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Authors
Erin McCarthy
Erin is the Editor-in-Chief ofMentalFloss.com, host ofThe List Show on YouTube, and the creator, executive producer, and host of Mental Floss'sHistory Vs.podcast. Previously, she covered everything from natural disasters to bridge engineering to the science behind sci-fi movies forPopular Mechanicsmagazine. When she's not editing or writing, you can find her karaoking, reading non-fiction, watching Investigation Discovery and hockey (go NYR!), or hanging out with her cats, Oliver and Pearl.
Jennifer M Wood
Jennifer M. Wood is a senior editor at MentalFloss.com, where she often writes about bad '80s movies, good British television, morbidly fascinating crimes, and Peeps. She writes more of the same for Condé Nast Traveler, Esquire, WIRED, Details, Rolling Stone, Complex and various other outlets.
Stacy Conradt
Stacy Conradt is a staff writer who's been contributing to mental_floss since 2008. As an avid board game lover, she is especially fond of her work on Split Decision and Mixed Nuts. In her spare time (ha) she likes to run badly and visit roadside attractions that make most people cringe. She never met an Abe Lincoln tribute she didn't love. If you have one to suggest, let her know at twitter.com/stacy_writes.
Ellen Gutoskey
Ellen Gutoskey is a Mental Floss staff writer who especially loves covering pop culture, not-so-popular culture, literature, really tiny things, really giant things, and anything that was previously thought to be lost.
Mark Mancini
A native of fabulous Rochester, NY, Mark loves freelance writing, community theater, & anything dinosaur-related. He’s also obsessed with Denver Broncos football.
Sean Hutchinson
Sean Hutchinson lives in the wilds of Brooklyn, NY. He’s got a couple of them fancy schmancy academic degrees in English literature, is a big World War II buff, counts Carl Sagan and Harry Nilsson among his personal heroes, and he’s also a huge movie fan. When he's not coming up with strange and interesting things to write about on Mental Floss, he's writing movie reviews and news at CriterionCast.
Rudie Obias
Rudie Obias lives in Brooklyn, New York. He's a freelance writer interested in cinema, pop culture, science fiction, and web culture. His work can be found atShockYa.com,MoviePilot.com, UPROXX, io9,ScreenRant.com,Giantfreakinrobot.com, and, of course,Mental Floss. He is also a Co-Working Evangelist for Bat Haus Co-Working in Brooklyn.
Jake Rossen
Jake Rossen is a senior staff writer for Mental Floss.
Clair McLafferty
Clair is a freelance writer and bartender-at-large in Birmingham, Ala. When she's not writing, Clair is usually nerding out on trashy science-fiction or researching cocktail history. Her other writing and rambling is usually posted on Twitter @see_clair_write and atclairmclafferty.com.
Paul Anthony Jones
Paul Anthony Jones is a writer and musician from Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of word origins guideHaggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons, and he runs@HaggardHawks.
Mark Peters
Mark Peters writes about euphemisms for , comedy for , and comic books for . He is the author of the forthcoming book from Three Rivers Press.
Beth Anne Macaluso
Beth Anne Macaluso is an editor forMentalFloss.com. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, running, and figuring out which wines pair best with her favorite cereals. She lives in Hoboken with her dog Ruthie, who is named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Shaunacy Ferro
Shaunacy Ferro is a senior staff writer forMentalFloss.com. Her work has previously appeared inFast Company,Popular Science, and Architect magazine, among others. She lives in Brooklyn and spends most of her free time taking photos of her cat.
Bess Lovejoy
Bess Lovejoy is a staff editor at Mental Floss, a former editor at Smithsonian.com and Schott's Almanac, and the author ofRest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses.
Erika Berlin
Erika Berlin is an editor atMentalFloss.com. She's a disco ball enthusiast, a pop culture addict, and a fan of pretending low-brow TV shows are educational. She is a Midwestern New Yorker who has a miniature schnauzer named Amadeus (after her favorite movie/composer). Erika was previously an editor atRolling Stone,Cosmopolitan, and Refinery 29, among others.
Suzanne Raga
Suzanne Raga loves writing about everything from history, business, music, and literature to personal finance, life hacks, food trends, and health. A graduate of Princeton University, she is the author of , curator of the indie music blog After The Show, and a whiz at Latin Scrabble.
Jeff Wells
Jeff Wells is a freelance writer and English teacher living in New York City. He’s a warrior of the casual sports league circuit, with titles in soccer and volleyball and a host of nagging injuries to boot. He also has a softer side that includes writing poetry and walking his French bulldog, Ruby. His current fascinations include the Civil War, German beer, and making the perfect omelet.
Nick Keppler
Nick Keppler is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Village Voice, Nerve, Vice, and Slate. When he’s not on his laptop, he’s probably kayaking on one of the city’s rivers with a Led Zeppelin track blaring through his earbuds.
Michele Debczak
Michele Debczak is a Senior Staff Writer for Mental Floss. Some of her favorite subjects include defunct theme park rides, weird-looking sea creatures, and fast food history. When she's not writing, she's probably watching Bon Appetit test kitchen videos or reading about unsolved mysteries on Wikipedia.
Andrew LaSane
Andrew is a staff writer formentalfloss.com. His name can also be found on sites like Complex.com and Thrillist, while the rest of him can be found wherever there are sneakers, movies, and picture books.
Valerie DeBenedette
Valerie DeBenedette is a freelance writer who lives in New York State with a small tan dog and a big red cat. She most often writes about health and medicine and knits quite frequently.
Nita Rao
Nita Rao is a writer, fact-checker, and volunteer library shelver. She lives in Austin, TX and holds a candle for the English village mystery sub-genre (sleuthing vicars most of all).
