We Almost Died Last Year
Palladium is a reader-supported, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. If our readers and supporters do not donate through subscriptions and strategic giving, we die. Don't let that happen!
Last year was Palladium’s hardest year yet. In fact, Palladium almost did not survive to see 2025. Due to a lack of funding, we were forced to let go most of our small and hard-working team. With much diminished manpower, editorial work and publishing slowed to a crawl, then came to a standstill by the winter. Plans to expand and launch new ventures were put on ice, indefinitely. Our leadership team, recently reorganized with several members moving on to pursue new projects, seriously debated whether we would have to stop hosting our quarterly events, cut our beautiful print editions, or even give a final thanks to our supporters then terminate Palladium’s existence entirely. Many whispered behind the scenes that Palladium had already died. They were wrong—but only barely. Palladium came within an inch of its life.
Palladium is not a business. We do not run Palladium to make a profit on selling magazines and hosting excellent parties. Anyone with a pulse could tell you there is no money to be made, in this day and age, in print media. Seven years ago, in 2018, Palladium was founded to be a beacon of sanity, original theory, outsider journalism, and deep thought in an intellectual and media landscape irresistibly more dominated by ideological dogma, willful ignorance, complacent hype, partisan bickering, and low-brow slop. Needless to say, it was always going to be a difficult mission. But we believed then, and we believe now, that the existence of institutions like Palladium is a crucial public good of which our society has a severe shortage. (If you aren’t already a PALLADIUM member, subscribe here now.)
We are living through a crucible moment in history. America is riven by deindustrialization, social ills, and elite conflict. Europe increasingly resembles a fragile museum, while the largest war since World War II rages brutally on its border and drives the cutting edge of military technology to places that were once thought reserved for science fiction. China is continuing its long and seemingly unstoppable rise to industrial and economic preeminence; the fear it will surpass America is a real one. Meanwhile, the entire planet is seeing an unprecedented and poorly-understood fertility crunch, as even poor countries like India and Mexico suddenly fail to reproduce, while countries like South Korea and Poland approach extinction-level declines. Yet even as we face down the prospect of a global graying and collapse in living standards by the end of the century, visionaries of science and technology have built ships that can take us to new planets and computers that can talk, think, and imagine.
This is not a golden age. Nor is it, yet, a dark age. It is an age of great trying, pregnant with possibility. Depending on how we collectively react by the end of this century, we might launch our grandchildren on a path to distant stars, or condemn our entire civilization to the history books. Our legacy intellectual institutions, from Harvard to The New York Times, are too sclerotic, dogmatic, and corrupted to guide us through such a time. We need deep and original thinking. Yet in those institutions there is no original thinking, and in the rowdy social media landscape that has failed to dislodge them for a decade, there is little deep thinking anyway.
Palladium is the solution to this problem: the first magazine for the third millennium. Palladium hosts the discussions and debates that will lead to a renewal of governance, culture, technology, and civilization. There is no need to say we will do this. We have been doing it already for seven years. For untold numbers of people, Palladium is who first introduced the ideas that China is a rising economic power that must be taken seriously, that good governance cannot be substituted with a retreat from society, that climate change can be solved through technological means, that universities have forfeited their roles as molders of the next elite, that industrial capacity must be preserved and expanded by all available means, that civilization is much older than we thought, that the city of San Francisco must be reformed, that nuclear power is clean and green, that global fertility collapse is an existential threat to modern life, that our complex institutions will break and explode without competent personnel, and that expansion into space is not just a science project, but an industrial, political, and ultimately spiritual project.
Palladium could never work as a business, because to drive the intellectual landscape and educate the public, our work must be freely and easily accessible to all—as it has always been and always will be—and our writers, editors, correspondents and artists must be free to pursue only the threads that will lead to a bright and glorious future for our society, rather than be drawn, intentionally or not, into the far easier and more profitable muck of politics and slop. There is enough of that already anyway. Ultimately, our model works: Palladium’s work has been read and cited by everyone from Elon Musk to the legacy prestige media and the halls of the U.S. government—not to mention by all of the ambitious young people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere seeking to make their mark on the world.
All of this almost died barely a few months ago. Many people, both friendly and not, seem to hallucinate that Palladium has a bottomless budget funded by shadowy billionaires. While some media outlets do have an effectively bottomless budget (The New York Times brings in $2.5 billion per year) and some billionaires do generously fund others (The Atlantic was bought in 2017 by Laurene Powell Jobs, who is worth $13 billion), nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to Palladium. Our main source of funding is you, our readers.
