Shankar Vedantam
Shankar Vedantam is the host and creator of Hidden Brain. The Hidden Brain podcast receives more than three million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations around the United States.
Vedantam was NPR's social science correspondent between 2011 and 2020, and spent 10 years as a reporter at The Washington Post. From 2007 to 2009, he was also a columnist, and wrote the Department of Human Behavior column for the Post.
Vedantam and Hidden Brain have been recognized with the Edward R Murrow Award, and honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Austen Riggs Center, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Webby Awards, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, the South Asian Journalists Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the American Public Health Association, the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion, and the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship.
In 2009-2010, Vedantam served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Vedantam is the author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives. The book, published in 2010, described how unconscious biases influence people. He is also co-author, with Bill Mesler, of the 2021 book Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain.
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Olutosin Oduwole was a college student and aspiring rap star when he was charged with "attempting to make a terrorist threat." Did public perceptions of rap music play a role?
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The researchers believe this is because politicians in gerrymandered districts are less likely to advocate for goods on behalf of their constituents.
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How do you convince a generation of people who once slaughtered each other to reconcile? In Rwanda, a team of psychologists, writers and policymakers came up with an unusual idea: a radio soap opera.
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Violent crimes committed by Muslims are much more likely to be reported as "terrorism." And that has disturbing consequences for the way Muslims are perceived.
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When we think of lies, we think of the big stuff. We say, "I could never do something like that." But big lies start with small deceptions. Dan Ariely talks about why we lie and why we're honest.
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Workers with a strong sales record were likely to be promoted into managerial positions, yet they tended to be worse at managerial jobs than those who were low-performing workers.
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Have you ever noticed that when something important is missing in your life, your brain can only seem to focus on that missing thing? Two researchers have dubbed this phenomenon "scarcity."
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Imagine seeing a cockroach skitter across your kitchen counter. Does the thought alone gross you out? This week on Hidden Brain, we discuss disgust.
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Boys get the message quickly: a man is supposed to be strong and independent. That message, researchers say, has widespread consequences for men's social lives and physical health.
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Economic theory rests on a simple notion about humans: people are rational. But a half century ago, two psychologists shattered these assumptions.