does the new yorker publish personal essays

80 Best Magazines & Websites That Publish Personal Essays

Wouldn’t it be great to find a whole list of magazines that publish personal essays, and even pay you for the privilege?

Well, you’re in luck because you’ve just found a list of magazines that accept essay submissions around pop culture, personal finance, personal stories, and many other topics. If you’re passionate about crafting personal essays and your work typically falls within a range of 600 to 10,000 words, consider submitting your essays to the organizations listed below. They generally offer compensation of $50-$250 for each accepted essay. After this guide, you may also want to check my list of the best essays of all time .

Here are the top magazines and publications that publish thought-provoking essays:

1. the new york times – modern love.

“Modern Love” accepts essay submissions via email at [email protected] with the essay subject or potential title as the email subject line. Submissions should be original, true stories between 1,500 and 1,700 words, sent both as an attached Microsoft Word-compatible document and pasted into the body of the email. The team collaborates with writers on editing, and authors are compensated for published work. Submission info .

2. The New York Times – Opinion Essays

To submit an essay to this publication, fill out the provided submission form with the essay and a brief explanation of your professional or personal connection to its argument or idea. The essay should include sources for key assertions (either as hyperlinks or parenthetical citations). Although all submissions are reviewed, the publication may not be able to respond individually due to the high volume of entries. If there’s no response within three business days, authors are free to submit their work elsewhere. Submission info .

3. Dame Magazine

DAME is a women’s magazine that prioritizes accessible and intersectional journalism that dives into context rather than breaking news. Their stories are unexpected, emotional, straightforward, illuminating, and focused on people rather than policy. They aim to reveal new or surprising information, provoke action or empathy, simplify complex issues, introduce fresh ideas, and foreground the people most affected by discussed topics. Submission info .

4. The New Yorker

The New Yorker welcomes letters to the editor sent to [email protected] and includes your postal address and phone number. For fiction submissions, send your work as a PDF to [email protected] or mail it to their New York address. They review all submissions within ninety days and will only contact you if they decide to publish your work. Submission info .

5. The Atlantic

The Atlantic is keen on high-quality nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Familiarity with their past publications can guide your submission. All manuscripts should be submitted as a Word document or PDF. They only respond if they’re interested in discussing your submission further. Separate submission channels exist for fiction and poetry. Submission info .

6. The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail welcomes your original experiences, viewpoints, and unique perspectives for your daily first-person essay. A good essay should have an original voice, an unexpected view, humor, vivid details, and anecdotes that illuminate a wider theme. While a successful essay could be funny, surprising, touching, or enlightening, it should always be personal and truthful, rather than political or fictional. Submission info .

7. The Guardian

To contribute to this publication, you should identify the most relevant section and contact the commissioning editor with a brief outline of your idea. You may be invited to submit your work speculatively, meaning payment will only be provided if your contribution is published. It’s important to note that your contribution should be sent electronically and will be published under standard copyright terms with payment at normal rates unless agreed otherwise before publication. Submission info .

8. Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is open to opinion articles on any subject, with most published pieces being about 750 words long. Submissions must be exclusive to them and not published elsewhere, including personal blogs or social media. Full drafts of articles are required for consideration and should include the author’s name, the topic, the full text, a short author biography, and contact information. Submission info .

9. The Sun Magazine

The Sun publishes personal essays, short stories, and poems from both established and emerging writers globally, particularly encouraging submissions from underrepresented perspectives. Their contributors’ work often garners recognition in prestigious anthologies and prizes. The Sun seeks personal essays that are deeply reflective, celebrating hard-won victories or exploring big mistakes, aiming to make newsworthy events feel intimate and wrestle with complex questions. Submission info .

Slate invites pitches that are fresh, and original, and propose strong arguments. They appreciate ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and encourage you to clearly articulate the insights your reporting can uncover. A concise pitch is preferred, even if a full draft is already written. You should include a short bio and any relevant published work. They advise waiting a week before pitching to other publications, and if an editor passes, refrain from sending it to another editor at Slate. Submission info .

VICE is primarily interested in mid-length original reports, reported essays, narrative features, and service journalism related to contemporary living and interpersonal relationships. They welcome stories informed by personal experiences and insight but advise writers to consider what makes their story unique, why they’re the right person to tell it, and why it should be on VICE. While all stories don’t need to be tied to current events, a timely element can distinguish a pitch. They also accept quick-turnaround blogs and longer features. Submission info .

12. Vox Culture

Vox Culture seeks to provide readers with context and analysis for understanding current entertainment trends. They are interested in pitches that answer significant questions about major movies, TV shows, music artists, internet culture, fame, and women’s issues in the entertainment business. Notably, they are not interested in personal essays or celebrity interviews. Past successful stories have ranged from exploring Disney’s move away from traditional villains to analyzing historical inaccuracies in popular shows. They accept story pitches ranging between 1,000 and 2,500 words. Submission info .

Aeon, a unique digital magazine since 2012, is known for publishing profound and provocative ideas addressing big questions. Their signature format is the Essay, a deep dive into a topic, usually between 2,500-5,000 words, approached from a unique angle and written with clarity to engage curious and intelligent general readers. Aeon’s contributors are primarily academic experts, but they also welcome those with significant professional or practical expertise in various fields. Submission info .

14. BuzzFeed Reader

This platform welcomes freelance pitches on cultural criticism, focusing on current or timeless topics in various categories like books, technology, sports, etc. Essays should offer a unique perspective on how these subjects reflect our society. The content must be relevant, advance ongoing dialogues, and add value to the existing discourse. Submission info .

15. The Boston Globe

Boston Globe Ideas welcomes a variety of content including op-eds, reported stories, book excerpts, first-person essays, and Q&A features. Submissions should be sent directly, not as pitches. Please include your submission in the body of the email, not as an attachment. Briefly explain why you’re uniquely qualified to write this piece. Ensure your submission hasn’t been published or under review elsewhere. Submissions page .

16. The Bold Italic

This platform is actively seeking submissions in the genre of personal narrative essays. These pieces can encompass a broad range of experiences from the hilariously light-hearted to deeply poignant, encapsulating the vibrant and diverse experiences of living in your community. Submission info .

Before pitching to a Medium Publication, thoroughly understand its unique style by reviewing published content and submission guidelines. This ensures your work aligns with their preferences. With numerous Medium Publications available, persist in your submissions until you find a fitting outlet. Submission info .

18. Refinery29

Refinery29 Australia is committed to empowering women and underrepresented groups, with a particular focus on Australian women and trans and gender-diverse individuals, primarily Gen-Z and millennials. We publish a diverse array of content, from timely personal essays to reports on race, reproductive rights, and pop culture, all with a distinctly local perspective. They aim to shed light on the world around us, and highly value pieces that capture the unique Australian experience, be it in subject matter or authorial voice. Submission info .

ELLE’s annual talent competition is back for, seeking out the next superstar in writing. The winner will have their 500-word piece, inspired by the hashtag #RelationshipGoals and focusing on a significant relationship in their life. Submission info .

20. Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan is looking for first-person features that cover all aspects of beauty. This can include writing personal essays or narratives about your struggles with adult acne, your journey to an all-natural beauty routine, or other unique beauty experiences. We are also open to opinion pieces about beauty trends or movements that resonate with you. Submission info .

Bustle encourages freelance pitches across different verticals such as Lifestyle, Books, News and politics, Fashion and beauty, and Entertainment. We value pitches that are brief yet comprehensive, including a sample headline, a 2-3 sentence description of the piece, your plan for photos, sources you have access to, your clips if you haven’t written for us before, and your standard rate. Make sure to understand what we’re looking for and convey your story idea clearly and professionally. Submission info .

22. The Walrus

The Walrus seeks short essays (up to 1,200 words) that are timely, focused, and sourced from Canada and globally. These can be reported narratives, memoirs, or mini-features on specific topics. Each essay should exhibit a distinct argument, a strong writing voice, and present an original and significant viewpoint. Writers new to The Walrus or those without long-form journalism experience are particularly encouraged to contribute to this section. Submission info .

23. Autostraddle

Autostraddle welcomes pitches, works in progress, and completed submissions. Any issues with the submission form should be emailed to Laneia Jones with the subject line “SUBMISSION ERROR”. Questions about the submission process can be directed to Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya with “SUBMISSION PROCESS” in the subject line. Please note that pitches or submissions sent via email will not be accepted. Submission info .

24. Narratively

Narratively focuses on original and untold human stories, welcoming pitches and completed submissions from diverse voices. They use Submittable for managing submissions. To better understand what they’re looking for in new writers, contributors can review their guidelines, and the best pitches they’ve received, and ask questions to their editors about how to pitch. Submission info .

25. Catapult

Catapult offers a regularly updated list of submission and freelancing opportunities. Some current options include Black Fox Literary Magazine, open for fiction submissions; Carina Press, seeking romance manuscripts; Elegant Literature, welcoming submissions for its contest; Inkspell Publishing, looking for romance manuscripts; Interlude Press, seeking original novels featuring diverse casts; and Intrepid Times, accepting stories about romance while traveling. Submission info .

26. Jezebel

At Jezebel, the high volume of daily emails (over 500), including tips and questions from readers, makes it impossible to respond to all of them, even though they are all read and appreciated. Their primary job involves posting 60+ items a day, and due to workload constraints, they may not always be able to reply to your email. Submission info .

27. Bitch Media

Bitch Media seeks pitches offering feminist analysis of culture, covering a wide array of topics including social trends, politics, science, health, life aspects, and popular culture phenomena. They publish critical essays, reported features, interviews, reviews, and analyses. First-person essays should balance personal perspectives with larger themes. Both finished work and query letters are welcome. However, due to the volume of submissions, they cannot guarantee a response or that every pitch will be read. Submission info .

28. Broadview

Broadview magazine prefers pitches from professional writers for unique, audience-focused stories. While unsolicited articles may be accepted, the initial idea pitch is recommended. Responses to each pitch are not guaranteed due to high submission volumes. Submission info .

29. Briarpatch Magazine

Briarpatch Magazine accepts pitches on a variety of political and social issues, valuing stories from diverse voices. They seek well-researched, fact-backed pieces aimed at a non-specialist, progressive audience. They recommend writers to first pitch their ideas, including contact info, estimated word count, recent publications, and a short writing sample. The magazine aims to respond within one to two weeks after the pitch deadline for each issue. Submission info .

30. Maisonneuve

Maisonneuve Magazine welcomes non-fiction writing submissions in various forms (reporting, essays, memoirs, humor, reviews) and visual art (illustration, photography, comics). They do not accept fiction, poetry, or previously published work. They prefer well-developed, well-researched pitches, but also accept polished drafts if the writer is open to edits. To understand what the magazine is looking for, it’s recommended to read some recent issues or check their website. Submission info .

31. Room Magazine

Room Magazine seeks original fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and art from individuals of marginalized genders, including women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit, and nonbinary people. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, and submissions can be made through Submittable. Submission info .

32. Hazlitt

Hazlitt is currently not accepting submissions but it might reopen soon. They seek original journalism, investigative features, international reporting, profiles, essays, and humor pieces, but they are not considering unsolicited fiction. Pitches with proposed word counts are preferred, and they have a section called “Hazlitt Firsts” for reviews of experiencing mundane things for the first time as adults. Submission info .

33. This Magazine

This Magazine seeks pitches for their annual Culture Issue with a DIY theme, open to various topics related to DIY spirit. They publish Canadian residents only and prefer queries over already completed essays or manuscripts. They look for unique stories with a social justice angle, and pitches should include reasons for telling the story, relevant sources, and potential takeaways for readers. Submission info .

34. Geist Magazine

Geist magazine seeks submissions with a literary focus, including short non-fiction for the Notes & Dispatches section (around 800-1200 words) with a sense of place, historical narrative, humor, and personal essays on art, music, and culture. They encourage submissions from diverse writers and will pay writers $300-500 for accepted pieces. Submission info .

35. Discover Magazine

Discover magazine seeks pitches from freelance writers for science-related stories that enlighten and excite readers, with a conversational tone and high reader interest. Pitch one idea per email, mentioning the newness of the science and specific studies and researchers to be cited. Include your science-writing credentials and best clips in the pitch and send them to [email protected]. Payment starts at $1/word for print and typically $300/story for web, with rights purchased for both. Submission info .

36. Eater Voices

Eater Voices accepts personal essays from chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders about the food world. To pitch, email a brief explanation of the topic and why you are the right person to write about it to [email protected]. Submission info .

37. The Temper

The Temper is an online publication focused on sobriety, addiction, and recovery, challenging drinking culture. They seek diverse and intersectional stories written through the lens of addiction, covering various topics like sex, food, relationships, and more. Submissions are currently closed, but they are especially interested in amplifying voices from marginalized and underrepresented groups. Submission info .

