It's Me. Your Brain. | The mind behind your decisions
It's Me. Your Brain. is a neuroscience and psychology podcast that explores decision-making, stress, mental health, brain health, and clear thinking in a fast-paced, AI-driven world. The show dives into attention, emotional regulation, cognitive performance, and how modern work environments affect our brains under pressure. Hosted by Virginia Palm, founder of Augment Mind, it offers grounded insights into the mind behind your choices, avoiding hacks and hustle culture.
Episodes
Performance Is a Cognitive Sport. So Where's Your Coach?
Performance Is a Cognitive Sport. So Where's Your Coach?Why the brain you lead with deserves the training, recovery and coaching athletes take for grantedAn elite athlete walks into competition with a coach on the sideline, a planned recovery and months of mental preparation behind her. A senior leader walks into a Tuesday of high-stakes decisions with a calendar, a coffee and the expectation
Out of Rhythm: What Your Body Clock Is Actually Doing to Your Brain - Guest Episode with Dr. Antonio Di Mauro
Coffee instead of breakfast. Lunch at the desk, or at four, or not at all. A late dinner, one last look at the inbox, and sleep that clocks the hours but never quite restores.Nothing on paper looks wrong. You're performing. And underneath it, a system that runs on timing is quietly falling out of sync.This episode is about the 24-hour biological clock that governs far more of your performance
The Confidence Paradox
Why the people who know the least often sound the surest - and what that costs you as a leaderPicture a meeting. Someone speaks with total certainty, no hedging, no "I think," just a flat statement delivered like fact. In that same room, someone else (usually the person who's actually spent years on this exact subject) speaks far more carefully. "It depends." A pause before
What Grit Actually Does to Your Brain - Guest Episode with Dev Aditya
600 investor calls. 600 no's. At some point in that stretch, most people would take any money, on any terms, just to make the calls stop. Dev didn't. He turned down a term sheet because it would have built the wrong thing, when the wrong money was the only money on offer.Dev Aditya co-founded an AI teacher that ran offline in refugee camps eighteen months before ChatGPT existed, and had to explain
The Reset You Actually Get: Why September Works on Your Brain - If You Use It Right
You've just sat back down at your desk. The inbox looks impossible, the calendar's already filling up, and underneath it, a quiet thought: I should be more motivated than this.That story isn't just wrong, it's costing you the exact week your brain is actually on your side.In this episode, Virginia Palm breaks down what's really happening in your brain during the return from a b
Do you listen to your body, or does it have to shout? - Guest Episode with Barnabás Boross
Every time your body sends a signal and you push through anyway - stay later, skip the walk, override the tiredness - you're making a quiet decision about which of you is in charge. Most people only notice that relationship when it breaks down. This episode is about what it looks like to build it deliberately, before the breakdown.Barnabás has been moving every single day for thirty years. Not to
Your Brain on Heat: What This Summer Is Actually Doing to Your Thinking
You've read the same email three times. The decision that should take two minutes is still sitting there at four in the afternoon. And underneath it, a quiet thought: I'm just being lazy today.That story isn't just wrong, it's making the week harder.In this episode, Virginia Palm breaks down four specific things heat does to a working brain: why it makes complex thinking so much ha
When the Alarm Won't Stop - Guest Episode with Nikki Anderssen
Nikki Anderssen spent fifteen years running live international news, thriving on exactly the kind of pressure most people spend their careers trying to avoid. Then, without warning, her body started failing her in ways that made no sense. She followed every protocol, eliminated every trigger, saw every specialist. And got smaller, not better, until the day she reacted to a handful of blueberries,
Halfway: What Six Months Has Actually Cost Your Brain
A mid-year audit - for your own nervous system, and for the team you leadIt's July. Half the year is already gone. Maybe you're already sitting somewhere quieter than usual, the inbox further away than it normally is. Or maybe you're not there yet, still fully present in three meetings a day while mentally packing for a break that hasn't started. Either way, there's a particula
The Brain in the Age of AI - Guest Episode with Dr. Pauldy Otermans
Are you using AI - or is it using you?Every time you hand a thinking task to AI without noticing, you're making a quiet choice about which mental muscles to keep training and which to let go quiet. Most people never make that choice consciously. This episode is about what happens when you do.Dr. Pauldy Otermans is a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist who helped build one of the first AI-pow
Resting Wrong: Why One Break Won't Undo the Year You Just Had
