In context: Marshal Brain created the HowStuffWorks website as a hobby in 1998. To his surprise, the site became a go-to for the layman wanting to understand complex processes and systems in easy-to-read language. The site spawned books, podcasts, and a TV series on the Discovery Channel, which purchased the brand from Brain for $250 million in 2007.
Marshall Brain, the creator of the popular HowStuffWorks website, died the week before Thanksgiving in his office on the campus of North Carolina State University. He was 63. Brain’s wife called NC State Police to perform a welfare check at 6:40 am on November 20. Officers arrived in his office at 7:00 am to find him already dead.
University newspaper Technician noted that initially, no cause of death was released. On Tuesday, Raleigh’s The News & Observer obtained a copy of Brain’s death certificate, confirming he committed suicide. The report did not mention motive or method, but an email sent a few hours before his death spelled out his motivation pretty clearly.
At 4:29 am, Brain emailed about 30 friends and associates. The lengthy letter explained how specific university staff members “ruined his life.”
“I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university,” Brain wrote.
The process he was referring to was NC State’s “EthicsPoint” system, a method of reporting ethical complaints. Brain claimed he had “witnessed wrongdoing” in August after having a dispute with an administrator over the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting place, which he led.
He used EthicsPoint to file his complaint, as the school had instructed staff and students to do. What followed was a complete system breakdown, leading to his firing.
“I witnessed wrongdoing on campus, and I tried to report it,” Brain’s email read. “What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation the likes of which could not be believed.”
One of his students, aware of the situation, said it boiled down to Brain not wanting to “play the political game.”
“Marshall was caught in an imbalanced group of people with more power than him, and they didn’t like him calling them out,” said email recipient and Brain’s former student Brandon Kashani. “… He was keeping people accountable. He didn’t understand that political aspect of it, and they just wanted to get rid of him.”
On November 6, North Carolina State’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Executive Program Director Stephen Markham publicly announced that Marshall Brain would retire on December 31, 2025. However, Brain’s letter said NC State fired him on October 29 and that the “forced retirement” was to allow him to save face.
“The fact is that I am not ‘retiring.’ Instead, NC State terminated me on Oct. 29. My career has been destroyed by multiple administrators at NCSU who united together and completely ignored the EthicsPoint System and its promises to employees. I did what the university told me to do, and then these administrators ruined my life for it.”
University’s spokesman, Mick Kulikowski, told Technician that the school has no comment on Brain’s death or his allegations against NCSU or its faculty. The school’s website briefly removed Brain’s bio page but restored it after his email leaked to the media.
Image credit: Marshall Brain, Suzie Tremmel
