Episode 250: Reflections on 2025

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Well, we’ve made it to the end of another year! It’s been a while since I’ve done a solo episode without a guest interview, so I thought the end of the year would be a good time to do one. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on the year, talk about some of the things that happened with me and my podcast, and share some of my thoughts on the year ahead.

If you’ve recently discovered Beyond 6 Seconds and you’re a new listener, welcome! Or if you’ve been listening for a while, welcome back. I’m really glad you found this episode. While you’re listening, I’d love it if you click that Follow button in your podcast app, or click the Subscribe button if you’re watching on YouTube. That way you’ll get notified about my new episodes.  It helps more listeners find the show too. So thank you for doing that.

Next month in January, 2026, this podcast will be eight years old, with the past four years focused on neurodiversity and disability. This specific episode that you’re listening to is also a big milestone: episode 250. That’s a long time in the indie podcasting world, and a lot of stories shared! I’m so happy that people are still enjoying Beyond 6 Seconds after all these years, and that more and more people keep discovering this show.

Let’s talk about what happened on Beyond 6 Seconds this past year. In 2025, I released 24 episodes. 23 of those were guest interviews. I talked with guests living in six countries: the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and for the first time on my podcast, Malaysia and Nigeria. Next year, I’m hoping to get guests from even more countries on the podcast, because your country of residence can often have an impact on your experience as a neurodivergent person.

My guests talked about their lived experiences with autism, ADHD, Tourette syndrome, dyslexia, dyspraxia, cerebral palsy, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), and Down syndrome – and for the first time on my show, schizoaffective disorder. All of these, and much more, are considered types of neurodivergence. In the larger scope of disability, I also interviewed three guests who are deaf and one who was born prematurely, about how those experiences have impacted their lives.

In the near future, I’d like to feature more people on my podcast who are neurodivergent in ways that I haven’t explored much (or at all) yet on my podcast, such as dyscalculia, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Down syndrome, dysgraphia, Tourette’s, nonverbal learning disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder (DID) and personality disorders. These types of lived experiences often get left out of conversations about neurodivergence. If you’re someone who has that lived experience and would like to be on my podcast, please reach out and let’s talk!

Through this podcast, I’ve appreciated learning about the different ways that neurodivergence can impact our lives. We’ve explored the difficulties and the joys. This past year, my guests talked about the trauma that comes from growing up in unsupportive or abusive environments – and how they process that trauma and find healing through music, public speaking, creating visual art, making films, leading nonprofits, and advocacy. These are all ways of telling their own stories, on their own terms. My guests have a wide range of talents as they shared their stories on my show: from competing on American Idol, to being a New York Times best-selling author, to hosting their own PBS Kids show about STEM topics. So many of my guests give back to their communities too. The work they’re doing now helps support new generations of neurodivergent children and adults, by giving them the encouragement they wish they had and making the world more accessible and inclusive.

My guests and I talked about the importance of inclusion, and what it looks like in the workplace, in film, books and media, at church, and when conducting research studies.

We talked about representation of nonspeaking autism in children’s literature and in public life – and how racism and ableism impacts perceptions of autism and disability, particularly for Black autistic people.

We discussed the negative impact that the US government’s actions this year have had on the neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ communities, especially transgender people, and explored some steps that marginalized business owners can take to continue to grow their brand safely online, and what allies can do to make the workplace safer and more welcoming for their LGBTQ+ colleagues.

We talked about the importance of having a community, and having people in your life who support and accept you, while you take care of yourself.

It’s so important to me that these stories get amplified and recognized. That’s why I was especially honored this past summer when Beyond 6 Seconds won a Women Who Podcast Award. My episode 225 with Sheri Brynard, a South African educator and public speaker with Down syndrome, won 1st place in the Impactful Story category. This new awards program was created by Women Who Podcast Magazine, a really great publication and community for women indie podcasters everywhere.

Through Women Who Podcast Magazine, I also learned about Podcasthon, which is an annual global effort among 1000+ podcast hosts to raise awareness and support for important causes by highlighting a charity of their choice, all during the same week (this year it was from March 15-21, 2025). For my Podcasthon episode, I featured Kind Theory, a neurodivergent-led nonprofit based in Texas. I interviewed the Founder and Executive Director, Samar Waqar, about how Kind Theory provides education about neurodiversity, accessibility, and disability rights to improve educational, health, and employment outcomes for neurodivergent people. I’m looking forward to participating in Podcasthon again in 2026.

