I Have A Secret To Tell You... | E53

In this solo diary episode, Steven Bartlett reflects on lessons learned during the pandemic after recovering from COVID-19. He explores how the direction you contrast your life in determines whether you feel grateful or miserable, and reveals that access to information is the real privilege separating the rich from the poor. He digs into neuroscience showing the brain is malleable and that self-observation and a detached 'video game' mindset can reshape it and protect mental health. He closes with a set of questions he asks himself daily and a reflection on how the things that invalidated him as a child (poverty) became the things he sought validation from as an adult.

• Bartlett reveals he and his entire team tested positive for coronavirus, which is why the previous week's podcast was disrupted.
  00:00:00
• He shares 'a secret': access to information itself is the real privilege in the world, the hidden 'curtain' wealthy people see behind.
  09:46
• He recounts offering a young person a job with a guaranteed raise in 60 days, and calls their decision to decline for slightly more money now a stupid one.
  14:55
• He announces his book Happy Sexy Millionaire, available on Amazon, and his resulting obsession with neuroscience.
  23:40
• He reveals his business partner Dom became an alcoholic and considered jumping in front of a train due to the stress of running the business.
  28:22
• He admits spending around 50,000-60,000 pounds on champagne in nightclubs in one year and buying a seven-bedroom mansion to impress people.
  48:24
• His core thesis: the thing that invalidated you when you were younger becomes the thing you seek validation from as an adult.
  49:28

• During his illness he ordered ibuprofen for 4am delivery and slept on his bedroom floor to ease bizarre muscular back pain.
  00:30
• He developed tinnitus a couple of years ago, a faint ringing in his right ear that lasted weeks and made him appreciate his health.
  07:09
• He cites a Joe Rogan podcast with Kevin Hart where Hart described meeting Jeff Bezos and realizing there's another level of access.
  10:16
• Bartlett mutes about 90-95% of people on Instagram and 50% on Twitter rather than unfollowing, to control his information diet.
  18:33
• He credits Tom Bilyeu, a past podcast guest, with introducing him to the idea that you can literally change the shape of your brain.
  23:09
• He references brain research showing meditators have reduced activity in the brain's mind-wandering region versus non-meditators.
  31:29
• For Bartlett, meditation usually takes the form of a massage, a moment to pause and detach.
  32:00
• He grew up in a near-bankrupt family in a beat-up house with a smashed window for a decade and a partially demolished, derelict back section.
  45:50
• As a black kid with curly hair in an all-white school, he felt different, and the family stopped doing Christmases and birthdays by age 10-11.
  46:52

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