Decoding the Gurus - Dr. K (Part 3): Therapeutic Non-Therapy

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Join Matt and Chris as they conclude their deep dive into the content of Dr. K, the streaming psychiatrist behind Healthy Gamer GG. In previous episodes, they explored his promotion of Ayurvedic medicine and his use of the rhetorical strategies often seen in Complementary and Alternative Medicine spaces. This time, they tackle his more controversial work: the (non)therapy sessions with influencers, focusing particularly on his challenging and controversial conversation with the late streamer Reckful.The episode considers how Dr. K navigates the boundaries between professional therapy and public conversation, examines his response to an official reprimand from his governing body, and questions whether his justifications withstand scrutiny.Matt and Chris critically assess the validity of legalistic defences, the ethics of publicly streaming sensitive conversations with vulnerable individuals, and broader concerns about mixing mental health care with entertainment.It's a lengthy episode and features discussions on patient-therapist power dynamics, definitional debates, and the complexities surrounding regulatory oversight and professional/general ethics.We warn you this is not a very light episode and deals with sensitive issues related to suicide and mental health.LinksHealthyGamerGG: Talking Depression with ReckfulHealthyGamerGG: EthicsHealthyGamerGG: Ludwig and Dr. K's Journey of Death and ConsciousnessHealthyGamerGG: Tired of Work, Society, and Life... (featuring response to reprimand)Dr. K's official reprimand by the Medical BoardDr. Mike: Debating The Value Of Eastern Medicine (Ayurveda) | Healthy Gamer Dr. KCritical Video by MrGirl: Dr. K - RecklessCritical YouTube video by Koubitz: Dr. K's Hidden AgendaThe New York Times: The Gamer and the PsychiatristHealthyGamerGG Official Response to Reprimand on Reddit

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's podcast. We're an anthropologist and a psychologist. Listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Matt Brown. With me is Chris Kavanagh. He's the anthropologist. I'm the psychologist.

He is the Cassius to my Brutus. That's how I've always thought of him. You get that reference, Chris? You get that reference? Cassius Clay. Yeah, the boxer. He was, yeah, Muhammad Ali, I get it. No, no, no. You don't get it.

But that's okay. That's okay. He was probably named after that Cassius, wasn't he? The one that killed Julius Caesar named after the boxer? No, I mean, Muhammad Ali was probably named after his original name. Is that not likely? That's all right. I organized a spare. I organized a follow-up because I knew that cultural reference would be over your head. So with me is Chris Kavanaugh, the two backers

of my hand solo. That's what you're speaking. I got that one. Star Wars. Yeah. I got my machine. I meant to say Star Trek and then, yeah, annoying people, but too late, too late. Yeah, that's fine. I'm Chewbacca.

That's about accurate. I'm hairy enough to be Chewbacca. You are, aren't you? I couldn't lie. Yeah, naturally. I am naturally, but I maintain my physique with various potions and shaving apparatus. So this is this is not natural, Matt. That's fierce. This is a sculpted perfection from, you know, raw materials, rough,

raw Irish salt of the earth materials crafted into this massage. Well, little fanners, we probably have the same matter here. Just yours is distributed all over your face. Mine is all at the top, like a carrot. That's right. Like a carrot that has got its leaves grown out too far, and they've wilted in the sun. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

White and dry. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is that's right. White and dry. Yeah. So, you know, this is something Nomad, I know banter isn't allowed in these episodes anymore, but it's gonna end very soon. Don't worry. It'll end very, very soon. But just to say, you know, we have a YouTube channel where editor Andy deposits various snippets from episodes, usually from supplementary material,

you can go check. And never feels to surprise me, Matt, how many people say, you know, I thought Matt would look like Chris and Chris would look like Matt. And I'm like, that doesn't like, because I get, you know, the podcasters don't look like what you expect them to look like. I understand that. That's happened to me on multiple times. But I'm like, why do you think I look like Matt? Why would you look like me? This is the confusion. We've got pretty stereotypical thesis as it happens. I think the implication is that you have an old voice and I have a young voice. Is that it? Wow. Insulting.

It's kind of insulting to both of us in different ways. Yeah, in different ways. Wow. Well, yeah, I get that. Yeah, that actually that does go along with it. Oh, I thought Chris would look like a scraggily old man, but instead look at him. Wow. Yeah.

So, that's good. I benefit from low expectations. I guess you are up here slightly older than people in this game, but that's... I look precisely my age. That's how I think. Agreed. Yeah, agreed. But banter finished. A lot of time ended. Don't worry. Don't worry. No more banter. This is a decoding episode. This is where we look at a figure somewhere in the Guru's sphere. They might be not in the Guru's sphere. You know, you never can tell. That's the

whole point of doing the decoding episodes. However, this figure we have already visited twice. We've been to Dr. K Alok Kanhojua's house multiple times. And here we are knocking on his door again. So why are we back here, Matt? What takes us again to the Vata realm? Is this a test? Am I supposed to have memorized the agenda? Do you know why we are here?

Why have we done three episodes of Dr. K? Well, I know we've done two episodes and I know we're going to do a third episode. And I think this third one is going to be looking at, well, a kind of a controversial online counseling episode that he had, which had lamentable outcomes. Maybe nothing to do with him, but you know, and also a sensor that he incurred from a professional body. How am I doing?

Is there another thing? You're about 30%. 30% accurate there. And yeah, because we will cover the interview he did with the influencer, Rekful, who went on to commit suicide after it. And that is one of the very controversial things because he did a series of interviews with him on stream talking about quite personal traumatic stuff. We're only covering that a little bit, though, Matt. And whether or not Dr. K's therapy sessions have anything to do with the eventual suicide is not really the focus of this episode. Though we can talk about it, but I think it doesn't matter. I mean, not that it doesn't matter, but it kind of stands apart the stuff that we're

going to talk about in this episode, because it's mostly about, we covered Dr. K's focus on Ayurveda and his kind of presentation about the limitations of Western medicine and how they are resolved by the individual focus that you get from Ayurvedic practices. And we showed that this was an emphasis that he had on his work previously, quite significantly, talking about the different doshik types and the types of food that you should eat and all this. But we also showed that that runs right up to the present because we looked at more recent content and his interview with Dr. Mike where he was pretty much doing very similar rhetoric that he was doing a number of years before. So it isn't that he has stopped doing that as various other people had suggested.

But the reason that he attracts controversy primarily is not really that. That was something that struck us in his content. But the reason that he gets controversy is for these interviews that he does on stream, typically with famous influencers or streamers, but it can also sometimes be with, you know, just non-famous individuals that have particular issues or this kind of thing. And these streams became very popular because essentially it looked to a lot of people like a therapy session, but a therapy session that has been streamed. So it's a therapist, Dr. K, a psychiatrist, asking these kind of probing and empathetic questions to a celebrity influencer, often about personal topics that they hadn't discussed elsewhere, or if they had discussed them,

you know, not in that level of depth and kind and openness. So there's a voyeuristic aspect of it, but Dr. K is clear in all of these encounters, he's not doing therapy. People might be under the mistaken apprehension that it's therapy, but from his point of view, it's not therapy. It's purely a conversation about mental health and issues that people might be having, but he was not acting as a therapist. And other people kind of disagreed with this and we will see why. And this has led him to what you mentioned, which is that he was disciplined recently by the relevant medical board because

a complaint was brought up about these therapy sessions or at least, you know, the one that we're going to talk about. So we're going to cover a broad range of things, but not solely focused around rectal or disciplinary things, but they'll all come in, Matt. So you went wrong. Oh, no, I get that. Yeah, I was just getting you started. Yeah, I think just to preempt this a little bit, I mean, I think one of the interesting dichotomies there is on one hand, as you said, he portrays it as,

this isn't therapy. This is just human beings having discussions on the internet and streaming them. On the other hand, he also portrays what he's doing as an exciting new way to help humanity and bring his therapeutic skills, you know, not just one-on-one, but to actually broadcast them and help many, many more people. So there seems to be some contradictions there. So yeah, let's get into it and explore it. Yeah. So I can actually play a clip at the start that kind of talks about that and brings up this concept about area of effect healing, right? A gamer term, as we know, Dr. K runs Healthy Gamer

GG. And this is a term from like kind of World of Warcraft, you know, these kinds of games where you're doing a spell and it's having an effect on like a group of people, right? Buffing people or healing them or whatever. So area of effect healing. And actually he suggested that this came from Wreckful. Wreckful was the streamer that we'll talk about who was also a World of Warcraft player, but who ended up committing suicide.

So he referenced the wide area of effect healing and Dr. K has rammed with that term. At least I think he said that in one of the things. So here's him talking about his motivation and what he's trying to do. And I'd like to start by sort of sharing a little bit of a narrative. So when I started Healthy Gamer, the reason that I started Healthy Gamer is I was working with a lot of people who were sort of of the digital generation. And the more gamers that I worked with, the more young people I worked with, I noticed I was having the same conversation

over and over. In fact, what I noticed was that what was really missing is not clinical treatment. These were not people who needed prescriptions or even psychotherapy. What they needed first and foremost was education. I found myself having the same conversation over and over again, teaching the same things over and over again. So I started to wonder, could I actually help 10 people or a hundred people by having a single conversation online? So that, yeah, that portrays the motivations and the altruistic light. Yeah, exactly. This is sort of a way to do more with the limited time that you've got here on Earth. Rather than speaking to just one person at a time, you can have these educational conversations and, you know, thousands or tens of thousands can benefit from them.

Yeah and maybe it's the wrong point to get into this but just to mention that I don't think it's perfectly plausible that Dr. K isn't being disingenuous when he's talking about early motivations or a significant portion of his motivation being about the desire to kind of help people with their mental health. I mean, he got into therapy and he was dreaming about mental health issues and that kind of thing. So I think it's perfectly reasonable to imagine that he's not lying about that at least being in the matrix of motivations for him to enter this

area. Yeah. I mean, sure. Isn't this in a way what every broadcaster, podcaster, dare I say, Chris, sort of aims to do? Like to sort of like, it's meant to be at least somewhat educational. Do we need to do that, Matt? Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Tune in to Decoding Academia to find out. That's true. That's true.

We do have that. But I guess I just mean that there are degrees within that and there are people that are very clear that their motivation is altruistic and to help others and others that are less, not really claiming that as strongly. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, this is pointing to a fuzzy boundary between educating people about the nature of, let's say, doshas and how different types of foods are going to affect your personality and what kind of personality type you are. And advice on to how to live your life and what you should do and not do, a la Jordan Peterson.

And then getting into, well, this is what your problem is. It all comes down to this. And there is this shades of grey as you get towards something that starts looking a little bit like clinical counseling Hmm. Yes. So Dr. Mike did discuss this at the beginning. We've covered the dr. Mike interview Mainly we focused on the debate around Ayurvedic versus modern medicine, but at the beginning of the episode they did focus more on this issue about interviewing streamers and whether what is being done could be classed as therapy.

So here's some of the discussion around that, because I think this is also a point where Dr. Mike offered quite valuable pushback and you get to hear Dr. K respond to it. I think we have a challenge, right? So like everyone says, so we have a mental health crisis. Suicide rates are increasing, depression, anxiety. We're seeing an evening out of body dysmorphia between men and women. We're seeing an evening out of ADHD equality and all things.

So we've got this mental health crisis. And the question is why, right? And this is where we have organizations that will advocate for destigmatization of mental illness. So the question becomes, how do we do that? Because mental illness is a little bit different because we've been so careful about talking about, which I'm all for, right?

So I don't conduct clinical interviews, I never have my patients on stream or anything like that. And at the same time, what is destigmatizing mental illness literally look like? Like, how do we do that? So that's kind of framing interviewing influencers as a public health service. Right. So to destigmatize it. So it's not something that

happens behind the veil. In you know, it's not it's not a thing you should be ashamed of that has to happen in private, in an office or something. It can be something that by bringing it out into the open and by showing people that, you know, everybody has mental health problems and talking about it openly, we can de-stigmatize these issues. Is that the subtext? Yeah, I think that's it. And also that, you know, the people, the influencers that people might look up to, you can discover that they too have struggles with anxiety and issues from their life, traumatic events that affect their confidence and that kind of thing. So

I think that's the positive spin on it, right? Is that it's about awareness, it's about increasing education, and it's about people not seeing, talking about these issues as being, you know, something that we need to hide away. Some would say, Matt, that we need this message more than others because of our cold-hearted ways. All right. Okay. Fine. Fine. All right. We're setting all this up. This is good. Yeah. And you get Dr. Mike, you know, talking directly about the issue of potentially getting in trouble. It's very rare that I sit in front of someone who has significantly more experience discussing health to a huge audience online, because there's not many people doing it period But to do it for the amount of time that you've done it not just years that you've been online

But also when you stream you spend a lot more hours in front of the audience For me when I make content online You know we hyper edit a fast-paced moving video 10 15 minutes now. I'm entering a little bit more into the podcast space How do you do it and? Not get in trouble So I you know, it's a great question so we'll see how much trouble I get into Well, let's get into troubles today. That'll be fun. And and so I I think a couple of things to keep in mind, right?

So I think just being super careful about what you say, what you don't say, I think steering clear of medical advice. So I think the way that I kind of frame things is when I make content online, I almost think about my target audience as like residents. So if I'm talking about, let's say, a clinical condition like borderline personality disorder,

I frame it in the way of, OK, if I was teaching a group of residents or medical students or even pre-meds, how would I explain this condition? So that's really what I usually think about. And then I'll prepare lectures and just keeping it more educational. I have a small bone to pick there, Chris, because on one screen I have a window, I have you in it. On the other screen I have a healthy gamer,

GGs, YouTube stream. And you know, the topics are things like what does gooning do to your brain? Why brainwashing yourself keeps you stuck in life and so on. I mean, and I've watched many of these, to be brain, why brainwashing yourself keeps you stuck in life and so on. I mean, and I've watched many of these. To be honest, I don't feel like the content of these videos is the same as if you're actually having a conversation with residents in a hospital, that is other doctors, that's not the tone of these YouTube videos. No, that is other doctors, that's not the tone of these YouTube videos. No, that is true. And I think here he could argue the defense of, well, he's talking about when he does the interviews, right?

Not necessarily the YouTube short videos. But I actually think he would meet with the right receptive audience. He would meet the same point that like his tone there is, sure, it's not like formal, but it's trying to give accurate information about complex medical topics in an understandable way. So I think you're right that there is a surprising lean towards more click-bitty content than you might expect given the way that he talks with Dr. Mike. And similarly, we'll see if the way that he's talking here matches, like how careful he is when he's talking to people on stream. But here he is also presenting that he's very careful about what he says. You know, they don't say things out of

hand. Yeah, very careful to frame things appropriately and so on. I guess the other aspect of this too is the, you know, it is flattering to the audience. This isn't always a terrible thing, but it is something that we do see with some of the gurus that we have a problem with, which is that the impression is given that you are not speaking down to your audience, right? You go straight into the very high level ideas, you know, Eric Weinstein will launch into a thing and drop all of this extremely abstract physics, you know, and it's flattering to the audience. Same with Brett and Heather. And I think that is at least part of the appeal there. So, you know, I just noted that that's all.

part of the appeal there. So, you know, I just noted that that's all. Yeah. Well, let's continue with the clips. So, he talked about how he avoids getting in trouble and Dr. Mike pushes a little bit more. What about when you're having conversations with a guest? And I struggled with this myself a lot. I've had struggled with this myself a lot. I've had difficult conversations on this podcast where someone brings up either a past trauma or you could see that they wanna talk about a past trauma. And I get uncomfortable,

and I'll explain what I mean by uncomfortable, that I don't wanna become their doctor on camera, right? So I know what next question my doctor mind wants to ask, but I also need to be hyper aware that I don't ask that question and become their doctor. So how do you kind of ride that line and make sure you're doing this ethically? Yeah, so it's a great question.

So I think we have a pretty rigorous informed consent process that not many people are aware of. So, you know, most people will see like the final product, but we go through a rigorous informed consent process that not many people are aware of. So you know, most people will see like the final product, but we go through a rigorous informed consent process. We also have like a boundary setting call at the before we meet someone or we offer a boundary setting call for anyone who wants to take advantage of it. And that usually is a chance for people to say we don't want to talk about this or I do want to talk about this.

And I think the main thing to keep in mind is that if you think about your job as a physician, you know, the process of a diagnostic interview is very different. So a rigorous informed consent process, Chris, this means that people sign something or agree to something? I believe so. I believe, no, I believe there is a consent sheet that they're required to sign before taking part saying that they understand it's not therapy, anything they don't want to comment on or this kind of thing that they aren't obliged to. And I'm sure there's stuff

about terminating the interview and whatever, your usual ethics thing. So Dr. Mike raises the questions that people would have about, you know, well, if you're having an interview with someone in the public stream and people start talking about private and sensitive issues, you know, that would make me a little bit uneasy as a medical expert, but how about you? But Dr. K is quite clear. No, it's not an issue. We've got that covered. Yep. We have the form. We have the form. And also, you know, I mean, in this answer, it's come across as at least having considered these issues, you know, like he's like, no, this is ethically fine

because of X, Y, and Z. Yeah, because there's a consent process and because he says that the the tenor of the conversation is not the same as one in which one was making like a diagnostic interview, as you would with an actual client. Yes. OK, fine. And he also wants to be clear that there are things which distinguish what he does from therapy for various reasons.

And we'll get into the legalistic arguments for this a bit more, but with Dr. Mikey offers this summary. So, you're usually thinking about what are these, the alternate diagnoses, you exclude certain kinds of things, you assess every patient. So for example, like for psychiatric intakes, we assess for suicidality, homicidality, you know, psychotic symptoms. So if you really look at the process of diagnosis, it's not just talking to someone about their life.

It's literally assessing for any number of conditions. And I think that's where it gets a little bit tricky because talking to someone about their life, which is usually what we do, and then sometimes we'll also educate about conditions. So there's absolutely absolutely a concern there. I think we try to get through it by using a rigorous informed consent process, really taking a more educational approach. And it seems to have worked pretty well so far.

So just bang the drum. Consent, educational approach, it's worked well. Yeah, it's worked well. Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting, like, again, like all of this comes back to this, this fuzzy boundary because you can say it's education, but if someone tells you, okay, I'm feeling very depressed with my life at the moment, feeling like life has no meaning, and then you say, and then you educate them by letting them know that the reason they're feeling they're depressed is because all depression stems from some trauma they've had in childhood. And it's due to the fact that there's a misalignment between their doshas and their life choices or something or whatever. And you could frame all of that as education if you wanted to, couldn't you?

Yeah, and if you remember last time in this conversation with Dr. Mike, he kind of flipped things around right at the end by pointing out that Dr. Mike was being aggressive and kind of was close-minded about Ayurveda, right? And this worked later in the conversation. There's a little bit of a similar move attempted here, where so Dr. Mike has been pushing Dr. K about the ethics of what he does on the stream, and then Dr. K raises these points. So part of what I think is really important is that if we sort of think about it,

and we think about the concept of mental health equity, so physical illness and mental illness should not be treated differently. So a lot of people, would you be thinking that question if you were talking to someone about their experience of being a cancer survivor? Right, so we don't have those same hesitations. If someone has a heart attack or if someone, you know, has a complication with labor or is raising a special needs

child, we're not, like, very, very touchy feely about that. We're open to discussing some of our struggles if people feel comfortable. Of course. And the whole point is I think that's the way we should be around mental illness, is that people should be able to discuss, hey, I struggled with this, I struggled with anxiety,

I struggled with trauma, here's my story. And then to also recognize that the practice of medicine is different from talking about your experience of life. And so the North Star that we try to use is people should be able to come on and talk about whatever they feel comfortable talking about. That we don't wanna say, we don't wanna put guardrails that,

okay, you can talk about your difficulties at work, but the moment that you mention something that touches mental illness, we're actually gonna muzzle you. Because that's sort of what goes on right now. And like, no wonder we have a stigma on mental illness, we're actually going to muzzle you. Because that's sort of what goes on right now. And like, no wonder we have a stigma on mental illness when literally no one talks about it. So by suggesting that there's, you know,

ethical issues at play, you're actually preventing people from addressing an important topic. And aren't you like suggesting that mental health needs to be stigmatized and hidden by this line of questioning and it's not as strong as it is later, right? Because at this stage it's early in the interview, but it's, it's not preeminent. Well, this is what equity are you against mental health equity then? There was an interesting little wriggle there

because when he said equity, I thought equity and the way that people normally think about it, which is, you know, different people get treated equally. But then he goes on to talk about equity as equity in terms of treating psychological issues on an equal par and in the same way as physical issues. So that's an entirely different application of the word equity than what I've ever encountered. Yeah, but one that would be effective if you are somebody that might be susceptible to

somebody invoking equity as a concept that you should be concerned about, for example. Yeah, you can't be against equity, against all things. Shouldn't we treat corporations the same as people? That would be more equitable, shouldn't we? Dr. Mike also gave good pushback here again, about this particular point. And by the way, I don't disagree with the notion of that it's important to break the stigma. I'm kind of just playing devil's advocate or creating the conversation. Push, bro.

For the idea of talking about, let's say cancer or a heart attack in comparison to talking about mental health. On one hand, I see the value of that, right? That we should treat mental health like a physical symptom. Like you have a broken bone, you need to go get it fixed. The same way that if you have a mental health issue you can get it fixed and talk about it but on the other hand there's really subtle differences that are super important for example if a primary care doctor who saw a patient in urgent care for a sore throat ends updating that

patient there's less of an ethical dilemma than if a psychologist or psychiatrist ends updating their patient. Do you agree with that? I don't know on a technical sense if I agree with that, but on a practical sense, sure. I think there's a very different level of clinical relationship if you're evaluating a sore throat, which in a one-time clinical scenario, versus generally speaking, if you look at a psychiatrist who are therapists who has a long-term relationship with a patient, I think there's a big difference there.

Correct. Correct. Yeah. No, you're right. He does well there and he hones in on the key point, which is that in the kind of relationship that a therapist can have with a client that is experiencing psychological issues, then they are psychologically vulnerable and there is a kind of a, well, what's the word? There is a dynamic there that should be kept separate from other things. And when someone is talking about, oh, yeah, I broke a bone or I had some sort of physical

injury, I had cancer, now I'm getting better, then the doctor that's treating you or the person that is counseling you about that, it's an entirely different thing. You do not have the same level of psychological vulnerability and there isn't the same dynamic at play. No, and there still is an issue. You know, there can be online streams with people, health influencers talking about people's private medical conditions and giving them all this health advice that is frankly often bullshit. But that still is putting them in a vulnerable

position. But Dr. Mike is exactly right that somebody talking about their personal trauma that has had a huge impact on their mental health or their family clinical history of depression or whatnot. These are more personal in a sense than talking about, yeah, family has a history of cancer. There's a clear distinction in a way because one is recognized to be like that it doesn't require, you know, apart from say, Gabbermatte streaming, it doesn't relate to your character or anything to do with that or your personal experiences, it can just purely be that's genetics or environmental feature or whatever, like you just got an illness.

