The BehavioralCorner

Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano. And this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us, as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and wellbeing. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner, please hang around a while. 

Steve Martorano 

Hi, everybody, Steve Martorano with you on the Behavioral Corner. That's where we hang, hoping to run into interesting people who can inform, and sometimes even just entertain us with everything and anything that has to do with what we call behavioral health. The Behavioral Corner is underwritten by our great partners in this endeavor, Retreat Behavioral Health, I'm gonna talk a little bit about them straight ahead because nothing happens without their support. They're just terrific. But anyway, this was launched six, seven months ago now. So we're going to talk a lot about that. And what this is not, though, is not a year-end review. And I'll tell you why. Well, I don't have to tell you why it's not a urine review. Because who the hell wants to look back at 2020? In any, you know, specific sense. You know, the other day somebody said, yeah, it began with Kobe Bryant die, and I went, Oh, my God I got. So no, it's not that but it is a year-end that we wanted to spend the last podcast of the passing here, just to bring you up to date, and up to speed on what we tried to set out to do with this thing, how well we're doing and what we want to do going forward. And I could do that by myself. But I'm no dope. It's easier when you bring somebody in, particularly with someone who is very important to the project. Paul Altobelli is our producer. He is my distributor, he is my social media guy. He does all that stuff for me. And briefly, about Paul, I've known for a very long time. I've known him as long as he's been alive. Without getting into too many details. Our families are very, very close. We've worked together in the past, he has a great background, he has all the necessary skills to do a podcast for us. And he brings to it also great enthusiasm and curiosity, which is important. Close gonna join us on this edition of the corner. Hello, Paul. 

Paul Altobelli 

Hello, Steve, or as I used to call you "Big Steve." 

Steve Martorano 

Big Steve. Ye s, well, you can still do that. Here's the deal. And this is in the interest of complete disclosure. Over the years if he's always had a real job. And I've always had a sort of real job, whenever we could do something together, we would do that. And we've done that only a couple of times, really, two notable times this project, of course, which is our latest, and one that preceded this by about 15 years, maybe even longer now. And that was we put the Village Voice, the venerable Village Voice, an alternative newspaper, we put that on the internet as an audio product. We did that, in terms of the history of the Internet, and all of that we did that 15 minutes after it was possible to do, we were very much ahead of the curve with the Voice Radio and Paul, you know, again, instrumental in getting that, you know, the tech and lots of the creative stuff in order so that we can do it. But it is important to note, he and I have come to work together. And I don't want to I don't like to blame for any of this. But the truth of the matter is, the world went to hell in a handbasket. 9/11. 911, we were in New York, he tried to get to New York City that day, I was in New York City for the 9/11 attacks as we were trying to get our radio station running for the voice. And then when we start doing this, BAM COVID, you know, for nothing, but we got to be careful when we do.

Paul Altobelli 

I think I'm worried about our next venture.

Steve Martorano 

Well, I think we used up all that weird karma. Anyway, as I said, we're going to talk about what we did this year, what kind of what we want to do going forward. Here's the deal with behavioral health. It covers a broad range of practices and disciplines and, and ailments and behavioral health in a simple way are how our behavior affects our mental, spiritual, and physical health. So it's a very big topic and Retreat, which began when I began partnering up with him as strictly a substance abuse treatment place. And one of the better ones in the country, I might add, has expanded over the years to include now all those other things, the mental health side of the issue in a behavioral health context. And so that's why we have a pretty broad purview. Well came into it. I told him what I needed to be done. We were going to change it from a terrestrial product to a podcast with that seemed to be the future and it is and so he has been there to help us create the podcast that now comes to you as the Behavioral Corner. So Paul take a minute or two and give me the state of the podcast we began with nothing. Take us from that day in June of this year to where we are now. 

Paul Altobelli 

We started with trying to figure out how do we actually put it on the air quotes, didn't even know how to do that. We figured it out. To this day. We are 30 episodes in for our first season. We have over 2000 listeners, were featured on over 30 podcast apps, including Apple, Google, Spotify, Pandora, Overcast, which, you know, for those who are in the podcast game, getting noticed by these apps. I feel that's a major accomplishment. The more these apps are familiar with the Behavioral Corner, the more people can listen to us. outside of the United States, that behavioral corner is heard all around the world. We have listeners in France, Ireland, Guam, Israel, India, the UK, South America, and Australia. So we're on seven continents, all seven continents, 

Steve Martorano 

Name the seven continents, Paul. 

Paul Altobelli 

Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and I always forget the last one. 