38. Chatelaine

Chatelaine is a prominent Canadian women’s magazine covering health, current events, food, social issues, decor, fashion, and beauty. To pitch, read the magazine first, and submit a one-page query letter explaining the idea’s fit for the magazine, section, and format. They prefer email submissions with at least two previously published writing samples, and response time may take six to eight weeks. Submission info .

39. Conde Nast Traveler

Condé Nast Traveler seeks pitches for reported and personal travel stories with inclusive coverage, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities. Focus on stories and angles rather than destinations, check for previous coverage, and offer a fresh perspective. If pitching a personality, indicate exclusivity and access. Consider your expertise in telling stories, especially about marginalized communities, and disclose any sponsorships. Keep pitches brief, including a suggested headline, angle, sources, and why it’s timely. Responsible travel stories are prioritized during the pandemic. Submission info .

40. Boston Globe Ideas

Globe Ideas is dedicating an entire issue to young people’s voices and stories. Teens are invited to share their aspirations, concerns, and experiences about mental health, school, social media, and more, up to 700 words or through short notes, videos, or illustrations. This is a chance for teens to set the record straight and tell the world what matters most to them. Submission info .

41. Babbel Magazine

Babel welcomes submissions from all linguists, focusing on accessible and stimulating articles about language. Writers can submit feature articles or propose ideas for regular features, and guidelines for contributions are available for download. For those with ideas but not interested in writing, they can also suggest topics for articles through email. Submission info .

42. HuffPost Personal

HuffPost seeks to amplify voices from underrepresented communities, including BIPOC, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities. They accept freelance pitches on a wide range of topics, providing clear guidelines for submissions. They also encourage visual creatives to submit their work, and all published contributors are paid for their work. Please note that due to the volume of submissions, individual responses may not be possible. Submission info .

43. Adelaide Literary Magazine

Adelaide magazine accepts submissions in various categories, including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, book reviews, interviews, and art/photography. Fiction and nonfiction submissions have a size limit of 5,000 words, while book reviews have a limit of 2,000 words. They do not accept previously published work or simultaneous submissions. Artists retain all rights to their work, and upon publication, rights revert to the author/artist. Submission info .

44. bioStories

BioStories welcomes nonfiction prose submissions of 500 to 7500 words, with the typical piece being around 2500 words. Submit via email to [email protected], pasting the submission in the email body with the subject line “biostories submission” and your last name. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but immediate notification is required if accepted elsewhere. Multiple submissions are allowed at a one-month interval, and the work must be previously unpublished in print and online. Noncompliant submissions will not receive a response. Submission info .

45. Quarter After Eight

Quarter After Eight welcomes innovative writing submissions in any genre from both new and established writers. To withdraw work, use the “withdraw” option on Submittable for the entire submission or the “note” function to specify which pieces to withdraw; do not email about withdrawals. Submission info .

46. The Rappahannock Review

The Rappahannock Review accepts original and innovative writing in various genres, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and audio pieces. They encourage experimentation and creativity, seeking enthralling voices and compelling narratives. Additionally, the magazine showcases a variety of visual artists and welcomes submissions for consideration in each new issue. Submission info .

Allure is seeking writers to contribute pieces that explore beauty, style, self-expression, and liberation. They are looking for writers with relevant credentials and experience in the field, and they offer compensation of $350 for reported stories and $300 for personal essays. Submission info .

48. MLA Style Center

The Modern Language Association is inviting students to submit research papers written in MLA style for consideration in their online collection “Writing with MLA Style.” Essays should be 2,000 to 3,000 words in length and must be written in English. Works-cited-list entries do not count toward the word limit. Submission info .

49. Marie Claire

Marie Claire magazine is dedicated to highlighting the diversity and depth of women’s experiences. They offer award-winning features, essays, and op-eds, as well as coverage of sustainable fashion, celebrity news, fashion trends, and beauty recommendations. Submission info .

SELF magazine is actively seeking new writers, particularly from marginalized communities, to contribute to their health and wellness content. They are interested in pitches that offer helpful insights on topics related to health, fitness, food, beauty, love, and lifestyle. The focus should be on improving personal or public health clearly and straightforwardly. Submission info .

51. Her Story

HerStry is a platform that focuses on the experiences of women-identifying persons, including cisgender women, transgender women, non-binary persons, and more. They accept personal essays that are true stories about the author, with a length between 500 to 3,000 words. They pay $10 for each published personal essay here, but there is a $3 submission fee (with limited free submission periods). Stories are read blind, and explicit or offensive content is not accepted. Submission info .

52. Griffith Review

Griffith Review accepts submissions based on specific themes for each edition. They welcome new and creative ideas, allowing writers to express their voices in essays, creative and narrative nonfiction-fiction, and analytical pieces. Submissions should generally range from 2,000 to 5,000 words, with up to four poems allowed on theme. Submission info .

53. Literary Review of Canada

The Literary Review of Canada welcomes prospective writers, photographers, and illustrators to submit specific review proposals, essay pitches, or general queries. They prefer to receive unsolicited review topics and essay ideas rather than completed work and do not accept simultaneous submissions. Submission info .

54. Harper’s Magazine

For Harper’s Magazine, nonfiction writers should send queries accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Ideas for the Readings section can be sent to [email protected], but individual acknowledgment is not guaranteed due to volume. All submissions and queries must be sent by mail to their New York address. Submission info .

55. Virginia Quarterly Review

VQR only considers unpublished work, submitted online via Submittable. One prose piece and four poems are allowed per reading period, but multiple submissions in the same genre will be declined unread. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but if accepted elsewhere, notify them immediately via Submittable. Submission info .

56. The New England Review

New England Review is open for submissions in all genres during specific periods. They accept fiction, poetry, nonfiction, dramatic writing, and translations. The magazine only considers previously unpublished work, and simultaneous submissions are allowed. They welcome submissions from writers of all backgrounds and encourage diverse perspectives. Submission info .

57. One Story

One Story seeks literary fiction between 3,000 and 8,000 words, any style, and subject. They pay $500 and provide 25 contributor copies for First Serial North American rights. Only unpublished material is accepted, except for stories published in print outside North America. Simultaneous submissions allowed; prompt withdrawals upon acceptance elsewhere. Accepts DOC, DOCX, PDF, and RTF files via Submittable. No comments on individual stories. No revisions of previously rejected work. Translations are accepted with proper attribution. No emailed or paper submissions, except for incarcerated individuals. Submission info .

58. The Threepenny Review

The Threepenny Review accepts submissions for fiction, poetry, travel essays, and Table Talk pieces. They pay $400 per story/article and $200 per poem, granting first serial rights and copyright reversion to the author. Mailed manuscripts require a self-addressed stamped envelope, while online submissions should be in Word format with a single document for prose or poetry. Submission info .

59. Zoetrope: All-Story

Zoetrope: All-Story is currently not accepting general submissions. They will announce when submissions reopen and update the guidelines accordingly. Submission info .

60. American Short Fiction

American Short Fiction accepts regular submissions of short fiction from September to December. The magazine publishes both established and new authors , and submissions must be original and previously unpublished. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and accompanied by the author’s contact information. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but authors must withdraw their work if accepted elsewhere. Payment is competitive and upon publication, with all rights reverting to the author. American Short Fiction does not accept poetry, plays, nonfiction, or reviews. Submission info .

61. The Southern Review

The Southern Review accepts work during its submission period. They only consider unpublished pieces in English and accept simultaneous submissions. If your work is accepted elsewhere, promptly notify them via email with the subject line “withdrawal.” Do not submit work via email, as it will be discarded. They do not consider submissions from anyone currently or recently affiliated with Louisiana State University within the past four years. It is recommended to familiarize yourself with the journal’s aesthetic by subscribing before submitting your work. Submission info .

62. Boulevard Magazine

Boulevard seeks to publish exceptional fiction, poetry, and non-fiction from both experienced and emerging writers. They accept works of up to 8,000 words for prose and up to five poems of up to 200 lines. They do not consider genres like science fiction, erotica, horror, romance, or children’s stories. Payment for prose ranges from $100 to $300, while payment for poetry ranges from $50 to $250. Natural Bridge Online publication offers a flat rate of $50. Submission info .

63. The Cincinnati Review

The Cincinnati Review accepts submissions for its print journal during specific periods: September, December, and May. miCRo submissions are open almost year-round, except during the Robert and Adele Schiff Awards and backlogs. They welcome submissions from writers at any stage, except current/former University of Cincinnati affiliates. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, and response time is around six months. Payment is $25/page for prose, $30/page for poetry in print, and $25 for miCRo posts/features. Submission info .

64. The Antioch Review

The Antioch Review seeks nonfiction essays that appeal to educated citizens, covering various social science and humanities topics of current importance. They aim for interpretive essays that draw on scholarly materials and revive literary journalism. The best way to understand their preferences is to read previous issues and get a sense of their treatment, lengths, and subjects used in the publication. Submission info .

AGNI’s online Submission Manager is open from September 1st to midnight December 15th, and again from February 15th to midnight May 31st. Manuscripts can also be submitted by mail between September 1st and May 31st. AGNI considers prose in various genres, including personal essays, short stories, prose poems, and more. They do not publish academic essays or genre romance, horror, mystery, or science fiction. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, and sending through the online portal incurs a $3 fee, but regular mail submissions can be made to avoid the fee. Submission info .

66. Barrelhouse

Barrelhouse accepts unsolicited submissions for book reviews through their Submittable online submissions manager. They pay $50 to each contributor and accept simultaneous submissions. There is no maximum length, but most published pieces are shorter than 8,000 words. They only accept Word or rich-text (.rtf) files and prefer poetry to be submitted as a single document. Submissions for their print and online issues are currently closed, but book reviews are open. Response time is approximately six months. Submission info .

67. Tin House Online

Tin House is a good company that offers a two-day submission period three times a year for writers without a current agent and no previous book publication (chapbooks accepted). They accept fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry, both in English and in translation (with formal permission). Completed drafts are required. They are particularly interested in engaging with writers from historically underrepresented communities. Submission info .

68. One Teen Story

One Teen Story publishes 3 stories annually and welcomes submissions from teen writers aged 13-19. They seek original, unpublished fiction across genres, focusing on the teen experience. Great short stories with compelling teen characters, strong writing, and a well-structured narrative are encouraged for submission to their contest. Submission info .

69. Bennington Review

Bennington Review accepts unsolicited submissions through Submittable during their reading periods in fall, winter, and spring. They seek innovative and impactful fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, film writing, and cross-genre work. Response times vary, but they aim to respond within five to eight months. Accepted contributors will receive payment ranging from $25 per poem to $250 for prose over six typeset pages, along with two copies of the published issue and a copy of the subsequent issue. Submission info .

70. Epoch Literary

Epoch Literary accepts poetry submissions of up to five poems, short fiction or essay submissions as a single piece or a suite of smaller pieces, and visual art and comics for the cover. They do not publish literary criticism or writing for children and young adults. Electronic submissions are open in August and January, with a $3 fee, part of which supports the Cornell Prison Education Program. Submission info .

71. The Gettysburg Review

The Gettysburg Review accepts poetry, fiction, essays, and essay reviews from September 1 to May 31, with a focus on quality writing. Full-color graphics submissions are accepted year-round. It’s recommended to read previous issues before submitting, and sample copies are available for purchase. The journal stays open during the summer for mailed submissions or those using Submittable and purchasing a subscription or the current issue. Submission info .

72. Alaska Quarterly Review

The publication accepts submissions of fiction, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction, and photo essays in traditional and experimental styles. Fiction can be short stories, novellas, or novel excerpts up to 70 pages, and poetry submissions can include up to 6 poems. They aim to respond within 4 to 12 weeks, but authors can inquire about their manuscript status after 4 weeks if needed. Submission info .

73. Colorado Review

Colorado Review only accepts submissions through its Submittable portal and no longer accepts paper submissions. They encourage writers to be familiar with their publication before submitting and provide sample copies and examples of recently published work on their website. They look for engaging stories with original characters, crisp language , and a provocative central problem or issue. Submission info .

74. The Georgia Review

The Georgia Review accepts submissions both online and by post, but not via email. Submissions are free for current subscribers. They do not consider unsolicited manuscripts between May 15 and August 15 and aim to respond within eight months. Previously published work will not be considered, and simultaneous submissions are allowed if noted in the cover letter. They offer different prizes for poetry and prose and accept submissions in fiction, poetry, essays, and book reviews. Submission info .

