Mark McClusky is the Editorial Director of the Freakonomics Radio Network. In this role, he’s responsible for the editorial quality and show development for the network, which includes the top 100 podcast Freakonomics Radio, No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and a slate of upcoming launches.
Before joining Freakonomics in November 2020, he was the Digital Editor of the Sports Illustrated Group. In this role, he directed all digital editorial strategy for the sites in the group—SI.com, Golf.com, Fansided.com, and SIKids.com. Under his leadership, the sites set new audience and traffic records. Traffic across the group grew by 50%, social media engagement more than doubled, and video views quadrupled across all SI platforms.
Before returning to Sports Illustrated and Time Inc. in September 2016, McClusky was Head of Product & Business Development at WIRED, where he directed the brand's technology, product and audience development teams, as well as leading business development for the editorial operation. In that capacity he spearheaded a groundbreaking initiative to offer ad-blocking users an ad-free subscription to WIRED.com; led a first-of-its-kind editorial partnership between WIRED and SI about the future of football; and expanded the brand’s expansion across emerging platforms, such as Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP.
He previously served as the Head of Operations at WIRED, as well as as Editor, WIRED.com for two years. Under his direction, WIRED.com record traffic and readership numbers, and garnered industry recognition for editorial excellence, including eight Webby Awards and multiple nominations for National Magazine Awards. Prior to that role, McClusky was Special Projects Editor at WIRED, where he led the magazine’s editorial efforts on new platforms, including its iPad and other tablet editions, working to help develop some of the first tablet magazine products in the industry.
From 2005 to 2010, McClusky was the WIRED's Senior Editor for Products, directing all gear and gadget coverage. He also served as editor of the newsstand-only WIRED TEST magazines and was the founding editor of Playbook, WIRED’s sports technology blog. He has been Managing Editor of WIRED.com, an editor at Mobile PC magazine, Editor in Chief of EA.com, and a reporter and editor at Sports Illustrated and SI for Kids magazines.
McClusky is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller Faster, Higher, Stronger: How Sports Science is Creating a New Generation of Superathletes, and What We Can Learn from Them, published in 2014. He has covered three Olympics, the World Series, and countless other sporting events. He was one of the founding editors of Sports Illustrated’s website, and was a staffer on SI Daily, the magazine’s daily edition at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. McClusky was also a member of the cutting-edge baseball analytics collective Baseball Prospectus, and a contributor to several of its bestselling books.
McClusky is an avid home cook who has studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa. He’s a co-author of Alinea with Michelin three-star chef Grant Achatz, and his WIRED feature story about scientist and cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold was anthologized in the 2012 edition of Best American Science & Nature Writing.
He has made a wide variety of media appearances, including television appearances on Today, NBC Nightly News, PBS NewsHour, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, and G4′s Attack of the Show. He’s appeared on many NPR shows including Morning Edition, Science Friday, Talk of the Nation, as well as Here and Now and Good Food. As a speaker, he's appeared at numerous events, including South by Southwest, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the WIRED Health Conference, the Magazine Publishers of America Swipe 2.0 Conference, and IAB Canada Connect.
A graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, McClusky lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife and two daughters.