The Baffler Magazine

12/01/2024

The far right beat took shape in 2015, but exploded after Charlottesville. Editors assigned more coverage of demonstrations and extremist groups. But one-off stories can’t always provide big-picture analysis, especially when written under pressure.

Extremism has migrated from the streets to the center of the Republican Party. What is the role of the journalist in such an environment?

11/01/2024

In our new issue, Anya Ventura travels to BizTown, a program where children toil at miniature versions of real businesses for popcorn and fake money—all in the name of teaching the next generation to love free enterprise.

At Junior Achievement’s BizTown, children get to experience the vaunted real world—and the indestructible loop of work and consumption that defines it.

09/01/2024

Baffler no. 72 is now available online and in print. “Life Alert” considers aging and its consequences, for the old and young alike—with stories on our sclerotic elites, q***r elders, and AI ancestors.

Start reading now:
https://thebaffler.com/issues/no-72

21/09/2023

Once a staple on Midwestern co-op shelves, the Guerilla Cookie has all but vanished. Dave Denison writes on his decades-long quest for its secret recipe, and the relationship he developed with the brilliant, complicated man behind it.

The recipe of the famed Guerrilla Cookie may be lost forever. But the legacy of its idealistic and eccentric creator lives on in unlikely ways.

20/09/2023

Wendell Berry is a prolific essayist, novelist, story writer, poet—and farmer. His book “The Unsettling of America” traced the dire consequences of agriculture’s decline. In 2020, George Scialabba wrote on the influential antimodernist.

What is Wendell Berry angry about? In 1950 there were more than twenty million farms in the United States. Today there are about two million.

19/09/2023

Ubiquitous coffee shops, machines manufactured to malfunction, and police paid to harass innocent child-cyclists . . . contemporary America is a sickening place. And in new fiction on our site, two road-trippers seek a remedy.

It looked like a cactus, but it was not a cactus. It had spines. It had juice, red flowers, you could make a living fence out of it. It had thorns.

18/09/2023

In 2015, Danny Meyer eliminated tipping in his NYC restaurants. Media coverage was breathless; the press seemed to believe that the rest of the industry would follow suit.

This didn’t come to pass. As it turns out, the politics of tipping are complicated.

Tipping may be an imperfect system, but is there an alternative that really works for everyone?

15/09/2023

No rational person is going to want to stay in Arizona as the mercury creeps toward 130 degrees—or endure the inevitable water shortages. They’ll have to move. But is the north ready to accept these internal climate migrants?

As the South heats up, more people will have to consider relocating to the Upper Midwest.

15/09/2023

The crunchy women of the alt-right are terrified of seed oils and insect protein. They want to return to the good old days—before pasteurized milk, before birth control, before vaccines. But they forget one simple, irrefutable fact: the tradlife generally sucked.

The tradwife life is based on lies of omission. Is that what makes it so appealing to such a broad swath of followers?

13/09/2023

Contemporary agriculture has very little to do with food. In our new issue, Alan Guebert offers an overview of farming in the United States, laying out the bewildering tangle of agriculture and economic policy that determines what we grow and how we eat.

American agriculture has become more industrial, more science-reliant, and more government-dependent than ever before. Is there another way?

13/09/2023

According to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau, child poverty more than doubled in 2022, thanks to Congress’s refusal to renew the child tax credit. SNAP has thus become a vital stopgap for families with children.

Tens of millions of food-insecure Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The program could be better—but it works.

12/09/2023

In our latest issue, Ruby Tandoh visits Margate, a British seaside town with a complex history whose recent revitalization as a food and arts destination has yoked it to London in the public imagination—for better and for worse.

Can the influx of Londoners to Margate serve as a fix for some of what ails the seaside town, or will it only make life worse for locals?

12/09/2023

Baffler no. 70 is now available online and in print.

We are what we eat, as the saying goes—and so in “Out to Lunch,” The Baffler serves up stories on the contemporary consumable, from subsidized crops to craft cocktails.

