December 15, 2024 - 1:00pm
Steven Bartlett, host of Diary of a CEO and patron saint of Britain’s basic business blokes, is probably feeling less-than-optimised right now. A BBC News investigation into his wildly popular podcast — the second-most popular in the UK and fifth-most popular in the world on Spotify this year — has thrown up certain issues about some of the health advice being hawked to his millions of listeners.
There’s the episode with Dr Thomas Seyfried, a researcher who reckons a ketogenic diet — fewer carbs, more fat — can stave off cancer, and said modern treatments equate to “medieval cures”. There’s another with Aseem Malhotra, a doctor who said the Covid vaccines were a “net negative to society”. Neither view was challenged by Bartlett, and nor were a myriad of other woo-woo health claims from guests, including the idea that disorders like autism can be “reversed” with a different diet.
Perhaps it’s too much to expect a keen medical mind in a man who once wrote a book called Happy Sexy Millionaire, and battle-rapped under the name Lyricist. Yet it seems Bartlett is actively attracted to dubious health fixes: as a judge on Dragon’s Den, he invested £50,000 in a company that claimed its gold-plated “ear seeds” could cure myalgic encephalomyelitis, a chronic fatigue condition, and tackle anxiety and insomnia. (He’s also had adverts for Huel, the meal-replacement drink, and Zoe, the nutrition company, banned because they looked like independent reviews, when in fact he’s an investor in both firms.)
As per his podcast’s name, Bartlett first got big by offering business advice. Given he was a millionaire by his mid-twenties, there was an obvious appeal. But Diary of a CEO’s evolution into a much broader media product — Boris Johnson probably wasn’t booked as a guest for his financial savvy — is unsurprising, particularly the focus on fringe health trends. As a genre, the self-optimisation podcast justifies its existence by what it can do for the listener. Go to Diary of a CEO’s YouTube channel (8.6 million subscribers), and each episode has a thumbnail image of Bartlett looking pensive; his guest looking authoritative; and a grabby quote or line: “this will turn your life around in 2025!”; “the one habit that’s making you feel lonely!”’; “do not buy a house!”; “stop using scented candles!”; “I cured their gum disease, and they walked again!”
The credulity with which Bartlett entertains all these ideas is very much like an even more popular podcaster Joe Rogan. Because with Rogan, as with Bartlett, and indeed much of the bro-coded podcast ecosystem, information is valuable in one dimension: the capacity to surprise. Truth doesn’t come into it. And if it does, it’s massaged away with woolly rhetoric around free speech and free thinking. Bartlett, in his episode with Aseem Malhotra, said he aimed to present “the other side” of the argument to the mainstream, and that “the truth is usually somewhere in the middle”. Well, no — with science, the truth is usually one thing or the other.
The two podcasters have come to this place from opposite directions. Rogan, a weed-smoking comedian, entertains weird ideas because it’s an entertaining thing to do. Bartlett spins them as things that will transform your life. It’s an attitude you see every day on LinkedIn, where engagement-seeking users post about their insane morning routines and how copywriting is best done while naked.
The bro podcaster’s reflexive contrarianism, where mainstream ideas are treated with scepticism and fringe ones aren’t, reflects how enmeshed they now are with startup culture. Almost by definition, starting a successful business means identifying a truth about the world that most people have ignored or actively denied. It’s all too easy for that attitude to then infect how you understand everything. This might be good for your streaming stats, but as Bartlett has found, sooner or later the truth catches up with you.
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SubscribeOh come on, not “Joe Rogan believes in dragons” again… now in a completely predictable arc is coming “trust health experts” ( but not all experts ,of course, only those that I trust)
Bullshit is Bullshit. The Bullshitter can be right about other things but this is bullshit.
If the author doesn’t like certain podcasts, don’t listen to them.
I won’t be taking advice from someone who says science and truth is black or white.
Have you seen GQ lately? It has swallowed the woke (and entirely unscientific) pieities wholesale. And in doing so it has lost almost all its readers. Hence, its writers are trying to get articles commissioned here.
There are people who believe a low carbohydrate diet can ‘starve’ cancer cells, and there are people who argue that the cost of lockdowns, let alone the risks of Covid vaccines, have not been properly investigated (yet). There are scientific papers about these things which may, or may not, support these views.
Merely gainsaying people is not an adequate response, not an informed response. You either have free speech or you don’t.
