About
About Rob Gorski & The Autism Dad Podcast
25 years of autism parenting. 9 seasons of conversations. The podcast started as a way to share what I wish someone had told me when my oldest was first diagnosed — and it became the show I still wish more parents knew existed.
About the host
I'm Rob Gorski. I've been raising three autistic sons — Gavin, Elliott, and Emmett — for 25 years from Northeast Ohio. I started writing about our family at theautismdad.com in 2009 because I couldn't find anything online that reflected the day-to-day reality of autism parenting: the meltdowns at Target, the IEP fights, the middle-of-the-night Google searches, the wins nobody else would understand. So I started writing it down.
The blog has now published more than 13,000 posts and is read in over 140 countries. The podcast launched in 2018 as the natural next step — some conversations needed voices, not paragraphs.
In December 2026, Quarto Publishing Group is releasing my first book: So Your Child Has Just Been Diagnosed with Autism. It's the book I needed when my oldest was diagnosed in 2003. More about the book.
About the podcast
The Autism Dad Podcast launched in April 2018 and is currently in its 9th season. New episodes publish twice a week. The show is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, and most other major platforms.
Episodes fall into a few buckets: conversations with clinicians (developmental pediatricians, OTs, speech pathologists, ABA professionals), conversations with autistic adults reflecting on their own childhoods, conversations with other autism parents about specific challenges — sleep, feeding, sensory regulation, school refusal, puberty, PDA — and the occasional episode with my own kids weighing in on what it's actually like growing up autistic.
What I try to do differently: I don't cut around the hard parts. Most parenting content treats autism like a problem to solve and the parent like a project manager. This show treats parents like adults who can handle nuance and treats autistic people like the experts on their own experience.
Where this work has been featured
Coverage of the family, the blog, or the podcast over the years:
- CNN
- ABC News
- BBC Worldwide
- Good Morning America
- The Tamron Hall Show
- Healthline
- Entrepreneur
- News 5 Cleveland
- Autism Science Foundation
Full press list and clips: theautismdad.com/press
What you'll get from listening
- •Specifics, not platitudes.When a guest says "we tried X and it worked," you get what X was, how long it took, and what failed first.
- •The whole spectrum, not the easy parts. Severe autism, non-speaking kids, behavioral challenges, regression — topics most parenting media avoids because they're harder to monetize.
- •Both perspectives. Parents AND autistic adults — because if you only hear one side, you only get half the picture.
- •No clinical filter.I'll say what most professionals won't. If something is unfair or broken — IEP processes, insurance gatekeeping, diagnosis wait times — the show will say so.
Subscribe wherever you listen
New episodes drop twice a week. Hit subscribe on your platform of choice and the next one will show up on its own.
Want to be a guest?
I'm always looking for parents, clinicians, and autistic adults to share their stories. If you have something worth saying, the contact form is the way in.
Get in touch