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Anita Rao

Host and Executive Editor, "Embodied"

Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.

She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.

You can send Anita an e-mail at arao@wunc.org.

  • If you’ve spent some time on TikTok or YouTube recently, you might have stumbled across ASMR content without even knowing it. From long acrylic nails tapping away on everyday objects to slow, soft whispers, ASMR content is a multifaceted and rapidly growing source of relaxation for millions. But what’s the science behind this brain-tingly phenomenon, and why do so many people love it?
  • Anita finds a lot of ASMR videos to be deeply relaxing, but she doesn't get the well-hyped/well-documented 'brain tingles.' Why? She puts the question to a physiologist who's been exploring the science of ASMR for the past decade. Plus, she meets an ASMR artist who's entranced hundreds of thousands of people with her medical role play videos and a woman who turned to the world of Boyfriend ASMR to heal her broken heart.
  • Egg donation in the U.S. is a multibillion dollar industry designed to provide infertile folks with the eggs they need to conceive. But how do we decide what human eggs are worth — and how do the characteristics of the donor factor into the equation?
  • Egg donation in the U.S. is a multibillion dollar industry with high stakes and complicated dynamics. Anita talks with two egg donors about why they donated and what they wish they'd known earlier. Plus, a medical anthropologist shines a light on the messy world of donor compensation and why some eggs are valued higher than others.
  • The Brazilian butt lift is one of the fastest growing cosmetic procedures. What is driving the desire for a “perfect peach”?
  • The Brazilian butt lift (or BBL) is the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in recent memory ... but why? Anita learns about the ins and outs of the procedure from a plastic surgeon and a BBL recipient. Then a scholar puts our obsession with big butts in historical context — tracing the conversation from Sir Mix-a-Lot to Kim Kardashian.
  • If you could speak again with a loved one who has passed away, would you? With recent advances in artificially intelligent grief tech, this question isn’t just hypothetical anymore.
  • When a loved one dies, a big part of the grieving process involves letting go of the role they once played in your day-to-day life. But with new developments in AI technology … the dead can live on in new and interesting ways. Anita meets a tech journalist who built bots of her parents to see how AI could preserve their memories for the long term. She also talks with a philosophy professor about the ways that ancient Chinese philosophy can address AI's emerging ethical issues and how grief tech fits into a long history of traditions around death and mourning.
  • Sex robots have been a sci-fi staple since the genre’s birth. Now that more advancements in technology are bringing early generation bots to life, how will they impact our human to human relationships?
  • Science fiction and real-life tech experts have promised a future filled with sex robots. But how many of those predictions will actually come true? Anita talks to an artificial intelligence scholar who's traced sex robots from Greek mythology to the prototypes on the market today. Plus, a writer shines a light on the dark world of a futuristic brothel … explored from the perspective of an AI Sex Bot herself.