Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Recent episodes of Hidden Brain podcast can now be found at hiddenbrain.org. Hidden Brain helps curious people understand the world-– and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain's host Shankar Vedantam reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.

Laughter: The Best Medicine

Patty Ramge leans against her Ford Pinto in 1978. Since then, the car has become one of the most infamous vehicles in American history, known for a design that made it vulnerable in low-speed accidents. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive hide caption

The Halo Effect

Social psychologist Keith Payne says we have a bias toward comparing ourselves to people who have more than us, rather than those who have less Marcus Butt/Getty Images/Ikon Images hide caption

Why Nobody Feels Rich

Secret Friends

The Fee-for-Service Monster

Finding Meaning At Work: How We Shape And Think About Our Jobs

You 2.0: Empathy Gym

You 2.0: WOOP, WOOP!

A young Maya Shankar. Courtesy of Maya Shankar hide caption

You 2.0: Loss And Renewal

Derek Amato became a musical savant after a traumatic accident. Derek Amato hide caption

You 2.0: Fresh Starts

You 2.0: The Mind's Eye

You 2.0: Our Pursuit of Happiness

Edge Effect

In The Heat Of The Moment

July 20, 2020 • 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 it is not the book Shepherd intended to write. In her original drafts, Shepherd, a white author, created a Lyndie who was Vietnamese-American, and dealing with issues of race in the deep South. This week we look at what it means to be a storyteller in a time of caustic cultural debate and ask when, if ever, is it okay to tell a story that is not your own?

The Untold Story Of Lyndie B. Hawkins

Actors reading during the recording of an episode of the radio soap opera "Musekeweya" in Kigali, produced by the NGO Radio La Benevolencija. Twice a week, people all around Rwanda gather in groups to listen together. Stephanie Aglietti/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Romeo & Juliet In Rwanda

At seventeen years old, Fred Clay was sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit. Various flawed ideas in psychology were used to determine his guilt. Ken Richardson/Ken Richardson hide caption

The Night That Lasted A Lifetime

Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves, yet he also wrote that "all men are created equal." How did he square the contradictions between his values and his everyday life? ericfoltz/Getty Images hide caption

The Founding Contradiction

Economist Amir Sufi says debt plays a bigger role in recessions than we typically recognize. erhui1979/Getty Images hide caption

Buy, Borrow, Steal

The Mind Of The Village: Understanding Our Implicit Biases

Olutosin Oduwole at his home in New Jersey in 2016. Shankar Vedantam/NPR hide caption

A Rap on Trial

The Air We Breathe

Graduating High School During A Recession Could Be A Good Thing, Study Finds

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