Samuel Huber's Unique Perspective: Autism as a culture

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast, hosted by
Tony Mantor, Broadcasting from Music City USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some.
Will make you cry.
Real life people who will inspire and show that you
are not alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World.
Today's guest is Samuel Huber. He was diagnosed autistic at
age fourteen. Now in his thirties, he's here to tell
us his story. Thanks for coming on, Samuel.
Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.
Yes, I really appreciate you coming on. So you was
diagnosed autistic at age fourteen. What led to that diagnosis?
Well, I was first diagnosed with AGD.
And nonverbal during disability, and I just was kno getting
the services that my mom thought I deserve. And she's
a psychologist herself, she was pretty sure Iff's on the spectrum.
In order to get those services, I needed to get
that fish dynasts. She took me to a different, you know,
person to get diagnosed and then I was diagnosed at
fourteen and that's when I and that's that's the reason
behind me being in dinosed solely.
Well, even though you got diagnosed late, it's still a
good thing that you did, because I've met people that
are in their thirties and forties and then that's when
they found out they was autistic.
Yeah, I've met them too, because like another big thing is,
you know, people.
That are at that age or even older or just
getting dinosms like they were just called like eccentric, are
quirky or you know, like some sort of ethism. But
you know, because autison wasn't like a hot you know,
hot word until like really the last twenty years and
before then, childhood schizophrenia basically.
Yeah. I know a speech therapist that went to college
twenty years ago and she told me that she had
one class in one semester that covered autism and that
was it for four years. So you're right, twenty years
ago it wasn't well known, right, So when you was diagnosed,
did it change your life at all? Or did it
kind of make things make more sense for you? Where
you was fourteen?
Uh?
To be honest, like I was not really aware of
a must have changed out really what it meant until
I started working with autistic individuals, says uh t A myself.
So like I really saw the variations of different kinds
of autism. When I really saw how far I come,
I'm like, huh, there's a lot more to this than uh.
Mean side because like back in my day, there wasn't.
Just there wasn't all this you know, hub ub about autism.
And I'm just seeing the different functionality levels just really
opened my eyes to how my brain works and how
it varies from the narrow typical mind.
So now, over the years you've learned and grown, how
do you see your mind changes and looks at things
differently than your friends.
Well, you know we think in pictures. It's like I
think in reverse of how my friends think. Uh or
I just take longer to get a thought across. I
have to, you know, view myself as a storyteller, like
you know, like my friend asked me how to describe,
and it's like it's like a Taratino movie, Like I
start the end and then I work my way back
to the beginning, jumped to the middle, and then you
know there's all these scenes jumping first, you know, first
time in the first grade, them in the sixth grade,
back to the first you know.
It's like that, like we're.
Just these natural storytellers that really, you know, just jump
all over the place.
Okay.
So so you you you're seeing more pictures than you saying.
Right, Like for example, like if you were to say
the word barn, like I would see the red building
for the I bring the process the word okay, and
then and then that's the big thing is you know,
and there are typical classrooms you know that I talked
through word, you know, associating the words with the image first.
But like I need the image first for another word,
like basically, what's that a barn?
Okay?
And that can burn the image into my brain. That's
what a barn is. Another example is how I learned
to read. I can't sound words out at all, Like
my brain just can't do it.
So I have to memorize what words look.
Like this like this is this is you know impossible,
this is I either like memorize what words look like.
Wow, that's very interesting. I spoke with a young lady
yesterday and she processes words and pictures and everything with music.
So The fact that you do it with pictures and
she does it with music is I think quite interesting
and shows the differences that people can do.
Yeah, and the music's and you know, one of the
reasons I wanted to do this podcast is music also
helps my brain make connections faster, like also to Miles Davis,
and the pictures will come faster versus if there's no
music at all, Like it's like it's my brain is
much slower. There's something magical about music that not only
enhances my social skills but increases.
The author of minds, brain function in my opinion.
Well, that's really good. Music is just something that I
love too. So what are some of your favorite artists
that you listen to?
I have like a y range.
Everything, like I said, Miles Davis, Coltrane, to the Graceful
Dead Fish, Arion Flowing Yes, Rush Beethoven, Uh really, you know,
Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton.
You know it's all over the Yeah, it's what moona man.
Sure really but really just I would say improv music
is my biggest love because it's like it's all about
trusting yourself in the moment as a musician and take
you know, taking.
A song, you know, beyond its normal borders. And I
liked I like the idea, like a lot.
