Hidden Brain

By NPR

What's Hidden Brain about?

Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.

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The Night That Lasted A Lif...

07.06.2020

Not long after his sixteenth birthday, Fred Clay was arrested for the murder of a cab driver in Boston. Eventually, Fred was found guilty — but only after police and prosecutors used questionable psychological techniques to single him out as ...

Hidden Brain episodes:

07.06.2020 The Night That Lasted A Lifetime Not long after his sixteenth birthday, Fred Clay was arrested for the murder of a cab driver in Boston. Eventually, Fred was found guilty — but only after police and prosecutors used questionable psychological techniques to single him out as ...
06.29.2020 The Founding Contradiction "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." These words, penned by Thomas Jefferson more than 240 years ago, continue to inspire many Americans. And yet they were written by a man who owned hundreds ...
06.22.2020 Buy, Borrow, Steal Policymakers have a tried-and-true game plan for jump-starting the economy in times of severe recession: Push stimulus packages and lower interest rates so Americans will borrow and spend. But economist Amir Sufi says the way we traditionally address a recession ...
06.15.2020 A Rap on Trial In the past few weeks, the nation has been gripped by protests against police brutality toward black and brown Americans. The enormous number of demonstrators may be new, but the biases they're protesting are not. In 2017, we looked at ...
06.12.2020 The Air We Breathe President Trump said this week that a few "bad apples" were to blame for police killings of black people. But research suggests that something more complicated is at play — a force that affects everyone in the culture, not just ...
06.08.2020 Playing Favorites If we do a favor for someone we know, we think we've done a good deed. What we don't tend to ask is: Who have we harmed by treating this person with more kindness than we show toward others? This ...
06.01.2020 Justifying The Means When we are asked to make a moral choice, many of us imagine it involves listening to our hearts. To that, philosopher Peter Singer says, "nonsense." Singer believes there are no moral absolutes, and that logic and calculation are better ...
05.30.2020 The Time Machine In recent months, many of us have looked back with longing at our lives before COVID-19. For many of us, that world was one of bustle and activity — marked by scenes of packed restaurants, crowded subway cars, and chaotic ...
05.25.2020 The People Like Us Far from being "the great equalizer," COVID-19 has disproportionately sickened and killed African Americans and Latinos in the U.S. Many of the reasons for these inequalities reach back to before the pandemic began. This week, we return to a 2019 ...
05.18.2020 Our Better Angels In the months since the spread of the coronavirus, stories of selfishness and exploitation have become all too familiar: people ignoring social distancing guidelines, or even selling medical equipment at inflated prices. Most of our public and economic policies take ...
05.13.2020 A Hidden Brain Commencement Address Commencement ceremonies allow us to take stock of what we've accomplished and where we're headed. This is one of the key opportunities that students and families have lost, as social distancing precautions lead schools to cancel in-person graduations. In this ...
05.11.2020 The Dramatic Cure In recent months, many of us have become familiar with the sense of fear expressing itself in our bodies. We may feel restless or physically exhausted. At times, we may even have trouble catching our breath. The deep connection between ...
05.04.2020 The Choices Before Us An abundance of choices is a good thing, right? In the United States, where choice is often equated with freedom and control, the answer tends to be a resounding 'yes.' But researchers say the relationship between choice and happiness isn't ...
04.27.2020 Starving The Watchdogs Amidst the confusion and chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have sought out a long-trusted lifeline: the local newspaper. Though the value of local journalism is more apparent now than ever, newspapers are not thriving. They're collapsing. For ...
04.20.2020 A Social Prescription Confined to our homes, many of us are experiencing a newfound appreciation for our social relationships. What we may not realize — and what physicians and researchers have only recently started emphasizing — is the importance of these connections to ...
04.13.2020 Sex Machines From stone statues to silicone works of art, we have long sought solace and sex from inanimate objects. Time and technology have perfected the artificial lover: today we have life-size silicone love dolls so finely crafted they feel like works ...
04.06.2020 Playing Tight And Loose We all know people who prefer to follow the rules, and others who prefer to flout them. Psychologist Michele Gelfand defines these two ways of being as "tight" and "loose." She says the tight/loose framework can help us to better ...
03.30.2020 Close Enough: Living Through Others A silver lining of social distancing: you may have more time and space to pursue the projects you've bookmarked on your web browser. Whether your goal is to build a barn door or to update your makeup routine, online tutorials ...
03.23.2020 An Unfinished Lesson A virus is more than a biological organism. It's a social organism. It detects fissures in societies and fault lines between communities. Historian Nancy Bristow shares the lessons about human behavior that we can take away from a century-old pandemic.
03.16.2020 Panic In The Street It sounds like a movie plot: police discover the body of a young man who's been murdered. The body tests positive for a deadly infectious disease. Authorities trace the killing to a gang. They race to find the gang members, ...
03.10.2020 The Bomb That Didn't Explode We know that we live in an ever-changing world, but one thing we often overlook is demographic change. Whether the world's population is growing or shrinking can affect many aspects of our lives, from the number of kids we have ...
03.03.2020 The Tale of the Cowboy Philosopher In 2009, an old man died in a California nursing home. His obituary included not just his given name, but a long list of the pseudonyms he'd been known to use. In this episode, which we originally released in 2019, ...
02.24.2020 The Influence You Have Think about the last time you asked someone for something. Maybe you were nervous or worried about what the person would think of you. Chances are that you didn't stop to think about the pressure you were exerting on that ...
