Hidden Brain

By Hidden Brain

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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Moral Combat

10.19.2020

Most of us have a clear sense of right and wrong. But what happens when we view politics through a moral lens? This week, we talk with psychologist Linda Skitka about how moral certainty can produce moral blinders — and ...

Hidden Brain episodes:

10.26.2020 Not at the Dinner Table We typically divide the country into two distinct groups: Democrats and Republicans. But what if the real political divide in our country isn't between "left" and "right"? What if it's between those who care intensely about politics, and those who ...
10.19.2020 Moral Combat Most of us have a clear sense of right and wrong. But what happens when we view politics through a moral lens? This week, we talk with psychologist Linda Skitka about how moral certainty can produce moral blinders — and ...
10.12.2020 Beyond Doomscrolling There’s no question that 2020 has been a tough year. We're grappling with a global pandemic. A deep recession. Fresh reminders of racial injustice. But today — without minimizing the justifiable pain that 2020 has brought to so many people ...
10.05.2020 The Logic of Rage Neuroscientist Doug Fields was on a trip to Europe when a pickpocket stole his wallet. Doug, normally mild-mannered, became enraged — and his fury turned him into a stranger to himself. Today on Hidden Brain, we explore the secret logic ...
10.02.2020 An Update from Shankar It’s been five years since we launched this podcast. Today, we want to take a moment to thank the many people who’ve helped us over the years. And we want to share some changes with you.
09.28.2020 Laughter: The Best Medicine If you listen closely to giggles, guffaws, and polite chuckles, you can discern a huge amount of information about people and their relationships with each other. This week, we talk with neuroscientist Sophie Scott about the many shades of laughter, ...
09.21.2020 The Halo Effect Judy, Lyn and Donna Ulrich were driving to a volleyball game when their Ford Pinto was hit from behind by a Chevy van. The Pinto caught fire, and the three teenagers wereburned to death. This week on Hidden Brain, we ...
09.14.2020 Why Nobody Feels Rich If you've ever flown in economy class on a plane, you probably had to walk through the first class cabin to get to your seat. Maybe you noticed the extra leg room. The freshly-poured champagne. Maybe you were annoyed, or ...
09.07.2020 The Fee-for-Service Monster The United States spends trillions of dollars on healthcare every year, but our outcomes are worse than those of other countries that spend less money. Why? Physician and healthcare executive Vivian Lee explains the psychological and economic incentives embedded in ...
08.31.2020 You 2.0: Empathy Gym Some people are good at putting themselves in another person's shoes. Others may struggle to relate. But psychologist Jamil Zaki argues that empathy isn't a fixed trait. This week, in our final installment of You 2.0, we revisit a favorite ...
08.24.2020 You 2.0: WOOP, WOOP! American culture is all about positive affirmations. Dream big! Shoot for the stars! But do positive fantasies actually help us achieve our goals? This week, as part of our You 2.0 summer series, we revisit a conversation with researcher Gabriele ...
08.17.2020 You 2.0: Loss And Renewal Maya Shankar was well on her way to a career as a violinist when an injury closed that door. This week, as part of our annual You 2.0 series on personal growth and reinvention, we revisit our 2015 conversation with ...
08.10.2020 You 2.0: The Mind's Eye Some challenges feel insurmountable. But psychologist Emily Balcetis says the solutions are often right in front of our eyes. This week, as part of our annual series on personal growth and reinvention, Emily explains how we can harness our sight ...
08.03.2020 You 2.0: Our Pursuit of Happiness Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. No matter how hard you try to get happier, you end up back where you started. What's going on here? We kick off our annual You 2.0 summer series with ...
07.27.2020 Edge Effect There is great comfort in the familiar. It's one reason humans often flock to other people who share the same interests, laugh at the same jokes, hold the same political views. But familiar ground may not be the best place ...
07.20.2020 The Untold Story Of Lyndie B. Hawkins In 2019, a novel by a new author, Gail Shepherd, arrived in bookstores. The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins tells the story of a young white girl growing up in the South. The book has been well received, but ...
07.13.2020 Romeo & Juliet In Rwanda How do you change someone's behavior? Most of us would point to education or persuasion. But what if the answer lies elsewhere? This week, we revisit a 2018 story about human nature and behavior change — a story that will ...
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 withmore kindness than we show toward others? This week, ...
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 ...

Older episodes

Hidden Brain

What's Hidden Brain about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Hidden Brain episodes:

Not at the Dinner Table

Moral Combat

Beyond Doomscrolling

The Logic of Rage

An Update from Shankar

Laughter: The Best Medicine

The Halo Effect

Why Nobody Feels Rich

The Fee-for-Service Monster

You 2.0: Empathy Gym

You 2.0: WOOP, WOOP!

You 2.0: Loss And Renewal

You 2.0: The Mind's Eye

You 2.0: Our Pursuit of Happiness

Edge Effect

The Untold Story Of Lyndie B. Hawkins

Romeo & Juliet In Rwanda

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?

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