Manoush Zomorodi speaks with Debbie Millman about reclaiming simple, intentional movement and moments of boredom as essential to restoring creativity, focus, health, and a sense of humanity.
Manoush Zomorodi is an award-winning journalist, author, and host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour whose work explores how technology shapes our minds, bodies, attention, and sense of humanity. She joins Debbie Millman live at the launch of her newest book, Body Electric, which examines the physical and psychological consequences of our increasingly screen-centered lives.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Somebody told me the other day, they’re like, “Yeah, did you know that we didn’t used to talk about being in nature until the Industrial Revolution came along because we were always in nature.” I was like, “That’s kind of like how we have to talk about movement.” Did we ever say like, “Did you move your body today in 1750?” Probably not. Everyone was moving their bodies, but that is where we are today.
Curtis Fox:
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, the conversation with journalist Manoush Zomorodi about why it’s so important to move your body in the age of screens.
Manoush Zomorodi:
To me, there is nothing that a short boring walk can’t fix.
Curtis Fox:
Manoush Zomorodi is a journalist, author, and longtime audio storyteller whose work explores how technology is reshaping our minds, our bodies, our attention, and our sense of what it means to be human. She is the host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and over the course of her career has created and hosted podcasts including New Tech City, Note to Self, ZigZag, IRL, and the acclaimed NPR series, Body Electric.
Her book, Bored and Brilliant, began as a public experiment with listeners and became a widely resonant investigation into boredom, creativity, and the power of reclaiming our attention.
Her brand new book, Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and the New Science to Reclaim Your Wellbeing, extends that inquiry from the mind into the body, asking what our screen-filled chair-bound lives are doing to our health and how small, science-backed changes can help us feel more alive. Debbie recently interviewed Manoush at her book launch at PNT Knitwear in New York City in front of a live audience.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Can we just… Can I say something?
Debbie Millman:
Of course.
Manoush Zomorodi:
You guys, huge bucket list moment going on Debbie’s podcast means you’ve fucking made it.
Audience:
Whoo.
Whoo.
Manoush Zomorodi:
So it’s also therapy-free. You have to do it publicly.
Debbie Millman:
All right. Manoush, is it true that Bridget Jones’ Diary is your favorite book?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, it was. There was a moment where I thought I was Bridget Jones. Please don’t think less of me. It was the ’90s, and there was a lot of trying to be a journalist, and I worked for the BBC, and I smoked cigarettes and went out a lot, and maybe tried reducing at times. And yes, there was a hot minute. Again, this is a terrible way to start this conversation, Debbie. We’ve set the floor down here. We can only go up, I suppose.
Debbie Millman:
I actually was really impressed. I love Bridget Jones.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, all right there. Okay.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Manoush Zomorodi:
No, I totally love that book. It was… I still really feel like I-
Debbie Millman:
I mean, Bridget Jones’s Baby didn’t really need that one, but…
Manoush Zomorodi:
I didn’t see it.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Oh, you’re missing a movie.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Okay.
Debbie Millman:
Okay. Here we go. Manoush, you’re half Persian and half Swiss. First-generation New Jersey-born daughter.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Born in New York.
Debbie Millman:
New York, New York?
Manoush Zomorodi:
New York, New York.
Debbie Millman:
All right. Well, you were raised in New Jersey.
Manoush Zomorodi:
That is so true.
Debbie Millman:
Daughter of psychiatrists working in private practice and academia. What did those early layers of identity teach you about belonging, observation, and moving between worlds?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Where’s my sister? Okay, there she is. So thanks for starting an argument that we’ll probably go. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually, because I do listen to your show, and I have thought, “How do I make sense of this?” I think we had a very unusual upbringing in that we were not part of a church or even any kind of community. So there was no sense of hierarchy or that certain people could do certain things.
My parents came to the United States because they were each going to do a year at a hospital, and that’s where they met. And then she didn’t want to move to Tehran, and he didn’t want to move to Geneva, so they ended up in New York as you do. And I think they’re both kind of black sheep in their families. So when they settled in New Jersey, in the wilds of New Jersey, I think there was a sense that you just do your work and you go to school and you do your things, and there was not any sense of the homeland. Both of them are not nostalgic people.
They’re not religious, they’re not political. And so in some ways, that was hard because we didn’t have a community. We had to make our own way. But on the other hand, I think it gave us a freedom that, like, “Well, you can do whatever you want. Just figure it out.” So I’m grateful to them in some ways for that, but it’s also been very… I realize it’s very unusual.
Debbie Millman:
I understand that when you were in the fourth grade, you wanted to be an actress.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Who doesn’t in the fourth grade, right? Yeah. No, I felt special on stage. It was fun.
Debbie Millman:
What kind of theater were you doing back then?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, I played the Wicked Witch. I played… Well, I played all the old mean characters, which were my favorite because then you get the best roles. You get to be evil, you get to treat people terribly, you get to pretend you’re old. It was really a delight.
Debbie Millman:
And then in high school, you were on the varsity ice hockey team, but you said that it wasn’t because you were any good.
Manoush Zomorodi:
No, I sucked.
Debbie Millman:
How did you make the varsity team?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, so I went to a prep school that this was the first year that they had any girls at the school, so they had to populate all of the athletic teams. So if you could skate, you were on the varsity ice hockey team. I sat on the bench the entire time, but I could skate, just not in an aggressive way at all. I was like, “Take the puck, dude. It’s fine. I don’t really care.”
Debbie Millman:
So evil on the stage, but not on the ice.
Manoush Zomorodi:
No, not on the ice. No.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve written about how you were a diligent student in high school and did well, but that you didn’t realize that you needed to manage up and manage your teachers in order to get A’s instead of B pluses and minuses.
