Steven Bartlett: The truth behind the Diary of a CEO podcast - BBC World Service

In just 10 years, Stephen Bartlett has become one of the most famous entrepreneurs in the UK.

Host of Europe's top podcast for the third year in a row, and a major player in British cultural life.

The co-founder of a globally successful marketing company at just 22, he soon came to national prominence.

Well, now 29-year-old Stephen Bartlett is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur.

Making history by becoming the youngest ever dragon to join BBC One's hit series Dragon's Den.

Have we got a deal?

Yes, you have.

Yeah, we have a deal.

Oh, amazing.

And as host of the hit podcast, The Diary of a CEO. But in the last 18 months, there's been a noticeable shift in the guests and subject matter of his podcast.

Yeah, we live in a toxic nutritional landscape.

I'm sorry that the medical establishment has not come to recognize what I'm saying.

I think humanity is in terrible danger.

Bringing fringe theories into the mainstream.

And it's raised concerns amongst leading health experts.

A lot of these podcasters just put out there like, oh, we're just giving people information.

No, you're not.

You're giving them misinformation.

Stephen Bartlett's number one podcast, The Diary of a CEO, first launched in 2017, is known for its in-depth personal interviews with high-profile figures. It's consistently been near the top of the UK and international podcast charts.

The podcast content, made into videos for his YouTube channel, has grown to over 8 million subscribers over the last three years.

For the first few years, it focused on business and success with guests like the former CEO of banking app Monzo and celebrities like influencer Molly Mae and the late singer Liam Payne.

Earlier this year, a viral clip from Bartlett's podcast came up while I was scrolling on my phone.

From everything I know now,

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that the COVID vaccine introduction

has had a catastrophic net negative effect on society.

In the full episode, Bartlett doesn't pick up on this bold claim.

Instead, referring to his own experience with COVID.

I've never experienced anything quite as bizarre as the symptom set that I had when I got COVID.

Later in the episodes, he seems to justify hosting Malhotra on the podcast.

Some of those amazing people you talked about like Martin Luther King and I don't know whether it's the suffragettes or Gandhi or whoever it might be.

Their ideas in their time were received

equally horrifically.

Cécile Simmons is a health disinformation researcher.

What's interesting about I think Stephen Bartlett's tone certainly is that he's quite amenable to his guests.

I don't think he asked a lot of challenging questions.

It's quite a friendly environment.

And certainly when he has profile people who have spread misinformation, I haven't seen a lot of contextualization of who these people are.

I recognize a lot of Bartlett's guests as known spreaders of misinformation.

Some of the guests do give legitimate health advice, but it seems like a departure from the previous tone of his podcast.

Over the past six months, nearly half of the podcast episodes have featured guests focused on health topics.

Why has there been such a definitive shift?

What we're seeing is that health-related content

tends to do really well online.

It's a very health-related clickbait content.

I tracked the podcast over the last 18 months and noticed the uptick in health-related episodes.

Then, I fact-checked 15 full episodes from April to November with the advice of four medical experts.

We found an average of 14 harmful claims, not backed up by scientific consensus, per episode.

We defined harmful claims as advice that if followed, could lead to patient harm.

Wow, okay.

So, naturopathic medicine is

not a legitimate thing.

This guest, known as the Glucose Goddess, claimed to help women reverse polycystic ovary syndrome.

In my second book, I ran a study.

Three females who were in the program doing my hacks for just a month, got their period back,

and were able to get pregnant in that month just with my hacks.

Three is a huge sample.

Just joking.

Dr. Mark Hyman is a functional medicine doctor.

Here's what he says on his episode of The Diary of a CEO.

Gluten can cause everything from osteoporosis to autism, to schizophrenia, to rheumatoid arthritis, to anemia, to hair loss, alopecia.

I mean, it can cause a million things.

And it's one inciting event.

After he claimed gluten causes autism,

this is what we next hear from Stephen.

Was there any personal experiences that made you more drawn towards focusing your life on health and helping people?

Dr. Grimes had a different reaction.

Gluten can cause everything from osteoporosis to autism, to schizophrenia, to rheumatoid arthritis, to anemia, to

No.

It can't.

That is absolutely false.

Autism, for example, is a is a condition people are born with, right?

And it's not caused by their parents' diet or what they have somehow ingested as a child.

