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Hidden Brain Podcast Transcripts

Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam · 712 episodes with transcripts

Why do I feel stuck? How can I become more creative? What can I do to improve my relationships? If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, you’re not alone. On Hidden Brain, we help you understand your own mind — and the minds of the people around you.

Spoken has transcripts of 712 Hidden Brain episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from October 19, 2026.

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archive.sh
curl -s -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  https://spoken.md/podcasts/1028908750/episodes \
  | jq -r '.episodes[] | "\(.id) \(.title)"' \
  | while IFS=' ' read -r id title; do
      slug=$(echo "$title" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -cs 'a-z0-9' '-' | sed 's/-*$//')
      [ -f "${id}-${slug}.md" ] && continue
      curl -sf -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
        -o "${id}-${slug}.md" \
        https://spoken.md/transcripts/$id || rm -f "${id}-${slug}.md"
      sleep 0.34
    done

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Latest Hidden Brain transcripts

Do You Have Trouble Sleeping?

October 19, 2026

Shankar Vedantam (0:00)

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Across the world, many countries are experiencing a sleep crisis. In the United States, 50 to 70 million Americans have sleep disorders. In India, almost 60% of adults get less than 6 hours of sleep every night.

Sleep deprivation can make us groggy and irritable. Chronic sleep deprivation can rewire our brains and wear down our bodies. It can change how we parent, how we work with others, even what we value.

SPEAKER_2 (1:39)

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Shankar Vedantam (2:38)

We all know that sleep matters, and we all know what happens when we miss a night of sleep.

At the University of Washington, sleep researcher Chris Barnes has studied what happens when the need for rest and the need to work collide. He says the consequences of not getting enough sleep extend far beyond what most of us imagine. Chris Barnes, welcome to Hidden Brain.

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