Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to Disability Empowerment now season four. I'm your host, Keith Murphy de Gansini. Today I'm talking to Jennifer Purcell, who runs the Living with Invisible Running Challenge podcast. Jennifer, welcome to the show.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Thank you for welcoming me, Keith, and for having me on your podcast.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: We've been exchanging several emails over the past few months.
Tell me, how did you find the podcast?
[00:00:59] Speaker A: So I found your podcast.
I think I found it through maybe Feedspot or one of your emails for the new episodes. And I was intrigued by it, by the title Disability Empowerment. And. And I listened to one of your episodes and was wanting to see if we could collaborate on our podcast together.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: And Joe, tell me about your podcast and how it came to be.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so I started my podcast lately, Living with an Invisible Learning Challenge about four years ago.
And it started out, I would say it started out when I was diagnosed with nld, which is non verbal, sorry, non verbal learning disability, in college.
And for those of you who haven't learned about NLD before, I can give a brief definition now and I can go into it more later, but it's basically a learning difference where it's hard to interpret nonverbal cues. So like body language and facial expressions.
And there are some other challenges with other areas like math and visual spatial.
And sometimes the challenges are more severe than others. So it's kind of like autism, where there's a spectrum for it.
And so I was diagnosed with that in college. And after I went through college, I realized that my learning difference wasn't really one that was talked about a lot because it's one of those that are more rare.
And I wanted to raise more awareness about it. And I had an idea for creating a podcast because I was listening to another person's podcast on how they empower women and men who have been abused in some way.
And I was inspired by her podcast to create my own. So that's kind of how it came about.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: What's the format like? And why did you choose that format and interviewed style?
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So format for me is usually I do some solo episodes where it's just me, and I do some topics with those. I usually choose the topic based on challenges that I've had in my life or that I've heard other people have had with an invisible learning disability or challenge.
And for me, usually I start on that and then I built from it with basically doing some research on that topic and seeing, like, if there are articles that pop up for it.
And I read a little bit of the article in the episode and kind of discuss how I think about it and how I can relate to it in some way.
And then the other format is I'll alternate the solo episodes with interviews. I do. So I do interviews like you do with other individuals who have a learning disability, or they might have a child who has one, or they are a therapist, and they have clients that have learning differences.
Um, so they.
They have some connection to the neurodivergent world.
And it doesn't have to be my learning difference. I interviewed a lot of people who have different learning challenges, and I use the word challenge instead of disability because for me, it's like, well, I'm not disabled. I'm just different.
So I. I try to, you know, be empowering in that way, I guess, because I feel like it's. It's better to say that than disabled.
And I think I kind of. I kind of evolved the format as I went with it, because I was really learning how to do a podcast on my own, and I really didn't have experience with it, but I got better at it after my brother, he gave me as a gift one year for Christmas, a podcast course by Udemy. I think I'm saying that correctly.
And that kind of helped me make it better because they gave you advice on how to, like, how long your episode should be and the topics and the structure of it. So that helped me make it better.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: So tell me about the logo and how the creation of that, if it influenced the podcast in any way at the beginning or going forward or both.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Sure.
So with my logo, I actually had two different logos.
The first one I had was.
It was kind of like a butterfly cage artwork that my grandma got me as a gift. And I always have liked butterflies because for me, they're kind of a symbol of how my life has changed over time.
And for me, when I realized that the logo I had at first wasn't really.
It wasn't really unique or a good one to have, like, on products that I could sell.
So I found a graphic designer for logos, and I contacted him and I said, hey, would you want to create one for my podcast? And he has adhd. His name is Matt, not remembering his last name right now, but he created my logo.
And he's. He's really good at drawing them and adding color to it. And basically you kind of just tell him what you would like, and he creates different drawings you to look at. And I liked the butterfly because of the meaning behind it for me. And then in the middle of it is affinity symbol that I found was also symbol for neurodivergent.
And.
