Instant Genius - How connecting with nature can help neurodivergent lives

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

It’s estimated that as many as one in five of the world’s population are neurodivergent. Be it ADHD, autism or dyslexia, these differences in brain function can make everyday life more difficult for many. But maybe the natural world can provide some much-needed relief. In this episode, we speak to naturalist and author Joe Harkness about his latest book Neurodivergent by Nature – Why Biodiversity Needs Neurodiversity. He tells us why many neurodivergent people don’t receive an accurate diagnosis until later in life, why many neurodivergent people are attracted to careers in conservation and how getting out in natural environments can help us all to relax and feel safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. It's estimated that as many as one in five of the world's population are neurodivergent, be it ADHD, ADHD, autism or dysent. These differences in brain function can make everyday life more difficult for many. But maybe the natural world can provide some much needed relief. In this episode we speak to naturalist and author Joe Harkers about his latest book, Neurodivergent by Nature,

why biodiversity needs neurodiversity. He tells us why many neurodivergent people don't receive an accurate diagnosis until later in life, why many neurodivergent people are attracted to careers in conservation, and how get out in natural environments can help us all to relax and feel safe. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So today we're talking about your new book, Neurodivergent by nature, why biodiversity needs neurodiversity. So I think the obvious first question then is, what does the term neurodiverse actually mean? Oh, wow, can of worms. So in principle, it is the notion, the concept that all of us are different in the way that our brains operate and function

and how our brains perceive things. So it's like a give and take, how we take things in and how we then express them. However, semantically, and as far as definitions go, there are lots of arguments always about what it truly, means, but in principle it is just the concept that we are wired differently. So what are some examples of neurodiversity then? Now, what's interesting about that, and when I first started researching this book, is that the answer is vast, the list is long, incredibly long, but what we can do, and this draws on what I do for a job, so just for context, so you know I run a

small post-16, so college setting for children of complex needs. And what that may entail is a child having autism, but also being diagnosed with multiple other neurodiverse, if you like, conditions. I hate all these words. I hate all these terms. I hate the idea of even having something. You know, you're just autistic or ADHD, but there's two examples for you. Autism. ADHD, which is attention, deficit, hyperactivity disorder, then what I group is the DISSES, so you've got dyslexia, dyspraxia, discolculia and dysgraphia. But that's what I focused on, that that group that I've just said, there's also lots of other things that people consider in a wider context to be examples of neurodiversity.

So someone did ask me why I haven't covered epilepsy in the book. They felt that neurological disorders, for one of the better phrase, such as epilepsy or acquired brain injury or fetal alcohol syndrome or things like that, would all fall under that bracket. But therein lies the problem. The very word itself, and you asked me in the first question, neurodiverse, means that even within those specific conditions and diagnoses, there are still lots of other sub-diagnoses. It's all just semantics are horrendous. But all of these things kind of come together and create this concept of neurodiversity.

But the amount of diagnoses that could fall under that umbrella is huge. Yeah, so let's have a look at diagnosis then. So something that comes up a fair bit in the book with the people that you speak to is a lot of them received a diagnosis later in life. So, you know, this seems like a bit of an issue. really. So why is that? There's multiple factors that feed into that. If you take my own experience, when I was at school, I say show my age. I'm not like an older person, but I was at school in secondary school in 1998 to 2003. And in that timeframe, there was a very little understanding

of neurodivergence. But B, they weren't in the domain of awareness like they are now. So, you know, my teachers, the adults working with me, just labelled me, as I said, in the book as like, naughty boy, single mum, working class family, social housing. He is a sum of his parts, a product of his life around him. And therefore, that's kind of just what I was labelled and treated as. Now, it's funny. I recently bumped into my old head of year.

I ended up working with him, which was a bit ironic. And we had a conversation about the journey I've been on. And when I spoke to him about my diagnosis, he, you know, that saying like, the jaw hit the floor. I just looked at him and he was like, oh my God, right, how did I, wow, just, whoa, we failed you. And I was like, no, he didn't. You didn't fail me. Like society, the system failed. So to bring that back to your original question, this lack of understanding and awareness just wasn't a thing.

And there were lots of who would have been children then like yourself, who kind of muddled through or had really difficult experiences at school or didn't even go to school in some cases. And that is a byproduct of unmet needs. And therefore, when everything kind of makes sense or someone points something out to you or you see something on social media, that makes sense to you, oh, wow, that's me. I want to come back to that point. So remember that about this whole social media stuff around their diversity. But when you see something like that and it hits the kind of process that you go through, it's very complicated for some people, but can also be very simplistic like it was for me.

