Bon Appétit is one of those food magazines with its own gravitational force — sixty plus years of pedigree, the largest of the old guard magazines still standing, a centerpiece of Condé Nast’s lifestyle empire. After weathering the media storms of the early 21st Century, they managed to successfully transition from the kind of newsstand standby thumbed through by Boomers in the grocery line to everyone’s favorite cooking YouTube channel, newsletter, Instagram feed, or podcast.

And then, in the summer of 2020, it all blew up. Editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport resigned after photos showed up on social media of him in blackface. The staff, particularly those who are not white, went public with details about a pervasively toxic workplace. The magazine issued a belated apology and hired Dawn Davis from Simon & Schuster and Sonia Chopra from Vox to help remake the culture of the magazine¹.

While the chaos blew up overnight, a toxic workplace like that doesn’t just happen. Reply All has released the first in a four-part series about what happened, going back a decade. It’s an incredible piece of reporting and critical listening, even if you think you’re the type who doesn’t care about the machinations of lifestyle magazines.