And so that kind of snuck that in there, which I thought was cool and just gave it some bright colors that I find appealing.
And the shape of it was basically one that I, you know, again, we thought would look better on T shirts or stuff like that if I wanted to eventually go that way with.
With products for the podcast.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: How had the podcast, which has been going on for four years, influenced or hait influenced how you relate to your own invisible learning challenge? And again, how has it done that?
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah, so I would say it has influenced my learning challenge with the podcast because over the years of doing it, with the solos episodes and the interviews I've had, I've gained definitely more perspective of what it's like to have a learning challenge across all the people I've interviewed.
From people who have just one learning disability or difference, like ADHD or autism, or if they have more than one sometimes or dyslexia or.
Or physical ones like a stutter or speech impediment, sometimes that comes up too.
And for me, hearing about, you know, other neurodivergence lives, that that has been helpful to see how.
How I relate to different aspects from their lives and how I might not as well.
Um, and also just the different challenges that we have and we experience and seeing. Okay, you know, I was diagnosed with nld, but sometimes I can relate to another challenge from dyslexia or autism or adhd. I'm like, well, maybe that's just because they're similar in some way, or maybe I have a little bit of that as well.
Sometimes it's hard to tell.
But yeah, I would say the interviews have definitely helped me think about future topics that I have done on my podcast that I Nestle didn't think about doing before or I tried to go deeper into previous topics as well.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: So your podcast operates in two different episode modes, solo and interview.
How did you decide on that?
Because VIJ podcads late right now and has always operated as a interview podcast only. So I'm interested in a several podcast being open to choosing to do either or. And then how do you select your dads and how do you format season?
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Yeah, so usually the format for the solos, like I was saying before, I find a topic and do art article research for that and give my thoughts about the article.
And then that differs from the interviews because so usually with the interviews I will find guests by I try to reach out to them. Like maybe there's an author of a article that I want to discuss more about with them and see if I can interview them.
Sometimes a little. It's a little tricky to try to figure out how to contact somebody if it's not real explicit.
But sometimes they'll have like a message that you can format that you can do through their article. Like if it's a blog, they'll have a messaging tool on there, or they'll have a contact form you can fill out and get in touch with them that way.
And then other times they actually reach out to me.
I would assume that they found my podcast and listen to it. And I always kind of end the episodes with an invitation of people contacting me if they want to be interviewed or if they know somebody who wants to be interviewed.
And that helps put that into fruition. And then when they email me, I basically ask them how they found the podcast like you do and what they want to talk about.
I usually give them some questions I've used before in the past with other interviews.
And I usually ask them if they haven't already volunteered, what learning disability they have.
And then I will let them know what format I use for the interview.
And also, like, other than asking them personal questions about their life and how it is with their learning challenge, I'll try to weave in some questions about like how they deal with it in their job or in school and in their adult life, and then how it's progressed over time for them as well.
And if they have any, like, accomplishments that they're really proud of that they've been able to achieve even with a learning difference.
And it's been really cool. I appreciate more when people find me, actually, than me finding them because it's. It's interesting for me, maybe this is true for you too, to see how they find it and what they like about the podcast and get some good feedback on it.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's very interesting to me as well.
Unlike you, I don't really ask that pre interview. I mean, I could. I just like bringing it up during the interview so I can absorb it how my viewers and legends do.
I noticed a shift in the product that I would putting out with my team was actually reaching an audience.
When people, yourself included, kept contacting me for interviews, I didn't expect that to happen as quickly as it did. It's very humbling at times, truly, that when I read email from a fellow pod cat, a literary agent or a entertainment agent, all the actual gats themselves, and so that, that makes me feel really good that I'm not just putting this Product pageant project out into the open into a void where I'm not sure if people are actually legending what watching it or if they are.
So that's. That's very gratifying, particularly that people want to come on the podcast and now video Cats and share their story and share what they're doing, what they think, what they feel about the world around them in which they live, that I feel very honored to be able to help them reach a broader audience.
