 What is up everybody, it's Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and we're doing something a little bit new and as you can see, I have a very special guest and go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience. Hi Chris, I'm Dr. Todd Grande and I appreciate you having me on here today. Yeah, thank you for coming on and so the purpose of this video is, as you all know, I took a little bit of a break and there's been some craziness going on and I am trying to grow as a content creator, as somebody to help people with mental health and a lot of you have seen, which we'll talk about pretty soon here, Dr. Todd Grande did a criticism of my channel, which was very fair and we're kind of trying to get together and try to figure out how we can better discuss mental health on YouTube so we can help more people. Does that sound about right, Dr. Grande? That sounds right. All right, so the first thing I wanna do just to get this out of the way, there's been some conversations around my mother, Dr. Kerry Randazzo and I just wanted to get, just have you help explain to the audience about credentials and licensure and things like that, even though it varies from state to state. So my mother has a PhD in psychology. She's currently not licensed, but she's built an amazing reputation over the last 20 years. She's been a clinical director of Intensive Outpatient Treatment Center. She's actually speaking at the CCAP conference, which is a addiction conference in California. But can you kind of explain how that works like between like a psychologist without a license and how they practice, how they help people, how they get invited to speak at events? Can you kind of explain how that works? Sure, well first of all, important to kind of make clear that I'm a counselor educator, PhD. So not a psychologist. It's a similar field, but a little bit different, just like social work would be a little different from both of these professions. But all the professions function in a similar way when it comes to licensure. So licensure is essentially a function in the United States anyway, at the state level. So you have to get a license through a state licensing board and you have to meet certain qualifications to do that. That's separate than education, right? So now in my case, it's a little unusual because in my profession, you can get licensed at a master's level. So I earned my master's degree, then I became licensed, then I got a PhD. So I was never a PhD without a license. In the world of psychology, they have really two different ways to get licensure. They have the PhD psychologist and the PSI-D. So they have to get that degree before they can get licensed. So there's always gonna be a period of time for a psychologist anyway, where they've graduated and they're not licensed. Now, just because you get a degree doesn't mean you have to get a license. You can decide not to get one, you can find a job, this happens to a lot of counselors. They find a job that's pretty good where they don't need a license. So they think, well, why am I gonna submit to oversight of this board when I don't have to? It's like, who asked to get regulated? The only reason you would ask to be regulated is if you wanna build insurance companies. So if you don't wanna build insurance companies, there's not really a huge need to get a license in some places. So if you wanna do consulting and all that, it helps to have a license. I mean, I think it's a good idea because it maximizes your education, because you can build insurance and you can supervise and do some other things. But they're separate constructs. Education is separate from licensure. Yeah, so in my mother's case, for example, being the clinical director at an outpatient center, they were billing insurance, but that comes with supervision. Am I correct on that? Like, as long as you have supervision, then you can build insurance. Because that's kind of what I believe was my case working in an addiction treatment center because I'm not licensed, but the psychoeducational groups I did were being billed to insure. Right, this varies wildly from state to state, right? So in some places, you absolutely have to have a license to bill insurance. And in other places, you can kind of fall under a group practice, like a hospital is a good example. You can work in a hospital, like a drug and alcohol treatment hospital, and you may not have a license, but they're still billing as a group because they have so many licensed people that they qualified for that. So, yeah, that really varies quite a bit. And two, you have to remember that insurance companies aren't the only way to get money. A lot of agencies use state funding, right? So I used to work for a place at a contract with a Delaware funding source, and I had some licensed people that I supervised, but other people weren't licensed, and we got paid either way. Got it. You really have to look at the individual circumstances where you are. Got it. Okay, so audience, I hope that clears some things up. That also answers a few questions about me and my work history and how I was able to work at a drug and alcohol treatment center and do groups and all of that stuff. But yeah, so let's jump into this. Again, the purpose of this is kind of to, so I can grow as a mental health channel. Also, Dr. Todd Grande is gonna give me some advice from his professional background. So the first thing I kind of wanted to touch on, and I'm always fascinated by perspective, you