Rachel Faulkner White
Rachel Faulkner is a producer and editor for TED Radio Hour.
During her time at NPR, Faulkner has also helped create dozens of TED Radio Hour segments, including a long-form interview on navigating grief and hardship, a look at how family income affects childhood brain development, a conversation on loneliness and human connection and an exploration of outer space and gravitational waves. She also occasionally produces episodes of How I Built This, including fan favorites like The McBride Sisters, Rent The Runway, Bumble and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
Faulkner is part of the TED Radio Hour team that received a 2018 Webby Award for their Manipulation episode. She also worked as a research assistant for Professor Steven V. Roberts, author of the memoir Cokie: A Life Well-Lived, about his wife (and one of NPR's Founding Mothers) Cokie Roberts.
Faulkner joined NPR in 2016 as an intern. She started producing while finishing college, coming into the office between classes, and joined NPR full-time after finishing her bachelor's degree in journalism and mass communications from George Washington University.
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We often equate youth with success at work. Physicist and network scientist Albert-László Barabási put this belief to the test, and found that with persistence, we can be successful at any age.
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We receive a lot of messages about how bad it is to grow old. Anti-ageism activist Ashton Applewhite says that while some of our fears may be valid, aging offers more opportunities than we think.
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Music curator Alexis Charpentier hunts for forgotten records around the world. He shares the story of rediscovering a Swiss band from the 80s — and how he helped give their music a second life.
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With few exceptions, ancient humans painted the same 32 symbols in caves all over Europe. Paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger asks: What were they trying to say to each other — and to us?
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Museums are full of artifacts left by "the first and the famous," says curator Ariana Curtis. Museums can better represent diverse stories, she argues, if they also include stories of everyday life.
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Facebook profits from being frictionless, says Yaël Eisenstat. But without friction, misinformation can spread like wildfire. The solution, Yaël says, is to build more friction into social media.
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Decades ago, a civil war in Sierra Leone left thousands as amputees. Researcher and current Education Minister David Moinina Sengeh set out to help them with a more comfortable socket for prostheses.
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Have you brushed your teeth today? Or gotten a shot recently? As tribologist Jennifer Vail explains, these mundane activities are among the many in our daily lives that are made possible by friction.
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From hippie culture to the first personal computers, Stewart Brand has been key to some of the most groundbreaking movements of the last century. This hour, he reflects on his life and career.
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In Marvel's "America," Gabby Rivera wrote a superhero who's queer, Latina, and punches portals across dimensions. She shares why it's empowering to write characters that mirror her identity.