Michael Mechanic

Senior Editor

Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. Father of two mostly charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps (okay, not the father), he lives in Oakland, California, where he raises four chickens, plays his guitar, and is lately attempting to teach himself fiddle and mandolin.

Full Bio | Get my RSS | Follow @michaelmechanic

Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. He set out to be a scientist, and as an undergrad spent a year in an organic chemistry lab at UC Berkeley trying to synthesize natural poisons found in the skin of certain tropical frogs. He later earned a masters degree in cellular and developmental biology, and another in journalism. In 2009, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for public service, as one of five writers in MoJo's "Torture Hits Home" package. The father of two usually charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps, Michael lives in Oakland, California, where, after years of classical piano and raucous punk-rock drumming (and putting out more than a dozen CDs on his former DIY label, Bad Monkey Records), he has retired to old-time and traditional American music, blues-guitar fingerpicking, and lately, teaching himself to play fiddle and mandolin. His family's chickens are named Lucia, Podge, Cat, and Weed-Whacker. The goldfish have no names, because the family plans to eat them someday.

The Fascination With Isolation

In real-life experiments, mental collapse comes quickly.

—By Michael Mechanic

| Fri Mar. 14, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

In 2004, when Andrew Golder and Lincoln Hiatt first proposed Solitary, a reality TV show about solitary confinement, they were met with the sort of polite humoring one might reserve for a delusional person. "The basic response," Golder recalls, "was 'No, that's too crazy.'"

Indeed, the initial idea was a far cry from the show they ultimately produced, in which an omniscient computer-voiced host named Val prods isolated contestants through a series of mental and physical challenges. In the beginning, Golder and Hiatt had wanted to put contestants in underground cells—with no books, music, television, phones, or stimulation of any kind—and keep them there until they chose to quit. This was to be true isolation, a purely psychological challenge observed through hidden cameras. Even the producers weren't convinced it would play. "How do you drive story?" Hiatt asks. And then, what if players managed to hold out for a long time? "We can't afford to shoot for 365 days and put people in the ground and just sort of let them quit one at a time. We don't have the budget for it."

[Read the full article]

Advertise on MotherJones.com

Hell Times Five

The terrible trials endured on Solitary

—By Michael Mechanic

| Fri Mar. 14, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Sure, the nine contestants on the second season of Solitary were made to stay awake for long stretches, deprived of food, and subjected to amplified infant screams. But that was only the beginning. Here are a few other ways in which the players were kept busy.

1. Playing with her subjects' sense of time, Val (the omniscient computer-voiced host) has each enter a cramped black box with a ridged floor, which is subsequently heated to a sweltering temperature. Players, sans watches, are told to exit the box after exactly three hours; the one who comes closest earns a pass on the next "treatment." A couple of contestants emerge from the box prematurely, and two come very close to three hours. The others, however, express surprise when, after more than four hours, Val alerts them that the contest is long over.

[Read the full article]

The Real Life Prison Experiment

Psychologist Phil Zimbardo explains how mild-mannered people become thugs.

—By Michael Mechanic

| Fri Mar. 14, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

In late October 2004, when a military court sentenced Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick to eight years in prison, busted him to private, stripped him of pay, and handed him a dishonorable discharge for his involvement in the Abu Ghraib fiasco, Stanford University psychologist Phil Zimbardo reacted with anger and frustration. It wasn't as though Frederick, who goes by "Chip," hadn't done horrible things. The 38-year-old had admitted to his role in the very incident that came to symbolize the scandal—Frederick had been the one who'd affixed wires to a hooded prisoner and told the man he'd be electrocuted if he stepped down from atop the flimsy box on which he stood. The soldier also admitted he'd sucker-punched another man, forced prisoners to masturbate publicly, and made detainees pile, naked, one atop the other. To avoid a lengthier sentence, Frederick agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, and pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty, assault, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, and committing indecent acts.

[Read the full article]

Voluntary Confinement

Contestants on the Fox Reality show "Solitary" forgo sleep, food, and dignity—all for a crack at $50,000.

—By Michael Mechanic

| March/April 2008 Issue

Phu Pham was hallucinating badly. Little gray rabbits stared up at him. Vivid cityscapes materialized in the stone-hard carpeting of his 10-foot-diameter pod, and instant-messaging gibberish scrolled across its translucent wall panels. "You're seeing all this crap," recalls the diminutive 23-year-old photographer. "It's scary." Pham had never been so tired. In two days of isolation, he'd been allowed just a few hours of sleep and minimal food. He'd been treated to the amplified screams of infants and hours stuffed into a small box that kept getting hotter. Those first days, he recalls, were when he most wanted out. But Phu Pham is no quitter.

[Read the full article]

Happy 2008! Your Prius' Fuel Efficiency Just Dropped 16%

—By Michael Mechanic

| Thu Jan. 24, 2008 12:00 PM PST

Old-school Detroit must be smiling just a bit right now. After decades of providing unrealistic fuel-efficiency estimates—those big numbers touted in magazine ads and printed in large fonts on the vehicle-details stickers in new car lots—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finally modified its method for calculating average miles per gallon, and the most fuel-efficient cars on the road have taken the biggest hit. Then again, they have a lot farther to fall.

The new method, which applies to all 2008 models and beyond, still doesn't quite reflect actual driving conditions, but unlike the old numbers, which basically reflected your mileage in heaven (or, if you prefer, in an idealized lab setting), the new ones take into account things like acceleration, winter driving, air conditioner use, and realistic speeds (ever tried doing 55 in a 55 zone on a moderate-traffic day? It's a recipe for abuse). Alas, the new formula appears to favor the gas guzzlers. Combined mileage for a 2007 Toyota Prius (automatic, 4 cylinder, 1.5 L engine) is down 16 percent under the new formula, to 46 mpg. The '07 Honda Civic Hybrid is also down 16 percent, to 42 mpg.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]