did a critique of my channel, right? So when I watched it, I was like, this is a very fair criticism. Like, this is fair. What are you saying? It's very fair. So I saw it as a very good criticism. Now, other people interpreted it as you just saying my channel's terrible and shutting it down. Like kind of summarize, can you, and I promise my feelings won't get hurt, can you kind of summarize like, your views on my channel, we'll dive more in depth in a little bit, but just kind of like overall with my channel, like what are your thoughts? Like my competency and things like that. Yeah, well, you know, when I did that critique, I think you were in a little bit of a different place. Before a lot of the controversy. So obviously I reserve the right to change it a little, but I think I largely feel the same way. I mean, you cross some boundaries there with that, I guess it was like direct messaging and that's what I call, well, in German, they call it Schadenfreude, the joy and others pain. So I think that kind of got you in trouble with part of the YouTube community, but outside of that, that was the big change that happened from my critique. That was the only thing that really changed is you got caught, I guess, or whatever happened. But outside of that, I think that I actually, in my review, I think I was largely positive. I think I mentioned at the end that I was kind of leaning more toward a positive review. And my concern was, I think the same concerns we see with many groups, which is you're getting close, if not blurring that line with like looking at somebody else and deeming them to be a public figure and then saying, okay, they're fair game for opening up like a mental health discussion. So you're right on the line, right? You're right on the line. Sometimes maybe you squeaked over it a bit, right? Yeah. But what I liked about the channel is, well, clearly you figured out the YouTube algorithm, right? You figured out how to be successful, how to get engagement, how to get views, and that's no small feat. And I also liked your energy. I mean, you had a lot of productivity, you're making a lot of videos. The editing was fairly clean, right? I mean, you had just good productivity and good efficiency. But I think that you just ran into that whole issue with that line, like how much kind of information can you take from the public sector, from somebody's public life and then bleed it over into their private life and say, well, they did this, so they might have a mental disorder. They did that. That's a symptom of this disorder. That was the blurry part. And I think if you had managed to stay a couple clicks inside that boundary, you know, you would've been okay. I think you could get through and, you know, solidly got the silver button and moved up from there. But yeah, that's pretty much, I'm summing up like a half hour critique or whatever, but that's pretty much what it was. Yeah, and kind of the goal of this video, and I'm gonna be talking with some other licensed professionals on YouTube and things like that, is trying to find, you know, like that line is blurry, right? And trying to figure out what I could do better so I don't cross any boundaries. And because, you know, at the end of the day, I made hundreds of videos that weren't really getting viewed and then I realized the algorithm and how to tie these things in and kind of use that as a jumping off point to drive into a more, you know, a topic more meant for the audience rather than a critique of the YouTuber. So I'm hoping that I can do that a little bit better. I'm not really gonna be focusing on YouTubers as much, but, you know, just a couple of my butt in the future. So I guess one of the first things I wanna ask you is, so defining the line, you and I, before we hop on this call, defining the line between like a drama channel and a mental health channel. And you've seen my content and kind of that jumping off point, like, here's the subject, right? Here's the give you context. You guys have all seen this video that I'm referencing. Now, how can you relate it to your life? Like, do you have any opinions or views on like that line right there between a drama channel and a mental health channel? And you've seen some of the controversy with me. Have you seen the difference between my content and what quote unquote drama channels are creating and what the difference is there? Yeah, you know, I haven't watched a lot of drama channel videos. And I don't know if they fit into as clean a category as like a mental health channel. Like I always know when I'm on a mental health channel. And I think sometimes I've clicked on the drama channels and not known and figured it out, right? Yeah. But my understanding, and I could be really off on this, is that this is a community, the drama YouTube community or whatever it is, they kind of feed on the drama that plays out among what I call the quasi celebrities, right? The YouTube famous, right? Which is in my opinion, markedly different than like a Hollywood celebrity, right? And mental health channels are there to educate and to raise awareness, help people, you know, identify that they might need to seek therapy or to resonate, right? Sometimes it's just they're there to resonate. You talk about things and people can say, yes, I've been through that same thing, I identify. I don't see any overlap between the two, right? That's where I struggle. I mean, I realized it could be for like thumbnails and for saying, you know, I'll