75. New Letters

New Letters accepts submissions year-round through Submittable, with a small fee waived for current subscribers. They welcome up to six poems, one chapbook, one piece of nonfiction, one short story (graphic or traditional), or one novella per submission. Simultaneous submissions are allowed if notified, and response time is approximately six months. They publish short stories up to 5,000 words, novellas up to 30,000 words, graphic short stories up to ten pages in color or black and white, and chapbooks up to 30 pages. Submission info .

76. Shenandoah

Submissions for comics will reopen soon. The Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets will be open for a limited time. Poetry submissions are considered in November and spring. Prose submissions will open soon. Short stories, creative nonfiction, and flash fiction are welcome. Editor Beth Staples looks for writing that challenges and offers diverse perspectives. Submission info .

77. TriQuarterly

TriQuarterly, the literary journal of Northwestern University, welcomes submissions in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, video essays, short drama, and hybrid work from both established and emerging writers. They are especially interested in work that engages with global cultural and societal conversations. Submissions are accepted through Submittable, and they charge a small reading fee. Submission windows vary by genre. Submission info .

78. E-International Relations

E-International Relations invites current and former undergraduate and Master’s students to submit their highest-graded essays and dissertations for publication. They seek work that is of academic utility to other students and demonstrates engagement with the subject, using pertinent case studies/examples and engaging with complex literature and ideas. Submissions must meet specific entry criteria, including word count, language standards, and full bibliographic references. Submission info .

79. Longreads

Longreads publishes the best long-form nonfiction storytelling and accepts pitches for original work. They pay competitive rates and prefer pitches via email to [email protected]. Fiction is not accepted, and submissions using generative AI tools will be rejected. You can also nominate published stories by tweeting with the #longreads hashtag. Submission info .

80. Education Week

EdWeek welcomes submissions from various perspectives within the K-12 education community, including teachers, students, administrators, policymakers, and parents. Submissions should be concise, relevant to a national audience, and have a clear point of view backed by factual evidence. We value solution-oriented and practical pieces that offer best practices, policy recommendations, personal reflections and calls to action. Essays longer than 1,000 words or shorter than 600 words will not be considered. Please submit in Word format via email. Submission info .

If you want to get your essays published in a print magazine or an online publication, it’s time to approach the appropriate section editor or send your work via a submissions page. Even in a world where so much content is produced by AI, publications are still interested in receiving great writing written in a conversational tone. Just make sure to follow the guidelines (especially those around word count) and show off your flamboyant writing style in a prestigious online magazine. Next up, you might want to check a list of the top sites that will pay you to write,  or my extensive list of publishing companies .

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I Got Published In The New Yorker: Tips And Insights From A Successful Submitter

Getting your writing published in the prestigious pages of The New Yorker is a career-defining accomplishment for any writer or journalist. The magazine’s legendary selectivity and rigorous editing process means that just landing an article, short story or poem in The New Yorker is a major success worthy of celebrating. But how does one actually go about getting published there? In this comprehensive guide, we share insider tips and hard-won lessons from someone who successfully made it into the hallowed pages of The New Yorker.

If you’re short on time, here’s a quick answer to your question: The keys to getting published in The New Yorker are 1) Target your submissions carefully by deeply understanding the magazine’s voice and sections, 2) Perfect and polish your best work before submitting, and 3) Persist through rejection after rejection until an acceptance finally comes through .

In the sections below, we’ll share everything I learned and did along my journey to New Yorker publication, from how I identified what to pitch and submit, to handling those inevitable rejection slips, to working with editors once a piece was accepted. I’ll also pass along wisdom from New Yorker staff and other successful contributors. Whether you’re a writer who dreams of seeing your name under those distinctive cartoons and columns, or simply curious about the submission process, use this guide to gain real-world insights into achieving the writing milestone of getting into The New Yorker.

Understanding The New Yorker’s Editorial Needs

Getting published in The New Yorker is a dream for many writers. With its prestigious reputation and high editorial standards, it’s no wonder that aspiring authors aim to see their work in its pages. To increase your chances of success, it’s important to understand The New Yorker’s editorial needs.

Here are some tips and insights to help you navigate the submission process.

Studying the different sections of the magazine

The New Yorker is known for its diverse range of content, covering topics such as fiction, poetry, essays, cartoons, and more. To better understand what the magazine is looking for, it’s essential to study the different sections and get a sense of their style and themes.

Spend time reading through past issues and familiarize yourself with the types of pieces that are typically published in each section.

For example, if you are interested in submitting fiction, read stories from previous issues to get a feel for the kind of narratives that resonate with The New Yorker’s readership. Pay attention to the tone, language, and themes explored in these stories.

This will give you valuable insights into what the editors are looking for and help you tailor your submission accordingly.

Reading issues like an editor

When reading The New Yorker, approach it with an editor’s mindset. Take note of the articles, essays, or poems that stand out to you and analyze what makes them compelling. Consider the structure, writing style, and unique perspectives that make these pieces successful.

By doing this, you’ll start to develop an understanding of the editorial preferences and tendencies of The New Yorker.

Additionally, pay attention to the topics and subject matters covered in the magazine. Are there any recurring themes or areas of interest? Understanding the magazine’s editorial direction will help you align your work with their needs and increase your chances of catching the attention of the editors.

Remember, The New Yorker receives an overwhelming number of submissions, so it’s crucial to stand out from the crowd. By studying the different sections of the magazine and reading issues like an editor, you’ll be better equipped to tailor your submission to meet The New Yorker’s editorial needs.

Crafting Your Best New Yorker-Worthy Submissions

Submitting your work to The New Yorker can be a daunting task, but with the right approach and a little bit of luck, you too can see your writing published in this prestigious magazine. Here are some tips and insights to help you craft your best New Yorker-worthy submissions:

Matching your writing style to The New Yorker’s voice

One of the most important aspects of getting published in The New Yorker is understanding and matching their distinctive voice and style. The magazine is known for its sophisticated and witty writing, so it’s essential to familiarize yourself with their articles and essays.

Pay attention to the tone, language, and overall vibe of the pieces they publish. This will give you a better understanding of what they are looking for in submissions.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to inject your own personality and unique perspective into your writing. The New Yorker appreciates fresh and original voices, so find a way to stand out while still staying true to their style.

Experiment with different writing techniques and incorporate elements of humor or satire if it aligns with your work.

Creating multiple targeted drafts

When submitting to The New Yorker, it’s crucial to tailor your drafts specifically for the magazine. Avoid sending the same piece to multiple publications without making any modifications. Instead, create different versions of your work, each targeted towards a specific theme or section of the magazine.

Research the different sections of The New Yorker and identify the ones that best align with your writing. Whether it’s fiction, poetry, essays, or cultural commentary, each section has its own unique requirements.

Take the time to understand what they are looking for in each category and adapt your writing accordingly.

Remember, quality is key. Take the time to polish your drafts and make sure they are the best representation of your work. Proofread for grammar and spelling errors, and consider seeking feedback from writing groups or trusted friends.

The more effort you put into crafting targeted and well-written submissions, the better your chances of catching the attention of The New Yorker’s editors.

For more information and inspiration, you can visit The New Yorker’s official website at www.newyorker.com . Their website provides valuable resources, including writing guidelines and examples of previously published work, which can further guide you in crafting your best New Yorker-worthy submissions.

Submitting Your Work and Handling Rejections

Submitting your work to The New Yorker or any other prestigious publication can be an exciting but nerve-wracking experience. However, with the right approach and mindset, you can increase your chances of success.

Here are some valuable tips and insights to help you navigate the submission process and handle rejections with grace.

Following submission guidelines closely

One of the most important aspects of submitting your work to The New Yorker is to follow their submission guidelines closely. The guidelines are there for a reason, and not adhering to them could result in your work being rejected without even being considered.

Take the time to carefully read and understand the guidelines, and make sure your submission meets all the specified requirements. This includes formatting, word count, and any other specific instructions given by the publication.

Furthermore, it’s worth noting that The New Yorker is known for having a unique style and voice. Familiarize yourself with the publication by reading previous issues and understanding their editorial preferences.

This will help you tailor your submission to align with their aesthetic and increase your chances of acceptance.

Persisting through inevitable rejections

Receiving a rejection letter can be disheartening, but it’s important not to let it discourage you from continuing to submit your work. Even the most successful writers have faced numerous rejections throughout their careers.

Remember, rejection is not a reflection of your talent or worth as a writer; it’s simply a part of the publishing process.

Instead of dwelling on rejections, use them as an opportunity to learn and improve. Take the feedback provided, if any, and consider it constructively. Reflect on your work, make revisions if necessary, and keep submitting. The more you persist, the higher your chances of eventually getting published.

It’s all about perseverance and resilience.

Additionally, it can be helpful to join writing communities or seek support from fellow writers who have experienced rejection themselves. Sharing your experiences and discussing strategies can provide valuable insights and encouragement.

Remember, every successful writer has faced rejection at some point in their journey. It’s how you handle those rejections and continue to refine your craft that will ultimately lead to success. So, don’t give up, keep submitting, and one day you may see your work in the pages of The New Yorker or any other publication you aspire to be a part of.

Working Successfully with New Yorker Editors

Expecting rigorous editing of accepted pieces.

One of the key aspects of working with New Yorker editors is understanding and embracing the rigorous editing process that your accepted piece will go through. The New Yorker has a longstanding reputation for its high editorial standards, and they take great care in refining and polishing every piece of work that gets published.

This means that as a writer, you should be prepared for multiple rounds of revisions and feedback from the editors. Don’t be discouraged or take it personally if your piece undergoes significant changes during the editing process .

It’s all part of the collaborative effort to ensure that the final product meets the publication’s standards.

Collaborating professionally during the refinement process

When working with New Yorker editors, it’s crucial to maintain a professional and collaborative attitude throughout the refinement process. Listen to and consider their feedback carefully , as they have a wealth of experience and insight into what works best for their publication.

Be open to suggestions and be willing to make revisions that align with the overall vision of the piece. Remember, the goal is to create the best possible version of your work that resonates with The New Yorker’s audience.

During the collaboration, it’s important to communicate effectively and promptly . Respond to emails or requests for revisions in a timely manner, and make sure to ask for clarification if there’s something you don’t understand.

Be respectful of the editors’ time and workload and show your appreciation for their expertise and guidance.

While working with New Yorker editors can be an intense and demanding process, it is also an incredibly rewarding one. The collaboration and refinement of your work with experienced professionals can help elevate your writing to new heights and increase your chances of getting published in one of the most prestigious literary magazines in the world.

Maximizing the Benefits of Being a New Yorker Contributor

Getting published in The New Yorker is a dream come true for many writers. It not only gives you the satisfaction of seeing your work in one of the most prestigious literary magazines in the world, but it also opens up a world of opportunities for your writing career.

Here are some tips and insights on how to maximize the benefits of being a New Yorker contributor.

Adding a New Yorker credit to your writing portfolio

Having a New Yorker credit in your writing portfolio is like having a golden stamp of approval. It instantly elevates your credibility as a writer and catches the attention of literary agents, publishers, and other industry professionals.

When showcasing your New Yorker publication, be sure to highlight it prominently in your portfolio, whether it’s a physical or online version.

Include a brief description of the piece you had published, and if possible, provide a direct link to the article or a PDF version. This allows potential clients or employers to read your work easily and see the quality of your writing firsthand.

Remember to update your portfolio regularly with any new New Yorker publications to keep it fresh and relevant.

Leveraging the prestige of New Yorker publication

The prestige of being a New Yorker contributor goes beyond just having a credit in your portfolio. It can open doors to various writing opportunities and collaborations. Use your New Yorker publication as a springboard to pitch ideas or submit your work to other prestigious publications, literary magazines, or even book publishers.

When reaching out to other publications, mention your New Yorker credit in your pitch or query letter to grab the editor’s attention. Highlight how your writing has been recognized by one of the most respected publications in the industry and emphasize the unique perspective or style that got you published in The New Yorker.

This can increase your chances of being accepted by other publications and boost your overall writing career.

Furthermore, being a New Yorker contributor can also attract speaking engagements, panel discussions, or even teaching opportunities. Organizations and institutions often seek out writers with a strong publication record, especially if they have been published in prestigious outlets like The New Yorker.

Leverage your New Yorker credit to showcase your expertise and secure these types of opportunities.

As a writer, seeing your name printed in The New Yorker is an incredible feeling hard to replicate. While getting published there requires immense skill as a writer, persistence through rejection, and professionalism when working with demanding editors, it is an accomplishment well worth striving for over a writing career. Use the tips and learnings from my journey outlined here to tilt the odds of a New Yorker acceptance in your favor, no matter how long it takes. The destination is worth the journey many times over when you can finally call yourself a New Yorker contributor.

