Hidden Brain

By Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Arts Performing Arts Social Sciences

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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Healing 2.0: The Power of A...

11.27.2023

Why is it so hard to say 'I'm sorry?' In the final episode of our Healing 2.0 series, we talk with psychologist Tyler Okimoto about the mental barriers that keep us from admitting when we've done something wrong, as well ...

Hidden Brain episodes:

11.27.2023 Healing 2.0: The Power of Apologies Why is it so hard to say 'I'm sorry?' In the final episode of our Healing 2.0 series, we talk with psychologist Tyler Okimoto about the mental barriers that keep us from admitting when we've done something wrong, as well ...
11.20.2023 Healing 2.0: Disrupting Death In 2019, Justin Harrison's mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer. But by the time she died, he had figured out how to keep a part of her alive...forever. This week, the strange and provocative story of a man who believes ...
11.13.2023 Healing 2.0: Life After Loss You've probably heard that people who lose a loved one may go through what are known as the "five stages" of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But many people find that their grief doesn't follow this model at ...
11.06.2023 Healing 2.0: What We Gain from Pain We’ve all heard the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But is there any truth to this idea? This week, we explore the concept of post-traumatic growth with psychologist Eranda Jayawickreme. He finds that pain can have benefits ...
10.30.2023 Healing 2.0: Change Your Story, Change Your Life We all tell stories about ourselves, often without realizing we’re doing so. How we frame those stories can profoundly shape our lives. In the kickoff episode to our month-long series on healing, psychologist Jonathan Adler shares how to tell our ...
10.23.2023 The Enemies of Gratitude One of the mysteries of human behavior is that it’s often easier for us to focus on what’s going wrong than on what’s going right in our lives. Why is that? Psychologist Thomas Gilovich studies the barriers that prevent us ...
10.16.2023 Follow the Anomalies As we move through our lives, we have to make decisions both big and small. Some are banal: What will I eat for breakfast today? Should I drive or bike to work? Others are more complicated: How much should I ...
10.09.2023 How to Spot a Scam We like to think that con artists only prey upon the weak, or gullible. But psychologist Dan Simons says all of us can fall victim to scams, because the best scammers know how to take advantage of our biases and ...
10.02.2023 Escaping Perfectionism Perfectionism is everyone’s favorite flaw. It’s easy to assume that our push to be perfect is what leads to academic, athletic, and professional success. But psychologist Thomas Curran says perfectionism has a dark side, and that there are much healthier ...
09.25.2023 The Secret to Great Teams It's easy to think that the best teams are collections of highly accomplished or talented individuals, working under a skilled leader. But that's no guarantee of success. Psychologist Anita Woolley says the best teams are far more than the sum ...
09.18.2023 Outsmarting Yourself After we make a decision, we often tell ourselves a story about why our choice was the right one to make. It's a mental process that psychologist Elliot Aronson calls self-justification. These rationalizations can sometimes lead us to excuse bad ...
09.11.2023 How We Live With Contradictions Think about the last time you did something you knew was wrong. How did you explain your actions to yourself? All of us tell stories about why we do the things we do. We justify our failures, and come up ...
09.04.2023 Being Kind to Yourself How often do you say something negative to yourself that you'd never utter to someone else? Self-criticism can often feel like a way to hold ourselves accountable. But psychologist Kristin Neff says there’s a better path to personal growth: self-compassion. ...
08.28.2023 You 2.0: Make the Good Times Last Sorrows have a way of finding us, no matter how hard we try to avoid them. Joys, on the other hand, are often hard to notice and appreciate. This week, we continue our conversation with psychologist Fred Bryant about the ...
08.21.2023 You 2.0: Slow Down! It’s understandable that we sometimes dwell on things that upset us. But our negative emotions can keep us from savoring the good things in our lives. This week, we continue our You 2.0 series with psychologist Fred Bryant. We’ll discuss ...
08.14.2023 You 2.0: Your Future Is Now Have you ever set a goal and had a really difficult time sticking to it? Maybe you decide you want to save more money, or go to the gym more often. This week on the show, psychologist Hal Hershfield explains ...
08.07.2023 You 2.0: How to Break Out of a Rut There are times in life when the challenges we face feel insurmountable. Authors succumb to writer's block. Athletes and artists hit a plateau. People of a certain age fall into a midlife crisis. These are all different ways of saying: ...
07.31.2023 The Truth About Honesty Think about how often you hold back honest opinions of someone else because you don’t want to hurt their feelings. But there are times when this well-intended restraint can be a mistake. This week, in the second part of our ...
07.24.2023 Learning From Your Mistakes No matter who you are, it's guaranteed that at some point in life you'll make a mistake. Many of us find failures to be uncomfortable — so we try our best to ignore them and move on. But what if ...
07.17.2023 The Path to Enough This week, we bring you the second part of our conversation on the perils of too much pleasure. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke explains the neuroscience behind compulsive consumption, and how it alters our brains. She also shares techniques she’s learned from ...
07.10.2023 The Paradox of Pleasure All of us think we know what addiction looks like: it’s the compulsive consumption of drugs, alcohol, or nicotine. But psychiatrist Anna Lembke argues that this definition is far too narrow — and that a broader understanding of addiction might ...
07.03.2023 How Others See You It's not easy to know how we come across to others, especially when we're meeting people for the first time. Psychologist Erica Boothby says many of us underestimate how much other people actually like us. This week, we revisit one ...