Somewhat bigoted and foolish article.
Steven Bartlett, Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, Lex Fridman, Sam Harris … I’ve followed them for years and I’ve heard a lot of woo woo junk. I’ve also learned some eureka gems … because they reliably provide one thing only – food for thought.
I don’t disagree with that. I like to be presented with wacky ideas (I’m here after all, where one finds not a few.) But I think there is also something to be said for the notion that too many afficionados of Rogan etc. take purveyors of food for thought as purveyors of truth in general. That’s at least as big a mistake as taking conventional wisdom for unassailable truth.
“…with science, the truth is usually one thing or the other.” – wow, the author knows nothing about the basics of science. Here are some definitions.
Science: “(knowledge from) the careful study of the structure and behaviour of the physical world, especially by watching, measuring, and doing experiments, and the development of theories to describe the results of these activities” – Cambridge Dictionary
The Science: “the facts and opinions that are provided by scientists who have studied a particular subject or situation” – Cambridge Dictionary
Science is a way of developing knowledge about the natural world. It doesn’t represent truth or absolute truth. One recent example is the scandal involving the president of Stanford University, a renowned Canadian-American neuroscientist. Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned in 2023 for manipulating lab data in multiple research papers (note: peer review does not validate lab data). Those papers have been cited by hundreds of other research papers. Science goes through the process of correction and “recall” throughout its short history.
To say that Bartlett and Rogan are mere reflexive contrarians appealing to engagement-seeking users is an insult to their audience. I listen to both of them. Do I believe everything being said on their podcasts? Of course Not. I’m not stupid (I have more degrees than most people). I trust my own knowledge, experience, and intuition to make informed decisions that matter to me.
Albert Einstein wrote: “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.” – The Evolution of Physics (1938 book).
We should take Bartlett and Rogan and the questions raised in their podcasts more seriously. Only then we can start asking and formulating more and different questions to enhance and enrich science, and to raise new possibilities. Making science a religion by using soft-authoritarianism will only further harm the integrity of science and drive more people away from science.
Great comment. Science is a process; not an established set of facts. Every scientific “fact” should be open for debate. And you’re right, it’s profoundly insulting to assume that people who listen to Rogan and Bartlett are incapable of differentiating between good arguments and bad arguments.
This is an evasion involving dubious reasoning and a justification of pure quackery. There simple ARE established truths in science and medicine! Newtonian mechanics isn’t quite accurate and any speeds and conditions that we might experience; however it was precise enough to get Apollo to the moon! This is not going to fundamentally change through any further understanding and development of relativity theory or quantum mechanics.
On a much more banal level the statement that “this chair is made of wood” is accurate (or not!) from both a common sense and scientific point of view. A wooden chair can never ever be accurately described it as being made of metal!
Nothing insulting. It’s obviously true.
I agree that science doesn’t necessarily equal truth because huge changes and discoveries can happen that change existing understandings. But your example is terrible. If someone resigned because they were manipulating data then they weren’t engaged in science in the first place.
My point is that science isn’t settled or isn’t “the truth” and science makes mistakes, intentional (more likely) or unintentional. To believe that scientists are honest nerds with good intentions and high integrity is naive or even foolish.
Like so many of the comments on here, it seems that you don’t understand anything about the scientific method, or indeed rational analysis of to include attempting to find out what happened historically without ideological bias.
Intentional mistakes(!) is an oxymoron if ever there was one, and could not be science by definition. Much of science is indeed “settled” for all intents and purposes. The (Newtonian) law of gravity is 99.99% accurate on Earth (and its Einsteinian development even more so) They are not going to be repealed anytime soon!
Thanks Joanne, and i echo JV’s comment about science as a process, not an absolute.
Questioning the status quo is the essential ingredient for human advancement; seeking to curtail questioning the antithesis. This applies both in the sciences (multiple) and the arts.
It depends how you are questioning the status quo and what evidence you have to do so. Simply because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean that all knowledge is up for grabs. This kind of thinking can be extraordinarily naive and simply open the away to any kind of quack asserting complete rubbish against all statistical evidence. (But no doubt making a very colourful story in the process which of course human beings tend to be very influenced by). Homeopathy for example has always been shown not to work, because controlled experiments show that it works no better than chance.
