Diabetics Doing Things Podcast

Peter Simpson has been at Dexcom for over 24 years, back when it was a small startup, and he says he's more excited about the technology now than at any point in that run. In this bonus tech episode, Dexcom's CTO walks us through the upcoming G8 sensor: about 50% smaller, plus a new in-use calibration system that checks itself every five minutes to account for the fact that every body is a little...

A lot of people think the $35 copay cap fixed insulin. For most of us, it didn't. In 2024, 36% of people responding to T1 International's out-of-pocket survey said they were rationing insulin, twice the rate in 2016. With midterms weeks away and the Insulin Act up in both the House and Senate, we brought in two people who have been in the room for this fight for years. Shaina Kasper, Executive Dir...

Leah Orleans shoots a bow and arrow with her toes, juggles fire, puts knives on her face, and performs around 300 shows a year as Tiny Girl Big Show. In her late twenties, in the middle of a tour, she landed in the ER with an A1C of 14. A few months later, a well-meaning doctor asked what other skills she had, and suggested she start looking for a desk job. She didn't. Instead, she got loud about...

When Aurelian Briner's wife was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes about twelve years ago, the hardest questions kept coming back to the plate: how many carbs are in this or how big is this portion? Aurelian, a product manager with a business background and an entrepreneurial itch, decided that was a problem worth solving. In 2017 he co-founded Snaq, and today the app has more than 300,000 registered...

At 15, Liz Van Voorhis landed in the ER on spring break with a blood sugar of 1,200. She weighed 78 pounds. She had two questions for the doctor. First, when could she get back to cheer conditioning? Second, did this mean she couldn't finish her Halloween candy? It was April. That mix of grit and humor is Liz Van Voorhis. Liz is an executive coach and founder of The Fit Collective. She has built w...

Rob sits down with a rare three-person interview: Danica Doble (@type1deeabetes) and her partner Lucas, who both live with type 1 diabetes. Their story starts with a genuinely wild diagnosis arc. Lucas was told he had type 2 diabetes, put on metformin, and left to figure it out on his own for over a year. It wasn't a doctor who caught the mistake. It was Danica, watching his Dexcom numbers from th...

Dave Holmes spent the late '90s and early 2000s as one of the faces of MTV, and these days he's a sharp, funny voice at Esquire — but before any of that, he spent six years being told he had type 2 diabetes when he actually had type 1. This week, Rob sits down with Dave to talk about that misdiagnosis, the strange cluster of friends who were diagnosed around the same time, and a diabetes-age chart...

It's episode 450 of Diabetics Doing Things — a milestone Rob almost forgets to mention until he's three topics deep. Fresh off Friends for Life in Orlando, he lays out what he calls the diabetes conference pyramid: the industry side (ADA, ADCES, ATTD, EASD) built for HCPs and brand messaging, and the community side, where Friends for Life stands alone as the one event he'd choose if he could only...

Melissa Slemp has lived with type 1 diabetes for 44 years — since she was diagnosed in 1982, before glucometers, before CGMs, back when insulin came from vials and syringes and "boiling your needles" was still a recent memory for a lot of people. In this episode, we trace that whole arc: what early management actually looked like, the high-risk pregnancy she navigated in the 90s, and the moment —...

Rob was at ADA 2026 in spirit — armed with press access and a list of questions unrelated to the usual conference talking points. His first guest from that coverage is Jake Leach, Dexcom's new CEO, who took over the role on January 1st after 22 years at the company. This is Jake's first time on Diabetics Doing Things as CEO. It sounds like two people having a real conversation about what it means...

When mutual friends in the diabetes community kept telling Rob he had a doppelganger in LA, he figured they were exaggerating. Then he met Dylan Leonard — creative director, documentary filmmaker, college basketball player, type one diabetic, philosophy reader, world traveler — and yeah, the comparisons held up pretty well. Dylan was diagnosed at 15, having dropped 45 pounds before anyone realized...

Tyler Cook is a professional GT3 racing driver who has competed in some of the most grueling endurance races on the planet, the 24 Hours of Spa, the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, IMSA, and GT World Challenge Europe. He's also been living with type 1 diabetes since he was 11 years old. This episode gets into what it actually looks like to manage blood sugar in a fire suit, in a 130-degree cockpit, at 15...

