ZigZag by TED and Stable Genius Productions

06.03.2021

S6 EP6 STEP 6: THE TIMELINE

On the final episode of The ZigZag Project, activist Stacey Abrams explains her short-term strategies for sticking to her long-term goals and Manoush shares data from surveying thousands of listeners about making a big career change. The project wraps up...

05.20.2021

S6 EP5 STEP 5: THE PATHS

Today is Step 5 of The ZigZag Project, our six-step process to get you from wanting to make a big change in your life and work...to actually making a change, in a responsible and mindful way. Now, as we move from ideation into...

05.06.2021

S6 EP4 STEP 4: THE MATCH

On this episode of The ZigZag Project, we move into a more practical phase and start asking hard questions like: What might you need to sacrifice, in order to align your values with your work? Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett shares a story about...

04.22.2021

S6 EP3 STEP 3: THE WEIRD IDEAS

The third step of The ZigZag Project requires getting weird. Because we're gonna need to dig deep to find new ways to roll back climate change, bring equity to society, and pay our bills. If, after a year of lockdowns...

04.08.2021

S6 EP2 STEP 2: THE VISION

Conflict resolution specialist Priya Parker joins Manoush to talk about visioning: Taking time out of our daily lives to clarify our professional and personal purpose. With 60% of the project’s beta testers reporting that work is an important part of...

03.25.2021

S6 EP1 STEP 1: THE PULSE

We’re doing something different this season… The ZigZag Project is six steps (and episodes) to help you map out a path that aligns your personal values with your professional ambitions. Think of it as a RESET for your career or business. In...

08.27.2020

S5 EP6: The Case of the Lost American Dream

You may have heard Aarti Shahani’s voice on the radio when she was NPR’s Silicon Valley reporter. The techies she interviewed often assumed she came from a family of engineers or scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth, Aarti says. Her parents...

08.20.2020

S5 EP5: Changing Our Relationship to STUFF

We recycle. But does it make a difference? We donate our old t-shirts. But does anyone want them? We try to shop less. But isn't that bad for the economy? On this episode, author Adam Minter explains the connections between our...

08.13.2020

S5 EP4: Carrie Goldberg is the Troll Slayer

Carrie Goldberg‘s legal career changed course the year her ex-boyfriend relentlessly cyber-harassed her. At the time, the First Amendment protected his right to post nude photos of her and file (false) police reports against her. Frustrated and angry, Carrie quit her stable...

08.06.2020

S5 EP3: Can Big Tech Be Healed?

From his posts at Harvard and M.I.T., Greg Epstein observed that the tech industry– with its hierarchies and sacred texts–looked a lot like a religion…and his students worshipped at the alter of Elon Musk. The chaplain wondered: how could he counsel techies to build more humane...

07.30.2020

S5 EP2: Why Arlan Hamilton Still Believes Capitalism is the Great Equalizer

In 2018, Backstage Capital's Arlan Hamilton was on the cover of Fast Company magazine. The headline was irresistible: homeless, gay, Black woman becomes hot-shot Silicon Valley investor. But the reality is that Black female founders still get token amounts of...

07.23.2020

S5 EP1: Eric Ries' Radical Stock Market Experiment

When Eric Ries wrote The Lean StartUp he had no idea his book would inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs to ‘pivot’ and ‘iterate.’ Now Eric is 'disrupting' how we do business again. His Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) requires...

07.16.2020

The zigs and zags just keep coming. Welcome to Season 5.

ZigZag, the business podcast about being human, returns as a member of the TED family of podcasts. Join this zig-zagging quest with Manoush Zomorodi (Host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour; Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business) to discover new...

05.07.2020

End of A Partnership

Two years ago, Jen and Manoush quit their jobs and became business partners. Today their adventure comes to an end. Hear how financial and parenting pressures in the age of COVID-19 forced them to make a hard choice. And what...

12.12.2019

S4 EP22: Mailchimp’s CEO On Building a Multi-Billion Dollar Business Without Being an A$$hole

The newsletter company Mailchimp made an impressive $700 million dollars in revenue in 2019 and, after 20 years, it’s still owned and operated by co-founders, Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius. On this episode, Ben shares his tactics for staying focused...

12.05.2019

S4 EP21: Being Ethnically Ambiguous At Work

As co-host of NPR’s Code Switch, Shereen Marisol Meraji combines groundbreaking reporting on race and culture with her own personal experience as a half-Puerto Rican, half-Persian American. On this episode, she and Manoush discuss why the push for inclusion makes some people uncomfortable...

11.28.2019

S4 EP20: How Valerie Jarrett Turned Her Misery Into Motivation

Valerie Jarrett‘s fascinating family defied racism to become some of the most influential African-Americans you’ve likely never heard of, including one of Louisiana’s first black legislators and MIT’s first black student. But Jarrett also shares how, despite a law degree...