Of listen to one concert, it could be four minutes,
the next minute the same, so it could be thirty
five minutes, right, and I just but there's still like
order in that that chaos where in life, you know,
you don't you have to improvise all the time, and.
And that really taught me how to do that in
a safe way.
So what was your school years?
Like?
Did you go to public school, private school, or homeschool?
How did that affect you.
A bit of everything?
Because like it wasn't like I never had an i EP,
you know, So I went to a lot of different
schools trying to figure out what works for me. So
I did some homeschooling, I did some private, some public,
all over the place, but you know, most of it,
I would say, middle school and high school was private,
you know, and just really that was like the most
I guess autistic focused school I went to it was.
And then college, you know, I was a normal college.
Okay, what'd you go to college for?
I originally psychology, but I couldn't pass the math class
no matter how hard I tried. So I ended up
doing family studies and I think psychology to be a psychologist.
I took psychology to understand people, right because.
I like, like I.
Just I was tired of you know, miss you, missing
all the unwritten social rules, missing by language cues, and like,
let me tackles in this scientific in visual way. So
I took it like a by language class where it
literally became a puzzle to me, like, you know, the
cheap but I'm going this high the eyes, dilating this
much means x okay really elevated my social skills being
able to communicate with people.
Wow, that's really good. So how does your family support you?
And how do they react to what you're doing? Now?
I mixed in a reaction like I'm sure like there,
and my wife is very you know, very proud proud
of me for you know, showing, you know, breaking the
social norm that autos of people can't form deep, meaningful relationships.
Like people are shocked that I do all the conference
that wait, you have children like.
They I've literally had, Like I would say.
Eight to ten people say I didn't know alto people's
you know, sexual organs worked even though.
They could reproduce.
Wow, Like This is just very bizarre thing to him, like, yeah,
everything works down there, and then they're asking like how
you know, how do you do as well?
Me and my wife work on.
Communication constantly, right what and she and she realize and
the way she looks looks at wow anthroologically like it's
a different culture, and that really changed my perspective.
Yeah, it's non disability.
As cultures, we do have our own dialect, but like
for example, our facial experisions aren't in our face but
in our hands.
Okay, like offscreen, my hand hands doing all this waving about, right,
you know, really helping me process and think in terms
of my parents.
You know that I do a talk show with my
dad What's on your Mind, Bob? And we're writing a
book together. It's really helped us come to our relationship
because growing up, my dad was just more of that
you can do this, and he would keep trying to
drill like learning the sound words out. It took him,
you know a lot of years of Really Sam can't
sound words out in his head.
He just can't do it.
It doesn't make him less than or anything.
It just he has to learn to read his own way.
And the big thing is I I, I really try
to push the envelope, and that makes them nervous because
like they'll know how the world's going to react like that.
But overall, I would say the answer question, I believe that,
you know, everyone's proud of me for being open about
my experience of being an autistic person.
I really like the fact that you brought up that
your wife and yourself look at that as a different culture.
I think that's just tremendously good. Uh, this is the
first time that I've heard that youth like that, and
I just think that it's just very very cool.
Yeah, as it is.
If you sit back and watch autistic people interact with
each other, they'll start to beck up that they has
their own.
Dialogue like that. Like for my wife, it was neurotypical.
If I do my turn to storytelling, she's like just
bullet point Sam, like boom boom boom, but like I'm
talking to another autista or like they're following the storyline,
like oh yeah, I see how you're connecting that way
out there.
And then it's like and she.
Knows that, you know, my hands get way more active
too when I'm talking to So it is also autistic
and vice versa their hands and all of a sudden,
like it's like we're speaking our.
Own language to each other.
Yeah, and then you know, a neurotypical person will come
into conversation and then we'll turn and we'll we'll lower
our hands and we'll start speaking neurotypical and it's just.
If you sit back and just watch us, you'll you'll
see that.
And then it really opens up to you know, what
autism really is, which as a public speaker, you know,
I've been now advocating for six years, it's a culture.
Yeah, that's that's good. Now you mentioned something about music
saving your life.
Is that?
What can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Well, you know, music is my big special interest. Like
I probably listened to for four to eight hours of
music a day, so there's always music going on in
my home. Really the big thing is, like I didn't
have friends until I would say fifteen, And it was
thally the fact that I start wearing band t shirts
and so when I'm like, oh, you like them, and
it started, you know, it was the first time I
really had conversations with people my own age.
He said, Mom and dad.