mention this person in order to get somebody to click. But I look at them as so distinct. It's like if you said like, I like car channels, right? I love fixing my own cars, picking up trucks. What's the overlap between, you know, Scotty Kilmer and my channel, right? Nothing, right? Yeah. He's a great channel, but it has nothing to do with mental health, right? So I fail to see the relationship, although you clearly found a way to weave them together a little bit. Yeah, yeah, and that was, yeah, that might have been a mistake on my part, but we're learning and we're growing here. So you, you know, you being a professional in this field, like something that I'm trying to do and, you know, I kind of went to the forefront because like, I want a lot of mental health channels to rise. And part of what this conversation is, is so smaller mental health channels watching me, watching what's happening to me so they can hopefully avoid some pitfalls. Like, what are your views on like, should unlicensed professionals be allowed to talk about mental health or even educate? Because a lot of mine, you know, a lot of my education has been self-education, right? I've done some schooling to get my CADC. I still need to finish that by the end of the year. But a lot of it is just like, I have books all right here. I just have books on psychology and mental health and different disorders and everything like that. So what are your views on, should unlicensed professionals be able to talk about, you know, mental health, mental illness, coping strategies, like, and on top of that, should they be held to the same standards as a licensed professional? Like, what are your thoughts on that? Right, so this is a great question. And you see kind of this line, right, that separates the mental health YouTube channels between individuals with like the education matches a license and individuals with a license and individuals who may have experienced a mental disorder or knew somebody and they kind of come into the field, like come into the, on the platform, into this area, the mental health realm and start talking. So to answer the question, I think that everybody's invited to this table, right? I don't see this as like a, you know, this is YouTube, anybody can get on. It really only takes the equipment that we have right here, right, to get on there. And that in a sense is, you know, maybe that's a low bar, but that's where you are. Anybody can come on and make a video. Now, should they is a different question. I would look at this way. I would say that for somebody who's a professional and licensed, it's pretty clear, right? They have expertise in the mental health area. So if they wanna start a YouTube channel and they wanna talk about anything that they understand, then that makes sense to me. If somebody's not licensed, if they're not a professional, I see more success in them talking about their personal experiences and what they kind of learned along the way from that, right? Because somebody with a disorder can give great perspective on what it's been like to be in treatment, what it's like to learn this material without going through the formal education, right? So there's still a ton of value. Where I think I get a little bit worried, and again, I can't do anything to stop this. I'm not the YouTube police or anything, but what I get a little worried is you'll see sometimes people do a great job talking about something they understand and then they'll wander off into an area they don't understand. And sometimes this is like, you don't know what you don't know, right? I have, I don't know what it is, 11 years equivalent of education after high school to learn this. And every moment of that, I was learning something and even now, after graduating many years ago, I'm still learning something every day. I read an article and I say, wow, I'm glad I didn't do a video until I read that because I would have totally messed that up. So you really have to have the mechanism to get the information in order to deliver it in an accurate way. So this is where I need you to give me a little tough love. Based on the content that you've seen from me, do you feel that I've improperly explained things or act like I knew more than I did? For example, I've had some backlash on my videos about borderline personality disorder. I don't know if you've read the book. I Hate You Don't Leave Me, which is a book that's, you know, they've created a newer version with new scientific studies. And a lot of the information that I've relayed has come directly from that book, which is often cited by other professionals. I too read a lot of studies. Like just from your opinion, like, and I need to know this stuff, have I wandered and given misinformation? I know we, I know you mentioned something about AA and I sent you a study. