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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Futurist Ray Kurzweil was early to forecast AI would turbocharge human potential. At 77, he shares lessons from 60 years of working on AI, and what to expect in the coming decade. -
When fame left him feeling empty, singer-songwriter Mike Posner set out to look for happiness. His plan: walk across America. What he didn't plan for: a venomous snake. -
At an early age, Tavares Strachan noticed there was a lot missing from his family's encyclopedia. Today, the artist searches for lost stories to include in his own Encyclopedia of Invisibility. -
Louisiana has two problems: an eroding coastline and limited glass recycling. Engineer Franziska Trautmann is solving both by turning bottles into beach sand. -
In communist Poland, the radio gave Agnieszka Pilat's family hope. Now, as an artist and techno-optimist, she hopes her portraits of robots and machines will change minds about the future of tech. -
Author Pico Iyer has traveled the world, but he finds his greatest escape in a monastery a few hours from his childhood home. He shares why he finds so much peace in silence and how you can too. -
Pioneering and controversial psychologist Philip Zimbardo passed away in 2024. In this remembrance, we revisit his talk on how our sense of time plays a powerful role in shaping our outlook on life. -
Cognitive neuroscientist Irena Arslanova says our brain perceives time but our body shapes how we experience it. She shares how our heartbeat influences whether we experience time moving fast or slow. -
Most U.S. cities are designed for cars. But one Arizona community has been designed to be completely car-free. Urban planner Jeff Speck says all cities can build more walkability into their designs. -
Social norms vary dramatically from one culture to another — but why? Psychologist Michele Gelfand unpacks why societies and individuals develop either tight or loose attitudes toward rules.
