Autistic Culture Presents...

In this episode of Autism Help, Heather McKay explores the importance of hobbies and special interests for autistic people, and what happens when we lose interest in the things that bring us joy.Heather discusses the differences between autistic and ADHD hobbies, including the emotional impact of losing a deeply meaningful interest, the financial cost of abandoned hobbies, and the relationship between hobbies, depression and burnout. She also considers how masking, everyday demands and a lack of support can affect our ability to enjoy our interests, and why finding ways to reconnect with the things we love can be important for our wellbeing.Content Note:This episode includes discussion of depression, suicidal thoughts, grief and autistic burnout. Please listen with care if these subjects may be difficult or triggering for you.Disclaimer:This podcast is for general information only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. Please consult an appropriately qualified professional about your individual circumstances.🎧 Autism Help is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcastnetwork.com📲 Follow us on Instagram: @autisticculturepodcast

Can AI help two people understand each other when they seem to experience the same relationship in completely different ways?In this episode of AI and Autism, Bre Ransome is joined by Jon Mick, an AuDHD product manager and founder of AIs & Shine. Jon shares how experimenting with ChatGPT developed into something much bigger: a detailed AI-supported “life model” that helped him explore his neurodivergence, understand patterns in his marriage and reconsider the way he communicates with his wife, Charlotte.Bre and Jon explore what he calls a “perspective translator” — using AI to help translate between different ways of thinking, communicating and experiencing a relationship.And then Bre takes the experiment one step further by interviewing Jon's AI counterpart, JonMick.ai, about the human Jon, his work and what he might be underselling about it.Connect with JonJonMick.ai — explore Jon's AI counterpart, built using his life model.AI Gave Me Autism — Jon's Substack documenting his experiences with AI and neurodivergence.AIs & Shine — Jon's public benefit corporation exploring personalised AI scaffolding.Connect with Bre:Subscribe to ai.tism — Bre's Substack exploring AI, neurodivergence and the ways she uses AI as an accessibility tool.Get in touch with Bre — share your experiences with AI, tell Bre what you're experimenting with, or express your interest in joining AI and Autism as a guest.🎧 AI and Autism is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcastnetwork.com📲 Follow us on Instagram: @autisticculturepodcast

Sometimes another person’s courage, creativity or refusal to remain inside one identity awakens something that was already waiting within us.After attending an evening in conversation with Suzy Eddie Izzard, Ashley reflects on inspiration, sideways thinking and the confidence we sometimes borrow before we can fully experience it as our own. She returns to a moment in the late 1990s when Suzy’s comedy gave her permission to discover her own silliness - and asks what the people who inspire us may be helping us recognise within ourselves.Moving from Suzy’s many creative “citadels” to Michael Jordan’s willingness to become a beginner again, this episode explores novelty and neuroplasticity, beginner’s mind and Steven Pressfield’s concept of Resistance.It also brings some essential Neurodivergent Nuance: not every feeling of resistance means we are afraid of our potential. Sometimes it is burnout, pain, sensory overload, executive dysfunction or a sign that we need more support. How can we tell the difference between a protective warning and an old prediction about what might happen if we allow ourselves to be seen trying?Through Aware, Allow, Align and From Mask to Map, Ashley explores how we can honour the part that hesitates while allowing another truth to exist beside it: we can feel frightened, unfinished or uncertain - and still take one honest step towards what matters.The episode closes with a neuroscience-informed guided practice, The Future Self Who Has Already Begun, inspired by Dr Tara Swart’s perspective-shifting future-self exercise.You do not need confidence for the whole road. You need only enough to begin.Explore Ashley’s meditations, Yoga Nidras, nervous-system practices, courses and Bedtime Alchemy sleep stories on Insight Timer:https://insighttimer.com/AshleyDupuyFind out more about Ashley’s work:https://www.integrativeiom.co.ukOur Sponsors:🧘‍♀️ Ashley Dupuy – Integrative Coaching, Breathwork & Hypnotherapy & https://insighttimer.com/AshleyDupuy🤝 Sophie James - Neurodivergent Mentoring: sophiejamesndmentoring.com🎧 The Neurodivergent Experience is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcast.com