02.17.2020 Liar, Liar, Liar We all lie. But what separates the average person from the infamous cheaters we see on the news? Dan Ariely says we like to think it's character — but in his research he's found it's more often opportunity. Dan Ariely ...
02.10.2020 Passion Isn't Enough Many Americans feel an obligation to keep up with political news. But maybe we should be focusing our energies elsewhere. Political scientist Eitan Hersh says there's been a rise in "political hobbyism" in the United States. We treat politics like ...
02.04.2020 When Things Click There can be a lot of psychological noise involved in teaching. But what if we replaced all that mental clutter...with a click? This week, we bring you a 2018 episode exploring an innovative idea about how we learn. It will ...
01.27.2020 Secret Friends Where is the line between what is real and what is imaginary? It seems like an easy question to answer: if you can see it, hear it, or touch it, then it's real, right? But what if this way of ...
01.20.2020 Warnings, Warnings Everywhere After a disaster happens, we want to know whether something could have been done to avoid it. Did anyone see this coming? Many times, the answer is yes. So why didn't the warnings lead to action? This week, we revisit ...
01.13.2020 Emotional Currency What's the point of money? The answer might seem obvious: we need it to get paid for our work, and to buy the things we need. But there's also a deeper way to look at the role of money in ...
01.06.2020 On The Knife's Edge What would drive someone to take another person's life? When researchers at the University of Chicago asked that question, the answer was a laundry list of slights: a stolen jacket, or a carelessly lobbed insult. It made them wonder whether ...
12.30.2019 Creatures Of Habit At the beginning of the year, many of us make resolutions for the months to come. We resolve to work out more, procrastinate less, or save more money. Though some people stick with these aspirations, many of us fall short. ...
12.23.2019 Why We Love Surprises Why do we fall for surprise endings? It turns out that our capacity to be easily fooled in books and movies is made possible by a handful of predictable mental shortcuts. In this 2018 conversation, we talk with Vera Tobin, ...
12.17.2019 Did That Really Happen? Our memories are easily contaminated. We can be made to believe we rode in a hot air balloon or kissed a magnifying glass — even if those things never happened. So how do we know which of our memories are ...
12.09.2019 Zipcode Destiny There's a core belief embedded in the story of the United States — the American Dream. Today we look at the state of that dream as we revisit our 2018 conversation with economist Raj Chetty. We'll ask some questions that ...
12.03.2019 In The Heat Of The Moment In a fit of anger or in the grip of fear, many of us make decisions that we never would have anticipated. This week, we look at situations that make us strangers to ourselves — and why it's so difficult ...
11.25.2019 Counting Other People's Blessings Envy is one of the most unpleasant of all human emotions. It also turns out to be one of the most difficult for researchers to study. And yet, there's mounting evidence that envy is a powerful motivator. This week, we ...
11.19.2019 The Ventilator Many of us believe we know how we'd choose to die. We have a sense of how we'd respond to a diagnosis of an incurable illness. This week, we have the story of one family's decades-long conversation about dying. What ...
11.11.2019 Hungry, Hungry Hippocampus Anyone who's tried (and failed) to follow a diet knows that food is more than fuel. This week, we revisit our 2018 episode about the psychology behind what we eat, what we spit out, and when we come back for ...
11.04.2019 The Talk Market Can we affect the rise and fall of the economy? This week on Hidden Brain, we talk with Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller about the powerful ways in which stories and psychology shape our economic lives. He argues that narratives ...
10.28.2019 BS Jobs Have you ever had a job where you had to stop and ask yourself: what am I doing here? If I quit tomorrow, would anyone even notice? This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit our 2018 conversation with anthropologist David ...
10.21.2019 The Monkey Marketplace What makes the mind of a human different from that of other animals? Psychologist Laurie Santos says we can't know the answer to that question if we only study humans. This week, we turn to Laurie's work with monkeys to ...
10.14.2019 The Lonely American Man Boys get the message at a young age: don't show your feelings. Don't rely on anyone. This week, we bring you a favorite 2018 episode about misguided notions of masculinity in the United States. We explore how these notions create ...
10.07.2019 Screaming Into The Void Turn on the news or look at Twitter, and it's likely you'll be bombarded by outrage. Many people have come to believe that the only way to spark change is to incite anger. This week on Hidden Brain, how outrage ...
09.30.2019 Baby Talk Babies are speaking to us all the time, but most of us have no clue what they're saying. To researchers, though, the babbling of babies is knowable, predictable, and best of all, teachable to us non-experts. This week, we revisit ...
09.23.2019 We're All Gonna Live Forever! Last week, we spoke with psychologist Sheldon Solomon about the fear of death and how it shapes our actions. This week, we pivot from psychology and politics to religion and history as we explore how people have tried to resolve ...
09.16.2019 We're All Gonna Die! Death may be inescapable, but we do our best to avoid thinking about it. Psychologist Sheldon Solomon says we're not very successful though. This week on Hidden Brain, we confront how death anxiety courses through our actions, even when we ...
09.10.2019 You Can't Hit Unsend Social media sites offer quick and easy ways to share ideas, crack jokes, find old friends. They can make us feel part of something big and wonderful and fast-moving. But the things we post don't go away. And they can ...
09.02.2019 You 2.0: Decide Already! For the last episode in our You 2.0 series, we bring you a favorite conversation with Harvard researcher Dan Gilbert. He explains why we're bad at predicting our future happiness, how that affects our decision making, and why we're actually ...
08.27.2019 You 2.0: Deep Work When your phone buzzes or a notification pops up your screen, do you stop what you're doing to look and respond? That's what many of us are doing. Even though we think we should be less distracted by technology, we ...
08.19.2019 You 2.0: Rebel With A Cause Francesca Gino studies rebels — people who practice "positive deviance" and achieve incredible feats of imagination. They know how, and when, to break the rules that should be broken. So how can you activate your own inner non-conformist? This week, ...