But when it comes to mental illness, it depends on the mental illness. But there can be a lot more issues about privacy there because there is often more things involved with relationships, with intimate information and that kind of thing. So yeah, it just feels like Dr. K is trying to say, well, you wouldn't feel bad talking about somebody got an infection. But if it was an infection for a sexually transmitted disease, yes, people would be more concerned about talking publicly about it. So he's wanting to say, well, it should all be the same,

but it obviously isn't all the same. Yeah, yeah. I think it's bent up with the fact that like psychological issues or relationship issues or like, you know, like you said, an like an intimate sexual issue or something like that, some kind of dysfunction. Those sorts of things are bound up with our concept of our ourselves. They are kind of who we are. And we can detach ourselves from, oh, yeah, you know,

like I broke my toe a few days ago, Chris. I don't think I mentioned that to you. All right. I can know like, I always I'm always kicking it on things. It's very annoying. But, you know, like I'm detached from that. That's an issue. It's not really attached to my to my sense of self or who I am. That would be very different if I was talking about some sort of sexual dysfunction I was having or something like that,

or some sort of deep seated relationship issues that I've got with my parents or something like that. Those are entirely different things and I think need to be treated differently when you're talking about them publicly and they have different scope for, I think, talk therapy or just talking about it, potentially causing complications, causing issues. Yeah. So Dr. Mike pushed back there. And actually in this whole section, he pushes back quite a few times and hears him talking about,

isn't the way that you know, you do interviews with people, isn't it like close to psychoanalysis? And Dr. K responds in the way that you'll see. I think they're more comparable, but still with mental health, I think in knowing the influence one can have with the power of words in an intimate setting, the mental health situation is still different. Okay. I think that's so- Do you feel like that's fair or do you think that's wrong? Yeah, I think it's very fair.

No, no, no. I think it's very fair. Yeah, that's why like, I don't know, like when I watch your interview that you did with Graham Stephan and, and Jack, and I'm watching it and there was like a section where you were doing some psychoanalysis of them, and I'm like, how do you do that? Because like I wouldn't even feel comfortable discussing a sore throat on a topic.

Where's that line for you basically is my question. Yeah, so if we look at what I did with Graham and Jack, so I wouldn't call that psychoanalysis. So like, I think this is where a lot of people don't know what psychoanalysis is. So he's referencing something that we actually played in the previous episode where he started talking about the personality traits

and the potential Ayurvedic classification of these two like YouTube interviewer characters, right, of a relatively superficial engagement with them. So he's saying he wouldn't diagnose someone who he just met with like a sore throat, but you seem to be talking about their deepest personality traits very confidently. And Dr. K is like, well, I wasn't diagnosing, right? Let's be clear. Yeah, that's right. It might have sounded like diagnosis, that's only because you don't understand what diagnosis is. Diagnosis is completely different. It might have sounded

like psychoanalysis or whatever, but actually that's completely different. But you are taking it on trust. And I'm not a clinician, but I know people that are clinicians, and I know a fair amount of the academic literature around clinical psychology. And yeah, I mean, I'm not quite sure where is this bright line between what has been going on. Oh, Matt, I'm glad you asked. So first of all, I'm just going to play the clip of him talking to those two influencers so you can hear what he actually kind of did.

Just here's a little snippet of it. We'll leave that with my comment and then we'll move to Dr. Mike's response about that and the issue of what he was doing and what is the line. You've been kind of more running the show than he has. Right. So you've been talking about meditation. We're talking about this thing. And, Oh, by the way, what do you think about this? And if we go for 15 more minutes, your mind will jump to something else. So my guess is that you get bored easily.

My guess is that you can dive into something for a long period of time, but then you may like leave it alone for a little while or move on to something else. So these are all consistent with vata, which means that your mind is like the wind. It can blow really hard in one direction and it'll blow hard in a different direction later. So it's quite powerful, but it's not necessarily very consistent. That doesn't mean that you can't consistently have a career. It just means that the more variability that you have within your career, I think the more you will have your best mind. Whereas if I told you,

hey, you're going to work a nine to five job and you're going to climb the corporate ladder for a decade, he'd be better out than you would. I 100% agree with that. Graham is extremely good at grinding, like putting his nose to something. He's guffa, which is earth and water. So stability, like low acceleration, high top speed, high acceleration, low top speed. That's really fun. Interesting.

So we have this joke, I'm the kite, he's the string. Absolutely. That's our job. He's the rock, you're the kite. That makes complete sense. Wow. So the cool thing about Ayurveda is that you're able to make these diagnoses

because there's physical correlations with mental attributes So if you look at like the veins on the backs of your hands are gonna be more visible than the veins on the backs Of his hands. He has a roundness to his face. You have more angularity So what could you tell about that about like facial structure? So your face is round, right? His is more angular your nose is round. His is more angular. Your nose is round. His is more angular. His ears stick out more.

My ears stick out more. By the way, what do you think I am? And so I want to know maybe for Graham. What would you say to somebody like Graham that thinks maybe something will continually make them happy, but they continually find themselves in this lower vibrational state. I would never say something to a person like that.

Why? I would ask them questions. So I think like there's like the fundamentals are different here. So like you think he needs help, right? And you've diagnosed some problem because you know him really well, right? So you preface this with, I've known you so, so long. So you started out by stacking the deck of like,

here's all the evidence for why my opinion is correct. Right? And then you said, this is what I've observed. It's clear to me that you love the guy and that you want to help him and your heart is in the right place. But if you kind of pay attention, how did he respond to what you said? He combated it.

Absolutely. Right. Some of it I agreed with the stress I agree with. Sure. So you're self-aware and stuff like that. But affectively, like emotionally, like he did not like that, bro. Like y'all can go back and watch the tape and just like watch. There's a lot of no, I think I'm indifferent about it.

I think there's a healthy amount of like back and forth that Jack I totally I totally I was giving Jack crap for his haircut. So it's like back and forth I totally agree that there's a lot of health here I'm not trying to create a mountain out of a molehill, but I saw something called micro expressions Okay, so there you go Matt, that's that Okay. All right. There we go. All right. So now, after that, Dr. Mike's kind of needling about this. Specifically, I was pointing out certain dynamics that they have. And I was talking about Ayurveda and a couple of these other like things. And I was educating about that using them as examples. But if you look at that, you know, I'm not assessing them. If you kind of think about that, let me put it this way. Let's say that that is the interaction that I have with someone who is presumably a patient.

Would you consider that medical care? Like did I, would you say that that is, so if someone comes to you and that's the kind of interaction that you have, right? Does that qualify as diagnosis or treatment in your book? I think it partially is, yeah. How so? I think when you're getting a history of present illness from a mental health condition and as a trained individual in that area, asking questions about mental health and then giving

your read on it is so partially a history assessment, et cetera. What would be the condition that you would say I was assessing for in that situation? Personality disorder, potentially mood, asking those questions and then giving your read of it. Again, I think when you're interpreting what someone is saying from your state

and they're looking for you to have the answers, I feel like is that potentially making a diagnosis? And maybe I'm wrong and this is completely. No, no, no, I think this is a fantastic conversation, something I've thought about a lot and I really appreciate your perspective. So let's just think through that, right? So here's the way that I think through it.

Oh, okay. appreciate your perspective. So let's just think through that, right? So here's the way that I think through it. Okay. Once again, once again, this is preempting stuff I think we're going to look at later on, but Dr. K is quite amazing in his instinct is always to lean into criticism. So as soon as somebody starts to cut a little bit close to the bone, he's like, no, no, no, this is fantastic. This is so good that we're digging into this. I'm jived to be talking about this. He only says that when things are getting a little bit close. But I'm with Mike here. Like this is like, basically, if it looks like therapy, if it sounds like therapy, if it feels like you're giving a diagnosis, if the person perceives you as being someone with authority and special knowledge that is able to advise them,

and it looks like you're giving them advice about what they should be doing, then it is for all intents and purposes, the conditions. So I don't really have much sympathy for Dr. K's sort of legalistic denying that there's any issues there. Well, here's his argument that he was about to respond, that he was so grateful to have the chance to outline why Dr. Mike is wrong. Like, if I was precepting a medical student or resident and they did what I did and they said, I have assessed this person for a personality disorder,

I would fail them. Well, of course, that's why it's not complete. Right? So, but I think there's a difference, because if that is, if you're saying that this is not sufficient for a personality assessment, then it is also not sufficient for a personality assessment. So, if someone did that and they said, I assessed this person for a mood disorder, I was like,

no, you didn't, you didn't assess their sleep, you didn't assess their anhedonia, you didn't assess their guilt, you didn't assess their energy levels, you didn't assess their concentration, psych didn't assess their anhedonia. You didn't assess their guilt. You didn't assess their energy levels. You didn't assess their concentration, psychomotor, suicidality. I didn't assess any of those things. So if we really look at the, this is my read on it, the technicality of what it means to do a diagnostic interview, right?

We literally have textbooks that say these are the questions that you should ask. So the DSM-5 has sample, you know, algorithms for assessing diagnostic interviews. And I think the big difference is if we sort of say, okay, what constitutes the practice of medicine? Assessing someone for a mood disorder, if you do what I did and I bill an insurance company and I say, I assessed you for a mood disorder, I could be sued for malpractice because I didn't actually assess for a mood disorder, right? And so for malpractice because I didn't actually assess for a mood disorder, right? And so that's kind of the way that I think about it is if we say assessing for a mood

disorder or a personality disorder, and I'll get to your point because I think there's validity there, if we say that this is what it is, did I do that? And the answer is, in my opinion, no, therefore I didn't do that. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, that you're saying it's not complete so that therefore it's not actually happening. I would even say that it not only is it not complete, it's not like I did assess eight out of the nine criteria. Usually speaking, I'll assess zero to one out of the nine criteria because I still won't do a clinical assessment.

Chris, let me check my understanding here because we've heard Dr. K do what can only be described as an extremely half-assed diagnosis of someone saying, oh, you know, within 30 seconds of them telling him about their problems, this is all because of you haven't got enough meaning in life or something. So, undoubtedly by his criteria, that is an incredibly poor kind of assessment that wouldn't be recognised as a good assessment in any rigorous clinical setting. So, his argument there is because as long as he does very bad clinical work of a very low standard online and it doesn't meet clinical criteria for rigor, then it's fine. Is that the argument? Yeah.

Well, we know because he'll cover this in another episode that we'll look at various clips from that he focuses on the kind of technical definitions so you heard him there by the technicality of a diagnostic interview you know the DSMV five textbooks and the diagnostic criteria right so? So if you're not taking, you know, if you're not following the diagnostic manual, you're not really doing appropriate diagnosis like in the medical setting, that could be presented as malpractice if you don't follow, you know, the proper clinical procedure. So obviously, Dan, what he's doing is not clinical therapy because it

doesn't fit with those criteria. But Dr. Mike is right in saying, right, but like you can still be using the tools and techniques from like clinical therapy and therapeutic settings, but not doing all of them or not adhering to the old thing and he's saying so if you're not doing it all you're not doing it and Dr. K kinda Responds that say well, but no look I'm not even doing like a bit of it But maybe not is a good time after this to play some clips to show you know What happens in the interviews because he's saying, you know, basically I'm hardly doing anything that right. It's just a conversation We're having.

Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll reserve my comment until after we've played those clips. So here's a clip of him talking with the streamer, Rekful. This is, I think, the first interview to Geller. And very early into the interview, he brings up the issue about Rekful struggling with depression. This is an issue that was well, he was well known as somebody that went through bites of depression, that had suffered with suicidal thoughts and had a family history of it, right?

But in any case, so here's the conversation with Rekful. So tell me, what do you mean by depression? Let's start there. Well, I've been diagnosed with bipolar type 2 And When I was six my brother killed himself he also had it how old was he? He was 21 very big age gap. Okay, and Then because of that when I've gone to get treated,

they can never give me SSRIs, I've never tried an SSRI. Because he's tried an SSRI and then that's happened after. Okay. Prozac. Okay. Okay. I've tried a couple things, I've tried like, I was on a really high dose of lithium at one point.

How did that feel? And then very bland. The same thing people always say, like kind of dead. You know, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. And then kind of tried a bunch of other ones, but they're not super memorable.

One of them gave me like some eye pain, so I had to stop taking it, because I was really sensitive to light. Maybe you know which one I'm talking about. Okay. I don't know. I tried a bunch of different ones. This is like 14 years ago, most of it.

So now I don't really remember. Okay, so to the untrained ear, Matt, that sounds like someone taking, not a completely in-depth one, but a kind of medical history from someone with some details. So what I would get as a non-clinician from that conversation is family history of depression, close family member committed suicide, issues with medication and so on and so forth. And I'm not a trained

psychiatrist to that, so this isn't the kind of conversation I usually get in with medication and so on and so forth and I'm not a trained psychiatrist so this isn't the kind of conversation I usually get in with people or that I hear in any other venue so I guess Dr. K will be saying well this is you know what talking about mental health looks like but it does sound much closer to someone talking to a doctor about their experiences than someone talking to an interviewer. Yeah, getting their medical history, finding out what medications they've been given, what they've been diagnosed with, history of the illness in the family and so on.

So yeah, so that is the time. So I guess the point is, I mean, the most important point is, is how is it perceived by in this case, Rick for right? How is it perceived by the person that he's talking to? Yes, yes, that's true, though, just to give a little bit more of the flavor of that. So here's a bit more of that discussion. So tell me what your experience of depression is. OK, it's very hard, very hard to explain. The easiest way to explain is I've had years of my life like this where I wake up every day and I don't see a purpose to doing anything.

I don't see a purpose to getting out of bed. I don't care if I stream or don't see a purpose to doing anything. I don't see a purpose to getting out of bed. I don't care if I stream or don't, or if I go eat or don't. At some point I get really hungry and I'm like, okay, I guess I have, I feel like, it forces me to kind of, you know? But I don't really care one way or the other. And then I start to think I don't care if I, when I go to sleep, I don't

care if I wake up, I'd prefer not to actually the sleeping was the most peaceful part of my day. Okay. And how long would this like, how long would this stretch last? Years. With? Okay. So I've had it since I was 14. And there's like 14 to 16. And then I remember when I found photography, I was like a little inspired for a little bit.

And then it went away and then maybe 17 to 20. Like it goes for years and then I'm happy for a little bit. And then years and I'm happy for a little bit. How long is your period of happiness? My shot would know better than I do, but it's pretty short. I don't know. Like two months maybe. Okay.

Yeah. What are the ways you could tell a difference between a clinical conversation and a conversation you're just having with a friend is that it's generally not recipe doesn't have reciprocity so when you're talking with a friend you'll say oh I was feeling you know really down last week and go oh no that's you know that's terrible yeah I've had these problems too and the conversation shifts you talk about yourself the other person talks about them there's this sort of back and forth.

What you tend to see with a more clinical interview is anyone knows who's gone to a GP. Is it the GP is going, oh, you stubbed your toe. Oh, that's, I stubbed my toe last week. Do you want to have a look? No, no, they ask you questions about this, right? And it's quite neutral. And it's really an information gathering exercise. That's what a clinical conversation looks like as opposed to a normal conversation. Yeah.

And, you know, there is an issue about building rapport, right? Because like doctors do tell you things just because they're humans, right? And also they want to build relationships with patients. But they typically, as you say, are not divulging deeply personal elements of their life, especially not psychiatrists and psychologists for obvious reasons because that would kind of confuse the therapeutic relationship. And here in this interview with Recville, Dr. K does talk a little bit about various things in his past, but it's mostly about gaming and some experiences he had and whatnot. It is not this kind of openness about the history of mental health. And also there, just a note,

he asked, how long was the duration of these episodes, right? How long did they last for? So you're getting history about depression and the experience of depression, but also some details about how long did these periods last? Is this an episodic thing or is it a chronic thing, right? This will be relevant later, but on the back of that, just listen to this. You hear about people like that? Yeah. So I think this is a really common misconception. You may have clinical depression, but I think what you're describing is not clinical depression. So I'm going to explain to you guys what clinical depression is. I think your problem is that your

life is empty. That's different. And in fact, that's what we were gonna talk to the other person about today and we will. So I got a bunch of questions about this because- So you're saying you think I was diagnosed incorrectly when they said not to have the bipolar- You may have depression on top of that, but what I want you to understand is that

there are different flavors of depression. One of them is a biological, organic, neurochemical kind of thing. And what I'm hearing from and but there are certain features of that that you you're not you don't really fit that bill. So I'm going to describe what that is. So you may be depressed on top of being unhappy or having a life without purpose. But those are two independent things. independent things. Chris, is this education or is this a diagnosis? He's saying your problem is that your life has no meaning. That's the symptoms that you're describing. Rachfold specifically says, because he says, you know, look, I don't think this is clinical depression. And then when Rachel says,

you're saying I was diagnosed incorrectly, I don't have bipolar, he says, well, no, you might have, I'm not saying no, but you know, biological depression has these kinds of characteristics. And what you're talking about, I don't think it really meets that. So like, what your real problem is, you might have depression, that's the same thing, but your other real issue is your life is empty. And like, there's a very short conversation to one, read the diets of somebody's clinical diagnosis, and two, to tell them that their life is empty.

And this is their fundamental problem, right? This is a conversation of a couple of minutes. And it comes on the back of, you know, the kind of conversation that you would have of a clinician. Yeah. Yeah. So Dr. K's defense referring back to his conversation with Dr. Mike there is that this couldn't possibly be a therapeutic interview because it's so half-assed. No real therapist would like make a diagnosis within, you know, a couple of minutes of just starting to talk to somebody. But for me, the key thing is how Recfall perceives it, right? So if he perceives it as he's talking to a credentialed psychiatrist, this psychiatrist has been asking him probing questions about his medical history and has

been asking him questions about the issues in the family, what medications he's been given and so on, has heard about the symptoms and now has told him what his problem is. And clearly by his response there, he's said, wait, you're saying this? That's the issue. That's what causes the ethical issues, right? Like you can't go off and swindle somebody, pretend to be an accountant, and then take all their receipts

and throw them down the drain, and then tell them that their accounts are, you know, they need to buy gold and Bitcoin, and say, well, no, I wasn't doing accountancy because no accountant would ever do that. Right? Like the important thing is that the person that you've been interacting with has been, you've given them the strong impression that you are a responsible accountant. Well, this is why this relationship with Breckol ends up quite fraught because there are points where Brechtol refers to what they're doing as therapy and Dr. Kasey is a therapist and

then you know does air quotes and all this kind of thing. I don't like to be in the tension so much. Beautiful. Yeah, so I'm in the tension of is he going to be my therapist or are we gonna be friends? Because he said if he's my therapist, we can never travel together anywhere. Like, it changes how it is. So I was thinking it'd be cool to go to Japan with Dr. K, you know, that sounds nice.

Yeah, that'd feel nice. Just see how he experiences things and have fun. I don't know. Yeah, so I think it's actually I really want a friend but you know, then I thinking longer term. I'll have friends. So what I need is a therapist maybe. Yeah, so I think rather than resolve that issue, wreckful, I think the important thing is that you said

something really, really beautiful, right? Which is that you do not like the tension. But then Dr. K also in later streams will correct him that we're not doing therapy here, right? Okay, I want to update the viewers on what happened off stream because they missed one therapy session that isn't therapy. It's not therapy, right? So that's actually what we talked about, right?

You know this. So there's, there is this blurring of boundaries. And there's even a case later where Dr. K says that, that what rectal suffering from this, you know, clinical illness can be cured if someone is willing to love him unconditionally for two years. And Dr. K is willing to do that. So, Rekful, I'm confident and OK, I'm confident there's going to be someone around in your life who will be there for you most of the time when you need them, hopefully for at least a period of two years.

OK. How can I be confident in that? How can you be confident? Yeah. Well, you probably... you find me stimulating to talk to, and I'm not demanding too much of your time or spamming you with walls of text. and Even if I were you'd feel inclined to answer me because it's You love helping people. It's your passion so from your perspective, maybe you can feel confident, but then if you put yourself in

The shoes of any other human being I don't know that they'll really spend two years with me unless there's Something so wreckful. I'm not I'm not counting on them to spend two years with you What are you counting on? I'm counting on myself. Oh They still spend here. Yeah Yeah that I believe that I can believe that So I can't trust any of them true so I'm gonna come to every week like this I I can believe that. So I can't trust any of them. True. So I'm going to try to love you every week like this.

I'm going to try to love you for two years at a minimum. I really appreciate it. He then does another conversation shortly after that, a few days later, taking that back and saying what he said was he is the and not that he shouldn't have said that. And it was irresponsible to say that. But that whole thing happening is only happening because this conversation is not a normal conversation, right? Yes, I was crying. I was crying.

I was saying my piece. He was saying that he wanted to be there for me for the next two years and that he, but the problem is that he kind of said it in a flurry, flurry of emotion. I don't know if flurry is a good word. While streaming, he was getting emotional himself. He wanted to be there for me. So he said it, but he hadn't actually thought it through and what that entails.

Cause he is not a licensed therapist in Texas and just a lot of things, you know, cause you'd have to live in Texas to be my therapist in Texas, is that how it works? Yeah, so we also did talk about, you know, whether you want me to be your actual therapist and what that would entail. And the other thing is that bit of research, which is important to remember is the research on

people on BPD. It's two years of someone who's actually a romantic partner. So it's unclear whether a friend... So yeah, I need to get in a relationship with a girl for two years and have it actually work out and that might cure my BPD. It's a barrier crossing blurring conversation. And this is the worst one, right? Especially because the outcome ends up that wreckful after the series of conversations, but not immediately. Four or five months later, he killed himself. And I think it's very important to note that it's very likely that there's a host of other factors that could have played into it,

that this conversation could have had nothing to do with the motivation at the final end. He had a history of suicide attempts, he had long-term depression, had a family history of suicide. And so, it's tragic, but it doesn't have to be Dr. K's fault for there to be significant ethical issues with what he did and what he perhaps continues to do but maybe not to the same extent because like I think that this is a particularly extreme example Dr. K does continue in this vein with other people but there is not many other people that I've seen that are as vulnerable as Rekful clearly is. Yeah, yeah, one suspects that Dr. K learnt a lesson there. And yeah, I think it is fair to say that most of his broadcast pseudotherapy sessions are with other influencers and streamers and

personalities who are not suffering from serious and life-threatening issues. So, yeah. Well, so just to carry on a little bit, Dr. K goes on to talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I know you are big into, Matt. But I think that this is like, your problem is that you're at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Are you familiar with that? No. Okay. So Maslow basically said we have a hierarchy of needs, that at the bottom we need like food and shelter, and then we need community and all that kind of stuff. And at the very top is something called self actualization, that at the end of the day, like we have a need to become like fully actualized

human beings who like derive, I mean, it's a need for us to feel like we're accomplishing what we put our mind to. Okay. And so I think what you are is unfulfilled. And that you've probably been in a party that inappropriate true, insufficiently challenged since you were a teenager and that life has not like given you anything that was worth fighting for that. It's just like, it's been like easy mode. Now you may be depressed on top of that. So let's talk about that for a second. So clinical depression is an episodic illness. That's the first thing to

understand. So major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder is episodic, which means that for periods of time you're well, and then you enter a period of depression which lasts two weeks to about one year, maybe a little bit over a year, and that you have a period of like, and then it sort of naturally gets better. Oh, now one thing now I'm worried that what if I incorrectly remembered my past when saying I've gone years of being unhappy. That's very possible. Now I'm getting now I'm getting misdiagnosed.