This week, Angela and Simon explore social media's role in Autistic identity and community. From the early days of Wrong Planet to finding your people through Instagram and YouTube, they discuss how online spaces have helped Autistic people understand themselves, connect with others and discover their culture. But as governments introduce new restrictions on social media access for young people, could we be making it harder for the next generation of Autistic people to find their community?For our third excavation into the Autistic Culture Archive, Angela is taking Simon back into the extraordinary story of Elizabeth Holmes. Using the Ten Pillars of Autistic Culture as their guide, they dig deeper into the Theranos founder’s world, exploring communication, intense focus, innovation, ambition and the complicated relationship between recognising Autistic patterns and making assumptions about somebody’s neurotype.By the end, there’s one particularly uncomfortable question left: could Elizabeth Holmes be an artefact of Autistic culture?If this week’s excavation leaves you wanting to dig deeper, you can explore the full Elizabeth Holmes Field Report in the Autistic Culture Archive, where Angela brings together the research, evidence, rabbit holes and connections to the Ten Pillars that couldn’t fit into the show.As always, we’ll take you through everything coming up across the Autistic Culture Podcast Network this week!🌐 Subscribe to our newsletter and read our Autistic Culture Archive Field Reports: www.autisticculturepodcast.com🎧 Listen: This Week in Autistic Culture is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all major podcast platforms.🌈 Become a Culture Builder: Get early access, ad-free listening and our full podcast archive at AutisticCulturePlus📲 Follow us on Instagram: @autisticculturepodcast

The first pancake never comes out right. It's the one you're willing to get wrong so every one after it is better.In this episode of The Neurocomplex Creative, Vicki Peterson reunites with playwright and theatre educator Jared Eberlein, whom she met as part of the very first cohort of a low-residency MFA program in New Hampshire.Together, they look back on becoming friends while raising young children, developing their craft and navigating the intensity of an experimental new program. Vicki also reflects on that experience through a neurocomplex lens, recognising how hyperfocus allowed her to meet its creative demands while her need for downtime, regulation and support remained largely invisible.Jared shares his journey from acting to playwriting and education, exploring creative constraints, persistence and why the life of a project isn't always determined by its first reception. Now teaching the next generation of theatre makers, he and Vicki reflect on what they've learned about sustaining a creative life, supporting other artists and allowing their children to see them as people with creative identities of their own.📲 Follow Jared on Instagram: @jaredeberlein📚 Mentioned in this episode:Notes to Screenwriters by Vicki Peterson & Barbara Nicolosihttps://www.amazon.com/Notes-Screenwriters-Advancing-Screenplay-Hollywood/dp/1615932135📝 Go deeper on Substack:https://ahatonahatonahat.substack.com/☕ Support the show:https://buymeacoffee.com/vickipetersonProduced for the Autistic Culture Podcast Network.🎧 The Neurocomplex Creative is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcastnetwork.com📲 Follow us on Instagram: @autisticculturepodcast

Why does pain sometimes continue long after an injury has healed — and why can chronic pain be such a significant part of neurodivergent life?In this episode of Clinical Misfits, Dr Mary explores chronic pain and its relationship with the neurodivergent nervous system. She breaks down different types of pain, from superficial and deep pain to visceral and nerve pain, and considers the role of interoception and the autonomic nervous system in how pain is experienced and processed.Dr Mary also explores why pain can persist after the original injury has healed, and how ongoing autonomic dysregulation might contribute to a much wider collection of symptoms. Drawing on her experience as a neurologist, she then discusses approaches to managing chronic pain, with a particular focus on her clinical experience using buprenorphine.Alongside medication, Dr Mary looks at other approaches to pain management and nervous-system regulation, including physical and occupational therapy, movement, massage, meditation and other non-pharmacological options — while considering what it means to treat chronic pain as a genuine neurological experience rather than something a person should simply be able to push through.Produced for the Autistic Culture Podcast Network.🎧 Clinical Misfits is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcastnetwork.com📲 Follow us on Instagram: @autisticculturepodcast

