Brain's admiration for those who truly understand the way things work propelled him from his youth to not only understand such things himself but also share the knowledge with as many people as possible.
"When I was 16, one of the things that fascinated me most was engines," he recounts. He found himself enthralled by his neighbor, who was able to take apart his car engine, fix it, and then put it back together. "I thought he was a genius," he says.
Brain attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute near Albany, New York, where he majored in electrical engineering. While at school, he became a member of the Alpha Chi Ro fraternity, eventually moving on to North Carolina State University, where he completed his master's in computer science.
Prior to launching HowStuffWorks he spent several years teaching in NCSU's computer science department, later running his own software training and consulting company. He also wrote technical books part-time. HowStuffWorks began in 1998 as Brain's hobby, quickly becoming something of a juggernaut when he began raising venture capital the following year. Three years later, the same year HowStuffWorks was named one of Time's "50 Best Websites," he sold the site to Atlanta-based media company Convex Group.
His meteoric rise to success has led to a number of books and high-profile media appearances, including a notable December 2006 spot on The Oprah Winfrey Show where he achieved his largest platform for educating the public and discussed the workings of many commonplace technical apparatus, including email, television, microwaves, and telecommunications.
Here's a surprising fact about Brain: though he's one of the leading technological minds in the country, he lives a decidedly low-tech lifestyle on a farm in Cary, North Carolina, with his wife and four children.
Another interesting tidbit about Brain: his favorite word is "fascinating," and he ascribes the adjective to many complex techniques and individuals, including stone lithography, Malcolm Gladwell, and uploading human memory into computers.
He is also "fascinated" by the very real possibility (or, as he might say, probability) that the world is heading into a "robotic age," a fundamental change in society with far-reaching consequences.
"We are standing right now on the threshold of the robotic era. Once robots start arriving in the job market in significant numbers…they have the potential to dramatically change the world economy," he observes.
Since the early years of his online success, Brain has moved on to a new full-time career: writing. He has written a series of essays called Robotic Nation, the science fiction novel Manna, and the very popular online article "How to Make a Million Dollars." He admits that his decision to write was borne out of his personal foibles.
"I have just a general memory problem. My whole writing career is dedicated to the fact that I don't have a memory," he confesses.
Like many overachievers, Brain is perennially unsatisfied with his own work, especially his writing, which he wishes was more like that of the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink.
"If I could cause myself to write in a different way, Malcolm Gladwell would be my model. I admire him because he's taking stuff that's esoteric and academic, and he's making it palatable to everyone."
In addition to writing his books, he writes and maintains 15 websites, personally answering hundreds of emails per week. It is estimated that more than 1 million people are privy to his opinions every week.
In 1997 he wrote and published a book titled The Teenager's Guide to the Real World as a reference for socially awkward teens struggling to fit in like he did during his high school days. His aim in writing the book was to tell teenagers many of the things he wishes he knew before moving on to college and into the competitive professional world.
But dealing with the public's unfamiliarity with the inner workings of technology is not Brain's only passion. He is also actively involved in the growing and increasingly prominent global community of atheists and secularists. Brain operates two websites which encourage the public to engage in freethinking and secular humanism and to challenge authority. The two sites, Why Won't God Heal Amputees? and God Is Imaginary, have garnered praise from many public figures critical of religion, including Oxford biologist and author Richard Dawkins.
Brain is also an active community advocate and sits on the North Carolina advisory board of DonorsChoose, a nonprofit organization which allows potential donors to make direct contributions to public schools. The organization boasts an impressive track record, having facilitated the donation of more than $13.9 million to over 31,000 projects and 690,000 needy students.
His wife, Leigh, says of Brain's innate curiosity and altruism, "One thing I noticed when I first met him was that he always thinks big. He's constantly asking himself, 'How can this change the world?'"
In light of his efforts to arm the public with knowledge and challenge authority, his impact has already registered.