Steve Martorano 

Asia.

Paul Altobelli 

Asia! Asia, how could I forget Asia?

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, you buried the lead. You know, it's amazing. Here's what I've learned. I have a fairly long background in broadcasting, radio, and television. Primarily radio. And I understand the radio and how it works fairly well. It's a very strange beast, the radio program is here in the moment and gone. That's just the nature of television. Same way except, I mean, certainly he can, you can record stuff. But nevertheless, when it's being done, it's in the moment, and then it's gone. podcasting is more permanent, can be more permanent. It's like building a library. Paul and I talk about this all the time, it's like putting episodes on a shelf, they stay there. If you like the podcast, in general, you can go back and listen to an old show. But there are eight or 900,000 podcasts, at least, if not more. And so the game becomes immediately half, how do you crack through the noise. And I didn't know how that's why that's where Paul comes in. Because he has a specialty in what's called search engine optimization people go looking for you, you got to make it easy for them to find you. And the learning curve on this thing has been pretty steep. For me, I'm still not up to speed on everything. But it's plainly obvious that at least two ways to do this. One is bringing to bear all of the techniques that are inherent in social media, and the Internet to build that. And believe me, there are dozens of things you've got to know about how to get a podcast to listen to that, if you don't know you're wasting your time. The second way, and I always go back to this is to figure out a way to get Michelle Obama and her husband to come on one of your shows. And then you have short-circuited the whole system, you've gone right to the front of the line. And then all you have to do is keep working at it. So it's about attracting attention. It's about we want to build a product that doesn't have to rely on getting you to know, a monster, a guest, although if you're listening, please come on, we want to build something that people go, you know, I'd like to know more about that topic. Let's see what the Behavioral Corner has about that. So over the course of that time, we've touched upon a lot of stuff. So we're building I mean, that's what we're doing, 

Paul Altobelli 

It's a process and not an event.

Steve Martorano 

Yep. Paul is a great example of whether this is succeeding or not on a certain level because his responsibility is not only the manufacturing of this product, but he listens to it naturally, obviously. And he has no background in behavioral health, or substance abuse or treatment, or any of that. So he's been a kind of fresh set of ears as I've been doing this for over 10 years. Now. I'm going to ask you, Paul, what did you think these shows are going to be like, and what has surprised you about the topics?

Paul Altobelli 

I had a general idea that substance abuse, Let's start there was a choice. It was something that I chose to do this that I can stop as I know about alcoholics and you know, you hear about stories of people that are addicted to drugs, but you always think in the back of your mind. Well, if you want to stop if you don't want to do it anyway, you just stop 

Steve Martorano 

You stop. Sure. 

Paul Altobelli 

And the disease part of it was something that I never really understood completely until we started hearing from people like Will Erdman or Rodney Thorne or Joi Honer or Sara Thomson. Vito Baldini, my favorite episode. Where these people were in the grips of addiction, to where everything was thrown away, they lost everything, they lost their homes, their cars, their money, their children, their jobs. And then, you know, they get this moment of clarity. And that's, that's I always like that part of the story where it's almost like the heavens open up and to hear the angels sing, and they realize I can, I can do this. But that's the second thing that I've learned to Steve is that very rarely can people do it by themselves and that through organizations like Retreat Behavioral Health, and Alcoholics Anonymous, and through the community, you know, that's a theme we've heard over and over and over again, is this idea of talking to others too, to working it through, you're not alone, that you can't get over this disease. You can't get over this. Let me rephrase that. You can come to manage the disease. Yeah. You ever really fully recover.

Steve Martorano 

So yeah know, so it worked on you the way, the industry, the field has always hoped that it would work. And it's been a long, long process. And they finally arrived, that is getting with regard to substance abuse, especially to convince the public, we're not talking about character flaws. Here. We're talking about the disease. This is a disease over which you have no control, they use the now some of the analogies you will hear endlessly is that it's like it's diabetes. It's a disease that you can manage and live with. Certainly, you have to take some responsibility for diabetes, you have to take your medicine, and you have to eat properly. Well, much can be said the same for substance abuse, but by getting people to appreciate that what's going on in front of them fewer people wreck their lives, destroy their families, go to jail. And ultimately, some of them die. It's because they cannot control themselves. And those people need help. There are people who can't just stop. But there is a large, large number who cannot. But over the years, I've learned that in spite of all that there are millions of people in long-term successful sobriety. So you know, that's terrific. One of the things that are another casualty of 2020 is that you know, the last couple of years prior to this year, the opioid epidemic had finally bubbled up into mainstream consciousness. Because there was in suburbia, suddenly, that group is going to start paying attention. And then it was a genuine bonafide epidemic of overdose deaths, stunning numbers every year, more and more, surpassing automobile accidents. Think about that. Yeah. And so at the moment, when the public it stopped thinking about this is a criminal justice issue, and started talking about it as a crisis of health issue. COVID comes along, and pushes it right out of the consciousness of everybody, for obvious reasons. And the further irony is that we know, people addicted are even more profoundly at risk of relapse during the pandemic. So it's been, again, just a mess. 2020 and this pandemic. I've told you many of the stories I've heard over the years stuff that you just, you can't imagine now. Yeah, people would, would do. We've had people on who are unbelievable testaments to getting it together. I think, specifically, two colleagues from Retreat. I mean, Maggie Hunt and Grace Shober is just unbelievably successful. Career women, moms, wives, great people, and sober for many, many years. And they did that themselves. They really did a lot of help, but they did it themselves.