No, no. So maybe I haven't gone years. Maybe it's been one year. Sure. So that's possible. So like I said, I don't think that how long how long do the happy periods would the happy periods be? It depends on the person. But generally speaking, I'm looking for a few months to a year to even over a year. So there, Matt. Self-actualization rears its head again. We'll

never escape it in these waters. So Dr. K starts explaining, right, look, clinical depression and bipolar disorder is episodic. It shouldn't be lasting for multiple years, right? So that means, and then Rackful is like, well, maybe I'm misremembering the time period and now I'm being misdiagnosed because I'm giving you the inaccurate information. And Dr. K doesn't stop him and say, no, no, no, I'm not diagnosing you. This is a conversation. Like stop, you're getting the wrong impression. He says, no, no, no, it's probable that you're not remembering it. And start talking about the duration that it would be this kind of long time with this month. So again, what happened to, I never talk about diagnosis or, you know, this kind of thing. Like as you said, Breckful's impression here is clearly that there

is some diagnosis going on and that it's important that he gives accurate information because then the particular disorder that he'd be identified with is wrong. And this is not the thing that you worry about with someone that you're having a casual conversation with about mental health. Yeah, exactly. And it goes to my point, which is the key thing is not whether or not Dr. K is satisfying some legalistic definition or whether he's jumping through the hoops of the DSM-5, the key thing is how he's perceived by the person that he's talking to. And if the person that he's talking to

perceives him as relating to him and taking his advice as a professional, then there are serious issues. And just to quibble there, Chris, he just blithely says, no, no, depression disorder is an episodic thing, lasts for a couple of weeks and then goes away again. No, no, no, there are other forms of depression. It's true, major depression tends to run like that, but there are persistent forms that can last for longer. And it just feels incredibly cavalier to me to just, after talking to someone for a matter of a couple of minutes yeah to just go no no no you don't have depression you know what I mean can't be because because what you're describing has been lasting for a really long time and what what you lack is meaning and purpose in your life but

what dr. K would say in response to that is he didn't say he had didn't have depression he said you might have, but I'm seeing a more fundamental issue. He was very clear at one point, like he's not ruling out depression, right? But then he is going on to explain why it doesn't fit the criteria for the kind of depression. So yeah.. And so what he is talking about, Matt, which again, will be so familiar to anybody that's about time and like self-help wellness, or alternative medicine spaces is like, the issue is a lack of meaning of challenge. And he implies that like, reckful is so good that his life has been without challenge, right? Like he's kind of, he is everything since he was a teenager. So this has left him with a feeling of, you know, life being meaningless

because he hasn't been challenged enough. Yes. Yeah. And this is what Dr. K clearly wants to focus on, right? Because then you can start to talk about how to generate meaning and what, you know, purpose is. So, but this is why I had to seize upon his blithe dismissal of the depression issue as being just purely an episodic thing and discounting the... Or biological. Yeah, like chronic and persistent forms of it. He discounts that very quickly because it's very clear what he wants to move to,

which is, oh, no, no, you don't have a disorder. Because he wants to talk about meaning and purpose and being challenged and stuff like that. So that's what he wants to talk about. So, yeah, so it's... That's just a dangerous thing to do with someone that is clinically ill. Oh, yeah. Well, let's stick with this a little bit more. So here's where this leads to next. So we're going to talk more about how you were insufficiently challenged because I still think that's your problem, but we'll get to that. So tell me a little bit about, so it doesn't sound

like I'm not hearing anything about Depression when you were in high school you said 14, but you're not describing anything to me that oh Yeah, no cuz it's hard for me to really dig deep and remember I mean I listen okay, I remember I listen to a lot of sad music I was idolized a lot of people who killed listen I was idolizing a lot of people who killed themselves okay the time is I was listening like Nirvana and then Elliott Smith and then I don't know a bunch of other I can't remember but um I mean sounds like you were yeah it could be yeah I know I was I but the lyrics were very relatable to me okay what was relatable lyrics I guess just this overall lack of purpose and meaning, something, I kind of really have

to, I feel like I'm not doing justice to my own life, to my own memories. I can't remember exactly. Yeah, well, you're not going to be able to, right? So I'm kind of digging around and you're not expected, like I don't remember much about when I was 14, like, you know, people don't really remember much about when they're 14. And that's okay. It's just I'm trying to figure out where the money is and it's sounding like it's not. So, Matt, just to say here, okay, like, if I was talking to someone and they explained everything

that Breckfeller said about like his history and his family history, and then he told me when he was a teenager that he idolized people that killed themselves and listened to, you know, depressing grunge music and like, my picture here is of someone that has a persistent long-term problem with suicide in particular. And yes, you know, people are goths and that kind of thing. But this is a goth where their family member killed themselves and they're no longer a 15 year old goth. They're, you know, talking about something 10 or 15 years later, and they're still persistently feeling depressed and lack of motivation and all that kind of thing. This sounds like a problem. And Dr. K would say, no, I'm digging around to find the money. And

in a therapy session, this would be a reasonable thing to do. Digging around in someone's past to try and find the trauma or whatnot. But you have to remember the context here is there are thousands of people watching this stream while he digs into the depressive past of someone. It just strikes me as I would feel the need here as a non-clinician to tread extremely lightly with this person? Well given everything that he said up to this point in the interview, yeah, the history of the family members committing suicide, all of this treatment, all of the symptoms he described, you know, what he described as a youth is not a fashion statement, which is how Dr. K

You know, what he described as a youth is not a fashion statement, which is how Dr. Kaye inquires. Yeah, he didn't really respond to that. Yeah. He's incredibly dismissive of the idea that this guy is ill. He wants to talk about meaning and being challenged and stuff like that. Like really, anyone... This is just my genuine feeling. I feel like any responsible professional who'd heard all of those things would have stopped the recording and taken steps to have this person get actual concrete help and certainly

not release this thing. That's just my opinion. Well, but the problem is this is live. This is all live. Right. Yeah. so it continues unlike if all of this wasn't worrying enough when I was 16, okay when I was 16, I I Tried to kill myself. Okay, so when I when I was 16, I I Took 22 22 sleeping pills and I drank a bottle of wine and I tied a plastic bag over my head and I fell asleep

And I just woke up later And I had ripped the bag off my head and I drank a bottle of wine and I tied a plastic bag over my head and I fell asleep and I Woke up later and I had ripped the bag off my head and I was alive and and I Were you ask do you remember what you were feeling when you tried to kill yourself He was really dumb I There was a game I was playing called Asheron's Call from when I was 10 to when I was 16. And then that game was no longer popular. No one was playing it. No one to play with.

And he goes on to explain that's being the cause. But there as well, Matt, you heard the little live chat chime. I think it's someone donating money or whatever. Right. When Dr. Cass, do you remember what you were feeling when you tried to kill yourself? Yeah. You know. Yeah. I mean, but and also just again, returning to the tone of the conversation.

Like, imagine if you and I were having a deep and meaningful chat, Chris, which hopefully will never happen, but if it did. Right. And I said, and I said, Chris, I tried to kill myself when I was 16. I had a plastic bag over my head and so on. And you went, Chris, I tried to kill myself when I was 16. I tied a plastic bag over my head and so on. And you went, right. OK. And what and what were you thinking? You know, like like that time, that's not that's clinical.

No, it's not uncaring. Right. Because that is like what a clinician would do. Right. Like if you were talking to a therapist. Yeah. And they said, you know, like, yeah, if you told them some traumatic thing and I was sexually abused by my cat tic, right. They, they would respond probably by saying, you know, I'm sorry to hear that. And like, yeah. Um, well, how did that impact? Right. They're not going to react by going fucking hell. That's awful. Yeah. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, all of that stuff matters because it contributes to how the interaction is perceived by the client slash interviewee, which is wreckful in this case. with the Ayurvedic stuff. Dr. K has a very heavy interpretive frame that he brings the conversations and yes, he's the expert here. So you would expect that. But like when you've

had 15 minutes with someone or 20 minutes, you're a very thin slice of information about them, right? So to get deep into, well, you are like this or whatever, it's akin to a psychic in a way, like saying, right, well I know what your problem is after 10 minutes. Maybe there's signs that you recognize from your years of clinical practice, but if anybody is coming to diagnose you in about space of 15 minutes for some severe mental issue and the cause of it. That should be warning flags. And so he mentioned this game that he played, and again, here, a game stopped being popular, so his response was to attempt to kill himself.

Right. That's a seriously depressed person with not logical reasoning. Right. Or, you know, maybe logical reasoning is the wrong way to put it, but that's somebody reacting in a way that the majority of people would not to that stimulus, right? And Dr. K continues. Yeah. Great.

I mean, not great, but I think I'm starting to see a pattern. Okay. Great. Great. Great. I mean not great, but I think I'm starting to see a pattern. Okay, so great great is a funny response So let's just let's just think about that for a second wreckful let's think about that right yeah What do you think was going on in your head there? So I think now that you you're leading me to the answer but The Ashland's call was giving me fulfillment and you know a place to try as hard as I could and be competitive and whatever and Meet friends and all these things all these natural human desires was it hard and then uh, it was hard

Yeah, and then uh, then it went away and I didn't have that anymore and I was unfulfilled. Uh-huh And then when did away and I didn't have that anymore and I was unfulfilled. And then when did you get your camera? It was around a little after that. And then I started liking photography. So tell me about the photography. The bit at the start there, by the way, Matt, was Rectal got emotional when Dr. Cade talked about, like he kind of pooched a bit more about why he felt sad

when the game stopped and he said it felt was the only thing I cared about, the only thing I practiced my whole life and I really loved. And it was not irrelevant. And then he he starts to break down, which is what you heard, like that kind of response at the start. And then Dr. Kay goes on to talk about what was going on there, but then moves back to the camera.

Like, when did you get your camera? And this is in reference to Rekful saying that like he was depressed but then he got into photography and then he was okay for a couple of years and then Dr. K has a thesis on that. But he, just to be clear, he hasn't heard this detailed information about you know the history of photography or whatever. It's been a brief mention that, you know, he got into photography. Yeah. Yeah. And that helped him. Well, so hold on. Let's talk about this.

So I think you're on to something, but that your solution is half correct. So why do you think it is that photography, like, do you remember when you started doing photography? Like how old were you? I was 16. My dad bought me a camera for my birthday and I remember taking a bunch of pictures of film camera and then I got developed. I looked at him and I was like, Oh, I really liked this. This is fun. And that's it. Nothing more to it than that. And then Dr. K talks about this. So the Recville mentioned that, like, he was he won an award as a teenager for like a photo.

You've got put into an exhibit and Dr. K thinks this is very important. So tell me about the photography. It's really hard when it's about artistic things. I can't remember, like the feeling in the wild. Like I don't know, but I was in a, I took pictures for a while and then my parents took me on a trip to Europe to show me where they used to live in Switzerland and neighboring countries.

I took a lot of pictures there and I came back and I got a bunch of my pictures printed out. And then I walked around South Hollywood and like into art galleries and showed them my pictures. and one of them put my pictures up in the gallery And then I remember feeling good Yeah, did that happen and and when did the depression come back after the pictures? Could have been around the time with the gallery because everyone liked other people's pictures way more than mine. So Dr. K's thesis is like, Recful is so good at, you know, naturally gifted individual

and he was very good at photography and he was rewarded by his photography being displayed in an exhibit. So this kind of made him feel like he'd won the game. I mean, life went back to being born, right? Because there's no challenge. I think the thing that the reason that that photography may have lost is its interest is, is this is going to sound really bizarre is not because other people's photography was better than yours. Because something tells me that when someone is better than you at something, that actually pulls. Oh, I actually want to try it's a drive. Yeah,

what happened? Your fucking problem was that you were young. You were how old? 16. And someone put up your artwork in a gallery in Hollywood. And that means you won the game. That doesn't mean you lost. That means you fucking won. OK. I didn't feel like I won, but yeah, OK. Yeah, I means you fucking want. Okay. I feel like I won. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I know you didn't. But I think the real problem there because it's weird, right? Like you would think that I would you would think so we have to just understand that like we would think certain things but we have to look at the data of your life and interpret it. What was disappointing what got you out of photography or when it lost its luster was actually at the height of your career and you could have kept going. So this is the issue, like a lack of challenge, but you heard that Rekholt said, well, you know, I didn't feel like I wanted, but that's not Dr. K's thesis, right? So he says, even

when you feel it doesn't match, like, you know, we have to look at the data of your life and see, you know, the patterns that are there. But he only knows the absolute bare bones of our Dr. Eckfels life. And now he's interpreting the patterns, you know, in a way that overrides what Rekful's reaction is to the description. Yeah, yeah. Just can't emphasize enough just how little information Dr. K is going on here. It's a very short conversation, a very brief mention of buying a camera and getting into photography and the game Asheron's Call is it.

And from that, Dr. K immediately moves to his grand thesis, which is that what Recful's real problem is, is that he's not challenged enough when he gets to a point where he's no longer any hills to climb or whatever, he gets that success, then he's not challenged and he life loses all meaning for him. And in a way, this fits his defense with Dr. Mike, because it's true. Like no professional therapy should ever look like this. Right. But the issue is, is the confidence and the degree of surety with which Dr. Kay is, is diagnosing it and telling RecFul what his problem is.

He's figured it out. He's the psychiatrist. He knows all of the theory. And so you can see that this does have an impact and an impact where Recful agrees, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the thing. So listen to this. And the thing, Recful, is that you don't like being yourself. And so when you can pull yourself out of being yourself,

It's true. it's an amazing feeling because you don't have to be wrecked right because wreckfuls life isn't worth living like you can wake up today and you can eat or not eat but who the fuck cares it's just wreckfuls life but when you're doing photography you're like you're not wreckful anymore right you're like taking a picture. You become kind of like one with the picture. And then the problem is like, once you get good at that, then you're like back to being wreckful.

Like you've conquered that. And so you're like, okay, well now what? Yeah. I mean, Chris, this, this, this should come across to everyone as disturbing to listen to mainly Rick Fall's responses. Yeah, emotional breakdown. Yeah, yeah, and it happens quite a few times and Dr. K blithely moves on with his extrapolations. Yeah, it's not pleasant to listen to. No, and so there's, Rackful is talking about making a game.

And his motivation is, you know, initially that he says it's just wants to make like a good game. And that's what he thought it's about. Yeah. I know I always wanted to make a game for sure. When I started playing an MMO when I was 10, just because Gary wanted to make a Pokemon MMO. And we were doing research

on other MMOs, and then I ended up playing it for six, seven years from 1999. So, it's kind of funny. I always thought it was a cool idea to make a game. I started streaming on Twitch because some game company made a game called Forge and said that if I advertised their game I could work for them or something or you know help design the game and that you know didn't their game didn't succeed so they never hired me. And then now I finally can make my own game just you know because I've been streaming for a long time and can fund it.

But Dr. K says, you know, no, it's about giving people the purpose that you like lacked. And in interpreting his project like this, he again gets an emotional reaction. What do you like about what you're doing? I like, I like that I'm trying to give people something I wanted as a kid. What is what is the who's the focus on? Who are you thinking about? I just think people have an experience with it. Yeah. So I'll tell you, Reckful, listen carefully now. Your depression, you're trying to cure the depression that is growing within kids out

there today. You're trying to protect them from what happened to you. Yeah. That how does that feel? That feels good. Yeah. Feels meaningful. Yeah. Good is an understatement. It's the understatement of the fucking year.

It is vital. It is crucial. You must do this thing. I agree with you, yeah. Yeah. I think it's the fucking understatement of the year when you say, yeah, it's like, it like gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. Like, no, this is, this is dharma. I've talked about dharma. You may not know what I'm talking about. People who watch regularly.

This is dharma. You guys are seeing it. Right? Oh, yeah. One thing to mention is that actually, I've talked about Tharmur, you may not know what I'm talking about. People who watch regularly. This is Tharmur. You guys are seeing it. Right. Oh, yeah. One thing to mention is that actually Wreckful does reuse this kind of interpretation in a way, like in a less emphasized way about, you know, his motivation being to give something that he would have liked when he was younger or whatnot. But so it isn't the Dr. K fabricates it out of nothing, but it's more that he spins a very elaborate interpretive web

from a fairly kind of throwaway comment, right? This leads to elaborate interpretation. But I do just want to say that, like, Rectful did bring up that point first. So it isn't invented from whole cloth. Just giving credit. Okay. So one thing to note here is that from these conversations and whatnot, Recville felt that he was getting help.

Right. He explained that and that he, you know, felt better after them. And maybe he did, but I have no idea about like, you know, the impact this had on him overall. But regardless, you can hear him emotionally breaking down on the stream here. And Dr. K has given him this narrative about like what the game means, right? And that already seems to be like a dangerous thing to do, to tell somebody prone to over interpreting things that this is your life's purpose. Like, he told Dr. K earlier that he attempted suicide over a computer game. And now he's telling him that finishing this game, completing is the most important thing and everything depends on it.

And, you know, I just want to remind people that, yeah, like as you said before, this is a live stream. There are people donating money to Dr. K live, and this is, this is monetized. This is entertainment for the vast majority of people listening. Yeah, this would be so different as a private conversation because there you could take issue with Dr. K's interpretation, but the issue is it's about that person, right? It's solely about that person and the relationship you're having with them.

And you could say, well, this therapist got bad advice, whatever. But the point was the therapeutic encounter. In this case, Dr. K is clear, this isn't therapy. I remember he said that's not therapy. It's just a conversation with someone about mental health and educational things. Is that what this sounds like? Is this how you talk with residents? No, it's not. So this is why people were finding this to be something they've never seen before. Yeah, look, Chris, I mean, like, absolutely, it presents a massive conflict of interest, right? Because Dr. K may well be this shittier therapist in private practice, right? You know, they're a good therapist, a bad therapist, you know, who knows what goes on. But the important thing, as you said, is that in that relationship, the therapist is getting paid to help that person, right?

That is the function of the interaction. Maybe they do a good job, maybe they do a bad job, but that's their only incentive. It's very different when you are broadcasting a live stream that is being monetized because then your incentive is entirely different. It has nothing to do with, regardless of what Dr. K says, the financial incentives, right? Have nothing to do with, with helping the person in question. Um, that's the issue.

with helping the person in question. That's the issue. Again, I have to say, I don't like these clips, right? Because they're showing somebody emotionally unstable and vulnerable, but I think they're important to play to show why it is that he got in controversy. Yeah, this is the thing that ends up with the official reprimand. right? And we'll get to Dr. K's response about the reprimand. But this is talking a bit more about the video game and Wreckful, like the meaning that is invested

in it and whatnot. I don't think you're talking about playing a fucking video game. I think you're talking about being alone. I think you're talking about being abandoned. And you don't want people to feel the way that you felt. And think you're talking about being abandoned. And you don't want people to feel the way that you felt. And so you're trying to make the world a better place. Maybe. What are you feeling right now? I don't know. It's just happening automatically. I am yeah, I'm not thinking anything

Take a moment. Yeah, it's nice to feel something. Yeah It's kind of weird right because you Because you're crying. So most people associate that as like a thing that they don't want to feel. No, I liked it. Yeah. How do you feel? What do you feel in your body? I feel like, um, in my body, I don't know how to describe it. I don't know. I feel like I just passed something. Yeah. And kind of hopeful, I guess, for the future maybe.

I imagine you feel a little bit lighter, but what we can call it is leveling up. A little bit. You just level leveling up. A little bit. You just leveled up. Leveling up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you can see, Matt, that like Dr. K's regarding this as like positive development, you know, helping Reg, Reg Phil, he's like getting to the bottom of all of these serious issues.

And yes, emotion is coming out, but that's just what happens. Right. But again, is that what happens in informal conversations with people? Have I ever cried? There's very few people I've cried with. Right. And certainly not in front of thousands of people. Yeah. I mean, like I feel incredibly uncomfortable even us playing these clips second hand, but I feel like, like you said, we need to, because you need to document what the process is here and what the issues are with it.

I mean, Dr. K would have that this is a wonderful moment. They're breaking through, they're finding new insights. Wreckful is discovering things about himself and moving on to the next level. What I see is someone who's extremely socially competent and pretty manipulative playing around with someone who's incredibly vulnerable and in serious trouble. And it's all being done in public for entertainment and monetized. That's what I see, Chris. Yeah, I can see that reading, though.

I think my perspective is actually slightly less cynical because I think Dr. K fully believes his self-story about him, this kind of unique fusion of Western and Eastern perspectives that is able to like get to the heart of people's problems effectively, right? Because he's a good goddamn therapist, right? So I don't think he regards this as, you know, like not serious or plain, but he regards it as this is him showing. Like when he's talking about like he wants to educate people about mental health, I think he does see this the way that he describes it like this is telling people about the proper way to process things and all that kind of stuff.

So like basically I'm saying I think he buys a lot of his own self narrative and his self narrative is that he's helping Rekful and like helping to resolve these or at least identify these deep-seated issues. Well, you could be right. I mean, I'm sure Tim Poole sees himself as an independent truth seeker telling it like it is and not in the pay of the Russian government. I'm sure Brett Weinstein sees himself as a very serious evolutionary biologist. I don't really care. But you know.

Well, I can put a tick in your corner. So, Rekful goes off the stream to go pee or something, you know, when they decide to take a break. And Dr. K interacts with Rekful's chat. So listen to how he talks when Breckville is gone, like what he decides to focus on talking to the chat about. If you guys want a Harvard, Andy, I'm I trained at Harvard Medical School and I'm faculty at Harvard Medical School, which a lot of people seem to get a kick out of. And my main area of interest until about one year ago was incorporating like Eastern medicine, like Eastern ideas and philosophy. So studying a lot of like yoga and meditation and Buddhism, Hinduism,

some of the more esoteric spiritual practices as well into mental health treatment. And my experience has been that like, our Western understanding of mental health is just woefully incomplete. And there are a lot of reasons for that. And I've had a lot of success through helping people kind of like Rectful by sort of getting to some root issues, which is what what the Eastern system kind of conceptualizes. Like Western medicine thinks about depression is like something that you just treat with an SSRI, like you just give them medication, and you do

some therapy. And then like, it's just a disease that you live with for the rest of your life. Like there's this idea in western medicine that once you get diagnosed with depression you have depression your entire life. I don't believe that. I mean I think some people do but in my experience I've had some people in my practice who have had bipolar disorder who like are off of medications and they have these sort of really powerful spiritual or psychological experiences that really get to the root of where their illness comes from. And by getting to that root, you can actually like have someone have a transformative experience, which is what I believe. And in in Rackful's case, I think that, you know, he may fit criteria for bipolar disorder type 2.

He gets interrupted because Rack-Po comes back. So there you had so many classic things from the last episode as well, right? Dr. K is fusing Eastern spirituality with Western science. And in that equation, Western science is coming out much worse, as we saw last time. He's fixing the deficiencies because Western medicine is just about giving people like SSRIs, without actually dealing with it. It says when you've got a disease, you've got it for your whole life. There's no actual cure. It's just managing symptoms. And like in his experience, even people who have had bipolar disorder and they're off their medications, that's when they can have transformative spiritual experiences that help them resolve

the root issues. Like that's a big Andy got in the mention about, you know, he's Harvard Edgy. Some people get a kick out of him being Harvard medical staff, you know. That's right. This is just a conversation between people. It's not a professional dealing with him, but it is worth reminding people about his qualifications. And he does emphasize that he's helping Rec fall right now

by getting to what he sees as the really rude issues. But again, it's not clinical therapy of any kind. That's just what he's doing. And you saw again how at the beginning there, he very quickly sort of dismissed those clinical diagnoses. You know, what you don't have is clinical depression because you don't fit the description. What you really lack is, you know, meaning being challenged, whatever. So, like he's fitting Rekful in to his grand theory of esoteric cosmic therapy. And it's really not

about rectal, right? I think it's the fucking understatement of the year when you say, yeah, it's like, it like, gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. Like, no, this is, this is dharma. I've talked about dharma, you may not know what I'm talking about. People who watch regularly, this is dharma, you guys are seeing it. Right? This is like, this is duty or responsibility. It's not something that you're doing. This is the other thing. The really powerful thing about

this, and we'll get to the roots of your depression. The really powerful thing about this is that you're not thinking about yourself anymore. Some, I don't know, I'd like to feel selfless like that, but I don't know that it's true. You know, I'd like that. You're thought. Yeah. We'll, we'd like that. You're not. Yeah. We'll get to how you're thinking about yourself. So I think now we also understand the roots of your depression. Rec for like plays a part.

