Pip Brown, the artist known as Ladyhawke, is an award-winning singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She also wrote all the original music for this podcast. Pip and Lauren talk about growing up odd, making sense of Asperger’s and crises in mental health, and that one time with all the vomit on the tram. 

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Chelsea Wolfe is a BMX freestyle rider and the first trans athlete to represent Team USA at the Olympics. She talks with Lauren about getting diagnosed with autism as a transgender woman, how autism helped her become a world-class athlete, and why autistic friends are the best kind of friends.

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Nonverbal since the age of 7, Susan Te Kahurangi King is an autistic artist whose drawings have been featured in museums all around the world. Lauren speaks with Susan’s sister Petita Cole about Susan’s journey from prolific, unknown artist to reaching international acclaim.

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At some point in any journey of self-discovery, you just have to start living. And that’s what Lauren needs to do. But before she can get on with it, she has to make peace — with herself and with others. She needs to allow herself to be a person with jumbo-sized feelings. And she needs the help of a guitar, a paintbrush and the lead singer of the band Big Thief — Adrianne Lenker — to get her there. Viva la feelings!

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Coming out to family is hard. And Lauren should know — she’s already done it once. But if Lauren wants to fully inhabit her autism, she’s going to have to let all the people into her reality. So it’s time for Lauren to pull up her big girl pants and get to it. And no better time to disclose than during an already stressful family holiday.

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It’s really hard to be a newly diagnosed autistic person and not know any autistic people. So it’s time for Lauren to make some autistic friends. But it’s not as easy as you might think. Which is why Lauren has to call up some big guns — Olympic BMX rider Chelsea Wolfe, New Zealand pop star Ladyhawke and best-selling author Katherine May — and force her friendship upon them.

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This autism stuff is hard. So Lauren needs a break. And she gets it on a trip to Autism Pleasantville — a perfect world made just for her and all her quirks and weirdnesses. Autism Pleasantville is place full of cute dogs and restaurants that accommodate extreme food sensitivities and autism support humans who help Lauren navigate sticky social situations. Is Autism Pleasantville real? No. But it is nice to pretend.

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It’s no fun being autistic all by yourself. If you feel comfortable, you have to tell folks and let them into your truth. So it’s disclosure time for Lauren. It’s time to tell her pals this wild new thing she’s learned about herself. But that’s not as easy as it sounds. Predictably, things get…kinda awkward. So Lauren calls in an expert — her pal Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex & Money — for advice.

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So Lauren finally got her autism diagnosis. But what the hell did that even mean? Where is the neurodiversity roadmap for someone diagnosed in their 40s? Turns out, there isn’t one. So Lauren has to make it up on her own. It’s time to do a deep dive into the world of autism. Which in itself is very autistic. Let’s get our research on!

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If you want to get evaluated for autism, you have to take some tests. But the earliest autism evaluations suggested that autistic kids were like little robots who wore the same clothes every day and looked through people like they were ghosts. So when Lauren decided to get evaluated, she was stepping into a problematic history. Still, she needed to do it.

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