Most of what we believe was never actually chosen — we just find ourselves with it, then defend it to the death. In other words, we don't defend ideas because they're true; we defend them because they're ours. What to Believe is where former journalist turned master coach Neil Bierbaum exposes the bug in the human operating system — a bug that makes it hard for us to face the truth about ourselves, and keeps us believing and chasing things that are not real and don’t matter. He offers a method for looking at oneself and life more objectively, to find signal within the noise, and deal with what’s real and what matters.
Fans of Stoicism will find their next level here in the form of ontological coaching, the field in which Neil spent a four-year apprenticeship, and which he has spent two decades — more than 10,000 hours — practicing and teaching. It’s a method for looking at oneself and life more objectively, to find signal within the noise, and deal with what’s real and what matters.
Neil offers a solid foundation drawn from more than 20 years of coaching, 10 years before that as a journalist, and decades of contemplative practice running through both. (Neil also has an academic master’s degree, out of which he won a research award and published a peer-reviewed paper on executive coaching methods.) His methodology integrates ontological coaching, neuroscience-backed mindfulness, and evidence-based psychology.
Three formats: solo deep dives, listener Q&A, and live coaching conversations.
New episodes Sunday mornings. Come skeptical. Stay curious.
Empathy vs Self-Interest: Who Is the Pie Really For?
Elon Musk says empathy is the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation, and he’s been telling everyone to read Gad Saad’s Suicidal Empathy to find out why. In this episode of the What to Believe About… series, I turn the lens on that argument, and on empathy’s old rival, self-interest. If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know the flaw in the human operating system: we argue things not because they’re true, but because they’re ours. The empathy debate is a near-perfect specimen. So ...
18 Oct 2026
What to Believe About Media Bias & Conspiracy Theories
Last time, with AI, I started turning the What to Believe lens outwards. This episode takes it somewhere the flaw in the human operating system lives almost in plain sight: the news we trust, the news we don’t, and the theories that grow in the gap between the two. It starts with Buzz Aldrin, a Bible and a punch, and two men who weren’t going to move. From there I test three beliefs — that the media is biased against your side, that conspiracy theorists are just gullible, and that doing your ...
4 Oct 2026
If Machines Can Do This, What About Us?
Global existential angst about AI is reaching fever pitch. So I put four common beliefs about AI through an inquiry to see which ones hold up. If you've been with me since the start, you'll know I've spent a good while on the flaw in the human operating system — the way we take the voice in our heads for the truth, and defend ideas not because they're true but because they're ours. In this episode, the first in a new series, I turn that lens outward, onto what we believe about the world out t...
20 Sept 2026
Most Evil Wears the Cloak of Good
The villains worth worrying about aren’t the ones in a high-tech bunker, stroking a hairless cat. They’re the people most certain they’re good — the most principled ones in the room. Most of the harm we do to each other isn’t done in the name of evil. It’s done in the name of good, by people entirely convinced of their own morality. In this episode I take that apart: how a private should hardens into a public must, how a moral standard enforced without wisdom, understanding or compassion reli...
6 Sept 2026
Abandon Your Shoulds (They Keep You Stuck)
There’s a word you use maybe ten times a day — often without noticing you’ve even thought it — that quietly drains your personal power and puts distance between you and the people you’re closest to. It sounds reasonable. Fair. Considered. And it keeps you stuck in the very situations you keep complaining about. The word is should. In this episode I take that one small word apart: where a should comes from, the second layer of should that stops us ever saying what we actually want, and how it ...
16 Aug 2026
Why Does Language Matter? | Q&A #2
For the last four episodes I’ve talked about language as a technology. How language is not just something you use, it's very essence of being human — it’s what sets us apart from other life forms and what we use to construct our reality. And I’ve stressed that you need to see it directly, not just understand it intellectually. Seeing it is like riding the bicycle; understanding is just knowing about the bicycle. We want to ride. Naturally, this medium lends itself to the understanding p...
2 Aug 2026
You’ve Never Actually Heard What Anyone Said
Three times I badly misheard someone — a heart attack, a missing T-shirt, an honest question I took as a trap. The problem wasn't what I was listening to. It was what I was listening for. This episode turns the language theme around: instead of what you put out, we look at what you take in — and how that affects what you put out. In other words, how the machinery of listening shapes the reality you live in, and how your listening gets revealed by the things you say. This is not ab...
19 Jul 2026
Why Your Story Doesn’t Matter
You didn't do what you said you'd do — and you offer a reason. The Wi-Fi bombed. The traffic was mad. Your team lost; you complain about the ref’s blunder, and explain what the coach should have done at halftime. A law you dislike gets passed; you opine that the country's going to the dogs. It all feels like it matters, like what you say will make a difference. It doesn’t. None of it. Your life continues in circles. You spend your life trapped in the same cycle, wondering why. Here’s he...
