Chubbyemu on Society, Medicine, and YouTube

ChubbyEmu [00:00:00] I remember when I first started, I, I started YouTube out of a frustration that I was stuck in a bureaucratic environment that locks you out. I mean, if you think about it, the youngest government sponsored investigator in medicine is 48 years old. I'm

Vance Crowe [00:00:23] Christina Hudson

ChubbyEmu [00:00:24] Kohler, an

Vance Crowe [00:00:25] Egg processing manager living in Syracuse, New York, and you

ChubbyEmu [00:00:28] Are listening

Vance Crowe [00:00:29] To the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we do an interview with my friend Bernard, otherwise known as Chubby imu, who is a fantastic YouTube producer. He creates videos about medical oddities and curiosities that are really surprising and interesting and engaging, and in fact are watched by tens of millions of people. Bernard stopped by the studio and we sat down and recorded an in-person interview, and it was just fantastic. I'm so excited that you're here to check it out. Bernard was actually in the studio because he was helping me upgrade our Legacy Interviews. They have become so popular that we are now interviewing multi-generations, doing groups of interviews, grandparents, parents, children, and it's really turned into something quite amazing. And Bernard was in the studio to help us figure out how to upgrade our lighting and how to do video on an even deeper level. If you're a person that's been interested in having one of your loved ones interviewed, I hope you will go to store dot Articulate Ventures and consider buying one. Right now we are waiting for our studio to be built. We're in the architectural phases and it's going to grow. We'll do a lot more in person, but for now we're focusing on our Zoom interviews. So if you have a mother or father, grandparents somewhere in the world that can get access to a Zoom link, you can sign us up and have me interview them. I can record stories about their family history, where they came from, what their values are, and so many other things that will be a treasure for you for many, many years, maybe even a hundred years in the future.

Vance Crowe [00:02:04] Consider doing that by going to store Articulate Ventures. Alright, well, if you're watching on the video, you can probably tell that I am not in the studio. I am in San Antonio, Texas, where I'm going to be giving a speech today about the smoking watch. It's really a talk about how we make decisions, how we make changes that at first can seem overwhelming, but what is the way we can think about things differently to make some of the big changes in our lives, something that's achievable and something that our future selves will be really glad we did. So I'm excited to give this talk and I'm excited for you listening this interview with my man, chubby imu. So without further ado, let's go to the interview. Bernard, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks.

ChubbyEmu [00:02:45] It's been almost two years.

Vance Crowe [00:02:47] Yeah. Wow. Can you believe it? It, it's, it's shocking. So that you were one of the first people that I ever did a remote interview with because I had previously, when I started the podcast, I only did it like, if you're in St. Louis, if you're swinging by, come by the podcast studio and do it. And then when Coronavirus hit, then I was like, loosened the rules, because now I needed to talk with people all over the world and I remember being like, ah, yes, now I can finally have Bernard on. Yeah. So for people that don't know, you run a medical YouTube channel that has grown from being a little itty bitty channel to being viewed by millions and millions of people. Man. What was it like to go from being just a regular person in the world to being a person that millions of people recognize?

ChubbyEmu [00:03:30] You know, it was interesting when I started YouTube, almost immediately I saw myself in the like out, like in the wild. And here's what I mean by that. I lived in New York City when I started the channel, and I remember maybe like a month or two after I had started. So I'd already made like, I don't know, 20 videos or something. I remember I was on the train on the subway going from I think Manhattan into Brooklyn. And when I was there, I remember looking, there was a woman like watching a video on her phone, and it was one of my videos and it, it, it, like, I got scared because I was like, there's only 90 views on that video. Like, how is it that I like just happened to walk into this one person who was like one of those 90. And so like, I remember kind of like tapping on her shoulder and like, she kind of looked up at me like really annoyed. And she's like, what do you want? And I'm like, I pointed at her phone and she was like, looking, she's like, what? And she didn't recognize that it was me. And I'm like, that's my video.

Vance Crowe [00:04:33] How did you find it?

ChubbyEmu [00:04:34] And she's like, wait, what? And I'm like, like, there's only 90 views on that. Like, how did you find that? And like, we both thought it was hilarious. And so like, that was kind of the start of it. And I maybe I, I've been lucky the entire time because when I started, probably like two months into it, I already got to like a thousand subscribers because one of that, that particular video that she found was the one that just kind of like got to a hundred thousand views all of a sudden. So I, I think I was like, I was lucky in the sense that that happened in the beginning. But like I had, I mean obviously it goes through a long series of lulls where it just like doesn't grow for a long time and then it has these spurts. But it, it was interesting because like I, I had kind of figured it would introduce a little bit of chaos into my life having YouTube like that because it had the potential where all of a sudden, you know, o overnight you see people either become memes or something and I'm like, well, I don't really wanna become a meme, but there is the potential of something just kind of like getting big numbers all of a sudden. And it that that, it was always scary to me. 'cause it's like, let's just say you have a video, do a couple million views, like what do you follow up with after that? That anxiety has settled down over the years. But you know, sometimes whenever it pops up you always wonder like, wait a second is, is this really what I want? I would say like from the YouTube perspective, now I've been on for six years now, seven years. Anytime something goes like ultra mega viral, like zero to like 10 million views, all of a sudden, like you have to be super cautious of that because you don't know what comes next.

ChubbyEmu [00:06:13] Like, it, it could just be a huge spike and then a cliff that you fall off right after. But you, like, you have to be cautious of anything that grows like way too quick. Brightest stars burn up fastest is what I always thought.

Vance Crowe [00:06:26] You know, I think a lot of people when they think about the, the person that's ever had a million views, they think, oh man, they got lucky. Right? They, they got something happen to you. Do you view yourself as having gotten lucky that your, your subscriber channel, you know, went so high that now it's easier, you're kind of in easier air?

ChubbyEmu [00:06:44] I would say we've gotten to the point where YouTube has become so well established that it, it isn't just luck. There is like an element of skill that's associated with it. Because there are people who've built substantial audiences off platform and they've done this as an example where they create a channel that's completely unknown to everyone and they use what they've learned about making videos to make a great video right off the bat. And they're able to use it in a way that that one video alone can skyrocket just off the fact that they know what they're doing. So it's like any YouTuber that you watch, if you watch their first videos and the first videos aren't bad, that's not their first channel.

Vance Crowe [00:07:35] And so when you did start getting all these big hits and you start doing this, like, what is that sensation? Like, what does it feel like to become a person that is getting, you know, I mean that's like, it's not just like, oh, I got 50 likes on a tweet, or I got 150 likes. It's like millions of people watched me talk about a subject for 18 minutes.

ChubbyEmu [00:07:57] Yeah. I mean, I'm thankful I have the opportunity to do it. That's why I go through like painstaking processes to like make sure I'm not saying anything that's like, you know, over the top. Sometimes obviously when things are subjective, you can take a stance on one way or the other. In other times, like, you know, it's like, well, based on the available data that we have, this is what we know. And like, you have to make it clear that this is what we know based on that data. And then you can also introduce like other things to say, well, you know, based on the fact that we have this technology or you know, this ability to do something, why don't we see if we can see something a certain other way and we can gather more data about a different aspect. And so like in terms of clinical practice, that's a lot of what gets done is, you know, hey, is it better to do therapy in this order versus this order? Right? Or if we move the patient to, you know, this ward instead of this ward first, what's a better outcome? Right? And so that's gathering data. So you, you could do that, but I would say like having a whole bunch of people, like they're, 'cause they're scrutinizing everything that you're saying and you also have the responsibility to make sure that you're not leading them astray, right? So it's like you have to make clear like, hey, this is what we know right now and you know it, in some areas it could be better, right? And here's some of it, but you also don't want to get too deep into the weeds of, you know, the, your own profession because it's like, well, the reason those other people are doing what they're doing and why you're doing what you're doing, you know, there is that division of labor and if you go too deep into your field, then what you're saying is really only relevant to people that you're working with your colleagues rather than for a general audience.

ChubbyEmu [00:09:37] And so to have to balance that has been kind of a struggle sometimes because like I, I wanna go super in depth, but sometimes I can't. And so it's like, well, we have it just for general audience, okay, so this is what we're gonna do for general audience. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:09:50] And you're kind of a perfectionist and the way to get good at your job is not to have like, ah, and then a miracle occurred and then the, the ending happens, right? Like actually knowing the details is what separates somebody from being successful or not successful, or a video being valid or completely meaningless.

ChubbyEmu [00:10:09] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:10:10] You know, when I look back on my videos, whenever I talk with somebody else that's done content creation, I always talk about like, there's a new psychological phenomena that happens now that we have all this video, particularly that you can put it out into the world. And that is that I look at a video that I made, let's say two years ago, and that's me that I'm looking at. I'm, I'm looking at a video of me. I said those things. I inhabited that person, and yet I can't do anything to change the behavior of that person. Right? So it feels a little bit like you have another self out there that's speaking for you, that's representing you. Do, do you feel that way? Like, do you understand that concept? Doesn't it feel a little surreal?

