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Parth Shah

Stories

  • caption: Envy is a useful tool for social comparison. But sometimes, it can lead us to wicked places.

    Feeding the Green-Eyed Monster: What Happens When Envy Turns Ugly

    Envy is one of the most unpleasant of all human emotions. It also turns out to be one of the most difficult for researchers to study. And yet, there's mounting evidence that envy is a powerful motivator. This week, we explore an emotion that can inspire us to become better people — or to commit unspeakable acts.

  • caption: Stephanie Rinka in her beach wheelchair at Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, North Carolina.
    Health

    The Ventilator: Life, Death And The Choices We Make At The End

    Many of us believe we know how we'd choose to die. We have a sense of how we'd respond to a diagnosis of an incurable illness. This week, we have the story of one family's decades-long conversation about dying. What they found is that the people we are when death is far in the distance may not be the people we become when death is near.

  • caption: Anthropologist David Graeber says there's a perverse logic that has allowed pointless jobs to proliferate in many workplaces.
    Health

    BS Jobs: How Meaningless Work Wears Us Down

    Have you ever had a job where you had to stop and ask yourself: what am I doing here? If I quit tomorrow, would anyone even notice? This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit our 2018 conversation with anthropologist David Graeber about the rise of what he calls "bullsh*t jobs," and how these positions affect the people who hold them.

  • First few days with a newborn. So tiny!
    Science

    Baby Talk: Decoding The Secret Language Of Babies

    Babies are speaking to us all the time, but most of us have no clue what they're saying. To researchers, though, the babbling of babies is knowable, predictable, and best of all, teachable to us non-experts. This week, we revisit our May 2018 primer on how to decipher the secret language of babies and young children.

  • Empathy
    Science

    You 2.0: The Empathy Gym

    Some people are good at putting themselves in another person's shoes. Others may struggle to relate. But psychologist Jamil Zaki argues that empathy isn't a fixed trait. This week: how to exercise our empathetic muscles. It's the first episode in our You 2.0 summer series.

  • In this Jan. 23, 2018 photo, Leah Hill, a behavioral health fellow with the Baltimore City Health Department, displays a sample of Narcan nasal spray in Baltimore. Public health officials say the drug is a critical tool in addressing America's opioid epidemic. (AP Photo/Patrick Sema
    Health

    Life, Death And The Lazarus Drug: Confronting America's Opioid Crisis

    More than 70,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2017 — many of them from heroin and other opioids. One of the most widely-used tools to confront this crisis is a drug called naloxone. It can reverse an opioid overdose within seconds, and has been hailed by first responders and public health researchers. But in 2018, two economists released a study that suggested naloxone might be leading some users to engage in riskier behavior — and causing more deaths than it saves. This week, we talk with researchers, drug users, and families about the mental calculus of opioid use, and why there's still so much we're struggling to understand about addiction. This episode originally aired in October 2018.