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What a person with autism sees during a job interview in 2 eye-opening minutes.

If just hearing the words job and interview together sends chills down your spine, you're not alone.

A whopping 92% of Americans report feeling fearful over the job interview process. And with good reason! What's more torturous than sitting in a room being judged on everything — from your voice and your shoes to each syllable that escapes your mouth — with your potential income and livelihood on the line?

Job interviews are tough. But they can be a whole lot tougher if you have autism.


A gripping new PSA by the U.K.'s National Autistic Society takes you into the mind of someone who has autism to better understand what a job interview might feel like for someone in their shoes:

"Employers don't see my abilities," the video description reads. "They see my autism. They see a problem."

The unemployment rate among people with autism is massive — and not at all reflective of the skills and qualities they offer employers.

As the National Autistic Society points out, just 16% of adults with autism in the U.K. are employed full time, and you'll find similarly alarming figures in the U.S., too.

While finding a job might not be the right fit for some people with autism, the vast majority are able and want to work; they just face many more roadblocks in getting an opportunity to do so.

"Autistic people can have strengths which may be beneficial to employers, such as tenacity and the ability to see things in a different light," said Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society. "But they frequently tell us they experience too much information when applying for jobs and at work — for instance, being bombarded by questions [during a job interview], by noisy open plan offices, or with anxieties over following unwritten social rules."

GIF via National Autistic Society.

There are simple ways to make workplaces more welcoming for folks with autism, though.

If you're an employer, subtle changes in your application process and the work environment can make a huge difference.

For instance, many hiring managers default to listing qualities like "has good communication skills" or "is a team player" on applications for roles that don't, in fact, require it. This may dissuade someone with autism from applying even if they have the talents and skill set for the role. You may miss out on landing the perfect candidate.

Inclusive hiring policies aren't just the right thing to do, they're good for business.

Image via iStock.

Most of us aren't employers, though, and there are ways for us to make a difference, too.

First of all, understanding why your colleague with autism might interact differently or do things around the office in their own way is crucial. This isn't because they're rude or inept. They just work and socialize differently than you do.

Being able to listen patiently is a big one. When they go over all the stats from last night's game, hear them out (you might learn something interesting). Don't take it personally if they don't seem interested in your weekend plans — many people who have autism have trouble understanding all the nuances to our unwritten rules around social etiquette. And if they don't make eye contact with you, that's OK, too; it's not because they're impolite. Doing so can be stressful for some people with autism. If they're hesitant to look directly at you, follow their lead and back away from the typical in-your-face way we tend to communicate in the workplace.

Really, it doesn't take all that much to make our world way more accommodating to people with autism. We just have to make the effort.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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