Shankar Vedantam

Shankar Vedantam is the host of Hidden Brain on National Public Radio (NPR) and is NPR’s social science correspondent. His reporting focuses on human behavior, the social sciences, and how research in those fields can get listeners to think about the news in unusual and interesting ways.

Before joining NPR in 2011, Vedantam spent 10 years as a reporter at the Washington Post. He was also a columnist from 2007 to 2009, and wrote the “Department of Human Behavior” column for the Post.

Throughout his career, Vedantam has been recognized with many journalism honors, including awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, the South Asian Journalists Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, and the American Public Health Association.

In 2009–10, Vedantam served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He participated in the 2005 Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion, the 2003–04 World Health Organization Journalism Fellowship, and the 2002–03 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship.

He is the author of The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.

Vedantam holds a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University.