Hi there, I'm Jessica, the solo traveler behind the travel blog Eye & Pen. I launched my site in 2020 to share over a decade of adventurous stories and vivid photography from my expeditions across 30+ countries. When I'm not wandering, you can find me freelance writing from my home base in Denver, hiking Colorado's peaks with my rescue pup Belle, or enjoying local craft beers with friends.

I specialize in budget tips, unique lodging spotlights, road trip routes, travel hacking guides, and female solo travel for publications like Travel+Leisure and Matador Network. Through my photography and writing, I hope to immerse readers in new cultures and compelling destinations not found in most guidebooks. I'd love for you to join me on my lifelong journey of visual storytelling!

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3 Things I Learned from Publishing a Poem in the New Yorker

1) They really do accept poems from the slush pile (even when you’re not famous). My acceptance came ~6 months after I submitted.

2) They pay $350 for up to 25 lines, and $10 for each additional line.

3) I should trust my initial instincts more when it comes to my work.

More about item 3.

When I first wrote my poem “Strawberries” (which I did on the long flight home from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference last summer) I sensed it was good. I thought: This might be one of the best poems I’ve ever written . It was trying to do a lot (too much) at once, but I liked the too-muchness. It felt true to how my brain feels when I write, like it’s experiencing an electric and menacing too-muchness of memory, connecting images that have no business being connected except that they do. The epiphany at the end felt truer than just about any other epiphany poetry has ever led me to (except, perhaps, the “I too am dying of what I don’t know” which ends my poem “Judas Goat,” but that’s a digression...).

I very quickly shared early drafts of “Strawberries” with several poets I admire who were looking to do a feedback exchange. Nobody told me to scrap the poem, but nobody seemed blown away either. I began to doubt my original enthusiasm. They suggested cuts and edits, which I applied. I changed the title. I read the poem to audiences at several readings, hoping to see the spark catch. But again, nobody looked ablaze. I searched the poem, trying to figure out if it was good or not.

Looking back, I see that with my revision-happy scalpel I’d gutted the poem of what, for me, had been crucial to its heart: the part about the joke of language, the I love you . . . I like your faded shirt . . . I’d cut out the bleeding, the slit pigs, the mind sawing down into it all as if a tree. I’d snipped away all the parts that risked sentimentality and melodrama and all the parts that would encourage the reader to connect the idea of a proxy—B (the less true, less satisfying entity) standing in for A (the true, satisfying entity)—to spoken language. And so I started to despise the poem, to despise myself for thinking it was one of my best.

I withdrew it from journals. I pulled it from my manuscript.

Eventually, a dear friend (shout out to Catherine Bresner) encouraged me to put it (or, rather, the heavily revised version it had become) back into my manuscript, so I did, somewhat reluctantly.

Then I got an email from the New Yorker .

I’d forgotten to withdraw it. Forgotten because to Kevin Young, I’d submitted an early version of the poem, with its original title: “Strawberries.”

And so of all the good things that have come from this New Yorker acceptance, this is perhaps the most valuable: It’s reminded me to stand up for my work, to myself. From now on, while staying open to feedback and radical revision, I’m not going to be so quick to discount my own early intuition and excitement when it comes to my poems. I have good taste, dammit!

To all who have read and reached out with kind words about the poem since it was published: Your messages mean so much to me. Here's a delicious strawberry, just for you.

Click here to read "Strawberries" online, or to see it in print, check out the June 4 issue!

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7 publications that pay well for personal narrative essays

Despite The New Yorker declaring that the personal essay boom was over in 2017, I’ve seen the opposite. Whenever I look on Twitter, I see callouts from editors for candid, revealing and thought-provoking first person pieces. For freelance writers, the advantage of writing a personal narrative essay is that you are drawing on your own experience, so there is very little need for external research or case studies. Many writers also say that writing down their own experience and sharing it with others feels validating, affirming and therapeutic.

Before I became a full time freelancer , I wrote quite a few personal narrative essays.

Why? Because personal narrative essays are one of the fastest and easiest ways to get published.

When I was writing my first-person pieces, I found numerous articles about how to sell personal essays in the age of over-sharing   and how to write compelling first person pieces for major publications.

I quickly learnt that if you are willing to open up and share your own experience, you can be compensated well for it.

And if you’re interested to learn more about how to write a personal essay (and how to get paid for it!) I’ve created the ultimate guide to step you through the process.

It takes you through:

• Choosing the perfect topic for a personal essay
• How to start a personal essay (including what to do and not to do and examples of banging beginnings)
• Common mistakes people make when writing first-person narratives
• How to write a compelling personal essay that keeps people reading right to the end
• Examples of great personal narrative essays
• How to pitching your story to an editor
• And lots more!

The guide also includes 15+ paying markets for personal narrative essays, but I know that it can be tricky to find publications that accept freelance submissions.

The good news is that there are plenty of online and print publications looking for personal essays.

So if you have a personal story you want to share, where can you pitch it?

If you’re a writer who has had a book published, it’s definitely worth pitching to Allure (a magazine predominantly for women about beauty) as they pay up to $3,000 for personal essays up to 2000 words.

For those mere mortals among us who haven’t written a book, the rate for personal essays seems to be more like $250 – $500.

Glamour is another women’s magazine that heavily focuses on beauty, fashion and entertainment stories. Personal essays published by Glamour are reported to fetch around $2/word.

3. The Guardian

You have to love an editor who puts what she wants from writers out there and Jessica Reed from The Guardian certainly delivers. For beautifully written personal essays, The Guardian reportedly pays 60c/word.

4. Marie Claire

If you’ve got something compelling, insightful, intimate, funny, relatable or awkward to say about your love or sex life, then a personal essay directed to Marie Claire might be just the ticket. Writers report that Marie Claire pays $2/word.

Are you spotting a theme here? Women’s magazines love personal essays. If you want to write first hand experience about fitness, food, health or culture, it’s worth pitching to SELF magazine, who pay up to $700 for 2000 words.

A dynamic site covering world affairs, pop culture, science, business, politics and more, Vox pay around $500 for personal narrative essays. What’s even better is their clear pitching guidelines for their First Person section .

7. News.com.au

If you feel like a sharing a real life story like this one , you can pitch to the lifestyle vertical on the Australian website news.com.au. Writers are reportedly paid around $500 for a post.

Great examples of personal essays

You could spend years reading all the personal narrative essays that get published, but here are my picks for some of the best:

My washing line is heavy with the weight of our ash-ridden tent hung out to air. I wonder if the smell of smoke will ever be gone. I have no recollection of the tent being packed away – I was focused on the children, keeping them calm. All I know is that we’d never packed up a campsite so damn quickly. But then, we’d never fled a bushfire.  You can read the rest of the article here.

  “I love you so much.” Those whispered words make everything better – and when my soul mate and husband died, five years ago, I truly believed I would never hear them again.  You can read the rest of the article here.

My epiphany came, like many of them do, while I was taking a dump. Specifically, it came while I was trying to take a dump in the woods after three years of struggling with gastrointestinal issues. It went something like this: you don’t need to be gluten-free anymore. You just need to relax.  You can read the rest of the article here.

The rules for pitching a personal essay are much the same as when you query an editor for any other kind of writing assignment.

You just need a strong hook and engaging writing style.

The writers I know who create personal narrative essays love it.

They feel free and are absolutely thrilled when readers respond to their articles with “me too!”

After all, isn’t the point of writing to reach and connect with others? Personal essays tend to do that in a very special way.

Do you write personal narrative essays? Have you found other well-paying markets?

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Trust the sun  with your story..

We publish personal essays, short stories, poems, and black-and-white photography in print and online in our monthly magazine.

We’re looking for narrative writing and evocative photography from all over the world. Send us work that maps the human landscape, where the light catches on the faintest joy, where darkness sometimes threatens to overwhelm, and where ✗ never marks the spot because the truth is never so simple.

First-time authors and award-winners alike find their place in The Sun . We are particularly interested in submissions from marginalized voices.

Our uncommonly supportive community of readers includes 60,000 print subscribers and thousands more website visitors. And The Sun is ad-free, so when we share your work, we don’t crowd it with distracting sales pitches.

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We publish writers who aren’t afraid to be vulnerable, who don’t shy away from difficult truths, and who don’t always deliver what our readers expect. Does your work invite us into a moment of reflection?

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30 publications that pay writers for personal essays.

Compiled By H. Lovelyn Bettison

The following is a list of 30 magazines, newspapers, and websites that pay for personal essays. Included is a wide variety of publishers, covering many specialties and topics. For even more publishers seeking submissions, grab a copy of the Paid Publishing Guidebook.

• The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe accepts personal essays about relationships for their Connections section. The essays should be about 650 words. Please send an email with “Query” as the subject line to [email protected] to pitch your essay.

• Extra Crispy

Extra Crispy pays for personal essays about food. The articles they publish have a conversational tone with a bit of humor. http://www.extracrispy.com/culture/185/how-to-pitch-extra-crispy

Dame is a women’s magazine. They don’t have a submissions page, but do provide an email address for pitches: [email protected] http://www.damemagazine.com/

Kveller is a parenting magazine that accepts personal essays about parenting and women’s issues as seen through a Jewish lens. http://www.kveller.com/article/submission-guidelines/   They pay $25 per post.

• The New York Times: Modern Love

The New York Times Modern Love is looking for essays about love and relationships in modern times payment $300. The desired length for essays is 1500 to 1700. The submission page is old, but still up to date.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/fashion/howtosubmit_modernlove.html?_r=1&

• The New York Times: Lives

New York Times Lives accepts essays about meaningful life experiences. http://www.nytimes.com/column/lives Read the section to get an idea of what they want and send pitches to [email protected]

Salon publishes personal essays. Send your pitches in the body of the email not as an attachment. They also would like to know about your background and what makes you qualified to write the piece you’re proposing.  http://www.salon.com/about/submissions/

Slate is an online magazine about news, politics, and culture. Please indicate which section you’re pitching to in the subject line of your email. http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/contact_us/2006/08/whereto_find_slate_staff.html

Slice is a print magazine based in Brooklyn. They accept short fiction and personal essays. Submissions will open again on April 1. They pay $250

https://slicemagazine.org/submit/

• The Smart Set

The Smart Set is an online magazine about arts and culture, science, and global and national affairs.  http://thesmartset.com/about-us/#submissions

• The Billfold

The Billfold is a publication about money. They accept personal essays about your experiences with money, saving, and debt. https://thebillfold.com/about

• MotherwellMotherwell is a parenting magazine that looks for personal essays that take a novel angle on parenting. Essays should be up to 1200 words. https://motherwellmag.com/submissions/

Tin House is a literary journal that publishes personal essays up to 10,000 words. They have themed issues and only accept unsolicited submissions in September and March. http://www.tinhouse.com/magazine/submission-guidelines.html

• Narratively

Narratively is devoted to untold human stories. They accept pitches and completed essays.   http://narrative.ly/contribute/

Guideposts is looking for your true stories of inspiration and hope. Submit completed essays via the submission form on their website. https://www.guideposts.org/tell-us-your-story

• The Christian Science Monitor: Home Forum

Home Forum publishes upbeat personal essays that are 600 to 800 words in length. The payment is $75.  http://www.csmonitor.com/About/Contributor- guidelines/Contributor-Guidelines-The-Home-Forum

• The Establishment

The Establishment is a multimedia publication that encourages diversity. They accept essays 800 to 1,500 words long and pay $125. https://theestablishment.co/pitch-us-b0788d803a0b#.34no26v7l

The Sun is a literary journal that is mainly interested in personal stories. They pay $300-$2000 for personal essays up to 7,000 words.  http://thesunmagazine.org/about/submission_guidelines/writing

Skirt is a women’s magazine that publishes essays that are about 800 to 1100 words long. Each issue of the magazine has a theme. Look at their editorial calender for subjects. They pays $200 per essay. http://www.skirt.com/contribute/

• Travels’ Tales

Travels’ Tales publishes your travel essays in their anthologies. They pay $100 per essay. http://travelerstales.com/submission-guidelines/

• Brain, Child

Brain, Child is an award-winning literary magazine for mothers. They pay for personal essays on parenting. https://www.brainchildmag.com/about/writers-guidelines/

• Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Soul releases themed books throughout the year. They accept uplifting essays that are less than 1200 words. The pay is $200. http://www.chickensoup.com/story-submissions/possible-book-topics

Backpacker has a Destinations section where they publish first person accounts of outdoor experiences. The pay is $0.40-$1 per word http://www.backpacker.com/backpacker-contributor-s-guidelines/

• Paste Magazine

Paste Magazine focuses on music, movies, TV, videogames, comedy, books and more. They do accept personal essays. Read past essays to get an idea about what they are looking for. Pay varies. https://www.pastemagazine.com/paste/2012/03/writer-guidelines.html

True Story is published by Creative Nonfiction. They accept personal essay between 5000-10000 words and pay $300. https://www.creativenonfiction.org/submissions/true-story

• Good Old Days

Good Old Days accepts personal essays about growing up between 1935 and 1960. They should be informal and conversational in tone. Payment varies. http://www.goodolddaysmagazine.com/contributor_guidelines.php

• AARP Magazine

AARP Magazine publishes thoughtful, timely personal essays that are relevant to people over 50. Payment varies.  http://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/info-05-2010/writers-guidelines-aarp-magazine.html

Broadly is a website devoted to representing a wide variety of women’s experiences. They publish personal essays. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/page/about

• The Three Penny Review

The Three Penny Review is a literary magazine that publishes both fiction and creative nonfiction. They pay $400 per story or article.  http://www.threepennyreview.com/submissions.html

• Vox First Person

Vox First Person is dedicated to publishing thoughtful, in-depth first person narratives. They pay, but don’t list the rates on their site. http://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8767221/vox-first-person-explained

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She left the CIA in frustration. Now her spy novel is racking up awards.

