PART ONE
How do we make the big decisions in our lives? Who to vote for?—or who to choose as a life mate or form an opinion about politics or war? Most of us are certain we consciously evaluate these decisions. But, we may be fooling ourselves, if not fooled by others. Shankar Vedantam, author of “The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives,” encourages us to be aware of how our unconscious mind is capable of controlling our decision making capabilities. In this, the first of two visits with Shankar Vedantam, we explore the unconscious mind, how we rely upon it and how it is capable of manipulation by advertising media and our anecdotal experiences. I visited with Shankar Vedantam by phone from his home in Massachusetts on May 17, 2010, and began by asking him to describe the “hidden brain.” Shankar Vedantam is a national correspondent and columnist for The Washington Post and 2009-10 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
The book Shankar Vedantam recommends is “A House For Mr. Biswas” by V.S.Naipaul.
