Shane Madej

Shane's profile picture on Twitter.

Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts

Starbucks

BuzzFeed

Sherry Madej (mother)

*For Shane's aliases, click here.*

## Description

Shane Madej is one of the two main co-hosts for *BuzzFeed Unsolved* alongside Ryan Bergara. He does not believe in ghosts nor paranormal forces, but does believe very strongly in Bigfoot. Fans that are also skeptics are referred to as Shaniacs.

## Life

Shane was born to Mark and Sherry Madej in Schaumburg, Illinois, and grew up there.

He has described his relationship with his parents as "pretty good," and his brother, Scott Madej, remarked to Ryan that Shane did not usually get into trouble. (Shane refuted this by saying Scott was usually the one getting in trouble).

Shane has also described his relationship with his brother as "even when we didn't get along very well, we've always been incredibly similar," and added that they both liked motion pictures, as well as both being "nerds."

As a child, Shane had a pet parrot named Paco that unfortunately died in winter. However, the ground was too cold, and the family had to keep the bird in the freezer until the ground thawed and they could bury him in the garden.

Growing up, Shane suffered nightmares of a "big, angry, black dog [that] would always sorta be standing there, growling, and it would jump at [him,] and it would bite [his] face." While playing with the other children in his neighborhood, one of his neighbors had a "rotten husky" that had gotten loose, and started chasing him throughout the neighborhood. These events instilled a distrust of dogs in Shane.

Shane also mentioned that he was in the Boy Scouts.

At some point in his childhood, Shane and his brother physically fought in the backseat of his mother's car, prompting her to threaten the two with leaving the car, to which they claimed they had not been fighting.

At around nine years old, Shane was going to attend church with a friend, but as soon "as he crossed the threshold," he got a bad nosebleed, and the church staff ran out of tissues.

Also around nine, Shane visited a campground with his family. While riding bikes with his brother and another child, they biked down a gravel hill. As Shane was going too fast, he hit the brakes and flew over the handlebars of the bike, falling down the hill and skidding across the gravel. He was scraped up, but no serious injuries remained.

Shane had a childhood friend named Alex.

Shane also famously created "Extreme Science!" with Rent Harrison playing Professor Morris Ashley, posted on his YouTube. He also created "Marshmallow World" with Matt Staffa and Christy Gurga.

At some point, Shane received a C in a class and was told he was grounded. He then ignored his parents and went out anyway, as he had made previous plans. It is unknown if he received further punishment for this.

When Shane saw his older brother Scott going through his "teen angst," he avoided the "angst" himself by deciding to "sit that out." This "teen angst" was shown when Scott (in Shane's words) "doinked" Shane's head on a staircase when Shane kicked him. This would cause Shane's glasses to dig into his face, creating a small scar still visible today.

Shane would re-enact skits on his parents' Handicam, which he found indicative of his desire to perform. He also did some stop-motion work with clay.

Shane attended Schaumburg High School. Shane also took German classes throughout all four years of high school. He competed in a contest called "Mr. Saxon," a male high school talent show, and won the title of "Mr. Saxon" by performing magic and singing the Saxon Spirit song in Geman while wearing a lederhosen.

Shane has described himself in high school as "casually delightful," saying he "wasn't cool, [he] didn't play sports, [he] was in band," although he did win a popularity contest. According to a friend at the time, after the contest results were announced on the loudspeaker in their class, a student next to the friend said that Shane was "dry as hell."

Shane also remarked that he "didn't really bother" with girls in terms of romance until senior year, when he had a girlfriend. Although the relationship only lasted a few months, he is still friends with her today. One of his friends remarked to Ryan that "a lot of ladies were interested" in him at the time, although Shane was very aloof and was unaware.

As an apparent prize for winning Mr. Saxon, Shane received free prom tickets, although he and his girlfriend had broken up before prom. Instead, he went to prom alone, where he came down with food poisoning, and "spent the entire night shitting on a boat."

At an unknown point in time, Shane owned a dummy and practiced ventriloquism.

At another unknown point in time, Shane worked at a ballpark. One day, on the third of July, there was a two-hour-long line at a concessions stand, where Shane worked the register, and they had sold out of lemonade. An angry customer, when informed of the issue, complained that that was not on the sign. When Shane said "I don't know what to tell you," the customer responded with "Well, that sucks," and threw his trash, including a cup of water, at him. Now covered in trash, Shane was forced to smile and apologize. In an interview with Ryan, he listed this as a moment where he felt as if he was "in the pits, and didn't know if [he] would make it."