Manoush Zomorodi:
God, when did I say that?
Debbie Millman:
I can give you the footnote.
Manoush Zomorodi:
No, no, it’s all good. No, it’s all good.
Debbie Millman:
So I was wondering what you meant by managing up your teachers.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Okay. I do know what this means. I will never forget at graduation where I was talking to one of my teachers who was all pally-pally with another one of the students. I was like, “She’s friends with all of you. Why is that?” And she said, the teacher said to me, “Oh, she talks to us just like we’re normal adults.” And I was like, “Oh.”
So in some ways, the deference that my parents had taught me to those who are elders, those who are senior, those who are teaching you didn’t count in the United States. In fact, I think it almost was a mark against you. And if you could hang, that gave you access in a way that I had to learn by watching people.
It is not something that was seen as acceptable by my parents who very much you do things a certain way, and the teacher’s always right. And I learned a lot because this was a person who didn’t have great grades, but boy, could she hang, and she got into a lot of places because of that. And there was an ease that she had that I was like, “Oh, okay. Stop trying to be right and do the right thing and respectful.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. So her personality really pushed her forward?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah, definitely.
Debbie Millman:
You attended Georgetown University. You studied English and fine arts. At that point, you had given up your aspirations to be an actress?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes. Yes.
Debbie Millman:
What did you think you wanted to do professionally at that point?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I had no idea. It was the ’90s. Again, back to Bridget Jones, I… something. I like to read, and I like to draw, so that’s what I did. I mean, how privilege does that sound in this day and age, but that’s kind of what it was. I went to college and tried to just learn. I really liked observing people.
It took me a while to find my people, though. I thought college was… When I got there, it felt like very much the same of the prep school that I’d gone to. There were a lot of people wearing baseball hats, and I was like, “Oh no, not this again.” So I thought I was going to leave. I applied to transfer, and then I ended up staying, and it just took me longer to find those people.
Debbie Millman:
In an interview with CNN, you were asked what advice you would give to your 18-year-old self, and-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, god.
Debbie Millman:
… you stated, “Take an economics class.”
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, yeah. Yes.
Debbie Millman:
Why that particular advice?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I mean, everything is economics, Debbie. Let’s face it. Planet Money is on the bestseller list. I think, honestly, as we have seen over… since I was 18, the last 30 years, if there’s anything that has shaped our lives and the way we work and the way we live, it’s capitalism and basic economic concepts, I think, are something, and also how to handle your personal finances. Those are the macro and micro should be the two things that every student has to learn. I still stand by that.
Debbie Millman:
Do you regret having a major in fine arts and English?
Manoush Zomorodi:
What’s the point of regrets, Debbie?
Debbie Millman:
Well, I mean, if we had to redo it, would you? I often think if I had the chops, the intellectual chops, I would’ve loved to have been a scientist, but I don’t really understand physics. That’s a problem.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. No, me neither. Totally. That’s a really interesting question. I mean, I like to… I did a whole semester on one poem. That just seems so indulgent and yet kind of delicious.
Debbie Millman:
I have a-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Who get to do that? Nobody.
Debbie Millman:
My major is English. My minor was Russian literature.
Manoush Zomorodi:
There you go.
Debbie Millman:
I have a college degree in reading.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes. And we are really good at it, Debbie. We are really good at reading.
Debbie Millman:
Clearly. After-
Manoush Zomorodi:
It’s about thinking, right. That’s all those things-
Debbie Millman:
Well…
Manoush Zomorodi:
… were to me. To me, the art was like looking at something and seeing it a different way, and then the reading thing was like trying to read between the lines, and it’s sometimes a little too much, I think. But…
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I mean, in an effort to understand my guests, I try to envision why they did certain things. So I was thinking about, “Well, why did Manoush do that?” And I was thinking, “Well, English teaches you to follow argument, metaphor, structure, and voice. Fine arts teaches you to look closely, notice composition, material, negative space.” And that’s sort of the way you tell stories.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Exactly. Correct, Debbie. That was why I [inaudible 00:11:31]-
Debbie Millman:
I wrote that, and I thought I just nailed her right there. That was… That’s Manoush.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Totally.
Debbie Millman:
After graduating from Georgetown, you began your career as a reporter and a producer. You worked early on for Reuters and BBC News. And some of your… This really surprised me in finding this about you. Your early assignments included flying into Belgrade in a rickety ex Soviet military jet with a forged visa, carrying a bulletproof vest across borders, training for kidnapping situations, and learning to decode warning signs from Guerrilla fighters. Give us some background here.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Okay. So I have to explain how. I ended up working for the BBC for a decade, and the way it started was I literally… there was still such a thing as the white pages. I looked up BBC. I called the Bureau. The Bureau chief happened to pick up the phone, and I was like, “Hey, I want to be an intern.” He was like, “Cool, what’s that?” And I was like, “I come and work for you for free.” He’s like, “Sounds good. Can you come Monday?” I was like, “Yes, I will.” I mean, it was that simple, and I was lucky that I didn’t need to be paid. And then every time I was like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.”
They were like, “Well, you could stay here.” And that went on for 10 years. And I think part of what… Why did I call the BCC? Because I thought I was going to be a documentary filmmaker. I was like, “That sounds cool.” But this was a news organization, and that was actually really interesting because it was the best people watching, just the drama that was going on behind the hard-charging correspondence, and they were all British and all the producers were American, and there was this weird sort of semi-class warfare going on in the office itself. And then the editor was crazy. She could go off at any moment. The whole thing was fascinating.
