Rad N Bad Podcast

Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero from Hickory Learning Group
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Social Sciences
  • Updated Weekly

The Rad N' Bad Podcast by Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero isn’t your average ABA podcast, it’s a full-blown wake-up call. These two BCBAs from Hickory Learning Group are smashing through outdated norms and calling out the BS in the field. No fluff, no sugar-coating, just raw, unfiltered truth about what ABA should be. They challenge you to think, question the “why,” and push past complacency. If you're ready to disrupt the status quo and make this field better for clients and practitioners alike, buckle up, Rad N' Bad is here to raise hell and raise standards.

  1. 5d ago

    Episode 46: Hover Before You Land: Building Cross-Disciplinary Standards in Autism Care with Dr. Robin McLeod from NSAP

    There is no shortage of organizations in autism—we have associations, credentialing bodies, coalitions, and advocacy groups. Yet, the field remains completely fragmented. Behavior analysts talk to behavior analysts, speech therapists talk to speech therapists, and physicians talk to physicians. While clinicians protect their turf, insurance companies write policy, legislators write laws, and private equity reshapes service delivery. In this episode of Rad N Bad, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero sit down with Dr. Robin McLeod, founding CEO of the National Society of Autism Professionals (NSAP), to address the missing element in autism care: cross-disciplinary leadership and standardized accountability. Dr. McLeod breaks down NSAP’s massive mission to unite clinical healthcare, education, policy, research, technology, and advocacy around meaningful, lifelong outcomes for autistic individuals and their families. Key Topics Covered in This Episode: The Fragmented Field: Why operating in professional silos leaves clinicians reactive to payer policies instead of driving care standards. The Two Engines of NSAP: How the Standards Engine (building a cross-disciplinary competency framework) powers the Influence Engine (advocating with payers and legislators). "Hover Before You Land": Dr. McLeod’s framework for cross-disciplinary perspective-taking and facilitating productive, respectful disagreement among experts. Compliance vs. Outcomes: Why an audit-proof treatment plan and high session attendance do not automatically equal clinically significant change. Value-Based Care & Reinforcement: How shifting away from volume-based hourly billing incentivizes true generalization, caregiver competence, and functional independence across the lifespan. If you are ready to stop performing leadership and help build an industry standard that holds providers and payers accountable, this episode is a must-listen. Learn More & Join NSAP: NSAP.org

  2. Aug 3

    Episode 45: Beyond Clinic Walls: 1,300 Sessions & a 1% Cancellation Rate with Melissa Kozak

    Most BCBAs are taught that high-integrity care requires a toddler sitting in a clinic 40 hours a week, locked into a screen, and managed by burned-out middle management. Melissa Kozak is here to prove that model completely wrong. As the founder of Kozak Consulting and Going Independent, Melissa has conducted over 1,300 direct caregiver sessions with an astounding 1% cancellation rate. The secret? She ditched the corporate assembly line, threw out the blanket hour prescriptions, and built a pure, caregiver-led practice that prioritizes human connection, Behavior Skills Training (BST), and soft skills over billable unit metrics. In this episode, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero sit down with Melissa to tackle the uncomfortable truths holding the ABA field back: The Soft-Skills Deficit: Why so many clinicians struggle to talk to parents without hiding behind an iPad or a checklist—and how to build genuine, rapport-first relationships. The Caregiver-Led Blueprint: How targeting real-life family priorities (like a 3-second photo or a mealtime routine) leads to lower cancellations and faster, sustainable progress. Ditching the 40-Hour Prescription: Why massive, blanket hour authorizations are often driving burnout and revenue—not actual clinical necessity. Tech That Works for You: How tools like HiRasmus can be leveraged to streamline clinical workflows without losing the human element. Taking Control of Your Science: How burnt-out BCBAs can step off the corporate hamster wheel, cut out the middleman, and launch their own high-impact, independent practices. If you are ready to stop checking corporate boxes and start engineering real-world outcomes, hit play.

  3. Jul 24

    Episode 44: Who the Hell Built the BCBA Industrial Complex? with Dr. Han-Leong Goh

    The BCBA credential has never been more valuable. So why do so many new clinicians feel completely unprepared? Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero welcome Dr. Han-Leong Goh for an unapologetic conversation about the systems shaping modern behavior analysis. From graduate education and supervision to insurance reform, billable hours, leadership, and mentorship, they examine how good intentions created incentives that don't always produce great clinicians. The conversation isn't about blaming universities, employers, or behavior analysts. It's about asking whether the profession has accidentally built a system that rewards the wrong behaviors—and what it would take to rebuild it.

