Arun Venugopal grew up in Piney Point, a suburb of Houston, Texas, as the son of parents who immigrated from India in 1969.[4] He has reflected on these experiences while critiquing ideas of Indian-American, and more broadly Asian-American, exceptionalism in the United States, and on the circumstances by which "the U.S. engineered the conditions that allowed certain nonwhite groups to thrive".[5] In 2017 he collected narratives of white working-class Americans who voted for Donald J. Trump for U.S. president, in order to understand their motives and concerns.[7] In his reporting he has also examined the political and cultural consciousness of the South Asian diaspora in the United States.[8]
He received a Master of Arts in Media Studies from The New School.[9] He has contributed to radio, print journalism, and digital journalism reporting in venues including National Public Radio (NPR) in its "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" programs, Slate, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Salon, The New York Post, the Associated Press, and more.[9]
In 2010, Venugopal created WNYC New York Public Radio's program called Micropolis, which aims to feature New York City's ethnically diverse communities while making "big, anonymous city just a little bit more knowable." Past episodes have featured topics ranging from Black protest music and the New York roots of Trumpist Islamophobia, to Christmas festivities among non-Christians, Jewish Talmudic study conferences, and the Tibetan community of Jackson Heights.[3] Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an episode in 2020 considered the challenges facing New York City's restaurant, bar, and food vendor scene and discussed how residents could support these businesses amid closures.[10]