Like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I've only worked with children with ADHD for like 10 years and not even gotten on to the fact that I am exactly like them. and that explains why we hype each other up when we're playing football and things like that. But when I look at that, that for me is the prime reason. So it's awareness and understanding,

but also just a societal shift, if you like. So you mentioned there's social media. I think this was something I was going to ask. So a lot of people on social media who aren't healthcare professionals will comment on this sort of thing. So I think that's a sort of double-edged sword Like in one way the awareness is being raised, but on the other side, the information they're putting out there may not be accurate.

Yeah, so I've got a couple of really interesting points on this. So the first one is since I've been posting about this book on social media, I've started getting adverts. Like, you know, they obviously pick up on what you're posting saying, could you be autistic? And then there's like questions to answer. And I'm like, oh my God, do you understand how dangerous this is? And there's certain aspects of this that really interests me. So it's like pathologising personality traits as things that mean you have a specific condition. I need to be like 100% clear here.

And I was in the book and you've read it so you know my condition, ADHD, which I have had all my life and people who knew me as a child understand this. Okay. It's very clear. You know, just for your benefit, Jason, I have had to take my medical. very obviously before I speak to you because I will not be able to concentrate. Just for listeners benefit, I just waved a pillbox at the camera. But yeah, so it is not a good thing, a positive thing for me.

I don't have this narrative of superpower. I know I wrote about it extensively, but I tried to be really objective in how I wrote about it because my experience is very different. People that are close to me will tell you that I am not an easy person. and to be around sometimes because of my neurodivergence. And we are in a, I've described it to someone the other day as a tipping point where we either completely mainstream the concept of neurodivergence for good and can make loads of positive and sweeping changes,

or we mainstream it to the point that it becomes a caricature of itself. And I think actually some of the people that I've encountered on social media, who it is their career to post about neurodivergence on social media, are making it into a fun and hugely positive. And I don't, I'm not saying it's not, okay, but there are, and this is at the other point I want to make really clear. There is what I now see is mainstream neurodivergence, the people that have a platform, the people that are capable, and I mean that word really specifically,

who are able to communicate these things. And then there are, if you were to come to the college that I run, okay, there are, we've had 19 children this year, young adults, okay? I would suggest that 80% of that cohort will go on to another setting, leave it, and then probably not do anything beyond that, okay? It is unlikely that they will find a job that they can keep down. It is unlikely that they will contribute to society in the law. way that our society believes we should do. And therefore, what you are getting is a complete misnomer about what certain conditions are. So autism in the eyes of a social media influencer who will post about autism is, sometimes I have meltdowns. Look at me having a meltdown.

Oh, I've got sensory processing disorder. I can't go in this place, right? Then you have kids who are unable to go anywhere but their education setting because, of the nature of their processing issues and their ability to be outside of what we would call a safe setting. And what we are, when I go back to my comment about tipping point, okay, we are in danger of losing sight of what it actually means to have a brain that functions very differently because it is a huge and broad spectrum and we will cut off part of that spectrum. and that is not what inclusion is about. It is not about, well, there's all these kids and adults with this, and they're just over there, and then there's all this fluffy, fun, ADHD, autism, woo, and like, oh my God, yeah.

I've said can of worms at the start. A lot of this is can of worm stuff, but it is, as you said, a double-edged sword, and it has to be, I think people just need to step back and have a look at what they're doing sometimes. So let's move on to the kind of the nature section of the book then and the positive effects that you can have on well-being, which is super interesting. So what are sort of some of the headline benefits? So I mentioned my first book, Bird Therapy, which was about the therapeutic benefits of birdwatching for mental health and well-being. You can tell I've said that line along.

