Get Your Weekly Digest

Receive the best podcast summaries and insights delivered to your inbox every week.

We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe anytime.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Most Replayed Moment: Anxiety Is Just A Prediction! Rewrite Old Stories and Build Emotional Safety

Published November 21, 2025
Visit Podcast Website

About This Episode

The host and guest discuss the concept of the predictive brain, explaining that the brain is not primarily a reactive organ but a prediction engine that prepares actions and experiences based on past learning. Using concrete examples such as language processing, thirst, coffee habits, exercise, trauma, and phobias, they show how prediction shapes perception, emotion, and bodily regulation. They also explore cultural inheritance, meaning-making, identity, and practical ways to change entrenched patterns by creating new experiences and dosing oneself with prediction error.

Topics Covered

Brain health Anxiety Therapy Personal narrative Predictive brain Trauma Cultural inheritance Perception Identity Phobias

Disclaimer: We provide independent summaries of podcasts and are not affiliated with or endorsed in any way by any podcast or creator. All podcast names and content are the property of their respective owners. The views and opinions expressed within the podcasts belong solely to the original hosts and guests and do not reflect the views or positions of Summapod.

Quick Takeaways

  • The brain primarily predicts and prepares actions and experiences based on past learning, rather than simply sensing the world and then reacting.
  • Everyday phenomena like language comprehension, thirst, coffee withdrawal, and muscle memory in sports are driven by predictive processes.
  • Trauma is not just an objective event but a relationship between past experiences and present circumstances, shaped by how events are interpreted and given meaning.
  • Much of what people take to be hardwired is actually culturally inherited, including how we interpret physical signals and social events.
  • Identity is not a fixed essence but is constructed moment to moment through actions that combine remembered past and present sensory input.
  • People can change future predictions either by reinterpreting past events (as in psychotherapy) or by deliberately creating new experiences in the present.
  • Meaning does not reside solely in objects or in the mind but in the relationship between the body, the brain, and the world in a given moment.
  • Overcoming fears like phobias involves gradually exposing oneself to manageable prediction errors so the brain learns that old predictions are wrong.

Podcast Notes

Defining the predictive brain and overturning the sense-then-react model

Everyday intuition about how we experience ourselves

Host and guest describe the usual feeling of sensing first and then reacting[1:23]
• The host says that in everyday life it feels like we perceive what someone is saying and then react to it in the moment.
• The guest agrees that this is how it feels to both of them: we sense and then we react.
Guest asserts that this intuitive model is not what is happening "under the hood"[1:40]
• She says the brain is not mainly reacting; it is predicting.
• If time were frozen, the brain would be in a particular state, using past similar experiences to predict what to do in the next moment.

How the brain prepares actions and experiences through prediction

Brain predicts physical actions down to fine-grained bodily changes[1:58]
• Examples of predicted adjustments include whether the eyes should move, whether heart rate should go up, whether breathing should change, and whether blood vessels should dilate or constrict.
• The brain also predicts whether to prepare to stand up or perform other movements.
Predicted movements become predictions for sensory experiences[2:36]
• Preparations for movement generate signals that serve as predictions for what a person will see, hear, smell, taste, think, and feel.
• Thus the brain predicts action first and sensory experience follows, rather than sensing first and then acting.

Concrete examples of prediction in language, thirst, and imagination

Language as a moment-to-moment prediction process

Guest explains that listening to speech involves predicting each upcoming word[3:43]
• Based on countless repetitions of hearing language, the brain predicts every single word that will come out of the speaker's mouth.
• The host acknowledges he intuitively predicts the next word in the guest's sentence.
Surprise demonstrates prediction in action[4:06]
• The guest notes it would be very surprising if she said a different body orifice instead of "mouth" for where words come out.
• She says the brain is always predicting and then correcting those predictions when they are wrong.

Evidence that prediction changes sensory brain activity

Guest mentions a demonstration video she uses in talks[4:09]
• She refers to a video shown in talks to scientists and non-scientists that lets people feel that a prediction is not just an abstract thought.
• In such demonstrations, the brain literally changes the firing of sensory neurons to anticipate incoming sensations.
People can feel sensations before external signals arrive[4:46]
• She explains that people start to feel sensations-start to have the experience-before the world has actually delivered the sensory signals.

