Andrew ChadwickĪndrew is a long-time audio professional with a heavy focus on radio he’s worked in AM, FM, and XM, but most of his time has been spent in public radio. Autumn started her career in radio at her local NPR member station, Montana Public Radio, and then went on to work in NYC as a producer for Rough Translation, Planet Money and The Indicator. Autumn BarnesĪutumn Barnes ( is technically an associate producer at Hidden Brain, but she wears many hats: contributing to the show as a researcher, writer, fact-checker and tech-support. She has reported for The Boston Globe, and began her career in public radio at WBUR in Boston. Previously, Tara spent a decade at WAMU, the NPR station in Washington, D.C. She also provides strategic support to Shankar in the development of new projects for Hidden Brain Media. Tara oversees the production of both the Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, providing editorial support to host Shankar Vedantam and the shows’ producers. Tara Boyle ( is executive producer of the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show, and the head of content for Hidden Brain Media.

Shankar is the winner of several journalism awards and was a 2009-2010 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2010, he published The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives. Between 20, he authored the weekly Department of Human Behavior column in The Washington Post. Before that, he was a national correspondent at The Washington Post. From 2011 to 2020, he was a social science correspondent with NPR.

Shankar Vedantam ( founded Hidden Brain Media in 2019, and is the host and executive editor of the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show. In 2019, we launched Hidden Brain Media to allow us to connect more deeply with our audience and to experiment with new ways of telling Hidden Brain stories across a range of different platforms. Our radio show, which debuted in 2017, is heard on more than 400 public radio stations across the country. Shankar and NPR launched the podcast in 2015, and it now receives millions of downloads per week, and is regularly listed as one of the top 20 podcasts in the world. Our exploration of these ideas can be heard every week on the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show. By drawing a simple line between mental activities we are aware of and mental activities we are not aware of, the “hidden brain” subsumes many concepts in wide circulation: the unconscious, the subconscious, the implicit. The “hidden brain,” in other words, is a metaphor, much like the “selfish gene.” Just as there are no strands of DNA that shout, “Me first!” no part of the human brain is disguised under sunglasses and fedora. Some deal with social dynamics and relationships. Some aspects of the hidden brain have to do with mental shortcuts or heuristics others are related to errors in the way memory and attention work. What, exactly, is the “hidden brain”? This is a term Shankar created to describe a range of influences that manipulate us without our awareness. In 2010, he published a book further exploring these topics and introducing the idea of “the hidden brain.” Our host and Executive Editor Shankar Vedantam has been reporting on human behavior and social science research for more than 25 years. Hidden Brain Media is an independent production company that aims to help curious people understand the world, and themselves.

Hidden brain maya shankar