I.S. Berry scored rave reviews and awards for her literary debut, “The Peacock and the Sparrow,” a novel mined from her time at the CIA.

She felt each boom like an electric jolt as she was trying to sleep in her Alexandria, Va., apartment.

It was August 2006, and Ilana Berry was then a 30-year-old Central Intelligence Agency case officer. Outside, construction crews were beginning work on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, knocking down the old expanse to make way for a new six-lane roadway.

But each rumble threw Berry off the steady anchors of time and place, hurling her back to her last year stationed in war-rocked Baghdad. There, she had spent sleepless nights alone in a trailer as insurgent mortars and rockets screamed into the Green Zone, the central area of the Iraqi capital where the American military, diplomatic and intelligence staffs were housed.

“I remember waking up and having the worst panic attack of my life,” she recalled. “I called my parents to say that we are all under attack.”

To cope, Berry began tracking when the crews would do demolitions and set an alarm for herself to stay awake. She began writing, caging the emotional fallout of her time in Iraq into the tidy frames of sentences. That writing would kick off a sequence of events that would pit her against the agency’s bureaucracy and end in her resignation.

But it would also start her second act as a celebrated, award-winning novelist — one that would be eventually be invited back to the CIA.

Berry applied to join the CIA while attending law school at the University of Virginia, believing it would combine her interests in international relations and intelligence work with her sense of patriotic mission.

Raised outside D.C., she was a 1994 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. She spent time in the Balkans after graduating from Haverford College, an experience that led to a position as an intelligence analyst with the Defense Department. “I loved the work of intel, and I wanted to make it my career,” Berry said. “So the CIA is the place to go, right?”

After being accepted, she trained at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, Va., known as “The Farm.” Much of that training was about logistics — how to conduct surveillance, how to know if you are being surveilled. But the more in-depth psychological elements made Berry wonder if she was in the right place.

“Your whole training is basically how to find people’s vulnerabilities,” Berry said. “What are their motivations? Is it flattery or vanity or revenge, or do they hate their boss? That was never an easy fit for me.”

But Berry graduated with high marks and volunteered to be stationed in Iraq for a year-long assignment. She arrived in 2004 as doubts were beginning to stain America’s initial reasoning for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. Among the CIA team, there was a growing realization that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country — the main justification for the U.S.-led coalition’s invasion.

Berry found that the CIA trailers didn’t have the armored protections or safety protocols in place like their military counterparts. But when she advised CIA headquarters about the danger, she was ignored, she said.

“We weren’t taking the precautions that we should have been,” Berry said. “And it was clear we knew we weren’t.”

One specific incident left Berry with doubts about the CIA’s mission. She got a tip from an Iraqi informant about a possible suspect involved in the 2003 truck bombing of the U.N. Baghdad headquarters that left 22 people dead, including the commissioner for human rights at the time. Berry’s tip led to the suspect being taken into custody, but he claimed he was not involved. Still, he was carted off to a detention facility. Berry later heard from other officers that they were unsure of his guilt, and she worries he may have been wrongfully pulled into the maze of America’s post-9/11 detention system.

In response to Berry’s allegations about her time in Iraq, a CIA agency spokesperson did not address specific complaints or allegations but said the agency “is absolutely committed to fostering a safe, respectful, and equitable workplace environment for all our employees, and we have taken significant steps to ensure that, including strengthening the Agency’s handling of issues when they arise.”

The living conditions. The murky mission. All that seemed to Berry to fuel rampant alcoholism at the CIA station. “Baghdad really screwed me up,” she said.

Her tour done but still living with the emotional aftershocks in Virginia, Berry kept writing. “My goal was never to publish my account of Baghdad,” she said. “It was to make sense of what happened.”

She had volunteered to go next to Afghanistan and was enrolled in Farsi-language classes. During that time, Berry volunteered to the agency that she had been writing about her experience.

According to agency regulation, all current and former CIA employees must submit any writing they plan on releasing to the CIA’s Publication Classification Review Board, which determines whether a potential book or screenplay or writing contains classified information. After the agency learned Berry was working on a memoir, she submitted the manuscript.

When her writing came back, it was covered in redactions that Berry felt made little sense. “They redacted my height and weight,” she said. “They redacted the color of the sky. These are clearly things that are not classified.”

Berry felt the pushback was all due to the unflattering light the account showed the agency. Her complaints in Iraq had already begun to hurt her prospects at the CIA. Her follow-up assignment in Afghanistan was pulled. She channeled her frustration into an appeal over her manuscript.

“I fought every single redaction, if for no other reason than to stick it to them that this was wrong,” she said.

Mark Zaid, a D.C. attorney who regularly represents CIA officers and helped Berry with her appeal, said he believes the board’s difficult responses were tied to the protective stance the agency assumed at the time. “There is a deep-seated paranoia and ignorance among security officers,” he said. “Their internal processes are geared for damage control, no matter whether there is damage or not.” Zaid later hired Berry into his law firm as an of counsel attorney.

In response to questions about Berry’s past conflicts with the review board, an agency spokesperson said the “CIA does not comment on details regarding specific prepublication reviews.” The spokesperson added that “the Board is open to authors’ requests to reconsider content they believe is unclassified.”

Eventually, the review board agreed with most of Berry’s appeal and removed most of the redactions from her manuscript.

By then, she had already resigned from agency, frustrated with the fight and her experiences in Iraq. She was married and a new mother. Though she had won the right to publish her account, she no longer wanted her own story — and the trauma and personal doubt she had put in writing — out there.

Write what you know

Despite her clash with agency, piling the mixed feelings about her time as a spy into a memoir reminded Berry how much she enjoyed writing. As she launched herself into a new career as an attorney and later followed her husband to Bahrain in 2012, Berry kept at it. Now it was fiction, but Berry found all her sentences echoed back to her time in Iraq.

The pages that would eventually become “The Peacock and the Sparrow,” a novel featuring a weary CIA officer caught in the turbines of Middle Eastern political change, include themes mined straight from Berry’s time at the agency. Its first lines plunge a reader into the morally ambiguous head space Berry learned in her training. “It was the ability to please that you learned as a spy: smoking a cigarette, offering compliments you didn’t mean, falling down drunk from having accepted too many vodkas,” Berry writes.

The novel’s CIA protagonist, Shane Collins, faces the same indifference from higher-ups that Berry said she saw in Iraq. She funneled the same problematic behavior she witnessed — the drinking, the war-zone infidelities — into her main character. The gnawing doubts about the guilt of the bombing suspect also popped up as a plot point.

Perhaps the most surprising element in her new work as a novelist was how easy it was to submit the manuscript to the review board. They demanded no significant redactions.

“Time had passed, and I had built up a good relationship with the board,” Berry said.

Berry’s debut novel, “The Peacock and the Sparrow,” was released by Atria Books in May 2023 under the pen name I.S. Berry. The book was feted by both the New Yorker and NPR on their annual lists of the best books of the year. This month, the novel also won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel by an American novelist, a significant industry award whose past recipients include Viet Thanh Nguyen and Tana French.

Even with that acclaim, Berry was still surprised when the CIA invited her to speak with Invisible Ink, a group of agency employees who are also writers.

“I was not exactly a poster child for the place,” Berry said. “But they assured me they valued authenticity over filtered plaudits, which were words I never thought I’d hear.”

Last September, Berry was sitting in her car in the ocean of parking spaces sprawling outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Even with her invitation, she felt “nervous as hell,” she said. “I did feel like it was a family reunion where I was estranged from my family.”

But Berry then met her agency contact, a member of Invisible Ink, who had asked her to come and speak. She was taken into a conference room where she spoke to about a dozen current agency staff members to discuss writing, publishing and working with the agency’s review board.

As she was leaving, Berry was asked to film a video about the career paths of officers after the agency. She agreed.

“This was such a formative part of my life,” she said. “They are people who have had that same singular experience as me.” Going back to the CIA, Berry said, “felt like I had rebuilt this broken bridge.”

In the meantime, she’s working away on a new novel. It’s another spy tale.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Berry visited Invisible Ink last February. It was last September. The article has been corrected.

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• Read the 1999 essay that made Anthony Bourdain famous

Bourdain’s first big essay shows off all the things that would make him a great food celebrity.

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Before Anthony Bourdain was a TV host, he was a memoirist. And before he was a memoirist — before Kitchen Confidential , before Medium Raw — he was an essayist.

Actually, technically, Bourdain was first a novelist and a short-story writer. “My lust for print knows no bounds,” he wrote on a submission to the downtown literary journal Between C & D in 1985 . In 1995, he published Bone in the Throat , a crime novel set in the restaurant world, and in 1997 a follow-up, Gone Bamboo . Both novels disappeared quickly and quietly.

Bourdain’s writing career truly began to take off with a 1999 essay for the New Yorker. Titled “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” the piece forms the basis of what would later become Kitchen Confidential — and in its pages, you can see all the elements of Bourdain’s distinctive, charismatic persona already in place.

The essay is framed as advice to a restaurant-goer from someone who knows: Order fish on Tuesday, when it’s fresh and the chef is well-rested from his day off. Never order your food well done, because that’s where kitchen staffs get rid of the worst of their meat. (“The philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam,” Bourdain explains.) Chicken is for people who can’t make up their minds, but pork is fantastic. At a good restaurant, there will be a stick of butter in every meal.

The savvy insider knowledge is fun, but what really makes the essay pop is Bourdain’s unmistakable voice. There’s lots of bad-boy posturing — Bourdain throws around Spanish obscenities with relish and boasts of the “powerful strain of criminality” in the restaurant industry — and it’s all mixed in with a sensualist’s genuine appreciation for and love of food.

“Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay,” Bourdain writes. “It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals.”

And that was the food world that Bourdain helped create and make wildly fashionable: one in which eaters could unabashedly celebrate their food, and the insistent physical fact of it.

You can read the entirety of “Don’t Eat Before Reading This” on the New Yorker’s website .

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Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control

The private and public seductions of the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist..

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

For the past three years, one of the biggest podcasters on the planet has told a story to millions of listeners across half a dozen shows: There was a little boy, and the boy’s family was happy, until one day, the boy’s family fell apart. The boy was sent away. He foundered, he found therapy, he found science, he found exercise. And he became strong.

Today, Andrew Huberman is a stiff, jacked 48-year-old associate professor of neurology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is given to delivering three-hour lectures on subjects such as “the health of our dopaminergic neurons.” His podcast is revelatory largely because it does not condescend, which has not been the way of public-health information in our time. He does not give the impression of someone diluting science to universally applicable sound bites for the slobbering masses. “Dopamine is vomited out into the synapse or it’s released volumetrically, but then it has to bind someplace and trigger those G-protein-coupled receptors, and caffeine increases the number, the density of those G-protein-coupled receptors,” is how he explains the effect of coffee before exercise in a two-hour-and-16-minute deep dive that has, as of this writing, nearly 8.9 million views on YouTube.

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Falling for dr. huberman.

Millions of people feel compelled to hear him draw distinctions between neuromodulators and classical neurotransmitters. Many of those people will then adopt an associated “protocol.” They will follow his elaborate morning routine. They will model the most basic functions of human life — sleeping, eating, seeing — on his sober advice. They will tell their friends to do the same. “He’s not like other bro podcasters,” they will say, and they will be correct; he is a tenured Stanford professor associated with a Stanford lab; he knows the difference between a neuromodulator and a neurotransmitter. He is just back from a sold-out tour in Australia, where he filled the Sydney Opera House. Stanford, at one point, hung signs (AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY) apparently to deter fans in search of the lab.

