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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A recent study finds companies whose CEOs committed a personal indiscretion — such as infidelity, substance abuse and dishonesty — experienced a decline in shareholder value.
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Researchers find that during extra innings, baseball umpires make calls in a way that tends to end games sooner. This seems to be because umpires aren't given additional money to work extra innings.
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The researchers believe this is because politicians in gerrymandered districts are less likely to advocate for goods on behalf of their constituents.
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When we think of lies, we think of the big stuff. We say, "I could never do something like that." But big lies start with small deceptions. Dan Ariely talks about why we lie and why we're honest.
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Workers with a strong sales record were likely to be promoted into managerial positions, yet they tended to be worse at managerial jobs than those who were low-performing workers.
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Flight delays and late arrivals have gone down since 1990. At the same time, airlines have increased scheduled flight times because flights are taking longer, and more time is spent taxiing.
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What is it that makes you...you? NPR's Shankar Vedantam explores new research that suggests the labels we use to categorize people affect not just who they are now, but who they'll be in the future.
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The desire to find our tribe is universal. We like to know who we are and where we belong. This week, how this fascination has led to a thriving industry built on the sale of personality tests.
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New social science research explores the relationship between who becomes a CEO and family birth order. First-born sons are far more likely to be represented among the ranks of CEOs.
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A study looks at the effect of housing vouchers on criminal activity. People who receive Section 8 vouchers are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, but this effect only shows up for men.