
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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As science becomes more diverse, scientific collaborators are growing more diverse, too. New research exploring the effect of this change suggests the diversity of the teams that produce scientific research play a big role in how successful the science turns out to be.
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The American Bar Association ranks nominees to the federal bench, with low rankings making confirmation difficult. A new study finds that these rankings systematically underrate women and minorities.
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A study in the journal Obesity found that students who used credit or debit cards in the school cafeteria chose fewer fruits and vegetables and more desserts than kids paying with cash. But the researchers say schools should work with the bias instead of trying to fight it.
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It takes more than a decisive vision to solve intractable world problems, says Harvard leadership expert Ronald Heifetz. Instead, he advises his students — including budding heads-of-state — to think less like surgeons and more like psychiatrists.
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In a psychology study using Halloween candy, kids who got a candy bar and a piece of bubble gum were less satisfied than kids who got just a candy bar. The study shows that when we think about experiences, we are significantly biased by how the experience ends.
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It used to be that neuroscientists thought smart people were all alike. But now they think that some very smart people retain the ability to learn rapidly, like a child, well into adolescence.
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Researchers find that winning and losing NFL games not only causes fan to feel differently the day after the game but to eat differently as well. Fans of losing teams eat significantly more saturated fat after suffering defeats, while fans of winning teams eat lighter fare after victories.
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China runs the largest censorship machine in human history, researchers say. But Harvard studies of Internet postings in China suggest that even vitriolic criticisms of leaders and state policies are not what officials want to censor.
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Many obstetricians make more money for C-sections than for vaginal deliveries. In a recent study, these doctors were more likely to perform the costly procedure than doctors paid a flat salary. But when the pregnant women were also physicians, doctors seemed less swayed by financial incentives.
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A gap persists in high school physics. A new study finds that girls are more likely to take physics if they see women in their communities working in science, technology, engineering and math.