4 Jul 2026
Why Feelings Fail You – And What Doesn’t
We've been told to honour our feelings — and mostly we've overcorrected, pandering to them at great cost to our motivation and discipline. Feelings do matter, but not for being effective. There’s a stronger foundation; one you walk past every day. It’s the single most powerful tool you have as a human being. This episode is about that foundation. We humans are linguistic systems. Our job is to maintain the integrity of that system. It’s the single most powerful thing you can do. In this episo...
28 Jun 2026
Why Language is the Ultimate Human Technology
There's a technology you use every waking second that you’ve probably never recognised as a technology. It built every bicycle, every courtroom, every marriage, every World Cup final. It’s language. And we just handed it to the machines — with no guardrails. That's why AI frightens us at a level we can't quite name. And here’s what we can do about it. In Episode 8, I open the door on linguistic ontology — the field underneath the coaching I’ve practised for two decades, and refined into...
21 Jun 2026
What To Do When Everybody's Right (Including You) | Q&A #1
As a way of turning over the ideas I’ve covered so far, in this episode I offer the five questions I get asked most often—and most immediately—when I teach this material. (Being early days for this show, nobody wrote in. So instead of inventing listeners, I hauled these ones out from my notes — and answered them straight. You’re invited to send in your questions for future episodes.) There's also a correction in here that I've owed you for six episodes: it was never "the need to be right." It...
14 Jun 2026
Is Self-Development A Luxury Right Now?
The world feels like it's on fire — the economy, AI, a war in the Middle East — and here's Neil talking about the inner workings of the ego. Isn't that a luxury? This episode takes the objection head-on. The argument: the inner work isn't a luxury, it's the spare wheel that matters most when you break down — and it's the one piece of the chaos actually in your hands. And it's needed more than ever: the same bug in the human OS that we've been tracing across this series (the need to be r...
7 Jun 2026
Experience the Power of Surrender
Krishnamurti stunned a room of followers with six words: "I don't mind what happens." This episode unpacks what he actually meant — and why surrender isn't giving in, it's giving up preferences. From Michael Singer's Surrender Experiment to a McKinsey CEO who ignores nine problems out of ten, Neil makes the case (with his own white coat and clipboard) that the people who try to control least often get the most. The answer to last week's question: how else are we supposed to live? Show notes: ...
31 May 2026
The Illusion of Self-Creation
You didn't decide to wake at 3am and worry — the thoughts simply arrived, and there you were, trying to get back to sleep. That ordinary moment is the clearest demonstration of something most of us never look at: your mind has a mind of its own, and you come after the thinking, not before it. In this episode I add a third mechanism to the ones we've been exposing — after the need to be right and the need to look good comes the need to believe we created ourselves. We treat our talents, prefer...
24 May 2026
Why More Knowledge Isn't Helping
You can read everything there is to read about a bicycle and still not be able to ride one. Episode 3 of What to Believe. In the first two episodes I exposed two of the automatic mechanistic ego reactions that run our lives — the need to be right, and the need to look good. This week I lift the hood and show you the approach itself. Why seeing is different from thinking. Why all the information in the world won't shift your behaviour unless you can see the mechanism in operation. Why staring ...
24 May 2026
The Enormous Cost of Looking Good
We don't worry about what people think of us. We worry about what we think people think of us. Episode 2 of What to Believe. I expose another mechanistic ego reaction — the need to look good in the eyes of others. It feels so natural we don't even register it as a thing, which is why it runs us. Same mechanism as the need to be right from Episode 1, different content. I work through three reasons it matters: how wrong we are about what others think, how much it costs us in life and business (...
24 May 2026
Why Everybody's Right And Nobody's Listening
We don't argue an idea because it's true. We argue it because it's ours. In this, the pilot episode of What to Believe, I introduce the central insight that I've spent twenty years testing — that there's a flaw in the human operating system that keeps us defending positions we didn't choose, mistaking our identity for the truth, and arguing for our own limitations. Through a series of analogies (the elbow, the bicycle, the bath) and a personal example from my first marriage, I work through wh...
18 May 2026
What To Believe Trailer
A brief 6-minute introduction to myself and the What To Believe podcast. I'm Neil Bierbaum, a journalist turned master coach, reporting what I found across four decades of investigation into the human operating system, distilling what's true — what really works and makes a difference — from what doesn't. In this trailer, I share a bit about my journey, and why I'm not here to offer opinions or pretend to be a guru. I mention the paths I've gone down, and the practices I've l...
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