Shankar Vedantam
Shankar Vedantam is NPR's social science correspondent and the host of Hidden Brain. The focus of his reporting is on human behavior and the social sciences, and how research in those fields can get listeners to think about the news in unusual and interesting ways. Hidden Brain is among the most popular podcasts in the world, with over two million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is featured on some 250 public radio stations across the United States.
Before joining NPR in 2011, Vedantam spent 10 years as a reporter at The Washington Post. From 2007 to 2009, he also 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.
From 2009 to 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, describes how unconscious biases influence people.
Outside of journalism, Vedantam has written fiction and plays. His short story-collection, The Ghosts of Kashmir, was published in 2005. The previous year, the Brick Playhouse in Philadelphia produced his full-length comedy, Tom, Dick and Harriet.
Vedantam has served as a part-time lecturer at Harvard University and Columbia University. He has also served as a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.
-
How might a pandemic affect racial prejudice? A new study finds that living in a region with higher infectious disease rates is linked to greater racial prejudice.
-
In a fit of anger or in the grip of fear, many of us make decisions that we never would have anticipated. Researchers say it is very hard to understand how we'll act in certain situations.
-
For years scientists have said that there is no link between vaccines and autism. There are still many people who are reluctant to vaccinate. But, one woman has changed her mind about vaccines.
-
As a society, we talk about sex more openly today than ever before. But so much still goes unsaid. This week on the Hidden Brain radio show, complicated stories of intimacy and attraction. -
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.
-
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. -
There's a core belief embedded in the story of the United States: the American Dream. The possibility of climbing the economic ladder is central to that dream. This week we speak with Raj Chetty, one of the most influential economists alive today, about the state of economic mobility in the U.S. and whether the notion of the American Dream is still useful. For more information about the research in this episode, visit https://n.pr/2z8cvSs. -
The CDC estimated that 72,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2017. There are many reasons why the opioid crisis is so hard to confront. One of them is social stigma. -
The clicker became a popular tool for dog training in the 1980s. It has also caught on with humans — helping people to become better dancers, fishermen, golfers, and now, surgeons. -
Many parents think they can shape their child into a particular kind of adult. Psychologist Alison Gopnik says the science suggests otherwise.
