Exploring the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior | Team: Host and Executive Editor Shankar Vedantam & Executive Producer @taranoelleboyle
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This is what makes a hollow thing look solid. It hides how weak it really is.
Governments are just one example. A workplace, a friendship, a marriage can appear harmonious, while under the surface there are major fault lines.
East Germany looked like one of the most loyal, unified nations on earth. Right up until the Berlin Wall came down.
The moment it did, almost no one would admit they'd ever supported the Communist regime. 🧵
For decades, everyone performed the same belief. Anyone who spoke against the system was crushed.
So each person kept quiet, sure they were the only one who had doubts.
Why is lasting happiness so difficult to achieve? Psychologist George Loewenstein explores the forces within our own minds that can undermine our well-being. He explains why satisfaction fades so quickly, while negative emotions can distort the way we see our lives. He also offers ways to better understand these forces and lessen their power over us. open.spotify.com/episode/1qy…
All through the month of October, we’re bringing you some of the stories that have deeply resonated with us over the past five years.
This week: Four years after his mother's death, Brad returned to the Manhattan diner where he'd last seen her and found unexpected comfort in a group of strangers.
hiddenbrain.org/unsunghero/p…
You know the fantasy: Quit the job. Move somewhere new. Finally become the person you were always meant to be.
We're all sure that a radical change will fix whatever feels wrong. A Stanford professor says that belief is a trap. 🧵
A few months in, they wake up in the new place and slowly realize they are still exactly who they were, carrying the same restlessness and the same questions they thought they'd left behind.
We all make ourselves the same promise: once I get the house, once I land the job, once the number in the bank is finally big enough, then I'll be happy.
But then we finally grab the brass ring we'd been reaching for — and we're still not happy.
A Stanford professor named Dave Evans calls this the "all will be well" fallacy. 🧵
That mindset keeps you moving. Just get the next thing, you tell yourself, and everything will click into place.
But then you do so, and there is no perfect life waiting on the other side.
We often imagine that the enemies of happiness lie outside us — in our circumstances, our setbacks, the difficult people in our lives. But many of the forces that erode happiness come from within.
This week, psychologist George Loewenstein on why our emotions work against us, nudging us toward the negative even when we want to feel happy.
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A scientist felt her heart pound and her cheeks flush on a first date. She figured it meant she liked the guy.
An hour later, the same pounding heart meant something else entirely. She was coming down with the flu. 🧵
Your brain is sealed inside your skull, in total darkness. All it gets are raw signals from your body: a racing heart, a tight chest, a knot in your gut.
It doesn't have direct access to what caused these reactions. So it does the only thing it can. It makes its best guess, and that guess becomes what you feel.