11.14.2019

S4 EP19: The Guy Who Quit Planes for Good

For millions of us, air travel comes with the job. NASA physicist Peter Kalmus was no different; he frequently flew to prestigious conferences around the globe to present his research. But then, on a routine flight in 2012, Kalmus had a personal...

11.07.2019

S4 EP18: Don't Tie a Pink Ribbon for Kate Pickert

After an onerous cancer diagnosis, Kate Pickert nearly skipped an interview for a job she desperately wanted. Her husband encouraged her to go, saying, "You never know. Maybe you won't die!" Pickert got the job...and she lived. Now she's a...

10.31.2019

S4 EP17: Helping Your Relationship Survive Your Job

Double-career couples are the norm these days. But when organizational behaviorist Jennifer Petriglieri looked for studies on how these couples manage their professional and personal responsibilities, she found little research. So Petriglieri did her own five-year study, talking to dozens of couples, and compiling...

10.28.2019

Bonus: “The Surveillance Economy” from IRL

This week, we’re featuring an episode from the IRL podcast called “The Surveillance Economy.” Learn about the rise of surveillance capitalism, and hear from guests like Harvard Business School’s Shoshana Zuboff. She says that Big Tech uses our personal data...

10.24.2019

EP16: Ari Weinzweig is Prototyping a New Kind of Delicious Capitalism

If you live in Michigan or run your company with a bit of an anarchist bent, you've likely heard of the Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including a coffee roaster, creamery, and candy factory, all co-owned and operated. On this episode,...

10.10.2019

S4 EP15: The Secret Ex-Rock Star at The Ford Foundation

With her band Tsunami and record label Simple Machines, Jenny Toomey was a fixture on the '90s Washington, D.C. indie music scene. On this episode, Toomey shares her evolution from rocker to founder of the Future of Music Coalition to...

09.26.2019

S4 EP14: When Women Don't Support Other Women at Work

In 2015, Katharine Zaleski wrote an op-ed for Fortune that went viral called I’m Sorry to All the Mothers I Worked With. In it, the former media exec apologized for “a long list of infractions against mothers,” whom she’d assumed couldn’t...

09.20.2019

Bonus: Manoush Guest Hosts the TED Radio Hour!

We're excited that Manoush is guest hosting the Ted Radio Hour! To celebrate, we're bringing you her 2017 TED Talk. It's all about our relationship to technology, and how it sometimes helps us to avoid some very human states of...

09.19.2019

S4 EP 13: The CEO Who Paid Everyone the $ame $alary. Including Himself.

Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Payments, became a media darling in 2015 after announcing that every employee would be paid a minimum of $70k. (Those salaries have consistently risen since then.) For most of his staff, the increase was dramatic...

09.12.2019

S4 EP12: We're Rethinking What Success Looks Like

ZigZag is back after a brief hiatus and kicking off a series of shows investigating how people are rethinking the notion of “success.” On this episode, listeners share their frustrations with an economy structured to thrive at the cost of the...

07.25.2019

S4 EP11: Pacing Yourself After Burnout

Two years ago, Helen Zaltzman and her husband, Martin Austwick, gave up their London apartment to travel the world. She paid the bills by continuing to produce her two podcasts, The Allusionist and Answer Me This, from the road. Things were going well until a visit...

07.18.2019

S4 EP10: This is What a Male Identity Crisis Sounds Like

Eighteen months. That's how long Khe Hy (pronounced Kay Hee) gave himself to figure out his life after quitting his extremely well-paid job at Blackrock Financials. His friends called him nuts. His immigrant parents thought they'd failed him. But his...

07.11.2019

S4 EP09: Is Your Career Veering Off Course...Or Just Doing a Zigzag?

It can be hard to know if you're on the right track for building your career or business. Manoush and Jen consider crucial lessons from entrepreneurs whom they've reported on over the past five years, including a CEO who changed...

06.27.2019

S4 EP08: The Weird Kids At The Big Tech Party

Before Silicon Valley was dominated by the Big Five tech companies, there was Mozilla, an organization founded by a motley crew of coders and activists who believe the internet should be open to everyone. Those punk rock roots live on...

06.20.2019

S4 EP07: 46, Female, and Ambitious. Is that so wrong?

You've probably heard her hundreds of times. Mallory Kasdan is the voice of dozens of ads, from Crest White Strips to Nickelodeon. For years, she made an excellent living sounding like the quintessential "hip mom" or sassy big sister, who...

06.06.2019

S4 EP06: Why Craiglist's Founder Just Wrote Consumer Reports a $6m Check

Consumer Reports, theOG‘s of product reviews, just got an upgrade: $6 million from Craigslist founder turned philanthropist,Craig Newmark. On this special episode, he and the CEO of Consumer Reports,Marta Tellado, announce their big plans to test all our apps and...

