Alex Cohen
Alex Cohen is the reporter for NPR's fastest-growing daily news program, Day to Day where she has covered everything from homicides in New Orleans to the controversies swirling around the frosty dessert known as Pinkberry.
Though based at NPR West in California, she's traveled to Des Moines to cover the first-in-the-nation caucus in 2008; to Paris (Texas, that is) to report on a devastating drought and to the far corners of the Navajo Nation to profile a politician forced to choose between his tribe and the New Mexico Senate.
Cohen also fills in as the host of Day to Day. With her colleagues Alex Chadwick and Madeleine Brand, she has anchored live breaking news coverage of Benazir Bhutto's assassination and the Minneapolis bridge collapse. She's interviewed Nobel Laureates, members of Congress, Grammy-winner Lucinda Williams and some people you may not have heard of, like the inventor of scratch-n-sniff wallpaper and David Depto (U.S. champion of the new intellectual and brutal sport of chess boxing.)
There is little Cohen won't do for Day to Day listeners. She's braved the the war zone of the "All You Can Eat" seats at Dodger Stadium. She played countless hours of Guitar Hero II to get audio from the game's last level — Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird." And she grooved to the Beach Boys while drinking several varieties of Chardonnay to test a theory about the effect of music on wine. (It was worth it: The piece wound up being one of NPR's Most E-mailed Stories.)
Cohen started her career at NPR as an intern with Weekend Edition Sunday, where she also launched the first-ever "Intern Edition." Since then, she has worked just about every angle radio has to offer. She's been a bureau chief, show host, newscast anchor, director, producer and editor at member station KQED, at NPR and for the American Public Media programs Marketplace and Weekend America.
She graduated from Brown University where she studied Eastern Religions and went on to get her Masters of Journalism at the University of Berkeley at California. Cohen has won awards from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.
She lives in the LA neighborhood of Atwater Village with her husband Rich and their two dogs Buddy and Bosco. When not making radio, Alex plays banked track roller derby under the nom de guerre Axles of Evil.
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The discovery that human body cells can be used as stem cells is creating buzz in the scientific community. Experts say the development will likely transform research; in the political world, some say it will end the debate over the need to use human embryos.
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British police arrested two more suspects in their investigation of attempted terrorist attacks last week. A total of seven people have now been detained in what a senior police official called "a fast-moving investigation."
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The Palestinian militant group Hamas controls most of the Gaza Strip and is declaring victory after five days of intense fighting with members of the rival Fatah movement.
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President Bush's speech to the Coast Guard Academy on Wednesday addresses intelligence documents on al-Qaida. The White House says the documents show that Osama Bin Laden sought a greater al-Qaida presence in Iraq.
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An explosion tore through the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament building Thursday, apparently from a suicide bombing. The Baghdad Convention Center is within the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least eight people, including lawmakers, were killed.
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Hundreds of women are taking part in a revival of one of America's most violent sports: roller derby. Alex Cohen of NPR station KQED, and a member of the L.A. Derby Dolls league, reports.