  4. Jul 15

    Episode 43: Who The Hell Is Steering This Profession? (With The ABA Accountability Project)

    The multi-billion-dollar corporate takeover of autism services has officially reached its breaking point. Over the last decade, we have watched private equity firms dump massive capital into the industry, swallowing up small community providers and mass-producing cookie-cutter clinic networks. Somewhere along the line, trade associations and self-appointed accreditation programs stepped behind closed doors and declared themselves the official voice of our science. But nobody asked the practitioners on the ground for a vote. In this explosive episode of Rad N Bad, Sean and Mike strip away the corporate marketing jargon to answer a simple, glaring question: Who the hell is actually driving this field? Joining the studio are Kirsten Hall and Aaron Gold, founders of the ABA Accountability Project, an organization dedicating itself to tracking power, governance, and transparency inside Applied Behavior Analysis. Together, they drop the ultimate "Umpire Analogy"—dissecting the massive conflict of interest where the same entities creating clinical standards are financially tied to the monopolies inspecting them, all while lobbying insurance payers to make those very inspections mandatory. They take a hard, behavior-analytic lens to the dangerous reality of corporate lobbying groups fighting against mandatory frontline RBT credentials under the guise of "improving access to care." This isn't a simple personal vendetta; it's a structural evaluation of an industry that treats kids like products and clinical decision-making like an asset portfolio. If you are an independent provider, a clinician drowning under corporate caseload targets, or a parent fighting for quality over volume, this episode is a blueprint for grassroots reform. Buckle up. Strong sciences don't fear questions—they invite them.

  5. Jul 6

    Episode 42: Who The Hell Is That Again, with Lou Sandler: The Illusion of Progress: Flashcards, Seismograph Graphs, and Real Industry Reform

    The Titanic has officially struck the iceberg, and the music is starting to stop behind closed doors. Following the explosive New York Times investigation exposing fraud, seven-minute nap billings, and hyper-inflated center-based hours across the autism therapy sector, the industry is entering its ultimate "prove it" era. But how did a pure, data-driven behavioral science transform into an industrialized, multi-billion-dollar corporate machine virtually overnight? In this massive, unfiltered, two-and-a-half-hour episode of Rad N Bad, Sean and Mike strip away the corporate marketing language, the toxic positivity, and the social media binaries to perform a brutal behavioral analysis of the contingencies that broke the field. Joining the conversation is an industry icon, Dr. Lou Sandler, who brings 45 years of clinical history from the trenches of Kennedy Krieger to pull back the curtain on what went wrong. Together, the guys dissect the concept of "Medical School Envy"—the dangerous structural delusion that behavior analysis can function as a standalone, isolated medical discipline rather than an integrated, instructional resource. Dr. Lou drops a nuclear take on why Discrete Trial Training (DTT) needs to die, exposes the total lack of clinical oversight in the mass-produced BCBA pipeline, and calls out the absolute corporate absurdity of offering financial bonuses to supervisors for hitting billing percentage targets. This isn't an attack on clinicians, and it's not a blind defense of a broken system. It’s a raw, battle-tested manifesto detailing how we pivot away from a service maintenance dependency model and go "back to the future" by prioritizing homes over centers, treating the family structure as the ultimate clinical environment, and measuring success solely by our ability to work ourselves out of a job. Buckle up. The filters are completely off, the labels are being torn down, and it's time to get radical.

  6. Jun 26

    Episode 41: DTT is Not a Permanent Residence: Mapping the Real Middle Ground of Structure vs. Autonomy

    Are we using clinical structure to build real-world independence, or are we just using it as an excuse for corporate and intellectual laziness? This week, Sean and Mike step right into the crossfire of the industry’s loudest, most polarizing argument to map out the definitive middle ground on Discrete Trial Training (DTT). Depending on who you ask on social media, DTT is either the only way to successfully teach complex skills or it’s the absolute poster child for everything wrong with modern, compliance-driven therapy. Both sides are completely right about the execution failures, but they are completely wrong about the science. Sean and Mike strip away the corporate marketing crap, toxic positivity, and traditionalist dogma to expose the reality of engineering behavior that actually leaves the clinical room. They break down: The Illusion of the Table: Why high acquisition numbers on a tablet can be a clinical lie if the behavior doesn't survive when the theatrical props, cards, and contrived rewards go away. The Workflow Over Science Trap: Tearing down why clinics stay stubbornly codependent on tabletop drills—not because the science demands it, but because it’s cheap to train, easy to score, and simple to audit for insurance funders. The True Middle Ground: How to ruthlessly apply intense structural repetition to build prerequisite skills in isolation, while simultaneously programming for prompt fading and Natural Environment Teaching (NET) from day one. The Generalization Mandate: Why if you cannot describe exactly how a target response transfers across new settings, novel materials, and organic contingencies, you are fundamentally not done designing the clinical program. Stop hiding behind rigid procedural brands or superficial, positive-only marketing labels to avoid the messy, complex work of real-world generalization. DTT should serve as a powerful clinical ladder—but a ladder is meant to be climbed off of, not lived on. Tune in, audit your current setups, and help us reclaim the true spirit of radical behaviorism. Stay bold. Stay contrarian. Stay Rad N Bad.