With this power comes the power to lift other scientists out of their narrow silos and turn them, too, into celebrities, but these scientists will not be Huberman, whose personal appeal is distinct. Here we have a broad-minded professor puppyishly enamored with the wonders of biological function, generous to interviewees (“I love to be wrong”), engaged in endearing attempts to sound like a normal person (“Now, we all have to eat, and it’s nice to eat foods that we enjoy. I certainly do that. I love food, in fact”).

This is a world in which the soft art of self-care is made concrete, in which Goop-adjacent platitudes find solidity in peer review. “People go, ‘Oh, that feels kind of like weenie stuff,’” Huberman tells Joe Rogan. “The data show that gratitude, and avoiding toxic people and focusing on good-quality social interactions … huge increases in serotonin.” “Hmmm,” Rogan says. There is a kindness to the way Huberman reminds his audience always of the possibilities of neuroplasticity: They can change. He has changed. As an adolescent, he says, he endured the difficult divorce of his parents, a Stanford professor who worked in the tech industry and a children’s-book author. The period after the separation was, he says, one of “pure neglect.” His father was gone, his mother “totally checked out.” He was forced, around age 14, to endure a month of “youth detention,” a situation that was “not a jail,” but harrowing in its own right.

“The thing that really saved me,” Huberman tells Peter Attia, “was this therapy thing … I was like, Oh, shit … I do have to choke back a little bit here. It’s a crazy thing to have somebody say, ‘Listen,’ like, to give you the confidence, like, ‘We’re gonna figure this out. We’re gonna figure this out. ’ There’s something very powerful about that. It wasn’t like, you know, ‘Everything will be okay.’ It was like, We’re gonna figure this out. ”

The wayward son would devote himself to therapy and also to science. He would turn Rancid all the way up and study all night long. He would be tenured at Stanford with his own lab, severing optic nerves in mice and noting what grew back.

Huberman has been in therapy, he says, since high school. He has, in fact, several therapists, and psychiatrist Paul Conti appears on his podcast frequently to discuss mental health. Therapy is “hard work … like going to the gym and doing an effective workout.” The brain is a machine that needs tending. Our cells will benefit from the careful management of stress. “I love mechanism, ” says Huberman; our feelings are integral to the apparatus. There are Huberman Husbands (men who optimize), a phenomenon not to be confused with #DaddyHuberman (used by women on TikTok in the man’s thrall).

A prophet must constrain his self-revelation. He must give his story a shape that ultimately tends toward inner strength, weakness overcome. For Andrew Huberman to become your teacher and mine, as he very much was for a period this fall — a period in which I diligently absorbed sun upon waking, drank no more than once a week, practiced physiological sighs in traffic, and said to myself, out loud in my living room, “I also love mechanism”; a period during which I began to think seriously, for the first time in my life, about reducing stress, and during which both my husband and my young child saw tangible benefit from repeatedly immersing themselves in frigid water; a period in which I realized that I not only liked this podcast but liked other women who liked this podcast — he must be, in some way, better than the rest of us.

Huberman sells a dream of control down to the cellular level. But something has gone wrong. In the midst of immense fame, a chasm has opened between the podcaster preaching dopaminergic restraint and a man, with newfound wealth, with access to a world unseen by most professors. The problem with a man always working on himself is that he may also be working on you.

Some of Andrew’s earliest Instagram posts are of his lab. We see smiling undergraduates “slicing, staining, and prepping brains” and a wall of framed science publications in which Huberman-authored papers appear: Nature, Cell Reports, The Journal of Neuroscience. In 2019, under the handle @hubermanlab, Andrew began posting straightforward educational videos in which he talks directly into the camera about subjects such as the organizational logic of the brain stem. Sometimes he would talk over a simple anatomical sketch on lined paper; the impression was, as it is now, of a fast-talking teacher in conversation with an intelligent student. The videos amassed a fan base, and Andrew was, in 2020, invited on some of the biggest podcasts in the world. On Lex Fridman Podcast, he talked about experiments his lab was conducting by inducing fear in people. On The Rich Roll Podcast, the relationship between breathing and motivation. On The Joe Rogan Experience, experiments his lab was conducting on mice.

He was a fluid, engaging conversationalist, rich with insight and informed advice. In a year of death and disease, when many felt a sense of agency slipping away, Huberman had a gentle plan. The subtext was always the same: We may live in chaos, but there are mechanisms of control.

By then he had a partner, Sarah, which is not her real name. Sarah was someone who could talk to anyone about anything. She was dewy and strong and in her mid-40s, though she looked a decade younger, with two small kids from a previous relationship. She had old friends who adored her and no trouble making new ones. She came across as scattered in the way she jumped readily from topic to topic in conversation, losing the thread before returning to it, but she was in fact extremely organized. She was a woman who kept track of things. She was an entrepreneur who could organize a meeting, a skill she would need later for reasons she could not possibly have predicted. When I asked her a question in her home recently, she said the answer would be on an old phone; she stood up, left for only a moment, and returned with a box labeled OLD PHONES.

Sarah’s relationship with Andrew began in February 2018 in the Bay Area, where they both lived. He messaged her on Instagram and said he owned a home in Piedmont, a wealthy city separate from Oakland. That turned out not to be precisely true; he lived off Piedmont Avenue, which was in Oakland. He was courtly and a bit formal, as he would later be on the podcast. In July, in her garden, Sarah says she asked to clarify the depth of their relationship. They decided, she says, to be exclusive.

Both had devoted their lives to healthy living: exercise, good food, good information. They cared immoderately about what went into their bodies. Andrew could command a room and clearly took pleasure in doing so. He was busy and handsome, healthy and extremely ambitious. He gave the impression of working on himself; throughout their relationship, he would talk about “repair” and “healthy merging.” He was devoted to his bullmastiff, Costello, whom he worried over constantly: Was Costello comfortable? Sleeping properly? Andrew liked to dote on the dog, she says, and he liked to be doted on by Sarah. “I was never sitting around him,” she says. She cooked for him and felt glad when he relished what she had made. Sarah was willing to have unprotected sex because she believed they were monogamous.

On Thanksgiving in 2018, Sarah planned to introduce Andrew to her parents and close friends. She was cooking. Andrew texted repeatedly to say he would be late, then later. According to a friend, “he was just, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be there. Oh, I’m going to be running hours late.’ And then of course, all of these things were planned around his arrival and he just kept going, ‘Oh, I’m going to be late.’ And then it’s the end of the night and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry this and this happened.’”

Huberman disappearing was something of a pattern. Friends, girlfriends, and colleagues describe him as hard to reach. The list of reasons for not showing up included a book, time-stamping the podcast, Costello, wildfires, and a “meetings tunnel.” “He is flaky and doesn’t respond to things,” says his friend Brian MacKenzie, a health influencer who has collaborated with him on breathing protocols. “And if you can’t handle that, Andrew definitely is not somebody you want to be close to.” “He in some ways disappeared,” says David Spiegel, a Stanford psychiatrist who calls Andrew “prodigiously smart” and “intensely engaging.” “I mean, I recently got a really nice email from him. Which I was touched by. I really was.”

In 2018, before he was famous, Huberman invited a Colorado-based investigative journalist and anthropologist, Scott Carney, to his home in Oakland for a few days; the two would go camping and discuss their mutual interest in actionable science. It had been Huberman, a fan of Carney’s book What Doesn’t Kill Us, who initially reached out, and the two became friendly over phone and email. Huberman confirmed Carney’s list of camping gear: sleeping bag, bug spray, boots.

When Carney got there, the two did not go camping. Huberman simply disappeared for most of a day and a half while Carney stayed home with Costello. He puttered around Huberman’s place, buying a juice, walking through the neighborhood, waiting for him to return. “It was extremely weird,” says Carney. Huberman texted from elsewhere saying he was busy working on a grant. (A spokesperson for Huberman says he clearly communicated to Carney that he went to work.) Eventually, instead of camping, the two went on a few short hikes.

Even when physically present, Huberman can be hard to track. “I don’t have total fidelity to who Andrew is,” says his friend Patrick Dossett. “There’s always a little unknown there.” He describes Andrew as an “amazing thought partner” with “almost total recall,” such a memory that one feels the need to watch what one says; a stray comment could surface three years later. And yet, at other times, “you’re like, All right, I’m saying words and he’s nodding or he is responding, but I can tell something I said sent him down a path that he’s continuing to have internal dialogue about, and I need to wait for him to come back. ”

Andrew Huberman declined to be interviewed for this story. Through a spokesman, Huberman says he did not become exclusive with Sarah until late 2021, that he was not doted on, that tasks between him and Sarah were shared “based on mutual agreement and proficiency,” that their Thanksgiving plans were tentative, and that he “maintains a very busy schedule and shows up to the vast majority of his commitments.”

In the fall of 2020, Huberman sold his home in Oakland and rented one in Topanga, a wooded canyon enclave contiguous with Los Angeles. When he came back to Stanford, he stayed with Sarah, and when he was in Topanga, Sarah was often with him.

When they fought, it was, she says, typically because Andrew would fixate on her past choices: the men she had been with before him, the two children she had had with another man. “I experienced his rage,” Sarah recalls, “as two to three days of yelling in a row. When he was in this state, he would go on until 11 or 12 at night and sometimes start again at two or three in the morning.”

The relationship struck Sarah’s friends as odd. At one point, Sarah said, “I just want to be with my kids and cook for my man.” “I was like, Who says that? ” says a close friend. “I mean, I’ve known her for 30 years. She’s a powerful, decisive, strong woman. We grew up in this very feminist community. That’s not a thing either of us would ever say.”

Another friend found him stressful to be around. “I try to be open-minded,” she said of the relationship. “I don’t want to be the most negative, nonsupportive friend just because of my personal observations and disgust over somebody.” When they were together, he was buzzing, anxious. “He’s like, ‘Oh, my dog needs his blanket this way.’ And I’m like, ‘Your dog is just laying there and super-cozy. Why are you being weird about the blanket?’”

Sarah was not the only person who experienced the extent of Andrew’s anger. In 2019, Carney sent Huberman materials from his then-forthcoming book, The Wedge, in which Huberman appears. He asked Huberman to confirm the parts in which he was mentioned. For months, Huberman did not respond. Carney sent a follow-up email; if Huberman did not respond, he would assume everything was accurate. In 2020, after months of saying he was too busy to review the materials, Huberman called him and, Carney says, came at him in a rage. “I’ve never had a source I thought was friendly go bananas,” says Carney. Screaming, Huberman threatened to sue and accused Carney of “violating Navy OpSec.”

It had become, by then, one of the most perplexing relationships of Carney’s life. That year, Carney agreed to Huberman’s invitation to swim with sharks on an island off Mexico. First, Carney would have to spend a month of his summer getting certified in Denver. He did, at considerable expense. Huberman then canceled the trip a day before they were set to leave. “I think Andrew likes building up people’s expectations,” says Carney, “and then he actually enjoys the opportunity to pull the rug out from under you.”

In January 2021, Huberman launched his own podcast. Its reputation would be directly tied to his role as teacher and scientist. “I’d like to emphasize that this podcast,” he would say every episode, with his particular combination of formality and discursiveness, “is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.”

“I remember feeling quite lonely and making some efforts to repair that,” Huberman would say on an episode in 2024. “Loneliness,” his interviewee said, “is a need state.” In 2021, the country was in the later stages of a need state: bored, alone, powerless. Huberman offered not only hours of educative listening but a plan to structure your day. A plan for waking. For eating. For exercising. For sleep. At a time when life had shifted to screens, he brought people back to their corporeal selves. He advised a “physiological sigh” — two short breaths in and a long one out — to reduce stress. He pulled countless people from their laptops and put them in rhythm with the sun. “Thank you for all you do to better humanity,” read comments on YouTube. “You may have just saved my life man.” “If Andrew were science teacher for everyone in the world,” someone wrote, “no one would have missed even a single class.”

Asked by Time last year for his definition of fun, Huberman said, “I learn and I like to exercise.” Among his most famous episodes is one in which he declares moderate drinking decidedly unhealthy. As MacKenzie puts it, “I don’t think anybody or anything, including Prohibition, has ever made more people think about alcohol than Andrew Huberman.” While he claims repeatedly that he doesn’t want to “demonize alcohol,” he fails to mask his obvious disapproval of anyone who consumes alcohol in any quantity. He follows a time-restricted eating schedule. He discusses constraint even in joy, because a dopamine spike is invariably followed by a drop below baseline; he explains how even a small pleasure like a cup of coffee before every workout reduces the capacity to release dopamine. Huberman frequently refers to the importance of “social contact” and “peace, contentment, and delight,” always mentioned as a triad; these are ultimately leveraged for the one value consistently espoused: physiological health.

