About

Most writing today is very good at explaining things, or even telling you why it’s important. But most of it fails to arrive at a conclusion. You read four thousand words and by the end know what everyone thinks about the issue except the author. We started 37 Cents because we wanted to write and read the other thing: essays that survey the terrain and then plant their flag with conviction.

We publish essays, criticism, satire, and reviews across four sections: Policy, Geopolitics, Ideas, and Culture. We ask three things of every piece. Engage the full complexity of the topic. Support every substantive claim. Argue your position relentlessly.

Every piece published is solely the argument of its writer — not their employer, their university, or 37 Cents. We don’t usually have a house view. When we do, it runs under “The Editors.”

Our name is a play on the phrase “my two cents…”

The idiom was coined in print on March 9, 1926 by columnist Allene Sumner of the Olean Evening Times. If you adjust those two cents for inflation, they’d be worth about 37¢ in 2026.

If you want to share your two, or thirty-seven, cents, please join us.

37 Cents is written from everywhere, but it’s edited in Berkeley, CA.