Author: Jaclyn Peiser / Source: New York Times
Manoush Zomorodi’s eyes used to glaze over when she heard someone bring up blockchain. Now she talks about it all the time as the host of “ZigZag,” a podcast that will go into its second season next month.
Ms. Zomorodi, the former host of the WNYC technology podcast “Note to Self,” created “ZigZag” with Jen Poyant, who was the executive producer of the WNYC show. It is the first of what the two hope will be many podcasts from the production house they formed this year in partnership with Civil Media, a new company built on blockchain technology.
“ZigZag” chronicles their journey as they try to understand blockchain technology and its possible implications for journalism. And because they are living the very topic they are reporting on, the podcast is also about what it means to be working mothers who are trying to make a go of it as entrepreneurs as they stake their financial and professional stability on Civil’s success.
Through the first 12-episode season, which concluded last month, Ms. Zomorodi became an expert in explaining the much-hyped but still arcane digital ledger to lay listeners.
“If I, as a tech journalist, roll my eyes when I hear about blockchain, somebody is not doing a good job explaining this stuff,” she said. “That’s where the opportunity is — for two women, two moms, who are going out on their own, who have to understand blockchain. There’s your entryway to a podcast.
”They named the podcast “ZigZag” because they knew it would wend its digressive way from blockchain to entrepreneurship to their personal lives and back again.
“We zigzag around, but all these issues are intertwined,” Ms. Poyant said, “and if you are patient enough to stick with us through the narrative of the first season, you will start to realize how intertwined they are.”
Ms. Zomorodi, 45, and Ms. Poyant, 39, left WNYC in April, months after the station, owned by New York Public Radio, had cut ties with its longtime hosts John Hockenberry, Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz. The men departed…
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