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Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the host and executive producer of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans.[3]
A Slight Change of Plans was first published in 2021 by Pushkin Industries, the media company co-founded by Malcolm Gladwell and Jakob Weisberg. [3]
A Slight Change of Plans explores what happens after a person experiences a life-changing event. It’s inspired by Shankar’s experience as a young classical violinist, training at Juilliard, whose career was cut short by an injury. “My whole childhood revolved around the violin, but that changed in a moment when I injured my hand playing a single note,” said Shankar. “I was forced to try and figure out who I was, and who I could be, without it.” [4]
On the show, Shankar interviews people who have lived through different kinds of big changes — accidents, deaths, kidnappings — to understand how they navigated the waters ahead. The show emphasizes the universality of human psychology to help listeners feel less alone with their own choices. Shankar explains: “Cognitive science teaches us that the strategies we use to navigate those changes can be quite similar. Which is heartening to realize!” [4]
A Slight Change of Plans was named the Apple Podcast of the Year in 2021.[4] In 2023, it won the Ambie Award for Best Personal Growth Podcast.[5] In 2022, Shankar earned a Webby nomination for Best Podcast Host.[6]
Shankar served as a senior advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team,[7] which was formalized by Executive Order 13707 in 2015.[8] Her work at the White House was profiled by The New Yorker in 2017.[9]
Shankar also served as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations.[10] She is a Director at Google.[11]
Shankar is a graduate of the pre-college program at the Juilliard School, where she was a private violin student of Itzhak Perlman.[12] When she was a teenager, she injured a tendon in her left hand, bringing her musical career to an end.[13][14]
Shankar earned her B.A. from Yale University in cognitive science and went on to earn her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. In 2013, Shankar completed her postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford University.[15] She attended high school at the Juilliard School PreCollege program.[12]
Maya Shankar's father is Ramamurti Shankar, Indian theoretical particle physicist and a professor at Yale University.[16] In her Meditative Story, The Joy of Being An Unwilling Traveler Through Life, she describes her father's influence on her and the insights he shared to ease her lifelong anxiety.[17]
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Her mother is Uma Shankar, an International Scholar Adviser at Yale University.[18] In a graduation speech Maya gave at The Juilliard School, she explains the role her mother played in her violin journey, and the lesson of "imaginative courage" her mom taught her.[19]
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