And then, occasionally, they would all look at me, and I would do something for them, and then they would look away. So the whole… And then it just sort of kept going like this to the point where I just was part of the furniture, and they kept offering me jobs, and I kept doing them, and I was cheerful, and I asked a lot of questions, and I was curious, and I never wanted anything, and that’s very I think British not to be too thrusting as they say. And so I ended up being a journalist, and I… then they started sending me to all these weird places, and I just worked really hard.
And every time I went somewhere, I was like, “Whoa, we have just been put into the strangest subculture.” Whether that was like farmers out in Iowa, story about Monsanto, or going to Serbia and the Civil War about to happen. Every time I went somewhere, it was the same thing that I’d seen happening in the Bureau, that there was this sort of microcosm of life, and all the ways that people talk to each other fascinated me. And I would also add, oh, this goes back to English and-
Debbie Millman:
Fine Arts.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes. At the time, this was really, I think, the golden age of broadcast television. Every piece that we made was beautiful. The cameramen were amazing. They were artistes, and they paid so much attention to the audio. And I was a bimedial producer, which meant that I also made radio pieces, and there was a real sense of storytelling and letting the audio or the video tell the story as much as the writing. It was like a collage. So I really appreciated the artistry of the journalism, and that was fascinating to me as well.
Debbie Millman:
What does training for kidnapping situations entail?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh. Well, so that meant we lived in a mansion out in the English countryside, and literally one day, we’re learning how to drive Jeeps in case we need to be stuck in the Alps or whatever, and they threw bags over our heads, put us in the back of a Jeep, and then drove off, and then put us on the ground and pretend-
Debbie Millman:
Did you know it was a simulation?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I knew it was going to happen at some point. They don’t tell you when it’s going to happen. They have since changed the rules around this. I don’t think they can do this like they used to. For the longest time, I had a scar across my nose because the day that we left from the training, my friend and I, a car backfired, and she threw me to the ground, and her engagement ring ripped across my nose, and she said to me, “You know what I learned? I learned I’m never doing this.” And she quit the next week and became a florist.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Debbie Millman:
Well, what did that early experience teach you about fear, and what did it teach you about your own composure under pressure?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I was down. I never actually saw any of that because 9/11 happened. So I moved back from Berlin, and that was its own… New York was its own sort of war torn place and a different kind of war torn place. And then after that, I was like, “I don’t want to do this breaking news thing anymore.”
So I never went to Iraq or Afghanistan. And when they would send me into places, I went into the Balkans and Israel, and peace would break out. I literally was the dove of peace. I would show up, and everything… suddenly things would be fine. So clearly that was a mistake dropping out, because they could have used me in the Middle East, but-
Debbie Millman:
Can you imagine?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
You’d be like going all over the world at this point.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I know. Hormuz. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
In 1996, you were the youngest producer in the BBC News Bureau in Washington, DC, and you were the only person in the office using the one computer-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
… connected to the internet, and you described it almost like having a secret reporting power.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Nobody knew what to do with the computer.
Debbie Millman:
So what did it feel like before it became ordinary for you to have this secret power?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, I didn’t really know what I was doing either, but I was like, “All right, let’s see what’s going on over there.” And I would just find sources. On chat rooms, I would be like, “Oh, this is an easy way to book people.”
I don’t know who they are, but I’d be like… they’d be like, “We need a real American.” And suddenly I would be able to find one, a real American, without having to hit the phones. And then the internet came to everyone, and my superpower was gone, but I was on fire for the six months that no one else knew how to use the computer.
Debbie Millman:
But what did those first online searches teach you about the sort of intimacy and reach of digital life? That’s something that’s actually been a through line for all of your work now.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, so true, Debbie. That intimacy was exactly like what I was seeing in the Bureau that people were talking to each other, and you could drop into these subcultures, which is what I really loved doing. So it was… it felt like you were eavesdropping on the world, essentially. It was great, delightful. It was what the internet was meant to be.
Debbie Millman:
At what point did technology stop being something you used as a journalist and became something you wanted to investigate as a journalist?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah, it was really clear to me. It was… So I like to say that my son and the iPhone were born three weeks apart in 2007, June 2007. And I didn’t get an iPhone to start because I was like, “I don’t know, whatever. I had a baby.” But when I got it, I was bewildered. I was like, “This is crazy. I can be in multiple places at the same time. I can be standing here in the playground, but also checking what time the library opens and taking a call and checking my email. This is wacky.”
And my brain couldn’t hack it, but the problems came later. At the time, I was like, “This is extraordinary. I can be a parent, and I can have a job, and I can check in on my parents.” And again, I felt superpowers once again. It really was fascinating to me, but then I also started to wonder, like, “Well, with every good thing, there’s a shadow side.” But that didn’t become apparent, I think, for a little while.
Debbie Millman:
Well, even with all of your early adoption of the internet, you’ve written about how, because you didn’t get a master’s degree, you felt slightly behind in the digital space, and you used that as an opportunity to, in your words, skill up, and you wrote a multimedia ebook to force yourself to understand publishing.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Deep cut, Debbie, deep cut. Yeah. Well, so there was this moment. It was 2012, I think.
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I was like, “Well.” I had two kids. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t work in breaking news because I had two kids. And so I was like, “Well, what am I going to do? I guess you can do anything now because of the internet.” So I started to think, “Oh, more people are doing video. I know how to do video. I know how to coach people to do video. Maybe I should try to write a book like that.”
But then I wanted to integrate multimedia into it. It just felt like to me I wasn’t going to go back to school, but I could learn by making something, and I still think that’s the best way to learn. Just make it yourself. So I recorded videos, and I made a vook. Anybody heard of a vook?
