The Divergence Department

Two major UK reports on neurodivergence came out a week apart this October. Within days, one of them was attached to a BBC headline it doesn’t actually support. Kerri has a question she can’t let go of: how much evidence does it take before something changes? Luisa, coming from Germany, where there’s hardly any data to argue with, is a little jealous anyway.Then they get to the question most organisations skip: where should neuroinclusion actually live? DEI, HR and business operations each turn it into something different, and each has its own blind spot. Luisa has a firm answer. Kerri has a test that involves all your best managers quitting. And somewhere in there is the reason nobody puts payroll in their values statement.Also: three wishes, one shameless plug, and a disputed number of tangents.

Kerri and Luisa are celebrating one whole year of friendship, and you're invited to the party. Some people just feel like home the moment you meet them. In this episode, Kerri and Luisa look back on the year since their friendship clicked into place (spoiler: it took about five minutes) and what it means when someone feels like kin.Along the way, they laugh about the glorious chaos of editing this podcast (yes, the last episode was an adventure), and talk about how good friends nudge us out of our comfort zones and into community. They also get real about why making friends as an adult is so much harder than it was in school, especially when you've always felt a little on the outside.Every neurodivergent experience is different, but that feeling of outsidedness is one plenty of us know well. This conversation is a warm celebration of the understanding, acceptance, and belonging that come from finding your people.

Kerri went away and did the reading, and it turns out she'd been calling three different things by one name. Distraction, mind wandering, incubation — one of them comes from outside you, two of them come from inside, and only one of them is what workplaces actually punish you for. A year to the day since the first message that started all this, we take the tangent that ended the last episode and follow it properly: why offices are built entirely out of interruptions and then blame individuals for not achieving deep work, why lateral thinking only looks illogical from where you're standing, and what it takes to make a room safe enough for someone to say the half-formed thing.

Ever lock into a task for hours without noticing the time, then can't focus for five minutes the next day? In this episode, Luisa and Kerri unpack the differences between flow and focus, and why they so often get confused for one another.They trace where the idea of flow actually comes from, then get personal about what hyperfocus feels like with ADHD versus flow for an autistic brain, and why one leaves you energised while the other leaves you drained. They also dig into what workplaces get wrong, from open-plan chaos to rigid schedules that make deep focus nearly impossible, plus practical ways to coax your brain into gear using music, timers, and old habits from childhood.A curious, down-to-earth conversation that might change how you think about your own focus, and your workspace.

Someone tells you to rest, and your brain goes: rest from what, exactly?In this episode, Kerri and Luisa pull apart the tangled, oddly loaded idea of "relaxation" and why the version other people mean is so rarely the one that actually works for them. Luisa unpacks why a packed, activity-filled holiday can feel more restorative than doing nothing. Kerri admits her idea of a good time barely resembles "relaxed" at all and that might be exactly the point.