An interruption to your regular podcast feed: the first episode of a new BBC Radio 4 series investigating the steep rise in autism diagnoses.

The Autism Curve looks into the data that has prompted arguments - and conspiracy theories - about what’s behind the rapid rise. It goes on to explore changes in what autism is, who gets to define it, and whose experience counts.

In this first episode, Ginny Russell discusses her 20-year study that showed an astonishing eightfold rise in new autism diagnoses in the UK on an exponential curve. And Professor Joshua Stott explains how a surprising discovery at a dementia clinic led him to calculate that that enormous rise in diagnoses may still undercount the country’s autistic population by as much as 1.2 million.

Listen to the rest of The Autism Curve here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002bszl

Archive: BBC; CSPAN; Fox News; CNN.

Presenter: Michael Blastland