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it yet, but like other than that, like have you seen me kind of just throw out some dangerous information? Yeah, I mean, I think to be fair, I looked for misinformation. I looked for problems. That's what I do when I critique channels, right? I assess the positive and I assess the negative and I just give a balanced delivery of it. I try to, a fair delivery. And I didn't really find a lot that you missed. I pointed out a couple of small things. I think some technical errors, which I could find even if I watched my own videos, right? That's something that I've become attuned to is finding technical errors. But no, I was actually kind of pleasantly surprised about the content and how you had prepared pretty well for your psychopathology specific type videos, right? The ones where you talked about a specific disorder. Yeah, so yeah, and I'm hoping in the future because I know you're an extremely busy man and some of the other licensed professionals, but hopefully, like I want you to call me out if you say like, well, Chris, that's some real bad misinformation or something like that, because I definitely don't want to be the one to just throw out some dangerous information. And one thing that I guess we'll address real quick is, like I think there was just some misinterpretation on, but I understand on my video about mental health professionals not getting paid. And I think I didn't communicate it properly, which is why I understand your view on it. But like basically what I was saying is, I worked at a treatment center where it cost $30,000. Like we build $30,000 and a lot of people couldn't go to that treatment center. But I wish there was more, what I was saying was, I wish there was more professionals like yourself doing additional free content like on YouTube to educate those who can't afford treatment. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. See, the way I interpreted courses, you know, is a little differently, which is kind of the same old thing. And maybe, you know, maybe part of it was a connected with an argument I've heard so many times, which is the whole, you know, if clinicians just work for free, you know, everybody would be happy. And we know that actually leads to disaster. So I didn't want to let that go as I saw it. But yeah, in terms of like, you know, professionals doing other things like YouTube, writing blogs, giving speeches, doing trainings, doing consults, that's brilliant. I mean, I think that's, I think you're right. I think that clinicians need to not just stay in like that comfort zone, like right in front of the client, but also get down to the community and be an active participant. That makes sense to me. Yeah, see, we agree on that. So next let's talk about, you know, the mental health stigma as a whole. And I'm curious what your views are with me being involved in this controversy going on. Like how do you think that's playing in the stigma? Like you've watched my content. Do you think, like two things, do you think I was increasing the stigma by doing what I'm doing, talking about mental health or what other mental health YouTubers are doing? And what do you think about this? Because I've seen some stigmatizing things happen just with some of the backlash I'm having. You see what I mean? Like, no, you're not allowed to talk about mental health. This is a taboo subject. And that's kind of where I'm struggling. So I'd love to know your thoughts on that. You know, I have pretty clear values on this, right? As you might have reasoned. You know, I kind of, I have opinions about things and I formed them over a long period of time, even though I'm willing to change them if I see evidence to the contrary. And you know, the idea that your channel could like globally increase stigma is unprovable, right? That's just, okay, maybe it did, but maybe any channel did, right? That's very hard to say. What I think is more definitive, I think it's a safer statement to say that you clearly offended certain people, right? Across the line with certain people and they had every right to be upset. And I totally get that. And, you know, whatever backlash they generate from that, you know, you have to kind of take that in consideration that you kind of offended first, right? So it should be fair to them. But the idea that, you know, I do have a problem when people come forward and say, you know, I have a complaint and everyone else shares my complaint, right? You ever hear that thing, it's a mentality, right? Somebody comes up to me, you know, I don't like this place and everyone else here doesn't like this place either. Well, I'm very big on kind of rugged individualism, right? Like I look at it like, look, own it, right? If you don't like where you are, you tell me, okay, but don't speak for everybody else, right? Let everybody speak to themselves. I mean, so I kind of, I think some of what you're seeing, again, is legitimate because you broke the rules, right? Fair enough. And some of it is, I think, a desire to jump on the rewired soul train, right? Which is, you know, you can get views by making videos criticizing your channel. Yeah, something that I've been struggling with and I'll have more videos just about how I'm working through it and stuff like that, but that kind of speaking for everybody, right? Like there are clearly people who don't like my channel, don't like what I do. That's okay. But going through, you know, comment sections, going through, you know, like to dislike ratios even, you can see how many people who have said thank you for helping me, right? So, you know, I'm also about that individualism and you know, like, and I just, I found it interesting that you're saying you are hurting people and it's like, but this person said that they watched my video and thanked me because it encouraged them to go back to therapy. So, you know, how can you speak for that person? And that's a whole nother topic. Right, it just gets into an existential issue, right? Not to bring this to a darker place, but essentially, you know, we're born alone, we live alone, we die alone, right? So, all these people saying, well, everyone