Start reading now.
https://thebaffler.com/issues/no-70

17/08/2023

The second in a trilogy centered on the dawn of science and the limits of mysticism, “Sublunar” follows earthbound astronomer Tycho Brahe in a memorably sticky sixteenth century.

Our regnant picture of the universe is of an inhuman cathedral, fathomless, hostile, and desolate. So why should we seek its fundamental truths?

17/08/2023

Since Covid-19 wiped out the attractions industry’s workforce, bosses have big plans for expanding their labor pool. Among them: recruiting foreign workers who can be treated as disposable, and pushing for laws that let minors work longer hours.

“When experiences are the product, authenticity is the currency.”

16/08/2023

Capitalism has banished care work to the sidelines. Tech evangelists claim that AI will fix this problem. It won’t!

Will the coming AI revolution reveal and nurture the indispensable core of our being, as some utopian tech fiends like to think? Probably not!

15/08/2023

In the novellas of Rachel Ingalls, a housewife is a dangerous thing to be. Her homemakers often see their stifling lives upended by an otherworldly visitor, whether a frog-man or a mechanical s*x doll.

Rachel Ingalls’s fiction stages encounters between unhappy housewives and the uncanny.

10/08/2023

Since the days of dial-up, trans people have gone online to find information and community. But there hasn’t really been a comprehensive history of the trans internet—until now.

The internet has expanded how we understand the possibilities of the trans experience.

10/08/2023

As the CEO of American Apparel, Dov Charney subjected the young women in his office to a boundless parade of creepy s*x. Eugenia Williamson reviews Kate Flannery’s memoir of working for the ostensibly ethical clothing company.

American Apparel offered ethically made clothes—and regressive s*xual politics. A new book gives a portrait of its sleaze-ball founder.

09/08/2023

In the nationwide assault on trans rights, Missouri has become something of a testing ground. Scott Branson reports on the activists who are fighting back—both in the courthouse and on the ground.

Missouri has become a testing ground of anti-trans legislation—and resistance.

09/08/2023

Beyond the bright lights of Hollywood or the Vegas Strip, hustlers and fanatics ply their trade in games of chance: at a poker table, in card magic, and in the world of music.

Las Vegas catered to losers. Gardena catered to regulars.

14/07/2023

Its contemporaries have been demolished, remade, or relocated over the years, but the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign has stood tall since 1959. Isobel Harbison tells the story of the woman who made it—and the many more who basked in its light.

Betty Willis created one of the most famous signs in the world. So why has so little been written about her, her signs, or their high-watt legacy?

12/07/2023

Asset managers control more than 40% of the world’s wealth—and an increasing share of the physical and social infrastructure of modern life. How did this come to pass?

The 2007–2008 crisis was an epic cl*******ck. The rise of private equity has only made things worse.

12/07/2023

A magician’s assistant must be a gifted illusionist and an excellent liar. Pamela Anderson has always been both of these things, and much more.

Pamela Anderson spins the creation of female desirability into a magic trick.

11/07/2023

Crypto has long operated as a cartel: a small group of powerful actors have been working in concert to dominate a market they created. But don’t take our word for it. Ask Sam Bankman-Fried, who more or less admitted it!

Crypto is not just a largely unregulated industry teeming with bad actors. It’s something more structured and recognizable: a cartel.

11/07/2023

Baffler no. 69—“Hell or Las Vegas”—is now available online and in print.

In this issue, we explain how the city’s icons and ethos have escaped the bounds of geography and infused the rest of the country, if not the world.

Start reading now: https://thebaffler.com/issues/no-69

17/06/2023

Daniel Ellsberg died yesterday at the age of ninety-two. Erik Baker writes on the moral courage of the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Daniel Ellsberg never let anyone off the hook easily—including himself.

14/06/2023

Obituaries are not politically neutral documents—just one of many reasons why we should not cede their creation to AI.

Artificial intelligence is coming for the obituary. Will it reproduce the biases that have long plagued the form?

13/06/2023

Just in time for the launch of Apple’s absurd new augmented reality headset, Jessi Jezewska Stevens brings us a story of VR zombies, parallel worlds, and weird little imps who speak in binary.

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