Nine magazines to help you cope with the world right now
Sometimes it all just gets too much. There are only so many dreadful headlines you can read before a survival instinct kicks in and your brain simply refuses to absorb any more. More people are hitting their limits more often these days, so we’ve assembled the following list of independent magazines to help fight that all too familiar sense of dread. Think of it sort of like the editorial version of a prepper’s go bag, but instead of providing the tools you’ll need to survive alone in the wilderness, this list of magazines will lead you gently back to the company of your fellow humans.
The magazine format is generally well suited to this task – ink on paper is gloriously limited, so you know that when you’re reading a magazine you won’t end up accidentally spiralling into the empty hopelessness of algorithmically concocted doom. But these magazines have been hand-picked for this list, and like a platoon of little Liam Neesons, they have a very particular set of skills.
Maybe you need something to make the news a bit more palatable again? They’ve got you covered. Or maybe you want something to completely change the way you see the world? They can do that too. So if you’ve found yourself despairing at the state of things recently, read on for our overview of thoughtful, inspiring, and visually stimulating publications that will help you back to yourself.
Broadcast
Published by Pioneer Works, an artist- and scientist-led organisation based in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Broadcast positions itself at the meeting point of arts and science to provide an ambitious and expansive view of the world. In the second issue that means a brilliantly stimulating set of stories that range from the mysterious secrets of ‘dark fungi’, to the researchers using Neanderthals in the search for alien life, and the experts experimenting with redrawing the periodic table.
At a time when scientific fact is frequently challenged by vociferous opinion, and mistrust of experts is on the rise, Broadcast offers an oasis of reassuringly rigorous thinking, conveyed in easy, accessible prose. The two-colour design is a reference to the appealing limitations of risograph printing, and there’s a lovely, retro feel to the magazine, which helps to steer it away from more conventional science-based journalism. The printed magazine itself is a platform for showcasing the best of what Pioneer Works is doing elsewhere, leading readers to the huge wealth of content they publish online, the events they hold in their building, the books they publish, and more. Pick up this magazine and discover a portal to a smarter, cooler version of the world.
Delivered to Stack subscribers in January 2025
pioneerworks.org/broadcast
Delayed Gratification
It’s notoriously difficult to build a sustainable business out of a print magazine, but Delayed Gratification has been publishing its quarterly overview since 2011, offering readers a slower, more carefully considered view of the world than is possible in the moment. The latest issue was published a few weeks ago, covering the period from October to December 2024, which they proudly note, makes them, “the world’s last remaining news magazine in which Donald Trump is not yet 47th president of the United States”. There are big, in-depth reports on the floods that devastated parts of Spain in October, and the first days of life in Syria after Assad fled in December. But there are also lighter moments like an overview of Britain’s most-watched Christmas TV programmes, and an infographic mapping out England’s best ever men’s football manager.
I’ve been a massive fan of this magazine since it started, and I’ve been interested to see the ways in which it has changed over the years. Partly that’s a function of any magazine that has existed for a long time, with gradual tweaks and occasional overhauls of the design and editorial that keep it looking and feeling fresh. But it also has a lot to do with the context it’s in – during the Covid pandemic, when we were totally overwhelmed with complex charts and doom-heavy headlines, we delivered Delayed Gratification to our subscribers as a calm, informed overview of what was happening in the world. With so much uncertainty flying around at the moment, Delayed Gratification is shining out again as a beacon that guides readers through the news and helps them to reflect on the things that really matter.
Delivered to Stack subscribers in July 2020
slow-journalism.com
Real Review
Carrying the ambitious strapline, ‘What it means to live today’, Real Review isn’t afraid to ask big questions and grapple with some big ideas. Everything about the magazine expresses this passion for innovation and enquiry, including its physical structure, which is built around an extra vertical fold, creating a quadruple page spread. Folding out into a wide format allows the pages to hold a formidable amount of text, while also packing down into a slim shape that makes the magazine more economical to post.