Shane attended Columbia College Chicago for editing.

Also at another unknown point in time, Shane cut up an avocado, intending to eat the meat off of the avocado pit. As he was eating with the pit in his mouth, he realized that if he sneezed, the pit would likely lodge in his throat, and he would choke to death. While he ultimately did not sneeze nor choke on the pit, Shane has wondered if he actually died since then, and the time following it was an afterlife.

In Shane's twenties, he was briefly interested in the McMurdo Station, a United States Antarctic research station, and wanted to live there.

In 2012, Shane posted the video "R.I.P. Greeno" on his YouTube channel. He later explained in a tweet that Greeno was "an incredible orc with a gentle soul that [he and his friends] met in [their] DnD campaign several years ago," explaining that "When he died (turned into goop) [Shane] made this touching tribute video."

Shane decided to move to Los Angeles after declaring it "cool" when he toured the city while visiting his brother, who moved there as soon as he left high school. He then left for Los Angeles after graduating Columbia College Chicago, as there were more editing jobs there. Shane describes the move as the "hardest thing [he's] ever done in [his] life." Although he knew he would still edit for BuzzFeed, he was still anxious about the move.

At some point, when inebriated, Shane ate a pumpkin, saying he "just took a bite out of a pumpkin."

When Shane moved into his first apartment in Los Angeles, someone defecated on his doorstep.

At some point, Shane visited a CHEERS bar in Boston, where he shouted, "Let's hear it for Frasier Crane!" Minimal people responded. He later described the bar as "very awful."

Shane first posted on Instagram about his now-significant other, Sara Rubin, in 2015, and clarified their relationship as romantic on February 14, 2016, when she was featured in a photo captioned "Valentine." (The two also starred in the famous 2017 BuzzFeedViolet videos titled "Do I Have A Crush?" and "Should I Talk To My Crush?").

In 2016, Shane made his first appearance in *BuzzFeed Unsolved* in The Mysterious Disappearance Of The Sodder Children.

Around 2018, Shane adopted a cat named Obi with Sara. Originally thinking Obi was named after *Star Wars* character Obi-Wan Kenobi, upon checking with others, they found it was short for "orange boy."

In January 2020, Shane launched Watcher Entertainment, a new entertainment company, with Ryan and Steven Lim, a colleague from BuzzFeed who had hosted the famous web-series *Worth It.*

In September 2023, Shane married his longtime girlfriend Sara Rubin.

## Work Before *BuzzFeed: Unsolved*

*Note: as there are no official dates for this work, this is not in order as a timeline, and is based on an estimate.*

Shane worked at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Shane remarked in an interview that after graduating from film school, he "spent a few years working at a company that produced corporate videos — think visual textbooks. Then moved on to do a few years in public access, which fleshed out [his] skillset as a one-man production crew."

Shane worked at Starbucks.

Shane briefly worked as a Video Producer for the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Shane cites Kate Sosa, his previous boss at BuzzFeed, as "the reason [he] got a job there," and said that BuzzFeed did not think Shane was "good enough" to become part of their staff. Before becoming a Video Fellow at BuzzFeed, as an intern, Shane was told by Sosa that BuzzFeed needed extra videos for Christmastime, and asked him to pick a video to make off of a list of "preresearched videos." Shane then created his first video, "Unusual Facts About Diet Coke" (2014), as "fact videos" were very popular around this time. Chris Lam, a then-fellow intern, was also featured in the video.

In late 2014 and early 2015, Shane worked with Keith Habersberger and Henry Goldman as an intern on two videos of the "Americans Try \_\_\_\_\_\_ Food With Their Driver" series. He appeared and worked on Americans Try Persian Food With Their Driver and Americans Try Armenian Food With Their Driver.

Shane also created an "AFV video," a video in which America's Funniest Home Videos would allow BuzzFeed to use their footage as part of a "compilation video," in order to "fill out a quota." He did not enjoy making it and said it "sucks" and was "a piece of shit."

Shane was part of the Test Friends series as his venture into unscripted work at BuzzFeed.