Shankar Vedantam

At one time or another, many of us feel stuck: in the wrong job, the wrong relationship, the wrong city – the wrong life. Psychologists and self-help gurus have all kinds of advice for us when we feel rudderless. This week on Hidden Brain, we conclude our You 2.0 series with a favorite episode exploring a new idea from an unlikely source: Silicon Valley.

Many of us have heard that we should think positively and visualize ourselves achieving our goals. But researcher Gabriele Oettingen finds this isn’t actually the best advice. Instead, she says, we should use her strategy — which she calls WOOP.

Many of us spend lots of time and energy trying to get organized. We tell our kids to clean their rooms, and our politicians to clean up Washington. But economist Tim Harford says maybe we should embrace the chaos. This week, as part of our You 2.0 series, we bring you our November 2016 conversation with Harford.

Will we one day create machines that are essentially just like us? People have been wrestling with that question since the advent of robotics. But maybe we’re missing another, even more intriguing question: what can robots teach us about ourselves? We ponder that question with Kate Darling of the MIT Media Lab in a special taping at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Pundits and prognosticators make predictions all the time: about everything from elections, to sports, to global affairs. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore why they’re often wrong, and how we can all do it better.

In a five year period from 2011 to 2016, just twelve percent of terrorist attacks in the United States were perpetrated by Muslims. More than fifty percent, on the other hand, were carried out by Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, or other far right groups. So why do Americans spend so much time worrying about “radical Islamic terrorism?” This week on Hidden Brain, we look at how the media over-covers some acts of terrorism — and quickly forgets others. We also look at some of the psychological reasons we have a hard time putting the threat of terrorism in perspective.

After a police-involved shooting, there’s often a familiar blame game: Maybe the cop was racist. Maybe the person who was shot really was threatening. Or maybe, the bias that leads cops to shoot affects us all. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how unconscious bias can infect a culture — and how a police shooting may say as much about a community as it does about individuals.

In the early 1980s, a couple of researchers wrote an article in The Atlantic that would have far-reaching consequences. The article introduced a new idea about crime and policing. It was called Broken Windows. The idea was simple: A broken window is a sign of a neglected community, and a neglected community is a place where crime can thrive. The researchers said, if police fixed the small problems that created visible signs of disorder, the big ones would disappear. Today, we explore how ideas sometimes get away from those who invented them… and then are taken to places that were never intended.

This week on Hidden Brain: coincidences. Why they’re not quite as magical as they seem, and the reasons we can’t help but search for meaning in them anyway.

Have you ever googled something that you would never dream of saying out loud to another human being? Many of us turn to Google when we have a deeply personal or embarrassing question. And we’re often more honest when we type our questions into search engines than when we answer surveys or talk to friends. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a former data scientist at Google, says our online searches provide unprecedented insight into what we truly think, want, and do. This week on Hidden Brain, what big data knows about our deepest thoughts and secrets.