Your Body on Tech: Why living online is leaving us exhausted — and what actually helps (with Manoush Zomorodi and Elise Hu)

**Elise Hu** (0:03)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. This week, we're doing something special. We're handing over the feed for the week to one of my favorite colleagues and my friend, Manoush Zomorodi. Many of you know Manoush as the host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. She's also a TED speaker and the author of two books, Bored and Brilliant, and her new one, Body Electric. She has spent her career exploring what technology is quietly doing to us and our bodies and our minds. She was a guest curator for TED 2026, working directly with speakers to develop their talks. This week, she's taking over my feed to share those talks and the stories behind them.
The week's series is called Your Body on Tech, How you can live a healthier life in our high-tech era. It's built around what I think is one of the big questions of this moment. What does it mean to stay human and stay in touch with our bodies and brains in a world of rapid technological and digital change? Manoush has assembled seven extraordinary thinkers to explore this urgent topic from every angle from the virologist who helped lead a vaccine release in a record 66 days, to the artist who makes you feel climate data in your bones, from the psychologist upending everything we thought we knew about teenagers and phones, to the father who found wonder inside the worst moments imaginable.
It's a week of talks and conversations that can change how you think about your body, your mind, your relationship with technology, and what it means to be alive. But before I hand the mic over to Manoush for the week, I can't pass up the chance to ask her some big questions about these big ideas because she's been thinking about this topic a lot.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (1:45)
Before the industrial age, no one used to say, I need to get into nature more. No one said that because we all lived in nature, right? It's like, duh, you don't need the words for it. And I think that that's where we are now with a lot of our technology. We don't see the sort of negative space that's been left behind. So we need to name it. We need to be intentional about it.

**Elise Hu** (2:08)
Our conversation covered a lot of ground, the science of our bodies, the design of our world and the cultural shifts she thinks we need.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (2:16)
Here we are at this point where technology sort of gives us so much, but we don't see the sort of negative space that's been left behind. So we need to name it. We need to be intentional about it.

**Elise Hu** (2:27)
By the end, Manoush distills it all down to something rather simple and joyful by way of a 1970s psychology experiment with rats. My conversation with Manoush is coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Conversation of the day. Manoush, it's so good to get a chance to talk to you again.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (2:54)
Elise, always a pleasure, always, always.

**Elise Hu** (2:58)
And it's a special treat because you're about to take over for a week.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (3:01)
I know, thank you for panning over the baton.

**Elise Hu** (3:04)
I'm delighted, I'm delighted. And I'm glad we're getting a chance to sit down and think about these ideas together. So my first question is, how to think about how we can remain human inside systems that are changing faster than we are?

**Manoush Zomorodi** (3:20)
That's an enormous question, Elise. And it's going to take us the whole week, I think, to unpack the various facets and angles on this very subject. I can tell you for me, this quest started, gosh, 15 years ago when I was a tech reporter, but noticed really how having a smartphone, god, that sounds so sweet and antiquated, how that was changing things that I did. And I was thinking, this is changing how I parent, this is changing how I learn, this is changing, actually, I think, the things I believe, this is changing. So watching myself and the way I use my brain, the way I use my body change led to some big interactive podcast projects that I did. One was about exploring the role of boredom in our lives, and what happens when we don't get bored because we're on our phones all the time. And then fast forward to the latest one, which is called Body Electric, which is about what happens to our bodies when we are sitting and looking at screens all day. And could that actually be some of the reasons why we feel like we can't focus or we're exhausted and drained all the time? So I just think we use our technology all day long in so many different ways. And the way it's designed is generally on a screen, which we conform to the tech as opposed to the tech conforming to us. And it doesn't always have to be that way. And that's what I think we're going to get into this week, is we're going to look at some of the pros and cons of technology, the best ways we can use it, the ways that maybe we don't want to use it and can leave it behind. And I think some of the really huge philosophical questions that come up, that we are going to be forced to confront, which is, what do we want humanity to look like, even if we can change it with technology?