feels the same way as me and let's just pile on. That's not supported by any evidence. It's an individual experience, life is, right? So, if somebody has a beef with you, right, they bring it to you, they put in a comment, they email you, whatever. And I think you've, I mean, you've been pretty forthcoming that that criticism is there. You haven't deleted comments. I mean, so, yeah, I mean, I think some people found your apology less than satisfactory because you put the word but in there and all, but. Yeah. I get it. But overall, I mean, you took down the offending videos and you did apologize and you're not deleting comments and you're letting everybody have their shot. What more, like, if you had stolen something, you go to jail for 30 days, your sentence would end, right? So, when does this end, right? Yeah, and that's a whole, yeah, and that's a whole nother thing. I listened to, you know, when that's an issue with cancel culture, which I think would be a great video for you to do, like, because we see it happening with celebrities and YouTubers all the time. And to be fair, because I know this'll be brought up, I am gonna make a video about working with my therapist. I am setting up some boundaries. So I have gone into the community tab on my YouTube thing and I've made like blocked words, like just certain words for my own mental health sake because seeing certain words, but anyways, people will learn more about that in a video I do. But yeah, for the most part, I've tried to give people a free platform to say their gripes with me and things like that. And have a conversation. So this next question I think is, it is gonna help me learn and maybe this is gonna help other mental health channels. So the question is, how do we capture the attention of YouTube viewers? And you're a YouTube creator, right? And you know about the keywords and all that kind of stuff, trying to please the YouTube gods of the algorithm and everything. And yes, I found a way to reach the audience, right? I found that way. So unfortunately, like we said, it's kind of blurred a line, but like in your opinion, like how do we reach the viewers when, for example, people aren't searching like, they're not always, you've been very successful. You're one of the larger mental health channels, but like people aren't searching certain disorders. People aren't searching certain, like how to cope with depression on YouTube. People come to YouTube for mainly entertainment, some education. So like, how do you think we can do better of reaching the audience without crossing any lines, you know? That's really the pivotal question, right? Because that's where your channel was, right? Your channel was kind of successful at the mental health largely, but also successful at the attracting viewers. So, well, one thing I think is you certainly can use the trends, which you know, you learned well, you can capitalize on trends. I do the same thing, right? I saw a video, we talked about this before with these body language experts, right? And how they're always, there's a few popular videos out there. And I made a video and released it today to kind of ride that wave. It also was a topic that I was very interested in and I've actually done other videos about it. So you have the trending piece. Of course, you have the typical thing we hear from all like the YouTube consultants, right? Like build good content, production value, all this stuff. But we already know all those criteria, right? Those aren't revolutionary. So the last frontier, so to speak, I guess, would be trying to introduce, trying to connect mental health to what you're seeing in the YouTube community or in the news or whatever is trending. Like trying to get a little sharper and going after that trend. But this is that place where you got in trouble. This is that difficult area. To give you an idea of how much I fret about this, I did a video about Ted Bundy a few weeks ago. Ted Bundy was executed for murdering 50 to 100 women. Nobody likes Ted Bundy. Does that make sense? He's not gonna have any big fans. They're like, oh, you said something bad about Ted Bundy. But it's not a matter of that. It's a matter of, I made it clear I wasn't diagnosing him because I didn't know him and I wasn't his clinician. So I draw all that. I'm standing to where I can barely even see the boundary is so far away from me, right? Okay, you have made a reputation and I think have had success in getting a lot closer to that boundary. And I was thinking about this, are there some general rules for like getting up right on that line without crossing it, right, without offending. So I would say, I actually wrote down a few rules or I typed out a few rules. One would be never diagnosing. Right, and maybe even going as far to do what I do, which is say, I'm not diagnosing. I'm speculating, right? It's my opinion based on what was made public. Yes. Right? The other thing is, obviously, if you're talking about yourself, you can say whatever you want. If you have consent of somebody, like another YouTube content creator says, look, I have this disorder and you really seem to have a connection with it, you understand it. You can go ahead and talk about it, right? I mean, I would probably put their consent right in the video. The next area is kind of like, and we talked about this before in the phone too, in order to even introduce the idea of connecting mental health to somebody, they have to truly be a public figure, right? Like Ted