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When former Buffalo Bill Jordan Poyer heard New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers extol the benefits of ayahuasca on The Pat McAfee Show in 2023, he was suspicious — but intrigued. Poyer had been struggling with his marriage and his recovery from alcoholism, and after hearing Rodgers discuss “plant medicine” — as the psychoactive brew […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. I am a recovering optimizer.  Over the past several years, I’ve spent ages agonizing over every decision I made because I felt like I had to do the best […]

It always seems like everyone wins and no one really loses at the Golden Globes.  The event has historically been known as more of a boozy party than a serious awards show, a casual hangout with Hollywood’s most charming celebrities rather than a cutthroat winner-take-all situation — even if it’s had its fair share of […]

In an ideal world, everyone who qualifies for an aid program ought to receive its benefits. But the reality is that this is often not the case. Before the pandemic, for example, nearly one-fifth of Americans who qualified for food stamps didn’t receive them. In fact, millions of Americans who are eligible for existing social […]

On New Year’s Eve, America’s most prominent nativist declared that the nation needs more immigrants.  “We need competent people, we need smart people coming into our country,” President-elect Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, “we need a lot of people coming in.” It may sound as though Trump was just visited by the […]

It’s been a contentious 24 hours in South Korean politics, after impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol narrowly avoided arrest for insurrection on Friday, a month after his martial law declaration.  It’s the latest development in a month-long political meltdown that has not only thrown Korean politics into turmoil, but surfaced the country’s deep political polarization, […]

House Republicans — after some initial drama — successfully reelected Rep. Mike Johnson as speaker on Friday. Johnson’s victory in the first round of voting came as something of a surprise, after three Republicans initially voted against him, depriving him of the 218-person majority he needed to win the speakership. After conferring with Johnson, however, […]

We’re all inured to sensationalist headlines about some disaster or another on the horizon. So I don’t blame anyone who was exhausted when they saw last month that dozens of scientists were warning in the journal Science that mirror bacteria could bring about a catastrophic ecosystem collapse and even mass extinction.  After all, we already […]

The question has been hurtling through think pieces, op-eds, and ominous headlines over the past few years: Have American men stopped reading? Specifically, have they stopped reading fiction? And is that why the world is so bad now? The most recent entry in this genre came in December, when David J. Morris, an assistant professor […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. Haga clic aquí para leer esta historia en español. VALLE DEL CAUCA, Colombia — From the side of an old highway that cuts through the Andean foothills, Dora Alicia […]

Sometime last spring, I decided to glow up. This is an extremely embarrassing thing to admit, or at least it should be. But this is America. If you’re not “glowing up,” which is to say, committing all of your time and money to the endless quest of self-improvement, you’re “letting yourself go.” And in America, […]

Your doctor orders blood work or requests you get a biopsy, or maybe your kid broke a bone and you need to rush to the emergency department. A few months later, a bill arrives in the mail with an astounding figure. Despite the federal No Surprises Act made into law in 2022 — which prevents […]