ChubbyEmu [00:10:50] So, you know, what's interesting is that I, since 2007, I've had a camera and I've pointed it at myself at least once a month, where I just talk and I talk about all the stuff that's, you know, happening either in the world or in my personal life. It's kinda like a, like a personal vlog and like I've archived it several times. I've actually like distributed it to like different parts of the country, right? So I have these copies in different places, right? And to me it's, it's like a, like a personal possession that I have because it's like, you know, I know I, I'm actually talking to myself in these videos, okay. So there's a video from like March of 2009 where back then I had like these, these old flip cameras, so before cell phones, right? Had before they took over.

Vance Crowe [00:11:41] Oh, I remember. Yeah. They were all, all the craze for like two or three years, right?

ChubbyEmu [00:11:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, I think it was made by like Cisco and it had like a, you know, there was a switch, you pull it down and then this thing pops out. It's a USB, so you plug it right into your computer. And so originally I got those for power lifting. So I did a lot of power lifting and I wanted to check my form. So I bought two of these flip cameras and you know, I would edit my own videos where I have two angles of myself, like squatting and just to see if I can find weak points that evolved into me talking into a camera to be like, oh, I, you know, I can't believe this this happened. You know, professor so and so, you know, can't believe the professor did this kinda shit, you know, just really mad. And then like, you know, you take a test, you failed it. And it's like, I'm not gonna make it, like, what's gonna happen to me, right? And like we had this conversation before four in 2009. I had this overwhelming feeling that I wasn't gonna make it. I was just completely gonna fail out and everything. And like that's captured in these videos where I'm talking about it and like, I can see the anguish, like, and just the stress on my face from these videos. Like, I looked different. I was a lot heavier back then 'cause I was doing the power lifting stuff. And what's interesting is that some of these videos I never watched back. And so like, I might have something like labeled, you know, September 17th, 2009 and then like the, just randomly and then like, if, if I watch it now, I won't remember exactly what I said. But the funny thing is as I listen, 'cause it might be like 20 minutes where I'm just rambling and just yelling because I'm just mad. And I remember September, 2009, it wasn't a good month.

ChubbyEmu [00:13:17] And so it was, it was interesting because like, let's just say I listened to it. I can almost predict what I'm gonna say. And in those cases, it, it's almost a confirmation in my mind. I'm still like, you know, I still sometimes have the same train of thought now than I do back then. And so that's the thing that's interesting to me. And what I've noticed is that like the worst the situation is at the time, the more videos there are that month, right? And then the better the situation is like some, some months, like there's only one video, right? So like 2013 sometimes there's only one video in the whole month. And I'm looking back and I'm like, did I delete them? Like, were there, is there no record of it? So like for me, it, it's super important to be able to keep that video record of myself. Just this past year in 2021 for my birthday, I was back at my parents' house and I captured them on video, like the three of us are standing there on camera. And I remember saying to my mom in that one video, I said, mom, it's very possible that someone down the line isn't gonna know me or you. They're just gonna know that they're somehow related to us. They're not gonna know anything about us. And here we are on the screen. And like that's a preservation that, you know, could be for however long that the copy lasts for. So

Vance Crowe [00:14:40] Yeah, I think about that all the time. You know, with my daughter Violet being born, all of a sudden the value of the conversations that I've had with all my friends, right? People stopping by wanting to hang out, people that have met along the way. It's like, Hey, I'm gonna be able to hand you this body of work where it won't just be, oh, dad used to have this friend that made these medical videos. Right? It'll be that she was able to, to watch it, to be able to see that, that this went on and how it all worked. And yet there's still something, 'cause I journal, right? So much of what you're talking about with the, you know, talking loudly into your camera or yelling or whatever, that for me that's into paper. But I don't know that I would ever want another person to see those. You know, for, for me, the journal is the most valuable thing that I probably hope gets burned when I'm gone. Like I, there's no, because it wouldn't mean anything to other people if they watched it. The the ones that mean something are maybe the more public facing one. You know, if my daughter or my wife read my journal, things would be so out of context is to be like, I don't know. I've never really thought about whether I would want those burned or not. I probably would. So,

ChubbyEmu [00:15:45] You know, what's interesting is that my family, I know my, my family's lineage to like the 16 hundreds on both sides. My mom and my dad's, we have a written record from my dad's side in the 16 hundreds. I'm a, I'm descended from what they call Ming Dynasty rebels, okay? On my dad's side. So what happened in 16 hundreds was the Manchus captured Beijing and they established the Ching dynasty and they deposed the, the Ming. So I had ancestors living in the south part of China at the time, who refused to accept the fact that foreigners had captured the capital and have now proclaimed that that land as their own. So these people apparently purchased cannons from the Portuguese to fire at Ching dynasty ships. And we have those receipts, we have written receipts in Chinese and Portuguese, and that's been passed down in our family. And because my dad's the oldest son, it's gonna get passed down to him. And I'm the son of the oldest son. So it's gonna get passed down to me. And so those written records are really something of importance, I think. Right? I also know on my mom's side, right? So it's like to be able to know that part of history and to your family, I don't want it to get lost at my generation. It might get lost at my kids or my grandkids, but I don't wanna be the one that loses it. So I would say it's important. The other thing too, if you read like old history, like when you're talking about, you know, burning your journals because like whatever you write could incriminate you.

ChubbyEmu [00:17:25] That that's actually a, an interesting concept because there was somebody in English history named Thomas Cromwell, who was the chief minister to Henry vii. And I, I read this like most of what I read is like history books. And so it, there's a book that's written by an English historian, I think it's Irish, Irish English historian named Dermot McCulloch. And it, it's just called Thomas Cromwell, A Revolutionary Life. And he writes about that one period in English history that had such far reaching implications that it actually echoes in the United States Constitution. But Thomas Cromwell, and this was 500 years ago, Thomas Cromwell, he was a tainted by the king. So he was elevated to almost noble status, but he was of low birth. He wasn't really an aristocrat by blood. And so a lot of people were trying to come after him, but he architected so many things for the king. The king elevated him. Now the problem is the king started to get mad at him and finally deposed him and at tainted him and seized all the lands that he gave this minister. And so when the a a tainted, when the act of attain happened, his household burned all of the letters that he wrote, but they kept the ones that he received. So the reason that they did that was because at his trial, if the royal authorities had seized the letters that he wrote, they would find something incriminating on him.

ChubbyEmu [00:18:58] But rather if somebody else wrote him something that wouldn't be incriminating, he

Vance Crowe [00:19:02] Could be responsible for it.

ChubbyEmu [00:19:03] Right? And so in the historical record, we have nothing that's, that anything that he says in the historical record, you can only find things that people have written to him. And so he has no voice. The only voice that he has is based on the actions that he conducted for the king in the royal court. And so somebody of that stature is super important that it, it's, it would be of interest to us today to see how he thought about things, but we just don't have them.

Vance Crowe [00:19:31] Yeah, I think something to do with letters would be different. You know, I feel very conflicted about reading meditations by Marcus Aurelius Because you know, that those were his journal writings or some of them were his personal correspondences that he asked, please burn these before I, you know, after I die. Only his followers didn't do that. And they published them now. Like I look at what he wrote, you know, for his journal and his journal in my journal, or not the same thing, right? I don't mean to make that comparison, but I can understand the desire to have a place where you're putting your unfiltered thoughts, but that the expectation would be that they, that they don't need to stay in the world. That, that the, that those thoughts can just go away. Like for me, the, the thought of having that unfiltered ness of me, I don't know that it even represents me. You know, it's a funny thing to think about. Does your journal, is that you or is it, like you were saying, you know, sometimes you're way more motivated to write it when you're in the peaks and valleys of some emotional thing going on in your world. And I'm not sure that my most emotional state is my most me state.

ChubbyEmu [00:20:39] Oh, that's interesting. I would say, like, for me, those are the most interesting times. Like I, I can, like the, the thing with me is that I remember like exact days and like stretches of times. And so like, just give you an example, March of 2016 in like the last 12 years is probably one of the worst months that I've ever had in my entire life, right? And I have a record of video record of everything that's happening and I basically outline everything happening hour by hour. And like, if you see like the anguish in my face and just kind of like the doom that's overcoming me. 'cause I knew that I was like, like bad things were coming and like they, they did, they did show up and like I knew they were gonna show up, right? The the fact that that's captured for me is important to me. Now, if my kids see it, if my grandkids see it, it's probably not gonna mean a lot to them. And, and this might sound kind of conceited, but like, you know, far in the future, people wanna know what the life of an average person was like during our time. You know, a lot of times, like we make fun of American culture, like, oh, McDonald's, Walmart, ha ha, right? There's gonna be a day when those things don't exist, right? And it's like even today, like we see there's nostalgia in like 1980s shopping malls. Like there, there's like whole YouTube channels that are dedicated to like strip mall or, or like actual like retail space nostalgia. And like in a hundred years that might not exist.

ChubbyEmu [00:22:12] And if we're already feeling nostalgic about it now, just imagine sometime in the future when, in the far future when people don't even know that that was something of the past, right? It it's almost to the point where people would conflate the creation of the internet with like the 1960s right? And like the hippie movement and like the hippies weren't on the internet.

