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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For decades, researchers have followed the participants of a 1960's preschool program. They found a range of social and economic benefits, and not just for the participants in the program.
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Sometimes, when we believe something, no amount of data can change our minds. This week, why we cling to our beliefs — even when they're wrong. -
Physicians believe placebos work only if patients think they're getting medicine. In other words, doctors have to deceive patients. But there might be a way to get placebos to work without deception.
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How many ads have you encountered today? On this week's radio show, we discuss the insidiousness of advertising in American media. -
We know our actions affect those around us. But how do we know whether our impact is positive? This week on Hidden Brain, what it means to do good in the world. -
March Madness is here, and college basketball is in the spotlight. When it comes to making free throws, who is better: College players who would eventually go pro, or players who would never go pro?
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New research finds that partisans agree with bumper sticker slogans — unless they are told that those slogans were made by a leader of the opposing party.
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Increasingly, people feel they can master tasks simply by watching instructional videos like the kind you find on YouTube. But sometimes the gap between perception and reality can be deep and wide.
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Investigations of Russian influence on the 2016 election have tended to focus on the role of social media. Researchers are also exploring the psychological vulnerability that hackers exploited.
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A study shows that rating systems for online marketplaces are prone to inflation, because raters feel pressured to leave high scores.
