#2517 - Taylor Sheridan

Taylor Sheridan’s horses are not just horses. One of his best stallions, Spook’s Got a Whiz, is “incredibly balanced, real feeling, very, very quick footed, big stoppers.” But every three months, for no reason, the horse decides it is not safe and tries to buck its rider off or flip over. Sheridan calls it seeing ghosts. The trait passes to the animal’s offspring. “We all deal with it because they’re worth it,” he says. That quirk is a window into the depth of knowledge required to work with animals—and into Sheridan’s broader philosophy about expertise, focus, and the difference between a superpower and a disorder.

The Superpower of Hyperfocus

Sheridan and Rogan discuss the idea that many people who excel at something are either ADHD or autistic. Sheridan was medicated for ADHD as a child but stopped, and his parents let him “run around.” He watched a neighbor’s child go from wild to flat after being put on medication and was disturbed by it. For Sheridan, the ability to hyperfocus is a superpower—but only if you can find something you love. “If somebody wants you to pay attention to the history of pop tarts or something, I can’t go in there,” he says. He can sit in an airport for twelve hours straight writing a script because he loves it. The problem, he argues, is that the modern education system is designed to squeeze that energy out of kids, to make them compliant wo