And yeah, it just gets to the real ethical issues here, which is it's it's about his brand and it's about the audience. And he's not helping. Recful. And so just this is one of the last clips from this where there's an emotional aspect to it. But so again, just look at the questions and again think is this therapeutic or not? Is this like a normal conversation about mental health? Let's see. Yeah, so, I mean, this is gonna sound like kind of a weird question,

maybe a leading question, but I can see a certain beautiful purpose with five-year-old you in your life. What was your purpose? Five-year-old me? Yeah, what was five-year-old you's purpose? Fuck, I don't know. I just wanted to play. I want to be as good as my brothers to play games with them. Something, I think. Yeah, right? It's like. I want to be as good as my brothers to play games with them. Something I think. Yeah, right. It's like simple, but it was it was pure and it was simple and it was it was like it was absolutely there. Right? Like you were excited about that. Like that's what

that's what you live for. Like, yeah, and you would like watch them play. Yeah. Yeah, it's simple, yeah. I fucking came out of nowhere, sorry. Yeah, that's okay. What are you feeling now? I don't know. It just happens automatically. That's really fucking painful. Just asking, like he's talking about one of his brother committed suicide, right? His memories of them and about like what he wanted to do when he was a five-year-old and just play games and all this and like and he's already been distraught, you know, or emotionally vulnerable during the episode so like talking about that

topic already, you know, that's needling or you know, or you can say digging, getting to the root issue but But like his response is showing he's emotionally vulnerable. And then just that therapist's speech of, so how does that make you feel? What are you feeling now? And like, I just, I know that's what therapists say, right? I know in a therapeutic setting, that might be a reasonable thing to say, why you, you know, why are you crying? No, or that kind of thing. But just in this setting, it just feels like... Exploitative. Exploitative. Yeah, exploitive. Like, tell me why you're freaking breaking down on stream. Like, ugh. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a few weeks since we listened to the full recording and listen to these clips again now.

I'm just sorry. It's making me incredibly angry. It really pisses me off. This is not good. Yeah. And okay, we'll round the corner with this. We've only got a couple more clips with this interview. But so to see how this is tied in to the interpretive framework, okay. And here you get, you know, Dr. K responding to that. So, Rackful, I think you love five year old you a lot. And I think you have a lot of hurt because something really bad happened to him. Yeah, like you love that kid. And something that was just terrible happened to him. Do you see how like that kid is not

you? Like that's like, yeah, fuck it's not. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not right. It's a different no, but you love him so much and in the problem Here is that you're trying to protect him You try so hard to protect him and take away What happened to him, but you just can't do it? And you don't know how to help him Yeah, what does he need Yeah, what does he need? Sure.

I don't know come to terms with reality. Nope. No, just think about it for a second. Like what does he need? Like what do you want to protect him from? I have no idea. Okay. So, but but you understand that he's different. And you

understand that something happened to him. What happened to him? Let's start there. He got quickly shoved out of his comfort zone of family and things he cared about. Yeah, I think comfort zone. I'm not I'm not buying this. comfort zone is a weird term. Yeah, I was trying to. Yeah. So so what happened? I went different term. It's way more powerful than comfort.

Oh, it's true. How do I word it? How do I word it? Well, he had family and then he didn't. Absolutely. There you go. Right? It's so simple. Yeah. Like, Matt, even with the best of intentions there, that's asking someone in a vulnerable state to confirm your, like he gave an answer, right? It's about getting out of my comfort zone or whatever and Doug says, no, no, no, no. That's not what it's about. Like, what is it?

Think harder. Think what it's about, right? And you can hear him being like, you know, I don't know, like what should I say? What's it like? And to me, I'm again, not a therapist, let's be clear, but that sounds to me like someone's searching for approval from, you know, somebody that considers authority and wanting to say the right thing, right? And not because he like doesn't believe it, but because he probably believes

that this person can help them, right? And is actually identifying the issue, right? So Dr. K wants him to say, it's about giving, restoring that kid's, like giving him the family that he lost or the happiness or this kind of thing. And then he gets, OK, so it's about family. And Dr. K is like, yes, that's it.

That's it. And he's like, yeah, great. And it sounds to me like even if he was right, there's so much feedback that is pushing you in the direction of say what I want to hear here. And you'll get the emotional payoff and the kind of like positive feedback. Say something else and I'll be like, no, no, no, come on, try harder. Yeah. Well, your instinct there that this is not what responsible therapy looks like, I think is completely correct, Chris.

I mean, in a way, this isn't new. You know, Dr. Phil, the celebrity psychologist from the Oprah Winfrey show. I mean, this has been pioneered in the United States before, which is to do a kind of sham therapy on air for entertainment. therapy on air for entertainment. And it's not therapy, but it is like a shambolic imitation of like wham bam, bang, we've solved it. Wow. Look at this insight.

It was all to do with the mother. That's what it was all along. You know, it's entertainment. But the problem is, is that this is a real person. It's a real person, right? Who is not just like, you know, a celebrity or influence a person who's coming on for shits and giggles. And yeah, it's quite staggering that the red flags weren't raised there for Dr. K if he is a proper psychiatrist and he

didn't just say, look, I'm sorry, like 20 minutes in just said look sorry everyone this this was a second gonna stop this now and and we're gonna talk offline and I'm gonna do these things but but he doesn't he continues and gets more enthusiastic and more into his stride as the interview goes on yeah and he actually so there's these two clips Matt they're kind of related. You heard him saying that, you know, the what's this about? Why are you making this game? Because this is what relates to the game, right?

The motivation is that from Dr. K's filming of it, there's the heel five-year-old wreckful or others that may follow in his path by giving them, you know, the means to be happy, like for this game that he's going to make. And Dr. K links this to his kind of comic destiny. What does he need? Family. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Fuck, dude. Okay. Alright. It's nice how simple it is. Yeah. The things that fuck us over always are. Now this is the really profound thing. Wreckful.

Is that while this seems like it fucked you over, in a sense of course it didn't. It's not. It's not. always are. Now, this is the really profound thing, Wreckful, is that while this seems like it fucked you over, in a sense, of course it did, but in a sense it didn't. This is your karma. This is what happened to you and this is what's made you the person that you are. This is the religious destiny stuff coming in, which you know, already he had earlier when he was

talking about Wreckful being this kind of genius from an early age who isn't challenged, right? He's been chosen by his karmic destiny to make this game. And just to put a pin on that before I let you respond, This is the last clip avoid that And then now I finally can make my own game just you know, because I'm just Streaming for a long time and can fund it. Yeah, so wreckful. This is really important to understand Okay, and I'm gonna reference some stuff that I've talked about before So I want you to understand that Everything that's happened in your life has brought you to this point. You've always wanted to make a game, but that's a desire.

That's just like, man, I've always wanted to make a game because I'm a gamer and that's kind of cool. Like I also want to, like I've wanted to make games. Like I'm interested in that. I bet a lot of people are. But what got you to where you are, like, like, it has to be the right game. The stars have to align for you to make the game that you need to make. And there's been one really big star missing, which is like purpose. And I think the reason that you're this game, like this game is different.

It's gotta be. Because you're trying to solve something with this game. Yeah. And that's going to give you the strength that you need to actually solve it. Yeah. I'm a little worried. I don't know that I'll initially solve it on first release right away, but I want to, you know, always be patching and iterating to get there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, notice the tone of authority there at the beginning. Like he uses phrases like, now what you really need to understand and so on. Like he's telling Recfall exactly how it is. And I mean, the other thing that makes me super uncomfortable about what he's doing

here is that throughout this thing, he's latched on to making this game as being. This is the key thing for finding meaning and accomplishing his goals. That's the absolutely key thing. And like any professional should appreciate that, like that's a risky thing, right? Someone that is clearly at risk, right? Clearly extremely vulnerable, clearly unwell. And you've said everything is riding on you completing this game. Like making a, having a successful computer game release as an independent creator, like that's an incredibly risky thing. And you're saying, yep, it all rides on this. This is someone who's committed suicide several times. And he's very casual about that. Doesn't seem to notice the risk involved in putting that onus on REC4. Yeah. I mean, that strikes me. I keep feeling like I'm not a therapist and I'm

noticing the huge warning lights of telling someone who's talked about killing themselves because the game ended that they, you know, when they were younger that like, no, I put your purpose, everything you are, your karmic destiny is for you to produce this game. This is the world, the heal people. Right. This is, this is why you and just like one, as you say, what if the game never gets made? Right. What if it doesn't? What if it like never for various reasons, it doesn't work out? What if it's not popular?

What if it doesn't fulfill any of that? It does. I mean, Recful Field is life's purpose. Right. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a that's a lot. And it would be kind of reasonable. I feel like if you were talking to someone about it, if you were talking to just me and saying, Chris, it's your purpose to make this podcast.

This is what you need to do, right? Because I would be like, all right, Matt, cool it. Cool it. Don't get so thing. But you could say that, and it wouldn't be this big, the injurious impact for me if the podcast like went away. Right. I'd find something else. But if I said to you, I'm an expert in psychiatry, I've got up from Harvard,

I've got all this experience in counseling patients. I can see to the very heart of you and I figured you out. And you're at this point in time, incredibly vulnerable, Chris. Your life is falling apart. The hope that the podcast, Decuting the Gurus, is going to go well is the only thing that's keeping you going. And I lay a lot on you. That's not a good thing to do.

I mean, look, I mean, I'm not a clinical psychologist either, Chris. I'm just like a normal psychologist. But you know, there's probably a clinical psychologist either, Chris. I'm just like a normal psychologist. But you know, there's probably people listening who are clinical psychologists. So, you know, I will post the link to the full interview. And, you know, by all means, if you guys want to listen to it and let us know if we're wrong, if we're seeing red flags that you think are totally fine, please, please drop us a note. Let us know. Yeah, it's hard to tell. Right. Like, so I'm curious how other people interpret this, but like, there's one last clip from this conversation I want to play, I forgot about. It's actually from

the start of the conversation, like way, way back, right. And after Rachel's talking about his depression and whatnot, Dr. K asks him about like, why he exists? What's the point of existence, right? And just listen to this. And is that all you are? You're just a biological organism? And I have consciousness, which we can't really explain the hard problem.

Okay, right. Yeah, so what does that mean? Like what do you think about your life? Like what's the like do you feel like your life has purpose? Most of the time no, but recently I've started to think yes because I realized I can start trying to help other people who have had my same problems so I relate to them. And then I hope by making this game I'm working on that they can find friendship and a sense of community. Because I'm making an MMO, like a really, yeah. Okay, that's awesome, man. Things I wanted as a kid.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to just dive into Sanskrit for a second, okay? So Sanskrit, the yogis like back in ancient India like thousands of years ago basically started to believe that the world was false. And the reason that they started to believe the world was false is because they sort of understood that like the sense organs can be falsified. So either through the use of hallucinogens or dreams, but ultimately that the experience that they have within a dream is actually the same

experience that you have within reality. That even though a dream can be fake or real, your experience of a dream is the same as your experience of life. Like you can feel suffering, you can feel joy, you can feel joy, you can feel hope, you can feel sorrow, abject terror. And so what they realized is that like ultimately, the foundation of reality is actually consciousness. And that the foundation of reality is experience and that the external world is false.

The external world is false, right? And, Matt, just the last bit that follows after that. The act of observation that our consciousness has created power. Now, the interesting thing is that if you... So now we get to Sanskrit, and this is kind of a real roundabout way of getting to this idea. So the yogis actually came up with two words for reality. One is Maya. Maya means illusion, and the other is Leela, and Leela means play. And so interestingly enough, both of these sort of imply a falseness to the universe, but I think what's happening is on some sense you've had an experience either through psilocybin or other things, and I suspect other things, and we'll get to that later, that has given you a sense that something about the world is not

real and what happens is when you're happy yeah we'll get to that when you're happy you can exist in a lila state which is like it's no big deal that the world isn't real it's play like let's just have a good time it's actually just like a video game. Like just because of- It's like an experience machine. Yeah. Seeing the issues there. Telling someone who is suicidal

this philosophical point of view that the world is false and reality isn't real, that it's all just a game. Yeah, I see some issues there. and reality isn't real, that it's all just a game. Yeah, I see some issues there. And Wreckful, by the way, on his last stream before he killed himself, talked multiple times about whether life was just a simulation and if he kills himself, whether he'll go to the next level. Yeah.

Now, he was a gamer. He was a gamer. Right. So it's probably just the vocabulary he had. I'm sure he had that thought before. But, you know, that would be a point of concern. Right. Like because even if Dr. K isn't the person that put that idea there or whatever, it shows that that idea could be on someone's mind just before they kill themselves.

So talking about it here seems very irresponsible, especially when it's not necessary. Like he's inserting the Ayurvedic, you know, like just the kind of general philosophy. What if we're all, you know, what if this is all a dream and stuff? And like, it's all an illusion. And you know, when you die, you'll level up or like, yeah, it's not the right thing to be talking about with someone in this state of mind. It's just not anyway. Yeah. So there we go. That's a conversation from Freckville. Very cheerful topic.

Yeah. But there's more, right? There's five. So this is conversation one, five more sessions with Freckville. This is the one that I think caused a lot of problems while other stuff happened in other streams. And so compare all of that to what Dr. K described as conversations as being with Dr. Mike. Now we're going to move on to look at his response after this event, right, where he's got criticism or he's being officially reprimanded

related to his handling of like these streams. And let's see how he frames what he, you know, was doing and has done in interviews and see if they match up. Sounds good. Let's see how he frames what he was doing and has done in interviews and see if they match up. Sounds good. Let's do that. So if I'm a mental health professional and I talk to people about their mind or their mental health, does that qualify as clinical care? That's your concern, right?

It's not a concern. I'm just curious how you toe the line. Yeah. When do you decide that you will talk about anedonia or you've talked about one now you don't want to stray into the two, three, four, or five. Yeah, so it's a good question. So a couple of other mental things that I do is if there's a conversation that I would have with my kids or a loved one, that's something that I would consider okay in a weird way, right?

So like for example, when I'm teaching someone about their personality and the way that they react to things, I have those conversations with my kids. I think it is a part of my parental duty to teach people, like my kids, like how their mind works and how they respond to situations. Now if we say that that qualifies as the practice of medicine, that means that I'm committing a ethical problem every single time I try to teach my kids about their mind. Right.

Yeah, it's an interesting argument he's got there. So he says that if what he does in one of these online sessions resembles what he does with his children or his partner, then by definition, it's like real life. So it's not therapy. And I think there's a problem with that. Firstly, I mean, we've sort of heard in some previous recordings that he doesn't necessarily talk to his family in a conventional kind of way, as we heard in his conversation with his wife there online.

Right. So you're saying basically this sentence, I feel like I'm dragging the relationship down despite her telling me that I'm doing fine as long as I'm working on myself. Listen to her. Yeah. So I think the perspective, this person is asking for my perspective because I've been closer to that situation than you have. I want to listen to her. No, I mean, that's not sufficient. Go ahead. So I'm a little bit concerned with how disrespectful you are to me on stream.

Okay. What do you think about that? I'm serious. Okay. What do you think about that? I'm serious. Um, okay. Do you understand what I'm saying? Tell me more. So, like, when you say go ahead, it implies that you're giving me permission to speak. Oh, that's because we were both talking and then then the same. You can talk. Right. And I will stop talking. So when you say like, if, yeah, I think it should be a little bit more, like

if I'm speaking, you should ask me if you want to interrupt to begin with. Okay. Um, but the other thing too is that, I mean, this really doesn't matter. What you do in your personal life and whether it's normal or unusual or sounds like therapy is beside the point. As we said earlier, what matters is whether or not what you're doing appears to be therapy to the person that you're talking to. And if you're representing yourself as an expert, as an authority, someone that who is telling you

what your problems are, and it sounds like you're getting their case history, diagnosing them and then telling them what to do. If that's how it's perceived by the person that you're dealing with, then you've got a problem, I think. Yeah. And I also think the way that you speak to loved ones and close family members, you know, people that you have intimate relationships with, it's usually different, right, than people that you've just met and are talking to in front of an audience. And if it isn't, there's something odd in one of those categories, right? But even setting that aside, for me, the strong rhetorical move there is

to say, well, I'm being criticized for having these conversations with influencers, which people are describing as therapy. But I have similar kinds of conversations with my kids. So am I violating ethics by just giving advice to my kids? And like, no, nobody is saying that you're violating ethics by talking to your kid about their mind, right? So there is no confusion there because it actually is a very different thing. You're doing that presumably in private, not with an audience, not with a celebrity figure. And talking about the mind is different than digging into the individual traumatic history of someone or their, you know, potential mental illnesses in front of an audience.

So he's saying, well, these things are the same, but actually, no, they're different. And that's why nobody objects to you talking to your children about like how their mind works. Yeah. I mean, there are no professional guidelines that rule over how people talk within their families, right? That's irrelevant. Is that true?

Like, I'm sure there must be things that say you, when engaging with family members, that you must also adhere to medical ethics, right? I'm sure there's the boundaries and whatnot are different, but I doubt there's something like anything goes with like family, you know, use your skills as you see fit. I mean, I don't know. I haven't read the fine print of these, of these things, you know, use your skills as you see fit. I mean, I don't know. I haven't read the fine print of these things, but I thought that mainly that they pertain to your professional activities, but yeah.

Well, I'm sure they do, but I think this is why you can get in issues around like family members and friends, right? Like if you're in a professional role. So you have to be careful. And actually Dr. Mike Rees' issues like this. So listen to this. I've had people in my personal life,

friends, loved ones, et cetera, that we would either get into an argument or they would come to see me for advice. And I'm like, I don't know where the line is here of should I be doing this because there's such a clear conflict of, you might be my girlfriend, you might be my close childhood friend,

you might be my brother. How far can I go without saying that I'm practicing medicine? Yeah, so like let's ask that question, right? So let's say that you're dating someone and they just had a bad day at work. Are you allowed to use reflective listening and empathic statements when you're talking to this person that you're in a relationship with?

What do you think? I think empathic listening would be fine. I think when you cross into the line of them asking, well, you're trained. Why do you think this is happening? Do you think this is related to episode X that happened 10 years ago? And now it's starting to cross into more medical questions I would ask my patients. Yeah. So I think that's where the line that I use is we have clear, very clear diagnostic questions.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it isn't cool. Like, do you remember that there was like a comedy based in New York and it was based on a true story about a therapist who uses his power over this guy to sort of control him and manipulate him? I've forgotten the name of it, unfortunately. But basically that's the case of them blurring. It starts off as a clinical relationship, but this guy definitely is played by that very funny guy who's in Talladega Knights, that kind of, you know, that very funny guy. Ricky Bobby, man. Yeah, yeah. Will Farrell. That's a good, yeah, Will Farrell, thanks. So that's a good illustration for anyone who's

seen it of what could go wrong, right? So you've got this therapist who's supposed to be his help with this person, then they start blurring the boundaries between this is a clinical relationship versus like a deeper friendship kind of life partner type business partner, something or other type relationship. But he's still maintaining all of those sort of clinical hooks and using it to manipulate this guy. And it's very clear in that show that he's using it for his own ends, right? He's using that manipulative power and the way that this guy perceives him as an authority over him to basically benefit himself, not Will Ferrell. Now I think that's a perfect analogy for what's going on here.

If you have a relationship with someone and you're dating them or whatever, and you start building up this perception of yourself as this authority over them, maybe they've got some sort of mental illness or struggling with something or whatever, and then you use it to control them to get them to do what you want for the relationship to suit you, then obviously that's a massive problem. So I think that there's a huge analogy here to what he's doing with this online streaming performance, entertainment, therapy stuff, because clearly his interests are not aligned with the people that he's talking to. His interests are aligned with the revenue and the profile that he's building on this show. It's not an exercise in disinterested whatever.

Let me give you the devil's advocate argument against that. So his interest is in, you know, yes, promoting himself as an authority and growing his channel and that. But what if he can help influencers by these conversations as well? So what if, you know, if the people were having terrible experiences and they were finding themselves traumatized by it and whatnot, then that would damage his reputation. He wouldn't be able to get people to come on and whatnot. So the fact that many people are feeling that the help that other people are seeing them

and saying, you know, I realized from this that I too, you know, might suffer from anxiety and stuff. Isn't there a case, and I know that he does make this case, that everybody is doing this voluntarily, everybody is adults, and most people, like the Wreckful competition we played, but a lot of other people will have said, you know, I had an interesting conversation, I learned things about myself. So in that sense, aren't their interests aligned? No, I don't think their interests are aligned. Like I could take money from the gambling industry, right? He could be funding me to do stuff that is actually genuine research. And, you know, they're not putting pressure on me to sort of

change the things to the results or falsify things or anything like that. But there is still a conflict of interest there in terms of the benefits that I'm getting in terms of that research funding and their interests. And it doesn't matter if in a particular case or something like that, that, you know, that it turns out to be no problem. It didn't affect me. I did good research or whatever. There's still a major issue there. Now, I kind of agree with you that that when he's doing this live therapy, whatever it is, with someone, yeah, with someone in a, in a cat who is he was there casually, you know, who maybe is an influencer and an online person themselves, and they're there casually, they don't have any major issues. And they're there for a bit of fun, maybe talk about chakras and their experiences as a kid and everyone goes home happy. I'm sure that's the case.

But we see in the case of Recfall what happens when it is serious and it's not just for a bit of fun. So yeah, look, I kind of agree with you that I think in some cases, the risk may well be minimal. Yes, it's good entertainment. People enjoy listening to it. The person who he's talking to is happy as well. His brand grows. It all works out.

But when it becomes real therapy, when the person really perceives them as a therapist, when they really perceive that they've just been diagnosed, like in 10 minutes flat, he's figured out what's wrong with them and they really agree, yes, I need to change my life based on this 10 minute chat and it's all spurious, then so I guess there's basically two scenarios scenarios one is that it's light and fluffy and it's kind of bullshit but harmless or the scenario where it's actually like perceived as real perceived as important in which case it's not harmless there is a specific example I believe where somebody did the

interview don't stream not wreckful went on to indicate that he had become the therapist, like formally. So that leads to, you know, that's the kind of blurring line business. But in any case, Matt, so one of the things that we heard about in the earlier content is about like, you know, Dr. K has this, he's looked up the definitions and he understands what goes into a clinical therapeutic relationship and he's clear that that's not there on the stream. So, here's him kind of reiterating a summary format, this position to Dr. Mike. I think there's a big difference between talking to someone about their problems and the practice of psychotherapy.

And you think that's because of the specific defined guidelines that you have to hit within the conversation? Not just the guidelines, it's also things like if we think about like a, so when I'm doing psychotherapy, I have to put together a formulation. So this is usually a biopsychosocial formulation of what's going on with a patient.

And this kind of is like a map, this is really like analyzing everything from their upbringing to biological genetic factors. And we kind of put that together. So there's a lot more formal robustness to it, because we have guidelines, kind of like you said, right? So the practice of psychotherapy is like you spend usually a long amount of time with someone.

