I see a lot of YouTube videos that are educational but we know that there is a more effective
way to do it.
I know you know - this is what has led me to have this existential crisis here about
this channel.
Hey Everyone.
I'm Ali Mattu and this is Josue Cardona.
Welcome back.
Thank you.
I wanted you back here on the podcast.
This is not a podcast.
I wanted to talk to you also about are we teaching anyone anything?
I like to frame it more like.
Are they learning anything.
Right.
The two hopefully go together but not always.
Yeah I mean one thing that some people do online that I see a lot is oh this movie teaches
you this or this TV show or that book teaches you something.
I disagree with that many times.
It's not the intention of the creator to teach anything.
No.
And you can learn a lot of things from content that it was not intended.
A good example of what you just mentioned are gender and sexuality and expectations
about relationships.
People learn a lot from media about how to interact with each other.
And a lot of that is not intended to teach people anything.
Reality TV shows for example are the most raw versions of that.
They're not acted out.
I would argue that porn is the most raw version of that.
Where would we be without porn.
Yeah exactly.
It's an upcoming episode.
Going back to reality TV.
People love it because it seems real and in many ways the reaction the emotions are real.
You start picking up things and you start learning..."learning".
Reality TV shows aren't making those shows so that other people will act the way that
their stars do.
This is where I think we have to talk about how we actually form memories.
We've all been in situations where we sat in a lecture or looked at a book and we thought
we might learn the material.
It would just sort of enter our head and we'd learn it.
But that doesn't necessarily happen when we're trying to learn new information.
It's an active process.
If you're in a class you might hear something in a lecture.
But then when you recall it again you're recreating that memory and each time you do you strengthen
it.
You have to read the book.
Think about it.
Write it down yourself.
Make your own examples.
You have to elaborate on it and each time you're strengthening the memory.
I see a lot of YouTube videos that are educational but we know that there is a more effective
way to do it.
I know you know.
This is what has led me to this existential crisis here about this channel when I'm actually
in a classroom
So much of my teaching is not about lecturing at you.
Lecturing is actually not that effective.
What's more effective is helping you to make the information your own.
But then there's like how to be a successful YouTuber or a podcaster which is very different.
The ideal thing would be that we would run through what we're going to talk about at
the beginning of the episode and then actually do it.
There's actually a lot of research about how important testing and quizzing and getting
feedback is to the learning process.
So if I start a video and I have a little quiz that engages some of the big myths about
a concept I'm about to teach and then I teach it.
And then a quiz you again you're going to remember more but like who wants to watch
a YouTube video that starts with a quiz?
I really worry that a lot of these videos are lecturey.
Maybe they're fun but they might just be edutainment and not educational.
It's not a bad word, you don't have to say it like that.
I feel bad saying it.
But I've also received feedback from YouTubers who have huge channels and have been doing
this much larger than are much longer than I have.
And they say it's OK.
Edutainment is what you're going for because your job is not to teach.
This isn't curriculum.
This is making information fun and easy to understand so that people who really care
about it they can go on and learn more.
If the idea is that someone is coming to you for entertainment then what does the educational
value matter?
And if someone is coming to you for learning why not use all of those things that we know
will help people learn it?
The real goal is education?
Now you can tell me.
Oh this is a real goal I want it to be educational and I want it to also be fun.
I want to be part of the larger conversation that's happening on YouTube.
Remember I once asked you how would you feel if I created some sort of interactive material
that was supplemental to your video?
Right.
That was me thinking with my teacher hat on.
Yeah.
Can we test the knowledge.
Can we actually provide something separate from the video to also reinforce the learning.
Do you remember what I said?
I don't.
That sounds like a lot of work.
I struggle so much to try and get one video out a week.
And this is all during off hours.
And the idea of doing that of also creating this curriculum base that will extend upon
every idea here was overwhelming.
Ultimately it comes down to the person recreating that memory in their head many times.
But we can help them do that.
I don't think I am.For me the idea of a one person lecture at the camera isn't the be
all end all of learning something.
And I think it's really important identify what part we want to play.
One of my other favorite videos that I made that a lot of people said have really helped
them to learn something is a video I made about exposure therapy showing people how
you actually do an exposure therapy session with myself doing it on my own exposure to
my fear of bees and that is something you can write about.
You can talk about but you have to see how it actually happens.
That's a video that shows you how to do something which is so much of YouTube.
How to tie a bow tie.
How to tie your shoelaces.
how to fix a router your format and my format are very different in that most of the content
that I produce is like this it's a conversation so that if I say something you can say it
in a different way and that helps the listener see things from a different perspective.
We can go into it a little more depth.
I am assuming that this video will be longer than your usual videos where it's just you.
For me I like the idea of discussion and having critical thinking seeing the critical thinking
happening.
We can tell someone that oh well maybe this maybe that looking at it in perspectives it's
very different than the like you mentioned before the lecture.
Is that any better at teaching people.
Are they actually learning.
I don't know.
It's important to bring up what a learning style is because people talk about that a
lot.
What I'm talking about now is lecture versus maybe discourse or discussion.
There are different learning experiences.
Yeah.
Because the idea of learning styles is bullshit.
Bullshit.
I learn really well by seeing stuff.
Well yeah so does everybody.
But if I test you that's not necessarily gonna show.
It doesn't show up in any in any research.
You also need to check out the learning scientists their blog which is all about how learning
styles don't exist and other strategies that can help you learn.
It really annoys me how hard it is to discover psychology biology chemistry a lot of the
fundamentals of these older sciences you get exposed to in elementary school.
But many people don't get exposed don't have the opportunity to study psychology until
college.
Maybe if you're lucky you have an AP psychology class in high school.
Part of my goal here was to make psychology fun and easy and make it accessible to people
so that's kind of what I told myself because I always put more resources below to learn
more about a topic that goes far more in depth because the other thing I'm not doing is I'm
not going in depth in anything.
That's one of my friendly critiques.
Sometimes of your videos where I'm like well that's
one part of a larger whole.
Your goal isn't to make what is it The Great Courses these 10 hour audiobooks.
However if the great courses wants to hire me.
But you only do short 5 minute videos.
I can make them bigger like this one like.
Like any time you're on the show.
Yeah sorry.
I always like to have a conversation about a topic on most of my content.
I have a female counterpart.
I think there are biases that I do not know that I'm not aware of it right and that are
important to have as part of the discussion but that is a longer discussion.
If you only have five minutes if you can open a door to more understanding you can present
a few ideas and then someone can find it in the video or google it and find way more information
about it.
Is that enough for you?
Are you satisfied with that?
I'm not I'm not satisfied.
This channel is a very narrow vision of what I want my dream has been to have a channel
where there's a new video Monday that's about a topic that a lot of people are talking about.
On Wednesday I'm bring in someone else and we do a live video discussion.
That's a longer format.
And on Friday we take viewer feedback.
It's a much longer and much more in-depth discussion into like one topic.
I would love to do that.
The problem with that is making a video like this takes hours and hours and hours.
This would be a lot easier if this was my full time job but it's not.
So are we teaching anyone anything?
Are they learning?
Have we Have we answered that question?
I don't think we can answer that question.
I think you all can answer that question.
Have you have you learned anything from The Psych Show?
I want to know your honest answer to that.
Josue thank you for coming back.
Where can people find you on Internet?
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