Vance Crowe [00:22:32] Yeah. But if you go far enough back, it's like we can't distinguish between when the pyramids were made and when the Greeks were, you know? Right. Like those are, they, they look like, to our view, almost the same. I completely can appreciate that. In fact, just this weekend I went to Walmart for the first time in I don't know how many years, right? Like, it's just, there are not very many Walmarts around my house. It's not really where I shop. My wife and I go there to pick up a trash can. And I did have the feeling of nostalgia where you're like, oh, I remember what it was like to be in a Walmart. I remember like, that's the way the carts are. Oh, that there's 50 cent pop. Remember when we used to come here and it was 25 cents. Right? You definitely have this feeling of the way that it was, and it won't be that way forever. I, I think people have a, a really hard time imagining that the things that are so stable in their lives won't be there in the future. Monsanto is the best example that I have is like, you know, I used to go into a room and, and ask a room of college students, you know, how many of you know who Monsanto is? 95% of them would raise their hands. Now every single year that Monsanto has been gone since Bear bought it, it's fewer and fewer and fewer. I was even in a room full of farmers the other day and there was a young guy I've never heard of Monsanto, and you're like, how is that possible?

ChubbyEmu [00:23:44] But

Vance Crowe [00:23:45] He hadn't,

ChubbyEmu [00:23:45] It's only been a couple years too.

Vance Crowe [00:23:47] Yeah. I mean I think he was kind of like new to the farm industry world. I don't know that he's an actual farmer, but, but like, you do start seeing that now and it happens much, much faster than people think that it would happen.

ChubbyEmu [00:23:58] Yeah, it's, and and that's the thing is that, you know, we wanna know like what was the average life for like somebody living in like the Aztec Empire, right? That's just a world that's so completely different from ours that just, it doesn't exist now, right. That it like, like at least how it did 500 years ago, right? So it's like if if there was some kind of record, it would just be so fascinating to us to see what that average life was like, because the structure of our world now is not gonna be the structure of our world in 200 years for sure. Right? It might not maybe even in a hundred years. Right? It's like, you know, when like you have kids and you know, at the end of your kids' life, right? Their grandchildren will be living in a completely different world. It'll be the year 2100. What's the world like then? I had no idea.

Vance Crowe [00:24:50] Yeah. And you know, you were talking about the way that we wouldn't be able to understand the Aztecs, that it's fascinating. I always think like there are quirks in our language that people might really think that we were really dumb, right? Like the way that we say the sun rises and sets, you know, and people will be like, oh, well, you know, were they still, you know, still believing that the earth was the center of the universe, right? You think about the way we think of the four humors of the, the medical advice of, of olden times, and we laugh at that, right? Oh, they think phlegm is one. You know, like look how silly it is. But my guess is it was far more sophisticated than what we give it credit for. We just can't understand what they were trying to contain in those phrases that they were using. So even being able to see somebody's written record of, of the way their life was, I mean the the language itself changes over time.

ChubbyEmu [00:25:41] Yeah, exactly. And the, the language embodies concepts that might not exist sometime in the future, right? Like, we have a wholly different day-to-day experience than somebody does 500 years in the future. Now with that said, we're experiencing some of the same stuff that they're gonna experience, right? They're gonna experience conflict, war, famine, greed, right? Exploiting fear for profit, that kind of stuff. They will see that too, except we can communicate amongst ourselves right now using those kinds of words, right? But 500 years in the future, that granularity might get lost. They might not have words for certain things, or they might have different words for other things that might happen as a result of what's gonna happen in the next 500 years. And they're, they might not understand. And so how would we tell them? How would we warn them of what might be coming if they go down a certain path, right? I was just thinking about this today. I I've been doing everything on the computer and it's like, you know, and even in the hospital, everything has to be documented electronically. Like, you know, you can do paper like here and there as like quick notes, but nothing's like officially documented really in paper. But I, I remember like writing a, like looking at a calendar on paper and just thinking like, what if we dated a journal like March, 2045? The page is blank right now, but there's gonna be a point in time in our lives provided, you know, nothing terrible happens to us in between now and then that that page is gonna get written whether we like it or not, and what is gonna, what is it gonna say, right?

ChubbyEmu [00:27:18] So it's always something to think about. And you know, it's like in some ways what we experience now isn't too different than what they experienced thousands of years ago. At the same time, our day-to-day is like this microphone exist

Vance Crowe [00:27:32] Even, you know, it's, it's funny to think about how many people watch your YouTube videos e even even a small channel, right? If you have 200 people, let's say watch a video, that's a massive crowd. You know, most people will go their whole lives and never address a crowd of 200 people, address a million people or 10 million people. You're talking about a voice that's louder than kings of, of the ancient time of pharaohs. That's like, it's, it's hard to really wrap your mind around the fact that technology allows people to speak in a, to a volume of people and share ideas in a scale that couldn't even have been fathomed even 40 years ago. Yeah.

ChubbyEmu [00:28:10] Yeah. I mean, it, it almost feels like there is like just some kind of black magic going on. Like how, how, right? How is it that, how is it that in a video that only has 90 views, I run into somebody who's actually watching the video randomly on the train right? In the subway in New York, right? To me doesn't make any sense. And like, that was one of the first times that that happened to me. Sometimes you'll, you're just walking and somebody will look at you a certain way and you're like, oh. And then they'll come up and ask you like, Hey, do you make YouTube videos? It's usually always a nice encounter. But you know, just the fact that that's happened, that there's so many people have seen my face, they've seen your face too on the podcast, right? So it's like that alone is, I hate the cliche, but, you know, 15 minutes fame, right? Everyone will be famous at some point in time. It's like, well, are we there now?

Vance Crowe [00:29:05] Yeah. I mean, I think in, in fact like now the adage is probably like people will be looking for 15 minutes of anonymity at some point, right? Like, they have so much fame that, that we'll discover. That's not what we want. You know? What do you think about the idea that maybe social media is just as dangerous as a nuclear weapon? You know, like I, I've, I've been playing with this idea last week. I had on the podcast a guy named Zach Stein who, who talks about the very, very fine line between education and propaganda. And you start seeing the power that you can have with social media, right? You can put these ideas out there, you can can accelerate it, you can pay to expose millions of people to it. You could have it go viral, you could have it be a part of TikTok. So it's like, you know, just thumbing through there and hijacking their senses. I'm not so certain that this thing that we've built isn't in and of itself like a very, very, you know, may maybe like nuclear material and you know, you could use that for doing some mining or some electricity, you know, creation. Or you could use it for a bomb to really blow things up.

ChubbyEmu [00:30:09] Yeah. I mean, I always feel like there, there is a responsibility, right? That I feel that I have, you know, to make sure that I, I have things that are at least backed by some kind of data, right? Or some kind of process that we know that we can vet that is reproducible, right? So in that sense, I'm careful to, to make sure that, you know, not going completely off the wall on certain things. The problem is sometimes I feel like the incentive structure might incentivize other people. 'cause I remember when I started YouTube, it was a whole bunch of people just copycatting, right? And you, you, you can't get past that sometimes, like with the nature of how the platforms work, you're gonna have copycats. You're gonna have people, bad actors, right? People who do really heinous stuff. And every time it seems like sometimes YouTube will get into, you know, some kind of controversy that somebody, I mean, I can't believe it was four years ago today now, but the whole Logan Paul thing that happened in 2018,

Vance Crowe [00:31:07] Tell people about that. 'cause they don't know.

ChubbyEmu [00:31:08] Okay? So there was a huge vlogger at the time in 2018 whose name was Logan Paul, and he was on a trip to Japan. And I would say he probably shouldn't have gone to Japan. It probably didn't bring him that good of luck. And also with the way that he behaved with people in Japan, maybe not fully appreciated. I remember watching him because it, it was, it was interesting to see kind of the links that the person would go to for his videos. And I would, I remember like, he would get within two hours, the counter was already at like one and a half million for YouTube, which is like, you know, you're like right at the very top and the bleeding edge of, of YouTube doing that. But he took a, he he vlogged in a forest that was known in Japan as the suicide forests where people do their thing. And he, I I, I didn't see that video. I didn't see the whole thing, but apparently there was like a, a body that he put on camera and then like pointed it at his face to show his reaction and then show like his crew's reaction. And that was put on trending at the time. And I think it got to like maybe six or 7 million. And then there was enough backlash where, you know, he effectively got taken down. He had to apologize for it. And I would say that kind of like began

Vance Crowe [00:32:29] And told to leave Japan, I think.