Thirst and drinking water as a prediction example

Timing mismatch between drinking and physiological effect[4:50]
• If someone is very thirsty and drinks a big glass of water, the feeling of thirst stops almost immediately.
• However, it actually takes about 20 minutes for water to be absorbed into the bloodstream and reach the brain to signal that fluid is no longer needed.
Learned prediction explains the immediate change in thirst[5:30]
• Across many opportunities, the brain has learned that certain movements (like drinking) and sensory signals now will result in a future mental state of no longer being thirsty.

Imagining an apple and predictive activation in the brain

Host imagines a specific apple in response to guest's instructions[5:51]
• The guest asks the host to imagine a Macintosh apple as a piece of fruit, not a computer.
• The host reports imagining a green apple with no red, which the guest labels a Granny Smith apple.
• The host describes the imagined taste as sweet, a little tart, and very juicy.
Imagery engages sensory brain regions without external input[6:26]
• The guest says that if she imaged the host's brain at that moment, she would see changes in visual cortex activity even though no apple is present.
• She would also see changes in auditory cortex activity even though the crunch of the apple is only imagined.
• The host notes that his mouth was watering, and the guest connects this to predictive preparation for eating.
Salivation before meals as prediction[7:10]
• The guest explains that before every meal the brain directs salivary glands to produce more saliva to prepare for eating and digestion.
• This preparatory salivation usually happens even before sitting down to eat and is an example of prediction.

Habits, coffee, and exercise as prediction-driven processes

Coffee, headaches, and the brain's expectations

Regular coffee drinking leads to predictable headaches if missed[7:36]
• The guest asks if the host gets a headache when he misses his usual coffee time; he says it has happened before.
• She shares that she used to drink a lot of coffee, always at the same time each day, and would get a massive headache if she missed it.
Brain anticipates physiological effects of substances[8:09]
• She explains that this pattern applies to every medicine or substance that regularly affects physiology: if taken on a regular schedule, the brain comes to expect it.
• Coffee contains chemicals that constrict blood vessels throughout the body, including the brain.
Pre-emptive vascular changes as prediction[8:35]
• Because the brain attempts to keep blood flow constant, if coffee is usually consumed at 8 a.m., the brain will dilate blood vessels a bit before that time in anticipation of the constriction.
• If the person does not drink coffee, the pre-emptive dilation is unopposed, creating a big dilation and a very bad headache.

Muscle memory, efficiency, and interval training

Repetition makes predicted movements more efficient[9:33]
• If someone wants to play tennis better or run a faster mile, they train by repeating the same movements over and over.
• With practice, they get better and faster while burning fewer calories because the brain predicts those actions very well.
• The guest clarifies that muscle memory is not literally in the muscles; it is a memory in the brain which controls the muscles.
Why repeating the same workout is inefficient for weight loss[10:02]
• If someone exercises to become healthier or lose weight, doing the exact same workout repeatedly leads to burning fewer calories because of increased efficiency.
Interval training disrupts predictions and increases energy use[10:14]
• In interval training, someone calls out a different movement every 30 seconds so the brain's prediction will frequently be wrong and must be adjusted.
• This constant adjustment burns more calories and pushes the body out of balance, which the guest calls allostasis and describes as becoming dysregulated.
• The brain then has to work to get itself back into balance, and this trains the ability to take in prediction error and adjust.

Predictive processing, trauma, and mental health

Connecting prediction to trauma and mental illnesses

Host suggests trauma as misfiring predictions rooted in past patterns[11:20]
• He notes that predictions rely on past patterns and asks whether trauma and disorders like depression and anxiety are misfirings of prediction.
• He gives an example of someone who grew up being hit whenever a man entered the room and later develops a fear of men when older, as the brain predicts danger when a man appears.
Guest affirms general principle but notes complexity[11:55]
• She agrees in general but says the devil is in the details.

