HowStuffWorks
American media company
HowStuffWorks is an American commercial infotainment website founded by professor and author Marshall Brain, to provide its target audience an insight into the way many things work. The site uses various media to explain complex concepts, terminology, and mechanisms—including photographs, diagrams, videos, animations, and articles.
The website was acquired by Discovery Communications in 2007, but was sold to Blucora in 2014. The site has since expanded out into podcasting, focusing on factual topics. In December 2016, HowStuffWorks, LLC became a subsidiary of OpenMail, LLC, later renamed System1. In 2018, the podcast division of the company, which had been spun-off by System1 under the name Stuff Media, was acquired by iHeartMedia for $55 million.
History
In 1998, then North Carolina State University instructor Marshall Brain (1961–2024), started the site as a hobby. In 1999, Brain raised venture capital and formed HowStuffWorks, Inc. In March 2002, HowStuffWorks was sold to the Convex Group, an Atlanta-based investment and media company founded by Jeff Arnold, founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of WebMD. The headquarters moved from Cary, North Carolina, to Atlanta. HowStuffWorks originally focused on science and machines, ranging from submarines to common household gadgets and appliances.
“HowStuffWorks” enters the record as american media company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what HowStuffWorks, American and media can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“HowStuffWorks” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, HowStuffWorks, American and media provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2720134. VIAF identifies the subject as 129201405. The Library of Congress control number is n2002117060. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2014, 2016 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “HowStuffWorks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.