Maya Shankar is a
cognitive scientist and the host and executive producer of the podcast, ''A Slight Change of Plans''.
Career
Podcast: A Slight Change of Plans
''A Slight Change of Plans'' was first published in 2021 by
Pushkin Industries
Pushkin Industries is an American publisher of podcasts and audiobooks. It was co-founded in 2018 by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. As of 2021, it hosts over 25 podcasts.
History
The company was co-founded in 2018 by Malcolm Gladwell and Jac ...
, the media company co-founded by
Malcolm Gladwell and
Jakob Weisberg.
''A Slight Change of Plans'' explores what happens after a person experiences a life-changing event. It’s inspired by Shankar’s experience as a young classical violinist, training at Juilliard, whose career was cut short by an injury. “My whole childhood revolved around the violin, but that changed in a moment when I injured my hand playing a single note,” said Shankar. “I was forced to try and figure out who I was, and who I could be, without it.”
On the show, Shankar interviews people who have lived through different kinds of big changes — accidents, deaths, kidnappings — to understand how they navigated the waters ahead. The show emphasizes the universality of human psychology to help listeners feel less alone with their own choices. Shankar explains: “Cognitive science teaches us that the strategies we use to navigate those changes can be quite similar. Which is heartening to realize!”
''A Slight Change of Plans'' was named the Apple Podcast of the Year in 2021.
In 2023, it won the Ambie Award for Best Personal Growth Podcast. In 2022, Shankar earned a Webby nomination for Best Podcast Host.
Career in behavioral science
Shankar served as a senior advisor in the
Obama White House
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican n ...
, where she founded the White House
Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, which was formalized by Executive Order 13707 in 2015. Her work at the White House was profiled by ''
The New Yorker'' in 2017.
Shankar also served as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the
United Nations.
She is a Director at Google.
Early career as a musician
Shankar is a graduate of the pre-college program at the
Juilliard School, where she was a private violin student of
Itzhak Perlman
Itzhak Perlman ( he, יצחק פרלמן; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist widely considered one of the greatest violinists in the world. Perlman has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that hav ...
.
When she was a teenager, she injured a tendon in her left hand, bringing her musical career to an end.
Education
Shankar earned her B.A. from
Yale University in
cognitive science and went on to earn her Ph.D. from the
University of Oxford on a
Rhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
. In 2013, Shankar completed her postdoctoral fellowship in
cognitive neuroscience at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. She attended high school at the
Juilliard School PreCollege program.
Personal life
Maya Shankar is the daughter of
Ramamurti Shankar
Ramamurti Shankar (born April 28, 1947) is the Josiah Willard Gibbs professor of Physics at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Education
He received his B. Tech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, I ...
, Indian theoretical particle physicist and a professor at Yale University.
In her Meditative Story, ''The Joy of Being An Unwilling Traveler Through Life'', she describes her father's influence on her and the insights he shared to ease her lifelong anxiety.
References
External links
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Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Alumni of the University of Oxford
Organization founders
Yale University alumni
Nudge theory
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