Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.
472 episodes transcribedThink 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 tha...
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt that people wrote you off? Maybe a teacher suggested you weren't talented enough to take a certain cl...
Why is it so hard to guess where we're meant to be? To predict where we'll end up? Nearly all of us have had the experience of traveling down one road...
If you're a parent or a teacher, you've probably wondered how to balance play and safety for the kids in your care. You don't want to put children in...
We've all had those days when all we want is a little treat. Maybe it's a bag of chips, an ice cream sundae or a glass of wine. But sometimes, these d...
Anthropologist Tom Pearson was devastated after his daughter Michaela was diagnosed with Down syndrome. When he began to examine that emotional respon...
If you've ever taken an economics class, you were probably taught that people are rational. But about 50 years ago, the psychologists Daniel Kahneman...
Have you ever sat across from your spouse, colleague or friend and realized that while they may be hearing what you're saying, they aren't actually li...
A little more than a decade ago, researchers began tracking an alarming trend: a dramatic uptick in anxiety and depression among young Americans. Psyc...
Over the past few weeks, we've been exploring the psychology of partisanship, and how to effectively handle disagreements with those around us. This w...
We typically divide the country into two distinct groups: Democrats and Republicans. But what if the real political divide in our country isn’t betwee...
Conflicts are inevitable — both at a global scale and in our personal lives. This week, in the latest in our US 2.0 series, psychologist Peter Coleman...
There's a saying that's attributed to the Dalai Lama: in the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher. It's a nice idea, but in reality,...
The United States, we’re told, is increasingly a house divided. Conservatives and progressives are so alienated from each other that conversation is v...
We rely on our memory to understand the world. But what if our memories aren't true? This week, we talk to psychologist Elizabeth Loftus about the mal...
We spend more and more of our lives staring at screens. Our cellphones, smartwatches and laptops allow us to communicate instantly with people across...
Most of us feel that our emotions are reactions to those outside of us. Someone cuts us off in traffic, and we say that the other driver made us upset...
When we're learning, or trying new things, mistakes are inevitable. Some of these mistakes provide us with valuable information, while others are just...
Humans have wrestled with questions about identity and purpose for millennia. So it’s no surprise that the insights of people who lived hundreds or ev...