Can you tell me why they should stay and listen?

Great question.

Bartlett isn't the first one to amplify these people.

This is the stuff that Joe Rogan's been doing for years.

And I have the same criticisms for him, constantly platforming contrarian,

you know, edgy kind of people that claim they have the simple answer to everything or the simple cause of everything.

Usually with something really controversial.

Shocking that grabs your attention.

It's a great model for getting millions of listeners.

If Biden got shot,

Joe Rogan, a comedian and host of the number one podcast in the United States,

has become one of the most powerful media figures in the US.

Controversial.

Many of Rogan and Bartlett's guests crossover.

Stephen Bartlett and Joe Rogan, I think have managed to do so well because they are actually quite mainstream figures.

We're rolling.

Good to see you, sir.

Let's go.

Here we go.

Joe Rogan, for instance, has for a long time said that he's bipartisan, that he's inviting people from across the political spectrum.

But that he's, you know, trying to have interesting conversations with interesting guests, and I think that Stephen Bartlett has tried to do the same.

He says that he wants to interview people from, you know, the world of politics and business.

But of course, quite a lot of these figures then shift towards inviting more, I suppose, extreme figures who have peddled anti-vaccine views, who have shown distrust of medical institutions.

In October, Bartlett hosted Dr. Thomas Seyfried.

Here, he's dismissing the success of proven cancer treatments, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

I call it medieval approaches to this.

Are you kidding me?

What they're doing with the cancer patients.

Cancer survival has never been better.

In human history, and that is because of dedicated cancer research around the world.

Then he claimed the ketogenic diet, a diet low in carbs and high in fat and protein, was a treatment solution without chemotherapy.

To manage cancer without toxicity,

is to simultaneously restrict the two fuels that are needed to drive this disregulated growth.

While transitioning the whole body off to a fuel that the tumor cells can't use,

which is fatty acids and ketone bodies.

At no point in the episode does Stephen challenge the suggestion that the keto diet could treat cancer.

When we next hear from him, this is what he says.

So what can we learn from our ancestors about cancer?

How prevalent was cancer?

If you were a cancer patient who took some of this advice and maybe changed your dietary patterns

and became very restrictive when you were undergoing treatment, you could potentially and very realistically get very, very sick

and have a much worse health outcome than if you followed recommended advice from your oncologist.

They're giving something that feels like it's tangible.

It's not going to hurt.

But they're way overstretching what the potential value of it is.

And the worrisome thing to me is that it sends people away from evidence-based medicine.

Which we need more than ever.

There's a real harm to this.

And a lot of these podcasters put out there like, oh, we're just giving people information.

No, you're not.

You're giving them misinformation.

And that's a very different and non-empowering thing.

It actually imperils all our health.

Is there a risk in having too much meat products?

Bartlett's shift to health may be great for the reach of his podcast.

But what's the line between hosting contrarian views versus allowing them to go unchallenged?

And what are Stephen Bartlett's responsibilities as the host of one of the world's biggest podcasts?

A spokesperson for Flight Studio, Stephen Bartlett's production company,

said that The Diary of a CEO (DOAC) is an open-minded, long-form conversation with individuals identified for their distinguished and eminent career and/or consequential life experience.

They said each guest is thoroughly researched, offered freedom of expression,

and they hear a range of voices, not just those Stephen and the DOAC team necessarily agree with.

They said the BBC reviewed a limited proportion of guests out of the nearly 400 broadcast to date.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra said he completely accepts that there are still some people who disagree with his views.

He said, does not mean that they have been debunked.

Thank you for joining us this morning, doctor.

He was on BBC News to speak about heart medication early January 2023.

He went on to make misleading claims about COVID vaccines.

The BBC said it should have been better prepared to challenge Dr. Malhotra, particularly given his past comments about the vaccine program.

The BBC apologized.

Dr. Thomas Seyfried said he stands by the statements that he made in the interview.

Jessie Inchauspé, known as the Glucose Goddess, said that she sees reversal of polycystic ovarian syndrome as remission of the condition.

She also said she ran a survey-based pilot experiment for her methods with nearly 3,000 participants and did not claim it was peer-reviewed.

Dr. Mark Hyman didn't respond to requests for comment.

It just worries me in the sense that it undermines trust in evidence-based medicine.

Which we need more than ever.