Shankar Vedantam

How many ads have you encountered today? On this week's radio show, we discuss the insidiousness of advertising in American media.

This week we consider what we misunderstand about newspapers – from their long history of hype, to the hidden price we pay when they close.

We know our actions affect those around us. But how do we know whether our impact is positive? This week on Hidden Brain, what it means to do good in the world.

March Madness is here, and college basketball is in the spotlight. When it comes to making free throws, who is better: College players who would eventually go pro, or players who would never go pro?

Envy is one of the most unpleasant of all human emotions. This week, we explore an emotion that can inspire us to become better people — or to commit unspeakable acts.

New research finds that partisans agree with bumper sticker slogans — unless they are told that those slogans were made by a leader of the opposing party.

Increasingly, people feel they can master tasks simply by watching instructional videos like the kind you find on YouTube. But sometimes the gap between perception and reality can be deep and wide.

What happens when we connect with people whose view of the world is very different from our own? This week on Hidden Brain, we look at the links between diversity, conflict, and creativity.

Investigations of Russian influence on the 2016 election have tended to focus on the role of social media. Researchers are also exploring the psychological vulnerability that hackers exploited.

This week on the Hidden Brain radio show, we tell the stories of two people who defy gender stereotypes in their jobs.

A study shows that rating systems for online marketplaces are prone to inflation, because raters feel pressured to leave high scores.

The turn of the year is a time when we set the old aside and welcomed the new into our lives. When one chapter ends, another begins.

A study shows gift-givers and gift-recipients differ on ideas about best gifts. Whereas recipients prefer sentimental gifts, gift-givers tend to opt for presents that match the recipients' interests.

This week on the Hidden Brain radio show, we dig into the culture and psychology that determines the foods that make us salivate and the scents that make us squirm.

Hundreds of newspapers have closed across the country. The loss of local reporting means fewer investigations into fraud and waste. That has had an impact on the budgets of cities and towns.

This week we focus on the behavior of the youngest members of the human race. We try to translate the mysterious language of babies. And we ask, when should we step back and just let our children be?

Many schools give attendance awards to motivate students. A study found students who were awarded for perfect attendance went on to have more absences than their peers who weren't given the award.

The CDC estimated that 72,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2017. There are many reasons why the opioid crisis is so hard to confront. One of them is social stigma.

American politics can be nasty. Does that mean that it's broken?

If being liberal and conservative is about political views, how come the labels describe other things? A social scientist says some part of people's leanings come from an unlikely source: their DNA.