I just started doing video as well as audio, actually last season, early last season, and then nearly everyone after that wanted to do video ads. Well, ads, audio and vintage. The first official season where it Video cats.
Have you ever thought about being a video cats or do you just like the podcast format?
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's a good question about audio and video.
For me. I.
I think I prefer just the audio because, well, it's a personal preference.
I definitely learn better with audio format. Like, I know when I'm reading a book, for example, I prefer an audiobook rather than reading a visual book because I found out actually by doing my podcast where when I do the solos, I have like a little script that I typed out so I can help the flow of the episode.
And I found out that early on, if I didn't underline the script, like the words, I accidentally jumped around a little bit sometimes.
And so, um, that for me is kind of like a little bit dyslexia there, I guess. And so when I underlined it, I found out that I didn't jump around as much. And so that made the audio easier.
I definitely have thought of doing some video with it, but I would have to kind of test and see how my video skills are, because I haven't really done much of that.
But I probably could do a basic videos, like with zoom and create a pretty good product that way.
I might kind of start experimenting with that. Maybe because I've done the audio format for so long, it might be good to, you know, occasionally do video as well.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I normally don't offer advice on the podcast and video cats, but as a fellow podcast, I would strongly encourage you to consider it.
Because once I'd started doing video, the interviews became so much more dynamic. I mean, they already were dynamic, but the added dynamic of seeing each other, being able to read and bounce off each other's body language was very thrilling. And it made the interviews, I would like to think, so much more interesting and engaging from a listener's and a viewer's stand point.
And so I would encourage you to Explore the that aspect when and if you are ready to do that.
And so.
So since season two of this podcast, I've created narrative arcs throughout every season and that really help helped me structure the seasons and the gads and the gads placement ads. Fellow podcast and you may have touched on that already at the top, but I would be interested in learning more about how you structure your season or if there's more loose structure, given that you do solo and interview episodes or if the structure is important there and you'd start each season with a set goal number of episodes you would like to get to.
I'm just curious more about your process on crafting than seasons.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's, that's a good question. I think for me with my seasons in the beginning it was, I would say it was more structured than it is now because I would say so I kind of started with going through the main areas of challenges that I have with nld. Like I was saying earlier, like with the doing math as hard for me, like mental math is tricky, so I usually do better if I write it down on paper.
And my processing speed is also slower. So like if I'm doing something where there's multitasking, like driving is challenging for me and that's where visual spatial comes into play also for me where I have challenged basically estimating distance between myself and another object basically and feeling how close I am to it or far away with that object.
And actually that's, that's definitely visible and driving in other aspects like of my life.
And so when I had gone through most of those challenges and like how I evolved through them throughout my life for those episodes, then I kind of started branching out and trying to explore the interview side because I started out pretty much just solo episodes.
And then I got the idea with doing interviews because trying to remember, I think somebody might have contacted me about being interviewed or I found somebody and wanted to interview them. And I the first few were, you know, kind of hard to do because I wasn't sure how long they should be or what the structure should be for them.
But that gave me a better idea for the future ones. Okay. I kind of do have to structure a little bit with some questions and the time of it because if it was too long, I felt like my audience lost some of the enjoyment in the topic or in the interview. So for me, sometimes they go longer than an hour and if they do, I kind of edit it and into our sections or half hour sections and release them over time so that they can still enjoy them. And in the time span that's good for them.
And with the structure, I would. Yeah. So like, like I was saying, it was definitely more structured in the beginning with the topic episodes and the solos and interviews.
But recently I've become a little bit more kind of loose with it because I realized that I did.
I've done so many topics, I'm kind of running out of ideas sometimes.
So I have like a list of topics that I've done over the years. And what I'll do is I can go on my podcast and see, okay, how many people have listened to a certain topic. And that kind of helps me know, okay, this is really popular or it's not so popular.