Trauma as a relation between past and present, not just an event

Adverse events are not automatically traumatic[12:25]
• She says trauma is not simply something that happens in the world to you.
• There can be an adverse event such as an earthquake, a death, or someone hurting you that is not traumatic if you are not using past experiences to make sense of it as trauma.
Seemingly mundane events can be traumatic for some people[12:53]
• An everyday experience for one person may link to traumatic memories for another, making it traumatic for that person.
Trauma is neither purely objective nor "all in your head"[13:00]
• She defines trauma as a property of the relation between what has happened in the past and what is occurring in the present.
• She emphasizes that trauma is not an objective thing in the world, but also not merely subjective imagination.

Case study of Maria and the power of meaning and cultural models

Description of Maria's cultural context and experiences

Anthropologist's study of trauma across cultures[13:21]
• The guest cites an anthropologist at Emory University who studies people and trauma in many cultures.
• She discusses a case study of a young adolescent girl named Maria.
Physical abuse interpreted as normal in Maria's culture[13:49]
• Maria lived in a culture where it was more normative for men to be very physical with women and girls.
• Her stepfather would slap her around; in the guest's culture this would be labeled physical abuse, but in Maria's culture it was seen as what men did.
• Maria did not like being slapped but showed no signs of trauma: she slept well, had good grades, and had friends.
• She made sense of it as "men are just assholes," attributing the behavior to them rather than to herself.

How watching Oprah changed Maria's meaning and symptoms

Media provided a new interpretive frame for her experiences[15:24]
• Maria watched Oprah and heard women describe physical abuse from boyfriends, fathers, or husbands.
• She recognized the similarity between those women's physical circumstances and her own.
• She also observed those women experiencing trauma-related symptoms.
Maria then began to experience trauma symptoms herself[15:34]
• After this, Maria developed difficulties sleeping, her grades dropped, she had trouble concentrating, and she became socially withdrawn.

Scientific interpretation of Maria's trajectory

Contrasting "latent trauma" story with prediction-based view[17:16]
• The guest notes some people might say Maria had latent trauma that was triggered later, telling a story of cause and effect.
• She says this is not what the best scientific evidence suggests.
Same physical acts, different psychological experiences[16:38]
• She emphasizes that the physical movements (the slapping) were the same before and after.
• What changed was the psychological experience because experience combines the sensory present and the remembered past.
• Maria initially experienced the events as an unfortunate aspect of physical life, not about her personally.
• After Oprah, Maria interpreted them as something being done to her because of who she is.

Therapeutic attempts to change meaning and reduce trauma

Host notes Maria also learned how she "should" respond by watching others[18:25]
• The host points out Maria also saw how others responded to abuse and may have been influenced by that.
• The guest agrees that it became about her as a person rather than just her stepfather's behavior.
Therapy aims to shift narrative away from self-blame[18:20]
• The guest says that in this culture, therapy for trauma often tries to reverse the narrative and change how people experience past events.
• She clarifies she is not saying people are at fault for what happened, but notes that sometimes you are responsible for changing things because you are the only one who can.
• When people learn to experience past physical events differently, they may no longer feel traumatized.

Cultural inheritance, brain wiring, and meaning-making

Host's paradigm shift about meaning and identity

Host reflects on realizing we give events their meaning[19:17]
• The host describes a paradigm shift: understanding that people give meaning to past events, sometimes by watching others give them meaning.
• He mentions a book, "The Courage to be Disliked," which argues that what happens to us does not create who we are; instead, we use what happened and apply meaning that guides our behavior.
• He notes this implies many beliefs about identity and behavior are choices about how we apply meaning to the past.

Guest introduces cultural inheritance and modern evolutionary views

Cultural inheritance as a kind of contagion[22:36]
• The guest calls this process cultural inheritance and compares it to a contagion.
Beyond genes: epigenetic and experiential inheritance[23:11]
• She contrasts an older evolutionary theory called the modern synthesis, which focuses on genetic inheritance and natural selection, with newer views.
• She says most evolutionary biologists no longer hold exclusively to the genes-only view because many forms of inheritance are epigenetic and experience-based.
• She summarizes her perspective as: we have the kind of nature that requires nurture, meaning genes require experience before brain wiring is established.