What's actually happening when you finally stop, and why your brain needs more than a holiday to recover from itIt's day one of your time off. The out-of-office is on, the laptop is closed. And then your hand finds your phone, not because anything's wrong, just to check. You close it again, and nothing settles. That night you're lying in bed replaying something from weeks ago. Your
What You Lose When AI Remembers for You - Guest Episode with Lucy Dinu
The strategy built in minutes. The brief drafted before the meeting ended. The answer retrieved before the question was fully formed.Everything faster. Everything smoother. And somewhere in that efficiency, something quietly shifting.This episode is about what happens to the brain when AI takes the cognitive load, what gets offloaded, what stops being encoded, and what leaders need to deliberately
Brain Capital - The Asset Nobody's Managing
Brain Capital - The Asset Nobody's Managing. Why the Most Important Asset in Your Organisation Is the One Nobody Is MeasuringMost organisations manage their buildings, their technology, their financial capital with rigour and intention. The cognitive capacity of the people doing the thinking, the brains running every meeting, every decision, every strategy, is largely unmanaged, often actively
From the Outside: Successful. From the Inside: Dysregulated. - Guest Episode with Camila Santiago
The apartment in front of the ocean. The titles. The recognition. Everything on paper looking exactly right.And underneath it, something slowly, quietly, falling apart.This episode is about high-functioning burnout: what it looks like from the inside before it breaks, why the people closest to you don't see it, and why the system you need to read the warning signs is the same system being quie
You Know the Science. So Why Hasn't Anything Changed?
You Know the Science. So Why Hasn't Anything Changed? Why insight and behaviour change are two different neurological events, and what to do about itYou've read the books. You've been in the workshops. Something clicked. And then Monday arrived, and you were exactly the same person you were before.This isn't a motivation problem. It isn't a discipline problem. It's a neuros
Your Brain Was Never the Problem
Sixteen episodes. One argument underneath all of them.In this Season 1 finale, Virginia Palm names what the show has been building toward, and what it means for Season 2.In this episode: Why your brain was never the problem, and what actually wasThe thread that ran through every solo episode without being namedWhat Yasmina and Monika showed about what happens when you stop fighting your brain and
Your Nervous System Is the Room
Your Nervous System Is the Room Why the state of your nervous system is the most powerful - and least measured - variable in your organisationThere's a kind of meeting everyone has sat in. The tension nobody names. The flatness where there should be energy. Everyone feels it and nobody says a word. Most leaders assume that's a communication problem, or a culture problem. The neuroscience s
Brain Fog Isn't Laziness. It's Biology.
Brain Fog Isn't Laziness. It's Biology.What's actually happening when your thinking goes offline - and how to work with itYou sit down to work. The task is in front of you. The time is there. And then... nothing. Not tiredness exactly. Something denser. You re-read the same sentence three times and it doesn't land. You're present, technically, but your thinking feels like it
The Execution Gap: Why Knowing Isn't Enough
The Execution Gap: Why Knowing Isn't Enough What's actually happening in the gap between what you know and what you doYou know what you're supposed to do. You've read the book, listened to the podcast, had the conversation with yourself on a Sunday night. And then Monday happens. By Wednesday evening you notice the gap - the quiet sigh, the small of course, the familiar note that s
The Leader Who Runs on KPIs and Finally Built One for Her Brain - Guest Episode with Monika Redzko-Otto
The Leader Who Runs on KPIs - and Finally Built One for Her BrainMonika Redzko-Otto is a CFO and COO working across Poland, Germany and Portugal. She runs finance and operations inside an automated industrial environment - machines moving at six metres per second, AI being introduced to teams that never had to think about cognitive load before. She tracks margins, KPIs, and operational metrics. Sh
Why Your Brain Resists Change - Even When You Want It
Why Your Brain Resists Change - Even When You Want ItThe neuroscience of why good intentions aren’t enough - and what actually isYou’ve made the decision. A real one. And then, almost without noticing, you don’t follow through. Not because you forgot. Because something in you quietly steered around it. And then comes the story: I don’t have enough willpower. I know what I should do and I just don’
Smarter Together: The Neuroscience of Teams That Actually Think
Why collective intelligence isn't about who's in the room, it's about what the room makes possibleYou've been in that meeting. The one where something clicked - where the thinking built on itself and the group arrived somewhere none of them could have reached alone. You've also been in the other kind. Same people, same agenda, completely flat. The difference wasn't talent.
