Rhaina Cohen
Rhaina Cohen is a producer and editor for Embedded, NPR's home for documentary storytelling. She's developed, produced, and edited acclaimed narrative podcast series on a wide range of issues, from abortion access to the aftermath of gun violence.
She was previously a producer and editor for the seasonal narrative shows Invisibilia, Rough Translation, and Louder Than A Riot. For years, she covered the social sciences as a producer for Hidden Brain. Cohen joined NPR as an intern for Planet Money.
She's also the author of the national bestseller, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. In 2024, Cohen gave a TED talk about the overlooked potential of friendship. She's written about the topic for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and TIME.
Cohen's work has been honored by numerous awards, including a National Headliner Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award, and she's received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Program and The Greater Good Science Center. Cohen was a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, where she earned a master's in comparative social policy. She holds a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Northwestern University.
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Buying a home is a conventional milestone for couples. But as home prices skyrocket, many Americans are buying homes with someone who isn't their romantic partner. -
Thousands of years ago, there was a ceremony to bind close friends together as sworn siblings. Could the practice be resurrected today to strengthen modern friendships? Two women did just that. -
The demand for "proper" English can be used to shut people out of spaces and opportunities. The folks at NPR's "Rough Translation" podcast have a story to tell. -
After the shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper, the surviving staff resolve to rebuild their paper. -
A virus is more than a biological organism. It's a social organism. Historian Nancy Bristow shares the lessons about human behavior that we can take away from a century-old pandemic.
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We know that we live in an ever-changing world, but one thing we often overlook is demographic change. Whether the world's population is growing or shrinking can affect many aspects of our lives, from the number of kids we have to the likelihood that we'll live to old age. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how our planet's population is changing, and what that means for us in the century to come. -
Social media sites offer quick and easy ways to share ideas, crack jokes, find old friends. But the things we post don't go away. We explore how one teenager's social media posts destroyed an opportunity he'd worked for all his life.
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Does living with animals really make us healthier? Why do we eat some animals and keep others as pets? This week on Hidden Brain, we talk with psychology professor Hal Herzog about the contradictions embedded in our relationships with animals. -
All of us are time travelers. We go back in history to turning points in our lives, and imagine how things could have turned out differently. Psychologists refer to this as "counterfactual thinking." This week on Hidden Brain, we look at why some events prompt these "What if?" questions, while others do not. This episode originally aired in May 2018. -
After a disaster happens, we want to know whether something could have been done to avoid it. Did anyone see this coming? Many times, the answer is yes. So why didn't the warnings lead to action? This week, we explore the psychology of warnings with a visit to a smelly Alaskan tunnel, a gory (and fictional) murder plot, and even some ABBA.
