Late Diagnosis Club

In this final meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club Season One, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Simon Scott, co-founder of the Autistic Culture Podcast Network, co-host of The Neurodivergent Experience , and producer of this series. Simon shares his own journey of identifying as neurodivergent, a story marked by missed signs, school struggles, identity, and years of feeling like an alien. Together, Angela...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Nyck Walsh, writer, therapist, and advocate, who shares their journey to identifying as Autistic and ADHD later in life. Nyck reflects on growing up feeling fundamentally different — navigating school, relationships, and work without the language to understand why things felt harder than they seemed for others. Like many late-i...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Katharine Gates, a writer, artist, and long-time creative who identified as Autistic and ADHD after a lifetime of questioning herself. Katharine shares how she spent decades feeling like the “odd one out” — academically gifted, outwardly successful, yet constantly struggling with everyday life, relationships, and a persistent s...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Dale Pickles — host of Sendcast and Managing Director of B Squared — for a wide-ranging conversation on late diagnosis, education systems, and what it really means to support neurodivergent people. Dale shares how he grew up surrounded by special education — yet still missed his own Autism and ADHD. It wasn’t until 2023, prompt...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Jason Killian, an engineer, hiking instructor, and long time member of the club, who shares his journey to understanding himself as Autistic in his 40s. Growing up in a neurodivergent household, Jason was unknowingly accommodated in early childhood. Despite strong academic performance, Jason struggled with social integration, b...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Danielle Procope Bell, PhD, an Autistic Black feminist scholar and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Danielle shares how she knew from early childhood that she was different, finding other children chaotic, preferring books and structure, and feeling an invisible glass wall betwe...

Warning: This episode includes discussion of terminal cancer, sudden bereavement, grief, burnout, and mental health struggles. Please listen with care. In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Scott Simpson, a late-identified Autistic and ADHD creator, former broadcast journalist, and widowed father who has been raising his son solo since 2016. After decades working i...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes KW Raney, a therapist, creative, and podcast host who identified as AuDHD in adulthood after years of misdiagnosis, burnout, and self-blame. As a child, KW was labelled with oppositional defiant disorder and grew up believing he was difficult, lazy, and broken. But decades later, recognition of ADHD, and later Autism, helped hi...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Sha’mya Jones, a graphic designer and entrepreneur who was diagnosed as Autistic in early childhood — but didn’t learn about it until she was a teenager. Sha’mya shares what it was like to grow up knowing she was different but not understanding why, navigating school, relationships, and identity without the language to describe...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Daria Brown, creator of Affect Autism and host of the We Chose Play podcast. Daria shares her journey from parent advocate to late-identified Autistic adult, reflecting on the decade between her son’s diagnosis and her own. What began as a search for how to support her son eventually led to a deeper understanding of herself, re...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Shyloe Fayad, a late-diagnosed Autistic school counsellor and somatic experiencing practitioner based on the stolen land of the Syilx people of the Okanagan in Canada. Shyloe works both within schools and in private practice, supporting neurodivergent people, mixed race communities, and teens and adults navigating depression an...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Carolyn Kiel, host of the award-winning podcast Beyond 6 Seconds, who discovered she was Autistic not before, but through her podcasting journey. Together, Angela and Carolyn explore late discovery through connection, the limits of traditional narratives around autism, workplace misunderstandings, and how language and self-unde...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Michael Kelly, a late-diagnosed Autistic artist and recent PhD graduate in design whose work explores how art can help us think about thinking. Michael’s path to diagnosis began unexpectedly during his wife Susie’s autism assessment. After sitting in on several sessions as her carer, the clinician suggested that Michael pursue...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Tigz Rice, an empowerment photographer whose work centres on helping people feel truly seen in their own bodies. Diagnosed with ADHD and autism in her late 30s, Tigz reflects on the subtle signs that were present throughout childhood — from early hyperfocus on computers and photography to lifelong curiosity about how things wor...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club , Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Jenna Goldstein, a late-diagnosed Autistic school psychologist who left the public education system after recognising its incompatibility with neurodiversity-affirming practice. Jenna first recognised her own autism after her three-year-old daughter was identified. As she turned to Autistic voices for understanding, what began...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Amy Kriewaldt, a late-diagnosed Autistic, ADHD, and PDA mother of three neurodivergent children. Amy grew up a hyperlexic piano prodigy, praised for talent and performance while quietly navigating sensory overwhelm, situational mutism, perfectionism, and crushing internal expectations. It wasn’t until her children began receivi...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Claire Samuels, a proud Autistic speech-language pathologist whose journey to self-recognition unfolded inside the very system she would later question. Claire began her career as a Registered Behaviour Technician (RBT) in the ABA industry, believing what she was told: that ABA was the gold standard for Autistic children. She l...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Julie Farrell, a late-diagnosed Autistic and ADHD writer, activist, and co-founder of The Inklusion Guide , a resource dedicated to making literature events accessible to disabled people. Julie shares her slow, layered journey toward understanding her neurodivergence — from burnout, migraines, and chronic illness labels, to fin...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Helen Shaddock, a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and PhD researcher whose work explores autism, eating distress, OCD, and healing through creativity. Helen was diagnosed with anorexia at 13 and spent the next 25 years moving through eating-disorder pathways that never fully explained her experience. It wasn’t until her late...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Tara for one of the most difficult and important conversations the Club has held. ⚠️ Content notice: This episode includes discussion of violence, sexual abuse, child harm, and coercive control. Listener discretion is strongly advised. Please pause or skip as needed and take care of yourself. Tara is a late-diagnosed Autistic w...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Abbey Thompson — a librarian, classically trained vocalist, prize-winning baker, gamer, social justice bard, and self-described random fact machine. Abbey is a fat, queer, neurodivergent woman living in Los Angeles with two orange cats and a deep commitment to creativity without perfection. Diagnosed with ADHD in her 40s and la...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Sarma Melngailis, a late-identified Autistic woman whose life unfolded in public long before she had language for her neurodivergence. Sarma was once a celebrated New York restaurateur and entrepreneur. Years later, she became the subject of global scrutiny following a highly publicised documentary that framed her story through...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes George Watts, a neurodivergent researcher, parent, and PhD candidate whose path into autism research began before realising they were autistic themselves. George first studied autism from the outside, absorbing dominant behavioural frameworks and evidence-based models that promised to “help” Autistic people. It wasn’t until the...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Julie M. Green, a writer, Autistic mother, and late-identified Autistic woman whose self-recognition unfolded through parenting. Julie’s story begins not with her own diagnosis, but with her son’s. As she learned how to support an Autistic child, she slowly began to recognise familiar patterns in herself — sensory sensitivity,...

In this meeting of The Late Diagnosis Club, Dr Angela Kingdon welcomes Becca Engle, an Autistic educator, author, and advocate whose early disability was recognised, but whose autism was not fully named until adulthood. Becca was identified as disabled at age three and was once non-speaking. She was repeatedly told she would never be independent, never succeed academically, and never become a teac...