ChubbyEmu [00:32:31] I think so, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:32:32] Something

ChubbyEmu [00:32:32] Like that. But yeah, I can't believe that was four years ago now. But, you know, I I would say like, 'cause, 'cause the incentivization to, to keep pushing the numbers up is to keep pushing the boundaries of what's socially acceptable at that point. And for people who do that, you know, then you're like, you're not being held to that responsibility of, hey, like there's a lot of people saying this and you're bringing attention to stuff that probably shouldn't have attention brought to it, or at least not in that particular way. Right? Obviously, you know, things like suicide is, you know, mental health is something that definitely should be brought up to light to be like, Hey, if we have resources to help, you can do that. But taking a video of a body in a forest is not the way to do that, right? And that's not a responsible way of doing it. So like, I, I don't know. The incentive structure is, you know, we, we need to figure out a way to work that out because that's also working its way into, you know, how we get media basically anything, everything, everything on the internet, right? There

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] Is a book written by a guy named Ryan Holiday called Trust Me, I'm lying. And, and when people are going into communications, if they're like, oh, do you have a, you know, a book I should read? I'm always like, read that book. And if somebody ever comes back and they, and they don't look a little bit shellshocked, like something's wrong with them, right? Something has gone not, not correct in their reading of this book because he goes through any outlines how the incentive system works. And I remember reading this book and, and realizing like what he's talking about is galvanizing a mob. Like, he's like saying, Hey, if you write these things, if you point incendiary accusations at these people, you can rile people up. You can, you can do gorilla tactics that will make it look like, you know, almost like false flag thing. So he is talking about this, and I remember reading this, and at the time I was doing, you know, as the director of millennial engagement for Monsanto. And I was like, I don't think I've crossed the line yet, but I'm definitely on the way to hijacking the incentives of these systems, right? Riling people up and pointing out how there's, you know, somebody doing something awful. This would've been in 2017, maybe 2016, where I'm reading this book. And I, I eventually was just like, okay, I, I need to change everything about the way that I interact with online. Because you can't just be a contributor. Like you, there's no way to just just add the negativity into the world and gain all the benefit. It's going to come for you eventually, eventually that mob turns on you and they come for you and you'll have deserved everything that the mob gives you if you've been putting all this negative energy into it.

Vance Crowe [00:35:04] There's

ChubbyEmu [00:35:04] A, there's a very rudimentary example of this from like the days when I started on YouTube back in like 20 15, 20 16, there was a very popular content creator who would comment. He, it, it's like called the commentary community. It, it's changed a lot since then, but a lot of it was just criticizing other people. And eventually every single one of those people who, who did it, eventually they would get criticized, right? Because it's like, if, if you make a living off of just talking about other people, eventually someone's gonna talk about you, right? So it's like that, that was always kind of like, you know, you, you're playing with fire. I always felt like when you do that kind of stuff, and that still holds true today, right? That, I mean, I don't think that'll ever not happen, right? It it's like if, if you make that living, you know, criticizing other people, you know, you point, you know that metaphor. Like you point the finger at somebody, you has one finger pointing at them, but three fingers pointing right back at you, right?

Vance Crowe [00:36:04] Yeah. It seems true and seems real. And like, I don't, you know, we talk about how is Facebook or YouTube or Twitter supposed to get rid of disinformation, particularly if people are hijacking it, right? But also, I don't know how they're supposed to police people having genuinely different opinions about things, right? And like, you can see where an opinion being different or perspective being different is different than somebody going out there and outright creating a conspiracy and trying to hijack that. But like all the space in between an opinion difference or a perspective difference and conspiracy theory gets really murky. How in the world do you think the social media will be able to counteract this? I I almost think it cannot be done.

ChubbyEmu [00:36:47] I, you know, going back to Thomas Cromwell during that time of the English Reformation, right? You had a, you had a disagreement. Although I, I would like just kind of reading the history, the English reformation was different than what was happening in, you know, continental Europe at the time, like 15, 17 Martin Luther, you know, nailing 95 theses on the wall. Like this is a much more extreme version of it because our communication is instant. I can send you like a direct message on Facebook Messenger now, right? And not just to you, I could send it to, you know, thousands of people all at once, right? And so like that disagreement is like fundamental in human nature, right? And so when you see the, you know, the eruption of what happened as 15, 17 and the events, you know, thereafter started to happen that just kind of like played into, I don't know, a dark side of humanity, right? Because on the other side of the world in Mexico, at around the same time, 1519 within the Aztec Empire, you had the same disagreement that was happening where the allies that were the enemies of the Aztecs allied with the Spanish and helped, you know, go into the, the, the actual indigenous city that's Mexico City today to go and help just a couple hundred Spaniards do what they did. Right? So, you know, that it's kind of like tapping into a dark side of humanity. I don't know what comes out of it, right? If if if not done, if not done responsibly, right?

Vance Crowe [00:38:20] What do you think about the world that kids will grow up in? 'cause when you and I were growing up, like I had a whole rich life of being outdoors. I mean there was occasionally the computer, but the best computer game you could get would be the Oregon Trail, which is mostly text-based, right? It's like not, do you think the kids are all right, you know, video games and having all of this access to being able to distribute your ideas all over the world? Is it gonna fundamentally change children?

ChubbyEmu [00:38:46] I would say it depends on the parents. So I, I have a friend and so he's, he's about 16 years older than me, but he had a daughter back in 2015. And so what's what's interesting is the daughter's, what, six or seven years old now, and he told me the last time I met with, met up with him that in the morning she'll wake up and she'll watch Roblox YouTube. First thing she does when she wakes up, turns on the iPad and then turns on some Roblox videos. And I told him, look, I I make a living on the internet. You know, I would encourage, you know, video consumption, but not first thing in the morning. Okay. And, you know, she's seven years old. I I wouldn't give her an iPad. Also, she's not allowed to be on TikTok because she's too young, right? There's actually a federal law saying that these tech companies can't collect information on people that are younger than 13. And so I, I told 'em, I'm like, you shouldn't do that. Like, don't, don't let her, don't let her look at the iPad that early in the morning. And he is like, oh, I don't see what, what's wrong with it? And I'm like, maybe you don't see what's wrong with it. Now in a couple years, like you might have, your daughter might, might have grown differently than how you would've expected. I, we don't know. Right? So I mean, I think it depends on the parents because I even for me, like when I lecture to students at the post or at the graduate level, right? What I've noticed, like this, this was even happening when I was in school, but everyone was on their laptops.

ChubbyEmu [00:40:19] They would download the slides, they would look at the slides on, on their laptop. They wouldn't print anything out 'cause they didn't wanna mess with the paper. Meanwhile, I remember I couldn't look at anything on a screen because I couldn't focus if a screen was, was on. I don't know if it was the flicker or, or just the fact that I was on the computer and like couldn't focus. 'cause it's like, you know, you'll see an icon there, like a notification and all of a sudden you'll click it, right? And like, this is the like early days, right? 2007, 2008. What's interesting is that I feel like students might be better engaged if, if they write something, just, just write something down on paper, okay? And, and don't write it down on a, on an iPad screen. Write it down on a piece of paper. And you, you know, having the contact of the pen with the surface of the paper, kind of, I I feels like it unlocks something in your brain where, you know, you actually have a physical connection with the idea that you're putting down physically not, not moving around electrons on a screen. This

Vance Crowe [00:41:15] Is a hundred percent. So when I give talks, I'll oftentimes ask people like, Hey, I want you to write down the name of three movies that come, you know, off the top of your head. And if I like actually wait and say no, I want you to write it down. Then if they do surveys afterwards, people's engagement level, if I wait for people to write things down, goes up by like two, three points be just by virtue of having them actually write things down, they, they like deeply enjoy it more. They can recall more. It's something about having that physical interaction with an idea and actually saying, I'm not just gonna stay up in this nebulous cloud of ideas. It's actually putting it down on paper.

ChubbyEmu [00:41:56] Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:41:57] I think is deeply important. How long do you go in the morning before you touch your phone?

ChubbyEmu [00:42:01] Usually I'll cook and eat breakfast and then I'll look at a screen afterwards. So it could be about 30 minutes. And

Vance Crowe [00:42:07] Is it hard for you, do you have to like force yourself not to look at your phone?

ChubbyEmu [00:42:12] Yeah, sometimes it can be, 'cause it's like sometimes like you'll have all these notifications, like email notifications that'll come up. Like sometimes those will be the thing that wake me up. 'cause it's like all of a sudden there's like a massive emails and you know, there's like a, a fire in in the corporate setting and all of a sudden like, no, you gotta like all hands on deck. We gotta hop on this call. You know, this person is is resigning or something, right? So now all of a sudden it's like, okay, well I'm in my pajamas, here we are. And, and that's kinda like a testament to how work has changed and the environment. 'cause everything's virtual now and I kind of feel like people are starting to lose their minds working virtually, right? Working from home and the institution of the office is, it's, it's just inherently different now. And it, it's coming, it like it needs to come to terms with virtual, but people are just inherently not compatible with that because they like, they need to go somewhere, they need to get dressed, they need to go to somewhere to talk and interact with people.

Vance Crowe [00:43:12] I'm a hundred percent with you on this. Like in fact, I was just telling Ben right before you stopped by, you know, like, hey man, you know, we we're building out a studio so we're, we're getting offices in the next couple of months, but I'm like, I think we may need to get in office between now and then. Like my productivity, if I just stay at the house now I'm like religious about, you know, taking my, working out, taking my shower, getting ready for work. But I'm sure there are a lot of people, well I've seen it on, on social media where they're proud of the fact that like they continue to wear their bathrobe and they're, you know, they have their foot massagers under their table. But there's something psychologically that happens that when you go to work where you get to put on a persona that I think is different than your home persona. And if you just stay at home, I don't, I I don't think the blending of those two things is necessarily natural.

