Welcome to another edition of This Week in Autistic Culture, our Sunday magazine podcast that brings together the stories, conversations and ideas shaping Autistic culture each week.
This week, Angela and Simon explore what it means to find your people, after a story from Boomtown Festival about an Autistic festivalgoer who arrived alone and left with a whole new group of friends. Simon reflects on his own experiences of finding community through music festivals, and how a muddy field in Leeds became one of the first places he experienced neurodivergence without deficit.
They also dive into new research using lab-grown brain models to study differences in synaptic pruning, and the uncomfortable questions raised when understanding Autistic brains becomes intertwined with attempts to change them. If science could one day offer a pill that altered the neurological differences associated with autism, would we want it? And where would improving someone’s quality of life end and changing who they are begin?
As always, we’ll also take you through everything coming up across the Autistic Culture Podcast Network this week, including the return of The Neuro Complex Creative for its second season, new episodes exploring the Kākāpō, The Princess Diaries, Autistic menopause, burnout, Neurodivergent tales on Reddit and Andy Warhol.
Plus, we head to the Community Notice Board for books, events and opportunities from across the wider Autistic community.
📌 Community Noticeboard
The Community Noticeboard is your space to share what’s happening across autistic culture. Whether you’re launching a book, hosting an event, releasing a podcast, starting a creative project, celebrating a milestone, or simply have something you’d like the community to know about, we’d love to hear from you.
Send your announcements, links and updates to autisticculturepodcast@gmail.com, and we’ll feature as many as we can in a future edition of This Week in Autistic Culture.
This Week’s Topics:
Books and Research:
Events:
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