Tourette's Podcast

Huge, major, priceless insights here with our guest Dave Ross, a computer-and-web engineering guy from Massachusetts whose perspectives on Tourette Syndrome are a great pump-up and, we'll predict, will be valuable to recently diagnosed Touretters (and their parents) who see the future like a void. Dave melts down and reshapes the conversation.

Jason Grant is on the show, who you won't be able to stop listening to once he gets rolling. There's so much in his experience and perspective, and he's got a gifted ability for telling it. He also runs an excellent website called My Tourette World, where he, among other things, writes a series about kids with TS that everyone will find empowering. Don't miss this episode -- it's funny, heavy and real.

Chris Fox is a standup comedian who works his Tourette Syndrome into his material as well as motivational speaking. He was also the first person to reach out to this podcast with support. On this episode we hear his story, his tics and his positive force -- after we hear from listeners and talk a little more about "visualisation" with tics. Thoughts?

Ben returns from a bad cold, and flashes back a few months when he talked with Britney Wolf, who's gained a following on YouTube for Tourette awareness videos and has vivid memories of her earliest tic. On this episode we also get to hear about the first time she brought up TS to her now husband, and what happened at work when she told her boss about it. She's great at building community and fairness across the spectrum. She also has thoughts about how outsiders perceive mild cases of Tourette's.

A video game developer might make a cool interview, yes? Meet Pat, a Touretter who's worked on some popular titles. On the one hand, it's a fun episode to be able to talk to someone who develops video games for a living and works inside a recognizable company. On the other hand, it's a charged-up conversation at times, getting really frank at certain moments, because having a cool job is not to say he hasn't seen his share of on-the-job challenges directly related to Tourette's.

Do you "visualize"? If that's a vague question, it'll make sense after you hear this episode, in which we head to Australia (virtually) to talk with Vaya, a quiz-show question writer and podcaster, and discuss Tourette Syndrome at school growing up, at work in adulthood, the empowerment of the diagnosis, and the totally overlooked quirks of having it.

The Neighbuzz Podcast http://neighbuzzpod.com/

On this episode: Jonah, a newspaper reporter whose previous voice-to-voice conversations with fellow Touretters have been few to none. But, via his profession and talents, Jonah knows what it is to sort out complexities for mass understanding and, as such, gives a beautiful and incisive conversation about his life with Tourette Syndrome.

Christine, known to fans as "Ticking Out Loud," is an amazingly solid voice for Tourette positivity and self-acceptance. She also knows how to call out misguided work or problematic portrayals of what it's actually like to live with tics -- or really anything perceived as either lesser-than or too-much. On this episode, we talk a lot about the TV show that portrayed her Tourette Syndrome across Canada. And we get real when it comes to acceptance standards in the workplace.

This week we've got Melissa C. Water, who we'll go ahead and say is an important figure in Tourette awareness today. Statistically, you're way more likely to have heard of her than this podcast -- but if you're new to her, by all means look her up on YouTube and see the work she's doing for the community. Melissa tells Ben about her early experiences with tics, her diagnosis and awareness work -- and she addresses something Ben has been wrestling with. Don't miss this episode.

This episode: Chris, a talented musician from Salt Lake City with an interesting history of tics -- including "musical tics" -- that led to a late-period diagnosis that he said came as a huge relief in terms of context and social-professional handling. But Tourette's isn't the only part of his life mired in misconception and stigma, so he takes education and community-building seriously. Chris ends up being a fountain of great advice to that end.