ChubbyEmu [00:44:02] You know what's interesting is from the YouTuber side, there's enough YouTubers that I know that I've connected with. They rent offices, like they rent an office to go to, to shoot their videos. And the reason they do that is so that they can separate work from home. And they find that it's, it's like a positive impact on mental health that you're not sitting all day at the computer stressing out over your videos. You do that when you're in the office, but when you're at home, you're at home. You don't need, need to be worrying about that kind of stuff. And so these are people voluntarily doing it because I mean, it's a business expense to them and sometimes not a cheap one. Like if they're renting in LA or renting in New York City, right? I mean the rent on that is a couple thousand dollars. Then you have, you know, business internet, which isn't cheap either. And then you're hiring employees, right? So sometimes these industrial spaces can be $30,000 a month for rent and you know, you have your half million dollars worth of equipment 'cause you built a stage or something, but you're physically there and when you come home, you're home And that way then you have that separation and if you have that separation, they find it's a positive impact for them.

Vance Crowe [00:45:14] So what do you think about people when they're working from home? And this is an interesting thing from a YouTuber's perspective. I think that corporations now have a giant incentive to say, Hey guys, thank you so much for working from home. This has been great. We got through the pandemic. The next wave of hiring we're gonna do is gonna be a global hire. So it no longer has to be just a person in this area or even in this country, but anywhere in the world. But I think YouTube probably has the biggest headstart on whether or not this is actually a threat to Americans. Because presumably you could be in India or Mongolia or Russia or wherever and be making videos to compete with chubby IMU videos. So do you think this is an actual threat to the American worker? Do you think work can get offshore in that way?

ChubbyEmu [00:45:59] I mean, in my setting probably not. 'cause you would need like a, you know, like board certified or board certified for your specialty, but you would need like a doctoral level education and like, it, it's harder to vet that outside of the US

Vance Crowe [00:46:14] Than here. Yeah. But so you're a rare thing, right? Yeah. Not only are you a YouTuber, you're also, you know, in involved in cancer research and like you, you're a doctor, so like, but you know, you're talking about communications people, guys running insurance companies, that kind of thing.

ChubbyEmu [00:46:29] I mean the, the time difference for calls is always tough, right? Because it's like, if you're working for a European company and let's just say they want to have their calls at 9:00 AM you know, central European time. If you're west coast, I mean, you're, you're having that call at what

Vance Crowe [00:46:45] 2:00 AM

ChubbyEmu [00:46:45] Yeah, 2:00 AM right? Or let's just say you're working for a Japanese headquartered company, right? And now like, you gotta be on their call at 9:00 AM but it's like, you know, 9:00 PM for you. And it's like, how do you rectify that? Right? A lot of the, the tech support that we have, like internal to the company is from India. And so it's like, I mean the, the people in India are up at like four in the morning just to conform to United States time. And it's like, I don't, they wouldn't, I I wouldn't wanna do it, right? And so, like some of them don't have a choice and they'll do it, but you know, if they did have a choice, they would rather do different one, right? And a lot of call centers that you get for like retail stores, like, Hey, I gotta return this camera or something, right? You call somebody and you know, it's a call center. You find out that's out in like Southeast Asia and like it's, it's like, you know, middle of the morning for them.

Vance Crowe [00:47:33] Yeah. But I mean, there are people that are willing to do it because the work they have available to them right now. So I in a, in a crazy turn of events, at one point in time I was helping offshore certain types of work that were going from the World Bank and they were headquartered in DC which would be one of the most expensive environments to have a call center in to Chennai, India. And you would talk to those people and they, you know, the, the job working for the World Bank as a call center person, even though they were up at 2:00 AM they were making like five x whatever they were gonna make regularly. And that five x was, you know, one, maybe one quarter less probably than, than what we were paying a DC person. So now if these people are willing to endure a little bit of pain, which I think a lot of them are now, you've just created a global marketplace for competition. And there are plenty of people in communications roles and social media roles and just kind of placeholder spots that don't seem, but you don't, you don't seem to think this is as big of a threat as I do.

ChubbyEmu [00:48:32] I mean, didn't I, I feel like tech, like didn't tech companies do that? Like they hired a bunch of of people from Asia in like 2004 and it like, it, I don't know, 10 years later it turned out like it really didn't work out for them. I, I feel like, like we've seen this story before and that, you know, it's like the, the leadership who's there had seen it. So there is like some like implication that, that they remember from it. So they may maybe a little bit more hesitant maybe in like a generation or so because they're saying that Zoomers are now entering the workforce. Like, I I'll tell you this, last year I was in a, I was in a call 'cause we were producing a video and one of the assistant producers, she was born in 1999 and that was the youngest person I've ever been on a Zoom call with. And like, you know, she was full-time working, not a, not a college student, not an intern. And like I was thinking, you know, it it's, I feel like they are still millennials. I I feel like, like actual Zoomers are the people who their education was affected by the pandemic. I feel like that that's where the divide comes from in terms of

Vance Crowe [00:49:45] That's where you think the next generational line will be. Yeah.

ChubbyEmu [00:49:47] Okay. And and and and they are, they are either in college or, or they're almost done, right? So it's like we're, we're getting like the, the older people from the next generation starting to enter the workforce. I feel like they might not have seen some of the, the disconnects and disjoints and misalignments in the corporate world and because they didn't see it, they will do the same things that happened 20 years before them. So it's possible, I would say in like the, the near to medium term, it might not happen. 'cause the millennial workforce has been there since what, 2005? Right? So they saw kind of the, the beginnings of it. They saw the middles of it, maybe they saw the end of it. So I, I don't know. But when this next generation gets into senior leadership, that that's where some of the incongruencies might start to occur.

Vance Crowe [00:50:38] So I, I think these millennials that, you know, started in whatever, 2004, probably or five in the workforce. My, I used to have this Chinese professor, he is been on the podcast Xang Wang. And he used to always tell me, you know, just get a job at a, at a giant corporation and just stay there. 'cause if you just stay there long enough, eventually you get to the top. And I remember thinking that his advice was horrible, right? Because at the time I was watching all of these millennials really struggle me, really struggle with this, you know, and, and so I had bounced around to a different com companies, he was coming at it from the perspective, if you were in the C CCP or if you were in a company that was involved, engaged with the ccp, just wait long enough and you move up the ranks. Well, now with COVID I'm watching friends of mine that did exactly that. They started at a corporation that didn't get a raise, didn't get bumped up. You know, we're kind of held under the middle management level, get two or even three promotions in a single year. So you're finally seeing the millennials move into leadership positions on a scale that they have not before. And I've not seen other people reporting on this, this is almost entirely anecdotal, but my experience is there's a whole bunch of young people that have just been catapulted into leadership roles way beyond what they were just two or three years ago.

ChubbyEmu [00:51:53] Oh, that's interesting. Maybe it's the field that I'm in. I don't see that. I, I'm, so, I'll tell you this, in July of 2021, I went back to visit old friends, right? These are childhood friends of mine

Vance Crowe [00:52:10] Back to where,

ChubbyEmu [00:52:11] Back to where? Back to my hometown, where I'm from. Okay. And so these were childhood friends of mine. And what was interesting to me was that of the childhood friends, everyone was distinctly in a different place in life. Like, not like physically, maybe physically, but, but just generally as like their, their, their being and their essence of a person was in a different phase of life distinctly compared to March of 2020 before pandemic. Right? And so this also went to mentors of mine, professionally, academically. And these people were also in, in different places. Somebody that I worked with who was high leadership in a big corporate structure, he was demoted, right? And I mean, he was slated to be chief operating officer got demoted. And how did I, I don't know how that happened, right? So it's like there is a shuffle going on and, and maybe millennials are getting catapulted up top in certain fields, but in other fields it's like, think of the, the millennial 20 eight's still a millennial right now. And so let, let's just say they worked for five years outta college and then they went back to medical school and now they're facing the fact that they gotta do residency during a pandemic, right? And so it's like their practice of medicine is gonna be distinctly different than had they gone straight to school right.

ChubbyEmu [00:53:44] Outta college. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:53:45] Right. I i, I don't know. I mean, like, I'm sure that different industries and different groups felt COVID very differently. In fact, I had to like, you know, I hear people talk about the, the other week I was in, I was in Tucson, Arizona, and the, and the first guy that stands up, he's an awesome speaker, but he must have said 15 or 20 times. I know how hard COVID has been. I know how, how much of a struggle this has been for everyone. And I'm sitting there saying like, has it been like the stock market went up 25% this year, right? Like thi things e every business that I know about has so much money, they have so much cash, they don't know what to do with it. And so I'm left wondering is that because, you know, we turned on the printers and we just went and printed money and everybody's happy right now, like something seems really off to me about how you can describe, Hey, I have friends, you know, a guy got demoted, people seem, you know, wary and down that guy's talking about how bad things are. And everywhere I look, people are like, man, I'm three steps ahead of where I was before my portfolio went up by 25%. Like, something's very off here and I'm, I'm totally willing for it to be like I'm living in a bubble and I don't know what's going on.

ChubbyEmu [00:55:00] That's interesting. I mean, remember I'm coming from the coast too.

Vance Crowe [00:55:04] Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

ChubbyEmu [00:55:05] I'm coming from a coastal perspective. And so what's interesting is thinking about it up 25%, but how much was inflation was inflation? 25%.

Vance Crowe [00:55:16] Well, the government says inflation is 7%, which is a joke, right? It's like 12%. Yeah. Like at, at a minimum 12%.

ChubbyEmu [00:55:23] I mean, what if it's 26%?