Steve Martorano 

I like how, a lot of these folks do that not only have they sought help and have cleaned up their lives, they're taking what they've learned, and they're helping others. That's such a special thing. 

Steve Martorano 

You know, that's an interesting phenomenon. I think some people don't understand that. I know, I didn't fully understand that. Because while it used to be more and more common, that people working in the field of substance abuse, were recovering substance abusers. There's still a lot of that, but it's not overwhelmingly who they are anymore. But I used to think Well, what's that all about? Is that just them continuing their treatment by doing this and that helps them. There's some of that, I'm sure, but I think I've seen it in people's stories and the way they talk about it. I think when you come back from the brink of something is devastating to say heroin addiction, really come back from it. It's your life back together. The power of that transformation. is so strong in you that when you look back on what you did and then see others still doing it, you are compelled to try to help them. It's so powerful to say I can't just sit around and let people do what I used to do, and not realize they can stop doing it. So you get a lot of people motivated that way. You mentioned a couple of your favorite interviews of Vito Baldini is an amazing guy. As Paul said, he's a minister at a church in Philadelphia. He is as bad a story as anybody. And then he starts a food bank actually just starts feeding people. Yeah, my buddy Darnell Hinton did the same thing in the Norristown area. Just $30 in his pocket, said I think we'll go buy some pizzas, feed some homeless people in Kensington, he has a very robust nonprofit, doing lots of good things called feed one, Teach One Feed One. And Vito has a Small Things, which is gigantic now. Have you seen the growth of that the three or four months it's like to take responsibility for that? But it's been Vito, he's a distributor, now, he handles tons of food for lots of nonprofits that came out of his addiction. So that's great. Now, again, we launched this thing under the banner of behavioral health and set it against the backdrop of an epidemic. So naturally, all those mental health things like anxiety and depression, all of that are exacerbated by the pandemic. So we've had an opportunity to talk to a lot of people about how to deal with that stuff. Because you know, if you think, you know, if you think all those other things are prevalent, considered depression and anxiety, plenty. We can't talk about the pandemic in this context. What about the pandemic, besides the scariness of it? Were you most surprised about what you still look at and can't believe? 

Paul Altobelli 

They didn't say, well, there's a pandemic, so we have to stop. They figured it out. And they had to figure it out quickly. And that seems to be a recurring theme with John White.

Steve Martorano 

From the Consortium? Yeah.

Paul Altobelli 

Yeah. He talks about how, you know, he's got these clinics all over Philadelphia, where people go to seek help. And then he said, we had it, we had, you know, a weekend to figure out how do we continue this? How do we move this along through technology? Through tele-health, you recently spoke with a gentleman that had a gambling addiction? And how they had to figure out how do we keep our meetings going in the face of this? Well, we can't get together anymore. And we're going to do it through tele-health. And he says that they have daily meetings now online, with people all over the world, hundreds of people that are participating. So I don't know if the technology was something that we always knew was going to happen. But this pandemic has sort of moved it along a lot quicker than anyone ever believed. And now we're able to use technology, and the internet and video conference and teleconferencing in a way that that's helping even more people now.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, and like everything else, that the irony is about just a moment, when particularly parents, were beginning to rise up against this notion of screen time, screen time, screen time, along comes this event that causes us to withdrawal from each other, and but still have to connect some way, bang your kids in front of a screen for your four hours a day now trying to get an education. So, interestingly enough, the pandemic may have saved the internet, from the road, it was heading down in the minds of most people as a net bad thing to somebody that's very, very useful. I think, for me, the thing that completely continues to blow my mind about the pandemic is that nobody was prepared for this. Not at any level of officialdom. Now I know, you know, without this thing becoming political, you know, we know there was very little top-down, but nobody was ready. Hollywood, for instance, has been telling us for years, with their goofy movies about, you know, epidemics was going to happen. And really smart people have been writing papers about saying, We've got to get ready for global pandemics, the spread of diseases, we've seen them before we've seen SARS before, seen Ebola, it was inevitable and nobody was ready. Nobody, and it constantly annoys me that we have spent, I can't even put a number on it, building weapons to protect us against China or Russia, and very little on getting ready for something like this. And you know, it's been devastating. And we're playing catch up and we're still playing catch up.