Older episodes

Hidden Brain

What's Hidden Brain about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Hidden Brain episodes:

The Night That Lasted A Lifetime

The Founding Contradiction

Buy, Borrow, Steal

A Rap on Trial

The Air We Breathe

Playing Favorites

Justifying The Means

The Time Machine

The People Like Us

Our Better Angels

A Hidden Brain Commencement Address

The Dramatic Cure

The Choices Before Us

Starving The Watchdogs

A Social Prescription

Sex Machines

Playing Tight And Loose

Close Enough: Living Through Others

An Unfinished Lesson

Panic In The Street

The Bomb That Didn't Explode

The Tale of the Cowboy Philosopher

The Influence You Have

Liar, Liar, Liar

Passion Isn't Enough

When Things Click

Secret Friends

Warnings, Warnings Everywhere

Emotional Currency

On The Knife's Edge

Creatures Of Habit

Why We Love Surprises

Did That Really Happen?

Zipcode Destiny

In The Heat Of The Moment

Counting Other People's Blessings

The Ventilator

Hungry, Hungry Hippocampus

The Talk Market

BS Jobs

The Monkey Marketplace

The Lonely American Man

Screaming Into The Void

Baby Talk

We're All Gonna Live Forever!

We're All Gonna Die!

You Can't Hit Unsend

You 2.0: Decide Already!

You 2.0: Deep Work

You 2.0: Rebel With A Cause

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