Hi Pod! I'm Dad.

Hi World I'm Dad: The Audiobook - Available Everywhere June 19

• James Guttman • Season 2 • Episode 252

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James Gutman makes a major announcement about his upcoming book "Hi World I'm Dad: How Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance to Appreciation" being released as an audiobook on June 19th, 2025. He shares personal reflections on recording the audiobook and his authentic approach to parenting his son Lucas.

• The audiobook will be available on multiple platforms including Audible, Amazon, Spotify, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo. It is available for pre-order now.
• James describes his initial hesitation about recording the audiobook but ultimately enjoyed the experience
• Authenticity is key to his approach to parenting and advocacy
• He emphasizes finding joy in everyday moments with his son rather than lamenting challenges
• James shares touching anecdotes about his relationship with Lucas, including why he can never stay mad at him for more than five minutes
• The book demonstrates his journey from autism awareness to acceptance to appreciation

Visit HiBlogImDad.com every Monday and Wednesday for new blog posts and follow James on Instagram @Hi_JamesGutman.


It's Here! Get the book – “Hi World, I’m Dad: How Fathers Can Journey to Autism Awareness, Acceptance, and Appreciation” on audio, digital, or print.

Follow Us On Facebook and YouTube. Follow James Guttman on Instagram.

Also, be sure to read the blog that started it all - Hi Blog! I'm Dad.

Speaker 1:

I want apple juice. Lucas wants apple juice. I know I heard him say that. Can I have apple juice? Yeah, you can have apple juice. Can I have soda? Yes, you can have soda. Can I press that button? No, you can't press that button. Why? Because that's going to play the theme song. I'm not ready to start the pot.

Speaker 1:

Hi Pod, I am Dad. He's not just Hi Dad, he's my dad, james Gutman. Folks, it's James Gutman, it's Hi Pod, I'm Dad. Welcome back to another edition of the podcast. Another friday, it is may 23rd. This is being posted on may 23rd 2025.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate you guys taking the time to check it out. We're on all the streaming services. If they stream it, we're on it. Thank you, um, like subscribe, all the good stuff you're supposed to do. I appreciate it. This is the episode. This is the edition of the podcast.

Speaker 1:

I've been talking about this for like weeks and weeks and weeks about the big announcement. There's more to come about this book and we already announced the book, june 19th 2025, high World I'm Dad how Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance to Appreciation. Talked about it, unveiled it. What else is there to do, right? Well, this is the announcement. Now. Hopefully, it'll be an announcement to you If you did not read the title of the podcast, in which case don't read. Don't. Why are you reading it now? Don't read it. The announcement is this High World Omdad how Fathers Can Journey from Autism Awareness to Acceptance to Appreciation will also be released on June 19th as an audiobook. That's right. There will be an audio version of Hi World I'm Dad, available on all the major platforms. I'm talking Amazon, audible, spotify, apple Books, google Play Books, kobo. I don't know what Kobo is, but it's on Kobo. So yeah, if you have Kobo, nice, you can check out the book. This has been it's been crazy. So I've known about this for a while, but we didn't even do anything with it yet. Right Like now, I was told we're gonna do an audio version of the book.

Speaker 1:

I don't know much about audiobooks, truth be told, and this kind of blows some people away. I know things. I know about literature and I know different things like that, but I'm not a huge reader per se. I always feel kind of weird reading other people's writing because I don't want to write like them. I don't know, maybe I'm just lazy. Whatever it is, I don't really do a lot in the literary community in depth like that. I'll read something if I want to read it, but for the most part, no. So I don't really know a lot about audio books, much less how to narrate them, which is what I would be doing, and that's right.

Speaker 1:

I spent three different days at Paradise Studios, new York, out in Massapequa, new York. Bobby helped me along. This was fantastic. It was a process that worried me. The idea was I was going to read my book out loud into a microphone from beginning to end, and that was the narration and I.