It’s published by Real Foundation, a London-based cultural institute and architectural practice, and it’s based loosely around the conventions of the review, with writers contributing their critical thoughts on a series of things and ideas. In the latest issue that means reviews of law enforcement hardware, higher education, voice notes, and the contemporary running club, but really all of it is more closely aligned with the higher aim of figuring out what it means to be living in the world in this particular moment. Real Foundation generally publishes one or two issues per year, so of course the stories are never based on events happening in the moment, and instead Real Review is a place for slow contemplation and an often provocative consideration of the forces that are shaping the world around us.
Delivered to Stack subscribers in May 2022
real-review.org
The Fence
Declaring itself, ‘The UK’s only magazine’, The Fence balances its obvious love of nonsense with a commitment to insightful and important reporting. The first few stories in the current issue demonstrate this delicate balance in action – after two pages of shorts reminiscing about childhood sex education, and a story about rude street names, comes an anonymous report from a clinician working to provide a GP service in one of Britain’s asylum hotels. It’s clear-eyed and unsentimental, relating some of the horrible difficulties that people seeking asylum must face within the system, and then the even greater struggle that often comes if they win the right to remain in the country.
Elsewhere in the issue there’s an affecting story by a doctor who quit when they realised they had been burned out by the demands of their job; a sex worker reflects on the demands of their day-to-day life and work; and there’s a long profile of, “property developer and self-styled anarchist” Russell Gray. It’s all well written, often with a sly sense of humour, and illustrated in black and orange. But these varied stories are also united by the sense of going behind the scenes and accessing a particular view of the world that’s not generally available to the wider public, drawing the reader into The Fence’s uniquely gossipy and informed existence.
Delivered to Stack subscribers in August 2024
the-fence.com
Offal
I first came across Offal as an odd audio experiment – every few months I receive a WhatsApp message containing a weird MP3 file with strangely unsettling, comically surreal speech layered over gently hypnotic music. It’s as if Chris Morris had resurrected his Blue Jam radio show from the late 90s, but voiced by AI bots and piped directly to my phone. Then, last year, the print incarnation followed in the form of an off-beat and experimental literary magazine.
It’s not exactly a print version of the audio thing – there are some similarities in the dark, somehow menacing tone, but if anything it feels more completely ‘offal’, in that it’s made from leftovers. Some of the pieces gathered here have previously been used elsewhere, but for the most part these texts haven’t found a home in other publications, so they’re squeezed together here, an “afterlife for overmatter… Our haggis of literary culture.” It goes without saying that these so-called “orphans of the creative process” have been carefully selected, though, and the result is a new magazine with an immediately distinctive voice. The magazine was designed using Microsoft Word, a decision, “driven by a desire for limitations in an over-stimulated world”, and it conjures up a riposte to anything that could be considered glossy, easy, or mainstream – exactly the sort of dystopia I’d love to escape to.
Delivered to Stack subscribers in March 2024
offaloffaloffal.com
Erotic Review
Launched in 1995 as a photocopied newsletter, the Erotic Review reached the height of its fame in the late 90s under editor Rowan Pelling, before following the trajectory of many great magazines over the last 20-odd years and shedding readers before finally coming to rest as an online-only publication. The owner was all set to pull the plug when writer Lucy Roeber stepped in, determined to bring it back as a fully-fledged print magazine, making something of real substance that readers will want to keep on their shelves forever. We’re now three issues into the new version of the magazine, which features the strapline ‘Exploring desire’, and which publishes writing and artwork reflecting on why we want the things we want, and how these irrational urges can generate power.
