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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New social science research explores the relationship between who becomes a CEO and family birth order. First-born sons are far more likely to be represented among the ranks of CEOs.
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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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Being able to recognize faces is a crucial part of life. Some of us are very good or bad at it, but in general we aren't as good as we think we are.
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Some new research says that many people use free speech arguments only when convenient, and as a cover for their own feelings.
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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.