And as a teenager, I was like, you know, very
very suicide because I was so lonely and it's go worthless.
But then I started making these connections with other people,
and I started going to concerts and it became a
subsession because I was able to talk to total strangers
and we're all jelling on the same thing, our love
for the band that we're seeing. And it really also
helped push me out of my shell, like going to
Upstate New York to see Fish by myself on a bus,
you know, no parents, and I had a wacky, crazy
venture up there doing that and it was just and
I was able to really zone out the social anxiety
because it was so focused on you know, having this
you know experience and just enjoying the music.
And that's really good. So in your formative years, did
anxiety ever come into your life? And if it did,
how did you work around it so that you was
able to figure it out and continue your path on
what you wanted to do in life.
Yeah.
I mean I never had like.
The point of like tearing part of room or becoming
like physically aggressive, But it was more I would say
an internal like authisic meltdown, like all of those fings
that you know a ptically describe and music is always
has been, always will be looking it always calms me
down the most, Like you know, as a teenager who
was having and all in college it started becoming like
the music, you know, hippie music from the sixties and seventies,
and and then as an older adult, jazz and has
really I always put on jazz when I need to
calm down because it's just you know, soothing and just
following the long progression of chords. It really helps to distract
my mind for whatever melting down about.
That's really good. So how about anxiety? Did that affect you?
And if it did, can you expand on that?
Oh?
Yes, Like I would say, anxiety was my biggest hurdle
to overcome, like okay, like in all relationships and and
just life in general.
I ran before I found God, just really ran anxious.
I wasn't anxious, and music was you know, playing at
the you know, the point where I always had when
earbuzz in and you know.
It would piss everyone.
But that would piss everyone off because I try and
talk to me, but you know, I have.
A c DC.
Blasting in my phones or yeah something, and they want
to talk to me about like it's the only thing
that kept me regulated for so long, and.
Right, right, well, music is a great thing. I mean,
I'm because I do production and work with all kinds
of musicians, so so yeah, it it definitely has that
calming or or it can just put it can take,
it can put you in any place that you want
to be. So it's it's really I'm glad that you
that you found it. That's that's great.
Yeah, I mean that's what that's like.
You said, music is very transformative, like you can listen
to a rock opera and be taken to, you know,
another dimension, or listen to a simple folk song and.
Yeah, stuff on a railroad.
Yeah yeah. So so now you said you're married and
you have have kids.
Yeah, two kids too, Okay, how old a day? One
six and the other one's one.
Oh that's awesome. Two great ages. I'm sure that you're
enjoying them as you should. So tell me what are
you currently doing for work now?
Right now?
I am a septic processing technician. Basically what I do
is I make a component for cancer drugs and a
clean room and that allowed you know, and so I
maintained the lab and the main thing about aceptic is
committings clean. And the funny thing is, like I only
went into lab work two years ago and I fished
the water because like, if you go into a lab
you throw.
A rock, you'll hit an autistic person.
It was like the first time, like I wasn't the
only one on staff that was autistic. It was just
like a hope I could like do a hand just
autistic hand jester and presently like, yeah, okay, I'll be
over in a moment.
I think they would get like that signal.
And that was when I says, like I found where
all my people are going as adults.
Right, So now I think you mentioned it earlier that
you sometimes will go out and do some public speaking
about autism.
Yeah, I've done public speaking on autism and romantic relationship,
autism in college, autism in the workplace. Really like what
happens after you hit twenty one because at least in PA,
a lot of services unless you're you know, freaking rich.
And at twenty one and there're kind of a lot
of there's a lot of aspects out there kind of
like what do I do now?
Or you know, there's an alarming amount of autistics that
are not finishing due to the stress of trying to
keep up with nurotypical people you're socially or academically, and
I'm finding just talking to them and it's more of
a social aspect, Like they'll go to a party and
like I don't want to drink alcohol, but like everyone
else is like, you know, getting toasted it, And I'm like, here's.
A secret I did.
I would sneak into the kids to get empty beer
cans and then I would throw it down. Oh I
just drank another one, and it would look like I
had this high tolerance for alcohol.
Yeah, I get that. My trick used to be always
having a bottle of beer in my hand, and when
people would come over and say, oh, you need a refill,
I would just show it to him and say, no,
just got one. Thanks. So that just goes to prove
that everyone has their own little tricks and as long
as it works for them, that's all it really.
