In the fall of 2016, Willow Defebaugh was working at an art and culture magazine in New York City that was, in their words, as creative as it was cutthroat. Donald Trump had just been elected. What Defebaugh would later identify as gender dysphoria was beginning to emerge. The climate catastrophe was showing no sign of slowing down. Defebaugh was filled with an existential dread — the kind that eventually led to leaving the job and pursuing a path of contemplation, spiritual studies, and freelance writing. It was during this period of searching that Defebaugh met Jake Sargent, who had previously run a fashion brand and co-founded a venture fund investing in sustainable consumer products. Sargent was similarly exhausted by a culture of climate denial and wondering what any of it was for. Together, they decided to start a magazine.
Atmos launched in 2019, named after the Greek root of "atmosphere." The inaugural issue ran to 228 pages and featured contributions from Yoko Ono, ANOHNI, and photographer Ryan McGinley. It explored clean lab-grown meat, mushroom-grown leather, vertical farms, and communities in rural India and the island of Kiribati adapting to climate change. The design was deliberately borrowed from the visual language of fashion and art magazines — Defebaugh and Sargent understood that the environmental conversation needed to be as seductive as the culture it was trying to change. The idea was not to preach to the converted but to reach people in positions of creative influence and show them that climate is not a niche concern. It is the context in which everything else happens.
Each volume is built around a single theme — Neo-Natural, Latitude, Hive, Cascade, Rhythm, Prism, and most recently Pollinate — and features contributors from across the creative spectrum: scientists, activists, indigenous elders, photographers, and writers whose work engages with the natural world in ways that are urgent, beautiful, and often surprising. The editorial tone balances alarm with wonder, acknowledging the scale of the crisis while celebrating the beauty of what we stand to lose. Atmos has since become a nonprofit, supported in part by Future Being, a grant-making studio dedicated to biological and cultural diversity.
The magazine's stated mission is to re-enchant people with nature. It is a phrase that could sound naive if the execution were not so rigorous — and if the founding story did not make clear just how much personal reckoning went into producing a publication that asks its readers to fall in love with the world all over again, and then asks what they are willing to do to protect it.
Explore Atmos at <a href="https://atmos.earth/" target="\_blank">atmos.earth