The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
No.1 Brain Scientist: My Brain Shut Down & I Realised Everything I Believed Was Wrong!
06 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What did Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor learn from her stroke experience?
You've bought a present for me in this box, and I feel nervous and excited.
So this is a human brain with a spinal cord.
Chapter 2: How can understanding our brain improve our emotional control?
Such a masterpiece. But what people don't know is that we have four different structured parts of our brain that automatically shape how we think, feel, and behave. But what if it's not unconscious? What if we could pick and choose how we want to be in any moment on purpose? Like we can manifest our own mental health.
And by the end of this conversation today, you're going to teach me how to do that.
Absolutely. You're going to so get it.
Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor has transformed how we understand the brain through her research and own traumatic experience. She's teaching the world how to unlock every part of their brain to regain control of their thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
We have a problem. We are skewed as a society to the two parts of the left brain, which focuses on me, the individual. How do I fit myself into a society? And trauma is living in there, as is cravings and addiction. And we need this. It protects us. But we get in trouble when this is the only portion of our brain that we value. Because look at the world we currently live in.
So is there a strategy for making sure that you don't act upon it?
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Chapter 3: How does trauma affect our brain's functionality?
Well, so many people are trying to get rid of their emotional reactivity, but the way to heal it is not to get rid of it. I mean, we're liars for this. Why do I want to just put myself in a little box and say, I don't want to have pain. I don't want to be mad. I want to be a robot. I don't want to be a robot. I want to be a whole human with a whole brain. Like, this is life.
And it lasts this long, and then it's gone.
And it took me losing the left side of my brain for eight years to realize just how precious this thing is.
So how do I control and protect my brain at all costs?
Well, there's a lot. So you ready? I want some hot stuff.
Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
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Chapter 4: What are the four personality types in our brain?
We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, what have you spent your professional career endeavouring to understand? And why does it matter?
I am fascinated with how does our brain create our perception of reality? And based on that information, what a wonder it is any two of us can communicate at all. I think I am fascinated by what we are as biological creatures and And most of us are so consumed with everything outside of ourselves that we have missed the wonder of what we are as this biological conglomeration of cells.
I think we're absolutely beautiful. You know, none of us came into this world with a roadmap about how to get it all right. And the roadmap is the brain cells. And when we understand the brain cells and what they do and how to work with them and how to keep them well, then we can manifest our own mental health.
And do you think the average person understands the brain? Did you understand the brain before you started studying it?
Well, I understood it because I had a brother who was diagnosed, would be diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. So I became fascinated by 5 or 6 about what are we and why is he the way he is? We are so different from one another. Our interpretation of our experiences are so different from one another. What's What are we?
I just became a philosopher very young and fascinated with the biology and the anatomy of what we are.
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Chapter 5: How can we effectively shift between the four brain characters?
What do you think an understanding of the brain, the understanding that you're going to communicate to myself and my audience today, how do you think that can help me improve my life?
Oh, my goodness. If I understand what part of me interacts with the external world and is smart and is good with details and is well-organized, then I know how to use that part. We are skewed as a society to that left-thinking portion of our brain. In fact, as far as traditional medicine is concerned, that thinking portion of our brain is the only portion that is actually conscious.
So then we live our lives literally with our left emotional tissue, our right emotional tissue, and our right thinking tissue all as part of our unconscious brain. But what if it's not unconscious?
What if we actually know what those groups of cells also do so that when I'm experiencing my pain from the past, I can actually call on the portion of my brain that knows how to self-soothe me so that I can lift myself out of my pain, learn from those experiences, and then live a more fulfilled life.
It's the power to choose who and how we want to be in the world when we understand what our choices are.
Is it possible to choose which part of your brain to use in a certain moment?
You do it all the time. You're just probably not aware of it. Let's say you're going to have a business call and you got your stats and you got your data and you pick up the phone and you say, yes, this is Steve and blah, blah, blah. And you work into your details. And then let's say someone peeks in to, let's say a little dog comes running in. Okay.
Well, you're going to have a couple of responses, potentially responses. One, you're going to smile, right? You just smiled. You just moved into, oh, I love my little fuzzy. And yeah, okay. Now, you know, now you're a little gentler because now you shifted into a different portion of your brain that is open to the present moment. And now you just got uplifted.
So we have these four different anatomically, neuroanatomically structured parts of our brain, and we can pick and choose who and how we want to be in any moment when we know what our choices are. But we don't know what our choices are as our society because we are functioning skewed to that left-thinking portion of our brain, and everything else is running on automatic.
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Chapter 6: What lifestyle changes can enhance brain health?
And the left-thinking portion of the brain is the more logical...
Logical, rational, analytical, likes to control people's places, things. There's a me definition, ego center of I exist. I am Jill Bolte-Taylor. This is my phone number. This is where I live. I know that this is where I begin and end, where my skin meets air because a group of cells tells me where I begin and end.
But you've probably had flow moments where you were doing your sports or you were making love or you were whatever you were doing. And you didn't begin and end here. You were vast and open and you were this big energy ball that you are. But the left hemisphere focuses on that little group of cells and those skill sets and the right and the wrong and the good and bad.
And that portion of the brain defines the social norm. And we all have to fit ourselves in the social norm. But it's only a quarter of our brain.
Is it making us unhappy the way that we use our brain currently?
Well, we're out of balance. We're completely out of balance because we're at the balance of the value of that left brain. What's going on in the right brain? The right brain is right here, right now. We spend so much of our time. So fundamental differences between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere.
And I know this only because I lost my left hemisphere and that's all I had for eight years.
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Chapter 7: What role do emotions play in our daily lives?
I had to use what I had currently going on in my right hemisphere after I lost those cells of the left hemisphere in order to rebuild the skill sets of the left brain so that I could become completely functional again. Are we unhappy? Well, that's not a happy part of the brain. When you're being analytical and organized and structured, you probably got that frown right there, you know?
And it's a different expression than as soon as I said a little puppy comes in and then all of a sudden your face happens. Well, what happens is you're shifting into a different part of your brain. And that's what we do. We're running it on automatic.
Chapter 8: How can we heal trauma and improve mental health?
So if we are running our brain on automatic, imagine how much better we might do if we were actually picking and choosing who and how we wanted to be on purpose.
And you're telling me that's possible?
Absolutely.
And by the end of this conversation today, you're going to teach me how to do that?
Absolutely. You're going to so get it and it will. And once you see you... you will no longer ever not see you. And then you're going to see these four characters inside of yourself. And now you're going to be looking at your partner, who you speak about often, and you're going to be going, I recognize all four parts of her too.
But what that means is that any relationship that we have, there's eight of us. There's eight of us. Eight very specific personalities that in every relationship. So I have four very predictable character profiles, as do you. It's the way the anatomy of the brain is built.
You've bought a present for me in this box.
I did.
What is in that box?
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