Bryan Reesman
Bryan Reesman loves music, movies, theater, comic books, books ... he can never keep up with everything, but he has fun trying.
Susan Welsh
Susan Welsh is a freelance writer and pastry afficionado. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where she is inspired by the historical villages and pristine countryside along the Delaware River.
Kristin Hunt
Kristin Hunt is a writer and professional movie geek. She's previously worked on the digital teams at Thrillist and Maxim, but you can also find her byline onGQ, Nerve, andPaste.
Stephanie Vermillion
Stephanie Vermillion is a travel and lifestyle journalist and filmmaker, and the founder of Stephanie Vermillion Studio. Her work has been published in outlets like Mental Floss, Elite Daily, and UNILAD. She's a member of the Society of American Travel Writers, and author of the road trip travel blog, The Wanderlost Way.
Karen Gardiner
Karen Gardiner is a travel and culture writer from Scotland, currently based in New York City. Her writing has appeared inThe Guardian, BBC,Condé Nast Traveler, and more. Find more at her website.
Nicola Prentis
Nicola Prentis has taught English all over the world and now writes materials for English Language Teaching, including award winning fiction for learners. She writes about English and the industry atwww.simpleenglishuk.wordpress.com.
Nina Pearlman
Nina Pearlman is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and chasing her 1-year-old son around the apartment.
Eeva Moore
Eeva Moore is a writer and politico living in Berlin. She has extreme geographic commitment issues, and so has never lived anywhere for longer than six years and is eyeing her next move. She speaks in Buffy references and will talk your ear off about gerrymandering and judicial elections. And if you’re an American abroad, she can totally help you register to vote.
Christine Jun
A graduate of Williams College, Christine has written for The Huffington Post, Inverse, Salon, Bustle, PopSci, VICE, Elle, Dazed & Confused, i-D, and Harper's Bazaar. She has also worked for The Stockholm Film Festival and appeared as a guest speaker on Monocle's live podcast.
Chuck Tryon
Chuck Tryon’s day job is working as an English professor at Fayetteville State University, but he has also written for Alternet, Filmmaker Magazine, andThe Chronicle of Higher Education. He is also the author of three books, including his most recent book,Political TV.
Rebekah Shoemake
Rebekah Shoemake is a summer intern forMentalFloss.com. She enjoys reading, listening to podcasts, re-watchingBob’s Burgerson Netflix, and looking at dogs on Petfinder. She splits her time between Boone, NC, where she is a big sister and free babysitter, and Princeton, NJ, where she’s a rising senior in the English department at Princeton and a theater nerd.
Corinne Cummings
Corinne Cummings is a writer and editor who believes you can drink iced coffee and rosé all year round.
Garrett Williams
Garrett Williams is a musician, writer, and lawn-game enthusiast. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their volatile cat/corgi duo. When not picnicking in Prospect Park or cheering on his beloved Pittsburgh Pirates, he can be found kicking out the jams with his soul band, The Irresponsibles.
Kenneth Partridge
Kenneth Partridge is a music and pop-culture writer based in Brooklyn. He's written for such publications as Billboard, The AV Club, Pitchfork, and Refinery29. His hobbies include reading, running, shopping for records, and attempting to justify his love of ska.
Allison C Meier
Allison C. Meier is a writer and editor focused on visual culture and overlooked history. She is the former senior editor at Atlas Obscura, and more recently a staff writer at Hyperallergic. She has contributed to the New York Times, Public Domain Review, Wellcome Collection, JSTOR Daily, CityLab, Narratively, and other illustrious publications. She moonlights as a cemetery tour guide in New York City.
Jeff Merron
Jeff Merron is a journalist who writes about pop culture, history, sports, and technology.
Chris Chafin
Chris Chafin writes about design, technology, the media, and other assorted strange groupings of people. He would be very flattered if you would follow him on Twitter.
Stephanie Faris
Stephanie Faris is a professional freelance writer and novelist. Her work has appeared on NYPost.com, The Week, Cosmopolitan.com, SheKnows, and Ecommerce Insiders, among many others. She is the Simon & Schuster author of 30 Days of No Gossip, 25 Roses, and the Piper Morgan series.
Sulagna Misra
Sulagna Misra is a freelance writer and illustrator living in the New York area. She writes about the weird things that pop into her head when she's not paying attention. She's on Twitter so she can not pay attention more effectively.
Erica Cirino
Erica Cirino is a freelance science writer based in New York. She covers wildlife and the environment, and specializes in biology, conservation, and policy.
Crystal Ponti
Crystal Ponti is a freelance writer and an award-winning blogger from Downeast Maine. Her lifelong quest has been to figure out why the cheese stands alone. When she's not up to her elastic waistband in freelance projects, you'll find her digitally devouring the latest indie novel, drinking maple syrup from the bottle, and playing slap jack with her kids. She lets them win.
Tom Metcalfe
Tom Metcalfe is a journalist and writer based in London in the UK.
Celeste Noche
Celeste Noche is a photographer, writer, and secondhand book enthusiast based in Portland, Oregon but is more likely to be found on the road. In addition to MentalFloss.com, she has collaborated with publications such as Condé Nast Traveler, Apartment Therapy, and The Huffington Post. She writes about her adventures on her blog, Wanderlogue.
Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi
Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, PhD is a journalist and author in Chicago. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence that Scandalized Jazz-Age Chicago (Chicago Review Press, May 2017). More at UglyPrey.com.
Ruz Gulko
Ruz Gulko is a passionate teacher of all things Jewish. Though born and raised in Canada, Ruz has resided in Seattle for 32 years, and is a Cantor as well as a Rabbi. She loves to work with people of all ages, and truly believes that learning and eating chocolate together could save the world.