06.26.2023 The Best Years of Your Life Aging isn’t just a biological process. Our outlooks and emotions also change as we age, often in ways that boost our well-being. Psychologist Laura Carstensen unpacks the science behind this surprising finding, and shares what all of us can learn ...
06.19.2023 When to Eat the Marshmallow Think about the last time you resisted watching yet another episode of your favorite TV show, or decided not to have a second piece of cake at a friend's birthday party. In many societies, self-discipline is seen as an invaluable ...
06.12.2023 Between Two Worlds Determination, hard work and sacrifice are core ingredients in the story of the American dream. But philosopher Jennifer Morton argues there is another, more painful requirement to getting ahead: a willingness to leave family and friends behind. This week, we ...
06.08.2023 Seeking Serenity: Part 2 In the second part of our series on the science of meditation, Richard Davidson continues his endeavor to unite seemingly opposite ways of understanding the mind. Plus, he shares the latest research on mindfulness, and the unexpected ways it can ...
06.05.2023 Seeking Serenity: Part 1 In graduate school, neuroscientist Richard Davidson learned to use scientific tools as a way to examine the brain. At the same time, he also started studying under master meditators — who deeply contemplated their internal and external lives. This week, ...
05.29.2023 Success 2.0: Getting to the Top and Staying There There are plenty of talented people in the world. So why do only a tiny percentage of us reach the highest peaks of achievement? This week, we conclude our "Success 2.0" series by talking with researcher Justin Berg about whether ...
05.22.2023 Success 2.0: The Psychology of Self-Doubt We all have times when we feel like a fraud. In the latest installment of our Success 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite 2021 conversation with psychologist Kevin Cokley. We'll explore the corrosive effects of self-doubt, and how we can ...
05.15.2023 Success 2.0: The Obstacles You Don't See Think about the last time you tried to bring up an idea at work, and it was shot down. What did you do? Most of us think the best way to win people over is to push harder. But organizational ...
05.14.2023 Introducing Hidden Brain+ Do you love the ideas we explore on Hidden Brain and want more of them? Then please join Hidden Brain+, our new podcast subscription. You’ll find new episodes not available anywhere else, plus the chance to have your questions answered ...
05.08.2023 Success 2.0: Getting What You Want We all rely on incentives to get people to do things they might otherwise avoid. Parents reward kids for doing their homework. Companies offer bonuses to their high-performing employees. Charities send gifts to their donors. In the second episode in ...
05.01.2023 Success 2.0: Taking the Leap American culture celebrates those who persevere in the face of adversity. So how do we know when to walk away from something that's not working? Today, we kick off our new "Success 2.0" series with economist John List. He says ...
04.24.2023 A Secret Source of Connection We all have moments in our lives when we see someone who could use a helping hand. It could be a friend who recently went through a breakup, an elderly person trying to load groceries into their car, or a ...
04.17.2023 Remember More, Forget Less It happens to the best of us — we blank on someone's name, or forget an important meeting, or bomb a test we thought we'd ace. Today on the show, we talk to cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham about the mysteries ...
04.10.2023 Crying Wolf It used to be that we tried our best to conceal disadvantages, hardships, and humiliations. But new research explores a curious shift: some people are flaunting limitations that don't exist. This week, we talk to psychologists Karl Aquino and Jillian ...
04.06.2023 The Snowball Effect Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? How do certain memes go viral? And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? Today on the show, we revisit a favorite 2021 conversation ...
04.03.2023 Less is More At every stage of life, there are moments when we need buy-in from other people. Yet most of us make a fundamental error when we try to persuade others to see things our way. This week, we talk with Niro ...
03.27.2023 How To Make Amends When James and Donovan first met, they knew little about each other, except that Donovan had stolen James' bike. Donovan got caught, and spent a month in jail. It was a story with a happy ending, as far as James ...
03.20.2023 Made of Honor Stories help us make sense of the world, and can even help us heal from trauma. They also shape our cultural narratives, for better and for worse. This week, we revisit a favorite 2021 conversation with psychologist Ryan Brown, who ...
03.14.2023 Revealing Your Unconscious: Part 2 In the second part of our series on implicit bias, we explore the relationship between beliefs and behaviors. We also talk with psychologist Mahzarin Banaji about whether research on implicit bias tells us more about groups than it does about ...
03.13.2023 Revealing Your Unconscious: Part 1 Would you consider yourself to be prejudiced against people who are different from you? Most of us would say no. But in the late 1990s, researchers created a test to measure biases that may be hidden from our conscious minds. ...
03.06.2023 How Your Beliefs Shape Reality As you move through the world, it's inevitable that your way of seeing things won't always align with the people around you. Maybe you disagree with the way your neighbor raises her kids, or find your brother's politics to be ...
02.27.2023 Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. This week, in the final installment of our ...
02.23.2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. What’s going on here? Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite ...
02.20.2023 Happiness 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains ...
02.13.2023 Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? This week, in the second installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Todd Kashdan ...
02.06.2023 Happiness 2.0: The Path to Contentment Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. ...
01.30.2023 When You Need It To Be True When we want something very badly, it can be hard to see warning signs that might be obvious to other people. This week, we revisit a favorite episode from 2021, bringing you two stories about how easy it can be ...
01.23.2023 Persuasion: Part 2 Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? This week, we continue our ...

