Following your purpose (not your passion) with comedian Zarna Garg
ReThinking
TED
4.7 • 626 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zarna Garg is a stand-up comic, screenwriter, bestselling author, and one of the busiest people in comedy right now. But before she ever set foot onstage, she went to law school and tried her hand at entrepreneurship, failing at a vegan chili company, a tomato sauce brand, and even a matchmaking service. In this episode, Adam and Zarna reflect on how her daughter challenged her to consider a career pivot, debate the usefulness of a humanities degree, and break down the meticulous process that goes into developing a hit performance. Zarna also delivers some hot takes and tells the story of how she found her husband by posting a shockingly no-nonsense online ad.
Featured guest
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ReThinking is produced by Cosmic Standard. Our Senior Producer is Jessica Glazer, our Engineer is Aja Simpson, our Technical Director is Jacob Winik, and our Executive Producer is Eliza Smith.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What is the worst career advice you've ever gotten? |
| 0:03.0 | Follow your passion. |
| 0:04.0 | Everyone hates that. Why do you hate it? |
| 0:06.0 | No. Please, no. |
| 0:08.0 | Nobody's passion took them to be a lung transplant doctor. |
| 0:12.0 | Do something that the world needs, okay? |
| 0:14.0 | Like, please monetize your misery. It's fine. |
| 0:18.0 | Your passion can be a side gig. And a lot of people think that I'm being hypocritical. I'm not. I believe that I'm doing work that is pushing |
| 0:26.9 | boundaries for women all over the world, especially brown women who've never known a world where they can say |
| 0:33.3 | these things. And I'm telling you, I run it like a business. So I think your advice is don't follow |
| 0:39.4 | your passion, follow your purpose. And monetize your misery is what I say. |
| 0:45.7 | Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of |
| 0:50.9 | what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, |
| 0:56.5 | and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. |
| 1:03.5 | Zarnaggard is a stand-up comic, screenwriter, best-selling author, |
| 1:07.3 | and one of the busiest people in comedy right now. |
| 1:09.7 | But her journey to success was not a |
| 1:11.7 | straight line. Comedy was a late career pivot for Zarnah, who previously tried to start multiple |
| 1:16.7 | businesses. There was a vegan chili company, a tomato sauce brand, a matchmaking service, but none of them |
| 1:23.1 | worked out. Then her daughter Zoya had an idea, and she launched a campaign to convince her mom to try |
| 1:28.7 | comedy instead. And Zarnah crushed it. Adam, should we get into trashing my mother-in-law right |
| 1:34.5 | away? Let's just get this party started now. When Zarnah stepped up to her first open mic in 2018, |
... |
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