Episode 11 is a conversation among seven neurodivergent podcasters that became the centerpiece of a peer-reviewed paper. The paper is called “Voices at the Margins: Podcasting as Neuroqueer Collaborative Autoethnography and Epistemic Healing,” and it just came out in Neurodiversity journal. Caitlin Hughes led the project and brought all of us together: Chris, Emma, Bee, Sheldon, Marni, and Teena Mogler, Caitlin’s co-host on Divergent Dialogues. If you’ve been listening to this show, you already know most of these people. Now you get to hear all of us together
Caitlin gave us five open-ended questions about what podcasting makes possible, where we’ve felt shut out of traditional knowledge spaces, and how sharing our stories ripples outward. We talked about belonging, about what it means to claim your lived experience as real knowledge, and about the way that being different from each other is actually what holds us together. Emma called us “scattergraph unicorns,” and honestly, that might be the best description of this group anyone’s come up with.
There’s a lot of laughter in this episode. There are also moments that hit hard. Bee shared a story about sending a podcast episode to someone who didn’t know he was neurodivergent yet—and that connection led to him getting real support. Sheldon talked about holding up a mirror so people can see themselves. Chris named what it feels like to bring your whole self into spaces that would rather you didn’t. The paper calls these things “resonances,” and that word fits.
The paper argues that podcasting is a legitimate form of knowledge creation—not a supplement to academic research, but a method in its own right.
Read the full paper (open access): https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330261437265
Published in: Neurodiversity, Volume 4, Special Issue: Towards a Critical Turn in Neurodiversity Studies: Bridging the Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences
*A PDF of the transcript is available here.
The podcasters in this episode:
* Caitlin Hughes (she/they) is a queer, nonbinary, multi-exceptional Australian social worker, researcher, educator, and advocate. Late-identified as Autistic, ADHD, Gifted, and PDA, Caitlin co-hosts the Divergent Dialogues podcast and brings a lived experience-led perspective to their work. They are committed to fostering epistemic healing through relational ethics, narrative reclamation, and accessible, lived experience–driven knowledge creation.
* Chris Wells (they/them) is a multi-exceptional, nonbinary, and neurodivergent writer, podcaster, and developmental theorist specializing in Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. They co-host the Positive Disintegration, cosmic cheer squad, and PDA: Resistance and Resilience podcasts, and are the founding president of the Dąbrowski Center and co-creator of the Positive Disintegration Network. Chris brings lived experience and a deep commitment to reframing neurodivergence through a developmental and relational lens.
* Emma Nicholson (she/her) is a neurodivergent Australian Senior Business Analyst, creative and advocate, identifying as gifted, Dyscalculic, with all five overexcitabilities (psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional), as well as bisexual and Heathen. She co-hosts the Positive Disintegration Podcast and serves as Vice President of the Dąbrowski Center. She is driven by an unkillable passion to demystify positive disintegration and share hard-won truths to help others feel seen and supported.
* Bee Mayhew (she/her) is a multiply neurodivergent (late-identified AuDHD, former gifted kid) writer, narrative collaborator, and communication coordinator for PDN Media. She co-hosts cosmic cheer squad podcast and has a background as a hospitality specialist and business owner. Bee’s work centers on collective narrative-building and neurodivergent storytelling through activist, community-rooted practice.
* Sheldon Gay (he/him) is a Black Gifted speaker and podcast host of I Must Be BUG’N (Black Underrepresented/Unidentified Gifted and otherwise Neurodivergent). Sheldon is guided by the belief that learning to deeply and wholly Love oneSelf, cape and kryptonite, is the path to finding, creating, and maintaining Love everywhere we go.
* Marni Kammersell (she/her) is an American late-identified neurodivergent (Autistic, ADHD, PDA, gifted) parent of neurodivergent children. She is an educator, researcher, writer, and consultant, and co-hosts the PDA: Resistance and Resilience podcast. Marni is dedicated to honoring neurodivergent experience through relational, self-directed, and nervous-system-informed knowledge practices.
* Teena Mogler (she/her) is an Australian AuDHD social worker, researcher, educator, and advocate, as well as co-host of the Divergent Dialogues podcast. As a mother to neurodivergent children, Teena is passionate about amplifying neurodivergent voices and disrupting epistemic injustice through lived experience-led, neuroaffirming, and critically reflexive knowledge practices.
Find the podcasters:
* Divergent Dialogues: divergentdialogues.substack.com
* I Must Be BUG’N: sheldongayisbugn.com
* Positive Disintegration: www.positivedisintegration.org
* cosmic cheer squad: cosmiccheersquad.substack.com
* PDA: Resistance and Resilience: pdapodcast.substack.com
💌 Connect with us:
* Instagram → @cosmiccheersquad
* Find bee on pragmagination
* Find Chris on Positive Disintegration and PDA: Resistance and Resilience
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