flappyhourcast 001: Our Autism Stories

Autistic Flappy Hour Podcast

Welcome to Autistic Flappy Hour, a podcast with an autistic angle! For our first episode we introduce ourselves and the podcast, share the 'flappy things' making us happy this week and tell our autism stories; describing how autism has affected our lives and we've come to be a part of the autistic community.

• View the post for this episode on our website
• Read a transcript of this episode

Introduction

We explain our motivations for the podcast. Nat mentions their previous podcast Bridging the Rift and explains why we decided against 'Autcast' as a name, to avoid being mixed up with Landon Bryce’s blogazine thAutcast. We also mention the Positively Autistic radio show for another source of autistic-run podcasts.

Related links

• Bridging the Rift - Nat's former podcast about Doctor Who fandom / creativity
• Landon Bryce’s blogazine thAutcast
• Positively Autistic radio show

Flappy things

Laurine’s flappy thing was that the National Autistic Society has published some new research about how we should speak about autism and autistic people, resulting in them deciding to phase out the use of 'person with autism' as the default, preferring 'on the autism spectrum'.

Nat’s flappy thing was that they helped design new autistic communication cards, which will be available shortly on Hannah Ensor’s shop, Stickman Communications. The cards will be available from the 1st of August if you would like to order them.

Cisco’s flappy thing was that he recently started a storefront to sell the products of his special interest: chainmaille. Cisco’s chainmaille store has a twitter account where you can see what he makes and find a link to his shop if you would like to make any purchase!

Related links

• Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast - inspiration for this segment
• Verity! Podcast - inspiration for this segment
• National Autistic Society research - Describing Autism
• Boycott Autism Speaks - to explain our comments about them not listening to autistic people
• Stickman Communications - Communication cards
• Facebook image of the new draft Autistic Spectrum communication cards
• Changeling Chain - the Twitter account for Cisco's chainmaille store

Discussion - About us and our autism stories

We get into more detail about our childhood, teenage years and adulthood and how we came to be identified as being autistic. We also speak about the importance of diagnosis and labels and how they can be helpful.

We finish off by talking about our involvement in the autistic community at large and what we hope to achieve with this new podcast.

Related links

• Autscape - the UK autistic-led conference and retreat
• Horse Boy Foundation - mentioned by Cisco
• My Family And Autism - the 2003 BBC 2 documentary, mentioned by Nat
• Luke Jackson - the author and autism consultant who presented that documentary aged 14
• The Dyspraxia Foundation's Dyspraxia In Adults symptoms list
• Victoria Biggs - the author of Caged In Chaos, mentioned by Nat
• DANDA - The Developmental Adult Neuro-Diversity Association
• Ask Cisco - Cisco's autism advocacy website
• Graphic Explanations - Nat's autism blog
• The 2-thirds finished comic page that Nat mentions
• Laurine's academic blog
• #Autchat, the twice-weekly hashtag discussion over on Twitter

Get in touch

We hope to see you for our next episode, which will be about passing, with Cisco as the main host! In the meantime, why not get in touch by leaving a comment on our website, emailing us at flappyhourcast at gmail dot com or sending a message on one of our social media accounts listed below.

Our social accounts

• Our website
• @flappyhourcast on Twitter
• Our Facebook page
• Our Tumblr account
• Cisco's Twitter - @AskCisco
• Laurine's Twitter - @lcgrmo
• Nat's Twitter - @quarridors
• Find out about past and future #Autchat discussions at bit.ly/autchat