Rhaina Cohen Rhaina Cohen is a producer and editor for NPR's Enterprise Storytelling unit, working across Embedded, Invisibilia, and Rough Translation.
Rhaina Cohen
Stories By

Rhaina Cohen

Rhaina Cohen

Producer/Editor, Enterprise Storytelling Unit

Rhaina Cohen is a producer and editor for NPR's Enterprise Storytelling unit, working across Embedded, Invisibilia, and Rough Translation.

Previously, she was a producer for Hidden Brain, where she brought together narrative journalism and social science research. Some of the most rewarding stories she worked on include those about why the #MeToo movement took off when it did, how American masculinity makes it harder for men to build close friendships and why we sometimes make decisions that baffle us. Cohen joined NPR as an intern for Planet Money.

She periodically writes for outlets such as The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. Her article about people who make a friend their life partner was selected by Longreads as one of the best articles of 2020. She received some of her earliest journalism training as a research assistant for authors. She worked on the New York Times bestselling book All The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation and the biography Michelle Obama: A Life.

Cohen was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, where she earned a master's in comparative social policy (and while there, competed in a dance style that hasn't yet taken off in the United States: acrobatic rock 'n' roll). She holds a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Northwestern University. As a 2018 FASPE fellow, she studied journalism ethics in Germany and Poland.

Story Archive

Thursday

Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR

Wednesday

Global communication specialist Heather Hansen has a stock of English language books that no longer fit her approach to teaching. Heather Hansen hide caption

toggle caption
Heather Hansen

Fan Favorites: How to Speak Bad English

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1175305103/1175459385" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Thursday

Sonnenzimmer for NPR

Wednesday

Global communication specialist Heather Hansen has a stock of English language books that no longer fit her approach to teaching. Heather Hansen hide caption

toggle caption
Heather Hansen

How To Speak Bad English

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/989477444/989574776" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Wednesday

Selene San Felice's editor, Rob Hiaasen, was killed during the shooting. She was assigned a new editor, and even though their first edit went well, she said, "It felt so bad to get that from somebody that wasn't Rob." She went out in the hallway and cried. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Claire Harbage/NPR

Wednesday

Nanjala Nyabola is an academic, traveler, and collector of guidebooks, some of which are pictured here. Nanjala Nyabola hide caption

toggle caption
Nanjala Nyabola

Rewriting The Travel Guidebook With Nanjala Nyabola

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/971101662/971220083" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Monday

Patty Ramge leans against her Ford Pinto in 1978. Since then, the car has become one of the most infamous vehicles in American history, known for a design that made it vulnerable in low-speed accidents. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive hide caption

toggle caption
Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Monday

Social psychologist Keith Payne says we have a bias toward comparing ourselves to people who have more than us, rather than those who have less Marcus Butt/Getty Images/Ikon Images hide caption

toggle caption
Marcus Butt/Getty Images/Ikon Images

Monday

vndrpttn/Getty Images

Monday

Malte Mueller/Getty Images/fStop

Monday

At seventeen years old, Fred Clay was sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit. Various flawed ideas in psychology were used to determine his guilt. Ken Richardson/Ken Richardson hide caption

toggle caption
Ken Richardson/Ken Richardson

Monday

Economist Amir Sufi says debt plays a bigger role in recessions than we typically recognize. erhui1979/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
erhui1979/Getty Images

Saturday

Luciano Lozano/Getty Images/Ikon Images

The Mind Of The Village: Understanding Our Implicit Biases

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/880379282/880467634" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Monday

Olutosin Oduwole at his home in New Jersey in 2016. Shankar Vedantam/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Shankar Vedantam/NPR

Friday

Santiago Mejia/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

Monday

Hannah Groch-Begley listens to Dylan Matthews play the ukulele at their home in Washington, D.C. Dylan had hesitated to buy the ukulele because it felt like too big of an indulgence. Shankar Vedantam/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Shankar Vedantam/NPR

Monday

DNY59/Getty Images

Monday

A recent study found that black doctors were more effective than non-black doctors at convincing black men to use preventative health services. Angela Hsieh hide caption

toggle caption
Angela Hsieh

Monday

Volunteers for the grassroots network Columbia Community Care organize donated groceries and household items at one of five distribution sites in Howard County, Maryland. Courtesy of Erika Strauss Chavarria hide caption

toggle caption
Courtesy of Erika Strauss Chavarria

Monday

It's not the pill. It's the doctor-patient relationship. Angela Hsieh/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Angela Hsieh/NPR

Monday

Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

Thursday

A copy of the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News sits in a newspaper box on a street corner in Denver, Colorado. John Moore/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
John Moore/Getty Images

Stop The Presses! Newspapers Affect Us, Often In Ways We Don't Realize

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/848404620/848861960" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Monday

A copy of the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News sits in a newspaper box on a street corner in Denver, Colorado. John Moore/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
John Moore/Getty Images

Monday

Justin Paget/Getty Images