Smith worked as a staff editor for
The Atlantic, and published his first major article there in 2001. The article, "Shock and Disbelief," was about electroshock therapy, and would become the center of a libel suit against Smith and the magazine. It later appeared in the 2002 collection
The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Smith helped to edit the 2007 anthology
The American Idea: The Best of The Atlantic Monthly. His first book, 2007's
Muses, Madmen and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity, explores the history and science of hearing voices. His 2012 memoir
Monkey Mind recounts the circumstances that led to his lifelong, occasionally crippling struggles with anxiety and its related symptoms. While primarily experiential, it also touches on the history of anxiety in literature, science and philosophy. Smith was praised for the book's sympathetic, humorous and entertaining tone.
Monkey Mind was a
New York Times bestseller, and was included on
Oprah Winfrey's 2013 list of 40 Books to Read Before Turning 40. Smith's third book,
Hard Feelings: Finding the Wisdom in Our Darkest Emotions, is scheduled to be published in March 2026. It explores the so-called negative emotions as "not enemies to be vanquished but essential guides to self-knowledge." Until 2019, Smith held the Mary Ellen Donnelly Critchlow Endowed Chair in English at the
College of New Rochelle, and he has also taught at
Bryn Mawr College and in the graduate journalism program at
New York University. He was a guest on
The Colbert Report in 2007; on
NPR's
Talk of the Nation in 2012; and on
WTF with Marc Maron in 2012. ==Personal life==