Hidden Brain

Losing Alaska

We didn’t hear very much about climate change during this election cycle — and social science research might give us some insight as to why not. This week, an encore of one of our favorite episodes about why it’s so hard for us to wrap our heads around climate change.

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Men

A century after women won the vote in the US, we still see very few of them in leadership roles. Researchers say women are trapped in a catch-22 known as “the double bind.” Note: an early version of this episode incorrectly stated that Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American U.S. Senator. She was in fact the first female African-American Senator.

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The Perils of Power

We’ve all heard the old adage that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but psychologist Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley has found evidence to prove it. His book is The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence.

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Decide Already

This week, Harvard researcher Dan Gilbert tells us why we’re bad at predicting our future happiness, how that affects our decision making, and why we are actually happier after making a decision that feels irrevocable.

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Forgery

This week on Hidden Brain, we explore real and fake, from fine art to fine wine. Shankar speaks with Noah Charney, author of The Art of Forgery, about why art forgers are compelled to spend their lives copying the great masters, and why so many of them want to get caught. Also this week: why we love studies that prove wine connoisseurs wrong.

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Defeated

While everyone is focused on the Olympic winners in Rio, we’re zooming in on loss. We have the story of how a world-champion judo player reacted to a devastating defeat, plus a Stopwatch Science on how losing affects us all.

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