No. Okay. Publishing people on the front are all like, “Yes, it wasn’t good. So I made one of those and self-published it before that was even a thing. And I mean, it didn’t really go anywhere, but boy did I learn a lot about writing for short form, integrating video, how you publish it, ways of marketing it. It really did give me a master’s degree.
Debbie Millman:
And you self-funded this entire venture.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, it didn’t cost me very much, I mean, at all.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, but it still took you a year to do.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes, that’s true.
Debbie Millman:
That’s quite a commitment.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
So it was called Camera Ready: How to Present Your Best Self and Ideas On Air or Online. You built the website, you did your own social media marketing. What did you learn in the process of doing this?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I liked being a little mini media entrepreneur. It was fun to put it all together. It wasn’t that different from anything else I’d done, just smaller platform. It was collage again, text, and visuals and audio. And it just… I liked building these worlds where, like, “Come and enter my world and we’ll learn something together.”
And I really did… I mean, he was a dear friend of ours, Ian Hardy, he said… 20 years ago, he said to me, he was like, “Everyone is going to be on video all the time.” And I was like, “Really?” He’s like, “Really?” So I was like, “Okay, well, this is a good skill to have then. So I know how to do that.” I think I was 10 years early, though, with that book, actually.
Debbie Millman:
I think it shows quite a lot of your being able to see things before people actually see them, and I think that’s one of your superpowers.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Or just listen to the people who do see it, I think. Nobody’s listening to them, but I’m listening.
Debbie Millman:
One of my favorite things that I found out about you was this. After you published Camera Ready, you said that you developed both self-confidence and an ability to not care what people thought.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, that was because I had two small children. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Was that really the reason?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, that’s really the reason. I didn’t sleep for a few years there, and you will be surprised at how little you give a shit at what anybody thinks when you have not slept, except perimenopause has helped that I didn’t think there was any shits left to give, but now the last one is gone as well with that.
Debbie Millman:
So that’s sustained itself through all these decades.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes, it’s beautiful. It’s like that filter-
Debbie Millman:
That’s the superpower. That’s-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
… the superpower.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, and you see that at every stage, good girl deferring upwards, doing the right thing, and I defer to you, older white man who actually doesn’t know the hell you’re talking about in our history class, but you’re the boss, right. And every time through each one, you learn more, you feel more confident, you give fewer shits, and then you’re like a whole human. It’s amazing.
Debbie Millman:
The book opened up several new opportunities for you, and you started to do a very short tech report for WNYC News and this coincided with the growth of podcasts and then they offered you the opportunity to run your own podcast, and be you in the process, which was a real change for you.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah, that was weird. So I went out for lunch with a friend, Charlie Herman, who was a news editor at WNYC, and he’s like, “So what should we be doing in our business coverage?” I was like, “Dude, the tech economy, it’s taking over New York City. You should be reporting on that.” He’s like, “Well, I don’t have any reporters, so why don’t you report on that?” I was like, “Ugh, fine.” So like-
Debbie Millman:
What a burden.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I know. The non-chill… The things that I really care about, if you… It’s the Buddhist thing, right. If you grasp too hard, it slips out of your grasp. But if you’re just like, okay, then things… you’re your real self. And so I went, and it was super fun. I got to… It’s hard to imagine, but in 2012, this was new. Google didn’t have offices here. It was a whole thing.
But what happened with podcasting was they were ahead of the curve. Well, you know what was going on then, and they were like, “Yeah, the difference with podcasting is that it’s more intimate, like you’re talking directly to people. So talk about the things that you find interesting as a parent.” And so when I started talking like myself, that changed everything. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Your first major technology show, New Tech City, began in WNYC in 2012, before smartphones had fully colonized every corner of our lives, and New Tech City was not simply a gadget show. It was already asking about how technology was changing behavior, work, attention, relationships. What was the original idea for the show? How did you come to bring this to life?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. No, it really was like tech economy. It was a business show, like what is happening as we change from financial services to looking more at tech, which sounds ridiculous now because everything is financial services and tech all baked in together. But at the time, it felt like, oh, digital, the digital vertical, and which sounds ridiculous, but that was the original idea. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
When New Tech City became Note to Self, the title shifted from a citywide technology beat to something that was much more intimate, almost like a private memo. What changed in the show’s ambition when the name changed?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. So what really changed it was Bored and Brilliant, the first engagement project that I did. So that was my own sort of feeling, like every time I had a spare moment, like times when I would have just been thinking about my life, I was now looking at this thing, and I was being productive, allegedly. I could check the headlines, I could text my husband, I could check the weather, and I just started to wonder what was happening in those moments before I was looking at my phone. I was like, “I guess I was bored. Was I bored? What is boredom?”
Literally, I was like, “So if we’re never bored, is that bad?” That was the question I had. And then that sort of kicked me off like, “Well, everybody must be feeling this weird thing.” So I came up with this scheme to explain what boredom was neurologically and recruit people. There was no research, zero research on how smartphones and being online all the time was affecting our cognitive ability at that point, because research takes time, right. And this was happening fast. We were experimenting on ourselves. There were no answers. So, WNYC, to their credit, they were like, “Cool, do it.”
So we put out the call. I was like, “Do people want to try to get bored for a week?” And I found this app. This guy named Kevin had made an app for his wife to see how many times a day she checked her phone. So I called Kevin and was like, “Kevin, can you white-label this for our project?” And he was like, “Sure.” I mean, ridiculous. And then so we had 22,000 people sign up for this thing who wanted to get bored and were willing to track their data and report back on this whole thing, and it was wild. And mind wandering was actually becoming a hot research topic at that point, which is kind of interesting.