And that helps me know, okay, maybe I need to go deeper into that topic in a different way than I did before. So that will help me with future topics as well. And like I said earlier, sometimes when I'm interviewing somebody, they bring up their own ideas of what topics that they might look like for me to go into as well. And that helps too.
And with the number of episodes, I used to do one weekly, but then I kind of found that sometimes bi week, not bi weekly, but twice a month was a little bit better for me sometimes depending on how busy I got.
Because I also have a full time job with the podcast on the side.
So I guess trying to balance the two is a little challenging sometimes.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: So when I first started Vids podcast, the first season was 10 episodes, very much hobby, had no idea if it would continue or not. In fact, probably in the back of my head I would like 10 episodes, 10 hours, one and done, move on to the next project.
But it's when I started creating multiple narrative arcs for season two, which was twice the length of season one.
Then it got to be really fascinating and very invigorating to do it. And we started every other week as well. And then we got till the point where every week made sense. But this is my full time job. I'm very blessed that way.
But I understand for a lot of people it's inside side project, side gig, side hustle.
And so if I may ask, what is your full time job and how do you find that your invisible learning challenge interacts or affects your work?
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so my full time job currently is working for my parents actually.
And my mother is a minister of a spiritual community.
And yes. So she's been doing that for 40 years for life.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And she was, she was ordained when she was 23, and so that was pretty young for her.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty young by anyone, I would imagine, but gone.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So she a little about her ministry.
Basically. It's. It does have a Christian base to it, but the name of it is Unity and it's more spiritual than religious.
One of the easiest ways for me to describe it is that basically we have a belief that there's one God called by many names and many pastor, that one God with all the different religions that exist.
And what I find really unique about it is when you attend the services on Sundays, you can practice your own religion if you still want to, or not. That's your choice.
And basically she gives a more metaphysical or spiritual outlook on a book. Like she'll do a series on a book usually and how it relates to her spiritual life.
Or she'll do one on things like cooking or gardening and stuff like that, which is kind of cool.
And then her husband, my dad is the facility manager of the church or spiritual community and of our retreat center that we have out in Descanso.
And my job, it really came about more during COVID I was always helping them like part time because I grew up in the community for my whole life.
And so the part time basically started out I was helping in the Sunday school with the kids because I like taking care of kids and playing with them and seeing how they interact with adults.
And then when I started working after college, I was working with.
Before I was working with my parents. I was working with different agencies who work with children who have learning disabilities like autism.
And I did some ABA therapy or life coaching for them.
And that was more part time.
I really liked it because I was working with other neurodivergence but it didn't really work well because I was creating my own schedule with my clients and people could kind of cancel easily.
So that was more part time and not very consistent.
But when Covid came about for my parents, for their business and non profit, it really shifted how they did their work because of church being mostly in person, they found that aspect kind of challenging with going online and more virtual.
So as they started to lose some of the staff, whether they were quitting because of COVID challenges or, you know, personal challenges that came about as Covid.
I came on more full time slowly and basically taught myself how to be an admin assistant as part of what I do. And my mom trained me for that as well.
And I do a lot of the tech stuff also.
So I help my mom manage our website and the app that we have and the social media posts that we do and the design behind that.
And then I also help with some of the events that we put on, like the classes.
If there's a tech aspect to it, like with a PowerPoint or a video, I will help my mom with that piece.
And we've done, we've also hosted memorials or weddings for people, either at the church or at the ranch retreat center.
And so I can help with the memorials too because I know how to do some audio and visual work with keynotes or PowerPoints.
And that's for me, fun, because as a millennial, I like working with tech and I've taught myself how to do a lot of things with tech, from the podcast to actually another side hustle I have is sometimes I'll help people with their own tech projects of learning how to use their iPhone better or other devices, or if they like want to create a PowerPoint that they want to show at an event or they have an online class, I've helped them with that.
