Episode 111 with Anahad O'Connor

Anahad is an author and reporter who writes about health and fitness for The New York

Times. Anahad was born and raised on Manhattan’s lower east side, the second youngest in a

family of seven. After graduating from the High School for Leadership and Public

Service in 1999, he went on to Yale University, where he studied neuroscience and

obtained a degree in psychology. 

Before joining the Times in 2003, he traveled the country by bicycle, building homes for

low-income families and working with Habitat for Humanity. At the paper he started out

writing about psychology for the Tuesday science section, and launched a weekly

column, which addresses questions on health from readers and explores and investigates

medical myths and curiosities. In his career at the Times he has been a correspondent for

the paper’s Metropolitan section, traveling the state to write about politics and life in the

suburbs, and has covered business, politics and foreign news. 

Anahad has published four books, including the bestselling Never Shower in a

Thunderstorm: Surprising Facts and Misleading Myths about Our Health and the World

We Live In, which was published in 2007, and The 10 Things You Need to Eat: And

More Than 100 Easy and Delicious Ways to Prepare Them, which made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2010. Anahad currently lives in New York City.