In August 2021, Sarah says she read Andrew’s journal and discovered a reference to cheating. She was, she says, “gutted.” “I hear you are saying you are angry and hurt,” he texted her the same day. “I will hear you as much as long as needed for us.”

Andrew and Sarah wanted children together. Optimizers sometimes prefer not to conceive naturally; one can exert more control when procreation involves a lab. Sarah began the first of several rounds of IVF. (A spokesperson for Huberman denies that he and Sarah had decided to have children together, clarifying that they “decided to create embryos by IVF.”)

In 2021, she tested positive for a high-risk form of HPV, one of the variants linked to cervical cancer. “I had never tested positive,” she says, “and had been tested regularly for ten years.” (A spokesperson for Huberman says he has never tested positive for HPV. According to the CDC, there is currently no approved test for HPV in men.) When she brought it up, she says, he told her you could contract HPV from many things.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about truth-telling and deception,” Andrew told evolutionary psychologist David Buss on a November 2021 episode of Huberman Lab called “How Humans Select & Keep Romantic Partners in Short & Long Term.” They were talking about regularities across cultures in mate preferences.

“Could you tell us,” Andrew asked, “about how men and women leverage deception versus truth-telling and communicating some of the things around mate choice selection?”

“Effective tactics for men,” said a gravel-voiced, 68-year-old Buss, “are often displaying cues to long-term interest … men tend to exaggerate the depths of their feelings for a woman.”

“Let’s talk about infidelity in committed relationships,” Andrew said, laughing. “I’m guessing it does happen.”

“Men who have affairs tend to have affairs with a larger number of affair partners,” said Buss. “And so which then by definition can’t be long-lasting. You can’t,” added Buss wryly, “have the long-term affairs with six different partners.”

“Yeah,” said Andrew, “unless he’s, um,” and here Andrew looked into the distance. “Juggling multiple, uh, phone accounts or something of that sort.”

“Right, right, right, and some men try to do that, but I think it could be very taxing,” said Buss.

By 2022, Andrew was legitimately famous. Typical headlines read “I tried a Stanford professor’s top productivity routine” and “Google CEO Uses ‘Nonsleep Deep Rest’ to Relax.” Reese Witherspoon told the world that she was sure to get ten minutes of sunlight in the morning and tagged Andrew. When he was not on his own podcast, Andrew was on someone else’s. He kept the place in Topanga, but he and Sarah began splitting rent in Berkeley. In June 2022, they fully combined lives; Sarah relocated her family to Malibu to be with him.

According to Sarah, Andrew’s rage intensified with cohabitation. He fixated on her decision to have children with another man. She says he told her that being with her was like “bobbing for apples in feces.” “The pattern of your 11 years, while rooted in subconscious drives,” he told her in December 2021, “creates a nearly impossible set of hurdles for us … You have to change.”

Sarah was, in fact, changing. She felt herself getting smaller, constantly appeasing. She apologized, again and again and again. “I have been selfish, childish, and confused,” she said. “As a result, I need your protection.” A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah’s accounts of their fights, denies that his rage intensified with cohabitation, denies that he fixated on Sarah’s decision to have children with another man, and denies that he said being with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. A spokesperson said, “Dr. Huberman is very much in control of his emotions.”

The first three rounds of IVF did not produce healthy embryos. In the spring of 2022, enraged again about her past, Andrew asked Sarah to explain in detail what he called her bad choices, most especially having her second child. She wrote it out and read it aloud to him. A spokesperson for Huberman denies this incident and says he does not regard her having a second child as a bad choice.

I think it’s important to recognize that we might have a model of who someone is,” says Dossett, “or a model of how someone should conduct themselves. And if they do something that is out of sync with that model, it’s like, well, that might not necessarily be on that person. Maybe it’s on us. Our model was just off.”

Huberman’s specialty lies in a narrow field: visual-system wiring. How comfortable one feels with the science propagated on Huberman Lab depends entirely on how much leeway one is willing to give a man who expounds for multiple hours a week on subjects well outside his area of expertise. His detractors note that Huberman extrapolates wildly from limited animal studies, posits certainty where there is ambiguity, and stumbles when he veers too far from his narrow realm of study, but even they will tend to admit that the podcast is an expansive, free (or, as he puts it, “zero-cost”) compendium of human knowledge. There are quack guests, but these are greatly outnumbered by profound, complex, patient, and often moving descriptions of biological process.

Huberman Lab is premised on the image of a working scientist. One imagines clean white counters, rodents in cages, postdocs peering into microscopes. “As scientists,” Huberman says frequently. He speaks often, too, of the importance of mentorship. He “loves” reading teacher evaluations. On the web, one can visit the lab and even donate. I have never met a Huberman listener who doubted the existence of such a place, and this appears to be by design. In a glowing 2023 profile in Stanford magazine, we learn “Everything he does is inspired by this love,” but do not learn that Huberman lives 350 miles and a six-hour drive from Stanford University, making it difficult to drop into the lab. Compounding the issue is the fact that the lab, according to knowledgeable sources, barely exists.

“Is a postdoc working on her own funding, alone, a ‘lab?’” asks a researcher at Stanford. There had been a lab — four rooms on the second floor of the Sherman Fairchild Science Building. Some of them smelled of mice. It was here that researchers anesthetized rodents, injected them with fluorescence, damaged their optic nerves, and watched for the newly bright nerves to grow back.

The lab, says the researcher, was already scaling down before COVID. It was emptying out, postdocs apparently unsupervised, a quarter-million-dollar laser-scanning microscope gathering dust. Once the researcher saw someone come in and reclaim a $3,500 rocker, a machine for mixing solutions.

Shortly before publication, a spokesperson for Stanford said, “Dr. Huberman’s lab at Stanford is operational and is in the process of moving from the Department of Neurobiology to the Department of Ophthalmology,” and a spokesperson for Huberman says the equipment in Dr. Huberman’s lab remained in use until the last postdoc moved to a faculty position.

On every episode of his “zero-cost” podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement of a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens and now as AG1. It is one thing to hear Athletic Greens promoted by Joe Rogan; it is perhaps another to hear someone who sells himself as a Stanford University scientist just back from the lab proclaim that this $79-a-month powder “covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.” In an industry not noted for its integrity, AG1 is, according to writer and professional debunker Derek Beres, “one of the most egregious players in the space.” Here we have a powder that contains, according to its own marketing, 75 active ingredients, far more than the typical supplement, which would seem a selling point but for the inconveniences of mass. As performance nutritionist Adam McDonald points out, the vast number of ingredients indicates that each ingredient, which may or may not promote good health in a certain dose, is likely included in minuscule amounts, though consumers are left to do the math themselves; the company keeps many of the numbers proprietary. “We can be almost guaranteed that literally every supplement or ingredient within this proprietary blend is underdosed,” explains McDonald; the numbers, he says, don’t appear to add up to anything research has shown to be meaningful in terms of human health outcomes. And indeed, “the problem with most of the probiotics is they’re typically not concentrated enough to actually colonize,” one learns from Dr. Layne Norton in a November 2022 episode of Huberman Lab. (AG1 argues that probiotics are effective and that the 75 ingredients are “included not only for their individual benefit, but for the synergy between them — how ingredients interact in complex ways, and how combinations can lead to additive effects.”) “That’s the good news about podcasts,” Huberman said when Wendy Zukerman of Science Vs pointed out that her podcast would never make recommendations based on such tenuous research. “People can choose which podcast they want to listen to.”

Whenever Sarah had suspicions about Andrew’s interactions with another woman, he had a particular way of talking about the woman in question. She says he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars. He told her that one woman tore out her hair with chunks of flesh attached to it. He told her a story about a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby to “entrap” him. (A spokesperson for Huberman denies the account of the denigration of women and the dead-baby story and says the hair story was taken out of context.) Most of the time, Sarah believed him; the women probably were crazy. He was a celebrity. He had to be careful.

It was in August 2022 that Sarah noticed she and Andrew could not go out without being thronged by people. On a camping trip in Washington State that same month, Sarah brought syringes and a cooler with ice packs. Every day of the trip, he injected the drugs meant to stimulate fertility into her stomach. This was round four.

Later that month, Sarah says she grabbed Andrew’s phone when he had left it in the bathroom, checked his texts, and found conversations with someone we will call Eve. Some of them took place during the camping trip they had just taken.

“Your feelings matter,” he told Eve on a day when he had injected his girlfriend with hCG. “I’m actually very much a caretaker.” And later: “I’m back on grid tomorrow and would love to see you this weekend.”

Caught having an affair, Andrew was apologetic. “The landscape has been incredibly hard,” he said. “I let the stress get to me … I defaulted to self safety … I’ve also sat with the hardest of feelings.” “I hear your insights,” he said, “and honestly I appreciate them.”

Sarah noticed how courteous he was with Eve. “So many offers,” she pointed out, “to process and work through things.”

Eve is an ethereally beautiful actress, the kind of woman from whom it is hard to look away. Where Sarah exudes a winsome chaotic energy, Eve is intimidatingly collected. Eve saw Andrew on Raya in 2020 and messaged him on Instagram. They went for a swim in Venice, and he complimented her form. “You’re definitely,” he said, “on the faster side of the distribution.” She found him to be an extraordinary listener, and she liked the way he appeared to be interested in her internal life. He was busy all the time: with his book, and eventually the podcast; his dog; responsibilities at Stanford. “I’m willing to do the repair work on this,” he said when she called him out for standing her up, or, “This sucks, but doesn’t deter my desire and commitment to see you, and establish clear lines of communication and trust.” Despite his endless excuses for not showing up, he seemed, to Eve, to be serious about deepening their relationship, which lasted on and off for two years. Eve had the impression that he was not seeing anyone else: She was willing to have unprotected sex.

As their relationship intensified over the years, he talked often about the family he one day wanted. “Our children would be amazing,” he said. She asked for book recommendations and he suggested, jokingly, Huberman: Why We Made Babies. “I’m at the stage of life where I truly want to build a family,” he told her. “That’s a resounding theme for me.” “How to mesh lives,” he said in a voice memo. “A fundamental question.” One time she heard him say, on Joe Rogan, that he had a girlfriend. She texted him to ask about it, and he responded immediately. He had a stalker, he said, and so his team had decided to invent a partner for the listening public. (“I later learned,” Eve tells me with characteristic equanimity, “that this was not true.”)

In September 2022, Eve noticed that Sarah was looking at her Instagram stories; not commenting or liking, just looking. Impulsively, Eve messaged her. “Is there anything you’d rather ask me directly?” she said. They set up a call. “Fuck you Andrew,” she messaged him.

Sarah moved out in August 2023 but says she remained in a committed relationship with Huberman. (A spokesperson for Huberman says they were separated.) At Thanksgiving that year, she noticed he was “wiggly” every time a cell phone came out at the table — trying to avoid, she suspected, being photographed. She says she did not leave him until December. According to Sarah, the relationship ended, as it had started, with a lie. He had been at her place for a couple of days and left for his place to prepare for a Zoom call; they planned to go Christmas shopping the next day. Sarah showed up at his house and found him on the couch with another woman. She could see them through the window. “If you’re going to be a cheater,” she advises me later, “do not live in a glass house.”

On January 11, a woman we’ll call Alex began liking all of Sarah’s Instagram posts, seven of them in a minute. Sarah messaged her: “I think you’re friends with my ex, Andrew Huberman. Are you one of the woman he cheated on me with?” Alex is an intense, direct, highly educated woman who lives in New York; she was sleeping with Andrew; and she had no idea there had been a girlfriend. “Fuck,” she said. “I think we should talk.” Over the following weeks, Sarah and Alex never stopped texting. “She helped me hold my boundary against him,” says Sarah, “keep him blocked. She said, ‘You need to let go of the idea of him.’” Instead of texting Andrew, Sarah texted Alex. Sometimes they just talked about their days and not about Andrew at all. Sarah still thought beautiful Eve, on the other hand, “might be crazy,” but they talked some more and brought her into the group chat. Soon there were others. There was Mary: a dreamy, charismatic Texan he had been seeing for years. Her friends called Andrew “bread crumbs,” given his tendency to disappear. There was a fifth woman in L.A., funny and fast-talking. Alex had been apprehensive; she felt foolish for believing Andrew’s lies and worried that the other women would seem foolish, therefore compounding her shame. Foolish women were not, however, what she found. Each of the five was assertive and successful and educated and sharp-witted; there had been a type, and they were diverse expressions of that type. “I can’t believe how crazy I thought you were,” Mary told Sarah. No one struck anyone else as a stalker. No one had made up a story about a dead baby or torn out hair with chunks in it. “I haven’t slept with anyone but him for six years,” Sarah told the group. “If it makes you feel any better,” Alex joked, “according to the CDC,” they had all slept with one another.