So just understanding what happens in the brain and explaining to people the default mode and how that’s actually related to original thinking and problem solving, and something called autobiographical planning, understanding the story of your own life. These are things that happen when you use boredom as a window to what they call positive constructive daydreaming. There was something about creating a community around that idea and giving everyone permission to do it together, even if it wasn’t IRL, that seemed to get people super excited.
And we had challenges every day, like try to be off your… keep your phone off your body today, or don’t take a photo for one day. And it wasn’t about judgment or shaming people. It was just like, see what it’s like. This is the world we live in. See what it’s like to change it. And I was astounded at the response that we got, but in the end, we only… people only shaved off six minutes on average, which I was like, “Oh, well, we failed.”
Debbie Millman:
Well, what does that say about our addictive relationship with the device?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I’ve changed my mind on that. I think it’s more about being intentional when you are on it. At the time, I was like, “We failed.” And the behavioral scientists were like, “Do you know how hard it is to change people’s behavior? You tried to do it in five days.” I was like, “Okay, fair.” But I now think that what we did it was when people went on, they were present, and they decided how they were going to use that time as opposed to being passive with it.
I think that is actually… was really powerful in and of itself. And to me, I was like, “Well, people are clearly craving this.” So that was sort of my signature was these big engagement projects. And we went on to do another one the next year about information overload. 30,000 people did that. We decided to do one about privacy, which I was like, “No one’s going to sign up for this.” 45,000 people signed up for that one. Just…
Debbie Millman:
What do you think the reason is that so many people are so curious about these behaviors that they sign on to do these projects with you?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I mean, at that point, no one was talking about any of this, or if they were, it felt very obscure. It felt like it was like only in like the tech… The Verge, maybe, was covering it, but it wasn’t mainstream to talk about how focus, attention, privacy in a sort of philosophical and a data way. That felt very new at the time, but there were people who were observing themselves and thinking like, “This is weird. I don’t quite understand it.”
And we weren’t treating it as a tech thing. We were like, “We would give you the history and the biology and talk to designing elements and ask you to be part of finding the answers because we don’t know. So you help us.” The citizen science thing, I think people like… they want, especially public radio people, they want to figure it out with you. They’re excited to be part of the solution, and they’re very generous with their time and with their feedback.
Debbie Millman:
How are you feeling about how people feel about boredom now?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, wow. It’s crazy. Again, 10 years early. I was too early. Boredom’s having like a crazy moment right now. Finally. Yeah. Gen Z is all about getting bored. Whenever I post anything about boredom, it does the best. And I’m like, “Where were you in 2017?”
Debbie Millman:
They were 10.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah, they were 10. They were 10. Exactly. It’s amazing. It’s like, yeah. So this will just keep happening that boredom will keep reasserting itself. But I love that boredom is now good. Isn’t that amazing? When I was a kid, it was like only boring people get bored.
Debbie Millman:
Or angry people. People that-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh.
Debbie Millman:
… are bored or angry.
Manoush Zomorodi:
They’re angry?
Debbie Millman:
That’s what I had always heard.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, really?
Debbie Millman:
That they can’t find-
Manoush Zomorodi:
That’s because you grew up in New York City.
Debbie Millman:
They can’t find something to do. They’re bored. They’re angry.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh.
Debbie Millman:
They’re cut off.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh.
Debbie Millman:
But do you think that people… Okay, maybe Gen Z is more attuned to the upside of boredom, to the potential that boredom can bring you. How do you think most other people view boredom still? I think so many people still see busy as a badge. They don’t want to be in a position where they are having to really think deeply about the choices that they make, which is what happens when you’re bored. How did you get to this place where you’re bored and then suddenly the world drops out from under you?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. I mean, I think we feel very uncomfortable with feeling uncomfortable, and that’s a big bummer. As much as I accept that rising rates of anxiety and depression and all of those things and absolutely believe those are real, I do think we have run the risk of diagnosing things that are just human feeling sad and uncomfortable and bummed out.
And finding your way back from that feeling is a skill that every person needs to develop. And if you are self-soothing with screens, which is, I think, what a lot of us do, we run the risk of not developing those abilities in ourselves. And we hear that from a lot of parents, but I think parents also should look at themselves [inaudible 00:34:09]-
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, of course. They’re socializing that behavior. In November 2019, NPR and TED announced that you would be succeeding Guy Raz as host of the TED Radio Hour. Your first episodes as host began airing in March of 2020.
Manoush Zomorodi:
March 13th, the day that the city shut down, was my first episode. Like anyone gave a crap about my first episode. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I mean, we were spending a lot more time listening to the radio, listening to podcasts, watching TV. I personally watched all 10 seasons of Columbo.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Wow, Debbie.
Debbie Millman:
I know. Roxane had never seen it. My wife had never seen the show.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I’ve never seen the show.
Debbie Millman:
Oh.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Okay.
Debbie Millman:
There you go.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Josh, get that one on the list.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. So…
Manoush Zomorodi:
No, the first episode was titled Reinvention. Yeah. They’d been very smart. They were like, “We want you to come on six months early, and we’re just going to bank a lot of episodes.” And every episode we had made made no sense after March 13th at all. So I was like, “Shit.”
Debbie Millman:
So what did you do?
Manoush Zomorodi:
We turned and burned, pivoted. We did best of with curators. What brings you joy? A whole episode talking about the TED Talks that bring you the most joy. We attempted to really get into vaccine, the cultural and history of vaccines. We just went, went, went. We just tried, tried, tried. And it was exhausting. But everyone… we all, everyone, it just felt so minimal compared to everything else that was going on. “Poor me. I need to fix my podcast.” [inaudible 00:35:55]-
Debbie Millman:
I was going to stop. I was actually going to stop because-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Were you?
Debbie Millman:
… at the time I was only doing episodes face to face.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, wow.
