01/04/2025
CELEBRATE AUTISTIC CREATORS IN APRIL AND JOIN OUR SUBSTACK: IT'S EASIER THAN YOU THINK.
Did you know you can listen to the Autistic Culture Podcast, for free, anywhere you get your podcasts? Just type in the name of the show and we will come up. ENJOY!
But there is a better place to find our show and that is through our Substack page. This April to Support Autistic Creators we would love to invite you to join our Substack if you haven't already, so here is the 101 - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SUBSTACK
•••WHAT'S SUBSTACK?
Substack is simply a platform where creators (like us!) can publish podcasts, articles, videos, and updates directly to readers. Subscribing means you'll get our podcast episodes straight to your email and you have early access to videos from each episode. You do NOT have to pay to subscribe.
•••WHY SIGN UP FOR OUR SUBSTACK?
The free subscription has 3 main benefits:
📧BENEFIT NUMERO UNO - Email reminders when new episodes come out! (Because it's easy to forget to listen)
📽️BENEFIT NUMERO DOS - Early access to video versions of each episode if you are into that sort of thing!
📄BENEFIT NUMERO TRES - Complete transcripts of each episode if you would rather read or read along!
•••HOW DO YOU SIGN UP?
Here's exactly how it works, step-by-step:
1. Go to AutisticCulturePodcast.com. You'll first see a landing page asking for your email.
2. Enter your email if you want updates delivered directly. If you'd rather just browse first, look below the email box and click "Continue without email" (at the bottom).
3. If you enter your email and hit "Subscribe," you'll be presented with subscription options. It will say Choose a Subscription Plan.
IMPORTANT: One of these plans is completely free (labeled as "None"). Just choose the free option to access all our standard content without cost.
Once you've subscribed, you'll get our latest posts delivered directly to your email inbox. You can also browse older posts on our Substack page anytime.
Also, Substack has an app, but you absolutely do NOT need to download it. The app is entirely optional—it just provides another way to conveniently read content if you prefer apps. You can fully access our content and subscribe without ever touching the app.
•••WHY ARE WE USING SUBSTACK INSTEAD OF FB, TWITTER, or TIKTOK?
Simply put, Substack aligns better with our values. It's also the only platform like this not owned by billionaires. The owners are 3 guys from New Zealand, Canada, and Japan—Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi. Now that does not make them perfect (cuz they aren't) but when Vivian's estranged father who shall remain nameless tried to buy the company, they told him to eff off and then systematically poached Twitter's top creators. I appreciate that. Most importantly, if they do something dodgy, we can leave and take our subscribers and content with us.
Unlike other platforms, Substack allows user greater control over what they see, it's not run my bots that take over your brain and show you what to watch or read, it also doesn't have ads, a small percent of our subscribers are paying for bonus content from us, and the substack platform takes 10% of that which seems fair and better than selling our souls for free access and sponsored content, and ensures our communication isn't controlled by algorithms or large corporations. This means fewer distractions, no selling of your data, and more direct, meaningful interactions between us and you.
•••WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE PAID OPTIONS?
First of all, there is never a need to subscribe to get our podcast. We publish 2 new episodes during the school year and in the summers we put together edits and best of collections to keep the stream flowing. All of that is now, and always will be free.
However, producing the podcast costs a lot. Just to break it down for you we have to pay for domains, webhosting, storage services, editing services, audio engineering, transcript and show note services, technical coders to put the episodes up, and a lot of admin - more than you are probably imagining! There is so much we want to do that we just don't have the budget for.
As a thank you to those who can help us defry our costs we have some extra and bonuses including a private book club, live calls with Matt and I, early access to our book, Adult Autism Home Assessment, discounts on tshirts and stickers, and the option to have a piece of your writing in our annual paid subscriber literary anthology, Neurodivergent Narratives.
So, if you do have the budget for it, we would love to welcome you to our producer circle as a paid supporter of the show.
Want to see what's inside our Substack? Here are our last 9 posts.
🎭Culture Episodes 🎭
Monster High Is Autistic with Fidgets and Fries
The Law is Autistic with Susan from Meet my Autistic Brain
Lena Dunham is Autistic
⚖️ Advocacy Episodes ⚖️
Special Interests are Self-Care
Autistic Intimacy with McNulty
Autistic Sleep Problems
✏️Neurodivergent Narratives ✏️
Each week I provide writing advice and prompts as part of our virtual asynchronous writing circle. Totgether we are working on submissions for our First Annual Literary Anthology. These are essays, poems, and other creative works about our experiences being neurodivergent.
I love how tidy the grid is looking right now!
