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.
-
Invisibilia co-host Alix Spiegel introduces us to a young man whose sights were set far beyond the Syrian orphanage in which he spent part of his childhood.
-
Suddenly aware of repetitive feedback loops in his life, Max Hawkins created apps that decided where he should go, what strangers' parties he should attend, even how he should spend Christmas. -
When anthropologist Renato Rosaldo went to live with a Philippine tribe that was known for beheading people, he couldn't grasp the emotion that fueled this violence. Then his wife suddenly died. -
NPR's Alix Spiegel, co-host of the podcast and program Invisibilia, tells the story of a robbery that was halted when a woman decided to respond to the threat in an unexpected way — with kindness. -
Kim was an accomplished doctor with plenty of friends. But a few pulses from an electromagnet to her brain at age 54 made her reconsider how she sees herself — and the world. -
NPR's Invisibilia podcast tells the story of a woman who participated in an experiment that gave her a whole new frame of reference and allowed her to see the world in a different way.
-
A man committed a horrible crime. Then he decided he no longer wanted to be a bad person. It is possible to change our personalities, psychologists say, even though we like to think they're innate. -
When McDonald's came to the Soviet Union in 1990, it insisted that workers smile. That didn't come easy. But customers grew to like it — and workers did, too. What happens when you change a norm? -
Jason Comely was terrified of being rejected. The only cure, he figured, was to get rejected on purpose, once a day. It started to hurt less and less. And then it actually started to become fun. -
The latest episode of NPR's Invisibilia takes us online. Some people think interacting with these machines is changing us all — for better and worse.