The women compared time-stamped screenshots of texts and assembled therein an extraordinary record of deception.

There was a day in Texas when, after Sarah left his hotel, Andrew slept with Mary and texted Eve. They found days in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself to two of them at the same time. They realized that the day before he had moved in with Sarah in Berkeley, he had slept with Mary, and he had also been with her in December 2023, the weekend before Sarah caught him on the couch with a sixth woman.

They realized that on March 21, 2021, a day of admittedly impressive logistical jujitsu, while Sarah was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to L.A. to stay with him in Topanga. While Mary was there, visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her with Costello. He drove to a coffee shop, where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about their relationship. They thought they were in a good place. He wanted to make it work.

“Phone died,” he texted Mary, who was waiting back at the place in Topanga. And later, to Eve: “Thank you … For being so next, next, level gorgeous and sexy.”

“Sleep well beautiful,” he texted Sarah.

“The scheduling alone!” Alex tells me. “I can barely schedule three Zooms in a day.”

In the aggregate, Andrew’s therapeutic language took on a sinister edge. It was communicating a commitment that was not real, a profound interest in the internality of women that was then used to manipulate them.

“Does Huberman have vices?” asks an anonymous Reddit poster.

“I remember him saying,” reads the first comment, “that he loves croissants.”

While Huberman has been criticized for having too few women guests on his podcast, he is solicitous and deferential toward those he interviews. In a January 2023 episode, Dr. Sara Gottfried argues that “patriarchal messaging” and white supremacy contribute to the deterioration of women’s health, and Andrew responds with a story about how his beloved trans mentor, Ben Barres, had experienced “intense suppression/oppression” at MIT before transitioning. “Psychology is influencing biology,” he says with concern. “And you’re saying these power dynamics … are impacting it.”

In private, he could sometimes seem less concerned about patriarchy. Multiple women recall him saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the woman was monogamous but the man was not. “He told me,” says Mary, “that what he wanted was a woman who was submissive, who he could slap in the ass in public, and who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home.” (A spokesperson for Huberman denies this.) The women continued to compare notes. He had his little ways of checking in: “Good morning beautiful.” There was a particular way he would respond to a sexy picture: “Mmmmm hi there.”

A spokesperson for Huberman insisted that he had not been monogamous with Sarah until late 2021, but a recorded conversation he had with Alex suggested that in May of that year he had led Sarah to believe otherwise. “Well, she was under the impression that we were exclusive at that time,” he said. “Women are not dumb like that, dude,” Alex responded. “She was under that impression? Then you were giving her that impression.” Andrew agreed: “That’s what I meant. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put it on her.”

The kind of women to whom Andrew Huberman was attracted; the kind of women who were attracted to him — these were women who paid attention to what went into their bodies, women who made avoiding toxicity a central focus of their lives. They researched non-hormone-disrupting products, avoided sugar, ate organic. They were disgusted by the knowledge that they had had sex with someone who had an untold number of partners. All of them wondered how many others there were. When Sarah found Andrew with the other woman, there had been a black pickup truck in the driveway, and she had taken a picture. The women traced the plates, but they hit a dead end and never found her.

Tell us about the dark triad,” he had said to Buss in November on the trip in which he slept with Mary.

“The dark triad consists of three personality characteristics,” said Buss. “So narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.” Such people “feign cooperation but then cheat on subsequent moves. They view other people as pawns to be manipulated for their own instrumental gains.” Those “who are high on dark-triad traits,” he said, “tend to be good at the art of seduction.” The vast majority of them were men.

Andrew told one of the women that he wasn’t a sex addict; he was a love addict. Addiction, Huberman says, “is a progressing narrowing of things that bring you joy.” In August 2021, the same month Sarah first learned of Andrew’s cheating, he released an episode with Anna Lembke, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Lembke, the author of a book called Dopamine Nation, gave a clear explanation of the dopaminergic roots of addiction.

“What happens right after I do something that is really pleasurable,” she says, “and releases a lot of dopamine is, again, my brain is going to immediately compensate by downregulating my own dopamine receptors … And that’s that comedown, or the hangover or that aftereffect, that moment of wanting to do it more.” Someone who waits for the feeling to pass, she explained, will reregulate, go back to  baseline. “If I keep indulging again and again and again,” she said, “ultimately I have so much on the pain side that I’ve essentially reset my brain to what we call anhedonic or lacking-in-joy type of state, which is a dopamine deficit state.” This is a state in which nothing is enjoyable: “Everything sort of pales in comparison to this one drug that I want to keep doing.”

“Just for the record,” Andrew said, smiling, “Dr. Lembke has … diagnosed me outside the clinic, in a playful way, of being work addicted. You’re probably right!”

Lembke laughed. “You just happen to be addicted,” she said gently, “to something that is really socially rewarded.”

What he failed to understand, he said, was people who ruined their lives with their disease. “I like to think I have the compassion,” he said, “but I don’t have that empathy for taking a really good situation and what from the outside looks to be throwing it in the trash.”

At least three ex-girlfriends remain friendly with Huberman. He “goes deep very quickly,” says Keegan Amit, who dated Andrew from 2010 to 2017 and continues to admire him. “He has incredible emotional capacity.” A high-school girlfriend says both she and he were “troubled” during their time together, that he was complicated and jealous but “a good person” whom she parted with on good terms. “He really wants to get involved emotionally but then can’t quite follow through,” says someone he dated on and off between 2006 and 2010. “But yeah. I don’t think it’s …” She hesitates. “I think he has such a good heart.”

Andrew grew up in Palo Alto just before the dawn of the internet, a lost city. He gives some version of his origin story on The Rich Roll Podcast ; he repeats it for Tim Ferriss and Peter Attia. He tells Time magazine and Stanford magazine. “Take the list of all the things a parent shouldn’t do in a divorce,” he recently told Christian bowhunter Cameron Hanes. “They did them all.” “You had,” says Wendy Zukerman in her bright Aussie accent, “a wayward childhood.” “I think it’s very easy for people listening to folks with a bio like yours,” says Tim Ferriss, “to sort of assume a certain trajectory, right? To assume that it has always come easy.” His father and mother agree that “after our divorce was an incredibly hard time for Andrew,” though they “do not agree” with some of his characterization of his past; few parents want to be accused of “pure neglect.”

Huberman would not provide the name of the detention center in which he says he was held for a month in high school. In a version of the story Huberman tells on Peter Attia’s podcast, he says, “We lost a couple of kids, a couple of kids killed themselves while we were there.” ( New York was unable to find an account of this event.)

Andrew attended Gunn, a high-performing, high-pressure high school. Classmates describe him as always with a skateboard; they remember him as pleasant, “sweet,” and not particularly academic. He would, says one former classmate, “drop in on the half-pipe,” where he was “encouraging” to other skaters. “I mean, he was a cool, individual kid,” says another classmate. “There was one year he, like, bleached his hair and everyone was like, ‘Oh, that guy’s cool.’” It was a wealthy place, the kind of setting where the word au pair comes up frequently, and Andrew did not stand out to his classmates as out of control or unpredictable. They do not recall him getting into street fights, as Andrew claims he did. He was, says Andrew’s father, “a little bit troubled, yes, but it was not something super-serious.”

What does seem certain is that in his adolescence, Andrew became a regular consumer of talk therapy. In therapy, one learns to tell stories about one’s experience. A story one could tell is: I overcame immense odds to be where I am. Another is: The son of a Stanford professor, born at Stanford Hospital, grows up to be a Stanford professor.

I have never,” says Amit, “met a man more interested in personal growth.” Andrew’s relationship to therapy remains intriguing. “We were at dinner once,” says Eve, “and he told me something personal, and I suggested he talk to his therapist. He laughed it off like that wasn’t ever going to happen, so I asked him if he lied to his therapist. He told me he did all the time.” (A spokesperson for Huberman denies this.)

“People high on psychopathy are good at deception,” says Buss. “I don’t know if they’re good at self-deception.” With repeated listening to the podcast, one discerns a man undergoing, in public, an effort to understand himself. There are hours of talking about addiction, trauma, dopamine, and fear. Narcissism comes up consistently. One can see attempts to understand and also places where those attempts swerve into self-indulgence. On a recent episode with the Stanford-trained psychiatrist Paul Conti, Andrew and Conti were describing the psychological phenomenon of “aggressive drive.” Andrew had an example to share: He once canceled an appointment with a Stanford colleague. There was no response. Eventually, he received a reply that said, in Andrew’s telling, “Well, it’s clear that you don’t want to pursue this collaboration.”

Andrew was, he said to Conti, “shocked.”

“I remember feeling like that was pretty aggressive,” Andrew told Conti. “It stands out to me as a pretty salient example of aggression.”

“So to me,” said Huberman, “that seems like an example of somebody who has a, well, strong aggressive drive … and when disappointed, you know, lashes back or is passive.”

“There’s some way in which the person doesn’t feel good enough no matter what this person has achieved. So then there is a sense of the need and the right to overcontrol.”

“Sure,” said Huberman.

“And now we’re going to work together, right, so I’m exerting significant control over you, right? And it may be that he’s not aware of it.”

“In this case,” said Andrew, “it was a she.”

This woman, explained Conti, based entirely on Andrew’s description of two emails, had allowed her unhealthy “excess aggression” to be “eclipsing the generative drive.” She required that Andrew “bowed down before” her “in the service of the ego” because she did not feel good about herself.

This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes, both men egging each other on, diagnosis after diagnosis, salient, perhaps, for reasons other than those the two identify. We learn that this person lacks gratitude, generative drive, and happiness; she suffers from envy, low “pleasure drive,” and general unhappiness. It would appear, at a distance, to be an elaborate fantasy of an insane woman built on a single behavior: At some point in time, a woman decided she did not want to work with a man who didn’t show up.

There is an argument to be made that it does not matter how a helpful podcaster conducts himself outside of the studio. A man unable to constrain his urges may still preach dopaminergic control to others. Morning sun remains salutary. The physiological sigh, employed by this writer many times in the writing of this essay, continues to effect calm. The large and growing distance between Andrew Huberman and the man he continues to be may not even matter to those who buy questionable products he has recommended and from which he will materially benefit, or listeners who imagined a man in a white coat at work in Palo Alto. The people who definitively find the space between fantasy and reality to be a problem are women who fell for a podcaster who professed deep, sustained concern for their personal growth, and who, in his skyrocketing influence, continued to project an image of earnest self-discovery. It is here, in the false belief of two minds in synchronicity and exploration, that deception leads to harm. They fear it will lead to more.

“There’s so much pain,” says Sarah, her voice breaking. “Feeling we had made mistakes. We hadn’t been enough. We hadn’t been communicating. By making these other women into the other, I hadn’t really given space for their hurt. And let it sink in with me that it was so similar to my own hurt.”

Three of the women on the group text met up in New York in February, and the group has only grown closer. On any given day, one of the five can go into an appointment and come back to 100 texts. Someone shared a Reddit thread in which a commenter claimed Huberman had a “stable full a hoes,” and another responded, “I hope he thinks of us more like Care Bears,” at which point they assigned themselves Care Bear names. “Him: You’re the only girl I let come to my apartment,” read a meme someone shared; under it was a yellow lab looking extremely skeptical. They regularly use Andrew’s usual response to explicit photos (“Mmmmm”) to comment on pictures of one another’s pets. They are holding space for other women who might join.

“This group has radicalized me,” Sarah tells me. “There has been so much processing.” They are planning a weekend together this summer.

“It could have been sad or bitter,” says Eve. “We didn’t jump in as besties, but real friendships have been built. It has been, in a strange and unlikely way, quite a beautiful experience.”

Additional reporting by Amelia Schonbek and Laura Thompson.

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Defying obstacles, and her husband, to pursue an education and a career.

As told to Lauren Schenkman

Putting a Faithful Friend to the Test

The religion of a companion causes a sectarian split.

As told to Dmitriy Frolovskiy

Strangers on an 18-Hour Train

Discomfort and deliverance on a long trip through Pakistan.

By Rafiq Ebrahim

The Cat Named Morphine

Allaying suspicions on the Ukrainian front, with some unexpected assistance.

By Sandor Jaszberenyi

An Iraqi Immigrant’s Unexpected Role

Getting started in the United States means living through some surprises.

As told to Cynthia Agustin

Motorcycling Without the Mansplaining

Zen and the art of managing comments about your crew of women riders.

By Lily Brooks-Dalton

Looking for a Friend in Old Age

At 80, she has spent years alone in her Russian village.

A Grim Discovery in El Mozote

Building a new home on the land where family members were killed.

As told to Sarah Esther Maslin

An Almost-Love Story

Disease comes between a young Nigerian couple.

As told to Chika Oduah