Shankar Vedantam

Shankar Vedantam pursued an undergraduate degree in electronics engineering in India before obtaining a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University. His career began in journalism, where he spent a decade as a reporter at The Washington Post from 2001 to 2011. During his time at the Post, from 2007 to 2009, he contributed a regular column titled “Department of Human Behavior.” Following his tenure there, he wrote an occasional column called “Hidden Brain” for Slate.

Between 2011 and 2020, Vedantam served as NPR’s social science correspondent. In 2017, he launched the “Hidden Brain” radio show, which is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations across the United States. In 2019, he founded Hidden Brain Media and became the host and creator of “Hidden Brain” podcast, which garners over three million downloads per week. His work on “Hidden Brain” has earned numerous accolades, including the Edward R. Murrow Award and honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Vedantam is also an accomplished author. In 2010, he published a non-fiction book titled “The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives,” which explores the impact of unconscious biases. He co-authored another book, “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain,” with Bill Mesler in 2021. His contributions to journalism and social science have been recognized through fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University (2009-2010), the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, and the World Health Organization Journalism Fellowship.