And for me, I would say how the learning challenge affects my working.
Definitely in the beginning, I affected it more because I was working with people that didn't know I had a learning challenge because I wasn't very comfortable with revealing that usually.
And I think I was still discovering how it affected my work world versus school because that was different. And I was like, well, I had a lot of accommodations growing up with school, so I was used to having a lot of help and support with that. And then when I was in my adult life, not at much support or it's different than academically speaking. And so I was realizing that when I was working with neurodivergence, it was more challenging for me because I think it was just really how the work was structured. Like some of the tasks they wanted me to do, I couldn't really do well at graphing because of the visual, spatial or mathematical piece of it.
And so I found out when I was working with my parents, whether that was with Sunday school or when I became more full time, it was a lot easier and more flexible for me because they know how I work with my learning difference from being my parents and also being my teachers for school. Actually, I was homeschooled, so they also know that aspect.
And I would say that makes working a lot easier because they know how to help me with those challenges.
More unique than most employers would.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I would homeschool for a few years.
I'm trying to remember their grades.
Can't.
The motivation of the hard cats came in 2019. So pre pandemic.
But like yours, it would very much and like your full time job. It was very much born a born again had to slide that in there out of the COVID pandemic.
I needed something to do and I wanted to give back in any way I could.
And that was very important to me. Now before I started doing the podcast, I had no idea how to interview people.
If I didn't have the innate curiosity about understanding others, I wouldn't do that at all.
Had someone told me several years ago that this would be the job I would be doing, I would have serge laughed in their face because this was never in my warehouse near the w acting part time.
I always loved going to theater.
Never had any gumption to really be like, hey, I could get up on stage, I could act virtually.
So it's interesting how things work out sometimes professionally, but general in life and how talents or capabilities that you necessarily wouldn't view as being in your toolbox, a warehouse, whatever metaphor you want to use there were actually there all along.
You just had little to no idea that they were there.
And so do you like, do you like the workload that your full time job gives you and juxtaposing it with the side HUD swords? You do one of them is the pod catch and do they intersect in any way and if so, how?
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So for me, I do enjoy working with my parents.
Like I was saying a little bit earlier, I find it easier than working the previous jobs I had because of them knowing more about me personally and how I work and my behaviors and challenges.
And for me, I actually have a lot of fun with my job.
I really like the tech part of it and teaching. I've taught myself most of that by going online and watching tutorials for what I work with with the website and the app, the different formats or programs.
And I also the other side hustle with a tutoring attack as kind of the name I gave to it.
That came about actually kind of last year when people were when I was giving some tech classes on what we use at work, the app and the website because some our members had questions about how to use those tools better when they were looking up on them to register for event or you know, go back and listen to a lesson that my mom did.
And so when I was teaching them that they realized that I was really patient with them and really good at teaching them. And then they asked if I ever thought about doing that for other people, for their businesses or for personal things.
I was like, well maybe what did you have in mind? Like, you know, I Asked them basically what. What they wanted help with, and I was like, yeah, if it's something I already know how to do, like editing their website or creating a website for them, or like I said, helping them host an online class or create, like a little audio project for them, help them create that, then, yeah, I can. I can do it. And some. Some of them, I actually haven't done much with my work job, but I do some with my podcasts as well.
So they do kind of intersect a little bit, where I've helped another neurodivergent create her own podcast because she has an LD and adhd. Her name is Linda Carozalis, and she also is a tutor and has some books.
And she wanted help with creating a website and podcast for herself. And so I helped her with that and kind of try to teach her how to use the formats that I use. I think she's changed the format for the website, but I kind of gave her a start with that.
And I would say the other areas that the podcast intersects with a job would be like, when I was homeschooled before college, I had a lot of tutors that would help me with my subjects.
And I, in different areas, I had challenges with, like, with the math and the science and the writing and a little bit of history as well.
And so for me, some of those aspects have actually inspired some of the topics I do on my podcast, which is kind of cool.
