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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One of Hidden Brain's producers tries to quit smoking using three interventions drawn from social science research. -
What draws people to terrorism? What propels them to commit mass murder? This week, we explore why some young people are attracted to terrorism. -
Researchers examine the effects of student debt on the personal choices that young adults have to make. For example, decisions about whether to get married or when to have children.
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What do large tables, large breakfasts and large servers have in common? They all affect how much you eat. This week on Hidden Brain, we look at the hidden forces that drive our diets. -
A study examined the economic effects of the Affordable Care Act. Researchers found states that opted to expand Medicaid through Obamacare had residents with fewer unpaid bills and less debt overall.
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J. Marion Sims is remembered as the father of modern gynecology. Forgotten are the mothers—the enslaved women whose bodies were sacrificed for the advancement of his research. -
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI hate crime data and census trends show that states with the strongest backlash against Muslims saw decreased rates of assimilation among Muslim immigrants in America.
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A study finds that children who demonstrate more "pro-social" skills — those who share more and who are better listeners — are more likely to have jobs and stay out of trouble as young adults.
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Researchers explored the effects of black and Latino graduation rates from medical school, following a ban on race conscious admissions policies in several states.
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To increase the number of organ donors in the U.S., psychologists have advocated for changes to how we ask people to donate. In California, officials tried something new — but it may have backfired.
