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Hidden Brain
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Hidden Brain
@HiddenBrain
Exploring the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior | Team: Host and Executive Editor Shankar Vedantam & Executive Producer @taranoelleboyle
- After learning she was a candidate for brain surgery, Rebecca Simonitsch boarded a flight home feeling overwhelmed and scared. The stranger beside her turned out to be exactly the person she needed.
- “The mask that I'm wearing at any given moment is not me.” For two decades, Eric Oliver has taught a university class designed to help students answer a big question: who are you? You’re not the same person with your friends as you are with your co-workers or your kids. So, who
- “ We are not nouns. We are verbs. There's no part of us...that's static.” For years, political scientist Eric Oliver searched for a deeper understanding of who he really was, through relationships, therapy, and personal achievement. Instead of finding one clear and consistent
- As a new mom, Missy Nicholson checked herself into a psychiatric ward for depression. During a group session, a fellow patient reached over and held her hand as she cried.
- We’ve all been there. You’re stuck on an impossible problem. Then you go for a walk or a drive or take a shower and —bam!—the solution comes to you in a flash of insight. Why does this happen? What are the mental mechanisms responsible for our most creative moments? This week,
- “There's something about the unconscious that can come up with something that is very pure, very beautiful.” You know those eureka moments, when an idea hits you like a bolt of lightning? Where do those ideas come from? This week, the science of inspiration.
- “At a certain point, you have this sudden flash of insight.” For centuries, people have described creativity as something mysterious—a light bulb moment, a whisper from the muse, a sudden epiphany that arrives out of nowhere. Psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis explores the hidden
- “If you look at the few centuries after these towns throughout Europe adopt a clock, you actually see an uptick in economic growth in the centuries after the clock arrives.” We like to think that our choices, habits, and behaviors are entirely our own. But our behaviors are
- Mike Lopes’ wife was dying after years of cancer treatment, and she could no longer recognize the people around her. Then her longtime chemotherapy nurse arrived.
- We like to think our choices, our thoughts, and our habits are entirely our own. But in reality, our individual choices are often echoes of centuries of cultural evolution. This week, a conversation with anthropologist @JoHenrich about how culture, history, and psychology
- “It's not that our brains have evolved to individually solve problems. What we're really good at is taking advantage of all the information stored in the minds around us, and the minds of others, and then we acquire that and we create new things.” Culture shapes how we see the
- “Empathy, at a deep level, is the understanding that someone else's world is just as real as yours.” Some people are good at putting themselves in another person’s shoes. Others may struggle to relate. But psychologist @zakijam argues that empathy isn’t a fixed trait. This week,
