From Bored and Brilliant to Body Electric
Manoush Zomorodi has spent years asking uncomfortable questions about our relationship with technology — and she's not done yet.
The NPR journalist, podcast host, and author first made waves with Bored and Brilliant, a book that explored how constant connectivity was quietly eroding our mental health, creativity, and capacity for deep thought. It resonated with anyone who has ever felt drained after a day of doom-scrolling or back-to-back video calls.
Now, Zomorodi is back with her follow-up: Body Electric — and this time, she's going further. The book examines how technology is affecting us not just cognitively, but physically.
What Is 'Body Electric' About?
Body Electric is a collaboration between NPR and Columbia University Medical Center, lending it both journalistic rigour and serious scientific credibility. Where Bored and Brilliant focused on the brain, Body Electric zooms out to ask a broader, more urgent question: what is all of this screen time, constant notification, and digital stimulation doing to our actual bodies?
From posture and sleep to stress hormones and nervous system responses, the book maps out the growing body of research connecting our tech habits to measurable physical consequences. It's not a luddite manifesto — Zomorodi is too nuanced a thinker for that. Instead, it's an evidence-based look at trade-offs most of us never consciously agreed to.
A Journalist Who Walks the Walk
Zomorodi's credibility on this topic isn't just academic. She built her reputation hosting WNYC's Note to Self, a podcast that tackled the human side of tech culture before that conversation was mainstream. She went on to host NPR's TED Radio Hour, bringing big ideas to millions of listeners.
Both of her books grew organically out of that podcasting work — out of conversations with scientists, designers, physicians, and everyday people grappling with the same contradictions. She's the rare writer who can make research feel personal and policy feel urgent without sacrificing either.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
The timing of Body Electric feels deliberate. As generative AI tools become embedded in daily work and life, and as average daily screen time continues to climb, the physical costs of digital living are only growing harder to ignore. Repetitive strain injuries, disrupted circadian rhythms, sedentary behaviour, chronic stress — these aren't abstract risks anymore.
Zomorodi's approach is to arm readers with information rather than anxiety. Like its predecessor, Body Electric is worth reading not as a scare story, but as a practical reckoning with habits most of us have adopted by default rather than by design.
If Bored and Brilliant made you reconsider your relationship with your phone, Body Electric might make you reconsider what that phone is doing to the rest of you.
Source: The Verge. Read the original interview at theverge.com.
