Curated from 2,322 episode summaries
Stephen Bartlett built The Diary of a CEO into the most listened-to business podcast in Europe, but some of his sharpest material isn't an interview at all. It's him, alone, working through a question out loud. We pulled his full library of solo episodes and diary chapters and ranked them by how much they actually reveal, not just how viral the clip got.
Below are all five of his solo appearances in our dataset, from most revealing to least. Expect habit science, a brutally honest Q&A, a reckoning with burnout, a 100-episode retrospective, and the actual financials behind the show itself.
5 Scientific Rules for Making & Breaking Habits! | E208
Bartlett spent weeks reading habit research and distilled it into five rules, and the opening reveal alone reframes the whole topic: once a habit is formed, it never actually disappears, it just gets replaced, which is why the MIT rat-maze subjects instantly reverted to old routes even after researchers made the reward nauseating. He walks through the cue-routine-reward loop, why willpower is a depleting muscle, and a bonus sixth rule around the question-behavior effect. Listen if you've tried and failed to build a habit and want the actual mechanism, not another motivational platitude.
Read the full episode notesHow I Make $1.2 Million A Year From This Podcast | E94
A rare pull-back-the-curtain episode where Bartlett puts real numbers on the table: the show clears over $1.2 million a year, about $100,000 a month, after he cut out ad middlemen and emailed five CEOs directly (all five replied). He also admits he's deleted three or four fully recorded episodes, including one with a mega-star guest, for not clearing his own quality bar. Essential listening for anyone building a podcast or content business who wants the monetization math instead of vague growth advice.
Read the full episode notesWhy We're Getting More Depressed, Anxious and Lonely | E55
This diary chapter is Bartlett at his most personal: he traces his own five-year cycle of getting fit for summer and then losing motivation to the fact that the goal was extrinsic, and admits that at 18 his entire life revolved around getting 'filthy rich' at the cost of everything else. He argues modern conveniences like 25-minute UberEats delivery have stripped out the intrinsic rewards humans evolved to need, and closes with a genuinely controversial take on marriage's roughly 50 percent failure rate. Good for anyone feeling burned out by chasing the next external milestone.
Read the full episode notesExtremely Honest Q&A | The Diary Of A CEO | E70
Answering fan questions, Bartlett gets uncomfortably candid about his own flaws, admitting he doesn't call his parents enough, that he's self-centered in relationships, and that he's grown impatient enough that his PA's simple questions feel like an irritant. He also shares the practical insight that the same skills can earn 10 to 50 times more just by moving to a market where they're rarer, and credits cold-call telesales work he started at 16 as the most valuable training of his life. Worth it for the self-awareness alone.
Read the full episode notesLife Changing Lessons From 100 Of The World’s Greatest Minds | E104
A compilation marking the show's 100th episode, stitching together the moments that stuck with Bartlett most, including Mo Gawdat's happiness equation (happiness equals your perception of events minus your expectations) and Gawdat's account of adding 'yes but he also lived' to his grief after his son died. It's less a single narrative than a highlight reel, which makes it the right starting point if you want a sampler of the show's best recurring ideas before diving into full episodes.
Read the full episode notesThat's every Stephen Bartlett solo episode in our library, ranked by how much they actually give you. Browse the full episode summaries on Episode Notes for the guest interviews behind Diary of a CEO's biggest ideas.