Manoush Zomorodi
Manoush Zomorodi is the host of TED Radio Hour. She is a journalist, podcaster and media entrepreneur, and her work reflects her passion for investigating how technology and business are transforming humanity.
Zomorodi is a co-founder of Stable Genius Productions and is the co-host and co-creator of ZigZag, the business podcast about being human. She also created, hosted, and was managing editor of the podcast Note to Self in partnership with WNYC Studios, which was named Best Tech Podcast of 2017 by The Academy of Podcasters.
Prior to her time at WNYC, Zomorodi reported and produced around the world for BBC News and Thomson Reuters, including a few years in Berlin.
She was named one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2018 and has received numerous awards for her work, including The Gracie for Best Radio Host in 2014 and 2018. Her book "Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Creative Self" (2017, St. Martin's Press) and her TED Talk are guides to surviving information overload and the "Attention Economy."
Zomorodi received a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in English and fine arts. She is half-Persian and half-Swiss but was born in New York City, where she lives with her family.
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In 2016, Peter McIndoe started a farcical conspiracy theory called Birds Aren't Real—gaining a following of Gen Z adherents. He reflects on what the fake movement reveals about belief and belonging.
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We all experience it: the desire to do something mischievous just for the sake of it. Psychologist Paul Bloom invites us to see the clever, creative and beautiful side of our desire to be bad.
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As a teenager, Maya Shankar planned to be a concert violinist. When an injury put her sense of self into question, Shankar began a lifelong mission to learn how the brain processes life's disruptions.
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Based on her work for a CIA task force aimed at predicting civil wars, political scientist Barbara F. Walter examines the rise in extremism and threats to democracies around the globe and at home.
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Democracy is being challenged around the world. Political scientist Yascha Mounk says that to fight for democracy, we need to take a hard look at why so many nations are electing populist leaders. -
At 16, Jose Antonio Vargas learned he was living in the U.S. illegally. As an adult, Vargas came out as undocumented and dedicated his career to broadening the idea of who belongs in America.
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In five years, Uruguay transformed its grid. Now 98% of its energy comes from renewables. Former national director of energy, Ramón Méndez Galain, recounts his country's path and how to replicate it.
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Following a devastating accident, a 22-year-old Ramona Pierson spent 18 months in a coma. She awoke unsure if she'd ever recover. But she did, in an unexpected safe haven — a group home for seniors.
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Writer Pico Iyer has crisscrossed the globe looking for paradise and different cultures' notions of it. Amid conflict and difficulty, he asks if it can ever be found.
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Paradise is a real place, and for many, the California town was utopia--until the fire. We hear from residents and wildfire expert George Whitesides, who says a safer wildfire season is possible.