  7. Jun 17

    Episode 40: Who the Hell is Dr. Erin Moran? From Backpacking Kazakhstan to Dismantling Corporate ABA

    Most people in the tech space claim they understand the frontline trenches. They haven’t. This week, Sean and Mike pull back the curtain on the corporate contingencies crippling clinical quality, and they are joined by someone who has lived a literal clinical Odyssey: Dr. Erin Moran, Director of Clinical Innovation at Hi-Rasmus. Dr. Moran didn’t just climb a corporate tech ladder. She has been thrown into a room with 38 six-year-olds in a Thai port city with zero support. She has backpacked into the freezing winter of Eastern Kazakhstan with nothing but shorts and a tank top to build parent-led behavior programs from scratch, getting her passport stamped in a dark back alley just to help moms who were told their children's autism was their fault. She has sat on the highly critical academic stages of London as the only BCBA in the room, defending the core science against massive systemic stigma. Sean, Mike, and Erin strip away the marketing fluff and toxic positivity to expose the systemic failures of modern, commercialized operations, including: The Rebrand Trap: Why the anti-ABA movement isn't attacking our scientific principles, but rather a rigid, high-hour commercialized therapy model that operates like a corporate religion. The 40-Hour Checkbox Crisis: Tearing down the passive, uninspiring video training models that are producing catastrophic 18% RBT exam pass rates across major national providers, and why real Behavior Skills Training (BST) cannot be scaled through a computer screen. The Circus Trick of Dependency: Why an intervention that only works when a clinician is standing in the room is a total failure, and how Erin used pure science to train Kazakhstani mothers to become the university professors training the next generation of therapists. Engineering Software with Science: How Erin is taking her global, boots-on-the-ground experience to design data systems that eliminate administrative headaches, supercharge supervisor feedback loops, and give BCBAs their time back to focus on the work that actually matters. Stop hiding behind empty corporate buzzwords and traditionalist dogma. If your therapy requires rigid compliance and endless paperwork, your environmental engineering is broken. The science doesn’t choose a side—it analyzes contingencies. Tune in to hear how a global perspective is rewriting the status quo of standard industry technology. Stay bold. Stay contrarian. Stay Rad N Bad. https://www.linkedin.com/in/emoran1/

  8. Jun 8

    Episode 39: No Man's Land-The Forbidden E-Word: Why You Can’t Escape Extinction

    In this episode of the No Man’s Land series, Sean and Mike tackle the 'forbidden E-word' of ABA: Extinction. While cancel culture and critics often paint extinction as cold or outdated, the guys pull the curtain back to show that it’s not a trend—it’s a law of behavior. Whether you call it 'planned ignoring' or 'compassionate support,' if you change a reinforcement contingency, you’re implementing extinction. Sean and Mike dive into the messy reality of extinction bursts, the 'vending machine' analogy of human behavior, and the controversial rise of 'Kind Extinction.' They argue that the science hasn't changed; our clinical skill just finally caught up. Stop avoiding the uncomfortable and start understanding the mechanics of how learning actually happens when the 'house rules' change.

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5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The Rad N' Bad Podcast by Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero isn’t your average ABA podcast, it’s a full-blown wake-up call. These two BCBAs from Hickory Learning Group are smashing through outdated norms and calling out the BS in the field. No fluff, no sugar-coating, just raw, unfiltered truth about what ABA should be. They challenge you to think, question the “why,” and push past complacency. If you're ready to disrupt the status quo and make this field better for clients and practitioners alike, buckle up, Rad N' Bad is here to raise hell and raise standards.

Information

  • Creator
    Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero from Hickory Learning Group
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    59
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero from Hickory Learning Group
  • Show Website
    Rad N Bad Podcast

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