I'm Shankar Vedantam, and this is hidden brain.
One of the great things about science is that it can change the way we see the world.
Today, we have an episode from March 2017 that I still think about all the time.
It's a story that will change the way you think about many things.
Poverty, loneliness, time, even hunger.
It's a tale about the psychological phenomenon of scarcity.
It affects nearly everything in our lives and connects people who appear to have nothing in common.
The story of scarcity is a story of how not having enough of what you need can become the only thing that matters to you.
That, I think, is the basic scarcity instinct.
We're hungry.
And then this thing starts going off in the head, saying, do you realize we're hungry?
Have I mentioned we're hungry?
We're hungry.
The scarcity trap.
This week on hit and brain.
My name is Brandi Drew.
I'm from Detroit, Michigan.
Brandy Drew has a story that may sound familiar to you, a story of poverty and debt.
It's the kind of story that may lead people to quick conclusions, so pay attention to your own.
Brandi is now 37.