This week’s episode is heavy. Matt and Erin slow things down to talk plainly about safety, community, and what it means to stay human when systems built on control and cruelty become more visible. This is a grounding conversation about fear, responsibility, and why autistic ways of seeing the world matter right now.

We cover:

• What it feels like to live under threat — and why many white autistic people are only now feeling what Black and Indigenous communities have lived with for generations

• Why autistic justice sensitivity, bottom-up processing, and pattern recognition make this moment especially destabilizing (and clarifying)

• Balancing staying informed with protecting your nervous system — including permission to rest, dissociate, distract, and come back

• Community vs. rugged individualism: why survival has always been collective, not transactional

• Practical ways to engage that don’t require burning yourself out (calls, mutual aid, creative support, resource-sharing)

• Repair, accountability, and why changing your mind actually matters — but only if you do the work

Also: snowstorms, go-bags, echolalia, Batman canon, Abed as an autistic icon, consensual licking (yes, really), and a reminder that you don’t have to do everything — just something, when you can.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. That’s not fluff. That’s the point.