You do an intake with them. You spend like two hours running through all kinds of different questions then you Put together a formulation then you put together a treatment plan and as part of that treatment plan You do like a B C D and E I think having conversations about mental health does not touch that like what I do with my patients and my practice is Very different from what I do on stream. Yeah, I mean, this is the consistent defense he's got in different ways, which is that he says,

oh, what I do professionally is quite different. And he could talk about creating a full psychosocial life history map and ticking off check boxes or whatever. But I mean, one, you're taking that on trust. But two, I really don't think that matters. What matters is how it's perceived by the person you're dealing with. Like to give you a hypothetical example, to illustrate this point, you could be a genuine therapist. You do genuine therapy with real

patients. Then you do your show therapy and your show therapy looks completely different. Right? It's got nothing to do with it, right? It's completely made up or whatever, but it's extremely convincing. You sound very authoritative. You're giving the person that you're talking to the distinct sense that you're diagnosing them, that you're figuring out what's going wrong with them. You know the sources of their problems and you know what they need to do, right? It doesn't matter if what you're doing there, like in the technical details, isn't following good therapeutic practice. In fact, it makes it worse that you're following this different thing. But if it's perceived as such by this vulnerable person, then you have a problem. So I just don't

feel like these defenses stack up. He sort of makes the same defense, I think, in many different ways. But that, I think, is what it boils down to, don't you? Yes, yes, it does. So there's, well, there's one last clip from this Dr. Mike thing, then we'll get to the specific episode he released to respond to questions about his ethics. So this ties in, Mark, to things that we previously saw related to life coaching and spirituality. And that being something of a way to go past some of the ethical constraints that potentially are there if you are practicing modern medicine or kind of licensed therapy, right? So listen to this. And when you talk about like the spiritual aspect of it, or the

coaching aspect of it, where you would take on consultations online, not as a doctor, how is that different? I mean, so I spent seven years studying to become a monk, and I learned a lot about the nature of happiness and suffering. And so I think we're starting to see that blend into clinical practice. So we'll see things like dialectical behavioral therapy or psychotherapists will teach mindfulness.

So let me kind of ask you, so do you think mindfulness is a treatment? Of course. Okay. So if mindfulness is a treatment, do you need a license to practice medicine to deliver treatments? No. And if you have a license, you delivering the treatment carries different weight.

So you think that it is okay for people to give treatments without a license to practice medicine, correct? So how do you decide so for example, like if I'm a random person on the street, I can give IV fentanyl to people and that's okay in your book. I think that there's a difference between Medications that are supplement form It's basically based on the regulation again Again, I think this is an example of, you know, rhetorical tricks he wants to make out like, Oh, you know, would you agree that massage can be a therapy? Yes. So you're saying that if you give a massage to your partner,

then you're doing therapy with them, right? Yeah. You know, you don't have a license. It's, you know, we don't need to break it down too much, I suppose, but it just doesn't stack up that reasoning. And same with making that analogy to prescriptions, right? Oh, so this is therapy. Well, isn't giving fentanyl to someone a therapy also? Well, if you're not a doctor, then it's okay. Just giving fentanyl to people willilly. I just, I find it very slippery. I don't like it. Yeah. And there's also this aspect that Dr. K acknowledges that like spirituality and life coaching gets you around various ethical constraints. Right? So if you frame it that way, you then are not practicing medicine, but you're allowed to do that, right? You're allowed to give people advice and whatnot, so like he can be a doctor but give spiritual and life advice without it being therapy, right? Which is true, but there's a very fuzzy ethical boundary around that whole field. And it's a bit

like supplements and medicine, right? That like supplements are not regulated the same way medicine is, but they often want to make similar sorts of claims, right? And you can make the point that, well, supplement isn't a medicine, right? So it should get regulated in the same way. And it's like, yes, but there is a lot of ethical issues then around. And the fact that maybe a company can get away with, like, as long as it doesn't say it directly cures cancer. But that doesn't mean there's not an ethical issue there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, this is the real world. So there's lots of gray areas. But like you said,

you know, you go to the chemist, you'll see heaps of, you know, bottles of full of multivitamins and echinacea and all kinds of things. And there'll be a bunch of vague promises on the bank label that'll sound and read very similar to the promises on the back of your shampoo bottle, right? With just as much validity to them, right? And that's kind of a problem. And, you know, you and me don't like these things, right? But it's less of a problem because in a way like our society knows, not to like believe what's on the back of a shampoo bottle in the same way that

when we go to the GP and the GP says, uh, you have cancer or you, you are sick, you need to take X and it's going to do Y. Like that's the difference. And that's why these professions, medical professions are regulated. And in the olden days, right, in the United States, for instance, you'd like the phrase snake oil salesman. That was when in a time when this stuff wasn't regulated and you'd have people going around doing a song and dance show up on a stage,

you know, somewhat analogous to Dr. K, what someone might say, and selling something with miraculous treatments, figuring people's problems out on the cuff and promising these great outcomes. And that was a problem. And that's why we have regulation. And maybe you should go and listen to our episodes about what Dr. Kaye mentions about like when you incorporate Ayurveda and how it supercharges the effectiveness and how you can cure people that haven't been able to be cured for decades or years by the standard medical procedures. But in any case, so all of these issues come up, you can hear Dr.

Mike pushing back on them and whatnot. And whenever the event with Rectful, like his suicide, happened, obviously there was a lot of criticism of Dr. Ken. He released a video that was about ethics, right, specifically. And we'll take a look at some of the arguments there. Some of it is familiar, so we don't need to go over all of it to what he raised with Dr. Mike.

But here's the way that he introduces that episode. Hey, y'all, I'd love to talk a little bit about ethics today. There have been several concerns in the community, a lot of questions about whether what we do at Healthy Gamer on stream is therapy, whether what we sort of do at Healthy Gamer as a whole is ethical. And I'd love to sort of talk you all through the ethics of what we do. OK, so there's that like kind of foxy charm there, you know, hey, y'all, you know, some people are saying I'm an unethical manipulative person taking advantage of vulnerable people. Let's have

a chat about that. And, you know, I'm here to help you understand, you know, how seriously we take why people might be making that error. Yeah. So, so, so this is very much on par for Dr. K, of course, leaning into criticism in a kind of love hug, bear hug, rather than fighting against it. But yeah, he is so casual. He is so relaxed. He's kind of emoting throughout this, that there's no problem here. This is this is all, this is so casual. He is so relaxed. He's kind of emoting throughout this that there's no problem here This is this is all this is all good and also Listen for the authoritative tone when it comes to like, you know explaining the details of things, right?

So there's here's the next point The first thing that I kind of want to acknowledge is that most people don't really get an opportunity even in higher education To really understand or learn about medical ethics. Medical ethics aren't really a matter of philosophy or even opinion. So just because I believe what we do is ethical doesn't actually make it ethical.

If someone else believes what we do is unethical, that doesn't actually make it unethical. The truth is, is that medical ethics are actually very, very clearly defined. There are standards of practice that are actually codified in state, federal, and international laws. And licensing boards are very specific about what is ethical and what is not ethical. So ethics aren't really a matter of opinion. I disagree with that claim already, because there's two separate things there,

right? There's the fact that ethics are regulated in professions by professional bodies and that you may, if you are accused of breaking ethics, there's a whole process, right? Where people will go through and check and you might then be fined to be like officially reprimanded for example, or you might have your license revoked or you may be fined not to be violating things. But that's actually a separate thing from whether there actually is ethical concerns because it can certainly be the case that one ethics board decides that what you're doing is okay, and another ethics board would not or another set of people. So, like, you could also get by technically that you haven't broken the letter of the ethics requirements, but you have in spirit. So, Dr. K's presentation

here is like on the one hand, he's right, you know, it's all people online saying does this violate ethical Regulations or not. That's just their opinion man on the but on the other that like ethics is purely a matter of Legalistic technical definitions and weller you are officially found guilty by an ethics board. No Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's another rhetorical trick he's using here because I guess there is like, this is obviously the trivial but stupid point that yes, it's not just anyone's opinion just because someone on Twitter says that you're unethical doesn't mean you are, of course. On the other hand, there may well be like a kind of like a legalistic case that happens at some point where there

is some determination made whether or not you're going to be sanctioned or punished or disbarred or reprimanded or something else. And you know, that can be somewhat legalistic. But just like any legal case, ethics boards are pretty similar. Like you said, is that it is a matter of opinion. You know, like it is a vague thing and you know, you and I have had hundreds together projects that have gone through ethics review boards, I've dealt with questions and done modifications and had a bit of

RG Baji with them from time to time. It is absolutely a matter of debate and opinion. So there's subjective assessments that go in. So there are clear issues that would violate, like violate. There are clear issues that would violate, there are often rules that you cannot inject someone with an unknown substance without them knowing, right? That's clear. That will be written down. But there are also areas where it will be a matter of judgment, like whether this crosses the line or this is reasonable. So he's not technically wrong. He's kind of saying there are clear

cut rules, which there are, but it isn't always so clear cut. Well there are clear cut principles and it is not clear cut and every case is evaluated on its own merits. But the other thing too is that he deliberately conflates two things. One is the kind of deliberations and final evaluation of some ethics review board, right? And then there's the question of like, is it ethical? Is it the right thing to do? Is it a thing a good person would do? And those are not quite one and the same thing. No. Yes, ethics review boards aim to kind of hit that, but it, you know, and so the way he presents it is, it's an extremely technical process that you guys don't understand.

You know, only proper professionals like me do. It's extremely legalistic and there's a kind of a flow chart and this logical thing. And you know, no matter how unethical it might seem to you, don't worry, it isn't because of reasons. Yeah. So yeah, and he first talks about like very general, broad principles of medical ethics. So what are some of the central principles

of medical ethics? The first principle is beneficence. So this is essentially to try to maximize the good that we do. The second principle of medical ethics is non-malphesance. So this is to try to minimize the harm that we do. The third principle of medical ethics is non-malphesance. So this is to try to minimize the harm that we do. The third principle of ethics is autonomy. So this is sort of when doctors,

we provide information to people, but it is ultimately their choice, whether they engage in something or not engage in something. As a patient, you have the right to refuse a treatment, right, so doctors can't make decisions for you. And the fourth major principle of medical ethics is justice. And that's where we try to deliver medical services in a fair way.

So this is the kind of content where you might say that he's delivering educational content, right? Because that's all fine and dandy, right? Like that is very general principles about medicine, do no harm and the other issues that he reads. So that description, there's nothing wrong with that, right? Nothing wrong with that per se. I think he's left out a few aspects of ethical principles that we can get to. Yeah. But I think, you know, if you look at an introduction

to medical ethics book, I'm sure you can find ones that say there are three core principles or four core principles. These are what they are. So he's going to, you know, argue that he meets these criteria in terms of, you know, medical thing. But that's like the baseline because the actual issue is this. And what I want to dive into next, which is a really, really big question in our community, is what we do therapy on stream. So a lot of people will sort of look at what we do on stream and sort of assume that this

is the practice of therapy. After all, I'm a therapist and I'm talking to someone about their emotions. So is that actually therapy? A potentially reasonable question. And here is the answer. And so as I started to investigate that question, even before I started streaming at all, the first thing that I looked into is whether it was possible as a psychiatrist

to have public conversations with people about their mind and mental health. The answer that I discovered was, yes, you can, provided you do it in a very specific way. So people may think that what I do on stream is therapy, but the truth is, I don't think that I discovered was yes you can, provided you do it in a very specific way. So people may think that what I do on stream is therapy, but the truth is it is actually very clearly not therapy. And what do I mean by that?

Let's explore that for a second. So first thing to understand is that the practice of psychotherapy is very tightly regulated. So I can't just, I mean, I can because I'm a psychiatrist psychiatrist, but you know the average person can't just open up an office and say I'm doing psychotherapy in the same way that someone can't hang up, you know open an office and say I'm doing surgery. So there are some things a psychotherapy is a very restricted practice and so as a result, it's very clearly defined. So what constitutes psychotherapy and what doesn't constitute psychotherapy? So there you go, Matt, problem solved.

He's not doing therapy, right? Because there's technical definitions and obviously he doesn't do like intake, he doesn't do treatment plans. So it can't be, right? That's a restricted thing. It's a protected term. So, resolve? We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Perhaps some issues there, but worth noting that

professions want to protect their professional qualification, right? So, they don't want anybody to be able to claim to be doing psychotherapy or licensed therapy. They do have things that they will say, you need to be doing each of these. You need to have a qualification. You need to be following this procedure and whatnot. If you're not doing that, you're not following the therapeutic regulations. That is usually done so that they distinguish themselves, but it's interesting here that's kind of flipped

around to be like, because we don't do that, that means that we can't be accused of doing anything that is therapy, right? Because we are not meeting the criteria that they use to protect the profession. So, and that's a convenient thing thing because that would mean that like, if you were aware of that stuff and you didn't want to, like most people want to be mistaken for being fairfests, right?

It usually goes the other way. But in this version, it's like you can just avoid a couple of the steps and then you can say, well, I don't meet the criteria. So that's it. Yeah. It's kind of illustrative to just imagine like a different profession. Like you could imagine an accountant or like a medical doctor and say, well, you know, yes, look, it looks a lot like I'm doing a diagnosis here and it looks as though I'm recommending a course of treatment, but I never even looked at their broken leg. And if I was actually doing medicine, I would

have taken a careful look and I would have gotten an x-ray, but I didn't do that. So we're fine fam. Like, yes, the person I was talking to went away. They didn't walk away. They hobbled away with their broken leg with the impression that they had some guidelines for what they needed to do. And they felt like they'd gotten the diagnosis. They felt as though they had a course of treatment and a course of action for themselves, all lined up. But you know, there wasn't medicine because I didn't get an x-ray. Yeah.

What he's going to do is identify some features about practicing medicine and, you know, related to the therapeutic setting. So and he's going to show that in each of these cases, he doesn't meet the criteria. So here are the key features. And the practice of medicine is actually very clearly defined. There's a clear line between what is medicine and what is not medicine. So for example, prescribing medications or doing surgery fall under the practice of medicine. Psychotherapy falls under the practice

of medicine. And while the practices of medicine may vary a little bit from state to state, each state has its own guidelines, each country has its own guidelines. There are three incredibly common and conserved things no matter where you look at the practice of medicine. Those three things are first of all the formation of a doctor-patient relationship. The second is diagnosis and the third is treatment. So wherever you go, medicine constitutes these three things. Karatmat, doctor-patient relationship, diagnosis and treatment. If you have those three things you have the practice of medicine It's not beyond to be it. I would gather from the way. Dr. K. Primes it

But if they're not there it is not medicine may look like medicine may look like therapy. It's not you need those three things Okay, that's okay. Just just remind me. So doctor patient relationship diagnosis and treatment Diagnosis and treatment. Yep, unless all those strings are there. There's no therapy going on. Not a problem. No. So, let's start with the first one. The commencement of a doctor-patient relationship. So, I know this sounds kind of weird and it may sound kind of simple, but this is actually very, very clearly defined. So, the AMA actually clearly defines what constitutes entering into a doctor-patient relationship. And the key thing here is that there's a voluntary agreement

by both parties that we are entering into a doctor-patient relationship. This may sound a little bit weird, but just think about it kind of logically, right? So you can't walk up to me or any other doctor and say, hey, you're my doctor now. Similarly, I as a doctor't walk up to me or any other doctor and say, hey, you're my doctor now. Similarly, I as a doctor cannot walk up to a random person on the street and say, hey, I'm your doctor now. The patient has to agree to be a patient and the doctor has to agree to be

their doctor. He doesn't actually need the other criteria then even because on that basis, he is clear in his disclaimer material or in various statements that he might make on the stream, he is not the doctor of the person on stream. Ergo, he cannot be practicing medicine. Ergo, he is not subject to the ethic considerations because it isn't a medical thing. So that... It's done. He doesn't need the other two because, you know, I'm sure there's a disclaimer there. I'm sure he never said, I am your doctor. I'm your therapist now.

We have a therapeutic relationship. It reminds me a little bit of, like, imagine a financial advisor. And they had these, they kept going on about how they've correctly predicted all of these things in the future. They know what things are going to go up and things are going to go down. They've made so much money for all of their clients. They understand about what's going to happen in the stock markets, whatever. They project this incredible impression of expertise.

They do have qualifications, right? Maybe they've got PhDs in economics from Stanford and so on. And they're telling you, you know, you need to buy gold, you know, lots of gold, buy it from this particular place or whatever. And down the bottom, they say, you know, this does not constitute financial advice, right? They're not your financial advisor. No issue. It's technically fine. No. Yeah. And also, you know, like those things where you have the disclaimers come up, this is not a financial advice, this is not a medical instrument that is, you know, like that is read out. That is used in the same legalistic way, say, well, and actually, like people like Mr. Beast recently has gotten hot water because he did some things which might be lottery,

so if I did disclaimers. But the point is, if he had the disclaimer, that's fine, because that's the legal thing. But actually, maybe that's fine technically, like he wouldn't be in the same potential legal trouble. But ethically, is it fine if he just put the disclaimer? Yeah. So anyway, I think it's interesting that Dr. K pre-exists very much as like, because obviously nobody thinks that if you walk up to someone in the street and say, you're my doctor now, yes, clearly that would be unfair and you cannot expect doctors to do that. But say you went on stream with someone, talked about their family history, talked about their life problems and their previous diagnosis, and you did it over eight hours continuously over a number of months.

Might that person have a better case for thinking that you were in a therapeutic relationship with them? Right? Like that's the reason there's a controversy, not because somebody's saying they're going to come up the street and Dr. K and just say, he's my doctor and I, right? Yeah. I think we'll hear throughout this that he's decided to take an extremely legalistic defense, which to me, that already rubs me the wrong way. But yeah, I don't think the legalistic defense stacks up, as you said.

Yeah. And he gets into, you know, he starts talking about specific exceptions, like, you know, can you transfer a patient to another doctor if you're ill? And, you know, like kind of saying, well, let's look at the specific, there's very specific exceptions, but he's not addressing the specific issue which revolves around his circumstance. Like nobody's concerned about this stuff about like if a doctor's on holiday, can you transfer his patient or whatever? That's not the issue, right? Yeah, well this is also why I smell it right, because this video is in response to a very concerning event, right, and something which clearly must have bothered him, reputationally, if not personally.

And he first of all adopts this tone, like, look, you guys don't understand ethics, we're gonna have this nice fireside chat, and I'm gonna explain ethics to you and why nothing that I did was in the slightest bit unethical. And then it's a two hour long talk, where he's very, takes a lot of care to keep

emphasizing all the time that he's the ethics understander and you aren't. And in fact, it's extremely technical and there's always complexities. What happens when a therapist wants to transfer a patient, whatever, all of this stuff and avoiding the actual stuff that happened specifically in that issue. Yeah, and so just to say one arm out, this is one arm out, it felt like two hours, this particular one, but it's 52 minutes. So let me just play that bit where he talks about the exceptions, because he's talking about these exceptions, but there's actually only one reason that he's talking about the exceptions, and it comes up at the end of this clip. So sometimes, for example, if you've got cancer, you may seek a second opinion from a different

doctor, and you still have your primary doctor, but you're allowed to engage in a limited doctor-patient relationship with a separate doctor as part of a consultation. The key thing here is that a doctor-patient relationship is very clearly defined. It's a voluntary commitment by both parties. The other key thing is that the exceptions to the doctor-patient relationship are also clearly defined. There are two major exceptions which we just talked about,

and those are the only ones. Talking to a psychiatrist online is not an exception to the voluntary entry of a doctor-patient relationship. That's what he wants to say, right? That is not the exception. But again, nobody's confused that talking to a psychiatrist in a conversation... Like automatically, automatically makes them have a professional relationship. Nobody thinks that, you know, nobody thinks that, you know, like a, like a, a clinical psychologist can't talk to anyone for fear that that person will, you know, they can't go and buy a loaf of bread because nobody thinks that like he, he's not actually addressing the grounds for concern. And he does a, what I would describe as an indulgent pizza analogy, where he talks

about, you can't just say anything as a pizza, pizza has to have a crust. It has to have, you know, like blah, blah. So, you know, it's not a matter of the beat. There's, there's definitions that we apply to these things, but of course it's one, there's the beats about like, well, there's a sandwich or whatever. There's a lot of debates about what constitutes pizza, but that aside, what of angry Italians online? The next thing, so right, okay, let's say he's right. He's clearing off his guard,

there's this gamer, the doctor patient relationship isn't there. So he's okay on that. Let's give that to him. What about diagnosis? So let's listen to what Dr. K says he doesn't do on his stream. And I want people to think back to his conversation with Rectal and see, is this accurate of what he never does? So I'll give you guys sort of a quick overview of what I do in my clinical practice and basically what other therapists should be doing as well, because it's the standard of care. So the diagnostic process involves a lot of different stuff. So it involves taking a history of present illness,

which includes like a symptom assessment. So what are the things that you're experiencing? It includes things like duration, frequency, severity of symptoms. So how long have you been experiencing this? How often does it happen? How bad is it? What are the character of the symptoms you experience?

In addition to the HPI, we also assess medical history. So do you have any other medical conditions? Have you had any other psychiatric conditions? Have you ever been hospitalized? Have you ever had surgery before? So there are lots of different things that you collect for the medical history. The next thing that we sort of collect

is we'll collect things like substance use history. So do you use substances? We'll ask questions about your social history. So where do you live? What do you do? Are you sexually active? What are your relationships like? Is there any chance you have an STI? And yes, I do ask each and every one of my patients whether they're 13 years old or 85 years old about their sexual history because it's standard of care for physicians. 85 years old about their sexual history because it's standard of care for physicians Other things include family history So has anyone in your family ever been hospitalized as anyone in your family have medical conditions and y'all may sort of Recognize this kind of stuff because if you go to a doctor's office

They're gonna give you a bunch of forms that you fill out and we don't ask any of those questions on stream, right? So people may volunteer some information kind of from a narrative perspective about what their upbringing was like, but we do not do diagnostic assessments on stream. Other parts of the diagnostic assessment include laboratory testing and imaging. Sometimes I'll order MRIs of the brain. Sometimes I'll order lab tests. So the process of diagnosis is actually

very, very specific. It's not something that it's not just like you ask a couple of questions and then you sort of suddenly have a diagnosis. Yeah, so we did hear, didn't we, questions in his conversation with Rickful that were to do with family history about the life history, you know, previous diagnoses, a lot of stuff which, which sounded pretty similar to some of the things he was listing off there. Duration, frequency, severity of symptoms, how long have you been experiencing, how bad it is, do you have a medical history, what are the psychiatric conditions, you have substance abuse, have you take substances. Wasn't Greg Fulham talking about his experiences on psilocybin and his previous history on medications, family history about intake. And he says, we don't ask any of those questions.

People might volunteer some of those information. But as we saw in the previous clips, Dr. K often saying, how did that make you feel? And how long did that last for? So yes, he didn't ask Regful about his STIs and sexual history. So yes, he didn't order an FMRI for Regful. Yeah. And how many psychiatrists, by the way, order FMRIs? I think it's incredibly rare. Unless there's had a head, unless there's a head injury or something incredibly rare. Okay.