Paul Altobelli 

There was an episode on Netflix before this thing about what would happen if there was a pandemic and it's four or five episodes long and they've known this and they know here are the issues that we could be facing lack of PPE, the speed and we can get a vaccine, the hospital space ventilators, they knew all this is gonna happen.

Steve Martorano 

Everything. Everything. I'm not one who loves to see government after the fact, feel the need to have a commission. Let's have a commission and find out what happened. These costs were once we get this thing under control and go back to something that approaches normal people to stop dying. They've got to impanel people to study how this happened. We were unprepared. And why it should never happen again. Because it's been outrageous. Just outrageous. But that's the thing that completely blew my mind. Do you have teenagers at home? 

Paul Altobelli 

I do. 

Steve Martorano 

There's a lot of talk about the kids. The kids. Whenever I hear people go, what about the kids I think of George Carlin. George Carlin used to go, "'Eff kids. Who cares?" Okay, that kid's crap. I have some sympathy for that answer. But it's not easy to be in. In a cloistered situation in lockdown, particularly with teenagers, how your guys...you got two great sons. How they holding up.

Paul Altobelli 

They're doing okay. The one son is just, we just kind of picked up where he left off when he was in class. The other son struggling a little bit. Maybe struggling isn't the right word. He's figured it out where he can do the least amount of work. Because he's not being called out on. I'm sure there are instances when I can go up there where he might have class on one screen and then he's got YouTube on another. 

Steve Martorano 

Really? 

Paul Altobelli 

Yeah. So he's getting away with things that you know what his grades are showing. He's the kinda kid that needs to be in class.

Steve Martorano 

I this the only thing I am convinced of and the other thing that's driving us all crazy is that, if you want an opinion, that suits you just look for it, it's out there. So you never know what to believe. Right. And I'm the same way except for this issue of the schools. Now convinced from the medical scientific community, and certainly from the practical economic side of the equation, that it's critical to get the kids back to school. Yeah, for their socialization and their education, for sure. But more than that, our society, this society, most societies cannot function. If the kids aren't in school, because people got to work, right, parents got to go to work. So that's a major, major piece that I'm glad to see we're moving towards, but most kids are not getting at least some kind of in-school education. But maybe in the new year, they can get them back to protect the staff, kids seem pretty, pretty safe and get people working again. And in the meantime, the stuff we'll be working on for the podcast. And it's something that so it's occurred, it was random, will be impacted by all that. I just want to sort of sum up Paul, to let people know, first of all, how grateful we are. This is something Paul hammers me on all the time. You got to tell him, you got to tell him to follow us. You got to tell I you know, I go in a camp, what do they forget to tell people to like us? And I go, Yeah, I don't care if people like, what was it? No, they gotta like, you know, all those platforms, any platform, you can imagine we're on it. And in most cases on those platforms, there are ways of acknowledging that. If Facebook and lots of other places are obvious, you can like something. So give people who might not know like me, a hierarchy of order of things we would like them to do what? They find the Corner? Yes. What should they like it first? Or should they subscribe first? Or should they