And now that is the kind of the crux of the benefits. So it is, I can't remember the exact figure. I feel like it's like 80% of people who have a diagnosis of what we would pigeonhole as a neurodivergent condition will experience struggles with their mental health, be that in mood, you know, depression or anxiety or other, especially autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder kind of coalesce, if you like, with each other at times. But anyway, so what I'm saying is that the mental health benefits are what we can focus. on, of course we can, but I think it's far more innate and simpler than that. So, so we are nature, okay? We, we are part of nature. So to separate like this concept of nature and connecting with it and accessing it for our benefit, if we go back to the fact that we kind of should just be part of it, yeah, because we are, what you will start to see is really clear physiological benefits

of being outside. So when you are, you know, even just from a fitness perspective and a health perspective, but as far as like how it sharpens aspects of your sensory awareness when you are outside. And I'm doing a talk later about flow and the flow state. And I think nature is like a really being out in nature and outdoors is somewhere where we can experience flow. And flow is something that's really difficult for people whose brains can't switch off or who are hyper-aware to access and therefore what nature does, and I wrote about this, or what natural environments do, I'm going to get away from saying nature, what natural environments do is encourage us to go back to where and what we should be, which is a far more relaxed state in the sense of

we are where we should be, but also it's this kind of more hyper-aware, you know, we evolved from Hunter, gatherers. So our senses should be sharp and picking up on bird calls and colors and clarity when we're outdoors. And we've just lost that completely with the screens and social media. So what we get as neurodivergent people when we're outdoors is a clarity of understanding ourselves and the situation that we're in. And we also wrote this and hopefully you'll remember it's non-judgmental. So society, the human race, is incredibly judgmental in every way. Now, when you're outdoors and you're walking past a tree and you think, oh man, I'm going to touch that tree because it looks really cool and then you touch it, like the tree doesn't judge you for touching the tree. The tree can't unless we go down the idea of sentient beings.

But if you stand and just look at an outdoor environment, you are where you should be. It does not judge you. It's so innate and built into us, but we just, through lots of different reasons, don't have that relationship with it anymore. So going back to your very original question, what nature gives us a safety, security, stability, warmth, and non-judgmental place to be? It sharpens our senses. It heightens our awareness. Do you know what? It just makes us feel really good.

and that's why it's so important. So in your case, as you mentioned earlier, you're a keen birdwatcher. Yeah. Well, you say that. I like other stuff too, but we'll come back to that as well. Yes, sure. So are some sort of neurodivergent people drawn to particular activities outdoors? Yeah, so in the autistic spectrum, there's something which I hate the term, but special interests.

Yeah, so it could be a hyperfocus, which hyperfocus. because this is something more associated with ADHD, but is when you kind of get into a flow state about a subject of interest. A special interest is something that you, for one, of the better word, obsess about and find out everything about, and it kind of becomes your thing. So if I was to flip this laptop round so you could see my bookshelves, all I have on my bookshelves are horror books, okay?

Because that is my special interest, right? Which surprises a lot of people, because they think I should have nature books on my shelf like that. Anyway, so with this kind of idea of having these specialised interests, just for the record, the National Autistic Society prefer to call them intense interests, which I quite like. So these intense interests can manifest in a particular aspect of wildlife, for example. So I don't know, let's take a botanist, for example, whose autistic may then become, you know, incredibly focused on understanding every aspect of the plants that grow out of our pavements or

that grow in a specific habitat. And that can then become life for them. Now, that's really useful if you're going to go into a career in, say, ecology or something like that. Museum curation, natural history, museum creation. I'm just coming up with some outlandish examples. But if you then take that whole idea of intense interest, but then add in sharpened senses and awareness. Now, the chapter in the book that covers the strengths of those people that I spoke to really delves into this. So you have lots of people who work in ecology who utilize those specific skills that they attribute to their neurodivergence as things that they then use in their career. So I think whilst we're drawn to it inately, like I said when we spoke about the previous answer,

If you also then take those kind of almost obsessive tendencies and those heightened senses and things like that into the equation, what you get is kind of like the perfect person to be working in that sector. Hence why I think there is a higher representation anecdotally from the people I spoke to. But what you also got to think is adding that non-judgmental aspect. If you're a kid who's gone through school and had a really bad time because of bullies and unmet needs. If you've then gone into a career that doesn't judge you in any way because you're so safe when you're in it,

then wow, how life-changing could that be? So it works two ways, I think. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed-sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

