Why You Forget Names and Remember Smells
Fiona explains why a name heard once slips away in seconds while a smell from childhood stays for life, with a detour into the hippocampus and why spaced repetition actually works.
Stage Fright, Measured
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Show notes
Stage fright, measured
The dry mouth, the fast heart, the sudden blank. Fiona walks through the ninety seconds before a talk as a chain of signals, from the amygdala to the adrenal glands to the muscles in your throat. Then performance psychologist Dr Marcus Whitfield joins to explain which calming techniques have evidence behind them and which are folklore.
- The alarm circuit and why it fires early
- Adrenaline, cortisol and the shaking hands
- Breathing patterns that actually slow the heart
- Reframing nerves as readiness, what the studies show
- Why rehearsal changes the brain, not just the speech
Next episode we look at dreams, including the one you keep having.
Transcript
Welcome back to Grey Matter Hour, I am Fiona Castellan. Before we start, a confession. I once forgot the title of my own talk at a conference in Lisbon, in front of two hundred people. So today is personal. We are going to slow down the ninety seconds before you speak in public and look at every signal, from the little almond-shaped alarm in your temporal lobe to the adrenaline that makes your hands shake. Then I have a performance psychologist, Dr Marcus Whitfield, who has tested the calming techniques people swear by, and some of them do nothing at all. You will leave with two things that are proven to help and a better understanding of why your body does this to you. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts. Deep breath, and here we go.
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