Paul Altobelli 

In order? What I would like them to do is like and follow, there's usually a button that says follow or subscribe to this podcast. So that would be helpful. Because you know, Apple, for instance, is going to look at that they're going to say, all right, if somebody types in behavioral health into their search engine, it's only going to bring up so many episodes, right? You talked about 900,000. There's a piece of that, that has to do with what we talked about going to feature episodes that people are engaged with, you know, we have solid content. And I feel that if Apple were to give us a little extra promotion, display our show more than others, then we have a shot of growing our audience. Secondly, if you have a couple of minutes, leave a review. That's a very solid thing you could do for our shows. "Love the podcast." That's all it's got to be three words. "Love the podcast." "Five stars." That helps a lot. But what we have learned and another thing, Steve that I thought has been fantastic is when somebody shares on podcasts, that they listen to the show and then they go on Facebook and go I listened to this podcast today. And I think there's a lot of value here. Please check it out yourself. We see our numbers increase, we see a lot of people listening to the show. Those are the three things that would recommend somebody does.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, you know, and they're easy, they're clicks of a button. The review thing is interesting, I didn't even I wasn't even aware that you could do that, I would say is the content producer here that I'm, you know, I don't know where the next good idea is coming from for a show. So if you have an idea, you know, well leaks, here's what's going on my life, or here's what my you know, what's going on in my community. And by the way up to senior tab, very thin skin, there's stuff you don't like, tell me about that as well. But the review is, would be just fantastic. I just want to say this going forward, so give you an idea. A couple of things in the new year that I want to get to right away, we're going to spend some time talking about nutrition and how we eat and what effect that hasn't our behavioral health, mental well being, I see nothing but ads, this time of the year for the supplements that are supposed to do everything from you know, every just every cure everything. I spent a couple of hours the other day trying to find out what was in the supplements, and nowhere do they tell you what's in the supplements. And many times these are multi-level marketing operations. So this, I want to do something on that I'm in the process of getting somebody authoritative to talk about it. And I guarantee you, we're going to do something on a field of study called neuropsychology, and neuropsychiatry, and that has to do with brain activity. And whether it means, you know, if you have a traumatic brain injury, they'll naturally do a brain scan of you, because that's an organic thing. But this is an emerging field where they claim they can look at a brain scan, and kind of predict why you're behaving the way you're behaving, very experimental. And it's very controversial because a lot of people go, please, I can let your brain up on a brain scan for a number of reasons. That doesn't mean that it will follow that you will behave this way. It's very fascinating. And I'm going to get somebody really good to come on and talk about that.

Paul Altobelli 

But if I may add to I just recently did my DNA with ancestry.com.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah.

Paul Altobelli 

And not only are they telling me, you know, who's my fifth cousin, and all that other stuff, but they're also telling me because of my genetic makeup what I am prone to do. Behavior once you go through look through DNA, am I left-handed or right? How many cups of coffee do I drink today? If I like comedy, more than drama, you know if I'm athletic, or if I'm not athletic, this is all done through DNA, 

Steve Martorano 

Who did you use? Ancestry?

Paul Altobelli 

 Ancestry.com. Yes. Fascinating.

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, yeah. That's sort of the neurobiology thing. But bigger than that, that would be another thing I'd like to look at. Because, you know, my default position is when I read here, that stuff like this, like just knee jerk reaction is, give me a break. Okay, you know what? Seriously? But we'll get some people who want to talk about it because there's a lot to know. And, you know, in closing with regard to the pandemic, in 2021, of the things that have been, and will and will know, more down the road, of course, remarkable is that, in spite of the fact that play a core margin, and a cynic in my life, I'm the biggest optimist alive, I wake up every day thinking, we got a shot at having a better day. I don't act like it. But that's what I believe. And I have thought for a long time, that this pandemic was so serious, and there were so many really smart sons of bitches. They were going to come up with something and that they came up with this vaccine, these vaccines, this quickly is flat out a miracle. It's an embarrassing one because it demonstrates once again, the thing shouldn't be anywhere near as fucked up as they are, since we could fix things if we got it. And they appear to have done that with this vaccine. This shows also in a small way about that. Things may be bad, you may be depressed, you may be anxious, you may be addicted. There's a way out of that. There is a way out of that. That's what the Behavioral Corner is about the conceit is that we're hanging, because that's the tone just like this. I want to thank Paul couldn't do without Paul. 

Paul Altobelli 

Thank you. 

Steve Martorano 

He's responsible for the 9/11 and the COVID thing. Your connection there. And we look forward to putting more of these together. Paul, Happy New Year. Look for us on the behavioral corner. Follow us, like us, review us. Thanks, Paul.

Paul Altobelli 

And share us!

Steve Martorano 

Share us. Absolutely.

Retreat Behavioral Health 

Studies show that 2020 has negatively affected the mental health of millions of Americans. That is my app retreat, we work to provide comprehensive mental health programming through our Synergy Health programs. To learn more about Synergy and the comprehensive mental and behavioral health services we offer. Call us today at 855-802-6600

The Behavioral Corner 

That's it for now. And make us a habit of hanging out at the behavioral corner. And when we're not hanging, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, on the Behavioral Corner.

The Behavioral Corner 30:48 

That's it for now. And make us a habit of hanging out at the behavioral corner. And when we're not hanging, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, on the Behavioral Corner.