Downtime With: Manoush ZomorodiThe longtime tech and culture journalist on small changes that can make us feel like ourselves again. And why she won't tell you to stay away from screens.Note: Alisha is currently on maternity leave until the summer. In the meantime, Downtime is edited by Elise Hu. Our full weekly posts during this time are exclusively for paid subscribers. Upgrade here for full access and get 20% off your subscription. Thank you for your support! Manoush Zomorodi is a journalist, host, author and mom of two living in New York City. She is out with a fascinating new book, Body Electric, and writes musings at her Manoush Minutes Substack. You are probably familiar with her voice, as she is a vet of WNYC and has since 2020 hosted NPR’s TED Radio Hour (not to be confused with TED Talks Daily, which is the show I host). She is a trusted colleague and a friend. So I can personally attest that Manoush is indefatigable. Below, Manoush shares the secret to her high energy at midlife, shows us the “box” she works in each day, and offers recommendations for books that reflect on womanhood and our climate present. Manoush’s 3 Good Things
Downtime With: Manoush ZomorodiTalk to us about where you’re from and what you do? I grew up near Princeton, NJ with a Swiss mom and an Iranian dad who are both retired doctors. After spending a decade in Washington, D.C. and Berlin and London, I ended up in Brooklyn in 2002 and have been here ever since. I do a lot of things (make videos, podcasts, write etc) but essentially, I’m a journalist and have been for over 30 years (whoa, that’s crazy). Today, I host TED Radio Hour, write a Substack, and am in the midst of getting my latest book out into the world. Basically, I’ve got one foot in legacy media and the other in the more indie online arena. I love having a mix of both. How did you end up in the work that you do now? I had no idea what I wanted to do in college, but I thought I might like to work on documentaries, so I called the BBC’s news bureau in Washington, D.C. Lucky for me, the bureau chief picked up. He’d never heard of “interns” but agreed to let me come in and be one, after I explained it to him. I ended up working for the BBC for the next decade — first as a producer and later as a reporter. When my kids were born, I worked part time, first as a business reporter for Reuters TV and then as a consultant helping nonprofits learn to make their own journalism. In 2012, I started making a radio show for New York Public Radio that eventually became Note to Self, a podcast about technology for normal people, asking questions like Why do I feel so distracted? That’s where I started creating large-scale interactive projects with listeners. One of them, Bored and Brilliant, was about the value of boredom and mind-wandering and making sure you spend less time on your phone and more time just thinking. It became my first book and then a TED Talk about boredom, attention, and creativity. |