Older episodes

Hidden Brain

What's Hidden Brain about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Hidden Brain episodes:

Healing 2.0: The Power of Apologies

Healing 2.0: Disrupting Death

Healing 2.0: Life After Loss

Healing 2.0: What We Gain from Pain

Healing 2.0: Change Your Story, Change Your Life

The Enemies of Gratitude

Follow the Anomalies

How to Spot a Scam

Escaping Perfectionism

The Secret to Great Teams

Outsmarting Yourself

How We Live With Contradictions

Being Kind to Yourself

You 2.0: Make the Good Times Last

You 2.0: Slow Down!

You 2.0: Your Future Is Now

You 2.0: How to Break Out of a Rut

The Truth About Honesty

Learning From Your Mistakes

The Path to Enough

The Paradox of Pleasure

How Others See You

The Best Years of Your Life

When to Eat the Marshmallow

Between Two Worlds

Seeking Serenity: Part 2

Seeking Serenity: Part 1

Success 2.0: Getting to the Top and Staying There

Success 2.0: The Psychology of Self-Doubt

Success 2.0: The Obstacles You Don't See

Introducing Hidden Brain+

Success 2.0: Getting What You Want

Success 2.0: Taking the Leap

A Secret Source of Connection

Remember More, Forget Less

Crying Wolf

The Snowball Effect

Less is More

How To Make Amends

Made of Honor

Revealing Your Unconscious: Part 2

Revealing Your Unconscious: Part 1

How Your Beliefs Shape Reality

Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button

Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy

Happiness 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose

Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through

Happiness 2.0: The Path to Contentment

When You Need It To Be True

Persuasion: Part 2

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