Advisory: This episode discusses parental loss, relationship separation, panic attacks, addiction and Alcoholics Anonymous.What happens when AI meets a brain running 17 trains of thought at once?In the first episode of AI and Autism, Bre Ransome is joined by writer Madison Kirby (Madii Bee), who recently identified as Autistic while navigating several major changes in her life — the loss of her stepfather, the end of a relationship and moving back into her childhood home at 30.Together, Bre and Madii explore the possibilities and limitations of using AI as a neurodivergent person. From external processing and internal scripting to break-up messages, memorial skateboard tattoos and the strange intimacy of saying please and thank you to a language model, they consider what happens when AI can keep up with your thoughts — and the moments when it really can't.They also discuss using AI during periods of isolation, wearable technology such as the Oura Ring to better understand stress responses, and the pressure to reach some imagined “rock bottom” before allowing yourself to recognise your needs or seek support.Mentioned in this episode:Oura Ring — discussed by Bre and Madii in relation to monitoring physiological stress.Common Therapy Advice To Ignore When You’re Autistic — an article by Autistic therapist Jackie Schuld.Wheels by Steve MoaklerConnect with Madii:Madii Bee on Substack — follow The Second Daughterhood, exploring life as a 30-year-old Autistic woman moving back into her childhood home.InstagramTikTokConnect with Bre:Subscribe to ai.tism — Bre's Substack exploring AI, neurodivergence and the ways she uses AI as an accessibility tool.Get in touch with Bre — share your experiences with AI, tell Bre what you're experimenting with, or express your interest in joining AI and Autism as a guest.🎧 AI and Autism is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcastnetwork.com📲 Follow us on Instagram: @autisticculturepodcast

In this episode of Mindful Mondays, we continue our exploration of the senses by turning toward something deeply personal and often overlooked: touch and movement.For many neurodivergent and highly sensitive people, the body can feel confusing, overwhelming, or even unsafe at times. And yet, movement and touch are not optional extras - they are fundamental ways the nervous system orients, regulates, and makes sense of the world.In this episode, Ashley explores:* How touch can regulate the nervous system - from weighted blankets to co-regulation* Why movement is one of the most powerful (and underrated) forms of medicine* The reality of sensory sensitivities - from textures and hugs to proprioception and coordination* The overlap between neurodivergence and chronic conditions like hypermobility and Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome* Why “clumsiness,” rushing, and discomfort in the body are not personal failings - but nervous system information* How small, gentle movements can help shift both physical and emotional stucknessThis episode also includes a guided practice to help you reconnect with your body through tiny, accessible movements and gentle awareness, meeting yourself with curiosity rather than pressure.Movement doesn’t have to be intense to be meaningful.Touch doesn’t have to be complicated to be regulating.Sometimes, the smallest shift is enough to remind your system:You are here. You exist. You belong to this moment.If you’d like to explore this work more deeply, Ashley is currently accepting expressions of interest for a final round of one-to-one journeys (May–July), as well as upcoming group coaching programmes.📩 integrativeiom@gmail.comMore details will be available soon at:🌐 www.integrativeiom.co.ukIf you enjoyed this episode, please follow, share, and leave a review — it helps this work reach more people who need it.And remember…We’re all just walking each other home.Our Sponsors:🧘‍♀️ Ashley Dupuy – Integrative Coaching, Breathwork & Hypnotherapy & https://insighttimer.com/AshleyDupuy🤝 Sophie James - Neurodivergent Mentoring: sophiejamesndmentoring.com🎧 The Neurodivergent Experience is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.🌈 Celebrate autistic voices with early access, ad-free listening, and our full archive at AutisticCulturePlus.com🌐 Visit www.autisticculturepodcast.com