Hello. I’m a UK-based writer and journalist, who specialises in things like popular history, jokes, debunking and product development. (“Specialises” is maybe the wrong word there? “Jumps about between”.)
I’ve written three books – Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up is a history of failure, while Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t is a history of lies and other forms of nonsense, and Conspiracy: A History of B*llocks Theories, and How Not to Fall For Them (written with Jonn Elledge) is a history of, well, conspiracy theories. Humans was an international bestseller that’s been sold into thirty territories and translated into at least twenty languages.
I’m currently working on my fourth book, a history of the apocalypse.
For the past two and half years I was the editor of Full Fact, the UK’s independent fact checking organisation, where I led the team through Brexit, a general election and a pandemic, and was a regular contributor on national broadcast media.
Before joining Full Fact in 2018, I was editorial director of BuzzFeed UK. I joined in 2013, and helped grow the organisation from seven people sat round a desk to a team of over 140. Among other things I created and ran the New Formats innovation team, developing everything from hugely viral new quiz formats to Pulitzer-shortlisted interactives. I also did a lot of jokes, often about the online travails of a fictional British retailer named Pricehound.
Before that I helped create and launch the experimental UsVsTh3m site for Trinity Mirror (“a three-month experiment that eventually lasted two years”, in the words of Matt Round). I’ve worked co-ordinating news coverage across 50+ countries as an editor for MSN International, and many, many years ago wrote about internet culture and technology for Metro. In my spare time, I think I may have helped to invent what came to be known in media circles as the “viral debunk”.
I’ve also helped start a short-lived London weekly newspaper, worked in television development for major production companies, and a long time ago was almost a professional comedian. I grew up in Cornwall, and currently live in London, where at the time of writing I am horribly outnumbered by an ever-growing family of spider plants.
All photos of me on this website are by the brilliant Paul Clarke. If you need pictures taken you should get him to do it.