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Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio, and Focal. With over 100 years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this man's, has shaped every innovation in hi-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering, balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure

digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist's focal, name audio creates systems that deliver. exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So let's stick with the workforce. I mean, what would you say organisations could be doing to support neurodivergent people more? Well, the book is very positive about the work that's happening. I could have gone down a completely different path, if I'm honest with you, but I can't afford to take on multiple

libel cases, so that wasn't going to happen. Your face says it all. So yeah, with that in mind, though, the biggest issue I found was not within individual organisations themselves. They silo themselves and do not work together. Now, if people just work together a bit more, which is kind of like the message I'm trying to get across in the whole book anyway, you might see vast employment improvements in the well-being and productivity of your workforce. There are so many simple and free and effective adjustments that you can make for neurodivergent people. You can't, yeah, but what I will say is going back to what we spoke about about social media,

you're in danger of the whole mainstream neurodivergence putting people off wanting to make changes because what they may also develop is this misconception that there are lots of people who are perhaps not pursuing a diagnosis for the right reasons, and therefore are you going to become more reticent to support them in the workplace because you don't therefore believe in the whole concept. It's very, I called it a tipping point, you called it a double-edged sword, it's both of those things. Now, the simple things that you can do are starting at the very point you receive an application

form with a tick in the box that says disability. I wish that people looked at that in a different way and didn't just think, man, we're going to have to make loads of changes now for this person. We're not going to interview them, which they can do because they're just sifting through job applications. However, what needs to happen at that point is, well, there's two things. Because neurodivergence on its own is not a protective characteristic, it falls under the umbrella of disability, would it just be easier if there was a slightly more broken down list

of what you then identified as having, if you like, to therefore, oh, they've got a disability, oh, well, they've got ADHD, well, we know what we can do for that. And that then falls back to the information sharing. If you look in the book at the RSPB and I think, off the top of my head, the Environment Agency, those two organisations had central banks of information for line managers mainly, but also for people who are interviewing about the things that they could do to support neurodivergent employees or prospective employees. Now, what they'd both done, I was privy to see. Obviously, I couldn't share it in specifics in the book, because everyone's very protective about what they do. They're in lies the problem. But when I saw these things, I was like, my God, this is

incredible. You have created handbooks to support people, yet you're all doing the same things, but you're not coming together and talking about it. So the workplace passport thing is completely free, right? It is the early 2000s concept of an individualised learning plan for a child with special educational needs or a pupil passport. So you're sticking a bit of paper in front of someone and saying, how can we do this to help you? How can we make this better?

A lot of the things on my own accessibility passport at work are things like, don't tell me you want to talk. to me about something and then go off and not talk to me about something. Tell me there and then. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to work until you tell me. There's silly, simple little things that are etiquette in communication that if we just adjusted our approaches and mindset in workplaces would change everything. So going back to your very original question, what we can do fundamentally is work in tandem, yeah, work together. on these kind of things, cross-organisation, cross-sector as well. And then secondly,

do not be afraid of this whole concept of making adjustments. The majority of them are free, and the ones that cost money can be funneled through the Access to Work scheme, for example. And people don't even know about that. I chuck that in the book because people didn't really know about it. So coming down off my high horse again, the changes are not as, you know, scary as they may seem. So like, of course, the government has lots of various programs and systems in place, but they're backed by, you know, large sums of money, large budgets. But there are also a lot of smaller organisations that are sort of punching above their weight with this. Yeah, the Mammal Society springs to mind actually, you say,

that their CEO, Matt Larsson-Dor, was, I mean, the contribution he actually made was pages and pages and pages of information. I had to like really distill it down because he had like what we would call a neuroinclusive culture in place in the organisation and it was just like, it was their thing, it was their ethos, it was what they worked towards. But they were doing it with a tiny team. Who was it? The British Dragonfly Society had like, I don't know, five, six staff, yet were still able to make it an inclusive enough place to work through collaboration and recognition of each other's needs and understanding of each other's needs, that their work was far superior to some of the kind of mid-tier organisations.

You're so right, though, the work of the governmental organisations that I spoke to, so Natural England, Environment Agency and like the Forestry Commission, Forestry England, Those three organisations have massive workforces, like 10,000 plus. And what they were doing for near inclusion was phenomenal. But what they, like you said, what they had is like this massive budget, this team working on it. And we're able to do that. And what's frustrating with that is that there is a public sector duty to report on the Equality Act annually. Well, not annually, but they do it annually.

because it just makes sense. And because of that duty, therefore, they were having to do it. Now, I didn't know this, but the charity sector don't have to report on it in the same way. And as the NGOs, like your RSPB, Shuala Love Trust, don't have to report on it the same way they don't, but some choose to. And it all became really interesting, the semantics of it. Now, if everybody was just the same and had to report on it and shared information a bit more, would we then have, you know, we spoke about earlier, this better collective approach to near a divergence that work. But yeah, the smaller organisations that were punching above their way, yeah, absolutely trailblazers some of them. But no one would have known what they were doing unless I'd spoken to them and put it in print because they're not out there publicising that fact.