I also got to be a guest on a couple of podcasts! I was interviewed on the Everything is Learning podcast, where we talked about the importance of authentic representation of neurodivergence, and my own life experience. I also was a guest on the Different Spectrums podcast, where we had a fun discussion about autism themes in the movie Ghostbusters Afterlife. My podcast and I were also featured on the Expert Voices blog written by one of my former podcast guests, Tas The Artist. I really enjoyed these collaborations, so if you’re a podcaster, blogger or other content creator and you’d like to collaborate, please reach out on social media or through my website’s Contact page, beyond6seconds.net/contact.

I got to attend some great in-person podcasting events this year too. In February I went to On Air Fest, a sound and storytelling festival in Brooklyn, NY. Closer to home, I also started attending the Montclair Podcast Meetups for podcasters and audio professionals in Montclair, New Jersey. It’s great to have a local community of podcasters. In the online world, I’ve been going to virtual events and meetups run by Women Who Podcast Magazine, Podcasthon, and Autastic (which is a community for late-diagnosed autistic adults). All of these have been great ways to meet new people. Did you attend any cool podcast events or neurodiversity-themed events this year? If so, let me know – I’d love to hear about them!

In addition to being a podcaster, I am also a singer. I haven’t sung much over the past few years, but this month I got to sing a little bit with some friends at one of their holiday concerts. I had forgotten how much I enjoy singing, especially in small groups of people. I was very happy that they asked me to be part of their group. I felt very cared for, very cared about. It was a warm and joyful experience, creating something special with each other, for an audience to enjoy.

Finding joy and community is really important.  That’s something I truly learned this year. Advocacy can be tough and heavy work, and it’s been a challenging year for the disability community. For example, in the United States where I live, we’ve faced dangerous lies that vaccines cause autism, attacks on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that people rely on for getting healthcare, massive cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits that low-income families rely on, removing consistent and fair special education protections at the federal level by gutting the Dept of Education, de-professionalizing and limiting access to student loans for educational degrees that help disabled people like nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy and social work (many of which are mandated reporters), ICE raids that rip families apart (including separating parents from their autistic children), continued attacks on the rights of transgender people, as just a few examples.

In my year-end episode last year, I shared a lot of my thoughts on the negative impact that this political administration would have on disabled people. Unfortunately, most of my predictions have been pretty accurate so far. I also shared recommendations on how to protest and resist – contacting your congresspeople, supporting organizations, nonprofits, and businesses led by disabled people (and by people with other marginalized identities as well), getting a library card to support your local library, and more. Those are some of the things I’ve been able to do this past year. I realize that not everyone can do everything. Not everyone feels safe enough to share their stories. Some people are just trying to survive. That’s why I believe that the stories that are shared have power, to show the individual impact that the government’s actions are having on real people. I’m grateful for everyone who allows me to share their stories on my podcast.

Next year on Beyond 6 Seconds, I plan to keep sharing stories to change minds, break stigma, and start conversations about authentic experiences of disability and neurodivergence. I hope you’ll continue to join me as a listener. If you know someone who would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them. And if my podcast has impacted your life, your heart, or your perspective in some way this past year, I’d love to hear about it. You can contact me on social media or on my website at beyond6seconds.net/contact. Your thoughts and feedback mean a lot to me, and they help keep me going with this show.

If you want to give a little extra support to Beyond 6 Seconds, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter to get all my latest episodes when they launch. You’ll even get to hear them before everybody else does. If you want to support this show with a small donation or by sponsoring an episode or two, you can do that too, on my Buy Me a Coffee page. I’ll put those links in the show notes.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for caring about the experiences and stories of neurodivergence and disability that I share on Beyond 6 Seconds. I’m really glad you’re here. You listening to this podcast really matters to me. I hope you have a restful and peaceful season, and that you experience joy and community for the rest of 2025 and beyond. I’ll see you next year.

Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media, or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at Beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.