Thank you, Jim and Lancashire. IMHO, the greatest setback to science happened during Covid when questions about the origin of the virus and the safety of the vaccines were shutdown and people were labelled as conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. As far as science is concerned, articles like this one perhaps spread more misinformation than the views from popular podcasts.
Some of those prominent people were not merely labelled’ – they were cancelled by the Woking Class
Thomas is a Ph.D and a full professor in the Biology Department at Boston College, where he directs research. He has written a well-known book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, and he is probably as qualified as anyone alive to have an opinion on this subject. To say that he claimed, on the podcast, that the Keto diet can cure cancer is such an oversimplification of the things he did say as to be a lie. He has every right to speak on this topic, and on his theories. The cancer establishment is threatened, and is having a hissy fit.
Interesting that Joanne Dong’s sensible analysis as to how science works should have attracted 9 downvotes in the last 16 hours despite receiving no actual critique supporting the idea that science is something fixed by the wise that can’t be questioned even if that questioning turns out to have no factual basis. Are there none willing to stand up for the Inquisition and condemn Galileo for his presumption? A pathetic downvote hardly cuts it as resistance to the questioning of settled Science.
The manipulation of results is not science, by any definition. And why does criticism of Joe Rogan to giving a lot of air time to quackery, ipso facto insult his audience. But they might well be being misled and at the very least offered a distorted account of the truth.
We should not, just because there is suspicion of government and in particular the overreach at the time of covid, suspend our critical facilities, or only apply them in one direction. “Government – all lies, Rogan, raises such pertinent points”!!
Saying that Covid vaccines were net negative to society is not a ‘woo woo’ claim. Is the author seriously suggesting that the Covid vaccine science is settled?
My family doctor believes that a carnivore diet is healthy. I like vegetables too much to follow his preferred diet but should I dismiss him as an all round quack on account of his sincerely held dietary beliefs?
The vaccines IMO were almost certainly quite beneficial to the main risk group, i.e. older people, and medium-old with metabolic insufficiencies or vulnerabilities. There’s room to debate whether they were of much benefit to the young, or whether we would have arrived at a situation very similar to the present even if they had never been invented (I think we would, but we’d have taken a few more losses along the way.) But I find it hard to make a case for net negativity. Covid did kill some younger people after all. The adenovirus vaccines also killed a significant number, but the mRNA vaccines don’t seem to have done so.
I think the extremists on either side are a bit silly here.
As for your doctor, if his carnivorous instincts are extreme, I suggest you press him on why our dentition and gut clearly suggest that we evolved to be omnivores. If he just thinks there’s no reason to get stressed about eating a decent amount of meat, I would have no problems with that.
AC, I was about to say the same thing. I subscribed to Unherd today, and the first article I read since then was this one, very disappointing. Gogarty has not done his homework on this.
Prof. Seyfried’s theory makes total sense. Cancer cells require about 10 times more glucose than a healthy cell, but starve to death on Ketones. This was discovered in the 1920s and won a Nobel prize for Otto Warburg. Gogarty withheld all the evidence and the many doctors who back Thomas up. So in sumation, if you avoid carbs and sugar, it creates a hostile environment for cancer.
Do I know of a case where a terminally ill cancer stage 4 patient was completely cured with a strict keto diet? I only know one person that has tried it; she was in terrible condition and did not even have any memory of one of the weeks she was in the hospital. I told her about it, she was totally open-minded about it, so she and her daughter studied Seyfried videos I sent her, and tried it, 100% as much as possible ate no carbs. 2 months later she was in total remission (the bone cancer is an uncurable type), which shocked her doctors.
2 months after that, the doctors told her she was totally cured, which they told her was impossible. That was 6 months ago, I see her weekly, and it is as if she never had cancer, totally healthy. Her name is Joann Diaz.
Reading this reckless smear job on Unherd is the opposite of what I wanted. After watching some Emily videos, I was impressed and saw her as even and fair in her reporting. I was unable to detect her politics until I researched her.
There could be a motive for this report; most TV news networks like CNN and Fox get over 50% of their ad revenue from drug companies, which means the reporters get most of their salary from Drug companies. Ever notice how news programs have way more drug ads than other programming? There is a reason for that: to create a conflict of interest. Roger Ailes admitted this to RFK Jr.; they were friends, although opposites.