Speaker 1:

There's not one part of that whole idea that I could wrap my head around, for a couple of reasons. First, I don't like to reread the things that I've written. I always kind of feel weird about it and people are surprised by that. But to go back, especially recently, to something I've written, I kind of I don't know Like I feel like I thought it already. I wrote't know Like I feel like I thought it already. I wrote it already. Plus, I think of things I want to change. I don't like this. I use this word too much. What am I trying to say here? What is this supposed to mean? That kind of stuff goes through my head. So I do that. So there was that concern. Plus, I don't know, maybe you haven't noticed I'm kind of winging it here this way.

Speaker 1:

The whole time I've been doing I used to call them audio shows. If you ask anybody from the World Wrestling Insanity Days, I used to call them audio shows. It was before podcasts that I started doing audio online to the point where no one understood it. Check this out this is how old I am and how long ago the story goes. My first audio that I recorded first podcast was in 2004. He goes my first audio that I recorded first podcast was in 2004. It was for the Pro Wrestling Torch. It was the first place that I worked for. I wrote for them, I got my book deal when I was with them.

Speaker 1:

It was really. It was the experience that began everything for me and we did audios on that site. So I, how do we do these audios? I asked I would call into essentially, an answering machine and just record my audio. And that was the audio. And oh my God, I mean you talk about being freaked out. Here you are. You know that everything you do is going to go right on there. You can't edit it, you can't change it. So I wrote everything down, so that first audio I have it somewhere on there too. I'm like hello everyone, this is James Gutman. It was really so I like to do that. I try not to do that. So I do this. I'm just like, hey, what's up? I tell you a story? Hey, how you doing? So I have to sit there and read word for word Kind of bugged me out. It was weird. End I got to tell you I liked it, I like doing it. I'll tell you why I like doing it.

Speaker 1:

It gave me the opportunity and I realized when I started speaking that it was my own voice anyway. So it wasn't like I was reading a book verbatim. I was reading you my thoughts verbatim, and my thoughts are my own thoughts. So to say them is kind of something I've already done in my head. So I knew how I meant it, I knew what I wanted to say. So that was pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

I got to tell stories. I got to, I don't know, I do voices sometimes. You guys know that. So every once in a while something gets a little accentuated by a little like you know. He said he was like so there's a few of those in there, I don't know, maybe a Ray L and autism appreciation and writing about raising my son with the mindset that I do it's that it's authentic. And when I say it's authentic I mean there's a simple reason for that. It's because it would be impossible for me to sit here week in and week out, twice a week, and talk about seeing my son and the way autism affects our family in such positive ways. There'd be no way for me to talk endlessly, I mean come on endlessly about this stuff and not see it and feel it. These stories come about and these points of view that I write about come about by me observing them. So to observe these powerful and great and wonderful moments and not like what I live them. I live these moments. I hang this thing up. We stop doing the podcast.

Speaker 1:

I go inside, I hang out with my kid. We laugh, we just hang out. I sit next to him. I'll tap him. What are you doing? What are you doing? We drive in the car. I reach behind me, I grab his leg, I fist, bump him.

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I look forward to when he and you know, everybody sees the challenges, everyone sees the work, everyone sees, because people will say they'll hear. It must be hard and it is. There's hard parts to raising a boy like him. There's hard parts to all of life, right, all of us have different things that go on. But the thing about Lucas is he's worth it. And he's worth it because the time that I spend with him, that I enjoy, far outweigh the times that are difficult or the times that I have to take care of him, and not for nothing, man, but like that's kind of the point for me. I don't know, maybe I'm different, maybe I'm whatever.

Speaker 1:

I always thought like your kids are your, that's your thing. When you have kids, you take care of your kids. Everything is for the kids. Everything you do is for the kids, and I try to do that. I try to make everything I can do for my kids happen. But you don't want to spoil your kids, right? So my daughter is an neurotypical 17-year-old. I don't want to spoil her. So when she can do something, if she can make her own you know, sandwich or whatever make your own sandwich, do that. But if my daughter couldn't make her own sandwich, if it was impossible, if she struggled, if I knew that there was like, I would make her a sandwich every day for the rest of her life.