And yeah, that was really important to me as well, giving a voice to all those people that didn't get that voice, which I think I've done successfully. the book, so I'm quite proud of that. So in the book, there are lots of interviews have done with lots of different people in all sorts of different fields. So is there any work there that stands out that you just like, I know it's all great work, but that you'd just like to tell us about? Oh yeah. So Hazel, who I interviewed, I spoke to her a lot actually through the process of the book, that the work she'd done when she hyper-focused in on parrot DNA was utterly fascinating. She had I don't want to spoil the book, so for anyone that does want to read it, but what she did and what she found out and the effort she put into it and the sacrifices that she made are just incredible. Without going into too much detail, it involves shaving toenail matter of dead parrots in Natural History museums to extract DNA in order to work something out, but I won't say what that is.

And another one, and he doesn't, he didn't see it as a big thing. But Alistair, who again was someone that I spoke to lots and lots of times through the book, because he was just brilliant. He looked after a tree that had been germinated from a seed, and it had gone into space with Tim Peek onto the International Space Station, then come back and been grown into this space tree. And Alistair was so blazay about it, like it just wasn't even a thing. He was like, oh yeah, no, it's not really a big deal.

And I was like, Alistair, it's really, really cool. I want to tell everyone about it. So I want to celebrate that as well. And just on awesome achievements, some of the rewilding stuff that I touched upon with the storks and Chinese Mustafa and the white stork project at NEP was just genuinely fascinating. NEP was just like genuinely fascinating. I don't work in conservation. So to find out the ins and outs of how all these things worked was just fascinating for me. So there's a few examples.

So I'd venture that a few people at least listening might be interested in joining the conservation sector themselves. But obviously, as you say in the book, it's a hugely competitive sector, very difficult to get into. And there are several barriers. Yeah, there are. And this whole chapter, as you know, in the book about this. And I think socioeconomics becomes by default probably the biggest barrier. So think like class, financial background, privilege, if you like. What I discovered was that almost every entry-level job in the conservation sector required the applicants,

and ultimately the successful applicants, to have done X amount of volunteering in the sector. Now, it wasn't ever really made clear in these jobs how much volunteering. So the advice that someone gave in one of their interviews was just volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. But what was interesting about that specific person is they openly admitted to me that they came from a position of privilege and they had been able to volunteer as much as they needed to or wanted to while they were essentially bankrolled by their parents. And they told me this, it could go in the book. So it's fine for me to say it like that because it sounds like I'm being harsh. But what you then have to bear in mind, and there's a guy I interviewed called Andrew who went

back into conservation when he was older. And he found that the salaries for the entry-level jobs were so low that it almost seemed almost pointless to then go in for those jobs because of what he'd been earning before. But what it also meant was if you hadn't had been able to access that amount of volunteering, you just wouldn't even get a look in. Now, if you came from a background like myself, which I touched upon earlier, if you came from a position like that, there's no way you would have been able to volunteer

at all, if, yeah, at all, we'll say at all. And therefore, what you then do without even realizing it is remove access to the sector for like a whole tier of the so-called class system. And it was shocking. And then, and that's without then factoring in, you know, race, for example. I spoke extensively about race in the book in that chapter as well. you know, people of colour statistically were, you know, ridiculously underrepresented in the sector. You know, disability stats were going up, but that comes with awareness.

But what it showed you was, and, you know, you traced back through history, lots of, you know, third, fourth generation immigrant families were living in what many of us would class as, as like, poverty, you know, let's just be brutal and blunt about this. They're not going to get the opportunity to have done what would be. be needed to go into that sector. So you already just make it unappealing. And that's not to mention the complete lack of outreach work to make young people aware of the conservation sector and the jobs that you can do. So, you know, that's touching very lightly on the barriers. But I definitely think this need for volunteering became one of the biggest ones. Thankfully, there is a bit of work now

going into changing that. And I touched upon that in the book as well. And hopefully we'll see developments in that area. But yeah, it made me quite sad that that whole realization that I firmly believe we need that, you know, access to nature and people to conserve it, but actually if you take the opportunity from the people that probably need it the most, you know, you're shooting yourself in the foot, so to speak. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Joe Harkness. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out his book, Neurodivergent by Nature,

why biodiversity needs neurodiversity. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then please also check out our YouTube channel, at Science Focus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or downloaders on your app store of choice. You can also find this on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com.

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