Where this was said
Pool, Deafness, and the Superpower of ADHD
At 7:50 · chapter starts 3:30
The deafness discussion naturally migrates to Joe Rogan's favorite example of auditory shutdown enabling peak performance: Shane van Boening, the greatest pool player alive, who clicks off his hearing aids before every match and enters a state of total immersion in angles, English, and geometry. Rogan describes how van Boening has won the US Open — the hardest pool tournament in the world — five times, tied with Earl Strickland as the only players in history to do so. Sheridan connects this to his own experience with ADHD, which he describes not as a disability but as a superpower: once he knows what he wants to write, he can sit in an airport surrounded by a thousand people and hear nothing. His parents, after a brief and miserable experiment with medication that left him flat and zombie-like, simply let him run. Rogan mourns a neighbor's kid who was similarly medicated into dullness, and both men agree: the education system is designed to suppress exactly the traits that make extraordinary people extraordinary — and anyone who is genuinely good at anything is either ADHD or autistic.
Shane van Boening, who is deaf and shuts off his hearing aids when competing, has won the US Open pool tournament 5 times — tied with Earl Strickland for the all-time record.