Bundy was a public figure. So if you're looking at somebody and they're like a YouTube content creator and they have a couple thousand subscribers, that's relatively small. I mean, it's an accomplishment, but that's relatively small compared to like your channel. Yeah. So it's about figuring out when does somebody truly become a public figure and when have they kind of, by their own hand have exposed themselves to these types of ideas. Yeah, and that's where I struggled. I was actually, right before we hopped on this call, I was thinking about it because part of my new content strategy is talking more about mainstream celebrities, right? And I don't know how much you follow like Philip DeFranco and stuff, but he's done some things about how YouTubers want to be taken as seriously as mainstream celebrities, right? And so for me, looking at this aspect and like obviously I found a formula that works, bringing in a public figure, talking mental health, can you relate to this? Because a lot of people like, it's no secret, a lot of people watch certain YouTubers because they can relate or they like certain celebrities because they can relate, right? So that's kind of how I made that connection. But for me to say, okay, I'll only talk about the mainstream celebrities and it's okay to quote unquote dehumanize them, then why would that be okay? Does that make sense? Like, so like you're saying with that, like if we're doing like a strict rule, like where's that line? Is it 100,000, is it 200,000, is it 500? I've talked about one of the biggest controversies I had was with someone with over 4 million subscribers. Like that is a very small percentage of people on YouTube who have that many subscribers. So where, so what are your thoughts on that? Like where is that line of public figure myths? So first just to clarify, I wouldn't say that we can dehumanize anybody, right? Like no matter how big, right? But what public figures do and what you and I have done essentially is we've exposed ourselves to criticism, right? There's no getting around that when you become a public figure, there's a tradition where you do lose some of your privacy, right? But I think that still only gives license essentially to say, okay, Dr. Grande appears to have this problem because I watched one of his videos and I saw this but I don't know if he has this problem but I wanna talk about what I think this problem is, right? That's a lot different than saying Dr. Grande has a diagnosable disorder or kind of implying or hinting that I could be assessed that way. Does that make sense? Now in terms of the line though and what I'm saying about the line in terms of public figure, when somebody drops below the threshold, I don't even think it's okay to do that. If your neighbor, like not long ago my neighbor, one of my neighbors drove into my pickup truck, she accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake and she ran into my pickup truck and I let it go because she's my neighbor. It's a truck, right? I mean, those are trucks are for but if I made a video about her, right? If I'm like, hey, look at my neighbor who hit my truck, she's off limits because she's not a public figure. She's not in the public realm. I would say if you go by the, how YouTube appreciates success, it would be maybe around 50,000 subscribers. I don't know. If I had to use a number and it's hard to quantify these things, I don't know. I think when you reach 50, it seems pretty clear you're gonna make 100 at some point. What else is fascinating to me too is myself and even you in the future might be in a difficult position because I have over 800 videos on my channel right now and only, I can only count three. I named those YouTubers in one of my apology videos and those are the videos I took down. Three YouTubers who got offended by my videos but I'll mention Ilimation because that's my number one video. It's almost out of a million views. She thanked me for my videos on her, right? She thanked me and now that I'm bigger, like I plan on trying to get consent and reaching out and saying, hey, you know, like that's something that I'm personally working on but as a smaller YouTuber, like, because I went from, in October, I had 18,000 and then I jumped to 100,000 like that, right? So I blew up faster than I could even comprehend and didn't realize how many people were seeing my thing so that's something I'm gonna try to be better about but that's kind of interesting, don't you think that some people get offended by what you're talking about and some people thank you for what you're talking about. Like Ilimation thanked me and said, I learned more from this about what I went through that I hadn't even learned in my own therapy sessions. Does that make sense? And that's kind of an interesting thing. Right, well, and it becomes a morbid calculation, right? So if you ran your channel, like if you could run it for 1,000 years and in that time you're gonna offend three people and you could help 300 or 1,000 or 100,000, where do you make these calculations, right? Where do you say it's okay to have this offending to helping ratio? You know, generally I say if you always stay within the boundary and you're purposely saying, look, I'm not assessing anybody, you know, you're pivoting off of the celebrity or quasi-celebrity and moving to your point, then you shouldn't have any problem. You know, regardless of somebody says they're offended or not, as long as you stayed in the bounds. Got it. Right, that's