Vance Crowe [00:55:24] It could be then,

ChubbyEmu [00:55:26] Then, then the stock market didn't go up. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:55:29] But my ability to sleep at night did,

ChubbyEmu [00:55:32] Right? Yeah. 'cause I mean, let's just say you wanted to dump a bunch of money into like material goods right now, right? That, you know, if it, if it's up 7% versus 12% versus 26%, it doesn't matter. You're still gonna get those goods today. And that effect isn't gonna hit you if like, versus if you held onto that money for like a year or two and all of a sudden, let's just say in 2024, all of a sudden a dollar is worth, you know, a quarter of what it was before. Right? And so, you know, in that sense,

Vance Crowe [00:56:02] Yeah. I mean, one thing I can tell you is the American corporations did not somehow become 25% more productive. It's just not possible, right? You look at the supply chain problems, you look at, you know, worker shortages. It's just, it's, so to me, I kind of use the stock market as a tongue in cheek thing because it's like, okay, well I'm glad it went up, I guess, right? Like, I'm not taking any of that, just like everyone that's our age, right? People don't take money outta the stock market. Well you maybe you can, but most people have it in as an IRA and it's like I just keep shoving it in there and they tell me it's gonna be worth a lot sometime in the future. But none of it seems real.

ChubbyEmu [00:56:41] Yeah. None of it seems real. And what's interesting is, I, I don't know if there's gonna be a correction

Vance Crowe [00:56:47] There will be there, certainly there

ChubbyEmu [00:56:50] Will be, right? I I,

Vance Crowe [00:56:52] I

ChubbyEmu [00:56:52] Guess, I guess in the context of like, I don't know, in two months, is everything just gonna like, crash all of a sudden? Kind of like how it did two years ago, right? On that one day, it was March 13 or March 14 when like, everything just like tanked all of a sudden, right? And it was only tanked for like a couple days and then it, it kind of recovered. So it was

Vance Crowe [00:57:07] Okay. Yeah. I was just looking at the graphs the other day. Right? So you have your portfolio and then it's like boom, boom,

ChubbyEmu [00:57:11] And then, and

Vance Crowe [00:57:12] Then it starts going back up again.

ChubbyEmu [00:57:14] Yep. On YouTube, there's instances of people who get phished. So there's YouTubers who will get a random email and the email will say that they're from YouTube support and that there's been a report on one of your videos and you need to click on this link to go to your creator studio dashboard to be able to rectify this report. So people will be like, oh no, they hit one of my videos. All right, let me, let me click on it. Sometimes it can be customized to actually show you the thumbnail of the exact video. And so as a YouTuber, they'll, they'll get panicked, they'll be like, oh no, YouTube is coming after my channel. If I get three of these strikes, my channel's gone. Right? All my livelihood is completely gone. So a they'll click the link, but guess what? That's not a YouTube email. That's a hacker's email. And when you click that link, they're now able to get some of your information and now they can log onto your YouTube channel.

Vance Crowe [00:58:06] Yeah. 'cause they show you a login and you're like, oh, got a quick do this, do, do, do, here's my username, here's my password. Right? So

ChubbyEmu [00:58:12] Now they have your login information. So they log in before you and then change the password on you and then wipe out your phone number, put it to, you know, some other phone number that they have. Then they delete all of your videos. And then they download a live stream of like the Ripple founder or the, the card founder or something. And they'll have this thing on, on the side where of of titles where there'll be like, if you send, you know, however many coins to this address, you'll get double back because it's like an Elon Musk 50 BTC giveaway or something. Right? And like, when you see those scams, it, it, it's kind of mind blowing that there are still people that are sending these things. Like the, the hack on Twitter where Elon Musk and Barack Obama were saying, if you send me Bitcoin, I'll send you some back. Like you can check the address. Like it might be some of the hacker's own addresses.

Vance Crowe [00:59:05] Scams are, scams are everywhere. 'cause I keep getting called where the, they'll say, this is Amazon and we just received your order for your iPhone 11. This charge of $1,200 will go to your account. But we wanted to check with you first press one to get connected. And the first time it happened, I was like, all right, let's find out what this is all about. And so I click this button and the person is like, gets on. He's like, oh yes, Mr. Crow. Yes. We see did you order this iPhone? And I'm like, no. Is there anyone else that could have your account that could order this? And I'm like, maybe why? Like, what are you seeing? And he's like, okay, what I'm gonna need you to do is do you have a Mac or do you have a pc? And I'm like, why do you wanna know that? And he's like, it's very important for the logging in that we're gonna have you do, do you have a Mac or a pc? And I was like, I see where this is going. Like click. And I went and looked it up. And this is a very sophisticated scheme where they get you to log in and then they say, we're gonna have you share your screen with us. Now we want you to go to your bank account to see if the account has really been, you know, deleted that amount. And what they do is they say, well, I can't see your login as you're doing this, but then they're doing the keystrokes so they can find your login to your Wells Fargo or your whatever. And then they log in and take grandma's money. And it's even more crazy and sophisticated than that. But they're, I've I've been called by those people twice.

ChubbyEmu [01:00:28] Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll get text messages like people saying that they're from like Facebook support or something. And it's like, well, jokes on you. I don't use Facebook.

Vance Crowe [01:00:38] I know a lot of nurses, right. I grew up with a lot of young women that ended up going into the nursing field. And you hear them say all the time, like, oh, I know a bunch that have left. Right? They're just saying way too much pressure, way too much demands on us. Way too many times we've been called in. What do you do in a world where you don't have enough nurses?

ChubbyEmu [01:00:57] Oh, so I saw, I saw a post yesterday. There was somebody in Canada was saying that they're paying, they're paying physicians like hourly, like I think 200 bucks an hour to do a nurse's job to cover for the shortage of the nurses.

Vance Crowe [01:01:15] Wow.

ChubbyEmu [01:01:16] But it's like, there's stuff that like, like a physician wouldn't be able to do a nurse's job as good as a nurse. Like that's why we have nurses. Right. So I, I don't, I don't know. I, there's a shuffle that's happening right now and I don't know what, what comes out of it. I, I don't know what happens next. And like, going back to the, the personal videos that I make, there's a recurring theme where I remember a couple years back, like I was pretty confident that within one year's time, like I'd be doing the same thing. I'd be, you know, relatively in the same place since, probably since 2020. I have no idea if I'm gonna be in the same place this time next year doing the same thing this time next year. I'm at the point now where I would consider it a win if I'm in the same place doing the same thing. And I took that for granted years ago. So to me, like that's just a, a shakeup in my own personal life.

Vance Crowe [01:02:12] So speaking of shakeup, right? So you've done this YouTube video and for as long as we've known each other, we've known each other for years, you're always like, oh man,

ChubbyEmu [01:02:19] We met from YouTube.

Vance Crowe [01:02:20] Yeah. That, yeah. Like I, you're always saying like, I think I just made my last video, right? Yeah. I think, I think I'm out. Tell me about the psychology of, of playing, of doing this art form. 'cause it really, for you, it a hundred percent looks like an art form to me.

ChubbyEmu [01:02:35] I would say my situation's a little bit different 'cause I still don't do it full time. So I feel like every time I make a video, I post a video, I feel like that's the last video I'm ever gonna make. Right? And it's like, even if I have other videos that I've already like, had in the pipeline that I've already started working on, I feel like that one's the last one that I'm gonna make. And it's like I, there's an overwhelming feeling that I don't like, I don't know what comes next. Right? I remember when I first started, I, I started YouTube out of a frustration that I was stuck in a bureaucratic environment that locks you out. I mean, if you think about it, the youngest government sponsored investigator in medicine is 48 years old.

Vance Crowe [01:03:21] Okay? So not a millennial.

ChubbyEmu [01:03:22] Not a millennial. Right. And, and not even like young Gen X, it's like middle of, of Gen X still right now. Right. So the thing is, you know, there was so much bureaucratic lockout that I was experiencing, like, oh, you didn't fill out a form the right way, you're gonna have to resubmit it and wait another six months for us to go back and look at it. And like, I was that, like, that was where the frustration was. So I decided, I'm like, well, okay, why don't I go to, you know, some like an organization that that really has to perform right? That really has, you know, money tied to it that, that like they're, they're beholden to, you know, some motivating factor. So I thought I was gonna skirt the bureaucracy by

Vance Crowe [01:04:05] Coming to YouTube.

ChubbyEmu [01:04:06] No, not by coming to YouTube. By, by going to a corporate setting. Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:04:09] Okay. Leaving regular medicine and going into corporate America. Yeah.

ChubbyEmu [01:04:13] Leaving academic hospital and, and going, because academic bureaucracy, right. I mean, it, it, it's become,

Vance Crowe [01:04:18] Yeah. I mean, I always say, if you wanna be in a place where decisions get made, get as close to where money comes in the door. That's, that's the fastest way to get to, to being where there's less bureaucracy. That's

ChubbyEmu [01:04:27] What I thought.

Vance Crowe [01:04:29] Okay.

ChubbyEmu [01:04:29] Right. So I, I was like, okay, well I'm running away from academic bureaucracy, gonna go to a, I'm, I'm, I'm in so much of a better place now. So I went to a corporate setting to find out there's a corporate bureaucracy.

Vance Crowe [01:04:42] Oh yeah, yeah.

