Neuroscientist Dr Mine Conkbayir and her partner, the comedian Paul Whitehouse have got a new podcast where they explore and discuss ADHD. Dr Mine has been diagnosed ADHD, Paul does not have ADHD (“but I have got five BAFTAs, is that relevant?”) and in each episode they invite a special guest to talk about their experiences and discuss what they believe has been misunderstood about the topic.
The mixture of having a doctor who has ADHD alongside someone who does not makes an interesting broadcasting duo, as Dr Mine provides a scientific take whilst Paul is the outsider and asks the basic questions you might ask. The first episode is with the comedian and satirist Rory Bremner who talks about his experience and how he was diagnosed later in life.
“It's [called] Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It's not an attention deficit because it's not that we're not paying attention. It's that we're paying attention to too many different things,” says Bremner. “And it’s not a disorder. It's a neurodevelopmental condition… we're not producing dopamine in sufficient qualities, that we need something else to rev our brains up.”