Maria Konnikova was born in Moscow, Russia and came to the United States when she was four years old. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a regular column with a focus on psychology and culture, and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, The Observer, and Scientific American, among numerous other publications. She is the author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and her latest book is The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con, and Why we Fall For it Every Time.