And also the challenges I had in college were an inspiration and challenges I've had in the working world to have been inspirations for topics as well.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: So we've talked about a lot of topics in this episode.
If there are any aspiring podcasters, video casters, self advocates who really want to get more involved, what would be some advice you would give them going forward?
[00:51:05] Speaker A: I think for me, the advice would be.
Excuse me. I think it would depend on how they want to get more involved.
Like, for yourself, if they want to do more solo episodes rather than, you know, mixed with the interview episodes like that. As an example, I would say, you know, try to explore maybe some of the topics your interviewees have brought up as a start and see, you know, like, if it's acting or entertainment. I know you mentioned some of those.
Like, maybe how that intersects with being Neurodiverse could be something to look at. Or maybe how Neurodiverse or neurodivergent interacts with the different jobs out there too, could be interesting.
And actually, for me also, I found inspiration by looking at other podcasters and how they structure Their podcast and the topics that they have is interesting as well. Or I've looked at blogs too, and use that as inspiration.
So I guess basically what I'm trying to say is to kind of play with what you're interested in and see what you can create. Because I think if it's.
If you're open to it being a little bit of free flow, that helps the.
The structure and what it can form into, I think sometimes, because you never know what you can create. Like, for me, I don't think I knew how much of an audience I was going to have in the beginning either.
Like you mentioned, like I thought, is this just going to be, you know, a thing where it doesn't pan out much for people to listen to or have an impact on. But I think I noticed that it did have an impact just seeing it grow over time by who went on the website that I created or who listened to the episodes, and that that definitely helped me evolve it over time.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: So I like to think that both advocates with disabilities and those who have yet to discover or embrace their own disabilities, or both legends and watch this program.
I'm not naive to think that both groups take away the same things from every episode.
So, as my guests, what do you hope that advocates with disabilities take away from this episode? And what do you hope that those who have yet to discover and embrace their disabilities take away from the.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Yeah, so for the advocates, I would want them to take away that their are different, like, different areas in life that neurodivergent people can be involved in, where it's, you know, having their own podcast or having their own business or helping somebody with somebody that they know with their business and, you know, seeing how.
How, excuse me, how the neurodivergent world compares to the neurotypical world, I think is also interesting for me.
And I hope that the advocates are able to see, you know, even though we may think differently than neurotypicals, there are.
There are some similarities for us. And I think, like you were saying, the advocates, if, whether they're neurotypicals or neurodivergence as well, can take away some things as well from this episode with hopefully helping the neurodivergence that they know, I would say just have an easier life with, you know, saying, oh, I maybe I didn't realize that they had that challenge before listening to this podcast and talking to them about it.
And with the neurodivergence, hopefully they are inspired to, I would say, really go after the challenges you have. Because if you do that then you can try to make them not as prevalent hopefully in your life.
Sometimes that depends on the learning difference and some, some of them you just have to live with and see how, how they impact your your life over time.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: Jennifer, if anyone wants to get in contact with you, I'll find out more about your podcast ads. How can they do that?
[00:57:23] Speaker A: Yes. So I would say the best way to find out more about my podcast is to go on the website I created, which is living with NLD.com and on there I have previous episodes and I have some testimonials from people I've interviewed and I have, I'm slowly creating transcripts to the episodes as well so that people can read along when they listen.
And I also have a way to contact me on there.
They can fill out a a form for a newsletter or they can email me. I think I have my email on there for the podcast too.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: Well, Jennifer, I've enjoyed immense play, talking to you and getting to know you and your podcast. I hope that we can collaborate in the near future.
It's been a pleasure interviewing you and I hope you would stay in touch.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: Yes. Thank you Keith for interviewing me and having on me on your podcast. I really enjoyed it as well.
[00:58:49] Speaker B: Thank you. Take care and have a great weekend.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: You too.
[00:58:55] Speaker B: Bye.
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