Debbie Millman:
Up until that point, till 2020 for 15 years, I’d only done shows face-to-face.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Whoa, that’s a big change.
Debbie Millman:
And I hightailed it to California to be with Roxane. And we had just gotten engaged, and I was going to take a break because we thought it was going to be like two weeks.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
And then I’ll come back. And then Curtis, my producer, was like, “I think maybe it’s going to be longer.” And then I had-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Maybe just-
Debbie Millman:
… to learn-
Manoush Zomorodi:
… just a little longer.
Debbie Millman:
… Zoom and Canva through… Canvas through school, and it was very challenging [inaudible 00:36:34]-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
But one of the things that I read that I thought was so interesting when you began, you said you understood that the format would still be built around TED Talks and conversations around speakers, but you wanted to make the organizing idea feel more like a thesis than just a theme and stated that you were looking forward to bringing in your own perspective as a woman, a mother and a child of immigrants and wanted to act as a proxy for listeners ideally voicing the question in their minds just as it arose.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Wow, that’s a real… Who did I think I was? My God, that is… that’s crazy.
Debbie Millman:
What are you talking about? I was like, “Wow, check. She did it.”
Manoush Zomorodi:
You know what? I think I was annoyed that like… So Guy Raz and I go way back. Should we just have some… air some tea here, or whatever it is? So I-
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, everybody come closer.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah, right.
Debbie Millman:
Come.
Manoush Zomorodi:
So I knew him when we were both in Berlin, and he was the hotshot young reporter, and I was a producer, and it felt like everywhere I went, Guy was just a little ahead of me. Do you know what I mean? Those people. And then I had kids, and then I was really set back from like that crop of men.
And this says more about the chip on my own shoulder than really anything, but it was that NPR voice of authority that I was exhausted by. I felt like dudes could say whatever they wanted, and everyone assumed they were right. And the minute I said the same thing, everyone was like, “Oh, that’s nice, but she’s not Leonard Lopate.” Do you know what I mean?
Debbie Millman:
Mm-hmm. I do.
Manoush Zomorodi:
And it annoyed me. And so I was like, “Fuck it. I’m doing it my way.” And I was totally wrong about the first part, though, the thesis running the way through the episode. This is very in the weeds. But very quickly, what happened was people wanted to listen to shorter things, and media became more niche, and really having a thesis, people didn’t want to listen to 52. That’s asking a lot from them. And so that was the wrong direction to go. In fact, we should have split the show apart at that point and made shorter, smaller things.
Debbie Millman:
Across New Tech City, Note to Self, some of your other podcasts, ZigZag, IRL, and the TED Radio Hour, your work keeps returning, I think, to a central question. How do we remain human inside systems that are changing faster than we are?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
And it often turns private discomfort into public inquiry. You do these wonderful projects where you bring in people to help understand something that we’re grappling with. So digital distraction becomes Bored and Brilliant. Bodily depletion inspired your brand new book. How do you recognize when something you’re personally struggling with is also a cultural story?
Manoush Zomorodi:
It’s this weird… Like this sounds kooky, but there’s this weird feeling I get super uncomfortable. I’m like, “Oh, shit. Shit, I’m uncomfortable. Everybody else is probably really uncomfortable, too. This is not good.” And then you’re like, “Do you feel this way?” And then you do, you’re like, “Yes, the PS32 moms, do you guys feel this way?”
And they’re like, “Yes.” Or… And then you start to look on social media, “Oh, people are talking about this. Well, this isn’t good. We need to figure this out.” And then I don’t know the answer, though, but I know how to go find the answer. I think that’s what I’m good at and make it interesting for other people to want to find the answer too.
Debbie Millman:
Well, let’s talk about some of the answers that you’ve found and discovered and written about in your beautiful new book, Body Electric.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yay.
Debbie Millman:
You first… Yes, let’s give her a hand… round of applause. So you first encountered a Body of Research by Dr. Keith Diaz from his Columbia University research through the journalist, Allison Aubrey. And at the time, the world was just emerging from the pandemic. Can you share the main thesis of Dr. Diaz’s research and why you found it so intriguing?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, Keith is here, so he might take issue with the way that I describe it. Please say hi to Keith, everybody. He’s amazing.
Debbie Millman:
Hi, Keith.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I was walking my dog, and I heard Allison on Morning Edition talking about this new piece of research that we know that working out in the morning isn’t enough in terms of our health, and standing desks, sadly, are not the answer. And this guy at Columbia had figured out that five minutes of movement every half hour largely offset the harms of us sitting on our asses and looking at our screens all day. And I was like, “What? That’s it? How is that possible that that’s it?”
Debbie Millman:
Were you skeptical as a journalist? Were you like, “How is this?”
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, no, because it was so obvious in some ways. I was like… You know you’re like, “Oh, of course that’s it. We just have to move.” But really, it seemed like it made sense to me. And that was the thing that I had been wrestling with. I was like, “Why am I so freaking tired all the time? I don’t understand. I’m sitting on my laptop doing nothing but looking at my laptop. Why can I not move except to get to the couch? I could not figure out the problem.”
And then this guy’s like, “This fixes the actual health, the medical side effects in terms of hypertension and raised glucose levels and high blood pressure and all those things.” And so I was like, “Well, maybe those must… I guess they’re related. I don’t know.” I hadn’t really thought about it, right. So I called him or emailed you, I can’t remember, and I was like, “This is amazing and really? And do you think people can do it?”
And Keith is a total pragmatist. He was like, “I actually don’t think anybody can do this.” And I was like, “Oh, but it’s so easy.” And he said, “Well, come up and try it out for yourself.” So I went up to his lab and… Well, first for a week I wore multiple things to measure my step count, my glucose, all the things. And then I went up to his lab, which I thought was going to be filled with people in white coats and everyone’s on treadmills.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I have this vision of mice in little cages.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. No. Uh-uh.
