Hacking Your ADHD

Caroline Maguire, social skills coach and author who treats social skills like a muscle. She explores using shared interests and proximity to bypass awkward small talk. She explains the scoop-by-scoop method to avoid oversharing. She talks about the rejection lens, the value of third places, and how online and low-pressure spaces help build neurodivergent friendships.

A guide to sliding ADHD down from hard mode to easy mode with practical tweaks. Hear how one pivotal action can trigger a domino effect that simplifies everything. Learn to redesign your environment and split tasks into setup, doing, and cleanup. Explore checklists, automation, and small wins as ways to lower friction and make routines feel effortless.

Brooke Schnittman, ADHD coach and bestselling author who led a global study on ADHD and bullying, discusses how ADHD traits are misread as character flaws. She explores power imbalances, the physiological freeze response, masking as a survival strategy, and the high prevalence of workplace and lifelong bullying. Practical focuses include building reciprocal support, recognizing safe people, and reclaiming identity after systemic harm.

Skye Waterson, research recap contributor and ADHD coach who runs Unconventional Organization, breaks down a Norwegian trial on goal-focused cognitive remediation. She explains Goal Management Training techniques like STOP and task-splitting. The conversation highlights why anxiety improved while ADHD executive symptoms did not and questions whether accountability drove the gains.

Dr. Stephen Faraone, a leading ADHD researcher and professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, walks through the ADHD Evidence Project and how to tell solid research from viral claims. He covers the pyramid of evidence, genetics versus environment, brain network differences, medication gaps and real-world costs of undertreatment. Practical strategies and where to find trustworthy resources are also highlighted.

A raw conversation about carrying on when everyday life feels impossible. It covers grief colliding with chores and the odd surrealness of routine after loss. The show digs into numbing versus true rest and warns against flashy overhaul plans. It highlights simple checks for emotional signals, using community as a refill, and choosing small sustainable moves over grand fixes.

Dr. Anupriya Gogne, a perinatal psychiatrist at Brown University Health who treats ADHD during pregnancy and postpartum, joins to unpack hormone-driven symptom changes. She explains why pregnancy and sleep loss amplify ADHD, how medication decisions are evolving, and why women often experience internal hyperactivity and emotional overload. Practical framing and support strategies are highlighted.

Skye Waterson, research recap contributor and founder of Unconventional Organization, breaks down a study on cosmetics and microplastics. She explores how phthalates, parabens, metals and microplastics might cross the placenta and affect fetal neurodevelopment. Short conversations cover sources of exposures, why pregnancy is a vulnerable window, and practical harm-reduction plus calls for regulation.

Erik Gude, an ADHD advocate who destigmatizes the internal ADHD experience, and Cate Osborn, an M.Ed-trained educator/researcher focused on relationships and communication, discuss their ADHD Field Guide. They cover designing an ADHD-friendly book, precision of language, combating misinformation, a systems-first approach to daily life, shame versus guilt, and practical home systems.

They unpack how memes act as visual shorthand that builds belonging and signals in-groups. They introduce "pebbling," small low-stakes gestures that maintain relationships. They consider why memes especially resonate with ADHD brains and how scrolling can comfort yet trap. They also warn about misinformation and over-pathologizing when memes are taken too literally.