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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Social science research explores how our minds push away information that gets in the way of our feelings and desires.
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What is it that makes you...you? NPR's Shankar Vedantam explores new research that suggests the labels we use to categorize people affect not just who they are now, but who they'll be in the future.
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A drive to better understand ourselves and the people around us has led to the creation of a thriving industry built around personality testing.
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If you believe something is real — if you can fall in love with someone or stand in awe of a painting — is it possible that it doesn't actually matter whether the object of your affection is fake?
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A study looks at the effect of housing vouchers on criminal activity. People who receive Section 8 vouchers are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, but this effect only shows up for men.
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A new study shows that CEOs who invest in corporate social responsibility initiatives put themselves at significant risk of losing their jobs.
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Whether people consume news in a social setting or alone can affect how likely they are to fact-check. Research suggests people let their guard down when they're in groups and become less skeptical.
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A study from the University of Kentucky shows that doing something virtuous can make indulging later even more pleasurable.
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Compared to older siblings, second-born boys are more likely to go to prison, get suspended in school and enter juvenile delinquency. Why? Parents of first-borns are more invested in their upbringing.
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Child care centers don't necessarily hire the most qualified teachers. A new study shows that child care centers pick applicants who are in the middle of the pack.