ChubbyEmu [01:04:43] Oh, okay. And so that one, and, and here, here's the thing. Like, I went to the east coast within a couple weeks. I remember sitting there, this is in one of my videos. It was, it it, like, I remember saying it, I made a mistake. Shouldn't have left, shouldn't have just picked up, you know, left my hometown, come to a completely different place where I know one person amongst 9 million people in like a little metro area. Like, you know, I, it is like, I, I thought I was from the big city, you know, coming from the largest city in the, the Midwest. And then I go to New York City and I'm like, no, apparently I'm from a small town, right? Go to Midtown Manhattan and you see the, there's people everywhere all the time. And I was like, okay.

Vance Crowe [01:05:25] And there's nothing more devastating than saying, oh, I made the wrong choice. Right? Like, after I've made a decision to move and to change all these things, it was

ChubbyEmu [01:05:33] An irreversible change. 'cause I couldn't go back to the hospital and be like, please take me back. Like, you know, I, I couldn't do it. So I, like, I was just thinking, what did I just do? Like I did. I just like, did, did I just like burn myself to the ground? Like, and I was in a panic and that one person I knew in New York, she was in a completely different field. She was in performing arts, right? She had done theater and like, she was doing Broadway at the time, which is why she was in New York. And she told me, she's like, well, you know, maybe you don't need to worry too much. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I, I think I might've just like screwed over everything like my entire career. Like, I shouldn't have come out here, I can't go back. What do I do? And so she said, well, she's like, maybe you should try, like, you know, making something right? Making something you can call your own. She's like, maybe you could do Broadway, because you know, the barrier to entry's kind of high. You know, you didn't gotta be a pretty

Vance Crowe [01:06:26] Good dancer.

ChubbyEmu [01:06:27] Yeah, right.

Vance Crowe [01:06:28] And

ChubbyEmu [01:06:28] Singer and, and all this other stuff. And I'm like, okay. And she's like, well, I don't know. Why don't you, why don't you try like YouTube or something? And I was like, well, maybe. Right? And so I thought, okay, well how do I start making videos? And at the time, like the video game stuff was super popular, so I figured, all right, low hanging fruit, I could talk over some video games. It's not that hard. It turns out it was pretty hard just like talking while you're playing, like you, you can't play. And then you also

Vance Crowe [01:06:54] Can't talk. Well, people probably don't, there are a lot of people riding in tractors right now, or sitting at benches at labs and they don't understand that there's this whole genre and it was a lot more popular in the past, but people still do it where they do, let's play videos where you're playing a video game that you've really developed a skill in so much so that people wanna watch you play it. And then you have to have a conversation that's engaging enough that makes people wanna do more than just watch you play. They wanna hear your thoughts on things. Right.

ChubbyEmu [01:07:22] Exactly. And so I remember, I, I didn't even upload the first like, 20 videos that I made where I was just talking while playing. And I got, I, I, I think I still have some of them archived, but like, some of them were just really awful videos where I'm just like, no one's gonna wanna watch this. I remember posting my first video, I got a dislike before I ever got a, like that I remember, 'cause I uploaded a video, I think it was like a Tuesday morning that

Vance Crowe [01:07:47] I remember,

ChubbyEmu [01:07:48] Yeah. At, at seven in the morning. I had, I had just posted it and like, as I was about to leave to go to the office, like, I refreshed the screen and there's like one down vote and I'm like, who just watched this video?

Vance Crowe [01:07:58] Like, what

ChubbyEmu [01:07:59] Is this? And so I like, pretty quickly I, I kind of moved on from just like talking on the game and just making like a video. Because there was a particular game that I had played so much in the past. I'm like, I, I can tell people about how to get better at playing the game and it doesn't need to be me, you know, playing the game for 30 minutes while talking over nonsense. Like I can actually edit it and show them. And that video did pretty well. It got to like 10,000 views in a weekend. And I'm, I mean I had like no subscribers at that point. And so I figured, oh, okay, so, you know, I'm learning, I'm, I'm learning it. It's, it probably gonna take me a hundred videos. Like I didn't know how long it would take, but, but I, that's the goal I set for myself. 'cause I can control how many videos I can make, right? So as, as I was making more, then I come across the, the girl who was watching one of my videos on the train and just as, as it kept going, I, I started to get lazy because I felt like I needed to make a video every day. So it was just the video game stuff where I was just talking. It was kind of boring. And I'm like, you know, I don't really know if I want to do this. At that time I had made a, a video about how I lost 60 pounds in 16 weeks, probably about like 10 years before that. And I remember I like tagged my coach that I worked with. 'cause I hired a coach. Like, I mean, I was doing the full power lifting thing. I was at the power lifting gym. I was with, with a coach that I hired from Detroit. And, you know, he, he monitored me every week. So I had pictures from them because I, because that was around the time that I started making these daily video or monthly videos where I'm talking to the camera.

ChubbyEmu [01:09:31] So I said, okay, well I'll, I'll highlight that. I'll just start making videos about anything that I can, because now then I have certain experiences that other people may not have had. So I can start talking about other things. And, you know, that video did okay at first and then all of 2016, like, everything just kept getting worse and worse like that In the last 10 years, that was probably the worst year of my life. Single worst year. And I, I have no idea why by the end of the year it was, it was like a bunch of teenage kids that were looking for the game and like, that's all they wanted was game stuff. But, you know, some, some of the comments, like, it wasn't the, the interaction that I wanted to have. And I set out doing YouTube so that I could say like, Hey, I made that. I wanted it to be like, something that I could call my own that I created, but this wasn't the stuff I wanted to create. And so at the end of the year, finally, I, I kind of wanted to delete the channel. I'm like, did, did I mess this up too? I feel like I failed the entire year. 2016 is awful. Everything I touched turned out terrible, right? I, I went to, I went to this corporate setting. I've been here for a year now. Like this is the worst place I've ever been to. I don't particularly like, you know, this part of the east coast that I'm on, I still don't know anybody. I know only one person. I try to get to know people, but it's so ethereal and there's so many people everywhere. It's like, what, what do I do? Like, 'cause I, I messed up, you know, two years before now I'm stuck in here. You know, I, I made my bed, now I have to sleep in it. What do I do? And finally, the video that I made about the fat loss started taking off.

ChubbyEmu [01:11:06] And that was how you found me was the video about how I lost 60 pounds in 16 weeks. And that was like, at that time that that video was already a year old. And that was when it kind of got a second wind. And I'm like, okay, well how about this? Why don't I see if I can make a fat loss vlog working with the same coach that I worked with 10 years before? And I'll make videos every single week about my progress because I, I've gained quite a bit of weight in 2016. Maybe I can work with him again. So he accepted, I paid him. And you know, we did, we did the fat loss vlog together in 2017. That was when I really started to learn how to make a little bit better of a video. Wasn't great at the time, but it was about the best video that I could make. But things, things were okay at first. Like at, at the beginning of the fat loss vlog. It was doing well. And then the numbers just kept getting worse. Every week you'd see less and less people, right? You'd get people unsubscribing in May by the time I was done. So I had already lost 50 pounds. Like that, that should have been the apex of the fat loss vlog, right? That is the final, that, that is the resolution of the story to show you what has happened through the struggle, right? I posted my very last fat loss vlog video showing how much weight I lost. I lost 500 subscribers that day and I only had 17,000 subscribers at that point. There's a video of me sitting there watching the sub count go down and me like screaming into the camera being like, I'm quitting this. This is stupid, right? I, I wanted to make something I could call my own.

ChubbyEmu [01:12:39] Yes. I, I made this, okay, I made this, but I can't be proud of this if it's drawing resentment from 500 people to the point where they're clicking a button to get outta here. And I was just so frustrated. I'm like, you know what? That's it. I'm done. I'm not doing this. This sucks. Okay. So that night I was sitting and just like looking at the computer, the actual like box of the computer. And at that time that computer was seven years old. It was this giant fricking box that I built in 2010. And then I thought about it, I'm like, wait a second, I have a video of me building that PC because I have personal videos that I've taken all the time. And so I thought, well what about this? How about the last thing I ever do on YouTube? It's just a story about this PC and how it made every single YouTube video and how it made its money back by doing some of the programming stuff and all that. So I was like, okay. So I drafted up a script, got a bunch of shots, narrated it for the first time. Like I never like actually like narrated a script. And then I posted the video. It, it did okay. I didn't actually lose subscribers that one time. I, I thought I would, because it wasn't a fat loss video. So people would be like, where's the fat loss video or something? And it, it wasn't like that. So I was like, okay, cool. So it did okay. Then I, I went to Chicago for a cancer meeting in the summertime and all of a sudden within like two weeks, the video got to like 600,000 views, which is like the most that I've ever gotten. It was like five times more than my most viewed video at that point in time. And I'm like, what happened? I was like, I was gonna delete the channel after this, this, like, what is this?

