When Thinking Sounds Different

Sometimes a conversation leaves behind a single idea that continues to echo long after the rest of it has passed. For me, this was one of those moments.

Listening to Romesh Ranganathan in conversation with Jack Thorne, (playwright and BAFTA-winning screenwriter) I found myself returning not simply to the subject of autism, but to the remarkable route by which Thorne came to understand something more about himself: that after hearing him on the radio, someone recognised something in the way he spoke and thought, and reached out to say they believed he might be autistic.

I found that incredibly powerful.

Not because I think people should be casually diagnosing one another, but because it was such a clear reminder that human thinking is not all the same. Sometimes, difference is so real, so present, that it can be heard.

That stayed with me.

We often talk as though thinking is broadly uniform, as though there is one ideal way for a mind to move: clear, linear, tidy, measured. But that has never felt true to me. Some people do think that way. Others do not. Some minds move step by step. Others move through patterns, instinct, leaps, questions and connections. Some arrive at a point directly. Others circle it, test it, pull it apart, and only then find the clearest way to express what they mean.

As someone who is neurodiverse, I recognised something in that conversation. Not just because of the language around autism, but because of the deeper reminder that people can genuinely experience and process the world very differently from one another.

And I think that matters.

It matters because we still live in a culture that often treats one kind of thinking as the gold standard. The tidy kind. The calm kind. The kind that presents itself neatly and makes immediate sense to everyone else. That kind of thinking has value, of course. But it is not the only kind with value.

Some of the most original ideas come from minds that do not move in the most conventional way. Some of the sharpest observations come from people who notice what others miss, question what others accept, or make connections that are not immediately obvious. The mind that seems restless can also be the mind that is searching, sensing, creating and seeing more.

That is one of the reasons I care about celebrating neurodiversity when I can. Not in a heavy-handed way, and not because every difference needs reducing to a label, but because different minds bring different forms of depth, creativity, perspective and possibility.

Not everyone thinks in the same rhythm. Not everyone processes life in the same pattern. And perhaps we would all benefit from taking that more seriously … not just clinically, but culturally, socially and creatively too.

Because sometimes difference is visible.

And sometimes, as that conversation reminded me, it can be heard.