The actual scandal, if there is one, is that the BBC World Service devoted our resources to investigating and conducting a hit-job on a podcaster, and that the BBC, with its sham Verify “Truth Unit” thinks itself a custodian and arbiter of truth. This is the arrogance of a legacy broadcaster that no longer has any legitimacy or relevance, and only shows how scared the BBC is of the growth of independent on-line channels.
For what it’s worth I don’t think the BBC or Independent posses the power to cancel anyone at this point. The legacy media have abused their power so much in the past that the kind of people who will listen to both BBC and Steven Bartlett probably don’t exist any longer.
I see this issue as a non-issue. What’s the alternative? Censoring podcasts when their reach becomes significant? Who the arbiter of the truth? Do we need to ban people whose ideas our different from the mainstream? Listeners are not stupid.
The BBC ought to investigate the plank sticking out of its own eye before critiquing the splinter in that of others’.
Arrant hypocrisy.
Yes, they could start by investigating all the pro-Hamas interviewees they haul before cameras to support their antisemitism and hatred of Israel….
This year Unherd has put out several of these shoddy bitchy hit pieces. I do wish they would stop. There seems to be about one or two a week. It’s very tedious.
They seem bereft of ideas. Targeting popular personalities seems to get the clicks.
i don’t see a problem at all with the two opinions mentioned at the beginning of this article. Many people believe in a Keto diet. Others believe in veganism, vegetarianism, a meat-only diet and more. I have spoken to those on all sides who are convinced of the value of their diet.
Similarly, Dr Malhotra has very clear and strong evidence for his assertions about the covid jab.
As a mainstream journalist, this writer is clearly rattled by alternative media and wants to denigrate it as much as possible, but he’s fighting a losing battle. The BBC is the same – it is desperate to rubbish alternative media as it sees its viewers and listeners leave in droves.
I’m frankly surprised this writer was given space here on UnHerd. His views are old, tired and, frankly, wrong.
It is certainly curious that, to bolster your right wing credentials, it has become essential to believe things that aren’t true -in this case crackpot ideas about medicine (and Aseem Malhotra obviously fits that description).
To me, Bartlett is light entertainment. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff would be a labour of love. Even to take the general drift of his arguments would require a leap of faith. Nowadays podcasts are full of Bartletts hawking cherry picked scientific surveys and slanting facts. Your better off reading Nature, BMJ, the Harvard Medical Journal, but even then your on soft ground. A synthesis of the noise out there is ones only hope, not to choose a narrow field of information, and leaving ones prejudices behind.
This donut sure tastes good.
Have you actually listened to any of Bartlett’s podcasts? I have, to more than a few in fact and cannot recall in any where he hawks his opinion. His guests do that. Which is the point of this podcast format.
And as for your suggestions of better reading, I think you are naïve. Nature, BMJ and more than a few other once respectable i.e. scientifically credible journals have been captured by the woke mind-virus. Unless your paper’s outcomes/findings subscribe to the accepted leftist narrative it is very unlikely to be published.
To have the BBC pick this up is utterly hypocritical.
To me Bartlett is a snake oil grifter….
ChatGPT could’ve written a better article than this.
It probably did.
Yawn
As no one with a brain will take medical advice from the Gentleman what harm is he doing ?
Josiah Gogarty has made a bit of a silly Billy of himself with this puerile attempt at journalism.
“ Well, no — with science, the truth is usually one thing or the other.”
Can you seriously argue ‘The Science’ has not been ideologically captured at this point? Did the ‘scientific’ discussion around Covid and the vaccines awaken nothing in you?
Scientists have egos and need to pay bills. The sexception being Newton who lived on the family farm; Mendel who was an abbot, Darwin inherited money from his wife, a Wedgewood and Einstein , a patent clerk. None needed grant money or were academics with careers in universities.
Dr Thomas Seyfried has lots of evidence to back up his claims on diet and cancer, usually accompanied by hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Only problem is that the evidence is on mice and I don’t think it has yet been evaluated on humans. Perhaps some good will come of this if it results in human studies so that we can either follow it or abandon it. I must say it goes somewhat against the advice of many holistic cancer doctors who claim success with very different therapies.
No doubt Bartlett is leading one or two people astray. This pales in comparison to the extent to which mainstream medical advice is slanted towards chemical induced symptom reduction with an extremely crude mechanical model – miraculous in its complexity, granted – of the human being. The degree to which serious illness can be mitigated by cheap means based upon nothing more complex than one’s own way of life is given insufficient anttention by the mainstream medical industry. Why is this?