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The Meteor Magazine
My name is Julia Schiwal, and I run The Meteor Magazine.
This blog and magazine is named for the meteor that seems to have hit us. The meteor is a lot of things. The meteor is the failure of meritocracy to deliver good American government. The meteor is the tendency towards fragmentation and suppression. The meteor is not one thing.
Meteors are made over tens of thousands of years, as lone particles of iron, rock, and ice collide into each other until someday they become one vast and unstoppable weight. They have a path that was determined long ago by gravity and accident. We live in the great wake of a meteor. We are in the crater, surrounded by the still-burning pines of the Tunguska forest. The meteor is every big and little failure, scandal, and act of corruption over these low, dishonest decades that have eviscerated state competence, culture, and quality of life.
I began The Meteor Magazine as my writing project after I was laid off by DOGE, and much of my writing was removed from the internet. I began this site to create a place for myself and writers and thinkers I work with to share our work. Frequently, The Meteor partners with international think tanks to advance the exchange of ideas, in particular, working with the Chinese think tank SAGE. Writing on The Meteor is not for me or others to express ourselves. Writing here is about being in conversation with others, especially radical and intellectual voices that are defining our times. So often, these voices are misunderstood, suppressed, or intentionally simplified; The Meteor does none of that.
Unlike writing on Substack, writing on The Meteor is independent and cannot be taken down by corporate content moderators or ideological government censors, as I've experienced before. The Meteor is also free. Please subscribe if you'd like to keep up with my work and those of others who write here.
About me, I am originally from Montana. I grew up in the Bitterroot Valley, on a small plot of farmland with a big family. I went to college in Missoula, Montana, then moved to Washington, D.C. I began a career there in international affairs. Then the meteor came for me. Realizing how fragile an author's work is, I chose to start this magazine.
This is a magazine for the doom-driven events of our time.
Welcome to The Meteor Magazine.
Welcome to life in the crater.