Because yeah, like if someone will come in suffering from depression, is it routine? No. Psychiatrists would order an fMRI? I don't think so. Maybe she knows what they do in different parts of the world. But yeah, I mean, and it really, again, is beside the point. Like he really is resting his argument on this case. He's painting, first of all, that there is this incredibly specific criteria. This is an incredibly specific

process that one follows when one is doing clinical evaluation. And that unless the thing that you're doing matches that exactly, then boom, you know, it's not therapy. And I just, I think that's incredibly well, first of all, as we pointed out, it's not true, right? He's, he was hitting a lot of those points actually in that conversation with RecFall, but even if, even if what he was doing with RecFall bore relatively little resemblance to the practice of very good, careful, responsible therapy. But it gave the impression to someone that they're getting therapy, then you have

a problem, right? Because if you tell people that you're a doctor, if you give them the impression that you're doing doctory things, like you're going over to a machine that goes ding and you're sort of shuffling your papers and you're given the very strong impression that you're doing medical stuff, then that's equally problematic as if you were actually doing the real thing. In fact, it's more problematic, right? No, no, but Matt, if you just tell them you're not doing that, doesn't that resolve it? Like if you just say, but just to be clear, I am not that resolve it? Like if you just say, but I'm just to be clear, I am not giving medical advice. No, that is that does not make it all better. Just like the disclaimer about, oh, but this isn't financial advice, but it's a strategic disclaimer and it's,

it might get you out of, you know, an ethics tribunal, if you add enough disclaimers, but have you done something unethical? That's a separate question. So one thing that he also says he doesn't do is what you need to do, Matt, is differential diagnosis. You need to be saying people don't have certain things, or they're not showing the criteria for certain things, but maybe they have this other thing instead. And he doesn't do that.

The other thing to consider about the diagnostic process, which is standard of care, is also a differential diagnosis. So it is actually not enough for me to ask all of those questions. As a doctor, the practice of medicine constitutes developing a differential diagnosis. So if someone comes in with symptoms of depression, I also have to assess them for bipolar disorder. I also have to assess them for schizoaffective disorder. I also have to assess them for a substance-induced mood disorder. So when he was talking to Rectful about why his depression didn't display the characteristics of bipolar disorder, but that wasn't differential diagnosis, that was just a conversation about mental health. I just find the specific things

that he referenced like, yes, you didn't talk to him about schizoaffective disorder, but also I don't think you have to assess everyone for every potential mental illness. There surely is a thing whereby it would be, you know, do these symptoms related to this disorder, this group of disorders. So, in any case, I don't know the specific things that you have to flag up, but if it is every mental illness in existence, the antics must take a hell of a long time. No, no, it's about differentiating between like equally plausible diagnoses that explains the symptoms being presented, right? And actually we did hear Dr. K do that, right?

He ruled out very quickly severe depression because severe depression is episodic, right? And he'd eliminated that diagnosis based on the fact that Regful had been feeling bad for a long time. Oh, and careful, Matt, he didn't eliminate it. He said it might also be there. Oh, yes, of course. It's not the real issue. Yes, good, good pull up. Thank you, Chris. Yes. So let's hear just a little bit more about the diagnosis issue.

The next thing that I want to point out is for people who think, okay, we are, do I diagnose things on stream? I don't. And so let me actually show you, so someone talking about their depression does not actually constitute diagnosis. Here are what actual diagnoses are. So this is from the ICD-11. So this is the International Classification of Disease. So this is an international consensus about what constitutes diagnosis.

So when I'm seeing a patient in my office, I will actually diagnose them with one of these things, recurrent depressive disorder, current episode mild, or current episode moderate without psychotic symptoms, with psychotic symptoms, severe with psychotic symptoms, in partial remission, in full remission. These are actual diagnoses. We do not tell people on stream that they have these. We do not ask diagnostic

questions to the extent of what is necessary for major depressive disorder. So depression is not a diagnosis. Anxiety is not a diagnosis. Anxiety is an emotion. The actual diagnoses are things like generalized anxiety disorder, socialized anxiety disorder, anxiety disorder induced by a substance, unspecified anxiety disorder. Those are actually diagnoses and we do not assign those labels to anyone on stream. So there you have it. Although we might have thought the thing that we saw in the conversation with Rekha was diagnosis, like Dr. K did not give him a technical level of an existing disease, right? Ergo, it's not diagnosis. So problem again, gone. People thought there might be

an issue with him giving Rackfell the impression that maybe some of his previous diagnoses were in error from Rackfell raising that point. But no, because Dr. K didn't say the name of a technical recognized illness, therefore it can't be diagnosis. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. It's this very legalistic logic chopping approach to whether or not he's doing something unethical. I have my own opinions about a different approach for determining unethical behavior, but I might say that. Well, so he goes on to, so on the subject of treatment, Matt, that was the third pillar,

right? And he says, you know, treatment is not just giving people advice. Treatment is developing a multi-pointed treatment plan where they have set goals and times that they need to deliver things and report on, and they have exercises that they need to do. So, you know, vague advice is not a treatment plan, right? It's not a specified thing.

So therefore, all three things are lacking. There is no patient- patient doctor relationship formally established. Diagnosis is not on the professional standard. Even if there are some questions, you know, that might look like it. And treatment is not of the variety that you would normally expect in therapy. There is no, you know, written out treatment plan. There are no prescriptions of medication. So people are just making an error. It is not a matter of opinion. So everything we do on stream is not the practice of clinical

medicine. In order to sort of figure out what is okay on stream, we can define what the practice of clinical medicine is, or understand the definition. So that's not something we define, that's something that we exhaustively looked up by looking through hundreds of pages of medical ethics documents, state laws, federal laws, regulations, licensing board things, ethics, opinions on ethics from the American Medical

Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and what we sort of decided to do on stream is actually clearly outside of those things. The other simple gut check that I have for y'all is when you go to a doctor's office, how similar is it to what happens on stream? And the short answer is like not at all, right? Because doctors are practicing clinical medicine. And what we're doing on stream is having conversations about mental health. We do not enter into a doctor-patient relationship.

We do not diagnose people with medical illnesses and we do not treat them for medical illnesses. It's strange that so many people who've had experiences with doctors make the mistake then. Isn't it like because Dr. K is saying, you know, don't you realize it's completely different? But yet so many people seem to be under the impression that there's a blurring of lines there. So you'd wonder why. I guess it's just a lack of education,

avoid like what therapy entails. But also this delivery, by the way, Ma, I commend Dr. K because it gives the people that follow him a very clear set of responses. Here are the free things that make up medicine. I don't do any of them. So yes, it's reasonable for people to be confused who aren't in the know, but we don't meet them.

Right, so you know, go forth and spread the word about how they feel. Then I would bet you that after this video, you would see a lot of Dr. K followers repeating, he doesn't do any of these free things. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you define the practice of clinical therapy, talk therapy, extremely precisely, extremely carefully, and you seize upon technical differences between what you do on stream with that. And you say, well, look, it's different.

So therefore I'm not bound by any of the rules around professional practice. There are no ethical problems whatsoever. And it doesn't matter that, you know, like it sounds like I'm doing therapy, like I'm asking about their clinical history. I'm sounding like one of the, like a, like a dispassionate neutral therapist. Say, how did that make you feel? And, and what happened before then? And talking about the family history

of the problem. And then it's sounding like I'm diagnosing the problem. But actually, no, no, no, technically, I'm not diagnosed the problem, but just people get that impression. But the problem is Rexrull's getting that impression because he's giving a very, very good impression of being an authoritative clinical practitioner and talking to him. Well, no, I'm not. Why are we and other people making the mistake that there might be a blurring here or an issue? Why is it that people get this wrong?

It's understandable. So then the next question very naturally is why do people think that what we do on stream is therapy? So where does this idea come from? What do we actually do on stream? And are there any overlaps with therapy? So it's a really good question because I don't think most people, like we sort of mentioned, most people haven't studied medical ethics. They don't really understand the definition of the practice of medicine. They're not trained in diagnosis. They're not trained in developing treatment plans or doing psychotherapy. So where do they get this idea that what we do on stream is therapy?

So it's a really good question. So what we do on stream is we have conversations with people that are about their mental health and I use some skills. So I'm a very good listener, for example. I'm very good at asking questions. I'm very knowledgeable about things. So I'll build some amount of an alliance with the person that I'm very good at asking questions. I'm very knowledgeable about things. So I'll build some amount of an alliance with the person that I'm talking to.

I'll be a very active listener, and I'll ask very insightful questions. So sometimes people think that that constitutes therapy, whereas no, that doesn't constitute therapy. Easy for people to get confused, isn't it? Yeah. But that's really on them, I guess. Yeah. It's because they haven't studied medical ethics. So I have taken ethics courses,

not medical ethics courses, but very related, right? And the history of psychology is full of various ethical lapses from researchers that led to many of the developments that are now there in medical ethics. And yet I found myself confused by some of the issues here actually being genuine issues. But I guess that's just me, like a foolish social scientist, not really getting it. And Dr. Mike also having, you know, these questions, like Dr. Mike is trained, he's, you know, he's confused to also confused. Confused. It's a we're all we're all just confused. I've gone through ethics boards literally hundreds of times. I'm not exaggerating. And yeah, I have issues. So I don't think he can play the on the ethics understander.

And, you know, you you let people you know, you just confused because you don't understand ethics properly. No. Yeah. And so this this next bit, I think it really it's laid on the rhetoric here because you get the repetition of the point and you're also getting the preempting of well, let's see, he's basically responding to what we're saying here. Listen to this. So like, what if you kind of make the argument for example that even though i'm a medical doctor

and i'm not entering into a doctor patient relationship i'm not diagnosing anyone with anything and i'm not providing treatment plans right so i'm not doing psychotherapy i'm not you know providing medications or anything like that i'm still a medical professional who is like listening empathically, which sometimes is done in therapy. So therapists are absolutely empathic listeners. So if I'm a medical doctor, am I allowed to empathically listen to someone and ask someone insightful questions?

Or is that something that I'm no longer allowed to do except with my patients? And that's kind of like absurd because the answer is clearly I'm allowed to do that with people without. And that's kind of like absurd because the answer is clearly, I'm allowed to do that with people without entering into a doctor-patient relationship. So for example, I do that with my kids. I do that with my wife.

I do that with my friends. When human beings talk to me, I try to be an empathic, active listener. A bit of a sort of a deflection here. Nobody is saying Dr. K cannot have empathetic conversations with people or do streaming. They're suggesting that the particular interviews that he does with influencers about, you know, traumatic incidents or their mental health might cross the barrier ethics wise, right?

They're not saying you can't speak ethically to someone about their struggles or whatnot. Like why is it that it's only Dr. K or Dr. Phil or Dr. O is that these issues tend to come up with? It isn't all people that have a background in psychiatry or therapy of one form or another, but yet, it's presented here, like, do you not want Dr. K to be able to talk to other humans in a considerate way? Like, hmm. Yeah, I agree.

So just to kind of reiterate that, like, if you really think about it, like, if that were true, if I weren't allowed to have emotional conversations with other people, like, I couldn't interact with other human beings in an empathic way. And this is what's sort of brilliant about the way that clinical medicine is defined because it's defined about what's the goal, right?

Is it diagnosis or treatment? If yes, then it's clinical medicine. If no, then it's not clinical medicine. So there you go, you know, those three criteria are not there. Medical doctor is allowed to, are they not allowed to ask insightful questions? Are they not allowed to do that except with their patients? And he actually goes on to say, you know, other people have these abilities, like customer service people.

Are they not allowed to speak empathetically with other people? And you're like, again, think about it. You're saying, well, this is just the same. But the reason that that is not coming up is because they're different. They're different. Nobody's saying, well, this is just the SIEM. But the reason that that is not coming up is because they're different. They're different. Nobody's saying, like customer service people who were streaming on Twitch and were being considerate, they're unlikely to get into the SIEM baller, right?

So there's a difference. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just he leans very hard on this legalistic defense, which just simply doesn't stack up. To give another example, imagine that I want to do something, that it's not research. I just wanted to collect some data. I wanted to talk to people. Am I not allowed to talk to people, Chris? People talk to each other all the time. I just want them to, I've got a form, I want them to write down some

stuff for me. I mean, are people not allowed to give forms? I mean, you know, people fill out forms all the time at the bank and stuff like that. And, you know, I just want to then, you know, I'm just curious. So I want to find out some stuff from this. It's not research, right? But I am going to do some stats on the information that I've gotten from them after I've typed it into the computer. And I might publish it, but, you know, it's not research, right? I'm just curious. And I'm just writing some stuff. I'm just talking to people about stuff that happens all the time. Like it's a really weak, legalistic, you know, logic chopping defense, which doesn't actually grapple with the fact, to use my little

example there, if it looks like research and it talks like research and smells like research, then the ethics review board is going to say, Matt, you're doing research. I don't care if you say that you're not. You know, a comparative example, which is Peter Burgosian, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay with the SoCal Squared, Cokes. Peter Burgosian got in trouble, right? And people thought this was an unfair targeting of him. And to me, it raked off people who don't understand like the ethics procedure at university, right? Because Boghossian's a philosopher, he'd never done empirical research,

neither had Helen or James, right? So they didn't get it. And what they did is they did this thing about submitting their articles to journals and seeing if they get through. And they described it as a study. They put it up and they had a method section and they had a sample and results, and they described it as a research study.

And that immediately led to Peter Rogozian being pulled by the IRB board and saying, hold on, you can't have done a study as an academic on people without having got approval from the university. And he took this as being witch hunted and all this kind of thing. He got a very mild slap in the wrist. He had to go to a training seminar or whatever. But for one, I know how they could have got around that. If they'd have framed it as a journalistic expose,

where Peter Pregossian had give them advice as an academic, that would have got avoided. But also, I actually think in that case, they brought the ethics board onto them because of what they did with framing. That led to the ethics board being able to take it as like, this is a study and you're an academic. And I think the ethical issues there are not so great. Although Boghossian is an idiot and they didn't even consider whether that would meet the criteria. I don't think, you know, people are potentially, are

really that harmed by- No, there wasn't a substantive ethical worry there. In contrast, I think, to Dr. K. Right. No, of course, the ethics board would take that there is because they'll say you're using people's time and people's like, you know. So this is the kind of thing. Oh, yeah, I know. I know. Like, technically, yes, right. The ethics boards judge, like as you said, any study, right?

Anything that an academic does involving human Public participants or not, right? It has to go through those boards because it's also about protecting the university legally apart from anything else Right, but yeah, but there there are ways what I want to like kind of point out Are there ways where you fall under an IRB and there are ways to get around it and you could be doing almost the exact Same thing that's just in the free. And you could be doing almost the exact same thing. That's just in the free. It's just in the free.

But the ethical issues may actually be entirely similar, but you've just legalistically managed to avoid. Yes, that's right. I take your point, which is that, you know, this goes to what we were saying before. Like there's ethical behavior in the common sense, human natural way that we mean it, right? Not being a bad person and potentially causing risks to people.

Then there's the letter of the law. And as you said, if you want to sidestep the letter of the law, then you could do something like frame it as a journalistic investigation. And then it doesn't fall within the remit of an ethics review board. Now, Dr. K is working extremely hard to say what I'm doing doesn't fall within the remit of an ethics board. Now, Dr. K is working extremely hard to say, what I'm doing doesn't fall within the remit of an ethics board. Therefore, I can do anything I want. Right. Now, that may well work in a legalistic way. It doesn't mean you're being a good person

and you're behaving ethically in the normal human everyday sense of the word. And on the subject of IRBs, Dr. K references going through IRB procedures. So this is institutional review boards. That's the jargon, okay? So the first example that I'll give y'all, and this is in many dimensions of our company and our work, but the first is research. So for example, for all of our research studies,

we submit them to something called an independent review board or an IRB. So there's a third party organization which is not affiliated with us at all. And when we want to do research, we'll take our research study and we'll pass it to the IRB and we'll say, hey, we would like to do this research on human subjects. Will you please evaluate it and tell us if it is in alignment with ethical principles? And the IRB is essentially, they were developed kind of after people did predatory research on human subjects.

And so we've actually had five independent reviews of our research, and a sixth that's ongoing for another study that we're doing, that have all sort of met an independently reviewed ethical criteria. So we got the green light from an institutional review board, which is a third party kind of ethical organization that approves the research that we do. So if you pass an IRB, Matt, you know, that's basically, you know, you have to be an ethical person and doing reasonable things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed he corrected himself. He said independent review board, but he corrected himself to institutional review board. At the end, yeah. I noticed he corrected himself. He said independent review board, but he corrected himself to institutional review board. At the end, yes. Yeah. In Australia, we call them, like for humans, human research ethics committees, HREC. That's our jargon. So I will say there, Matt, as somebody, as you mentioned,

that have gone through an IRB multiple, multiple times, that they're often the pain in the arse because the people on the IRB board may not have expertise in a particular area and they might have very subjective interpretations of particular rules, right? But I will also say, so I passed much more than six IRBs and I've never took it as indicating that this is meaning that I'm an ethical person or that my research is fundamentally ethical. All it shows is that you can meet the requirements of an IRB review. And actually, people that have done more of them know the things that will bring up red flags and how to avoid them. So it is being presented here.

Like this is a very, very significant thing if you are passing an IRB, but it's actually mundane thing. It's a, that's a baseline measure for academic research. And it does not mean that the research is actually valid, reasonable thing. Technically, it's supposed to mean that the like ethical issues have been shown to be considered and now the institution is liable because they approved it. But there's been plenty of research that's got through IRB boards, which has turned out to be like deeply unethical or like pointless, bad research, right?

So like going for an IRB board, it's slightly presented there as like more of a significant achievement than it is. And this is, you know, still at the same time I'm saying, yeah, because he's not going through that, you know, shows that he lacks a particular expertise, but like overselling IRBs also shows expertise, but like overselling IRBs also shows either willing misrepresentation or a lack of familiarity of IRBs being not a particularly significant hurdle. Yeah, of course, professional ethics regulation is a little bit different from our research ethics regulation. Different issues tend to crop up. I mean, one of the ones that I think most people

are familiar with is when there's a conflict of interest. So for instance, very famous cases, especially in the United States, where doctors are getting approached by pharmaceutical companies, and the pharmaceutical companies, the representatives are very keen to sell their particular drug,

could have some addictive properties or something like that. And they basically pay or reward the doctors in various ways for prescribing that drug. Now, why is that a problem? Because the drug may work, the drug may be effective, the patients may be very happy to be prescribed the drug, makes them feel better. Why is it a problem? Because there's a conflict of interest. That's the issue, right? The doctor is meant to be acting in that relationship purely on behalf of the patient, are totally motivated for the best interest of the patient and have no other motivations in terms of their diagnosis and treatment. Now, I want to ask you, Chris, what do you think the motivations might be for someone who is an aspirational YouTube celebrity and a streamer and somebody who gets most of their revenue from the audience and in fact probably isn't getting paid by the person they're talking to at all.

Where might their motivations lie? Yes, there might be a conflict of interests there coming in because as we noted earlier, the focus is not solely on the patient or client, right? There's an audience and there's a ecosystem and a brand and so on to be built up there and yeah that introduces incentives that might make the best interest of the individual secondary. Yeah, secondary not the principal focus of the interaction and that would be fine if what you were doing didn't look or sound

or appear at all like therapy wasn't perceived as such by the person that you're talking to. And it might be fine if the person is incredibly healthy and robust and is treating the thing as just a bit of fun. Right. But when that's not the case, then you're in serious trouble. Yeah. And so I think he oversold the ability to pass IRBs as really a mark of ethical quality. He also, I think, over sells informed consent. Now, we'll talk about why this is important,

but listen to this. So how does someone come on stream? What are the protections that we use? What are the standards that we hold to? And so this is where there's another really important part that I wanna talk about, which is kind of an ethical standard that we hold ourselves to, which is informed consent.

So before people come on stream, they meet with a producer, and the producer sort of lays out with them what stream is, what's allowed, what's not allowed. We make it very clear to them that this is not the practice of medicine, that Dr. K is not your doctor, and we make sure that they agree to that.

So we go through an informed consent process. So if there's any confusion there, or they're looking for some kind of medical advice, that's where things end, right? So we inform them, and then we go through the consent process. And this is where the ethical principle of autonomy comes up. So we at HG

believe that a human being, an adult who wants to come onto the internet and voluntarily talk to someone about their mental health should be able to. We believe that human beings should have the autonomy to make their own decisions. It's just about respecting autonomy, Matt. It's about equity, it's about autonomy, it's about, you know, do you not think adults have the right to make their own decisions? Yeah, yeah, that's interesting in defense. Yeah, like it sounds good because you're saying, hey, look, I'm not talking down to like a person like Recfall.

No, no, they're a powerful person. They have agency. They can make their own decisions. But what it does do is it absolves you of responsibilities because they're a free person. They're making free choices. They get to do what they want. And actual Fakris, as an interesting example,

this is the very same line that the gambling industry takes in terms of not providing player protections, because people are coming in there of their own free choice. Nobody's forcing them to play the the poker machine. No, nobody's saying you have to keep sitting there for three hours and spend all your money. That's their choice. Right. Are you saying you're not going to respect their freedom to decide what they're going to do?

You don't know what's going on with them. Don't modestly coddle them. Don't be like a nanny state and kind of say what they can and can't do. So it's a very convenient thing when you want to have an exploitative relationship with someone. Yeah. And so informed consent, right? Important in research.

It is a principle of modern medicine and so on. However, anybody that has run studies or been involved with research will understand that there's the theoretical model about what informed consent involves. And this is what Dr. K has just outlined. That it's all about the individual being given the information and making a choice of their own free will, their autonomy, understanding all of the implications, having everything laid out to them so they're clear in non-technical language. Right, but also a lot of informed consent procedures are essentially to protect informed consent procedures are essentially to protect universities and researchers from being sued. Because when somebody comes back and says, I didn't consent to this, I didn't

agree to this has harmed me or whatever, they can point to the consent sheet and say, we informed you of everything that would happen and you agreed that you understood that that was not the case and that these were the limitations of the thing and so on. So Dr. K here is emphasizing this is for the guest's own understanding of the relationship. But just, you know, by having chance, it also happens to protect Dr. K and organization from any subsequent claim that anybody was under confusion or whatnot. No, they have the document that is signed. And I feel like this doesn't address the reality that people can read things that can be told, you know, this is not therapy. He is not your doctor.

Right. You understand that you're not going to be prescribed medication in this encounter, anything that's uncomfortable that you, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then you sit down with someone who for hours listens empathetically, talks to you about your family history, talks about previous diagnosis that you've had and whatnot. And they start to get to the root issues of your trauma and so on. So yeah, sure. You've got a disclaimer. You can show it and you can say, everybody understood. Everybody agreed that this wasn't. And I said multiple times during the session, I'm not your doctor. Dr. K frames that as like being very careful not to confuse people.

