Margaret Talbot
Margaret Talbot joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2004, writing Profiles and also dispatches and commentary on legal issues, cultural history, social movements, and indie music. Previously, she was a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and, from 1995 to 1999, the executive editor of The New Republic. She was one of the founding editors of Lingua Franca and was a senior fellow at New America. In 1999, she received a Whiting Award.
Talbot is the author of “The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father’s Twentieth Century,” a history of twentieth-century entertainment told through the adventures of her actor father, Lyle Talbot. She also wrote, with her brother David Talbot, “By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution,” about left-wing activism in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. A native of Los Angeles, she now lives in Washington, D.C.
How Candida Royalle Set Out to Reinvent Porn
As a feminist in the adult-film industry, she believed the answer wasn’t banning porn; it was better porn.
A Begrudgingly Affectionate Portrait of the American Mall
“We’re all being manipulated in the mall,” the photographer Stephen DiRado says. But his photos elicit a certain nostalgia, almost in spite of themselves.
When America First Dropped Acid
Well before the hippies arrived, LSD and other hallucinogens were poised to enter the American mainstream.
The Difference That Sandra Day O’Connor Made
The late Supreme Court Justice had a keen feeling for the real-world impact of the Court’s decisions.
What Really Started the Great Chicago Fire?
The famous disaster razed a metropolis and spread a pack of colorful lies. To sift through the ashes today is to encounter some uncomfortable truths.
The Villa Where a Doctor Experimented on Children
As a girl in Austria, Evy Mages was confined to a mysterious institution in Innsbruck. Decades later, she learned why.
How America Manufactures Poverty
The sociologist Matthew Desmond identifies specific practices and policies that consign tens of millions to destitution.
J. Edgar Hoover, Public Enemy No. 1
The F.B.I. director promised to save American democracy from those who would subvert it—while his secret programs subverted it from within.
Weyes Blood Gives Soft Rock an Apocalyptic Edge
In the studio, the singer turns sonic nostalgia into something eerie and ironic.
Justice Alito’s Crusade Against a Secular America Isn’t Over
He’s had win after win—including overturning Roe v. Wade—yet seems more and more aggrieved. What drives his anger?
Exercise Is Good for You. The Exercise Industry May Not Be
Amid the marketing of unattainable physical ideals, it’s easy to forget what made fitness fun.
Cate Le Bon’s Strange Journey Home
How a Welsh artist making sharp, mysterious songs found herself in the desert.
Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game
The newest Supreme Court Justice isn’t just another conservative—she’s the product of a Christian legal movement that is intent on remaking America.
What Was So Special About Greta Garbo?
An enigma onscreen and off, the actress only magnified her celebrity by suddenly renouncing it.
Jocelyn Lee’s Older Women in the Nude
Is nakedness invisibility’s opposite? Maybe not, but, if it’s unapologetically displayed, it can be a kind of antidote to erasure.
The Increasingly Wild World of School-Board Meetings
At one event, riled-up conservatives got so out of hand that the board chair halted the proceedings while the police cleared the room.
The Supreme Court and the Future of Roe v. Wade
Abortion rights may hinge on a case involving a Mississippi law—and the errors of fact and judgment in the state’s brief are staggering.
How the Real Jane Roe Shaped the Abortion Wars
The all-too-human plaintiff of Roe v. Wade captured the messy contradictions hidden by a polarizing debate.
What Gilles Peress Saw on 9/11
The Magnum photographer looks back on capturing an “inconceivable event.”
Karen Black’s Lost Music
The artist’s newly released recordings often sound like those your big sister made, sitting cross-legged on her canopy bed, before she ran off to Haight-Ashbury.
How Candida Royalle Set Out to Reinvent Porn
As a feminist in the adult-film industry, she believed the answer wasn’t banning porn; it was better porn.
A Begrudgingly Affectionate Portrait of the American Mall
“We’re all being manipulated in the mall,” the photographer Stephen DiRado says. But his photos elicit a certain nostalgia, almost in spite of themselves.
When America First Dropped Acid
Well before the hippies arrived, LSD and other hallucinogens were poised to enter the American mainstream.
The Difference That Sandra Day O’Connor Made
The late Supreme Court Justice had a keen feeling for the real-world impact of the Court’s decisions.
What Really Started the Great Chicago Fire?
The famous disaster razed a metropolis and spread a pack of colorful lies. To sift through the ashes today is to encounter some uncomfortable truths.
The Villa Where a Doctor Experimented on Children
As a girl in Austria, Evy Mages was confined to a mysterious institution in Innsbruck. Decades later, she learned why.
How America Manufactures Poverty
The sociologist Matthew Desmond identifies specific practices and policies that consign tens of millions to destitution.
J. Edgar Hoover, Public Enemy No. 1
The F.B.I. director promised to save American democracy from those who would subvert it—while his secret programs subverted it from within.
Weyes Blood Gives Soft Rock an Apocalyptic Edge
In the studio, the singer turns sonic nostalgia into something eerie and ironic.
Justice Alito’s Crusade Against a Secular America Isn’t Over
He’s had win after win—including overturning Roe v. Wade—yet seems more and more aggrieved. What drives his anger?
Exercise Is Good for You. The Exercise Industry May Not Be
Amid the marketing of unattainable physical ideals, it’s easy to forget what made fitness fun.
Cate Le Bon’s Strange Journey Home
How a Welsh artist making sharp, mysterious songs found herself in the desert.
Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game
The newest Supreme Court Justice isn’t just another conservative—she’s the product of a Christian legal movement that is intent on remaking America.
What Was So Special About Greta Garbo?
An enigma onscreen and off, the actress only magnified her celebrity by suddenly renouncing it.
Jocelyn Lee’s Older Women in the Nude
Is nakedness invisibility’s opposite? Maybe not, but, if it’s unapologetically displayed, it can be a kind of antidote to erasure.
The Increasingly Wild World of School-Board Meetings
At one event, riled-up conservatives got so out of hand that the board chair halted the proceedings while the police cleared the room.
The Supreme Court and the Future of Roe v. Wade
Abortion rights may hinge on a case involving a Mississippi law—and the errors of fact and judgment in the state’s brief are staggering.
How the Real Jane Roe Shaped the Abortion Wars
The all-too-human plaintiff of Roe v. Wade captured the messy contradictions hidden by a polarizing debate.
What Gilles Peress Saw on 9/11
The Magnum photographer looks back on capturing an “inconceivable event.”
Karen Black’s Lost Music
The artist’s newly released recordings often sound like those your big sister made, sitting cross-legged on her canopy bed, before she ran off to Haight-Ashbury.