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.
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There's a difference between the stories we tell and the stories we like to hear. New social science research finds most of us like to listen to stories about familiar things. -
The parable of the fox and the hedgehog tells us that there are some who are guided by one big idea. That's the story of Don Laub, a surgeon whose single-mindedness was his triumph, and his downfall. -
Social science researchers examine whether extreme protest tactics are an effective way for recruiting popular support. The public may not be relating to protesters like the way protesters aimed for. -
With repeated lies, the brain becomes less and less sensitive to dishonesty, supporting ever larger acts of dishonesty. But why do we lie and is it such a terrible thing if we do? -
As Republicans unveil their Affordable Care Act replacement, we examine how Medicaid expansion has affected divorce rates among older people. -
Airbnb has come under fire in the last year following reports that hosts are less likely to rent to African-Americans compared to whites. New research looked at ways to address the discrimination. -
J. Marion Sims is remembered as the father of modern gynecology. Forgotten are the mothers of that medical specialty — the enslaved women whose bodies were used for the advancement of his research. -
In 2015, health workers in Liberia faced a challenge. They had to figure out how to quarantine a street gang that could be spreading Ebola at the height of the epidemic. -
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. -
Research collaborations often involve scientists from all over the world. A new study looks at plane ticket prices, and how they relate to the direction of science.
