather than quantitative control. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that traditional research models prioritise procedural ethics and measurement over the messy, human reality of practice, urging therapists to instead emb...

Today’s episode offers a critical analysis of B.F. Skinner’s behaviourism. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, positions Skinner’s work, particularly his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, not as neutral science but as a “theology of control” that seeks to abolish human concepts like freedom and dignity in favour of engineered obedience and predictability. Dr. Hoerricks, who ident...

Today’s episode presents a critical reading of B.F. Skinner’s utopian novel, Walden Two, arguing that it serves as a blueprint for control rather than a work of fiction. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, contends that Skinner’s vision of a perfectly managed society, achieved through behavioural engineering and reinforcement contingencies, directly informed the development of m...

Today’s episode critiques the dominant analytic frameworks of language acquisition, particularly those rooted in Behaviorism and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). The author of the source article, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, argues that these frameworks systematically erase and delegitimise Gestalt Language Processing (GLP) by treating it as a “null hypothesis”—something presumed not to exist or as mere...

Today’s episode critiques the standardisation of literacy education through legislative efforts like California’s AB 1454. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that reforms, often framed around evidence-based instruction like phonics, have built a “fence” around literacy, reducing it from a communal, meaning-making “commons” to a technical act focused on compliance and met...

Today’s episode functions as a meditation on authorship, erasure, and inherited trauma, tracing the forgotten contributions of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, the first wife of Eric Blair (George Orwell). The central argument is that O’Shaughnessy, an Oxford-educated poet and thinker, coined the year 1984 and laid the intellectual groundwork for the novel in her 1934 poem, End of the Century, 1984. The auth...

Today’s episode provides excerpts from a Substack essay that focuses on teaching Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs) in a high school mathematics setting, specifically geometry. The author, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, a special education teacher, introduces an instructional framework—Identify, Represent, Compute, Check—as a way to support students whose comprehension is holistic and intuitive but whose ar...

Today’s episode discusses the exclusion of neurodivergent individuals from the social work profession in the US, arguing that the licensure exam functions as a form of gatekeeping that prioritises conformity over authentic empathy and diverse cognitive styles. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, cites a 2024 study that found 30% of social work exam-takers identified as neurodive...

Today’s episode offers an extensive overview of a Gestalt-informed lineage in language study, which stands in opposition to positivism and behaviorism by prioritising meaning, wholeness, and relational context over measurement and segmented analysis. The core argument centers on the work of Ann Peters and her 1977 challenge to the idea that language learning is the sum of its parts, asserting inst...

Today’s episode argues that safety and regulation, which the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, terms “softness” or “felt safety,” are absolute preconditions for language development, particularly for gestalt language processors (GLPs). Dr. Hoerricks contrasts this relational approach with the prevalent methods of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Verbal Behaviour (ABA-VB), which...

Today’s episode offers an in-depth discussion distinguishing Autism as a neurological way of being from Gestalt Language Processing (GLP) as a specific language pathway, clarifying that they frequently intersect but are not synonymous. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, advocates for a paradigm shift that recognises GLP—where language is acquired in holistic, tonal patterns—as...

Today’s episode serves as a meditation on gender, time, and the experience of becoming. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, frames her gender transition not as a transformation, but as an attunement or a return to an innate “hum” or frequency that existed before language, which she labels a “pulse of becoming.” Dr. Hoerricks uses concepts like retrocausality and coherence to exp...

Today’s episode presents a comprehensive neurodivergent critique of data-driven psychiatry, specifically targeting the reform efforts proposed by studies like Forbes et al. (2024), which seek to restructure the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) using quantitative data. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that psychiatry’s ongoing “reconstructions...

Today’s episode provides a critical analysis of assimilationist voices within the trans community, particularly those found on platforms like Substack, which advocate for obedience and respectability over radical inclusion. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that these older, often medically transitioned individuals confuse conformity with belonging, mourning the loss of...

Today’s episode analyses significant ethical and methodological issues within current autism research, focusing on the lack of diversity and problematic historical narratives. Initially, the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, highlights that autism research populations, such as those in a SPARK study, are predominantly white, which limits understanding of autism across racial and e...

Today’s episode provides a rigorous critique of institutional power and the “myth of democracy” within autism research, arguing that the language of “consensus” and “community involvement” is often a performance that masks deep-seated inequity and colonial structures. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, examines three specific studies to illustrate this point: one showing how re...

Today’s episode critiques the historical bias within autism research toward deficit and pathology rather than genuine understanding of strengths. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, examines a systematic review by Chow and Cooper (2024), which sought to catalogue the lived experiences of strengths as defined by autistic individuals, yet found a profound scarcity of strength-focu...

Today’s episode examines a critical essay refuting the methodology and underlying assumptions of a 2024 Cambridge study on the moral foundations of autistic people, particularly focusing on research by the Baron-Cohen cohort. The author of that essay, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that the study, which suggests autistic people favor Fairness over Care and exhibit libertarian tendencies, is not objec...

Today’s episode critically reviews a new Nature study, led by researchers associated with Cambridge and Simon Baron-Cohen, which proposes two polygenic factors for autism based on the age of diagnosis. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that this study attempts to “repackage exclusion as genetics” by dividing autistic people into “core” (early-diagnosed, often white and...

Today’s episode presents a powerful argument challenging the prevailing narrative that autistic people lack empathy. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, asserts that autistic empathy is not deficient but rather was “stolen, misread, [and] weaponised” by fields like philosophy and psychology, which apply inappropriate metrics to measure it. The work establishes a “Stone-Borne” hi...

Today’s episode provides a critical analysis of how the speech patterns of Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs), particularly those who are AuDHD, are frequently misread as deficits rather than a complete form of communication, focusing specifically on expressions of morality and justification. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that for GLPs, repeating a “script” or “frag...

Today’s episode critically examines how traditional autism research has misinterpreted the moral reasoning of autistic children. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that the use of gestalt language processing (GLP)—communication through whole phrases or “echos”—has been mistakenly coded as “poor justification” or a deficit in moral understanding, particularly in a key 200...