Shankar Vedantam

Journalism career

Vedantam was a participant in the 2002-2003 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, the 2003-2004 World Health Organization Journalism Fellowship, and the 2005 Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion. He was a 2009-2010 Nieman Fellow. He worked at The Washington Post from 2001 to 2011, writing its "Department of Human Behavior" column from 2007 to 2009. He then wrote an occasional column called "Hidden Brain" for Slate (magazine). He joined NPR in 2011. Since September 2015, he has hosted the NPR social sciences podcast "Hidden Brain", where he "reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships."

He has lectured at Harvard University and Columbia University, served on the advisory board of the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowships in Science & Religion, and been a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Literary career

Vedantam has written plays, fiction and nonfiction. His comedy Tom, Dick and Harriet was produced by the Brick Playhouse in Philadelphia in 2004, and his collection of short stories, The Ghosts of Kashmir, was published in 2005. His nonfiction book, The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives, was published in 2010.

Awards and honors

Vedantam has been honored by awards from the American Public Health Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the South Asian Journalists Association.

Works