Rob and Neil have been doing this a long time, long enough to get bored with the safe version of things. This conversation started as a Friday-at-5 PM debrief between two guys who've spent years making diabetes content, and it ended up going somewhere worth sharing. They talk about the trap of waiting until you've "figured it out" before helping anyone and why being in the middle of something is a...

Rob sits down with Dr. Gregory Dodell, an endocrinologist from New York City and one of the more honest voices in the diabetes space online. What starts as a conversation about why a doctor would bother making Instagram videos turns into something a lot more real, a candid look at what actually happens between patients and their providers, why those relationships succeed or fall apart, and what it...

What happens in the room when a therapist with Type 1 diabetes hears the same fear over and over, that everyone else has their numbers under control, and you’re the only one who doesn’t? Rob sits down with Christine Keown, a registered psychotherapist and T1D since age four, to have the conversation that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime. Recorded right in the middle of the Diabetes and Mental Hea...

Health insurance is one of those things that's genuinely important and genuinely confusing. When you're managing diabetes or any chronic illness, the stakes are a lot higher than for most people. One wrong plan choice can mean insulin coverage disappears, specialist visits become out-of-pocket, or you get hit with a bill you didn't see coming. Rob sits down with Dakota Myers, known online as The B...

Ten years ago, Hannah Hamlin came on the pod (Episode 8!) as a medical school student with type 1 diabetes trying to figure out how to manage blood sugar while surviving boards. She's back now as Dr. Hannah Parr, D.O., a physician with additional training in integrative medicine and diabetes education, and the conversation is a completely different one. This episode is about what happens after you...

Most of us know diabetes affects the body. Fewer of us talk honestly about what it does to the mind and what the mind does right back. In this episode, Rob sits down with Sam Tullman, co-founder and facilitator of Diabetes Sangha and a dedicated student of Rinzai Zen, for a wide-ranging conversation on mental health, mindfulness, and what it actually means to live well with diabetes. Not managing...

Exercise is one of the most recommended tools for living well with diabetes and one of the most complicated to actually start. In this episode, Rob sits down with Amanda Mueller (aka @bicepsandbolus), a certified personal trainer, corrections exercise specialist, and CPA who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 26. Amanda's honest about the years she spent afraid to move her body after diagnosis,...

Rob Howe has lived with type 1 diabetes for 21 years. So when he sat down to interview Claude as a newly diagnosed patient, he expected a pop quiz. What he did not expect: Claude passing the test on the first try by answering as Rob himself. Because Claude thought it been hosting this show all along. This is Diabetics Doing Things Episode 348: Claude vs T1D — an experiment in AI health literacy, a...

Rob welcomes Dr. Nick Heath—an atmospheric scientist living with type 1 diabetes for 27+ years and known online as “The Breathing Diabetic”—to explore how breathing can become a practical lever for living well with diabetes. Nick shares his diagnosis at age 11 and how his “second diagnosis” moment came in his mid-20s when nutrition changes improved his control and opened his mindset to other tools...

Dr. Carol Johnston—Arizona State University nutrition professor and registered dietitian known online as “The Vinegar Lady”—joins Rob to break down what decades of research actually say about vinegar, blood glucose, and metabolic health. Johnston explains how her work began with an obscure 1988 rat study and led to a landmark 2004 Diabetes Care paper showing vinegar could blunt post-meal blood glu...

On episode 3 of Doing Well with Diabetes Season 2, Rob and Jyotsana Rangeen discuss the journey of living with type 1 diabetes, focusing on the challenges of stigma, the importance of community support, and the transformative power of advocacy. Jyotsana shares her personal experiences from diagnosis to becoming a prominent advocate, emphasizing the need for positive language and self-acceptance in...

Summary In this episode, two university presidents, Dr. Sally Kornbluth (MIT) and Ron Daniels (Johns Hopkins) join Rob to talk about adult-onset Type 1 (LADA), leading in high-performance environments, and the single most “practical” diabetes upgrade: making a friend with diabetes. What stands out isn’t prestige—it’s how candidly they describe the everyday realities: managing highs and lows during...

Episode 4 of Doing Well with Diabetes Season 2 features Kerry Murphy, wife and mother to multiple people with type 1 diabetes and founder of Follow T1Ds, who explains how her long, layered exposure to T1D—from her sister-in-law and husband to her niece and daughter—pushed her from terrified observer to frontline advocate. She describes the collision between modern diabetes tech (CGMs, pumps, data-...