More importantly, all of this was achieved on what is by any objective standard a shoestring budget. The success of a nonprofit is a simple function of two things: how effective it is per dollar spent and how many dollars it has to spend. With almost no resources, we have built the most forward-thinking magazine in the world, presaged and shifted elite international discourse on a litany of key issues, inspired a renaissance of independent print media, and created the sharpest and most sophisticated community of readers, thinkers, and founders in America, whom we bring together in person every quarter with the best parties in the San Francisco Bay Area—and occasionally elsewhere.
Only the heroic efforts of our remaining team kept Palladium from going over the brink. This work was not compensated at market rates, let alone generously rewarded by mysterious benefactors. It was work undertaken out of nothing more than zeal and faith in the importance of the mission of Palladium.
In the end, we prioritized print and parties and did not miss a single quarter despite unprecedented strain. Since January 1, 2025, we have also published digitally every single week without exception, including some already influential and widely-read articles by Casey Handmer on Mars colonization, Patrick Mellor on genetic engineering, and Lawrence Thomas on the decline of South Africa and what lessons it holds for the rest of the developed world. Our latest print edition, PALLADIUM 17: Universal Man, is our longest and densest yet, featuring both seminal essays and new first-in-print contributions from some of the most novel and even controversial thinkers of our time. We hosted our first-ever quarterly launch party in Washington, D.C. just weeks ago, which was, as always, a smash hit.
One half of the function is taken care of. Palladium will never produce more governance futurism per dollar donated than it is now. Now, it falls to you, our readers and donors, to take care of the other half of the function, so we can make the greatest impact possible on the future of American and ultimately global governance. Your subscriptions, donations, and strategic gifts are fuel for the engine we have built in Palladium. The more fuel, the further we will go. Without fuel, we will go nowhere and die.
Right now, Palladium is still teetering on the edge and may well die this year if we do not rapidly increase our subscriber base and raise a significant amount of funds. If Palladium dies, nothing and nobody will replace it. Our discourse, our society, and our civilization will get dumber yet, break down, and eventually die too. There are no adults in the room coming to save us. There will be no renaissance or renewal. These are the stakes. Consider this our appeal to you. If you aren’t already, become a PALLADIUM member immediately:
Subscription Member
$60 per month. Subscription to quarterly Palladium print editions.
Supporting Member
$200 per month. Priority invites to events and out-of-print editions of the magazine.*
Sustaining Member
$1000 per month. Gift of a complete print collection, private calls with our editorial team and other select benefits*
*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions, including PALLADIUM 17: Universal Man which ships internationally to new members until June 2025. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.
We ship our print editions worldwide. Donations to Palladium Magazine are tax-deductible in the United States. Memberships are also tax-deductible. Print editions of PALLADIUM are gifts for our members and donors and are not, nor ever will be, for sale.
Tell your friends about Palladium. Tell your family about Palladium. Tell your colleagues about Palladium. Get your friends, family, and colleagues to subscribe to Palladium. Upgrade your Palladium membership. Get your spouse subscribed to Palladium and save a copy of each print edition as a back-up for the future. If you cannot or do not wish to receive print editions, you can still support Palladium monthly by subscribing to this newsletter here. If you can, make a large donation to Palladium here. If you wish to make Palladium a part of your philanthropy or strategic giving, contact us here.
Every dollar donated to Palladium is converted directly into changing minds and steering the vast, heaving ship that is our society towards a new golden age of governance, in the form of new articles, new art, new events, and the deep thought, original research, unorthodox journalism, logistical work, networking, promotion, and intellectual head-hunting necessary to produce them. The more you donate, the more we can do. At the end of the day, it is just that simple.
At the same time, there is so much more we could do with more funding. Palladium has sent correspondents into China’s Xinjiang, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and warzones from Ukraine to Armenia. In 2022, we launched the Center for Strategic Translation, led by Tanner Greer, to translate key documents, essays, and speeches from China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into English for the very first time. These and other initiatives would be expanded; there is a limitless number of necessary projects that will be unlocked with more funding. From new parties and events, to deeper and more dangerous investigative journalism, to film and documentary work, to book publishing, to experimental new projects in art and aesthetics, the potential of Palladium has barely begun to be tapped. All we need are the funds. Over the coming weeks, expect more in-depth letters explaining the mission of Palladium, our operations, and our future plans—and why you must subscribe and donate.
For all of our existing and long-time friends, supporters, readers, donors, and writers, we cannot thank you enough for your support on this vital mission. Our work would have been impossible without you, and it will continue to be impossible without your support.
Sincerely,
The Palladium Editors