How infant brains get wired to their specific world

Adult brains are wired to their world; babies' brains await instructions[24:16]
• An adult brain is wired to its world, including the body, but a baby's brain is incomplete and awaits wiring instructions from the world and its own body.
• She says a baby's brain is not a miniature adult brain.
Brain wiring is specific to an individual's body[25:09]
• The brain is wired to see out of eyes located at a specific distance from each other; if transplanted to a different skull, it would not see properly out of different eyes.
• Similarly, hearing depends on the shape of the ears; the brain is wired to hear from "these ears," not just any ears.
Cultural inheritance teaches the meaning of physical signals[25:09]
• As a baby, a person is taught the meanings of physical signals and how to make sense of them; this is cultural inheritance.
• Many traits assumed to be hardwired in the brain are actually culturally inherited over generations, enabling survival in particular environments.
• She cites explorers in the 1800s and 1900s who died in harsh environments where Inuit people lived successfully because the Inuit had culturally inherited knowledge.

Agency, identity, and constructing meaning in the present

Sources of predictions: personal experience and mediated culture

Predictions come from many kinds of learned information[25:50]
• The guest notes that predictions draw on personal experience, watching television, talking to people, reading books, and watching movies.
• Human brains can recombine bits and pieces of past experiences into new arrangements to experience something novel that was never directly experienced before.

Meaning as relational and action-based, not inherent in stimuli

Sensory inputs have no inherent psychological meaning[26:18]
• The guest says that sights, sounds, smells, and internal body signals in the present have no inherent psychological, emotional, or mental meaning.
• Meaning is supplied by memories from the past; people are meaning makers.
Cup example: meaning depends on current use[26:18]
• She uses a metal cup to illustrate that its meaning in the moment is what she does with it: drinking vessel, weapon, flower holder, or measuring cup.
• Meaning is not located solely in the object or solely in the head but in the transaction between object features and brain signals that produce actions.
Even physical properties like solidity are relational[28:08]
• She notes that the cup's solidity is not just a property of the object but arises from having a body of a certain type with particular features.
• Solidity is in the relationship between the body and the object, not wholly in either alone.

Agency, identity, and changing who you are

People lack a constant sense of agency because prediction is automatic and fast[28:25]
• She says people do not feel agency over meaning-making because it happens extremely quickly and automatically, faster than a blink.
• Despite that, she argues people are partly in control and responsible for the meaning they create.
No enduring identity: you are who you are in the moment of action[29:10]
• She states that people do not have an enduring identity; instead, they are who they are in the moment of their actions.
• Actions are produced by a combination of remembered past (used for prediction) and sensory present.
Two main ways to change future predictions and experiences[29:54]
• One way is to go back into the past and change the meaning of prior events so that future remembering and predicting will differ; this is what psychotherapy and deep conversations attempt.
• She notes this is difficult and does not always work well.
• Another way is to deliberately create new experiences in the present, knowing that current experiences become seeds for later predictions.
• People can expose themselves to new ideas, interact with different people, and practice cultivating specific experiences as they would any skill.
• New concepts and practiced experiences become automatic predictions in the future.

Applying prediction theory to objects and fears

Reframing the cup example with prediction and action

Host contrasts psychotherapy with creating new patterns in the present[30:42]
• He suggests psychotherapy would try to convince him that a silver cup is not only for drinking, while the second approach would have him actually put flowers in it to create a new pattern.
• This new pattern would lead his brain, in the future, to predict both drinking and using it as a vase when seeing a similar cup.
Guest clarifies prediction precedes conscious thought[31:41]
• She stresses that the thinking about the vase use comes after action preparation; the brain will already be preparing actions to get flowers when approaching the cup.
• She explains that the brain first prepares visceromotor actions (changes in heart rate, blood vessel dilation, breathing) to anticipate bodily needs.
• These preparations support upcoming physical movements, such as walking to get flowers and cutting stems, which require glucose and oxygen.
Thoughts and feelings follow from prepared actions[32:55]
• She summarizes that it is not what you think that determines what you feel, but what you prepare to do that shapes thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