And I think you could also frame that as covering your butt. Oh yeah, of course. It's a waiver. It's a waiver. Sign this waiver. And people do, we all sign them every time we download something from Apple, we sign these very complicated waivers and it's not, yes, legally it could be helpful, but it's not a get out of jail free card. So, you know, there could be in that waiver, you know, if you're feeling upset or any point in time, you have the right to terminate the session whenever you like, whatever. You know, you're talking to someone that's

mentally unwell and if they're breaking down online and then you're encouraging them to dig deeper and you're not terminating the session or anything like that and they're not, well, that's on them. That's's on them and it totally fails to take into account that they're a vulnerable person and actually the onus is on you to take care of them not to for them to take care of themselves yeah yeah so Matt one other concern Dr. K has and this is the end of the ethics thing right there he's basically dressed that he doesn't violate the ethics. It's not a fair recession that's done,

but there is a concern, Matt, there is a concern about some groups of people online. We might be said to be in these people. So let's hear what he has to say about hate farmers. The next thing that I wanna talk a little bit about is something that's a little bit more negative, and that's hate farming. So there's been an increasing and disturbing trend on the internet recently of people sort

of being increasingly critical and essentially farming hate. And I want to talk a little bit about what we've learned sort of in terms of our platform and sort of the reach that we have and how we try to behave in an ethical manner. So as a content creator, you know, I feel like I have a duty to use my platform for good. The unfortunate thing is that there are some people out there who will use platforms essentially for negative reasons. So they'll hate farm or criticize or things like that. And like I've said,

we're actually completely open to criticism, assuming that it's sort of fair and based in fact, and is well-cited. So we're completely open to criticism, assuming that it's sort of fair and based in fact and is well cited. So we're completely open to criticism and quite responsive to criticism like that. Unfortunately, what we're seeing on the internet is an increasing amount of like toxicity, right? Like we can all feel that the internet is becoming a more toxic place. And so what I'd like to do today is talk a little bit about how I've come to understand hate farming and sort of what goes into it. So the first thing to understand is that hate farmers usually are operating on an emotional level and the main emotion that they sort of target is a vague sense of righteousness. So when you watch a video by a hate farmer, what you'll often find is that it's very emotional in

nature, right? So it's going to have very powerful imagery. It may have sort of a very strong title, may have sort of a very powerful thumbnail. And as they sort of const... As they start to weave their narrative, like what you're gonna be feeling is some sense of outrage or irateness or things like that. Heat farmers, man, it's an epidemic and he's open to the high quality criticism,

but the problem is... Yeah, there's a lot of hate out there. Always there is low quality criticism. Yeah, there's a lot of haters out there. Yeah, that's us, I guess. So he's preempting. I'm sure he's already seen a negative blowback. I think this is directed at Mr. Girl in particular, a guy that like me, which was actually showing various clips of professionals discussing ethics and showing that what he is doing might

violate that. And whether I say his name is Mr. Girl, whatever, he himself is a rather heinous character online, various controversies, go look into it. But the issues that he raised about Dr. K are valid and he may have been the person involved with submitting the thing which led to the ethical reprimand. There's reasons to think that he is and some to think that he's not which related to the timing of the official documents. But a lot of people, including Mr. Grawler initially thought he was the person because he submitted things to the ethics board and like a kind of package. Yeah.

I mean, I guess the meta sense that I get though is that like combined with his extremely legalistic defense that he makes there, that he also follows it up by kind of like this pre-inoculating his audience against any, you know, you might be hearing stuff out there that people are saying that I'm doing bad things. They're hate farmers. They're people that are just filled with hate and are just trying to whip up emotion. You know, I feel very sorry for these people obviously, but yeah, it's not serious criticism. I mean, it's all very strategic, though, isn't it?

Like he's incredibly gifted at self-presentation and all of this is very finely crafted. And the thing that actually does upset me a little bit, I don't want to be one of these emotional people that he's talking about. But the fact that like this was a serious thing that happened, regardless of whether you think he did something right or something wrong or whether he was doing everything okay. I mean, somebody died and, you know, and stuff went down on that episode that, that clearly was, was pushing some boundaries.

And at no point does he seem to engage with that at all. Instead, he takes an incredibly self-interested approach, which is all about minimizing damage, minimizing reputational hit and inoculating himself through waivers and signing things and also inoculating his audience against anyone that might be criticizing him. This is clearly his intent with this thing that he released. Yeah. Yeah. And he, you know, he made the point about dramatic thumbnails and emotional content and whatnot. And I wonder, has he seen his own channel and some of the various things that are popular? There's certainly a lot of

emotion in those interviews and there's click-bitty titles going on there as well. But the things that he's warning about are also real. But like you say, it's very self-serving. So listen to this warning about confirmation bias. So they'll usually have some kind of narrative where they sort of will find a bunch of information on the internet. And this is where it's challenging as a content creator because you know We've probably streamed for well over a thousand hours And if you go through all of the the content that we've done you can stitch together

Basically, whatever kind of narrative you want to so a really good example of this if you all haven't seen it is dr. K interviews Dr. K Which is when someone takes clips of me and like stitches them together as if I'm having a conversation So you can sort of clip things into context to weave whatever kind of narrative you want to. So the first thing to understand about hate farmers is that they work primarily on an emotional level and will really sort of encourage you to get your pitchforks out. They may make some kind of narrative argument, which sounds very logical at the time, but this is where oftentimes what hate farmers do will come up with a priori arguments. And what does that mean?

And that means that the judgment actually proceeds the collection of evidence. So I'll go into a little bit more detail there. So oftentimes if you look at people who are critical and people who are hate farmers, they sort of assume guilt at the very beginning, right? So they haven't really done an objective investigation. Something has happened and they've sort of assume guilt at the very beginning, right? So they haven't really done an objective investigation. Something has happened and they've sort of decided that you're guilty.

And then something really tricky happens is that once they've decided you're guilt, they'll start collecting information. The problem is that on the internet, search and the way that you collect information is going to probably reinforce your biases. Very clever. It's very clever. So, you know, you may be seeing clips, people may be playing clips of me that sound damning, but you know, you can, you can clip together stuff from the internet that can make someone sound like anything.

Um, and, I mean, there's clips of me interviewing myself. So that's, that's obviously didn't happen. So you know, that's... Don't trust the clips. And their arguments may sound very logical, but you see what they're doing is that they're tricking you because they've actually started off with a foregone conclusion and they're actually assembling evidence to support that conclusion.

Yeah, I mean, I admire the craft. This is what I can say. Because he's not wrong about this being something that can happen. People can make these clip compilations of people doing that. However, Dr. K has put out a bunch of content, but I bet it would be hard to make a very long clip compilation of him presenting that Ayurvedic is terrible and that we really need to drop it in favor of Western medicine or modern medicine.

Now, there are some isolated clips that you could use for that purpose, but it would be easy. It would be child's play to show that that's not representative of what he does. And like we were able to play two episodes of, you know, multiple hours of clips of him disparaging modern medicine and arguing that Ayurvedic medicine was much better and was filling all the gaps in modern medicine because that's what he has primarily done. Yes, there's a couple of times where he adds in, you know, disclaimers and whatnot. So there's that notion that like you can make anything with clip

compilations and what Destiny, I think, refers to clip champion. You can do that, right? You can take isolated chips, but it is also not the case that like, therefore, everything, you shouldn't believe it, right? Like you've seen these compilations of Joe Rogan saying right-wing conspiracy theories like no, that's not what he's, yes it is. That's an accurate representation. So there's videos of Dr. K crossing ethical boundaries in interviews.

Well, you know, that's not what it appears to be. Is it not? Well, in any case, Chris, I'll just point out that we didn't do that. We didn't go cherry picking through thousands of hours of content. The clips we've played are of a specific piece of content. Well, yes, a few specific pieces of content, but yes. But so you might be wondering how you could link Hitfarm farmers to IRBs. I would wonder that. Well, here you go. And I'm not so sure that they're doing this like

insidiously and on purpose. Is it harmful? Absolutely. But I think that they sort of stumble upon some idea and then it actually shapes the questions that they ask. And once you shape the questions that you ask, you're going to shape the questions that they ask. And once you shape the questions that you ask, you're going to shape the responses that you get. And this is precisely why, if we look at a scientific standard of how to collect information, making Twitter posts is like not a good way

to collect information. So if you submit a study to the IRB that has a loaded question in it, the IRB, the Institutional Review Board will say, this is a bad question. You cannot ask this question because it is biased by its nature. So this is where in scientific research, like we understand this stuff really well. When we formulate questions, when you ask a research question, it has to be approved

by someone who sort of makes sure that it isn't biased. But when it comes to hate farmers, like they don't go to independent review boards to see if their question is biased in some way. And so then what happens is you create a selection bias for information, right? So that's how you connect an IRB to heat farmers. Heat farmers haven't gone through the rigorous scientific training necessary to be capable of passing an IRB. And if they had, they would understand that what they're doing is, you know, fearing things in a particular way. So, we are incapable of this because we've passed IRBs like Dr. K, right? So therefore, we understand this and that doesn't apply to us.

Or we're doubly damned because we understand what scientific approaches are. And yet here we are still with concerns about what Dr. K does. So aren't we the worst hit farmers of all? We're people with scientific training of sorts, enough to pass an RB board. And yet we are here saying there's issues. We are indeed. We are indeed.

So are we done with Dr. K's detailed defense about how he'd done no wrong? Just one last thing, Matt. One last thing from this. You have to be sympathetic to the hate farmers. It's not their fault. It's not their fault, Matt. They're just, they're not scientists. But this is why I remind you that,

especially when it comes to some of the criticism that we've faced, it's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of law, right? These things are very clearly designated and we are in compliance with these kinds of things. So when it comes to hate farming,

be a little bit careful about this stuff, right? Because this is happening more and more on the internet. And I, oddly enough, I don't even necessarily blame these people because I don't know that the people who make hateful videos have done any kind of training with like how to formulate a good, non-biased research question. That's something that I learned through four years

of getting a master's in public health in some amount of like as an MD. Generally speaking, formulating research questions is actually like a very technical and difficult thing to do. So I think what's happening is people will sort of come to an a priori conclusion. They already decide that something is bad and then they'll sort of ask questions in a way that reinforces their bias.

This is why the internet is turning into echo chambers, and this is what's leading to toxicity. I love it when he plays the credentialist card, Chris, because that's my card. I got a bigger card. You got a bigger card on this particular card. So he's done four years of a master's in public health, has he? He's worked as a general practitioner. I'm a professor, Chris. I'm a professor. I've done hundreds of these kinds of IRB.

You've developed your own skills. I've done so many things. You and I- You're a psychometrician, Matt. You're a your own skills. I've done so many things. You and I know about- You're a psychometrician, Matt. You're a psychometrician. You might say that, you know, I know a little bit about generating a research question. So this is not something that he can tag on me. No, I have a problem with what Dr. K has done and continues to do.

And I don't find any of his legalistic defenses very convincing. And frankly, I find his total lack of engagement with what actually happened during that interview with Recfall and the ultimate outcome, whether or not he was in any way to blame for that outcome, not saying he was. I mean, a human person would have engaged with that, honestly, not legalistically. Just to be clear though, Matt, he did release a video after where he cried on stream and talked about Rekful being a hero and all this and that we lost a great hero and so on. So he didn't address the... It wasn't all legalistic. No, I appreciate that. But you can see how that can also be

self-serving, I suppose. Indeed. Indeed. The thing is that when addressing these issues about the criticism, this was the thing. This was the response. This is the content that we're talking about now. The death of Rekful was covered in the more emotional short video about his response to his friend dying. But like you say, that didn't get into the issues around the streams that they did or whatever. It was more about just the emotional response to that. And also potentially that does have, even if genuine, some rather conflicted issues because it is also self-serving for your presentation.

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. There's another interview that they did, Matt, that is more recent. I just have a couple of clips from it that I think relate to those issues before we get to the final clips about his response to the reprimand. But he did some streams with a streamer called Ludwig. Ludwig is a very PC kind of, he's like the anti-destiny. His streams are relatively, he avoids controversy like the plague and he's doing gaming streams. He looks like a

very handsome young chap and whatnot. He would stay away from edgy stuff as far as possible. Sometimes get involved with it, but he's not a Hassan type. Now, he went on with Dr. K and he was mostly very light, keeping things light and whatnot, but he does, like most people have some tragedy in his past. And you can see when Ludwig was talking about his life story, he said like this. Thank you. Can you, can you tell me a little bit about what growing up was like? Uh, grew up in New Hampshire. It was chill.

I had like a nice house, indoor pool. That's cool. That's like a weird thing that people don't have a lot. Dad died. High school was great. 3.0, I would say. Yeah, pretty good high school all in all. zero, I would say. Yeah, pretty good high school all in all.

Did you say your dad died? Yeah, my dad died. My dad died when I was 10. Yeah. But also 3.0 I was in choir honors wire. Wow. That's impressive. Can I just think for a second? Go for it. Go for it. Varsity soccer.

How old were you when you were into the 10th grade? So you might have picked up on, like, I also think Ludwig was kind of dropping that in as like, that's not a natural way to mention that a close family member died or whatnot. But the conversation proceeds, right? And Dr. K does the thing, Matt, where he gives the option about should we dig into this or should we not? It's got to be your choice, right? But I also want to fully respect, you know, what you wanna do and what you don't wanna do. We're gonna ignore Twitch chat,

don't care about what they think, it's not about that. We gotta go down the road, Dr. K. No, we don't. That's why you, we have to. Nope. I want to. Do you feel beholden to? In, yeah, okay.

What does that word mean? So, do you feel obligated to? Yeah, okay. What does that word mean? So, do you feel obligated to? Or do you really want to? No, I think it's a more hype road to go down and that's what I'd prefer. Okay. Why do you choose the hype road? Well, because when it's hype, it's more fun. It would be regrettable to not pick a hype decision. Yeah. So once again, you gravitate towards fun and lightheartedness. See it's happening right now. You're doing it again.

No, it's just like it's something that's hype. Like I could go down the road that I had predetermined and then I could think a week later like, damn, maybe Dr. K had some shit to say. Like he probably had some bars to drop and I didn't like go for the bars. Is it OK to not go for the bars? Sometimes, yes, but if you can and it's not that problematic, why not? OK, cool. There you go.

Issue resolved. And also, Matt, just that reference to, you know, you made the joke. So, you know, we talked about like that you can kind of weaponize therapy speak or even if you don't put as weaponized, there's a power differential when it comes to like a therapist talking to someone, right? And one of the things they can do is stuff like this. Do you have any advice on like my YouTube videos? Because I sent him a video I had made. What are your thoughts on this video? And how did that make you feel when you responded?

It I think didn't matter because I had already quit at that point, but I thought it was cool that he replied for sure. What was cool about that? That he took the time for a young 16 year old boy. about that. That he took the time for a young 16 year old boy. Yeah, so we're gonna point something out, Ludwig. What did you just do? Thanks to the anonymous donator, we're in conjunction with you and brought up a story about Eat My Addiction. Yeah, so like you just changed your voice a little bit. Uh-huh. Right. Yeah. So, like you just changed your voice a little bit, right?

Yeah. And you kind of made a joke out of it. You're like, oh, like was nice for a 16 year old boy. Oh my god. You're most likely to be live on Twitch.tv. I can stop if it makes you uncomfortable. No, you're so good. You're so good. I did do that. Yeah. How do you understand why you did that? Uh, how I made the voice, you make it more spicy.

No, no, no. I mean, but why did you make the voice in that moment? A little flair. Yeah, but why flair at that point? I completely agree. It's flair. You're cracking a joke. You're making it a little bit funny. Well, why then? Because I guess it was a bit.

I was a bit goofy that I just be laughing, you got me. It was a bit goofy that the whole entire situation, but it's something I look maybe fondly back on. Yep. But, you know. Yes. So it's kind of interesting because I think actually like what you're doing is lightening, I think, the significance of it. Okay.

Yeah. Why did I do that? So I think it, we can get to that in a second. I just, let's notice it first, right? So we start with observations and then like we can develop hypotheses down the road. The more data we collect, the more accurate, right? So we start with observations, and then like, we can develop hypotheses down the road, the more data we collect, the more accurate, right? But like, I think that sometimes people feel uncomfortable if I had to venture, sometimes like people feel uncomfortable, like talking about things that are impactful to them. Just normal conversations, not at all, like like therapeutic interaction, right?

Yeah, right, right. And look, I think even apart from digging into Dr. K, I think this is really helpful for people to understand the way in which therapy speak can be used as a power play and as a way to manipulate people in conversations. And as you said, like it all lies on one side, like the powers within Dr. K to say, why did you, why did you say it like that? I mean, you smiled just then when you said it. What did that mean? You know, how did that make you feel?

You know, and it puts you on the back foot and you have to explain yourself. Therapist is like a shield around them, right? They are the one that asks questions and you are the one that answers. And I think because people associate this therapy talk with being helpful or kind or something that they think that there can be nothing wrong with it, but it can be misused. Yeah. And this is because Ludwig put on a funny voice when he was talking about a story that he told about something semi-embarrassing he did in the past. And then that whole thing

about, well, why did you do that? If somebody asked you to break down a joke, it's kind of embarrassing right in general But in in this case, you know literally mentions, you know, you're roasting me live on a stream and he's like no no But you know, it's more deeper than that right and and also these pauses the pregnant pauses where you're like, that's it Let me just think about that like again. this is things which people don't normally do, but can happen in a session where a therapist says, you know, let me just think about what you've said there. Also, podcasters occasionally do this. It is fair to say like when they want to seem profound.

But it is well known. It's almost a cliche of a power play, which is to let the silence sit. Yeah, let's sit with that. Let's sit with this. And oh, by the way, Matt, just to say, I do appreciate this from Ludwig, because like they go on, they end up talking about his dad, and I'll play one clip related to that. But Ludwig does actually show awareness of the kind of power play.

So listen to this interaction. So if you want to go down the road enough of a man. Oh, shit. You do it too, Dr. K. Way to make a lighthearted joke in the moment. No, I mean, I seriously my fingers are slippery. Which is a, you know, whole different discussion. But I'm supposed to ask you about Coomers at some point too. Okay, sure. Speaking of making things lighthearted. So tell me, were you always kind of the Joker?

Yeah, for sure. Class clown. Can you tell me a little bit about that? So he dropped the pan and makes a joke and Ludwig is like look you You know you're making that lighthearted thing, but I talked to Kay says, ah, haha I then you know make some like kind of off-color remark, but then this tone completely shifts You heard at the end what he's like, okay, but then so tell me what did you mean when you said so like? It's okay for him to pause and like say, you know, but why did you make that joke? But when Lydric does it, it's just like, okay,

yes, that's funny. No, let's get back to the serious business here. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you hear the change in tone and the very focused question, were you always a class clown? Yeah. Like you're saying, this isn't how people talk, right? This is a form of some form of therapeutic communication. And it is like Dr. K is good at it. You could tell it at all points in time. And he boasted about this earlier. He's good at it. You could tell it at all points in time. And he boasted about this earlier. He's

good at controlling the conversation. He's good at asking the insightful or the correct questions. He's running it and using what he's learnt in his clinical training. Yeah, and he likes these eureka moments. So you picked up there, Matt, on the, were you always a class clown? Right Ludwig talks about this experience he had where he was a class clown, he did something, and he got a reaction, and since then, he's always kind of been performing in front of crowds. And then I washed the dishes and took a shower

at the same time. And everybody thought it was the funniest thing ever. And ever since then, I've just been on a high road. I just ride that high. What is that high? They all laughed. They thought it was funny. It was a classic good one.

And how did that make you feel? 10 out of 10. It was a banger. Certified good one, live in front of all the people in my class and my crush and the cool teacher. Sounds amazing. Did I do the voice again? Yeah, it was amazing. It was good. Yeah. But Dr. K, he often draws these connections, right? So,

Ludwig mentioned the 10th grade whenever he had that story, right? So, listen to this. No, he died when I was 10 not in the 10th grade unless you're just wondering how old were you it when the joke story is from the third grade it was on hindsight I misremembered it's fifth grade I believe actually how were you ever grade eight 10. Wait. I was 10, Dr. K. See you did it again. Oh, fuck. Yeah, I was 10 years old. A detective voice. Do you remember?

What else happened that year? Wait, my dad died that year. Wait, OK, I'm I'm using a voice, but I do think I have an erect. Yeah, I guess that does add up. Sure, you're on to something here, I think. I mean, maybe. Mm hmm. So it's OK. Let's just sit for a second. How are you feeling right now, Ludwig? I feel good. I'm trying to remember dates.

Because he died in March. I can't remember if it was before or after the story. But I don't I don't remember. I can't remember. So Dr. Kay's version is that Ludwig became the class client in response to the sadness of his dad's death. And now he's kind of repressing the actual significance of that event, even though, because when he's talking about it, he's kind of saying, you know,

he processed it. It's very sad. But like, he's OK with it. Yeah, so this is the really challenging thing, Ludwig, is I think you're doing great. I don't think you're someone who has all these problems or things like that. I don't mean to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the same time, I think that

there are still like areas that all human beings can grow. And I think the real challenge here is that what we have to, what I think would help you move forward in life, which by the way, I think it's just, you know, I don't know if you... Because I have a long time ago and I'm not so sure that that's the case, I think it's just, I don't know if you... Because it happened a long time ago and Dr. K is not so sure that that's the case. But you hear at the end of the map where he says like, maybe it's the same year, right? Like maybe, literally maybe it's unclear, right? But he's not sure if that event happened before or after. So if it happened before, it wouldn't fit this whole detective case, but that doesn't

come up. Dr. K moves on as if the connection is pretty much likely to be the case and kind of fixates on that interpretation as they go on. And they talk about other stuff as well, but it's that thing where, so that explains why Ludwig is this kind of personality and he's a streamer and yeah. Is it possible to be grateful for things and ungrateful for things at the same time or is it either or? It is, but I think the energy spent reflecting on what you're grateful for is more valuable than what you aren't or upset about because that you cannot change. And when you're grateful for is something that you can keep

and continue to grow and like, you know, I think it's more valuable. I can get behind that. At the same time, I disagree. Look, you know, I can be 15, mauled that, you know, my Jonah had a dad until he was 17 and then my dad died at 10, or I can be like, damn, I got this sweet car because my mom is nice. That's pog.

And I think that it's a better headspace to be in the second world I agree with that. So there's there's there's one thing there's one thing that I would switch in your words Okay, sure. You can be mauled at whoever that is at 15 because they have a dad or you can be grateful for the Car and this is where I would say replace the or with an and. But why be mauled? Because you're only mauled at life, which you have no control over. Getting mad at something I have no control over seems like a fruitless endeavor. Let me think about that for a second, because I think you're right. What do you have control over?

Well, I mean, this is therapy as spectacle, right? And just like a Hollywood movie or something, it's like you, within five minutes, right? You've art, like it's like, you know, Colombo. It's Colombo. Colombo, you know, this is to actual therapy and diagnosis as Colombo is to actual real detective work, right? Unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, this is detective work, right? Unfortunately. Yeah.

I mean, this is my point, which is it's entertainment. It's designed to be entertaining. And there's none of the careful stuff that actually goes on, which is actually quite boring and not fun to listen to. Now, I mean, one little thing that I'll point out, Chris, though, too, is that it's just I'm kind of fascinated by those little tricks that he uses, for instance. Like, but, you know, I just want to check in, you know, how are you feeling right now? Yeah, I get not therapy.

Not for. Yeah, again, again, this is totally normal. This is how people talk. But that aside, I mean, those sorts of questions, they can be asked in good faith. But that aside, I mean, those sorts of questions, they can be asked in good faith, but honestly, in the hands of Dr. K, then it can be used as like a double edged sword, where if you go, oh, no, I'm fine, right? Okay, great. Let's continue. We can dig deeper. And if you say, well, actually, I'm feeling a bit upset by what we've just been talking

about. Well, then you've got another avenue to go on. But either way, the person that you're talking to, there is no way out. The only way is further in for them to expose more of themselves and for you to to take them where you want to take them. Now, Matt, last clips, last few clips just to play the finish of this long episode. Okay, Matt, last few clips just to play the finish of this long episode. So Dr. K more recently released a thing where he talks about his reprimand,

his official reprimand from the licensing body, right? Because he was reported for the streaming that he was doing and including the interviews with Breckville. And he did receive an official reprimand from the Board of Registration in Medicine. Okay. And it's, the publicly available document is not that long. It's eight pages long and it outlines, you know, the circumstances it talks about the interviews he did Rekful. And the conclusion at the end is that he has engaged in conduct that undermines the public confidence in the integrity of the medical profession. The respondent's license is hereby reprimanded. The sanction is imposed for each violation of law listed, blah, blah, blah.

