There are interesting people doing incredible things just about anywhere. My job is to find them and write about it—or often assign someone else to write about it and live vicariously if I’ve got my editing cap on instead. In recent years I’ve done that as a Senior Writer at Fast Company and most recently as the Features Editor at Men’s Health.
My stories have also appeared in the pages of Wired, Businessweek, Esquire, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Slate—and been anthologized in the annual editions of the the best technology, food (so much food!), and sports writing.
Along the way, I’ve hunted meteorites in Kansas, taste-tested cloned bacon in Indiana, and chased down copper thieves causing an alarming amount of dropped calls in Texas. I’ve also spent way too much time making pit stops at McDonald’s but that became another story entirely…
I’ve also made the strong case that Nickelback are geniuses and investigated how Tide detergent became a drug currency. And I received the James Beard Foundation Award for politics and environmental reporting for a story about Cargill’s quest to make diet sweeteners both natural and fully mainstream.
Ever wonder what the end of the world might actually look like? Or what happens when a man decides to donate his body to strangers, one piece at a time? These are the kind of bizarre questions I love to answer.
Ben Paynter 