Speaker 1:

There are things that my son can't do he struggles with. He'll never be able to do it, and I will do those things for him as long as I need to do them. I'll do them with a smile on my face. I'll do them with a smile on my face because A yeah, it's my responsibility and it's my kid. I'm supposed to take care of him, but I love my son and I want him to have all the best things he can have, just like you want your kids to have all the best things they can have. So if my son doesn't use a fork appropriately, does he never eat macaroni and cheese? No, we go hand over hand. Macaroni and cheese, yeah, I want him to have everything that he's supposed to have. So I do these things. So even when I'm working, or even when somebody sees me at a restaurant, like, oh, we have to feed this, I'm smiling because we're sharing this moment. This is what we do. We just we hang out Like it's. It's different than most people think. It's not.

Speaker 1:

I'm not constantly lamenting a boy who's not here. My boy is here and I, like the boy who's here. I've never been mad at my son for more than like five minutes. I swear like, how do you stay mad at them? I can't. I've tried to explain that too. Like he'll knock something over, he'll break something in his room, he'll spill a plate of food, and I get so mad and he's just kind of like he's jumping around, he's smiling, he's laughing. Now there, there was, especially when he was younger, that initially, what do you get mad? He cries and you realize like, oh, this isn't helping, this doesn't do anything, this is just making him sad. So now I don't know. He tries not to do it and I teach him with. With Lucas there's never anything naughty. He doesn't register the idea of like, oh, this will piss off my dad. He doesn't even think like that, he just kind of does his thing. So I show him whatever. Even just now we had a thing downstairs, right he has.

Speaker 1:

My son is the only kid in the world that's got spill proof cups. Spill, proof, spill proof cups, those old like metal, they're kind of like kitty cups. I really gotta get new cups. I know if you guys saw them in the pictures. They're kind of old. They're supposed to not spill unless when you put them down, you just put them down, face down on the couch and that's what he does all I don't know when he got used to it. He likes it, so he does that.

Speaker 1:

And when I see I'm like lucas, and he goes, he takes his little finger and he goes no, no, no, with his finger, like that, and I'm like, if you know, no, no, no, and it just becomes a back and forth. He's not doing it to get to me, he just does it I don't know. So it's hard to stay mad at him. It's easy to get mad in a second at something like oh my, what did you do? It's not easy for more than two minutes. He's smiling, he's lifting your head up, he's kissing you. He's literally kissing the top of your head as you clean up all the potato chips he spilled on the floor. What are you going to do? Come on, what are you? The Grinch, this kid's awesome dude.

Speaker 1:

And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So if you want to hear like the stories like this and things like that I don't even mean to get off on this tangent, but it's all included. This is what I'm saying. I'm excited because I know, as somebody who's not a huge reader, I might check out the audio book. So hopefully, if you're not a huge reader, you'll check out the audio book. Hi world, I'm dad. How fathers can journey from autism awareness to acceptance to appreciation. The audio book available on audible Amazon, spotify, apple books, google play books, kobo. It's for pre-order, pre-save it on Spotify. It's all there and it will be released also on Amazon via paper. Shout out Dunder Mifflin on June 19th, worldwide, everywhere. Guys, thank you. This has been an exciting journey.

Speaker 1:

I want to get your feedback when this book comes out. When things come out, please don't hesitate, let me know. I'll try to set something up. I always have these ideas. Oh, get everybody's feedback. I don't even know what to do with it. We're going to figure it out, but a lot of big stuff literally is on the way, and now you know what a lot of it is. So excited to share it, excited to hear what you guys think. That does it for me. Do me a favor Be on HiBlogOnDadcom Monday, wednesday, new, new blogs every single week. Uh, new podcast here. Hi, pod, I'm dad, and follow me on on instagram. Hi, james gutman. Hi, hi, james got me. We're on facebook, we're on. We're on lots of stuff. It's a good day. Thank you guys once again for all your support, until next time. This is james gutman saying be well, bye, pod, I'm dad. Thank you, I'm out.