Manoush Zomorodi is a journalist, podcast host and author. She was the host of the

WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that di ...

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

'' Note to Self'', which explores humans' relationship with technology through conversations with listeners and experts. In 2018, Zomorodi quit WNYC to start a media company, Stable Genius Productions, with her colleague Jen Poyant. The process of starting their company is documented in the podcast ''

ZigZag A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular. In geometry, this pattern is described as a ...

'', which is also their first production. As of March 2020, she is the host of NPR's

TED Radio Hour ''TED Radio Hour'' is a weekly, hour-long radio program and podcast, produced as a co-production between TED (conference) and National Public Radio. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and i ...

Early life

Zomorodi, who is of part Iranian descent, was born and raised in

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and studied English and Fine Arts at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

. She began her career as a reporter and producer at Thomson Reuters and BBC News. During this time, she lived in Berlin for two years. She is married to television reporter Josh Robin, with whom she has two children.

''Note to Self''

In September 2012, Zomorodi began hosting a new podcast at WNYC called ''New Tech City''. The name was changed in 2015 to ''Note to Self''. Zomorodi described the show as "the tech show about being Human". The podcast covered a range of topics ranging from

information overload Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, ...

and digital clutter, to

sexting Sexting is sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or videos, primarily between mobile phones. It may also include the use of a computer or any digital device. The term was first popularized early in the 21st ...

, and the eavesdropping capabilities of our gadgets. In 2017, Zomorodi teamed up with

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...

to launch "Breaking the Black Box", an investigation into

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

's collection of their users' personal data. This was followed by "The Privacy Paradox", a five-part podcast and audience engagement series that aimed to help Facebook users to take control of their own data. This project won a

Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...

in the Podcasts & Digital Audio category in 2018. It was named Best Tech Podcast of 2017 by the Academy of Podcasters.

Stable Genius Productions

In 2018, Zomorodi quit WNYC, along with Jen Poyant, Executive Producer for ''Note to Self''. The two of them started a media company called "Stable Genius Productions", a reference to a tweet by President Donald Trump. The first project by the new company was a documentary podcast ''

'', which documented the early days of the company itself. The podcast covers their attempts to obtain funding for their company, ideas for new projects, and candid discussions by both co-founders about the financial risk they were taking, and the effect of running the startup on their personal lives. The podcast is initially being broadcast as part of the previously established

Radiotopia Radiotopia is a podcast network founded by ''99% Invisible'' host Roman Mars and run by the Public Radio Exchange. The network is organized as a collective of some two dozen shows whose producers have complete artistic control over their work. P ...

network. After their initial funding fell through, Zomorodi and Poyant partnered with Civil, a marketplace that used

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

technology to distribute news. Civil also planned to sell 100 million digital coins of its own cryptocurrency to raise money to fund themselves and their partners. Civil shut down in 2020. At the end of 2019, Zomorodi and Poyant were attempting to reorganize their partnership with a limited amount of funding remaining. Zomorodi was named the host of the ''

'' in November 2019, and Poyant was planning on taking side projects on contract, but with

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

shutting down advertising funding in early 2020, Stable Genius Productions did not have the financial runway to continue producing the podcast as a partnership. Zomorodi will continue to hold onto Stable Genius Productions, LLC and is planning on releasing more content to the ZigZag Podcast.

Awards and recognition

Zomorodi has won numerous journalism awards including the New York Press Club Award for Journalism. She was also named Outstanding Host in 2014 by the Alliance of Women in Media. In 2018, she was listed as one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" by ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

''.

Other work

Zomorodi is the author of the books ''Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self'' and ''Camera Ready: How to Present Your Best Self and Ideas On Air and Online''. She also hosted the fourth and fifth seasons of the IRL Podcast from

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zomorodi, Manoush Living people American podcasters American women journalists Journalists from New Jersey American women writers American writers of Iranian descent Georgetown College (Georgetown University) alumni People from Princeton, New Jersey Year of birth missing (living people) American women podcasters 21st-century American women