Debbie Millman:
White glove.
Manoush Zomorodi:
No.
Debbie Millman:
Plastic gloves.
Manoush Zomorodi:
They were just like, “Oh, hey, come on in.” And then they put me in an office that looked like an office, and I was like, “What’s it?” So I sat at a desk for eight hours and had a normal day on my laptop, but they also measured all my vitals and my mood and ability to concentrate. And I got a couple of breaks. I got to go to the bathroom. I had lunch. I was exhausted when I got on the subway as per usual. And then I came back another day, and they had me walk for five minutes at two miles per hour, not a New Yorker strut, just stroll for five minutes every half hour and I’m a relatively healthy person. And he came back. I was like, “So you probably didn’t see very much of a difference.”
He’s like, “Actually, your blood sugar was cut in half, and your blood pressure dropped by five points, and your… the way you measured the value of your work was much higher. You weren’t as anxious. You could concentrate again, and you were more positive.” I was like, “Okay, this thing works.” And I was like, “We got to just ask people if they can try it and figure it out.” And he was totally game. And to him and his team’s credit, they decided that this was going to be a… This meant a lot to me as somebody who doesn’t have a PhD but also has a big chip on our shoulder. It meant a lot to me. He was like, “No, let’s do it as a proper scientific study.”
So they went through all the IRB channels to make sure that this was a clinical trial, and 23,000 people signed up and crashed Columbia servers, so they had to close it. And the goal was do it on your own. It was self… We couldn’t measure everyone’s glucose. You had to… We would send you forms or text you. You could choose to either take movement breaks every half hour during long periods of sedentary screen time, every 60 minutes, or every two hours, and people did it. 80% of those who decided to commit to it stuck with it for the full two weeks, 82% liked doing it. Fatigue levels were cut by up to 28%, which was amazing.
But the best part to me was that productivity actually rose, which I think really speaks to the culture that we have, which is like butts in seats looking at a screen, in some cases software, watching your every keystroke. We’re measuring that as what good work looks like, what productivity looks like, and we’re getting it wrong. That’s how computers work. Humans don’t. And we need these breaks to… I learned so much about biology and how our leg muscles work and why they need to be stimulated and how they suck in the glucose and the lipids from your blood and how you oxygenate your brain.
And then another really interesting, reminded me of like what mind wandering was a decade ago, interoception is kind of at the same point where neuroscientists are studying the body sending the brain like what it needs, telling you what it needs. And they’re now also starting to study how screens mess with the messages that get sent from your body to your brain. And…
Debbie Millman:
Can you talk about that a little bit more?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Okay. So interoception. That is… So I was talking to someone who has an autistic kid, and she was saying, “Oh my God, we talk about interoception all the time” because her kid’s interception is very dialed down. He doesn’t know when he has to go to the bathroom, forgets to eat all the time.
Debbie Millman:
Why is that?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, autism, they don’t know exactly why, right. But his body can be sending signals that his brain just doesn’t get them. Other people, maybe the signal is turned up too high. So someone who’s really anxious, if their heart is beating really hard and really fast, they think like, “Oh my God, I’m having a heart attack.” As opposed to like, “Okay, well, hang on. Did you just run up some stairs? Maybe it is beating hard.”
So everyone has more interoceptive or less interocept… We’re all different. But I should say also that the people who are studying it, mostly what they’re looking into is people who have eating disorders, and anxiety disorders because they believe that… there might be a mismatch with interoception. They also measure interoception for people who are in cardio rehab.
It’s called the heartbeat test. There’s some debate over whether it’s accurate or not, but can you sense your own heartbeat? Do you know when to take it easy and back off or push yourself if you’ve had a heart attack and you’re in rehab, that kind of thing? So I called this guy, Sahib Khalsa. He’s now at UCLA and he’s been studying floats, which is you lie in like a saltwater thing, and there’s no sound and sensory-
Debbie Millman:
[inaudible 00:47:55].
Manoush Zomorodi:
… deprivation kind of as a treatment for people who do have interoceptive disorders like anxiety eating disorders and are seeing amazing results, like this idea that maybe you can recalibrate how the body sends its messages and how the brain takes them in. So to me, I was like, “But I feel like screens are messing with my interoceptive ability that I will stand up and I haven’t peed for hours and oh, my left foot’s asleep and like what the hell?”
It’s like I completely ignore the fact that I’m attached to this bag of flesh that needs tending to, and it just kind of freaked me out that I could ignore it so much. And it turns out that at the University of Bern, these scientists are studying what is the difference between adding movement interruptions versus not adding it and how it helps or hinders your interoceptive ability.
And they have concluded that yes, your sense of embodiment obviously. I mean, I love when science proves something that we all know, which is that if you move more, your interoception improves, and therefore you feel more… you feel better, you feel more human, you feel like you can think again. And so that just was fascinating to me. I was like, “Do people talk about interoception? That’s really cool.”
Debbie Millman:
I mean, one of the things that completely blew my mind was the idea that your legs are doing so much of the pumping of the blood to your heart.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I know.
Debbie Millman:
And that moving your legs actually helps your heart, and I think about this now every single day.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Or here’s another good one. This one’s also courtesy of Keith, which you will never be able to unsee, which is that think of a garden hose. Keith, God bless you for this one. A garden hose that’s kinked, right. When you sit, you kink your body at your torso and your knees, and you know how with a garden hose, there backs up the pressure builds, et cetera.
