I'm the one on the left.As great as it might seem to be a horse, I am in fact a human, one who is a science journalist and scriptwriter at Wired Magazine.
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Books
New book, available now! Plight of the Living Dead. It's about the many parasites that mind-control their hosts.
“Matt Simon is, to borrow his term, a zombifier: Plight of the Living Dead will infect your brain, forcing you to spout a stream of bizarre facts—about fat-sucking worms, muscle-eating fungi, brain-stabbing wasps—until your friends buy the book for themselves, and the chain of infection continues.”
—Mark Essig, author of Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig
“Spine-tingling . . . Faced with living (and undead) examples of unimaginable suffering, Simon questions the cruelty of nature, explores the way that mind-controlling viruses have ravaged human society, informs us that one in three humans is strolling around with a zombifying parasite right now, and nearly disproves the existence of free will along the way. It’s a fun read that will haunt you to your very core.”
—Gizmodo
“This book is fantastic! The sci-fi stories you’ve read barely hold a candle to the gruesome ways in which parasites manipulate their hosts in real life. This book will make your skin crawl with some of the best examples of manipulation we’ve encountered, fascinate you with what we know about how parasites achieve these amazing feats of control, and leave you wondering what this all means for the nature of free will. You’ll be thinking about this book long after you’re done reading it.”
—Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
Press:
Gizmodo
BuzzFeed
Pop Sci
Forum
Life Elsewhere
“Matt Simon is, to borrow his term, a zombifier: Plight of the Living Dead will infect your brain, forcing you to spout a stream of bizarre facts—about fat-sucking worms, muscle-eating fungi, brain-stabbing wasps—until your friends buy the book for themselves, and the chain of infection continues.”
—Mark Essig, author of Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig
“Spine-tingling . . . Faced with living (and undead) examples of unimaginable suffering, Simon questions the cruelty of nature, explores the way that mind-controlling viruses have ravaged human society, informs us that one in three humans is strolling around with a zombifying parasite right now, and nearly disproves the existence of free will along the way. It’s a fun read that will haunt you to your very core.”
—Gizmodo
“This book is fantastic! The sci-fi stories you’ve read barely hold a candle to the gruesome ways in which parasites manipulate their hosts in real life. This book will make your skin crawl with some of the best examples of manipulation we’ve encountered, fascinate you with what we know about how parasites achieve these amazing feats of control, and leave you wondering what this all means for the nature of free will. You’ll be thinking about this book long after you’re done reading it.”
—Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
Press:
Gizmodo
BuzzFeed
Pop Sci
Forum
Life Elsewhere
You can buy my first book, The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar, on Amazon. Or go to your local bookstore. I'm not your father.
Various writings
Science:
Inside the Mind of Amanda Feilding, Countess of Psychedelic Science
To Save an Endangered Fox, Humans Turned Its Home Into a War Zone
Kratom: The Bitter Plant That Could Help Opioid Addicts—if the DEA Doesn’t Ban It
The South Hills Crossbill Is Evolving in a Seriously Bizarre Way
Unraveling the Mystery of the Ocean’s Twilight Zone
Tech:
This Incredible Hospital Robot Is Saving Lives. Also, I Hate It
The Remarkable Tech Bringing the Deaf and Hearing Worlds Together
Stop Laughing at Those Clumsy Humanoid Robots
I Went to a Robot Cage Fight and Learned How to Be Human
Absurd Creature of the Week column archive
Absurd Creatures the show archive
Video
Nota bene: The following pictures came with the website template but I kept them anyway because I thought they looked nice. They have nothing to do with my work, though like anyone else I do appreciate a good orange soda.
Hit me up.
You can reach me at matthew_simon at wired (.com, of course), or on Twitter at @mrmattsimon.
Repped by David Fugate, LaunchBooks |