Matt Simon has been a science journalist at Wired magazine for nine years. He covers a range of beats, including biology, robotics, climate change, and of course, microplastic pollution. He is the creator of Wired’s Absurd Creature of the Week column, which ran from September 2013 to March 2016. This later turned into the weekly web video series Absurd Creatures, which was then adapted into the hit Netflix series Absurd Planet, which premiered in April 2020. Matt is the author of two previous books. The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar: Evolution's Most Unbelievable Solutions to Life's Biggest Problems, which cataloged the strangest creatures on Earth, won an Alex Award in 2017. This inspired his second book, Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal About Our World—and Ourselves, which dove deep into the science of how parasites mind-control their hosts, published in 2018.