05.30.2019

S4 EP05: The Venture Capitalist Asking Existential Questions

We went looking for a venture capitalist who is investing in products or platforms that make money AND make our lives a bit saner: Caterina Fake co-founded Flickr, coined the acronym FOMO, and is now a partner at Yes VC. She’s putting her...

05.16.2019

S4 EP04: When Your Gut Tells You It's Time to END Your Company

We hear a lot about how people start up companies but what about winding them down? After 15 years, media entrepreneur and "influencer" Grace Bonney has decided to close her lifestyle blog Design*Sponge. In this episode, Grace explains why she...

05.02.2019

S4 EP03: Adam Grant Says Your Next Boss Might Want You to "Self Manage"

The workplace has become a place of sociological experimentation. But what are the pros and cons to “flattening” hierarchy or employees giving each other "radically transparent" feedback? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant (and host of TED's WorkLife podcast) explains some of...

04.25.2019

Bonus: Our Old Podcast is Back! Here's a Taste.

The tech show about being human returns with an all new season exclusively on the new Luminary app. Manoush kicks things off with the latest on the battle between kids and parents over their screens: do we know how kids...

04.25.2019

S4 EP02: An Alternative To Silicon Valley's "Unicorn" Bullsh*t

Founded by Jenn Brandel and Mara Zapeda, the growing Zebras Unite network is a backlash against Silicon Valley's so-called "unicorn" companies. Many of these entrepreneurs are saying no to venture capital investors and attempting to build sustainable companies that fit their lives and...

04.11.2019

S4 EP01: Manoush and Jen Became Entrepreneurs One Year Ago

On the launch episode of Season Four, Jen and Manoush celebrate the first anniversary of their company, Stable Genius Productions, and share the most important and difficult entrepreneurial lessons they've learned over the past year. They also explain how, after...

03.28.2019

S3 EP06: The Plateau of Productivity

What IS that anti-climactic feeling we get after completing a big project? Shouldn’t we be patting ourselves on the back and mixing celebratory martinis? Perhaps you’ve simply entered the final phase of the Hype Cycle: the rather dull Plateau of Productivity. This...

03.14.2019

S3 EP5: The Slope of Enlightenment

We're almost at the end of our deep-dive into the lifecycle of innovation, or the so-called Hype Cycle. Phase Four, aka the Slope of Enlightenment, is when the breakthrough happens, you get out of the trough, and start moving...

02.28.2019

S3 EP4: The Trough of Disillusionment

Our journey through the Hype Cycle takes a dark turn this week. Because every innovative idea, sadly, must pass through the third (and most miserable) phase of the cycle: the Trough of Disillusionment. This is when you start questioning why you ever...

02.14.2019

S3 EP3: The Peak of Expectations

As we continue through the Hype Cycle, we reach the fun, thrilling, titillating phase: the Peak of Expectations. It generates the vital inspiration and adrenaline that keeps every entrepreneur or visionary going (that includes the listener who is in the...

01.31.2019

S3 EP2: What Triggers Innovation

Question: what SPARKS us to *act *on an idea, rather than let it fade away? Answer: an "Innovation Trigger," also known as Phase 1 of the Hype Cycle. Hear listeners detail what triggered them to pursue a project, more...

01.17.2019

S3 EP1: The Lifecycle of an Idea

You may *feel *like a special snowflake, but even our best ideas usually take a predictable path: they'll pass through the 5 Phases of the Hype Cycle. Tech analyst Jackie Fenn created this iconic graph (see below) 25 years ago, and it's been...

12.20.2018

S2 EP12: Lessons Learned from a Risky Crypto Experiment

The co-founders of Stable Genius Productions have a candid conversation about their current financial situation (hint: their grant is running out soon), the highs/lows of making this season of the podcast (another hint: they had a fallout over email), and Civil's...

12.20.2018

S2 EP11: If Capitalism and Socialism Had a Baby

The richest 1 percent of the world's population now owns more than half of the world's wealth. The calls for breaking up Big Tech companies are growing louder. On this episode, the author of Open Revolution, Rufus Pollock, proposes a...

12.13.2018

S2 EP10: An App for Information Overload?

Journalists-turned-entrepreneurs Mark Little and Áine Kerr believe the experience of getting news online is broken. (And they should know: Mark worked at Twitter and Áine at Facebook.) So, they're building an app called Kinzen which they hope can reboot our daily news habit by delivering trustworthy...

12.06.2018

S2 BONUS: The Story of ZigZag Through Voice Memos

It's been an extraordinarily weird year. This mini episode compresses Manoush and Jen's story so far into a strange mash-up of voice memos that documents their leap from public radio producers to audio entrepreneurs (who often are very stressed and seem...

12.06.2018

S2 EP9: Julia Angwin's Investigations Haunt Facebook

Julia Angwin, the award-winning reporter whose investigations make Facebook sweat, just got $20 million from Craig Newmark (yes, as in Craig's List) to start her own publication. Hear her vision for The MarkUp, why we need a new kind of watchdog journalism,...