The current issue features a hare on the cover and throughout its pages, and in her editor’s letter Lucy reflects on the animal’s significance: “It’s earthy and wild and elusive. This is an animal that is all speed and muscular agility, inescapably physical… We’ve been led to believe that its fluffy, domesticated, slow cousin, the rabbit, is rampant. But in comparison to the hare, the rabbit is stationary and dull.” If the bunny is a symbol of porn, (“a young blonde woman wearing rabbit ears and fishnets for Playboy”) the hare is a symbol of something wild and elemental, tapping into an idea of the erotic as a vital and essential lifeforce. All three of the new issues of Erotic Review are packed with fantastic writing and artwork that will help you escape into that wild and uncontrollable domain.
Delivered to Stack subscribers in November 2024
ermagazine.com
Elastic
A new magazine of psychedelic art and literature, Elastic looks beyond the cliches of the 1960s to find a fuller, more challenging, more ambitious version of an expanded reality. Editor-in-chief and publisher Hillary Brenhouse uses her introduction to the first issue to explain: “This is a field broadly centered on the expansion of the mind; meanwhile, the cartoonish version of psychedelic culture we’ve accustomed ourselves to is a cramped corridor. Elastic is interested in taking the walls down. Or, rather, Elastic is interested in demonstrating that the walls were never really there.”
Stories bleed from one into another, sometimes starting or ending halfway down a page, rather than the conventional approach of separating everything into its own space. And images repeat and echo one another, creating a dreamlike experience of several slightly uncanny realities all existing alongside one another at the same time. Even the shape of the magazine feels slightly off, the almost square pages folding out to create long, cinematic spreads that don’t quite match what we expect from a traditional magazine. This isn’t pure escapism – the first issue is themed ‘Dying’, with a series of stories that considers the cyclical nature of death and rebirth, the slowing that comes with age and the importance of grief. But its focus on a greater reality that exists just beyond our ordinary lives feels like a thrilling alternative to the relentless slog of the daily routine.
Footnote
A clever and playful new magazine, Footnote draws readers into its world by inviting writers, photographers and artists to respond to a ‘central text’. For this first issue the foundational text is Peg, a short story by AK Blakemore, author of The Manningtree Witches, and it’s a brilliantly creepy, satisfyingly repellent piece of writing. Peg is a monstrous fish woman – she was normal once, but she fell into the river a long time ago, and has since transformed into a thing of the water, lurking just below the surface, “beneath the underpass by the potholed road between the railway station and the Hollywood Bowl”.
The magazine’s contributors each respond to a specific line or phrase, and those slivers of text are marked in the story as the footnotes that inspired the words and pictures that follow. For example John Sunyer chose the line, “all the effluvium that sinks beneath the water”, as his excuse to interview Feargal Sharkey, the one-time frontman of The Undertones who now spends his days campaigning for cleaner waterways in Britain. Meanwhile ‘Pemi Aguda uses, “rotting hits” as the starting point for a short story about a singer in Lagos who becomes obsessed with a fur coat, never taking it off although his body rots away underneath it. As with Elastic, this isn’t a particularly lovely world to escape to, but it’s an escape nonetheless, descending through the layers of artistic exchanges into Footnote’s own bizarre reality.
Toilet Break
Maybe we all just need a little break, and Lidia Molina Gonzalez has come up with a magazine concept that offers readers a few minutes of respite. A graphic design student at ECAL in Switzerland, her bachelor’s project is Toilet Break, a magazine exploring the in-between spaces of public toilets, where the private and public overlap. Photographing public toilets in Lausanne, including the facilities, the graffiti, and the areas they serve, she aims to highlight a resource that’s easily overlooked: “Toilet Break delivers a moment of silence, a moment to sit with things. The first issue is dedicated to silence, how we experience it, how we seek it, and how it exists (or doesn’t) in a space that is both intimate and shared.”
The pages are die cut into handy sheets, and some are even embossed with flowers and crests, referencing toilet paper patterns. It’s worth pointing out that the paper doesn’t look particularly soft or absorbent, and you definitely wouldn’t want to pull this magazine apart to flush it down the toilet, but I love the playful touch and Lidia’s total commitment to her editorial concept.
instagram.com/toiletbreak_magazine
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