Randy Cohen
At a glance:
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines. His first television work was writing for "Late Night With David Letterman" for which he won three Emmy awards.Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harper’s, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for “Late Night With David Letterman” for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s “TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. In 2010, his first play, “The Punishing Blow,”ran at New York’s Clurman Theater. His most recent book, “Be Good: how to navigate the ethics of everything,” was published by Chronicle. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.
If you’d like to bring in Randy Cohen as your next keynote speaker, please fill out the “Request More Information” form on the right.
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Being "The Ethicist"
After twelve years writing the popular New York Times magazine column, Mr. Cohen examines how the moral landscape — and his own moral reasoning — changed over that time. As an added plus, he'll discuss how he got, how did, and what he learned from his unusual job. Are those questions real? Did he ever get one wrong? (Or, depending on your perspective, right?) -
How To Be Good
If we can reach a rough consensus on right and wrong -- don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal -- why don't we all behave virtuously? Mr. Cohen explores the idea that the answer lies not in our characters but our circumstances, and discuss how to create the kind of communities -- in our neighborhoods, our schools, our businesses -- in which we are likely to behave admirably. During the Q&A, he applies these ideas to the actual ethical problems facing the listeners.
