Alix Spiegel
Alix Spiegel has worked on NPR's Science Desk for 10 years covering psychology and human behavior, and has reported on everything from what it's like to kill another person, to the psychology behind our use of function words like "and", "I", and "so." She began her career in 1995 as one of the founding producers of the public radio program This American Life. While there, Spiegel produced her first psychology story, which ultimately led to her focus on human behavior. It was a piece called 81 Words, and it examined the history behind the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
In January 2015, Spiegel joined forces with journalist Lulu Miller to co-host Invisibilia, a series from NPR about the unseen forces that control human behavior — our ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and thoughts. Invisibilia interweaves personal stories with fascinating psychological and brain science, in a way that ultimately makes you see your own life differently. Excerpts of the show are featured on the NPR News programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The program is also available as a podcast.
Over the course of her career in public radio, Spiegel has won many awards including a George Foster Peabody Award, a Livingston Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Spiegel graduated from Oberlin College. Her work on human behavior has also appeared in The New Yorker magazine and The New York Times.
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The tobacco industry played an influential role in the funding and popularization of stress research. A vast document archive details the relationships between cigarette makers and key scientists. -
After a suicide, family members are often devastated. Depression rates are much higher than when a loved one dies naturally. But Sandy Bem's family says her approach to suicide helped them mourn.
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What we think about food may change how our bodies respond to it. Sip what you think is a rich milkshake, and your body acts as if you've had a fatty treat, even if it's really a lower-calorie drink.
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We're all seduced by repetition, music research suggests — 90 percent of the music we listen to, we've heard before. Beyond music, this bias toward familiarity holds up in every culture. What gives?
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When 3,000 average citizens were asked to forecast global events, some consistently made predictions that turned out to be more accurate than those made with classified intelligence. -
Later this month, a Chicago based company called Fig will ship out a new product that it believes will help keep people motivated to meet their life goals. It's an alarm clock, but an unusual one.
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Only a rare few people have the ability to remember everything that happened in their lives. But that gift can seem like a curse, they say, keeping them marooned in the past and unable to enjoy the present. Forgetting, it seems, can be a good thing. -
For the most part in American culture, intellectual struggle in school children is seen as an indicator of weakness, while in Eastern cultures it is not only tolerated, it is often used to measure emotional strength. (This piece initially aired on Nov. 12, 2012 on Morning Edition.)
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A computer-simulated woman named Ellie is designed to talk to people who are struggling emotionally and take their measure — 30 times per second. Researchers hope their technology, which reads a person's body language and inflections, will yield diagnostic clues for clinical therapists. -
Psychologists have long known that children often model their behavior on the actions of parents or peers. But science has only recently begun to measure the influence of siblings. An older brother's or sister's behavior can be very contagious, it turns out — for good and for bad. -
Psychologists have used the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other tragedies to track the arc of recovery from incidents like the marathon bombing. Such tragedies make many people think about their own vulnerability. -
Since most of the faces we encounter are emotionally ambiguous, we're forced into interpretations. And in the case of troubled teens, the perception of hostile faces all around can lead to aggressive behavior. In an experiment, researchers tried to retrain the way those kids interpreted faces.
