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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It's in our nature to idolize the rich and famous. But this week on Hidden Brain, we explore the other side of our nature: the part of us that wants to see the rich and powerful fall from grace. -
Young people have always used language in new ways, and it has always driven older people crazy. But the linguist John McWhorter says all the LOLs are part of an inevitable evolution of language. -
In Liberia, a team of epidemiologists have to delay a criminal investigation, look the other way on illegal drug use and build trust to stop an outbreak of Ebola. -
As the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani was a proponent of a controversial policing philosophy that calls for police to go after small crimes in hopes of preventing bigger problems. -
Pollsters across the ideological spectrum predicted Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election. They got it wrong. But one man did not: historian Allan Lichtman. -
Most scientists agree, climate change is perhaps the most serious issue facing our planet today. And yet, it's uniquely difficult for us to wrap our heads around. Hidden Brain explores why. -
A century after women won the vote in the U.S., we still see very few of them in leadership roles. Researchers say women are trapped in a catch-22 known as "the double bind." -
This week on Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam explores how unconscious ideas about the family shape the way we think about politics. -
With the Olympics in full swing, we look at the myriad ways losing a competition can wreak havoc on our physical and mental health.
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The rush of victory or crush of defeat in the Olympics can flash by very quickly. But if you slow those moments down, there's a lot to learn about human behavior.