kind of how I look at it. I mean, if they're gonna say something and you follow the rules, then it's really more of how they're perceiving it and I don't know what more you can do. Look, people can get offended by anything, right? Any channel, any video that I make or anybody else makes. Somebody can look at that video and say, not only do I disagree at a rational intellectual level, but for some reason I disagree emotionally. I feel an emotion about it. And what happens is people act on the emotions without thinking. Right, so I don't know that's what happened here. I think you actually did offend some people legitimately, right, just to be clear. But yeah, I mean, certainly there are some other people that maybe didn't like what you said about them, but they didn't come forward when your channel was smaller. Definitely possible, definitely. And then you got bigger and then it became more of a problem. Yeah, so the last question I wanna ask you, this is something we touched on in our call, but I just wanted to talk about it here, is I won't name names, but there actually, here's one like, that we could probably discuss without getting in trouble, Logan Paul, right? Logan Paul when he went on his trip to Japan and everything like that, there are clearly things in the YouTube community, like Logan Paul filming that body in Japan, that was bad. He has 18 million, 20 million subscribers, most of them being adolescents. That is bad behavior, which is possibly influencing, like when I see that and I'm a father too, I'm like, okay, this man is basically showing a younger generation that this behavior is okay because you're getting views, you're getting money, you're getting this, right? And something I've done on my channel is called out behaviors, not to the extreme of Logan Paul, but behaviors that could potentially be a bad influence, like I've worked with clients where, especially in the drug and alcohol addiction treatment field, like they've been influenced, like maybe their substance use started by bad influence, whether it was their parents, whether it was their friends or whatever. So like, what are your thoughts on that when a YouTuber is potentially being a bad influence? Like, is there a right to call them out on that? Like that's where I'm struggling here. Like I'm not the YouTube police, but I think it's important to have some kind of voice of reason saying this is not healthy behavior, please do not emulate this. Right, well, and also it's just, it's criticism, right? We're allowed to be critical. Actually, we would be kind of mandated to be critical in a sense if our channels are about mental health and science and reason. So the important part is not extending beyond what the evidence supports, right? So I think Logan Paul there is a great example, right? What he did was appalling, right? But I don't know why he did it, okay? Impulsivity, was it lack of empathy? Did he just, you know, was it just all blur? And it's like, you're an action hero when you're that big and you don't think about things, I don't know. So I can't really say his frame of mind, but I could certainly say this behavior is totally unacceptable. I gotcha. So the more you kind of chase down a particular line of thinking and the further you get away from the evidence, that's when you start to get into the danger zone. You just, I just had the aha moment, Todd. Okay, so that might be where I crossed that line, right? Where I, in certain videos, I steered away from the evidence, because I pride myself in using clips and let me know your thoughts on this. I pride myself in using clips, but at some points, maybe I was trying to discuss the thought process behind the actions rather than the physical evidence of the actions. Do you think that might be part of where I crossed that blurry thin line? Yeah, absolutely. Like whenever you move past the evidence and you start saying, well, I think I understand their motives, it's very hard to understand somebody's motive. And that's another problem with the public figure, right? Like you look at me and you might think this is how I really am in real life, right? The way I'm talking to you now, which it is, but you don't know that, right? Cause you haven't seen me in person teaching a class or running a group or whatever. So there's a public persona that we all have, right? For example, I'm fairly careful with my word selection, right? If I'm talking to somebody informally, I might not be, but because I know it's on YouTube and I know that it influences people and I don't wanna do anything to create more stigma and I wanna be helpful. So yeah, I think when you look at that persona, there's a point where you have to say, okay, this is what I see in the persona, but the person might be different. Just like I think your persona on YouTube, right? People have gone beyond that and attacked you personally, right? You mentioned that before. I think in that famous deleted video, right? You mentioned the, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No way to make a video more famous than delete it, right? So, but either way, you know, that was I think uncalled for it. You, I think had earned some criticism to be sure, but personal attacks, they don't know what your frame of mind is, right? I don't know what your frame of mind is. I can make some assumptions. I have some work in my head, but I wouldn't say them. