About me

I'm a writer, blogger, and humorist based out of New Jersey. My main interest is how to live well in the 21st century, but that sends me in all directions -- I write about travel, politics, culture, and occasionally, I make jokes. My main project at the moment is the blog Fellow Travelers, which covers politics, travel, parenting, culture, and life in the 21st century.

I was formerly a managing editor at the Matador Network, and I've been published on Business Insider, The Daily Meal, Fox News, Thought Catalog, The Migrationist, Catalyst.cm, and Immigration Impact. I now spend part of my time writing, part of my time working at my town library, and most of my time being a stay-at-home dad.

I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and went to undergrad at Penn State University, where I got my BA in Journalism. Upon graduation, I started traveling the world and blogging about it. For a year, I worked in content creation at an internet marketing firm. I later got a MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I wrote my dissertation on the U.S. conservative media's treatment of the children of undocumented immigrants and how that treatment affected policy. It was very professional and intelligent sounding, and I used words like "discourse" and phrases like "power dynamics."  After that, I worked as the website and blog manager for the pro-immigrant American Immigration Council in Washington, DC, during the 2013 immigration reform push. I've also lived in Beijing and Buenos Aires.

If you Googled me looking for the MMA guy, that's not who I am. That guy is probably me from an alternate universe where I don't suck at sports.

You can reach out to me at matt.d.hershberger@gmail.com, or you can whisper my name into an ocean breeze*.

*I may be slow to respond if you opt for this method.