Tourette's Podcast

Our guest is Erick, a trans man and lifelong Touretter who, in navigating outsider judgments, became his own boss, found success with it, and realized that you "can't waste your energy anymore worrying about the people who try and deny who you are or what you have," as he put it. The discussion covers self-acceptance, co-occuring conditions like OCD, working in one's own, best way, and the differe...

We talk with the eloquent Tom White, who works in the space of startups, in a great conversation covering pursuit of intellectual curiosities and how to keep momentum through often serious challenges. Plus, listener questions: 1) How do Touretters get used to ticcing in public?; and 2) When is Billie Eilish going to be on the show?  Tourette Gala, Nov. 10 in NYC https://www.tomwhitenoise.com/

We start this week with some breaking news from the Tourette Association of America: a Tourette Syndrome research study from the CDC has just landed, and it concludes that the prevalence numbers for Tourette Syndrome and persistent tic disorders are double what we previously thought. One in 50 school-age children has Tourette or a persistent tic disorder. Read more .  Our conversation this week is...

Peter Zhao -- you might know him as the great Fabulously Tourette -- takes the hosting helm for this episode featuring high school-aged guest Slayton, who has been managing Tourette in his life for about four years so far. Ben kicks us off with some quick Q&A about adults with Tourette before making way for the fantastic conversation that Peter and Slayton are able to create, with points about cop...

Let's head to New Zealand, specifically Dunedin, home to a legendary music scene whose latest name, Mads Harrop, is our fantastic guest this week. Mads' experience with Tourette Syndrome, autism and anxiety directly informs and shapes her music, which has a great early-90s quality and lyrics you'll know how to follow. Mads just released a new EP, "My Chemical Fix," easily locatable through Bandcam...

Season 8, Episode 2 follows last week's guest-host format with our friend Kass taking the reins in conversation with Lilly. They find quick connections in their respective Tourette experiences. Great discussions here about self evaluation and self care, imposter syndrome and dealing with later-onset tics. https://twitter.com/TicsnTatts https://www.instagram.com/ticsntatts/ https://www.tiktok.com/@...

Season 8 is here. Following our usual Episode 0 , we're here with Episode 1, in which Ben steps back and Britney and Aiya take the reins. Britney (author Britney Wolf , that is) leads the conversation with Aiya, who was diagnosed last year at age 16. She knows she's always experienced Tourette, but her tics really picked up (she calls it a "tic boom") as the years progressed. This episode is great...

Season 8 is here! Via our traditional Episode 0, we kick it off with updated thoughts on popular listener questions. 

The Tourette community lost a hero Dec. 15 , someone I named on the very first episode ( Season 1, Episode 0 ) of Tourette's Podcast. Steve Bachner was my first frame of reference for TS. Seeing him on an episode of 20/20 in the late 1980s was my first time seeing someone else with the disorder, and there he was, Steve, being followed by John Stossel and cameras, in a shopping mall, Steve ticcing...

The Season 7 finale episode. Our guest is Tourette scientist Dr. Flint Espil, who talks with us about the latest Tourette treatments and questions before saying something we weren't expecting. In a great way. Thanks so much to Gogo, Maddie, Johnelle, Tamara, Davide, Dan, Amelie, Winter, Jack, Mark, Sophia, Shamus, Saddiq, Christine, Harper, Flint, the other Sophia, the Tourette Association of Amer...

Taking risks is ... risky. Might fail, right? You don't just suddenly decide to move from, say, the midwest to Los Angeles to try and turn your talents into a rewarding career. And, lord have mercy, having something like Tourette Syndrome and comorbids like anxiety doesn't help, does it? For pop singer Harper Starling, it did. This is, in fact, her story. She uprooted, made a long trek to L.A., wh...

Keeping last week's episode - our analysis with tourette scientist Dr. Christine Conelea on some of the recent talk about young women and their symptoms -- in focus, this week is a referral to a response video from Tics n Tatts on YouTube . Kass, who runs the channel, adds great points. Tons left to explore with this question: has the Tourette science and treatment world gotten it wrong when it co...