The Brain That Had to Build Its Own Map with Yasmina Haryono
The Brain That Had to Build Its Own Map - What a Diplomat's Daughter Learned About Trust, Belonging, and Leading Without a Fixed NorthYou grew up in one place, with one culture, one set of rules for how things work. You absorbed them, and they held you. But what happens to the brain when none of that was ever stable? When the environment kept changing and you had to build your own internal referen
The Most Expensive Brain in the Room
The Most Expensive Brain in the Room - What Leadership Actually Costs, and How to Stop Paying for It TwiceYou get to the end of the day. On paper, it was a good one. You led the meeting. You navigated the difficult conversation. You kept the room steady. And you are completely, disproportionately exhausted, in a way that doesn't quite match what the day looked like from the outside.That's
The Conditions for Your Best Thinking - A Personal Protocol for Cognitive Performance
The Conditions for Your Best Thinking - A Personal Protocol for Cognitive PerformanceYou've protected the morning. No meetings. Inbox closed. You sit down to do the work that actually matters — and nothing quite arrives. You're not tired. You're not distracted. You're just somehow not there.That's not a discipline problem. It's a conditions problem.In this episode, Virginia Palm explores what actu
The Smartest Thing Nobody Said | Why Your Team's Best Thinking Never Makes It Into the Room
The Smartest Thing Nobody Said Why Your Team's Best Thinking Never Makes It Into the RoomEvery team has a meeting where the outcome is less than the sum of the people in it. Where the best thinking stays unspoken. Where the right question never gets asked. Where someone knew something important, and said nothing.That gap isn't a communication problem. It's a neurological one.In this ep
When AI Helps - And When It Doesn't
When AI Helps - And When It Doesn’tWhat Your Brain Actually Needs to Think Well in an AI-Accelerated WorldAI is speeding up work. But the human brain doesn’t scale with speed.In this episode, Virginia Palm explores what actually happens inside your cognition when AI compresses time, increases output, and quietly intensifies decision-making. Why does work feel heavier inside supposedly “smarter” sy
The Human Layer of AI: Why So Many Transformations Struggle
The Human Layer of AI: Why So Many Transformations StruggleAI is being rolled out across organizations at speed.New tools, copilots, and automation layers promise efficiency and scale.And yet, many leaders notice something quieter happening beneath the surface:more output, but less claritymore activity, but thinner judgmentmore speed, but heavier cognitive loadIn this episode of It’s me. Your Brai
Why Decisions Get Heavier When Everything Speeds Up
You’re not suddenly “worse at deciding.”Your decisions feel heavier because your brain is being asked to operate under increasing speed, pressure, and visibility, with less time to recover in between.In this episode of It’s me. Your Brain., Virginia explores why decision-making feels more effortful in modern work environments, and how speed, complexity, and constant demands quietly change the qual
Why Your Brain Hates Constant Context Switching
Why Your Brain Hates Constant Context Switching (and What It’s Costing You)You’re not distracted because you lack discipline.You’re tired because your brain is being asked to switch contexts all day long.In this episode of It’s me. Your Brain., Virginia explores why constant interruptions, emails, messages, meetings, notifications, and mental to-do lists, quietly exhaust the brain and degrade how
Staying Clear When Everything Is Urgent
Staying Clear When Everything Is UrgentBack-to-back meetings.Shifting priorities.Decisions arriving faster than you can fully process them.Nothing is technically wrong, but your thinking feels narrower, your patience thinner, and everything takes more effort than it should.This is the state many leaders operate in for large parts of the day.In this episode of It’s Me. Your Brain., Virginia Palm, f
Your Brain Doesn’t Need Motivation - It Needs Regulation
Most high-performing leaders don’t wake up unmotivated.They wake up mentally overbooked.In this first episode of It’s Me. Your Brain., Virginia explores why mental clarity isn’t about discipline, willpower, or optimizing your morning, it’s about how regulated your nervous system is before the day even begins.You’ll learn:Why your brain goes into “reactive mode” the moment you reach for your phoneH
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