Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast produced by the American Psychological Association.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna. I'm joined by Dr. Ali Matu, a clinical psychologist at the Columbia

University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. He's also the host of a YouTube series

called The Psych Show, where he's been explaining psychological concepts and giving

advice to his more than 15,000 subscribers for more than three years now. Welcome, Dr. Mantu.

Thanks for having me. Okay, so you have your PhD. You have a great job. You're a psychologist.

So what brought you to wanting to do these videos online? What made you want to start your channel?

I was sitting with a patient of mine back in 2014, and they said, Ali, can I share with you this

video that's been really helpful for me? It's kind of changed my life. It's really helped me

to understand things in any way. And I said, yeah, sure, let's watch it. It was a YouTube video. It was some YouTuber,

I think a teenager that was sharing their advice, and it was like completely wrong. It was like completely wrong advice.

It was not what any psychologist would say.

And so I told her, I said, I told my patient, give me a moment, let me find something

that's like more effective, more true to the science, and I couldn't find anything.

And that put me down a path of trying to find,

trying to find out where all the psychologists, YouTubers were.

I couldn't really find any.

And then I decided I have to do something about that.

I have to change that.

So why do you think people need psychology brought to them?

And in a way, like a YouTube

channel, as opposed to going to see a psychologist in an office? Well, psychology is so relevant

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