Using prediction error to overcome fears and phobias

General strategy: dosing yourself with prediction error

Host asks how to overcome a fear of spiders using the second route[33:26]
• He asks how someone with a spider phobia could overcome it by the present-focused method the guest described.
Guest says you cannot simply will predictions to change[32:55]
• She states you cannot just will yourself to change a prediction.
• She uses her own fear of bees as an example, rooted in a traumatic experience at age five.
• Despite knowing a lot about bees, both as a gardener and about their biology, her first reaction to a nearby bee is to run or freeze.
Gradual exposure and interaction to change actions and experience[32:55]
• She says she has to "dose" herself with prediction error by interacting with bees in ways that change her actions and lived experience.
• Jumping straight to working with beehives in a full suit would be overwhelming, so that is not a good starting point.
• Instead, she can start by not running away, then by standing and watching bees, then by getting closer.
• She mentions planting bushes and flowers that bees like so she can sit near them while they buzz and do their work.
• She says she even deliberately let herself get stung at some point.
Proving predictions wrong so the brain updates[32:55]
• The brain makes a set of predictions, preparing multiple possible actions.
• To change those predictions, you must set up circumstances that prove to your brain that its predictions are wrong.
• She confirms to the host that this means deliberately arranging experiences so that feared outcomes do not occur and prediction errors drive updating.

Episode context note

Clip framing as a replayed moment

Host notes this segment is from a previous episode[33:13]
• At the end, a voice explains that what was just heard was a most replayed moment from a previous episode and directs listeners to the full episode via a link in the description.

Lessons Learned

Actionable insights and wisdom you can apply to your business, career, and personal life.

1

Your brain is fundamentally a prediction engine: it prepares bodily states and actions based on past experiences, and your perceptions and feelings follow from those preparations rather than the other way around.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Where in my daily life do I notice myself reacting automatically in ways that might actually be driven by old predictions rather than current reality?
  • • How could recognizing that my feelings follow from what my brain is preparing me to do change the way I interpret intense emotional moments?
  • • What is one recurring situation this week where I can pause and ask, "What is my brain predicting right now, and is that prediction still accurate?"
2

Trauma and emotional responses are not just about what happened, but about how past experiences and present context combine to give events their meaning.

Reflection Questions:

  • • What challenging past experience might I be interpreting in a way that makes current situations feel more threatening than they objectively are?
  • • How could separating the raw facts of what happened from the meaning I have given them help me relate differently to a current trigger?
  • • Which person or resource could I engage with to explore alternative, less harmful meanings for a difficult experience I still carry?
3

Cultural inheritance powerfully shapes your predictions and sense of self, because you absorb narratives and models of meaning from media, family, and society, often without realizing it.

Reflection Questions:

  • • What beliefs about myself or about certain types of events can I trace back to cultural messages I have seen in TV, books, or social media?
  • • How might my reactions change if I deliberately exposed myself to people or stories that model different ways of interpreting similar experiences?
  • • What is one narrative I have inherited from my culture that I want to question or update because it no longer serves me?
4

Because experiences today become the raw material for tomorrow's predictions, you can deliberately create new experiences-like practicing different actions or perspectives-to reshape your future automatic responses.

Reflection Questions:

  • • In what area of my life would I benefit most from having different automatic reactions than the ones I have now?
  • • How could I design small, repeatable experiences over the next month that embody the new patterns I want my brain to predict and prepare for?
  • • What specific practice can I start this week (new habit, conversation, or environment) that will serve as a "seed" for different future predictions?
5

Overcoming fears and rigid patterns requires dosing yourself with manageable prediction errors-gradual exposures that safely disconfirm your brain's old expectations so it can update them.

Reflection Questions:

  • • What fear or avoidance behavior in my life might be maintained by predictions that have not been seriously tested recently?
  • • How could I break that fear into tiny steps of exposure that feel uncomfortable but still doable and safe?
  • • When will I schedule the first small "prediction error" experiment to gently confront this fear and observe what actually happens?

Episode Summary - Notes by Harper

Most Replayed Moment: Anxiety Is Just A Prediction! Rewrite Old Stories and Build Emotional Safety
0:00 0:00