Same thing is happening with your blood flow. Try to not imagine that one every time you sit for hours and hours, and you need that blood flow because that is the thing that is pushing the oxygen up to your brain, letting you think properly. It’s taking in the fats, the lipids, and the glucose, and Keith’s TED Talk is out in a couple of weeks, where he goes more deeply into that biology.
Debbie Millman:
You also write about a different kind of MAHA, not make-
Manoush Zomorodi:
No.
Debbie Millman:
… America healthy again, but misinformation, assumption, hype, and alarmism. And in a wellness culture where fear seems to be traveling a lot faster than nuance, how did you decide what kind of health book you did not want to write?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah. Wow. I just went on Summit at Sea, if any of you have ever been on that. Holy shit. I did not know what I was getting into. It is a conference on a boat with people… Yeah, I know. I should have stopped at that moment with like lots of tech bros who were talking about peptide stacks and psilocybin, and then this guy told me I needed raw milk, and I was like, “Okay, but what about the bacteria?”
And he’s like, “Oh no, you need clean cows.” I was like, “What? Oh, I need clean cows. Okay, cool.” Anyway, so that did my head in because I was like, “Whoa, we have got this whole…” But that’s not… I have to accept those are not the people that this book is for. In fact, I was brought on the boat to talk about this book, and they… that was not a good fit because they’re in their own little universe. I brought up COVID in a conversation on the boat.
Debbie Millman:
Did you have to swim back to shore?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh my God. They looked at me like I had just farted so. They were all like… I was like, “What? I had COVID.” I was like, “No, I did. I really did. I had it. It was bad.” They were like none of the people in that group had ever had COVID. “Oh, the sniffles, you don’t think so? Uh-huh.”
Debbie Millman:
By the end of the Body Electric study, the question that you were considering was no longer simply can people take movement breaks, but what kind of life makes those breaks possible?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
What did the project teach you about the difference between personal and responsibility and environmental design?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, it’s frustrating, right. Because, on the one hand, it annoys me that once again, it’s our personal responsibility. It’s on you, the individual, to figure out how to live with this stuff that Sam Altman has decided should be part of your life. That annoys me. On the other hand, the more I think about how we use this technology, each of us uses it very differently.
On average, a person uses 11 different software tools at work, 11 different ones. And I know the way that I use Slack is different from someone else, is different from Google Docs, is different from all the other things. And so it does kind of… This personalization of our tools means that we have to personalize our own… I love that that guy’s gotten up to move over there by the way. Hell yes, you are on brand. We’re so dancing after this.
Debbie Millman:
I was wondering a little bit-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yeah, well-
Debbie Millman:
… about practicing what we preach here.
Manoush Zomorodi:
I know your garden hoses. So I think it has to be a balance, right. I think there’s a cultural change that has to happen where people accept that productivity doesn’t mean grinding it out. I think that the science needs to get out there, like really basic science, that here’s how your brain works and here’s why you feel so like you can’t pay attention. It’s not just because you’re on Instagram, it’s because you are not moving your body for hours.
Let’s not blame everything on the content and the scrolling. It is basic human function that we are neglecting as well. And so before we ban… Oh God, I’m getting on my high horse here. Before we decide that we’re going to ban kids from being on social media and then pat ourselves on the back and say, “See, we fixed it,” without fixing all the other things that kids need, which is places to go in real life. And oh, healthcare would be nice and-
Debbie Millman:
Safe schools.
Manoush Zomorodi:
… safe schools, hell yes. Parents who don’t have mental health issues that aren’t being dealt with as well, like so many other things. So I think this integration, especially as AI makes this more and more intense. I mean, on the boat, people were telling me that they’re working 16, 18-hour days. They are running eight AI agents at once that they then need to go back and check all the work of all of their agents.
They’re like, “This is not setting me free in any way. This is giving me more work. The expectations are higher, and they’re spending so much money wherever I’m working, or I, as an entrepreneur, I’m spending so much money on these tools, I need a return on investment. I’m desperate for a return on investment.” So we’re just spinning our wheels faster and faster. As a design element, I think we need to make interruptions beautiful.
Debbie Millman:
Manoush, I have one last question. Dr. Diaz wrote the forward to Body Electric and described you as a scientist at heart. Someone who wants to understand the research deeply, rather than just pull out a headline. So, without it being headline-like, I’m wondering if there’s a piece of advice besides our both urging everyone to read this wonderful, groundbreaking book. What could people do right now, aside from just getting up and leaving, but what can people do right now to improve the quality of their life through movement?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Oh, I would just say to me, there is nothing that a short, boring walk can’t fix. It is beautiful magic. When I go for a walk around the block, and I leave the dog at home, and it just resets, and I’m able to think again, and my body feels better, and I’m more patient, and I breathe, and I just think it’s that simple.
Somebody told me the other day, they’re like, “Yeah, did you know that we didn’t used to talk about being in nature until the Industrial Revolution came along because we were always in nature.” I was like, “That’s kind of like how we have to talk about movement.” Did we ever say like, “Did you move your body today in 1750?”
Probably not. Everyone was moving their bodies, but that is where we are today. We need to remind people to think and to move. We need to use the language. We need to be intentional. And I think people, even just a little bit of joy that they get out of that, that is something in 2026.
Debbie Millman:
Manoush Zomorodi, thank you so much-
Manoush Zomorodi:
Thank you, Debbie.
Debbie Millman:
… for making so much work that matters. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Audience:
Whoo-hoo.
Curtis Fox:
Manoush Zomorodi’s new book is Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and the New Science to Reclaim Your Wellbeing. To learn more about Manoush Zomorodi, you can listen to NPR’s TED Radio Hour or see more of her work on her website, manoushz.com.
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Master’s in Branding Studio at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.