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 °µºÚ±¬ÁÏpaper 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 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? -
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. -
When you look at a photograph of someone, researchers say it's remarkably difficult to dislodge that first impression — even after we have had a chance to meet the person we initially saw in a photo. -
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. -
New social science research shows that women in the arts earn significantly less than men across the board. -
As the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani was a proponent of a controversial policing philosophy that calls for police to go after small crimes in hopes of preventing bigger problems. -
Women in power often have to choose between being seen as likeable but incompetent, or competent but cold. We explore what's known as "double bind" — assumptions about men, women and leadership. -
U.S. politics have long been marked by disagreement and even rancor. But 2016 feels worse than usual. NPR's Hidden Brain podcast offers one explanation why, from deep in our psychological frameworks. -
Many immigrant groups faced prejudice and suspicion when they first arrived in the U.S. quickly turn around and exhibit the same kinds of prejudice and suspicions toward those who come after them.
