More Than a Meme: The Low-Stakes Guide to Social Maintenance
Release Date: 03/06/2026
The ADHD Field Guide with Cate Osborn and Erik Gude
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! This week I’ve got Cate Osborn and Erik Gude on the show. Cate, known online as Catieosaurus, holds an M.Ed and uses her background in research and sex education to help neurodivergent folks navigate relationships and communication. Erik, known online as HeyGude, is an advocate and speaker who uses his platform to destigmatize the messy internal monologue of the ADHD brain. Honestly, it almost feels like I don’t need to introduce these two given everything they’ve produced; they are definitely an online powerhouses. I’ve been a fan of their podcast, Catie and Erik's Infinite...
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More Than a Meme: The Low-Stakes Guide to Social Maintenance
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team, I’ve been working on a presentation for an upcoming conference called Neurodiversion, and when I was thinking about what I wanted to present, the idea of memes came to me, and I'm gonna be honest here: this was mostly out of a desire to just make looking at memes part of work. As I started looking into the concept more and putting together the presentation, I realized there's a lot more to it than I initially thought. Memes are more than just digital clutter; they're a fairly vital part of modern culture. I know how that sounds, but this is visual shorthand. They give us a way to...
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Ditching the Planner: Consistently Inconsistent with Dani Donovan
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey team! This week I’m talking with Dani Donovan, a neurodivergent artist and designer whose ADHD comics have been shared all over the internet. Dani holds a BFA in Visual Communication and Design and is the creator of The Anti-Planner. She’s spent years as an advocate for neurodivergence, using her background in design to simplify those complicated, invisible daily struggles we all face. In our conversation today, we’re diving into why traditional planners often feel like they never work how we want them to and how we can transition into a "toolbox" mindset instead. We explore the...
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Research Recap with Skye: Maternal Inflammation
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we look at a single research paper, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Evaluation of Maternal Inflammation as a Marker of Future Offspring ADHD Symptoms: A Prospective Investigation." This study investigates the biological...
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My IEP Hero with Erika Levine
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! Today, I’m talking with Erika Levine, a special education professional with a clinical background in Occupational Therapy. Erika has made it her mission to simplify the legal and procedural hurdles that keep parents from getting their kids the support they’re legally entitled to, drawing from her deep well of lived experience as both a professional and a parent of neurodivergent children. In this episode, we get into the nitty-gritty of advocating for a child who isn't "failing" but certainly isn't thriving. We dive into the legal weight these documents carry, the difference...
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Calming Up: Beyond the Hype
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! In physics, there’s a concept called "static friction"—it’s the friction that exists between a stationary object and the surface on which it’s resting. It’s actually harder to get something moving than it is to keep it moving once it’s already in motion. I think about this a lot when I’m staring at a pile of mail or a sink full of dishes. We often feel like we need a massive internal explosion to overcome that static friction, like we have to "hulk smash" our way into productivity just to get off the couch. But that explosion often carries us too far, landing us right...
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Escaping the Doer Trap with Katy McFee
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! Most of us with ADHD have fallen into the trap of thinking that if we just work a little harder or do a few more things, we’ll finally feel like we have our lives under control. But it turns out that "doing" and "leading" are two very different skill sets, and being a world-class "doer" can actually keep you stuck in place. Today, I’m talking with Katy McFee, an executive coach and the founder of Insights to Action. Katy reached the highest levels of corporate leadership before realizing that her success was built on a "doer" mentality that was no longer serving her, especially...
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Research Recap with Skye: The Atomoxetine Trial
Hacking Your ADHD
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our research recap series. In this series, we take a look at a single research paper and dive into what the paper says, how it was conducted, and try to find any practical takeaways. In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Atomoxetine treatment strengthens an anti-correlation relationship between functional brain networks in medication-naive adults with...
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Shrinking the Goal to Find the Win with Sharon Pope
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! Today I’m talking with Sharon Pope, a certified habit coach and the CEO of Shelpful. Sharon has an extensive background in the tech world, having served as a CMO for multiple companies and as an advisor for the startup accelerator Y Combinator. After her own ADHD diagnosis, she pivoted her career to focus on building tools that help neurodivergent brains get more done. Sharon also runs the ADHD Founders Podcast with Jesse J. Anderson and Marie Ng, where they talk about the unique challenges of having ADHD and building a business. I actually had Sharon on the show a number of years...
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Trojan Horses
Hacking Your ADHD
Hey Team! So it’s been a bit since I’ve done a monologue episode - for those of you new to the podcast that are more used to the interview format, that’s not how the show began. It started with me doing episodes like these, where I’m dissecting an idea about how we can really work with our ADHD brains. The plan right now is that I’m going to be sprinkling in a few more of these episodes throughout the year, looking to add them every other Friday opposite the Research Recaps. So let’s get into this first episode back. In the mythology of the Trojan War, after a 10-year...
info_outlineHey Team,
I’ve been working on a presentation for an upcoming conference called Neurodiversion, and when I was thinking about what I wanted to present, the idea of memes came to me, and I'm gonna be honest here: this was mostly out of a desire to just make looking at memes part of work. As I started looking into the concept more and putting together the presentation, I realized there's a lot more to it than I initially thought.
Memes are more than just digital clutter; they're a fairly vital part of modern culture. I know how that sounds, but this is visual shorthand. They give us a way to communicate that we are part of an in-group simply by understanding what the meme is. They are these inside jokes across entire online communities, and the more I dove in, the more I realized that memes are more important than they seem on the surface. They aren't just jokes; they're ways to find community, understanding, and meaning in our own experience. That's important even if they come from something silly.
And so that's what we're going to explore in this episode: how memes can give us meaning, how they can give us community, and how they can be a little dangerous.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/278
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD
This Episode's Top Tips
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- For ADHD brains, traditional social upkeep sometimes requires more executive function than we have available. "Pebbling" allows for a low-stakes connection that signals "I am thinking of you" without the cognitive load of a conversation.
- Digital content can act as a starting point for self-discovery, but it’s still not a diagnostic tool. A meme can point you in the right direction, but it doesn't represent the actual lived experience of your impairment. Don't mistake a "relatable quirk" for the totality of the disorder.
- Virality is not a proxy for truth. ADHD brains can be prone to "sticky" ideas and sometimes skip steps on verifying facts. The shift here is moving from "It’s relatable, so it’s true" to "It’s relatable, but what’s the source?”