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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.

  • Can A Computer Change The Essence Of Who You Are?
    Lulu Miller
    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.
  • Think of human relationships as entanglements. How do they bind you; how do they reveal who you really are?
    By Impersonating Her Mom, A Comedian Grows Closer To Her
    Alix Spiegel
    Human relationships are entanglements, and those connections often aren't clear to us at all. When Maria Bamford impersonated her mom, she realized what she loved about her — and about herself.
  • By Making A Game Out Of Rejection, A Man Conquers Fear
    Alix Spiegel
    Jason Comely's fear of rejection was so strong that he'd become completely isolated. So he set out to get himself rejected at least once a day, every day. Funny thing is, it worked.
  • Why Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning Differently
    Alix Spiegel
    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.)
  • Ellie (right) is a computer simulation designed to engage real people, like the woman on the left, in meaningful conversation and take their measure. The computer system looks for subtle patterns in body language and vocal inflections that might be clues to underlying depression or other emotional distress.
    If Your Shrink Is A Bot, How Do You Respond?
    Alix Spiegel
    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.
  • Samantha Grimaldo was born with a rare disorder, Perisylvian syndrome, and has never been able to speak.
    New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade
    Alix Spiegel
    For those who rely on technology to speak, there are a limited number of voices. "Perfect Paul" sounds robotic, and "Heather" can seem too old for some. Now, a researcher is using sound samples from people who have never been able to speak to create new, personalized voices for them.
  • Notice anything unusual about this lung scan? Harvard researchers found that 83 percent of radiologists didn't notice the gorilla in the top right portion of this image.
    Why Even Radiologists Can Miss A Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight
    Alix Spiegel
    An attention researcher wanted to find out how radiologists would fare in a version of the famous Invisible Gorilla study. He found that 83 percent of the radiologists failed to spot an image of a gorilla on slides they were told to inspect for cancer. It's just one example of how, when people are asked to perform a challenging task, their attention can narrow and blocks things out.
  • Teachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. But they can be trained to change those classroom behaviors.
    Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform
    Alix Spiegel
    Teachers' expectations about their students' abilities affect classroom interactions in myriad ways that can impact student performance. Students expected to succeed, for example, get more time to answer questions and more specific feedback. But training aimed at changing teaching behavior can also help change expectations.
  • Research shows that under certain circumstances, we can train ourselves to forget details about particular memories.
    Can We Learn To Forget Our Memories?
    Alix Spiegel
    Our capacity to forget is as important, and certainly as interesting, as our ability to remember. But can we train ourselves to suppress certain memories, or the meaning we attach to life events?
  • Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control
    Alix Spiegel
    Play has radically changed — and not for the better, some researchers say. So, at one school in New Jersey, preschoolers are asked to fill out paperwork before they pick up their Play-Doh. The idea isn't to take the fun out of play, but to get kids to think in advance about what they're doing and how they'll do it.
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