Shankar Vedantam is NPR’s longtime science correspondent and public radio listeners have got used to hearing his rapid-fire scientific stories squeezed into three- or four-minute segments. On his new podcast, The Hidden Brain, he is given more room to explore his chosen topics and the results make for fascinating listening.
Why you should listen
“The podcast is not going to be a substitute for what I do on NPR,” says Vedantam. The Hidden Brain will let the veteran science explorer go deep on topics that are of particular interest to him and, hopefully, his audience. “I have a set of interests that look at the world of the social sciences,” said Vedantam. “I’m happy to explore those interests in many forms, whether that’s on the radio or the podcast or at live events. To me, the medium is much less important than the content and the engagement, or relationship with the audience.”
To hear him describe it, Vedantam’s podcast had an almost spontaneous generation. “The fans who like the work I do on NPR really seem to like it a lot,” he says. “Over the years some have asked why there isn’t a podcast so they can get more than one story a week. This podcast was as much a decision that listeners made as a decision that NPR and I made.”
Still, Vedantam is pleased to have entered into the new enterprise. The podcast format gives them room to play – including introducing games to engage listeners. “It’s a way to talk about serious topics without necessarily taking ourselves seriously,” said Vedantam.
As in his NPR segments, on the podcast Vedantam makes complex scientific ideas understandable and even relatable. For example, in its debut episode, the show covered a phenomenon called “switchtracking”, which is what happens when two people think they are talking about the same thing, but are really on their own tracks – a show and a concept that surely left a few couples questioning conversational patterns in their own relationships.
Vedantam isn’t worried about getting too nerdy, though. “It’s a self-selected audience,” said Vedantam. “They’ve actively chosen to come to you so presumably they are going to have the same interests as the podcast, to let you go deeper and look at some of the nuances and the complexities.”
For Vedantam, the world is full of complexities. “I am really curious about why people behave the way they behave,” he says. For the always-on scientific reporter, that translates into making the world his laboratory: he’ll watch people at the grocery store to see what people buy or why they choose one product over another; when he’s sitting in traffic he’ll observe how people interact. “I’m constantly trying to make connections in my own mind between everyday behaviour and the world of the social sciences – psychology, sociology, economics – to try and understand why people do what they do,” said Vedantam.
That driving curiosity is evident in the first three episodes of The Hidden Brain, whether it’s exploring the relationship between student and teacher and its effect on education or telling the story of Annie Duke, a world-ranked poker player who “weaponised” the stereotypes about women and used them to her advantage at the World Poker Championships. For Vedantam, the goal is to make the science as engaging and as accessible as possible. “The idea of the podcast is to connect what people experience every day with scientific research, which will allow people to think about their own lives and the lives of people around them in sophisticated ways,” explained Vedantam.
The Hidden Brain isn’t merely trying to entertain its listeners: instead, it’s attempting to effectuate real change. “We’re trying to make connections between what people experience in their everyday lives and the world of rigorous scientific research,” says Vedantam. “The hope is that people will not just find that entertaining, but actually useful. It can change the way they communicate with their partner or their boss, park their car, or shop at the grocery store.” All that in just a 20-minute podcast.
Where to start: There are only three episodes. Start at the beginning.
Subscribe to The Hidden Brain on NPR.
