From 2007 to 2013, Mac worked at
Mother Jones, where he began as an intern, working his way up from fact checker and copy editor until he was published as a writer. From 2010 to 2013, he was a Human Rights reporter, a position that was created for Mac. He has appeared on
MSNBC,
PBS,
NPR,
Democracy Now!, the
BBC, and
Al Jazeera. He has been described variously as trustworthy by
Newsweek, "a total bad-ass" by
The American Prospect, and "a profane young
bisexual" by
The Wall Street Journal. In 2010, Mac published ''For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma's Never-Ending War'', which was about his experience in
Thailand and accounts of the refugee crisis of those fleeing nearby
Burma. He had initially gone to Thailand in 2006 to teach English and spent six weeks in the country, where he learned more about the
Karen refugee crisis. In July 2011, Mac wrote an essay for
GOOD about trying to use violent sex to treat his
posttraumatic stress disorder, which Mac said was triggered by reporting the
2010 Haiti earthquake, and included first-hand recounting via
Twitter of being with a woman traumatized by rape. The writer
Roxane Gay, a Haitian-American, was supportive of Mac recounting personal, first-hand experience in Haiti, Louisiana, and other locations Mac lived and worked as a writer. Journalist Marjorie Valbrun wrote in
Slate that she found the article problematic from a journalist's perspective, while writer Debra Dickerson, also writing for
Slate, felt that the article was brave and fearless.
Jezebel published an "open letter to the editors" of
GOOD signed by 36 female journalists and researchers, condemning Mac's lack of understanding of the context of Haiti, saying that he was perpetuating stereotypes. Journalist Elspeth Reeve wrote in defense of Mac's essay in
The Atlantic, examining the motivations behind the
Jezebel letter.
Conor Friedersdorf, another journalist at
The Atlantic, disputed the criticism that Mac was operating under a "colonialist mindset", instead seeing the
Jezebel letter as unjustifiably scapegoating Mac. In
Essence, Haitian-American writer
Edwidge Danticat said that he met the Haitian rape victim that Mac wrote about, and alleged that Mac did not have permission to write about the victim. Journalist Ansel Herz blogged that he felt that Mac had breached journalistic ethics. Journalists Amanda Taub and Jina Moore and others questioned the live-tweeting reportage method as well as the question of consent. Mac responded via a
Ms. interview, discussing the response to his personal essay. In March 2012,
Mother Jones published an article by Mac on working undercover at a warehouse as a picker doing
third-party logistics. In 2015, Mac published his second book,
Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story, which described his experience with
post-traumatic stress disorder. The book was a further examination of his personal journey with PTSD, which was initially the subject of the essay he wrote for
GOOD magazine in 2011. In 2016, Mac traveled to Cuba to document extreme birders for
Audubon. In 2017, Mac wrote a feature for
Rolling Stone about exploring the use of
hallucinogens to treat depression and PTSD, and the underground network used by practitioners in the United States. Since 2013, Mac has worked as a freelance journalist. In 2021, Mac was featured on the cover of
New York Magazine, where he discusses his experiences with
phalloplasty, a gender-affirming surgery for transgender men. == Personal life ==