ChubbyEmu [01:14:10] And I was like, well, okay, how about this? I have a couple more tech things from the past with videos because I have those personal videos, so why don't I just make a couple more of those? And so I made a couple more tech videos. They did okay. But then that started to decline too. And at that point I had moved outta New York City. I went to Washington DC and like I was consumed with moving and everything. So I like didn't post anything for like a month and a half. And then I thought about it, I'm like, wait a second, hold on. As I'd been driving up and down I 95, like just back and forth the entire time. I remember in April of 2017, I had a C at Johns Hopkins give a talk at the Endocrine Society conference. And he talked about a woman who drank three gallons of water in two hours. And this happened in 2007. It was for a radio show competition, hold Your WI for a Wii. And I, I, I remember the audience was like captivated by him telling the story of this woman and what happened Endocrinol and Endocrinological, right? What was going on in her body in terms of the hormones. So I thought, okay, how about this? Instead of the computer stuff, I'll use that format and do, do the video. Like, like Roberto had given this presentation because it had entranced so many people, like who were, who was a medically centered audience, right? They wanted to hear about it. So, okay, why don't I give it a shot? So I remember, I I did it the same style as I did with the tech videos. I sent it to you before I posted it like a week before. And I sat on it thinking like, yeah, you know, I don't, I don't know if I wanna post this because this, like, I, I've kind of come full circle at that point because I started doing YouTube to get away from the professional situation that I was in, which was scorched earth, which I avoided one bureaucracy to step into a different bureaucracy.

ChubbyEmu [01:16:00] I like YouTube was my space where I could talk about whatever I wanted, right? That was how I originally interpreted it. So to be able to talk about something that I did professionally that I knew professionally was kind of like, do I really wanna go this route? Okay. May let, let's see how it does. And you were there for this. And so I, I, I remember the day that I posted the video, it had already been on YouTube for a week and then I finally made it public. So published, I was, I I was on a plane to Cleveland, like I published it and I, I had to go immediately. So I remember sitting in the hotel in Cleveland at, at the Tudor Arms Hotel right by the Cleveland Clinic and just sitting there thinking like, well, what do the comments look like on this video?

Vance Crowe [01:16:42] You

ChubbyEmu [01:16:42] Know, it was kind of mixed. And then I had my meeting in Cleveland and then that was on a Monday. And I, I think I got back home by Thursday. And by Thursday I had a colleague who worked at the FDA and she texted me and she, and she took a picture of it and she said, Bernard, why are you on my screen?

Vance Crowe [01:17:01] And

ChubbyEmu [01:17:01] You know, I see the, the little YouTube badge on there. And I'm like, huh, that's interesting. 'cause I like, I I pledge to not look at anything YouTube while I was in Cleveland. 'cause it was just all the work that I had to do. And I'm like, how did you find that? She's like, oh. And so she like took a selfie with like a bunch of her colleagues and they're like, they all found it. And I'm like, wait, what? And then I looked at the video, I think it had like, maybe like 300,000 views, like by that weekend. And I'm like, what is going on? Because like I had never had a video do like that. Well, and like I'd been on YouTube for a couple years at that point. So I'm like, I was already kind of demoralized. And then I see that and I'm like, this is kind of weird. And then the weekend rolls around and the, the video is getting like 10,000 views an hour. And then like, it didn't just stop at 10,000, then it jumped to 25,000, then it jumped to 60,000 an hour. And I'm sitting there and I'm starting to get texts from people who know me in person. And they're like, what are you, is this you? Right? Like, they're just like, sending me this. And I'm like, what is happening? So like that was where I came full circle and I'm like all, well, I had another tech video that I, it was in the works, but since that's declining, I'm just gonna start making some medical videos. And then the next one I did got to a million in a week. And then like you, you saw the whole thing happening in 2017. And so at the end of that year, I had a video get to 6 million views in one month. And I just thought, o okay, well I'm, I'm here now and you know this, like, this is something where I can see tangibly people are receiving it.

ChubbyEmu [01:18:36] Well they're learning from it. And to me like that's super important that they're learning concepts that I'm putting out there. And it's like, well if you wanna know more, I also have references in the description if you wanna read more about it. Then I started getting emails from students saying like, you know, thank you so much. Like, you know, you actually broke down a lot of concepts that were confusing me about things like low sodium in the blood. And that's something that actually trips up medical students a lot is low sodium and blood isn't actually a problem of low sodium. It's usually a problem with water. And so like, just breaking that down is usually super helpful for them. So then like that was when I came full circle and that was it. I mean, it, it wasn't like a straight line up. There were so many points where I just wanted to quit and just give it up. And then this was during a time where I had no idea what was gonna come next for my life because I thought I had burned myself down to the ground and that, you know, I was gonna be forever a worker, be in some bureaucracy no matter what it is.

Vance Crowe [01:19:34] And still that desire to quit persists. Right? You still have that

ChubbyEmu [01:19:40] For YouTube? For YouTube. I'm, I'm more uncertain of, of what's the future. I would say like any other YouTuber has a fear that like they're gonna run outta ideas. They, so it's like I, I've, I've

Vance Crowe [01:19:54] That's all creatives, every creative Yeah, I feel that way. Yeah. I write a speech and I'm like, that was the last speech I'll ever be able to write. 'cause you just, you can't imagine being creative again.

ChubbyEmu [01:20:03] Yeah, exactly. And so it's like I've, I've, you know, leaned on my colleagues and, you know, they tell me skeleton cases, you know, there's ones published in literature that I'll, I'll put up. But yeah, that's, that's really how it turned out. And even while I was doing the medical videos, there was a lot of struggles. Like there were, there were singular times where I've nuked my channel. Like in 2018, I nuked my channel. I made a video about Tide pods that came from one of the poison centers and the, the maker of Tide pods weren't very happy with that.

Vance Crowe [01:20:34] Yeah, I remember we were in Kansas together.

ChubbyEmu [01:20:35] Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And so I, I was in Phoenix for a cancer research meeting and then I flew to Los Angeles for vacation to visit the YouTube space. And so I posted the video, I think in Phoenix and then landed in LA and then I saw that the video was front page to Reddit, which scares me because it's like when you have that many, that much attention on you, like you don't want that, right? Like, I mean, every YouTuber wants visibility. You don't want that level of visibility because there, there, it's a double-edged sword, okay? Right. There's always a balance to one thing. If something's super high, there's, there's a cliff that is that you're going to fall down somehow. And it turned out that was the cliff. I fell down the, the next couple videos just didn't do well for my channel. Now, 2018 was a weird year 'cause I also have like greatest of all time videos that happened that year. But for a moment I thought, I thought it was over. And then I did actually nuke my channel again in 2019.

Vance Crowe [01:21:32] What does it mean nuke your channel?

ChubbyEmu [01:21:34] So you, you post a video and it destroys like the next several months of video performance. Like every video keeps doing worse and worse and worse until finally some, some change in, I don't know if it's a change in your luck or the change in sentiment reverses. And then like, you, you, that, that's the one thing that'll bail you out. I, I did an April Fool's joke in 2019 where I recited the medical dictionary for three hours from memory.

Vance Crowe [01:21:59] I remember that.

ChubbyEmu [01:21:59] And that was an April Fool's joke, don't do that. Because at, at least what happened for me at that time was people didn't watch the video. They watched it for 30 seconds and it was a three hour long video. So YouTube registered that 0.0% of the video was viewed.

Vance Crowe [01:22:17] So

ChubbyEmu [01:22:17] They viewed it as people didn't wanna watch chubby IMU videos anymore. So my, my channel went from like, I don't know, a hundred thousand views a day to like 30,000 views a day. Ooh. And and it stayed that way for almost a year in the fall of that year. I remember every time I posted a video, it, there was like this huge spike in views that you would get. And then literally the next day it would drop back down to 30,000 a day. Like it, it would jump up to like 700,000 and then 30,000 a day. And like that just kept happening. And I think in 2020 was, I was, when I finally got bailed out or bailed myself out, I don't remember, but it was a year. And like the channel was like, and it, the question is like, could that happen again? Right. That just kind of like weighs on your mind.

Vance Crowe [01:23:04] So to close out, you, you have started a new channel where you've been working on teaching people again. Can you talk about that?

ChubbyEmu [01:23:12] Yeah. So I have two new channels. So one is where I can go more in depth in medical subjects that I wouldn't otherwise be able to, because the videos on the main channel are tailored for a general audience. The second one is called Heme review. And it's, it's geared towards people who wanna know more about medicine, who have some scientific acumen who can understand, you know, some, some of the more nuances, but also like some of the things are, are more subjective. 'cause it's like, well we're not a hundred percent sure this is the data that I can present to you and then you can make up your own mind. Right? The third one is about camera stuff. And so completely non-medical, maybe in line with the, the tech stuff. Maybe we'll decline like the tech stuff. I don't know. But I've been able to learn a lot more about how to take videos. A lot of people don't believe that. I take a lot of the videos in my main channel videos. Like I actually cast an actor. I drive to set, I have a production assistant sometimes, not all the time. And we film it, like pull out the tripod, pull out the lights, haul that stuff up and down stairs, right? And so that's, that's the third channel would be a little bit behind the scenes and then just talking about camera stuff

Vance Crowe [01:24:21] And how can people find that channel.

ChubbyEmu [01:24:22] So that channel's called Big Emus. It's two words, big emus.

Vance Crowe [01:24:28] Well man, I'm so glad you cruised by here today, Bernard, this has been a blast and I really appreciate you. Yeah, just hanging out for a while.

ChubbyEmu [01:24:37] Thanks for having me on.