Recall our episode a while back with the authors of scientific report examining why doctors were seeing reported swells of young women over the course of the pandemic with Tourette-looking symptoms, and how social media like TikTok -- by way of the tic-heavy videos posted by influential Tourette personalities -- might be a player. We're revisiting that on this episode, but from a different angle....

Saddiq is a radiography student and fitness Instagrammer/TikTok-er whose energy-spending workouts serve a role for his Tourette, discussed here in addition to late diagnosis, coprolalia, creativity and the stress of travel. https://www.instagram.com/saddiqhead/ Support the show https://www.patreon.com/tourettespodcast Tourette's Podcast is made possible by the Tourette Association of America, tour...

A different kind of episode this week -- all listener questions, including some day-of zingers. Should we make this an occasional thing? An all-listener-questions episode? Contact. TAA's YouTube page Ask the Expert: Tourette and COVID-19 Vaccine Support the show https://www.patreon.com/tourettespodcast Tourette's Podcast is made possible by the Tourette Association of America, tourette.org . Suppo...

Seamus Evans, an ambassador for the Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia, is a standup comedian, television and radio personality, and keynote speaker working in his experience with Tourette and the boundaries it seemed to set for him -- which he essentially laughed right past. Not that it was overnight-easy. Not that he didn't have the challenges and self-doubt and depression and everything...

A small preview of the good times awaiting you on Episode 11 of Season 7, out this weekend. It'll be a good one; we're checking back in with Australia. Eyes peeled!

This is a replay of an episode from 2019 that speaks pretty well to the emails we get asking for discussion of alternative "remedies" -- and why the podcast doesn't (or does so with heavy heaps of caution). Here's the writeup that accompanied the original airing: For Episode 10 of Season 3, we've called a doctor. (Yes, one with TS.) Clay Jones, M.D., is a pediatrician with a frequent byline on the...

Tourette. Rhetoric. Tourrhetoric. We're talking on this episode with Sophia Maier, a Touretter who takes extra care and study when it comes to the shapes and tones and incisions we create with our words. This isn't just a "words matter" dialogue -- it's about really caring for the language people use and why, so loaded with implications for empathy, public policy and, maybe most importantly, refle...

Astrophysicist Mark Giovinazzi is on the show -- a guest we're meeting almost at random. Mark, an exoplanet-hunter, sees the chaos of Tourette and the universe working nicely together. Plus: that vocal-tic feeling; and Ben has an wonderful panic attack at work. https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/ Tourette's Podcast is made possible by the Tourette Association of America, tourette.org . Support! You can g...

Fourteen-year-old Jack Kearney, an active Touretter whose name you might've heard around the community, brings an important point -- when it comes to community, don't forget yourself. When Tourette became a focus at his school, with visiting ambassadors spreading peer education, Jack made sure to share his own story, style and perspective -- a solid move to improve peers' contextual connection. It...

What an episode. Winter Tashlin is a name you might know from the Twittersphere and acceptance messaging. But hearing him speak is something else. From his accent, you'll quite understandably assume he's British. Many of his fellow Americans do. This -- along with his creativity, queerness, self-acceptance and other central elements -- all interact with his Tourette Syndrome. He also has the airpo...

Getting it done in a rural area with little to no support for Tourette Syndrome is just one of the vitals we hit with our guest this week, Amelie, a 15-year-old who lives in a small village in Ireland and depends on herself to not only live with her TS but educate peers as well -- something she's done a solid job with. Great takes from a seriously thoughtful teenage ambassador here. Plus: A diffic...

Dan Zerin is here! The Iceland-based comedian and podcast host welcomes room for lighter-side talk about Tourette et al. He in fact was part of an award-winning comedy stage show about Tourette Syndrome, "My Voices Have Tourettes," which ran weekly to sold out rooms -- for years. Since the pandemic hit, it's been a podcast you'll want to bookmark if you haven't already. Somewhat in the spirit of K...

Bonus episode! If you're new to Tourette Syndrome, it's fair if you haven't heard the name Oliver Sacks before. But he's one of the most acclaimed figures in all of neuroscience -- arguably in all of medicine, and his humanization of disorders including Tourette had incalculable benefit. In May, Ben got to interview people closely involved with Sacks and the new documentary about his life, "Oliver...