Matters, right, And that's the big thing I I tried
teaching my puck speaking is he's a little It makes
autism people feel more comfortable going into the college setting
on their own. So I went to college two hours
away from my parents, they weren't there. That prompted me
through a college party. And also you don't want your
parents at a college party, absolutely all right, So like
what do I like, how do I start a college party?
And you know, I advocate like joining social clubs that
it's something you're into. If you're really into anime, started
an anime club and you know, or if you're a musician,
start something with music and really start.
The ball rolling with that.
Then also amantic relationship, like I always add my props
in that would make autism your pickup line because you know,
also people have a lot to offer when it comes
to romantic relationships and it's not as hard as a
lot of us.
Make it out, to be sure, and in reality, autistic
people have a lot to give anyways, that's true. Well,
it just comes down to communication and understanding. If everybody
could learn how to communicate what's needed and then learn
how to accept and understand, then that would make things
in life just a little bit easier.
Right, And that's all.
If someone want to ask me what I want as
Elvis person, I want to be understood absolutely and in there,
you know, but I have to do my part on that,
Like how I react to my autism is going to
you know, raise the bar for the other person to
if I actually it's such a huge struggle and it's
it torments me, and then I personally be like, I
don't know if I want to hang out with someone
that's constantly tormented.
But it's like, oh, like my socks are green.
Oh and by the way, I'm autistic. Yeah, and I
can care on the conversation.
Then we're like, oh, it's just a thing, or if
they want to go on depth, just talk about, well,
it's my culture. You know, look at my hands, not
not my face. I just have resting bitch face all
the time. But it doesn't mean I'm not feeling.
Something, right.
I've got to say, I really like this conversation, and
I think people are going to really get into it
because I love your attitude even more. I like the
fact that you bring up that it's a culture. Of
all the people I've spoken with, you're the first person
that's actually defined autism as a culture. I think that
it's a great definition, And I also believe that a
lot of people are going to be helped by this
because it's just a different way of looking at it.
Yeah, and I think it needs to be defined this
way because like the word disability or disorder is so crippling.
And also the fact that when I look at other
influences out there, that we're still arguing over what we
should be called. Like just ended at culture and and
celrate the.
Culture absolutely correct. I mean, there are just so many
autistic people out there that are just brilliant. They do
so many great things for humanity. What it really comes
down to is the definition that some people have for
autism is not the correct one, and they have to
be learned and taught so they can understand that what
they're thinking about is not correct.
Yeah, that's what I have definitely gone through in talking
at conferences, are just to people in general on Instagram
and stuff, like the best way I can describe autism
and one thing, it's just amplified humanity. We feel what
everyone else feels with no felt the like, just just
being human.
But you know, turn it up to eleven.
Absolutely. One thing that I think that people misunderstand is
they think that people that are autistic look and act
differently than they do. What it comes down to is
autistic people just like you and me. So it comes
down to we have to educate these people, give them
a better understanding of what autism is, so that we
can all find a way to live together and thrive together.
Mm hmm.
Right, Because like the big thing that I've also I've
often heard is you know why is autism all of
a sudden like it's it's where were the autos to
people when I was born, Like fifty year olds are
saying like they were they were just called something else
like Einstein, Pessa, John Lennon for example, on this on
the office. Especially if we just google famous people on
the spectrum, it's more than just Sheldon Cooper and rain
Man and that, like they're if they were contributing to
Like we wouldn't be on the moon without autistic people.
Like I said, you can go into a laboratory, like
throw a rock and you'll hit someone. If you hit someone,
most likely they're on the spectrum. We just we've we've
been in the shadows moving humanity. All I take this
is a Google search and you'll find out it reaches
across generations.
It sure does. I spoke with a lady last week,
she's going to be sixty next month. She found out
she was autistic about forty five, and she feels like
she lost four decades because when she was younger, everybody
thought she was just acting up and just being a
bad child. In reality, she was just dealing with her autism,
and at that point, no one really knew what it was.
So it has come a long way in the last
twenty years. We're starting to understand, but we just need
to take it to a higher level of understanding so
that people can understand what she did because she eventually
embraced it and used it to help her. So now
she's doing many good things and anybody can do that.
Yeah, and that's the big thing.
I've had my own interview view show, like j Pennemvera
had years of autism.
It was my show, and I interviewed a lot of
women on the spectrum.
