Rad N Bad Podcast

About Rad N Bad Podcast

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 These two BCBAs from Hickory Learning Group are smashing through outdated norms and calling out the BS in the field.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.

Publisher

Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero from Hickory Learning Group

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 May 2025

Latest episode

16 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

55 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Oct 2026

   Episode 53: The Middle Ground of NET: Escaping the Babysitting Trap with Precision Mechanics & Real-World Rigor

   Here’s the dirty little open secret in applied behavior analysis right now: the pendulum swung so hard away from discrete trial training that clinicians are terrified to even look at a flashcard. Everyone ran screaming from the tabletop because God forbid you look like an old-school compliance robot. And where did we land? In a land of milk, honey, and vibes known as "Natural Environment Teaching"—except half the time, it isn't teaching at all. It’s an ideological surrender. We took entry-level technicians, gave them 40 hours of sleep-inducing online modules, threw them onto a foam mat, and told them: "Just follow the child's lead, bro." Now insurance companies and families are cutting checks for $75 to $100 an hour for intensive, medically necessary behavioral intervention, while a tech sits crisscross applesauce staring into the middle distance while a kid watches wheels spin on an iPad. That’s not trauma-informed clinical mastery. That’s the world’s most aggressively overbilled babysitting gig. On this episode of Rad N Bad, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero march straight into No Man’s Land to call out the clinical neglect hiding behind progressive buzzwords. In this episode, we unpack: Real NET vs. Passive Proximity: Why legitimate incidental teaching is elite, dynamic behavioral science that demands active environmental sabotage—not sitting on your hands waiting for an establishing operation to fall from the sky. The 85% Trial-Density Collapse: How trading structured repetition for casual play robs learners of up to 60,000 learning opportunities a year. The Token Board Illusion: Why arbitrary five-star boards are rarely functioning as generalized conditioned reinforcers, but rather as visual countdown timers to escape the clinician. Assent Washing: The dangerous line between respecting human autonomy and using "compassionate care" as an excuse to avoid hard instructional friction and guarantee lifelong dependency. The Measurement Dumpster Fire: Why fast-moving sessions lead to 4:55 PM creative writing on session notes, and how cold probes, first-trial data, and Standard Celeration Charts save empirical integrity. The Synthesis: Why you earn the floor at the desk and prove the desk on the floor.

2. 

   7 Oct 2026

   Episode 52: Dosage by Tradition: Why ABA Confused 30 Hours on a Clock with Actual Clinical Science

   Somewhere along the way, applied behavior analysis took an intensely personal clinical question—what does this unique child and family actually need right now?—and turned it into an algebra problem. Higher support needs? Add hours. More assessment goals? Add hours. Comprehensive treatment? Hand over 30 to 40 hours of your week. We spend our entire careers training parents, schools, and technicians not to explain behavior with circular labels. We tell them to find the environmental variables, analyze motivating operations, and identify reinforcement contingencies. Yet, when someone asks why an autistic child needs 30 hours of ABA, our answer basically amounts to: "Because they're in the 30-hour tier." That isn’t a functional analysis. That’s circular reasoning with a CPT billing code slapped onto it. On this episode of Rad N Bad, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero stop ducking the hardest, most guarded debate in the behavioral health industry. We trace the history of high-dosage ABA from Lovaas in 1987 to the landmark 2024 JAMA Pediatrics meta-analysis, run a ruthless systems-level contingency analysis on fee-for-service reimbursement, and challenge every clinician in the field to take The Zero-Dollar Test. In this episode, Sean and Mike break down: Where Did 40 Hours Actually Come From? Deconstructing the 1987 UCLA Young Autism Project, replication attempts by Smith and Eikeseth, the 2001 National Research Council report, and why our field mistook a broad treatment package for a single active ingredient. The 2024 Sandbank Meta-Analysis: What 144 studies and over 9,000 children published in JAMA Pediatrics actually tell us about the lack of a universal linear dose-response curve. Volume vs. Intensity (The Baseball Practice Metaphor): Why hours only measure elapsed time on a clock—and why 15 hours of dense, high-integrity, parent-embedded teaching can be far more behaviorally "intensive" than 35 hours of passive technician time. Follow the Money (Contingency Analysis): How traditional fee-for-service reimbursement actively punishes clinical titration, rewards dependence, and turns a BCBA who successfully makes therapy unnecessary into an operational nightmare. The Caregiver Gap: Why 30 hours of therapy only touches 18% of a child’s week, and why under-reimbursing parent coaching keeps families trapped in professional dependency. The Zero-Dollar Test: If your organization’s revenue was completely disconnected from the volume of direct billable hours delivered, would your treatment recommendations look the same tomorrow morning?

3. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Episode 51: The Financial Chokehold: Killing the 60-Day Cash Trap & Beating Private Equity with Data w/ Ethan Schwarzbach of Flychain

   There is a brutal reality nobody warns you about when you sit for your BCBA exam: within 18 months of launching an independent practice, you aren't analyzing behavior graphs. You're staring at generic QuickBooks spreadsheets at midnight, explaining CPT codes to an accountant who doesn't know ABA, and watching payroll approach while commercial payers sit on your claims for 90 days. The dirty secret of our industry right now isn't that clinical models are failing—it's that independent, clinician-owned operators are getting choked out by cash flow. On this episode of Rad N Bad, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero sit down with Ethan Schwarzbach, co-founder of Flychain, to cut directly into the financial engine of ABA. We pull back the curtain on how predatory private equity actually took over the space (hint: it wasn't superior clinical care) and how independent clinics can build modern financial infrastructure to stay open, stay ethical, and compete. In this episode, we break down: The Fixed-Payroll vs. Variable-Reimbursement Trap: Why paying staff on a strict bi-weekly schedule while waiting on unpredictable 60-to-90-day payer cycles creates an operational crisis. The Myth of Private Equity Clinical Superiority: Why corporate roll-ups dominate through capital reserves, data infrastructure, and secret contracted rate bargaining—not clinical outcomes. True Unit Economics: Calculating the fully burdened cost of an RBT hour (taxes, benefits, non-billable drive time, supervision allocation) vs. raw hourly pay. The Quota Trap: Why pushing clinicians to maximum billable capacity masks broken margins and accelerates burnout, turnover, and clinic failure. Leveling the Playing Field: How machine-readable payer rate transparency and CFO benchmark tooling give independent owners the leverage to negotiate higher reimbursement rates. Visit Flychain at https://www.flychain.us/ (https://www.flychain.us/)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 9 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

18

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

Contact Rad N Bad Podcast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Shows with a similar audience

• 

  The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

• 

  Behavior Bitches

• 

  At Peace Parents™ Podcast

• 

  Motley Fool Money

• 

  Scamfluencers

• 

  What’s Up With Catalight!

Questions about Rad N Bad Podcast