Right. So they did find that he had violated the ethics of the profession, but not such that his license would be revoked, which would be very strong. One just enough that he would receive an official reprimand, which goes on your record and which you need to notify employers of. And you can look up Dr. K's medical record and so on there. So it's not the harshest thing that they can levy, but it is also not just a minor thing, which everybody gets a couple of reprimands in their career. No, most people do not. Obviously he needed to respond to this and he did. So let's see how he framed it.

Before we get started with that, as some of y'all may have seen, I was recently reprimanded by the Medical Board of Massachusetts. And I think it's really important to kind of talk about this. So the first thing to understand is that this is like really, really important. We've been cooperating with a board investigation that started about two years ago.

It's finally concluded. And I think that this is like a very healthy and fair way to do things. So, I know a lot of people like the work that we do and they're like, oh my god, like this is so unfair. No, this is exactly how things are supposed to happen. It's fine. It's great in fact. It couldn't be better. I think this is exact opposite response of Jordan Peterson in a way, right? You know, real, we're fire and fury. How dare they? Who has the right to judge me? But Dr. K is almost like, it is fantastic that the ethics board

have done this. We have been holding hands with them every step of the way. It's been a wonderful experience. And let's explain why it's good. This is a good outcome for everyone involved. Yeah, yeah. This is the sort of lean into the criticism. Embrace embrace any detrimental things in a in a love bear hug. Dr. Kay is is far more sophisticated socially than someone like Jordan Peterson. This is much more effective. Of course, his tone of voice, the way he's presenting it, he's relaxed. He's happy. You know, he's just like, some of you will be upset by this, but this is fine. This is a good thing.

Let me explain. You people don't understand how these things work like I do. Also, you may have noticed they said, before we get into it, I need to talk about it because this video is not highlighted. My official reprimand response, it's a separate video. And this is just at the start of it, right? It's not in a segment that you would notice if you went through his channel. But okay, so what is he abiding? What is the medical board? You know, people have got things in their head. Let's be clear. So about five years ago, I saw a problem with mental health.

I saw a degree of AOE damage that was being done, where as a clinician working in an office, I realized that like there is no way, like the number of people who need help, we would need an army of clinicians that we don't have to try to fix this problem. The extent to which people are suffering and the extent that the mental health crisis that we were facing required some kind of additional innovation or something needed to be done differently. So I started streaming and when I started streaming, I did everything that I could to make sure that this was okay.

And then what happened is someone filed a complaint in 2022, and this is exactly why medical boards exist. Right? So medical boards exist because occasionally you'll have a doctor who tries to do something a little bit different. And is this okay or is this not okay? or is this not okay? That's the purpose of medical boards. Innovative doctors trying things and boards us and is it okay or is it not okay? Yeah, yeah, that's why they exist and yeah, he's like his motivations in streaming these online therapy sessions. It's it's about error area of effect Helping because that's what he's all about. He's trying to find new ways of helping because there's so much suffering out

there. He's just one man. He can't help people one at a time. He needs to help people en masse. That's the only motivation to broadcast these things. Important to remind people of that point. Important to remind people of that point. It's important to remind people of the good intentions before we get into the official reprimand. But also, Matt, this process was fantastic, as we've seen. It was great. So we've been cooperating with the board for the last two years. I actually think it has been an eye-opening, humbling, fair, and excellent process.

This is why medical boards exist. Because when there is a problem, when I show up and say, hey, I'm here to help, is what I am doing harmful in some way, helpful in some way? Where is the line? I personally feel relieved that the board has gone through everything that we've done with a fine-tuned tooth comb. And they have placed no restrictions on my license, no probation, nothing like that. And furthermore, and more importantly, no restrictions on the work that we do here. So they could have said, hey, you shouldn't do interviews anymore, that's therapy.

No more streaming, no more content creation. This is not allowed, this is the practice of medicine. They did not find that any of those things were actually applicable. So I'm still allowed to interview people. I'm still allowed to stream. I can make mental health content on the internet and I can see patients without restriction. So that feels really good to me. It's been a complete validation.

A complete that it's been given a clean bill of health. He's, he's innovated cause he needs to help more people. And the IRB board whose job it is to look at... No, sorry, not the IRB board, but the medical board. Yes. Sorry, the medical board has looked into it and, you know, clean bill of health is fine. He's got the thumbs up. Could you just remind us, because it wasn't a severe reprimand, but what was the reprimand

who was given again? Just those details? The respondent has engaged in conduct that undermines the public confidence in the integrity of the medical profession. The respondent's license is hereby reprimanded. I guess you could say he's given that a positive spin. He also said, you know, when I show up and say, I'm here to help, is what I'm doing harmful?

Is it helpful? Did he submit the ethics violation thing to the board? Was that what happened? Or was it someone else that said that, you know, he might be violating ethics? And yeah, so if he wasn't, why did he get an official reprovod? It's a little bit confusing. It might seem like there's a contradiction, but you'd be mistaken. And he specifically here talks about rectful. You know, a lot of people thought that I was negligent with rectful and all this kind of

stuff. And this is where the board actually outlines this very clearly that I operated within standard guidelines There's no evidence of negligence or malpractice or anything like that Now this may surprise people because they're like, oh my god what I did was so bad But you know, I'm gonna say this I've said it before but I'll kind of say it again so one of the challenges of this situation is that Because someone has a right to privacy I

cannot share Everything that I know about the situation, right? So people made allegations and like in order to defend myself I have to violate someone's privacy and I'm not going to do that. I'll never do that The good news the relieving thing for me is that with the medical board though the right to privacy because they are a medical board They reviewed a lot of records things like that, right? They can look at patient information and they are allowed to make a determination After they've looked through all of the information and I don't even blame people for thinking negatively about me

Right because you guys didn't have all the information and you can't ever get all the information. I can't give you the information It's just not possible and that's okay Right. Right? So that's, it's part of what being a content creator is. So I think this is a really important, healthy process. This is what oversight looks like. Right? This is what we need to be safe is for someone to go through, it's totally fine to complain and then the board goes through everything and they make a determination. I think it's been an incredibly fair process. I'm personally relieved and I'm like actually really happy that I continue to do everything that I've been doing right. No restrictions on my license or content creation.

So can I just mention that in the official reprimand document, it mentions about his friend contacting him about Recful's declining mental health on June 30th. And the point that I believe he's referencing here is that the board says, during his conversations with Recful and his friends, the respondent followed standard referral guidelines, including referrals for outpatient care, higher levels of care, and guidance around use of emergency services. This is in reference to the conversation on June 30th, 2020. And then on July 2nd, 2020, Recful died by suicide was his last conversation with Regfull on stream was in February 12th, 2020. Okay. So that's different than what he's saying. Now, there might be some other document where they say everything is okay. Right. But what that says there is that when contacted by

Regfull and his friends, and when he was having an acute episode, he correctly followed the referral and standards of practice. But that is not saying everything in the conversations was completely fine. In fact, they reference various examples throughout the document of stuff that doesn't seem fine. throughout the document of stuff that doesn't seem fine. Right? And so I feel that this is putting a heavy dose of spin on like, they said there was nothing wrong with any of that.

They said I followed all the standards carried. No, they said, because like if he had not done that or that acute incident where somebody committed suicide shortly after his friends and he contacted them. Yes, that would be a really big issue. But he's presenting that as like kind of, that's a validation. And no, that's the least that you should expect from someone with training. Like, you know, that when people contact you, you know, really, and they're contacting you,

which speaks already to how they see you. Yeah, a perception of the relationship. Yeah. Why are they contacting him? They were just a guest on the show purportedly. And he probably rightly told them that he needs to contact like help, like and get in contact with doctors immediately. That's what you should do.

But yeah, so there's that framing of the relationship. Like and get get in contact with doctors immediately. That's what you should do. But Yeah, so there's that pre-emptive of the relationship and no I might you mentioned about a clean bill of health, right? So that's right. So overall this has been like honestly, it's been Eye-opening humbling, but I've really I think it's a very healthy thing This is the way that things work in the world right when you try to do something new Occasionally we need a third party that is objective that is going to look at everything that you do and determine what you are doing Right and what you are doing wrong. I'm actually incredibly grateful to the board I know some people have been like oh my god, there's no no like that. They're doing their job, right? It's their job to make sure that I'm not doing something

out of line or whatever and then they take my license away if I am like that's what they're supposed to do And so i'm just really grateful to everyone who's been helpful to us Everyone who's given us feedback on what we could be doing better everyone who's helped us Create the processes that keep people safe in the work that we do I'm grateful to everyone for all that kind of stuff, right? I'm even grateful to the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association For weighing in and what way they could in our processes for our attorneys and everyone else And I'm grateful to y'all for allowing us to do this work

right, so we showed up five years ago to help and I think we've done some help in that time and right? So we showed up five years ago to help and I think we've done some help in that time and we're, we'll continue to do so. And I think that's the most important thing is that we don't need to change actually like a single thing about our process. Everything that we've been doing or I mean, it's not perfect by any means, but the board made no recommendations on restrictions to practice or any of the content or interviews that we do. Wow, this is fantastic news. I wish I was officially reprimanded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, the overall impression you get is it's very much like a corporate damage control, like amped up to 11. Yeah, but just it's, it's quite impressive, right? To like, you know, receive an official reprimand that they presented as everything that you've done has been vindicated. And like the other way

that they presented this, well, this was all issues from years ago. We've completely changed things. We don't do any of this stuff. Like it's different. We wouldn't have a situation like that We don't do any of this stuff. Like it's different. We wouldn't have a situation like that anymore. And I do think that there is more care is probably taking no about things, but like that Ludwig clips that we're playing, that's not from years ago. So like, yeah, they're just, I think they're overselling the extent to it. So, you know, maybe they have crossed the T's and dotted the I's so that the board cannot point to.

You've got consent forms, you're clear that you're not doing therapy. You know, we're not going to revoke your license, but that's not one in the CMOS like them saying there's no issue. In fact, they've said something different. They've said, you brought the profession into disrepute. That's a serious thing for a professional to do. That doesn't happen to most therapists or most doctors in their entire career. So to present that as you've actually been told that everything you're doing is fine. It's quite impressive and I think one of the things that he's doing that holds up a shield is that he's so clear that the board is fantastic, that everybody involved is in good faith, right? So there there is no way that you can imply that he is arguing against what the board has said, right? So yeah, it's impressive reframing. That's what it is like that.

Yeah, yeah, he's leaning in incredibly so. And you know, totally gels with everything we've seen in terms of how he conducts himself and how he talks to people and that he's extremely socially competent. He's very good at this. So yeah, he really makes Jordan Peterson look like a bit of a fool. I think Jordan Pearson has his own motivations, right? Jordan Pearson, the crews benefit by making a huge mountain out of a molehill. But with Dr. K,

he's going a different tack. He's in damage control mode and you know, he loves this. It's fantastic. It doesn't reflect badly on him. Couldn't be better. It's great. I mean, it is a bit of a shame that a lot of what this medical board, you know, said, the advice they gave, the feedback they had, it's not all public, is it, Chris? We don't have access to typing. No, I don't think so. I think you know the you get the official reprimand being public but I think there's a larger report because it's like

you know two years and I'm sure lots of details of that are private for maybe for very good reasons but yeah so who knows and Matt one last thing There's just one last clip. This is the last clip, I swear to you. So, do you think I'm reading too much into this? So just listen to this paragraph and see what you take from this. I feel privileged that I will continue to be able to do this work essentially in the same way that we have been. I'm not saying that, you know, this is like I will have a license to do this for the next 30 years. Like we're gonna continue to make process improvements, right? There's always, you can always do better. And that's like part of what we do here at HG is like continual process improvement.

It's part of the reason that our content does well. It's part of the reason that our coaching program does well. And by the way, the board looked at all that stuff too. So did you note anything there? Well, no, not really. I was just catching the sort of normal corporate speak about we're always in a process of continual improvement. We're always revising and looking over our processes to see where we could make things

better. What did I miss? Well, the one line I got, which I was like, is he says, you know, I'm not saying I'll have a license to do this for the next 30 years. And then he goes on. So, like, why not? Right? Because that sounds like you're kind of priming the audience that maybe what we're doing will, you know, eventually eventually it'll mean that I can't be using a license because it's too innovative for, you know, it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Like why would you say that? Why would he lose his license? Yeah, yeah, actually now you mentioned it. Yeah, that didn't click for me either. Like he's implying that at some point in the future, they may well decide, look, no, you've gone too far. We're going to take away your license. And he's thinking ahead, which is like, that'll be fine, right?

He can be like Dr. Phil. He can just switch over and say, no, I'm not a therapist anymore. But why would they do that? Because he's already outlined that he hasn't broken any ethical rules. And also, I'm wondering, why was he reprimanded given that he's very clear, there are all these free things that need to be there. He didn't do any of those things on any streams, even in the past. He was talking about this long before. So how could the board make this official reprimand if he had done nothing that would cross the line, maybe he was being too innovative.

That's probably what it was. So yeah, I guess the board also doesn't understand the practice of medicine and therapy or what would bring the profession into disrepute. Yeah, it is a little confusing because according to what he says, you know, he's been given a clean bill of health. He can keep doing what he's doing. There was no injunctions made about not allowed to do this or not allowed to do that. He can keep doing it.

Yet he was given an official reprimand. When he does practice, then he has to broadcast it. He has to let people know that he's been reprimanded. It's an embarrassing thing for a professional to have. Now, presumably there was some reasons for that, but the report is in public and Dr. K hasn't said what they are. Yeah, well, it's kind of like it's unspecific, but it outlines, you know, basically the interactions with Rekful, which strongly talks about like statements that he'd said about, you know, that he would be there for him for two years and

so on. So like it isn't specific in that document, but it's very clearly implied that it was through those conversations. So yeah, so anyway, Matt, it's been a long jaunt for Dr. K content, but we're out of it now. This is right at the Dr. K here. We've got three episodes covering the Ayurvedic promotion, the kind of rhetoric around calm, which was surprisingly heavy. And now we have this, which is another completely separate content. Well, let me say my piece about, this is my genuine feeling about this type of activity. And it applies just as much to Dr. Phil, perhaps not quite as much because Dr. Phil on like a daytime TV show like Oprah is perceived by the audience and probably the people that are turning up as entertainment. That's just my gut vibe. And the thing about what Dr. K does

is that he presents it as a deep and meaningful connection of souls. Like it's deadly serious. It may be educational, but really this is serious stuff. It's not just light entertainment. And I think most people tuning into Oprah and the people that apply to go on stage and appear on those reality TV shows. I mean, I don't like them. I don't condone them, endorse them in any way, shape or form.

But I think in a way, it's a bit less bad than what Dr. K is doing because there is the perception of it being somewhat light entertainment. So what the issues are in doing this live streamed broadcast stuff that looks a lot like therapy, first of all, is that there's a conflict of interest, right? Because you're doing something which appears a lot like therapy to the person that you're talking to, but actually your interests are not aligned with the person you're talking to in the same way that it is when you are a practitioner who is getting paid to do that therapy session. It's in private. No one else is seeing it.

Your only motivation is to help them. Hopefully you're not getting any kickbacks from some pharmaceutical company or anything else that that's going to motivate your diagnosis and treatment. So it's good. Your interests are aligned with the patients. That's not the case when it is live streamed for someone who is building a channel, who's probably their principal sources of revenue are coming from clicks and views and subscriptions and all of these things. So that's one conflict of interest. It's a big problem.

The second one is confidentiality and privacy. That's one of the key things that when you're doing something that looks like therapy, it happens in private. If you are breaking down, if you are saying incredibly embarrassing things, a whole bunch of stuff can happen. Strict confidentiality always applies and that obviously, you know, is fundamentally violated when you're doing it on a stream where if something does go wrong as things did appear to go wrong in his thing with Wreckful, I mean it's live, it's live, there are thousands of people watching. So your motivation when you're doing this kind of performance theater therapy is not about quality and depth of

treatment but it's about providing a good show. So you're going to have sensationalism and stuff like that prioritized over it being like a genuine therapeutic intervention. And I believe Dr. K, when he's saying, oh no, this isn't therapy, because I'm not doing X, Y and Z. Now, yes, it's clear that you're doing a very half-assed form of performance therapy, but that is not a get out of jail free card for you not undertaking unethical behavior. The other thing too is in terms of post-therapy care. Once you've engaged a client, you've got a responsibility to them.

There's an ongoing relationship and you've got a responsibility to them to follow up and make sure that things go okay afterwards. There isn't that, right? When people like Recful have signed these waivers and so on, and sorry, you have none of the rights that apply to a patient. You're just a guest on our podcast and once you're gone, we have no responsibilities to you. And he's really big on emphasizing how he doesn't have any responsibilities to the people that appear on the show. So, you know, there's this very real risk of exploitation when you're saying, I'm going to have vulnerable people on that have genuine psychiatric issues. And there's

going to be titillation and fascination by all of the dark stuff that's going on, there's an incredible potential for that to be pure and simple exploitation, which is going to generate clicks and views and revenue to Dr. K, but it's accruing no benefits to someone like Regful. Now, I'll hand it to Dr. K that I'm sure that in the majority of cases, and he's probably learned his lesson, that if you keep it light, if you're talking to fellow streamers and they're just having a bit of fun, they actually don't suffer from any serious psychological issues, then in those cases, it can be a lot more like a Dr. Phil Oprah type scenario where people know the score, everyone knows that it's a bit like, it's not real wrestling, it's WWW wrestling.

In that case, I acknowledge that the potential for harm is a bit less. But really what he's doing here, what his motivation is, is to blur those boundaries. He wants to take some of the credibility and some of the interest and the status that accrues to being like a licensed credentialed therapist. And then he wants to use that in his broadcast streaming career, but he doesn't want any of the responsibilities that go along with those credentials. So I don't like it. I don't endorse it. And I think he's got a problem. Yes. Well, well said. So you offered, you know, your kind of big picture. And I will say from mine that like, I think part of the reason that we split it up was because there is genuine, unique, ethical questions here. It's quite an unusual thing that

Dr. K is doing. And yes, it does bear similarities to some previous cases with people who have credentials who are doing public advice giving, but is it therapy, but is it not? And so on. And I just think that part of the issue here is that Dr. K is clear. He's considered all the ethical issues. He's an expert. There is nothing which they've really done which is wrong. People online lack the expertise, which is why they get confused about this. But I think that he uses a lot of rhetoric in making that argument and that there are all professionals, there are all the people with training and ethics and scientific objective ways of asking questions who are also saying that there are issues here. It's not just internet trolls. So yeah, there's like

a overlap of influencers and this kind of thing. But I do think that he's not engaging with the criticism in the way that he portrays himself as. And the conversation with Dr. Mike is probably the most direct that those points have been, you know, put with pushback. And I think he slips into rhetoric quite a lot there. So is he a secular guru? Well, I think we'll see when we put him in the grometer, but I, I definitely think there's a lot of guru-ish techniques at play, but he does lean heavily into the calm and spirituality side of things as well. So yeah, I think he's doing something akin to secular guru-izing, but it's probably more a combination of influencer power social stuff with kind of Dr. Phil celebrity therapist.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, in our defense, this has been a gargantuan triumvirate of episodes. But, you know, I think we needed to play a lot of those clips to illustrate the points. If we just played one or two, then, you know, he could be cherry picking and so on. And I think we've established a fair few points.

Yeah, he's an interesting character. I agree with what you said. He's primarily, I guess, a kind of a Dr. Phil type character, a pop streaming broadcast therapist. I mean, the appeal pop streaming broadcast therapist. I mean, the appeal there is clearly therapy as theatre. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean it's always toxic and that it's always hurting people. I'm sure in many cases, it isn't. From the first episode we covered, we see that he definitely does have like a woo spiritual approach to clinical stuff that isn't grounded in evidence and science, but he definitely does take on the mantle of being a credentialed expert authority. So I think in that sense, that's where he's sort of, he's hitting our guru things. Yeah. And you. And we see the same thing with this theater therapy, where on one hand, just like the gurus do, they get to play it both

ways. They could appeal to the emotional woo stuff while claiming for it to be grounded in secular evidence and so on. With the therapy theater, he's digging into all of the drama and the emotions and the... What's the word when you're enjoying looking at other people do things? Voyeuristic. Voyeuristic, that's the word. Tapping into that voyeuristic stuff. But no, no, it has the highest of motivations, right? This is education.

This is teaching people about learning about themselves, helping them level up and ascend Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So I'm not a big fan, I have to say. I was more of a fan before I started looking for his contact. The first exposure was like interesting and you know, oh, I haven't seen somebody doing these kinds of conversations, this kind of like empathetic listening and you listening and it is getting to a deeper conversation with people. But then the more that you look, the more it seems potentially ethically fraud and yeah, just blurring off lines between all sorts of different things. And this is not to say just the final thing I want to say as well.

And we keep making this point and it doesn't seem to align with people. This doesn't mean Dr. K cannot have give you good advice. He cannot have been helpful to you or to the influencers that he's talking about that he doesn't give advice, which is useful and accurate about mental health in all our circumstances, right? All of that can be true. Then this is like a problem that I constantly bump into where people assume that like, if somebody

is doing the kind of things that we're showing Dr. K is doing, it means that we are saying he can never give accurate advice or be helpful to people. And obviously he can. Obviously many people of his community have like found his advice genuinely helpful, have like sought out help, you know, because of his things or have improved their life. And all of that can be true as well as the criticisms about the ethics and the conflicting motives and manipulative techniques that are sometimes a part of his content being there. So I just want to say like, you know, it's perfectly, you're not an idiot if you find

Dr. K beneficial or that you, you know, you're interested in this stuff. Like it doesn't have to be that somebody is completely all evil for there to be, you know, potential issues that are not just from heat farming trolls that we may be. Yeah, that's right. And in terms of the kind of knowledge base or the stuff that he says, I mean, you know, he knows a lot of stuff and not everything he says is, is woo, not everything he says is illogical or a misrepresentation of the evidence. Some of it is.

Don't believe him about the history of psychology, for example. We covered that in a previous episode. But yes, some of it is perfectly grinded expertise and clinical experience. It's more about this way that it gets used. Like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's a thing. Some psychologists see some value in it. But on the other hand, it has essentially no evidence for it. It's one of these things that kind of sounds good that there might be some truth in it, but whatever. And you can take that and it makes you sound very smart about Maslow. And it's the way you use it and the confidence with which you take that nugget of knowledge and throw it about as you're building these

kind of rhetorical arguments. And I have some issues with how he does that. But anyway, yeah, Chris, thank you for bringing him to my attention, our attention. He definitely is a unique snowflake. He's a little bit different than anyone we've covered before. And for that, Dr. K, we thank you. We thank you. Yeah. We give you... It's a clean bill of help, basically. So it's a gargantuan episode. It ends the... Or does it? We'll see. It's at least coming to the end of the Streamer and Academic season. So there's not that much chance to play the theme music, Matt.

So I think I'm going to play that out. Patreon shout outs, the other things. It'll have to wait for another occasion because we're out of time folks. I'm afraid we're out of time. So you're just going to have a little listen to this music and Matt and I will say goodbye before that. So have a good night. God bless and be safe out there. Yep.

Let's not say sayonara. Let's say matane. Very good. Yeah, very good. And I... some Technosynth! academics. And when I'm talking about that anagogic in and out of the imaginal augmentation of our ontological depth perception, that's what I mean by imaginal faithfulness. Enlightening stuff. You'll provide some interesting lessons for us today. Decoding the gurus, streamers, and academics season.

This is going to be really interesting.