Randy Cohen

Randy Cohen is an American writer and humorist known as the author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine between 1999 and 2011. The column was syndicated throughout the U.S. and Canada. Cohen is also known as the author of several books, a playwright, and the host of the public radio show Person Place Thing.

Career

Cohen graduated from the University at Albany, SUNY in 1971, with a Bachelor of Arts in music. He received an MFA in music composition from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2011, Cohen received from SUNY, Albany the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters.

He spent several years "writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for leading newspapers and magazines," including The New Yorker, Harpers, and The Atlantic; his first paid, published piece was in 1976 for The Village Voice In 1981, his book of satiric letters, Modest Proposals, was published by St. Martins Press. In 1989, his collection of humor pieces, Diary of a Flying Man, was published by Knopf. In 2002, The Good, The Bad, & The Difference: How to Tell Right from Wrong in Everyday Situations was published by Doubleday. His book Be Good: how to navigate the ethics of everything was by Chronicle Books in August 2012.