And and women are still facing this whole thing that
it's a boys that's order, that the ratio is four
to One's just as many autistic women out there as
there are men. It's just for some reason, you know,
the medical world is just, oh, she's just you know,
being cutesy or like some feminine youthism. And a lot
of women don't get diagnosed in to their twenties or thirties,
I found in my interviews, and that's a crime that
if we just again treats a culture, what is how
are autistic women treated in.
Their own culture?
And a lot of them, you know, are brilliant, you
know women, just as there are brilliant people in their
typical cultures, and they just they need more of a
shout out than they've been getting. The boys have been
getting all the glory, and now I think the women
need need to have their day.
I agree. I did a press release a few weeks
ago and in it I had Tory Clark, which was
my first episode on my podcast with Rachel Moseley, who's
coming on my podcast in the near future. They both
were at a function that was put on by autistic
people for autistic people over in the UK. She told
me that that was one of the first times that
she had seen two women in a press release about
autism and it just made her feel really good. So
I agree one hundred percent with you that they need
their props, and I think we need to let people
know that women can thrive just as well as men.
That's really cool and thank you for doing that. Yeah,
it just and that's The other big thing. I think
autistic people need to be talking at their own conferences
like often do. When I talk at conferences, usually I'm
the only autistic yeah person that's speaking.
It's usually I have a PhD.
You know, I've worked with authorsic individuals for X amount
of years and I just want to stay in the
background and be like, but what you're saying is absolutely wrong.
Okay there.
You know a lot of them still have this, you know,
treating it in the medical mindset. This is something to
be cured, and we're not meant to be cured. We
just need understanding and regulation like everyone else. Because everyone stems.
When you click your pen at work when you're bored,
that's stemming. Niro typical people do this. But because we're
authistically and I said, we're amplified people, we do it
all the time.
That's the only difference, correct, And I think people have
to understand that a lot of autistic people out there
are very very intelligent, and they contribute to society in
ways they would never even think of.
Right, and we do contribute, Like I said this, Google
famous auticipate you like like I wouldn't be talking to
you through my iPhone without not just a person inventing
that iPhone and Steve Jobs was autistic. Bill Gates was autistic.
He didn't finish high school because you know, he has
struggled with fitting the narotypical curriculum. Einstein failed narrotypical math classes.
But we wouldn't have Eagles Mpty Square without him.
So true. I don't think there's a lot of people
out there that realize how many people that were autistic
and are autistic that contribute to our society in so
many ways. So I think you told me that you
was doing something with your dad. Could you expand on
that a little bit?
Well, right now, me and my dad are doing a
show call What's on your Mind about where me and him,
you know, take things that are going to be in
the book once it gets published Berna Mila or trying
to get an agent to represent it.
But apart from.
That, I do a show called God Thoughts, which is
bringing off the people to God, where I'm trying to
bring individuals who are you know, autistic onto the show
and we talk.
About our least with God.
And you know, when I'm you know, more time, I
do want to.
Go back to just regular interviews with adults on the
spectrum and learning their secrets on how they function in
this world, because we often feel.
Like we're in the minority in the narotypical world.
But I want to expose the secret that everyone's narrative verse.
If you, if you take the DSM from psychology, you
go up to any individual and talk to them and
flip through them, you can diagnose them with something. And
I just really want to smash that idea that there
is no such thing as a normal person. That we
all think differently, and this what's actually crushing autistic people
today is this idea that we have to get.
You to conform to this idea, the normal thoughts. And
I'm like, stop it.
You don't think the way I do, and you don't
and the person next to you who's nurotypical doesn't think
the way you do.
Exactly. Man, I got to tell you, I've really really
enjoyed this, the tremendous insight that you have given, and
I believe that a lot of people that hear this
will think a little differently because of it, and I
believe that will help a lot of people as well.
So give us a final thought on what you'd like
to put out there before we end this.
I think the final thoughts are, if you're off this
individual struggling to make it in this world, focus on what
you love and learn and bring that into reality. And yeah,
like just find like you can form your own structure
in your own life.
You don't need people practicing you through your life.
And if you're still struggling, you know God or treat
your life like a song progression because life is a
lot like music that it follows this progression and sometimes
it veer is often you're in twenty minutes of just
noodling on through life and then you veer.
It back to the main theme of the song.
And just enjoy the process of growing up and you know,
live on Hawaiian time.
You get there.
When you get there, like, don't worry about trying to
keep up when their typical people. You're only getting up
burnt out and feel bad about yourself. So just enjoy
going through life on your own pays.
That's so true. And I really have to say this
has been great, so again, thanks for coming on. I
really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
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