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, so we all form opinions. We have to be careful when expressing them. So do you think it's completely, or like, so do you think it's completely off limits to assume somebody's thought process or do you have a suggestion for me? You know, just for example, Tana Mojo with TanaCon, based on the evidence, I don't know how much you knew about that, but VidCon, VidCon, the biggest YouTube convention kind of screwed Tana over. She made a very spiteful video, right? Saying F VidCon, F VidCon, F VidCon. Then, you know, there was a trail of her saying, you know what? I'm gonna create TanaCon out of spite, right? So she made it, she made her convention on the same day as VidCon to try to pull in their audience. It appeared to be a very spiteful action, right? And then it crumbled, people got hurt, people went to the hospital. So I made some videos about that because I have personal experience where my emotions made me vindictive, which then backfired in my face and made me look worse. Like, do you think, like, is there a way to explain the potential thought process without saying, like, this is for sure what they're thinking, like, or is that just something you think is a complete, like, red zone? Do not talk about that. Because it is a learning experience, I think. Yeah, I think you have to be, again, so that's drifting a little bit further away from the evidence, you just have to be careful. Like, you could say, look, I don't know what the frame of mind was, but here's, you know, a possibility or here's a few possibilities. But I would really emphasize the disclaimer because you're really using it as a teachable moment, but it might not have been a good case to select because you don't know what their motive really was. But if we, you know, if we stop too short, right? Like, we have to be allowed to speculate a little, right? And say, well, you know, if somebody did some certain action, like they committed a homicide, it's reasonable to think that they might've been angry, although some people aren't angry when they do that, right? But it's reasonable to think there's rage involved, right? If somebody's premeditated, it's reasonable to say that they were calculating, right? But you don't know for sure, they could also have been on drugs, right? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of things that could be happening. So as long as you disclaim it, I think in a fairly kind of frequent and routine way and don't extend it too far. I think that could stay in balance. But you know, it's one of those things where one time you do it, it might be in bounds, and the next time it might be right on the line. Yeah, right, so. Yeah, I definitely think I've got, you know, especially with like some rules that you laid out after thinking about this and I have more conversations I'm gonna be having. I think I got like, I'm gonna be doing a lot of movies and TV shows and music. I think that'll help things calm down a little bit and I'm gonna take my time before jumping back into the YouTube sphere. But I'm gonna continue having conversations with you and other professionals and kind of see how we can do this because yes, millions of people are being influenced and how do we turn those into teachable moments without crossing boundaries with the creators, you know? But at the end of the day, myself, you, a bunch of other mental health creators, at the end of the day, we're just trying to help people, right? Yeah, that's the purpose of it. And I think that's what, to keep in mind, I think that's what really went wrong before where people kind of, again, they saw that potential Schadenfreude, right? They saw that maybe you were enjoying the triggering aspect. Whereas if you approached it differently and didn't do that and said, look, you know, maybe I speculated too far here and we're proactive, it would have made a difference. So yeah, that's the other thing too. I'm glad you brought that up. We have to always be kind of checking and checking with the audience and making sure that what we're saying is resonating and that we're not going too far. And probably that's probably my caution to you, right? And my caution to myself would be, sometimes I have to go a little further because I'm so far away from the boundary, right? Yeah. Subscribers ask me oftentimes for like more personal details and a little bit more speculation. And you're kind of on the other side pulling the other way. Yeah, yeah. So, well, yeah, hopefully we have a follow up at some point to, maybe in 90 days we'll do an evaluation to see where I'm at. See how close I've come to that line. But anyways, thank you Dr. Todd Grande and anybody watching all of Todd's links and social media stuff will be down in the description below and we are also recording a video over for his channel. Is there anything else going on in your world that you would like the rewired soul audience to know about before we go? You know, I would just kind of make like one last kind of statement around the value of flexible thinking where it's a thing I always push. I think it's something that applies to you but it really applies to everybody. We talked about it when I was talking about Jordan Peterson before and how one of the things I like about Jordan is he has opinions but you get this sense that if you had evidence to the contrary, he would say, you know, let me rethink it. Right, so just one last note that flexible thinking is our friend. Yes, I 1000% agree, we'll end on that note. So thanks again for being on my channel and we'll see all of you next time.